Mary Bottari, PRWatch: "On June 1, 2012, the [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel] broke the story that Milwaukee County prosecutors were forced to move from a regular investigation to a secret 'John Doe' criminal investigation more than two years ago after being stonewalled by the County Executive's office. Court records released in the trial of one of the defendants showed that prosecutors said Walker's office had been 'unwilling or unable' to turn over requested records.... As of today, this ongoing criminal investigation has resulted in six indictments, 15 felony charges, and two convictions.... [F]ive people are awaiting trial."
Read the Article
Monday, June 4, 2012
Egypt: Protests Erupt
"It feels like the revolution is back in a big way" - Protests have continued overnight in Cairo's Tahrir Square, after ex-President Hosni Mubarak was jailed for life for his part in the killing of protesters during the 2011 revolution. The crowds are furious at the acquittal of key security officials who were on trial alongside Mubarak. Four interior ministry officials and two local security chiefs were cleared of complicity in protesters' killings. Rallies against the verdict were also held in Alexandria, Suez and Mansoura. Correspondents say a verdict that was meant to bring closure for Egypt is in danger of reopening old wounds. In another development, dozens of protesters stormed the campaign headquarters of presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq in the Fayoum area south of Cairo, Egyptian media reported. Mr Shafiq was Mubarak's last prime minister.
Exploiting the Houla massacre as Syrian-Lebanese lines are being blurred
Unraveling the Welfare Safety Net - Europe Moves Closer to Banktatorship
The present crisis, which is largely the result of excessive credit expansion and poor risk management by EU banks, is being used by the European Commission and the ECB to establish a euro-wide "banking union" and to impose savage cuts to social programs, health care, and pensions.
OpEdNews
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Overloading Israel with Muslim Immigrants
Posted: 02 Jun 2012 08:06 PM PDT
Guy Bechor wrote a very powerful op-ed last week about the looming crisis of African migrants to Israel:When we published an article in 2007 about the nightmare facing Israel from Africa, many were shocked. Today, this vision has become a reality (Then, 400 infiltrators stole over the border from Africa each month; currently, about 4,000 come here illegally every month).I am always reluctant to post a charge like this, that NGOs are encouraging this migration, but some proof comes from a monograph recently put out by the UNHCR:
I realize today that I too was naive back then, when I wrote the article. I did not see the depth of the picture unfolding before us. Then I thought that the primarily reason for the infiltration was to improve the lives of the Africans who came here, as it is with the migration from Mexico to the United States, but now it appears that the image is unique to Israel.
The truth is that millions of Africans would like to immigrate to Israel to improve their lives, but it turns out that in Israel there are those who want to exploit this to change our country’s demographic balance. After they failed to let in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into this country, these people now expect a migration of hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Africa to Israel. It’s not a war on immigration that lies ahead of us, but a war over the continuation of the Jewish majority in Israel.
A number of associations, NGOs and others have encouraged this African immigration to Israel. They begin by directing the emigration from the countries of origin, preserving it, preventing it from running into obstacles in the Sinai Peninsula, and providing it with a warm home in Israel. They have spread and continue to spread the rumor in Africa that Israel is a paradise, and that it can be reached by foot.
These are not migrant workers who stand before us, and not refugees, but a majority of African Muslims who come here to settle, and never leave.
...
And what is the plan hatched in secret by those organizations of “human rights?” When the numbers reach a quarter of a million or half a million, and we’re getting there fast, the organizations will turn to the High Court of Justice and to the United Nations, demanding that Israel grant residency to these “immigrants” and even citizenship, as is customary in the West.
With that, the percentage of Muslims in Israel will jump immediately to between 30% and 35%, with all the demographic implications that you can imagine.
Being residents, then citizens, the Africans will naturally be able to bring their family members, and the numbers will double. For those who did not want the Jews in Uganda, Uganda will now come to Israel. Being a small country, these processes will occur very fast, faster than in Europe.
Now we understand that the Muslim infiltrators from Africa (the migrants from Sudan are all Muslim, and most of the Eritrean migrants are, too) are not weak, but rather their Israeli absorbers. They are not the ones being threatened, because they are not war refugees, but rather Israel is being threatened.
The “human rights” organizations have easy access to the media, and they do not hide their desire to see Israel as a state of all citizens and no longer a Jewish or Zionist state, and from this perspective, the Muslim migrants from Africa suit their cause very well. These organizations bear direct responsibility for the new plague that has befallen Israel. They direct the migration, organize it, preserve it from the authorities, help the migrants get permits and papers, empower them, teach them how to stand up to the authorities, how to conduct demonstrations that will touch the sensitive nerves of the Israelis, and even made them a newspaper, in African languages, which is funded by the UN.
[O]ne NGO worker argued that civil society organisations advocate a perception of 'universalistic citizenship‘, where everyone should have rights. "They do not see the nationality issue as relevant, but publicly, it is not stated. In today‘s public atmosphere, we will not say it out loud because it does not serve the struggle and the strategy." As the same NGO worker argued: "the central issue here is [one that addresses] the nature of Israeli civil society, the struggle is about the character of Israel as a state, and the refugees are not really sharing this struggle, they are rather disempowered by it".
Rotter.net also translates an interview with one of the Sudanese migrants who names the left-wing Israelis associated with the New Israel Fund that helped him come into the country.
It is not the spontaneous flight of refugees from Africa that the media is implying.
(h/t Ruchie)
Down With the Next President
Posted: 02 Jun 2012 03:03 PM PDT
Sonali Pahwa and Jessical Winegar, in the latest issue of Middle East Report:The Arab uprisings have brought major challenges, as well as unprecedented opportunities, to the culture industries. According to a flurry of celebratory news articles from the spring of 2011 onward, protest art is proliferating in the region, from graffiti in Egypt to hip-hop in Morocco to massive photographic displays and political cartoons gone viral in Tunisia. These articles then adopt a predictably ominous tone to express the concern that resurgent Islamist forces represent a danger to arts and culture writ large.Read on.
Two fundamental aspects of this emerging cultural politics are frequently overlooked: the support for culture industries in mainstream Islamist circles and the underlying structural transformation of the relationship between arts and the state. The story is not simply one of liberation from authoritarian states, new desires to criticize such states or Islamist threats to freedom of expression. Rather, there are complex shifts in the overlapping cultural and political fields. Changes in the cultural scene are not simply a barometer of broader political and economic change, but part and parcel of it, particularly in countries with strong, centralized ministries of culture, such as Egypt, Syria and Tunisia. In these places, the dominant state ideology poses culture as a path to progress and enlightenment. In this moment of opening, cultural producers, intellectuals and politicians are asking foundational questions about the role of government in the field of culture and vice versa. Egypt, the most populous Arab country and thus a bellwether of sorts, is a case in point.
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