FBI Informant Outed In Iowa

It has come to our attention through information that we've recieved that there was a person informing to the FBI about numerous individuals involved in the Wild Rose Rebellion group and University Of Iowa Anti-War Committee. He has since been outed, confronted and ousted from our community. The purpose of this statement is to warn all radical organizations and people, that we don't have personal ties with, across the country about the following person. Anything identifying or useful pertaining to him we have attempted to include.

Name: Jason Munford, also later went by Valvilis Cormaeril

Age: Late Twenties

From: Mighigan, Iowa City

Background: Claimed he served in the Air Force as a MP stationed in Japan, then became a Conscientious Objector.

Interests: Considers self a Platonist, sword fighting, philisophy, informing for FBI

Charecteristics: clean cut, dry sense of humor, known to be problematic (overly flirty and pushy) when it comes to female bodied people.


Photos
@ Twin Cities Indymedia
http://twincities.indymedia.org/2008/dec/fbi-informant-outed-iowa



Video At Rally He Spoke At
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvNqXAMY5OUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvNqXAMY5OU

Signed,
WRR

P.S.-Don't Get Scared, Get Inspired!

This Blog Is Fucking Dead

I have jumped ship.
http://athomehesaturista.wordpress.com/

Witnesses tell of Greek police 'brutality'

A British expatriate businessman living in Athens has told how a pre-bedtime stroll with his dog led to an introduction to Greek police violence.

The man, who is in his 30s, and has asked not to be identified, contacted the BBC after witnessing what he says was unjustified brutality and aggression in the popular bar district of Gazi in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The alleged clash happened not long after scores of masked youths attacked a police station in the nearby district of Exarchia, where 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead a week ago by police.

The businessman said that while he was walking his dog and came across a "largely peaceful" demonstration passing the bars and coffee shops about 3km (two miles) from the Acropolis. He decided to tag along.

'Strip-search'

There was a "carnival atmosphere", he said, as the demonstrators chanted slogans and invited young Greeks to put down their drinks and join the group.

"As the group, numbering about 600, walked up Pireos Street, several bus loads of riot police arrived and began to deploy at the front and back of the demonstration and on side streets," he said.

"After the majority of the protesters had passed one of these side streets, a group of riot police charged and forced about 15 young men and women into a dark shop front on the corner of the street.

"As the protesters put their hands on their heads to signify that they were not intending to fight, the police began beating individuals with their batons, issuing threats of extreme violence. The women were handcuffed together and the men strip-searched.

"Additional police joined the group to stop passers-by witnessing what was going on. Four young men aged about 20 and clearly not connected to the demonstration walked past. They were ushered on.

"As they were walking away, a riot policeman ran up behind one of the men kicking him in the back making obscene comments about his size. As the man turned, the policeman began beating the young man with his baton, striking him on the head and the side of his face."

Police denial

The BBC asked Greece's police headquarters to comment on the allegations, and after initially denying knowledge of the case, returned our call within 10 minutes with a statement vigorously denying the use of force.

A spokesman said: "The incident happened late last night. A group of people were moving in Pireos Street. They started causing a disturbance and trashing things close to the Ministry of Employment."

"Three teams of police, comprising 60 officers were deployed and made 51 arrests in the presence of television cameramen," he added.

The police spokesman insisted this version of events was correct.

"If anything like the events described by your witness had taken place, the media would not have missed the opportunity to film it, as this is exactly the sort of thing they are looking for. It would have been extremely difficult to have missed such an incident at that particular location," the spokesman added.

'We are going to kill you'

Following the police statement, the BBC interviewed the British businessman again.

"I did not see a camera person there. I cannot believe they arrested 50 people. The impression I had was that there was no major trouble until the police arrived. I saw them smash a couple of cash machines and closed circuit television cameras on the street and there was some stone throwing," he said.

"There were elements who wanted to cause trouble," he acknowledged. "But others on the demo were trying to stop it. And it was the peaceful ones who ended up being beaten."

The witness, who speaks Greek, said he overheard the police saying to their detainees: "We have you now. You are out of your universities now… We are going to kill you."

One of the demonstrators told the BBC the same story almost word for word.

"The person in front of me was hit with a baton, as was the person behind. I fainted and they didn't get me. I was in a total panic. Anyone who moved got hit. Anyone who talked got hit," she said.

"A policeman kept on marching in front of us and screaming verbal abuse. He was saying we are going to kill you. It was very scary," she added.

'Enemies of democracy'

Since the death of Alexis, about 400 people have been arrested and 70 people injured.

The government has instructed the police to take a defensive stance to ensure that there is no more bloodshed.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis told President Karolas Papoulias that the "enemies of democracy" could not expect any leniency.

About 12 hours before Alexandros Grigoropoulos was killed, riot police are alleged to have baton charged several thousand economic migrants and would be refugees who were trying to obtain the necessary papers to claim political asylum.

During the panic, one young South Asian man plunged head first into a concrete lined canal and was critically injured.

He has been on a life support in intensive care for more than a week. On Monday, doctors are due to turn off the machine to see whether he can survive unaided.

Amnesty International has criticised the riot police for using excessive force during the course of the past week.

The police claim that they are amongst Greece's most poorly paid public servants and are often forced to take second jobs to make ends meet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7782907.stm

In Athens, the university of anarchy

ATHENS: Early Saturday morning inside the gates of Athens Polytechnic University, a dozen groggy young people in hooded sweatshirts slumped on folding chairs around a smoky fire. Others trickled in, holding cups of coffee. Small gypsy children scampered around with wheelbarrows, collecting empty beer bottles. One lit a cigarette.

But the young people and their friends were not simply recovering from a long night of drinking or studying. They were regrouping for revolution.

Many of the violent protests that have rocked Athens in recent days, after the police shot and killed a 15-year-old boy on Dec. 6, have taken place in and around the university, driven by a group of anarchists that has long occupied the buildings here. Garbage fires burn in its courtyard. On the streets outside, youths throwing gasoline bombs and rocks have clashed with riot police officers armed with tear gas.

The National Technical University of Athens, as it is officially called, is one of Greece's leading schools, training engineers, architects and scientists since 1836. It moved its main campus outside the city center in the 1980s, leaving its neoclassical downtown buildings largely to the whims of protest groups.

The university administration seems to view the squatters as uninvited house guests who overstayed their welcome so long ago that they have become fixtures. They hold regular demonstrations and often destroy university property.

But these protests have been different.

"In former times, a couple of years ago, there were only students protesting," said Constantinos Moutzouris, the university's rector. "This time there are all kinds of groups. This is difficult to control."

Conversations with those inside the university revealed a mix of students, older anarchists and immigrants protesting everything from police brutality to globalization to American imperialism.

Some are simply thrillseekers along for the ride.

Administrators say that evicting the anarchists now, especially after the protests of the past week, would entail a police operation they are unwilling to undertake for fear of instigating further violence or destruction.

Under an asylum law instituted after the police crushed a student rebellion at the polytechnic university against the military junta in 1973, the Greek police are not allowed on university property unless invited by administrators.

Yet unlike when the police killed protesters at Kent State University in Ohio in 1970, a tragic episode in a dramatic time, emotion over the Athens shooting has intensified, not faded, over time.

In Greece, the police are seen as both overly aggressive and disconcertingly passive. Although a police bullet killed the teenager, sparking the latest violence, the government then told the police not to use force to tamp down the protests, to avoid further mayhem. The cost of the ensuing riots, in which businesses and cars were torched, is estimated at $1.3 billion nationwide.

Outside the university gates Saturday morning, merchants were sweeping up the broken glass from their vandalized shops. The hulks of burned-out cars sat like carcasses in the streets.

Asked what the shops had to do with the death of the student, one black-clad young woman said, in perfect American English, that they represented "the corporate machine." The protesters do not have a traditional hierarchy, she said, but held "collective meetings" in the university auditorium.

Like rave parties, the protests are called through text-message chains or on Web sites like indymedia.org.

Protesters have said they will continue to demonstrate until the police charged with killing the teenager, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, are tried and jailed.

In an inner courtyard, someone has spray-painted "Don't Blame Us, The Rocks Ricocheted." A lawyer for the policeman who killed the teenager has said that the bullet was deformed, so that it was probably not a direct hit.

The Greek authorities have insisted that the violence has been driven by a radical handful, whom they refer to as "the known unknown."

That term is "nonsense," said Dimitris Liberopoulous, 44, a freelance book editor and anarchist sympathizer who discussed the protest movement over coffee in Exarchia, the neighborhood surrounding the university. "It's a game of semiotics," he said.

He said the authorities did not know who the protesters were, nor understand their frustration at class division, the poor economy, a broken education system and a corrupt government.

"We are thousands of people," Liberopoulous said. "We live in a parallel society with parallel values and parallel ideas."

That the authorities have not identified and arrested the ringleaders seems more a question of political will.

Greece has witnessed low-level political violence for decades. Starting in the mid-'70s, the terrorist group November 17 killed at least 23 people until the Greek authorities largely dismantled it before the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Last year, another group fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy here, causing damage but no injuries.

It is unclear whether the self-styled anarchists have ties with terrorist groups. But security experts fear that terrorist groups might see the new unrest as fertile ground for attacks.

They also worry that the anarchists themselves might up the ante.

More protests are expected this week, though Athens was largely calm Sunday.

"There's a proverb," Liberopoulous said. "That a civil war never ends."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/14/europe/journal.php

Athens hit by new protest rallies

Hundreds of people are staging fresh protest rallies in Athens, after days of rioting sparked by the killing of a teenager by police in Greece.

They gathered near the capital's police headquarters and the main court, where some of the protesters arrested last week were to appear before magistrates.

The policeman accused of shooting Alexandros Grigoropoulos, aged 15, has been charged with murder.

The shooting has also generated widespread anti-government sentiment,

Sixty per cent of those questioned by Greece's Kathimerini newspaper rejected the assertion that the disturbances have been merely a series of co-ordinated attacks by a small hard core of anarchists.

Another poll, in the Ethnos newspaper, suggested that 83% of Greeks were unhappy with the government's response to the violence. Kathimerini put the disapproval rating at 68%.

The BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens says the results appear to confirm what many commentators have been saying - that conservative Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis has pulled off the unique feat of alienating all sections of Greek society.

Mr Karamanlis - who is on Monday attending the funeral of former Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos - has rejected calls to step down.

He said the country needed a "steady hand" to deal with the economic downturn, "not scenarios about elections and successions".

Economy fears

The new street protests are being held amid a heavy police presence.

Demonstrators are chanting anti-government slogans, but no major incidents have been reported so far.

Further protests are planned later on Monday outside parliament.

They come after calm was briefly restored in the capital on Sunday.

In all, some 70 people are said to have been injured in violent protests across Greece during the unrest sparked by the shooting on 6 December.

On Sunday, the leader of the opposition Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) demanded elections and said the government "ignores the calls of society, is incapable of steadily driving the country towards change, and is afraid of the people."

"It is wasting away, collapsing and dissolving into a dead-end... Its political time is finished," George Papandreou told a party meeting.

A top union official meanwhile warned that with around a quarter of the young age group involved in the disturbances being unemployed, the unrest could grow in the coming months as more people lose their jobs.

"A massive wave of redundancies will kick in come the New Year when, according to our estimates, 100,000 jobs will be lost, which represents an additional 5% on the unemployment rate," said Stathis Anestis of the General Confederation of Greek Workers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7783375.stm

Fears of unrest spreading across Europe

THE unrest that has gripped Greece this week is spilling into the rest of Europe, raising concerns that it could be a trigger for opponents of globalisation, disaffected youth and others outraged by economic turmoil.
Protesters in Spain, Denmark and Italy smashed shop windows, pelted police with bottles and attacked banks this week, while in France cars were set ablaze on Thursday outside the Greek consulate in Bordeaux, where protesters warned about a looming "insurrection".

At least some of the protests were organised over the internet. One website Greek protesters use to update each other on the locations of clashes asserted there have been sympathy protests in nearly 20 countries.

But the clashes have been nothing like the scope of the chaos in Greece, which was triggered by the police killing of a teenager last Saturday and has ballooned into nightly scenes of burning street barricades, looted stores and overturned cars. Nevertheless, authorities in Europe worry conditions are ripe for the contagion to spread.

As Europe plunges into recession, unemployment is rising, particularly among the young. Even before the crisis, European youths complained about difficulty finding well-paid jobs – even with a university degree.

"Look what is going on in Greece," Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, told members of his UMP party this week, rejecting budget proposals that would have cushioned the wealthy from losses.

With memories fresh of weeks of rioting in 2005, Mr Sarkozy expressed concern that the anti-government backlash could spread to France: "The French love it when I'm in a carriage with Carla, but at the same time they've guillotined a king."

At the Athens Polytechnic, where many of the protesters are based, Konstantinos Sakkas, 23, said: "We're encouraging non- violent action. What these are abroad are spontaneous expressions of solidarity."

Internet sites and blogs have popped up to spread the call to protest. In Spain, Nodo50.org, an anti-globalisation website, greeted visitors with the headline "State Assassin, Police Executioners" and told them of rallies in Barcelona and Madrid.

At the Independent Media Centre, photos and video of the Greek demonstrations were uploaded and plans were listed for "upcoming solidarity actions" in London, Edinburgh and Berlin.

"What's happening in Greece tends to prove that the extreme left exists, contrary to doubts of some," said a French interior ministry spokesman. But, he added, the coming weeks would determine whether "there's a danger of contagion of the Greek situation into France".

One rally outside the Greek embassy in Rome turned violent on Wednesday, while in Copenhagen, protesters pelted riot police with bottles and paint.

In Spain, youths in Madrid and Barcelona attacked banks, shops and a police station. Eleven people were arrested at the two rallies, which drew about 200 protesters.

Daniel Lostao, president of the Youth Council, an umbrella organisation, said young people in Spain faced daunting challenges – soaring unemployment, low salaries and difficulty in leaving the family nest because of expensive housing. But he doubted the protests in Spain would grow. "We do not have the feeling that this is going to spread."

BACKGROUND

GREECE'S headline rate of unemployment – 7.4 per cent in September – is just below the eurozone average.

The key factor, however, is unemployment among those aged 15 to 24, which is 22 per cent.

"Young Greeks up to the age of 35, make up a silent majority of overworked, underpaid, debt-ridden and insecure citizens," said Generation 700 Euros, a group defending the 56 per cent of Greeks under 30 earning that amount a month.

http://news.scotsman.com/world/Fears-of-unrest-spreading-across.4790369.jp

Greek protesters rally outside police headquarters

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Youths protested outside of Athens' main police headquarters on Monday, in the second week of violent protests over the shooting death of a teenager.

The young protesters pelted riot police with flour and other objects, while police responded with tear gas.

Some 2,000 youths at the rally blocked one of the capital's main avenues, chanted slogans and set fire to trash bins before dispersing. Two demonstrators were arrested, police said.

Greece has seen its worst riots in decades after 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos died Dec. 6 in a police shooting.

The riots quickly spread from Athens to more than a dozen cities. For a week, youths smashed and burned stores and cars, and hurled petrol bombs and rocks at riot police, who responded with stun grenades and large amounts of tear gas.

On Friday, the head of Greece's Retailers Association said riots in Greek cities had caused an estimated 100 million euros ($135 million) in damage to stores, and was likely to cost businesses 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) in lost revenue.

Dozens of people were injured in the rioting, while hundreds of stores were damaged or looted and more than 200 people were arrested. The policeman accused of killing the teenager has been charged with murder and is being held pending trial.

On Monday, students also staged peaceful blockades of several busy roads in the capital, marched through the city center, and protested outside Athens' main court complex, where four people arrested during last week's riots were ordered to remain in custody.

The protests are shifting from expressing anger at police to showing general anger at the country's increasingly unpopular conservative government and the economic hardships faced by many Greeks.

Socialist opposition leader George Papandreou renewed calls Monday for early elections.

"The government cannot deal with this crisis," he said. "It cannot protect people — their rights or property — and it cannot identify with the anxiety felt by the younger generation."

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, whose party has only a single seat majority in parliament, has repeatedly rejected calls to resign and call early elections, saying the country needed a steady hand in times of crisis.

Sunday was the first trouble-free day since Grigoropoulos' killing, but some groups, mostly left-wing students, have vowed to keep up the protests until the government addresses their concerns.

Protesters have called for riot police to be pulled off the streets, for police to be disarmed and for growing social inequality to be resolved.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jIVDJEwIjDFDxGPN5HDQqTzoSVNgD953AA800

Iraq rally for Bush shoe attacker

Thousands of Iraqis have demanded the release of a local TV reporter who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference.

Crowds gathered in Baghdad's Sadr City district, calling for "hero" Muntadar al-Zaidi to be freed from custody.

Officials at the Iraqi-owned TV station, al-Baghdadiya, called for the release of their journalist, saying he was exercising freedom of expression.

Iraqi officials have described the incident as shameful.

A statement released by the government said Mr Zaidi's actions, which also included him shouting insults at President Bush, "harmed the reputation of Iraqi journalists and Iraqi journalism in general".

Correspondents say the protesters are supporters of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr - a leading critic of the US presence in Iraq. Smaller protests were reported in Basra and Najaf.

The Iraqi government has demanded an on-air apology from his employer.

An Iraqi official was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that the journalist was being interrogated to determine whether anybody paid him to throw his shoes at President Bush.

He was also being tested for alcohol and drugs, and his shoes were being held as evidence, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya TV channel said Mr Zaidi should be freed because he had been exercising freedom of expression - something which the Americans had promised to Iraqis on the ousting of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"Any measures against Muntadar will be considered the acts of a dictatorial regime," the firm said in a statement.

The programming director for al-Baghdadiya, Muzhir al-Khafaji, described the journalist as a "proud Arab and an open-minded man".

He said he was afraid for Mr Zaidi's safety, adding that the reporter had been arrested by US officials twice before.

"We fear that our correspondents in Iraq will be arrested. We have 200 correspondents there," he added.

'Proud Arab'

Mr Zaidi leapt from his chair at Sunday's news conference and hurled first one shoe and then the other at Mr Bush, who was joined at the podium by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.

The shoes missed as Mr Bush ducked, and Mr Zaidi was immediately wrestled to the ground by security guards and frogmarched from the room.

"This is a farewell kiss, you dog," he yelled in Arabic as he threw his shoes. "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

Arabic TV stations have been repeatedly showing footage of the incident, which was also front-page news in many papers.

Correspondents say the journalist's tirade was echoed by Arabs across the Middle East who are fed up with US policy in the region.

"He [George Bush] deserves to be hit with 100, not just one or two shoes. Who wants him to come here?" said a man in Baghdad.

But his view was not expressed by everyone.

"I think this incident is unnecessary, to be honest. That was a press conference, not a war. If someone wants to express his opinion he should do so in the proper manner, not this way," said another Baghdad resident.

Courts criticised

Also on Monday, Human Rights Watch accused Iraq's main criminal court of failing to meet basic international standards of justice.

The New York-based group said torture and abuse of prisoners before trial appeared common, and legal representation was often ineffectual.

Human Rights Watch said some of the court's failings showed disturbing similarities to those that existed during the Saddam Hussein era.

The group called on Iraq to take immediate steps to protect detainees from torture, and ensure they had access to proper defence and received a prompt hearing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7783608.stm

Updates from the Greek Insurrection: Occupation of the city hall of Sykies, Thessaloniki

There is a pandemic of occupations of city halls, following the occupation of the city hall at Ag. Dimitrios. Saturday the old city hall of Halandri was occupied and today the city hall of Sykies, a suburb of Thessaloniki. Three people arrested and then released during this occupation. I will provide more news and translated statements as they become available.

There have also been several takeovers of radio stations and other facilities. I am compiling a list.

One worrisome aspect from the US and European anarchist and left comrades. There is continuous reference to the greek "riots" (a term NEVER used by my greek comrades to refer to their actions or the situation, who call it explicitly a popular insurrection, but a term used all the time by the police and the mass media) and on the most spectacular attacks and property destruction, while virtually ignoring the insurrection and the grassroots organizing that is going on, such as the occupations of the public buildings, which are more popular in their compositions vs. the occupations of the universities which are student focused (and are protected by university asylum laws).

There is no split between those who are in the streets, those who occupy the universities and those who are taking over public buildings like the city halls. But to continue to refer to the "riots" is to completely, in my opinion, demean and ignore the true popular nature of the insurrection and to buy into the message of the spectacle that the state and the mass media are selling us. I beseech you to stop referring to the insurrection as riots and to help shift the rhetoric. Let us honor the nature of the insurrection by calling it what it is and by striving to understand its complexities and its intricacies, and not focus only on its more spectacular moments.

Words have meaning, and words like "known unknowns" "hooded ones" "self-styled anarchists" "looters" and "riots" are designed to disinform and disorient. Let us not become a party to that.

FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.

The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

Nextel cell phones owned by two alleged mobsters, John Ardito and his attorney Peter Peluso, were used by the FBI to listen in on nearby conversations. The FBI views Ardito as one of the most powerful men in the Genovese family, a major part of the national Mafia.

The surveillance technique came to light in an opinion published this week by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. He ruled that the "roving bug" was legal because federal wiretapping law is broad enough to permit eavesdropping even of conversations that take place near a suspect's cell phone.

Kaplan's opinion said that the eavesdropping technique "functioned whether the phone was powered on or off." Some handsets can't be fully powered down without removing the battery; for instance, some Nokia models will wake up when turned off if an alarm is set.

While the Genovese crime family prosecution appears to be the first time a remote-eavesdropping mechanism has been used in a criminal case, the technique has been discussed in security circles for years.

The U.S. Commerce Department's security office warns that "a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone." An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can "remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call."

Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government agencies. "They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time," he said. "You can do that without having physical access to the phone."

Because modern handsets are miniature computers, downloaded software could modify the usual interface that always displays when a call is in progress. The spyware could then place a call to the FBI and activate the microphone--all without the owner knowing it happened. (The FBI declined to comment on Friday.)

"If a phone has in fact been modified to act as a bug, the only way to counteract that is to either have a bugsweeper follow you around 24-7, which is not practical, or to peel the battery off the phone," Atkinson said. Security-conscious corporate executives routinely remove the batteries from their cell phones, he added.

FBI's physical bugs discovered
The FBI's Joint Organized Crime Task Force, which includes members of the New York police department, had little luck with conventional surveillance of the Genovese family. They did have a confidential source who reported the suspects met at restaurants including Brunello Trattoria in New Rochelle, N.Y., which the FBI then bugged.

But in July 2003, Ardito and his crew discovered bugs in three restaurants, and the FBI quietly removed the rest. Conversations recounted in FBI affidavits show the men were also highly suspicious of being tailed by police and avoided conversations on cell phones whenever possible.

That led the FBI to resort to "roving bugs," first of Ardito's Nextel handset and then of Peluso's. U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones approved them in a series of orders in 2003 and 2004, and said she expected to "be advised of the locations" of the suspects when their conversations were recorded.

Details of how the Nextel bugs worked are sketchy. Court documents, including an affidavit (p1) and (p2) prepared by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Kolodner in September 2003, refer to them as a "listening device placed in the cellular telephone." That phrase could refer to software or hardware.

One private investigator interviewed by CNET News.com, Skipp Porteous of Sherlock Investigations in New York, said he believed the FBI planted a physical bug somewhere in the Nextel handset and did not remotely activate the microphone.

"They had to have physical possession of the phone to do it," Porteous said. "There are several ways that they could have gotten physical possession. Then they monitored the bug from fairly near by."

But other experts thought microphone activation is the more likely scenario, mostly because the battery in a tiny bug would not have lasted a year and because court documents say the bug works anywhere "within the United States"--in other words, outside the range of a nearby FBI agent armed with a radio receiver.

In addition, a paranoid Mafioso likely would be suspicious of any ploy to get him to hand over a cell phone so a bug could be planted. And Kolodner's affidavit seeking a court order lists Ardito's phone number, his 15-digit International Mobile Subscriber Identifier, and lists Nextel Communications as the service provider, all of which would be unnecessary if a physical bug were being planted.

A BBC article from 2004 reported that intelligence agencies routinely employ the remote-activiation method. "A mobile sitting on the desk of a politician or businessman can act as a powerful, undetectable bug," the article said, "enabling them to be activated at a later date to pick up sounds even when the receiver is down."

For its part, Nextel said through spokesman Travis Sowders: "We're not aware of this investigation, and we weren't asked to participate."

Other mobile providers were reluctant to talk about this kind of surveillance. Verizon Wireless said only that it "works closely with law enforcement and public safety officials. When presented with legally authorized orders, we assist law enforcement in every way possible."

A Motorola representative said that "your best source in this case would be the FBI itself." Cingular, T-Mobile, and the CTIA trade association did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mobsters: The surveillance vanguard
This isn't the first time the federal government has pushed at the limits of electronic surveillance when investigating reputed mobsters.

In one case involving Nicodemo S. Scarfo, the alleged mastermind of a loan shark operation in New Jersey, the FBI found itself thwarted when Scarfo used Pretty Good Privacy software (PGP) to encode confidential business data.

So with a judge's approval, FBI agents repeatedly snuck into Scarfo's business to plant a keystroke logger and monitor its output.

Like Ardito's lawyers, Scarfo's defense attorneys argued that the then-novel technique was not legal and that the information gleaned through it could not be used. Also like Ardito, Scarfo's lawyers lost when a judge ruled in January 2002 that the evidence was admissible.

This week, Judge Kaplan in the southern district of New York concluded that the "roving bugs" were legally permitted to capture hundreds of hours of conversations because the FBI had obtained a court order and alternatives probably wouldn't work.

The FBI's "applications made a sufficient case for electronic surveillance," Kaplan wrote. "They indicated that alternative methods of investigation either had failed or were unlikely to produce results, in part because the subjects deliberately avoided government surveillance."

Bill Stollhans, president of the Private Investigators Association of Virginia, said such a technique would be legally reserved for police armed with court orders, not private investigators.

There is "no law that would allow me as a private investigator to use that type of technique," he said. "That is exclusively for law enforcement. It is not allowable or not legal in the private sector. No client of mine can ask me to overhear telephone or strictly oral conversations."

Surreptitious activation of built-in microphones by the FBI has been done before. A 2003 lawsuit revealed that the FBI was able to surreptitiously turn on the built-in microphones in automotive systems like General Motors' OnStar to snoop on passengers' conversations.

When FBI agents remotely activated the system and were listening in, passengers in the vehicle could not tell that their conversations were being monitored.

Malicious hackers have followed suit. A report last year said Spanish authorities had detained a man who write a Trojan horse that secretly activated a computer's video camera and forwarded him the recordings.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029_3-6140191.html

Greece: Students Remain on the Streets to Protest the Murder of Alexi

The protest movement against the murder of sixteen year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos shall continue, the students have decided.

Students will conduct protests outside the General Police Directorate of Attica (G.A.D.A.) and outside police stations in the rest of the country.

At this hour, students have blocked roads on Gregoriou Lambraki St. in Korydallos. In addition, students plan to shut-down the streets near the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Defense, the Square of Kalogiron, and a number of other streets.



The spiritual center and public radio station of the municipality of Ioannina, the old City Hall of Halandri, and the City Hall of Aghios Dimitrios remain under the occupation of anti-authoritarians, with the goal of felicitating grassroot meetings.

The Ministry of Education claims that 100 schools are under the occupation of the students, but information from the students suggests between 400 to 600, and about 100 universities are under student occupation.

The students plan to remain on the streets all week and continue their protests.

SOURCE:
"TO VEMA" (15 December 2008, 12:11 p.m.)
http://www.tovima.gr/default.asp?pid=2&ct=1&artId=246746

Translator's note:
"To Vema" is one of the major dailies in Greece and typically has a centrist politics. The article was edited for brevity.

Shoe attack mars Bush's Iraq visit

George Bush, the US president, has had a pair of shoes hurled at him at a press conference during his last surprise visit to Iraq before leaving office in January.

An Iraqi reporter called Bush "a dog" and shouted out "this is the end" at Sunday's news conference in Baghdad, before throwing his shoes at the US leader.

Bush, who had been giving a joint press statement with Nuri Al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, ducked behind a podium as the shoes narrowly missed his head.

He was reported to be unhurt after the attack by Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadiya television, the Associated Press news agency reported.

The outgoing US leader had just told reporters that while the war in Iraq was not over "it is decisively on its way to being won," when al-Zeidi got to his feet and hurled abuse - and his footwear - at the US president.

Sign of contempt

In Iraqi culture, throwing shoes at someone is a sign of contempt.

The incident will serve as a vivid reminder of the widespread opposition to the US-led invasion of, and subsequent war in, Iraq - the conflict which has come to define Bush's presidency.

Bush shrugged off the incident and quipped: "All I can report is that it's a size 10."

Adil Shamoo, an Iraqi analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, told Al Jazeera: "I think we should go beyond the shoe and think about the fact that the US should respect Iraq's sovereignty in order to regain respect of the Iraqi people and the Arab world.

"I think Bush has increased terrorism against the United States and instablity in the Middle East because of his policies."

The US president was in Baghad for unannounced talks on the pact between Iraq and Washington that will see American troops leave Iraq by 2011.

Al-Maliki applauded security gains in Iraq and said that two years ago "such an agreement seemed impossible".

Bush's visit to the Iraqi capital came just 37 days before he hands the presidency over to Barak Obama, who has vowed to withdraw troops from Iraq.

http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2008/12/2008121419453773379.html

General strike in Italy against government handling of the crisis

Hundreds of thousands of workers downed tools and took to the streets in a four hour stoppage stating "we won't pay for the crisis".

The strike by the General Confederation of Italian workers (CGIL) shut down postal services nationwide, transport services and airports in several cities and many automobile manufacturers, in some of which strikers were joined by members of other unions.

Despite the rain, tens of thousands marched in Rome, 200,000 workers rallied in Bologna, 30,000 in Turin, 50,000 in Milan, 40,000 in Naples, 10,000 in Genoa and many more gathered elsewhere.

In the face of the crisis, with Italy now officially in recession, workers are demanding higher wages, better pensions, more labour rights and lower unemployment.

The union called off stoppages were transport workers in flood-hit Rome and Venice.

http://libcom.org/news/general-strike-italy-against-government-handling-crisis-13122008

Greek riots eyewitness reports - 12 December 2008

Rundown of the days events of the sixth full day of rioting in Greece, including statements from workers and students in Athens.

Better than guerrilla radio
Anarchists take over the tv station Super B in Patra. They went live at 21.37pm

Part of the broadcast is viewable on youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-a1jCD9sk0

#18, 18:40: 13-year old girl brutally arrested; murderer’s lawyer’s office attacked; high school students keep up the struggle and get targeted

Just about when the demonstration today was reaching its end, riot cops attacked at Korai Str in Athens, arresting at least four students. One of the arrestees was a 13 year old girl; nearby journalists who reacted to her brutal arrest were also beaten up heavily. Earlier, the office of Alexis Kougias (the murderer’s lawyer) were trashed.

High school students also held fresh demos across the country and neighbourhoods in Athens. The attack of the state’s mechanism on them is in full swing: Earlier today, a car with unregistered license plates (i.e. belonging to the undercover police) drove into two students outside a high school in Ilioupolis, Athens, leaving them both injured.

A more detailed summary of today’s events, hopefully with some thoughts on where things can go from here, will follow once we’ve had some rest!

#17 15.34 ATHENS: Parliament demo ends, retreats to occupied universities

15.34 The demo has ended and we have retreated in the three occupied universities, waiting for the pigs. Outside the law school a jeep is burning. They should be here soon.

15.46 The riot cops approach the law school. They are pelted with stones and molotovs, and retreat. One jeep and one riot cop on fire.

18.01: Let me update you about today's demo in Athens.

A pupil and student demo was organized for 12 o clock today, starting from Propylaia as usual. More than 10000 attended, the vast majority of them school kids and teenagers. It was again an angry demo, the school kids have been proven to be the BEST demonstrators during these days, focused and determined, they really seem that they are on the streets FOR A REASON. During the last 2 days, 25 police departments have been attacked all by school kids and teenagers. This is the best answer to the system and the media, who only talk about "vandals with covered faces" ... Well NO pupil had a covered face at all the demos.

The police was provocative from the very beggining of the demo. Chemicals were continiously thrown during the whole demo, as well as a lot of clashes with the police. They were hitting visiously and throwing chemicals, although we are talking about young school kids....

In Korai str they arrested and visiously hit a 13 years old girl.. A lot of journalists and reporters that were there they were filming them and shouting at them to stop hitting the girl.. The result was chemicals against the reporters and they started beating them... One journalist got badly hit. At a small alley near Panepistimiou str the RIOT police went in, in order to wait for the demo and hit it from the side. The people who were on that alley (the alley is full of cafes) starting shouting at the police to get out of there and a lot starting throwing at them glasses, chairs and stones. They threw chemicals against them but they had to run out of there as they were being attacked a lot. They turned to Panepistimiou str again where people of the public (even random pedestrians) were shouting at them and throwing them stones. Some of them tried to arrest a boy (about 15 years old) who was on the demo (not throwing stones) because he had his head covered (not face just head)..... The public managed to rescue the boy as they pulled him from them. Four pupils were arrested.

A lot of tension started also at Syntagma square, where a lot of chemicals were also thrown as well as stunt grenades. These grenades have been used a lot throughout the week.

Some comrades broke in the office of Mr Kougias, the lawyer of the cop, and trashed it completely. Kougias told the press that these actions are not going to hold him back from defending the cop....

A petrol bomb was thrown against this cop outside the Law Department of the University of Athens as an answer to the "fuck you" gesture that he did a few seconds before, to the comrades that have taken over that building. The other cops around quickly put out the fire and the cop was not injured. This triggered violence around the area of the Law Department for quite enough time.

The demo finished when heavy rainfall started.

A "sit down" demonstration (if I am using this term correctly) was also taking place at Syntagma square. At the beggining the MAT (RIOT police) was there and were trying to create trouble with the demonstrators but it was a peacefull demo so they left. Normal police went to replace them, they stayed at that point for some time and when they realised that the guys were not "terrorists" they left. An another sit down demo has been organized for 10 o clock tonight but I dont know if it will happen because of the rain.

Also a bicycle demo is about to take place today, normally bicycle demos have a lot of crowd but today because of the rain I am not sure how many will be there.

NOTHING IS OVER YET.. WE ARE ONLY IN THE BEGINNING.

NO PEACE NO JUSTICE

#16, 14.13 Student Demonstration at Parliament

14.13 the student demonstration in Athens is large, at least 5-6,000. The high school kids block is an amazing spectacle to watch. They chant “shoot us too!”. We are approaching the parliament now.

14.30 we charge at the cops. They respond with a fuckload of tear gas. People hold. “MURDERERS!” More and more people arrive. There must be at least 10,000 of us.

#15, 12:17 Athens: Business unusual

The ballistic examination report is expected today. “Leaks” in the media the previous days have been suggesting that the report will claim Alexandros was killed by a ricochet and not a direct shot (which is against what every single eye witness says). They have already reached their verdict - but so have we: At the occupied Athens School of Economics and Business, an enormous banner is about to be hanged reading “Cougias” (the lawyer of the murderer), “go ricochet yourself”.

The student demonstration is starting now at Propylea. I’m heading there and will report from the street.

#14, 11:57: Video from Patras, report from besieged Athens police stations

Video from the demonstration in Patras. Just to put this into perspective: The demonstration was called by the (anarchist &leftist) occupation of the “parartima” (branch of the university in the city centre). This was their callout. Under “normal” circumstances, around 100-200 people would respond. These are not normal days we are living, though: 5-6,000 people took the streets in Patras yesterday…

In Athens, as reported yesterday, at least 25 police stations were under siege by school students. The police station of Petroupoli was besieged for more than seven hours and its facade was entirely burnt by molotov cocktails. 3 students were arrested but the crowd succeeded in demanding their release, as happened a bit later when another two students were arrested only to be released again, under the pressure of the people in solidarity outside (these are all according to indymedia reports).

In the early hours, anarchists occupied the mainstream radio station Flash FM, broadcasting their messages for more than half an hour.

“We are in Civil War: With the fascists, the bankers, the state, the media wishing to see an obedient society”

…you would be excused to think that the above extract comes from an anarchist statement; alas, no - it is from the statement issued by the association of employees of the suburb of Agios Dimitrios in Athens. Here’s a rough translation of the statement, as promised. Keep in mind that, as members of the association told some comrades, they tried to keep the style of the text as sober as possible, to ensure the maximum number of people take the streets with them.

STATEMENT

On Saturday night, the Greek police assassinated a 15 year old student.

His assassination was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It was the continuation of a coordinated action, by state terrorism and the Golden Dawn, which aimed at university and high school students (with the private universities first), at migrants that continue to be persecuted for being born with the wrong colour, at the employees that must work to death without compensation.

The government of cover-ups with its praetors, having burnt the forests last summer, is responsible for all major cities burning now, too. It protected financial criminals, all those involved in the mobile phone interceptions scandal, those looting the employees’ insurance funds, those kidnapping migrants, those who protected the banks and the monasteries that steal from the ordinary people.

We are in Civil War: With the fascists, the bankers, the state, the media wishing to see an obedient society.

There are no excuses, yet they once again try to use conspiracy theories to calm spirits down.

The rage that had accumulated had to be expressed and should not, by any means, end.

Throughout the world we are making headlines, it was about time that people uprise everywhere.

The generation of the poor, the unemployed, the partially employed, the homeless, the migrants, the youth, is the generation that will smash every display window and will wake up the obedient citizens from their sleep of the ephemeral American dream.

Don’t watch the news, consciousness is born in the streets

When the youth is murdered, the old people should not sleep

Goodbye Alexandros, may your blood be the last of an innocent to run

We are here/ we are everywhere/ we are an image from the future

If I do not burn

If you do not burn

If we do not burn

How will darkness come to light?

(Nazim Hikmet, “Like Kerem”)

Clenching fear in their teeth the dogs howl: Return to normality – the fools’ feast is over. The philologists of assimilation have already started digging up their cut-sharp caresses: “We are ready to forget, to understand, to exchange the promiscuity of these few days, but now behave or we shall bring over our sociologists, our anthropologists, our psychiatrists! Like good fathers we have tolerated with restraint your emotional eruption – now look at how desks, offices and shop windows gape empty! The time has come for a return, and whoever refuses this holy duty shall be hit hard, shall be sociologised, shall be psychiatrised. An injunction hovers over the city: “Are you at your post?” Democracy, social harmony, national unity and all the other big hearths stinking of death have already stretched out their morbid arms.

Power (from the government to the family) aims not simply to repress the insurrection and its generalisation, but to produce a relation of subjectivation. A relation that defines bios, that is political life, as a sphere of cooperation, compromise and consensus. “Politics is the politics of consensus; the rest is gang-war, riots, chaos”. This is a true translation of what they are telling us, of their effort to deny the living core of every action, and to separate and isolate us from what we can do: not to unite the two into one, but to rupture again and again the one into two. The mandarins of harmony, the barons of peace and quiet, law and order, call on us to become dialectic. But those tricks are desperately old, and their misery is transparent in the fat bellies of the trade-union bosses, in the washed-out eyes of the intermediaries, who like vultures perch over every negation, over every passion for the real. We have seen them in May, we have seen them in LA and Brixton, and we have been watching them over decades licking the long now white bones of the 1973 Polytechnic. We saw them again yesterday when instead of calling for a permanent general strike, they bowed to legality and called off the strike protest march. Because they know all too well that the road to the generalisation of the insurrection is through the field of production – through the occupation of the means of production of this world that crushes us.

Tomorrow dawns a day when nothing is certain. And what could be more liberating than this after so many long years of certainty? A bullet was able to interrupt the brutal sequence all those identical days. The assassination of a 15 year old boy was the moment when a displacement took place strong enough to bring the world upside down. A displacement from the seeing through of yet another day, to the point that so many think simultaneously: “That was it, not one step further, all must change and we will change it”. The revenge for the death of Alex, has become the revenge for every day that we are forced to wake up in this world. And what seemed so hard proved to be so simple.

This is what has happened, what we have. If something scares us is the return to normality. For in the destroyed and pillaged streets of our cities of light we see not only the obvious results of our rage, but the possibility of starting to live. We have no longer anything to do than to install ourselves in this possibility transforming it into a living experience: by grounding on the field of everyday life, our creativity, our power to materialise our desires, our power not to contemplate but to construct the real. This is our vital space. All the rest is death.

Those who want to understand will understand. Now is the time to break the invisible cells that chain each and everyone to his or her pathetic little life. And this does not require solely or necessarily one to attack police stations and torch malls and banks. The time that one deserts his or her couch and the passive contemplation of his or her own life and takes to the streets to talk and to listen, leaving behind anything private, involves in the field of social relations the destabilising force of a nuclear bomb. And this is precisely because the (till now) fixation of everyone on his or her microcosm is tied to the traction forces of the atom. Those forces that make the (capitalist) world turn. This is the dilemma: with the insurgents or alone. And this is one of the really few times that a dilemma can be at the same time so absolute and real.

11/12/2008 Initiative from the occupation of the Athens School of Economics and Business

#13 What to expect tomorrow (12.12.2008)

Friends call from abroad. “Is it over?” we can only laugh at that idea - What do you mean, is it over? It’s just about to start. Some comrades come back to the Athens School of Economics (our base), carrying incredible stories from the occupation of the town hall of the suburb of Agios Dimitrios in Athens. In a previous post we reported that the town hall was occupied by anarchists. Wrong: The town hall was occupied by the locals, whose statements so far easily overcome the “toughest” of anarchist speech. “This is civil war”, they write. “Alexis, we hope that your blood is the last of an innocent to run”. We’ve got a copy of the entire statement published by the area’s employees committee, and will be translating it tomorrow. It is, quite simply, a historical document.

As for what to expect tomorrow (12.12). There is a callout for yet another mass demonstration in Athens, at noon. A “revolutionary alleycat race” is called for 21:30. Its tag: “Come contribute to the chaos!”. Most university students will be holding department assemblies to decide whether they will proceed with occupations (surely enough, most of them will do so); we expect high school students to keep rocking, as they have all these days (and if information received so far is confirmed, regarding their plans, they might have some awesome surprises for us tomorrow).

“Is this over?” How, exactly, could it be? The murderer if Alexandros shows no remorse and is about to get away with it. The pigs keep provoking. Their political leaders remain unpunished. What single argument, what single reason is there for us to return to normalcy, to forget, to retreat from the streets? None. There is no way back now.

compiled from the posts of Dimitris on urban 75 and from www.occupiedlondon.org/blog

http://libcom.org/library/greek-riots-eyewitness-reports-12-december-2008

Chicago Sitdown Strike Produces Win for Workers, Anger against Banks

When managers informed the workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago that the plant would close in three days’ time, the announcement was no surprise.

Suspicion that something was wrong had been floating around the workplace for weeks before the December 2 announcement. “We’ve had a lot of our machines taken out of the plant at night,” said Melvin Maclin, vice president of United Electrical Workers (UE) Local 1110 and a seven-year employee. “And along with the machines go people’s jobs.”

Concerned that Republic’s owners would remove or sell off the remaining machinery before they handed over pay for severance and vacation time already accrued, the workers brought in a local congressman, Representative Luis Gutierrez.

But management failed to show at a meeting with Gutierrez, leading workers to take a dramatic stand that confounded expectations about the U.S. labor movement, long in retreat.

They refused to leave the plant at closing time December 5, voting unanimously to occupy their factory, the first such action in the United States in years.

Lalo Munoz, an employee of Republic for 34 years, said workers were determined to fight. “They decided just to kick (us) into the streets, with no benefits or nothing, not even what we have already earned,” he said.

The occupation lasted six days, until a unanimous December 10 vote among the 240 workers accepted a severance package worth about $7,000 per worker. The deal also includes two months of health care, a crucial gain for workers who discovered that their coverage had been unilaterally yanked.
WHO GETS BAILED OUT?

Republic management laid the blame on its primary financier, Bank of America, claiming the bank’s refusal to extend further credit to the company caused the shutdown.

Company representatives insisted that without further credit they could not pay workers the severance they were owed—although information surfaced days into the occupation that owners had found enough cash recently to purchase a non-union window factory in Iowa.

A Chicago councilman who had seen company documents said workers in Iowa would be paid one-third of what Republic workers earned. In 1996, the company received a $9.6 million subsidy from Chicago to place the factory in the city.

The Republic workers turned their attention to Bank of America. Jobs with Justice helped the union organize a press conference outside the bank’s Chicago headquarters, where speakers hammered the bank for refusing to release to Republic a tiny fraction of the $25 billion it was granted in the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

The plant occupation tapped into simmering discontent nationwide about banks’ refusal to open credit lines that could help struggling firms survive . Dozens of protests sprouted across the country in front of Bank of America branches.

As harsh as Republic’s stance seemed, Chicago organizers emphasized that the company’s refusal to give the legally required 60 days’ notice of a plant closing and to pay severance was by no means unique.

A bakery and a potato chip plant, both large and unionized factories, are just two that have shuttered in Chicago in recent years without following the plant-closing law.

“This is not an exceptional practice,” said Adam Kader, director of Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues (CICWI), a worker center involved in campaigns to recover severance pay. “This is standard practice.”

Workers at Republic, however, were uniquely prepared to fight their plant closing. Before the occupation, they were already well-known in Chicago labor circles. A mostly African-American and immigrant Latino workforce, they organized into UE Local 1110 four years ago after dumping a company union that had agreed to a wage freeze and had allowed dozens of workers to be fired with no protest.

“There is a political tradition that the UE has nurtured, and when the time was right, it presented itself and they could seize the moment. The organizers were quick on the uptake to understand the issue at hand and fit it into the global context. They did it brilliantly,” says Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
SPARKING THE FIRE

Word of the workers’ decision spread rapidly among Chicago labor and social justice activists. Within hours a prayer vigil, organized by CICWI, had been planned. Supporters appeared at the factory’s entrance bearing gifts of food, coffee, blankets, and sleeping bags. They signed posters that workers taped to the factory walls, with messages like “Thanks for showing us all how to fight back” and “You are an inspiration to us all.”

Hundreds of supporters showed up to the prayer vigil, and workers received statements of solidarity from as far away as France and Argentina, where factory occupations are a more familiar form of protest.

The occupation entered the national stage in full force after President-elect Obama voiced his support. The Republic workers make energy-efficient doors and windows, products at the core of Obama’s call for a new, more environmentally sustainable economy.

Local politicians threatened to pull city and state business with the Bank of America, and apparently offered other promises of assistance to the workers, too. UE Western Region President Carl Rosen announced he was working with state agencies to find financing to re-open Republic under new management, and UE announced the creation of a fund to restart the plant.

Given the scale of public and political support, it was only a matter of time before the workers won their demand for the severance legally mandated under plant-closing laws.

Some pumped-up supporters are wondering whether the Republic victory will be a spark that re-ignites the labor movement.

“We really feel like we had an obligation to working class people to win this fight,” said UE international representative Mark Meinster, “because of what it could mean for workers in this country.”

http://labornotes.org/node/1994

San Francisco activists demonstrate in solidarity with Republic Windows & Doors workers

By Richard Becker - Tuesday, December 9, 2008, Originally posted at Party for Liberation and Socialism.

A sit-in and protest was held in San Francisco on Dec. 9 as an act of solidarity with workers who have been sitting-in since Dec. 5 at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago . Four people were arrested after sitting in at a downtown office of the Bank of America during the protest in San Francisco.

Bank of America, which has received tens of billions in taxpayers money from the bank bailout, triggered the plant closing by cutting off credit to the company to pay workers their wages and ongoing expenses. The shutdown of the plant without notice is a violation of federal law.

The workers, members of the United Electrical Workers union, have refused to leave the factory until they are paid in full for wages, unused vacation time and other compensation due to them. They are also demanding that Bank of America extend credit so that the plant can remain open and they can keep their jobs.

The solidarity demonstration in San Francisco was organized on less than 24 hours notice. It was initiated by the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) and endorsed by the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, Justice First, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the San Francisco Labor Council (AFL-CIO), among others. A meeting of 70 delegates of the S.F. Labor council enthusiastically and unanimously voted to endorse the protest at their bi-weekly meeting held the night before.

As trade unionists, other workers and progressive activists picketed outside chanting "Bailout the Workers, Not the Banks," four activists entered the Powell & Market branch of the bank, declaring that they would not leave until there was justice for the Chicago workers. After a short standoff, the four were arrested for trespassing. They are: Jon Britton and Chris Banks of the ANSWER Coalition; John Reiman of the IWW; and Gloria La Riva, President of the Typographical Sector of the Northern California Media Workers Union and the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s 2008 presidential candidate.

As those who had been arrested were brought out of the bank, they and the San Francisco police who arrested them were surrounded by spirited picketers, chanting "Let Them Go!"

The protest drew the attention of hundreds of people in the downtown area, some of which joined the picket line. Among the speakers at the event were: Clarence Thomas, Executive Board member, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 10; Frank Martin del Campo, member of the Executive Committee of the S.F. Labor Council; Richard Becker, ANSWER Coalition; and Gloria La Riva.

The arrested activists were cited and released later in the evening.

For more information on the Chicago plant sit-in, visit http://www.ueunion.org/ue_republic.html.

http://www.iww.org/en/node/4497

Pentagon May Have Mixed Propaganda With PR

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 12, 2008; A02

The Pentagon's inspector general said yesterday that the Defense Department's public affairs office may have "inappropriately" merged public affairs and propaganda operations in 2007 and 2008 when it contracted out $1 million in work for a strategic communications plan for use by the military in collaboration with the State Department.

"Without clearly defined strategic communications responsibilities, DoD may appear to merge inappropriately the public affairs and information operations functions," the inspector general said in a report released yesterday. Strategic communications programs, which have become a major part of the Pentagon's information operations carried out in the "war of ideas" in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East, should be under the oversight of the undersecretary of defense for policy, the report added.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs "should only perform strategic communications responsibilities related to its public affairs mission," the report said. It called attention to a May 2005 Defense Department publication titled "Public Affairs," which stated that public affairs and information operations "differ with respect to the audience, scope and intent and must remain separate."

Robert T. Hastings, the acting assistant secretary for public affairs, has responded to the report by saying he agrees there should be an evaluation of the functions of the office with a new definition of its missions.

Last year the Senate Armed Services Committee eliminated $3 million requested for a Defense Department strategic communication program. The committee wrote that responsibility for "public diplomacy rests with the president and Secretary of State and any DoD efforts to formulate a message should be framed and informed by those efforts."

The inspector general also raised questions about the Office of Public Affairs' use of funds and personnel from the Armed Forces Information Service to carry out its functions without specific authority. AFIS, which was recently renamed Defense Media Activity, runs Pentagon internal communications including Stars and Stripes as well as the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. With a budget of more than $160 million and about 1,200 staff members, it nonetheless comes under the authority, direction and control of the assistant secretary for public affairs, whose authorized staff is only 89, according to the report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/11/AR2008121103319_pf.html

Change we need: An Anarchist Perspective on the 2008 Election

The election is over. Barack Obama will become the next president of The United States. The news of Obama's victory resulted in spontaneous celebrations across the country. The energy was infectious and everywhere conversations seemed to contain a positive outlook that people in the U.S. have not known for many long years. Words like change and hope are being used, and it seems widely assumed that the election of Obama will herald a new age of social justice, an end to the wars, and significant reduction in the racism the plagues U.S. society. But as the energy and media spectacle dies down, we would like for you to consider the election from a different perspective. It is our belief as Class Struggle Anarchists that elections in a capitalist society in fact can never bring true justice and security to the average working person. We do not believe that such elections can with any degree of permanence prevent wars, or deal effectively with racism, sexism or environmental degradation.

We stand in solidarity with the hopes for profound change of the millions of people who voted for Obama. However, we also recognize that the capitalist system is in a serious crisis which is dragging down all working class and oppressed people and which even the best-intentioned high office-holder is incapable of solving. The aim of this piece is to provide a perspective on the crisis and an outline for solutions.

The presidency of George W. Bush has been by almost any reasonable standard a complete disaster. Lies, wars, a financial crisis and deep recession, and the building up of a police state are just a few of Bush's dubious legacies. Some of these were already obvious two years ago as the electoral season opened and the liberals and reformists began their campaign against these issues. However, glaringly missing from their attacks was why these problems existed in the first place.

It is our belief that economic inequality, war, racism, sexism and environmental destruction are inherent in any capitalist society. Consider for a moment the vast wealth that our society creates,everything from crops to advanced medicines. However, the access to this wealth is unequally divided, determined by supposedly free markets. It is assumed by the politicians and corporate media that these supposedly free markets are a natural part of life. Markets, however, are set up by people; they can also be modified or undone by people. As anarchists, we believe that the production and distribution of society's wealth should be decided democratically, by people, and not by a market mechanism which in fact is controlled by a few.
Democracy:
Anarchists are absolutely for democracy. The concept that people should come together and make decisions is the backbone of our ideology. However, we do not view the U.S. system of democracy as being representative of those ideals. The Republicans and Democrats exist as two rival factions battling over our consent to be ruled. Both promote rhetoric of common interest with ordinary people, but we feel this is an illusion. The politicians in this nation exist to provide a stable platform for the rule and exploitation of the majority of working people in America by the minority of capitalists; that is, the owners of the property on which we produce the wealth. We build, guard,clean and work in the offices and plants , we transport the goods, and we sell them, but the capitalists own them them and pocket the profits. The interests of these two groups are not the same. The boss class wants to get as much from the workers as it can. They want to pay us as little as possible and sell us everything they own as dearly as they can. Unchecked these conditions have led to uprisings. Don't believe it? Look at our own history! The abolition of slavery, 8-hour day, the right to form unions, overtime pay, child labor laws, the end to legal segregation, the right of women to vote and to choose, and the right of gay and transgender people to be themselves was won not at the ballot box, but by people organizing, striking, boycotting and taking to the streets. The liberals in elective office passed the laws in response to the movements and to head off what could become a revolutionary upsurge.
Implications of the Election
Without a doubt this election has been historic. We see two reasons. A Black man has been elected to the highest office in the U.S., a country founded on the mass kidnapping of Africans and the theft of land from the Indigenous people who already lived here. Second, Obama's campaign was marked by some of the most widespread mass organizing in years.

The US is a nation deeply scarred by racism, and despite what some pundits might believe, it is clear to any working person that racism is nowhere near dead. Racial oppression is a complicated issue, and we do not mean to simplify it. However, a discussion of why racism and white supremacy have been so intractable in US society would have to consider how race has consistently been used as a wedge by the ruling class in its rhetoric and its policy decisions to keep the working class divided along racial lines, and so prevent the class from realizing its full potential as a force capable of self-organizing and overcoming its oppression. The election of a Black man to the presidency of the US represents a real shift in the attitudes of Americans, and we applaud this. However, racism is not just about attitudes. It is integral to the system of exploitation of working people. This systemic racism is what leverages the advantage of the ruling class, and with the increasingly evident magnitude of the economic collapse we are heading into, the ruling class will be aggressively seeking opportunities to defend its advantages. The way forward is for working-class people to organize in their own interests and to champion the aspirations of those who are oppressed by racism. We see social justice movements, neighborhood associations and cop-watch as examples. These sorts of bottom-up movements stand in complete contrast to what will be the top-down efforts of even an Obama administration to address social problems. Such efforts may alleviate some of the symptoms but they will leave the root causes of the problems untouched.

The other significant element of the election was the unprecedented grassroots mobilization that supported Obama's campaign. Under a banner of change and social justice many thousands of people volunteered,donated money, and did the labor of making the campaign run. We view this trend with great excitement. Imagine what could be gained if that focus on grassroots organizing was taken into the communities we lived in, into direct action on our on behalf instead of appeals to power.

We urge for this energy and creativity to go into movements independent of politicians. We encourage the support of unions, neighborhood democracy, resistance to police brutality, support for political prisoners, models for mass education, and also a movement with teeth. Above all, we must struggle for what we need, not what the system is willing to give us.

In addition, we must all be on the watch for expressions of racist hatred and organized fascist movements in the months and years following the election. The truth is that many white Americans are still openly racist, and there are groups that will exploit this, and real anger of social issues, to create violent movements. The news of a Black church burned in Springfield, MA just hours after the election was not surprising, and we must use all means necessary to stop such movements.

US NEFAC
November 2008
Related Link: http://www.nefac.net

Chiapas: Zapatistas to host "Festival of Dignified Rage"

The Sixth Intergalactic Commission of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) has announced a "First World Festival of Dignified Rage" (Festival Digna Rabia), to be held in January at San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. Participants have been confirmed from some 20 countries around the world. Among the Mexican participants are the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), representatives from maquiladora workers in Baja California and Tamaulipas, and from the Lomas de Poleo land struggle at Ciudad Juárez. International participants include a delegation from the ACIN indigenous alliance in Cauca, Colombia; Spain's anarcho-syndicalist General Workers Confederation (CGT); and representatives from the labor struggle in Iran. Invited writers include Mexico's Adolfo Gilly, Ireland's John Halloway, the USA's Michael Hardt, and India's Arundhati Roy. (La Jornada, Nov. 29)

http://ww4report.com/node/6454