soc.culture.usa
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa
soc.culture.usa@googlegroups.com

Today's topics:

* How Come No Hate Crime Charges? - 2 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/14c20914fba8c0e6
* THE PROTOCOLS ARE FACTUAL - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/2a9ca0f3e623cf6b
* Pallie's nightmare built by Mexican Bandolero - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/21939cecfde811c0
* The New Protocols - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/b4ee8675ec938f47
* SECURING THE KIKE REALM - 2 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/8dd1ed5cdcb29a1b
* Malcolm and Martin: The Struggle Continues - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/cdd9f0904e0626cf
* Israel Fires Missiles at PA President's Compound - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/815219e2e7049e98
* MLK: Vietnam - A Time to Break the Silence, April 4, 1967 - 1 messages, 1
author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/c2b6fef3c1a58180
* Race Dialog Is Back. Racism Never Went Away - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/c82cc913aea3a7a6
* Hunger Strike Called in Miami Janitors' Strike - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/9fc213e82b3b22dc
* NC School Board Wrestles with Bible Distribution - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/8d7a16fbb34fbff9
* "Transformation of Venezuelan Society" 4/6 -NYC - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/ab6a40b8a382722b
* An Interview with William Blum - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/b248d57f419b650a
* Belafonte Honored in Washington, 50 Years after "Day-o" - 1 messages, 1
author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/abc94a7422e8d058
* Most Brits Want Blair to Resign: Poll - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/17bb78a8cc5e0fe7
* UK: New Motion Calls for Better Relations w/Cuba - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/ce7f6c58aa573e37
* Goodbye Europe - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/45e5b9700b1e9ac3
* NUMBER OF NEWSPAPERS UNESCO'S STATISTICS 1950 ' s en un pais que dice la
propaganda era casi todo de analfabetos... - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/57ba02f2ccbcbc2b
* THE DANCING ISRAELI ILLEGALS - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/b3c07890c30a3b6
* Turkish PM promises more democracy for Kurds after deadly riots - 1 messages,
1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/2c732940d6921c01
* Suchart and Yuwadee Akkavibul 'WANTED' $10,000 Reward! - 1 messages, 1
author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/0c0d7e65e6312a02
* Thaksin Demands Arrest Of Commander Akkavibul - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/dec150920a54cc7c
* World War III News, Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 AD....... - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/6db1c03f9201f54c

==============================================================================
TOPIC: How Come No Hate Crime Charges?
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/14c20914fba8c0e6
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 8:43 pm
From: "Jim E"

"serwad" <serwad@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:31GYf.2056$48.1156@bignews7.bellsouth.net...
>
> "Jim E" <YD653126@sea.edu> wrote in message
> news:49gnuvFon3kdU1@individual.net...
>>
>> "serwad" <serwad@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
>> news:5qFYf.1731$48.907@bignews7.bellsouth.net...
>>>
>>> "Salah Jafar" <codeman@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:W0EYf.13497$zk4.12218@trnddc05...
>>> How Come No Hate Crime Charges?
>>>
>>> These Jewish Psychos burnt down nine churches, and had every black
>>> churchgoer in Alabama scared to death. They appeared to have used
>>> specially-designed thermite, or incendiary magnesium as an accelerant.
>>>
>>> To claim that these church burnings (map) were just a prank, is
>>> ludicrous. You just don't burn nine Baptist churches without an agenda.
>>> The damage is over two million dollars.
>>>
>>> There is an agenda allright. The school that jewboys attended has been
>>> silenced, neither students nor teachers are allowed to talk to the
>>> press, nor to blog information to anyone. The reason is simple: it was
>>> an organized targeted church burning which was supposed to somehow be
>>> blamed on muslims!It backfired when jewboys got caught red handed!
>>>

Whenever something bad happens at least twenty muzzies should be sacrificed
just on principle.
Nothing to do with who did it, just to ease tensions among the civilized
people.

> Jews did it! jews should pay the prize!

I'm going to have to find out why the locals haven't crusaded your muzzy ass
yet.
Must be an oversight.

Jim E
>

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, Apr 5 2006 3:56 am
From: "Salah Jafar"

Those fucking Parasites did it to blame Moslem.
SJ

==============================================================================
TOPIC: THE PROTOCOLS ARE FACTUAL
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/2a9ca0f3e623cf6b
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Apr 5 2006 3:44 am
From: flaviaR@verizon.net

On 4-Apr-2006, "TheM0nk" <punisherx@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> You are racist against Islamists

This is about as idiotic a statement as ever I heard since
"Islamists" are not only not a race, the word describes *SOLELY*
a MODE OF BEHAVIOR DERIVED FROM A BIGOTED BELIEF.

Good grief....

Susan

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Pallie's nightmare built by Mexican Bandolero
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/21939cecfde811c0
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Apr 5 2006 3:46 am
From: "Mexican Bandolero"

Watch for more interesting pictures I will upload as I organize this free
website!
It's really amusing and entertaining to see this Pallie Scumbag getting his
ass
doormatted in the "casas" in Mexico!
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahah!

"John Smith" <JSmith888654778@aol.com> wrote in message
news:e0u42f$j2j$1@news.datemas.de...
> Man, that's a hot one.
>
>
> "Mexican Bandolero" <extremebubble128@att.net> wrote in message
> news:zBnYf.681386$qk4.452999@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
>> Hey Guys, this is one Pallie's nightmare among the others.
>> Care to see it?
>>
>> http://home.att.net/~extremebubble128/four.html
>>
>> NOTE : Keep distance from your monitor's screen
>>
>>
>
>

==============================================================================
TOPIC: The New Protocols
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/b4ee8675ec938f47
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Apr 5 2006 3:46 am
From: "DoD"

"serwad" <serwad@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:vXGYf.2290$48.1548@bignews7.bellsouth.net...
>
> "DoD" <thecats@ss.mil> wrote in message
> news:OvlYf.40096$ty4.27277@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>>
>> "serwad" <serwad@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
>> news:jqlYf.36496$g6.23805@bignews8.bellsouth.net...
>>>
>>> "DoD" <thecats@ss.mil> wrote in message
>>> news:l%kYf.40094$ty4.3638@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>>>>
>>>> "serwad" <serwad@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
>>>> news:oRkYf.36480$g6.26886@bignews8.bellsouth.net...
>>>>> > Hey Moishe, do you really think you anyone falls for 'I am a Jew'
>>>>> pretense?
>>>>>>
>>>>> As if it makes any diff to anyone who the fuck he is, so long as he
>>>>> tells the truth, not lies like you always blubber!
>>>>
>>>> I have never seen Tilly say Islam is the religion of peace.
>>>
>>> It matters not what either one of you say. Islam is a religion of peace.
>>> Islam has not started wars which killed many millions of people!
>>
>> Tell that to the Hindus.
> Hindus?

Indians you goof off. Don't you even know what has been done in your
relgions name since it's inception?

==============================================================================
TOPIC: SECURING THE KIKE REALM
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/8dd1ed5cdcb29a1b
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, Apr 5 2006 3:51 pm
From: "Tilly"

serwad wrote:
> "DoD" <thecats@ss.mil> wrote in message
> news:lkoXf.30490$iR1.6504@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
> >
> > <Boedicia@isp.com> wrote in message
> > news:1143869292.870240.104240@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> > >
> > > DoD wrote:
> > > > "Calife" <user@user.net> wrote in message
> > > > news:442c03d5$0$18327$8fcfb975@news.wanadoo.fr...
> > > > > BernardZ wrote:
> > > > > > In article <MsRWf.15204$g6.11008@bignews8.bellsouth.net>,
> > > > > > serwad@bellsouth.net says...
> > > > > > > Look at Palestine. Horror/chaos destabilizes people and it
> > > > > > > takes generations to restabilize and build back a
> > > > > > > civilization.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Actually this is a true statement. When Israel ruled the
> > > > > > region it was
> > > > > > claim and one of the fastest growing economy in the world.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Now look at what replaced it.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > http://www.gamla.org.il/english/feature/lynch2a.htm
> > > > > >
> > > > > > As a Muslim don't you feel ashamed Alex at what has been
> > > > > > created.
> > > > >
> > > > > You're right of course!
> > > > > US built cluster bombs and assorted hi-tech weaponry used by
> > > > > Israel are
> > > > > far more efficient and way more discrete in extermination
> > > > > than the knives and other "weapons" allowed the Palestinians.
> > > > > Israeli quality killings performed far from the "free press",
> > > > > and thereby affording BernardZ the comfort of guiltless eye
> > > > > aversion, are a
> > > > > fine example of Israeli talents at turning the victim into
> > > > > perpetrator,
> > > > > and vice-versa!
> > > > > Bravo!
> > > >
> > > > You must of left the USA because we got over our Jew hatred
> > >
> > > When was that?
> >
> > In the 40's and 50's you dumb fuckin wannabe American....
> YOU, AMERICAN? YOU ARE A FUCKING KIKE!

LOL....

We have a Serbian-Croat war on our midst!

--
TillyGr@hotmail.com

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 9:33 pm
From: "Tilly"

Miriam Cohen wrote:
> On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 05:37:21 GMT, "DoD" <thecats@ss.mil> wrote:
>
> >
> > <Boedicia@isp.com> wrote in message
> > news:1143869292.870240.104240@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> > >
> > > DoD wrote:
> > > > "Calife" <user@user.net> wrote in message
> > > > news:442c03d5$0$18327$8fcfb975@news.wanadoo.fr...
> > > > > BernardZ wrote:
> > > > > > In article <MsRWf.15204$g6.11008@bignews8.bellsouth.net>,
> > > > > > serwad@bellsouth.net says...
> > > > > > > Look at Palestine. Horror/chaos destabilizes people and it
> > > > > > > takes generations to restabilize and build back a
> > > > > > > civilization.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Actually this is a true statement. When Israel ruled the
> > > > > > region it was
> > > > > > claim and one of the fastest growing economy in the world.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Now look at what replaced it.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > http://www.gamla.org.il/english/feature/lynch2a.htm
> > > > > >
> > > > > > As a Muslim don't you feel ashamed Alex at what has been
> > > > > > created.
> > > > >
> > > > > You're right of course!
> > > > > US built cluster bombs and assorted hi-tech weaponry used by
> > > > > Israel are far more efficient and way more discrete in
> > > > > extermination than the knives and other "weapons" allowed the
> > > > > Palestinians.
> > > > > Israeli quality killings performed far from the "free press",
> > > > > and thereby affording BernardZ the comfort of guiltless eye
> > > > > aversion, are a fine example of Israeli talents at turning
> > > > > the victim into perpetrator, and vice-versa!
> > > > > Bravo!
> > > >
> > > > You must of left the USA because we got over our Jew hatred
> > >
> > > When was that?
> >
> > In the 40's and 50's you dumb fuckin wannabe American.... When the
> > fuck are you gonna head back to Europe and quit fucking our soil
> > up? Don't stop in Britain... Ariadne is a true British woman....
> > you would do better to go to France or Germany, stewpid fucking
> > racist bitch....
>
> Excuuuuuuuuuuse me. Araidne is not a true British woman. She is a
> true semite, i.e. a jew!

One can be a Jew and British and value being both.

--
TillyGr@hotmail.com

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Malcolm and Martin: The Struggle Continues
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/cdd9f0904e0626cf
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 10:56 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Malcolm and Martin: The Struggle Continues

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by TOPLAB - Apr 4, 2006

The Black Commentator - March 30, 2006
http://www.blackcommentator.com/177/177_malcolom_and_martin_guest_bailey.html

Malcolm and Martin: The Struggle Continues

by Jason Bailey

Recently I was helping my mother clean out her closets and get rid of
old boxes. During the flurry of trashing old papers and reliving
cherished memories Mother came upon a postcard that her late sister, my
favorite aunt, kept in her office when she was a professor at the
University of Missouri-Columbia. The postcard was a picture of Malcolm
X and Martin Luther King Jr. during their only meeting. I have seen a
picture of this meeting before, but not this picture.

The picture I am familiar with had the pair shaking hands side by side
and smiling. It's a classic photo-op today's politicians engage in all
the time. The smiles are sincere but you get the sense that right
before it was snapped a cameraman said "hold it, let me get a picture of
this." For years I loved that picture because it was the only photo I
knew of that showed two of my heroes together in the same place. I
always assumed that it was the only picture of that meeting so when I
saw this picture I was surprised and gratified.

The picture post card that my mother discovered seems like it was taken
after the photo I am so familiar with. It depicts the conversation
after the photo-op. In it, Martin is talking while Malcolm listens
intently. Ralph Abernathy is in the background and reporters are
flanking the men. A sour faced policeman is in the foreground looking
mad that he's there. What strikes me about the picture is how intimate
my heroes look. I have no idea what Martin was saying or what Malcolm
was thinking but the picture gives the sense that they understood more
deeply than anyone else in that room how important this impromptu
meeting was. It seems as if they are the only ones in the room and they
are giving one another their full attention. They seem to know that
time is short and this may be the only time they get to talk. History
tells us that this was the only time that they met and it may have been
the only time they ever spoke directly to one another. Less than a
year later Malcolm was shot dead in Harlem's Audubon Ballroom,
assassinated by the hands of Black men thought to be loyal to the Nation
of Islam.

The caption on the back of the postcard says that the meeting happened
in Washington D.C. in 1964. Both men had been observing the Senate
debate the Civil Rights Bill that would later be signed into law by
President Lyndon Johnson. After the debate King addressed reporters in
a nearby conference room and Malcolm sat in the back row of the room, I
believe waiting. When Martin finished he left by one door and Malcolm
left by another. In the hallway outside the men headed straight toward
one another. Martin extended his hand and said, "Well, Malcolm, good to
see you." Malcolm replied, "Good to see you," grinning the huge grin
that few pictures depict but that his friends knew intimately.

This new photo captured my imagination and set it to spinning.
Personally, I don't believe there was any apprehension in either man at
the sight of the other. I believe that during the debate they both
realized the presence of the other and they intended to take advantage
of the opportunity to meet.

There was no ego involved, just one great soul seeking another for a
moment of understanding. They understood one another on levels that few
can fathom. They were brothers in spirit and cause, taking time to
acknowledge one another. Although they never met again I am sure both
were touched by the gravity of this meeting. Touched and encouraged.
In fact they look as though they want more time to talk but know that
they won't have it. So in this moment they are engaged in a discussion
that involved more than words, it involved their souls.

As different as their approaches were to the struggles of Black people
in America they were both dedicated to freedom, so dedicated that they
gave their lives. They knew their deaths at the hands of assassins were
probable but neither had any intention of stopping. They were both
spiritual men destined to die for their causes, but at that moment they
were friends that shared a love of their people. Though both were
constantly surrounded by advisors, confidants and spies they walked the
lonely road of sacrifice. They shared a burden of sincere leadership,
uncompromising discipline and the dream of better days for all of us.
In my mind's eye as I look at the postcard they are in communion;
knowing that they weren't alone because they had each other. In that
moment they were looking at mutual reflections giving both a living
touchstone and reminder that their fight was larger than the accolades
and the debates and the speeches. By looking at one another, touching
one another and fellowshipping with one another they reaffirmed
themselves and gathered strength.

What that picture shows me is that regardless of how extraordinary and
brilliant these men were, they were just men. Men that needed
encouragement and support from those who thought about, fought for and
struggled for the same cause. When given the opportunity to reach out
to one another they did and they were able to share a moment.
Regardless of the presence of police, politics, reporters and picture
men, that moment was private. To me the men are saying, "Stay strong
brother, I've got your back. I will go where you can't go and say what
you can't say and we shall overcome"

In 1964 the stakes were extremely high. Malcolm and Martin didn't see
eye to eye about tactics to get our people free. But disagreement about
approach did not make them disrespectful to one another as men. The
picture shows obvious admiration and love, despite differences. This
picture that my mother found doesn't just show two leaders meeting for
the first time; it shows the best in humanity recognizing itself. How
much we have lost.

These objectives of these two pathfinders were not completed. Martin's
dream and Malcolm's vision could not be carried out completely because
the dreamer and the visionary were struck down. They died laying the
framework, and the question that remains is what we have done with it.
For all intents and purposes Black people are free. The 800 pound
albino gorilla of American society was blown off of the back of Black
people through a century of struggle after emancipation. Malcolm and
Martin embodied the tactics that got us through. They were the final
champions of our people and they died looking forward at the problems
that would plague us after we "overcame." Today the problems are here
and we have no plan. Our so-called leaders are negotiating for reality
shows and sit-coms or paying child support for illegitimate children.
Our
politicians either have nothing relevant to say or are co-opted and on
the other side of freedom's fence sleeping with the enemy. Our children
go under-educated; our families are broken with more than three quarters
headed by single mothers and many of the men that should be fathering
those families caught in a justice system not interested in
rehabilitation, only punishment and imprisonment. Yet we spend our time
in the community concerned with entertainers' personal conflicts and
sexual escapades or dress codes for multimillion dollar athletes. We
debate the presence of the word nigger in popular culture as though it's
the problem and not a symptom of the sickness of our community. How
much we have lost.

The truth of the picture my mother found is not that it shows brilliant
heroes locked in philosophical debate or intrigue. It shows two men who
did the best that they could with what they had. It shows men dedicated
to principles meeting, and although they did not agree on the hows, they
were very sure of the whats and that if they each did their part we all
would be better for it. I keep that picture near my desk because I am
only a man. I have few means but I can do what I can do and when I meet
others doing what they can I will support them even if we don't agree.
What will you do?

[Jason Bailey is a freelance writer and performance poet based in St.
Louis. He is the editorial voice of The St. Louis Argus, the oldest
Black owned business in Missouri and one of the oldest African-American
publications in the country. You can read more of his work at his weblog
at http://www.kingpenchronicles.blogspot.com ]

toplab@toplab.org
http://www.toplab.org

*
================================================================
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Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Israel Fires Missiles at PA President's Compound
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/815219e2e7049e98
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 10:56 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Israel Fires Missiles at PA President's Compound

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Radio Havana Cuba
http://www.radiohc.cu

Israel Fires Missiles at PA President's Compound

Gaza, April 4(RHC)- Israeli fighter jets fired missiles into the
presidential compound of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas today,
wounding two people and leaving huge craters in the ground. President
Abbas was at his main office in the West Bank at the time.

The Israeli attack was reportedly in response to homemade Palestinian
rocket attacks on southern Israel, despite the fact that Abbas has
been an outspoken critic of the rocket fire and has urged the new
Hamas Cabinet to accept peacemaking with Israel.

Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh, has demanded that Washington and
other Western powers intervene.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees some of the Palestinian security
forces, condemned the Israeli aggression.

Meanwhile, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced Tuesday that
he'll seek to form a coalition with the center-left Labor Party, an
alliance that would boost his plan to withdraw from much of the West
Bank and draw Israel's final borders by 2010.

The announcement that Olmert's Kadima Party would seek a coalition
with the more-left Labor Party came after a meeting between Olmert,
head of Kadima, and Labor's chief, Amir Peretz. The meeting signaled
the end of a rift between Olmert and Peretz that began after last
week's national election.

With Peretz standing next to him during a news conference, Olmert
said: "We are happy to announce that immediately after the president
gives me the mission of putting together a government, we will open
coalition talks that will allow us to form a government in which the
Labor Party will be a senior member."

In last week's election, Kadima emerged as the largest party in
parliament with 29 out of 120 seats, followed by Labor with 19 seats.

Under Israel's electoral system, the leader of the largest party is
traditionally asked by Israel's president to try to form a coalition
government. However, Labor initially recommended to the president that
its leader, Peretz, be asked to form the government. It was not clear
whether this was an attempt by Labor to pressure Olmert in coalition
talks. Peretz, an ex-union boss, wants to become finance minister, a
demand Olmert is loathe to meet.

In other Middle East news, Israel's largest bank, Hapoalim, has
announced that it is breaking off its relationship with Palestinian
banks, the latest blow to the beleaguered Palestinian economy in the
wake of the formation of a new Hamas government.

And, there are press reports that a Jewish settler group has
reportedly purchased two buildings in an Arab neighborhood on the
Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem. A number of Jewish groups have been
buying up Arab property in Jerusalem, in an attempt to strengthen
Israeli control over the entire city. Despite the displeasure
expressed by fellow Palestinians, some Arabs are lured by the high
prices to take the money and run.

The new Palestinian foreign minister from Hamas has been invited to
China next month for what would be his first trip to a non-Arab
country since the Islamic group took office.

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
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TOPIC: MLK: Vietnam - A Time to Break the Silence, April 4, 1967
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/c2b6fef3c1a58180
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Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 10:56 pm
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MLK: Vietnam - A Time to Break the Silence, April 4, 1967

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by TOPLAB - Apr 4, 2006

Martin Luther King: A Time to Break the Silence, April 4, 1967

African-American Involvement in the Vietnam War
(and numerous other websites)
http://www.aavw.org/special_features/speeches_speech_king01.html

Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence
A Speech Delivered at The Riverside Church, New York City
April 4, 1967

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my
conscience leaves me no other choice.

I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the
aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy
and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your
executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found
myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when
silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they
call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of
inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their
government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human
spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of
conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.
Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in
the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being
mesmerized by uncertainty: but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night
have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but
we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate
to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well,
for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a
significant number of [its] religious leaders have chosen to move beyond
the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm
dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of
history.

Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its
movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its
guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness
that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own
silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have
called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many
persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of
their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you
speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of
dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting
the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often
understand the sources of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly
saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really
known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest
that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal
importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe
that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the church in
Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate, leads clearly to this
sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved
nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National
Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it
an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need
for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an
attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons
of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in a successful
resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons
to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and
history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never
resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National
Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans. There is at the
outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in
Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A
few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as
if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white,
through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, new
beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam and I watched this program
broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a
society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the
necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as
adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like
some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled
to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became
clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes
of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and
their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions
relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young
men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles
away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found
in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly
faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV
screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable
to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in
brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village but we realize that
they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be
silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows
out of my experience in the ghettos of the north over the last three
years, especially the last three summers.

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I
have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their
problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while
maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully
through non-violent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about
Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of
violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted.
Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my
voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without
having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world today, my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake
of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling
under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, 'Aren't you a Civil Rights leader?' and
thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this
further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: 'To save the soul of
America.' We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to
certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction
that America would never be free or saved from itself until the
descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they
still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black
bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern
for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.
If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must
read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest
hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet
determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and
dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America
were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in
1964. And I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was also a
commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before
for 'the brotherhood of man.' This is a calling that takes me beyond
national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have
to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus
Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace
is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am
speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know the good
news was meant for all men, for communist and capitalist, for the
children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and
conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to
the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then
can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister
of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with
them my life?

Finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads
from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most
valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share
with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the
calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and
brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned
especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come
tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem
ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and
deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined
goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the
voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy,
for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our
brothers.

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways
to understand and respond in compassion my mind goes constantly to the
people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side,
not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not the junta in Saigon,
but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for
almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is
clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some
attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people
proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and
Japanese occupation, and before the communist revolution in China. They
were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American
Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused
to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its
re-conquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not 'ready' for
independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly western arrogance
that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that
tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking
self-determination, and a government that had been established not by
China, for whom the Vietnamese have no great love, but by clearly
indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this
new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs
in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right
of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in
their abortive effort to re-colonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war
we were meeting 80% of the French war costs. Even before the French were
defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless
action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and
military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will.
Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at
re-colonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land
reform would come again through the Geneva agreement. But instead there
came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the
temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we
supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man,
Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed
out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused
even to discuss re-unification with the North. The peasants watched as
all this was presided over by United States influence and then by
increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the
insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown
they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships
seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for
land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments
in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and
without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and
received regular promises of peace and democracy, and land reform. Now
they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow
Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd
them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where
minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be
destroyed by our bombs. So they go, primarily women and children and the
aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their
crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas
preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals,
with at least 20 casualties from American firepower for one
Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them,
mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the
children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets
like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg
for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers,
soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and
as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land
reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on the,
just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the
concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent
Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and
the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have
cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-communist
revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have
supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their
women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. What of the
National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call VC or
Communists? What must they think of the United States of America when
they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which
helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What
do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own
taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we
speak of 'aggression from the North' as if there were nothing more
essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with
violence after the murderous reign of Diem, and charge them with violence
while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must
understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions.
Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their
violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of
destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is
less than 25% communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name?
What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their
control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow
national elections in which this highly organized political parallel
government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free
elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the
military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new
government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real
touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny
the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded.
Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to
build on political myth again and then shore it up upon the power of new
violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence when
it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to
know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see
the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature we may
learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called
the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land,
and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but
understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of
confidence in western words, and especially their distrust of American
intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence
against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in
the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and
the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second
struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were
persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the 13th and 17th
parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us
conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought
Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had
been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be
remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered
the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have
been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreements concerning
foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send
troops in large numbers and even supplies until American forces had
moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the
earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how we claimed that none
existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as
America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has
surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for
an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing, shelling, and mining we
are doing a part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his
sense of humor and irony can save him when he hears the most powerful
nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of
bombs on a poor weak nation more than 8,000 miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these
last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to
understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply
concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to
me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the
brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other
and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for
they must know after a short period there that none of the things we
claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know
that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese,
and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the
wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of
God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those
whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose
culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are
paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and
corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world
as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves
America, to the leaders of our own nation. The great initiative in this
war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently
one of them wrote these words, and I quote, "Each day the war goes on,
the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of
those humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their
friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans,
who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do
not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological
and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image
of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and
militarism." Unquote.

If we continue there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the
world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop
our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left
with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy and
deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to
achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the
beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to
the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must
be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for
our sins and errors in Vietnam we should take the initiative in bringing
a halt to this tragic war and set a date that we will remove all foreign
troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.
[Applause]

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to
grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime
which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations
we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that
is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.
[Applause]

Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while
we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful
commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our
nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to
match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest
possible.

These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the
moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to
survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on
the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending
us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against
the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go
on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but
a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit. [Applause]
And if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing
Clergy and Laymen Concerned with committees for the next generation.
They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned
about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and
South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and
attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound
change in American life and policy. [Applause] Such thoughts take us
beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to
him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During
the past 10 years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has
now justified the presence of U.S. military 'advisors' in Venezuela.
This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for
the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It
tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in
Cambodia, and why American napalm and green beret forces have already
been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind
that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five
years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will
make violent revolution inevitable." [Applause]

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has
taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by
refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the
immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world
revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.
We must rapidly begin to shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a
'person-oriented' society. When machines and computer, profit motives
and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant
triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of
being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness
and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we
are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will
be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole
Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be
constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's
highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It
comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars need re-structuring.
[Applause]

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring
contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look
across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing
huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the
profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries,
and say: 'This is not just.' The Western arrogance of feeling that it
has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not
just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and
say of war: 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This business
of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with
orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins
of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody
battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot
be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual
death. [Applause]

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well
lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a
tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so
that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.
There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with
bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness.
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting
against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs
of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The
shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before.
'The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.' We in the West
must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of
comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of Communism, and our proneness to
adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the
revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch
anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has
the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, Communism is a judgment against our
failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions
that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture
the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world
declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism. With this
powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust
mores and thereby speed the day when 'every valley shall be exalted, and
every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made
straight and the rough places plain.'

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our
loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation
must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to
preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern
beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an
all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft
misunderstood, this often misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed
by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now
become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of
love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not
speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of
that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme
unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the
door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu, Moslem, Christian,
Jewish, Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up
in the first epistle of Saint John:

'Let us love one another; for love is God and everything that loveth is
born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth no knoweth no God; for God
is love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is
perfected in us.'

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no
longer afford to worship the God of Hate or bow before the altar of
retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever rising
tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and
individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold
Toynbee says: 'Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving
choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil.
Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is
going to have the last word.'

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We
are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding
conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late.
Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us
standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The 'tide in
the affairs of men' does not remain at flood; it ebbs. We may cry out
desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to
every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues
of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: 'Too late.'
There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance
or our neglect. Omar Kayam is right, 'The moving finger writes, and
having written moves on...' We still have a choice today, non-violent
coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak
for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a
world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be
dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for
those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and
strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and
bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of
the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall
we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too
hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate
against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or
will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with
their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The
choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose
in this crucial moment of human history.

That noble bard of yesterday James Russel Loyle eloquently stated, 'Once
to every man and nation comes a moment to decide. In the strife of truth
and falsehood, for the good or evil side, some great cause, God's new
messiah offers each the gloom or light and the choice goes by forever
twixt that darkness and that light though the cause of evil prosper. Yet
tis truth alone is strong. Though her portion be the scaffold and upon
the throne be wrong, yet that scaffold sways a future. And behind the
dim unknown standeth God within the shadow keeping watch above his own.'
And if we will only make the right choice we will be able to transform
this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will
make the right choice we will be able to transform the jangling discords
of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but
make the right choice we will be able to speed up the day all over
America and all over the world when justice will roll down like waters
and righteousness like a mighty stream. [Applause]

toplab@toplab.org
http://www.toplab.org

"My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the
battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
--George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

"...I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult, and
that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult--and we are
prevailing."
--George W. Bush, June 28, 2005

U.S. military fatalities through May 1, 2003: 140
U.S. military fatalities through June 28, 2005: 1743
U.S. military fatalities as of April 4, 2006: 2342

Iraqi civilian fatalities through May 1, 2003: 1982
Iraqi civilian fatalities through June 28, 2005: 22,563 – 25,560 (estimated)
Iraqi civilian fatalities as of April 4, 2006: 33,821 – 37,943 (estimated)

Sources: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ http://icasualties.org/oif/

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org
List Archives: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
Subscribe: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
================================================================

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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Race Dialog Is Back. Racism Never Went Away
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/c82cc913aea3a7a6
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 10:57 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Race Dialog Is Back. Racism Never Went Away

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by TOPLAB - Apr 4, 2006

The Black Commentator - March 30, 2006
http://www.blackcommentator.com/177/177_think_samad_race_dialogue.html

Race Dialogue Is Back, But...Did Racism Ever Go Away?

by Anthony Asadullah Samad

America is talking about race again. With Crash winning the Oscars and
Ice Cube co-producing a series on race called Black/White on FX, race
dialogue is back! But did racism ever go away? Or did it just change
forms and go underground? It has been well documented over the past five
years (since the turn of the century) that the racial disparities of the
last half of the 20th Century are still very much in evidence today. In
some instances, they are greater than they were 40 or 50 years ago.

These studies, that come from everywhere, from major universities to
private research institutions to civil rights organizations, all say the
same thing: that race is still very much prevalent in American society,
whether we talk about it or not. So since race differences never went
away, can we also assume that racism never went away? Of course, we can.
Thus, the need for a renewed race dialogue. America is not colorblind.
It's so blinded by color that it just can't see racism. Like looking
into sun with Ray-Bans, the glare doesn't make that object in front of
you disappear. You will still run into it if you don't make an
adjustment in your vision. America never made the adjustment. That's
what the movie, Crash, was about: our refusal to acknowledge race until
it confronted us.

Race dialogue took a decade-long hiatus (since President Bill Clinton's
attempt to raise a national dialogue on race almost ten years ago) as
America came up with race "fatigue" after the Soon Ja Du, Rodney King,
O.J. Simpson racial episodes of the early 1990s. Of course, Clinton's
efforts were an attempt to bring forth what some called "the Third
Reconstruction," to address the racial disparities left over from the
unfinished work of the 1960's war on poverty that was interrupted during
the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. By the time the Reagan
Revolution came along, Reagan had declared that poverty had won, and it
was time to end "race policies." By the time George Herbert Walker Bush
came into office, America had developed colorblindness and public policy
initiatives were "race neutral" and any discussion about race, race
differences, and most critically, racism were now persona non grata in
social circles and viewed as politically incorrect in the public domain.
Nobody wanted to talked about race anymore, and opinion leaders went to
great lengths to convince us that race no longer mattered.

Foolish proclamations were made by a new phenomena, the Black
Conservative—a new type of Negro that was used to deflect any discussion
on race and racism. One such fool, Larry Elder, went on national
television (20/20) and said, "There is no racism in America." When I
want comedic relief, I don't put on Steve Harvey, or Cedric "The
Entertainer," or D.L. Hugley. I put in that tape of 20/20 of Larry Elder
saying "there is no racism in America."

America, as a nation, tried so hard to believe that racism no longer
exists, that we just began to ignore even the most obvious
demonstrations of racial mistreatment. Hurricane Katrina was a
revelation for many who came of age in the Post-Civil Rights era, the
era where the notion of race-neutrality also came of age. It's also the
age where America came apart - so much so that Colorblindness became the
new "Jim Crow." White flight to the "burbs," deconstruction of
affirmative action, economic boons of the 1980s and 1990s, re-emergence
of white privilege, the decline of public education and the 9/11 attacks
were all reasons to ignore race over the past 30 years. The separation
in wealth, knowledge, geography and the nation's shift in political
ideology allowed us to deflect the race debate on every front.

Now America got a chance to see how a simple natural catastrophe had
such stigmatizing racial implications. While the debate is much more
stratified (multi-focal) than the historical black-white (bi-focal) race
politic, race was (and still is) the underlying factor in a time when
class conflict (the politics of the rich versus the poor) is emerging as
the biggest social threat in America today. While race has long been at
the root of the poverty question, there are some who still refuse to
believe that the evacuation delay in New Orleans, and the subsequent
evacuation support efforts in Houston, and other cities, wasn't about
race. America still can't see what it refuses to acknowledge. But a
refusal to see something doesn't make it disappear.

Author Tim Wise, appearing before the Urban Issues Forum last week,
stated that "Whites don't get it" when it comes to understanding their
own privilege, racism and how it affects others not part of the
"in-group."

"Whiteblindness," as Wise called, is a refusal to understand their own
pathology with respect to race prejudice, the privileges that race
affords them, denies others, causing society (largely themselves) to
ignore some very fundamental "danger signs" that, because of their own
race biases, don't frame all white males as suspect, which caused the
Columbine school massacre and the Oklahoma City bombing to occur despite
all signs - two events hidden by white America's "blind spot" - while
causing every Black (male), Arab, Muslim, and now Latino (because of the
anti-immigrant backlash) to be met with suspicion, to be perceived as
the biggest threats to society, profiling them as un-American,
un-democratic, un-patriotic and ungovernable (terroristic). White
radicals who terrorize are just sick, troubled or misguided and
suspicions are limited to their individual acts. Driven by the
xenophobic fears of Whites and passed on to sub-culture populations, all
of our biases we have been propelled by the dominate culture's attitude
on race and race tolerance.

America has crashed and burned on the race issue the past two decades.
But now, at least, the dialogue has returned through the subtle entrée
of art imitating life. Or is it life imitating art imitating life…? The
race dialogue being a throwback of white minstrels imitating Blacks by
wearing blackface then acting out their pre-defined perceptions of black
intellectual and cultural behavior, allows us to watch movies and
television to sympathize with acts of racism and differences in racial
treatment we thought were days long past, but Blacks knew - had never
went away. It only went away in the eyes of Whites refusing to see race.

As we know, turning one's head doesn't solve the problem. It just allows
the trash of racism to pile up in the house until the stench becomes
unbearable. Somebody has to say something or somebody needs to take out
the trash. Well, the movie, Crash, and Ice Cube's Black-White series
have decided to say something, calling out the stench.

Colorblindness was a ploy to refuse to acknowledge race, but racism is
as plain as it's ever been. Thanks to the arts, we again smell the
stench of racism. Now it's time to take out the trash.

[Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing director of
the Urban Issues Forum and author of 50 Years After Brown: The State of
Black Equality In America (Kabili Press, 2005). He can be reached at
http://www.AnthonySamad.com ]

toplab@toplab.org
http://www.toplab.org

"My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the
battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
--George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

"...I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult, and
that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult--and we are
prevailing."
--George W. Bush, June 28, 2005

U.S. military fatalities through May 1, 2003: 140
U.S. military fatalities through June 28, 2005: 1743
U.S. military fatalities as of April 4, 2006: 2342

Iraqi civilian fatalities through May 1, 2003: 1982
Iraqi civilian fatalities through June 28, 2005: 22,563 – 25,560 (estimated)
Iraqi civilian fatalities as of April 4, 2006: 33,821 – 37,943 (estimated)

Sources: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ http://icasualties.org/oif/

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org
List Archives: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
Subscribe: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Hunger Strike Called in Miami Janitors' Strike
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/9fc213e82b3b22dc
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 10:57 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Hunger Strike Called in Miami Janitors' Strike

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Janitors' Strike at University of Miami: Hunger Strike Called

NYCOSH Newswatch - Apr 4, 2006
http://www.nycosh.org

Janitors and Students to Start Hunger Strike Over Civil and Human
Rights Violations Against Immigrant Janitors at University of Miami -
Service Employees International Union, April 4, 2006

Strike Is about Hope for Healthcare and Better Pay (Op-ed) -

Miami Herald, March 15, 2006

Janitors and Students to Start Hunger Strike Over Civil and Human Rights
Violations Against Immigrant Janitors at University of Miami

Service Employees International Union
April 4, 2006

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060404/dctuv002.html?.v=1

MIAMI, April 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Eight striking janitors along with eight
University of Miami students have pledged to stage a hunger strike
beginning Wednesday morning to protest the ongoing and unchecked abuses
and civil rights violations committed by UNICCO at the University of
Miami. Immigrant, low wage workers suffer at the hands of unscrupulous
employers who believe they can get away with violating the rights of
workers without repercussions from the law or the community. Janitors at
the University of Miami have been on strike for six weeks over unfair
labor practices committed by UNICCO Services, the janitorial company
hired by the University to clean the campus.

There will be a "Last Supper" for the hunger fasters tonight, April 4,
at the Strike Sanctuary @ 6:00 p.m. There will be a kick off news
conference tomorrow, April 5 at 10:00 a.m. Visual: Students and strikers
will be building a refuge for the hunger fasters and their supporters

"Unscrupulous employers prey on low-wage immigrant workers, violating
their rights and using their immigration status, and their poverty, to
intimidate them into silence," said Anna Berger, secretary-treasurer of
the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU),
"and we can not let that happen unchallenged as a free society."

UNICCO is currently facing charges by OSHA, the NLRB, and state agencies
for endangering their employees as well as well as violating their civil
rights in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Florida. (On the Web @
uniccodirt.com)

The NLRB issued a formal complaint against UNICCO for violating the
rights of janitors at the University of Miami after a lengthy
investigation of charges brought against UNICCO by janitors were found
to have merit. Since the complaint was handed down in January 2006, more
than a dozen new charges against UNICCO have surfaced at the University
of Miami, and Nova Southeastern. Charges filed by UNICCO against SEIU
Local 11 were dismissed by the NLRB.

The janitors created full-size, 7-foot silhouettes that they will
position on campus. The silhouettes are designed to educate the campus
about the effect of abuse on workers and their families.

Gissela Alejandra Ochoa's is just one of many stories. Each day we will
release the story of an additional worker.

The Accident

"My supervisor came and told me I had to clean the bathrooms. I had to
remove the rust from where the toilet paper is placed and from the
floors. They were really watching me that day, 'listen, they're going to
come to check on your work.' That day I mixed the 'Biscayne' with the
chlorine. It turned into a kind of gel and started to foam. A very
strong odor came out of the mix. 'What is this I asked myself,' but even
though the stench was horrible, we still have to work.

"I went to the closet and took a pair of gloves, because they don't
provide us with gloves, and went to the third floor. I spread out the
mix (on the bathroom wall) and left it -- I went to the second floor
restroom and applied the mix there. After that, I went back up to the
third floor.

Feeling Sick

"I started feeling sick, but kept on working. I felt nauseated, my head
hurt, and my stomach hurt. I was scared because I was alone in the
building. I called my supervisor, and told him, 'listen, I don't feel
well. I don't know what's happening to me and I'm scared. I mixed the
Biscayne and the chlorine and I don't know if it's made me ill.'

"When they arrived my skin was cold, I was sweaty and shivering. They
took me outside to walk to see if the fresh air would make me feel
better. But I couldn't stand it any longer. I started to vomit. The
supervisor told me that once I finished cleaning the first floor
(bathroom) I could go home. I can't remember how, but somehow I finished
cleaning.

"I did not go to the hospital for a week because I could not pay and
they (UNICCO) would not take me. I didn't say anything to the union
because I was afraid I'd get fired.

"I was having problems breathing. I was thinking, 'what's happening to
me?' I was very scared. If something happened to me, who was going to
care for my daughter? So I went to the hospital. I felt very alone.

The Union or UNICCO -- You Decide

"At the hospital my supervisor asked me, 'Are you going to go home with
them (the union) or with us?' I was horrified. If I said I'm going with
them (the union), they would fire me. I said nothing. The union had come
to check on me. He asked me what they were doing there. My supervisor
said he was going to call security. I wanted the earth to open up and
swallow me whole because I didn't know what to do. Afterward, the
company promised me everything was going to be fine and that they were
going to take care of all the expenses.

Promises to Nightmares

"The only thing I asked of the company was that they heal me. The
company took me from the hospital around 3 or 4 p.m. but I did not get
home until about 11 at night. Nobody knew where I was. My boyfriend was
nervous and left messages for me on my cell. Nobody could find me.
Later, they made me sign some papers, but I didn't understand them.

Restraining Order

"At some point they asked me if I wanted them to take out a restraining
order against the union. I told them what I wanted was for them to heal
me because I was still feeling sick. I was scared. If they realized I
was going to support the union, they would abandon me -- and I thought I
was going to be left to die from this illness.

"They told me, 'when the union comes to your house, tell them to leave.
They cannot get close to you because you asked us to take out a
restraining order.' I was in such bad shape that they knew how to
manipulate me. Everything they said I said yes to. They gave me a phone
number to a lawyer so I could give it to the union. When they came by, I
was really scared that they would be taken to prison, so I would ask
them to leave. I thought the company was keeping a watchful eye on me. I
was terrified. But I never signed nor saw this order."

Note: Gissela defied her supervisors and began publicly supporting the
union. The toxic effect of the unspecified gas fumes, vapor have
affected her lungs, heart, and kidneys. UNICCO never paid for Gissela's
medical bills. As of now, she has more than $8,000 in medical debt
stemming from the incident. Gissela has testified before the NLRB. Her
case in currently under investigation.

***

Miami Herald - March 15, 2006
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14100468.htm

Strike Is about Hope for Healthcare and Better Pay (Op-ed)

By Clara Vargas

Ask us, the janitors who clean the University of Miami, what this strike
is about -- and we will tell you. Hope.

We have been hoping for change for a long time. Hoping that UNICCO, the
company we work for, would raise our pay or provide us with health
insurance.

But there comes a time when hope is not enough.

When your family is hungry, when you cannot pay the rent, when you stay
away from the doctor because you cannot afford it, hope is not enough.
At 57, Pedro Ruiz works 15 hours a day at two jobs just to have enough
to live on. He can only dream about retiring or buying a house. Marta
Rubi cleans 209 offices in eight hours. Marlene, who at 57 works seven
days a week, 12 hours a day, still can't earn enough to live.

The work is bruising and dangerous. And UNICCO doesn't care enough about
us to make sure that we are safe at work. We have been ordered to haul
heavy machinery up flights of stairs without help, to clean up
infectious waste at the medical complex without gloves and to sign
documents about the dangerous chemicals we are expected to use without
being able to read them. All for under $7 an hour.

We decided to form a union

UNICCO treats its employees just as badly in other cities. Workers have
died because it did not care enough to make our workplace safe. Three in
Boston, one in Oklahoma. And that's just in the last five years. It had
to pay a $1 million settlement to workers who came forward to stand up
against sexual harassment at UNICCO and spend another $500,000 to stop
any further sexual harassment on the job.

We had hope. But UNICCO had such a reputation for breaking the law on so
many fronts -- labor law, health and safety laws, civil rights laws --
that we came to realize that we needed action, too.

That is why we decided to form a union. Through a union, our voices
would be strong. But UNICCO began to terrorize us when we started
talking to each other about the union. UNICCO spied on us at meetings.
It threatened us. And to scare us, it fired Zoila Marsuli, one of our
leaders, the night before the strike vote.

Even before Zoila was fired, we filed charges with the government, which
sided with us, and went so far as to issue a formal complaint against
UNICCO for illegally interfering with our legal right to organize a
union. The right to unite with our co-workers to build a better life
without having to fear that we will be spied on and fired is so central
to our future that we went on strike to protect it.

UNICCO janitors from Boston and other cities came to tell us about their
situations. We learned from them that in Boston, New Jersey, Connecticut
and many other places, UNICCO pays $13 an hour and provides health
insurance. In those cities UNICCO does not stand in the way of its
workers forming a union. When a majority of workers sign a card saying
that they want a union, instead of threatening them, UNICCO accepts the
will of their workers and agrees to negotiate higher wages and benefits.
But for us here in Florida, the company has a different standard: It
pays us less and threatens us more.

As equals, not as servants

UNICCO executives from Boston came down to lecture us on democracy. Many
of us came to this country fleeing dictatorships in search of freedom
and democracy. We know what democracy is. It's being able to make a
choice without fear of losing one's job.

When my 10-year-old son comes down to the picket line and asks me why I
am on strike, I will tell him that I am on strike for our right to be
able to negotiate our future as equals, not as servants. And then I will
tell him that I am on strike for hope -- hope for a better future for
him, and for all of us.

Clara Vargas, one of the nearly 200 janitors on strike at the University
of Miami, is a member of the Justice Leadership Council, a committee of
workers elected to represent the UM janitors.

(c) 2006 MiamiHerald.com

Jonathan Bennett, Public Affairs Director
New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health
116 John Street, Suite 604 New York NY 10038
jbennett@nycosh.org
Tel: 212-227-6440 ext. 14
Fax: 212-227-9854
http://www.nycosh.org

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: NC School Board Wrestles with Bible Distribution
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/8d7a16fbb34fbff9
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 10:57 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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NC School Board Wrestles with Bible Distribution

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Freedom from Religion Foundatin - April 4, 2006
http://www.ffrf.org

Wilmington Star (North Carolina) - April 4, 2006
http://www.starnewsonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID 0660403032

Religious material in schools on agenda in Brunswick County

By Sam Scott

Facing the threat of legal action, Brunswick County school board members
tonight will try to craft a plan to allow limited distribution of Bibles and
other religious materials in schools.

In a split vote last month, the board decided to allow religious literature
to be "passively" available to middle and high school students. The move
followed a request from Gideons International, the group best known for
placing free Bibles in hotels. At the time, board member Ray Gilbert asked
the board attorney to defend members well if the decision snared them in
legal wrangling.

A month later, Gilbert appears prescient. The American Civil Liberties Union
of North Carolina and the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation
have sent concerned letters to the board.

At issue is the separation of church and state that prohibits governments
from advancing or opposing any set of religious beliefs, a standard the
courts have set especially high when children are involved.

"If the vote to permit this unconstitutional action is not rescinded, our
group will seek an injunction to halt this illegal proceeding," wrote Annie
Laurie Gaylor, Foundation co-president, in a letter to Katie McGee, schools
superintendent. "Rogue school boards cannot be permitted to undermine our
Constitution and proselytize small children."

A concerned parent with children in Brunswick schools contacted the
organization, Gaylor said.

But Shirley Babson, vice-chairwoman of the board, said she is not worried.
The proposal, based on a decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals,
calls for only one day a year during which people of all faiths could set
out literature in designated places outside of the classroom or assemblies.

No school employees would take part, and only middle and high schools would
be involved. A sign would indicate the schools did not endorse or disapprove
of the literature.

"Children are exposed to everything but the Bible every time they turn on
the television or every time they walk into a grocery store and see the
cover of a magazine," Babson said. "The tide has to be changed somehow."

Jennifer Rudinger, the executive director of the N.C. ACLU, discouraged the
schools from allowing religious literature to be distributed at all, fearing
the potential for coercion.

But any schools that did distribute materials would have to follow
guidelines laid out by the Fourth Circuit decision Babson referred to,
Rudinger said. That ruling limits the distribution of religious materials to
secondary schools, Rudinger said.

That could be problematic for Brunswick, she said, because the draft
proposal going to the board tonight also would apply to grades 6 through 8,
which are considered elementary level in North Carolina, she said.

The policy could prove troubling for the schools in other ways as well.
Board member Willie Gore and Chairman Scott Milligan voted against the
change last month, saying the board could be opening the door to groups it
might find less appealing than the Gideons.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national association of
freethinkers (atheists and agnostics) working to keep church and state
separate since 1978. For more information, go to http://www.ffrf.org.

*
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NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: "Transformation of Venezuelan Society" 4/6 -NYC
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/ab6a40b8a382722b
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 10:57 pm
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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"Transformation of Venezuelan Society" 4/6 -NYC

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Walter Lippmann (cubanews) - Apr 4, 2006

The Jacob Burns Ethics Center
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law/Yeshiva University

Presents

The Transformation of Venezuelan Society
under its New Constitution

Justice Fernando Ramón Vegas Torrealba Justice of the Supreme Court
of Venezuela In 1999, the Venezuelan people approved by popular vote
a new constitution which includes many guarantees for formerly
excluded sectors of society - the work of women in the home is
recognized as contributing economic value and entitling them to
social security; a worker's right to a wage that provides a life with
dignity is recognized; the rights of indigenous people and minorities
are protected; and health care is a guaranteed right. Provisions are
made for the protection of the environment. Political freedoms such
as expression and assembly are articulated. Oil and mineral wealth is
claimed as the property of the Venezuelan republic and new
legislation has been passed that designates a portion of the profits
from the oil industry to public welfare - health care, housing, low
cost food and worker cooperatives. Private as well as cooperative
forms of property o wnership are recognized. Justice Vegas Torrealba
will discuss this new constitution and its impact on Venezuelan
society.

Thursday, April 6, 2006 at 5:30 p.m.
Jacob Burns Moot Court Room
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Yeshiva University, Brookdale Center
55 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10003

RSVP: carley @yu.edu or 212.790.0410

***

Justice Fernando Ramón Vegas Torrealba was appointed to the Venezuelan
Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) in August, 2004, and assumed office on
January, 2005. He sits in the Electoral Chamber of the TSJ. Previously
Justice Vegas Torrealba was a civil and labor litigator who argued many
cases before the old, as well as the newly constituted, Supreme Tribunal.
>From 2002-2004 he helped to outline the new responsibilities and design
training for public officials under the new Bolivarian Constitution and
international agreements pertaining to human rights, as Director of
Education of the Venezuelan national police.

He is an expert in commercial relations, has written and lectured
extensively in this area and has helped to negotiate various international
trade agreements with companies doing business in Venezuela. Justice Vegas
Torrealba earned his law degree at the Central University of Venezuela and
holds a Masters Degree in the Laws of Economic Integration. The Justice is a
published novelist and writes regular columns for newspapers and journals.

***

The Jacob Burns Center for Ethics in the Practice of Law sponsors courses,
programs, and events that provoke dialogue and critical thought on ethical
and moral standards and issues of professional responsibility. The Center
helps prepare students to face with integrity the difficult and important
questions that arise in all areas of legal practice. The annual Access to
Justice Award honors those whose practical work has made a significant
difference for those underserved by the justice system.

*
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TOPIC: An Interview with William Blum
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/b248d57f419b650a
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Apr 5 2006 3:59 am
From: "David Morgan \(MAMS\)"

CounterPunch - April 4, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/corseri04042006.html

Osama's Favorite Writer?

An Interview with William Blum

By GARY CORSERI

WILLIAM BLUM left the State Department in 1967 because of his
opposition to what the United States was doing in Vietnam. He has been
a freelance journalist in the United States, Europe and South America,
and has been a recipient of a Project Censored award for "exemplary
journalism." His books include, ROGUE STATE (recommended by Osama bin
Laden in his January, 06 audiotape); KILLING HOPE; FREEING THE WORLD
TO DEATH; and, WEST-BLOC DISSIDENT.

Q. In his January 19, '06 audio tape message to the world, Osama bin
Laden stated: "If Bush carries on with his lies and oppression, it
would be useful for you to read the book, ROGUE STATE." Then, he
quoted the line in which you write that you would end US interference
in the nations of the world as soon as you become president Now, I've
read ROGUE STATE, and I know that your projected first 4-days in
office would actually be even more interesting than that. How do you
conceive the first 4 days of a Blum Administration?

A. The first day, I'll apologize-publicly and sincerely-to all the
widows and orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, to all the many
millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would announce to
the world that America's global military interventions have come to an
end The second day, I would tell Israel that it is no longer the 51st
state, but, oddly enough, a foreign country ... On the third day I
would reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings
to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many
American bombings, invasions and sanctions. There would be more than
enough money. One year's US military budget is equal to more than
$20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus was born. On the fourth
day, I'd be assassinated."

Q. Soon after bin Laden's endorsement, ROGUE STATE leapt from below
200,000 on Amazon's book list of sales, to number 21. Some media
people asked if you had any regrets about OBL's recommendation-if you
wanted to renounce it--and you stated that you did not. You've called
the public attention your fifteen minutes of fame. It's now 10 weeks
since the bin Laden tape. How are things going? Are you still enjoying
your 15 minutes?

A. It probably lasted about a month, a month and a half It was very
nice while it lasted. When I think about it, the fact that I had the
ear and the eyes of tens of millions of Americans who normally would
never hear anything from me, or about me, and I could say things they
normally are never exposed to at all by the mass media. So it really
was marvelous. On a personal level it was very time-consuming; I had
to put aside all kinds of things. But on a political level, it was
excellent.

Q. So, the attention is tapering off?

A. Oh, it's gone I mean, I still have the occasional interview, but I
had those before-

Q. Do you have any intention to renounce bin Laden's endorsement?

A. No. The political value of it outweighs any other
consideration-getting me on the mass media. As I've said to some of the
people who interviewed me, I'm part of a movement which has the very
ambitious goal of slowing down-if not stopping-the American Empire. To
do that, we need to reach the American people. And to reach them we
need access to the mass media. So, for that reason, I'm very thankful.

Q. Why did bin Laden single out your book among all the others?

A. Partly because it was available in Arabic. I assume he read the
Arabic edition. Partly because it says things which he's been
saying-that the reason for anti-American terrorist acts have to do
with past American foreign policy, not with American religion or
secular government or American music or films or television. It's about
our foreign policy. It's what we do to the world that has created all
these anti-American terrorists.

Q. That reminds me of an interview you gave to GUERILLA RADIO in
Halifax, Canada, posted at COUNTERPUNCH on March 8, '03. You said:
"If the U.S. carries out the war in the face of worldwide opposition, it
may be the beginning of the end for the Empire. And I hope it is."
Well, we're now into the fourth year of a much worse war than the
lightning-swift operation we were promised--do you still hope and
believe this is the "beginning of the end for the Empire"?

A. Oh yeah! The Empire is on its way out. The opposition is growing
all the time. The numbers of Americans will before too long reach a
critical mass and explode. I don't know exactly what form that
explosion will take, but it's going to happen The Republicans are
losing the support of many leading conservatives. There must be ten
leading conservatives who have come out in the past few months in no
uncertain terms condemning the Bush Administration and their foreign
policy. The end can't be too far away. Hopefully, they will not take
the world with them.

Q. That great sucking sound will not be the world going down the
drain?

A. It will be Bush and Rumsfeld and Rice-and their ilk-sucking down
all the way to hell!

Q. How long will it take?

A. Who knows

Q. But you expect to see it?

A. Yes, even at my advanced age, I expect to see it.

Q. You're 72 now?

A. I just turned 73 ...

Q. You've described the 9/11 attacks as "an understandable retaliation
against US foreign policy," while making it clear that this is not a
justification for them. One of the debts I owe you-and I've now read
ROGUE STATE, FREEING THE WORLD TO DEATH and KILLING HOPE-is that you
contextualize and make comprehensible so much of modern history. In
KILLING HOPE, especially, you tell the story of what Barbara Tuchman
called "the march of folly,"-but, here, it's our unique folly, that of
a superpower which enjoyed so much of the world's good will after
World War II, then squandered it. In your books, you roam the globe,
and show with an investigative reporter's eye for detail, and an
historian's grasp of context, how our repeated interventions in the
affairs of other nations brought catastrophe and tragedy to them and,
often, to ourselves, as well. Focussing on the Middle East, can you
walk us through the idea of "understandable retaliation"? Can you help
us to see our foreign policy through the insurgent's eye, the
terrorist in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan?

A. In my book, ROGUE STATE, I have a list of some of the lesser "nice"
things done to the Middle East since the 1980's--so we're talking
about some 25 years. I have about 20 items on this list. Just to name
a few: the support of corrupt and tyrannical governments from the Shah
of Iran to the Saudis; the shooting down of two Libyan planes in 1981;
the bombing of Libya in 1986; the bombing of an Iranian ship in 1987;
shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in 1988 it goes on-more
bombings, more downing of planes, attacking ships the habitual support
of Israel, the habitual condemnation of Palestinian resistance to this
ending with the devastation and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq in
2001 and 2003. That's a small sample of what we've done in the Middle
East in the past 20 years or so. So, it's not surprising that many
people there would be hell-bent on some kind of retaliation.

Q. You also have an extensive list of votes at the United Nations,
where we've practically stood alone, or with a single ally-more often
than not, Israel-against the wishes of the world.

A. Against the wishes of the other members of the U.N., certainly 140
to 1; 139 to 2. Dozens and dozens of examples. And it's not just the
voting where we say "to hell with you" to the rest of the world The
U.S. has gotten rid of high U.N. officials when they wouldn't follow
US bidding. Concerning the environment, for example, we've gotten rid
of more than one official who would not cater to US wishes. People
like Mary Robinson, the former Irish president, from her position at
the U.N. I've got a long list in FREEING THE WORLD TO DEATH.

Q. I've got to tell you Before I met you, I was expecting something of
a firebrand. Instead, you're soft-spoken, gentlemanly, kind of
professorial-a good listener. Though we've only met twice, I sense
you're a straight-shooter, a man who doesn't pull his punches ... I'm
wondering: How does a guy like you get to be a guy like you? Tell us
about yourself-

A. I'm not really that soft-spoken The reason I'm that way in public
is if I get too excited and I speak too fast, my speech is not as
clear as it might be. I have to speak slowly and calmly to be coherent
I have a temper You mean how I became this way personally or
politically?

Q. Both

A. Well, it's a long story. I've written a I have a political memoir
which goes into that in great detail, it's called WEST BLOC DISSIDENT
(as opposed to an East Bloc dissident!). See, I'm a product of the
Cold War.

My politics stems from the Cold War. I'm always looking to counterpose
the propaganda I was raised with-the anti-Soviet, anti-Communist
propaganda--that's very much a part of my thinking.

Q. You're called an historian on the cover of your books, on the book
jackets are you trained as an historian?

A. No. Oddly enough, I'm self-taught.

Q. The best of us are!

A. In college, I majored in economics and accounting. I worked as an
accountant, worked for CPA's and then I went into computers in the
early '60's. I was in on the ground floor. If I had never left that
field, I would be a multi-millionaire today-I was really good at it! I
spent four years at IBM. Then I spent two years as a systems analyst
and programmer at the State Department. Working with computers, but my
reason for being there was otherwise: I wanted to become a foreign
service officer. Because I was still a good, loyal
anti-Communist--this was the mid-60's-and I wanted to join the
anti-Communist crusade. So I took a job with the State Department,
biding my time until I could take the foreign service exam. But a
thing called Vietnam came along and changed my mind completely. I left
the State Department, and I became one of the founders of the
WASHINGTON FREE PRESS, the first alternative newsweekly in Washington.
That's where I began writing The rest, as they say, is history

Q. So

A. But I didn't write my first book-at least I didn't have my first
book published, until I was a pretty advanced age--I was, um, 53. I
think of myself as the Grandma Moses of Radical Writing!

Q. I don't think anyone will confuse you with Grandma Moses! One more
diversionary, personal question I was surprised to learn that you had
a stint as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Do you have any delicious or
pernicious insights about that?

A. Yeah that's also explained in detail in WEST BLOC DISSIDENT I'd
sent a copy of my first book, KILLING HOPE to Oliver Stone and he
invited me down to speak to him. He told me he wanted to make a
documentary based on that book. So I moved to Hollywood, and I was
there working on this film for six months. It's a long story, but it
didn't come to fruition. I had the best-paying job I'll ever have for
those six months, though. Then I stayed on in Hollywood for seven more
years I completed three scripts, but none was ever optioned, so I must
say that my career in Hollywood was a failure-except for the money I
made on Stone's project Hollywood is full of people who "express
interest." They can "express-interest" you to death!

Q. Much of American culture seems to me a game of images, smoke and
mirrors, fraud. "Expressing interest" to the point of death! I'd like
to talk about fraud getting back to the Cold War, you've written that
"The Cold War as a moral crusade was always a fraud. There was never
any such animal as the International Communist Conspiracy. There were,
as there still are, people living in misery, rising up in protest
against their condition, against an oppressive government most likely
supported by the U.S." I know that you were in Chile, and you've seen
that aspect of the way our government intervenes and overthrows other
governments-and that was all part of the so-called Cold War. What were
your personal experiences, did you suffer the consequences of the coup
directly?

A. I was in Chile for eight months. I left before the coup took
place-which may have saved my life because the two Americans who were
killed in the wake of the coup were friends of mine But I was back
home in California when the coup took place, and I was, I was very
upset by that And that, that, played a role in the formation of my
politics

Q. Let me continue in this vein on the Cold War. You've written that
we need to re-define the Cold War, see it not as an East-West struggle
but as a North-South struggle I personally think that since the end of
the Cold War we've been suffering from a sense of triumphalism-we
defeated this major boogeyman, the Evil Empire, and ever since it's
been hard for reason to prevail, for dissident voices to be heard-the
idea of can-do America, the beneficent protector of civilization and
democracy But, if we re-calibrate, if we re-define the Cold War, as
you suggest, then a very different picture emerges. Then we see more
failures than successes. Can you help us to see the Cold War through
your eyes?

A. I tend to view American foreign policy-and the whole world, in
fact, and all of life-I tend to view this from a moral point of view.
Which is not the sole province of people who are religious. One can be
non-religious and still have a very moral point of view. From a moral
viewpoint, the world and the U.S. did not win anything by "winning the
Cold War." The average person in the former Soviet Union and
satellites is much worse off today than they were under the Soviet
Union. Like the average person in Iraq is much worse off today then
they were under Saddam Hussein-which says a great deal! US policy does
not make life better for people. They went around the world during the
Cold War stamping out one attempt after another at improving people's
lives The Cold War has always been sold to us as, "We are the good
guys and the Commies were the bad guys and the good guys won." But
it's a total fabrication I have one chapter in FREEING THE WORLD--I go
from one year to the other in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, showing
examples of the foolishness and the nonsense of the Cold War-all the
crazy things which the average person today under the age of 30, say,
is hardly aware of. That was really an absurd period of US foreign
policy

Q. You've written that we have "a foreign policy establishment
committed to imperialist domination by any means necessary."
(Therefore, we can assume that there's no real difference between
Bush, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, etc.) Your books are as critical of
Clinton and Carter as they are of both Bushes and Reagan. Many people
have heard of the the Peter Principle, but you've got your own take on
it. Please define it according to William Blum.

A. The Peter Principle was a book that came out in the 60s, maybe the
70s, which said that in a corporation or in some institution, an
employe rises to the level of his incompetence and I suggested that in
a foreign policy establishment committed to world domination at any
price a person employed by that establishment reaches the highest
level of cruelty that they can live with. To put it in simple terms,
US foreign policy is cruel, it causes great hardship all over the
world The people who carry out those policies rise in the institutions
to the point where they reach a level of cruelty beyond which they
can't go, where it's too much for their conscience. The cruelest ones
claw their way to the top!

Q. You've said that they rise to the level of their amorality. And you
make a distinction-you say it's not even that they're immoral, because
they think they're fine. It's just that they have no morals-

A. They don't care Of course, everybody like that rationalizes that
what they're doing is really for the betterment of the world, or at
least of the American people.

Q. You cited Madeleine Albright's infamous statement to Leslie Stahl
that the death of half a million Iraqi children under our sanctions
was "worth it." You wrote: "These leaders are cruel because only those
willing and able to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold
positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment."
Following up on this-you've touched on this just now After the 9/11
attacks, many Americans asked in bewilderment, Why do they hate us?
You address that. You write that there is a myth about America, woven
so deeply into the fabric of our national consciousness that it's a
given--and the myth is that, though we often make mistakes, our
intentions, unlike those of other nations, are always honorable, we
always mean well What is the genesis of that myth; how has it been
perpetuated and how can we begin to dispell it, to lift the veil from
our eyes, to understand the Cold War, etc., foreign policy, etc., to
see the world clearly?

A. As to the genesis, I imagine it goes back to the founding of the
nation. I mean, if you read the Declaration of Independence that
really paints a picture of a very noble people engaging in a very
noble undertaking. I have been moved by it. The whole world has been
moved by it-

Q. You even mention that Ho Chi Minh cites our Declaration-

A. Ho Chi Minh used the opening words of our Declaration of
Independence for his Constitution in Vietnam. Despite that, he was
regarded as an enemy till we wiped out ... That shows the insanity of
anti-Communism It didn't matter whether he admired our government and
our way of life. He was a "Commie" and he had to be punished.

Q. My feeling is that the Declaration of Independence is a great
document, but by the time we come to the Constitution, we've got
something else entirely. Then we become a very conservative nation and
it's all about property and so forth.

A. Even in the Constitution you have many famous phrases, beginning
with "We the People" and so on.

Q. That's about the best thing in there, isn't it? Between The
Preamble and the Bill of Rights, it's mostly about protecting property
rights through the electoral college, limiting the franchise, etc.

A. I haven't checked it recently, maybe you're right Okay, let's stick
with the Declaration that probably went a long way in instilling in
Americans the belief that we mean so well I'm sure you can find that
belief in other nations, but it's probably fed here more than anywhere
else

Q. And I think that continuous feeding of the myth helps us understand
how we get away with so much invidious foreign policy year after
dreary year So, foreign policy, then you've written and spoken about
our crusade during the Cold War How did our crusade against
International Communism morph into our crusade against Islamic
nationalism?

A. There's not much difference. They're both the Empire getting very
upset with any obstacle in its way It doesn't matter who the people
are. Often, people on the Left claim that our foreign policy is
racist, that we invade and bomb people of color. But I don't share
that view. The most sustained bombing since the 2nd World War was 78
days non-stop bombing of Yugoslavia-a white, Christian, European
people I don't think the Powers-that-be in the U.S. are anti-Muslim.
What individual leaders in Washington may think is one thing. Some of
them, I'm sure, are racist-on a purely personal basis. But we cannot
confuse that with the policies that come out of Washington. Those
policies are color-blind and religion-blind, and they are aimed at
stopping any obstacle to the expansion of the Empire.

Q. So, you don't see this as a Christian Fundamentalist-Zionist-Wall
Street Alliance against the world?

A. It may be that-but it's not motivated by racism. The Christian
Fundamentalists who support Bush and support Israel-- they're looking
forward to-what's that term when you rise to Heaven?

Q. Rapture?

A. They're looking forward to Rapture. And Rapture supposedly will
come only after Armageddon and other things related to Israel. These
fundamentalists tie in supporting Israel with the coming of Rapture.
And that is not because of any anti-Muslim feelings per se or because
of racism But, individually, I'm sure people like Cheney--I can't
imagine him having any sort of tolerance for non-Christians or
Muslims, but I think it would be a mistake to assume that that's what
motivates US foreign policy.

Q. It's about power? It's about money?

A. It's about corporations. The corporation is the leading unit of
these institutions. Ralph Nader has it right. Ralph Nader's whole
campaign, his whole thrust, his writing is based on pointing out how
the corporation infects and poisons every aspect of American
life-domestic and foreign. It's the corporation which is the chief
devil in this whole scenario.

Q. Getting back to our history, it's worth remembering that 1776 saw
the Declaration of Independence and also Adam Smith's THE WEALTH OF
NATIONS published the same year I'd like to have your reaction to some
recent, official statements ... I often lament that we don't have
reporters with your kind of historical background to question and
rebut the spinmeisters, so here's your chance On March 28th, Donald
Rumsfeld addressed the Army War College, where he said: "From time to
time, one hears the claim that terrorist acts are reactions to
particular American policies. That's not so. Their violence preceded
by many years operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their violence
will not stop until their ideology is confronted."
A. The US policies which are being retaliated against go back to the
early 80's, well before 9/11. And there were retaliations well before
9/11. So, 9/11 is just the most outstanding example of this phenomenon
which has been going on for over 25 years As I've mentioned elsewhere,
it's the same phenomenon all over the world. From the 1950s through
the 1980s in Latin America, the U.S. was doing terrible things-the
same as they did in the Middle East. And in that period, some forty
years, there were numerous anti-American attacks in Latin
America-attacks upon US embasies, personnel from those embassies, and
many bombings of US corporations. This happened in Latin America in
the same way it's happening now in the Middle East, with the exception
of suicide bombings. It works the same way all over the world.

Q. I'd like to talk a little more about how we act in the world. For
example, your books indicate that we act through chicanery, bribery,
assassinations, fraudulent elections, death squads, etc. And we
disguise our actions. Would you tell us, for example,about the
National Endowment for Democracy.

A. That's an organization that came out of a period in the 1970s when
many misdeeds by the CIA and FBI were exposed. Almost every day there
was some revelation about a serious misdeed. In the minds of the Power
Elite, it reached a point where something had to be done. What was
done-and, of course, nothing changed in our foreign policy-what was
done was to form a new organization, one with a nice-sounding name,
the National Endowment for Democracy, which would continue to do many
of the things the CIA had been doing, but the N.E.D. would do them
somewhat overtly, therefore, hopefully, losing the stigma attached to
CIA covert activities. For the past 25 years or so, the N.E.D. has
been carrying out operations all over the world, in the same fashion
the CIA did-interfering in elections, overthrowing governments,
suppressing movements not favored by Washington-they've been doing
these somewhat openly. They hand out grants, and they publish lists of
the grants they disburse, so in that sense it's open, one can see
who's getting the money. Of course, they don't tell you how the money
is actually spent or what the effect of that spending actually is.
I've followed the money trail and document in my books how the grants
don't further democracy, but just the opposite-the money is used to
overthrow democratically elected governments.

Q. Again, we want to maintain the myth of our integrity, our good
intentions, but your books reveal the other side I have another recent
comment by Rumsfeld In a report in the March 29th UK TELEGRAPH,
Rumsfeld was asked about the US/Iraqi raid on a Shia mosque resulting
in the deaths of 21 unarmed worshippers and an imam. Rumsfeld
disparaged the claims about unarmed worshippers being killed,
responding, "The US government has not got to the point where we are
as deft and clever and facile and quick as the enemy that is perfectly
capable of lying, having it printed all over the world, and there's no
penalty for having lied." Have we gotten to that point?

A. We got to it decades ago. There are many entire books based on the
lies of George Bush and other leaders of the U.S. My books deal with
many of the lies, but not so much on a personal basis. I've documented
the lies involved in our foreign policy. We are the masters. I give
many, many examples in my book, KILLING HOPE, of the lies we've
employed. We have it down to a fine science, the way we would plant
articles in newspapers-and we're still doing the same thing in Iraq.
But now it's being revealed much sooner. Which is a good sign. That's
one reason I can be optimistic. Things are exposed much sooner now
than before.

Q. Thanks to the Internet?

A. That's one of the most hopeful developments!

Q. The last question relating to Rumsfeld At the Army War College,
about critics of the war, he said: "They say that a retreat from Iraq
would provide an American escape from the violence. However, we know
that any reprieve would be short-lived The war that the terrorists
began would continue, and free people would continue to be their
targets."

A. This "war that the terrorists began," as he puts it, didn't exist
before the American invasion and occupation. That by itself is reason
enough to pull out. I think the violence would very quickly come to an
end. I don't think the people of Iraq have a need for this kind of
civil war. They have a need for peace and quiet and sovereignty. They
certainly don't have sovereignty now. Just last week the White House
gave a clear message that they don't want the man who is now Prime
Minister, to continue in office!

Q. Jaafari?

A. Umh The fact that Washington can say that to the world,
unashamedly, says everything you need to know about soverignty there.

Q. I've asked you to be a reporter at a press conference, now I'd like
you to be a surgeon. You've written: "The American mind is,
politically, so deeply formed that to liberate it would involve
uncommon, and as yet perhaps undiscovered, philosophical and surgical
skill." How can we go about liberating our minds?

A. As I said in a recent "Anti-Empire Report," those people who are
beyond surgery or any kind of relief-I estimate their number at 15% of
the population-- I suggest to activists to stop wasting their time on
them. They will not change even if the Government comes into their
homes and kidnaps their first-born and takes them away screaming The
other 85% are capable of change if they get enough input. Some people
can see how they've been lied to with a single example. Other people
need to be continuously exposed-on television, at rallies-they need to
hear certain messages again and again. That's why it's a good thing to
keep repeating certain messages. I don't appreciate that argument that
you shouldn't preach to the choir First of all, no one is born into
the choir. So, it's okay if we repeat the same message in various
media. I'm sure our numbers are increasing all the time. The polls
show that I have faith that our numbers will increase to the point
where we'll reach a critical mass and then there will be fusion or
fission.

Q. I like your point about repetition. We take it as a given that the
Big Lie is repeated over and over. Maybe we need to repeat the Big
Truth over and over, too!

A. Some people have-even though they are on the surface good, loyal
Americans--they have many underlying doubts which they've harbored for
many years, and it takes just one spark to make them open their eyes
for the "Ah ha!" moment. For some people it takes one spark, for
others it takes a dozen. But we have to keep igniting those sparks!

Q. Two last questions I'd like your comments on what Bush is now
calling-I suppose he thinks he's being witty-the "question du jour,"
US policy on immigration, guest workers, etc. How can Progressives
turn this issue to our advantage?

A. You mean to the advantage of the immigrants? Not to our-

Q. Well, here's what I'm thinking I saw a half a million get into the
streets in Los Angeles. And I'm thinking, one month before that, the
best the anti-war movement could manage was 50,000 people in the
streets. What's missing? Why aren't we linking up?

A. It's more personal with the immigration those people there, almost
everyone of them-if not themselves, then their father or their brother
or their son--was or is an illegal immigrant and it really hits home.
It's like in Vietnam in the 60s with the draft that really hit home.
It brought many parents out into the streets because they were afraid
of their sons being called up. So, the answer to your question is that
we have to find a personal angle and, in the absence of the race issue
and the absence of the draft, that's not easy to find Even so, we had
millions of people marching against the war-that's pretty good! On the
question of immigration I've yet to see anyone pointing out what I
pointed out in my "Anti-Empire Report" how many of these immigrants
have come here to escape an economic situation made worse by US
policies. They're escaping the results of US foreign policy in
Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras-so we do bear
responsibility. It's not simply that they want something for nothing
and have no right to anything. They've been hurt by our policies-even
though the average immigrant is unaware of that! We owe them something
because of our policies-including NAFTA.

Q. I'm talking about awareness, too. I think there's a lack of
awareness on the part of the Left that the anti-war movement and the
pro-immigration movement-if you want to call it that-have a linkage.
And that linkage is-those policies. Those predatory-capitalist
policies that are destroying the world.

A. And I wonder if, at the mass march in L.A., any of the speakers
mentioned this? I imagine someone did, but I don't know.

Q. I just think it's a point that needs to be driven home and repeated
over and over: We're on the same page here!

A. And that takes away many of the arguments of the conservatives-that
people have to earn their right to live here, and get jobs and all
that. They're just divorced totally from what the US government has
done.

Q. They've been earning that right for many years-decades, even-and
they've come to that critical mass where they realize, you know, we're
just being exploited here, we're doing all this shit work and getting
nothing.

A. Yeah, but that, that is not the motivation behind this recent
uprising or protest. It's just this bill in Congress that's the
motivation. It's not the fact that they're under-paid, which they are,
of course.

Q. I just would like to see people on the Left reach out to all kinds
of other people and embrace their causes. I don't think there's enough
of that in the anti-war movement.

A. I don't know I think the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition certainly has
embraced it. A.N.S.W.E.R. in San Francisco, they've given much
publicity to the march in L.A.

Q. OK Last question: Your books describe an American government and
media divorced from the everyday reality of the American public. You
write about the "great irony" of the "free enterprise system." Most
Americans have knee-jerk responses to words and phrases like
"socialism" or "free markets," but when we don't use these
highly-charged words and phrases but describe helpful social programs,
such as Medicare or Medicaid, a minimum wage, a living wage,
unemployment compensation--we find a more positive range of attitudes
Do Americans really believe in "free enterprise," and what is "the
great irony"?

A. By a remarkable coincidence that's the name of one of the chapters
in one of my books!

Q. You have the floor-

A. Yeah, I posit that question, and I answer it in the negative-I
don't think they really do believe in "free enterprise" and that is
"the great irony" since our leaders would have us believe that "free
enterprise" is written into our genetic code. But you can show people
that many of their attitudes are actually in conflict with the idea of
"free enterprise." They are opposed to corporations coming into their
neighborhoods and replacing their favorite coffee shop or pharmacy or
what have you. They think that's a shame. But that's what corporations
do. That's what they're supposed to do, they're supposed to expand, to
grow-that's the nature of the beast. And if you don't accept that,
then you're questioning the nature of the beast!

Q. Any final comments from William Blum, any message to the world?

A. Go to my website: www.killinghope.org. And buy lots of books.

[GARY CORSERI has taught in public schools, prisons and universities.
His work has appeared at CommonDreams, CounterPunch, DissidentVoice,
The New York Times, Village Voice, City Lights Review, Atlanta-PBS and
200 other sites and publications. His books include, MANIFESTATIONS
and HOLY GRAIL, HOLY GRAIL.]

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Belafonte Honored in Washington, 50 Years after "Day-o"
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/abc94a7422e8d058
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Apr 5 2006 3:59 am
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Belafonte Honored in Washington, 50 Years after "Day-o"

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Ed Pearl

[Harry Belafonte is special to me, being one of the 4 or 5 real influences
in my young growth of loving music and developing politics as the same time.
I finally saw him at the Greek theater on one of my first dates. Years
later, right after the Sharpeville Massacre, in South Africa, he brought
Miriam Makeba to this country to raise consciousness about apartheid and the
SA struggle and she played my club, the Ash Grove. We became friends while
she was here in LA, but I never met Harry, even missed him the night he came
to see her perform. Nevertheless, I've always felt bonded to him, grateful
and quite proud. This little report offers a glimpse of why. Thanks to Joe
Maizlish for sending it. -Ed

The Washington Post - April 2, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040101435.htm

Tally Mon Come, Name Belafonte

The Singer's Latest Hits Find an Enthusiastic Audience in Washington

By David Montgomery

Even friends who most appreciate the complicated package that is Harry
Belafonte hark back to that simple soundtrack of America getting its first
black matinee idol -- cheesy as the calypso sweetness might seem half a
hip-hopping century later.

As Belafonte enters a banquet hall at Howard University Friday to receive an
award from TransAfrica Forum, there it is, sea-breezing out of the sound
system: Day-o, day-ay-ay-o... Come, Mr. Tally Mon, tally me banana; Daylight
come and me wanna go home...

The luncheon crowd of 225 civil rights activists, foreign policy idealists,
celebrities (Danny Glover) and ambassadors (Hugo Chavez's emissary from
Venezuela) gives a hip-swaying standing ovation. A big screen flashes
snapshots of a career -- Belafonte with Martin Luther King Jr., Jack and
Bobby Kennedy, a giant bunch of bananas. But what the crowd most wants to
hear is more of the stinging, controversial jeremiad that Belafonte has been
laying down this year, red hot like today's news.

He does not disappoint. At 79, the entertainer still knows his audience. He
may discomfit -- in fact, he likes to discomfit -- but he never disappoints.

In January he led a delegation (Glover, Cornel West, Bloods, Crips) to
Venezuela, met with leftist president Chavez for eight hours, and called
President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world." Back in the United
States, he referred to "the Gestapo of Homeland Security." A few years ago,
he compared then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to a slave who "was
permitted to come into the house of the master."

After each rhetorical detonation, he was duly interrogated by the likes of
Larry King and Wolf Blitzer, asked if he wanted to take anything back.

Here at the lunch, speaking for 39 minutes without notes, he takes nothing
back.

"George W. Bush will not be in office forever, Mr. Ambassador," Belafonte
says, addressing Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez. "It is hard to ask
you and the rest of the world to be patient with our brutality... Be
patient. America is awakening again."

A moment later, working his way into the rhetorical red zone, he adds, "I
knew what I was saying when I referred to George W. Bush as the greatest
terrorist in the world." (Pause for rising applause and cheers.) "And he has
done nothing to try to improve his image."

Such talk has inspired some columnists and editorial writers to suggest that
Mr. Tally Mon needs to count whether Belafonte is losing his bananas. Even
some allies on the left have wondered whether the old man is going too far.
Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of the Nation, recently called
on people, including Belafonte, to drop the Nazi analogies because, she
wrote, they demonize more than they encourage debate.

But if anything, Belafonte is crazy like a fox, and his critics have
forgotten that the radical calypso singer has always staked out political
ground on the edge of what the mainstream was ready to handle. The edge
keeps moving, and Belafonte keeps moving one step ahead of it, afflicting
the comfortable.

"It's always the same old thing," he says. "People feel jeopardized if
ruling power speaks. When I took up the cause of Dr. King" -- as counselor,
fundraiser and bail-poster -- "I was a threat for my middle class and white
audience... White women ran through the house singing my songs while cooking
dinner, their husbands came home and they danced all night to the calypso...
[Then] I support the 'upheaval.' Oops."

But now look how far the mainstream edge has moved: "Dr. King is a holiday."

Belafonte spoke of this latest phase in the arc of his life in several
conversations over his two-day visit to Washington for the foreign policy
weekend of TransAfrica Forum, the advocacy and policy group he helped start
three decades ago. He traveled alone from New York, where he lives with his
wife, Julie, in the apartment building he bought after he was refused
admittance more than 40 years ago. Bald now, wearing a hearing aid, he
carries himself erect and resolute. His famous voice used to be a whisper
embracing a growl. Now only the whisper remains -- a rich, expressive
whisper. He squints with the same fierceness of the characters in his
racially proud movies. But when the familiar sun of his smile comes out,
decades drop away from his features.

"Sometimes I step into [controversy] to provoke it," he says. "That gives me
a chance to have rebuttal. That has worked very well for me. I feel most of
the resistance is really from the progressive forces themselves... They move
very cautiously, whereas the right jumps right in and lets me have it.
They're careless enough to give me a platform to get on and speak. Thank
you, Mr. Blitzer. Thank you, Larry King."

Belafonte is happy to accept another platform on which to elaborate.

"Greatest terrorist"? He discounts the intentions of an Osama bin Laden or a
Bush, instead holding them to the effects of their actions. "It's not just
bin Laden and the 3,000 people caught in the twin towers, it's the thousands
of Americans who are dying in the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq. It's the
tens of thousands forever maimed and wounded, and the hundreds of thousands
of people in the region who are just called, quietly and decently,
'collateral damage.' "

It was Martin Luther King himself, of course, who once said the U.S.
government was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

"Gestapo of Homeland Security"? Belafonte focuses on the warrantless
surveillance, the chargeless detentions and the alleged torture being
carried out by the United States.

Belafonte is in the back seat of a car riding up to Takoma Park. He is going
to visit Luis Cardona, the Montgomery County Youth Violence Prevention
Coordinator, and others involved in programs to counter gangs and ease
tensions "between the black and the brown," as Belafonte says -- African
Americans and Latinos.

This is typical Belafonte, say those who know him. Unlike many celebrities
who offer checkbook support for causes, he returns to the trenches.
Belafonte knows Cardona well -- Cardona was on the mission to Venezuela.
They met through work with Barrios Unidos, the award-winning gang-prevention
program out of Los Angeles. Belafonte is more than casually interested in
the immigrant debate. He is the son of immigrants from Jamaica, and his
mother was undocumented.

One of the purposes of the trip to Venezuela -- lost in the din over who's
the greatest terrorist -- was to lay groundwork for a trade cooperative
between former gang members in the United States and farmers in Venezuela.
Later on his visit to Washington, Belafonte meets privately with Alvarez in
the ambassador's residence to further these plans.

Over the years, there has been a price to being Harry Belafonte. That price
is part of the bargain of living out on that edge. He has learned so much
about America from the things that unsettle it.

In 1957, what was scary to some was the movie "Island in the Sun," with
Belafonte playing a dashing politico who flirts with the rich blonde played
by Joan Fontaine. "You never had to fight stupidity and prejudice," he tells
her. "As long as you're looking for something real, you're not lost."
Southern theaters balked at showing it but finally agreed under heavy
Hollywood studio pressure.

A few years later, the head of Revlon canceled a series of television
specials because Belafonte insisted on having integrated acts in every
episode. Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover was keeping tabs because of Belafonte's
leftist organizing and association with King.

Along the way, Belafonte turned down potentially career-making roles in
"Lilies of the Field," "To Sir, With Love," and others, because he
considered the black characters "neutered," with little sexuality or
humanity. Sidney Poitier, one of his best friends then and now, became a
star by accepting some of those roles.

Belafonte sometimes has been too much for his friends: In the mid-1980s, he
quit the board of TransAfrica when it wanted to accept Bill Cosby as a board
member. Cosby was allowing "The Cosby Show" to be broadcast in South Africa
during apartheid, and TransAfrica was leading the fight for divestment and
sanctions. Belafonte saw hypocrisy in his own organization.

"I said, 'I'm out of here,' " he says.

But look how the edge moves: Apartheid is gone, Cosby is not involved with
TransAfrica, Belafonte is back on the board, and he's receiving an award for
lifetime service.

He gave his last concert three years ago, though he says he may go back in
the studio this summer. A documentary is being made of his life. He just
shot a film with Anthony Hopkins about Bobby Kennedy's assassination that is
due out later this year. He earns as much as $20,000 per speaking
engagement.

Some of those dried up this year. Kansas City Young Audiences canceled his
engagement to headline a fundraiser in May because corporate and
philanthropic sponsors objected to his statements, says Harlan Brownlee,
executive director. He says his organization could not afford to risk
funding because 150,000 children served in arts programs would be the
losers.

Belafonte disagrees: "The children are the losers, for not having somebody
stand up," he says.

In February he was disinvited from speaking at the funeral of Coretta Scott
King. The shock of that slap is still reverberating in civil rights circles.
Belafonte says he thinks the Bush administration applied pressure. Yesterday
afternoon the King family issued its first statement on the controversy,
blaming an unnamed volunteer for both inviting and disinviting Belafonte
without the family's knowledge. The family apologized to "one of our
father's strongest supporters, and one of the giants of our freedom
struggle."

Looking back, Belafonte remembers a piece of advice he got early on from his
role model, the blacklisted Paul Robeson.

"Get them to sing your song," Robeson told him one night at the Village
Vanguard in New York, "and they'll want to know who you are."

"Sure enough, I woke up one day and the whole world was singing 'Day-o,' "
Belafonte says.

Now he's hoping for the edge to move again, another lurch forward. Waiting
for the mainstream to catch up to Harry Belafonte, so that one more time the
controversial doesn't seem so anymore. <17> ^

***

[... and now for something COMPLETELY different. Shame on Obama,
raising money for the Senator from Tel Aviv. - NY Transfer]

sent by Michael Munk via Ed Pearl

Obama raises money for Lieberman

The Dems' "great brown hope," Sen Barack Obama of Illinois, spoke up for
fanatic war supporter Joe "Bush Lite" Lieberman at a $175 dinner in Hartford
March 30. Obama praised Lieberman as "a man with a good heart, with a keen
intellect, who cares about the working families of America." Despite a
primary challenge from antiwar candidate Ned Lamont, Obama predicted
"Connecticut's going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to
the Senate." (see NYT, April 2)

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Most Brits Want Blair to Resign: Poll
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/17bb78a8cc5e0fe7
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Apr 5 2006 3:59 am
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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Most Brits Want Blair to Resign: Poll

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Radio Havana Cuba
http://www.radiohc.cu

Majority of British Tired of Tony Blair

London, April 4 (RHC)- Most British voters believe that Prime Minister
Tony Blair, is worn out and should give up his position this year
according to a survey released today. The poll coincides with rumors
of a power struggle between the head of government and his Economy
minister, Gordon Brown.

The survey, done by the Populus group for The Times newspaper, reveals
that 34 percent of those asked believe that Blair should step down
"immediately". 57 percent say he should resign this year, since he has
"run out of energy".

Nine percent say that 2007 should be the year of his departure.

However, a full half of Labor Party voters believe that Blair should
serve out his term and 37 percent say that he still has much to do
before he leaves government service.

According to the public opinion poll, the majority of those questioned
have lost patience with the Labor Party leader, who has faced a series
of accusations about secret business executive donations , estimated
at 20 million dollars, for which the donors received titles of Lord in
the Parliament.

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: UK: New Motion Calls for Better Relations w/Cuba
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/ce7f6c58aa573e37
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Apr 5 2006 3:59 am
From: NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org

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UK: New Motion Calls for Better Relations w/Cuba

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Cuba Update - 05 April 2006
http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk

Cross-party group of MPs tables motion on UK/Cuba relations

London, 4 April: As the June 2006 EU review of its ‘Common Position’ on Cuba
approaches, a cross-party group of MPs has tabled an Early Day Motion in
Parliament calling on the UK to improve its relations with the island.

The UK is a key player in determining Europe’s future relationship with Cuba
when the so-called Common Position, the EU's policy statement on Cuba, comes
up for review.

The tabling group of MPs is led by Labour's Ian Gibson, Chair of the
All-Party Cuba Group, and includes a Conservative, Liberal Democrat and
Plaid Cymru MP as well.

Together they are calling on the UK to keep up its policy of constructive
engagement with Havana.

The move is particularly important in view of the fact that already the US
has been aggressively lobbying for European governments to follow their
belligerent policy towards the island.

In the build up to the June review, Caleb McCarry, the Bush Administration’s
'Cuba transition co-ordinator,' has had meetings with British Foreign Office
officials and other European governments to try and influence them to follow
the US line.

It is therefore timely that a cross party consensus has emerged that is
urging the Blair government not to cave in to US pressure.

Readers are urged to ask their MP to sign Early Day Motion 1959 on Cuba.

Email them from:

http://www.writetothem.com today.

Progress of the EDM can be followed at:

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=30440&SESSION=875

On 4th April, the day it was posted, it had already gathered 11 signatories

EDM 1959, EU COMMON POSITION ON CUBA

That this House recognises efforts by the Government to cement positive
relations with Cuba; identifies the 48 per cent decrease in United Kingdom
exports to Cuba since 2000 as unwelcome and in direct contrast to increased
trade between Cuba and other EU partners; notes the continued aggressive
lobbying of EU member states by the US Commission for Assistance to a Free
Cuba which promotes a tightening of extra territorial elements of the
illegal blockade which effect EU/Cuba relations; acknowledges that despite
differences between the two countries, cultural, scientific, sporting and
trade links should be protected and built upon; and calls on the United
Kingdom Government to maintain and develop its independent approach of
positive engagement towards Cuba when the EU common position on Cuba is
reviewed in June.

Tabling signatories

Ian Gibson MP, Labour
Nigel Evans MP, Conservative
Glenda Jackson MP, Labour
John Pugh MP, Liberal Democrat
Adam Price, Plaid Cymru
Colin Burgon, Labour

Cuba Solidarity Campaign
c/o Red Rose Club, 129 Seven Sisters Rd, London N7 7QG
Tel. 020 7263 6452 Fax. 020 7561 0191
E.Mail: office@cuba-solidarity.org.uk
http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk

*
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NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: Goodbye Europe
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/45e5b9700b1e9ac3
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Apr 5 2006 4:05 pm
From: "Tilly"

Daniel Bernard wrote:
> On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 07:25:22 GMT, "DoD" <thecats@ss.mil> wrote:
>
> >
> > They are your words? Did you not say them? Do you think that Jews
> > are Christ killers... Is that in vogue in Europe? Come on Daniel
> > are you not into bringing Jews to the ovens, when us Americans
> > actually care about Jews.... what is your opinion about Jews
> > Daniel..... I like them... I can state that outright... can you?
> >
> I'm not going to spoon feed you answers, especially answers you should
> have pieced together ages ago.
>
> As I told you cranks before, I only answer when it serves my purpose
> to answer.

Has marriage made you find religion?

--
TillyGr@hotmail.com

==============================================================================
TOPIC: NUMBER OF NEWSPAPERS UNESCO'S STATISTICS 1950 ' s en un pais que dice
la propaganda era casi todo de analfabetos...
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/57ba02f2ccbcbc2b
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Apr 5 2006 12:03 am
From: "PM"

pero habian mas de 60 periodicos y revistas para 6.5 millones de
cubanos...
amen de que la revistas eran ya de exportacion, Bohemia, Vanidades, y
Carteles
con tiradas semanales , Bohemia tenia una tirada de mas de 250,000
revistas semanles y a veces 300,000 cada una con mas de 200
paginas...para un pueblo de "analfabetos..." habian periodicos y revistas
en cantidades industriales...

sacado de GOOGLE

Subject: ,soc.culture.cuba,
UNESCO S STATISTICS IN THE 50 S FACTS AND
NUMBERS PUBLICATION--- UNESCO
COUNTRY ------ CANADA --------------YEAR 1956 98----------NUMBER
OF NEWSPAPERS 3,899,000 NUMBER OF COPIES 244---------PER
1000 INHABITANTS COSTA RICA 1952 5 78,000
91 CUBA 1956 58 796,000 129
REP. DOM. 1957 4 43,000 16 El
Salvador 1954 10 70,00 33
Guatemala 1956 7 86,000
26 Haiti 1956 6 10,000 3
Honduras 1956 7 37,000 21
MEXICO 1954 198 -----
Nicaragua 1952 11 56,000 51
Panama 1952 11 99,000 111
Argentina 1957 346 3,162,000 159
Bolivia 1952 235 2,975,000 50
Chile 1952 43 465,000 74
Colombia 1952 37 778,000 60
Ecuador 1952 24 167 50 Peru
1952 60 350,000 40 Uruguay
1957 12 536,000 200 Venezuela
1956 32 610,000 102 ------
NextPart 000 0115 01C0783C.395645A0 Content-Type: text/html;
charset"UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

UNESCO S STATISTICS IN THE 50 S FACTS AND NUMBERS
PUBLICATION
COUNTRY YEAR NUMBER OFNEWSPAPERS NUMBER OF COPIES PER 1000INHABITANTS
CANADA 1956 98 3,899,000 244 COSTA RICA 1952 5 78,000 91 CUBA 1956 58
796,000 129 REP. DOM. 1957 4 43,000 16 El Salvador 1954 10 70,00 33
Guatemala 1956 7 86,000 26 Haiti 1956 6 10,000 3 Honduras 1956 7 37,000 21
MEXICO 1954 198 ----- Nicaragua 1952 11 56,000 51 Panama 1952 11 99,000
111 Argentina 1957 346 3,162,000 159 Bolivia 1952 235 2,975,000 50 Chile
1952 43 465,000 74 Colombia 1952 37 778,000 60 Ecuador 1952 24 167 50
Peru 1952 60 350,000 40 Uruguay 1957 12 536,000 200 Venezuela 1956 32
610,000 102
--
CALLES DE LA HABANA: (ESTE WEBSITE ES UNA JOYA)

Calle http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/calle23/index.htm 23
Quinta http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/quinta/index.htm
Avenida
Línea <http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/linea/index.htm
Almendares
http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/almendares/index.htm

Calle http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/calle26/index.htm 26
Avenida http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/ave26/index.htm 26
Avenida http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/ave11/index.htm 11
Avenida
http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/presidentes/index.htm
de los Presidentes
Rancho http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/rancho/index.htm
Boyeros
Monserrate
http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/monserrate/index.htm
Empedrado http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/empedrado/index.htm
Avenida http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/puerto/index.htm del
Puerto
Calle Cuba http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/cuba/ind
"PM" <pedro1940@progression.net> a écrit dans le message de news:
6yFYf.1820$sh3.112267@news20.bellglobal.com...
> Castro debe a 27 gobiernos 37 mil millones de dolares.
>
>
> El régimen comunista de Fidel Castro ha endeudado a Cuba con 27 países en
> mas de 37 mil millones de dólares, informó el viernes el Proyecto
Transición
> Cuba de la Universidad de Miami.>>
>
> Todas las cifras mencionadas en este estudio son aproximadas, en dólares
>
> Uno de los principales acreedor del régimen de La Habana, dice el
Proyecto,
> es Venezuela, a cuyo gobierno de Hugo Chávez se estima que Castro debe
3,532
> millones de dólares.>>
>
> El otro gran acreedor es Rusia, con 20,848 millones de dólares.>>
>
> La deuda a largo plazo de la dictadura de Castro con Japón asciende
> aproximadamente a 245,860 millones de yenes. Esta es la suma de deudas
> bancarias, comerciales y de gobierno a gobierno que datan de la década de
> 1970. Según el estudio, Cuba refinanció 100 mil millones de yenes de su
> deuda comercial con 182 suministradores japoneses y un acuerdo suscrito en
> 1999 permitió a La Habana reprogramar su deuda a corto plazo de 12 mil
> millones de yenes (109 millones de dólares) con el gobierno japonés.>>
>
> Argentina es otro país acreedor. Cuba le debe 1,967 millones de dólares y
ha
> solicitado el perdón del 75 por ciento y el pago parcial del resto en
> mercancía. La deuda con Buenos Aires data de fines de la década 1970 y
> principios de la década de 1980, afirma el Proyecto Transición Cuba.>>
>
> El cuarto acreedor es Francia con cerca de 689 euros, seguido por China
que,
> además de una suma anterior de 682 millones de dólares en comercio y
> financiamiento, a fines de 2004 reveló la existencia de cerca de 38
millones
> de dólares en créditos comerciales que datan del período 1990-1994. China
> emitió además otro préstamo comercial calculado en 150 millones de dólares
> para que Cuba adquiriera un millón de receptores de televisión y anunció
una
> inversión de 500 millones de dólares financiada por por préstamos chinos
en
> una nueva empresa conjunta minera para extraer níquel en el Oriente de
> Cuba.>>
>
> Otros acreedores de Cuba son (las cifras son aproximadas en dólares):>>
>
> España, 1,256 millones; México, 480 millones; Italia, 413 millones;
Alemania
> 317 millones; Holanda 280 millones; Rusia (después de la era soviética)
246
> millones; República Checa, 236 millones; Bélgica, 221 millones;
>
>
> Panamá (zona libre) 200 millones; Canadá, 97 millones; Austria, 62
millones;
> Brasil, 40 millones; Trinidad-Tobago, 30 millones; Uruguay, 30 millones;
> Suecia, 20 millones; Suiza, 2 millones; Financiamiento extranjero no
> revelado, 612 millones.
>
> Las cifras anteriores suman 15,438 millones de dólares, dice el Proyecto
> Transición Cuba.Cuba debe a Rusia actualmente 20,848 millones de dólares.
> Esta cifra incluye la transferencia de la deuda que La Habana tenía con la
> ahora desaparecida Unión Soviética (que Rusia heredó) y además, la deuda
en
> moneda dura por créditos comerciales que no se han pagado para la
> importación de productos rusos desde 1990 a 2005 como parte de un acuerdo.
> Moscú concedió a Cuba un préstamo de 85 millones de dólares en 2004,
> pagadero a plazos en nueve años, para financiar la adquisición de dos
> aviones "ejecutivos" modelo IL-96-300 para el uso de Fidel Castro y altos
> funcionarios de su régimen.También la deuda con Rusia incluye 1,932
millones
> de dólares en financiamiento a largo plazo y entregas no pagadas de
petróleo
> desde fines de 2000 a 2004, así como la suma de 1,600 millones de dólares
en
> pagos diferidos por 98,000 barriles diarios de petróleo en 2005 (con
precio
> de mercado de 45 dólares por barril). El 2 de febrero de 2004 se publicó
en
> el diario The Wall Street Journal que "Para el anciano Castro, Chávez
emerge
> como una muleta vital".>>
>
> Además, el régimen castrista debe a Rumanía 951 millones de dólares, a
> Hungría 200 millones y a Polonia, 70 millones.>>
>
> Es decir, la deuda total del régimen de La Habana con el resto del mundo
> asciende a 37,507 millones de dólares, mas o menos, según revela el
estudio
> del Proyecto Transición Cuba.>>
>
>
>
>
> --
> CALLES DE LA HABANA: (ESTE WEBSITE ES UNA JOYA)
>
> Calle http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/calle23/index.htm 23
> Quinta http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/quinta/index.htm
> Avenida
> Línea <http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/linea/index.htm
> Almendares
> http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/almendares/index.htm
>
> Calle http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/calle26/index.htm 26
> Avenida http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/ave26/index.htm 26
> Avenida http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/ave11/index.htm 11
> Avenida
> http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/presidentes/index.htm
> de los Presidentes
> Rancho http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/rancho/index.htm
> Boyeros
> Monserrate
> http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/monserrate/index.htm
> Empedrado http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/empedrado/index.htm
> Avenida http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/puerto/index.htm del
> Puerto
> Calle Cuba http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/cuba/ind
>
> --
> CALLES DE LA HABANA: (ESTE WEBSITE ES UNA JOYA)
>
> Calle http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/calle23/index.htm 23
> Quinta http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/quinta/index.htm
> Avenida
> Línea <http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/linea/index.htm
> Almendares
> http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/almendares/index.htm
>
> Calle http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/calle26/index.htm 26
> Avenida http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/ave26/index.htm 26
> Avenida http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/ave11/index.htm 11
> Avenida
> http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/presidentes/index.htm
> de los Presidentes
> Rancho http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/rancho/index.htm
> Boyeros
> Monserrate
> http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/monserrate/index.htm
> Empedrado http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/empedrado/index.htm
> Avenida http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/puerto/index.htm del
> Puerto
> Calle Cuba http://www.guije.com/pueblo/habana/calles/cuba/ind
> "PL" <pl.nospam@pandora.be> a écrit dans le message de news:
> 4432B47A.9060705@pandora.be...
> > Lunes 3 de abril de 2006
> >
> > Solecito La orden vino de Estados Unidos, acusa Ricardo Alarcón
> > Filial de banco canadiense en Jamaica niega servicio a Cuba
> >
> > DPA
> >
> > La Habana, 2 de abril. El presidente del Parlamento cubano, Ricardo
> > Alarcón, acusó a Estados Unidos de obligar a la filial del banco
> > canadiense Nueva Escocia en Jamaica, a no prestar servicios a la
> > embajada cubana en Kingston, informó hoy una agencia de prensa cubana.
> >
> > La sucursal del banco de Nueva Escocia de Canadá comunicó a Gisela
> > García Rivero, embajadora cubana en Jamaica, que no podría brindarle a
> > esa misión diplomática "ningún servicio" en cumplimiento de la Ley
> > Patriota estadunidense, comentó Alarcón a la Agencia de Información
> > Nacional (AIN).
> >
> > La Patriot Act fue aprobada en Estados Unidos tras los atentados contra
> > Washington y Nueva York del 11 de septiembre de 2001 para reforzar los
> > poderes del gobierno de Washington y de las fuerzas de seguridad en la
> > lucha antiterrorista, tanto en territorio estadunidense como en el
> > extranjero.
> >
> > Alarcón denunció que "desde Washington le ordenaron al banco canadiese
> > que extendiese el bloqueo a Cuba en materia financiera y bancaria,
> > violando las leyes de Jamaica y también de Canadá, que prohíbe hacer
> > cosas como esas".
> >
> > Recordó lo ocurrido recientemente en el hotel María Isabel Sheraton, de
> > la ciudad de México, propiedad de la cadena estadunidense Starwood
> > Hotels, que expulsó a funcionarios cubanos por órdenes del Departamento
> > del Tesoro bajo las leyes de embargo estadunidense contra la isla.
> >
> > Tras calificar el hecho de "refuerzo del bloqueo", el líder del
> > Parlamento unicamaral cubano afirmó que "la guerra económica de
> > Washington contra Cuba incluye los intentos de impedir que los peloteros
> > cubanos reciban el premio en metálico".
> >
> > "Ese dinero les corresponde -añadió- por quedar subcampeones en el
> > Primer Clásico Mundial de beisbol y donarlo en su totalidad a las
> > víctimas del huracán Katrina en Nueva Orleans".
> >
> > Para Alarcón "lo ocurrido con la filial del banco canadiense es una
> > medida muy específica dirigida contra Jamaica, pero además pisoteando la
> > soberanía canadiense".
> >
> > "Ahora descubrimos que ese instrumento (Ley Patriota) también tiene una
> > finalidad agresiva contra Cuba , aseguró el también miembro del Buró
> > Político del gobernante Partido Comunista (PCC), quien asistió en
> > Kingston a la toma de posesión de la nueva primer ministra de Jamaica
> > Portia Simpson Miller.
> >
> > http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2006/04/03/033n3mun.php
> >
>
>

==============================================================================
TOPIC: THE DANCING ISRAELI ILLEGALS
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/b3c07890c30a3b6
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 9:19 pm
From: "bernardz"

Dr. Lipschitz wrote:
> "bernardz" <bernardz@mail.com> wrote in message
> news:1144201585.380525.245310@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > Dr. Lipschitz wrote:
> >> "BernardZ" <DontBother@NOSPAM.com> wrote in message
> >> news:MPG.1e9a9a0bf51294a69896cd@west.Usenet-News.net...
> >> > In article <UdMXf.2720$qe7.2556@trnddc04>, me@avengers.nu says...
> >> >>
> >> >> "BernardZ" <DontBother@NOSPAM.com> wrote in message
> >> >> news:MPG.1e969552c9a4885d9896c7@west.Usenet-News.net...
> >> >> > In article <avJWf.1350$z7.979@bignews3.bellsouth.net>,
> >> >> > serwad@bellsouth.net says...
> >> >> >> How could any person of sound moral character not be
> >> >> >> enraged at witnessing this horrific act of barbarism?
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >
> >> >> >
> >> >> > How indeed!
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Yet throughout the Arab world - and especially in Yasser Arafat's
> >> >> > Palestinian Authority - thousands of people took to the streets this
> >> >> > week and lustily cheered the work of the suicide bombers who
> >> >> > destroyed
> >> >> > the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon. Even as thousands
> >> >> > of
> >> >> > Americans lay buried in the rubble of the Twin Towers, hordes of
> >> >> > Palestinians in Nablus and Bethlehem and Jericho handed out sweets,
> >> >> > a
> >> >> > traditional sign of celebration, and danced in the streets.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > http://www.afsi.org/MEDIA/newsLinks/shockers/m58.htm
> >> >>
> >> >> That's propaganda from the jew media. Reminds me of when the US
> >> >> entered
> >> >> Iraq
> >> >> and some guy was hitting a picture of Saddam with his shoe lol Hmm I
> >> >> wonder
> >> >> if that was staged? lol I'm always amazed that the jew media will
> >> >> believe
> >> >> that any intelligent person would believe this horseshit.
> >> >
> >> > The pictures are real. There are many others of Arabs dancing in the
> >> > streets because of 911. Don't believe me just do a net search!
> >>
> >> Muslims aren't permitted to dance, it's against their religion just like
> >> John Ashcroft :o)
> >>
> >
> > Man, I am so sick of people's ignorance on the usenet!
> >
> > Did not think that anyone who never heard of belly dancing today?
>
> I'm sure they do but those girls are viewed as whores much like we view
> girls who srtip for money as sluts.

Okay Muslims do dance. Please read the rest of my previous post. Like I
said you may learn something.

Some pictures of Muslim dancers are

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.uuottawa.com/images/weddings_muslim_somali_dance.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.uuottawa.com/muslimweddingsmain.htm&h=320&w=205&sz=13&tbnid=gwcF-lamup5pxM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=72&hl=en&start=2&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddance%2Bmuslim%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.khrw.com/sandiego/img/kurdish%2520youth%2520dance%2520team%2520in%2520San%2520Diego.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.khrw.com/sandiego/youth2.html&h=382&w=597&sz=113&tbnid=mfGONxm414_a8M:&tbnh=85&tbnw=133&hl=en&start=20&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddance%2Bmuslim%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.easternartists.com/images/kurdbountiful72.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.easternartists.com/links.html&h=252&w=431&sz=26&tbnid=_ItiSBu6lOISmM:&tbnh=71&tbnw=123&hl=en&start=37&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddance%2Bmuslim%26start%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN

I am sure that a net search will show you more examples.

Muslims dancing after acts of terrorism is quite common. Its been seen
after just about every major act of Islamic terrorism that has taken
place.

>
>
> >
> > For a guy pretending to be Jewish, if you know something of the Jewish
> > religion you would know how stupid this comment it too.
> >
> >
> > Anyway read this you might learn something
> >
> > http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1119503545778&pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaEAskTheScholar
> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> >
> >> >> >
> >> >> >
> >> >> >
> >> >> >
> >> >> >
> >> >> > --
> >> >> > Never met a women so mechanically inept that she could not use a
> >> >> > flexiteller or a heater.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Observations of Bernard - No 98
> >> >> >
> >> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > Never met a women so mechanically inept that she could not use a
> >> > flexiteller or a heater.
> >> >
> >> > Observations of Bernard - No 98
> >> >
> >> >
> >

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Turkish PM promises more democracy for Kurds after deadly riots
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/2c732940d6921c01
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 9:21 pm
From: "rick murphy"

http://www.turkishforum.com/pkk/img/photos/bebek_katili1.jpg
http://www.turkishforum.com/greece/visual.html

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Ali Asker (pasa_asker@lycos.com, <pasa_as...@kurdistan.kd>) is a self
proclaimed PKK terrorist and proud of his murders living off british
taxpayers goodwill in Belfast, UK.

++++++++++++++++=

"From: Ali Asker (pasa_asker@lycos.com)
Subject: Re: Kuwerdish contribution to Oscar 2005
This is the only article in this thread
View: Original Format
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian, soc.culture.kurdish,
soc.culture.turkish, soc.culture.iraq
Date: 2004-10-02 04:55:12 PST

We are the TERRORISTS...

We will divide Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq in to the pieces until
ever single individual is free from thought control, torture and
brain-washing! Every nation should have their own land where they can
practice their own culture. Iran has consist of about 20 some
different nations and we will tore them in to 20 different countries
and give mollahs a small land where they can practice their barbaric
religion to themselves and only harm temselves.

WE WILL BREAK IRAN IN TO THE PIECES!!! "

++++++++++++++++++

http://www.hurriyetim.com.tr/haber/0,,sid~381@nvid~607454,00.asp

Ereli: Our common interest is to stop the PKK

The U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli in response to whether
the US would allow Turkey to enter the north of Iraq in order to
eliminate the terrorist organization, the Kurdistan Workers Party
(PKK), said that he was unaware that such a statement had been made and
that if it did become a question, the necessary military authorities
would deal with it.

Ereli reiterated that the US recognised the PKK as a terrorist
organization and would act with its common interest with Turkey in
preventing terrorism activities of the PKK.

"Both Turkey and the United States consider PKK a terrorist
organization. Both countries are active against PKK," Ereli indicated.
He noted that the two countries would continue to cooperate and work
together on this matter.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=42380

Boucher: Ocalan Is A Terrorist Who Belongs In A Prison Cell

Published: 5/19/2005

WASHINGTON D.C. - The United States Department of State has announced
that Abdullah Ocalan is a terrorist who ''belongs in a prison cell.''

The U.S. Department of State has indicated that it took note of the
recent decision made by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on
Ocalan and that this topic will be best handled by Turkey.

Spokesman of the U.S. Department of State Richard Boucher has said that
the U.S. continues to regard the PKK as a terrorist organization.

Describing Ocalan as a terrorist who belongs in a prison cell, Boucher
said that they did take a note of the ECHR decision.

Yet we believe that this topic would most appropriately be handled by
Turkey itself, commented Boucher.

+++++++++++++++++++

http://www.turkses.com/index.asp

The Terror Organization KADEK

1. General

Historical Background

The initial activities regarding the terror organization PKK have
started with the intellectual activities of some students defending the
Marxist-Leninist ideology within the Ankara's Democratic Patriotic
Students Association (ADYÖD) under the leadership of Abdullah ÖCALAN
since 1973.

Abdullah ÖCALAN and his friends declared the setting up of the
Kurdistan's Workers Party (PKK) during an illegal meeting held in the
Diyarbakir province, Lice district, Fis village on November 27, 1978
which was called 1 st. Congress.

The inital documents stating PKK's aim were the "The Way Of
Kurdistan's Revolution-Manifesto" and party program published in 1978.
According to the said program, the aim of the terror organization is to
found initially an independent Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan state in the
East and Southeast Anatolian regions in Turkey by using the method of
armed propaganda and to achieve subsequently its final goal of
establishing an "Independent United Kurdistan" through the unification
of the Kurdish states to be founded in neighboring countries.

To this end, the terror organization PKK having officially declared
the commencement of its armed activities following the bloody attacks
on the districts Eruh and Þemdinli on August 15, 1984 has determined
four-stage strategy in order to divide and destroy Turkey by trying to
gather some part of the people, who have been living in peace within
the country for thousands of years, on a separate territory under a
different flag claiming that they have allegedly a different identity.

According to the above-mentioned strategy, it has been intended to;

- Obtain certain cultural and social rights at the first stage,

- Set up an autonomy or another administrative system of federation
type at the second stage,

- Establish the alleged North Kurdistan in our territory at the
third stage and

- Found an independent and united Kurdistan state in the region to
include some parts of Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian territories at the
final stage.

To this end, the terror organization PKK has adopted the method of
separatism-based, three-phased armed propaganda which was called the
war of people, and based on violence directed against the regional
people. Accordingly, the terror organization PKK has aimed at.

- Completing strategic defense stage through armed propaganda,
alleged guerilla war and mobile war operations under the control of its
leading staff within the framework of its ideological ideas in the
first phase,

- Partially completing the process of establishing fronts and an
army and thus, creating the strategic balance which will provide the
balance of power between the security forces and the terror
organization in the second phase and,

- Establishing saved areas in the region after triggering public
risings wherever possible by escalating the conflicts and passing into
strategic attack state when seizing the authority in the third phase,

The terror organization which has increased its armed force over 8
thousand men and raised the violence it has used against the people
regardless of their being women, elder or children to the highest level
from 1992 has not been able to achieve the above-mentioned stages until
today due to the measures taken in accordance with the "Area
Superiority Concept" put into practice from 1994, and the operations
successfully conducted by security forces. As a result, the separatist
terror organization was forced to take the decision of unilateral
ceasefire four times in 1993, 1995, 1998 and finally on September 01,
1999 in order to preserve its terrorist power.

The terror organization desiring to exploit the alleged cease-fire
as an opportunity of recovery for tactical purposes has tried to prove
that it still maintains its existence by continuing its acts and
violence against the civilians and security forces in rural, on the one
hand, carrying out sabotage and bomb attacks in the cities, on the
other hand.

The Turkish Armed Forces has gained an important success in pulling
down the terror organization and its activities to a marginal level
through a successful military operation it has conducted under the
Turkish constitution and legislation to destroy the internal threat, by
acting in a way that ensures the simultaneous implementation of a
series of administrative, social and economic measures taken to prevent
the support being provided to the terror organization.

The last achievement of the Turkish Armed Forces in struggling
against terrorism was that head of the terror organization A. ÖCALAN,
who was deported from Syria, was taken to Turkey following his capture
in Kenya/Nairobi on February 15, 1999 and brought before the
independent court.

The terror organization, tending to resort again to violence during
the period when the head of the terror organization has been taken to
Turkey and brought before the judge, has been able to adapt itself to
the new situation in a short time within the framework of the defense
that head of the terror organization has made in the court and has
tried to reach its goal by exploiting Turkey's EU goal and certain
values such as human rights and democratic rights widely accepted by
the international community. Within the framework of his defense in the
court, the head of the terrorist organization has changed his tactic
and begun to articulate such concepts as "Democratic Republic" and
"Democratic Middle Eastern Union" in its defense to save himself from
capital punishment.

At the VII. Congress of the terror organization held in the Kandil
Mountain region in Iraq on January 02-23, 2000 during which the new
strategy of the terror organization was agreed, it was decided that;

- The armed activities should be resumed in case of execution of
head of the terrorist organization and.

- The Kurdistan's National Liberation Army (ARGK), the alleged
military flank of the terror organization should maintain its existence
under the title of "People Defense Forces (Hezi Parastini Gel-HP) and
the Kurdistan's National Liberation Front (ERNK), the alleged political
flank of the terror organization, which mainly carries out activities
in European countries under the "Kurdish Democratic People Union
(Yekita Democratic A Gele Kurd-YDK) until appropriate legal
arrangements regarding recognition of the Kurdish identity in Turkey
and constitutional guarantees are provided.

The legalization plan that the terror organization has developed
according to its new strategy agreed during its congress, provides for
the followings:

- Giving the message that it is ready to make peace with the
government of Turkish Republic in order to obtain the status of being
recognized as a party in national and international public opinion,

- Handing over some terrorists to the security forces to convince
the public opinion that it is allegedly ready to make peace,

- Making political studies within the People's Democratic Party
(HADEP), which has political connection with the terror organization,
or a similar legal organization, and cooperating with other political
parties,

- Making guiding studies within the municipalities governed by
HADEP to broaden grass roots,

- Having contacts and cooperating with intellectuals from all
circles in Turkey's democratization to ensure the alleged cultural
rights of Kurds being recognized,

- Demanding that the Turkish government should make legal changes
to prove its goodwill through the human rights organizations,

- Bringing up the education in Kurdish language,

- Ensuring the Kurdish identity coming to the fore by focusing on
cultural activities,

- Organizing campaigns in order to ensure the scope of the law of
amnesty being extended,

The terror organization has attempted by its new plan to reach its
final goal that it could not achieve through its armed struggle it has
been carrying out for 16 years, through legalization efforts. To this
end, it has increased its activities it has conducted under the title
of the "Democratic Republic" at home and under "Political Settlement (
Solution ) To The Kurdish Problem" abroad,

In the plan the terror organization developed under the name of
"Peace Project" on March 07, 2000 following the VII. Congress,

- The alleged "Kurdish Problem" and PKK terror are identified with
the Irish, Palestinian, East Timor and Basque problems and it is
requested that the related "Political Solution" initiatives should also
be taken in Turkey and,

- It is put forward that the settlement of the alleged Kurdish
problem in Turkey in accordance with the predictions of head of the
terror organization, Öcalan would also serve the settlement of the
problems in the Middle Eastern countries, and the "Democratic Middle
Eastern Union" to be set up in regional countries would lead to
economic, social and cultural developments,

- Subsequently, in its 2nd "Party Assembly" meeting held in North
Iraq in September 2000, the terror organization decided to be
reorganized to conceal its terrorist identity and began to term its
former structure with innocent titles,

- Assuming that the new strategy of the terror organization could
not be well understood and adopted by its mountain members, the terror
organization held the III. "Party Assembly" meeting between 27 February
and 03 March 2001 and focused on restructuring activities in accordance
with the decisions it took during the said meeting. In addition, the
terror organization, having assessed that the people movement
activities could not achieve the desired level, has intensified its
efforts to ensure its new strategy being accepted by its members and
supporters through a series of meetings.

In this context;

* The "Centralized Propaganda and Media Conference" was held
between 29 May and 07 June 2001 in order for the efforts in the media
field, that the terror organization considers to be insufficient, and
to reach an organized structure,

* The "1st Public Movement Conference" was held between 20 June and
02 July 2001 for the purpose of carrying out the acts and activities
the terror organization has started under the name of alleged 2nd Peace
Efforts, in a more organized manner through its supporters and
sympathizers who are directed by the front organizations,

* The "1st Public Defense Forces (HPG), Conference" was held
between 28 June and 12 July 2001 in order to develop a new structure by
making radical changes in the armed flank of the terror organization
from the armed group order and discipline to war tactics and
techniques,

* The "3rd Free Women Party (PJA) Conference" was held on July
11-22, 2001 to make the women organizations conducting activities in
legal and illegal fields more active and organized,

* The "1st Culture, Art and Folklore Conference" was held on 11-22
July 2001 in order to indoctrinate wider parts of the people with
separatist ideas and,

* The "6th National Conference" was held on August 05-22, 2001
under the leadership of the alleged Supreme Council of the terror
organization in order to coordinate the conferences to be held in line
with the activities the terror organization carries out in various
fields and to direct all organizational efforts towards public
movements,

- The above-mentioned conferences have drawn special attention as
the ones which have been held within the framework of preparations for
the 8th Congress of the terror organization PKK. According to the
decisions taken during the said conferences, various campaigns have
been organized primarily in Europe and subsequently in Turkey for the
purpose of gaining support for the requests of constitutional
recognition of the Kurdish identity and the use of Kurdish language as
the language of education. However, the terror organization has not
been able to reach the desired level of participation by the people.

- On the other hand, the terror organization has focused on
re-establishment of the terrorist groups not directly affected by the
security forces and on their armed training in raid, laying ambush and
sabotage. The disagreements arising within the terror organization,
PKK-KPU conflict and escape of nearly five hundred Syrian terrorists
from the terror organization in particular have been the noticeable
problems that the terror organization has faced within the period under
review.

- In the meantime, the defense that head of the terror organization
has developed for his trial lasting in the European Court of Human
Rights has been printed by the terrorist organization in a two-volume
book under the title of "From the Sumerian Monastic State To The
Democratic Republic", accepted as the second manifesto and begun to be
used as a guide document for all activities carried out by the terror
organization and as a basic document in the ideological training of the
terrorist organization's members and supporters.

- The 8th Congress preparations which have lasted for a long time
in accordance with the outline of the said defense of head of the
terrorist organization was held in the Kandil Mountain region in
Northern Iraq on April 04-10, 2002 with the participation of 285
terrorist's 106 of whom were women and 179 men as well as about 100
audiences,

- In the said congress during which the activities the terror
organization PKK has conducted in the past and report developed
according to the defense of head of the terror organization and
submitted to the congress have also been evaluated, it has been pointed
out that;

* The terror organization PKK has obtained some advantages like
raising of the Kurdish problem in international area as a result of the
armed struggle it has conducted since 1977,

* However, the ideology and modus operandi adopted by the terror
organization at the beginning have failed due to the collapse of the
former Soviet system and the anti-terror environment arising following
the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the US and,

* It has been the time that PKK would be replaced by a completely
new formation in order not to be included in the list of terrorist
organizations, and it must undergo restructuring beginning from its
ideology to its lowest-level units, including a change in its
organizational title,

* The "3rd Free Women Party (PJA) Conference" was held on July
11-22, 2001 to make the women organizations conducting activities in
legal and illegal fields more active and organized,

* The "1st Culture, Art and Folklore Conference" was held on 11-22
July 2001 in order to indoctrinate wider parts of the people with
separatist ideas and,

* The "6th National Conference" was held on August 05-22, 2001
under the leadership of the alleged Supreme Council of the terror
organization in order to coordinate the conferences to be held in line
with the activities the terror organization carries out in various
fields and to direct all organizational efforts towards public
movements,

- The above-mentioned conferences have drawn special attention as
the ones which have been held within the framework of preparations for
the 8th Congress of the terror organization PKK. According to the
decisions taken during the said conferences, various campaigns have
been organized primarily in Europe and subsequently in Turkey for the
purpose of gaining support for the requests of constitutional
recognition of the Kurdish identity and the use of Kurdish language as
the language of education. However, the terror organization has not
been able to reach the desired level of participation by the people.

- On the other hand, the terror organization has focused on
re-establishment of the terrorist groups not directly affected by the
security forces and on their armed training in raid, laying ambush and
sabotage. The disagreements arising within the terror organization,
PKK-KPU conflict and escape of nearly five hundred Syrian terrorists
from the terror organization in particular have been the noticeable
problems that the terror organization has faced within the period under
review.

- In the meantime, the defense that head of the terror organization
has developed for his trial lasting in the European Court of Human
Rights has been printed by the terrorist organization in a two-volume
book under the title of "From the Sumerian Monastic State To The
Democratic Republic", accepted as the second manifesto and begun to be
used as a guide document for all activities carried out by the terror
organization and as a basic document in the ideological training of the
terrorist organization's members and supporters.

- The 8th Congress preparations which have lasted for a long time
in accordance with the outline of the said defense of head of the
terrorist organization was held in the Kandil Mountain region in
Northern Iraq on April 04-10, 2002 with the participation of 285
terrorist's 106 of whom were women and 179 men as well as about 100
audiences,

- In the said congress during which the activities the terror
organization PKK has conducted in the past and report developed
according to the defense of head of the terror organization and
submitted to the congress have also been evaluated, it has been pointed
out that;

* The terror organization PKK has obtained some advantages like
raising of the Kurdish problem in international area as a result of the
armed struggle it has conducted since 1977,

* However, the ideology and modus operandi adopted by the terror
organization at the beginning have failed due to the collapse of the
former Soviet system and the anti-terror environment arising following
the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the US and,

* It has been the time that PKK would be replaced by a completely
new formation in order not to be included in the list of terrorist
organizations, and it must undergo restructuring beginning from its
ideology to its lowest-level units, including a change in its
organizational title,

- During its 8th Congress, the terror organization has stated that
PKK's role has ended under current circumstances and decided that;

* It will not use the title "PKK" in the activities it carries out
in every field from April 04, 2002 when the birthday of head of the
terrorists is,

* It will conduct its activities under the title "Kurdistan's
Freedom and Democracy Congress-KADEK" from now on in accordance with a
new program, statute and organization based on the solution of Kurdish
problem in line with the main points of the defense that head of the
terrorists has submitted to the European Court of Human Rights within
the existing borders in four countries,

* PKK considers KADEK as its sole legal representative and disposes
of its moral and physical acquisitions to KADEK. The terror
organization made a press conference in Belgium/Brussels on April 16,
2000 and publicized its decisions.

- In the meantime, the fact that the inclusion of the PKK in the
list of terrorist organizations developed by the European Union member
nations which was issued on May 4, 2002 has led the members of the
terrorist organizations into great concern regarding the possible
inclusion of KADEK in the list of terrorist organizations. For this
reason, the terror organization has immediately begun to make protests
against such nations as Denmark, Spain, the UK who have had an effect
on the related decision-making,

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Suchart and Yuwadee Akkavibul 'WANTED' $10,000 Reward!
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/0c0d7e65e6312a02
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 7:56 am
From: Anonymous

Reward paid on conviction of Suchart and Yuwadee Akkavibul.

http://thailand.ahrchk.net/mainfile.php/general/29/

http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2004/886/

UPDATE (Thailand): Case of the killing of a migrant worker dragged on
by apparent delay of trial; Public prosecutor must speed up the case

UPDATE ON URGENT APPEAL UPDATE ON URGENT APPEAL UPDATE ON URGENT
APPEAL

ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION - URGENT APPEALS PROGRAMME

Update on Urgent Appeal
10 December 2004

[RE: UA-91-2004: THAILAND: Transparency in trial of the killers of a
migrant worker demanded on 23 July 2004]

UP-80-2004: THAILAND: Case of the killing of a migrant worker dragged
on by apparent delay of trial; Public prosecutor must speed up the
case

THAILAND: Impunity; violence against women; rule of law

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission is seriously concerned by the
apparent delay of a trial of Ma Suu, a Burmese migrant worker who died
after being beaten and set on fire by her employers, Suchart and
Yuwadee Akkavibul in July 2002. The accused Thai airforce officer and
his wife had escaped justice for two years, because of the officer's
influence and position of authority. (See further: UA-91-2004)

According to the information we have received, hearings were held to
take evidence two times on July 26 and August 4 2004. After hearing a
number of witnesses and obtaining strong evidence, the public
prosecutor charged the accused, Suchart and Yuwadee, with murder,
confinement and harbouring an illegal alien, and the case went to the
full court on November 1, 2004 (Black No. 1089/2547 at Uthaithanee
Provincial Court).

However, the court delayed the trial by setting the next hearing in
January 2006 saying that the court needed to handle pending cases
before new ones, under a new procedure. Local human rights groups say
that some new cases will be delayed for about three or four years
under these circumstances. Ma Suu's lawyer worries that the case will
be weakened by this delay as it is not certain that witnesses will be
available at the convenience of the court over a year from now.

The AHRC calls for your urgent intervention into this matter. Please
send a letter to Mr Kampree Kaocharern, the Attorney General of
Thailand, and urge him to take prompt steps to speed up the case,
considering the brutality and urgency and the fact that the case has
already been considerably delayed before the accused is an airforce
officer. Please also urge him to take evidence from witnesses prior to
the next hearing in 2006 in order to prevent damage to the prosecution
case.

Urgent Appeals Desk
Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)

UPDATED INFORMATION:

An 18-year-old Burmese migrant worker, Ma Suu, was brutally murdered
by her employees, Suchart Akkavibul and his wife Yuwadee, who set her
on fire alleging theft in Lop Buri Province, Thailand, in early July
2002. Two years after the incident on June 25, 2004, Suchart and his
wife finally appeared before the Uthaithanee Provincial Court.
However, they were given bail on the grounds that Suchart is a state
officer, although the prosecutor opposed bail. Suchart Akkavibul is a
special group commander in the Royal Thai Airforce.

The public prosecutor then applied to the court in order to take
testimony from the witnesses before the entry of the charge in the
court under Section 237 of the Criminal Procedure Code B.E.2477
[1928]. According to Section 237, when there are reasonable grounds to
believe that it is difficult for the witness to give testimony in the
future, the public prosecutor can apply motion to the court to take
his testimony promptly before the entry of the charge in the court.
The court received this application and hearings were held two times
on July 26 and August 4, 2004. Five Burmese workers who were employed
by Suchart gave their testimony at the hearings. Their names were
recorded as Mr Janai, Mr Chid, Mr Chai, Mr Nai and Mr Sang. At the
hearings, they testified that they saw that Ma Suu was severely beaten
by the employers. Some of them also testified that they saw her burn
injuries after the incident. Another Thai employer named Samrueng
Ponnikorn, who had been involved in the incident, also testified
against the two accused with the agreement that he would be escape
from prosecution. His elder brother, Kamron Ponnikorn has also already
agreed to testify in next hearing on the same condition.
Finally, the Public Prosecutor charged Suchart and his wife with
murder, confinement and harbouring an illegal alien under Sections 289
and 310 of the Penal Code of Thailand and Section 64 of the
Immigration Act B.E.2522 [1979]. The first hearing of the case was
held at Uthaithanee Provincial Court on November 1. Although the
initial progress looked good, the court set the next hearing for
January 2006. As a new hearing system was enforced a year ago, the
court needs time to handle pending cases filed in the old hearing
system prior to hearing new cases. However, local human rights groups
argue that enforcing the new hearing system is being used as an excuse
to drag on trial in some cases, and this case must be heard without
further delay due to its brutality and urgency. The accused Thai
airforce officer and his wife had already escaped justice for two
years, apparently because of the officer's influence and position of
authority.

A journalist working for the Voice of America is also scheduled to
give a statement in the next hearing. He is the person who recorded Ma
Suu's statement about the incident and took her photos when he visited
her at the hospital in July 2004.

Ma Suu's lawyer worries that the delay will weaken the case and the
accused will enjoy impunity in the end, as most of these witnesses may
not be expected to be available at the convenience of the court over a
year from now. The lawyer is also concerned that even though some
witnesses may appear in the court in 2006, the evidence of the case
will be destroyed because the accused is an influential state officer.

BREIF REMINDER OF THE CASE:

Ma Suu was brutally murdered by her employers, Suchart and Yuwadee
Akkavibul, who set her on fire alleging theft in Lop Buri Province,
Thailand, in early July 2002. Although Ma Suu sustained fatal burn
injuries, her employers abandoned her in a room without treatment or
food for three days and then dumped her by a roadside. On the early
morning of July 7, 2002, a man found Ma Suu on the road and sent her
to a hospital in town. However, she died nine days later, after
implicating the accused three persons;, Suchart his wife and Kamron
Ponnikorn.
SUGGESTED ACTION:

Please send a letter to the Attorney General of Thailand and urge him
to take prompt steps to speed up the case. Please also urge the
Attorney General to file the motion to the Court under Section 237 of
the Criminal Procedure Code B.E.2477 [1928], and take evidences from
the witnesses concerned prior to the next hearing in 2006 in order to
prevent loss of evidence.

Sample letter:

Dear Mr Kampree,

THAILAND: Case of the killing of a migrant worker dragged on by
apparent delay of trial; Public prosecutor must speed up the case;
(Black No. 1089/2547 at Uthaithanee Provincial Court)

Name of Victim: Ma Suu, 18, a Burmese migrant worker
The Accused:
1) Suchart Akkavibul, a special group commander in the Royal Thai
Airforce
2) Yuwadee Akkavibul, wife of Suchart Akkavibul
Case Number: Black Number 1089/2547 at Uthaithanee Province Court

It is with grave concern that I write to you regarding the apparent
delay of a trial of Ma Suu, a Burmese migrant worker brutally murdered
by her employers, Suchart and Yuwadee Akkavibul in July 2002.

According to the information I have received, at the first case
hearing on 1 November 2004, the Uthaithanee Provincial Court delayed
the trial by setting the next hearing for January 2006 despite the
presence of a number of witnesses and strong evidence ensured through
preliminary hearings.

This delay will weaken the case, as the witnesses concerned may not be
expected to be available at the convenience of the court over a year
from now. I am also concerned that the case evidence may be harmed due
to the delay by giving enough time and chance to the accused to
manipulate it. I would like to remind you that one of the accused,
Suchart Akkavibul, is an influential officer in the Royal Thai
Airforce, and he and his wife have so far escaped justice for two
years because of this.

I therefore urge you to take prompt action to speed up the case in
court. I also urge you to take appropriate steps to take evidence from
the witnesses concerned, with the permission of the court, prior to
the next hearing in 2006, in order to prevent loss of evidence.

Yours truly,

SEND A LETTER TO:

Mr Kampree Kaocharern
Attorney General
Office of the Attorney General
Lukmuang Building
Nahuppei Road
Prabraromrachawang, Pranakorn
THAILAND
Fax: +66 2 224 1448 / 221 0858

SEND A COPY OF THE LETTER TO:

1. Mr Pongthep Thepkanjana
Minister of Justice
Office of the Ministry of Justice
Ministry of Justice Building
22nd Floor
Chaeng Wattana Road
Pakkred, Nonthaburi
Bangkok 11120
THAILAND
Tel: +66 2 502 6776/ 8223
Fax: +66 2 502 6699/ 6734/ 6884

2. Ms Yakin Erturk
Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women
OHCHR-UNOG
Palais Wilson, 8-14 Avenue de la Paix
1211 Geneva 10
SWITZERLAND
Fax: +41 22 917 9022

3. Ms Gabriela Rodr?uez Pizarro
Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants
Att: Ms. Veronica Birga
Room: 3-040
8-14 Avenue de la Paix
1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 917 9336
Fax: +41 22 917 9006
E-mail: urgent-action@ohchr.org (please include in the subject box:
Special Rapporteur HR Migrants)

Thank you.

Urgent Appeals Programme
Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)

-=-
This message was sent via two or more anonymous remailing services.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Thaksin Demands Arrest Of Commander Akkavibul
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/dec150920a54cc7c
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 6:49 am
From: Anonymous

Reward paid on conviction of Suchart and Yuwadee Akkavibul.

http://thailand.ahrchk.net/mainfile.php/general/29/

http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2004/886/

UPDATE (Thailand): Case of the killing of a migrant worker dragged on
by apparent delay of trial; Public prosecutor must speed up the case

UPDATE ON URGENT APPEAL UPDATE ON URGENT APPEAL UPDATE ON URGENT
APPEAL

ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION - URGENT APPEALS PROGRAMME

Update on Urgent Appeal
10 December 2004

[RE: UA-91-2004: THAILAND: Transparency in trial of the killers of a
migrant worker demanded on 23 July 2004]

UP-80-2004: THAILAND: Case of the killing of a migrant worker dragged
on by apparent delay of trial; Public prosecutor must speed up the
case

THAILAND: Impunity; violence against women; rule of law

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission is seriously concerned by the
apparent delay of a trial of Ma Suu, a Burmese migrant worker who died
after being beaten and set on fire by her employers, Suchart and
Yuwadee Akkavibul in July 2002. The accused Thai airforce officer and
his wife had escaped justice for two years, because of the officer's
influence and position of authority. (See further: UA-91-2004)

According to the information we have received, hearings were held to
take evidence two times on July 26 and August 4 2004. After hearing a
number of witnesses and obtaining strong evidence, the public
prosecutor charged the accused, Suchart and Yuwadee, with murder,
confinement and harbouring an illegal alien, and the case went to the
full court on November 1, 2004 (Black No. 1089/2547 at Uthaithanee
Provincial Court).

However, the court delayed the trial by setting the next hearing in
January 2006 saying that the court needed to handle pending cases
before new ones, under a new procedure. Local human rights groups say
that some new cases will be delayed for about three or four years
under these circumstances. Ma Suu's lawyer worries that the case will
be weakened by this delay as it is not certain that witnesses will be
available at the convenience of the court over a year from now.

The AHRC calls for your urgent intervention into this matter. Please
send a letter to Mr Kampree Kaocharern, the Attorney General of
Thailand, and urge him to take prompt steps to speed up the case,
considering the brutality and urgency and the fact that the case has
already been considerably delayed before the accused is an airforce
officer. Please also urge him to take evidence from witnesses prior to
the next hearing in 2006 in order to prevent damage to the prosecution
case.

Urgent Appeals Desk
Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)

UPDATED INFORMATION:

An 18-year-old Burmese migrant worker, Ma Suu, was brutally murdered
by her employees, Suchart Akkavibul and his wife Yuwadee, who set her
on fire alleging theft in Lop Buri Province, Thailand, in early July
2002. Two years after the incident on June 25, 2004, Suchart and his
wife finally appeared before the Uthaithanee Provincial Court.
However, they were given bail on the grounds that Suchart is a state
officer, although the prosecutor opposed bail. Suchart Akkavibul is a
special group commander in the Royal Thai Airforce.

The public prosecutor then applied to the court in order to take
testimony from the witnesses before the entry of the charge in the
court under Section 237 of the Criminal Procedure Code B.E.2477
[1928]. According to Section 237, when there are reasonable grounds to
believe that it is difficult for the witness to give testimony in the
future, the public prosecutor can apply motion to the court to take
his testimony promptly before the entry of the charge in the court.
The court received this application and hearings were held two times
on July 26 and August 4, 2004. Five Burmese workers who were employed
by Suchart gave their testimony at the hearings. Their names were
recorded as Mr Janai, Mr Chid, Mr Chai, Mr Nai and Mr Sang. At the
hearings, they testified that they saw that Ma Suu was severely beaten
by the employers. Some of them also testified that they saw her burn
injuries after the incident. Another Thai employer named Samrueng
Ponnikorn, who had been involved in the incident, also testified
against the two accused with the agreement that he would be escape
from prosecution. His elder brother, Kamron Ponnikorn has also already
agreed to testify in next hearing on the same condition.
Finally, the Public Prosecutor charged Suchart and his wife with
murder, confinement and harbouring an illegal alien under Sections 289
and 310 of the Penal Code of Thailand and Section 64 of the
Immigration Act B.E.2522 [1979]. The first hearing of the case was
held at Uthaithanee Provincial Court on November 1. Although the
initial progress looked good, the court set the next hearing for
January 2006. As a new hearing system was enforced a year ago, the
court needs time to handle pending cases filed in the old hearing
system prior to hearing new cases. However, local human rights groups
argue that enforcing the new hearing system is being used as an excuse
to drag on trial in some cases, and this case must be heard without
further delay due to its brutality and urgency. The accused Thai
airforce officer and his wife had already escaped justice for two
years, apparently because of the officer's influence and position of
authority.

A journalist working for the Voice of America is also scheduled to
give a statement in the next hearing. He is the person who recorded Ma
Suu's statement about the incident and took her photos when he visited
her at the hospital in July 2004.

Ma Suu's lawyer worries that the delay will weaken the case and the
accused will enjoy impunity in the end, as most of these witnesses may
not be expected to be available at the convenience of the court over a
year from now. The lawyer is also concerned that even though some
witnesses may appear in the court in 2006, the evidence of the case
will be destroyed because the accused is an influential state officer.

BREIF REMINDER OF THE CASE:

Ma Suu was brutally murdered by her employers, Suchart and Yuwadee
Akkavibul, who set her on fire alleging theft in Lop Buri Province,
Thailand, in early July 2002. Although Ma Suu sustained fatal burn
injuries, her employers abandoned her in a room without treatment or
food for three days and then dumped her by a roadside. On the early
morning of July 7, 2002, a man found Ma Suu on the road and sent her
to a hospital in town. However, she died nine days later, after
implicating the accused three persons;, Suchart his wife and Kamron
Ponnikorn.
SUGGESTED ACTION:

Please send a letter to the Attorney General of Thailand and urge him
to take prompt steps to speed up the case. Please also urge the
Attorney General to file the motion to the Court under Section 237 of
the Criminal Procedure Code B.E.2477 [1928], and take evidences from
the witnesses concerned prior to the next hearing in 2006 in order to
prevent loss of evidence.

Sample letter:

Dear Mr Kampree,

THAILAND: Case of the killing of a migrant worker dragged on by
apparent delay of trial; Public prosecutor must speed up the case;
(Black No. 1089/2547 at Uthaithanee Provincial Court)

Name of Victim: Ma Suu, 18, a Burmese migrant worker
The Accused:
1) Suchart Akkavibul, a special group commander in the Royal Thai
Airforce
2) Yuwadee Akkavibul, wife of Suchart Akkavibul
Case Number: Black Number 1089/2547 at Uthaithanee Province Court

It is with grave concern that I write to you regarding the apparent
delay of a trial of Ma Suu, a Burmese migrant worker brutally murdered
by her employers, Suchart and Yuwadee Akkavibul in July 2002.

According to the information I have received, at the first case
hearing on 1 November 2004, the Uthaithanee Provincial Court delayed
the trial by setting the next hearing for January 2006 despite the
presence of a number of witnesses and strong evidence ensured through
preliminary hearings.

This delay will weaken the case, as the witnesses concerned may not be
expected to be available at the convenience of the court over a year
from now. I am also concerned that the case evidence may be harmed due
to the delay by giving enough time and chance to the accused to
manipulate it. I would like to remind you that one of the accused,
Suchart Akkavibul, is an influential officer in the Royal Thai
Airforce, and he and his wife have so far escaped justice for two
years because of this.

I therefore urge you to take prompt action to speed up the case in
court. I also urge you to take appropriate steps to take evidence from
the witnesses concerned, with the permission of the court, prior to
the next hearing in 2006, in order to prevent loss of evidence.

Yours truly,

SEND A LETTER TO:

Mr Kampree Kaocharern
Attorney General
Office of the Attorney General
Lukmuang Building
Nahuppei Road
Prabraromrachawang, Pranakorn
THAILAND
Fax: +66 2 224 1448 / 221 0858

SEND A COPY OF THE LETTER TO:

1. Mr Pongthep Thepkanjana
Minister of Justice
Office of the Ministry of Justice
Ministry of Justice Building
22nd Floor
Chaeng Wattana Road
Pakkred, Nonthaburi
Bangkok 11120
THAILAND
Tel: +66 2 502 6776/ 8223
Fax: +66 2 502 6699/ 6734/ 6884

2. Ms Yakin Erturk
Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women
OHCHR-UNOG
Palais Wilson, 8-14 Avenue de la Paix
1211 Geneva 10
SWITZERLAND
Fax: +41 22 917 9022

3. Ms Gabriela Rodr?uez Pizarro
Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants
Att: Ms. Veronica Birga
Room: 3-040
8-14 Avenue de la Paix
1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 917 9336
Fax: +41 22 917 9006
E-mail: urgent-action@ohchr.org (please include in the subject box:
Special Rapporteur HR Migrants)

Thank you.

Urgent Appeals Programme
Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)

-=-
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: World War III News, Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 AD.......
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/6db1c03f9201f54c
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 9:18 pm
From: "K Miller"

I always like the Clint Eastwood line "Go ahead punk, Make My Day
!!!" - myself. }:-)

;-)

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