U.S. "Judge" Declares Detroit Residents Have No Right To Water

Access to clean water is a basic HUMAN RIGHT: "judge" Steven Rhodes now attempts to set precedent for legalised genocide in America by denying U.S. citizens the right to water of any kind; a cutoff of water to citizens will no doubt spark a revolution that will spread across America:  Time to break out the well drilling rigs, sink water wells on public property for the universal free use of citizens    
WORLD SOCIALIST WEBSITE
By Jerry White
10/01/2014

In a ruling on Monday, the federal judge overseeing the bankruptcy of Detroit declared that workers, youth and retirees have no “fundamental right” to water, as he threw out a lawsuit challenging the city’s policy of shutting off tens of thousands of residents from one of the most fundamental necessities of life.

Obama's fascist, fraud "judge" Steven Rhodes

The cruel decision by judge Steven Rhodes is an object lesson for the entire working class. Rhodes exposed the logic of the capitalist system, the ruthlessness of the corporate and financial aristocracy that oversees it and the class character of all the institutions of the state.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs, which included victims of the water shutoffs, argued that irreparable harm had been inflicted on their clients and residents of Detroit. If the policy continued, they contended, it could lead to the outbreak of disease and death.

Rhodes acknowledged that such harm had occurred and that “water is a necessary ingredient for sustaining life.” Nevertheless, he insisted, a finding of irreparable harm “does not suggest that there is a fundamental enforceable right to free or affordable water. There is no such right in law. Just as there is no such affordable right to other necessities of life such as shelter, food and medical care.”

Halting the water shutoffs was unacceptable, Rhodes asserted, because it would interrupt the flow of revenue to the banks and big bondholders, which get 50 cents out of every dollar the municipally owned water department collects. “Detroit cannot afford any revenue slippage, and its obligations to its creditors require it to take all reasonable and business-like measures to collect the debt that is owed to it,” Rhodes insisted.

Access to clean water is a basic human right and now under threat in a country that espouses and promotes "human rights"

In short, the working class has no right to a healthy life, economic security, education or culture. The only “right” recognized by the court is for the rich to continue their looting operations unimpeded.

According to previous testimony by the chief financial officer of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, the mass water shutoffs were demanded by Wall Street credit rating agencies, including Fitch, Moody’s and S&P, which insisted that the DWSD clear its “bad debt” in order to qualify for better terms on the municipal bond market. Once the shutoffs began, reaching a peak of almost 900 households a day, the department was upgraded, allowing it to float a new multibillion-dollar bond with lower borrowing costs.

Obama's message to Detroit, Americans

The shutoff of water and the planned privatization of the DWSD reveal the essence of the bankruptcy process as a whole. 

Everything will go to the banks and wealthy investors—from the money owed to pensioners, to the art museum and publicly owned land, to new fees extracted from low-income families for private trash collection, parking and water service. The most essential service the city will be left with is servicing its debt.

In this process, the court has functioned not as a neutral arbiter, but as an instrument of the ruling class. Rhodes’s claim that absolutely nothing can be done to stop water shutoffs, that his hands are tied by the law, stands in sharp contrast to the readiness of the bankruptcy court to override protections included in the Michigan state constitution that prevent cuts in city worker pensions. Throughout the whole bankruptcy, when laws were deemed to be obstructions to the plans of the banks, they were simply dismissed or ignored.

The decision exposes all those forces, including the trade unions and other Democratic Party-affiliated organizations, which claim that workers can get justice and defend their interests through the capitalist courts and appeals to the powers-that-be.

In the Detroit courtroom, Rhodes only openly stated the operating principle that guides the ruling class the world over. Every past gain wrenched from the ruling class in previous struggles—pensions, access to sanitation and health care—is being taken away. From Detroit to Athens and Madrid, the story is the same: the only “rights” recognized by governments around the world are those of the financial overlords.

Despite the pretensions about democracy, every institution of the government—the judges and the courts, the state and local politicians, the Democrats and Republicans, the presidency and the Congress, the police and military—defend the economic and political dictatorship of the super-rich.

The working class cannot begin with the lying claims by big-business politicians about what the capitalist system can “afford.” Instead the starting point must be what is required by the masses of working people whose collective labor produces the wealth and is indispensable for the functioning and progress of society.

It is necessary to begin with the insistence that there are basic social rights,including the right to a secure and good-paying job, health care, housing, education and culture, and, yes, the right to free water and essential utilities. These rights, as the program of the Socialist Equality Party asserts, are essential to life in a complex, modern society and are, therefore, “inalienable.”

Water denial/cutoff will definitely spark mass riots this time around, infections diseases previously unknown before in urban environments will now appear once again and spread with incredible speed

What Rhodes’s decision once again makes clear is that these rights can only be secured through the mass mobilization of workers as a class, independent of and in opposition to the corporate-controlled political parties and the institutions of the capitalist state. The existing political institutions must be overthrown and replaced with genuinely democratic bodies that give expression to the social interests of the working class.

Detroit water cut-off exposes dictator for what he is

What is required is a frontal assault on the “right” of the capitalist class to rule over society and enrich itself from the exploitation and impoverishment of the working class. 

The dictatorial grip of the banks must be broken and the ill-gotten gains of the financial criminals seized and placed at the disposal of the people as a whole. This will require the nationalization of the banks and major corporations under the democratic control of working people.

An economic and political system that cannot provide the most basic necessities of modern civilization, including clean water, deserves to perish. If Judge Rhodes accomplished anything, he proved the necessity for a revolutionary struggle to reorganize society and replace capitalism with socialism.

This news bureau contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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Russian State Television Says Britain And U.S. Provoked Hong Kong Protests

Russian State Television is absolutely correct

THE TELEGRAPH
By Tom Parfitt
09/30/2014

Russian state television has claimed the pro-democracy protests inHong Kong are being organised by Britain and the United States.

CIA, MI6 behind protests

In a sign of the Kremlin’s deep antipathy for popular street protest and growing anti-Western sentiment in Russian society, the Rossiya 24 channel regurgitated Chinese reports suggesting that leaders of the Occupy Central movement “underwent special training with the American secret services”.

“The tactics of the protesters exactly replicates the beginning of the ‘orange revolutions’, that were in fact coups,” the channel said, referring to the mass demonstrations that ousted governments in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan during the 2000s.

“What’s more,” Rossiya 24 continued in a broadcast shown on Tuesday and published online, “experts believe that Great Britain stands behind the protests in Hong Kong because it is losing economic benefits that its companies had after the handover of the colony to China.”

It is true that Chinese media have accused the protesters of having ties to the US government. Wen Wei Po, a pro-Beijing newspaper, said last week that Joshua Wong, the 17-year-old Hong Kong student leader, had met frequently with US embassy personnel in Hong Kong and received donations from Americans. He denies the allegations.

Beijing-leaning media have also accused the CIA of infiltrating schools in Hong Kong and claimed Britain has planted intelligence agents in the city’s government, judiciary and chambers of commerce.

Russia has been drawing closer to China as Moscow faces biting sanctions from the United States and the European Union over the Ukraine crisis.

Earlier this month, Rostec, the sanctions-hit Russian state tech company, signed a $10bn (GBP3.7bn) deal with a Chinese coal producer to develop deposits in Siberia and the Russian Far East. A week earlier, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, offered China a stake in Vankor, the country’s second-biggest oil project, which is situated in eastern Siberia.

Other Kremlin-leaning media are rolling into action to shore up Beijing and cast doubt on the origins of the Hong Kong protests. Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of Russia’s biggest tabloids, said on Tuesday that the “western champions of democracy are supporting the insurgents in unison”. 

The paper cited the “odious” US state department spokesperson, Marie Harf, as an example.

During large anti-Kremlin demonstrations in Moscow in late 2011, Mr Putin claimed that protest leaders had worked “with the support of the US state department”.

Yury Tavrovsky, a China specialist at Moscow's Peoples' Friendship University, told Voice of Russia radio that America was using the Hong Kong protests as a way of putting pressure on Beijing.

“If the Chinese leaders do not squeeze this spot now it will keep on suppurating and then there will be great bloodshed,” he added. “So the sooner they take decisive action, the sooner this crisis will be liquidated.”

This news bureau contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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Ebola Diagnosed In Texas, First Case Found in the U.S.

NYT lies in headline, first case was IMPORTED BY THE CDC AND OBAMA CRIMINALS IN AUGUST; Dallas case came into contact with children:  Airlines are responsible as flights from Africa should have been banned long ago and they will now pay the price for exposing Americans and the world to this weaponised virus - RIBAVIRIN could provide protection; FUX "News" now furiously backtracks from initial panic "reporting," their fraud quack "doctor" insisting that there "is no danger of spread, pandemic like Africa in U.S."  

NEW YORK TIMES
By Denise Grady
09/30/2014

A man who took a commercial flight from Liberia that landed in Dallas on Sept. 20 has been found to have the Ebola virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Tuesday. He is the first traveler to have brought the virus to the United States on a passenger plane and the first in whom Ebola has been diagnosed outside of Africa in the current outbreak.

Weaponised Ebola:  Airlines, CDC responsible for importation

As the disease has swept across West Africa, many health experts said it would be only a matter of time before it reached the United States. 

Hospitals and health departments around the country have been preparing for it, and a number of false alarms have occurred. 

But this time, the case is real.

The man, who was visiting relatives in the United States, was not ill during the flight, health officials said at a news conference Tuesday evening. Indeed, he was screened before he boarded the flight and had no fever. 

Because Ebola is not contagious until symptoms develop, there is “zero chance” that the patient infected anyone else on the flight, said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the disease centers. Ebola is spread only by direct contact with body fluids from someone who is ill.

Key Dates for Man Infected With Ebola

The man who has been found to have Ebola showed no symptoms when he boarded his plane in Liberia.

Satanic CDC responsible for importation, spread of Ebola in U.S.

A team from the C.D.C. is being dispatched to Dallas to help trace any contacts who may have been infected, including family members, health care workers and others with whom the patient spent time in Dallas. Health officials in Texas said they had already begun that process. 

Dr. Frieden said the family and community contacts were few, no more than a handful. But he said it was possible that family members who were with the man while he was ill would turn out to be infected.

Contact tracing involves identifying people who might have been exposed to the patient during the time he was infectious, and then monitoring them for symptoms every day for 21 days — the full incubation period of the disease. 

A Kawaoka/Fouchier engineered virus?

Most people develop symptoms within eight to 10 days of being exposed. Anyone who starts running a fever or having symptoms is then isolated and tested for Ebola. 

If the test is positive, that person is kept in isolation and treated, and his or her contacts are then traced for 21 days. 

The process is repeated until there are no new cases.

Describing these methods as “tried and true,” Dr. Frieden said, “I have no doubt that we’ll stop this in its tracks in the U.S.”

Dr. Frieden declined to disclose flight information or to say whether the patient is an American citizen. He said the man was not a health worker, and officials had no idea how he had become infected.

The man did not get sick until about Sept. 24, several days after he arrived. He is being treated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, and is critically ill, Dr. Frieden said. He said there was no reason to move the patient to another hospital, noting that any hospital in the United States capable of isolating patients for other infectious diseases could safely handle an Ebola case. Doctors and the patient’s family are discussing whether to try experimental treatments, Dr. Frieden said.

The hospital’s epidemiologist, Dr. Edward Goodman, said: “We have had a plan in place for some time now for a patient presenting with possible Ebola. Ironically, we had a meeting the week before of all the stakeholders who might be involved. We were well prepared to care for this patient.”

Feeling ill, the man first sought medical help on Friday, and was treated and sent home. Ebola was not recognized. Officials did not say where that initial visit took place. Dr. Frieden said the early symptoms of Ebola, like fever and nausea, can easily be mistaken for other illnesses. But he added that public health experts have for months been urging doctors and nurses to take a travel history on anyone who shows up with such symptoms and to be on the alert for Ebola in anyone who has been to Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone.

Will this come to pass once again, this time in America?

With worsening symptoms, the man sought care again on Sunday, and was then admitted to the hospital in Dallas and placed in isolation. Blood samples arrived at the disease centers on Tuesday, and tested positive for Ebola. A state lab in Texas also tested samples, and got positive results.

Dr. Frieden briefed President Obama by telephone on Tuesday afternoon about the case, explaining what the White House described as the “stringent isolation protocols” being used to treat the patient and efforts to trace the patient’s contacts to mitigate the risk of the virus spreading.

Dr. Frieden told the president that the C.D.C. had been prepared for an Ebola case in the United States, according to an account of the call distributed by the White House, “and that we have the infrastructure in place to respond safely and effectively.”

The Obama administration was working to prevent a public panic over the case, using social media to describe how Ebola can — and cannot — be transmitted.

“You cannot get Ebola through the air, water or food in the U.S.,” the White House said on Tuesday night in a posting on its official Twitter account. “Ebola can only spread from contact with the blood or body fluids of a person or animal who is sick with or has died from the disease.”

Another official Twitter posting said, “America has the best doctors and public health infrastructure in the world, and we are prepared to respond to Ebola.”

This news bureau contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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Statement : Julia Pierson Resigns As Secret Service Chief

White House scandals continue to mount as Obama's tottering criminal regime is exposed for what it really is; Secret Service deserves better

WALL STREET JOURNAL
By 10/01/2014

Julia Pierson has resigned as head of the U.S. Secret Service, in the wake of a serious security breach at the White House. Here is the statement from Jeh Johnson, the head of Homeland Security

STATEMENT BY SECRETARY JOHNSON ABOUT THE U.S. SECRET SERVICE

Today Julia Pierson, the Director of the United States Secret Service, offered her resignation, and I accepted it. I salute her 30 years of distinguished service to the Secret Service and the Nation.

As an interim Acting Director of the Secret Service, I am appointing Joseph Clancy, formerly Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Protective Division of the Secret Service. 

Mr. Clancy retired from the Secret Service in 2011. 

I appreciate his willingness to leave his position in the private sector on very short notice and return to public service for a period.

Today, I have also asked the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, aided by this Department’s General Counsel, to assume control and direction of the ongoing inquiry by the Secret Service of the fence jumping incident at the White House on September 19. Deputy Secretary Mayorkas should complete that review and submit findings to me by November 1, 2014.

Finally, I have also determined that scrutiny by a distinguished panel of independent experts of the September 19 incident and related issues concerning the Secret Service is warranted. The Panelists will be named shortly. By December 15, 2014, this panel will submit to me its own assessment and recommendations concerning security of the White House compound. I will also invite the panel to submit to me recommendations for potential new directors of the Secret Service, to include recommendations of individuals who come from outside the Secret Service. I will also request that the panel advise me about whether it believes, given the series of recent events, there should be a review of broader issues concerning the Secret Service. The security of the White House compound should be the panel’s primary and immediate priority.

Where is Clint when we need him?

It is worth repeating that the Secret Service is one of the finest official protection services in the world, consisting of men and women who are highly trained and skilled professionals prepared to put their own lives on the line in a second’s notice for the people they protect. Last week, the Secret Service was responsible for the protection of the President as well as 140 visiting heads of state or government as they convened at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. Likewise, in August the Secret Service handled the protection of 60 world leaders as they convened in Washington, D.C. for the African Summit. 

As usual, the Secret Service executed these highly complex and demanding assignments without incident. There is no other protection service in the world that could have done this.

This news bureau contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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