Tuesday, August 6, 2013

PEN-Zentrum Deutschland fordert Einstellung der Anklage und Schutz für Edward Snowden


Offener Brief des deutschen PEN an US-Präsident Obama:

Einstellung der Anklage und Schutz für Edward Snowden gefordert

Hans Weißhaar
Darmstadt (Weltexpresso) - Als eine von über 125 Menschenrechtsorganisationen, die sich weltweit für die Freiheit des Wortes und der Medien einsetzen, hat das PEN-Zentrum Deutschland in einem Brief an US-Präsident Barack Obama die Einstellung der Anklage gegen Edward Snowden und den Schutz der US-Regierung für ihn und andere Whistleblower gefordert.

Snowdens Enthüllungen, so heißt es darin, haben eine dringend notwendige und längst überfällige öffentliche Debatte über die massenhafte digitale Überwachung in demokratischen Staaten entfacht; sie dienen dem öffentlichen Interesse. Nicht er gehört unter Anklage gestellt, sondern diejenigen, die diese beispiellose globale Verletzung unserer Rechte angeordnet und durchgeführt haben. Geboten sind daher öffentliche Anhörungen und Ermittlungen hinsichtlich der Aktivitäten der National Security Agency (NSA) sowie die Stärkung und Erweiterung juristisch bindender Schutzmaßnahmen für Whistleblower bzw. aufklärerisch wirkende Informanten.
Besondere Sorge macht den Unterzeichnern, zu denen eine Reihe von PEN-Clubs weltweit, aber auch Organisationen wie „Index on Censorship“ oder „Reporter ohne Grenzen“ gehören, dass entgegen der amerikanischen Tradition, die wichtige Rolle von Whistleblowern in demokratischen Gesellschaften anzuerkennen, deren Verfolgung während Präsident Obamas Amtszeit zugenommen hat und dass sich andere Regierungen auf das US-Beispiel berufen werden, um ihrerseits gegen Whistleblower und missliebige Journalisten vorzugehen und kritische Aufklärung über Regierungsfehlverhalten und Korruption in ihren Staaten zu unterbinden.

Dies teilte soeben für das PEN-Zentrum Deutschland deren Generalsekretärin Regula Venske mit.
INFO: 
Das PEN-Zentrum Deutschland ist eine der weltweit über 140 Schriftstellervereinigungen, die imPEN International vereint sind. Die drei Buchstaben stehen für die Wörter Poets, Essayists, Novelists.
Der PEN wurde 1921 in England als literarischer Freundeskreis gegründet. Schnell hat er sich über die Länder der Erde ausgebreitet und sich als Anwalt des freien Wortes etabliert – er gilt als Stimme verfolgter und unterdrückter Schriftsteller.

"Obama Adopted a Pivot to Asia Strategy As Way to Contain China" Says Filmmaker Oliver Stone


 

Acclaimed director is touring Asia in criticism of the US government’s ‘pivot to Asia’ policy

By Huh Ho-joon, Jeju correspondent

“Ever since the Second World War, the US has been building military alliances and setting up military bases overseas. A lot of those bases are in Japan and Korea. Jeju Island is less than 500 kilometers from Shanghai. It could end up on the front lines if a military conflict breaks out between the US and China.”
Internationally renowned filmmaker Oliver Stone said this about the naval base currently under construction on Jeju Island. The 67-year-old director, whose works on the Vietnam War include “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” met with the Hankyoreh on Aug. 3 at the Peace Center in Gangjeong Village in Jeju.
Noting the US’s overseas military strategy, Stone said the issue with the Jeju base was “global, not regional.”
“The Obama administration has adopted a ‘pivot to Asia’ strategy as a way of containing China,” he said. “It’s similar to the way the Soviet Union was contained during the Cold War. And in its push to do this, Washington has built or is building military alliances not just with South Korea and Japan, but with the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Cambodia, and Myanmar. It’s a foolish, paranoid strategy.”
In view of this strategy, the Jeju naval base may be a military extension of the US forces, who could eventually end up using it, Stone said.
The director said he came to Jeju after seeing documentaries by US directors on Gangjeong Village and the April 3 Uprising of 1948 and reading articles on the villagers battle against the construction.
“I wanted to see for myself,” he said. He arrived on the island on Aug. 2 for a three-day stay.
As soon as he arrived, he went to visit film critic Yang Yun-mo, who was arrested while campaigning against the base, as well as people involved in the Grand March for Life and Peace, an event organized to call for a halt to the construction. On Aug. 3, he went to see activists opposing the base in their battle against police at the construction site in Gangjeong - a visit that left him looking very troubled.
“They’re calling the people who oppose the base ‘pro-North Korea,’ but that’s a very simplistic expression and their methods are easy to attack,” Stone said. “But the residents and activists are very sincere about their home, their rights, and this beautiful island of Jeju.”
He also spoke on environmental concerns, noting the base was “destroying beautiful soft coral reefs and contaminating the water.”
“I’ve heard that Jeju water was some of the cleanest and best in the world,” he said. “What happens when it ends up getting polluted?”
“The Gangjeong residents and activists aren’t alone in their battle against the base. This is going beyond South Korea and turning into a worldwide issue,” he continued. “I don’t know how this battle is going to go, but the residents’ fight will not be forgotten.”
Following his trip to Jeju, Stone plans to head to the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where atomic bombs were dropped during the Second World War. There, he plans to attend a conference opposing atomic and hydrogen bombs before traveling on to Okinawa, site of a large US military base.
 
 
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
globalnet@mindspring.com
www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/  (blog)
 

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.  ~Henry David Thoreau 

Oliver Stone joins Jeju residents’ battle against naval base on Jeju Island


Posted on : Aug.5,2013 12:00 KST
Film director Oliver Stone shakes hands with priests and brothers Moon Jeong-hyun (right) and Moon Kyu-hyun at a concert supporting the opposition to the construction of a naval base in Gangjeong Village, Jeju Island, August 3. (by Ryu Woo-jong, staff photographer)

Acclaimed director is touring Asia in criticism of the US government’s ‘pivot to Asia’ policy 

By Huh Ho-joon, Jeju correspondent
“Ever since the Second World War, the US has been building military alliances and setting up military bases overseas. A lot of those bases are in Japan and Korea. Jeju Island is less than 500 kilometers from Shanghai. It could end up on the front lines if a military conflict breaks out between the US and China.”
Internationally renowned filmmaker Oliver Stone said this about the naval base currently under construction on Jeju Island. The 67-year-old director, whose works on the Vietnam War include “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” met with the Hankyoreh on Aug. 3 at the Peace Center in Gangjeong Village in Jeju.
Noting the US’s overseas military strategy, Stone said the issue with the Jeju base was “global, not regional.”
“The Obama administration has adopted a ‘pivot to Asia’ strategy as a way of containing China,” he said. “It’s similar to the way the Soviet Union was contained during the Cold War. And in its push to do this, Washington has built or is building military alliances not just with South Korea and Japan, but with the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Cambodia, and Myanmar. It’s a foolish, paranoid strategy.”
In view of this strategy, the Jeju naval base may be a military extension of the US forces, who could eventually end up using it, Stone said.
The director said he came to Jeju after seeing documentaries by US directors on Gangjeong Village and the April 3 Uprising of 1948 and reading articles on the villagers battle against the construction.
“I wanted to see for myself,” he said. He arrived on the island on Aug. 2 for a three-day stay.
As soon as he arrived, he went to visit film critic Yang Yun-mo, who was arrested while campaigning against the base, as well as people involved in the Grand March for Life and Peace, an event organized to call for a halt to the construction. On Aug. 3, he went to see activists opposing the base in their battle against police at the construction site in Gangjeong - a visit that left him looking very troubled.
“They’re calling the people who oppose the base ‘pro-North Korea,’ but that’s a very simplistic expression and their methods are easy to attack,” Stone said. “But the residents and activists are very sincere about their home, their rights, and this beautiful island of Jeju.”
He also spoke on environmental concerns, noting the base was “destroying beautiful soft coral reefs and contaminating the water.”
“I’ve heard that Jeju water was some of the cleanest and best in the world,” he said. “What happens when it ends up getting polluted?”
“The Gangjeong residents and activists aren’t alone in their battle against the base. This is going beyond South Korea and turning into a worldwide issue,” he continued. “I don’t know how this battle is going to go, but the residents’ fight will not be forgotten.”
Following his trip to Jeju, Stone plans to head to the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where atomic bombs were dropped during the Second World War. There, he plans to attend a conference opposing atomic and hydrogen bombs before traveling on to Okinawa, site of a large US military base.
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
original

Ford Foundation and CIA


The Ford Foundation and the CIA

Attorney General Robert Kennedy was the first, in 1967, to investigate the use of the Ford Foundation and other foundations as “conduits,” “pass-throughs,” and “fronts” to disguise CIA funding for domestic operations (it’s technically illegal for the CIA to operate on US soil under federal law). The investigation ended with Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in 1968 but in 1976 was taken up by the Church Committee, a Senate Select Committee formed in the aftermath of Watergate. The Church Committee found that between 1963-1966, 164 foundations gave out 700 grants over $10,000. Of these, 108 involved partial or complete funding by the CIA (Frances Stoner Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War)
Saunder’s work was the first, in an impressive body of research by progressive academics and investigative journalists:
  • Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War (1999) by British historian and journalist Frances Stonor Saunders
  • Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (2003) by New Hampshire political science professor Joan Roelof
  • The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (2007) by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
  • The Shock Doctrine (2007) by Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein
  • Towers of Deception: the Media Cover-up of 911 (2006) by Canadian journalist, documentary producer and political activist Barry Zwicker
  • Barack H. Obama: the Unauthorized Biography (2008) by historian and journalist Webster Tarpley
CIA Funding of Alternative Media
Most of the research into left gatekeeping foundations involves the funding of so-called alternative media outlets, largely based on information derived from tax returns. The most prolific writer in this area is Massachusetts-based investigative journalist Bob Feldman. Feldman published the bulk of his research in a paper in Critical Sociology “Report from the Field: Left Media and Left Think Tanks – Foundation-Managed Protest?” Although Critical Sociology charges a fee to download this paper, Feldman and others have republished excerpts elsewhere on the Internet. Edward Ulrich published a helpful digest of Feldman’s work in March 2011 at his blog “News of Interest” athttp://www.newsofinterest.tv/politics/media_issues/demnow_npr_controlled.php
The History of CIA/Ford Foundation Collaboration
Feldman starts (http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html) by recapping the history Frances Sanders lays out in Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War).
The Ford Foundation was created in 1936 from the immense Ford family fortune. Historically its governance and mission has been conservative and pro-corporate, in line with its namesake Henry Ford, a rabid anti-Semite who admired Adolph Hitler and helped finance his rise to power.
The Internation Jew by Henry Ford
The International Jew by Henry Ford
***
The CIA-Ford Foundation collaboration began in 1953, when John McCloy, another Nazi sympathizer, because the director of the Ford Foundation. McCloy’s corporate credentials include serving as chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, Westinghouse, AT&T, Allied Chemical and United Fruit Company. As a lawyer, he served as chief counsel to Standard Oil of New Jersey, Mobil, Texaco and Gulf I.G. Farben (German chemical company that was Hitler’s primary German sponsor and which developed the nerve gas used in the mass execution of European Jews). Mcloy watched the 1936 Berlin Olympics from Hitler’s box seat and as the Assistant Secretary of War, blocked Jewish immigration to the US, as well as the bombing of railroads leading to Nazi concentration camps. As High Commissioner of Germany following the war, he pardoned a large majority of Nazi war criminals and assisted in their secret repatriation in the US and South America. Finally in 1963-64 he served on the Warren Commission, which like the 911 Commission, played a critical role covering up FBI, CIA and Pentagon involvement in the JFK assassination.
McCloy publicly advocated for the Ford Foundation to cooperate with the CIA. He argued that open collaboration was a better alternative than having the Agency secretly infiltrate the Foundation’s lower echelons and subvert their work. McCloy also chaired a three man committee that had to be consulted every time the CIA wanted to use the Foundation as a pass-through.
Ford Foundation archives reveal a raft of joint Foundation-CIA projects. The most prominent of these CIA fronts are the Eastern European Fund, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and International Rescue Committee (where William van den Heuvel, father of Nation editor and publisher Katrina van den Heuvel, was a long time board member). The Ford Foundation has also been the primary funder of two secret elite planning groups, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
Alternative Media Outlets Funded by the Ford Foundation
According to Feldman, the so-called alternative media outlets receiving Ford Foundation funding (based on their tax returns) include:
  • Democracy Now!
  • Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and their radio program Counterspin
  • Working Assets Radio
  • The Progressive
  • Mother Jones
  • South End Press (Z Magazine)
  • Alternative Radio
  • Ms. Magazine
  • Political Research Associates (run by rabid anti-conspiracist Chip Berlet)
As Feldman points out, each of these outlets has systematically marginalized independent researchers who have systematically studied 9-11 and the JFK and other political assassinations. Feldman currently blogs at “Where’s the Change?” http://wherechangeobama.blogspot.com/
To be continued.

Rosika Schwimmer (IFFF/WILPF) und die Henry Ford Stiftung

"Die Ford-Stiftung übertrifft an Vermögen alle anderen. Der alte Henry Ford freilich hätte an der Stiftung sicher nur gemischte Freude gehabt. Wohl hatte auch er die Idee, daß die von ihm angesammelten Millionen zu einem wohltätigen Zweck verteilt werden sollten, aber dies geschah mehr nach Laune und exzentrischen Einfällen.
Sein "Friedensschiff", das er 1917 ausrüstete, um bei den Europäern für einen Kriegsschluß zu werben, war weder materiell noch ideell seetüchtig. Bevor es Europa erreicht hatte, war an Bord der Arche ein durch Seekrankheit und üble Laune verschärfter Kleinkrieg ausgebrochen. Rosika Schwimmer, eine ehrgeizige Ungarin, die dem Autokönig die Idee des Schiffes "verkauft" hatte, zerzankte sich mit jedermann. Später war sie Gesandtin des kurzlebigen ungarischen Kommunistenregimes in Bern."

"Ein Vermögen, das zu einem beträchtlichen Teil aus Kriegslieferungen von Bombern, Panzern und Motoren gemacht wurde, soll nun zur "Milderung der Spannungen, die den Weltfrieden bedrohen", beitragen. Millionen, die durch Einführung des laufenden Bandes und radikaler Rationalisierung erworben wurden, sollen jetzt zum Studium und zur Stärkung "individueller Verschiedenheit" beitragen"

DER SPIEGEL 46/1950 15.11.1950  "STIFTUNGEN - Nicht steuerpflichtig"







Australians For BDS and Free Speech/ Petition


Defend free speech and human rights and support the BDS

Defend free speech and human rights and support the BDS

    1.  
    2. Petition by

    3.  
Prof. Stuart Rees, Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation and Assoc. Prof. Jake Lynch, Director of Sydney University's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS), have been threatened with legal action by Shurat HaDin, an Israeli Law Centre, through agents acting on their behalf in Australia.

The claim is that Rees and Lynch are backing racist and discriminatory policies through their support for the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
These accusations are unfounded and intimidatory. They are intended to stifle free speech.

The BDS movement is a call for justice by all sectors of Palestinian civil society and supported around the world by unions, churches, civil society and human rights groups. It is a form of non violent popular resistance and international solidarity in protest against Israel's persistent violation of Palestinian human rights and international law.

BDS policies make it clear that it is a human rights based movement and opposed to racism in all forms, including anti-Semitism.
Inspired by the effective movement against apartheid South Africa, BDS is directed against the illegal military occupation and settlements of the West Bank, the collective punishment of Gaza and Israeli discrimination of its own Palestinian citizens.
BDS opposes corporations, institutions and organizations which support Israel's violation of human rights and international law including businesses such as Caterpillar, Motorola, G4S and Veolia.

In 2009, Assoc. Professor Lynch wrote to the Sydney Vice Chancellor asking him to revoke fellowships schemes between the University of Sydney and two Israeli universities: Technion University, Haifa and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In 2012, Professor Don Avnon of Hebrew University contacted Assoc. Prof. Lynch, seeking permission to use his name on an application under the Sir Zelman Cowan fellowship program. Prof Lynch refused, citing his and CPACS’ support for a boycott of institutional links with universities in Israel.

By supporting BDS and in resisting derision and threats for doing so, Rees and Lynch have rejected the attempt by a foreign agency – in this case the Israeli law firm Shurat HaDin – to stifle dissent in Australia. This letter invites you to do the same, and in the following terms:
I hereby support the global BDS movement.
I wish to be named a co defendant.
To: 
I hereby support the global BDS movement.
I wish to be named a co defendant.
I agree to my name being published.

NATO, gulf monarchies, Israel: hands off Syria



Demonstration on anti-war day 2013 - 31st August 2013 in Frankfurt
Stop intervention and mercenary war against Syria!

Two years of bloodshed in Syria is more than enough!  

In the beginning, many thought that the Syrian people would bring down their “detested dictator” within days or months – as had happened with Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. Time has shown that they have had to rethink. Events have contradicted this simple idea. Syrian society has proved to be more complex and more stable than many had thought.
The hopes and expectations that many observers had pinned on the “Arab spring” two years ago were dashed at the latest with NATO’s attack on Libya. Today, religious minorities are under threat more than before. Instead of strengthening a secular movement for democratic and in particular social rights and the rights of women, the most reactionary Islamist forces are fighting for power.
At the beginning of events in Syria, there were protests against the government and its policies, against repression and corruption. And there were violent clashes from both sides.
The Syrian government reacted to the protests with a comprehensive reform programme. NATO and the gulf monarchies simply continued to supply weapons and focussed completely on destroying Syria as a political force in the Near East. It is a war about regional and global interests of power.
The governments of the USA, France, Great Britain and the gulf monarchies dream of dividing up Syria and continue to give the Islamists both financial and military support. These governments want to take a geostrategic hub under their control, remove Iran’s most important ally and push back Russia’s influence. Hypocritically, they are no longer worried about “democracy and human rights”. They simply want the government removed.
Stop the supply of weapons and sanctions!
The more weapons are supplied to the armed gangs, the more people are being killed. It is a war in which the fighters are not in the uniforms of the countries attacking. It is warfare that is outsourced. Fighters are being recruited within the country; others are being smuggled in from outside. Supplied with arms and money, and given information from the secret services, they wage the war of those powers protecting them.
This war, the support of armed gangs from abroad, is the main obstacle to negotiations between the government and opposition.
Particularly in view of the upcoming general election in Germany on 22nd September 2013, we call upon members of the German parliament to speak out against Germany’s participation in this undeclared war of aggression against Syria, to end sanctions and to stop the supply of weapons to areas of crisis.
For the Syrians’ right to determine their future themselves
We call upon all peace-loving people, irrespective of their origin and their political views, and irrespective of which position they have on inner-Syrian disputes, to stand up against the destruction of Syria by foreign forces! Only a sovereign and independent Syria free of foreign intervention offers the chance for Syria to be able to build a future formed according to the will of the Syrian people!
The most reactionary forces in the region and well beyond, armed, paid and equipped, have united to destroy Syria. Even the supporters of a political opposition in Syria are exposed to the terror of these forces.
In particular, those who want a pluralistic and democratic further development of Syrian society through reforms and dialogue are calling for the end of aggression against Syria as a necessary requirement for this. For apart from the material destruction of the country, the country is in danger of being divided up into spheres of influence of differing and to some extent extremely Islamist forces.
The war waged by NATO states together with the gulf monarchies and Israel against Syria is not only a tragedy for the physical and social, material and cultural life of the Syrians, it also represents an acute threat to world peace. In their striving for power and influence, the warmongers are putting the fate of humanity at risk.
We must make sure that their plans fail and that they are punished for their crimes! We stand up together against them! For Syria! For peace! For the whole of humanity!
Stop smuggling in terrorists and all forms of support!
Withdraw patriot missiles!
Stop the sanctions, which are destroying the life of Syrians!
Only the Syrians themselves have the right to determine their future! No German arms exports to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar!
Germany out of NATO
NATO out of Germany!
End the warmongering!
Frankfurt committee for solidarity with Syria