polly7

polly7's Journal

January 23, 2015

A Future in Prison

By Kathy Kelly

January 23, 2015

The Bureau of Prisons contacted me today, assigning me a prison number and a new address: for the next 90 days, beginning tomorrow, I’ll live at FMC Lexington, in the satellite prison camp for women, adjacent to Lexington’s federal medical center for men. Very early tomorrow morning, Buddy Bell, Cassandra Dixon, and Paco and Silver, two house guests whom we first met in protests on South Korea’s Jeju Island, will travel with me to Kentucky and deliver me to the satellite women’s prison outside the Federal Medical Center for men.

In December, 2014, Judge Matt Whitworth sentenced me to three months in federal prison after Georgia Walker and I had attempted to deliver a loaf of bread and a letter to the commander of Whiteman Air Force base, asking him to stop his troops from piloting lethal drone flights over Afghanistan from within the base. Judge Whitworth allowed me over a month to surrender myself to prison; but whether you are a soldier or a civilian, a target or an unlucky bystander, you can’t surrender to a drone.

When I was imprisoned at Lexington prison in 1988, after a federal magistrate in Missouri sentenced me to one year in prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites, other women prisoners playfully nicknamed me “Missiles.” One of my sisters reliably made me laugh today, texting me to ask if I thought the women this time would call me “Drones.”

It’s good to laugh and feel camaraderie before heading into prison. For someone like me, very nearly saturated in “white privilege” through much of this arrest, trial, and sentencing process, 90% (or more) of my experience will likely depend on attitude.

But, for many of the people I’ll meet in prison, an initial arrest very likely began with something like a “night raid” staged in Iraq or Afghanistan, complete with armed police surrounding and bursting into their home to remove them from children and families, often with helicopters overhead, sequestering them in a county jail, often with very little oversight to assure that guards and wardens treat them fairly. Some prisoners will not have had a chance to see their children before being shipped clear across the country. Some will not have been given adequate medical care as they adjust to life in prison, possibly going without prescribed medicines and often traumatized by the sudden dissolution of ties with family and community. Some will not have had the means to hire a lawyer and may not have learned much about their case from an overworked public defender.

.........

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/a-future-in-prison/

January 22, 2015

What is at Stake in the Greek Elections?

By Chris Spannos
Source: teleSUR English
January 22, 2015

An overview of how Greece’s Jan. 25 election weighs heavy upon major issues of the day.

It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of the Jan. 25 Greek elections. Out of control economic austerity has left three million Greeks without health insurance, soaring infant mortality, and an increase in suicides. No less than the livelihoods of the Greek people are at stake. At the same time the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank — together known as the troika — are forcing debt repayment conditions that include sweeping privatization of the country’s public assets. If Greeks elect the left wing Syriza party to majority power, the result could transform the character of the Hellenic Republic and the European Union itself.

.....Finally, by reducing family incomes and increasing the unemployment of parents, Greece’s austerity measures have also severely affected the health of children. In October 2014, UNICEF reported that since 2008 Greek child poverty rates have increased by more than 50 percent. A growing number of these children receive inadequate nutrition. The Lancet study reported that between 2008 and 2011 the number of stillbirths rose 21 percent, “The long-term fall in infant mortality has reversed, rising by 43 percent between 2008 and 2010, with increases in both neonatal and post-neonatal deaths.”

The scope of social problems is overwhelming. In order to deal with some of them, Syriza party leader Alexis Tsipras outlined their plan for an immediate response to the humanitarian crisis at the party’s national gathering earlier this month. The plan included food vouchers for the poorest 300,000 households, free healthcare, a shelter program for the homeless, and much more.

Rationalizing how it compromises the Hellenic Republic’s national sovereignty to international capital, HRADF views privatization, not merely as a sale of public assets, but a “key element in re-establishing credibility” for the return of Greece as a player in global capital markets. HRADF was created in 2011 with the sole mission of maximize profits from the sale of Greece’s public assets. More than 80,000 properties have been assessed, 3,000 preselected for development and 1,000 already transferred to the body for privatization. The HRADF boasts of having already “raised” 3.1 billion of its 7.7 billion euro (US $8.9 billion) transaction value. It prides itself in that a large number of regulatory, administrative and technical barriers have been slashed to speed up privatizations.

More: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/what-is-at-stake-in-the-greek-elections/

January 21, 2015

Oh, I'm sure it does ............ to you.

Bitter Seeds (2011)

Awards

Showing all 4 wins and 0 nominations

Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival 2011

Won

Green Screen Award Micha X. Peled (director)

Won

Oxfam Global Justice Award Micha X. Peled (director)
Teddy Bear Films Inc. (production company)

Cinema for Peace Awards 2013

Won

International Green Film Award Micha X. Peled
Teddy Bear Films Inc.

International Documentary Association 2012

Won

Humanitas Award Micha X. Peled (director/producer)

You can watch it here: http://www.alluc.com/l/Bitter-Seeds-2011-WEB-DL-x264-NoGRP-mkv/dpug0ll I'd never seen the whole thing before, it's heartbreaking.

January 21, 2015

In Leaked Conversations, Director Of Rutgers Hillel Engages in Shocking Islamophobia

Andrew Getraer retweeted a series of hateful messages defaming Muslims and Palestinians.
By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet January 19, 2015

A growing movement of young Jewish American college students have formed what they call “Open Hillel,” an activist campaign to get the Jewish Hillel organization to stop freezing out critics of Israeli foreign policy.

One reason this movement has grown is because much of the younger Jewish community does not agree with the right-wing views traditionally espoused by Hillel. For example, Rutgers Hillel notoriously allied itself with extremist Pamela Gellar, who runs the anti-Muslim hate site Atlas Shrugs, when its president invited her to speak at its campus.

Rutgers Hillel director Andrew Getraer is very vocal on social media about his views, not only on Jewish faith topics but also his support for the Israeli government. Although as a matter of principle, retweets are not endorsements, Getraer in recent months retweeted a series of hateful messages defaming Muslims and Palestinians. Here are a few examples:

(next, a long line of disgusting comments)

Getraer is also going further in violation of Hillel's historic legacy by engaging in Islamophobia, suggesting that true Islam means murdering non-beleivers and that 375 million Muslims, including numerous Muslim students at Rutgers, believe in this ideology. Hillel chapters nationwide have worked alongside Muslim faith organizations to promote interfaith harmony, and the statements Getraer made to a person he believed was a friendly Israeli Twitter user are hostile, bigoted and polarizing.

http://www.alternet.org/education/leaked-conversations-director-rutgers-hillel-engages-shocking-islamophobia?akid=12706.44541.ZRHhmD&rd=1&src=newsletter1030634&t=14

January 21, 2015

Uday Al-Zaidy: Another Life in the Balance in “The New Iraq”

by Felicity Arbuthnot / January 20th, 2015

This is a very serious matter – they will slaughter him.

— Sabah Al-Mukhtar, President of the Arab Lawyers Association

On Saturday, January 10th, the BRussells Tribunal circulated a Press Release which stated, “Iraq: Mr Uday Al-Zaidi – Appeal of Extreme Urgency.”

It outlined “an appeal for the immediate and urgent mobilization of (the relevant UN Agencies, Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch and other international NGOs and appropriate legal bodies) in securing the release of the prominent human rights defender, Mr Uday Al-Zaidi.”

The Appeal was necessarily brief, but the wider context is vital to understanding as another life hangs in the balance in the living hell of the Bush and Blair led “New Iraq.”

Mr Al-Zaidi was arrested by Iraqi security forces at 6 pm, local time, on Friday January 9th, near Al-Nasriyah in southern Iraq. Al-Zaidi, a respected journalist, is internationally renowned for his courageous advocacy against the sectarian cleansing in Iraq which began with the onset of the “divide and rule” policy of the US-UK invasion, continued under the occupation, their puppet Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and now under his replacement of August 2014, Haider Al-Abadi.

Serious indeed. A March 2013 Amnesty International report on Iraq’s Human Rights record is chilling, including:

http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/01/uday-al-zaidy-another-life-in-the-balance-in-the-new-iraq/

January 21, 2015

Trojan Hearse: Greek Elections and the Euro Leper Colony

by Greg Palast / January 20th, 2015

....The problem is austerity run wild is merely a symptom of an illness. The underlying disease is the euro itself.

For the last five years, Greeks have been told that, if you cure your disease—that is, if you dump the euro—the sky will fall. I guess you haven’t noticed, the sky has fallen already. With unemployment at 25%, with Greek doctors and teachers eating out of garbage cans, there is no further to fall.

Can Greece survive without the euro? Greece is already dead, but the Germans won’t even bother to bury the corpse. Greeks are told that if they leave the euro and renounce its debts, the nation will not be able to access world capital markets. The reality is, Greece can’t access world markets now: no one lends to a corpse.

Greece, to survive in a euro economy, can only revive employment by reducing wages. Indeed, the recent tiny reduction in unemployment is the sign that Greeks are slowly accepting a permanent future of low wages serving piña coladas to Germans on holiday cruises.

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/01/trojan-hearse-greek-elections-and-the-euro-leper-colony/

January 21, 2015

The Rise of Islamo-Fascism in Turkey

By Taylan Tosun
Source: teleSUR English
January 21, 2015

We have been witnessing the rise of Islamo-Fascism in Turkey in the last few years. Indeed the official ideology of both Turkish state and the governing party AKP is called “Turkish-Islamic synthesis”, which means the exclusion of ethnically non-Turks and religiously non-Sunnite minorities from the public sphere by suppressing the public expression of their identities. In this particular conjuncture in which we live, the so-called “Islamic” aspect of this kind of fascism has gained prominence. And this not without reason: since about 2009-10, Turkey-European Union (EU) relations increasingly deteriorated, Turkey begun to look for new partners in Mideast and soon established strong relations with the dictatorial Gulf States (especially Qatar).

Then it began to sponsor with its new partners the jihadist organizations like Al-Nusra or IS (Islamic State) in the hope of overthrowing Bashar al-Assad regime and thus planned to turn the vast Sunnite regions in Iraq and Syria into its backyard. So these Sunnite regions in Iraq and Syria would be leverage for geopolitical as well as economic power for Turkey.

The second main reason of the rise of Islamo-Fascism in recent years had to do with domestic politics: the ruling party AKP endeavored to consolidate its electoral base and succeeded in this policy. Indeed this is a classic in Turkish politics: when right wing-conservative parties create networks for the distribution of wealth and rent from which only a narrow group of businessmen and followers benefit and large segments of the population can’t take any share, the best way to get out of this impasse is to polarize the society around nationalistic (i.e., Turkish) and religious (Sunnite-Muslim) “values” and “claims”. As the majority of Turkey’s population is Turkish and Sunnite Muslim, this tactic has almost worked mainly due to the lack of a comprehensive popular opposition movement which organizes to improve the life conditions of the poor Turkish and Sunnite people.

Of course there were revolutionary movements, especially during 70’s, which endeavored to make connections with the workers and poors, succeeded to a certain extent and then crushed mercilessly by the 1980 military coup.

Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-rise-of-islamo-fascism-in-turkey/

January 21, 2015

What Happens in Greece can transform Europe

By Jérôme Roos
Source: Syriza.net
January 21, 2015

.....The Greek elections, 25.1.2015
The forthcoming Greek elections may bring the Left to power. What’s their significance and meaning for Greece and Europe?

As a general matter, I do not ascribe very great significance to elections in the broader social struggle, but it’s obvious that these elections are different. Greece finds itself in a permanent state of emergency, and there is no doubt that this will be the most monumental vote since the fall of the junta. Obviously the prospect of the radical left taking power for the first time in EU history is significant in and of itself, and given Syriza’s stated intentions to renegotiate the debt and take on the oligarchs, there is a genuine prospect of an improvement in overall conditions – if only to provide much-needed breathing space to working people, the unemployed and the movements. And needless to say, the possible demise of the two-party political aristocracy that has ruled the country since the fall of the junta would be a historical development per se.

For the European bankocracy, a Syriza victory would probably be a big shock initially – but I think they will quickly adjust. In the end, I believe a left government in Greece could provide the European project with a rejuvenating impulse from below. Many influential economists and commentators now stress that, if Germany lets it, Syriza could strengthen rather than undermine the single currency. As Wolfgang Münchau of the Financial Times has repeatedly argued, the radical left is the only force capable of nudging the European project into a sensible direction – even if he believes, like I do, that Greece’s interests are ultimately not served by continued euro membership.

Of course we build on a long-standing tradition of workers’ struggle and radical thought, and there is no point in reinventing the wheel. Many have gone before us, and we have many lessons to learn from past experience. But we also have to recognize that our tradition is full of failures and tragedies, many of which could have been prevented with a more imaginative approach to doing politics. We cannot simply repeat the mistakes of the socialist and communist movements of the past. We need to invent something radically new. As Cornelius Castoriadis would have put it, without the creative impulse of the radical imagination, it is impossible to build a truly self-governing society.

As for ROAR, we aim to insert ourselves in important international debates by stressing the need for autonomous movements in the process of social transformation, by highlighting the creative and imaginative solutions ordinary people are coming up with all around the globe, and by trying to indirectly connect these struggles by developing a common discourse about them. This is where the transnational nature of our editorial collective and our network of contributors plays a crucial role. It allows us to look beyond borders, to highlight the common elements in national struggles, and to recognize that what happens in a place like Greece will not stay in Greece. With the right combination of determination, strategy and imagination, it can transform Europe and the world.

Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/what-happens-in-greece-can-transform-europe/

January 20, 2015

The Golden Age of Black Ops: Special Ops Missions Already in 105 Countries in 2015

Published on
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
by TomDispatch

byNick Turse

During the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2014, U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) deployed to 133 countries -- roughly 70% of the nations on the planet -- according to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bockholt, a public affairs officer with U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). This capped a three-year span in which the country’s most elite forces were active in more than 150 different countries around the world, conducting missions ranging from kill/capture night raids to training exercises. And this year could be a record-breaker. Only a day before the failed raid that ended Luke Somers life -- just 66 days into fiscal 2015 -- America’s most elite troops had already set foot in 105 nations, approximately 80% of 2014’s total.

The Golden Age

“The command is at its absolute zenith. And it is indeed a golden age for special operations.” Those were the words of Army General Joseph Votel III, a West Point graduate and Army Ranger, as he assumed command of SOCOM last August.

Everywhere They Want to Be

To America’s black ops chiefs, the globe is as unstable as it is interconnected. “I guarantee you what happens in Latin America affects what happens in West Africa, which affects what happens in Southern Europe, which affects what happens in Southwest Asia,” McRaven told last year’s Geolnt, an annual gathering of surveillance-industry executives and military personnel. Their solution to interlocked instability? More missions in more nations -- in more than three-quarters of the world’s countries, in fact -- during McRaven’s tenure. And the stage appears set for yet more of the same in the years ahead. "We want to be everywhere,” said Votel at Geolnt. His forces are already well on their way in 2015.

“We need to continue to synchronize the deployment of SOF throughout the globe,” says Votel. “We all need to be synched up, coordinated, and prepared throughout the command.” Left out of sync are the American people who have consistently been kept in the dark about what America’s special operators are doing and where they’re doing it, not to mention the checkered results of, and blowback from, what they’ve done. But if history is any guide, the black ops blackout will help ensure that this continues to be a “golden age” for U.S. Special Operations Command.

Full article: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/20/golden-age-black-ops-special-ops-missions-already-105-countries-2015

January 20, 2015

The Agents of Unregulated Globalization vs. the Agents of the Fight against Climate Change

byJeanette Bonifaz

?itok=Q02Aq8rt
A man stands in his pepper field in El Salvador. (Photo: Bread for the World/flickr/cc)

Experts have argued for some time that small farms can play an important role in the struggle against climate change and that governments should prioritize strengthening and protecting small and medium-sized farms. Yet small farmers continue to be the victims of land displacement, killings, and other human rights violations, often perpetrated by state security forces, private companies, and paramilitaries, in many parts of Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world. Rural workers face the destruction of their environment and culture, lack access to basic needs, and rarely have a say in the policymaking processes that affect their lives.

Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), says his organization emphasizes that such “smallholders are among the most effective clients for public funds for dealing with issues around climate change.” Yet a focus on making profits for agribusiness has led to the breakup of Indigenous organizations; increased hunger; environmental destruction; migration from rural areas to cities; and unregulated, unsafe, and low-wage work. As Diego Montón from la Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo points out, agribusiness and its transnational companies have transformed food into a commodity at the mercy of financial speculation. Through mechanisms such as the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture and General Agreement on Trade in Services [PDF], corporations wield enormous influence over how prices of goods, agricultural models, and trade mechanisms are determined, including the standards for quality, efficiency, and distribution.

The implications for human rights and climate change are dire. Naomi Klein explains in her latest book, This Changes Everything, that it will be necessary to radically change our economic system if we want to effectively tackle climate change. In this transformation, localized economies and small farmers will be essential. Klein notes how the global export of industrialized agriculture has contributed significantly to greenhouse gas emissions:

…the trade system, by granting companies like Monsanto and Cargill their regulatory wish list – from unfettered market access to aggressive patent protection to the maintenance of their rich subsidies – has helped to entrench and expand the energy-intensive, higher emissions model of industrial agriculture around the world. This, in turn, is a major explanation for why the global food system now accounts for between 19 and 29 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions.

Full article: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/20/agents-unregulated-globalization-vs-agents-fight-against-climate-change

Profile Information

Gender: Do not display
Hometown: Saskatchewan
Home country: Canada
Member since: Sat Jul 9, 2005, 11:46 PM
Number of posts: 20,582

« Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next »