Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, October 10, 2023

On Indigenous Peoples' Day, Stand Against Colonialism from Palestine to Haiti to the U.S!!!

 

NOT ANOTHER US/UN INVASION OF HAITI

DEMONSTRATE

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 10TH, 4:00 PM

SAN FRANCISCO FEDERAL BUILDING

7TH AND MISSION

Haiti Action Committee condemns in the strongest possible terms the UN Security Council vote to authorize yet another invasion of Haiti. Organized and promoted by the US, the invasion will be fronted by Kenya, which has pledged to send 1000 police. The Kenyan police force is notorious for its corruption and brutality, including the recent killing of over 30 people in a peaceful demonstration over increased fuel prices. Soon, this police force - along with other foreign troops - will be murdering Haitians.

The authorization comes despite overwhelming opposition from multiple sectors of Haitian society, who have demanded instead the removal of the current regime of unelected and illegitimate Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the installation of a broadly representative transitional government. While the US characterizes this new intervention as an attempt to stop “gang violence,” the real aim is to prop up the current dictatorship and to fend off the broad-based efforts within Haiti to oust it. 

This is why Henry, the neoliberal puppet of the US and the Core Group of foreign occupiers, has called for foreign troops and why Kenyan soldiers are preparing an invasion. Faced with collapsing infrastructure, the spectre of famine looming over half the population, a new cholera outbreak, and a defunded health care system, Haitians now fear that the militarized national police and their armed proxies, the paramilitary “gangs” who have been terrorizing dissident communities, will be buttressed by more foreign tanks and troops, to further oppress the civilian population.   

We remember the democratically elected governments of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas movement that were twice overthrown by US-supported coups d’etat. Had it not been for the coups, “Today, many of the beautiful dreams of the Haitian people would have already materialized,” a recent Fanmi Lavalas statement declared. “The anti-democratic forces have produced a hell on earth: kidnapping, insecurity, misery, hunger, corruption”—a failure that now requires a new occupying army to sustain it. 

THIS IS WHY WE OPPOSE A NEW FOREIGN INVASION AND EXPRESS OUR OUTRAGE AT THE US GOVERNMENT’S POLICY

Haiti Action Committee

PO Box 2040

Berkeley,CA 94702

Website:

https://haitisolidarity.net

Thirty-one years of solidarity with the anti-colonial grassroots struggle for dignity, democracy, and self-determination of the Haitian people!

 

 

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Join our virtual conversation on "The Torture of Solitary Confinement."

Death Penalty Focus is marking the 21st World Day Against the Death Penalty with a webinar Tuesday, October 10, 2023, at noon PT/3:00 P.M. ET, with DPF President Mike Farrell, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan E. Méndez, and Rachel Meeropol, who, as a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, represented those imprisoned in solitary confinement in California in their landmark lawsuit, Ashker v. Governor.

Register Now:

https://deathpenalty.org/event/the-torture-of-solitary-confinement/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=4feff85f-406b-4930-9441-2bf1b148ec09

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Register at:

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

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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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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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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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Sign the petition:

https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/

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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) Amid Strikes, One Question: Are Employers Miscalculating?

UPS, the Hollywood studios and the Detroit automakers appear to have been taken aback by the tactics and tougher style adopted by new union leaders.

By Noam Scheiber, Oct. 8, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/08/business/economy/labor-strikes.html

The Writers Guild of America’s deal was the latest high-profile labor standoff that seemed to produce substantial gains for workers. Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

The list of gains that the Hollywood writers secured to end a nearly five-month strike with studios once seemed ludicrously ambitious: not just wage increases, but also minimum staffing levels for shows, new royalties on successful series and restrictions on outsourcing writing duties to artificial intelligence.

 

Yet far from an anomaly, the writers’ deal was the latest high-profile labor standoff that seemed to produce substantial gains for workers, and to suggest that they have more leverage than in the past.

 

United Parcel Service employees won large pay increases for part-timers by pushing the company to the brink of a strike, while the lowest-paid academic student employees at the University of California won salary increases of more than 50 percent after a monthlong strike affected thousands of students.

 

Given the unions’ apparent bargaining power and the economic costs to a prolonged work stoppage, the question arises: Why wouldn’t management make its eventual concessions more quickly?

 

The answer, many union and management experts say, is that employers are increasingly miscalculating — acting from a template that applied in previous decades, when employees had little leverage, and underestimating the frustration and resolve in the postpandemic work force.

 

“Psychologically, it’s a big shift: They’ve been in control. They have been able to tell their representatives to go and get concessions on X and Y, to make sure the wage increase is modest,” said Thomas Kochan, an emeritus management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, referring to corporate executives.

 

“Now, they have to change their expectations internally,” Dr. Kochan added. “They have a lot of work to do.”

 

In example after example, executives appear to have been taken aback by unions’ new, more assertive leaders and their success at rallying members and the public, as well as the ineffectiveness of the employers’ traditional bargaining approach.

 

In Hollywood, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents entertainment companies in negotiations with writers, directors and actors, has frequently tried to forge a deal with one of the three guilds, then push the other two to accept similar terms.

 

That appeared to be the group’s strategy this year as well: After the writers went on strike in May, the alliance reached a deal with directors the next month. But any hope that the writers would be isolated collapsed when SAG-AFTRA, the union representing more than 150,000 actors, went on strike in July.

 

“The playbook was clearly outdated,” said Peter Newman, a longtime independent producer who heads a dual-degree master’s program in business and fine arts at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

 

Still, Mr. Newman said, the strikes saved the studios hundreds of millions of dollars on shows in the short term as Wall Street was pressuring them to cut costs.

 

The producers’ alliance declined to comment for this article.

 

In Detroit, the three major U.S. automakers had grown accustomed to closed-door negotiations with the United Automobile Workers union, in which the parties did not disclose the potential terms until they reached an overall agreement.

 

But in the run-up to this year’s mid-September strike deadline, the union’s new president, Shawn Fain, appeared to wrong-foot executives at Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis — which makes the Chrysler and Jeep brands — by disclosing and deriding the companies’ offers. In one case, he literally threw a Stellantis proposal in the garbage.

 

The companies’ responses — a Stellantis executive sent employees a letter saying that “theatrics and personal insults will not help,” while Ford and G.M. have also expressed impatience — may have further galvanized members and built public support. Polls have found that the public supports the autoworkers over the companies by large margins, and that the margins increased after the U.A.W. began a limited strike.

 

“It doesn’t seem like they were prepared for the direction he was headed with his public comments,” David Pryzbylski, a labor lawyer who represents employers at Barnes & Thornburg, said of the reaction to Mr. Fain. “The way they have responded may have escalated it further versus letting it die out.”

 

Stellantis declined to comment. Auto industry executives argue that they have made historically generous offers, and that they haven’t been put off by Mr. Fain’s outspokenness so much as what they say are the showmanship and the unrealistic expectations he has created.

 

Mr. Pryzbylski emphasized that it was too early to tell whether the landscape had tilted to labor’s advantage for the longer term, or just temporarily. The outcome of the U.A.W. strike remains unclear, and the workers’ resolve could diminish if the strike drags on for weeks. Talks between the sides are ongoing.

 

Other management-side lawyers said that while a handful of executives might have miscalculated of late, there was no broader trend in this direction. They say that employers remain capable of assessing and acting in their self-interest, and that unions are equally capable of miscalculating.

 

“People are sophisticated on both sides,” said Marshall Babson, a longtime management-side lawyer and former member of the National Labor Relations Board. “From my experience, good negotiators don’t get distracted by pyrotechnics.”

 

But in many cases, what has changed is not so much the bluster from union leaders as their willingness to follow through — a potentially disruptive shift after years of often empty threats.

 

When Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters president, ran to succeed his longtime predecessor, James P. Hoffa, in 2021, he promised to raise wages for part-time workers at UPS, many of whom had long felt shortchanged.

 

And yet, according to two people close to the negotiations, the company seemed caught off guard when talks broke down over the issue on July 5 — Mr. O’Brien’s initial deadline.

 

Mr. O’Brien and the union spent the next few weeks publicly attacking UPS over what the union referred to as “part-time poverty” jobs before the company agreed to hourly wage increases for part-timers of more than $7.50 over the life of the new five-year contract.

 

Shortly after a tentative deal was reached in late July, the UPS chief executive, Carol Tomé, said the company had expected the negotiations “to be late and loud, and they were.” The company declined to comment for this article.

 

Part of the challenge for employers is public opinion: Confidence in big business is at its lowest point in decades, according to Gallup, while approval of labor unions is close to its highest. Mr. Fain and Mr. O’Brien appear to have devised their public campaigns to press this advantage.

 

Unions also appear to have benefited from new methods of keeping members focused on shared goals — as when writers erupted on social media over the news that the talk show hosted by Drew Barrymore would return before the strike ended. (Ms. Barrymore soon reversed course.)

 

And rank-and-file members appear to have become more committed to their leaders’ negotiating strategy as unions have become more democratic and involved members more in the push for a contract, said Jane McAlevey, a longtime labor organizer and scholar.

 

But perhaps most important, employers seem to be underestimating the determination of workers, who believe they have little to lose from striking amid rising prices and fundamental shifts in their industry that have sometimes made their jobs more precarious.

 

A few weeks after the writers walked off the job this spring, Mae Smith, a strike captain and former writer on the Showtime series “Billions,” predicted in an interview that the economic pain of a protracted strike against the studios would not discourage the writers because “unfortunately they’ve been training us to live off very few months of work for a long time.”

 

The prediction largely held, in something of a departure from the 2007 writers’ strike. Back then, when streaming felt like a distant threat, there were some splits within the Writers Guild over how aggressive to be, said Chris Keyser, a past president of the union.

 

This time, the writers appeared particularly unified by the looming role of artificial intelligence, an issue on which the studios largely refused to engage for months.

 

“A number of C.E.O.s, when we talked to them later about A.I., said that was a mistake,” recalled Mr. Keyser, a co-chair of the writers’ negotiating committee this year.

 

(The writers did compromise on some key issues in the end — there is no ban on studios’ use of scripts they own to train A.I. tools, though the guild reserved the right to challenge instances of this.)

 

Dr. Kochan of M.I.T. said the concession from studios on artificial intelligence was especially significant because it highlighted another shift: employers’ diminished ability to limit negotiations to conventional issues like wages and benefits while often reserving the right to control other aspects of the job, like technology adoption.

 

“For decades, management has been able to say: ‘These are our decisions, our prerogatives. It’s none of your business,’” he said.

 

With the breakthrough on artificial intelligence, he added, “this is a new day — that’s why the writers’ strike was so important.”

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2) Across the Mideast, a Surge of Support for Palestinians as War Erupts in Gaza

The escalation laid bare the limitations of diplomatic deals between Israel and Arab governments as long as the underlying conflict continues. “We told you so,” a Saudi scholar said.

By Vivian Nereim, Oct. 9, 2023

Reporting from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/world/middleeast/mideast-palestine-support-gaza.html

The National Islamic Bank in central Gaza was bombed on Sunday. Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

When the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco announced that they were establishing relations with Israel in 2020, Emirati officials said the deals were symbols of peace and tolerance, while then President Donald J. Trump declared “the dawn of a new Middle East.”

 

Those words rang hollow to many in the region, though. Even in the countries that signed the deals, branded the Abraham Accords, support for the Palestinians — and enmity toward Israel over its decades-long occupation of their land — remained strong, particularly as Israel’s government expanded settlements in the Palestinian West Bank after the agreements.

 

On Saturday, when Palestinian gunmen from the blockaded territory of Gaza surged into Israel, carrying out the boldest attack in the country in decades, it set off an outpouring of support for the Palestinians across the region. In some quarters, there were celebrations — even as hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians were killed and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel threatened a “long and difficult war” ahead.

 

“This is the first time that we rejoice in this way for our Palestinian brothers,” said Abdul Majeed Abdullah Hassan, 70, who joined a rally with hundreds of people in the island kingdom of Bahrain. In the context of the Israeli occupation and blockade, the Hamas operation “warmed our hearts,” he said, calling his government’s deal to recognize Israel “shameful.”

 

Demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinians took place across the region, including in Bahrain, Morocco, Turkey, Yemen, Tunisia and Kuwait. In Lebanon, Hashem Safieddine, head of the executive council for the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah, delivered a fiery speech lauding “the era of armed resistance.” And in Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria, a policeman opened fire on Israeli tourists, killing two Israelis and an Egyptian.

 

The ripples spreading from Gaza underscored what many officials, scholars and citizens in the region have been saying for years: The Palestinian cause is still a deeply felt rallying cry that shapes the contours of the Middle East, and Israel’s position in the region will remain unstable as long as its conflict with the Palestinians continues.

 

Diplomatic “normalization” agreements between Israel and Arab governments — even with the powerhouse of Saudi Arabia, where American officials have been pushing recently for normalization — will do little to change that, many regional analysts say.

 

“The current war is a stark reminder that lasting peace and prosperity in the region is only possible after resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Bader Al-Saif, a professor at Kuwait University. “No amount of heavy lifting or acrobatics in dealing with Israel on other files can sidestep or erase this simple fact.”

 

Many Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, have long insisted that the price of recognizing Israel must be the creation of a Palestinian state. But over the past decade, that calculus has shifted, as authoritarian leaders weigh negative public opinion toward a relationship with Israel against the economic and security benefits it could offer — and what they might be able to get from the United States in return.

 

The Biden administration has been pressing for a deal that would establish ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia in exchange for significant concessions to the kingdom. Saudi officials have demanded American security assurances and support for a civilian nuclear program.

 

Last month, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia made his first public reference to the negotiations, saying in a Fox News interview that the talks felt “real” for the first time. And in early October, the kingdom’s newspapers — which operate under limited press freedom — began publishing a spate of columns that were subtly or openly supportive of normalization.

 

The eruption of violence on Saturday presented a significant challenge to those efforts.

 

It also made comments by King Abdullah II of Jordan at a conference in New York last month appear prescient: “This belief by some in the region that you can parachute over Palestine — deal with the Arabs and work your way back — that does not work,” he said.

 

Indeed, some Arab officials and scholars complain that their warnings about normalization deals that do not sincerely address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have fallen on deaf ears.

 

Watching the events in Gaza feels like hearing Arabs say “we told you so” to the American president, Khalid al-Dakhil, a prominent Saudi academic, wrote on the social media platform X. “Ignoring what’s right in finding a just solution to the Palestinian cause creates a trap for the region and threatens peace,” he said.

 

American officials say that normalization is a key step toward a more integrated Middle East, with positive implications for regional security and American defense interests.

 

“There are really two paths before the region,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “There’s the path of greater integration, greater stability, including, critically, making sure that Israelis and Palestinians resolve their differences, or there’s the path of terror that Hamas is engaged on, that has not improved the lives of a single person.”

 

He added: “We’ve said from day one that even as we’re working toward normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, that can’t be a substitute for resolving the differences between Israelis and Palestinians.”

 

But many in the region say that normalization feels like a betrayal: a triumph of government and business elites over the will of their people.

 

The Palestinian cause “is something we grew up on as children, and it became a compass to show what is right and just,” said Reem Maraj, 34, who participated in a symposium on Saturday in Bahrain that discussed the outcome of the Abraham Accords, three years later.

 

“If I had the choice, I would have erased this agreement from the history of my country,” she said.

 

Polls show that even in Arab countries that have relations with Israel, a majority of citizens view the Abraham Accords negatively.

 

“We stand fully with the rights of the Palestinian people to free their land,” said Hassan Bennajeh, one of the organizers of protests in Morocco. “We are asking to end the normalization because it doesn’t reflect the opinion of Moroccans.”

 

The Qatar Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that it holds Israel “solely responsible for the ongoing escalation due to its continuous violations of the rights of the Palestinian people.”

 

The government of Iran, which for years has been engaged in a shadow war with Israel and has supported Hamas, cheered the group’s attack on Israel on Saturday.

 

And Ahmed Abu Zeid, a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, said on local television last night that his country “has been warning, for months, of the danger of provocative practices” by Israel.

 

“The ongoing occupation and dehumanization of Palestinians has been on full display for decades and it has shaped the way Arabs view the conflict,” said Mr. Al-Saif, the Kuwaiti professor. “Palestine is the priority of the Arab street.”

 

Even so, Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati political scientist, predicted that a deal between Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel was likely to move ahead.

 

“I would bet my money on it,” he said. “If the right price comes across from the Americans, I think the Saudis have their national interest as No. 1 priority.”

 

The violence in Israel “might derail things for a while, but it’s not going to reverse the appetite for normalization with Israel and de-escalating — a new Middle East,” he said.

 

On Sunday morning, another signal arrived in a major Saudi-owned newspaper, Asharq al-Awsat. In a column, Tariq Alhomayed, the newspaper’s former editor, criticized Hamas and Palestinian factions for waging what he called a “useless war.”

 

He accused them of trying to sabotage the prospects for Saudi-Israeli normalization — and of serving their Iranian backers at the expense of the Palestinian people.

 

“Iran does not want to see real peace, or specifically Saudi-Israeli peace,” he wrote. “Because if it happens, it will be the peace that will change the face of the region.”

 

Aida Alami contributed reporting from Asilah, Morocco; Nazeeha Saeed from Berlin, Germany; Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon; and Ahmed Al Omran from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

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3) Gaza’s health ministry says that Israel is striking medical facilities.

Raja Abdulrahim, October 10, 2023

Reporting from Jerusalem

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/10/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza#gazas-health-ministry-says-that-israel-is-striking-medical-facilities

A couple carrying their injured daughter to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Monday. Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

Gaza’s medical system and infrastructure have come under attack by Israeli airstrikes, the health ministry in the territory said on Tuesday, as hundreds of wounded fill hospital operating rooms and intensive care units.

 

At least five medical workers have been killed, the ministry said.

 

“The Israeli occupation has expanded its circle of targets to the medical teams, the health facilities and ambulances,” said Ashraf al-Qidra, the spokesman for the Gaza health ministry.

 

Israel has said its strikes are targeting all sites connected with Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that controls the Gaza Strip, including the homes of members. Israel said it believes Hamas members are hiding in homes, schools and hospitals. Because its members are Palestinians from Gaza, they live among the community.

 

Seven hospitals have been struck with Israeli airstrikes and one of them was bombed out of operation, Mr. al-Qidra said. His account could not be immediately verified, but the United Nations has said that at least two hospitals, multiple homes and two centers run by the Palestine Red Crescent Society have been hit.

 

The strikes came as part of Israel’s response to Saturday’s attack, when hundreds of Palestinian gunmen swept across Israel’s border with Gaza, killing hundreds of civilians and soldiers and firing thousands of rockets toward the center of the country. On Monday, Israel’s defense minister announced a “complete siege” of Gaza, saying “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” would be allowed in.

 

Volker Türk, the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, on Tuesday warned that a full siege of Gaza would exacerbate the “already dire” humanitarian situation in the coastal territory and would hurt hospitals’ ability to treat the growing number of wounded.

 

At least 765 Palestinians have been killed since Saturday and 4,000 injured, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

 

Gaza, a small densely populated enclave that is home to more than two million people, has been under a severe blockade imposed by Israel, and backed by Egypt, for 16 years, limiting what can go in, including medicines and medical equipment.

 

“The hospitals in Gaza are in a very critical situation as a result of this oppressive siege and has led to a big shortage of medicine and medical tools and fuel,” Mr. al-Qidra said, referring to the new bombardment. “Everyone needs to bear responsibility to save the medical work in Gaza.”

 

The heavy Israeli bombardment has made movement in the streets dangerous and ambulances have had difficulty transporting the dead and wounded. Instead, people have at times relied on borrowed vehicles, tuk-tuks or motorcycles.

 

The health ministry said that at least nine ambulances had been struck since Saturday.

 

“The health system was already suffering before this war,” said Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaiseeb, the deputy medical coordinator in Gaza for Doctors Without Borders, widely known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières.

 

He said he has seen people coming to schools and hospitals for shelter because they feel these are the safest areas — though they may not be. A building next to Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest, was struck, he said, and shrapnel hit the hospital.

 

“If the current situation continues, we are now in day four, there will be a critical impact not just on the medical system but on every aspect of life in Gaza,” he said.

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4) 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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5)  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/

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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