More Rohingya survivors tell of Thai abuse

ugh. I haven’t been covering this story, so for background and details, I recommend checking New Mandala. In the meantime, this is a very upsetting video.

more about “More Rohingya survivors tell of Thai …“, posted with vodpod

Dey Krahom Razed to the Ground. State Violence in the service of predatory capital.

[photo by John Vink, taken from Ka-Set page]

The violent eviction of the residents of Dey Krahom in the early hours of Chinese New Year has been well-covered in a number of online fora and publications. It is horrific: the bravery of the residents in their attempts to resist the theft of their land and homes, the destruction of their livelihoods, and their safety was inspiring. The use of impoverished former evictees as workers ordered to violently evict others was tragic.

Dey Krahom was a deeply impoverished area – many called it a slum, though some residents objected to the term, preferring to call the area their home – located in an increasingly valuable part of Phnom Penh. Like previous evictees, the residents were violently intimidated over the course of years, threatened, and told they would be ‘compensated’ with kit homes in an area far outside of Phnom Penh that still lacks running water, sanitation, nearby markets, or anything else that makes life capable of being lived with dignity.

All for the new ‘owner’ of the land, 7NG, a large construction company. The company (or the police?) hired impoverished evictees from previous evictions to do much of the dirtiest and most dangerous work of demolishing the homes of the new evictees.

The entire situation reminds me of a well-known proverb:

ភ្នង​ដេញ​ខ្មោច
ខ្មែរ​ដេញ​ភ្នង
ចិន​ដែញ​ខ្មែរ

The Pnong chase away the ghosts
The Khmer chase away the Pnong, and
The Chinese chase away the Khmer.

In this proverb, the “Pnong” stand in for every indigenous group living in land newly attractive to the lowland Khmer, who chase them off of the land after the Pnong are supposed to have chased away the spirits of the forests. But the chasing continues, for a stronger group then chases the Khmer off the same land. [I'd love to know more about this proverb - anyone have any ideas?]

You can read more about the evictions ay Dey Krahom in the following links. [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 - See also Flickr page here managed by Jinjadey krahom, ] But in the meantime, read this excerpt from the article in Ka-Set (English, below the fold).

Iranian Trade Unionist To Be Hanged Today – Your Urgent Help

Farzad Kamangar, a teacher in Iran, is about to be executed by the Iranian state for his union activities. Short of armed rescue, there is little to be done. Won’t you please help us do just that little bit? You can click on the links in the message (from Eric Lee of LabourStart) below, but they are currently a bit overwhelmed. Try the additional links after the quoted section if that is the case. Thanks.

This morning I received news that jailed Iranian teacher union activist Farzad Kamangar may be hanged within the next few hours.

According to the Education International, he has been taken from his cell in Tehran’s Evin prison in preparation for execution. The guards have told him he is about to be executed and they are making fun of him, calling him a martyr.

According to the Education International, he has been taken from his cell in Tehran’s Evin prison in preparation for execution. The guards have told him he is about to be executed and they are making fun of him, calling him a martyr.

We need your help and we need it right now.

Send off your message to the Iranian president:

http://www.labourstart.org/farzad

Pass on the this message to everyone you know who might support this campaign.

We may only have a few hours left.

I know that I can count on your help. Thank you.

Eric Lee

Related Link: http://www.labourstart.org/farzad

via Iranian Trade Unionist To Be Hanged Today – Your Urgent Help – Anarkismo

More information, and a currently functional link to send a letter to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here at Education International.

A letter from Farzad, via the Canadian Coalition.

What has been accomplished?

I voted for the first time in eight years yesterday. I have no confidence that just because Obama won, the world will become a better place. I have every confidence that if McCain had managed to somehow swipe the election the world would have become a much much more dangerous place.

I am pleased beyond reason that the US managed to elect a black man as president. Hopefully we’ll stop imprisoning so many of them, but if I recall correctly, that issue never came up in the election campaign. More than half of my siblings are of African (and two with Asian) descent, and I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit that a large part of my decision to vote this year came out of the following self-assessment: I do not want to look my siblings (who are not anti-capitalists, anti-statists, or anarchists), my children, or my eventual (maybe) grandchildren in the eyes, and tell them that when given the opportunity to help vote a black man into the presidency, I abstained.

Friends and colleagues on the internets have written some important things on this win which I would like to recommend to my readers. These posts make the point to which I allude in the title of this post clear. As Obama himself said last night, “This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change.” Perhaps. If an Obama presidency has the opportunity to make positive change, it will happen only insofar as he is held responsible for making the bold changes we all need.

We don’t need a new American century – the last one was terrible. We don’t need new American leadership. We do need some basic decency. We do need all sorts of things that would be called ’socialism’ by McCain’s campaign: national health care, job-creation, the production and expansion of our manufacturing base, the re-regulation of the financial industries, and much, much more.

Some thoughts from these good folks after the jump…

Cambodia 1968-1974, Syria and Pakistan 2008: Where’s the Outrage?

via BBC NEWS | Middle East | What could lie behind Syria raid?:

Syria has said American troops carried out a raid inside Syria along the Iraqi border, killing eight people – if the claims are true then this will be the first military incursion by the US into Syrian territory from Iraq.
But its timing is curious, coming right at the end of the Bush administration’s period of office and at a moment when many of America’s European allies – like Britain and France – are trying to broaden their ties with Damascus.

…

All of this is in marked contrast to European efforts to engage the Syrians.

With French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the lead, a number of European countries have sought to bring Syria in from the cold.

But despite glimmerings of dissent from the State Department, the Bush administration has held firm to its policy of no substantive talks with Syria unless – as the Americans put it – Damascus decides to take a more “positive role” in the region.

Our illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, accepted by the vast majority of the world’s complicit governments, despite the occasional feeble protest, have begun spilling, ever more illegally, into neighboring countries – last week’s bombing in Pakistan, yesterday’s bombing in Syria.

All of which happen without serious attempts at justification on behalf of the criminals who perpetrate these murders.

When this happened in Cambodia, from 1968-1973, there was widespread outrage. It must be granted that the Cambodian situation was much more devastating and lengthier than the current outrages taking place in Pakistan and Syria (so far), and that it took a long time for the domestic outrage to build.

But we are supposed to learn from our mistakes, correct?

Correct?

When Game Show Audiences Appear More Informed Than the US Electorate

Word. Submedia and Rebellious Pixels at it again. This stunning piece of propaganda demonstrates why I hate representative politics, and why I’ll be voting, contrary to every kantian ounce of my being, in this year’s elections. (tip o’ the hat to Max Forte for his earlier posting on why he voted in this year’s Canadian election) The way this is remixed makes the audience of “So you think you can dance” appear much, much, much more intelligent and well-informed than the entire American electorate. Shameful really.

more about “When Game Show Audiences Appear More …“, posted with vodpod

Thank Goodness – Troy Davis Execution put on hold again

You should probably know more about this case, which is a particularly egregious example of the sort of garbage that constitutes the US government’s murder of its own citizens.

Were I a praying man, I’d be thanking god. As it is, I’m grateful to all those who were on the streets, working the phones and email accounts, over the last few days.

via Execution put on hold for man convicted in cop’s murder – CNN.com

Developmental Nationalist Ventriloquism and Cui Bono?

David Lempert, whose distressingly hilarious and obviously self-authored wikipedia page is today’s must read, was mentioned in these pages briefly a few days ago, in which I characterized him as a person promoting a Cham homeland, and compared him to people who know better.

My qualifications on this discussion are extremely limited. I am a fluent Khmer speaker who conducted three years of fieldwork in Cambodia, one year of which was funded by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship, and some time of which was funded by the Center for Khmer Studies. I mention these sources of funding to indicate that I share some of Lempert’s funding. I received other funding as well, which is not apparently relevant to this discussion.

Some of my fieldwork included fieldwork in village Kompong Cham, a province inside of Cambodia (not, as Lempert implies, somehow a mixed border area with joint jurisdiction between Vietnam and Cambodia). I do not speak Cham, and although I teach in a religious studies department, my expertise does not include Islam. I do, however, have the capacity for critical thought, and have no dog in this fight.

Stop Police Violence

OCTOBER 22 NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY,

REPRESSION AND THE CRIMINALIZATION OF A GENERATION

PROTEST AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22

4:30 p.m.
KELLOGG PARK, KELLOGG & WABASHA, ST. PAUL

From mass police brutality during the RNC to the
everyday brutality against people of color and
poor people in the streets and in the jails,

something has got to be done to end the reign of terror.

Come out and demand REAL solutions:

• We need a real civilian review authority that holds cops accountable and isn’t just a rubber stamp agency!
• End beatings and abuse in the jails and prosecute brutal jailers!
• No more bogus charges against police brutality victims. Prosecute brutal cops!
• Drop ALL charges against RNC arrestees.  Dissent is not a crime!
• Fire cops who lie in police reports or in court!
• We must let the authorities know that we will no longer be silent in the face of police brutality!

R.I.P., Posse Comitatus, killed by ‘Sea Smurfs’

George Washington himself warned the American populace against the danger of a standing army. Another famous US general, Eisenhower, took advantage of his farewell speech to warn, in tones justifiably strident, about the rise of the military industrial complex.