The Arms Merchant

NICHOLAS WOOD

ZAGREB, Croatia, June 30 — On a hot Sunday evening in June, thousands of fans in a packed stadium here in the Croatian capital gave a Nazi salute as the rock star Marko Perkovic shouted a well-known slogan from World War II.

Some of the fans were wearing the black caps of Croatia’s infamous Nazi puppet Ustashe government, which was responsible for sending tens of thousands of Serbs, Gypsies and Jews to their deaths in concentration camps.

The exchange with the audience is a routine part of Mr. Perkovic’s act, and the gesture seemed to lack any conscious political overtones. The audience — most of whom appeared to be in their teens and early 20s — just seemed to be having a good time. But Mr. Perkovic’s recent success among a new generation — many of them apparently oblivious to the history of the Holocaust — has prompted concern and condemnation from Jewish groups abroad and minority groups in Croatia.

Read the rest: New York Times

Protesters in Guatemala have disrupted an Army Day parade, which they said was an insult to the memory of the war’s 200,000 mostly civilian victims.

Police on Saturday used tear gas to disperse protesters, members of the Children’s Collective, whose relatives died or disappeared in the 1960-1996 civil war.

Read the rest: Al Jazeera

BOB HERBERT

Chances are you didn’t hear it, but on Thursday night Senator Hillary Clinton said, “If H.I.V./AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country.”

Her comment came on the same day that a malevolent majority on the U.S. Supreme Court threw a brick through the window of voluntary school integration efforts.

There comes a time when people are supposed to get angry.

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Read the rest: New York Times

WASHINGTON – For the sixth time this year a retired D.C. public school teacher will risk arrest for nonviolent protest against the war and occupation of Iraq.

Eve Tetaz, 75, of 17th Street, N.W. will openly demonstrate in the forbidden “picture postcard” zone in front of the White House Friday at about 12:30 pm. She has described the protest as one of mourning for lives lost during the war in Iraq.

Read the rest: Indy Media

Phil Rockstroh

To live under corporatism is, in ways large and small, to be a fascist-in-training.

In microcosmic mimicry of the plight of the besieged middle and laboring classes, my parent’s Atlanta neighborhood, as is the case with many others in the vicinity, is being destroyed, in reality — disappeared — by a blight of upper-class arrogance. The modest, post-war homes of the area are being “scraped” from the landscape as an infestation of bloated mcmansions rises from the tortured soil. These particleboard and Tyvek-choked monstrosities loom over the remaining smaller houses of the area, as oversized and ugly as mindless bullies, as banal as the dreams of petty tyrant

Read the rest: One Thousand Reasons

Josh Wolf spent more time in prison than any other American journalist in U.S. history for protecting his source materials — videotapes taken at an anti-globalization demonstration in San Francisco. He was finally released on April 3 of this year. Press reports about Wolf have described him as an anarchist, and he has described himself as an anarchist sympathizer.

Read the rest: 10zenmonkeys

WASHINGTON - Thousands of Americans traveled from across the nation to Capitol Hill to demand that Congress restore due process rights, and the rule of law as enshrined in the Constitution. Over eighty organizations, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, came together to organize a rally and lobby visits to Congress. In addition to the rally, attendees at the Day of Action to Restore Law & Justice delivered over 250,000 petition signatures to Washington lawmakers, urging them to:

1. Restore habeas corpus and due process.

Read the rest: ACLU

Brenda Ryan

More than 100 anti-war organizers, including many students and youths, labor, community and immigrant organizers, veterans and GI organizers gathered June 16 at the Solidarity Center in New York City for the National Anti-war Strategy and Planning Meeting. They came from as far away as California, Cleveland, North Carolina and Boston to discuss how to kick-start the anti-war movement into action following its pause after the Democratic Party-controlled Congress approved war funding this spring.

Read the rest: Workers World

Felicani

23 August 2007 will be the 80th anniversary of the state murder of Niccola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Italian-American anarchist militants, they were convicted of murder during the ‘red scare’ by a prosecutor who didn’t hesitate to use their radicalism to bias the jury against them and before a prejudiced judge.

Read the rest: anarkismo

Darrin M. McMahon

American gadget lovers are already lining up for the tech event of the year: Friday’s release of Apple’s much-ballyhooed iPhone. By all accounts, it’s a spectacularly cool gizmo — a single, sleek device that, at the poke of a finger, lets you surf the Web, watch a movie, take a picture, listen to a song or even gab on the phone. It’s easy enough to get seduced by the next next thing, as the phrase goes. But amid all the hype, the real question that a savvy shopper should be asking is: Can it make me happy?

In avid consumer societies such as ours, connecting a gadget, brand or product with happiness — a true, lasting sense of well-being — has become the stock in trade of modern advertising. No doubt Apple will be trying to forge that link again in the coming media and advertising blitz. (Just look at its hipster ad campaign for the shrewdly marketed iPod: all those Technicolor swingers jiving ecstatically away.) The underlying message (Consume and Be Content) is perfectly clear.

Read the rest: Washington Post

Rebecca Carr

Even before Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty got the chance today to describe his role in last year’s firing of nine U.S. attorneys, protesters dressed in pink took over the House Judiciary Committee room.

The protesters, wearing signs with “Fire the Liar” emblazoned across their backs, demanded that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales be removed from office for not telling Congress the truth about why the prosecutors were fired.

Read the rest: Cox

James Wagner

Tonight The Radical Homosexual Agenda struck once again, dramatically zapping Chris Quinn deep inside City Hall during her presentation at the the “Celebration of LGBT Pride” hosted annually by the City Council Speaker.

Why did these homosexuals interrupt the homosexual Speaker while she was addressing her core homosexual constituency in this historic room, the Council Chamber on the second floor of our two-hundred-year-old seat of government? Because Quinn was the civilian agent for a secretly-negotiated agreement (there were no public hearings) with the NYPD which gives the police full authority to restrict public assembly and public speech (if more than 49 people get together anywhere, under any circumstances, they are all subject to arrest - unless they have applied to the police for a permit ahead of time and have received the department’s approval). This policy was never submitted to the Council for consideration; no statute supports this agreement and practice; it is the creation of the Speaker herself.

Read the rest: Indy Media