• Shares slip on both sides of Atlantic • George Osborne accused of ‘sitting on hands’ • Obama faces calls to stimulate economy Stock markets dived on Friday after weak US jobs figures, news of a slump in UK construction orders and further wrangling over the eurozone’s Greek bailout unnerved investors. The FTSE was down 137 points at 5280 while the US Dow Jones industrial average closed down 253 points, or 2.2%, at 11,240. Frankfurt and Paris followed the downward trend, with both losing more than 3% of their value. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are expected to come under pressure to reverse the decline in growth rates that is pushing western economies to the edge of a second recession in three years. Declines in business and consumer confidence have hit manufacturing and other key sectors, with knock-on effects for jobs and consumer demand. Barack Obama, who is due to deliver a speech on employment next Thursday, is expected to face calls to stimulate the economy from his Democrat supporters despite intense lobbying by opposition Tea Party representatives on Capitol Hill. The chancellor, George Osborne, has refused to waver in his plans for widespread spending cuts, insisting that his deficit reduction programme has prevented a Greek-style panic. Economist David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, accused Osborne of sitting on his hands at an important time for the economy and warned that action was needed to create jobs or Britain could suffer a double-dip recession. His concerns echoed those of shadow chancellor Ed Balls, who said Osborne should use a G7 meeting in Marseille next weekend to agree a growth strategy to stop Britain and other leading economies from falling back into recession. Figures from the US labour department showed America failed to create any new jobs in August. Analysts expected at least 75,000 jobs to have been created last month, but the figure came in at zero. A strike by 45,000 Verizon telecoms workers distorted the August figures – which showed a 48,000 decline in the number of workers in the information services sector – but that was offset by a revision to the July numbers, which showed 58,000 fewer jobs had been created than thought. The US economy needs to add 150,000-200,000 new jobs each month to bring the jobless rate down. It remained at 9.1% last month. The US labour department said it was the weakest reading since last September, with firms holding off hiring after declines in consumer and business confidence. Few firms made redundancies, but the data showed a freeze on new hirings. The poor snapshot of the labour market led Goldman Sachs and several other big Wall Street firms to forecast that the US could back further rounds of quantitative easing. Goldman said that the federal open market committee, which determines the policy followed by the US central bank, might extend maturity on the Fed’s $1.65 trillion (£1trn) of government bond holdings after its policy meeting this month. “This report will certainly strengthen the case for the doves on the committee going into the next meeting this month,’ said Millan Mulraine, a senior strategist with TD Securities in New York. Rob Carnell, chief international economist at ING, said the figures would provide further ammunition for those arguing for policy easing. He said it would be difficult to boost consumer demand while the figures showed real wage growth stalling. “If there are any glimmers of hope, and basically there aren’t, you could point to the smaller decline in the government sector as a potential slowing of public sector job-shedding,” he added. “You could also assume this has bolstered the chances of a new round of quantitative easing from the Fed before the year end.” Britain’s MPC is also expected to discuss further quantitative easing at its next meeting after one of its chief hawks, Martin Weale, argued that the deteriorating situation in the UK might warrant further support from the central bank. More problems also emerged in Athens following negotiations between the International Monetary Fund, the EU and the Greek government. Talks were suspended after disagreement on the success of Greek austerity measures, which have already failed to generate the expected savings. The situation worsened after the Finnish government warned that it would only agree to lending Greece further funds if it was given a cash security. Recession Market turmoil US economy Dow Jones FTSE Quantitative easing Global economy Stock markets George Osborne Barack Obama Economics Phillip Inman guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Click here to view this media My buddy, comedian John Fugelsang, is filling in for Stephanie Miller while she’s on vacation. Friday morning, Fugelsang had on your favorite Crooks and Liars managing editor (favorite or at least in the top three*), yours truly. It was an all out riot. I’ll be calling in a bunch next week too. So tune in! Also, yes, Fugelsang is married – so stop asking. *Crooks and Liars has had only three managing editors.
Continue reading …China’s village of the bachelors: no wives in sight in remote settlement
September 2, 2011 No Comment
Surplus of males caused by preference for sons means poor subsistence farmers have no chance of finding a mate He wants a wife, of course. But ask what kind of woman he seeks and Duan Biansheng looks perplexed. “I don’t have any requirements at all,” said the 35-year-old farmer. “I would be satisfied with just a wife.” His prospects of finding one, he added, are “almost zero”. There are dozens of single men in Banzhushan village, perched high on a remote mountain peak in central Hunan province – and not one unattached woman of marriageable age. Tens of millions of men across China face a future as bachelors. They are a source of pity, not envy, in a country where having children is central to life. Duan worries about growing old with no one to care for him. He chafes at the unhelpful pressure to wed from his parents and neighbours. The worst thing of all is the loneliness. This is the perverse outcome of the country’s longstanding preference for sons, and its sudden modernisation. Traditionally, the family line is passed via men. When a woman marries, she joins her husband’s family. Having a boy is a cultural and a pragmatic choice: you expect him to continue your lineage and support you in old age. The result has long been a surplus of men, because of female infanticide or excess female deaths through neglect. But in the last 20 years, the problem has exploded thanks to the spread of prenatal scans. Sex-selective abortion is illegal, but is clearly widely practised. The normal human birth ratio is 106 males for every 100 females. In China, that has risen to 118 boys. That means 30 to 50 million men will fail to find wives over the next two decades, according to Prof Li Shuzhuo of the institute for population and development studies at Xi’an Jiaotong University. It is equivalent to every male in the UK dying a bachelor. Experts have warned that these unmarried “bare branches” pose a threat to social stability. Some suggest that excess men leads to more crime and sexual violence; officials have warned of increased women trafficking. Already, women are kidnapped and sold as wives, as villagers in Banzhushan acknowledge. Other commentators say that while some women are at greater risk, many will benefit from better treatment due to their scarcity. “We can find no evidence, as yet, for a destabilising influence,” said Prof Therese Hesketh of the UCL’s institute of global health, who has co-authored a paper on the impact of the imbalance. Crime is not higher in high sex ratio areas, but it may be too early [to see the effects]. Women want to marry men with money or prospects. “This is not about men oppressing women – maybe the reverse. The situation is good for women.” Poverty is as much to blame for “bachelor villages” as the skewed sex ratio. Women can improve their status by “marrying up”; men are rarely able to do so. Girls born in poor areas leave and outsiders stay away. “Even though there are girls from this village, and we grew up together, they know they can have a better life outside,” said Duan. In late summer, Banzhushan – “chestnut bamboo mountain” – is mesmerisingly beautiful. Large brown butterflies flutter among the tallow trees as you gaze down into deep valleys. But it is simply too remote to be a good home, even to its 300 residents. They struggle to grow enough potatoes, maize and rice to feed themselves. Selling wood helps, but incomes are just 300-400 yuan (£30-40) a year, compared with 5,900 yuan for the average rural resident. Pieces of plastic and cardboard flap across the glass-free windows of tatty brick houses. In winter, thick snows can cut off the village for two weeks at a time. Conditions here are far better than 20 years ago. The long, steep path to the village has been bulldozed into a road and there is electricity, mobile phone and TV coverage. The government has even built a two-storey community centre, shining white amid the pines and bamboo. But these developments have worsened the predicament for bachelors. It is easier to learn about the outside world and easier to move away, and local improvements have been far outpaced by the rapid changes elsewhere. “Thirty or 40 years ago, girls from the valley were willing to marry up here,” said Jin Shixiu, 54. “Everyone was poor and hungry. Transport was bad everywhere. Now the roads down there are better but up here, it’s still the same. Some guys even met women outside, but when they came and saw our houses and how poor we are, they just went away.” Jin longs for a grandchild – “everyone else is holding theirs” – but says she does not dare to hope for one. She encouraged her two sons to move to Shenzhen in search of money and wives but her eldest, now 32, is still single. Even when men become migrant workers, they lack the education to find decent jobs, said the village’s party secretary, Jin Yisong. “It is still very hard to help these men find wives. I really don’t know how to do it,” he said. Duan’s eldest brother took the rare step of marrying into another village, moving away to join his bride’s family. The next eldest brother is working as a migrant labourer, but at 40 has yet to find a wife. His sister married a man from a richer, lower-lying area. Only Duan is left to look after his parents. “Even if I could persuade them to move down, we wouldn’t have money to build a house or land to grow crops,” he said. “After they pass away I will be too old to get married. I don’t think there’s any hope for me.” But he does not blame himself, he said. There is little he can do. “Even though there’s pressure, and people gossip behind my back, I don’t see it as really aimed at me. There are tens of us in this situation.” Home is where the heart is It is a truth universally acknowledged in China that a single man must be in want of a house. “Everyone complains that the pressure is huge,” said economist Zhang Xiaobo. “If you ask people what the important indicators are in the marriage market, 75% say owning a house is the most important factor.” Zhang and co-author Shang-Jin Wei, of Columbia University, believe China’s skewed sex ratio is pushing up property prices and leading to “competitive saving” as the parents of boys vie to buy better property. Zhang, of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, cites the example of a farmer in Guizhou province who was selling his blood to pay for a large new house. It was, thought the man, the only chance of finding his son a bride. “It is totally wasteful. Almost all the young men or women go out as migrant workers,” said Zhang. “They build a two-storey or three-storey house, but the second floor can be totally unfurnished. “It is in a remote mountainous area which in a few decades will probably be a national park. “And there’s no property market in rural villages because land is communally owned. “That was when I realised how strong an impact there was.” said Zhang. A controversial new decision from the country’s top court – giving the spouse who buys a house before marriage the right to keep it after divorce – may help change attitudes. Zhang said that in cities like Beijing, a growing number of couples pool resources anyway: prices are too high for one set of parents to cover the cost. Additional research by Han Cheng China Population Marriage Poverty Tania Branigan guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …China’s village of the bachelors: no wives in sight in remote settlement
September 2, 2011 No CommentSurplus of males caused by preference for sons means poor subsistence farmers have no chance of finding a mate He wants a wife, of course. But ask what kind of woman he seeks and Duan Biansheng looks perplexed. “I don’t have any requirements at all,” said the 35-year-old farmer. “I would be satisfied with just a wife.” His prospects of finding one, he added, are “almost zero”. There are dozens of single men in Banzhushan village, perched high on a remote mountain peak in central Hunan province – and not one unattached woman of marriageable age. Tens of millions of men across China face a future as bachelors. They are a source of pity, not envy, in a country where having children is central to life. Duan worries about growing old with no one to care for him. He chafes at the unhelpful pressure to wed from his parents and neighbours. The worst thing of all is the loneliness. This is the perverse outcome of the country’s longstanding preference for sons, and its sudden modernisation. Traditionally, the family line is passed via men. When a woman marries, she joins her husband’s family. Having a boy is a cultural and a pragmatic choice: you expect him to continue your lineage and support you in old age. The result has long been a surplus of men, because of female infanticide or excess female deaths through neglect. But in the last 20 years, the problem has exploded thanks to the spread of prenatal scans. Sex-selective abortion is illegal, but is clearly widely practised. The normal human birth ratio is 106 males for every 100 females. In China, that has risen to 118 boys. That means 30 to 50 million men will fail to find wives over the next two decades, according to Prof Li Shuzhuo of the institute for population and development studies at Xi’an Jiaotong University. It is equivalent to every male in the UK dying a bachelor. Experts have warned that these unmarried “bare branches” pose a threat to social stability. Some suggest that excess men leads to more crime and sexual violence; officials have warned of increased women trafficking. Already, women are kidnapped and sold as wives, as villagers in Banzhushan acknowledge. Other commentators say that while some women are at greater risk, many will benefit from better treatment due to their scarcity. “We can find no evidence, as yet, for a destabilising influence,” said Prof Therese Hesketh of the UCL’s institute of global health, who has co-authored a paper on the impact of the imbalance. Crime is not higher in high sex ratio areas, but it may be too early [to see the effects]. Women want to marry men with money or prospects. “This is not about men oppressing women – maybe the reverse. The situation is good for women.” Poverty is as much to blame for “bachelor villages” as the skewed sex ratio. Women can improve their status by “marrying up”; men are rarely able to do so. Girls born in poor areas leave and outsiders stay away. “Even though there are girls from this village, and we grew up together, they know they can have a better life outside,” said Duan. In late summer, Banzhushan – “chestnut bamboo mountain” – is mesmerisingly beautiful. Large brown butterflies flutter among the tallow trees as you gaze down into deep valleys. But it is simply too remote to be a good home, even to its 300 residents. They struggle to grow enough potatoes, maize and rice to feed themselves. Selling wood helps, but incomes are just 300-400 yuan (£30-40) a year, compared with 5,900 yuan for the average rural resident. Pieces of plastic and cardboard flap across the glass-free windows of tatty brick houses. In winter, thick snows can cut off the village for two weeks at a time. Conditions here are far better than 20 years ago. The long, steep path to the village has been bulldozed into a road and there is electricity, mobile phone and TV coverage. The government has even built a two-storey community centre, shining white amid the pines and bamboo. But these developments have worsened the predicament for bachelors. It is easier to learn about the outside world and easier to move away, and local improvements have been far outpaced by the rapid changes elsewhere. “Thirty or 40 years ago, girls from the valley were willing to marry up here,” said Jin Shixiu, 54. “Everyone was poor and hungry. Transport was bad everywhere. Now the roads down there are better but up here, it’s still the same. Some guys even met women outside, but when they came and saw our houses and how poor we are, they just went away.” Jin longs for a grandchild – “everyone else is holding theirs” – but says she does not dare to hope for one. She encouraged her two sons to move to Shenzhen in search of money and wives but her eldest, now 32, is still single. Even when men become migrant workers, they lack the education to find decent jobs, said the village’s party secretary, Jin Yisong. “It is still very hard to help these men find wives. I really don’t know how to do it,” he said. Duan’s eldest brother took the rare step of marrying into another village, moving away to join his bride’s family. The next eldest brother is working as a migrant labourer, but at 40 has yet to find a wife. His sister married a man from a richer, lower-lying area. Only Duan is left to look after his parents. “Even if I could persuade them to move down, we wouldn’t have money to build a house or land to grow crops,” he said. “After they pass away I will be too old to get married. I don’t think there’s any hope for me.” But he does not blame himself, he said. There is little he can do. “Even though there’s pressure, and people gossip behind my back, I don’t see it as really aimed at me. There are tens of us in this situation.” Home is where the heart is It is a truth universally acknowledged in China that a single man must be in want of a house. “Everyone complains that the pressure is huge,” said economist Zhang Xiaobo. “If you ask people what the important indicators are in the marriage market, 75% say owning a house is the most important factor.” Zhang and co-author Shang-Jin Wei, of Columbia University, believe China’s skewed sex ratio is pushing up property prices and leading to “competitive saving” as the parents of boys vie to buy better property. Zhang, of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, cites the example of a farmer in Guizhou province who was selling his blood to pay for a large new house. It was, thought the man, the only chance of finding his son a bride. “It is totally wasteful. Almost all the young men or women go out as migrant workers,” said Zhang. “They build a two-storey or three-storey house, but the second floor can be totally unfurnished. “It is in a remote mountainous area which in a few decades will probably be a national park. “And there’s no property market in rural villages because land is communally owned. “That was when I realised how strong an impact there was.” said Zhang. A controversial new decision from the country’s top court – giving the spouse who buys a house before marriage the right to keep it after divorce – may help change attitudes. Zhang said that in cities like Beijing, a growing number of couples pool resources anyway: prices are too high for one set of parents to cover the cost. Additional research by Han Cheng China Population Marriage Poverty Tania Branigan guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Many black Africans have been arrested and accused of fighting for dictator, but claim they were press-ganged Earlier this year, as revolution and siege ground Tripoli to a halt, Mehdi Hassan knew where to look for work. He would drive his taxi to a roundabout in the south-west of the capital and wait for foreigners who had arrived with the name of a destination, but had no idea how to get there. “The cigarette factory,” he said. “That’s all they had to say.” Hassan drove each of the men – there were around six over a three-week period – to a warehouse behind the giant, government-run tobacco plant in western Tripoli. The site was well known: an industrial plant, protected by military guards, which had become a cash cow for the Gaddafi regime. “I was always told to go round here,” he said as he retraced the route this week, down a long straight road inside the factory’s high wall. “There were soldiers along the way and they pointed me towards that white building. Only one of the men I took there told me why he had come. The others couldn’t speak Arabic. He said I am here to fight for Gaddafi.” The building, like almost every other government facility in town had been ransacked and abandoned. Three huge sacks of rice sat amid broken glass, an empty weapons crate and strewn green uniforms. A sign on the wall said: “God, Muammar and Libya only.” But there was little else left to prove this place was what many in town believe it to have been – a processing centre for mercenaries, who threw in their lot with a dictator. Mehdi and other drivers around Tripoli are adamant. “It was very clear what it was,” he said of the scene he saw in March. “They weren’t even trying to hide it. There were around 100 men there and all of them were African. The Libyan soldiers were trying to speak to them in English.” In the 13 days since Gaddafi’s security forces were ousted, finding out how – and by whom – this totalitarian state was held together for so long has become an obsession for Tripoli’s brutalised residents as well as the city’s new guard, which rode into town seeking vengeance as much as a new beginning. What began early last week as a series of security sweeps to uncover the remnants of Gaddafi’s loyalists has edged towards a larger and more troubling persecution. It is not a good time to be a sub-Saharan African here. It is an especially poor time to be black and in hospital with a gunshot wound. A tour of the capital’s overworked hospitals over the past fortnight revealed sizable numbers of such men in beds alongside soldiers from Gaddafi’s ousted army. How they got there is an issue of much conjecture. “I swear by God I was walking in the street when I was shot,” said a Senegalese man, Ali Senegal, in Mitiga hospital. A bullet had entered the right side of his neck and shattered his jaw. A Gaddafi soldier in a bed opposite spoke up. “You were a sniper and you know you were,” he said. Senegal looked horrified and alone. Even if he was telling the truth, there is little chance that he will be believed. In the next room, a second man from Niger had just been brought in from a triage centre with a gaping wound to his right leg. “I am a mechanic,” he said angrily. “I have been working in Abu Selim for three years.” Both men had the misfortune to be injured in a battle that raged on 26 August in the staunchly loyalist neighbourhood just south of Gaddafi’s Bab al-Azazia compound. In the eyes of the doctors treating them, they had no good reason for being in Abu Selim. But at least here, the men can expect to be fed, given water and have their wounds tended to. The street outside is not proving as kind. Across Tripoli, thousands of black Africans no longer enjoy the status bestowed on them under Gaddafi, when hundreds of thousands were welcomed over the past 25 years and given work permits or citizenship. At least several thousand have been detained in the past fortnight on suspicion of being mercenaries. Many thousands more have fled or are in the process of doing so. Yet more still remain holed up in small groups in Tripoli neighbourhoods too frightened to venture out. At Mitiga hospital two badly wounded men, one a Tuareg tribesman and another from Chad, walked gingerly into the emergency ward, wincing with every step. They had been staying together in a private home, not willing to seek help for fear of what might happen to them. “We were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said the Tuareg man. “Help us.” Hundreds of thousands of Africans fled Libya to their home countries, mainly Chad, Mali, Niger, Sudan and Somalia in the early days of the revolution in late-February and March. Yet there is evidence that as they left, small numbers of men from the same countries were travelling in the other direction. Late last week at Abu Selim hospital, Dr Sami, a trauma surgeon, walked the Guardian around the grounds. Every blood-caked trolley from inside the building had been wheeled outside into the scorching sunlight because the hospital was being disinfected in an effort to cleanse the stain and scent of death caused by so many bodies. Sami took us to a hut near the hospital entrance, where cleaners had kept a memento – a wallet-sized card issued to a man from Chad. On one side it said in Arabic and English: “Carry this with you at all times and you will be safe.” On the other side it said: “I am here to protect the king of kings.” Sami said: “This is what was given to the mercenaries. There were dozens like this. We had many, many of them in this hospital in the past few days. Most couldn’t speak Arabic, or English. They would just point at their injuries. They didn’t want to be admitted even if they were in agonising pain. Most of the bodies we had here were black Africans. And most of them were not claimed by anyone.” In a second hospital, Shara Zaweya, in the centre of town, Dr Ghassem Barouni has also been treating suspected African fighters. He held up a necklace of one man – a Tuareg tribesman – who claimed to hold Libyan nationality and said: “He believed this was going to protect him from bullets. He was still very loyal to Gaddafi, even after all this death. “It is 200% true that there were mercenaries here fighting for Gaddafi,” he said. “Many of them came just for that purpose. But there are others who have been here for a long time. They were allowed to work here and they were given benefits. But there was a price to pay for that. When the time came they were expected to fight.” Sami’s account has been supported by interviews with many other officials over the past week who suggest an unknown number of non-military men took up arms to support Gaddafi in the dying days of his regime. Some were compelled to do so. Others apparently volunteered. In a police station in Tripoli, where 34 alleged soldiers of fortune are being held, Abdalla Beid, 31, from Niger, said he had been living in Libya for seven years and working as a cleaner. He claimed he was recently deceived into joining Gaddafi’s army with the promise of a job as a security guard for 400 dinars a month. “A Libyan man came to Sabha and said there is a job in Tripoli providing security for a house but he needs five people,” he said. “He took us to Tripoli and put us in a house. Then he said, ‘This job is not a security job. Now we are fighting for Libya. We need people to fight the rats.’ “He tried to give us guns. He tried to force us to do the job. He said, ‘I brought you here to do this job and you have to do it, whether you like the job or not.’ I tried to refuse. He said, ‘If you refuse, I will kill you.’ One man, who was from Chad, agreed to fight but the rest of us refused. He locked us in a room for six days. Then he drove us outside and, on the same day, I was caught.” The desperate and savage last days of Gaddafi’s 42 years in power are rapidly recasting Libya’s historical association with Africa and lay bare the often cynical relationship Gaddafi had with the people he championed. In the wake of the regime has come resentment and a current of racism that Libya’s new leaders have vowed will not become entrenched. “Some people chose to fight,” said Winston Emerson Adango, who is trying to leave Libya to return to Niger. “But people like me just want to live.” Libya Middle East Africa Arab and Middle East unrest Muammar Gaddafi Martin Chulov David Smith guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Many black Africans have been arrested and accused of fighting for dictator, but claim they were press-ganged Earlier this year, as revolution and siege ground Tripoli to a halt, Mehdi Hassan knew where to look for work. He would drive his taxi to a roundabout in the south-west of the capital and wait for foreigners who had arrived with the name of a destination, but had no idea how to get there. “The cigarette factory,” he said. “That’s all they had to say.” Hassan drove each of the men – there were around six over a three-week period – to a warehouse behind the giant, government-run tobacco plant in western Tripoli. The site was well known: an industrial plant, protected by military guards, which had become a cash cow for the Gaddafi regime. “I was always told to go round here,” he said as he retraced the route this week, down a long straight road inside the factory’s high wall. “There were soldiers along the way and they pointed me towards that white building. Only one of the men I took there told me why he had come. The others couldn’t speak Arabic. He said I am here to fight for Gaddafi.” The building, like almost every other government facility in town had been ransacked and abandoned. Three huge sacks of rice sat amid broken glass, an empty weapons crate and strewn green uniforms. A sign on the wall said: “God, Muammar and Libya only.” But there was little else left to prove this place was what many in town believe it to have been – a processing centre for mercenaries, who threw in their lot with a dictator. Mehdi and other drivers around Tripoli are adamant. “It was very clear what it was,” he said of the scene he saw in March. “They weren’t even trying to hide it. There were around 100 men there and all of them were African. The Libyan soldiers were trying to speak to them in English.” In the 13 days since Gaddafi’s security forces were ousted, finding out how – and by whom – this totalitarian state was held together for so long has become an obsession for Tripoli’s brutalised residents as well as the city’s new guard, which rode into town seeking vengeance as much as a new beginning. What began early last week as a series of security sweeps to uncover the remnants of Gaddafi’s loyalists has edged towards a larger and more troubling persecution. It is not a good time to be a sub-Saharan African here. It is an especially poor time to be black and in hospital with a gunshot wound. A tour of the capital’s overworked hospitals over the past fortnight revealed sizable numbers of such men in beds alongside soldiers from Gaddafi’s ousted army. How they got there is an issue of much conjecture. “I swear by God I was walking in the street when I was shot,” said a Senegalese man, Ali Senegal, in Mitiga hospital. A bullet had entered the right side of his neck and shattered his jaw. A Gaddafi soldier in a bed opposite spoke up. “You were a sniper and you know you were,” he said. Senegal looked horrified and alone. Even if he was telling the truth, there is little chance that he will be believed. In the next room, a second man from Niger had just been brought in from a triage centre with a gaping wound to his right leg. “I am a mechanic,” he said angrily. “I have been working in Abu Selim for three years.” Both men had the misfortune to be injured in a battle that raged on 26 August in the staunchly loyalist neighbourhood just south of Gaddafi’s Bab al-Azazia compound. In the eyes of the doctors treating them, they had no good reason for being in Abu Selim. But at least here, the men can expect to be fed, given water and have their wounds tended to. The street outside is not proving as kind. Across Tripoli, thousands of black Africans no longer enjoy the status bestowed on them under Gaddafi, when hundreds of thousands were welcomed over the past 25 years and given work permits or citizenship. At least several thousand have been detained in the past fortnight on suspicion of being mercenaries. Many thousands more have fled or are in the process of doing so. Yet more still remain holed up in small groups in Tripoli neighbourhoods too frightened to venture out. At Mitiga hospital two badly wounded men, one a Tuareg tribesman and another from Chad, walked gingerly into the emergency ward, wincing with every step. They had been staying together in a private home, not willing to seek help for fear of what might happen to them. “We were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said the Tuareg man. “Help us.” Hundreds of thousands of Africans fled Libya to their home countries, mainly Chad, Mali, Niger, Sudan and Somalia in the early days of the revolution in late-February and March. Yet there is evidence that as they left, small numbers of men from the same countries were travelling in the other direction. Late last week at Abu Selim hospital, Dr Sami, a trauma surgeon, walked the Guardian around the grounds. Every blood-caked trolley from inside the building had been wheeled outside into the scorching sunlight because the hospital was being disinfected in an effort to cleanse the stain and scent of death caused by so many bodies. Sami took us to a hut near the hospital entrance, where cleaners had kept a memento – a wallet-sized card issued to a man from Chad. On one side it said in Arabic and English: “Carry this with you at all times and you will be safe.” On the other side it said: “I am here to protect the king of kings.” Sami said: “This is what was given to the mercenaries. There were dozens like this. We had many, many of them in this hospital in the past few days. Most couldn’t speak Arabic, or English. They would just point at their injuries. They didn’t want to be admitted even if they were in agonising pain. Most of the bodies we had here were black Africans. And most of them were not claimed by anyone.” In a second hospital, Shara Zaweya, in the centre of town, Dr Ghassem Barouni has also been treating suspected African fighters. He held up a necklace of one man – a Tuareg tribesman – who claimed to hold Libyan nationality and said: “He believed this was going to protect him from bullets. He was still very loyal to Gaddafi, even after all this death. “It is 200% true that there were mercenaries here fighting for Gaddafi,” he said. “Many of them came just for that purpose. But there are others who have been here for a long time. They were allowed to work here and they were given benefits. But there was a price to pay for that. When the time came they were expected to fight.” Sami’s account has been supported by interviews with many other officials over the past week who suggest an unknown number of non-military men took up arms to support Gaddafi in the dying days of his regime. Some were compelled to do so. Others apparently volunteered. In a police station in Tripoli, where 34 alleged soldiers of fortune are being held, Abdalla Beid, 31, from Niger, said he had been living in Libya for seven years and working as a cleaner. He claimed he was recently deceived into joining Gaddafi’s army with the promise of a job as a security guard for 400 dinars a month. “A Libyan man came to Sabha and said there is a job in Tripoli providing security for a house but he needs five people,” he said. “He took us to Tripoli and put us in a house. Then he said, ‘This job is not a security job. Now we are fighting for Libya. We need people to fight the rats.’ “He tried to give us guns. He tried to force us to do the job. He said, ‘I brought you here to do this job and you have to do it, whether you like the job or not.’ I tried to refuse. He said, ‘If you refuse, I will kill you.’ One man, who was from Chad, agreed to fight but the rest of us refused. He locked us in a room for six days. Then he drove us outside and, on the same day, I was caught.” The desperate and savage last days of Gaddafi’s 42 years in power are rapidly recasting Libya’s historical association with Africa and lay bare the often cynical relationship Gaddafi had with the people he championed. In the wake of the regime has come resentment and a current of racism that Libya’s new leaders have vowed will not become entrenched. “Some people chose to fight,” said Winston Emerson Adango, who is trying to leave Libya to return to Niger. “But people like me just want to live.” Libya Middle East Africa Arab and Middle East unrest Muammar Gaddafi Martin Chulov David Smith guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
enlarge Here’s a fact set for your consideration: Two middle school boys. One a foot taller than the other. Both have difficult backgrounds. One is struggling with his sexuality and working it out publicly, which makes others around him uncomfortable. He been bullied in his past for his appearance and sexual orientation. The other one is about a foot taller, and has been raised by a homophobic, abusive, alcoholic father. It is possible, but seems to be unproven, that the taller one is also experimenting with involvement in white supremacy groups, but whether that is true or not seems to be at issue. Here is what isn’t in dispute: Brandon McInerney took his father’s Saturday night special from wherever it was stashed in the house. He loaded it with hollow-point bullets. He put it in his backpack and went to school. The day before he said he was going to bring his gun to school . When he got to school, he went to the computer lab, pulled out the gun, and shot Larry King in the back of the head. That is not in dispute. All sides agree. You would think, with that fact set, a jury could come to a verdict. And yet, they didn’t. Thursday the judge declared a mistrial after the jury deliberated 15 hours because seven jurors wanted to convict him on voluntary manslaughter and five wanted to convict him of first or second degree murder. What’s even weirder? Suddenly all the usual law-and-order conservatives have turned into merciful Pollyannas, including the Ventura County Star itself, whose reporting mirrored their editorial belief that McInerney should have been tried as a juvenile and not an adult, and the hate crime charge should not have been part of the trial. I’m not sure what you call it if it’s not a hate crime, to be honest. Despite the defense team’s best efforts to paint it as a “gay panic” defense , it really came down to one kid taunting another with his sexual orientation. If he were not dead from bullets that exploded his head like a watermelon, perhaps we could debate the wisdom of allowing the types of interactions between the two that happened. But he is dead. He is dead after a classmate shot him in front of all of the other classmates and the teacher. He is dead and he is gone and Brandon McInerney is very much alive and in jail and on trial. McInerney breathes. King doesn’t. And still, there is this weird, strange, counter-intuitive vibe here in Ventura County about how McInerney is as much a victim as King. I can only attribute it to the usual homophobic tendencies of many in this area. The sly implication is that King had it coming. That the victim, the one cold in his grave, deserved what he got because, well, he was gay. Or looked gay. Or acted gay. I’m not sure any of us really know whether he was or wasn’t. And in more reversals, the conservative kings and queens of personal responsibility are whispering and crying that McInerney was the victim of a school administrator and “lax attitudes.” As if stepping on Larry King would have prevented the whole thing. As if a kid who dared to be different, and perhaps in a way that offended or got in others’ space, deserved to have hollow point bullets put in his head. As if being gay is a reason to be dead. James Gilliam directs the Seth Walsh Students’ Rights Project , a project of the Southern California ACLU. Here’s what he has to say about the defense that ultimately succeeded enough to hang the jury. A toxic and dangerous environment has festered for years in California schools, where any student perceived as having a different sexual orientation or gender orientation — or simply perceived as different — can be teased and abused, often with impunity. But bullies don’t exist in a vacuum — they’re acting on messaging they learn from parents, from churches, even from educators themselves that LGBT people are somehow less than equal. It’s a message expected to be reinforced in the Chatsworth courtroom as McInerney’s attorneys assert that he was driven to temporary insanity following unbearable and humiliating sexual harassment on the part of King; that revulsion and violence are the natural responses to homosexual behavior. And also that anyone who may not fit someone else’s idea of how a member of a certain gender should behave perhaps brings that hostility on him or herself. About that messaging thing: Here is my open letter to “SaveOurKids.net” , a LaHaye production. That followed my discovery that petitions to put Proposition 8 on the ballot were in church lobbies everywhere. Messaging, indeed. Words matter, but apparently guns matter more. And even more apparently, the prosecution in this case couldn’t manage to muster enough passion or facts to get a verdict of murder for someone who indisputably pulled the trigger and unloaded into Larry King’s head. If we’re honest with each other, would there be any doubt of a verdict if it had been South Central LA? Or a hispanic defendant? Would there? No. They’d have been tried as an adult, tossed in jail and the key tossed. But in this case, when it’s a couple of white kids and one has daddy’s gun, they can’t decide whether he actually meant to pull the trigger or not. Daddy may have been a mean sonofabitch with a temper and an attitude, but hey — Daddy wasn’t on trial here. Brandon was. And Brandon should have been held to account. It defies logic. My other posts on this case can be found here , here and here . Firedoglake has more on it, too. Crossposted from odd time signatures
Continue reading …
enlarge Here’s a fact set for your consideration: Two middle school boys. One a foot taller than the other. Both have difficult backgrounds. One is struggling with his sexuality and working it out publicly, which makes others around him uncomfortable. He been bullied in his past for his appearance and sexual orientation. The other one is about a foot taller, and has been raised by a homophobic, abusive, alcoholic father. It is possible, but seems to be unproven, that the taller one is also experimenting with involvement in white supremacy groups, but whether that is true or not seems to be at issue. Here is what isn’t in dispute: Brandon McInerney took his father’s Saturday night special from wherever it was stashed in the house. He loaded it with hollow-point bullets. He put it in his backpack and went to school. The day before he said he was going to bring his gun to school . When he got to school, he went to the computer lab, pulled out the gun, and shot Larry King in the back of the head. That is not in dispute. All sides agree. You would think, with that fact set, a jury could come to a verdict. And yet, they didn’t. Thursday the judge declared a mistrial after the jury deliberated 15 hours because seven jurors wanted to convict him on voluntary manslaughter and five wanted to convict him of first or second degree murder. What’s even weirder? Suddenly all the usual law-and-order conservatives have turned into merciful Pollyannas, including the Ventura County Star itself, whose reporting mirrored their editorial belief that McInerney should have been tried as a juvenile and not an adult, and the hate crime charge should not have been part of the trial. I’m not sure what you call it if it’s not a hate crime, to be honest. Despite the defense team’s best efforts to paint it as a “gay panic” defense , it really came down to one kid taunting another with his sexual orientation. If he were not dead from bullets that exploded his head like a watermelon, perhaps we could debate the wisdom of allowing the types of interactions between the two that happened. But he is dead. He is dead after a classmate shot him in front of all of the other classmates and the teacher. He is dead and he is gone and Brandon McInerney is very much alive and in jail and on trial. McInerney breathes. King doesn’t. And still, there is this weird, strange, counter-intuitive vibe here in Ventura County about how McInerney is as much a victim as King. I can only attribute it to the usual homophobic tendencies of many in this area. The sly implication is that King had it coming. That the victim, the one cold in his grave, deserved what he got because, well, he was gay. Or looked gay. Or acted gay. I’m not sure any of us really know whether he was or wasn’t. And in more reversals, the conservative kings and queens of personal responsibility are whispering and crying that McInerney was the victim of a school administrator and “lax attitudes.” As if stepping on Larry King would have prevented the whole thing. As if a kid who dared to be different, and perhaps in a way that offended or got in others’ space, deserved to have hollow point bullets put in his head. As if being gay is a reason to be dead. James Gilliam directs the Seth Walsh Students’ Rights Project , a project of the Southern California ACLU. Here’s what he has to say about the defense that ultimately succeeded enough to hang the jury. A toxic and dangerous environment has festered for years in California schools, where any student perceived as having a different sexual orientation or gender orientation — or simply perceived as different — can be teased and abused, often with impunity. But bullies don’t exist in a vacuum — they’re acting on messaging they learn from parents, from churches, even from educators themselves that LGBT people are somehow less than equal. It’s a message expected to be reinforced in the Chatsworth courtroom as McInerney’s attorneys assert that he was driven to temporary insanity following unbearable and humiliating sexual harassment on the part of King; that revulsion and violence are the natural responses to homosexual behavior. And also that anyone who may not fit someone else’s idea of how a member of a certain gender should behave perhaps brings that hostility on him or herself. About that messaging thing: Here is my open letter to “SaveOurKids.net” , a LaHaye production. That followed my discovery that petitions to put Proposition 8 on the ballot were in church lobbies everywhere. Messaging, indeed. Words matter, but apparently guns matter more. And even more apparently, the prosecution in this case couldn’t manage to muster enough passion or facts to get a verdict of murder for someone who indisputably pulled the trigger and unloaded into Larry King’s head. If we’re honest with each other, would there be any doubt of a verdict if it had been South Central LA? Or a hispanic defendant? Would there? No. They’d have been tried as an adult, tossed in jail and the key tossed. But in this case, when it’s a couple of white kids and one has daddy’s gun, they can’t decide whether he actually meant to pull the trigger or not. Daddy may have been a mean sonofabitch with a temper and an attitude, but hey — Daddy wasn’t on trial here. Brandon was. And Brandon should have been held to account. It defies logic. My other posts on this case can be found here , here and here . Firedoglake has more on it, too. Crossposted from odd time signatures
Continue reading …Dems Desperate to Hold Senate Majority– Let’s Build A PROGRESSIVE Majority! Support Sanders & Warren
September 2, 2011 No CommentBernie and Elizabeth depend on Grassroots (that’s us!) not Wall Street. Every penny goes directly to their campaigns. Please give what you can. Blue America doesn’t usually send e-mails asking for contributions because of some phony Inside the Beltway “deadline”– as if a $20 contribution is any more or any less crucial today or tomorrow. But we just got a wretched plea from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, begging for money for the dreadful and unpopular incumbents whose voting records make it impossible for them to raise money from grassroots Democrats. I mean who in their right mind is going to donate to conservative shills like Ben Nelson, Joe Manchin or Claire McCaskill? They’ve alienated Democratic voters and the lobbyists and Big Business interests they have normally counted on would rather replace them with Republicans. Good riddance! On the other hand, Blue America would like to ask you to help us send a message to the DSCC today (or tomorrow– we don’t care) by helping us support Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), two people who have fought long and hard for ordinary American families, not for the banksters and not for the corporate elites. You already know Bernie. This is what Elizabeth Warren told the Boston Globe yesterday: “It’s about being willing to take a good idea and fight for it. It’s being willing to throw your body in front of a bus to block bad ideas… There are some things worth fighting for and right now it’s about fighting for the middle class.” She’s running for Ted Kennedy’s old seat, which is currently occupied by Wall Street’s favorite senator, Scott Brown– and that’s what business-friendly Forbes called him… admiringly. One day Elizabeth may be the tellers’ favorite senator, but she’ll never be the banksters’ or hedge fund managers’! “I came out of a hard-working middle class family. I lived in an America that created opportunities for kids like me… I now see an America in which our government works for those who already have money and already have power… I would walk out of a senator’s office and the office would be completely jammed with lobbyists who were there to explain why the consumer agency was bad. There was not enough room for them to sit down.’’ Blue America has only endorsed 2 people for the Senate so far this cycle. It’s hard to imagine any other incumbents and so far the only other challenger who looks worthwhile is Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, although she hasn’t declared yet. So we’re asking you to take a look at our Senate page and see if you can give us a hand with Bernie and Elizabeth… either before or after the DSCC’s midnight “deadline.” We are all in this together, Digby, John, Howie and the Blue America team Check out this video of Elizabeth Warren, who is worthy of our support.
Continue reading …Dems Desperate to Hold Senate Majority– Let’s Build A PROGRESSIVE Majority! Support Sanders & Warren
September 2, 2011 No Comment
Bernie and Elizabeth depend on Grassroots (that’s us!) not Wall Street. Every penny goes directly to their campaigns. Please give what you can. Blue America doesn’t usually send e-mails asking for contributions because of some phony Inside the Beltway “deadline”– as if a $20 contribution is any more or any less crucial today or tomorrow. But we just got a wretched plea from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, begging for money for the dreadful and unpopular incumbents whose voting records make it impossible for them to raise money from grassroots Democrats. I mean who in their right mind is going to donate to conservative shills like Ben Nelson, Joe Manchin or Claire McCaskill? They’ve alienated Democratic voters and the lobbyists and Big Business interests they have normally counted on would rather replace them with Republicans. Good riddance! On the other hand, Blue America would like to ask you to help us send a message to the DSCC today (or tomorrow– we don’t care) by helping us support Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), two people who have fought long and hard for ordinary American families, not for the banksters and not for the corporate elites. You already know Bernie. This is what Elizabeth Warren told the Boston Globe yesterday: “It’s about being willing to take a good idea and fight for it. It’s being willing to throw your body in front of a bus to block bad ideas… There are some things worth fighting for and right now it’s about fighting for the middle class.” She’s running for Ted Kennedy’s old seat, which is currently occupied by Wall Street’s favorite senator, Scott Brown– and that’s what business-friendly Forbes called him… admiringly. One day Elizabeth may be the tellers’ favorite senator, but she’ll never be the banksters’ or hedge fund managers’! “I came out of a hard-working middle class family. I lived in an America that created opportunities for kids like me… I now see an America in which our government works for those who already have money and already have power… I would walk out of a senator’s office and the office would be completely jammed with lobbyists who were there to explain why the consumer agency was bad. There was not enough room for them to sit down.’’ Blue America has only endorsed 2 people for the Senate so far this cycle. It’s hard to imagine any other incumbents and so far the only other challenger who looks worthwhile is Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, although she hasn’t declared yet. So we’re asking you to take a look at our Senate page and see if you can give us a hand with Bernie and Elizabeth… either before or after the DSCC’s midnight “deadline.” We are all in this together, Digby, John, Howie and the Blue America team Check out this video of Elizabeth Warren, who is worthy of our support.
Continue reading …