GREEK GENERAL STRIKE AGAINST ATTACKS ON RIGHT TO DEMONSTRATE

By Katerina Selin, WSWS.

November 28, 2020



https://popularresistance.org/greek-general-strike-against-attacks-on-right-to-demonstrate/



And Devastating Coronavirus Policy.

The mood in the international working class is strained to the breaking point. As millions of people were demonstrating against the government across India on Thursday, tens of thousands of public sector workers and employees in Greece also went on a nationwide 24-hour general strike.

They were protesting against the devastating coronavirus policies and demanded better protective measures, the confiscation of private hospitals, mass hiring of health workers and salary increases. This week, the total number of infections in Greece exceeded the 100,000 mark and the death toll rose to over 2,000. Given the overcrowded intensive care units in northern Greece, patients had to be transported to Athens by a special flight for the first time.

The strike was also directed against the authoritarian attacks of the state in the spirit of the military junta, which brutally ruled the country from 1967 to 1974 with the support of NATO. Demonstrators demanded the immediate withdrawal of the draft for a new labour law that would abolish the eight-hour day and drastically restrict the right to strike and demonstrate.

While the General Confederation of Trade Unions (GSEE) collaborates closely with the government during the pandemic, the Public Services Union (ADEDY) and the Public Hospitals Union (POEDIN) had called for the strike to try and keep the resistance under control. In addition to doctors, nurses and public employees, transport workers, dockworkers, journalists, teachers and cultural workers also took part in the strike. Ports, the subways and the electric train in Athens stood still. Strikers from all over the country gathered in front of hospitals, observing the coronavirus safety measures.

In downtown Athens, small rallies were held in front of the Labour Ministry and the Health Ministry. A large police force was deployed to intimidate the protesters.

Athenian artists rode in a motorcycle protest convoy past the hospitals to the Health Ministry. “Police everywhere—intensive care beds nowhere” and “Money for health, not for Aegean Airlines [largest Greek airline]” were written on their posters. With these slogans, they denounced the class politics of the government, which is putting vast sums into big business and increasing the repressive powers of the state, while the public health system is falling apart.

Air traffic controllers also wanted to down tools but were prevented from doing so by court order shortly before the strike began. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Transportation had gone to court against the strike in the aviation industry and was granted an injunction. The airlines celebrated and announced flights would operate normally.

In the last weeks and months workers, students and young people had taken to the streets against the government under the right-wing conservative New Democracy (Nea Dimokratia, ND). In early April, at the beginning of the pandemic, doctors and nurses protested nationwide. In the summer, thousands demonstrated against the massive restrictions on the right to demonstrate. In September and October, thousands of students occupied over 700 schools, demanding huge investments in education rather than the military.

In mid-November, hospital workers again organised protest actions as part of a “National Action Day for Health.” Students at the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki occupied the rector’s office to draw attention to the dangerous conditions in their student residences. They demanded mass tests, better cleaning and safety measures against COVID-19. The Health Ministry ignored the demands and sent in the police instead to suppress the protests.

The growing strikes and protests by the Greek working class and youth raise fundamental political questions. Few countries in recent years have experienced as many general strikes as Greece. Whenever the pressure becomes too great and the wrath of the workers threatens to break out uncontrollably, the unions resort to general strikes and ensure that resistance is channeled into a dead end. They deliberately prevent a European-wide and the international unification of the struggles, although the pandemic makes a worldwide response by the working class necessary.

The general strike covered only the civil service and was limited by the organisers to a purely national framework. The calls for the strike by the trade unions and pseudo-left organisations associated with them, such as the Stalinist Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the Antarsya alliance, contain no reference to the international situation, nor make an appeal to the European working class or demand the closure of all non-essential production with payment of full wages to protect all workers from the virus. The union officials do not articulate the interests of the workers but speak for prosperous sections of the middle classes who fear a revolutionary movement of the working class like the devil fears holy water.

It is significant that Syriza, the largest pseudo-left organisation in Greece and nominal leader of the parliamentary opposition, has effectively blacked out the general strike. There was no official strike call, let alone a statement by party leader Alexis Tsipras on Twitter or YouTube. Tsipras hurries from one hospital to the next to have his picture taken with doctors and nurses and to pretend to support them. But Greek workers know only too well what these false statements and empty phrases mean. They experienced it first-hand when Syriza, with Tsipras as prime minister, implemented the austerity dictates of the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank when in government for four years. Syriza imposed massive cuts in health, education and social services.

Now, the pseudo-left party essentially acts as a loyal parliamentary opposition. On Thursday, the day of the general strike, Syriza representative Giorgos Katrougalos met with Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias, who informed him about the new strategic partnership with the United Arab Emirates. Katrougalos, who was himself Foreign Minister in 2019 and who implemented drastic pension cuts in 2015 as Labour Minister, welcomed the cooperation with the Emirates. When he criticised the government, he did so from the right. A foreign policy “strategy” was lacking and “clear red lines” against neighbouring Turkey were needed, the Syriza politician said. Both sides agree on the need for a more aggressive imperialist policy, which of course requires billions in arms expenditures.

On the domestic front, too, Syriza and the unions agree in essence with the government’s course and play a key role in pushing through the deadly herd immunity policy against enormous resistance.

Although the pandemic situation in Greece is currently on a knife-edge, the government wants to gradually lift the lockdown on December 7. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Education Minister Niki Kerameos declared that the first thing to do was to reopen schools. In an interview with RealNews, Kerameos again claimed that children were less likely to be affected by the virus. Elementary schools had only been closed to limit social mixing and traffic by parents, he said.

Children are to be brought back to classrooms in the middle of winter, despite exploding coronavirus numbers, so that their parents are available for the job market. At the same time, the government has hardly spent any money to make distance learning technically and financially feasible for all students.

The dangerous reopening of schools is also supported by the teachers’ union OLME, which wants to link it only to certain safety precautions. In its call for a strike, OLME demands more education spending and the “necessary measures for running open schools under safe health conditions.” During the demonstration, the trade unionist P. Saraidari criticised the government for not carrying out mass tests and increasing staff, but said, “We believe that schools must be open, with safeguards.”

Syriza uses the cynical argument of child welfare to promote open “safe” schools, criticising the government for having “no plan” for education. “The school closures shows the bankruptcy of the Ministry of Education,” Syriza’s parliamentary group on education wrote in a statement in early November. Because of the “social discrimination” in the pandemic, “we must all try not to alienate children from the educational and social environment of the school and to return students to in-person classes under safe and educational conditions.” While Syriza speaks of “social discrimination,” the organisation was responsible for trampling on “child welfare” with its austerity policies and stole the future from a whole generation of young people.

The second wave of the pandemic finds a society that has been destroyed by the EU’s austerity dictates over the past ten years. While Greece’s oligarchs withdraw to their yachts and luxury villas, rejoicing in their rising share prices, most families are defenceless and at the mercy of the pandemic. Death, unemployment, low wages, poverty pensions, lack of prospects—this is the bleak reality that drives masses of people to the barricades again and again.

But a real struggle for social equality and the containment of the pandemic requires that Greek workers and youth go beyond the framework of the worn-out trade union nostrums and form their own rank-and-file safety committees, independent of all bourgeois and pseudo-left organisations and unite across national borders. Workers and young people need a socialist programme to settle accounts with the criminal coronavirus policy worldwide. Big business and the banks must be expropriated, capitalist governments overthrown in the fight for a society that puts health and life before the profits of the oligarchs.

‘REFUSING TO SERVE IN THE ARMY IS MY SMALL ACT OF MAKING CHANGE’

By Oren Ziv, +972 Magazine.

November 28, 2020




https://popularresistance.org/refusing-to-serve-in-the-army-is-my-small-act-of-making-change/



Hallel Rabin Spent 56 Days In Military Prison For Refusing To Serve In The IDF.

Now she opens up about her time behind bars, conversations with her fellow inmates, and talking to young Israelis about the occupation.

As Hallel Rabin stood before the IDF conscientious objectors committee two weeks ago, the military body that decides whether or not she would be sent back to prison for refusing to serve in the army, she was asked the strangest of questions: “Would you agree to wear the army uniform if it were pink?”

“I don’t have an issue with the color,” she responded, “I have an issue with wearing an army uniform — regardless of the army.” A conscientious objector, Rabin was still in military prison for refusing to serve due to the army’s occupation policies. On November 20, Rabin’s fourth stint in military prison came to an end; a day later the army officially gave her the discharge she had wanted. She served a total of 56 days behind bars.

Rabin, 19, from Kibbutz Harduf in northern Israel, was first imprisoned in August after appearing before the committee to appeal for an exemption. She was tried and sentenced to two different periods of incarceration, including during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Upon her release last week, Rabin thought she would be going home for a brief stint before another sentencing. But when she turned on her phone, she received a message from her attorney, Adv. Asaf Weitzen, who informed her that the committee had accepted her request and that she was being released.

As she told Orly Noy in October, Rabin was raised by a mother who taught civics, and began asking herself questions about the reality in Israel from a young age. By the age of 15 she knew she wouldn’t be able to enlist in the army, since doing so goes “against my most basic ideals, and that I cannot support such violent policies.”

Less than a week after her release, Rabin has yet to get used to life outside prison. She wakes up every day at six, as is required on the inside, and answers the hundreds of messages she regularly receives from across the world. I met her this week in Harduf for a conversation about refusing to serve in the army, her time behind bars, and the possibility of talking to young Israelis about refusal.

How did you end up in prison? What did your refusal look like?

“On the day of my enlistment, I arrived at the conscription base knowing that I was going to jail. That was my goal, but I didn’t really understand how to go about it. I started the conscription process but did not know whom to turn to [to refuse]. I sat down on a chair and loudly proclaimed: “I need you to bring someone who will know to tell me what to do. I am a conscientious objector and I need to go to prison and I will not become a soldier.

“Finally, a nice woman took me to an office where I signed a paper saying I was refusing to serve. I found it amusing that my goal was to go to jail, and that once I was there I would be in the right place.”

Rabin was initially sentenced to seven days and was sent to the women’s ward of Prison Six, a military prison in northern Israel. “It was the longest, most exhausting day of my life,” she recounts. “It took me three days to understand what was going on, how to respond [to the prison authorities], how to get around. I learned fast.”

What was your time in jail like?

“It was a crazy experience. I was in a cell with a Border Police officer, a woman who served at a checkpoint, two women who refused to serve as surveillance monitoring operators, one woman who had attacked her commander, and a military police officer who went AWOL. We were six in total.

“The first question they asked me was ‘why are you here?’ I told them, hesitantly, ‘I am a conscientious objector.’ They immediately began asking all the well-known questions: ‘Are you a leftist? Are you pro-Palestinian?’ During my first sentence I learned how to live as a conscientious objector. Every time there was a new group of girls or I went back [to prison], the subject would stir controversy and a great deal of discussion.”

Did the soldiers and commanders in jail talk to you about your decision to refuse?

“There is not one soldier who didn’t hear my story. Even the commanders were interested. There was one officer who told me that she appreciates my decision and even praised me. That was one of the important conversations I had — someone from inside the system understood why I did what I did and had an appreciation for it.

“I didn’t fight with anyone in jail. It was practice for my ego, for my ability to have a conversation, for my ability to be socially flexible. To be in a position in which people disagree with me and in which I feel uncomfortable — almost threatened — but to be okay with that.”

Rabin was released after five days and sent home, where she spent the next 2.5 weeks. “It takes longer to get used to home. In jail there is order in everything, then all of a sudden you’re released. It’s confusing,” she says. “The hardest thing about going back home is returning to jail.”

When she returned to the conscription base in Tel Hashomer, she was sentenced to another two weeks in prison — one week for refusal to serve and another for absenteeism. Like other conscientious objectors, after each stint in prison she received another summons to the base and was repeatedly sentenced.

How did you pass the time?

“I read eight books, including ‘Feminism is for Everybody’ [by bell hooks] and ‘Nonviolence Explained to My Children’ [by Jacques Semelin]. My friends Hillel and Tamar, also conscientious objectors, told me half-jokingly that my homework was to find similarities between feminism and conscientious objection.”

Before her third stint in jail, Rabin decided to go public about her refusal with the help of Mesarvot, a grassroots network that brings together individuals and groups who refuse to enlist in the IDF in protest of the occupation. “At first, I hoped that there wouldn’t be any good reason for me to turn to the media. I had hoped to be discharged by the conscientious objectors committee. I thought it would all come to an end after my first sentence,” she explains.

Even before her enlistment date, Rabin tried to approach the conscience objectors committee, which promptly rejected her request for an exemption. During her first period of incarceration, she filed an appeal and waited for the military to return with its reasons for jailing her. When the arguments were late in coming, she decided to go to the media. After her third time in prison, Mesarvot organized a demonstration in support of Rabin outside the conscription base. She was sentenced to 25 days. Between the third and fourth incarceration periods, Rabin was scheduled to have her second hearing before the IDF conscientious objectors committee.

What was the difference between the first and second committee?

“The second time around was longer, they went deep into the details. The first committee asked me questions to try and prove that my refusal was political and based on conscientious objection rather than on pacifism [the IDF has historically made a distinction between conscripts who can prove they are “non-political pacifists,” and those who refuse to serve over what the army deems “political” reasons, such as specific opposition to the Israeli occupation. Despite the difficulties of doing so, conscripts who can prove they are the former have a higher chance of receiving exemptions].

“In the second committee hearing they asked me why I wasn’t wearing my army uniform. I explained that I had come from my home and that in any case I had refused to enlist as a conscientious objector, which is why I never received a uniform in the first place. Even if they demanded I wear it, I would never put on a uniform. They are trying to understand whether your refusal is political or driven by pacifism, how you respond to situations of violence, and what your lifestyle looks like.”

What did you say?

“I was more prepared [the second time around]. Fifty days in prison, daily conversations on the topic, and interviews with the media helped me explain myself.

“I said that I was not willing to take part in any way in a system whose very essence is based on fighting and violent oppression. I believe that this needs to change, and this is my way to make change. This is my small act. I added that I have been vegetarian my entire life, buy second-hand clothing, and am against exploitation, capitalism, and sexism.”

Did you feel that the committee understood that a pacifist objector who opposes violence will also be against the occupation?

“It upsets them. It’s hard for them. They are four members of the army and a civics professor. All of them are 50 years old or older and have dedicated their lives to reaching high positions [in the IDF], and I’m a 19-year-old girl who tells them ‘this is not okay.’ I am sure that it is personally hard for them. I would not enlist in the Swiss army, but I live here and am supposed to serve in the army that commits these acts. I oppose the occupation because it is violent, oppressive, and racist.”

During her second committee hearing, the members showed Rabin a photo of herself taking part in the Mesarvot protest outside the conscription base, which took place just before she was jailed for the third time. The photo showed her holding a sign that read “Mesarvot” [Hebrew for the feminine form of “refusers”] and “Refusing the occupation is democracy.”

“They asked me what the sign meant,” Rabin says. “I said that it is legitimate to oppose issues that have turned into taboo subjects — that opposing them is democratic.”

Activists in Mesarvot told +972 that over the past half year, the conscientious objectors committee has made it much harder to receive an exemption on conscientious grounds as well as to receive explanations when requests for discharge are denied. The organization hopes that Rabin’s discharge will bring about a change in this policy.

Do you feel it is possible to talk to teenagers about the occupation?

“It’s not about age. I don’t need to wait until half my life is behind me to fight for my principles… it is not a bad thing that I say out loud that going to the conscientious objectors committee is a legitimate option and that it is possible to think for oneself. Even prison isn’t bad. It is exhausting but I did not leave with a feeling of anxiety or wanting to die.”

What kind of responses did you receive after your release?

“A lot of people reached out from Israel and across the world. Some people cursed me. Others wrote that [my refusal] was inspirational and brings hope that there are teenagers who stand up for what they believe. Palestinians also wrote to me after [my story] was published in Turkey. Someone from Tulkarem wrote that he appreciates my act and hopes that one day we’ll drink coffee together and talk about life.”

DEMONSTRATORS RALLY AGAINST FRENCH SECURITY BILL IN PARIS

By Sputnik News.

November 28, 2020




https://popularresistance.org/demonstrators-rally-against-french-security-bill-in-paris/




French parliament late on Tuesday passed a bill on global security, criminalising the publication of images of police officers online, despite the recent riots against the legislation being criticised for possibly infringing on the freedom of the press.

Live from Paris as protesters rally against the ‘Global Security’ bill in France.

Article 24 of the bill, which has come under especial criticism as it makes it illegal to distribute videos and photos identifying law enforcement officers and thereby violate their “physical or mental integrity,” was approved by the parliament, against the backdrop of demonstrations over the past week.

Critics of the legislation have said say it may hamper the functions of mass media to cover protests and inform the population, while also violating freedom of expression.

In turn, French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Twitter that the government has never had any intention to undermine freedoms of press and expression, and added that he would refer the bill’s controversial Article 24 to the country’s Constitutional Court.

Follow Sputnik feed to find out more.

CALL TO STOP SHUTTING OFF PEOPLE’S POWER FOR GOOD

By Greg Harmon, Deceleration.

November 28, 2020




https://popularresistance.org/call-to-stop-shutting-off-peoples-power-for-good/



Disconnects By CPS Energy Have Doubled During CEO Paula Gold-Williams’ Tenure.

And there are still no promises of reform.

Across San Antonio, the virus was hunting. Food insecurity was high. Mass layoffs and terminations rolled on. And it was hot. Hundred-degree days scorched much of July.

Yet the lights and air conditioners—for the first time in many, many summers—were staying on reliably for rich and poor alike across the city. Every side of town. Every block. For thousands of poor families across the city who routinely struggle to keep up with their utility payments, this was perhaps the one gift of a deadly pandemic: a pause on forced electricity disconnections for nonpayment.

Since the pandemic struck, however, these disconnections—up to nearly 100,000 some years—have been on hold. Across the country, utilities like City-owned CPS Energy—some voluntarily, most by decree—prioritized human wellbeing over profit.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg and City Council members, faced with the compounding tragedy that is the virus and its disproportionate punishment of poor folks and people of color (locally, Latinx communities most of all), have pledged to build a new world—a post-COVID world beyond the structural racism and economic oppression that made San Antonio, the most racially and economically segregated large US city, particularly vulnerable to the virus.

In an attempt to force the issue, nearly two dozen community organizations penned an Open Letter to Mayor Ron Nirenberg and the City Council last month. Top of the list of recommended policy reforms intended to spur recovery from the impact of COVID-19 was a call for the elimination of disconnections as policy for any residents at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line.

It was a letter I submitted on the group’s behalf.

Here’s the relevant excerpt:

End the Policy of Utility Disconnections for Most Vulnerable Families

Until the novel coronavirus appeared in San Antonio, CPS Energy was cutting power to roughly 100,000 households and businesses every year for non-payment. While disconnections are currently paused in response to the economic crisis that has followed the COVID-19 pandemic, other city-owned utilities have begun returning to disconnecting power to the most vulnerable households for non-payment, and it’s just a matter of time before CPS Energy returns to their former behavior. To give ratepayers more security than a 30-day warning, we call on CPS Energy to publicly commit to ending disconnections until, at least, February 2021.

CPS must eliminate completely the policy of disconnections for nonpayment for all households at or below 200% of the poverty level. Additionally, we call for a third-party audit of existing payment assistance programs and a study of the potential impacts of rate-structure changes that could significantly reduce the costs to overburdened lower-income neighborhoods. We note that CPS Energy enacted a temporary pause on disconnections in the early days of this pandemic–the same day Councilmembers called for such a pause. While Council members have historically resisted engagement with CPS Energy because of power distinctions set in the Charter agreement, the Mayor and Council have a tremendous amount of political authority to set our energy agenda when they choose to use it.
Support The Call For Ending Disconnections At Action Network.

This movement for the elimination of disconnections as policy was spurred along, in part, by revelations about the sizable scale of suffering involved.

As a colleague of mine working as a Democracy & Clean Energy intern at the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, Shaneal Harun filed a state open records request with CPS in February to find out how common these disconnections were. The answer, it turns out, is very.

Though CPS Energy CEO Paula Gold-Williams consistently downplays the numbers involved, the utility disconnects power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses per year. I first wrote about the disconnections for San Antonio Report in July (republished here at Deceleration).

At that point I hadn’t noticed how significantly different the numbers were under each CEO.

While state unemployment rates declined year by year from 8.3 percent in 2010 to 3.5 percent in 2019, it has been under Gold-Williams’s watch over these last few years that disconnects have soared.

Milton Lee served as CPS CEO from 2002 to 2010. During this time disconnects hovered around 50,000 per year.

CEO Doyle Beneby reduced disconnections for nonpayment during his tenure from 2010 to 2015, keeping them under 50,000 until the year of his departure, when they leapt to 72,000. (Beneby left CPS in September, 2015. He was named CEO of New Generation Power International on October 1, 2015.)

Shutoffs remained unusually high in 2017 at 75,131, but hit a new peak under Gold-Williams at 99,908 in 2018 before starting to slow in 2019 with 53,391 total disconnections for nonpayment.

Harun originally sought records dating back to 2000, but CPS Legal Services Attorney Stacey Cormican wrote that no data existed prior to 2003 “due to a change in our reporting hardware and software.”

Harun was not entirely surprised by what they found.

“Some of the numbers I saw, such as the number of summer shutoffs across ZIP Codes, certainly surprised me in relation to CPS Energy’s claims that they don’t perform shutoffs during extreme weather conditions such as heat waves,” they said. “Other numbers were less surprising, [reflecting] the existing inequities in San Antonio.”

Given the amount of time Harun spent researching the utility’s board of trustees during their time with the Sierra Club, Harun even may have expected worse.

“I found that the current Trustees reflected, at best, an ideological slant towards corporate interests and corporate style governance and, at worst, substantial ties to halls of power populated by the most powerful actors in San Antonio—oil and gas, real estate, and other industrial interests in particular,” they said.

So far, the coalition’s Open Letter and call for an end to disconnects has made hardly a ripple in the local political fabric.

The only response from Council came in an automated confirmation of receipt from the office of District 7 Councilmember Ana Sandoval. The mayor’s office is aware of the letter but has yet to respond publicly to its contents.

As a new wave of COVID-19 is manifesting, utilities around the country, from Alabama to Colorado and beyond, have returned to policies of disconnections for nonpayment, according to another colleague, Mary Anne Hitt, the Sierra Club’s national director of campaigns, writing in The Hill. With apparent disinterest marking most of the elected leadership in San Antonio, there is no reason to hope that we are headed to any changes in CPS’s disconnection policies, even as Gold-Williams promises to bring a rate increase request to Council next year.

CPS also hasn’t responded to the call for an end to disconnects. However, last month, about two weeks after the Open Letter was released, Gold-Williams pledged the moratorium on disconnections would remain through the end of the year.

True, Gold-Williams may be considered otherwise occupied, having her job (and last remaining coal plant) under threat by a recall petition likely advancing to the 2021 ballot. To this immediate personal threat, she has taking to bashing climate-action advocates while standing alongside heads of the San Antonio Chamber, where she herself briefly served as chair before resigning under public pressure.

Those organized for climate action as part of the Recall CPS petition she dismisses as advancing “an ideology” rather than a critical policy shift supported by international climate science and San Antonio’s own Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (PDF).

With stirring echoes of San Antonio, Hitt assesses the COVID-era national utility landscape this way:


Some are still sinking billions of dollars into botched nuclear plants and want to spend billions more on gas infrastructure that will be uncompetitive in less than a decade. Others are similarly holding onto coal, chasing nuclear and gas and sticking families with the bill. And as these companies dump billions into polluting projects and shut off power to low-income families, their CEOs are taking home multi-million dollar salaries.

Though COVID-scolded CPS executives went without bonuses this year, Gold-Williams’s take home in 2019 was $930,669, according to the San Antonio Report, making her (by a long way) San Antonio’s highest-paid employee.

At the other end of the economic spectrum are those hundreds of thousands being punished by by CPS’s business-as-usual cutoffs, expected soon to make a return.

Considering that three people live in an average San Antonio household, it would follow that in 2018 roughly 300,000 people were cut off by CPS at some point in the year from a source of refrigeration for foods and medicine, light to study by at night, and air conditioning to stay healthy/alive. That is, if most of those disconnections were homes rather than businesses, which seems likely.

That’s 300,000 in a city of 1,500,000.

The summer-month cutoffs are certainly particularly cruel, but in a city where residents in upper-income ZIP Codes tend to outlive those in historically neglected Southside communities by decades, the practice of stripping power from those struggling to improve their lot is unconscionable whatever time of year.

What city can prosper like this?

What Council committed to dismantling structural violence can permit it?

As the call for reform at the Action Network states:


The impact of COVID-19 has laid bare San Antonio’s glaring income and health disparities between white residents and people of color. A raft of factors are behind these grim inequities: exposure to air pollution from fossil-fueled car and truck traffic; lack of access to greenspace and healthy food; redlining and racist development patterns and policing; rising temperatures driven by the engines of climate change and dirty power plants; and zoning that permits industrial operations near schools and neighborhoods.

Eliminating disconnections is just the first step toward elevating those long alienated from political power in the City. We’ll see how deep our leaders evolving public commitment to resisting racism as a public health threat really is in the months ahead.

Potential Biden Officials’ Firm Is Promising Big Profits Off Those Connections

Former government officials Tony Blinken, Michele Flournoy & Lloyd Austin may run Biden’s national security agencies — their firm is telling investors it expects to profit off ties to those officials.


David Sirota






Two former government officials who may now run President-elect Joe Biden’s national security team have been partners at a private equity firm now promising investors big profits off government business because of its ties to those officials, according to government documents reviewed by The Daily Poster.

Pine Island Capital Partners lists former Under Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy and retired General Lloyd Austin as a partner in the firm, and lists former Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken as a partner on a leave of absence. Flournoy and Austin are reportedly among the leading candidates being considered for Secretary of Defense, and Blinken is Biden’s designated nominee for Secretary of State. Pine Island’s chairman is John Thain, the former top executive at Merrill Lynch when the company paid out huge executive bonuses as it began to collapse during the financial crisis.

Flournoy and Blinken’s ties to Pine Island were first reported by the New York Times.

In Securities and Exchange Commissionfilings, Pine Island describes one of its investment vehicles as “a newly organized blank check company incorporated in Delaware” that will use its connections to top officials to take advantage of rising government expenditures on the national security agencies that Flournoy and Blinken could oversee. Pine Island’s first filings about the investment vehicle were made in September — the same month Biden suggested that he will not push for significant reductions in Pentagon expenditures, which have reached record levels.

“The reputations and networks of Pine Island Capital Partners’ team, both individually and collectively, will ensure exposure to a significant number of proprietary opportunities,” the company said in one SEC document. “We believe there will be increased demand in the U.S. defense market for advanced electronics, communications, sensor and detection processing and other technologies that enhance the modernization efforts of the Department of Defense’s military readiness. We believe this demand represents strong growth that our management team is uniquely positioned to capitalize on given our combined investment experience and deeply connected partner group of former U.S. defense and government officials.”

The company says Thain and CEO Philip Cooper John A. Thain and Philip A. Cooper founded the firm “on the idea that a talented group of accomplished, highly respected, commercially-savvy and long-tenured former government and military officials, when fully aligned and engaged, could enable a first class investment team with better access, better information, better expertise and better management skills than those typically found in private equity firms.”

"This is so explicit that it's astonishing Pine Island even put it on paper,” said David Segal of Demand Progress, a grassroots group pressing Biden to reject Cabinet appointments tied to corporations. “This is not an example of people who happen to work at a big company — these are partners at a firm whose stated business model is to profit from the revolving door and connections gained from time in government."
Pine Island Announces $200 Million IPO After The Election, Projects COVID-Related Profits

On November 16, two weeks after Election Day, Pine Island announced an initial public offering of $200 million in its new investment vehicle, called Pine Island Acquisition Corp. In that filing, the company suggests that because of its ties to former government officials, it will have an advantage in investing — and it specifically boasts that its team includes Flournoy.

“Pine Island Capital Partners spends the majority of its time focused in the aerospace, defense and government services sectors, where Pine Island Capital Partners believes it has extensive connections to industry leaders, unusual access to information, and often unique insights into specific companies, programs and overall market dynamics,” the company declares. “The reputations and networks of Pine Island Capital Partners’ team, both individually and collectively, will ensure exposure to a significant number of proprietary opportunities.”

Pine Island also says that it expects to profit off the COVID pandemic in its potential investments in government information technology services.

“We further believe COVID-19 will be a tail wind for the sector,” the company writes. “Critical to any successful government services offering is the skillset, integrity and security clearances of those who execute on its strategy. Our deep bench of connected advisors and former government officials will be the catalyst to recruiting, retaining and developing an elite team of managers and employees, which we believe will enable us to exploit an opportunity in government services.”

The financial relationship between Blinken, Flournoy, Austin and Pine Island could in theory be detailed as part of the Senate confirmation process. However, government ethics regulations allow that information to be concealed if nominees assert that they signed non-disclosure agreements with counterparties.

Even Tucker And Geraldo Know Trump Is Lying

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihpBgMYEi-k&ab_channel=CBCNews%3ATheNationalCBCNews%3ATheNationalVerified

Secret Recordings Reveal Alberta's Conservatives Overruled Top Doctors

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9SSIB-rMWg&ab_channel=TheRationalNational