The Black defenders of Sirte and Bani Walid fight like lions because they have no choice
By Glen Ford
Both NATO and their Libyan rebel surrogates express wonder at the fact that loyalist forces continue to fight so fiercely in the contested cities of Sirte and Bani Walid, despite being vastly outnumbered on the ground and unceasingly pummeled from above by the world’s largest air armada. But one look at a picture of Gaddafi loyalist prisoners, captured at a hospital in Sirte, tells the story: they are all Black. The assault on Libya has largely devolved into a race war, and the Black soldiers are fighting for survival against the world’s biggest lynch mob, armed to the teeth by the United States and Europe.
Bulldozer in Tawergha digging mass grave
Where are the people of Tawergha, the mostly Black Libyan city that was wiped from the face of the earth by the rebels? Many of those who were not killed or captured have clearly made their way to Sirte and Bani Walid, to make a last stand against the racist killers that westerners like Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now! call “revolutionaries.” The rebels are brazen – absolutely without shame – in their determination to cleanse Libya of its Black population. They are like Arab Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, backed by a European and American air force, a racist militia whose fighters have vowed to “purge Black skin” and who scrawl the Arabic equivalent of “nigger” on the homes of their vanquished Black countrymen.
Their rationalizations for ethnic cleansing and summary executions of Black prisoners are quite familiar to the American ear, identical to our own practitioners of White Terror. The Tawerghans raped women, the rebels claim, even as international observers report that it is the rebels and the riff-raff that surrounds them who have systematically raped and captured Black girls and women. The Tawerghans, say the rebels, tried to “slaughter all the Misuratans” – and “this is something they have to answer for.”
Many of those who were not killed or captured have clearly made their way to Sirte and Bani Walid, to make a last stand against the racist killers.
Of course, the town of Tawurgha, with only 30,000 mostly Black Libyan citizens, could not possibly have terrorized Misurata, the third biggest city in the country, 25 miles away. But racists always claim to be the victims of crimes in which they, themselves, specialize. So, the Tawurghans – standing in for all Blacks – are labeled rapists, to justify the racist rampages of the Misurata Brigade.
According to a report by none other than the Voice of America, one-third of all prisoners of the rebels are Black. And they appear to be the lucky ones. The captured Tuwarghan men are nowhere to be found, an indication that the rebels don’t give them a chance to surrender, or keep them long after they do. Wounded Blacks that have made their way to hospitals are snatched from their beds, to an unknown fate.
NATO says it will keep bombing until the last resistance to their Libyan rebel surrogates, is crushed. That appears to mean, until the last free Black men in Libya are captured or killed, their families caged at the mercy of racist brutes and sexual marauders. Black civilians are clearly not the kind of people that the Euro-Americans had in mind, when they claimed to be on a mission to protect civilians.
No wonder, then, that the defenders of Sirte and Bani Walid fight like lions, against all odds. They are heroes, but they also have no choice. The racist death squads will have no mercy. Black skin will be purged, Black women raped and then killed. The First Black President of the United States has unleashed a hell on Black Libya. No decent person can ever forgive him.
Tens of thousands of people take a part in a demonstration in Puerta del Sol square in Madrid on Saturday, part of the global movement against corporate greed. Photograph: Arturo Rodriguez/AP
‘Occupy’ anti-capitalism protests spread around the world
Thousands march in Rome, Sydney and Madrid as Occupy Wall Street protests go global
Protests inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York and the “Indignants” in Spain have spread to cities around the world.
Tens of thousands went on the march in New York, London, Frankfurt, Madrid, Rome, Sydney and Hong Kong as organisers aimed to “initiate global change” against capitalism and austerity measures.
There were extraordinary scenes in New York where at least 10,000 protesters took their message from the outpost of Zuccotti Park into the heart of the city, thronging into Times Square.
Only 36 hours earlier, police were preparing to evict the protest from Zuccotti Park. On Saturday they escorted thousands of marchers all day as they made their way uptown through Manhattan, and looked on as they held a rally at a New York landmark.
Occupy Wall Street protesters take part in a demonstration at Times Square in New York/Photo:Eduardo Munoz /Reuters
Dave Bonan, who was at Occupy Wall Street on the first day of the protest a month ago, said it was “a little surreal” that the protest had spread. “I didn’t expect it to last more than 15 minutes,” he said. “The fact it lasted more than a day inspired people all over the world to capitalise – no pun intended – on our success.”
In Madrid, tens of thousands of people take a part in a demonstration in Puerta del Sol square in Madrid, home of the “Indignants” movement, which has been building through the summer as Spain’s economy faltered.
In London, dusk fell on more than 2,000 protesters assembled in front of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, earlier addressed by the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Protesters who are part of the "Indignants" movement based in Madrid burned police cars and otherwise rose up in defiance
There was civil unrest in Rome, where police turned teargas and water cannon on the crowds. Smoke hung over Rome as a small group broke away from the main demonstration and smashed windows, set cars on fire and assaulted television news crews. Others burned Italian and EU flags. “People of Europe: Rise Up!” read one banner in Rome. Fights broke out and bottles were thrown between demonstrators as some tried to stop the violence.
Occupy solidarity demonstration in Berlin, Germany October 15 AP photo
In Germany, about 4,000 people marched through the streets of Berlin, with banners calling for an end to capitalism. Some scuffled with police as they tried to get near parliamentary buildings. In Frankfurt, continental Europe’s financial capital, some 5,000 people protested in front of the European Central Bank.
In the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, marchers carried pictures of Che Guevara and old communist flags that read “Death to capitalism, freedom to the people”.
Another 500 people gathered at a peaceful rally in Stockholm, holding up red flags and banners that read “We are the 99%” – a reference to the richest 1% of the world’s population who control its assets while billions live in poverty.
“There are those who say the system is broke. It’s not,” trade union activist Bilbo Goransson shouted into a megaphone. “That’s how it was built. It is there to make rich people richer.”
Occupy Manila, Philippines
Asian nations, where the fallout from the banking crisis has been less severe, saw less well attended protests – 100 turned out in the Philippines.
A group of 100 prominent authors including Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman and Pulitzer prize-winning novelists Jennifer Egan and Michael Cunningham signed an online petition declaring their support for “Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy movement around the world”.
Occupy Sydney, Australia
Police in London made seven arrests and contained the crowd near St Paul’s. Assange made a dramatic appearance, bursting through the police lines just after 2.30pm, accompanied by scores of supporters.
Occupy Stockholm, Sweden
To clapping and some booing, he climbed the cathedral steps to condemn “greed” and “corruption”. In particular he attacked the City of London, accusing its financiers of money laundering and tax avoidance. “The banking system in London is the recipient of corrupt money,” he said, adding that WikiLeaks would launch a campaign against financial institutions.
Occupy Lisbon, Portugal
Assange is on bail as he fights extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over claims of rape and sexual molestation made by two women.
Police in New York said they made 70 arrests. These were mostly at two flashpoints: 42 were detained near Times Square when attempts to disperse a crowd led to confusion; 24 Citibank customers who attempted to close their accounts in protest were led away for trespass after they opposed an order by the branch manager for them to leave.
Barbara Quist, 67, was pushed around by police in Times Square. Quist, who used to work in the pharmaceutical industry but described herself as unemployed, said the treatment would not put her off further action. “I’m just another person that’s just been run over by capitalism and greed.”
Ethan McGarry, 18, who had travelled to New York from Boston for the day, said it was “fantastic” how the occupy movement had spread. “People identify with us, then hey will find reasons in their own community for action.”
Lauren Zygmont had travelled from the Occupy Denver protest to New York a week ago ago. “Borders don’t matter at all,” she said. “Were all human beings, were all in this together. This is a global movement.”
Occupy Athens, Greece in Syntagma Square Oct. 15; the country is in the throes of mass strikes and walk-outs over austerity measures
Rampage, tear gas in Rome
Alessandro Bianchi / Reuters
October 15, 2011
Hundreds of hooded, masked protesters rampaged through Rome in some of the worst violence in the Italian capital for years Saturday, torching cars and breaking windows during a larger peaceful protest against elites blamed for the economic downturn.
Police repeatedly fired tear gas and water cannon in attempts to disperse them but the clashes with a minority of violent demonstrators stretched into the evening, hours after tens of thousands of people in Rome joined a global “day of rage” against bankers and politicians.
Smoke rose over many parts of the neighborhood between the Colosseum and St John’s Basilica, forcing many residents and peaceful demonstrators to run into buildings and churches for shelter as militant protesters ran wild.
After police managed to push the well-organized radicals away from the St. John’s area, they ravaged a major thoroughfare, the Via Merulana — building barricades with garbage cans and setting the netting of the scaffolding of a building on fire.
Athens: protesters call for world revolution to overthrow the global capitalist system
Discontent is smoldering in Italy over high unemployment, political paralysis and 60 billion euros ($83 billion) of austerity measures that have raised taxes and the cost of health care.
The violence at times resembled urban guerrilla warfare as protesters hurled rocks, bottles and fireworks at police, who responded by repeatedly charging the demonstrators.
Around 70 people were injured, according to news reports, including one man who tried to stop the protesters from throwing bottles.
Protesters from France, Spain and Portugal participated in Occupy Paris Oct. 15
Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno blamed the violence on “a few thousand thugs from all over Italy, and possibly from all over Europe, who infiltrated the demonstration.” Some Rome museums were forced to close down and at least one theater canceled a show.
Protesters also set fire to a building, causing the roof to collapse, reports said. The Defense Ministry denied reports it was one of its offices.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi called the violence a “worrying signal,” and added that the perpetrators “must be found and punished.”
Occupy Seoul, South Korea
Berlusconi barely survived a confidence vote Friday, with many questioning his leadership. Italy’s debt burden is second only to Greece in the 17-nation eurozone and the country is rapidly becoming a focus of concern in Europe’s debt crisis.
At one point radicals surrounded a police van near St John’s Basilica, pelted it with rock and bottles, and set it on fire. The two occupants managed to escape, television footage showed.
Occupy London
Some peaceful demonstrators also clashed with the militants and turned some of them over to police.
A day of worldwid protests inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States began Saturday with the hundreds of people gathering in cities from Japan and South Korea to Australia.
Organizers had hoped to see non-violent demonstrations in 951 cities in Asia, Europe, South America and Africa in addition to every state in the United States.
Frankfurt
In continental Europe’s financial capital, some 5,000 people protested in front of the European Central Bank , while in London, around 500 people marched from St. Paul’s cathedral to the nearby stock exchange.
A website called 15october.net urged the people of the world to “rise up” and “claim their rights and demand a true democracy.”
“Now it is time for all of us to join in a global non violent protest. The ruling powers work for the benefit of just a few, ignoring the will of the vast majority and the human and environmental price we all have to pay. This intolerable situation must end,” the website says.
Sydney About 2,000 people, including representatives of Aboriginal groups, communists and trade unionists, protested outside the central Reserve Bank of Australia.
“I think people want real democracy,” said Nick Carson, a spokesman for OccupyMelbourne.Org. “They don’t want corporate influence over their politicians. They want their politicians to be accountable.”
The crowd cheered a speaker who shouted, “We’re sick of corporate greed! Big banks, big corporate power standing over us and taking away our rights!”
Occupy Detroit packs plaza in front of Coleman A. Young Municipal Center Oct. 14
Most diverse crowd of protesters seen in years
By Diane Bukowski
October 18, 2011
DETROIT – Occupy Detroit hit the city like a thunderclap Oct. 14 as hundreds of marchers packed the plaza in front of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center chanting “The people united will never be defeated,” and “Bail out Detroit, not the banks.”
Long-time schools activist and former board member Marie Thornton's sign demands moratorium on city's debt to banks
They brandished signs condemning foreclosures, DTE shut-offs, unemployment, public bank debt, corporate greed, U.S. wars, and the entire capitalist system. Banners sponsored by Moratorium NOW! demanded that President Barack Obama issue executive orders establishing a national jobs program and banning foreclosures.
“It’s not one thing, it’s everything!” one protester’s huge cardboard sign read.
Numerous rank and file Detroiters from the Black community joined young white protesters new to the movement, as well as seniors, filling the sidewalks all the way to Grand Circus Park a mile away. There they began an occupation they said will last as long as possible, joining people in 900 cities across the country who have allied themselves with Occupy Wall Street.
Marie Butler (l) campaigns against DTE shut-offs, street light elimination
“It’s always about the children,” said Marie Butler, a member of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. “DTE turns our lights off at home, and they’ve dug up street light poles in Highland Park. We don’t have cars, the buses are late, it gets dark by 4 and 5 p.m. now. The children can be accosted going to school, their parents’ homes can be broken into. DTE could have given Highland Park a waiver with a plan to work out their debt. This is ridiculous.”
Occupy Detroit wasted no time with plans to target those it says are enemies of the people, marching first on Bank of America Oct. 17 to demand that it declare a moratorium on foreclosures or face a mass demonstration Oct. 21. (See accompanying story.)
Numerous other targets populate the area around Grand Circus Park, including the DTE headquarters on Bagley, the Detroit Water Board building on Randolph, and various court buildings. U.S. District Judge Sean Cox is poised to sever Detroit’s possession of its primary jewel, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, which serves 400 million customers in southeast Michigan, on Nov. 4.
Marchers take the street; youths are joined by AFSCME Local 207 (Water Department) officer Mike Mulholland (behind man in blue jacket)
Detroit’s casino workers, who were on the verge of a strike over stalled contract negotiations, planned to rally at Campus Martius Oct. 19 at 5 p.m. Across the country, unions have joined Occupy Wall Street protests in a rejuvenation of the earlier mass occupations in the Midwest that they sponsored earlier this year.
“This is long overdue,” Wallace Hoskins, a slot machine field service technician who works all over the state. “The people have been sleeping a long time, addicted to Facebook and video games, but it’s finally coming to a head. Detroit is the worst hit city in the country. I want to see a future for everyone. Even though I’m working, if I ignore this like nothing’s happening, then I’m a fool, because it’s going to come to my doorstep too.”
Occupy the Hood leader Ifejohari Uhuru; instead of police (at right) occupying the hood, they want the people in control.
The occupation notably included many people like Hoskins, not the usual dedicated protesters from many organizations who have held the fort in smaller numbers for many years, but fresh new faces.
Anne Kabel, a Southfield librarian, campaigned to keep libraries open.
“Everything on both sides of the aisle is wrong,” she said, referring to the Democrats and Republicans. “They need to listen to the people who elected them.”
Librarian Anne Kabel
As she was speaking, a contingent of Black youths sporting shirts demanding “Good Jobs Now,” and carrying signs declaring “Fight Racism,” positioned themselves in Grand Circus Park and began a cadence of chants.
“When I say good jobs, what do you say?” a leader of the group shouted. “Good jobs NOW,” the youths declared in unison, over and over. Many young people from the Black community were present at the protest, a heartening sign in a city that has been devastated by youth unemployment, government-sanctioned drug trafficking, police brutality, and violence triggered by the overwhelming lack of hope many young people experience.
What do we want? Jobs! Good Jobs NOW!
Ifejohari Uhuru represented “Occupy the Hood,” a national movement that has sprung from Occupy Wall Street.
“We began three weeks ago in solidarity with the Wall Street occupation,” she said. “We seek to encourage people of color to get involved. We have over 10,000 supporters now and have been joined by people like Cornel West and [U.S. Congresswoman] Maxine Waters.”
Tax the Rich MORE
By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), a national organization largely composed of Black students, has fought school closures, privatization, and state takeovers of Detroit Public Schools for years. They recently won a court victory against Michigan’s anti-affirmative action Proposal 2 and plan to rally at the University of Michigan Nov. 16 to oppose the state of Michigan’s appeal of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision.
Tabrion Joe was there with BAMN
They were present as well to welcome the addition of many other Black youths to the movement.
Tabrion Joe, who has grown up with BAMN, said he wished the marchers had taken Woodward as well as the sidewalks and Grand Circus Park.
At one point, chanting, “Whose streets, our streets,” they began to do so, but were reined in both by Occupy Detroit marshals and Detroit police. Students who occupied Catherine Ferguson Academy in February took Woodward in during a march to Detroit Public Schools headquarters at the Fisher Building in April.
A contingent of marchers carried signs opposing Proposal C, the city charter revision on Detroit’s ballot this November.
Part of Vote NO on C contingent
“This represents a corporate takeover of the city of Detroit,” said Dempsey Addison, president of the Association of Professional and Technical Employees, representing city workers. “They are using the charter to take over and retrofit the city for their profits.”
A man who did not give his name but said he was born in India carried a sign decrying the fact that only 18,000 students graduated from medical schools in the U.S. last year. He blamed the American Medical Association, which he said deliberately limits the number of physicians in the country, despite the crying need in cities like Detroit for health care.
While America occupies Iraq and Afghanistan, wages covert war on Pakistan, conducts drone attacks on Yemen and Somalia, bombards Libya, and positions for a wider confrontation with Iran and Syria, Nobel Peace Prize Laurette President Obama has now quietly, without much fanfare, sent 100 US troops to help Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni crush rebels threatening his 25 year dictatorship.
In what is essentially a “reverse-Libyan-style” intervention, the US is sending troops to crush, not assist rebels rising up against their despotic ruler. Ironically, just as with Libya’s rebels, Uganda’s rebels are also listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department. Instead of the corporate-financier contrived International Criminal Court issuing fictitious warrants for Uganda’s head of state, as was done with Qaddafi in Libya, it is the Ugandan rebel leader, Joseph Kony, who is being targeted.
Both the Ugandan government (with US assistance) and the rebels, known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), are accused of perpetrating heinous atrocities against their enemies and civilian populations in their decades long conflict. In particular, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has just recently presided over the mass murdering and displacement of 20,000 of his own people on behalf of British corporations who sought to construct tree plantations on their land. US and British military assistance and business deals with the Ugandan government have been a ubiquitous feature throughout Museveni’s perpetual, unending term as president.
While mutilated victims of the LRA are just now being paraded in front of the public to frame the recent US troop deployment as another “humanitarian intervention,” it is more than likely that geopolitical aspirations, not humanitarian concerns, are driving this agenda. This is especially so considering just how equally abhorrent the Ugandan government’s human rights record is.
The LRA has often been harbored by the Sudanese government (now the South Sudanese government). Sudan has served as a proxy battlefield between the West and China for control over of its vast oil holdings and ultimately as part of a greater battle to control Africa’s resources. Sudan appears to have used the LRA as a sort of armed buffer between them and their neighbors, in particular, Uganda, ruled by an eager servant of the Anglo-American agenda.
U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, daughters, on safari in Africa: hunting for new resources for faltering U.S. economy?
Surely, as Africa, a forsaken continent, is already written off in the minds of many Americans, little concern and few eyebrows will be lifted as their Nobel Peace Prize-wearing president sends yet more troops off to war there, in a global military expansion quickly and alarmingly approaching the scale and scope of Adolf Hitler’s expansion across Europe and Northern Africa during World War II.
This is difficult to deny when the final tally is done – the United States is conducting either covert or overt military operations in at least 8 nations – Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, and now Uganda – and has 820 military installations in at least 135 countries. As Wall Street and London seek global hegemony, the price Americans pay as this tally grows will only increase. However far flung Uganda may seem, every inch of expansion by the globalists is one inch less for free humanity.
TEL AVIV — An influential “crisis management organization” that boasts billionaire George Soros as a member of its executive board recently recommended the U.S. deploy a special advisory military team to Uganda to help with operations and run an intelligence platform.
The president-emeritus of that organization, the International Crisis Group, is the principal author of Responsibility to Protect, the military doctrine used by Obama to justify the U.S.-led NATO campaign in Libya.
Soros’ own Open Society Institute is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, a doctrine that has been cited many times by activists urging intervention in Uganda.
Authors and advisers of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, including a center founded and led by Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, also helped to found the International Criminal Court. Continue reading →
Protesters walking off the job cause chaos days before key vote
Derek Gatopoulos/ Associated Press
Last Updated: October 18. 2011 1:00AM
Athens, Greece— Strikes halted ferries to the Greek islands Monday and left rotting trash piling up in Athens for the 16th straight day, as unions fought back against more austerity measures at the start of a crucial week for both Greece and the 17-nation eurozone.
The unions orchestrated a barrage of strikes, protests and sit-ins. Tax collectors and customs officers walked off the job, several hundred firefighters and police officers staged a central Athens protest in uniform, and protesting civil servants occupied the finance and labor ministry buildings in the Greek capital.
Greece faces a key vote on the new austerity measures Thursday, and other eurozone countries are rushing to find a comprehensive solution to Europe’s escalating debt crisis in time for a Sunday summit in Brussels by European leaders.
Both the Greek vote and the debt plan are needed so Europe can avoid a loss of confidence in global markets that some fear would plunge the world economy back into a recession.
Parliament’s finance committee on Monday approved the new austerity measures, which include pension cuts and across-the-board tax hikes, as well as pay and staff cuts in the civil service.
“The latest measures are the deathblow for our income, “the civil servants’ union ADEDY said. “The government is destroying its central administration and cutting away the safety net for our citizens, while dramatic cuts in pay are driving workers into poverty and deprivation.”
Public workers on strike; garbage piles up in streeets.
But Prime Minister George Papandreou said he was determined to see the latest reforms through because it would prove to international creditors that Greece was “seeking to make major changes.” Greece has been kept solvent since May 2010 only with international bailout loans.
“This is the most critical week for Europe, and of course for Greece, with decisions that will determine the fate of the eurozone,” he said at an emergency meeting with President Karolos Papoulias. “It will mean we can go to the (debt) negotiations … with our heads held high and with a stronger negotiating position.”
The Socialist government is facing mounting party dissent over a vote in parliament Thursday to pass a new punishing round of tax hikes and pay cuts agreed upon in exchange for international bailout loans.
One Socialist lawmaker, 50-year-old Thomas Robopoulos, resigned his seat in parliament Monday, calling the new round of austerity measures “unfair and anti-labor.”
His resignation does not affect the government’s four-seat majority in parliament as lawmakers there are replaced by party list and not by-elections.
Still, with its slim majority, the government is facing the prospect of an embarrassing defeat over a central part of the new legislation — its plans to strip Greek workers of decades-old labor rights.
The government, meanwhile, was considering using the army to help clear the mounds trash in Athens. Worse labor unrest was ahead: a 48-hour general strike looms for Wednesday and Thursday that will ground flights for two days, cripple public and many private services, even shut down essential services like gas stations and bakeries
(Reuters) – You couldn’t make it up — or could you?
U.S. allegations that an Iranian spy outfit attempted to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington in a convoluted plot involving a U.S. informant posing as a member of a Mexican drug cartel seem bizarre to say the least.
Still, Washington says the drama justifies new international sanctions against Iran and Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief insists that “somebody in Iran” must pay the price.
“The burden of proof and the amount of evidence in the case is overwhelming and clearly shows official Iranian responsibility for this,” Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal said.
Manssor Arbabsiar is shown in this 1996 Nueces County, Texas, Sheriff's Office photograph released to Reuters on October 12, 2011. Arbabsiar, 56, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and holds an Iranian passport, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Sept. 29. The United States accused Iran on Tuesday of backing a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington, escalating tensions with Tehran and stirring up a hornet's nest in the Gulf, where Saudi Arabia and Iran have long jostled for power. Iran denied the charges and expressed outrage at the accusations. REUTERS/Nueces County Sheriff's Office/Handout
The potential consequences are dire in a tense region where the United States and Israel reserve the right to attack Iran to stop it acquiring a nuclear bomb, a goal Tehran disavows.
For starters, the row could throttle any slim chance of resuming negotiations to settle the nuclear dispute.
Saudi-Iranian acrimony has ratcheted up this year, especially since Saudi troops intervened to help Bahrain’s Sunni rulers crush protests led by the island’s Shi’ite majority and fomented, according to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, by Iran.
From across the Middle East’s Arab-Persian and Sunni-Shi’ite faultlines, Riyadh also accuses Tehran of inciting unrest among minority Shi’ites in its own oil-rich Eastern Province, and has often urged the United States in the past to attack Iran, according to diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks.
The plot suspects are Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar, 56, arrested on September 29 in New York, and Gholam Shakuri, said to be a member of Quds Force, the covert, operational arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. He is thought to be in Iran.
U.S. evidence rests mainly on Arbabsiar’s alleged confession that he had acted for men he thought were top Quds officials.
MOTIVE AND MEANS
Yet questions abound over the putative plot, not least the classic ones of motive and means. Many analysts are skeptical.
What could Iran hope to gain from an assassination that would have brought fierce retribution? Why try to recruit a hitman from a Mexican drug cartel instead of using its own? Continue reading →
The video above shows what organizers called the beginning of “Occupy Detroit” outside Cadillac Place, where Gov. Snyder’s Detroit office is, and where protesters have been fighting the cruel cut-offs of 50,000 (and counting) people including children and babies from public assistance every Thursday at noon.
By Diane Bukowski
October 11, 2011
Hazen Pingree: Beware the power of the private corporations
DETROIT – People of all ages, sexes and races poured into the City of Hope Church near Grand River and Trumbull Oct. 11 to bring Detroit into the occupation movement that has spread like wildfire across the country, beginning Sept. 17 with Occupy Wall Street.
The Detroit assemply decided by consensus that the occupation of Detroit would begin Friday, Oct. 14 at 4 p.m. outside the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center on Woodward at the foot of Jefferson. Participants will then march at 6 p.m. to set up their base in Grand Circus Park.
The park is presided over by a statue of 19th century Detroit Mayor Hazen Pingree, “the first to warn the people of the power of the private corporations,” according to an inscription on its base.
“This is the first time in years where we have had an opportunity for class unity, the first time we should be able to join together to stop the welfare cut-offs and the Wall Street bail-outs,” Maureen Taylor, president of the Michigan Welfare Rights Association, cried out during the assembly.
Pres. Obama greets South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak at the White House Oct. 12
U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to be in the Detroit area the same day, visiting the Ford Wixom plant with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. South Korean trade unionists have struck and held mass rallies to protest their government’s anti-labor policies.
Occupy Detroit has now been endorsed by the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO, a hopeful indication that the labor movement will come out in force to support it. Currently, Ford rank-and-file workers are fighting a proposed contract. (See article below.)
The excitement in the air was palpable. Organizers estimated the turn-out for Occupy Detroit’s first general assembly at 1,000 people, so large they re-directed participants outside to the park/playground area behind the church.
Abayomi Azikiwe
Long-time Detroit activist Abiyomi Azikiwe opened the rally in the church, noting it was taking place on Columbus Day.
“This is a day that we pay tribute to the indigenous people of America, and to our ancestors who were brought here in slaveships,” Azikiwe said. “Detroit was the first city to be hit by the economic crisis, and hit the hardest. The rest of the country and the world is now catching up. It is time to reclaim what is ours. We are the 99 percent, the masses who should be in control. We must retake the banks and the multinational corporations and run society on a humane truly democratic level.
Below, Danny Glover addresses Occupy L.A., raising the importance of supporting the hunger strike of 12,000 prisoners in California.
Other speakers acknowledged that members of the oppressed communities should be at the forefront of the occupation, including people of color, women, and the LGBT communities. Detroit’s population is at least 86 percent Black, and many said the success of the occupation will depend on the inclusion of rank-and-file Detroiters, particularly the youth.
Maryanne Godboldo, who stood off police in March to defend her daughter from CPS
“They are illegally stealing our children, and we need a committee to address that,” one woman cried out during the assembly. She referred the the thousands of families in Detroit and Michigan who have had their children kidnapped by Child Protective Services using an assembly-line court system absent any judicial oversight.
This was a concrete example of the need to address the specific problems of the people of Detroit if Occupy Detroit is to succeed.
The assembly included a large number of young white people, some who came directly from New York as representatives of the Occupy Wall Street movement. They brought with them the tools developed there, including consensus voting, hand signals, and “the people’s mike” (when mechanical mikes don’t work or the police ban bullhorns, the crowd as a whole shouts back what a apeaker either from the stage or from the audience is saying).
Section of crowd at Oct. 10 assembly/WSWS photo
They also brought copies of the “Occupied Wall Street Journal” put out by the thousands of anti-corporate activists in New York, and a lot of desperately needed energy and enthusiasm.
Many of the city’s long-time activist groups were also present, hopeful that Occupy Detroit would spark a long-awaited rising up of the people in this long down-trodden, depressed city.
They included the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice, the Moratorium NOW! Coalition against Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shut-offs, and the Socialist Equality Party, which has led protests against DTE shut-offs that cost the lives of dozens of Detroiters, including toddlers, over the last year.
Travion, Selena and Fantasia Young, killed in a fire caused by 2009 DTE shut-off
A member of that group called on the assembly to be as inclusive as possible, allowing broad debate from all political perspectives. Recently, many leaders of the Democratic Party have sought to piggyback on the Occupy Wall Street movement, he said, and they should not be allowed to co-opt it.
A consensus vote was taken to select Grand Circus Park as the initial base for the occupation. The Park in located in central downtown, next to Comerica Park and Ford Field, which are expected to be packed with people attending the Tigers and Lions games.
Grand Circus Park is also close to the financial district full of the banks that have created the worldwide economic meltdown being taken out on the backs of poor and working people. Not to mention that it is only a few blocks from DTE headquarters on Bagley, which recently announced rate increases and cutbacks in assistance for the poor in paying their bills.
Twelve initial committees were set up, including Outreach, Comfort, Food, Education, Information, Media, Sensitivity and Racial Inclusion, Finance, Direct Action, Name (there is a debate about other names besides Occupy Detroit), Facilitation, Child Care, Medical, Security and Legal.
For more information, according to a flier distributed Oct. 10:
By Askia Muhammad -Senior Correspondent-
Updated Oct 5, 2011 – 1:21:36 PM
WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) – It was one of the most bizarre incidents during the NATO-supported uprising in Libya. The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, a retired member of the Congressional Black Caucus went missing in Tripoli for several weeks during a self-sanctioned mission to that war zone, as rebel forces advanced toward the capital and their eventual overthrow of Col. Muammar Gadhafi , who led the North African country for nearly 41 years.
Rumors spread that the former senior aide to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed. Then, on Aug. 24, the office of the Rev. Fauntroy’s successor in Congress— D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton—announced that she had “been in touch with authorities who have spoken with” Mr. Fauntroy. “Authorities have confirmed for Norton that (the) Reverend Fauntroy is safely in the care of the International Committee of the Red Cross and is expected to leave Libya soon.”
One day later Mrs. Norton issued another statement indicating that she “spoke with Ms. Dorothy Fauntroy, wife of former D.C. Congressman Walter Fauntroy. Ms. Fauntroy told Norton that the family spoke to (the) Reverend Fauntroy around 3:00 a.m. EDT and that he said he is in a safe place in Libya and expects to return to D.C. later this week. … Ms. Fauntroy did not know the circumstances of (the) Reverend Fauntroy’s visit to Libya. He told her of the trip only shortly before his departure in order to prevent her from worrying,” the statement concluded.
“And I went” to Libya, Mr. Fauntroy told The Final Call, after several days of thinking about whether or not to grant an interview. “And God knows, did I get in trouble. When I got there I found myself in the secure hotel that had been, by international law reserved for news media so they could go out and cover the war and come back and report it to the world in safety. I was there.
“But I found myself there among 37 so-called newsmen, and myself, all of whom were threatened, first by ones within the group. There were Gadhafi reporters who were so angry with the lies the reporters were saying that they were going to kill them, and told them they were going to kill them. And chop their heads off, and cut their right arm and left leg off and take a picture of it and send it to their friends. And they were scared to death, because they knew if we walked out of that place, they could do it.” Continue reading →
Early results of voting on the new Ford-United Auto Workers contract are nearly break-even, according to Detroit newspapers. Reformers in the union are organizing to get the 41,000 Ford workers to once again vote “no” on their national contract, as they did in October 2009.
Wisconsin: Now is the time to escalate the struggle for labor and a just economy/ Photo Mark Brennan Labor Notes
UAW reformers point out that the contract would freeze wages and substitute bonuses—which wouldn’t recover the losses from years of concessions—and it would permanently institutionalizes the two-tier wage system. Despite raises for the lower tier, it provides no bridge to higher wages.
With 7.3 percent of votes reported, production workers have voted “yes” by 50.1 percent and skilled trades “no” by 54.8 percent. Local 900, covering a Focus assembly plant west of Detroit where the shop chair opposed the agreement because of onerous “alternative work schedules,” voted “no” by 56 votes.
The Autoworkers Caravan group is circulating a leaflet asking workers to vote no. It says, “Ford is rolling in profits and Wall Street is tickled to see this contract.”
Labor Notes Conference 2008
Local 900 member Dave Dogonski described himself as a fence-sitter who had voted yes. “I would like to have voted no in order to make a political statement,” he said. “How can the union in one breath support things like Occupy Wall Street but at the same time let the corporations take windfall profits and not get us a raise?”
Ford is currently the richest of the Detroit 3, and the only company where workers have the right to strike. UAW President Bob King negotiated a package that is richer monetarily than the one ratified by GM workers last month. They will receive signing bonuses of $6,000 rather than $5,000 and annual bonuses of $1,500 rather than $1,000.
Judy Wraight, an instrument repairperson at Ford’s ancient Rouge complex near Detroit, pointed out that $1,500 is the monetary equivalent of just three of the concessions workers made in 2009 (one holiday, less daily break time, and a Christmas bonus). Two other concessions—a wage freeze in place since 2005 and the 99 cents-per-hour wage cut workers took when they gave up the cost-of-living allowance—were not addressed.
Auto company execs are clear that they want to shift workers to half wages—permanently.
GM CEO Dan Akerson and UAW President Bob King
GM CEO Dan Akerson said recently that although “we don’t need to get there tomorrow,” his aim is to replace higher-paid workers with those now starting at $15.78, partly through buyouts of senior workers and skilled trades.
But the contracts contain no pension increases, for the first time, and they take away the small Christmas bonus most retirees had received.
The UAW says that Ford will invest to create new jobs, but the reformers counter: “What does the record tell us about promises like that? Ford will invest in what it thinks is profitable. Every contract for decades has been presented as a ‘job security contract,’ but UAW-Ford has lost half its membership since 1999.”
Ford is rolling in profits and Wall Street is tickled to see this contract. But we don’t even get the concessions back–from COLA, to Annual Improvement Factor, to Easter Monday. Retirees lose the Christmas bonus and the legal services plan is being phased out—read on and find out more. We voted NO in 2009 to preserve the right to strike, but you wouldn’t know it from this contract.
COLA is gone forever if we can’t restore it now, when Ford is making big profits. Bloomberg News quotes Bob King: “Would [the members] like fixed rate increases? Sure they would. I’d like to give it to them, but they know the competitive structure as well as I do.”
UAW and Ford at the bargaining table
A lump sum is not a Cost of Living Allowance keyed to inflation. King’s words ”fixed rate increases” mean increases in the base hourly rate, like the 3% Annual Improvement Factor and COLA that we lost. Scott Houldieson of Chicago Assembly has a good comeback for President King: “Frozen COLA and second tier wage increased to full wage combined would have reduced profits for 2010 to a mere $6.41 billion dollars! How is a company to survive on that?!” A 4% wage increase for the first year of the contract would amount to $95.5 million–less than the stock awarded to Mulally and Bill Ford in 2011. What a time to eliminate Equity of Sacrifice from the “Unpublished Letters”!
Second tier comes up only to average NON-union industrial pay. Ford needed this anyway to get workforce stability. If we sell out our children, they won’t defend our pensions. They only get 13 weeks SUB. UNITY = Equal Pay for Equal Work, not second class citizenship. Brother Houldieson also wrote: “Forget all the happy talk about the FTPM Morale Matrix. The company knows it has a better chance of controlling us if they can keep us divided.” Gary Walkowicz of Dearborn Truck wrote: “The biggest concession is that 2-tier will continue.” Do you believe any 2nd tier will become 1st tier with this contract?
If Ford hires permanent 2nd tier workers, the contract contains loopholes that let them hire way more than the so-called 20% cap–including some whole plants that are 2nd-tier only. Either way, everyone is undermined by non-equal pay for equal work. Will Ford even hire true 2nd tier? Last time we checked, all but 100 nation-wide were LTSs, not permanent 2nd tier. We have a three tier membership. Why is insourced work not counted toward the 20% cap on entry level numbers?
Pensions: New low for the UAW: No increase. Retirees lost their Christmas bonus.
• VEBA: Health care is still inadequately funded. New VEBA funds come only from the profit-sharing gamble. 30 & Out means little–if you’re afraid to retire before Medicare!
“Manufacturing Work Groups” combine production and skilled trades. This undermines trades classifications andunderminesproduction workers’ chances of real advancement through apprenticeships.
• Overtime: Time and a half after 8 hours is not restored. Increasing Alternative Work Schedules are designed to eliminate overtime pay as much as possible. We should make enough to not need overtime.
• Without real barriers to outsourcing, the outsourcing will continue and increase. “Sourcing moratorium remains intact,” say the Highlights. But we see outsourcing all the time.
Working conditions: Lost break time is not restored. Alternative Work Schedules undermine working lives and family lives.
The 2011 UAW Bargaining Convention endorsed domestic partner same-sex bereavement pay, but it’s not in this contract.
We need a contract that helps organize the unorganized at Toyota, VW, Honda, Mercedes. Non-union workers need to see us as a fighting union. There has been no national Ford strike since 1976!
ACH workers should simply be made full Ford workers now—rather than waiting for openings.
What’s the alternative to voting Yes? Vote No–send them back to the table to get what we deserve. And show Ford some real strike preparation.
“Creating” and “saving” jobs?? What does the record tell us about promises like that? Ford will invest in what it thinks is profitable. The contract will not force Ford to add jobs if business conditions are not good and we don’t have a fighting union. Every contract for decades has been presented as a “job security contract,” but UAW-Ford has lost half its membership since 1999. Now Twin Cities MN and Walton Hills OH plants will close. And as the Autoworker Caravan wrote about the GM contract: “Shifting work from one plant to another isn’t ‘new’ work. Laying off autoworkers in Mexico is not ‘creating jobs’. Talk about new work, why didn’t the Union challenge the corporations to make fuel-efficient buses that every U.S. city could purchase?”
Gary Walkowicz, 313-737-3166, gwalk32@att.net; Judy Wraight, 313-272-0307, jswraight@aol.com; TO ADD YOUR NAME TO NEXT EDITION OF THIS LEAFLET, WRITE OR CALL:
