Howard has increased the Risk of terrorism

Repost from Anarchist Age Number 667

"The Prime Minister vindicated by the arrest of terror suspects in Melbourne and Sydney" hardly. Those Australians who doubted the PM's sincerity when they questioned the timing of his release of information into the public arena that Australia faced the prospect of an imminent terrorist outrage, have egg on their faces, I doubt it. I distinctly remember how John Howard, his brow furrowed, told Australians that he didn't want people who threw their children overboard in this country. Four years later, it's commonly accepted that no refugee threw their children overboard and the great majority of asylum seekers involved in that incident now live in Australia.

VINDICATED

I distinctly remember the PM telling the world that Australia couldn't wait for the UN to make up its mind about whether Iraq should be invaded, because the Baath Party, led by Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction at their disposal. Nearly 3 years later, those elusive weapons have still not materialised.

Whether the terror suspects that have been arrested and charged were involved in something as innocent as a discussion group or whether they were, as he has been extensively reported in the media on the verge of committing a terrorist outrage, is a matter for public conjecture. It's up to the courts, not the PM, the Victorian and NSW Premiers, their Chief Police Commissioners or the media to decide these men's innocence or guilt. [It's not even up to the courts when the courts have to do as the parliament say i.e. draconian laws.]

Currently, both the view that these men were arrested by the thought police for they were thinking or the community has been saved from a terrorist outrage by a group of potential suicide murders, is legitimate. [No both views are not legitimate mate, this is rubbish because these people are being used as scapegoats to bolster support for the Coalition of the Killing's resource wars in the Middle East, otherwise the law would never have been made DRACONIAN.] If the judiciary is able to hold its nerve, despite the current political and media barrage to convict these men before they have faced their accusers in court, the community will find out the outcome in due course. [No not really because Draconian laws means that the outcome, my friend, is bent, all you are getting is the DRACONIAN OUTCOME.]

Unfortunately, the next group of people who are arrested under the new batch of terrorist and sedition laws won't be so lucky. [You mean it gets worse?] They will be able to be secretly detained and interrogated with minimal judicial intervention and no media scrutiny. They can have what few rights and liberty they enjoy stripped away from them, their lives and the lives of their families and communities destroyed, because some faceless bureaucrat in ASIO believes they pose a potential threat to the community. [Well actually it can't get much worse than solitary confinement for anyone because that in itself without any other mistreatment is torture.]

The removal of rights and privileges, checks and balances that have existed for generations will not make the community safer as John Howard keeps telling us, but will create a climate of angry disillusionment and isolation among sections of the Australian community that will increase, not decrease, the possibility of a home grown terrorist outrage.

POLITICAL AUTHORITY

Irrespective of the state of perpetual fear that the Howard government is fostering in the community, irrespective of the draconian authoritarian legislation that is being pushed through Parliament, irrespective of the total capitulation of the Federal Opposition, ultimate political authority rests in the hands of the people, not the government of the day or the State. The Federal government can pass whatever legislation it likes, whether it is able to enforce that legislation is a different matter.

Governments normally rule through community consensus, not by force. Those that resort to force, sow the seed of rebellion among the people they rule. Whether the Howard government is able to implement its legislative agenda is not determined by its ability to push its legislation through Parliament, but whether it can convince people that the curtailment of their rights, privileges and freedoms is in their best interests. Governments that stop listening to the people they rule, who believe they know what is best for them, create a culture of dissatisfaction and resistance within the communities they rule.

A government's legitimacy is determined by the cultural consensus it is able to create within the community for its political program. Once a significant minority rejects a government's legitimacy, its ability to impose its political program on them by exercising the monopoly on force governments enjoy, is compromised. It seems the Howard government has bitten off more than it can chew; the resistance to Howard's ideological wet dream is not just limited to a disenfranchised minority, it is extending into his own party room.

The instability that is being created by his four pronged attack on the Australian people by the passage of his Industrial Relations (Destruction), anti-terrorist (Dissent), Welfare to Work (Slavery) and media ownership laws, will escalate as the Howard government tries to implement its legislative agenda by threatening to bankrupt and imprison those that oppose these laws.

Whether the corporate sector and his political supporters have the nerve and stomach to wield the big stick that he is threatening to use and put the significant gains they have made over the past 20 under threat, or whether they sacrifice Howard on the altar or economic and political expediency, is another matter.

HOW CONVENIENT!

How convenient, on the very day the Howard government introduced its Industrial 'Destruction' legislation into Parliament, the Prime Minister breathlessly tells the Australian people that he has just received information that the country faces an imminent terrorist outrage. Ho hum, I wonder if the people who passed on the information that ASIO has passed onto the Prime Minister, has come from the very same people that told the Prime Minister that Australia had to invade Iraq because the Baath Party has 'weapons of mass destruction' at their disposal.

John Howard hasn't much of a reputation when it comes to telling the truth. When you consider his core and non core promises, the children overboard fiasco and his never never a GST saga, any sane rational person isn't going to take much notice of the boy who has learned to call wolf whenever he doesn't want people to pay close attention to what he is doing. If we faced a potential terrorist outrage, you'd think he'd do something about it, instead of recalling the Senate.

First, he is responsible for creating the conditions that have increased Australia's risk of becoming a terrorist target, then he uses that potential risk to divert the public's attention from legislation that will wipe away from the gains made through over 100 years of community and workplace struggle. Talk about Machiavellian; Machiavelli was an amateur when compared to our beloved Prime Minister.

Howard may think he can fool most of the people most of the time, but there is no way he is going to fool all of us all the time. There are terrorists living in Australia, they wear suits, appear on television during the evening news and use the spectre of terrorism to bolster their political position. They push legislation through Parliament that does more damage than any terrorist outrage could ever do. The Industrial 'Destruction' legislation that is being lobbed into Parliament by the Prime Minister with the adroitness of an SAS soldier throwing a hand grenade into a bunker, will eventually maim and kill thousands of Australians.

Yes Virginia, politicians do exist who will use all the means at their disposal to deflect the fourth estate's attention from the main parliamentary game. Fortunately for the country, there are an increasing number of Australians who have learnt to ignore the boy who's called wolf once too often, and have their eyes firmly on the only game in town the Industrial 'Destruction' legislation - that has been introduced into Parliament by a government that has deserted its constituents in favour of corporate Australia.

Read more at: Anarchistmedia.org

By Joseph Toscano posted 10 November 05

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Mr Annan said that with so many people still in need of shelter, food and other aid in Pakistan, the risk to life there was "not over yet".

He appealed for a big increase in international donations, saying that of the funds secured so far only 12% had been given with firm commitments.

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His story transfixed the audience of about 30 at Sacred Heart Church, as he explained how DNA tests of blood on the victim's clothing cleared him and implicated a man already convicted of a sex offense.

"This is part of my therapy, I think, being able to speak about it," he told the group.

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Krone, who returned home to York County after his release, has won a $1.4 million judgment from Maricopa County in Arizona, but he said that most of it went to lawyer fees and other debts from his years of appeals.

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"It's very, very lonely, very disorienting, and, for many, it's ultimately frustrating to the point that some of them wish they were back inside," Duff said.

Krone, now 48, said he couldn't even sleep on a bed when he first got out because he was accustomed to sleeping on a concrete or metal frame, and he found himself subconsciously avoiding fences because prisoners were barred from walking near fences. Even now, he said, he has a problem believing in people.

"Trust is an issue," he said.

But Krone, a postal worker with no criminal record who stayed in Phoenix when he got out of the Air Force, said he was fortunate because he had the unwavering support of family and friends back home who prayed, wrote and believed in him, and that helped a lot.

For people without that kind of support - especially those who were very young when they went to prison - life can be very difficult. Although many have little trouble attracting sympathetic women, relationships can be difficult to manage on top of the other stresses of readjustment. One man released from Florida's death row after 16 years, for example, was sentenced last year to two years back in prison for assaulting his wife of four months.

Yarris, who grew up in Southwest Philadelphia and spent 22 years on Pennsylvania's death row, said he felt as if he had been stuck in a "time warp" and emerged from prison feeling much like the 20-year-old he was when he entered.

"I paid for every stupid mistake I ever made three times over," Yarris told a class at Princeton University last fall.

Yarris insists that he is not angry, though people who know him say that he is struggling with resentment over the lost time - 8,057 days on death row.

He has a federal lawsuit pending against Delaware County. Last month, he married a woman who had heard him speak last year in England. And they have settled there while Yarris writes a book.

He was featured in a documentary, After Innocence, which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival this year. He declined to comment for this article, saying in an e-mail that he now prefers to "concentrate" on the European news media so as not to take "time away from writing my book." His Web site is http://www.nickyarris.com.

His mother, Jayne Yarris, who lives in Southwest Philadelphia, said her son was a bundle of nerves when he was released. He ate quickly, talked nonstop, and had to reacquaint himself with all sorts of normal lifestyle matters. "It is really a rough, rough time," she said.

She said she worried about his readjustment: "When you're pushed in the door, they control your life. When they throw you out, they don't care."

She said England is a good change. "England knows him as Nick and not as the one who got off death row."

Krone said that "a lot of anger and frustration" comes from being falsely accused. He was convicted, got a new trial, then was convicted again because of testimony that his crooked teeth had left a bite mark on the victim's breast.

Krone said he had always been sensitive about his crooked teeth, so when the Extreme Makeover TV show offered him a new smile and other cosmetic surgery, he accepted the offer. The show is set to be rerun tomorrow.

Krone said that life is good in York County. He helps out friends with odd jobs, and largely earns a living from speaking engagements. He said he believes he has adjusted pretty well. "I think I'm doing OK with my relationship with family and friends," he said.

Mr Krone wants to remain in the limelight for as long as possible to keep the pressure on those who snagged him for a horrific crime that he did not commit.

"I want to keep this going as long as I can until they acknowledge their mistakes," he said.

By Emilie Lounsberry Posted 20 July 05

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The Australian Coalition Against Death Penalty (ACADP) is (again) calling on U.S. President George W. Bush, to join the civilised world and destroy all chemicals of mass destruction, for the dignity and respect of every human life.

LIFE ON A THREAD:
The difference between life and death can rest on the whim of a president or the ability of a lawyer. Whether or not the death penalty can be justified is very much up for grabs.

THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK:
US: The American media reports that thousands of Iranians cheered, whistled and clapped as a serial killer was publicly executed in Iran last week.

USA - FEELING THE HEAT FROM INTERNATIONAL FIRE:
The United States of America has withdrawn from an international agreement that gives detained foreign nationals the right to seek assistance and talk to their consular officers.

Corby lawyer pleads for Australian help
Schapelle Corby, 27, is accused of carrying over four kilograms of marijuana into Bali and could be sentenced to death if she is found guilty.

OHIO: Appeals court tosses death sentence for U.S.-British citizen
In Cincinnati, a federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out the conviction and death sentence of a man with dual U.S.-British citizenship who was convicted of killing a 2-year-old girl by starting a fire in his ex-girlfriend's apartment.

THE INNOCENT SCOT ON DEATH ROW IS ALMOST FREE
If you haven't heard about it yet, you will. There's a celebration in the air: Kenny is an innocent man living on death row in an Ohio prison and the authorities may finally acknowledge what we've known all along.

EXPENSES FOR STATE-ASSISTED SUICIDE EXCEEDS $33,000.00
To prepare for Connecticut's first state-sanctioned killing in 45 years, the state Department of Corrections has spent more than US$33,000 on such items as training personnel, drugs (poison), intravenous catheters and tubing, portable restrooms, mobile offices, lighting and curtains for the witness observation room.

Child Offenders on Death Row
Recent Australian studies of alcohol and cannabis use show that girls are increasingly inclined to behave boldly. But boys out number the girls, two to one; and three to one in the juvenile justice system, mortality figures, speeding infringements and car crash statistics.

US death row numbers don't change policy?
The number of prisoners on death row in the United States appears to be falling, mostly credited to a single Governor who commuted the sentences of all the death row prisoners in his state.

Despite Drop in Crime, an Increase in Inmates
US: The number of inmates in state and federal prisons rose 2.1 percent last year, even as violent crime and property crime fell, according to a study by the Justice Department released yesterday.

How Denying the Vote to Ex-Offenders Undermines Democracy
For starters, hundreds of thousands of people who are still eligible to vote will not do so this year because they will be locked up in local jails, awaiting processing or trials for minor offenses.

DNA Evidence of Bipartisanship
Last week the U.S. Congress passed the Justice for All Act, which includes provisions of the Innocence Protection Act. As of this posting, the legislation has not yet been signed by President Bush. Attached is an analysis of the legislation prepared by the Justice Project.

Our Two Priority Bills sent to White House
US: The 8th National CURE Convention last June lobbied on Capitol Hill the Innocence Protection Act in the Senate and the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004 in the House. On Sunday, October 10th, Congress passed both bills and sent them to the President to be signed.

THE LAW IS AN ASS:
US: A Californian man who beheaded a german shepherd dog he had named after his girlfriend, has been sentenced to 25 years to life under California's three-strikes law.

SAVE THE LIFE OF NGUYEN TUONG VAN:A PLEA TO SINGAPORE PRESIDENT On behalf of the Australian Coalition Against Death Penalty (ACADP) and in the spirit of respect for human life, I make a heartfelt plea for clemency, compassion and mercy, to spare and save the young life of Nguyen Tuong Van, currently under sentence of death at Changi Prison in Singapore. Nguyen Tuong Van, is a 23-year-old Australian man of Vietnamese origin. Nguyen was arrested at Changi Airport in December 2002, whilst in transit from Cambodia to Australia. He was later charged and convicted of drug-trafficking. In March 2004 he was sentenced to death for his crime.

EXTRADITION ACT FLUSHED DOWN THE TOILET
A long-standing convention not to extradite people out of Australia if they face the death penalty has been abandoned.

BIRTHDAY PROTEST BACKS INNOCENT MAN ON DEATH ROW:
Kids from 3 to 83 years old beat candy labeled "Justice" out of a big Texas-shaped piqata on Aug. 1 as dozens gathered in the Houston City Hall Park to celebrate the 30th birthday of Nanon Williams, an innocent person on Texas death row.

THE LAND OF BIBLES, GUNS, PATRIOTS AND THE 'WORLD ROLE MODEL' FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: The state of Alabama, USA, executed James Barney Hubbard. So what? ... you might say ... America executes prisoners almost every week!

Appealing a Death Sentence Based on Future Danger USA-HOUSTON, June 9 - Texas juries in capital cases must make a prediction. They may impose a death sentence only if they find that the defendant will probably commit more violent acts.

Forensics? In proposing a new death penalty for Massachusetts last month, Governor Mitt Romney offered firm assurance that no innocent people would be executed: Convictions, he said, will be based on science.

Silencing the Cells: Mass Incarceration and Legal Repression in U.S. Prisons People without a voice are not people in any meaningful sense of the word. Silenced people cannot express their ideas; they can neither consent nor protest. They are reduced to being pawns in the schemes of the powerful, mendicants who must accept whatever is imposed upon them. In order to keep people in a state of subjugation, silencing their voices is essential. Nowhere is this clearer than in U.S. prisons.

U.N. Group Seeks End To Executions The United States, Japan, China, India and Muslim nations including Saudi Arabia opposed the resolution. Burkina Faso, Cuba, Guatemala, South Korea and Sri Lanka abstained.

US: Execution Dear Friends, this is so sad especially for our dear friend, San Nguyen. San who lives in Oklahoma worked very hard with the rest of the Vietnamese community to stop Mr. Le's execution. You may remember San from being at CURE's First International Conference in New York City in 2001. San also plans to be at the 8th National Convention this June in Washington. Charlie

Please contact the Governor The Vietnamese-American Community, the ACLU, and many others want the March 30 execution of Huang Thanh Le commuted.

Cherie Blair attacks US over death penalty in Catholic paper Cherie Blair has renewed her attack on America's use of the death penalty. In a book review in the Catholic journal The Tablet, under her maiden name Cherie Booth, she says: "Capital cases are uniquely prone to error and thus call into question whether we can ever be really sure of obtaining the just result.

Death penalty: a lawyer sees the light The observation "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus" is illustrated by the two nations' differing reactions to the use of the death penalty as a legitimate punishment for murder.

OHIO: Judges join dissent on execution delay In Columbus, 5 federal appeals court judges say a convicted killer's request to delay his execution was illegally denied because 2 senior judges participated in the vote.

Stephen Romei: Death knell sounds for US capital law GEORGE Ryan gets my vote as Australian of the Year, even though he's the outgoing governor of the US state of Illinois. There's just no one I admire more right now, not even Greg's Kables Community News Newtwork..

Mexico Awaits Hague Ruling on Citizens on U.S. Death Row Sbaldo Torres, a convicted murderer on death row in Oklahoma, should have been dead by now, his appeals exhausted, his time up.

Jury Passes On Business Of Killing US: This drives the death penalty crowd in the legislature nuts. Yet another jury - another 12 men and women, tried and true, who had all attested to their belief in the death penalty - has refused to join in the killing business.

Ultimate Punishment Scott Turow has long juggled two careers‹that of a novelist and that of a lawyer. He wrote much of his first and best known legal thriller, Presumed Innocent, on the commuter train to and from work during the eight years he spent as an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago, and he has churned out another blockbuster every third year since joining the firm of Sonnenschein Nath and Rosenthal in 1986.

A Question of Innocence Rubin Carter: Day after day, week after week, I would sit in that filthy cell, seething. I was furious at everyone. At the two state witnesses who lied, at the police who put them up to it, at the prosecutor who sanctioned it, at the judge who allowed it, at the jury who accepted it, and at my own lawyer, for not being able to defeat it.

Amnesty steps up campaign to abolish death penalty Human rights watchdog Amnesty International is urging people around the world to pressure countries to abolish the death penalty.

'LAND OF THE FREE' SET TO EXECUTE TWO PRISONERS BY FIRING SQUAD: Wanted: Willing executioners for two convicted murderers. Must be psychologically sound and familiar with .30-calibre rifles. No victims' relatives need apply.

TEXAS EXECUTES 300th PRISONER Keith Clay was executed tonight, becoming the 300th prisoner in Texas to die by lethal injection since the rogue state resumed the death penalty 20 years ago.

AUSTRALIAN COALITION AGAINST DEATH PENALTY " ... Our nation was built on a promise of life and liberty for all citizens. Guided by a deep respect for human dignity, our Founding Fathers worked to secure these rights for future generations, and today we continue to seek to fulfil their promise in our laws and our society.

Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Please note the following article carefully.....it shows clearly the hateful, uncaring and anti-human rights attitude as reflected by the Governor of Texas (and most other elected Texas officials).

Bush rules out death sentence review US President George W Bush says has dismissed any chance of a review of America's system of capital punishment.

Amnesty urges Bush to shut death row Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has urged US President George W. Bush to take a "moral stand" and abolish the death penalty after the Illinois Governor dramatically emptied that state's death row.

USA - A NATION IN TURMOIL: As the year 2002 draws to a close, little if anything, has changed in the United States in regards to state-sanctioned killing. Various campaigns, calls for clemency, petitions, and international condemnation, have failed to humanize U.S. politicians.

Here come de Judge - Time to Leave [266]
There have always been examples of rulings and interpretations that have supported the saying "The law is an ass". This is increasingly the case, because even the best intentioned judges are now facing an avalanche of new technologies and social change. But, it is no good making excuses for the judiciary and continuing to accept their strange interpretations. We must recognise that not only judges but the whole legal system will struggle more and more. In the end the whole system will become a farce. This is the way empires end.

AFGHANISTAN: Mixed reactions to rights watchdog report

KABUL, 11 July (IRIN) - The United Nations and human rights activists in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Monday welcomed a recent report of Human Rights Watch (HRW), which called on the Afghan government to 'bring war criminals to justice.'

The New York based rights watchdog, in a 133-page report released on Friday, accused some high-ranking officials in the Afghan government of violating human rights and demanded their trial.

While some are dead or in hiding, many of those linked to the carnage that erupted between April 1992 and March 1993 following the collapse of the Soviet-backed Najibullah government, are now defense or interior ministry officials, or advisors to President Hamid Karzai, the report said.

"It is a report that has to be taken very seriously. It raises very important concerns and points a crucial and difficult question to any country emerging from conflict, that is, how to deal with major violations of human rights from the past?" Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the United Nations special envoy in Afghanistan, said.

Edwards maintained the government of Afghanistan was working on a transitional justice plan and the UN had been in contact as to how to develop that plan.

The report entitled "Blood-Stained Hands: Past Atrocities in Kabul and Afghanistan's Legacy of Impunity" is based on two years of research, including interviews with witnesses, survivors, officials and combatants.

During the time covered by the report whole sections of Kabul were left in ruins, tens of thousands of civilians were killed and wounded and at least half a million people were displaced, the rights group said.

"This report isn't just a history lesson," said Brad Adams, executive director of HRW's Asia Division. "These atrocities were among some of the gravest in Afghanistan's history, yet today many of the perpetrators still wield power."

The HRW report follows a survey by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC's) on transitional justice entitled "A Call for Justice" released in February. AIHRC's report was based on interviews and focus groups with more than 6,000 Afghans in 32 of 34 provinces. According to the Afghan rights body, all those interviewed wanted those who had committed past criminal acts to be brought to justice.

But transitional justice is a very controversial issue in post-war Afghanistan where there is still much work to do on the issue of legal reform. Analysts in Kabul believe there has not been any criminal justice structure for years and there has been no rule of law in the country for decades, resulting in no prosecutions for war crimes in the past 30 years.

There is no official charge from any court against anyone accused of war crimes, which is another element, hampering the trial of any criminal.

"Every time before the elections such reports or concerns are raised but neither the government nor the UN and international organisations have so far taken any step to open the debate of past criminals prosecutions," said Mohammad Qasi Akhgar, a local political analyst.

Akhgar said the war crimes did not take place only during the 1990s, "but when we say past criminals all the regimes in the last three decades must be included, not just the civil war. The HRW report has only underlined and mentioned the war criminals of the civil war. It has completely ignored the atrocities of communists," Akhgar noted.

Various groups were fighting for control of the country in the power vacuum that followed the bloody Soviet occupation and the fall of President Najibullah.

Among those mentioned in the report are several former chiefs of the Northern Alliance, which later helped the US-led coalition topple the hardline Taliban regime at the end of 2001, following the 11 September attacks on the United States.

HRW cites the example of notorious warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, who now holds a senior post in the ministry of defense and exercises political control of several provinces in the north of Afghanistan.

It also mentions Karim Khalili, a former militia commander and now one of Karzai's two vice-presidents and Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, a radical Islamist commander who currently advises President Karzai and exercises major political power over the Afghan judiciary.

But the Afghan government has termed the report as incomplete and imperfect.

"The report is based on a specific period of Afghan history while in the last three years a lot has been done to respect human rights in Afghanistan," presidential spokesman Mohammad Karim Rahimi said on Sunday.

Ruling out the possible trial of the accused Afghan dignitaries, the spokesman said the people named had significantly contributed to peace and stability in post-war Afghanistan.

In the last three years Karzai's government has avoided pursuing suspected war criminals in the interest of national stability. Indeed, many suspects were co-opted into his interim government. Others accused of war crimes remain powerful in the provinces, with their own private armies and links with the flourishing opium trade. It is the failure to take any action against such alleged perpetrators that has strengthened the culture of impunity in the country, observers say.

"If Afghanistan doesn't begin a process of addressing its history now, the past may repeat itself," the rights group warned, urging the government to accelerate efforts to reform the judicial system and set up special courts to try alleged rights abusers.

"In Afghanistan today, alleged war criminals - Taliban, Mujahideen, Communist - enjoy total impunity in the name of national reconciliation," Adams said. "This is an insult to victims and an affront to justice."

By UN 11 July 05

Related:

III. The Battle for Kabul: April 1992-March 1993

[Washington Post, May 3, 1992] Kabul today is anything but a city basking in triumph. . . . [R]ockets and shells continue to crash into residential neighborhoods, fired by the forces of fundamentalist guerrilla leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. . . . Hundreds of civilians lie in hospitals lacking electricity, water, and basic sterilization equipment. More arrive each day. . . . Heavily armed, ethnically divided guerrillas and militiamen prowl the city streets, defending patchwork blocks from their rivals, speaking in heated tones about their various enemies and sometimes looting homes and shops. . . .22

Related links:

Stop all the terror! Troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan
On July 7, some of the horrific consequences of the "war on terror" hit working-class Londoners. In a series of bomb blasts on the London tube and buses, more than 50 people were killed, and more than 700 injured, many losing limbs or suffering other debilitating injuries.

US confirms civilian deaths in Afghan air strike!
American-led forces have mistakenly killed scores of Afghan civilians since engineering the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, including 48 who died when a wedding party came under attack three years ago.

Labor, 'Showroom Dummies'
Labor does not oppose illegal and degrading wars? Nor do they stand up for renditioned and tortured citizens, welfare rights, people held in detention for years on end? Or anything else that matters to the marginalised voters who have to rely on the minor parties time and time again for some support.

Crush, Kill, Destroy, Labor Wants War on Afghanistan
Labor's Pre-emptive war spokesman, robert mcClelland, says Australia needs to redeploy troops to Afghanistan after an attack today against a US helicopter left 17 missing.

Searching for resistance in Afghanistan
Tribal leaders listen in a meeting in Miana Shien, Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan, on Saturday in an attempt to end the fighting that has killed more than 175 freedom fighters since Tuesday.

Battlelines drawn on Security Council
THE US has outlined its first detailed position on UN Security Council reform, proposing a limited expansion of the permanent membership by two nations - one of them Japan - and foreshadowing a major statement next week on specific criteria to be met by candidate countries.

Annan calls for human rights agency revamp!
The commission has been harshly criticised recently by human rights groups claiming it has become less of a body for upholding human rights, and more of a haven for violators.

Returning veterans of Iraq/Afghanistan
In the last two years, nearly one million U.S. service-members have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regardless of how you may feel about the war, most of us agree that those service-members deserve the best possible care and treatment our country can provide.

UN panel proposes criteria for legitimate military action
With countries still bitterly divided over the war in Iraq, a high-level panel appointed by the United Nations has recommended a five-step guideline to determine when to use military action.

Unknown News Update - 2009
More than 103 times as many people have been killed in these wars and occupations than in all terrorist attacks in the world from 1993-2004. About 241 times as many people have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq than in the ghastly attacks of September 11, 2001.

Monster of the moment

Zimbabwe is being hypocritically vilified by the west for forced slum clearances that are routine throughout the developing world.

For a month now, the BBC, CNN, ITV and others have been reporting what has been portrayed as one of the greatest humanitarian and human rights disasters in years.

At least 200,000 people - sometimes this figure grows to 250,000 or even 300,000 - are said to have been forcibly evicted from slum areas of Harare in Zimbabwe. The figure peaked last week at 1.5 million, but yesterday the BBC reckoned that bulldozers were now "crashing through the homes of 500,000 people".

In fact, only about 1.2 million people live in Harare and no one is suggesting that half the population has fled in terror or that most of the city has been wrecked. So where are all these allegedly terrorised people? A few thousand have been filmed in makeshift camps but not many more. Who is trying to count the numbers? They are almost always attributed to an unnamed person in an unnamed UN agency. But read the only UN statement on the evictions and it says nothing of 200,000 people.

The evictions - which are clearly happening on a wide scale - have been seized on by the west, and the former colonial power Britain in particular, as another reason to demonise President Mugabe and further humiliate long-suffering Zimbabwe. It's open season on the Harare regime and it appears that anyone can say anything they like without recourse to accuracy or reality. Whipped into a frenzy of hypocritical outrage, the EU, Britain and the US, as well as the World Bank - all of which have been responsible for millions of evictions in Africa and elsewhere as conditions of infrastructure projects - have rushed to condemn the "atrocities".

The vilification of Mugabe is now out of control. The UN security council and the G8 have been asked to debate the evictions, and Mugabe is being compared to Pol Pot in Cambodia. Meanwhile, the evictions are mentioned in the same breath as the genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans - although perhaps only three people have so far accidentally died. Only at the very end of some reports is it said that the Harare city authority's stated reason for the evictions is to build better, legal houses for 150,000 people.

Perspective is needed. The summary removal of people at gunpoint from their homes is indefensible, almost certainly unnecessary, and probably economically counter-productive, but it is not unusual in the developing world. Every year millions of poor people are evicted to make way for tourism, dams, roads and airports, for events like the Olympics, and for the gentrification and beautification of cities, national parks and urban redevelopments.

Nor is it new. Forced evictions, brutal land grabs and slum clearances were all used by Britain's own rulers in the past to enlarge their estates, build bigger, more modern cities, construct reservoirs, make way for railways and lay out fine parks and fashionable areas for the newly rich to live. Rapidly developing countries are now doing the same as the rich world did during its own industrial and urban development.

The difference is mostly in numbers. According to UN-Habitat, the Nairobi-based agency that concerns itself with the urban environment, hundreds of millions of the world's poor are technically illegal squatters living in slum communities like those in Harare, liable to be moved on by private landowners or by governments. In the past five years, slum clearance programmes have forced more than 150,000 people out of their homes in Delhi; 300,000 people were evicted to make way for Olympic sites in Beijing; 100,000 were moved on in Jakarta; 250,000 were forced out of dam sites in India; and as many as a million in Lagos and Port Harcourt in Nigeria. There are many more.

Yet those who like to call themselves "the international community" say nothing about these mass evictions and the world's press has been mostly silent. For the World Bank to condemn the Zimbabwean evictions was particularly rich. According to its own calculations, the bank has funded projects that have required the eviction of at least 10 million people.

So why are the Harare slum clearances so different? As international monster of the moment, Mugabe is unacceptable to Britain and the west mainly because he has chosen to evict whites and redistribute land grabbed in colonial times. The fact that the African Union and other African leaders are not prepared to condemn him for the Harare evictions reflects the fact that they, too, recognise the injustice of the colonial land ownership inheritance and do not want to see Africa bullied again by the west.

But there may be another reason why African leaders have not condemned the evictions. Urbanisation is overwhelming most African cities, which have been flooded by impoverished people forced off the land. According to the UN's 2003 study of urbanisation and slums, the driving force behind the slums of Africa and Asia is not bad governance or tyrants, but laissez-faire globalisation, the tearing down of trade barriers, the privatisation of national economies, structural adjustment programmes imposed on indebted countries by the IMF, and the lowering of tariffs promoted by the World Trade Organisation.

Like every city in the world that has tried to clear its slums, Harare will find that history repeats itself. This year, Zimbabwe faces massive food shortages that will force more of the urban poor into destitution and drive yet more people off the land into the cities to look for work. The poor, punished for their poverty rather than for voting one way or another, will become poorer and the shacks and shelters so brutally pulled down in the past month will just go up somewhere else.

However, an alternative to forced evictions is emerging right under Mugabe's nose. Last year, 250 homeless Zimbabweans, members of the Federation of Slum and Shackdwellers, negotiated the provision of land from the city authority. They have now planned the layout of their community, worked out the costs of the homes and are ready to build. Where are they? Harare.

By John Vidal posted 3 July 05

Malnutrition strikes 1 in 3 Africans: UN

One in three Africans suffers from malnutrition and a total of 852 million people in the world suffer from hunger, the United Nations says in a new report.

The World Food Program (WFP) report highlighted the plight of starving Africans and said that the financial contributions necessary for alleviating the continent's hunger problems were lacking.

The program said they had received less than 20 per cent, or $US67 million, of the $US405 million it needs for its operations in southern Africa from now until 2006.

"The WFP aims to feed 26 million victims of food crises on the continent this year because of drought, conflict, HIV/AIDS, locust infestations and economic problems," the report said.

"So far it has barely half the contributions it needs to keep these people alive and build better lives."

The report came just days before next week's G8 summit of leaders of the most industrialised countries, where African poverty is set to have a place on the agenda.

Activists have planned a string of worldwide concerts, protests and rallies in the build-up to the July 6-8 G8 summit in Scotland, designed to force world leaders to give the issue priority and to provoke action on debt, trade and aid in Africa.

The WFP report said the number of people in need of emergency food aid this year had rapidly risen from 3.5 million to 8.3 million in seven southern Africa countries, mainly because of drought.

It gave hunger figures as four million in Zimbabwe, 1.6 million in Malawi, 1.2 million in Zambia, 900,000 in Mozambique, 245,000 in Lesotho, 230,000 in Swaziland and 60,000 in Namibia.

In addition, the triple threat of HIV/AIDS, food insecurity and weakening capacity for service delivery is leaving whole societies much more vulnerable to external shocks.

Other African hunger hotspots mentioned in the report included Ethiopia, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Niger.

The WFP is the largest UN humanitarian agency and it feeds around 90 million people per year, of which 56 million are children.

Stages set for the 'greatest concert ever'

Final preparations are underway for what organisers have promised will be the greatest music show on Earth, with pop stars joining forces to raise awareness of poverty in Africa.

Irish rocker and organiser Bob Geldof says he believes Saturday's Live 8 event will eclipse the Live Aid concert of 20 years ago, when 1.5 billion people tuned in to see the likes of U2, David Bowie and Mick Jagger perform to raise money for Ethiopia's famine.

This time the event is about people power, with organisers hoping huge crowds at the venues and a television and Internet audience in the billions will put pressure on world leaders meeting next week in Scotland to do more to fight poverty.

"I tell you something ... You will never see it again. It will be the greatest concert ever," Geldof told an audience of young people on the MTV channel.

Plea

In an open letter from Live 8 appearing in The Times newspaper on Saturday, organisers made a final plea to governments to meet their demands to end poverty.

"Just as people demanded an end to slavery, demanded women's suffrage, demanded the end of apartheid - we now call for an end to the unjust absurdity of extreme poverty that is killing 50,000 people every day in the 21st Century," it said.

Concerts will be held in all the Group of Eight industrialised nations, plus one in Johannesburg and another featuring African acts in south-west England.

Tokyo will open proceedings in the east and the event winds up in North America.

The initiative, costing an estimated 25 million pounds ($US45 million) to stage, has been widely praised by aid groups, and Geldof can point to a recent $US40 billion debt forgiveness deal and US pledges to double aid to Africa as signs of progress.

"We're on the way," he said.

"It's incredible to think after 20 years we're almost there."

March planned

The Live 8 concerts are linked to the Make Poverty History campaign, campaign organisers hope up to 100,000 people will march through Edinburgh on Saturday.

"There is suddenly a real chance - the sort that comes but once in a generation, for Africa to reverse its three decades of stagnation," Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor said, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Not everyone is sure Live 8 will directly affect the outcome of the G8 meeting near Edinburgh on July 6 to 8.

By Feed the World 2 July 05

Related:

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UN relief boss warns Sudanese rebels
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Top UN official concerned about 'lack of progress' in Darfur
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Sudan launches fresh helicopter attacks in Darfur: UN
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African Union may send 2,000 troops to Darfur
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Sudan rejects UN resolution deadline
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African Union considers Sudan peacekeeping mission
Intervention considered: The African Union says the Sudanese Government has failed to stop the bloodshed.

Annan urges more aid for Sudan
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Annan, African leaders to hold Sudan talks
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan will hold talks with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and other African leaders on peace initiatives in Sudan and Ivory Coast on Thursday, a Nigerian spokeswoman said.

US threatens Sudan with UN sanctions
The United States has circulated a United Nations resolution threatening sanctions against the Sudan government if Khartoum did not prosecute Arab militia leaders in the western Darfur region.

UN sanctions for Sudan 'unlikely'
United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan says Sudan has made little progress in curbing marauding militias in the Darfur region but diplomats said sanctions against Khartoum were unlikely.

Sudan rejects human rights report on Darfur
The Sudanese government has slammed a report by Human Rights Watch over the strife-torn western region of Darfur and accused the organisation of attempting to provoke the UN Security Council into imposing sanctions against the country.

Health catastrophe looms in Sudan: UN
A malnourished Sudanese refugee child lies at a feeding centre in Iriba Town in Chad.

Sudan decrees end to relief restrictions
The Sudanese Government, under international pressure to help displaced people in the western region of Darfur, has ordered an end to restrictions on the movement of relief organisations and imports of relief supplies.

Sudan urged to take urgent action to protect refugees
The UN is urging the Sudanese Government to take urgent action to protect more than 1 million refugees.

UN links herb smokers to terrorism?

UN links herb smoker...?

Antonio Maria Costa: "We know that even the occasional marijuana smoker is a link in a much longer and more dangerous chain."???

Lighting a cigarette--linked to bushfires!

Motor vehicles emissions--linked to cancer!

Alcohol linked--to corporate takerism!

Would you mind telling us why other dangerous products and legal drugs are not included in the UN'shit list?

Big Pharma linked to--WHOM?

Ford and Holden linked to--WHOM?

Mazda linked to--Zoom, Zoom Zoom!

Oil linked to-- greed and war!

And he tipped his hat and said 'happy motoring'...

ABC - SPECIAL: The United Nations drug agency has warned that even occasional use of marijuana is a link in a long and dangerous cycle of crime, degradation and terrorism.

I can see the versatility with those links now? All pot smokers are urban terrorists? Great way to curb the habit? Lock em all up and rendition them to china?

ABC: "The links between organised crime, drug trafficking, drug consumption, drug money, arms trafficking and terrorism become clearer every day," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

But not the link between organised governments, oil, corporations, big pharma, breweries, and tobacco? I wonder why that is?

Antonio Maria Costa: " We know that even the occasional marijuana smoker is a link in a much longer and more dangerous chain."

Just like a rock-- is linked to an-- earthquake?

We also know that even the occasional driver, pill popper, smoker and drinker is linked in a much longer and more dangerous chain. So what! All matter is linked no doubt.

In a message to mark an international anti-drug day, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan warned that drugs are "little more than tickets to a dead end."

Just like Central Governments, Wars, Big Phama, Texico Oil, Holden, and Ford perhaps, and also like some other corporate media giants.

Governments marked the day with drug bonfires, and, in the case of China, by executing convicted drug traffickers.

Beauty? We could start with hoWARd?

Is this another attack on the indigenous people of Afghanistan or what?

In Afghanistan, where the UN has warned that narcotics trafficking is undermining the country's fragile security, officials put almost 60 tons of opium, heroin and hashish to the torch, according to General Mohammad Daud, the deputy minister for counter-narcotics.

What has that got to do with smoking herbs you might ask?

Afghanistan is the world's largest drug producer and supplies almost 90 per cent of the opium used to make heroin.

In Burma, the world's second largest drug producer, the military regime used the occasion of the anti-drugs day, as it does every year, to burn a huge stash of opium, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines at a ceremony attended by diplomats and foreign journalists.

In China, still conditioned by the awareness that opium ravaged previous generations and opened the door to foreign imperialists, the Government marked anti-drug day by executing dozens of traffickers.

Is that a joke son? Perhaps Geoff Raby can put that on his Human Rights agenda with Minister Shen Guofang in the current discussions about Australia and China's human rights records.

In the southern city of Guizhou, 24 people were convicted of trafficking this weekend, and five were immediately executed with a bullet in the neck, according to official media.

The Vienna-based UNODC, which was to publish its annual report in Stockholm on Wednesday, estimates that 200 million people are users of illicit drugs around the world, with 40 million of those chronically addicted.

But killing people is good way to solve the problem? Immediately executed, but I wonder, 'were they given a fair trial'? That's what you call setting an example?

Thought police

Illicit drugs don't include central governments, corporations, big pharma, oil companies? The tobacco industry? Or even the Alcohol industry? Mmmmm!

'Tickets to a misinformed end me thinks'

ABC: In his message, Mr Annan said that drugs "might have names that sound colourful or enticing, such as crack, pot, junk, crystal meth and disco biscuits".

"But these are little more than tickets to a dead end," he said.

But not unlike illegal and degrading wars? Inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, torture, and the Coalition of the Killing I suppose? As well as george w bushit, tony blurter, john hoWARd, oil, plonk, fags, diazepam, piss, Johnny Walker, Jack Daniels, or even margaritas? Not even a Tooheys or two?

But at last some good advice

As one means of combating drugs, Mr Annan recommended "participation in sports to improve health and well-being, teach the value of teamwork and discipline, and build self-confidence".

As long as it's not military training in the special-forces or army to improve teamwork, discipline, and to build self-irrationalism then that's okay!

All things in moderation can help as well and also to stay away from things that might harm you if you know about it that is?

A good place to start would be to stop illegal and degrading wars, killing, maiming and torture, motor vehicles, harmful products and some of the legal drugs first so the government's and corporations can set an example for the rest of us?

War in Afghanistan

ABC: "In Afghanistan, last year's poppy crop was the largest in history "because everyone thought they could grow poppy with impunity," said Habibullah Qaderi, the minister in charge of counter-narcotics.

He said that Afghanistan had "turned the corner" in the fight against drug trafficking, but Mr Costa said recently that while the area planted with poppies was shrinking, the productivity for each hectare was increasing.

Afghan and Western officials have said several senior officials, including provincial governors and police chiefs, were involved in the narcotics business.

Mr Costa, who also heads the UN's Vienna office, said "traffickers, warlords and insurgents in Afghanistan control quasi-military operations" in a trade that last year was estimated to be worth $A3.6 billion.

Burma, where the ruling military is accused by the United States of participating in the drugs trade, says it has destroyed drugs with a street value of almost $19.5 billion and slashed its production of opium.

Nevertheless, UNODC says at least 1.15 million people still depend on poppy crops, and narcotics produced in Burma continue to flood Asian markets, Europe and North America.

Despite draconian punishments for traffickers, the drug problem is getting worse in China, and contributing to the spread of AIDS through the sharing of contaminated needles.

The official China Youth Daily said the number of drug addicts in China reached 791,000 at the end of last year, an increase of 6.8 per cent on a year earlier.

But the official figure is "just the tip of the iceberg," legal scholar Pi Yijun told the Beijing News. The real figure, he said, is "shocking".

Still, the drugs agency was able to point to a few successes in the war against drugs, including Laos, which for the first time in many years is no longer consider a supplier of illegal opiates to the world market."

But what has all that got to do with smoking herbs in Australia? Nothing! Just more propaganda so the government can send troops to Afghanistan to help out with the occupation and to get everyone else hooked on legal drugs that they benefit from and can procure.

By Bud Hemp and Bongo Jack 27 June 05

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