A FIVE-DAY FESTIVAL OF RADICAL AND INDEPENDENT FILM AND TALK. Including films from and about IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, LEBANON, PALESTINE, ISRAEL and more

With solidarity groups, international activists, film-makers, and music.

from 7pm each evening Tuesday 26th - Friday 29th and from 5pm Saturday 30th.

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soffy for my english... Read more >>

How about the McCartney sisters and all of the Crown and free state media making a never-ending hoo-ha about getting justice for the family of this poor man? Maybe MI5 could bankroll a trip to Washington for his family too? Read more >>

13th April 6.30pm
Pillow fight for Trade Justice.
City of London
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED ---email:  pillowsforjustice@hotmail.com to register your interest or visit  http://www.cloxfam.org/pilllow.htm Read more >>

Wickes, the building suppliers, recently had one of their Ad hoardings modified. Read more >>

This is a short report of the situation at the Egyptian/Jordanian border and the crossing from Nuweiba to Aqaba. Five photos are attached. Read more >>

Reg Keys, father of a solider killed in Iraq, launched his election campaign today in Sedgefield confident that he can unseat Tony Blair. Read more >>

Genoa Legal Support
Diaz victims group.

April 6th marks the first official trial day of the Diaz raid and the subsequent torture and abuse at the Bolzaneto detention camp which occurred during the G8 summit, July 21/22nd 2001. It is very important that these proceedings have placed on trial a total of 75 police and five doctors, 47 at Bolzaneto and 28 police from Diaz.
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Monday 11th April 7.30-9.30
Pelham Room, Brighthelm Centre, North Road, Brighton
The Edo Injunction and how it affects us Read more >>

Well just looky here:

 http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4412907.stm

From the deepest depths of the goverment's own television station. Ghoon is opening a new "Special Reconnaissance Regiment", has a whiff of Speznaz about it.

It's a good job I keep an eye on the slippery bugger isn't it.
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Syria plans to pull all of its troops and intelligence agents from Lebanon by April 30, and a United Nations verification team will be dispatched - if the Lebanese government agrees - to verify the withdrawal, a U.N. envoy said Sunday after meeting with President Bashar Assad. Read more >>

BBC have bought McLibel!
(better late than never?)


it'll be screened on Weds 13th April - two days before McD's 50th b'day - on BBC4 at 9pm.

press release below to any journos/mailing lists. Read more >>

An evening of entertainment, public debate, showing of the 'McLibel'
documentary - and the world premiere of the new McLibel DVD! Read more >>

The charges against two people arrested during a demonstration outside a meeting of the International Energy and Environment ministers last month have now been dropped due to lack of evidence [read as, no legitimate grounds for arrest in the first place].

One of the two arrested was a journalist who had been filming the protest for a collaborative film about the G8. Here is his statement about the events surrounding his arrest. Read more >>

Indymedia cinema presents...

a MIDDLE EAST FILM FESTIVAL Read more >>

The film we co-authored with Guido Chiesa last year, set in 1977 during the Bologna student uprising, is going to be screened in the UK (London 9 April, Glasgow 13 April, Edinburgh 15 april) in the context of the Italian Film Festival. Places, timetable, and bookings at:  http://www.italianfilmfestival.org.uk/
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I saw atrocities committed by the US financed Death Squads of Central America in 1998 and 1989...to understand the crisis of the church and of politics in Latin America we need to identify the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the church and its Pope (s) ... !

Special on Pope John Paul

[Titled: Pope a War Criminal and Hypocrite for Bush ]

 http://publish.nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/update/i ndex.php

Martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero to Become a Saint - John Paul to Be Tried for War Crimes and Genocide;



Having watched the Pbs Special on the Pope - and Knowing (seeing) the atrocities committed by the US financed Death Squads of Central America (during my visits in 1998 and 1989) - I copied the transcript for the show and was searching around the internet when i found this report on indymedia - Wow - It is true...

I believe that in order to understand the cirisis of the church and of politics in Latin america that we need to identifiy the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the church and its Pope (s) ... !

Special on Pope John Paul

[Titled: Pope a War Criminal and Hypocrite for Bush ]


Martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero to Become a Saint - John Paul to Be Tried for War Crimes and Genocide;

a Report by Enrique Munoz, CNI correspondent in Mexico City

The defining moment in John Paul's legacy was his unjust and disrespectful treatment of Arch Bishop Oscar Romero in 1980. Romero thought that the church's place was with the poor and to back radical social change to end the suffering and repression.

After meeting with the Pope, Romero said to an aide: " Help me to understand why I have been treated so badly by the Holy Father." The Pope had told Romero to get along with the government of El Salvador that with US money training and moral support was frantically killing priests, peasants and organizers by the tens of thousands yearly.

Romero himself called the Pope's response to his pleas and the situation in El Salvador as "Unjust." One month later the Arch Bishop was assassinated while saying mass. Romero's funeral turned into a bloody riot as the US-backed death squads (the Salvadoran Government) opened fire on the crowds.

From a letter to President Carter by Oscar Romero:
"You say that you are Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here, because they use it only to kill my people."
 http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/rom ero.html

The Pope made similar statements to GW Bush before the illegal and criminal invasion of Iraq.

Millions of people all across Latin America call for sainthood for Oscar Romero.

Next the Pope turned his attention to destroying the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua and the many priests who supported the revolution in the sprit of Romero, particularly Ernesto Cardinal. The Pope put the unity of the church ahead of the salvation of the world and its role to defend the poor.

As a US PBS television special on the Pope stated: "It was a tragedy what the Pope did in Central America and Latin America in the 1980's." The show goes on to cite a number of observers who question whether the pontiff's judgment was clouded by his personal experience with communism in Poland.

The Pope continued his right wing purge of Church officials, seminaries and Liberation theology activists throughout Latin America until his death, though he also increased his attacks on capitalism and the imperialist designs of the US and its hero GW Bush.

Since 1990 the Pope intervened in Mexico - especially in Chiapas - installing conservative Bishops and seeking to discredit or silence Bishop Ruiz and others who supported the Zapatista revolution and called for an end to oppression and oppressive structures in Mexico..

The torment of the Pope - or a grand act of hypocrisy - can be seen in the pope's focus on the Culture of Death: Modernity. He opposed birth control, abortion, homosexuality and women in the church because he ( Unlike anyone we know of on the left or right) understood that these were band-aids seeking to cover up or justify a sick and evil society promoted by the US of materialism and self-centeredness. He said that a self-centered concept of unlimited freedom allowed no place for solidarity and that this drew attention away from the violence done to millions forced into poverty. This freedom top him became a Culture of Death... a new holocaust. He rightfully saw only darkness in modernity and he was appalled at the betrayal of humanity exhibited in his native Poland with their sex shops, McDonalds and materialism.

The Pope changed Eastern Europe and single handedly destroyed the Stalinist Communist system and yet he ultimately saw this as a terrible failure as he witnessed materialism grow there.

In Latin America he stopped the change that was so necessary and surely went to his death knowing the evils that he spawned.

"We agree with almost every single thing that that John Paul wrote or said. He was the greatest and most powerful person to live in at least 100 years and probably ever again given the weakness and disrepute of the Catholic Church today due to the sex scandals.

But what the Pope did was one of the greatest evils in all of history. His systematic destruction of the popular church and Liberation Theologists constitutes a war crime, a crime against humanity and genocide. he should be tried in absentia and all of the church's property and wealth should be transferred to the poor people of Latin America that he persecuted and betrayed so utterly.

Only by acknowledging these crimes - crimes that the Pope did admit to some degree in his trip to Mexico, can the church reclaim its mission and that of Christ for a preferential option for the poor. If the church does not move immediately to recognize Oscar Romero as a saint and the true leader of the church then all Catholics, and all people should boycott and attack this decrepit and evil institution."

Anamaria Salvedra, speaking for the underground remnants of Liberation Theology in Central America.

Remembering Oscar A Romero
 http://www.stpetersnottingham.org/saints/romero.ht ml

One priest, Fr. Rutilio Grande, was particularly outspoken in denouncing the injustices against the 30,000 peasants working thirty-five sugar-cane farms in his area. Archbishop Romero defended Fr. Grande against official criticism: "The government should not consider a priest who takes a stand for social justice, as a politician, or a subversive element, when he is fulfilling his mission in the politics of the common good". In March 1977, Fr. Grande and two companions were murdered. Archbishop Romero was summoned to view the bodies - a hint of what happens to meddlesome priests. This and the lack of any official enquiry convinced him that the government employed - or at least supported - people who killed for political convenience. He responded by prohibiting the celebration of Mass anywhere in the country on the following Sunday except at his own Cathedral, a celebration to which all the faithful were invited - and came - overflowing in their thousands into the plaza outside. The event served to unite the faithful and remove any doubts about Romero's commitment to justice. The government of course was furious, even more so as the church began to document civil rights abuses and seek the truth in a country governed by lies. Visiting the Pope in 1979, Archbishop Romero presented him with seven dossiers filled with reports and documents describing injustices in El Salvador.

New pastoral letter blasts economy

Meanwhile, despite the conservative turn of the Mexican hierarchy ecclesiastically, the bishops just recently released a new pastoral letter which denounces the structures of the Mexican economy for being "poverty-generating."

The letter, entitled, "From the encounter with Jesus Christ to solidarity for all," calls on all the people of Mexico to engage the struggle "to build a more just society" (IPS, Mar. 24).

The product of a year's worth of dialogue, input from many social sectors, sharply divided debate, writing and re-writing, it is said to be the broadest and most "consensus-driven document in the last 30 years, [according] to Archbishop Luis Morales, president of the [Mexican] Conference of Bishops."

With Ruiz's departure, Mexico loses one of its last remaining exponents of liberation theology. Bishop Arturo Lona of the Diocese of Tehauntepec in Oaxaca, the last of this line of bishops, turns 75 later this year.

In a recent interview, Lona said that the impact of liberation theology will remain at the grassroots, in base communities and among the poor. It is the poor, he said, who "evangelize us and help us awaken the message of Jesus" (IPS).

He also criticized the "official" church and "my superiors" for their "obsession...with obedience andauthority, which I believe is authoritarian at times. The church is hierarchical, but it really must be democratic, which is not a contradiction."

Former nuncio Prigione, who retired in 1997, has left a staunchly conservative imprint on the hierarchy in Mexico, having overseen the replacement of 86 of Mexico's 100 bishops over his 19 year tenure.

The country's newest nuncio, the recently-named Leonardo Sandri, is also a staunch conservative, opposed to the liberationist line.

The bishops, responding to these economic realities, proclaim that an economic model that prioritizes the market as "the central factor in development," "is unstable and immoral."

The bishops also critique the problems of democracy in Mexico, saying the country must develop alternatives to "anti-democratic and fraudulent structures that are obsolete and unjust, and deteriorated by corruption, impunity and authoritarianism."
 http://www.rtfcam.org/report/volume_20/No_2/articl e_12.htm

-- IRENA ALBERTI, Editor, "La Pensee Rousse," Friend: The Pope believes that the 20th century is the most evil of all of mankind's history.

See also:
 http://pbs.org
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There was an opportunity there. There was a moment in the history of Latin America. There was a moment in the history of the church. He decided not to go down the route of change. Instead he chose another route. He chose to end the experimentation, to throttle that initiative. That was his choice, and that's what he'll live with…
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Amnesty International Statement on the Genoa G8 Diaz police trials due to start this week on Wednesday 6th. Also comments on the ongoing Balzanetto detention centre torture trials and Italy's failures in general.

A damning statement.

The opening of the diaz trial on wednesday is just the start. The actual trial is not expected to go ahead until the end of the summer - again raising fears that if more delays occur then under the Italian legal system too much time will have elapsed and the trials cannot proceed.
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The media monitoring website Medialens (www.medialens.org) has published some extraordinary correspondence between itself and the BBC regarding allegations of war crimes committed by US troops in their recent assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Read more >>