Dr. Dawg
Dawg's Blawg

That was always talk in faraway places, where hope springs eternal among the optimistic and the naive. The farmers know better. The truth of the occupation is written on their bodies, their minds and their lands. There is nothing left for them but resistance. And there is nothing left for us but to support Palestinians in their struggle against a tyranny no less brutal than the ones that are currently crumbling. Surely now is the time to choose sides.

A few days ago the US finally had the courage to let us all in on the truth: it supports the continued annexation of the West Bank by Israeli settlers. All of its protestations to the contrary have been erased by a simple veto —a monumentally cowardly act.

When we read about the settlements, and too often when we write about them, we tend to slip into geopolitical abstractions, familiar rhetoric, entrenched positions. What all of us need to do is to grasp the cost in human terms.

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Stephen Lendman

Pinkerton guards escort strikebreakers in Buchtel, Ohio, 1884

It dates from America's 19th century industrial expansion when workers moved away from farms to factories, mines, and other urban environments, with harsh working conditions, low pay, and other exploitive abuses. As a result, labor movements emerged, organizing workers to lobby for better rights and safer conditions, pitting them against corporate bosses yielding nothing without a fight.

During unionism's formative years, workers were terrorized for organizing. In company-owned towns, they were thrown out of homes, beaten, shot, and hanged to leave management empowered.

The 1892 Homestead Steel Works strike culminated in a violent battle between Pinkerton agents and workers. As a result, seven were killed, dozens wounded, and, at the behest of Andrew Carnegie, owner of Carnegie Steel, Governor Robert Pattison sent National Guard troops to evict workers from company homes, make arrests, and help CEO Henry Clay Frick's union busting strategy. It worked, preventing organizing of the Works for the next 40 years.

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions chose May 1, 1886 as the date for an eight-hour work day to become standard. As the date approached, unions across America prepared to strike. On May 1, national rallies were held, involving up to 500,000 workers.

On May 4, the landmark Haymarket Square riot protested police violence against strikers the previous day. Someone threw a bomb. Police opened fire. Deaths resulted. Seven so-called anarchists were convicted of murder. Four were executed.

Radicalized by the incident, Emma Goldman became a powerful social justice voice through writing, lecturing, being imprisoned for her activism, and finally emigrating to Russia after its revolution, then elsewhere in Europe. After her death, she was buried in Chicago near the graves of the Haymarket radicals she supported.

Led by American Railway Union's Eugene Debs, the 1894 Pullman strike was the first national one, involving 250,000 workers in 27 states and territories. America's entire rail labor force struck, paralyzing the nation's railway system. At the time, The New York Times called it "a struggle between the greatest and most important labor organization and the entire railroad capital."

At issue were unfair labor practices, including long hours, low pay, poor working conditions, and little sympathy from owner George Pullman. On his behalf, President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops. Hundreds of others were given police powers. At the time, unionists were seen threatening US prosperity.

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Ray McGovern
Consortium News

It was not until Secretary of State Hillary Clinton walked to the George Washington University podium last week to enthusiastic applause that I decided I had to dissociate myself from the obsequious adulation of a person responsible for so much death, suffering and destruction.

I was reminded of a spring day in Atlanta almost five years earlier when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld strutted onto a similar stage to loud acclaim from another enraptured audience.

Introducing Rumsfeld on May 4, 2006, the president of the Southern Center for International Policy in Atlanta highlighted his “honesty.” I had just reviewed my notes for an address I was scheduled to give that evening in Atlanta and, alas, the notes demonstrated his dishonesty.

I thought to myself, if there’s an opportunity for Q & A after his speech I might try to stand and ask a question, which is what happened. I engaged in a four-minute impromptu debate with Rumsfeld on Iraq War lies, an exchange that was carried on live TV.

That experience leaped to mind on Feb. 15, as Secretary Clinton strode onstage amid similar adulation.

The fulsome praise for Clinton from GW’s president and the loud, sustained applause also brought to mind a phrase that – as a former Soviet analyst at CIA – I often read in Pravda. When reprinting the text of speeches by high Soviet officials, the Communist Party newspaper would regularly insert, in italicized parentheses: “Burniye applaudismenti; vce stoyat” — Stormy applause; all rise.

With the others at Clinton’s talk, I stood. I even clapped politely. But as the applause dragged on, I began to feel like a real phony. So, when the others finally sat down, I remained standing silently, motionless, wearing my "Veterans for Peace" T-shirt, with my eyes fixed narrowly on the rear of the auditorium and my back to the Secretary.

I did not expect what followed: a violent assault in full view of madam secretary by what we Soviet analysts used to call the “organs of state security.” The rest is history, as they say. A short account of the incident can be found here.

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Tom Eley
WSWS

Protestors march in front of Capitol building in Madison

"This is, above all, a political fight against the entire economic and political set up in the United States, which sacrifices the interests of masses of working people to the wealthy few."

The Wisconsin legislature began debate on Tuesday over a bill that would force major wage cuts on government workers and further restrict their legal right to strike and organize. Democratic legislators are maneuvering with the trade unions to wind down protests and reach a compromise with Republicans that will leave intact the drastic cuts to workers’ wages. At the same time the Democrats are seeking to remove elements of the bill aimed at destroying the public sector unions in Wisconsin, such as the legislation’s abolition of the automatic dues check-off and its requirement that unions be re-certified by election each year.

The bill, pushed by Republican Governor Scott Walker, has provoked massive resistance among Wisconsin workers and youth, who have launched a wave of school and college walkouts and an unprecedented series of demonstrations, including an ongoing occupation of the capitol building in Madison going back to Tuesday, February 15. Inspired by developments in Wisconsin, similar protests and sympathy actions are proliferating across the US.

The demonstrations are anticipated to continue. According to Chad, an unemployed worker in Madison who has attended the demonstrations, rallies at the capitol continue to draw many thousands and are expected to be larger over the weekend. Hundreds of workers and youth have been streaming into Wisconsin from across the US, hoping to take a stand against wage-cutting and attacks on workplace rights. Several hundred teachers from New York City went to Madison on Wednesday, as did 160 government workers from Los Angeles.

In an effort to stall for time while negotiating with Republicans to reach a compromise, assembly Democrats forced a debate on the bill through Tuesday night and Wednesday morning by introducing a series of amendments that were voted down along party lines. The debate continued all day Wednesday, with Democrats promising to introduce as many as 200 amendments. The bill was to have been first considered by the senate, but the flight of 14 Democratic senators to Illinois on Thursday, February 17, denied Republicans a quorum. They remain in Illinois.

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Patrick O’Connor
WSWS

An injured Afghan child at the hospital in Farah province.
Photo: Abdul Malek/AP [From an earlier US massacre]

In the worst of several US air strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent days, up to 51 civilians were killed last Thursday in Afghanistan’s north-eastern Kunar province. General David Petraeus, the commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, expressed the colonial-style hostility of the occupation force’s senior command toward the Afghan population, reportedly accusing local residents of burning their children to fake evidence of civilian casualties.

In a five-hour operation on the night of February 17, US Apache helicopters strafed a group of alleged Afghan insurgents with gunfire, rockets and Hellfire missiles. Surveillance drones guided the helicopter assault in the mountainous district of Ghaziabad, near the Pakistan border, and according to the Washington Post, bombs were dropped by at least one of the unmanned Predator aircraft. The attack was one of a number of recent US operations in the district, ordered as part of President Barack Obama’s broader escalation of the Af-Pak war.

Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, senior military spokesman in Kabul, stated that three dozen people were killed in the incident. He maintained they were all “suspected insurgents who had gathered to attack US and Afghan troops”. However, the remarks of one unnamed military official, cited by the Washington Post on Monday, made clear that American authorities had no knowledge of the identities of those killed. The official admitted that those targeted had been wearing civilian clothes.

Kunar Governor Said Fazlullah Wahidi contradicted Smith’s claims. He said: “According to our information 64 people were killed: 13 armed opposition, 22 women, 26 boys and 3 old men.” The governor sent a three-man “fact-finding team” to the area on Saturday, which returned with seven injured people suffering burns and shrapnel wounds, including a young man and woman and five boys and girls.

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Fred Reed
Fred on Everything

Date: The following is a somewhat amplified letter to a friend. I know I've said some of this before.

Jim,

Permit me respectfully to disagree about the potency of American intelligence agencies. It seems to me that they are clowns, incompetent at their assigned work but adept at causing grave problems for the United States. Their almost comic ineptitude lies hidden behind a veil of romantic secrecy a la James Bond. But look at their known record.

Your belief that a few jets and Marines would have changed the outcome in the Bay of Pigs rests on the characteristic inability of US intel to grasp how other people look at things. Cubans hated Batista, did not yet hate Castro to whatever extent they ever would, and the exiles used to invade the island were agents of the people Cubans hated most—that is, the rich property owners who fled Castro. The Americans, remember, had always supported Batista, as they had supported every ugly dictator in Latin America. America itself is detested throughout South America. No warm welcome was in the cards.

Americans still have no understanding of how other people work, and therefore of what they are likely to do. I remember that in Afghanistan the Pentagon was going to conquer Marjah and give it a “government in a box.” That is, the Afghans were going to fall in love with brutal invaders who destroyed most of their city. Fat fucking chance. Iraq would be a cakewalk? A friend of min--Jack McGeorge--on Blix’s team briefed Langley on WMD before the invasions of Iraq. I asked him whether the CIA really believed the cakewalk theory or were lying for political reasons. They really believed it, he said.

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Jerry White
WSWS

Demonstrations continued in the state capital of Wisconsin Tuesday against Governor Scott Walker’s budget-cutting proposal and attack on public employees. Protests inspired by the stand taken by Wisconsin workers also spread to other states across the country, including Indiana and Ohio.

In Indianapolis workers marched at the state capitol against Republican governor Mitch Daniels’ proposal to restrict bargaining by public school teachers. In Columbus, marchers denounced a bill that would prohibit collective bargaining for 42,000 state workers in addition to 19,500 workers in the state’s university and college system. (See “Columbus, Ohio rally against anti-worker legislation”) Protests also took place in Lansing, Michigan, Boston and other cities.

In New Jersey, Republican Governor Chris Christie announced a state budget Tuesday that would double a property tax rebate program only if lawmakers voted to require public workers pay 30 percent of their health care benefits, more than triple what they pay now.

In addition to draconian cuts in public and higher education, Medicaid and other services, Wisconsin’s Republican governor is demanding public employees sharply increase their contributions to health care and pension benefits, a move that would result in hundreds of dollars in lost wages each month.

The governor is also seeking to strip teachers, nurses, firefighters and other state and municipal employees of bargaining rights and bar negotiations on any issues except pay increases, which could not exceed a rise in the Consumer Price Index. The measure would also end automatic deduction of union dues and compel bargaining units to have a revote every year to maintain union representation.

In a 10-minute “Fireside Chat” Tuesday night, Walker reiterated his determination to press ahead and once again attempted to pit private sector workers against public employees by claiming public workers had not given up the type of wage and benefit concessions during the recession as workers in private industry.

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Stephen Lendman

Ronald Reagan was right saying:

"Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem."

His type governance, that is, and from administrations that followed, Democrats as ruthless as Republicans.

For decades, bipartisan consensus governed lawlessly, waging imperial wars, trashing human rights and civil liberty protections, unabashedly backing monied interests, letting them loot the federal treasury, fleecing working Americans, and targeting organized labor for destruction.

Washington is ground zero for government's assault. Outside the beltway, it's Wisconsin, but spreading fast to other states and cities. An unfair fight pits major media-supported federal, state and local governments allied with union bosses against American workers, largely on their own, relying on their grit and resourcefulness to survive in a very hostile environment.

Threatened are hard-won worker rights, including secure jobs, a living wage, essential benefits, and the right to bargain collectively with management to protect them. They're going, going, and soon gone unless mass grassroots activism saves them, what's so far absent. Wisconsin worker heroics are impressive, but not enough.

Much more is needed - there and across America, because workers in all states and communities are threatened, their rights being trashed and have been for decades, especially since the Carter administration drafted plans [that] Reagan implemented:

Firing over 11,000 PATCO workers, jailing its leaders, fining the union millions of dollars, and effectively busting it for monied interests. It was a shot across organized labor's bow, a clear message to Wall Street and other corporate favorites - supported by then AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland, one of many labor bosses who betrayed rank and file trust. They still do for their own self-interest. No wonder organized labor is a shadow of its former self, headed for extinction unless stopped.

Reagan's administration set the pattern. Union bosses conspired with management against their own membership. During bitter coal miner, steel worker, bus driver, airline worker, copper miner, auto worker, and meatpacking worker strikes, they denied rank and file support, assuring them defeat. At decade's end, trade unionism in America was decimated and kept declining since, heading for oblivion with little pressure to stop it.

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Ann Talbot
WSWS

"The popular uprising in Libya threatens to bring down a tyrant long courted by European governments and seen as a reliable partner who would ensure Europe’s oil supplies and invest the riches that his family had looted from the Libyan people in European banks, companies and universities."

As the uprising in Libya spreads throughout the country, the toll of protesters killed and wounded by the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi continues to rise. Jets have opened fire on protesters, including, according to some reports, in the capital Tripoli. Fighter planes reportedly attacked demonstrators and bombed the approach roads to the city, which is home to two million people.

Speaking live over the phone to Al Jazeera, Adel Mohamed Saleh, a Tripoli resident, described what was happening:

“What we are witnessing today is unimaginable. War planes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead. “Our people are dying. It is the policy of scorched earth. Every 20 minutes they are bombing. “It is continuing, it is continuing. Anyone who moves, even if they are in their car, they will hit you.”

The uprising spread to Tripoli Sunday night when 4,000 protesters gathered in Green Square calling for the overthrow of the regime. Government thugs attacked them and security forces opened fire with live ammunition. Clashes went on until dawn. Heavily armed mercenaries were said to be driving through the streets shooting on sight and running people down. On-the-spot reports speak of the mercenaries including not only Africans, but also Italians.

Gaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, went on government television late Sunday night to threaten civil war. He warned “We will fight to the last minute, to the last bullet.” He said there would be “rivers of blood” in Libya if the protests continued.

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Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch

Protesters shout slogans against Libyan leader
Muammar al-Gaddafi during a demonstration in
front of the United Nations.

World Report 2011: Libya | Country Summary

[PDF] Government control and repression of civil society remain the norm in Libya, with little progress made on promised human rights reforms. While releases of large numbers of Islamist prisoners continued, 2010 saw stagnation on key issues such as penal code reform, freedom of association, and accountability for the Abu Salim prison massacre in 1996.

Libya maintains harsh restrictions on freedom of assembly and expression, including penal code provisions that criminalize “insulting public officials” or “opposing the ideology of the Revolution,” although there has been slightly more media debate in recent years, particularly online.

Arbitrary Detention and Prisoner Releases

An estimated 213 prisoners who have served their sentences or been acquitted by Libyancourts remain imprisoned under Internal Security Agency orders. The agency, under the jurisdiction of the General People’s Committee for Public Security, controls the Ain Zara and Abu Salim prisons, where it holds political and “security” detainees. It has refused to carry out judicial orders to free these prisoners, despite calls from the secretary of justice for their release.

In March Libyan authorities released 214 prisoners, including 80 of a group of 330 detained despite the fact that courts had acquitted them and ordered their release. Some former prisoners have received compensation from the state for years of arbitrary detention. Others are still struggling to receive compensation, and many are banned from travelling outside Libya.

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Stephen Lendman

"Leaving", oil and graphite on paper, © Karen Rice

In Washington, Obama, Democrats and Republicans are doing it. In Wisconsin and other states, so are Governor Scott Walker, other governors, and mayors across America - planning major social benefits cuts and other ways to address budget shortfalls through layoffs, fewer services, and other draconian measures on the backs of working people, ones least able to afford them.

At the same time, America's aristocracy is thriving, benefitting largely from tax cuts, other benefits, and bipartisan complicity to reward them by exemption from planned austerity when stimulus, job creation, and other populist measures are needed, including for Chicagoans facing hard times. Instead, all major mayoral candidates promise worker sacrifices to benefit business and city elites.

On February 22, voters will choose a new mayor. Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel holds a commanding lead, numerous polls confirming it against:

● former Senator Carol Moseley Braun;
● former Richard Daley chief of staff and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Board of Trustees president Gery Chico;
● former state senator and current Chicago city clerk Miguel del Valle;
● former Harold Washington aide, once Rainbow/PUSH national political director, and current Committee For A Better Chicago William "Dock" Walls III; and
● Patricia Van Pelt Watkins, Executive Director of TARGET Area DevCorp, a self-styled regional grassroots social justice organization.

Odds favor either a first-round Emanuel win or a clear April 5 runoff one if he gets less than a majority. Either way, Chicagoans will be cheated by a man promising draconian cuts as mayor. Unfortunately, so are the other major candidates faced with an estimated $1 billion city budget shortfall.

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David Michael Green
The Regressive Antidote

Whodathunkit, eh?

Insignificant, backwater, third world banana republics like Tunisia and Egypt pioneering the way for the greatest superpower and richest country on the planet. That’s not supposed to happen.

I mean, we pay for a military that costs as much as every other one in the world, combined, even though it can’t win endless wars against insignificant, backwater, third world banana republics. They can’t say that about their militaries! We’ve got annual deficits that are bigger than their entire economies. The size of our economy is half-again bigger than the number two in the world (with one-fourth the population), and we’ve managed to produce a health care system that ranks 39th globally. Who else can claim that badge of honor? No doubt that ranking partially explains why our life expectancy figures are lower than just about every country in the developed world. Our education system, once the envy of the world, is crumbling, along with the size of our college enrollments. Ditto our infrastructure, much of which hasn’t been maintained in decades. Who can touch that? We have the highest polarization of wealth in the entire developed world, and more than any country in the Arab world too. Sweet! Another cool thing is our incarceration rate. It’s 743 per hundred thousand people. The next highest country has less than half that figure. Our use of torture and rendition and the remote-controlled aerial bombings of civilians has earned us the scorn and hatred of the world, while our political leaders, unmatched in their capacity for hypocrisy and buffoonery, have made us a laughingstock that few puffy-chested, medal-covered third world dictators can match. You got Mugabe? We got Palin. You got Charles Taylor? We got George W. Bush, in a democracy no less.

So, with a record like that, who in the world are these punky backwater countries to teach high and mighty America anything about anything?!?!

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Nahida Izzat
Exiled Palestinian

"When given the freedom to vote, why do people in the Middle East end up voting for the so called "Islamists"?"

The toppled X-president Ben Ali of Tunisia -like his counterpart Husni Mubarak of Egypt, and the rest of tyrants of the Arab world- was a Secular, Liberal and Westernized DICTATOR. This corrupt puppet was supported and admired by the Western governments, his anti-Islam policies were glorified and his “moderate version" of Islam was puffed up and endorsed.

Ben Ali has oppressed and terrorized his people for decades, he imprisoned them, starved them, closed down mosques, made it illegal for women to wear hijab, and for men to gather in mosques or to even grow beards.

This was one of Ben Ali palaces, after liberation, please watch to the end, even though it’s in Arabic:

Jewelry, Money and Treasure in one of Ben Ali's palaces

In contrast, this is the "Palace" of the so called "Islamists", the Palestinian Prime-minister Ismail Haneyeh, who has won a fair election in occupied Palestine in 2006:

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Stephen Lendman

What began in Tunisia spread to Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, Bahrain, and now Libya, Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The entire region is erupting in protests, mischaracterized as revolutions. They're not, falling far short convulsive, violent, unstoppable tsunamis for change, removing old orders for new ones. So far, they're absent in the region, not even close despite popular passion for change. More on that below.

On February 20, Al Jazeera said Libya protesters want Gaddafi's 42-year rule ended. He's violently suppressing popular anger to prevent it. On Sunday night, one of his sons, Saif El Islam, warned of civil war on state television, saying "we are not Tunisia and Egypt," then gave notice about a "fight to the last minute, until the last bullet." Attempting to diffuse popular anger, however, he offered new media laws, an amended constitution, changes in the penal code, other unspecified reforms, and, unrelated to street anger, a new national anthem and flag.

On Sunday, Warfala tribal leaders, representing 500,000 Tuareg people, said they're joining the anti-Gaddafi struggle. Al Jazeera reported they've been attacking government buildings and police stations. The common thread throughout the region is poverty, unemployment, corruption and repression, varying only by degree from one country to another.

Precise numbers aren't known, but some accounts say hundreds have been killed since violence erupted a week ago. As a result, divisions in Gaddafi's government got two diplomats to resign - Libya's China ambassador, Hussein Sadiq al Musrati, and Arab League representative Abdel-Monem al-Houni. Other reports say members of Libya's military have joined protesters, and army weapons and vehicles have been seized.

Residents said at least at least 200 had died in Benghazi alone....Protests have also reportedly broken out in Bayda, Dema, Tobruk and Misrata. In the capital, Tripoli, government supporters and security forces prevented spreading anti-government demonstrations. On February 21, however, heavy gunfire was reported in central Tripoli.

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Stephen Lendman

It was reminiscent of November 22, 2000 Florida, outside the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board offices when dozens of imported Bush-Cheney ruffians rampaged through Miami's County Hall, disrupting the recount of about 10,000 undervotes, ballots with no presidential choice registered.

They assaulted Democrat party representatives, near rioted, and succeeded in halting the process. As a result, hundreds of Gore-Lieberman votes weren't counted in largely Democrat Dade County.

Fraud, intimidation and ties to big money infest US politics. Washington's criminal class is bipartisan, but Republicans are especially brazen. Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker matches the worst of his Capitol Hill counterparts. Likely he's been chosen for his role and was directed by party bosses to wage open warfare on labor rights, the same scheme playing out across America, including by Democrats, many as extremist as Republicans at a time working people are being hammered relentlessly.

Target one is America's middle class, headed for extinction by decades of wealth shifts to super-rich elites, millions of high-pay/good benefit jobs offshored to cheap labor markets, and unions earmarked for elimination - policies Washington's duopoly endorses.

Outside the beltway, Wisconsin is ground zero, but anger is spreading and may erupt anywhere at a time workers are struggling to save hard-won labor rights, targeted for elimination. As Wisconsin goes, so goes America perhaps.

The stakes are that high. Bipartisan complicity is involved. So are union bosses tied to corporate interests against their own rank and file, concerned only for their own welfare and self-enrichment. For decades, they betrayed their loyal members, functioning as wealth and power instruments, not legitimate labor leaders the way early organizers envisioned.

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