Successful Picket of Israeli Zim Lines Ship

Labor and community activists staged a successful picket of an Israeli ship attempting to unload goods at berth 57 on the Oakland California docks on June 20, 2010. ILWU workers honored the picket line and refused to unload the ship. This action catalyzed by labor activist, Steve Zeltzer, http://laborfest.org was staged to protest Israel’s recent murderous attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

This picket action mirrored an action taken back in the 1980′s at the same location, that led to the end of South Africa’s apartheid system.

In this video, camerman, John Parulis and Steve Zeltzer, interview labor activists, organizers, Palestinians , international activists and others.

The event was a first in the struggle of human and worker rights movements in the US to bring pressure on Israel for its illegal occupation of Palestine and murderous attack on the recent Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

The ILWU continues to take courageous stands when it matters most.

http://transportworkers.org
http://labortech.net
http://brightpathvideo.com
http://bpathvideo.blogspot.com
http://blip.tv/file/3792682

READ FULL STORY HERE

All dockworkers were sent home with FULL PAY.

Protesters prevent unloading of Israeli ship

David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Becker estimated that 600 to 700 people joined the demonstration, many of them arriving at 5:30 a.m. Oakland police, who estimated the crowd at 500 people, reported no arrests.
READ FULL STORY HERE

FLASH NEWS: Protestors call for a 2nd Mass Picket Sunday 4:30pm Pacific

answersf.org 6-20-2010

Historic Victory – Mass Picket Blocks Unloading of Israeli Ship

2nd Mass Picket TODAY
Sunday, June 20, 4:30 p.m.
Berth 58, Port of Oakland

We are calling on everyone to come to the 4:30 p.m. picket line to continue the boycott of the Israeli ship. The evening shift is being assigned the bulk of the work for unloading the ship. Please forward this announcement to everyone you know!
READ FULL STORY HERE

Labor & Community Coalition
puts out an “UNWELCOME” sign
Asks dock workers not to load or unload the ship

With news of the arrival of an Israeli ship in the Port of Oakland, CA this Sunday, a large coalition of organizations announced it will demonstrate at the terminal of Stevedoring Services of America (SSA), where the ship is scheduled to dock.  The mass picket at the Port of Oakland is the latest Bay Area reaction to the May 31st Israeli attack on the humanitarian aid Gaza Freedom Flotilla.  It also responds to a unified call by the Palestinian Trade Unions for dock workers around the world to refuse to load or unload Israeli cargo and ships.

Demonstrators will demand an end to the blockade of Gaza and dismantling of the Israeli apartheid wall.

In San Francisco in 1984, a similar picket line and longshoremen’s refusal to unload a ship carrying South African cargo was a key event that mobilized the global anti-apartheid movement and inspired similar actions by dockworkers worldwide.

UPDATE: 6/21/2010 The evening dock workers refused to cross the picket line making it a 24-hour boycott!

READ FULL STORY HERE

RTAmerica — June 11, 2010 — Wikileaks creator Julian Assange has brought controversial images to the spotlight and forefront for people to see what is really happening in the world. However, he is now wanted by the FBI in his connection to his most recent released video and documents that Bradley Manning, a US intelligence soldier gave to Wikileaks.

Pressrelease:
“Europe must protect freedom of expression and press following the example of Iceland” said Marietje Schaake (D66, NL) during today’s ALDE seminar on ” Censorship and Self censorship” hosted with Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP, DE) which looked at challenges to freedom of expression, with a special focus on the role the internet plays and with the aim to be informed, and inspired by good practices, to be alerted to worst cases, and to consequently look at concrete ways to make Europe a safe haven for the free word, also online.

“Freedom of expression is under threat in Europe, which instead should be a model for the rest of the world. How can we credibly speak about a lack of freedom of expression in China or Iran if we don’t apply the highest standards ourselves? Journalists, cartoonists, but also scientists are increasingly censored, or apply self-censorship, and in worst cases, individuals are not able to live in freedom after expressing certain opinions. This is unacceptable and that’s why we should learn from Iceland where the most protective draft legislation for whistleblowers, confidential sources of journalists and libel-tourism prevention is being prepared.” Schaake added

“No person should be afraid of the consequences when they freely express themselves. That would be contrary to European values we believe in and protect. ALDE defends the right to offend which is an essential part of freedom of expression, and we will stand with those who come under pressure to freely express their views, be they political, artistic or otherwise.” said Alexander Lambsdorff.

Main speakers of the ALDE seminar were:Lars Vilks, Artist, Flemming Rose, Jyllands-Posten editor, Naema Tahir Dutch author, Professor Alistair Mullis, UK Defamation Law expert, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and Birgitta Jonsdottir, member of the Icelandic Parliament and rapporteur of the draft legislation in Iceland.

HEARING: (SELF) CENSORSHIP NEW CHALLENGES FOR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN EUROPE 21/06/2010 Event date: 21/06/10 14:30 to 18:00 Location: BE BRUSSELS A1G-2 !!! THIS EVENT WILL BE STREAMED LIVE !!!

Journalists, artists and publicists in Europe are increasingly confronted with censorship and self-censorship. Freedom of expression, as well as journalistic freedom is not automatic anymore. While the internet makes borders increasingly irrelevant, freedom of expression, online and offline, become even more relevant. Laws are the safeguards, which are still determined by nation states. The seminar aims to look at freedom of expression from different viewpoints. Swedish artist Lars Vilks, Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose and Dutch author Naema Tahir will share their personal experiences with freedom of expression in Europe, while Professor Alistair Mullis, UK Defamation Law expert, Julian Assange from WikiLeaks and Birgitta Jonsdottir will speak on the legal and political questions surrounding freedom of expression. Defamation law, source protection, safety, libel shopping and the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative will all feature prominently. This event is the initative of ALDE MEPs Marietje Schaake and Alexander Lambsdorff. For more information about this event and registration, please contact angela.morgan-ficheroulle(at)europarl.europa.eu
SEE MORE DETAILS HERE

If you missed the live broadcast…check here for YouTube Video.

The following is a transcript of Barrie Zwicker’s address to the Deep Politics Conference on May 15, 2010 in Santa Cruz, California. More on Barrie Zwicker here. Transcript provided courtesy of Barrie Zwicker.

[TITLE SLIDE]
Preliminary Thanks, Observations, Remarks

I was inspired by last evening’s opening session, from David Kubiak on. Also I’m virtually in awe of Mickey, Peter and Annie, not least because they shared their insights extemporaneously, barely looking at whatever notes they had. I hope you’ll appreciate that, as someone who forgot the number of his hotel room yesterday, I am going to stick to my prepared remarks. If my calculations are right, I’ll be finished in about 50 minutes, leaving 20 for questions, answers and discussion. I know people don’t like being read to, but I’m not the worst reader and this is better than the alternative, in which I would digress promiscuously. There’s a price for everything.

Peter Dale Scott has done more than anyone else I know to introduce the concept of the Deep State, capital D, capital S, and educate widely about it. There is something deeper than the Deep State. That’s the deep state, all caps, of crisis that we’re in as a planet and as a civilization. Needless to say the Deep State and the state we’re in are deeply connected. As are the steps we need to take to emerge, with luck, into an improved state.
To begin I rely on [HOLD IT UP] this book, A Short History of Progress, by Ronald Wright, a Canadian novelist, historian and essayist. In just 132 pages Wright does the best job I’ve encountered of explaining why civilizations crash, nailing the pickle we’re in today and offering a general solution. Wright is aware of Deep Politics, as revealed in his latest book, What is America?
There’s graffiti that reads: “Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.” Wright quotes this to begin his final chapter in A Short History of Progress. In that chapter he also nails down what most history books fail to emphasize – that throughout history oligarchies have been the dreadful default in human governance. Another history book that’s also an exception to the rule is Michael Parenti’s Democracy for the Few. Just the sub-section “Capital Concentration: Who Owns America?” from Parenti’s second chapter should be required reading everywhere.
The oligarchs and their many Machiavellian minions never identify themselves as problem. They’re too wrapped up in their Narcissistic power games and career paths to take even a day to try to see themselves in the perspective of history. Or if they do, they see themselves as heroes, saviours of whatever current empire they serve, and its assumed superior values. According to Wright no group of oligarchs has ever self-corrected. I wish Wright had touched on the role of psychopaths in these oligarchical pyramids. My psychologist Truther friend Dr. Terry Burrows says: “The higher you go in any organization the more likely you are to encounter a psychopath.” [PAUSE] “Or be one,” quipped my Truther friend Dr. Frank Denson last week. [POINT HIM OUT] Frank, take a bow.
“The upward concentration of wealth,” says Wright, “ensures that there can never be enough to go round. Thinkers from Christ to Marx have touched on this deep problem.” I’m going to assume everyone here today knows about the grotesque and growing gap on our planet between the super-rich and the rich, on one hand, and the middle class, the poor and the poorest of the poor, on the other. I also assume that no one here believes this situation is either just or sustainable. Wright continues: “The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace have begun to suffer.” He calls it the dinosaur factor — hostility to change from vested interests plus inertia at all social levels.

This is a framework within which the phenomena of repeated false flag operations can be approached historically. False Flag Operations are history’s deadliest deceits. They are the best kept of the many dirty secrets of oligarchies. They are used to trigger and justify the oligarchs’ wars for power, prestige, land and resources. Most false flag events are unopposed military operations. The perpetrators have all the advantages: virtually endless technical, administrative, logistical and other resources; secrecy; surprise, and other kinds of power. They specialize in knowing about and cynically taking advantage of human gullibility.

Their false flag ops enable and cover up the bloody coups that come naturally to them. In a coup the false flag is the patsy. Members of the public are the dupes. What a surprising number of lone-nut gunmen have decided to change history, eh? False flag ops are the most effective of the oligarchs’ spectrum of deceptions for seizing, expanding and maintaining their power, wealth and privileges.
But false flag operations have never made it onto humanity’s radar. The never-ending secrecy, the seemingly never-ending human gullibility and the fact that history is written by the victors have ensured this… so far. Even Wright mentions 9/11 only for purposes of comparison — quote, “terrorism is a small threat compared with hunger, disease or climate change. Three thousand died in the United States that day; 25,000 in the world die every day from contaminated water alone.” Unquote. His emphasis. Fair enough. His apparent acceptance of the official version of the 9/11 conspiracy. Unfortunate.
There are three categories of false flag: events, agents and fronts. The events (they can also be pseudo-events) exhibit three phases: planning, execution and cover-up. The planning, which includes planning for the cover-up, is executed in utmost secrecy, as is the execution. The all-important cover-up is the most expensive and extended and atypical phase of the operation. By definition it’s not secret. It’s in your face. For the cover-up the pre-existing overt and covert establishment is brought into play, including pop-up talking heads and choke-point operatives in the media, as well as false flag fronts – from the likes of NIST to publishing houses – all of which already have false flag agents of the state permanently embedded in them.

But there are, contrary to the old saying, a couple of new things under the sun. One is literal. The events of 9/11 mere committed in broad daylight, making them the most brazen false flag op of all time. That makes 9/11 a gift that keeps on giving. It has drained, for those with eyes to see, much of the swamp of the Deep State. Many Machiavellian swamp creatures are exposed to the gaze of the unblind. These creatures include the mainstream media, covered with the slime of their refusal to question, let alone investigate the anomalies, contradictions, absurdities and impossibilities of 9/11 and their demonization of those who want to investigate or even question the events of that day. Equally disgusting are the mud-caked gatekeepers of the left and the apologist community of public intellectuals – foes of 9/11Truth and of the 9/11Truth movement. Maybe I’m being too extreme, too emotional, too harsh, speaking with too little academic detachment. Be that as it may, the determined enmity of the media and the left gatekeepers is real and ongoing and proves the importance of the 9/11Truth movement. As Mickey Huff said so eloquently last evening, there must be no issues we cannot talk about, and this is one of them.

The second new thing under the sun is that there’s a quantitative and qualitative difference between the state of public understanding today of 9/11, and the state of public understanding of all previous false flag ops. Chalk up that difference to two words: the Internet.
Until the advent of the so-called “war on terror” almost no false flag events were laughable. But now the masters of psyops – their twisted minds marinated in an excited delirium of unaccountable deception and impunity – are laying down between train bombings a slap happy hit parade of preposterous false flag ops. You had Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. He lit a match that ludicrously continues to remove millions of shoes at airports. You had the 2006 trans-Atlantic exploding shampoo terror fraud. That led to dandruff eradication for thousands of airport security personnel. You had the well-to-do one-way-ticket no baggage had-been-banned-from-Britain underwear bomber. As Conan O’Brien put it: “It’s now been reported that Britain did pass information on to U.S. authorities about the attempted underwear bomber, but the U.S. disregarded it. In part, that’s because the British intelligence referred to him as ‘’a bloke with boomzy-woomzy in his knickers.’’”
You had the murderous Fort Hood Muslim padre, under-surveilled by the well-known civil libertarians in the Pentagon. And now the Times Square fireworks-packed Nissan Pathfinder, the one with the big back window. As Globe and Mail columnist Tabatha Southey commented: “Anyone walking by that car in Times Square could have seen exactly how stupid-looking the bomb was. If there’s one thing I know about New Yorkers, it’s that they’re not going to hold back about something like that. You try to blow up New York City with a crap bomb, you’re going to hear about it. I’ve known people who realized too late they’d carried the wrong handbag to a party in New York; they left that party immediately and booked a flight to Saudi Arabia on the way to the airport…” As she says, Faisal Shahzad’s plan was “Well if this doesn’t work out I can always grow Heritage tomatoes.”

Progressive people everywhere have got a daunting To Get Done list if the worst of the coming collapse is to be mitigated. Here’s how Wright puts it at the very end of his book: “The case for reform that I have tried to make is not based on altruism, nor on saving nature for its own sake. …these are moral imperatives but such arguments cut against the grain of human desire. The most compelling reason for reforming our system is that the system is … [that it] is a suicide machine.” “Things are moving so fast,” Wright continues, “that inaction itself is one of the biggest mistakes. The 10,000-year experiment of the settled life will stand or fall by what we do, and don’t do, now.”

He continues: “We have the tools and the means to share resources, clean up pollution, dispense basic health care and birth control, set economic limits in line with natural ones. If we don‘t do these things now, while we prosper, we will never be able to do them when times get hard. Our fate will twist out of our hands. And this new century will not grow very old before we enter an age of chaos and collapse that will dwarf all the dark ages in our past. Now is our last chance to get the future right.”

Ronald Wright says that his key reform – educating for long-term thinking – isn’t anti-capitalist. This doesn’t mean that a lot of capitalists, or socialists, or others, will agree with him. In fact monopoly capitalism and long-term, even short-term survival seem to me to be inimical to each other.
Also, education for long-term thinking seems awfully vague. We need more specific projects to undermine the juggernaut, thereby making space to grow for the thousands of local initiatives the world over for the environment, for peace and for economic and social justice to build.

Because 9/11 is the largest Achilles Heel of the largest oligarchy ever, arguably the single most important task on that To Get Done list is exposing the truth of 9/11 in the most politically-relevant way possible for a significant fraction of the world public in the hopes that this can trigger an earthquake for the network of oligarchies. I doubt anyone here under-estimates the challenge.

Possibly the best model for the re-investigation required is the 1967 War Crimes Tribunal initiated by the British philosopher and peace activist Bertrand Russell. I refer in some detail to him and his Tribunal later. It remains significant that [HOLD IT UP] the first chapter of his book [SLIDE] War Crimes In Vietnam is devoted to the press. The first sentence: “The role of the Western press in the Vietnam controversy has been important and revealing. It is from Western newspapers that I derived my earliest understandings of the involvement of the United States, and it is from these same reports that I first became aware of the barbarous character of the war.” He then provides examples. But he continues — and the parallels with our time hard to miss — “I was soon to discover, however, that although some newspapers were prepared to publish isolated pieces of horrifying information, they had no intention of forming a coherent picture of the war from these reports [PAUSE] and every intention of preventing others from doing so.”
Unbundling our Slogan
“Re-investigate 9/11” is a simple powerful slogan. It’s a unifying force within the 9/11Truth movement. All Truthers I’ve met accept re-investigation as a common goal and the highest. The sign Richard Gage travels with is a variation: “Over 1,000 Architects & Engineers Demand A Real 9/11 Investigation.” Mark Phillips [POINT HIM OUT IF I CAN] suggested the other day that the slogan should be “Investigate 9/11” because the previous so-called investigation was unworthy of the description. True, but many people don’t know that.
In any event, “Re-investigate 9/11” – however that is taken – has the virtue of being simple and practical. Within our ranks, it supersedes differences among us on lesser fronts, from the political to the theological. Bill Brewer of New Hampshire, one of my Truther telephone friends, left me a voice message recently in which he expressed frustration with his local branch of Veterans for Peace. He said when he raises 9/11Truth the others call him extreme. He says he’s decided, okay, he’ll be extreme. He told me he’ll refuse to hold up a sign or otherwise support any cause other than his three main ones: opposition to capital punishment, opposition to abortion, and support for 9/11Truth. Now I happen to be with him 100 per cent on the first and the last and probably 100 per cent against him on the middle one. But given his age and mine, I predict that Bill and I will continue to agree to disagree indefinitely on the reproductive choice issue, yet remain firmly united on the demand for the truth about 9/11.
Why, in more detail, do we want a re-investigation of 9/11? What is our ultimate purpose or purposes? Do we want truth intrinsically, as an end in itself? If so, that’s a worthy goal, and a challenging one. “Truth,” however, is a high abstraction. Climbing down the abstraction ladder a rung or two we can see less abstract goals historically sought by disaffected minorities or majorities. These include (with some overlapping) accountability; apologies; reparations; prevention of future crimes (in our case in particular putting the kibosh on further false flag ops); setting an example; establishing precedent; removing immunity and impunity from present and/or future perpetrators; gaining closure; setting the record straight for future generations; revenge or reprisal; strengthening the rule of international or other law; restoring the letter and spirit of Constitutions, and last but not least, reconciliation. Except for revenge and reprisal, any of these could be listed under the heading A Better World.

I daresay most of us see 9/11 truth as needed more as an instrument to achieve some combination of these in the service of larger goals such as social and economic justice and finally peace, however peace may be defined. I’m personally okay with the most simplistic definition, “absence of war.” How will a big shot of 9/11Truth increase our chances of getting to that improved or less terrible world? How might it speed up the process? What’s likely possible and what less possible?

One Outcome We Are Not Likely to Achieve

Let me get a bit of negativity out of the way. The most unrealistic goal, which is why I don’t list it, is to think the mole-infested corporate or left-gatekeeping media will provide anything resembling full honest coverage of a full honest re-investigation. The facts Elizabeth Woodward, through her impeccable research, has established about mainstream media exceptions to the rule of de facto censorship are important, and are to be lauded. But taken together they are but a small breeze blowing against a hurricane of pro war-on-terror propaganda fuelled by serial false flag ops that is only increasing in intensity.
Re-Investigation Projects Underway
Initiatives include NYC CAN, activities in London, England, perhaps a“BRrussels” initiative and the legal moves to indict George Bush including those associated with the Calgary Principles. Others here will know more about these and other initiatives and can speak to them. Because of this, and time constraints, I only mention them here.

One initiative you probably don’t know about I’d like to describe in some detail. It’s called the 11-11 Project, or the International Inquest into the events of September 11th, 2001. [ASK FOR A HANDS-UP FROM THOSE WHO KNOW ABOUT IT.] It’s been quietly gathering steam for about a year. The co-ordinator is Daniel LeBlanc, one of Atlantic Canada’s most accomplished activists. He is Canada’s founding Riverkeeper and co-founder of the Canadian Waterkeeper movement, dedicated to bringing to justice some of the worst polluters in Canada. His strong points are strategizing and fundraising, and he’s tenacious. One of his recent successes was putting an end to Canada’s longest environmental battle and triggering the country’s largest river restoration project on the Petitcodiac River. He served for six years with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in various war-torn regions of the world including Southern Africa, Iraq, Cambodia and Ethiopia, where he saw first-hand how wars can devastate entire societies.

Until now Daniel has deliberately kept a low profile while consulting with, for instance, William Pepper, Lawyers for 9/11Truth, Ted Walter at NYC CAN, Kevin Ryan, Canadian legal scholars who prefer to remain anonymous at this stage, myself and a few others. Daniel could not attend this Santa Cruz gathering but agreed to my sharing news of the 11-11 Project with you.
[SLIDE]
Its stated goal is to implement a global campaign to gather, safeguard and file legal evidence dealing with the events of 9/11 in an internationally recognized process specially created for this purpose – an International Inquest.
[SLIDE]
Project Objectives:
1. To gather and safeguard available evidence pertaining to the events of 9/11;
2. To have this evidence filed in a globally publicised and transparent judicial process especially created for this purpose;
3. To have this judicial process (modeled on Coroner’s Inquest) review evidence presented by witnesses and independent experts and review the key findings of the 9/11 Commission Report and the NIST WTC reports;
4. To have a minimum of two internationally respected judges, one American and one Canadian, pass judgment on the case.
[MAKE SLIDE]
The Timeline:
Nov 2010: Project launch date:
Early 2011: International Inquest Members and Lead Counsel appointed
Spring/Summer 2011: International Inquest begins
September 2011: Judgment anticipated
Nov 2011 (11/11): Project objectives achieved

Dozens of witness accounts, expert testimonies and documents about the events of 9/11, many currently posted on the internet, need to be sworn in and filed in such a judicial process, to leave the realm of hearsay and become possible evidence into a crime. A preliminary plan to protect the evidence in multiple countries has been prepared. Toronto, because of its proximity to the crime scenes of New York, Washington and Shanksville, is intended to be the location for the inquest process.
[SLIDE]
Steps include:
1. Expand consultation more broadly within the 9/11 movement to test for support
2. Convene legal experts (Canadian, American, and overseas) to settle on a unique model for this judicial process
3. Set up an international coordinating committee
4. Set up a local (Toronto) implementation committee.
5. Set up a communications committee
6. Set up a legal committee (to evolve into Lead Council)
7. Explore fundraising options
8. Prepare for fall 2010 project launch date, with completion prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11

David Ray Griffin and Richard Gage addressed a sold out meeting at The University of Toronto on May 2nd. It’s worth mentioning Dr. Griffin’s final words and I quote: “Canada could lead the way exposing their lie which has made the world so much worse.” If the 11-11 Project builds serious momentum, Truthers from coast to coast to coast in Canada would pitch in, in whatever ways they can.

So this is a solution project.

Some past models of truth investigations
For obvious reasons I exclude the House-Senate so-called investigation into 9/11 and the 9/11 Commission. Fair to exclude also, I think, are the many investigations into Pearl Harbor and Warren Commission and subsequent inquiries into JFK’s assassination.

Two investigations deserving the name, however, include:

1 – The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, admirable in scope, mandate and internationalism, probably an all-time aberration. Justice Robert H. Jackson, the American who was Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg, made a statement worth quoting here: How much should or must we redefine our purposes to achieve what we think realistically can be achieved? [SLIDE]

If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.

2 – South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

International courts come to mind as appropriate venues for hearing evidence concerning 9/11. It should be noted that the International Criminal Court is out of the question. The ICC was founded July 1st, 2002 and can hear complaints only of actions occurring after that date.

The ICC is not to be confused with the International Court of Justice or ICJ, commonly referred to as the World Court. The World Court, based in The Hague, is a possible if unlikely venue for a re-investigation of 9/11. It’s the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. Its two main functions are to settle legal disputes submitted to it by states, and to give advisory opinions on legal questions submitted to it by duly authorized international organs and agencies, and by the UN General Assembly.

So, if a duly authorized international organ or agency or the UN General Assembly could be persuaded that 9/11 deserves investigation, one of these could ask the World Court to render an opinion.

The most relevant investigation may well be the International War Crimes Tribunal of 1967, initiated by Bertrand Russell.

The Russell Tribunal

It held 18 days of sessions in two rounds. The first round was in Stockholm, Sweden, in May, the second in Roskilde, Denmark in late November. [SLIDE OF A VIETNAMESE VICTIM] Witnesses included victims of the US war machine and Americans who were cogs in the machine. [SLIDE OF MARTINSEN] This is Army intelligence officer Peter Martinsen of Berkeley, California. The Americans told of torture and death during interrogations they had personally seen or participated in. [TITLE SLIDE]

In 1967 the American War on Vietnam, as I prefer to call it, was 17 years old, if we date its beginning from December 23rd, 1950. That was the date the USA entered the French War on Vietnam on the French side, signing an arms agreement with the puppet Bao Dai government. In August 1964 a major escalation was set in motion, justified by the Gulf of Tonkin false flag operation. The war eventually claimed 58,000 American and 3-million Vietnamese lives.

The Russell Tribunal is relevant to us in at least nine ways. First is that it was held at all. It was not inevitable such an event would be mounted. There was no shortage of opponents first and nay-sayers later. For its existence we must thank Russell, not least because he launched his efforts in 1966, in his 95th year, the same year he wrote War Crimes in Vietnam.

I hope our movement doesn’t wait until some of us are 95 to mount an international inquiry of the scope of Russell’s. It appears that so far the closest we’ve come to what’s needed is the six-day International Citizens’ Inquiry Into 9/11 that I directed in May 2004 at The University of Toronto. There were 40 presenters from three continents. Much more has been learned about 9/11 since then. But even then, as Bob Bowman stated from his podium, there was sufficient evidence of treason for him to make that a public charge at the time.

Second, the timing of the Russell tribunal. It was held while the war was still being prosecuted. In other words, the hearings could be considered “news you can use.” Except the news media chose to make the tribunal non-news. We’re back to the long standing, structural, endemic, serial malfeasance of the media. [SLIDE] This is a special 80-page double issue of the magazine Liberation for December 1967/January 1968. The main headline is “WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL” followed by “Testimony, Reports, Findings.” Inside, to begin, is an article by Dave Dellinger. On the first page he writes:
[SLIDE]
“…the U.S. press chose to ignore most of the evidence. (The New York Times correspondent did not attend on the days that ex-G.I.’s Peter Martinsen and David Tuck gave their testimony of G.I. tortures of prisoners, though he was in town and forewarned.) Anyone who reads the documents reproduced in this issue will realize that this dereliction condemns the mass media and seriously handicaps the developing American conscience but does not nullify the work of the Tribunal, which will out in the end.” Here’s an interesting question: do we have today an equivalent to the magazine Liberation?
[TITLE SLIDE]
As to the timing of a 9/11 Truth Tribunal, any time is suitable considering the ongoing so-called “war on terror.” But a particularly relevant time will be around the date of the 10th anniversary, when the propaganda onslaught supporting the fraud of the official conspiracy theory will be fully engorged. Expect a hail of lies. Expect a spate of CIA-sponsored false flag books. Expect solemn lies embedded into the emotions of solemn commemorations at Ground Zero and elsewhere. Expect the illusory show trials, tellingly just now in their early stages, to be extremely high profile. Expect, altogether, a tsunami of bullshit, including more incendiary false flag ops, possibly the sometimes-predicted and dreaded 9/12 – maybe a dirty nuke in a suitcase found on a freighter in Galveston harbour and traced to Iranians, providing the perfect pretext for war on Iran the Israeli right has long wanted and for which, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has extensive contingency plans.
[SLIDE]
Third, the 1967 tribunal panel was comprised of 25 distinguished persons. Besides being convened under the auspices of Russell, a world-renowned philosopher, mathematician, author and political activist, participating members, as they were called, included Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, historian Isaac Deutscher, and among the Americans Stokely Carmichael, Dave Dellinger, James Baldwin and Carl Oglesby.
[TITLE SLIDE]
It would seem time for the 9/11Truth movement to draw up a list of equally-distinguished people today, sounding out those able and willing to be members of a 9/11Truth Tribunal.

Fourth, the tribunal was thoroughly international. Russell was from England, de Beauvoir and Sartre from France and I’ve named some who hailed from this country. The other participants were from Austria, Cuba, Denmark, Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Scotland, Sweden and Turkey.

Fifth, the tribunal hired its own investigators who travelled to Vietnam . California’s own giant for truth, Ralph Schoenman, [RECOGNIZE HIM IN THE AUDIENCE] at the time Russell’s personal secretary, was dispatched to North Vietnam. In April 1966 he wrote a substantial report, published as an appendix in Russell’s book.

The 9/11Truth movement already has a substantial core of investigators in the physical and social sciences. With sufficient finances it could fund them and others.

Sixth, as mentioned, the tribunal succeeded in hearing firsthand testimony from victims and perpetrators. Besides the 23-year-old Martinsen and 25-year-old infantryman David Tuck, there was Donald Duncan, who had been an instructor in interrogation techniques at the US Army Special Warfare School in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Seventh, the preparations for the Tribunal including Russell’s book, and the questions raised in sessions, took into account the broader context of the Cold War and American imperialism, as well as more restricted but still important questions such as whether US actions in Vietnam constituted genocide (it was determined they had) and whether there was complicity on the part of the governments of Japan, Thailand and the Philippines (the verdict was mixed).

Presumably an inquiry into 9/11 could not fail to explore its international ramifications and links to the arms industry, Big Oil, intelligence agencies in the USA, Israel, Britain and elsewhere, and the geopolitical plans and practices of the Anglo-American alliance and other players. But because 9/11 has been such a far-reaching and pivotal historical event, some limits would need to be placed on the mandate.

Eighth, the Russell Tribunal probed the specific questions. These concerned, for instance, the use of weapons and products, such as white phosphorous and “lazy dog” scatter bombs, prohibited by the laws of war, and whether there was deliberate, systematic and large-scale bombing of civilian objectives. In all, 10 specific subject areas were addressed.

Organizers of a 9/11 Tribunal should have little difficulty defining specific areas of investigation.

The ninth relevancy is not a parallel for a 9/11 tribunal but rather a central question that will face the organizers of a major honest 9/11 re-investigation. It is so complicated I can only touch upon it here. Tribunal members, whether there are two or 25, must be substantial, preferably distinguished. The question is: Are only allegedly “objective” persons, with no preconceived notions about 9/11, to be sought out to serve as Tribunal members? To have no opinions about 9/11 going on ten years after the events is to be distinguished, but not in the usually accepted sense. But if only known if distinguished Truthers are selected to serve, you can already hear the outcry. The selection process would be pilloried in order to denounce the whole exercise as an anti-American setup or worse. It’s a hard and tricky challenge.
Russell set up a whole series of further Tribunals, that examined alleged crimes over much of the world. These met in the 70’s and 80’s. In 2003 the Russell Tribunal model was adopted by the World Tribunal on Iraq, held to analyse the Project for the New American Century, the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, the subsequent occupation of Iraq and the links between these. Out of interest, how many people here [HOLD UP MY HAND] are aware of that Tribunal? In 2004 the “BRussells Tribunal” with a capital BR in tribute to Bertie, took place in Brussels as a continuation of the World Tribunal on Iraq. Commented philosopher Jacques [PRON Derry-Dah] Derrida: “To resuscitate the tradition of a Russell Tribunal is symbolically an important and necessary thing to do today.”
Reasons for hope…

To the extent that I for one am hopeful, my hope rests on two broad categories. First is the ongoing work of people in this room and others like us all over the world. There are so many people and projects, from David Ray Griffin to We Are Change, that one hesitates to single out one. Nevertheless Peter Phillips’ spotlighting of what he calls the “Truth Emergency” and SCAD, State Crimes Against Democracy, are exemplars. There’s the positive, creative work done by Carol Brouillet and others, particularly women, and the benign contributions of many people guided by spiritual wisdom.
My second hopeful category is much harder to describe. And it’s equally the basis for my worst fears. Call the category trends and developments – trends and developments over which we in this room and others like us all over the world have little control.

Developments include the collapsing ecosystem, massive die-off of other species, unsustainable depletion of renewable and non-renewable resources, a still growing human population living increasingly in megalopolis or conurbations, and the still-increasing pace of technological developments such as nano-technology. Thank you, nano-technology, for super thermite.
I find hopeful a trend toward national political coalition-building. See Britain. More talking, more negotiation, more compromise, less posturing, less bullying. In spite of the exceptional and bad examples of Israel and Italy, coalitions tend to improve governance. The USA, as usual, lags. We’re also seeing a counter-development: More splintering. New religious outcroppings, sects, militias, fads – paths to personal or collective salvation, or survival, are emerging. All typical during societal collapses.
There’s also a small but unmistakeable trend toward greater accountability. Because of Google, You-Tube, wikileaks and generally the mushrooming data cloud, and with privacy a partial casualty, we’re seeing more outings, more accountability for the likes of politicians, corporate executives, Roman Catholic bishops and even the Pope.
But an over-emphasis on certain kinds of accountability can draw public servants into wasting large amounts of time poring over expense accounts in search of an occasional strip club receipt which the media then will seize upon to distract the populace with the scandal of the week. It’s much larger accountability that’s needed – accountability for the likes of SCAD.

In this revelations and accountability drama, there’s an invisible non-player, the vast spook establishment. It continues to succeed in protecting itself from transparency, continues to execute its dirtiest jobs well hidden. These include their data harvesting from Google, You-Tube, and generally the mushrooming data cloud. Long ago, Google, originally a private company with retired CIA executives on its board, from the outset has tracked every mouse click. The CIA, NSA and at least 14 other so-called intelligence agencies in the USA have a combined staffing of 200,000 and according to the New York Times non-black budgets totalling more than $44-billion annually, and growing. Taken with Mossad, MI-6 and the like, covert agents and so-called Special Forces crawl the globe like bacteria. By way of illustration and a change of pace, let me share a recent 2 minute, 27 second clip from my favourite vide sources, brasschecktv, setting it up by quoting Picasso: “Art is a lie that lets you see the truth.”

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/841.html

To revert to language deconstruction just for a moment, I have to get this off my chest. [SLIDE] This was taken during a full-fledged British assault on a police station in Basra, one which successfully rescued two Brits. The pair, dressed as Arabs, were caught in a car loaded with explosives, on their way to a market. They were members of a “black ops” unit of the [SLIDE?] the British Army’s Special Reconnaissance Regiment or SRR. Such units almost always are referred to in the media as “elite.” As in US Army’s “elite Special Forces.” Whereas their bloodthirsty characters and crimes against humanity and peace justify them being described as “uncommonly vicious psychotic criminal moral scumbags for hire.” I’m opposed to name-calling, by the way. I’m just describing.

Back to the various developments: they’re all part of or contributing to meta-developments, including speed-up and scale-up. An example of both at once was that record market drop and rebound, what scuba divers call a bounce dive, on May 6th. A contributing reason, by the way, was automated trading. Talk about an edge for the super rich! This gives a whole new meaning to the term money machine.
Another meta-development is ungovern-ability. There’s growing agreement that many countries and some states and even some cities are too large and complex to govern as they were in the past. As far as I can make out, all that’s holding the American Empire together at the seams is military might, covert activities and the persistence of illusions.
Here’s a meta-musing: we may be experiencing the emergence of a planetary survival ethos. If we are, it’s being enabled by instantaneity of communication and feedback among wired and wireless millions of gadget-attached humans, comprising what Peter Russell in his 1982 book and film described as The Global Brain, a metaphor for a worldwide intelligent network formed by people enmeshed with information and communication technologies connecting them into an “organic” whole. Arguably a global superbrain is evolving. Ideally it enables people, as one of Peter Russell’s colleagues puts it, “to find out what they need to know rather than what they think they need to know.”

This is a lot of words from me. In toting up all these dangers and problems and uncertainties and then tacking on at the end a stab at semi-mystical promise, I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s description of Nevada City when he first arrived there. “There were,” he said, “ military companies, fire companies, brass bands, banks, hotels [and] theatres, ‘hurdy-gurdy houses,’ wide-open gambling palaces, political pow wows, civic processions, street fights, murders, inquests, riots, a whisky mill every fifteen steps, . . . a dozen breweries, [a half dozen] jails and stationhouses in full operation – [BIG PAUSE] and some talk of building a church.”

Perhaps less mystical is that if Peter Russell is correct in recognizing a global brain, it must be evolving – growing electrosensory parts such as citizen video, the Internet, facebook, twitter, wikileaks (think Baghdad gunship massacre) and even the ubiquitous surveillance cameras (think Mossad assassins in Dubai caught on video). And we know our brains are physically changed by our sensory intake.
So whatever progress we make with conscious evolution is taking place within these developments, trends and thickening inforsphere.

Besides the failing ecosystem, the biggest black swan swimming closer is that the current industrial, commercial and financial system is unsustainable. Speed-up being what it is, a few days from now the world economy may collapse. But say it’s months or years. That would still be huge, and in historic terms, happening in a flash. It seems to me the greedsters, power-trippers and psychopaths, ignorant or dismissive of history, have really built a house of cards. These are not designed to stand. Something will bring it down. There’s a need for contingency planning and not only by survivalists.

There’s one contingency some of us are preparing for. We have the resources. Should the current gang of dinosaurs impose on a long-suffering planet another 9/11, call it 9/12, the vast and now clued-in 9/11Truth movement should move with lightning speed to expose 9/12 for the fraud it is. It would be unprecedented in world history for this to take place.

What we call civilization has become so complex that it may be slipping beyond the oligarchs to control. Call that hopeful. But fear rests on the likelihood of chaos setting loose the dark sides of human nature.

Arthur C. Clarke wrote that the two greatest failures of our time are failure of imagination and failure of nerve. To some extent our imaginations are being pried open and expanded. The power of crisis will surely continue, speeding up the process and expanding our imaginations further. The Sufi mystic Jalaludin Rumi wrote: “To increase your knowledge, increase your necessity.” He might have added: “To increase your nerve increase your knowledge.”
Conclusion
One goal to consider as a purpose for re-investigating 9/11 is to provide an important foundation stone for a counter-revolution. The liberating trends and developments of the 1960’s scared the Western oligarchs into orchestrating a reactionary rightwing revolution fronted by the likes of Reagan and Thatcher.
The big plan was to restructure the world’s economy to be sweet for global monopoly capitalism, requiring a rollback of the fairer society that took shape following the Second World War. The propaganda machine of the elites convinced all sorts of people to think of this improved society as “the welfare state” or the “nanny state.” Domestic deregulation and the establishment of Trojan horse bodies such as the IMF and World Bank were made, through media brainwashing, to appear good for all. All sorts of trends, including trends of omission, developed. By and large these trends were manufactured, imposed. Ken Burrows and I were talking this morning and jointly discovered our wonder at why the promising trend to Futures Studies in the universities in the late 60s and early 70’s petered out. Could it be that the oligarchs, always plotting long-term wide band strategy – think Hitler’s 1,000-year reich – don’t want other classes studying and thinking about the big picture future, the way we are at this conference? Today’s eruptions in Thailand, Greece and elsewhere, and probably more to come, are complicated. But I’d like to think that analysis will show they are in part a counter-revolution, pushback against the agenda of the oligarchs.
If they are, we may in the real world stand where the movie V for Vendetta ends – with the populace on the street by the thousands, all wearing Guy Fawkes masks, fully informed now that they have been hoodwinked by the rot, corruption and death-dealing at the core of the Deep State, by the subservient mass media and by false flag operations. But the movie’s makers left completely up in the air what what populace is going to do, how that populace will reorganize society, now that they have had the scales removed from their eyes.
The so-called anti-globalization movement (which always should have called itself the anti-corporate agenda globalization movement) was a significant casualty of 9/11 – stopped in its tracks and just now recovering. Will the best blueprints for a safer saner world take hold in the imaginations and lives of a critical mass of Earth’s inhabitants? Can the switch be made to bioregionalism, the return of community, taming the military monster, detecting and neutralizing psychopath power, putting banksters in their place, reducing the yawning gaps between the richest and the poorest, and much more? Can we achieve –not a heaven on Earth, not a new Jerusalem; it’s too late for that — just a half-decent Plan B.
Speaking to our strategy, consider that of the US Space Command in its DOD Joint Vision 2020 document. It calls for “full spectrum dominance” over “all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win global wars against any adversary, including with nuclear weapons pre-emptively.” Except for the last part, I like the sheer ambition of it. Maybe we could adopt the DOD’s can-do spirit in our struggle against the diaboligarchy – a suitable label for a system that would plot an aggressive imperialist militaristic imposition of “full spectrum dominance” and unselfconsciously call it “a vision.”
On our side of the full spectrum, this is no time for surplus powerlessness. Hit ‘em everywhere. Replace power with truth. Replace hate with love. Replace fear with courage. Project resistance and inspiration across the electromagnetic spectrum and over the back fence with your neighbour. And if that new safer saner world, that Plan B world, is achieved, the 9/11Truth movement – by reaching beyond its grasp – will have made a worthy contribution toward bringing it about. Thank you.
===30===

SOURCE: IHH Insani Yardim Vakfi

# And that the boats are being hauled into Haifa and not Ashdod so that journalists are not there 7 minutes ago via web
# Our Israeli attorney in Haifa has said that ten people have been murdered 10 minutes ago via web
# Don’t know fate of the other boats
# At about 4:30 am, Israeli commandos dropped from helicopter onto deck of Turkish ship, immediately opened fire on unarmed civilians. 20 minutes ago via web
# IDF commandoes descending from an helicopter on the IHH turkish ship. The ship is surrounded by Navy vessels. #Flotilla 7 minutes ago via web

me: where are you? Are you there?

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Firefighters, Architects & Engineers – Truth Exposes 911 Myths
Firefighter Erik Lawyer and Architect Richard Gage, AIA

9/11 Myths Exposed: Firefighters, Architects and Engineers Re-investigate the Destruction of the Three World Trade Center Skyscrapers — Firefighter Erik Lawyer and Architect Richard Gage, AIA.

Video & Audio courtesy of ae911truth.org Share ]]> http://noliesradio.org/archives/15996/feed 0 http://noliesradio.org/archives/15365 http://noliesradio.org/archives/15365#comments Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:29:08 +0000 noliesradio http://noliesradio.org/?p=15365 Coming Up Tue April 27th – 7:00 pm Pacific – 10:00 Eastern – 02:00 GMT

This was a No Lies Radio News Live Video Broadcast done on April 27, 2010 from Berkeley, California.

It is now archived below.

An evening with Michael Parenti
— Book Launch of ‘God and His Demons’

Launch of ‘God and His Demons’ and talk by award winning, internationally acclaimed author Michael Parenti. In his brilliant new book, God and His Demons, Michael Parenti’s critical reading of the Old and New Testament throws light on the religious origins of contemporary cruelty… God and His Demons is a tour de force, combining serious scholarship and political passion with wry wit. –James Petras, Bartle Professor Emeritus, Binghamton University, NY

Share ]]> http://noliesradio.org/archives/15365/feed 0 http://noliesradio.org/archives/14906 http://noliesradio.org/archives/14906#comments Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:09:24 +0000 noliesradio http://noliesradio.org/?p=14906 Coming Up Thur April 22nd – 7:00 pm Pacific – 10:00 Eastern – 02:00 GMT

This show was a No Lies Radio News Special and was Video-Casted LIVE on April 22, 2010. It is now archived below.

Truth Emergency International:
…. Censorship, Propaganda, and American Empire

THE EMPIRE, POWER, AND PROPAGANDA LECTURE SERIES:
An evening with Project Censored. Please join the co-editors of Censored 2010, Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, for a public talk and discussion on the ongoing Truth Emergency and media censorship in the US.

From Project Censored article “State Crimes Against Democracy”
by Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff:
“New research in the journal American Behavioral Scientist (Sage publications, February 2010) addresses the concept of ‘State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD). Professor Lance deHaven-Smith from Florida State University writes that SCADs involve highlevel government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities for political advantages and power. Proven SCADs since World War II include McCarthyism (fabrication of evidence of a communist infiltration), Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (President Johnson and Robert McNamara falsely claimed North Vietnam attacked a US ship), burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in effort to discredit Ellsberg, the Watergate break-in, Iran-Contra, Florida’s 2000 Election (felon disenfranchisement program), and fixed intelligence on WMDs to justify the Iraq War…Credible scientific evidence brings into question the possibility that some aspects of the events of 9/11 involved State Crimes Against Democracy. Psychologically this is a very hard concept for Americans to even consider. However, ignoring the issue in the context of multiple proven SCADs since World War II seems far more dangerous for democracy than the consequences of future scientific inquiry and transparent, fact-based investigative reporting.”

VIDEO ARCHIVE: Questioning the War on TERROR
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Kevin Barrett Premiered His New Book in Sacramento on April 2, 2010
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A talk by Dr. Kevin Barrett, one of America’s best-known critics of the “War on Terror”.

If you are in the Sacramento Area of California, please support Kevin by attending in Person: Friday, Apr 2, 7pm Pacific, Meeting Rm, Colonial Heights Library, 4799 Stockton Blvd. (at 21st Ave.), Sacramento. FMI: 916-372-8433; afreedmind@yahoo.com

Coming up Saturday April 3rd Live Videocast
–Kevin Barrett on Tour in Sacramento — Stop # 2
Kevin continues his speaking tour in Sacramento. Today he will address the topic,
Peace Jihad: Islam and the Quest for a World Without War.