Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, October 12, 2023

Register at:

https://secure.everyaction.com/YHt05NuyC0aYxjJ-tXwmdQ2

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Zaid Abdulnasser, the coordinator of Samidoun Network’s chapter in Germany, and member of the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, is currently being threatened by the German state that his residency as a Palestinian refugee born in Syria will be revoked due to his political engagement in Samidoun and Masar Badil.

 

In the face of this attack, more than 130 international organisations, unions, and political parties, have expressed their absolute refusal of Germany’s ever increasing repressive measures against Palestinian refugees and their fundamental right to struggle for their liberation and return.

 

We call for organisations to join us by signing the statement under the following link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffcsikMQR1lwvPqukzYCQpCzSZwLy28RXY8tYdGNxzlgugOA/viewform

 

To financially support the legal defence of Zaid and other Palestinians in Germany bearing the brunt of the state’s repressive measures against Palestine, you can make a donation to the following account:

 

Name: Rote Hilfe e.V.

IBAN: DE55 4306 0967 4007 2383 17

BIC: GENODEM1GLS

Note: Palaestina gegen Repression

 

We, in Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, declare that all attacks against us by the zionist occupation, its organisations abroad, and by Western imperialist countries and right-wing, racist media, have not and will not change our absolute commitment to defending and supporting the Palestinian prisoners movement, and to struggle for the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.

Sign the statement!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffcsikMQR1lwvPqukzYCQpCzSZwLy28RXY8tYdGNxzlgugOA/viewform

Download the poster, take a selfie or group photo, and send it to us at: 

samidoun@samidoun.net

@samidounnetwork (Instagram) 

@SamidounPP (Twitter/X)!

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The ongoing Zionist theft of Palestinian land from 1946 to now.

77 years of brutal oppression must end!

End all U.S. aid to Israel now!

For a democratic, secular Palestine!

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Leonard Peltier’s Letter Delivered to Supporters on September 12, 2023, in Front of the Whitehouse

 

Dear friends, relatives, supporters, loved ones:

 

Seventy-nine years old. Mother Earth has taken us on another journey around Grandfather Sun.  Babies have taken their first breath. People have lived, loved, and died. Seeds have been planted and sent their roots deep below red earth and their breath to the Stars and our Ancestors.

 

I am still here.

 

Time has twisted one more year out of me. A year that has been a moment.  A year that has been a lifetime. For almost five decades I’ve existed in a cage of concrete and steel.  With the “good time” calculations of the system, I’ve actually served over 60 years.

 

Year after year, I have encouraged you to live as spirit warriors. Even while in here, I can envision what is real and far beyond these walls.  I’ve seen a reawakening of an ancient Native pride that does my heart good.

 

I may leave this place in a box. That is a cold truth. But I have put my heart and soul into making our world a better place and there is a lot of work left to do – I would like to get out and do it with you.

 

I know that the spirit warriors coming up behind me have the heart and soul to fight racism and oppression, and to fight the greed that is poisoning our lands, waters, and people. 

 

We are still here.

 

Remember who you are, even if they come for your land, your water, your family. We are children of Mother Earth and we owe her and her other children our care.

 

I long to turn my face to the sky. In this cage, I am denied that simple pleasure. I am in prison, but in my mind, I remain as I was born: a free Native spirit.

 

That is what allows me to laugh, keeps me laughing. These walls cannot contain my laughter – or my hope.

 

I know there are those who stand with me, who work around the clock for my freedom. I have been blessed to have such friends.

 

We are still here and you give me hope. 

 

I hope to breathe free air before I die. Hope is a hard thing to hold, but no one is strong enough to take it from me. 

 

I love you. I hope for you. I pray for you. 

 

And prayer is more than a cry to the Creator that runs through your head.  Prayer is an action.

 

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

DOKSHA, 

LEONARD PELTIER

Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132

USP Coleman 1

P.O. Box 1033

Coleman, FL 33521

Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.

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SF ANSWER office suffers major fire damage. Your support needed!

 

DONATE:

https://www.answercoalition.org/sf_donate?utm_campaign=2023_09_17_lc_fundraiser&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition

 

Dear Friends and Supporters of the ANSWER Coalition,

 

An early morning fire on Thursday, Sept. 14 caused massive damage to our offices on Mission Street. It appears that the fire started in the lot next to our building, turned into a two-alarm blaze, and took fire-fighters more than three hours to fully extinguish. Thanks to their skill and courageous action our building was not completely destroyed. But it will take at least several months to restore it to use. We are awaiting an investigation and assessment of what if any of the contents – our several-thousand-book library, a very large collection of historical materials, computers and other office equipment, etc.– are salvageable.

 

This disaster occurred just as we were in the midst of reconstructing and refurbishing the building, painting the main meeting room, installing a new ramp, doors and entryway for disabled persons, redoing the storefront windows and the marquee.

 

Multiple organizations are now using our office for activities and we were about to announce a new name for the building: the Mission Liberation Center. Such centers are now operating in cities across the country. That will of course have to be put on hold.

 

The loss of the use of our building for an extended period of time creates a serious problem for carrying out our work, but we have no intention of being sidelined. From opposing the blockade of Cuba and providing critically needed humanitarian aid, to support for the many labor struggles taking place from coast-to-coast, to resisting the U.S. war drive against Russia and China, to fighting toxic racism in the Bayview, and much more, ANSWER will continue our work on vital international, national and local issues.

 

We are asking everyone who values our work to express your solidarity at this time of greatest need. While many of the costs of repair will be covered by insurance, not everything will. If you are able to help with a donation, you can make a tax-deductible donation to the Progress Unity Fund.

 

Thank you in advance for your solidarity,

 

Richard Becker

Western Region Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition

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Drop the Charges on the Tampa 5!

Sign the Petition:

https://peoplespetitions.org/tampa5

 

The Tampa 5—Gia Davila, Lauren Pineiro, Laura Rodriguez, Jeanie K, and Chrisley Carpio—are the five Students for a Democratic Society protesters at the University of South Florida who were attacked by campus police and are now facing five to ten years in prison for protesting Governor Ron DeSantis' attacks on diversity programs and all of higher education.

 

On July 12, 2023, the Tampa 5 had their second court appearance. 

 

The Tampa 5 are still in the middle of the process of discovery, which means that they are obtaining evidence from the prosecution that is meant to convict them. They have said publicly that all the security camera footage they have seen so far absolves them, and they are eager to not only receive more of this evidence but also to share it with the world. The Tampa 5 and their supporters demand full transparency and USF's full cooperation with discovery, to which all of the defendants are entitled.

 

In spite of this, the charges have not yet been dropped. The case of the five SDS protesters is hurtling towards a trial. So, they need all of their supporters and all parties interested in the right to protest DeSantis to stay out in the streets!

 

We need to demand that the DeSantis-appointed, unelected State Attorney Susan Lopez and Assistant Prosecutor Justin Diaz drop the charges.

 

We need to win this case once and for all and protect the right of the student movement—and all social movements in the United States—to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech and to protest.

 

Defend the Tampa 5!

 

State Attorney Susy Lopez, Prosecutor Justin Diaz, Drop the Charges!

 

Save Diversity in Higher Education!

 

Protesting DeSantis is Not a Crime!

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Free Julian Assange

Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange

 

Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count.  We are to believe we are represented in this country.  This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well.  Please take this action as often as you can:

 

Find your representatives:

https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

 

Leave each of your representatives a message individually to: 

·      Drop the charges against Julian Assange

·      Speak out publicly against the indictment and

·      Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges: 

           202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard 

 

Leave a message on the White House comment line to 

Demand Julian Assange be pardoned: 

             202-456-1111

             Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST

 

Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:

             202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line

             202-514-2000 Main Switchboard 

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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!

FREE HIM NOW!

Write to Mumia at:

Smart Communications/PADOC

Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335

SCI Mahanoy

P.O. Box 33028

St. Petersburg, FL 33733

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Update on Ed Poindexter and Urgent Health Call-In Campaign

 

Watch the moving video of Ed's Niece and Sister at the April 26, 2023, UN EMLER Hearing in Atlanta: https://youtu.be/aKwV7LQ5iww

 

You can also watch Ed speaking about himself some years ago thanks to Sister Tekla, who was able to interview Ed and Mondo some years ago: https://youtu.be/sps0s4zeJxg.

More of these videos will be forthcoming.

 

Ed needs to be released to live the rest of his life outside of prison, with his family! (His niece Ericka is now 52 years old and was an infant when Ed was targeted, stolen from his home, jailed, framed, and railroaded.)

 

Friends and Comrades,

 

Thank you so very much for your phone calls and communications in support of Ed Poindexter’s health care!

 

We have learned from Ed’s family that a date has been set for Ed to go to an outside doctor to be evaluated for a hearing device. (Thank you, callers!) We have also learned that Ed will not be fitted for a prosthesis within the foreseeable future. The reason for this is that Ed is unable to sit up for more than a few seconds on his own. He is unable to get himself out of bed by himself. Ed cannot go to the restroom without substantial help. There is a fear of him falling.

 

The prison’s response has been to suggest that Ed try harder at physical therapy—so that he might be able to tie his own shoes again and perform basic self-care—but he cannot. Our position is that he is too weak because of the near daily kidney dialysis and multiple other health problems. As you know, he has lost sight in one eye, and is unable to hear. While he may have been weakened by being wheelchair bound for years, the fact that the institution amputated his left leg below the knee (without notice to the family) has made recovery of strength in his legs difficult. Add to this that Ed is extremely ill from kidney disease, and the near daily kidney dialysis artificially making his kidney’s function causes him to vomit his food and makes him ill overall. All of these combined illnesses have resulted in Ed not being able to even hold his frame upright for more than a few seconds.

 

Therefore, in protection of Ed’s basic rights as a human being to health care and human dignity, we demand that Ed be seen by an outside high ranking National Medical Association Certified geriatric physician or team of physicians who specialize in heart, kidney, and geriatric health. We demand the evaluation be by a physician connected to a reputable hospital so that Ed’s entire condition: eyes, heart (recall that Ed underwent triple bypass heart surgery in 2016) kidneys, neuropathy, amputated leg, serious inability to balance his frame, and hearing can all be evaluated as a whole.

 

It is the family’s belief that Ed is experiencing a diminishing quality of life that it is irreversible, and we demand an outside doctor also evaluate him for this obvious fact. If it is determined by a reputable doctor that Ed is experiencing a diminishing quality of life; we want his status changed at the prison to reflect this reality.

 

Please call the numbers below and write to demand that Ed be seen by an outside doctor at a state-of-the-art hospital facility—for the purpose of evaluation specifically as to whether his condition is diminishing and irreversible—taken as a whole.

 

Ed Support Committee and Family and Concerned Members of the Community

 

PLEASE CALL, EMAIL AND WRITE:

 

Acting Medical Director Jeff Kasselman, M.D.: 402-479-5931 jeffrey.kasselman@nebraska.gov

 

Warden Boyd of the Reception and Treatment Center: 402-471-2861

 

Warden: Taggart Boyd

Reception and Treatment Center

P.O. Box 22800

Lincoln, NE 68542-2800

Phone: 402-471-2861

Fax: 402-479-6100

 

Jeff Kasselman, M.D.

Acting Medical Director,

Nebraska Department of Corrections

Phone: 402-479-5931

Email: jeffrey.kasselman@nebraska.gov

 

Sample Message:

 

“I’m calling to urge that Ed Poindexter, #27767, be given appropriate medical care. I demand that be seen by an outside high ranking National Medical Association certified geriatric physician or team of physicians who specialize in heart, kidney, and geriatric health. I demand the evaluation include Ed’s entire condition: eyes, kidneys, diabetes, neuropathy, amputated leg, serious inability to balance his frame, and hearing. ”

 

You can read more about Ed Poindexter at:

https://www.thejerichomovement.com/profile/poindexter-ed

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Updates From Kevin Cooper 

March 23, 2023 

Dear Friends and Comrades, 

This is Kevin Cooper writing and sending this update to you in 'Peace & Solidarity'. First and foremost I am well and healthy, and over the ill effect(s) that I went through after that biased report from MoFo, and their pro prosecution and law enforcement experts. I am back working with my legal team from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

'We' have made great progress in refuting all that those experts from MoFo came up with by twisting the truth to fit their narrative, or omitting things, ignoring, things, and using all the other tactics that they did to reach their conclusions. Orrick has hired four(4) real experts who have no questionable backgrounds. One is a DNA attorney, like Barry Scheck of the innocence project in New York is for example. A DNA expert, a expect to refute what they say Jousha Ryen said when he was a child, and his memory. A expect on the credibility of MoFo's experts, and the attorney's at Orrick are dealing with the legal issues.

This all is taking a little longer than we first expected it to take, and that in part is because 'we' have to make sure everything is correct in what we have in our reply. We cannot put ourselves in a situation where we can be refuted... Second, some of our experts had other things planned, like court cases and such before they got the phone call from Rene, the now lead attorney of the Orrick team. With that being said, I can say that our experts, and legal team have shown, and will show to the power(s) that be that MoFo's DNA expert could not have come to the conclusion(s) that he came to, without having used 'junk science'! They, and by they I mean my entire legal team, including our experts, have done what we have done ever since Orrick took my case on in 2004, shown that all that is being said by MoFo's experts is not true, and we are once again having to show what the truth really is.

Will this work with the Governor? Who knows... 'but' we are going to try! One of our comrades, Rebecca D.   said to me, 'You and Mumia'...meaning that my case and the case of Mumia Abu Jamal are cases in which no matter what evidence comes out supporting our innocence, or prosecution misconduct, we cannot get a break. That the forces in the so called justice system won't let us go. 'Yes' she is correct about that sad to say...

Our reply will be out hopefully in the not too distant future, and that's because the people in Sacramento have been put on notice that it is coming, and why. Every one of you will receive our draft copy of the reply according to Rene because he wants feedback on it. Carole and others will send it out once they receive it. 'We' were on the verge of getting me out, and those people knew it, so they sabotaged what the Governor ordered them to do, look at all the evidence as well as the DNA evidence. They did not do that, they made this a DNA case, by doing what they did, and twisted the facts on the other issues that they dealt with.   'more later'...

In Struggle & Solidarity,

An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:

Mr. Kevin Cooper

C-65304. 4-EB-82

San Quentin State Prison

San Quentin, CA 94974

 

 

Call California Governor Newsom:

1-(916) 445-2841

Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, 

press 6 to speak with a representative and

wait for someone to answer 

(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)

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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system. 

See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:

https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings

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Sign the petition:

https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/

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Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale

 

I’m pleased to announce that last week our client, Daniel Hale, was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. The “Corner-Brightener Candlestick” was presented to Daniel’s friend Noor Mir. You can watch the online ceremony here. As it happens, this week is also the 20th anniversary of the first drone assassination in Yemen. From the beginning, the drone assassination program has been deeply shrouded in secrecy, allowing U.S. officials to hide significant violations of international law, and the American Constitution. In addition to the lives directly impacted by these strikes, the program has significantly eroded respect for international law and thereby puts civilians around the world in danger. Daniel Hale’s revelations threw a beam of light into a very dark corner, allowing journalists to definitively show that the government's official narrative was a lie. It is thanks to the great personal sacrifice of drone whistleblowers like Hale that public understanding has finally begun to catch up to reality. As the Sam Adams Associates note:  “Mr. Hale was well aware of the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment to which other courageous officials have been subjected — and that he would likely suffer the same. And yet — in the manner of his famous ancestor Nathan Hale — he put his country first, knowing what awaited him at the hands of those who serve what has become a repressive Perpetual War State wreaking havoc upon much of the world.” We hope you’ll join the growing call to pardon or commute Hale’s sentence. U.S. citizens can contact your representatives here.

Happy new year, and thank you for your support! Jesselyn Radack Director Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) ExposeFacts Twitter: @JesselynRadack

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Laws are created to be followed

by the poor.

Laws are made by the rich

to bring some order to exploitation.

The poor are the only law abiders in history.

When the poor make laws

the rich will be no more.

 

—Roque Dalton Presente!

(May 14, 1935 – Assassinated May 10, 1975)[1]

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[1] Roque Dalton was a Salvadoran poet, essayist, journalist, political activist, and intellectual. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets.

Poems: 

http://cordite.org.au/translations/el-salvador-tragic/

About: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_Dalton

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A Plea for the Compassionate Release of 

Leonard Peltier

Self Portrait by Leonard Peltier

Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWdJdODKO6M&feature=youtu.be

Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

 

https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition

 

Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info

Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603

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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression

https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/

 

Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests. 

 

The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page. 

 

Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.

 

Emergency Hotlines

If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities. 

 

State and Local Hotlines

If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for: 

 

Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312

San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org

Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963

National Hotline

If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:

 

National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811

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Articles

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1) They Were Given IUDs as Children Without Their Consent. Now, They Want Compensation.

A group of Indigenous women in Greenland say Danish doctors inserted intrauterine devices without their consent. They are now seeking damages from the Danish government.

By Isabella Kwai, Published Oct. 3, 2023, Updated Oct. 4, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/world/europe/greenland-indigenous-women-contraception.html

Britta Mortensen told the AFP she was forced to have an IUD implanted, without her parents’ knowledge, while she was living at a boarding school in Greenland in 1974. Credit...Odd Andersen/AFP vis Getty Images

Dozens of Indigenous women and girls from Greenland have said that they had intrauterine devices inserted without their consent in the 1960s and 1970s and have filed a complaint with the Danish government, demanding compensation.

 

The women said they were among thousands affected by a Danish government campaign to control the growth of Greenland’s Indigenous population. Greenland is a semiautonomous part of the kingdom of Denmark.

 

The women in the complaint, many of whom are now in their 60s or older, have called the procedure a violation of their human rights that left lasting physical and psychological damage. They said they would bring the case to court if necessary. The women are asking for 300,000 Danish kroner each for their suffering, or about $42,135.

 

“None of them had given consent or were even asked or told anything,” said Mads Pramming, a lawyer representing the group of 67 women, many of whom were minors at the time, who had the devices inserted. He shared the complaint with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s office on Monday.

 

Naja Lyberth, one of the women, said she was about 13 years old when she visited the doctor, thinking she was going to a routine annual checkup, but instead was scheduled for an IUD insertion.

 

“As girls aged 12 to 17, we were defenseless against the doctor,” she said, adding that the damages would amount to an apology from the government. “We were not treated as equal citizens within the Commonwealth.”

 

Many of the women seeking compensation had been living in boarding schools or school dormitories throughout Greenland at the time, sometimes far from their families. Some had never been sexually active and were called into a doctor’s appointment without knowing what was going to happen, according to the complaint.

 

Some of the women reported that they had felt so exposed, anxious and shamed by the experience, the complaint stated, that they never told their parents. They called the procedure, which inserted a device larger than modern IUDs, painful and traumatizing.

 

Ms. Lyberth, 61, now a psychologist and women’s activist, said she was not yet sexually active when it was inserted and did not feel she had the option to refuse. The pain, she said, felt like there were knives inside her.

 

“It was the worst thing I have experienced in my life,” she said. “I could not tell anyone because of shame and guilt and the fear of being judged by others.”

 

The devices also caused lasting damage, the women said in the complaint. Several said they experienced bleeding, abdominal pain or infections. Some said they feared that complications from the device left them infertile or struggling to carry pregnancies to term. Others said they developed scar tissue or that they had to have their uteruses or ovaries removed years later.

 

It remains unclear how many women or girls had the devices implanted without their consent. However, according to the complaint, which cited an investigation by the Danish broadcaster DR, an expert estimated that “4,500 IUDs were inserted in a population of approximately 9,000 women” in Greenland between 1966 and 1970, per data shared by health officials at the time, the complaint said.

 

The issue drew nationwide horror in Denmark last year after several women spoke of their experiences on a podcast by DR. Both Denmark’s and Greenland’s governments said last year that they would launch an investigation.

 

“It is imperative that we thoroughly investigate this matter,” Sophie Lohde, Denmark’s health minister, said in a statement on Tuesday, calling it a “deeply tragic matter.”

 

Greenland, a former Danish colony, became a district of Denmark in 1953. It remains part of Denmark but won autonomy over much of its governance and domestic policy in 2009.

 

At the time of the IUD campaign, Danish officials were in the midst of a “modernization” period in post-colonial Greenland. A 1972 study by a health officer in southern Greenland examined the IUD program and called it a success, saying that the population growth of Greenland, which was “in excess” compared to the rest of Denmark, was being curtailed.

 

If the officials did not accept the women’s complaint, which cites a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, Mr. Pramming said he planned to file it as a case in a Danish court.

 

He pointed to another case that had drawn condemnation of Denmark’s colonial legacy in Greenland, in which Greenlandic children were separated from their families and sent to Denmark in 1951 to in an attempt to “re-educate” them. The Danish government has since apologized and agreed to award each victim about 250,000 kroner, or about $35,100.

 

Ms. Lyberth said she did not want to wait for the investigations to conclude before she received justice. “We are no longer victims because we act now,” she said.

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2)  Code Pink Suppresses Discussion over Peace in Ukraine

By Steven Strauss, October 5, 2023

https://socialism.com/code-pink-suppresses-discussion-over-peace-in-ukraine/

Photo: Marcin Libera

A letter of protest from Freedom Socialist Party organizer Steve Strauss to Code Pink about suppression of free speech at an October 3 event in Washington, D.C., called “The Urgency of Pursuing Peace in Ukraine.”

 

Dear Code Pink,

 

I wrote to you about an incident that occurred at your October 3rd event in D.C. with Medea Benjamin, Lee Camp, Claudia de la Cruz, Eugene Puryear, and Cornel West. I received an automated reply that I would hear from you shortly. Since I have not, I have decided to send you the facts again.

 

I am a member of the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP). I and a supporter registered for your October 3 event on Ukraine. We RSVP’d as directed. We arrived at the site and registered with no problem at the registration table finding our names on the RSVP list. We had brought FSP leaflets with us to hand out. We identified ourselves at the registration table as being with the FSP and asked if we could hand out our leaflets in the building. We were told that we could only do so outdoors and we were in fact thanked for even asking about that.

 

We exited the building and began distributing our leaflets near the entrance, with more than adequate space between us and the doorway. At some point a man from Code Pink approached me. I do not know his name but can tell you he was dressed from head to toe in pink clothing. He took a leaflet, read it, and began shouting at me that I was pro-war. Our view, as you perhaps know and as expressed in the leaflet, is that the Ukrainians have a right to defend themselves if they so choose. This man interpreted that as “pro-war” and was visibly angry and disturbed. He left only to return about 20 minutes later. He physically body-shoved me, demanding that I “get out of the way.” I stepped away and ignored him, a more pacifist behavior than his, for sure.

 

Finally, shortly before the event was to begin, I and my supporter re-entered the building and took our seats. Literally within two minutes we were approached by this man and two security people (one with an ID that he flashed, which seemed like something a little stronger than a building security person). We were told to leave. Naturally I asked why. The security men told us we were being “disruptive.” We asked who told them that and they indicated the man in pink, who was standing right there. I asked them if they or anyone else saw us being disruptive and complained about it and they said “no.” That man then added that we had not registered or RSVP’d, a complete fabrication. There was a little commotion over this and not one of your people, nor any of Cornel West’s people, nor people from the Party for Socialism and Liberation [an event promoter] came over to find out what was going on. This was nothing less than a violation of our democratic right to express our ideas to people. Furthermore, we did so in a respectful manner, asking first where we could do this and keeping our distance from the entranceway. At no time were we disruptive.

 

Yes, our view on Ukraine is different from yours. That’s politics, as you must certainly understand. But I am sure that you can also understand, given your history of fighting against U.S. imperialism and other forms of violations of people’s rights, that suppressing dissent, especially non-disruptive dissent, is profoundly dangerous for our movement. It betrays an authoritarian arrogance. It gets in the way of finding common ground for those times we will need to build strong united fronts. Your group owes the FSP, and the entire peace-loving community, a political apology. Otherwise, we will have no choice but to consider your professed pacifism hypocritical.

 

Sincerely,

 

Steve Strauss, Freedom Socialist Party, Baltimore, Maryland.

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3) Inside one hospital in Gaza, the bloodied and broken fill the corridors.

By Samar Abu Elouf and Hiba Yazbek, October 12, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/12/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas

The scene inside the hospital as the wounded and their families arrive. Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

Ambulances, yellow cabs and cars scream up to the entrance of Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza in a nonstop convoy, rushing in both broken and lifeless bodies.

 

Inside, hospital staff scramble to treat the wounded who are crammed into corridors that are also filled with people who fled their homes and are seeking refuge. The harrowing scenes have been playing out on a seemingly endless loop at Al Shifa Hospital since Saturday, when Hamas, the group that controls the strip, launched a deadly assault on Israel — and Israel’s military retaliated with punishing airstrikes on the blockaded enclave.

 

Al Shifa Hospital is the Gaza Strip’s largest medical complex. Many of the limestone villas and high-rise buildings surrounding the hospital in its affluent Gaza City neighborhood of Al Rimal have been reduced to piles of rubble and concrete. The Israeli Army claims that the neighborhood is a financial hub for Hamas, making it a target of airstrikes.

 

In addition to the aerial assault unleashed on the 140-square-mile Gaza Strip — of a magnitude and intensity not seen in past assaults on the blockaded territory — Israel has said it is blocking water, electricity and fuel from entering the enclave, contributing to the shutdown of the territory’s only power station. That has left already overwhelmed hospitals dependent on generators with a dwindling supply of a few days’ fuel.

 

The director of Al Shifa Hospital, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salima, told The New York Times on Wednesday that the facility was operating well over its capacity of 500 beds and had enough fuel to power its generators for another four days.

 

In the meantime, families, friends and rescue workers continue to stream into the hospital with the wounded. Some carry children, others wheel in adults on stretchers. Bloodied people waiting for treatment sit or lie on the hospital’s tile floor as medical workers race through the wards to help patients in need of more urgent care.

 

And more were expected to keep coming: At least 10 people were killed by an Israeli airstrike on the Shati refugee camp in Gaza on Thursday morning, according to the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa. Unverified video from the aftermath of the strike showed a gruesome scene covered in gray ash and dust, the bodies and wounded nearly indistinguishable from the rubble around them.

 

Outside the hospital’s morgue, bodies wrapped in white cloth line the sidewalk waiting to be identified or collected by loved ones. At least 1,417 Palestinians have been killed and 6,268 wounded since Saturday, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.

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4) Palestinian Americans, Dismayed by Violence, Say Historical Context Is Being Overlooked

After Hamas attacked Israel, some U.S. Palestinians said that American politicians and news outlets ignored underlying causes and took Israel’s side.

By Mitch Smith, Lauren McCarthy, Ernesto Londoño and Miriam Jordan, Oct. 12, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/us/palestinians-reaction-israel-hamas.html

A Palestinian flag was raised from a car’s sunroof in Brooklyn on Tuesday. Credit...Ahmed Gaber for The New York Times

As news spread over the weekend that gunmen from Hamas, the Palestinian faction that governs the Gaza Strip, had killed hundreds and taken hostages in a surprise attack on Israel, Zarefah Baroud watched in horror from Seattle.

 

Ms. Baroud, a doctoral student and activist who is Palestinian American, said she felt deep sadness for the Israelis who were killed and kidnapped. And she was immediately worried that those killings would be “used to justify genocide” against Palestinians.

 

On Monday, Ms. Baroud managed to reach a younger cousin in Gaza. In an exchange of painful text messages, she learned that her aunt and five cousins, ages 9 to 18, had been killed in a retaliatory airstrike.

 

“Virtually every year there is a bombing campaign, but I’ve never heard my family talk as hopelessly about the situation,” said Ms. Baroud, 24, who faulted Israel for the escalation in hostilities. “There is nowhere to hide.”

 

Palestinians in the United States have long grappled with the complicated history of their ancestral home and the foreign policy of their adopted one. Many have parents or grandparents who left the Middle East decades ago when the modern Israeli state was founded. Their families found refuge and built new lives in America, starting businesses, joining mosques or churches, enjoying a sense of freedom and stability.

 

But all that time, their new country has remained a proud ally of Israel’s government, which many Palestinians see as an oppressive, occupying force.

 

“I cannot understand the double standard of this country,” said Zein Rimawi, a Palestinian who immigrated to the United States in the 1980s and lives in New York City, where he founded a mosque. Mr. Rimawi said he was troubled by the way U.S. leaders were supportive of Ukraine’s fight against Russia, yet, in his view, unable to understand the perspective of Palestinians.

 

In interviews with more than a dozen Palestinian Americans, many said they were saddened by the violence against civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, and hoped for a peaceful resolution. But many said that the underlying causes of the conflict could be traced to the policies of Israel and the United States, and decades of Palestinians being denied freedom of movement and basic rights.

 

Gaza residents have long endured food and medicine shortages, crumbling infrastructure, soaring joblessness and outbreaks of violence that have killed thousands of people. The expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which complicates the possibility of a two-state solution, has enraged Palestinians.

 

Several Palestinian Americans said they were frustrated by the bipartisan rush by U.S. politicians to support Israel, and by the way the conflict had been covered in American news outlets. Over the last few days, some have organized protests across the country that have included blistering critiques of Israel and calls to “free Palestine,” even amid criticism that such gatherings are tone-deaf.

 

“We have to have a memory that’s longer than 24 hours,” said Muhammad Sankari, an organizer with the Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine, which helped arrange a protest on Sunday outside that city’s Israeli consulate. “There’s 75 years of the occupation of Palestine.”

 

Clashes over the land date back to biblical times. The establishment of the modern Israeli state in 1948 on land that had been occupied by Britain led to a decades-long conflict over land and statehood for Palestinians.

 

More than two million Palestinians live in Gaza, a strip of land on the Mediterranean Sea whose borders are tightly controlled by Israel and Egypt. Since 2007, Gaza has been governed by Hamas, which the United States and European Union have labeled a terrorist organization.

 

More than 170,000 people in the United States identified as having Palestinian heritage in the 2020 census. Other census data shows that a majority of Palestinians in the country are American-born. Among those who immigrated, more than half have been in the country for at least two decades.

 

Within the Palestinian community, the census figures are considered to be a significant undercount given longstanding challenges in tallying the number of Americans of Middle Eastern and North African descent.

 

Though Palestinians live across the country, they are concentrated in a handful of large metropolitan areas.

 

In Anaheim, Calif., a district known as Little Arabia was revitalized with shops and restaurants by immigrants from the Middle East, including Palestinians. Last year in Paterson, N.J., part of Main Street was renamed “Palestine Way.” In a stretch of suburban Chicago that some refer to as Little Palestine, store names are listed in both Arabic and English, bakeries sell the Middle Eastern cookie maamoul and the soccer stadium hosts an annual Palestine Fest.

 

In the days since Israel began a counteroffensive to the terrorist attacks, health officials in Gaza said that 1,400 Palestinians had been killed and more than 6,200 others had been wounded. Officials said that more than 1,200 people in Israel had been killed, and an estimated 150 abducted.

 

Essa Masoud, a Staten Island resident who owns a halal grocery store, said his reaction to the war was “mostly regret.”

 

“Regret that this is happening; regret that people from both sides are getting killed,” said Mr. Masoud, whose parents were Palestinian immigrants, and who has family living in Jerusalem.

 

Still, the gulf between U.S. foreign policy and the views of many Palestinians has been on sharp display in recent days as protesters gather in American cities to speak against Israel’s government and voice support for Palestinian civilians bracing for counterattacks.

 

Most American officials, even those leery of the rightward shift of Israel’s government, have loudly defended Israel in recent days. President Biden called the attack against Israel “pure unadulterated evil.” Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and a Republican presidential candidate, said, “Israel needs our help in this battle of good vs. evil.”

 

And in New York, where supporters of Palestinians and Israelis held dueling rallies in Times Square, Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, called the gathering by Palestinians “abhorrent and morally repugnant.”

 

Sumaya Awad, a Palestinian American writer and activist living in New York City, said responses like those were shocking.

 

“These statements are really dehumanizing us,” she said, “and telling us that our lives are not worth anything.” In the eyes of those officials, she added, “we are never the victim, we are always the aggressor.”

 

The attacks by gunmen from Hamas galvanized this country’s Jewish community, which includes about 7.5 million people. Though American Jews hold a range of views about the Israeli government and U.S. politics, they were largely united in shock and anger at Hamas, with many voicing fear about the safety of friends or relatives in Israel. As of Thursday, at least 25 American citizens were known to have died in the violence, with others among the hostages.

 

Rabbi Nancy Kasten, who leads an interfaith group in Dallas, said she sympathized with the challenges facing Palestinians and believed Israel’s government had long committed human rights violations. But she rejected the idea that Israel’s policies justified or prompted Hamas to attack and kill last weekend.

 

“I don’t think that the occupation caused Hamas to do this,” said Rabbi Kasten, who said she visited Palestinian territories regularly. “I don’t think Hamas has Palestinian liberation in mind at all.”

 

The bipartisan rush to voice unwavering support for Israel was disappointing but not surprising, said Abdelnasser Rashid, an Illinois state representative from suburban Chicago who is Palestinian American.

 

Mr. Rashid, a Democrat who spent part of his childhood in the West Bank — a territory on Israel’s eastern border that’s home to some three million Palestinians — said he was visiting family there this year when Israeli settlers attacked the village where he was staying. He said his relatives, which made it through uninjured, barricaded inside a home as they listened to gunshots outside.

 

“We have to have a real reckoning with Israeli government policies that got us to this point and the American government policies that got us to this point,” Mr. Rashid said. He said that “we should condemn any attacks on innocent civilians” but added that “this did not start on Saturday.”

 

Palestinian Americans are a diverse group. They include both Muslims and Christians, recent arrivals and those whose families have been in the United States for generations. Some described a new wave of activism among younger Palestinian Americans, who have organized on college campuses and made common cause with Black Lives Matter organizers. Others sought to distance themselves from the actions of Hamas.

 

Many U.S. Palestinians interviewed said they were reluctant to speak out on the unfolding situation. Several people declined to be interviewed, citing fear of legal and professional backlash, distrust of the American news media or concern that they could place loved ones at risk overseas. In recent days, the police in some U.S. cities have stepped up security around synagogues and mosques.

 

“It’s impossible to say anything and not receive harsh criticism or anger,” said Aziza Hasan, a Palestinian American who is the executive director of a group that seeks to forge ties between Jewish and Muslim people in Los Angeles.

 

Ameen Hakim, a Palestinian American who lives in Brooklyn, said he was born in Jordan as a refugee after his parents, who were from Nazareth, fled their homeland. He was one of several Palestinians who shared complicated opinions about the war — horror at the loss of life, anger about the underlying conditions, hope for a more sustainable solution.

 

“We’re glad the Palestinians’ story is back on the surface,” Mr. Hakim said, and “we pray that the killing will stop, from both parties.”

 

Mr. Hakim said he also hoped Western countries would help enforce a cease-fire. “Otherwise,” he said, “it would be continuous, continuous suffering.”

 

Ms. Baroud, the graduate student in Seattle whose relatives were killed in Gaza, said she had traveled there for the first time last year. She had hoped to pray at the grave of the grandmother she was named after. When she could not find her grandmother’s headstone at the refugee camp cemetery where she was buried, she asked a camp administrator for help.

 

His answer was crushing, she said. He told her that so many people were dying that workers needed to replace older headstones with new ones. “So it’s not there anymore,” she said.

 

Robert Chiarito and Robert Gebeloff contributed reporting.

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5) What More Must the Children of Gaza Suffer?

By Fadi Abu Shammalah, Oct. 12, 2023

Mr. Abu Shammalah, Just Vision’s outreach associate in Gaza and the executive director of the General Union of Cultural Centers in Gaza, wrote from the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Gaza.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/opinion/gaza-children-war-hamas.html

Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

The bomb exploded a few hundred feet from where I was sitting with my wife, Safa, and my three children, Ali, Karam and Adam. Ali, 13, screamed; Karam, 10, buried his face in my chest; and Adam, 5, burst into tears.

 

We were in the outdoor area at the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt on Tuesday morning. I had been lucky enough to obtain permits for my wife and kids to cross into Egypt so they could wait out the terrifying violence raining down on Gaza in safety. But before their names were called, Israel bombed the crossing, at that point the only way in or out of the strip.

 

We quickly ushered the kids into the crossing’s hall, but a policeman started shouting for everyone to evacuate immediately; the crossing was being closed.

 

Thronged by dozens of others, we jumped in my car and sped back to my family home in the Khan Yunis refugee camp, where Ali and Adam continued to cry while Karam sat silently shaking.

 

We were just one family, experiencing one terrifying close call. More than two million Palestinians are trapped inside Gaza, about half under the age of 18, as Israel pounds us in retaliation for Hamas’s surprise attack on Saturday, with the United States promising “surging” military support.

 

Apartment complexes in Gaza City have been leveled, houses bombed and families annihilated. I can’t even recognize the upscale Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City — it’s been so thoroughly damaged. At least 326 children in the Gaza Strip have been killed since Saturday, according to the Ministry of Health here. Women and children from my extended family were killed in an attack on Tuesday, and my cousin was killed on Wednesday. The smell of explosives permeates the entire strip. Yoav Gallant, Israel’s minister of defense, called us “human animals” and announced that the suffocating siege that Palestinians in Gaza have endured for more than 15 years would be tightened even further: The strip is now cut off from food, electricity and fuel.

 

No electricity means no internet or connection to the outside world. Raw sewage is seeping into Gaza’s streets; waste treatment facilities require electricity. The water supply has been cut. Driving south on Monday, I passed five United Nations schools-turned-shelters, so jampacked with displaced people that families spilled out into the yards. Dread grows inside me, as I know the worst is yet to come.

 

Over 2,300 Israelis and Palestinians have been killed so far, the majority of them civilians. I am saddened by the killing of all civilians. I know that the pain of an Israeli parent is no different from the anguish of a mother or father in Gaza. Yet I’m not surprised that we have found ourselves at this bloody point of no return.

 

Many of the fighters who breached those walls are probably just a few years older than Ali; many of them were born during the second intifada. Their entire experience has been Israeli military occupation, siege and devastating military assault upon assault in an enclave of 140 square miles, with unemployment and poverty rates of approximately 50 percent. This is the history, and these are the conditions that have shaped so many in Gaza, not a justification. Israel helped create these fighters by starving them of hope, dignity and a future.

 

I am trying to imagine some positive outcome that this terrifying escalation might bring. Perhaps there will be an exchange of prisoners. Though Palestinians have the right to resist occupation, I have always preferred unarmed, civilian-led, direct mass action. Maybe the Palestinian, Israeli and international activists who have been using these tactics to oppose Israel’s occupation and a system that major human rights organizations — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli rights group B’Tselem — consider apartheid will be able to harness this horror to someday advance their vision of a future of liberation and a decent life for all.

 

But at the moment, with Israeli troops massing on the border with Gaza, suggesting an imminent ground invasion, I can’t think beyond the coming days.

 

How many more families will be obliterated? How many children will be made orphans and homeless? What will happen when the shelves in our markets are empty and reserves of fuel for our hospitals’ generators run out? What will become of our collective humanity if Israeli civilians continue to be targeted and bombs keep shattering our infrastructure, leaving Gazan children lying dead in our streets?

 

Unless the international community intervenes, Israel can continue to cut off access to water, food, fuel, electricity, medications and every other necessity of life. Without outside pressure, particularly from the United States, Israel can continue to flatten our cities and refugee camps.

 

As Israel maintains its rampage, I keep asking myself, “What’s in store for Ali, Karam and Adam?” We are unable to shield them from the pervasive violence and trauma. An explosion on Monday rattled the windows, prompting Adam to implore, “If the Israelis must bomb us, can’t they at least use smaller, quieter bombs?” Ali is a talented young musician, with an artist’s temperament and a musician’s soul. Does Israel want to convert him from an artist to a fighter? If my children have no hope for their future, I cannot guarantee what path they take.

 

The international community must immediately do everything in its power to ensure that my children — that all children in the region — are able to live in freedom, with dignity and safety. That is the only solution to the current horror show.

 

Fadi Abu Shammalah is Just Vision’s outreach associate in Gaza and the executive director of Gaza’s General Union of Cultural Centers.

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6) Talks Between Striking Actors and Studios Are Suspended

The sides said they remained far apart on the most significant issues, dealing a blow to hopes that the entertainment industry could soon fully roar back to life.

By John Koblin, Oct. 12, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/business/media/actors-strike-talks-suspended.html

Actors have been on strike since July 14 and most TV and film production remains suspended. Credit...Caroline Brehman/EPA, via Shutterstock

Negotiations between the major entertainment studios and the union representing tens of thousands of actors have collapsed, with both sides saying on Thursday morning that they remained far apart on the most significant issues.

 

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, said that it was suspending talks because they were “no longer moving us in a productive direction” after a session on Wednesday. SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, which has been on strike since July, accused studio executives of “bully tactics,” and said the studios recently presented an offer “that was, shockingly, worth less than they proposed before the strike began.”

 

The collapse of the negotiations is a significant setback for the entertainment industry, which has essentially been at a standstill for months because of dual strikes by actors and screenwriters. On Monday, more than 8,000 screenwriters ratified a new three-year contract with the studio alliance, formally ending their monthslong labor dispute. There was optimism that a deal with the actors would follow and that Hollywood could soon fully roar back to life.

 

But with actors continuing to strike, most television and movie production remains suspended. The financial fallout has been significant. The California economy has lost an estimated $5 billion. Tens of thousands of behind-the-scenes workers have been out of work for months. Share prices for many major media companies have dropped, and now there is a further threat to next year’s box office results.

 

Like their counterparts in the screenwriters guild, leaders of the actors’ union have called this moment “existential.” They are seeking wage increases, as well as protections around the use of artificial intelligence. Actors have now been on strike for 91 days; screenwriters recently returned to work after a 148-day walkout. The last time both unions had been on strike at the same time was 1960.

 

When negotiations between the actors’ union and the studios resumed last week — just days after the studios and screenwriters had reached a tentative agreement — it represented the first time that the sides had met since the actors went on strike on July 14. There were five bargaining sessions, and many industry observers believed that the talks would soon lead to a deal.

 

In a statement released early Thursday morning, the studio alliance said it had offered wage increases, met “nearly all of the union’s demands on casting” and proposed further protections around the use of A.I. The alliance also said it offered “the same terms that were ratified” by both the writers’ and directors’ unions regarding wage increases and streaming royalties.

 

The alliance also said, however, that the actors’ union wanted a viewership bonus that “would cost more than $800 million per year, which would create an untenable economic burden.”

 

Union leaders accused studio executives of walking away from the bargaining table “after refusing to counter our latest offer.”

 

“These companies refuse to protect performers from being replaced by artificial intelligence, they refuse to increase your wages to keep up with inflation, and they refuse to share a tiny portion of the immense revenue YOUR work generates for them,” union officials said in a statement addressed to members.

 

“Our resolve is unwavering,” the statement continued. “Join us on picket lines and at solidarity events around the country and let your voices be heard.”

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7) U.A.W. Expands Strike to Ford Plant in Kentucky

The factory employs 8,700 and makes some of Ford’s most profitable products, including pickups and sport utility vehicles.

By Neal E. Boudette, Oct. 11, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/11/business/uaw-ford-kentucky-strike.html

United Automobile Workers members picketing outside the Ford Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Mich., last month. The union has expanded its strike to a Ford plant in Louisville, Ky. Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

The United Automobile Workers union expanded its strike against Ford Motor on Wednesday evening, calling on 8,700 workers to walk off the job at a critical plant in Kentucky.

 

The plant makes some of Ford’s most profitable offerings, including the Super Duty version of its F-Series trucks and the Ford Expedition, a full-size sport utility vehicle.

 

The union and the company had appeared to make progress toward a new contract in recent weeks. But at an afternoon bargaining session, U.A.W. negotiators sought a sweetened offer from the company and Ford declined.

 

The union’s president, Shawn Fain, who attended the meeting at Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn, Mich., then informed Ford that he was calling for an immediate strike at the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, according to both union and company officials.

 

“You just lost Kentucky Truck,” Mr. Fain said, and he and the other U.A.W. negotiators left the meeting only minutes after it had started, these officials said.

 

The U.A.W. is staging an escalating strike campaign against selected Ford, General Motors and Stellantis plants to press the terms it is demanding in contracts replacing those that expired last month.

 

The union is now on strike at three Ford plants. The others are in Lansing, Mich., and Chicago.

 

The strike has also shut plants in Missouri and Michigan that are owned by G.M., and one in Ohio owned by Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram vehicles. U.A.W. workers have also walked off the job at 38 G.M. and Stellantis parts warehouses around the country. Including the workers at the Kentucky plant, nearly 34,000 of the 150,000 U.A.W. members employed by the three companies are on strike.

 

Losing production at Kentucky Truck is a significant financial blow for Ford. It is the company’s largest plant in the world. In the first nine months of this year, it produced more than 300,000 vehicles. The stoppage is likely to force Ford to halt production at a stamping plant at the same location.

 

Last year, Ford said it was investing $700 million in the Kentucky plant, a move that would create 500 additional jobs.

 

“We have been crystal clear, and we have waited long enough, but Ford has not gotten the message,” Mr. Fain said in a statement. “It’s time for a fair contract at Ford and the rest of the Big Three. If they can’t understand that after four weeks, the 8,700 workers shutting down this extremely profitable plant will help them understand it.”

 

In a statement, Ford said it had made a “record offer” to the union that “would make a meaningful positive difference in the quality of life” of the 57,000 U.A.W. members employed by the company. It said the expansion of the strikes to the Kentucky plant was “grossly irresponsible” and had “serious consequences for our work force, suppliers, dealers and commercial customers.”

 

The U.A.W. has demanded substantial wage increases from the companies. On Friday, Mr. Fain said Ford had offered raises of 23 percent over four years. G.M. and Stellantis have offered about 21 percent.

 

Ford previously agreed to other provisions, like allowing workers to rise to the top U.A.W. wage in four years instead of eight, providing cost-of-living adjustments if inflation remains high and giving the union the right to strike over plant closings.

 

Ford last made a substantial new offer to the union on Oct. 3, according to both sides.

 

U.A.W. negotiators had asked Ford for an in-person meeting on Wednesday, and negotiators gathered in a large boardroom, officials from both sides said. Ford had expected to discuss matters like union representation of workers at new battery plants that are still under construction and at least a year or more away from hiring staff, a company official said.

 

Last week, in what he described as a major breakthrough, Mr. Fain said G.M. was now willing to include workers at its battery factories in the company’s national contract with the U.A.W.

 

At Wednesday’s session with Ford, Mr. Fain quickly asked if the company had a comprehensive new offer to put on the table — one with improved salary terms, according to a union official briefed on the matter. When Ford officials said they did not, Mr. Fain replied, “This is all you have for us?” and announced that the strike would be extended to the Kentucky factory, the official said.

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8) “Innocent Israelis”

By Patrick Lawrence

—Sheerpost, October 11, 2023

https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/11/patrick-lawrence-innocent-israelis/

Missile explosion in the Gaza Strip in conflict between Israel and Hamas. Humberto Patrick, CC BY-SA

Of all the gruesome images and stomach-turning news reports to come out of Israel since Hamas launched its daring attack across the Gaza border last Saturday, one incident stays stubbornly with me. It occurred early on the morning of the assault near a kibbutz called Re’im, which lies in the Negev Desert just inside the boundary separating Israel and Gaza. 

 

A large group of young people—hundreds, it seems—were having an all-night rave, according to media reports, when an unstated number of Palestinian troops paraglided across the border and landed amid the festivities. A witness said 50 more militiamen then arrived in vans. Death, mayhem and panic ensued as the Gaza militias fired into the crowd and then continued firing as ravers ran for their lives. This incident, now much-noted, was among the bloodiest of the early hours of this new phase in the long war between Gaza and Israel, although the latter has already begun to deliver worse. Survivors and a local rescue agency put the dead at 260 and called it a massacre. 

 

A rave, should you not know the social nomenclature, is a gathering of partiers among whom it is understood more or less anything goes. In my very limited experience, at a serious rave, the shared thought is that no one has any thoughts: You leave behind your mind, your obligations, all connection to what we quaintly call the real world. You lose yourself, in a phrase, at least until your fantasy of escape exhausts itself. 

 

What is it that causes the events at Re’im to linger in my mind? Having given this some thought, I conclude it has something to do with the old, archetypal encounter between innocence and experience. The imagery could not have been more directly to this point: There were these partiers with nothing on their minds set to rave it up for who knows how long, and out of the sky come heavily armed troops with a lot on their minds. The scene of revel becomes the scene of horror.  Youthful innocents, hardened militants with deadly intent: It was hard to escape the metaphysics. 

 

The media accounts of the Re’im attack are many but sketchy and too reliant on official Israeli sources. The first video I saw, published without attribution in the New York Post, is 47 seconds and poorly recorded. The New York Times published another, of better quality, on Monday evening. There is enough in the plentiful media coverage and the footage of the scene, however well or badly done, to consider very carefully what exactly it is that we are being told and shown about the Re’im incident, and so about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict altogether. This is not a new question. It arises every time the 75–year conflict between the state of Israel and the Palestinian population it displaced at its founding erupts into open violence, as it just has. Now we must pose this question yet again: We owe a proper answer to the Palestinians, to the Israelis and to ourselves. 

 

The interpretation Western governments and corporate media have imposed on the available imagery since last Saturday has been as uniform and predictable as it is simplistic. It is as easily described as it is utterly standard: Virtuous, decent, minding-their-business Israelis encounter the “terrorists,” the “gunmen,” the “killers” of Gaza. The power of this rendering of events is beyond dispute, prevalent as it has been for many decades. With minor variations, it survives intact no matter what may transpire between Israel and the Palestinian Territories. It is impervious, let’s say, to history.

 

To consider the Re’im attack as an event in history, it seems to me there is something very off about a group of young and privileged Israelis having a carefree weekend in the sand hard by a land of daily, incessant suffering, a place where the innocence of its children and youth has been stolen by the state wherein the partiers do their partying. Something very off: By this I mean the revelers betrayed themselves as profoundly irresponsible, so it seems to me. Maybe unconsciously and maybe not, to me they displayed that indifference toward the lives of others for which many Israelis have unfortunately made themselves well-known.

 

For some days after violence erupted last Saturday I was struck by the absence in the mainstream coverage of any explanation as to why Hamas determined to launch an attack against a power it cannot hope to defeat. Why would the Gaza leadership decide on such a course? I eventually came upon reports indicating that the Netanyahu government had been again provoking Hamas, probably but not certainly with intent, by permitting ultranationalists to enter the grounds of the al–Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a sacred site for Muslims.  

 

Sequence: Hamas warned the Israeli government about such interventions on October 1. This was understood to be a Hamas red line. Three days later dozens of  intentionally provocative settlers forced their way into the mosque complex—this while thousands more had been touring the complex since Hamas issued its October 1 warning. So far as I have been able to find, accounts of these events have appeared only in Al Jazeera and other non–Western publications. You will search long and fruitlessly in Western media to discover the “why” of the Hamas offensive, the motive. 

 

The al–Aqsa events may have lit the fuse, but if this is so, it is doubtful they alone explain the Hamas attacks. There are three-quarters of a century to take into account—the ad hoc persecutions and harassments, the confiscations of land, the raids on Palestinian towns, the arrests and murders—and altogether the punishing psychological humiliation of a people for 75 years. Gazans are as aware as anyone that Israel now has the most extreme-right government in its history. Even from a distance it looks as if the lines of the apartheid state will be drawn ever more sharply.

 

You would not believe it, but against this indefensible record, the Hamas offensive is put down as “unprovoked”—this favored new term the U.S. and its Western allies deploy to explain themselves out of this or that picture. Russia was famously unprovoked when it intervened in Ukraine last year. China is unprovoked as it builds its military and braces for a conflict across the Taiwan Strait. And now Hamas joins the list. This may be ridiculous, but we cannot call it surprising. America has never acted abroad but in the name of the highest principles. It has, since 1776, always been the innocent party—the provoked, not the provoking.  

 

Caitlin Johnstone published a well-done column Sunday under the headline, “They’re Repeating the Word ‘Unprovoked’ Again, This Time In Defense of Israel.” In it the inimitable Johnstone quotes a preposterous list of leading American pols who immediately came forth to state that Hamas acted without provocation. To read this litany of assertions one after the other is briefly humorous but mostly offensive. “Calling Palestinian violence against Israel ‘unprovoked’ is easily even more ridiculous than calling the Russian invasion unprovoked,” Johnstone writes, “because the abuses of Israeli apartheid are so well-known by the general public at this point.”

 

We must understand the use to which this term is put in all cases, but let us stay for now with the events that began in Gaza and Israel last weekend. The fiction of the Hamas attacks as unprovoked is absolutely essential to the claim, as considered above, to Israeli innocence. And now to the questions that have accumulated in my mind since I picked up the newspaper last Saturday morning and read of the events in the desert near Re’im. 

 

Nobody at Re’im deserved to be killed, let there be no question of this. But did the revelers in the sands of the Negev have a claim to innocence? If so, on what would this claim rest? Taking this one step on, can people evidently indifferent to the suffering of others a few miles’ distant be at the same time innocent people? What about people who appear to be fundamentally irresponsible? Note in the videos all the abandoned cars the partiers left behind: These were people who plainly achieved the age of reason. Can they rightfully be considered innocent? 

 

You may have noticed the remarks of Yoav Gallant on Monday. The Israeli defense minister went all the way in the terrorists-killers-murderers line when announcing a “complete siege” of Gaza: Food, water, power, fuel, and medicines are all to be cut off. “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” Gallant declared. He chose to paraphrase rather than quote the Reich, but it is hard to miss his meaning: Palestinians are Untermensch, sub-humans, just as the Nazi ideologues would have put it.

 

Let us consider this sub-human remark in the context of our questions. What does it mean to live in a country where someone such as Yoav Gallant holds high and influential office, expresses the views he expresses, and plans the actions he plans? How can one be innocent in such a circumstance? If so, by virtue of what? 

 

On Tuesday The Spectator quoted a survivor of the Hamas attack in Re’im saying,  “I just want to live!” It takes a certain nerve for any Israeli to say such a thing—nerve, ignorance of history, and, I would say, indifference and irresponsibility. How many images have we seen of Palestinians fleeing the muzzles of Israeli rifles? How often must we read of Palestinians whose water supplies have been cut, whose farms have been burned, whose hospitals cannot function for lack of supplies? With this person so appreciative of human life in mind, let us consider what it means to be innocent. I think, at the outset, it is extremely difficult to be innocent in our time, in the world as we have made it—to avoid complicity, this is to say. Setting aside the very young and the otherwise powerless, who among us is not complicit, who is truly innocent?

 

I took up this question once before, in May 2014, when the September 11 Memorial and Museum opened at the site of the World Trade Center towers in Lower Manhattan. All of those who lost their lives were commemorated as innocent victims in highly individuated presentations—individuation being essential to all claims of innocence. None of those who died deserved to die, of course. But were they innocent? This was a difficult but necessary question to pose. 

 

Those in the World Trade Center towers worked for JPMorgan Chase, Cantor Fitzgerald, Marsh and McClennan, television networks, advertising agencies, and a great variety of other banks, insurers, media companies, and the like. The New York Times, which published brief profiles of each of the victims, put them across as soccer dads, amateur chefs, do-it-yourself guys, good fathers and mothers, husbands and wives—innocent folk making their livings. But many of these people, maybe most, also served in the system of global capital that was and remains the cause of much exploitation and deprivation. It was their choice to work for these companies, to serve in this system. They were not innocent of this system’s various forms of violence. In averting their eyes from this reality they surrendered part of their humanity to the system they served.  

 

Personal responsibility in the way the French existentialists used this term: This was my point when I commented on the September 11 Memorial. We are all responsible for what we choose to do or not do in each moment we are alive. This is what Sartre meant by freedom: We are free to do what we like and we are responsible for our choices. 

 

This question of responsibility, and the related matter of indifference, leads me to mention Emmanuel Lévinas, the Lithuanian-born thinker who was prominent in the postwar Parisian scene. Lévinas was preoccupied with our relations with the Other. It was necessary, he held, not only to recognize and eventually embrace others among us, but also to understand ourselves as others and—here comes the big one—that we are responsible to and for the Other in our midst and in whose presence we live. This is a matter of realizing our full humanity, as Lévinas reasoned it. 

 

To assume the responsibilities that fall to us is to preserve some claim to innocence, it seems to me. To develop within ourselves a sense of empathy, or whatever is the opposite of indifference, is equally to retain or regain our innocence. Again, there is no defending the shootings at Re’im. But only those among the revelers who understood and assumed their responsibility for Israel’s conduct and all the Yoav Gallants running the apartheid state can fairly be counted innocent of what we must recognize as a criminal regime. There is an honorable movement of such people in Israel, let us not forget. It is hard to imagine any of its members partying on the Gaza border, but let us allow for the possibility. For the rest, they must be counted as complicit.

 

I write of Israelis, but in truth we are all Israelis, especially we Americans. I say this not only because of the extravagant political, military, and propaganda support the U.S. provides the apartheid state. This is equally so because we face the same predicaments. The Israeli case is extreme, but is our case, the case of Americans, so much less so? Nikki Haley, and thank goodness she is a political never-will-be, appeared on Fox News Monday evening and, amid various bits of posturing nonsense, had this to say:

 

Let’s step back because I want the American people to take this in for a second. Here the Israelis woke up and their families were murdered, women and children were taken hostage, dragged through the streets—all of this happened in front of everyone. This should be personal for every woman and every man in America…. I will say this to Prime Minister Netanyahu: Finish them. Hamas did this. You know Iran is behind them. Finish them.

 

Finally, at last, I am in agreement with Haley on something: Americans should indeed understand what is going on in Israel and Gaza and the Occupied Territories as very personal. We have an unfortunately prominent political figure publicly advocating war crimes—and she is very far from alone. It has come to this. Americans can either take responsibility for this or remain complicit in it. No available alternatives. 

 

There is the question of Hamas, of course, and let us not pretend the question is simple. There is no arguing the justice of the Hamas attacks on noncombatants: There is none. Reports indicate that many of the dead were soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces, and this is altogether another matter. Setting aside the IDF’s casualties, the offensive Hamas launched on civilians last weekend was in no particular order tactically, strategically, morally, ethically wrong. The only thing served was revenge, and revenge is never productively acted upon, never wisely served. Hamas may have acted out of fury, the fury of the Other when the Other is unrecognized. But it left a lot of its claim to innocence on the ground as it tore through Re’im and elsewhere in southern Israel: There can be no question of this, all the civilian deaths for which Israel is responsible notwithstanding. 

 

But I insist we draw a sharp distinction between what I judge irrational attacks, probably born of fatalistic frustration, and the right of all Palestinians to resist, with arms, Israel’s sustained, inhumane conduct, its confinement of Gazans into what is commonly called an open-air prison. Resistance against the apartheid state’s abuses is a legal right—see Security Council Resolution 37/43—as well as a moral right. I would argue it is also a responsibility Palestinians bear toward themselves and the principles that make us—sometimes, once in a while—human. In this way, resisting oppression is also a responsibility the oppressed have to the rest of us.  

 

Who is answerable for the deaths at Re’im? This is the ultimate question, but only the first half. To say, “Hamas!” is not wrong but too shallow a reply. It is too far short of complete. To leave it at this is another form of complicity. Who is to be held accountable for the climate of abuse and violence that has characterized Israeli–Palestinian relations for 75 years? Who, we may even ask, made Hamas Hamas? These are versions of the second half of the question, the part that can lead us to assume our responsibilities and regain our humanity as we do.

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