Military Resistance 10F9 the Payoff
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Military Resistance 10F9
Taliban Bomb Makers And Leaders Caught Red-Handed Trying To Kill American Troops In Afghanistan Freed Without Trial After Paying Off Corrupt Local Officials:
“They Are Releasing The Real Taliban And Keeping People Who Are Nothing”
“Corrupt Officials Had Taken Bribes Worth The Equivalent Of Thousands Of Pounds”
04 Jun 2012 By Ben Farmer, Ghazni; Telegraph Media Group Limited [Excerpts] American officers in Ghazni province say in several cases they have been powerless to prevent the release of insurgent figures despite strong evidence they were attacking coalition forces. The men were released not as part of the judicial process, or as part of a formal reconciliation deal, but after corrupt officials had taken bribes worth the equivalent of thousands of pounds. A former Afghan intelligence chief from the eastern province confirmed to the Daily Telegraph that the practice had been rife for some time. Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division have been sent to southern Ghazni this summer with just months to try and stabilise security and bolster the Afghan forces, before they pull out. The Taliban have had free run of the area in recent years, installing their own shadow administration and staging attacks on military convoys using the highway running through Ghazni between Kabul and Kandahar. Since the arrival of the American troops, seven paratroopers have been killed, mainly when their vehicles have been hit by huge homemade bombs dug into roads. Attacks have dropped recently though, as large caches of small arms and ammunition, along with tons of fertiliser-based homemade explosives, have been seized – with many prisoners. American policemen and federal agents attached as advisers to the paratroopers have been able to use police forensic and biometric techniques to strengthen the cases against those caught. However the collected evidence has been ignored by officials intent on lining their own pockets by releasing prisoners. “We are talking about people who may have American blood on their hands,” complained one officer. In one example, an insurgent caught in Muqur district on March 31 with eight homemade bombs was released two weeks later, after never facing trial. In another, an insurgent jailer who was seized in a raid on a clandestine Taliban prison which he ran was quietly released soon afterwards without consultation.
Of 20 prisoners taken in Muqur district since the 82nd Airborne arrived, it is unclear how many are still in custody. When confronted, Afghan officials have said the men were wrongly held, or had sworn their innocence on the Koran. In at least one case American officials later found that sums of up to 600,000 Pakistani rupees (£4,200) had changed hands to gain the release of the prisoners. Mohammad Aref Shah Jahan, who was until last year head of the Afghan intelligence service in Ghazni, said there was a long-standing financial trade in prisoners. He said: “They are releasing the real Taliban and keeping people who are nothing.” The government’s formal reintegration process for fighters who abandon their struggle was occasionally used as a front for cases where money had changed hands, he claimed. However he also blamed American forces for mistakenly freeing senior fighters in the province last year, despite his protestations.
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AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS
Four French Soldiers Killed By Bomber In Kapisa;
Five Wounded “Including Three In A Serious Condition”
09 Jun 2012 Aljazeera A blast in eastern Afghanistan has killed at least four French soldiers as President Francois Hollande announced France’s plans to begin withdrawing its troop from the country next month.
In an email, Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, claimed responsibility for the attack in the Nijrab district of Kapisa province. Five other people were injured in the attack when a man wearing a burqa detonated his explosives after approaching the French forces on foot, a local official said. Hollande said on Saturday that France would pay a “national homage” to the men. He added that the wounded will be repatriated rapidly. “This morning during an operation in Afghanistan in Kapisa province, four of our French soldiers were killed. Five wounded were evacuated including three in a serious condition,” his office said in a statement. Hollande announced that France would begin its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in July and complete it by the end of the year. France has 3,500 soldiers in Afghanistan, mostly stationed in Kapisa, and provides the fifth largest contingent to NATO’s 130,000-strong US-led force.
Foreign Occupation “Servicemember” Killed Somewhere Or Other In Afghanistan: Nationality Not Announced
June 9, 2012 Reuters A foreign servicemember died following an improvised explosive device attack in eastern Afghanistan today.
Last Week: 137 US Afghan War Casualties
Jun 6, 2012 By Michael Munk [Excerpts] US military occupation forces in Afghanistan under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered 137 casualties in the period ending June 5, as the official casualty total for the Iraq and AfPak wars* rose to 113,938. The total includes 79,474 casualties since the US invaded Iraq in March, 2003 (Operations “Iraqi Freedom” and “New Dawn”), and 34,327 since the US invaded Afghanistan in November, 2001 (Operation “Enduring Freedom”)
AFGHANISTAN THEATER: US forces suffered 135 combat casualties in the period ending June 5 raising the total to 34,464. This includes 17,844 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as “hostile” causes and 16,620 dead or medically evacuated (as of May 7) from what it calls “nonhostile” causes. US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by reporting regularly only the total killed (6,480 --- 4,489 in Iraq, 1,991 in Afghanistan) but rarely mentioning those wounded in action (48,505 --- 32,228 in Iraq, 16,277 in Afghanistan). They ignore the 58,948 (42,752 in Iraq; 16,196 in AfPak (as of May 7) military casualties injured and ill seriously enough to be medevac’d out of theater, even though the 6,480 total dead include 1,387 (963 in Iraq, 424 in Afghanistan) who died from those same “non hostile” causes, including 314 suicides (as of May 7) and at least 18 in Iraq from faulty KBR electrical work. NOTE: The Pentagon seems to have stopped its monthly reports on “non hostile” injured and ill. Its previous website was changed to https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/pages/report_sum_reason.xhtml The last total was as of May 7, 2012. WIA are usually updated on Tuesday at www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf (See note above) Non combat casualties are usually reported monthly at http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/castop.htm -------------------------------------------Visit my website www.michaelmunk.com
POLITICIANS REFUSE TO HALT THE BLOODSHED THE TROOPS HAVE THE POWER TO STOP THE WAR
A Useless Military McMansion For Afghan Government Soldiers
Three Years Late, An $114 Million Base For Afghan Troops Too Complicated For Them To Operate;
“A Fiber-Optic-Equipped Military Base For A Wood-Burning Army”
The hand-built stone wall surrounding the base cost $2.5 million. There is a wastewater plant, a soccer field with bleachers, an underground sewer system and a fire station. The kitchen has separate fish-prep, chicken-prep and beef-prep areas. It also has deep fryers, a salad room and sneeze-guarded, stainless-steel service lines. June 8, 2012 By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS, Wall Street Journal [Excerpts] ZARGHUN SHAHR, Afghanistan—In a dusty valley here, construction workers are racing to finish a fiber-optic-equipped military base for a wood-burning army. The $89 million U.S.-funded forward operating base, called Super FOB, is being built to house the Afghan army brigade that patrols Paktika province, along the contentious Afghanistan-Pakistan border. But Super FOB is being completed, and due to be expanded, after the U.S. and its allies have decided the Afghan security forces should be about a third smaller than envisioned when the base was conceived by U.S. and Afghan strategists. The base, already more than three years behind schedule, is so elaborate it will require fuel and technical skills that many U.S. officers doubt the Afghan army will possess once American troops withdraw. It is also being built to American specifications, with a huge, propane-powered kitchen whose stoves the Afghans say they won’t use. Instead, they are getting wood stoves designed for their tastes. “Deep fryers? Really?” said Lt. Col. Rafael Paredes, deputy commander of the 172nd Infantry Brigade, which inherited the five-year-old project from previous U.S. units. Col. Edward Bohnemann, commander of the 172nd Infantry Brigade, tried last summer to kill a plan to spend an additional $43 million to expand the capacity of the 300-acre Super FOB to house two more Afghan battalions, according to his spokesman. The troops would be better positioned elsewhere, Col. Bohnemann argued, according to his spokesman. His entreaties went nowhere.
Super FOB will be finished in June, according to a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is in charge of the U.S.-funded base-building operation. The expansion project will be completed next spring, and is now expected to cost $25 million, bringing the total base cost to roughly $114 million, the spokesman said. “Super FOB is no more unique” than any of the other 16 brigade bases now in various stages of construction, said Lt. Cmdr. Robert Wadsworth, a NATO engineering officer. Six corps-size bases are being set up, each with a $300 million to $350 million price tag. Super FOB was conceived and contracted in the early stages of the decade-old war, when NATO envisioned an Afghan army based in garrisons built to Western standards. In 2009, when Super FOB was supposed to be completed, the coalition lowered its ambitions for future bases to “austere standards” that meet the needs and abilities of Afghan soldiers, according to a NATO report. The new standards include using local materials and construction equipment, as well as wood-burning stoves. Super FOB, however, was already under way. Jocelyne Nassar, chief administrative officer of Nassar Group International, the Lebanese contractor building the base, blamed the three-year delay in completing Super FOB on logistical, political, weather and security issues. Shipping containers filled with roofing and other material are stuck in Pakistan, according to officials familiar with the project, hampered by Islamabad’s decision late last year to shut down U.S. supply routes. NGI has installed generators the Afghans seem unlikely to be able to maintain, fueled with 250,000-gallon diesel tanks the Afghans seem unlikely to have the fuel to fill because of lack of money and logistics. “They’ll use all of their fuel just heating the place” instead of fueling their vehicles, predicts a U.S. officer. “They won’t be able to patrol.” At full capacity, the generators would create 33% more power than the base consumes, according to U.S. estimates. The base contains 122 buildings, many with lowered ceilings that absorb sound, terrazzo floors and forced-air heating and cooling. Fiber-optic Internet service is on its way. The hand-built stone wall surrounding the base cost $2.5 million. There is a wastewater plant, a soccer field with bleachers, an underground sewer system and a fire station.
The kitchen has separate fish-prep, chicken-prep and beef-prep areas. It also has deep fryers, a salad room and sneeze-guarded, stainless-steel service lines. Afghan military cooks traditionally do their food preparation on the floor, and prefer to make large pots of rice and meat stew. When Afghan commanders inspected construction recently, they complained that the U.S.-supplied propane stoves are too small to hold such large pots. Now the contractor is installing a kitchen annex with 10 wood-burning stoves set into the ground that Afghan cooks can stand on as they stir. “We require a different way of cooking,” Gen. Zemaray says.
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“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. “For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. “We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.” “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.” Frederick Douglass, 1852
The Nixon administration claimed and received great credit for withdrawing the Army from Vietnam, but it was the rebellion of low-ranking GIs that forced the government to abandon a hopeless suicidal policy. -- David Cortright; Soldiers In Revolt
“Most Americans Probably Don’t Think They Could Be Locked Up
Indefinitely Without Charges Or A Trial”
“Most Americans Are Wrong”
June 6, 2012 Editorial, USA Today [Excerpts[ Most Americans probably don’t think they could be locked up indefinitely without charges or a trial. Most Americans are wrong. In the decade since the 9/11 attacks, Congress has been willing to do almost anything to ward off more terrorist strikes. It has given the government broad authority to hunt, hold and try suspected terrorists. Trouble is, the law is written so broadly that the government would have little difficulty applying it to virtually anyone. The latest example is a provision in the annual defense authorization bill that would allow the U.S. military to detain anyone indefinitely without charges or trial — even U.S. citizens — if the president determines they’re suspected of being terrorists or having aided terrorists. One would hope no president would ever abuse that authority, but the Founders saw enough of a threat to protect against it constitutionally. Lawmakers who allow fear of terrorism to overcome respect for more than two centuries of American legal tradition wrote this indefinite-detention measure into last year’s defense authorization bill. A federal district court ruled the law unconstitutional last month, but higher courts have yet to weigh in. The House effectively renewed the authority last month. The Senate could take it up soon. Backers insist this is a necessary protection against terrorists who could otherwise manipulate America’s legal system, sneer at prosecutors, withhold knowledge of imminent terrorist attacks, and walk free to commit murder and carnage. That sounds more like an episode from the TV show 24 Hours than what happens in real life. Supporters of the no-trial/no-charges rule say U.S. citizens are protected because they can always use their right to challenge their imprisonment, known as habeas corpus. But courts in terrorism cases have often either been slow to grant habeas relief or have given the government’s evidence so much deference that the protection is virtually nullified.
Increasingly, the choice between security and civil liberties is looking like a false one.
DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK
Twisted Drooling Congressional Sex Freaks Smear Environmental Activist With Kiddie Porn Accusation
Erica and Rully must bathe their daughter, age 5, in contaminated water that is the color of tea. heir water has been tested and contains high levels of arsenic. The coal company that mines the land around their home has never admitted to causing this problem, but they do supply the family with bottled water for drinking and cooking. Contaminated and colored water has occurred in other coalfield communities as well where mountaintop mining is practiced. (Photo: Katie Falkenberg) ********************************************************************** [A]fter testifying she was escorted into an empty side room by Capitol Police Special Agent Randall Hayden and questioned for nearly an hour about the photo, which she had gotten the approval of the photographer, the child’s parents, and Democratic committee members to use. Jun. 5, 2012 By Tim McDonnell, Mother Jones & 08 June 12 By Matt Kasper, Climate Progress [Excerpts] When award-winning West Virginia anti-coal activist Maria Gunnoe went to Washington, DC, last week, she was prepared for obstructionist tactics. She was prepared to face icy stares and hard questions from Republican lawmakers. She was not prepared to be branded a pedophile.
On Friday, Gunnoe testified before the House Committee on Natural Resources in a hearing on the Obama administration’s contentious relationship with the coal mining industry. She had prepared a slideshow presentation that included a photograph by the photojournalist Katie Falkenberg depicting a nude young girl sitting in a bathtub filled with murky brown water. The photo was meant as a salient statement to legislators on the impact of coal mining on society’s most vulnerable. “We are forced to bathe our children in polluted water,” she said. “Or not bathe them.” Such water is common in taps near mountaintop-removal sites, Gunnoe told me yesterday by phone, and often contains high levels of arsenic, which can seep into groundwater via underground cracks caused by mining explosions. It was a point she never got to make: Shortly before she testified, Gunnoe was approached by committee staffers and told she had to remove the photo from her presentation. She complied, but after testifying was escorted into an empty side room by Capitol Police Special Agent Randall Hayden and questioned for nearly an hour about the photo, which she had gotten the approval of the photographer, the child’s parents, and Democratic committee members to use. Gunnoe said Hayden, whom she described as kind and professional, told her the committee believed the photo to be suggestive of child pornography, and that he would be following up on the possibility of her being involved in such illegal activity. “I had to pull my chin off the table,” Gunnoe, a mother of two, said. “It gives you a very sick feeling when you’re actually a protector of children.” In 2009, she won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her work defending rural West Virginia communities against the health and ecological impacts of mountaintop-removal coal mining. The smear tactic against Gunnoe has nothing to do with coal mining issues, of course— but while the tactic may seem shocking, it’s not difficult to see why Lamborn and his allies would react with such hostility. Lamborn, the Chairman on the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, has long kept close ties to coal — a billion-dollar industry in his home state — last year blasting what he called Obama’s “war on coal” in a keynote address to the American Coal Council. Falkenberg, who captured the original image, said it was taken in the presence of the girl’s parents, and with their express consent, for a series she was working on about the human effects of mountaintop-removal mining.
Late Monday, a Capitol Police spokesperson said the investigation had so far “discovered no criminal activity”; in a separate phone interview with Mother Jones, Hayden said the case was still open and declined to detail any specifics. “We look at everything, and then the US Attorney makes a decision about whether or not to prosecute,” he said. Committee spokesman Spencer Pederson said that after Lamborn decided the photo was “inappropriate for committee use,” committee staffers, with the blessing of committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), contacted police to “apprise them of the situation.” Joan Mulhern, an Earthjustice staff attorney and friend of Gunnoe who was present at the hearing, said the committee’s tactic wasn’t fooling anybody. “Committee Republicans are in denial and want to stay that way about the human health effects of mountaintop removal,” she said, adding that the suggestion of Gunnoe being involved with child porn was “despicable.”
CLASS WAR REPORTS
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“The Extraordinary Student Mobilization In Quebec Has Already Sustained The Longest And Largest Student Strike In The History Of North America”
“It Has Already Organized The Single Biggest Act Of Civil Disobedience In Canadian History”
“They Have Created General Assemblies, Which Have Invested Themselves With The Power To Deliberate And Then Make, Quickly And Collectively, Important Decisions”
“Actions Are Decided By A Public Show Of Hands, Rather Than By An Atomising Expression Of Private Opinion”
Comment: T Unlike the political stupidity practiced in last years’ NYC Occupy Wall Street effort, where elitist anarchist bullshitter bullies denied people the right to vote on and carry out their own decisions, this successful Canadian effort rejected rule by a carefully hidden political dictatorship pretending that nobody run anything, while running everything. “At every pertinent level they have created general assemblies, which have invested themselves with the power to deliberate and then make, quickly and collectively, important decisions.”\ “Actions are decided by a public show of hands, rather than by an atomising expression of private opinion.” “Delegates from the assemblies then participate in wider congresses.” Lesson learned by many in the U.S., hopefully, so the next time things get moving here, those bullshitter bullies will get kicked to the curb. ************************************************************ From rallies and class boycotts, in April the strike expanded to include more confrontational demonstrations and disruptive nightly marches through the centre of town. Soon afterwards, solidarity protests by groups like Mères en colère et solidaires started up in working-class districts of Montreal. June 6, 2012 By Peter Hallward, The B u l l e t
The extraordinary student mobilization in Quebec has already sustained the longest and largest student strike in the history of North America, and it has already organized the single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. It is now rapidly growing into one of the most powerful and inventive anti-austerity campaigns anywhere in the world. Every situation is different, of course, and Quebec’s students draw on a distinctive history of social and political struggle, one rooted in the 1960s ‘Quiet Revolution’ and several subsequent and eye-opening campaigns for free or low-cost higher education. Support for the provincial government that opposes them, moreover, has been undermined in recent years by allegations of corruption and bribery. Nevertheless, those of us fighting against cuts and fees in other parts of the world have much to learn from the way the campaign has been organized and sustained. It’s high time that education activists in the UK, in particular, started to pay the Quebecois the highest compliment: when in doubt, imitate! The first reason for the students’ success lies in the clarity of both their immediate aim and its links to a broad range of closely associated aims. Students of all political persuasions support the current ‘minimal programme,’ to block the Liberal government’s plan to increase tuition fees by 82 per cent over several years. Most students and their families also oppose the many similar measures introduced by federal and provincial governments in Canada in recent years, which collectively represent an unprecedented neoliberal attack on social welfare (new user fees for healthcare, elimination of public sector services and jobs, factory closures, wanton exploitation of natural resources, an increase in the retirement age, restrictions on trade unions and so on). And apart from bankers and some employers, most people across Canada already regret the fact that the average debt for university graduates is around $27,000. A growing number of students now also support the fundamental principle of free universal education, long defended by the more militant student groups (loosely coordinated in the remarkable new coalition CLASSE), and back their calls for the unconditional abolition of tuition fees, to be phased out over several years and compensated by a modest and perfectly feasible bank tax, at a time of record bank profits. “This hardline stance,” the Guardian’s reporter observed, “has catapulted CLASSE from being a relatively unknown organization with 40,000 members to a sprawling phenomenon that now numbers 100,000 and claims to represent 70 per cent of striking students.” Growing numbers, too, can see how such a demand might help to compensate for the most obvious socioeconomic development in Canada over the last 30 years: the dramatic growth in income inequality, reinforced by a whole series of measures (tax
cuts, trade agreements, marketization plans...) that have profited the rich and very rich at the expense of everyone else. In Quebec, student resistance to these measures hasn’t simply generated a contingent ‘chain of equivalences’ across otherwise disparate demands: it has helped to create a practical, militant community of interest in the face of systematic neoliberal assault. “It’s more than a student strike,” a CLASSE spokesman said in April, “We want it to become a struggle of the people.” At first scornfully dismissed in the corporate media, this general effort to make the student movement into a social movement has borne fruit in recent weeks, and it would be hard to describe the general tone of reports from the nightly protest marches that are now taking over much of Montreal in terms other than collective euphoria. Nothing similar has yet happened in the UK, of course, even though the British variant of the same neoliberal assault – elimination of the EMA, immediate trebling of fees, systematic marketization of provision – has been far more brutal. But the main reasons for this lie less in some uniquely francophone propensity to defend a particular social heritage than in the three basic (and eminently transposable) elements of any successful popular campaign: strategy, organization and empowerment. As many students knew well before they launched their anti-fees campaign last summer, the best way to win this kind of fight is to implement a strategy that no amount of state coercion can overcome – a general, inclusive and ‘unlimited’ boycott of classes. One-day actions and symbolic protest marches may help build momentum, but only “an open-ended general strike gives students maximum leverage to make their demands heard,” the CLASSE’s newspaper Ultimatum explains. So far, it has been 108 days and counting, and “on ne lâche pas” (we’re not backing down) has become a familiar slogan across the province. So long as enough students are prepared to sustain it, their strike puts them in an almost invincible bargaining position. Ensuring such preparation is the key to CLASSE as an organization. It has provided new ways for students previously represented by more cautious and conventional student associations to align themselves with the more militant ASSÉ, with its tradition of direct action and participatory democracy. Activists spent months preparing the ground for the strike, talking to students one at a time, organizing department by department and then faculty by faculty, starting with the more receptive programmes and radiating slowly out to the more sceptical.
At every pertinent level they have created general assemblies, which have invested themselves with the power to deliberate and then make, quickly and collectively, important decisions. Actions are decided by a public show of hands, rather than by an atomising expression of private opinion. The more powerful and effective these assemblies have become, the more active and enthusiastic the level of participation. Delegates from the assemblies then participate in wider congresses and, in the absence of any formal leadership or bureaucracy, the “general will” that has emerged from these congresses is so clear that CLASSE is now the main organizing force in the campaign and able to put firm pressure on the other more compromise-prone student unions. Week after week, assemblies have decided to continue the strike. In most places, this has also meant a decision to keep taking the steps necessary to ensure its successful continuation, by preventing the minority of dissenting students from breaking it. Drawing on his experience at McGill University, strike veteran Jamie Burnett has some useful advice for the many student activists now considering how best to extend the campaign to other parts of Canada: don’t indulge in ‘soft pickets’ that allow classes to take place in spite of a strike mandate, and that thus allow staff to isolate and fail striking students. “Enforcing strikes is difficult to do, at least at first,” he says, “but it’s a lot less difficult than failing a semester. And people eventually come around, building a culture of solidarity and confrontational politics in the process.” The main result of this process so far has been one of far-reaching collective empowerment. Resolved from the beginning to win over rather than follow the more sceptical sectors of the media and ‘public opinion,’ the students have made themselves more powerful than their opponents. “(We) have learned collectively,” CLASSE spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said last week, “that if we mobilize and try to block something, it’s possible to do it.” From rallies and class boycotts, in April the strike expanded to include more confrontational demonstrations and disruptive nightly marches through the centre of town. Soon afterwards, solidarity protests by groups like Mères en colère et solidaires started up in working-class districts of Montreal.
In a desperate effort to regain the initiative by representing the conflict as a criminal rather than political issue, the panicked provincial government rushed through its draconian Bill 78 to restrict the marches, discourage strike enforcement and consolidate its credentials (in advance of imminent elections) as a law-and-order administration. In the resulting escalation, however, it’s the government that has been forced to blink. On 23 May, the day after an historic 300,000 people marched through Montreal in support of the students, police kettled and then arrested more than 700 people – a jaw-dropping number by historical standards. But the mobilization has become too strong to contain, and after near-universal condemnation of the new law it is already unenforceable. Since 22 May, pro-student demonstrations have multiplied in ways and numbers the police can’t control, and drawing on Latin-American (and older charivari) traditions, pot-clanging marches have mushroomed throughout the province of Quebec. On Thursday night tense negotiations with the government again broke off without resolution, and business and tourist sectors are already alarmed by the prospect of a new wave of street protests continuing into Montreal’s popular summer festival season. There is now a very real chance that similar mobilizations may spread further afield. Recent polls suggest that most students across Canada would support a strike against tuition increases, and momentum for more forceful action may be building in Ottawa and across Ontario; in Quebec itself they also show that an initially hesitant public is beginning to swing behind the student demands and against government repression. On 30 May, at the ritual hour of 8pm, there were scores of solidarity rallies all over Canada and the world. In London around 150 casserolistas clanged their way from Canada House to the Canadian embassy at Grosvenor Square. If enough of us are willing to learn a few things from our friends in places like Quebec and Chile, then in the coming years such numbers may change beyond all recognition. After much hesitation the NUS recently resolved that education should be “free at all and any level,” and activists are gearing up for a massive TUC demonstration on 20 October. After a couple of memorable springs, it’s time to prepare for a momentous autumn. •
MORE:
“Every Night, There Are Anywhere From 2,000 To 100,000 People In The Streets If You Add Up All The Small
Protests That Take Place In Lots Of Towns And Cities Across Québec”
“Legault: We Have A Strike Committee Of 12 To 20 People That Is Elected”
June 4, 2012 Guillaume Legault and Guillaume Vézina interviewed by Ashley Smith, Socialist Worker [Excerpts] The largest student union organizing the strike is CLASSE, which stands for Coalition large de l’association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante, (Coalition of the Association for Student Union Solidarity). CLASSE is itself a coalition of different Associations for Student Union Solidarity (ASSÉ). Guillaume Legault is the general coordinator of CLASSE and Guillaume Vézina is the secretary of information for CLASSE. ************************************************************ What are the key issues in the struggle? Vézina: We are on strike against tuition hikes imposed on us by the Charest government. Our union, CLASSE, is founded on the idea that education should be free and a social right. When Charest proposed tuition increases, we said we wouldn’t accept this. That’s the main issue in the strike. We reject the idea that the universities need more money from us. They have increased their enrollment and are meeting their budgetary needs that way. But there are deeper reasons we raise as well about what education should be about. They want it to be about research and development for Nike and the other companies. We think education should be about improving society, not making profit. What is Bill 78 and what has been the response to it? Vézina: The law does several things. First, it suspended the semesters until August. So they basically shut down all the universities, whether they were on strike on or not, to try to paralyze the strike. Second, the law gave the cops the right to ban a protest of 50 or more people if the organizers don’t submit the hour, date, time and route of the march to authorities. The cops can even change the route if it breaks the “social peace.” I mean, if we’re making a protest against the prime minister being somewhere, they can just tell us “go protest in another city on another day.”
This is absurd. This law affects more than just students. It affects everyone, including the traditional trade unions. They can even suspend automatic dues collection to the unions if people violate this law. Legault: Ever since the passage of the law and especially since the 22nd, people are marching every single night, banging pots and pans together in what we call casseroles. People gather together every night on a volunteer basis. There is no organization, no speakers, no sound system and no security. People just gather in a park, and march every night. And every night, there are anywhere from 2,000 to 100,000 people in the streets if you add up all the small protests that take place in lots of towns and cities across Québec. How is CLASSE organized, and how does it differ from the other two student unions, FEUZ and FECQ? Legault: I think the main difference is direct democracy. In our organization, we never wanted to tell people what to do, but we wanted people to tell us what to do. We just don’t organize an entire campus in one union. We organize our local unions by academic departments, so that we can have as deep roots as possible, involving as many students as possible. Two other major differences between the national organizations are definitely principles and actions. ASSÉ and CLASSE proclaim ourselves as part of combative syndicalism. This main principle of our organization defines the actions we make to get heard. This type of unionism made us build our movement completely independent of the political parties. Another key idea for us is that we need to be a fighting union based on the complete rejection of collaboration. We also are principled feminists. These principles have structured our struggle. CLASSE is really a grassroots movement. So how do you coordinate this grassroots democratic unionism across the whole of Québec? Legault: We have a strike committee of 12 to 20 people that is elected. On top of that, we have almost 55 volunteers who are part of various committees to organize things throughout Québec.
These people are really committed, risking their jobs, taking time away from their families, girlfriends and boyfriends. They go throughout Québec just trying to keep the strike going on and helping people organize actions.
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Class War Greece:
Union President “Speaks Of The
Potential Necessity Of Armed Resistance—Saying One Can Choose Either To ‘Die From Hunger,’ Or ‘With A Gun In The Hand’” Mr. Manousarides “Says He Sees His Fight Against The Mayor As Part Of A Struggle Against The Destructive Forces Of Capitalism And Austerity”
“‘How Will I Pay My Wife’s Medication?’ Yelled One Worker”
June 8, 2012 By JAMES ANGELOS, Wall Street Journal [Excerpts]
THESSALONIKI, Greece—The world is fixating on coming national elections here that may determine the euro zone’s future. But inside Greece, local leaders are struggling with more prosaic concerns, like trash pickups. In this northern Greek city, officials say mounting piles of garbage became such a problem that at one point the mayor called the Greek army for help removing it. Locals call the mounds “the mountains,” and blame them on everyone from elected officials to the International Monetary Fund. The difficulties in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, have been spotlighted amid a public feud between the mayor, who casts himself as a reformer, and members of local trade unions concerned he will privatize garbage collection. Shortly after Yiannis Boutaris took over as mayor last year, only four garbage trucks were functioning, with 10 sanitation vehicles in all in operation from a fleet of around 100, the officials say. They are still trying to grasp the extent of historical spending for garbage collection, they say. The city is considering a partial privatizing of garbage collection as part of a bid to modernize waste management. The mayor’s most vocal and visible opponent has been the leader of the municipal trade-workers union, who says the mayor is intentionally sabotaging the garbagecollection system in order to justify privatization. “The whole city could shine, but the mayor doesn’t want it shining,” says Ilias Manousaridis, president of the municipal trade worker’s union and a member of the AllWorkers Militant Front, which is linked to Greece’s Communist Party. “He wants to take the tax money paid by the workers and citizens of Thessaloniki and give it to his friends, the industrialists.” The conflict between the mayor’s office and segments of the municipal-trade union came to a head last week when the city closed a €1.9 million ($2.4 million), one-year deal to have a private company repair and service 71 sanitation vehicles. As the tender for the job was under way, scores of demonstrators tried to enter city hall and disrupt the proceedings. They clashed with riot police, who used tear gas against them. Mr. Manousarides says he sees his fight against the mayor as part of a struggle against the destructive forces of capitalism and austerity, which he says, “are taking the milk from our children.” He speaks of the potential necessity of armed resistance—saying one can choose either to “die from hunger,” or “with a gun in the hand.” “Is that what we want? The work to leave our hands?” he said. Mr. Georgiadis said sanitation workers have also been subject to pay cuts, including this spring, when salary reductions that were part of the nationally
imposed austerity showed up in one small paycheck that reflected months of retroactive cuts. A crowd of sanitation workers confronted the vice mayor of sanitation at a waste transfer station. “How will I pay my wife’s medication?” yelled one worker who said he had received only €5, according to Mr. Georgiadis, who was present. Afterwards, garbage collectors abstained from work for four days to protest what they say were months of night and weekend pay still owed to them. In many places, trash continues to accumulate and garbage collection remains slipshod. One recent day, a garbage collector could be seen jamming garbage into the back of a rickety truck with a broomstick. Two temporary workers outside a city repair shop complained the back of the truck they had been working on began spewing hot oil. Officials in the mayor’s office said improvements are coming soon, provided national politics will cooperate. If the entire national system collapses, an aide to the mayor said, “then it’s another story.”
“In The Past 11 Years, The Number Of Americans Living In Poverty Has Increased From 33 Million To 44 Million”
“Since 1979, Income For The Top 1% Has Increased By $700,000 A Year, While Income For The Bottom 90% Has Declined By $900 A Year”
“Between 1992 And 2007, Income For The Richest 400 Americans Increased By 392%, As Their Taxes Dropped By 37%”
08 June 12 By Alan Grayson, Reader Supported News [Excerpts]
[T]oday marks 11 years since the Bush tax breaks for the rich were enacted. President George W. Bush signed the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act on June 7, 2001. Bush claimed (as right-wingers always do) that tax breaks for the rich would create jobs in the private sector. Well, they haven’t. There were 110 million private sector jobs in America in 2001. There are 110 million private sector jobs in America today. Despite a population increase of more than 25 million, there are no more private sector jobs today than when the Bush tax breaks for the rich became law. In the past 11 years, the number of Americans living in poverty has increased from 33 million to 44 million. The number of Americans receiving food stamps has risen from 18 million to 46 million. “Trickle-down” has not even been a trickle. And for the rich, the past 11 years has been one long party. According to the Paris School of Economics, the top 1% in America saw their share of national income increase by more than 13% from 2001 to 2010. The top 0.1% saw their share of income increase by 20%. The top 0.01% saw their share of income explode by more than 37%, from 2.4% of all of the income in America to 3.3%. The Bush tax breaks for the rich have yielded the most unequal distribution of wealth in American history, more unequal even than that of 1929, just before the Great Depression. The lurch toward inequality started decades ago; the Bush tax breaks for the rich only accelerated it. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, since 1979, income for the top 1% has increased by $700,000 a year, while income for the bottom 90% has declined by $900 a year. Between 1992 and 2007, income for the richest 400 Americans increased by 392%, as their taxes dropped by 37%.
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“They Rescue The Banks And Evict People”
Demonstrators hold up signs reading: “Everybody Out”, “We don’t owe, we don’t pay” and “They rescue the banks and evict people” in reference to Spain’s bailout, at Puerta del Sol square in Madrid June 9, 2012. REUTERS/Paul Hanna
Demonstrators hold up signs reading: “This isn’t a rescue, it’s a fraud” and “Hands up, this is a rescue” in reference to Spain’s bailout, in Puerta del Sol square in Madrid June 9, 2012. Euro zone finance ministers agreed on Saturday to lend Spain up to 100 billion euros ($125 billion) to shore up its teetering banks and Madrid said it would specify precisely how much it needs once independent audits report in just over a week. REUTERS/Paul Hanna
Photo By SUSANA VERA/REUTERS Antonia Sastre Castilla, 44, (C) shows how little space they have to sleep, as her sister Rosa Maria Sastre Castilla, 46, tries to make the area more comfortable for the family to sleep, outside a store in Madrid June 8, 2012. The family was evicted from the apartment they were renting in April 24 after Rosa, the sole breadwinner, lost her job and couldn’t pay for the monthly rent. Social services provided them temporary lodging for 15 days, and after that they found themselves on the street. They all sleep cramped in a tiny space outside a store nearby. “Some people have given us mattresses so that we wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor, but my mother has a hard time getting up from the floor level and she prefers to sleep on the chair,“ says Rosa.
GOT AN OPINION?
Comments from service men and women, and veterans, are especially welcome. Write to Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657 or send to [email protected]: Name, I.D., withheld unless you request identification published. “The single largest failure of the anti-war movement at this point is the lack of outreach to the troops.” Tim Goodrich, Iraq Veterans Against The War
“Anti-Syrian Regime Protesters Wave Revolutionary Flags During A Demonstration In The Kfar Suseh Area Of Damascus”
June 7, 2012: Anti-Syrian regime protesters wave revolutionary flags during a demonstration in the Kfar Suseh area of Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo/The Kfar Suseh Coordinating Of The Syrian Revolution
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Military Resistance 10F9
Taliban Bomb Makers And Leaders Caught Red-Handed Trying To Kill American Troops In Afghanistan Freed Without Trial After Paying Off Corrupt Local Officials:
“They Are Releasing The Real Taliban And Keeping People Who Are Nothing”
“Corrupt Officials Had Taken Bribes Worth The Equivalent Of Thousands Of Pounds”
04 Jun 2012 By Ben Farmer, Ghazni; Telegraph Media Group Limited [Excerpts] American officers in Ghazni province say in several cases they have been powerless to prevent the release of insurgent figures despite strong evidence they were attacking coalition forces. The men were released not as part of the judicial process, or as part of a formal reconciliation deal, but after corrupt officials had taken bribes worth the equivalent of thousands of pounds. A former Afghan intelligence chief from the eastern province confirmed to the Daily Telegraph that the practice had been rife for some time. Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division have been sent to southern Ghazni this summer with just months to try and stabilise security and bolster the Afghan forces, before they pull out. The Taliban have had free run of the area in recent years, installing their own shadow administration and staging attacks on military convoys using the highway running through Ghazni between Kabul and Kandahar. Since the arrival of the American troops, seven paratroopers have been killed, mainly when their vehicles have been hit by huge homemade bombs dug into roads. Attacks have dropped recently though, as large caches of small arms and ammunition, along with tons of fertiliser-based homemade explosives, have been seized – with many prisoners. American policemen and federal agents attached as advisers to the paratroopers have been able to use police forensic and biometric techniques to strengthen the cases against those caught. However the collected evidence has been ignored by officials intent on lining their own pockets by releasing prisoners. “We are talking about people who may have American blood on their hands,” complained one officer. In one example, an insurgent caught in Muqur district on March 31 with eight homemade bombs was released two weeks later, after never facing trial. In another, an insurgent jailer who was seized in a raid on a clandestine Taliban prison which he ran was quietly released soon afterwards without consultation.
Of 20 prisoners taken in Muqur district since the 82nd Airborne arrived, it is unclear how many are still in custody. When confronted, Afghan officials have said the men were wrongly held, or had sworn their innocence on the Koran. In at least one case American officials later found that sums of up to 600,000 Pakistani rupees (£4,200) had changed hands to gain the release of the prisoners. Mohammad Aref Shah Jahan, who was until last year head of the Afghan intelligence service in Ghazni, said there was a long-standing financial trade in prisoners. He said: “They are releasing the real Taliban and keeping people who are nothing.” The government’s formal reintegration process for fighters who abandon their struggle was occasionally used as a front for cases where money had changed hands, he claimed. However he also blamed American forces for mistakenly freeing senior fighters in the province last year, despite his protestations.
Troops Invited:
Comments, arguments, articles, and letters from service men and women, and veterans, are especially welcome. Write to Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657 or email [email protected]: Name, I.D., withheld unless you request publication. Same address to unsubscribe.
AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS
Four French Soldiers Killed By Bomber In Kapisa;
Five Wounded “Including Three In A Serious Condition”
09 Jun 2012 Aljazeera A blast in eastern Afghanistan has killed at least four French soldiers as President Francois Hollande announced France’s plans to begin withdrawing its troop from the country next month.
In an email, Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, claimed responsibility for the attack in the Nijrab district of Kapisa province. Five other people were injured in the attack when a man wearing a burqa detonated his explosives after approaching the French forces on foot, a local official said. Hollande said on Saturday that France would pay a “national homage” to the men. He added that the wounded will be repatriated rapidly. “This morning during an operation in Afghanistan in Kapisa province, four of our French soldiers were killed. Five wounded were evacuated including three in a serious condition,” his office said in a statement. Hollande announced that France would begin its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in July and complete it by the end of the year. France has 3,500 soldiers in Afghanistan, mostly stationed in Kapisa, and provides the fifth largest contingent to NATO’s 130,000-strong US-led force.
Foreign Occupation “Servicemember” Killed Somewhere Or Other In Afghanistan: Nationality Not Announced
June 9, 2012 Reuters A foreign servicemember died following an improvised explosive device attack in eastern Afghanistan today.
Last Week: 137 US Afghan War Casualties
Jun 6, 2012 By Michael Munk [Excerpts] US military occupation forces in Afghanistan under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered 137 casualties in the period ending June 5, as the official casualty total for the Iraq and AfPak wars* rose to 113,938. The total includes 79,474 casualties since the US invaded Iraq in March, 2003 (Operations “Iraqi Freedom” and “New Dawn”), and 34,327 since the US invaded Afghanistan in November, 2001 (Operation “Enduring Freedom”)
AFGHANISTAN THEATER: US forces suffered 135 combat casualties in the period ending June 5 raising the total to 34,464. This includes 17,844 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as “hostile” causes and 16,620 dead or medically evacuated (as of May 7) from what it calls “nonhostile” causes. US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by reporting regularly only the total killed (6,480 --- 4,489 in Iraq, 1,991 in Afghanistan) but rarely mentioning those wounded in action (48,505 --- 32,228 in Iraq, 16,277 in Afghanistan). They ignore the 58,948 (42,752 in Iraq; 16,196 in AfPak (as of May 7) military casualties injured and ill seriously enough to be medevac’d out of theater, even though the 6,480 total dead include 1,387 (963 in Iraq, 424 in Afghanistan) who died from those same “non hostile” causes, including 314 suicides (as of May 7) and at least 18 in Iraq from faulty KBR electrical work. NOTE: The Pentagon seems to have stopped its monthly reports on “non hostile” injured and ill. Its previous website was changed to https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/pages/report_sum_reason.xhtml The last total was as of May 7, 2012. WIA are usually updated on Tuesday at www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf (See note above) Non combat casualties are usually reported monthly at http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/castop.htm -------------------------------------------Visit my website www.michaelmunk.com
POLITICIANS REFUSE TO HALT THE BLOODSHED THE TROOPS HAVE THE POWER TO STOP THE WAR
A Useless Military McMansion For Afghan Government Soldiers
Three Years Late, An $114 Million Base For Afghan Troops Too Complicated For Them To Operate;
“A Fiber-Optic-Equipped Military Base For A Wood-Burning Army”
The hand-built stone wall surrounding the base cost $2.5 million. There is a wastewater plant, a soccer field with bleachers, an underground sewer system and a fire station. The kitchen has separate fish-prep, chicken-prep and beef-prep areas. It also has deep fryers, a salad room and sneeze-guarded, stainless-steel service lines. June 8, 2012 By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS, Wall Street Journal [Excerpts] ZARGHUN SHAHR, Afghanistan—In a dusty valley here, construction workers are racing to finish a fiber-optic-equipped military base for a wood-burning army. The $89 million U.S.-funded forward operating base, called Super FOB, is being built to house the Afghan army brigade that patrols Paktika province, along the contentious Afghanistan-Pakistan border. But Super FOB is being completed, and due to be expanded, after the U.S. and its allies have decided the Afghan security forces should be about a third smaller than envisioned when the base was conceived by U.S. and Afghan strategists. The base, already more than three years behind schedule, is so elaborate it will require fuel and technical skills that many U.S. officers doubt the Afghan army will possess once American troops withdraw. It is also being built to American specifications, with a huge, propane-powered kitchen whose stoves the Afghans say they won’t use. Instead, they are getting wood stoves designed for their tastes. “Deep fryers? Really?” said Lt. Col. Rafael Paredes, deputy commander of the 172nd Infantry Brigade, which inherited the five-year-old project from previous U.S. units. Col. Edward Bohnemann, commander of the 172nd Infantry Brigade, tried last summer to kill a plan to spend an additional $43 million to expand the capacity of the 300-acre Super FOB to house two more Afghan battalions, according to his spokesman. The troops would be better positioned elsewhere, Col. Bohnemann argued, according to his spokesman. His entreaties went nowhere.
Super FOB will be finished in June, according to a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is in charge of the U.S.-funded base-building operation. The expansion project will be completed next spring, and is now expected to cost $25 million, bringing the total base cost to roughly $114 million, the spokesman said. “Super FOB is no more unique” than any of the other 16 brigade bases now in various stages of construction, said Lt. Cmdr. Robert Wadsworth, a NATO engineering officer. Six corps-size bases are being set up, each with a $300 million to $350 million price tag. Super FOB was conceived and contracted in the early stages of the decade-old war, when NATO envisioned an Afghan army based in garrisons built to Western standards. In 2009, when Super FOB was supposed to be completed, the coalition lowered its ambitions for future bases to “austere standards” that meet the needs and abilities of Afghan soldiers, according to a NATO report. The new standards include using local materials and construction equipment, as well as wood-burning stoves. Super FOB, however, was already under way. Jocelyne Nassar, chief administrative officer of Nassar Group International, the Lebanese contractor building the base, blamed the three-year delay in completing Super FOB on logistical, political, weather and security issues. Shipping containers filled with roofing and other material are stuck in Pakistan, according to officials familiar with the project, hampered by Islamabad’s decision late last year to shut down U.S. supply routes. NGI has installed generators the Afghans seem unlikely to be able to maintain, fueled with 250,000-gallon diesel tanks the Afghans seem unlikely to have the fuel to fill because of lack of money and logistics. “They’ll use all of their fuel just heating the place” instead of fueling their vehicles, predicts a U.S. officer. “They won’t be able to patrol.” At full capacity, the generators would create 33% more power than the base consumes, according to U.S. estimates. The base contains 122 buildings, many with lowered ceilings that absorb sound, terrazzo floors and forced-air heating and cooling. Fiber-optic Internet service is on its way. The hand-built stone wall surrounding the base cost $2.5 million. There is a wastewater plant, a soccer field with bleachers, an underground sewer system and a fire station.
The kitchen has separate fish-prep, chicken-prep and beef-prep areas. It also has deep fryers, a salad room and sneeze-guarded, stainless-steel service lines. Afghan military cooks traditionally do their food preparation on the floor, and prefer to make large pots of rice and meat stew. When Afghan commanders inspected construction recently, they complained that the U.S.-supplied propane stoves are too small to hold such large pots. Now the contractor is installing a kitchen annex with 10 wood-burning stoves set into the ground that Afghan cooks can stand on as they stir. “We require a different way of cooking,” Gen. Zemaray says.
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FORWARD OBSERVATIONS
“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. “For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. “We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.” “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.” Frederick Douglass, 1852
The Nixon administration claimed and received great credit for withdrawing the Army from Vietnam, but it was the rebellion of low-ranking GIs that forced the government to abandon a hopeless suicidal policy. -- David Cortright; Soldiers In Revolt
“Most Americans Probably Don’t Think They Could Be Locked Up
Indefinitely Without Charges Or A Trial”
“Most Americans Are Wrong”
June 6, 2012 Editorial, USA Today [Excerpts[ Most Americans probably don’t think they could be locked up indefinitely without charges or a trial. Most Americans are wrong. In the decade since the 9/11 attacks, Congress has been willing to do almost anything to ward off more terrorist strikes. It has given the government broad authority to hunt, hold and try suspected terrorists. Trouble is, the law is written so broadly that the government would have little difficulty applying it to virtually anyone. The latest example is a provision in the annual defense authorization bill that would allow the U.S. military to detain anyone indefinitely without charges or trial — even U.S. citizens — if the president determines they’re suspected of being terrorists or having aided terrorists. One would hope no president would ever abuse that authority, but the Founders saw enough of a threat to protect against it constitutionally. Lawmakers who allow fear of terrorism to overcome respect for more than two centuries of American legal tradition wrote this indefinite-detention measure into last year’s defense authorization bill. A federal district court ruled the law unconstitutional last month, but higher courts have yet to weigh in. The House effectively renewed the authority last month. The Senate could take it up soon. Backers insist this is a necessary protection against terrorists who could otherwise manipulate America’s legal system, sneer at prosecutors, withhold knowledge of imminent terrorist attacks, and walk free to commit murder and carnage. That sounds more like an episode from the TV show 24 Hours than what happens in real life. Supporters of the no-trial/no-charges rule say U.S. citizens are protected because they can always use their right to challenge their imprisonment, known as habeas corpus. But courts in terrorism cases have often either been slow to grant habeas relief or have given the government’s evidence so much deference that the protection is virtually nullified.
Increasingly, the choice between security and civil liberties is looking like a false one.
DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK
Twisted Drooling Congressional Sex Freaks Smear Environmental Activist With Kiddie Porn Accusation
Erica and Rully must bathe their daughter, age 5, in contaminated water that is the color of tea. heir water has been tested and contains high levels of arsenic. The coal company that mines the land around their home has never admitted to causing this problem, but they do supply the family with bottled water for drinking and cooking. Contaminated and colored water has occurred in other coalfield communities as well where mountaintop mining is practiced. (Photo: Katie Falkenberg) ********************************************************************** [A]fter testifying she was escorted into an empty side room by Capitol Police Special Agent Randall Hayden and questioned for nearly an hour about the photo, which she had gotten the approval of the photographer, the child’s parents, and Democratic committee members to use. Jun. 5, 2012 By Tim McDonnell, Mother Jones & 08 June 12 By Matt Kasper, Climate Progress [Excerpts] When award-winning West Virginia anti-coal activist Maria Gunnoe went to Washington, DC, last week, she was prepared for obstructionist tactics. She was prepared to face icy stares and hard questions from Republican lawmakers. She was not prepared to be branded a pedophile.
On Friday, Gunnoe testified before the House Committee on Natural Resources in a hearing on the Obama administration’s contentious relationship with the coal mining industry. She had prepared a slideshow presentation that included a photograph by the photojournalist Katie Falkenberg depicting a nude young girl sitting in a bathtub filled with murky brown water. The photo was meant as a salient statement to legislators on the impact of coal mining on society’s most vulnerable. “We are forced to bathe our children in polluted water,” she said. “Or not bathe them.” Such water is common in taps near mountaintop-removal sites, Gunnoe told me yesterday by phone, and often contains high levels of arsenic, which can seep into groundwater via underground cracks caused by mining explosions. It was a point she never got to make: Shortly before she testified, Gunnoe was approached by committee staffers and told she had to remove the photo from her presentation. She complied, but after testifying was escorted into an empty side room by Capitol Police Special Agent Randall Hayden and questioned for nearly an hour about the photo, which she had gotten the approval of the photographer, the child’s parents, and Democratic committee members to use. Gunnoe said Hayden, whom she described as kind and professional, told her the committee believed the photo to be suggestive of child pornography, and that he would be following up on the possibility of her being involved in such illegal activity. “I had to pull my chin off the table,” Gunnoe, a mother of two, said. “It gives you a very sick feeling when you’re actually a protector of children.” In 2009, she won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her work defending rural West Virginia communities against the health and ecological impacts of mountaintop-removal coal mining. The smear tactic against Gunnoe has nothing to do with coal mining issues, of course— but while the tactic may seem shocking, it’s not difficult to see why Lamborn and his allies would react with such hostility. Lamborn, the Chairman on the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, has long kept close ties to coal — a billion-dollar industry in his home state — last year blasting what he called Obama’s “war on coal” in a keynote address to the American Coal Council. Falkenberg, who captured the original image, said it was taken in the presence of the girl’s parents, and with their express consent, for a series she was working on about the human effects of mountaintop-removal mining.
Late Monday, a Capitol Police spokesperson said the investigation had so far “discovered no criminal activity”; in a separate phone interview with Mother Jones, Hayden said the case was still open and declined to detail any specifics. “We look at everything, and then the US Attorney makes a decision about whether or not to prosecute,” he said. Committee spokesman Spencer Pederson said that after Lamborn decided the photo was “inappropriate for committee use,” committee staffers, with the blessing of committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), contacted police to “apprise them of the situation.” Joan Mulhern, an Earthjustice staff attorney and friend of Gunnoe who was present at the hearing, said the committee’s tactic wasn’t fooling anybody. “Committee Republicans are in denial and want to stay that way about the human health effects of mountaintop removal,” she said, adding that the suggestion of Gunnoe being involved with child porn was “despicable.”
CLASS WAR REPORTS
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“The Extraordinary Student Mobilization In Quebec Has Already Sustained The Longest And Largest Student Strike In The History Of North America”
“It Has Already Organized The Single Biggest Act Of Civil Disobedience In Canadian History”
“They Have Created General Assemblies, Which Have Invested Themselves With The Power To Deliberate And Then Make, Quickly And Collectively, Important Decisions”
“Actions Are Decided By A Public Show Of Hands, Rather Than By An Atomising Expression Of Private Opinion”
Comment: T Unlike the political stupidity practiced in last years’ NYC Occupy Wall Street effort, where elitist anarchist bullshitter bullies denied people the right to vote on and carry out their own decisions, this successful Canadian effort rejected rule by a carefully hidden political dictatorship pretending that nobody run anything, while running everything. “At every pertinent level they have created general assemblies, which have invested themselves with the power to deliberate and then make, quickly and collectively, important decisions.”\ “Actions are decided by a public show of hands, rather than by an atomising expression of private opinion.” “Delegates from the assemblies then participate in wider congresses.” Lesson learned by many in the U.S., hopefully, so the next time things get moving here, those bullshitter bullies will get kicked to the curb. ************************************************************ From rallies and class boycotts, in April the strike expanded to include more confrontational demonstrations and disruptive nightly marches through the centre of town. Soon afterwards, solidarity protests by groups like Mères en colère et solidaires started up in working-class districts of Montreal. June 6, 2012 By Peter Hallward, The B u l l e t
The extraordinary student mobilization in Quebec has already sustained the longest and largest student strike in the history of North America, and it has already organized the single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. It is now rapidly growing into one of the most powerful and inventive anti-austerity campaigns anywhere in the world. Every situation is different, of course, and Quebec’s students draw on a distinctive history of social and political struggle, one rooted in the 1960s ‘Quiet Revolution’ and several subsequent and eye-opening campaigns for free or low-cost higher education. Support for the provincial government that opposes them, moreover, has been undermined in recent years by allegations of corruption and bribery. Nevertheless, those of us fighting against cuts and fees in other parts of the world have much to learn from the way the campaign has been organized and sustained. It’s high time that education activists in the UK, in particular, started to pay the Quebecois the highest compliment: when in doubt, imitate! The first reason for the students’ success lies in the clarity of both their immediate aim and its links to a broad range of closely associated aims. Students of all political persuasions support the current ‘minimal programme,’ to block the Liberal government’s plan to increase tuition fees by 82 per cent over several years. Most students and their families also oppose the many similar measures introduced by federal and provincial governments in Canada in recent years, which collectively represent an unprecedented neoliberal attack on social welfare (new user fees for healthcare, elimination of public sector services and jobs, factory closures, wanton exploitation of natural resources, an increase in the retirement age, restrictions on trade unions and so on). And apart from bankers and some employers, most people across Canada already regret the fact that the average debt for university graduates is around $27,000. A growing number of students now also support the fundamental principle of free universal education, long defended by the more militant student groups (loosely coordinated in the remarkable new coalition CLASSE), and back their calls for the unconditional abolition of tuition fees, to be phased out over several years and compensated by a modest and perfectly feasible bank tax, at a time of record bank profits. “This hardline stance,” the Guardian’s reporter observed, “has catapulted CLASSE from being a relatively unknown organization with 40,000 members to a sprawling phenomenon that now numbers 100,000 and claims to represent 70 per cent of striking students.” Growing numbers, too, can see how such a demand might help to compensate for the most obvious socioeconomic development in Canada over the last 30 years: the dramatic growth in income inequality, reinforced by a whole series of measures (tax
cuts, trade agreements, marketization plans...) that have profited the rich and very rich at the expense of everyone else. In Quebec, student resistance to these measures hasn’t simply generated a contingent ‘chain of equivalences’ across otherwise disparate demands: it has helped to create a practical, militant community of interest in the face of systematic neoliberal assault. “It’s more than a student strike,” a CLASSE spokesman said in April, “We want it to become a struggle of the people.” At first scornfully dismissed in the corporate media, this general effort to make the student movement into a social movement has borne fruit in recent weeks, and it would be hard to describe the general tone of reports from the nightly protest marches that are now taking over much of Montreal in terms other than collective euphoria. Nothing similar has yet happened in the UK, of course, even though the British variant of the same neoliberal assault – elimination of the EMA, immediate trebling of fees, systematic marketization of provision – has been far more brutal. But the main reasons for this lie less in some uniquely francophone propensity to defend a particular social heritage than in the three basic (and eminently transposable) elements of any successful popular campaign: strategy, organization and empowerment. As many students knew well before they launched their anti-fees campaign last summer, the best way to win this kind of fight is to implement a strategy that no amount of state coercion can overcome – a general, inclusive and ‘unlimited’ boycott of classes. One-day actions and symbolic protest marches may help build momentum, but only “an open-ended general strike gives students maximum leverage to make their demands heard,” the CLASSE’s newspaper Ultimatum explains. So far, it has been 108 days and counting, and “on ne lâche pas” (we’re not backing down) has become a familiar slogan across the province. So long as enough students are prepared to sustain it, their strike puts them in an almost invincible bargaining position. Ensuring such preparation is the key to CLASSE as an organization. It has provided new ways for students previously represented by more cautious and conventional student associations to align themselves with the more militant ASSÉ, with its tradition of direct action and participatory democracy. Activists spent months preparing the ground for the strike, talking to students one at a time, organizing department by department and then faculty by faculty, starting with the more receptive programmes and radiating slowly out to the more sceptical.
At every pertinent level they have created general assemblies, which have invested themselves with the power to deliberate and then make, quickly and collectively, important decisions. Actions are decided by a public show of hands, rather than by an atomising expression of private opinion. The more powerful and effective these assemblies have become, the more active and enthusiastic the level of participation. Delegates from the assemblies then participate in wider congresses and, in the absence of any formal leadership or bureaucracy, the “general will” that has emerged from these congresses is so clear that CLASSE is now the main organizing force in the campaign and able to put firm pressure on the other more compromise-prone student unions. Week after week, assemblies have decided to continue the strike. In most places, this has also meant a decision to keep taking the steps necessary to ensure its successful continuation, by preventing the minority of dissenting students from breaking it. Drawing on his experience at McGill University, strike veteran Jamie Burnett has some useful advice for the many student activists now considering how best to extend the campaign to other parts of Canada: don’t indulge in ‘soft pickets’ that allow classes to take place in spite of a strike mandate, and that thus allow staff to isolate and fail striking students. “Enforcing strikes is difficult to do, at least at first,” he says, “but it’s a lot less difficult than failing a semester. And people eventually come around, building a culture of solidarity and confrontational politics in the process.” The main result of this process so far has been one of far-reaching collective empowerment. Resolved from the beginning to win over rather than follow the more sceptical sectors of the media and ‘public opinion,’ the students have made themselves more powerful than their opponents. “(We) have learned collectively,” CLASSE spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said last week, “that if we mobilize and try to block something, it’s possible to do it.” From rallies and class boycotts, in April the strike expanded to include more confrontational demonstrations and disruptive nightly marches through the centre of town. Soon afterwards, solidarity protests by groups like Mères en colère et solidaires started up in working-class districts of Montreal.
In a desperate effort to regain the initiative by representing the conflict as a criminal rather than political issue, the panicked provincial government rushed through its draconian Bill 78 to restrict the marches, discourage strike enforcement and consolidate its credentials (in advance of imminent elections) as a law-and-order administration. In the resulting escalation, however, it’s the government that has been forced to blink. On 23 May, the day after an historic 300,000 people marched through Montreal in support of the students, police kettled and then arrested more than 700 people – a jaw-dropping number by historical standards. But the mobilization has become too strong to contain, and after near-universal condemnation of the new law it is already unenforceable. Since 22 May, pro-student demonstrations have multiplied in ways and numbers the police can’t control, and drawing on Latin-American (and older charivari) traditions, pot-clanging marches have mushroomed throughout the province of Quebec. On Thursday night tense negotiations with the government again broke off without resolution, and business and tourist sectors are already alarmed by the prospect of a new wave of street protests continuing into Montreal’s popular summer festival season. There is now a very real chance that similar mobilizations may spread further afield. Recent polls suggest that most students across Canada would support a strike against tuition increases, and momentum for more forceful action may be building in Ottawa and across Ontario; in Quebec itself they also show that an initially hesitant public is beginning to swing behind the student demands and against government repression. On 30 May, at the ritual hour of 8pm, there were scores of solidarity rallies all over Canada and the world. In London around 150 casserolistas clanged their way from Canada House to the Canadian embassy at Grosvenor Square. If enough of us are willing to learn a few things from our friends in places like Quebec and Chile, then in the coming years such numbers may change beyond all recognition. After much hesitation the NUS recently resolved that education should be “free at all and any level,” and activists are gearing up for a massive TUC demonstration on 20 October. After a couple of memorable springs, it’s time to prepare for a momentous autumn. •
MORE:
“Every Night, There Are Anywhere From 2,000 To 100,000 People In The Streets If You Add Up All The Small
Protests That Take Place In Lots Of Towns And Cities Across Québec”
“Legault: We Have A Strike Committee Of 12 To 20 People That Is Elected”
June 4, 2012 Guillaume Legault and Guillaume Vézina interviewed by Ashley Smith, Socialist Worker [Excerpts] The largest student union organizing the strike is CLASSE, which stands for Coalition large de l’association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante, (Coalition of the Association for Student Union Solidarity). CLASSE is itself a coalition of different Associations for Student Union Solidarity (ASSÉ). Guillaume Legault is the general coordinator of CLASSE and Guillaume Vézina is the secretary of information for CLASSE. ************************************************************ What are the key issues in the struggle? Vézina: We are on strike against tuition hikes imposed on us by the Charest government. Our union, CLASSE, is founded on the idea that education should be free and a social right. When Charest proposed tuition increases, we said we wouldn’t accept this. That’s the main issue in the strike. We reject the idea that the universities need more money from us. They have increased their enrollment and are meeting their budgetary needs that way. But there are deeper reasons we raise as well about what education should be about. They want it to be about research and development for Nike and the other companies. We think education should be about improving society, not making profit. What is Bill 78 and what has been the response to it? Vézina: The law does several things. First, it suspended the semesters until August. So they basically shut down all the universities, whether they were on strike on or not, to try to paralyze the strike. Second, the law gave the cops the right to ban a protest of 50 or more people if the organizers don’t submit the hour, date, time and route of the march to authorities. The cops can even change the route if it breaks the “social peace.” I mean, if we’re making a protest against the prime minister being somewhere, they can just tell us “go protest in another city on another day.”
This is absurd. This law affects more than just students. It affects everyone, including the traditional trade unions. They can even suspend automatic dues collection to the unions if people violate this law. Legault: Ever since the passage of the law and especially since the 22nd, people are marching every single night, banging pots and pans together in what we call casseroles. People gather together every night on a volunteer basis. There is no organization, no speakers, no sound system and no security. People just gather in a park, and march every night. And every night, there are anywhere from 2,000 to 100,000 people in the streets if you add up all the small protests that take place in lots of towns and cities across Québec. How is CLASSE organized, and how does it differ from the other two student unions, FEUZ and FECQ? Legault: I think the main difference is direct democracy. In our organization, we never wanted to tell people what to do, but we wanted people to tell us what to do. We just don’t organize an entire campus in one union. We organize our local unions by academic departments, so that we can have as deep roots as possible, involving as many students as possible. Two other major differences between the national organizations are definitely principles and actions. ASSÉ and CLASSE proclaim ourselves as part of combative syndicalism. This main principle of our organization defines the actions we make to get heard. This type of unionism made us build our movement completely independent of the political parties. Another key idea for us is that we need to be a fighting union based on the complete rejection of collaboration. We also are principled feminists. These principles have structured our struggle. CLASSE is really a grassroots movement. So how do you coordinate this grassroots democratic unionism across the whole of Québec? Legault: We have a strike committee of 12 to 20 people that is elected. On top of that, we have almost 55 volunteers who are part of various committees to organize things throughout Québec.
These people are really committed, risking their jobs, taking time away from their families, girlfriends and boyfriends. They go throughout Québec just trying to keep the strike going on and helping people organize actions.
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Class War Greece:
Union President “Speaks Of The
Potential Necessity Of Armed Resistance—Saying One Can Choose Either To ‘Die From Hunger,’ Or ‘With A Gun In The Hand’” Mr. Manousarides “Says He Sees His Fight Against The Mayor As Part Of A Struggle Against The Destructive Forces Of Capitalism And Austerity”
“‘How Will I Pay My Wife’s Medication?’ Yelled One Worker”
June 8, 2012 By JAMES ANGELOS, Wall Street Journal [Excerpts]
THESSALONIKI, Greece—The world is fixating on coming national elections here that may determine the euro zone’s future. But inside Greece, local leaders are struggling with more prosaic concerns, like trash pickups. In this northern Greek city, officials say mounting piles of garbage became such a problem that at one point the mayor called the Greek army for help removing it. Locals call the mounds “the mountains,” and blame them on everyone from elected officials to the International Monetary Fund. The difficulties in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, have been spotlighted amid a public feud between the mayor, who casts himself as a reformer, and members of local trade unions concerned he will privatize garbage collection. Shortly after Yiannis Boutaris took over as mayor last year, only four garbage trucks were functioning, with 10 sanitation vehicles in all in operation from a fleet of around 100, the officials say. They are still trying to grasp the extent of historical spending for garbage collection, they say. The city is considering a partial privatizing of garbage collection as part of a bid to modernize waste management. The mayor’s most vocal and visible opponent has been the leader of the municipal trade-workers union, who says the mayor is intentionally sabotaging the garbagecollection system in order to justify privatization. “The whole city could shine, but the mayor doesn’t want it shining,” says Ilias Manousaridis, president of the municipal trade worker’s union and a member of the AllWorkers Militant Front, which is linked to Greece’s Communist Party. “He wants to take the tax money paid by the workers and citizens of Thessaloniki and give it to his friends, the industrialists.” The conflict between the mayor’s office and segments of the municipal-trade union came to a head last week when the city closed a €1.9 million ($2.4 million), one-year deal to have a private company repair and service 71 sanitation vehicles. As the tender for the job was under way, scores of demonstrators tried to enter city hall and disrupt the proceedings. They clashed with riot police, who used tear gas against them. Mr. Manousarides says he sees his fight against the mayor as part of a struggle against the destructive forces of capitalism and austerity, which he says, “are taking the milk from our children.” He speaks of the potential necessity of armed resistance—saying one can choose either to “die from hunger,” or “with a gun in the hand.” “Is that what we want? The work to leave our hands?” he said. Mr. Georgiadis said sanitation workers have also been subject to pay cuts, including this spring, when salary reductions that were part of the nationally
imposed austerity showed up in one small paycheck that reflected months of retroactive cuts. A crowd of sanitation workers confronted the vice mayor of sanitation at a waste transfer station. “How will I pay my wife’s medication?” yelled one worker who said he had received only €5, according to Mr. Georgiadis, who was present. Afterwards, garbage collectors abstained from work for four days to protest what they say were months of night and weekend pay still owed to them. In many places, trash continues to accumulate and garbage collection remains slipshod. One recent day, a garbage collector could be seen jamming garbage into the back of a rickety truck with a broomstick. Two temporary workers outside a city repair shop complained the back of the truck they had been working on began spewing hot oil. Officials in the mayor’s office said improvements are coming soon, provided national politics will cooperate. If the entire national system collapses, an aide to the mayor said, “then it’s another story.”
“In The Past 11 Years, The Number Of Americans Living In Poverty Has Increased From 33 Million To 44 Million”
“Since 1979, Income For The Top 1% Has Increased By $700,000 A Year, While Income For The Bottom 90% Has Declined By $900 A Year”
“Between 1992 And 2007, Income For The Richest 400 Americans Increased By 392%, As Their Taxes Dropped By 37%”
08 June 12 By Alan Grayson, Reader Supported News [Excerpts]
[T]oday marks 11 years since the Bush tax breaks for the rich were enacted. President George W. Bush signed the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act on June 7, 2001. Bush claimed (as right-wingers always do) that tax breaks for the rich would create jobs in the private sector. Well, they haven’t. There were 110 million private sector jobs in America in 2001. There are 110 million private sector jobs in America today. Despite a population increase of more than 25 million, there are no more private sector jobs today than when the Bush tax breaks for the rich became law. In the past 11 years, the number of Americans living in poverty has increased from 33 million to 44 million. The number of Americans receiving food stamps has risen from 18 million to 46 million. “Trickle-down” has not even been a trickle. And for the rich, the past 11 years has been one long party. According to the Paris School of Economics, the top 1% in America saw their share of national income increase by more than 13% from 2001 to 2010. The top 0.1% saw their share of income increase by 20%. The top 0.01% saw their share of income explode by more than 37%, from 2.4% of all of the income in America to 3.3%. The Bush tax breaks for the rich have yielded the most unequal distribution of wealth in American history, more unequal even than that of 1929, just before the Great Depression. The lurch toward inequality started decades ago; the Bush tax breaks for the rich only accelerated it. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, since 1979, income for the top 1% has increased by $700,000 a year, while income for the bottom 90% has declined by $900 a year. Between 1992 and 2007, income for the richest 400 Americans increased by 392%, as their taxes dropped by 37%.
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“They Rescue The Banks And Evict People”
Demonstrators hold up signs reading: “Everybody Out”, “We don’t owe, we don’t pay” and “They rescue the banks and evict people” in reference to Spain’s bailout, at Puerta del Sol square in Madrid June 9, 2012. REUTERS/Paul Hanna
Demonstrators hold up signs reading: “This isn’t a rescue, it’s a fraud” and “Hands up, this is a rescue” in reference to Spain’s bailout, in Puerta del Sol square in Madrid June 9, 2012. Euro zone finance ministers agreed on Saturday to lend Spain up to 100 billion euros ($125 billion) to shore up its teetering banks and Madrid said it would specify precisely how much it needs once independent audits report in just over a week. REUTERS/Paul Hanna
Photo By SUSANA VERA/REUTERS Antonia Sastre Castilla, 44, (C) shows how little space they have to sleep, as her sister Rosa Maria Sastre Castilla, 46, tries to make the area more comfortable for the family to sleep, outside a store in Madrid June 8, 2012. The family was evicted from the apartment they were renting in April 24 after Rosa, the sole breadwinner, lost her job and couldn’t pay for the monthly rent. Social services provided them temporary lodging for 15 days, and after that they found themselves on the street. They all sleep cramped in a tiny space outside a store nearby. “Some people have given us mattresses so that we wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor, but my mother has a hard time getting up from the floor level and she prefers to sleep on the chair,“ says Rosa.
GOT AN OPINION?
Comments from service men and women, and veterans, are especially welcome. Write to Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657 or send to [email protected]: Name, I.D., withheld unless you request identification published. “The single largest failure of the anti-war movement at this point is the lack of outreach to the troops.” Tim Goodrich, Iraq Veterans Against The War
“Anti-Syrian Regime Protesters Wave Revolutionary Flags During A Demonstration In The Kfar Suseh Area Of Damascus”
June 7, 2012: Anti-Syrian regime protesters wave revolutionary flags during a demonstration in the Kfar Suseh area of Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo/The Kfar Suseh Coordinating Of The Syrian Revolution
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