6 Steps to Enjoying Your True Wealth by Bo Sanchez

How to Be More Emotionally Present to Your Family No Matter How Busy You Are
 
6 Steps to Enjoying Your True Wealth
By Bo Sanchez
     We  were going to Hong Kong that day. I was going to preach for three days but had two extra days to be with my family. Picture us at the airport:  My  wife  carrying  our  baby in her arms, my eldest son bouncing about  like  a rabbit and announcing to the whole world, “I’m going to Hong Kong  Disneyland!”  And  the  poor  skinny  father? Straining to push eight massive  bags  on  a wobbly cart with a stubborn right wheel. (I’ve noticed that these deranged carts supernaturally end up with me wherever I go.)

     That was when we heard the crying.

     Correction.  Not  crying.  But  spine-chilling,  lung-busting screaming.  Two kids were holding onto their mother. They were separated by four-foot  tall  steel  bars. But to those distraught children, those steel bars  represented two years of being without their mother – the contract of a domestic helper in Hong Kong.

     Four small arms clutching, grabbing, not letting go.
    
     The  whole  world  heard  their pleading scream, “Mommy, please don’t go! Please don’t go!” I’ll never forget the mother’s pained, tortured face  -  as  though  a  knife  was  ripping through her body. My wife cried openly. I wept inside and held onto my kids more closely.

      That was two days ago. Yesterday, the story continued…

      Those Small Arms Continue to Reach Out Yesterday was Sunday.

      And I walked around Central.

      If you don’t know Hong Kong, Central is where thousands upon thousands of Filipina Domestic Helpers congregate. They sit on sidewalks. They sit on overpasses. They sit by storefronts.

       I walked passed one woman who was reading a handwritten letter.

       The handwriting was obviously a child’s penmanship.

       I walked passed another listening to a little cassette player – not to listen to music – but to a voice of a kid telling stories.

       But  what  broke  my heart was the news given to me by Shirley, the  head  of  one  organization  that  tries  to  help  them get financial education.  I  was  shocked  by  what she said. “Brother Bo, out of our 700 members who are married, 80% is already separated from their husbands.”

       Families aren’t designed for prolonged separation.

       They’re not just made for that.

       We’re supposed to spend time together.

              6 Steps to Spending More Time with Your Family No Matter How Busy You Are

      “Bo, why are you telling me this? I’m not in Hong Kong. I’m living with my family under one roof.”

        Listen. Yes, you’re not in Hong Kong.

        But if you don’t have time for your family – and your heart is not focused on them – you might as well be in another country.

        You could be physically present – but are you emotionally present as well?

        Let me share with you six important steps you could take to become more emotionally present with them…
Step #1: Be Close.

     I’m still in Hong Kong as I write this piece.

     It’s  five in the morning as I type this article in bed. And my little family is literally around me because we’re all sleeping on one bed. Yes, we’ve become one mass jumble of intertwined humanity – our limbs, legs and  arms  crisscrossing  each  other.  And that’s when I realize – gosh, I don’t know how blessed I am.

     Why?

     Here I am with my family. I feel their skin. I smell their scents. We’re so close, I feel their breath.

     And yet I’m surrounded by 148,000 domestic helpers here in Hong Kong that have been away from their families for months, for years, for decades.

     And for those who’ve separated – forever.

     Let me say it again: We don’t know how blessed we are.

     We complain that our families are nutty. But we don’t understand how blessed we are to have them close enough to experience their nuttiness. We complain about our petty quarrels, our cold wars, our dysfunctionality.

      But whose family isn’t dysfunctional?

      I’ve  talked  to  some  people here in Hong Kong who would give anything  to  be  with  their  families  again  -  even for just one day of nuttiness.  The first step is to be more emotionally present to your family is to actually be physically present to them. Be close!

      You  need  to know how precious your family is – and treat them that  way.  You need to see them as your true wealth – that nothing is more precious than your relationships.
Step #2: Be Deliberate.

     Because you need to protect this treasure or they get stolen from you.  No matter how busy I am, I schedule a weekly romantic date with my spouse.
     Yes, I actually write it down in my appointment book and treat it like a meeting with the President of the Philippines. These weekly nights are blocked off for the entire year. Nothing can touch it, except some dire emergency.

     Why?  Because if my marriage fails, everything else stands to fail as well: My  ministry,  my businesses, my soul… So it is an emergency that I bring her out every week.

     I also schedule a weekly date with my kids.

      I believe parents need to do these one-on-one dates with each of their kids. Unless of course you’ve got 18 children and may need to bring them out by two’s or three’s.

     Sometimes my son and I just walk around the village and talk.

     It doesn’t have to be big. But swapping stories and opening our hearts to one another on a consistent basis is already very big to them. It means they matter to you – that you value them – and you’ll see their self-esteem grow.
Step #3: Be Expressive.

     I tell my wife “I love you” seven times a day.

     I hug my kids countless of times a day.

     At  night,  I  tell  my kids, “I’m so proud you’re my son. I’m so proud I’m your  Daddy.  You’re  a  genius.  You’re a loving boy. You’re an incredibly gifted young man…”

     This is true. I have met 40-year olds who long to hear these words from their parents – “I’m proud of you,” and feel an empty space – like a gaping wound in their souls because their parents have never told them this.

     Don’t do that to your kids.

     And before I forget: Praise your kids seven times a day.

     And praise your spouse seven times a day.

     I’m not kidding. It will revolutionize your marriage.

     If I say, “Criticize your spouse seven times a day,” I bet you’d say, “Kaunti naman. I do that already.” But that’s the problem. We don’t realize that when we criticize our spouses, we actually destroy our marriage bit by bit – not just our spouses.

     But when you praise and honor your spouse – you build up your marriage.

     It can be very simple stuff:
        Ang sarap ng luto mo ngayon, Hon.
        I thank God He gave you to me.
        You’re so hardworking.
        I love it when I see you play with the kids.
        You know how to make me happy.
        Ganda mo ngayon.

     Keep on doing this and you’ll see changes in your life and your marriage you thought were not possible.

     Let me say it again: Praise your spouse – and your children – seven times a day.

  Step #4: Be Deep.

      Your weekly dates shouldn’t just be watching movies, eating out and going home.

      Talk deep.

      Talk about your feelings.

      Enter into each other’s worlds. Dive into each other’s dreams, hurts, desires, worries, hopes and burdens.

       When you open yourself up to your spouse or your child, there are more chances for the other person to open up to you.

Step #5: Be Simple

     Yesterday afternoon, I preached to 700 people in Hong Kong.

      I usually give my talks for 45 minutes. That’s been my trademark. But yesterday, I gave a solid two-hour talk. Vein-popping, heart-pounding, passion-driven talk – because I had a burden in my heart.

      Because I preached on Financial Literacy.

      I challenged them, “Raise your financial I.Q.!”

      I  scolded  them, “When you left the Philippines, you told your kids,  ‘Anak, two years of separation lang ‘to. After two years, Mommy will have  saved enough and will go home and we’ll be together again.’ But after two  years,  you  go  home and you haven’t saved. Because you repainted the house.  Because there’s a new TV set in the living room and a new gas range in the kitchen. Because the kids have new designer rubber shoes.

      I taught them how to live simply and ruthlessly save 20% of their income.

      Because unless they do this, they will be forever trapped in Hong Kong.

      Look at your life.

      Are you living simply?

      Are you saving 20% of your income?

Step #6: Be Financially Intelligent

     I also taught them where to invest.

     I told them, “It’s not enough to just save. You need to know where to put your money. Because savings accounts at 1% and time deposits at 5% won’t do. Inflation – which is at 7% – will simply eat them up.”

     So I taught them about mutual funds and other investment vehicles, including the ability to sell something and get into business.

     Here’s the truth: The more you know about money, the less time you need to make money. So the more time you have for your family.

     Actually, a time should come when you don’t need to make money. Instead, you let money make money. And that requires financial intelligence.

     Read. Attend seminars. Look for mentors.

     Go Home.

     After giving my talk, I took a deep breath and told my audience in Hong Kong, “When you follow these principles and have saved enough – please go home. Please go home to your children.”

     I made a lot of people cry that day.

     I’m telling you the same thing.

     Oh yes, you may be living with your family in one house, but it’s possible that your heart is so far away from your spouse and kids – and they are far away from you as well.

      You need to let your heart go home.
 
      Go home my friend.
      Your heart belongs there.

Discussion: Do you think that religion can create terrorism?

Pormadi has begin a discussion on mylot.com, here is the discussion:

Do you think that religion could create a terrorism? I do not want to say that certain religion. Every single religion have potentiality to create a terrorism. How do you think?

Sunny68:

I do not agree with you. no religion can create terrorism. all religions are good both in content and intent. unfortunately some so called custodians of religions misinterpret and misuse religion for their own vested interests. history is full of events where wars have been waged in the name of religion but in reality were wars for land and wealth. empires were expanded in the name of religion but the benefit went to kings and so called custodians of religion.

Jis2507:

Religion cannot create terrorism.
Yeah, the media portrays (wrongly) Muslims as terrorists. This is very wrong and should stop.
Sure there are some extremeists but they do not speak for all Muslims.
There are extremists in every religion. I am a christian and let me tell you; there’s a such thing as Christian extremists.
The religion itself doesn’t create terrorists. It’s when the religion is taken completely out of proportion and not interpretted correctly, so no, religion cannot, will not, and should not create terrorism.

Ravenladyj:

Religion by itself doesnt and can’t for the most part but when combined with fanatics and ppl who misinterpret what any given religion tries to teach then yes it can….MIND YOU religion on its own comes very close to being able to create terrorism simply by how certain beliefs/rules etc are worded…Religion can, is and has been for centuries, the BASE of terrorism but the acts themselves fall strictly on the doorstep of man..

Pose123:

Hi pormadi, I don’t believe that any of the major religions of the world teach terrorism, in fact no religion that I know off does so. It is only when fanatics twist what religion is saying to mean something else that we have this problem. Blessings.

I think the problem is not a religion, but the people who do not understand the true teaching of a religion.

Indonesia’s quiet revolution bodes well for the relationship

Indonesia’s quiet revolution bodes well for the relationship

• Tim Colebatch
• August 18, 2009

Our next door neighbour is booming politically and economically.

  

THIS year, most of the world’s economic growth will take place in China. Much of the rest will be in India. But the third biggest source of global growth will be right next door: Indonesia.

We don’t think of Indonesia as a rising economic power. Its output ranks only 15th in the world (a bit bigger than ours). Its market ranks 18th (a bit smaller than ours). But Indonesia is changing.

Yes, there was a terrorist attack in Jakarta last month, but that was the first in four years. It has just held free elections for president and legislature that gave an emphatic mandate to its modernising moderate leader, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, for a second five-year term. The army no longer rules. The economy is no longer broken. Indonesia, for so long under the heel of dictators, is now what one analyst calls ”the best functioning democracy in South-East Asia”.

A decade ago president B. J. Habibie unexpectedly ended the dictatorship to allow free speech, a free press, independent courts and free elections. While China, Singapore and Malaysia remain in the grip of ruling elites that won’t let power out of their grasp, Indonesia has become a country where people can say what they like without having to check who’s listening.

And as the global financial crisis has flattened most countries, Indonesia has flourished. In this decade, its economy has grown by almost two-thirds. More Indonesians now live in cities than on farms. Per capita incomes have risen almost 25 per cent in five years, almost 50 per cent in a decade. Even on the IMF’s forecasts – seen in Jakarta as unrealistically low – its economy would grow 15 per cent over the three years of this global recession. Only China and India will do better.

Indonesia has no lack of problems. But a month travelling the country has left me with a strong sense that it is moving ahead, that the roots of democracy have grown deep in its decade of freedom, and that its potential importance to us and the world will grow if Yudhoyono’s 10 years as President becomes the bridge between the chaos of old and its emergence as a new world power.

Indonesia never will be a giant on the scale of China and India. Indonesia has 230 million people; they each have well over a billion. But it is moving along very different lines from China. Last year, analysts Andrew MacIntyre and Douglas Ramage published an essay for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute titled provocatively Seeing Indonesia as a normal country. Their thesis was that Indonesia is developing into a middle-income, stable democracy that poses no threat to its neighbours, and solves issues by peaceful, democratic means. At the time I thought their title provocative; a year and two elections later, it looks prescient.

China is much bigger, much mightier. But China is not a normal country. As we have been reminded starkly, it is an authoritarian dictatorship that tries to solve problems by bullying and force: arresting Rio Tinto’s chief in China, trying to bully the Melbourne film festival, and now, according to The Canberra Times, engaging in ”cyber espionage”, with China suspected of having sent Australian diplomats fake emails, designed to give the sender access to DFAT’s computer network.

Indonesia is different. For all the mistaken fears of Australians past and present, it is not a threat to us. In a wise paper for the Lowy Institute, Australia and Indonesia: current problems, future prospects, Professor Jamie Mackie tells how in the turmoil of the 1960s, when the British embassy was burnt to ashes, president Sukarno summoned Australian ambassador Mick Shann to explain why his embassy remained intact. ”You [Australia] are part of our region, and we both have to learn how to live alongside each other.”

And we have. At government level, the relationship is in excellent shape. Indonesia and Australia are working closely on issues from climate change to people smuggling. Indonesia is now the largest destination for Australia’s development aid, receiving almost $500 million a year to build schools, roads and health centres. There are 17 Australian Government departments and agencies with staff working in the Indonesian Government, helping them make government work. (One big success has been the Australian Tax Office helping its Indonesian counterpart make Indonesia’s big companies and rich people pay their taxes.)

People-to-people relationships are improving, if underdeveloped. There are now 15,000 Indonesians studying in Australia. In the year to June, a record 436,000 Australian tourists went to Indonesia, despite the official warning urging them to reconsider.

The commercial relationship, however, could be much bigger. Indonesia still has a widespread hostility to foreign investment, which Yudhoyono’s reforms have not challenged. Yet Australian companies in Indonesia – such as the ANZ, Toll and Thiess – are doing well, and there is the potential for Australia to help modernise Indonesian business as it is helping to modernise government.

Indonesia’s democratic revolution has put down deep roots. Its economic revolution is starting to do the same. Much depends on Yudhoyono’s second term, and how it tackles corruption and reforms to the bureaucracy, the labour market, infrastructure and investment. What will be good for Indonesia will be good for us.

 

Tim Colebatch is economics editor.

Terror Plot Emerges as Secret Service Game

Manufacturing Consent For The “War On Terror”

Terror Plot Emerges as Secret Service Game

By Julio Godoy

August 20, 2009 — BERLIN, Aug 20 ( IPS) – It was announced as a terror plot busted. German police had captured three young Muslim men in the small village Medebach-Oberschled or, some 450 km southwest of Berlin Sep. 4 in 2007. The police declared they had seized 730 kilograms of hydrogen peroxide, enough to make 550 kg of explosives.

The three men, and a fourth, who was captured a year later in Turkey, wanted to bomb U.S. military and other facilities in Germany, and to kill “as many U.S. soldiers as possible,” one of the accused later confessed.

The four men told court their plans were in retaliation against the U.S. war on ‘Islamic terrorism’, especially the abuse of hundreds of Muslims detained at Guantanamo prison. German authorities and the media dubbed the four men ‘the Sauerland group’, in reference to the region where they were captured.

The Sauerland group were declared to be members of the Islamic Jihad Union, an alleged terrorist organisation based in Uzbekistan.

Almost two years later, the case is before the higher regional court in Duesseldorf, some 460 km southwest of Berlin, and should come to a close early 2010.

But now, the case has ceased to be “the serious terrorist threat” it was called. It is now a mysterious puzzle of secret service games, prosecutors’ alarmism spread by the media, and basic failures of justice.

The supposedly dangerous group members have emerged as no more than some muddle-heads. They had no links whatsoever to international Islamic terror groups.

“No Islamic chief villain…in Pakistan or somewhere else influenced the group,” says Hans Leyendecker, one of Germany’s top investigative journalists. “Its members are dumb, narrow-minded young men who hate the U.S.”

Moreover, the fifth member of the group, yet to be captured, has been described as a Turkish national known only as Mevlut K. He now appears as an informer of the Turkish national intelligence organisation (MIT, after its Turkish name). He was the key figure in the plot, according to confessions by other members of the Sauerland group.

“Without Mevlut, we would not have been able to go as far with the preparations as we did,” Attila Selek, one of the accused, told the court. ‘K’ had procured 26 fuses for the bombs the group was supposed to make, Selek said. Only, the fuses were useless. German police investigations showed that all but two were too humid to work.

Fritz Gelowicz, another member of the terrorist group, said the four men were informed of K’s links with the MIT. “We knew that Mevlut had links with several secret services,” Gelowicz told the court. “We though that these links were good for us.”

K apparently did not hide his links to the Turkish secret service. On at least one occasion K told the group they were being monitored by the German security agencies. “Then he told me he was stealing this information from secret services,” Selek told the court.

Despite warnings that the German police were constantly informed of their actions, the four men continued their preparations until they were captured.

Numerous sources have confirmed that the German foreign intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendi enst (BND) knew in 2004 that Mevlut K worked for the MIT. That year, the sources said, the MIT proposed to the BND that K be infiltrated into Islam movements in Germany. The BND reportedly rejected the Turkish plan.

Despite the confessions about K’s involvement, German justice failed to order his capture for a long time. Mevlut K. is believed to be living in Turkey.

German authorities only issued an international warrant against Mevlut K. Aug. 13, several weeks after depositions by the other four members of the group had been widely circulated.

The Sauerland group could have been “an orchestration to make believe that a huge terrorist threat” was looming over U.S. military facilities in Germany, says Rene Hellig, leading commentator with the Neues Deutschland daily.

Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray calls it a fake case orchestrated by Uzbek security services.

“I should make plain that regrettably it is a fact that there are those who commit violence, motivated by a fanatic version of their faith,” Murray wrote in his personal blog. “Sadly the appalling aggression of the U.S. government and allied war policy has made such reaction much more frequent. They may or may not have been planning to commit explosions. But if they were, the question is who was really pulling their strings, and why?”

Murray says there is no evidence of the existence of Islamic Jihad Union, alleged to have been directing the Sauerland group, other than that given by Uzbek security services. “There are, for example, no communications intercepts between senior terrorists referring to themselves as the Islamic Jihad Union,” he said.

Murray said the planned attacks the Uzbekistan government attributed to the group since the spring of 2004 “are in fact largely fake and almost certainly the work of the Uzbek security services, from my investigations on the spot at the time.” (END/2009)

 

 

http://www.informat ionclearinghouse .info/article233 18.htm

C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help to Kill Jihadists

August 20, 2009

By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.

Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.

The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.

It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations.

Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune. Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program.

Blackwater, which has changed its name, most recently to Xe Services, and is based in North Carolina, in recent years has received millions of dollars in government contracts, growing so large that the Bush administration said it was a necessary part of its war operation in Iraq.

It has also drawn controversy. Blackwater employees hired to guard American diplomats in Iraq were accused of using excessive force on several occasions, including shootings in Baghdad in 2007 in which 17 civilians were killed. Iraqi officials have since refused to give the company an operating license.

Several current and former government officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing details of a still classified program.

Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, declined to provide details about the canceled program, but he said that Mr. Panetta’s decision on the assassination program was “clear and straightforward.”

“Director Panetta thought this effort should be briefed to Congress, and he did so,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “He also knew it hadn’t been successful, so he ended it.”

A Xe spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, also declined to give details of the program. But she praised Mr. Panetta for notifying Congress. “It is too easy to contract out work that you don’t want to accept responsibility for,” she said.

The C.I.A. this summer conducted an internal review of the assassination program that recently was presented to the White House and the Congressional intelligence committees. The officials said that the review stated that Mr. Panetta’s predecessors did not believe that they needed to tell Congress because the program was not far enough developed.

The House Intelligence Committee is investigating why lawmakers were never told about the program. According to current and former government officials, former Vice President Dick Cheney told C.I.A. officers in 2002 that the spy agency did not need to inform Congress because the agency already had legal authority to kill Qaeda leaders.

One official familiar with the matter said that Mr. Panetta did not tell lawmakers that he believed that the C.I.A. had broken the law by withholding details about the program from Congress. Rather, the official said, Mr. Panetta said he believed that the program had moved beyond a planning stage and deserved Congressional scrutiny.

“It’s wrong to think this counterterrorism program was confined to briefing slides or doodles on a cafeteria napkin,” the official said. “It went well beyond that.”

Current and former government officials said that the C.I.A.’s efforts to use paramilitary hit teams to kill Qaeda operatives ran into logistical, legal and diplomatic hurdles almost from the outset. These efforts had been run by the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, which runs operations against Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.

In 2002, Blackwater won a classified contract to provide security for the C.I.A. station in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the company maintains other classified contracts with the C.I.A., current and former officials said.

Over the years, Blackwater has hired several former top C.I.A. officials, including Cofer Black, who ran the C.I.A. counterterrorism center immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.

C.I.A. operatives also regularly use the company’s training complex in North Carolina. The complex includes a shooting range used for sniper training.

An executive order signed by President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 barred the C.I.A. from carrying out assassinations, a direct response to revelations that the C.I.A. had initiated assassination plots against Fidel Castro of Cuba and other foreign politicians.

The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that attacked the United States and has pledged to attack it again, was no different from killing enemy soldiers in battle, and that therefore the agency was not constrained by the assassination ban.

But former intelligence officials said that employing private contractors to help hunt Qaeda operatives would pose significant legal and diplomatic risks, and they might not be protected in the same way government employees are.

Some Congressional Democrats have hinted that the program was just one of many that the Bush administration hid from Congressional scrutiny and have used the episode as a justification to delve deeper into other Bush-era counterterrorism programs.

But Republicans have criticized Mr. Panetta’s decision to cancel the program, saying he created a tempest in a teapot.

“I think there was a little more drama and intrigue than was warranted,” said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

Officials said that the C.I.A. program was devised partly as an alternative to missile strikes using drone aircraft, which have accidentally killed civilians and cannot be used in urban areas where some terrorists hide.

Yet with most top Qaeda operatives believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of Pakistan, the drones have remained the C.I.A.’s weapon of choice. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has embraced the drone campaign because it presents a less risky option than sending paramilitary teams into Pakistan.

Source: http://www.ny times.com/2009/08/20/us/20intel.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

ZIONIST PIONEER RENOUCES ZIONISM

August 17, 2009

Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism

By HELENA COBBAN

 

I’ve never met Dov Yermiya, a Jewish Israeli peace activist who is now 94 years old. But I read of course the book he published in 1983 in which he wrote with anguish about the torture and other gross mistreatment of civilians he witnessed directly during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon the year before.

I have it in my hand now.

I just learned, from  an open letter published  by Uri Avnery, that Yermiya, recently renounced the ideology and practice of Zionism with these stirring words:

“I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has plowed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel,

“Declare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides in the wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is committing suicide and at the three generations of offspring that I have bred and raised in it.

“… for 42 years, Israel turned what should have been Palestine into a giant detention camp, and is holding a whole people captive under an oppressive and cruel regime, with the sole aim of taking away their country, come what may!!!

“”The IDF eagerly suppresses their efforts at rebellion, with the active assistance of the settlement thugs, by the brutal means of a sophisticated Apartheid and a choking blockade, inhuman harassment of the sick and of women in labor, the destruction of their economy and the theft of their best land and water.

“Over all this there is waving the black flag of the frightening contempt for the life and blood of the Palestinians. Israel will never be forgiven for the terrible toll of blood spilt, and especially the blood of children, in hair-raising quantities.. . “

Avnery’s response is fascinating. He too is a veteran peace activist, and of about the same generation as Yermiya. But in the letter he is, I think, pleading with Yermiya not to renounce Zionism completely, but rather to reconnect with the “idealistic” Zionism that they both experienced during their youth.

He writes,

“When I think of our youth, yours and mine, one scene is never far from my mind: the 1947 Dalia festival.

“Tens of thousands of young men and women were sitting on the slope of a hill in the natural amphitheater near Kibbutz Dalia on Mount Carmel. Ostensibly it was a festival of folk dancing, but in reality it was much more – a great celebration of the new Hebrew culture which we were then creating in the country, in which folk dancing played an important role. The dancing groups came mainly from the kibbutzim and the youth movements, and the dances were original Hebrew creations, interwoven with Russian, Polish, Yemenite and Hassidic ones. A group of Arabs danced the Debka in ecstasy, dancing and dancing and dancing on.

“In the middle of the event, the loudspeakers announced that members of the UN Commission of Inquiry, which had been sent by the international organization to decide upon the future of the country, were joining us. When we saw them entering the amphitheater, the tens of thousands spontaneously rose to their feet and started to sing the “Hatikva”, the national anthem, with a holy fervor that reverberated from the surrounding mountains.

“We did not know then that within half a year the great Hebrew-Arab war would break out – our War of Independence and their Naqba. I believe that most of the 6000 young people who fell in the war on our side, as well as the thousands that were wounded – like you and me – were present at that moment in Dalia, seeing each other and singing together.

“What state did we think of then? What state did we set out to create?

“What has happened to the Hebrew society, the Hebrew culture, the Hebrew morality that we were so proud of then?”

Then, he pleads this:

“You, Dov, have invested in this state much too much to turn your back on it in a gesture of anger and despair. The most hackneyed and worn-out slogan in Israel is also true: ‘We don’t have another state!’

“Other states in the world have sunk to the depths of depravity and committed unspeakable crimes, far beyond our worst sins, and still brought themselves back to the family of nations and redeemed their souls.

“We and all the members of our generation, who were among those who created this state, bear a heavy responsibility for it. A responsibility to our offspring, to those oppressed by this state, to the entire world. From this responsibility we cannot escape.

“Even at your respectable age, and precisely because of it and because of what you represent, you must be a compass for the young and tell them: This state belongs to you, you can change it, don’t allow the nationalist wreckers to steal it from you!

“True, 61 years ago we had another state in mind. Now, after our state has tumbled to where it is today, we must remember that other state, and remind everybody, every day, what the state should have been like, what it can be like, and not allow our vision to disappear like a dream. Let’s lend our shoulders to every effort to repair and heal!
These are very weighty issues that these two longtime Zionists are debating.”

I remember the evening I had back in early March with longtime Jewish-Israeli nonviolence activist Amos Gvirtz. Gvirtz is “only” in his late 60s or early 70s. But like Avnery and Yermiya he grew up in Israel.

He told me in March,

“I became an anti-Zionist after Oslo, when the government expelled the Arabs of Jahhaleenn to make room for the big new settlement area if Maale Adummim… Like the Zionists, I believe we Jews need a state of our own. But unlike the Zionists I don’t think this should be built on the ruins of someone else’s home. So our state need not necessarily be right here.”

Gvirtz, too, like Avnery, identified a strong link between the events of 1947-48 and the situation today– though the nature of the link Gvirtz identified was very different from Avnery’s: “The Nakba wasn’t really a single event that happened in 1948, so much as a long-drawn-out process, that continues to this day.” In other words, he was quite unwilling to neatly divide Israeli history, as Avnery still does, between the idealized, prelapsarian days of the 1947 Dalia festival and the post-lapsarian era that was inaugurated- – in Avnery’s view– only by Israel’s conquest of the West Bank.

Obviously, this is a very weighty issue for Zionists and their supporters to grapple with. Did 1967 mark a notable break between a laudable past and a troublesome present? Or were there indeed, as Gvirtz and many other current non- and anti-Zionists have argued, many elements of continuity from the 1947 period right through to the present?

Anyway, I’d love to see the whole text of the latest Yermiya letter from which Avnery is quoting, if anyone can provide a link to it, preferably in English. The only recent English text that I could find by him online was this letter, published in the Communist weekly Zo Haderekh in June 2008.

In it, Yermiya was returning to Defense Minister Barak the invitation he had been sent to attend a ceremony to honor all veterans of Israel’s 1948 “War of Independence” .

He wrote,

“As a veteran of the 1948 war, who was already wounded in face to face combat two weeks before the Declaration of the State, I feel obliged herewith to return the invitation to you, as Minister of Defence. I do so regretfully but see this as my duty.

“I consider you, Ehud Barak, as one of the top military commanders and prominent political leaders who were responsible for converting the army from ‘the Israeli Defence Force’ to an army of occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people and defender of the criminal settlements in their country.

“40 years of occupation have utterly corrupted the Israeli army and all strata of Israeli society.They are both characterized by the nationalist ‘east wind’ [the east wind brings the chamsin and locusts ]which blows and kindles conflagrations of endless wars, which threaten our people and land with the third and final destruction. Your share in the responsibility for all this is enormous, and therefore I return your invitation to you, without thanks…”

Helena Cobban is a veteran writer, researcher, and program organizer on global  affairs. Since 2003 she has published  “Just World News”, a lively blog on international issues that has gained a broad international readership. She can be reached at hcobban@gmail. com

Letter from an Israeli Jail

http://english. pravda.ru/ world/americas/ 08-07-2009/ 108016-letterisr aelijail- 0

08.07.2009

Letter from an Israeli Jail

This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies – and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around.

The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation ‘Cast Lead’ [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day’s notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver 3 tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.

During Operation Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16’s rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full scale outright genocide. U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs – new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught that Gaza had become Israel’s veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel’s despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water … It’s a miracle that I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime … I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?

Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else’s children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza’s children could color & paint, that Gaza’s wounded could be healed, and that Gaza’s bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I’ve learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it’s incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream … like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better … The once proud, never colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn’t cheap. Many of them represent their family’s best collective efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel only after they arrived Israel told them “there is no UN in Israel.”

The police here have license to pick them up & suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world’s first Jews and Christian. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.

The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle’s detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for 6 months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and ‘yes we can’ were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel’s marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to do so. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what they’ve done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people’s children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I’m experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I’m lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] what are you willing to do?

Let’s change the world together & reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United State’s Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I’ve met at Ramle. This is Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794

Moslem in China: The Uighur say Beijing’s repression of their culture led to the outburst of violence [EPA]

Tuesday, July 07, 2009 12:36 Mecca time, 09:36 GMT

FOCUS: CHINA     Uighurs blame ‘ethnic hatred’    By Dinah Gardner in Beijing   The Uighur say Beijing’s repression of their culture led to the outburst of violence [EPA]   The riots that rocked the city of Urumqi in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region are the area’s worst for more than a decade.  In the 1990s, Uighur insurgent groups staged several deadly bomb attacks across the region; in 2008, attacks on police and government targets in Xinjiang ended with more than two dozen deaths. What makes these riots different, however, is the high number of causalities. Exile groups say violence erupted after police moved in on Sunday to break up a peaceful demonstration protesting against the killing of two Uighur migrant workers in southern China last month. Many Uighurs – the Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic minority of the region – and overseas scholars say the recent violence is rooted in deep-seated and long-standing resentment between the Uighur people and the Han Chinese majority, who account for 92 per cent of the population. Andrew James Nathan, a political science professor at Columbia University in the US, says deteriorating relations between the Uighur and the Han are to blame for the latest riots. “I don’t know what triggered this specific event, but the underlying tension that broke out in this as well as previous events reflects the alienation of the Uighur residents from the kind of rule imposed by Beijing, which is insufficiently respectful of their culture, religion, identity, and interests,” he says. Ethnic tensions persist From her exile in the US, Kadeer denied any involvement in the unrest in Xinjiang [AFP]  The government, though, is clear about who is to blame – outside forces, in particular Rebiya Kadeer, the leader of the US-based World Uighur Congress (WUC). “The unrest was a pre-emptive, organised, [and a] violent crime. It was instigated and directed from abroad, and carried out by outlaws in the country,” a government spokesperson said. Kadeer, a former political prisoner in China who now runs the WUC as a Uighur rights organisation, rejects the accusations. “I did not organise any protests or call on the people to demonstrate, ” she says. A young Uighur man, who has been living in Beijing for the past five years, agreed to an interview on the condition that he remain anonymous, saying he feared repercussions from the authorities. He says Kadeer and the WUC could not have been behind the violence. “Ever since I was born until now there has been this problem between Uighur and Han,” he says. “Han people don’t treat us or our culture with any respect, and the key thing is that there are more and more Han coming to live in Xinjiang. And that means us Uighur people are losing our culture and we have less freedoms.” Relations are so bad, he says, that Han taxi drivers will not even pick him up on the streets of Urumqi. Uighur children, he says, are barred from learning their own language in schools – from middle school onward studies are solely in Chinese. “They don’t allow us to teach our children about Islam in schools. They are not allowed to study religion until they are at least 18.” “They have taken away our language and our culture. Han people treat us like dirt.” Outside forces Tensions had been reaching boiling point in the past week or so after the deaths of the two Uighur migrant workers. They were killed in a fight in a toy factory in Guangdong province following a rumour that six Uighur men had raped two Han Chinese women. While Chinese media is acknowledging the link between the Urumqi riots and the tragic killings in Guangdong, it is insisting that outside forces used the incident “in the name of revenge” to “sow the seeds of racial and religious hatred in Xinjiang”. Al Jazeera approached several Chinese scholars for comment on the riots in Xinjiang but they declined to be interviewed, saying they do not have permission to discuss the issue with journalists. The killings were definitely the spark for this latest violence, says Dru Gladney, a professor of anthropology and Xinjiang specialist at Pomona College in California. “I think it is connected [with the Guangdong killings] at least that’s what I’ve been told by Uighurs I have spoken to,” Gladney says, adding that this time because the violence took place in Urumqi it is likely the protest is rooted in anger at Han treatment rather than any religious-based fight for independence. “I think it was significant that it took place in Urumqi because Uighurs there only make up about 10 per cent of the population,” he explains by phone. “Most protests have historically been outside Urumqi, in rural areas in the south or in Yili in the north … There are more worker solidarity issues [in Urumqi] – a lot of the Uighur intellectuals and more secular nationalist Uighurs are based in urban areas like Urumqi whereas more religious activists are in the countryside and places like Kashgar.” Blaming insurgent groups Beijing says the insurgent groups are fighting for independence and may be connected to al-Qaeda, but for the average Uighur, independence seems an unattainable dream. The young Uighur man in Beijing says his people are powerless and it is useless pursuing notions of independence. “China has caught and suppressed our culture and religion. They have destroyed our history and our ancient buildings in Kashgar. And now it’s all gone.” Meanwhile, in Urumqi, the city is under lock-down, according to western media. Curfews have been imposed and mobile phone and Internet links cut, much as authorities crushed anti-government riots in Tibet last year. Despite the crackdown, the chances are, say scholars, that this is not the end of it. “Protests in Xinjiang have been increasing slowly for many years and I think the prospect is that they will continue to occur, both this year and in future years,” says Nathan. Anniversary celebrations Some analysts hope the level of violence will convince Beijing to heal rifts with the Uighur The government is particularly on edge this year because of celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1. While officially, the government insists this problem is caused by exile separatists and local “outlaws”, Gladney is hopeful that the scale of the violence will convince Beijing that the solution lies less in an authoritarian approach and more in trying to heal the rifts between the ethnic groups. “I think some of us are hoping that it may cause them to rethink their strike hard tactics that they’ve used up until now, but certainly not until things settle down,” he says. “Clearly with this level of [violence] it should cause them to really rethink that.” How do the local people see an eventual solution to the ethnic strife? The Uighur man strokes his beard and laughs nervously. “I don’t know how to solve this problem,” he says. “I wish I was in Xinjiang now but I’m not there. I feel helpless.”    Source: Al Jazeera

SBY Covered Up Ambush Murder of U.S. Citizens

From: John M Miller <fbp@igc.org>
Subject: SBY Covered Up Ambush Murder of U.S. Citizens
To: etan@etan.org
Date: Wednesday, July 1, 2009, 9:45 AM
SBY Covered Up Ambush Murder of U.S. Citizens
 
Eben Kirksey, Ph.D., University of California (Santa Cruz)
+1.831.429.8276 or +1.831.600.5937  (English or Bahasa Indonesia)
Paula Makabory, Institute of Papuan Advocacy and Human Rights (Melbourne)
+61.402.547. 517 (English or Bahasa Indoneisa)

John M. Miller, East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (New York)
+1.718.596.7668 (English)
 
1 July, 2009 – Previously secret U.S. State Department documents implicate the President of Indonesia in a probable
cover-up of an ambush in West Papua. The documents show Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is running for reelection on  July 8, maneuvering behind the scenes to manage the  investigation into the August 2002 murder of three teachers—one Indonesian and two U.S. citizens.

“Yudhoyono brought politics into a case that should have  just been about forensic facts,” said Dr. Eben Kirksey, an anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz  and a regional specialist. “The documents reveal that Yudhoyono initially stalled attempts by the FBI to launch an independent investigation,” he continued. The U.S. Congress, outraged at these stalling tactics, blocked funds for Indonesian military training until there was cooperation with the FBI.

The documents released today add a new twist to a hotly contested Presidential race.

“Yudhoyono is not the only controversial former soldier running in the presidential election,” said John M. Miller, National Coordinator of the East Timor and Indonesia  Action Network. “Vice presidential candidates and former generals Wiranto and Prabowo Subianto were involved in well-documented human rights crimes in East Timor and
throughout Indonesia.”
 
When a police investigation implicated Indonesian military shooters as the likely murderers of the schoolteachers,
Yudhoyono became involved. Yudhoyono, a retired General and then the Coordinating Minister of Political and Security Affairs, wrote to the Charge D’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta that “I have dispatched a fact finding team led by one of my deputies to Timika and its surrounding (sic), to find additional information and other related facts  especially on a broader political and security aspects of the incident.” Timika, the site of the attack, is in the remote province of Papua, where U.S. mining giant Freeport  McMoRan (FCX) operates a concession.

Yudhoyono’s stalling tactics let the Indonesian military cover their tracks,” said Paula Makabory, a Papuan human rights activist who founded the Institute of Papuan Advocacy and Human Rights in Australia.  “The ‘fact finders’ under his command systematically intimidated witnesses and tampered with material evidence,” Makabory continued.

Following high-level negotiations with Bush administration officials, who promised Indonesia millions in military aid, Yudhoyono allowed the FBI into his country. “By the time the FBI were granted access the trail was cold,” said Makabory.  “The FBI investigation proceeded within a narrow framework that fit the Bush administration agenda,” said Dr. Kirksey.

The Special Agents found a fall man, while tiptoeing around evidence connecting their man to the Indonesian military,” Kirksey added. Antonius Wamang, an ethnic Papuan, was indicted by a U.S. grand jury for his role in the attack. He was apprehended in 2006 by the FBI and sentenced to life in Indonesian prison. Wamang had extensive ties to the Indonesian military, according to a peer-reviewed article, Criminal Collaborations,” co-authored by Dr. Kirksey and Andreas Harsono, an Indonesian investigative reporter (link below).

The declassified documents disclosed today were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA) by Dr. Bradley Simpson of the National Security Archive. The State Department found 62 documents relevant to the Timika murders. They released only two of these documents in full and 20 others “with excisions.” The rest were withheld. The FBI did not release any documents, writing: “No records responsive to your FOIA request were located by a search of the automated indices.” The FBI is notorious for not complying with Freedom of Information Act requests. The documents reveal evidence of a cover-up,” said Dr. Kirksey. “The fact that many relevant documents were not released is more evidence of the same” 

Selections from these documents are published here in seven distinct sections [links to the PDFs of the documents can be  found here: http://etan. org/news/ 2009/06Timika. htm

 
1) Response by the State Department and the FBI to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request

2) Initial Reports About Attackers; Yudhoyono Orders a Quick Response The first State Department reports about the
2002 attack seriously entertained two theories: that the perpetrators were Papuan independence fighters (OPM guerillas) or rogue elements of the Indonesian military. The  documents note that the assault took place on a foggy mountain road near a military checkpoint and an Army Strategic Reserve Forces post. Upon learning of the attack, Yudhoyono ordered a quick response to restore security and to investigate the attack. 

The U.S. Embassy noted in a cable to Washington: ”Many Papuan groups are calling for an independent investigation led by the U.S. Calls for an independent probe are unrealistic, but we believe that Papua’s Police Chief, who enjoys a good reputation with Papuan activists (and U.S.), can conduct a fair investigation.” The Police Chief’s investigation later indicated that the Indonesian military was involved. The FBI subsequently launched a separate probe.

3) Attack Victims Treated in Secrecy at Australian Hospital

The survivors of the assault were airlifted out of Indonesia to a hospital in Townsend, Australia. Here U.S.
diplomats, the FBI, Queensland Police, and the Australian Defense Force kept a tight lid on the situation—preventing the victims from speaking with the press and even from contacting family members for the first two days. See: Tom Hyland, “Lost in the Fog,” The Age, September 28, 2008. http://www.theage. com.au/world/ lost-in-the- fog-20080927- 4pb8.html? page=-1

4) Yudhoyono Assumes Coordinating Role in Investigation

Following police reports of Indonesian military involvement, these documents reveal that Yudhoyono began to play a more active role in managing and influencing the direction of the investigation. Yudhoyono met repeatedly with the FBI field investigators, as well as high-level U.S. diplomats, blocking their initial attempts to gain unmediated access to witnesses and material evidence. This  file includes a letter from Yudhoyono to the Charge D’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy where he outlines a strategy  for managing the broader political and security aspects of the incident.

5) Commander-In- Chief Concerned About Washington Post
Interview  The Washington Post reported in 2002 that senior Indonesian military officers, including armed forces commander General Endriartono Sutarto, had discussed an unspecified operation against Freeport McMoRan before the ambush in Timika.  General Sutarto vehemently denied that he or any other top military officers had discussed any operation targeting  Freeport. He sued The Washington Post for US$1 billion and demanded an apology from the paper. Several months after this lawsuit was settled out of court, The Washington Post asked to interview Sutarto. This document contains notes  from a meeting between the U.S. Ambassador and Commander-in- Chief Sutarto where this interview request was discussed: “Clearly concerned, General Sutarto asked why  the Washington Post wanted to interview him, as well as  TNI’s Strategic Intelligence Agency (BAIS) and the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) Chiefs regarding the Timika  case.”  See: Ellen Nakashima and Alan Sipress “Indonesia Military Allegedly Talked of Targeting Mine,” The Washington Post, November 3, 2002. http://etan. org/et2002c/ november/ 01-09/03mine. htm
6) Most Important Issue in U.S.-Indonesia Bilateral Relationship

The U.S. Ambassador stressed in a June 2003 meeting with Yudhoyono that justice in the Timika killings was “the most important issue in the bilateral relationship.” During this period, FBI agents were given intermittent access to evidence. Yudhoyono continued to play an active role in coordinating the political aspects of the investigation. Taking an unusual personal interest for  someone with a Ministerial level position, Yudhoyono repeatedly met with the FBI case agents the low-ranking U.S. investigators who were deployed to Timika for field investigations.

7) Attorney General Ashcroft Suppressed Evidence

On June 24, 2005, Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that Antonius Wamang, an ethnic Papuan, was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for the Timika murders. The indictment alleged that Wamang was a  “terrorist” who sought independence from Indonesia. Following this announcement, three respected human rights groups and indigenous organizations charged that the U.S. Government suppressed evidence linking Wamang to the Indonesian military. A peer-reviewed article, titled “Criminal Collaborations: Antonius Wamang and the  Indonesian Military in Timika,” details the nature of these links. The group called for Wamang to be given a fair trial in the U.S., rather than in notoriously corrupt Indonesian courts. See: Eben Kirksey and Andreas Harsono, “Criminal Collaborations,” South East Asia Research, vol 16, no 2.  http://skyhighway. com/~ebenkirksey /writing/ Kirksey-Harsono_ Timika.pdf

John M. Miller     
Internet: etan@igc.org
National Coordinator East Timor & Indonesia Action Network
PO Box 21873, Brooklyn, NY 11202-1873 USA
Phone: (718)596-7668      Mobile: (917)690-4391
Skype: john.m.miller  Web: http://www.etan. org
Twitter: http://twitter. com/etan009
Facebook: http://apps. facebook. com/causes/ 134122?recruiter _id=10193810

Don’t copy if you can’t paste (humour)

From: Irwan Suwono

 
 A painful (and  heavy) price to  pay for infringement of copyright. 
 
 A popular motivational  speaker was entertain ing his audience.
 He  said: ”The best years of my  life were spent in the arms of a woman who wasn’t my  wife!” 
  
 The audience was in silence and shock.  The speaker added: “And that woman was my  mother!” 
 
 Laughter and  applause. 

 A week later, a top manager trained by  the motivational  speaker tried to crack this  very
effective joke  at home. He was a  bit foggy after a drink. 
  
 He said loudly to his wife who  was preparing dinner, “The greatest years of my life  were spent in  the arms of a woman who was not my  wife!” 

 The wife went;  “Aaaaaggh!” with shock and rage  !!

 Standing there for 20 seconds trying to recall  the second  half of the joke, the manager finally blurted  out ”…and I can’t   remember who she was!” 
 
 By the time the manager regained his  consciousness, he was on a hospital bed  nursing burns from  boiling water. 
   
 Moral  of the story:    Don’t copy if you can’t paste!