Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Mr. Velile Mafani Will Throw Three Stones Through the Window of the High Court in Grahamstown Tomorrow


Our movement has been approached by Mr. Velile Ben Mafani. He informed us that tomorrow he will throw three stones, one white, one black, and one red, through the window of the High Court in Grahamstown. He will tie a letter stating his demands around the stones.

Mr Mafani was born in a shack settlement in Coega, just outside Port Elizabeth two days after Christmas in 1953. His parents worked on nearby farms, bought and sold produce from the farms and his mother worked in kitchens. The apartheid system did not want black people living in their own places in the cities and in the 1970s they were threatened with forced removal to the Ciskei Bantustan which was a human dumping ground. Mr Mafani formed an organisation called ‘Operation Go Nowhere’ and they organised against the forced removal. But Piet
Koornhof pressured them and their struggle was defeated. On the 15th of April 1979 the police and the bulldozers came. Mr Mafani was the first to be put inside a police van. The door was closed. He couldn’t see anything but he heard the screams as the shacks were destroyed and were people loaded up on to trucks like animals to be dumped in the Ciskei. People were told that there was a Court Order from the Hight Court in Grahamstown ordering their eviction. They were shown the paper but they were not allowed to read it.

Three thousand people from Coega were dumped in Glenmore, near Peddie. Today it is more than two hours by car from Coega. They lost their work, their cattle and their homes. They lost everything. Soon after their arrival in Glenmore 140 people, mainly children and old people, died. There were no funeral parlours and they couldn’t afford coffins so the dead were just wrapped in blankets and buried on the banks of the Fish River.
Since then Mr Mafani has never stopped challenging and struggling for justice.


See also:

 Consultation with his ancestors prevented outspoken Glenmore activist Ben Mafani from attending a court hearing in Grahamstown Wednesday, the second time he has failed to appear in recent months.
[ ... ]
He said he went to the cemetery on the day he was due to appear in court. "I took some time to go to the graves of the activists who had fought with me during the forced removals, to have a conversation with them, Mafani said. It's a spiritual conversation now," he explained.

Wiki entry:  Ben Mafani

Former Supreme Court Justice Souter on The Danger of America's 'Pervasive Civic Ignorance'

Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter sat down with Margaret Warner and answered an audience question concerning the appropriate role of schools to produce civicly engaged students.

#S17 Occupy Arrests at West Street

See also: 


Pakistan: Center of the Grand Chessboard


WeAreChange presents a film by Saad Ali. Read the article that accompanies this short film at their website: http://wearechange.org/pakistan-center-of-the-grand-chessboard/

HACKED STRATFOR EMAILS: DEA Told To Back Off From The Brother Of Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Pagans challenge occult-related crime training

A leaked internal police memo entitled “Investigation of Harmful Occult-Related Crimes: Investigation Support Capacity” is being circulated on the Internet.

The police document mentions that two detectives per province must be experts in dealing with occult crimes. The memo says these include muti murders, curses intended to cause harm, vampirism, spiritual intimidation including “astral coercion”,  rape by “tokoloshe spirits”, poltergeist phenomena, voodoo,  black magic and traditional healers involved in criminal activities.

“This newly envisioned scope of investigation must be viewed with suspicion and be of concern to anyone engaged in the practice of witchcraft, traditional African religion, and other occult spiritualities, including satanism,”  the  SA Pagan Rights Alliance (Sapra) said.

Dead Guantanamo Prisoner On Why He Gave Up on Life


Guantanamo Bay Prison(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout; Adapted: art makes me smile, jjay69, nitrodog, jfrancis)Adnan Latif was found dead in his cell on September 10th, 2012, just a day before the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. He was 32. Latif, a Yemeni citizen, had been detained at Guantanamo Bay for over a decade, despite a 2010 court ruling that ordered the Obama administration to "take all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate Latif's release forthwith," due to lack of evidence that he had committed any crime. He suffered at the hands of the US government in ways that most people can't begin to comprehend, and his death should be a reminder that the national shame that is Guantanamo Bay lives on and now enjoys bipartisan support.
Reexamining a letter he wrote to his lawyer David Remes in December of 2010 shows the depths of his despair near the end of his life. His letter begins simply. The first paragraph is just one devastating sentence: "Do whatever you wish to do, the issue is over." He then goes on to describe Guantanamo as, "a prison that does not know humanity, and does not know [sic] except the language of power, oppression, and humiliation for whoever enters it."
"Anybody who is able to die," Latif writes, "will be able to achieve happiness for himself, he has no hope except that."
He continues:
"The requirement...is to leave this life which is no longer anymore [sic] called a life, instead it itself has become death and renewable torture. Ending it is a mercy and happiness for this soul. I will not allow any more of this and I will end it."

More...

Stories For Boys (the Occupy edit)


As part of the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street (Sept 17), Minuit teamed up with New York photojournalist Nina Berman to produce this clip. These shots were taken during the time Occupy was in Manhattan Sept - Nov 2011, as well as at Occupy Chicago, May 2012. But it's not only about Occupy. Zuccotti Park was one face of protest at one place in time. There's a lot of causes and a lot of work and a lot of people who hustle tirelessly to fight for fairness. Whether it's silently amongst their own communities or loudly lobbying politics.Those noisy gnats on the toe of an increasingly uncomfortable corporate camper. ha! "What is the most important thing? It is people, it is people, it is people." I may never fully understand that or apply it 100%. But it comes from heads a lot wiser than mine. And it makes you think. So here's to the watchdogs, the whistleblowers, the non-violent resisters who hustle to keep the planet honest. And keep the issues in our faces so we can make the choices. Kia kaha

Photos: Nina Berman/NOOR 
Music: Minuit

Prominent Canadians Release Statement Supporting Iraq War Resister Kimberly Rivera


With less than two days left before Kimberly Rivera and her family, including two Canadian children, must leave Canada or be deported, supporters of the US Iraq War resister are calling on Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to stop delaying and make a decision on the Rivera family's three-year-old application to stay in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds (H&C).
As of Tuesday morning, nearly 19,000 people had signed a petition urging Minister Kenney to grant the Rivera family's H&C application (http://change.org/letkimstay).
During a news conference in Toronto on Tuesday afternoon, a group of prominent Canadians released a statement calling on Minister Kenney to "do the right thing and allow Kimberly Rivera and her family to stay in Canada":

We the undersigned support conscientious objector Kimberly Rivera and her family who are threatened with imminent deportation from Canada on September 20. Kim deployed to Iraq in 2006 and sought asylum in Canada in 2007. She faces a court martial and up to 5 years in military prison for refusing to participate any longer in the Iraq war-a war which had no legal sanction. Kim would be separated from her four young children, two of whom were born in Canada. A felony conviction would mean a lifetime of difficulty finding employment. We call on the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney to do the right thing and allow Kimberly Rivera and her family to stay in Canada.



Andy Barrie, broadcaster and Vietnam War resister

Dan Bar-El, award-winning children's author

Maude Barlow, author and activist

Maev Beaty, actor

Shirley Douglas, O.C., actor

Dennis Foon, award-winning writer

Richard Greenblatt, playwright/actor

Ron Hawkins, musician

Naomi Klein, author

Ron Kovic, author, Born on the Fourth of July

Avi Lewis, filmmaker

Peter Showler, Director, the Refugee Forum, University of Ottawa; former chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board

Jack Todd, journalist and Vietnam War resister

Alexandre Trudeau, filmmaker


"Canadians' support for conscientious objectors to the Iraq War, and for the Rivera family specifically, has been overwhelming," said Michelle Robidoux, spokesperson for the War Resisters Support Campaign. "If it was up to the Canadian people, there is no doubt that the Rivera family would be allowed to stay in this country. We are appealing today to Jason Kenney to stop a great injustice from being done, by approving Kimberly Rivera's application to stay in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds."

More...

Mexican Special Forces Employed as Death Squads in Drug War, Email Records Released by WikiLeaks Reveal

Bill Conroy reports for the Narcosphere:

From MX1’s email correspondence with Stratfor:
So, as you have no doubt gathered by now, the National Security Council decided to really up the ante in Juarez. We expect 5,000 additional troops and up to 1,000 additional federal police. Among the new elements, there will be at least 10 specialized intelligence units, as well as special forces units from both the Army and the Air Force. One of the intelligence units will be from the Navy (not for publication).
… The military will surgically remove cells that had been previously identified, but for whatever reason were not taken down yet. Periods of adjustment will ensue, but the military will fill any void left in terms of territorial control, ultimately causing the competing DTOs [drug trafficking organizations] to wait/give up. [Emphasis added.]
… The first to fall will be those waging the "third war", as they are a bunch of retarded morons that have no chance against a force deployment of this size, and thrive only because of impunity.
The “third war” MX1 referred to in the email correspondence is described as follows in a 2009 article penned by Stratfor analysts Fred Burton and Scott Stewart:
This third war is the war being waged on the Mexican population by criminals who may or may not be involved with the cartels. Unlike the other battles, where cartel members or government forces are the primary targets and civilians are only killed as collateral damage, on this battlefront, civilians are squarely in the crosshairs.

The Inside Story of a Controversial New Text About Jesus

The Police Remembered Occupy Wall Street’s One Year Anniversary!!!

From Wonkette:

As you all know, working and lower-middle-class households are among the most likely to spend any additional income (like that TIME-AND-A-HALF OVERTIME, BABY!) immediately and locally on necessity goods. In New York, rookie cops make roughly $42k annually — with a chance to incrementally reach the maximum salary of $76,488 over five-and-a-half years — placing them squarely in this category (particularly, if they are the primary earner of a large household). Their spending then cascades through the local economy, enacting what Keynesian economists call a “money multiplier effect.”

With #S17, the Occupy movement is once again doing what President Obama and Congress can not or will not do: providing the extra economic stimulus Americans need to get our country running again!


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