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CHIROT ZERO ZINE--ANNOUNCING NEW BLOG
Dear Followers, Friends, fellow Workers:
I have just begun a new blog/zine called Chirot Zero Zine A Heap of Rubble-- Anarkeyology of hand eye ear notations--- http://chirotzerozine.blogspot.com the blog is more exusively concerned than this one with presenting essays, reviews (inc. "bad reviews") , Visual Poetry, Sound Poetry, Event Scores, Manifestos, Manifotofestos, rantin' & raving, rock'roll, music all sorts--by myself and others--if you are interested in being a contributor, please feel free to contact me at david.chirot@gmail.com as with this blog, the arts are investigated as a part of rather than apart from the historical, economic, political actualities of yesterday, today, & tomorrow as with al my blogs-- contributions in any language are welcome
Free Leonard Peltier
The government under pretext of security and progress, liberated us from our land, resources, culture, dignity and future. They violated every treaty they ever made with us. I use the word “liberated” loosely and sarcastically, in the same vein that I view the use of the words “collateral damage” when they kill innocent men, women and children. They describe people defending their homelands as terrorists, savages and hostiles . . . My words reach out to the non-Indian: Look now before it is too late—see what is being done to others in your name and see what destruction you sanction when you say nothing. --Leonard Peltier, Annual Message January 2004 (Leonard Peltier is now serving 31st year as an internationally recognized Political Prisoner of the United States Government)
Injustice Continues: Leonard Peltier Again Denied Parole
VISUAL POETRY/MAIL ART CALL No Sieges, Tortures, Starvation & Surveillance GAZA-GUANTANAMO-ABU GHRAIB—THE GLOBE Deadline/Fecha Limite: SinsLimite/ongoing Size: No limit/Sin Limite No Limit on Number of Works sent No Limit on Number of Times New Works Are Sent Documentation: on my blog http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com Addresses: david.chirot@gmail.com David Baptiste Chirot 740 N 29 #108 Milwaukee, WI 53208 USA
Miss Universe Visits Guantanamo: 'A Loooot Of Fun!'
Miss Universe Visits Guantanamo: 'A Loooot Of Fun!'
The current 'Miss Universe' Dayana Mendoza (formerly Miss Venezuela) and 'Miss America' Crystal Stewart visited US troops stationed in Guantanamo Bay on March 20th, the New York Times reports. Here's Mendoza's account of the visit from her pageant blog last Friday. She says the trip "was a loooot of fun!"
This week, Guantánamo!!! It was an incredible experience...All the guys from the Army were amazing with us. We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting. We took a ride with the Marines around the land to see the division of Gitmo and Cuba while they were informed us with a little bit of history.
The water in Guantánamo Bay is soooo beautiful! It was unbelievable, we were able to enjoy it for at least an hour. We went to the glass beach, and realized the name of it comes from the little pieces of broken glass from hundred of years ago. It is pretty to see all the colors shining with the sun. That day we met a beautiful lady named Rebeca who does wonders with the glasses from the beach. She creates jewelry with it and of course I bought a necklace from her that will remind me of Guantánamo Bay :) I didn't want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful.
B'Tselem published a video clip documenting an Israeli soldier firing a rubber coated steel bullet, from extremely close range, at a cuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainee. The shooting took place in the presence of a lieutenant colonel, who was holing the Palestinian's arm when the shot was fired. The incident took place on 7 July, in Nil'in, a village in the West Bank. A Palestinian demonstrator, Ashraf Abu Rahma, 27, was stopped by soldiers, who cuffed and blindfolded him for about thirty minutes, during which time they beat him. Afterwards, a group of soldiers and border policemen led him to an army jeep. The video clip shows a soldier aim his weapon at the demonstrator's legs, from about 1.5 meters away, and fire a rubber coated steel bullet at him. The video was yesterday on Youtube, but today it was removed.
Check out their newest music on Line--this group is great!
1. English 2. Français
1.________________________EN
Dear Checkpoint 303 friends,
BREAKING NEWS:
Checkpoint 303 supporting Massive Attack in Lyon, France !
Thursday, July 24th, 2008
Amphithéâtre Gallo-Romain, Nuits de Fourvière Lyon, France (20h)
Checkpoint 303 has been invited by Massive Attack this week to perform an electronic set opening up for the band's show in Lyon on July 24th, 2008. This concert will take place at the gallo-roman amphitheater in Lyon and is part of the Nuits de Fourvière event. Doors @ 8 pm, Checkpoint 303 will be on @ 9 pm. Nevermind the short notice, the show sold out weeks ago.
Some of the major artists performing at this event this year include: R.E.M., Leonard Cohen, Cat Power, Camille, Youssou N'Dour, Orchestra Baobab, Goran Bregovic, Pink Martini, CocoRosie, Yael Naïm, Pauline Croze, Angélique Kidjo, Rokia Traoré, Asa, Manu Katché, Keith Jarett, Thomas Dutronc, etc...
The first encounter between Massive Attack and Checkpoint 303 took place back in February 2007 when Massive Attack invited Checkpoint 303 to be part of their UK gigs in Birmingham and London's Brixton academy benefit shows organized back in February 2007 by the Hoping Foundation in order to raise funds to help improve the living conditions of Palestinian children in refugee camps in the West Bank , Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. After over a year and after numerous checkpoint 303 gigs in Europe, North America and Australia, CP-303 hooks up again with Massive Attack on the road...a road to freedom, justice and peace...
NEW CHECKPOINT 303 VIDEO ONLINE
The Checkpoint 303 video of the track "Streets Ô Ramallah" (by Leaphar) is now available on youtube: (comments are diabled but you can tell us whether you like by rating it.)
ps. you have received this email because you or a friend has added your address to our mailing list. If you no longer wish to receive CP-303's newsletter reply to this email with "unsubscribe" as subject.
2. ___________________________FR
Chers amis de Checkpoint 303,
Dépêche de dernière minute!
Checkpoint 303 en première partie de Massive Attack à Lyon, France !
Jeudi, 24 Juillet 2008
Amphithéâtre Gallo-Romain, Nuits de Fourvière Lyon, France (20h)
Checkpoint 303 a été invité par Massive Attack à assurer la première partie de leur concert à l'amphithéâtre gallo-romain à Lyon ce jeudi 24 juillet 2008. Ce concert aura lieu dans le cadre du festival Les Nuits de Fourvière. Le set électro de Checkpoint 303 débutera à 21h.
Dans la programmation de cette édition du festival vous trouverez aussi: R.E.M., Leonard Cohen, Cat Power, Camille, Youssou N'Dour, Orchestra Baobab, Goran Bregovic, Pink Martini, CocoRosie, Yael Naïm, Pauline Croze, Angélique Kidjo, Rokia Traoré, Asa, Manu Katché, Keith Jarett, Thomas Dutronc, etc...
La première rencontre entre Checkpoint 303 et les membres de Massive Attack a eu lieu lorsque ces derniers ont invité "checkpoint 303" à participer à la première partie de 3 concerts au Royaume-Uni en février 2007. Ces concerts, organisés par la Hoping Foundation, avaient pour but de collecter des fonds pour améliorer les conditions de vie des enfants dans les camps de réfugiés palestiniens de Gaza, de Cisjordanie, de Jordanie, de Syrie et du Liban.
NOUVEAU CLIP CHECKPOINT 303 EN LIGNE
Le clip de Checkpoint 303 "Streets Ô Ramallah" (par Leaphar) est maintenant disponible sur dailymotion et youtube:
Washington, DC, July 22, 2008 - After hearing arguments today, a federal court in New York decided that the government must release most of the sealed grand jury records from the 1951 indictment of alleged Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In response to a petition filed by the National Security Archive and others, the government conceded in a June filing that the Rosenberg case is of "significant historical importance" and therefore said it would not contest the release of testimony of witnesses who have passed away or consented to the disclosure.
On the basis of the government's concession, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said today that he will order release of the testimony of 36 witnesses. Judge Hellerstein reserved ruling on three additional witnesses that appear to be deceased and four witnesses that the government said it could not locate, and ordered the government to make greater efforts to confirm the status of these witnesses.
With regard to several living witnesses that objected to release of their testimony, including David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg's brother, Judge Hellerstein said he would deny the petition for release and allow these materials to remain secret. Finally, he suggested that grand jury materials from the related proceeding against Abraham Brothman and Miriam Moskowitz should be released, but said he will wait to rule until the government determines whether the witnesses are dead or consent to release.
Visit the Web site of the National Security Archive for more information about this case and today's posting.
There is increasing International concern for the treatment of persons of all nations traveling to and from the Occupied Territories.
As noted below, this story has had a wide coverage in Britain, Israel and around the world, yet has had almost no coverage in the US. This despite the fact that award winning journalist Mohammed Omar works for, among others, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, based in Washington. D. C..
The War in Iraq has been one of the worst ever for the the treatment and deaths of journalists, photo-journalists, media reporters. The situation for Palestinian journalists has long been much worse than even in Iraq. Foreign journalists as well as Israeli journalists report an increase in harrassement of themselves, and there are many areas "off limits." The trend is towards making ever more limited any reporting of events in the OT other than that of the IDF or State spokespersons.
This continued increase in the one sided presentation of events makes it possible for the State to, in Karl Rove's formulation "create (its) own reality."
Increasingly that reality is the creation of ever smaller Bantustans, with the difference that in South Africa, people were, under strict controls, let in and out to go to work in the mines, whereas in the OT, especially Gaza, there is almost no work at all. In fact, there is almost nothing of anything.
some background information, from the links:
More than 2,300 people have signed a petition drafted by the Washington Report on Middle EastAffairs calling for the Israeli government to protect journalists and end its harassment of journalists, academics and other travelers to and from the occupied Palestinian territories.
We are requesting a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the U.S. State Department at which we plan to submit, along with our petition, Omer's medical report detailing his injuries. We will call for an investigation of Omer's treatment at the Allenby border crossing, as well as assurances from Israel that it will not target journalists, especially Omer, working in the occupied territories.
Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer, Gaza correspondent for the Washington Report, Inter Press Service News Agency contributor, and co-recipient of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, was hospitalized with cracked ribs and other injuries inflicted by Israeli soldiers June 26 at the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan into the occupied West Bank.
Omer was returning home to Gaza after a European speaking tour and the June 16 London ceremony at which he accepted the prestigious Gellhorn Prize.
Omer was detained, questioned by a Shin Bet agent, strip searched at gunpoint, assaulted and dragged by the heels to an ambulance after he began vomiting and going in and out of consciousness. When he finally came to, he was in a Palestinian hospital in Jericho, where he was treated and allowed to return home in the custody of the Dutch diplomats. See the following article by John Pilger in the July 2 Guardian:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: ATFL News Service <atfl@mail.democracyinaction.org> Date: Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 6:48 AM Subject: WRMEA Action Alert and Petition on Mohammed Omer To: david.chirot@gmail.com
NEWS SERVICE
Subject: WRMEA Action Alert and Petition on Mohammed Omer
PLEASE FORWARD TO YOUR FRIENDS WHO MAY BE INTERESTED
We are forwarding an action alert and petition from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs about WRMEA Gaza correspondent Mohammed Omer:
The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), a respected non-profit foundation incorporated in Washington, D.C., asked us to send out the link below and to sign the petition in the link regarding WRMEA Gaza correspondent Mohammed Omer, who was hospitalized as a result of mistreatment by Israeli authorities. Below is the WRMEA update on the case. WRMEA has been helpful to ATFL on the cluster bomb problem in Lebanon.
WRMEA reports that "The State Department has agreed to meet with Mr. Omer's editors at the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Inter Press Service, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and heads of several Arab American organizations to review Mohammed Omer's case and accept the petition (details haven't been ironed out yet). We need signatures on the petition ASAP. Mr. Omer is at home recuperating. The British and Israeli press have covered Israel's beating of this journalist. The U.S. press has ignored it, with the exception of a highly questionable Associated Press story written from Jerusalem after a sloppy phone interview with Karin Laub."
Hebron's orphans Harassment by the Israeli authorities leaves Palestinians angry and despairing. Could that be the intention? Seth Freedman Monday June 30 2008 guardian.co.uk
Sitting in the courtyard of one of the orphanages facing closure by the Israeli Defence Force, Rasheed admitted he'd all but lost hope of preventing demise of the institution in which he's worked for 12 years.
"I want to ask the Israeli public one simple question," said Rasheed, who teaches English to the orphans. "'Do you want to live in peace with the Palestinians?' If the answer is yes, then they need to know they're not taking the right track here [by shutting down the orphanages and attacking the Islamic Charitable Society, which administers them]. This method plays into the hands of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the other extremists; no one here will just sit back and watch the collapse of their community."
The ongoing saga of the orphanages has seen several raids by the army on ICS-affiliated businesses and schools, and severely weakened the charity's ability to continue its desperately needed pastoral care in Hebron. The army claims ICS is a front for Hamas, but has not provided a shred of evidence for the assertion.
"Sometimes they say we're funded by Hamas, other times they say we're funding Hamas," noted Rasheed drily. Despite an appeal to the Israeli courts, the judge handling the case has refused to discuss the matter again until October. In the meantime, the army's punitive measures against the charity continue.
"They've served more eviction notices on the schools and welded shut the doors; they've raided nurseries and taken away the children's birth certificates; and at the same time ICS is facing financial [meltdown]," said Rasheed. "Last month we only got 40% of our salaries, and this month we may not get paid at all." Even if the army doesn't physically shut down the entire ICS network, he said, they would eventually force its closure via a process of economic strangulation.
"The boys have been asking me if they'll ever see me again after the summer vacation," he added, "|and I don't have an answer for them." Rasheed anticipates further raids over the holidays, despite the ceasefire brokered between Hamas and Israel in Gaza. "The military are very stubborn, and they aren't prepared to back down on this issue."
Despite the crippling tactics of the Israeli authorities, Rasheed is keen to differentiate between the actions of Israeli officialdom and the man on the Israeli street. "Rabbi Ascherman [of Rabbis for Human Rights] has been fantastic in his support, and so have many others from within Israel."
"I believe that the soldiers who raided the sewing workshop and threw the equipment in the city dump are not truly Jewish. We in ICS know the difference between Zionism and Judaism. However, when it comes to the army, I believe that if all of the Palestinians left the West Bank and fled to Jordan, the IDF would follow us all the way to Amman."
"It's not a case of 'the Arabs will throw the Israelis into the sea',", he said, "but more a case of them throwing us into the sea." He added that the Israeli government loved to complain of Palestinians sending their children to be suicide bombers, "yet they do everything possible to encourage this to happen".
"I have never even thrown a rock; I just want a peaceful life," said Rasheed. "I've got a wife and two daughters to look after, but the army are suffocating us. This used to be a rich city; now over 70% of the residents live in poverty. I don't let myself dwell on my daughters' future, because it's too depressing. If one of them met a man living abroad who asked me for their hand in marriage, I would say 'mabrouk, yalla' and be delighted for them."
Making life so intolerable for the Palestinians that they up and leave their ancestral home is as effective a tactic as any to cleanse the land of undesirables, and leave the field open for Israeli settlers to fill the void.
Rasheed believes that the Israeli authorities are doing everything in their power to undermine the moderates in Palestinian society in order to drive the public into the welcoming arms of the extremists. "When [prime minister] Fayed - sent PA police to patrol Jenin, the IDF raided the area the same night," he said. "They do whatever they can to weaken the PA in the eyes of the Palestinians. Is this how to support the moderates?"
Similar thinking appears to be behind the case of the orphanages. Appeals by EU politicians, UN representatives, activists in Israel, and even Israeli judges have all fallen on deaf ears, leaving the residents of Hebron under no illusions about the type of opponent with which they are dealing. If all proper channels of intervention turn out to be culs-de-sac, then it's little wonder that the locals turn to the only groups offering to defend their honour, namely the militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
That the hounding of ICS and its charitable work in the community is abhorrent is in no doubt. What is questionable, however, is the mindset of the officials who are giving the army carte blanche to to carry out such a cruel operation. Instead of weakening Hamas (who they have still not proved are connected to ICS), they are strengthening them with every raid on the weak and defenceless orphans.
Assuming those in the upper echelons of power are no fools, it would seem there is something far more sinister behind their desire to radicalise the Palestinian public. As I wrote last week, it appears that there is a burning desire to create what they fear, in order to give their relentless campaign of occupation and oppression at least some modicum of justification. How long they can continue to fool all of the people all of the time, however, is another question.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008
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Does this wall stop terrorism, or insure its permanence? |
Ghost town in the West Bank
Locals have fled the West Bank village of Al-Ram since the barrier was built two years ago, cutting family members off from each other and from work in Jerusalem. Once a thriving Palestinian district, it is now home to abandoned shops, deserted streets and overgrown gardens. Photographs: Gali Tibbon
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The barrier was erected in the middle of the neighbourhood two years ago, cutting off families from each other
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As the barrier crept down the high street in Al-Ram, it separated children from schools
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Many residents travel through a gap in the barrier to work, but Israel only needs to insert two more concrete blocks to seal it shut
Invitados: Alicia Alarcón: Jefa Departamento de Obras y Artes, Dirección de Arquitectura del Ministerio de Obras Públicas
Viviana Bravo: Artista Visual, especializada en integración entre arquitectura, artes visuales, sociedad y espacio urbano. Patricia Mix: Coordinadora Nacional Programa Chile + Cultura, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes Ximena Chávez: Coordinadora Corporación MetroArte, Metro S.A.
Suspect Soldiers: Did Crimes in US Foretell Violence in Iraq?
by Russell Carollo
Before Army Sgt. 1st Class Randal Ruby was accused in Iraq of beating prisoners and of conspiring to plant rifles on dead civilians, he amassed a 10-year criminal record in Colordao and Washington state for assaulting his wife and in Maine for a drunken high-speed police chase, for which he remains wanted. Before Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes stabbed an Iraqi private to death, angering the soldier's unit of coalition soldiers, he was hospitalized after threatening suicide in high school, accused of assault, disorderly conduct and trespassing, and, in the months leading up to deployment, twice linked to drug use. Before Army Spc. Shane Carl Gonyon was convicted of stealing a pistol at Abu Ghraib prison, he was convicted twice on felony charges and arrested four times, once for allegedly giving a 13-year-old girl marijuana in exchange for oral sex. He enlisted weeks after his release from a federal prison in Oregon. A yearlong examination of military and civilian records by The Sacramento Bee involving hundreds of troops who entered the services since the Iraq war began identified 120 cases of people whose backgrounds should have raised the suspicions of military recruiters, including felony convitions and serious drug, alcohol or mental health problems. Of those, 70 later were involved in controversial or criminal incidents in Iraq. Ruby, Holmes and Gonyon were among those cases. "These guys are out there carrying weapons, fighting on the streets with drugs in their pockets," said Tressie Cox, whose son, Lee Robert, had a history of drug and mental problems before he was charged with selling drugs in Iraq. "Shame on my son, but shame on all you people out there who are policing this and allowing this to continue to happen." The 70 were among the tens of thousands of military personnel recruited or retained as the armed services, entering the sixth year of the Iraq war, lowered educational, age and moral standards and granted a growing number of waivers to applicants whose backgrounds previously would have barred them from serving. From 2003 to 2007, the percentage of Army recruits receiving so-called "moral conduct" waivers more than doubled, from 4.6 percent to 11.2 percent. Others, The Bee found, were able to enlist because they had no official criminal record of arrests or convictions, their records were overlooked or prosecutors suspended charges in lieu of military service - akin to a now-defunct Vietnam-era practice in which judges gave defendants a choice between prison and the military. "How in the hell can they legally possess a gun?" asked Montgomery County, Ala., Sheriff D.T. Marshall, when questioned about a soldier from his county. That soldier, Eli C. Gregory, was convicted in an attempted home invasion and of felony theft in Alabama, making him ineligible to legally possess a firearm there. Yet the military gave him a rifle and sent him to Iraq, where he was convicted by the Army of assault and battery on a fellow soldier and discharged. Gregory, who returned to Alabama after his court-martial, said during an interview that he still cannot legally possess a firearm in the United States. The military defended its recruiting policies, including granting more waivers for past conduct. "Standards in our society have changed over the years; we are a reflection of those changes," said Douglas Smith, spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command. "Considering offering a waiver to otherwise qualified recruits is the right thing to do for those Americans who want to answer the call to duty." Earlier this month, the Department of Defense announced a new system to categorize waivers by the severity of prior offenses to allow the services to analyze the link between waivers and future military behavior. The examination looked at only a fraction of the 1.4 million people in uniform and was conducted largely without benefit of sophisticated criminal databases available to the military. Still, The Bee linked dozens of soldiers and Marines with criminal records and other questionable backgrounds to misconduct in the military. In some cases, past misconduct appeared to forshadow future behavior. "Criminal history is the best predictor of future behavior," said Shawn Bushway, a criminology professor at the University of Albany, N.Y., School of Criminal Justice. "Any time you lower your standards, you're going to raise the risk. No question about it." Nine months before the death of the first of three Iraqis that Army sniper Michael A. Hensley was accused of murdering, members of a San Diego-area family witnessing his actions in Seward, Alaska, were so concerned about what they saw that they videotaped him. The family, sharing a third-floor hotel room in Seward, awakened to screams from the parking lot below and peered out to see Hensley threatening a woman inside a Jeep, pounding on the vehicle with his fists. "He obviously wasn't stable, just from seeing him the 20 minutes I did," said Alex Elling, who was 18 when he videotaped the incident. Hensley "had bloody knuckles, and the windshield of the Jeep was broken," a Seward Police Department report said. Hensley, who had previously served six months' probation on a drunken-driving conviction in Georgia, pleaded no contest to the Alaska charges of disorderly conduct. In Iraq, the military found Hensley guilty of planting an AK-47 on the body of an Iraqi he was accused of killing, but not guilty in any of the three killings. In the months surrounding his enlistment into the Army in 2000, Ricky Allen Burke was the subject of two court cases for unpaid debt, and, according to Monticello, Ky., Police Chief Ralph Miniard, he was involved in two vehicle accidents. His wife, who left him before their second anniversary, claimed in a domestic violence petition filed in March 2000 that he threatened to kill her, causing her to flee to a police station. Two months later, court records say, Burke confronted his wife again at a relative's house, and police cited him for violating the domestic violence order. A domestic violence conviction could have triggered a federal law precluding Burke from possessing a firearm. But seven days after he enlisted, the criminal case was continued, one of several continuances before it was dismissed in 2002. Three years later in Iraq, Burke shot and killed a wounded insurgent he claimed had moved toward a weapon. But soldiers contradicted his story in statements to investigators. "(Burke) said to me, 'Let me shoot him. Let me shoot him. I got payback coming,' " Staff Sgt. Timothy Nein said, adding that he repeatedly ordered Burke not to fire since the insurgent was injured and Nein saw no weapon nearby. Despite the testimony against him, Burke was found not guilty of the killing by a military court. In December, the National Guard quit granting felony waivers. The Guard's chief recruiting officer, Col. Mike Jones, was quoted in the Army Times calling the previous policy "a risk," but he later told The Bee an increased number of applicants made the policy no longer necessary. Of the more than 120 soldiers and Marines with questionable pasts examined by The Bee, at least 18 had felony arrests or convictions or histories of mental illness. At least eight of the 18 later were connected to incidents in Iraq, and a ninth fatally shot himself while on guard duty in Kuwait. The military refused to disclose who required waivers to enter the military, citing privacy, but waivers were not required of all convicted felons. Gregory, the Alabama felon prohibited from possessing a firearm, said he was allowed to join without a waiver because he was convicted of stealing less than $500, so the Army didn't technically consider the crime a felony. The Army confirmed that it does not require waivers for some felonies in which the crime loss is less than $500, but a spokesman noted that a felony waiver is required for larger amounts. Spc. Shane Gonyon had four felony arrests and two convictions, but he had only to lie to avoid rejection. Shortly after he was discharged from the Air Force in Wyoming for drunken driving in 1998, Gonyon was arrested in Colorado on suspicion of pointing a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol at a homeless man who had accused him of theft. The following year, he admitted to stealing more than $10,000 in equipment from an Air Force base, and months later, he was accused of providing marijuana to a 13-year-old girl in exchange for oral sex, triggering a felony charge that resulted in a guilty plea to misdemeanor child endangering. Nineteen days after he walked away from a federal prison, Gonyon applied for the Michigan National Guard, claiming he had worked at a wood supply company during the period when he actually was incarcerated. He was accepted the following month, in January 2003. Since Gonyon had previously served in the military, the Guard didn't require a complete background check. That practice also ended earlier this year, after a guardsman with a past felony conviction shot and killed four civilians. Gonyon wasn't confronted about his criminal record until 2006, after an incident at Abu Ghraib prison, where he processed detainees. In late March or early April 2006, Gonyon stole a 7 mm pistol from a translator. He was caught trying to mail it to the United States. "I deliberately concealed my arrest(s) and convictions," Gonyon told a court-martial panel, which convicted him of theft and other charges. The military is required to screen applicants for drug or alcohol abuse, mental health history and prior criminal conduct. Recruiters, however, are not required to call former employers, research all information held by law enforcement agencies, check civil court files or, unless a security clearance is involved, attempt to contact relatives, former spouses, schoolteachers and neighbors - all techniques used by law enforcement agencies to screen applicants. Such checks could uncover applicants not necessarily fit for service, even though they lack serious criminal convictions. The additional checks might find criminal defendants not prosecuted in exchange for agreements to join the military, for instance, or defendants in criminal cases who had their charges dropped or reduced in exchange for providing information to police. When the military did its standard criminal background check on David Crawford, who entered the Army at age 18 in 2006, he had only a minor juvenile record, Cincinnati police said. A request to police for a more thorough check would have revealed much more. "I would have told them he was a suspect in a murder case," said police Spc. John Horn, who questioned Crawford about the killing days before he left for boot camp. "When I interviewed him in September 2006, he admitted, because he was sniffling, that he was on a three-day cocaine binge." Crawford was arrested by Cincinnati officers for the crime when he returned from boot camp in 2006, and the following year, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to 28 years to life. Asked why someone like Delano Holmes was allowed to deploy to Iraq, Marine Capt. Brett Miner, a prosecutor at Holmes' court-martial, said: "We're kind of short on bodies." Indianapolis police records show that on Jan. 13, 2002, when Holmes was 16, officers dispatched an ambulance to his high school after Holmes threatened to kill himself. Fifteen months later, Holmes was arrested for disorderly conduct at an Indianapolis mall and banned from returning there for a year. He returned 10 minutes later and was arrested on a trespassing charge. Then, on April 14, 2004, a college student told police that Holmes had shoved him onto a bed and hit him in the forehead during a dispute over a vehicle. Weeks later Holmes left for boot camp in San Diego. In the months leading up to his 2006 deployment to Iraq, civilian police found Holmes in a pickup containing marijuana residue and drug paraphernalia. In a separate incident, the military disciplined him for failing a drug test given to members of his unit preparing to deploy to Iraq. Section 6210.5 of the Marine Corps Separation and Retirement Manual says Marines confirmed to have used illegal drugs "will be processed" for separation. A Marine Corps spokeswoman said the regulation does not give a time limit for completing that separation process, but she acknowledged that commanders had not even started the process for Holmes. Three months after he deployed, Holmes was standing guard at an outpost in Fallujah when he pulled out a 13¼-inch bayonet and repeatedly stabbed Pvt. Munther Jasem Muhammed Hassin, whose Iraq army unit was serving alongside U.S. Marines. An autopsy found Hassin suffered 17 stab wounds, 26 cuts and a severed spine. Holmes then fired Hassin's AK-47 rifle to make it appear he had killed him in self-defense, the prosecutor told The Bee. Defense attorneys said the fight started when Hassin refused to put out a cigarette, which Holmes feared might alert insurgents. A military panel at Camp Pendleton, Calif., found Holmes guilty of negligent homicide and making a false statement and sentenced him to 10 months in jail or, in effect, time served. Holmes did not testify during his military trial, but read a statement. He stood silent for several minutes, turning pages in a notebook. Then his eyes filled with tears so large that they could be seen falling on the lectern from across the room. Between sobs and silence, he finally spoke, calling himself a warrior and a Christian. "I believe we are all products of our experiences," Holmes said. "God gave me more than I could handle." Holmes' criminal record was not part of his court-martial, and media accounts identified him as a college student. The prosecutor acknowledged in a subsequent interview that he was aware of Holmes' record. "I think that his character for violence was a contributing factor to the death of Private Hassin," Capt. Miner said. COSTS AND CONSEQUENCES For years the military was warned about applicants with criminal backgrounds. A 1996 Pentagon study of more than 100,000 California recruits found that those with arrest records left the service at a rate 70 percent higher than those without such histories. A 2003 study warned that destructive behavior by troops with criminal histories or troubling backgrounds "could have the most serious consequences." An October 2007 Army study shows that although recruits requiring conduct waivers re-enlisted at a higher rate, were promoted to sergeant faster and received more awards, they had a higher rate of desertion, misconduct and failure to complete alcohol rehabilitation. Hassin, the Iraqi soldier killed by Holmes, had a relative assigned to the same post. His death angered the Iraqi soldiers serving with the Marines there. "They took it pretty personal," Capt. Javier Torres testified at Holmes' court-martial. "After the incident, the Iraqis did not want to assume (their) post." In another well-publicized incident, Army Spc. Mario L. Lozano Jr. fueled anti-war protest across Italy when he mistakenly shot and wounded an Italian journalist and killed her bodyguard at a checkpoint in Iraq. The shooting of Nicola Calipari, an Italian intelligence agent, and journalist Giuliana Sgrena, whose freedom Calipari had help secure, bolstered anti-war sentiment in Italy credited with helping elect a new government, which pulled its troops from Iraq in late 2006. Though the shooting was the subject of hundreds of news accounts, including a "60 Minutes" segment, and described in two books, The Bee uncovered criminal records on Lozano not previously made public. In 1994, for instance, a man who repossessed Lozano's car told Hollywood, Fla., police that Lozano threatened him. "My Rottweiler was barking," Lozano explained in an interview. "I look out my window, and there's a guy rolling the car back. So I came out. I grabbed a bat." Lozano joined the Army in 1998. Two years later, his wife dialed 911 and told Hollywood police that Lozano had hit her in the face with his open hand because she had been seeing another man. "I've never done anything like that to any female," Lozano responded. He left after the incident and was back at his military post in Alaska in a day, he said, because "I know that … even if she dials 911 and hangs up, the cops are going to come." A domestic violence conviction could have ended Lozano's military career, but with Lozano in Alaska, records indicate, authorities had trouble pursuing the case. His wife subsequently filed for divorce. In Alaska, Fairbanks police twice sought Lozano regarding threats to a man there, he was accused of writing bad checks, and eventually owed child support of more than $5,500, prompting a Florida court to take legal action. Lozano left the active duty Army in 2001 but joined the National Guard in July 2003. Less than two years later, he was sitting atop a Humvee parked near a road leading to the Baghdad airport, manning an M-240B belt-fed machine gun that can fire 10 large-caliber rounds per second. Lozano said he shone large lights on the vehicle carrying the Italians before firing, but Sgrena's book, "Friendly Fire," said the illumination and the shots came simultaneously. An Italian court threw out the murder charge against Lozano, his attorney said, after realizing the United States is allowed to prosecute its own soldiers. Lozano blamed the journalist for the shooting. "If it wasn't for her, it wouldn't have happened," he said. "It was her idea to go over there and mingle with terrorists." Lozano said he left the Guard after commanders refused to let him deploy to Afghanistan. "They got like 5,000 Italian soldiers over there," he said. "They don't want to create no kind of problems." MILITARY HISTORIES Like Lozano, several other soldiers and Marines linked to incidents in Iraq had questionable histories - obtained not as civilians, but as members of the armed services. They, too, were nonetheless deployed. Three years after Randal Ruby joined the Army in 1985, civilian police near his post at Fort Lewis, Wash., arrested him on a charge of assault after Tacoma police officers reported finding him pacing amid belongings scattered across his living room. The officers reported that the left side of his wife's face was swollen. Six months later, Ruby's wife again called officers, who found her scalp and forehead red from an apparent attack, and, in 1991, she obtained a restraining order after alleging Ruby "struck me several times." Ruby was transferred to Fort Carson, Colo., and civilian police were called to the couple's home after his wife accused him of choking her. He filed for bankruptcy protection in 1997, the same year he led three police officers in Maine on a high-speed chase that ended when he lost control of his pickup and crashed. Ruby was indicted in that case on charges of eluding an officer, drunken driving, speeding more than 30 mph over the limit and driving without a license. A warrant remained outstanding when he deployed to Iraq, where he was accused in 2006 of "drop kicking" one detainee and allowing a translator to beat another with a Kevlar vest. "What was Sergeant Ruby doing when he (the detainee) started crying after he beat him in the head with a Kevlar?" a defense attorney asked Sgt. Justin Stubblefield during a military proceeding in 2007. "He was laughing," the soldier responded. Soldiers, including Ruby's driver, testified that the unit kept AK-47 rifles, known as "packages," in Humvees to plant on civilians killed by mistake. Once, Pfc. Nathan Huhn testified, Ruby ordered a "package" after telling his men to open fire and calling in an airstrike on an area populated by civilians. Once the firing started, Huhn testified, "We maneuvered up there and still didn't see nobody … a crowd of women, children and men, but nobody with weapons or like that. Sgt. Ruby told Staff Sgt. (Armando) Cardona (Jr.) to go ahead and send the package." Cardona testified: "I grabbed an AK, walked up around my truck, looked for a spot" to throw it, then realized he couldn't reach across a canal. Ruby, who said in an interview that he ordered his men to stop firing as soon as he realized civilians were in the area, was charged with nine offenses but found guilty of only one: disrespecting a superior. That superior, Lt. Neale Shank, was found dead in a suspected suicide weeks before Ruby's court-martial. Ruby was sentenced to a reprimand, in which a general wrote: "Your behavior is a disgrace to the Army." Now retired and living in Kentucky, Ruby denied ever planting weapons, and said his soldiers were pressured to testify against him, especially after Shank's death. He also maintained that his civilian charges "have nothing to do with Iraq." "I never robbed a bank or a 7-Eleven or smoked dope or any of that stuff that they're letting kids in the military for today because there's no draft," Ruby said. "I served my country honorably."
We've been following the distressing story about the powerful show on display at Chicago's Jewish Spertus Museum on maps and the Holyland which featured Palestinian and Israeli artists. First it opened, then suddenly closed, then opened. In a follow up post about how the exhibit ruffled feathers in the institutional Jewish world (read: funders), we pointed to a Chicago Reader story about changes the museum was forced to make when the exhibit re-opened. Hat tip to Richard Silverstein and Google Alerts for the devastating news from the Chicago Tribune tonight that the exhibit was forced to close down altogether by upset funders.
Under intense pressure from angry Jewish patrons, the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies on Friday abruptly closed the controversial "Imaginary Coordinates" exhibition, which explored Israeli and Palestinian concepts of homeland and how that is defined both historically and in the present day. Critics charged that the combination of historical Holy Land maps and contemporary artwork cast Israel in a negative light. "Aspects of it were clearly anti-Israel," said Steven Nasatir, president of the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. "I was very surprised that a Jewish institution would put forward this exhibition. I was surprised and saddened by it."
Jewish Voice for Peace's own Lynn Pollack is quoted concerning the critically well received exhibit:
"These were not fringe Palestinian and Israeli artists," she said. "These were mainstream artists who are able to display in their own country," she said. "Why can't this art be seen by American Jews?
Yet again, what's the take home message here? That Jewish institutions can be counted on to be no-independent-thinking zones? For shame. Spertus deserves our support for having mounted such an important show. Meanwhile, thanks to a tip from a reader, we learned from Inside Higher Ed that the University of Michigan finally, as many had long anticipated, severed its relationship with left publisher Pluto Press after pressure from right-wing pro-Israel groups.
In September, the University of Michigan Press faced intense criticism from pro-Israel groups–and questions from some regents–over its distribution of a book called Overcoming Zionism, which argues that the creation of Israel was a mistake and urges adoption of the one state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which Israelis and Palestinians would form a new country, without a Jewish character. Michigan wasn't the publisher, but it distributed the book under a deal with Pluto Press, a leftist British publisher with extensive lists on the Middle East and international affairs. Some critics of the book demanded that Michigan stop distributing the book, which it briefly did, and cut ties to Pluto immediately. The university declined to do so, and resumed distributing the book, citing both contractual obligations to Pluto and concerns that halting distribution because of content would raise issues of academic freedom. By the end of this year, however, Michigan will no longer be distributing the book or have any ties to Pluto Press.
This is a sad week.
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Typewriter mail art show > > > Theme: Typewriter > > Tema: Macchina da scrivere > > > > free size > > qualsiasi dimensione > > no return > > le opere ricevute non saranno restituite > > exhibition in Italy, doc. on line: www.guzzardi.it/arte/machine.html > > mostra in Italy, doc. on line: www.guzzardi.it/arte/machine.html > > deadline 30/07/2008 > > scadenza 30/07/2008 > > all works must be sent by post > > tutti i lavori devono essere spediti per posta > > dont' forget your photo, some lines of biography, address and e- > > mail address > > non dimenticarti una tua foto, una breve biografia, indirizzo > > postale ed e-mail > > send to: > > spedisci a: > > > > Macchina da scrivere > > By Claudio Grandinetti > > Via Popilia Palazzo Manna 1 > > 87100 Cosenza > > ITALIA > > > -----------------------------------
Mary Baker has a telephone in her vault in Cambridge 'MA's Mt Auburn Cemetery--
the number was (and hopefully still is) in he phonebook-- she never answered in al the times I tried calling--
but with ever advancing Media as Mediums, one may soon find oneself with the ability to accompany Raymond Chandler "down these mean streets," or join Rimbaud for 'A Season in Hell"--
Attempts to lengthen one's stay among simulated "literary/artistic people, places & times"--
may have to be carefully controlled by guardians against new forms of "escapism"--
and, perhaps, "border patrols" will have to be employed to contain all those from "other times" attempting to crash into the present as "illegal aliens"--
How I Fought to Survive Guantánamo By Patrick Barkham
How I Fought to Survive Guantánamo
By Patrick Barkham
For nearly six years, British resident Omar Deghayes was imprisoned in Guantánamo and subjected to such brutal torture that he lost the sight in one eye. But far from being broken, he fought back to retain his dignity and his sanity.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24468.htm
Torture Team Cards
Lest we forget--
ZERO POEM viSUAL sCORE/sOUND pERFORMANCE WITH THANKS TO GLEB KOLOMIETS
Gleb Kolomiets of Slova journal just put on line my ZERO POEM/POEM ZERO with the Visual Poetry score synched to the Sound Poetry--of the performance-- many thanks to Gleb more than i can say and i hope some of you may enjoy this--
BOOKS BEING PRESENTED HERE A LETTER HEADING AT TIME:
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT'S DICTIONARY OF RECEIVED IDEAS
WITH
AMBROSE BIERCE'S THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
and
A CHAPTER AT A TIME
BERNAYS' PROPAGANDA
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Audio: Sarenco & the Visual/Sound Poetry of Italy
Audio: Sarenco & the Visual/Sound Poetry of Italy
download the poetry-generating software Gnoetry0.2
Slides shows: Iranian Street & Grafitti Art -Photo Stream: Multimedia Artist A1One's Work
-thanks Kohla Studio &A1One the 2 above slides shows are of Iranian Street and Graffiti Art; the one below is the photo stream of Iranian multimedia artist A1One Kohla Studio & various artists have hosted major International exhibitions of Sticker Art and related forms of Steet Art--Stenciling, Painting, Skate Board Art--
The New Extreme Experimental American Poetry & Arts--Necessity is the Motherfucker of Invention
"As usual, the only symptoms we had were in the language." --Pier Paulo Pasolini To degenerate as a result of the use of torture, & by its concealment & deception question human dignity & individual rights--
In the first lines of his Introduction to Torture: Cancer of Democracy France and Algeria 1954-62, Pierre Vidal-Naquet asks "Can a great nation, liberal by tradition, allows its institutions, its army, and its system of justice to degenerate over the span of a few years as a result of the use of torture, and by its concealment and deception of such a vital issue call the whole Western concept of human dignity and the rights of the individual into question?"
To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change
In The Peloponnesian War, Book 3, Thucydides states: "To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change. What used to be thought of as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward, any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant one was totally unfitted for action; frenzied violence came to be considered an attribute of a real man. "
Necessity is the Mother of Invention These entries are ongoing found materials with which one works on various projects. They are an Anarkeyology of Site/Sight/Cites in which, by relinking the Military & Art meanings of "avant-garde," are found different ways of investigating separations, Walls, silences, distranslations, forgeries, torture, "Newspeak," censorship and propaganda as elements common to both war and writing/art historically & in the USA & Globally today.
The finding of these materials and the questions they open are, I find, "necessary," as the Formal separations of the American "avant-gardes" from the Military & external/ internal imperialist realities that are among the "symptoms . . . in language" that Pasolini notes "we (have) to go on."
Separations in, of, and by language are "necessary" to Vidal-Naquet's "concealment " of "torture, cancer of democracy," whose "deceptions" erect barriers, Walls, prisons, "Security," Surveillance between not only the torturers and the tortured, Occupiers and the Occupied, but between actions and words, so that a culture conceals itself from itself.
Materials & questions that are "necessary" to examine separations, concealments, deceptions that are "necessary"-- and are Hidden in Plain Site/Sight/Cite
"Necessary"--to find among the "fictional" and the "factual," among street debris and the debris of Poetry, Writing & Arts, Street & Protest Arts and Actions, News Reports, Torture Documents , Prisons . . . the" failure to communicate" that haunts the Prison //Security//Surveillance System of Cool Hand Luke's"Boss Keane's Ditch" and daily covering more of the world. These interconnections and relinkings, the symptoms in language, is a work found by what I call "Necessity, the Motherfucker of Invention."
In The Moro Affair, Leonardo Sciascia writes: "Indeed when the truth which had been confined to literature emerged harsh and tragic within the context of everyday life, and could no longer be ignored, it seemed as if it were a product of literature."
This "truth" " is something so "obvious"that it becomes treated as a separation, a "fiction," rather than a "real, true fact."
To work with the "Hidden in Plain Site/Sight/Cite" can in this way be considered a "fiction," compared to the "reality" of a Formal Separation which is "immune to these things."
Sciascia notes the "Hidden in Plain Site/Sight/Cite" in using an expression from Poe's "The Purloined Letter:"
"(W)hat we called the invisibility of the obvious . . . (from Poe's Dupin) . . others have called over-obviousness . . . an obviousness linked to other obviousnesses , all of them conforming to a . . . concept of the clandestine."
This "invisibility" is separated from the "real, true fact," which the account and appearances of events create as the version that is "believed" to have occurred.
Sciascia quotes a dictionary:
"One says: a real true fact. and such like. Real in this case seems to reinforce true, not simply as pleonasm but thus: a real true fact hasn't simply occurred but it has occurred as it is told, as it appeared, as it is believed . . . "
The separation of "what is told, as it appeared, as it is believed" from what is "the invisibility of the obvious" allows for the concealment and deception Vidal-Naquet writes of.
The entries here may be read as the raw materials of as an examination of these separations, symptons in language, and finding ways to link them in the term common to the military & ar t"avant- garde" in Necessity the Motherfucker of Invention's "New Extreme Experimental American Poetry& Arts.
"Waterboarding"--Brief History of a Word, a Practice
If the word torture, rooted in the Latin for “twist,” means anything (and it means “the deliberate infliction of excruciating physical or mental pain to punish or coerce”), then waterboarding is a means of torture. The predecessor terms for its various forms are water torture, water cure and water treatment.
The early phrase Chinese water torture described a cruel ordeal invented by Asian ancients. The purpose of slowly dripping water on the forehead until each little splash became unbearable was not “to elicit information through harsh interrogation” but to drive the victim mad. That phrase outlived its sadistic practice and is in use today, adopted as a metaphor for “repeated annoyance intended to infuriate.” In a 1991 hostage standoff, President George H. W. Bush decried “the cruel water torture of occasional vague promises.”
The water cure was described as the response by some American soldiers to atrocities by Filipino insurgents after our liberation of the Philippine Islands in the Spanish-American war of 1898. At a Congressional hearing in the spring of 1902, the “cure” was described as water “poured onto his face, down his throat and nose. . . . His suffering must be that of a man who is drowning but who cannot drown.” Mark Twain, writing in the May 1902 issue of the North American Review, deplored “the torturing of Filipinos by the awful ‘water cure’ . . . to make them confess.”
President Theodore Roosevelt disapproved, and in 1902 ordered the dismissal of the United States general in charge; in a letter to a German friend dated July 19, 1902, however, Roosevelt was slightly more understanding: to find out which Filipinos committed outrages, he wrote that “not a few” of our officers and enlisted men “began to use the old Filipino method of mild torture, the water cure. Nobody was seriously damaged, whereas the Filipinos had inflicted incredible tortures upon our own people.” T.R. was careful to add, “Nevertheless, torture is not a thing that we can tolerate.”
To more recent times: in 1953, a U.S. fighter pilot told United Press that North Korean captors gave him the “water treatment” in which “they would bend my head back, put a towel over my face and pour water over the towel. I could not breathe. . . . When I would pass out, they would shake me and begin again.” In 1976, a United Press International reporter wrote that U.S. Navy trainees “were strapped down and water poured into their mouths and noses until they lost consciousness. . . . A Navy spokesman admitted use of the ‘water board’ torture . . . to ‘convince each trainee that he won’t be able to physically resist what an enemy would do to him.’ ” In 1991, the columnist Jack Anderson — confusing the phrase about ancient practice with the modern development — wrote of “the Chinese water board demonstration, one of the most dangerous in the Navy arsenal. Water is then poured over their faces by an instructor to simulate prisoner-of-war treatment.” Without the “Chinese” reference, such “simulated drowning” is the method most often used today to describe the interrogation of three suspected terrorists, about which the C.I.A. director recently testified.
The earliest use of the phrase water boarding I can find is in an article about the interrogation of the suspected terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (often awarded the bogus title “9/11 mastermind”). It was posted on the Web site of The New York Times on May 12, 2004, by James Risen, David Johnston and Neil Lewis, published in The Times and carried worldwide on the A.P. wire the next day: “C.I.A. interrogators used graduated levels of force, including a technique known as ‘water boarding,’ in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.”
Palfest 09: "to confront the culture of power with the power of culture"
Monday, May 25, 2009
Palfest 09: Culture vs. Power
The Guardian reports today that armed Israeli police last night tried to halt the opening night of the Palestinian Festival of Literature, organised by Ahdaf Soueif, when they ordered a Palestinian theatre in East Jerusalem to close, claiming that the festival - which is funded by the British Council and UNESCO - had received funding from the Palestinian Authority.
Soueif writes on Palfest's author blog http://www.palfest.org/authorsblog.html
(referring to a famous phrase of Edward Said's):
Today, my friends, we saw the clearest example of our mission: to confront the culture of power with the power of culture.
Authority.
Soueif writes on Palfest's author blog (referring to a famous phrase of Edward Said's):
Today, my friends, we saw the clearest example of our mission: to confront the culture of power with the power of culture.
Despite attempts to prevent the sharing and transmission of culture, Palfest is using all the communications tools at its disposal to reach out -- for videos, photos, blogs and other Palfest updates go here. Here's a video from the opening night:
"GITMOS ACROSS THE USA"--SEE SIDEBAR FOR ARTICLES & LINKS
The story of a man from Guinea who was detained in New Jersey raises questions about accountability and oversight in U.S. immigration detention system.
Israeli forces ended their offensive against Hamas in Gaza on Saturday, 17 January, following the declaration of ceasefires by Hamas and Israel.
Highlighted below are some of the main buildings identified as destroyed or damaged in Gaza City and the surrounding area as of 16 January, when this latest satellite image was taken.
The image, taken for Unosat at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, has helped researchers identify at least 566 destroyed or damaged buildings.
The map below shows the main areas attacked in the three weeks of violence.
Palestinian medical sources say more than 1,010 Palestinians were killed in the violence, which began on 27 December 2008. Israel says 13 Israelis died, including 10 soldiers in the campaign and three civilians killed as a result of rocket fire from Gaza.
NO MORE BLANK CHECK FOR ISRAEL! Plz Sign..
cpdweb.org — Campaign for Peace and Democracy sign-on statement. massive military attacks on Gaza, Israel has again engaged in actions contrary to morality, international law, the cause of peace, and to the long-term best interests of the people of Israel. And, once again, the United States government has been the enabler of Israeli actions: [To sign:- http://www.cpdweb.org/statements/1010/stmt.html
Urgent action by the UN General Assembly is warranted and possible.
Israeli impunity must be ended by the collective action of the world community - Plz sign
Manifesti, Scritti, Teorie, Saggi d'il Maestro e d'Il Professore Vidiamodopo
Roberto Bolano Paris 2001--Homage
Georg Grosz---Dada Death
Waiting for the Guards--extreme performance artist troupe enacts interrogationscenes for real
Waiting for the Guards Waiting for the Guards highlights interrogation techniques used in the 'war on terror'. The film was made using members of the extreme performance artist troupe who enacted the interrogation scenes for real. The film demonstrates the so called Stress Position and is the first in a series of films focusing on different 'enhanced interrogation' techniques. For now the film is an exclusive for the web, before a theatrical release in independent UK cinemas in early 2008. We believe that the film is a great introduction to the unsubscribe movement, so we ask you to get the movie out there, in any way you can. The more people who will see it, the more people will be compelled to unsubscribe.
Anarkeyology of Vision: from Paul Virilio Forward to his "Negative Horizon"
The field of vision always seemed to me comparable to what the ground is for archeological exploration. To see is to be lying in wait for what may spring up from the ground, nameless; for what presents no interest whatsoever, what is silent will speak, what is closed is going to open, it is always the trivial that is productive, and so this constant interest in the incidental, in the margins of whatever sort, that is, in the void and absence.
Felix Feneon
Arrested for "Anarchist Conspiracy"
GITMOS ACROSS AMERICA--DETENTION & DEATHS ARTICLES & LINKS
After the deaths of two immigrant detainees, a review of the cases prompted recommendations for faster reporting of deaths and better sharing of information.
A bill would require the secretary of the Homeland Security Department to report all deaths in immigration detention within 48 hours to the Justice Department's inspector general as well as its own.
As authorities continue rounding up illegal immigrants in these harsh days of ever-stricter enforcement, the potential for abuse will grow largely out of sight.
The Senate immigration bill that is lumbering toward final passage is overloaded with provisions that will make life harsher and more unfair for immigrants.
Lawmakers and government investigators are examining deaths of immigrants who die while in custody as immigration detention system swells to meet demands for stricter enforcement of immigration laws; family members and advocates have difficulty getting information about those who die in custody of immigrant detention, patchwork of federal, private and local facilities; new Immigration and Customs Enforcement report finds that 62 immigrants have died in custody since 2004; immigration officials ...
A case before a federal court of appeals has linked the Bush administration's methods of interrogating prisoners to a sharp change in the standards of humanitarian law at home.
Edwin Bulus, who fled Nigeria after members of family were jailed for allegedly plotting coup against military regime, has been detained by Immigration and Naturalization Service since arriving at Kennedy International Airport in May 1995, and his treatment has sometimes been harsh; is accused by Federal Government of entering country with false documents, and has since been denied parole while request for asylum is pending; asylum advocates describe handling of case by immigration service as K...
The story of a man from Guinea who was detained in New Jersey raises questions about accountability and oversight in U.S. immigration detention system.