tim update
Just talked with Tim, he wanted to point out that we were right about US influence in Somalia (I’ve re-printed our article in the comments under this), the inflation situation will become worse as the new cheap looking change comes into effect as it will then become a mental block sort of thing. He says he will write a prison blog, and has sent me his first one – all about work yard beatings. He says he was flown down con air styles to Hawkes Bay with a whole bunch of other prisoners in a private charted flight because Mt Eden is so over flowing it’s not funny. He has asked me to thank everyone for their kindness and their thoughts and wants to reiterate that he will appeal his sentence. He also wanted to say thank you to TV3 for their coverage. Most of the screws and prisoners have told Tim he shouldn’t be inside, and all of them have said he should have put a bomb through Helen Clarkes window, not an Axe. Having said that, I need to point out in this weird age of Police surveillance that the bomb comment WAS A JOKE, and not a reason to raid my house and charge me with some sort of bullshit Terrorist charge under all those bullshit terrorist powers you got after everyone freaked out after September 11th okay!
posted by Bomber @ 12:25 pm
2 comments
2 Comments:
Somalia and the US
Remembering Martin Adler
Another eyewitness swallowed up by the war of terrorism.
Reporter and cameraman, Martin Adler, was the foreign journalist shot by an unknown assassin in Mogadishu last week during a rally for the new power block in war weary Somalia, a collection of Islamic nationalists.
This movement is non-Al Quada connected and was given popular support when the United States started arming the existing Somali warlords. The levels of justified anti-western sentiment amongst a population desperate for law and order was rallied with enough widespread support that the position of the Islamists has more mandate than any of the squabbling groups currently trying to claim Somalia.
The Americans in an almost identical historical mistake have put any opponents of the Koran on immediate Pentagon pay rolls with the same failed counter insurgent tactics that were brutally used in South America by fuelling paramilitary death squads with the defence of anti-communist fervour.
The fact that the policy of supporting the warlords has blown back so appallingly is bad enough, but it comes from a long history of blow-back where CIA 'black ops' play God with the internal politics of another sovereign state for 'national interests' and end up creating the monster they were trying to contain. Amongst this ghoulish galleries most recent graduates hang the pictures of Saddam and Osama. In most situations it is a reactive nationalism that seizes back the initiative from American supported dictatorships. These movements then get tagged by the Americans as Islamic terrorists or communist guerillas, once tagged the military aid starts pumping to find another warlord to support American hegemony in the region.
One would hope that the Americans would re-examine their heavy handed tactics but news that neighbouring (Christian) Ethiopia is gearing up to invade Somalia with tacit American support begs the question: who is the more fundamental, the more hell-bent on confrontation and control of the Islamic World, Bush or Bin Laden?
All of this clumsy proxy-war foreplay was being watched by Martin Adler. As the enormity of the American policy failure dawned on the media, attention from journalists is the last thing dirty wars need, and a good way of hostile governments to do that is by assassinating journalists. Kate Peyton, BBC Producer was killed in almost identical circumstances some months earlier and before that, 20 journalists have been killed during the current American sponsored warlords' reign.
The first time perhaps we ever saw Martin Adler's work was a piece he had done embedded with the American infantry in Iraq. The story had won him the Rory Peck Hard News award. It was a brilliant and terrifying report from a psychological front line of confusion and moral self-doubt with Marines roughing up Iraqi civilians during house to house raids. The highlight were comments from a gung ho Marine leader who stated he would shoot any Iraqi dead without excuse. The honesty of his words making the reasons for the war as empty as those searches for weapons of mass destruction. Adler was a remarkable journalist who went to the fringes of our global interests and recorded our naked vileness. His murder has become the starting point for another moral blind-spot into which American-backed Ethiopian forces have scuttled.
The people of Somalia deserve better than that.
Hey Martyn,
I hope this is hitting your in-tray. I'm having a bit of trouble tracking you down. I'm commenting on RNZ's Nine-to-Noon tomorrow (WED 11:30 am) about the Tim prison-blogging issue. I'm inclined to agree that Simon Power's comments are odd. But I was also interested in seeing what powers prisons have to open, read, and censor mail. Having looked at the prison regs, I think they can read mail in certain circumstances (likely threat to security etc) but can't censor it, as far as I can tell. So when you say Tim's blog has been censored for legal reasons -was this by you or Tim, or was it by the prison?
Cheers
Steven Price
VUW Media law lecturer
04 463 6336
steven.price@vuw.ac.nz
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