Mois : avril 2008

Linked with Lynne Stewart’s Long Struggle for Justice, with Updating Sami Al-Arian – His Ordeal Continues, with Sami Al-Arian – USA & Kuwait, and with BBC: Imperial Tool.

Stephen was born in 1934 in Boston, MA. Raised in a modest middle class family, attended public schools, received a BA from Harvard University in 1956 and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of PA in 1960, following 2 years of obligatory military service in the US Army. He spent the next 6 years as a marketing research analyst for several large US corporations before becoming part of a new small family business in 1967, remaining there until retiring at the end of 1999. Since then he has devoted his time and efforts to the progressive causes and organizations he supports, all involved in working for a more humane and just world for all people everywhere, but especially for the most needy, disadvantaged and oppressed. Stephen’s efforts only in the last 6 months have included some writing on the various issues of personal concern like war and peace; social, economic and political equity for all; and justice for all the oppressed peoples of the world like the long-suffering people of Haiti and the Palestinians. (The Populist Party).

The Rules of Imperial Management, UN Peacekeeping Paramilitarism, Feb 15, 2007.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached by e-mail. Also visit his blog site, and listen to The Global Research New Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests.

The audio: THE GEORGE TRYMAN SHOW, on Feb 20, 2008, 2 hours.

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Stephen Lendman – USA

Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment, Review of Peter Hallward’s book, by Stephen Lendman, Part I, April 14, 2008 … and: Peter Hallward’s Damming the Flood, Part II, 9 pages, April 17, 2008.

Dandelion Salad, by Stephen Lendman Global Research, April 18, 2008.

He writes: … Parenti’s latest book, and subject of this review, is the newly updated eighth edition of one of his most noted and popular earlier ones – Democracy For the Few. In it, he shows how democracy in the nation really works. It dispels the fiction Americans are practically weaned on from birth, taught in school to the highest levels, and get daily from the dominant media … This is Parenti’s dominant theme – of a government, since inception, serving the privileged few at the expense of the neglected or exploited many. That’s hardly a textbook definition of democracy, yet it’s the model one we’re taught to believe we have serving everyone equally. Parenti says his book is intended to show how vital it is for everyone to critically examine our society as a step toward improving it. He stresses a nation’s greatness is measured by its freedom from poverty, racism, sexism, exploitation, imperialism, environmental devastation, and a fundamental opposition to war and pursuit of peace everywhere. Benjamin Franklin also said There never was a good war or bad peace, a notion unimaginable to our leaders today. (full text, Sept. 10, 2007).

Media Disinformation and the BBC, April 10, 2008.

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Linked with Muslim Women in Europe caught between traditions and secular ethos, and with Necla Kelek – Turkey and Germany. Sorry, I found no militant turkish women NGO.

Seyran Ateş (born 1963) is a German lawyer born in Istanbul, Turkey. Her article Making multiculturalism work. Multiculturalism details how the far left in Germany tolerates sexism and violence against women when it is done in the name of Islam . In a judgement regarding whether an Islamic schoolgirl could be exempted from gym class on March 24, 1994 (InfAuslR 8/92, S. 269), she quotes the ruling of a higher administrative court in Bremen: « it is irrelevant that adolescent Muslim women are prevented by the demands of their religion from achieving equal status as women in Western society ». Her views, highly critical of an immigrant Muslim society that is often more conservative than its counterpart in Turkey, have put her at risk. In an interview in January 2008, Ateş stated that she is now in hiding and will not be working on Muslim women’s behalf publicly (including in court) due to the threats against her. In one particular incident, she and her client were attacked by a woman’s husband in a German courthouse in front of onlookers who did nothing … (en.wikipedia).

She warns: « Minority protection with respect to Islam can only be had at the cost of the equal rights of women » … (full text).

Listen her audio interview on a german radio, 9.58 min, Oct. 1, 2007.

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Seyran Ates – Turkey

Human rights activist and lawyer Seyran Ates, Turkey, was named Germany’s woman of the year in 2005 for her work in defense of Muslim women in immigrant communities … (full text).

She says: « I see left-wingers as particularly culpable for the mistakes made in current integration policy, because for a long time they hindered any debate. Despite all that left-wing thought aspires to, they did not look closely enough at what was actually happening in these communities, in the cultures that were settling in Germany » … (full interview text, 2007).

Her german website.

Seyran Ates opened a loose-leaf notebook in her fourth floor apartment in the center of Berlin and flipped through the pages of hate mail. She read the letters in a monotone. The 43-year-old Turkish-born attorney had the face of a weary warrior … (full text).

Seyran Ates on flickr’s photo sharing.

Each year, according to UN studies, more than one million people are forced into marriage – and for many years now, Berlin-based lawyer Seyran Ates has been fighting to increase the German public’s awareness of the issue. Sigrid Dethloff reports … (full text, 22.04.2004).

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Linked with Ex-UN prosecutor’s organ trading claims challenged, with The belated confession of Carla Del Ponte, and with Swiss block del Ponte over controversial book’s claims.

Carla Del Ponte (born February 9, 1947 in Lugano, Switzerland) was a Chief Prosecutor of two United Nations international criminal law tribunals. A former Swiss attorney general, she was appointed prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ICTY and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ICTR in August 1999, replacing Louise Arbour. In 2003, the U.N. Security Council removed Del Ponte as the Prosecutor for the ICTR, and replaced her there with Hassan Bubacar Jallow in an effort to expedite proceedings in that Tribunal. She remained the Prosecutor for the ICTY until 1 January 2008, when she was succeeded by Serge Brammertz. Del Ponte was formerly married, and has one son … (full text).

Her Profile on BBC: … Del Ponte sees herself as the victim of political pressure … Numerous other men once wanted over the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s have been brought to trial by her office. They included the Serb leader regarded as a key instigator of the turmoil – Slobodan Milosevic … (full text).

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Carla del Ponte – Switzerland

She works now as the Swiss ambassador to Argentina (Embajada de Suiza, Buenos Aires).

… « Del Ponte hid the truth and left this information about the grave crimes committed against the kidnapped Serbs out, in this way helping the crime, although she received the list of names of those kidnapped and those who kidnapped them in 2001. She never arrested anyone and she must answer for this, » Spasić said … Del Ponte says in her book that she learned from a group of reliable journalists that some 300 Serbs were taken to Albania in the summer of 1999, after the end of the NATO bombing of Serbia and arrival of their forces in Kosovo. The victims had their organs removed and were then killed, the former prosecutor says … (full text).

“Moscow is carefully following developments regarding the former Hague chief prosecutor’s memoirs on activities in investigating war crimes,” the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in a statement … In its reaction to the Swiss ban, Russia said they were not surprised. Such discoveries, Moscow said, did not fit into the scenarios of a series of countries where “propaganda portrayed the Kosovo Albanians as great martyrs and therefore legitimised Kosovo’s independence” … (full text).

Organ smuggling accusations … : The Hunt (La caccia: Io e i criminali di guerra / the hunt: I and the war criminals), for the moment the book is available only in italian language:

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Linked with A video called Firewall, and with Biofuels Are Famine Policy.

Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. (born September 8, 1922 in Rochester, New Hampshire) is an American economist, philosopher, political activist, and founder of several political organizations in the United States and elsewhere, jointly referred to as the LaRouche movement. He is known as a perennial candidate for President of the United States, having run in eight elections since 1976, once as a U.S. Labor Party candidate and seven times as a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination … (full long text on wikipedia).

He says first: « A diagnosis: The nation is not only very sick; the nation is terminally ill and we are in the final phase of a terminal illness« .

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Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. – USA

In These New York Times: Predident George W. Nero, August 6, 2006.

Then he says: « Corporate business is a gambling table. It is not an enterprise. It is not a business with a purpose. In the old days, somebody would have a business. The business would have a speciality. Their purpose was to be successful at that business and to have the business survive for the coming generations. But with the corporation, you have people who invest in a stock for one or two days. There is no real long-term commitment to doing something. There is a short-term commitment to becoming rich, but not a short-term commitment to building the future. They’re always looking for a short-term get-rich, they’re always looking for ME, not for what they do for the country. Therefore, forecasting is based on these kinds of ideas. But the world doesn’t work that way … (full interview text, Nov. 22, 2005).

Duggan Hoax Rewarmed Again, Nov. 8, 2006.

… LaRouche is the author of  » So, You Wish To Learn All About Economics? » and « The Science of Christian Economy ». Taxes & Spending:

• Increase federal spending and taxes–if needed to provide services and protection to the Americans.
• Regardless of increases or decreases, it is vitally important that federal spending and taxes are balanced.
• Full employment for all Americans should be federal policy.
• Advocates a national program modeled after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and its TVA, including a detailed plan to create a « Super-TVA » to upgrade and fix the country’s transportation network, with high-speed magnetic rail.

Such emergency infrastructure resolution would make millions of jobs, and be the first step toward America becoming a producer society again. His program reportedly influenced Kucinich to announce his running as an FDR Democrat. « We must shift from the Wal-Mart to reality. Reality means infrastructure building as the leading edge of a revival of durable goods production » … (full text).

It Happened in Berlin Last Week, July 4, 2005.

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Linked with Echoes of 1968.

Todd Gitlin (born 1943) is an American sociologist, political writer, novelist, and cultural commentator. He has written widely on the mass media, politics, intellectual life and the arts, for both popular and scholarly publications. In the 1960s, Gitlin was a political activist. In 1963 and 1964, Gitlin was president of Students for a Democratic Society; he was elected, he writes, because « none of the other four candidates, each of whom was experienced, was willing to serve, » since « we mistrusted power, including our own! Recruiting leaders was hard. » Letters to a Young Radical, p. 117. Indeed, he writes, the SDS abolished its presidency and vice-presidencies in the mid-sixties. He helped organize the first[citation needed] national demonstration against the Vietnam War, held in Washington, D. C., on April 26, 1965, with 25,000 participants, as well as the first[citation needed] civil disobedience directed against American corporate support for the apartheid regime in South Africa – a sit-in at the Manhattan headquarters of Chase Manhattan Bank in 1965 … (full text).

His Homepage.

He says: « My generation of the New Left — a generation that grew as the [Vietnam] war went on — relinquished any title to patriotism without much sense of loss. All that was left to the Left was to unearth righteous traditions and cultivate them in universities. The much-mocked political correctness of the next academic generations was a consolation prize. We lost — we squandered the politics — but won the textbooks ». (wikipedia/quote).

Todd Gitlin Reviews Obama’s Speech, March 18, 2008.

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Todd Gitlin – USA

Video: The Mark Bauerlein – Todd Gitlin in Dialogue, 72 minutes. More on this page: Links mentionned in this dialogue:

• The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage;
• The Intellectuals and the Flag;
• Bruce Bartlett’s Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy;
• Wilfred McClay’s review of The Intellectuals and the Flag.

The Kagan Subtext, April 9, 2008.

Gitlin regrets that state of affairs. He suggests that in the United States, « the pot is still melting. There are clumps that don’t melt, that refuse to melt. » He was thrilled by Obama’s speech, but as a race warrior who’s been around a lot longer than the senator from Illinois, he’s enthusiastically skeptical: « I don’t know, » says Gitlin. « I suspend disbelief. That speech was flying on two wings and a lot of prayers. It is a very American hope on his part that you can face it and transcend it » … (full text, March 20, 2008).

He says also:  » … those who still cling to gauzy dreams about untainted militancy need to remember all the murders committed in the name of various radical ideologies that accomplished exactly nothing for the victims of racism ». (wikipedia/quote).

Todd Gitlin alerts us to a new Robert Kagan book excerpt in The New Republic. Kagan’s idea, it seems, is that since neoconservatism has proven such a complete and utter failure as an approach to the challenge of transnational terrorism and WMD proliferation, we ought to use use it as a guide for dealing with Russia and China instead. If you’re a sociopath like Kagan, a renewal of Cold War-style conflict with other great powers is good news because, as Todd says, it serves the goal of « conjuring a proper target for unilateralist belligerence » … (full text, April 10, 2008).

Too Much to Ask, March 23, 2008.

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Linked with The Raoul Wallenberg Institute, with Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Peking University Law School 2008-2010, and with The Jewish Virtual Library.

Raoul Wallenberg (August 4, 1912 – July 16, 1947?)[1][2][3] was a Swedish humanitarian sent to Budapest, Hungary under diplomatic cover to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. He was of the prominent Swedish Wallenberg family. Inspired by the the tale of the Scarlet Pimpernel[4], he worked to save the lives of Hungarian Jews in the later stages of World War II by issuing them protective passports from the Swedish embassy. These documents identified the bearers as Swedish nationals awaiting repatriation. It is impossible to determine exactly how many Jews were rescued by his actions, but Yad Vashem credits him with saving 15,000 lives[5] … (full text, see also References).

The Wallenberg web-page.

Raoul Wallenberg (* 4. August 1912 in Kappsta bei Stockholm; Schicksal nur bis Mitte 1947 bekannt) war ein schwedischer Diplomat … (Biographie auf de.wikipedia).

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Raoul Wallenberg – Sweden (1912 – 1947 ?)

Holocaust Essays: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg.

… Raoul’s grandfather, Gustav Wallenberg, took care of Raoul’s education. The plan was for him to continue the family tradition and become a banker, but he was more interested in architecture and trade … (full long text on Jewish Virtual Library, not dated).

An Angel in Rescue.

Introduction: Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat and businessman who saved a hundred thousand Jews from the Nazi Holocaust. If you ask anyone who Raoul Wallenberg is, the chances are, they haven?t heard of him. This great feat which he performed surely deserves more credit than that? Oskar Schindler, saved a thousand Jews from the holocaust. A mere figure compared to that of a hundred thousand. Schindler has had a book written about him, a film made about him, Raoul Wallenberg deserves more, and should be more well known to the world … (full long text on geocities, not dated).

Raoul Gustav Wallenberg and the Holocaust.

Continuer la lecture de « Raoul Wallenberg – Sweden (1912 – 1947 ?) »