Guerrero: Social insurrection in Olinalá against organized crime
SIPAZ blog – International Service for Peace – 14 November, 2012

On 31 October, more than 700 residents of Olinalá, some of them armed with rifles, installed barricades in the five access-points to the municipal center so as to impede the passage of organized crime. After several violent acts in the past few days for which organized crime has been responsible, the residents established a supervision commission in Olinalá, saying that they saw themselves as obligated to take justice into their own hands, given the extortion, disappearances, and murders committed by organized crime in this municipality of the Mountain Region of Guerrero, without any appropriate response from authorities. On 27 October, bothered by lack of security, hundreds of residents of the same municipality took city hall for the entirety of the day and detained a presumed kidnapper from a gang that in recent days had assaulted the region with kidnappings and murders.

On 6 November, members of the Regional Coordination of Communal Authorities (CRAC-Communal Polices) from San Luis Acatlán affirmed that, while the presence of Navy and Army units in Olinalá could be positive, “when the federal forces go, the problems will continue.” They emphasized that the state and federal governments have failed to observe their obligation to provide security to the municipalities of the Mountain. That same day, the state Congress called on Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero to open dialogue with the residents of Olinalá toward providing assurances of security for the population. …more

Mexico: UN Committee against Torture expresses grave concern for the practice of torture in Mexico
SIPAZ blog – Internation Service for Peace – 14 November, 2012

On 31 October the United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT), with headquarters in Geneva, opened its evaluation of the Mexican State, in the presence of a delegation of more than 30 public officials from the federal government and that of different states. The CAT is entrusted with monitoring the observance by member-states of the Convention against Torture.

The Committee expressed its grave concern for the practice of torture in the country, particularly in light of the use of armed forces in tasks of public security and the “phenomenon of grave impunity” in which acts of torture remain. It indicated that the penal reform that seeks to change this practice by means of a transition to an oral and accusatory system is not serving well, given that security forces and the Public Ministry continue to utilize coerced testimony as evidence in juridical proceses.

Among the more than 70 questions posed by the CAT experts, those associated with the “evident contrast” of the number of denunciations of cases of torture and the number of punishments meted out were stressed.

By means of a communique released jointly by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), Governance (Segob), and the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR), it was noted that the ten members of the CAT posed several challenges to the Mexican State as regards the classification of the crime of torture at the national level, the application and effects of the Istanbul Protocol, the advances in the implementation of the reform of the judicial system, the situation of migrants in the country, the application of community control, the protection of the human rights of women, as well as challenges in the prison system, among other things. …more

Hamas: Israeli strike ‘has opened gates of hell’
14 November, 2012 – Lebanon Now

An Israeli air strike that killed top Hamas military commander Ahmed al-Jaabari on Wednesday has “opened the gates of hell,” the armed wing of the ruling Islamist movement said.

“The occupation has opened the gates of hell on itself,” said a statement from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, which vowed its militants would “continue the path of resistance.”

Israeli military spokesperson Avital Leibovich said the strike was the start of an operation targeting armed groups in Gaza following multiple rocket attacks on southern Israel.

Jaabari was killed in an Israeli air strike on a car in Gaza City that also killed his bodyguard.

The killing of Jaabari sparked furious protests in Gaza City, with hundreds of members of Hamas and its armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, chanting for revenge inside Shifa hospital.

Outside, armed men fired weapons into the air, and mosques throughout the city called prayers to mourn the commander’s death.

Palestinian security sources and medics confirmed a total of four air strikes across Gaza during the late afternoon—two in Gaza City, one of which killed Jaabari, one in northern Gaza, and a fourth in the southern city of Khan Yunis.
…source

Hamas’s vows to retaliate and warned the killing had “opened the gates of hell.”

Gaza Under Attack
14 November, 2012 – Gaza live with Nadeem Baba

Over the past 48 hours, the Israeli army has escalated their aerial and ground attacks against the Gaza Strip. At least five Palestinians, including children, have been killed, and more than 30 others, including 6 women and 12 children, have been wounded.

Four of these deaths and 38 of the injuries, some of them serious, resulted from an Israeli attack in the al-Shoja’iya neighborhood east of Gaza City which occurred on Sunday.

The Israeli army said that four soldiers were injured when an “anti-tank missile was fired at an IDF patrol along the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip”.

On the first day of the attack, Shifa hospital struggled to deal with the number of injured Palestinians.

In response to Israeli attacks, Palestinian fighters have been sending rockets to Israel while Israel continues to attack different locations in the Gaza Strip, including during the funeral of one of the Palestinians killed in Jabaliya.

Source, credit to Aljazeera- http://www.aljazeera.com/video

FAIR USE NOTICE: This video has been posted to further advance our understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, Technological, democratic, scientific, and social justice issues which constitutes a “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 for research and educational purposes.

…source

Mexico’s New President Set to Empower a “Devil’s Cartel”
14 November, 2012 – NOVANEWS – SHOAH

Baruch Vega, a long-time CIA operative, has raised a red flag over the incoming president of Mexico’s decision to employ the former head of the Colombian National Police, Gen. Oscar Naranjo, as his security advisor in the war on drugs.

CIA Operative Claims Corrupt Colombian Law Enforcer Now Advising Peña Nieto Is Sign Of That Danger Ahead…

“I do not think Naranjo will be running a war against drugs,” Vega contends. “He will be running a war to protect Mexican drug traffickers.”

Vega contends there is a real danger that Mexican president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto is on a path to recreate a similar corrupt alliance between government security forces and major narco-traffickers — many shadowed in the trappings of legitimate business interests — as existed in the early to mid-2000s in Colombia during Naranjo’s rise to power in the Colombia National Police (CNP) while he also allegedly was assisting elements of the infamous North Valley Cartel.In addition to the role Naranjo will play in helping to cultivate Mexico’s drug-war strategy for Peña Nieto, the president-elect has already made public his plans to stand up a paramilitary force, composed of ex-soldiers, that would be some 40,000 strong. Peña Nieto also hopes to created a single, consolidated national police force.

With these tools, he says, the Mexican military can be replaced as the primary enforcer of security in the drug war in Mexico and the battle can be refocused from hunting down the top narco-capos to stemming street violence and other crimes against the community, such as extortion and kidnappings.

The elements of Peña Nieto’s plan, however, as Vega has already exposed in Colombia while working as a US government asset, are almost identical to what gave birth to what Vega calls the “Devil’s Cartel.”Dark AllianceVega told Narco News that between 1997 and 2000, the FBI and DEA each employed him as an operative in separate investigations focused on the North Valley Cartel leadership.
At the same time, Vega claims, he also worked as a foreign counterintelligence source for the CIA. Those facts are verified in US federal agency judicial-hearing documents [link here].During the course of those DEA and FBI investigations, Vega claims he discovered the operations were being compromised by corrupt players within both DEA and U.S. Customs — a federal law enforcement agency whose investigative arm has since become U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. ICE is part of the US Department of Homeland Security.

Vega’s allegations are supported by a US Justice Department memo obtained by Narco News in 2008, known as the Kent Memo. That memo, drafted by Department of Justice attorney Thomas M. Kent, contains some of the most serious allegations ever raised against U.S. antinarcotics officers: that DEA agents on the front lines of the drug war in Colombia are on drug traffickers’ payrolls, complicit in the murders of informants, and directly involved in helping Colombia’s infamous paramilitary death squads to launder drug money. …source

URGENT APPEAL: After Judge Denies Two Requests for Medical Treatment; Ebrahim Saleh’s Lawyer Fears for his Life
14th November, 2012 – Bahrain Center for Human Rights

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights expresses grave concern for the well being and life of political prisoner Ebrahim Saleh. Twenty-one year old Ebrahim Saleh Ali was shot with a pellet shotgun while participating in a peaceful protest in his home village Karranah on the 20th of October.

According to information received by the BCHR. Ebrahim Saleh was carrying a Bahraini flag and protesting peacefully when he was severely injured. After he fell unconscious he was reportedly beaten by riot police and imprisoned for illegal gathering. Throughout his detention and until this day, Saleh has been denied treatment by the authorities. The pellets are spread throughout Saleh’s body but are mostly concentrated in the genital area.

The BCHR has been informed by Ebrahim Saleh’s lawyer, Reem Khalaf, that Saleh was interrogated at the military hospital, and that his health is deteriorating quickly and that he is in severe pain. Saleh has trouble moving and sitting. Reem Khalaf has requested the court twice for medical treatment for her client, but her requests were denied both times.

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights appeals to the United States government, the United Kingdom, the United Nations and all other ally governments and international institutions to put pressure on the Bahraini authorities to:

1. Immediately and unconditionally release Ebrahim Saleh.

2. Allow Ebrahim Saleh immediate access to medical treatment.

3. Immediately stop using excessive force against peaceful protesters.

4. Hold all police officers and those in charge accountable for the deaths and injuries caused by excessive use of force.

The BCHR respectfully reminds the Government of Bahrain of Article 20 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.”

…source

Movement Strategy Brunches: “Campaign Season” Never Ends for the Professional Left “One Big Progressive Cluster-F–k”
by The INSIDER – November 14, 2012 – counter punch

President Barack Obama was elected merely a week ago in a presidential campaign that ran a bill of $6 billion.
“Campaign Season,” as its called by the electioneering professionals and most journalists, has officially come to an end in the eyes of most citizens and the press, both mainstream and “independent media” alike. For the “Professional Left” though, “campaign season” never actually ends, which explains why they refer to their form of activism as “campaigns.” It’s truth in advertising, at last!

The newest “campaign” in town is being run by….wait for it….a MoveOn.org offshoot in the form of “Movement Strategy Brunches” being held nationwide on Nov. 17-18.

“Drink Mimosas”

On Nov. 8, writing to a confidential email list, Liz Butler, a “Senior Fellow and Network Organizing Project Director” of the Movement Strategy Center, declared,

“We are asking you to set up a Movement Strategy Brunch – an informal, low-key way to bring together you and other local grassroots people at the local level to reflect, drink mimosas (or healthy green smoothies) and talk about the future. Sound fun? It’s supposed to be! After so much hard work, it’s nice to be able to kick back, drink some orange juice, and munch on a flaky croissant.”

The Movement Strategy Center is the Fiscal Sponsor for Van Jones’ Rebuild the Dream, according to Rebuild the Dream‘s website. Jones’ front group for the Democratic Party set up shop in June 2011 when MoveOn.org gave $348K to Rebuild the Dream in start-up capital, according to its most recent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 990 form.

Rebuild, as regular CounterPunch readers will likely recall, was responsible for the attempt to co-opt the Occupy movement not once, but twice – once in the fall of 2011 and once again in the spring of 2012.

Butler oversaw the “99 Spring,” the front operation for both MoveOn.org and the Democratic Party. Prior to her current stint at the Movement Strategy Center in April 2012, Butler worked for 3.5 years as the Campaign Director for 1Sky, which in April 2011 merged with 350.org, currently in the throes of its “Do the Math” campaign.

The email was co-signed by Billy Wimsatt, a Fellow at the Movement Strategy Center, as well as an employee of Rebuild the Dream, two outfits that are interchangeable and one-in-the-same. A WhoIs.net search shows Wimsatt registered the website for the “Movement Strategy Brunches” on Oct. 16, a few weeks ahead of the Nov. 6 election.
“Consensual Domination”

Like its cousin the 99 Spring, the ”Movement Strategy Brunches” give well-meaning grassroots activists the illusion of having full control of things at the local level. “YOU organize it,” shouts its website.

Yet again, it’s the same players managing a brand new version of what University of California-Santa Barbara Sociology Professor William I. Robison refers to as “consensual domination” in his classic book, “Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony.”

“The Gramscian concept of hegemony as ‘consensual domination’ exercised in civil and political society at the level of the individual nation (or national society) may be extended/applied to the emergent global civil and political society,” he wrote in the book’s introduction. “The emergence of ‘democracy promotion’ as a new instrument and the orientation in US foreign policy in the 1980s represented the beginnings of a shift – still underway – in the method through which the core regions of the capitalist world system exercise their domination over peripheral and semi-peripheral regions…”

The tools of imperialism have come home to the core of the empire, as they always do. This time, like the many times before, it’s in the form of “consensual domination” on the part of citizens who partake in “activism” that’s nothing more than freshly installed astroturf for the Democratic Party disguised as “democracy promotion.”
“These pseudo-revolutionaires no doubt believe their own propaganda, or their ‘memes,’ as they prefer to call them. But these liberal cultists are nothing more than convenient lap dogs for the ‘progressive’ millionaires who fund them and the Democrats,” said John Stauber, author of the book Toxic Sludge is Good for You and Founder of the Center for Media and Democracy. ”They are well fed, they groom each other, they regurgitate the same talking points, and they consistently accomplish nothing in the real world except to push a false hope that they are leading a real Movement. In other words, it’s a classic form of cooptation, which is both made possible by the severe limitations of the political process and of course serves to limit it further. It is essential to maintaining a status quo that benefits the 1%. Follow the money, this is one big progressive cluster-fuck.”

The Insider is the pseudonym of an activist who works inside the Liberal Foundation-Funded Democratic Party-Allied Belly of the Beast.