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Cynthia McKinney and the Dignity delegation visit victims of US/NATO bombings at a hospital in Tripoli, Libya, June 4, 2011   

WBAIX is running a series of interviews from El Khadra Hospital in Tripoli of a number of civilian victims of the US-led NATO bombing campaign being conducted against Libya. Go to www.WBAIX.org and keep going back – we will be receiving more video from Tripoli for the next few days and posting it there as it comes in. 

Don DeBar  

www.WBAIX.org

Abdullah took a shrapnel wound in the abdomen after the NATO attack on Muammar Qaddafi's sprawling residential and military command compound at Bab al-Aziziya in downtown Tripoli. Abdullah's nearby house was damaged in the attack. His hospital window continues to be blown open and ceiling tiles fall on his bed from continued NATO attacks on Bab al-Aziziya, a kilometer and a half away. Abdullah, whose friend lost a hand in the NATO attack, says he is not able to sleep with the continuing NATO bombardment.

Muammar is from Zlitan, near rebel-held Misrata, east of Tripoli. His two legs were hit with DIME-like shrapnel while he and his friends were sitting in front of Muammar's grocery store.

 WAYNE MADSEN: I witnessed a number of seriously injured Libyans and other Africans of all colors, many darker than or having the same skin tone as Barack Obama.

Another victim of the Pentagon’s “precision-guided” munitions. This 26-year old man from Tadjoura, west of Tripoli, remains unconscious after a NATO attack resulted in the roof of his house collapsing on him. The El Khadra hospital spokesman said the man is unaware that two of his family members were killed in the attack.

 Libyan rebels using Western arms, looting Libyan Central Bank in Benghazi; Evidence of NATO war crimes

WAYNE MADSEN REPORTING  Sunday, June 5, 2011 

TRIPOLI, LIBYA – Shortly after Libya’s rebel Interim Transitional National Council (ITNC) seized control of Benghazi, the second-largest Libyan city, they discovered the two keys for the cash vaults of the Libyan Central Bank in the city. However, because of control mechanisms, the cash vault required a third key held at the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli, the capital. The rebel movement brought in a professional safe cracker from the United Arab Emirates who successfully opened the cash vault safe. The rebels had their hands on $900 million in Libyan dinars and $500.5 million in U.S. dollars.

According to Central Bank officials in Tripoli, the rebels have now spent or siphoned to their offshore bank accounts the entire Benghazi Central Bank cash reserves. In addition, the rebel movement has squandered millions of euros provided by the Euriopean Union. The rebel’s theft of money is so great, the U.S. Treasury has refused to provide frozen Libyan central government funds to the rebel movement.

In addition to the Libyan dinars stolen from the Benghazi Central Bank, NATO countries have printed their own Libyan dinars abroad and have made the cash available to the rebels.

Under Qaddafi’s Libyan Oil Wealth program, every Libyan family received a monthly payment of 500 dinars, their share of Libya’s oil revenues. With the rebels controlling the finances of eastern Libya, families in the east are no longer receiving the oil wealth-sharing payments and the looting of the Central Bank in Benghazi has resulted in no money for civil servants and pensioners.

View Central Bank of Libya and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.

Prior to the NATO attack on Libya, Qaddafi was working with other African nations, including that of President Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d’Ivoire, to establish an Africa-wide currency unit under the African Monetary Authority. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his French business friends saw Qaddafi’s move as threatening the collapsing CFA franc, a neo-colonial contrivance used by France to maintain control over their former colonies in Africa. With Gbagbo ousted largely by French troops and Qaddafi under attack by French-and Israeli-backed rebels, Sarkozy and his banker and business friends feel that the CFA franc is safe and plans for the African currency unit are aborted.

A portrait of Muammar Gaddafi hangs in a destroyed office of Libya's anti-corruption agency following Nato bombing. Photograph: Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty Images

One of NATO’s first targets in Tripoli was the Office of Investigation of Corruption in Tripoli. Several of the Qaddafi ministers who defected to the rebels, including the former Justice, Interior, Planning and Economic Development, and Trade and Industry ministers, were being investigated for fraud by the Libyan government. The documents on corruption were backed up, however, and are now stored in a safe location.

The Libyan rebels, many of whom are Libyan mujaheddin Salafists from Afghanistan and Iraq, including many Libyans captured in Afghanistan and released from detention in Guantanamo, obtained brand new weapons not found in Libyan stockpiles at the outset of their rebellion. Other Salafists crossed into Libya from neghboring Darfur in Sudan.

Some of the Salafists are members of the Islamic Combatant Group while others have established the “Emirate of Derna” in the east that is under the control of a member of “Al Qaeda” named Sheikh Abdul-Hakim. The INTC has issued Hakim a false Libyan passport. The passport photo shows Hakim with a beard and the Qaddafi government prohibits passport photos showing beards.

U.S. diplomat Luke Reynolds was expelled from U.S. embassy in Tripoli in Nov. 2010

Many of the Islamic mujaheddin groups began their campaign to topple Qaddafi on Facebook. In November 2010, a political officer for the US embassy in Tripoli was expelled for espionage. WMR has learned the diplomat was a CIA agent who was on a liaison mission with a Libyan rebel “sleeper cell” in Ifrane, about 100 miles southwest of Tripoli, when he was caught by Libyan security. Thne CIA’s early involvement with the Libyan rebels, along with early support for the rebels by French and British intelligence, indicates that the Libyan rebellion was not based on events in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, but was designed to authorize the rebels to move when a favorable situation presented itself. The overthrow of the governments of Tunisia and Egypt provided just the right situation for the CIA and its French and British counterparts.

FNH USA markets this image as computer wallpaper

Many of the new weapons being used by the rebels are from the Belgian-based arms manufacturer Fabrique Nationale (FN), which has a CIA-connected subsidiary called FNH-USA. (VOD ed.: Click on http://www.fnhusa.com/mil/ to view “patriotic” video showing FNH-USA weapons with soldiers, courtesy of U.S. Dept. of Defense.) One FN rifle, the Fusil Automatique Léger (FAL), is the standard weapon being used by the rebels. The FAL, called the “Right Arm of the Free World” during the Cold War, only uses NATO standard rounds. The weapon was never used by the Libyan Army, which relied on Soviet weaponry. Claims by NATO that the rebels are using Libyan weapons captured from army arsenals and caches are, therefore, false.

Libyan rebels are also using U.S.-produced machine guns chambered for NATO rounds.

There are also reports that rebels have agreed to recognize Israel and allow Israel to maintain a 30-year lease for a military base in eastern Libya that would be used to check the Egyptian military should a future breakdown in Israeli-Egyptian relations occur.

NATO WAR CRIMES

In the current NATO war on Libya, the citizens of European and North American NATO countries are being treated to the largest propaganda blitz by their governments in cahoots with corporate media outlets since the U.S.-led invasions and occupation of Iraq. The situation on the ground in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, could not more different from what is being portrayed by Western news networks and newspapers.

Saif al-Arab Gadhafi, murdered by NATO forces along with three of Gadhafi's tiny grandchildren

The NATO missile attack that killed Muammar Qaddafi’s son, Seif al Arab Qaddafi, on April 30, was an attempt to kill Muammar Qaddafi himself. This editor visited the devastated home where Seif was killed, along with his friend and three of Muammar Qaddafi’s grandchildren. The only reason why Muammar Qaddafi survived the blast was that he was away from the main residence tending to some animals, including two gazelles, kept in a small petting zoo maintained for his grandchildren. Muammar Qaddafi escaped the fate of his son and grandchildren by only about 500 feet. The residence was hit by bunker buster bombs fired from a U.S. warplane. One of the warheads did not detonate and was later removed from what remained of a bedroom in the home. Libyan authorities do not have the technical capabilities to determine if the warhead contained depleted uranium.

NATO and the Pentagon claimed the residence was a military compound, yet there is no evidence that any military assets were located in the residence that was flanked by the homes of a Libyan doctor and businessmen. The Qaddafi residence actually is owned by Qaddafi’s wife. The neighbors’ homes were also badly damaged in the U.S. air attack and are uninhabitable. Only a few hundred yards away from the Qaddafi compound sits the embassy of Cote d’Ivoire.

Obama laughing at White House Correspondents' Dinner while Gadhafi's son and grandchildren are murdered

The presence of a foosball table and swing set in the yard of the Qaddafi compound belies the charge by the Pentagon that the home was a military target. However, considering that Qaddafi was present in the compound during the attack, it is clear that President Obama violated international law and three Executive Orders signed by three past presidents — Ford, Carter, and Reagan — in trying to assassinate the Libyan head of state. In fact, while Obama’s order to kill Qaddafi was being carried out, the President of the United States was preparing to yuck it up with Washington’s illuminati and Hollywood’s glitterati at the White House Correspndents’ Dinner in Washington.

Obama’s order to kill Qaddafi is reminiscent of George W. Bush’s order to kill Sadaam Hussein at the outset of the U.S. war against Iraq, an assassination order that was also a violation of international and U.S. law.

Putting into context what occurred at Mrs. Qaddafi’s home and the aftermath, let one say that there is an unprovoked and surprise enemy missile attack on a secondary U.S. presidential residence, say Camp David. The world’s major media then claims that the attack was justified because the U.S. president was committing unsubstantiated war crimes, all reported from sketchy sources. A group of independent journalists and human rights activists drive to Camp David and are welcomed by a plainclothes member of the Secret Service’s Presidential Protective Division.

The Secret Service official then proceeds to show the delegation one of the bombed out bedrooms of the main residence and points out that one of the pulverized bedrooms is where the president’s daughter was killed in the attack. The delegation is then shown the First Lady’s singed handbag thrown several hundred feet away in the explosion. Although the President was taking a walk away from the main residence, the delegation is shown a windbreaker bearing the presidential seal lying on the couch of the destroyed living room. A room said contain military command and control systems is then found by the delegation to have a destroyed pool table and a shattered pinball machine. The attacking nation claims that the Camp David compound was a security threat. But the American people rally to support their president and his family after the attack. Now, you can begin to understand how the people of Libya feel after the U.S. attack on Mrs. Qaddafi’s house that killed her and her husband’s son and three grand children, along with a family friend.

Gadaffi is all we need
From: LizziesLiberation | Jun 4, 2011 | 116 views

Children at Djil Attahadi primary school in Tripoli, Libya sing “Allah, Moammar, Libya bas” (Allah, Moammar [Gadaffi], Libya – it’s all we need”.

The school was shaken to its foundations on Sat 28 May 2011 when nato bombed an adjacent complex which houses trainees of the civil militias. The bomb caused the school to shake, many windows were blown in by two bombs 30mins apart. The children were sitting their exams at the time and ran en masse out of the school in terror

Real danger of chemical weapons falling into hands of radical Islamists

SPECIAL FROM WAYNE MADSEN www.waynemadsenreport.com

June 6-8, 2011

TRIPOLI, LIBYA — Chemical weapons and chemical weapons precursor materials that were declared by Libya to the United Nations and United States but not yet destroyed are stored in warehouses at facilities adjacent to Libyan military bases now being attacked by U.S. and NATO forces. Libyan chemical and environmental engineers now warn that if NATO and the U.S. manage to force Libyan security forces to abandon their positions around the military bases and chemical weapons storage facilities, chemical weapons could end up in the hands of the radical Islamist Salafist forces that make up part of the Libyan rebel coalition force.

One Libyan chemical engineer was blunt in his warning about the chemical weapons and their current lack of security. He said, “the U.S. and U.N. took over responsibility for protecting these weapons, which include mustard gas canisters . . . now, the U.S. and U.N. are placing these weapons in danger of being captured by the “Al Qaeda” forces, being sold on the black market, or being used against the United States after the alliance between “Al Qaeda” and the United States terminates after a rebel takeover of Libya.” The engineer added, “the last time America allied itself with “Al Qaeda” in Afghanistan, they attacked you country. After Libya, they will attack you again.”

Chemical and environmental engineers gathered for a conference in Tripoli dealing with the environmental damage already witnessed as a result of the NATO military attack on Libya. As NATO bombs could be heard exploding in the Tripoli region, environmentalists said that the potential for greater environmental damage looms with the NATO attack.

One conference participant said, “In Brega, which is now under attack by NATO helicopters, a stray missile from one of those helicopters into ethylene storage tanks which are kept at minus 174 degrees Fahrenheit at a plastics factory in the city would result in an atomic bomb-like explosion that would destroy everything in a 10 kilometer radius.” The participant added that the environmental damage from such an explosion would be catastrophic. Another attendee said there has already been damage to feeding and watering areas used by migratory birds flying to Europe from Africa, including some rare species.

There will also be consequences from the use by NATO and U.S. forces of depleted uranium shells. One environmental conference participant revealed that depleted uranium has been used in the NATO attack. In fact, this reporter witnessed shrapnel wounds of patients in the intensive care unit at El Khadra Hospital in Tripoli that were consistent with the use of Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) missiles. DIME weapons are spin-offs from bunker buster technology and both rely on depleted uranium. DIMEs cause powerful localized explosions that are, ironically, intended to limit “collateral damage.” Wounds from DIME weapons, resulting from small shrapnel dispersion, are highly carcinogenic due to the use of uranium components. The discoloration of the wounds seen on the patients are consistent with DIME attacks on Libya. DIME weapons were a favorite weapon for the Israelis in their attack on Gaza.

More at www.waynemadsenreport.com    

Posted by Don DeBar at 9:27 AM

Simon’s Pizza Being Tossed from Cobo after 30 Years: MyFoxDETROIT.com

 By Diane Bukowski 

DETROIT – The video above tells the tale of only one of the disastrous effects of the city’s loss of control of Cobo Hall, but it is a prime example of the vicious attack the corporate world has mounted on the predominantly Black residents and small business owners of this, the poorest city in the country.

Larry Simon with friend Maz (Facebook photo)

Larry and Sandy Simon’s family has owned Simon’s Pizza, located just behind the Joe Louis Statue in Cobo’s lobby, for 30 years. The Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority (DRCFA), created despite an uproar from the community during former Mayor Ken Cockrel, Jr.’s short-lived administration, awarded Centerplate the concessions contract for all of Cobo in April, 2010.

The other Larry: Larry Alexander

“We were very impressed by the Centerplate team and their strategic approach to enhancing our brand and building our business,” said DRFCA CEO Larry Alexander at the time.

Centerplate is owned by a New York City-based private equity firm, Kohlberg & Company, LLC, worth $7 billion. Centerplate’s parent company is Volume Services America, headquartered either in Stamford Connecticut or Spartansburg, South Carolina according to which sources one references. Centerplate operates concessions, catering and merchandise services in over 130 sports facilities, convention centers and other entertainment venues in North America.

Former Mayor Ken Cockrel, Jr. announces Cobo Hall give-away in March, 2009, as Joe Louis turns his back in shame

“We always think that if you got some value and offerings to anybody, everybody should have the same equal opportunities out here as anybody else,” Larry Simon said at a rally to save his business June 7. “If you’re small, do you have the capital to move with us? We don’t know that, but whatever reason it is, we’re still confused as to why we were not renewed the contract.”

(Click on http://www.clickondetroit.com/video/28149296/index.html for video. Note: the report erroneously says that Centerplate just took over Simon’s contract.)

Drew Clora (l) with Oakland Co. Executive L. Brooks Patterson (center) and partner "Rick." A Patterson appointee sits on the Cobo Regional Authority Board. Wonder how Drew got the contracts?

Simon said he is looking into filing a lawsuit. His is the last Black-owned business in Cobo Hall. Since Centerplate took over, they have launched “Eatsville USA” on the Cobo concourse, according to a release. Eatsville includes the Detroit Beer Company and Lockhart’s BBQ among other businesses.

Drew Clora of Royal Oak owns The Detroit Beer Company and Lockhart’s BBQ as well as the Detroit Brewing Company and the Royal Oak Brewery. He says his BBQ restaurant is named after a small town in Texas.

Centerplate has also partnered with Andiamo to open the Vu Restaurant.  Andiamo’s Dearborn workers just carried out a long and bitter strike against their employer, asking patrons to boycott the chain for unfair labor practices.

A Labor Notes article from June, 2010, noted, “Frightened wage-thieving owners shut down their restaurant when rowdy picketers from the Social Forum appeared. The Restaurant Opportunities Center of Michigan (ROC) has mobilized for months against Andiamo, a white-tablecloth Italian place in Dearborn, over its overtime-stealing, racial-discriminating ways.”

VOD ED: The comment below by Keith Hines is also in the comments section of this post, but I certainly thought it deserved being part of the entire story.

HELLO WORLD! ***Me KEITH*** ***DIAMOND-II Productions***
THEY HAVE GONE TOO FAR NOW! THEY JUST HAD TO GO MESSING WITH “MY FAMILY”!!! I WAS ONE OF THE #1st DELIVERY BOYS BACK IN 1975. I WAS THE ONE WHO DROVE THE “1974 TRICKED OUT MUSTANG.”
WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THERE FOR EACH OTHER AS A FAMILY, ALL THE WAY BACK TO “St CLAIR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL” ON THE EAST SIDE OF DETROIT IN THE 60s.
THIS “COBO BATTLE” GOES BEYOND THE YOUR IMAGINATIONS AND WE HAVE TO “FIGHT THEM WITH OUR EDUCATION AND HISTORY BOOKS”.
1st MAYOR COBO WHO WAS A REPUBLICAN WHO RAN THE CITY OF DETROIT DURING ONE OF THE WORST TIMES IN HISTORY FOR THE AFRICAN AMERICANS AND PEOPLE OF ANY RACE BELOW A CERTAIN INCOME IN THE CITY OF DETROIT.
“THE DETROIT PLAN” WAS MADE PUBLIC ON NOVEMBER 18, 1946 BY “MAYOR EDWARD J. JEFFERIES, Jr.” AND “MAYOR COBO”(a republican) TOOK OFFICE IN THE FALL 1949.
“THE COBO ADMINISTRATION” WAS IN PLACE IN 1949 AND ” THE DISLOCATION WITHOUT RELOCATION POLICIES” A CLEAR AND DEFIANT ACTION DISPLAYING AND USING “THE COLOR OF LAW” IN A “CONCERTED ACTION” AGAINST “DETROIT’S CITIZENS” CAME FROM HIS OFFICE AND DEFYING THE “FEDERAL HOUSING ACT OF 1948″ WHICH WAS SIGNED BY “HARRY S. TRUMAN” ON JULY 15,1949 WHICH SQUARELY “PLACED A DUTY ON THE CITY TO PROVIDE “ACCOMMODATIONS” FOR RESIDENTS BEFORE EVICTING THEM”.
MAYOR COBO WAS QUOTED AS SAYING IN A RALLY TO THOSE CITIZENS PROTESTING EVICTIONS…“WE DON’T WANT THEM HERE” !!??
THE PROJECT WAS “LAFAYETTE PARK” AND THE I-75 FREEWAY.
THANKS TO “WALTER REUTHER” “PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED AUTO WORKERS” WHICH DONATED $10,000.00 TO HELP FORM “A CITIZEN’S COMMITTEE” TO HELP THE DISPLACED RESIDENTS. OF COURSE “MAYOR COBO” DIDN’T LIKE THIS AND FOUGHT THE “UNITED AUTO WORKERS UNION” EVERY INCH OF THE WAY WHO MADE THEM INCLUDE IN THE NEW PLAN “AFFORDABLE HOUSING” IN THE “LAFAYETTE PARK PLAN”!!
WHEN THE “CITY OF DETROIT, PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT” APPROVED THE PLANS FOR THE “COBO HALL EXPANSION PROJECT” THEN MAYOR “MAYOR COLEMAN YOUNG” MADE THEM INCLUDE “SIMONS PIZZA”/PATS PIZZA IN THE PLANS AND THE CONSTRUCTION WAS COMPLETED WITH THEM INCLUDED “AS SHOWN” IN THE BLUEPRINTS!!
THINGS HAVE NOT CHANGED MUCH HAVE THEY???
WHY DO THEY WANT “COBO”?? WHY NOT!! IT WAS NAMED AFTER “MAYOR COBO” ONE OF “THEIR GREATEST HEROES”??? “MAYOR COBO”
THIS INFORMATION WAS OBTAINED FROM A BOOK CALLED
“DETROIT PERSPECTIVES” *Crossroads and Turning Points* Published In 1991
WRITTEN BY “WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS” Edited By “WILMA WOOD HENDERSON.”
“I” STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT “ALL DETROITERS” ESPECIALLY “OUR NEWLY ELECTED OFFICIALS OBTAIN A COPY OF THIS BOOK AND ANOTHER BOOK CALLED “BARRON’S LAW DICTIONARY”
SO THAT WE CAN COMMUNICATE OUR VIEWS AND OPINION’S ON A LEVEL THAT CAN HOLD “THE COURTS” “LIABLE” OF “LEGAL DETRIMENT” AND “A DISPLAY OF PREJUDICE” BY NOT MAINTAINING “THE LEGAL CONSIDERATION” GRANTED IN A “PROMISE” SUPPORTED BY “LEGAL DOCUMENTATION” AS FILED WITH “THE CITY OF DETROIT PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT” IN “THE PLANNING AND COMPLETION” OF “THE COBO EXPANSION PROJECT” WHICH “INCLUDED AS “TENANT” “SIMONES/PATS PIZZA” TO FUNCTION, MAINTAIN AND OPERATE THEIR BUSINESS IN THE LOCATION “AS WRITTEN/DRAFTED” IN “THE FINAL APPROVED PLANS/DRAWINGS” WITH “THE ASSOCIATION” ACTING WITH AN “ABUSE OF PROCESS” TO “THE TENANT”, “SIMON’S PIZZA” WHO HAVE A “RIGHT OF TENANCY” AND ARE “NOT AGREEING” TO ANY ALTERATION OF “THE ORIGINAL CONTRACT” MADE WITH THE CITY OF DETROIT.”
“THE NEW AUTHORITIES” BY FUNCTIONING “NUISANCE PER SE” ALSO VIOLATE “THE RIGHTS OF THE TENANTS” BY NOT EVEN PROVIDING AN “OFFER OF APPRECIATION” TO THE TENANT, SO DEFYING “”THE “RIGHT” AS GRANTED BY “THE COURTS” “” IN “THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION” (Art. VI, #2) AND CLEARLY DEFYING WHAT IS KNOWN IN THE COURT AS “SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND” WITH “THE CITY OF DETROIT” AS HAVING “OWNERSHIP” OF “COBO” AS AN “ESTATE OWNED BY THE CITY OF DETROIT” AND “THE CITY OF DETROIT” IS “THE ACTUAL AUTHORITY” OF “THE REAL PROPERTY” “COBO HALL”!!
“I” HOPE THIS HELPS??
THE INDIANS WHO ONCE LIVED ON THE LAND WE NOW OCCUPY TRUSTINGLY, MAINLY SUPPORTED BY “THE NEW YOUNG INDIAN CHIEFS” SIGNED WHAT THEY BELIEVED WAS A “20-YEAR RENEWABLE LAND CONCRACT” ONLY TO HAVE ARTICLE #4 “AMENDED” LATER TO A 5-YEAR GET OUT OF TOWN LAND GRAB THAT COULDN’T BE CONTESTED IN COURTS BECAUSE THE INDIANS WERE NOT CONSIDERED “AMERICANS” AND COULD NOT VOTE TO PROTEST ????

Take Care! ***Me KEITH*** ***Love*Peace*Out***

INTERVIEW WITH CYNTHIA MCKINNEY ON STATE TV, SENT BY DON DEBAR OF DIGNITY DELEGATION CURRENTLY ON GROUND IN LIBYA

WAYNE MADSEN REPORTS FROM LIBYA

Saturday, June 4, 2011 

PHOTO – Mostly black African refugees, who fled Libya after US allied rebels committed war crimes against them because of their skin color, in sprawling refugee camps on the Tunisian side of the border.

June 4-5, 2011 — TRIPOLI, LIBYA. WMR Exclusive.

Western Libya portrait is not what is being painted by the Western media

Western media reports continue to indicate that Libyan rebels trying to oust Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi from power, backed by daily NATO air strikes, are gaining ground in western Libya. During a six-hour drive from the Tunisian border to Tripoli, the Libyan capital, this reporter saw no signs of Libyan rebel successes in western Libya. In fact, I witnessed a spontaneous pro-Qaddafi demonstration on the main Tunisia-Tripoli highway in a town about one and a half hours west of Tripoli.

The green flag of the Libyan Arab Jamahiryah not only adorn flag poles in towns from Tripoli to the Tunisian border, but a number of private residences are flying the green flag from their rooftops, on flag poles, and even from outside of top floor windows in medium size and small towns alike along the main highway.

There are some telltale signs of previous fighting in the western part of the country — bullet holes in the walls of some buildings and even some more extensive structural damage — but there are no signs that the rebels, backed by the United States, NATO, and the European Union, have any substantial support in western Libya.

The one major sign of the Libyan civil war lies not in western Libya but across the Tunisian border where several refugee tent cities have been set up to accommodate thousands of refugees, most of them black African guest workers from sub-Sahara and Sahel nations who were set upon by rebels who said the workers were “mercenaries”brought to Libya by Qaddafi to fight on his behalf. In fact, there is a strong anti-black racialist element within the Libyan rebel movement that used the mercenary meme to justify heinous war crimes by rebel units against blacks from other African nations, as well as native Libyan blacks.

While many of the refugee camps on the Tunisian side of the Libyan frontier are sponsored by the International Committee of the Red Cross, one is funded by the United Arab Emirates, one of the nations participating in President Obama’s “coalition of the willing” that is waging a war on behalf of the Libyan rebels. From our hotel on the Mediterranean coast, we expect to see and hear the attacks conducted against military and some civilian targets a further few miles inland in downtown Tripoli.

The EU and NATO sanctions on Libya are being severely felt by Libya’s civilians. Petrol stations are rationing gasoline and long lines of cars sit waiting for gasoline to be delivered to the pumps. The NATO, EU, and U.S. policy of “collective punishment” of western Libya’s civilian population is being compares to Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank. In fact, many Libyans believe that Obama’s crippling sanctions on western Libya were crafted by Israel’s lobby in Washington, which pressured the Obama administration into adopting them.

NATO has conducted nightly air strikes against western Libya, including downtown Tripoli, since March 19. The attacks begin around 12 midnight local time and at the time of this report we are expecting another NATO bombing of Tripoli in a little less than an hour.

Please visit www.waynemadsenreport.com  for more information from Wayne on Libya and other important issues:

Posted by Don DeBar at 7:14 AM

Below: a really interesting, insightful and inspiring conversation between Sons of Malcolm’s Sukant Chandan and Libyan brother Faraj Jibreel on the evening of 02 June 2011 in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.…

VOD EDITOR: THE FOLLOWING REPORT FROM THE BBC REGARDING THE FIRST USE OF UK APACHE HELICOPTERS TO ATTACK LIBYA INDICATES THE LEVEL OF DANGER FORMER CONGRESSWOMAN MCKINNEY AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE DIGNITY DELEGATION ARE FACING. SUCH HELICOPTERS ARE CAPABLE OF PINPOINT ATTACKS. SEE LINKS FOLLOWING FROM LIZZIE COCKER WHO REPORTS THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF ATTACKS FROM GADHAFI’S FORCES ON CIVILIANS.

UK APACHE HELICOPTERS USED FOR FIRST TIME TO ATTACK LIBYA; BRITISH GOVT. OFFICIALS MEET WITH CIA-LED OPPOSITION FORCES

 Jonathan Beale, Defence correspondent, BBC News

Apache attack helicopter

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13651736

Apache pilot: “We’re pleased that it was mission success”

UK Apache attack helicopters have been used over Libya for the first time, Nato has confirmed.

They attacked and destroyed two military installations, a radar site and an armed checkpoint near Brega, the Captain of HMS Ocean told the BBC.

The Apaches are understood to have faced incoming fire.

Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that Foreign Secretary William Hague has arrived in rebel-held Benghazi in eastern Libya.

He is due to hold talks with the head of Libya’s opposition National Transitional Council (NTC), Mustafa Abdul Jalil, later.

(VOD editor: click on http://voiceofdetroit.net/?p=6334  to read Cynthia McKinney’s statement about Jalil’s direct connections to the CIA.)

International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell has also made the trip to Benghazi.

French Gazelle helicopters also took part in simultaneous attacks on different targets in Libya for the first time.

On Wednesday, Nato extended its mission in Libya by 90 days.

UK Apache attack helicopters are deploying from HMS Ocean

Major General Nick Pope, the chief of the defence staff’s strategic communications officer, said:”The Apaches were tasked with precision strikes against a regime radar installation and a military checkpoint, both located around Brega.

“Hellfire missiles and 30mm cannon were used to destroy the targets. The helicopters then returned safely to HMS Ocean.”

He said the targets had been “carefully and rigorously selected” and said intelligence about the positions of the Gaddafi forces had been improving “despite their efforts to conceal themselves”.

Two of the four Apaches on board HMS Ocean left under the cover of darkness. From the ship you can see the lights on Libya’s coast.

This was a mission that would signal an escalation in the bombing campaign. It would also come with added risks.

The Apaches fly lower and slower than other Nato warplanes – able to identify a wider range of targets, but also more vulnerable to attacks from the ground.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox added: “The attack helicopter is yet another potent and formidable aircraft type which has now been added to the Nato forces engaged on this operation. Those who are still supporting Colonel Gaddafi would do well to realise that the best way to remove themselves from danger is to understand that their future lies with the Libyan people, not a discredited regime.”

The former head of the Army, Lord Dannatt, said the move has an “inevitable intensification”.

“If you pick up the words from when President Obama was visiting, what we’ve heard the prime minister say, we don’t want to let this thing linger on any more than we absolutely have to.

“The mission under UNHCR 1973 is quite clear, it’s to protect people but of course the implied task, and let’s be absolutely open and honest about it, is the removal of Colonel Gaddafi.”

Missile risk

The decision to send four British Apache helicopters to Libya was made by Prime Minister David Cameron on 27 May.

Their deployment via HMS Ocean means there should be less chance of civilian casualties in operations that previously relied on the use of Tornado and Typhoon aircraft.

But the Apaches operate at lower altitudes and could be targeted by Libyan forces loyal to Col Gaddafi, which still have access to thousands of surface-to-air missiles.

Labour MP Graham Allen claimed the introduction of Apaches was “mission creep” and said there needed to be a fresh debate in the House of Commons on Libya.

“The way out of this mess is not to keep cranking up the military hardware and having so-called ‘implied tasks’ added on against the express view of the House of Commons; what we need to do is figure out how we can get a political solution that will last for several generations in Libya rather than this adventure which has no prospect of coming to a close,” he said.

Nato intervened in Libya after the UN passed a resolution for the protection of civilians, amid a two-month revolt inspired by other uprisings in the Arab world.

It has intensified raids in recent weeks with attacks on command-and-control structures in the capital Tripoli.

The intervention was initially led by France, Britain and the US until 31 March – when Nato took over. It was given an initial 90 days, which would have run out on 27 June.

On Wednesday, UN investigators accused government forces in Libya of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Rights experts said they had found evidence of crimes including murder and torture, in a pattern suggesting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was behind them.

The UN mission also said opposition forces were guilty of abuses that would constitute war crimes, although they were not so numerous.

Click on the link below to view French video on Apache attacks.

http://www.france24.com/en/20110604-nato-strikes-libya-with-attack-helicopters-gaddafi

Don DeBar has also sent the following materials from the last several weeks, received from Lizzie Cocker, journalist and activist also on the ground in Libya:

Lizzie Cocker on Press TV discussing Libya

Sukant Chandan on Russia Today stating NATO war claims are false

Sukant Chandan again on Russia Today discussing Libya (Second video from bottom)

And once more discussing Libya (second video from bottom)

Lizzie Cocker’s first video blog from Tripoli

Sukant Chandan interviews Hospital worker at the sight of the NATO bombing of Saif Al-Arabs home 

Below is Libyan-produced commentary on history of conflict.

Tax Day protest outside main Detroit post office April 18, 2011

Is There An Answer to the Deficit Dilemma?

By Mark Brenner

June 3, 2011

Labor Notes

While today’s report of nonexistent job growth has the media in a tizzy, working people didn’t need the latest temperature check to tell them the economy’s still flat-lining.

Protest in Albany, New York

But somehow the debate in Congress still isn’t about how we’re going to get people back to work or bring homeowners back above the water line. Beltway politicians from both sides of the aisle can’t stop talking about government deficits and the national debt.

Do these twin issues actually threaten our national well-being? There’s a two-part answer: No, not much, compared with the wailing in Washington. Yes, but both are fixable if Congress would go where the money is.

Leading the charge is Representative Paul Ryan, who wants to cut $4.5 trillion in government programs over the next decade. His “Path to Prosperity” claims the sky is falling and that unchecked government spending is the problem. Ryan’s solution is to privatize Medicare and have the poor take the brunt of the cuts, about two-thirds in total.

Paul Ryan

Most economists and policy analysts agree Ryan’s numbers don’t add up. But despite the fuzzy math, Ryan’s looking less like Chicken Little and more like trickster Brer Rabbit, having helped Republicans extract $38 billion in budget cuts last month.

The fiscal tug-of-war nearly forced a federal government shutdown. What’s in store once 2012 electioneering kicks into high gear could be even worse.

YES, IT’S BIG

There is no question federal deficits in recent years have been high by historical standards—about 10 percent of total economic activity (Gross Domestic Product, or GDP). In the 35 years prior to the financial meltdown, deficits averaged about 2.5 percent of GDP.

But since the 2008 economic collapse, government has been running up red ink. Together these annual deficits have added to the national debt, which will top $10 trillion by year’s end.

Is the problem as bad as Ryan and others claim?

Bush tax cuts--relief for all Americans who are white and wealthy

Not really, because the main drivers of today’s deficits are temporary. They include:

• lower tax revenues, owing to high unemployment and the extension of the Bush tax cuts
• the money spent on stopping the 2008 financial freefall, first the bailouts and then the stimulus package
• relief for those left in the recession’s wake, including unemployment insurance and food stamps
• the spiraling war budget (this one doesn’t look temporary).

The Congressional Budget Office says the annual deficit will drop considerably as the economy recovers, to average about 3.3 percent of GDP by 2013. This is lower than Reagan’s deficits, which averaged 4.2 percent.

IS THE U.S. BROKE?

Steady deficits, even small ones, can build up to create large-scale debt. Conservatives point to Greece and warn of eventual U.S. default.

Nearly 60 percent of U.S. taxes go to the military budget

But if they were serious about avoiding the apocalyptic scenarios they predict, they’d acknowledge how we got here: Bush’s tax cuts and war spending, which wiped out the surplus the country had 10 years ago.

Pull back from those expenses and the national budget looks a lot prettier.

Instead, conservatives are pushing to undo the paltry financial regulations put in place last year to avoid another meltdown and locking in the Bush tax cuts that mostly benefit the richest 1 percent.

It’s easy to believe the nation is broke when most state and local governments are in a hole.

But the country isn’t broke. Tax policies allow some people to hoard huge wealth—which would be available to fund schools, firefighters, and bridge repairs if politicians had the will to tax corporations and the rich.

Corporate profits 2010

Last year corporate profits exploded, jumping 29 percent to $1.65 trillion. CEO salaries saw a similar bounce, and Wall Street executives raked in $21 billion in bonuses, the fifth-highest payout ever. Individual taxes, particularly on the wealthy, are lower than they’ve been in 60 years.

The GAO, the federal auditing agency, said recently that two out of every three corporations are paying zero federal income taxes, and most of the Fortune 500 pays a lower proportion of their earnings in federal taxes than working people.

Just enough wealth is lavished on politicians to ensure those fortunes stay in corporate coffers and billionaires’ bank accounts. That’s why most states are choosing draconian cuts.

State governments are forbidden by law to run deficits, they’re abandoned by Washington, and they’ve shouldered the recession’s costs, like unemployment insurance and services for 25 million people who can’t find work (or enough of it). Most say there’s no alternative but to cut.

United for Oregon March 6/7/09 Photo from SEIU Local 503

Oregon proved states can go the other way: a 2010 referendum backed by a union-community alliance saved essential services by increasing taxes on corporations and the top 3 percent of earners. Oregon’s richest angrily vowed to move out of state, but surveys show they’ve stayed put.

‘ENTITLEMENTS’

It’s true that both Social Security and Medicare project long-term financial shortfalls. But Washington’s hysteria is misplaced.

We could largely eliminate Social Security’s problems by scrapping the cap which lets income over $106,800 go untaxed by Social Security.

Medicare is indeed extremely expensive, and getting more so. But that’s because of double-digit cost increases in the overall health care system. Medicare is sideswiped by that, even though its administrative costs are a fraction of the costs of for-profit insurance.

Medicare for ALL: HR 676

Medicare’s problem is that government controls too little of the health care system. If Medicare covered everyone, the government could save big time by cutting out the bloated insurance industry and negotiating lower costs for drugs and care.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration, along with most of Congress, showed no appetite for confronting insurers, for-profit medical chains, and pharmaceutical companies in the 2009 health care reform debate. Imagine where we’d be if they had.

De’Jaun Correia, nephew of Troy Davis, who has mentored him all his life

Photos/Jen Marlowe

by Jen Marlowe

Wednesday, June 1 2011, 9:00 AM EST  http://colorlines.com/

“De’Jaun, come over here, I want to talk to you.”

De’Jaun Correia, a slender 13-year-old with thick corn-rows in his hair, sat down next to his uncle Troy Davis in the corner of the room. Troy described to De’Jaun what to expect now that he was approaching adolescence. “Your body’s gonna be changing…. Women, they go through things, and us guys, we go through things, too. The same thing happened to me when I was a young boy growing up.”

Troy and De'Jaun

De’Jaun listened intently as his uncle explained the birds and the bees. It wasn’t the first time De’Jaun and Troy had had an intimate one on one. De’Jaun was more comfortable talking to his uncle, a sturdily built man with warm brown eyes, than anyone else.

Martina Davis-Correia, De’Jaun’s mother and Troy’s older sister, encouraged the close relationship that Troy had with her son. Troy helped Martina chastise De’Jaun if he got in trouble at school. “You don’t go to school to talk in class, you go to school to learn!” Troy would scold the boy. And then, once he felt sure that De’Jaun got the message, Troy grew gentle. “Now come here, and give me a hug.” Nephew and uncle embraced.

“He gets his discipline [from Troy],” Martina said. “But then he gets his love to back it up.”

Those uncle-and-nephew exchanges could be deemed ordinary, if not for their setting. The interactions took place in a narrow concrete room with locks and bars on its only door in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, where Troy Davis is a prisoner on death row. When De’Juan was still little, death-row inmates and their visitors could be in the visiting room together; contact visits were taken away a year and a half ago. Now, De’Jaun receives his uncle’s counsel through phones mounted on either side of a plexiglass window.

Troy and De'Jaun as he grew up

Davis is on death row for the 1989 murder of white Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. On Aug. 19, MacPhail was gunned down while rushing to the rescue of a homeless man being pistol-whipped in the parking lot of a Greyhound bus station. The day after the murder, a man named Sylvester “Red” Coles told the police that Troy Davis was the shooter. Davis was arrested and was convicted in 1991, primarily on the basis of eye-witness testimony.

There is no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime. The murder weapon was never recovered. Yet, Davis was sentenced to death. He has remained on death row for 20 years, despite the fact that the case against him has completely unraveled. He now awaits an execution date, which could be set any moment, having had his final appeal rejected by the Supreme Court.

Major human rights and civil liberty groups, including the NAACP, Amnesty International, and the ACLU, have taken up Davis’s case, and individuals ranging from President Jimmy Carter to Archbishop Desmond Tutu have spoken up on his behalf.

Davis’s case has become an emblem for much of what is problematic about a capital punishment system that is riddled with racism, economic disparity and error. Public capital defenders do not have the resources to properly investigate or litigate their overburdened case loads. Those with the means to hire decent legal representation are unlikely to end up on death row. Over 130 death row inmates have been exonerated since 1973, demonstrating just how many innocent people are convicted and sentenced to death. 

Meanwhile, there’s considerable evidence of a racial imbalance in who the government decides to kill. According to a 2001 study from the University of North Carolina, a defendant whose victim was white was 3.5 times as likely to receive the death penalty in North Carolina than if the victim were non-white. A 2005 study in California found the defendant of a white victim three times as likely to be penalized by death. Growing realizations of these problems have led more and more states to question their death penalty policies. Earlier this year, Illinois became the 16th state to abolish capital punishment.

Even pro-death penalty advocates, such as former FBI director and federal judge William Sessions and former Republican Congressman from Georgia Bob Barr, have spoken out against executing Davis, citing “crucial unanswered questions” (Sessions) and a lack of the requisite fairness and accuracy required to apply the death penalty (Barr).

The “crucial, unanswered questions” include the fact that seven of the nine non-police witnesses later recanted or changed their testimonies, many stating that police coercion and intimidation led to their initial implication of Davis. Continue reading →

CFA student at rally May 11

By Nicole Conaway

June 1, 2011

On May 26, Detroit Public Schools Emergency manager Roy Roberts announced changes to the district’s school consolidation and closure plan. 

Claiming it was in response to “broad community input” the modifications are ostensibly to ”cut operating costs and align resources to maximize services to students.”  The plan euphemizes that Catherine Ferguson is one of the buildings  “coming off line”.

Roberts also claims  to be “developing a transition plan for continuing the services” of  CFA and two other alternative high schools to “focus on remediation and return to traditional schools.” The other two schools, Hancock and Barsamian, serve students who have been expelled from other schools, usually for violent offenses. The objectives of those programs are completely different and it is completely inappropriate to put CFA in the same category.

Marching for CFA May 11

Students choose to attend CFA because they are committed to their education and to providing a better life for their children, and require the support services CFA provides in order to to so.

 The truth is that Roberts and his backers don’t have any real plan to continue the service CFA provides. They are trying to ride things out until the end of the school year when they think they will be safe from a public outcry.

To date there has been no public meeting  regarding the future of the Catherine Ferguson Academy.  No one from the Emergency Manager’s office has even visited the school or met with school administration, staff, or students. No accurate information has been shared about the actual cost of operating CFA, the supposed reasons for closing the school, or any plan to continue services CFA provides. We must insist that our voices be heard and the truth be told. 

(Click on http://detroitk12.org/content/2011/05/26/dps-alters-school-closureconsolidation-plan-after-broad-community-input/  to read Roberts’ statement.)

The students and teachers at DFA are demanding a public hearing on their unique school, attended by EM Roy Roberts, before any decision is made on its future. To assist these young mothers, their children, and their supporters in circulating the petition, you can sign online at:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGd4XzNKckt4V2lDdVBEY2VwRXY5X2c6MQ

or click on PetitionforaPublicHearingontheFutureofCFA[1] to download a copy of the petition. For further info, contact nconaway@gmail.com, or click on http://defendpubliceducation.com/.

Keep CFA and all DPS schools open and public!

PETITION FOR A PUBLIC HEARING ON THE FUTURE OF CFA

Whereas:

CFA is a nationally renowned, successful high school that has provided a quality education for pregnant and parenting teen girls for twenty years. CFA offers:

● Small classes to provide a supportive learning environment.

● A modified schedule and dual enrollment night school to allow students to recover creditsand get a head start on college.

● Support services like WIC, healthcare for moms and babies, and early education from birth through pre-K.

● An organic farm and orchard that provide a unique outdoor learning environment. 

CFA is more than the sum of its programs; it is a lifeline for growth, development and abetter future for the young women and their children. Pregnancy is the number one reason girls drop out of school. Approximately 70% of teenage girls who give birth leave school (ACLU.org). All CFA graduates are accepted to community college or university and secured with financial aid. 

In a recent press statement the new EM, Roy Roberts, lumped CFA in with remedial programs at Barsamian and Hancock, but CFA is not a remedial program. Being pregnant is not a crime, and pregnant girls should be supported, not punished and degraded. 

Drivers honked constantly to support CFA throughout protest at charter bidder DABO's HQ May 19

“Transition” back to a regular high school with no infant care and pre-school, no credit recovery program, no parenting classes, no support for the young mothers to continue their education and enhance the education of their children, will force these young women out of school.

 The community supports CFA, and deserves the transparency and accountability that its public school system should provide.

 Therefore:

 We the undersigned, call on EM Roy Roberts to attend a public hearing on the future of CFA, at a time and place convenient to the community, to hear from the CFA students, teachers and community about the importance of maintaining CFA as it currently exists, and to answer questions about the actual costs to DPS, how much is covered by federal funds, and the costs to the students, their children and the community if CFA is closed.

Signed:

Cynthia McKinney led another delegation to Tripoli earlier this year for the Jan. 15-17 Pan-African Conference. Bay View Associate Editor JR Valrey, known as Minister of Information JR, Hajj Malcolm Shabazz, grandson of Malcolm X, and former Bay View writer Ra’Shida accompanied her. They met with Africans from all over the continent and across the Diaspora, including Samia Nkrumah, daughter of the great pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah and member of parliament in Ghana, Roland Lumumba, son of the heroic Congolese President Patrice Lumumba, and many traditional African kings and chiefs. Here, Haitian activist Da’Vid and international peace activist McKinney lead a panel at the mid-January conference. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

Congressman Dennis Kucinich sponsored legislation calling for U.S. to pull out of Libya

Today, independent journalists from across the United States departed on a truth-telling, fact-finding mission to Libya. This coincides with what was supposed to have been a debate in Congress on U.S. involvement in the war against Libya, but the debate got sidelined due to the fact that the legislation requiring a pullout by the U.S. could actually have passed. Both Democratic and Republican leadership are responsible for pulling the bill at the last minute.

Al Jazeera film footage (below) showsthat Western soldiers have their “boots on the ground” in Libya, overstepping authority granted by the United Nations Security Council for action in Libya. Every day that President Obama contributes to the military action against Libya, he tests the United States Congress and defies the United States Constitution and the War Powers Act which limit presidential acts of war, subject to authorization by the U.S. Congress.

Incredibly, in what yet may prove to be another act beyond the mandate of the United Nations Security Council resolution, NATO extended its operations in Libya for another 90 days.

Because the public has become increasingly unable to rely on embedded media to tell the American people the “whole truth and nothing but the truth,” the DIGNITY Delegation will shed rare light on NATO’s actions inside that country.

According to some estimates, the American people and the global community were lied to 935 times by administration officials and the media in the lead-up to the Iraq War. As Aeschylus said, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” The DIGNITY Delegation is expected to make daily reports while on the ground of the ongoing NATO actions in the country.
 

For more information, contact Don DeBar, dondebar@optonline.net .

This video shows NATO “boots on the ground” in Libya, which is prohibited by the U.N. resolution that permitted the invasion.

(SFBayView Editor’s note: In a new poll, the public seems to back the Kucinich resolution that was postponed today for fear it would pass. When asked by CNN pollsters who should have final authority for deciding whether the U.S. should continue its use of military force in Libya — Congress or President Obama — 55 percent of respondents answered Congress.)

Former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney Returns to Libya with DIGNITY Fact Finding Delegation of independent journalists.

From the International Action Center
NATO has announced it will continue the criminal bombing of Libya for another 90 days. The U.S. Congress has postponed any vote on President Obama’s obvious violation of the War Powers Act. In the face of this, Cynthia McKinney has returned to Libya with a fact finding delegation to meet with Libyans under attack by NATO’s bombs. She plans to bring back to the U.S. documented evidence of NATO war crimes.

NATO bombs have continually targeted Gadhafi and have killed his son and three of his grandchildren. NATO targeted the guest house where a large religious peace delegation of 150 Imams gathered to attempt to meet with opposition leaders to urge a peaceful solution; NATO’s bombs killed 11 imams and wounded another 47. These attacks have destroyed schools, hospitals and essential civilian infrastructure.

Please sign the petition to demand Congress use the War Powers Act to order an end to the criminal bombing of Libya. We cannot allow Congress to put this third U.S. war with large civilian casualties on the back burner.

Tell Congress: Use War Powers Act to stop bombing Libya! End NATO massacres of imams and other civilians!

SIGN online petition at iacenter.org/africa/libyawarpowersact to send messages to House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, congressional leaders, the Obama administration, the U.N. Secretary-General, Security Council, General Assembly President and member states, and the national and international media

SIGN the online petition at iacenter.org/africa/libyawarpowersact

Read Cynthia McKinney’s reports below of her visit to Libya last week.

From: Cynthia McKinney
NATO: A Feast of Blood
24 May 2011

While serving on the House International Relations Committee from 1993 to 2003, it became clear to me that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was an anachronism. Founded in 1945 at the end of World War II, NATO was founded by the United States in response to the Soviet Union’s survival as a Communist state. NATO was the U.S. insurance policy that capitalist ownership and domination of European, Asian, and African economies would continue. This also would ensure the survival of the then-extant global apartheid.

NATO is a collective security pact wherein member states pledge that an attack upon one is an attack against all. Therefore, should the Soviet Union have attacked any European Member State, the United States military shield would be activated. The Soviet Response was the Warsaw Pact that maintained a “cordon sanitaire” around the Russian Heartland should NATO ever attack. Thus, the world was broken into blocs which gave rise to the “Cold War.” Continue reading →

VANESSA FLUKER

DETROIT, June 1, 2011

Despite the huge turnout at a May 13 court hearing to support attorney Vanessa Fluker, Chief Judge Virgil C. Smith has handed down a ruling denying her request to recuse Judge Robert Colombo from a client’s case and refusing to invalidate $12,200 in fines Colombo hit her with in retaliation for her appeal of an eviction order.

Go to http://voiceofdetroit.net/?p=7335 and http://voiceofdetroit.net/?p=6035  to read about details of the May 13 hearing, and “A Tale of Two Attorneys: Royal Bank of Scotland’s Friend Robert Colombo and People’s Attorney Vanessa Fluker.” A story on Smith’s decision will be forthcoming.

But meanwhile, on Thursday, June 2, 6-8 pm, there will be a rally and fundraiser for attorney Fluker, to help with the costs of an appeal. She will talk about her case and the continuing struggle for a moratorium to stop foreclosures in Wayne County. General Baker and invited community leaders will also speak on the foreclosure crisis and the campaign to pass “The Homeowner Protection and Neighborhood Preservation Act” in Wayne County.

The Act calls for the Sheriff to declare a moratorium on foreclosures in Wayne County. (The bill goes before the County Ways and Means Committee for a hearing on the evening of June 13– details to follow). Light refreshments and music will be provided on June 2.

RALLY THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2010  6-8 p.m. UAW LOCAL 600, 10550 Dix, Dearborn, MI

 TO SUPPORT ATTORNEY VANESSA FLUKER and

 STOP FORECLOSURES AND BANK ABUSES IN WAYNE COUNTY!!

Click on Flyer– June 2 People Before Banks rally for copy of flier.

Also, on Saturday, June 4, 11 am to 3 pm, Local 600 will host a free legal clinic on mortgage foreclosures. If you or anyone you know is seeking advice from lawyers who represent the community rather than the banks, come to the clinic for free and confidential assistance. Click on Flyer– June 4 legal clinic for flyer.

For more information, go to moratorium@moratorium-mi.org and http://www.peoplebeforebanks.org.



On May 18, 2011, Bank of America, Citi and Chase, three of the largest racist, predatory lenders in Detroit, along with Fannie Mae, the government agency that bails out the banks with every foreclosure and does most of the evictions of homeowners at 36th District Court, sponsored a conference about continuing their takeover of Detroit through their front organization, “NeighborWorks.” Mayor Dave Bing opened the conference, spelling out his agenda of cutting public services and the wages and jobs of city workers to pay off the city’s massive debt service to the banks. Even some of the attendees joined the protest, called by Moratorium NOW!

No cuts by Snyder, Bing, or Council; no EM!

By Diane Bukowski

DETROIT – All over the world, poor and working people are rising up against the International Monetary Fund and the international banks. During the G-20 summit held last June in Toronto, Canada, in the midst of a global economic crisis, government officials announced it was time to reduce multi-trillion dollar budget deficits blowing up like nuclear bombs everywhere.

The simplest way to reduce the debt, of course, would have been to quit paying it, as Third World nations have been demanding for decades. But that was not on the agenda of the G-20. Instead, plans were laid to chop down the very pillars of civilization, services and infrastructure meant to fulfill basic human needs: housing, schools, hospitals, public transportation, even water and food.

Protesters rose up in Toronto, burning police cars and battering banks. Prior to Toronto, and since then, the world’s people have targeted the banks everywhere, in massive protests from Ireland to the Philippines, from Mexico to Africa. They know who the enemy is and they are mobilizing.

But here in Detroit, we have been awfully slow to learn.

An example is the current debate over the city of Detroit budget, taking place with the threat of Public Act 4 hovering overhead like a giant vulture. No matter that Bing is flapping one wing of the vulture while Gov. Rick Snyder flaps the other wing.

Tashi Kiya demands: Cut debt service!

Both Mayor Dave Bing and the City Council are busy laying the blame for the city’s alleged budgetary crisis at the feet of public workers, their wages, pensions, and benefits, and the money spent on services for Detroiters. Meanwhile, even some so-called progressives are diverting the fight by creating imaginary castles in the air where Detroiters will live in green spaces, return to farming, and resurrect underground creeks flowing to the Detroit River that were covered over more than a century ago.

The City Council as a whole wants to cut even more from the budget than Bing, a scenario that has happened for several years now. Oh, for the days when Maryann Mahaffey and others did battle with the Mayor to advocate for the people and the workers.

Today, both the Mayor and the Council are missing the elephant in the room.

After a huge set-to with the Council, Bing finally coughed up a 440 page “Deficit Elimination Plan,” mainly filled with mind-boggling charts and diagrams that will lead to permanent crossing of the eyes if studiously read all the way through.

“Our latest forecast . . . . shows that if we take no action our annual deficits will grow from the $53MM projected in 2010/11 to $337MM by FY 2016; with an accumulated deficit of $1.5 B by 2016,” Bing says.

Bing and bosom buddy Snyder

“ . . . .We have shared the data with Council members and met with budget staff early in the debate. We have also met with State Executive Officials including the Governor, the Treasurer, and their team to communicate our analysis, the 2012 budget and the deficit elimination plan.”

Bing then proceeds to unveil his plan, the Bing-Snyder plan. It boils down to getting more out of the little people by hook or by crook or by PA 4.

Bing plans to turn the city around and end up in surplus status by 2015 through the following measures:

• 

  AFSCME protest 2010

  First and foremost, reducing pension and medical costs; if the unions don’t agree by Sept. 1, 2011, the PA 4 vulture will darken the skies. Remember, many pensioners make only a few hundred a month if they retired before 1994, and many current workers are at poverty-level wages after years of wage concessions. The pension systems have already agreed to defer this year’s payments due from the city.

• More lay-offs, wage cuts and furlough days, further reducing available services as well as the city’s tax base.
• Increasing property tax collection by $5 million at a time when Detroiters continue to be thrown out of their homes right and left by the banks.
• A gain of $17 million by hiking the income tax rate for individuals back to 2.5 percent, under an agreement with Snyder, through legislation introduced by Rep. David Nathan (D-Detroit). What income? The plan says the official unemployment rate in Detroit is 22 percent, but we ALL know that MOST of the folks in poor communities are out of work.

• 

  Federal assistance line in Detroit

  Compuware (wonder how much Bing is paying them to do so) is coming up with a plan to shake loose $154.9 million from resident non-filers, $21.8 million from corporations, and $6.5 million from commuter non-filers. Again, how many residents are working?

• Taxing the casinos more? Don’t be fooled. Bing is not talking about taxing casino PROFITS, but about taxing INDIVIDUAL WINS. Poor little senior citizens.

• 

  DTE protest Photo by Daymon Hartley

  Restoring the utility tax of 5 percent. That’s NOT a tax on the utilities like DTE, which makes billions every year in profits. That’s a tax on the utility USERS. Is Bing insane? How many Detroiters have their utilities shut-off now because they can’t afford to pay their bills, let alone pay an additional tax?

• Outsourcing Public Lighting Department (virtually already done, with Detroit paying DTE big bucks for its power.)
• Outsourcing DPW—more profits for mob-controlled waste management companies.
• Regionalizing D-DOT and reducing the city subsidy to this enterprise agency. What will happen to the jobs of D-DOT workers and the taxes THEY pay? What will happen to Detroit commuters and their routes—who will control where the routes go and who gets the jobs?

• 

  City and county workers protest Bing, Ficano

  Consolidation of Health Department, Buildings and Safety, police lock-ups with Wayne County. Ficano is already at war with his workers—more of the same, fewer jobs.

• Combining the Recreation Department with DPS, already experiencing dissolution.
• And etc.

 The one thing Bing makes clear he will not cut is (bated breath here) – THE CITY’S DEBT PAYMENTS TO THE BANKS.

And herein lies the true insanity. If there was ever a time for a solution posed by former Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy during the Depression years of the 1930’s – a moratorium on debt to the banks, IT IS NOW!  If not now, when? When the banks are blazing in the skies, having fallen victim to the just wrath of the people?

Just look at the city’s own figures on its debt, taken from the 2010 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. THE CITY’S TOTAL DEBT TO THE BANKS AS OF 2010 WAS $7.7 BILLION, more than seven times this year’s budget of $1.2 billion:

But the chart above does not show the real picture, because it takes into account only the principal on the city’s debt to the banks.

READ THE CHART BELOW AND WEEP, BUT THEN RISE UP—DEMAND AT LEAST A MORATORIUM ON THE INTEREST ON DETROIT’S DEBT TO THE BANKS!  THE BANKS HAVE DESTROYED DETROIT, NOT ONLY THROUGH FORECLOSURES, BUT THROUGH USURIOUS INTEREST RATES AND OTHER PRACTICES.

Adding the figures below, from the 2010 CAFR, the city paid a total of $433,691,964 in debt to the banks in 2011. Of that, $216,418,043 was in interest alone. THE INTEREST ALONE IS FOUR TIMES MORE THAN FOUR TIMES THE 2011 DEFICIT BING CITES! The U.S. government has bailed out the banks to the tune of trillions of dollars–TIME FOR PAYBACK!