Anarchists have vowed to disrupt the Olympics

anarchists claim railway sabotage in britain, against the “fuck bhopal” olympics

there is misinformation here – to be expected by the mass media – about the group of anarchists. the informal anarchist federation is just that – informal. anyone can claim the label. and anyone can join in on the fun!

An anarchist group has vowed to wage “low level warfare” against Britain, sabotaging financial institutions, transport, and the military in the lead up to the London Olympics.

The Informal Anarchist Federation has already claimed to be responsible for damaging railway signal systems which led to travel being disrupted around Bristol earlier this week.

They said their representatives had deliberately lifted concrete slabs beside the tracks to burn out signalling cables, on a route chosen to target Ministry of Defence employees.

The group, known as FAI, have now threatened to continue their “guerrilla attack” on the country, “disturbing the social peace” in a protest against the establishment.

Posting on anarchist website 325.nostate, the group said: “In the United Kingdom of clockwork control and domestication, we’re some of the ‘unpatriotic ones’ who find the 2012 Olympics, with the ensuing spectacle of wealth (when so many here struggle to feed themselves and their families), harmful developments and escalating police state, frankly offensive.

Anarchists have vowed to disrupt the Olympics Photo: REUTERS

“But no union or movement calls our shots, and we have no inhibition to use guerrilla activity to hurt the national image and paralyze the economy however we can.“Because simply, we don’t want rich tourists – we want civil war.”A spokesman for British Transport Police have confirmed a signal system was sabotaged at two places on the rail network in Bristol last Tuesday.The same anarchist group has previously claimed responsibility for a drive-by gun attack in Italy in which the chief executive of a nuclear power firm was shot in the kneecaps.The group now say they are deliberately targeting the Ministry of Defence and defence firms in Britain.

They added: “The purpose of guerrilla attack is to spread the struggle into different territories and facets of life.

“Finance, judicial, communications, military and transport infrastructure will continue to be targets of the new generation of urban low-intensity warfare.”

from the daily telegraph - Anarchist group vows to wage ‘low level warfare’ on Olympics

Vietnam joins the protest against Olympic sponsor Dow Chemical, accused of “green-washing” its Agent Orange sins.

The organizers of London’s 2012 Olympics call them the “Green Games” — a monument to best sustainable practice within the sports world.

The Vietnamese government says the organizers should tell that to the hundreds of thousands of children born with cleft palates, mental disabilities, hernias, lung, larynx and prostate cancer, missing limbs and extra fingers and toes.

Vietnam joined the growing chorus of protest against Olympic sponsors accused of “green-washing” their past sins earlier this month. In a letter obtained by GlobalPost, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism castigated the Lausanne-based International Olympic Committee (IOC) for green-lighting Dow Chemical as a major Olympic sponsor.

Dow produced about one-third of the 80 million liters of Agent Orange defoliants sprayed over southern Vietnam, during what the Vietnamese call “The American War.” The Vietnamese Red Cross estimates that up to 3 million Vietnamese have been affected by Agent Orange, including at least 300,000 children born with birth defects.

Photos from GlobalPost: Tragic traces of Agent Orange

Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates are much higher. It says 4.8 million people were exposed, resulting in 400,000 deaths and injuries and about 500,000 children born with defects, many of which are still being born to this day — some four generations later.

“Agent Orange … destroyed the environment, claimed the lives of millions of Vietnamese and left terrible effects on millions of others, who are now suffering from incurable diseases. Hundreds of thousands of fourth generation children have been born with severe congenital deformities,” wrote Hoang Tuan Anh, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism in a letter to the IOC.

from global post - Vietnam: Dow Chemical shouldn’t sponsor the Olympics

Bhopal and the Olympics

Here is what happened in Bhopal twenty-eight years ago:

“We took a bulldozer and dug pits to bury all the animals. Some people were picking up bodies and some animals. 50 – 60 drivers were all working that day (3rd December). We picked up the bodies with our own hands. Every time we picked one up it gave out gas. The bodies had all turned blue, and had froth oozing from their mouths.
“In some houses everyone had died so there was no one to break the locks. In one case a 6 month old girl had survived and everybody else (mother, father and siblings) was dead. I broke the locks to that house.

“At least 15 – 20,000 people died in those first few days. What they said in the papers was absolutely wrong. What could I have done? I was a government servant. What the government said was absolutely wrong but what could I do?

“Those who have survived are like the living dead. My lungs have become useless: till today I’m being looked after by Hamidia hospital. Ever since I got affected I get vertigo – I would have to stop my truck because I get vertigo if I drive. My hands and feet don’t work, I can’t see well. The last two to three years I’ve gotten much worse.”

from the Edinburgh Eye

Activists protest Dow-sponsored Olympic wrap

Activists calling for Dow Chemical to be dropped as a sponsor of the 2012 Games have unfurled a giant protest banner in front of the Olympic stadium, whose wrapper is funded by the US-based company. Dow is the parent company of Union Carbide, whose pesticide plant leaked gas into the central city of Bhopal in 1984, killing tens of thousands of people

fire destroys activist, liberal church in minneapolis

historic Minneapolis church known for supporting LGBT rights and other progressive causes burned to the ground on Sunday night.

According to the StarTribune, the Walker Community United Methodist Church caught fire around 8:20 p.m. Five of the firefighters who battled the blaze for hours were taken to the hospital, but their injuries were not life threatening.

“Some people at the scene Sunday night speculated lightning was the culprit, while close neighbors said they thought it could be arson,” the paper reported.

Walker Methodist Church is known within the Minneapolis progressive community as a meeting place for various activist groups. Communities United Against Police Brutality CUAPB, Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) and the Welfare Rights Committee all had offices in the building.

In June 2011, the church adopted a statement supporting LGBT rights and marriage equality.

“Walker Community United Methodist Church will welcome all people to use our facilities to have ceremonies of marriage or other appropriate union services as approved by the pastor,” the statement said. “Walker Community United Methodist Church recognizes that it stands outside the polity of the United Methodist church on this issue. It is our intention to expand and affirm the sanctity of marriage and to lead our denomination in the journey to welcome all people into the circle of our community.”

Members of the congregations were expected to hold a meeting at Living Spirit United Methodist Church on Monday morning to “to gather, grieve, console, and start the plan for our new realities together.”

A church history says that Walker Community United Methodist Church started in 1886 and construction began at the current location in 1909. The building was officially dedicated on Easter Sunday, March 27, 1910.

via Pro-LGBT church destroyed by fire in Minnesota | The Raw Story.

nuclear submarine docked in maine catches fire

As three teams of U.S. Navy investigators prepared to board a nuclear submarine that caught fire at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard this week to assess the damage, senators from Maine and New Hampshire also traveled to the shipyard Friday to hear about the incident first-hand.

Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen toured the Kittery, Maine, facility Friday and spoke with officials from the shipyard and the Navy.

They also spoke with some of the more than 100 firefighters who fought the overnight blaze.

The cause of the 5-alarm fire, which broke out at approximately 5:41 p.m. Wednesday inside the USS Miami (SSN 755), a Los Angeles-class attack submarine, remains unknown.

Seven people suffered minor injuries during the fire, which spread through the middle and upper levels of the submarine’s forward area, continuing to burn for more than 10 hours before it was extinguished.

Emergency responders from around the Seacoast rotated in and out of the flaming submarine, equipped with oxygen tanks. They took turns descending two stories into the unlit, smoke-filled bowels of the ship to push back the flames.

Shipyard officials said most of the emergency responders from the 21 units that provided aid during the fire had no prior experience on board a submarine.

“I can’t imagine the courage it took to go into the confined spaces of this submarine,” Collins said Friday, speaking at a 9 a.m. news conference outside the shipyard’s main gate, where she was joined by Shaheen.

Although the extent of damage to the ship remains unknown, the Navy is “determined” to put the USS Miami back out to sea, according to Snowe, who also toured the facility later in the day.

Shaheen said shipyard commander Captain Bryant Fuller believes the repairs to USS Miami will be undertaken at PNSY, where the ship has been docked since March 1 undergoing a 20-month overhaul.

Collins said the submarine was at a stage in the overhaul where nearly all of the ship’s critical systems had already been removed from the Miami’s forward area before the fire broke out.

via Maine, N.H. senators briefed on submarine fire at shipyard: Speak with some of the 100 firefighters who fought the blaze – Fosters.

Illegal kidney trade booms as new organ is ‘sold every hour’

The illegal trade in kidneys has risen to such a level that an estimated 10,000 black market operations involving purchased human organs now take place annually, or more than one an hour, World Health Organisation experts have revealed.

Evidence collected by a worldwide network of doctors shows that traffickers are defying laws intended to curtail their activities and are cashing in on rising international demand for replacement kidneys driven by the increase in diabetes and other diseases.

Patients, many of whom will go to China, India or Pakistan for surgery, can pay up to $200,000 (nearly £128,000) for a kidney to gangs who harvest organs from vulnerable, desperate people, sometimes for as little as $5,000.

The vast sums to be made by both traffickers and surgeons have been underlined by the arrest by Israeli police last week of 10 people, including a doctor, suspected of belonging to an international organ trafficking ring and of committing extortion, tax fraud and grievous bodily harm. Other illicit organ trafficking rings have been uncovered in India and Pakistan.

The Guardian contacted an organ broker in China who advertised his services under the slogan, “Donate a kidney, buy the new iPad!” He offered £2,500 for a kidney and said the operation could be performed within 10 days.

via Illegal kidney trade booms as new organ is ‘sold every hour’ | World news | The Guardian.

In China, criminals fill the kidney donor deficit

By the time Hu Jie changed his mind about selling his kidney it was too late. The 25-year-old migrant worker had travelled to a distant province and had medical checks. A recipient had been matched. If he pulled out now, the web of doctors and agents brokering the illegal operation would lose a lot of yuan.

So the night before Hu’s operation in January 2011 an agent kept watch. “I saw the agent couldn’t stop rubbing his waist; he was suffering,” Hu says. “He told me he had sold his kidney two months ago.”

At that moment Hu considered the enormity of what he was about to do. “I tried to flee but didn’t succeed; there were agents and strangers surrounding me. The next morning my phone, ID card and bank card were confiscated. That afternoon I was taken to the local hospital – it was shabby, more like a township health centre. I protested, crying. I tried to run twice more but the agents were guarding the door.”

Hu was stripped and put under general anaesthetic. When he woke the next morning, trembling with cold, a 10cm scar arced his torso and his left kidney was gone.

Earlier this year there was a public outcry whena 17-year-old sold his kidney for an iPad and iPhone.

much more of this story can be read at the guardian, u.k.

in iran, the organ trade is legal, the streets near hospitals have been turned into a ‘kidney eBay’

Marzieh’s biggest challenge in life is to come up with money for her daughter’s wedding. In Persian custom, it is the parents’ duty to provide a dowry, known as jahizieh, and as a widow from north Iran, she feels it is important to fulfil her responsibility and protect the family’s honour.

To achieve this, she is ready to sell one of her kidneys. If she is successful, she will travel to one of Tehran’s kidney transplant centres and have it removed. She will have to cope with only one kidney from then on, but she will have performed her duties by her daughter.

“It is getting too late for my daughter to marry – her moment has already passed,” she said.

Iran is the only country where the selling and buying of kidneys is legal. As a result, there is no shortage of the organs – but for those trying to sell a kidney, there is a lot of competition.

In order to advertise her kidney, Marzieh has written her blood type and her phone number on pieces of paper and has posted them along the street close to several of Tehran’s major hospitals, home to the country’s major kidney transplant centres.

Others have done the same. Some have written in big letters or in bright colours to attract attention; some have sprayed their information on the walls of public or even private properties.

“Kidney for sale,” reads one ad, carrying the donor’s blood type, O+, and a mobile number, with a note emphasising “urgent”, insinuating that the donor is prepared to consider discounts. Another similar ad reads: “Attention, attention, a healthy kidney for sale, O+.” Many are handwritten, though some have typed the ads to make them look better. “24 years old, kidney for sale,” another reads. “Tested healthy.”

Competition means that some ads have been torn down. Some have added their information to ads by other donors. Others have placed their ads on people’s doors or simply written them in marker pen on trees where they think they will catch people’s attention.

At the heart of the capital, near the Charity Association for the Support of Kidney Patients (CASKP), the number of ads has made the streets of Tehran into a sort of kidney eBay. “My six-month-old baby was paralysed after falling from the hands of my wife,” said Ali, 28, from the northern city of Nur in the Iranian province of Mazandaran. “I have to find 20m rials [around £7,500] for my child’s operation.” He hopes he will get 12m rials for his kidney.

still more, from the guardian – Kidneys for sale: poor Iranians compete to sell their organs

see previous posts:

poor people in the philippines to be used as organ sources

Organ trafficking: the rich prey upon the poor

Cannibal serial killer arrested in China

Yesterday AFP reported that ‘Police have detained a man suspected of murdering more than a dozen boys and young men, chopping up their bodies and selling the flesh to unsuspecting consumers’.

There had previously been a trickle of reports about teenagers that had disappeared in Yunnan. On May 8, the Global Times English edition ran a story titled ‘Yunnan town fears serial kidnapper‘. On May 24, the Chongqing Economic Times published a report titled ‘In Jinning County, Yunnan Province, 17 people have disappeared – there may be a serial killer’, naming Zhang Yongming as the suspect.

The earlier Global Times story speculated that the missing young men were possibly victims of a ‘serial kidnapper’ who may forced them to work in illegal brick kilns near Kunming. The brick kilns’ theory was actually thought up by the parents of one of the missing youths, Han Yao. His parents never suspected a serial killer; such evils barely exist in state media, while kidnappings of young men are not uncommon in the provinces. Most end up in coal mines or illegal brick kilns, but more educated kidnap victims sometimes even end up tricked into running white-collar scams like pyramid schemes.

Therefore the kilns theory was quite feasible: the Global Times report mentions one man name Lei Yusheng from Yunnan who says he escaped such a place after being grabbed off the street by ‘two strong men… armed with a sword [who] pulled him into a van. He was then taken to brick kiln where he was forced to work with 30 other men from 2 am to 12 noon every day.’

This sort of trafficking is now so ubiquitous the police barely bother to investigate and it lands on the parents to conduct their own searches. The Global Times report also mentioned another case:

One of the most disturbing cases involves Xie Junhai, a 16-year-old student who left home to collect his report card on January 27 and never returned.

‘I have searched more than 100 brick kilns. Some wouldn’t let me enter. I had to plead with the local villagers to take me in. I have not found any trace of my son,’ said Xie’s father.

The search was pointless because Xie’s son had been the victims of a prolific serial killer, a 56-year-old farmer named Zhang Yongming who lived in a shack near the cold storage unit where victim Han Yao was last glimpsed. Zhang Yongming should have been the police’s first suspect: In 1978, he was sentenced to life in prison for murder, after dismembering a victim. He was released in 1997 and lived within a two kilometer radius of all the victims. The local villagers certainly suspected something was up with Zhang: the Daily Telegraph reported on May 24 that ‘last December, [Zhang Yongming] was found trying to strangle Zhang Jianyuan, 17, with a belt outside his house’. Police arrived at the house of the convicted murderer but Zhang ‘laughed off the episode, saying that he was just fooling with the boy.’ The cops also seemed to have a good sense of humour, as they ‘simply told [villagers] he was mentally ill’.

As sadly undeveloped as China’s mental-health awareness is, this failure to detain Zhang for attempted murder probably resulted in the hideous deaths of up to seventeen boys.

Grisly details that have so far emerged include that police also found human eyeballs preserved inside wine bottles, and human flesh hanging up to dry, (according to a now deleted article on Guangxi News. The AFP report says that ‘green plastic bags containing what appeared to be white bones protruding from the top were seen hanging from his home’. Zhang is now thought to have fed human flesh to his three dogs and sold portions on the market, telling people it was ‘ostrich meat,’ according to the Hong Kong Standard.

The official reaction has been predictable: censorship and the dismissal of two individual police officers. Weibo searches for ‘Jinning’, ‘Yunnan disappeared’ and ‘Yunnan murder’ (晋宁, 云南失踪 and 云南谋杀) are blocked. Jinning county police chief Da Qiming has been sacked, alongside the head of the Jincheng township police station, Zhao Huiyun. A special Public Security Bureau task force has been sent from Beijing to supervise the case: this is the Crime Investigation Bureau (CIB), the Chinese equivalent of the FBI. While the CIB employs expert staff, they are normally brought in to deal with cases that threaten public stability, and they serve ministerial ends. The victims’ parents will probably be largely ignored, the case declared exceptional and individual, and the public afforded little further protection.

For more on serial killers by Robert Foyle Hunwick, see Serial killers in China.

via Cannibal serial killer arrested in Yunnan | Danwei.

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