Israel indicts Palestinian Ghandi, Issa Amro

The Israeli army has laid a lengthy list of charges against Issa Amro, the longtime Palestinian activist and organizer in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.Issa  is a prominent human rights defender and founding member of many non-violent organisations in Hebron who work peacefully against Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Amongst these organisations include the the Hebron branch of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), https://palsolidarity.org/  and Youth Against Settlements, which Issa, aged 36 is a founder a group that organizes non violent demonstrations and direct actions against the violent settler encampments that are protected by heavily armed soldiers who frequently harass Palestinian residents in the city.
Every year, Youth Against Settlements organizes a week of activities calling to open Shuhada Street.
Once the city’s main commercial strip, Shuhada Street was closed off to Palestinians in 1994.Issa  inspired by the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi and that of  Martin Luther King, founded Youth Against Settlements in 2007, advocating civil disobedience and non-violent and pro-active measures to document and protest against the Israeli occupation in Hebron and the West Bank. He  also organizes nonviolent demonstrations to resist settlement expansion and the confiscation of land.
On  26 February 2016 a non-violent protest took place in Hebron, calling to re-open Hebron's Shuhada street, lift the closed military zone in Hebron and put an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine. Although the protest was totally peaceful and no stones were thrown, it was met from the outset with excessive violence from the side of the Israeli army, which  fired rounds of tear gas, stun grenades, and runner coated steel bullets against the demonstrators. Two participants, the lawyer Farid Al Atrash and journalist Mohammad Jardat got arrested. The lawyer Farid Al-Altrash was holding a sign reading ' Free Palestine' when he was arrested and beaten before being taken to the Jaabara police station in the Kiryat Arba settlement.

 Israeli soldiers and Border police attack journalists during Hebron protest 
.

From the outset of the protest it was clear that the Israeli armies main target was Issa Amro. For the first time since he started his human rights activities the Israeli civil administration had given the direct order to arrest him. At first rubber bullets were shot against him, then a sniper aimed at him, he quickly left the protest in fear of being shot.
 On Monday 29 February 2016, three days after the protest, Issa passed through checkpoint 56 to meet an Israeli group from Breaking the silence, a link to their website is  here :-
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/
However the group  was also facing problems. Although they had a special permit to access Issa's house, the army refused to let them in, so the meeting needed to be held outside. While Issa was responding to questions from the group, soldiers came to arrest him.
Arrriving at the police station the investigator accused him of Facebook incitement and organising an illegal protest. The investigator accused him of being the main organizer of the Friday 26 protest and that he had disturbed soldiers on duty and escaped when they tried to arrest him. Je denied all the accusations, but the investigator continued to show him social media pictures from 2012, 2013, and 2014, all of which showed nonviolent events, such as the Olive harvest, the Open Shudada Strret campaign, and a recent art event. One police officer even told him, that they did not legally hold anything against him, but that there were orders from above to arrest him.
The subsequent trial against him  and of Farid Al- Atrassh is clearly aimed at punishing them for their human rights activities. Their treatment as well as the accusations against them ,lack any foundation and Israel is clearly misusing its military court system to restrict  the fundamental basic rights of human rights defenders, including the right of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.
Issa is not a criminal but a human rights defender who uses principles of non-violence that can only be commended. He and  all other  human rights defenders in the Occupied Palestinian Territories I believe should be able to carry out their legitimate human rights activities, including through the exercise of their right to free assembly, without fear of reprisals and free of all restrictions.  
 Amro is one of dozens of leaders across the West Bank and East Jerusalem who are using nonviolent tactics, civil disobedience, and direct action to challenge Israel's occupation. The work of these activists has gone nearly unrecognized, with most of the international media attention focusing on rockets launched from Gaza , but for years he and others have been working to instill the principles of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience in the hearts of Hebron's Palestinian youth, even if no one is watching.
His military trial will begin on September 25th

Read more here, the original source of much of  information contained above :-

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/israel-indicts-palestinian-gandhi

45th anniversary of Attica prison rebellion.

On September 9th, 1971 the Attica Correctional Facility in the State of New York exploded in rebellion. Less than two weeks after the killing of imprisoned black revolutionary George Jackson inmates attempted to free a fellow inmate from his cell after reports that he was being tortured. When guards realized that prisoners had successfully come to the aid of their fellow inmate they attempted to collectively punish the prisoners. Instead of being punished the prisoners revolted. Almost 1,500 inmates in Cell Block D rebelled and seized control over the Attica Correctional Facility several months after  they had formally submitted a 27-point manifesto to the prison administration and the media with a list of demands for prison reforms and an end to racism and brutality against prisoners.
At the time of the uprising, there were 2,300 inmates living in a facility built for 1,600. Though over 60 percent of inmates were Black and Latino the prison was completely run by white guards and employees, many of whom were openly racist..Prisoners were only allowed one shower per week and one roll of toilet paper each month. Their mail was heavily censored to cut out anything involving prisons and prisoners’ rights. The medical neglect within the facility was criminal. Guards often pitted inmates against each other to incite racial violence.Inmates also labored for 40 cents a day, assembling mattresses, shoes and license plates.
The level of unity that developed among prisoners was nearly unprecedented. There were four days of negotiations, until then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered state police to take back control of the prison by brutal force. When the uprising was over, at least 39 people were dead, hundreds were left maimed and wounded and the prisoners left were subjected to extreme brutality and torture. Those who were considered leaders, the prisoner negotiators, spokesmen and security men, were singled out for prolonged abuse. The example of the Attica prisoners uniting and standing up for their rights and dignity in the face of such intense repression inspired and electrified  people around the world.
The Attica prison uprising was by no means an isolated or spontaneous clash. It came as a revolutionary mood swept through Black and Latino communities and other progressive sectors of the population in the United States.By September 1971, the Civil Rights movement had transformed itself into a movement for national liberation among the Black, Puerto Rican and Chicano populations.Starting in 1964, rebellions swept urban areas throughout the United States. Major insurrections took place in Rochester, Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and other cities. When Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered in 1968 more than 120 cities went up in flames as young people battled police, National Guard units and state troopers.Revolutionary organizations like the Black Panther Party and Young Lords Party were militantly organizing in urban communities. Millions of people were protesting the Vietnam War and joining the women’s and LGBT liberation movements.
This revolutionary mood in the community sank deep roots within the prisoner population too. The Attica prisoners were reading revolutionary newspapers. They were studying Marx and Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, and Franz Fanon and reading socialist, communist and revolutionary nationalist newspapers.Prisoners were staging uprisings all over the country, not just in Attica, New York. The rebellions were extensions of the national liberation struggles happening all over the United States.

 
Attica Blues - Archie Shepp
 

Today September 9th  on the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison rebellion, prisoners across the United States will begin a strike that will be a general work stoppage against prison slavery. In short, prisoners will refuse to work; they will refuse to keep the prisons running by their own labors. Prisoners are striking not just for better conditions or changes in parole rules, but against prison slavery. Prisoners state that under the 13th Amendment which abolished racial slavery, at the same time it allowed human beings to be worked for free or next to nothing as long as they were prisoners. Prisoners see the current system of prison slavery to thus be a continuation of racial slavery, which is a system that generates billions of dollars in profits each year for major corporations in key industries such as fossil fuels, fast food, banking, and the US military.
Due to all of these factors, at the present time round 1 in 100 American adults is locked behind bars, and many more are on probation, parole, house arrest, or in immigrant detention facilities. While African-Americans, Native, Latino, and poor whites make up the bulk of the prison population, black, brown, and red convicts make up much a higher percentage of inmates than their white counter-parts. For instance, there are currently more African-American people locked within the prison industrial complex than were held in racialized slavery prior to the American civil war in the 1860s. It is in this climate in the footsteps of their predecessors at Attica that today's prison rebels have organized themselves to carry out the strike.
45 years after Attica the cruel mass incarceration system in the USA that is still inherently merciless and immoral and  must continue to be exposed.A radical vision for change behind bars is still urgently needed, and it was powerfully captured in the Manifesto of Demands read out by LD Barkley, one of the leaders of the Attica rebellion who was killed along with 38 others when the prison was violently re-taken:

We are men! We are not beasts and do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. The entire prison populace has set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners here and throughout the United States.
What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed...We call upon all the conscientious citizens of America to assist us in putting an end to this situation that threatens not only our lives, but each and every citizen as well.

Raving

( a sponanteous memory release)

Too many beats per minute,

too much mdma,

too many straight white lines,

as we huddled together in some far away space,

in corners of oblivion,

getting high as the sky,

watching time burn,

as the profiteers counted their cash,

straight sunshine came to catch us ,

before we all came down,

some of us kept on spiralling,

kept on flying, free falling in escape.

carrying traces of ecstasy unbound.

Survival

 Life is short moves so fast
In moments of slumber leaps,
Everything bought together
Thoughts flying free,
Sailing the seas of time
Carrying a mighty love,
Lamps of resistance
Following free birds on earth,
Releasing defiant cries
Light found in the dark.
Laying with all the hope

We have managed to save,

Allowing impalpable imaginings

To work their magic and become real,

As our journeys continue unbroken
We leave behind traces of struggle,
Evidence of battles fought and won
Stories of endurance, pain and survival,
Moving forward unbowed, unbeaten
Keeping hopeful, steadfast and strong,

Beyond  rage and tears falling from within

Escape the torrents of life, filled to the brim, 

Let your spirits guide you forwards

Let them unlock your locks and chains,

Follow Autumn’s  shapes and hues

Don't  give in to forces of despair.  

Tax Avoidance

An act, made to escape paying taxes is known as Tax evasion. Such practices can be deliberate concealment of income, manipulation in accounts , disclosure of unreal expenses for deductions, showing personal expenditure as business expenses, overstatement of tax credit or exemptions suppression of profit and capital gains etc.This will result in the disclosure of income which is not the actual income earned by the entity. It is surely one of the biggest problems of our age.

In a  piece of research published by HMRC, people who used tax avoidance schemes were asked about why they took them up. With very few exceptions, avoiders were aware that the tax avoidance scheme introduced to them was “unusual” and “at the edge of tax law” — they followed the letter of the law if not the spirit.

It highlighted the reassuring language used by those marketing the schemes that was “designed to make the tax avoidance schemes appear appealing and acceptable”. For example, tax avoidance schemes were described as: being smart with your taxes; a technical exploitation of the law; a form of tax relief; well within the [tax] guidelines; and an opportunity to exploit tax efficiencies.
Anonymous shell corporations and secret bank accounts are vital resources for those engaged in tax evasion and money laundering. But this web of secrecy has started to crumble in recent years due in part to revelations from whistle-blowers embedded in this complex web of tax havens and fake corporations. The Panama Papers, revealed that a single law firm, Mossack Fonseca, facilitated the creation of more than 200,000 offshore entities.The Tories and the right-wing press love to point the finger at those at the bottom of society like people on benefits, the disabled and immigrants. But the truth is tax avoidance by large corporations and the super rich is a far bigger drain on society, with some estimates saying that it costs the UK over £120 billion a year.

Companies that make use of our infrastructure and services while avoiding tax are freeloaders and parasites! Simple as!

John Cage ( 5/9/1912 – 12/8/1992) - Anarchist Poem

 

Avant-garde composer John Cage was born today in Los Angeles,1912. Cage moved in the 1940'S TO New York, where he quickly became known as not just a composer but as a radical aesthetician who profoundly influenced people in several domains. 

Though his achievements as a composer and a theater artist remain well known, he was also a brilliant and original writer, especially at the intersection of poetry and politics. He died in 1992, but his influence continues to echo.

Whenever John Cage performed, he insisted that the auditorium have accessible exits: A spectator who didn't want to stay, he said, should be able to leave easily. Cage—most famous for his 1952 composition 4'33", in which musicians sit in perfect silence for four minutes and 33 seconds—was a gut anarchist.

John Cage - 4'33 performed by David Tudor

 His  music relied on mathematical patterns, randomness, improvisation and chance to create unique sounds and rhythms. He could be said to be one of the developers of modern dance. Cage's pieces are controversial because they are vastly different from mainstream music. All of his compositions were difficult to reproduce and perform, which was an embodiment of his anarchist views. He believed that difficulty would ensure that "a performance would show that the impossible is not impossible" -this being Cage's answer to the notion that solving the world's political and social problems is impossible. Cage considered himself to be an anarchist, and was inspired by the work of Henry David Thoreau.whose texts he used in various ways, most brilliantly in his Song Books, where the performers repeat, " The best government / Is no government at all." In an interview in 1985 John Cage said, "I'm an anarchist. I don't know whether the adjective is pure and simple, or philosophical, or what, but I don't like government! And I don't like institutions! And I don't have any confidence in even good institutions."

Asked about the word ecology, the composer replied that whenever he heard that seductiv word he knew he'd soon hear the word planning and " When I hear that word, I run in the other direction." He also boasted that he never voted.
Some have said his philosophy was more important than his music. He became a Zen Buddhist which impacted enormously on his music. According to Cage music was " purposeful play" however " this play is an affirmation of life - not an attempt to bring order out of chaos , nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living, which is so excellent a once one gets one's mind and desires out of the way and lets it act upon its own accord"
Such an approach that set him so apart from other composers. For him it was the Eastern virtues of " Simplicity , disorder and chance." that he built his ideas and music upon..Cage's unequivocal questioning of the status quo  remain an inspiration for todays artists who are struggling to forge a career. Ever the anarchist, Cage stated :! I think my activity in the arts is analoqous to political activity. It gives an instance on how to change things radically. " I will end with this poem from his visionary hand.

Anarchist Poem

We don't need government
We need utilities. 

Air, water, energy
Travel and communication means
Food and shelter. 

We have no need for imaginary mountain ranges
Between separate nations. 

We can make tunnels through the real ones. 

Nor do we have any need for the continuing division of people
Into those who have what they need
And those who don't. 

Both Fuller and Marshal McLuhan
Knew, furthermore
That work is now obsolete. 

We have invented machines to do it for us.
Now that we have no need to do anything
What shall we do?

Looking at Fuller's geodesic world map
We see that the Earth is a single island, Oahu.
We must give all the people all they need to live
In any way they wish. 

Our present laws protect the rich from the poor.
If there are to be laws, we need ones that
Begin with the acceptance of poverty as a way of life.
We must make the world safe for poverty Without dependence on government." 

Noam Chomsky - The Essentials

For the past 50 years Noam Chomsky’s writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, as a dedicated opponent of war and injustice for more than half a century Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States. His dozens of books and writings for innumerable journals have made him one of the best-known radical voices in the U.S. and around the world, responsible for contributing to the commitment and shaping the thinking of countless people.Here is a compilation of 50 years of ideas and analyses condensed into 2 hours 43 minutes.  Riveting and essential. His words still carry the immense power that criticism and analysis at its best can exemplify: the power of people to understand the world in order to better understand how to change it.