EU-MENA revolution consolidation

[vanlose kid]

starting this up to keep a tab on all things having to do with people rising against TPTB/TBTF. chip in with links etc.

first up:

Mutiny On The Acropolis: Greek Protesters Seize Finance Ministry

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/03/2011 15:16 -0400

Someone keep an eye on Waddell and Reed at all times. Repeat: all times. Because once they, and the market, and the Troica realize that the passage of Bailout 2 will lead to a revolution, it will get very, very interesting.



From Press TV:

Protesters belonging to the left-wing The All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) union unfolded a giant banner from the roof of the finance ministry building on the central Syntagma square, calling for a nationwide strike against the new austerity measures that the government agreed to take in return for the new bailout package.

"From dawn today forces of PAME have symbolically occupied the finance ministry, calling on workers to rise, organize their struggle and prevent the government's barbarous and anti-popular measures from passing," the front said, AFP reported.

Angry citizens in the country have now, for a tenth consecutive day, held anti-government demonstrations against the austerity measures.

Protesters have set up a camp in the central square of the capital, in a move modeled after the Spanish M-15 movement and the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.

The new bailout plan will mean harsher austerity measures, as it is aimed at reducing the 2011 budget deficit by EUR 6.5 billion. PAME said the new plan would “turn workers into slaves.”


The plan, however, is set to be approved by EU finance ministers on June 20. Additionally, the government will also commence its EUR 50 billion privatization program.

Greece received a EUR 110 billion EU-IMF bailout loan last year, as it faced a massive debt crisis, but did not manage to resolve its financial problems.

Since last year, Greece has witnessed massive anti-government protests which turned violent at times and left scores of protesters and security forces dead or injured.

A poll conducted recently found that the majority of Greeks no longer have confidence their government can pull the country out of its national debt.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/mutiny ... e-ministry

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and this from the Wall St. thread:

The Greek "Ultimatum": Bailout (For The Bankers) And (Loss Of) Sovereignty
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/29/2011 19:19 -0400


So after one year of beating around the bush, it is finally made clear that, as many were expecting all along, the ultimate goal of the Greek "bailouts" is nothing short of the state's (partial for now) annexation by Europe. According to an FT breaking news article, "European leaders are negotiating a deal that would lead to unprecedented outside intervention in the Greek economy, including international involvement in tax collection and privatisation of state assets, in exchange for new bail-out loans for Athens. People involved in the talks said the package would also include incentives for private holders of Greek debt voluntarily to extend Athens’ repayment schedule, as well as another round of austerity measures." Thus Greece is faced with the banker win-win choice, of not only abandoning sovereignty, a first in modern "democratic" history, in the pursuit of "Greek" policies that are beneficial for Europe, or not get a bailout, which would only serve to prevent senior bondholder impairments. How could Greek leaders and its population possibly not accept such an attractive option which either leaves the country as another Olli Rehn protectorate, or forces it to not bailout Europe's overleveraged banker class. In essence Europe is now convinced, just like Hank Paulson was on September 14, 2008, that the downstream effects from letting Greece implode are manageable. But the key development is that the Greek bankruptcy, which from the beginning, and as Peter Tchir's note below demonstrates, was always simply a Greek choice, was just made that much easier.

From the FT:

People involved in the talks said the package would also include incentives for private holders of Greek debt voluntarily to extend Athens’ repayment schedule, as well as another round of austerity measures.

Officials hope that as much as half of the €60bn-€70bn ($86bn-$100bn) in new financing needed by Athens until the end of 2013 could be accounted for without new loans. Under a plan advocated by some, much of that would be covered by the sale of state assets and the change in repayment terms for private debtholders.

Eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund would then need to lend an additional €30bn-€35bn on top of the €110bn already promised as part of the bail-out programme agreed last year.

Officials warned, however, that almost every element of the new package faced significant opposition from at least one of the governments and institutions involved in the current negotiations and a deal could still unravel.

In the latest setback, the Greek government failed on Friday to win cross-party agreement on the new austerity measures, which European Union lenders have insisted is a prerequisite to another bail-out.

In addition, the European Central Bank remains opposed to any restructuring of Greek debt that could be considered a “credit event” – a change in terms that could technically be ruled a default.

One senior European official involved in the talks, however, said ECB objections could be overcome if the rescheduling was structured properly.

Despite the hurdles, pressure is building to have a deal done within three weeks because of an IMF threat to withhold its portion of June’s €12bn bail-out payment unless Athens can show it can meet all its financing requirements for the next 12 months.

And the latest set of very timely observations from TF Market's Peter Tchir.

You Can Lead A Trojan Horse To Water But You Can't Make Him Drink

Restructuring in one form or another seems imminent rather than years away

Well, it seems as though this week's news flow has spurred the mainstream media into action. Everywhere you look there are stories about the Greek credit crisis. It is encouraging to see that more of them now agree with my view that a restructuring would occur sooner rather than later. Only a month ago, almost every article and every piece of official street research made it clear that a restructuring was at least a year off, if not longer. I demonstrated why I thought that opinion was wrong, and although I haven't been proven correct yet, I am no longer in a tiny minority. Restructuring (reprofiling or default or whatever you want to call it) will not be easy, but I remain convinced that it is the best outcome for Greece and in the long run will be the best outcome for Europe even with the short term pain it will cause.

There is growing scrutiny of the ECB's actions and motivations

It has also become painfully obvious to everyone that the actions of the ECB are making any resolution more difficult. Someone, other than me, has now called the ECB 'pathological' in their resistance to restructuring. The ECB, led by Trichet, made a major mistake in their purchase of Greek bonds in the secondary market. It is unclear what they intended to gain (other than a short squeeze) as Greece was not tapping the capital markets for new bond deals. If Trichet worked at a real bank, he would have been fired by now, or allowed 'to pursue time with his family'. Someone who was not part of the bad decision would be brought in to oversee the positions. The ECB needs to change personnel immediately and bring in someone fresh to be part of the negotiations who can focus on what is best going forward and not on how best to cover up previous mistakes.

It is Greece's decision to default or not, NOT the ECB's or EU's

I continue to be confused by the fact that most people talk about the issue from the lender's perspective. "Should Greece be allowed to default?" "Does it teach Greece a bad lesson if they let them walk away? " "Won't Greece just default again if the ECB lets them walk away?"

The reality is the IMF, or ECB, or EU can offer money to Greece, but it is Greece's decision to borrow more to pay off old debts. Only Greece can decide to make payments and not default or demand restructuring. Other entities or countries can make it easier for Greece to kick the can down the road, but in the end, only Greece can decide whether or not to pay its bills.

The people of Greece seem to prefer default. It is fairly clear that this is not a short term liquidity problem, but a longer term solvency problem for Greece. Greece has some assets it can sell, but as I have said time and again, they will still have those assets to secure new funds after a default/restructuring. I continue to believe it is in the best interest of Greece to default and it is their decision, no one else's. It may be bad for the rest of Europe if Greece defaults, but that really should not be the priority of the Greek government.

If Greece defaults, the creditors can then take steps to enforce their rights. If a person fails to pay on their mortgage, the banks can enact their rights to foreclose. If a U.S. company fails to pay its debt, creditors will suit, and the company and debtors will typically resolve the issue in the courts under Chapter 11 or Chapter 7. There are similar statutes for corporate defaults in other countries. The real reason that we are hearing so much about this from the lenders perspective, rather than the borrowers, is because it is not very clear what the lenders' rights are if Greece stops paying.

If Greece stops paying, the lenders cannot 'foreclose' on it. There is no law that dictates how to proceed like chapter 11 does. The bonds have very few if any covenants. The lawsuits would have to be won in Greek courts and then enforced by people employed by the Greek government. Good luck with that.

The reason the lenders have an almost irrational need to avoid a default, is they don't know what they will get if Greece does default. There is no good way to analyze it. Their ultimate recovery will be based on some threats of future lending, rights of set-off, and maybe some threats of trade sanctions, but unlike a mortgage or a corporate bond, there is no good way to analyze the potential outcome. There is a reason 'vulture' funds focus on corporate debt much more than sovereign - there is a way to analyze the outcomes, it is not just guess work.

So people can continue to comment on whether Greece should be allowed to default, but that misses the point. Lenders can make it easy for Greece to make payments, but choosing to default or not remains solely a Greek decision and they should do what is best for them.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/greece ... overeignty

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[vanlose kid]

previous related threads:

15 May 2011: Spain awakens (?)

Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

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edit to add:

[url=http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=406004#p406004]
The Arab Summer: All Out War?[/url]

The Libya thread

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[vanlose kid]

one of the reasons i've started this thread is i've been following spain, greece, syria and yemen lately and had no idea where to post what i'd read.

Yemen fears anarchy after attack on president Ali Abdullah Saleh

Saleh remains defiant as violence grows with peaceful polls a remote prospect amid succession doubts

Tom Finn and Ian Black
guardian.co.uk, Friday 3 June 2011 20.11 BST

Yemeni protests against Ali Abdullah Saleh
Yemeni anti-regime protesters crowd into central Sana’a calling for the ousting of Ali Abdullah Saleh following Friday prayers. Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP

The capital of Yemen is famous for its picturesque gingerbread houses, but in the last few days Sana'a has echoed to the sound of gunfire and explosions as President Ali Abdullah Saleh faces a last battle that could determine whether the country teeters into all-out anarchy.

Saleh survived what looked like a direct attempt to kill him when shells crashed into a mosque in his palace compound, reportedly leaving him lightly wounded but still defiant in the face of demands at home and abroad that he step down. The conflict looks more dangerous than ever now.

For nearly two weeks Yemenis have watched armed men crouching at makeshift barricades or firing from rooftops, the wounded bundled screaming into cars in a grim landscape of urban warfare. In Taiz, Yemen's industrial capital, police fired directly into crowds of unarmed demonstrators.

"In Change Square [Sana'a's tent encampment and homage to Cairo's Tahrir square] you can hear the bullets," Hamza al Shargabi, a surgeon and blogger, reported gloomily on Thursday. "The truce has failed. The fighting has become more and more fierce."

Yemen's version of the Arab spring is like the country itself — volatile, idiosyncratic and complex. Libya and Syria are racked by violence, too. But nowhere are events so hard to understand and the outcome more uncertain as in the land once known as "Arabia Felix", or happy Arabia.

Ironically, Saleh had been looking forward to 2011. In January parliament approved in principle a constitutional amendment that would have paved the way for him to extend his 32-year-rule indefinitely. In March, as protests swelled, he pledged not to stand again but still seemed determined to hang on.

Now, though, the former tank driver faces a final battle for survival. In the heart of the capital his bitterest rivals control key ministries, the ruling party HQ and one of the main police stations. The US, his uneasy partner in the war on terror, is ratcheting up the pressure – via a still hesitant Saudi Arabia next door – for Saleh to pack up and go into exile.

Initially the Obama administration refused to call on him to stand down, seeing him as a bulwark against al-Qaida, a view the Yemeni president was only to happy to encourage as it guaranteed him financing and support from Washington. But as Saleh's crackdown becomes ever more violent, that position has become untenable, even if it remains unclear what or who might follow him.

Yemen's many conflicts long pre-date the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, but they acted as a powerful catalyst – and a pretext for Saleh's enemies to act and to pursue old rivalries.

"Yemenis had been demanding change for 16 years since the civil war in 1994," said Muhammad al-Qutabi, a leading opposition activist and former senior government official. "Saleh agreed an agenda but he has reneged on it. The Arab spring encouraged Yemenis to come out to demand a better future."

If the protest movement has been slow-moving, its gains have been huge. Demonstrators have broken a wall of fear and given birth to a new way of life. Change Square started out with a bunch of rowdy students rattling the gates of Sana'a University to celebrate Hosni Mubarak's downfall. Now it is a fully-fledged shanty-town packed with poets, musicians, actors, art galleries, football tournaments and other portents of the nascent democracy so many of them are striving for.

The lines of dusty tents contain Yemenis from all walks of life: mutinous army officers, dissident tribal sheikhs, grey-haired socialists and young pro-democracy activists. In their midst are thousands of women, defying authority as well as the weight of tradition. In a country where most women are neither seen nor heard, the sight of 10,000 of them marching down a six-lane motorway in mid-April after Saleh accused them of "mingling with men" was too much for some to bear.

Tawakul Karman, the head of Women Journalists Without Chains, has become a much-admired figure agitating for press freedoms and staging sit-ins to demand the release of political prisoners. Her success in bringing so many protesters out, and keeping it largely peaceful, is a remarkable achievement

But this may be lost in the shadows of a looming war. On 23 May, after snubbing a third attempt at mediation by his Gulf neighbours, Saleh sent his forces to take on the leaders of Yemen's most powerful tribe, the Hashid, who have been bankrolling the opposition and supporting hundreds of thousands of protesters on the streets. It reinforced his reputation for ruthlessness – and for taking risks. The shootout between tribesmen and Saleh loyalists has left over 200 people dead.

Saleh's latest battle with the tribes, which he managed to juggle dexterously – and has famously compared to "dancing on the heads of snakes" – is part of a desperate attempt to prevent his downfall.

It is unclear who might replace him. The Gulf accord envisages elections within 60 days of a caretaker president taking over. But now, with the power struggle moving from negotiating table into the streets, the prospect of peaceful polls seems fanciful. It is just as likely that another strongman will push Saleh and his regime aside.

The man who may decide whether the violence fizzles out or flares is not the president but his half-brother, Ali al-Mohsen, a renegade general. Mohsen has been lurking on the sidelines, nervously keeping watch over the protesters in Change Square. He has called on his men to defy the president. "Beware of following this madman who is thirsty for more bloodshed," he said.

Elsewhere, swaths of Yemen are simply slipping out of Saleh's grasp. Zanjibar on the gulf of Aden is now under the control of 300 gunmen the government has described as al-Qaida militants – a sure way of engaging the attention of the US. Government forces have been pounding the city from the air but to no avail.

"Saleh is playing his last cards – to prove that only he can maintain stability," said journalist Abubakr al-Shamahi. "The question is whether people will buy that."

Away from the streets, there remains a significant silent majority who are too bogged down in the day-to-day struggle to exist to go out protesting. But with an economy marked by corruption, poverty and 40% unemployment, the uncommitted may have to take sides.

Yemeni and foreign experts alike warn that there is no quick or easy solution in sight. "If Saleh is removed from the equation tomorrow it still doesn't solve Yemen's problems," said Ginny Hill of the Chatham House thinktank. "It's not so much a fight between the government and the tribes as one between elite factions, though one of those does control a significant part of the instruments of the Yemeni state. We are not looking at a single transition but cycles of transition. Everything in Yemen is contested."

Abdulghani Iryani, a respected Sana'a analyst, is adamant: "Saleh's continuation in office will make civil war inevitable."

Yet the president, some argue, could be put under far heavier pressure from the west and the Saudis to sign and implement the Gulf deal. Sanctions, assets freezes and the sort of measures applied to Libya have not even been tried. "Saleh is unpredictable, devious and untrustworthy," said al-Qutabi. "But if he feels people breathing down his neck he will sign."
In numbers

17.9

Estimated median age in the country (by far the youngest population in the Middle East, by this measure)

23.6m

The population (2009) of Yemen, which has one of the world's highest birth rates, is increasing by 700,000 a year

64.9

Life expectancy at birth. Healthcare services are scarce in rural areas; only 25% of which are covered

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ju ... dent-saleh

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Yemen slides towards all-out war after President Saleh survives rocket attack

Government claims attack on presidential compound was 'attempted coup' as fighting intensifies in Sana'a


Ian Black, Middle East editor and Shatha al-Harazi in Sana'a
The Guardian, Saturday 4 June 2011

Yemen violence
The latest violence in Yemen is likely to lead to Saudi Arabian calls for Saleh to step down. Photograph: Hani Mohammed/AP

Yemen's embattled president survived an apparent attempt to kill him on Friday as fighting intensified in Sana'a amid warnings that the country is sliding inexorably into all-out war.

Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled Yemen for 32 years, emerged lightly injured but defiant from his compound in the capital after shells or a missile hit a mosque inside, killing three guards and a cleric and injuring two other senior government figures.

The incident fuelled growing anxieties that the Arab uprisings, which have brought dramatic changes to Egypt and Tunisia, are turning Yemen – the Arab world's poorest country – into something far more volatile and dangerous.

The government accused Saleh's bitter rival, Hamid al-Ahmar of the opposition Islah party, of launching the attack, and government forces immediately shelled his mansion in Sana'a.

"The al-Ahmars have committed a great crime, and crossed a red line," said Tareq al-Shami, a government spokesman. "This was an attempted coup, and the government will take all necessary measures."

Sadeq al-Ahmar, head of the powerful Hashid tribal federation, blamed Saleh himself for the shelling, saying it was carried out to help justify the government's escalation of streetfighting in the capital.

Saleh, who was treated at a military hospital, was reported to be preparing to give a press conference later. An opposition TV station initially reported him dead, which made headlines around the world.

Abdul Ghani al-Iryani, a Yemeni political analyst, told al-Jazeera TV it was "quite reasonable to assume" that Ahmar's fighters were behind the palace attack. "[The tribesmen] probably wanted him to know that [Saleh] can no longer attack them with impunity, and that they can reach him as he can reach them," Iryani said.

Other regional analysts say the chances for a democratic or peaceful transition of power in Yemen are slim.

It was a violent end to a violent week. On Thursday government jets strafed roads and villages north of Sana'a as thousands of tribesmen tried to enter the capital to fight Saleh loyalists. Residents described an atmosphere of fear and alarm at food shortages and rising prices.

Saleh has reneged on a deal brokered by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states under which he would step down in return for an amnesty and free elections.

The US, which has leaned on Saleh in its fight against al-Qaida, has increased pressure for him to go, blaming the bloodshed on his backpedalling from the agreement. Britain and the EU are also pushing hard for him to implement the deal.

The latest violence is likely to persuade Saudi Arabia, which has strong ties with the Yemeni tribes, to press Saleh to step aside, to avert disaster in a country where half the population owns a gun.

The attack on the president came after Friday prayers, with heavy artillery repeatedly striking the presidential compound and shaking nearby buildings.

The streets were deserted after many residents fled the city for the safety of nearby villages.

"People there were happy to hear that he [the president] had been killed, but then the government denied that," said Ibrahim Mothana, 22, a student. "It means we will experience an escalation and it will probably be more violent."

Another resident told the Guardian: "The streets are empty. I managed to go out yesterday to buy food but prices are going up daily. In the street where I live all the families have gone back to their villages and just left a family member to stay behind to look after the house. There must be more than 100,000 in total who have left the city."

The foreign secretary, William Hague, said: "British Nationals in Yemen should leave immediately while commercial flights are still operating. Given that we cannot expect forewarning of any airport closures, British nationals should not wait to leave. We have already said that in such a difficult security situation it is extremely unlikely the British government will be able to evacuate British nationals. In light of the latest escalations, I cannot restate this strongly enough. You should not plan for, nor expect, the British government to be in a position to assist you to reach safety."

The European Union high representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, deplored the loss of life and said the EU would help EU citizens wishing to leave Yemen. "I have repeatedly urged President Saleh to listen to the demands of the Yemeni people and transfer power," she added.

The US emphasised the need for an orderly transfer of power. "Violence cannot resolve the issues that confront Yemen, and today's events cannot be a justification for a new round of fighting," a White House spokesman said. President Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, spent two days this week trying to persuade the Saudis and the UAE to boost efforts to help end the violence.

On Thursday, the official Yemeni news agency said the government was, again, willing to endorse the Gulf-brokered transition agreement.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ju ... llah-saleh

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[vanlose kid]

Middle East live blog: Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and Middle East unrest – Friday 3 June

• Yemen's president injured and others killed in attack
• President Saleh makes audio statement on state TV
• Bahrain wins Formula 1 reprieve despite protests
• Military in Syria attack protesters, multiple deaths
• UN to meet Libyan rape victim deported from Doha

•

[vanlose kid]

Tortured and killed: Hamza al-Khateeb, age 13
The mutilation and death in custody of a 13-year-old child has sparked further furious protests in Syrian city of Daraa.
Hugh Macleod and Annasofie Flamand Last Modified: 31 May 2011 12:11


Many tributes to Hamza al-Khateeb, such as this one drawn by a child, have been posted to the Facebook group set up to commemorate his life - and death [Facebook]

Hamza al-Khateeb used to love it when the rains came to his small corner of southern Syria, filling up the farmers' irrigation channels enough so that he and the other children could jump in and swim.

But the drought of the last few years had left the 13-year-old without the fun of his favourite pool.

Instead, he'd taken to raising homing pigeons, standing on the roof of his family's simple breeze-block home, craning his neck back to see the birds circling above the wide horizon of fields, where wheat and tomatoes were grown from the tough, scrubby soils.

Though not from a wealthy family himself, Hamza was always aware of others less fortunate than himself, said a cousin who spoke to Al Jazeera.

"He would often ask his parents for money to give to the poor. I remember once he wanted to give someone 100 Syrian Pounds ($2), and his family said it was too much. But Hamza said, 'I have a bed and food while that guy has nothing.' And so he persuaded his parents to give the poor man the 100."

In the hands of President Bashar al-Assad's security forces, however, Hamza found no such compassion, his humanity degraded to nothing more than a lump of flesh to beat, burn, torture and defile, until the screaming stopped at last.

Arrested during a protest in Saida, 10km east of Daraa, on April 29, Hamza's body was returned to his family on Tuesday 24th May, horribly mutilated.

The child had spent nearly a month in the custody of Syrian security, and when they finally returned his corpse it bore the scars of brutal torture: Lacerations, bruises and burns to his feet, elbows, face and knees, consistent with the use of electric shock devices and of being whipped with cable, both techniques of torture documented by Human Rights Watch as being used in Syrian prisons during the bloody three-month crackdown on protestors.

Hamza's eyes were swollen and black and there were identical bullet wounds where he had apparently been shot through both arms, the bullets tearing a hole in his sides and lodging in his belly.

On Hamza's chest was a deep, dark burn mark. His neck was broken and his penis cut off.

"Where are the human rights committees? Where is the International Criminal Court?" asks the voice of the man inspecting Hamza's body on a video uploaded to YouTube.

"A month had passed by with his family not knowing where he was, or if or when he would be released. He was released to his family as a corpse. Upon examining his body, the signs of torture are very clear."

The original clip has since been removed, but a version with Hamza's castrated genitals blurred is still running [Note: this video is extremely graphic].

"When Hamza's mother came to see the body she was only shown his face," said the cousin, who was present at the time.

"We tried to tell the father not to look, but he pulled the blanket back. When he saw Hamza's body he fainted. People ran to help him and some started filming - it was chaos."

'He just disappeared'

April 29 was dubbed "The Friday of Ending the siege on Deraa", the border city where the torture of children had lit the spark for the Syrian uprising and where Maher al-Assad's forces lead the assault on a civilian population that killed hundreds.

Hamza didn't burn for politics, said his cousin, "but everybody seemed to be going to the protest, so he went along as well," walking with friends and family the 12km along the road from his home town of Jeezah north-west to Saida.

The firing began almost as soon as the villagers reached the edge of Saida, said the cousin.

"People were killed and wounded, some were arrested. It was chaotic we didn't know at that point what had happened to Hamza. He just disappeared."

A second source from the region, an activist, also spoke to Al Jazeera, confirming that Hamza had been among 51 protesters detained on April 29, he said, by Airforce Intelligence, which a number of detainees have reported as using brutal torture.

"They were all arrested by the anti-terrorism branch of the Airforce Intelligence," said the activist.

"They were all alive when they went into prison, but we received 13 bodies back this week and all had been tortured. The Airforce Intelligence are notorious for torture, they're barbarians. We're expecting another dozen bodies back in the coming days."

Responding to the video of Hamza's mutilated body, Syria's only private TV station, the pro-regime Al Dunia, aired an interview (Arabic) with a forensic doctor from Damascus' Tishreen Militarily Hospital.

Dr. Akram al-Shaar, who claimed to have supervised the autopsy of Hamza in Tishreen, said he found no signs of torture, claiming the marks on Hamza's body had been caused by natural decomposition.

Dr Shaar's testimony, however, is also the first public admission by a Syrian official that civilians arrested or injured or killed during the military assault on the Deraa region have been collected and transported to security facilities in Damascus.

Earlier this month, the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies (DCHRS) reported that the bodies of 244 civilians killed in the military assault on Deraa had been transported to Tishreen Military hospital, consistent with an apparent systematic regime campaign, first reported by Al Jazeera, to disrupt the treatment of dead and dying protestors.

After Hamza's body was filmed so the world could see how he died, the boy was buried in Jizah after last prayers for his soul in the local mosque. Following the ceremony, children walked through the streets of Jizah holding up a photo of Hamza and a banner that said he died a martyr, 13-years-old, under the brutal torture of the security forces.

All foreign media are barred from Syria but experienced local journalists and human rights researchers found no reason to doubt the authenticity of the footage of Hamza.

'A crime against humanity'

Hamza's father, Ali al-Khateeb, wanted to press charges against the army and security forces, said Hamza's cousin. Instead, Ali and his wife were visited by the secret police and threatened.

"They said: 'Enough of what has happened because of you already. You know what would happen if we heard you had spoken to the media,'" said Hamza's mother, clearly terrified as she spoke to the local activist, refusing to give further details on the circumstances of her son's arrest or death.

Hamza's father was briefly detained late Saturday afternoon, said his wife, after the secret police demanded he tell state media that Hamza was killed by armed Salafists, Sunni Muslim extremists, which the regime has claimed are driving the popular uprising.

"The father was asked to go to the security branch for half an hour so they could tell him their point of view about Hamza," said the cousin. "He was well treated."

Torture in Syrian prisons, long known as some of the worst in the world, is now "rampant" according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

"When you have mass execution and torture it rises to the level of a crime against humanity. In Syria, it appears clear that this has become widespread and systematic," said Ricken Patel, director of Avaaz, which has been documenting human rights abuses in the country.

"This is a campaign of mass terrorism and intimidation: Horribly tortured people sent back to communities by a regime not trying to cover up its crimes, but to advertise them."

If advertising its crimes is indeed the regime's strategy then it appears to be working: Within hours of the video of Hamza's mutilated body going online a protest broke out in Daraa city by hundreds of furious residents, defying the ongoing military siege to express their outrage at Hamza's torture and killing.

"People here are really furious about what happened to Hamza and this is another sign that the secret police and the authorities are criminals who cannot be trusted to make any reforms," said the activist, who travels widely in the Deraa region.

A week after his body was returned, a Facebook page dedicated to Hamza had more than 60,000 followers, under the title, "We are all Hamza al-Khateeb", a deliberate echo of the online campaign on behalf of Khaled Saeed, the young Egyptian whose death in police custody last year proved a trigger for the revolution in Cairo.

From the other end of Syria, in the far north-east, Rezan Mustapha, spokesman of the opposition Kurdish Future Movement said he and others had also seen the horrifying footage.

"This video moved not only every single Syrian, but people worldwide. It is unacceptable and inexcusable. The horrible torture was done to terrify demonstrators and make them stop calling for their demands."

But, said Khateeb, protestors would only be spurred on by such barbarity.

"More people will now go to the street. We hold the Syrian secret police fully responsible for the torturing and killing of this child, even if they deny it."

Some reactions didn't need any words at all. Though only one among his 20 other children from two wives, Hamza's 65-year-old father Ali appeared no less devastated by Hamza's murder than if he had lost his only son.

"How would any family feel if they saw that video of their own child?" asked Hamza's cousin. "I have never seen Hamza's father cry in his entire life. Now we see only tears in his eyes."

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/fe ... 13389.html

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Hamzah Ali Alkhateeb, a boy of only 13 years, went with his family from Aljeezah in the march to break the siege in Deraa, he was among the unlucky hundreds detained during the massacre of Seda in front of the army barrier.

Hamzah's dead body was later handed over to his family with clear traces of torture, bruises all over his body, bullets have penetrated his corp, and even more... his gentile was cut and then he was killed.

Hamzah is only one of the thousands of victims of the murderous regime of Alassad.

The story of Hamza is unfortunately one of many. There are many men, women, children, elderly who have yet to be returned to their families. One cannot belive the amount of torture inflicted upon these unarmed civilians by the hateful and barbaric Syrian regime.

We kindly ask you to spread awareness about Syrian regime crimes. We must demand that the UN and Amnesty investigate the murder of this young child and many like him.

https://www.facebook.com/hamza.alshaheed

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[vanlose kid]

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Bahrain police 'suppress protest'
Eyewitnesses say police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters marching in capital, Manama.
Last Modified: 03 Jun 2011 16:21

Bahraini police have fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters marching against the government near the capital Manama, eyewitnesses say.

The crackdown on Friday came just two days after the tiny Gulf kingdom's authorities lifted emergency rule.

The protesters in Manama were marching adjacent to the city's Pearl Roundabout, which was the epicentre of weeks of protests against the kingdom's Sunni rulers, with demonstrators in particular demanding more rights for the island nation's majority Shia population.

There were no immediate reports of injuries during the protests, the eyewitnesses said. They spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals.

Witnesses said that police fired tear gas at a crowd of hundreds of people who had gathered to mourn Zainab Altajer, who died on Thursday. Opposition activists said she died as a result of exposure to tear gas, but the government said her death was due to natural causes.

The protesters marched through the village of Sanabis, adjacent to the Pearl roundabout.

Also on Friday, hundreds of mourners gathered at a cemetery in Manama to bury Salman Abu Idris, a 63-year old protester who died in hospital earlier in the day of injuries from a demonstration in March, a witness told Al Jazeera.

Security forces had set up multiple checkpoints around the cemetery in Gudaibya, where they were checking the identities of those attempting to attend the funeral, and refused entry to "many", the witness said.

He said that people at the funeral were "calm", and while some in the crowd did raise slogans against the ruling al-Khalifa family at one point, "not many people chanted with them".

He said some left after the funeral to protest at the slums near Bab al-Bahrain, but were stopped by security forces armed with tear gas and rubber bullets. It did not appear that security forces used these weapons in that confrontation, however.

The witness was speaking to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisals from the authorities.

Protests after emergency lifted

The Bahraini government lifted emergency rule in the country on Wednesday. Tanks and soldiers left the centre of the capital, but authorities warned that they would still not stand for any protests against the government. This came as opposition groups called on supporters to return to the streets.

This was the first such appeal for protests since the military raided the roundabout in February, and martial law was imposed in mid-March.

At least 31 people have been killed in Bahrain since the protests, inspired by revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, began on February 14.

Bahrain's rulers responded to the initial round of protests by inviting 1,500 troops from its Gulf neighbours (primarily from Saudi Arabia) to suppress the unrest under emergency laws.

Since the country lifted the emergency law on Wednesday, small protests have taken place in various villages and in Manama itself, rights groups have said. They said that they were met with tear gassing from the police.

"Instead of rights, every family got a political prisoner. Did the government expect people to stay at home?" said Nabeel Rajab, a leading activist and the Bahrain Center for Human Rights' president. "After almost three months of military rule, the crisis is deeper because every family has suffered when the army was sent to solve a political problem."

Hundreds of protesters, political leaders and Shia professionals like doctors and lawyers have been arrested and tried in a special security court, set up under martial law. Two protesters were sentenced to death.

Formula One on track

Also on Friday, Formula One's governing body decided at a meeting in Barcelona to allow Bahrain's Formula One Grand Prix to go ahead. The race had initially been scheduled for March, but has now been put on the calendar for October 30.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch, said the state of emergency appears to have been lifted partly "for the benefit" of the Formula One race.
Click here for more of Al Jazeera's special coverage

But he said the crisis in the country was continuing and that protesters remained at risk.

"The fact is ... the crisis is by no means over. Not only since [the lifting of emergency rule] have there been protests, violently suppressed ... but also the repression by which the government has kept quelled the protest movement in the last weeks continues. So large numbers of people are under incommunicado detention, at risk of torture. There are reports of torture continuing. There are layoffs right, left and centre against people who took part in the protests," he said.

"The abuses that we've seen in Bahrain actually predate the imposition of the state of emergency ... and it was clear that this state of emergency was lifted in part to send a message that everything is back to normal in Bahrain, and partly for the benefit of the Formula One movement.

"But the situation remains appalling. The repression is there. Obviously large numbers of people were killed during the protests, proportionate to the size of the country. This is a major crisis, and it's part of the wider situation in the Middle East."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middl ... 07409.html

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[vanlose kid]

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[vanlose kid]

'No humanity left' in Syria
By Cal Perry in Middle East on Sun, 04/24/2011 - 12:41.



Every other journalist is trying to get into Syria, but on Saturday I was trying to get out. The government had made it perfectly clear: My visa was expiring and unless I left on April 23, I would "face the full force of the law".

I had agreed the night before with my cameraman, Ben Mitchell, over a drink that neither of us wanted to discover what "full force of the law" meant. So the debate was really whether I should fly out from Damascus or drive to Amman, Jordan, and fly from there.

The decision was made that he would fly out from Damascus, the Syrian capital, with the gear and I would drive to Amman. I had left my second passport there with a friend. One for Arab countries and the other for Israel. Welcome to 21st century diplomatic relations.

I decided to wait until after noon prayers before setting out south to the border. If the roads were going to be blocked with various pieces of burning detritus, as they had the day before, I wanted to know first. It's about 125km from Damascus to the Jordanian border - a drive that should only take an hour or so, especially with the way Syrian drivers tend to step on the gas.

I was in a really bad mood on this particular morning as I was by default being expelled from the country. I said very little to the driver as we set out, which is unusual for me. I've been grilled in the old school style of journalism: I can still hear the voice of one of my mentors saying "eyes and ears Mr Perry ... eyes and ears".

The only two questions I asked my driver as we left Damascus were his name, and where he was from. "Abdel … from Daraa," he told me.

"Beautiful city," I responded.

Truth was: I didn't know if it was beautiful or not. It was less than four weeks ago when I tried to access the city (which lies right against the Jordanian border in the South) and was turned back by the army. It was my first week in Syria when we tried to cover the initial protests in Daraa. I remember coming across that army checkpoint and two machine-gun positions had been "pre-sighted".

'Kill zone'

An old military technique that I learned from the US Marine Corps about after years in Iraq: Soldiers will simply take two posts, put them at approximately "two o'clock and ten o'clock" as your eyes would scan the horizon: a certain distance out - fire off a few rounds until you hit the post. Then mark that spot on the machine guns sightings - and just like that ... you've got yourself a "pre-sighted kill zone".

A kill zone. The name says it all. US marines have a particular knack for naming things that describe exactly what they really are.

I knew that day, seeing those posts and that "kill zone" that the government was taking these small demonstrations (at the time) very seriously. Syria up until these past five weeks had been a quiet country, while the rest of the region seemed to continue to burn.

Of course it became clear the day before, on April the 22nd, that the government would no longer stand for the type of dissent that had spread: clear opposition to the regime. Over a hundred people were killed across the country on a bloody Friday, the bloodiest since the protests began.

I tried to get out of the hotel and around the country as best I could throughout my month there. But as I told a colleague: "I don't blend in really well - and this government is rounding up journalists."

It was really that, and a few bad incidents I had come across while trying to get out and about. Be it my camera being wrested away from me outside the main mosque in Damascus or my drive through the neighbourhood of Barza in Damascus the previous week.

Barzah: A bad neighbourhood to begin with ... it had gone from bad to worse the Friday I decided to drive through and take a look. Men with metal pipes were in the middle of the street beating people.

At least a dozen walking wounded were headed away from the main mosque there, some bleeding from the head; others had their hands bandaged. Clearly there had been a hand-to-hand brutal battle. Ambulances raced away from the scene - and each time I would have the driver circle back they would wave the pipes as if to say: "We dare you to get out of that car."

Gunfire raining into crowd

My grumpy attitude, Abdel [the driver] and I were approaching the city of Izraa when something immediately clearly horrible was unfolding down the road directly in front of us. People, mostly truck drivers, were standing on the highway ... yelling at the cars approaching - telling them to pull over.

Screaming and waving widely. I saw one making signs with his hands. He was mimicking the motion of a machine gun firing. I got my bearings, noticing right away two road signs: one pointing to the right that read "Izraa: 1km" and the other pointing to the left that read "Daraa".

It dawned on me at that moment that I had been here before. We were just outside the "kill zone" I had seen weeks earlier on the outskirts of Daraa.

About 50 metres from where we pulled over was an overpass that connected Daraa to Izraa. I could see clearly a crowd of people marching from my left to my right over the bridge.

Suddenly gunfire rained into the crowd. The truck drivers dove for cover. And, for what seemed like an eternity, I sat there in the car, stunned and frozen. People were falling on top of each other, being cut down like weeds in a field by what I think must have been a mix of both small arms fire and machine gun fire. I saw at least two children shot. They fell immediately. People were screaming. Gunfire rattled on.

Two cars tried to gun it under the overpass and continue down the highway, even with the gunfire continuing to cut people up. One of the cars got hit immediately before it passed under the bridge and ended up slamming into the embankment on the right side of the road. Someone fell out of the passenger side and scrambled under the bridge and crawled into a ball ... just hoping for survival, I suppose.

I've been playing it through over and over again in my head for the past 16 hours and I still do not know where the gunfire was coming from. It seemed to be coming from a field that lay off to my right - on the Izraa side of the bridge. I could see some muzzle flashes, but I've never in my life seen people walking, and just shot at indiscriminately.

I could not take my eyes off what was quickly becoming carnage. One of the last things I remember seeing clearly were people lying flat on the road, taking cover behind those who had already been wounded or shot dead ... lying in what must have been pools of blood to avoid a hail of flying hot hell.

Abdel's brain finally switched back on and he flung the car into reverse and headed backwards down the highway, laying on his car horn the entire time, weaving backwards through the cars that were now slowly approaching the spot where truck drivers were taking cover in the ditch. I was gripping the handle of the door so hard, I noticed my knuckles had gone totally white.

Mini-massacre

Abdel spun the car around, drove over the median and started driving back to Damascus. There was really nothing to say at that point. But out of immediate instinct, I rang our news desk in Doha. I can't remember what I said initially, but clearly it was enough for the editors to get an anchor up immediately to tape an interview over the phone, getting my fresh reaction to what I had seen.

I didn't know what to say honestly except it was clear security forces [or Assad loyalists, who are now, based on behaviour, part of the security forces] had just carried out a mini-massacre. I'm sure I repeated myself too many times, something you try not to do ... but this was unlike anything I had ever seen. After covering seven separate wars in as many years, I've never seen people march directly into a hail of gunfire.

As the interview was rapping up, we came across a heavy army checkpoint. We had driven through maybe a dozen on our way down, and the further we headed south, the more frequent they became. It was as if around 25km north of the Jordan border there was an invisible military zone that had been put up.

I didn't notice the ones on the other side of the highway, but as soon as we started approaching one (now driving back north), Abdel and I looked at each other. Immediately I apologised to Tony Harris [our anchor] and shoved the phone into my pocket, bringing a quick end to the interview.

Being seen talking on the phone as a journalist, right after fleeing that scene, we would have ended up in detention, there is not a doubt in my mind.

As we passed through the army checkpoint, the soldiers were smoking and laughing; looking at each other; smiling, waving us through various barriers. I can only describe it like what it felt to me: an evil grimace of enjoyment was on their faces. We were maybe, at the most, 3km from where I had just seen people cut down, bullets tearing their bodies into pieces. It was disgusting.

I turned to look at Abdel, to begin asking him a series of questions about the best way to proceed from that point on - and I saw a man of maybe 40 years old with a single tear running down his cheek. "Are you ok, habbibi," I asked like an idiot.

"Yes ... yes - but shou (what) … shou," he repeated … what do we have? There is no humanity here anymore."

'No humanity left'

After a few minutes of silence and many cigarettes passed back and forth we debated the best way for me to get out of the country. We debated it all the way back to Damascus.

In the end, Abdel and I agreed: make a run for the Lebanese border now, spending another night in Damascus; overstaying my visa to face the "full force of the law" after reporting what we had both just seen was not a smart idea.

So, off to the Lebanese capital Beirut we went.

Ironic that a place where I've seen a war and many clashes break out before was suddenly a seven-hour refugee for me as I waited for the first flight to any European city so I could then connect home to see my elderly and sick grandfather on Easter.

As I sit at this airport in Paris, writing this piece, watching people come and go, I am haunted by two thoughts: The first is a question I cannot answer. How can you shoot people like that? Just watch a crowd march towards you; sit in a firing position, wait ... watch; then fire directly into a crowd of civilians.

I did not see a single shot fired from the crowd in the few minutes we sat there watching people flail without any place to hide - a gut wrenching pink mist spraying strait in the air.

It is that thought, and the words of a young man from the southern city of Daraa speaking about the country he once loved, a country that has forever changed asking me rhetorically: "What do we have? There is no humanity here anymore."

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/ ... ft-syria-0

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[vanlose kid]

Spiegel Reports Greek Bailout #2 To Surpass €100 Billion
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/04/2011 13:45 -0400



It's the weekend, which means another Spiegel hit piece over the solvency and stability of the Eurozone is overdue. Sure enough, the publication comes through admirably with "New Greek aid to cost more than one hundred billion euros." As a reminder, until as recently as 24 hours ago it was expected that the bailout would be at most €80 billion, with half coming from Greek privatization efforts. Naturally, this means that even more money will be transferred from taxpayer pockets to bank capital deficiency accounts. Next up: Greek bailouts 3, 4, 5, by which point Goldman will have hopefully achieved its life long ambition of opening a Goldman Sachs-branded ATM at the main entrance to the Acropolis, which GS will have LBOed using discount window capital.

As for the photo from a May 30 protest which accompanies the Spiegel piece, it is sadly amusing that the Greek lady next to the EU Swastika flag is wearing designer glasses and a gold watch.

Google translated from Der Spiegel, although the gist is clear: the bailout, which has to be ratified by Greece, may be that more problematic now that even more Greek assets will have to be pledged to facilitate the ongoing colonization of Greece by its temporarily solvent Eurozone brethren.

A new aid program to Greece cost a lot more money than previously thought. Experts from the Federal Treasury and the so-called Troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) hold after SPIEGEL information a magnitude of more than one hundred billion euros for possible when the Greeks in 2013 and 2014, foreign aid also depends should be. Cause of cost increases, the Greek government bonds, for the 2014 follow-up financing is required.

Hamburg - It is once again really expensive: a new aid program to Greece cost a lot more money than previously thought. Experts from the Federal Treasury and the so-called Troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) hold after SPIEGEL information a magnitude of more than one hundred billion euros for possible when the Greeks in 2013 and 2014, foreign aid also depends should be. Cause of cost increases, the Greek government bonds, for the 2014 follow-up financing is required.

At a meeting of senior officials from the Euro-zone last Wednesday rejected Financial Secretary Jörg Asmussen details of a new program participants after, if present investors in some of their claims on Greece to give private, too. It is not enough that private investors their money more freely in the country were, as suggesting the ECB.

He stood alone against the rest of the euro zone. Asmussen indirectly threatened at the meeting with a state bankruptcy Greece . His colleagues, he explained that the private sector is not the consent of the Bundestag's participation will be without - and without any new program. Without new tools but the country was soon face bankruptcy.

Asmussen had strict instructions to get away from Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) to agree to any solution, unscathed by the private investors. not the money for the new program must come solely from public funds, Schäuble announced before the meeting as a line of travel. The State went three clock on Thursday morning apart without result. Now the Finance Minister should, at their meeting on 20th June come to a conclusion.

Discussions in Berlin, protest in Athens

At the conclusion of the Troika talks Schäuble made this Saturday once again that he wants the government in Athens, but also private creditors to accept strict liability to remediate Greece. It was "clear that further measures in the fiscal area and in the privatization by the Greek government will be required. The private creditors will have to make a voluntary contribution."

Such a move, however, is tricky because it could trigger a disastrous chain reaction in the balance sheets of the creditors. Thus, the rating agency Standard & Poor's warned in a Reuters news agency this report when creditors de facto to a voluntary waiver would forced to claims because they were at risk otherwise even higher losses, would the government bonds with the default status of "default" is provided. As a result, such as credit default swaps could be due.

The joint expert report by the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission should officially presented next week. Schäuble: "Then we will evaluate it carefully and circle the euro-zone countries will decide on further steps as soon as the report is available, we will also inform the German Bundestag immediately.."

On Friday the troika had been in talks with the Greek government the way cleared for the next installment from the first aid package , the total volume of 110 billion €, and has one year to the way well before had been brought. Now, additional 12 billion flow to Athens. The fact that it solved the problems are not, at this stage was already clear. Therefore, additional financial help in sight.

FDP chairman Rainer Brüderle announced that the Bundestag would not be waving another utility easily. He has already made conditions for approval of the planned Euro-emergency funds. The "Hamburger Abendblatt" he said, not aid from the bailout fund for €-countries are expected to be decided, against the will of the primary financers of Germany. "The federal budget is no self-service store for countries that get into difficulties."

Brüderle also said that in the Greek crisis debt restructuring "makes sense at a time X may be" could. "But Greece is not a protectorate." The decision falls in Athens. The country must decide whether to stay in the monetary union, according to former Federal Minister of Economics. "A withdrawal may be technically possible, but the Greeks would have significantly more difficult for a return to drachma."

In Greece, more resistance to the planned austerity measures and privatizations. The two most influential Greek unions Saturday in Athens against the privatization of state enterprises at the protest. Despite a call for a mass demonstration took part but only about 1,000 people at the protest. Most of them are employees of the state electricity utility PPC, port workers and teachers. Only on Friday demonstrators had occupied the Ministry of Finance .

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/spiege ... 00-billion

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[stefano]

Thanks for all this. What's special about Waddell & Reed? (In the first article by Tyler Durden.)

[vanlose kid]

Thanks for all this. What's special about Waddell & Reed? (In the first article by Tyler Durden.)

history:

Publicity related to "Flash Crash" on May 6, 2010

According to a Chicago Mercantile Exchange document obtained by Reuters, exchange officials focused on futures transactions made by Waddell & Reed during the May 6, 2010 flash crash because it sold 75,000 E-mini S&P on that day, the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped at least 7% in about 15 minutes. However, an exchange spokesman would not confirm the document. Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in testimony before Congress[4] said one sale was indeed large, but did not say who executed the trade. He said the CFTC had no evidence that the trader "did anything wrong."[5] Waddell & Reed has denied being the cause of this stock market crash.[6]

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... _6.2C_2010

embedded links and refs at wiki.

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edit: Exclusive: Waddell is mystery trader in market plunge

(Reuters) - A big mystery seller of futures contracts during the market meltdown last week was not a hedge fund or a high-frequency trader as many have suspected, but money manager Waddell & Reed Financial Inc, according to a document obtained by Reuters.

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edit: yr welcome stefano. here's a bit more on W&R: http://leverageacademy.com/blog/2010/05 ... n-may-6th/

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[undead]

PAME means "we go" or "let's go".

About PAME
PAME is a Trade Union Front. It is open, democratic, unifying and it pursues to have among its members the most active, fighting forces of the trade union movement. It has got panhellenic characteristics and focuses on every working field and production branch, in the Public and Private Sector, with no exceptions.

PAME was founded on April 3rd 1999, through the Panhellenic Meeting, held at the Piece and Frienship Stadium , Faliro, Athens, with the participation of 230 trade unions, 18 branch and peripheral associations and 2.500 elected union members.

From 1999 until 2008 PAME has held three (3) Panhellenic Meetings.

The most active Greek trade unions are members of PAME. These are the unions that go on with the class struggle and fight for the abolition of the human exploitation by other humans.

PAME, from its foundation till this very day, has guarded its special character, as a whole, class Trade Union Front, which connects people who struggle, no matter where they start from, no matter where they hold their political affiliations or what they vote.

All these forces have made the agreement to follow the guideline to struggle against the Capital, against the European Union, against the Government. They have also made the agreement to be opponents to Imperialism and its wars.

Branch trade unions, clerk unions, pensioner unions, labour centers, trade unions, elected union members, Struggle Committees of workers and clerks, and Coordinating Committees are members of PAME.

The struggle for the working class’ interests is directly connected to the empowerment of the Front against the employers’- governmental unions, against the majorities of GSEE and ADEDY.

The difference between the class-oriented movement and these forces is not limited to choosing the ways to struggle or to the different demands. The difference lies on the basic guidelines, on the whole framework within these two different movements work.

Forces like these, GSEE and ADEDY, support the exploitation system and they defend it. They actively support the Capital’s strategies and anti-peoples policies. They act according to the competitiveness and profitability criteria for the capitalistic enterprises; they place themselves in favour of what the economy can withstand. This is why they refuse and fight against the class struggle, choosing the path to class cooperation and social dialogues.

They cannot represent the working class; they represent the opponents’ interests. From this basis on they participate, with different means and pretences, in the planning to forward every contradictory to the working class’ interests reformation, they take part in the privatizations scheme, in the destruction of industrial relations, of the social security, of the diminish of the workers’ income.

Under the applied pressure of the class-oriented movement and of the workers, but also due to different hidden agendas, they decide to take some sort of action, but they do not care whether these actions to be held are prepared, they do not want or care if the workers are coordinated and they demand things that neither doubt nor conflict policies- their demands are not related to the needs of the Working Class.


PAME fights with no ambivalence for the Unification and Unity of the Working Class. It aims at the gathering and activating of more and more workers and young employees to the class-oriented, fighting path, to the path of conflict against capitalist forces, against the anti-peoples policies. It pursues common, coordinated struggle of workers in the private sector, the public sector and former DECO(Public Enterprises of Common Welfare). It pursues common struggle no matter if the workers are Greek on migrants. Only on this basis, the basis of class struggle, the basis of the fight to abolish the exploitation of man, can the Unity of the Working Class become stronger. The Unity, which employers’- governmental unions talk about, is unity in submission, in acceptance of the strategies of the opponents of the Working Class; it is a caricature of unity.

PAME is based on the proletarian internationalism and solidarity principles. Nowadays, in the conditions of the temporary ruling of imperialism we live, the need to Coordinate and Work Together with movements in other countries is strong.

Capitalists’ forces, Socialdemocracy and Opportunism are coordinated through the mechanisms of the Confederation of European Work Unions (SES) and of ITUC. These organizations work for and work with Capitalism.

Facing all these, PAME takes actively part in the attempts to rebuild the class-oriented trade union movement in Europe. We have successfully held, with the cooperation of other union members and trade unions, European trade union meetings in Turkey, in Greece, in France, in Italy and elsewhere. We are going to go on with these efforts because we firmly believe that the situation in Europe affects negatively the whole world. The difficulties the trade union movement faces, do not lay only in fighting capitalists and governments. The union movement has got to fight also some leading groups in CGT France and CCOO Spain and their dirty role in all these.

Since 2000 PAME is a member of the World Federation of Trade Union (WFTU), which, since its 15th Conference, becomes stronger, step-by-step.
2010-05-17 15:49:17

[vanlose kid]

Saleh is gone. What next for Yemen?
The president's departure for medical treatment has created an opportunity to resolve Yemen's political crisis

Brian Whitaker
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 5 June 2011 09.27 BST

With the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia, Yemenis now have a chance to resolve the political crisis that has bedevilled the country since February.

Contrary to the official story that he merely suffered scratches and/or a slight head wound in the explosion on Friday, latest reports say he has second-degree burns to his face and chest, plus a piece of shrapnel lodged near his heart which is affecting his breathing – though Saleh, who is 69, is said to have been able to walk from the plane when he landed in Riyadh.

A second plane followed him, reportedly carrying 24 members of his family. This is one indication that to all intents and purposes the Saleh era is finished. He is unlikely ever to return to Yemen as president – and the Saudis and Americans will be working behind the scenes to ensure that he doesn't.

It's also worth mentioning that others injured by the explosion include the prime minister, deputy prime minister, the heads of both houses of parliament and the governor of Sana'a, the capital. Some of them have also been flown to Saudi Arabia for treatment. One of Saleh's nephews, the commander of the special forces, is said to have been killed. So, even discounting Saleh himself, what's left of his regime is in serious disarray.

Given the desperate plight that Yemen is in, this offers the best prospect of a way forward for the country (as I suggested in an article on Friday). There is now a fair chance that the armed conflict will subside. It's by no means certain – and Yemen is never totally conflict-free – but the prospects for relative calm are a lot better now than they would have been if Saleh remained in Sana'a battling to cling on to power.

Secondly, work can begin on the political transition, drawing on some elements from the plan negotiated earlier by the Gulf Cooperation Council – the one that Saleh, after agreeing to it verbally, refused at the last minute to sign.

Apart from the lack of a signature from Saleh, there were two major problems with the plan which made it look unworkable at the time, though both of them are now somewhat academic.

One was that parliament had to grant Saleh immunity from prosecution before he would budge. This condition had been grudgingly accepted by Yemen's official opposition parties, though the protesters on the streets, together with international human rights organisations, found it abhorrent. With Saleh now out of the country, it need no longer be a bone of contention.

The second major hurdle in the GCC's plan was that it envisaged a prolonged resignation/transition period. After being granted immunity, Saleh would tender his resignation to parliament – though the parliament, where Saleh's party has an overwhelming majority, had the power to reject it unless he submitted his resignation for a second time. Meanwhile, the plan envisaged that Saleh would continue in office, working with a new transitional government that included opposition parties.

Anyone familiar with Saleh's usual modus operandi could see that this would not work. He would use every means at his disposal to sabotage its implementation, and the plan itself allowed plenty of scope for him to do so.

Despite that, the broad aim of the GCC plan – to form a government of national unity and prepare for elections – was (and is) the only practicable way forward in the circumstances, especially in the light on international concerns about Yemen's instability. It is far from ideal, because even the recognised opposition politicians have been around for years, some of them are as corrupt as Saleh's chums, and they are mostly devoid of new ideas for tackling the country's multifarious problems.

The hope then, is that this will indeed be a short-term transition and that elections will eventually bring in some new blood that reflects the aspirations of the millions of Yemenis who have risked their lives for so long protesting on the streets.

So far, constitutional procedures seem to be taking their course, and it is to be hoped that Saleh's kinsman, Ali Muhsen al-Ahmar, and the powerful tribal leaders will allow that to happen by staying on the sidelines.

Vice-president Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi, a Saleh appointee and a former military man from the south who is something of a nonentity, has temporarily taken charge as required by the constitution. As a next step, he should form a new government from across the political spectrum. Obviously Hadi's position is precarious in the light of the recent turmoil but for the time being at least he can count on international support – most importantly, from the US and Saudi Arabia.

The constitution specifies that presidential elections must be held within 60 days after Saleh resigns. Yemen is probably not ready for elections just yet but, since he is already out of the way, there is no immediate need for Saleh to formally resign.

It's certainly not going to be an easy ride and there's an awful lot that could still go wrong. But Saleh's departure for Riyadh does create an opportunity for a solution and Yemenis, together with their friends abroad, must seize the moment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/middle ... ast-unrest

Yemen: Injured President Saleh heads to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment
Speculation mounts that departure of president could lead to the break-up of country

Peter Beaumont and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 4 June 2011 20.00 BST

President Ali Abdullah Saleh's authoritarian grip on Yemen appeared to be slipping as he accepted an offer from the Saudi king to travel there for medical treatment for wounds suffered in a rocket attack on his compound.

A Saudi official, who asked not to be named, said: "He's just landed. He's here for medical treatment. We are the closest country and we have the capabilities."

Asked whether Saleh was stepping down, the official said only: "He's coming for medical treatment."

The reports of Saleh's journey to Saudi Arabia came amid speculation from Yemeni and western analysts that it was unlikely that he would be able to return to Yemen if he was forced to seek medical assistance abroad.

Saleh delivered an audio address on television to reassure supporters, but his voice sounded laboured and the address was made accompanied by an old photograph of him on the screen.

Analysts fear that a sudden departure by Saleh, after 33 years in power, would leave a political vacuum and create even deeper chaos in Yemen, where the government has already lost control of some outlying provinces and al-Qaida and other jihadists have appeared to exploit the political turmoil to move more freely.

A leaderless Yemen would place enormous pressure on Saudi Arabia, which has long played the role of kingmaker for its much smaller, and infinitely poorer, neighbour.

The offer of treatment came as it was confirmed that Saudi Arabia – which has been deeply shaken by the events of the Arab spring – had acted to negotiate a ceasefire between the rival factions in Yemen even as it was arranging for Saleh's evacuation.

There are fears that without Saleh, whose regime has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of protesters and political opponents, the nascent civil war between rival factions could escalate further and splinter the fragile state that is home to one of al-Qaida's most active franchises.

Earlier yesterday, conflicting reports of his whereabouts and condition spread through the Middle East after officials and opposition tribal leaders reported that Saudi King Abdullah had mediated a ceasefire in the conflict.

The violence in the country grew out of pro-democracy protests that has turned into a power struggle between Saleh's ruling clique and his former allies in the Ahmar clan.

Sadeq al-Ahmar, the eldest of the Ahmar brothers, whose fighters have been battling Saleh's forces in the capital, confirmed that the Saudis had arranged a ceasefire, which he said he would respect.

The extent of the president's injuries has been a matter of intense speculation: when the rocket struck the mosque in his presidential compound, he was surrounded by senior officials and his bodyguards. Eleven guards died and five officials standing near the president were seriously wounded. They have already gone to Saudi Arabia for treatment.

King Abdullah intervened in the conflict after almost four months of largely peaceful protests against Saleh spun out of control into an increasingly bloody civil conflict.

Late last night, al-Ahmar, who is also the head of the Hashid confederation, accused Saleh's troops of not observing the ceasefire. He said that the president's forces had not withdrawn from their positions in the city but were instead reinforcing those positions.

"We are respecting what we agreed upon under the guidance of the Saudi monarch to stop the bloodshed of innocents and bring safety for citizens based on our desire to bring security and quiet back to the capital, which is living through a terrible nightmare that Saleh's regime has brought upon it," al-Ahmar said in a statement.

Inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, protesters have been trying unsuccessfully since February to oust Saleh with a wave of peaceful demonstrations that have brought out hundreds of thousands daily in Sana'a and other cities. Now the crisis has transformed into a power struggle between two of Yemen's most powerful families: Saleh's, which dominates the security forces, and the al-Ahmar clan, which leads Yemen's strongest tribal confederation, known as the Hashid. The confederation is grouped around 10 tribes across the north.

Al-Ahmar announced the Hashid's support for the protest movement in March, and his fighters adhered to the movement's non-violence policy. But last week, Saleh's forces moved against al-Ahmar's fortress-like residence in Sana'a, and the tribe's fighters rose up in fury.

There were signs last night the ceasefire was already unravelling as the boom of artillery fire could be heard again near the al-Ahmar compound in the Hasaba neighbourhood in northern Sana'a, where the fighting has been concentrated in the past two weeks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ju ... udi-arabia

Is Saleh gone for good?
President Saleh's visit to Riyadh ostensibly for medical treatment has fuelled speculations over his rule.
Last Modified: 05 Jun 2011 06:55

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is in the Saudi capital Riyadh to ostensibly seek medical treatment for injuries sustained during an attack on his presidential palace, but his departure from Sanaa has raised speculations over whether he is gone for good.

Saleh had initially clung on to power, remaining defiant despite growing protests sweeping the country against his 33-year rule. He had even refused to sign a plan worked out by other Gulf Arab nations for a peaceful transfer of power.

But since the embattled president took a plane to Riyadh on Saturday, accompanied by several of his family members, there has been growing talk that he might not return to Yemen.

That his deputy, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has already taken over as the acting president, has further fuelled the speculations.

Analysts like Saudi Arabia's Khalid al-Dakhil believe that Saleh would not have travelled to Riyadh unless he had intended to seek an exit.

"The speaker of parliament, prime minister and president are here so effectively the government is here," Dakhil said. "This is going to facilitate the arrangement for Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down."

Saudi position

Much certainly would depend on how Saudi Arabia, Saleh's ally and neighbour, positions itself in the coming hours and days. The kingdom is Yemen's biggest financial donor, bankrolling Saleh's government, supplying the military and supporting hospitals.

If Saleh choses to stay back in Saudi Arabia, he would become the second Arab leader to find refuge in the kingdom after Tunisia's President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled to the kingdom in January this year after protests forced him out.

Munir Al Mawri, a Yemeni-American journalist in Washington, told Al Jazeera that Yemen had probably seen the end of Saleh's presidency.

"US Vice-President Joe Biden has already phoned the Yemeni Vice-President [Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi], indicating that the US accepts him as the one to take over power in Yemen," Mawri said.

"The US has officially asked Saleh to leave and transfer this authority to his vice-president and this is exactly what is happening I think.

"I think the Saudis will never allow Saleh to go back to Yemen because they care about their interests inside Yemen."

'Life in exile'

That Saleh, despite all his bravado, could be contemplating a life in exile comes as little surprise.

He was definitely not winning the battle with his opponents, and protests against his rule had dangerously escalated, bringing the country to the brink of civil war.

Even his authority had vastly eroded as top generals defected and threw in their weight behind the protesters. Friday's attack on his palace - viewed by many as an assassination attempt - could have finally broken Saleh's resolve to hold on to power.

Saleh has said all along that he was seeking an "honourable exit" and, in negotiations with Gulf Arab states, had insisted on and received guarantees that he would be immune from prosecution.

Saleh's departure possibly followed intense pressure from his Gulf neighbours and longtime ally Washington to step down amid fears the chaos would plunge the country into anarchy and undermine the US-backed campaign against al-Qaeda's most active branch.

With hundreds dead in the four-month uprising against Saleh's rule, Yemenis could be longing to return to a period of calm and normality.

Whether Saleh longs for the same now remains to be seen.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middl ... 28416.html

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[vanlose kid]

Yemenis in Sana'a celebrate the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA







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[vanlose kid]

Biggest Protest In Athens Under Way As Tens Of Thousands Ask "Where Did Our Money Go", Demand No More Austerity (Now With WiFi Access)
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/05/2011 14:10 -0400


After 12 consecutive days of protests, the biggest gathering in Athens' parliamentary Syntagma square is currently underway. The FT reports: "Thousands of Greeks protested outside parliament on Sunday against a fresh austerity package agreed in return for the country’s second bail-out in 13 months by the European Union and International Monetary Fund. “Thieves, thieves….Where did our money go?” the protestors shouted, blowing whistles and waving Greek flags as riot police thickened ranks around the parliament building on Syntagma square in the centre of the capital...Frustration over the socialist government’s half-hearted reform effort has united diverse activists –from unemployed graduates to environmentalists and pensioners – under the umbrella of the new movement. George Papaconstantinou, finance minister, is due to unveil on Monday a €6.4bn emergency package of tax increases and cuts in allowances aimed at putting this year’s budget back on track....“What went wrong? We need answers right now,” said Rovertos, a volunteer computer technician helping provide wi-fi services at the protest camp. “The government promised there wouldn’t be any more tough measures but they’re about to announce new taxes and thousands of job cuts,” said Stefanos, a retired civil servant sitting outside a tent." What went wrong is that Greece is in the process of being colonized by the global banker certal. But with summer season in swing, and most Greeks hitting the beach, we doubt many will notice until it is too late. As for those who may have noticed, below is a webstream of the biggest protest before the Greek parliament in 2011. It is sure to provide some entertainment for when the EUR opens up in 3 hours, if not much else.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/bigges ... no-more-au

live feed at link.

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Thousands protest against Greek austerity

By Kerin Hope in Athens

Published: June 5 2011 18:23 | Last updated: June 5 2011 18:23

Thousands of Greeks protested outside parliament on Sunday against a fresh austerity package agreed in return for the country’s second bail-out in 13 months by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

“Thieves, thieves….Where did our money go?” the protestors shouted, blowing whistles and waving Greek flags as riot police thickened ranks around the parliament building on Syntagma square in the centre of the capital.

Activists from the “Indignant Citizens” movement – modelled on its Spanish namesake – have camped in tents around the square for more than a week. Organisers said Sunday night’s events were part of a co-ordinated Europe-wide protest against unemployment and austerity.

Frustration over the socialist government’s half-hearted reform effort has united diverse activists –from unemployed graduates to environmentalists and pensioners – under the umbrella of the new movement.

George Papaconstantinou, finance minister, is due to unveil on Monday a €6.4bn emergcncy package of tax increases and cuts in allowances aimed at putting this year’s budget back on track.

He will also announce details of a medium-term fiscal and structural reform programme that includes mergers or closures of several hundred out-dated state organisations, cuts in allowances for public sector workers and a €50bn privatisation programme intended to part-finance the new EU-IMF bail-out package.

“What went wrong? We need answers right now,”said Rovertos, a volunteer computer technician helping provide wi-fi services at the protest camp.

“The government promised there wouldn’t be any more tough measures but they’re about to announce new taxes and thousands of job cuts,” said Stefanos, a retired civil servant sitting outside a tent.

Banners draped nearby read “Take back the new measures” and “Greece is not for sale” – a reference to the government’s plans to include state property and real estate for tourist development in the privatisation scheme.

Parliament has been the focus of regular marches by trade unionists that have periodically erupted in violence triggered by extreme leftwingers, but the prolonged protest in Syntagma square has raised the stakes for the government as it tries to secure political backing for the latest measures.

High-profile deputies have been increasingly targeted by demonstrators, with opinion polls showing that many Greeks hold politicians responsible for the country’s economic plight.

The socialists last week accused supporters of Syriza, a small leftwing party, of running a campaign of harassment after protestors threw stones and yoghourt at members of the government attending official events.


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a9ef95d6-8f97 ... ftcamp=rss

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