And They Also Have Tasers Now…

Thames Valley Police has been fined £40,000 for breaching health and safety laws when a civilian worker was accidentally shot. Pc David Micklethwaite, 52, shot control room employee Keith Tilbury, 57, during a firearms awareness course in Oxfordshire on 30 May 2007. It was revealed at Southwark Crown Court that Pc Micklethewaite had failed a gun training course, but was allowed to continue working. He mistakenly loaded a Magnum revolver with live ammunition which was kept in an old Quality Street tin. The judge said this practice was a “disaster waiting to happen”.

Pc Micklethwaite was accused of “engaging in the pointing of weapons and the pulling of a trigger during role-play in the classroom”, “failing to examine or check the round of ammunition” and discharging the gun “while inadvertently pointing the weapon at Keith Tilbury”. Mr Tilbury, a control room employee for Thames Valley Police Authority, was shot in the stomach at point-blank range while he was listening to a lecture alongside 10 colleagues at the force’s Police Headquarters North in Kidlington. He suffered serious damage to his lungs, kidneys and bowel and spent two weeks in intensive care. Mr Tilbury has told the BBC he is unlikely to return to work.

The EDL Is Not Welcome In Manchester

Apparently the English Defence League Retarded Fascist Thugs are planning some kind of event in Manchester on 10th October. As a Mancunian I would like to speak for my city, we like diversity, we like a multifaceted solidarity, Manchester generally is left wing. So right wing nationalist fanatics using violent misfits (normally masking their personal shortcomings by supporting events where millionaires play a children’s game while they assault each other) to pursue a racist agenda really ought not to bother going all that way just to find out they are very unwelcome. Clairwill has an excellent suggestion inspired by news of the moron roadshow eyeing up Glasgow. The EDL represent a few hundred largely male Islamophobes and racists with a liking for dominance and violence, they concentrate on stories of Muslim extremists to license their own extremism, (together with a misreading of history that would fail the grade for even a Ladybird level). In other words they are what they profess to oppose, they welcome any narrative of other extremism because it gives cover to their own extremism which pre-existed and will always search for rationalisations. Every nation, every culture has chumps like this, it’s ensuring they do not utilise violence or intimidation to enforce their dysfunctional thoughts that is every citizen’s responsibility if we want to live in an open society that values the scintillating breadth of human experience and culture. Manchester has withstood fascist  attacks in the past, they failed to kill my family with their bombs and now what might be thought of as fifth columnists are troubling my fair city with their half-witted notions of ‘Englishness’. I don’t think so.

NB. While EDL fronts are at pains to claim non racism and that they are not fascist, whether it is misdirecting expediency or personal denial, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a fucking duck!

Evo Morales, Word!

Speaking to reporters, Bolivian President Evo Morales blamed state capitalism for the onset of global warming and said the Copenhagen talks should include a focus on determining the climate debt owed by rich nations.

Bolivian President Evo Morales: “Climate change is not a cause, rather an effect. It is a product of the capitalist system, which favors the obtaining of the maximum profit possible. That is the purpose of the capitalist system, without taking into due consideration the lives of others. In Copenhagen, we should enter into a thorough analysis of what countries are the ones that are hurting the environment the most, and we should consider those damages and focus on the countries that bear a major responsibility for the payment of this climate debt, this obligation.”

A Nation Under House Arrest

The Field-

The Honduran coup regime’s 26-hour martial curfew upon the entire country effectively places 7.5 million Honduran citizens – men, women, children and elders – under house arrest. They are prohibited from going to work, to the store, or to walk down the street to visit a neighbor. Anybody on the street is subject to arrest, for violation of the curfew.

But…

Meanwhile, at least two popular barrios in and around Tegucigalpa have defied, en masse, the curfew order and chased National Police out of their communities: El Pedregal and Colonia Kennedy. They’ve erected barricades and declared the coup regime and its security forces non grata.

It also seems Micheletti has realised invading the Brazilian embassy is not such a good- act of war- type idea. Hilariously he talks of democracy in the Washington Post (the increasingly go-to-place for tyrants and elite criminals to sell their faeces masquerading as thought) even as a normally supine press ridicule him and Micheletti also encourages others to stage their own coups, clearly not getting the whole contradiction in terms thing. But what he is clear on is- violence, he loves it-

“Early this morning, military forces attacked those of us outside the Brazilian embassy. There are no words to describe the brutality of the attack,” reported a member of the group Feminists in Resistance. “They chased us, threw bombs, beat us, and now are hunting down everyone who took refuge in the surrounding area.”

The women say there are 65 members of their group “under siege,” hiding in houses as military squads search the neighborhood.

Honduran Coup Links

Big list here, latest is the military have shut down various media and have occupied the building next to the Brazilian Embassy, meanwhile US rightists are supporting the coup regime, lying through their teeth to support a military dictatorship whose members in the past raped, murdered and tortured people with US support. Make no mistake this is struggle of democracy against fascism, of Latin America against the torture regimes the US historically installed as proxy rulers. No surprise the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal peddles misinformation and supports the torturers, as it did for the coup regime of George Bush, see how that works?

District Neuf

Look how the Daily Mail (ht2 Lenin) celebrate the violence of the Calais refugee camp being bulldozed. It is weird that the dynamic here is best relayed in fiction Banlieue 13 told how a Sarkozy figure plotted to kill and ethnically cleanse walled in migrant ghettos and the current District 9 puts apartheid in a SciFi context, yet will all the people leaving the cinema realise that in reality the same thing is happening and the likes of the Daily Mail celebrate the oppressor. As the Mail piece notes but avoids comment on most of the refugees are from Iraq and Afghanistan, hmm I wonder if anything, anything might be going on in those countries that might make a person flee for their life, gee I wonder, I must do a Google search and see if there’s been ANYTHING in the news about it…

Check out No Borders Network

Honduras Fighting The Coup

The must read Al Giordano’s The Field @ Narconews, latest-

5:50 p.m.: The coup regime has just cut electricity to entire neighborhoods surrounding the Brazilian Embassy and Channel 36 TV. How long do you think it will take the people to install a generator in each place? The same will happen when the regime cuts the water, the next likely step coming from that form of logic. And the people will usher in water trucks to refill the tanks. Hell, they’ll bring it cup by cup if they have to! This is a losing gambit by the Micheletti regime because it does not have control of the street.
6:52 p.m.: As predicted in the previous update, the regime’s attempt to cut electricity to the Brazilian Embassy is already an epic fail. Tim Russo just reported live on that Flashpoints radio show from inside the Embassy as the electric power went back on! A discussion about a half hour prior, on Radio Globo, included a call for generators and a pledge by the head of the electrical workers union to send technicians to set them up. A half hour later, there was light. An organized people can never be beat. That is the lesson of Honduras.

Chris Hedges- Globalization Goes Bankrupt

The rage of the disposed is fracturing the country, dividing it into camps that are unmoored from the political mainstream. Movements are building on the ends of the political spectrum that have lost faith in the mechanisms of democratic change. You can’t blame them. But unless we on the left move quickly this rage will be captured by a virulent and racist right wing, one that seeks a disturbing proto-fascism.

Every day counts. Every deferral of protest hurts. We should, if we have the time and the ability, make our way to Pittsburgh for the meeting of the G-20 this week rather than do what the power elite is hoping we will do—stay home. Complacency comes at a horrible price.

“The leaders of the G-20 are meeting to try and salvage their power and money after everything that has gone wrong,” said Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of the Mexican Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT), who is in Pittsburgh for the protests. “This is what this meeting is about.”

The draconian security measures put in place to silence dissent in Pittsburgh are disproportionate to any actual security concern. They are a response not to a real threat, but to the fear gripping the established centers of power. The power elite grasps, even if we do not, the massive fraud and theft being undertaken to save a criminal class on Wall Street and international speculators of the kinds who were executed in other periods of human history. They know the awful cost this plundering of state treasuries will impose on workers, who will become a permanent underclass. And they also know that once this is clear to the rest of us, rebellion will no longer be a foreign concept.

The delegates to the G-20, the gathering of the world’s wealthiest nations, will consequently be protected by a National Guard combat battalion, recently returned from Iraq. The battalion will shut down the area around the city center, man checkpoints and patrol the streets in combat gear. Pittsburgh has augmented the city’s police force of 1,000 with an additional 3,000 officers. Helicopters have begun to buzz gatherings in city parks, buses driven to Pittsburgh to provide food to protesters have been impounded, activists have been detained, and permits to camp in the city parks have been denied. Web sites belonging to resistance groups have been hacked and trashed, and many groups suspect that they have been infiltrated and that their phones and e-mail accounts are being monitored.

Read the rest.

Baha Mousa & The Rotten Barrel

Baha Mousa was tortured to death by British troops. There is little need to wonder about whether our forces were given the green light to torture,they were-

[June 2007] The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, is facing accusations that he told the Army its soldiers were not bound by the Human Rights Act when arresting, detaining and interrogating Iraqi prisoners.

Such were the concerns of legal advisers on the ground over the Attorney General’s views that the MoD arranged for the senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office, Gavin Hood, to visit Permanent Joint Headquarters to settle any worries. Crucially, the emails make clear Lord Goldsmith’s legal opinion was not shared by Colonel Mercer, who contacted his superiors in London to ask for guidance after he had witnessed the hooding of 40 Iraqis at a British PoW camp in March. The men were all forced to kneel in the sun and had their hands cuffed behind their backs. Worried this could leave the soldiers vulnerable to prosecutions, he told the MoD that in his view soldiers should behave in accordance with the “higher standard” of the Human Rights Act.

But the response from the military’s Permanent Joint Headquarters in Qatar was that Lord Goldsmith had told the MoD the human rights law did not apply and soldiers should simply observe the Geneva Conventions.

When Colonel Mercer said he disagreed with the Government’s most senior law officer he was told that “perhaps you should put yourself up as the next Attorney General”. Colonel Mercer also asked for a British judge to be flown out to oversee the procedures for the detention of Iraqi prisoners, but this also was blocked at a high level.

Furthermore Ben Griffin is still gagged from speaking publicly on UK forces role in torture and their knowledge of US torture.

Zelaya Is In Honduras

Al Jazeera reports-

The ousted president of Honduras says he has returned to his home country, nearly three months after he was forced from power and into exile by a military-backed coup. “I am here in Tegucigalpa [the Honduran capital] I am here for the restoration of democracy, to call for dialogue,” Manuel Zelaya told Honduras’ Canal 36 television network on Monday. Monica Villamizar, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Washington DC, said she had confirmation that Zelaya was in Honduras.

Scores of Zelaya supporters celbreated (sic) outside the UN office in the Honduran capital after hearing of the deposed leader’s apparent return. A spokeswoman for the Honduran embassy in Nicaragua, where Zelaya had been exiled, also said that Zelaya was in Tegucigalpa. ”He is in Honduras and calling the resistance to gather in front of the United Nations and protect the constitutional president of Honduras,” Elizabeth Sierra said.

Update: Liveblogging Al Giordano@ Narconews (ht2 BoRev)

For US citizens click here to send a message to your Reps to support the Delahunt-Serano-McGovern Resolution which calls for the return to democracy and the reinstatement of President Manuel Zelaya.

Hollywood & Progressive Except for Palestine

I have been following the brouhaha over the Toronto film festival and its part in promoting Brand Israel, it is notable that opponents of the Toronto declaration misrepresent what it says and attack it with strawmen arguments. It is doubly disappointing that a raft of Hollywood notables then signed up to protest the protest, again repeating the fictional claim of a blacklist. It is a triumph of marketing and an abject failure of those signing the protest against protest to engage with the actual Toronto Declaration and not its fictionalised bogeyman. One could play similar games (although with arguably more credibility), one could say the celebrities protesting the protest are supporting apartheid, that historically this makes them similar to those who supported the apartheid regime of South Africa and ensured Nelson Mandela remained imprisoned. It’s not really helpful to go for that kind of hyperbole even though what I have just written is more truthful that the pro-Israel PR attack on the Toronto Declaration. That is why it is disappointing when clearly intelligent and talented creative people lend their support to an effort to sink the debate to that disingenuous level. The reason for lowering the issues to fictional mud slinging is because in the sharp light of day it is evident Israel enacts polices more extreme than the Bush/Cheney reign and the Toronto Film Festival worked with the Israeli government to put a shiny spin on it. As for issues of career in lining up to sign the protest against the protest, well we all make our choices and have to live with them, I’m sure readily available drugs help with that, as ever.

The world is shifting and unthinking US elite support of the Israeli regime is making them a laughing stock and for some a pariah. It is perhaps predictable for an empire entering its bloody decline that its corporate mass media is also similarly uninformed and irrelevant to global citizens. No wonder a film about evolution was not bought for the US market. (But hey I’m not proud, I’m thinking instead … Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens in Adam & Eve- Creation Musical! That’s all kinds of retarded Awesome-all the way to the bank! Or Miley Cyrus & Seth Rogen in Samson & Delilah, Smackdown!)

NB. Some of those signing the blacklist advertisement are conservatives, so I expect little of them as they have their own problems, it is the notionally progressive signers who are bewildering in their (wilful?) blind spot when it comes to Israeli policies, human rights and Palestine. It is also noticeable that the signers of the Toronto Declaration are more diverse and less wealthy than the signers of the ‘We don’t need another blacklist’ advertisement, so it goes.

Journalist Elena Rodriguez Attacked

On the night of Wednesday September 16th, the TV journalist Elena Rodriguez was attacked by three armed men, beaten, pistol whipped and left in the streets of Quito, Ecuador. A stencilled death threat was left on the windscreen of her car that make it clear the attack was politically motivated and said she wouldn’t be so lucky next time. Her injuries were not life-threatening but the pistol-whip knocked her cold and drew blood and the punches left her bruised all over and confined to bed on medical orders for 72 hours.

I pass this on because as Otto says the attack was on a journalist who worked for Telesur, so far little or no English reports have been made about the attack. Recently Ecuador said goodbye to the US military base there, I think we can be reasonably assured that if a US or UK journalist was attacked for political reasons our media would be very swift in reporting it.

Apartheid Much

During the attack on Gaza the West Bank also saw an increase in attacks on Palestinians, with rules that changed depending on who was present-

Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict
16. Treatment of Palestinians by Israeli security forces in the West Bank, including use of excessive or lethal force during demonstrations

83. Various witnesses and experts informed the Mission of a sharp increase in the use of force by the Israeli security forces against Palestinians in the West Bank from the commencement of the Israeli operations in Gaza (Chapter XIX). A number of protestors were killed by Israeli forces during Palestinian demonstrations, including in support of the Gaza population under attack, following the beginning of the operations, and scores were injured. The level of violence employed in the West Bank during the time of the operation in Gaza, was sustained also after the end of the operation.

84. Of particular concern to the Mission were allegations of the use of unnecessary, lethal force by Israeli security forces, the use of live ammunitions, and the provision in the Israeli armed forces “open fire regulations” of different rules to deal with disturbances where only Palestinians are present, as compared to disturbances where Israelis are present. This raises serious concern with regard to discriminatory policies vis-à-vis Palestinians. Eye-witnesses also reported to the Mission the use of sniper fire in the context of crowd control. Witnesses spoke of the markedly different atmosphere they encountered in the confrontation with the soldiers and border police during demonstrations in which all checks and balances had been removed. Several witnesses told the Mission that during the operation in Gaza, the sense in the West Bank was one of a “free for all”, where anything was permitted.

85. Little if any action is taken by Israeli authorities to investigate, prosecute and punish violence against Palestinians by settlers and members of security forces, including killings, resulting in a situation of impunity. The Mission concludes that Israel has failed to fulfil its obligations to protect the Palestinians from violence by private individuals under both international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

Known Torturers, Assassins & Terrorists Flock To Afghanistan

The CIA is deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence “surge” that will make its station there among the largest in the agency’s history, U.S. officials say. When complete, the CIA’s presence in the country is expected to rival the size of its massive stations in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars. Precise numbers are classified, but one U.S. official said the agency already has nearly 700 employees in Afghanistan.

No Choices

Now- Party leader Nick Clegg will seek to rally his rank-and-file by claiming that now is the time for the Lib Dems to supplant Labour as the main “progressive” party of British politics.

Then- In his first major speech since winning the job, Mr Clegg has pretty much adopted the agenda set out in the controversial Orange Book, authored by party frontbencher David Laws and others (including Mr Clegg himself) in 2004. The book included essays which demanded a return to what was claimed were the basic liberal values of free trade and the effectiveness of the private sector.

But by suggesting a greater role for private firms in the public services, the so-called “orange bookers” sparked an internal row with those in the party advocating what many saw as a more left-wing agenda. That group, led by the likes of party president Simon Hughes, suggested their opponents were going down a Conservative path at a time when the party needed to attract disillusioned Labour voters.

Our choices for government are merely which style of neoliberal free market corporatism we find the least offensive, wonks, pundits,blogs, tweets and papers follow the political class like gossip columnists, keeping themselves in work and produce what amounts to nothing more than soap opera that obscures the truth- we have no real political choice. I believe it would be wise to look to what people in other countries with little democracy do to survive under such circumstances rather than keep following the farce of party politics as if they represented your interests.