Protest Oaxaca city invasion tomorrow

Rick Fellows , 30.10.2006 04:11

Carpool tomorrow (monday) at 4pm from the Vic's parking lot in west Olympia to get to the Mexican consulate in Seattle by 6pm to protest the recent brutal incursion of armed forces into Oaxaca city.

This is not just about the killing of a resected NY indymedia journalist Brad Will, but also about a brutal crackdown on indigenous people of Oaxaca standing up for long standing issues of corruption and disenfranchisement.

e-mail: mediaisland@riseup.net
Homepage: http://www.mediaisland.org

I'm not sure if it's anyone from our site, but the pictures that are going on right now are really cute. Whoevers daughter, niece, whatever that is, she's adorable.

 I had to make a positive post today!

Norm

...

Iraq is proving the central training ground and testing field for the renewed Afghan rebellion. The Taliban, this summer and fall, returned to the battle in Afghanistan in force (with plans to continue their offensive well into that country's bitter winter) -- and with some techniques clearly imported from Iraq. So, the use of sophisticated IED or roadside explosive devices and of suicide bombers, as well as targeted assassinations of government officials, have been on the rise -- all techniques pulled directly off the Iraqi battlegrounds; while foreign jihadis are now, according to Sebastian Rotella of the Los Angeles Times, choosing Afghanistan over Iraq as the prime place to make a stand (as it was during the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s).

Meanwhile, NATO and U.S. forces in that country find themselves engaged in the kind of warfare that results, as in Iraq, in high body counts but also generates lots of enemies in the long run, fuelling the Taliban's war. (As one British officer put it, "For every Taliban you kill, you recruit three or four more.")

...

When are we going to figure out how to hold our "leaders" accountable?

UN Passes Arms Trade Treaty Over US Opposition
by Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS - United Nations member states voted Thursday to create an international treaty to curb the illicit trade in guns and other light weapons, despite strong opposition from the United States and other big powers.

On Thursday, a vast majority of delegates to the U.N. General Assembly's first committee endorsed the resolution calling for the establishment of a treaty to stop weapons transfers that fuel conflict, poverty and serious human rights violations.

As many as 139 countries voted in favor of the resolution while 24 abstained. The United States, the world's largest supplier of small arms, was the only country that opposed the resolution.

Other major arms-manufacturing nations that oppose the treaty but did not participate in the voting include Russia, China, India and Pakistan.

The vote came after three years of complex diplomatic negotiations and a worldwide campaign by civil society groups that involved more than one million people in 170 countries.

Civil society groups said they were extremely happy with the outcome of the vote.

"It's a great victory," Helen Hughes of the London-based Amnesty International told IPS. "We had governments in that room who finally listened to human rights campaigners."

Jeremy Hobbs, director of Oxfam International, described the treaty as an international commitment to "end the scandal of the unregulated arms trade".

And then someone got ticketed and the mass stopped. Two cruisers and and a pig SUV pulled up to intimidate us. While they were doing this, some wonderful human being snuck up to one of the parked cruisers and proceeded to slash two of the tires. We saw the driver of the car start running towards the person and yelled warnings, but the hissing of air out of the tires or the excitement of the person's undertaking prevented their hearing it. The pig tackled him and put him in a chokehold. The mass immediately crowded around what was happening and the police pulled out their batons. The person who slashed the tires was smiling the whole time. We all started clapping in unison for a few moments until they drove the person away.

I'm an ex-Seattlite and current Floridian moving back across the nation. I will land in Olympia.

I'm giving notice to my employer in early December, then shopping around for an office job and, ideally, a 2-bedroom house to rent. Then I'm taking off about 4 days before Christmas, and landing my station wagon in the Pacific Northwest just in time for New Year's Eve.

Escaping the conservative torpor that I live in will be the easy part, just requiring a little bit of patience and time. I'm much more worried about what to do when I get to my destination.

Hopefully I'll have a job and a place to live lined up, but if I don't, my savings are going to be dwindling quick. And even if I can take care of both of those things, there will be only one person I know within 40 miles... which doesn't seem like much, but I am a little afraid of having to travel that far just to see another familiar face. And yet, what I've experienced of Olympia and what I've heard about it both seem to suggest that I should have an easy time making friends—or at least acquaintances—and feeling at home. Whatever the case, Olympia will be a much easier home to acclimate to than the place I'm stuck in now.

So there's my hodgepodge escape plan. I'll post periodically here about how it's working out.

Saturday 28 October 2006

"A dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows, or at least should. The vast majority of economists and budget analysts agree: The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it."

BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@MiamiHerald.com

In the debate about the reliability of electronic voting technology, the South Florida parent company of one of the nation's leading suppliers of touch-screen voting machines is drawing special scrutiny from the U.S. government.

Federal officials are investigating whether Smartmatic, owner of Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, is secretly controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, according to two people familiar with the probe.

In July, a Treasury Department spokeswoman disclosed that a Treasury-led panel had contacted Smartmatic, and a company representative said his firm was ''in discussions'' with the panel. At the time, those discussions were informal. The government has now upgraded to a formal investigation, the two sources said.

Sequoia's electronic voting machines operate in 17 states. In Florida, the machines are used in four counties: Palm Beach, Indian River, Pinellas and Hillsborough.

Miami-Dade and Broward use other technology.

Concerns about Smartmatic are keen on the eve of the Nov. 7 election, given fears that someone with unauthorized access to the electronic system could create electoral chaos. Some critics believe that if the Venezuelan government is involved, Smartmatic could be a ''Trojan horse'' designed to advance Chavez's anti-American agenda.

However, officials in all four Florida counties using Sequoia said they were satisfied with the machines and were not concerned about allegations of a Chávez connection because company officials told them the Venezuelan government had no stake in the company.

''We are very satisfied,'' said Kathy Adams, spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County supervisor of elections.

The probe stems from a May 4 letter to the Treasury Department by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., raising concerns about Smartmatic's purchase of Sequoia last year. Maloney said she was disturbed by a 2004 article in The Miami Herald revealing that the Venezuelan government owned 28 percent of Bizta -- a company operated by two of the same people who own Smartmatic. Bizta bought back those shares after the article appeared, and Smartmatic now characterizes the deal as a loan.