Al Jazeera: Anger in Egypt

A revolution far from over

READ PART TWO OF THIS ARTICLE HERE

[print_link] Crosspost: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/spotlight/anger-in-egypt/2011/02/201122675333177233.html

The reports started coming in shortly after midnight: Contacts I met in Cairo earlier this month, a few of them still camped out in Tahrir Square, said the Egyptian military was using force to expel protesters from downtown Cairo.

An ongoing process

But the Egyptian revolution (like the Tunisian one) is far from over, and it would be a mistake to view it in the past tense.

In other words: Toppling Mubarak was a major achievement, but it is a milestone, not an endpoint.

GO TO PART TWO




Al Jazeera: Anger in Egypt (cont'd)

Egypt’s military have a long history of collaboration with US-controlled tyrants.

READ PART ONE OF THIS ARTICLE HERE
[print_link] 

They took questions from journalists and the public during the three-hour programme, which generally won positive reviews from Egyptians.

And they promised a number of significant reforms:

  • The current government, headed by prime minister Ahmad Shafiq, will be temporary.
  • High-ranking officials accused of corruption during the Mubarak regime will be investigated and arrested (several have been already, and the generals promised more).
  • Political prisoners will be released (though they did not specify when).
  • Egyptians will be allowed to vote in upcoming elections using their national IDs, rather than using the old fraud-ridden system of voting cards.

A system worth restarting?

The military, for its part, seems to be trying to outmanoeuvre the protesters, by pledging political reforms while simultaneously casting the rallies as a drag on the struggling Egyptian economy.

But labour activists view this as a rare opportunity to win real economic reforms. Corruption and nepotism were hallmarks of the Mubarak-era Egyptian economy, which allowed a handful of well-connected cronies to enrich themselves through monopolies and back-room deals.

Strike actions are likely to continue, in other words, with a few activists even now calling for a nationwide general strike to oust the Shafiq government and the military junta.

This tension will probably come to define Egyptian politics over the next few weeks and months, and decide the (still uncertain) outcome of the Egyptian revolution.




REPORT: You Have More Money In Your Wallet Than Bank Of America Pays In Federal Taxes

US Uncut takes to the streets to fight for Main Street

By Zaid Jilani  | 26 February 2011

[print_link] 

Today, hundreds of thousands of people comprising a Main Street Movement — a coalition of students, the retired, union workers, public employees, and other middle class Americans — are in the streets, demonstrating against brutal cuts to public services and crackdowns on organized labor being pushed by conservative politicians. These lawmakers that are attacking collective bargaining and cutting necessary services like college tuition aid and health benefits for public workers claim that they have no choice but than to take these actions because both state and federal governments are in debt.

But it wasn’t teachers, fire fighters, policemen, and college students that caused the economic recession that has devastated government budgets — it was Wall Street. And as middle class workers are being asked to sacrifice, the rich continue to rig the system, dodging taxes and avoiding paying their fair share.

In an interview with In These Times, Carl Gibson, the founder of US Uncut, which is organizing some of today’s UK-inspired massive demonstrations against tax dodgers, explains that while ordinary Americans are being asked to sacrifice, major corporations continue to use the rigged tax code to avoid paying any federal taxes at all. As he says, if you have “one dollar” in your wallet, you’re paying more than the “combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America“:

[Gibson] explains, “I have one dollar in my wallet. That’s more than the combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America. That means somebody is gaming the system.”

Indeed, as politicians are asking ordinary Americans to sacrifice their education, their health, their labor rights, and their wellbeing to tackle budget deficits, some of the world’s richest multinational corporations are getting away with shirking their responsibility and paying nothing. ThinkProgress has assembled a short but far from comprehensive list of these tax dodgers — corporations which have rigged the tax system to their advantage so they can reap huge profits and avoid paying taxes:

this happens all the time,” said Robert Willens, a tax accounting expert interviewed by McClatchy. “If you go out and try to make money and you don’t do it, why should the government pay you for your losses?” asked Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice. The same year, the mega-bank’s top executives received pay “ranging from $6 million to nearly $30 million.”

pay a dime of U.S. federal corporate income taxes” between 2008 and 2010.

grand total of $0.00. At the same time, Citigroup has continued to pay its staff lavishly. “John Havens, the head of Citigroup’s investment bank, is expected to be the bank’s highest paid executive for the second year in a row, with a compensation package worth $9.5 million.”

uses offshore subsidiaries in the Caribbean to avoid paying taxes in the United States. Although Exxon-Mobil paid $15 billion in taxes in 2009, not a penny of those taxes went to the American Treasury. This was the same year that the company overtook Wal-Mart in the Fortune 500. Meanwhile the total compensation of Exxon-Mobil’s CEO the same year was over $29,000,000.

largest corporation — filed more than 7,000 tax returns and still paid nothing to U.S. government. They managed to do this by a tax code that essentially subsidizes companies for losing profits and allows them to set up tax havens overseas. That same year GE CEO Jeffery Immelt — who recently scored a spot on a White House economic advisory board — “earned total compensation of $9.89 million.” In 2002, Immelt displayed his lack of economic patriotism, saying, “When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China….I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to 5 billion.”

fourth largest bank in the country, Wells Fargo was able to escape paying federal taxes by writing all of its losses off after its acquisition of Wachovia. Yet in 2009 the chief executive of Wells Fargo also saw his compensation “more than double” as he earned “a salary of $5.6 million paid in cash and stock and stock awards of more than $13 million.”

In the coming months, politicians across the country are going to tell Americans that the only way to stave off huge deficit and balance the budgets is by gutting programs for the poor, eviscerating support for the middle class, eliminating labor rights, and decimating the government’s ability to serve the public interest. This is a lie. The United States is the richest country in the history of the world, and income inequality is higher now than it has been at any time since the 1920′s, with the top “top 1 percentile of households [taking] home 23.5 percent of income in 2007.”

It is simply unfair for Main Street Americans who’ve already been battered by one of the worst economic crises in our history to have to continue to sacrifice while the rich and well-connected continue to rip off taxpayers and avoid paying their fair share. That’s why a Main Street Movement consisting of Americans who are fed up with the status quo is rocking the nation, and one of its first targets should be tax dodgers like Bank of America and Boeing.

UPDATE

All across the country, Main Street Americans are protesting tax dodgers like Bank of America. A picture from one such demonstration (HT: @loril):

UPDATE

shut down a major branch in Washington, D.C. today.

UPDATE

@jashsf):

UPDATE

allisonkilkenny):

UPDATE

This art school dropout in Maine was outraged at having to pay more taxes than Bank of America (HT: RawStory):

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Showing random select comments

  • Apply the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) to corporations.
  • Problem solved.
  • Next?

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    39 people liked this. Like Reply

  • * the unincorporated
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  • Exactly. Better do it fast because once every one is in on the con they will change the rules.

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  • Who are they paying the higher taxes to?

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    3 people liked this. Like Reply

  • Other countries. In their consolidated financials for 2009, they estimate the equivalent U.S. tax to the $15 billion they paid globally was about $12 billion. Had they paid ALL their taxes in the U.S., which was impossible, they would have saved $3 billion. That suggests had they not TRIED to avoid U.S. taxes, they would nave paid less overall.

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    4 people liked this. Like Reply

  • Because corporations exist to make money for their shareholders, not to lose money in furtherance of a political objective in a certain country.

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    5 people liked this. Like Reply

  • Not only do they not pay taxes in the US, they are recipients of the generous tax breaks the US gives ALL the oil companies. How can we get those bozos to stop doing that?

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  • This comment was flagged for review.
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  • Sean Laney Today 03:08 AM in reply to fractionofawhole 
  • Both parties *are* to blame, albeit not equally. On the other hand, if you are claiming the Democratic party is progressive, that is the silliest thing I have heard in a long time. They are a corporatist party just like the Republicans.

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  • Betsy Yesterday 01:16 AM in reply to lance peeples 
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  • Stephanie Fralin Yesterday 01:53 PM in reply to lance peeples 
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  • So maybe we assess tax on income, ie sales or other sources of revenue, kind of like the rest of us persons have to?

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  • Sean Laney Today 03:11 AM in reply to the_proctor 
  • No, it would not work at all that way. Retail sales would be impossible unless markup was ridiculously high. You have to tax profits, not sales, but there are ways to make such things much more honest.

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  • Sean Laney Today 03:09 AM in reply to Stephanie Fralin 
  • Most corporations *are* small businesses.

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  • No no no!!! It was ACORN!!!!

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  • SOROS! (drink!)

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  • 🙂

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  • InsidiousProphet 02/26/2011 04:57 PM in reply to MoodyEllis 
  • Since 1968 we have had 5 Republican presidents and 3 Democratic presidents (Clinton was more of a republic or corporatist president)
  • Nixon: 5 years
  • Carter: 4 years
  • Reagan: 8 years
  • Bush 41: 4 years
  • Bush 43: 8 years
  • Obama: 3 years
  • So in the last 43 years we have had a Republican president for 28 years and a Democratic president for 15 years.
  • So you can spin things all you want but facts are facts. 8 years of Bush along with a 6 year republican majority in both houses of congress under Bush led to the near collapse of our financial system and our economy as American jobs were shipped overseas in record numbers. (Edited by author 1 day ago)

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  • I take issue with your assertion that President Bush ignored the housing crisis. See news below.
  • What do you think? (Edited by author 1 day ago)

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  • Sean Laney Today 03:18 AM in reply to My Editor Friend 
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  • One of the biggest lies from the right is the wealthy and corporations are the ones that pay the most in taxes of every kind.
  • Greed is one of the strongest addictions known to mankind, hence the tax unfairness in America today. (Edited by author 1 day ago)

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    44 people liked this. Like Reply

  • They continually and repeatedly make that claim and no one calls out their lies.

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  • Duopoly, Both parties drink from the same Corporate well!

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  • Betsy Yesterday 01:21 AM in reply to Onyxcat 
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  • Sean Laney Today 03:23 AM in reply to Neoconhater 
  • The capital gains tax is a privilege for the ultra rich, and rewards those who do not work for a living. Such profits should be taxed the same as any other income, not given special rate lower than that applied to the income of working people.
    • The pretext here is that with their “surplus” cash from investment they’ll invest more…and create jobs, and all the rest of that con game that goes by trickle down/supply side economics. Voodoo is the right name, but neither the media nor the (bought) politicos will call it out for what it is, so the con continues…
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  • Heaven forbid MSM might actually do some reporting. I am no longer donating to NPR due to their inept coverage of the WI rally.

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  • We know them as corporate welfare bums.

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  • And be fully liable with severe consequences for not paying taxes.

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  • Memoirs from the class divide

    Why downstairs HATED upstairs: The acerbic memoirs of a Twenties maid reveal what domestic staff REALLY thought of their masters

    By MARGARET POWELL
    Last updated 26th February 2011

    [print_link] 

    • One morning, as I was polishing the brass knocker on the front door, the newsboy arrived with the papers. Just then, my employer floated downstairs — so I dutifully handed them over.

      Then at last she spoke. ‘Langley,’ she said, ‘Never, never on any occasion ever hand anything to me in your bare hands — always use a silver salver.’

      Tears started to trickle down my cheeks. So this was what being in service was all about: you were so low that you couldn’t even hand your employer something without it first being placed on a silver salver. I was just 15, I’d recently become a kitchen maid — and I wanted more than anything to run home. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so wretched before or since.

      Mind you, I had a kind of contempt for those children because they couldn’t do what they wanted: they weren’t allowed to dirty their clothes, they couldn’t run in and out of the bushes and they gawped when I climbed on benches.

      For my dad, work in the decorating business had always been slow. I remember once having to queue like Oliver Twist for watery gruel at the town soup kitchen when I was seven. One winter, we’d even burnt all the shelves and banisters just to keep warm.

      Fortunately, she decided that because I was strong and healthy, I’d do. I was to have £24 a year, with half a day off a week, and do everything the cook commanded.
      That seemed fine — until I was given a list of my duties, which seemed sufficient for six maids. 

      LEFT: Poles apart—Lady Agnes Holland (Keeley Hawes) and Sir Hallam Holland (Ed Stoppard) in the BBC drama Upstairs Downstairs – and Powell’s memoirs have shed yet more light on the subject

      The first time I cleaned the boots, I was pulled up sharply by Mary, the under-housemaid. ‘They won’t do — you haven’t polished the insteps,’ she said. ‘And you have to take all the bootlaces out and iron them.’

      The breakfasts I helped prepare for the Clydesdales were enormous: bacon and eggs, sausages, kidneys and either haddock or kedgeree — not one or two of these things, but every one. I couldn’t help thinking of my parents, who had only toast.
       
      But if I commented to the cook about the unfairness of life, she just said: ‘If there weren’t the people who had the money, what would there be for people like us to do?’ 

      LEFT: Lower class—Rachel Perlmutter, played by Helen Bradbury, starred as the parlourmaid in Upstairs Downstairs and was most likely treated similar to that of Margaret Powell

      They never went into the flats — but, using the royal ‘we’, they’d take us through each encounter in all its amorous detail.

      Still, we had the feeling that whatever people got up to upstairs was their privilege. Not because they were better than us, but because they had money.

      Next, Agnes tried carrying heavy weights all day. And on her day off, she’d go to Hyde Park and keep jumping off the benches. She even tried shifting massive pieces of furniture, but none of it did any good.

      A pretty girl, she’d never been the sort who’d dally with any Tom, Dick or Harry. Plus, I knew her lover had bought her some expensive silk underwear. Which meant the father almost certainly had to be Mrs Cutler’s nephew.

      Living in such close contact with the other servants, a lot of quarrels went on. But a united front was always presented against those upstairs, whom we always called ‘Them’.

      LEFT Stick together: Although there were often quarrels between servants, a united front was put on in opposition to ‘them’ upstairs

      But there the resemblance ended because Miss Susan had masses of clothes, a horse to ride and a tennis court to play on. She could also speak French and play the piano.

      Everything was done for Miss Susan: the under-nurse used to brush her hair, her bath was got ready, even the toothpaste was laid on the brush for her.

      And there was Miss Susan, dressed up to the nines, asking for something which I’d immediately have to get for her — though never once did she speak to me directly.

      Then we’d deferentially accept the parcels they handed us, containing horrid new uniforms, and mutter: ‘Thank you, Master Charles, thank you, Miss Susan.’

      I didn’t work again until our three sons were all at grammar school and World War II was drawing to a close. Once again, I was back on the bottom rung, earning tenpence an hour as a daily.

      I found the differences from my days in service astounding: big houses that had once had a large staff were now reduced to no staff at all, and often stripped of their possessions.

      In one house, all they had left of their silver was a large tray. While I was polishing this one day, my employer said: ‘Ah, Margaret, when the silver service stood on that tray and the butler carried it into the drawing room, it used to look a picture of safety and security. We never thought our way of life would change.’

      They’d complain bitterly about the ‘sordidness’ of life, and their favourite expression was: ‘The working class are aping their betters.’

      Then, at the age of 58, I passed my O-levels before going on to tackle A-levels.

      Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1360819/Why-downstairs-HATED-upstairs-The-acerbic-memoirs-Twenties-maid-reveal-domestic-staff-REALLY-thought-masters.html#ixzz1F5F2jjoO




    Defend Julian Assange

    Telling the truth is a highly subversive act in a world dominated by the Big Lie. 

    [print_link]

    The ruling by Judge Howard Riddle at Belmarsh Magistrates Court in London that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden represents a grave threat to his liberty and even to his life.

    The decision is only the latest episode in a massive, internationally coordinated campaign headed by the Obama administration and US intelligence agencies to discredit and destroy WikiLeaks.

    Assange is the victim of a politically motivated attempt at character assassination and legal frame-up based on trumped-up charges of sexual misconduct. Washington’s chief collaborators are the British government and courts, the Swedish government and its legal system, and the Gillard government in Australia, which has done nothing to defend one of its own citizens.

    Julian Assange has emerged as a major figure in journalism, fighting for a genuinely independent press. As opposed to the New York Times and the rest of the establishment media, which routinely and systematically collaborate with the state to conceal the truth and keep the public in the dark, he has worked to expose the crimes of American imperialism. For this reason he has been targeted for destruction.

    The frame-up is aimed at silencing WikiLeaks, which has made public thousands of secret US military documents exposing the criminal character of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and US diplomatic cables documenting the filthy conspiracies that have been carried out against the world’s people by Washington and its allies.

    The determination of the United States to destroy Assange has only grown as the revelations made by WikiLeaks have helped spark mass popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries, cutting across the efforts of the US and Europe to portray themselves as benevolent advocates of democracy.

    Assange engaged in consensual sex with two women in Sweden last August before being subject to allegations of sexual assault. Within 24 hours, any action against him was dropped by Swedish chief prosecutor Eva Finne, who declared the accusations to be groundless.

    But Finne’s decision was overturned after leading Social Democratic Party figure Claes Borgström intervened to act for the two women. One of the women making the allegations is associated with the Christian wing of Swedish Social Democracy.

    On November 18, 2010, Director of Prosecution Marianne Ny passed a European arrest warrant to police in the UK, just ten days prior to WikiLeaks releasing the US diplomatic cables.

    Borgström’s partner in his legal firm is Thomas Bodström, minister for justice in the 2000-2006 Social Democratic government. In 2001, Bodström was involved in the case of two asylum-seekers named as terrorist suspects who were handed over to the Central Intelligence Agency and later reportedly tortured in Egypt. The Social Democratic Party government participated in the US-led war in Afghanistan.

    The Alliance for Sweden coalition elected in 2007, under Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, is just as close to Washington. Karl Rove, the former adviser to President George W. Bush, has worked as an adviser to Reinfeldt for the past two years.

    If extradited to Sweden, Assange faces an extended period in custody as there is no system of bail for those held on charges of rape. He would then be subjected to a secret trial in which evidence is heard in private, presided over by a senior judge and three lay judges who are political appointees. If found guilty, he faces up to four years in prison.

    To speak of Britain’s close political relationship with Washington would be superfluous. London has been embroiled in every US crime exposed by WikiLeaks and Assange, above all those related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the so-called “war on terror.”

    One needs only to contrast the treatment meted out to Assange to that afforded to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to understand how politically motivated Britain’s actions have been.

    Judge Howard Riddle ruled that Assange can be extradited, even though he has not been charged with any crime. He summarily dismissed any and all concerns raised by Assange’s legal team.

    The mass murderer Pinochet was held in Britain on October 17, 1998 under an international arrest warrant issued by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón. Unlike Assange, who has committed no crime and has not even been officially charged with one, Pinochet spent his time in the UK in luxury while being feted by leading politicians such as ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. His defence team included Clare Montgomery, the lawyer for the Crown who argued for Assange’s extradition.

    IN JANUARY 2000, Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw intervened directly to rule that Pinochet should not be extradited but returned to Chile on grounds of ill-health.

    If he is extradited to Sweden, Assange faces being sent to the United States, where he could face the death penalty. Leading figures in the US have described him as a “terrorist” and “traitor,” including Vice President Joseph Biden, while prominent figures calling for him to be killed include former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

    These are not idle threats. Last year, President Obama himself ordered the “targeted killing” of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born Muslim cleric accused of terrorism and reported to be in hiding in Yemen.

    One needs only consider the barbaric treatment being meted out to US Army Private Bradley Manning, who is being held at a US base in Quantico, Virginia simply on suspicion of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks. Awaiting trial, he has been physically and psychologically tortured for more than nine months, kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, denied exercise or even a pillow or sheets. He is allowed to wear his prescription glasses only when reading, rendering him virtually blind for most of the day.

    The media, including the liberal and pseudo-left press, has played a politically criminal role in legitimizing and promoting the vendetta against Assange. The New York Times and the Guardian, which initially agreed to publish and disseminate the WikiLeaks documents, did so only in order to suppress the most damaging information. The New York Times even admits to having consulted the State Department and senior White House figures before publishing a small number of documents.

    Once the decision was taken to go for Assange, the Times and the Guardian led the media frenzy aimed at portraying Assange as a criminal and lending credibility to the empty charges of sexual abuse and rape against him. Numerous feminist commentators were wheeled out to claim that anyone defending Assange was not only a conspiracy theorist, but guilty of blackening the name of his accusers and being indifferent to the crime of “rape.”

    A warning must be made. The US government and its accomplices have gone a long way towards crippling WikiLeaks and creating the conditions where Assange will likely end up spending a long time in prison. Their ability to do so testifies to the vast erosion of democratic rights in the US and internationally.

    If the current political conditions had prevailed in 1969, Seymour Hersh, who authored the exposé of the My Lai massacre, and the soldier who gave him information would have both ended up in jail.

    In contrast, none of those responsible for the mass killing, torture and destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere exposed by WikiLeaks has been held to account.

    This cannot be allowed to stand. The decision to extradite Assange to Sweden must serve as a rallying cry for a mass movement of protest, mobilising working people, students and all those concerned with democratic rights to demand his release.

    Robert Stevens writes for the World Socialist Web Site.