Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video is called Edvard Munch.

By Mike Marqusee in Britain, originally from The Hindu in India:

Munch’s very real phantoms

In celebration of the return of “The Scream” to museums, Mike Marqusee recounts the painting’s remarkable life, and that of its creator, Edvard Munch.

July 3, 2008

FOUR YEARS after it was stolen by masked gunmen in broad daylight, and two years after it was recovered in still undisclosed circumstances, “The Scream” has gone back on display at the Munch Museum in Oslo. …

Part of Munch’s genius lies in his evocation of isolation; but though mentally embattled from an early age, he was not an entirely isolated genius. As a young man he was drawn into Oslo’s bohemian counter-culture, where he was exposed to anarchist and revolutionary ideas.

He enjoyed friendships with a wide range of contemporary Scandinavian and European artists and writers, who saw Munch’s work as part of a broader avant-garde challenge to a complacent establishment. An establishment that reacted accordingly, condemning the subject, tone and technique of Munch’s groundbreaking paintings of the 1890s. He was not accepted as the master he obviously was until he was past 40.

In 1937, the Nazis condemned Munch’s work as “degenerate” and sold off the scores of Munch paintings held in German museums. When they occupied Norway in 1940, Munch refused to have anything to do with them. He confessed to a friend that the “phantoms” that had haunted him for years had been put in the shade by the giant “phantom” at loose in the real world.

This video from the USA is called Jeremy Scahill on The Myth of Humanitarian Intervention.

SiCKO- Michael Moore Interview On Real Time With Bill Maher - More amazing videos are a click away

This is a Michael Moore interview on privatized medicine.

Here comes a poem about the tendencies of the Thatcherist-Blairist-Brownist British governments towards privatization of the National Health Service.

The Bevan! in the poem ia Aneurin Bevan, the British “Old” Labour minister, who founded the National Health Service in the 1940s.

The “should be living at this hour” line is borrowed from a poem by William Wordsworth:

Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour:

LONDON, 1802.

Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters

This line has become standard in deploring the decline of British poetry; or, in this case, of British Labour ministers.

From London daily The Morning Star:

POETRY: Poem of the week

edited by John Rety

Poem of the week: For Aneurin Bevan by Danielle Hope.

Bevan! You should be living at this hour
the NHS has need of you. She is a shell
sapped of spirit, a disoriented hull
a revengeful return of the Mayflower.
Her decks brim with pristine shops and babble,
burble like a jaunty airport mall.
Her cargo strains with episodes, manpower
and medicines, each counted to cut costs.
Below she battles ageing, accidents and old super-bugs
that breed below adverts for tomorrow’s drugs.
Passengers please travel on for health care
you’ll find private dentists, stocks, shares
and lawyers on each turning of the stair.

About the poet

Danielle Hope was born in Lancashire but now lives in London. She has had three collections of poetry, Fairground of Madness, City Fox and The Stone Ship, published by Rockingham Press.

John Rety of Hearing Eye Press and Torriano Meeting House is a former editor of anarchist paper Freedom.

This is a video about domestic spying in the USA.

There is a new animation by Mark Fiore from the USA on the Internet.

It is called Constitutional Comprise.

It is about George W. Bush´s domestic spying, and the compromise in Congress about it.

It is here.

This video is called Australian Army UH-1 Iroquois [helicopter] in the Solomon Islands.

By Patrick O’Connor:

Soldiers and police in the Australian-dominated Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) took to the streets of the capital, Honiara, last week in response to a strike by telecommunications workers and the threat of industrial action by public service employees. RAMSI’s provocative intervention comes amid heightened social tensions driven by rising food and fuel inflation, and coincides with an ongoing dispute over the status of the occupying forces’ immunity from Solomons’ law.

This is a video of a demonstration by Nepali migrant workers in South Korea, members of the KCTU.

By James Cogan:

South Korean government turns to repression to curb protests

3 July 2008

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has ordered the police to crack down on the anti-government movement that has developed since his administration’s decision to allow the resumption of US beef imports. The move is a response to fears in the Korean ruling elite that social discontent is spiralling out of control and aggravating an already unstable economic situation.

Lee’s office sought to outlaw industrial stoppages yesterday by an estimated 120,000 of the 511,000 members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), called over both wage demands and in opposition to US beef imports. Lee declared the stoppages were an “illegal and political walkout” and KCTU leaders have been summoned to appear before the Ulsan District Prosecutors Office. If they do not turn up, arrest warrants will be issued.

Hyundai Motors, whose 44,000-strong workforce closed down production lines for two hours at plants in Ulsan, Jeonju and Asan, has announced it is filing a petition for union leaders to be arrested and charged with “obstructing its business”. …

Despite its limited scope, the strike contributed to the general panic in the South Korean corporate elite. The stock market Kopsi index plunged 2.6 percent in trading yesterday, the largest decline in three months and the 18th consecutive day of falls. The stock sell-off has been a response to high oil prices, the government’s lowering of economic growth expectations from 6 percent to 4.7 percent, rising inflation and the fear of political instability.

This video is called US Troops in Iraq talk about Halliburton & KBR.

From the New York Times in the USA:

After Deaths, U.S. Inspects Electric Work Done in Iraq

By JAMES RISEN

Published: July 1, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has ordered electrical inspections of all buildings in Iraq maintained by KBR, a major military contractor, after the electrocutions of several United States service members.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, told Congress of the new inspections while also disclosing that at least 13 Americans had been electrocuted in Iraq since the war began. Previously, the Pentagon said that 12 had been electrocuted. In addition to those killed, many more service members have received painful shocks, Army officials say.

KBR, of course, used to be a subsidiary of Halliburton, the corporation of George W. Bush’s Vice President, Dick Cheney.

The New York Times article does not mention the number of Iraqi civilians killed or wounded by KBR’s deathly electricity. Very probably, numbers will be much bigger than the at least thirteen US American dead now officially admitted.

This video from the USA says about itself:

Talk by Naomi Wolf author of “The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot” given October 11, 2007 at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus.

From Project Syndicate:

White House Sex Crimes

by Naomi Wolf

NEW YORK – Sex crime has a telltale signature, even when those directing the outrages are some of the most powerful men and women in the United States. How extraordinary, then, to learn that one of the perpetrators of these crimes, Condoleezza Rice, has just led the debate in a special session of the United Nations Security Council on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.

I had a sense of déjà vu when I saw the photos that emerged in 2004 from Abu Ghraib prison. Even as the Bush administration was spinning the notion that the torture of prisoners was the work of “a few bad apples” low in the military hierarchy, I knew that we were seeing evidence of a systemic policy set at the top. It’s not that I am a genius. It’s simply that, having worked at a rape crisis center and been trained in the basics of sex crime, I have learned that all sex predators go about things in certain recognizable ways.

We now know that the torture of prisoners was the result of a policy set in the White House by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Rice – who actually chaired the torture meetings.

Retired [US] General [Taguba]: Bush Administration Committed War Crimes: here.

This video is called Standard Operating Procedure Movie Clip: Abu Ghraib Torture.

From Reuters:

Former Iraqi detainees sue U.S. military contractors

Mon Jun 30, 2008

By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL - Four Iraqi men are suing U.S. military contractors who they say tortured them while they were detained in Abu Ghraib prison, according to lawsuits being filed at U.S. federal courts on Monday.

The lawsuits allege the contractors committed violations of U.S. law, including torture, war crimes and civil conspiracy.

The scandal over the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib unleashed a wave of global condemnation against the United States when images of abused prisoners surfaced in 2004.

The four plaintiffs, all later released without charge, described their experiences to Reuters on Monday at an Istanbul hotel, where they periodically meet their U.S. legal team. They gave accounts of beatings, electric shocks and mock executions.

Farmer Suhail Naim Abdullah Al-Shimari, 49, said he was caged, beaten, threatened with dogs and given electric shocks during more than four years in detention. He was released in March without being charged and without any judicial process.

“I lost my house, my family were made homeless and left without a breadwinner. I lost four-and-a-half years of my life and all they did was say sorry,” he told Reuters. …

“This litigation will contribute to the true history of Abu Ghraib. These innocent men were senselessly tortured by U.S. companies that profited from their misery,” said Susan L. Burke, one of the attorneys representing the detainees.

The lawsuits were being filed where the contractors reside. They named CACI International Inc, CACI Premier Technology, L-3 Services Inc and three individual contractors.

The first suit was filed on Monday in Seattle, Washington, and the others were being filed in Maryland, Ohio and Michigan.

CACI provided interrogators at Abu Ghraib and L-3 provided translators at the prison.

Sa’adoon Ali Hameed Al-Ogaidi, a 36-year-old shopkeeper and father of four, described being caged, abused and paraded naked as one of the unregistered “ghost” detainees, hidden for a time from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“In our Arab culture being stripped naked is one of the worst rights violations. It made me feel ashamed and it has left a deep scar in me,” he told Reuters.

“What I want is for the perpetrators to be brought to justice and punished for what they have done,” he said.

See also here.

US advisers steered Iraqi oil contracts to Western firms: here.

This video is a called ARCHITECTURE: IG Farben in Berlin Express.

From British daily The Morning Star:

Hitler’s helpers

(Monday 30 June 2008)

Hell’s Cartel; IG Farben and the Making of Hitler’s War Machine by Diarmuid Jeffreys
(Bloomsbury, £20)

JOHN GREEN reviews Diarmuid Jeffrey’s meticulous narrative on the rise of Hitler-supporting chemical cartel IG Farben.

The Anglo-Saxon world has a morbid fascination with all things to do with Hitler and nazism. Analyses or clarifications about how fascism comes about, though, are few and far between.

Marxists see fascism as the last resort of capitalism in acute crisis, but this has never been taken on board by mainstream historians. That’s why explanations of Hitler’s rise to power have invariably ignored the part played by big business.

In his book Hell’s Cartel, Diarmuid Jeffreys attempts to clarify the central role played by the giant chemical conglomerate IG Farben in financially supporting Hitler and fuelling his war machine.

He argues that he is “filling a gap” in the literature on this subject, ignoring the fact that the socialist countries dealt with this in detail. The renowned GDR feature film Council of the Gods provides a vivid account of the role of IG Farben in Hitler’s rise to power, but gets no mention. Jeffreys’s sources are virtually all Western.

At Nuremberg, for the first time in history, not only were chief nazis on trial but also some of the top managers of German industry. This sent shockwaves through the boardrooms of capitalist companies everywhere and raised the question of where culpability begins and ends.

Some defendants called for the prosecution of the US Standard Oil Company, which did business with IG Farben during the war.

The trial of the IG Farben and Krupp managers was the last of its kind. They ceased abruptly as the cold war against Bolshevism took centre stage and former nazis were transformed into useful allies.

IG Farben was allowed to remain as a holding company, but those formerly under its wing, such as Bosch, Bayer and Hoechst, again became powerful chemical companies on the world stage.

In this book, Jeffreys takes us back to the 1850s to give us a potted history of the German chemical industry. Bayer, for instance, began as a small dye-making company in Engels’s home town of Barmen on the Rhine.