Democrats, Republicans escalate attack on public employees

World Socialist Website
Patrick Martin

Democratic and Republican politicians at the US state and local level are pressing

ahead with a new round of attacks on the jobs and living standards of public employees and the public services they provide. They are working in tandem with the Obama administration and congressional Republicans, who are carrying out the same policies at the federal level.

In Massachusetts, where Democrats control the governorship and both houses of the state legislature, the House of Representatives voted April 27 to approve legislation that would strip municipal workers of the right to collective bargaining on health care benefits. The vote was an overwhelming 111-42, with the majority of Democrats and nearly all Republicans backing the bill. (See “Massachusetts: Democrats attack municipal workers’ health care”)

In response to this frontal assault on workers’ rights, Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes could only complain that he was “profoundly disappointed in every Democrat who voted to do away with collective bargaining here in Massachusetts.”

Admitting that what the Democrats were doing in Massachusetts “looks just like Wisconsin to me,” he made clear that the unions intend to do nothing to seriously fight the attack. He offered no explanation for the unions’ dishonest attempt to attribute the wave of anti-worker legislation around the country entirely to the Republicans, a lie that is being exposed in Massachusetts and other states controlled by the Democratic Party.

In another New England state, Connecticut, Democratic Governor Dan Malloy has reached a budget deal with the Democratic-controlled Senate that would impose $2 billion in concessions on state workers, while giving the unions a role by determining which cuts the workers will be compelled to accept.

In nearby New Hampshire, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed legislation last week to prohibit mandatory union membership and dues collection for any employee, private or public. Democratic Governor John Lynch promised to veto the bill, but the Republicans have more than the 2-1 margin required to overturn a veto. The so-called “right-to-work” law, similar to those that have long restricted unions in the southern US states, is the first to pass in a state outside the South in 25 years.

The day after the Massachusetts vote, the lower house in the Midwestern state of Indiana voted to approve the most sweeping school voucher plan adopted by any state, a death blow to the principle of public education. The vouchers, paid for by state funds, could be used by any family in the state at a private school. The bill passed 55-43, with most Democrats voting no, but only after they had agreed to abandon a protracted publicity stunt in which the Democrats blocked action on the bill by leaving the state and denying the Republican majority the necessary quorum.

The voucher program begins with some restrictions during the first two years, but by the third year any student could get a state-funded voucher to use towards tuition at private schools, with the money deducted directly from public education budgets. A separate bill passed the same day would expand charter schools and allow them to buy public school buildings at bargain basement prices—a bonanza for profit-based education corporations.

The Indiana legislature has already passed bills limiting collective bargaining rights for teacher unions and approving so-called “merit pay” for teachers, which ties salaries directly to student test scores.

The Midwestern states, once the center of industrial unionism in the United States, have become the focal point of the rampage against public-sector workers.

This began with the month-long confrontation in Wisconsin, touched off by Republican Governor Scott Walker, who pushed through a bill in March to slash the pay and benefits of state and local employees and eliminate most collective bargaining rights. The legislation has been temporarily blocked by a court injunction, but a Republican spokesman said April 29 that there had been discussion of reintroducing the bill in the legislature as early as May 3 as part of a new two-year state budget.

In Ohio, Republican Governor John Kasich signed a bill into law that represents an even more sweeping attack on public employees than the Wisconsin bill. The law outlaws strikes by 360,000 public employees, raises health care payments for workers, imposes performance-based pay on teachers and other local government workers, and makes it easier to decertify unions.

In Illinois, the Democratic-controlled Senate voted 59-0 for legislation that guts teacher tenure rights, effectively ends the right to strike for Chicago public school teachers, and expands the powers of local school boards to fire teachers arbitrarily, extend the school year, and make other changes.

In Michigan, Republican Governor Rick Snyder has pushed through legislation giving him the power to appoint emergency financial managers for cities facing fiscal crises. These unelected officials will have the power to tear up union contracts and unilaterally decide on pay, benefits and working conditions. In some cases, prominent Democrats, like Detroit Mayor David Bing, are candidates to be handed these emergency powers.

Snyder also proposed, in a speech April 27, to eliminate teacher seniority as a factor in promotions or layoffs, to expand charter schools, and to demand greater “accountability” from local schools even while he slashes a half billion dollars from state aid to public education.

Nationwide, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, some 744 bills have been introduced to attack public employee wages, benefits and collective bargaining rights. Such legislation is pending in nearly every state.

Both Democrats and Republicans are demanding that public employees and other sections of the working class pay the price for a projected $125 billion in state budget deficits for the upcoming fiscal year.

A study released April 26 by the Pew Center on the States found that the current year deficits were dwarfed by the projected shortfall in pension and health care obligations for retired state workers. The report projects a $660 billion shortfall in pension funding and a $604 billion gap in retiree health care, for a total funding gap of $1.26 trillion.

For years, public employee unions have forced workers to take concessions on pay in return for promises of higher pensions and medical coverage in retirement. Now the states will default on the deal.

In addition to the wages, benefits and jobs of public employees, the cuts proposed by state governors and legislatures include:

* · New York—Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo decided not to restore $302 million in aid for New York City.
* · Pennsylvania—Republican Governor Tom Corbett’s budget cuts higher education funding in half.
* · Texas—The Republican House passed a budget cutting $23 billion from current spending, including $8 billion from local schools and $4 billion from Medicaid.
* · Oregon—Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber proposed cutting Medicaid reimbursement for doctors, dentists, hospitals and nursing homes by 19 percent.
* · Florida—Republican Governor Rick Scott signed into law a bill attacking teacher tenure and imposing a “merit pay” plan based on test results.

These attacks have evoked outrage among working people, not only the public employees directly affected, but much broader layers of the working class who see these actions as aimed at lowering living standards and destroying basic democratic rights for all workers.

The unions have collaborated in these attacks, opposing any genuine mass struggle and urging workers to rely on the Democratic politicians, presenting them as the only alternative to the Republicans and the ultra-right. The truth is that both parties are doing the bidding of corporate America.

In every case, the unions are cynically seeking to defend their own institutional interests—including the automatic deduction of union dues from workers’ paychecks and the right of union officials to negotiate concessions and help impose them on the workers—by pledging to accept and enforce wage cuts, reductions in benefits and attacks on working conditions. The turn by the US ruling elite to open class war has further exposed the unbridgeable chasm separating the official unions from the working class.

A new low in the bankruptcy of the unions’ policy of supporting the Democrats as the “lesser evil” came in Wisconsin this weekend. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka led a May 1 union demonstration in Milwaukee that featured hollow rhetoric about the evils of Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans.

Meanwhile, at the state Democratic Party’s annual Founders Day Dinner—attended by many of the same top union executives—the keynote speaker was Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. He denounced a Republican policy of “cut spending, bust unions” only a few days after pushing his own anti-worker bill through his state legislature.

The real alternative to the bipartisan gang-up of the Democrats and Republicans is the building of an independent political movement of the working class that bases itself on the total rejection of all the cuts being demanded at the federal, state and local level. A mass movement must be organized to oppose the cuts and advance a socialist alternative that proceeds from the needs of working people, not the profits and personal fortunes of the corporations and the rich.

The claim that “there is no money” for jobs, schools, health care and decent wages is a lie. The resources of society are being plundered and monopolized by a criminal financial elite that exerts dictatorial control over the government, both political parties and the media.

The Socialist Equality Party calls on workers to assert their basic social rights, including good-paying jobs, education, housing, health care, utilities and access to culture, which must be guaranteed to all. We call for the building of committees of action in workplaces, communities and schools completely independent of the trade unions and their Democratic Party allies to mobilize the industrial and political strength of the working class.

The author also recommends:

Obama, Congress renew push for austerity measures
[30 April 2011]

Michigan governor outlines assault on public education
[29 April 2011]

Bin Laden Hustle: That Erosion of Talent in the "Vision Thing"

How else can one explain such an insult to those who want swallow your Kool-Aide?  Can't they just pretend like they care to make it look real?

First rule, if you are going to fake a picture, do it right. Where does all that money go to if you can't even use that money to lie properly and convincingly?



Here is the real Osama from about 15 years ago.

Now flip it left to right...

And compare the lower half with today's photo of the dead 'Osama'!

There are other signs of photoshop as well, such as blurred edges on the beard and an obvious difference in sharpness between the eyes and the mouth, It looks like someone took a dead body and pasted the real Obama's mouth onto it to make it look more like him.

(this analysis is mirrored from http://whatreallyhappened.com/)

'Nuclear hellstorm' if bin Laden caught: 9/11 mastermind

LONDON (AFP) – The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks warned that Al-Qaeda has hidden a nuclear bomb in Europe which will unleash a "nuclear hellstorm" if Osama bin Laden is captured, leaked files revealed Monday.

The terror group also planned to make a 9/11 style attack on London's Heathrow airport by crashing a hijacked airliner into one of the terminals, the files showed.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told Guantanamo Bay interrogators the terror group would detonate the nuclear device if the Al-Qaeda chief was captured or killed, according to the classified files released by the WikiLeaks website.

Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has been held at Guantanamo since 2006 and is to be tried in a military court at the US naval base on Cuba over the attacks.

His nuclear threat was revealed in Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper, one of several media outlets which have published the classified assessments of detainees at Guantanamo.

The German weekly Der Spiegel, also citing WikiLeaks, said that Sheikh Mohammed had told his interrogators he had set up two cells for the purpose of attacking Heathrow in 2002.

The aim was to seize control of an airliner shortly after take-off from Heathrow, one of the world's busiest aiports, turn it around and crash it into one of the four terminals.

Sheikh Mohammed said one cell had been formed with the aim of taking flying lessons in Kenya, while the other had been tasked with recruiting participants.

He said the plot had been discussed several times at the highest level of Al-Qaeda. One component had involved the infiltration of ground staff at the airport, according to Der Spiegel.

Another attack given the green light in late 2001 would have targeted "the tallest buildings in California" with hijacked airliners, Der Spiegel reported.

The attackers would have gained access to the airliner cockpits by setting off small bombs hidden in their shoes, it said.

Sheikh Mohammed, captured in 2003 in Pakistan, also claims to have personally beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 with his "blessed right hand" and to have helped in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people.

Der Spiegel noted that his "confessions" should have be treated with caution as they could have been extracted through torture. Sheikh Mohammed is known to have undergone the method known as "waterboarding."

Former US president George W. Bush claimed in his memoirs published last year that using the interrogation technique -- which simulates drowning -- helped prevent planned attacks on Heathrow and London's Canary Wharf business district.

He also told the London Times newspaper in November that it was "damn right" that he had authorised use of the method on Sheikh Mohammed.

WhatReallyHappened.com Hacked Prior to Bin Laden Anouncement

The following is a direct statement from Mike Rivero, host of his site, whatreallyhappened.com

"Yes, we were hacked. Starting just moments before President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden, our website was hit with what the hosting company described as a massive distributed denial of service attack, no doubt to prevent the public from accessing the documentation showing Bin Laden actually died in December of 2001 of natural causes."

That information can be found here.

Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden dies in a firefight near Pakistan capital.

LA Times

Editors note: Retaliatory propaganda for Pakistan.

In this Dec. 24, 1998, photo,
Muslim militant and Al Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden speaks to a selected group
of reporters in the mountains of Helmand province
in southern Afghanistan.

Reporting from Washington—

A U.S. special forces team killed Osama bin Laden at a compound inside Pakistan and recovered his body, bringing a close to the world's highest-profile manhunt after a decade-long search, President Obama announced to the world Sunday night.

"Justice has been done," the president said solemnly in a hastily arranged late-night televised address from the East Room of the White House.

Bin Laden, he said, was "a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children," and his death was "the most significant achievement to date" in the U.S. war against the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

As described by the president and top administration officials who briefed reporters after the president's speech, the successful effort to track down Bin Laden centered on a trusted courier for Al Qaeda, a man whom officials described as a protege of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the operational mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

U.S. intelligence officials had identified the courier four years ago, based on information from detainees in U.S. custody who said he was one of the few Al Qaeda couriers trusted by Bin Laden, a senior official said. Two years ago, they succeeded in identifying areas in Pakistan in which the courier operated. In August, they succeeded in finding the man's residence, a walled compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

The compound had drawn the CIA's interest because it was far larger than residences around it, had walls 12 to 18 feet high that were topped with barbed wire and had few windows in its three-story building. The compound was valued at $1 million but had no telephone or Internet, and all trash was burned on the premises.

To the CIA, the compound appeared custom-built to hide someone of major significance. After years of speculation that the world's most-wanted man was hiding in the caves and rugged redoubts of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, officials now came to believe that he was hiding there, less than 40 miles north of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

Obama was briefed on the intelligence in August, but "it took many months to run this thread to ground," the president said Sunday.

"The bottom line of our collection and our analysis was that we had high confidence that the compound harbored a high-value terrorist target … and strong probability the terrorist who was hiding there was Osama bin Laden," the senior official said.

By early Friday morning, the official said, the evidence had become sufficiently certain that Obama, meeting with his top national security advisors in the White House Diplomatic Room, was able to give the go-ahead for a helicopter-borne team of special forces, including Navy SEALS, to attack the compound. It was the fifth formal meeting of his National Security Council on the progress of the hunt, officials said.

The president then left Washington to fly to Alabama to survey tornado damage. As he did so, his national security advisor, Tom Donilon, prepared the formal orders for the operation. On Saturday, White House officials gave a few key congressional leaders advance word that an unspecified national security development could happen over the weekend.

On Sunday, the special forces launched their raid, which lasted approximately 40 minutes, the senior official said. After what the president described as a firefight, they killed Bin Laden. No Americans were injured in the raid, Obama said, although the senior official said that one of the helicopters used in the operation was damaged and had to be destroyed.

Also killed were the courier, his brother, one of Bin Laden's sons, and a woman who officials said was being used as a shield.

White House officials were told at 3:50 p.m. Eastern time that Bin Laden had been tentatively identified as among the dead. DNA tests confirmed his identity later in the day, U.S. officials said.

Vice President Joe Biden and CIA Director Leon Panetta called members of Congress and leaders around the world earlier Sunday night to break the long-awaited news. Obama, himself, called House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), officials said. Shortly afterward, White House officials began alerting reporters to prepare for a rare, late-night broadcast statement by the president on an unspecified national security topic.

In announcing the news, Obama praised the joint efforts of U.S. and Pakistani intelligence, and appealed to Muslims around the globe to support the U.S. action.

"Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader," he said. "He was a mass murderer of Muslims."

In Islamabad, a Pakistani intelligence official also confirmed Bin Laden's death and said that Pakistani forces were involved in the attack on the compound, an assertion that U.S. officials denied. Pakistan had not been informed of the intelligence in advance, U.S. officials said.

Analysts said Bin Laden's death was likely to accelerate the fracturing of militant groups loosely associated with Al Qaeda, especially in the Middle East, that have taken their inspiration from Bin Laden's call for attacks on the U.S. and its allies for more than a decade.

His killing deprives Al Qaeda of its most charismatic and important leader. It leaves Ayman Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician and Islamist ideologue, as the putative leader of the group, whose ranks already have been badly depleted in recent years as a result of arrests and attacks by the U.S. and allied nations.

It was Bin Laden's fervent call for attacks on the U.S. — which he referred to as the "far enemy" — and Al Qaeda's ability to recruit and train operatives from its sanctuary in Afghanistan that led to some of the world's deadliest terrorist attacks.

As the first word of Bin Laden's death leaked out, a jubilant and fast-growing crowd gathered outside the White House. The throng waved flags, chanted "USA! USA!" and sang "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Elation over his death crossed hardened party lines.

Obama called President George W. Bush, who issued a statement saying that he had "congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission."

"Tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done, " Bush said.

Boehner called the development "great news" and congratulated U.S. forces.

"I also want to commend President Obama and his team, as well as President Bush, for all of their efforts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice," Boehner said.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also commended "the president and his team" for the achievement. "I am overjoyed that we finally got the world's top terrorist," McCain said. "The world is a better and more just place now that Osama bin Laden is no longer in it."

But there was a sense that the development would accrue to Obama's political benefit in tense dealings with Republicans on other issues.

"It's the mission-accomplished moment that President Bush only fantasized about," said Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.).

Inside the White House, aides said Obama's mood was not celebratory when told of Bin Laden's death, but rather was "sober and serious."

Aides walked through the corridors after the president's announcement with looks of elation and relief. "We're not going to gloat," said one aide who was not authorized to speak publicly. Such was the level of secrecy surrounding the Bin Laden mission that even veteran White House aides who work steps from the Oval Office were caught by surprise.

One aide was wearing a Washington Capitals hockey jersey, having come to the West Wing directly from a playoff game at Washington's Verizon Center. Others who are normally never seen in the West Wing without a jacket and tie wore jeans and sneakers.

Asked what the day was like, one top national security advisor gave a one-word answer: "Excruciating."

The news came months before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which were orchestrated by Al Qaeda. More than 3,000 people were killed

The horrifying attacks set off a chain of events that led the United States into wars in Afghanistan, and then Iraq. As the nation girded for more attacks, America's entire intelligence system was overhauled to counter the threat of terrorist bombs or other attacks at home.

Al Qaeda also was blamed for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 231 people and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as countless other plots, some successful and some foiled. It has generated local organizations in hot spots from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Bin Laden first gained attention in the 1980s, when he drew on his family's vast fortune, derived from the construction industry, to build hospitals, mosques and other facilities to help support Afghans then fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The CIA considered him a financier, not a terrorist leader.

In 1991, Bin Laden bitterly opposed the introduction of U.S. troops onto bases in Saudi Arabia during the run-up to the first Persian Gulf War, which ousted Saddam Hussein's Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

His fiery sermons demonized the Saudi rulers, and infidel Westerners, and soon attracted like-minded extremists to Al Qaeda.

The CIA had been on Bin Laden's trail since the mid-1990s, when it set up a separate intelligence unit to penetrate his organization and track his whereabouts.

After the embassy bombings in 1998, the Clinton administration undertook several intelligence and military operations aimed at killing him, including one in which cruise missile attacks were ordered against al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. All failed.

Though the U.S. had made plans to hold and interrogate Bin Laden if he was captured, most U.S. officials assumed that he would never be taken alive.

"You're talking about a hypothetical that will never occur," said Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. when asked in early 2010 if Bin Laden would enjoy constitutional protections. "The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom."

Gaddafi's son's killing puts Nato in line of fire

The Guardian
Harriet Sherwood

Russia, Venezuela, Italy join Libyan regime in accusing Nato of attempting to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi

The Libyan regime's claims that Nato is attempting to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi have intensified following the apparent death of one of the leader's sons and three of his grandchildren in an air strike on Tripoli.

Gaddafi was at the one-storey house in a residential area of Tripoli when the missile struck late on Saturday, according to the government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim.

In a rare acknowledgement that security around Gaddafi may not be watertight, Ibrahim told reporters that intelligence about Gaddafi's whereabouts or plans must have been leaked to Nato.

The missile struck the house of Saif al-Arab, 29, the youngest and least well-known of Gaddafi's seven sons, just after 8pm on Saturday during a family gathering. The three grandchildren who were killed were under the age of 12, said Ibrahim.

David Cameron insisted that Nato was acting within the remit of the UN security council resolution, which authorised military actions to protect civilians.

But officials in Russia and Venezuela criticised the attack. "More and more facts indicate that the purpose of the anti-Libyan coalition is to physically destroy Gaddafi," said Konstantin Kosachev, a Russian legislator.

Nato said it had carried out a precision strike against a known command and control building. "All Nato's targets are military in nature and have been clearly linked to the Gaddafi regime's systematic attacks on the Libyan population and populated areas. We do not target individuals," said Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, commander of Nato's Operation Unified Protector.

"I am aware of unconfirmed media reports that some of Gaddafi's family members may have been killed," he said. "We regret all loss of life, especially the innocent civilians being harmed as a result of the ongoing conflict. Nato is fulfilling its UN mandate to stop and prevent attacks against civilians with precision and care – unlike Gaddafi's forces, which are causing so much suffering."

The strike came hours after Gaddafi called for a ceasefire in the two-and-a-half-month civil war in a speech delivered live on Libyan state television. The Libyan government has repeatedly said it is ready for a political resolution to the conflict and a ceasefire, while continuing to launch military assaults on opposition forces, particularly in Misrata and the western mountains region.

"We renew our call for peace and negotiations," said Ibrahim following the air strike. "What we have now is the law of the jungle. How is this helping in the protection of civilians?"

Cameron declined to comment on the "unconfirmed report", but told the BBC: "The targeting policy of Nato and the alliance is absolutely clear. It is in line with UN resolution 1973 and it is about preventing a loss of civilian life by targeting Gaddafi's war-making machine. That is obviously tanks and guns and rocket launchers, but also command and control as well."

The Libyan regime will use the apparent death of close members of Gaddafi's family to reinforce its claims that Nato is acting illegitimately and that Libya is a victim of a western plot to topple Gaddafi.
UN resolution 1973 permits military action to protect Libyan civilians, which has been interpreted as covering Libyan military facilities, such as command and control centres, as well as military equipment in the field. It does not permit the specific targeting of individuals.

However some politicians in the west have urged Nato to target Gaddafi. "We must cut the head of the snake off," US senator Lindsey Graham said a week ago after the bombing of a building within Gaddafi's Tripoli compound.

Journalists taken to the scene of Saif al-Arab's house in a smart neighbourhood of the capital reported seeing an unexploded missile lying amid shattered concrete and twisted metal. A large crater exposed what appeared to be an underground bunker.

In his 80-minute speech on Libyan state TV in the early hours of Saturday morning, Gaddafi said: "I'm not leaving my country. No one can force me to leave my country, and no one can tell me not to fight for my country."

He described Nato's military intervention in Libya as "a massacre".

Anti-semitic incidents dropped 46 per cent in 2010, report finds

Monitors and Critics

Jerusalem - The number of antisemitic incidents world-wide dropped 46 per cent in 2010 compared with the year before, a report by an Institute of Tel Aviv University said Sunday.

The total of incidents as physical injuries, vandal acts and direct threats attributed to anti-semitic motives in 2010 was 614, while 1,129 were recorded in 2009.

The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism published annual figures on worldwide anti-semitism on the eve of Israel's annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was to begin at sunset Sunday and end at sunset Monday.

The report explains the peak in 2009 as a direct consequence of Israel's war in Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009, when 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. The Israeli offensive 'provoked unprecedented anti-Jewish activity worldwide,' the report says.

Britain, France and Canada were in 2010 the three countries with highest rates of anti-semitic incidents, mostly physical street assaults on people identified as Jews. They constituted near 60 per cent of all incidents worldwide.

Between the hundreds of examples, the report quotes the attack in February last year against a 14-year-old student wearing a skullcap in Paris. He was brutally punched by seven teenagers inthe head and the stomach and called a 'dirty Jew'.

Harassment of Jews by young Muslims in several cities in the Netherlands led Rabbi Benzion Evers, son of Amsterdam's chief rabbi, to say that he would emigrate because of growing antisemitism.
Jews in Holland hid their skullcaps and avoided wearing traditional clothing because they feared harassment or violence on the part of young Muslims, the report notes.

Australia was however the country with the biggest increase last year showing a growth of one-third of that in 2009, despite a rise in the amount of insults directed against Jews on their way to or from synagogue.

The second half of last year, after Israel boarded the Freedom Flotilla and killed 9 activists of Turkish origin, the attacks against Jews and Israelis increased in Latin America also, specially in Chile, where the Palestinian diaspora is the fourth largest in the world.

In Venezuela, the report says, the flotilla incident triggered a further rise of antisemitic non-violent allegations. Those kind of attacks 'became an integral part of the anti-Israel propaganda of governmental and pro-Chavez circles', the report continues.

'Have we learned the lessons of the Holocaust in the world? To our great regret, the answer is no. A renewed anti-Semitism is spreading,' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday in his cabinet meeting in the eve of the Holocaust Memorial day.

Israel PM says international anti-Semitism spreading

Editor's Note:  See next article "Anti-semitic incidents dropped 46 per cent in 2010, report finds"


XinHuan

JERUSALEM, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that anti-Semitism is once again manifesting throughout the world, as lessons of the Holocaust " have not been learned."

"A renewed anti-Semitism is spreading," Netanyahu told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting, according to a government press release.

"Various forces are joining together and flooding the world with anti-Semitism. The hatred of Jews and the denial of their existence have turned into hatred of the Jewish State and denial of its existence," he added.

The prime minister's comments came hours before the official state ceremony in Jerusalem that marks the beginning of Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day.

The Israeli cabinet on Sunday unanimously voted to establish an umbrella organization that will represent Holocaust survivors in Israel and promote awarding them financial benefits, in a bid to assist thousands that live in poverty.

In a separate decision, a budget of 25 million shekels (about 7. 5 million U.S. dollars) was approved for the renovation of pavilion 27, the main Jewish exhibition at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, whose inauguration is expected in the summer of 2012.

Meanwhile, Israel's Yad Vashem (Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority) on Sunday launched a national campaign encouraging citizens to donate personal Holocaust-period items.

The Prime Minister's Bureau, Education Ministry and Senior Citizens Ministry are also part of the project, which aims to preserve historical evidence of the annihilation of six million European Jews at the hands of the Nazis in World War II.

The project is launched amid fresh data on the dwindling numbers of Holocaust survivors living in Israel.

According to official figures released by the Jerusalem-based Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, 13,000 of them passed away over the past year -- around 1,000 every month. Of the 208,000 survivors currently alive, about two thirds are expected to still be around by 2015.

No ground operation in Libya without UN mandate: Russia

The Deacon Herald

Aware of NATO and its allies planning to launch a ground military campaign in Libya, Russia has said that such a plan requires UN Security Council mandate

"The information shows that both NATO and EU are working on the similar plans. The EU is developing these plans to secure humanitarian convoys, though it is being stressed that it would take place after the UN gave the green light," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. Talking to a weekly analytical programme 'Post Scriptum' of TVC channel Lavrov said, "If anybody wants to ask for this mandate, welcome to the UN Security Council. We will discuss, try to understand what is planned, because the deviation from the mandate that we are watching now, are enough to learn lessons". On March 17, Russia and China had abstained in the voting on the UN Security Council resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, which paved the way for the US-led anti-Gaddafi coalition's aerial strikes. The command of the operation was shifted from a US-led international coalition to NATO in late March. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev defended Moscow abstention on Libya vote, while Prime Minister Vladimir Putin qualified the UN Security Council resolution as 'flawed' and said it reminds of the medieval Crusade.

Doubt of anthrax suspect's role resurfaces in lawsuit/ Palm Beach Post

AnthraxVaccine

Meryl and other panelists at Anthrax Letters
seminar, Washington, D.C., November 29, 2010

Bob Stevens' family's attorney has filed papers disputing the role of Bruce Ivins (in a much delayed lawsuit against the federal government), regarding the wrongful death of Bob Stevens, a photo editor at the National Enquirer who died after exposure to an anthrax letter in 2001.  From the Palm Beach Post:

Maureen Stevens' attorneys originally agreed to accept the findings of the estimated $100 million FBI investigation. But when Ivins' bosses at the military lab in Maryland insisted under oath that he lacked the time, equipment and know-how to produce the anthrax, the attorneys said they could no longer accept the findings.

They asked for permission to dispute Ivins' role in Stevens' death when the $50 million lawsuit against the federal government goes to trial in December or January. U.S. District Judge Daniel Hurley, who will decide the case, approved their request. That doesn't mean Ivins won't loom large during the trial...

[Two former supervisors of Ivins, also] bacteriologists testified that a variety of people used the lab. "We had people from Egypt, Poland, India, Iran, Latvia and China," Byrne [one supervisor] said...

Still, Schuler said, Maureen Stevens' case against the government doesn't turn on Ivins' guilt or innocence. At its core, the case is relatively simple, he said: The government was negligent in Bob Stevens' death because it didn't provide sufficient security at the labs where anthrax was kept. In court papers, the government concedes that before the attacks, Fort Detrick didn't have cameras to monitor the labs and didn't search workers for pathogens when they were leaving the base.

"We just have to show that there was bad security," Schuler said. "We don't have to solve the crime..."