5112개의 게시물을 찾았습니다.
Under the motto
We are not criminals! We are not terrorists!
Stop crackdown on undocumented
migrant workers in the name of G-20
Migrants' Trade Union staged a sit-in protest(*) in Hyangrin Church (in Myeongdong, downtown Seoul) between July 13 and August 28.
Additionally - to enforce the protest against the policy of arrest and deportation - MTU’s president began a hunger strike on July 25...
MUST SEE! Comrade "Hong Gil-dong..." released today his video interview...
... with MTU's president and you can watch it here.
* MTU's "Sit-in Struggle Reports" you can read here!
Barely Enough to Keep Body and Soul Together
The minimum cost of living for a four-member household next year has been set at 1.43 million won ($1,200), up 5.6 percent from this year, the S. Korean gov't announced two weeks ago, according to Korea Herald(8.24)...
Almost three weeks earlier Kim So-yeon (Hankyoreh journalist) reported about his experience how he - alone, not a four-member household(!!) - survived with 1,110,919 won ($946.29) for one month:
☞ 30 days on the minimum cost of living (Hankyoreh, 8.02)
Any more questions?
Almost three weeks ago France has begun the deportation of possibly thousands of members of the Roma (aka Gypsy) minority, to Romania and Bulgaria (member states of the E.U.)...
Roma mother and their children sit next to luggage
in Bucharest, Romania, after deported from France
Opposition politicians, labour unions and human-rights organizations have widely condemned the operation as abusive and racist, saying the Roma have too often been Europe's scapegoats.
On Aug. 18, the E.U. Commission for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship reminded France of the "freedom of movement for E.U. citizens." It also warned that it would be watching France closely to make sure due process and the rights of European Roma were being respected.
But despite the criticism, the Sarkozy administration is moving ahead with the plan...
But at least since y'day a broadly organized resistance takes the streets of France to damand: "Stop Deportation! Stop the State-operated Racism!"...
Today's Haaretz/AP reported the following:
Thousands march across France against decision to expel Gypsies
Protesters accuse Sarkozy of stigmatizing minority groups like Gypsies and seeking political gain with a security crackdown. They also say he is violating French traditions of welcoming the oppressed, in a country that is one of the world's leading providers of political asylum.
Thousands of people marched in Paris on Saturday to protest expulsions of Gypsies and other new security measures adopted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy's government.
Protesters blew whistles and beat drums in the largest demonstration among those in at least 135 cities and towns across France and elsewhere in Europe. Human rights and anti-racism groups, labor unions and leftist political parties took part in the protests.
They accuse Sarkozy of stigmatizing minority groups like Gypsies and seeking political gain with a security crackdown. They also say he is violating French traditions of welcoming the oppressed, in a country that is one of the world's leading providers of political asylum.
The protests mark the first show of public discontent since the conservative Sarkozy, a former hardline interior minister, announced new measures to fight crime in late July.
Sarkozy said Gypsy camps would be systematically evacuated. His interior minister and other officials said last week that about 1,000 Roma have been given small stipends and flown home since then.
For years, Sarkozy has used his image as a tough, law-and-order politician to win political support. Sarkozy has linked Roma to crime, saying their camps are sources of prostitution and child exploitation. The latest moves by Sarkozy came after violence between police and youth in a suburban Grenoble housing project and other clashes in a traveling community in the Loire Valley.
Sarkozy also said naturalized citizens who threaten the lives of police officers should lose their citizenship - and his leftist critics slammed that proposal as anti-constitutional and evocative of nationalist measures during France's collaborationist past in the Vichy regime during World War II.
"Mr. Sarkozy is there to stand for the Constitution, not to trample it," said Jean-Paul Dubois, president of France's Human Rights League. "So we consider this situation extremely dangerous, that's why we are here."
Paris police said some 12,000 people took part in the protest in the capital and that no violence took place. Organizers estimated that 100,000 people took part in such marches across the country - though they did not immediately estimate how many of those attended the largest one, in Paris.
Small groups of Gypsies took part, including women with flowered skirts, sandals or looping earrings, and men in jeans with gold caps on teeth in the corners of their smiles. But they were far outnumbered by left-leaning political parties, labor unions, and dozens of activist groups like those supporting illegal immigrants or gays.
"It warms the heart to see so many people out here. Fortunately, there are nice people in the world," said Delia Romanes, walking behind a banner of a 17-year-old Gypsy circus that she heads in northeastern Paris. She said the government has recently sought to strip its performers of their work papers.
Other Roma without proper residency rights were more fearful.
"We are afraid. We aren't prepared for this, said David Anghel," a 24-year-old mason from Romania, who has lived in France for eight years. Holding the banner of a Gypsy-support association, he said his wife had been served with an order to leave their camp in Fleury-Merogis, south of Paris, about 10 days ago. They fear police will come to expel them in the next few days.
Similar peaceful protests took place outside French embassies elsewhere in Europe. In Belgrade, Serbia, dozens of Gypsies chanted anti-racist slogans and held banners calling for an end to the expulsions from France.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/thousands-march-across-france...1.312191
Related articles:
☞ France Steps Up Deportation of Roma (Time, 9.01)
☞ French protest over Roma expulsions (al-Jazeera, 9.04)
Two weeks ago Scott Burgeson has published his entire - remarkable but (IMHO) diversive - essay on the 2008 "Beef Protests" in Seoul...
Few days later he wrote (as a reply on his freeboard): "It's good to know that some intellectuals in South Korea are finally starting to take seriously my essay on the mad-cow candlelight protests of 2008, or to even acknowledge it. As you can see here, when '더 발칙한 한국학' came out last year, the essay was essentially ignored by the mainstream South Korean media, although one or two reviews briefly and vaguely mentioned it being 'dangerous and provocative.' If it was so 'dangerous and provocative,' why was it so uninteresting that most South Korean reviewers felt that it wasn't worth even discussing?"
Here you can read the essay's English complete (4 pages, f... long^^) version:
☞ "A Stranger in Chongno"
Finally, if you still feel bored, here you can read at least 60 comments (on Marmot's Hole) related to Scott's essay!
Enjoy your weekend (reading)!!
Last month Chicago Indymedia predicted in connection to the coming G-20 Summit in Seoul (Nov. 11/12) that "There will be a storm"...
Well, until now it's not really sure if there will be a "storm" or not... But it seems as if the S.K. gov't already prepares for a kind of mass uprising/civil war, according to today's Yonhap report:
Military sets up security command center for G-20 summit
South Korea's military on Wednesday launched a "G-20 command center" to coordinate the government's security planning and operations in preparation for the G-20 summit in early November.
Tasked with protecting the world's leaders and ensuring the hosting of a successful summit set for Nov. 11-12, the command center would serve as a central part of security operations with some 10,000 troops from various military branches taking part, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement.
"The military has elaborate action plans and firm determination to counter any possible enemy threat," the statement said. "We will make utmost efforts to make the G-20 summit in Seoul safer than any in the past."
The command center also coordinates coverage with other relevant security agencies, including the Presidential Security Service, the National Police Agency and the National Intelligence Service.
Police are mainly in charge of security on streets and at the convention venue in Seoul, while the military provides policing for the skies and seas, JCS officials said.
Navy ships will conduct underwater searches and patrol ports around the country, while fighter jets will monitor the skies when the world's leaders arrive, they said...
Last month, some 400,000 government officials, police and security personnel staged days of anti-terrorism drills, including mock hostage situations and other attacks, as part of preparations for the November summit:
Already one month ago the Korea Times reported that the National Police Agency will be mobilizing more than 400,000 police around the G-20 Summit in Seoul...
Last Monday's Guardian published the following startling report:
Many migrant workers in UK are modern-day slaves
Thousands of foreign domestic workers are living as slaves in Britain, being abused sexually, physically and psychologically by employers, according to an investigation...
More than 15,000 migrant workers come to Britain every year to earn money to send back to their families. But according to a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation, many endure conditions that campaigners say amount to modern-day slavery.
Kalayaan, a charity based in west London that helps and advises migrant domestic workers, registers around 350 new workers each year.
About 20% report being physically abused or assaulted, including being burnt with irons, threatened with knives, and having boiling water thrown at them.
"Two-thirds of the domestic workers we see report being psychologically abused," said Jenny Moss, a community advocate for the charity. "That means they've been threatened and humiliated, shouted at constantly and called dog, donkey, stupid, illiterate."
A similar proportion say they were not allowed out alone and have never had a day off. Nearly three-quarters say they were paid less than £50 a week.
"The first thing to understand when we're talking about slavery is that we're not using a metaphor," said Aidan McQuade from Anti-Slavery International. "Many of the instances of domestic servitude we find in this country are forced labour – a classification that includes retention of passports and wages, threat of denunciation and restriction of movement and isolation."
Lobby groups and charities say that a large proportion of domestic workers are paid less than £50 a week for working 20-hour days. Others have their wages withheld completely. In some cases, the workers are young people who were trafficked over to the UK as children and forced to endure years of violence and forced labour.
The programme also investigates claims that foreign diplomats are among the worst offenders. Their workers, unlike those brought in on a domestic worker visa, cannot change their employer and face being homeless or being deported if they escape. The Dispatches study says it is also extremely difficult to prosecute diplomats for treating their workers as slaves.
Accurate figures are hard to establish because the abuse happens behind closed doors. But campaigners say that every year, hundreds of domestic workers run away from employees they claim have mistreated them.
Marissa Begonia left three young children in the Philippines when she came to Britain as a domestic worker 16 years ago. Now the head of Justice 4 Domestic Workers, a new campaigning organisation run by and for migrant workers, Begonia says most of their clients are forced to work abroad, without ever seeing their families, because of extreme poverty in their home countries.
"It's a matter of life and death," said Begonia. "You have two choices only: you watch your children die slowly, starving, or you leave them and come to the UK to work to make sure your children survive." The Metropolitan police specialised crime unit specifically targets forced labour, including domestic workers. "We've now got 10 cases of domestic servitude we are investigating," said detective chief superintendent Richard Martin, who heads the unit.
"Some victims are being chained to the kitchen sink, working seven days a week, 20 hours a day, for little or no pay. We have had cases of workers being forced to eat scraps off the table, so some of them are not even fed properly, and are assaulted and abused. We've had cases where women have been raped."
Children are also being bought to the UK to work in conditions of slavery. Christina was trafficked from Nigeria to London when she was just 12 years old. She says the woman in charge of her was of Nigerian origin, but worked as a British civil servant first with the Home Office and then Customs and Excise.
"I got beaten up all the time but I had no choice: I had nowhere to go," said Christina, who worked for the woman for five years, until she escaped in 2005. "She hit me with a frying pan and with a belt, so many, many times. It was horrible. I wanted to die."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/aug/30/migrant-workers-modern-day-slavery
In the context of the coming G-20 Summit in Seoul the S.K. gov't is preparing (starting from tomorrow) new, 'sophisticated' measures to discriminate against visitors from abroad (i.e. "third world" foreigners/potential migrant workers)...
For more please "enjoy" the following piece, published in yesterday's (bourgeois) Korea Times:
Suspicious visitors to be fingerprinted from Wed.
Starting Wednesday, foreign nationals suspected of using fake identities to enter the country or whose purpose of visiting Korea is suspicious will have their fingerprints(*) scanned and face photographed at all 22 international airports and harbors in the country.
The move is intended to tighten security ahead of the G20 summit to be held in Seoul in November.
This is the first in a three-phased initiative to screen for “suspicious” foreign visitors by matching their biometric information with that of “blacklisted” people, the Ministry of Justice said Monday...
The legal grounds were reinstated early this month ― the law was scrapped in 2003 over fears of human rights infringement.
Those affected by the lowest level of screening are people whose identity is similar to that of an international terrorist...
For instance, those who transit other cities before coming to Korea or who buy a one-way ticket to Korea in cash are among those deemed suspicious.
“Cash is hardly ever used to buy flight tickets,” said Ahn Gyu-seok, a spokesman for the Korea Immigration Service. “We suspect that those who do so are attempting to prevent the authorities from tracking cash flows.”
Those who are not proficient in the language of the state of origin stipulated in their passport, and who lack basic knowledge about the country will also be questioned, the ministry said...
Officials did not elaborate on the guidelines for security concerns...
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/08/117_72265.html
* In another blog someone added: "Nothing says ‘Welcome to my country you filthy foreign scum’ quite like being fingerprinted at customs..."
Escalating Fascist Terror in Russia
Y'day(8.29) during the course of an assault upon concert-goers in Miass (Chelyabisnk Region, 1400km east of Moscow) hundreds of “bare-chested” boneheads (fascist skinheads) have apparently injured scores and killed a 14-year-old girl(*). Some reports suggest that there may be more victims, but accurate information will be difficult to obtain while the Russian state goes into damage control mode.
AP reported the following:
Scores of bare-chested skinheads attacked a crowd of about 3,000 people at a rock concert in central Russia on Sunday, beating them with clubs, media reports said.
Dozens of people were left bloodied and dazed in the attack, television and news agencies reported, and state news channel Rossiya-24 said a 14-year-old girl was killed at the concert in Miass...
Not surprisingly — or incredibly, if you prefer — some other reports said that the cops stood aside as the boneheads went about their bloody business!
According to local media reports, shooting was also heard as a crowd of angry bare-chested boneheads, armed with batons, sticks and iron rods, forced their way through security cordons.
“Police and security guards were either inactive or ran away. Some attackers snatched truncheons from police officers and started beating the visitors,” the Chelnovosti reported citing eyewitnesses.
Today's Guardian (UK) reported the following:
Skinheads attack crowds at Russian rock festival
About 100 skinheads attacked crowds of revellers at a Russian rock festival yesterday, injuring 19 people, reports in the Russian media say.
The state-run Rossiya 24 television channel showed footage of large groups of bare-chested men with cropped hair running up to the entrance of the Tornado festival in the Urals city of Miass, about 850 miles east of Moscow.
A spokeswoman said local police had no immediate comment on the motive behind the attacks. Six of the 19 victims were taken to hospital.
At least 60 people were killed and 306 injured in hate crimes in Russia last year, according to Sova, a rights group that monitors racist violence in the country. Most were attacks on Muslim migrants from central Asia.
Witnesses at the festival, which was attended by 3,000 people, said some of the men fired gunshots into crowds, Rossiya 24 reported. Footage showed policemen collecting axes and batons belonging to the skinheads.
The Ekho Moskvy radio station said the owner of a local cafe had been detained on suspicion of organising the violence.
Activists in Russia have warned that increasing xenophobia and a corrupt police force are allowing far-right groups to prosper.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/30/skinheads-attack-russian-rock-festival
* According to the Russian Indymedia, "in the attack died from 3 to 7 people, more than 50 people were injured"...
"Russian state-run news channel Rossiya-24 reported the death of a 14-year-old girl, but the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted police in the Chelyabinsk Oblast as saying no one had died in the violence", according to Radio Free Europe
For next Friday's "Peace Talks" the Obama administration plans to present Israel and the Palestinian Authority with a new outline aimed at ending the Middle East conflict. The Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported two days ago that "the Americans will pressure the parties to sign a framework agreement for a permanent settlement within one year"...
But instead of "ending the Middle East conflict" last week's Haaretz (Israel's most important "left"-liberal newspaper) predicted that...
Peace talks... will make war more likely
Terror is likely to resume during the talks, in order to thwart them. And Israel must prepare on all fronts for a long period of unrest.
This time, Benjamin Netanyahu really wants to do it. The decision had been percolating for some time, and was finally made, after a not particularly hard push from U.S. President Barack Obama, in his Bar-Ilan University speech.
The prime minister's opponents, who look for flaws in everything he does, don't believe him. They think he doesn't mean what he says. How could he?
But he can. It happens to many decision-makers: They behave in ways that violate their fundamental beliefs. Improvement of Government Services Minister Michael Eitan, who this week called for extending the freeze on settlement construction, expressed it well. His explanation: On the issue of two states and the future of the settlements, he, his leader Netanyahu and a majority of their Likud Party have accepted the left's positions, if only by default.
The Bar-Ilan declaration became binding Israeli policy. It was also an ideological milestone with far-reaching ramifications: The leader of the camp identified with the indivisibility of the Land of Israel was the one who announced, in his role as prime minister, that the land will be divided.
Now, in embarking on talks whose aim is to implement the division, he has reconciled himself to that declaration, without any signs of traumatic guilt on either his own part or that of his party. What's done is done, as Eitan rightly observed.
But Netanyahu will not be able to do it this time, either. Not because he doesn't want to, or because he will lack a majority in the Knesset. If he reached an agreement with the Palestinians, the opposition would provide him with a majority, as happened with the Oslo Accords and the disengagement from Gaza. But with the Likud leading the move to divide the country's heartland, there would most likely be no need for the opposition's support.
Rather, Netanyahu will not be able to do it because this time, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas really can't. And he also doesn't want to.
Netanyahu, in contrast, has put himself in the political position of his predecessors Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. There was almost no compromise they were not willing to make, or they indeed made many. But the Palestinians simply "couldn't do it." They even escalated the terror.
The minimalist Jewish Zionist consensus includes recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people; relinquishing the "right of return"; ending the conflict and waiving all further demands once the agreement is signed; no division of Jerusalem by formal agreement, as opposed to practical arrangements; and the continued existence of the settlement blocs. Are the Palestinians prepared to accept this Zionist minimum? Absolutely not.
But even if it turned out that this time, the Palestinians didn't want to miss another opportunity to miss an opportunity, those with the real power would torpedo the process: Tehran, Damascus, Hezbollah in Beirut, and soon also Baghdad, where Iran will pull the strings. They would never accept recognizing Israel as the home of the Jewish people. They would use force to prevent the Palestinians from relinquishing the right of return, to prevent a declaration that the Arabs have no more ideological, religious and territorial claims in Palestine, that the conflict has ended.
The man who forced Abbas to go to Washington next week is the same one who, by withdrawing from Iraq and appeasing Iran, sowed the seeds of trouble that will undermine any agreement. Iraq's abandonment by the United States is creating regional instability.
The one who will benefit from the chaos is the one with power, defined goals and the determination to achieve them: Iran. And America, its wings clipped by choice and fearing another entanglement, will not be able to stop Iran from achieving decisive influence in the region and completing its nuclear bomb project. The axis of evil will not make do with its outpost in Gaza.
Given this situation, how could Abbas reach an agreement, even if he wanted to?
Terror is likely to resume during the talks, in order to thwart them. And Israel must prepare on all fronts for a long period of unrest - because Egypt is also in transition, characterized by instability, and the Jordanian monarch, as we all have seen and heard, is in a panic.
There is no certainty that the instability will lead to war. But it certainly doesn't bring peace between us and the Palestinians, or with most of the Arab world, any closer. Obama, when he imposed the direct talks, apparently didn't think about that. Thus the peace talks bring us no prospect of peace - only the seeds of war.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/peace-talks-that-will-make-war-more-likely-1.310283
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