Adolf Hitler: "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty."
*****
The Arroyo administration kills us in so many ways.
Among other things since 2005, is psychological disarmament. The separation of people's mental and defense mechanisms from their bodies; the dissociation of people from their stimuli-reaction response. People's aggression capacities are not only suppressed but are made distasteful TO THEM. The very idea and fact of 'fighting back' - is systematically crushed and/or outright BANNED. The next target is COMPLAINT. All of which are facilitated and ingrained, in ways that surpass the Ludovican technique.
In this case, however, there is no machine, but our very mental functionalities being used against us, subverted and turned on its head, through appeals for calm as fascilitated by the co-opted media spheres and establishment Church, and the physical intimidation on the ground by the gestapo force. The goal here, after all, is not to visibly take down enemies one by one ( though God knows, they have tried ), but making the environment inhospitable to their actions. It's all in the service of creating condition, of forging an atmosphere against even the most basic irritability and anger, as people's capacities for resistance are kept trapped inside their hearts and minds. Covering all bases, all inclinations met with instant intimidation and abuse.
You may have heard of this slogan : " Sundin ang Obispo, Itigil ang Gulo' ( 'Follow The Bishops, Stop The Disorder' ). It is quite a slogan to use in a Catholic country weaned on silly superstition and putrid calm. One which has led people to perceive protest as unholy insubordination, and legitimate dissent as godless terror. Complaint here gets reduced to discordant 'noise' - and street rallies its worse manifestation. Probably one of the reasons why these - the clear and present threat to PGMA in the metropolis - have since been made to look like brigand things, thus setting the stage of the escalation of activist and media extrajudicial killings which have reached alarming heights this week. This has been the single byline the admin has used against its critics. The crux of her derelict policy. Her claim to infamy, in her bid for continued reign.
Ampatuan Massacre is that byline blowing up in her face.
November 28, 2009
November 27, 2009
Resolution on Peace-disturbing role of USA in Pakistan, Executive Committe World Peace Congress,11/11/2009
Resolution on Peace-disturbing role of USA in Pakistan
The EC meeting of WPC strongly condemns the Anti-people role being played by USA in Pakistan. Imperialism has adapted hostile policy of creating war hysteria after tilt of world power balance in 1991 in favour of war mongering imperialist forces headed by USA. This policy is being continuously followed.
Iraq and Afghanistan have been occupied in the name of so- called war against terrorism. Pakistan is rapidly becoming the next target. Imperialism’s own creatures, the Taliban, have created an atmosphere of terror across the Pakistan. This situation is being utilized as a justification for American open and covert activities of destabilizing the area.
Drone attacks deep inside Pakistan are been carried out. US Embassy and Consulates in Islamabad, Karachi and Peshawar are being converted into military complexes. Private armies like Black Water and XE are openly working in Pakistan under American Patronage. This meeting of WPC demands that Pakistan’s independence and sovereignty should fully be respected. It demands immediate evacuation of bases and withdrawal of regular and private military forces from Pakistani soil and cessation of Drone attacks
DAMASCUS, SYRIA OCTOBER 24, 2009 EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE WPC
Delhi Declaration: 11th International Meeting of the CP's and Workers' Parties, from: Rebel Youth Magazine, November 22, 2009
Source: REBEL YOUTH
Delhi Declaration
This 11th International Meeting of the Communist and Workers' Parties, held in New Delhi, 20-22 November 2009 to discuss "The international capitalist crisis, the workers' and peoples' struggle, the alternatives and the role of the communist and working class movement":
Reiterates that the current global recession is a systemic crisis of capitalism demonstrating its historic limits and the need for its revolutionary overthrow. It demonstrates the sharpening of the main contradiction of capitalism between its social nature of production and individual capitalist appropriation. The political representatives of Capital try to conceal this unresolvable contradiction between capital and labour that lies at the heart of the crisis. This crisis intensifies rivalries between imperialist powers who along with the international institutions-the IMF World Bank, WTO and others - are implementing their 'solutions' which essentially aim to intensify capitalist exploitation. Military and political 'solutions' are aggressively pursued globally by imperialism. NATO is promoting a new aggressive strategy. The political systems are becoming more reactionary curtailing democratic and civil liberties, trade union rights etc. This crisis is further deepening the structural corruption under capitalism which is being institutionalised.
Reaffirms that the current crisis, probably the most acute and all encompassing since the Great Depression of 1929, has left no field untouched. Hundreds of thousands of factories are closed. Agrarian and rural economies are under distress intensifying misery and poverty of millions of cultivators and farm workers globally. Millions of people are left jobless and homeless. Unemployment is growing to unprecedented levels and is officially expected to breach the 50 million mark. Inequalities are increasing across the globe – the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. More than one billion people, that is one-sixth of humanity go hungry. Youth, women and immigrants are the first victims.
True to their class nature, the response of the respective capitalist governments to overcome this crisis fails to address these basic concerns. All the neo-liberal votaries and social democratic managers of capitalism, who had so far decried the State are now utilising the state for rescuing them, thus underlining a basic fact that the capitalist state has always defended and enlarged avenues for super profits. While the costs of the rescue packages and bailouts are at public expense, the benefits accrue to few. The bailout packages announced, are addressed first to rescue and then enlarge profit making avenues. Banks and financial corporates are now back in business and making profits. Growing unemployment and the depression of real wages is the burden for the working people as against the gift of huge bailout packages for the corporations.
Realises that this crisis is no aberration based on the greed of a few or lack of effective regulatory mechanisms. Profit maximisation, the raison d' etre of capitalism, has sharply widened economic inequalities both between countries and within countries in these decades of 'globalisation'. The natural consequence was a decline in the purchasing power of the vast majority of world population. The present crisis is thus a systemic crisis. This once again vindicates the Marxist analysis that the capitalist system is inherently crisis ridden. Capital, in its quest for profits, traverses boundaries and tramples upon anything and everything. In the process it intensifies exploitation of the working class and other strata of working people, imposing greater hardships. Capitalism in fact requires to maintain a reserve army of labour. The liberation from such capitalist barbarity can come only with the establishment of the real alternative, socialism. This requires the strengthening of anti-imperialist and anti-monopoly struggles. Our struggle for an alternative is thus a struggle against the capitalist system. Our struggle for an alternative is for a system where there is no exploitation of people by people and nation by nation. It is a struggle for another world, a just world, a socialist world.
Conscious of the fact that the dominant imperialist powers would seek their way out of the crisis by putting greater burdens on the working people, by seeking to penetrate and dominate the markets of countries with medium and lower level of capitalist development, commonly called developing countries.
This they are trying to achieve firstly, through the WTO Doha round of trade talks, which reflect the unequal economic agreements at the expense of the peoples of these countries particularly with reference to agricultural standards and Non Agricultural Market Access (NAMA).
Secondly, capitalism, which in the first place is responsible for the destruction of the environment, is trying to transfer the entire burden of safeguarding the planet from climate change, which in the first place they had caused, onto the shoulders of the working class and working people. Capitalism's proposal for restructuring in the name of climate change has little relation to the protection of the environment. Corporate inspired 'Green development' and 'green economy' are sought to be used to impose new state monopoly regulations which support profit maximisation and impose new hardships on the people. Profit maximisation under capitalism is thus not compatible with environmental protection and peoples' rights.
Notes that the only way out of this capitalist crisis for the working class and the common people is to intensify struggles against the rule of capital. It is the experience of the working class that when it mobilises its strength and resists these attempts it can be successful in protecting its rights. Industry sit-ins, factory occupations and such militant working class actions have forced the ruling classes to consider the demands of the workers. Latin America, the current theatre of popular mobilisations and working class actions, has shown how rights can be protected and won through struggle. In these times of crisis, once again the working class is seething with discontent. Many countries have witnessed and are witnessing huge working class actions, demanding amelioration. These working class actions need to be further strengthened by mobilising the vast mass of suffering people, not just for immediate alleviation but for a long-term solution to their plight.
Imperialism, buoyed by the demise of the Soviet Union and the periods of boom preceding this crisis had carried out unprecedented attacks on the rights of the working class and the people. This has been accompanied by frenzied anti-communist propaganda not only in individual countries but at global and inter-state forums (EU, OSCE, Council of Europe). However much they may try, the achievements and contributions of socialism in defining the contours of modern civilisation remain inerasable. Faced with these relentless attacks, our struggles thus far had been mainly, defensive struggles, struggles to protect the rights that we had won earlier. Today's conjuncture warrants the launch of an offensive, not just to protect our rights but win new rights. Not for winning few rights but for dismantling the entire capitalist edifice – for an onslaught on the rule of capital, for a political alternative – socialism.
Resolves that under these conditions, the communist and workers parties shall actively work to rally and mobilise the widest possible sections of the popular forces in the struggle for full time stable employment, exclusively public and free for all health, education and social welfare, against gender inequality and racism, and for the protection of the rights of all sections of the working people including the youth, women, migrant workers and those from ethnic and national minorities.
Calls upon the communist and workers parties to undertake this task in their respective countries and launch broad struggles for the rights of the people and against the capitalist system. Though the capitalist system is inherently crisis ridden, it does not collapse automatically. The absence of a communist-led counterattack, engenders the danger of rise of reactionary forces. The ruling classes launch an all out attack to prevent the growth of the communists and the workers' parties to protect their status quo. Social democracy continues to spread illusions about the real character of capitalism, advancing slogans such as 'humanisation of capitalism', 'regulation', 'global governance' etc. These in fact support the strategy of capital by denying class struggle and buttressing the pursuit of anti-popular policies. No amount of reform can eliminate exploitation under capitalism. Capitalism has to be overthrown. This requires the intensification of ideological and political working class led popular struggles. All sorts of theories like 'there is no alternative' to imperialist globalisation are propagated. Countering them, our response is 'socialism is the alternative'.
We, the communist and workers' parties coming from all parts of the globe and representing the interests of the working class and all other toiling sections of society (the vast majority of global population) underlining the irreplaceable role of the communist parties call upon the people to join us in strengthening the struggles to declare that socialism is the only real alternative for the future of humankind and that the future is ours.
November 22, 2009
Déjà Vu: Obama Plans to Send 34,000 More Troops to Afghanistan, by Jonathan S. Landay, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef
Published on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 by the McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama met Monday evening with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he's called "a war of necessity" in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told McClatchy.
[ESCALATION -- US Marines search a compound in Lakari, Helmand Province on November 21, 2009. US President, Barack Obama, has huddled with his war cabinet for what officials indicated could be the final time before he decides whether to dispatch tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan. (AFP/Manpreet Romana)]ESCALATION -- US Marines search a compound in Lakari, Helmand Province on November 21, 2009. US President, Barack Obama, has huddled with his war cabinet for what officials indicated could be the final time before he decides whether to dispatch tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan. (AFP/Manpreet Romana)
Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on Dec. 1, followed by meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at winning congressional support amid opposition by some Democrats who are worried about the strain on the U.S. Treasury and whether Afghanistan has become a quagmire, the officials said.
The U.S. officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the issue publicly and because, one official said, the White House is incensed by leaks on its Afghanistan policy that didn't originate in the White House.
They said the commander of the U.S.-led international force in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, could arrive in Washington as early as Sunday to participate in the rollout of the new plan, including testifying before Congress toward the end of next week. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry also are expected to appear before congressional committees.
As it now stands, the plan calls for the deployment over a nine-month period beginning in March of three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., and a Marine brigade from Camp Lejeune, N.C., for as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.
In addition, a 7,000-strong division headquarters would be sent to take command of U.S.-led NATO forces in southern Afghanistan - to which the U.S. has long been committed - and 4,000 U.S. military trainers would be dispatched to help accelerate an expansion of the Afghan army and police.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to brief America's NATO allies after next week's announcement, and the allies are to meet again on Dec. 7 in Belgium to discuss whether some other nations might contribute additional troops.
The Monday evening meeting was the ninth that Obama has held on the crisis in Afghanistan, where the worsening war entered its ninth year last month. This year has seen violence reach unprecedented levels as the Taliban and allied groups have gained strength and expanded their reach.
A U.S. military official used the term "decisional" to describe Monday evening's meeting among Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Gates, Clinton, National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Eikenberry and senior U.S. military commanders.
The administration's plan contains "off-ramps," points starting next June at which Obama could decide to continue the flow of troops, halt the deployments and adopt a more limited strategy or "begin looking very quickly at exiting" the country, depending on political and military progress, one defense official said.
"We have to start showing progress within six months on the political side or military side or that's it," the U.S. defense official said.
It's "not just how we get people there, but what's the strategy for getting them out," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.
The approach is driven in part by concerns that Afghan President Hamid Karzai won't keep his promises to root out corruption and support political reforms, and in part by growing domestic opposition to the war, the U.S. officials said.
As McClatchy reported last month, the Obama administration has been quietly working with U.S. allies and Afghan officials on an "Afghanistan Compact," a package of political reforms and anti-corruption measures that it hopes will boost popular support for Karzai and erase the doubts about his legitimacy raised by his fraud-tainted re-election.
The British government is offering to host a conference early next year to win international support for the compact.
Last week, Clinton suddenly adopted a more conciliatory tone toward Karzai, whom she and other administration officials had been pressing to clean up the rampant corruption and cut his ties to local warlords, some of whom traffic in opium.
In an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, she said that Karzai had demonstrated "good faith" and added: "Well, there are warlords and there are warlords."
As part of its new plan, the administration, which remains skeptical of Karzai, will "work around him" by working directly with provincial and district leaders, a senior U.S. defense official told McClatchy.
The plan adopted by Obama would fall well short of the 80,000 troops McChrystal suggested in August as a "low-risk option" that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan.
It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a "high-risk" approach that called for 20,000 additional troops and a "medium-risk" option that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.
There are 68,000 U.S. troops and 42,000 from other countries in Afghanistan. The U.S. Army's recently revised counterinsurgency manual estimates that an all-out counterinsurgency campaign in a country with Afghanistan's population would require about 600,000 troops.
The administration's plan is expected to encounter opposition on Capitol Hill, where some senior Democrats have suggested that the administration may need to raise taxes in order to pay for the additional troops.
Obama campaigned saying that he'd fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from the defense budget, but Mullen has said that the Afghan war - which some administration officials privately concede could cost $700 billion to $1 trillion over 10 years - might require a supplemental funding bill next year.
The administration's protracted deliberations have escalated into open warfare between McChrystal and his supporters and advocates of a more limited strategy led by Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that often played out in dueling leaks to news organizations.
© 2009 McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama met Monday evening with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he's called "a war of necessity" in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told McClatchy.
[ESCALATION -- US Marines search a compound in Lakari, Helmand Province on November 21, 2009. US President, Barack Obama, has huddled with his war cabinet for what officials indicated could be the final time before he decides whether to dispatch tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan. (AFP/Manpreet Romana)]ESCALATION -- US Marines search a compound in Lakari, Helmand Province on November 21, 2009. US President, Barack Obama, has huddled with his war cabinet for what officials indicated could be the final time before he decides whether to dispatch tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan. (AFP/Manpreet Romana)
Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on Dec. 1, followed by meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at winning congressional support amid opposition by some Democrats who are worried about the strain on the U.S. Treasury and whether Afghanistan has become a quagmire, the officials said.
The U.S. officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the issue publicly and because, one official said, the White House is incensed by leaks on its Afghanistan policy that didn't originate in the White House.
They said the commander of the U.S.-led international force in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, could arrive in Washington as early as Sunday to participate in the rollout of the new plan, including testifying before Congress toward the end of next week. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry also are expected to appear before congressional committees.
As it now stands, the plan calls for the deployment over a nine-month period beginning in March of three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., and a Marine brigade from Camp Lejeune, N.C., for as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.
In addition, a 7,000-strong division headquarters would be sent to take command of U.S.-led NATO forces in southern Afghanistan - to which the U.S. has long been committed - and 4,000 U.S. military trainers would be dispatched to help accelerate an expansion of the Afghan army and police.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to brief America's NATO allies after next week's announcement, and the allies are to meet again on Dec. 7 in Belgium to discuss whether some other nations might contribute additional troops.
The Monday evening meeting was the ninth that Obama has held on the crisis in Afghanistan, where the worsening war entered its ninth year last month. This year has seen violence reach unprecedented levels as the Taliban and allied groups have gained strength and expanded their reach.
A U.S. military official used the term "decisional" to describe Monday evening's meeting among Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Gates, Clinton, National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Eikenberry and senior U.S. military commanders.
The administration's plan contains "off-ramps," points starting next June at which Obama could decide to continue the flow of troops, halt the deployments and adopt a more limited strategy or "begin looking very quickly at exiting" the country, depending on political and military progress, one defense official said.
"We have to start showing progress within six months on the political side or military side or that's it," the U.S. defense official said.
It's "not just how we get people there, but what's the strategy for getting them out," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.
The approach is driven in part by concerns that Afghan President Hamid Karzai won't keep his promises to root out corruption and support political reforms, and in part by growing domestic opposition to the war, the U.S. officials said.
As McClatchy reported last month, the Obama administration has been quietly working with U.S. allies and Afghan officials on an "Afghanistan Compact," a package of political reforms and anti-corruption measures that it hopes will boost popular support for Karzai and erase the doubts about his legitimacy raised by his fraud-tainted re-election.
The British government is offering to host a conference early next year to win international support for the compact.
Last week, Clinton suddenly adopted a more conciliatory tone toward Karzai, whom she and other administration officials had been pressing to clean up the rampant corruption and cut his ties to local warlords, some of whom traffic in opium.
In an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, she said that Karzai had demonstrated "good faith" and added: "Well, there are warlords and there are warlords."
As part of its new plan, the administration, which remains skeptical of Karzai, will "work around him" by working directly with provincial and district leaders, a senior U.S. defense official told McClatchy.
The plan adopted by Obama would fall well short of the 80,000 troops McChrystal suggested in August as a "low-risk option" that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan.
It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a "high-risk" approach that called for 20,000 additional troops and a "medium-risk" option that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.
There are 68,000 U.S. troops and 42,000 from other countries in Afghanistan. The U.S. Army's recently revised counterinsurgency manual estimates that an all-out counterinsurgency campaign in a country with Afghanistan's population would require about 600,000 troops.
The administration's plan is expected to encounter opposition on Capitol Hill, where some senior Democrats have suggested that the administration may need to raise taxes in order to pay for the additional troops.
Obama campaigned saying that he'd fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from the defense budget, but Mullen has said that the Afghan war - which some administration officials privately concede could cost $700 billion to $1 trillion over 10 years - might require a supplemental funding bill next year.
The administration's protracted deliberations have escalated into open warfare between McChrystal and his supporters and advocates of a more limited strategy led by Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that often played out in dueling leaks to news organizations.
© 2009 McClatchy Newspapers
Abbas: Obama doing nothing for peace process; Brazil holds hope, Wednesday, November 25, 2009
http://al-darb.blogspot.com/
Buenos Aires - Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas complained that US President Barack Obama "is doing nothing for the peace process" in the Middle East so far. "For now he is doing nothing, but he has invited us to revive the peace process. I hope that in the future he can play a more important role," Abbas said in an interview published Tuesday by the Argentine daily Clarin.
Instead, Abbas again called upon Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to take a more active role as mediator in the Middle East.
"He can do it, because he has good relations with the two parties in the conflict and I think he can help," said Abbas, who has visited with Lula in recent days, along with separate visits from Israeli President Shimon Peres and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Abbas expressed the hope that "the United States (will) put pressure on the Israelis to abide by international law, so that the roadmap can be implemented."
The "roadmap" refers to the years-old plan for Middle East peace put forth by the international quartet - Russia, the European Union, the United Nations and the US.
Abbas, who was in Argentina Tuesday, said he was pleased with the results of his ongoing South American tour, which initially took him to Brazil and was also to include a stay in Chile.
"President Lula can now take on a mediating role because he has ties of trust with the two parties in the conflict. Besides, he also has a good relationship with the US government. Brazil can play that role," Abbas stressed.
He anticipated, however, that the Palestinians will not make any more concessions than they have already made.
"We accepted to have only 22 per cent of Palestine, and that is the biggest concession. And we also accepted that Israel had 78 per cent. So, what kind of concessions are they expecting from us?" he said.
"Now we are ready to announce our independence if the Israelis will allow us to," he said.
Abbas said, however, that independence would not be declared unilaterally.
"(The Israelis) are trying to say that we the Palestinians are seeking a unilateral decision. We are not seeking a unilateral decision," he said.
Buenos Aires - Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas complained that US President Barack Obama "is doing nothing for the peace process" in the Middle East so far. "For now he is doing nothing, but he has invited us to revive the peace process. I hope that in the future he can play a more important role," Abbas said in an interview published Tuesday by the Argentine daily Clarin.
Instead, Abbas again called upon Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to take a more active role as mediator in the Middle East.
"He can do it, because he has good relations with the two parties in the conflict and I think he can help," said Abbas, who has visited with Lula in recent days, along with separate visits from Israeli President Shimon Peres and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Abbas expressed the hope that "the United States (will) put pressure on the Israelis to abide by international law, so that the roadmap can be implemented."
The "roadmap" refers to the years-old plan for Middle East peace put forth by the international quartet - Russia, the European Union, the United Nations and the US.
Abbas, who was in Argentina Tuesday, said he was pleased with the results of his ongoing South American tour, which initially took him to Brazil and was also to include a stay in Chile.
"President Lula can now take on a mediating role because he has ties of trust with the two parties in the conflict. Besides, he also has a good relationship with the US government. Brazil can play that role," Abbas stressed.
He anticipated, however, that the Palestinians will not make any more concessions than they have already made.
"We accepted to have only 22 per cent of Palestine, and that is the biggest concession. And we also accepted that Israel had 78 per cent. So, what kind of concessions are they expecting from us?" he said.
"Now we are ready to announce our independence if the Israelis will allow us to," he said.
Abbas said, however, that independence would not be declared unilaterally.
"(The Israelis) are trying to say that we the Palestinians are seeking a unilateral decision. We are not seeking a unilateral decision," he said.
November 26, 2009
The bootstrap theory of propaganda Posted by gowans in: what’s left, on: Nov 23, 2009 by: stephen gowans
By Stephen Gowans
The New York Times and U.S. politicians are, through assertion and repetition, attempting to create as common knowledge the idea that Iran has a nuclear weapons program and that the last presidential election in Iran was fraudulent, even though there is no evidence to back either claim.
In today’s (November 23, 2009) New York Times, reporter Alexei Barrionuevo writes that “Brazil’s ambitions to be a more important player on the global diplomatic stage are crashing headlong into the efforts of the United States and other Western powers to rein in Iran’s nuclear arms program” (my emphasis.)
This treats the existence of a nuclear arms program in Iran as an established finding.
Yet, Tehran denies it has a nuclear weapons program and the U.N nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, says it “‘has no concrete proof’ that Iran ever sought to make nuclear arms…” [1] The 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate disagrees, in part, claiming that Iran had a nuclear weapons program in 2003, but says that Iran has since disbanded it. In February, “US officials said that…no new evidence has surfaced to undercut the findings of the 2007 (estimate).” [3]
According to the head of the I.A.E.A, Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency has
“not seen concrete evidence that Tehran has an ongoing nuclear weapons program… But somehow, many people are talking about how Iran’s nuclear program is the greatest threat to the world… In many ways, I think the threat has been hyped. Yes, there’s concern about Iran’s future intentions and Iran needs to be more transparent with the IAEA and the international community… But the idea that we’ll wake up tomorrow and Iran will have a nuclear weapon is an idea that isn’t supported by the facts as we have seen them so far.” [3]
Barrionuevo isn’t alone in asserting, without evidence, that Iran is building nuclear arms. U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, told Barrionuevo that “the world is trying to figure out how to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons,” assuming, as a given, that Iran is trying to have nuclear weapons.
Engel also says that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “is illegitimate with his own people,” a reference to the disputed presidential election Iran’s opposition claims Ahmadinejad won through fraud. Barrionuevo points to critics who worry that a planned visit to Brazil by Ahmadinejad will “legitimize” the Iranian president “just five months after what most of the world sees as his fraudulent re-election.”
Yet there is no evidence the election was stolen. All that backs the allegation is the assertion of the opposition that the election was fraudulent and “what most of the world” believes, this being based on the Western media treating opposition claims as legitimate.
This is a circular process. Most of the world believes the election was fraudulent because that’s what the principal source of information on this matter, the media, led it to beleive. Now the New York Times offers the fact that the assertion is widely believed as evidence it is true. This might be called the bootstrap theory of propaganda: legitimize an assertion by treating it as true, and when most of the world believes it’s true, offer the reality that everyone believes it to be true as evidence it is.
The only relevant evidence that would allow us to determine whether the outcome of the election was crooked or fair is provided by the sole methodologically rigorous poll conducted prior to the election. It was sponsored by the international arm of the U.S. Republican Party, the International Republican Institute, hardly a booster of Ahmadinejad. Carried out three weeks prior to the election, the poll “showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin – greater than his actual apparent margin of victory”. [4] The pollsters, Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty, concluded that “Ahmadinejad is who Iranians want.”
The process of creating commonly held beliefs that have no evidentiary basis, and doing so through assertion and repetition, is not new. To justify an illegal war on Yugoslavia, Western politicians, and the Western media in train, asserted without evidence that a genocide was in progress in Kosovo in 1999. Tens of thousands of corpses were expected to be found littering the “killing fields” of the then-Serb province. But when forensic investigators were dispatched to Kosovo after the war to document the genocide, the bodies never turned up. By frequently repeating unsubstantiated claims, people were led to believe that systematic killings on a mass scale were being carried out, and that the West had a moral obligation to intervene. The public was duped.
Similarly, Western politicians “sexed up” intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Western media went along, acknowledging only after public support for the war had been engineered by the media’s propagation of U.S. and British government lies, that it had got it wrong. The politicians said they had been misled by the C.I.A. The C.I.A said it was pressured by the politicians. All that mattered was that many people believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding banned weapons. When none were found, a new pretext for dominating Iraq militarily was trotted out, and acceptance of the pretext was aided by the repetition of more unsubstantiated assertions.
The bootstrap theory of propaganda is at work again, this time in connection with Iran.
1. William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, “Report says Iran has data to make a nuclear bomb,” The New York Times, October 4, 2009.
2. Greg Miller, “US now sees Iran as pursuing nuclear bombs,” The Los Angeles Times, February 12, 2009.
3. William J. Cole, “UN nuclear watchdog says Iran threat hyped,” The Boston Globe, September 2, 2009.
4. Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty, “Ahmadinejad is who Iranians want,” The Guardian (UK), June 15, 2009.
Philippines Arroyo Regime must be condemned for Maguindanao massacre & impunity of Regime's favored warlords, Wed., 25 Nov 09, LUIS G. JALANDONI
source: ndfp.net
LUIS G. JALANDONI is the NDFP Chief International Representative & a
Member‚ NDFP National Executive Committee
http://ndfp.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=730&Itemid=1
The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) condemns in the strongest possible terms the barbaric massacre of two outstanding people's lawyers, Atty. Concepcion "Connie" Brizuela and Atty. Cynthia Oquendo, dozens of journalists, and other civilians in Maguindanao on 23 November. Identified as the direct perpetrators of this heinous crime are the Ampatuan warlord clan, Philippine National Police (PNP) personnel, paramilitary CAFGU personnel, and other armed men of Ampatuan's private army.
The Ampatuan warlords' armed contingent of more than 100 abducted the convoy accompanying the wife of Buluan Vice Mayor Ishmael Mangudadatu and her family who were on their way to the Commission on Elections office in Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao, to file the certificate of candidacy of Ishmael Mangudadatu for governor of Maguindanao.
The ruling Ampatuan warlord clan in Maguindanao has long enjoyed the favor and protection of Ms. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the police, military and paramilitary forces of the regime for delivering huge majorities in the 2004 and 2007 elections through massive fraud and brutal force. The impunity accorded by the corrupt and brutally oppressive Arroyo regime to the Ampatuan clan and other favored political fiefdoms has given them license to commit atrocious acts against the people in order to perpetuate themselves in power. It is highly irregular and scandalous that while the massacre was going on, Andal Ampatuan, governor of Maguindanao, and Zaldy Ampatuan, governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), were in Malacañang "for an emergency meeting"!
The NDFP vigorously condemns not only the direct perpetrators of the monstrous massacre but even more so the Arroyo regime for criminally cultivating the culture of impunity for its cohorts, in order to cling to power.
The NDFP holds Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her regime accountable for this massacre that deserves the outrage of the Filipino people. This massacre is the latest atrocious act, further aggravating the regime's accountability for extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, frustrated killings, torture, and the uprooting of millions of people since 2001.
The NDFP demands an immediate end to the reign of impunity. It demands that all those responsible for this monstrous crime and other gross and systematic violations of the human rights of the Filipino people be brought to justice. The people must rise in outrage against this regime, the Ampatuan warlord clan and other cohorts of the Arroyo regime.
November 24, 2009
UK Inquiry: Blair Conspired with Bush as Early as February 2002 to Plot Iraq Invasion By Dave Lindorff
Most Americans are blissfully in the dark about it, but across the Atlantic in the UK, a commission reluctantly established by Prime Minister Gordon Brown under pressure from anti-war activists in Britain is beginning hearings into the actions and statements of British leaders that led to the country's joining the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Even before testimony began in hearings that started yesterday, news began to leak out from documents obtained by the commission that the government of former PM Tony Blair had lied to Parliament and the public about the country's involvement in war planning.
Britain's Telegraph newspaper over the weekend published documents from British military leaders, including a memo from British special forces head Maj. Gen. Graeme Lamb, saying that he had been instructed to begin “working the war up since early 2002.”
This means that Blair, who in July 2002, had assured members of a House of Commons committee that there were “no preparations to invade Iraq,” was lying.
Things are likely to heat up when the commission begins hearing testimony. It has the power, and intends to compel testimony from top government officials, including Blair himself.
While some American newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, have run an Associated Press report on the new disclosures and on the commission, key news organizations, including the New York Times, have not. The Times ignored the Telegraph report, but a day later ran an article about the British commission that focused entirely on evidence that British military leaders in Iraq felt “slighted” by “arrogant” American military leaders who, the article reported, pushed for aggressive military action against insurgent groups, while British leaders preferred negotiating with them.
While that may be of some historical interest, it hardly compares with the evidence that Blair and the Bush/Cheney administration were secretly conspiring to invade Iraq as early as February and March 2002.
Recall that back in the fall of 2002, the Bush/Cheney argument to Congress and the American people for initiating a war against Iraq was that Iraq was allegedly behind the 9-11 attacks and that it posed an “imminent” danger of attack against the US and Britain with its alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Of course, such arguments, which have subsequently been shown to have been bogus, would have had no merit if the planning began a year earlier, and if no such urgency was expressed by the two leaders at that time. Imminent, after all, means imminent, and if Blair, Bush and Cheney had genuinely thought an attack with WMDs was imminent back in the early days of the Bush administration, they would have been acting immediately, not secretly conjuring up a war scheduled for a year later. (The actual invasion began on March 19, 2003).
As I documented in my book, The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin's Press, 2006), there is plenty of evidence that Bush and Cheney had a scheme to put the US at war with Iraq even before Bush took office on Jan. 20, 2001. Then Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in his own tell-all book, The Price of Loyalty, written after he was dumped from the Bush Administration, recounts that at the first meeting of Bush's new National Security Council, the question of going to war and ousting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was on the agenda. Immediately after the 9-11 attacks, NSC anti-terrorism program czar Richard Clarke also recalled Bush ordering him to “find a link” to Iraq. Meanwhile, within days, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was ordering top generals to prepare for an Iraq invasion. Gen. Tommy Franks, who was heading up the military effort in Afghanistan that was reportedly closing in on Osama Bin Laden, found the rug being pulled out from under him as Rumsfeld began shifting troops out of Afghanistan and to Kuwait in preparation for the new war.
It is nothing less than astonishing that so little news of the British investigation into the origins of the illegal Iraq War is being conveyed to Americans by this country's corporate media—yet another example demonstrating that American journalism is dead or dying. It is even more astonishing that neither the Congress nor the president here in America is making any similar effort to put America's leaders in the dock to tell the truth about their machinations in engineering a war that has cost the US over $1 trillion (perhaps $3 trillion eventually when debt payments and the cost of veterans care is added in), and over 4000 lives, not to mention as many as one million innocent Iraqi lives.
__________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
Obama Says He Intends to ‘Finish the Job’ in Afghanistan By JEFF ZELENY and DAVID STOUT, New York Times, November 25, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama said on Tuesday that he will announce his decision on how many more troops to send to Afghanistan next week, and that it is his intention to “finish the job” that began with the overthrow of the Taliban government in the fall of 2001.
Mr. Obama, offering a tantalizing preview of what looms as one of the momentous decisions of his presidency, said he would tell the American people about “a comprehensive strategy” embracing civilian and diplomatic efforts as well as the continuing military campaign.
While he avoided any hints of the new troop levels he foresees in Afghanistan, the president signaled that he will not be talking about a short-term commitment but rather an effort muscular enough to “dismantle and degrade” the enemy and ensure that “Al Qaeda and its extremist allies cannot operate” in the region.
A round of White House meetings on Afghanistan, which concluded on Monday night, included discussions about sending about 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, administration officials said. There are about 68,000 United States troops there now.
The president commented during an appearance at mid-day Tuesday with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India after what Mr. Obama called a “detailed discussion” of regional issues with the Indian leader, including Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama said there had been “some progress” in efforts by the Pakistan military to root out extremists. Al Qaeda members are widely believed to travel freely between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
President Obama said the entire world has “a core security interest in making sure that the kind of extremism and violence that you’ve seen emanating from this region is tackled, confronted in a serious way.”
Mr. Obama said he would talk about the “obligations” of America’s allies in fostering peace in Afghanistan, and that the United States would be acting not unilaterally but rather as part of “a broader international community.” It will be up to the Afghan people to bring security to their homeland, with the help of training and other outside assistance, the president said.
“And I feel very confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we’re doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, that they will be supportive,” Mr. Obama said. Public opinion polls have shown growing concern among the American people over the war in Afghanistan, and there is unease as well on Capitol Hill, where hearings are likely soon after the president’s address.President Obama has made revamping of health care in the United States his top domestic priority, and it would be a nightmare for his administration to become mired in Afghanistan, as President Lyndon B. Johnson did in Vietnam more than four decades ago.
In pledging that the United States would “finish the job” in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama said the campaign there had not had sufficient resources for the past eight years, an obvious allusion to the war in Iraq undertaken by President George W. Bush, to the detriment of the effort in Afghanistan, in the opinion of President Bush’s critics.
Administration officials said President Obama had conducted the final meeting of his military review for Afghanistan. While there was a growing impression in the White House that the address to the nation would be next Tuesday, Mr. Obama did not specify a day for his speech. He jokingly told journalists he had already given them “a sufficient preview to last until after Thanksgiving.”
The chief White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said Tuesday morning that “after completing a rigorous final meeting, President Obama has the information he wants and needs to make his decision, and he will announce that decision within days.”
For two hours on Monday evening, Mr. Obama held his ninth meeting in the Situation Room with his war council. The session began at 8:13 p.m., aides said, and ended at 10:10 p.m.
Mr. Obama’s military and national security advisers came back to him with answers he had requested in previous meetings, most of which focused on these questions: Where are the off-ramps for the military? And what is the exit strategy?
The conversation settled around sending about 30,000 more American troops, two officials said, the first of which would deploy early next year to be in place in southern or eastern Afghanistan by the spring. The troop reinforcements would most likely be sent in waves, according to an official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss war strategy.
The White House has indicated recently that Mr. Obama has been studying several alternative approaches — including varying numbers of troops — with the intent of picking what he considers the best features of each.
Mr. Obama did not announce his specific decision to his advisers. He is scheduled to stay at the White House over the Thanksgiving holiday to finalize his decision, as the White House plans to prepare for what could be Mr. Obama’s first prime-time address to the nation from the Oval Office.
The venue of the announcement has not been decided, however. While an Oval Office address fits the gravity of the moment, one official said Tuesday that a full-length speech — rather than a short message, delivered as the president sits behind a desk — is a more likely way for Mr. Obama to explain one of the most important decisions yet in his presidency.
For the first time, Peter R. Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, joined the group of advisers in the White House Situation Room on Monday evening — a strong indication that the president’s address would allude to the enormous costs of the military effort.
A photograph released by the White House shows Mr. Orszag sitting four seats from the president, next to Susan Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations.
As the White House prepares for how Mr. Obama will explain his decision to the nation, the president is trying to allay deep concerns within his own party.
The first in a series of meetings with Congressional leader was to come come later on Tuesday, when Mr. Obama plans to meet at 3:10 p.m. in the Oval Office with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That meeting is to be followed by a private session with Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates at 4:30 p.m.
The White House is preparing for the president’s announcement to take place next Tuesday evening, aides said, which would probably be followed by hearings in the House and Senate. But the date could be changed, one official said, depending on briefings with Congress and allied leaders.
While Mr. Obama is expected by several of his advisers to announce sending more than 20,000 new troops — perhaps closer to the 40,000, as recommended by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal — the White House is working to make the announcement more than about simply the number of troops. It will include an outline of an exit strategy, officials said.
The New York Times Company
Mr. Obama, offering a tantalizing preview of what looms as one of the momentous decisions of his presidency, said he would tell the American people about “a comprehensive strategy” embracing civilian and diplomatic efforts as well as the continuing military campaign.
While he avoided any hints of the new troop levels he foresees in Afghanistan, the president signaled that he will not be talking about a short-term commitment but rather an effort muscular enough to “dismantle and degrade” the enemy and ensure that “Al Qaeda and its extremist allies cannot operate” in the region.
A round of White House meetings on Afghanistan, which concluded on Monday night, included discussions about sending about 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, administration officials said. There are about 68,000 United States troops there now.
The president commented during an appearance at mid-day Tuesday with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India after what Mr. Obama called a “detailed discussion” of regional issues with the Indian leader, including Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama said there had been “some progress” in efforts by the Pakistan military to root out extremists. Al Qaeda members are widely believed to travel freely between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
President Obama said the entire world has “a core security interest in making sure that the kind of extremism and violence that you’ve seen emanating from this region is tackled, confronted in a serious way.”
Mr. Obama said he would talk about the “obligations” of America’s allies in fostering peace in Afghanistan, and that the United States would be acting not unilaterally but rather as part of “a broader international community.” It will be up to the Afghan people to bring security to their homeland, with the help of training and other outside assistance, the president said.
“And I feel very confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we’re doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, that they will be supportive,” Mr. Obama said. Public opinion polls have shown growing concern among the American people over the war in Afghanistan, and there is unease as well on Capitol Hill, where hearings are likely soon after the president’s address.President Obama has made revamping of health care in the United States his top domestic priority, and it would be a nightmare for his administration to become mired in Afghanistan, as President Lyndon B. Johnson did in Vietnam more than four decades ago.
In pledging that the United States would “finish the job” in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama said the campaign there had not had sufficient resources for the past eight years, an obvious allusion to the war in Iraq undertaken by President George W. Bush, to the detriment of the effort in Afghanistan, in the opinion of President Bush’s critics.
Administration officials said President Obama had conducted the final meeting of his military review for Afghanistan. While there was a growing impression in the White House that the address to the nation would be next Tuesday, Mr. Obama did not specify a day for his speech. He jokingly told journalists he had already given them “a sufficient preview to last until after Thanksgiving.”
The chief White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said Tuesday morning that “after completing a rigorous final meeting, President Obama has the information he wants and needs to make his decision, and he will announce that decision within days.”
For two hours on Monday evening, Mr. Obama held his ninth meeting in the Situation Room with his war council. The session began at 8:13 p.m., aides said, and ended at 10:10 p.m.
Mr. Obama’s military and national security advisers came back to him with answers he had requested in previous meetings, most of which focused on these questions: Where are the off-ramps for the military? And what is the exit strategy?
The conversation settled around sending about 30,000 more American troops, two officials said, the first of which would deploy early next year to be in place in southern or eastern Afghanistan by the spring. The troop reinforcements would most likely be sent in waves, according to an official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss war strategy.
The White House has indicated recently that Mr. Obama has been studying several alternative approaches — including varying numbers of troops — with the intent of picking what he considers the best features of each.
Mr. Obama did not announce his specific decision to his advisers. He is scheduled to stay at the White House over the Thanksgiving holiday to finalize his decision, as the White House plans to prepare for what could be Mr. Obama’s first prime-time address to the nation from the Oval Office.
The venue of the announcement has not been decided, however. While an Oval Office address fits the gravity of the moment, one official said Tuesday that a full-length speech — rather than a short message, delivered as the president sits behind a desk — is a more likely way for Mr. Obama to explain one of the most important decisions yet in his presidency.
For the first time, Peter R. Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, joined the group of advisers in the White House Situation Room on Monday evening — a strong indication that the president’s address would allude to the enormous costs of the military effort.
A photograph released by the White House shows Mr. Orszag sitting four seats from the president, next to Susan Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations.
As the White House prepares for how Mr. Obama will explain his decision to the nation, the president is trying to allay deep concerns within his own party.
The first in a series of meetings with Congressional leader was to come come later on Tuesday, when Mr. Obama plans to meet at 3:10 p.m. in the Oval Office with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That meeting is to be followed by a private session with Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates at 4:30 p.m.
The White House is preparing for the president’s announcement to take place next Tuesday evening, aides said, which would probably be followed by hearings in the House and Senate. But the date could be changed, one official said, depending on briefings with Congress and allied leaders.
While Mr. Obama is expected by several of his advisers to announce sending more than 20,000 new troops — perhaps closer to the 40,000, as recommended by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal — the White House is working to make the announcement more than about simply the number of troops. It will include an outline of an exit strategy, officials said.
The New York Times Company
White supremacist and teen sought in Calgary Bombing: Police say it was a targeted attack, by DAWN WALTON, Globe & Mail, Nov 24, 09
DAWN WALTON
CALGARY — From Tuesday's Globe and Mail Published on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009 12:00AM EST Last updated on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009 4:47AM EST
An avowed white supremacist and a teenager are being sought in connection with a bombing in Calgary over the weekend that police say was a targeted attack.
Police issued warrants yesterday for Kyle Robert McKee, 24, who is involved with the Aryan Guard, as well as a 17-year-old male who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
Staff Sergeant Keith Cain said it's not clear whether the teen is also connected to the neo-Nazi group, which has been active in recent years in Calgary, holding marches, rallies and offering to pay the rent of new recruits. It claims a few dozen members. In March, members clashed with anti-racism protesters in a skirmish that ended in minor injuries and arrests.
Both men are wanted for attempted murder, possessing, making or controlling explosives, and possession of a weapon or imitation weapon for a dangerous purpose.
On Saturday morning, police responded to a complaint from residents of gunfire in the Rundle neighbourhood in the city's northeast. Investigators found what appeared to be an improvised explosive device in a parking lot between two apartment buildings.
It had been detonated.
The tactical team was called in and nearby residents were evacuated. Officers found a second detonated IED nearby.
Police said the intended victim spotted the devices outside his ground-floor apartment and tossed them away moments before they blew up.
The attack could have been much worse for the man and woman inside the apartment, Staff Sgt. Cain said.
"It would have been fatal. They could have blown through the window and killed whoever was inside the residence," he said.
Police called it a targeted attack, although there is no indication that it is a hate crime or that it is gang-related. The suspects and the victims are known to each other and share similar beliefs, police said.
"We're very interested in locating both the 17-year-old and Mr. McKee because we believe that there is danger to the victims and possibly to others," Staff Sgt. Cain said.
CALGARY — From Tuesday's Globe and Mail Published on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009 12:00AM EST Last updated on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009 4:47AM EST
An avowed white supremacist and a teenager are being sought in connection with a bombing in Calgary over the weekend that police say was a targeted attack.
Police issued warrants yesterday for Kyle Robert McKee, 24, who is involved with the Aryan Guard, as well as a 17-year-old male who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
Staff Sergeant Keith Cain said it's not clear whether the teen is also connected to the neo-Nazi group, which has been active in recent years in Calgary, holding marches, rallies and offering to pay the rent of new recruits. It claims a few dozen members. In March, members clashed with anti-racism protesters in a skirmish that ended in minor injuries and arrests.
Both men are wanted for attempted murder, possessing, making or controlling explosives, and possession of a weapon or imitation weapon for a dangerous purpose.
On Saturday morning, police responded to a complaint from residents of gunfire in the Rundle neighbourhood in the city's northeast. Investigators found what appeared to be an improvised explosive device in a parking lot between two apartment buildings.
It had been detonated.
The tactical team was called in and nearby residents were evacuated. Officers found a second detonated IED nearby.
Police said the intended victim spotted the devices outside his ground-floor apartment and tossed them away moments before they blew up.
The attack could have been much worse for the man and woman inside the apartment, Staff Sgt. Cain said.
"It would have been fatal. They could have blown through the window and killed whoever was inside the residence," he said.
Police called it a targeted attack, although there is no indication that it is a hate crime or that it is gang-related. The suspects and the victims are known to each other and share similar beliefs, police said.
"We're very interested in locating both the 17-year-old and Mr. McKee because we believe that there is danger to the victims and possibly to others," Staff Sgt. Cain said.
November 23, 2009
PNHP co-founder Dr. Steffie Woolhandler on the passage of House Bill 3962, Physicians for a National Health Program, Posted on: Mon., Nov. 16
(Excerpted from an interview with Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, November 11, 2009)
AMY GOODMAN: When the House voted on the bill, 220-to-215, what was your reaction? And can you analyze it for us?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, we think that the Congress needs to start from scratch on this bill. The reform process in Washington has been hijacked by the private health insurance industry. If you look at the Baucus framework, which was the basis of the Senate bill—it’s on the Senate Finance Committee website. Just right-click on that document, and it turns out the author of the document was Elizabeth Fowler, who’s a former vice president of Wellpoint, the nation’s largest private insurance company, covering 35 million people. So the private insurance industry has hijacked the process. What’s come out of the House, what’s likely to come out of the Senate, is a completely inadequate bill that takes about $500 billion in taxpayer money and hands it over to the private health insurance industry.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, explain exactly that, as people are suffering in the midst of this, you know, tremendous economic downturn, this global economic meltdown. You’re talking once again, not only with the bankers, but with the insurance company, of forcing people to buy health insurance, but to buy it from private insurers. So this is an incredible deal for the private insurers.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Right. Well, the private insurers are getting millions of mandatory new customers. The taxpayers are going to give subsidies. It’s not going to make healthcare affordable, but it’s going to cost the taxpayers a lot of money to give these subsidies.
Private health insurance is a defective product. We know from our studies of bankruptcy that the majority of Americans who face medical bankruptcy start their illness with private health insurance but are bankrupted anyway by gaps in coverage, like co-payments, deductibles and uncovered services.
And under the House and Senate bills, they’ve done nothing to fix private health insurance. They’ve merely made private health insurance mandatory for middle-income working people and forcing those folks to take lots of money out of their pocket to buy this defective product.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, most bankruptcies in this country are caused by medical problems; they are medical bankruptcies.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Right. In our studies, we found that 62 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States are due at least in part to medical illness or medical bills and that the majority of folks in medical bankruptcy started that illness with private health insurance.
AMY GOODMAN: But what about those who perhaps do even support Medicare for all or single payer who are saying, “Well, at least now you’re talking about tens of millions of people who will be insured, who weren’t otherwise”?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: What’s happened in the past when bills like this have passed in the states is that they run out of money very quickly, healthcare is simply unaffordable, and then you start to see the coverage expansions cut back. The subsidies shrink, the Medicaid shrinks, and then you’re back at square one, where you’ve spent a lot of money and not made any progress. And we’ve seen this over and over in the United States—in Massachusetts in 1988, in Oregon in 1992, in Washington 1993—passed bills virtually identical to what’s being passed in the House right now, and there was no durable improvement in the number of uninsured in those states. Healthcare was not affordable ten years after those bills were passed.
The problem with the House bill is it simply won’t work. And, you know, if we want to expand Medicaid, fine, we should expand Medicaid. If we want more primary care, good, let’s expand primary care. But doing it through $500 billion in subsidies to the private health insurance industry will have the effect of making the health insurance industry more powerful, making the health insurance lobby more powerful. And just as they’ve hijacked this process in Washington, it makes them more able to hijack political processes in the future.
AMY GOODMAN: And the cost of drugs? So it’s not only the mandatory—mandating that people buy health insurance from private companies, but the deal that was worked with the pharmaceutical industry in this country. Explain that.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: OK. Well, the deal with the pharmaceutical industry was minimal. The pharmaceutical industry gave up very little. They said for Medicare recipients who are in the doughnut hole, they would make low[er]-priced [brand-name drugs] available. That’s a very small share of the population. For the rest of us, who may be unable to afford expensive medications, we got nothing out of the pharmaceutical industry.
The pharmaceutical industry, frankly, is thrilled with this bill. And despite all their squawking, the health insurance industry is pretty happy, too. You know, Wall Street has rewarded them by driving up the value of their stocks. And I think any fair and honest reading of this bill would say that it’s a tremendous victory for the health insurance industry. And what we need to do to get to universal healthcare is start from scratch, go for that Medicare-for-all, single-payer approach.
AMY GOODMAN: And the issue of women, reproductive healthcare and abortion?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, that is a horrendous provision in the House bill, which would essentially extend a ban on abortion to private health insurance. In the past, the Hyde Amendment applied only to people who were getting publicly funded care. But in the new bill, any insurance product that’s offered through the exchange has to—
AMY GOODMAN: And explain the exchange.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Yes. The exchange would be this marketplace where you would go to buy your insurance. If you had subsidized coverage, you would have to buy your insurance through the exchange.
And any insurance plan purchased through the exchange would have to exclude coverage of abortion. So, for the first time, Congress has stepped in and said that even with your own money, with private money, it’s illegal for insurance to cover abortion. It’s a tremendous step backwards for women’s rights.
AMY GOODMAN: And do you think it will make its way through to the final bill?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, I’m not sure about that. Certainly President Obama has weighed in to say, “Well, let’s try to return to what was there before, with just a ban on public funding of abortion,” which is bad enough. It remains unclear what’s going to happen in the Senate, whether the right-to-life folks will step in and get an anti-choice plank in the Senate bill, as well. They certainly were successful in the House. And, of course, that’s one of the many reasons that we think we need to start from scratch on a new health reform bill.
AMY GOODMAN: Steffie Woolhandler, you come from Massachusetts. That’s often held up as the model. I recently saw on CNN your former Governor Weld interviewed about his plan that has been adopted by all of Massachusetts. Explain the Massachusetts plan and then how we, as Americans, fit into the rest of the world when it comes to our healthcare system.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: OK. Well, the Massachusetts plan is considered the model for the national legislation. There’s a mandate that makes it illegal to refuse to purchase private health insurance. The fine is up to $1,068. The good thing with the Massachusetts plan was there was a big Medicaid expansion, but you didn’t need to do the mandates in order to do the Medicaid expansion.
Much of the Massachusetts plan has been wildly expensive. According to the state’s report to its bondholders, it’s cost $1.3 billion this year. The state has opted to pay for that by stealing money from safety net clinics and hospitals, so that safety net providers that care for immigrants, the mentally ill, people with substance abuse, that provide primary care, they’ve seen their funds shrunken, so that money could be handed over to purchase insurance policies. Massachusetts now has the highest healthcare costs in the history of the world.
You have to compare that to what goes on internationally. With the average per capita cost of healthcare about half those in the United States, yet people in Canada and western Europe live about two years longer. They have complete free choice of doctor and hospital. They have lower infant mortality. People in other developed nations use some form of nonprofit national health insurance to get better care for less money. And that’s why our group supports the Medicare-for-all approach.
AMY GOODMAN: So the question is where that fits in today. Finally, former President Clinton met with Senate Democrats yesterday and basically said nothing—said something is better than nothing, pass this now. What do you feel about that?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, I think we know—we now know the outlines of what they’re going to pass. It’s not an abstract something; it’s something real. And it’s quite bad. It’s $500 billion in new subsidies to the private health insurance, millions of mandatory new customers for private health insurance.
The public plan option is incredibly puny. According to the Congressional Budget Office, fewer than 2 percent of Americans will enroll. And the premiums will actually be higher—higher—than premiums in the private sector. So the public plan option will be an expensive, tax-funded subsidy to private health insurance, because the public plan option will take the sickest patients off their hands. It’s not going to be something that’s going to generate coverage or decrease costs.
So, we know what the outlines are of the plan, and there are so many bad and harmful planks to the plan that we do need to start from scratch on health reform.
AMY GOODMAN: Since it doesn’t look like they will, will you not support what is coming out right now? Would you have voted no if you were a congressman—Congress member? Would you vote no in the Senate?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, I’m a, you know, doctor; I’m not a politician. I feel a little bit like we’re debating whether to give aspirin or Tylenol to a patient with breast cancer. The patient needs surgery. And what’s being debated in Washington is really Tylenol or aspirin. And I had said for awhile we’d have to see the final shape of the bill, because, of course, we’d—I’d love to see more Medicaid money. Medicaid is very helpful for very poor people. It’s not perfect, but it’s much better than nothing. But I think there’s so many bad planks in the bill that this bill needs to be scratched, and we need to start over.
AMY GOODMAN: Do think this is a better deal for the health insurance industry, for the private health insurance industry in this country, than we have right now?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: I actually do. Their number one demand was the so-called individual mandate that would make it illegal to not have health insurance. It will become a federal crime to be uninsured. If you have private health insurance through your work, and you hate your private health insurance, tough luck, you have to keep that insurance. The mandate means you have to keep it. You can’t buy the public option. You probably won’t be able to go through the exchange. So they’ve made private health insurance mandatory, giving them hundreds of billions in new—mandatory new customers.
There’s some minimal insurance regulation, and I think more regulation is better than less regulation of insurance, but that’s going to be counterbalanced by the tremendous economic boost that will be given to the private health insurance industry through this bill. And as we know, if you have a lot of money, you can buy a lot of political influence. I think down the line we’re actually likely to be worse off in handing over so much taxpayer money to what is essentially a private health insurance industry bailout.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, I want to thank you very much for being with us, professor of medicine at Harvard University, primary care physician in Cambridge, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. We’ll have a link to their study on our website at democracynow.org.
Physicians for a National Health Program
29 E Madison Suite 602, Chicago, IL 60602
AMY GOODMAN: When the House voted on the bill, 220-to-215, what was your reaction? And can you analyze it for us?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, we think that the Congress needs to start from scratch on this bill. The reform process in Washington has been hijacked by the private health insurance industry. If you look at the Baucus framework, which was the basis of the Senate bill—it’s on the Senate Finance Committee website. Just right-click on that document, and it turns out the author of the document was Elizabeth Fowler, who’s a former vice president of Wellpoint, the nation’s largest private insurance company, covering 35 million people. So the private insurance industry has hijacked the process. What’s come out of the House, what’s likely to come out of the Senate, is a completely inadequate bill that takes about $500 billion in taxpayer money and hands it over to the private health insurance industry.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, explain exactly that, as people are suffering in the midst of this, you know, tremendous economic downturn, this global economic meltdown. You’re talking once again, not only with the bankers, but with the insurance company, of forcing people to buy health insurance, but to buy it from private insurers. So this is an incredible deal for the private insurers.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Right. Well, the private insurers are getting millions of mandatory new customers. The taxpayers are going to give subsidies. It’s not going to make healthcare affordable, but it’s going to cost the taxpayers a lot of money to give these subsidies.
Private health insurance is a defective product. We know from our studies of bankruptcy that the majority of Americans who face medical bankruptcy start their illness with private health insurance but are bankrupted anyway by gaps in coverage, like co-payments, deductibles and uncovered services.
And under the House and Senate bills, they’ve done nothing to fix private health insurance. They’ve merely made private health insurance mandatory for middle-income working people and forcing those folks to take lots of money out of their pocket to buy this defective product.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, most bankruptcies in this country are caused by medical problems; they are medical bankruptcies.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Right. In our studies, we found that 62 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States are due at least in part to medical illness or medical bills and that the majority of folks in medical bankruptcy started that illness with private health insurance.
AMY GOODMAN: But what about those who perhaps do even support Medicare for all or single payer who are saying, “Well, at least now you’re talking about tens of millions of people who will be insured, who weren’t otherwise”?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: What’s happened in the past when bills like this have passed in the states is that they run out of money very quickly, healthcare is simply unaffordable, and then you start to see the coverage expansions cut back. The subsidies shrink, the Medicaid shrinks, and then you’re back at square one, where you’ve spent a lot of money and not made any progress. And we’ve seen this over and over in the United States—in Massachusetts in 1988, in Oregon in 1992, in Washington 1993—passed bills virtually identical to what’s being passed in the House right now, and there was no durable improvement in the number of uninsured in those states. Healthcare was not affordable ten years after those bills were passed.
The problem with the House bill is it simply won’t work. And, you know, if we want to expand Medicaid, fine, we should expand Medicaid. If we want more primary care, good, let’s expand primary care. But doing it through $500 billion in subsidies to the private health insurance industry will have the effect of making the health insurance industry more powerful, making the health insurance lobby more powerful. And just as they’ve hijacked this process in Washington, it makes them more able to hijack political processes in the future.
AMY GOODMAN: And the cost of drugs? So it’s not only the mandatory—mandating that people buy health insurance from private companies, but the deal that was worked with the pharmaceutical industry in this country. Explain that.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: OK. Well, the deal with the pharmaceutical industry was minimal. The pharmaceutical industry gave up very little. They said for Medicare recipients who are in the doughnut hole, they would make low[er]-priced [brand-name drugs] available. That’s a very small share of the population. For the rest of us, who may be unable to afford expensive medications, we got nothing out of the pharmaceutical industry.
The pharmaceutical industry, frankly, is thrilled with this bill. And despite all their squawking, the health insurance industry is pretty happy, too. You know, Wall Street has rewarded them by driving up the value of their stocks. And I think any fair and honest reading of this bill would say that it’s a tremendous victory for the health insurance industry. And what we need to do to get to universal healthcare is start from scratch, go for that Medicare-for-all, single-payer approach.
AMY GOODMAN: And the issue of women, reproductive healthcare and abortion?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, that is a horrendous provision in the House bill, which would essentially extend a ban on abortion to private health insurance. In the past, the Hyde Amendment applied only to people who were getting publicly funded care. But in the new bill, any insurance product that’s offered through the exchange has to—
AMY GOODMAN: And explain the exchange.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Yes. The exchange would be this marketplace where you would go to buy your insurance. If you had subsidized coverage, you would have to buy your insurance through the exchange.
And any insurance plan purchased through the exchange would have to exclude coverage of abortion. So, for the first time, Congress has stepped in and said that even with your own money, with private money, it’s illegal for insurance to cover abortion. It’s a tremendous step backwards for women’s rights.
AMY GOODMAN: And do you think it will make its way through to the final bill?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, I’m not sure about that. Certainly President Obama has weighed in to say, “Well, let’s try to return to what was there before, with just a ban on public funding of abortion,” which is bad enough. It remains unclear what’s going to happen in the Senate, whether the right-to-life folks will step in and get an anti-choice plank in the Senate bill, as well. They certainly were successful in the House. And, of course, that’s one of the many reasons that we think we need to start from scratch on a new health reform bill.
AMY GOODMAN: Steffie Woolhandler, you come from Massachusetts. That’s often held up as the model. I recently saw on CNN your former Governor Weld interviewed about his plan that has been adopted by all of Massachusetts. Explain the Massachusetts plan and then how we, as Americans, fit into the rest of the world when it comes to our healthcare system.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: OK. Well, the Massachusetts plan is considered the model for the national legislation. There’s a mandate that makes it illegal to refuse to purchase private health insurance. The fine is up to $1,068. The good thing with the Massachusetts plan was there was a big Medicaid expansion, but you didn’t need to do the mandates in order to do the Medicaid expansion.
Much of the Massachusetts plan has been wildly expensive. According to the state’s report to its bondholders, it’s cost $1.3 billion this year. The state has opted to pay for that by stealing money from safety net clinics and hospitals, so that safety net providers that care for immigrants, the mentally ill, people with substance abuse, that provide primary care, they’ve seen their funds shrunken, so that money could be handed over to purchase insurance policies. Massachusetts now has the highest healthcare costs in the history of the world.
You have to compare that to what goes on internationally. With the average per capita cost of healthcare about half those in the United States, yet people in Canada and western Europe live about two years longer. They have complete free choice of doctor and hospital. They have lower infant mortality. People in other developed nations use some form of nonprofit national health insurance to get better care for less money. And that’s why our group supports the Medicare-for-all approach.
AMY GOODMAN: So the question is where that fits in today. Finally, former President Clinton met with Senate Democrats yesterday and basically said nothing—said something is better than nothing, pass this now. What do you feel about that?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, I think we know—we now know the outlines of what they’re going to pass. It’s not an abstract something; it’s something real. And it’s quite bad. It’s $500 billion in new subsidies to the private health insurance, millions of mandatory new customers for private health insurance.
The public plan option is incredibly puny. According to the Congressional Budget Office, fewer than 2 percent of Americans will enroll. And the premiums will actually be higher—higher—than premiums in the private sector. So the public plan option will be an expensive, tax-funded subsidy to private health insurance, because the public plan option will take the sickest patients off their hands. It’s not going to be something that’s going to generate coverage or decrease costs.
So, we know what the outlines are of the plan, and there are so many bad and harmful planks to the plan that we do need to start from scratch on health reform.
AMY GOODMAN: Since it doesn’t look like they will, will you not support what is coming out right now? Would you have voted no if you were a congressman—Congress member? Would you vote no in the Senate?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, I’m a, you know, doctor; I’m not a politician. I feel a little bit like we’re debating whether to give aspirin or Tylenol to a patient with breast cancer. The patient needs surgery. And what’s being debated in Washington is really Tylenol or aspirin. And I had said for awhile we’d have to see the final shape of the bill, because, of course, we’d—I’d love to see more Medicaid money. Medicaid is very helpful for very poor people. It’s not perfect, but it’s much better than nothing. But I think there’s so many bad planks in the bill that this bill needs to be scratched, and we need to start over.
AMY GOODMAN: Do think this is a better deal for the health insurance industry, for the private health insurance industry in this country, than we have right now?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: I actually do. Their number one demand was the so-called individual mandate that would make it illegal to not have health insurance. It will become a federal crime to be uninsured. If you have private health insurance through your work, and you hate your private health insurance, tough luck, you have to keep that insurance. The mandate means you have to keep it. You can’t buy the public option. You probably won’t be able to go through the exchange. So they’ve made private health insurance mandatory, giving them hundreds of billions in new—mandatory new customers.
There’s some minimal insurance regulation, and I think more regulation is better than less regulation of insurance, but that’s going to be counterbalanced by the tremendous economic boost that will be given to the private health insurance industry through this bill. And as we know, if you have a lot of money, you can buy a lot of political influence. I think down the line we’re actually likely to be worse off in handing over so much taxpayer money to what is essentially a private health insurance industry bailout.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, I want to thank you very much for being with us, professor of medicine at Harvard University, primary care physician in Cambridge, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. We’ll have a link to their study on our website at democracynow.org.
Physicians for a National Health Program
29 E Madison Suite 602, Chicago, IL 60602
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Lacrosse trumps torture for Stephen Harper, by John Ibbitson, Globe & Mail, Nov. 23, 2009
(Photo: The Prime Minister accepts an official 2010 Team Canada lacrosse jersey from players Brodie Merrill and Geoff Snider at his Langevin Block office. Jason Ransom/PMO)
All available opposition guns were brought to bear against the government on the question of Afghan detainees during Question Period. But Prime Minister Stephen Harper wasn’t in the House to return fire. His more pressing engagement was a photo opportunity with the national men’s lacrosse team.
So Mr. Harper didn’t get to hear the Liberals join the NDP in calling for a public inquiry into whether and why Canadian forces transferred Afghans in their custody to local officials, who proceeded to torture them, according to testimony last week by Richard Colvin, a Foreign Affairs official who was in Afghanistan during the years of alleged abuse in 2006-2007. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff opened the questioning, asking why the government stopped transferring prisoners on several occasions, unless it was suspicious of exactly that abuse?
“Can’t the government tell us the truth on this issue?” he asked.
We stopped the transfers when the Afghans refused us access to their prisons, Defence Minister Peter MacKay, who was on his feet during much of Question Period, replied.
Then the Liberals unleashed the hounds. “This government is engaged in a massive obstruction of justice,” Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh stormed, repeating the demand for a public inquiry.
The Bloc Quebecois wanted to know why the government is trying to impeach the testimony of Mr. Colvin. “Why not investigate the allegations, rather than attack the messenger?” asked Bloc MP Claude Bachand.
To which Mr. MacKay repeatedly replied that “there has not been a single, solitary proven allegation of a prisoner being abused who was transferred” by Canadian authorities to Afghan authorities.
As for Mr. Colvin, “the testimony that was heard last week is not credible,” he maintained.
Many have stated such torture was routine, but the Conservatives have imposed a high burden of proof in this instance.
Such accusations, the minister suggested, impugns the integrity of the Forces. “The last thing they want to do is be smeared by the opposition,”
NDP Leader Jack Layton mischievously took a swipe at Mr. Ignatieff’s who controversially (though with many, many qualifications) supported the use of torture in extreme circumstances, after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
“Unlike other party leaders … we are not going to write books justifying torture in any way shape or form.” Mr. Layton reported to the House.
Mr. MacKay also counterattacked, claiming it was the Liberal government of Paul Martin that put the initial “inadequate transfer arrangement” in place. Mr. MacKay seemed prepared to comply with an opposition request to release all related ministerial and prime-ministerial briefing documents, broadly hinting that it was the Liberals would be embarrassed by what they read.
Then after almost half an hour, it was on to desultory questions on other topics, the only one of real interest being questions of Environment Minister Jim Prentice about what, if anything, Canada would be bringing to the climate change summit Describing the negotiations as “among the most difficult our country has ever been involved in,” Mr. Prentice insisted any agreement Canada signed on to would need the signatures of the United States, China, India, Brazil and other major emitters.
East Germans lost much in 1989, by Bruni de la Motte, The Guardian (UK), published: Sun 8 Nov 2009
For many in the GDR, the fall of the Berlin Wall and unification meant the loss of jobs, homes, security and equality
On 9 November 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down I realised German unification would soon follow, which it did a year later. This meant the end of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the country in which I was born, grew up, gave birth to my two children, gained my doctorate and enjoyed a fulfilling job as a lecturer in English literature at Potsdam University. Of course, unification brought with it the freedom to travel the world and, for some, more material wealth, but it also brought social breakdown, widespread unemployment, blacklisting, a crass materialism and an "elbow society" as well as a demonisation of the country I lived in and helped shape. Despite the advantages, for many it was more a disaster than a celebratory event.
Just two examples. My best friend, a foreign languages teacher, lost her job and was blacklisted because, at the time the wall fell, she happened to be teaching at a government law college. She was not a member of the party or indeed political at all. After much effort she managed to find a job helping young people excluded from school, with no long-term contract and on a much lower salary. My brother, who has a PhD in the philosophy of science, lost his research job at the academy and ever since has only been able to find odd, low-paid temporary jobs.
Little is known here about what happened to the GDR economy when the wall fell. Once the border was open the government decided to set up a trusteeship to ensure that "publicly owned enterprises" (the majority of businesses) would be transferred to the citizens who'd created the wealth. However, a few months before unification, the then newly elected conservative government handed over the trusteeship to west German appointees, many representing big business interests. The idea of "publicly owned" assets being transferred to citizens was quietly dropped. Instead all assets were privatised at breakneck speed. More then 85% were bought by west Germans and many were closed soon after. In the countryside 1.7 million hectares of agricultural and forest land were sold off and 80% of agricultural workers lost their job.
In July 1990, when the GDR still existed, a hasty "currency union" was introduced with the result that the GDR economy was plunged into bankruptcy. Before unification the West German mark was worth 4.50 GDR marks; however, at currency union it was fixed at parity with an exchange rate of 1:1. The result was that GDR export products rose in price by 450% overnight and were no longer competitive; the export market (39% of the economy) inevitably imploded.
Large numbers of ordinary workers lost their jobs, but so too did thousands of research workers and academics. As a result of the purging of academia, research and scientific establishments in a process of political vetting, more than a million individuals with degrees lost their jobs. This constituted about 50% of that group, creating in east Germany the highest percentage of professional unemployment in the world; all university chancellors and directors of state enterprises as well as 75,000 teachers lost their jobs and many were blacklisted. This process was in stark contrast to what happened in west Germany after the war, when few ex-Nazis were treated in this manner.
In the GDR everyone had a legally guaranteed security of tenure and ownership to the properties where they lived. After unification, 2.2m claims by non-GDR citizens were made on their homes. Many lost houses they'd lived in for decades; a number committed suicide rather than give them up. Ironically, claims for restitution the other way around, by east Germans on properties in the west, were rejected as "out of time".
Since the demise of the GDR, many have come to recognise and regret that the genuine "social achievements" they enjoyed were dismantled: social and gender equality, full employment and lack of existential fears, as well as subsidised rents, public transport, culture and sports facilities. Unfortunately, the collapse of the GDR and "state socialism" came shortly before the collapse of the "free market" system in the west.
Czech Communists want post-1989 politicians to account to people Prague, ČTK 16 Nov. 09
Prague, Nov 13 (CTK) - The Czech Communists (KSCM) called on post-November 1989 politicians to present to people accounts for the 20 years since the Velvet Revolution during which, they say, the property created in the 40 years of Communist rule has been misappropriated.
The KSCM leadership issued Friday a statement on the 20th anniversary of November 17, 1989, when the events that brought about the fall of Communist rule in then Czechoslovakia started.
The statement says the 20 years of "promises and lying" by the post-November governments and ruling political parties have resulted in the current economic and financial crisis.
A mere cliche has remained from the post-November 1989 ideas of democratisation of society, the statement says.
It claims that a majority of society wished that the socialist social system, work and social certainties be preserved 20 years ago.
The November 1989 leaders, "particularly Vaclav Havel and a part of so called 'dissidents' concentrated around him knowingly lied to people in the Czech Republic from the very beginning," the statement says.
Not the truth and love prevailed and determined the fundamental values of society, but those who were purposefully building neo-liberal capitalist society in which one sole measure - private profit - exists under the veil of moral values, the Communists say.
They refer to Havel's motto that the truth and love will prevail over lie and hatred.
The new political elites broke up the joint state of Czechs and Slovaks (as from January 1993) and the coupon privatisation became the fraud of the century, the statement claims.
It says unemployment has appeared in society and half a million people in the ten million country are without work now.
More than 800,000 people live on the brink of poverty, human health and the right to education have become commodities, society is threatened with mounting crime and corruption, including political corruption, the Communists say.
They accuse the post-November 1989 government of having brought the country to NATO, of sending soldiers to foreign missions and of being servile to the United States and other allies.
The Communists accuse the rightist parties of being ready "to sell the Czech Republic to the foreign military-economic interests of the United States" and to allow building a military base on Czech oil.
They refer to the U.S. plans to build a radar base on Czech soil within the U.S. missile defence shield that Barack Obama's government has scrapped, however.
The two strongest Czech parties, the Civic Democrats (ODS) and the Social Democrats (CSSD), together with their "political satellites" are unable to cope with the current social and economic problems of society, the statement says.
The Czech Republic has lost a substantial part of its state sovereignty when it entered NATO and ratified the Lisbon treaty.
"Vaclav Havel who bears personal responsibility for the developments in the Czech Republic over the past 20 years even publicly and systematically challenges the arrangement of Europe after World War Two," the Communists claim in the statement without elaborating.
The KSCM leadership issued Friday a statement on the 20th anniversary of November 17, 1989, when the events that brought about the fall of Communist rule in then Czechoslovakia started.
The statement says the 20 years of "promises and lying" by the post-November governments and ruling political parties have resulted in the current economic and financial crisis.
A mere cliche has remained from the post-November 1989 ideas of democratisation of society, the statement says.
It claims that a majority of society wished that the socialist social system, work and social certainties be preserved 20 years ago.
The November 1989 leaders, "particularly Vaclav Havel and a part of so called 'dissidents' concentrated around him knowingly lied to people in the Czech Republic from the very beginning," the statement says.
Not the truth and love prevailed and determined the fundamental values of society, but those who were purposefully building neo-liberal capitalist society in which one sole measure - private profit - exists under the veil of moral values, the Communists say.
They refer to Havel's motto that the truth and love will prevail over lie and hatred.
The new political elites broke up the joint state of Czechs and Slovaks (as from January 1993) and the coupon privatisation became the fraud of the century, the statement claims.
It says unemployment has appeared in society and half a million people in the ten million country are without work now.
More than 800,000 people live on the brink of poverty, human health and the right to education have become commodities, society is threatened with mounting crime and corruption, including political corruption, the Communists say.
They accuse the post-November 1989 government of having brought the country to NATO, of sending soldiers to foreign missions and of being servile to the United States and other allies.
The Communists accuse the rightist parties of being ready "to sell the Czech Republic to the foreign military-economic interests of the United States" and to allow building a military base on Czech oil.
They refer to the U.S. plans to build a radar base on Czech soil within the U.S. missile defence shield that Barack Obama's government has scrapped, however.
The two strongest Czech parties, the Civic Democrats (ODS) and the Social Democrats (CSSD), together with their "political satellites" are unable to cope with the current social and economic problems of society, the statement says.
The Czech Republic has lost a substantial part of its state sovereignty when it entered NATO and ratified the Lisbon treaty.
"Vaclav Havel who bears personal responsibility for the developments in the Czech Republic over the past 20 years even publicly and systematically challenges the arrangement of Europe after World War Two," the Communists claim in the statement without elaborating.
November 22, 2009
Nov 10 Poll: Czech Communists (KSCM) gain in support: Social Dems and Civic Dems slipping, ČTK , 19 November 2009
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Source: Prague Monitor
Prague, Nov 18 (CTK) - Preferences of the two strongest Czech political parties, the Social Democrats (CSSD) and the Civic Democrats (ODS), are falling, according to a November poll the STEM agency has released to CTK.
The CSSD is now supported by 25.4 percent of people, which is 1 percentage point less than in October, and the ODS is supported by 23.3 percent, 2 percentage points less than in October.
"The Communists (KSCM) have relatively strong preferences at the time of the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution," STEM analysts said.
According to its poll, 12.3 percent of people preferred the Communists in November.
The new conservative TOP 09 party is supported by 8.4 percent of people, the Christian Democrats by 5.1 percent, and the Green Party (SZ) by 3.5 percent.
All other political parties jointly received preferences of 6.6 percent of respondents, while 7.1 percent said they did not know what party they would vote for and over 6 percent said they would not vote for any party.
The preferences are calculated with the inclusion of undecided voters and people who said they would not vote for any party.
This means that the parties' actual election results would be better, STEM said.
According to STEM, the CSSD would gain 72 seats in the 200-member Chamber of Deputies, if elections were held in November. The ODS would gain 69 seats, the KSCM 31, TOP 09 would gain 18 and the KSCM 10.
"Given the current distribution of voter support it would be possible to form a stable grand coalition (ODS-CSSD) government. The CSSD and the KSCM would also be able to form a government that would enjoy the narrow support of 103 deputies in the lower house," the poll authors said.
According to the poll, 50 percent of Czechs would attend the elections in November, 18 percent clearly said they would not go to the polls and 32 percent were undecided.
The poll was conducted on 1300 adult voters on October 31 - November 9. The statistical margin of error is about 1.5 percent in small parties and about 2.5 percent in big parties.
November 20, 2009
Weak Public Option Myths That Liberals Believe, By Kevin Gosztola For OpEdNews: Kevin Gosztola, Nov 20, 2009
On Saturday night, the Senate will take a procedural vote to move debate on the current health insurance enrichment bill in Congress forward.
Democratic Senators like Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy, and Chuck Schumer, through a project called Citizens for a Public Option, have been building support for the public option and encouraging Americans to write letters to the editor that debunk health care reform myths---myths that the conservative echo chamber have been propagating.
Senators (and representatives in the House and Obama) can champion this health insurance legislation all they want and claim it will “foster greater competition in the marketplace, create more choices for consumers, and lead to lower costs and better quality for all,” but doctors who have been on the front lines of America's sick care non-system do not believe many of the arguments that Democrats are using to create support for a public option.
Myth #1 – Public option will help control costs
Dr. Margaret Flowers with Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) explains that Americans have been led to believe that “the public option is going to keep companies honest and help control costs.”
Obama and Congress are taking an approach that has failed to control costs time and time again.
“We've already had states that have tried this type of approach over the past few decades,” says Flowers. “Every state that has tried this approach has had these grandiose hopes where they had said we're going to cover this many of hundreds of thousands of people in this time period and not a single one of them has succeeded. They've all fallen far short and then gone under financially.”
Self-employed doctor, Dr. Matt Hendrickson, who risked arrest in a MobilizeforHealthcare.org action at the Cigna Offices in Glendale, CA, cites examples “from the last 20 years of states that have attempted a public option.” He explains that Tennessee, Oregon, and Massachusetss (twice) have tried the public option.
“In each case, the number of uninsured went down briefly then returned to the baseline for one reason: cost,” said Hendrickson. “There's no way to control cost as long as you allow private insurance industry to add a 25% surcharge to all healthcare transaction and to continue divert money to avoiding the sick, marketing and advertising, to avoid the sick and try to dump them onto a public plan.”
Anesthesiologist Dr. Samuel Metz, who is with the Mad as Hell Doctors, explains, “Massachusetts has been held up as an example of a state that has come closest to providing universal health insurance. However, not only has it failed to provide universal health insurance. It is also now the most expensive place on the planet for healthcare. It leads the U.S. in annual cost per person.”
The public option, “will not reduce the cost of healthcare,” says Metz. “In fact, it's anticipated it will add $800 billion more into a system that's already twice as expensive as the average industrialized nation.”
Myth #2 – The public option is a "public" option
The public option that came out of the House, according to Dr. Flowers, is “even worse than we could have imagined because they're predicting that maybe 2% of the population will be able to go into that public option, that it will be run by private insurance companies, and that it will actually cost more than private insurance.”
What's so public about something only open to 2% of the population?
As Kevin Zeese from the Prosperity Agendaexplains, “No matter how much you hate your current insurance, no matter how much they've abused you with premiums, co-pays, denials of care, no matter what they've done to you, you can't leave your insurance and go to the public option,” said Zeese. “90% of Americans can't even choose it. So much for choices.”
Flowers adds the government would be subsidizing the purse of private insurance to try to help people buy their products. Government would be putting public dollars into the pockets of private insurance companies. And, a private corporation would be allowed to run the public option.
How many Americans really think putting reform in the hands of those who have created this crisis in health care in America will ultimately work or produce any favorable results?
Myth #3 – Public option will make single-payer possible
Doctors, nurses, and patients following the de-evolution of health care reform closely know that the public option (especially the idea of a robust public option) is a carefully calculated political carrot being offered to progressives so they will sit down, shut up about single-payer, and support this current corporate giveaway to private insurance companies, which is moving through Congress right now.
Hendrickson explains, “The reason why the public option was introduced, according to congress people that have spoken to the single-payer movement, was because of the single-payer movement. There was such an upswell in the progressive part of this country for single-payer that they opted for some compromise that would not have been given if there wasn't so much support for single-payer.”
If you ask Zeese, this won't do anything to get us closer to single-payer.
This bill will “enshrine and deepen the power of the insurance industry.” Hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue, according to Zeese, will now be available for corrupting and influencing Congress.
It will be even harder to get single-payer if a weak public option remains in the bill. And the money government gives away will help private insurance fight any additional reforms to legislation passed by Congress and Obama.
Metz concludes that the public option will make it impossible for us to achieve universal coverage for at least a decade.
“Every passing year we'll see more Americans with worse health and nobody will do anything because we will point to our legislation and say give it another couple years to work,” says Metz. “And in five years, we will have exhausted the financial resources of the government, we will have exhausted taxpayers, we will have exhausted the good will of voters, the patience of voters, and no one will want to attempt health reform again.”
__________________________________________________________________
Kevin Gosztola is a trusted author who publishes his writing regularly to OpEdNews and Open Salon and he is a 2009 Young People For Fellow.
He is a documentary filmmaker currently completing a Film/Video degree at Columbia College in Chicago. Currently, he is working on a documentary project on Renaissance 2010 and Chicago Public Schools.
On Columbia College's campus, he helps organize events and programming with a humanities/social sciences group known as Critical Encounters. He is currently working with the group to plan a media summit for Chicago in April 2010 and is currently seeking speakers who are willing to participate in talking to artists and media makers about how they can use participatory or social media to create art & media that promotes conversation and action on political, social, and cultural issues.
Letter to an American Friend: On replacing the Hammer and Sickle, by Andrew Taylor Nov 20, 2009
I recently read a speech by a national communist party figure where she suggested her party replace the Hammer and Sickle emblem. The argument was that the sickle is not a 21st century understandable symbol.I think those who want to replace the hammer & sickle show profound anthropological naivete! Our Symbols from the past cannot be discarded without intentionally or by sheer stupidity tossing our ideology. Yes, all symbols require Translation, but symbols also gain associations in communities over time. To ditch the hammer and sickle for a new bureaucratic up-to-date symbol is idiotic.
November 19, 2009
Russian Capitalism catching on?: 3 Homeless men kill, eat friend, 'sell leftovers' to kebab house, Ilona Golovina, Moscow, November 17 (RIA Novosti)
Ларек на остановке
Related News
* Homeless men kill, dismember, eat victim in Russian Urals
* Five homeless people found killed near Moscow
Three tramps in Russia's Urals city of Perm killed an acquaintance, ate his remains and then sold the rest of his body to a nearby kebab house, Russian media have reported.
Police have established that the 25-year-old homeless man was killed by his fellow tramps on November 6. The tramps attacked the man with knives and a hammer. Media reports said one of the tramps suspected the victim of making advances to his girlfriend.
After the murder, which took place in a wooded area in the south of the city, the tramps cut their victim up, buried the upper half of the body, cooked and ate the lower half, and then sold the remains to a nearby kebab house, the news.ru website said, citing local reports.
The Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said police took a sample of the meat from the kebab house in order to verify the claims.
The three suspects are undergoing psychiatric evaluation.
Related News
* Homeless men kill, dismember, eat victim in Russian Urals
* Five homeless people found killed near Moscow
Three tramps in Russia's Urals city of Perm killed an acquaintance, ate his remains and then sold the rest of his body to a nearby kebab house, Russian media have reported.
Police have established that the 25-year-old homeless man was killed by his fellow tramps on November 6. The tramps attacked the man with knives and a hammer. Media reports said one of the tramps suspected the victim of making advances to his girlfriend.
After the murder, which took place in a wooded area in the south of the city, the tramps cut their victim up, buried the upper half of the body, cooked and ate the lower half, and then sold the remains to a nearby kebab house, the news.ru website said, citing local reports.
The Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said police took a sample of the meat from the kebab house in order to verify the claims.
The three suspects are undergoing psychiatric evaluation.
Peru arrests 'human fat killers', BBC News, published: 2009/11/20
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/8369674.stm
Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe.
The gang allegedly targeted people on remote roads, luring them with fake job offers before extracting their fat to sell it for $15,000 (£9,000) a litre.
Other suspected gang members, including two Italian nationals, remain at large.
Police said the gang could be behind the disappearances of up to 60 people in the region.
At a news conference in the capital, police showed reporters two bottles containing human body fat and images of one of the alleged victims.
One of the alleged killings is reported to have taken place in mid-September, with the person's body tissue removed for sale.
Cmdr Angel Toledo told Reuters some of the suspects had "declared and stated how they murdered people with the aim being to extract their fat in rudimentary labs and sell it".
Police said they suspect the fat was sold to cosmetics and pharmaceutical companies in Europe, but have not confirmed any such connection.
'Detailed confession'
Gen Felix Burga, head of Peru's police criminal division, said there were indications that "an international network trafficking human fat" was operating from Peru.
The first person was arrested earlier this month in a bus station in Lima, carrying a shipment of the fat.
The Associated Press news agency quoted Col Jorge Mejia as saying one of the suspects had described to police in detail how the victims were killed and their fat removed.
The suspect said the fat was then sold to intermediaries in Lima and that the gang's leader, Hilario Cudena, had been carrying out such murders for decades, AP reported.
The alleged buyers of the fat are also being hunted by police.
The gang has been referred to as the Pishtacos, after an ancient Peruvian legend of killers who attack people on lonely roads and murder them for their fat.
© BBC MMIX
Xenophobia, politics and labour unions, By Braam Hanekom, The Zimbabwean, 18 Nov 2009
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/2009111826770/opinion-analysis/xenophobia-politics-and-labour-unions.html
CAPE TOWN - It is widely recognised that one of the biggest issues in post-apartheid South Africa has been the high unemployment levels experienced by our impoverished and "previously disadvantaged” populations. While much has changed in South Africa, the redistribution of wealth has hardly begun, with only the emergence of a small black elite partially integrating into the white minority elite.
The majority remain largely neglected. Even those who are employed are paid menial wages, while the unemployed are left dependent on meagre government grants—leaving neither group content. The frustration among the working class has been brewing for a while, as their wages are often equivalent to less than 1% of the wages paid to their CEOs and senior management. Worker dissatisfaction is clear: almost every labour union has held strikes striking in the past twelve months.
Recently the National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA) went so far as to call for the nationalisation of South Africa’s billionaires’ fortunes. The order of the day has become unions demanding higher wages, civil society demanding more employment opportunities, and community members staging violent protests against politicians and their frivolous spending.
With all this tension, it is no coincidence that many South Africans, some of whom were involved in the horrific xenophobic violence in 2008, believe that immigrants have increased competition for the few jobs that remain. Indeed, "They are stealing our jobs!" was one of the more common allegations made by blood-hungry mobs as they searched for their victims—their neighbours, the "lesser" Africans, the foreigners.
Men and women, young and old, were killed, beaten, raped, and stolen from. The xenophobic violence made victim thousands of Zimbabweans, Congolese, Somalis, and other Africans from all over the continent.
The question that followed became the subject of hundreds of meetings, lectures, workshops and debates: could this have been avoided? What caused such great tension? Thoughtful investigation reveals that many factors came into play, that it was a complex and unfortunate combination of conditions. These included poor service delivery, poor education, crime, unemployment, poverty, a large undocumented population, police brutality towards immigrants, possibly “a third force”, and foreigners undercutting local markets.
The next question was centred on reintegration: how do you create a safe environment for immigrants and how do they return to their host communities? There was a focus on the tensions that existed in the impoverished township communities, with an overwhelming view that they could not easily be alleviated. This posed a great threat to reintegration, as it forced the realization that if the causes of xenophobia were not easily eliminated, there would be more violence and could be no true security for immigrants.
While I agree with many parts of the theory that community uprising is the culmination of tensions over service delivery issues, I cannot concede that this tension was the only cause, or even the main cause, of the xenophobic violence. It would not be possible for hate to have been directed at immigrants without a segregated population, where each insular community was equally ignorant and suspicious of the ‘other’—ignorant of the cultural practices and suffering faced by the ‘other’.
This can be seen by the attitude of foreigners towards locals, ignorant of the historical disadvantages faced by black and coloured South Africans, such as Bantu education (a system in which South Africa deliberately provided an inferior education to the oppressed majority). Many immigrants believe South Africans to be “stupid or lazy,” while also failing to take into account that Zimbabweans, for example, benefited from an education system widely recognised as being among the best in the world between 1980 and 1999.
Host communities do not realise what tragedies have led to the forced migration of thousands of people from other African countries, instead they largely believe that the migration was calculated and aimed to undermine South Africans, intercept jobs, and ‘steal’ opportunity. Another gross ignorance has been the belief by many South Africans that if someone has not got documents they are criminals, a belief which ignores the dire situation at refugee centres across the country.
The divide in civil society can be taken advantage of, for example, in the labour force, where a vast demographic of vulnerable groups are preyed on by opportunistic employers. Most undocumented immigrants are ill-informed about their rights, and are thus subjected to some of the greatest abuses.
This creates tension in the larger labour community, because the immigrants’ vulnerability brings down wages, living conditions, and rights for all labourers. It is a great injustice when people who are already victims of a desperate situation are further punished because of deliberate wrongdoing of the abusive employer.
It is thus important that Zimbabweans participate in demands for better wages and working conditions, and ultimately join unions. Probably the strongest allies to the Zimbabwean people in South Africa are the trade unions. This they have made clear with their continued public condemnation of the Mugabe regime, both in words and in action. In the midst of all the hostility and xenophobia, it is clear that Zimbabweans have a friend in the trade unions.
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