Revolution

A climate of change

A rainbow coalition of angry residents, greens and a local MP will defy BAA to join next week's Heathrow camp. Helen Pidd and John Vidal on the new face of protest Britain

Helen Pidd and John Vidal
Saturday August 11, 2007
The Guardian

Only three people in the world are in on the secret of where the second Camp for Climate Action is going to set up next week. All anyone else - including the rest of the 150-strong organising team - knows is that it will be somewhere near Heathrow airport. If they want to find out exactly how near, they are to be at Staines railway station in west London on Tuesday by 10am. Then, after many months of planning, all will be revealed.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,,2146575,00.html

"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality." - Ernesto Che Guevara

"If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine". - Ernesto Che Guevara




Che Guevara in the Sierra Maestra with his puppy "Hombrito", 1958


"I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man." - Ernesto Che Guevara (just before he was shot and murdered)

"There is no other definition of socialism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man." - Ernesto Che Guevara



"There is more repression of individual freedom here than in any country we've been to, the police patrol the streets carrying rifles and demand your papers every few minutes, which some of them read upside down. The atmosphere is tense and it seems a revolution may be brewing… In summary, it's suffocating here." - Ernesto Che Guevara, in a letter to his mother from Bogotá, Columbia - July 6, 1952

"To accomplish much you must first lose everything." - Ernesto Che Guevara


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara
(Links)

Published on Sunday, August 12, 2007 by The Boston Globe
US Doles Out Millions For Street Cameras
Local Efforts Raise Privacy Alarms
by Charlie Savage

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/12/3134/

It's true. There are cameras everywhere here.

Yeah, the camera thing is crazy - it's all too hollywood for me -
i'm starting to feel like i'm in some sort of quirky SF film ......
hopefully not this one

Talking of cameras - take a look at this photographer, Greg Constantine
who is working on a project about statelessness and has been photographing the plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar/Burma


Photographing 'nowhere people' - 12 Aug 07

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zBb9uMtIwS0


Everyone has the right to a nationality, according to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But it is estimated that more than 11 million people in over 70 countries can be classed as "stateless".

No asylum for Palestinians in Canada - 11 Aug 07

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KhDK3IAgG1M

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/790225F4-CD7E-4CBF-B30A-7EAE12CD5339.htm

Dick's Driveway
Hundreds topple Cheney effigy outside Wyoming home


August 14th, 2007 1:38 pm

War Protesters March on Cheney's Home in Wyoming

Hundreds Cheer 'Toppling of Vice President's Statue'

Hollywood tears up script to make anti-war films while conflicts rage
Tradition overturned as star-studded movies deal with Iraq and Afghanistan


Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Tuesday August 14, 2007
The Guardian

For Americans sitting in cinemas watching the summer's fun movies, such as The Simpsons and Hairspray, the trailer for Lions for Lambs is jarring and unexpected. It opens with a moody shot of the Washington Memorial, and shifts to a series of quick-fire scenes about President George Bush's "war on terror".

Lions for Lambs, scheduled for release in the US on November 9, is not a documentary nor an art house film nor even a Michael Moore-style piece of agitprop. It is mainstream Hollywood, starring Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, who also directed it. It is one of about a dozen Hollywood films due for release or being made that deal with America divided, the national debate over Iraq and Afghanistan, and other consequences of 9/11.

This is a departure for Hollywood. During the second world war, there were almost no films made other than propaganda ones. The same happened during Vietnam: it was three years after the fall of Saigon before film-makers felt brave enough to make explicit anti-war movies - Mash hid its colours behind humour and a previous war.

Controversy

Jerry Sherlock, director of the New York Film Academy and executive producer of movies including The Hunt for Red October, welcomed the prospect of movies coming out while wars were being waged. "I think it is great because films do influence people. I hope that the films coming out influence people. The truth sets us free, after all the bullshit that we get every day in Washington and the airways and Cheney... I am surprised it has taken so long," he said.

Lions for Lambs interweaves the stories of two American students who end up in Afghanistan, their idealistic professor, a senator and a journalist. The trailer shows Cruise, who plays the senator, in his office on Capitol Hill shouting at the journalist, Streep: "Do you want to win the war on terror? Yes or no? This is the quintessential yes or no question of our time."

The films are bound to be politically controversial, particularly coming in the run-up to next year's presidential election. American conservatives, without having seen it, have begun vilifying Lions for Lambs as anti-war propaganda.

Other films on the way include Rendition, with Reese Witherspoon as the wife of an Egyptian chemical engineer spirited away for interrogation by the CIA. In the Valley of Elah, due for release on September 14, is directed by Paul Haggis, and stars Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon. It is about post-combat stress and is based on a real incident in which a soldier was murdered while on a drinking spree with his comrades on return from Iraq.

That, too, has already run into trouble. Dennis Griffee, national commander of the Iraq War Veterans Organisation, refused to help after learning that Sarandon, an anti-war critic, was involved.

Grace is Gone, due out in October and directed by James Strouse, looks at the impact on a family of the loss of a wife and mother killed in Iraq, while Kimberly Peirce's Stop Loss, scheduled for release next March, deals with a veteran who refuses to return to Iraq. Redacted, to be released in December, is directed by Brian de Palma and is about US soldiers persecuting an Iraqi family.

The Hurt Locker, on which filming is due to begin this week in Jordan and Kuwait, is written by Mark Boal, who also worked on In the Valley of Elah. The Hurt Locker concentrates on a US army explosives disposal unit in Iraq.

"It's the first movie about the Iraq war that purports to show the experience of the soldiers," Boal, a former journalist, told the Hollywood Reporter from location in Jordan. "We wanted to show the kinds of things that soldiers go through that you can't see on CNN."

He added: "Most war movies don't come out until after the war is over. It's really exciting for me, coming out of the world of journalism, to have a movie come out about a conflict while the conflict is still going on."

Hollywood is normally averse to risk but it may have decided the public mood is anti-war and unlikely to change. Darrell West, who specialises in politics and the mass media at Brown University, Rhode Island, said: "I think the outpouring of movies reflects the widespread public disenchantment with the war. It took longer with Vietnam."

One factor that is different from Vietnam is 24-hour news. "The news cycle is definitely faster now than it was 40 years ago, so when bad things happen, they definitely become aware of them very quickly," Professor West said.

Pentagon

In the past, many war movies were sanitised because they relied on the Pentagon to provide equipment and extras and the Pentagon in return often asked for a degree of control over scripts.

David Robb, the Los Angeles-based author of Operation Hollywood, which investigated the relationship between film-makers and the Pentagon, is sceptical about whether the films will find a market or even get made. "I think it is impossible to sell an unpopular war while it is going. People go for entertainment. We will see how many get made and how many get distributed and how many get military assistance," he said.

But while movies such as Top Gun required the help of the Pentagon, most of the present batch of movies do not involve large set pieces or require aircraft carriers or tanks and have been made independent of the military.

Sherlock believes making films while conflicts are ongoing is positive, not least because "this war is lasting longer than world war two". "I think there are things we did not find out about the Vietnam war until after. I think now the American public is much more advanced. There are fairly few people saying our flag right or wrong," he said.

Getting serious

Almost all the Hollywood movies made during the second world war tended to be feel-good propaganda ones. The same was true during the Vietnam conflict, led by John Wayne's Green Berets.

In spite of the high-profile anti-war protests of the Vietnam era, it was very late in the conflict before the public mood turned. And it was not until 1978, three years after the war ended, that the first serious films appeared, Coming Home and the Deer Hunter. Apocalypse Now followed a year later. Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Born on the Fourth of July were not made until the late 1980s.

Movies about recent US involvement in the Middle East have been thin. Rules of Engagement (2000), an Alamo-like siege in the US embassy in Yemen, mainly involved shooting lots of Arabs. A similar movie, The Kingdom, is due out next month and is based in Saudi Arabia.

But there have been a series of American documentaries about the "war on terror" in addition to Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11. Those dealing with Iraq include: Gunner Palace (2005), an account of US soldiers confronting the insurgency, and How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair (2006).

In Iraq, sex is traded for survival
By Afif Sarhan in Baghdad

When Rana Jalil, 38, lost her husband in an explosion in Baghdad last year, she could never have imagined becoming a prostitute in order to feed her children.
A mother of four, Jalil sought out employment, but job opportunities for women had decreased since the US invasion.

She begged shop owners, office workers and companies to hire her but was treated with what she calls chauvinistic discrimination.

Within weeks of her husband's death, a doctor diagnosed her children with malnutrition.
Fighting tears, she recalled the desperation which led her to the oldest profession: "In the beginning these were the worst days in my life. My husband was the first man I met and slept with, but I didn't have another option … my children were starving."

She left the house in a daze, she recalled, and walked to the nearest market to find someone who would pay her for sex.
She said: "I'm a nice-looking woman and it wasn't difficult to find a client. When we got to the bed I tried to run away … I just couldn't do it, but he hit and raped me. When he paid me afterwards, it was finished for me.

"When I came home with some food I had bought from that money and saw my children screaming of happiness, I discovered that honour is insignificant compared to the hunger of my children."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/36B04283-E43F-4367-90BB-E6C60CB88F76.htm


Prior to the US invasion, Iraqi widows, particularly those who lost husbands during the Iran-Iraq war, were provided with compensation and free education for their children. In some cases, they were provided with free homes.
Now they are destitute.


There are now 350 THOUSAND widows in Baghdad alone


The average age of Iraqis prior to invasion? 14 years old


Half the population are under 18 years old


Tthe NGO has documented the disappearance of some 4000 women, 20 per cent of whom are under 18, since the March 2003 invasion.
OWFI believes most of the missing women were kidnapped and sold into prostitution outside Iraq.

Forced Sex and Labor Trafficking in the U.S.

By Rebecca Clarren, Ms. Magazine. Posted August 15, 2007.

An investigation into the shadow world of sex and labor trafficking in the United States reveals not just the dimensions of the problem but the startling inadequacy of the federal response.

**

About 80 percent of those enslaved are women, pawns in the fastest-growing and one of the largest criminal industries in the world, second only to the drug trade and tied with the arms trade. With an estimated 800,000 people trafficked across all international borders each year, the shadow industry is estimated to generate $31.6 billion in profits annually.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/59646/

We've been neglected and let down say combat troops
Campaign to be launched over medical care, compensation and inquests

Audrey Gillan
Wednesday August 15, 2007
The Guardian

The (British) government is failing in its historic duty of care towards frontline troops who put their lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan, forces charities and campaigners claim.

There is growing anger in the service community that the Military Covenant, which says soldiers should always be able to expect fair treatment in return for the rights they forgo, is not being upheld.

The newly-founded British Armed Forces Federation, Baff, says that the covenant is "now a dead letter". And in an unprecedented move, the Royal British Legion - widely known for its poppy appeal and welfare work for old soldiers - is to launch a campaign demanding that the government upholds the covenant and provides its armed forces and their families with proper care in return for asking them to risk making "the ultimate sacrifice for their country".

The campaign aims to "address the growing sense of disillusionment among service personnel and veterans about their treatment by the state".

"The Legion believes that our servicemen and women deserve more from their government. By committing themselves to put their lives on the line for their country, they deserve immediate medical treatment and just compensation if they are injured," the organisation says on its website.

Pressure on the government is growing after six men died under enemy fire in one of the bloodiest weeks in Iraq and Afghanistan. It includes:

· The Legion's campaign, to be launched during the autumn party conference season, will highlight medical care, military inquests and iniquities in the compensation system for injured troops;

· The rising toll of the seriously injured, with casualty figures for this year already set to outstrip the whole of 2006;

· Growing concern about the mission purpose in Basra, where soldiers told MPs troops face "nightly suicide missions";

· Soldiers losing faith in their equipment - particularly the Snatch Land Rover, which is extremely vulnerable to roadside bombs

Last year General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the army, warned that the government was in danger of breaking the covenant.

Published as an army doctrine the covenant states that: "Soldiers will be called upon to make personal sacrifices - including the ultimate sacrifice - in the service of the nation. In putting the needs of the nation and the army before their own, they forgo some of the rights enjoyed by those outside the armed forces. In return, British soldiers must always be able to expect fair treatment, to be valued and respected as individuals, and that they (and their families) will be sustained and rewarded by commensurate terms and conditions of service."

Douglas Young, chairman of Baff, told the Guardian: "If the military covenant is anything other than spin and hot air, then it has to be at the forefront of policymakers' minds whenever defence policy is being formulated and not just trotted out when there's a good news story. The sacrifices made by members of all three armed services in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the past few years have been immense and in return they need to be recognised with the special consideration that the covenant appears to promise."

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2148954,00.html

Are You Scared?

By Craig Winters

08/14/07 "ICH" -- -- Multinational corporations sell our jobs to the lowest overseas bidders. The credit industry preys on our poor. The for-profit healthcare system is the leading cause of bankruptcy while hospitals dump indigent patients on skid row. Our country's infrastructure is breaking down from New Orleans levees to Minnesota bridges even as we are mired in a war that drowns us in debt and advances only the interests of big oil and arms merchants. The Medicare prescription drug law leaves an enormous hole in coverage while it forbids the government from negotiating lower prices on behalf of the people. Bush signed into law a bill making bankruptcy harder and more expensive for people who need relief and now he threatens to veto health insurance for poor children.

How can the government ignore such obvious and immediate needs?

The regulatory and general welfare roles of the government have totally succumbed to the unassailable wealth that corporations have amassed over many generations. Blind quest for personal wealth and power now bind government officials (as well as universities, NGOs and think thanks) into an integrated corporate dominated power structure. Corporations use their money and vast resources to control every aspect of our public institutions. More than just campaign contributions and cash bribes, they offer a rich array of incentives to "team players" including private jets, resort vacations, in kind services, indulgence of vices, and obscenely high paying private positions when they leave government. Corporations use their influence over government officials not just to buy their vote or a favorable ruling, but to seduce them into playing the power game, a life-long pursuit of power and wealth at the expense of principles, allegiances, and common decency. Politicians have neither the will nor the capacity to dismantle this system.

So what can desperate citizens do in the face of a captured government?

Some suggest that efforts to reshape today's world are pointless when today's world will not exist in ten years. This view holds that "peak oil" will impose an inescapable world-changing transition to the "post-carbon" era. Without abundant cheap oil we will all be living local existences. Washington will be far away and insignificant in our lives. Wal-Mart will cease to exist due to the rising costs of materials and transportation. Sporadic or absent electricity will place a premium on manual skills and hand labor. The food we eat and much of the material goods we use in daily life will come from our local economy, and the Washington power crowd will be a vanishing relic of the past.

While I respect this view and believe that peak oil will drastically change all our lives, I also believe that there is time before the worst effects are felt. Now more than ever we need responsible collective action to begin making preparations, investing in alternative energy, and promoting sustainable living. The ruling class also sees these changes coming, but their response is to secure maximum assets for themselves, squeeze our economy for their short-term gain, and leave the common people to scrap among themselves.

The electoral process has failed us - it failed us in Florida, it failed us in Ohio, and it is failing us in Congress today. Seeking change through the political system will beget the usual political response - cosmetic reforms for us, and fat contracts for the corporate overlords. Our government no longer represents our interests so we must speak for ourselves, en mass, not asking but demanding change. For examples of true substantive change look back to the trust busting of Roosevelt and Taft that followed the Populist uprisings in the late 19th century, or the Civil Rights legislation following massive nationwide demonstrations by everyday people. History shows us that a popular uprising will bring about meaningful change. As recently as March of last year HR 4437 criminalizeing undocumented immigration was stopped in its tracks when a million people joined public protests across the country. If we want change now we need people in the streets, lots of angry people, not merely to get the attention of the powerful or to gain their respect, but to put them in fear for their opulent lives.

September 15th could be the day when the people declare they will no longer quietly suffer these corporate and political abuses. Protest events in Washington invite a massive outpouring of pent-up anger from people with many political concerns including issues of war, civil liberties, economic justice, climate change, and 9-11 truth, and it's going to feel damn good to get out in streets and tell the world how we feel. United, we have sufficient power to threaten the existing structure, and I expect their enforcement machine will respond with disproportionate violence and large scale round ups and detention. The media will then be forced to cover these events and the public will awaken to the true face of the authoritarian system under which we live.

I think the best thing we can do to promote this day is to share with others the thoughts we have late at night when we are alone with our fears and hopes. As we find more like-minded people in our communities we gain confidence and clarity so that when that day comes we will not be cowed by authority but will rise to our feet and join our voices and our strength in challenging this illegitimate government. Politicians will rail and police will crack heads, but I pray we will stand our ground and demand a new balance of power that puts the needs of the people ahead of the insatiable desires of the wealthy few.

Craig Winters <[email protected]> is a civil engineer and software professional in Las Cruces, NM who suffered a political awakening while trying to make sense of the US invasion of Iraq.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18186.htm

The Battle For Iwo Jima - Part One


Endymion 2007


Tonight I watched the first part of The Battle For Iwo Jima -
Flags of our Fathers. This was a story told from the American side.

The second part - Letters from Iwo Jima, is the same story, told from the Japanese side.

I always liked Clint Eastwood.
The first film I ever saw him in was Kelly's Heroes. It came on tv at a mate's house and he said I had to see Donald Sutherland in this really 60s American 'war' movie. Being only sixteen at the time, I thought tanks that fired paint bombs and played soppy flower music was the funniest thing I'd seen since my guardian broke his own toe trying to kick the neighbour's cat.

And yeah, I thought Donald Sutherland was hilarious - but Clint Eastwood - I immediately liked and respected the man. It was just something about him. I was later introduced to the spaghetti westerns, and I (like millions before me) was hooked.

I've no idea how old Clint Eastwood is now, but I'd say he's come a long way. I see a parallel in Flags of our Fathers with his own story.
Basically it's about dispelling the hero myth - in favour of honouring those who sacrifice themselves for their country, by remembering who they really were as people.
It's a compassionate war film - with some extremely powerful scenes and I know it will piss off some die hards - but I believe its message is universal as well as topical and it will be a slow burning success.

Because of the excellent way in which Eastwood has dealt with he traumatic after effects of war (the raspberry sauce scene for instance) and also the obvious respect he has for the American soldiers he is portraying, I would recommend this film to anyone who wants to understand war better - but be warned - Eastwood has captured very well, one of the most frightening aspects of flashbacks - the continuing, unstoppable and repetitive way in which the brain will work over and over something to try and understand it - and how that can be triggered by many things - some less obvious than others.

(A little side rant)

The film confirmed something for me - and I would like to see more public awareness regarding war trauma and the use back home of fireworks (which these days are designed to sound like rockets and rapid gunfire).
To me, there is real disrespect in emulating explosives and the explosions that are killing and disfiguring people -

I have actually rung up a city sports ground before, who were having a massive firework display on a Sunday following 5th Nov - which happened to be Remembrance Sunday (I was later told no one had thought of that).

The bloke I spoke to (Security) told me that mine was the latest in an evening of complaints he'd been left to deal with and that he agreed with us all that it was inconsiderate and out of order and I swear, he was near to crying when he said it.
It sounded like he was speaking to me from a war zone… but people were laughing and clapping and cheering and some comedian was singing on a mic about a party…
I don't think I've ever felt quite so depressed in my whole life.

I hope people take the time to watch The Battle for Iwo Jima

And I hope that Clint Eastwood's film(s) helps get a message across to the public, explaining that war, in the end, affects us all… and we must all take responsibility for it - not just the men on the ground, who stand at the front…

And … that the country who sends soldiers off to fight - should care for those that return - and if they won't do it out of respect -- they should at least do it out of loyalty.

I am putting off watching the second of Clint Eastwood's Battle for Iwo Jima films - the Japanese side, I mean.
I've a feeling it may take some hard watching.




Flags of our Fathers



Letters from Iwo Jima

The Heathrow Protest



"There's been some pushing and shoving but we've managed them safely and they've been allowed to make their protest."
Commander Joe Kaye, of the Metropolitan Police

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6954251.stm

***********************************************

This Says It All, Really



Mounted riot police ride down peaceful climate camp protesters
...in the fields surrounding the camp on the way to BAA building on Bath Road, Sunday 19th Aug...

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/379117.html

Published on Sunday, August 19, 2007 by the Boston Globe
When Ignorance Isn't Bliss

Endy, My Vietnam vet dad just showed me the movie Kelly's Heroes. He said it reminded him of Vietnam. The way the General was and all the wheeling and dealing going on and disregard for chain of command.

wheeling and dealing
f*cking and thieving
skiving and scheming


........ and that's just the Generals …



hey, Amigo
must be good to watch a film with your dad, huh? Has he got The Eagle Has Landed? That's a good one from that era.

I watched a new Jet Li film last night -
Huo Yuan Jia (2006) (Fearless) with sub-titles -(f*ck dubbed) - it wasn't bad - based on a true story set in China 1910


( - traditional martial arts i consider a discipline in self patience - the opposite of the picture above)

Global appeal for N Korea flood aid

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0CCF0810-0546-4218-B7EE-B8E170387BC1.htm