By
our reporters

1 July 2013

Following Socialist Equality Party public meetings in Melbourne and Tuggerah yesterday, some of those in attendance spoke with World Socialist Web Site reporters. Those who came to the SEP meetings raised a range of issues, from the turmoil in the Labor Party to widening social inequality and hardship and concerns about the NSA revelations.

Jim, a student at Melbourne’s RMIT said: “I hadn’t heard about the foreign policy issues involved in the coup before. I really think Rudd’s going to do the same as Gillard. It’s a different face for the same power. And I think that would be the same for the Liberals as well. It’s just switching between different faces. Both parties are mechanisms of the ruling class. It’s like in America with the Democrats and Republicans… The working class needs an alternative. We need a party of our own like the Socialist Equality Party.”

Jamie, a road worker, attended the Tuggerah meeting after being encouraged by a friend. “I sort of read about it but brushed it off at the time,” he explained. “Then I got the election statement in my letterbox, opposing the drive to war. I nearly threw it out, but I thought I’d keep reading it and the more I read the more I’m thinking, ‘Yes, yes, yes, totally’.”

He continued: “Today’s meeting brought up issues that really should be common knowledge in every household so it was just really good to come here… Between myself and my friends there’s been a wedge over the years because I’ve always hated Labor, I really have. I haven’t voted for nearly six years because none of the major parties, when it gets down to the actual policies, really do anything for me… It’s us and them, it’s the ruling elite and the rest of us. Why shouldn’t there be more equality? I can see what the party’s trying to achieve and I just want to jump onboard.”

Manan is a full-time architecture student at the University of Newcastle who was born in India and grew up in Singapore. “The meeting shed light on the forces that were influential in the change from Rudd to Gillard,” he said, “and it is shocking that this is not being talked about in the mainstream media.”

He added: “The information in the report really showed how intimate the relationship is between American and Australian politics, and how Washington has the capacity and means to depose and put in a leader which is more in tune with their political line… I would like to support the SEP election campaign because you are spreading awareness and raising the political consciousness of workers around the world.”

Karlie is a full-time student studying mathematics at the University of Newcastle and spoke about the escalating economic and social crisis in Australia.

“In the meeting it was brought up that Australia’s economy is not as strong as is portrayed in the media. I had my own personal belief that this was the case, based on what I saw was happening all across the world with other economies breaking down. This was reinforced in my day-to-day life by seeing people losing their jobs–not just factory workers but mining workers as well.”

She explained how many unemployed workers in the area were turning to the military. “What is hard for the people losing their jobs is that they have trades and apprenticeships they were completing through the mines, and the only way they see to complete them is to turn to the defence force. I have met at least thirty people like this who have stated they felt it was their only option as they had to complete their apprenticeships. It is scary that they are in this position, but it is scarier to think that with Australia gearing up for war, more young people’s lives will be pushed down this path.”

Karlie explained why she was supporting the SEP campaign. “It comes back to a point made today–that the importance of the campaign is not being voted into parliament but raising the political consciousness of people. This is important, because at the moment most Australians have no understanding of what is happening politically. I believe the SEP is really blunt and honest with their analysis and sometimes it can be hard to take in, however, it is the most truthful analysis of what is currently happening, not just in Australia but internationally.”

Loon, a sales worker in Melbourne, said: “I preferred Rudd because he was elected and Gillard had the stigma of being a backstabber who didn’t win the election. That was the main reason. A first-term prime minister should contest in the next election. He shouldn’t have been removed.”

Asked his opinion of the SEP’s analysis of the 2010 coup and recent leadership change, Loon said: “The analysis opened my eyes to more of the background; what the international influence was, rather than the Australian media saying it was just about the mining tax or opinion polls and ignoring the deeper issues, that the Americans had a hold on Australia to press their status quo onto the current situation… Now the capitalist elite need to control the Labor Party, and if it did diminish into nothingness, there might only be one party that the elite would not have full control over.”

Adil who works as a driver said: “People I know think that things will turn for the worse if Abbott gets in. They think they already know what Kevin’s about. But what’s his agenda? What’s he going to do? When he got elected in 2007 I thought he would make changes for the better, but things changed very quickly.”

Angela was born in Liverpool, England, and now resides in Gosford on the NSW Central Coast, where she is employed as a casual child care worker. She explained that in the past she had always voted Labor, adding “my grandmother was a suffragette and I was told to always vote, don’t waste it.”

She continued: “When I came to Australia, my main aim was to become an Australian citizen so I could vote in elections. I felt as though I was doing something and taking part in politics. Things have now changed. Labor is not the lesser of two evils. I can’t see any difference between Labor and the other political parties. They do not represent us… I think that all the things that we fought for over the years are being taken away. In my area, child care centres are being privatised and staff put on three-month contracts. Workers who want job security transfer to other council run centres, so casual employees’ hours are cut.”

Angela said that she was shocked when she heard that the Gillard government had allowed the US to set up a Marine base in Darwin.

“The people had no say in it, so we could not oppose it,” she said. “There was no debate in parliament, no referendum, nothing. It is scary that the US will also be allowed to put drones on the Cocos Islands. This shows that the governments are preparing for confrontation with China. What military agreements does Australia have with the US? We don’t know.”

Authorised by Nick Beams, 113/55 Flemington Rd, North Melbourne VIC 3051

Two milestones in world history

1 July 2013

This week marks the anniversary of two great events in American and world history: the Declaration of Independence and the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg.

The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted by the Continental Congress 237 years ago this Thursday, on July 4, 1776. Expressing the advanced political thought of the Enlightenment, the Declaration proclaimed as “self-evident” the “truths”–bitterly opposed by the rulers of the day–that “all men are created equal” and endowed with “unalienable Rights” to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The Declaration did not end there. It proclaimed that “[W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

To the British government in London, the Declaration was illegal and treasonous. If King George had been able to capture the signers of the Declaration, they would have been transported back to England and hanged, drawn and quartered. But the revolution succeeded, and history honors those who inspired, led and fought for it arms in hand.

Eighty-seven years after the signing of the Declaration, and 150 years ago today, the Battle of Gettysburg began, lasting from July 1 to July 3, 1863. The conflict in the southern Pennsylvania town, only 80 miles north of the nation’s capital, was one of the monumental struggles between the Union and Confederate armies, leaving 35,000 soldiers killed or wounded. The great historical issue that underlay the conflict was the destruction of slavery. After a three-day battle, in blazing summer heat, the soldiers of the Union emerged victorious.

The Battle of Gettysburg did not end the Civil War, which would continue for two more years. It was, however, a turning point in the struggle against slavery in the United States. Coming six months after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect, the battle turned back General Robert E. Lee’s northern invasion, a defeat from which the South would never recover.

In his speech four months later dedicating the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Lincoln drew the connection between the Declaration of Independence and the Civil War. “Four score and seven years ago,” Lincoln began, “our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Those who sacrificed their lives at Gettysburg–what Lincoln described as “the last full measure of devotion”–had done so to ensure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Historically speaking, these events belong to the epoch of bourgeois democratic revolutions in the United States and internationally. Yet the principles embodied in them have a broader, universal significance. The bourgeois democratic revolutions were the precursors to the great social revolutions. The American Civil War, in the words of Marx, “sounded the tocsin” for the future struggles of the international working class.

How stark is the contrast between the principles advanced in these revolutions and the actions of the American government today! Predictably, Obama has said virtually nothing about the 150th Anniversary of Gettysburg. While the celebrations this week will attract hundreds of thousands of people, the media has given scant attention to them.

And what could they say? How can they evoke the traditions of the Civil War and the Revolution without exposing their own hypocrisy?

The list of usurpations that served as the indictment of King George III pale in comparison to the actions of the American government today. Under the fraudulent banner of the “war on terror,” the rights embodied in the Bill of Rights–freedom of speech and the press, the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to due process and a jury trial, protection against self-incrimination, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment–are being systematically eviscerated.

The growth of executive power has gone beyond what King George himself would have imagined, with the president asserting the right to assassinate anyone, including US citizens, without due process.

The US government is engaged in a vicious campaign to seize and prosecute the young whistleblower Edward Snowden. Snowden’s “crime,” for which he too has been declared a “traitor,” is to reveal to the American people an illegal spying operation of incredible scope, in which the government is collecting and monitoring every email and phone call, every web site visited, every Facebook chat and Skype call of everyone in the United States and a good portion of the rest of humanity.

In the United States, Bradley Manning is being tried before a court martial for exposing the crimes of the American military. And in Britain, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been forced to seek refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has spent the past year.

The political structure of the country is being transformed. In April, Boston–the cradle of the American Revolution–was shut down and placed under virtual martial law in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. In June, an individual who apparently had important information about the two suspects in the bombing was shot dead by the FBI during interrogation. No credible explanation has been given for his killing.

Every official institution is infected with the disease of dictatorship. The Supreme Court last week observed in its own peculiar way the anniversary of Gettysburg by overturning the key provision of the Voting Rights Act, the major piece of democratic legislation to come out of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In so doing, the Court implicitly attacked the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution, enacted in 1870 and empowering Congress to prevent any state from infringing on the right of people to vote on account of their race or color.

Congress, dominated by multimillionaires, functions as a facilitator and co-conspirator in the destruction of democracy. The pundits, columnists and newspaper editors of the establishment media direct their venom not at the government, but at those who seek to expose government criminality.

The political front men of the modern-day financial aristocracy defend a government not “of the people, by the people, for the people,” but “of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.” The financial speculators and corporate executives have built up fortunes on an unimaginable scale while society as a whole has undergone a terrible retrogression. They hate and fear the population.

The traditions of the American revolutions are deeply embedded in the consciousness of the people. The memory of the Founders and, above all, Abraham Lincoln evokes respect and reverence. The tens of thousands who are visiting Gettysburg this week prove that Lincoln was right when he predicted that the people “will never forget what they [the soldiers] did here.”

Despite all the efforts of the media and political establishment to pollute public consciousness, the great historical struggles have not been eradicated from the consciousness of the people–neither in the United States nor around the world.

The American and international working class are the true heirs of the ideals and traditions of 1776 and 1863. The defense of democracy again assumes a revolutionary character, but under very different conditions. To halt and reverse the drive towed dictatorship, a movement must be built in the working class, a movement that begins with the understanding that democracy is incompatible with capitalism, and that true freedom must be rooted in social equality. All that was progressive in the history of the United States can be carried forward only through a revolutionary struggle for socialism.

Joseph Kishore

By
Ben McGrath

1 July 2013

South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s government announced in early June that it would implement a job program with the target of creating 2.38 million jobs by 2017. The plan was hailed in the media as Park’s commitment to “economic democratization” and a follow through on her election promise to raise the country’s employment rate to 70 percent from the current 64.2 percent of the working age population.

The jobs plan, however, is not a step towards greater economic and social equality. Rather it will further lower wages and increase the number of workers in temporary and part-time work.

At a press conference announcing the job plan, Prime Minister Chung Hong-won said the government would “fundamentally” change job creation. “For this, we need to change the labor market led by male workers, manufacturers and big companies, and create a new environment where everyone can take on flexible types of work and take care of their families at the same time.”

What in fact Chung means by “flexible” is the expansion of the irregular labor market made up of low-paid, part-time workers. Forty percent of the jobs to be created, or 938,000, are marked for part-time positions. Often referred to as “job sharing”, the scheme calls for workers to accept reduced hours and forfeit the corresponding wages, while companies receive government subsidies and tax breaks.

The plan has met with some resistance from big business, which complains that hiring any additional workers would raise labor costs. The Hyundai Research Institute, an economic think tank, recently warned that employment without economic growth was more dangerous than economic growth without employment. Lee Jun-hyup, an economist with the institute, criticized the government saying: “This is a very difficult task to reach a 70 percent employment rate under the current economic structure. The government needs to set up more long-term projects based on realistic plans.”

This criticism stems from the fact that the plan does not go far enough in attacking working standards and conditions. Since the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, the South Korean ruling elite has been on a campaign to create a low-paid, part-time work force. Park’s plan is the continuation of the assault on full-time employment begun under President Kim Dae-jung from 1998 to 2003, and intensified under every subsequent president.

In 2009, President Lee Myung-bak unveiled a proposal similar to the one now proposed by Park. Lee’s job sharing plan, depicted at the time as protecting workers’ jobs, called for workers to surrender upwards of 30 percent of their wages in order to keep their jobs while companies received large tax breaks. In some cases, companies such as KT, a large telecommunications firm, participated in the program and then proceeded to slash 6,000 jobs anyway.

Unemployment and underemployment is a growing problem in South Korea. The official jobless rate of 3.2 percent in April greatly understates the situation. A National Assembly report released in March suggested that unemployment was at least 2.3 percentage points higher than the official figure.

The emphasis the government has placed on job creation demonstrates it is well aware of the explosive nature of the problem, particularly for youth. In 2011, the Hyundai Research Institute estimated that unemployment for those aged 15-29 was as high as 22.1 percent.

Park’s job plan received support from the opposition Democratic Party (DP–formerly the Democratic United Party). Party chairman Kim Han-gil said: “I think that the time to consider a Korean version of the Wassenaar Agreement has come.” The Wassenaar Agreement was signed in 1982 in the Netherlands between the government, labor unions and businesses. Businesses promised to create more jobs and the unions pledged to curtail wages. The result was a sharp redistribution of wealth to the upper class. Income and corporate taxes were reduced while real income for workers dropped.

Kim’s call reveals clearly the true nature of the Democratic Party. For months leading up to the elections last year, the Democrats bombarded workers with the slogan “economic democratization”, holding out the illusion that the country’s business conglomerates or chaebols would be challenged. Once the elections were over, the Democrats quickly dropped their rhetoric.

The DP’s embrace of the jobs plan is also revealing of the trade unions, particularly the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). While the overtly pro-government and pro-business Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) supports Park’s plan, the KCTU, which tacitly backs the Democrats, ostensibly came out against it.

While organizing protests allowing workers–particularly part-time, irregular workers–to let off steam, the KCTU has sought to direct workers’ anger behind the Democrats. Last year, the KCTU backed the Democrats in the general and presidential elections. In January, the KCTU demanded parliamentary hearings into the layoffs at Ssangyong in 2009, a bitter experience for workers who occupied the plant for weeks.

In early May, when President Park pledged to address big business demands over rising regular wages, the KCTU asked workers to put their faith in lawsuits and the government’s courts. It also endorsed a DP-sponsored amendment to the Labor Standards Law, supposedly in order to resolve the issue in workers’ favor. Any such bill would have to pass through the National Assembly controlled by Park’s right-wing Saenuri Party.

By defusing the anger and opposition in the working class, the DP and KCTU are playing the key role in allowing Park to proceed with her bogus jobs plan that is designed to provide a cheaper, “more flexible” workforce for big business.

By
Patrick Martin

1 July 2013

The US National Security Agency spied on officials of the European Union, infiltrated its computer network and bugged the EU’s headquarters in Brussels as well as diplomatic offices in Washington DC and New York City, according to a report published by the German magazine Der Spiegel .

The magazine said it learned of the spying from secret documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden, now threatened with criminal prosecution and a possible death sentence for exposing illegal US government spying.

An NSA document dated September 2010 specifically mentions the EU offices at the United Nations headquarters in New York as a “location target” for eavesdropping.

Even more serious is the apparent electronic eavesdropping of the Brussels office building where the EU Council of Ministers and the European Council are located. A security investigation by the EU five years ago monitored calls that were being made from the building’s telephone system.

“Security officials managed to track the calls to NATO headquarters in the Brussels suburb of Evere,” Der Spiegel reported. “A precise analysis showed that the attacks on the telecommunications system had originated from a building complex separated from the rest of the NATO headquarters that is used by NSA experts.”

This revelation may have the most explosive consequences for US-European relations, since NATO, nominally a military alliance between the US, Canada and numerous European countries, has apparently been used as a screen for US surveillance of its supposed allies. Der Spiegel said the Snowden documents also revealed that the NSA taps a half billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany every month. The magazine quoted an NSA document saying, “We can attack the signals of most foreign third-class partners, and we do it too.”

In NSA parlance, the United States is the sole first-class nation, with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand rated as second-class partners, and less favored European countries such as France and Germany rated as third-class partners. Only the four second-class partners, all of whom participate in and facilitate the US-led spying on the entire world, are ostensibly exempted from NSA surveillance.

Many of the third-class partners have agreements to share communications data with the US, including Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, according to a report Sunday in the British Observer newspaper. This does not stop the NSA from carrying out large-scale surveillance of communications in and through these countries, however.

The surveillance of Germany is much more intensive than that of France–as many as 30 million connections monitored daily compared to 2 million–and the spying is on the same level as that carried out by the United States against Iraq, Saudi Arabia and China.

Many high-ranking European officials issued statements of outrage and protest. It is doubtful that these representatives of the European ruling class are as surprised by the revelations as they claim to be, and they no doubt are engaged in similar surveillance of their own populations and of their American counterparts.

But the unanimity of the response is an indication that European governments are concerned about the potential backlash among the people of the continent over the US dragnet of telecommunications and the Internet, as well as the US efforts to persecute those who have brought the spying to public notice.

Germany’s justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, called Sunday for an immediate explanation from the United States. “If the media reports are accurate,” she said, “it is reminiscent of actions among enemies during the Cold War.”

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said, “If these reports are true, then it is abhorrent. It would seem that the secret services have gotten out of control. The US should monitor their own secret services rather than their allies.”

The diplomat noted the contradiction between the professed purpose of NSA spying and the latest revelations, declaring, “The US justifies everything as being part of the fight against terrorism. But the EU and its diplomats are not terrorists.”

Elmar Brok, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, affiliated with the German Christian Democratic Union, the ruling right-wing party, told Der Spiegel, “The spying has reached dimensions that I didn’t think were possible for a democratic country. Such behavior among allies is intolerable… They have completely lost all balance. George Orwell is nothing by comparison.”

Similar statements were issued by spokesmen across the bourgeois political spectrum in Europe, from the conservative right to the Greens. The EU commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship, Viviane Reding, told an audience in Luxembourg that the spy revelations could wreck talks set to begin next week on a US-EU trade agreement.

“Partners do not spy on each other,” she said. “We cannot negotiate over a big trans-Atlantic market if there is the slightest doubt that our partners are carrying out spying activities on the offices of our negotiators.”

By
Johannes Stern

1 July 2013

Egypt is witnessing a renewed upsurge of mass working class struggles. On the first anniversary of Islamist president Mohamed Mursi’s inauguration, millions poured into the country’s streets and squares to demand his ouster and that of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB).

In scenes reminiscent of the struggles which led to the ouster of Egypt’s long-time dictator nearly two and a half years ago, workers and youth gathered in the iconic places of the Egyptian Revolution, chanting: “Get out” and “The people want the fall of the regime.”

In Cairo several marches converged in Tahrir Square. Crowds swelled to up to an estimated one million in the early evening hours, vowing to stay until Mursi leaves office. Another mass protest in the capital took place in front of the heavily-guarded presidential palace in Ittihadia, where hundreds of thousands came together.

Massive protests took place in all major cities throughout the country’s 27 governorates. In the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, hundreds of thousands filled Sidi Gaber Square, determined to oust Mursi.

In the industrial city of Mahalla, one of the centers of the Egyptian revolution, tens of thousands gathered in Al-Shoun Square, chanting revolutionary slogans against Mursi. Reportedly 90 percent of workers at the state-owned Mahalla Misr Spinning and Weaving company–Egypt’s largest factory, employing over 25,000 workers–went on strike to join the protests.

Other mass protests took place in Mansoura, Damanhour, Minya, Tanta, Sharqia and the Suez Canal cities of Port Said, Suez and Ismailia. A military source quoted by the Egyptian daily Al-Shorouk said that 17 million people took to the streets in one of the largest protests since the beginning of the revolution.

“The scenes of protests are unprecedented in size and scope, and seemingly surpass those during the 18-day uprising that toppled Mubarak,” Michael Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation and Egypt analyst told the British Guardian.

In some locations, protests took an insurrectionary character, and violent clashes between anti-government protesters and Mursi supporters erupted. In Cairo protesters attacked the national headquarters of the MB with Molotov cocktails, while Islamist militants defended themselves with shotguns from inside the building.

In the Upper Egyptian town of Assiut, assailants killed three protesters as thousands of anti-Mursi protesters marched towards the local FJP headquarters.

As in 2011, the mass protests are driving by Egypt’s staggering social inequality–which has increased under the rule of the military junta and the Muslim Brotherhood–and the repressive character of the US-backed Egyptian state apparatus.

Mohamed Ramadan Badawy, a protester from the Southern governorate of Qena who joined a delegation from Upper Egypt travelling to Cairo to join protests on Tahrir Square, told Ahram Online: “Egyptians don’t have their basic needs, we have a massive problem of unemployment particularly within the youth, killing continues under [Mursi’s] rule, then there is the breakdown of the state, like train accidents and electricity outages. Egyptian poverty is on the rise, to the point where people are eating from the rubbish.”

As in 2011, mass anger is again directed against the United States, the main imperialist power backing Mursi’s repressive Islamist regime. After the revolutionary ouster of its long-time stooge, Mubarak, Washington first backed a military junta and then threw its support behind the MB to defend its economic and strategic interests throughout the Middle East. Mursi has aligned himself on the ongoing US-led war in Syria to oust President Bashar al-Assad, pledging to “materially and morally” support Western-backed Islamist opposition militias.

Only a few days ago, US Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson denounced protests against Mursi, effectively issuing a blank check to the Islamists to violently suppress the protests.

“Some say that street action will produce better results than elections. To be honest, my government and I are deeply skeptical”, she said, adding: “Egypt needs stability to get its economic house in order, and more violence on the streets will do little more than add new names to the lists of martyrs.”

Reflecting the widespread hatred against US imperialism in Egypt, protesters carried pictures of Patterson and Mursi crossed out with an “X”. One anti-Patterson banner read “Old hag, go home.”

The presidential palace, government buildings and other key locations throughout the country were guarded by the US-sponsored Egyptian army. Tanks and soldiers were especially stationed in cities on the strategic Suez Canal, where anti-Mursi protests already took an insurrectionary character after the second anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution on January 25 of this year.

As in the first days of the revolution, army helicopters flew over Cairo monitoring the crowds in Tahrir Square and before the presidential palace. According to military sources, Defence Minister and Commander in Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces General Abdul Fatah Khalil Al-Sisi monitored the protests from a special operations room.

Al-Sisi had threatened in a speech last Sunday that if political parties fail to reach a consensus and the situation gets out of their control, the military would intervene. Spiegel Online reported that thousands of Islamists staging a sit-in in Nasr City in Cairo formed armed brigades. The MB and other Islamist groups, such as Gamaa Islamiyya and various Salafist organizations, have repeatedly vowed to defend Mursi’s “legitimacy.”

Essam al-Erian, the vice chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP)–the political arm of the MB–denounced anti-Mursi protests as a “coup attempt”. He accused the opposition of “simply massing people in violent demonstrations, thuggery or shedding the precious blood of Egyptians.”

The lessons of the past two years of revolutionary struggle are critical, as the working class once again enters into struggle. The fight for workers’ democratic and social rights cannot be entrusted to any faction of the Egyptian bourgeoisie–be it the army, Islamists, or secular-leaning opposition forces–but requires an independent revolutionary struggle for power based on a socialist perspective.

The program advanced by the “Tamarod” (“rebel”) campaign that called the protests–backed by the National Salvation Front (NSF) and pseudo-left groups such as the Revolutionary Socialists (RS)–is another attempt by the Egyptian bourgeoisie to reshape its rule, defuse mass working class anger, and forcibly defend the power and wealth of the ruling elite.

At a press conference Wednesday, Tamarod laid out its political program. Its co-founder Mohamed Abdel Aziz called for an “independent prime minister” to “head a technocratic government whose main mission is to put together an urgent economic plan to save the Egyptian economy”. His comments made clear that this would be an unelected dictatorship serving the interests of international finance capital and imposing austerity policies demanded by the International Monetary Fund.

He said that “the head of the High Constitutional Court would be assigned the duties of the president according to protocol when all executive powers are assigned to the prime minister in a six-month transitional period that ends by presidential elections judicially supervised and monitored internationally, followed by parliamentary elections.”

By
Barry Mason

1 July 2013

The report that the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), suppressed one of its own investigative reports is the latest scandal to hit the organisation, whose supposed aim is to protect health and social care standards.

The independent report, commissioned by the CQC, by management consultants Grant Thornton accused the regulator “of quashing an internal review that uncovered weaknesses in its processes”. This related to an investigation at the maternity unit at Furness General Hospital in Cumbria, England, part of the Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, that included the deaths of 14 babies, two mothers and nine infants born with permanent brain damage.

Joshua Titcombe died in October 2008, only nine days old, but an inquest showed he could have been saved if antibiotics had been given to treat his lung infection. Joshua’s father, James, led the campaign for a public inquiry into “serious systemic failures” at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Trust.

Nittaya Hendrickson died following a complication as a result of fluid from her womb entering her bloodstream, and her son Chester died from fatal brain damage. Nittaya’s husband alleged that heart monitor records that had gone missing would have shown that a caesarean operation should have been performed much earlier than it was.

An inquest blamed lack of co-operation between midwives and doctors for the death of Alex Brady, as a result of the umbilical cord being wrapped around his neck in September 2008.

The report also alleged that a senior CQC manager had told a CQC employee “to destroy his review because it would expose the regulator to public criticism.” Initially, the CQC refused to name the staff involved in the alleged cover-up but, following media pressure, relented the next day and released their names.

It was also revealed that a second damaging report into the investigations at the Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, carried out by consultants Deloitte, was also quietly published on the CQC website in January without any press release as is usual in such circumstances or notifications to those involved in the case.

The terrible tragedy at Furness General Hospital and the callous cover-up that followed cannot simply be heaped on the individuals involved, as the media and politicians have done, but must involve an examination of successive government policies.

Set up in 2009 by the previous Labour Party government as an independent regulator, CQC has been subject to political pressure and manipulation by both the Labour government and the current Conservative/Liberal coalition government. It has been an integral part of the plans by both governments to open up the health service to privatisation, and to provide a cover for the numerous scandals that have occurred in the NHS and privately run care facilities, as a result of the search for profit.

A June 22 Daily Telegraph article alleges Roger Davidson, head of media and public affairs at the CQC, was sacked prior to the 2010 general election after he said “a quarter of NHS trusts failed to meet basic hygiene standards.” According to Davidson, the CQC’s “message that ‘we don’t want bad news’ infected the whole organisation.”

In 2009, University of London professor of public health research and policy Allyson Pollock, at Queen Mary, University of London, warned, “hospitals and trusts are given a single index of ‘fair’, ‘good’, ‘excellent’ or ‘weak’ based on a medley of 84 composite measures…it does not provide a basis for NHS planning and health service development…market reforms have been accompanied by a hollowing out of the intelligent public health information that is required for healthcare planning and ensuring fairness of distribution of resources…the CQC performance indicators tell us nothing about need and fairness of access for the whole population.”

In the decade running up to March 2010, the Morecambe Bay NHS Trust was trying to convert to “Foundation Trust” status. This was being demanded the then-Labour government as a key step in the privatisation process. Foundation Trusts were given the autonomy to redesign NHS services for the private sector, or franchise them out. Since its conversion, Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust has acquired a massive £16 million deficit and been under continuous pressure to cut services.

It is alleged that then-Labour Party health secretary Andy Burnham and Andrew Lansley, his coalition government successor until September 2012, both pressed for hospitals to be given clean bills of health in order to speed through the foundation trust process. A whistleblower within the CQC said this week that she had contacted Lansley about her concerns in March 2012.

In the CQC’s case, it had been found wanting in other incidents. In November 2009, a report leaked to the media highlighted poor standards at the Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It revealed “hundreds of people had died needlessly due to appalling standards of care”. Yet, the previous month, a CQC report had rated the hospital’s performance as good. As a result of the exposure, the then-CQC chair, Barbara Young, resigned.

In 2011, the BBC Panorama current affairs programme showed undercover film of people with learning disabilities being mistreated at the Winterbourne View private hospital near Bristol after being contacted by a former charge nurse, Terry Bryan. As a result, 10 employees were arrested and taken to court and the home closed down, while the business tycoons who raked in tens of millions of pounds over several years at the expense of patients and workers remained unpunished. Prior to contacting the BBC, Bryan had contacted the CQC, but his concerns were ignored.

In April 2012, another BBC Panorama exposure using hidden cameras revealed the abuse of an 81 year woman suffering from Alzheimer’s disease at the privately run Ash Court Centre in Kentish Town, London. One person was sent to prison and another four were sacked.

Unannounced visits by the CQC the previous October had failed to pick up any concerns and had given it the highest recommendation of three stars. The response of the CQC to the exposure was to state they “should not be criticised for failing to protect people from harm…which often takes place behind closed doors.”

Recent appointments to the CQC board show it is anxious to maintain close links with those having a vested interest in supporting the opening up of the health service to rationalisation and privatisation. They include Paul Corrigan, who was former health policy advisor to ex-Labour prime minister Tony Blair and a former special advisor to health ministers Alan Milburn and John Reid; Michael Mire, who had worked for business consultancy firm McKinsey and Company for more than 30 years; and Camilla Cavendish, a journalist who had also been an analyst at McKinsey.

McKinsey and Company are the largest private health consultants that have been hired by successive UK governments to carry through rationalisation and prepare privatisations plans for the NHS.

The latest revelations further disprove the claim that the ailing social and health care system can be revived through “regulatory measures”, administered by governments, set on the privatisation of public health care.

Current health minister Jeremy Hunt is calling for a “culture change”, stating that he would back the CQC “absolutely to the hilt” if it chose to take action against individuals responsible. This is a desperate attempt to deflect responsibility for the crisis away from his government and the previous Labour one, whose policies have paved the way for far greater tragedies than even that which occurred at Furness General Hospital.

The European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship has warned that a long-awaited trade deal between the European Union and the United States could be in jeopardy following the latest disclosure that Washington spied on EU offices.

Viviane Reding said Sunday the recent talks to create what would be the worldâ„¢s largest free trade area could be jeopardized if the latest revelations proved true.

The disclosure revealed on June 29 was based upon documents obtained by American whistleblower Edward Snowden, which included a Å“strictly confidential” National Security Agency (NSA) document, showing the spy agency monitored the EU mission in Washington.

Å“We canâ„¢t negotiate a large transatlantic market if there is any doubt that our partners are bugging the offices of European negotiators,” Reding stated.

Other European officials have also reacted angrily to the latest disclosures, which showed that the NSA spying operations had 38 targets, including the EU headquarters in Brussels, and the French, Italian and Greek embassies in Washington, as well as the EU delegation at the United Nations.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has demanded an explanation from US authorities, saying that if the spying activities are confirmed, then it would be Å“totally unacceptable.”

German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger compared the disclosure to methods used during the Cold War, saying, Å“If the media reports are accurate, it is reminiscent of actions among enemies during the Cold War.”

European Parliament President Martin Schulz said he was Å“deeply worried and shocked” by the latest reports.

Luxembourgâ„¢s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn responded by saying, Å“The United States would be better off monitoring its secret services rather than its allies. We must get a guarantee from the very highest level now that this stops immediately.”

On June 17, negotiations on EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) began during the G8 meeting, and if a deal were to be struck, it would reportedly add some 119 billion euros every year to the EU economy, and 95 billion euros to the US economy.

CAH/HSN

By
Ulrich Rippert

1 July 2013

During the last plenum of the German parliament before the summer recess the Social Democratic Party (SPD) candidate for chancellor in this year’s federal election, Peer Steinbrück, fiercely criticized the government policy of Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union, CDU). Steinbrück accused Merkel of squandering the economic bonus that her government had inherited from the previous SPD-Green government. He also claimed she bore responsibility for a deep and growing crisis of confidence in the European Union.

The German media response was enthusiastic–and not just from newspapers close to the SPD. “Well roared lion” wrote the Tagesspiegel, describing the speech by the SPD chancellor candidate as “surprisingly combative”. Lead columnist of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Heribert Prantl, already sees the SPD taking power. Under the heading “Chancellor Steinbrück”, Prantl commented that the SPD candidate was “such a brilliant attacker” that he could afford to forget the despondency and timidity of his party in the recent past.

At the beginning of the plenum Chancellor Merkel declared that her coalition government had been extremely successful. She stated that far from been one sided and promoting cuts, her government’s European policy included various elements promoting growth and was bearing fruit.

The correctness of a policy must always be checked in one’s country, she continued, and there could be no doubt that Germany was showing signs of strength. The county’s unemployment rate was at its lowest for the past twenty years and wages were increasing for the first time in a long period. Although the German economy had experienced the worst downturn in the history of the Federal Republic, Germany was “back to pre-crisis levels.” According to Merkel: “This is the best federal government since reunification.”

Steinbrück replied by accusing Merkel of being responsible for the “dramatic increase” in unemployment in Europe, especially among young people–the result of her “one-sided austerity policy without growth elements.” He also accused the chancellor of being driven by events and of failing to provide leadership. A close examination of his speech makes clear that his criticism was basically from a right wing standpoint.

This was most apparent when Steinbrück attacked the electoral promises of the CDU, charging the chancellor with playing the “big spender” at home while admonishing everybody else in Europe for not cutting enough, and forcing some countries into an economic and social “straitjacket”.

In its election manifesto the CDU promises financial aid for families and mothers, an expansion of social infrastructure and a limit on rent levels–altogether costing an estimated 30 billion euros. Such promises are pro forma in an election campaign and invariably subject to the proviso that there must be sufficient money available, and will therefore never be realized. Nevertheless Steinbrück railed against the “spreading of social benefits”.

“What sort of example do we give to the rest of Europe?” he declared. Greeks, Spaniards, Italians or the Portuguese were told to implement harsh austerity measures while the Merkel government doled out gifts at home.

Steinbrück has no interest in promoting solidarity in a common struggle against the anti-social austerity emanating from Brussels and Berlin. His aim is to expand austerity programs everywhere. Rather than “jobs for all”, the social democratic motto in this election campaign is “austerity for all!”

Steinbrück’s sense of solidarity extends exclusively to the super-wealthy upper class to which he belongs and for whom he speaks. His criticism of Merkel’s campaign promises barely differs from the critique of business federations and the CDU business association, which had previously proclaimed its opposition to a “program of social promises and benefits”.

In addition, his right wing onslaught is also aimed at winning favor with Merkel’s coalition partner, the free market Free Democratic Party FDP, which has also criticized the election promises of the Chancellor. Following the continuing decline of the SPD in the polls and the diminishing likelihood of a future SPD-Left Party-Green Party government after the election in September, Steinbrück and his election strategists are increasingly wooing the FDP as potential partners, in a so-called traffic light coalition (SPD red, FDP yellow and the Greens).

The right wing and reactionary stance of Steinbrück was also apparent with regard to another issue. In his typical arrogant fashion he accused Merkel of weak leadership and criticized her “hesitation and procrastination” on the basis of a historical comparison.

In 1951, “only seven years after the end of the German occupation,” the Coal and Steel Community was founded. France yielded considerable national sovereignty to Germany at the time, “despite and against the mood of the French people.”

“That was leadership, chancellor,” Steinbrück proclaimed, adding: “You have no strategy, instead you muddle through from one meeting of the European Council to the next.”

For Steinbrück and the SPD, “leadership” is above all the readiness to enforce policies against public opposition. It was on this basis that the former SPD-Green coalition government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder imposed its deeply unpopular Agenda 2010 in the face of mass demonstrations.

A section of the German ruling class is once again seeking a change of government in favor of the SPD, hoping that a revival of the SPD-Green coalition–possibly in alliance with the FDP–would be better placed, in close co-operation with the trade unions, to enforce the social attacks which have already been prepared.

While Steinbrück openly exposes the reactionary class character of the SPD as a party of big business and finance, the Left Party is desperately trying to daub the SPD in leftist colors.

On Thursday, Left Party parliamentary leader Gregor Gysi said in parliament that he agreed with many of Steinbrück’s criticisms of the chancellor and of government policy. At the same time, Gysi continued, he did not understand why the SPD had supported all of the government’s bank bailouts and austerity programs.

Gysi knows very well that all of the government’s budget cuts have been developed in close cooperation with the SPD. The German debt brake, which forces governments to slash budgets, was passed by a former SPD-CDU coalition with Steinbrück as finance minister.

The rapid lurch to the right by the SPD also exposes the Left Party for what it is: a bourgeois, pro-capitalist party, which is providing a pseudo left cover for a program of social counterrevolution.

By
Patrick Martin

1 July 2013

US whistleblower Edward Snowden appears trapped in a transit zone at the Moscow airport, with plans to travel to Ecuador and seek political asylum disrupted by US government intervention to put pressure on Ecuadorean officials.

Snowden leaked documents exposing illegal and unconstitutional spying by the US National Security Agency on the telecommunications and e-mail of virtually every US citizen and much of the world’s population. He has since been indicted by the Obama administration on espionage charges, has had his passport revoked, and is the target of an international dragnet mounted by Washington.

Snowden was residing in Hong Kong when he revealed himself several weeks ago to be the source of the revelations of NSA spying published by the British Guardian newspaper and the Washington Post. In the face of US demands for his extradition, he flew to Moscow after remaining in hiding in Hong Kong for several days. He was widely expected to fly from Moscow via Havana to Quito, the Ecuadorean capital. The Ecuadorean embassy in London issued him a travel permit at the urging of the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks.

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has lived in the embassy for more than a year, seeking to avoid extradition to the United States, where he could face espionage charges, indefinite detention without trial as an enemy combatant, or even execution.

On Thursday, however, Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, rescinded Snowden’s travel permit, saying it had been issued without authorization. Correa indicated that Snowden would still be welcome to seek asylum, but he took no action to make this possible.

Instead, he left it up to the whistleblower to make his way to safety. “The situation of Mr. Snowden is a complex situation and we don’t know how he will solve it,” Correa said.

The next day, US Vice President Joseph Biden called Correa in Quito to discuss the US campaign to seize Snowden and return him to the United States for prosecution on espionage charges. “He communicated a very courteous request from the United States that we reject the request” for asylum, Correa told the media.

In his weekly television address to the Ecuadorean population, Correa said that his government would not consider an asylum request until Snowden was on its soil or inside one of its embassies. “The moment that he arrives, if he arrives, the first thing is we’ll ask the opinion of the United States,” he said, a remark that does not bode well for the whistleblower.

By
Dylan Lubao

1 July 2013

Taking advantage of the anti-immigrant chauvinism being fomented by the trade union bureaucracy and the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP), Canada’s ruling Conservative Party has granted itself sweeping powers to surveil temporary foreign workers, setting the stage for a further expansion of police-state measures against workers nationwide.

Earlier this month, the Conservative government announced that through regulatory changes it is giving government inspectors the power to carry out warrantless searches of workplaces that employ workers under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TWFP). The Conservatives claim that this new power will help inspectors protect workers from employer abuses.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The warrantless searches will be used to conduct a witch-hunt against so-called “illegal” immigrants and further intimidate those legally in the country under the TWFP.

Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, like its Liberal predecessors, has been expanding the coercive powers of the state. Earlier this year, the Conservatives rammed “anti-terrorist” legislation through parliament that tramples on fundamental democratic principles, expanding the time police can hold a terrorist suspect without charge and giving the state, in violation of the right of silence, the power to compel persons to give evidence. Under secret government directives, the Canadian equivalent and partner of the U.S. National Security Agency–the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC)–has been spying on Canadians’ telephone and computer communications since 2005 it was revealed last month.

The Conservatives’ claims to be concerned about employer abuse of foreign workers are also belied by their record of attacks on immigrants and refugees and the very terms of the TFWP.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has severely curtailed provisions that allow immigrants to reunite with their families. Adult children over the age of 18 are no longer eligible for sponsorship; waiting times to sponsor a parent or grandparent are in excess of seven years; and due to increased income requirements, sponsoring a family member has become too expensive for low-income immigrants. In speeches and talk-show appearances, Kenney has painted elderly immigrant dependents as a burden on Canada’s welfare and health systems and “an abuse of Canada’s generosity.” Last year, he eliminated health-care funding for refugee claimants.

Under the TWFP, workers from outside Canada are hired under short-term contracts of no more than two years to staff what are largely low-wage, back-breaking positions. TWFP workers are tied to a single employer under a work-permit regime reminiscent of the ancient Master and Servant laws. They are not allowed to change their employer, can be told where to live, are deprived of residency rights, and are subject to immediate expulsion if they lose their jobs.

Employers often use the threat of deportation to keep workers from reporting abuses. Only one stream of the TFWP, the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP), contains provisions whereby participants can eventually apply for citizenship, and even then, reports of employer abuse are rampant. All other TFWP workers, including thousands of seasonal agricultural and construction workers, are forced to return to their countries of origin at the end of their work-term prior to being even allowed to apply to immigrate to Canada.

The Conservatives have repeatedly illegalized strikes and recently granted themselves the power to directly intervene in the contract negotiations of Crown Corporations such as Canada Post, so as to slash pensions and other benefits. In last year’s federal budget, they reduced jobless benefits for repeat users of Employment Insurance, who can now be forced to take low-wage positions, and raised the retirement age from 65 to 67.

The Conservatives have been able to press forward with this class war assault only because the unions and the social democrats of the NDP have systematically suppressed the class struggle for more than a quarter century. Whilst the unions have imposed concessions and job cuts, the NDP has imposed capitalist austerity whenever it has held office. With the full support of the unions, the NDP is currently sustaining in office a Liberal minority government in Ontario that has cut billions from social spending and used anti-worker legislation, Bill 115, to enforce a two-year public sector wage freeze and impose concessionary contracts on the province’s teachers.

These pro-capitalist organizations have frequently invoked the chauvinistic slogan “Canadian jobs for Canadians,” laying the blame for job and wage cuts on workers in other countries. This serves a double-reactionary purpose: by fomenting nationalism, the unions and NDP seek to mask their own complicity in imposing concessions and plant closures and to block a united struggle of workers in Canada with their class brothers and sisters in the U.S., Mexico and around the world against the transnational corporations, which site production wherever labor and tax regimes are the most “competitive.”

The Canadian Auto Workers, for example, has for decades competed with the U.S.-based UAW as to which union could offer the Detroit Three the most favorable contracts, resulting in the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs and a never-ending race to the bottom.

In recent months, the unions’ and NDP’s “Canadian jobs for Canadians” campaign has taken the form of a rightwing, chauvinist opposition to the TWFP. The Conservatives have now taken advantage of the chauvinist backlash against foreign workers that the unions and NDP have promoted to expand the coercive powers of the state and lay the groundwork for increased harassment and victimization of immigrant workers.

Significantly, neither has made an issue of opposing the new powers given Immigration inspectors to conduct warrantless searches.

Last December, the British Columbia Federation of Labour and many of its affiliates demanded that Chinese workers who had come to Canada under the TWFP to work at a mine owned by H.D. Mining International be sent home. (See: Canadian unions’ chauvinist campaign against “temporary foreign worker” expansion .) The unions’ campaign against the program went into high gear this past April after a CBC exposure of how a Royal Bank of Canada subcontractor used the TWFP program to bring in workers from India who were to be trained to manage a back-office operation that was ultimately to be outsourced to India.

Responding to May’s unemployment figures, Ken Georgetti, the president of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the country’s largest labour organization fulminated against foreign workers, claiming that they were taking jobs from Canadians. Georgetti said the CLC had “crunched” the numbers and found that “Roughly 75 percent of the new jobs created in Canada in 2010 and 2011 were filled by temporary foreign workers despite the fact that 1.4 million Canadian residents were unemployed.”

This spurious claim, which the CLC passes off as “research,” was based on comparing the number of new jobs and the total number of participants in the TWFP, a program which expanded rapidly in the years preceding the 2008 global financial crisis.

In reality, the dismal employment figures in Canada, as in the U.S, Europe, and Japan, are a product of the greatest crisis of world capitalism since the Great Depression.

The unions’ and NDP’s scapegoating of immigrants is–as the extraordinary new police powers the Conservatives’ have given Immigration inspectors underscores–aiding reaction. It is at one with their advocacy of protectionist measures, the logic of which is trade war and ultimately military conflict.

In recent months, the NDP and its union allies have raised a hue and a cry about Chinese investment in Canada, denouncing the “Communist” regime in China in crude Cold War terms. This maneuver has been aimed at demonstrating to Canadian big business that an NDP government would more vigorously defend their interests than the current Conservative one and at signaling to Washington that the NDP supports the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia”, that is its preparations for war with Beijing.

The anti-immigrant nationalism peddled by the trade unions and the NDP must be vigorously opposed by Canadian workers. These marginalized workers are not the source of the crisis but its most tragic expression, as governments all over the world impose wave after wave of austerity to satiate the appetites of global finance capital.

The answer to mounting unemployment and falling living standards is not to restrict, ban, or discriminate against “foreign” workers, but rather the mobilization of the international working class against big business and the capitalist profit system, which are exploiting and oppressing workers the world over. As a crucial element in the fight to unite the working class against capitalism, workers must fight for full citizenship rights for people wherever they choose to live and oppose all restrictions on the free movement of people across the globe.

By
Nick Barrickman

1 July 2013

The criminalization of the poor and the brutality of the justice system in the US know virtually no limit.

On Friday, a 34-year-old woman was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the death of her infant son in a Philadelphia homeless shelter in late 2010. Tanya Williams was sentenced to 9 to 18 years in prison. Williams is a single mother of five.

According to testimony, Williams had been living in the shelter system since the fall of 2010 after being forced out of her mother’s home and then that of a church acquaintance just a month before giving birth to Quasir, the infant who died, and his twin brother, Quamir.

The woman’s lawyer, Gregory Pagano, explained to the court that Williams was overwhelmed as she recovered from the premature birth of the twins, while caring for four other children in a homeless shelter.

Pagano commented, according to the Philadelphia Daily News, that “she was failed by the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, which discharged her too early after giving birth to the premature babies, by the city Department of Human Services, which provided inadequate services to her family, and by a social worker from Lutheran Children and Family Service, who reported that the twins were fine just 36 hours before the death.”

The lawyer commented, “If they [the family service] didn’t see it, how do we expect her to see it with an IQ of 65?” In fact, Lutheran Children has fired the social worker who last visited the family and pronounced the infant “healthy and well.”

The prosecution pushed for the most savage conviction and sentence possible. Assistant District Attorney Peter Lim had asked the jury to convict Williams of premeditated first-degree murder. After she was convicted of manslaughter, Lim asked the judge to sentence her to the maximum 22 to 44 years in prison, saying she showed “no accountability and no remorse” for nearly killing Quamir and for allowing Quasir to die in “the most painful way.” Here is the voice of the well-fed and well-heeled speaking about people living in the social abyss.

In a heart-breaking statement to the court, Williams said, “I am sorry for what I have done. I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. I’m just asking for a second chance. I love my children more than I love myself. I love my children and would never do anything to hurt them.” The court was predictably merciless.

In nearby Trenton, New Jersey, a mother was indicted with child endangerment June 27 after it was found that she and her two sons were living in a five-by-ten storage facility without heat or electricity. The woman, Sheena Johnson, 27, turned to sleeping in the unit after losing her source of employment last December and leaving an abusive fiancé.

During the winter months Johnson had been forced to scrape by for days at a time on couches of friends, family shelters, and charity hotels, until county assistance ran out. “It really hit me so hard, that I’m down at about the tree-root’s-bottom, and what can I do to make my kids’ life better this way… I didn’t see any clarity–our only option was to stay where our stuff is,” she told reporters. Johnson was released on $50,000 bail, which was raised by various community organizations.

For the past several months, Johnson had kept her children in school, taking them to local fast food eateries for breakfast so they could dress and brush their teeth.

Despite the obvious difficulties the young mother faced, county officials were indifferent. “I just wished the mother would have sought help instead of going down the route she took,” stated Ewing city Mayor Bert Steinmann, who added that the circumstance had “shocked and appalled” him.

A renter of a nearby storage unit said he believed Johnson had been living in the facility “for months” without heat or power, surrounded by trash bags full of belongings.

By
Tom Mackaman

1 July 2013

On July 1, 1863, in the fourth month of the third year of the Civil War, armies of the Union and the Confederacy met near the small southeastern Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. Over the next three days, the bloodiest battle in North American history would rage, resulting in more than 46,000 dead, wounded and captured, before the Confederates were defeated and driven from Northern territory.

It was the second and final Southern invasion of the North under General Robert E. Lee. In September of 1862, Lee had invaded Maryland with an eye toward wresting that divided state from the Union and perhaps winning British recognition of the Confederacy. He was forced to retreat after the Battle of Antietam, the single bloodiest day in US history. That victory allowed Lincoln to release the Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect on January 1, 1863.

The Emancipation Proclamation, the executive order freeing the slaves, had changed the dynamic of the war from a war for a return to the status quo ante –the restoration of the Union with slavery intact–to a social revolution for the destruction of slavery and the planter aristocracy. Yet by the summer of 1863, the Proclamation largely remained a legal order awaiting enforcement, which could be purchased only by victory in the field.

Military success had not followed. The commander of the Grand Army of the Potomac, George McClellan, a Democrat who sympathized with the South, refused to pursue Lee after Antietam. Lincoln finally sacked McClellan, but the next two generals to command the Union army in the Eastern theater, Ambrose Burnside and “Fighting Joe” Hooker, proved no more successful, suffering lopsided defeats to Lee at the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, and in the process taking upwards of 30,000 casualties. Hooker was finally replaced by George Meade days before the Battle of Gettysburg.

Failure in the field compounded the political crisis, with Republicans suffering serious losses in mid-term elections in the fall of 1862. Democrats used emancipation to race-bait the Republicans and openly encouraged defiance of a new military draft law put in place in March of 1863. This contributed to widespread draft resistance in the two most populous states, New York and Pennsylvania. The New York draft riots of July, 1863 rank as the largest domestic uprising in US history outside of the Southern rebellion itself. Union soldiers fresh from Gettysburg were called to the city to put it down.

Lee was aware of the importance of politics in the North, and when he marched his 75,000 soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia across Maryland and into Pennsylvania, he anticipated that a decisive victory would lead to a collapse of support in the Union for the war. His army would feed off of Pennsylvania’s fields, relieving Virginia’s, and he would aim to take Harrisburg, capital of Pennsylvania, and perhaps Philadelphia. Lincoln would then be forced to sue for peace.

It is impossible to understand the heroism of the soldiers at Gettysburg without an appreciation of the political aims of the war. This was true on both sides. Ulysses S. Grant later said of Lee and the Confederates that they fought “long and valiantly… and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.” Perhaps one quarter of the soldiers were slave-owners, and well over half of the officers were. As Lee’s army drove into southern Pennsylvania, it captured free blacks and sent them south into slavery.

The extent to which anti-slavery sentiment had spread through the Union army by the time of Gettysburg cannot be known. It was certainly greater by the autumn of 1864, when the army voted over 80 percent for Lincoln’s reelection, than it was in the summer of 1863. Yet according to the leading scholar on this question, James McPherson, the Emancipation Proclamation had deepened the army’s politicization. In a three-day battle full of twists and turns, the politicized character of parts of the 90,000-strong Union army, in critical moments, proved decisive.

On the battle’s second day, soldiers from Maine’s 20th Regiment under Joshua Chamberlain protected the Union army’s vulnerable left flank at Little Round Top. Chamberlain, an anti-slavery man and an acquaintance of abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe, ordered a bayonet charge when his men were low on ammunition. The daring move repulsed the Alabama 15th.

Earlier, Chamberlain had been given charge of Maine soldiers from a different regiment who had been accused of attempting to desert. Given the right to execute the men, he instead made a political appeal to them, convincing them to fight. The extra men proved decisive in the engagement.

Another crucial moment also unfolded on the second day. General Winfield Scott Hancock ordered the Minnesota 1st to fill the breach in order to buy time to refortify defensive positions on the highest ground of Cemetery Hill. The loss of that position would have likely spelled defeat for the Union.

The Minnesotans, outnumbered perhaps 10 to 1, must have recognized that the order meant likely death, but they successfully held off the attacking Alabamians. Of 262 soldiers, only 47 returned to Hancock’s lines. The casualty rate was the highest of any regiment in the Civil War.

The 1st Minnesota was comprised of the first from the state to rally to Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers after the attack on Fort Sumter in April, 1861. These men had subsequently re-mustered for three years’ service. They had already suffered heavy casualties at First Bull Run and Antietam.

In a cruel twist, the surviving 47 were reassigned to the center of the defensive positions on Cemetery Ridge for the third day of battle, commanding officers believing that this would be an area that would not see combat. It instead became one of two locations where Confederate soldiers breached Union defenses in Pickett’s charge on July 3, the last day of the battle.

Pickett’s charge, named after Confederate General George Pickett, who was tasked with leading it, turned out to be the decisive moment in the three-day battle. At about 2 p.m., Lee ordered some 12,500 men to advance across three-quarters of a mile of open field toward Union defenders positioned behind a stone fence on Cemetery Ridge. The Confederates marched uphill through cannon fire until coming within 400 yards of the Union line. Thereafter they were raked with musket and canister shot from three directions. They broke the Union lines briefly, but were routed in hand-to-hand combat.

Gettysburg was not the decisive event of the war, which would drag on for nearly two more years. To be sure, it was devastating to Lee’s army, which could not afford to lose men and materiel the way the North could. The industrialized capitalist society of the North was, in fact, gaining strength–its population and army growing; its factories, mines, and fields producing more and more. The defeat at Gettysburg meant that the Confederate army could not menace the North again. Lee could now only hope for a defensive stalemate and political exhaustion within the Union.

The Union commander at Gettysburg, Meade, had done well to shield Philadelphia and Washington from Lee, and when the Confederates were found near Gettysburg, he quickly moved his armies into good defensive position. But like McClellan after Antietam, Meade failed to pursue Lee, letting go a chance to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia. Like McClellan, Meade was a Philadelphia Democrat who hoped, as he said, “to make terms of some kind with the South.”

After the battle, an exasperated Lincoln authored a letter to Meade but did not mail it, instead filing it away in a folder marked “To Gen. Meade, never sent, or signed.” Lincoln wrote, “I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely.”

Perhaps a more significant event, at least in a strategic sense, took place the day after. On Independence Day 1863, and far to the west, General Ulysses S. Grant received the surrender of the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi, Vicksburg. The Union now exercised total control of the river.

“The Father of Waters flows unvexed to the sea,” a relieved Lincoln said. In “Unconditional Surrender Grant” and his subordinates William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan, Lincoln had finally found generals whose strategy matched the new revolutionary character of the war. With Vicksburg securing his credentials, Grant was brought east to replace Meade, and in the spring and summer of 1864 he launched a devastating attack on Virginia, while Sherman drove on Atlanta.

Aside from its staggering death toll, Gettysburg’s hold on our memory rests with Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg address. On November 19, 1863, Lincoln stood on a crowded platform with thousands of shallow graves strewn across the battlefield all around him. In about two minutes, he spelled out that the Civil War was the continuation of the American Revolution, that it was at its heart a struggle for equality, and that the war would forever test whether or not democratic principles and self-government could survive:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom–and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Four Chinese government ships have entered the territorial waters of the disputed chain of islands in the East China Sea, which are claimed by China and Japan, the Japanese coast guard says.

Japanâ„¢s coast guard said on Monday that the maritime surveillance vessels sailed into the 12-nautical-mile zone off the islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, at around 5:00 a.m. local time (2000 GMT on Sunday).

Japan and China have long been in a dispute over the sovereignty of the uninhabited islands, which are located near a crucial shipping lane and would give the owner exclusive oil, mineral and fishing rights in the surrounding waters.

On September 11, 2012, Tokyo signed a deal to buy three of the islands from their private Japanese owner in line with plans to nationalize the archipelago.

In late April, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tokyo would Å“expel by force” any Chinese individuals landing on the islands, following an incident where eight Chinese vessels entered the disputed waters.

DB/HSN

“Extremism
in defense of liberty is no vice! And . . .
moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

~ Barry
Goldwater, in speech written by Karl Hess

A recent
discussion on the Fox Business channel, amongst John Stossel,
Stuart Varney, and Judge Andrew Napolitano, has raised, once again,
the empty charge directed at libertarians: “you are being
an extremist!” Such words are always offered in lieu of a
substantive analysis of the position advocated. That both Albert
Einstein and Jeffery Dahmer could be labeled as “extremists,”
by virtue of how far their thinking deviated from some norm, provides
us no basis upon which to evaluate their thinking or conduct.
Intelligent minds would ask: by what criteria do you judge these
men; what are the implications of what each is doing or
saying? That so many scientists who contributed to the development
of our understanding of the world had to endure such criticism,
should cause us to insist upon a standard of evaluation that rises
above the simplistic thinking presently in place.

These three
men were debating the wide-ranging NSA surveillance practices
recently revealed by Edward Snowden — whose actions have led statists
to label him an “extremist,” among other charges.
When Judge Napolitano insisted that the government should be required
to adhere to Fourth Amendment standards and procedures, Varney
— the moderator of the program — began accusing the good judge
of “extremism.”

But how does
one define “extremism”? Is there a standard by which
we can make intelligent distinctions, or is the word only intended
as a polite form of name-calling? Words are but abstractions and
require interpretation, no matter how certain we feel that our
subjective sense allows us to overcome the difficulties that often
attend defining them. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous
admission to the difficulty of defining “pornography”
nonetheless led him to conclude “I know it when I see it.”
Does Mr. Varney’s charge of the good judge being an “extremist”
amount to anything more than his stating a preference for his
preferences?

Explanations
for the inability of people to employ a reasoned analysis in their
thinking are to be found in institutions of learning. One criticism
directed at the government schools is that they do not do an adequate
job teaching students how to pass the tests such systems use to
evaluate themselves. In this sense, schools — including universities
and graduate schools — are more in the business of certifying
their students to the next level at which they are to perform
than helping them learn to become independent thinkers capable
of engaging in principled, factually-supported analysis. In performing
this certification role, schools engage in the circular process
of certifying themselves. “See, 83% of our students passed
the test that we taught them how to pass!” In law schools,
this helps to explain the preoccupation with bar exam results.

When a school
system’s emphasis shifts from helping students learn how to
think, to teaching them what to think, the dumbing down
process is well under way. The principal failure of the education
system is not reflected in the fact that most students
cannot identify the kinds of information easily found in a Google
search, but that they cannot analyze the meaning of such empirical
data. An honor student may correctly answer that the Hundred Years
War was a series of 14^th and 15^th conflicts
between England and France; that same student may give you a blank
response to such follow-up questions as what were the causes
or the consequences of this war?

Persons who
were educated in the rote methods of the institution-serving schools,
tend to be very weak in the skills of intellectual analysis. Being
unable to intelligently evaluate a particular proposition, they
may resort to public opinion polls, or the pronouncements of a
recognized authority for direction. They may also fall back on
the “extremism” charge when confronted with a point
of view they are otherwise unable to analyze.

The contrast
between these two approaches is evident from Judge Napolitano’s
discussion with Stuart Varney. The judge’s criticism of the NSA’s
ubiquitous, unconsented surveillance of everyone was grounded
in principles from which he reasoned. He quoted the Fourth Amendment,
which has a narrowly-focused exception to the general rule that
people should be “secure . . . against unreasonable searches
and seizures,” an exception that requires the government
to go to court and seek a warrant against specific persons, at
specific locations, identifying the specific items to be seized.

In making
this argument, the judge is being accused of engaging in what
is rarely taught in modern schools: the art of implicit thinking.
It is not just that the state is engaged in actions wrong
in themselves, but that the acceptance of such behavior can lead
to even more serious consequences. If Uncle Willie drinks a quart
of Scotch every day, cirrhosis of the liver is implicit in his
habit. Does this mean that he will develop this disease?
The study of chaos tells us “no,” that outcomes associated
with complex systems are unpredictable. It does mean, however,
that his addiction will greatly increase the likelihood of his
developing cirrhosis. As such, on the first day that Willie consumes
his quart of Scotch, he should understand that the destruction
of his liver is implicit in what he is doing, and not just assume
that each additional day stands on its own, unaffected by what
has preceded it.

If, on one
occasion, a police officer brutalizes a harmless individual, does
that mean that a police-state has arisen? No, but intelligent
minds should recognize that such totalitarian consequences are
implicit in such an act, and should respond accordingly. I am
reminded of that powerful scene at the end of the movie, Judgment
at Nuremberg. Judge Haywood (played by Spencer Tracy) has
been called to the jail cell of the Nazi judge (played by Burt
Lancaster) who has just been given a life sentence for his crimes.
The convicted judge tells Judge Haywood: “Those people, those
millions of people. . . I never knew it would come to that.”
Judge Haywood replies: “it ‘came to that’ the first time
you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.” This
is a poignant example of “implicit thinking.” If you
doubt that one atrocity, indulged in and sanctioned today, does
not have implications for the future, ask the ghosts of Auschwitz,
Buchenwald, Dachau, Treblinka — and the hundreds of other Nazi
concentration camps — whether critics of such systems were being
“extremists” for warning of the likely consequences!
A more dramatic expression is to be found in Judge Haywood’s explanation
of the court’s ruling at the end of the movie. His words may help
us to understand the implications of the present behavior of the
American state.

Implicit
thinking requires a standard by which to judge the propriety of
one’s actions. Judge Napolitano used language from the Constitution
as such a standard, but other principles could be employed as
well (e.g., the inviolability of the person or property of individuals).
Having a norm by which to measure one’s response to state action
is a necessary means for engaging in an intelligent, reasoned
analysis. Without such a principle, one is left with frenzied
ranting, name-calling, or empty rhetoric such as accusing another
of “extremism.”

How does
one learn this art of implicit thinking? It is evident that such
skills will never be a part of the curriculum of government schools.
Their job is to condition young minds in the establishment mindset,
a purpose wholly inconsistent with the development of critical
thinking. There is nothing so annoying to the state’s conditioning
academies as children who keep asking questions. The word “why?”
— and the independent thinking that underlies it — is a constant
challenge to a system that has no standards that would appeal
to curious minds. The child who persists in questioning what is
being taught may soon be labeled “hyperactive” or having
an “attention deficit disorder” and be subjected to
therapies or drugs to overcome his or her resistance. The words
of the late Steve Jobs come to mind, in discussing his response
to elementary school: “I encountered authority of a different
kind than I had ever encountered before, and I did not like it.
And they really almost got me. They came close to really beating
any curiosity out of me.”

How does
one help children develop the skills of implicit thinking, and
avoid the indoctrination that trains one to become a servo-mechanism
of the corporate-state? In his 1976 book, The Uses of Enchantment,
psychologist Bruno Bettelheim discussed the importance of fairy
tales in helping children deal with the kinds of fears that are
so much a part of growing up. In the course of reading and finding
meaning in such stories, children would experience the kind of
emotional development necessary to the well-lived life.

I believe
that such stories — and the processes of questioning that accompany
their reading — can help children learn to think implicitly. Fairy
tales are often presented in terms of black-and-white contrasts:
the consistently “good” guy up against the “villain”
who is beyond the possibilities of rehabilitation. The purpose
of making such sharp comparisons is not to make children
aware of how people necessarily behave in the world, but to provide
standards with which to evaluate human conduct. Are all
children as sweet and innocent as Hansel and Gretel, or as loving
and considerate as Little Red Riding Hood? Are step-mothers all
mean? Hardly. These stories are not offered as psychological or
sociological studies, but as clearly defined criteria by which
to make judgments.

One
of my favorite children’s stories is The Little Red Hen,
but I detest those modern corruptions of the tale in which the
Red Hen gives in to all the free-riders and allows them to share
in the product of her labors. There is an important lesson for
children to learn from Ms. Red Hen, which goes far beyond the
modern simple-minded standard of “niceness” that seems
to limit the judging of human conduct. The story informs children
of what, in a welfare-dominated world has long been forgotten:
not only are there consequences to our actions, but precursors
for the attainment of what we enjoy. The bread that the Red
Hen produced — and the moochers now want to enjoy — came about
only through her willingness to incur all of the costs necessary
to create the bread. This is the meaning of Milton Friedman’s
now classic observation: “there’s no such thing as a free
lunch.” Someone had to incur the costs of providing
it.

Implicit
thinking has no relevance absent a clear standard by which to
evaluate our thinking and behavior. In order to live as intelligent
adults, children must learn to explore the importance and meaning
of principles that transcend the immediate circumstances they
confront. In the turbulence of a world that is redefining itself
into fundamentally new social systems and practices, our thinking
— and judgments — must undergo major transformations. If we are
to survive — and I believe that we will — we must walk away from
such school playground rhetoric as “if you’re not with us,
you’re against us,” or “America: love it or leave it,”
or “you’re being an extremist.” As Einstein observed:
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used
when we created them.”

At least seven people have been killed in clashes between supporters and opponents of Egyptâ„¢s President Mohamed Morsi, security and medical sources say.

Five people were killed on Sunday in towns south of the capital Cairo, one each in Beni Suef and Fayoum and three in Assiut.

Medical sources said two more people lost their lives during clashes outside the national headquarters of Muslim Brotherhood in a suburb of Cairo.

The clashes erupted when hundreds of protesters attacked the building, which was set on fire.

More than 600 people were also injured in Sunday clashes, Egyptâ„¢s Health Ministry said.

Sundayâ„¢s massive rallies come a year after Morsi was elected as Egypt’s first freely elected president following the 2011 revolution that toppled the Western-backed regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Å“It is the biggest protest in Egypt’s history,” a military source told AFP on condition of anonymity, noting that Å“millions” of people have packed the streets across Egypt.

In a televised address on June 26, Morsi said the polarization of the countryâ„¢s political life is Å“threatening to paralyze” Egypt.

He acknowledged that he had made some mistakes during his first year in office but called for national reconciliation, saying that he was open to cooperating with the opposition on constitutional reform.

On June 27, Egyptâ„¢s main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front (NSF), rejected the presidentâ„¢s offer.

The NSF claimed that Morsi had failed to take responsibility for the deep political polarization in the country and the failed economy.

Morsiâ„¢s supporters, however, say the president is cleansing Egyptian institutions of corruption but needs time to realize the ideals of the revolution.

MR/AS

The Turkish police have attacked thousands of Kurdish demonstrators in Diyarbakir, the main city in the countryâ„¢s Kurdish-dominated southeast.

The police used water cannons and fired tear gas on Sunday to disperse about 8,000 protesters who gathered in the center of Diyarbakir to press the central government to advance the peace process with the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK).

Video footage showed scuffles at the scene, with police charging at and chasing away protesters.

The pro-Kurdish the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) had called for protests to launch a summer of demonstrations against Ankaraâ„¢s lack of commitment to the peace process.

“Our party is calling on our people as well as all oppressed and ignored segments of society to say ‘Government, take a step’ in order to step up the struggle for democracy,” the party said in a statement issued on Sunday.

Earlier this year, the Turkish government and PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan launched an initiative to establish peace in Turkeyâ„¢s southeast where the PKK has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region since the 1980s.

The conflict between Ankara and the PKK has left tens of thousands of people dead.

The unrest in southeastern Turkey comes after weeks of unrelated anti-government protests in Istanbul, Ankara and dozens of other cities in which several people have died and thousands have been injured.

The protests began on May 31 after police broke up a sit-in held at Taksim Square to protest against a proposal to redevelop Gezi Park, which is a traditional gathering point for rallies and demonstrations as well as a popular tourist destination.

The demonstrators say the park is also one of Istanbul’s last green public spaces.

GJH/HN

A roadside bomb blast has killed three civilians and injured two others in southern Afghanistan, security officials say.

The explosion took place on Saturday evening in the Sewri district of southern Zabul province when the civilians’ vehicle hit the roadside bomb.

Jilani Khan, a provincial security officer said that the victims were taken to a nearby hospital after the incident, Tolonews reported on Sunday.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but Afghan officials put the blame on Taliban militants who have carried out similar attacks in the past.

On June 27, at least five people were reported to have been killed and another wounded in a roadside bomb blast in a village in Afghanistanâ„¢s eastern province of Laghman.

Roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are by far the most lethal weapons Taliban militants use against Afghan forces, foreign troops, and civilians.

In late April, the Taliban announced the start of their annual “spring offensive” against US-led and Afghan forces, vowing a new wave of attacks across Afghanistan.

The militant group said it would use “every possible tactic” to inflict casualties on Afghan and US-led forces. They specifically mentioned insider and bomb attacks.

The announcement prompted the Afghan authorities to tighten security in major cities across the country, including the capital Kabul.

MR/HN

Powerhouse Italy has come back from the Fridayâ„¢s loss to beat Iran 3-2 in a Pool B match in the fourth week of 2013 FIVB World League.

Italian volleyball players won the difficult five-set match in Sassari, the second-largest city of Sardinia island on Sunday.

Italyâ„¢s Ivan Zaytzev scored 18 points in the first set, which finished 25-22 for the hosts. Italy also beat the visitors 25-20 in the second set despite attacks by the Iranian side.

The third set was pushed into a fourth after the Iranians won it 20-25. Iran also managed to finish the fourth set 18-25 for the game to come to a draw.

However, in the tie break, the Italians took an advantage of their fansâ„¢ support to secure the match by winning the last set 15-13.

On Friday, Iran registered its second victory of the tourney by beating Italy 3-1 in the northern Italian city of Modena.

On June 23, Iranian volleyball players gained their first victory in the 2013 FIVB World League against Serbia.

In other matches held on Sunday, in Pool B, Serbia beat Germany 3-2. In Pool A, Bulgaria hit the United States of America 3-1, and Poland also gained a 3-1 victory against Argentina. In Pool C, the Netherlands won a game against South Korea 3-1, and Japan defeated Portugal 3-2.

On July 5, the Iranian volleyball team will face Cuba in the South American country.

NT/AS

A Syrian minister says over two years of foreign-sponsored terrorism in the country has damaged about 9,000 state buildings and cost $15 billion in losses to the public sector.

Local Administration Minister Omar Al Ibrahim Ghalaounji said in comments published in Syrian newspapers on Sunday that the damages worth of $15 billion to the public sector were caused between March 2011 and March 2013.

He added that they were the result of “terrorist attacks on government buildings and infrastructure.”

Former Syrian Planning Minister Abdullah al-Dardari has recently said that the Syrian crisis has cost $60-$80 billion in damages to the countryâ„¢s economy.

He stated that the Syria economy has contracted by about 35 percent, compared to the 6 percent annual growth the country enjoyed in the five years before 2011.

According to Dardari, the Syrian economy has lost about 40 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), and there are some 2.5 million unemployed people in Syria today.

The Syria crisis began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of government forces, have been killed.

Damascus says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

The Syrian government says the West and its regional allies — especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey — are supporting the militants.

On June 4, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich issued a statement, saying, Å“We have more than once stated our opinion on this — foreign weapons are being pumped into an explosive region.”

Å“This is happening very close to Syria, where for more than two years the flames are burning of a devastating conflict,” the statement added.

GJH/HN

Anti-government protesters have flooded the streets across Egypt, calling for the resignation of President Mohamed Morsi.

Mass rallies on Sunday come a year after Morsi was elected as Egypt’s first freely elected president following the 2011 revolution that toppled the Western-backed regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Å“The people want the ouster of the regime,” the protesters chanted in the capital Cairo’s iconic Liberation Square.

The demonstrators are angry at Morsi’s handling of the economy and his failure to fulfill his electoral promises. The organizers of the major demonstration for Sunday claim that more than 22 million people have signed petition for the resignation of the president and a snap election.

Anti-government protests were also staged in the coastal city of Alexandria, the Nile Delta cities of Mansura, Menuf, Tanta and Mahalla, the canal cities of Suez and Port Said as well as Zagazig.

Meanwhile, pro-Morsi demonstrators have held rival rallies in support of the president as they say he needs time to implement the changes demanded by the Egyptians.

Å“… We support President Mohamed Morsi. We would like to tell him not to be affected by the opponentsâ„¢ protests and not to give up his rights. We are here to support and protect him,” said one of the Egyptian presidentâ„¢s supporters.

At least four people have been killed in clashes in the cities of Assiut and Beni Suef. Many others were also injured.

One person has been reportedly killed and 35 others injured in clashes outside the Muslim Brotherhoodâ„¢s headquarters in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

Reports say clashes broke out between supporters and opponents of Morsi after protesters marched to the office of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Dozens also attacked the Brotherhood headquarters in Cairo with petrol bombs, birdshot and stones, according to Gehad al-Haddad, a spokesman for the movement.

Å“It is the biggest protest in Egypt’s history,” a military source told AFP on condition of anonymity, noting that Å“millions” of people have packed the streets across Egypt.

Morsi’s spokesman Ehab Fahmy has highlighted the need for a national dialogue in the country, saying, Å“Dialogue is the only way through which we can reach an understanding… The presidency is open to a real and serious national dialogue.”

However, the opposition has urged the demonstrators to hold their ground until Morsi resigns.

Hundreds of Egyptians have also staged anti-Morsi demonstrations in other countries including the UK and Australia.

MR/HN

Anti-government protesters have flooded the streets across Egypt, calling for the resignation of President Mohamed Morsi.

Mass rallies on Sunday come a year after Morsi was elected as Egypt’s first freely elected president following the 2011 revolution that toppled the Western-backed regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Å“The people want the ouster of the regime,” the protesters chanted in the capital Cairo’s iconic Liberation Square.

The demonstrators are angry at Morsi’s handling of the economy and his failure to fulfill his electoral promises. The organizers of the major demonstration for Sunday claim that more than 22 million people have signed petition for the resignation of the president and a snap election.

Anti-government protests were also staged in the coastal city of Alexandria, the Nile Delta cities of Mansura, Menuf, Tanta and Mahalla, the canal cities of Suez and Port Said as well as Zagazig.

Meanwhile, pro-Morsi demonstrators have held rival rallies in support of the president as they say he needs time to implement the changes demanded by the Egyptians.

Å“… We support President Mohamed Morsi. We would like to tell him not to be affected by the opponentsâ„¢ protests and not to give up his rights. We are here to support and protect him,” said one of the Egyptian presidentâ„¢s supporters.

At least four people have been killed in clashes in the cities of Assiut and Beni Suef. Many others were also injured.

One person has been reportedly killed and 35 others injured in clashes outside the Muslim Brotherhoodâ„¢s headquarters in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

Reports say clashes broke out between supporters and opponents of Morsi after protesters marched to the office of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Dozens also attacked the Brotherhood headquarters in Cairo with petrol bombs, birdshot and stones, according to Gehad al-Haddad, a spokesman for the movement.

Å“It is the biggest protest in Egypt’s history,” a military source told AFP on condition of anonymity, noting that Å“millions” of people have packed the streets across Egypt.

Morsi’s spokesman Ehab Fahmy has highlighted the need for a national dialogue in the country, saying, Å“Dialogue is the only way through which we can reach an understanding… The presidency is open to a real and serious national dialogue.”

However, the opposition has urged the demonstrators to hold their ground until Morsi resigns.

Hundreds of Egyptians have also staged anti-Morsi demonstrations in other countries including the UK and Australia.

MR/HN