Intimidation

By Mary Turck, TC Daily Planet August 30, 2008

“I heard somebody saying, ‘They’re coming, they’re coming!’ And feet pounding on the back stairs, pounding on the door saying they had a search warrant. They busted through the door. They’ve got their guns cocked at people.” Sammy Schutz held tightly to five-year-old Gabe, who had been watching a video with his mother and father and about 20 other people when the police stormed into 827 Smith Avenue in St.  read more »

By Richard Brenneman Berkeley Daily Planet August 27, 2008

Campus Police, guns drawn, raided the Long Haul Infoshop Wednesday morning, seizing 13 computers and other gear, but the reason remains a mystery.

The building, which houses a collection of individual organizations ranging from the Needle Exchange to the East Bay Prisoner Support, was targeted by a team of at least seven officers.  read more »

Aug 22, 2008 Indybay

At 9:00 the university submitted a letter to Judge Miller who placed an injunction against cutting the Oak grove. Before she responded the University had arborist extractors cutting limbs off of trees. They started between 9:15 and 9:30. They cut many limbs from the redwood tree with four tee sitters in it. They were stopped from cutting more by tree sitter actions. People began to gather on the ground and decry the Universities actions and to video tape. Soon mainstream news crews were there as well. Then many limbs were cut off of two or more oak trees in the middle of the grove.  read more »

by Amal Jayasinghe Wed Jul 2, 2008

COLOMBO (AFP) - Hundreds of Sri Lankan reporters and cameramen staged a protest outside President Mahinda Rajapakse's home Wednesday demanding an end to a wave of killings, abductions and assaults against journalists.

Media workers' associations peacefully demonstrated outside the main access to Rajapakse's Temple Trees residence while dozens of unarmed police stood behind yellow iron barricades.  read more »

Indybay.org June 16, 2008

On Tuesday, June 17th, at least five hired contract workers arrived at 6:30am and climbed into the branches of the oak trees to take down tree-sit platforms. On Tuesday, June 17th, at least five hired contract workers arrived at 6:30am and climbed into the branches of the oak trees to take down tree-sit platforms. Around 5pm, one woman tree-sitter was taken down from a tree and arrested. Police cordoned off the area with barricades as oaks supporters converged on the site.  read more »

By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press June, 17, 2008

LONDON - Tents, sacks of food and a replica of a burnt-out village hut appeared in Trafalgar Square on Tuesday as a tourist hotspot became a refugee camp to highlight the plight of millions of people displaced in Darfur and elsewhere.

The display, set up to mark World Refugee Day this week, came as the U.N. refugee agency reported a record 11.4 million people were driven from their home countries last year.  read more »

On June 4, 2008 some 200 Mexican troops and police engaged in aggressive actions against Zapatistas in the Patiwitz Canyon of the Lacandon Jungle. Specifically the heavily armed military / police convoy entered the corn and banana fields surrounding Zapatista communities. This threat to the communities' only food supplies provoked a desperate response by Mayan boys and girls, women, and men.  read more »

Mon Jun 2,2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has been secretly detaining terrorism suspects aboard floating "prison ships," a British legal charity charged on Monday, but the Pentagon described the report as inaccurate.  read more »

This article from Radar magazine discusses (all in good histrionic-free reporterese) "Main Core", the database that may identify contain up to 6 million names the Fascist's in power would want to round up if they ever got their martial law,.  read more »

(In apparent retaliation for the mass immigration rallies on May 1. SR)

Heather Knight San Francisco Chronicle May 3, 2008

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Friday stormed 11 El
Balazo restaurants around the Bay Area, arresting 63 illegal immigrants -
and drawing the outrage of immigration advocates who had marched the
previous day to call for the legalization of undocumented workers.

The raids began at 10:30 Friday morning in San Francisco, San Ramon,
Lafayette, Concord, Pleasanton and Danville and involved 62 people from
Mexico and one from Guatemala.  read more »

From: EL NUEVO TOPO <giltapia@igc.org>

May 3, 2008 10:51 Two peasants were murdered on or about April 25, according to the Frente Campesino Ezequiel Zamora. (FNCEZ)

The FNCEZ states: "A group of criminals who hide behind police uniformssilenced the lives of two noted peasants, Fabricio Duglas Ivan Perez Heredia and his brother Engel Alexander Hernesto Perez Heredia. Their bodies were found in the zone of Pavia. Witnesses confirmed that the companeros were transported in a police car shortly before their bodies were found.  read more »

By TINI TRAN, Associated Press April 29, 2008

BEIJING - A Chinese court on Tuesday sentenced 30 people, including six monks, to jail terms ranging from three years to life in prison for their alleged roles in deadly riots in the Tibetan capital last month, state media reported.

The Intermediate People's Court of Lhasa announced the sentences at an open session, state media reported. The trial was the first since the mid-March riots.  read more »

WASHINGTON - Military interrogators assaulted Afghan detainees in 2003, using investigation methods they learned during self-defense training, Pentagon documents released Wednesday show.  read more »

By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Wed Apr 16, 2008

WASHINGTON - The government plans to begin collecting DNA samples from anyone arrested by a federal law enforcement agency — a move intended to prevent violent crime but which also is raising concerns about the privacy of innocent people.  read more »

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press April 16, 2008

BAGHDAD - Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein embraced sobbing relatives and thanked colleagues after being released Wednesday from more than two years in U.S.  read more »

Mexico 9 April 2008 Reporters without Borders

Reporters Without Borders is deeply shocked by the fatal shooting on 7 April in Putla de Guerrero, in the southern state of Oaxaca, of Teresa Bautista Flores, 24, and Felicitas Martínez, 20, two women journalists working for La Voz que Rompe el Silencio (“The Voice that Breaks the Silence”), a community radio station serving the Trique indigenous community.  read more »

Monday March 31, 2008 PGA North America

Davis, CA- Student Leaders at Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl are preparing a demonstration at 5:30 pm tonight in front of the Yolo County Detention Facility after a series of arrests that took place today on D-Q University campus early this morning around 9:30 am. Seventeen Youth and Elders were arrested, most without being given the option of leaving. The Board of Trustees, accompanied by the Yolo County Sheriff’s Department have attempted to remove all the students from campus and brought in a locksmith to replace all the locks.  read more »

Urgent ELP! Bulletin (11th of March 2008)

News is coming in of a number of raids/arrests involving American environmentalists.

The raids appear to be linked to an arson at Michigan State University in 1999 and another arson at a logging site in 2000. Both arsons where claimed at the time by the Earth Liberation Front.

Well known American Earth First! activist, Frank Ambrose, (who has been wrongfully accused of ELF actions in the past) told ELP he has been charged on three counts of arson and conspiracy to commit arson. Other people listed in the indictment include Marie Mason, Aren Berthwick, Stephanie Sultz, and an "un-named participant known to the grand jury."  read more »

By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press March 1, 2008

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli troops turned heavy firepower on rocket squads bombarding southern Israel Saturday, killing 54 Palestinians in the deadliest day in Gaza since the current round of fighting erupted in 2000.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven were wounded in the clashes, the military said.  read more »

By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, Associated Press Feb 18, 2008

KALMA, Sudan - U.N. peacekeepers in armored vehicles and pickup trucks whizzed into this refugee camp. A dozen women came to meet them, bringing their donkeys, water rations and homemade axes.

It was time for one of the refugees' most perilous tasks: collecting firewood.  read more »

This Day Online From Reuben Buhari in Kaduna, Jan. 16, 2008

Four youths, including a pregnant woman were yesterday killed by Policemen in Kaduna when irate youths numbering thousands who claimed to have been without electricity for more than a year, took to the streets in protest.
Also injured in the demonstration, which took place in Sabon Tasha, were 18 policemen who were manhandled by the youth and had their uniforms and booths removed from them. The demonstration started the previous day when Ungwan Boro, a settlement in Sabon Tasha demonstrated by blocking the main road that runs through the area, totally blocking movement in and out.  read more »

Mapuche Student Shot Dead; Political Prisoner Slowly Dying From Hunger Strike

13th January 2008

A peaceful protest by the Mapuche met a bloody end on 3rd January when police opened fire into the crowd, killing 22-year-old university student Matias Catrileo Quezada. The young Mapuche man was shot in the back upon retreating, when Chilean police began firing indiscriminately into the crowd with machine guns. Among the protestors were elderly civilians and children, and it was a miracle that nobody else was killed.

For years the Chilean judicial system has refused to deliver justice and
return the indigenous land illegally taken by the estate Santa Margarita,  read more »

By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press Jan 12, 2008

NAIROBI, Kenya - The price for burning down a home: 500 shillings, or about $8. Double that to have someone hacked to death.

The price list comes from a leading Kenyan human rights group that says some of the worst violence in the country's deadly disputed presidential election is the work of militias paid and directed by politicians.  read more »

By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated Press Jan. 6, 2008

SHENZHEN, China - Huang Qingnan lifts his hospital sheets and shows a long scar below his left hip. His right thigh needed stitches and surgeons fought to mend muscle and tendon gashed in his calf.

The 34-year-old labor activist was stabbed repeatedly by knife-wielding thugs, one in a series of attacks that experts and workers' rights advocates fear may signal a worrying new trend — privatized intimidation.  read more »

By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY, Associated Press Jan. 1, 2008

NAIROBI, Kenya - A mob torched a church sheltering hundreds of people fleeing election violence Tuesday, killing up to 50 people — including many children — as four days of rioting and ethnic clashes marked one of the darkest times in Kenya's history.  read more »

December 5th, 2007 elenemigocomun.net via infoshop News

- jlaw writes: The dirty war against the Oaxacan people and their struggle for justice continues. Ever since the federal government occupied Oaxaca City in November 2006, the state government has carried out kidnappings, beatings, harassment and arrests against members of the popular movement that demands the destitution of Oaxaca’s governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.  read more »

By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer Dec. 11, 2007

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip - Israeli tanks and bulldozers backed by attack aircraft moved into the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing five militants in the widest operation in the territory since Islamic Hamas forces wrested control in June. Another died in an airstrike in northern Gaza.  read more »

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta December 08, 2007

Dozens of transvestites and activists staged a peaceful protest at City Hall on Wednesday, demanding the city administration investigate the death of a transvestite following a raid by public order officers.  read more »

By DAVID PITT, Associated Press Dec 3, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa - A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the state of Iowa cannot fund an evangelical Christian prison ministry program because doing so advances or endorses religion, violating the Constitutional separation of church and state.  read more »

The Telegraph November 22, 2007

 Several pockets of the city spent Wednesday under siege as a small show of protest exploded into an alarming show of strength.

Thousands of rioters played a cat-and-mouse game with hundreds of policemen — and later some armymen — as bottles and bricks outfought lathis and teargas shells for over 10 hours.  read more »

By BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press Nov. 19, 2007

NEW YORK - The U.S. military plans to seek a criminal case in an Iraqi court against an award-winning Associated Press photographer but is refusing to disclose what evidence or accusations would be presented.An AP attorney on Monday strongly protested the decision, calling the U.S. military plans a "sham of due process." The journalist, Bilal Hussein, has already been imprisoned without charges for more than 19 months.  read more »

Sun Nov 11 2007 San Farncisco Bay Independent Media Center (Updated 11/15/07) Hundreds Gather in Calexico / Mexicali to Advocate a World Without Borders  read more »

Karachi, 15 Nov. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - Two boys were killed in Pakistan on Thursday during protests by supporters of the opposition Pakistan People's Party led by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Tufail, 11 and Abdul Rahman, 12, were killed during the PPP protests in the Lyari neighbourhood of Karachi which has been the traditional stronghold of the PPP in the southern port city.

"These two boys are just more victims of this unruly protest," said Muhammad Fayyaz, the superintendent of the Lyari Town Police Station in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI).  read more »

By JAN SLIVA, Associated Press Nov. 14, 2007

STRASBOURG, France - An EU investigator said Wednesday he has evidence to suggest that a Ukrainian airstrip was used by CIA-operated planes involved in the U.S. extraordinary rendition program.

Giovanni Fava said he was also looking into possible CIA use of a military facility at a Ukrainian base. Fava, an Italian member of the European Parliament, drafted a report last year identifying more than 1,000 secret CIA flights with stopovers on European territory since 2001. He identified several of them as being used to transfer terror suspects.  read more »

Fri Nov 9, 2007

LOS ANGELES (AP)- Civil rights advocates criticized plans by the Los Angeles Police Department to map the city's Muslim communities, calling it racial profiling.

The LAPD's counterterrorism bureau plans to identify Muslim enclaves in order to determine which might be likely to become isolated and susceptible to "violent, ideologically based extremism," said Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing on Thursday.  read more »

Nov. 7, 2007

TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgian police armed with batons on Wednesday broke up a six-day protest outside parliament calling for the resignation of U.S. ally President Mikhail Saakashvili, but opposition leaders vowed not to be defeated.

The protesters accuse Saakashvili of economic mismanagement and corruption, accusations he refutes.

An opposition leader told Reuters some of the police hit protesters with plastic batons.  read more »

By MUNIR AHMAD, Associated Press Nov. 5, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Police fired tear gas and clubbed thousands of lawyers protesting President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's decision to impose emergency rule, as Western allies threatened to review aid to the troubled Muslim nation. Opposition groups put the number of arrests at 3,500, although the government reported half that.  read more »

Berwyn, IL via Infoshop News

Over 70 students participated in a sit-in against the Iraq War on All Saint's Day, Thursday, November 1st. It began third hour when dozens of students gathered quietly in the lunchroom at Morton West High School and refused to leave. The administrators and police became involved immediately and locked down the school for a half hour after class ended. Students report that they were promised that there would be no charges besides cutting classes if they took their protest outside so as not to disturb the school day. The students complied, and were led to a corner outside the cafeteria where they sang songs and held signs while classes resumed.  read more »

By MATTHEW PENNINGTON, Associated Press Nov. 4, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Police and soldiers emboldened by state of emergency powers swept up hundreds of activists and opposition members on Sunday, dragged away protesters shouting "Shame on you!", and turned government buildings into barbed-wire compounds.  read more »

"HELL NO WE WON'T GO": FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICERS TO RICE

Thomas Riggins

Recent press reports have highlighted a growing resistance movement by employees at the US State Department. It seems that the Dept. is having trouble finding enough red blooded pork chop eating real American patriots to serve their country by working out of the super sized new American Embassy in Baghdad. It seems like the diplomatic corps is turning down assignments to Iraq in droves, so the Dept. has issued a ukase to serve in Iraq or be fired.

The State Department insiders know what's what in Iraq, not to be at all fooled by the testimony of Tin Pot generals lying to Congress, and they would rather stay safe and sound then go there.  read more »

Nov 1, 2007 By M.J. STEPHEY Time  read more »

By DENIS D. GRAY, Associated Press Oct 26, 2007

THAI-MYANMAR BORDER - It fell to Buddhist monks, normally nonpolitical advocates of loving kindness, to lead Myanmar's recent uprising, taking over from veteran activists who had secretly organized and planned to confront the ruling military.  read more »

Sat Oct 13, 2007

BLANTYRE (AFP) - Despite a maize surplus, some half-a-million Malawians affected by drought may face food shortages before the 2008 harvest, a United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) official said Saturday.

"Some 520,000 people in four districts which were affected by drought are on close watch as they may face risk of food shortages before next year's harvest," Matthews Nyirenda told AFP.  read more »