Avaaz Petition For Aung San Suu Kyi

And all of Burma’s political prisoners sign here.

Filth

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, said today that he was extremely concerned about some aspects of the policing of the G20 demonstrations although he insisted the vast majority of his officers had done a “remarkably good job”. Giving evidence in front of the Commons home affairs select committee, Stephenson said images of officers apparently lashing out at protesters “were a real concern and should be investigated thoroughly”. But he denied the footage showed behaviour that was “incompatible with British policing”.

Yesterday the MPs also heard from Commander Bob Broadhurst, who was in charge of policing the G20 event. He defended his officers saying they had been “superb” in challenging circumstances.

“The vast majority of those officers have never faced a situation as violent as that,” he said. “I do have a concern that some of our officers have not faced that. I would like to train them more but we don’t have the time.”

What violent situation? Oh the one your agent provocateurs tried to instigate you mean! Talk about rewriting history. And good to see the commissioner thinks murder is a compatible method of British policing. No change there.

Worth a look- Launch of United Campaign Against Police Violence

Noam Chomsky, Unexceptional Americans

Small wonder that President Obama advises us to look forward, not backward — a convenient doctrine for those who hold the clubs. Those who are beaten by them tend to see the world differently, much to our annoyance.

Chompo @ Tom Dispatch- Why We Can’t See the Trees or the Forest, The Torture Memos and Historical Amnesia 

Life In A Garrison State

An excerpt from a piece by Mirjam Hadar Meerschwam, read in full @ Mondoweiss

Following the “raid” on our house by two non-uniformed policemen, Miki and Eytan, at 7:15, last week, just as I was helping our daughter to get dressed for school, it occurred to me that our house, in a regular, boring suburb, is actually surrounded by “security” related individuals and organizations. On the left, there’s D., whom I just mentioned, and on the right it’s Y. who has a fairly senior job in the military industries and stopped being friendly once he understood our family were leftists. Very near is the ugly “duplex” – an ungainly two-family house which after standing empty for years was recently let to a nameless firm. Its windows are still as shuttered as they were during the empty times, and its front yard remains a garbage strewn desert as before – but casually dressed young men carrying various types of briefcases and rucksacks come in and out. It is common knowledge by now that this is what they locally call a “shoo-shoo house”: the army’s secret services use civilian property, everybody knows that. Nobody asked or informed us. At the bottom of the road is a huge, pastoral looking area – disenchantingly protected by electronic fencing and a number of forbidding guard dogs. This no-go park belongs, again, to Israel’s military industries: they develop explosives here – underground. At times our buildings shake with the impact. Much has been said and agitated about the way these underground adventures have affected our environment – there are fearful rumors about cancer incidence. Meanwhile work has not stopped.

 I’ve often thought and spoken about these things, one way or another. For instance during the recent attack of the Israeli army on Gaza, when the Israeli public was told about the cruelty of Hamas who presumably placed themselves squarely among Gaza’s civilian population.

 But this morning, in the context, now, of my own and my friends’ recent interrogations I thought specifically about the more subtle work of intimidation, delegitimization, social ostracizing.

 An Israeli feminist antimilitarist group and registered non-profit organization, New Profile, the group of which I am a member, is these days subject to an unprecedented attack carried out by means of the state and the police. New Profile addresses itself to Israeli society. It is our aim to raise public consciousness to what militarism is and how it affects civic society. We also give moral and legal support and information to young people who contact us having decided not to enlist in the military. This is information about the army’s own accepted and legal routes toward exemption. Typically, such information is not part of the eye-catching display in my son’s former high school. On that poster the various army units vie to win the favors of the not-yet recruits with promises of their various “challenges”. Across the entrance hall, facing it in sinister unselfawareness, the national flag gives permanent honor to a list of former pupils who lost their lives in military service.

What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

Since 1945, the United States has lost 11 nuclear weapons

And if you live near Savannah, Georgia… I’d move.

‘Guns have no place at all in our community’

Note the police (who us H&K firearms) tried to silence media coverage-

Interestingly, local media also came under pressure; Trent FM, who had shown some enthusiasm about reporting these demos, received a word in their ear from both H&K’s press office as well as the police, warning hacks that it would be ‘irresponsible’ to publish the fact that H&K has a warehouse full of weapons in Nottingham, as it may prompt criminals to try and steal them. 

In response the campaigners pointed out to the radio station that H&K’s address was published at Company House, as well as in several business directories. About the radio station being leaned on, the campaigners said that “If the security policy of H&K and Notts police relies on no-one finding out the company’s location, then clearly it is they who are irresponsible, not our campaign and not the media. A large warehouse stocked with high-power assault rifles and submachine guns with inadequate security to prevent a robbery is clearly a significant danger to the public, and publicisng such a danger is very much in the public interest.” 

The H&K warehouse, located at Easter Park, Lenton Lane, Nottingham, is next to the ‘Trent Vineyard’, an evangelist church that held the funeral of Danielle Beccan, a 14 year old girl who was killed in a drive-by shooting. At her funeral service the then mayor of Nottingham said, “Guns have no place at all in our community – not in Nottingham, not in my city nor any other city in Britain.” 

Crusaders

“Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, The nation that keeps faith.” [The quote appears over an image of tanks entering an Iraqi city]

In a lengthy article on Donald Rumsfeld’s rocky tenure as Defense Secretary, GQ published never-before-seen cover sheets from top-secret intelligence briefings produced by Rumsfeld’s Pentagon. Starting in the days surrounding the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the cover sheets featured inspirational Bible verses printed over military images, “and were delivered by Rumsfeld himself to the White House” to the president, “who referred to America’s war on terror as a ‘crusade,’” GQ writes.

Why Take Two Bottles Into The Gaza Siege?

Well because you are only allowed shampoo-

A little more than a month ago, following a long ban, Israel permitted the import of detergents and soaps into Gaza. Even shampoo was allowed. But one merchant discovered that the bottles of shampoo he had ordered were sent back because they included conditioner, which was not on the list. 

Amira Hass (who was arrested by Israeli authorities when she returned to Israel from Gaza to report) continues-

The few items merchants are allowed to trade in are divided into three categories: food, medicine and detergent. Everything else is forbidden – including building materials (which are necessary to rehabilitate Gaza’s ruins and rebuild its infrastructure), electric appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines, spare machine and car parts, fabrics, threads, needles, light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, cutlery, crockery, cups, glasses and animals. Many of the banned products are imported through the tunnels and can be found in Gaza’s markets. 

Pasta, which had been forbidden in the past, is now allowed, after U.S. Senator John Kerry expressed his astonishment at the ban during a visit to Gaza in February. But tea, coffee, sausages, semolina, milk products in large packages and most baking products are forbidden. So are industrial commodities for manufacturing food products, chocolate, sesame seeds and nuts. Israel does allow importing fruit, milk products in small packages and frozen food products as well as limited amounts of industrial fuel. 

Full article here.

‘Humanitarian Operation’

Maybe like torture, war will be erased from the corporatist media polluted lexicon, then harsh interrogation and humanitarian operations will populate our complacent newspeak paradise. Until such time those forces turn their attentions towards us, then we might regret looking the other way.

Sri Lanka’s president has declared that the island’s Tamil Tiger fighters have been “defeated,” after the military said it had captured the area of coastline held by the separatists. Speaking to a G11 group of developing nations summit in Jordan on Saturday, Mahinda Rajapakse said he would return home as “a leader of a nation that crushed terrorism”.

“I am proud to announce… that my government with the total commitment of our armed forces, has in an unprecedented humanitarian operation, finally defeated the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] militarily,” he said.

There was no immediate comment on the situation from the LTTE and the reports are impossible to independently verify as the government has barred most journalists and aid workers from the conflict zone.

 Jan Jananayagam from a group called Tamils Against Genocide, who has spoken to the LTTE, told Al Jazeera: “Tamil Tigers have called for international intervention. They have said they are willing to cooperate with the UN and America. They do so because the people are suffering in the most enormous way,” she said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has given warning of “an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe” for the hundreds of wounded.

“No humanitarian organisation can help them in the current circumstances. People are left to their own devices,” Pierre Krahenbuhl, the ICRC’s director of operations, said.

District Attorney Involved In Majaz Torture Gets Off

It’s not just corrupt US and UK elites who get away with torture, when a public prosecutor is caught on film at a mass kidnapping and torture he has all the charges dropped for lack of evidence. This is the Monterrico Metal’s Majaz mining camp incident (covered previously here, here and here) where 29 protesters assured a meeting to have their grievances heard, instead were held and tortured under the auspices of corporate officers with police and state approval. A planned ambush to torture protesters and silence them, a terrorist tactic by state and corporate forces, not to mention the UK ambassador Richard Ralph who helped cover it up and then became chairman of the company!

Piura region district attorney Sofía Milla has dropped all charges against her colleague, former DA Félix Toledo Leiva, who was accused of witnessing the torture and kidnapping of 29 anti-mining protesters in 2005, but doing nothing, daily El Comercio reported Tuesday.

Milla cleared her colleague, currently jailed in a Piura prison on charges of corruption in an unrelated case, arguing that the plaintiffs offered insufficient evidence. But, according to the National Human Rights Coordinator, or CNDDHH, there are four photos in which Toledo can be seen in the mining camp when the torture took place, standing nearby some of the victims. And, several victims have testified that while in the camp, they told Toledo that they had been tortured.

As Otto @ Inca Kola News makes clear-

• all 29 victims testified he was there

• all 29 victims said he was an eyewitness to the brutality

• there is photographic evidence that shows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he saw what was going on

• the photos show him in the presence of injured and tortured individuals

• various of the tortured individuals, including the women victims, testify that he shouted insults, made physical threats and even violently pulled the hair of one of the women

Friday! Joe Jackson- Steppin’ Out

Nakba Day

 

Every year Palestinians commemorate the Nakba (“the catastrophe”): the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948. In 1948 more than 60 percent of the total Palestinian population was expelled. More than 530 Palestinian villages were depopulated and completely destroyed. To date, Israel has prevented the return of approximately six million Palestinian refugees, who have either been expelled or displaced. Approximately 250,000 internally displaced Palestinian second-class citizens of Israel are prevented from returning to their homes and villages.

Philip Weiss reports on a Nakba remembrance in New York- Led by a rabbi, Jews and Palestinian-Americans mark Nakba in Passover-derived ceremony-  that shows the Zionists are losing their power even as the extremists take hold in Israel.

Thousands of Palestinians have marked the 61st anniversary of the “Nakba” or “catastrophe,” in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced following the creation of Israel. Demonstrators marched through cities across the West Bank on Thursday, holding Palestinian flags and images of Arab villages razed by Israeli forces in 1948. The ceremonies took place a day early because the May 15 anniversary of the Nakba falls this year on a Friday, a day off in the mostly Muslim Palestinian territories.

 In Ramallah, demonstrators waved banners reading, “The right of return is sacred,” and “Return, Jerusalem And Self-Determination: Our Struggle Will Continue” as they gathered at the tomb of Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader. The commemoration followed an announcement by Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, that he intends to ban Israeli Arabs from marking the anniversary of the Nakba.

Malalai Joya Talks, You Listen

Just like in Iraq, war has not brought liberation to Afghanistan. Neither war was really about democracy or justice or uprooting terrorist groups; rather they were and are about U.S. strategic interests in the region. We Afghans have never liked being pawns in the ‘Great Game’ of empire, as the British and the Soviets learned in the past century.

It is a shame that so much of Afghanistan’s reality has been kept veiled by a western media consensus in support of the ‘good war.’ Perhaps if the citizens of North America had been better informed about my country, President Obama would not have dared to send more troops and spend taxpayers’ money on a war that is only adding to the suffering of our people and pushing the region into deeper conflicts.

A troop ‘surge’ in Afghanistan, and continued air strikes, will do nothing to help the liberation of Afghan women. The only thing it will do is increase the number of civilian casualties and increase the resistance to occupation.

-Malalai Joya was just a child when the Soviet Union invaded her native Afghanistan, forcing her family to withdraw into refugee status in Iran and Pakistan after enduring years offighting.  She returned in 1998 and lived under the reign of the Taliban, while actively fighting to progress human and women’s rights within the country. Joya is the youngest member of the Afghan parliament but her membership was suspended in 2007 after publicly condemning other members.

Read the rest.

The War Pimps Are Up To Something

I don’t buy this-

America’s spy chief was sent on a secret mission to Israel to warn its leaders not to launch a surprise attack on Iran without notifying the US Administration. As Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, prepares to visit Washington, it emerged yesterday that Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, went to Israel two weeks ago. He sought assurances from Mr Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, that their hawkish new Government would not attack Iran without alerting Washington.

Notice at no point does it say ‘Do not attack’ it just says- Hey, tell us first. But that’s not it, why send the CIA head two weeks before Bibi he comes to Washington. Well it was ahead of the AIPAC conference for one (so, co-ordinating a message, friction but not too much), it also meant…well do you trust the CIA? Are they working wholly for the Obama administration or are they working towards an attack on Iran, or is that the true Washington intention. After all we should now be used to betrayals of the campaign rhetoric. We know spying for Israel will not be prosecuted now and Harman also walked, Senators sign any old shit AIPAC give them and this is from a Murdoch paper, an attempt to isolate and weaken the negotiations route? The generally given reason the US would have to green light an attack is Israeli jets would be flying through US controlled Iraqi airspace, so why have to ask to be warned? The conventional wisdom says the airspace question means Israel has to resolve that to mount an attack with permission, so how come now the US thinks it will be surprised? Would US forces confronted with Israeli jets fire or not? This suggest they had a meet up to try and avoid that situation occurring, but not by ruling out an attack, so what did they discuss, scheduling?

Free Aung San Suu Kyi Demonstration London

Free Aung San Suu Kyi Demonstration London – May 18th

 Join this demonstration to free Aung San Suu Kyi after she was arrested by the Burmese regime and taken to the notorious Insein Prison.

 Protest outside the Burmese Embassy, London, for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all of Burma’s political prisoners

 Date:18 May 2009

Time: 12:00 – 13:00

Location:Burmese Embassy Street: 19A Charles Street, Mayfair, London, W1J 5DX

Town/City: London, United Kingdom

Event on Facebook.

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Find out more about Aung San Suu Kyi here