Category: liberation
- Labels: action, altruism, deception, fascism, freedom, government, human condition, liberation, revolution, truth
“When the people
fear their government,
there is tyranny;
when the government
fears the people,
there is liberty.”
Thomas Jefferson
- Labels: corporations, corruption, freedom, government, liberal, liberation, liberty
Cinco de Mayo has its roots in the French occupation of Mexico, which took place in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, the Mexican Civil War of 1858, and the 1860 Reform Wars. These wars left the Mexican Treasury nearly bankrupt. On July 17, 1861, Mexican President Benito Juárez issued a moratorium in which all foreign debt payments would be suspended for two years. In response, France, Britain, and Spain sent naval forces to Veracruz to demand reimbursement. Britain and Spain negotiated with Mexico and withdrew, but France, at the time ruled by Napoleon III, decided to use the opportunity to establish a Latin empire in Mexico that would favor French interests, the Second Mexican Empire.
Late in 1861, a well-armed French fleet stormed Veracruz, landing a large French force and driving President Juárez and his government into retreat. Moving on from Veracruz towards Mexico City, the French army encountered heavy resistance from the Mexicans near Puebla, at the Mexican forts of Loreto and Guadalupe. The 8,000-strong French army attacked the much smaller and poorly equipped Mexican army of 4,500. Yet, on May 5, 1862, the Mexicans managed to decisively crush the French army, then considered “the premier army in the world”.
The victory represented a significant morale boost to the Mexican army and the Mexican people at large. In the description of The History Channel, “Although not a major strategic win in the overall war against the French, Zaragoza’s success at Puebla represented a great symbolic victory for the Mexican government and bolstered the resistance movement.” The description of Time magazine was: “The Puebla victory came to symbolize unity and pride for what seemed like a Mexican David defeating a French Goliath.” It helped establish a much-needed sense of national unity and patriotism. (read more)
- Labels: democracy, freedom, liberation, liberty, war
Julian Paul Assange (born 3 July 1971) is an editor, activist, political talk show host, computer programmer, publisher, and journalist from Australia, currently granted asylum in Ecuador. He is best known as the editor-in-chief and founder of WikiLeaks, a media website which has published information from whistleblowers.
Assange has received numerous awards and nominations, including the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award, Readers’ Choice for Time magazine’s 2010 Person of the Year, the 2011 Sydney Peace Foundation gold medal and the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Snorre Valen, a Norwegian parliamentarian, nominated him for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.
In 2010, a European Arrest Warrant was issued for Assange in relation to allegations of rape and sexual assault by two women in Sweden. Assange was arrested and after ten days in Wandsworth prison was freed on bail. On 30 May 2012 Assange lost his Supreme Court appeal in England to avoid extradition to Sweden though the court gave Assange a stay of 14 days on the extradition order. This final appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected and, barring any appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, extradition was to have taken place over a ten day period commencing on 28 June 2012. On 19 June Assange entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London, asserted he was being persecuted and requested political asylum, which was granted on 16 August. However, the British government has said he will be arrested if he tries to leave the embassy. (read more)
- Labels: awareness, freedom, liberation, liberty, secrets
Ernesto “Che” Guevara (June 14, 1928 â October 9, 1967), commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia within popular culture.
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout Latin America and was radically transformed by the endemic poverty and alienation he witnessed. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region’s ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of capitalism, monopolism, neocolonialism, and imperialism, with the only remedy being world revolution. This belief prompted his involvement in Guatemala’s social reforms under President Jacobo Arbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow solidified Guevara’s political ideology. Later, while living in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.
Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, instituting agrarian land reform as minister of industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide literacy campaign, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cubaâs armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Such positions also allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces who repelled the Bay of Pigs Invasion and bringing the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba which precipitated the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful motorcycle journey across South America. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment revolution abroad, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and executed.
Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a “new man” driven by moral rather than material incentives; he has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist-inspired movements. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while an Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled Guerrillero Heroico , was cited by the Maryland Institute College of Art as “the most famous photograph in the world”. (read more)
“Guerrillero Heroico”
Che Guevara at the La Coubre memorial service.
Taken by Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960.
- Labels: equality, freedom, liberal, liberation, rebel, revolution
TEHRAN, Iran – Police have closed down dozens of toy shops for selling Barbie dolls in Iran, part of a decades-long crackdown against “manifestations of Western culture,” the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported Friday.
Barbie dolls are sold wearing swimsuits and miniskirts in a society where women must wear headscarves in public, and men and women are not allowed to swim together.
A ban on the sale of the Barbies, designed to look like young Western women, was imposed in the mid-1990s. In its latest report, Mehr quoted an unidentified police official as saying authorities confiscated the dolls from Tehran stores in a “new phase” of the campaign.
In 2008, the Iranian judiciary warned against the “destructive” cultural and social consequences and “danger” of importing Barbie dolls and other Western toys. Even so, Iranian markets have been full of them. One-third of Iran’s population of 75 million is under 15. (read more)
- Labels: censorship, Culture, liberation, religion, sex, women
“People should not be afraid of their governments.
Governments should be afraid of their people.”
- Labels: anarchy, fascism, government, liberation, lies, now
Foolish act of bravery? Egyptian activist risks her life after posting full frontal nude shot online sparking outrage among Muslims.
Wearing nothing but a pair of stockings, red ribbon in her hair and a pair of flat red shoes, the black and white shot would not look out of place in a nude photography book.
But this is no ordinary art project. It is the work of a feminist Egyptian activist who is making a bold and potentially dangerous statement.
Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, a 20-year old university student from Cairo, has sparked outrage in the Middle East with the controversial full-length image, posted on her blog last week.
It has since received 1.5 million hits and thousands flooded the site with insults. Some denounced Elmahdy as a ‘prostitute’ and ‘mentally sick’ or urged police to arrest her.
Elmahdy’s posting is almost unheard of in a country where nudity is strongly frowned upon – even as an art form and could lead to her being jailed.
On her arabic blog, Aliaa defends her actions, writing: “Put on trial the artists’ models who posed nude for art schools until the early 70s, hide the art books and destroy the nude statues of antiquity, then undress and stand before a mirror and burn your bodies that you despise to forever rid yourselves of your sexual hangups before you direct your humiliation and chauvinism and dare to try to deny me my freedom of expression.”
The posting prompted furious discussions on internet social media sites, with pages for and against her put up on Facebook.
One activist, Ahmed Awadallah, praised her in a Tweet, writing, “I’m totally taken back by her bravery.”
A supporter, who identified himself as Emad Nasr Zikri, wrote in a comment on Elmahdy’s blog, “We need to learn how to separate between nudity and sex.”
He said that before fundamentalist influence in Egypt, “there were nude models in art school for students to draw”. Some 100 people liked his comment. (dailymail.co.uk)
Aliaa Magda Elmahdy
- Labels: art, courage, freedom, liberation, women
The proposed United Nations declaration on sexual orientation and gender identity is a Dutch/French-initiated, European Union-backed statement presented to the United Nations General Assembly on 18 December 2008. The statement, originally intended to be adopted as resolution, prompted an Arab League-backed statement opposing it. Both statements remain open for signature and neither of them has been officially adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
The proposed declaration includes a condemnation of violence, harassment, discrimination, exclusion, stigmatization, and prejudice based on sexual orientation and gender identity that undermine the integrity and dignity. It also includes condemnation of killings and executions, torture, arbitrary arrest, and deprivation of economic, social, and cultural rights on those grounds.
Voicing France’s support for the draft declaration, Rama Yade asked: “How can we tolerate the fact that people are stoned, hanged, decapitated and tortured only because of their sexual orientation?”
The proposed declaration was praised as a breakthrough for human rights, breaking the taboo against speaking about LGBT rights in the United Nations. Opponents criticized it as an attempt to legitimize same-sex marriage, adoption by same sex couples, pedophilia (although all major psychological and scientific institutions have rejected such a link), and other “deplorable acts” and curtail “freedom of religious expression” against “homosexual behavior”.
Homosexuality is currently illegal in 76 countries and punishable by death in five. In its 1994 decision in Toonen v. Australia, The UN Human Rights Committee, which is responsible for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), declared that such laws are in violation of human rights law.
In 2003 a number of predominantly European countries put forward the Brazilian Resolution at the UN Human Rights Commission stating the intention that lesbian and gay rights be considered as fundamental as the rights of all human beings.
In 2006, with the effort of its founder, Louis George Tin, International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) launched a worldwide campaign to end the criminalisation of same-sex relationships. The campaign was supported by dozens of international public figures including Nobel laureates, academics, clergy and celebrities.
Among the first to voice opposition for the declaration, in early December 2008, was the Holy See’s Permanent Observer at the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, who claimed that the declaration could be used to force countries to recognise same-sex marriage.
However, Archbishop Migliore also made clear the Vatican’s opposition to legal discrimination against homosexuals: “The Holy See continues to advocate that every sign of unjust discrimination towards homosexual persons should be avoided and urges States to do away with criminal penalties against them.”
In an editorial response, Italy’s La Stampa newspaper called the Vaticanâs reasoning “grotesque”, claiming that the Vatican feared a “chain reaction in favour of legally recognised homosexual unions in countries, like Italy, where there is currently no legislation.”
(read more) (the yogyakarta principles)
The Chinese government should immediately release the artist and outspoken critic Ai Weiwei and end its arbitrary crackdown on dissent, Human Rights Watch said today.
Ai was arrested at Beijing airport on the morning of April 2, 2011, as he was about to board a flight for Hong Kong. Despite considerable domestic and international attention, the Chinese government has refused to disclose where he is detained or the reasons for his arrest.
Update (April 7): A government spokesperson admitted on April 7 that Ai was under investigation for suspected economic crimes but no legal notification has yet been issued. Incommunicado arrests are often the prelude to criminal prosecutions, Human Rights Watch said.
“The arrest of Ai Weiwei reflects a new escalation in the current and already severe crackdown,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “Only sustained international pressure can help Ai Weiwei now.”
On April 6, in what can be read as the first official acknowledgment of Ai’s arrest, a newspaper article in the state-run Global Times announced that Ai would “pay a price” for being an activist and that “the law would not concede” to his criticisms of the government.
The government’s detention of Ai Weiwei appears to have been carefully planned. On the day he was arrested, Beijing public security officers raided his art studio in the suburbs of Beijing and took eight members of his staff, his wife Lu Qing, and a lawyer friend of Ai’s, Liu Xiaoyuan, in for questioning; they were all released later that day. The police seized computers, hard-drives, and other items. State media were instructed not to report on the case, and all references to Ai Weiwei’s arrest were censored on internet and popular micro-blogging services such as Weibo, a Twitter clone.
Under Chinese law, the police can hold an individual for up to three days before deciding whether to release him or apply to the prosecutors for an arrest warrant. But invariably the police manipulate exception clauses that allow for up to seven days’ and, in limited circumstances, up to 30 days’ detention. Police also routinely prevent lawyers from meeting their clients in detention despite legal provisions guaranteeing such access.
Ai’s lawyer, the prominent Beijing lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, has so far been unable to see his client, or even to get formal notification of his arrest. Approval of arrest by the prosecutors, a matter of routine in most cases, usually guarantees later indictment, conviction, and punishment, which typically includes a prison sentence. The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Liu Xiaobo, was detained for a year before he was sentenced in December 2009 to an 11-year term of imprisonment for a series of articles published overseas.
“The Chinese authorities appear to be laying the ground for Ai Weiwei’s formal arrest,” said Richardson. “This is an ominous sign because there are no fair trials of government critics in China.”
Since mid-February, the Chinese government has arrested, detained, disappeared, put under house arrest, summoned for interrogation, or threatened with arrest over two hundred people for dissent or peaceful social activism. Six of the country’s most prominent human rights lawyers – Teng Biao, Tang Jitian, Jiang Tianyong, Liu Shihui, Tang Jingling, and Li Tiantian – have been “disappeared” by the police and remain at serious risk of torture and ill-treatment.
Four prominent activists, Ran Yunfei, Cheng Wei, Ding Mao, and Li Shuangde, have been formally arrested on state security charges. On March 25, the veteran dissident Liu Xianbin was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for “incitement to subvert state power.” The government has also significantly increased its censorship of internet, forced several liberal newspaper editors to step down, and imposed new restrictions on foreign media reporting in Beijing.
The arrest of Ai, one of the most celebrated Chinese artists, who is currently exhibiting at Tate Modern in London, has prompted a reaction from several foreign governments, with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle calling on China for an “urgent explanation” of his fate. British Foreign Secretary William Hague has called on the government to “urgently clarify Ai’s situation and well being.” The European Union delegation in Beijing, members of the European Parliament, and the Australian government have also expressed concern. US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said on April 4 that the government was “deeply concerned.”
“Ai Weiwei is a test case for the international community,” said Richardson. “The past few years have shown that appeasement and âquiet diplomacy’ do nothing to dissuade Beijing from cracking down even harder on dissent.” (Human Rights Watch)
- Labels: censorship, china, fascism, fear, liberation, prejudice
One Human Family
“Whether we like it or not, we have all been born on this earth as part of one great human family. Rich or poor, educated or uneducated, belonging to one nation or another, to one religion or another, adhering to this ideology or that, ultimately each of us is just a human being like everyone else: we all desire happiness and do not want suffering. Furthermore, each of us has an equal right to pursue these goals.
Today’s world requires that we accept the oneness of humanity. In the past, isolated communities could afford to think of one another as fundamentally separate and even existed in total isolation. Nowadays, however, events in one part of the world eventually affect the entire planet. Therefore we have to treat each major local problem as a global concern from the moment it begins. We can no longer invoke the national, racial or ideological barriers that separate us without destructive repercussion. In the context of our new interdependence, considering the interests of others is clearly the best form of self-interest.
I view this fact as a source of hope. The necessity for cooperation can only strengthen mankind, because it helps us recognize that the most secure foundation for the new world order is not simply broader political and economic alliances, but rather each individual’s genuine practice of love and compassion. For a better, happier, more stable and civilized future, each of us must develop a sincere, warm-hearted feeling of brother and sisterhood”…Dalai Lama. (read more)