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QUOTE OF THE DAY: KILL TO SAVE THE ECONOMY
“In response to a question, Mr. Gates also said that because the U.S. was at war in two countries, he anticipated 'continued support for a pretty robust defense budget' in the next administration.'I may be whistling past the graveyard here but I think that we’re not likely to see significant cuts,' he said, adding to applause that 'the defense budget at the end of the day is a pretty impressive stimulus for the economy.'"
--DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT M. GATES
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Greetings,
Please join a Holiday Picket supporting Union Workers in wireless @ Mobility.
Tuesday, December 16 - 5PM
Lakeshore Mobility Store
3333 Lakeshore Ave [near 580 Freeway]
Oakland, CA
Did you know that AT&T Mobility is the ONLY unionized wireless phone service?
AT&T Mobility Workers across the country appreciate your support. In the past few years, tens of thousands of workers at AT&T Mobility have joined together in a union; the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
Workers at Mobility are working hard to raise standards in the wireless industry by negotiating fair contracts with our employer. We can improve conditions for wireless workers, but we could use your help. If working people join together and support each other, we can keep decent jobs in our communities and help the US economy—for all of our sakes.
Please join us this Tuesday on a Holiday Picket supporting good union jobs and consider subscribing to the only union wireless provider, Mobility. When our contract expires on February 7th, you can join us as we work to improve our conditions and keep good jobs in California.
Happy Holidays from our families to yours.
This action is sponsored by CWA 9415. For more information call (510)834-9415.
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Notes on a Meltdown, and a View of the Other Side
By Ali Mir
"...so I tried to figure out what a trillion was. I knew it had 12 zeros after the 1, that it was a thousand billion or a million-million, but I couldn't for the life of me understand what a trillion dollars might look like. So I imagined a magic machine that spits out a $10 bill every second, all day and all nightlong. Nice thought. In the first minute in my fantasy world, I would have $600. In the first hour, $36,000. In the first 24-hour day, $864,000. So far, so good. But as I kept up the calculation, and as the enormity of the numbers dawned on me, I began to dismay. I realized that after one year of this enterprise, I'd have a mere $315 million or so. It would take me three years to get close to a billion. I'd need to collect for more than 3,170 years to walk away from my machine with a trillion dollars. If I had been a contemporary of Jesus Christ, I still wouldn't be two-thirds of the way there!"
Samar, November 10, 2008
http://www.samarmagazine.org/archive/article.php?id=269
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UNITE TO PROTEST THE SIXTH YEAR OF U.S. WAR AND OCCUPATION IN IRAQ!
U.S. OUT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN NOW!
MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
MARCH 21, 2009
SIGN ON TO THE UNITY CALL!
The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations:
Call for Unity
We hope that you and your organization agree that unified national March actions are sorely needed in these times of military and economic crises. We ask that you:
1. Sign the Open Letter to the U.S. Antiwar Movement.
2. Urge all local and national organizations and coalitions to join in building the mobilizations in D.C. in March and the mass actions on March 21.
3. Support the formation of a broad, united, ad hoc national coalition to bring massive forces out on March 21, 2009.
You can sign the Open Letter by writing natassembly@aol.com [if you are a group or individual. (Individual endorsers please include something about yourselves.)] or through the National Assembly website at www.natassembly.org [if you are a group endorsement only]. For more information, please email us at the above address or call 216-736-4704. We greatly appreciate all donations to help in our unity efforts. Checks should be made payable to National Assembly and mailed to P.O. Box 21008 , Cleveland , OH 44121 .
In peace and solidarity,
Greg Coleridge, Coordinator, Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition (NOAC); Economic Justice and Empowerment Program Director, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee (AFSC); Member, Administrative Body, National Assembly
Marilyn Levin, Coordinating Committee, Greater Boston United for Justice with Peace; New England United; Member, Administrative Body, National Assembly
On behalf of the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY STATEMENT URGING UNITY OF THE
ANTIWAR MOVEMENT FOR THE MARCH 2009 ACTIONS
For more information please contact:
natassembly@aol.com or call 216-736-4704
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Bring the Anti-War Movement to Inauguration Day in D.C.
January 20, 2009: Join thousands to demand "Bring the troops home now!"
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Strikes Cripple a Riot-Shaken Greece
By RACHEL DONADIO and ANTHEE CARASSAVA
December 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/world/europe/11greece.html?ref=world
2) Italy: World Hunger Is Increasing
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
World Briefing
The number of hungry people in the world increased by 40 million this year, pushing the total to an estimated 963 million, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported Tuesday. The agency blamed high food prices for the increase. Even though grain prices fell sharply from their peaks earlier this year, they remain high compared with previous years, especially in local markets, the agency said. “This sad reality should not be acceptable at the dawn of the 21st century,” Jacques Diouf, the agency’s director general, said in Rome. “Not enough has been done to reduce hunger, and not enough is being done to prevent more people becoming hungry.”
December 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/world/10briefs-WORLDHUNGERI_BRF.html?ref=world
3) Dire Forecast for Global Economy and Trade
By MARK LANDLER
December 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/business/worldbusiness/10global.html?ref=business
4) In Afghanistan, Gates to Talk of Troop Increases
“In response to a question, Mr. Gates also said that because the U.S. was at war in two countries, he anticipated 'continued support for a pretty robust defense budget' in the next administration.'I may be whistling past the graveyard here but I think that we’re not likely to see significant cuts,' he said, adding to applause that 'the defense budget at the end of the day is a pretty impressive stimulus for the economy.'" [DISGUSTING!...BW]
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
December 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/world/middleeast/12gates.html?hp
5) Dr. King’s Documents Withdrawn From Auction
By MOTOKO RICH
[Transcription of note on scrap of paper displayed with this article:
"I. Commend Strikers (Support of SCLC
II. You are demanding that this city respect the dignity of labor
III. You are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people in this rich nation to receive starvation wages. (Most poor people work everyday)
IV. We are tired of being at the bottom. We are tired of living in poverty.
V. Nothing worthwhile is gained without sacrifice. Nothing is gained without pressure (Work stoppages)
VI. This is why we are going to Washington....BW]
December 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/books/11king.html
6) Economy Complicates Labor Dispute
[U.S. exploiting workers around the world to make war on workers around the world...bw]
By DAMIEN CAVE
December 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/us/11puerto.html?ref=us
7) WORKERS AT THE WORLD?S LARGEST MEATPACKING PLANT VOTE YES TO
UNION REPRESENTATION
From: Jobs with Justice National
jwjnational@jwj.org
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1) Strikes Cripple a Riot-Shaken Greece
By RACHEL DONADIO and ANTHEE CARASSAVA
December 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/world/europe/11greece.html?ref=world
ATHENS — The Greek government on Wednesday defended its response to the crisis that has gripped the country since a teenager was fatally shot in a clash with the police last weekend, saying that leaders in Athens had chosen not to crack down on a violent minority in an effort to avoid further bloodshed.
Even as new clashes erupted during a general strike that disrupted transportation, schools and services throughout Greece, a government spokesman said he expected the crisis to tail off in due course.
“I think it’s going to fade out,” said Panos Livadas, general secretary of the Information Ministry. “I think reason will prevail. I also think we will keep on doing our best not to have a future risk of innocent life. No more innocent blood. It’s O.K. if we have to wait a day or two.”
The statement coincided with an offer by Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis to compensate shopkeepers whose premises have been damaged in the riots that have swept Greece since Saturday, when the teenager, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, 15, was shot and killed by the police.
Tensions remained high on Wednesday in Athens and other major cities. Clashes erupted outside the Parliament building, where several thousand demonstrators had gathered to mark the general strike, and also outside the main Athens courthouse, where two police officers involved in the shooting that sparked the riots were testifying behind closed doors. The riot police reacted by firing tear gas as youths hurled rocks and gasoline bombs.
Meanwhile, the policemen’s lawyer, Alexis Cougias, told reporters that a ballistics examination showed that Mr. Grigoropoulos was killed by a ricochet and not a direct shot, The Associated Press reported. One of the officers had said that he had fired warning shots and did not shoot directly at the boy.
There was no comment from prosecutors, who do not make public statements on pending cases.
The general strike on Wednesday was a new blow to the government after four days of violent protests.
Airports were severely affected by the strike as air traffic controllers walked out. Scores of international and local flights were grounded, the state news media reported. Railways, subway and bus lines were virtually halted, as were intercity bus services.
But while labor unions went ahead with the national strike, they called off a planned protest to help limit the disorder that has unfurled through the country. Dozens of people have been arrested in the past four days as rioters have fought with the police and rampaged in Athens and other cities.
The general strike was originally called to press economic demands for increased pay and to protest belt-tightening measures put forward by the government.
But the antigovernment movement acquired new impetus after the shooting on Saturday.
While clashes between the police and students have been common in Greece for decades, the ferocity of the reaction to the boy’s death took the nation — and its government — by surprise. Outrage over the death was widespread, fueled by what experts say is a growing frustration with unemployment and corruption in one of the European Union’s consistently underperforming economies, worsened by global recession.
But it was expressed in violence in the streets by student anarchists. They had been quiet for several years but seemed revived by the crisis. Mr. Karamanlis, hanging on to power in Parliament by only one vote, has seemed frozen, his government, once popular but now scandal-ridden, increasingly under pressure.
“He’s seriously troubled” about the riots, said Nicholas Karahalios, a strategy adviser to the prime minister. “Whereas before we were dealing with a political and economic crisis, now there’s a third dimension attached to it: a security crisis which exacerbates the situation.”
More demonstrations were expected in the national strike Wednesday.
On Tuesday, bands of militant youths threw gasoline bombs and smashed shop windows in downtown Athens, as rioters battled with the police here in the capital and in Salonika, Greece’s second largest city. In the port city of Patras, residents tried to protect their shops from rioters, while other rioters blocked the police station, the authorities said.
While widespread and violent, the protests on Tuesday were seen as slightly smaller than those the day before, when after dark hundreds of professed anarchists broke the windows of upscale shops, banks and hotels in central Athens and burned a large Christmas tree in the plaza in front of Parliament.
At the Athens police headquarters, a spokesman said 12 police officers had been wounded in fighting with demonstrators that flared at 10 major locations around the Greek capital on Monday night. He said 87 protesters had been arrested and 176 people briefly detained because of the confrontations.
In the shattered city center on Tuesday, street-cleaning trucks tackled the mess. Mayor Nikitas Kaklamanis advised Athenians not to drive into the area and asked them to keep their trash indoors; rioters burned 160 big garbage containers in the streets on Monday night.
On Tuesday, the opposition leader, George A. Papandreou, a Socialist, renewed his call for early elections. Yet it remained unclear whether the riots would cause the government to fall or whether the current stalemate would continue.
“What I foresee is a prolonged political crisis with no immediate results for two or three years,” said George Kirtsos, a political commentator and the publisher of City Press, an independent newspaper. “In that time, the country will be going from bad to worse.”
On Tuesday, as youths scuffled with the police outside Parliament, Prime Minister Karamanlis met with his cabinet council and opposition leaders in an effort to get their backing for security operations. But he seemed uncertain exactly how to contain the disturbances. The authorities seem to fear that cracking down on the demonstrators may lead to other unintended deaths, provoking more rioting.
Asked why the riots had not been contained, a spokesman for the national police, Panayiotis Stathis, said, “Violence cannot be fought with violence.”
But in a news conference, Mr. Karamanlis issued warnings somewhat stronger than his actions, saying there would be no leniency for rioters.
“No one has the right to use this tragic incident as an alibi for actions of raw violence, for actions against innocent people, their property and society as a whole, and against democracy,” Mr. Karamanlis said after an emergency meeting with President Karolos Papoulias.
Mr. Karamanlis faced criticism for not acting with a stronger hand earlier, with some suggesting that this gave credibility to the rioters’ anger.
“They chose to show tolerance, which backfired,” said Nikos Kostandaras, the editor of Kathimerini, a daily newspaper. The riots, he added, “were radicalizing every sector of the population.”
On Tuesday, schools and universities were closed, and thousands of teachers and students joined generally peaceful protests through Athens.
George Dimitriou, 22, a member of the agriculture students’ union, said the teenager’s death was an opportunity to protest other issues. “Our generation is facing a tougher future than our parents,” Mr. Dimitriou said as he stood outside Athens University. “This is unheard of, because normally things get better.”
Demonstrations, even occasionally violent ones, are nothing new in Greece, which has a long history of political protest and has been relatively tolerant of the professed anarchist groups that routinely hold antigovernment demonstrations.
To many Greeks, scarred by the memories of military rule in the 1970s, the police remain a hostile remnant of the military junta.
While Greece has a comparatively high ratio of more than 45,000 police officers for 10.7 million people, in the popular imagination, they are seen as ineffective and corrupt, so many Greeks view the police as a fair target for regular demonstrations.
The 15-year-old whose death is at the heart of the disturbances was shot on Saturday night while carousing with friends in the Athens neighborhood of Exarchia, where youths routinely battle the police. The police have said he died when officers clashed with a mob of some 30 youths.
One police officer has been charged with premeditated manslaughter in the case and another as an accomplice.
Meg Bortin contributed reporting from Paris.
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2) Italy: World Hunger Is Increasing
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
World Briefing
The number of hungry people in the world increased by 40 million this year, pushing the total to an estimated 963 million, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported Tuesday. The agency blamed high food prices for the increase. Even though grain prices fell sharply from their peaks earlier this year, they remain high compared with previous years, especially in local markets, the agency said. “This sad reality should not be acceptable at the dawn of the 21st century,” Jacques Diouf, the agency’s director general, said in Rome. “Not enough has been done to reduce hunger, and not enough is being done to prevent more people becoming hungry.”
December 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/world/10briefs-WORLDHUNGERI_BRF.html?ref=world
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3) Dire Forecast for Global Economy and Trade
By MARK LANDLER
December 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/business/worldbusiness/10global.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON — The world economy is on the brink of a rare global recession, the World Bank said in a forecast released Tuesday, with world trade projected to fall next year for the first time since 1982 and capital flows to developing countries predicted to plunge 50 percent.
The projections are among the most dire in a litany of recent gloomy forecasts for the world economy, and officials at the World Bank warned that if they proved accurate, the downturn could throw many developing countries into crisis and keep tens of millions of people in poverty.
Even more troubling, several economists said, there is no obvious engine to drive a recovery.
American consumers are unlikely to return to their old spending habits, even after the United States climbs out of its current financial crisis. With growth in China slowing sharply, consumers there are not about to pick up the slack from the Americans. The collapse in oil prices — a side effect of the crisis — has knocked the wind out of consumers in oil-exporting countries.
“We know that the financial crisis now is likely to be the worst since the 1930s,” said Justin Lin, the chief economist of the World Bank, summarizing the projections.
The bank forecasts the global economy will eke out growth of 0.9 percent in 2009, down from 2.5 percent this year and 4 percent in 2006. That is the slowest pace since 1982, when global growth was 0.3 percent. Developing countries will grow an average of 4.5 percent next year — a pace that economists said constituted a recession, given the need of these countries to grow rapidly to generate enough jobs for their swelling populations.
“You don’t need negative growth in developing countries to have a situation that feels like a recession,” said Hans Timmer, who directs the bank’s international economic analyses and projections. He predicted rising joblessness and closed factories in many developing countries.
The volume of world trade, which grew 9.8 percent in 2006 and an estimated 6.2 percent this year, will contract by 2.1 percent in 2009, the report said. That drop would be deeper than the last major contraction in trade: 1.9 percent in 1975.
Net private flows of capital to developing countries are projected to decline to $530 billion in 2009, from $1 trillion in 2007.
The loss of that capital will sharply constrict investment in emerging-market economies, the report said, with annual investment growth slowing to 3.5 percent in 2009 from 13.2 percent in 2007.
Several countries are also being hurt by the decline in the prices of oil and other commodities — a phenomenon the World Bank characterizes as the end of a five-year commodities boom — though the decline in food and fuel costs has relieved the pressure on people in other countries.
The sudden drop in capital flows poses a particular danger to oil exporters, some of whom have run up heavy debts.
“They’ll have to roll over that debt, one way or the other,” said Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. “That’s going to put a huge squeeze on these countries.”
Mr. Johnson said the calmer atmosphere in foreign markets belied the gravity of the situation. Spreads on credit default swaps — a common yardstick for whether a country’s government is in danger of default — continue to signal potential trouble for Ireland, Italy and Greece.
The authorities in Greece are battling violent street protests in Athens and its suburbs, caused in part by the deteriorating economy.
Reflecting what is by now conventional wisdom, the World Bank recommended that countries undertake large fiscal stimulus programs to cushion the downturn. The bank itself has committed up to $100 billion in aid to developing countries over three years.
If there is a silver lining amid the gloom, it is the relief that lower food and fuel prices mean for poorer countries. While the prices of almost all commodities have fallen sharply since July, they remain higher than in the 1990s, which the bank says should prevent future supply shortages.
As the World Bank’s experts struggled to find a historical analog for the slump, they said it had more in common with the Depression of the 1930s than with the severe recessions of the 1970s or 1980s.
“It is not just a supply shock,” Mr. Timmer said. “It is not just a reduction in demand, but it is the lack of availability of credit.”
Deutsche Bank, in a forecast issued this week, was even more pessimistic. It said global growth would drop to 0.2 percent in 2009, with the United States, Europe, and Japan in recessions of roughly equal severity.
China, which grew 11.9 percent in 2007, will slow to 7 percent next year, the bank projects, and 6.6 percent in 2010, when the rest of the world is slowly recovering. “It’s not going to be the spark that reignites global demand,” said Thomas Mayer, the chief European economist for Deutsche Bank. “We’re almost in an air pocket, where we don’t have a new global driver of growth.”
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4) In Afghanistan, Gates to Talk of Troop Increases
“In response to a question, Mr. Gates also said that because the U.S. was at war in two countries, he anticipated 'continued support for a pretty robust defense budget' in the next administration.'I may be whistling past the graveyard here but I think that we’re not likely to see significant cuts,' he said, adding to applause that 'the defense budget at the end of the day is a pretty impressive stimulus for the economy.'" [DISGUSTING!...BW]
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
December 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/world/middleeast/12gates.html?hp
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Defense secretary Robert M. Gates said here on Thursday that the Pentagon, which plans to send 20,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, was trying to get thousands of the additional combat forces into the country as soon as next spring, a sign of the seriousness of the threat facing the United States against the Taliban.
The soldiers were requested by Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top commander in Afghanistan. The first of them, about 3,500 to 4,000 troops from the Third Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, N.Y., are scheduled to arrive next month.
Mr. Gates said he hoped to deploy an additional two combat brigades in Afghanistan by the spring as part of an effort to combat growing violence and chaos in the country. He declined to name the specific units. Pentagon officials have said it would take 12 to 18 months overall to get all 20,000 American troops to Afghanistan.
Both Mr. Gates and General McKiernan said on Thursday that there would be a “sustained commitment” of American troops in Afghanistan for the next three to four years, although they declined to put a number on that commitment.
The additional 20,000 troops will increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan to about 58,000 from the current level of 34,000. Neither Mr. Gates nor General McKiernan gave any indication that that number was likely to be reduced soon, meaning American force levels could remain that high in Afghanistan through much of the first term of President-elect Barack Obama.
Mr. Gates, who is stay on as Mr. Obama’s Defense Secretary, arrived here early Thursday on an unannounced trip to a regional military base for international forces in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the ideological centre of gravity for the Taliban.
Earlier, Mr. Gates told reporters on his plane en route to Kandahar, that the planned drawdown of some troops from Iraq in January had enabled the military to begin sending additional forces to Afghanistan.
But while he outlined the United States’ commitment, he was critical of NATO for allowing the United States to share a disproportionate share of the burden of the war in Afghanistan.
“NATO is a military alliance, not a talk shop,” Mr. Gates told reporters.
Mr. Obama vowed repeatedly during the campaign to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan, which he declared the central front in the war against terrorism. His call for more troops here was consistent with the views of top commanders, although Mr. Gates made clear that the new administration’s military policy in Afghanistan is far from settled.
“But I have not heard anybody talking about forces beyond those that General McKiernan has already requested,” said Mr. Gates, who has been in recent conversations with Mr. Obama and in meetings with the president-elect’s transition team. “And I think that’s a discussion that the new administration will have as we look to the future.”
Mr. Gates said that his view would be to accelerate the growth of the Afghan army, particularly as the United States increases its military presence in the country.
“The history of foreign military forces in Afghanistan, when they have been regarded by the Afghan people as there for their own interests, and as occupiers, has not been a happy one,” Mr. Gates said. “And the Soviets couldn’t win in Afghanistan with 120,000 troops. And they clearly didn’t care about civilian casualties. So I just think we have to think about the longer term in this. I think we’re going to be in this struggle for quite a long time, and I think we have to make sure we’ve got some of the basics right.”
Mr. Gates said he had talked on the telephone with Mr. Obama since they first met in Washington on Nov. 10 and that the conversations since then have largely focused on personnel, including who will assume the top jobs under Mr. Gates at the Pentagon.
“It’s a dialogue,” he said. “I do not have specific candidates for specific jobs, and so they’re providing me with names and I’m giving them feedback.” Mr. Gates added that he would interview all prospects for senior-level positions and make recommendations to Mr. Obama. “I guess the way I would leave it is I believe I have substantial influence over those decisions, but if the president of the United States wants to appoint somebody to a job, nobody in the executive branch has a veto,” Mr. Gates said.
Mr. Gates also said there had been “some occasional awkwardness” as he makes the transition from one commander-in-chief to another. For example, he said, he has sometimes had to chose between attending what is known as a “principals”‘ meeting at the White House — a session with the secretaries of State, Treasury and other Cabinet members, without the president — or a session with Mr. Obama’s transition team.
“I haven’t missed any meetings with the president, let me put it that way,” Mr. Gates said. “But let’s just say that if I’m faced with a choice between attending a principals’ meeting on an issue that I think is not particularly hot and a meeting with the transition folks, I’ll opt for the latter.”
Before arriving in Kandahar, Mr. Gates made a brief stop at Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, the main base for American air transport into Afghanistan. In remarks to American troops there, Mr. Gates said that the scope and size of their mission would change in the months to come.
“The final decision will be made by the next president, but a consensus has emerged that more troops are needed,” Mr. Gates said, cautioning that “success in Afghanistan will not come easily or quickly.”
In response to a question, Mr. Gates also said that because the U.S. was at war in two countries, he anticipated “continued support for a pretty robust defense budget” in the next administration.
“I may be whistling past the graveyard here but I think that we’re not likely to see significant cuts,” he said, adding to applause that “the defense budget at the end of the day is a pretty impressive stimulus for the economy.”
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5) Dr. King’s Documents Withdrawn From Auction
By MOTOKO RICH
[Transcription of note on scrap of paper displayed with this article:
"I. Commend Strikers (Support of SCLC
II. You are demanding that this city respect the dignity of labor
III. You are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people in this rich nation to receive starvation wages. (Most poor people work everyday)
IV. We are tired of being at the bottom. We are tired of living in poverty.
V. Nothing worthwhile is gained without sacrifice. Nothing is gained without pressure (Work stoppages)
VI. This is why we are going to Washington....BW]
December 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/books/11king.html
On the eve of a planned Sotheby’s auction of three documents related to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Belafonte, the singer and a friend of Dr. King who owned the papers, withdrew the items for sale.
In a brief statement released on Wednesday afternoon, Sotheby’s said the items had been removed from the auction roster “at the request of Mr. Harry Belafonte.” Sotheby’s gave no reason for the withdrawal, and Mr. Belafonte did not return calls left with his agent.
The items scheduled for the auction on Thursday included a three-page handwritten outline of one of Dr. King’s most important speeches, “The Casualties of the War in Vietnam,” delivered in February 1967, and notes for a speech recovered from his suit pocket after he was assassinated in 1968. The third document was a typewritten condolence letter to Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, from President Lyndon B. Johnson.
After news reports early this week about the auction the King estate released a statement condemning the sale and saying that it believed the documents had been “wrongly acquired” by Mr. Belafonte.
“The King estate contends that these documents are the property of the estate of Martin Luther King Jr.,” the statement read. “Mrs. Coretta Scott King and the King estate stopped a previous attempt by members of Harry Belafonte’s family to anonymously and secretly auction wrongfully acquired King documents through a Beverly Hills auction house.” In the statement the estate said lawyers were “looking into issues related to the December 11th Sotheby’s auction of King documents.”
Joseph M. Beck, a lawyer representing the King estate, did not return calls or an e-mail message seeking comment. Calls to Bernice King and Martin Luther King III, children of Dr. King, were not returned. Phillip Jones, a King family representative, and Isaac Newton Farris Jr., a nephew of Dr. King and president of the King Center in Atlanta, did not return calls.
In a telephone interview before Mr. Belafonte withdrew the items for sale, David Redden, vice chairman of Sotheby’s, said that the outline for the anti-Vietnam War speech was written in Mr. Belafonte’s Manhattan apartment. The notes from Dr. King’s pocket, Mr. Redden said, had originally been given by Mrs. King to Stanley Levison, an adviser to Dr. King, who left the notes to Mr. Belafonte. Mr. Redden said that Mrs. King had given the condolence letter to Mr. Belafonte. Mr. Redden, who estimated the documents together could fetch from $750,000 to $1.3 million, declined to comment on whether the King family objected to the sale of the papers.
Mr. Belafonte originally met Dr. King, the civil rights leader, when he gave a speech at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem in the mid-1950s. In an interview this week with The Associated Press Mr. Belafonte said he met with Dr. King for four hours in the basement of the church outlining plans for the singer to help spread the civil-rights message through the entertainment industry. In the interview Mr. Belafonte said he later invited Mr. King to use his apartment during his visits to New York. In other news media interviews Mr. Belafonte said he planned to donate the proceeds from the auction to charities representing “the disenfranchised.”
Mr. Belafonte appeared to fall out with the King family around the time of Mrs. King’s funeral in 2006, when he was invited, and then disinvited, to give a eulogy.
The King family has been criticized for its handling of Dr. King’s papers and for trying to profit from them. In 2006 the family selected about 10,000 items from its collection of his papers to auction at Sotheby’s. At the last minute the collection was withdrawn from auction because the city of Atlanta secured a privately financed loan of $32 million and established a nonprofit organization to buy the papers and store them at Morehouse College, Dr. King’s alma mater.
David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Dr. King, said that the Belafonte documents were historically important and that he hoped they would go to a “professionally respectable archive.” In addition to Morehouse, Boston University, where Dr. King received his Ph.D., holds a collection of his papers. “It is regrettable if Mr. Belafonte has been intimidated by the estate, if indeed he was going to put the proceeds to good social cause,” Mr. Garrow said in a telephone interview. “Given the years of intimate loyalty that Belafonte had with Dr. King, he is one of the last people who should be legally intimidated by the estate.”
Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a trilogy on Dr. King and a friend of Mr. Belafonte, said he was more concerned about the fate of hundreds of documents still stored in the King Center, the nonprofit foundation started by the King family in Atlanta. “Most of Doc King’s collections are locked up in the King archives, which have been essentially nonfunctional for years,” Mr. Branch said. “This is what really worries historians, which is that everything will get lost.”
Clayborne Carson, founding director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University and director of the King Papers at Morehouse, said that he was not so concerned about the content of Mr. Belafonte’s papers getting lost, because Mr. Carson had already obtained copies from Sotheby’s. “To me the buying and selling of papers is a whole other world from what my interest is,” Mr. Carson, a historian, said. “I wish we could go back to the days when people cared about the ideas as opposed to the commodity.”
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6) Economy Complicates Labor Dispute
[U.S. exploiting workers around the world to make war on workers around the world...bw]
By DAMIEN CAVE
December 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/us/11puerto.html?ref=us
ADJUNTAS, P.R. — At a squat green factory here in the mountains of central Puerto Rico, workers stitch together camouflage uniforms for American troops. They arrive around sunrise, and the first thing they see is a banner that reads, “Say no to the union!”
It is the most visible sign of an intensifying conflict over sick days that has set mostly rural Puerto Rican workers against one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of military clothing. And in a sign of what may be to come in other depressed areas, both sides seem determined to use the faltering economy to gain leverage.
The company, Propper International of St. Charles, Mo., has been making military uniforms for more than 25 years. It employs about 3,000 people at eight factories in Puerto Rico, and Tom Kellim, Propper’s chief executive, said in an interview that its pay and benefits were “equal to or better than the competition.”
Indeed some employees say they feel blessed just to have a job, with Puerto Rico in its third year of recession and unemployment at nearly 12 percent.
But others — like Gladys López and Albert Torres here in Adjuntas — accuse the company of using an oversupply of labor to sidestep a Puerto Rican law (known as Law 180) that grants full-time employees 12 paid sick days and 15 days of vacation per year. Ten years after the law passed, workers say, Propper still does not pay for sick days and allows only about a week of paid vacation.
In interviews, they described a company where employees were expected to disregard their health to keep sewing.
Ms. López said that after she injured her back a few years ago at work, she postponed a doctor’s visit to protect her pay and her job. Similarly, Mr. Torres said he had put off an operation for a thyroid problem because he feared the consequences.
“I waited a year before going for surgery,” he said. “And when I finally submitted the paperwork to my superiors, two days later they gave me a memo stating I had been laid off.”
Mr. Torres said his health seemed to be the only cause for termination. “When I had my surgery and went back,” he said, “they rehired me.”
Workers from other Propper factories also said they had felt pressured by the lack of paid sick days and their financial needs to take greater risks with their health.
Maritza Vázquez, a worker at the Propper factory in Las Marías, in southeast Puerto Rico, said that after surgery for breast cancer a few months ago, she cut her recovery short by three weeks to get back to work.
“They made me sign a release at the doctor’s office in case something happened to me,” Ms. Vázquez said. “It took longer for my scars to heal, but they eventually did — and at least I didn’t lose my job.”
Mr. Kellim, in a brief telephone interview, did not deny that Propper failed to grant its workers the sick days allotted by Law 180. He said a longstanding “mandatory decree” from the Puerto Rican government exempted the apparel industry from certain labor provisions.
But according to legal experts, such a decree may apply, if at all, only to workers hired before Aug. 1, 1995. For more recent hires, like Ms. Vázquez, who started working at Propper in 1999, Law 180 superseded the earlier agreements, said Manuel Rodríguez Banchs, a law professor at the University of Puerto Rico.
“What the law did was make uniform a set of minimum requirements for all those companies that were subject to several different decrees,” Professor Rodríguez Banchs said.
Puerto Rico’s Department of Labor, which is responsible for enforcing the law, did not respond to calls seeking comment.
Diana Stewart, a spokeswoman at the Defense Logistics Agency — an arm of the Department of Defense, which ordered $99 million in products from Propper for fiscal 2008 — said her office would contact labor officials to learn more about the employees’ accusations.
Some of the workers said they had already filed formal complaints. They also turned this year to Unite Here, the union that represents more than 450,000 hotel, restaurant, apparel and laundry workers.
Liz Gres, a Unite Here organizing director in San Juan, said Propper was the largest of at least five military uniform manufacturers in Puerto Rico that do not comply with the law requiring paid sick days.
“They’ve basically been acting like this new law was never passed, and getting away with it for many, many years,” Ms. Gres said.
Unite Here has also accused Propper’s management of illegally threatening workers with plant closings or job loss for supporting the union. Last month, after the union filed a complaint with National Labor Relations Board, the company agreed to a settlement in which it promised to inform workers of their legal right to organize.
Still, the conflict shows no sign of fading; the antiunion banner in Adjuntas compares organizers to leeches with the line “pa’ fuera el chapacuotas,” or “out with the dues suckers.”
And the battle comes at an especially uncertain time. Puerto Rico has also lost 50,000 manufacturing jobs over the last four years, and evidence from independent groups like the Center for a New Economy suggests that high taxes, strict labor laws and government inefficiency are part of the cause.
Mr. Kellim said making military uniforms these days in Puerto Rico “is a very low margin industry.”
But Ms. Gres said Propper was simply exploiting the economic moment.
“They know it’s difficult to find jobs,” she said, “so people will take whatever they can get.”
Ebedet Negron contributed reporting from Adjuntas.
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7) WORKERS AT THE WORLD?S LARGEST MEATPACKING PLANT VOTE YES TO
UNION REPRESENTATION
From: Jobs with Justice National
jwjnational@jwj.org
Tar Heel, N.C. - This week workers at Smithfield Packing in Tar
Heel, North Carolina, chose union representation with the United
Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW). Workers
voted 2041 to 1879 for a voice on the job.
"When workers have a fair process, they choose a voice on the
job," said UFCW Director of Organizing Pat O'Neill. "This is a
great victory for the Tar Heel workers. I know they are looking
forward to sitting down at the bargaining table with Smithfield
to negotiate a contract. The UFCW has constructive union
contracts with Smithfield plants around the country. Those union
contracts benefit workers, the company and the community. We
believe the workers here in Tar Heel can achieve a similar
agreement."
Ronnie Ann Simmons, a worker of 13 years at the plant said, "We
are thrilled. This moment has been a long time coming. We stuck
together, and now we have a say on the job."
Jobs with Justice would like to congratulate the workers and
their union for their courage and inspirational example.
We would also like to thank the many faith, community, student,
labor and political leaders who stood by the workers at
Smithfield through their long struggle.
Smithfield workers have shown the way for workers everywhere as
we fight together for an economic recovery that benefits
everyone.
It shows the importance of passing the Employee Free Choice Act
so that all workers can have good jobs with decent wages,
respect on the job and a future for their families.
Sign on to Support the Employee Free Choice Act:
http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/S7vwU511xcDg/
Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
http://www.unionvoice.org/join-forward.html?domain=jobswithjustice&r=r1vwU51qeYC7
If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for
Jobs with Justice at:
http://www.unionvoice.org/jobswithjustice/join.html?r=r1vwU51qeYC7E
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