Monthly Archives: July 2010

Choice of NPR vs. FOX is like Obama vs. Bush, difference is only skin deep.

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Petition mongers are hoping you’ll help pressure the White House Correspondents’ Association to assign the front row briefing room seat recently purged of Helen Thomas to the public-serving NPR instead of the right-wing FOX. I favor whoever will unmask the corporate choke hold on the media and government, not who’ll perpetuate the facade that policy is guided by public discourse.

“Give Helen Thomas’ former briefing room seat to NPR, which has provided public interest coverage for decades – not Fox, which is a right-wing propaganda tool, not a legitimate news organization.”

I’d not give the seat back to Helen Thomas, if she asked. Talk about a caricature to confine the purported extremes of the Left.

NY Times pretends the Afghanistan War Logs is news that does not fit

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Is it surprising that the US newspaper of record, the NYT which prints all the news that’s fit, should declare of the Wikileaks Afghanistan War Logs: there’s nothing much new there? Oh REALLY? Point me to a NYT headline that read US Death Squads, or Civilian Casualties: We DO Body-Counts, or Insurgents Armed With Heat-Seeking Missiles, or War Crimes Being Committed Daily. Are we to accept that the NYT knew about these, but thought wisest not to report them? The only revelation which has been known, Pakistan Directs Taliban, is the leak they’re running with, because those reports are founded on intelligence, ie dubious conjecture, to discredit the others based on first hand accounts, and to rationalize more attacks on Pakistan.

I’m galled even that Wikileaks chose to let the NYT in on the advance team. Of course the NYT went right to the White House and Pentagon to warn them of what was about to be unleashed.

The files were given to three news organizations simultaneously to limit the spin each might try to apply. The move to involve the press in advance was for stories and their context could hit the ground running.

It’s curious that most columnists and news blogs are favoring the Guardian’s analysis the logs, over the NYT’s.

In spite of the peer review, the NYT is pushing back harder the the White House, which isn’t disputing the authenticity of the material, only their outrage that the facts are being made public. Small wonder.

Worse than denying them, the NYT is dismissive. No big deal. And it’s working. The rest of the MSM is characterizing the “alleged” logs as “accusations.” Despite the un-argued official admission that these are the unadulterated records.

Most of the discussion is about the leak itself, and Julian Assange’s motive as an activist. No mention he’s anactivist for “justice.” Not partisan, not pacifist, but moral. You’d think that shouldn’t differentiate him from a journalist.

The NYT has some nerve to pretend the logs aren’t going to bring on a sea change of despondency about the war, even in Iraq. In particular with the soldiers’ families starved for news, who will recognize from the reports the snippets of sensitive information they get from their individual soldier, with no idea it forms the character of the whole picture. We’re fucked. We can’t throw more at it, we can’t fire truer, wiser, safer. This is unwinnable.

And those are the reports our government has been seeing. Maybe that’s what the NYT means to say, we/they already know this material. Our leaders have been reading these reports daily and they don’t dispute that. Their glass-half-full projections for success in Afghanistan is half-full with blood. Now we know it.

That’s the sordid quality of these revelations. Soldiers lives FUBAR. These are more than the Pentagon Papers, these are American war-making unspun, undone.

NYT et al, will have us blame the messenger, condemn Private Bradley Manning for his breach of security. Our national security depends on keeping secrets is their unchallenged theme. Do you believe it’s the media pressing that point? These assholes are embedded so far into America’s military export industry, we need to look elsewhere for the news that’s fit.

Furkan Dogan was no Leon Klinghoffer, (nor Abu Abbas, ergo no press for him)

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Interesting that when Palestinians hijack a passenger ship, and kill one person, it’s quite a different story than when the Israelis pirate a ship and kill nine, even when one is an American. We remember the Achille Lauro, and the wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer executed when the hijackers’ demands were being ignored. 19-year-old Furkan Dogan was executed without the Israeli Commandos making clear why they had any authority to attack the Mavi Marmara in international waters. Not one complaint from the US press or government. The difference is of course that Dogan was not Jewish, but Muslim. Israel’s own brand of antisemitic racism, obviously America’s too.

I wonder if Midnight on the Mavi Marmara will be immortalized like the Voyage of Terror: the Achille Lauro Affair? We all know that story. Evil Arabs seize innocent passengers, negotiate release of passengers for escape flight, American renege on safe passage, intercept plane and capture the terrorists, all except for the ringleader whose name become household for nefarious evildoer. Americans still knew the Iagoian Abu Abbas when he was captured in the invasion of Iraq and died in US captivity. What had been the point of hijacking the Achille Lauro? Prisoner release? Something about Palestine and Israel? That part is certainly fuzzy.

Apparently giving voice to the motives of terrorist acts is to play into their hands, ergo, they’re simply despicable “terrorists,” no one else’s freedom fighters.

Wikileaks spills “Afganistan War Logs” detail Task Force 373, US death squad

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7th Special Forces AirborneYou thought death squads were only for banana republics? Meet covert US Task Force 373 which circulates in Afghanistan with a 2,058 name “Kill or Capture List” killing all witnesses, even policemen, who get in their way. The sudden transparency is due the AFGHANISTAN WAR LOGS, courtesy at last from Wikileaks. While dodging US DHS agents, Wikileak’s Julian Assange was able to coordinate a clever self-checking joint release of the documents via the Guardian UK, Der Spiegel, and the New York Times. The events reported aren’t accusations, they’re the soldiers’ own records.

This leak of over 90,000 files represents the US military’s account of the Afghanistan conflict virtually in its entirety. The news outlets have attempted the present the data in manageable articles, while also providing the raw material for download. The Guardian even offers a tutorial.

The coordinated release ensures that no one can alter the information, and Assange’s choice of outlets was also clever: all three of them are/were pro-war.

There will be lots of revelations from these leaked document, including underestimates of civilian casualties, and acknowledgment of casualties not admitted to the media, CIA hits, and another Black Ops SF squad called Scorpion 26, but let’s get back to the death squad.

We don’t have to allege that TF 373 is an extrajudicial, fully-illegal assassination team, we have their own logs. Who they killed, tried to kill, killed instead, killed trying to get there, killed covering their tracks. Men, women and children. The logs cover up to November 2009, but we have no reason to think they’re not killing still.

Task Force 373 operates out of Kabul, Kandahar and Khost, comprised of soldiers of the 7th Special Forces Group of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. They are transported by Chinook and Cobra helicopters flown by 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, of Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia. Special Forces Airborne death squads.

Or is America inured by our armed drones which assassinate from up high. Whether the trigger man wears a mask in Afghanistan, or sits at a console in Nevada, the hit is a war crime. Outside of a field of battle, it’s simply murder.

And lookey here, the 7th Special Forces have a patch for their record in El Salvador in 1984…

Addressed by their commander in 2001: “From Fort Bragg to Colombia to Venezuela to Peru to Ecuador to Bolivia to Nicaragua to Argentina, you have been instrumental in forging deeper bonds with the democracies of Latin America,”

So before I let the banana republic slur go. Let’s recall that Latin American death squads were often trained at the US School of the Americas, when they or their governments weren’t being directed by Americans outright. Or the 7th, the “Devil’s Brigade.”

US House Resolution 1553 offers go-ahead for Israel to attack Iran

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House Republicans have crafted a resolution to offer US approval for Israel to use “all means necessary” to confront Iran, reviving Holocaust fears and misquoting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where “wipe from the map” conflating the “Zionist Regime” with the Jews. Below is the full text of the resolution, supported by Republican congress members including Colorado’s Doug Lamborn.

111TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION

H. RES. 1553

Expressing support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

JULY 22, 2010

Mr. GOHMERT (for himself, Mr. AKIN, Mrs. BACHMANN, Mr. BARTLETT, Mr. BISHOP of Utah, Mrs. BLACKBURN, Mr. BONNER, Mr. BROUN of Georgia, Mr. BURTON of Indiana, Mr. CAMPBELL, Mr. CHAFFETZ, Mr. CONAWAY, Mr. CULBERSON, Ms. FALLIN, Mr. FLEMING, Mr. FRANKS of Arizona, Mr. GINGREY of Georgia, Ms. GRANGER, Mr. GRIFFITH, Mr. HENSARLING, Mr. HERGER, Mr. KING of Iowa, Mr. LAMBORN, Mr. LATTA, Mr. LOBIONDO, Mrs. LUMMIS, Mr. MARCHANT, Mr. NEUGEBAUER, Mr. PENCE, Mr. PITTS, Mr. POSEY, Mr. PRICE of Georgia, Mr. OLSON, Mr. ROONEY, Mrs. SCHMIDT, Mr. SHADEGG, Mr. SMITH of Texas, Mr. WESTMORELAND, Mr. ROSKAM, Mr. MCCOTTER, Mr. BROWN of South Carolina, Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin, Mr. MCCLINTOCK, Mr. JORDAN of Ohio, Mr. BARTON of Texas, Mr. KINGSTON, and Mr. CARTER) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs

RESOLUTION

Expressing support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.

Whereas with the dawn of modern Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, some 150 years ago, the Jewish people determined to return to their homeland in the Land of Israel from the lands of their dispersion;

Whereas in 1922, the League of Nations mandated that the Jewish people were the legal sovereigns over the Land of Israel and that legal mandate has never been superseded;

Whereas in the aftermath of the Nazi-led Holocaust from 1933 to 1945, in which the Germans and their collaborators murdered 6,000,000 Jewish people in a premeditated act of genocide, the international community recognized that the Jewish state, built by Jewish pioneers must gain its independence from Great Britain;

Whereas the United States was the first nation to recognize Israel’s independence in 1948, and the State of Israel has since proven herself to be a faithful ally of the United States in the Middle East;

Whereas the United States and Israel have a special friendship based on shared values, and together share the common goal of peace and security in the Middle East;

Whereas, on October 20, 2009, President Barack Obama rightly noted that the United States–Israel relationship is a ‘‘bond that is much more than a strategic alliance.’’;

Whereas the national security of the United States, Israel, and allies in the Middle East face a clear and present danger from the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran seeking nuclear weapons and the ballistic missile capability to deliver them;

Whereas Israel would face an existential threat from a nuclear weapons-armed Iran;

Whereas President Barack Obama has been firm and clear in declaring United States opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran, stating on November 7, 2008, ‘‘Let me state—repeat what I stated during the course of the campaign. Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable.’’;

Whereas, on October 26, 2005, at a conference in Tehran called ‘‘World Without Zionism’’, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, ‘‘God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism’’;

Whereas the New York Times reported that during his October 26, 2005, speech, President Ahmadinejad called for ‘‘this occupying regime [Israel] to be wiped off the map’’;

Whereas, on April 14, 2006, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, ‘‘Like it or not, the Zionist regime [Israel] is heading toward annihilation’’;

Whereas, on June 2, 2008, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, ‘‘I must announce that the Zionist regime [Israel], with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion, and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene’’;

Whereas, on June 2, 2008, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, ‘‘Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come, and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started’’;

Whereas, on May 20, 2009, Iran successfully tested a surface-to-surface long range missile with an approximate range of 1,200 miles;

Whereas Iran continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons;

Whereas Iran has been caught building three secret nuclear facilities since 2002;

Whereas Iran continues its support of international terrorism, has ordered its proxy Hizbullah to carry out catastrophic acts of international terrorism such as the bombing of the Jewish AMIA Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1994, and could give a nuclear weapon to a terrorist organization in the future;

Whereas Iran has refused to provide the International Atomic Energy Agency with full transparency and access to its nuclear program;

Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 1803 states that according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, ‘‘Iran has not established full and sustained suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing activities and heavy-water-related projects as set out in resolution 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) nor resumed its cooperation with the IAEA under the Additional Protocol, nor taken the other steps required by the IAEA Board of Governors, nor complied with the provisions of Security Council resolution 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) . . .’’;

Whereas at July 2009’s G-8 Summit in Italy, Iran was given a September 2009 deadline to start negotiations over its nuclear programs and Iran offered a five-page document lamenting the ‘‘ungodly ways of thinking prevailing in global relations’’ and included various subjects, but left out any mention of Iran’s own nuclear program which was the true issue in question;

Whereas the United States has been fully committed to finding a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear threat, and has made boundless efforts seeking such a resolution and to determine if such a resolution is even possible; and

Whereas the United States does not want or seek war with Iran, but it will continue to keep all options open to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives—

(1) condemns the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran for its threats of ‘‘annihilating’’ the United States and the State of Israel, for its continued support of international terrorism, and for its incitement of genocide of the Israeli people;

(2) supports using all means of persuading the Government of Iran to stop building and acquiring nuclear weapons;

(3) reaffirms the United States bond with Israel and pledges to continue to work with the Government of Israel and the people of Israel to ensure that their sovereign nation continues to receive critical economic and military assistance, including missile defense capabilities, needed to address the threat of Iran; and

(4) expresses support for Israel’s right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran, defend Israeli sovereignty, and protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within a reasonable time.

Black is Back at the United Antiwar Conference: breaking the Obama Spell

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Black Agenda Report‘s Glen Ford speaking at UNAC in Albany: “A real movement breeds a culture of resistance, a widely held belief that it is right to resist, that it is virtuous to speak truth to power. That culture of resistance is what made Black America the most reliably progressive antiwar demographic in the United States. It was not that black people were smarter than anybody else, we were just less confused. We had a better and clearer idea of who the enemy was.”

Also, here’s a letter from activist lawyer Lynne Stewart, whose sentence was recently extended from two years to ten, for giving assistance to an incarcerated “terrorist.”

Futbol or Football, it’s all about us

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Americans already have a “football” and so come into conflict with a majority of the world when our television broadcasters have to say “soccer” and assuage the confusion of US viewers when confronted by everyone else’s “football.” And ironic too, the sportscasters like to explain, compounding their error, because it’s about the foot and the ball, unlike domestic football which is about using your hands to carry an un-spherical bladder. But this humor presumes another American overreach: “Futbol” incorporates “foot” and “ball” only if you speak English.

In a preponderance of languages, futbol defines neither foot nor ball, and mimics simply the phonetic term used by the British, whose colonial representatives were responsible for spreading the game across the world. As long time English speakers, the Brits have no difficulty with differentiating football from American Football. But Americans didn’t come by the term “soccer” on its own, which brings to light the other side to the complexity of FIFA’s hope to standardize the World Cup experience. Americans are not alone in resisting globalization’s attack on their cultural identity. A great deal of the world doesn’t call it FOOTBALL either.

To survey just the languages which share our Arabic alphabet, here’s how others refer to what we call soccer: Sokker (Afrikaans), Fodbold (Danish), Voetbal (Dutch), Jalgpall (Estonian), Jalkapallo (Finnish), Labdarúgás (Hungarian), Calcio (Italian), Sepak bola (Indonesian), Putbol (Filipino), Peil (Irish), Pêl-droed (Welsh), Pi?ka no?na (Polish), and Nogomet (Croatian).

Animal Liberation Lone Wolf betrayed by ATF informant, literature and tattoo

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Animal Rights Activist and VeganPardon the delay, but when an activist is arrested for the literature he’s carrying, I’ve got to find that material. 34-year-old Walter Edmund Bond was arraigned today for setting the Denver Sheepskin Factory fire in May. ATF agents report that in his knapsack was a tract entitled Declaration of War: Killing People to Save the animals and the Environment The ATF alleges his copy was subtitled: Strike a Match, Light a Fuse, We Only Have the Earth to Lose. Bond was arrested after an informant taped him confessing to being the “Lone Wolf” who took credit on an Animal Liberation Front website. In the meantime, media outlets have linked Bond to a 1977 conviction for arson, failing to note he would have served the time as a toddler. (Turns out “1977” was a typo.)

This story makes me sad, because as much as direct action now requires a culture of secrecy, and as renegade as “Lone Wolf” may have been, if it was Bond, what happened reminds us that wolves are in fact a social animal like we, and every ideologically driven person needs to seek out like-minded comrades.

While it was probably a foregone conclusion that the Sheepskin Factory fire was set to make a statement about animal rights, today’s media requires that someone take the credit. Lone Wolf’s online post performed that protocol, and that should have been that. Doubtless it’s hard to recruit allies for future projects without wanting to claim a resume of past deeds. And what’s to stop everyone from pretending to have been there?

The certainty with which the ATF ties Walter Bond to the fire is built on his bragging to a friend. His choice of reading material, or tattoos, corroborates the subject of his interest, equally likely what he would brag about, and not his actual culpability.

The Smoking Gun has obtained the full affidavit submitted by ATF Special Agents Rennie Mora, which details a call received by fellow agent Christopher Forkner. Someone who hadn’t talked to Walter Bond since the suspect was 22, called the ATF to relate a phone call he/she received from Bond in late June. Asked what he’d been up to lately, Bond referred “Informant CI-01” to the website voice of the voiceless and directed her/him to scroll down to the “Denver Sheepskin fire.” There “ALF Lone Wolf” had posted an explanation for why he’d targeted the business. Concluded the informant: “that’s what he had been up to.”

The informant then called the authorities, the ATF claims, because of fears firefighters might be endangered by future fires the suspect might light.

The affidavit also mentions that the informant passed on photographs of Bond to the ATF.

At the direction of the ATF, Informant CI-01 contacted Bond in Utah. Though Bond had called initially from “a phone at a Salt Lake City public library,” the affidavit offers no details about how the informant reached Bond. The informant suggested Bond travel to Denver and meet at a Ramada Inn on East Colfax, where their conversation was then recorded.

Had the ATF been tracking Bond since his arson conviction in 1997, or at activist gatherings since? There are no ready explanations for what motivated or enabled Informant CI-01 to ensnare her friend of twelve years before. It should be interesting to learn from Bond how he recounts the past weeks’ events and whether if was indeed a friend he last spoke with during his first stint in prison. The informant could have been a prison relation worried about violating parole, or a full-fledged undercover agent.

It appears Bond was short on friends. He was apprehended in the yard of friend Billie Jo Riley who described Bond as an “unlikable drifter.” She made a point to ridicule Bond for accepting two hamburgers in spite of the tattoo on his throat which reads “vegan.” The reporter from Denver’s 9News prodded her incredulously. “Did he know they were real hamburgers?” 9NEWS asked, as if anyone doesn’t recognize meat fat by just its smell. “Yeah” Riley complied, adding again “He ate two of them, two of them.”

The evidence which the ATF asserts corroborates Bond’s taped admission is his “VEGAN” tattoo and the aforementioned “propaganda.”

Which it very well may be. The 1991 screed is attributed to one “Screaming Wolf” and its publishers claim it came by floppy-disk, by mail, its postmark undecipherable. The text is available at Animal Liberation Front, archived under Philosophy/Legal. I’ll reformat it here for legibility, and of course, for curiosity only.

A DECLARATION OF WAR

?Killing People To Save Animals And The Environment ?

This book is dedicated to the animals who have been killed by human greed, selfishness, and bloodlust. In their names, and in the names of current and future generations of innocent beings who will suffer and die as a result of human brutality, the liberators are striking back. Our fellow creatures who have been mutilated, slaughtered, burned, poisoned, strangled, gassed, shot, electrocuted, microwaved, run over, skinned, eaten, enslaved, and domesticated are now being defended. Humans, beware!

?– Screaming Wolf –

Table Of Contents

A MESSAGE FROM THE UNDERGROUND

MAJOR DISCLAIMER BY SCREAMING WOLF

CHAPTER 1: THE LIBERATORS

CHAPTER 2: THIS WORLD IS MEANT FOR ALL BEINGS

CHAPTER 3: HOMO DESTRUCTUS

CHAPTER 4: THE EVERYDAY HOLOCAUST

CHAPTER 5: THE MYTH OF NON-VIOLENCE

CHAPTER 6: A TIME FOR WAR

CHAPTER 7: FINDING PEACE IN TIMES OF WAR
?
—

A MESSAGE FROM THE UNDERGROUND
(Preface from the original editors)

My husband and I are animal rights activists. For the past ten years we have been in trenches fighting for the animals. But we have always fought legally. We have used the system to its fullest, coordinating various educational, legislative, and litigious campaigns.

If you would have asked us how we felt about our work, we would have told you that our struggle for animal rights and a more humane world was finally becoming mainstream and acceptable. We really believed that our message was beginning to be heard.

However, on the morning of January 18, 1991, our lives were turned upside down.

Included in our mail was a small package with no return address. Inside was a computer disk. There was no explanation of what this disk was for, or who had sent it to us. We looked at the postmark on the envelope, but it was faint and illegible. With no clues as to its contents, we decided to put it in our computer and see what was on it.

The  disk  had  one  file on  it  called, A Declaration  of  War. We opened the file, and the following message appeared.

    “This manuscript explains the philosophy of a group of individuals throughout the world who call themselves, ‘Liberators’. They believe in a revolution to liberate animals and, if necessary, to kill their oppressors. They say such extreme action is needed to stop the horrible human caused suffering of animals and the destruction of the world. They believe that nothing short of a total overthrow of this system will free our brothers and sisters. Please see that this ‘Declaration of War’ is published for the world to read and understand.

Signed – Screaming Wolf”

?

Our curiosity kept us glued to the computer for the next four hours, as we read this bold manuscript. When we finished, we were extremely disturbed. What kind of person could be responsible for this, we wondered. At first, we couldn’t understand why we were chosen as the recipients of this ‘Declaration of War’. After thinking it through, we assumed it was because of some similarities in our personal philosophies. We, too, see humans as the destructive force in the world. We feel that this planet was not put here for humans to exploit, and that nature and other animals, not humans, are at the center of our moral thinking. ?

But what was this talk of killing oppressors? We never promoted or defended violence. Why did Screaming Wolf decide to contact us? The answer to that question is still a mystery, But the reason for our selection is a moot point. We have been selected and must now deal with this terrifying manuscript. ?

Screaming Wolf explains the reason why ‘Liberators’ feel that they must declare war on society. We expect that many activists in the animal rights and environmental movements agree with much of what the ‘Liberators’ have to say, but would seldom admit these deep and frightening thoughts, even to themselves. Feelings of frustration, feelings of alienation, feelings of love and hate and anger and fear, all of these, and more, are common to all of us working within the system for change. ?

However, the ‘Liberators’ go beyond these feelings, and describe real or proposed actions: actions which the public will immediately decry as terrorism, actions which the ‘Liberators’ defend as heroism. According to Screaming Wolf, who apparently is a spokesperson for these ‘Liberators’, these terrorists are a branch of the A.L.F. (Animal Liberation Front). This group has claimed responsibility for breaking into laboratories and factory farms, rescuing animals and damaging equipment. However, the A.L.F. has maintained a commitment of nonviolence towards all living beings, including humans. Liberators, according to Screaming Wolf, have decided to end their commitment of non-violence towards human life. These people actually feel that violence against humans is the only way to make a real difference for the animals. ?

After reading this manuscript, our anxiety and fear almost prompted us to toss it in trash. We were looking for any excuse to forget what we had just read. However, we concluded that Screaming Wolf’s message is too important to simply dismiss. People must know what ‘Liberator’ believe, and can come to their own conclusions about what it means, how they feel about it, and what they want to do about it. ?

We know that publishing a book like this is risky, despite the alleged First Amendment rights of freedom of press. People in this country are allowed to purchase and bear arms, but not to announce a call to arms. We expect some people to construe our publication of this book as an endorsement of violence, despite our disclaimers to the contrary. We looked into the laws regarding publication of literature concerning terrorism and realized at once that the risk in publishing this book is real. We expect to be slapped with dozens of lawsuits, and probably death threats as well. As one lawyer put it, our publishing this book may be totally legally defensible, but we will most likely have to repeatedly prove that fact over the next decade, costing us a fortune in legal fees, and draining our energy and time as we deal with the legal system. ?

The situation, as we see it, is that we have been the recipients of a manuscript that describes a terrorist group of people declaring war on humans to save animals and the environment. If we ignore the manuscript, the public will not know of this threat to its safety. People need to know that ‘Liberators’ exist. We also feel that everyone who believes in working within the system needs to engage in open and honest dialogue about all ways of seeing a problem and its possible solutions, including the solution offered by the ‘Liberators’. This applies to activists and those invested in the status quo. The message of ‘Liberators’ affects all of these people. ?

We concluded, therefore, that we must accept the responsibility of publishing this manuscript. In the name of truth and honesty, people must hear this message of the ‘Liberators’. ?

In an attempt to protect ourselves from criminal prosecution, we, the publishers, would like to make the following direct disclaimer. We do not endorse or support any of the illegal, terrorist activities described by Screaming Wolf or the ‘Liberators’. We present this book for informational purposes only. ?

The entire manuscript of Screaming Wolf could have been printed with quotation marks from the first word to the last, since all that follows this preface are the words of that individual and his or her presentation of the ‘Liberator’ position. We have excluded such quotation marks for the purpose of clarity. ?

This is a glimpse into the world of animal liberation terrorism. We suspect that the life and message of a ‘Liberator’ will be a difficult one for most people to understand. But we feel that the public has a right to have this information. After all, if the ‘Liberators’ continue to carry out their tactics, it may be a matter of life and death.

The Publishers ?
February, 1991.   ?

Read the entire manuscript in our archives: A Declaration of War.

$35 iNDIApad running Linux reveals iPad users pay for intellectual property

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While MIT has been racing to design the world’s first $100 computer, India has performed an end-run at a third the price, and it’s a tablet no less. Running with open-source software, as genuine volks-werks will, the iNDIAPAD will reach third world schoolchildren for $35, developers at the India Institute of Science hope even as low as $10. Absent keypad and hand crank, but with camera, touchscreen and wireless. Which begs the question of course, what indispensable features drive Apple prices? Bill Gates earned his fortune on them. Patents.

Fox News is the media’s Sarah Palin

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Do you wonder how it is Fox News can retain its broadcasting license? While traditional news outlets scrupulously uphold a pretense of objectivity, Fox spews forth with unapologetic propaganda, often easily debunked. You’d think our government could prosecute Fox for abuse of the public airwaves, for propagating untruths, even treason. Is it that regulators must not be seen to pick on conservative voices, or that this comically-rendered caricature of the Right is better than a real critic? They may be unfunny clowns, but they’re our clowns.

Fox as a distinct role within the corporate media. As Palin to Obama, or Mel Gibson to the Israeli Lobby, they’re bogeymen meant to frighten in a calculated way.

Gaza we are coming

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Gaza we are comingPlans are once again underway for another attempt to run the blockade of Gaza. Two ships are set to sail from Lebanon today or tomorrow, despite intimidation from Israel –which worked to prevent the aid ship INFANTS OF GAZA scheduled to leave from Iran. As a result, the Israeli navy is maneuvering to intercept, as it did for the recent Libyan AMALTHEA, and the Irish RACHEL CORRIE before that. Israel is even preparing “Flotilla 13,” the Shayetet commandos who killed nine activists on the Mavi Marmara in May. If it does leave, the Lebanese convoy will consist of a ship named MARYAM, carrying only women and nuns, and the JULIA (the Naji Al Ali) carrying journalist and Reporters Without Borders. It’s hard to imagine what reception the journalists are intent to document, Israel can hardly surpass itself with brutality, so will it be news?

Meanwhile another flotilla is in the works for September, which may include Spanish footballers. Canadian activists have announced efforts to contribute a Canadian ship, and US activists are raising funds for an American ship, to be named “The Audacity of Hope,” after President Obama’s autobiographical self-promotion. Personally I think the pay-it-forward Nobel Prize to Obama paid squat. Obama couldn’t even muster outrage over Israel’s murder of the Freedom Flotilla activists, nor would he sanction an international investigation. Why credit him with any part of the rescue of the Palestinians of Gaza?

Naji Al Ali docked in LebanonThe naming of “Maryam” or Mariam, after the Virgin Mary is already being resisted by the Israeli press, which is referring to the ship by its previous identity JUNIA. No doubt the all-woman ship will present a challenge to the brutality-prone IDF.

The confusion over the identity of Julia/Junia may be part of the subterfuge meant to evade Israel sabotage which succeeded in hampering the Freedom Flotilla’s CHALLENGER I and II.

GAZA WE ARE COMING is the title of a documentary made about the earlier attempts to break the siege of Gaza by sea. The project is more complicated than you might think, having to avoid the MOSSAD at every turn. Each successive wave has involved bigger ships, so far, taken as prizes by Israel. Will a sovereign government finally step forward to provide official escort to a convoy?

The United Nations has ruled the siege of Gaza to be illegal. Israel itself pretends that Gaza is autonomous, thus the naval blockade cannot be a pretext to protect Israeli waters. Debates in the media about who’s in the right are merely charades.

Refudiating the misunderestimation of Sarah Palin

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Even my Democrat friends are tired of apologizing for their party. They can point to nothing they and Obama have accomplished that’s reason enough to rally for Democrats in November, EXCEPT the specter of Sarah Palin. Ya think? –because I don’t. There may be American voters who prefer to elect a president they can drink a beer with, but in the feminine that’s going to be a Budweiser Girl. My apologies to feminists, but Bush’s dumbfuck shtick from the mouth of a woman comes across as a shrew. Palin’s invention of “refudiate” is no funnier than a common Bushism. It’s a sign her writers think they can crib the Bush playbook, but this time for a bogeyman, I think they misunderestimate the American public.

What are US Special Forces doing in the Philippines? Killing Filipinos.

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At a recent party, I ran into a friend who mentioned her son was in the Philippines. “He’s in the Special Forces,” she explained tentatively in view of her audience, adding disarmingly “who knows what they are doing there.” I couldn’t help but snap back “They’re killing Filipinos is what they’re doing.”

I instantly regretted my cheap shot but spent the ensuing days rationalizing why the Philippines in particular should not have to abide American shoulder-shrugging.

What right has civil society to insulate itself from the unpleasant details about how it maintains order?

If her soldier had been deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, I would have held my tongue, in the context of unrelated festivity at least. Whether you support the current occupations or not, the violent facts about who’s doing what are not disputed, generally. I’ve no business facing off with a lone mother who more than likely has mixed feelings about the wars, although put on parade it’s a different story.

Perhaps too, other US interventions prompt only vague comprehension of their nature, of the true evil which our country is perpetrating. But we can say the same thing about commercial enterprises which comprise the capitalist global onslaught. None of it party talk.

Few examples match the longevity of US imperial atrocities in the Philippines. There our public ignorance has no right to be ambivalent.

US military activities in the Philippines may as well be the Indian Wars for all the American public understands them, as racist and despotic, and ongoing. Our specialists have been exterminating Filipino insurgents for over a century. When we are not committing the atrocities ourselves, our military advisers are directing them for what has never risen above a client state. The rebels of Mindanao have been trying to fight off foreign occupation since the original Spanish invaders. They are the Philippines’ indigenous Taliban, and we keep trying to put them down.

The insignia of the 4rth Cavalry still commemorates what we call the “Battle of Bud Dajo” but what was in reality a massacre. where US Marines scaled an extinct crater to mount machine guns to fire into a Moro village and exterminate thousands of men, women and children.

The antiwar, anti-imperialist movement of the early 1900s knew the barbarity which our boys were visiting on the Filipinos. It was US soldiers who popularized “waterboarding” there. But since the facade of granting the islands their independence after WWII, Americans have absolved themselves of what is an ongoing occupation.

Will this be the future of Afghanistan’s puppet regime? Continued suppression of the Afghan’s efforts to fight for their liberty?

Judge-shooter Bruce Nozolino indicted before Facebook friends can jump ship

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Bob Balink, Jeff Crank, Bob Beauprez, Kent Lambert and Dave SchulteisConservative petition-circulator Bruce Nozolino warned would-be litigants that he had a reputation, “a propensity to shoot judges and lawyers” and it turns out whoever got in his way. He poses with a rifle on his Facebook profile. Today a local grand jury indicted Nozolino for murder. While Nozolino loitered outside the courthouse beyond a boundary court-ordered by the judge, his associate Doug Bruce was granted immunity for testifying against him. Other Republican friends were not so lucky. Local cronies Bob Balink and Jeff Crank and state crazies Bob Beauprez, Kent Lambert and Dave Schulteis have ties to the self-styled gun-toting avenger, and Facebook has the paper trail! There’s also Robin Coran, whose profile pic features attack-mite Michelle Malkin, local Tea Party heavies Crista Huff and Michelle Morin (Who unfriended Nozolino as I typed this), and other locals who I’ll list here for posterity: “Bob” Clark, Andy McElhany, Carolyn Borgwardt, Jim Pfaff, Judy Rydberg Reyher, Kathy Peterson, Kay Rendleman, Mark H. Barker, Robert J. Lane, Shawn Mitchell, Tom Wiens. This “Likes Cooking bacon with a machine-gun” profile is almost too perfect to be believed, but you can’t claim a Facebook friendship without being accepted.

NYPD says files on innocent people are integral part of crime-fighting strategy

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NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly is fighting to retain the city’s database of “Stop and Frisk” reports. Faced with legislation that would purge 90% the files on people never charged with a crime, he argues such information is integral to his crime-fighting strategy to which he credits New York City’s declining crime rate. Other opponents of the bill include Mayor Michael Bloomberg and local politicians. Form UF250 is estimated to catalog up to two million innocent people. It’s interesting that reporters are left to approximate the total figure because the NYPD will not reveal it. Are readers meant to pretend an “integral” database doesn’t tabulate its data?

Nonviolence is the refuge of cowards

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I say this with the full authority of my own personal experience: nonviolence is for cowards. When push has come to shove, I stepped to the sidewalk but I am so full of admiration for those who stayed in the line of fire. Today much of the world commemorates Bastille Day, France’s unique independence day, because it launched the French Revolution. Not just a revolution for the masses of humanity, but their Enlightenment. Storming the Bastilles was no small transformative event, and the sans-culottes were not led by urgings to keep it nonviolent. The monarchy took heed, as it had for every historic concession, because the citizenry had it scared to death.

Have you changed social inequity by voting in the polls? Have you found justice via protest? Sought, beseeched, was as far as you got. Violent uprising has not lately looking too effective either. But it’s got the track record.

I’m not saying I’m up to the task, but I assure you I have the courage to be nonviolent in spades.

It is a most self-aggrandizing dishonesty that holds nonviolence to be brave. There is nothing easier than to take the path of least resistance. I don’t mean to downplay the audacity to protest, as opposed to conforming, although isn’t sticking to your principles squarly self-indulgent? I claim no credit for failing to bend on matters of principle. In fact, sometimes I feel positively anti-social.

But taken the next step, what’s easier than subjecting yourself to the authority of the sword? Again it’s the principle of not becoming like your abuser, another no-brainer, but no-bravery required.

Standing up for what you believe? Easy-peasy. To the death? Positively cowardly lion.

This is you inner dialog, be honest: I defy your authority, but only so far. I reject your physical oppression, but just kidding. I call for the total destruction of your hierarchy, but only in words, I’m entitled, and you can’t lay a finger on me because I’m playing by the rules.

Hope of getting anywhere: dismal. Modern social movements have only Gandhi and Mandela as purported success stories. But I’ll not insult the elders. The Gandhi and Mandela of our textbooks bear no resemblance to the reality, they are false role-models put forth by fascists who want to blunt every effort to rise against power.

Oh, nonviolence is the higher ideal, sure. Lovely. Browny points for the afterlife. Trickle-up transcendence has as much potential for success as awaiting extraterrestrials or building playing fields for disgraced baseball reincarnates.

Unless power wants to transcend the human experience, and lift all of us with it, mankind is not going anywhere. The only way you’re going to levitate powerful heads is with a guillotine. Dreadfully eighteenth century, but check out the horrific bygone days from which they’re reconstituting torture and feudalism.

You can probably contrive a litany of rationalizations for why it would be beneath you, but imagine picking up a gun and having a go against the overwhelming power of the state. Now that’s terrifying.

US denies holding Iranian scientist Amiri prisoner, yet sought to swap him?

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Contradictions are varied and colorful in the feuding accounts of Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri’s brief stay in the US. He says he was abducted and interrogated, American sources hope to mar Amiri’s homecoming by suggesting he was paid five million dollars for squealing on Iran’s weapons program. How are we to know except to disbelieve whatever CNN says? Most amusing were US denials that it had held Amiri captive, having earlier suggested a prisoner swap with Iran in exchange for three Americans detained in Iran.

There is no disputing that Iran holds the American “hikers,” although the US maintains they were innocent. Iran apprehended the anti-Iranian western journalists while scouting rural border regions, where US special ops have admitted to be operating.

Tribal Sovereignty means uh… you’re a sovereign entity, with a US passport.

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Remember when George Bush couldn’t define “sovereignty?” Maybe it wasn’t his fault. How would you describe sovereign lands where US extraction and exploitative industries can operate without regulatory oversight, and tribes can issue identification papers unless they mean to travel somewhere. When the original Indian treaties were signed, US destiny was manifested with promises that the former landholders’ sovereignty would be respected. The Iroquois Lacrosse team have just learned tribal sovereignty means carrying the occupier’s passport.

The US State Department at first refused to grant travel permission to the sovereign Iroquois because they didn’t have the newfangled, traceable, trackable, American passport. When congressmen intervened on behalf of the Iroquois who did not wish to submit to United States stinkin’ papers, the government relented, granting a one-time exemption.

How do suppose they mean to explain that? A just-this-once exception on the sovereignty whatsit.

But the lacrosse team’s destination was England, and British bureaucrats held firm on the original argument that the sovereign Native Americans required non-Native American passports. Post 9/11 days are no time apparently to permit international travelers to pass themselves off with rinky dink documents issued by who knows what maize-republics. The USA may foist whatever charade it wants on its captive vanquished aborigines, that doesn’t mean England has to play dumb too.

Maybe the British are mindful not only that the Iroquois were among the inventors of lacrosse, but that they once used the pretext of a game to successfully storm an English fort. Is that among their worries, Post 9/11?

Post 9/11 is no time for the pretense of sovereignty. Whether schoolchildren can grasp its contradictions or not.

Here’s Bush again, doing his best Miss South Carolina:

“Uh, tribal sovereignty means that. It’s sovereign. You’re a, you’ve been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.”

Wednesday

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My sister lost a cat today. She wrote this online:

“Wednesday came home in pretty bad shape this morning. I got to hold him and tell him how cool I thought he was. And we all got to say goodbye. He came to us on a Wednesday and left us 17-years later on a Wednesday – Maybe I should have named him Forever.”

As Wednesday had been mine for a time, and had been an intensely social neighbor, we thought about how many people might appreciate knowing why he would no longer be visiting. Some told their children he was theirs. I remember once crossing paths with Wednesday on Halloween, he didn’t give us a second glance, he was trick-or-treating with another party.

I found this note I had written some years ago:

I wrote to tell my sister that Wednesday was okay. The other day I had driven past a cat’s body on the side of the street and thought it was Wednesday. I’d made the wrong turn and wouldn’t otherwise have seen it.

I was running late so I didn’t stop, plus I didn’t want the body to have been his.

I’ve searched over dead cats on the road before, it’s heartbreaking. Even if you found the cat wasn’t yours. And you had to scrutinize the poor thing closely quite unsure because you’d never seen your cat dead or decomposed before.

Haunted by having encountered the accident by accident, I returned to the spot later that night determined to check. The body was gone. There had been a squirrel on the other side, its body was still there. But the big black cat with a bushy tail extended straight up in the wind was nowhere to be found. Someone had picked it up I suppose. I was five blocks from my house. Too far to have been Wednesday.

I didn’t go back home that night. I didn’t want to not find Wednesday there.

He and I had been seeing very little of each other. I leave the window open and he comes and goes as he pleases. I get home late, go to bed, and somewhere in my sleep he comes in meowing, meows past me to his food, then meows as he leaves. I wake remembering something of that. For a time he was bringing birds home. I’d take notice in my sleep when he passed without a sound, figuring out later his mouth was probably full. I came to dread that dream because I would then wake to find the hall strewn with feathers and I’d find a little beak lying in the midst.

I got Wednesday from my sister. She was going to have a second baby, and was moving, and wasn’t crazy about having a cat around. When I visited I remember twice Wednesday leapt unto my sleeping face in pursuit of his playmates.

Wednesday is named after the day on which he arrived at my sister’s farm. My little niece decided the logic. From the condition of his fur, the vet determined he’d been in the wild for at least two months. It was incredible that he’d survived the coyotes, rattlers and hawks. One night Karin remembers Wednesday was outside under the porch while coyotes hunted for him above it.

At my place he’s made a similar legendary impression. I live on the second floor. He climbs the cedar wall to my balcony without apparent effort. When he wants to descend he just jumps straight unto the lawn. My neighbors beneath are no longer startled to see him fly by.

I’m quite proud of him. Another neighbor cautioned me about a fox she’d seen on the property. Worry about Wednesday? Oh no.

Everyone has befriended him. I know by how well brushed he is. A neighbor who had moved away, and to whom I had never spoken, came by during a holiday visit and left a note with treats for Wednesday. Another neighbor had him shaved when it was obvious I was neglecting his fur.

The other night I called him and I could hear his faint reply from far off. I imagined him wounded, calling to me meekly. When he got to me, in the dark I couldn’t see if he was wounded. He brushed through my legs and i avoided looking at him that night. He was alive.

In the morning I could see that he was his safe, alive self. My fears had been entirely imagined.

I reassured my sister that Wednesday was back, safe, the body I had seen on the street had not been Wednesday. She told me “Well, you’ll never know, it might have been. You know he’s immortal.”

Something like that.

“Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree” is welcome home for felons

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There’s a new yellow ribbon on our block. Anymore, yellow ribbon stickers on cars designate wives of servicemen, or realtors sucking up to the military because the only real estate sales here come from Fort Carson’s ever expanding war training. Actually, vehicles of military families are now often festooned wildly with ribbons designating service, regiment and very specific distinctions. Their tailgates mimic the colorful macaroni worn by soldiers on parade. Fine time too, to abandon the old yellow ribbon and the specialization it stood for.

“I’m coming home, I’ve done my time.”

You remember the lyric. He’s about to be released from prison, after three long years, so it wasn’t for littering. What has his homecoming to do with US killers overseas except the obvious?

Our soldiers at war are serving their time, and there’s an argument to be made that they too are war’s victims. Hasn’t it become fitting that the yellow ribbon of pop music lore forgave a felon?

But the song forgave a felon for the crime he’d done, a changed man, now repentant, returning to make a humble appeal for forgiveness.

American soldiers coming home offer no sign they are rehabilitated, nor even that they have an inkling of crimes commited, nor certainly that they bear any of the responsibility. Our soldiers coming home probably mirror a real life parolee’s likelihood to be a recidivist.

FBI manhunt ends for Barefoot Bandit breaking & entering, petty crime spree

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After a continent-wide manhunt, US and Bahama authorities have finally nabbed the “Barefoot Bandit,” interrupting 19-year-old Colton Harris-Moore’s two-year joyride with other people’s planes, boats and summer homes, proving that when it comes to the hierarchy of crime, law enforcement packs the big guns to protect PROPERTY. Don’t have a plane? Yeah, it’s not your property they’re worried about.

Police tracking the Barefoot Bandit admit that most of the time he wore shoes. Appropriately, in custody, the fugitive teen was supplied chains and who knows what else, but not footwear. Serial borrower and Facebook hero Harris-Moore lowers his head when paraded past the press, dispelling a notion he might be grandstanding, and walks with the hesitation of a tenderfoot on the tarmac. Curious bit of stage managing.

Libyan humanitarian aid ship to Gaza undaunted by Israeli Navy death threat

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While Israel releases redacted portions of its internal investigation of the Mavi Marmara Massacre, another aid ship steams toward the Gaza Blockade. The cargo ship Amalthea carries humanitarian aid from Libya and is due to cross into Gazan waters on Wednesday, barring interception by the Israeli navy in international waters.

Israel was able to exert international pressure on various fronts to try to prevent the departure of the humanitarian cargo ship. It’s flagged in Moldova, and had to port in Greece before making its run to relieve the Siege of Gaza.