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Republican National Convention concludes
full of disruptions
By Liz Allen
Asheville, North Carolina; New York, New York, Sept. 7 (AGR)
— George W. Bush’s acceptance speech for his Republican incumbent
presidential candidacy nomination on Sept. 2 was interrupted twice by
activists who snuck into the Republican National Convention held at
Madison Square Garden (MSG), leaving the president obviously shaken.
A permitted rally organized by ANSWER took place in front of MSG, a
candlelight vigil filled Union Square with as many as 4,500 people,
and an unpermitted march of 2,000 left from Union Square and went to
MSG. Earlier that day in Harlem, Artists and Activists United for Peace
held a march. In the midtown area, thousands of police blocked the streets
with barricades and nets, in groups lined up holding batons — some
regular nightstick size and some the size of a broomstick, but thicker.
Also that evening, Henry Kissinger was spotted in a sedan; a group of
people chanted “Fuck you! Fuck you!” at his car before it
drove off and police ordered the crowd to keep moving.
At the candlelight vigil that was held during Bush’s speech, police
encircled MSG and had their Long Range Acoustic Device out. In reference
to the police presence in the city, Susan Bloom, a New York resident
attending the vigil, said, “I’m very upset about it. I feel
like we live in a police state. It terrifies me.”
Demonstration attendees on bicycles were warned by fellow protest-goers
not to take bikes into the Midtown area because they would be arrested.
According to the Times Up! bike collective in NYC on Aug. 29 the NYPD
implemented a “bike frozen zone” between 34th and 59th streets,
west of 6th Ave, and made up to 400 bike-related arrests. There were
also reports of police taking or mangling bicycles that were in areas
that police had cleared of everyone except for law enforcement. Currently
many of the confiscated bicycles are being held until the court dates.
Earlier that day in Grand Central Station around 200 protesters invaded
Grand Central Station, chanted “Fight AIDS, Not War,” and
hung banners. More than a dozen arrests occurred after demonstrators
sat down around the information booth and refused to move during rush
hour.
On Sept. 2 NY Indymedia reported receiving a message from a group calling
itself C-BLOC, claiming to have “successfully shut down several
computer systems on Wall Street and in the NYSE” to oppose “war
profiteers, Bush supporters and companies invested in” surveillance.
Another group, the CrimethInc Black Hat Hacker’s Bloc, had two
weeks earlier called for an “electronic sit-in” to flood and
shut down emails and fax and phone numbers of Bush’s re-election
staff. The claim has not yet been corroborated by other media.
Throughout the week mass demonstrations against the Republican’s
neo-conservative agenda were held throughout New York. The main march
on Aug. 29 drew half a million people. On Sept. 1 the National Organization
for Women had a rally, and there was an anti-gun display held in Union
Square. Marches against Coca-Cola and Fox news were also held.
Inside Madison Square Garden
Speeches were disrupted daily inside the Garden by activists that obtained
passes to enter the convention. During Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s
speech on Sept. 1, a banner reading “Be Pro-Life, Stop Killing
in Iraq” was unfurled directly in front of Dick Cheney by Medea
Benjamin, co-founder of the women based peace group Code Pink. Also,
during Laura Bush’s speech on Sept. 2, Fernando Suarez del Solar
unfurled a banner on the convention floor that read “Bush Lied.
My Son Died.” His son, Jesus Suarez, a US soldier, was killed in
Iraq on Mar. 29. The day before members of the AIDS activist group ACT
UP interrupted a Republican youth gathering. Convention interrupters
were all quickly escorted out. When such interruptions occurred, convention
attendees were instructed to begin chanting “four more years.”
Controversy over the content of some of the delegates’ speeches
has also been raised. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s claim of becoming
a Republican after seeing a debate between Hubert Humphrey and Richard
Nixon in 1968 after first arriving in the US from Austria is false:
there were no presidential debates between 1960 and 1976. Schwarzenegger
also claimed to hate socialism because he came from a country controlled
by socialists; but the entire time Schwarzenegger was in Austria the
country was conservative.
Bush’s speech also drew criticism for his vow to protect marriage
from “activist judges” and his plan to continue to push for
a Federal Marriage Amendment to constitutionally ban same-sex marriage.
Arrests, detentions, and lawsuits
On Sept. 2 State Supreme Court Justice John Cataldo ordered the release
of demonstrators who were arrested in previous protest actions that
took place throughout the week; some had been held for almost three
days.
The city would have been charged $1000 per day, per person in custody
with no charges, and held in contempt of court for failure to comply
with the order. “I can no longer accept your statement that you
are trying to comply,” the judge told the city’s lawyer who
blamed the large number of detainees as the cause of them having such
a long wait to be released.
Timothy Grayson, from Chicago, was held for 43 hours on charges of parading
without a permit and disorderly conduct. He said once he saw how fast
the city could process the cases, it “seemed pretty clear that
they were holding us until the RNC was over.” He was told that
his charge was similar to getting a ticket for smoking on the subway.
Grayson was held at first in Pier 57, where detainees were kept in large
wire pens that were overcrowded and without beds or sufficient seating.
Concerns about asbestos have also been raised, but were dismissed by
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. “They kept us there all night
and if you couldn’t stay awake you had to sit or lie on the floor,”
Grayson said. He said the floors had once been used for “raw chemical
storage” and were covered in oil or kerosene. “You could smell
it in the air, some sort of carcinogenic smell …. [after skin contacted
the floor] some people had legs puffing up,” he said.
Grayson spoke to AGR just after being released, in the park across the
street from the courthouse on Centre St. in downtown Manhattan, which
was filled around the clock with people doing “jail solidarity.”
Food was served by the Anti-Capitalist Kitchen and press was camped
around the park. Medics, legal observers and friends and family members
of those arrested waited outside, surrounded by police, and chanted
“Let them go” and cheered for those being released from jail.
Those arrested at the protests have for the most part been released
or have had their felonies dropped. The only person still in custody
is Jamal Holiday. Holiday has been accused of throwing an undercover
officer from his scooter and giving him a concussion; the officer had
driven the scooter into the crowd at the Poor People’s March on
Aug. 30. Police claim that he was wearing the same clothes at a protest
the next day.
US defies WTO ruling on duties
By Emad Mekay
Washington, DC, Sept. 1 (IPS)— The United States says it
will continue to slap duties on countries it claims dump their goods
on the US market, despite a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling on
Aug. 31 that authorizes seven nations and the European Union (EU) to
impose sanctions against Washington’s anti-dumping law.
According to the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) the United
States will not back down even after the WTO gave the US trading partners
the right to retaliate based on claims of significant economic damage
from the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act, also know as the
Byrd Amendment.
USTR spokesman Christopher Padilla said in a statement the decision
will not “affect the ability of the United States to continue enforcing
its trade laws to impose duties on countries that sell unfairly dumped
or subsidized products in the US market.”
The response contradicts Washington’s often-repeated call to developing
nations that only by abiding by global trade rules will they prosper
economically.
According to analysts, the WTO decision also acknowledged that the US
anti-dumping law is being abused by businesses here.
The WTO case was brought by the EU, Canada, Japan, India, Brazil, Mexico,
Chile and South Korea.
Earlier in 2004, the Geneva-headquartered WTO ruled the Byrd amendment
violated trade rules because it penalized foreign companies twice: first
by making them pay dumping duties and then by giving their US competitors
that money.
The trade body set the level of sanctions the nations were allowed to
impose on Washington at up to 70 percent of the duties collected by
the United States.
But the WTO arbitrators ruled Aug. 31that the trading partners’
claims of damage were “exaggerated,” and set a ceiling of
$150 million that the nations can impose on the United States in retaliation.
The Byrd amendment, passed in 2000, directs the US government to distribute
anti-dumping and anti-subsidy fines it collects directly to US companies
harmed by dumping and subsidies. Before it became law, such revenue
went to the US Treasury.
In September 2002, a WTO dispute settlement panel found the amendment
violated several provisions of various WTO agreements. Four months later
the WTO Appellate Body upheld most of the panel’s findings.
This week it announced it would allow retaliation because of Washington’s
failure to comply with those earlier rulings.
“It is unfortunate that this dispute has come as far as retaliation
authorization,” said Daniel Ikenson, trade policy analyst at the
Cato Institute in Washington, DC.
“While it is well within the rights of any sovereign WTO member
to ignore dispute settlement findings, such non-compliance will only
invite retaliation against other US interests, inspire similar disregard
for WTO decisions from other members, and ultimately undermine the rules-based
system of trade,” he added.
Ikenson argued that the US law, by compensating petitioners and supporters
of petitions (complaints of dumping), provides an extra financial motive
to file anti-dumping and countervailing duty cases.
Also, by excluding from compensation those companies or unions that
do not support the petitions, the law encourages firms that might otherwise
decline to support the complaints to do so simply to maintain eligibility
for compensation.
Petitioning industries tend to deny any link between their actions and
the Byrd Amendment. Yet, the WTO tribunal included as evidence a letter
from a US law firm urging a company to register support for the countervailing
duty case against lumber from Canada in order to qualify for Byrd amendment
payouts.
Canadian International Trade Minister Jim Peterson said the Aug. 31
ruling fully protects his country’s right to retaliate. “We
continue to urge the US to live up to its WTO obligations and to repeal
the Byrd Amendment,” he added in a statement.
The US Congress has been reluctant to change the Byrd Amendment under
pressure from some businesses that have profited from the law.
But the administration of President George W. Bush claims it is acting
in the interest of workers, saying on Aug. 31 it will work closely with
Congress to resolve this issue in a way that promotes “the competitiveness
of American workers,” and protects US jobs.
“It is proving difficult to pry congressional hands from a tool
that allows them to quietly subsidise their business constituents. Unfortunately,
the relatively low levels of retaliation authorized — about 150
million [dollars] this year — will do little to inspire a change
in that mindset,” said Ikenson.
The Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition (CITAC), which promotes
US exports abroad, said Sept. 1 that Washington should take immediate
steps to end the Byrd Amendment’s payouts to US companies.
“The WTO’s authorization for retaliation is one more reason
that Congress should repeal the Byrd Amendment,” said CITAC President
Jon Jenson, in a statement.
“The amendment is bad policy because it distorts trade, provides
an incentive for filing trade petitions, and keeps products under trade
restrictions that are in short supply in the US or not made here at
all.”
Jenson, whose group pushes for access for US products in foreign markets,
warned that US exporters might bear the consequences of Congress’
failure to terminate the law.
Abu Ghraib torture allegations spread
far and wide
Compiled by Jodi Rhoden
Sept. 8 (AGR) -- The latest Army investigation into the Abu
Ghraib scandal is raising new questions about whether the CIA contributed
to the breakdown of military discipline at the prison, while new evidence
gathered for a class action lawsuit filed against two US-based private
contractors could prove that the scandal at Abu Ghraib was far from
an isolated series of incidents perpetrated by a few “bad apples.”
Meanwhile, on Sept. 3, four Navy special forces personel were charged
with abusing an Iraqi detainee who later died during questioning at
Abu Ghraib last November, and then lying about it. An alleged participant
in the torture claims he was encouraged by military intelligence to
do so.
The recent report by senior Army generals investigating Abu Ghraib
describes some of the CIA’s detention procedures, saying that
“the CIA’s detention and interrogation practices contributed
to a loss of accountability and abuse at Abu Ghraib.”
Arrangements to hold “ghost detainees” were made between
local CIA officers and military officials at the prison, the investigation
found. Army investigators said they located information on eight “ghost
detainees” held at Abu Ghraib, but said there may have been more.
Of 44 incidents of possible abuse cited in the Army’s intelligence
investigation, the CIA was involved in only one -- the only one to
involve the death of a detainee. In that case, a newly arrived CIA
prisoner did not receive the initial medical screening typical for
incoming detainees, and then died. That death remains under investigation.
In that case, on Nov. 4, 2003, a Navy SEAL team captured Manadel Al-Jamadi,
who was thought to have been connected to an attack on the International
Committee of the Red Cross. In detaining him, a SEAL subdued him by
hitting him on the side of the head with a gun butt. Two CIA personnel
brought Al-Jamadi to Abu Ghraib and put him in a shower room.
The prisoner was dead 45 minutes later. An autopsy determined Al-Jamadi
died of a blood clot in his head that was probably the result of being
struck with the gun.
A day later, US personnel snuck the body out on a stretcher, disguised
so the dead person would only look sick to other inmates.
“It is unclear how and under what authority the CIA could place
prisoners like [this detainee] in Abu Ghraib,” because no formal
agreement between the agency and the military existed, the report
says.
Had the prisoner been processed like a normal Army prisoner, he would
have received at a minimum a medical screening, the report says.
Furthermore, four SEAL commandos have been charged with prisoner abuse
in Iraq, including involvement in the Al-Jamadi case, the Navy said
Sept. 3.
Military officials said it was highly unusual to charge Special Operations
forces with offenses committed on the battlefield.
In the case of the lawsuit against US-based private contractors, Michigan-based
attorney Shereef Akeel, who is representing former detainees, says
his recent fact-finding mission to Baghdad uncovered dozens of cases
of physical and psychological abuse, sexual humiliation, religious
desecration and rape in ten US-run prisons throughout occupied Iraq.
Akeel and his colleagues are working in concert with the Center for
Constitutional Rights to sue the US companies CACI International,
Inc. and Titan Corp., which were respectively contracted to provide
interrogators and translators to support the American military’s
efforts to obtain information from “security detainees”
— those thought to be involved in resisting the US occupation
of Iraq.
Akeel and his clients hold the US military personnel who were involved
in unlawful incidents and the corporations named in the suit responsible
for abuse carried out in prisons controlled by the US military.
During the course of his investigation in Iraq, Akeel said, clear
patterns emerged. According to Akeel, testimonials gathered individually
from former captives held in US prisons all over Iraq indicate many
of the common methods came into use across disparate, geographically
distant detention centers.
Perhaps the most disturbing evidence Akeel found suggesting an overarching
policy of abuse comes in the form of first-hand accounts that captors
singled out religiously observant prisoners for particularly harsh
abuse.
Meanwhile a US soldier expected to plead guilty to charges of abusing
Iraqi prisoners told a German magazine he deeply regretted his actions
but said the abuses were encouraged by military intelligence services.
Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick told the German weekly Der Spiegel conditions
in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib jail were a “nightmare” with
no clear line of command and conflicting demands placed on junior
soldiers with insufficient training.
“I didn’t know at all who was actually in charge,”
he said, according to a German translation of his remarks. “The
battalion wanted one thing from you, the company wanted something
else and the secret service had their own ideas. It was just chaos,”
he said.
“The secret service set no limits at all. It was about concrete
results and they weren’t interested how they were achieved,”
he said, adding that many more people should be called to account
for the abuses in Abu Ghraib.
“There are definitely more people responsible for what occurred
in Abu Ghraib, and many of them have not been charged.”
Sources: AP, CNN, NY Times, Reuters
US: food waste and hunger exist side
by side
By Haider Rizvi
New York, New York, Sept. 4 (IPS)— “Do you want
these? They are so fresh,” says Catherine, holding up a bunch
of grapes she just pulled out from one of the trash bags piled up
on the sidewalk. “Take this, man. It’s good too,” adds
her friend Morlan, holding out a loaf of bread.
Though happy to have found something for dinner, both Catherine, 21,
and Morlan, 19, wonder why some edible food is thrown out as garbage
in New York City
“They only sell this food to the rich,” says Catherine,
pointing to the upscale grocery store that put out the bags.
Inside the store, the manager is visibly upset with Catherine and
other young people who are stuffing their backpacks with fruits and
vegetables from the trash bags. “They are picking up garbage,”
says the manager. “I don’t know why they are doing this.”
“I have zero cash right now, and no place to stay,” Morlan
said. “What do you expect me to do?”
Such scenes are becoming increasingly commonplace on the streets of
US cities, despite the enormous quantity of food that the world’s
most affluent nation produces every year.
Official surveys indicate that every year more than 350 billion pounds
of edible food is available for human consumption in the United States.
Of that total, nearly 100 billion pounds — including fresh vegetables,
fruits, milk, and grain products — are lost to waste by retailers,
restaurants, and consumers.
By contrast, the amount of food required to meet the needs of the
hungry is only four billion pounds, according to Food Not Bombs, an
advocacy group, which estimates that every year more than 30 million
people in the United States are going hungry on regular basis.
“The American government has billions of dollars in surplus money,
which could go towards poverty elimination nationally or globally,”
Samana Siddiqui of the Sound Vision Foundation, a Chicago-based non-profit
group, said.
But Joyce Glenn, a novelist who lives next to the grocery store, where
Catherine looks for food in the trash bags, has a different take on
the wastage of food and over-consumption in her country.
“Americans consume as much as they are able in order to lull
themselves into a sense of complacency as long as the need for food,
as well as even luxurious food, gives them a sense of well being,”
says Glenn, who is in her 60s, and often invites homeless people she
sees in the street into her home.
Noting that food production in the United States and the world has
increased more than the population, food rights groups say they believe
more people are likely to suffer from lack of food as long the agri-business
firms continue to be driven primarily by profits.
“We don’t have a democratic say in how food is produced
or distributed,” according to Food Not Bombs. “In our society,
it is acceptable to profit from other people’s suffering and
misery.”
The group’s position is based on the assertion that people from
the more affluent and middle class sectors of US society are drawn
to over-consumption as a lifestyle — validated by a study carried
out by the Washington-based World Watch Institute earlier this year.
“US consumption styles have not only spread to other industrialized
nations,” says the State of the World 2004, “they have succeeded
in penetrating much of the developing world as well.”
The study shows how millions of middle class people across the globe
have adopted the diets, transportation systems, and lifestyles pioneered
in the United States.
To some degree, “rising consumption has helped meet basic needs,”
said World Watch president Christopher Flavin. “But this unprecedented
consumer appetite is undermining the natural systems we all depend
on and making it even harder for the world poor to meet their basic
needs.”
According to the report, the US and Western European consumers, who
constitute only about 12 percent of the world population, are responsible
for about 60 percent of consumption of private consumer goods.
By contrast, the people of Latin American and the Caribbean, whose
share in the world population is just nine percent, spend only seven
percent on non-essential household goods.
“Agriculture, free trade, and intellectual property policies
have become a leading edge of the US corporate push for global economic
dominance,” says Kathy McAfee, executive director of the San
Francisco-based Institute for Food and Development Policy (better
known as Food First).
“But at the same time,” she adds, “farmers and ecologists
around the world have been achieving impressive successes in increasing
food production by sustainable methods. We are seeing the mobilization
of hundreds of thousands of small farmers from Mexico to Brazil, from
India to Thailand to the Philippines in defense of their rights.”
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