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And, yes, I DO take it personally
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"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
- Noam Chomsky
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And, yes, I DO take it personally

Sunday, December 05, 2010

More info that suggests that Assange is being framed by those who want to silence him

more and more and more and more interesting...
Assange Accuser Worked with US-Funded, CIA-Tied Anti-Castro Group

Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden has a significant history of work with anti-Castro groups, at least one of which is US funded and openly supported by a former CIA agent convicted in the mass murder of seventy three Cubans on an airliner he was involved in blowing up.
Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a “leftist”. She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. From Oslo, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes that the group is connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner whose CIA ties were exposed here.

Quelle surprise, no? Shamir and Bennett went on to write about Ardin’s history in Cuba with a US funded group openly supported by a real terrorist: Luis Posada Carriles.

In Cuba she interacted with the feminist anti-Castro group Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White). This group receives US government funds and the convicted anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is a friend and supporter. Wikipedia quotes Hebe de Bonafini, president of the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo as saying that “the so-called Ladies in White defend the terrorism of the United States.”

Who is Luis Posada Carriles? He’s a mass murderer, and former CIA agent.

Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles (born February 15, 1928) (nicknamed Bambi by some Cuban exiles)[1] is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist extremist. A former Central Intelligence Agency agent,[2] Posada has been convicted in absentia of involvement in various terrorist attacks and plots in the Americas, including: involvement in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed seventy-three people;[3][4] admitted involvement in a string of bombings in 1997 targeting fashionable Cuban hotels and nightspots;[5][6][7] involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion; [and] involvement in the Iran-Contra affair…

Luis Posada Carilles is so evil that even the Bush administration wanted him behind bars:

In 2005, Posada was held by U.S. authorities in Texas on the charge of illegal presence on national territory before the charges were dismissed on May 8, 2007. On September 28, 2005 a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Posada cannot be deported, finding that he faces the threat of torture in Venezuela.[11] His release on bail on April 19, 2007 had elicited angry reactions from the Cuban and Venezuelan governments.[12] The U.S. Justice Department had urged the court to keep him in jail because he was “an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks”, a flight risk and a danger to the community.[7]

Who is Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden? She’s a gender equity officer at Uppsula University – who chose to associate with a US funded group openly supported by a convicted terrorist and mass murderer. She just happens to have her work published by a very well funded group connected with Union Liberal Cubana – whose leader, Carlos Alberto Montaner, in turn just happened to pop up on right wing Colombian TV a few hours after the right-wing coup in Honduras. Where he joined the leader of the failed coup in Ecuador to savage Correa, the target of the coup. Montnaner also just happened to vociferously support the violent coup in Honduras, and chose to show up to sing the praises of the Honduran junta. Jean-Guy Allard, a retired Canadian journalist who now writes for Cuba’s Gramma, captured the moment

A strange pair appeared on NTN 24, the right-wing Colombian television channel aligned to the Fox Broadcasting Company the U.S. A few hours after the coup attempt in Quito, Ecuador, CIA agent Carlos Alberto Montaner, a fugitive from Cuban justice for acts of terrorism, joined with one of the leaders of the failed Ecuadorian coup, ex-Lieutenant Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez, to attack President Rafael Correa…

On the margin of his media news shows, Montaner’s is known for his fanatic support of the most extreme elements of the Cuban-American mafia.

Last year, in the wake of the coup d’état against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, June 28, he became an fervent supporter of the dictator Roberto Micheletti, along with U.S. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and another Cuban-American terrorist and CIA collaborator, Armando Valladares.

Montaner showed up repeatedly in Tegucigalpa to “defend human rights,” and at the same time to applaud the fascist Honduran regime when it unleashed its police on demonstrations by the National Resistance Front.

Oh…and the “rape” charge that’s smeared Julian Assange’s name around the world? On Thursday James D. Catlin, the Melbourne barrister who represented Assange in London, wrote:

Apparently having consensual sex in Sweden without a condom is punishable by a term of imprisonment of a minimum of two years for rape. That is the basis for a reinstitution of rape charges against WikiLeaks figurehead Julian Assange that is destined to make Sweden and its justice system the laughing stock of the world and dramatically damage its reputation as a model of modernity.

Sweden’s Public Prosecutor’s Office was embarrassed in August this year when it leaked to the media that it was seeking to arrest Assange for rape, then on the same day withdrew the arrest warrant because in its own words there was “no evidence”. The damage to Assange’s reputation is incalculable. More than three quarters of internet references to his name refer to rape. Now, three months on and three prosecutors later, the Swedes seem to be clear on their basis to proceed. Consensual sex that started out with a condom ended up without one, ergo, the sex was not consensual.

I’ve spent much of my professional life as a psychiatrist helping women (and men) who are survivors of sexual violence. Rape is a hideous crime. Yet in Assange’s case his alleged victim – the gender equity officer at Uppsula University – chose to throw a party for her alleged assailant – after they’d had the sex that even Swedish prosecutors concede was consensual. Barrister Caitlin again:

[The] phenomena of social networking through the internet and mobile phones constrains Swedish authorities from augmenting the evidence against Assange because it would look even less credible in the face of tweets by Anna Ardin and SMS texts by Sofia Wilén boasting of their respective conquests after the “crimes”.

In the case of Ardin it is clear that she has thrown a party in Assange’s honour at her flat after the “crime” and tweeted to her followers that she is with the “the world’s coolest smartest people, it’s amazing!”. Go on the internet and see for yourself. That Ardin has sought unsuccessfully to delete these exculpatory tweets from the public record should be a matter of grave concern. That she has published on the internet a guide on how to get revenge on cheating boyfriends ever graver. The exact content of Wilén’s mobile phone texts is not yet known but their bragging and exculpatory character has been confirmed by Swedish prosecutors. Neither Wilén’s nor Ardin’s texts complain of rape.

Small world, isn’t it? Julian Assange is the human face of Wikileaks – the organization that’s enabled whistle-blowers to reveal hideous war crimes and expose much of America’s foreign policy to the world.

He just happens to meet a Swedish woman who just happens to have been publishing her work in a well-funded anti-Castro group that just happens to have links with a group led by a man at least one journalist describes as an agent of the CIA: the violent secret arm of America’s foreign policy.

And she just happens to have been expelled from Cuba, which just happens to be the global symbol of successful defiance of American foreign policy.

And – despite her work in Sweden upholding the human right of gender equity – in Cuba she just happens to end up associating with a group openly supported by an admitted CIA agent who himself committed mass murder when he actively participated in the terrorist bombing of a jetliner carrying a Cuban sports team…an act that was of a piece with America’s secret foreign policy of violent attacks against Cuban state interests.

And now she just happens – after admittedly consensual sex – to have gone to Swedish authorities to report the sex ended without a condom…which just happens to be the pretext for Interpol to issue a “Red Notice” informing the world’s police forces of charges against Julian Assange.

Who just happens to be the man America’s political class – the people who run America’s foreign policy – have been trying to silence. And who happens to be the man some of them have been calling to have murdered.

With a lust for vengeance like that, one could be forgiven for concluding they’ve just happened to have taken a page from Anna’s revenge manual.


(via firedoglake...)

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Sunday, June 20, 2010

Something hopeful for a Father's Day

as a father and a grandfather, i feel a special pull toward bequeathing a legacy to our future generations, something we've been failing at spectacularly, particularly in the course of my lifetime... here's something to give us a little hope, not obama-style hope, but REAL hope...
A short film looking at the success of organic urban agriculture in Havana, Cuba. An example for cities around the world.

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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

McCain will continue to reward narco-fascist regimes that side with the U.S.

and attempt to interfere with the internal affairs of states that insist on charting their own course independent of the u.s...
"If I am elected president (…) We will work to prevent Venezuela and Bolivia from taking the same road to failure Castro has paved for Cuba, and we will broaden and strengthen ties with key states like Brazil, Peru, and Chile," McCain said.

Likewise, McCain criticized Obama for opposing to a free trade agreement with Colombia.

"Colombia is a beacon of hope in a region where the Castro brothers, [Venezuelan President] Hugo Chávez, and others are actively seeking to thwart economic progress and democracy," McCain added.

what do brazil, chile, colombia, and peru have in common...? that's right... they all have significant energy and mineral resources and are willing to cooperate with the u.s. its own terms... what does colombia have that makes it a "beacon of hope"...? it lets the u.s. military play an unfettered hand within its borders, to say nothing of the billions of dollars the u.s. spends arming the colombian military lining the pockets of its wealthy elites...

what do bolivia, cuba, and venezuela have in common...? bolivia and venezuela have significant energy and mineral resources and are led by populist governments intent on having the final say about how their resources are used... all three insist on charting an independent course, free of controlling u.s. influence...

to the money and power-crazed criminals that preside over my country, governments of, by, and for the people are acceptable only if those governments fully align themselves with u.s. "interests"... if a country is governed by super-rich, narco-fascists AND is fully aligned with u.s. "interests," hey...! that's ok... after all, it's u.s. "interests" that really matter...

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Thursday, April 24, 2008

Hugo Chávez on the world food crisis - a "massacre" of the poor

and it ain't by chance either... it's by design...
Soaring food prices are a "massacre" of the world's poor and are creating a global nutritional crisis, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday, calling it a sign that capitalism is in decline.

His comments came only hours after the United Nations' World Food Program called more expensive food a "silent tsunami" that threatens to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger.

"It is a true massacre what is happening in the world," Chavez said in a televised speech, citing U.N. statistics about deaths caused by hunger and malnourishment.

"The problem is not the production of food ... it is the economic, social and political model of the world. The capitalist model is in crisis."

[...]

Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage, visiting Caracas to meet with Chavez and other allied leaders on Wednesday, accused developed countries of spurring food prices through biofuels.

"Developed countries want to feed the cars of the rich with food -- this is the irrational world we live in today," Lage said, echoing Chavez's frequent accusations that Washington's promotion of biofuel is boosting prices of staples like corn.

don't think for one single second that this wasn't planned...

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Saturday, March 29, 2008

Cell phones in Cuba...? Eavesdropping on conversations...? NO-O-O-O-O-OOO...! Say it isn't so...!



this might seem a bit trivial in the high-impact news department and maybe it is... however, i think it's right up at the top of the list in the ironic propaganda spin department... read it and see if you agree...
First microwaves, now cell phones. Is this the new Cuba? Raul Castro is revolutionizing his brother's island in small but significant ways — the latest in a decree Friday allowing ordinary Cubans to have cell phone service, a luxury previously reserved for the select few. The new president could be betting greater access to such modern gadgets will quell demand for deeper change.

Many Cubans hope cell phones and new appliances are only the beginning for a post-Fidel Castro government that will improve their lives. Communist bureaucracy currently limits everything from Internet access to home ownership.

Could cellular phones in dissidents' hands give state security forces an edge in monitoring their conversations or tracking their movements by satellite? Perhaps, but government opponents — including the few who have cell phones — already assume someone's always listening.

Until now, the only people legally allowed to have a cell plan were foreigners, Cubans working for foreign companies and top government officials. Thousands more illegally use phones registered to foreign friends or relatives.

"Finally. We have waited too long for this," said Elizabeth, a middle-aged housewife waiting in line to pay her home telephone bill. She wouldn't give her last name because she already has a cell phone through a foreign co-worker of her husband.

so, accusing raúl of tossing bread and circus to the masses, eh...? accusing raúl of monitoring phone conversations, eh...? accusing raúl of tracking citizens' whereabouts, eh...? tell me... does this ring any bells at all...?

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Sunday, February 24, 2008

Raúl



raúl, pronounced rah-OOL...
The Cuban National Assembly voted Raúl Castro as its new president on Sunday, the first time the country has had a new leader since his brother Fidel seized power in 1959.

Mr. Castro, the 76-year-old armed forces minister, had been widely expected to be named president by the 614 members of the assembly. Mr. Castro, dressed in a gray suit and steel-colored tie, cast the first vote for president of the assembly with a smile and wave at about 11:15 a.m. Fidel Castro was said to be too ill to attend the meeting, and he voted through a proxy.

hey... no problem... now nobody has to stop referring to cuba's president as castro...

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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

The end of the Castro era




Fidel Castro in his early years


Fidel Castro in Argentina
in July 2006

Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday that he will not return to lead the country as president or commander-in-chief, retiring as head of state 49 years after he seized power in an armed revolution.

fidel castro has been a fixture of my mental landscape since i was eleven years old... his image was burned in to my brain during the cuban missile crisis but only became more than a two-dimensional propaganda target in the past few years...

i had the opportunity in 2004 to meet and get to know the former ambassador to cuba of a former socialist country... he is a delightful individual, intelligent and urbane, and we quickly discovered we shared the same twisted sense of humor... over dinner one evening, he regaled me with hours-long conversations he had with fidel about every conceivable subject and where castro revealed himself to be a most engaging and decent individual, fully wise in the ways of the world, and a passionate advocate of the common man... listening to his first-hand experiences, i quickly came to realize just how little i knew of fidel and how my views of him had been so effectively shaped by the bias of my own country...

love him or hate him, fidel castro has achieved something for cuba that no other country but north korea has been able to accomplish... he has kept cuba out of the grasp of the united states for nearly fifty years, and that, in itself, is quite remarkable...

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Monday, June 25, 2007

Kill Fidel



quentin tarantino needs to step up to this one...
Cuba's communist leader Fidel Castro accused US President George W. Bush of ordering him killed even before moving into the White House, in an article published in the newspaper Granma Tuesday.

"The issue of the accusation related to his plan to kill me comes from before he used fraud to steal the victory from another candidate," the convalescing Castro, 80, said of Bush.

ya know what...? i don't doubt it for a minute...

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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

World-class Cuban health care



with the debut of michael moore's "SiCKO" coming june 29, a look at cuban health care seems in order...

maybe i'm just perverse, but i really like to see good news coming out of cuba, particularly when it's of the kind that builds understanding and better relationships with the people of the u.s...

[A]bout 90 young people from poor parts of the United States have joined the ranks of international students studying medicine in Cuba.

The offer of medical training is just one way Cuba has reached out to the United States. Immediately after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, 1,500 Cuban doctors volunteered to come to the Gulf Coast. They waited with packed bags and medical supplies, and a ship ready to provide backup support. Permission from the U.S. government never arrived.

"Our government played politics with the lives of people when they needed help the most," said [Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi]. "And that's unfortunate."

cuba's medical and healthcare system is making an impact around the world...
[D]isaster assistance is part of Cuba's medical aid mission that has extended from Peru to Indonesia, and even included caring for 17,000 children sickened by the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine.

It isn't only in times of disaster that Cuban health care workers get involved. Some 29,000 Cuban health professionals are now practicing in 69 countries -- mostly in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. In Venezuela, about 20,000 of them have enabled President Hugo Chávez to make good on his promise to provide health care to the poor. In the shantytowns around Caracas and the banks of the Amazon, those who organize themselves and find a place for a doctor to practice and live can request a Cuban doctor.

As in Cuba, these doctors and nurses live where they serve, and become part of the community. They are available for emergencies, and they introduce preventative health practices.

the more important thing is that it's not only working, it's working well, it's highly cost efficient, and is offered for free...
The Cuban health care system is producing a population that is as healthy as those of the world's wealthiest countries at a fraction of the cost.

[...]

Everyone has access to doctors, nurses, specialists, and medications. There is a doctor and nurse team in every neighborhood, although somewhat fewer now, with 29,000 medical professionals serving out of the country -- a fact that is causing some complaints. If someone doesn't like their neighborhood doctor, they can choose another one.

House calls are routine, in part because it's the responsibility of the doctor and nurse team to understand you and your health issues in the context of your family, home, and neighborhood. This is key to the system. By catching diseases and health hazards before they get big, the Cuban medical system can spend a little on prevention rather than a lot later on to cure diseases, stop outbreaks, or cope with long-term disabilities. When a health hazard like dengue fever or malaria is identified, there is a coordinated nationwide effort to eradicate it. Cubans no longer suffer from diphtheria, rubella, polio, or measles and they have the lowest AIDS rate in the Americas, and the highest rate of treatment and control of hypertension.

there is a key difference in the underlying drivers of the cuban health care system and the u.s. health care system... in cuba, the HEALTH of ALL the people is the principal priority and, in the u.s., despite the glossy mission statements prominently displayed in the annual reports of all the big health care corporations, the health of ALL the people is simply NOT the priority... when that priority is placed first, and is both taken seriously and acted upon, it changes everything...

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Thursday, May 03, 2007

"Democracies have an absolute responsibility" to insure freedom of the press



when we think of restrictions on freedom of the press, we automatically think of countries like russia, cuba, egypt and pakistan... when we think of journalists being targeted for their work, we think of places like gaza, the congo and iraq... while it's always easier to point the finger elsewhere, we need to look in the mirror and take to heart the following...
Dear Reader,

Major terrorist attacks and threats against countries world-wide, particularly democracies, in recent years have led to the widespread tightening of security and surveillance measures.

The objective of these measures is laudable and compelling – the protection of citizens against threats to life and property. There is, however, a legitimate and growing concern that in too many instances such measures, whether old or newly introduced, are being used to stifle debate and the free flow of information about political decisions, or that they are being implemented with too little concern for the overriding necessity to protect individual liberties and, notably, freedom of the press.

Anti-terrorism and official secrets laws, criminalisation of speech judged to justify terrorism, criminal prosecution of journalists for disclosing classified information, surveillance of communications without judicial authorisation, restrictions on access to government data and stricter security classifications, all these measures can severely erode the capacity of journalists to investigate and report accurately and critically, and thus the ability of the press to inform.

Balancing the sometimes conflicting interests of security and freedom might indeed be difficult, but democracies have an absolute responsibility to use a rigorous set of standards to judge whether curbs on freedom can be justified by security concerns and should set them against the rights protected in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which guarantees freedom 'to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers'.

This is the clear message we need to impress on governments and their agencies on World Press Freedom Day.

Timothy Balding
Chief Executive Officer
World Association of Newspapers

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Saturday, April 21, 2007

Opposed to Bush? "The rule of law is out the window. Wild West hangin' justice is in."

bush and his criminal compadres present themselves as the saviors of the american people, protecting us from the horrors of global "terrorism," which, if not confronted at exorbitant financial and human cost in iraq, will cross the ocean and attack us on our homeland... sadly, far too many people in the united states have swallowed this nonsense, hook, line and sinker, without stopping to consider that the fight is not between u.s. citizens and "terrorists..." rather, it is between those who support vs. those who resist the interests of the bush family and its highly interconnected networks of money and power... no one has documented this better than robert parry... what follows are the four paragraphs introducing parry's latest post on his consortium news, chronicling the staggering hypocrisy of george w. bush in the context of the recently released anti-castro terrorist, luis posada carriles...
George W. Bush likes to present the “war on terror” as a clear-cut moral crusade in which evildoers who kill innocent civilians must be brought harshly to justice, along with the leaders of countries that harbor terrorists. There are no grays, only blacks and whites.

But evenhanded justice is not the true core principle of the Bush Doctrine. The real consistency is hypocrisy: violence which Bush favors – no matter how wanton the slaughter of innocents – is justifiable, while violence that goes against Bush’s interests – even an insurgency against a foreign military occupation – must be punished without remorse as “terrorism.”

In other words, if Bush hates the perpetrators, they are locked up indefinitely without charge and, at his discretion, can be subjected to “alternative interrogation techniques,” what most of the world considers torture. The rule of law is out the window. Wild West hangin' justice is in. Even the ancient fair trial right of habeas corpus is discarded.

However, when the killers of civilians are on Bush’s side, they get the full panoply of legal protections – and every benefit of the doubt. Under this Bush double standard, therefore, right-wing Cuban terrorists Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, though implicated in a string of murderous attacks on civilians, get the see-no-evil treatment.

parry's conclusion is stark...
[T]he Bush family regards terrorism – defined as killing civilians for a political reason – as justified or at least tolerable in cases when their interests match those of the terrorists.

Terrorism is only a moral evil to the Bushes when the violence against civilians clashes with the Bush family’s interests.

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