OCTOBER 29 – #ROBINHOOD GLOBAL MARCH
October 18th, 2011 · Ella · Announcements 9 comments

Posted from: http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/robinhood.html

This is a proposal for the general assemblies of the Occupy movement.

Eight years ago, on February 15, 2003, upwards of 15 million people in sixty countries marched together to stop President Bush from invading Iraq … a huge chunk of humanity lived for one day without dead time and glimpsed the power of a united people’s movement. Now we have an opportunity to repeat that performance on an even larger scale.

On October 29, on the eve of the G20 Leaders Summit in France, let’s the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax on all financial transactions and currency trades. Let’s send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3-trillion easy money that’s sloshing around the global casino each day – enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world.

Take this idea to your local general assembly and join your comrades in the streets on October 29.

for the wild,
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Hats off to Bahraini women
Arab Spring, Oct. 12

Since the beginning of Bahrain’s national uprising on Feb. 14, women have been at the forefront of demonstrations calling for greater democracy and freedom. Participants have been wide ranging from academia, bankers, students, teachers, doctors and nurses. They have also paid a heavy price for their demands including being harassed, arrested, handcuffed, tortured and abused in prison.

The women of Bahrain deserve attention and solidarity from the international community in their desires and efforts for a more democratic and just system in which the universal principles of freedom, equality and justice are promoted and practiced.

Sukeina Bhimji, Richmond Hill

…source

“There’s no point to allowing these human rights catastrophes to get such a level that you impose an arms embargo after the event,” said Wood. “The smart system that should be in place should be a case-by-case risk assessment system, where officials, whether in trade department or foreign affairs or the military, look at the risks from different angles. Of course HR is one of the risks.”

Exporters Armed Arab Spring Crackdown
Written by David Rosenberg – October 18, 2011 – The Media Line

Repressive regimes had all the equipment they needed to quash protests, Amnesty Says

Many of the world’s governments calling for change and human rights in the Middle East were playing a key role in blocking it by selling arms to the region’s repressive regimes, Amnesty International said in a report on Tuesday.

Egypt, whose security forces killed 850 people and left thousands of others injured in 18 days of protests before President Husni Mubarak was forced out of power, bought or approved to buy millions of dollars worth of sub-machine guns and armored vehicles from Germany in the years beforehand, as well as assault weapons, tear gas and ammunition from the United States.

Amnesty cited 17 countries in Europe and North America that sold arms and equipment to despotic regimes with records of humans rights abuses that could be – and, when Arab Spring unrest erupted 10 months ago, were – used against civilians. The London-based human rights organization urged the world’s governments to adopt a systematic and comprehensive system for governing the global arms trade.

The sales recorded by Amnesty in its report Arms Transfers To The Middle East And North Africa: Lessons For An Effective Arms Trade Treaty were relatively small and involved relatively unsophisticated weapons. But Brian Woods, manager of arms control at the organization’s international secretariat, said they enabled governments to repress protests and rebellions.

“You don’t need a jet fighter or a submarine to violate human rights. You can do that with rubber-coated bullets, tear gas, pistols and sniper rifles. We’ve seen it on our television screens,” Wood told The Media Line.

Although the governments of the Middle East and North Africa routinely score low on the observance of human rights, the Arab Spring unleashed an unprecedented wave of killings, arrests and repression. The United Nations estimates that some 3,000 have been killed in Syria in a rebellion that shows no sign of ending. In Libya, fighting probably left more than 10,000 dead – two thirds of them on the rebel side before strongman Mu’amar Al-Qaddafi was ousted in August. In Yemen, some 1,800 have been killed in fighting.

As governments were quelling rebellions with arms often bought from abroad, Western leaders were urging them to observe human rights and belatedly imposing arms embargos, the report’s authors asserted.

They cited Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Britain and the U.S. as the top suppliers of arms since 2005 to the five Arab Spring countries covered in the report — Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen. The equipment cited in the report included small arms; smooth-bore weapons over 20mm; ammunition; bombs, rockets, missiles and explosives, armored vehicles; and toxic agents.

“Governments that now say they stand in solidarity with people across the Middle East and North Africa are the very same as those who until recently supplied the weapons, bullets and military and police equipment that were used to kill, injure and arbitrarily detain thousands of peaceful protesters in states such as Tunisia and Egypt,” said Helen Hughes, Amnesty’s principal arms trade researcher.

In Libya, Al-Qaddafi launched artillery, mortar and rocket attacks against civilian residential areas, also using anti-personnel mines and cluster bombs in residential areas, the report said. While Western governments imposed an arms embargo on Al-Qaddafi, the arms he needed had long been stockpiled, Amnesty noted.

Spanish cluster submunitions and MAT-120 cargo mortar projectiles, licensed for sale in 2007, were found in Misrata by Amnesty when it was being shelled by it Al-Qaddafi forces. The equipment is now prohibited by the Cluster Munitions Convention, which Spain signed less than a year after supplying them to Libya.

In September, China was discovered to have been trying to sell some $200 million worth of weapons to the embattled Al-Qaddafi, prompting the government to promise that it would tighten its procedures for selling weapons abroad.

“There’s no point to allowing these human rights catastrophes to get such a level that you impose an arms embargo after the event,” said Wood. “The smart system that should be in place should be a case-by-case risk assessment system, where officials, whether in trade department or foreign affairs or the military, look at the risks from different angles. Of course HR is one of the risks.” …more

Beware of Small States: On America’s Failure in Bahrain
by Peter Fettner – Papers by Peter

If U.S. MENA policy is to successfully adjust to the new conditions of the Arab Spring, the citizens of the United States must get directly involved in MENA policy, helping the administration counterbalance the anti-democratic forces represented by the Saudis, big oil, AIPAC, and so forth. The alternative to genuinely supporting democracy in the Middle East and North Africa is failure in the region. But the necessary paradigm shift requires the democratization of American MENA policy through involvement from civil society; it cannot, and will not, come from above. Read Peter Fettners Paper HERE

Iran Says Saudi Plot Defendant Belongs to Exile Group
By RICK GLADSTONE – October 18, 2011 – NYT

Iran injected a new twist on Tuesday into the week-old American accusation of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, asserting that one of the defendants really belongs to an outlawed and exiled opposition group.

The defendant, Gholam Shakuri, identified by the Justice Department as an operative of the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, is actually a “key member” of the Mujahedeen Khalq, Iran’s Mehr News Agency reported.

The agency did not explain the group’s possible motive but left the implication that the plot was a bogus scheme meant to frame and ostracize Iran.

It said Mr. Shakuri, who is at large, had last been seen in Washington and in Camp Ashraf, the group’s enclave in Iraq. “The person in question has been traveling to different countries under the names of Ali Shakuri/Gholam Shakuri/Gholam-Hussein Shakuri by using fake passports including forged Iranian passports,” Mehr said.

American officials did not immediately comment on the Mehr report. Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, reiterated the American view in a daily press briefing in Washington that “this was a serious breach of international law and that Iran needs to be held accountable.”

The opposition group itself dismissed the Mehr report as nonsense. Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman, said in an e-mailed response that “this is a well-known tactic that has been used by the mullahs in the past 30 years where they blame their crimes on their opposition for double gains.”

The group, also known as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, is regarded by Iran as a violent insurgent organization with a history of assassinations and sabotage aimed at overthrowing the Islamic government that took power in 1979. While the group claims to have renounced violence a decade ago, it is still classified as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department, but not by Britain or the European Union. It maintains a headquarters in Paris. …more

US links Bahrain arms deal to human rights report
19 October 2011 – BBC

The US says it will wait for the findings of a human rights commission before pursuing a $53m (£34m) arms deal with the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain. The US state department said it shared misgivings voiced by congressional representatives about the treatment of civil rights protesters. The commission is due to report by 30 October on a crackdown by Bahrain’s Sunni rulers on protests led by the country’s Shia majority.

Bahrain is home to the US Fifth Fleet. State department spokesman Mark Toner said the US would look “closely” at the forthcoming human rights report. “We’re going to continue to take human rights considerations into account as we move toward the finalisation of this deal,” he said.

He added that the arms would be for “external defence purposes” and that several procedural steps remained before the weapons could be delivered.

Assistant Secretary of State David Adams wrote to Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, a critic of the arms deal, that after the publication of the report the US would also “assess the government of Bahrain’s efforts to implement the recommendations and make needed reforms”. “We will weigh these factors and confer with Congress before proceeding with additional steps related to the [deal],” he wrote. …source