26 March, 2012

Albert Speer's Nuremberg defence will not work for Bill Shorten when he is charged with collaboration in crimes against humanity


There is no such thing as values-free business, especially when it can readily be shown that harm and extreme violations of international and human rights law are direct results of your business activity. If a Minister in an elected government chooses to do business with Apartheid Israel they may find that one day there will be law suits as the victims come after them for their knowing and intentional acts. Bill Shorten, MP, Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation; Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, a former trade union leader, is on notice that Albert Speer's Nuremberg defence will not work for Bill Shorten when he is charged with collaboration in crimes against humanity.

Bill Shorten MP Trade Mission to Israel

The Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce and the Embassy of Israel are delighted to advise that Minister Bill Shorten MP, Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation; Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations will lead a Trade Mission to Israel from Sunday 29 April - Saturday 5 May, 2012. The trade mission will attempt to understand how is it that Israel-a country of 7.2 million people, a third of the size of Tasmania, sixty per cent desert, only sixty three years old, with limited natural resources-produces more start-ups than large, peaceful and stable nations like Japan, India, Korea, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Here is the letter written by Dr Vacy Vlazna

Dear Minister Shorten

With regard to your upcoming Trade Mission to Israel, as Israeli businesses linked to maintaining the occupation of Palestine (illegal under international law) have subsidiaries in Australia such as Elbit Australia, Rafael Australia, Strauss Group, etc as well as US arms subsidiaries in Israel eg Raytheon Australia and Thales Australia: you could use instead that time spent meeting them in Israel to-

*spend a day in Gaza while it is being bombarded by contributions by the aforementioned businesses and experience first hand their product success.

*as well as visit the mother of Ayoub Asalya who is still picking up fragments of her 12 year old son's body after he was hit by an Israeli surgical precision missile on 18-3-12

*and while there visit a Gazan hospital that is desperately trying to tend patients, including premature babies and dialysis patients, with little electricity and medicines

*and in your role as Minister for Employment meet with the hundreds of thousands of desperate unemployed Gazans (50% of Gaza) struggling to survive under Israel's illegal blockade

*spend a day in Silwan, East Jerusalem with a Palestinian family while it is being illegally evicted for the glorious judaisation of Jerusalem funded by the said businesses and Zionist Australians

*go to Hebron to see how Israeli economic policy works in Shuhada Street that is closed and empty of Palestinian businesses owned by now impoverished families

*while in Hebron accompany Palestinian children as they run the daily gamut to school of colonist verbal and stonethrowing harassment as well as ducking faeces and urine thrown by illegal colonists who are the pride of Israel and supported financially by Australian Zionist Jews

*pass through Israeli checkpoints from Bethlehem to Jerusalem alongside Palestinians and experience the humiliation and delays in the heat of the day

*visit a Palestinian school and watch as the heroic Israeli military burst in and kidnap 11 year old kids who won't see their parents for a month under administrative detention

*and why not take your delegates to visit 30 year old Hana Shalabi who is dying for her principled hunger-strike stand for freedom and justice after she was released and rearrested after the honorable Shalit prisoner deal still with no charge or trial. Hana wants to study nursing.

*perhaps a tour of Palestinian farms that have had their orchards uprooted for the illegal Annexation Wall and illegal colonies that spread like cancer across stolen Palestinian lands and lost livelihoods.

Israel, the only democratic, peace-loving, dovish and non-nuclear country in the Middle East, has so much reality to enlighten you and your delegation.

When on your return, it is business as usual with Israel then we will know that your political ambition trumps international law, justice and compassion.

Sincerely

Dr Vacy Vlazna

08 March, 2012




Joseph Kony and the ‘Visible Children’

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/its_time_to_catch_joseph_kony_20120307/

which is part of:

Obama Mines for Voters With High-Tech Tools

Daniel Borris for The New York Times

Inside a Chicago office complex, Obama aides sift through reams of data about supporters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/us/politics/obama-campaigns-vast-effort-to-re-enlist-08-supporters.html?_r=3&hp

By JIM RUTENBERG and JEFF ZELENY

Published: March 8, 2012

First, let me say that Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army is burnt into my heart. I do care about this issue and don't like to see it trivialised or cynically harnessed to a campaign for the re-election of a war-making US Commander-in-Chief.

I spent 2 years, from 2002 till 2004 in Uganda as a human rights volunteer. I went to the north of Uganda to the war zone and saw schools that had been closed because the children who were student had been abducted by the LRA. I interviewed children who had escaped the LRA and worked with young adults who had previously been those abducted children.

I have been to parts of the north where it wasn't safe to land a plane and I could have been shot down. I have seen some of the hundreds of thousands of displaced people and slept with them in their huts. I have been within a few kilometres of where Kony and his main force were, and all of the 50 soldiers who were protecting me were killed two weeks later, including the Ugandan soldier who was 11 years old and the one I held in my arms while he had an epileptic fit.

Please watch this video, and appreciate that it was made by one of the USA's most expensive PR firms and remember:

1. The video promotes the ICC, the International Criminal Court - which the US government refuses to recognise. The US also has plenty of war criminals, not just Africans and Bush and Obama are among them.

2. The US was funding and arming the SPLA which fought for South Sudan's independence from Sudan to enable the USA to get their hands on South Sudan's oil. The abundance of weapons in that region enabled Joseph Kony to continue fighting, as the video says, for 20 years, when "no one cared".

3. For part of the time the war against Kony was being fought, part of the Ugandan army was diverted into an illegal invasion of the DRC and the plundering of resources. That was also a time when three African nations were receiving huge military aid. They were Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Uganda.

4. The Ugandan army is part of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni's military dictatorship which tortures political opponents while collecting huge aid donations. I have also met children who had been abducted to fight in Museveni's army. He says that white people think all Africans look young and cannot tell their age. He is a liar and a murderer. He is also now Obama's ally.

5. Don't even get me started on the cynical US aid given to Uganda, especially the aid to HIV NGOs who were not permitted to give out condoms because US pharmaceutical corporations were going to profit from an outbreak of AIDS. George W Bush even visited to clinch the deal.

I'll save the rest, but this will give some idea why I say watch this video but be careful what you believe. Obama is desperate to get re-elected so he can go on making wars, mostly in secret. US special forces are said to be in 19 African countries.