the pixies where is my mind

On June 2, 1967, Ohnesorg participated in a protest held near the Deutsche Oper, aimed against the state visit of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,(see Iranian Revolution) who was attending a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Deutsche Oper that night. It was the first political demonstration Ohnesorg had ever taken part in. The protest turned violent after provocations by the Shah's agents and the police's overreacting. Demonstrators were then dispersed into the side streets. In the confusion in the courtyard of Krumme Strasse 66, Ohnesorg was then shot by plain-clothes police officer Karl-Heinz Kurras. Ohnesorg died before he could be operated on in the hospital. Kurras was cleared of all charges in two separate trials.

-wiki-

The photo is from the works of the great Russian photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. The Chechenya Gorge.

Putin and his watchdogs in Caucasus are advertising every day through mass media, how they introduce order, how they bring peace to Caucasian peoples. In two previous recordings on the internet, at the same [site] where this recording will be [posted], you will watch how three long-range bombers drop bombs on outskirts of our villages. After that you will also watch the destructions, that were inflicted by their bombardment. And after that, our Mujahideen are sent by me into those places, in order to collect these remains of their "gifts".

These are ball bombs, they are banned everywhere in the world. This is a ball bomb, it is left after every bombardment, it is Putin's "gift" for the Chechen people. This was collected in the territory of Nokhchicho (AKA Chechnya/Ichkeria), therefore I am elaborating, saying "Chechen people". This is a "gift", which he sends through his watchdog Kafyrov (Kadyrov) to this Chechen people.

These remains of their "gifts" explode instantly upon contact with a human or with hoofs of livestock, and people die and suffer because of it, especially during this time, during this season. Many from the poorest, the lowest section of the Chechen people, who gather ramsons, many times they have been blown up [by these things], and many times they have been suffering from these things. These bombs by themselves are banned by all civilized states in the world.

I am clearly demonstrating you how planes bombed, destruction in forests that is left after their bombardment, entire glades, and how we, Mujahideen, protect our people. These bomblets, remains, are collected by Mujahideen, brought [here], and here are some good specialists, insha'Allah, Allah will grant them Paradise for it, they defuse it, and then we bury it completely, so that it would not harm neither animals, nor [other] fauna, nobody.

Here are all those "gifts", that come to our lands, and all those praises, that are directed to us through television, you can see it. For example, these several bomb[let]s can cause irreparable harm. This single bomb[let] is capable of killing ten people. So let the people, the society, the so called society, see, with which gifts they have come to these lands and how they are doing it.

Excerpt from a 2009 May internet broadcast of the leader of a Chechen separatist organization. Dokka Abu Usman is the Arabized pronunciation, Doka Umarov is the traditional spelling.

The C.I.A. and later, the Reagan administration used the war in Afghanistan as a tool for the eventual collapse of the Soviet Empire. The effects of the Western powers meddling (primarily the U.S. and Britain) have continued to send aftershocks throughout the modern world. The network that the Reagan administration would ensure the creation of, remains largely intact to this day. Al-Qaeda, and its leader Osama Bin Laden are among a million individuals and organizations that owe much of their success to the love and support of the U.S. Government, especially the Reagan administration and the C.I.A during the entire decade of the 1980s on into the 1990s, and still to this very day. The following in an excerpt from a timeline constructed to track the majors points of "Charlie Wilsons War".


courtesy of historycommons.org
1985-1986: CIA Becomes Unhappy with Afghan Fighters, Begins Supporting Islamist Volunteers from Other Countries

The Central Intelligence Agency, which has been supporting indigenous Afghan groups fighting occupying Soviet forces, becomes unhappy with them due to infighting, and searches for alternative anti-Soviet allies. MSNBC will later comment: “[T]he CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan made famous by Rudyard Kipling, found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to ‘read’ than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So [Osama] bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the ‘reliable’ partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.” The CIA does not usually deal with the Afghan Arabs directly, but through an intermediary, Pakistan’s ISI, which helps the Arabs through the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) run by Abdullah Azzam. [MSNBC, 8/24/1998] The agreement is sealed during a secret visit to Pakistan, where CIA Director William Casey commits the agency to support the ISI program of recruiting radical Muslims for the Afghan war from other Muslim countries around the world. In addition to the Gulf States, these include Turkey, the Philippines, and China. The ISI started their recruitment of radicals from other countries in 1982 (see 1982). This CIA cooperation is part of a joint CIA-ISI plan begun the year before to expand the “Jihad” beyond Afghanistan (see 1984-March 1985). [RASHID, 2001, PP. 128-129] Thousands of militant Arabs are trained under this program (see 1986-1992).

Much of the conflict in Iran is based out of neighboring Pakistan, more specifically Balochistan Autonomous Region of Pakistan. Jundallah is the name of the current organization for the establishment of an independent Balochistan nation. The following is an excerpt from the Balochistan Online Entertainment company...

Who Are the Baloch?

To the neighboring Pushtun tribes, who live in fertile riverine valleys, Baluchistan is "the dump where Allah shot the rubbish of creation. But for the Baluch, their sense of identity is closely linked to the austere land where they have lived for at least a thousand years. According to the Daptar Sha'ar {Chronicle of Genealogies), an ancient ballad popular among all seventeen major Baluch tribes, the Baluch and the Kurds were kindred branches of a tribe that migrated eastwards from Aleppo, in what now is Syria, shortly before the time of Christ in search of fresh pasturelands and water sources.



One school nationalist historians attempts to link this tribe ethnically with the Semitic Chaldean rulers of Babylon, another with the early Arabs, still others with Aryan tribes originally from Asia Minor. In any case, there is agreement among these historians that the Kurds headed toward Iraq, Turkey, and northwest Persia, while the Baluch moved In to the coastal areas along the southern shores of the Caspian sea, later migrating into what are now Iranian Baluchistan and Pakistani Baluchistan between the sixth and fourteenth centuries.


Western historians dismiss the Daptar Sha'ar as nothing more than myth and legend, totally unsubstantiated by verifiable evidence, and it remains for future scholars to probe into the murky origins of the Baluch. These legends are cited here not because they have serious historiographic value but because they are widely believed and are thus politically important today. For the most part, Aleppo is a unifying symbol of a common identity in the historical memories shared by all Baluch. In recent years, however, Arab attempts to attribute Arab ethnic origins to the Baluch have become a divisive factor in the nationalist movement.


Whatever the authenticity of the Aleppo legends, scholars in Baluchistan and in the West generally agree that the Baluch were living along the southern shores of the Caspian at the time of Christ. This consensus is based largely on linguistic evidence showing that the Baluchi language is descended from a lost language linked with the Parthian or Median civilizations, which flourished in the Caspian and adjacent areas in the pre-Christian era. As one of the oldest living languages, Baluchi is a subject of endless fascination and controversy for linguists. It is classified as a member of the Iranian group of the Indo-European language family, which includes Farsi (Persian), Pushtu, Baluchi, and Kurdish. Baluchi is closely related to only one of the members of the Iranian group; Kurdish. In its modern form, it has incorporated borrowings from Persian, Sindhi, Arabic, and other languages, nonetheless retaining striking peculiarities that can be traced back to its pre-Christian origins. Until150 years ago, the Baluch, like most nomadic societies, did not have a recorded literature. Initially, Baluch savants used the Persian and Urdu scripts to render Baluchi in written form. In recent decades, Baluch nationalist intellectuals have evolved a Baluchi script known as Nastaliq, a variant of the Arabic script.


Ethnically, the Baluch are no longer homogeneous, since the original nucleus that migrated from the Caspian has absorbed a variety of disparate groups along the way. Among these "new" Baluch were displaced tribes from Central Asia, driven southward by the Turkish and Mongol invasions from the tenth through the thirteenth centuries, and fugitive Arab factions defeated in intra-Arab warfare. Nevertheless, in cultural terms, the Baluch have been remarkably successful in preserving a distinctive identity in the face of continual pressures from strong cultures in neighboring areas. Despite the isolation of the scattered pastoral communities in Baluchistan, the Baluchi language and a relatively uniform Baluch folklore tradition and value system have provided a common denominator for the diverse Baluch tribal groupings scattered over the vast area from the Indus River in the east to the Iranian province of Kerman in the west.

To a great extent, it is the vitality of this ancient cultural heritage that explains the tenacity of the present demand for the political recognition of Baluch identity. But the strength of Baluch nationalism is also rooted in proud historical memories of determined resistance against the would-be conquerors who perennially attempted, without success, to annex all or part of Baluchistan to their adjacent empires.


Reliving their past endlessly in books, magazines, and folk ballads, the Baluch accentuate the positive. They revel in the gory details of ancient battles against Persians, Turks, Arabs, Tartars, Hindus, and other adversaries, focusing on how valiantly their generals fought rather than on whether the Baluch won or lost. They point to the heroes who struggled to throw off the yoke of more powerful oppressors and minimize the role of the quislings who sold out the Baluch cause.


Above all, they seek to magnify the achievements of their more successful rulers, contending that the Baluch were on the verge of consolidating political unity when the British arrived on the scene and applied their policy of divide and rule. This claim is difficult to sustain with much certainty on the basis of the available evidence. Nevertheless, the Baluch did make several significant attempts to draw together politically, and their failure to establish an enduring polity in past centuries does not prove that they would fail under the very different circumstances prevailing today. As Baluch writers argue, given the technologies of modern transportation and communication, the contemporary Baluch nationalist has new opportunities for cementing Baluch political unity that were not open to his forebears.


From the book

In Afghanistan’s Shadow:

Baloch Nationalism and Soviet Temptations

By Selig S. Harrison

A Glance At Patani
(from the Patani Malay Human Rights Organization)

The nearly 2 million inhabitants of the presently Southern five Malay speaking provinces of southern Thailand, embraced Islam during the region's changing of ages leaving behind the their former ancient Hindu-Buddhist sphere of Langkasuka empire since the first century AD to form a new nation called 'Malay Kingdom of Patani' during 1350 AD with Islam as new faith

As Islam began to establish under Patani's second king, Patani gradually flourished especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But during its political decline in the eighteenth century, Patani was subdued by Siam (later called Thailand) in 1786 after it had won a war against Burma. Patani became a Siamese tributary state with their state affairs run by an ethnic Thai-Buddhist nation, the ethnic Malays of Patani again flourished their Islamic identity and, until the 19th century, it was well-known as the cradle of Islam in Southeast Asia.

But the situation begun to worsen as Siam incorporated Patani as part of its kingdom 1902, the Patani has since then been relentlessly struggling against Siamese imperialism to the present day. Siam brutalises Patani in all forms, politically, culturally and economically.

Disrespectfully towards the Islamic Malay tolerant way of life of Patani people, Siam forcefully promulgated its colonial policy aiming to assimilate the Patanis and abandon their own origin. From 1921 onwards the Patanis were obliged to attend Siamese schools in learning Thai language and history, culture and kingship. Without doubt, Buddhist influence was part of the campaign. It was unsuccessful though, as no matter how harshly the policies were imposed upon them, the Islamic Malay culture remained at an all-time high among the Patanis. But after 1932, a period in which Siam itself changed from an absolute monarchy system to a constitutional one and Siam was renamed as Thailand, from loosely controlled units to a powerful centralised one, the Patanis were since then victimised even further as the national government became mostly controlled by the military, promoting Thai nationalism, especially after World War II. Due to these situations, a prominent religious leader named Haji Sulong proposed a seven-point self-rule plan to safeguard Patani rights and identity, but the Thais responded to his sincere intention with crushing and killing. This made the Patanis stage uprisings from time to time since 1948 that led to the forming of armed struggle groups in 1960s as a defensive matter.

With suffering in silence on the one hand and preserving Malay Islamic culture on the other, the Patanis continue to fight on. With the end of the cold war and the emergence of the globalisation era during the 1980s and 1990s the Thai elites engaged in immorally political capitalism which was, in fact, what brought a downturn to their nation as can be seen to the present day. The Patanis prefer the sustainable and economical Islamic way of life. This led the Thais to wrongly come to the conclusion that the Patanis were against prosperity. Therefore the new anti Thai sentiment among the Patanis grows gradually and peacefully but are again brutalised by the all-time violent mentality of the Thais.

Why Ugandans want to work in Iraq

By Joshua Mmali
BBC News, Kampala

At the Watertight security training ground in Uganda, a group of men and women are doing target practice with their AK47s.
Nearby, another group are listening to a lecture under the shelter of a tree. Watertight Security Services has been sending Ugandan security guards to Iraq since 2007. So far, more than 10,000 Ugandans have gone to work in the country. Moses Matsiko worked in Iraq for more than three years before returning to Uganda to set up the company. "Since we do security, we start by screening the criminal background of people, hand in hand with Interpol," he told the BBC World Service.
"Then we do a medical screening to make sure that the people we are sending are medically fit. From there we start a training programme which entails weapon handling, shooting range drills and first aid." Applicants outnumber available places by more than 1,000.

Land of opportunity

Seth Katerema Mwesigye, an instructor at Watertight, says the money has made him wealthy by Ugandan standards.
"I was a student at Makerere university, but when I left, I did not have land. When I came back, I bought land and cows. All that money came from Iraq." Mr Masiko says that Iraq has proved to be a lucrative opportunity for security firms and their Ugandan recruits. But he says the company now needs to stay ahead of the increasing competition in the security sector and look for opportunities in new places. "More companies are coming in and they are ready to recruit for much less than we are offering which is $700 or $1,000 (£600) per month," he says. "Also you realise that other countries are coming into the market on the other side. "Originally Kenyans were not doing security work but today, there are more than 500 of them in Iraq and they work for as little as $400 per month. "So we are facing competition.

"But all eyes are now on Afghanistan. We hope that as it opens we are going to get more business there," he says.
But the picture is not all rosy. As well as the obvious danger of going to Iraq, there have been numerous stories recently in the Ugandan media about disaffected workers with complaints about conditions and pay. Some of them want to return home. Labour, Gender and Social Affairs Minister Gabriel Opiyo admits that not all of these companies have been treating their workers fairly.

"They must conform to the regulations which they signed up to when they got their licence, otherwise we will withdraw their licence," he says. "We are in the process of developing employment policies which will include a minimum wage."
It is obvious that the recruits at Watertight Security Services are desperate to escape from the poverty and unemployment that define their lives in Uganda. With hope, soon they will be marching into a future that will bring them rich rewards.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8341003.stm

Published: 2009/11/06 00:35:31 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Ft. Hood shooting suspect endured work pressure and ethnic taunts, his uncle says

The uncle says Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a sensitive man haunted by the wartime disabilities of soldiers he treated. The Army psychiatrist was not political, his relatives in the West Bank say.
By Richard Boudreaux

November 7, 2009 7:47 a.m.
-latimes.com-

Reporting from Al Birah, West Bank - When Rafik Ismail Hamad last traveled from the West Bank to visit relatives in America, he was struck by the pressures one of his nephews was facing. The younger man, an American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, spoke to his uncle of ethnic taunts by Army colleagues. He was haunted by the wartime disabilities of soldiers he treated as an Army psychiatrist, Hamad recalled, and was overwhelmed by a growing caseload he felt unable to manage. On top of that, the uncle said, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had drifted apart from his family; he was a sensitive, solitary man bearing his burdens alone. Late Thursday, Hamad was home in the West Bank town of Al Birah when he heard the news on television: A shooting spree at Ft. Hood, Texas, had left 13 people dead, and Hasan, wounded and in a coma, was being accused of the killings.

"The whole family is in a state of denial," Hamad said today. "We don't believe he is capable of doing something like that. I was amazed and shocked, because it's not him. He's very quiet, gentle."

"Maybe it built up together -- the harassment, too many patients, the workload, the tragedies his patients brought to him," said the 65-year-old retired real estate broker. "Whatever it was, it must have been big pressure, something terrible he couldn't handle."

Hamad said he had not seen or spoken to his nephew since that visit early last year, when Hasan was stationed in Washington. But the West Bank branch of the family had kept up with him through relatives in the United States. The uncle and another West Bank relative, Mohammed Munif Hasan, said they learned recently that Maj. Hasan had consulted a lawyer about securing a discharge from the Army. Nidal Hasan is the oldest of three brothers. Their Palestinian-born parents ran a restaurant and bar and owned a small grocery store in Roanoke, Va. Family members said the father died in 1999 and all three sons lived at home until their mother died about a year later. Eventually, Annas and Eyad moved out and got married, leaving Nidal on his own. Eyad lives in Virginia; Annas, a lawyer, moved to Al Birah in 2007 with his wife and their daughter. (Annas left his home after the shooting, apparently to avoid reporters; no one answered the door today.) The major's octogenarian maternal grandparents, Salha and Ismail Hamad, live in Al Birah with Rafik Hamad, their son. Rafik Hamad, a heavyset man with a trim white beard, spoke in an interview outside their three-story apartment building. He declined to make his parents available to reporters, explaining that the family was shielding them from the truth about what happened at Ft. Hood.

"They know there was an incident at the base and their grandson was injured," he said. "We didn't tell them there's lots of killing. Because you know old people. They get shocked. And even if we told them, they wouldn't believe it."

Hamad described his nephew as a gentle soul who once, as a young adult, mourned for three months after rolling over during a nap and crushing his pet parakeet. During medical school, the uncle said, Hasan switched his major to psychiatry after fainting at the sight of blood while delivering a baby. The young man became more religious after the death of his parents, who were Muslims but not observant, Hamad said. He noticed the change during the visit last year, when his nephew urged him to accompany him to pray at a mosque. His turn to religion had nothing to do with political identity, Hamad and other West Bank relatives said. He never traveled outside America except for two brief visits to the West Bank, the last one more than a decade ago, they said.

"He never knew anything about politics," Hamad said. "He didn't know who is the president or the king of any Arab country. He's American. . . . He once told me, 'The chances I have in the United States I couldn't have in any other country in the world, so I appreciate what this country has done for me.' "

Hamad said that although his nephew complained last year about ethnic slurs, he appeared to be handling them well. Fellow soldiers once handed him a diaper and told him to wear it around his head, the uncle said; another time they sketched a camel on a piece of paper and left it on his car with a note that said, "Here's your ride."

"He told me, 'They're ignorant. I'm more American than they are. I help my country more than they do. And I don't care what they say.' He felt sorry for them. He didn't feel grudges; he felt sympathy."

Hamad said that during their time together last year the major seemed more afflicted by his caseload of disabled and traumatized war veterans.

"He didn't have time even to breathe," Hamad said. "Too much pressure, too many patients, not enough staff. He would say, 'I don't know how to treat them or what to tell them,' because he didn't have enough time. They just kept coming one after the other.

"Sometimes he cried because of what happened to them. How young they are, what's going to happen to the rest of their lives. They're going to be handicapped; they're going to be crazy. He was very, very sensitive."

Mohammed Hasan, 24, a cousin of the major, said he heard the same story from relatives in America. Nidal Hasan brought his caseload home, he said, seeing patients at his house when the clinic was not open.

"He was a good doctor, and he liked working with soldiers and helping them," Mohammed Hasan said as he absorbed the news of the shooting. "We're the first to wonder how he could have done something like this. It's baffling."

The uncle said, "I think he snapped. Something big happened and he snapped."

With Hasan in a coma, his West Bank relatives said they were uncertain whether they would travel to Texas.

"I'd like to go visit the families [of the shooting victims] and apologize to them and give them my sympathies," Hamad said.

"But for him, I don't know what I can do. If he wakes up, I want to ask him, 'Did you do it and why?' I want to know. Otherwise, I have nothing to say to him."

boudreaux@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Chinese Agencies Struggle Over Video Game
By MICHAEL WINES
-nytimes.com-
Published: November 6, 2009


BEIJING — It could almost be a snippet from a World of Warcraft game session — two competing titans, plotting against each other, swapping punches, embarked on a quest for a single prize that only the stronger of them will claim.

But this is not virtual reality. The titans are two agencies of the Chinese government. And their quest, during which they have traded a few blows in the past week, is for a comparatively mundane prize: the power to regulate the real World of Warcraft, among the most popular online games in China.

Last Monday, the Chinese General Administration of Press and Publication ordered the Shanghai-based operator of World of Warcraft, NetEase, to shut down its servers for the game, saying it had rejected the company’s application to be the host of the game’s four million Chinese players.

But by Wednesday, the Ministry of Culture had struck back. “In regards to the World of Warcraft incident, the General Administration of Press and Publication has clearly overstepped its authority,” a ministry official, Li Xiong, was quoted as saying in the Economic Information Daily, a newspaper in Beijing. “They do not have the authority to penalize online gaming.”

The ministry said it had that authority. And it said NetEase was perfectly free to offer the game on computers in China. The matter now appears destined for settlement by the State Council, the Chinese government’s cabinet. Such bureaucratic hair-pulling might seem petty, were so much not at stake.

The online gaming industry in China is already huge, and growing fast. About 50 million people crowd the Internet cafes of China on a regular basis to play. Revenues in 2008 rose about 50 percent to at least 20 billion yuan, or $2.9 billion, according to Alicia Yap, a Hong Kong analyst for Citi Investment Research & Analysis. That is 10 times the revenue of just five years ago. IDC, a research company, has predicted that annual revenue will reach $6 billion by 2013.

In that context, the question of who decides what games go online — and how they decide — looms large. It is perhaps especially important for game makers outside China, who have had trouble cracking the vast Chinese market.

Of the 10 most popular Chinese games ranked by MMLC Group, a Beijing intellectual-property consulting firm, only World of Warcraft, by Blizzard Entertainment, is American-made; two are South Korean, and the rest were developed in China.

The press and publication administration has taken a hard line against outside involvement in the industry, stating flatly last month that foreign investment in Chinese online gaming operations, whether by joint ventures, cooperatives or other means, was forbidden.

The agency did not directly address the origin of the actual games, although it did bar foreigners from providing technical support to Chinese companies and declared its authority over foreign “service packs” and other improvements to existing online games.

In practice, some experts say, at least some of those bans could be easily sidestepped. The proclamation may be part of a larger feud within the government, and perhaps in the business world as well, over parceling out regulation of the booming industry.

Historically, the publication administration has had the power to censor and ban virtually anything published, whether a book, a DVD or an online game. The Ministry of Culture has policed film and other performing arts, including literary and audiovisual works.

The State Council sought to redefine this overlap in 2008, essentially giving the publication agency the power to approve online games before they are made public, and assigning the Culture Ministry to police them once they appear on the Internet.

World of Warcraft fell between the cracks. Long popular among Chinese gamers, the role-playing game hit a snag in June, when Blizzard dropped the previous operator of the game’s Chinese franchise in favor of NetEase. NetEase shut the game down while it reapplied for permission from the Ministry of Culture and the publication agency.

The Culture Ministry swiftly approved the game, while the publications agency lagged. In September, after the State Council issued a statement reaffirming the Culture Ministry’s authority over games already online, NetEase restarted World of Warcraft — and drew the publication agency’s wrath.

Which agency will win the regulatory battle remains unclear, although the Culture Ministry, with allies among other ministerial-level offices, is said to enjoy an edge. Regardless, there appears to be much for both offices to do. The government this summer proclaimed its desire to clean up the Internet, ridding it of pornography, gambling, violence and seditious material.

The Culture Ministry dived further into that Herculean task in the past week, announcing sanctions against 188 companies that it said were running unlicensed, vulgar or overly violent online games. NetEase and World of Warcraft were conspicuously absent from the list.

Li Bibo and Xiyun Yang in Beijing contributed research.

Iran holding three journalists on charges of 'unauthorized reporting'

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 6, 2009; 2:19 PM

TEHRAN -- Iranian officials arrested a Japanese reporter and two Canadian reporters during anti-government protests this week and charged them with "unauthorized reporting," the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Friday. It did not identify the reporters or their news organizations. The three reporters join two others whose agencies said they were also arrested during Wednesday's protests marking the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy here. Agence France Presse said its local reporter Farhad Pouladi was detained and the International Federation of Journalists said a Danish journalist, Niels Krogsgaard, was arrested in connection with the demonstration.

"The claim about the arrest of the AFP journalist is under investigation," the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency cited Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi as saying Friday. Iranian media gave no further details on the other arrested foreigners. All are still believed to be in custody.

On Wednesday authorities temporarily blocked all access to e-mail programs such as Gmail and Yahoo during the demonstrations to prevent people from sending images to foreign media organizations. Still, many managed to upload cellphone clips to video sites, which were widely broadcast by foreign-based Farsi language satellite channels.

Anti-government protesters used a state-backed rally commemorating the 1979 embassy takeover to stage their own demonstration against the government, which they call illegitimate. The confrontation led to clashes between security forces and protesters in the center of the capital. Foreign reporters were ordered to report only from the official demonstration.

Iranian officials have often accused Western media organizations of organizing and promoting the protests. Foreign journalists are largely barred from the country since several demonstrations and riots following June presidential elections.

-pictured- of the story of the Blind Men and the Elephant

fanaa- passing away
baqaa- levels of God
marifa- knowledge
latif-e-gitta- six subtleties
nafs- breath
qalb- maintaining good heart
sirr- total negation of ego
ruh- the effort of being created in God
khafi- primordial knowledge
akhfa- unity

Tibetan Prayer Flags

meditation for simply the self can lead to selfishness

The LAPD fights crime, not illegal immigration
The outgoing chief of police urges the department to keep focusing on community outreach.

By William J. Bratton, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department

October 27, 2009


On March 12, Juan Garcia, a 53-year-old homeless man, was brutally murdered in an alley off 9th and Alvarado streets in the Westlake District, just west of downtown Los Angeles. At first, the police were stumped; there were no known witnesses and few clues. Then a 43-year-old undocumented immigrant who witnessed the crime came forward and told the homicide detectives from the Rampart station what he saw. Because of his help, a suspect was identified and arrested a few days later while hiding on skid row. Because the witness was not afraid to contact the police, an accused murderer was taken off the streets, and we are all a little bit safer. Stories like this are repeated daily in Los Angeles.

Keeping America's neighborhoods safe requires our police forces to have the trust and help of everyone in our communities. My nearly 40 years in law enforcement, and my experience as police commissioner in Boston and New York City and as chief in Los Angeles, have taught me this.

Yet every day our effectiveness is diminished because immigrants living and working in our communities are afraid to have any contact with the police. A person reporting a crime should never fear being deported, but such fears are real and palpable for many of our immigrant neighbors.

This fear is not unfounded. Earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that 11 more locations across the United States have agreed to participate in a controversial law enforcement program known as 287(g). The program gives local law enforcement agencies the powers of federal immigration agents by entering into agreements with Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Although many local agencies have declined to participate in 287(g), 67 state and local law enforcement agencies are working with ICE, acting as immigration agents.

Some in Los Angeles have asked why the LAPD doesn't participate. My officers can't prevent or solve crimes if victims or witnesses are unwilling to talk to us because of the fear of being deported. That basic fact led to the implementation almost 30 years ago of the LAPD's policy on immigrants, which has come to be known as Special Order 40. The order prohibits LAPD officers from initiating contact with someone solely to determine whether they are in the country legally. The philosophy that underlies that policy is simple: Criminals are the biggest benefactors when immigrants fear the police. We can't solve crimes that aren't reported because the victims are afraid to come forward to the police.

The idea of engaging all members of the public in reporting crime and identifying criminals not only helps us with short- and medium-term goals of reducing crime; it helps improve relations with community members. We all have an interest in helping our young people develop into healthy, educated and law-abiding adults. Breeding fear and distrust of authority among some of our children could increase rates of crime, violence and disorder as those children grow up to become fearful and distrustful adolescents and adults. That is why the Los Angeles Police Department has not participated in 287(g) and the federal government is not pressuring the department to do so.

Americans want a solution to our immigration dilemma, as do law enforcement officials across this nation. But the solution isn't turning every local police department into an arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Police Foundation published a report in April titled "The Role of Local Police: Striking a Balance Between Immigration Enforcement and Civil Liberties." The report confirms that when local police enforce immigration laws, it undermines their core public safety mission, diverts scarce resources, increases their exposure to liability and litigation, and exacerbates fear in communities that are already distrustful of police.

The report concluded that to optimize public safety, the federal government must enact comprehensive immigration reform. As police chief of one of the most diverse cities in the United States, and possibly the world, I agree. As I leave my position as leader of the LAPD, I will encourage my successor to adopt the same rigid attitude toward keeping Special Order 40 and keeping the mission of the men and women of the department focused on community cooperation instead of community alienation.

Working with victims and witnesses of crimes closes cases faster and protects all of our families by getting criminals off the street. We must pass immigration reform and bring our neighbors out of the shadows so they get the police service they need and deserve. When officers can speak freely with victims and witnesses, it goes a long way toward making every American neighborhood much safer.

William J. Bratton is chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. The Police Foundation's report is available online at http://www.policefoundation.

org/strikingabalance/.

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

List of noted U.S. involvement in regime changes of foreign nations courtesy of - wiki -


Iran 1953
Guatemala 1954
Cuba 1959-
Turkey 1960
Democratic Republic of the Congo 1960
Iraq 1963
Brazil 1964
Iraq 1968
Chile 1973
Afghanistan 1973-74
Argentina 1976
Afghanistan 1978-1980s
Iran 1980
Turkey 1980
Nicaragua 1981-1990
Republic of Ghana
Iraq 1992-1995
Guatemala 1993
Zimbabwe 2000s
Serbia 2000
Venezuela 2002
Georgia, 2003
Ukraine, 2004
Equatorial Guinea 2004
Lebanon 2005
Palestinian Authority, 2006-Present
Somalia 2006-2007
Venezuela 2007
Iran 2001-present

Monday, November 2, 2009
Profiteering from misery: Alaskan Natives' migrant prison

Profiteering from misery: Alaskan Natives' private migrant prison for profit is disturbing trend in violation of the traditional teachings of Native Americans

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/


UPDATED
TUCSON -- Native Americans say the disturbing trend of profiteering from foul and abusive private migrant prisons by American Indian Nations violates traditional teachings to honor the sacredness of life and all humanity.

The San Xavier District of the Tohono O'odham Nation has planned a migrant prison in secret for years. Recently, outcry from neighbors at Sahuarita, Ariz., halted the plan. However, a second site selected in secret is east of Three Points, Ariz. and has not been made public.

Mike Wilson, Tohono O'odham who puts out water for migrants against the wishes of the Tohono O'odham government, is among those opposing the migrant prison.

"The Tohono O'odham Nation is anxious to take blood money from the Department of Homeland Security. Shamefully, we who were once oppressed are now the willing oppressors," Wilson said.

The residents of Sahuarita and city officials of the City of Green Valley, including the mayor, were opposed to the prison. David Garcia and Wilson, both Tohono O'odham, met officials at the Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting on May 12, 2009 and opposed the prison.

Jose Matus, Yaqui and director of the Indigenous Alliance without Borders/Indigena Alianza sin Fronteras, points out that many of those arrested by the US Border Patrol, and dying in the Sonoran Desert, are Indigenous Peoples from southern Mexico and Central America. They are desperate for food and jobs after being forced off their lands by multi-national corporations. An increasing number of the dead are Mayan women, walking with their children.

Meanwhile in Montana, the private security firm American Police Force is under a state Attorney General probe, after masquerading as the police force in Hardin, Montana, a town with a long history of racism and attacks on American Indians. American Police Force is linked to Texas-based CorPlan Corrections, which is pitching the private prison to Tohono O'odham and other Indian Nations.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was indicted in Texas for prison profiteering. Cheney invested in the Vanguard Group, which profits from private prison contractor GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut, which split into GEO and Wackenhut Transportation.)

The Vanguard Group reported $1.24 trillion in assets, in mutual funds, in 2009, with global offices, including offices in Scottsdale, Arizona and Valley Forge, Penn. Vanguard Group is among the top investors in Corrections Corporations of America, CCA, operating private prisons in Arizona and throughout the United States.

Wackenhut Transportation, owned by G4S, currently has a contract to transport detained and arrested migrants in buses at the Arizona border. The buses constantly flow from the border to Tucson. Aso, at the Arizona border, Elbit Systems, the Israeli contractor of the Palestine Apartheid Border, was subcontracted by the border wall profiteer Boeing for spy apparatus on the Arizona border.

In another twist, there's an Israeli/US border prison connection. US based Emerald Corrections was granted a prison contract in Israel. Israel’s government awarded a 22year contract to a consortium of Africa-Israel Investments, Minrav Holdings Ltd and Emerald Correctional Management to finance, design, build and operate the country’s first private prison at Be’er Sheva. Emerald operates the prison at San Luis, Arizona, on the US/Mexico border and others in Texas.

Private prisons, packed with migrants, were quickly built in Texas and along the Southwest border during the Bush administration. American Indians continue to be imprisoned at a disproportionate rate and receive longer prison terms than non-Indians, according to the ACLU. While the abuses in private prisons continue, Cheney has not been prosecuted.

Already, Alaskan Natives are in the private prison profiteering business, according to New York Times, citing the abuses today from a filed complaint of a migrant detention center in New York. Mildew, frigid temperatures and hunger were repeated complaints.

"In vivid if flawed English, it described cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for $1 a day," New York Times reported.

A subsidiary of Ahtna Inc., an Alaska Native regional corporation, Ahtna Technical Services Inc., operates the Varick Street Detention Facility with the help of a Texas subcontractor.

Ben Carnes, Choctaw prison rights activist, was surprised by the news of Native-run prisons. "Wow. I always thought that if the First Nations were in the prison industry, they would manage it as a positive advancement in corrections, instead of just another stinking jail."

After viewing a photo of an outdoor migrant detention center on the Tohono O'odham Nation, often described as "The Cage," Carnes said, "The people cannot keep ignoring how the US imposed tribal council system is operating before they end up in those dog cages!"

Read the article below from the New York Times.

Corrupt prison hustlers linked to Tohono O'odham prison:
(Link to prison hustle in Choctaw and Chickasaw lands)
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2009/10/corrupt-prison-hustlers-linked-to.html

New York Times: Immigrant Jail Tests U.S. View of Legal Access
By NINA BERNSTEIN
New York Times
Published: November 1, 2009
A startling petition arrived at the New York City Bar Association in October 2008, signed by 100 men, all locked up without criminal charges in the middle of Manhattan.
Daniel I. Miller, a former detainee at the Varick Street center, complained of abuses there. "These people have no rules," he said.
In vivid if flawed English, it described cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for $1 a day. Read article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/nyregion/02detain.html?_r=1

Indianz.com
http://www.indianz.com/
A subsidiary of Ahtna Inc., an Alaska Native regional corporation, runs an unusual immigrant detention facility in New York City under a $79 million, three-year contract with the federal government.
Ahtna Technical Services Inc. operates the Varick Street Detention Facility with the help of a Texas subcontractor. The jail houses up to 250 adult male aliens who face deportation for various reasons.
The Obama administration cites the jail as a model for the way legal services are provided to detainees. But the New York City Bar Association says detainees are frequently denied counsel and live under harsh conditions.
Ahtna has about 1,200 shareholders.
Relevant Documents:
Contract with Homeland Security for the operation of the Varick Federal Detention Processing Facility

http://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/contracts/ahtnatechnicalservicesinchsceop07c00019asofp00012.pdf

ACLU: Racial profiling and prison sentences of American Indians
"Indian political participation is further diminished by the disproportionate number of tribal members disfranchised for commission of criminal offenses. There is a pattern of racial profiling of Indians by law enforcement officers, the targeting of Indians for prosecution of serious crimes, and the imposition of lengthier prison sentences upon Indian defendants. These injustices result in the higher incarceration of Indians and dilute the overall voting strength of Indian communities." (OCt. 14, 2009)
http://www.nativelegalupdate.com/2009/10/articles/aclu-alleges-widespread-voting-rights-problems-in-native-communities

US Detention Facilities:
http://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/americas/united-states/list-of-detention-sites.html
Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at 9:18 AM 0 comments Links to this post

THE STREETS SPEAK: COLOMBIAN GRAFFITI ARTISTS HAVE THEIR SAY STREETS SPEAK: COLOMBIAN GRAFFITI ARTISTS HAVE THEIR SAY

Written by Raimondo Chiari

Monday, 21 September 2009

Recent political graffiti from the streets of Bogotá provides creative commentary on militarism, US military bases, President Álvaro Uribe and extrajudicial military killings.
-
1, 2, 3 - Uribe - What's behind the FALSE POSITIVES
This message, written in the form of a chant, refers to a recent scandal over the Colombian Army’s practice of extrajudicially killing civilians, whose bodies are then dressed as guerrilla fighters (now called ‘False Positives’) in order to fabricate combat reports and results, leading to monetary and vacation rewards, as well as the promotion of army officers.

THE TRUTH UNDER THE EARTH: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GENOCIDE AND FEMICIDE IN GUATEMALA

Written by Colm McNaughton

Thursday, 22 October 2009

The war in Guatemala has never ceased. While the Peace Accords signed in 1996 demobilized some combatants and weapons - the killing, raping and torturing continues unabated. In 2009 the homicide rate for Guatemala, with a population of 13 million, is about 8,000 per year. Of these 8,000 murders approximately 10 percent are women and girls.

According to figures from Guatemala City based women’s group Grupo Guatemalteco de Mujeres (GGM) between January 2002 and January 2009 there were 197,538 acts of domestic violence, 13,895 rapes and 4,428 women were murdered. What is perhaps even more disturbing is that for this tsunami of violence there is a 97 percent impunity rate. One of the main reasons for near total impunity in the Guatemalan context is that the people responsible for the genocidal civil war against indigenous people in which 200,000 people were murdered and 50,000 disappeared have never, nor are they ever likely to be held accountable.

In August and September of 2009 I visited Guatemala, at least in part, to examine how the civil war has been superseded by an as yet undeclared social war, part of which is an ongoing femicide.

This journey really starts for me in early September 2009 in the Ixil triangle, which is an area in the western highlands framed by the three townships of Nebaj, Chajul and Cotzal. It is a fiercely indigenous region which has resisted the colonialism and brutal immiseration forced upon the region since the times of the Spanish invasion. Consequently, it bore the brunt of the genocidal ‘scorched earth’ policies enacted by the consecutive military dictatorships of Romeo Lucas Garcia and Rios Mont in the early 1980s. At this time there were more than 200 massacres and 16,000 deaths, which led to a population decrease of the region by a quarter.

I visited Finca Covabunga, which is just up the road from Chul, a bumpy, dusty, windy three hour trip through the mountains on the back of a pick up, north of Nebaj. On December 9, 1982, 75 men, women and children were massacred by the Guatemalan army. The exhumation of seven or so bodies from two graves - the rest had been eaten by dogs, birds and time - was organized by the Centre for Forensic Analysis and Scientific Application (CAFTA) and it was part of their ongoing campaign against impunity for genocide in Guatemala. In speaking with the folks from CAFTA they were not hopeful of a prosecution – there is no functioning legal system in Guatemala – but they keep on building the case anyway. Over the two days I was in the community, like everyone else I tried to find a little spot underneath the black plastic to watch the digging: a pair of gumboots here, a crumbling skull there, some paperwork in a pocket, all carefully collected, noted and packed. One of the most surreal experiences of my life is helping to clean up the site and carrying plastic bags full of clothing, body parts and personal affects of recently exhumed massacre victims to the four-wheel drive for further tests and safer storage. As the exhumation continued an old woman wept, someone let off fireworks, others cooked beans and tortillas, young boys played football and stony faced older men talked softly in conjobal, a Mayan language.

I talked and recorded survivors of the massacre. Margarheta lost her husband, animals, land and all her possessions on that day. She spent the next ten years living in the mountains running from the army. Digging up the bodies was painful for her as it brought back a flood of painful memories. I met another man, Juan, hunched over, with a tiny twisted frame, obviously in pain from years of unrelenting farm labor. He lost his whole family on that day, he kept repeating the same word ‘everything’, ‘everything’. He found it hard to walk, to talk.

A day or so after returning from Chul, I was visiting an activist friend, Nicolas, in his dirt-floored shack surrounded by his wife and eight beautiful kids. He had been unable to attend the exhumation because of other business. I played him the recordings and showed him the photos. He listened with a sharp intensity to every word. He looked at the pictures likewise, it was like he had lost something precious and he was looking for clues. He told me his grandfather and grandmother had been executed by the army. Later on, he explained he had only learned to read and write recently, after he and his people had come down from the mountains. I asked him if he was a guerilla. He replied with some sadness: ‘no, I was too young’. He was elated that people from other countries are interested in learning about and telling the story of his people’s suffering and resistance. He gave me a present, of a book, a powerful pictorial account of the struggle for memory in Guatemala. The title translates as ‘the truth is under the earth’. Indeed.

The next day Nicolas and I and a couple of other activists visited a community on the outskirts of Nebaj. It is named June 30th which commemorates the date in 2006 in which the community reclaimed land from the army - who had stolen it after eradicating the owners - and started growing food, teaching their kids and various other projects of self-determination. All these families that made up this community had been dispossessed by the ‘scorched earth’ policies of the army in the region and been living in the mountains for more than a decade. Now this community is in a low-intensity conflict with the soldiers at the army base, which is situated on the other side of the hill. What this war largely consists of is the continual harassment, rape and sometimes torture and killing of women, which usually occurs when the women go out to collect firewood in the forests.

While at the community I met a young woman of sixteen who had a six month old baby, the father is a soldier and the conception method was rape. Nothing has ever happened in regards to this rape. In June of 2009 a woman who had five young children, was raped, murdered and cut up by soldiers. Nothing will likely ever happen to the person/s who committed this heinous act - impunity for such crimes is total in Guatemala. This woman’s five children are now orphaned and being helped out for now by a much older aunt and they have no means of support. I visited these kids and the littlest one who is two, had her finger in her mouth the whole time, and she looked out the world with big accusing eyes.

After a meeting with the community and many different perspectives on what is happening - in four different languages - we asked the community if they would like us to accompany them on a wood-sourcing mission. They enthusiastically agreed, so after lunch we set off into the forest, literally to confront power and to defend memory against institutionalized forgetting. On the way we were shown the spot were the mother of five was murdered, and stories were shared by the women who heard the screams and found the body. It was about half an hour into chopping and collecting wood when first contact was made with the army. They called for back-up immediately and the community gathered. First, we eyed five soldiers in shorts and runners with machetes, ropes and bags, obviously on some sort of collection mission. They were soon joined by five more soldiers, wearing camouflage fatigues and heavily armed. They kept their distance, filmed the proceedings and generally added a malevolent presence and threat to the encounter.

The community members began to really speak their minds to the soldiers. After a while, the tension eased and soldiers and community members went on their way. As she was leaving, one older woman said to the soldiers, "I am not afraid of you. Back in the eighties and nineties we used to kill you sort of people, and we’ll do it again if we have to." The soldiers were visibly shaken by her words.

Won Buddhism founded in Korea

excerpts from the website wonbuddhism.info
1 : The Essential Dharmas of Daily Practice..

1. The mind ground is originally free from disturbance, but disturbances arise in response to sensory conditions; let us give rise to the absorption (dhyana) of the self-nature by letting go of those disturbances.
2. The mind ground is originally free from delusion, but delusions arise in response to sensory conditions; let us give rise to the wisdom of the self-nature by letting go of those delusions.
3. The mind ground is originally free from wrong-doing, but wrong-doings arise in response to the sensory conditions; let us give rise to the precepts of the self-nature by letting go of those wrong-doings.
4. Let us remove unbelief, greed, laziness, and foolishness by means of belief, zeal, questioning, and dedication.
5. Let us turn a life of resentment into a life of gratitude.
6. Let us turn a life of dependency into a life of self-reliance.
7. Let us turn a reluctance to learn into a readiness to learn well.
8. Let us turn a reluctance to teach into a readiness to teach well.
9. Let us turn a lack of public spirit into an eagerness for the publics welfare.

7 : The Dharma of Timeless Zen

As a rule, zen is a practice that leads to the achievement of freedom of mind through gaining awakening to ones own nature, which is originally free from discrimination or attachment. Since time immemorial, those who have been determined to achieve the great way have all practiced zen. If people intend to practice genuine zen, they first should take true voidness as the essence and marvelous existence as the function and, externally, be unmoving like Mount Tai when in contact with the myriad of sensory conditions, and, internally, keep the mind unsullied, like empty space. Let the mind function so that it is not acting even in action and not resting even at rest. If we do so, then all discrimination will not depart from absorption, so that the functioning of the six sense organs will tally with the self-nature of the void and calm, numinous awareness. This is what is called Mahayana zen and the method of practice in which we progress in concert through the Threefold Study. Therefore it says in a sutra, Give rise to a mind that, while responding, does not abide anywhere. This is precisely the great dharma of practice that remains unmoved amid the myriad of sensory conditions. This dharma may seem extremely difficult, but if only we come to understand in detail the methods of practice, then even a farmer wielding a hoe can practice zen, as can a carpenter wielding a hammer, a clerk using an abacus, and an official seeing to an administrative matter; and we can practice zen even while going about or staying at home. What need is there to bother with choosing a specific place and with talking about action or rest?

However, for people who are first beginning to practice zen, the mind is not easily controlled according to their wishes; it is like training an ox where, if the reins of the mind are dropped even for a moment, it will instantly harm ones commitment to the way. Therefore, if you keep exerting yourself without letting go of that spirit which is ready to fight to the bitter end no matter how alluring the sensory conditions you face may be, the mind gradually will become tamed and you will reach a state where the mind will do what you wish. Each and every time you are in contact with a sensory condition, do not forget to keep the thought in mind that an opportunity for practice has arrived, always roughly ascertaining only whether or not you are affected by that sensory condition. Thus, once there is a gradual increase in instances of behavior in which the mind does what you wish, you may from time to time let yourself be put in situations that you normally would find extremely attractive or abhorrent. If the mind is moved as before, then your commitment to the way is immature; but if it is unmoved, then you will know that this is proof that your commitment to the way is ripening. However, at the very time that you realize that the mind is unmoving, do not let down your guard, for it is unmoving by employing the mental powers, rather than naturally unmoving. The mind has been well tamed only when it is unmoving even if left unguarded.

If a person continues for a long time to practice zen so as to put an end to all the defilements and free the mind, then, you will be centered like an iron pillar and defended from the outside like a stone wall, so that neither wealth or status, or honor and glory, can coax the mind, nor can anyone make that mind submit through weapons or authority. Practicing all dharmas in this wise, you will never be enticed or obstructed, and even while residing in this dusty world, you constantly will attain hundreds and thousands of samadhis. Once you reach this stage, the entire world will be transformed into the one genuine realm of reality, and right and wrong, good and evil, and all the defiled and pure dharmas will become the single taste of ghee. This state is called the gateway of nonduality. Freedom in birth and death, liberation from the cycle of rebirths, and the ultimate bliss of the pure land all emerge through this gateway.

early snowfall in Beijing

"I tell you not to resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well." Matt. 5:38-42

"Love your enemy and pray for those who misuse you" Matt 5:43-44

satyagraha- unwavering search for truth
ahimsa- avoiding harm of living creatures