Arundhati Roy Under Attack, Canadian Activists Fight Back

Vancouver and Surrey social-justice activists protest contempt charge against Arundhati Roy

by Charlie Smith | The Georgia Straight | January 2nd, 2016

Arundhati Roy has received a contempt citation for criticizing the arrest of a high-profile Indian human-rights activist. Vikramjit Kakati

The judicial persecution of a prominent Indian author and essayist has riled activists around Vancouver.

Many of them gathered in Surrey to protest a charge of contempt of court filed against Booker Prize-winning Delhi writer Arundhati Roy.

The demonstration included Chinmoy Banerjee, Parminder Swaich, Hardev Singh, Harbhajan Cheema, Harinder Mahil, Jai Birdi, and Avtar Gill, all of whom belong to different progressive groups in the Lower Mainland.

When Art Speaks Truth about the Police State, It Is Criminalized and Destroyed

 [Whether banning or burning books, or destroying truth-telling murals, repressive systems reveal their fear of informed people.  —  Frontlines ed.]

Ferguson-inspired ‘Sagging pants is not probable cause’ mural in Trenton removed after police request

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A mural depicting Ferguson teen Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by police earlier this year, was removed from a gate on the corner of North Broad and Hanover Streets on Monday Oct. 20, 2014 after concerns from police. (Jenna Pizzi / Times of Trenton)

By Jenna Pizzi | Times of Trentoon October 20, 2014

TRENTON – A mural was painted over Monday afternoon after Trenton police expressed concern that the painting, depicting Michael Brown, a Ferguson, Mo., teen who was fatally shot by police in August, sent the wrong message about community and police relations.

The painting depicted Brown’s face with the caption “Sagging pants … is not probable cause.” Will “Kasso” Condry, the artist behind the mural, said he wanted to start a conversation about racial profiling.

The Trenton Downtown Association elected to remove the image after hearing concern from police officers that the mural sends a negative message about the relationship between police and the community.

US military blocks entire Guardian website for troops stationed abroad

General, Your Tank is a Powerful Vehicle
It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.
General, your bomber is powerful.
It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant.
But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.
General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think
-- Bertolt Brecht

Troops deployed to Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East and South Asia have ‘theater-wide block’ to Guardian

Spencer Ackerman in New York

guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 July 2013

[Edward Snowden supporters demonstrate outside the US consulate in Hong Kong. Photograph: Bobby Yip/Reuters]

The US military has blocked access to the Guardian’s website for troops in the Middle East and south Asia, after disclosures about widespread US surveillance.

On Friday, the Pentagon and the US army told the Guardian that automated content filters installed on Department of Defense (DoD) networks to prevent the unauthorized dissemination of classified information had blocked access to selected aspects of the Guardian’s website.

But in for troops in Afghanistan, the Middle East and south Asia, the restriction applies to the entire website.

“The Last War Crime” Debuts At Cannes – But Censored In US.

By Jeanine Molloff, Information Clearing House, July 12, 2012

During this summer of Occupy and subsequent police brutality, the subject of torture is hotly denounced by protesters and conveniently ignored by candidates. Like that ostrich diving head first into the sand of political expediency–Americans want to focus on the alleged debt crisis or gay marriage–anything that absolves us from the messy subject of tortures committed in our names by the Bush/Cheney administration and which continue under Obama to the present day. The entire Bradley Manning debacle speaks volumes to this accusation.

In spite of strong evidence identifying Dick Cheney as the mastermind behind this torture regime–the subject remains taboo, both in the ‘news’ business and in Hollywood–that is until Hollywood executives watched trailers for the anti-war documentary– The Last War Crime.

Written, produced and directed by a new talent known only as ‘The Pen,’ this film documents the torture protocol ordained by the Bush-Cheney administration. Since it first circulated a trailer on the web; it has been heavily censored and cyber attacked. You Tube has removed it at intermittent intervals and MTV (which is owned by Viacom) has refused to sell air time for a commercial.

Apparently, there are some things that Viacom won’t accept money for—namely any film or story which exposes the regular torture ordered by Vice-President Cheney. Curious about this documentary and the blatant censorship–(I couldn’t download it)–I contacted the artist aka The Pen. Here is the interview.

JM : What are you hoping this film will accomplish in terms of genuine political change?

The Pen:” The Last War Crime Movie is about indicting Cheney for torture. And isn’t that something billions of people want to see? They say sometimes life can imitate art. But first we felt it was important that we retrace our country’s steps as to how torture was used to get the false intelligence to sell us on a war with Iraq. The real story of how this happened has been buried under an avalanche of pseudo history. They want people to forget the Downing Street minutes and the foreknowledge that the British had that Cheney and Bush were determined to invade Iraq, even if they had to “fix the facts around the policy” to do so. They want to obliterate the memory of the flimsy legal arguments in the torture memos. So we dig out all the true facts, and put them on the big screen, together with an entertaining narrative story about what it would have been like if justice had already prevailed.

Resistance in Tucson, Arizona: “No History Is Illegal! A Campaign to Save Our Stories”

by Teacher Activist Groups, Tucson

They say shut it down. We say spread it around!

As a network of Teacher Activist Groups (TAG), we believe that education is essential to the preservation of civil and human rights and is a tool for human liberation. In alignment with these beliefs, TAG is proud to coordinate No History is Illegal, a month of solidarity work in support of Tucson’s Mexican American Studies (MAS) Program. In January, 2011, state attorney general Tom Horne declared the Tucson Unified School District MAS program illegal. Over the past year, teachers, students and administrators have come together to challenge Horne’s ruling, but on January 10, 2012, the TUSD school board voted 4-1 to cease all MAS classes immediately for fear of losing state aid.

In the month of February we invite you to strike back against this attack on our history by teaching lessons from and about the banned MAS program. On this website you will find a guide that includes sample lesson plans from the MAS curriculum as well as creative ideas and resources for exploring this issue with students. Whatever happens in Arizona, we can keep the ideas and values of MAS alive by teaching about them in our classrooms, our community centers, our houses of worship, our homes.

February 1 is the first day on which TUSD must comply with this law. It is also the first day of African American History Month. And as Dr. King warned us, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” What is happening in Arizona is not only a threat to Mexican American Studies, it is a threat to our right to teach the experiences of all people of color, LGBT people, poor and working people, the undocumented, people with disabilities and all those who are least powerful in this country.

Our history is not illegal. Please join us by pledging to teach MAS.

Go to http://www.teacheractivistgroups.org/tucson/    to:

• Pledge your support
• Tell your story
• Download the curriculum (PDF)

Banned Books in Arizona: Tucson Students Walk Out, Speak Out

On Martin Luther King Day in Tucson 2012, Tucson students spoke out on the seizure of books from their classrooms and the decision to forbid Mexican American Studies. The public school district, Tucson Unified School District, voted in Jan 2012 to forbid the studies after Arizona threatened to extract millions of dollars. Rethinking Columbus was one of seven books moved to a depository by the schools. There are 50 books on the reading list. 

[Thanks to CENSORED NEWS for bringing the news of this resistance. — Frontlines ed.]

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Students Step Up Tucson Walkouts

Protest School District Folly and Mexican American Studies Banishment

by Jeff Biggers, Common Dreams, January 24, 2012

As the nation watches the Tucson Unified School District’s spiral into disarray, hundreds of students walked out of their Tucson schools Monday in a coordinated protest against the banishment of the district’s acclaimed Mexican American Studies program.Pouring into the downtown Tucson area from Pueblo, Cholla and Tucson high schools, among other institutions, the students brought their march to the offices of floundering Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) administrators. In recent days, administrators and board members have issued a series of conflicting and inaccurate statements and carried out the extreme actions of confiscating books in front of children. Last week, a recently hired assistant superintendent from Texas made a troubing call for the deeply rooted Tucson students–many of whom trace their ancestors to the town founders– to “go to Mexico” to study their history.

In a district with over 60 percent of the students coming from Mexican American backgrounds, the TUSD board “dismantled its Mexican-American studies program, packed away its offending books, shuttled its students into other classes,” according to an editorial in the New York Times on Sunday, because “it was blackmailed into doing so.”

Oakland: Tempers Flare Over Cancellation of Palestinian Youth Art Exhibit

by Noelle de la Paz , ColorLines.com

Friday, September 30 2011

Residents in Oakland staged a protest recently to oppose the decision of officials at the Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) to cancel a scheduled exhibit of Palestinian children’s artwork. For some local residents, the cancellation is a seemingly petty effort to stifle self expression and political dissent led by small children.

Nearly one hundred Bay Area residents held a demonstration last Friday to speak out against what they called the censorship of the children’s artwork. The protest was co-sponsored by over twenty organizations, including the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC). A spirited crowd of local youth and exhibit organizers gathered outside in front of the museum with live music by the Brass Liberation Orchestra, then made their way down the street to an alternate venue secured just the day before.

Oakland museum cancels exhibition created by Palestinian children

[Revolutionary Frontlines urges all readers to protest this censorship of Palestinian children’s art by the Oakland Museum, and find other venues where the art show may be viewed by people in the US.  The US government, it must be said, finances the Israeli missiles and bullets which rained down on Gaza during the siege depicted by its child victims.  The US support for Israeli displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their native lands, must stop! — Frontlines ed.]

In December, 2010, Revolutionary Frontlines posted

this video and an article about the Palestinian children’s art at

https://revolutionaryfrontlines.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/children%E2%80%99s-pictures-of-the-devastating-assault-on-gaza/

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By Jennifer Modenessi, Contra Costa Times, 09/10/2011

An exhibition of drawings and paintings created by Palestinian children scheduled to open Sept. 24 at Oakland’s Museum of Children’s Art has been canceled.

The show, which was to run until Nov. 13, included harrowing images of bloodshed and loss during the Israeli bombing of Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead, which began in 2008. In one drawing, a little girl with a bandage on her head stares out from behind prison bars. In another, tanks roll through a burning town as women wail and children weep.

These and other artworks created by Palestinian children ages 6-14 were to have been included in “A Child’s View of Gaza,” which was to open with a day of cartooning workshops and poetry readings.

Hilman Storey, chair of MOCHA’s board of directors wrote in a statement that while the museum supports art that fosters “insight and understanding,” an exhibit of art about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “not appropriate for an open gallery accessible by all children.”

Committee to Protect Journalists: “China must allow free reporting in Inner Mongolia”

[China has had repeated conflicts with ethnic minorities and people in non-Han areas, which have grown more intense since the restoration of capitalism led by Deng Xiao-ping after the death of  revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. — Frontlines ed.]

Paramilitary police block the street during a protest in Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia.

(Reuters/Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center/Handout)

New York, June 1, 2011–Authorities in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region must allow journalists to report on protests that have been ongoing for more than a week, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Information authorities restricted domestic reporting on the student-led protests, which were sparked after Chinese coal mine employees killed two ethnic Mongolians who voiced complaints about the environmental impact of mining in mid-May, according to international news reports. Demonstrators angered by the two attacks gathered in several cities in the northern region, expressing frustration on a range of issues, including the destruction of the Mongolian grassland and tensions between the local population and Han Chinese leaders, the reports said.

Tribune Magazine (UK): Tunisia’s brutal regime may be down, but it has shown it is not out

Since the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali was ousted by mass unarmed demonstrations, successive waves of protest and self-organisation have dismantled many of the old structures of that dictatorship.

by Amanda Sebestyen

Friday, May 27th, 2011

But earlier this month the old regime showed it could still strike back. The prospect of a coup by the old dictator’s party, which had one million members, after the elections in July led to further demonstrations. This time protesters were beaten and journalists – male and female – were singled out. It emerged that a censorship law had been secretly rushed through by the interim government. News from the Tunisian heartland, where the democratic revolution started, is being censored.

La Tunisie profonde is where the uprisings began. The Jasmine Revolution is seen as bloodless, but when you reach the small towns almost everyone knows someone who died, and almost everyone marched and organised against the regime. Since then, they have been setting up their own local councils, been central participants in the independent trade unions, made organisations for the graduate unemployed whose plight kicked off the uprising, held women’s marches, and begun court proceedings to prosecute the snipers who killed the young men and women demonstrators.

‘Killing the truth’ in Kashmir

South Asia

 

Protest in Srinagar on 14 September 2010. The protests are the biggest security challenge to Indian rule in many years

Local journalists have been beaten and prevented from covering recent unrest in Indian-administered Kashmir. More than 100 people have died since June during clashes between security forces and anti-government protesters in some of the bloodiest scenes the disputed state has seen in years.

Sajjad Haider, editor of The Kashmir Observer in Srinagar, describes what it is like for journalists trying to cover the deaths of members of their own community while under curfew.

A local journalist working for the BBC recently had to get his pink-coloured curfew pass, specially designed for the press, replaced with one meant for those attending marriage ceremonies in order to reach me at my home in curfew-bound central Srinagar.

A considerate police officer had told him that this was the best option if he wanted to escape the wrath of the security personnel enforcing the curfew on the streets.The treatment of local reporters by the authorities is in contrast to that received by visiting correspondents.They have come to be known locally as “embedded journalists” and are accorded full assistance by the state government to move around freely in Kashmir. Local journalists covering the unrest – and living amid it – were banned from moving around during the curfew while permit cards issued to them were cancelled.

The Kashmir Press Association recently said this amounted to an “unwritten ban” on local media outlets and accused the government of adopting a discriminatory attitude.  “Scores of local journalists have been thrashed while discharging their professional duties,” it said.

Turkey: Two Kurdish newspapers suspended; magazine copies seized

IPS Communication Foundation,  7 September 2010

Kurdish newspapers “Azadiya Welat” and “Rojev” have been suspended for one month under allegations of “spreading propaganda for a terrorist organization”. Similarly, copies of the left-wing “Guney” magazine were confiscated.

The “Rojev” paper had just resumed publishing after a long break on 24 August 2010 before the Istanbul 11th High Criminal Court decreed the one-month publication ban. The decision was based on the 36th issue of the Kurdish paper, published on 28 August, which featured a picture of Abdullah Ocalan, imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and a PKK flag on the front page.  Additionally, a chart depicting Ocalan and other members of the militant organization published on page eight of the same issue was given as a reason for the ban.

On 21 August, the Istanbul 14th High Criminal Court suspended the publication of “Azadiya Welat”, the only nation-wide Kurdish daily published in Turkey, on the grounds of “spreading propaganda for an illegal organization” and “praising criminals”. The decision stemmed from the paper’s 21 August issue.

Editor-in-chief M. Nedim Karadeniz said that the newspaper has “faced unlawful bans” for eight issues within the past four years. He added that the daily had already been closed down three times since the beginning of the year.

“None of these suspension punishments were in line with universal law. As a matter of fact, Turkey was convicted by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in similar cases related to newspapers stemming from the tradition of the Free Press. Imagine a judiciary system where all the news and articles in the current issue of a twelve-page newspaper are considered a crime,” the editor-in-chief said.

Israel Classifies its Past as Top Secret

Israel seals its archives to prevent more disclosures like this

By Professor Lawrence Davidson

Department of History, West Chester University

Israel is a land built on myths. It is, of course, not unique in this. Indeed, in this way Israel is very much like its patron, the United States. In order to build and maintain a mythical status a nation must create a picture of itself from its very inception and pass that picture down generation upon generation. For the U.S. it is the idea that the nation is a beacon of both democracy and capitalism unto the world and what it does in terms of foreign policy, and even when at war, is always done altruistically. For Israel, the myth is that the nation is democratic and the last bastion of safety for the world’s Jews. Everything it does, even when that amounts to imperial expansion, is done defensively.

“Operation Green Hunt” — the Cultural War

From the Odiya-language film "Swayamsidha"

BJP seeks ban on movie with Maoist theme

2010-07-21 22:40:00

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Orissa Wednesday sought a ban on an Oriya film with a Maoist theme and accused its producer and actors of gloryfying the Left-wing extremists’ ideology.

A delegation representing the state youth unit of the party met Governor M.C. Bhandare and submitted a memorandum demanding a ban on the release of ‘Swayamsidha’ in which two leaders of the state’s ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) would be seen in prominent roles.

‘At a time when the country is struggling to fight Maoism, how could a movie like this be allowed to be screened? We want a ban on the release of the film,’ Bibhuti Jena, president of the BJP’s state youth wing, told reporters.

However, the producer of the movie, Prabhat Ranjan Mallick, denied the charge and said ‘it (the movie) was an attempt to bring the so-called Naxals (Maoists) to the mainstream’.

Sidhant Mohapatra, a BJD member of the Lok Sabha, will be seen in the role of a Maoist leader in the film.

Keeping the lid on government crimes

Targeting Whistleblowers: Truth Telling Endangered

By Stephen Lendman

13 June, 2010
,Countercurrents.org

On April 16, journalist John Cole wrote:

“The message is clear – you torture people and then destroy the evidence, and you get off without so much as a sternly worded letter. If you are a whistle blower outlining criminal behavior by the government, you get prosecuted.”

In fact, it’s worse. Under Bush, torture was official policy. It remains so under Obama who absolved CIA torturers, despite unequivocal evidence of their guilt. But leaking it risks criminal prosecution for revealing state secrets and endangering national security.

On June 7, New York Times writer Elisabeth Bumiller headlined, “Army Leak Suspect Is Turned In, by Ex-Hacker,” explaining that US Army intelligence analyst Specialist Bradley Manning told Adrian Lamo that he leaked the following materials to WikiLeaks:

— “260,000 classified United States diplomatic cables and video of a (US) airstrike in Afghanistan that killed 97 civilians last year,” and

— an “explosive (39 minute) video of an American helicopter attack in Baghdad that left 12 people dead, including two employees of the Reuters news agency.” Manning called it “collateral murder,” a crime he felt obliged to expose.