https://bit.ly/2B5xt54

By Zhong Sheng (People’s Daily)    09:19, October 12, 2019

Pointing fingers at matters concerning Xinjiang, the U.S. Department of Commerce is doing nothing but twisting the truth under the banner of human rights.

Its practice of adding some Chinese entities to its sanctions list and the imposition of export restrictions further exposed Washington’s evil intentions to encumber Xinjiang’s counter-terrorism efforts and obstruct China’s stable development.

It is common sense that terrorism and extremism are enemies of the human society, and counter-terrorism and de-extremism remain a responsibility shared by the international society, and also necessary guarantee for human rights.

In recent years, Xinjiang has established vocational education and training centers in accordance with the law to prevent the breeding and spread of terrorism and religious extremism, effectively curbing the frequent terrorist incidents and protecting the rights to life and development of the people of all ethnic groups. Worthwhile results have been achieved.

No terrorist incidents have occurred in Xinjiang for nearly three years since the education and training started.

However, such worthwhile results are invisible for the US Department of Commerce. It is a smear on China’s governing policies in Xinjiang, deliberate sabotage of the counter-terrorism achievements made by the Chinese people, as well as a rude interference in China’s internal affairs and severe damage to the interests of China.

The rights to life and development are fundamental human rights, as well as the premise and foundation to safeguard individual and collective rights. These two rights are difficult to be protected without a secure and stable social environment, let alone other rights.

For some time, Xinjiang has been plagued by terrorism and religious extremism, which has led to the loss of lives and properties of the local people, and tremendously impeded the economic and social progress of Xinjiang.

It is a fundamental task of any responsible government, acting on basic principles, to remove the malignant tumor of terrorism and extremism that threatens people’s lives and security, to safeguard people’s dignity and value, to protect their rights to life, health and development, and to ensure they enjoy a peaceful and harmonious social environment. That is what Xinjiang is practicing.

Rumors are seen through by the wise, and lies cannot defeat facts. Compared with the US politicians distorting the facts, those foreigners who have visited Xinjiang have stronger voices.

Since the end of the last year, dozens of batches of foreign ambassadors in China, UN officials, social organizations, religious groups and journalists have been invited to pay visits to the vocational education and training centers in Xinjiang. The field trips helped them see the facts and understand the urgency, necessity, validity and rationality of the training and education in the autonomous region.

Xinjiang affairs are China’s internal affairs, and are related with the country’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity. The Chinese government and people have always taken a clear stance on the matters related to Xinjiang, and will never allow any interference from any other country or external force.

China strongly urges the US to move related Chinese entities out of the sanction list, and stop staging farces like the one made by the US Department of Commerce.

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy.) 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/UAINE/

Background
It has been a full year of orchestrated “gladiator fights” with no education, no programs, hunger strikes, lockdowns as long as 9 months, and next to no visitation for populations at CTF Soledad. As some of you might know, CDCr just admitted failure and stopped the “incremental release” (gladiator fight) program at the root of it all. While the program is reportedly being investigated by the Office of the Inspector General and cancelled, guards have been enacting group retaliation on whole segments with people thrown in administrative segregation (ad-seg), then people taken out of ad-seg but being placed on lockdown with no phone or visits, mail and JPay receipts not being delivered, and personal property being tampered with. A full list of grievances are also attached, that you can refer to in your call. The system of petty and inhumane punishments must end! End group punishments!
 demands list soledad

Background Article on Gladiator Fights at CTF Soledad

Oakland IWOC response to the CDCr announcement and spin

Call or email:
1. Warden Craig Koenig
(831) 678-3951 ext. 5950
craig.koenig@cdcr.ca.gov

2. Director Connie Gipson, Division of Adult Institutions
(916) 445-7688
connie,gipson@cdcr.ca.gov

Sample script

“Hi, I’m calling on behalf of the prisoners who have been subject to group retaliation in CTF Soledad. People inside have been subject to a range of dangerous to unsanitary conditions, from being thrown in the hole or placed on lockdown, to mail being deliberately and maliciously missing or lost. This is group punishment and directly related to the Incremental Release program in Central Valley facilities that has now been cancelled. In their statements, CDCr said it is committed to individualized treatment, so why is group punishment being put on whole segments? We want group punishments ended, everyone out of ad-seg immediately, visitation, phone, and mail fully restored, and programming restored. Thank you.”
 
 

You can report any feedback and information from your calls and emails by replying directly to this email. Thank you so much!

UAW International Union

“We are standing up for fair pay and benefits for our families”

Standing up for fair pay, benefits and job protections for over 3,600 workers in 6 locations across the U.S.

“UAW members get up every day and put in long, hard hours of work from designing to building Mack trucks,” said Ray Curry, Secretary-Treasurer of the UAW and Director of the Heavy Truck Department. “UAW members carry on their shoulders the profits of Mack and they are simply asking for dignity, fair pay and job protections.”

Unresolved issues by Mack Truck include:  wage increases, job security, COLA, wage progression, skilled trades, shift premium, holiday schedules, work schedules, health and safety, seniority, pension, 401(k), healthcare and prescription drug coverage, overtime, subcontracting, and temporary/supplemental workers.

“Based on our strong past relationship with the Mack Truck group, we are confident that further discussion of these, and other open issues, will result in progress toward the goal of a contract that works for both the Company and its UAW members,” said Curry. “But the fact remains, that our members are united in standing together to strike until Mack agrees to resolve these significant issues.”

“The last four years we have helped Mack Truck make significant profit through our work,” said Doug Irvine, President of Local 2301 and President of the Mack Truck Council. “All we are asking is that the company treat us with the dignity and respect we deserve in making them successful.”

Mack Truck has plants in Allentown, PA; Middletown, PA; Hagerstown, MD; Baltimore, MD; and Jacksonville, FL.

Local Unions Striking:
Local 677 Allentown, PA
Local 677 Middletown, PA
Local 171 Hagerstown, MD
Local 1247 Hagerstown, MD
Local 2301 Baltimore, MD
Local 2420 Jacksonville, FL

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2019/10/11/bombings-greet-the-great-migration/

October 11, 2019 Stephen Millies

A fundamental change in the composition of the U.S. workforce was the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to Northern cities.

With the outbreak of World War I, factory owners lost Eastern and Southern Europe as a source of exploited workers. For the first time, Black people were able to get jobs in many Northern plants.

Hundreds of thousands of African Americans, largely from sharecropper families, went North. Chicago’s Black population increased two-and-a-half times between 1910 and 1920, rising from 44,103 to 109,408. In the same decade, Detroit’s Black community grew sixfold.

This sudden growth combined with segregation allowed landlords to jack up rents on their overcrowded properties. Real estate moguls tried to stop African Americans from moving into white neighborhoods.

Between July 1917 and March 1921, 58 Black homes were bombed. Among the few terrorists arrested for the bombings was James Turner, a clerk at the real estate firm of Dean & Meagher. A six-year-old Black child was killed when a bomb was thrown into a building on Chicago’s Indiana Avenue.  

Decades later, real estate sharks prefer setting fires to throwing bombs. Between 1978 and 1981, 41 people, including 30 children in Hoboken, N.J., were killed by arsonists. The Latinx population of this small city dropped by half.

The Chicago bombings often followed racist meetings like the one organized by a “property owners’ association” on May 5, 1919. A real estate agent urged whites to “stand together block by block” against the “invasion” of African Americans seeking homes.

Two weeks later, the home of the renowned actor Richard B. Harrison and his family was destroyed on May 16. Harrison was most famous for his role in the Broadway play “The Green Pastures.”

Against a backdrop of racist newspapers and politicians, the  campaign of real estate crooks sought to provoke a hysteria among whites. A result was that the Black teenager Eugene Williams could be killed for swimming off the “wrong beach” of Lake Michigan.

Why didn’t the Great Migration happen earlier?

Why did it take 50 years after the Civil War for Northern industry to exploit Black workers? Andrew Carnegie recruited workers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire for his Pittsburgh steel mills. Why didn’t Carnegie seek Black or white employees from the U.S. South?

Northern capitalists needed Black and white labor to stay in the South. Cotton production grew from 4 million bales in 1870 to over 16 million bales in 1911. Even though U.S. manufacturing exports grew at a more rapid rate, cotton still accounted for 29 percent of U.S. exports in 1911.

Employment in Southern logging, sawmills and tobacco factories also boomed. Yankee corporations grabbed much of the profit. Both the Southern Railroad, (now part of the Norfolk Southern), and the steel mills around Birmingham, Ala., were effectively controlled from J.P. Morgan’s banking house at 23 Wall Street.

As World War I began, Black labor was summoned North. But Chicago’s ruling class continued to use racism to pit workers against each other.

The packer Phillip Armour bragged that he sought to “keep the races and nationalities apart after working hours, and to foment suspicion, rivalry, and even enmity among such groups.”

Armour was filthy rich. His packing plants were just plain filthy. In 1898, when the U.S. invaded Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, more U.S. soldiers died by food poisoning from Armour’s tainted pork and beans than were killed by gunfire.

The Democratic machine and the race riot

Just as Wall Street ran New York City for generations through the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine, so did Chicago’s wealthy and powerful rely on the Democrats.

The living shadow of the 1919 “race riots” was the Chicago Democratic Party machine. Even decades later, a whole layer of this apparatus — alderman, judges, ward bosses and the like —c ould trace their careers to membership in the neighborhood “athletic clubs” that sparked the violence.

These clubs were sponsored by elected officials like the racist Cook County commissioner, Frank Ragen. His “Ragen’s Colts” killed and wounded Black people. They were like the fascist gangs that were being formed in Italy and Germany.

The coroner’s report emphasized the role of these clubs:

“Responsibility for many attacks was definitely placed by many witnesses upon the ‘athletic clubs’ including Ragen’s Colts, the Hamburgers, Aylwards, Our Flag, Standard … and several others. The mobs were made up for the most part of boys between 15 and 22.

“Gangs, particularly of white youths, formed definite nuclei for crowd and mob formations. Athletic clubs supplied the leaders of many gangs.”

Among the members of the “Hamburg Social and Athletic Club” at the time was 17-year-old Richard J. Daley, who would be elected six times as Chicago’s mayor.

Crucial to Daley’s political ascent was winning the presidency of the Hamburgers in 1924.

This racist swine was still mayor when he finally died in 1976. One of his sons, William Daley, became President Bill Clinton’s secretary of commerce and helped drive the North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress.

Another of his sons, Richard M. Daley, was elected to his fourth term as Chicago’s mayor in 1999, the 80th anniversary of the “race riots.”

Sources: “Race Riot, Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919” by William M. Tuttle Jr.; “The Kerner Report: The 1968 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders”; “A Few Red Drops, the Chicago Race Riot of 1919” by Claire Hartfield; “The Chicago Race Riots, July, 1919” by Carl Sandburg; “Down on the Killing Floor, Black and White workers in Cicago’s Packinghouses, 1904-54” by Rick Halpern; “Boss, Richard J. Daley of Chicago” by Mike Royko.

Next: What did the unions do?

Part 1: The long shadow of the 1919 Chicago race riot

Support our independent & non-profit work via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acTVism In this exclusive interview with author, Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, Peter Kuznick, we talk about the thinking of “American Exceptionalism”, what it means, its history and modern form. In addition, we also examine alternative visions that developed throughout the 20th century under progressive thinkers such as Henry Wallace. FOLLOW US ONLINE: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/acTVism/ Instagram: actv_munich Website: http://www.actvism.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/acTVismMunich YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/acTVismMunich/ #america #americanexceptionalism #peterkuznick #history #imperalism #unitedstates #empire SOURCE // AUTHOR OF YOUTUBE FEATURED IMAGE: – Autor: jnn1776 – Link / Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/5463795… – Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) – The author of the featured image does not in any way support or endorse the work exhibited in this video.