Not too long ago we had ongoing coverage about the housing shortage in France with people squatting in empty buildings hoping they wouldn’t get tossed into the street in the middle of winter. Some were not so lucky and got tossed anyway because the buildings they were in weren’t safe. Of course, the street is safer and much warmer.

It is impossible to rent here in France without a permanent job contract unless you have contacts and someone is willing to fiddle around with the paperwork. Mr. Villepin’s new contract may help some get jobs from which there will be no guarantee they will keep but it will also insure they will not find a place to live. Mr. Villepin’s job contract puts the cart before the horse. The creation of jobs and housing before changing laws that will make the acquisition of these necessities even more difficult would get a more positive response from the people.

As fools rush in with the unorthodox reasoning that says if an employer knows he can toss you out for whatever reason he chooses and at any time you will stand a better chance of getting hired I begin to believe that politicking cannot be that hard, in fact, any fool could do it.

Read more at Pourquoi Pas

Go to House Report 109-333 -USA PATRIOT IMPROVEMENT AND REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005 and check it out for yourself. Sec. 605 reads:

"There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the 'United States Secret Service Uniformed Division'."

The new police are empowered to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony."

The new police are assigned a variety of jurisdictions, including "an event designated under section 3056(e) of title 18 as a special event of national significance" (SENS).

Unfathomed Dangers in Patriot Act Reauthorization

“A special event of national significance” is not defined but most assuredly a Presidential State of the Union address such as Cindy Sheehan attended recently and was arrested I might add would come under this heading. Read more at Pourquoi Pas

In the new allegations, former detainees claimed they were beaten with plastic cables, given electric shocks and made to stand in a flooded room as an electrical current was passed through the water, London-based Amnesty said. Its report said the interviews were conducted last year and this year.

"Some of the detainees have been held for over two years without any effective remedy or recourse," it said. "Others have been released without explanation or apology or reparation after months in detention, victims of a system that is arbitrary and a recipe for abuse." Rights Group says Iraq Torture Continues

Read more at Pourquoi Pas

“If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state and give them back all their rights, then we are ready to recognize them,” Haniyeh told The Washington Post in an interview posted on its website on Saturday.

Read more at Pourquoi Pas

There was a memorial service last night at a synagogue in Paris, France for 23 year old Ilan Halimi. He was found 11 days ago in the Essonne region south of Paris, naked, handcuffed and 80% of his body burned and bruised. He died on the way to the hospital.

Considering that Mr. Bush doesn’t even trust US citizens when it comes to “keeping America safe from terrorist” his decision now to veto efforts in Congress to block an agreement that would allow a takeover of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports by a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates seems more than a little disingenuous.

Are there real reasons to be concerned about Dubai Ports World running major commercial port operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia or is it just another partisan political issue?

Two of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks came from the United Arab Emirates and laundered some of their money through the country's banking system. It was also the main transshipment point for Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear engineer who ran the world's largest nuclear proliferation ring from warehouses near the port, met Iranian officials there, and shipped centrifuge equipment, which can be used to enrich uranium, from there to Libya. The UAE was also one of only three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Overriding objections from Republicans and Democrats alike, President Bush endorsed the takeover of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports by a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates. He pledged to veto efforts in Congress to block the agreement.

Mr. Bush issued the threat after the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, and the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, publicly criticized the deal and said a thorough review was necessary to ensure that terrorists could not exploit the arrangement to slip weapons into American ports.

President Bush, during his two terms in the White House, has yet to veto any piece of legislation emerging from Congress.

Why now? Why is this port deal so important to Mr. Bush?

Workers in Iraq's southern oilfields began organising soon after British occupying forces invaded Basra. We founded our union, the Southern Oil Company Union, just 11 days after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. When the occupation troops stood back and allowed Basra's hospitals, universities and public services to be burned and looted, while they defended only the oil ministry and oilfields, we knew we were dealing with a brutal force prepared to impose its will without regard for human suffering. From the beginning, we were left in no doubt that the US and its allies had come to take control of our oil resources.

The occupation authorities have maintained many of Saddam's repressive laws, including the 1987 order which robbed us of basic union rights, including the right to strike. Today, we still have no official recognition as a trade union, despite having 23,000 members in 10 oil and gas companies in Basra, Amara, Nassiriya, and up to Anbar province. However, we draw our legitimacy from the workers, not the government. We believe unions should operate regardless of the government's wishes, until the people are able finally to elect a genuinely accountable and independent Iraqi government, which represents our interests and not those of American imperialism.

Our union is independent of any political party. Most trade unions in Britain only seem to be aware of one union federation in Iraq, the regime-authorised Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, whose president, Rassim Awadi, is deputy leader of the US-imposed prime minister Ayad Allawi's party. The IFTU's leadership is carved up between the pro-government Communist party, Allawi's Iraqi National Accord, and their satellites. In fact, there are two other union federations, which are linked to political parties, as well as our own organisation.

Our union has already shown it is able to stand its ground against one of the most powerful US companies, Dick Cheney's KBR, which tried to take over our workplaces with the protection of occupation forces.

We forced them out and compelled their Kuwaiti subcontractor, Al Khourafi, to replace 1,000 of the 1,200 employees it brought with it with Iraqi workers, 70% of whom are unemployed today. We also fought US viceroy Paul Bremer's wage schedule, which dictated that Iraqi public sector workers must earn ID 69,000 ($35) per month, while paying up to $1,000 a day to thousands of foreign mercenaries. In August 2003 we took strike action and shut down all oil production for three days. As a result, the occupation authorities had to raise wages to a minimum of ID 150,000.

We see it as our duty to defend the country's resources. We reject and will oppose all moves to privatise our oil industry and national resources. We regard this privatisation as a form of neo-colonialism, an attempt to impose a permanent economic occupation to follow the military occupation.

The occupation has deliberately fomented a sectarian division of Sunni and Shia. We never knew this sort of division before. Our families intermarried, we lived and worked together. And today we are resisting this brutal occupation together, from Falluja to Najaf to Sadr City. The resistance to the occupation forces is a God-given right of Iraqis, and we, as a union, see ourselves as a necessary part of this resistance - although we will fight using our industrial power, our collective strength as a union, and as a part of civil society which needs to grow in order to defeat both still-powerful Saddamist elites and the foreign occupation of our country.

Bush and Blair should remember that those who voted in last month's elections in Iraq are as hostile to the occupation as those who boycotted them. Those who claim to represent the Iraqi working class while calling for the occupation to stay a bit longer, due to "fears of civil war", are in fact speaking only for themselves and the minority of Iraqis whose interests are dependent on the occupation.

We as a union call for the withdrawal of foreign occupation forces and their military bases. We don't want a timetable - this is a stalling tactic. We will solve our own problems. We are Iraqis, we know our country and we can take care of ourselves. We have the means, the skills and resources to rebuild and create our own democratic society.

"Our aim in SOCU is to organise oil workers who have an important role to play in the resistance against the occupation and to put forward workers' interests to the employers.

All the refineries in the south are still state owned and we are trying to build links with other oil workers elsewhere in Iraq to unite the fight against privatisation of the oil industry.

The occupation of Iraq is seen by most Iraqis as illegal. This occupation is not about freeing the Iraqis but about oil and the looting of Iraq's natural resources. After the military occupation comes economic occupation!

Nationalisation of the Iraqi oil industry [in 1958] was a blow to colonisation and US imperialism at the time. Now, instead of economic sanctions [imposed on Saddam Hussein's regime following the 1991 Gulf War], we see an economic occupation that will push through privatisation.

We are seeing Iraqis from Saddam's old regime who left Iraq with millions of dollars returning to buy industries. These are the people with capital - the Iraqi capitalists. What is important is to oppose all privatisation by the capitalists."

Q: What were the problems that the union had to overcome?

A: Workers haven't received what they should. The occupying forces issued Order #30 setting wages for workers in the public sector. According to this order, the salary of a worker would be 69,000 Iraqi dinars a month, the equivalent of about $35. That salary was extremely low, while inflation and the cost of living are very high.

Iraqi oil reserves are the second largest in world. We asked ourselves, in a situation like that, how can it be that the workers in our industry would be getting a monthly salary of $35? We found that the American administration wasn't willing to cooperate with us about the scale, so we decided to go on strike on the 13th of August. After a short strike, we managed to get the minimum salary up to 150,000 Iraqi dinars, or about $100. This for us is the beginning of the struggle to improve the income of the oil workers. We were also able to get the American company KBR to withdraw its personnel from our installations completely.

Q: How do the members of the oil workers union look at the occupation?

A: From all the meetings we've had with workers all over the industry, we've heard from almost everyone that they want the occupation to end immediately, and the immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces from Iraq.

Q: Are you concerned about your security if the occupation ends immediately?

A: No, we are not worried. We don't have any problem with that because we are able to look after ourselves and our own security.

Q: If the occupation forces withdraw, isn't there a danger that there could be attacks on trade unionists by the insurgents, like those which have taken place in Baghdad?

A: That could happen, but we have to solve our problems ourselves.

Q: What kind of government do you want to see?

A: We want a government that will represent the national Iraqi movements. It should be friendly to all countries, especially those that stood against the war and occupation.

“The opinion of all [Iraqi] oilworkers is that they are against privatisation”, states Hassan. “We see privatisation as economic colonialism. The authorities are saying that privatisation will develop our sector and be useful. But we do not see it as development at all; we view any plan to privatise the oil sector as a big disaster”.

Sovereignty over its oil reserves is key to Iraq’s future development, Hassan argues. “Oil must stay in the hands of Iraqis, because oil is the only national resource that we have which is of great value, and our economy depends on it”.

List of massacres, compiled by refugees in Touloum refugee camp, Chad. The refugees are desperate to have their stories told - they want the world to know where, when, what and who. Photo by Jerry Fowler

1. Killing members of the group;



2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;



3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;



4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;



5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

1. Genocide;



2. Conspiracy to commit genocide;



3. Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;



4. Attempt to commit genocide;



5. Complicity in genocide.

Gregory H. Stanton wrote Eight Stages of Genocide in 1996.

Genocide is a process that develops in eight stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The later stages must be preceded by the earlier stages, though earlier stages continue to operate throughout the process.

• Classification: All cultures have categories to distinguish people into "us and them" by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality.



• Symbolization: We name people "Jews" or "Gypsies", or distinguish them by colors or dress; and apply them to members of groups.



• Dehumanization: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder.



• Organization: Genocide is always organized, usually by the state, though sometimes informally (Hindu mobs led by local RSS militants) or by terrorist groups.



• Polarization: Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda. Laws may forbid intermarriage or social interaction.



• Preparation: Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. Members of victim groups are forced to wear identifying symbols. They are often segregated into ghettoes, forced into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved.



• Extermination: Extermination begins, and quickly becomes the mass killing legally called "genocide." It is "extermination" to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human. When it is sponsored by the state, the armed forces often work with militias to do the killing.



• Denial: Denial is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes, and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile. There they remain with impunity, like Pol Pot or Idi Amin, unless they are captured and a tribunal is established to try them.
  
  The best response to denial is punishment by an international tribunal or national courts. There the evidence can be heard, and the perpetrators punished. Tribunals like the Yugoslav, Rwanda, or Sierra Leone Tribunals, an international tribunal to try the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and ultimately the International Criminal Court must be created. They may not deter the worst genocidal killers. But with the political will to arrest and prosecute them, some mass murderers may be brought to justice.

As the death toll mounted, General Dallaire submitted a detailed plan for a Rapid Reaction Force. He needed 5,000 soldiers to dismantle the killing machine of the genocidaire and to stop the Hutu power movement. The UN Security Council rejected the plan. The United States even refused to acknowledge the genocide to avoid any legal obligations to help. Indepth: Romeo Dallaire

Attention to Darfur's staggering death toll---which has grown to approximately 400,000 over the course of more than two years of genocidal conflict---has increased dramatically in the past several months. Darfur Mortality Update: April 30, 2005

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed the Security Council's decision as one that would "ensure that those responsible for atrocities in Darfur are held to account." The text, which refers to developments in Darfur since 1 July 2002, was adopted just before midnight Thursday (New York time) by a vote of 11 in favour, with Algeria, Brazil, China and the United States abstaining. In particular European powers had lobbied for the decision.

The Khartoum government, on the other hand, today made it clear it would not support the Security Council decision. Several high-ranking Sudanese government officials risk being accused of war crimes by the ICC. The government in a statement indicated it would not cooperate with the Court, rejecting "the prosecution of any Sudanese national outside of the country."

In January 2005, an international commission of inquiry appointed by the UN recommended that the UN Security Council refer the situation in Darfur to the ICC - the only means by which the Court could assume jurisdiction in this instance. The commission found that the Sudanese government and militias were responsible for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, amounting to crimes under international law.

Opposition by several major powers so far however had hindered the referral of war crime cases in Darfur to the ICC. In particular the Washington government opposed the move as the US does not recognise the ICC. Further, China, an ally of the Khartoum government, protested the solution. Both China and the US have veto powers in the Security Council and only their abstention in the vote secured this night's resolution.

The use of the ICC has also been strongly lobbied by human rights groups all over the world, in particular in the US. The groups hold that the ICC is the only institution that can bring justice to Darfur's many war crime victims. This night's decision was therefore celebrated as a major victory by these groups, several UN institutions and governments in Europe. Relief as Darfur war crimes are referred to ICC

"I feel terrible about the September 11 terrorist attacks – it was absolutely grotesque - but you mobilized the world. No one was mobilized when 800,000 were killed in Rwanda, and they are just as human." Lt. Gen. Roméo A. Dallaire

"A former Marine, I had arrived in Sudan's Darfur region in September 2004 as one of three U.S. military observers for the African Union, armed only with a pen, pad and camera. The mandate for the A.U. force allowed merely for the reporting of violations of a cease-fire that had been declared last April and the protection of observers. The observers sometimes joked morbidly that our mission was to search endlessly for the cease-fire we constantly failed to find. I soon realized that this was no joke." Brian Steidle

See the children with their backs torn open by bullets. See the villages torched and strafed by government gunships. See the refugees crammed into camps, parched and starving. A few minutes of this is enough to make one scream for someone, anyone, anyone at all to just do something.

The UN Security Council could, in theory, put in an expanded civilian protection force into Darfur, possibly deploying peacekeepers from other African and Muslim countries. But China—which imports six percent of its oil from Sudan, and has a controlling stake in various Sudanese oil companies—would likely veto any such intervention. Likewise, NATO could step in, but for the fact that France has opposed such a move, arguing that the organization should not be "the gendarme of the world." And other Arab countries have also declined to get involved; Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, for instance, has denounced any possible "internationalization" of the conflict.

For its part, the Bush administration no longer seems willing to put pressure on its allies over Darfur; over the past few weeks the State Department has shied away from calling the situation a "genocide," a word that Colin Powell had been hurling around with authority last year. More recently, Mark Leon Goldberg of the American Prospect reported that the White House was trying to thwart the Darfur Accountability Act from passing Congress, an act which would accelerate AU deployment, authorize an expansion of the UN peacekeeping force, slap sanctions on Khartoum, and use international airpower to enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur and prevent Sudanese gunships from strafing villages. One possible explanation for the shift: The Los Angeles Times' Ken Silverstein reported last week that the U.S. appears to be gaining valuable counterterrorism support from, among other things, Sudan's intelligence chief Salan Abdallah Gosh, who happens to be overseeing the genocidal war against Darfur.

PULSE: How do you think September 11 affected political activism in this country?

KLEIN: I think the opposition to neo-liberalism is much, much stronger than it was in 1999. But I think activism in general, and in the United States in particular since September 11, has been very timid.

I think that there’s a climate of fear in the United States around being perceived as anti-government. There’s a fear of being in the streets. I saw this very clearly when I was in New York during the Republican convention. Certainly the opposition to the Bush administration and the war in Iraq and the sort of corporate takeover of politics was very, very clear; but in terms of the opposition, the way it was expressed was very timid and controlled. I think that’s a broader social issue that people in the U.S. really need to grapple with: what is the role of dissent in a democracy?

Weinglass contrasted the prosecution of the Cuban Five with the case of Orlando Bosch. Bosch was implicated in the deaths of 73 men, women and children when a bomb destroyed a Cubana Airlines passenger plane in 1976. Once described as “the most notorious terrorist in the hemisphere,” Bosch has friends close to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Despite a Justice Department recommendation that Bosch be denied residency, the Bush administration intervened on his behalf and today he walks the streets of Miami a free man.

Touching on the Bush administration’s general foreign policy and its “bizarre acceptance of the use of torture” in Afghanistan and Iraq, Weinglass said, “We are undergoing a crisis of illegality and lawlessness at the highest levels of government.”

And, overall Iraq has less electricity each day than a year ago. Oil production has slipped below 2004's disappointing levels and 60% of the people depend on food handouts.

Two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, much of Iraq's infrastructure remains impaired and insurgents are working to wreck the economy as fast as the U.S. and Iraqi governments can restore it.

The tattered and struggling country has become one of the world's poorest -- ranking at the level of Haiti and Senegal -- and economists see little hope for major improvements this year.

Yet some Iraqis say parts of their lives are improving. The country now boasts a freewheeling consumer economy flush with cell phones, Internet cafes and independent newspapers, along with plenty of high-paying government jobs.

12,000 to 20,000 guerrillas stage nearly 40 attacks a day, according to Pentagon figures, and do their best to tear down an economy that the U.S. and Iraqi governments are struggling to rebuild with $18.4 billion in U.S. taxpayer money.
Iraq Occupation Watch

If French voters reject the EU's first ever constitution on May 29, as recent polls suggest, it will largely be because the country's disgruntled electorate believes the charter will destroy Europe's beloved social model.

Rising unemployment, falling wages, Turkey's possible membership of the EU and the unpopularity of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's center-right government all help explain why support for the "yes" camp has plummeted in recent weeks. But the one rallying cry that unites both right- and left-wing opponents of the constitution is "Yes to a Social Europe!"

This slogan means different things to different people.

"In some countries, social cohesion means having the trade unions on board, and sustainable development means having Greenpeace on board," quipped the European Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry Gunter Verheugen last week. "I tell people everywhere, 'You can have a strong economy without social cohesion. But you cannot have social cohesion -- whatever that is -- without a strong economy.'"

In France, a country wedded to short working hours, long holidays and high unemployment, such views are considered heretical. Given the choice between a strong economy and a generous welfare state backed up by first-class public services, most French would plump for the latter. Hence many voters' opposition to the EU constitution, which is perceived as being too "liberal," (in the classical sense), too free-trade oriented and too "Anglo-Saxon."

"Our ambition for a powerful and united Europe" will end up "drifting toward a large market open to all winds and politically diluted," wrote former prime minister and leading Socialist "non" campaigner Laurent Fabius last month. Fearing the constitution will put "an end to any social striving," Jacques Nikonoff, president of the influential pressure group Attac-France, says: "This crisis is the direct result of political choices made by EU governments and the European Commission, putting competitiveness and the market ahead of any other considerations, such as cooperation, solidarity and social justice."

He worked for the Venezuelan secret police for several years. Then, in 1976, he and Miami pediatrician Orlando Bosch were arrested following the midair bombing of a Cubana airliner that killed all 73 people aboard.

But in 1985, Posada escaped from prison. He turned up a year later in El Salvador, where he worked for an unauthorized Nicaraguan contra resupply network overseen by then-National Security Council staffer Oliver North.

In 1997, he first admitted and then denied masterminding the bombing attacks on several Havana hotels and restaurants that catered to foreign tourists, who provided needed currency to cash-strapped Cuba.

Three years later, Posada and three Miami exiles were arrested in Panama after Castro, visiting for a heads-of-state summit, alleged at a news conference that they were plotting to kill him. The four claimed they were trying to help a Cuban general defect.

The Cuban militant suspected of plotting to kill Fidel Castro plans to seek asylum in the United States in hopes of avoiding prosecution in Venezuela for allegedly blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976, according to a lawyer who will represent him.

Luis Posada Carriles, 77, whom Castro has described as ``the worst terrorist in the hemisphere,'' is also wanted by Cuba and could face execution if he were extradited there.

Benefiting from the murderous tolerance granted in the United States to the same individuals who were being fought against by the five anti-terrorist Cuban patriots still unjustly imprisoned by imperialist justice, Posada has illegally returned to US territory with no problem. CSC

"My name is Florence Aubenas. I'm French. I'm journalist in Liberation. Please help me. My health is very bad. I'm very bad psychologically also. Please it's urgent now. Help me. I ask especially Mr Didier Julia, the French deputy. Please Mr Julia, help me, it's urgent. Mr Julia, help me."

That is a horror. Let me tell you a story. Some 10 or 15 years ago, I was invited to Tokyo—the only time I've spoken in Tokyo, to an inter-religious meeting, of a variety of opinions in the traditions which are not Biblical. And the question was: What is it, that Biblical religions hold in common, and more important still, that they have in common with the non-Biblical religions?

And I said: The great disaster is, that we are now increasingly identifying ourselves by what we assert as our truth, our virtues, our right, our powers. And therefore, we are making war, and not peace. That the function of religion, at its most serious, is not to encourage the believers to say, "I'm right and you're wrong," because "I'm right and you're wrong" means war, means holy war, and the most disastrous of holy wars. I think what we must change over to, is the notion that what religions have in common, is their duty, and their passion for defending the defenseless, whoever they are, whatever tradition, wherever they come from.

And therefore, I regard Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, and all other forms of fundamentalism, as the enemies of God—and I hope you'll quote me on that: "As the enemies of God."

Jewish fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism teach them, that they are right about everything, and we and those who don't agree with them, are going to fry in Hell. Jewish fundamentalism is teaching that Jews can fight with guns and with civil war, against being relocated off the West Bank, and disobey the orders of their government. That is the call to jihad, to several kinds of jihad.

Moral values, if you want to use them correctly, begin with love of your fellow man. And if they teach, not love, but hatred; if they teach you to be certain that your fellow man is part of what the Christians once called, when they wanted to beat up on Jews, a part of the "Synagogue of Satan," then it is the call to war, it is the call to fascism, and it makes God into Hitler! Quote me.

It is one's religious duty to stand up to all of this.