Two weeks ago we reported on the ongoing campaign to get the City of Holland to adopt an anti-discrimination ordinance that would include sexual orientation.
At that August 17 City Council meeting a member of the Holland PFLAG invited members of the City Council to attend their next meeting so that the elected officials would have a chance to hear directly from parents, friends and family members about the harm being done the LGBT community that lives and works in Holland.
GRIID contacted the folks at Holland PFLAG to find out if any of the Holland City Council members attended their last meeting on August 20. According to one PFLAG spokesperson not one of the Holland City Council members attended that meeting.
PFLAG Holland meets the 3rd Friday of every month from 7 – 9PM Grace Episcopal Church 555 Michigan Ave, Holland, MI (Across from Holland Hospital). One spokesperson for the group said that their PFLAG chapter is working closely with Holland is Ready to get the ordinance passed.
Recall Efforts Continue For Both Snyder and His EFM Law
Haven’t signed a Recall Snyder petition yet? Grand Rapids residents have three chances in September to do so before the deadline at the end of the month. There will be a petition signing station set up at the Fulton Street Farmers’ Market on Labor Day—Monday, September 5—from 7AM to 6PM. The Farmer’s Market is at 1147 Fulton St. SE.
The Recall Snyder group will also be there on Saturday, September 10 and Saturday, September 17 —same place, same times.
Meanwhile, you may get an anonymous phone call telling you that if you sign a Recall Snyder petition, your identity will be stolen. This is just one of the efforts by state conservatives to derail the drive in its final month.
To get the recall on the ballot, 807,000 verified signatures of registered voters need to be handed in. The effort fell short on August 5, the original deadline to make the November ballot. Only 300,000 signatures had been collected. Regrouping, the campaign set its sights on a February ballot. The new deadline is September 29.
The Recall Snyder campaign plans a major push over the Labor Day weekend. Counter measures are being deployed. The Battle Creek Enquirer published information on August 24 that state voters are receiving untraceable telephone calls that say that signing a Recall Snyder petition will lead to identify theft. In Saugatuck, City officials have told canvassers that they can stand on public sidewalks to collect signatures…but they are forbidden to speak to anyone to tell them about the recall effort. The ACLU filed a lawsuit over this fiat.
Many Michigan newspapers have remained silent on Recall Snyder petition drive, giving it little play in their pages. The Grand Rapids Press’s articles have been mainly anti-recall, such as a slavishly supportive commentary about Snyder from the head of the Michigan Association of Realtors and the president of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. No hidden agenda there.
In the meantime, your best bet to get updated information is the Recall Snyder Facebook page.
As for the recall attempt for Public Act 4 (Snyder’s Emergency Financial Manager law), GRIID was informed by Michigan Forward that after this past weekend’s petition drives, the group is within 30,000 signatures of its goal. The allied activist groups collecting signatures (they were here on Saturday, August 27) may reach their goal to freeze use of Public Act 4 just in time to save Flint, which has been placed under preliminary financial review.
This review has been ordered even though the City of Flint reduced its deficit from $14 million to $2 million with this year’s budget agreement. As in Detroit, it’s Flint’s mayor who is campaigning for the all-powerful EFM position, and he attended Emergency Financial Manager training earlier this year.
The training sessions are run by Treasury Secretary Andy Dillon at Michigan State University to sell-out crowds. You can see the agenda for one session here. Note that a large part of the program involves hiring “professional support”—contractors—and also trains future EFMs on how they can avoid personal liability or indemnity for acts they commit such as breaking legal contracts.
September’s training session will include the hilariously titled special session, “How to Communicate Bad News.” The cost of the workshop ranges from $199 to $315 (charges for entry to the lavish reception, the group golf tournament, and the hotel room are extra). In the case of Flint’s mayor, the costs for the workshop were apparently passed onto the citizens of Flint.
As soon as the petition signatures are submitted and validated to recall Public Act 4, Snyder’s version of the EFM law will be suspended until the election.
Copyrighted image used by permission from Linda R. Robinson
Snyder/Dillon photo from Voice of Detroit http://voiceofdetroit.net/
Over the past several months there has been an effort by AT&T and T-Mobile to merge making them the largest telecom corporation in the country.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been hearing arguments and getting input from the public. In addition, the Media Reform group Free Press, based in Madison, has been engaged in a campaign to defeat this merger.
In recent weeks it has been discovered through an internal memo to AT&T that the merger would eliminate an estimated 20,000 US jobs. It has also been discovered that the cost of texting would increase if the merger were to go through, because there would be less competition.
In a recent campaign to target the White House with opposition to the merger, Free Press included the following as part of their campaign:
“We at Free Press have warned about this from day one. Now, in a letter that was inadvertently leaked, one of AT&T’s own lawyers has confirmed it. The letter reveals the merger has nothing to do with expanding AT&T’s coverage to 97 percent of the country – the main argument the company has made to gain Washington’s support – and everything to do with eliminating the cheaper T-Mobile option from the marketplace (and laying off half of its workforce) to pad company profits.”
Free Press has also created this short video as a popular education tool to inform people about why a merger between AT&T and T-Mobil would be bad for the public.
Michigan Politicians
The FCC has yet to decide on this matter, but one thing that both AT&T and T-Mobile have been doing is trying to influence the political process with money.
According to the Center for Responsible Politics, AT&T has contributed to almost every member of the House and Senate from Michigan. In 2010 alone, this chart shows which Michigan politicians have received money and how much. Fred Upton was the top recipient with $11,000, but AT&T spent its money with both Republicans and Democrats.
Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow received $3,000 in 2010 from AT&T, but has received a total of $51,900 from the Telecom giant since joining the Senate in 1989. Stabenow has also received a total of $3,000 from T-Mobile since 2010. Michigan Congressmen John Conyers and Fred Upton each received $10,000 from T-Mobile in 2010 alone.
It seems clear that AT&T and T-Mobile have been busy spending money on both Republicans and Democrats from Michigan in order to influence the outcome of the proposed merger, a topic that has received little coverage in the commercial media.
Why Is Israel Bombing Gaza?
(This article by Peter Hart is re-posted from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.)
The coverage of the Israeli attacks on Gaza is following some predictable patterns. The New York Times has a headline today (8/26/11), “Israeli Strikes in Retaliation Kill Nine Gazans.” Readers should ask: Retaliation for what?
It’s widely understood that this violence stems from the attack last week in the southern Israeli town of Eilat. As the Times puts it: “The recent round of violence started a week ago, with a terrorist attack on southern Israel in which eight Israelis were killed.”
The real question, though, is who committed these acts. The Times says:
“Israeli officials said the perpetrators and planners of the terrorist attack were originally from Gaza, and Israel has retaliated with strikes that have killed at least 23 Palestinians. Gazan officials say they know nothing about the source of the attack.”
That’s a massive understatement.
To date, no armed Palestinian groups have claimed responsibility for the Eilat attack. Israeli officials claimed the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) were behind it, but have offered no proof to back up these allegations. And there has been almost no critical coverage of the weakness of the Israeli case. On NPR (8/18/11), for example, listeners have heard Israeli ambassador Michael Oren claim that Palestinian militants carried out the attack, and five days later London Times reporter James Hider (8/23/11) stated the same thing as if it were a well-established fact.
A handful of journalists have been persistently pointing out that the weakness of this case. One of those writers, Yossi Gurvitz, explains in his latest piece at the Israeli website +972 (8/25/11) that Israeli media are beginning to raise serious questions:
“Since Monday, there have been a few more reports in the Israeli media, casting more doubt on the official story. Yediot reported on Tuesday (Hebrew) that nameless people in the security apparatus doubt the PRC were responsible for the attacks, and raise an interesting question: If they were responsible, why was the PRC’s entire leadership in the same place?
According to Yediot’s anonymous intelligence sources (bear in mind that such sources should always be viewed with skepticism; by their very nature they cannot be corroborated, and they tend to be unreliable even when speaking openly), the attribution of the attacks to the PRC stems from one somewhat incoherent comment on some Jihadi message board.
Ha’aretz reported on Tuesday (Hebrew) that at least three on the attackers were Egyptian Jihadis. American intelligence sources – the same caveat above applies here–told Globes (Hebrew) that they, too, doubt the PRC are responsible, though they may have had a small role in the attacks.
Two days ago, the IAF attacked the Gaza Strip again–naturally, it does not consider itself bound by the ceasefire; only the Palestinians are, and only them can be blamed for breaking it–and killed some Islamic Jihad apparatchick. Yesterday, the IDF claimed (Hebrew) that he was in charge of funding the Eilat attacks. Hold on a minute, I’m confused: I thought you said the attacks were carried out by the PRC, and now it’s the Islamic Jihad left holding the bag? As of yesterday, reported Amira Hass in Ha’aretz (Hebrew), there are no mourning tents in Gaza. As of today, one week after the attack, the IDF refrains from exposing the identity of the attackers it killed.”
This is a remarkable story that deserves serious coverage. Two-dozen people in Gaza have been killed in “retaliation” for an attack that very well could have originated somewhere else.
No Way to Honor Dr. King
(This article by Medea Benjamin is re-posted from Common Dreams.)
The ceremonies for the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington DC were kicked off on August 24 at an event billed as Honoring Global Leaders for Peace. But some of those honored are a far cry from King’s beloved community of the poor and oppressed. The tribute to peacemakers, organized by the MLK National Memorial Foundation, was mostly a night applauding warmakers, corporate profiteers and co-opted musicians.
The night started out with great promise when MC Andrea Mitchell mentioned Dr. King’s brilliant anti-war speech Beyond Vietnam as a key to understanding the real Dr. King. And sure, there were a few wonderful moments—a song by Stevie Wonder, a speech about nonviolence by the South African Ambassador and a quick appearance by Jesse Jackson in which he managed to spit out a call to “study war no more.”
But most of the evening’s speakers and guests of honor had little to do with peacemaking. One of the dignitaries thanked at the start of the program was Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, representing a country that uses $3 billion a year in precious U.S. tax dollars to commit war crimes against Palestinians.
Then came a parade of representatives of corporations that want to cleanse their image by being associated with Dr. King. The first was General Motors VP Eric Peterson. His company took billions from government coffers to keep it afloat, then showed its “generosity” by donating $10 million of our tax dollars to the memorial. Mr. Peterson gave a speech paying tribute to the company’s first black board member, Rev. Leon Sullivan. Peterson claimed that the Sullivan Principles, principles that established a social responsibility code for companies working in South Africa, helped abolish apartheid. The truth is that the Sullivan Principles ended up being a cover for U.S. corporations—like General Motors–to continue doing business in racist South Africa instead of respecting the international divestment campaign.
Up next was Guy Vikers, president of the Tommy Hilfiger Corporate Foundation. Although the group Sweatshop Watch fingered Hilfiger for mistreating workers and inducted the company into its Hall of Shame, Hilfiger’s $6 million gift to the memorial bought it a piece of the King legacy.
Next on the corporate sponsor list was Myrtle Potter of Medco Health Solutions. Medco is a $60 billion “pharmaceutical management” company that fought against healthcare reform and was recently forced to pay the U.S. government $155 million to settle fraud charges. Other corporate benefactors to the memorial include union-busting Verizon, war profiteering General Electric and sweatshop king Wal-Mart.
After the line-up of corporate shills came U.S. trade rep Ron Kirk. One wonders how on earth a man who pushes free trade policies that destroy workers’ right and promote a race to the bottom was deemed a peacemaker. King’s commitment to workers—remember his support of the sanitation workers?—was in total opposition to Ron Kirk’s pro-corporate stance.
But the queen bee of the evening was former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She dismissed King’s call that morality to be the guiding light of our international relations as nice, but far from the complex real world where we have enemies we have to confront. This is the same “practical” diplomat whose claim to shame in the eyes of true peacemakers was her support of such stringent sanctions against Iraq that over 500,000 children under 5 were killed. When asked about the morality of this policy on national TV, Albright calmly asserted that “the price was worth it” in the fight against Saddam Hussein.
Ms. Albright was awarded a model-size version of the King Memorial, presented by the controversial Chinese artist himself, Lei Yixin. Uninvited was the group that had spearheaded a campaign pressing the Foundation to choose an African-American artist, and use American granite and American workers. Instead the Foundation tried to save some money with a Chinese artist who used Chinese materials and Chinese workers. The human rights abusing Chinese government, delighted by the association with Dr. King, sweetened the deal with a $25 million donation. And despite written promises that the Foundation would use local stonemasons to assemble the memorial, Chinese laborers were used. The Washington area local of the Bricklayers and Allied Craftsworkers union claims the workers were not paid fairly, and their pay was withheld until they returned to China.
After the speeches and Stevie Wonder’s song, the mic was turned over to an Israeli musician Idan Raichel, an avid supporter of the Israeli Army and someone who has publicly expressed approval of Israel’s 2009 invasion of Gaza. One wonders how much the Israel government gave to the Foundation to get a plum spot in the tribute to peace.
But don’t ask the King family how they feel about their fathers’ opening tribute being sold off to the highest bidder. The family demands royalties for use of the King name—even from the Memorial—and so far have received about a million dollars. Cambridge University historian David Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of King, said that King would have been “absolutely scandalized by the profiteering behavior of his children.”
Today’s great global peacemakers, the true followers of Dr. King, were neither seen nor evoked. No mention of Burma’s struggling opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi or the nonviolent protagonists of the Arab Spring or the environmentalists opposing a proposed tar sands pipeline from Canada to Texas who were arrested at the White House on the very day of the tribute. No mention of the U.S. peace groups trying—for 10 years now—to stop the horrifying Bush/Obama wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the drone attacks in Pakistan that have killed so many civilians.
Dr. King, whose life was spent preaching unconditional love and nonviolent redemptive good, continues to inspire people the world over who are helping to shape his vision of an “arc of the moral universe” that is long but bends toward justice. Gandhi, King, Mandela—there are precious few whose legacies resonate with those who are risking their lives today, in a nonviolent fashion, to eliminate the evils of racism, poverty, militarism and environmental destruction. King’s tribute to global peacemakers should have reached out to them as the legitimate heirs of the King legacy, not the monied interests who helped pay for the piece of carved granite that bears his image.
Last night in downtown Grand Rapids several hundred people gathered for a rally in support of Israel. The Stand With Israel rally was one of many happening across the US, rallies that were coordinated with Glen Beck’s visit to Israel.
Last Saturday, the Grand Rapids Press announced this rally and cited one of the organizers as saying, “Israel tends to garner much negative press in the U.S.” Neither the organizer or the Press reporter verify such a claim. This is not the conclusion that Richard Falk and Howard Friel come to in their book Israel-Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East. In fact, Israel tends to receive favorable coverage in the US media, which is the conclusion we made in a GRIID report entitled Roadmap to Nowhere.
The rally took place in Rosa Parks Circle and included music and singing of both US patriotic music and the Israeli national anthem. The MC for the event was retired military officer and radio show host Denny Gillem. Gillem was himself a US military analyst on the Middle East and has harassed anti-war protestors in Grand Rapids during Iraq war protests in recent years.
In addition to introducing speakers, Gillem made his own observations about the US and Israel. Gillem said that only England and Israel have been “dependable allies of the US since WWII.” Gillem also said at one point that “this rally was like a Tea Party event, because it focused on an issue not on partisan politics.”
Such a statement flies in the face of what we know about the Tea Party’s endorsement of purely Republican candidates and it ignores the fact that virtually every member of the US Congress votes in favor of continued US military, economic and diplomatic support. In fact, Gillem himself said there was a petition that people could sign at this event, which would deny the Palestinians desire to be recognized as a state at next month’s United Nations meeting in New York.
The first speaker of the evening was former Congressman Pete Hoekstra. Hoekstra was an ardent supporter of Israel during his time in Congress and he made that clear in his comments, which we filmed.
After Hoekstra spoke, Gillem invited to the stand State Representative Dave Agema. Agema spoke about being a military veteran and how in 1973, while in the Air Force, his squadron was asked to loan their fighter planes to the Israelis in their war against Egypt and the Palestinians. Agema also mentioned that he has introduced legislation in Michigan (House Bill 4769), which he said was to deny foreign laws to be introduced into US law. Critics of this legislation are saying that it is really a veiled attempt to marginalize and attack Muslims in the US.
Following Agema was Rabbi Schadick, a local Rabbi who is a member of the Grand Rapids chapter of the Zionist group the Jewish Federation. Schadick spoke in mostly theological terms, but at one point he said, “the US and Israel has each others’ back.” He acknowledged the fact that the US and Israel share weaponry, intelligence and training of troops. Schadick also quoted President Obama who said, “Israel is the best friend the US has in the world.”
Before the featured speaker stepped up to the stage, a local African American minister addressed the crowd. Pastor Thomas Wilson of the Word of Faith Christian Center said he supports Israel because it was the only nation founded “as a sovereign act of God.” It should be noted that Wilson’s church hosted another Stand with Israel event last year at his church where Israeli soldiers spoke.
The featured speaker for this event was Elliot Chodoff, a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces and now a military analyst. As a was making my way to this event I saw Chodoff being escorted by 2 body guards, which stood at the stage the who night.
Chodoff, like the rest of the speakers, did not source his claims about Israel or Palestinians. He said that 9/11 has its origins in the ideology of groups like Hamas. In fact, Chodoff spent most of the time talking about Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, al Qaeda and Hezbollah. In many ways what Chodoff had to say was very similar to the argument made in the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.
Chodoff went on to say that some of the “terrorist tactics being used in Afghanistan today were developed by Hamas.” In fact, Chodoff’s assessment of the countries that border Israeli were such that it was like “being in a room filled with gunpowder and the only light was from candles placed throughout the room. You never knew when there was going to be an explosion.”
Chodoff also continued many Israeli talking points, such as they only respond to attacks and that “since 2001 there have been 10,000 rockets fired at Israel from Gaza.” If this was indeed the case, why does the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem document that there have been a grossly disproportionate amount of Palestinians killed since 2000 compared to Israelis killed.
By the end of the rally it was clear that this event was nothing short of a propaganda event, filled with lies and half-truths. There were numerous information tables set up around Rosa Parks Circle with information such as a booklet entitled Israel 101, published by Stand With US. Another table, featured information by the group Christians United for Israel, the Christian Zionist group founded by Pastor John Hagee. Hagee is such an ardent supporter of Israel that he was quoted as saying in 2006 that Israel should have dropped a nuclear bomb on Lebanon after the 33-day Israeli assault on that country. Hagee and Chodoff were two of the many speakers that headlined the Christians United for Israel summit last month in DC.
There were some people who were opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land who came with posters and handouts, but their views were not heard from the stage. The only commercial media we saw at the event was the Grand Rapids Press, which ran a short article about the rally.
This Day in Resistance History: Remembering the Dublin Lock-Out
On August 26, 1913, the Dublin Lock-Out began. This was one of the longest and most difficult strikes in modern history, and its story is one of struggle, solidarity, betrayal, and bloodshed.
The Dublin Horse Show, held in August by the Royal Dublin Society, was one of the elite’s favorite yearly events. The workers of Dublin’s extensive tram service went on strike just as the show was starting, in order to get the attention of wealthy capitalists and cause the greatest disruption to the elite class.
The union workers were protesting horrific working conditions set by William Martin Murphy. He was the owner of the tram corporation as well as Dublin’s largest department store, Ireland’s major newspapers, and the Imperial Hotel. He was also the major stockholder in Ireland’s railway system. His tram employees worked on schedules of 11 to 17 hours a day. Murphy paid workers to be informers on their peers and harsh discipline was handed out to anyone who violated even the most minor rule. The week before the lock-out, Murphy had met with 300 tram employees and got them to agree not to join or aid any union members. He then fired 340 workers he suspected of belonging to the newly founded union.
On August 26, trams were stopped along their lines and abandoned by their drivers. Murphy snapped into action. He rallied 400 of Dublin’s employers to threaten their own workers against unionizing and to force them to sign anti-union and anti-strike pledges. To make sure that their shops remained non-union, Murphy struck a deal with the business owners. They each deposited a large sum into an account called “The Employers’ Federation.” Murphy then went to the bank and arranged that if a shop was unionized, the employer would lose his deposit.
Murphy also controlled the media, and the message, about the strike. He published a series of articles stating the resistance was about to collapse. He depicted the unionized workers as debauched and slovenly, claiming that even if their wages were raised, they would just drink it all away. Employers who were keeping wages low were therefore protecting public safety and helping to keep the “lower classes” sober.
These preliminary tactics failed, and thousands of workers joined the tram workers in their strike. They were locked out of their jobs as a result. Within a month, 27,000 workers in Dublin were on strike. By mid-October, 32 unions representing more than 30,000 workers had shut down nearly all of Dublin’s businesses.
On August 31, Jim Larkin, leader of the tram workers’ union, was let out of jail on bail. A rally was planned, and hundreds of police officers stood nearby, looking to re-arrest Murphy. They were unprepared when he turned up to speak—from the balcony of Murphy’s own Imperial Hotel, having slipped past guards in disguise. He was arrested before he start his speech, and the police attacked the crowd. Hundreds ended up in city hospitals with injuries. Two workers were killed in the streets, and a third was tortured to death in a jail cell. A fourth worker was shot as she returned home from the rally.
But perhaps the cruelest intervention by William Murphy against the strikers came that fall, and it involved the most powerful of his allies: the Roman Catholic Church. Union workers in Ireland had corresponded with British trade union groups, who agreed to shelter the Irish workers’ children until the end of the strike. Without wages, many families were starving, and the union had run out of money for its food kitchens.
Dublin’s Archbishop Walsh wrote a letter that Murphy published in all of his newspapers. The letter claimed that that the entire plan was a scheme to turn the children into Protestants. It said, in part, “… they can no longer be worthy of the name of Catholic mothers if they so far forget that duty as to send away their little children to be cared for in a strange land, without security of any kind that those to whom the children are to be handed over are Catholics or…persons of any faith at all.”
Walsh also argued that once the children had lived in comfortable homes with three meals a day, they would be unfit to return to their lives in Dublin and its much lower standard of living (due, of course, to the “debauched natures” of the Irish working class).
Some mothers were convinced by the letter or by their own priests not to send their children away. Others faced harsher manipulation. As children were taken to the waiting boats, Irish priests organized groups of weapon-carrying men to block them from boarding. Some children did manage to escape to England, but many were left in Dublin where their parents had no money to care for them. Murphy’s newspapers portrayed Jim Larkin as the villain in this action, a man who had to be stopped as he attempted to steal Ireland’s youth and future.
British trade unions responded by sending ships of food supplies to the Dublin workers. This made it possible for the strike to continue, and for families to at least provide a subsistence level of food for their children. By January, two meetings had been held with the Employers’ Federation without any positive outcome. Many workers could hold out no longer and began accepting individual offers to return to their jobs.
A core group of 5,000 union members tried to keep the strike alive, even after it had been officially broken. They launched court challenges, and in October 1915 they won a case against the Dublin Steam Packet Company. But most workers were forced at some point to return to non-union shops to find jobs.
William Butler Yeats wrote a scathing poem, “September 1913,” which attacks the Employers Federation, the colluding banks and press, and the Catholic Church in the parts they played in thwarting the unions of Dublin. He pictures the capitalists as they “fumble with their greasy till” adding “halfpence to the pence,” while depriving the working class of a decent living. Of the strikers and other Irish revolutionaries, he wrote:
Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun And what, God help us, could they save?
Yeats’ poem reflects the demoralized feeling of many after the collapse of the strike. The rebuilding of the broken union system was slow, and it was not until 1919 membership in unions in Dublin finally reached levels matching those of 1913, when the lock-out began.
But for seven months, Dublin’s working class had put everything on the line in an attempt to face down the wealthy who controlled their lives and their right to reasonable working conditions. And Irish employers, many of whom had lost money and even gone bankrupt during the lengthy strike, never again tried to break a union the way that William Martin Murphy had in 1913. Today, 37 percent of Ireland’s full-time workers belong to a union.
Trading Jobs for Torture in Saudi Arabia
In the August 25 e-blast from MiBiz, under the “News You Can Use” section, there was a story about a new General Dynamics contract to rehab military tanks for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Actually, it wasn’t much of a story, it was really just a link to a General Dynamics Media Release, which states in part that the $42.4 million contact will upgrade the entire Saudi fleet of 314 tanks.
It is interesting that MiBiz puts this under their News You Can Use section of their weekly e-mail news bulletin, but not surprising since they are only interested in promoting news that promotes the economic bottom line.
However, a more honest look at what this $42.4 million dollar contract for a Michigan-based company really means would require the business press to ask questions about the value of the jobs and economic investment trade off will mean in Saudi Arabia.
While Saudi Arabia has been a US ally since WWII, the country has no relationship to democracy or freedom. Beyond the absence of an electoral system the country is run by the Saudi Royal Family, which has a long tack record of human rights violations.
According to the 2011 Amnesty International report on human rights in Saudi Arabia, the country engages in systemic violations, including illegal detentions, lack of rights for women, labor abuses and torture. Even a recent US State Department report acknowledges that Saudi Arabia has an atrocious human rights record, that includes:
“torture and physical abuse; poor prison and detention center conditions; arbitrary arrest and incommunicado detention; denial of fair and public trials and lack of due process in the judicial system; political prisoners; restrictions on civil liberties such as freedoms of speech (including the Internet), assembly, association, movement, and severe restrictions on religious freedom; and corruption and lack of government transparency. Violence against women and a lack of equal rights for women, violations of the rights of children, trafficking in persons, and discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, sect, and ethnicity were common. The lack of workers’ rights, including the employment sponsorship system, remained a severe problem.”
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has also pointed out that the Saudi government has recently crafted new anti-terorism legislation that will further violate basic human rights and legalize various forms of abuse and torture. The HRW analysis of the new anti-terrorism laws suggests that these will be adopted to prevent an “Arab Spring” from happening in that country.
The lack of human rights begs the question why the US would continue to sell them military equipment. The answer is that the US is more interested in the geo-political role that Saudi Arabia plays, a role that supports long-term US plans for the region. This is the conclusion that former CIA operative Robert Baer provides in his book “Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude.” (This book is what the 2005 film Syriana is based on.)
The regional role that Saudi Arabia plays in support of US policy was seen in 2009 when the Saudi military attacked armed insurgents in Yemen, an action that fits in with the larger US War on Terror.
So it seems that in exchange for some jobs and increased profits for General Dynamics the world gets more violence and human rights violations. General Dynamics doesn’t seem bothered by the consequences of their desire for greater profits, since they subvert the democratic process in the US by buying political power in Washington to the tune of $11,534,452 (over the last 20 years).
The One Billion Dollar Question: Who Are the Libyan Rebels?
(This video is re-posted from Democracy Now.)
Libyan rebels have consolidated their grip on the capital of Tripoli by capturing Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s main compound, but the whereabouts of the Libyan leader remain unknown, and he has vowed his forces would resist “the aggression with all strength” until either victory or death. Reporters in Tripoli say heavy gunfire could still be heard nearby the area of the Rixos Hotel, where dozens of international journalists guarded by heavily armed Gaddafi loyalists are unable to leave.
The Arab League said on Tuesday it will meet this week to consider giving Libyan rebels the country’s seat at the League, after it was taken away a few months ago from the Gaddafi government. Today Britain’s National Security Council is meeting to discuss unfreezing Libyan assets to financially assist the National Transitional Council. We speak with Gilbert Achcar, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. “Who are the rebels? Well, this is actually the $1 billion question,” says Achcar. “Even in NATO circles, you find the same questions.”
New Media We Recommend
Below is a list of new materials that we have read/watched in recent weeks. The comments are not a “review” of the material, instead sort of an endorsement of ideas and investigations that can provide solid analysis and even inspiration in the struggle for change. All these items are available at The Bloom Collective, so check them out and stimulate your mind.
What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism, by Fred Magdoff & John Bellamy Foster – With issues like global warming, species extinction and global deforestation, environmentalists have a great deal to fight against. However, unless we are willing to confront the fact that there can be no real sustainable solution under the current economic system of capitalism there will be no viable future. This is the basic argument that the co-authors of this book make, that at the root of our current environmental crisis is capitalism. Magdoff and Foster make a strong case in not only pointing out the current state of the environment, they make clear that global capitalism is not only the root of the major environmental problems we face today, it is incompatible with sustainability. Highly recommended for anyone who really wants to promote and practice environmental justice.
An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln, by Robin Blackburn – Did you know that Karl Marx was assigned by the Tribune to write about the US Civil War and slavery? Marx wrote quite a bit as a journalist and for the International Workingmen’s Association and he even sent a letter to Lincoln while he was President. Historian Robin Blackburn juxtaposes the writings of Marx with the evolution of Lincoln’s position on slavery and industrial capitalism in this intriguing book. Blackburn also looks at the US period of reconstruction and how both abolitionists and labor groups responded to the adjustments that capitalism made with the abolition of chattel slavery. In addition to the analysis the author provides the book also includes the writings of Marx and the proclamations and letter of Lincoln in the appendix, which makes for very interesting historical reading.
Goldstone Recants, by Norman Finkelstein – South African jurist Richard Goldstone was appointed by the UN along with other jurists to investigate the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2009. Goldstone and his colleagues published a fairly scathing report that indicted Israel with war crimes for its deliberate attack against a predominantly civilian population in Gaza. Then in April of this year, Goldstone recanted his position and said there was new evidence that caused him to change his mind. Israel/Palestine scholar Norman Finkelstein provides an important analysis of why Goldstone recanted in this 40-page booklet. Finkelstein asserts that Goldstone was pressured into making this reverse decision by both the Israeli power elite and Israeli apologists who reside in the US. Goldstone Recants is a timely and important response to Israeli propaganda, especially since their illegal occupation of Palestine continues with frequent military incursions.
Trail of Tears (DVD) – Produced by a Native American film company and using archival material, this documentary is an interesting investigation into the US government’s forced removal of the Cherokee Nation. What is now famously called the Trail of Tears is not only explored in this film it is put in proper context of what the larger US response to the “Indian problem” was throughout much of the 19th Century. The film uses recreated scenes, narration and commentary in the Cherokee language in order to better tell the story of one of the most brutal and inhumane actions against Native Americans. An excellent resource for educators and anyone interested in US history through the eyes of the indigenous inhabitants.
