march 2005

I grew up on a reservation very close to Red Lake. Let me tell you:

1) it's extremely impoverished, with all the predictable social ills that usually accompany poverty;
2) Natives have to endure racism on a regular basis in the local towns and schools; and
3) there is no political will to address either of these problems (poverty and racism), just endless talk about "values."

What kind of message does the US send these days regarding the resolution of disputes? It sure isn't a message of peace.
Scott, Cass Lake, USA

I'm afraid none of you have even the barest of understanding of social conditions on Indian Reservations in Canada and the US. Alcoholism, solvent abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence: all these plague their day to day lives. Also, the legal framework of these reservations (which straddle the US-Canada border) make their gun laws totally different. In short, beware of declaring this incident indicative of American society's relations with guns. It is (more likely) an indication of the social despair of life on reservations.
Kristian, Canada & UK
From Letters to BBC

"He was taking the antidepressant Prozac and at least  once was
hospitalized for suicidal tendencies, said Gayle Downwind, a cultural
coordinator at Red Lake Middle School, who taught Weise."  from THE
WASHINGTON POST  http://rense.com/general63/shooter.htm

Giuliana Sgrena was in deliberate attack by U.S.Military
UPDATE:Giuliana Sgrena has provided more details on her near murderous ordeal. “There was no checkpoint and we were going at a normal speed,” Sgrena told Radio Free Europe. “We were going about 50-60 kilometers an hour—which for a place like this was completely normal. We were not traveling along the normal road for the airport we were traveling on a privileged road that is less dangerous than the normal one where every day bombs explode.The car kept on the road, going under an underpass full of puddles and almost losing control to avoid them. We all incredibly laughed. It was liberating. Losing control of the car in a street full of water in Baghdad and maybe wind up in a bad car accident after all I had been through would really be a tale I would not be able to tell. Nicola Calipari sat next to me. The driver twice called the embassy and in Italy that we were heading towards the airport that I knew was heavily patrolled by U.S. troops. They told me that we were less than a kilometer away…when…I only remember fire. At that point, a rain of fire and bullets hit us, shutting up forever the cheerful voices of a few minutes earlier.”
www,axisoflogic.com
John Chuckman's Letter:The car carrying the released hostage to freedom was not speeding. The car was a very short distance from the airport when a patrol of American soldiers blinded it with a searchlight and an instant hail of bullets. The occupants had no idea what was happening until it was over, and the truly brave Italian agent lay bleeding and dying in the arms of the wounded journalist. It became obvious what happened as the trigger-happy soldiers stood around the car containing wounded and dying occupants and wouldn't permit any access or help for several minutes.

News Update from Citizens for Legitimate Government
March 5, 2005
http ://www.legitgov.org/ 
http://legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

US attack against Italians in Baghdad was deliberate: companion --The companion of freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena on Sat urday leveled serious accusations at US troops who fired at her convoy as it was nearing Baghdad airport, saying the shooting had been deliberate. "The Americans and Italians knew about (her) car coming," Pier Scolari said on le aving Rome's Celio military hospital where Sgrena is to undergo surgery foll owing her return home. "They were 700 meters (yards) from the airport, which means that they had passed all checkpoints." The shooting late Friday was witnessed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office which was on the phone with one of the secret service agents, said Scolari. "Then the US military silenced the cellphones," he charged. "Giuliana had information, and the US military did not want her to survive," he added.

Address to receive newsl etter:
clg_newsletter-subscribe@mlm.legitgov.org

The Italians say they were hit by hundreds of bullets. The Observer reports up to 400 rounds struck their car "from an armoured vehicle. Rather than calling immediately for assistance for the wounded Italians, the soldiers' first move was to confiscate their weapons and mobile phones and they were prevented from resuming contact with Rome for more than an hour." Sgrena's car, the US claims, is now "lost," and cannot be inspected.)

Here are two excerpts from Sgrena's work, which may speak to motive. First, a July, 2004 interview with a woman tortured in Abu Ghraib:

I asked her if she was held on her own all the time. 'No. It was then that they put me in a cell with other women, two women per cell. There were thirteen women, mainly wives of men belonging to the previous regime, and seven children. There was even the wife of Sabah Merza, one of Saddam's guards in the 1970s, who kept her hands plunged in ice to soothe the pain caused by the torture that had been inflicted on her. Another woman was in really bad shape: they'd kept hurling her against the wall. Another had been locked in a tiny cage for six days and couldn't even move. One of the prisoners had been forced to walk on all fours and her knees and elbows were in a terrible state. Another woman had been forced to separate faeces from urine, using her own hands. The soldiers frequently forced us to drink water from the toilet bowl. A woman of sixty, who had said she was a virgin, was continually threatened with rape.'

Did you know of cases of rape? 'Yes, but I'm not going to go into that. In our society, it's something you don't talk about.' How old were the women prisoners? 'Between forty and sixty years of age.' And what about children, how were they treated? 'We heard them screaming. They were tortured too. Mostly dogs were set on them.'

And last November, in Fallujah:

"We buried them, but we could not identify them because they were charred from the napalm bombs used by the Americans." People from Saqlawiya village, near Falluja, told al Jazeera television, based in Qatar, that they helped bury 73 bodies of women and children completely charred, all in the same grave. The sad story of common graves, which started at Saddam’s times, is not yet finished. Nobody could confirm if napalm bombs have been used in Falluja, but other bodies found last year after the fierce battle at Baghdad airport were also completely charred and some thought of nuclear bombs. No independent source could verify the facts, since all the news arrived until now are those spread by journalists embedded with the American troops, who would only allow British and American media to enrol with them. But the villagers who fled in the last few days spoke of many bodies which had not been buried: it was too dangerous to collect the corpses during the battle.

As she was released, Sgrena's captors - whoever they were - warned her to take care, because "there are Americans who don't want you to go back."
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com

Palestine
 
The military court decided yesterday to detain the mayor of Beit Surik until the end of the proceedings against him despite protest from his Israeli neighbors in Mevaseret Zion. Muhhamad Kandil was a key player in initiating a joint petition on behalf of members from both communities to The Israeli Supreme court which resulted in an unprecedented ruling to revise the route of Israel's separation wall. According to Ha'aretz newspaper the deputy head of the Mevasseret Zion Local Council and a Likud member, Arieh Shamam, declared in an affidavit to the military court that Kandil contributes to the good neighborly relations between the two communities.

Mevasseret resident Shai Dror told the court that Kandil had ensured that the joint activities against the route of the fence last year had not deteriorated into violent protests. When work on the wall on Beit Surik land resumed a week ago. Beit Surik residents found that it extended into areas beyond the criteria set by the Supreme Court and that 1000 Dinam of Beit Surik land was to be lost behind the wall.

When Villagers gathered on their land in an attempt to protect it from being leveled by Israeli bulldozers Mayor Kandil approached the Israeli soldiers to deescalate the situation. Ha'aretz reported that Kandil thought that he was being escorted by the soldiers in order to speak with the contractors only to discover he had been arrested. Kandil is being accused of attacking Israeli border Policeman Shachar Yizchaki much to the disbelief of all who know him including Mevasseret residents who provided character references supporting him. Yizchaki, an officer in the Border Police, who claims that the mayor attacked him, is well known for his methods of dealing with protesters.

On the day of Kandil's arrest his men were filmed stoning the Palestinian demonstrators. On April the 15th last year during a demonstration against the wall in Biddu Yizchaki was photographed handcuffing a twelve year old child to the windshield of his Jeep and using him as a human shield against stones for several hours. When Rabbi Arik Asherman, Director of Rabbis from Human Rights, tried to intervene he was also forced to stand before the military jeep and was assaulted by Yatzchaki. Rabbi Asherman has filed a complaint against Yizchaki.   Also yesterday, Attorney Billal Mahfouz agreed to a Plea bargain on behalf of Minors, Muntaser Najib Al Jamal 12, Ahmad Suleiman Sheikh 15, and Amjad Ghazi Ahmad 16, in which Muntaser was released and Ahmad and Amjad were each sentenced to three months detention. In the process of their arrest the three were severally beaten. During their interrogation they signed documents in Hebrew, the contents of which they were unaware, under the threat that if they didn't they would be killed. Their attorney plans on filing a complaint. According to the minors and eyewitnesses, the three were severely beaten by the undercover border policemen while being taken to the detention center.

US AMBASSADOR TO UN A KNOWN OPPONENT OF INTERNATIONAL AGGREEMENTS 

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced today the president’s nomination of John Bolton to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. As George W. Bush's undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, Bolton served as the administration's designated treaty killer. Since his State Department appointment (which was opposed by Secretary of State Colin Powell), Bolton's reputation as a rabid opponent of international agreements and loose-lipped critic of foreign regimes has become the stuff of legend, at times hampering the State Department's ability to undertake negotiations. http://rightweb.irc-online.org

Sports boycott in Ireland: Show Israeli Apartheid the Red Card!Not much chance for this one....
Activism, The Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, February 28th, 2005

The Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign has launched calls for a sports boycott of Israel, as its national team look set to take on the Apartheid state in the qualifying stages of the World Cup.
They have called upon the Irish team to take the moral initiative against Apartheid Israel, engaging in a similar strategy used to isolate the equally racist regime of South Africa in the 1980s.
Anti-Apartheid activists noted that, “During the 1970s and 80s Irish sporting fans showed their opposition to Apartheid policies by boycotting sporting events with South Africa. Like the Dunnes stores' workers who refused to handle South African produce, we refused to give legitimacy to Apartheid by boycotting the Springboks tour.”

The Irish activists have distributed pamphlets during recent international friendly matches informing supporters about the crimes committed every day in Palestine, and the political implications their presence at the games will have. A boycott of the games will sharpen attention on Apartheid Israel’s illegal occupation and continuing colonisation of the Palestinian people and their lands.
Fans have responded positively to the calls but activists have met with opposition from the head of the Irish Football Supporters Association. They have bluntly brushed the calls for boycott aside noting they found no “grave issue” with the games going ahead and maintained “politics should be kept off the football field”. Yet, campaigners called on Irish supporters not to be used as political pawns by a criminal Israeli regime, who show a total disregard for International Law, and continue to build an 8 metre high Apartheid wall on stolen Palestinian land, while at the same time, pretending to engage in peace talks.

Solidarity activists from other countries in the qualifying group, Switzerland, France and the Faroe Islands, have also begun mobilising public condemnation against this Apartheid regime. Campaigners hope that if the matches cannot be called off, supporters will show solidarity with Palestinians who are nearing their 60th year of illegal Israeli occupation. That will mark how there is no place for either racism or Apartheid Israel in football. The Republic of Ireland are due to play Israel in Tel Aviv on the 26th of March with the return leg in Dublin scheduled for the 4th of June

ISRAELI UNDERCOVER AGENTS AMONG WALL PROTESTERS: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Palestinian Youth Arrested in Demonstration against the Wall in Beit Surik
Thursday March 3, 2005
 
Today in the village of Beit Surik in northwest Jerusalem, Israeli undercover agents beat and arrested five Palestinian youth during a nonviolent demonstration against the Wall. The youth were taken from Beit Surik to Givat Zeev early Thursday afternoon. One of the five youth was released. The other four are being held in Kfar Etzion juvenile prison and have a trial scheduled for Sunday at Ofer military court.
 
Ahmad Suleiman Sheikh 14 years old
Muntaser Najib Al Jamal 12 years old
Mustafa Mohammed Khaled 13years old
Amjad Ghazi Ahmad Sheikh 14years old
 
This is the fourth consecutive day that Israeli ‘special forces’ disguised as Palestinians have infiltrated the demonstrations against the Wall in Beit Surik. Yesterday two Palestinians were arrested and later released. On Monday, Israeli undercover agents arrested six Palestinians including the mayor of Beit Surik, Mohammed Kandil, while he and other Palestinians from the village tried to prevent the destruction of their lands.
 
Mohammed Kandil has been held in Israeli police custody since his arrest. He had a hearing in Ofer military court today to determine the conditions for his release until his hearing which will begin on Sunday. Mohammed has been accused of assaulting a police officer. The judge agreed to release Kandil to house arrest on 12,000NIS cash bail until his hearing. The prosecution has 24 hours to appeal the judge’s decision. Kandil’s son Mustafa Mohammed Khaled is one of the youth being held in Kfar Etzion.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
ISM Media: 0546.326.392 or 059.871.055
www.palsolidarity.org

Ken Livingstone writes:
Friday March 4, 2005
The Guardian

Not to speak out against this injustice would not only be wrong. It would ignore the threat it poses to us all

Racism is a uniquely reactionary ideology, used to justify the greatest crimes in history - the slave trade, the extermination of all original inhabitants of the Caribbean, the elimination of every native inhabitant of Tasmania, apartheid. The Holocaust was the ultimate, "industrialised" expression of racist barbarity. Racism serves as the cutting edge of the most reactionary movements. An ideology that starts by declaring one human being inferior to another is the slope whose end is at Auschwitz. That is why I detest racism.

No serious commentator has argued that my comments to an Evening Standard reporter outside City Hall last month were anti-semitic. So I am glad that Henry Grunwald, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, accepted on these pages that "Ken is sincere when he states that he regards the Holocaust as the worst crime of the last century".

The contribution of Jewish people to human civilisation and culture is unexcelled and extraordinary. You only have to think of giants such as Einstein, Freud and Marx to realise that human civilisation would be unrecognisably diminished without the achievements of the Jewish people. The same goes for the Jewish contribution to London today.

As mayor, I have pressed for police action over anti-semitic attacks at the highest level, and my administration has backed a series of initiatives of importance to the Jewish community, including hosting the Anne Frank exhibition at City Hall and measures to ensure the go-ahead for the north London eruv.

Throughout the 1970s, I worked happily with the Board of Deputies in campaigns against the National Front. Problems began when, as leader of the Greater London Council, I rejected the board's request that I should fund only Jewish organisations that it approved of. The Board of Deputies was unhappy that I funded Jewish organisations campaigning for gay rights and others that disagreed with policies of the Israeli governmen.

Relations with the board took a dramatic turn for the worse when I opposed Israel's illegal invasion of Lebanon, culminating in the massacres at the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila. The board also opposed my involvement in the successful campaign in 1982 to convince the Labour party to recognise the PLO as the legitimate voice of the Palestinian people.

The fundamental issue on which we differ, as Henry Grunwald knows, is not anti-semitism - which my administration has fought tooth and nail - but the policies of successive Israeli governments.

To avoid manufactured misunderstandings, the policies of Israeli governments are not analogous to Nazism. They do not aim at the systematic extermination of the Palestinian people, in the way Nazism sought the annihilation of the Jews.

Israel's expansion has included ethnic cleansing. Palestinians who had lived in that land for centuries were driven out by systematic violence and terror aimed at ethnically cleansing what became a large part of the Israeli state. The methods of groups like the Irgun and the Stern gang were the same as those of the Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic: to drive out people by terror.

Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return. Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office. Israel's own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

Sharon continues to organise terror. More than three times as many Palestinians as Israelis have been killed in the present conflict. There are more than 7,000 Palestinians in Israel's jails.

To obscure these truths, those around Israel's present government have resorted to demonisation. Initial targets were Palestinians, and have now become Muslims. Take the Middle East Media Research Institute, run by a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence, which poses as a source of objective information but in reality selectively translates material from Arabic and presents Muslims and Arabs in the worst possible light.

Today the Israeli government is helping to promote a wholly distorted picture of racism and religious discrimination in Europe, implying that the most serious upsurge of hatred and discrimination is against Jews.

All racist and anti-semitic attacks must be stamped out. However, the reality is that the great bulk of racist attacks in Europe today are on black people, Asians and Muslims - and they are the primary targets of the extreme right. For 20 years Israeli governments have attempted to portray anyone who forcefully criticises the policies of Israel as anti-semitic. The truth is the opposite: the same universal human values that recognise the Holocaust as the greatest racist crime of the 20th century require condemnation of the policies of successive Israeli governments - not on the absurd grounds that they are Nazi or equivalent to the Holocaust, but because ethnic cleansing, discrimination and terror are immoral.

They are also fuelling anger and violence across the world. For a mayor of London not to speak out against such injustice would not only be wrong - but would also ignore the threat it poses to the security of all Londoners.

· Ken Livingstone is the London mayor

from http://www.gilad.co.uk

Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon
05 March 2005
New Scientist
David Hambling
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/mg18524894.500

THE US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims unharmed.

"I am deeply concerned about the ethical aspects of this research," says Andrew Rice, a consultant in pain medicine at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. "Even if the use of temporary severe pain can be justified as a restraining measure, which I do not believe it can, the long-term physical and psychological effects are unknown."

The research came to light in documents unearthed by the Sunshine Project, an organisation based in Texas and in Hamburg, Germany, that exposes biological weapons research. One document, a research contract between the Office of Naval Research and the University of Florida in Gainsville, is entitled "Sensory consequences of electromagnetic pulses emitted by laser induced plasmas". It concerns so-called Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs), which fire a laser pulse that generates a burst of expanding plasma when it hits something solid, like a person (New Scientist, 12 October 2002, p 42). The weapon, destined for use in 2007, could literally knock rioters off their feet. The idea is to work out how to generate a pulse which triggers pain neurons without damaging tissue. Studies on cells grown in the lab will identify how much pain can be inflicted on someone before causing injury or death.

New Scientist contacted two researchers working on the project. Martin Richardson, a laser expert at the University of Central Florida, refused to comment. Brian Cooper, an expert in dental pain at the University of Florida, distanced himself from the work, saying "I don't have anything interesting to convey. I was just providing some background for the group." His name appears on a public list of the university's research projects next to the $500,000-plus grant.
Amanda Williams, a clinical psychologist at University College London, fears that victims risk long-term harm. "Persistent pain can result from a range of supposedly non-destructive stimuli which nevertheless change the functioning of the nervous system," she says. She is concerned that studies of cultured cells will fall short of demonstrating a safe level for a plasma burst. "They cannot tell us about the pain and psychological consequences. "

 Northeastern Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild to Present Free Speech Award to M. Shahid Alam.
Award Recognizes Alam’s Contribution to Vigorous Academic Debate Protected by the First Amendment.


BOSTON, February 14, 2005 - The Northeastern University School of Law Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild will present its Free Speech Award to M. Shahid Alam on Thursday, February 17, 2005, at 12:15 pm in the Law School’s Brown Lounge.


Dr. Alam is a Professor of Economics at Northeastern University. He has written extensively on issues ranging from global economics to international development. He is the author of three books, including Governments and Markets in Economic Development Strategies (Praeger: 1989), Poverty from the Wealth of Nations (Macmillan: 2000), and, most recently, Is There an Islamic Problem? (The Other Press: 2004). In addition, Dr. Alam’s essays have been widely printed in a number of academic journals, including American Economic Review, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Science and Society, Kyklos, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Southern Economic Journal and Journal of Development Economics.

"Dr. Alam has been singled out and had his loyalty to America questioned by conservative commentators like Bill O’Reilly," explained Bina Ahmad, a third-year law student at Northeastern Law and member of the National Lawyers Guild. "Daniel Pipes of Campus Watch" an organization that claims on its website to respect professors’ right to free speech goes on national television and calls Dr. Alam a ‘radical Muslim’ and a ‘bomb thrower’ with ‘venom towards’ America," she continued. "These are outrageous allegations based on a selective and distorted reading of Dr. Alam’s writings. Additionally, Dr. Alam has been the target of physical threats and harassment after excerpts from one of his recent essays were posted on websites of known, extreme right-wing organizations."

Jonathon Foglia, another Northeastern Law student member of the National Lawyers Guild said that the Free Speech Award was being given to Dr. Alam because his work epitomizes the type of thought and expression that the First Amendment protects. "Dr. Alam is a man of profound scholarship and enviable bravery. His work is clearly core political speech. Anytime self-professed ‘patriots’ threaten and intimidate individuals on the basis of published words, we must all rally to the defense of the First Amendment and people such as Dr. Alam."

The Northeastern Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild is one of the most active chapters in the nation. The Guild was born in 1937, when, at the time, the American Bar Association would not admit to its ranks African American lawyers. For nearly 70 years the Guild has been dedicated to the cause of human rights. The Guild works locally, nationally, and internationally as a force to effect change in the service of people. It is committed to combating discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, political thought, immigration status, gender, and sexual orientation.

"...to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests." -- 1937 Constitution of the National Lawyers Guild.

from Mona Baker