Friends and Supporters, Thanks for your support over the past months. It has been almost a year since I was detained and forcibily removed from your country without explanation.

Since my return, I have moved to San Francisco, California and continued working for environmental and social justice. If anything, my experiances in Australia have firmed up my commitment to make a better world. As part of that commitment, I have campaigned to clear my name and protect others from similar treatment.

My Australian supporters, Friends of Scott Parkin, and I have done this through a variety of political, legal, media and cultural channels. Check here for details-- http://scottparkin.org/index.htm   Most importantly, I launched a court challenge to quash the security assessment that led to my detention and removal from Australia. Plus, now the court action includes Muhammad Faisal and Mohammad Sagar, 2 Iraqis that have been detained on Nauru for the past 5 years. Both have had secret security assessments made of them, are unable to leave as no country will take them and remain in detention limbo. On July 19th, we had our first day in court. Details here-- http://scottparkin.org/release13-12-05.htm Recent Sydney Morning Herald column by Adele Horin on our case http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/democracy-damned-by-secret-justice/2006/07/21/1153166583062.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

 

 

message for clowner …..

‘The British government issued a fierce condemnation of Israel's bombing campaign in Lebanon last night as world leaders desperately sought a last-minute deal to avert a ground war.

As Israeli tanks massed on the border and troops made sporadic raids on Lebanese villages, Foreign Office minister Kim Howells claimed Israel was not inflicting "surgical strikes" but waging war on "the entire Lebanese nation".

‘Citizens of the eleventh class, really not citizens at all, have no rights citizens of the first class or their government are bound to respect.  Their residence is forbidden in nearly nine-tenths of the country, all of which they used to own.  The areas left to them are cut up into smaller and smaller portions weekly, by high walls, free fire zones and hundreds of checkpoints manned by the army of the first class citizens, so that none can travel a dozen miles in any direction to work, school, shopping, a job, a farm, a business or a hospital without several long waits, humiliating searches and often arbitrary denials of the right to pass or to return.  Posh residential settlements for the first class citizens with protecting gun towers and military bases are built with government funds and foreign aid on what used to be the villages and farms and pastures of the eleventh class citizens.  The settlers are allotted generous additional housing and other subsidies, allowed to carry weapons and use deadly force with impunity against the former inhabitants, and are connected with the rest of first class territory by a network of first-class citizen only roads.

‘A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars-Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime," the 87-year-old Ferenccz told OneWorld from his home in New York. He said the United Nations charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II, contains a provision that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN Security Council.

The six o'clock news is showing cartoons of the Hezbollah missiles flying over the border into Israel, and the planes flying back to retaliate, Israeli troops invading Lebanese villages.  Meanwhile George and Condi are pointing the finger at Syria, even as the US donated smart-bombs are destroying underground bunkers in Lebanon.

Condi says that this is the "birth pangs of a new Middle East" but so close to 6/6/06, from a local point of view, it must look a little like the beginings of Armageddon.  Especially if you live in Har Mageddon 

It must be painful for Dubya, though, to have to work through his summer hols.  The sacrifices one must make to achieve global domination !

Isreal claims a "measued response" to Hezbullah, with no intentions of hurting the innocent people of Lebanon. 

 

Here is the results of that so called "measuered Response.

 

http://fromisraeltolebanon.info/ 

 

Someone, anyone, please STOP THIS MADNESS!!!!!!! 

From: The Sunday Telegraph

TWO Sydney schoolboys are missing, feared dead, after the south Lebanon
village in which they were trapped was destroyed by Israeli missiles.
The father of Ali Sayed, 11, and his brother Abbas, 8, said yesterday he
held little hope the Bexley Public School students had survived Friday's
attack, which destroyed 30 homes in Aitaroun.

"It is very bad news. It is with God now," Rockdale excavator Fadel
Sayed said.

If his worst fears are realised, Ali and Abbas - who were born in Sydney
and on their first visit to Lebanon - would be the first known
Australian casualties of the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in
southern Lebanon.

According to the New York Times, "The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon."

The Times article states that "The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration."

 Report raps Pentagon for equipment sales

By ANDREW MIGA, Associated Press WriterFri Jul 21, 11:10 PM ET

Undercover government investigators purchased sensitive surplus military equipment such as launcher mounts for shoulder-fired missiles and guided missile radar test sets from a Defense Department contractor.

Much of the equipment could be useful to terrorists, according to a draft report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

In June, two GAO investigators spent $1.1 million on such equipment at two excess property warehouses. Their purchases included several types of body armor inserts used by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, an all-band antenna used to track aircraft, and a digital signal converter used in naval surveillance.

"The body armor could be used by terrorists or other criminal activity," noted the report, obtained Friday by The Associated Press. "Many of the other military items have weapons applications that would also be useful to terrorists."

Thousands of items that should have been destroyed were sold to the public, the report said. Much of the equipment was sold for pennies on the dollar.

The list included circuit cards used in computerized Navy systems, a cesium technology timing unit with global positioning capabilities, and 12 digital microcircuits used in F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft.

At least 2,669 sensitive military items were sold to 79 buyers in 216 sales transactions from November 2005 to June 2006.

"DOD has not enforced security controls for preventing sensitive excess military equipment from release to the public," the report concluded. "GAO was able to purchase these items because controls broke down at virtually every step in the excess property turn-in and disposal process."

In the report, the GAO said it had briefed Pentagon officials on its findings but that the Pentagon had no response because it had not had time to perform a detailed review.

Rep. Christopher Shays (news, bio, voting record), R-Conn., chairman of the House Government Reform Committee's national security panel, will hold a hearing on the matter Tuesday. Earlier GAO reports also had found lax security controls over sensitive excess military equipment.

"During previous hearings we learned DOD was a bargain basement for would-be terrorists due to lax security screening of excess military equipment," Shays said in a statement Friday. "Based on GAO's most recent undercover investigation it looks like the store is still open."

Shays added: "We've seen partial changes that have resulted in over $34 million savings, but they still have a long way to go to make this system functional."

The GAO findings were first reported by CBS News and ABC News.

Bush has abdicated the role of the USA as a broker of peace in the Middle East by failing to call for a UN sponsored cease-fire between Israel and Hezbullah. He and America are no longer viewed as a neutral player in this debacle, but then they never were truly neutral.

On Tuesday Bush told reporters that Hezbullah was the "root cause" of the strife in the Middle East. Anyone with any knowledge of the region will tell you that the problems in this region are the result of nearly 60 years of oppression of the Palestinian People by Israel.

While the situation in the region has continued to fester, Bush has been obsessed with his disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq, a continually esculating melay of death and destruction brought on by his and his cronies lies about WMD and Iraq's non existant connection with the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Centre.

 Bush has effectively condoned the isolation of the democratically elected government of Palestine, the "kidnapping" of more than two dozen ELECTED government officials in Palistine and the depriving of the Palestinian Government of it's own tax revenues. Bush also raised no objections when Israel destroyed the only energy plant in Gaza, leaving thousands of Palestinians without electricity.

‘What is transpiring in the Holy Land is anathema to human civilization; it is an embarrassment to six billion people who are good, decent human beings. If our governments refuse to act, then so we must, for the sake of innocent and peaceful Palestinian and Israeli people, for the sake of human decency and for the sake of our future generations. Walls and fences that imprison and dehumanize cannot stand, for they help set mankind back in time to days dark and repressive, unenlightened and barbaric. Together, united as one we can become the massive tremor that helps bring walls and tyranny down.

In a move unprecedented in American History, one local government is trying to make helping the less fortunate a criminal offence. The move emphasises the importance of the corporate dollar over the lives of people as no other laws to date could do, by denying the right of volunteers to help their follow man. The law denies the right of the charitable to feed persons whom "a reasonable ordinary person" determines may be indigent. In this writers opinion this is one step away from calling for the mandatory euthanasia of the poor.

Don't feed the homeless: new Vegas law


July 21, 2006 - 2:36PM


Trying to curb charity that is having unintended consequences, the Las Vegas City Council has made it illegal to give food to homeless people in city parks.

Residents complained that the large numbers of homeless gathering in the parks make it impossible for others to use them, said city spokesman David Riggleman.

Civil libertarians are crying discrimination.

"We're trying to empathise with both camps," he said.

"We're hoping we can improve their lives and improve the lives of people living around the park, some of whom have people urinating and defecating in front of their door."

The new law targets mobile soup kitchens, with a maximum penalty of a $US1000 ($A1300) fine and six months in jail.

Riggleman said that by shutting down such soup kitchens, homeless people will be encouraged to go to a centre or charity that offers services such as mental health evaluations or job placement.

Gail Sacco, who operates a mobile soup kitchen seven days a week, said the city doesn't have adequate homeless services and that she is undeterred.

"There's no way for people to get out to those services in triple-digit weather," she said - with the US experiencing a heatwave.

"My plan is to do anything I feel is needed to keep these people alive."

The law defines a homeless person as an indigent "whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive assistance."

American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada lawyer Allen Lichtenstein said the language makes the law unenforceable.

"The ordinance is clearly unconstitutional and nonsensical," he said. "How are you going to know without a financial statement who's poor and who's not poor?"

"It means they can discriminate based on the way people look.".

from the pen of Richard Neville …..

‘Familiar lies are music to our nation’s ears.

Australians always punch above their weight. We are the most generous people on earth. Our soldiers are the most professional in the world. In fact, we’re so professional, that even when our troops shot at the Iraqi Trade Minister’s bodyguards in June, killing two people and wounding four others, our military carried out an investigation without bothering to interview any Iraqis. Defence Force chief, Angus Houston, found that our soldiers had “acted in accordance with their rules of engagement”. In November, when the US Marines murdered Iraqi women and children in their homes in Haditha, this action was also said to comply with the “rules of engagement”. In that case, the toll was 24. Perhaps it was this death disparity that led Air Marshall Houston to conclude, “the Australian soldiers might have been over-cautious”. While the government has agreed “in principle” to pay compensation, it has decided “in principle” not to apologise.