The Republicrats: A Plague on Both Houses

From Harriet Tubman to Assata Shakur, and the great Indigenous warrior Crazy Horse, from Nat Turner and John Brown, to brothers Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Huey P. Newton, we must recommit ourselves to this struggle for ourselves and the peoples of the world. There is much work to be done outside the garbage of the U.S. Democratic and Republican parties [i.e. the Republicrats] - who must be uncompromisingly relegated to the dust bin of broken promises, hypocrisy and lies, from whence they came. - Larry Pinkney

Civil Liberties Union Report Highlights NYPD Racism

A closer analysis of the complaints themselves reveals other disturbing trends. For the last decade 80% of complaints were filed by persons of color – 50% of those by African-Americans and 24% by Latinos. African-Americans filed six times more complaints regarding street-stops by the police than whites. African-Americans were also 12 times more likely to be stopped using physical force and 40 times more likely to be stopped by police using a gun than whites.
Although criminal prosecution of abusive police officers has produced few convictions, civil cases have provided compensation for damages. In total, from 2000-2004 the New York City tax funds were used to pay out $224 million in damages and $45 million in lawyers fees for brutality claims. These statistics suggest a political trade-off in which public funds are dispersed to cover over the most egregious brutality cases while the unregulated policing tactics which are certain to produce new forms of brutality on a daily basis are allowed to continue. - Billy Wharton

On “Broken” and Other Windows

Even studies which attempt to defend elements of the Broken Windows theory indicate that the NYPD has moved dangerously beyond Wilson and Kelling’s model. As Jeffery Fagan and Garth Davies suggest, OMP “…does seem to create a racial classification of ‘suspicion.’” Further, they suspect that the resurgence of community organizations and not aggressive police tactics are responsible for the decline in the overall rate of crime in New York City.
Thirteen years of OMP policing are enough to recognize the everyday racialized brutality of the NYPD. If the sodomization of Abner Louima, the shooting of Antoine Reid and the execution of Amadou Diallo are not sufficient evidence of its failure, then certainly the academic rejection of Broken Windows theory should be acknowledged. The acquittal of three officers charged in the fatal shooting death of Sean Bell provides further evidence that OMP policing produces little more than more victims. Some of these victims will die horrific deaths such as Bell while others will have to organize their everyday lives around the very real threat of the unrestrained violence of the NYPD. - Billy Wharton

If your Ideology is Gigantic ..

If your ideology is gigantic, the problems encountered will also be gigantic. You must keep your mind like a wood apple, and not like a mango fruit. Do you know the mango skin, it is very soft and any bird can eat it, but in the case of the wood apple, no one can destroy it. If your goal is extensive, your journey will take time. You must be like a wood apple.

Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar

Beating the Drums of a Broader Middle East War: Israel, Syria, and Lebanon Prepare the "Home Fronts"

In a regional war scenario, Israel will deal mainly with Lebanon and Syria while the U.S. and Britain will deal mainly with Iran. [51] The help of Turkey and NATO will definitely be needed by Israel, America, and Britain in such a war. Ankara and NATO will also be involved in both fronts.
NATO has already built a presence on the western borders of Syria and Lebanon and inside Afghanistan on the eastern borders of Iran with forward positions. Israeli officials such as Shaul Mofaz have also stated, in no uncertain terms, that if they launch an attack on Iran, the U.S. and NATO will come to the aid of Tel Aviv. - Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

SOMALIA: Amnesty report "scratches surface of atrocities"

Up to one million Somalis are internally displaced, while an estimated 6,500 civilians have been killed since 2007. Some 2.6 million Somalis need assistance. The figure is expected to reach 3.5 million by the end of the year, if the situation does not improve, according to the UN...In another, Amnesty reported, a 32-year-old man said he saw his neighbours “slaughtered”, adding that he saw many men whose throats were slit and whose bodies were left in the street.
"Some had their testicles cut off," the man told Amnesty. He also saw women being raped.
Yet the real scale of Somalia's "dire" rights crisis remained unknown because international aid agencies were under heavy pressure not to expose the abuses they witnessed.

Guantánamo judge rules Omar Khadr, arrested at 15, can be tried as war criminal

On the eve of the Guantánamo judge’s ruling denying the appeal based on Omar Khadr’s status as a juvenile, his military defense lawyer, Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler, visited Canada, appearing before a parliamentary human rights panel and speaking to the media in an apparent attempt to shame the Canadian government into intervening on behalf of his client. He made it clear that the youth has no chance of receiving a fair trial in the Guantánamo tribunal. “There is almost no real evidence to support the proposition that Omar actually threw a hand grenade in July 2002 that killed a US soldier,” he told the committee. “Omar will probably nonetheless be convicted of murder by the military commission for little more than having survived the firefight.”--Bill Van Auken

Swept Off The Map

A new book looks at the lives of 3,000 households moved to the margins of Delhi to make way for a ‘world-class’ city...According to Hazards Centre, a Delhi-based NGO, 75,000 slum dwellers were evicted from the banks of the Yamuna, of which less than 50 percent were considered ‘eligible’ for relocation. Resettlement plots were given only to those “genuine claimants” who had proof of residence such as a ration or voter-ID card before 1998 and could pay Rs 8000 for the plot- apart from the many bribes that the slum dwellers had to pay along the way.--Tanya Matthan

Iraqis forced to abandon farming

Iraq has started to import vegetables for the first time in its modern history despite ample water, fertile land and a rich farming heritage stretching back to 6,000 years. While gasoline and petrol prices did not exceed one cent per litre prior to the US-led invasion in 2003, they are now sold for about 750 Iraqi Dinars per litre (around 65 cents). "In the past fertilisers were subsidised, but now we have to pay more than one million dinars around $830) per tonne. We cannot get water through the normal water network anymore which makes farming itself harder than usual," he said.--Ahmed Janabi

China's submarine progress alarms India

According to reports, commercial satellite images indicate that the Chinese are building a massive strategic naval base on Hainan island, in the South China Sea, south of Hong Kong. This confirms suspicions of several Asian nations since 2002 about the underground submarine base. A reputed British daily has described the base as a "vast, James Bond-style edifice capable of concealing up to 20 nuclear-powered submarines and which will enable China to project its power across the region". --Siddharth Srivastava

Google: Kiss Freedom Goodbye

Co-founder of internet giant Google, Sergey Brin, will join Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Yahoo president Susan Decker at a presidential panel on technology to be held at the Jerusalem International Convention Center May 13-15...The panel will discuss issues facing technology in today's age and the future, in particular in regard to how it will affect Israel and the Jewish world.--Gabriele Zamparini,

Localisation is about bringing the economy back to a human scale

When I first arrived in Leh, the capital of 5,000 inhabitants, cows were the most likely cause of congestion and the air was crystal clear. A five-minute-walk in any direction from the town centre took you to barley fields dotted with large farmhouses. For the next 20 years I watched Leh turn into an urban sprawl. The streets became choked with traffic, and the air tasted of diesel fumes. Housing colonies of soul-less, cement boxes spread into the dusty desert. The once-pristine streams became polluted, the water undrinkable. For the first time, there were homeless people. Within a few years, unemployment and poverty, pollution and friction between different communities appeared. All of these things had not existed for 500 years...In addition, media, advertising and tourism gave an idealised impression of a consumer culture of infinite wealth and leisure, which led young Ladakhis to see their own culture as backward and inferior. Modern education also contributes to the dismantling of Ladakhi culture. It not only ignores local resources, but worse still, makes children think of themselves and their culture as inferior. It isolates children from their culture and from nature, training them instead to become narrow specialists in a Westernised urban environment.--Helena Norberg Hodge

Al-Hajj says US wanted him to spy

"They wanted me to betray the principles of my job and to turn me into a spy."It was made clear to me later the main goal behind my detention was to detain the journalist who reveals the truth. "They did not want to shed any light on their horrible crimes in Afghanistan."

Amnesty International denounces war crimes by US-backed forces in Somalia

“In reality, the United States is preparing to carry out the military occupation of Somalia so it can install a puppet regime and establish American military and economic hegemony over the region. “What is involved here is not simply an isolated military adventure, but the drive of American imperialism to recolonize Africa and large parts of Asia and Latin America.”--Barry Grey

Katrina Redux: Iraq prepares for Baghdad exodus

Fighting between government and US troops on one side, and Shia militia on the other, has intensified recently. Two football stadiums are on stand-by to receive residents from two neighbourhoods in the Sadr City area.--Clive Myrie -- Now we have two Katrina superdomes ready. There will not just be chaos, poverty but there will be dying people with bodies torn up by shrapnel from our bombs. Those who live will be tortured with the memories of their loved ones slaughtered by our bombs; slaughtered because of our cowardice; our refusal to stop the slaughterers in the Pentagon.

Call for inquiry into US role in Somalia

According to the report, based on the testimonies of refugees who have fled Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, in recent weeks, Ethiopian troops have killed civilians by slitting their throats. Ethiopian and Somali forces were also accused of gang-raping women and attacking children. A refugee, named Haboon, accuses Ethiopian troops of raping a neighbour's 17-year-old daughter. When the girl's brothers – aged 13 and 14 – tried to help her, Ethiopian soldiers gouged out their eyes with a bayonet. --Steve Bloomfield--The Ethiopians carried out these crimes on orders from our government. Why, because we refuse to take responsibility for our government, because we refuse to stop their slaughter around the globe. The blood is on our hands.--WPA

Why John Yoo and Other Top Administration Lawyers Should be Investigated for War Crimes

ABC News reported last month that the National Security Council Principals Committee consisting of Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft met in the White House and micromanaged the torture of terrorism suspects by approving specific torture techniques such as waterboarding. Bush admitted, "Yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved." These top U.S. officials are liable for war crimes under the U.S. War Crimes Act and torture under the Torture Statute. They ordered the torture that was carried out by the interrogators. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, used at Nuremberg and enshrined in the Army Field Manual, commanders, all the way up the chain of command to the commander in chief, can be liable for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them, and they did nothing to stop or prevent it. The Bush officials ordered the torture after seeking legal cover from their lawyers.--Marjorie Cohn

Death toll in Burma rises, as major powers press to intervene

The Bush administration, which has been pressing the junta to allow unrestricted access to international aid organisations and entry for the US military, is seeking to undermine the Burmese regime because of its close ties with America’s rival, China...If the regime were an ally of Washington, as the Indonesian government was in 2004 when a tsunami devastated the province of Aceh, its incompetence and callous indifference to the suffering of millions would have been all but swept under the carpet. Instead, all of the obvious weaknesses of the Burmese relief effort are magnified and, in some cases, invented.--Peter Symonds

The Challenge Of Modern Slavery

Slavery is in our refrigerators. From fruit to beef, from sugar to coffee, slave labor brings food to our tables. “Miguel,” a Mexican slave freed by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a US human-rights organization, may have harvested the apples we eat at breakfast. Miguel picked fruit under guard in the United States. He had traveled to el norte to earn the money to pay for treatment for his six-year-old son who has cancer; instead, his employer enslaved him.--Loretta Napoleoni

A Picture Worth A Thousand Words

A Picture Worth A Thousand Words. Is this the picture to end the brutal war of illegal, criminal occupation? How long must the babes of Baghdad go on dying at the whim of tyrants who bomb with frozen hearts? Remember the photo of the naked, napalmed Vietnamese child fleeing her tormentors. That photo traveled around the world, piercing the hearts of entire humanity. Now let the photo of this sweet babe travel around the world, and let the hearts of humanity once again bleed in pain. Let entire humanity now compel tyrants to cease their tyranny once and for all. The vast majority of people never want war. They want to live out their lives in peace - in song, in beauty and in love. Now let moralists everywhere assert themselves and proclaim in unison, "No more war. Let us begin to build a magnificent, universal, healthy human society, ignoring all obstacles and difficulties." - Garda Ghista

No checkpoints in heaven

His severe asthma, which he developed as a teenager, was compounded by lack of adequate medical facilities. Yet, despite daily coughing streaks and constantly gasping for breath, he relentlessly negotiated his way through life for the sake of his family. On one hand, he refused to work as a cheap laborer in Israel. "Life itself is not worth a shred of one's dignity," he insisted. On the other, with all borders sealed except that with Israel, he still needed a way to bring in an income. He would buy cheap clothes, shoes, used TVs, and other miscellaneous goods, and find a way to transport and sell them in the camp. He invested everything he made to ensure that his sons and daughter could receive a good education, an arduous mission in a place like Gaza.--Ramzy Baroud

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear

Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics—ruthless legal battles against small farmers—is its decades-long history of toxic contamination. We speak to James Steele, contributing editor at Vanity Fair.While the rising cost of food pushes millions around the world into deeper hunger and scarcity, agricultural companies like Monsanto are posting record profits.

Emancipation

As everybody has equal rights of proper utilization of mundane potentialities for the maintenance of their physical existence, likewise everyone must be given equal opportunities for their mental progress. Inferiority complex is a kind of mental ailment. There are so many persons who think themselves inferior and useless due to poverty, lack of education and social injustice. Virtuous people and the well-wishers of society will have to arrange proper treatment for these ailing individuals and suffering humanity. But it is a matter of great regret that the so-called religious leaders have been fostering such complexes from time immemorial. By propagating different kinds of “isms” they have been exploiting the common people. If the supporters of such fissiparous principles in the physical spheres are satans, then the advocates of such harmful theories in the intellectual sphere are polished satans. Mental development is not possible without constant endeavour to liberate oneself from physical bondage, and likewise, if there is no pauseless effort for intellectual emancipation, there will be no progress in the spiritual world.

Shrii Prabhat R Sarkar

“Guantanamo’s Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr”

A US military judge dismissed the argument Friday that Guantanamo’s youngest detainee, Omar Khadr, was a child soldier when captured in Afghanistan and therefore in need of protection and not prosecution. US Army Colonel Peter Brownback’s ruling clears the way for Khadr’s trial, which will be the first war crimes trial in history of anyone under the age of eighteen.

Profiteers Squeeze Billions Out of Growing Global Food Crisis

Speculators blamed for driving up price of basic foods as 100 million face severe hunger. The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12 billion. Its profits increased from $1.44 billion to $2.22 billion. Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030 billion over the same three months.--Geoffrey Lean

The Old Order Rules

The everyday reality of caste in interior India has changed little despite State efforts, reports KVS CHOWDARY from TikamgarhCaste hierarchy is strikingly visible in the villages of Tikamgarh even today. Dalits and Adivasis here have little say in local decisionmaking, and their control over Common Property Resources (CPRs) is minimal. Grazing lands, old village tanks constructed by the ninth century Chandela kings and other common property resources such as drinking water wells and so on are completely controlled by higher castes such as Brahmins, Thakurs, and Yadavs. The traditionally skewed social structure not only keeps Dalits and Adivasis deprived of their rightful access to livelihood resources but also to public goods, such as their due share in the government’s development and welfare programmes.

Bottom of Food Chain Illustrates Growing Economic Disparity

The next time you open a can of tomatoes, think about the migrant workers who picked them. And think about what it says about the morality of our economic system when one man - who makes money by betting against a rising economy - takes home a paycheck equal to that of 370,000 tomato workers who labor in the hot sun every day to put food on our tables.--J. Richard Cohen

Localisation is about bringing the economy back to a human scale

Fundamental to these negative changes was a shift away from an economy based on local resources and local knowledge to a global economy based on capital and technology from the outside. Suddenly, the local market was flooded with all sorts of foreign goods, including subsidised food. In addition, media, advertising and tourism gave an idealised impression of a consumer culture of infinite wealth and leisure, which led young Ladakhis to see their own culture as backward and inferior. Modern education also contributes to the dismantling of Ladakhi culture. It not only ignores local resources, but worse still, makes children think of themselves and their culture as inferior. It isolates children from their culture and from nature, training them instead to become narrow specialists in a Westernised urban environment.--Naveen Vasudevan

Global Famine

Spiraling food prices are in large part the result of market manipulation. They are largely attributable to speculative trade on the commodity markets. Grain prices are boosted artificially by large scale speculative operations on the New York and Chicago mercantile exchanges. It is worth noting that in 2007, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), merged with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), forming the largest Worldwide entity dealing in commodity trade including a wide range of speculative instruments (options, options on futures, index funds, etc). What triggers famine is the absence of regulatory procedures pertaining to speculative trade (options, options on futures, commodity index funds). In the present context, a freeze of speculative trade in food staples, taken as a political decision, would immediately contribute to lower food prices. --Michel Chossudovsky

The Gospel of Consumption: And the better future we left behind

By the late 1920s, America’s business and political elite had found a way to defuse the dual threat of stagnating economic growth and a radicalized working class in what one industrial consultant called “the gospel of consumption”—the notion that people could be convinced that however much they have, it isn’t enough. President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes observed in glowing terms the results: “By advertising and other promotional devices . . . a measurable pull on production has been created which releases capital otherwise tied up.” They celebrated the conceptual breakthrough: “Economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.” --Jeffrey Kaplan

More on the Rice Crisis: Profiteering and Poverty

If there is no shortage, locally and internationally, and no compelling reason for the increases in rice prices and yet it is happening then somebody is making a hefty profit out of it at the expense of the majority of the Filipino people.--Benjie Oliveros

Journalist released from Guantánamo details abuse

n. Al-Hajj was gaunt and too weak to stand or speak as soldiers carried him off the C-17 cargo plane and placed him, still shackled, on a stretcher. He was transported immediately to a hospital in Khartoum. His brother told reporters he did not immediately recognize al-Hajj, who had been seized as a healthy 32-year-old and now resembled a man in his eighties. Al-Hajj spent the last 16 months of his imprisonment as a hunger striker. Twice a day, soldiers strapped him into a restraint chair and shoved a feeding tube through his nose to his stomach. Human rights lawyers for al-Hajj—a survivor of throat cancer—have said that the force-feedings scraped his throat raw. Over the course of 480 days, the journalist lost 40 pounds.--Naomi Spencer