CINA

본문

The German bourgeois magazine Der Spiegel published some days ago following article..

Player Silences German Racists With Hitler Salute

Mired in betting scandals, riven by infighting and alarmed by recent poor performances on the pitch, German soccer needs anything but more controversy in the few months remaining before it hosts the World Cup. But some recent cases of blatant racism are doing further damage to its image.

It started with a Hitler salute. Two eastern German soccer teams in the fourth division, FC Sachsen Leipzig and Hallesche FC, had just drawn 2-2 on March 25 in Halle, and the fans weren't happy.

Leipzig's Nigerian midfielder Adebowale Ogungbure was walking off the pitch when hooligans ran up to him, spat at him and called him "Dirty Nigger," "Shit Nigger" and "Ape." He ignored it and walked on. Then, when he passed the main stand and heard fans making whooping monkey noises at him, he decided he'd had enough. He put two fingers above his mouth to symbolise a Hitler moustache and stuck out his right arm in a Nazi salute to the crowd.

Given their behavior, one might think they would have appreciated the gesture and even returned it. But a Halle supporter attacked him from behind with a corner flag and another grabbed him in a stranglehold. Ogungbure pushed them away as a teammate intervened and dragged him towards the tunnel, to the safety of the changing rooms.

"I was just so angry, I didn't care. I could have been killed but I had to do something," Ogungbure told SPIEGEL ONLINE last week. "I thought to myself, what can I do to get them as angry as they have made me? Then when I lifted my arm I saw the anger in their faces and I started to laugh."

"I've faced some sort of racist abuse at about half the matches I've played," he said, but the spitting was too much on March 25. "I've never seen anyone spit at a dog or a cat in Germany -- why should I be spat at?"

The story took a grotesque turn when Ogungbure was charged with "unconstitutional behavior" for making the Hitler salute, which is illegal in Germany. The public prosecutor's office wisely dropped proceedings within 24 hours. But the incident made nationwide headlines and spurred a flurry of reports suggesting racist abuse is rife in the lower leagues where crowds are smaller and fewer police are present.

Rolf Heller, president of FC Sachsen Leipzig, played down the incident and said it was an isolated case. "This has nothing whatsoever to do with right wing extremism, it is just misguided fervor on the part of the fans," he said. Ogungbure said he informed Heller long ago about the hostility he faces. His answer: "They only want to wind you up."

FIFA toughens penalties

The case came to the attention of the governing body of world football, FIFA, which recently implemented tougher penalties for clubs whose fans engage in racist behavior. Possible sanctions now include match suspensions, the deduction of points, relegation or elimination from competitions.

The new rules were introduced in response to recent acts of racism in the top Spanish and Italian leagues but FIFA Secretary-General Urs Linsi told German newspaper Tagesspiegel last week: "We will of course also make sure that something like this is punished in Germany's fourth division as well."

So clubs had better start getting their act together, because greeting black players with ape noises and riling against foreigners is a frequent occurrence, especially, it appears, at matches involving teams from eastern Germany where unemployment is high and support for far-right parties has been strongest in recent years.

Last weekend at a second division match between Hamburg St. Pauli and eastern club Chemnitz FC, visiting Chemnitz fans stormed Turkish-owned stores chanting "Sieg Heil" and waving imitation Nazi flags. Some shouted: "We're going to build a subway from St Pauli to Ausschwitz."

Such behavior is bad enough at any time, but especially damaging now with Germany trying to project a cosmopolitan image under a World Cup slogan: "A Time to Make Friends."

Neo-Nazis plan to spoil World Cup

German officials last week admitted the far right may try to capitalize on the month-long World Cup, which starts July 9. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said neo-Nazi groups were planning to use the tournament to raise their profile.

The far-right NPD party and other neo-Nazi groups apparently want to stage a "freedom of speech" march in Gelsenkirchen, in the Ruhr Valley, and further demonstrations in Leipzig, Berlin, and Nuremberg, to show solidarity with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has openly denied the Holocaust and suggested that Israel should be "wiped off the map."

The NPD is also already actively fomenting soccer xenophobia by offering a World Cup match fixtures guide that calls for Germany to field only white-skinned players.

The list is headlined "WHITE -- not just a soccer shirt color -- for a real NATIONAL team." It has a picture of a player bearing the number 25 -- the number used by national team player Patrick Owomoyela, who has a Nigerian father.

........................

The 2006 Soccer World Cup is staying under the motto THE WORLD TO GUEST IN GERMANY... harrharr

본문

One protester died after police opened fire to disperse Kurdish demonstrators in southeastern Turkey on Sunday, raising the death toll in six days of street violence to nine, security sources said.

They said Mehmet Sidik Onder, 22, had been shot in the stomach when police started firing in the air to stop a protest march in the town of Kiziltepe, near the Syrian border.

He was part of a crowd that had marched to the family home of another protester, 27-year-old Ahmet Arac, who was shot dead in Kiziltepe on Saturday, they said.

Riots in the mainly Kurdish region erupted on Tuesday after the funerals of 14 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) killed in clashes with the military last weekend.

The civil unrest has been some of Turkey's worst since the PKK took up arms against the state in 1984.

Security sources said additional troops were being deployed to Kiziltepe, a town of about 100,000 people south of the region's largest city, Diyarbakir.

Locals gathered under a canopy to express condolences to relatives of the two men killed in the town.

"The people are very angry and I think the trouble will continue. We are protesting because we want Europe to know what is happening. How can Turkey enter the EU when it is like this?" asked Abdulkadir, a car salesman and friend of Arac.

AUTONOMY AND LIVING STANDARDS

Political analysts and diplomats say the violence reflects local anger over high unemployment, poverty and Ankara's refusal to grant more autonomy to the mainly Kurdish region.

Locals are disappointed that more reforms have not emerged out of Turkey securing an EU go-ahead last October to begin accession talks, and pledges of economic improvements by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

........................................................................

Meanwhile the conflict, or better said a kind of Kurdish uprising in Turkey, N. Kurdistan is reaching the Turkish and Kurdish diaspora. Before yesterday in the early night young Kurdish activists in Berlin, Germany, attacked a bourgeois Turkish restaurant, to protest against the massacres by the police and military against civilians there. The owners of the attacked restaurant have usually also no problems to support German conservative members of the govt. and beside Turkish rightwing politicians.

........................................................................

4.3 updating..

Three Killed in Istanbul Bus Attack

본문

The Nepalese bourgeois eKantipur published yesterday following articles

Mass movement aimed at restoring people’s sovereignty: Koirala

Former Prime Minister and Nepali Congress (NC) President Girija Prasad Koirala has said that the present mass movement launched by the seven-party alliance was aimed at restoring the people’s sovereignty in the country.

본문

ANOTHER STEP FORWARD TO A REAL DICTATORSHIP..

IHT reported yesterday, 4.1 following

Philippine press comes under official heat

The Philippine press, one of the most vigorous and free-wheeling in Asia, is coming under serious government pressure for the first time since the martial law government of Ferdinand Marcos more than 20 years ago.

Along with hints that the authorities might restrict public assembly, the campaign against the press strikes at the heart of the freedoms that were won in 1986 when Marcos was driven from the presidency by a popular uprising.

It is an insidious form of pressure that involves warnings, watch lists, surveillance, court cases, harassment lawsuits and threats of arrest on charges of sedition.

No one from the press has yet been arrested, although three journalists from The Tribune, a daily newspaper, have been charged with rebellion. No news outlets have been shut down, although troops surrounded television stations for several days.

Journalists say the situation is all the more unnerving because of the uncertainty of what is happening or may happen to them.

"I have a number of people on my list," Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez said in a recent television interview. "We are studying them."

This aggressive posture follows a one-week state of emergency imposed Feb. 24 by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in response to what she said was a coup attempt involving an array of people who have been calling for her resignation.

Since then, the police have broken up several gatherings that were seen as critical of the president and have briefly detained some participants.

The gatherings included an annual celebration of International Women's Day on March 8, in which a congresswoman who opposes Arroyo was forcibly detained "to get her out of harm's way."

They also included a mock beauty pageant in which each contestant was to be made up with a mole on her face in imitation of Arroyo.

There also was something else that seemed like a joke - small weekly protest gatherings that at first amounted to buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

The protesters got away with that one, but on March 19, the same group was dispersed by the police as its members walked through a park wearing T-shirts reading, "Out Now" in an evident reference to the president.

Officials have spoken of "intelligence" they had received about planned gatherings in the same manner they have talked about monitoring reporters.

Government statements about the press have played on the intimidation caused by uncertainty.

"The press is not a target of censorship," said the president's press secretary, Ignacio Bunye, "but some members of the press have been charged with violations of law and shall be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen."

The director of the National Police, General Arturo Lomibao, has told the press it must conform to certain standards, but unspecified ones, subject to government interpretation on a case-by-case basis.

He referred to a new catch-all regulation that bans "actions that hurt the Philippine state by obstructing governance including hindering the growth of the economy and sabotaging the people's confidence in government and their faith in the future of this country."

The apparent goal of all this is self-censorship, said Maria Ressa, senior vice president for news and public affairs at the ABS-CBN broadcasting network.

"It's crazy," she said. "You don't know what's happening, but you feel they can move on you at any time."

Ressa has been a leader in demanding clarification of the government's policies toward the press and in filing a class-action lawsuit to bar prior restraint.

"There is definitely fear and uncertainty," she said.

"When government officials say, 'We have the power to shut you down, we have the power to look at your content,' it's intimidation."

Some news organizations have prepared for possible searches or arrests by backing up computer files, setting aside bail money and instructing their staffs on their legal rights if the police enter their offices.

Some journalists have noted that the president's executive secretary, Eduardo Ermita, is experienced in censorship and press manipulation, having served at the top of the Department of Public Information under Marcos.

If the current restrictions are pointing the way toward de facto martial law, as some critics suggest, Ermita said, it is a "smiling" or "laughing" martial law.

The government has chosen in its threatening statements to single out the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, a small, aggressive group of journalists headed by Sheila Coronel, a prominent figure in Southeast Asian press associations.

The center's exposés of corruption, presented during congressional impeachment hearings, were instrumental in bringing down Arroyo's predecessor, Joseph Estrada.

Government officials have said they might charge Coronel and members of her staff with sedition, but the evidence they cite is strangely lackadaisical.

Their only references are to an audiotape posted on the center's Web site in which Arroyo apparently consults with an election official about rigging the presidential vote in 2004.

But as Coronel pointed out in a statement, portions of the tape have been played on radio and television and are posted on a dozen other Web sites and blogs. A version was even played for the press by Bunye, the press secretary.

"It's very insidious," Coronel said. "They say they are studying filing sedition charges. They say they have lists, but they don't say who is on them. This is not how the game should be played. We know our rights, and we should not be harassed by psychological pressure."

Coronel was one of a group of young female reporters who became well known for defying Marcos in the early 1980s when journalists were being harassed and arrested.

The press freedom that is now under threat is something she struggled for herself.

"People went to prison, people died for this freedom," Coronel said, "and if you give it up, it is a betrayal of all the sacrifices that people have made in the past, people I know personally. It really makes me mad."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/31/news/manila.php

본문

The police have so far acted with relative restraint, IHT wrotes...

IHT was asking in its yesterdays edition..

What's next for the protesters?

The French government's decision not to rescind its disputed labor law risks radicalizing the protest movement and plunging France into a new, more dangerous phase of disturbances, students, labor unionists, opposition politicians and sociologists warned Friday.

With labor unions planning another day of nationwide strikes and demonstrations Tuesday, unauthorized protests by students have already begun multiplying across the country - a clear change of tactics from traditional demonstrations and strikes, which are planned with police authorization.

For a second day Friday, decentralized groups of protesters disrupted traffic and invaded public buildings in Paris and other cities, prompting the riot police to intervene.

"They have opened a Pandora's box," said François Dubet, a prominent sociologist. "The decision of the government is an extremely dangerous one."

Student leaders called on students throughout the country Friday to rally in the main squares of their cities before a televised address to the nation by President Jacques Chirac.

At the Place de la Bastille in Paris on Friday evening, thousands of students crowded around a set of loudspeakers to listen to Chirac's speech. They greeted his announcement that he would enact the law with cries of "Resign, Chirac! Resign."

"In my opinion, things are going to explode, and it's going to hurt," said Jeanne Enaut, a 22-year-old economics student at the rally.

Before the Bastille rally, the police blocked exits from the Métro, apparently to prevent people who were arriving via the underground train from gathering there. Early in the day, riot police officers broke up an attempted sit-in at the square. Métro exits were also blocked at the Concorde and Champs-Élysées- Clémenceau stations, near the presidential palace where Chirac lives, because of student actions above ground, a police officer said.

Elsewhere, students blocked train tracks in Libourne, in the southwest, and invaded a post office in Montpellier, in the south. In the Mediterranean city of Marseille, two youths were injured when a motorist forced his way through a blockade across a road to a school campus, French news organizations reported. Incidents were reported in many other cities across the country.

High school students, who were less represented in the movement initially, have now joined the protests in droves. Karl Stoeckel, the head of the UNL, the national union of high school students, said Friday that he expected unauthorized protests to continue through the weekend, with youths occupying train stations, roadways and public buildings.

"Demonstrations and strikes didn't do the job, so we need to diversify our ways of protesting," he said.

Even students at the Lycée Victor Hugo in Paris's wealthy Marais neighborhood walked out Friday to protest the youth employment law. As Chirac prepared to enact the legislation, hundreds of Victor Hugo students gathered at the nearby Place des Vosges, one of Paris's most venerable squares, with banners and drums.

"Enough is enough," said Ulysse Mathieu, 16. "In the beginning only a few of us actually joined the protests. But now most students are mobilized. The government is really asking for it."

Zoë Miniconi, 16, predicted that the movement would grow - and grow more radical. "This could blow up in their faces, just like the suburbs last year," she said, referring to three weeks of rioting in immigrant suburbs across France last November.

Dubet, who is research director at Paris's School for Higher Studies in the Social Sciences, and other political scientists warned that Chirac's decision to enact the law could widen the gulf between moderate students and a radical fringe of youths willing to use violence to make themselves heard.

If the movement becomes more radical and clashes with the police turn more violent, the protests risk drawing in youths from immigrant neighborhoods who were at the center of three weeks of rioting last autumn, the analysts said. Some youths from the poorer suburbs ringing Paris have joined the protests already, but those numbers could swell, the experts said.

Finally, they warned, if youths resort to the kind of violence that has broken out in some areas during the protests - smashing storefronts, battering cars and setting them on fire, attacking the police - labor unions that have acted as a moderating force on the young people could distance themselves from the movement for fear of alienating their members. This could amplify the radicalization.

"So far we have been in a phase of protest that in general was less explosive because there has been a strong coalition between unions and students," Dubet said. "If divisions emerge, it would create a very high risk of violence, chaos and police violence."

François Hollande, leader of the opposition Socialist Party, warned Friday that by signing the law Chirac would be "opening a major crisis."

For the moment, labor unions are planning to step up their resistance to the law. At the headquarters of the powerful CGT union, a spokeswoman said that France's five main unions would decide in coming days what "new forms of protest" would be pursued next week.

The unions and student organizations are hoping that strikes next Tuesday will exceed the mass protests of the past week, which brought more than one million demonstrators into the streets.

The police have so far acted with relative restraint, although students say tensions are increasing.

Anna Mélin, 22, a law student in the southern city of Toulouse, where students occupied a post office Friday, said the riot police had reacted "very aggressively" when she and others occupied a local government building, hitting students with their batons and arresting scores of them.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/31/news/paris.php

본문

Hey, first of all yesterday was the holiday in Palestine...

...but the Guardian, UK, reported following story..

Palestinian factions clash over militant killing

본문

..UPRISING

The KurdishMedia, united kurdish voice reported 3.31 following..

Violence Spreads in Turkey’s Kurdish Region

A child is reported in critical condition after Kurdish demonstrators clashed with security forces for a third day, Thursday, in the Turkish city of Diyarbakir.

Turkish police backed by armored personnel carriers used tear gas and truncheons to disperse a violent march Thursday by tens of thousands of Kurdish protesters in Diyarbakir. A seven-year-old boy was reported to be in critical condition after sustaining bullet wounds in his stomach. Witnesses said he was fired on by police. The reports could not be confirmed.

The urban skirmishes, described as the worst in the past decade, first erupted on Tuesday during funeral services for 14 rebels of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

The rebels were killed by Turkish security forces in the neighboring province of Mus over the weekend.

Four of the rebels were from Diyarbakir, the most populous city in southeastern Turkey, a hotbed of Kurdish nationalism. Thousands of Kurds clashed with security forces during a funeral organized for the rebels on Wednesday. Three mourners, including an eight-year-old boy, were killed in the clashes. Elsewhere across the city, teenagers chanting Kurdish nationalist slogans smashed hundreds of shop windows and torched businesses and government offices in rioting that lasted for several hours.

Most shops remained closed Thursday and most residents kept to their homes, fearing unrest during the funeral for the three victims of Wednesday's violence.

Eyewitnesses said the violence was triggered by teenage youths who hurled rocks at a police station on the way to the cemetery.

The chief of Turkish National police and other high ranking security officials gathered in Diyarbakir Thursday as the violence spread to the neighboring city of Batman.

Officials there say some 5,000 demonstrators, protesting Wednesday's deaths, torched and ransacked around 300 shops, banks and government offices in the city. At least 20 people were reported to have been wounded when police intervened to disperse that demonstration.

Violence has been steadily escalating in Diyarbakir and the surrounding region since June 2004. That is when the PKK ended a five year unilateral truce it had declared following the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in February 1999. The PKK said it was taking up arms again because of what it termed the government's failure to broker a lasting peace. The rebel group began its armed campaign, initially for independence and later for autonomy, in 1984. Over 30,000 people have died in the fighting.

Western governments had long criticized the Turkish army for the brutal methods employed to suppress the rebellion in the Kurdish region. Turkey has adopted a more conciliatory approach toward the Kurds in recent years, including easing bans on the Kurdish language, as it seeks to gain entry of the European Union.

Analysts say the escalation in violence risks jeopardizing the reform process, as the Ankara government has begun taking tougher measures to counter the PKK. On Thursday, the interior ministry launched an investigation of Diyarbakir mayor Osman Baydemir for expressing sympathy for the dead PKK rebels.

http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=11838

...............................................................

The German magazine Der Spiegel reported at least 8 people, among them at least 3 children, were killed by the Turkish police and military and hundreds were injured.

...............................................................................

IHT, Reuters, AP published yesterday following article...

Turkish police break up widening Kurdish rioting

The police broke up demonstrations by thousands of Kurdish protesters in southeastern Turkey on Thursday as violence spread to a second city in the aftermath of the killing of 14 Kurdish guerrillas.

Diyarbakir has been hit in recent days by the region's worst street violence in more than a decade. Three people have died during riots, and Kurdish officials claim two of them were shot by the police. Five people were wounded, including some by gunfire, during new clashes in Diyarbakir on Thursday, the authorities said.

Hundreds of protesters hurled firebombs at two banks and shattered the windows of the local police headquarters, as well as a high school and some businesses, the Anatolia news agency reported. The police also fired into the air in an attempt to disperse the crowds, it said.

Extra police and paramilitary forces were drafted into the city Thursday and fearful residents kept their children indoors. Most shops remained closed.

Violent protests, meanwhile, spread to the nearby city of Batman, and security forces stopped a march by some 2,000 people after firebombs were thrown at businesses. Protesters also smashed the windows of banks and government offices.

News reports said at least 10 protesters had been hurt in the clashes. Black smoke from burning car tires mixed with white smoke from tear gas canisters fired by police.

Kurdish guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers Party have been fighting for autonomy in a war that has left 37,000 people dead in the region since 1984. The group is listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States.

Political analysts said the riots are rooted in high unemployment, poverty and a belief among the Kurds of the region that Ankara is not seriously interested in improving their lot. Under pressure from the European Union, which it hopes to join, Turkey removed restrictions on Kurdish language and culture, but critics said that was insufficient.

The Turkish authorities have been trying to restore order in the Kurdish- dominated southeast without using excessive force so as to not endanger the country's bid to join the EU by tarnishing its human rights record. But they are also under intense pressure from nationalists, who want force used.

In a related development, a parliamentary commission on Thursday approved a draft law to establish better coordination among security forces.

There has been a resurgence of violence since June 2004, when the rebels declared an end to a cease-fire.

In Diyarbakir, residents feared an escalation of the violence, which began after the funerals of four of 14 Kurdish guerrillas killed by Turkish troops in the southeastern province of Mus.

"We're scared to go out," said a banker, who refused to give his name because he feared reprisals.

Mustafa Tanir, a locksmith, called for an end to the protests. "We can't open our shops," he said. "We want these incidents to end as soon as possible."

Mayor Osman Baydemir, from the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, claimed that two protesters aged 19 and 23 had been shot by Turkish security forces. An 8-year-old boy also died this week, apparently hit by a car as he tried to escape the violence.

Baydemir met with protesters late Wednesday in an apparent bid to restore some calm. The private television station NTV said he had kissed a masked rioter on the cheek, then said, "I congratulate you because of your courage."

...........................................................................

AFP reported this

Turkey's Kurdish riots death toll rises to six

Indymedia Istanbul reported 7 people killed by the state terror troops

............................................................................

Al Jazeera reported following..

Three die following Turkey clashes 

본문

Yesterday thousands of students blocked main highways and rail roads.. But, according to German news, the French govt. will not give up... So the struggle will continue...

Activists were blocking main train stations...

IHT wrote yesterday this...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/30/news/france.php

And please read the latest independent updates here..

http://www.libcom.org/blog/                                                   

본문

THE POSSIBLE NEXT STEP FORWARD TO DEMOCRACY...

eKantipur wrote yesterday following...

Parties call on all to attend showdown, govt to expel employees supporting parties

The seven-party alliance on Thursday called on all to make its nationwide general strike and political showdown beginning on April 6 a success.

본문

Qassam lands in kibbutz soccer field

Two Qassam rockets were fired at south Israel. One lands in soccer field in kibbutz Karmiya, south of Ashkelon; one person sustains light injuries, several people suffered shock, car parked nearby was damaged. Mofaz: Hamas government responsible for situation in Palestinian territories...

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3234369,00.html

Not really well done... The World Cup will be in Germany and not in a f.. Kibbutz in the Negev... At first they were firering rockets against a BEER FACTORY... and now this shit...

Of course we should fight against the World Cup, but it might be better on the place where it will be happen soon.. harrharr......

...................................................

But to be more seriously, Haaretz reported yesterday this...

Thousands of Israeli Arabs mark Land Day around the country

Thousands of Israeli Arab citizens on Thursday marked Land Day, an annual day in protest of the expropriation of Arab-owned lands. The main protest took place in Lod, where thousands of demonstrators marched from the city's biggest mosque to city hall.

Among the speakers was Shuweiki Hatib, chairman of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, who told his audience, "We are staying hear and this is our land... We will decide our fate, not them."

Land Day, commemorated since 1976 when six Arabs were killed by police in Sakhnin while protesting land expropriation, took place this year in the shadow of Tuesday's Knesset elections. All of the Arab Knesset MKs, incoming and outgoing, were present at the rally, but did not speak because of time constraints.

Please read the full article here..

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/700772.html