Thanksgiving

Do Turkeys Enjoy Thanksgiving?

By Arundhati Roy, author of " The God of Small Things" - Booker Prize winner 1997

Speech at the opening Plenary of the World Social Forum in Mumbai on January 16, 2004 - "Another World is Possible"


"Last January thousands of us from across the world gathered in Porto Allegre in Brazil and declared — reiterated — that "Another World is Possible". A few thousand miles north, in Washington, George Bush and his aides were thinking the same thing.

Our project was the World Social Forum. Theirs — to further what many call The Project for the New American Century.

In the great cities of Europe and America, where a few years ago these things would only have been whispered, now people are openly talking about the good side of Imperialism and the need for a strong Empire to police an unruly world. The new missionaries want order at the cost of justice. Discipline at the cost of dignity. And ascendancy at any price. Occasionally some of us are invited to `debate' the issue on `neutral' platforms provided by the corporate media. Debating Imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?

In any case, New Imperialism is already upon us. It's a remodelled, streamlined version of what we once knew. For the first time in history, a single Empire with an arsenal of weapons that could obliterate the world in an afternoon has complete, unipolar, economic and military hegemony. It uses different weapons to break open different markets. There isn't a country on God's earth that is not caught in the cross hairs of the American cruise missile and the IMF chequebook. Argentina's the model if you want to be the poster-boy of neoliberal capitalism, Iraq if you're the black sheep.

Poor countries that are geo-politically of strategic value to Empire, or have a `market' of any size, or infrastructure that can be privatized, or, god forbid, natural resources of value — oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, coal — must do as they're told, or become military targets. Those with the greatest reserves of natural wealth are most at risk. Unless they surrender their resources willingly to the corporate machine, civil unrest will be fomented, or war will be waged. In this new age of Empire, when nothing is as it appears to be, executives of concerned companies are allowed to influence foreign policy decisions. The Centre for Public Integrity in Washington found that nine out of the 30 members of the Defence Policy Board of the U.S. Government were connected to companies that were awarded defence contracts for $ 76 billion between 2001 and 2002. George Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State, was Chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Bechtel Group. When asked about a conflict of interest, in the case of a war in Iraq he said, " I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there's work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it. But nobody looks at it as something you benefit from." After the war, Bechtel signed a $680 million contract for reconstruction in Iraq.

This brutal blueprint has been used over and over again, across Latin America, Africa, Central and South-East Asia. It has cost millions of lives. It goes without saying that every war Empire wages becomes a Just War. This, in large part, is due to the role of the corporate media. It's important to understand that the corporate media doesn't just support the neo-liberal project. It is the neo-liberal project. This is not a moral position it has chosen to take, it's structural. It's intrinsic to the economics of how the mass media works.

Most nations have adequately hideous family secrets. So it isn't often necessary for the media to lie. It's what's emphasised and what's ignored. Say for example India was chosen as the target for a righteous war. The fact that about 80,000 people have been killed in Kashmir since 1989, most of them Muslim, most of them by Indian Security Forces (making the average death toll about 6000 a year); the fact that less than a year ago, in March of 2003, more than two thousand Muslims were murdered on the streets of Gujarat, that women were gang-raped and children were burned alive and a 150,000 people driven from their homes while the police and administration watched, and sometimes actively participated; the fact that no one has been punished for these crimes and the Government that oversaw them was re-elected ... all of this would make perfect headlines in international newspapers in the run-up to war.

Next we know, our cities will be levelled by cruise missiles, our villages fenced in with razor wire, U.S. soldiers will patrol our streets and, Narendra Modi, Pravin Togadia or any of our popular bigots could, like Saddam Hussein, be in U.S. custody, having their hair checked for lice and the fillings in their teeth examined on prime-time TV.

But as long as our `markets' are open, as long as corporations like Enron, Bechtel, Halliburton, Arthur Andersen are given a free hand, our `democratically elected' leaders can fearlessly blur the lines between democracy, majoritarianism and fascism.

Our government's craven willingness to abandon India's proud tradition of being Non-Aligned, its rush to fight its way to the head of the queue of the Completely Aligned (the fashionable phrase is `natural ally' — India, Israel and the U.S. are `natural allies'), has given it the leg room to turn into a repressive regime without compromising its legitimacy.

A government's victims are not only those that it kills and imprisons. Those who are displaced and dispossessed and sentenced to a lifetime of starvation and deprivation must count among them too. Millions of people have been dispossessed by `development' projects. In the past 55 years, Big Dams alone have displaced between 33 million and 55 million people in India. They have no recourse to justice.

In the last two years there has been a series of incidents when police have opened fire on peaceful protestors, most of them Adivasi and Dalit. When it comes to the poor, and in particular Dalit and Adivasi communities, they get killed for encroaching on forest land, and killed when they're trying to protect forest land from encroachments — by dams, mines, steel plants and other `development' projects. In almost every instance in which the police opened fire, the government's strategy has been to say the firing was provoked by an act of violence. Those who have been fired upon are immediately called militants.

Across the country, thousands of innocent people including minors have been arrested under POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) and are being held in jail indefinitely and without trial. In the era of the War against Terror, poverty is being slyly conflated with terrorism. In the era of corporate globalisation, poverty is a crime. Protesting against further impoverishment is terrorism. And now, our Supreme Court says that going on strike is a crime. Criticising the court of course is a crime, too. They're sealing the exits.

Like Old Imperialism, New Imperialism too relies for its success on a network of agents — corrupt, local elites who service Empire. We all know the sordid story of Enron in India. The then Maharashtra Government signed a power purchase agreement which gave Enron profits that amounted to sixty per cent of India's entire rural development budget. A single American company was guaranteed a profit equivalent to funds for infrastructural development for about 500 million people!

Unlike in the old days the New Imperialist doesn't need to trudge around the tropics risking malaria or diahorrea or early death. New Imperialism can be conducted on e-mail. The vulgar, hands-on racism of Old Imperialism is outdated. The cornerstone of New Imperialism is New Racism.

The tradition of `turkey pardoning' in the U.S. is a wonderful allegory for New Racism. Every year since 1947, the National Turkey Federation presents the U.S. President with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every year, in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the President spares that particular bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon, the Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its natural life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are slaughtered and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company that has won the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the press. (Soon they'll even speak English!)

That's how New Racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys — the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell, or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself) — are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park. The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically they're for the pot. But the Fortunate Fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and the WTO — so who can accuse those organisations of being anti-turkey? Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee — so who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalisation? There's a stampede to get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way?

Part of the project of New Racism is New Genocide. In this new era of economic interdependence, New Genocide can be facilitated by economic sanctions. It means creating conditions that lead to mass death without actually going out and killing people. Dennis Halliday, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Iraq between '97 and '98 (after which he resigned in disgust), used the term genocide to describe the sanctions in Iraq. In Iraq the sanctions outdid Saddam Hussein's best efforts by claiming more than half a million children's lives.

In the new era, Apartheid as formal policy is antiquated and unnecessary. International instruments of trade and finance oversee a complex system of multilateral trade laws and financial agreements that keep the poor in their Bantustans anyway. Its whole purpose is to institutionalise inequity. Why else would it be that the U.S. taxes a garment made by a Bangladeshi manufacturer 20 times more than it taxes a garment made in the U.K.? Why else would it be that countries that grow 90 per cent of the world's cocoa bean produce only 5 per cent of the world's chocolate? Why else would it be that countries that grow cocoa bean, like the Ivory Coast and Ghana, are taxed out of the market if they try and turn it into chocolate? Why else would it be that rich countries that spend over a billion dollars a day on subsidies to farmers demand that poor countries like India withdraw all agricultural subsidies, including subsidised electricity? Why else would it be that after having been plundered by colonising regimes for more than half a century, former colonies are steeped in debt to those same regimes, and repay them some $ 382 billion a year?

For all these reasons, the derailing of trade agreements at Cancun was crucial for us. Though our governments try and take the credit, we know that it was the result of years of struggle by many millions of people in many, many countries. What Cancun taught us is that in order to inflict real damage and force radical change, it is vital for local resistance movements to make international alliances. From Cancun we learned the importance of globalising resistance.

No individual nation can stand up to the project of Corporate Globalisation on its own. Time and again we have seen that when it comes to the neo-liberal project, the heroes of our times are suddenly diminished. Extraordinary, charismatic men, giants in Opposition, when they seize power and become Heads of State, they become powerless on the global stage. I'm thinking here of President Lula of Brazil. Lula was the hero of the World Social Forum last year. This year he's busy implementing IMF guidelines, reducing pension benefits and purging radicals from the Workers' Party. I'm thinking also of ex-President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Within two years of taking office in 1994, his government genuflected with hardly a caveat to the Market God. It instituted a massive programme of privatisation and structural adjustment, which has left millions of people homeless, jobless and without water and electricity.

Why does this happen? There's little point in beating our breasts and feeling betrayed. Lula and Mandela are, by any reckoning, magnificent men. But the moment they cross the floor from the Opposition into Government they become hostage to a spectrum of threats — most malevolent among them the threat of capital flight, which can destroy any government overnight. To imagine that a leader's personal charisma and a c.v. of struggle will dent the Corporate Cartel is to have no understanding of how Capitalism works, or for that matter, how power works. Radical change will not be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by people.

This week at the World Social Forum, some of the best minds in the world will exchange ideas about what is happening around us. These conversations refine our vision of the kind of world we're fighting for. It is a vital process that must not be undermined. However, if all our energies are diverted into this process at the cost of real political action, then the WSF, which has played such a crucial role in the Movement for Global Justice, runs the risk of becoming an asset to our enemies. What we need to discuss urgently is strategies of resistance. We need to aim at real targets, wage real battles and inflict real damage. Gandhi's Salt March was not just political theatre. When, in a simple act of defiance, thousands of Indians marched to the sea and made their own salt, they broke the salt tax laws. It was a direct strike at the economic underpinning of the British Empire. It was real. While our movement has won some important victories, we must not allow non-violent resistance to atrophy into ineffectual, feel-good, political theatre. It is a very precious weapon that needs to be constantly honed and re-imagined. It cannot be allowed to become a mere spectacle, a photo opportunity for the media.

It was wonderful that on February 15th last year, in a spectacular display of public morality, 10 million people in five continents marched against the war on Iraq. It was wonderful, but it was not enough. February 15th was a weekend. Nobody had to so much as miss a day of work. Holiday protests don't stop wars. George Bush knows that. The confidence with which he disregarded overwhelming public opinion should be a lesson to us all. Bush believes that Iraq can be occupied and colonised — as Afghanistan has been, as Tibet has been, as Chechnya is being, as East Timor once was and Palestine still is. He thinks that all he has to do is hunker down and wait until a crisis-driven media, having picked this crisis to the bone, drops it and moves on. Soon the carcass will slip off the best-seller charts, and all of us outraged folks will lose interest. Or so he hopes.

This movement of ours needs a major, global victory. It's not good enough to be right. Sometimes, if only in order to test our resolve, it's important to win something. In order to win something, we — all of us gathered here and a little way away at Mumbai Resistance — need to agree on something. That something does not need to be an over-arching pre-ordained ideology into which we force-fit our delightfully factious, argumentative selves. It does not need to be an unquestioning allegiance to one or another form of resistance to the exclusion of everything else. It could be a minimum agenda.

If all of us are indeed against Imperialism and against the project of neo-liberalism, then let's turn our gaze on Iraq. Iraq is the inevitable culmination of both. Plenty of anti-war activists have retreated in confusion since the capture of Saddam Hussein. Isn't the world better off without Saddam Hussein? they ask timidly.

Let's look this thing in the eye once and for all. To applaud the U.S. army's capture of Saddam Hussein and therefore, in retrospect, justify its invasion and occupation of Iraq is like deifying Jack the Ripper for disembowelling the Boston Strangler. And that — after a quarter century partnership in which the Ripping and Strangling was a joint enterprise. It's an in-house quarrel. They're business partners who fell out over a dirty deal. Jack's the CEO.

So if we are against Imperialism, shall we agree that we are against the U.S. occupation and that we believe that the U.S. must withdraw from Iraq and pay reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage that the war has inflicted?

How do we begin to mount our resistance? Let's start with something really small. The issue is not about supporting the resistance in Iraq against the occupation or discussing who exactly constitutes the resistance. (Are they old Killer Ba'athists, are they Islamic Fundamentalists?)

We have to become the global resistance to the occupation.

Our resistance has to begin with a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. It means acting to make it materially impossible for Empire to achieve its aims. It means soldiers should refuse to fight, reservists should refuse to serve, workers should refuse to load ships and aircraft with weapons. It certainly means that in countries like India and Pakistan we must block the U.S. government's plans to have Indian and Pakistani soldiers sent to Iraq to clean up after them.

I suggest that at a joint closing ceremony of the World Social Forum and Mumbai Resistance, we choose, by some means, two of the major corporations that are profiting from the destruction of Iraq. We could then list every project they are involved in. We could locate their offices in every city and every country across the world. We could go after them. We could shut them down. It's a question of bringing our collective wisdom and experience of past struggles to bear on a single target. It's a question of the desire to win.

The Project For The New American Century seeks to perpetuate inequity and establish American hegemony at any price, even if it's apocalyptic. The World Social Forum demands justice and survival.

For these reasons, we must consider ourselves at war. "

Arundhati Roy

Federal Court rejects government bid to keep spy document

Federal Court rejects government bid to keep spy document

The Gazette - November 19, 2010 - by Andrew Duffy, Postmedia News
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Federal+Court+rejects+government+keep+document/3858079/story.html

"Government agencies will not be able to hide information behind the veil of national security if the information offers evidence of complicity in torture, a Federal Court judge has ruled."

Vincent Price : "Poison doesn't always come in bottles"

From 1947 - 1951, Vicent Price portrayed the radio incarnation of Leslie Charteris' character Simon Templar. At the conclusion of a radio broadcast of 'The Saint', episode "Author Of Murder", Price delivered the following message:

Spreading falsehoods - "The terrorists came from Canada", "They got a birth certificate in Montreal"...etc...

“"What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through. That's the most porous border that we have. We cannot allow terrorists, we cannot allow anyone to come across our border if we don't know why they're coming. So, we have to secure all of our borders and that's what that was about, is border security."

Comments by Sharron Angle , 2010 Republican nominee for the United States Senate seat in Nevada, on October 16, 2010

More at:
CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20019924-503544.html
WinnipegFreePress: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/ottawa-tells-tea-party-backed-candidate-911-hijackers-did-not-come-from-canada--105238458.html

"The Reader" - Movie

The movie tells the story of Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes), a German lawyer who as a mid-teenager in 1958 had an affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial, stemming from her actions at a Nazi concentration camp after she takes a job at Siemens.

Preceding WW II, Siemens was involved in funding the rise of the Nazi Party. World War II, Siemens supported the Hitler regime and contributed to the war effort. Siemens had many factories in and around notorious concentration camps to build electric switches for military uses. Almost 100,000 men and women from Auschwitz worked in a Siemens factory inside the camp.
At the trial, Hanna explains how it was "just a job"...

Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II

The BESA Project


"For over 6 years I have been traveling to Muslim Albania and Kosovo documenting and doing portraits of Muslim families that saved Jews in WW2. Although Besa is a traditional Albanian code of honor many Muslim families have incorporated Besa in their religious beliefs and often were inspired by their faith in saving Jews from the Nazis. The rescue of Jews in Albania was a unique experience in Holocaust history as Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler were welcomed not as refugees but as guests."
Norman H. Gershman


BESA is a long held tradition of the Albanian people which is their code of honor. According to the code of Besa an Albanian will lay down their life for another in need of their assistance, friend or enemy.

The Eye Contact Foundation promotes religious, political, cultural and economic understanding and tolerance among people worldwide through the use of portrait photography.

http://www.eyecontactfoundation.org/node/16

Through its financial support of photographic projects, The Eye Contact Foundation seeks to bring together people of radically diverse backgrounds and beliefs in an effort to advance humanitarianism into the future.

Upcoming Exhibitions at:
http://www.eyecontactfoundation.org/Exhibitions/Upcoming

"It is a small city in the South of France... Not Canada, YET

Prompted by the documented revelations contained in the book written by H.P. Albarelli (HERE), the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research has received a confidential inquiry from the office of Erard Corbin de Mangoux, head of the French intelligence agency, Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), concerning a recent account of American government complicity in a mysterious 1951 incident of mass insanity in France. According to an official with the DGSE, the French counterpart of the CIA, “If the details of this book’s revelations prove to be true, it will be very upsetting for the people of Pont-St.-Esprit, as well as all French citizens. That agencies of the United States government would deliberately target innocent foreign citizens for such an experiment is a violation of a number of international laws and treaties.” Full text "French Government Queries U.S. State Dept. about LSD Attack, Prompted by New Book Release" - February 3, 2010 at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/A_Terrible_Mistake/Albarelli/prweb3549024.htm (retrieved March 24, 2010) Experiments were conducted in populatuions not only in France but also in Canada , Europe , NY, as documented in the book: Don't know much about the following videos but added just in case .... Documents of CIA ARTICHOKE Project - HERE Extract: "Artichoke is the Agency cryptonym for the study and/or use of "special" interrogation methods and techniques. These "special" interrogation methods have been known to include the use of drugs and chemicals, hypnosis, and "total isolation", a form of psychological harassment"... 1995 - Hearings - USA

The Holy Grail , "those who know" and the Scientists of the "The Ahnenerbe"- Documentary by historian Michael Wood- BBC

"Hitler and the Holy Grail" -documentary by historian Michael Wood, broadcasted in August 1999, BBC Channel 4 (UK) , as part of its Secret History series.

The documentary presents an in-depth analyses of "The Ahnenerbe", a Nazi German think tank, that promoted itself as a "study society for Intellectual Ancient History."
As hundreds of scientists and Institutions joined the organization, the order, the brotherhood of "Holy Grail" around "the Holy Grail of the pure blood" expanded its activities searching for the "truly pure" and noble - eternal life would be valid only to "the trully pure", those "who really know".

PART I of 10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWb8g6X59NM



PART II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTTx3j3wzho



PART III


PART IV -


PART VI - "These guys are all scientists"

PART VII - "Everything we admire is the creative product of a few"




PART X - "other races"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI62Fmx5-EQ

What the Buck Show - Oct 17, 2007- "Eat My Jew Bagel, Ann Coulter"

RACIAL PROFILE

March 8th, 2010 - Centennial of International Women's Day

Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women is an international convention adopted in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly.
It is described as an international bill of rights for women and it came into force on 3 September 1981.

"Article I

For the purposes of the present Convention, the term "discrimination against women" shall mean any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field."
The UN headquarters-New York,USA

Seven countries have not ratified the international treaty:
- United States of America
- Iran
- Sudan
- Somalia
- Nauru
- Palau and
- Tonga


UNITED NATIONS DOCUMENTS : (HERE)
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cedaw.htm

March 8th, 2010 - Centennial of International Women's Day / 1 July 2009 - Marwa Ali El-Sherbini murdered inside a courtroom in Dresden, Germany

Marwa Ali El-Sherbini (7 October 1977 – 1 July 2009) was an Egyptin German resident, who was killed during a hearing at a court of law in Dresden, Germany , on July 1, 2009.

She was stabbed by the man against whom she had testified in a criminal case about wearing a headscarf. The murder was committed inside the Courtroom in front of her three-year-old son and husband. She was three months pregnant.

As El-Sherbini and her family were about to leave, Alex Wiens, the man against whom she had testified, attacked her with an 18 cm (7 in) long blade. She received multiple stab wounds to the upper body and arm (at least 16). While trying to protect his wife, El-Sherbini's husband Elwi Ali-Okaz was stabbed at least 16 times to the head, neck, upper body and arm. The attack happened at 10:23 (time-stamped by the judge having raised a security alarm). A police officer, called to the scene to intervene, mistook Elwi Ali-Okaz for the attacker and shot him in the lower leg. Her three-year-old son was also injured while being ushered to safety. Marwa El-Sherbini died at the scene, at 11:07, succumbing to her injuries. Alex Wiens was arrested on the scene.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR - CNN

March 8th, 2010 - Centennial of International Women's Day

Christiane Amanpour(CNN) interviews Marc Thiessen, a former George Bush speechwriter recently hired by the Washington Post as columnist. (HERE)
Marc Thiessen is also a passionate advocate of torture .

Viewer Advisory:
This interview contains language that sanctions, promotes or glamorizes violence.

HATE GROUPS AT RECORD LEVELS IN USA - March 2010 Report

A new report says the United States is seeing a right-wing extremist groups growth of 244% in 2009. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (HERE), based in Alabama, USA, extremist racist groups grew to 512 in 2009. Right-wing militias tripled over the same period to 127.

(More HERE) - http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/splc-report-number-of-patriot-groups-militias-surges-by-244-in-past-year






A "SMALL THING" ? As BIG THINGS COME FROM LITTLE THINGS ...- "Foolish Frog" - Peggy Seeger - Feb 6, 2010 post), a look at a very public "small thing"(in 2006).

Michael Richards exploded in anger as he performed at a famous Los Angeles comedy club on November 2006, hurling racial epithets that left the crowd gasping.

Along with Julia Louis-Dreyfus (as Elaine Benes), Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld), and Jason Alexander (as George Constanza), Michael Richards plays Cosmo Kramer, one of the main characters in the American TV sitcom "Seinfeld".

More at: http://www.tmz.com/2006/11/20/kramers-racist-tirade-caught-on-tape/#ixzz0hE43dli3

"SHUT UP! 50 YEARS AGO WE'D HAVE YOU UPSIDE DOWN WITH A F* FORK UP YOUR ASS" : by actor MICHAEL RICHARDS , aka "Kramer" in sitcom "Seinfeld") - December 2006

San Diego, University of California :Racist and misogynist events on the rise in San Diego - 2010

San Diego - University of California and the dehumanizing and demoralizing of the "people who get dark in the sun" (whatever it means...):

From noose being hung in the library to Facebook invitation that urged women to dress as “ghetto chicks” who, quote, “usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes.” It said the menu would include chicken and watermelon...



More on San Diego, California:
(John Choon Yoo (born June 10, 1967 in Seoul, South Korea), known for his leading role in providing legal guidance on "enhanced interrogation techniques" to the George W. Bush administration ( see "Torture Memos") , has been a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Law , since 1993.)

San Diego is also home to wireless telephone chip maker QualComm Inc.
Verizon Wireless uses Qualcomm's MediaFLO technology to broadcast live TV to certain phones. Verizon Communications was involved the controversy of NSA spying program.(http://www.eff.org/cases/verizon-mci)

BLACKWATER MERCENARIES (now "XE") ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

TORTURE MADE IN THE United States of America

CIA "VIGILANTS" Convicted in Italy - Extraordinary Rendition First Conviction

At ABC News:
Convicted CIA Spy says: "We broke the Law"

By MATTHEW COLE, AVNI PATEL, and BRIAN ROSS
Nov. 4, 2009

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/exclusive-convicted-cia-spy-broke-law/story?id=8995107


And " The Nuremberg Defense: We were following orders"

Making a killing: War Profiteers join at the "International Peace Operations Association"

Aired October 27, 2009

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

MORE AT: 
BLACKWATER: The Rise of the Most Powerful Mercenaries - By Jeremy Scahill



and at:Not Blackwater but Xe
http://www.thespywhobilledme.com/the_spy_who_billed_me/2009/02/not-blackwater-but-xe-as-in-xena-warrior-princess.html

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” - documentary film launched in London, UK

TRAILER AVAILABLE HERE

directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington , and inspired by Andy’s book, The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison, it was launched on October 21, 2009 in London, UK.(photos from the launch of "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo)

The film tells the story of Guantánamo (and includes sections on extraordinary rendition and secret prisons) with a particular focus on how the Bush administration turned its back on domestic and international laws, how prisoners were rounded up in Afghanistan and Pakistan without adequate screening (and often for bounty payments), and why some of these men may have been in Afghanistan or Pakistan for reasons unconnected with militancy or terrorism (as missionaries or humanitarian aid workers, for example).

The film is based around interviews with former prisoners (Moazzam Begg and, in his first major interview, Omar Deghayes, who was released in December 2007), lawyers for the prisoners (Clive Stafford Smith in the UK and Tom Wilner in the US), and journalist and author Andy Worthington, and also includes appearances from Guantánamo’s former Muslim chaplain James Yee, Shakeel Begg, a London-based Imam, and the British human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce.

Focusing on the stories of three particular prisoners — Shaker Aamer (who is still held), Binyam Mohamed (who was released in February 2009) and Omar Deghayes — “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” provides a powerful rebuke to those who believe that Guantánamo holds “the worst of the worst” and that the Bush administration was justified in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by holding men neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights, but as “illegal enemy combatants” with no rights whatsoever.

For further information, interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Andy Worthington(andy@andyworthington.co.uk) or Polly Nash(p.nash@lcc.arts.ac.uk).

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is a Spectacle Production (74 minutes, 2009).

Andy Worthington is a journalist, and the author of three books, including The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (Pluto Press). Visit his website here.

Polly Nash is a lecturer at the London College Of Communication (LCC), part of the University of the Arts, London, and has worked in film and TV for 20 years. Core funding for the film was provided by LCC.

Review at The Osterley Times :

"The film was intense and powerful, mostly because it did not attempt in any way to emotionalise the story it was laying out before us. [Andy] Worthington, Clive Stafford Smith and others simply told the story of how the US abandoned habeas corpus and found itself in a kind of war with its own legal system, whilst [Moazzam] Begg and [Omar] Deghayes told the tale of what it was like to be on the receiving end of this historic aberration of justice."

Comments:
"The film was brilliantly powerful — both understated and shocking. All night I have had the images in my head and thoughts of these men who, even when released, can’t contact their families. I hate to admit I had no idea about extraordinary rendition — you have lifted the lid on a world that far too many people, like myself, find too easy to avoid."

"I have just returned from a rather extraordinary evening. I attended the film premiere of Andy Worthington and Polly Nash’s film “Outside the Law” — a feature length documentary about Guantánamo. I urge you all to see it. Please do and then when you have seen it pass it on to your friends and family. I have not seen anything at all that compares to understanding the magnitude of what has been happening in Guantánamo and Bagram. After seeing this film and then staying for the Q&A, which featured the film makers, as well as former detainees Omar Deghayes and Moazzam Begg, I was moved, inspired and angered beyond any other event I have been to. People left the venue with changed opinions, far better informed and shocked. Once again please do try and get to a screening."

For more information : Andy Worthington Website at: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/