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Zebra 3 Report by Joe Anybody
Monday, 17 March 2008
M - 15 Peace March PORTLAND
Mood:
 cool
Now Playing: Sucessful Peace March - And a Grannies Special Video
Topic: PROTEST!
The Portland Peace March was successful and was positive There were no clashes nor any reports of "police abuse" I have about 3 hours worth of video from the event that should be on-line by the end of the week here (3/21/08) I will be adding it to my website and YouTube-&-Google as well up on www.PDXpeace.org and www.Portland.Indymedia.org I will have a heading under my videos titled "" M15 "" For all the video's I will have from the March 15 event in Portland Ore ---------------------------- Meanwhile ---------------------------------- Stay tuned .... I just spent the past 24 hours working on a video called "Seriously Pissed Off Grannies 2007" I have a completed "quick-rushed-copy" finished and it will be used in a presentation tonight. I really rushed it an d will be going back over it in the real near future to dial it in better. I didn't have the time I wanted to in order to make this as professional as possible. I will be posting "what I got so far" in regards to the Grannies 2007 ....but expect to see it "modified" in the weeks to come. I also have a project on the burner of a special Grannies Video with music provided by one of the Seriously Pissed Off Grannies daughters..... now that one is gonna be "special"
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 1:29 PM PDT
Updated: Monday, 17 March 2008 1:45 PM PDT
Thursday, 13 March 2008
WINTER SOLIDER
Mood:
 on fire
Now Playing: streaming LIVE video from Washington DC
Topic: WAR
Live telecast on the BIG SCREEN at Portland State University: Winter Soldier II. Iraq/Afghanistan
veterans will testify giving an accurate account
of what is really happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is information you won't find in the mainstream media. |
THURSDAY, MARCH 13: 4 P.M. - 6 P.M.
FRIDAY, MARCH 14: 6 A.M. - 5:30 P.M.
SATURDAY, MARCH 15: 6 A.M. - 5:30 P.M.
Also on Portland Cable Access TV:
Fri. 3/14 Channel 23: 6 a.m.-9 a.m. and 10 a.m.- noon
and On Channel 11 at 7 p.m. Jim Lockhart discussion
Sat. 3/15: Channel 23: 6 a.m.-10 a.m.
Veterans of the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts will give public testimony and share the eyewitness stories that have been censored from the American public about the true human cost of these occupations. Spread the word about this historic and profoundly significant four day event - and please join us for live internet telecast presentations of testimony and panels.
In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote: "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
In 1971, a courageous group of veterans exposed the criminal nature of the Vietnam War in an event called Winter Soldier. Once again, we will demand that the voices of veterans are heard.
Once again, we are fighting for the soul of our country. We will demonstrate our patriotism by speaking out with honor and integrity instead of blindly following failed policy. Winter Soldier is a difficult but essential service to our country.
Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan will feature testimony from U.S. veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground.
The four-day event will bring together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans' health benefits and support.
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Posted by Joe Anybody
at 11:37 AM PDT
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
person of interest? in the 2001 anthrax attacks and one reporter refuses to talk
Mood:
 not sure
Now Playing: Media reporter told to give up source
Topic: MEDIA
I ran across this article today ...not sure what day it came out. __________________________________________ __________________________________________ A former reporter for USAToday newspaper who was ordered to pay hefty fines starting at midnight Tuesday for refusing to name confidential sources for a story, has been granted a stay, court sources said. “It is ordered that the motion for a stay pending appeal be granted,” a clerk at the US court of appeals in Washington told AFP, reading from the order. “Appellant has satisfied the stringent standards required for a stay pending appeal,” the clerk read, hours before the first payment of 500 dollars (325 euros) was due. Reporter Toni Locy was last week ordered by US District Court Judge Reggie Walton to pay a daily fine of 500 dollars, rising in steps to 5,000 dollars, for refusing to name the sources for a story she wrote about Steven Hatfill, the former army bioweapons scientist named a “person of interest” in the 2001 anthrax attacks. The judge also ordered that Locy pay the fines with no help from her employer, friends, family or even anonymous supporters. Gannett, the parent company of USAToday, on Monday filed a motion with the court of appeals for an emergency stay of the contempt citation, and a coalition of about two dozen media companies and non-profit journalism organizations also filed an ‘amicus brief’ in support of Locy the same day. Hatfill, meanwhile, filed a response on Tuesday, seeking to bar the stay. The former army scientist was named a “person of interest” by investigating authorities in the United States after anthrax-laced letters were sent to several lawmakers and television offices in October 2001. Five people, including two post office workers in Washington, died of anthrax inhalation. In the original complaint Hatfill filed against Locy in August 2003, he alleged that “the Justice Department had violated the Privacy Act by making unauthorized disclosures about him to the news media — that is, by intentionally ‘leaking’ investigative information,” his response to the motion for a stay said. Locy has said in court that she could not remember all her sources, and was ordered to pay the rising fines, on her own, until such time as she did name them. She also faced prison if she failed to name the confidential sources by early April. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” Gregg Leslie, the legal defense director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said of the rising fines imposed on Locy, and the judge’s order that she pay them on her own. “The only authority the judge tried to base it on were cases that had to do with whether a lawyer who was found in contempt of court could have a client reimburse him. So we think he based it on a pretty poor precedent and, yes, there isn’t anything like it in any other contempt case,” Leslie told AFP. “It is troubling that courts are going to allow this kind of examination of a reporter’s work product,” he added. Locy, who is currently a professor of journalism at West Virginia University, said she was delighted to be given a stay and would now “let the appellate process play out.” No date has been set for the appeal hearing.
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 11:15 PM PDT
Updated: Wednesday, 12 March 2008 11:17 PM PDT
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
Winter Solider - in Washington DC (3 days) Watch it - LIVE STREAMING
Mood:
 crushed out
Now Playing: Iraq Veterans Against War
Topic: WAR
PLEAS PASS THIS INFORMATION TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW Thanks Z3 Readers, from joe-anybody From March 14th to 16th, Pacifica Radio will suspend regular programming to broadcast the historic Winter Soldier gathering in Washington, DC. The three day live broadcast will be co-hosted by Aaron Glantz and former Army medic and KPFA Morning Show host Aimee Allison. A live web-stream of the broadcast will be available through the War Comes Home as well as at KPFA.org -
http://warcomeshome.org/wintersoldier2008
What's Winter Soldier In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote: "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." 
Iraq Veterans Against the War argues that well-publicised incidents of U.S. brutality like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha are not the isolated incidents perpetrated by "a few bad apples", as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They are part of a pattern, the group says, of "an increasingly bloody occupation."
"What's going on is were trying to create a space for veterans to speak out and change the rhetoric around the war from these politicians with these ideologies that have no real experience on the ground," said Aaron Hughes, a former member of the Illinois National Guard who spent a year running convoys in Iraq. "There are human beings on both sides. There are not just numbers. That's what missing in our culture. This was has been statistics, it's been rhetoic, and it's not personal. But for the American soldiers who've served there it is personal and for the Iraqi people who live there it's personal. That's why our testimony is important." "The problem that we face in Iraq is that policymakers in leadership have set a precedent of lawlessness where we don't abide by the rule of law, we don't respect international treaties, so when that atmosphere exists it lends itself to criminal activity," argues former U.S. Army Sergeant Logan Laituri, who served a tour in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 before being discharged as a conscientious objector. 
Laituri explains that precedent of lawlessness makes itself felt in the rules of engagement handed down by commanders to soldiers on the front lines. When he was stationed in Samarra, for example, he said one of his fellow soldiers shot an unarmed man while he walked down the street.
"The problem is that that soldier was not committing a crime as you might call it because the rules of engagement were very clear that no one was supposed to be walking down the street," he said. "But I have a problem with that. You can't tell a family to leave everything they know so you can bomb the shit out of their house or their city. So while he definitely has protection under the law, I don't think that legitimates that type of violence." The veterans also want to stress the similarities between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "The exact same units that are getting the exact same training and the exact same orders are getting sent to both Iraq and Afghanistan," explains Perry O'brien, a former US Army Medic who became a conscientious objector after his tour in Afghanistan. "What we're seeing is a lot of similarities between practices in both countries and both are equally criminal." "Something that I personally witnessed and that I'm going to be submitting testimony on is the use of civilian corpses for medical practice," he added. "When a patient would die we would hear over the PA system we would hear an announcement through the clinc saying 'Who wants to learn how to do a chest tube?' or 'Who wants to know what a human heart looks like?' Rather than giving the proper treatment of the dead, the body would become a cadaver for medical practice with no consent from the victim." Winter Soldier is modeled on a similar event held by Vietnam Veterans 37 years ago. In 1971, over 100 members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered in Detroit to share their stories with fellow citizens. Atrocities like the My Lai massacre had ignited popular opposition to the war, but political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions. 
Among those in attendance was 27-year-old Navy Lieutenant John Kerry, who had served on a Swift Boat in Vietnam. Three months after the hearings, Nicosia notes, Kerry took his case to Congress and spoke before a jammed Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Television cameras lined the walls, and veterans packed the seats.
"Many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia," Kerry told the committee, describing the events of the Winter Soldier gathering. "It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room, and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do." In one of the most famous antiwar speeches of the era, Kerry concluded: "Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be - and these are his words - 'the first president to lose a war'. We are asking Americans to think about that, because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War can prove similarly historic – especially in encouraging an increase in the amount of GI Resistance against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This event is going to empower soldiers to follow their conscience whaterver that means for them," says Camilo Mejia, the Chair of the Board of Iraq Veterans Against the War. "The kinds of things we're talking about are non-partisan. They're non-political. They have to do with human being trapped in this atrocity producing situation."
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 2:51 PM PST
Sunday, 24 February 2008
A Call Out by Joe Anybody For Solidarity Towards Peace
Mood:
 loud
Now Playing: Stand Up - Get Active - List Of Joe Anybody Video Links All Right Here
Topic: PROTEST!
Hello One n All,Have I been busy? Well let’s just say …I am not sleeping my Life Away 
So who am I voting for …well let me say so far Ralph Nader is the “only” kind of possible hope the Nation has And he announced he is running…. Seems no one else running, really cares about what is important, so he has to “give the people some representation” That’s not why I send this email updateIt is sent to alert, brag, and beg for activism for the peace movement Who doesn’t want peace you say?Let me reply …. If you do “Step Forward … Step up…. You are being summoned!”This is a call to action By your friendly neighborhood average “joe anybody” I have been working to end this war 24-7 I am calling out for help!Everyone that is reading this email , I am asking for you to do something for me…well for peace actually!Which in turn will influence many others, actually the “more you engage” this will create an even bigger impact and influence! You and me all need to do something for promoting “peace” and “ending this war”
I am asking for one major effort …. Be it any kind of action or endeavor, what ever you choose will be fine …make the effort to challenge this war and the acceptance of it The theme is (Same as is in the 5 year anniversary march theme which is coming up in 20 days)“World With Out War” – “Stop The War Bring The Troops Home Now” What I am really asking is for everybody who is reading this to do something to extra … something more than what you may already be doingOn March 15 a Hugh rally and march is going on in Portland in the Park Blocks outside of my work In commemoration and in solidarity I am seriously asking you all to “ramp this up” and start “demanding Peace Now!”
Come on down on the 15th to Portland or start a rally vigil march in your area Look around things are going on, join a peace group , make a sign, talk to your neighbors!!Engage …network….. plug in……. do something to make change !
Did you know March 20 is a “Student Walk-Out Day across America?” This is a good bold necessary statement I support 100%Organize …engage …resist war and Imperialism! If you choose to sit idle or as a spectator you will be ….sad to say “condoning this blood bath, waged by these neocons in charge at the moment” Millions are now dead and its continuing every minute… soon more and more it will be people we know as we do now ….who are the victims of this illegal war….!Get up …. Get Out ….. Stand for what you know is rightYou can not just read about what the corporate press keeps telling you… they will convince you the surge is working or terrorist want to get you…. They will Lie to you, they will tell you 911 had something to do with Iraq, etc! They are lying and have been lying all along about this WMD war…..they serve the military complex and the war profiteers….. Your country and Constitution has been “high jacked”The fourth amendment is disappearing before your eyes (PS the government is reading this email without a warrant) I working 24/7 on being a peacemaker….. I am asking for and calling for Solidarity… I am calling out or re-enforcements I need your help …… I need you all to also ask for help with your own Families and friends ….. the request is to help promote and encourage peace and stop the killing! Spend one minute looking at the horrors of this occupation in IraqAnd you better do something other than escape it … you have to …. I ask you as a favor to me, lets help those families who are being killed, and those soldiers who are dieing for lies
I think you all understand my message For an example of one thing to do could be in helping with….On March 9 the Iraq Body Count Flag Display will be coming to Portland for a couple weeksIt will take days to put flags into the PSU lawn that will represent all those that have died from this illegal occupationI will be their filming it through out the day as well as helping with the thousands of flags that need to be put into the earth
The Veterans will be putting in the “red flags” …. I bet that will be a sight to bring a man to his knees!Will you, or can you stop in to help with this powerful display (it is stated as being non-political)It will be up for a few weeks Will you write a letter to your editor about ending this war? …Will you call your Senator? Will you please do something, to help try to end the occupation, or Impeach the criminals that are doing this to the world, families across the globe?I have personally talked with and filmed refugees begging for help and the madness to stop….. I can hear them ….. I ask …can you….? Anyway …I have lots to do …so I will be moving on Please hear my call for Solidarity Check my website out often …..especially the Video Tracker this page:www.joe-anybody.com/id104.html Every single video I make goes up there on that tracker page Also there is my blog page “The Zebra3 Report”: http://zebra3reporttripod.com/zebra3report/Many times it is just important topics I copy paste to here that I feel need to be passed alongMany times its letters like this that I will post on that page or my thoughts and opinions It is constantly updated My home page is as you all should know is: …. www.joe-anybody.com it changes all the time as well My ID “mission page” is here: www.joe-anybody.com/id1.html This Link here will show you every YouTube video I ever made and the latest ones are always on topThese video are all under 10 minutes (the max limit) I now have over 150 YouTube video’s online(This link is the good one to see my recent uploads to YouTube so be sure to keep it handy)http://www.youtube.com/user/zebra334 I have some of the same video on Youtube also on this website called BlipTV (all under 10 min)http://joeanybody.blip.tv/ And then I also have put some of the same video over here on MetaCafe as well (all under 10 min)http://www.metacafe.com/channels/Joe+Anybody/ My oh My … I do have a Myspace ..but don’t use it too much but it is here:www.myspace.com/joecouldbeanybody Of Course I also Post on Portland Indy Media as my main news outlet www.portland.indymedia.org And, there is www.PDXpeace.org that gets a health dose of my videos and good peace related info That’s where I read and then filmed the student led Peace March that goes on weekly here in Portland The longer videos all go onto Google the latest list is at the bottom of this page….Some of these people who I have filmed are spectacular …. Take a look !! Speaking of spectacular I filmed a 24 hour Peace Vigil in Sandy Oregon and stayed there 21 hours I missed the first few hours because I was at the weekly Pioneer Square Peace march and filming it Also I cam home from the 24 hr vigil to upload to YouTube what was going on “right now” then head back out to join them Stephan came out and joined me around that time for about an hour as well around 5 amYou should really see some of these COLD wet videos I filmed (I’m still editing them too and its been over a month) Thanks for reading this far.Sorry for my rambling and also lack of partaking in non-political involvements…. I am super busy trying to stop a war …..seriously!!! Please do something to meet my challenge, to bring peace to our worldIf you have anything you want published in this realm on my website or “help with” let me know ….or if you have any ideas “lets do it!”I am promoting Peace and Justice…. If I don’t who will ? No Justice …No Peace! Just came back (yesterday) for this event titled “People of Color Against The War” .. This is the first clip I have edited <so far> from that day…but man this Reverend Dr Haynes is one heck of an empowering speaker, you got to hear this! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8324257986546789484 Oh by the way every Thursday I skip lunch to film the Impeachment Vigil We are on week 30 ..its been going on for over 210 days (we all show up on Thursdays at noon) to encourage our House Rep Earl Blumenauer to support the Impeachment Hearings …. (He doesn’t listen)I have filmed every one except the very first one that The Lone Vet has organizedShow up on Thursday’s from 12 – 2 at his Portland Office if you want to help urge him (Earl) to honor the Constitution and his oath he took. Videos from that Impeachment vigil are all here for your enjoyment http://www.joe-anybody.com/id96.html Love
Mike ____________This is My Google Video List of all my video’s over 10 minutes in length _____________ Take Care Joe Anybody
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 11:49 PM PST
Updated: Monday, 25 February 2008 12:00 AM PST
Tuesday, 19 February 2008
A message to Iranians: In response to the New York Times
Mood:
 chatty
Now Playing: Propaganda - NY Times - And The Iranian People
Topic: WAR
A message to Iranians: In response to the New York Times A repost to Z3 Readers by Kuros Yalpani, Munich/Germany, CASMII http://www.payvand.com/news/08/feb/1165.html 02/17/08 A short February 4th, 2008 editorial in the New York Times (NYT) insert of the German "Süddeutsche" newspaper, entitled "How to Deal With Iran," criticizes the U.S. administration for not being resolute in its approach to Iran, i.e. not making a "grand gesture" to Iran, a code phrase for coercing Iran into a compromise, the details of which casually undisclosed. Furthermore, the editorial criticizes the other powers, Europe, Russia, China and the Arab states, for not enforcing sanctions against Iran, even though they have no legal basis. Finally, the editorial concludes with the following remedy "... send a strong message to the Iranian 'people' about the folly of their leaders." In spite of the flagrantly arrogant tone of the editorial, one must be mindful of its message, albeit not the one explicitly stated. Judging by its tone, the editorial is directed primarily at the elite policy makers close to the Iranian issue, who presumably read the NYT. Furthermore, since the editorial is not credited to a specific author, it does not reflect any particular author's view, rather the NYT's doctrinal views. Since the NYT is arguably aligned with the primary goals of U.S. foreign policy, the article reflects these interests. Most importantly, it reveals that U.S. foreign policy is directed at the Iranian people and not just its leadership, as media propaganda and U.S. administration officials (including George Bush) to date consistently claim. Iranians in general seem to have agreed with their leadership on the legitimacy of the Iranian atomic program. Furthermore, given the unfolding catastrophes resulting from U.S. interventions in neighboring countries, Iranians are not keen to assist a U.S. military intervention in their own country. Nor are they responding in an effective manner, from the vantage point of U.S. policy makers, to U.S. demands for a regime change. Necessarily, the NYT propaganda is shifting gears from promoting a war against the Iranian leadership to advocating a war against the Iranian people. While the U.S. propaganda has shifted gears, actual U.S. foreign policy has always been a policy of plain old imperial conquest, in this case, about subjugating the Iranian people, no matter how it is masked as being against the Iranian regime. This "dual" approach in foreign policy is clearly by design and is an attempt, so far unsuccessful, to co-opt Iranians against their own national interests. As admitted by the former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, it worked in 1953, in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Mossadegh. It would be a mistake though to think that this particular episode of U.S. foreign policy is limited to Iran and to the current historical era. Every U.S. intervention in history caused civilian causalities by design and was directed against the respective people: beginning with the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans (estimated 20,000,000+ killed), commencing with the kidnapping of African Americans (80,000,000+?) from their continent, their enslavement and dispossession in an Apartheid state, the Mexican War of 1845 (as a result of which Mexico lost 40% of its territory), the declaration of the Monroe Doctrine (a flagrant manifesto dated 1823) in order to subjugate Central and South America for the next 200 years, the sinking of the USS Maine to justify the war with Spain, the war on the Korean peninsula, the murder of 800,000+ individuals after the U.S.- orchestrated coup against the democratically elected government of Sukharno, the national hero of Indonesia, the Indochina wars, and all of the since World War One ongoing wars and interventions in the Middle East, to name just a few well known cases. Due to the distances involved in history and huge advances in technology, it is very difficult to compare the U.S. Empire to any previous empire. Nonetheless one can draw parallels between the effects of U.S. foreign policy and the conquest of previous empires, e.g. the empire of the Mongols or the Nazi Regime. A few days after the fall of Baghdad, American soldiers were seen plundering priceless treasures in Baghdad's museums, among many of these, "the mask of Ur," which presumably will never be returned to their rightful owners, the people of Iraq, the descendants of the Mesopotamians. Events in U.S. history have consistently taught us that these acts are a design of their instigators, in this case a coalition of Western elites. It is also an attempt to erase the collective memories of the subjected peoples, thereby more easily coercing them into subjugation. Western media skillfully mask all such pillages and all the killings of wholly uninvolved people, portraying them as "collateral damages." Because there is such a stark contrast between the brutality of U.S. foreign policy and the spinned, clean-cut and complex media portrayal, it is very hard for most, not directly involved, observers to make the connection between these two systems. Occasionally, I see old footage of Nazi propaganda news reels and I must confess that from today's vantage point and compared with today's standards, they seem quite crude! I wonder if 50 years from now our descendants will not think the same of today's modes of justifying wars of aggression. In light of the shift in the NYT propaganda and the re-doubling of efforts of the U.S. and their allies to impose sanctions on Iranians for their defiance, Iranians, concerned citizens and activists world-wide ought to stand united in informing the world public opinion about the real motives of the U.S. and no longer give in to its historic demand. |
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 6:10 PM PST
Monday, 18 February 2008
The Hub (Rodney King's Children)
Mood:
 bright
Now Playing: Putting Cameras into the hands of Human Rights Activists
Topic: MEDIA
Rodney King's Children Human rights activist Sam Gregory on fighting oppression with video cameras written by: Jesse Walker | February 15, 2008 http://reason.com/news/show/125004.html Over the last few years, a brave group of Arab activists has circulated footage of Egyptian cops striking, lashing, and even raping detainees. The torture videos, which had been filmed by the policemen themselves, prompted protests both inside and outside the country. They also prompted censorship: YouTube temporarily shut down the dissident blogger Wael Abbas' digital video channel after the company received complaints about the violent clips.
The channel can now be viewed on YouTube again. Much of its footage can also be seen on a website called The Hub, which is what YouTube would look like if it had been designed by Mohandas Gandhi. The site first appeared in pilot form in 2006, and a beta version launched in December 2007; over 500 pieces of media—videos, audio clips, photo slideshows—have been uploaded to it since its debut. The offerings range from raw footage of a massacre in Guinea to a detailed documentary about forced labor in rural Brazil. Most are accompanied by further information on the issues examined and on ways to take action against the abuses.
The site was created by Witness, a Brooklyn-based group founded by the pop star Peter Gabriel in 1992. Conceived in the wake of the Rodney King beating, the group first focused on getting cameras into the hands of human rights groups around the world and then on training them in the most effective ways to use those tools—creating, in Gabriel's phrase, a network of "Little Brothers and Little Sisters" to keep an eye on Big Brother's agents. Now Witness wants to move that community of camera-wielding activists online.
Gabriel serves as the group's celebrity face and as chairman of the board, but he stays out of the organization's day-to-day operations. Those decisions are made by people like program manager Sam Gregory. A human rights activist since he first joined Amnesty International in his teens, the U.K.-born Gregory became a student filmmaker at college, where he "was always trying to find a way to combine" his two interests. In addition to his managerial work, Gregory, 33, has co-produced videos about human rights issues in Burma, the Philippines, Argentina, Indonesia, and the United States.
Managing Editor Jesse Walker met Gregory at the DIY Video Summit at the University of Southern California, where Gregory gave a presentation about The Hub; Walker interviewed him via phone in mid-February.
reason: How did Witness get started?
Sam Gregory: Peter Gabriel had been traveling the world with the Amnesty human rights tour in the late '80s. He repeatedly encountered activists who were saying, "We've experienced this abuse, we've heard these stories of abuses, and we have no ways of responding." He had been carrying a Hi-8 camera with him, and it struck him that if those activists had access to cameras they would be able to document what was happening around them and share it in a way that would be totally different from the typical text-based approach.
The Rodney King incident brought that idea home. You had this example of an amateur, George Holliday, on the balcony of his apartment filming a graphic instance of abuse and receiving massive news coverage. That gave the impetus to start the organization. What we learned over the first four or five years was that the promise that Rodney King represented couldn't be realized just by providing cameras to human rights groups. In the absence of technical training, they couldn't produce video that would be used by news organizations and they couldn't craft the stories that would engage audiences.
We also found it was challenging to reach the right audiences. For example, it's very hard for most human rights activists to get mass media coverage. Their issues are either censored by their governments or not considered newsworthy or are hard to represent in just a single snapshot—they're more structural or deeper than just a single image of, say, police brutality. Similarly, trying to use the video as evidence did not work. It's challenging to get it into court, and the Rodney King experience taught us that video evidence can be turned either way—in the Rodney King case, used in the defense as well as the prosecution of LAPD officers.
reason: Were there any notable successes in that first period?
Gregory: There was footage that got into the news media, but it wasn't a successful period in terms of creating real change. I'm trying to think of what was especially effective in those first few years. I'm actually hard pressed to put my finger on an example.
So we learned to think more strategically about what kind of training you provided to groups, how you helped them tell stories, and, most importantly, where you tried to place that material. We train them to develop something called a video action plan, which is essentially a strategic communications plan around video. They'll say, for example, "We're trying to persuade this UN committee to recognize that the government is not reporting the whole story on this issue." And we'll say, "This is how you might think about crafting videos so you'll be able to persuade that committee of the truth of your side of the story." Or they might be doing community organizing—to give a concrete example—around child soldiers in eastern Congo. They faced a problem in terms of persuading parents not to let their children be voluntarily recruited. They needed to find a way to show the impact on the children and present a range of voices explaining the damage without pointing the finger at the parents so they just feel guilty, but instead giving them an option to find alternatives for their children.
reason: How do you get the video in front of those parents? I assume this stuff isn't aired on Congolese TV.
Gregory: The idea at the root of our work is that the voices that need to be heard are the ones closest to the violations. It's not a centralized vision, and all our work derives from the agency of those locally based human rights groups. At any given time we're working with around 13 groups around the world—our core partners—on a range of issues. They'll come to us with a campaign and a strategy that they already have in place.
The group in the Congo, a group called Ajedi-ka, was already doing village meetings all around this area affected by voluntary recruitment. What they were doing with the video is bringing it into that setting: They're bringing a TV, they're bringing a generator, literally just carrying it there.
In other settings you take a different approach. In a high-tech setting, you might carry a video around on an iPod. On Capitol Hill we'll get a screen up and do a much more traditional showing. But the root of it is always the human rights groups themselves thinking about how to use it as a tool to complement what they've done before, and not assuming that video is a magic bullet that will get people to react. It has to be within this context of options for people to take action.
reason: How do you train the people?
Gregory: We train them initially around how to film. We're not trying to make human rights workers into filmmakers, but we give them the tools to be mediamakers within their work. It's media literacy: Just as they can write a written report, they should be able to pull out a camera and film. Alongside that we develop this video action plan.
Usually there's a process after that where we receive footage from them and we provide feedback. We'll say everything from "Maybe you should put that person a little bit to the right in the frame" to "Have you thought about whether you're getting the right testimonies in order to persuade the audience you want to reach?" Typically, at least in the first instance, groups will come to Witness to edit. We do that partly so they can tap into a range of experiences here. In a lot of the relationships, as time moves on, we train them how to edit on their own. So, for example, a group we've work ed with on the Thai-Burma border that secretly travels into Burma to document atrocities there—they produce all their videos in the villages on the border. At this point we're really just a strategic consultant to them.
reason: Did you have any notable successes during that period after you rethought your approach and before you launched The Hub?
Gregory: I would highlight Ajedi-ka. We worked with them first on that campaign around child soldiers, and they've seen a decline in voluntary recruitment in communities where they've been doing work. They then identified a need to reach a completely different audience, to communicate with people at the International Criminal Court, which was making a decision about what to investigate in the Congo. We worked with them to develop a video that spoke to the impact on children of being involved in conflict. The organization did private screenings with senior members of the International Criminal Court, and that helped push the court to prioritize that issue. The first arrest warrant they issued in their investigation was for a warlord, and it was specifically on the child soldier issue.
Another example is in Mexico, where a group called Comisión Mexicana has been looking at murders of young women in Ciudad Juarez. You've had this pattern of murders of young women, failures by the local police to investigate, and choices to arrest and torture scapegoats. We worked on a video that found a very powerful individual story that spoke to the broader pattern. It was the story of a young woman who disappeared shortly before she was due to go to university. She's never been found, but the police two weeks later arrested her uncle, accused him of the murder, and tortured him into confessing. So this one story wrapped together both the murders and the abuse of power.
They used this video to lobby Congress here in the U.S. but also showed it to the attorney general's office in Mexico and to local politicians there, and as a result of that the young man who had been arrested was released.
reason: What were they lobbying for in Congress?
Gregory: They were lobbying for a House statement that Mexico should do more to investigate these murders. I wouldn't place much emphasis on that, but you can use it in human rights advocacy. For example, recently we've done a lot of screenings around Burma with the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in D.C.—again, trying to bring those voices of people driven from their villages directly into a committee room in Washington. You can sometimes see the boomerang effect of that.
reason: What did you think of the way the Burmese atrocity footage was used at the beginning of the new Rambo movie?
Gregory: The people we work with inside Burma are tremendously excited that the Rambo movie came out, because it's another way of focusing attention on the crisis. I think it was effective. I have some concerns about how you then go into, essentially, a Hollywood revenge fantasy. But I think it was important that people knew that this was a real situation, and I think it is important to think about how this accesses other audiences that might not know about Burma.
reason: Most of the examples that you've given so far have involved one form or another of narrowcasting. Do you still make an effort to get something out to a mass audience like that?
Gregory: We absolutely do think about how you reach out to a broader audience. In fact, some of our footage appeared in the opening credits of Rambo.
We try to build media attention when we think it's complementary to the advocacy goals. We don't assume that media attention will work. The experience of many of the groups that we've worked with is that the way they're represented in the media doesn't represent either them or their communities well and can be counterproductive. So we try to find opportunities where we can help navigate how it's covered and retain the advocates' point of view. Certainly with The Hub we're thinking about how the media gets access to a broader range of grassroots footage.
reason: How do you police the clips on The Hub for accuracy?
Gregory: We don't police heavily. We made a decision early on that we cannot guarantee the accuracy of every clip. But when we look at clips, we look for red flags, such as someone being exposed to a risk by being seen, or graphic sexual violence that's not in a human rights context. If it's something we're not sure about, we'll try to contact the user who uploaded it and ask more questions. If there's a big question mark in our minds we won't upload it.
We're trying to move to a more community-based model of assessing human rights footage. We've seen success in a number of instances. There was a case from the Ivory Coast where collective intelligence helped identify falsification of footage around a shooting of civilians there.
reason: But nothing goes up until you've approved it. It's not like YouTube.
Gregory: At the moment, nothing goes up until we've approved it. In the long run, I think we'd like to move to a situation where more material can go directly up. We'd like to trust more to the community to assess that material, but right now we've got to build that community.
reason: What are some of the other differences between what you do and YouTube?
Gregory: One key area is the issue of security. We are very aware that people may be uploading from situations where the government is watching the Internet and there may be potential repression. So when someone tries to upload to the site they're given an indication of the security risks. We provide ways to upload safely and securely. Once they upload, we don't hold onto their IP address, so if someone tries to obtain that information either legally or illegally we are unable to identify where users are based.
Another element is editorial control. We're trying to tap into a participatory community of human rights activists rather than leave it in the hands of a corporation. That's an important difference.
Another element is that the pages are designed to provide space to contextualize and act around the footage. We're building a number of advocacy options into the site, so people can find ways to generate online or offline action. If you look at the Shoot on Sight clip from Burma, for example, the video itself is quite self-contained, but the underlining material gives more information, gives the statistics, gives more background about what's been happening, and gives ways to act.
One of the functionalities that will launch shortly is an ability to download the clips, so people can use them in the kind of offline settings that are particularly common outside the global North. Perhaps there's only one connection to the Internet, so what you want to do is download it and take it into a communal setting.
We're definitely encouraging people to port the media out. We want them to share it, to embed it in their blogs, and to take it offline, in a community setting or on a mobile phone.
reason: Are there projects outside of Witness that have influenced what you're doing?
Gregory: I think the Amnesty International Unsubscribe Me campaign, which shows six minutes of someone going through a stress position, is an interesting one to look at, in terms of how you use the vaudevillian characteristics of something like YouTube and turn it around for human rights purposes.
reason: The definition of human rights activism gets kind of hazy around the edges sometimes, and you'll often see groups with very broad political agendas. There are also times when people in different parts of the community have had very different ideas about, say, whether to call for military intervention. Do you accept clips from groups with different analyses? How do you deal with those tensions?
Gregory: We don't have any particular focus in terms of human rights issues. We define human rights very inclusively, so we include economic, social, cultural, political, and civil rights. We wouldn't typically take two core partners that have dueling perspectives, but we're open to groups that are on the edge and leading. We worked, for example, with the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan under the Taliban when they were definitely not the mainstream of human rights activism there. We don't necessarily go for the middle-of-the-road groups.
In the context of The Hub, there's a clear set of community guidelines in terms of how people should act on the site. So advocating violence or posting hate speech or slurs will violate the terms. But we don't legislate a particular point of view, and in fact we encourage different points of view on how to address human rights violations.
We also, in some cases, will contextualize clips that have a public service value, even though they may be a piece of hate speech. If we were to receive footage similar to, say, the incitement to violence by the Rwandan government during the Rwandan genocide, I think there would be a strong reason to feature that on The Hub, but then to put a comment around it. So there is a place where we might editorialize, to explain why something is there.
reason: How does the site deal with informed consent?
Gregory: The overall framework we've set is to think about informed consent in a victim- and survivor-focused model. That means making sure that someone who is filmed is doing it voluntarily, that they understand the risks, that they understand how it's going to be used, and that they're competent to agree, so it's not someone who for reasons of mental disability or age or trauma is incapable of making an appropriate decision. Often oppressive governments will hunt down people who are featured in human rights material. People should be aware of the risks, and they should be aware that any piece of media, once it's out there, can be seen by their worst enemy.
We recognize that we can't impose that standard on people uploading to The Hub. So we emphasize that people shouldn't just think about consent as something legalistic. It's not a legal question whether someone in Burma is filmed and faces risk. They're never going to sue you. You should think about it in a much deeper way that centers on the safety and security of the person filmed as much as the person filming.
reason: The site includes clips of beatings in Egypt that were filmed by Egyptian police officers themselves. How often does that kind of footage appear on the site?
Gregory: There's quite a lot of it. One piece of footage that surfaced in the pilot project was something that became known as squatgate. Police officers in Malaysia used a cell phone to film the humiliation of a young woman who had been arrested. They forced her to strip and to squat in a jail cell. Similar to the Egyptian footage, that escaped from the closed circle of police officers sharing it among themselves and sparked a national outcry in Malaysia around police misconduct.
reason: Do you worry about consent issues in that context?
Gregory: We do. In fact, with the Egypt videos, we made a decision not to show the most grotesque of them, which included the sodomization of one of the detainees. And in the squatgate example we decided not to post that video because it had been seen so widely, and the woman involved specifically requested to me, "Please don't circulate this anymore."
In the case of the Egyptian footage, the people involved said they really wanted people to know about what was happening. When we can get that kind of cue from the people in the material, that helps.
reason: What other approaches have the clips taken?
Gregory: One of the primary modes is witness journalism. Clips filmed by the right people in the wrong place. We have a clip, for example, from a group in Cambodia that is recording forced evictions in Phnom Penh.
Another genre is advocacy videos—videos that speak to a particular audience and push for a particular change in policy, behavior, or practice. Most of the videos from Witness are in that mode, including the videos I talked about from the Congo.
And I think there's a third kind of video: more traditional documentaries that follow a story in a human rights context but don't necessarily have an explicit call for action. It sort of splits into two. For example, we have footage from Al Jazeera on The Hub. So that's a news story. And there's a video that explains the history of West Papua under Indonesian control. That's more of a documentary.
The important elements for us are to go beyond a space where footage is viewed to think about how you create a human rights community around it and how you turn that visual media into action. It's not OK just to see scenes of misery. In fact it can be deeply draining and frustrating both for the people creating it and the people watching it. You have to think about ways to contextualize and ways to act. Discuss this story at reason's Hit & Run blog.
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 5:09 PM PST
Friday, 15 February 2008
Southern Poverty Law Center & Jailing The Young People of America
Mood:
 irritated
Now Playing: Children in Prisons Report - Portland TriMet moves to jail youths
Topic: HUMANITY
Tri-MetBus services plans to jail youth in the Portland Oregon area for minor crimes read more here on "portland indy media" * * * New Project Seeks Justice for Vulnerable Children
Z3 Readers the following article I copied (link below)
and it is related to "jailing the youth" http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=297&splcnewsletter=newsgen-021508 Darius was only 9 when he was locked up. For two months, he languished in a juvenile facility — alone, frightened. He missed his 10th birthday party. He missed Thanksgiving. He missed his stepfather's funeral. His offense: He had threatened a teacher with a plastic utensil. Unfortunately, Darius's early introduction to the juvenile justice system is not that uncommon. Across America, countless school children — particularly impoverished children of color — are being pushed out of schools and into juvenile lock-ups for minor misconduct that in an earlier era would have warranted counseling or a trip to the principal's office rather than a court appearance. The problem is particularly acute in the Deep South, where one in four African Americans live in poverty. The children and teens most at risk of entering this "school-to-prison pipeline" are those who, like Darius, have emotional troubles, educational disabilities or other mental health needs. But rather than receiving the help they need in school, these vulnerable youths are being swept into a cold, uncaring maze of lawyers, courts, judges and detention facilities, where they are groomed for a brutal life in adult prisons. "Our juvenile prisons and jails are overflowing with children who simply don't belong there," said SPLC President Richard Cohen. "These are the children who desperately need a helping hand. Instead, we're traumatizing and brutalizing them — increasing the risk that they'll end up in adult prisons. It's tragic for the children and bad for the rest of us, because it tears apart communities, wastes millions in taxpayer dollars and does nothing to reduce crime." To attack this problem, the Southern Poverty Law Center has launched a multi-faceted new initiative, called the School-to-Prison Reform Project. Based in New Orleans, the project is seeking systemic reforms through legal action, community activism and lobbying to ensure these students get the services — both in school and in the juvenile justice system — that can make the difference between incarceration and graduation. Nationwide, almost 100,000 children and teens are in custody. Black youths are vastly over-represented in this population; they are held in custody at four times the rate of white youths, according to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Students with disabilities that would qualify them for special education services are also grossly overrepresented. Some studies suggest that as many 70 percent of children in juvenile correctional facilities have significant mental health or learning disabilities. 
Many very young children end up in the juvenile justice system because schools do not provide the services they need. Steve Liss photo. |
"These are the children left behind," said Ron Lospennato, an SPLC lawyer who heads the new project. "They are paying a heavy price because of short-sighted policies based mainly on fear and myths. Someone must be there to catch them before they fall through the cracks." The pipeline begins in the classroom, where black students are disproportionately affected. Nationally, black students in public schools are suspended or expelled at nearly three times the rate of white students, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis of U.S. Department of Education data. The state with the worst disparity is New Jersey, where black students are almost 60 times as likely as white students to be expelled for serious infractions. Many other states also had striking gaps in discipline rates. In Alabama, a state where more than a third of all public school students are African American, black students are expelled five times as often as whites. Once a black student is pushed into the juvenile justice system, the pipeline takes another tragic turn. The proportion of black youths within the system grows at each stage — from arrest through sentencing — until this group, which represents only 16 percent of the nation's youth population, accounts for 58 percent of the youths admitted to state adult prisons. "The vast majority of children caught up in the juvenile justice system have not committed violent crimes and do not deserve to be sent to prison," Lospennato said. "And what most people don't know is that thousands of non-violent kids get locked up for months even before their cases are heard." Students in special education are especially at risk of being pushed into the pipeline. "Often these students are simply acting out of frustration because they can't keep up with the others, and they're not getting the help they need in class," said Jim Comstock-Galagan, founder and executive director of the Southern Disability Law Center, which has partnered with the SPLC on the School-to-Prison Reform Project. Poverty makes the situation worse, because a family may not have the resources needed to successfully demand the special school services that can prevent an outburst of misbehavior. It also means a detained child might find her fate in the hands of an overworked and underpaid public defender who has little or no training in the field of juvenile law. Cohen noted the importance of basing the project in New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina exposed the country's racial and economic disparities. "In opening the New Orleans office, we are sending a message, loud and clear, that the key to addressing these inequities is ensuring all children receive the education they deserve and are guaranteed under federal law," Cohen said. The project grew out of the SPLC's legal work representing children with disabilities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. SPLC won key victories
The project has already won key victories for many school children in Mississippi and Louisiana. Settlements reached with school systems in Louisiana's Jefferson, East Baton Rouge and Calcasieu parishes, for example, will ensure that quality special education services are provided to thousands of students. The settlements also have provisions that will enhance school experiences for all children, not just those with emotional or learning disabilities. As for Darius, the SPLC won his release from juvenile detention and helped him receive mental health treatment near his home and special education services at school. A program to help strengthen family relationships was part of the treatment. "There are thousands of children like Darius whose lives can be saved if we reform this broken system," Cohen said. "That's what this project is all about." Editor's note: Darius' name has been changed to protect his identity.
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 12:22 PM PST
Updated: Friday, 15 February 2008 12:23 PM PST
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
No Torture Here (We are blocking your inquiry)
Mood:
loud
Now Playing: CIA kidnapped then tortured ..... the wrong guy for 5 months
Topic: TORTURE
Senate to Examine "Tool for Cover-Up" http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2008/02/senate-to-exami.html February 07, 2008 11:18 AM Justin Rood Reports: Despite all but admitting it kidnapped and interrogated the wrong guy, the Bush administration shut down the alleged victim’s civil suit against it by declaring the his ordeal to be a state secret that could not be discussed in court. For civil liberties advocates, the derailment of German citizen Khaled El-Masri’s claim against the CIA is one of the administration’s more egregious misuses of a power known as the state secrets privilege. It allows the administration to petition a judge to dismiss a case on the grounds that it could disclose information that is vital to national security. Judges can overrule the administration’s concerns, but experts on the matter say they rarely do. And that’s how alleged victims like El-Masri, who says CIA agents kidnapped him, held for five months and beat him, forever lose their day in court. It’s the kind of vital constitutional question that Americans and the media rarely fail to ignore. But the Senate Judiciary Committee next week is going to take a closer look at the power -- what Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., has called "a tool for cover-up" -- as well as a bipartisan bill that backers hope will guide judges in considering future state secrets claims. A Justice Department official will testify at the hearing, slated for Feb. 13, and is expected to defend keeping the authority as broad as possible. He will be joined by several legal scholars. Both the panel's chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and its ranking member, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., are sponsors on the state secrets reform bill, along with Kennedy. It should be interesting.
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 6:08 PM PST
Updated: Tuesday, 12 February 2008 6:09 PM PST
Thursday, 7 February 2008
Afgan Journalist ordered - "Put to Death"
Mood:
 down
Now Playing: Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women's rights
Topic: MEDIA
By Kim Sengupta writing for "The Independent" 
Thursday, 31 January 2008
Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women's rights http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/sentenced-to-death-afghan-who-dared-to-read-about-womens-rights-775972.html A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country's rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after "liberation" and under the democratic rule of the West's ally Hamid Karzai. The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed. Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death. The Independent is launching a campaign today to secure justice for Mr Kambaksh. The UN, human rights groups, journalists' organisations and Western diplomats have urged Mr Karzai's government to intervene and free him. But the Afghan Senate passed a motion yesterday confirming the death sentence. The MP who proposed the ruling condemning Mr Kambaksh was Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, a key ally of Mr Karzai. The Senate also attacked the international community for putting pressure on the Afghan government and urged Mr Karzai not to be influenced by outside un-Islamic views. The case of Mr Kambaksh, who also worked a s reporter for the Jahan-i-Naw (New World) newspaper, is seen in Afghanistan as yet another chapter in the escalation in the confrontation between Afghanistan and the West. It comes in the wake of Mr Karzai accusing the British of actually worsening the situation in Helmand province by their actions and his subsequent blocking of the appointment of Lord Ashdown as the UN envoy and expelling a British and an Irish diplomat. Demonstrations, organised by clerics, against the alleged foreign interference have been held in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where Mr Kambaksh was arrested. Aminuddin Muzafari, the first secretary of the houses of parliament, said: "People should realise that as we are representatives of an Islamic country therefore we can never tolerate insults to reverences of Islamic religion." At a gathering in Takhar province, Maulavi Ghulam Rabbani Rahmani, the heads of the Ulema council, said: "We want the government and the courts to execute the court verdict on Kambaksh as soon as possible." In Parwan province, another senior cleric, Maulavi Muhammad Asif, said: "This decision is for disrespecting the holy Koran and the government should enforce the decision before it came under more pressure from foreigners." UK officials say they are particularly concerned about such draconian action being taken against a journalist. The Foreign Office and Department for International Development has donated large sums to the training of media workers in the country. The Government funds the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in the Helmand capital, Lashkar Gar. Mr Kambaksh's brother, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, is also a journalist and has written articles for IWPR in which he accused senior public figures, including an MP, of atrocities, including murders. He said: "Of course we are all very worried about my brother. What has happened to him is very unjust. He has not committed blasphemy and he was not even allowed to have a legal defence. and what took place was a secret trial." Qayoum Baabak, the editor of Jahan-i-Naw, said a senior prosecutor in Mazar-i-Sharif, Hafiz Khaliqyar, had warned journalists that they would be punished if they protested against the death sentence passed on Mr Kambaksh. Jean MacKenzie, country director for IWPR, said: "We feel very strongly that this is designed to put pressure on Pervez's brother, Yaqub, who has done some of the hardest-hitting pieces outlining abuses by some very powerful commanders." Rahimullah Samander, the president of the Afghan Independent Journalists' Association, said: "This is unfair, this is illegal. He just printed a copy of something and looked at it and read it. How can we believe in this 'democracy' if we can't even read, we can't even study? We are asking Mr Karzai to quash the death sentence before it is too late." The circumstances surrounding the conviction of Mr Kambaksh are also being viewed as a further attempt to claw back the rights gained by women since the overthrow of the Taliban. The most prominent female MP, Malalai Joya, has been suspended after criticising her male colleagues. Under the Afghan constitution, say legal experts, Mr Kambaksh has the right to appeal to the country's supreme court. Some senior clerics maintain, however, that since he has been convicted under religious laws, the supreme court should not bring secular interpretations to the case. Mr Karzai has the right to intervene and pardon Mr Kambaksh. However, even if he is freed, it would be hard for the student to escape retribution in a country where fundamentalists and warlords are increasingly in the ascendancy. How you can save Pervez Sayed Pervez Kambaksh's imminent execution is an affront to civilised values. It is not, however, a foregone conclusion. If enough international pressure is brought to bear on President Karzai's government, his sentence may yet be overturned. Add your weight to the campaign by urging the Foreign Office to demand that his life be spared. Sign our e-petition at www.independent.co.uk/petition
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 4:30 PM PST
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