Omani workers’ demonstration

This is a video about a speech to Filipino migrant workers in Oman.

After the fall of the dictatorial presidential republic of Tunisia, it is the turn of workers in the absolute monarchy of Oman … From Associated Press:

About 2,000 Omanis demonstrate demanding higher wages and stop rising prices

01/17/2011 12:44 PM

MUSCAT, Oman – About 2,000 Omanis have staged a rare protest demanding higher wages and salaries and a curb to rising prices and the high cost of living.

The demonstration Monday, a rarity in the sleepy sultanate, was called for by the civil society groups and publicized on websites.

Protesters gathered in the district housing most government ministries under close watch by police. The demonstration ended peacefully.

One demonstrator said the march was a request to Sultan Qaboos to personally intervene against the greed of the merchants and raise government employees salaries including those in the police and the army. He refused to give his name fearing of government reprisal.

Banners held by the demonstrators read “no to high prices” and “no to the merchant greed.”

WikiLeaks and bankers

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange vowed to reveal confidential account details of rich and famous individuals today after taking delivery of a new dossier from a former Swiss banker: here. And here.

USA: JPMorgan Chase’s profit report for 2010, released Friday, has become the occasion for a celebration by the American plutocracy of the return of the good old days before the Wall Street crash of 2008. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s CEO, summed up the general mood of the financial elite when he declared the bank’s record profits to be evidence of a “broad-based economic recovery,” adding, “I think the future is extremely bright”: here.

Richard D. Wolff: “One aspect of ‘American exceptionalism’ was always economic. US workers, so the story went, enjoyed a rising level of real wages that afforded their families a rising standard of living. Ever harder work paid off in rising consumption. The rich got richer faster than the rest, but almost no one got poorer. Nearly all citizens felt ‘middle class.’ A profitable US capitalism kept running ahead of labor supply. So it kept raising wages to attract waves of immigration and to retain employees across the 19th century until the 1970s”: here.

Britain: Union leader Bob Crow blasted David Cameron today for his impotence over the controversial issue of banker’s bonuses: here.

British bankers gave over 50% of Tory election year money: here.

Left economists called for nationalisation of the banking sector today after the Bank of England’s deputy governor conceded that taxpayers should not have had to pay for the 2008 collapse: here.

The public-sector PCS union hit out at the Treasury today for failing to collect millions of pounds from Britain’s richest people under the 50p tax rate: here.

WikiLeaks and music: here.

Tunisian democrats fight on

This video from Tunisia says about itself:

WELL no idea where to start but the first thing that comes to mind or occupies my mind rather is the deaths of all the innocent people that paid the ultime price or sacrifice to pave the way for the rest of us as tunisians to have our freedom as smart educated peoeple …I was always proud to be a TUNISIAN and even more proud to be from KASSERINE today I’m twice as proud our small town was a forgotton city when it comes to employment oppurtinities and big projects they all go to other places where the thieves of our goverment wants them to be.

history tell us even before the french occupation that uprise of the TUNISIAN people starts from KASSERINE.

we lost more of our youth than any other city …and we broke the wall of fear to open the gate wide open to the freedom fighters …and from now on we will never stop fighting for our rights enough is enough ..( YOU CAN FOOL PEOPLE SOME TIMES BUT YOU CAN’T FOOL ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME ).

our next president better be aware not to put KASSERINE aside or ignore us.

we will not be silent again.

I want to salute SIDI BOUZID our neighbor that shares with us the same things and concerns.01/14/2011 should be named a BOUAZIZI day maybe even be an official holiday.

About a thousand people rallied in central Tunis today to demand the abolition of ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party: here.

Transitional government in Tunisia: here. See also here.

The self-immolation that sparked the ousting of Tunisia’s leader has led to similar desperate protests in other north African states, with four men setting themselves on fire in Algeria and one each in Egypt and Mauritania: here.

Berlusconi sex scandals investigated

This video from Italy is called Ruby, Berlusconi, e il BUNGA BUNGA.

From ANSA news agency in Italy:

‘Ample evidence’ Berlusconi paid for sex

Premier denies allegations, says in steady relationship

17 January, 17:24

Milan, January 17 – Milan prosecutors say they have “ample evidence” Premier Silvio Berlusconi paid for sex with young women at his residences, according to a formal request sent Monday to parliament asking for permission to search the office of the premier’s accountant.

“A significant number of young women prostituted themselves with Silvio Berlusconi at his residences in exchange for sums of money,” the request said.

As well as money, the women received free housing in the plush Milan district built by Berlusconi in the late 1970s before he became a media magnate, the prosecutors said.

Berlusconi, 74, who denies the allegations stemming from a probe into underage prostitution, said in a TV message Sunday that he had never paid for sex and was in a steady relationship with an unnamed woman.

In the request, the prosecutors also said a teen Moroccan belly dancer who spurred the probe into underage prostitution was at the premier’s Milan residence at least eight times between February and May 2010.

They said they had discovered this from examining the phone records of the young woman, Karima El Mahroug, 17 at the time. In a tapped conversation between two other women released Monday, one allegedly said to the other: “the papers say much less than the truth, even when they massacre him (Berlusconi).

“Either you’re up for everything or else you can get a taxi and leave,” the woman added.

The prosecutors meanwhile said they would press on “serenely” in the probe despite the premier’s claim they were politically motivated.

On Sunday Berlusconi accused the prosecutors of waging “political battles” and “illegitimately using their powers” to try to bring him down.

In reply Monday, Chief Prosecutor Edmondo Bruti Liberati said the probe had been “obligatory” because of incriminating evidence taken last year, first from the phone records of El Mahroug, better known under her stage name Ruby Rubacuore (‘Ruby the Heart-Stealer’).

Bruti Liberati also cited the Constitutional principle that everyone is presumed innocent until receiving a definitive sentence in Italy’s three-tier justice system, a process that can take years.

The prosecutors have asked for a fast-track trial in the case and summoned Berlusconi for questioning at the end of this week, but the premier’s lawyers have indicated he may not answer the summons.

Ruby has admitted attending three parties at Berlusconi’s residence outside Milan and said she received 7,000 euros ($9,400) from him, but denies having sex.

Paying for sex with a minor currently carries a jail sentence of three years but parliament is in the process of ratifying an international convention that would raise the penalty to six years.

In a TV message on Sunday, Berlusconi reiterated he had never paid for sex in his life, calling the notion “absurd”.

The premier also revealed that he had been in a steady relationship since separating from his wife in 2009 when she accused him of “frequenting minors” after he attended the 18th birthday party of a Neapolitan aspiring actress who says she often visited him and called him “Daddy”.

Berlusconi said he had not wanted to name his companion so as to keep her out of the media glare.

As well as facing possible prostitution charges, Berlusconi is also under investigation for alleged abuse of power in getting Ruby out of a scrape on the night of May 27-28.

Berlusconi allegedly asked for Ruby to be released after an allegation of theft because she was, he said, the granddaughter of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

He has said he believed her when the girl, daughter of a street vendor, told him this, as well as saying she was 24. Berlusconi has denied abuse of power, saying he only inquired about the case. He says this version of events has been corroborated by police.

After phoning Milan’s main police station to inquire about Ruby, Berlusconi sent a Lombardy regional councillor, his former dental hygienist Nicole Minetti, to take her under her wing, but the girl eventually went away with a Brazilian prostitute.

Minetti is under investigation for allegedly procuring prostitutes along with two of Berlusconi’s close friends, veteran TV anchor Emilio Fede and showbiz talent scout Lele Mora, who the premier has admitted helping with debts.

El Mahroug, who has been in and out of homes after running away from her religiously observant family, was depicted by the premier as a “tragic” figure he helped out because of his natural generosity.

Berlusconi deflected attention from the scandal with trademark quips about his well-known liking for girls and controversially added that liking beautiful women was better than being gay.

The news about the prostitution probe on Friday came a day after a Constitutional Court ruling that partially struck down an immunity law shielding the premier from three trials.

Berlusconi and his supporters claim the probe is another “clockwork justice” stunt aimed at undermining the premier, who is struggling to widen his House majority after a wafer-thin victory in a confidence vote last month.

Italy’s prime minister pledges to punish magistrates who mounted an investigation over allegations he paid an under-age prostitute: here.

Dutch corporate slavery in Argentina

This video is called Tobacco Farm Workers in Argentina_part_02.

This video is called Tobacco Farm Workers in Argentina_part_03.

From Radio Netherlands Worldwide:

Dutch company accused of slavery

Published on 17 January 2011 – 2:01pm

The Argentinian authorities accuse Dutch grain merchant Nidera – one of the world’s biggest – of human trafficking and tax evasion.

Argentinian police on 30 December raided a Nidera plantation near Buenos Aires, where they found 133 seasonal workers living under conditions “resembling a concentration camp”. Seven of the company’s executives were arrested and Nidera was fined 125,000 euros. In addition, the Argentinian tax authorities suspect Nidera of evading 49 million euros in taxes during the 2005-2009 period.

Labour Minister Oscar Cuartango says the conditions under which the workers lived and worked bordered on “crimes against humanity”. Two holes in the ground served as toilets, a container for pesticides was used as a bath. They had no electricity, very little drinking water and were not allowed to leave the plantation. The workers were charged exorbitant amounts for food and water, and earned almost no money.

Nidera has denied all charges, claiming that “It’s a local issue”. The company refused to comment on the arrests of seven of its executives. Nidera says it has not received official notification of the alleged tax evasion. Nidera produces and trades in soy, rice and various seeds and grains, and is active in 22 countries.

In Argentinia, the Nidera investigation is seen as an important victory in the government’s campaign against the exploitation of farm workers. The Nidera plantation is seen as symptomatic for the situation in Argentinian agriculture. Hundreds of thousands of agricultural workers are believed to be working illegally and under very poor circumstances.

The 10 most sued companies in America: here.

Argentina has launched a tax evasion and money-laundering probe of transnational agribusiness giants including US-based Cargill and Bunge, accusing them of evading around 150 million pesos (£23m) in taxes: here.

Maryam Al-Zoubi, Campaign for America’s Future: “With unemployment at a near historic high in the United States, could you imagine any American company bringing in foreign workers to work for them below the minimum wage and with no benefits? Most people would say no. But can you imagine those same Americans forcing foreign workers to stay here, with no pay, and constant abuse? That is actually happening in this country today. Forced labor is a real phenomenon in the United States agriculture business. Without awareness and investigation into where our supplies come from and who businesses are hiring, the American people become unwitting complicit supporters of labor trafficking. Monday June 13th, in anticipation of the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04) held a Senate committee hearing and panel discussion to review the success and needed improvements of the law”: here.

Dutch 17th-18th century slave trade: here.

Play computer games with living organisms

From New Scientist:

Play Pacman, Pinball and Pong with a paramecium

17:59 14 January 2011

Sandrine Ceurstemont, video editor

Using the latest computer graphics is one way to make video games more life-like – but what about incorporating life itself into them?

Physicist Ingmar Riedel-Kruse and his team from Stanford University have done just that by creating versions of classic games that you can navigate by physically controlling living organisms. A game called PAC-mecium is Pacman with a twist: players use a console to change the polarity of an electrical field in a fluid chamber filled with paramecia, which makes the organisms move in different directions. A camera sends real-time images to a computer, where they are superimposed onto a game board (see video above). By looking at the screen, a player can guide the paramecia to eat virtual yeast cells and make them avoid Pacman-like fish. A microprocessor tracks the movement of the organisms to keep score. Another game called Ciliaball uses the same principle to play virtual soccer with paramecia stars (see video).

Biotic pinball uses a slightly different method to flick away paramecium “pinballs”. A player controls a tiny needle that squirts a chemical repellant at approaching organisms (see video). An alternate two-player version of the game called Pond Pong places two needles on opposing sides of the gameboard and challenges you to aim paramecia into your opponent’s pond.

Although the games are fun to play, Riedel-Kruse and his team also see them as educational tools. “Everyone should have sufficient knowledge about the basics of biomedicine and biotechnology. Biotic games could promote that,” says Riedel-Kruse. The team hopes that other life sciences researchers will develop games that illustrate their work. They also think that the games could be used to run experiments during play and allow for crowdsourced results.

All of the team’s game designs are published in a paper this month in Lab on a Chip.

If you enjoyed this video, you may also like to see a laser gadget that plays Pong with cells.

See also here.

Call of Duty: Black Ops – game with glimpses horrors of war: here.

Egyptian sets himself on fire

This video is called South Koreans protest against Mubarak, Egypt military dictatorship.

From AFP news agency:

Man Sets Fire To Himself Outside Egypt’s Parliament – Source

Monday, Jan 17, 2011

CAIRO –A man set himself on fire outside parliament in Cairo Monday, a parliament source said, in an apparent replay of the self-immolation of a Tunisian graduate which sparked a popular revolt.

The man “stood outside the People’s Assembly, poured fuel on himself and set himself on fire,” the source said.

From Reuters:

A Interior Ministry source said the man was a small restaurant owner protesting about his poor living standards.

See also here.

A Mauritanian man set himself on fire in front of the West African state’s presidential palace on Monday, police officials said, in an echo of the suicide that triggered an uprising in Tunisia: here.

Sudan: Opposition Plans Street Protests, Government Threatens Clampdown: here.

The Tunisian uprising in pictures: here.

Note on Tunisia’s military: here.

The Rise and Fall of Tunisia’s Ceauşescu: here.

German racist and pro-capitalist demagogy

This video is called Thilo Sarrazin: Eight Indians Attacked by a Racist German Nazi Mob.

By Ulrich Rippert in Germany:

German media spreads nationalism by right-wing demagogues

17 January 2011

The deepening international economic crisis has led to rapid social and political decline across the globe. Austerity programmes abound. Poverty and social misery are increasing dramatically. Living conditions are becoming intolerable for many people who are attempting to find a way to defend themselves. …

An attempt is now being made in Germany to divert the mounting insecurity and fear of sections of the middle class into right-wing channels. Racist and nationalist demagogues have received an unexpected boost from the media and are strutting the stage ever more loudly, boldly and aggressively. They garner enthusiastic support from numerous newspaper editors and radio commentators, and are courted on countless television chat shows. A political climate is thus being created for the emergence of a new right-wing party.

When Thilo Sarrazin published his book Germany Abolishes Itself last summer, presenting the burgeoning social crisis as a result of “foreign infiltration” by Muslim immigrants, he was applauded by leading social democrats, intellectuals and media representatives.

Sarrazin, who served in the Berlin city government as finance senator for many years and bears major responsibility for the social decline of entire neighbourhoods, ascribes increasing poverty and its associated social problems to immigrants’ allegedly below-average intelligence and their supposed unwillingness to integrate. He remains a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Although he demonstrably interprets statistics falsely and uses pseudo-biological arguments, which have been repeatedly repudiated since the Nuremberg racial laws and the Nazis’ eugenics programme, he is celebrated by some sections of the media as a national hero daring to confront a taboo subject.

His book first appeared in instalments in influential newspapers and was then promoted with great media fanfare. Finally reports about the book’s high sales figures were taken as evidence of Sarrazin’s success in capturing popular opinion in the formulation of his racist theories.

A few months later, Hans-Olaf Henkel published a nationalist diatribe directed against the euro. In a book entitled Rescue Our Money, the former president of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) agitated against the Greek population, accusing Greeks of “taking it easy at our expense”. The subheading of his book is “Germany is Being Sold Out―How the Euro Fraud Threatens our Prosperity”.

While Sarrazin limited himself in his 460-page-long book to disseminating the ultra right-wing and neo-Nazi slogan “Foreigners out!” Hans-Olaf Henkel goes a step further. Implicitly invoking the power politics of the German Reich (empire), he demands that Germany must be prepared to act with more self assurance and assert itself in Europe more forcefully. The euro should not be used to harmonise Europe, but to dominate it. He combines poisonous attacks on working people―referring to them disparagingly as “the little people”―and demands sharper cuts in social services, with calls to use Germany’s economic strength to make other countries bow to submission.

He writes: “From the moment the euro was introduced, there broke out in Greece the usual competitive auction”, which he claims also occurred in other countries. “In this kind of competition, every political party wanted to take credit when it came to ‘Who is the most socially minded?’ ‘Who is the most worker-friendly?’ ‘Who has the biggest heart for the little people?’” Sponsored by the “solidarity of the euro”, “charity without end” broke out in Athens (page 107).

Henkel demands an immediate end to this “transfer union”. All payments to indebted countries in Europe should be stopped immediately. This would require the immediate abolition of the common currency in its current form. The indebted countries should be forced to leave the strong euro and join forces in a weak euro zone―” One might call it the southern euro”, he says. He goes on to suggest that the economically strong euro countries should unite under the leadership of Germany in a “northern euro”.

That such a splitting of the euro would have a devastating impact on the German export economy; that German industry has dramatically increased its exports to European countries―including Greece, whose most important trading partner is Germany―since the introduction of the euro nine years ago; that the money from the euro rescue package does not benefit the Greek population, but goes directly into the accounts of German and international banks, which nevertheless demand drastic welfare cuts from the Greek government―all this the former president of the BDI knows full well, but it does not interest him.

Hans-Olaf Henkel is the Bank of America’s Senior Advisor in Germany.

Australian floods spreading

This video from Australia is called Victoria Floods: Record Peaks | 15 Jan 2011 – ABC News.

Australia’s flooding has spread to the southern states of Victoria and Tasmania over the past few days, adding to the devastation already experienced by people in Brisbane and across Queensland, northern New South Wales and the central coast of Western Australia: here.

South Africa to declare flood disaster: here.

Tunisian democrats’ struggle continues

This video is called Tunisia solidarity protests & clashes.

Tunisia’s ruling elite is seeking to secure its rule in the aftermath of the popular insurgency that forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country and take refuge in Saudi Arabia: here.

Thousands of people demonstrated on Saturday in France’s urban centres, in support of the popular uprising which forced the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali to flee two days before: here.

This is a video from Belgium about solidarity with Tunisia.