Guantanamo Uighur release blocked

An US federal appeal court has blocked a judge's order that 17 Chinese detainees at the Guantanamo Bay camp should immediately be released.

A district court had said it was wrong for the Bush administration to continue holding the Chinese Muslim Uighurs, as it had no evidence against them.

The White House then appealed, saying the original ruling - the first of its kind - could set a dangerous precedent.

Captured in Afghanistan in 2001, the group has been held without charge.

Under the original ruling, they were to be brought to court on Friday, and then freed to stay with members of the Uighur community in the Washington area.

The appeal court ruling puts a temporary halt to the release to allow lawyers for both sides to present further arguments over the coming week.

'Sworn enemies'

The Uighurs had been cleared for release in 2004 but the US says they may face persecution if returned to China.

The White House said if they were released it could set a precedent that would allow "sworn enemies" to seek US entry.

The government says the 17 also pose a security risk if released into the US.

But in the original ruling, District Judge Ricardo Urbina said there was no evidence that they were "enemy combatants" or a security risk.

Lawyers for the Bush administration have argued that federal judges do not have authority to order the release into the US of Guantanamo detainees.

Beijing demand

Some detainees at the military prison fear torture or persecution if they return to their home countries, according to the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

The Bush administration has maintained that if they cannot be returned home and no other country will take them, they should stay at Guantanamo.

In 2006, five Chinese Muslim men released from Guantanamo Bay were flown to Albania for resettlement.

The 17 Uighurs involved in the current case had been living in a camp in Afghanistan during the US-led military campaign that began in October 2001.

They fled into the mountains and were held by Pakistani authorities who handed them over to the US.

Beijing has demanded that all Uighurs held at Guantanamo be repatriated to China.

Many Muslim Uighurs from Xinjiang in western China want greater autonomy for the region and some want independence.

Beijing has waged a campaign against what it calls their violent separatist activities.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7660399.stm

Anger over Guantanamo Bay ruling

The White House has reacted angrily after a judge ordered that 17 Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay should be released into the United States.

District Judge Ricardo Urbina said the US could not hold the 17 as they were no longer considered enemy combatants.

The Uighurs were cleared for release in 2004 but the US says they may face persecution if returned to China.

The White House said the ruling could set a precedent that would allow "sworn enemies" to seek US entry.

The government says the 17 also pose a security risk if released into the US.

Lawyers for the Bush administration have argued that federal judges do not have authority to order the release into the US of Guantanamo detainees.

Analysts say the ruling is a rebuke for the US government and could set the stage for the release of dozens more detained at the military jail in Cuba.

'No risk'

Lawyers for the prisoners said it was the first time a federal court had ordered the release into the US of any Guantanamo prisoners.

Judge Urbina had presided over a hearing to consider appeals by the 17 who were seeking to be freed and allowed into the US.

They have been held at Guantanamo for nearly seven years.

The judge said there was no evidence that they were "enemy combatants" or a security risk.



"Because the constitution prohibits indefinite detentions without cause, the continued detention is unlawful," he said.

He ordered that they be brought to his courtroom for a hearing on Friday and he scheduled another hearing for the following week to decide where the Uighurs should be permanently settled.

Members of the Uighur community in the Washington DC area have offered to take them in.

The Washington DC courtroom was packed with dozens of Uighurs and human rights activists who cheered and applauded at the decision.

Justice department attorney John C O'Quinn's request to delay the detainees' release pending a possible appeal was denied by the judge.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the ruling "could be used as precedent for other detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, including sworn enemies of the United States suspected of planning the attacks of 9/11, who may also seek release into our country".

Beijing demand

Some detainees at the military prison fear torture or persecution if they return to their home countries, according to the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

The US has maintained that if they cannot be returned home and no other country will take them, they should stay at Guantanamo.

The 17 Uighurs had been living in a camp in Afghanistan during the US-led military campaign that began in October 2001.

They fled into the mountains and were held by Pakistani authorities who handed them over to the US.

Beijing has demanded that all Uighurs held at Guantanamo be repatriated to China.

Many Muslim Uighurs from Xinjiang in western China want greater autonomy for the region and some want independence.

Beijing has waged a campaign against what it calls their violent separatist activities.

Debt and Exploitation: The Coming Economic Crisis

Unless you have been stuck in a cave somewhere over the past few weeks, you have no doubt heard about the financial crisis south of the border. You have also likely heard Canadian officials and business people claim that the Canadian economy is doing just fine and is immune from the US turmoil. We can hardly expect them to say other wise, not least during an election. But in fact there is more than a good chance that Canada will follow the US into a major economic crisis.

If this does happen it will not be just because financial deregulation has allowed the banks to risk our savings on the crisis-ridden financial markets. It will also not be just because investors have created new and high-risk ways to play the global financial casino. It will not even be just because the US market, where most of Canada's exports go, will have closed shop. For sure, financial deregulation and so-called “free trade” shoulder a lot of the blame for this mess. But the fundamental source of the problem goes beyond these policies. We are about to reach the limits of the economic model that has been imposed on us for the past 30 years.

This model can be called the “low wage/high debt” economic model. Beginning in the early 1980s it has come to replace the old “high wage/high production” model. Under the old model, companies sought to turn big wage gains made by workers' struggles into profits by: a) demanding a faster pace of work (higher productivity) and b) by encouraging a culture of consumerism so that workers would use their high wages to buy the vast amount of goods being produced. This came to be know as the productivity deal.

At the end of the 1970s workers began to break this cycle by demanding and winning both higher wages and social services (a higher social wage) while refusing to increase the pace of work which had already reached super-human speeds. Thus companies found their profits under attack as the better quality of life for workers came to clash with the needs of bosses to make a profit.

In response governments all over the world and of all political stripes began to attack the wage and social services gains made by workers. In Canada this began with the Mulroney government and has continued to this day regardless of which party has been in power. And this attack has largely been successful. A recent study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows that real wages today (that is when inflation is taken into account) are at the same level as the 1970s. At the same time, spending on social services has been drastically cut. Hence the “low-wage” part of the new economic model.

But low wages present a major problem for profits. If wages are too low than workers cannot afford to buy the increasing number of goods being produced. The misery that this means for workers is not the problem from the point of view of business. The problem is that if goods cannot be sold then profits are not made. This is a classic problem of overproduction. The low-wage model is thus inherently unsustainable.

One way that big business and big government have tried to get around this problem is by pushing through free trade policies like NAFTA and the upcoming Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) that let companies sell their goods all over the globe. In this way, companies can reduce their dependence on the wages or consumption power of their Canadian workers. However this has not really solved the problem of overproduction since the wages of all workers everywhere have been under attack. In the case of Canada, the wages of the American worker, our biggest export market, have been reduced even more than Canadian workers. At best, free trade only delays the day of reckoning.

Another strategy is to lower the price of goods consumed by one group of workers by reducing the wages of another group of workers. This is the true meaning of Wal-Mart. By super-exploiting workers in China and other countries, companies can lower their prices to a point where workers in Canada can afford them despite their lower wages. In this way the sweat and blood of workers overseas is used to build a thin and tattered safety net for Canadian workers. But this strategy is also unsustainable.

For one, super-exploited workers always resist, driving up wages. For example, China is brimming with workers struggles (the China Labour Bulletin reports tens of thousands of strikes and other workplace stoppages per year). These have recently forced the Chinese government to pass a new labour law that contains some gains for workers. Further, the prices of key goods cannot be reduced in this way. Goods such as houses, cars, education and others require such high levels of work and technology that no matter how low wages get, they will always costs thousands of dollars. If workers cannot afford to buy these goods in large quantities, profits cannot be realized and crisis follows. But this has not yet happened. Why?

This brings us to the second part of the “low wage/high debt” economic model. The availability of cheap credit has allowed workers to borrow large sums of money and consume way past their means. This reason, more than any other, explains why the low-wage economy has not yet come to a grinding halt. Low mortgage interest rates, zero-percent car financing, credit cards in every wallet and a “pay day” loan shop at every corner have allowed high levels of consumption to continue even as wages are reduced. For companies this is the best of both worlds. Low wages combined with high sales mean astronomical profits. For workers this has meant insecurity at work and anxiety over soaring debts. None of this is a problem for business as long as it continues. But you don't need a PhD in economics to figure out that eventually people will not be able to make payments on their loans with decreasing wages and rising interest rates.

This is precisely what is happening now in the US housing market where millions of Americans have had their homes taken away as they are unable to pay their mortgages. The fact that banks and investors turned these loans into stocks and gambled with them on the financial markets, losing trillions in the process, is a serious issue. But in the long run it is not as serious as the fact that millions of workers in the US are defaulting on their debts. In addition to housing, credit card debt in the US totals nearly 1 trillion dollars and auto financing debt is also in the hundreds of billions. (Globe and Mail, September 27, B1) No taxpayer bailout, no matter how big, will solve this problem (not that the bailouts of Wall Street investors is meant to help anyone but rich investors).

In other words, the “low wage/high debt” US economy is imploding. And Canadians, according to a recent report by investment firm Merill Lynch, are only slightly less in debt as the average American. (The Hamilton Spectator, September 24) What are the chances that Canadians will also start defaulting on their mortgages, credit cards, student debts, auto financing and a myriad of other debts which we have been forced to take on because our wages do not stretch far enough? Even without increasing food and oil prices, it is very likely that what we are seeing in the US today is only a frightening preview of things to come.

The US also provides a sneak peek into what is likely to happen if we leave the solution to the same people who got us into this mess: trillion dollar bailouts for the rich and increased repression for the rest of us. If we self-organize and struggle for a better alternative, the outcome may be different, perhaps radically so.

Banks Get Bailed Out, People Get Thrown Out

The Esquivel family were evicted yesterday from their home in Roslindale. That same morning they had gone to the Boston Municipal Court in a last effort to stop the eviction. The judge did not rule in their favor. Raul and Anna Esquivel came back from court, tears streaming for their face, to find about 10 police officers on and around their property and another 40 people protesting the eviction. The picket was lively and emotional. Around forty people came out to support the Esquivels. The blockade was called by City Life/Urbana, and supported by many community groups, including Dorchester People for Peace, SEIU 615, the Boston No Eviction Network, the Boston Workers Alliance and others. At one point it appeared that the eviction was going to be called off. To this news, Anna Esquivel danced and people cheered. Yet about 30 minutes later, there was another call saying the eviction was in fact going to take place that same day at 2:30 pm.

There so many things that are wrong with this, first that the Esquivel family had tried in vain to negotiate with Deutsche Bank: they had offered to pay rent, other family members had offered to purchase the house at the appraised market value. This is a reoccurring phenomenon: the banks are not negotiating with families in foreclosed properties, instead they kick families onto the street and have empty buildings because then this, nominally will not be considered a loss. Not a loss for whom and to what expense, I ask myself. Families are being thrown out, displaced; communities are being destroyed so that a bank won't call it a loss?! Adding to the injustice: just a day before this eviction, Bush proposed a $700B bail out for the banks. This would be the largest transfer of money in all of history. One of the arrestees defending the Esquivel's home pointed out that in Boston it has been working class people of color who are being evicted from their homes while white business men are being bailed out. One thing is for sure, these men will sleep comfortable tonightt, and may even be able to choose among several houses in which to sleep.

At about 3:00 pm the constable and a moving truck came to remove the Esquivel's belongings. They family only had time to throw their things in trash bags and get out. They were crying, the grandchildren screaming. As the constable tried to walk up the stairway to deliver the eviction notice, the protesters surrounded him, shouting "shame!" Police moved in immediately, four people were arrested - taken away in police vans.

Yesterday a beautiful home in Roslindale was standing empty, and the Esquivel family were left wondering where they were going to sleep. Ana said they were going to look for a place in a shelter. The fact that the Esquivel family was evicted from their home is despicable. Those being bailed out are the same who implemented the policies that are having devastating economic effects for the majority of the population. As this sham government spends billions on war and occupation and bails out big financial institutions, it is working class and immigrant families that are paying the bill. We must not become resigned in the face of this crisis. We need to come out again and again to show these greedy banks that we will not be moved without a fight. As Ana Esquivel said, "This is still a victory because we will continue to fight together!"

http://www.nefac.net/en/node/2434

The Free Market Preachers Have Long Practised State Welfare for the Rich

According to Senator Jim Bunning, the proposal to purchase $700bn of dodgy debt by the US government was "financial socialism, it is un-American". The economics professor Nouriel Roubini called George Bush, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke "a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the United Socialist State Republic of America". Bill Perkins, the venture capitalist who took out an ad in the New York Times attacking the plan, called it "trickle-down communism".

They are wrong. Any subsidies eventually given to the monster banks of Wall Street will be as American as apple pie and obesity. The sums demanded may be unprecedented, but there is nothing new about the principle: corporate welfare is a consistent feature of advanced capitalism. Only one thing has changed: Congress has been forced to confront its contradictions.

One of the best studies of corporate welfare in the US is published by my old enemies at the Cato Institute. Its report, by Stephen Slivinski, estimates that in 2006 the federal government spent $92bn subsidising business. Much of it went to major corporations such as Boeing, IBM and General Electric.

The biggest money crop - $21bn - is harvested by Big Farmer. Slivinski shows that the richest 10% of subsidised farmers took 66% of the payouts. Every few years, Congress or the administration promises to stop this swindle, then hands even more state money to agribusiness. The farm bill passed by Congress in May guarantees farmers a minimum of 90% of the income they've received over the past two years, which happen to be among the most profitable they've ever had. The middlemen do even better, especially the companies spreading starvation by turning maize into ethanol, which are guzzling billions of dollars' worth of tax credits.

Slivinski shows how the federal government's Advanced Technology Program, which was supposed to support the development of technologies that are "pre-competitive" or "high risk", has instead been captured by big businesses flogging proven products. Since 1991, companies such as IBM, General Electric, Dow Chemical, Caterpillar, Ford, DuPont, General Motors, Chevron and Monsanto have extracted hundreds of millions from this programme. Big business is also underwritten by the Export-Import Bank: in 2006, for example, Boeing alone received $4.5bn in loan guarantees.

The government runs something called the Foreign Military Financing programme, which gives money to other countries to purchase weaponry from US corporations. It doles out grants to airports for building runways and to fishing companies to help them wipe out endangered stocks.

But the Cato Institute's report has exposed only part of the corporate welfare scandal. A new paper by the US Institute for Policy Studies shows that, through a series of cunning tax and accounting loopholes, the US spends $20bn a year subsidising executive pay. By disguising their professional fees as capital gains rather than income, for example, the managers of hedge funds and private equity companies pay lower rates of tax than the people who clean their offices. A year ago, the House of Representatives tried to close this loophole, but the bill was blocked in the Senate after a lobbying campaign by some of the richest men in America.

Another report, by a group called Good Jobs First, reveals that Wal-Mart has received at least $1bn of public money. Over 90% of its distribution centres and many of its retail outlets have been subsidised by county and local governments. They give the chain free land, they pay for the roads, water and sewerage required to make that land usable, and they grant it property tax breaks and subsidies (called tax increment financing) originally intended to regenerate depressed communities. Sometimes state governments give the firm straight cash as well: in Virginia, for example, Wal-Mart's distribution centres receive handouts from the Governor's Opportunity Fund.

Corporate welfare is arguably the core business of some government departments. Many of the Pentagon's programmes deliver benefits only to its contractors. Ballistic missile defence, for example, which has no obvious strategic purpose and is unlikely ever to work, has already cost the US between $120bn and $150bn. The US is unique among major donors in insisting that the food it offers in aid is produced on its own soil, rather than in the regions it is meant to be helping. USAid used to boast on its website that "the principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the USAid's contracts and grants go directly to American firms." There is not and has never been a free market in the US.

Why not? Because the congressmen and women now railing against financial socialism depend for their re-election on the companies they subsidise. The legal bribes paid by these businesses deliver two short-term benefits for them. The first is that they prevent proper regulation, allowing them to make spectacular profits and to generate disasters of the kind Congress is now confronting. The second is that public money that should be used to help the poorest is instead diverted into the pockets of the rich.

A report published last week by the advocacy group Common Cause shows how bankers and brokers stopped legislators banning unsustainable lending. Over the past financial year, the big banks spent $49m on lobbying and $7m in direct campaign contributions. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac spent $180m in lobbying and campaign finance over the past eight years. Much of this was thrown at members of the House financial services committee and the Senate banking committee.

Whenever congressmen tried to rein in the banks and mortgage lenders they were blocked by the banks' money. **** Durbin's 2005 amendment seeking to stop predatory mortgage lending, for example, was defeated in the Senate by 58 to 40. The former representative Jim Leach proposed re-regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Their lobbyists, he recalls, managed in "less than 48 hours to orchestrate both parties' leadership" to crush his amendments.

The money these firms spend buys the socialisation of financial risk. The $700bn the government was looking for was just one of the public costs of its repeated failure to regulate. Even now the lobbying power of the banks has been making itself felt: on Saturday the Democrats watered down their demand that the money earned by executives of companies rescued by the government be capped. Campaign finance is the best investment a corporation can make. You give a million dollars to the right man and reap a billion dollars' worth of state protection, tax breaks and subsidies. When the same thing happens in Africa we call it corruption.

European governments are no better. The free market economics they proclaim are a con: they intervene repeatedly on behalf of the rich, while leaving everyone else to fend for themselves. Just as in the US, the bosses of farm companies, oil drillers, supermarkets and banks capture the funds extracted by government from the pockets of people much poorer than themselves. Taxpayers everywhere should be asking the same question: why the hell should we be supporting them?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/30/marketturmoil.subprimecrisis

Bolivia: Defeat of the Right

In the amazing series of elections in South America in the last five years, the most radical results were in Bolivia, with the election of Evo Morales as President. It is not because Morales stood on the most radical platform. It was rather that, in this country in which the majority of the population are indigenous peoples, this was the very first time that an indigenous person was elected president of the republic. This in itself was a profound social revolution, and was not at all appreciated by the descendants of European immigrants who had always controlled the country.

The big question when Morales was elected was whether he could stay long in office, or whether the Bolivian right, perhaps in collusion with the armed forces, could oust him. He has now demonstrated that he can.

There were three major elements in his program. Bolivia's national income today is primarily drawn from its gas exports, essentially to Brazil and Argentina. The gas is located in the eastern provinces, the so-called Half Moon. And these areas are the ones in which there are the lowest percentages of indigenous peoples. The majority are Euro-descendants. Until Morales came to power, the prices at which the gas was sold were ridiculously low. And the income remained largely with the eastern provincial governments.

So, Morales sought to renegotiate the prices of the gas being exported. And he instituted a hydrocarbon tax so that much more of the income would come to the national government. Morales intended to use the money for social redistribution throughout the country, which would of course significantly benefit the indigenous populations.

In addition, the land in the eastern provinces is exceptionally mal-distributed. Two-thirds of the land are owned by one-sixth of 1% of the population. Morales wished to place a cap on the acreage any one person could own -- a form of major agrarian reform.

In foreign policy, Morales attempted to maintain reasonable relations with the United States. He continued to accept the money the U.S. had been giving for anti-narcotic operations, especially since this money went to the armed forces. He did, however, in addition, welcome Venezuelan aid and Cuban doctors. The U.S. government was clearly not happy with Morales and would have preferred to see the Bolivian right return to power.

The strategy of the Bolivian right was to demand more autonomy for the regional governments, ultimately hinting at secession -- a project they had never advocated as long as they controlled the central government. They demanded a recall election of Morales. The tactic badly backfired.

Morales accepted the challenge, adding to the recall election the question of whether the nine provincial prefects should also be recalled. In the elections Morales got a whopping 68% support, far greater than the votes he had originally received when he was elected. Seven prefects were returned but two anti-Morales governors were ousted, which has allowed Morales to name successors.

The right in the eastern provinces then sought to block exports of gas. They hoped thereby to induce the Brazilian and Argentine governments to put pressure on Morales. Supporters of Morales then began to demonstrate. The governor of Pando province, Leopoldo Fernández responded with repression. Over 30 demonstrators were killed in the capital city, El Porvenir. Morales arrested the governor and named a navy admiral as the new prefect.

At this point, President Michelle Bachelet of Chile convened an emergency meeting of the organization of the 12 South American states, UNASUR, to consider the situation. All twelve presidents came to Santiago for the meeting, and unanimously adopted a resolution of "full and complete support for the constitutional government of Evo Morales," denouncing any possible coup d'état. The significance of this resolution was that it was unanimous, being signed even by the deeply pro-American president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe. The resolution was then endorsed by the Grupo Río, composed of 22 countries from all of Latin America and the Caribbean, including Mexico.

UNASUR called for dialogue. Morales called for dialogue himself, even before the UNASUR resolution. The right is stymied. Its last hope was some U.S. intervention. But Bolivia has now expelled the U.S. ambassador, Philip Goldberg, for "conspiring against democracy," that is, with the Bolivian right. The United States is now withdrawing its small aid projects in Bolivia. Russia has offered to enter the breach. The United States is becoming more and more irrelevant in Latin America.

If one asks why even Uribe supported the resolution, it is because no president wants to see the new tactic of secession receiving support. The United States is trying this also in Ecuador, where it has backfired equally, with the great victory of President Rafael Correa's referendum on the constitution.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wallerstein031008.html

Afghan victory hopes played down

The UK's commander in Helmand has said Britain should not expect a "decisive military victory" in Afghanistan.

Brig Mark Carleton-Smith told the Sunday Times the aim of the mission was to ensure the Afghan army was able to manage the country on its own.

He said this could involve discussing security with the Taleban.

When international troops eventually leave Afghanistan, there may still be a "low but steady" level of rural insurgency, he conceded.

He said it was unrealistic to expect that multinational forces would be able to wipe out armed bands of insurgents in the country.

The BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul says Brig Carleton-Smith's comments echo a view commonly-held, if rarely aired, by British military and diplomatic officials in Afghanistan.

Many believe certain legitimate elements of the Taleban represent the positions of the Afghan people and so should be a part of the country's future, says our correspondent.

'Taken the sting out'

Brig Carleton-Smith is the Commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade which has just completed its second tour of Afghanistan.

He paid tribute to his forces and told the newspaper they had "taken the sting out of the Taleban for 2008".

But he stated: "We're not going to win this war.

"It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army."

Brig Carleton-Smith said the goal was to change how debates were resolved in the country so that violence was not the first option considered.

He said: "If the Taleban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that's precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this.

"That shouldn't make people uncomfortable."

Since the start of operations in Afghanistan in 2001, 120 UK military personnel have been killed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7653116.stm

US Supreme Court rejects new trial for Mumia

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court Monday refused to hear arguments for a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther accused of killing a police officer who has become an icon for anti-capital punishment campaigners.

His lawyer Robert Bryan has already said he will seek to bring a second Supreme Court appeal -- on the grounds of racism -- for the 54-year-old former radio journalist accused of the 1981 murder of Daniel Faulkner.

Abu-Jamal's death sentence was overturned in March by a federal court in Philadelphia, which found that the jury in the case had been incorrectly instructed. The judges voted two-to-one to uphold his conviction, however.

Having escaped death row, his lawyers are now fighting a life sentence and want to bring him back before a jury for a new trial.

They had asked the Supreme Court to approve a re-trial because of unreliable testimony from witnesses.

Bryan has said he will not rest until his client is freed. "Even though the federal court granted a new trial on the question of the death penalty, we want a complete reversal of the conviction," he said in July.

As part of his defense, Abu-Jamal has argued he was denied a fair trial in 1982 because the prosecution barred 10 qualified African-Americans from sitting on the jury, which in the end consisted of 10 whites and two blacks.

The Philadelphia appeals court had rejected his arguments on lack of evidence of any racist intent on the part of the prosecution.

The US penal code bans the exclusion of potential jurists because of the colour of their skin.

Abu-Jamal's campaign has attracted support from Nelson Mandela, Hollywood celebrities Danny Glover and Susan Sarandon and British parliamentarians, according to campaign group Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition.

Abu-Jamal was serving as the president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists at the time of his arrest. He was a founding member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Black Panther Party as a teenager.

The Black Panther Party was a Leftist African-American organization from the 1960s and 70s established to promote black power and self-defense.

Jury decides that threat of global warming justifies breaking the law

The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage.

Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a "lawful excuse" to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of "lawful excuse" under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.

The not-guilty verdict, delivered after two days and greeted with cheers in the courtroom, raises the stakes for the most pressing issue on Britain's green agenda and could encourage further direct action.

Kingsnorth was the centre for mass protests by climate camp activists last month. Last year, three protesters managed to paint Gordon Brown's name on the plant's chimney. Their handi-work cost £35,000 to remove.

The plan to build a successor to the power station is likely to be the first of a new generation of coal-fired plants. As coal produces more of the carbon emissions causing climate change than any other fuel, campaigners claim that a new station would be a disastrous setback in the battle against global warming, and send out a negative signal to the rest of the world about how serious Britain really is about tackling the climate threat.

But the proposals, from the energy giant E.ON, are firmly backed by the Business Secretary, John Hutton, and the Energy minister, Malcolm Wicks. Some members of the Cabinet are thought to be unhappy about them, including the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, and the Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn. Mr Brown is likely to have the final say on the matter later this year.

During the eight-day trial, the world's leading climate scientist, Professor James Hansen of Nasa, who had flown from American to give evidence, appealed to the Prime Minister personally to "take a leadership role" in cancelling the plan and scrapping the idea of a coal-fired future for Britain. Last December he wrote to Mr Brown with a similar appeal. At the trial, he called for an moratorium on all coal-fired power stations, and his hour-long testimony about the gravity of the climate danger, which painted a bleak picture, was listened to intently by the jury of nine women and three men.

Professor Hansen, who first alerted the world to the global warming threat in June 1988 with testimony to a US senate committee in Washington, and who last year said the earth was in "imminent peril" from the warming atmosphere, asserted that emissions of CO2 from Kings-north would damage property through the effects of the climate change they would help to cause.

He was one of several leading public figures who gave evidence for the defence, including Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Richmond Park and director of the Ecologist magazine, who similarly told the jury that in his opinion, direct action could be justified in the minds of many people if it was intended to prevent larger crimes being committed.

The acquittal was the second time in a decade that the "lawful excuse" defence has been successfully used by Greenpeace activists. In 1999, 28 Greenpeace campaigners led Lord Melchett, who was director at the time, were cleared of criminal damage after trashing an experimental field of GM crops in Norfolk. In each case the damage was not disputed – the point at issue was the motive.

The defendants who scaled the 630ft chimney at Kingsnorth, near Hoo, last year were Huw Williams, 41, from Nottingham; Ben Stewart, 34, from Lyminge, Kent; Kevin Drake, 44, from Westbury, Wiltshire; Will Rose, 29, from London; and Emily Hall, 34, from New Zealand. Tim Hewke, 48, from Ulcombe, Kent, helped organise the protest.

The court heard how, dressed in orange boiler suits and white hard hats bearing the Greenpeace logo, the six-strong group arrived at the site at 6.30am on 8 October. Armed with bags containing abseiling gear, five of them scaled the chimney while Mr Hewke waited below to liaise between the climbers and police.

The climbers had planned to paint "Gordon, bin it" in huge letters on the side of the chimney, but although they succeeded in temporarily shutting the station, they only got as far as painting the word "Gordon" on the chimney before they descended, having been threatened with a High Court injunction. Removing the graffiti cost E.ON £35,000, the court heard.

During the trial the defendants said they had acted lawfully, owing to an honestly held belief that their attempt to stop emissions from Kingsnorth would prevent further damage to properties worldwide caused by global warming. Their aim, they said, was to rein back CO2 emissions and bring urgent pressure to bear on the Government and E.ON to changes policies. They insisted their action had caused the minimum amount of damage necessary to close the plant down and constituted a "proportionate response" to the increasing environmental threat.

Speaking outside court after being cleared yesterday, Mr Stewart said: "This is a huge blow for ministers and their plans for new coal-fired power stations. It wasn't only us in the dock, it was the coal-fired generation as well. After this verdict, the only people left in Britain who think new coal is a good idea are John Hutton and Malcolm Wicks. It's time the Prime Minister stepped in, showed some leadership and embraced the clean energy future for Britain."

He added: "This verdict marks a tipping point for the climate change movement. When a jury of normal people say it is legitimate for a direct action group to shut down a coal-fired power station because of the harm it does to our planet, then where does that leave Government energy policy? We have the clean technologies at hand to power our economy. It's time we turned to them instead of coal."

Ms Hall said: "The jury heard from the most distinguished climate scientist in the world. How could they ignore his warnings and reject his leading scientific arguments?"

Calling all you Suburbanites...the RNC08 Need Money!

So it seems we’ve found ourselves in a predicament. We, as anarchists, who have never believed in the practice of commerce, are now faced with the reality of our situation; we are up to our asses in legal fees! We quickly forget sometimes that our actions will unduly have negative repercussions. Lucky for us folks who believe in community support and mutual aid, we can count on our comrades to help us out in these dark times. We are asking again, as we will again and again and again, to donate to the legal costs of the RNC 8. Currently, the 8 are facing up to a quarter of a million dollars in lawyer fees that cannot, by any means, be paid out of pocket. My goddess, that’s like, 6 Hummers!

Though sexy solidarity actions, heartfelt e-mails and crusty punk shows really DO really mean a lot to us, we need y’all to step up the mother fuckin’ ante! Though our fundraising committee is and is planning on working hard these next few weeks, months, years etc., we could really use the help of everyone around the country…and the world! If you have the time and the place, please find it in your hearts to organize a benefit, a bike-drag race, an anarcho-clown circus or ANYTHING you creatively think will roll in some dough.

Any proceeds can be mailed to:

RNC 8 Legal Defense Fund, c/o CUAPB
3100 16th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55407

If you plan to donate more than $100 and would like your donation to be tax deductible, make your check payable instead to “National Lawyers Guild Foundation” (not CUAPB) and note “RNC 8” in the memo area. Mail your check to the same address:

RNC 8 Legal Defense Fund, c/o CUAPB
3100 16th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55407

Also, if you have any rich liberal friends, parents or European connections that just happen to have their life savings in Euros, please let them know about what’s happening in the Twin Cities and with the RNC 08. Then, tell them how they can donate! Though the thought of holding “Free Them Now” signs in front of McCain or telling sad anarchists stories to the media is endearing, we unfortunately cannot win this thought crime battle without the logistics of, we hate to say this, $$$ BIG MONEY $$$.

Grumpily yours,
The anarchist(s) that always get stuck with the fundraising…

OBAMA AND LATIN AMERICA: A FRIENDLY IMPERIALISM?

By Jose Antonio Gutierrez D.

ZABALAZA
A Journal of Southern African Class Struggle Anarchism
No. 9 | September 2008

With the official nomination of Barack Obama as the Democrat candidate for the next US presidential elections, there are many who are rejoicing in the hope that this will bring an end to the imperialist and aggressive foreign policy of the US.1 A wise traditional saying states that it really does not matter what colour a cat is as long as it can catch mice. Turning their backs on popular wisdom, many on the Latin American left are full of expectations about Obama, who is almost certain to follow Bush as the White House leader.

What's the difference between a Black Democrat and a White Republican?

"Oh, but he's a black candidate" we are told. As if the presence of one - 1! - black man in a racist institutional machinery was going to make any difference to immigrants and the residents of US ghettos.

Obama has, by the way, already been forced to distance himself from his pastor Jeremiah Wright, who denounced institutional racism in the US and had to embrace fully the discredited rhetoric of the "land of opportunities". Being a black man, with fresh roots in the African continent and thus an alien body in the traditional US spheres of power, Obama has on his shoulders a pressure none of his political rivals have in order to demonstrate that he is trustworthy for the Yankee plutocrats. So there he goes, adhering with greater fervour than anyone else to the values and project of the American Way. With the fanaticism of the religious convert, he proves his credo to his associates, in a way that those born into the faith do not need to.

There also those who believe that the colour of the skin, due to some curious intellectual and emotional effect of melanin, would make the potential US head of State more sensitive to the sufferings of the Third World and of its neo-colonies. But has Condolezza Rice's presence in the government meant any change in the policy of the US towards the Middle East or Latin America? If anything, we could say without much hesitation than it's been for the worse. Did Colin Powell make a difference in Bush's government or stop the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq or Plan Colombia?

"Ah, but he is a Democrat" we are now told. And do they forget that it was Kennedy, the Democrat, who pushed for the invasion of the Bay of Pigs (Cuba) and that it was he who, applying the theory of the Carrot and the Stick, carried the developmentalist bluff of the Alliance for Progress, while on the other hand he implemented the "National Security Doctrine" towards Latin America? Do they forget that it was Clinton who bombed Iraq (1998) and Somalia (1994)?

Not to mention all of murderous blunders in the Balkans... Do they forget the criminal embargo that Clinton imposed on Iraq, which, according to UNICEF, cost the lives of at least 500 000 children? Do they forget it was Clinton who started with the rhetoric of the Iraqi

Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Obama and the (Old) New World Order

Obama certainly is a critic of the Iraqi invasion, but he is not for an end to the occupation, only for the reduction of military personnel, which will remain necessary to guarantee the loyalty of the Iraqi regime, to train the Iraqi army and to "fight the threat of Al-Qaeda".2 His main criticisms of the Iraqi war are of form, not of substance; they are not about the human cost on the Iraqi people, and certainly he is not to question the ravenous logic of the oil interests behind the occupation, but only criticises its excessive costs on the US budget. It seems that, when it comes to Iraq, differences between Democrats and Republicans are more of a quantitative than of a qualitative nature. It seems that we can have a Yankee praetorian guard perpetually in the Middle East...

On the Palestinian question, Obama has been more than clear: in March, he criticised the "view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam".3 Can anyone point out to me what the difference is between this view of the Middle East and that of the Pentagon's hawks? Just like Bush, he fails to "see" the link that the Palestinian conflict has with "minor details" such as the Palestinian occupation, Israeli State terrorism (a State founded on forced displacement and violent land expropriation of Palestinians, it has to be said), the institutional racism in Israel, similar in many aspects to the South African apartheid and worse in some respects, or the strangling of Gaza. If he sees these factors, he quite convincingly plays the fool...

But what about his positions towards Latin America? He has made clear what his programme towards Latin America will be, starting with a criticism of Bush's politics towards the region. "We've been diverted from Latin America. We contribute our entire foreign aid to Latin America is $2.7 billion, approximately what we spend in Iraq in a week. It is no surprise, then, that you've seen people like Hugo Chavez and countries like China move into the void, because we've been neglectful of that".4

A New Alliance for Progress?

Do we need it? Do we want it?

What is Obama offering to us Latin Americans? Something maybe worse than Bush has already given us: more intervention, more domination, more interference in our own affairs, more death. The lesser- evil politics turn into a cruel paradox with the imperial grandeur that Obama adopts when talking of his "backyard". Now that the US is being displaced from Latin American markets by China and the EU,5 who are making a triumphal entrance with their own Free Trade Agreements, as well as by the new emerging regional power of Brazil (not to mention the shivers that the regional unity projects led by Venezuela cause in Washington, as they also represent a further threat to its hegemony), Obama states openly that he is about to turn our land into a battlefield for the US to recover its lost ground. Competition for our markets is out there, and no matter which global power is to win, we know who will be the certain loser: our people.

And not to leave the slightest shadow of doubt about his imperial pretensions over our America, on May 23rd at a meeting with the Cuban American Foundation, the FNCA (in Miami, where else?), he set out his complete programme towards Latin America: 6

1. Direct diplomacy with Cuba, but maintaining the embargo;

2. He stated his intentions to isolate Venezuela and its allies in the region, with the argument that they are FARC-EP supporters;

3. The FARC-EP gets exactly the same role as Al-Qaeda in the Middle East: the perfect excuse to justify any intervention in the region. In fact, he goes as far as to declare that he will not tolerate members of that organisation looking for sanctuary beyond Colombian borders nor any local regimes giving them any support, in a clear follow-up to the media harassment of Ecuador and Venezuela;

4. Absolute support for Plan Colombia and for the fascist regime of Uribe in Colombia * he, however, remains opposed to the Free Trade Agreement with that country, so as not to contradict his own supporters in the US who remain staunchly opposed to any more trade liberalisation with that country. Let's see if he remains opposed after the elections;

5. To increase the budget for the Merida Plan, which under the excuse of the "War on Drugs" (local variant of the War on Terror), is nothing but the latest mechanism of social control over Latin America. He went further to declare that he was going to expand its current area of operations in Mexico and Central America southwards ... maybe he will expand it to the Andean axis which runs from Venezuela down to Bolivia?

So, there's not much of a novelty in this. Unless it is the deepening of an aggressive intervention policy, which is a US tradition in our region, and the continuity of a dated paternalism, though in more of a blatant form.

His view of Latin America is not very different to that of Bush in relation to the Middle East, save for the fact that the villains of the story are adapted to local circumstances: the FARC-EP replaces Al- Qaeda, War on Drugs replaces War on Terror, Chávez replaces Saddam Hussein and Venezuela replaces Iran. The independent regional projects of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, which are drifting away from the Washington Consensus, constitute the new "Axis of Evil".

Obama describes Venezuela as an authoritarian regime, with a wallet-led diplomacy and full of Anti-American jargon that reproduces the "false promises" of those "failed ideologies of the past".7 But what is it that Obama has to offer instead? Unconditional support for authoritarian regimes such as that of Uribe,8 dollar-led diplomacy * plus more economic intervention, microcredit offers, and some other filthy handouts to increase our dependency * and hollow promises from failed ideologies such as the Washington Consensus. All of his platitudes are, indeed, stained with the old-fashioned National Security Doctrine. And in an attempt to recycle failed intervention programmes, he even literally calls for a New Alliance for the Americas,9 suspiciously similar to the discredited fiasco called Alliance for Progress that Kennedy promoted in the `60s.

Obama go home!

It is only natural for Obama to increase the virulence of the imperialist politics towards Latin America; after all, he knows that he will be in command of a sinking ship, of an empire stuck in a swamp of political, economic and military troubles. The depth of the US crisis is not, this time, a result of the hallucinating desires of a bunch of utopian leftists * tycoons such as Soros or economists such as Stiglitz are turning into the main prophets of the new crisis. And every single empire in crisis has to resort to higher levels of violence, in a similar fashion to a drowning man who tries to remain afloat by blindly slapping the water's surface. In the same way, Obama is already threatening Venezuela and Iran. Every worn-out project needs to refresh its image, to display some renewal on its facade in order to conceal its exhaustion. This wearing out of the "American Way" made it possible for something unthinkable to happen... a black candidate! The perfect chief for this crisis, a cosmetic change for the substance of the domination system to remain untouched: imperialism has never been an issue of melanin.

The imperial politics of the US are not up to each US president to decide: it is a well ingrained element in the Yankee State apparatus, in the social forces which shape the life of that nation, and the single force that can alter this order of things is the grassroots, bottom-up, struggle of the people. For let us remember something that we Latin Americans frequently forget: in the US there are also people. There is also a working class. Change depends on them. A US president, at most, can decide what version of imperialism he wants to apply, be it a Neanderthal version of imperialism, or a "forced consensus" version.

Let us hold no false illusions.

Imperialism cannot be reformed, neither will it be defeated in the ballot box. It will be defeated in the streets, in the workplaces, in the schools and universities, through the struggle we lead in the countryside and in the urban centres, the struggle we take to every corner of this world. Difficult as this struggle may seem, is the only realistic option left.

Let me repeat: in the US, there are also people. But just as the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal needed that push from the African anti-colonial struggles (Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau) to fall, and needed that stimulus for the blossoming of the Carnation Revolution to happen, US imperialism and its global dictatorship will fall with that little push of our anti-colonial struggles in the Middle East and Latin America. But that struggle belongs to the people themselves, to the working class, and it will have no other unconditional allies but their own solidarity: if Ayiti (Haiti), if Colombia, if all of America, if Palestine, if the Middle East, are to wait for the answers to their deep problems to arrive from the White House, they will have to remain waiting for millenia to come, forever and ever...

José Antonio Gutiérrez D.
05 June 2008

Nigeria militants step up 'war'

Militants have attacked another oil facility in Nigeria's Delta region, after "declaring war" at the weekend.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said it had destroyed Shell's Orubiri flow-station.

"Militants in eight speed boats attacked Orubiri with bombs, dynamite and hand grenades," said military spokesman Lt Col Sagir Musa.

This is the fourth attack this week. Nigeria's oil production has been cut by 20% due to the unrest.

Col Musa told Reuters news agency that no soldiers had been killed in the attack.

Militants also claimed to have blown up a major oil pipeline at Rumuekpe in Rivers State, but the military could not confirm the attack.

Hostages not free

The BBC's Andrew Walker in Nigeria says the recent fighting has been the heaviest in two years between militants and security forces.

Mend says it has killed at least 29 people, mostly soldiers, although this has been denied by the military.

Two other Shell facilities have been attacked, while a raid on one owned by Chevron was fought off on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the military said two South African hostages captured on the weekend had been released, but this has been denied by Mend.

The South Africans were among 27, including two Britons, seized from an oil services ship on Saturday.

The other workers were Nigerians, Mend said.

"For the avoidance of doubt Mend wishes to state we still have custody of the two South African Hostages," an e-mail to journalists said.

The group also said the hostages would be used as a "human shield" during their handover, which Mend said would happen soon.

On Monday a British oil worker was seized in the Delta's main city, Port Harcourt.

Mend said it was "declaring war" in response to attacks by the military, which it said had left seven of its fighters dead on Saturday.

Some 200 foreign oil workers have been taken hostage in recent years.

Almost all have been freed, normally in return for a ransom, although this is always officially denied.

The militants claim to be fighting for the rights of inhabitants of the oil-producing Niger Delta, who mostly live in poverty.

But many say they are criminal gangs out to extort money from oil companies.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/7620390.stm

The long arm of RNC security reaches IWW at the MOA

By David Seitz , TC Daily Planet - September 04, 2008

Members of the Twin Cities Industrial Workers of the World reported being detained by police on a Hiawatha Light Rail Train at the Mall of America after peacefully gathering Sunday to support re-instated co-worker who works at the mall.

The workers met at 1 p.m. at the 27th Ave. and Lake St. stop to celebrate with Erik Forman, a barista at a Mall of America Starbucks who successfully contested his termination, which he said was an illegal move to suppress his union activity. While there were many Minneapolis and Metro Transit Police present at the gathering, Forman and fellow IWW member Jake Bell said the group’s police liaison was able to make clear to police the peaceful nature of the gathering.

Following the rally, many boarded the train with Forman as he returned to work.

“I invited anybody who wanted to come to come with me to the Mall of America, to see the first union Starbucks in Minnesota and the first union shop in the mall, to buy a cup of coffee and to take a look around,” Forman said.

When the train reached the Bloomington Central Station, Bell said, Bloomington police gathered at the station pulled the liaison off the train.

“The police told him that we could go into the mall as long as we didn’t have signs,” Bell said. “And he made clear that no, we weren’t going to picket. The cop said that was cool, and we kept going.”

When the train reached the Mall of America stop, however, Bell and Forman say there was a line of Plymouth police in riot gear waiting for them. Bell said the police were accompanied by mall management.

“They said anyone who stepped out would be arrested,” Bell said. “They detained all of the people who were on the train, even who weren’t involved in the rally.”

After twenty minutes, the train continued its journey with all the mall-bound passengers still on board. When Forman and others who needed to report to work, and people who weren’t involved tried to negotiate, Forman said they were told they could walk to the Mall from the 28th Avenue station.

When contacted, a representative of the Plymouth Police said officers were working in conjunction with Bloomington Police. A representative of the Bloomington Police Department deferred to the Joint Information Center, which is managing law enforcement information across and between jurisdictions in the metropolitan area during the Republican National Convention

Sergeant Palmer of the Joint Information Center offered a different account. After participants in the IWW gathering got on the train, he said, law enforcement contacted mall management.

“The mall said, ‘we do not want these people here at the mall,’” said Palmer. “The train stopped before the Mall of America [at 28th Ave.] and these people were told, ‘this train is not going to the Mall of America, you can continue on foot.”

When asked about reports that the train did indeed continue to the mall, where passengers were then detained, Palmer replied, “I don’t know about that, because I wasn’t there, but that wasn’t what I was told.”

Mall of America spokesperson Dan Jasper said the group was asked to leave because it was in fact demonstrating.

“The Mall of America is private property,” Jasper said. “The group was treated fairly, equally and with dignity, and asked to leave the premises. We just don’t allow demonstrations.”

Asked about collaboration with law enforcement, Jasper said the mall “works in partnership with all local organizations.”

Forman said the group made clear that it planned no demonstration, and that this response from mall management and law enforcement was deeply troubling.

“We were very surprised,” Forman said. “We weren’t doing anything illegal. We weren’t there to protest. We were there to go to the mall, and in fact to do shopping like any other tourist. So it had to be political, and I’m fairly sure it’s illegal to ban someone from your property because of their political beliefs.”

WSA Statement on the RNC Protest

In the opening days of September 2008 people from all over the country came together in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St.Paul to protest the agenda of the Republican National Convention. And in response, police cracked down, hard. And even before the events had begun police responded to mere calls for protest through strong-arm tactics reminiscent of a police state, including infiltration and spying by state agents against protest organizations and preemptive raids with guns drawn against private protest centers. During the event police responded with the indiscriminate arrest of hundreds of protesters, and even journalists recording the event where arrested.


Decked out in full military garb masses of police indiscriminately assaulted numerous protesters with batons, pepper spray and other weapons, that though listed under the term "less then lethal" nevertheless inflict great pain and suffering, and have been implicated in serious medical complications and even death. Fortunately no one was killed in the Twin Cities, but the use of tactics befitting a police state should be a cause of grave concern for all people of good conscience.


In response we at the Worker Solidarity Alliance (WSA) call upon all poor and working people everywhere to reach out in support of the 284 protesters that have been jailed by the cops.


Please make a donation to help cover the legal fees of our jailed comrades, and to cover any medical fees that may arise among protesters due to the brutal tactics utilized by police on behalf of the Republican Party.
One place you can donate is the web site of the Coldsnap Legal Collective: http://coldsnaplegal. wordpress. com/

Although the Workers Solidarity Alliance extends unconditional solidarity and support to the victims of state repression during the RNC, we also call for a critical evaluation of the approach taken by anti-authoritarians and anarchists. The repression of RNC activism demonstrates that new organizing models will be needed if anticapitalists are to mount a genuine challenge to the power of capital and the state. Specifically, we must avoid playing into the hands of the state by using rhetoric, rituals, and tactics that isolate us from the majority of the world's population that suffers under capitalism. We call for a resistance based not exclusively on the advanced tactics of a jail-ready minority, but the solidarity and militancy of a revolutionary social bloc, organized in workplaces and neighborhoods, fighting for self-determination. As the raids on activists spaces have already shown, anything less is political suicide.


The reasons people protested were varied, as was the political background of the protesters. Some of the protesters came seeking to end the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, some economic justice, others out of criticism of the current Republican administration in Washington. Some protesters came to voice their dissent and in support of Obama. Some came to protest the havoc that the endless pursuit for capitalist profits has wrecked upon the environment. And yet others still came to protest the political rule of the U.S. government, whether under the leadership of Republicans or Democrats, or other would be contenders for the throne.


The "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent came to protest the war, for economic justice, for a healthy environment, and against white supremacy, nationalism, sexism and homophobia --- and to promote the idea that simply changing office holders does not do away with capitalism and the political state. This contingent called for a new world, a world without bosses, states and bureaucrats.


The Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) seeks the self-empowerment of ordinary poor and working class people through democratic self-management of their workplaces and their communities without mediation by elite's from above. Those of the "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent, and their supporters in the WSA and elsewhere, are sick and tired of living in a society that is dominated by the special interests of wealthy men and the political system that these elites have set in motion to protect their interests at the expense of the genuine interests, the aspirations and collective well being of the vast majority of the population, the working class. As supporters of the "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent we of the WSA denounce both the Republican and Democratic parties, as we understand that the true motivating cause of all political parties, in every part of the globe, is that of keeping a small elite entrenched firmly in political and economic power over, and to the detriment, of the working class across the earth.


The WSA also denounces the Patriot Act, under which the state has charged eight (RNC 8) prominent protest organizers with "Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism," this despite the fact that the RNC 8 were arrested days prior to the beginning of both the convention and the actual protests and had not carried out any actual protest actions whatsoever. The provisions of the Patriot Act grants the state power to charge people with "conspiracy" for simply planning a nonviolent protest, and in turn to saddle them with a felony for making calls for dissent to state policy. Thus the true purpose of the Patriot Act isto criminalize exercises of the right to free speech, peaceful assembly and protest. In light of the true intentions of the Patriot Act the WSA calls for the working class to get together in solidarity to put pressure upon the state to rescind and abolish the Patriot Act.


Yet despite all of the terror and mayhem unleashed by the police the fact that ordinary people maintained their presence, their solidarity and their dissent against the unjust policies of the political elite for the duration of the convention is in the last analysis a demonstration of the courage of the working class. The protesters that made up the "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent, and others as well, have a positive vision of a better society. A society in which ordinary folks come together in brotherly solidarity to create a new system based upon the moral value of "Mutual aid" and free from the rule of a lying, scheming and predatory elite. For a society in which "freedom and liberty for all" are not mere sentiments regulated to paper, or simply buzz words to throw about by self-interested politicians looking for your votes, but are instead the overwhelming living reality of society, and not just in the United States but throughout the entire earth.


Workers Solidarity Alliance
339 Lafayette Street - Room 202
New York, NY 10012 USA
www. workersolidarity. org

Orthodox Union to Agriprocessors: Hire new management or lose certification

By Lynda Waddington 9/9/08 4:04 PM

Child labor violation charges filed today by the Iowa Attorney General against Agriprocessors and five individuals in plant management have prompted the Orthodox Union (OU), arguably the best-known kosher certification enterprise in the U.S., to issue an ultimatum to the company.

“Within the coming days, or let’s say a week or two, we will suspend our supervision unless there’s new management in place,” Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of kosher supervision for the Orthodox Union, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this afternoon.

Shortly after the May 12 immigration raid at the plant, the company announced that Sholom M. Rubashkin, son of owner Aaron Rubashkin, was being ousted from his position as chief executive officer and president. The ouster was prompted, at least in part, by threats from the Orthodox Union. Although the search for a replacement had been narrowed, no one has yet been hired to replace him.

Ganack, in an interview with Shmarya Rosenberg of FailedMessiah.com, said this afternoon that the Rubashkin family would need to hire a “new indepedent CEO,” but conceded that members of the Rubashkin family could remain on the company’s board.

“[The family] can’t be involved in running the plant — actually hands-on running of the plant,” Ganack said.

It is unclear if the decision by the Orthodox Union would be limited to only the Postville facility or would also encompass operations at Local Pride, an Agriprocessors plant located in Gordon, Neb.

Sholom and Aaron Rubashkin, along with three human resources workers, were named today in the attorney general’s charges.

On April 16, kosher certifier K’Hal Adath Jeshurun (KAJ) terminated its supervision of all Agriprocessors’ operations. The decision was made, according to a letter from the KAJ, “after consideration of the appeals made” by the Rubashkin family.

~UPDATE~

Vos Iz Neias? is reporting that Rabbi Menachem Weissmandl will continue to provide the Rubashkin family and Agriprocessors his certification, regardless of the OU’s decision.

“My job and expertise is strictly kosher supervision. As long as the strict guidelines of Kosher Shichitah is followed in this plant, my Hecsher will stay on.”

Rabbi Weissmandl previously told Iowa Independent that he is “the supervising rabbi for all glatt kosher meat and strictly kosher poultry at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville.”

HERE

Residents, officials frustrated over pace of flood recovery

CEDAR RAPIDS - Council member Pat Shey is mild-mannered enough. So when he turns testy, it's time to ask why.

Shey launched off last week when the speechifying by a couple of his council colleagues dragged out the start of the City Council meeting for more than an hour before the council even got to its agenda.

"If we all decide we're going to blab about everything we know about everything, then we're not using our time together very effectively," Shey said Tuesday. "... My frustration is that we're not being as productive as we should be at this time. ... Otherwise it's going to be like a kids' soccer game where there's a lot of kicked shins and not a lot of forward progress."

Impatience with the City Council and City Hall is coming from outside as well.

Don Karr, owner of Affordable Plumbing and Remodeling, is one of the founders of Cedar Rapids Small Business Recovery. Some of the group's flood-hit members crowded the City Council meeting a week ago to press their case for the council to release the final $2 million of a $3 million city commitment to a local Job & Small Business Recovery Fund.

The council agreed, though the group still has its concerns about City Hall.

"We got our group going is for one major reason: It is because we think they're not making decisions," Karr said Tuesday.

Karr pointed to council member Justin Shields, who at one point at last week's council meeting turned to the small-business owners in the audience and pleaded for their help. Shields has been pushing, unsuccessfully, for his council colleagues to hire their own policy adviser to help the council sort through the issues related to flood recovery.

"He kind of let the cat out of the bag," Karr said of Shields. "There's no leadership, and they're not making decisions that need to be made as a group."

Chuck Swore, a former council member who was defeated for the District 4 council seat last fall, is heading a Developers Council in the city, and he, too, said his group continues to be frustrated by the City Council and City Hall.

In particular, Swore said the Developers Council is upset by what it thinks are impediments erected by City Hall that slow the effort to rebuild homes and businesses.

"The city still seems to be in the regulation mode rather than the assistance mode," Swore said. "Now is not the time to worry about regulating. Now is the time to worry about helping."

Swore, whose former council district includes the heavily flood-damaged Time Check Neighborhood, also is impatient with the council's reluctance to identify and buy out homes that he said cannot be rebuilt.

"Let's get a clipboard and walk through the neighborhood, and we'll agree which structures can't be rebuilt," Swore said. "And we can go to the Czech Village area and Rompot and do the same."

Scott Olson, a commercial Realtor who lost a close race for mayor in 2005 against Kay Halloran, on Tuesday said it was "scary" how flood-damaged businesses are "quietly" leaving the city. He called it a "triple whammy" — flood damage, fewer companies and jobs, and higher taxes on the horizon because of lost businesses. Some businesses, he added, are relocating in the metro area with the help of incentives.

"Who in the city government is protecting our borders?" Olson asked.

Olson said City Hall needed to create an aggressive program committed to getting flooded businesses back in business in Cedar Rapids.

"The City Council: I know them all well. They're working hard. But they continue to fiddle while Rome burns," he said.

Shey said that some measure of upset would be the rule no matter who was on the City Council.

The needs are many and the funds limited, and so groups are going to be unhappy, Shey said.

Into this climate of frayed nerves and growing impatience have come questions about 71-year-old Mayor Kay Halloran nodding off at council meetings.

Shey had little time for the matter, saying the attention doesn't capture all the work the council is doing or the role the mayor plays — one of nine votes — in the city's council/manager government.

"She puts in a full day," Shey said. "She's said all along, 'I'm one of nine.' If she nods off once in a while, is that really impacting how the body works as a whole? I don't think it does."

HERE

Cataloguing the RNC’s journalist detainees

Of the 800-plus people who were arrested or detained in conjunction with RNC protests, a good chunk of them — 42, by our count — were members of the news media. Media representatives in town to cover the events, from both big and small presses, were slapped with citations and pending charges ranging in severity, including unlawful assembly, obstructing the legal process, misdemeanor interference with a peace officer and felony to riot plus other riot pretenses. (Notably Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was jailed along with two of the show’s producers.) Many others who weren’t arrested or detained endured pepper-spray and other arms used for crowd-control.

MnIndy has compiled a list of journalists who were detained or arrested, including some preemptively, culled from news reports and sources, including the Ramsey County sheriff’s department’s booking roster. Let us know if anyone is unaccounted for and we’ll add them to the list.

Journalists detained/arrested:

Tom Aviles, WCCO photojournalist

Charlie B, MTV Think blogger (full last name unknown)

Anita Braithwaite, New York-based Glass Bead Collective

Wendy Binion, Portland IndyMedia

Geraldine Cahill, The Real News

Eileen Clancy, I-Witness Video, a New York-based media collective

Paul Demko, Minnesota Independent

Amy Forliti, Associated Press reporter

Ben Garvin, Pioneer Press photographer

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! host

Art Hughes, Public News Service

Suzanne Hughes, The Uptake, volunteer coordinator

Ted Johnson, Variety managing editor

Olivia Katz, Glass Bead Collective

Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! producer

Alice Kalthoff, MyFoxdfw.com editor

Jon Krawczynski, Associated Press reporter

Joseph La Sac, Pepperspray Productions journalist

Ed Matthews, University of Kentucky photojournalism student

Jonathan Malat, KARE-11 photojournalist

Stephen Maturen, Minnesota Daily assistant picture editor

Britney McIntosh, University of Kentucky photojournalism student

Matt Nelson, University of Iowa student

Jason Nicholas, New York Post freelance photographer

Mark Ovaska, Rochester freelance photographer

Elizabeth Press, Democracy Now!

Matt Rourke, Associated Press photographer

Sheila Regan, TC Daily Planet

Lambert Rochfort, Pepperspray Productions journalist

Seth Rowe, Sun Newspapers, St. Louis Park community editor

Jeff Schorfheide, Madison, Wis. Badger-Herald photographer

Mark Skinner, University of Nevada Las Vegas Rebel Yell reporter

Ania Smolenskaia, The Real News

Matt Snyders, City Pages

Nicole Salazar, Democracy Now! producer

Vlad Teichberg, New York-based Glass Bead Collective

Dean Treftz, U-Wire, national college news service

Nathan Weber, photographer, Chicago-area freelancer

Tony Webster, Twin Cities independent media professional

Jim Winn, University of Kentucky journalism adviser

John P. Wise, MyFox national editor

Dawn Zuppelli, Rochester IndyMediaHERE

Attorneys for Minnesota Nine call criminal charges ‘outrageous’

In the days leading up to the Republican National Convention, a series of police raids led by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office resulted in the arrest of eight people for allegedly conspiring to disrupt the political gathering. On Wednesday the individuals were each charged with a single count of “conspiracy to commit riot in the second degree in furtherance of terrorism.” The criminal complaint details a far-ranging plot by members of the RNC Welcoming Committee that included plans to kidnap delegates, attack cops with urine and molotov cocktails and ultimately bring the convention to a halt.

The charge carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. A ninth individual was also arrested earlier this week and is named in the criminal complaint, but has not yet been charged. All but the latter suspect have been released on $75,000 bail.

Yesterday afternoon attorneys for the alleged co-conspirators held a press conference to rebut the charges. They portrayed the allegations as a trumped-up plot hyped by confidential informants who had a financial incentive to exaggerate the potential violence. “The most outrageous allegations made by the authorities are not supported by any evidence other than the statement of the confidential informants,” said attorney Bruce Nestor. “They’re not supported by the evidence seized.”

In one instance, for example, officers seized what was purportedly a police shield and cited it as evidence of the group’s ill intents. “We have the Sheriff displaying a single plastic item that he claims was a shield, as if one shield was going to protect demonstrators from 3500 armed riot police who have projectile-tear-gas weapons,” said Nestor.

The trio of lawyers also charged that police are utilizing terrorism fears to circumvent First Amendment rights. “All they do is they label people as terrorirsts and anarchists, and at that point what people are actually saying and the content of their views has no meaning anymore,” said attorney Jordan Kushner. “What they do is they dehumanize people, they stigmatize them and in the process cut off what they’re saying.”

Kushner compared the case to the treatment of the Chicago Seven in 1968 — all of whom were ultimately acquitted of conspiracy charges. “Of course that made complete fools out of the government,” he said. “When the evidence comes out in this case it’s going to be the same thing. It’s going to be about politically opportunistic, abusive, cynical people in power who are abusing the law to suppress political dissent and suppress political organizing.”

Three of the defendants — Luce Guillen-Givins, Robert Joseph Czernik and Max Jacob Specktor — were present at the press conference but did not answer questions from reporters. However, two of the defendants’ parents did comment on the charges.

Mordecai Specktor, father of Max (pictured together) and editor of the American Jewish World newspaper, stated that his son was held in solitary confinement for two days before being released on bail. “The criminal complaint here is farfetched, overblown, outrageous,” he said. “I encourage all the journalists here to look into the specifics of this complaint and see where the truth really lies.” Specktor then put his arm around his son. “This is your domestic terrorist,” he said. “Take a good look. I don’t believe it at all. Give me a break.”

The other defendants are Nathanael David Secor, Erik Charles Oseland, Garrett Scott Fitzgerald, Monica Rachel Bicking and Garrett Scott Fitzgerald.

Final RNC Dispatch

RNC 8 Charged with "Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism"

In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector, face up to 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty.

Affidavits released by law enforcement which were filed in support of the search warrants used in raids over the weekend, and used to support probable cause for the arrest warrants, are based on paid, confidential informants who infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provacateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence.

"These charges are an effort to equate publicly stated plans to blockade traffic and disrupt the RNC as being the same as acts of terrorism. This both trivializes real violence and attempts to place the stated political views of the Defendants on trial," said Bruce Nestor, President of the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. "The charges represent an abuse of the criminal justice system and seek to intimidate any person organizing large scale public demonstrations potentially involving civil disobedience, he said."

The criminal complaints filed by the Ramsey County Attorney do not allege that any of the defendants personally have engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. The complaints list all of alleged violations of law during the last few days of the RNC -- other than violations of human rights carried out by law enforcement -- and seeks to hold the 8 defendants responsible for acts committed by other individuals. None of the defendants have any prior criminal history involving acts of violence. Searches conducted in connection with the raids failed to turn up any physical evidence to support the allegations of organized attacks on law enforcement. Although claiming probable cause to believe that gunpowder, acids, and assembled incendiary devices would be found, no such items were seized by police. As a result, police sought to claim that the seizure of common household items such as glass bottles, charcoal lighter, nails, a rusty machete, and two hatchets, supported the allegations of the confidential informants. "Police found what they claim was a single plastic shield, a rusty machete, and two hatchets used in Minnesota to split wood. This doesn't amount to evidence of an organized insurrection, particularly when over 3,500 police are present in the Twin Cities, armed with assault rifles, concussion grenades, chemical weapons and full riot gear," said Nestor. In addition, the National Lawyers Guild has previously pointed out how law enforcement has fabricated evidence such as the claims that urine was seized which demonstrators intended to throw at police.

The last time such charges were brought under Minnesota law was in 1918, when Matt Moilen and others organizing labor unions for the Industrial Workers of the World [ed. correction-TCIMC] on the Iron Range were charged with "criminal syndicalism." The convictions, based on allegations that workers had advocated or taught acts of violence, including acts only damaging to property, were upheld by the Minnesota Supreme Court. In the light of history, these convictions are widely seen as unjust and a product of political trials. The National Lawyers Guild condemns the charges filed in this case against the above 8 defendants and urges the Ramsey County Attorney to drop all charges of conspiracy in this matter.

Source:
Bruce Nestor, President
Minnesota Chapter of National Lawyers Guild