» Archive: April 2006
Net Neutrality
Rabble @ Reclaim the Media: "Net Neutrality is the principle that forbids Internet service providers from discrimination in content delivery. 'Net Neutrality' is why the Indybay home page will download to your computer just as fast as the White House's. representatives of major ISPs have argued that because they own the broadband cables, they ought to have the right to charge extra for quick and "guaranteed delivery" of data. Currently, ISPs are required to handle data in a similar fashion as telephone companies: all content must be processed equally, regardless of source."
May Day in Americkay
The New Standard has some excellent reporting on the upcoming "Day Without Immigrants".
Leaders of a lot of the American unions seem to be pressuring immigrant groups to keep them from endorsing the walkout.
Save the Baby Veal
I somehow missed this the first time it was making the rounds...
Big version here.
Letter from Hazel Hill
A letter sent out from Hazel Hill, spokesperson for the Six Nations occupation.
* * *
I am sorry it took so long to get back to you. I am Hazel E. Hill. I am one of the designated spokesperson for the media etc. and in situations like this, also one of many jobs. The people are well. We are remaining peaceful, although in the minds of many, how long will we be able to? The police situation is building up fast. Last night I myself went to scout around with a couple of the men from the camp and there were at LEAST 60 opp marked&unmarked cars at unity school road, we have confirmed reports that the cdn. army is based at the Hamilton Airport, and that there are over 1000 opp or rcmp stationed in several motels around the yorkdale area. I am not a criminal. i am a mother and a grandmother. our people have the oldest and dearest law of the land. The Kaienerekowah. That is what the people are fighting for. Sounds kind of ironic doesn't it. We are fighting for our Law of Peace, Love and Harmony. Our ancestors shared till there was nothing left for their children. We are only trying to keep what little there is for ours. I am so saddened this morning as I write because we have one young man still in jail because he only has a traditional name and refuses to speak their english language. I am very proud of that young Kanienkehaka. He is standing up for our Law. We have the Two Row Wampum. that is the original treaty between the Onkwehonweh people and the White race. We stand by that two row. we do not intererfere with their government, yet they do not acknowledge ours. We were never concqured yet they stand before us with guns as if their intimidation tactics will make us run and hide. i refuse to be the next sacrificial lamb that their race uses to usurp authority over our people so that they can stand before creation pretending to be upholders of Peace. Sonkwiontisonh has seen their true colours, the rest of the world will see their true colours. the Onkwehonweh nations of the world are coming together for Peace, and we are standing strong and united. Welcome.! Their press stands at the gate occasionally to give us an interview. We have tried to tell our story. They play what they want to play. We are learning to work with independent press and we will have our story told. My tears this morning are for the children. They are trying to incite fear into their citizens and my daughter will attend school with them this morning. I pray for her. She is strong and knows our hearts. I know she will be respectful of their feelings and opinions, but will they respect hers? My thoughts are running so many ways, we have so many people to protect and they have guns. But I will stand with our Creator, with our Kaienerekowah, in Peace and Love and Truth and I will stand with Honour. they can stand their with their guns and their hatred and only they will know what that makes them feel like. tonight the Caledonia citizens are rallying. they are angry because we refuse to lift the roadblocks. they want the world to think we are keeping their citizens hostage. We did not cause this to happen. the OPP moved in and swarmed our people violating the OIdest and Supreme Law of the Universe. They even violated their own laws and continued promises by promising an hours warning before they came in. they think that we didn't see them gathering numbers in the barn across the road for the past two weeks. they didn't think that we could count as carloads of men came in and only one driver came out. for weeks they have planned this. they think they are the only ones who understand preparation. We proved once again that we are an honourable people. they did not get met with weapons although our warriors want to do their jobs. we met them once again with peace and marched them right back off our lands. Even l was a victim of their brutality and in defense I did kick back. I have already asked forgiveness of Creation for my anger. I will continue to do so. But it is they who put the roadblocks their. we only built a physical one for the protection of our people as well as their own. their children feel the same things in their hearts as our children do. they are frustrated and angry and we are trying to teach them how to deal with those feelings. before the roadblocks came up and before they attacked us that early morning, their children would come by and throw garbage and holler racial statements to our people. The roadblocks are for their children as well to keep them from being able to antagonize and cause hardships so that our young people won't want to re-act. We hold no hostages. the ememergency vehicles are allowed through. The local residents are allowed through. They came to worship at their church yesterday and they probably prayed for us as we pray for them each morning at sunrise. We have to maintain that protection for all of us. they want us to show good faith. We have shown good faith for over 2000 years, and it is not we who killed the Peacemaker, it is their people. He told us this day would come, and we are doing as He instructed us to do. Only Canada can decide what it will do. My heart is filled with thanksgiving to each and everyone of you who has shown their support, through e-mails, donations, by coming to the site. I apologize to all of you who I have been unable to answer in e-mail because we are in a very violent and serious situation which requires my attention in other areas. I have forwarded this through our Mohawk Nation News office so that she can share with all of you. We welcome you to the Land of Peace, we have re-kindled the fire of Peace here and we will stand United and we are honoured by the show of strength of our brothers and sisters across the world. The Eagle people are doing their job upholding the Peace. We need you to help the rest of the world understand and get this word out. I will be in touch as soon as I possibly can. It is just after 7:00 am, I am going to work with the Clanmothers and women to get our young boy out of jail this morning. Please pray that we are successful. He has become a Prisoner of the War that they have declared against us. We want our son to come home.
In Peace,
Hazel E. Hill
Beyond fanaticism
Asia Times Iran's political dynamics. It's a little more complicated.
But there are huge problems behind this appearance of unity. Iranian money from the bonyads - foundations - badly wants a reconciliation with the West. They know that the relentless flight of both capital and brains - which is being actively encouraged by the Rafsanjani faction - is against the national interest. But they also know this can hurt Ahmadinejad's power. Some Western-connected Iranians are even comparing Ahmadinejad's current days to the Gang of Four in China a little while before the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.
The point is not that Ahmadinejad is a suicidal nut bent on confronting the US by all means available. The point is that the president leads just one of four key factions in a do-or-die power play, and he is following his own agenda, which is not necessarily the Iranian theocratic leadership's agenda. Washington neo-conservatives for their part may want regime change - but that won't happen with another shock and awe.
JP on SN
Justin Podur has a solid summary of the Six Nations situation up at ZNet.
"Community Policing"
Martin Lukacs has some excellent analysis of the state of "community policing" in the The McGill Daily.
An abundance of social science research and evidence demonstrates that inequality – not only poverty, but relative deprivation – produces crime. Yet everywhere that police have converted to the “community-oriented” model, politicians have adopted a regulatory approach to social problems, rather than addressing the real factors of crime. During the last federal election, even Canada’s supposedly progressive New Democratic Party adopted a conservative stance on crime, advocating hiring more police and stringent criminal sentencing for crimes involving guns.
Kanehsatake
Six Nations Links
Autonomy & Solidarity and Six Nations Solidarity both have a lot of useful information up.
Six Nations: How to survive a siege
[Reposting.... --d]
SIX NATIONS UPDATE - HOW TO SURVIVE A SEIGE
MNN. April 23, 2006. The source of the false alarm was discovered. Someone, in this case, a native, seems to have instigated another false alarm. This person is acting as a tool to disrupt all attempts to achieve a peaceful solution.
The deliberate attempt to disturb people's sleep and make us live in constant fear is a familiar tactic. We saw it before at the seige of Kanehsatake/Oka in 1990. Now that Six Nations/Caledonia is under seige, it is worth remembering what was done to us then. [continues...]
From Six Nations
Update:
From: TheBasketCase thebasketcase@on.aibn.comHey to all of our friends and allies from Grand River Territory. We upheld the law and we're standing proud. this morning 15 people were arrested when the police moved in about 4:30 am. they had pepper sprayed some of the men and women, and forcibly removed our people from the site, including some of the non-native supporters that have been on the site with us, some for weeks. My husband and I weren't on the site at the time, but one of the women from the camp came and told us that the police had moved in and so we immediately headed back down. the people had congregated at the back gate and when we arrived on the scene there were police around each corner of our lands, probably about 200 total. the people were still on the lands and had never completely left. we continued to gather and the numbers continued to grow. the people continued to tell the police to leave, women & men elders & youth, we stood together in unity. When the police continued to resist our peaceful request to leave our territory, the caledonia by-pass was closed down, trafffic was backing up in both directions, and only then did they realize that our people were not small in numbers, and perhaps they had underestimated the support that we did have. we had hundreds of Six Nations people gathered at the site within the hour, and had the police surrounded at the back gate; and finally, the police agreed to withdraw. we marched them off of the back gate, many women linking arms together walking the police off our land followed by the rest, we then went to the corner gate, again, marching them off of the lands. the police continued to file out of the lands onto hwy 6 in front of the disputed land area. the people then gathered to the front gate and continued to uphold our Kaierenekowah, removing the police from the site. I attended toward the back of the property to inform the remaining officers on site that they were pulling out and asked them to leave. A female officer informed me that i was in violation of a court injunction and that if i didn't leave the property i would be arrested. i informed her that SHE was in violation of the Supreme Law of the Land, our Kairenekowah, and in violation of international law and that she should leave. i again informed them that their officers were leaving the site and that they should leave. She again told me that if I didn't leave that I would be arrested, I told her again that she should leave, at which point she said, that's it mam your under arrest and tried to grab ahold of me. She was unable to get me down, at which point about 4 other male officers came to her assistance wrestling me to the ground. I had hollered for help and at that point several of our people had headed in my direction, they began to knee or kick me in my left thigh, I did try to defend myself and at one point kicked an officer square in the chest to get him away from me (sorry to my friends who asked me not to fight, but my instincts kicked in and my reaction was immediate to defend myself) my eldest son tried to pull the police off of me and he was shot in the back with a tazer gun, but as soon as several others arrived on the scence, the police immediately withdrew off of me, people helped me and my son over to a vehicle where they pulled the darts out of his back. The police then got into their vehicles and on their way out I seen the female officer in the middle of the van with a big gun in her hands obviously ready to use it. Everyone followed their vans to the front gate and the people walked the opp straight down argyle street south of the main gate and when they were far enough away, we pulled in a transport truck and shut the road down. We then blocked the road just north of the 6th line leading into our community. The OPP have been continuosly reporting that they did not use any weapons other than pepper spray, that our people were armed etc., but when they moved in, the people were resting, some of them awakened from sleep and told to move out. We maintain that we did not break the Peace, the opp crossed the line and came into our lands fully packed with guns and other weapons with the intent to use them. The situation was very tense but as I have told many many reporters today during interviews, "we upheld the Law that the Creator gave to us and are standing strong in front of Creation, honouring our Creator, our responsiblities according to the Kaierenekowah and Our Spirits and our hearts swelled with Pride. We continue to keep the Peace, we have many supporters from many territories coming in to our aid and we want to send a Big Nya Weh to all of you, who, while you might not be here physically, all of the efforts through e-mails, letters etc., the food and other donations that you have been bringing in have touched our hearts tremendously, and through your support, you have helped in keeping that spirit alive and in the forefront. will talk to you soon. our prayers are with all of you tonight as well.
Hazel.
Six Nations: Tragedy Averted?
Copying and pasting...
6:00. GOOD NEWS! THE OPP AND RCMP SAID “IT’S A FALSE ALARM”. It was really a normal sadistic police tactic to perfect their psychological strategies to break down the Indians. They want to watch and report on all our movements - who’s on the phone to who, who’s staying and who’s leaving. In other words, they’re testing the waters. So now they know us, they think. It was a test all along. A dry run to see what everyone was going to do. They found out that no one was going to leave the site of the protest, and more came. We can expect them to continue to toy with us in this kind of way. the very fact that they would set us up for a false alarm like this shows that they are functioning in good faith. They are not respecting the fiduciary obligations that the Crown has assumed over the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island.
We were all going to stay and face them for round 2 or 3 or however many rounds they will come at us. if they are sincere about peaceful negotiations, they will show their good faith by burying their weapons underground where they can be washed away in the underground rivers never to trouble relations between them and us and the generations to come.
When we were in the Treatment Center during the 1990 Mohawk Oka Crisis, we got these false alarms so many times that we got better and better at it. We still laugh about it. All the kids learned how to put wet cloths on their faces to stop the tear gas that we knew was going to be thrown at us. Do’s and don’t’s. Do have a good legal defender. At the end of the day, they won't hesitate to use bayonets or whatever other weapons they happen to have at hand. they will use them against unarmed non-combatants and children. they will lay criminal charges for getting in their way. they will not allow a neutral court to consider the legality of their claim to own our land or to have jurisdiction over us.
They will throw heavy criminal charges at you with long term incarceration, that's if you get a Nazi judge. Don’t hold a stick in front of yourself without a mask or you’ll be charged with rioting, disguisement and unlawful confinement. Be ready for such conditions as banishment, being separated from your spouse, your children, your family and friends. So be prepared. Tell everyone what happened to us and that it will happen again and again. prepare your kids and grandchildren beause they will probably have to fight the same fight over and over again. We are standing our ground. Don't forget, everyone has a right to self-determination under international and under the natural law of the Kaianereh'ko:wa. We are not giving up. We still need your help.
Six Nations Update #2
Just received:
URGENT. WITNESSES NEEDED. CANADIAN GOVERNMENT HAS ISSUED ULTIMATIM DEMANDING SIX NATIONS PEOPLE LEAVE THEIR LAND WITHIN ONE HOUR! NO OFFER TO NEGOTIATE. Get over there quick. Support needed desperately. Bring gas masks. anything you can think of that might protect you from pepper spray and tasers or even being beaten up. Bring cameras, tape recorders, cell phones, observors required, friends, walkie talkies, face coverings. Tell someone where you are going so that you will not suddenly "disappear". Stand up for democracy. Stand up for freedom. Stand up for peace.
Things we know, and then forget
ZNet: "No, not the one you think, outrageous as it is. I'm referring to the US prison system that's with no exaggeration about as shockingly abusive as the gulag abroad. It qualifies for that label by its size alone - more than 2.1 million as of June, 2004 and growing larger by about 900 new inmates every week. Blacks (mostly poor and disadvantaged) especially are affected. While they make up just 12.3% of the population, they account for half the prison population, and their numbers there have grown fivefold in the last 25 years. Hispanics (also poor) account for another 15%."
Six Nations Update
Update from Six Nations, as of 12pm on Friday.
read more...Democracy Promotion, circa 1899
Jonah Gindin: "In 1876, nine years after confederation, Canada passed the Indian Act. The new law sought to replace Indians' legal and cultural identity with a Canadian one. After all, with no Indians, there could be no Indian claims. As part of this process, the Indian Act replaced native government with imposed electoral democracy, in one of the first recorded attempts anywhere at 'democracy-promotion.'"
Iggymania
Scott Piatkowski offers a rather revolting sample of how Canada's press corps is slobbering all over Michael Ignatieff.
Life after medicare
[A rather worth-reading analysis of Canada's health care woes. --doj]
by Tim Rourke
The health care system that has been in place in Canada for forty years is now collapsing. It has been based on a top down system which is called ‘insurance’ but is not a true insurance system. It is public revenues used to pay providers of health services by a ‘fee for service’. It is being replaced by a real insurance based system which will be an extension of the American system. This is run by private insurance companies for their own profit, out of premiums paid by those who can afford this service.
Opposition to this private health care system in Canada and in Ontario has been huge, hysterical and ineffective. The push to ‘privatise’ health care in Canada has rolled on like a glacier. Some leaders of the ‘fight to save medicare’ admit their fight remains in “one step forward, two steps back” mode and they seem unable to take the offensive.
Medicare defenders are defending something which is indefensible. Medicare was never a good system. But to its defenders it is a sacred cow, the biggest thing which ‘defines’ Canada for them.
The ‘fight for medicare’ has come to be lead by a coalition of health care unions and certain types of non profit clinics. The fight has focussed on preservation of union jobs and clinic funding. Scant resistance is offered to the progressive ‘delisting’ of medical services, first physiotherapy, now optometry, and of drugs, which are of much greater importance to users of health services.
Immigrant rights movement: millions more
WSWS: "Smaller towns, meanwhile, saw unprecedented crowds taking to the streets, For example, in Garden City, Kansas, a farming community of 30,000 in the southwest of the state, more than 3,000 people demonstrated."
Korrupt in Kurdistan
WSWS: "Eighteen years on, Halabja locals assembled during the commemoration to denounce the fact that the only new construction paid for by the Kurdish authorities in the poverty-stricken area was a museum dedicated to the gassing victims. The elaborate building was officially opened by then US Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2003. Meanwhile, the town’s electricity and water services are dysfunctional, most of the housing is in serious disrepair and there is considerable unemployment."
Cynthia McKinney
David Vest: "A Washington press corps that stood idly by while Bush and Cheney plundered the country, wrecked the environment, spied on Americans without a warrant, tortured civilians and lied the country into a war that will only get worse, woke up one morning and collectively decided: 'Let's all play Get Cynthia!'"
Remi Kanazi: "It didn't concern Scarborough that a class action lawsuit has been filed by black Capitol Hill police officers against the United States Capitol Police department or that McKinney has been targeted by the brave protectors on Capitol Hill in the past. Race just isn't an issue in America anymore-we all learned that after Hurricane Katrina."
Al Pacino as Dick Cheney
So everyone saw the latest piece of video editing brilliance, where Al Pacino's Tony Montana (Scarface) is paired with Dick Cheney's image, right? It's a pretty good fit. [Audio not work safe, and quite likely offensive]
Free-Trade Mania
"Brazil, India and South Africa are working to set up a free trade area they hope will eventually take in the continents they represent."
"The trio - known as IBSA and part of the G20 group of developing nations - has been frustrated by the WTO's lack of progress at breaking down trade barriers. "
Read more about it here
Japan and Washington
Asia Times: "The payments are known to Japanese as the 'sympathy budget' (omoiyari yosan) and in English as 'host nation support'. A recent article by Hokkaido Shimbun journalist Yoshifumi Tokosumi in the current edition of Sekai magazine quotes a foreign ministry source as saying that 12.96 trillion yen (more than $100 billion) was paid to Washington as 'sympathy' money between 1972 and 2005."
Asia Times: "Taiwan's part in this drama is complex, as the island is strongly dependent on the US for its security, and the two sides have a history of close relations. Nonetheless, Taiwan's democratic evolution is actually undermining US support, despite the rhetoric emanating from Washington about promoting and defending democracy."
Schrodinger’s War
Jonathan Schwarz: "I guess everyone intuitively senses that the war's quantum superposition, in which it exists and does not exist at the time, can only be sustained as long as we don't observe the issue."
CKUT Radio: the 17th Annual Funding Drive
[CKUT is community independent media in Montreal, and they need folks to pledge or donate to keep doing the work they do. Consider it! --doj]
CKUT Radio: the 17th Annual Funding Drive.
OFF the HOUR, Community News at CKUT....
A Call for Financial Support & Solidarity from CKUT's Community News Collective!
CKUT Radio in Montreal is hosting its annual Funding Drive, between THURSDAY, March 30th & SUNDAY, April 9th, at which time Montreal's predominate community radio station calls on it's estimated 100 000 weekly listeners in Montreal & beyond for financial support & solidarity.... CKUT Radio in Montreal, one of the most respected & recognized campus / community radio stations in Canada operates through the collective organizing & network of hundreds of volunteers, representing a diverse array of cultural, political & artistic communities & movements in MONTREAL.
read more...Immigrant rights in the US: 3 million hit the streets!
A millions-strong movement for immigrant rights has materialized in the US. According to the figures compiled (see below), three million people have participated in walkouts, marches or sit-ins in the last month!
read more...Korea
Evan has some interesting photos from Korea.