Blast kills four Afghan civilians

Agence France Presse

A roadside bomb killed four civilians in southern Afghanistan, authorities said Sunday, as tension over the deaths of non-combatants in military operations rises between Kabul and foreign allies.

The four were killed Saturday when their vehicle struck a bomb planted on a road in Kandahar province, the interior ministry said blaming the strike on the insurgents.

The Taliban frequently use home-made bombs and landmines in their attacks on military targets. The devices however, often kill civilians sharing the same roads with the Afghan and foreign military and security forces.

According to a report by the United Nations and the war-torn country's leading Human Rights body, Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission, 9,000 civilians have lost their lives in crossfire between Afghan and foreign security forces and the rebels since 2007.

The report said 2010 was the deadliest for Afghan civilians since the war began in 2001 with 2,777 deaths, the bulk caused by insurgents.

President Hamid Karzai rejected an apology by the commander of the US-led NATO force earlier this month over the deaths of nine children killed in an air attack carried out by the troops in the province of Kunar.

Karzai on Saturday went to the mountainous and insurgency-troubled province to meet families of the children and called on the Western troops to stop military operations in his battered country.

Karzai urged the US and NATO to shift the war on insurgents to neighbouring Pakistan where Afghan leaders say most insurgent leaders are based and launch attacks on Afghan targets.

http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/519621/blast_kills_four__afghan_civilians/

You Can't Keep A Cheesehead Down. This, Again, Is What Democracy Looks Like!

By Susie Madrak
Sunday March 13, 2011 07:00 am

An estimated 100,000 union supporters turned out yesterday in Madison, Wisconsin to welcome back the Democratic state senators who decamped to Illinois to prevent a vote on Gov. Scott Walker's union busting bill. The day's festivities included a parade of tractors around the state Capitol:

The day after Scott Walker's ceremonial signing of a bill stripping collective bargaining rights from Wisconsin's public employees, tens of thousands of protestors once again filled the Capitol Square Saturday. "Kill the bill" was no longer heard, but a new chant rose to take its place: "What's the word? Kloppenburg!"

Although they lost a battle in the legislature, pro-union protestors have pledged to win the middle class war. Their newest slogans centered around this goal, urging protesters to recall the eight eligible Senate Republicans, and to vote JoAnne Kloppenburg to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

To that end, clipboard-wielding activists commandeered a Carroll Street bus shelter, urging protestors parading past to sign (if they hadn't already) their senator's recall petition. "Vote for Kloppenburg" signs suddenly became a ubiquitous fixture of the protest landscape.

Overall, the rally looked to be the biggest yet, with Madison police estimating a crowd size of 85,000-100,000.

The day began with a morning "Farmer Labor Tractorcade" that circled the Square with antique tractors and farmers who led the chants (and, of course, honks) of "Show me what democracy looks like!" and “Recall Walker!".

[...] Of course, the highlight of the day was unquestionably the return of the 14 Senate Democrats. An overflow crowd that packed the Square and several State Street blocks greeted the returning senators like celebrities, chanting: "Thank you! Thank you!" and "Welcome home!"

After the senators had their turn at the mic and their share of the applause, the Reverend Jesse Jackson took the stage to drive home the message of the day. A chorus of voices ricocheted off the Capitol and down State Street, taking up the reverend's cry: "April 5, come alive!"

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/you-cant-keep-cheesehead-down-again-w

Protesters in DC demonstrate against the PATRIOT Act

By Eric W. Dolan
Sunday, March 13th, 2011 -- 12:34 pm

In Washington, DC on Sunday, demonstrators rallied in front of the White House in protest of repressive governments around the world.

Included in the protests were those opposed to extending the USA PATRIOT Act, which gives law enforcement authorities sweeping surveillance powers that have been criticized for endangering innocent American's civil liberties.

"The American citizenry has been giving up their rights over the last eleven years," Tighe Barry of CODEPINK told Press TV ^[1] at the protest. "It's a shame that someone like George Bush, who came into power, thought he could just tear up parts of our constitution."

Congress passed a bill in February that extended three controversial provisions of the PATRIOT Act ^[2] until May 27.

The three provisions allow authorities to conduct surveillance without identifying the person or location to be wiretapped, permits surveillance of "non-US" persons who are not affiliated with a terrorist group, and allows law enforcement to gain access to "any tangible thing" during investigations.

"It creates a very 'Big Brother' atmosphere where the government can monitor everything," Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said.

The protesters called for a repeal of the PATRIOT Act, claiming it gave the government too much power to conduct surveillance of Americans.

Senators push for reform of PATRIOT Act

Congress is expected to pass a longer extension of the PATRIOT Act, but some senators have vowed to amend the legislation to ensure American's civil liberties are protected.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) has proposed an amendment to the bill that would require the government to describe the target of a roving wiretap "with particularity."

"Roving wiretaps, which do not require the government to specify the place to be bugged, are designed to allow law enforcement to track targets who evade surveillance by frequently changing phones," he explained. "Before the PATRIOT Act, roving wiretaps were only permitted for criminal investigations."

"Unfortunately, the PATRIOT Act did not include sufficient checks to protect innocent Americans from unwarranted government surveillance," Sen. Durbin continued. "Under current law, the FBI is not required to ascertain the presence of the target of the wiretap at the place being wiretapped, as it is for criminal wiretaps."

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a senior member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also introduced legislation in February to narrow the PATRIOT Act's section 215 provision ^[3], which allows law enforcement to obtain "any tangible thing," including library and bookstore records.

"Government agents should not be able to collect this sort of information on law abiding American citizens without showing that they have at least some connection to terrorism or other nefarious activities," he said.

Wyden's bill would force law enforcement to demonstrate that the records were in some way connected to terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities before gathering the information.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has also recently sought to reform the PATRIOT Act by increasing judicial oversight of government surveillance powers.

URL to article: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/13/protesters-demonstrate-against-the-patriot-act-in-dc/

URLs in this post:

[1] Press TV: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/169686.html

[2] passed a bill in February that extended three controversial provisions of the PATRIOT Act: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/15/senate-votes-for-short-term-extension-of-patriot-act-provisions/

[3] introduced legislation in February to narrow the PATRIOT Act's section 215 provision: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/23/senator-vows-to-reform-patriot-act/

Assault on Collective Bargaining Illegal, Says International Labor Rights Group

Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn | Sunday 13 March 2011

The International Commission for Labor Rights (ICLR) sent a notice to the Wisconsin Legislature, explaining that its attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers is illegal.

Anyone who has watched the events unfolding in Wisconsin and other states that are trying to remove collective bargaining rights from public workers has heard people protesting the loss of their "rights." (For more on the record turnout, see this story.) The ICLR explained to the legislature exactly what these rights are and why trying to take them away is illegal.

The ICLR is a New York-based nongovernmental organization that coordinates a pro bono network of labor lawyers and experts throughout the world. It investigates labor rights violations and issues reports and amicus briefs on issues of labor law.

The ICLR identified the right of "freedom of association" as a fundamental right and affirmed that the right to collective bargaining is an essential element of freedom of association. These rights, which have been recognized worldwide, provide a brake on unchecked corporate or state power.

In 1935, when Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the NLRA, or the Wagner Act), it recognized the direct relationship between the inequality of bargaining power of workers and corporations and the recurrent business depressions. That is, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners, the economy fell into depression. The law therefore recognized as policy of the United States the encouragement of collective bargaining.

While the NLRA covered US employees in private employment, the law protecting collective bargaining in both the public and private sectors has developed since 1935 to cover all workers "without distinction."

 The opening paragraph of the ICLR statement reads:

As workers in the thousands and hundreds of thousands in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio and around the country demonstrate to protect the right of public sector workers to collective bargaining, the political battle has overshadowed any reference to the legal rights to collective bargaining. The political battle to prevent the loss of collective bargaining is reinforced by the fact that stripping any collective bargaining rights is blatantly illegal. Courts and agencies around the world have uniformly held the right of collective bargaining in the public sector is an essential element of the right of Freedom of Association, which is a fundamental right under both International law and the United States Constitution.

The ICLR statement summarizes the development of this law from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through the International Labor Organization's (ILO) conventions on freedom of association (that is, the right to form and join unions) and collective bargaining. It cites court cases from the United States and around the world. All embrace freedom of association as a fundamental right and recognize the right to collective bargaining as an essential element of freedom of association.

Some anti-union voices argue that since federal employees presently do not have the right to bargain collectively, neither should state workers. In fact, the argument should go the other way. The law cited in the ICLR statement means that denying federal employees collective bargaining rights - which they have had over the years when presidents have recognized them by executive order - is just as illegal as denying collective bargaining rights to state public employees. President Obama should take this opportunity to reinstate the rights of federal employees to collective bargaining.

Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/assault-collective-bargaining-illegal-says-international-labor-rights-group68423

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Army Recruits Prisoners to Make Body Armor

By Noah Shachtman
March 10, 2011 |
7:00 am |

Building parts for Patriot missile systems was just a warm-up, apparently, for a government-owned company that relies on federal inmates making at little as 23 cents an hour. On Wednesday, the U.S. Army announced that it handed Federal Prison Industries a no-bid, nearly $20 million contract to build body armor.

It’s the latest in a decades-long string of military deals for FPI, also known as Unicor. Over the years, the company has supplied parts for F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, the Cobra attack helicopter, and the iconic Patriot interceptor system. (More about that in a second.)

But this deal is particularly odd, because FPI’s track record with protective equipment is, to put it generously, uneven. In May of last year, the Army recalled 44,000 FPI-made protective helmets after they failed ballistic testing. FPI then promptly got out of the helmet business.

That rather serious blemish on FPI’s record hasn’t stopped the Army from going back to the firm for $19,767,468’s worth of bulletproof “Outer Tactical Vests.” According to the Army’s contract announcement, the gear is supposed to be “for Pakistan” — presumably, for the Pakistani military. (Although a State Department told suppliers Wednesday that it wants 1,000 vests in Pakistan, too.)

The vest-making will be done at the federal correctional facility in Yazoo City, Mississippi — one of 70 prisons where inmates make anywhere from $0.23 to $1.15 per hour building everything from clothing to office furniture to solar panels to military electronics.

Exactly which military electronics FPI’s nearly 20,000 prisoners build is a matter of some dispute, however. According to FPI’s website, the company “supplies numerous electronic components and services for guided missiles, including the Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) missile.”

A spokesman for Lockheed Martin, which assembles the missile, calls that “completely false” and insists in an e-mail to Danger Room that “at no time were parts from Unicor EVER used in the PAC-3.” The spokesman, Craig Vanbebber, instead says that Unicor components are only used in larger Patriot system, like the ignition and control units which ensure that the missiles are actually launched into the sky. That larger system is put together by a separate defense contractor, Raytheon. The missiles themselves are free of prison labor, Vanbebber asserts.

But Eric Piepert, who sells FPI’s electronics to the government, insists that the company is very much involved in missile-making. “We’re not making anything up,” he tells Danger Room. “We make wiring harnesses for the military, this being one of them — the Patriot missile.”

The protective clothing business appears to be an equally integral part of FPI’s inmate-reliant business. The company website advertises five different models of body armor, on sale from $170 to $325 each.

Photo: U.S. Army


http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/prisoners-body-armor/

Wisconsin Senate leader admits union-busting bill is about defeating Obama

By Megan Carpentier
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 -- 3:36 pm

State Sen. Scott Fitzgerald (R), the Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader, must have forgotten his talking points while appearing on Megyn Kelly's Fox News show. This afternoon he admitted on-air what many liberals have long-suspected: rescinding collective bargaining rights from state workers is Wisconsin is as much about the 2012 presidential election as Wisconsin's 2011 budget shortage.

As first reported by ThinkProgress, Fitzgerald told Kelly: "If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin."

Watch Fitzgerald in the video below, as first seen on Fox News on March 9, 2011:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/09/wisconsin-senate-leader-admits-union-busting-bill-is-about-defeating-obama/

Bankers Whine Over New Cap On Unlimited Debit Card Fees

March 08, 2011 04:00 PM
By Susie Madrak

You know, fellas, we do remember how to use cash. It's bad enough that we let you guys charge us for the automatic cash machines that first allowed you to lay off thousands of bank tellers when you first came up with the idea. But now you want to just keep upping the charges for using the debit cards you gave us -- again, yet another device that let you cut labor costs? You bankers really have no shame:

WASHINGTON — It seemed a good idea last year, when the financial crisis had turned banks into Public Enemy No. 1 and lawmakers were looking for ways to reward consumers still bitter about billion-dollar bailouts and executive bonuses.

Without much warning or debate, the Senate passed an amendment directing the Federal Reserve to reduce the hidden “swipe fees” that banks collect from retailers each time a customer makes a purchase with a debit card.

Merchants, who had complained that the $20.5 billion in annual fees were biting into their profits, were elated. Banks were stunned. Their lobbyists tried to reverse the move, but when the overhaul of the nation’s financial regulation was passed by Congress last July, the debit card cut survived.

Now, as the Fed faces a deadline in April to write the rules for the lower fees, banks and debit card companies are engaged in an all-out assault on Capitol Hill, enlisting a growing cadre of lawmakers and lobbyists to push for changes, delay or outright repeal. Banks contend the proposed cut in fees — to 12 cents per transaction from an average of 44 cents — will leave many of them unable to afford to issue debit cards to customers or will force them to raise other consumer banking charges to cover the costs. They also claim retailers will reap unfair profits.

A coalition of banks and card companies have plastered subway cars and Internet sites with ads warning, “Bureaucrats want to take away your debit card!”

“I am appalled that our members will shoulder tremendous financial burden and still be on the hook for fraud loss while large retailers receive a giant windfall at the hands of the government,” John P. Buckley Jr., the president of Gerber Federal Credit Union of Fremont, Mich., told a House of Representatives subcommittee last week.

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/bankers-whine-over-new-cap-unlimited-

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