The world's largest solidarity mural is nearing completion in Olympia, WA, the home of ISM activist Rachel Corrie. The 4000 square foot mural depicts a giant olive tree festooned with over 150 "talking" leaves, each one representing a solidarity organization or activist project including images by Palestinian artists including  Vera Tamari, Ziad Deeb and Sliman Mansour,  activist groups like Bi'lin Popular Committee, Anarchists Against the Wall, Zochrot and others from the US and elsewhere including incarcerated Native American, Leonard Peltier. At the base of the olive tree the separation wall is flying apart under the force of a giant Hokusai styled ocean wave. Olympia is the capitol of the state of Washington and is located an hour south of Seattle. 

Second and third phases of the project are planned to include a mural in Rafah and web-based ghost maps of the social justice histories of Olympia and Rafah - two cities joined by the death and life of solidarity activist Rachel Corrie.

The project honors Rachel's vision of international solidarity and is cosponsored by the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, the International Trauma Treatment Program, MECA/Middle East Children's Alliance, The Rachel Corrie Foundation and the Break The Silence Mural Project. 

As the civil trial in the case of the death of Rachel Corrie continues in Haifa - in which Rachel Corrie's family hopes to hold the Israeli government accountable for Rachel's death in Rafah, Gaza, an audio component is being added for each of the giant olive tree's leaves. You can listen to the leaves on-line or in person via cell-phone. For more information go to www.olympiarafahmural.org.

'It's a real victory for the anti-war movement, The jury were presented with the facts and they supported our motivations. If people in Britain knew the truth away from media manipulations they would all support our actions' - Ornella Sabeine, EDO Decommissioner.

After a nail-biting twenty-four hour hiatus, the jury came to
decision on the Decommissioners Case (see SchNEWS 721 ) - 100% Not
Guilty! Six of the seven defendants Tom Woodhead, Bob Nicholls,
Ornella Saibene, Harvey Tadman, Simon Levin and Chris Osmond came
smiling out of Hove Trial Centre at the end of a gruelling three and
half week trial. Elijah Smith was remanded in custody for another
offence. Five were acquitted on Wednesday afternoon, the other two
Chris and Elijah had to wait until this morning. They had waited
eighteen months for this moment.
The jury decisions were all completely unanimous, an indication
perhaps of the depth of feeling ignited by the evidence presented of
war atrocities committed in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.
It was on the night of the 16th January 2009 that six activists broke
into EDO MBM's manufacturing facility on Home Farm Rd Brighton
(see SchNEWS 663). For an hour they wreaked havoc with hammers. Filing
cabinets and computers were hurled from top-floor window. Machinery
was also sabotaged. One of the reasons that the six had so much time
in the factory was ironically that Sussex police saw a bomb in the
car-park and cordoned off the area for specialists to arrive. The
'bomb' was in fact a dummy, a prop for EDO to display at
trade fairs, precision guided out of an upstairs window by the
decommissioners.
The six had pre-recorded videos to be posted on Indymedia after the
action (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfa8R2AxUFg). In his video Elijah
Smith said 'I don't feel I'm going to do anything
illegal tonight, but I'm going to go into an arms factory and
smash it up to the best of my ability so that it cannot actually
produce munitions and these very dirty bombs that have been provided
to the Israeli army so that they can kill children. The time for
talking has gone too far. I'm not a writer, I'm just a
person from the community and I'm deeply disgusted'.
The jury requested to view those videos again before they made their
historic decision ...and they obviously liked what they saw.
In effect the trial was turned around: it was EDO MBM in the shape of
managing director Paul Hills who found themselves in the dock.
Laughably they had come to court intending to pass themselves off as a
company primarily manufacturing in-flight entertainment equipment. He
was presented with a dossier of evidence painstakingly built up over
the years by campaigners, which pointed firmly at the company's
complicity in war crimes.
Paul Hills was due to be giving evidence again on Thursday after
accusing a campaigner of intimidating him as a witness at the regular
weekly noise demo. Funnily enough Hills wasn't available at the
time and the court heard that he was flying to the U.S. Perhaps we
should spare a thought for Paul standing right now in front of ITTs
board explaining how a bunch of goddam two-bit limey punks were able
to smash his factory up with hammers and walk out of court smiling.
The answer is that Paul Hill's evidence was more full of holes
than his factory's windows. Here's just a few edited
highlights of five days of his cross-examination.
Hills revealed that the company have owned the rights to the main
bomb rack used on Israeli F-16s - the VER-2 - since 1998. He admitted
removing website evidence of his company's dealings with Israel
as early as 2004, the date of the first protests. He admitted having
interfered with the crime scene, retrieving debris and papers, before
police photographers arrived. He claimed to have police permission but
no police statement backed him up. There has been speculation that
£189,000 is actually an underestimate of the damage caused and
that more controversial evidence may have been spirited away. After
being warned at one stage by the judge that he was at risk of
perjuring himself if he contradicted evidence he'd produced in
earlier court cases, crucially he ended by admitting that anyone
looking at the evidence presented to him in court would form the
reasonable belief that his company was involved in arms sales to
Israel.
It was this that the defendants needed to convince the jury of - that
there was an obvious link between this factory and the bombardment of
Gaza.
A witness, Sharyn Lock, provided the background necessary for the
jury to understand the full scope of the horror then unfolding in
Gaza. Now a trainee midwife, in 2009 she was a human-rights volunteer
in Al-Quds hospital, Gaza City. She was in the Gaza strip for the
whole of Operation Cast Lead, and able to show footage of a missile
strike on the hospital, just metres from the maternity ward. The jury
also saw news reports of the white phosphorus attacks on the UNWRA
compound, which incinerated much-needed food and medicine. Sharyn
closed her evidence by saying she had no doubt that those who armed
the Israeli Air Force 'had the blood of children on their
hands'.
After hearing of the verdict she told SchNEWS 'Brilliant news.
I am so proud not only of the eight UK civilians who risked their
liberty to protect fellow civilians whom they may never meet - but
also of the jury who recognised that it is everyone's
responsibility to uphold international law, even if that means
decommissioning the weapons.'
By the time this went to print the news of the verdict was spreading.
Right-wing nutjob and Daily Mail journalist Melanie Phillips was first
in with her considered opinion on 'the ignorance and bigotry of
the judge'. The Israeli ambassador was crying foul saying that
it was 'not a great era of the British system' (sic) -
according to Israeli news source he was reportedly
'furious' at the judges 'blatant anti-semitic
stand'. Even David Icke put it up on his website.
On the more positive side, the decommissioners were congratulated by
Noam Chomsky, who said 'I would like to express my respect and
admiration for those who are undertaking non-violent resistance to
oppose British participation in Israel's cruel crimes in
Gaza'.
So what next for Smash EDO? Unable to extract any usable quotes from
the after-verdict party at the Community Garden, SchNEWS spoke to an
increasingly bleary eyed Andrew Beckett, press spokesman for the
campaign: 'When we first started banging pots and pans outside
the factory back in 2004, we never believed we'd get anywhere
like this. EDO must be reeling, their dirty laundry is now flapping
out there for the whole world to see. We're not to going to let
up the pressure on this factory - watch this space'.
* See www.smashedo.org.uk *
* http://decommisioners.wordpress.com *
* View these SchMOVIES of the trial: The opening day of the trial -
http://schnews.clearerchannel.org/snippet-decoms-day-one.flv * The day
of the first verdicts -
http://schnews.clearerchannel.org/special-report.flv

 * This text appears in the June-July 2010 issue #59 of El Libertario, describing the position this voice of the Venezuelan anarchist movement takes regarding the close links between the governments of these two countries.

אנו קבוצה קטנה מאד של אנשים, החפצים להקים קומונה באצבע הגליל (איזור מטולה), בסוף השנה הנוכחית או במרוצת השנה הבאה.

* From Madrid the anarchist group Star, linked to the Iberian Federation of Anarchists Youths (Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Anarquistas-FIJA-), has raised questions whose answers will let us know today and in detail what is doing and saying the known Venezuelan anarchist newspaper.

* El Libertario www.nodo50.org/ellibertario has joined this campaign and we’re trying to divulge this initiative in an attempt to confront the hired killers that are taking the lives of labor activists in this country.

* Soon El Libertario #56 will be available in the street and on the Internet (www.nodo50.org/ellibertario). El Libertario is the voice of free ideas and independent social movements in Venezuela and Latin America. As a preview of its usual combative, irreverent and uncompromising position with regard to authoritarian power and oppression, here's the editorial:

* Call to the First Libertarian Print and Audiovisual Documentary Fair of Caracas. D O C U M E N T (a) November 2009.