Alternative To Israeli War On Palestine - International Law, Legality & Accountability - New birth pangs for the Middle East

Israel's savage attacks on Gaza come after months and weeks of repeated threats and secret planning. The shockwaves are rumbling all over the Arab world, as much because of the official Arab silence and international cowardice and complicity as because of Israel's barbarity.

Israel brought nuclear weapons to the region and its chief innovations have been how to occupy, build settlements, usurp lands and rights by every means, commit massacres against civilians with advanced weapons, and invent new justifications for each crime.

The attack on Gaza will not destroy Hamas, and even if Israel kills every person who ever supported Hamas, the attack will not end resistance. On the contrary, resistance will be strengthened throughout the region, undermining the notion that resistance is outdated or impossible and that the only remaining "strategic choice" for the Arabs is negotiation from a position of weakness.

The Gaza attack will weaken and discredit even further the so-called "moderates" who did their best to extinguish any form of resistance and bet heavily on the failed peace process and its sponsors.

may also see an awakening of the role of the Arab public,

The reality is that the starvation siege Israel has imposed on Gaza could not continue so long without Arab complicity. These facts leave indelible marks of shame on Arab history.

military force does not bring security. In fact, all it has done is to make Israel less secure and more hated for its crimes.

The "peace process"
has failed and cannot be revived.

The alternative must not be a continuation of violence.

There are other paths.
a return to international law, legality and accountability.
+++


New birth pangs for the Middle East
Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, 31 December 2008
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10082.shtml

An protester in Cairo holds a newspaper featuring a photo of Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit meeting with his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni, 28 December 2008. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice famously celebrated Israel's 2006 aggression against Lebanon as "the birth pangs of a new Middle East." She could say the same thing about Gaza today, but it will not be the birth of the Middle East she wanted.

Israel's savage attacks on Gaza come after months and weeks of repeated threats and secret planning. The shockwaves are rumbling all over the Arab world, as much because of the official Arab silence and international cowardice and complicity as because of Israel's barbarity.

Israel has never behaved otherwise. Right from the beginning, and even before Israel was founded, Zionist gangs led by future prime ministers were the first to introduce terrorism to the Middle East. Israel and its founders were the first to carry out political assassinations of United Nations officials and Palestinian leaders, as well as other truly terrorist attacks against hotels, railway stations and civilian Palestine government departments.

Israel brought nuclear weapons to the region and its chief innovations have been how to occupy, build settlements, usurp lands and rights by every means, commit massacres against civilians with advanced weapons, and invent new justifications for each crime. These have been its chief contributions to the region for 60 years.

Israel's butchery in Gaza is therefore nothing new, even if its brazenness and cruelty set shameful new records. The pain penetrates deep into every soul as ordinary people in Arab capitals voice their anger at Israel, at their own indifferent governments, and the duplicity of an "international community" that automatically supports the aggressor and blames the victim.

It is true that what is happening in Gaza happened before: the massacres there earlier this year, in Lebanon in 1982, 1996 and 2006, among many other examples. The reactions are similar too. When Israel attacked Lebanon in 2006, it also had a green light from international and regional powers. Then, as now, the United States and United Kingdom refused to call for a ceasefire, to give Israel time to continue the killing and to try to achieve its goals. But in 2006, Israel failed to achieve anything but defeat, despite massive political and military support.

In Gaza, Israel created through the siege, and through the continued occupation and oppression of Palestinians everywhere, conditions that made its attack a self-fulfilling prophecy. Israel cornered itself. The indiscriminate murder of hundreds of civilians in Gaza (300 dead and 700 injured in only the first 24 hours) generated the usual bleats of "concern" from the "international community."

Israel is ignoring the weak statement calling for an end to violence issued by the UN Security Council because it knows that the statement is meant only as political cover for those who issued it, not as a real effort to end the aggression.

As with Lebanon, Israel is quick to start a war, but the question is how to end it. Hamas -- and the steadfast Palestinian people -- are not an army to be defeated on a battlefield with a declaration of victory. Of course, Israel has the military might to destroy all of Gaza and kill every Palestinian there. But no matter how many atrocities it commits, the Israeli army will end its attack with no victory. Israel will reap another defeat in Gaza, to add to its harvest of defeat, and death.

With its latest massacres, Israel has ensured once and for all that it will never be accepted as a normal, permanent state in this region. That is a decision that can only be taken by the people of this region -- not by declarations from their leaders -- and the people have made their views clear every time they were given a chance to express themselves. For that Israel can also thank its so-called "friends" who never heeded the calls to restrain Israel even for its own good if not for the good of its victims.

Israel has been pushing events such that any chance of reconciliation and peace has been destroyed. It has embarrassed and humiliated the Arab states that signed peace treaties in the hope that this might encourage Israel itself to pursue real peace, especially with the Palestinians. It has seized every Arab opening and initiative as a sign of weakness to be exploited instead of built upon. While claiming to desire nothing but peace and security, it has all along been acting as a rogue state with disrespect, lawlessness, bigotry, racism and a savage disregard for human life.

The end of this process has not been reached. Israel will push things until even the meagre remaining peace "achievements" -- the peace treaties themselves -- are undone. It seems that is what Israel truly desires no matter how much it claims to want peace.

No one can say with certainty what Israel's new aggression will unleash, but one can point to some likely outcomes.

The attack on Gaza will not destroy Hamas, and even if Israel kills every person who ever supported Hamas, the attack will not end resistance. On the contrary, resistance will be strengthened throughout the region, undermining the notion that resistance is outdated or impossible and that the only remaining "strategic choice" for the Arabs is negotiation from a position of weakness.

The Gaza attack will weaken and discredit even further the so-called "moderates" who did their best to extinguish any form of resistance and bet heavily on the failed peace process and its sponsors.

We may also see an awakening of the role of the Arab public, which has been extremely patient with the sterile negotiations and summitry conducted by its leaders. It will be impossible to counteract the now firmly rooted idea that there was official Arab complicity in the Gaza attack. No one will forget that Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni issued her threats against Gaza from Cairo on 25 December, while Egypt's foreign minister stood smiling next to her without saying a word of protest. Neither will it be easy for Egypt to further justify its role in tightening the siege on the Gaza population by keeping the Rafah crossing closed.

The reality is that the starvation siege Israel has imposed on Gaza could not continue so long without Arab complicity. These facts leave indelible marks of shame on Arab history.

Finally, Israel may recognize what it should have learned after its invasion of Lebanon in 1982: its enemies do not have the might that it has, and it can invade and kill with impunity, but military force does not bring security. In fact, all it has done is to make Israel less secure and more hated for its crimes.


We are undoubtedly at the end of the era which started with the Madrid peace conference 17 years ago. The "peace process" that conference inaugurated, based on sidelining international law and institutionalizing Israeli dominance, has failed and cannot be revived.

The alternative must not be a continuation of violence.

There are other paths. One, long neglected, stands out: a return to international law, legality and accountability.

That would require real courage from an international community that has for too long abdicated its duties. Governments and international bodies may continue to evade those duties, but they should know that they will not be immune from the spreading shockwaves emanating from Gaza.

Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations. This essay first appeared in The Jordan Times and is reprinted with the author's permission.

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Crony Capitalism Goes Wild With GMAC - John Snow Former Bush Treasury Secretary Helps Himself And Friends

John Snow may have been a lousy Treasury Secretary, but his lobbying skills are not in doubt.

Snow, who was Treasury Secretary before Paulson, works for Cerberus Capital which was the largest shareholder of GMAC:

The move represents the second tranche of government aid that redounds to the benefit of giant private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, which owns Chrysler and, until these recent moves, a majority stake in GMAC. John Snow, a top player at Cerberus, was the Bush administration’s Treasury secretary before Henry Paulson.

[Cerberus - Greek Mythology - a monstrous watchdog with three (or in some accounts fifty) heads that guarded the entrance to Hades.]

Cerberus 49% stake will be diluted to a max of 33%. Certainly, they would have been diluted a little more in bankruptcy court where GMAC belonged.

Thanks to John Snow the wealthy investors at Cerberus get bailed out and the management at Cerberus doesn’t even have to take a pay cut:

As part of the deal, GMAC agreed to limit compensation on its top 25 executives including a ban on severance packages for the top five employees. The limits won’t apply to executives at Cerberus.

Cerberus made some lousy investments buying Chrysler and GMAC. Why should taxpayers be forced to bail them out? Disgusting…

+++

Crony Capitalism at GMAC

Posted by Joseph Y. Calhoun, III
December 30th, 2008
http://alhambrainvestments.com/blog/2008/12/30/crony-capitalism-at-gmac/

John Snow may have been a lousy Treasury Secretary, but his lobbying skills are not in doubt. The government threw a little more money GM’s way last night (via WSJ):

WASHINGTON — The federal government Monday deepened its involvement in the U.S. automotive industry by committing $6 billion to stabilize GMAC LLC, a financing company vital to the future of struggling car maker General Motors Corp.

In response, GMAC said Tuesday that it will immediately resume auto financing for “a broader spectrum of U.S. customers.”

The company said it will modify its credit criteria to include retail financing for customers with a credit bureau score of 621 or above, compared with the 700 minimum score it put in place two months ago as its troubles deepened. The median US consumer credit score is 723.

“The actions of the federal government to support GMAC are having an immediate and meaningful effect on our ability to provide credit to automotive customers,” said GMAC President Bill Muir said in a prepared statement.

Because you know, what people with low credit scores really need is a new car and a little more debt. Snow, who was Treasury Secretary before Paulson, works for Cerberus Capital which was the largest shareholder of GMAC:

The move represents the second tranche of government aid that redounds to the benefit of giant private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, which owns Chrysler and, until these recent moves, a majority stake in GMAC. John Snow, a top player at Cerberus, was the Bush administration’s Treasury secretary before Henry Paulson.

[Cerberus - Greek Mythology - a monstrous watchdog with three (or in some accounts fifty) heads that guarded the entrance to Hades.]

Maybe if GMAC had stuck to financing cars, they wouldn’t be in this mess, but they were neck deep in the mortgage market too. Now GMAC is a bank holding company and gets to access the TARP as well as having new debt guaranteed by the government. Existing debt holders participated in a debt for equity swap. Cerberus 49% stake will be diluted to a max of 33%. Certainly, they would have been diluted a little more in bankruptcy court where GMAC belonged.

Thanks to John Snow the wealthy investors at Cerberus get bailed out and the management at Cerberus doesn’t even have to take a pay cut:

As part of the deal, GMAC agreed to limit compensation on its top 25 executives including a ban on severance packages for the top five employees. The limits won’t apply to executives at Cerberus.

Cerberus made some lousy investments buying Chrysler and GMAC. Why should taxpayers be forced to bail them out? Disgusting…

Update: I didn’t notice this earlier. Not only is GM going to use these bailout funds to finance buyers with low credit scores but they’re offering 0% financing to boot. The dividend on the preferred we taxpayers just bought is 8%. How exactly will GMAC make money on that deal? Let’s see…pay 8% for money and then loan it at 0%. What do you think the chances are that we’ll ever get our money back from these financial geniuses?

1. Peter, on December 30th, 2008 at 2:19 pm Said:

   I do not agree with the government solution, of just throwing money, at the problem. Do we even know, what the balance sheets of this and/or any of these bailout companies are ? We, the little people, will be paying for this bailout, sooner or later, but we will pay. Why ? Simple, our government doesn’t have this money, but never gets denied for a loan. Amazing…I should go apply for a bailout too…

2. Joseph Y. Calhoun, III, on December 30th, 2008 at 2:41 pm Said:

   Peter,

   Part of the deal was the debt for equity swap so we will know what the balance sheet looks like. I’m with you though; it really doesn’t matter. We’ll have to pay for this and all the other bailouts through higher future taxes.

3.  As for the US never getting denied a loan, well that will not last forever. At some point our creditors are going to have a problem accepting more depreciating dollars.

DEALTALK-GMAC bailout could give Cerberus a floor and exit

Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:30pm GMT

(For more Reuters DEALTALKs, click [DEALTALK/])

By Jui Chakravorty Das
http://uk.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idUKN3033869120081230

NEW YORK, Dec 30 (Reuters) - The federal bailout of auto lender GMAC LLC puts a floor under the potential losses for its owner Cerberus Capital Management and could provide a roadmap for the private equity firm and its investors to cash out with their remaining capital.

The development underscores how the deepening government support for the U.S. auto industry has spread to include help for the battered sector's most controversial participant, Cerberus, a private Wall Street firm with deep connections to the Republican Party.

Not that Cerberus, which bought a 51-percent stake in GMAC from General Motors Corp (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) two years ago, won't take its licks as well. It will become a much smaller shareholder in the finance firm under a government-brokered restructuring.

GMAC won approval from the Federal Reserve to become a bank holding company last week, giving the auto finance company access to government lending programs.

Late on Monday, the U.S. Treasury also announced it would provide a cash infusion of $6 billion into GMAC under the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

"It's a good thing for GMAC -- it literally throws GMAC a lifeline," said David Kudla, chief investment strategist of Mainstay Capital Management LLC. "So in that regard it's good for Cerberus and good for GM. They are stakeholders. GMAC desperately needed capital."

As a condition for winning bank status and access to low-cost funding from the Fed, Cerberus will have to reduce its 51 percent stake in GMAC to 33 percent of total equity and 14.9 percent of the voting shares.

Under the Fed's plan, Cerberus' co-investors will take control of their own holdings in GMAC rather than through Cerberus' fund. Cerberus has not detailed its co-investors in GMAC, but they include Japan's Aozara Bank Ltd. (8304.T: Quote, Profile, Research)

General Motors Corp (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research), which owns the rest of GMAC, will have to shrink its stake to 10 percent by transferring the rest of it to a trust. The trust will have to dispose of that stake within three years, prompting several investment bankers to expect an offering of GMAC stock.

Such an initial public offering could also allow Cerberus and its co-investors to cash out their 2006 investment in GMAC, a goal that had been thrown into uncertainty by the deepening crisis at the firm.

JP Morgan analyst Himanshu Patel said in a research note on Tuesday that GMAC could eventually go public, helping the Treasury and the firms' existing investors sell their stakes.

'A SMALLER STAKE IN A VIABLE COMPANY'

GMAC had been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy as it struggled amid a deepening credit crunch that raised its borrowing costs sharply and a housing crisis that hammered its residential mortgage lending unit, ResCap.

But GMAC has now avoided that hard landing with government assistance, a positive for Cerberus, analysts said.

"It's a smaller stake in a viable company as opposed to a larger stake in a bankrupt company," said Mirko Mikelic, a portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

GM also stands to benefit from a better-capitalized GMAC that can get back to its core business of providing loans for car shoppers in GM showrooms.

GMAC said it would provide loans to a wider range of borrowers as its own access to credit eases, and GM's North American sales chief Mark LaNeve said he expected that would spur sales and dealer orders.

A Cerberus spokesman declined comment on the government bailout.

The restructuring of GMAC will take the firm in a different direction than the private equity firm had envisioned.

Cerberus, which also owns a majority stake in Chrysler LLC, had been in talks with GM about a potential merger with Chrysler and was clearly eager to hold on to GMAC.

Early on in talks with Chrysler, Cerberus had floated the possibility of swapping Chrysler's auto company for the remaining 49 percent stake in GMAC, sources familiar with the talks had told Reuters.

That option would appear to be off the table now as Cerberus' total stake in GMAC is reduced and its co-investors control their own holdings.

The timetable and more details on the transfer will be provided by GMAC early next year, according to a person with direct knowledge of the transaction, who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Cerberus is not obligated to disclose its losses because it is a private company.

Cerberus paid a net $6.4 billion for its share of GMAC including a later, offsetting payment from GM.

One investment banker, who asked not to be named, estimated that the current value for GMAC would be near $9.25 billion, or roughly the book value of the firm.

That would imply that Cerberus had lost about 26 percent of its investment in GMAC before Monday's bailout was announced and would exclude the unspecified additional capital that Cerberus had invested. (For more M&A news and our DealZone blog, go to www.reuters.com/deals) (Additional reporting by Kevin Krolicki in Detroit)

===

Cerberus Capital Management, L.P.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerberus_Capital_Management

 is one of the largest private equity investment firms in the United States. The firm is based in New York City, and run by 48-year-old financier Steve Feinberg. Former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle has been a prominent Cerberus spokesperson and runs one of its international units.

Contents [hide] 1 History 2 Notable acquisitions 3 Broken Deal for United Rentals 4 Notes and references 5 External links

[edit] History

Founded in 1992, Cerberus is named for the mythological three-headed dog that guarded the gates of Hades. While many of its peers have bought out companies in order to strip assets and sell on for a profit, Cerberus builds its reputation on identifying firms that are undervalued, and assisting in rejuvenating them by working with current management.^[1] Feinberg has stated to his employees that while the Cerberus name seemed like a good idea at the time, he later regretted naming the company after the mythological dog.^[1]

The company has been a very active acquirer of businesses over the past several years and now has sizable investments in automotive, sportswear, paper products, military services, real estate, energy, retail, glassmaking, transportation, and building products. In 2006, its holdings amounted to $24 billion.

On October 19, 2006, John W. Snow, President George W. Bush's second United States Secretary of the Treasury, was named chairman of Cerberus.

During the U.S. automotive industry crisis of 2008, Cerberus was lobbying for a government bailout of troubled automaker Chrysler Corporation, of which it owns 80%, but refused to inject cash into Chrysler,^[2] as Sen. Bob Corker pointed out at a hearing about the economic needs of the American automobile industry on December 4, 2008. In response to questioning at a hearing before the House committee on December 5, 2008 by Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, Chrysler President and CEO Robert Nardelli said that Cerberus' fiduciary obligations to its other investors and investments prohibited it from injecting capital^[2].

J. Ezra Merkin is a partner in Ceberus.

[More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerberus_Capital_Management  ]

===

Cerberus Capital Management

http://www.nndb.com/company/698/000124326/

COMPANY

Hedge fund operated by Steve Feinberg.

Official Website:
http://www.cerberuscapital.com/

Industry:
Private Equity

Ticker:
(private)

Corporate headquarters:
New York City

EXECUTIVES

Name	Occupation	Birth	Death	Known for
Frank W. Bruno	Business	c. 1965		Cerberus Global Investments
Thomas A. Dattilo	Business	c. 1951		CEO of Cooper Tire & Rubber, 2000-06
Steve Feinberg	Business	29-Mar-1960		Cerberus Capital Management
W. Grant Gregory	Business	c. 1942		Chairman of Touche Ross, 1982-87
Mark A. Neporent	Attorney	c. 1957		COO of Cerberus Capital Management
Seth P. Plattus	Attorney	c. 1961		CAO of Cerberus Capital Management
Dan Quayle	Politician	4-Feb-1947		Vice President under George H.W. Bush
John Snow	Government	2-Aug-1939		US Secretary of the Treasury, 2003-06
Lenard B. Tessler	Business	c. 1951		Cerberus Capital Managment

CURRENT BOARD MEMBERS OR DIRECTORS

Name	Occupation	Birth	Death	Known for
John Snow	Government	2-Aug-1939		US Secretary of the Treasury, 2003-06

EXTRANEOUS

Name	Occupation	Birth	Death	Known for
Kathleen Ligocki	Business	c. 1956		CEO of Tower Automotive, 2003-0

===

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World Move On Emergency Basis To Protect Palestinian People From Israel's War Crimes

Israel has also ignored recent Hamas diplomatic initiatives to re-establish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on 26 December.

the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law--regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations.

move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel's serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.

+++

Israel's War Crimes

by Richard Falk

Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by CommonDreams.orghttp://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/30-5

The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war

Even the most naive American voter cannot be expected to see the morally, legally and politically questionable death sentence given to Saddam Hussein a milestone in the Bush Administration's illegal war in Iraq. As the milestones pile up, so do the bodies.

Those violations include:

• Collective punishment: The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

• Targeting civilians: The airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

• Disproportionate military response: The airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.

Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.

Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right, neither as the Occupying Power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel's escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; to the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.

Israel has also ignored recent Hamas diplomatic initiatives to re-establish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on 26 December.

The Israeli airstrikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel's violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries who have supported and participated in the siege of Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

I remind all Member States of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law--regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel's serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.

Richard Falk is professor of international law at Princeton University and the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.

From The Ashes Of Gaza - A Single State Of Palestinians, Jews, Christians & Everybody Else

"Dissolve the Palestinian Authority"

situate the Palestinian national cause on its proper basis, with the demand that the country and its resources be divided equitably, in proportion to two populations that are equal in size

The only acceptable alternative is a single state for Jews and Palestinians alike,
in which the exactions of Zionism are repaired.

There is no other way.
+++


Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by The Guardian/UK

From The Ashes of Gaza

In the face of Israel's latest onslaught, the only option for Palestinian nationalism is to embrace a one-state solution

by Tariq Ali
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/30-0

The assault on Gaza, planned over six months and executed with perfect timing, was designed largely, as Neve Gordon has rightly observed, to help the incumbent parties triumph in the forthcoming Israeli elections. The dead Palestinians are little more than election fodder in a cynical contest between the right and the far right in Israel. Washington and its EU allies, perfectly aware that Gaza was about to be assaulted, as in the case of Lebanon in 2006, sit back and watch.

Washington, as is its wont, blames the pro-Hamas Palestinians, with Obama and Bush singing from the same AIPAC hymn sheet. The EU politicians, having observed the build-up, the siege, the collective punishment inflicted on Gaza, the targeting of civilians etc (for all the gory detail, see Harvard scholar Sara Roy's chilling essay in the London Review of Books) were convinced that it was the rocket attacks that had "provoked" Israel but called on both sides to end the violence, with nil effect. The moth-eaten Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt and Nato's favourite Islamists in Ankara failed to register even a symbolic protest by recalling their ambassadors from Israel. China and Russia did not convene a meeting of the UN security council to discuss the crisis.

As result of official apathy, one outcome of this latest attack will be to inflame Muslim communities throughout the world and swell the ranks of those very organisations that the west claims it is combating in the "war against terror".

The bloodshed in Gaza raises broader strategic questions for both sides, issues related to recent history. One fact that needs to be recognised is that there is no Palestinian Authority. There never was one. The Oslo Accords were an unmitigated disaster for the Palestinians, creating a set of disconnected and shrivelled Palestinian ghettoes under the permanent watch of a brutal enforcer. The PLO, once the repository of Palestinian hope, became little more than a supplicant for EU money.

Western enthusiasm for democracy stops when those opposed to its policies are elected to office. The west and Israel tried everything to secure a Fatah victory: Palestinian voters rebuffed the concerted threats and bribes of the "international community" in a campaign that saw Hamas members and other oppositionists routinely detained or assaulted by the IDF, their posters confiscated or destroyed, US and EU funds channelled into the Fatah campaign, and US congressmen announcing that Hamas should not be allowed to run.

Even the timing of the election was set by the determination to rig the outcome. Scheduled for the summer of 2005, it was delayed till January 2006 to give Abbas time to distribute assets in Gaza - in the words of an Egyptian intelligence officer, "the public will then support the Authority against Hamas."

Popular desire for a clean broom after ten years of corruption, bullying and bluster under Fatah proved stronger than all of this. Hamas's electoral triumph was treated as an ominous sign of rising fundamentalism, and a fearsome blow to the prospects of peace with Israel, by rulers and journalists across the Atlantic world. Immediate financial and diplomatic pressures were applied to force Hamas to adopt the same policies as those of the party it had defeated at the polls. Uncompromised by the Palestinian Authority's combination of greed and dependency, the self-enrichment of its servile spokesmen and policemen, and their acquiescence in a "peace process" that has brought only further expropriation and misery to the population under them, Hamas offered the alternative of a simple example. Without any of the resources of its rival, it set up clinics, schools, hospitals, vocational training and welfare programmes for the poor. Its leaders and cadres lived frugally, within reach of ordinary people.

It is this response to everyday needs that has won Hamas the broad base of its support, not daily recitation of verses from the Koran. How far its conduct in the second Intifada has given it an additional degree of credibility is less clear. Its armed attacks on Israel, like those of Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade or Islamic Jihad, have been retaliations against an occupation far more deadly than any actions it has ever undertaken. Measured on the scale of IDF killings, Palestinian strikes have been few and far between. The asymmetry was starkly exposed during Hamas's unilateral ceasefire, begun in June 2003, and maintained throughout the summer, despite the Israeli campaign of raids and mass arrests that followed, in which some 300 Hamas cadres were seized from the West Bank.

On August 19 2003, a self-proclaimed "Hamas" cell from Hebron, disowned and denounced by the official leadership, blew up a bus in west Jerusalem, upon which Israel promptly assassinated the Hamas ceasefire's negotiator, Ismail Abu Shanab. Hamas, in turn, responded. In return, the Palestinian Authority and Arab states cut funding to its charities and, in September 2003, the EU declared the whole Hamas movement to be a terrorist organization - a longstanding demand of Tel Aviv.

What has actually distinguished Hamas in a hopelessly unequal combat is not dispatch of suicide bombers, to which a range of competing groups resorted, but its superior discipline - demonstrated by its ability to enforce a self-declared ceasefire against Israel over the past year. All civilian deaths are to be condemned, but since Israel is their principal practitioner, Euro-American cant serves only to expose those who utter it. Overwhelmingly, the boot of murder is on the other foot, ruthlessly stamped into Palestine by a modern army equipped with jets, tanks and missiles in the longest-armed oppression of modern history.

"Nobody can reject or condemn the revolt of a people that has been suffering under military occupation for 45 years against occupation force," said General Shlomo Gazit, former chief of Israeli military intelligence, in 1993. The real grievance of the EU and US against Hamas is that it refused to accept the capitulation of the Oslo Accords, and has rejected every subsequent effort, from Taba to Geneva, to pass off their calamities on the Palestinians. The west's priority ever since was to break this resistance. Cutting off funding to the Palestinian Authority is an obvious weapon with which to bludgeon Hamas into submission. Boosting the presidential powers of Abbas - as publicly picked for his post by Washington, as was Karzai in Kabul - at the expense of the legislative council is another.

No serious efforts were made to negotiate with the elected Palestinian leadership. I doubt if Hamas could have been rapidly suborned to western and Israeli interests, but it would not have been unprecedented. Hamas' programmatic heritage remains mortgaged to the most fatal weakness of Palestinian nationalism: the belief that the political choices before it are either rejection of the existence of Israel altogether or acceptance of the dismembered remnants of a fifth of the country. From the fantasy maximalism of the first to the pathetic minimalism of the second, the path is all too short, as the history of Fatah has shown.

The test for Hamas is not whether it can be house-trained to the satisfaction of western opinion, but whether it can break with this crippling tradition. Soon after the Hamas election victory in Gaza, I was asked in public by a Palestinian what I would do in their place. "Dissolve the Palestinian Authority" was my response and end the make-believe. To do so would situate the Palestinian national cause on its proper basis, with the demand that the country and its resources be divided equitably, in proportion to two populations that are equal in size - not 80% to one and 20% to the other, a dispossession of such iniquity that no self-respecting people will ever submit to it in the long run. The only acceptable alternative is a single state for Jews and Palestinians alike, in which the exactions of Zionism are repaired. There is no other way.

And Israeli citizens might ponder the following words from Shakespeare (in The Merchant of Venice), which I have slightly altered:

"I am a Palestinian. Hath not a Palestinian eyes? Hath not a Palestinian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Jew is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that ... the villainy you teach me, I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

 

© 2008 Guardian News and Media Limited

Tariq Ali has been a leading figure of the international left since the 60s. He has been writing for the Guardian since the 70s. He is a long-standing editor of the New Left Review and a political commentator published on every continent.

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Pinter: USA Lacking Moral Sensibility, Contempt For Law And Is Brutal, Ruthless

Harold Pinter (1930-2008) on “Art, Truth and Politics”
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/30/harold_pinter_1930_2008_on_art

Harold Pinter, the Nobel Prize-winning British playwright, screenwriter, poet, actor and political activist died last week at the age of seventy-eight after a prolonged battle with cancer. In his 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Pinter excoriated US foreign policy. “The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law,” Pinter said. We play an excerpt from his speech. [includes rush transcript]



Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Prize speech


AMY GOODMAN: Harold Pinter, the Nobel Prize-winning British playwright, screenwriter, poet, actor, political activist, died last week at the age of seventy-eight after a prolonged battle with cancer.

He’s considered one of the most influential and provocative dramatists of his generation, often compared to his friend and mentor, Samuel Beckett. Pinter’s well-known plays include The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming and Betrayal. The adjective “Pinteresque” is often used to describe situations marked by “halting dialogue, uncertainty of identity and an air of menace."

Born in 1930 into a Jewish family in London that had fled persecution in Poland and Odessa, Pinter began his career as a stage actor and wrote his first play, The Room, in 1957.

Pinter was also well known as a vociferous critic of British and American foreign policy and an activist against nuclear proliferation, political repression and censorship. As early as 1948, Harold Pinter resisted joining the British military national service and registered as a conscientious objector.

Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005. In his Nobel acceptance speech, titled “Art, Truth, and Politics,” he strongly denounced the United States, its actions in Iraq and its policy of backing groups like the Contras in Nicaragua.

Today, we bring you an excerpt of “Art, Truth, and Politics.” Harold Pinter gave the speech in December of 2005. He was too ill to go to Stockholm to receive the award, so it was videotaped, and this is what was broadcast around the world.



      HAROLD PINTER: The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over forty years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

      The Sandinistas weren’t perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance, and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilized. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. 2,000 schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one-seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

      The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist-Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of healthcare and education and achieve social unity and national self-respect, neighboring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was, of course, at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

      I spoke earlier about “a tapestry of lies” which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a “totalitarian dungeon.” This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government: two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954, and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

      Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

      The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance, but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty-stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. “Democracy” had prevailed.

      But this “policy” was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

      The United States supported, and in many cases engendered, every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

      Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes, they did take place, and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

      I put to you that the United States is, without doubt, the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless, it may be, but it’s also very clever. As a salesman, it is out on its own, and its most saleable commodity is self-love. It’s a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, “the American people,” as in the sentence, “I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people, and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.” It’s a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words “American people” provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties, but it’s very comfortable. This does not apply, of course, to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the two million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the United States.

      The United States no longer bothers about low-intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favor. It quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead: the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

      What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days—conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead?

      Look at Guantanamo Bay: hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated, but hardly thought about, by what’s called the “international community.” This criminal outrage is being committed by a country which declares itself to be “the leader of the free world.” Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally, a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man’s land, from which indeed they may never return. At present, many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said, “To criticize our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You’re either with us or against us.” So Blair shuts up.

      The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading, as a last resort—all other justifications having failed to justify themselves—as liberation; a formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.


AMY GOODMAN: Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, his acceptance speech in 2005. He died Christmas Eve at the age of seventy-eight.



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Israel Is Massacring A Captive Population In Gaza - Boycott, Divest, Sanction Israel

we have to go back to the Warsaw Ghetto or Guernica to find crimes in the modern era of the scale of the viciousness and of the deliberateness of what Israel is committing with the full support of the United States, not just the Bush administration, but apparently as well the incoming Obama administration.

Mahmoud Abbas is not a bystander,
He does not have the authority, moral or otherwise,

Israel is ... massacring a captive population.

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
This is necessary. This is moral. This is the nonviolent resistance we can all participate in. And it is more urgent than ever.

The time to stop this is now.

We have a captive occupied population.
80 percent of the people in the Gaza Strip are refugees.
750,000 of them are children.

Where else in the world can these crimes be committed while the world looks on,

People have to stand up to this.

Change is not coming unless we create it.
+++



Democracy Now Excerpt:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/29/israeli_attacks_kill_over_310_in

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring in Ali Abunimah, who is in Jacksonville, Florida, though usually based in Chicago, founder of the Electronic Intifada. Your comments on the situation, on Mahmoud Abbas, for example, saying that it was Hamas that brought this on?

ALI ABUNIMAH: I want to say, Amy, first of all, that we have to go back to the Warsaw Ghetto or Guernica to find crimes in the modern era of the scale of the viciousness and of the deliberateness of what Israel is committing with the full support of the United States, not just the Bush administration, but apparently as well the incoming Obama administration. We have to recognize the complicity not just of the so-called international community, but also of the Arab regimes, Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak, the Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit of Egypt. Tzipi Livni, when she issued her threats against Gaza, was in Cairo in the biggest Arab capital, and Aboul Gheit stood next to her silently.

Mahmoud Abbas is not a bystander, the so-called president of the Palestinian Authority. For two years since the elections, which Hamas won, he and his coterie have been collaborating with Israel and the United States, first to overthrow the election result and then to besiege Gaza. We have talked before of the Palestinian Contras, funded and armed by the United States, which sought to overthrow Hamas in June 2007 and had the tables turned on them. And now this. The complicity of Mahmoud Abbas is very clear and must be clearly stated. He does not have the authority, moral or otherwise, to call together the Palestinian people for anything. He has gone over to the other side. He has joined the Israeli war against the Palestinian people, and I choose my words very carefully.

And let me say this, as well, Amy, that Israel is trying to produce and promote the fiction that it is engaged in a war with a so-called enemy entity. What Israel is doing is massacring a captive population. You heard—you said in the headlines how Nancy Pelosi, our so-called progressive, liberal, antiwar Speaker of the House, gave her full support to these crimes. Obama has done the same through a spokesman. And that will not change. The United Nations issued a weak statement aimed at covering the backsides, let me say, of those who issued it, not aimed at changing the situation.

What are Palestinians calling for today? Yesterday, the Palestinian National Committee for the Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions reissued and reaffirmed its call on all international civil society in the United States, in North America, in Europe, everywhere, to redouble the efforts for boycott, divestment and sanctions modeled on the anti-apartheid movement. This is necessary. This is moral. This is the nonviolent resistance we can all participate in. And it is more urgent than ever. Let’s not look back at these crimes like we look at the Warsaw Ghetto and like we look at Guernica and we look at the other atrocities of the twentieth century and say, “We had the chance to act, but we chose silence and complicity.” The time to stop this is now.

And we also have to be clear that those who are accountable—Ehud Barak, his orders over the past few months to withhold insulin, chemotherapy drugs, dialysis supplies, all forms of medicine from the people of Gaza, were just as lethal and just as murderous as the orders to send in the bombers and warplanes to attack mosques, to attack universities. The Islamic University in Gaza is not a military site. It is a university with 18,000 students, 60 percent of them women. Last night, Israeli warplanes attacked a female dormitory in the Islamic University. This is what Israel is attacking. They attacked the fishing port. No food gets into Gaza. People can barely fish enough to sustain them, and Israel has attacked the fishing boats that sustains them. These are historic crimes, and we cannot be silent about them.

And we have to continue this nonsense that there’s fault on both sides. We have a captive occupied population. 80 percent of the people in the Gaza Strip are refugees. 750,000 of them are children. Where else in the world can these crimes be committed while the world looks on, while our elected politicians in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, sit there applauding, when you see the shameful statement of Howard Berman, the Democrat chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, giving his full support to Israel? People have to stand up to this. We cannot sit on our hands anymore and say change is coming. Change is not coming unless we create it.

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Kucinish: Israel Disproportionate, Indiscriminate Mass Violence In Violation Of International Law

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is calling for a United Nations investigation into Israel’s attacks on Gaza, criticizing Israel for a disproportionate response to Hamas rocket attacks.

Kucinich likened the Israeli attacks on Gaza to its war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006. In both cases, he said, civilian populations were attacked and “countless innocents” were killed or injured.

“All this was, and is, disproportionate, indiscriminate mass violence in violation of international law,
“Israel is not exempt from international law and must be held accountable.”

Israel “cannot create a war against an entire people in order to attempt to bring to justice the few who are responsible.”

attacks on civilians represented collective punishment, which he said was a violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
+++


Kucinich criticizes Israel; wants U.N. probe
By Ian Swanson
Posted: 12/29/08 01:48 PM [ET]
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/kucinich-criticizes-israel-wants-u.n.-probe-2008-12-29.html

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is calling for a United Nations investigation into Israel’s attacks on Gaza, criticizing Israel for a disproportionate response to Hamas rocket attacks.

The criticism stands in stark contrast to the statements of other Democrats, who have offered near-unanimous support for Israel amid the latest violence in the Middle East.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democrats have blamed Hamas for the violence, which has left more than 300 people in Gaza dead. One person in Israel has been killed by a Hamas rocket.

Kucinich likened the Israeli attacks on Gaza to its war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006. In both cases, he said, civilian populations were attacked and “countless innocents” were killed or injured.

“All this was, and is, disproportionate, indiscriminate mass violence in violation of international law,” Kucinich said in a statement. “Israel is not exempt from international law and must be held accountable.”

Pelosi and other Democrats have refrained from criticizing Israel’s government, which has responded to the Hamas attacks with a rocket assault on Gaza.

“Peace between Israelis and Palestinians cannot result from daily barrages of rocket and mortar fire from Hamas-controlled Gaza,” Pelosi said in a statement posted on the Speaker’s website on Monday.

“Hamas and its supporters must understand that Gaza cannot and will not be allowed to be a sanctuary for attacks on Israel.

Reid said he “strongly” supported Israel’s right to defend its citizens from the Hamas rocket attacks and to restore its security. He also blamed Hamas for any humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

“Hamas’s failure to stop these attacks only exacerbates the humanitarian situation for the residents of Gaza and undermines efforts to attain peace and security in the region.”

In March, the House voted 404-1 for a resolution condemning Hamas and other Palestinian groups for rocket attacks on Israel. It also condemned the use of Palestinians as human shields. Hamas has been criticized repeatedly for shooting rockets into Israel from civilian areas in Gaza, which leads to the deaths of civilians when Israel counterattacks.

The only member of Congress to vote against the resolution was Rep. Ron Paul (Texas), a Republican candidate for president in 2008. Four Democrats, Reps. Jim Moran (Va.), Neil Abercrombie (Hawaii), Michael Capuano (Mass.) and Jim McDermott (Wash.), voted present. Kucinich was not present for the vote.

Kucinich said the perpetrators of attacks against Israel should be brought to justice, but that Israel “cannot create a war against an entire people in order to attempt to bring to justice the few who are responsible.”

Pelosi said the U.S. must continue to do everything it can to promote peace in the region and a negotiated settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. She said humanitarian needs of all innocent civilians must be addressed, but added that when Israel is attacked, “the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally.”

Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Israel had a “duty” to defend itself in response to the attacks. “The loss of innocent life is a terrible tragedy, and the blame for that tragedy lies with Hamas.”

Similarly, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) laid blame with Hamas.

“Hamas is abusing the people of Gaza by using their homes as a base for terror operations,” he said. “The world should no longer tolerate a terrorist government in the Gaza Strip.”

President-elect Obama has yet to weigh in on the violence, although top adviser David Axelrod on Sunday noted statements Obama made over the summer that respected Israel’s right to defend itself.

Kucinich said in his statement that he had sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon requesting an independent inquiry. He said the attacks on civilians represented collective punishment, which he said was a violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

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More NYT Denial Of Massive Global Depression

A restaurant owner contemplates moving into a smaller space.
A bicycle manufacturer lays off five workers.
A car salesman postpones retirement.

Layoffs, shorter hours and struggles to pay bills

perhaps the new president, would bring relief.

business down, he fell behind in his electric payments
cut hours for his four workers
wife to help and started working part time

There were days where you almost feel like you want to close the doors and walk away and say, “I can’t do it anymore.”

A couple of my suppliers cut me off.
pay cash whenever I can

I’m hoping that we get some support from Washington for small businesses. Just the way that they’re supporting the big corporations, maybe they could help out the little guy.

lost almost 20 pounds in the last two months worrying about how to save his business.
sales have plummeted as nearby firms have cut jobs and reduced or eliminated food allowances.

Last month, it was down 35 percent. This month, it’s going to be more,
They are really cutting down and they’re cutting down big.

The price of oil went down, but all of my prices are still up.

let one guy go, so far.
we are trying to save the business.

Me and my wife came to the conclusion that we should take a smaller place, just me and her and a dishwasher, like when we started out.

orders from automakers and their suppliers have “basically dried up to nothing.”

Nobody is buying anything at this point
austerity budgets
plant close-downs and layoffs
definitely trickled down to us.

cut our factory hours fairly significantly.
retire
had to lay off
cut hours
pretty devastating effect on our workers and on our company.

when the spring comes, and hopefully there will be improvement in the business climate.

never seen business this bad.
General Motors, stopped offering lease-sales deals
restricted spending.

returning their cars
It’s very dispiriting.

fewer customers coming in
across the industry
down by half to two-thirds.

retirement fund has contracted somewhat

We go out to dinner less.
planning to travel less frequently

business will be off more next year than she predicted two months ago.
eliminated part-time positions
delayed seeking a line of credit

we lost was the domestic tourist

fewer tours running
We haven’t made a lot of cuts yet.
cut some of our weekend staff
growth will happen maybe after a year from now

I’m sleeping differently at night. My stress levels are a little bit higher.

In October, he said his work had been down 50 percent from last year.
slow. The phone doesn’t ring much.
I’m one of the lucky ones who’s still working.

not getting big jobs
small ones here and there, from people I know.
“I have two weeks and that’s it.”

“Take whatever you can get because it’s so tough.”
+++

As Crisis Spreads, a Pinch Becomes a Squeeze

By THE NEW YORK TIMES
December 28, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/nyregion/28small.html?_r=3&hp

(Watch the video of this story to see each person recount how this disaster is unfolding on their lives. Ignore the gross ad at the beginning.)

A restaurant owner contemplates moving into a smaller space. A bicycle manufacturer lays off five workers. A car salesman postpones retirement. In October, The New York Times began tracking how six small businesses were handling the recession. The holiday season seems to have provided little relief: Layoffs, shorter hours and struggles to pay bills were common refrains in recent interviews conducted by Ken Belson, Brent McDonald, Patrick McGeehan and Erik Olsen.

But there was also some hope that the new year, and perhaps the new president, would bring relief. The Times will continue to follow the six businesses in 2009.

Making Ends Meet

Michael Menna, 46, is the owner of Menna’s Quality Meats and Salumeria, his family’s 50-year-old meat market in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx. With business down, he fell behind in his electric payments, and Con Ed demanded about $6,500 as a security deposit. He has cut hours for his four workers, asked his wife to help and started working part time as a D.J. to help pay bills.

There were days where you almost feel like you want to close the doors and walk away and say, “I can’t do it anymore.” But that’s not an option.

Been doing this myself with my family for 37 years, and my father and my uncle for over 50 years. This is what I know, and I have a family to support.

A couple of my suppliers cut me off. I’d been trying to pay cash whenever I can. So that was one of the most difficult things that I’ve been facing right now. They have to pay their bills as well.

Con Ed decided to give me a bill for a large sum — a security deposit — which kind of messed up the whole ballgame. So they threatened to shut my electric down. I actually borrowed some money from family and gave them some money.

You lie in bed sometimes wondering how you’re going to get through the next day and make sure everyone gets paid. That’s one of the big issues. How are you going to make the mortgage payment? How are you going to make the Con Ed bill? How are you going to pay your kids’ tuition?

I’m hoping that we get some support from Washington for small businesses. Just the way that they’re supporting the big corporations, maybe they could help out the little guy.

I was a musician for about 25 years. If things get any worse, I’m ready to put the band back together again and get back on the road.

Feeling the Pinch of Wall Street's Slump

Mouhamad Shami, 54, the owner of Alfanoose, a Middle Eastern restaurant on Maiden Lane in the financial district, says he has lost almost 20 pounds in the last two months worrying about how to save his business. Mr. Shami said that his sales have plummeted as nearby firms have cut jobs and reduced or eliminated food allowances. He is considering moving Alfanoose to a smaller space and releasing most of his staff.

Last month, it was down 35 percent. This month, it’s going to be more, I can tell. Usually at lunchtime, there is no place to sit. On delivery, dinners, we’re hardly doing anything. They are really cutting down and they’re cutting down big. If the company’s not paying for their dinner, they’re not going to spend $20. They can get a slice of pizza for $3.

The price of oil went down, but all of my prices are still up. What they are waiting for? Leg of lamb, it’s still the same price. Beef, Angus, it’s still the same.

Everybody tells me they are down, even the pita bread guy. I used to get three cases a day. Now I buy for two days and I skip a third day. I keep what’s left in the freezer. Last week, I called him, I said, “Don’t send me for two days” because our freezers, they were full.

I did have to let one guy go, so far. One who was full time and one who was part time. My wife is back to working full time because we are trying to save the business. This year we didn’t get no catering for the holidays, for Christmas. Last year, there was no limit.

Me and my wife came to the conclusion that we should take a smaller place, just me and her and a dishwasher, like when we started out. I noticed that there are lots of places that are empty and nobody’s renting. It’s going to hurt me if I have to leave this place. The woodwork, I did it all myself. I’m very proud of it.

Scaling Back Staff

Wayne Sosin is the president of Worksman Cycles in Ozone Park, Queens, a 110-year-old shop that produces heavy-duty bicycles and tricycles used in warehouses and factories. In October, a manager at the company was worried about rising costs, but confident that sales would remain strong. But orders from automakers and their suppliers have “basically dried up to nothing.”

During the summer, our business was so busy that for a while we were actually unable to fill orders that people wanted to place with us. In September, I would have said, “Business is wonderful,” because people really like what we were doing. Our products were a good alternative to gas-guzzling vehicles.

Nobody is buying anything at this point because their factories are on austerity budgets, you know, a lot of plant close-downs and layoffs. You know, that’s definitely had a ripple effect and it’s definitely trickled down to us.

We actually had to cut our factory hours fairly significantly. Now keep in mind that we were coming off a high level of employment, based on the level of demand we had had. So we had a larger staff than normal. But we’ve had two people retire. And we’ve had about four or five people that we’ve had to lay off. And we’ve cut hours for other people. So yeah, it’s had a pretty devastating effect on our workers and on our company.

I’ve been here since 1979, so I know firsthand how to deal with some bad economic conditions that have a negative impact on the business. But this is one of the cases where small is beautiful. As a small business, you can react to the times, to make sure that you can get through rough times and you’re well positioned for the good times. That’s the strategy we’re going to take through this winter. You know, let’s get through this winter, do what we need to do to make sure we’re in a good position when the spring comes, and hopefully there will be improvement in the business climate.

Frozen by the Credit Markets

Lawrence Vayda, 65, a sales consultant at Parkfield Saab in Rochelle Park, N.J., has been selling cars for 17 years — the last four at Parkfield Saab — and says he has never seen business this bad. Two months ago, he had trouble making sales after Saab’s parent company, General Motors, stopped offering lease-sales deals, causing customers with maturing leases to return their cars. With G.M. facing bankruptcy and his job in some doubt, Mr. Vayda has restricted his spending.

Things are no better going forward than two months ago. Two or three customers a day are coming in and returning their cars and going to another maker.

Once they are in a different brand, they’re gone. I saw a guy who was on his fifth Saab; he’s moving on. It’s very dispiriting.

There are fewer customers coming in, but it’s not specific to us. It’s true across the industry right now. Showroom traffic is down by half to two-thirds.

When the credit markets unfreeze and when there’s some sort of stability in the auto industry, you’re going to see a big spike in new car sales because I think people are holding on to their cars for a little longer.

My wife’s retirement fund has contracted somewhat, mine has contracted somewhat. We were going to retire this year, but we’ve put that off a year until 2010.

I might have to throttle back a bit. We go out to dinner less. We’re planning to travel less frequently. Every three months, we would go to our home in Florida, or visit my daughter in Las Vegas or my wife’s daughter in Arizona. We’re not going out there this year.

Maxing Out Tours

Georgette Blau, 34, is president of On Location Tours in Midtown Manhattan, which gives bus tours of New York locations from popular movies and television shows, including “Ugly Betty” and “Sex and the City.” Though she says her holiday numbers have been steady, she thinks business will be off more next year than she predicted two months ago. She has eliminated part-time positions and delayed seeking a line of credit because the market is tight.

The first thing we lost was the domestic tourist, and that was sort of saved by the foreigners coming in, and then that recently changed with the dollar getting stronger.

I just think there’s a lot of uncertainty out there. People are not sure if they should come to New York or travel or save their money, if their jobs are going to be there down the road.

Through the first week in January is a very strong time for us. We do see those numbers are staying strong. A lot of people are coming to New York. They probably already planned trips to New York several months ago.

What we’ve really been trying to do is fill up our buses to the max, have fewer tours running but making sure that we’re maxing out those tours and filling up the seats. We haven’t made a lot of cuts yet. We’ve just cut some of our weekend staff, but we haven’t made staff cuts.

My worst nightmare would be to cut staff, because I feel a responsibility toward our staff.

I do feel that the growth will happen maybe after a year from now, and that we’ll be able to move forward. It’s just frustrating, because we just moved into these offices and we were hoping to immediately hire one or two people and to feel comfortable in these spaces. It’s just been a strange transition, being in a new office and with the recession and the uncertainty.

I find that I’m sleeping differently at night. My stress levels are a little bit higher. I’m trying to stay positive.

Staying Optimistic

Ruben Villasante, 46, is the owner of a small contracting firm, V & V Construction, that specializes in painting and home renovations in Ditmas Park, a thriving neighborhood in Brooklyn. In October, he said his work had been down 50 percent from last year. But he has orders for the spring.

It’s still slow. The phone doesn’t ring much. But I’m one of the lucky ones who’s still working.

I’m not getting big jobs, just small ones here and there, from people I know. People have things to be done, things that have to be fixed. They have to fix the stairs or patch a piece of the roof or fix a cabinet. That’s what happens in slow times. It goes into slow motion.

When the busy season starts in March, we’ll be busy. I was talking to other guys I know and one said, “I have two weeks and that’s it.” Another guy told me, “Take whatever you can get because it’s so tough.”

If they stabilize the market so it doesn’t go up and down, maybe in the 9,000s, it will give people a little security; that will help everybody. We haven’t seen the foreclosures in Ditmas Park. This is business and professional people; they’re not going to lose their job or house. So if the market gets stable, people will spend.

I have four workers, one is Irish and three Mexicans. I give them a bonus of one week’s work, and that won’t change. Looking ahead, it looks better than two months ago and it’s going to get better faster than what everyone thinks.

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