Obama’s Jobs Plan
Moon of Alabama | September 9, 2011
Obama’s jobs plan:
- “We will continue to falsely diagnose a solvency crisis as a normal liquidity recession.” (I would otherwise have to demand credit write downs from those criminal banksters who pay for my reelection bid.)
- “We will cut the payroll taxes which pay for social security.” (This will make it easier to later gut the whole program.)
- “We will pay for that by later cutting Medicare and Medicaid.” (See how I never lose sight of my original aims.)
- “We also ask the Congress super-committee to find more ways to cut spending.” (Time for the cat food commission to earn its name.)
- “We will give tax breaks to companies that hire workers.” (Just fire them from those well payed jobs, rehire them for less and get another tax break. What’s not to like here?)
- “We will give some money to the cities and towns so they can keep more policemen on their payrolls.” (We will need those when the people eventually start to revolt.)
- “We will put up $10 billion of the people’s money toward a public-private infrastructure bank. (Here is some upfront money for the banksters to privatize more of the now public owned space.)
- “We will also offer money to rehab vacant and foreclosed houses that are now owned by the banks.” (They never really wanted those houses so why should they pay for them?)
- “We ask Congress to pass this immediately.” (Please don’t give anyone time to find out what really is behind these ideas.)
Police clash with protesters in Italy
Press TV – September 7, 2011
Demonstrators hold a banner reading “Stop to social butchery, diktat of the European Union” during a general strike in Rome, Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011.
Italy’s riot police have clashed with anti-government demonstrators rallying against the government’s controversial austerity package, which the Senate recently approved.
The police reportedly used batons and fired tear gas in an attempt to disperse the protesters in the capital of Rome, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
Moreover, hundreds of demonstrators tried to break through a police barrier protecting the upper house of parliament in which the vote for the austerity package was held.
The package, initially introduced by Prime Ministers Silvio Berlusconi, was approved by a vote of 165 to 141.
The EUR 54 billion package of spending cuts and tax hikes is meant to help the debt-ridden eurozone country balance its budget deficit by 2013.
The package was originally worth EUR 45.5 billion, but was raised due to market concerns. It will now be passed on to the lower house Chamber of Deputies for approval, before it comes into effect.
Meanwhile, analysts believe the Italian government needs an additional EUR 10 billion cut in spending to achieve a balanced budget by 2013.
Italians had a day earlier, also staged demonstrations against the package.
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See also:
Conservative Mayor in Italy calls for a wealth tax
“Given that Italy has no real tax on residential properties, the lowest capital gains tax rate in Europe and rampant tax evasion among higher-income professionals, why not recover resources from the people who have the money”?
and
Ahmadinejad Launches Tajik Power Plant, Lashes West
Al-Manar – September 5, 2011
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched the first turbine of Tajikistan’s 220-megawatt Sang Toodeh II Dam and Hydroelectric Power Plant.
President Ahmadinejad attended the launching ceremony along with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and other high-ranking officials from both countries on Monday, IRNA reported.
The Iranian president traveled to Tajikistan on Sunday for an official two-day visit.
Ahmadinejad lashed out at global powers for interfering in domestic affairs of Asian and African countries. “We believe it is against the interests of the nations, their dignity and prosperity,” he said at the opening ceremony of the station.
“This is a project of mutual friendship and brotherhood, we’re happy with Tajikistan’s success,” Ahmadinejad said in televised remarks. “Our cooperation is aimed at peace and stability in the region.”
The Sang Toodeh II project can greatly help Tajikistan in its industrial and agricultural sectors and in meeting its energy needs, according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
Iranian Sangab Company began construction of the power plant in 2006 in the southwestern Khatlon province.
Iran has invested around USD 180 million in the project, along with Tajikistan’s $40-million investment, and is expected to carry out management of the plant for 12 years. Tajikistan’s national power company will then take over the management from Iran.
Rahmon has described the project as “Iran’s biggest gift” to the Tajikistani nation.
How Walmart Trains Managers
By Adrian Campbell Montgomery – Labor Notes – 08/31/2011
The brave Walmart workers who belong to OUR Walmart say fear is the main thing stopping their fellow retail workers from organizing. As an assistant store manager at Walmart, I saw how managers were trained to put that fear into hourly workers’ heads.
When I was hired four years ago, new assistant managers had to complete eight weeks of training. We got a $500 prepaid credit card for meals and were thrown into a hotel, with weekends off to go home.
I thought we would get a crash course in Walmart history and then get into learning the computer systems, the policies, how to schedule people. I was far off track. I was now in an eight-week indoctrination into how Walmart is the unsurpassed company to work for, and how to spot any employee who was having doubts. I was supposed to be happy at all times.
The training was done at “Stores of Learning.” The assistant managers were new hires to Walmart, like me, or about one-third had been promoted from within.
Training activities included the Walmart cheer. Every morning, as store associates do, we would participate in the cheer. A few people stood up to read the daily numbers, then break out into a chant—“Give me a W-A-L-M-A-R-T,” with the rest of the people in the room shouting back the same letter. Back then, Wal-Mart still had a hyphen, so between the L and the M they would yell, “Give me a squiggly!” and everyone would do a butt wiggle.
Whenever it was my turn to lead, let’s just say I was less than thrilled, an early warning system for upper management on who was not Walmart material.
You, Too, Can Rise
Most days we watched videos of the CEO telling us what a good choice we’d made to come to Walmart. Other videos showed folks who are now top management in Bentonville, Arkansas, but started out as a cashier when they were young.
We were all given Sam Walton’s book to read: Sam Walton: Made in America. We were allotted 15 to 30 minutes a day for silent reading, or instead you could help out in the store. I was one of the few that chose to fetch carts in the parking lot or help throw freight around in the back. Since the Store of Learning was also going to be the store I would work at, I wanted to take the opportunity to get to know the workers and other managers. I wanted to see if anybody could tell me what an assistant manager’s role was, considering there wasn’t much of that going on in the classroom.
We had a week-long schedule of anti-union sessions. They didn’t call them that, but essentially it was how to spot uprising employees.
We had an entire day devoted to word phrasing, looking at how employees use words and what key words to look for. A computer test consisted of a “what’s wrong with this picture?” game. You were shown the area near a time clock, and different handmade and computer-made signs. One sign said “Baby shower committee meeting Jan. 26, 8 pm.” Another said “Potluck Wednesday all day in break room.” Which one of those signs should raise alarms with management?
“Baby shower committee.” Because of the word “committee,” a manager would have to find the person who made the sign, find out why they used that word, then determine if the action got a warning or a write-up. If it was the store manager who found the sign, a write-up was almost guaranteed. They called it unlawful Walmart language, unbecoming a Walmart employee—words like “committee,” “organize,” “meeting.” Even “volunteer” was an iffy word, and they would raise an eyebrow at “group.”
The anti-union training was the biggest part of our reading and training material. We watched videos about why unions are bad and how proud Walmart was for not allowing unions into its system. I let all that go in one ear and out the other. I felt that if I gave those videos even five minute’s worth of attention, I was betraying my union parents.
We did get a day and a half of loss-prevention training; how to spot shoplifters, what happens if you catch an employee stealing, and routine loss-prevention. They brought in a loss-prevention district manager whose 30-minute talk was to put the fear of Sam Walton in us. He told the class that if he found out we let anything fall through the cracks, he would show up at the store with a pink slip in hand.
Nothing from that eight weeks of brainwashing was geared to help you do your job as an assistant manager. Essentially it was more of a police academy, training the managers to be police officers for Walmart. We were being trained to put fear into the hourly workers’ heads. Step out of line, and you lose your job.
After graduating (they held a makeshift ceremony), I had no clue what exactly my job was. I had to learn from the other assistant managers in my store how to operate the scanner, how to schedule my departments, and the other operational items that weren’t covered in the training. The only thing I learned was how to fake being happy around customers and my subordinates.
Segregation
The trainers told us that assistant managers are only allowed to hang out or go to break or lunch with other assistant managers, not with hourly associates, not with co-managers, not the store manager. Once I was on the job, half the time I went to a diner with another assistant manager. If I stayed in for lunch, I would turn my walkie-talkie off, sit in the break room with the associates, and talk with them. That was frowned upon.
One day of training was about attire. There were separate rules for dress policy according to job title. Assistant managers and higher have to wear a collared blue shirt. No collar, no job.
Hourly people get a little more free play and are not required to wear a collar shirt. Management has to wear khakis; hourly can wear jeans. I heard one trainer say, “Well, the hourly folks probably can’t afford khakis, even with their discount.”
How anti-union is Walmart? I wore a UAW jacket that my mom had bought for me. When I wore it into the store, the store manager broke into my locker and took it. He said it would encourage others, and I was written up for conduct unbecoming a Walmart employee. I called Human Resources, but I got nowhere. Walmart says they have an open-door policy, but like OUR Walmart members have testified, it’s closed to most of us.
Prior to my employment with the largest retailer in the world, I worked for a union-friendly Midwest competitor, in the same management position. The differences were amazing. It was nothing for me as a manager to go out for a few beers with my people. At the competitor, the hourly workers are union. As a manager, it’s a breeze to write out your weekly schedules when you follow the contract!
Hershey’s Walkout Exposes J-1 Guestworker Scam
By Jenny Brown | Labor Notes | August 25, 2011
Every year the U.S. State Department grades countries on human trafficking, but it would do well to look at its own J-1 visa program, which one organizer called “the ultimate captive guestworker program.”
The Summer Work Travel program for students was widely exposed when three hundred J-1 student guestworkers from China, Turkey, Ukraine and other countries walked out of a Hershey’s packing plant in Palmyra, Pennsylvania August 17.
The students demanded a refund of program fees, and said the jobs should go to local unemployed people at a living wage.
The students presented a petition to management and then marched out chanting in English and their native languages. Three Pennsylvania labor leaders blocked the door and were arrested, while Jobs with Justice put out a call for funds and solidarity, and the National Guestworker Alliance, which helped the students organize, demanded that the State Department eject the company responsible from the student guestworker program.
“Why did they bring us here?” said Harika Duygu Ozer, a medical student from Turkey. “Because they want to make profits from us instead of giving good jobs to local workers.“
Saket Soni, executive director of the NGA, said that if the jobs were living wage jobs, with a union contract, they would have paid $15 million this year to currently unemployed Pennsylvania workers and their families.
CULTURAL EXCHANGE
The striking workers are college students who were solicited by a dizzying range of sponsoring groups with splashy websites promoting a fun four-month cultural exchange visit to America.
The Council for Educational Travel, USA (CETUSA) provided the workers to the Hershey’s-owned plant. CETUSA describes itself as “a non-profit, global exchange organization dedicated to helping people from different cultures develop more compassion and understanding for one another.”
To employers, it markets its services as a way to fill seasonal staffing needs, “No matter if you own a little candy shop in Texas or run a huge processing plant in Alaska.”
The Palmyra J-1 workers packed and lifted 65 pound boxes of candy at breakneck speed, many on night shift. They complained of severe back pain, bruising, and numbness in their arms.
Workers were subjected to camera surveillance and were told they would be fired if they didn’t keep up the pace. Zhao Huijiao, a 20-year-old international relations student from China, said managers pushed them, “work, work faster, work.” Students said they were threatened with deportation if they didn’t keep up.
Inflated housing costs were deducted from their paychecks, leaving them as little as $95 for a 40-hour week, said Godwin Efobe, a Nigerian medical student who works night shift in the plant.
The last straw, some students said, was when they discovered that they were paying more than double the rent of their non-J-1 neighbors. Typically, four students crammed into an apartment with a market rent of $600. The company deducted $400 from each student’s paycheck, adding up to $1,600 a month.
Housing wasn’t close to the plant, either, requiring a 20-minute walk followed by a 40-minute bus ride. Students were told they could not rent for themselves because they were staying such a short time. The costs of damage deposits, bus fare, hats, and gloves were also deducted. One student ended up with a paycheck of six cents after her first week’s work.
CAPTIVE WORKERS
The wage theft is especially galling because the students paid between $3,000 and $6,000 to enter the program, a fee which included round-trip travel.
Like many agricultural guestworkers, they found themselves “captive workers,” they had to keep working to pay off their debts. Some had hoped to save money for fall school expenses, but the paychecks barely met their daily needs.
A Ukrainian student told television news in her home country that she couldn’t leave because her parents had invested so much, and if she came home she’d have to pay her own travel, piling on more expense. How would she look her parents in the eye? she asked.
When management got wind of worker unrest, they threatened deportation, in a meeting that one of the students audiorecorded.
LOCAL JOBS
Hershey’s laid off 600 workers in 2009, when it moved some product lines to Mexico, said Diane Carroll, Secretary-Treasurer of the Chocolate Workers union (BCTGM). Four hundred more union jobs will soon be lost to automation when a new plant opens, replacing the original Hershey factory. Some of the Palmyra packing jobs used to be union, too, but the company closed that plant in the early 1990s.
After that, the union tried to organize the current plant, but Hershey’s said it only owned the building, the real employer was subcontractor Exel, and therefore the workers were not covered by the Hershey’s contract.
It is not clear how long Exel has used J-1 students, some say five years. The employers take advantage of varying college schedules around the world to maintain staffing year round, although the students only work 4 months each.
“Quick turnover is part of the recipe for exploitation,” said Stephen Boykewich, a Guestworker Alliance organizer. He said other guestworker programs, administered by the Department of Labor, have been scrutinized lately due to worker organizing and renewed enforcement, but the J-1 program has virtually no safeguards.
SWEATSHOP DIPLOMACY
The Summer Work Travel program was originally fashioned during the cold war to promote America to foreign students. Now it annually accounts for 130,000 college students, in low-wage jobs, while another 200,000 J-1 visas are issued to workers in year-long trainee and intern programs.
Unlike other guestworker programs, J-1 employers don’t have to advertise jobs locally to show that Americans don’t want them, and there is no limit on the number of J-1 visas issued. The H2A agricultural guestworker program brings 40,000 workers while H2B, the non-agricultural program, is capped at 65,000.
The J-1 program is “Particularly offensive because it appears to be standard-less,” said Rebecca Smith of the National Employment Law Project, who works on guestworker rights. “It’s used in a way to subvert the already low standards of the other programs.”
BACK INSIDE
Two hundred student workers who struck walked back into the plant three days later, but this time they returned as “labor justice monitors,” said Boykewich of the Guestworker Alliance. They are armed with badges and logbooks, looking for labor violations of any kind.
“This forces the plant management to take a very different approach and be on guard about minimal labor standards for the first time,” he said. No one has been fired yet.
Simultaneously, the students are launching a kitchen table listening tour, visiting the families of Pennsylvanians who reached out to them when their strike hit the news. Many offered the students food and places to stay.
The students are taking them up, making connections with people in the area who have been hit by corporate cost-cutting like Hershey’s. The outlook is good for some real cultural exchange, they say.
In America The Rule Of Law Is Vacated
Bank fraudsters, torturers, and war criminals running free…
By Paul Craig Roberts | Global Research | August 31, 2011
With bank fraudsters, torturers, and war criminals running free, the US Department of Justice (sic) has nothing better to do than to harass the famous Tennessee guitar manufacturer, Gibson, arrest organic food producers in California and send 12 abusive FBI agents armed with assault rifles to bust down yet another wrong door of yet another innocent family, leaving parents, children, and grandmother traumatized.
What law did Gibson Guitar Corp break that caused federal agents to disrupt Gibson’s plants in Nashville and Memphis, seize guitars, cause layoffs, and cost the company $3 million from disrupted operations?
No US law was broken. The feds claim that Gibson broke a law that is on the books in India. India has not complained about Gibson or asked for the aid of the US government in enforcing its laws against Gibson. Instead, the feds have taken it upon themselves to both interpret and to enforce on US citizens the laws of India. The feds claim that Gibson’s use of wood from India in its guitars is illegal, because the wood was not finished by Indian workers.
This must not be India’s interpretation of the law as India allowed the unfinished wood to be exported. Perhaps the feds are trying to force more layoffs of US workers and their replacement by H-1B foreign workers. Gibson can solve its problem by firing its Tennessee work force and hiring Indian citizens on H-1B work visas.
In Venice, California, feds spent a year dressed up as hippies purchasing raw goat milk and yogurt from Rawesome Foods and then, decked out in hemp anklets and reeking of patchouli, raided with guns drawn–always with guns drawn–the organic food shop. The owner’s crime is that he supplied the normal everyday foods that I grew up on to customers who requested them. For this heinous act, James C. Stewart faces a 13 count indictment and is held on $123,000 bail.
How did raw milk become a “health threat?” Far more Americans have died from e-coli in fast food hamburgers and from salmonella in mass produced eggs and chicken. Like many of my generation, I was raised on raw milk. Mathis Dairy delivered it to the homes in Atlanta. Even decades later a person could purchase Mathis Dairy’s raw milk in Atlanta’s grocery stores. How did supplying an ordinary staple become a crime?
The FBI agents who broke down Gary Adams door in Bellevue, Pennsylvania, claim they were looking for a woman. Why does it take 12 heavily armed FBI agents to apprehend a woman? Are FBI agents that effete? If the feds can never get the address right, how do we know they have the name and gender right?
I can remember when it only took one policeman to deliver a warrant and to arrest a person, and without gun drawn and without breaking down the door, tasering or shooting the object of arrest. It turns out that the FBI agents who broke into the Adams home not only were at the wrong address but also didn’t even have a search warrant had they been at the correct address.
The practice of sending heavily armed teams into American homes has resulted in many senseless murders of US citizens. The practice must be halted and SWAT teams disbanded. SWAT teams have murdered far more innocents than they have dangerous criminals. Hostage situations are rare, and they are best handled without violence.
Jose Guerena, a US Marine who served two tours in Bush’s Iraq War was murdered in his own home in front of his wife and two small children by a crazed SWAT team, again in the wrong place, who shot him 60 times. When his wife told him that there were men sneaking around the house, he picked up his rifle and walked to the kitchen to see what was going on and was gunned down. The hysterical SWAT team fired 71 shots at him without cause. Brave, tough, macho cops out defending the public and murdering war heroes.
I have seen studies that show that police actually commit more acts of violence against the public than do criminals, which raises an interesting question: Are police a greater threat to the public than are criminals? On Yahoo I just searched “police brutality” and up came 4,840,000 results.
Meanwhile, the real master criminals, such as Dick Cheney, who, if tried for his actions at Nuremberg, would most definitely have been executed as a war criminal, run free. Cheney is all over TV hawking his memoirs. On August 29, interviewed by Jamie Gangel on NBC’s Dateline, Cheney again proudly admitted that he authorized torture, secret prisons, and illegal wiretapping. These are crimes under US and international laws.
Cheney claims breaking laws against torture is “the right thing to do” if “we had a high-value detainee and that was the only way we can get him to talk.”
Three questions immediately come to mind that no member of the presstitute media ever asks. The first is, why does Cheney think the office of Vice President, President, or Attorney General has the power to “authorize” breaking a law? Our vaunted “rule of law” disappears if federal officials can authorize breaking laws.
The second is, what high-value detainees is Cheney talking about? Donald Rumsfeld declared the Guantanamo detainees to be “the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.” http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=43817 But the vast majority had to be released when it turned out, after years of their lives were spent in a torture prison, that the vast majority of the detainees were hapless innocents who were sold to the stupid Americans by war lords as “terrorists” for bounties. To save face, the US government has held on to a few detainees, but hasn’t enough confidence in their alleged guilt to put them on trial in a court of law.
The third is why does Cheney think that he knows better than the accumulated documented evidence that torture doesn’t produce truthful or useful information. If the person under torture is actually a terrorist, he knows that his tormentors don’t know the answers that they are looking for and so he or she can tell the torturers whatever serves the tortured victim’s purposes. If the person under torture is innocent, he has no idea what the answers are and seeks to discover what his torturer wants to hear so that he can tell him.
As Glenn Greenwald makes clear, Dick Cheney, who presided “over policies that left hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead from wars of aggression, constructed a worldwide torture regime, and spied on Americans without the warrants required by law” is now being feted and enriched thanks to “the protective shield of immunity bestowed upon him by the current administration.”
Meanwhile Gibson Guitar faces prosecution because of the feds’ off-the-wall interpretation of a law in India, and the owner of Rawesome has a 13-count indictment for supplying customers with a food staple that was a part of the normal diet from colonial times until recently.
In America we have the rule of law–only the law is not applied to banksters and members of the executive branch but, as Greenwald says, is only applied to “ordinary citizens and other nations’ (unfriendly) rulers.”
A country this utterly corrupt is certainly no “light unto the world.”
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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.
Settlement produce exporter Agrexco set for liquidation
By Maureen Clare Murphy – The Electronic Intifada – 09/01/2011
The Israeli produce company Agrexco, which has been a key target of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement in Europe, is set for liquidation, the Israeli business publication Globes reported Tuesday.
Agrexco, Israel’s largest fresh produce exporter, has come under pressure because the majority of its goods are grown in illegal Israeli settlements — though they are often misleadingly labeled as “product of Israel” in European supermarkets. The Israeli government also holds a 50 percent stake in the company.
As The Electronic Intifada reported earlier this summer, more than a hundred activists from nine countries convened for the first ever European Forum Against Agrexco. Stephanie Westbrook reported for The Electronic Intifada:
From 4-5 June, delegates from Italy, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Palestine joined the French organizers for two full days of workshops aimed at strengthening the boycott campaign against the Israeli agricultural export giant.
The liquidation of Agrexco can be seen as a major victory of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is making it increasingly undesirable for multinational companies to be entangled in the Israeli occupation.
While certainly factors besides the mounting pressure on Agrexco from the BDS movement were at work here, the movement has made an impact on the Israeli economy.
Bloomberg News reported yesterday that Israeli stocks aren’t doing so well:
Israeli shares traded in New York are heading for their worst month on record on concern global economic growth is faltering and the Palestinian Authority’s quest for statehood may destabilize the country.
The Bloomberg Israel-US 25 Index of the largest Israeli companies that trade in the US retreated 0.2 percent to 85.48 yesterday, extending its August drop to 13 percent, the worst monthly performance in data going back to September 2005. SodaStream International Ltd., the maker of machines that carbonate water, led the gauge’s decline, falling 50 percent after its profit forecast trailed estimates. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., the world’s largest maker of generic drugs, dropped 13 percent on concern new products won’t boost sales.
Yesterday, The Electronic Intifada reported that Sweden’s largest grocery chain, Coop, removed the popular Sodastream products from its shelves, as they are manufactured in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank:
The Israeli maker of home carbonation devices, Sodastream, took a direct hit when the Coop supermarket chain announced on 19 July that it would stop all purchases of its products due to the company’s activity in illegal Israeli settlements. This marked another important victory for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, as Sweden is Sodastream’s largest market, with an estimated one in five households owning a Sodastream product.
In her report for The Electronic Intifada, Stephanie Westbrook added:
In disclosing risk factors as required in SEC filings, Sodastream listed both remaining in and transferring from Mishor Adumim as potential liabilities. The risks associated with staying include “negative publicity, primarily in Western Europe, against companies with facilities in the West Bank” and “consumer boycotts of Israeli products originating in the West Bank.”
Complying with international law and leaving the illegal settlement, on the other hand, would “limit certain tax benefits” enjoyed by companies in industrial parks in illegal settlements.
However, for more and more companies, those tax incentives fail to compensate for the negative publicity. On 19 July, the multinational corporation Unilever, after unsuccessfully attempting to sell its shares in the company, formally announced plans to move its Bagel and Bagel pretzel factory from the Barkan industrial zone in the Ariel settlement bloc to within the green line, Israel’s internationally-recognized armistice line with the occupied West Bank (“Bagel Bagel leaving territories,” 19 July 2011).
While governments continue to perpetuate the status quo of Israeli impunity, colonization and warfare, the BDS movement is effectively challenging business-as-usual with Israeli apartheid.
Pentagon No-Bid Contracts Rise to 45% in 2011
Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky | AllGov | August 30, 2011
The post-9/11 years at the Department of Defense have seen an enormous increase in no-bid contracts, with the lack of competition approaching 50% during the first six months of this year.
Over the course of the last 10 years, the amount of money spent by the Pentagon on non-competitive contracts has almost tripled, from $50 billion in 2001 to $140 billion in 2010, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News. And the reliance on no-bid deals has only gone up so far in 2011—to 45%—the highest rate recorded since 2001.
Like other federal agencies, the Defense Department is supposed to demand competitive bidding. But numerous loopholes in federal law make it possible for contracting officers to bypass restrictions and select a single company to provide goods and services. For example, the government may claim “an unusual and compelling urgency” to skip competition, when in fact, according to iWatch News, “the urgency stemmed from the agency’s lack of planning for requirements that have been known for years.”
Another problem is “bridge contracts”, in which the Pentagon extends an existing contract rather than put the contract out for rebidding. These account for one quarter of all sole source contracts.
The Pentagon defends itself by pointing that, on a dollar spent basis, in 2010 62% of all contracts were competitive. However, this figure does not compare well with other departments of the federal government. For example, the Department of Energy has a 94% competition rate, the Department of Homeland Security 77% and the State Department 74%.
French giant Veolia cut down to size for abusing Palestinian rights
Maren Mantovani and Michael Deas – The Electronic Intifada – 26 August 2011
The French corporation Veolia once appeared unassailable; today it is ailing. It is faced not only with the global economic crisis but also the growing impact of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against its involvement with Israeli apartheid infrastructure and transport projects. A recent merger between Veolia’s transport division and a subsidiary of the main French state investment fund indicates French industry and government have united to find a simple solution to Veolia’s problems: let the taxpayers finance Veolia’s income losses — and its complicity with Israeli war crimes and human rights abuses against the Palestinian people.
On 4 August, Veolia management held a conference call with major financial analysts to defend the company’s latest figures. It wasn’t an easy task. Veolia’s management was forced to gloss over the terrible financial situation of the group that has forced it to draw up sharp cost reduction plans, initiate a complete restructuring of management, plan the pullout from more than forty countries and search for more investors to cover a high debt.
Veolia has lost more than 50 percent of its share value since March 2011, according to tear sheet data from The Financial Times (“Marketdata: Veolia Environnement Ve SA,” accessed 25 August 2011).
However, among the underlying financial data discussed — €67 million ($96 million) in net loss during the first half of this year; €15 billion ($21.6 billion) net debts; €250 million ($360 million) yearly cost reduction — one number did not come up: the massive financial damage the company has faced at the hands of the BDS movement. Since the beginning of the Palestinian-led campaign in 2005, Veolia has lost contracts worth more than €10 billion ($14 billion) following high profile campaigns.
Veolia’s chief financial officer Pierre-Antoine Riolacci had to admit that its municipal services are suffering a downturn in some countries “in particular with pressure on the downside, namely in the UK where things are rather difficult.”
Ignoring London loss
Surely the CFO had heard the news from across the English Channel the day before the conference call, where Veolia had failed to be selected for a £300 million ($493 million) contract by Ealing Council in London following a determined campaign by the local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
The worldwide campaign against Veolia was initiated in response to the company’s five percent stake in the consortium that is constructing the light rail project that links West Jerusalem with illegal Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the surrounding West Bank, thereby cementing Israeli colonization and creating the necessary infrastructure for its further expansion. Moreover, Veolia holds a thirty-year contract for the operation of its first line, due to open later this month. Veolia and its subsidiaries also operate bus services, waste management and a landfill all deep within the occupied West Bank, and all for the use of Israeli settlers. All of these projects contribute to war crimes, as defined by the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Refusal to withdraw from Israel
Despite its apparent desperation to reduce costs, Veolia has yet to implement the most effective cost reduction strategy it could: including Israel in the list of countries it plans to withdraw from. Rather than divesting from Israeli colonization of Palestinian land, Veolia is turning to the French state for financial assistance, involving public money in operations abetting Israeli war crimes.
This spring Veolia Transport merged with Transdev into a newly created company Veolia Transdev (“Veolia Transdev: Creation of the world’s leading private-sector company in sustainable mobility,” press statement, 3 March 2011).
Transdev was a subsidiary of the French Caisse des Dépôts (CDC), a public investment authority that manages public funds and is overseen by the French parliament. The CDC is now a 50 percent partner in the newly created Veolia Transdev transport company. According to Veolia’s Pierre-Antoine Riolacci, the entrance of Transdev intp the group has allowed Veolia to “cut back our debt by €159 million [$229 million].” The degree to which Veolia Transdev has come under the protection of the French state is evident in the fact that during the conference call, Veolia Transdev issues were directly dealt with by the CDC’s chief executive Jerome Gallot.
On its website, CDC boasts that it exists to “serve the general interest and the economic development” of France. But pumping French tax money into Veolia to make up for its financial troubles, thus allowing it to push forward projects that serve illegal Israeli population transfers into occupied Palestinian territory, is unlikely to help attain either goal. Moreover, the Jerusalem light rail project contradicts French government policy that East Jerusalem should be the capital of a future Palestinian state. Promoting the project in 2005, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated, “This [light rail] should be done … to strengthen Jerusalem, construct it, expand it and sustain it for eternity as the capital of the Jewish people and the united capital of the state of Israel.”
Even before its partial ownership of Veolia Transdev, CDC was involved in the light rail project through its subsidiary Egis Rail, which won a contract in 2008 to assist with managing the project. The current role of Egis Rail is unclear.
Private companies have long been heavily involved in Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights, such as building and maintaining the illegal settlement infrastructure, and the wall built on Israeli-occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank. But by investing in Veolia, the French government is bucking a recent European trend of governments to start ensuring public enterprises and institutions are not complicit with Israeli violations of international law.
The German government recently responded to public pressure by taking steps to end the state-owned company Deutsche Bahn’s involvement in the construction of a train line from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv passing through the occupied West Bank. Explaining its intervention, the German transport ministry pointed to the “potentially illegal” nature of the project and the fact that it is inconsistent with government policy toward Israel and the Palestinians (“Letter from German government to Die Linke parliamentarian concerning A1 train project,” 10 May 2011). The German foreign ministry has admirably published an alert on its website warning German companies about the potential legal consequences of Israeli projects in the occupied West Bank (“West Bank, Economy”).
Precedents set by other European capitals
The Norwegian government took a precedent-setting step when it excluded Elbit Systems from its investment portfolio. Elbit is an Israeli arms company involved in the construction of Israel’s illegal wall in the West Bank. It subsequently also excluded Africa Israel and Danya Cebus, two companies which build illegal Israeli-only settlements in the West Bank (“Norwegian government pension fund excludes more Israeli companies,” 23 August 2010).
The British government also took a stand on the issue when, in 2009, the foreign ministry pulled out of a deal to rent office space for its embassy in a building owned by Lev Leviev, the Israeli diamond tycoon who owns Africa Israel and finances development of illegal settlements in the West Bank. The British government also withdrew export licenses to Israel from UK arms companies that provided the Israeli military with weapons or components that have been used during the winter 2008-09 attacks on the Gaza Strip (“Israel arms licenses revoked by Britain,” The Huffington Post, 13 July 2009).
In September 2009, the Spanish government excluded Ariel university from a state-sponsored architecture competition after having become aware that it was located in an illegal settlement.
The French government, however, has so far failed to take action to end such complicity. By doing so, France is not only undermining important precedents set by its allies. It also violates its obligations under international law and the voluntary commitments it has made regarding good governance and corporate social responsibility.
France must honor obligations
When the International Court of Justice ruled on the illegality of Israel’s apartheid wall and related infrastructure in the occupied West Bank, it also ruled that third party states are obliged not to aid or assist the maintenance of the unlawful situation created by Israel or infringements of the right to Palestinian self-determination. Two companies owned by the French state fund CDC — Veolia and Egis Rail — are involved with and profit from such unlawful acts. This calls France’s commitment to international law into question.
In June, the United Nations Human Rights Council approved its new Guiding Principles for the implementation of the Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework, designed to help states and businesses understand their duty to prevent corporate abuse of human rights and their obligations under international law (“Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework,” 21 March 2011).
According to these principles, “states should take additional steps to protect against human rights abuses by business enterprises that are owned or controlled by the state … [including by] denying access to public support and services for a business enterprise that is involved with gross human rights abuses and refuses to cooperate in addressing the situation.”
Involvement in the light rail project also violates the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s guidelines on multinational companies. Considering that Paris is the seat of the OECD, this is particularly ironic (“OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises,” 2008 [PDF]).
The OECD guidelines call for companies to “respect the human rights of those affected by their activities consistent with the host government’s international obligations and commitments.” Israel’s settlements and associated infrastructure violate several key international law treaties, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, all of which have been ratified by Israel and France.
The French government has become a shareholder in Veolia in full knowledge of that company’s role in supporting Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian land. The principal victims of this French policy are the Palestinian people. However, this development should also be of concern to all those who believe in the importance of a functioning system of international law and the implementation of human rights standards. The French people, whose taxes have financed the Veolia Transdev merger, should be especially concerned.
It will be up to campaigners in France and all around the globe to stop governmental buy-ins to illegal operations of private or state enterprises. It will be their task to ensure that the Transdev deal will not be enough to shield Veolia from the impact of the BDS movement’s demand for accountability. The group is in financial trouble and its CFO has admitted that Veoila is losing municipal service contracts in cities and regions that have seen meticulous grassroots campaigning. In December, Veolia will present the full list of countries which it is leaving (“Veolia to leave 37 countries as loss spurs quicker revamp,” Bloomberg, 4 August 2011).
This might be another chance for the company to show that it has learned that failure to respect human rights and the Palestinians’ right to self-determination comes with a price.
Maren Mantovani is coordinator for international relations with Stop the Wall, the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign.
Michael Deas is Europe coordinator for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC).
Seeking Social Justice Through Education in Chile
By Ramona Wadi | Upside Down World | 25 August 2011
The ongoing student protests in Chile are an unwavering accomplishment aimed at combating the social injustice riddling the country’s education system. What started out as a series of peaceful protests has become a manifestation of unity between students, artists and much of the general population in a stance defying the current government’s position regarding social class, cultural difference and political division with regard to education.
Upon assuming power in a military coup that ousted President Salvador Allende, General Augusto Pinochet implemented a series of policies that spelled poverty for the working class. To this day, remnants of the military dictatorship are evident in Chile. Upon Milton Friedman’s advice, Pinochet altered the education system in Chile. Responsibility for public schooling was transferred from the Ministry of Education to public municipalities. Private schools were financed by the voucher system in proportion to student enrollments. The elite families began enrolling their children into schools which charged for enrollment. No effort was made on behalf of the government to improve the curriculum, education quality or management, resulting in a society which, for decades had to contend with social class division within education.
Private universities meant excessive tuition fees, causing students and their families to incur debts whilst education quality was barely improved. Universities were mostly attended by students from the middle class and higher income families. Impoverished areas had no access to quality education, with low income families obliged to send their children to public schools where no incentives, such as better working conditions for teachers were offered, to promote and enhance student educational performance. Discrepancy in Chile’s education system led to society incurring yet another split. The current system exploits class as well as cultural differences. Low income families have no option but to send their children to public municipal schools. Mapuche people living in rural areas having to contend with an inferior education as well as lack of intercultural awareness.
Students are demanding the state assumes responsibility to provide free education and broader access to education. The students’ proposals include eliminating the business concept of education, ensuring the quality of public education, the creation of an education system which falls under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education and ensuring educational rights for Chile’s indigenous people.
Protests have ranged from sit-ins, to barricades and marches, as well as hunger strikes as a mark of resistance. Hunger strike protestors have read statements holding the government responsible for their plight. Cacerolazo protests (a common form of protest in Latin American countries which involves banging on pots with kitchen utensils) have also gained ground within the movement and Chilean society. This form of protest, which can even be performed from home, has achieved a high level of solidarity with the student protestors.
Thousands of students in Santiago clashed with the police as force was used in an attempt to restore what the state defines as public order. The students were met with tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets. In what may be portrayed as another relic of the dictatorship some protests were deemed illegal, citing the lack of a permit allowing students to demonstrate.
Camila Vallejo, spokesperson for the student’s movement described the state repression as a great mistake, adding that the student movement was not intimidated by threats and encouraging the students to persist in their various forms of protest.
President Sebastian Piñera’s attempts to appease the students have been rejected outright. In a televised speech, Piñera’s proposals, including a cabinet reshuffle and an annual education fund used to support public education, were dismissed as not addressing the students’ concerns and demands. While the students were calling on the government to end private education schemes, Pinera declared that nationalizing the education system would damage quality and freedom of education.1
The second attempt at reform was the government’s 21 point plan2, which was once again swiftly rejected by the students. The right to a quality education, promoting student involvement, promoting multiculturalism in higher education and an inclusive admission system were listed amongst the proposals being branded as reform.
The discrepancies in Piñera’s proposals highlight Chilean divisions. There is no mention of state takeover of education; hence the right to a free quality education for all society remains debatable. Education administered by the private sector remains the estate of the privileged, enforcing further gaps within Chilean society. Student involvement in education remains a distant objective, as protests continue to be met with force. Multiculturalism awareness and inclusive admission border on illusion when considering the intolerance and abuse of human rights suffered by indigenous people.
As a result of state repression against indigenous people, the Mapuche have been subjected to discrimination. Apart from the anti terror law, which allows the state to prosecute Mapuche in a military court, the community has been subjected to cultural repression. Yonatan Cayulao, leader of the Mapuche Federation of Students has proposed a Mapuche University3, stating that Chilean education has marginalized indigenous people in its quest to create a homogeneous nation. The Mapuche University would allow the community to protect their culture within their own environment.
In the latest turn of events, Camila Vallejo was reported to have delivered a letter4 to President Piñera, challenging the president to a transparent debate and urging him to acknowledge education as a universal right instead of a consumerism scheme, as he had previously announced. The letter denounced student segregation under the current education system and called for education to be guaranteed constitutionally ‘as a social law’.
Reminiscent of the past is the way nueva canción singers are uniting once again in support of Chileans. In a message broadcast on You Tube5, Inti Illimani’s Jorge Coulon reiterated his support for the students. “We admire and respect tremendously the current student movement in Chile and we are glad to participate in it since they (the students) are not only writing, but rewriting the history of Chile, which is full of episodes in which the students have been fundamental. The present time is one of them, and you – the students, are playing a leading role in this history.”
Pinochet’s influence in Chilean democracy is never far from the people’s consciousness. Each year Chile’s September 11th anniversary is marked with violent incidents and manifestations – a reminder that justice remains a remote illusion for many victims of the military dictatorship. With the protests set to continue, talk emerges regarding the possibility of the army being deployed against the students if the protests continue up to that date.
An issue which portrays the social injustice incited by Pinochet is the attitude of Chileans towards state violence. In a conversation with Julieta, a local anthropology student, I was told “In Chile, because we are accustomed to police violence, we have naturalized this violence that we receive.” The memory of the military coup is far from being relegated to the confines of history. With a democracy that molds itself on past legislation, the concept of freedom and dignity for Chileans remains a battle to be fought from many societal aspects and the struggle for free education seems to have ignited the memory of the past to be combated in the contemporary realm.
Ramona Wadi is a freelance writer living in Malta. Visit her blog at http://walzerscent.blogspot.com.
Notes:
2. http://www.mineduc.cl/index2.php?id_portal=1&id_seccion=10&id_contenido=15546
3. http://www.unpo.org/article/13030
4. http://www.nuestrocanto.net/joo/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2013%3Acarta-de-la-confech-al-presidente-sebastian-pinera&catid=36%3Achile
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itfa8lqaSfk&feature=youtu.be
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