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(Thnx to Dollar's comment @'Dangerous Minds'!)
Monday, 21 February 2011
City of Madison News Release
For Immediate Release:
Feb 19, 2011 For More Information Contact:
Joel DeSpain
266-4897
SATURDAY'S CAPITOL SQUARE DEMONSTRATIONS
Law Enforcement Praises Protesters' Conduct
On behalf of all the law enforcement agencies that helped keep the peace on the Capitol Square Saturday, a very sincere thank you to all of those who showed up to exercise their First Amendment rights. You conducted yourselves with great decorum and civility, and if the eyes of the nation were upon Wisconsin, then you have shown how democracy can flourish even amongst those who passionately disagree. As of 5:00 p.m., no major incidents had been reported. There have been no arrests. However, discourse and discussion was - at times - loud and heated. That was to be expected. As previously indicated, the goal of law enforcement has been to provide a safe environment for democracy to take place. That goal has been realized for yet another day.
African Head Charge album to kick of On-U Sound anniversary year
Formed in the early 80’s by On-U head honcho Adrian Sherwood and percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah, African Head Charge have established a unique reputation over the years for producing exceptionally beautiful and deeply strange music.
This is their first release since 2005’s Visions of a Psychedelic Africa and sees Bonjo once again joining forces with long time On-U stable-mates Skip McDonald, Crocodile and the Crispy Horns together with contributions from legendary bassist George Oban, Dancehall pioneer Jazzwad and electronic wizard Adamski. All the elements of a classic Head Charge album; a triumphant mix of dub, psychedelia, trance, afro and tribal rhythms that have given them their own unique place in contemporary music.
Voodoo of the Godsent will be followed in April by the re-release of 3 seminal On-U Sound albums: Creation Rebel’s “Starship Africa”, African Head Charge’s “Off the Beaten Track” and The New Age Steppers’ eponymous first album that was the first ever LP release on the On-U Sound label.
@'Adrian Sherwood'
PREVIEW
Egypt revolt becomes global case study
It seems naive to hope the fallout from cataclysmic events in the Middle East and North Africa can spill beyond the region and stir distant, repressed populations with no cultural or historical affinity. Yet successful uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia have captivated dissidents and activists around the world who have campaigned in vain for radical change, in some cases for decades.
This week, South Korean activists even hoisted helium balloons into the air and watched them drift into North Korea with a message attached: discard your leaders, just as the Egyptians did.
"The Egyptian people rose up in a revolution to topple a 30-year dictatorship," said one of the leaflets coasting over the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas.
"The North Koreans too must revolt against a 60-year-old dictatorship." The strain of poverty and inefficient government in North Korea, which has been targeted by international sanctions, matches or exceeds that of Arab autocracies currently buffeted by street protests. Its human rights record, along with those of Myanmar and Zimbabwe, is routinely condemned in international forums.
But there are no clear signs that these countries will face the same kind of upheaval sweeping Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.
"Everything depends on local conditions," said Charles Ries, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based RAND Corp. who recently oversaw economic issues while stationed at the American Embassy in Baghdad.
North Korea, after all, has a cult-like leadership rooted in its World War II-era separation from the south; Myanmar brutally stamped out revolts in 1988 and 2007; and Zimbabwe has a shaky coalition government and plans elections later this year.
Dissidents and authoritarian governments on other continents are undoubtedly reviewing the playbook of their counterparts in the Middle East _ social media networking for the protesters, and hasty reform pledges and thugs in civilian clothes for the leaders. Unrest even spread to Djibouti, a city-state across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, where protesters reportedly clashed with security forces on Friday.
Fear of bloody retaliation, sharp curbs on information, tactical decisions to avoid a showdown and the lack of a trigger _ severe food shortages or a fuel price hike, for example _ are deterrents to popular revolt in repressive systems.
Protesters in Egypt and the region used Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to organize, and benefited from pan-Arab media outlets such as Al-Jazeera television that spread word of the uprisings.
But there is no sign of an organized opposition in North Korea, where most people do not have access to outside TV and radio, or the Internet. The leadership had long-standing ties to ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. On Jan. 23, two days before protests broke out in Egypt, ruler Kim Jong Il, who rarely meets foreigners, hosted the head of Cairo-based Orascom Telecom, which built a 3G telephone service network in North Korea.
Dissidents in military-ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, want to know more about what happened in Egypt despite a state media blackout.
"Everyone is trying to find out information and is interested," said Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK, which is based in London. Dissidents are "talking about whether they can learn anything from this, and what examples there are," he said.
However, Farmaner said there no signs that anti-government groups want to try a revolt similar to the 18-day uprising in Egypt, where a military council took power and promised to oversee a democratic transition. The military sided with protesters in pushing out Mubarak.
In Myanmar, "the army has always been prepared to shoot when it's ordered to," Farmaner said. "There's no separation of president and military in any way." Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has called for dialogue with Myanmar's leaders, reflecting concern that a popular upheaval that could end in bloodshed.
"We are interested in the parallels in Egypt and the parallels with Burma but the institutions are not exactly the same. I think protests are one way of bringing about change but not necessarily the best way," she told the BBC in early February, before Mubarak was ousted.
There are plenty of precedents for politically potent ideas taking flight across continents. Ries, the former U.S. diplomat, said European thinkers provided some intellectual backbone for the American Revolution, which did the same for the French Revolution, which in turn inspired Haitian slaves in their revolt against French colonizers, all in the space of a few decades in the late 18th century.
"You look at other places where there are huge numbers of people who have little to lose by banding together and applying these new techniques," Ries said of today's uprisings. "It also exposes, in a sense, the impotence of repression against huge numbers." Some Arab countries, however, have not yielded to protests, responding instead with deadly force. Prof. Hurst Hannum, an international law expert at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, cautioned against predictions of a worldwide "outbreak of 'democracy."' In an e-mail, he recalled the "rather premature" thesis of Francis Fukuyama, a U.S. academic whose 1992 book, "The End of History and the Last Man," declared that Western-style democracy would prevail over other systems in the wake of communism's fall.
On Feb. 3, state-run radio in Zimbabwe accused Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a former opposition leader, of trying to spark anti-government uprisings similar to those in Tunisia and Egypt. Tsvangirai said before he joined the governing coalition that he would not lead his followers into danger and that he stood for peaceful change.
State radio is controlled by loyalists of President Robert Mugabe, who has been in power for three decades.
Political scientist John Makumbe wrote an essay titled "Is Egypt possible in Zimbabwe?" in which he speculated that the military would crack down on any revolt, but he drew inspiration from the uprisings to the north.
"Thank you, Tunisia and Egypt, for making us realize what is possible with people power," he wrote on the website of Nehanda Radio, an independent station.
The North Korean system, which survived a famine in the 1990s, has long defied predictions of collapse. Kim Jong Il, who inherited power from his father, has tightened his grip with perks for the military and a propaganda machine that seeks to rouse national pride by demonizing declared enemies.
North Korean state media have not reported events in Egypt, and it is doubtful that the leaflets of the South Korean activists, who also send short-wave radio broadcasts to the north, will reach or convince many people. But they draw a clear dynastic parallel _ some images show Mubarak and his son, Gamal, once thought to be his successor, and Kim Jong Il and his third son and heir, Kim Jong Un.
Paik Hak-soon, an analyst at the Sejong Institute research center near Seoul, speculated that top government and trade leaders in North Korea were "definitely aware" of what is happening in Egypt. But a similar uprising is unlikely, he said.
"There are so many differences in terms of ideology, in terms of power structure, in terms of domestic and external relationships," Paik said. "North Korea is basically an isolated, socialist regime, protected by a most reliable and most supportive big power, China." China itself portrayed the protests as the kind of chaos that comes with Western-style democracy, underscoring how wary it is of any potential source of unrest that might threaten its power. As Mubarak's hold slipped, Chinese censors blocked the ability to search the term "Egypt" on microblogging sites, and user comments that drew parallels to China were deleted from Internet forums.
In Myanmar, many people with access to satellite dishes followed the historic events in Egypt, quietly wishing for the same thing.
"Tears welled in my eyes when I watched the Egyptians, overjoyed after Mubarak left. I want to tell them that your fight has paid off but we don't know where our future lies," said a 53-year-old private tutor in Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city. The tutor spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the authorities.
@'ahramonline'
This week, South Korean activists even hoisted helium balloons into the air and watched them drift into North Korea with a message attached: discard your leaders, just as the Egyptians did.
"The Egyptian people rose up in a revolution to topple a 30-year dictatorship," said one of the leaflets coasting over the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas.
"The North Koreans too must revolt against a 60-year-old dictatorship." The strain of poverty and inefficient government in North Korea, which has been targeted by international sanctions, matches or exceeds that of Arab autocracies currently buffeted by street protests. Its human rights record, along with those of Myanmar and Zimbabwe, is routinely condemned in international forums.
But there are no clear signs that these countries will face the same kind of upheaval sweeping Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.
"Everything depends on local conditions," said Charles Ries, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based RAND Corp. who recently oversaw economic issues while stationed at the American Embassy in Baghdad.
North Korea, after all, has a cult-like leadership rooted in its World War II-era separation from the south; Myanmar brutally stamped out revolts in 1988 and 2007; and Zimbabwe has a shaky coalition government and plans elections later this year.
Dissidents and authoritarian governments on other continents are undoubtedly reviewing the playbook of their counterparts in the Middle East _ social media networking for the protesters, and hasty reform pledges and thugs in civilian clothes for the leaders. Unrest even spread to Djibouti, a city-state across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, where protesters reportedly clashed with security forces on Friday.
Fear of bloody retaliation, sharp curbs on information, tactical decisions to avoid a showdown and the lack of a trigger _ severe food shortages or a fuel price hike, for example _ are deterrents to popular revolt in repressive systems.
Protesters in Egypt and the region used Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to organize, and benefited from pan-Arab media outlets such as Al-Jazeera television that spread word of the uprisings.
But there is no sign of an organized opposition in North Korea, where most people do not have access to outside TV and radio, or the Internet. The leadership had long-standing ties to ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. On Jan. 23, two days before protests broke out in Egypt, ruler Kim Jong Il, who rarely meets foreigners, hosted the head of Cairo-based Orascom Telecom, which built a 3G telephone service network in North Korea.
Dissidents in military-ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, want to know more about what happened in Egypt despite a state media blackout.
"Everyone is trying to find out information and is interested," said Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK, which is based in London. Dissidents are "talking about whether they can learn anything from this, and what examples there are," he said.
However, Farmaner said there no signs that anti-government groups want to try a revolt similar to the 18-day uprising in Egypt, where a military council took power and promised to oversee a democratic transition. The military sided with protesters in pushing out Mubarak.
In Myanmar, "the army has always been prepared to shoot when it's ordered to," Farmaner said. "There's no separation of president and military in any way." Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has called for dialogue with Myanmar's leaders, reflecting concern that a popular upheaval that could end in bloodshed.
"We are interested in the parallels in Egypt and the parallels with Burma but the institutions are not exactly the same. I think protests are one way of bringing about change but not necessarily the best way," she told the BBC in early February, before Mubarak was ousted.
There are plenty of precedents for politically potent ideas taking flight across continents. Ries, the former U.S. diplomat, said European thinkers provided some intellectual backbone for the American Revolution, which did the same for the French Revolution, which in turn inspired Haitian slaves in their revolt against French colonizers, all in the space of a few decades in the late 18th century.
"You look at other places where there are huge numbers of people who have little to lose by banding together and applying these new techniques," Ries said of today's uprisings. "It also exposes, in a sense, the impotence of repression against huge numbers." Some Arab countries, however, have not yielded to protests, responding instead with deadly force. Prof. Hurst Hannum, an international law expert at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, cautioned against predictions of a worldwide "outbreak of 'democracy."' In an e-mail, he recalled the "rather premature" thesis of Francis Fukuyama, a U.S. academic whose 1992 book, "The End of History and the Last Man," declared that Western-style democracy would prevail over other systems in the wake of communism's fall.
On Feb. 3, state-run radio in Zimbabwe accused Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a former opposition leader, of trying to spark anti-government uprisings similar to those in Tunisia and Egypt. Tsvangirai said before he joined the governing coalition that he would not lead his followers into danger and that he stood for peaceful change.
State radio is controlled by loyalists of President Robert Mugabe, who has been in power for three decades.
Political scientist John Makumbe wrote an essay titled "Is Egypt possible in Zimbabwe?" in which he speculated that the military would crack down on any revolt, but he drew inspiration from the uprisings to the north.
"Thank you, Tunisia and Egypt, for making us realize what is possible with people power," he wrote on the website of Nehanda Radio, an independent station.
The North Korean system, which survived a famine in the 1990s, has long defied predictions of collapse. Kim Jong Il, who inherited power from his father, has tightened his grip with perks for the military and a propaganda machine that seeks to rouse national pride by demonizing declared enemies.
North Korean state media have not reported events in Egypt, and it is doubtful that the leaflets of the South Korean activists, who also send short-wave radio broadcasts to the north, will reach or convince many people. But they draw a clear dynastic parallel _ some images show Mubarak and his son, Gamal, once thought to be his successor, and Kim Jong Il and his third son and heir, Kim Jong Un.
Paik Hak-soon, an analyst at the Sejong Institute research center near Seoul, speculated that top government and trade leaders in North Korea were "definitely aware" of what is happening in Egypt. But a similar uprising is unlikely, he said.
"There are so many differences in terms of ideology, in terms of power structure, in terms of domestic and external relationships," Paik said. "North Korea is basically an isolated, socialist regime, protected by a most reliable and most supportive big power, China." China itself portrayed the protests as the kind of chaos that comes with Western-style democracy, underscoring how wary it is of any potential source of unrest that might threaten its power. As Mubarak's hold slipped, Chinese censors blocked the ability to search the term "Egypt" on microblogging sites, and user comments that drew parallels to China were deleted from Internet forums.
In Myanmar, many people with access to satellite dishes followed the historic events in Egypt, quietly wishing for the same thing.
"Tears welled in my eyes when I watched the Egyptians, overjoyed after Mubarak left. I want to tell them that your fight has paid off but we don't know where our future lies," said a 53-year-old private tutor in Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city. The tutor spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the authorities.
@'ahramonline'
Govt. failures contributed to rise of neo-paramilitaries: Wikileaks
In November 2006, Sergio Caramagna, the director of the OAS Mission to Support the Peace Process (MAPP/OEA), visited Colombia and successfully identified 14 neo-paramilitary organizations with a possible eight more. These groups he said consisted largely of narcotraffickers and paramilitaries who had refused to demobilize despite benefits offered by the government. However, there was also a small percentage of criminals who had previously demobilized.
While this number wasn't high, Caramagna asserted that it would grow if the government failed to increase the breadth of the JPL to include incentive structures for former mid-level leaders of the AUC, not just its most prominent members. These mid-level commanders are now leading neo-paramilitary groups like "Los Urabeños," "Los Paisas," the "Oficina de Envigado" and ERPAC.
Additionally, the government, despite it's willingness, wasn't doing enough to combat these new groups according to Caramagna. Peace Commisioner Carlos Restrepo seconded this, adding that the police force weren't provided with the adequate resources to mitigate the rise of the neo-paramilitaries.
In another cable dated October 24, 2006, significant elements of the JPL - a law which the then interior minister described in another cable as being "difficult to understand, even for Colombians," - were shown to be deeply flawed, the most prominent being the reintegration efforts.
In the cable, Reintegration Commissioner Frank Pearl cites coordination and implementation problems within government due to divided and overlapping responsibilities
Furthermore, Pearl added that financial resources for reintegration were distributed poorly with 80% being spent on monthly stipends and administration. This left an insufficient amount for the actual rehabilitation of the ex-paramilitaries.
Based on these facts, Under Secretary Burns urged better action and communication from the Colombian government with the U.S., acknowledging the disastrous implications if the newly demobilized failed to reintegrate ino society and returned to crime.
These fears materialised the following month with Caramanga's findings.
On Thursday, another Wikileaks cable revealed that in 2004, former President Alvaro Uribe predicted the rise of neo-paramilitary organizations from the ashes of the AUC.
However, this speculation negated the factor of his own government's failures within the JPL to successfully rehabilitate former AUC members.
Since 2006, neo-paramilitary groups have posed an ongoing challenge to Colombia's security forces. Political supporters of Uribe blame current Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera for the violence, while the Liberal Party -- an opposition party during the two Uribe terms -- blames the violence on the past administration.
Colombia's justice and interior minister admitted Monday that the illegal armed groups now have increased control over large areas of the countryside and within dozens of cities and threaten to influence October's local elections.
@'Colombia Reports'
Tripolitanian Libyan
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