Assembly President calls on Israel, Palestinians to implement resolution on Gaza conflict

General Assembly President Ali Treki today urged Israel and the Palestinians to heed the body’s call to conduct credible investigations into charges that both sides were guilty of serious human rights violations during the conflict in the Gaza Strip at the start of the year.

Fiji: What I tell you three times is true

Workers Tell Ford Motor: No Right to Strike? No Way!

Workers tell Ford Motor: No right to strike? No way!

By Martha Grevatt
Published Nov 5, 2009 8:22 PM

Nov. 2—Losing a job is a scary thing for any worker to contemplate. It’s certainly scary for any worker lucky enough to still have a job with union wages and benefits. The fear of job loss has for several years led members of the once-mighty United Auto Workers to accept drastic concessions they normally wouldn’t consider.

Nevertheless, UAW Ford workers have overwhelmingly voted down the latest package of contract modifications, sending a powerful message to their bosses. “We’ve taken enough,” Dan Coll told the Detroit Free Press. “Enough’s enough.”

Coll, a member of UAW Local 600 at Ford’s Dearborn, Mich., truck assembly plant reminded the Free Press reporter that he and 41,000 other Ford workers had just approved major givebacks in March. These included suspending cost-of-living-allowance (COLA) increases and scheduled bonuses, weakening job and income security provisions, sacrificing an annual paid holiday, and break-time reductions that add up to 40 hours more free labor for the bosses each year.

Why, just seven months later, did Ford think it could ask the UAW leadership to convince the rank and file to give up more? Ford wanted the additional concessions that the bosses at General Motors and Chrysler, with the help of the U.S. Treasury, squeezed out of their hourly employees by threatening to liquidate operations altogether. The reorganized GM and Chrysler corporations will be able to freeze the wages of future workers at $14 an hour and impose a no-strike rule on all workers until 2015, even though the current contract expires in 2011.

That’s what Ford bosses wanted and what they said they needed to be “competitive.” UAW International President Ron Gettelfinger campaigned for a “yes” vote on the contract changes—which included a more limited no-strike rule and a bonus of $1,000 not offered at GM or Chrysler—with the argument that “we’re talking about 7,000 jobs that have either been created and/or protected by this agreement.”

“Members at Ford retain the right to strike on every issue—and I say every issue—except improvements in wages and benefits,” Gettelfinger told Frank Beckmann of WJR-AM. “If Ford was to propose a cut, we would maintain the right to strike. That would never even go to arbitration. This has become a flash-point issue, but this agreement is not about that.” (MLive.com, Oct. 27)

Ford hourly workers, who so far are voting down the concessions two-to-one, know better. The promise of job security—or more accurately the threat of job loss—has been used to pass concessions for decades, especially in the 2007 contract and again last March. Yet where are the jobs? At one time Local 600, which led the fight to unionize Ford in the 1930s, had 100,000 members at the sprawling Rouge complex. Now the total number of UAW hourly workers at Ford is 41,000 and falling.

Ford workers want no part of even a limited restriction on the right to strike. Wouldn’t they want to reserve the right to strike to restore COLA, for example, so their pay could start to catch up with inflation? Workers know that without the right to strike they have no leverage—they’re at the mercy of the companies.

That’s why a number of anti-concession leaflets—some from rank-and-file activists and some from local leaders—made the rounds on the shop floors. When UAW Vice President Bob King tried to sell the concessions at the Dearborn Truck plant, he was drowned out by workers chanting “No, no, no!” Only a small number of locals voted in favor of the modifications.

A healthy rivalry developed after 92 percent of the workers at the Kansas City assembly plant voted no. Dearborn Truck workers boasted of a 92.6 percent rejection rate, only to be outdone by a 93 percent no vote in Sandusky, Ohio.

While some locals are still voting as of this writing, Gettelfinger has acknowledged that the concessions will not pass. There are no plans for a revote or for further negotiations before 2011. Seen from a purely electoral point of view, this is a tremendous victory, and not only for the Ford workers. Some GM and Chrysler workers, whose plants are closing even after they agreed to such outrageous givebacks, are cheering the Ford vote.

All UAW members must categorically reject the idea that concessions—especially those that compromise the right to strike—are necessary to “protect and/or create” a specified number of jobs. The right to strike and the right to a job go hand in hand. In fact, both are recognized under U.S. and international law as a result of fierce class battles that took place in the 1930s.

Only the worst misleaders of the working class would suggest giving up one right—the right to strike—in exchange for a dubious promise to save a few thousand jobs. These jobs already belong to the workers as a property right!

Martha Grevatt has worked for 22 years at the Twinsburg, Ohio, Chrysler plant, which is scheduled to be closed next year. E-mail mgrevatt@workers.org.
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Email: ww@workers.org
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Honduras Power Sharing Deal Dead, Says Ousted President Zelaya

Friday, November 06, 2009
22:39 Mecca time, 19:39 GMT

Zelaya: Power-sharing deal dead

Zelaya has been living in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa since late September

Honduras’s deposed president says that a US-brokered agreement has failed to end the country’s political crisis.

Manuel Zelaya made the announcement on Friday after a deadline for forming a unity government passed.

“The accord is dead,” he told Radio Globo. “There is no sense in deceiving Hondurans.”

Reached last week with the help of US diplomats, the pact gave both sides until Thursday midnight to install a unity government with supporters of Zelaya and Roberto Micheletti, who was named interim president by congress after Zelaya was ousted on June 28.

Lucia Newman, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Tegucigalpa, said that “supporters of Zelaya who were celebrating when the accord was signed a week ago are now looking sombre, demoralised and especially very, very angry.

“We understand from the people who negotaited this agreement that it was inherent in that agreement that Micheletti would stand down - but he has not done that. So Zelaya is calling for his supporters to boycott the [general] elections set for November 29.”

Zelaya has long insisted that he be reinstated as president before the general election at the end of the month.

Onus on congress

Jorge Reina, a negotiator for Zelaya, said the pact fell apart because congress failed to vote on whether to reinstate Zelaya before the deadline for forming the unity government.

“The de facto regime has failed to live up to the promise that, by this date, the national government would be installed. And by law, it should be presided by the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya,” Reina said.

The pact did not require Zelaya’s return to the presidency - it left the decision up to congress. Zelaya interpreted that to mean that congress had to vote on the issue by Thursday.

Supporters of Micheletti, who was named interim president by congress after Zelaya was ousted, disputed that, saying the pact required that members of the unity cabinet be in place by Thursday but that there was no deadline for congress to meet.

Shortly before midnight, Micheletti announced that a unity government had been created even though Zelaya had not submitted his own list of members.

Micheletti said the new government was composed of candidates proposed by political parties and civic groups.

He did not name the new members.

No deadline

Zelaya, who has been living in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa since his return in September, decided on Thursday that he would not present any candidates for the unity government, according to Rasel Tome, an adviser.

The same day, Jose Angel Saavedra, the congress president, said the 128-member body would not “avoid the historic responsibility” of deciding on Zelaya’s return to power, but failed to give a date for the vote.

Zelaya was forced from power on June 28, the same day that he planned to hold a non-binding referendum on changes to the constitution that had faced opposition in the country’s congress and supreme court.

Opponents of Zelaya say that the public vote was intended to measure support for an extension to presidential term limits, in Zelaya’s favour.

Zelaya has dismissed those claims, saying that the vote was aimed at improving the lives of the poor in the nation of 7.6 million people.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Large Union-Community Protests Target Bankers

Large union-community protests target bankers

By Bryan G. Pfeifer
Chicago
Published Nov 5, 2009 8:15 PM

For three days, from Oct. 25 to 27, thousands of poor and working people from across the U.S. came here to directly challenge the criminal bankers and bosses at an American Bankers Association conference.

Those protesting are fed up with taxpayer-funded trillion-dollar bailouts to the bankers, the foreclosure epidemic, the refusal of the government to implement a federally funded jobs program, the billions spent on U.S. wars instead of for people’s needs and much more.

“We are here to demand that the banks and the government bail out the workers. Everyone has to stand up for dignity, for respect, for our families, for the working class,” said Armando Robles, president of United Electrical Workers Local 1110. This UE local led the successful six-day sit-in at Republic Windows and Doors in December 2008.

Robles and his UE brother Keith Scribner, president of Local 174 at Quad City Die Casting in Moline, Ill., spoke before a sea of 5,000 poor and working people at a massive rally Oct. 27 directly in front of the Sheraton Hotel where the bankers’ conference was being held. The crowd hoisted banners and signs in various languages declaring “Stop foreclosures: State of Emergency NOW” and “We need jobs.” They chanted at the bankers, bosses and government officials, both Democrats and Republicans, who were hiding in the hotel: “We want our money back!”

Other speakers at the rally included Richard Trumka, newly elected president of the AFL-CIO; Anna Burger of the Change to Win Federation; the Rev. Jesse Jackson; and representatives of labor, community and student organizations throughout the Chicago region and beyond.

The rally was sponsored by the AFL-CIO and endorsed by numerous organizations throughout the U.S., including the Chicago-based community organization Action NOW, which says there have been 44,000 foreclosures in the Metro Chicago area since 2007 and more than 5 million foreclosures in the U.S. since 2007.

The main AFL-CIO demands were to stop foreclosures, stop bailout-funded bonuses, invest in jobs and small businesses, and invest in public services.

“We’re sending a message. Business is over. We’re shutting it down. We are not going to let bankers rule our country or our lives anymore. This is a new day,” said Trumka.

Labor-community-student delegations marched to the Oct. 27 rally and drove in. Significant delegations came from youth-student organizations, African-American organizations and immigrant workers, including Asian and Latina women.

A van sponsored by Southeastern Michigan Jobs With Justice carried members of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs from Detroit. Workers from the Service Employees International Union, the Carpenters union, the International Association of Machinists, the Sheet Metal Workers International Association, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, UE and others participated.

On Oct. 25 protesters had crashed a large dinner meeting at the beginning of the bankers’ conference, resulting in arrests. Other protest actions, such as demonstrations at the hotel, took place on Oct. 26. (www.showdowninchicago.org)

Those protesting in Chicago were clear that the Oct. 25-27 actions were just one part of building massive, organized resistance against the bankers and bosses.
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Kenyans Side With Israel on United Nations General Assembly Vote

Kenyans side with Israel on UN vote

Africa Leader
Friday 6th November, 2009

Kenya has abstained from voting on the endorsement by the UN General Assembly of what is widely known as the Goldstone Report.

Justice Richard Goldstone, a former war crimes prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, led an investigation of alleged war crimes by Israel and Hamas during the 2008/9 Gaza War. He produced a 574-page report which was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council, which referred it to the General Assembly.

On Tuesday night, on the eve of the debate of the report in the General Assembly, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 344-36 to reject the report.

Kenya sided with the Jewish state by abstaining from voting on the UN resolution. Regardless, the resolution was won convincingly with 118 nations voting for the report’s adoption against 18 dissenters. 43 other countries abstained from voting.

Support For Caster Semenya: Let Us Celebrate Our World Champions

Let us celebrate our world champions

Support for Caster Semenya

Courtesy of ANC Today
November 6, 2009

The ANC NEC of 17-19 September 2009, appalled by the manner in which the IAAF and the ASA handled the issue of Caster Semenya. The NEC was of the view that she has been victimised and subjected to unnecessary public scrutiny, and thus denied her rights and undermined her dignity.

The ANC established a task team to give concrete and practical support to Caster Semenya and her family. The team was lead by the ANC Secretary General and convened by ANC National Spokesperson, Jackson Mthembu.

It is constituted of senior ANC leaders, namely

Winnie Madikizela- Mandela (NEC)
Manto Tshabalala-Msimang (NEC)
Gwen Ramokgopa (Gauteng PEC)
Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya (NEC)
Aaron Motsoaledi (NEC)
Joyce Mashamba (NEC)
Sisisi Tolashe (NEC/ANCWL)
Vuyiswa Tulelo (ANCYL)

The Caster Semenya Support Team was established to mobilise the South African civil society, our government, corporate South Africa, and the South Africa sporting fraternity to ensure that;

Caster and her family are afforded redress by all those who violated her rights during and in the aftermath of her gender testing;
Caster and her family are given professional help so as to deal with the implications of her gender testing;
Caster continues to advance her exceptional talent as a female athlete of international repute;
Her family, her community, South Africa at large, the continent and the world celebrate Caster’s victory in Berlin and those of Mulaudzi and Mokoena.

In taking forward these four objectives and mobilising South Africans around the objectives above, the Task Team met with the family of Caster Semenya as well as the Moletjie community (a village where Caster was born) who welcomed the ANC initiative.

The task team also met the following stakeholders who fully agreed to support the Task Team and all its activities:

University of Pretoria
South African Student Congress (SASCO)
Athletic South Africa
Department of Sport and Recreation
ANC Parliamentary study group on Sport
Caster Lawyers
Med Scheme
Organised formation of South African musicians
Dr Harold Adams
SASCOC
Department of Transport
Department of Arts and Culture
SACP
COSATU

After concluding the consultations with all these organisations and after interrogating the volumes of submissions made, the task team decided to hand over its findings that deals with the redress on the mishandling of the gender verification process of Caster by Athletics South Africa and the IAAF, to the Ministry of Sport and Recreation, for further probing and conclusions.

The task team findings reveal that ASA took part in the gender verification process of Caster Semenya. The tests done in South Africa were conducted at their instance. They instructed their doctor to conduct such tests and provided resources including transport, a psychologist (who is one of their board members) to conduct counselling which ultimately was aborted.

In their submission to the task team ASA members were less than honest and very defensive and did not disclose their role in the process and in sanctioning the gender verification tests conducted in South Africa. They intentionally deceived South Africans, the President, Caster and her family.

Further, it is the view of the task team that ASA should have protected Caster before they left for Berlin and in Berlin and it must come clean to all South Africans and our government regarding their role in this saga.

With regard to the IAAF, the task team maintain that they should apologise to Caster, her family and South Africa as well as to the leadership of the Republic for the violation of Caster’s rights and the resultant humiliation. It is the view of the task team that IAAF should declare the gender verification results conducted both in South Africa and Berlin null and void based on the following IAAF gender verification policy 2006:

a) The IAAF gender verification policy state that there should be a complaint or a challenge from another athlete/ team before an investigation can be conducted. The policy states that:

Gender issues are likely to arise as a result of:

Challenge’ by another athlete or team as brought forward to authorities at an athletic event, including the President of the meet, technical delegate, medical delegate;

b) Suspicion’ raised as to an athletes’ gender as witnessed during an anti doping control specimen collection; an approach made to the IAAF/regional AAA or National federation by an athlete or his representative for advice and clarification.

In the task team interaction with this matter, there is no evidence that any athlete or a team brought forward to authorities a complaint or a challenge against Caster in Berlin. As it applies to B, no suspicion was raised at any anti doping control specimen collection against Caster’s gender.

c) If there is any ’suspicion’ or if there is a ‘challenge’ then the athlete concerned can be asked to attend a medical evaluation before a panel comprising a gynaecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, internal medicine specialist, expert on gender/transgender issues. The medical delegate can do an initial check.

In the task team interaction with this matter ASA and IAAF conducted gender tests in SA and Berlin with no panel of such specialists as envisaged above was established to do a medical evaluation of Caster both in South Africa and in Berlin.

d) Accordingly, the steps to be followed in handling cases of gender ambiguity, the following must happen:

The athlete is referred to the investigating authority in confidence for further investigation and advice; The verdict is passed on to the national federation with advice for further action including appropriate advice to the athlete as the need to withdraw from competition until the problem is definitively resolved through appropriate medical and surgical measures;

There is evidence that Caster was not taken into confidence, because Nick Davis, the IAAF spokesperson, disclosed in a press conference publicly that such tests will be conducted on Caster. The alleged tests results were also leaked to the international media.

It is the view of the task team that the gender verification of Caster was not in accordance with the gender verification policy of the IAAF as demonstrated through the above facts. It is for the reasons above that we therefore call for the nullification of the results as they have been compromised. They cannot therefore be used for any decision-making.

The task team will continue its role to give whatever support that Caster and her family might need. It is also on-course regarding the articulation of a celebration programme for Caster, Mulaudzi and Mokoena. The programme that began with the gala dinner of the ANC Youth League will be carried forward with an intense eight weeks of activities from December 2009 to January 2010. The programme will include provincial and national activities.

The task team has established the support Caster contact facility and has received positive and encouraging feedback, pledges and commitments by individuals and institutions in support of the campaign.

People can call, fax or e-mail the task team office at:

Tel (011) 376 1052
Fax: 0866581053
Email: supportcaster@anc.org.za

Total Third Quarter Profits Down by Half

Total Q3 profit halved, but better than expected

Associated Press

PARIS_Total SA, Europe’s third-largest oil company, reported Wednesday that profits were more than halved in the third quarter, due to a sharp fall in energy prices, but were still somewhat better than expected.

Total posted third quarter adjusted net profit of euro1.9 billion ($2.8 billion), 54 percent below the year ago figure of euro4.1 billion but ahead of the euro1.8 billion that analysts forecast.

Adjusted profit is a key oil industry measure that excludes inventory gains and losses and tax charges and credits.

Total’s earnings were on par with the steep drop in third quarter profits already reported by larger rivals Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP PLC. The industry is struggling to adapt to lower demand and the volatility in oil prices that has seen the price of a barrel spike to nearly $150 last July, then stage a retreat back to around $30 early this year.

Barclays Capital oil and gas industry analyst Lucy Haskins said Total’s third quarter production increase was reassuring, and that with new fields starting up this year, “should continue to show improvements into 2010.” Haskins rates Total’s shares at overweight relative to the oil and gas sector.

During the third quarter, Brent crude averaged $68 a barrel, while on Tuesday oil traded around $77 a barrel.

Experts say prices have not risen solely because of improving demand, but mostly due to the fall in the value of the dollar.

The U.S. currency is used to buy and sell crude, so when it depreciates investors holding euros or other relatively strong currencies can buy more crude.

Last week Shell CFO Simon Henry said there are “few if any signs of demand recovering” in Europe, while the improvement seen in U.S. demand “is not firm enough to call a recovery.”

Oil demand in developed countries is forecast to shrink by 4.7 percent this year due to the global economic slowdown, and to grow only 0.1 percent in 2010, according to the International Energy Agency.

Analysts expect crude prices to remain well above the levels seen in the first quarter of this year as they forecast the economy to revive, helping oil companies post higher quarterly profits in 2010.

Total has also suffered from falling production over the past year, due to lower output from existing fields and slow startup of new fields as well as security disruptions at a field in Nigeria and cutbacks by OPEC.

Production fell 2 percent last year and 6 percent in the first half of 2009. Total’s output finally returned to growth in the third quarter, pumping an average of 2.2 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, or 1 percent more than a year earlier.

Production is still down 4 percent for the first nine months of the year, though, and Total doesn’t forecast a return to full-year growth in output until next year.

The company said output was lifted by ramping up production in fields in Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as in new fields in Norway, Angola and Qatar. Total said it is pursuing new projects in Bolivia, Algeria and Thailand with the aim of further lifting production.

These investments accounted for some of the $12.2 billion that Total invested in its operations through the first nine months of the year. It has budgeted $18 billion of investments this year, excluding acquisitions, as it aims to find new fields to replace declining production from older sites.

In midday trading on the Paris stock exchange Total shares were flat at euro40.97.

UN agency helps officials in Cape Verde tackle outbreak of dengue fever

Officials from the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) are at work in the Atlantic Ocean archipelago of Cape Verde to help local authorities battle the country’s first reported epidemic of dengue fever.

Today on New Scientist: 6 November 2009

Today’s stories on newscientist.com, at a glance, including: how to end the epidemic of short-sightedness, the future of computer graphics, and why human microbes are total NIMBYs