Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Gaza Freedom March Dispatch #2 (7:07 pm)

A Movement Re-imagining Change

It has been a tumultuous 15 hours. Two buses, carrying 100 people from the Gaza Freedom March (GFM) and loads of humanitarian supplies, just departed from Cairo for Gaza. This was a victory and a concession.

The decisions and the manner in which this opportunity was framed and promoted by various actors fractured the GFM participants in familiar and unlikely, real and sectarian ways—all documented by media cameras and hundreds of Egyptian security forces. Ali Abunimah, myself, Veterans for Peace organizers, and Israeli journalist Amira Hess were among the 100 people on the list to go, who arrived at 6:30 this morning, on the corner of Ramsis by the 6th October Bridge at the Al Gona Bridge, to depart for Gaza.

Tuesday morning, delegates from several countries went to their embassies in Cairo to plead for help getting to Gaza. Most were met with predictable bureaucratic intransigence. The French, however, staged an extraordinary encampment in front of their embassy and their ambassador and his wife came out and spent time speaking with them individually and in small groups. That action continues today.

Bill [Ayers] and I went to the American Embassy at 10 a.m. and asked to see the Ambassador. We were ushered into a holding pen a block away from the embassy building where we joined 35 people already there, surrounded by Egyptian soldiers. Over the next 4 hours, another dozen Americans arrived, and those of us who asked to leave were denied. Meanwhile, Medea Benjamin, Kit Kiteredge, and Ali Abunimah were meeting with an embassy official and stressing that we intended to go to Gaza on a non-violent humanitarian mission, and requested their assistance. Further, they asked that the embassy officials release the U.S. citizens who were now clearly being detained outside.

Ali emerged first, to tell us that their discussion achieved nothing, and they were now requesting that we be free to go. This process took another hour. Ali refused to enter the holding cage, and spoke to us from outside. At one point, out of nowhere, military personnel grabbed Ali, and Medea –... read more

posted by Bernardine Dohrn | 21 comments

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Gaza Freedom March Dispatch #1 (10:05 pm)

Dear friends and allies:

The 1,300 people from 43 countries who came to break the blockade of Gaza, to witness the reality of life in occupied Gaza, and to join the civil society and people there in a huge demonstration for peace on December 31, are being denied passage to Rafah and entry into Gaza. We cannot accept this.

Today, in Cairo, Netanyahu is meeting with Mubarak at the presidential palace while occupied Gaza remains cut off from access to urgently needed supplies and the necessities for survival.

A team of 50 U.S. citizens rallied today outside the U.S. embassy, while Ali Abunimah and Medea Benjamin met with a first secretary inside the embassy to demand that the U.S. government press the Israeli government to open the borders and allow us into Gaza. U.S. officials insisted that it was not their affair, much as they remained silent last year during the onslaught. The French team continues their theatrical and militant encampment outside the French embassy. Twenty people are continuing their hunger strike. Tonight, a large pro-Palestinian rally is underway at the Syndicate of Journalists in Central Cairo.

Blockaded Gaza remains occupied, since it is surrounded by walls, razor wire, and outside military forces on all sides. It is urgent that citizens across the world awake the the suffering and displacement that is continuing one year after the inhuman Israeli assault on the civilian population of Gaza and the grave human rights abuses are ongoing. Our goal, to bring supplies, visibility and solidarity to the people of Gaza, continues, and with your help we intend to try to enter Gaza to initiate a new decade of global human rights.

It is dismaying to be in Cairo now, when our intent was to be in Gaza. That remains our focus, in spite of the challenges and obstacles put up by the United States and others.

posted by Bernardine Dohrn | start the discussion

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Weekly Diaspora: ICE Perpetuating Human Rights Abuses (3:38 pm)

Ed. Note: This week’s Diaspora is short due to the holidays. We’ll be back to full-length next week.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, apparently isn’t beholden to US or international law. In The Nation,
Jacqueline Stevens reveals the “clandestine operations, akin to extraordinary renditions” carried out by ICE.

Beyond the department’s public list of detention facilities—many of which are already sites of alleged abuse—ICE is also “confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices” around the nation. According to Alison Parker, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, these secret detention centers may violate the UN’s Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a signatory.

But what’s most appalling is ICE’s assertion that the department is some sort of super-police with powers of rendition. James Pendergraph, former executive director of ICE’s Office of State and Local Coordination, said in late 2008 that “if you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally, but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.” The boldness with which a law official would state such an idea is confounding; the confession, if true, is criminal.

Last week, The Diaspora wrote about the introduction of the CIR ASAP immigration bill by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL). Freshman Congressman Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) is a recent addition to the list of 87 cosponsors on the bill, as The Colorado Independent reported last Wednesday. This is a positive step forward. The bill will most likely be sponsored in the senate by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). CIR ASAP establishes a basic layout of progressive immigration reform, but the final bill will probably become more focused on enforcement in Schumer’s hands.

Finally, David Moberg reports on the Obama administration’s controversial use of “audits” to purge employment payrolls of undocumented workers for In These Times. While the audit method is much quieter and less likely to make headlines, it is also ineffective. Not only do audits rely upon “flawed federal databases” to judge who is documented, they also purge immigrants who are “legal.”

As the Service Employees International... read more

posted by Nezua | start the discussion

Weekly Pulse: A Senate Bill By Christmas? (3:36 pm)

Early Monday morning, the senate voted 60-40 along straight party lines to defeat the initial attempt to filibuster the health care reform bill. Yesterday, it passed the second of three procedural votes, bringing the Senate one step closer to a final vote on the health care reform bill. Majority Speaker Harry Reid (D-NV) is on schedule to vote on the bill before Christmas.

In the last-minute negotiations leading up to these votes, Reid made stiff concessions to conservative Democrats, eliminating the public option and the expanded Medicare buy-in to placate Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). Sen. Ben Nelson (R-NE) got tougher restrictions on abortion funding, though not as tough as those spelled out in the Stupak amendment to the House bill.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a socialist who caucuses with the Democrats, has apparently given up his threat to filibuster a bill with no public option. Instead, he’s taking his turn as “the 60 vote,” reports Katrina Vanden Huevel in The Nation. Sanders is using his leverage to push for waivers which would allow states to develop their own health insurance systems, possibly including single payer. Canada’s celebrated Medicare program began in a single province and eventually went national.

In AlterNet, Zaid Jilani argues that President Barack Obama failed his progressive base by all but abandoning the public option. As Jilani points out, Obama is even trying to rewrite his own record on the issue. Now he says he didn’t campaign on a public option. Jilani reminds us that the Obama-Biden campaign platform promised that “any American will have the opportunity to enroll in [a] new public plan.” Obama was promising a sweeping public option. Even the House bill would only make a tiny fraction of the population eligible for the public option.

It’s not surprising that the health care bills before us favor vested interests in the health insurance sector. Health care companies spent $635 million on lobbying over the past two years, and 166 former congressional aides who used to work on health care legislation have registered as lobbyists, reports Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!.

Rachel Larris reports in RH... read more

posted by Lindsay Beyerstein | start the discussion

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Weekly Audit: Stop Wall Street’s Economic Rampage (8:30 am)

Over the past year, Wall Street’s excess has helped push the unemployment rate to epic levels and created millions of foreclosures. Yet the rules of the financial road remain unchanged. As 2009 draws to a close, it’s astonishing that so little progress towards financial reform has been made.

President Obama, Congress and federal regulators have not been tough enough on the nation’s financial elite. As Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery emphasize for Mother Jones, the government has committed about $14 trillion in bailout funds to save the banking system without demanding much of anything in return. Goldman Sachs and other big banks are now planning to pay giant bonuses that come straight from taxpayer giveaways rather than invest that money in socially constructive banking.

“Bankers aren’t being rewarded for pulling the economy out of the doldrums,” Bauerlein and Jeffery write. “Nope, they’re simply skimming from the trillions we’ve shoveled at them.”

The major banks are even spending our bailout money to lobby against reform. When President Obama called a meeting for leaders of the nation’s largest banks to scold them for their lobbying, the heads of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup didn’t even bother to show up, as Matthew Rothschild describes in a podcast for The Progressive.

It’s easy to see why the bank execs are so indifferent, Rothschild argues, even to the president. Now that almost all of these banks have repaid the loans they received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Obama has no negotiating leverage and the bankers know it. Even though it represents just a tiny fraction of the $14 trillion bailout, TARP was the only program that attached any strings to that money. Prior to those TARP repayments, Obama could have demanded that banks do more lending to help the economy, work harder to keep troubled borrowers in their homes—or face executive compensation restrictions or other penalties.

And many of the same regulators who helped bring about today’s economic disaster are still in power. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) explains for Brave New Films (video below), Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke blew just about... read more

posted by Zach Carter | start the discussion

Monday, December 21, 2009

The Mulch: Tepid Accord Reached in Copenhagen (10:52 am)

After two weeks of negotiations for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop15), global leaders produced a limited, non-binding agreement that was noted, but not adopted. President Barack Obama presented the Copenhagen Accord to the summit on Friday night, calling it an “important milestone.” The accord promises global cooperation to combat climate change, recognizes the need to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, and commits funding for developing nations to battle the impacts of global warming.

But on Saturday, after President Obama had returned to Washington, leaders from Europe and the least developed nations announced that the accord was not definitive and represented the views of only a few countries. In particular, Lumumba Stanislas Dia-ping, chair of the Group of 77, which represents the poorest nations in the world, pushed back, claiming that their interests had been abandoned.

As David Roberts reports in Grist: “Since the … process requires unanimity to move forward, Danish Prime Minister Lokke Rasmussen could only look on, bewildered, as country after country restated its position in increasingly emotional terms.”

Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told reporters that the more powerful countries overlooked the interests of their less fortunate neighbors, according to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

“I think the countries that can really make a difference have not really got sensitive enough to the plight of the poorest of the poor. I think that’s a harsh reality which we have no choice but to accept,” Pachauri said.

The accord left out crucial elements that tripped negotiators up throughout the week. David Corn and Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones report that the accord “…contains few specific numbers—beyond “recognizing the scientific view” that a global temperature rise should be ‘below 2 degrees.’ It dropped language from an earlier draft calling for cutting global emissions in half by 2050. The agreement urges developed nations to implement reductions they have already pledged—without spelling out those numbers or [establishing] baseline years. Developing nations would establish their own emissions curbs.”

During the summit, China objected to requirements that would allow outside monitoring... read more

posted by Sara Laskow | start the discussion

Friday, December 18, 2009

ITT’s ‘Voices From the Island’ Guest Editor on Chicago Public Radio (2:31 pm)

On last Wednesday’s edition of Chicago Public Radio’s Worldview, Havana-born author Achy Obejas discussed the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution with host Jerome McDonnell. Obejas edited the In These Times special edition Inside Cuba: Voices From the Island, which features a series of exclusive articles and essays written by Cubans about contemporary Cuban life.

Check out full audio from the program here.

The WBEZ interview mentions several of the pieces from December’s issue, including “From Fidel to Raul” by poet Norberto Codina, “Mystery Island” by novelist Leonardo Padura Fuentes, “We’re Bad Cuz Nobody Loves Us, Nobody Loves Us Cuz We’re Bad” by author and hard rock singer Yoss, and storyteller Yohamna Depestre’s first work of nonfiction, “A Day in My Life (Any Day).”

Achy Obejas is also a member of the In These Times Board of Editors.

posted by Zachary Gonzalez-Landis | 2 comments

The Mulch: Frustrated, Obama Calls for Action (12:23 pm)

President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated arrival in Copenhagen today has turned from a hopeful sign of success into a grim reality check. Immediately after arriving this morning, Obama joined an unscheduled meeting with 18 other world leaders before the most high-profile session of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop15) began. The deal depends on the United States and China, the world’s leading emitters of greenhouse gas emissions to reach an agreement on a course of action.

At this morning’s session, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jibao hailed his country’s efforts to curb greenhouse emissions. Wen implied that China would keep its emissions voluntary and unilateral, which was out of step with suggestions that China place its reduction goals within a binding treaty. Then, Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva complained about the Cop15 negotiations’ lack of progress.

A visibly frustrated Obama took the stage immediately after (video below), saying he was in Copenhagen “not to talk, but to act.” The question is no longer the nature of the challenge, Obama said, but leaders’ capacity to meet it: “For while the reality of climate change is not in doubt, I have to be honest as the world watches us today. I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now and it hangs in the balance. I believe we can act boldly and decisively in the face of a common threat.”

David Corn of Mother Jones wrote that Obama’s speech “signaled a global train wreck… Obama was clearly venting. … If an accord is not reached at this summit, Obama remarked, ‘we will be back having the same stale arguments month after month, year after year, perhaps decade after decade all while the danger of climate change grows until it is irreversible.’”

Although Obama didn’t mention China directly, he “took a dig at the way the country has resisted transparency measures for monitoring emissions cuts,” as Jonathan Hiskes writes for Grist. “Is this a sign that the Copenhagen talks may fail to produce even a weak, tentative accord—a so-called ‘fig leaf’ deal that would provide world leaders the barest of... read more