In a Democracy Now! exclusive, investigative journalist and activist Allan Nairn reveals US-backed Indonesian armed forces carried out a series of assassinations of civilian activists in late 2009.

 

The news comes as the White House moves towards increasing aid to the Indonesian military and lifting a twelve-year ban on the training of the notorious Indonesian military unit known as Kopassus.

 

A US-trained Kopassus general who coordinated the assassinations confirmed to Nairn an Indonesian army role in the killings. [includes rush transcript]

 

Vancouver Island Community Forest Action Network
versus City of Langford

"This case is not just about challenging the destruction of natural heritage," says Zoe Blunt, VIC FAN director. "We're challenging how they go about doing it – the tactics and strategies they use. This case is about putting a stop to these abuses of power."

Walls, checkpoints, and fragmentation in Palestine

Nadia Abu-Zahra is a professor at the University of Ottawa who has written extensively on mobility, human security, and militarisation. Her forthcoming book, Restricting Freedom, will be published by Pluto Press (with Adah Kay).

Semantics and Apartheid
by Kim Petersen
In Canada, support for Zionism and Israeli oppression of Palestinians is deeply entrenched in the political duopoly. Liberal prime minister Paul Martin even proclaimed, “Israel’s values are Canada’s values,” as if Canada had to look elsewhere to determine its own values.

 

Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper tried to one-up his predecessor by boasting that only his party was a “steadfast friend” of Israel. Consequently, some advocates of social justice for Palestinians have pinned their hopes on Canada’s “third” party, the social-capitalist New Democratic Party (NDP).

In the build up to Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), many parliamentarians strode forward to denounce IAW. Yesterday, I received a formulaic response from Jack Layton – leader of the NDP.

 

Of Palestine-Israel, he wrote,

    New Democrats have long been vocal and passionate advocates for a peaceful end to the Israel-Palestine conflict. We have consistently said that Canada can play a positive role in bringing Israeli and Palestinian representatives to the negotiating table in order to chart a path towards a negotiated peace, which ensures Israelis and Palestinians can live safely, side by side, in independent states with secure borders. [italics added]

The proposed project would involve building 17 separate dams and river diversions, over 440 km of power lines, over 250 km of roads and over 100 bridges.

This forum will feature Professor Michael M'Gonigle, George Heyman of Sierra Club, Joe Foy and Gwen Barley of the Wilderness Committee, Aaron  Hill of Watershed Watch Salmon Society, and a spectacular slideshow from Friends of Bute Inlet.

The event is taking place at the University of Victoria Social Science and Math Building, Room A120 from 7:00-9:00 pm.

Please help us spread the word by forwarding this email, inviting your friends to attend the Facebook event, or helping put up posters.

Thanks!

Tria Donaldson | Vancouver Island Outreach Coordinator
Wilderness Committee  

The Pentagon Church Militant and Us

When it comes to our nation’s military affairs, ignorance is not bliss.  What’s remarkable then, given the permanent state of war in which we find ourselves, is how many Americans seem content not to know.

    There are many reasons for this state of affairs.  Our civilian leaders encourage us to be deferential toward our latest commander/savior, whether Tommy Franks in 2003, David Petraeus in 2007, or Stanley McChrystal in 2010.  Our media employs retired officers, most of them multi-starred generals, in a search for expertise that ends in an unconditional surrender to military agendas.  A cloud of secrecy and “black budgets” combine to obscure military matters, ranging from global strategy to war goals to weapons procurement.  The taxpayer, forced to pony up about one trillion dollars yearly to fund our military, national security infrastructure, and wars, is sent a simple message: stay clear and leave it to the experts in uniform.

    The powerlessness of ordinary Americans in military matters is no accident.  Recall the one-word reply -- “So?” -- Dick Cheney offered in March 2008, when asked to comment on popular opposition to the war in Iraq.  The former vice president was certainly far blunter than Washington usually is, and for that we may owe him a measure of thanks.  By highlighting the arrogant dismissiveness of Washington’s warrior-elite when it comes to American public opinion, he revealed more than he intended.

The Real News' Lia Tarachansky spoke to Toufic Haddad, journalist and author of Between the Lines: Israel the Palestinians, and the U.S. "war on terror" about the real reason for these protests. Haddad explains that Israeli colonization over East Jerusalem led to home demolitions, confiscations, and the flourishing of settlements all over the Palestinian Territories. Because these protests are supported by the government, Palestinian protests are systemically repressed, leading to mass arrests, injuries, and sometimes death. Alternative tactics, such as undercover police often lead to the tensions which are expected to rise as the Jerusalem Municipal Police approved another right-wing settler protest for Sunday through the Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.

 

by Chris Floyd   
Kucinich drops opposition to health-care bill (Washington Post).

Well, so much for conscience. The other day here, we had kind words for the stand taken by Dennis Kucinich against the boardroom-backroom boondoggle known as the health care bill. The main thrust of that post was not meant to be the innate wonderfulness of St. Dennis but the hypocrisy of the "Fightin' Progressives," such as Commander Kos and Alex Koppelman, who had launched a vituperative attack on Kucinich for daring to oppose the bill -- a measure which not only represents a complete and craven surrender of even the smallest crumbs of the progressives' original hopes for health care reform, but was also fatally tainted by the brazen bribe Obama took from the gorging, gouging drug and insurance cartels to make sure their destructive sway over American health care remains unbroken.

Still, I admit I was pleasantly surprised to see Kucinich stand up against the health care bill, apparently on principle, especially as he was also sponsoring a bill to end the Afghanistan War at the same time. (I realize the latter was a wholly symbolic act -- then again, all acts are symbolic to one degree or another; that is, they symbolize the moral stance behind the act, whether it is effective or not. Thus, "savvy" compromises on, say, appropriations for the Terror War or detainee policy or illegal surveillance symbolize an underlying acceptance of atrocity, tyranny and war crime.)

But I suspected the fix was in when I saw reports that Kucinich was flying with Obama for a presidential appearance in Ohio. There was little or no chance that Kucinich would have been engaged in such high-profile hitchhiking if he was not already in the bag for Barack.