Crumbs of Good News
Today is Wednesday, 2 June 2010.
The Museum of the Bourgeois was very pleased to learn last week that Lori Berenson and her son have been conditionally released from the hellhole known as the Peruvian “corrections” system. Berenson had originally been sentenced to life by an extrajudicial military “court” during the reign of the military dictatorship fronted by convicted criminal and former president Alberto Fujimori. After the latter’s overthrow, she was re-tried and sentenced to 20 years, of which she served 15.
Berenson was charged with assisting the now-defunct Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA), a guerilla formation attempting to overthrow the corrupt and dictatorial regimes which have plagued Peru for decades.
While I am deeply skeptical of the utility and ethicality of armed political struggle, I entirely understand and sympathize with those who take up arms in response to decades of murder and exploitation, and in an attempt to gain a measure of justice for the masses.
The Museum of the Bourgeois demands that the Peruvian president, the venal and thuggish Alan Garcia, commute the remainder of Berenson’s sentence of house arrest and return Berenson and her son to the USA/USE, and immediately free all other political prisoners.
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The Museum of the Bourgeois is also pleased by the release last week on bail of Jafar Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker kidnapped nearly three months ago by the reactionary and anti-Islamic Iranian dictatorship, and imprisoned in the former Shah’s notorious Evin Prison. Mr. Panahi is charged in the Revolutionary [sic!] Court with unspecified crimes, certainly related to his opposition to the corrupt dictatorship’s theft of last June’s presidential election.
The Museum of the Bourgeois demands that the squalid gangsters, Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, drop all charges and allow Mr. Panahi to leave the country, and immediately free all other political prisoners.
The Museum of the Bourgeois was very pleased to learn last week that Lori Berenson and her son have been conditionally released from the hellhole known as the Peruvian “corrections” system. Berenson had originally been sentenced to life by an extrajudicial military “court” during the reign of the military dictatorship fronted by convicted criminal and former president Alberto Fujimori. After the latter’s overthrow, she was re-tried and sentenced to 20 years, of which she served 15.
Berenson was charged with assisting the now-defunct Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA), a guerilla formation attempting to overthrow the corrupt and dictatorial regimes which have plagued Peru for decades.
While I am deeply skeptical of the utility and ethicality of armed political struggle, I entirely understand and sympathize with those who take up arms in response to decades of murder and exploitation, and in an attempt to gain a measure of justice for the masses.
The Museum of the Bourgeois demands that the Peruvian president, the venal and thuggish Alan Garcia, commute the remainder of Berenson’s sentence of house arrest and return Berenson and her son to the USA/USE, and immediately free all other political prisoners.
________________________________________________
The Museum of the Bourgeois is also pleased by the release last week on bail of Jafar Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker kidnapped nearly three months ago by the reactionary and anti-Islamic Iranian dictatorship, and imprisoned in the former Shah’s notorious Evin Prison. Mr. Panahi is charged in the Revolutionary [sic!] Court with unspecified crimes, certainly related to his opposition to the corrupt dictatorship’s theft of last June’s presidential election.
The Museum of the Bourgeois demands that the squalid gangsters, Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, drop all charges and allow Mr. Panahi to leave the country, and immediately free all other political prisoners.
posted by HH at 9:38 AM
1 Comments:
HH
Our mutual friend BK was part of the production team nominated for an Emmy (she was specifically nominated I believe) for the PBS documentary on the Tulsa Race Riot. I believe that the documentary aired in '98 (or thereabouts).
I grew up knowing vaguely that the riot occurred. I wrote a paper for a survey US History class in '76 about the riot and was surprised that the only materials I was able to find were the actual Tulsa World reports of the riot.
When I saw the documentary much later I did some internet searching and was pleased to find much of the first person interviewing of the events that were produced by a Tulsa commission on the riot that was formed in the mid to late 90s. If you haven't read those materials, they are readily accessible.
Interestingly, it appears that the Tulsa police chief acted honorably and was attempting to provide justice (and protection) to the 'colored' elevator operator that had been accused by a third party of inappropriate advances to a white woman who regularly to the elevator that he operated. The chief's refusal to 'hand him over' was reported to be the spark that ignited the riot if memory serves.
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