The Plague Dogs

IMDB for this film

Hypocrites on the Hill

[col. writ. 6/20/09]
(c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal

As politicians rush resolutions through Congress supporting the protesters in Tehran, defending the principle of freedom to protest, their hypocrisy is even more blinding than their own myopia.

For, it takes only a moment's reflection to recognize that they don't give a tinker's damn about the protesters. This is about using resolutions as a weapon to further mark Iran as the enemy, the dangerous other which "threatens" U.S. hegemony.

As proof of political hypocrisy, one can cock an ear to hear the hiss of silence when protests erupt here in America, and demonstrators get beaten, locked up and prosecuted for practicing their alleged rights under the First Amendment. (...)

Think back to the massive street protests against the police murder of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California. People were beaten, busted and had their cell phone cameras confiscated by the police.

Did Congress support these protesters? Well, not yet.

State and local politicians, when they said anything, called for calm, an end to protests -- and some dissed the protesters as "animals."

Sound familiar?

I don't speak Farsi, but it's my guess that they don't sound too different in tone from Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- in other words, 'the system works -- trust the system!'

Why? Because that's what states always say.

Protesters here in the U.S. have had their butts kicked for years -- yes, years -- in spite of so called guarantees in the constitution to free expression and the right to protest.

Indeed, we need look no farther than the hallowed halls of Congress itself, specifically Rep. John Lewis, (D.-GA), whose head still sports the scars from the police batons that battered him in Selma, when he protested against American apartheid.

A half a century later, and protesters still get beat downs, from coast to coast, for demonstrating -- and if they don't get beat down physically, they get beaten economically, by lawyers, judges and DA's, who squeeze them -- as they pay for the right to practice the freedom to demonstrate.

The U.S. Congress, which just a few generations ago, supported the brutal, savage reign of repression over Iran under the Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi), and also supported his nuclear ambitions, could care less about the Iranian people.

This is politics -- pure and simple -- and about using these protests as pretexts for other, more nefarious goals.

Because of the brutish, bone-headed policies of the Bush Regime, Iran emerged from the carnage of the Iraq war period as the strongest player on the board. That's because the U.S. took down their deadliest enemy, Saddam Hussein.

The U.S. wants to reset the wheel, by sparking internal conflict, and thereby weakening the Iranian government.

We have been here before -- and it didn't turn out well the last time.

-- (c) '09 maj

Report and photos on the 2009 Euro CW Gathering

Christiane Danowski
July 3 2009

This year’s annual European Catholic Worker Gathering took place between April 29 and May 3 in Duelmen, Germany.

Again folks from Catholic Worker Houses in Amsterdam (Netherlands), Hamburg and Dortmund (Germany) and London/Oxford (Great Britain) came to meet old and get to know new friends. But this year something was different. (...)

Since we started our annual European Catholic Worker Gathering 12 years ago you guys over the pond have been joking about our German efficiency in planning and coordinating our gatherings. But this year it finally happened, this year everything was different, this year finally Sugar Creek was in the midst of Europe, this year …

Unfortunately the British, who were in charge of coordinating the schedule, couldn’t make it to the gathering because of family and work reasons, and that left us without a “head master”. So fate could work its way and we had a more Sugar Creek kind of gathering, where some people just stepped in and facilitated the first evening with getting to know each other and forming affinity groups. Well, to be honest, after all we are still Europeans and we were still in Germany, so yes we still had a schedule for the whole gathering …

We didn’t come up with a theme, though, so we took advantage of offering different workshops. Some of us talked about their recent trips and volunteer work at Catholic Worker Houses in the US. Then we took some time to listen to our guest speaker Steve Jacobs from Columbia, MO CW, his music and stories of resistance. After the gathering he (with the help of his “tour manager” Bernd) went on a tour through Germany and gave nine talks and concerts in six German cities. Thank you, Steve for your wonderful music and inspiration!

It was the fourth time in a row that we met at this beautiful spot called “Haus am See” (house at the lake) located in a nature reserve. And again this place offered lots of adventures for kids and grown ups alike - like swimming, canoeing, hauling wood for the bonfires, playing soccer and more…

We also have developed some good traditions. Sabrina from Amsterdam again offered to do child care - the kids love her. And like before the folks from Dortmund managed food and cooking.

We started to work on a Euro CW website called www.eurocatholicworker.org where you can find a list of all the communities, soup kitchens and houses connected to the Catholic Worker. The website itself isn’t finished yet though, and most of the text hasn’t been translated.

Lawsuit now accuses Xe contractors of murder, kidnapping

Bill Sizemore
The Virginian-Pilot
July 2 2009

A just-amended lawsuit alleges six additional instances of unprovoked attacks on Iraqi civilians by Blackwater contractors.

Three people, including a 9-year-old boy, are said to have died.

Also added to the suit is a racketeering count accusing Blackwater founder Erik Prince of running an ongoing criminal enterprise involved in, among other things, kidnapping and child prostitution.

The latest charges, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, bring to more than 60 the number of Iraqis allegedly killed or wounded since 2005 by armed Blackwater contractors guarding U.S. diplomatic personnel in Iraq.

read the rest here

The War Prayer by Mark Twain

Part 1


Part 2

Obama Lacks Legal Authority For Afghan Escalation

Sherwood Ross
July 3, 2009

(Special)---President Obama has no legal authority either from the United Nations or the U.S. Congress under the War Powers Resolution(WPR) to escalate the war in Afghanistan, a distinguished professor of international law says.

“President Obama’s surge of 21,000 troops now engaged in combat in Afghanistan comes on top of the 60,000 we already had there,” says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law at Champaign. (...)

“The Obama Administration simply ignored Section 4(a)(3) of the WPR when it announced the escalation,” Boyle noted. “U.S. armed forces are in Afghanistan originally pursuant to WPR. Its requirement that the President get Congressional consent on substantial enlargement (of forces) was put there to deal with the kind of gradual escalation we saw in Viet Nam that eventually led to 550,000 troops being there,” Boyle said.

“Clearly,” Boyle added, “President (George W.) Bush never had authority from Security Council in the first place to invade Afghanistan, and the WPR requires that any enlargement of U.S. troops in a foreign nation be authorized by Congress.” Boyle made his comments in a telephone interview with columnist Sherwood Ross of Miami, Fla.

President Obama “has now escalated the conflict into Pakistan and has set off a humanitarian catastrophe for 2-million of its people similar to what President Nixon set off in Cambodia,” Boyle said. “What Obama is doing is destabilizing Pakistan and setting off a civil war there. It’s a very dangerous, illegal, unconstitutional policy,” Boyle said.

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the first place because the Taliban government refused to allow UNOCAL oil to build the TAPI pipeline across its territory, Boyle said. He noted the route U.S. troops are taking in Afghanistan is that of the proposed pipeline. “I think this (escalation) is about getting the oil and gas out of Central Asia by avoiding Russia and without dealing with Iran,” Boyle added.

The easiest way to do that, he said, is to construct pipelines south through Afghanistan, into Pakistan and then out to the Arabian Sea. The oil and natural gas resources of Central Asia, Boyle noted, are reported to be the second largest in the world after the Persian Gulf.

In his new book, “Tackling America’s Toughest Questions,”(Clarity) Boyle wrote, “What is going on now in Afghanistan is not self-defense. Let’s be honest. We all know it. At best this is reprisal, retaliation, vengeance, catharsis. Call it what you want, but it is not self-defense. And retaliation is never self-defense.”

Who Are They and Why Can't the World Afford to Lose Them Part 2

Michele Naar-Obed
July 3 2009



137 Iraqi Kurdish families are currently living in the Zharawa Internally Displaced People's Camp in northern Iraq after their villages were attacked by Iran and Turkey. Both governments accuse the Kurdish Regional Government of allowing the PKK to occupy these villages and therefore claim it as fair game for their military to trespass into Iraqi sovereign territory.

The conditions in the Zharawa camp are bleak and desperate. Rows of UNHCR tents are crowded together and are backed up against rows of toilets and showers. For the past month, temperatures have regularly exceeded 100 degree Fahrenheit. (...)

“We once lived in paradise. We had everything in our villages; grain, orchards, vegetables, animals. Our water came down from the mountains and was crystal clear, clean and cold” Mr. Babaqir told CPT. “Our villages were destroyed during Saddam's Anfal campaign. After 1991, we were able to go back and rebuild. During the years of the economic sanctions, we grew food for ourselves and for the people in the nearby cities”, Babiqir continued. Indeed, the people of these villages are generous and hospitable. They feel ashamed that they can barely share a cup of watered down tea with their CPT guests.

Mrs Aman Ali recalled the days when the families lived together in the villages. “I went out to the orchards early in the morning to pick fruits and vegetables until I heard the noon call to prayer. Then the family would gather together to eat. Now we are separated”. Some crowd into cheap rented houses in town so the children might be able to finish school. Others work as shepherds far away to make a little money. The rest are at the camp. “My grandchildren live here with me. What kind of life is this” she asked CPT as tears streamed down her face. Mrs. Aman Ali is one of the many family members in the camp desperately holding on to the “family values” that the people in the west cherish so dearly.

Mr. Abdul Rakhman, a high school teacher and Miss Taban, the camp nurse, are IDP siblings at the camp. Both shared their fears for the children. “Our children are traumatized. Their health suffers as does their minds and their hearts. When the children lived in the village, they were rarely sick. Occasionally they would get colds. Now they suffer with diarrhea which can be deadly in these conditions”.

The children gathered to draw pictures of stick figured children with smiling faces standing next to houses surrounded by trees filled with apples. Other pictures were of rows of tents devoid of children or flowers. The boys played soccer on a hot dusty field. The girls sang songs and modeled sunglasses. Like other children, they like to play and have fun. But their eyes are deep and distant, filled with sorrow and fear. They are the future of not only the Kurdish people, but of humanity.

The world cannot afford to lose these people to war or IDP camps.

CPT has tried to raise the voices of the IDP's through the international media. So far, the media have not been interested.

Who Are They and Why Can't the World Afford to Lose Them Part 1

Michele Naar-Obed
July 2 2009



Amin is one of over 11,000 Kurdish refugees from Turkey who lives in the Makhmoor Refugee camp in the Ninevah province in Iraq. All are the living relatives of PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) fighters killed in battle by the Turkish military. She is also one of a group called the "Mothers for Peace".

Amin is an aging woman with soft yet anguished eyes. She tells CPT stories of how her children were taken from their village and tortured. Almost devoid of feeling, she described how Turkish soldiers stuffed children into the inside of truck tires and then rolled the tires. Her mind recalled other stories, even more horrendous, which were too difficult for her to say. She told CPT that even to this day, Turkish soldiers take children as young as 10 years old from their villages in southeastern Turkey to kill and torture them. (...)

Amin admitted that in the armed battle for Kurdish rights in Turkey, many Turkish people have died too.. “We want neither the Kurdish mother nor the Turkish mother to cry anymore”, Amin reiterates throughout the interview. “It is time for forgiveness, peace, and reconciliation”, she continued. This is the call from the Mothers for Peace.

The PKK has been adhering to a unilateral cease fire since 13 April, 2009. The cease fire has been extended once and there is talk that it will be extended again if there are tangible signs that the Turkish government would be willing to come to the diplomatic table. At least publicly, the Turkish military says it is intent on wiping out the PKK in war. However, there are hints that the civilian branch of the Turkish government is willing to talk it out.

“How much influence do the Mothers for Peace have over the PKK's decision to extend the ceasefire”, CPTers ask Amin. “They are our children and our loved ones. We have great influence over their actions”, she assures us. But the Turkish military must show some evidence that they will stop waging war against us and talk to us”. “So far they continue to answer us by killing us”, she continued. “However, our call is still for peace”, she stated boldly and clearly.

Especially true of the wars in this current century, women and children have born the brunt of suffering. Amin and the other Mothers for Peace have seen horrors that would turn a heart into stone, anguish into hatred, and response into vengeance. Instead, these mothers want neither the Kurdish mother nor the Turkish mother to have their hearts broken again because of war. Yet Amin's voice is virtually silenced as she and the other mothers are sequestered inside the walls of the Makhmoor Refugee Camp. “We are the Mothers for Peace”, she shouts out. “Please raise our voice to the world”.

And the world cannot afford to lose these women to war or to refugee camps.

Robert Jensen "The Color of the Race Problem Is White"

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois suggested that the question white people so often want to ask black people is, How does it feel to be a problem? This program turns the tables and recognizes some simple facts: Race problems have their roots in a system of white supremacy. White people invented white supremacy. Therefore, the color of the race problem is white. White people are the problem. White people have to ask ourselves: How does it feel to be a problem?

Following the ideas in his book The Heart of Whiteness, Jensen argues that -- even decades after the significant achievements of the civil-rights movement and with an African-American president -- it is still appropriate to describe the United States as a white-supremacist society, in terms of how we think and how we live. Through an analysis of contemporary racial ideology, Jensen presents a framework for critiquing the naturalizing of power and privilege in other arenas of our lives (gender, class, nationality, and ecology). How have we come to accept so easily systems of domination and subordination? How did we become resigned to hierarchy? How can we challenge the unjust and unsustainable nature of the systems in which we live?

Pakistanis Reject U.S. "Aid" Flights, As Lawsuit is Filed Against U.S. Drone Attacks

Jeremy Scahill
Rebel Reports
July 2 2009

Damn those ungrateful Pakistanis. After U.S. drone attacks killed more than 600 of their people since 2006—most of them civilians—it seems they think they have some right to say they don’t want the U.S. flying its “aid” planes to Swat and other “tribal areas.” The New York Times reports that “the Pakistani authorities have refused to allow American workers or planes to distribute the aid in the camps for displaced people.” The paper reports:

read the rest here

Readings from The Sparrow Sings Newsletter

Don Timerman
June from the 2009 issue

The U.S. is the only industrialized country in the world without universal health care. In spite of this, the average American spends $7900 per year on health care which is twice as much as citizens of industrialized countries. As many as 46 million Americans have no health care insurance at all.

Yet single payer health care or universal heath care is not even on the table in the discussion for reformed health care in the U.S. The U.S. is one of the signers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which declares that health care is the RIGHT, not the PRIVILEGE, of every person in the world. (...)

No one in the world is to be without health care because he or she has no money. It is estimated that as many as 18,000 Americans die every year from preventable illnesses because they do not get to a doctor when they should. This is six times the number who died on 9/11. The U.S. ranks 37th in the world in terms of health system performance, and according to the World Health Organization we are far behind many other countries in terms of childhood deaths, life expectancy and preventable deaths.

Our current private health insurance system is the most costly, wasteful, complicated, corrupt and bureaucratic in the world. The function of health insurance companies is to make money, not to provide adequate health care for their clients. Almost 30% of private insurance companies’ health care money is spent on administration and billing, exorbitant CEO pay, advertising, lobbying and campaign contributions. Medicare, Medicaid and the VA are administered for far less.

The number of health care administrative personnel has grown by 25 times in the last 3 years over the number of doctors. Nick Turkal, CEO of Aurora Health Care gets $2,020,814 a year. From 2003 to 2007, the profits of the nation’s major health insurance companies has increased by 170%, and the CEO pay for the top 7 health insurance companies now averages $14.2 million. Many of the legislators are beholden to the insurance and pharmaceutical companies and will push for more profits for these corporations. For example, Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut), who chairs the health care hearings in the Senate, received $2.1 million from the insurance industry throughout his career, another $547,000 from the pharmaceutical industry and $467,000 from health care professionals.

Thirty members of the Congressional committee that will decide on health care all have huge investments in health care companies. The best way to provide health care to all our citizens is following the lead of most of the countries in the world, by having universal health coverage for all citizens. We are only deluding ourselves thinking we can do this with private insurance companies where money, not people’s health, is the name of the game.

Health care is a right for everyone, not just for the well-to-do.

THE SPARROW SINGS

is a monthly newsletter put together by Don Timmerman and Roberta Thurstin
if you would like to get the entire newsletter either mailed or e-mailed to you contact them at:

N15878 Tamarack Rd.
Park Falls WI 54552
don2roberta@yahoo.com

Israeli doctors colluding in torture

While world's medical ethics chief turns blind eye

Jonathan Cook
Z Magazine
July 1 2009

Nazareth -- Israel's watchdog body on medical ethics has failed to investigate evidence that doctors working in detention facilities are turning a blind eye to cases of torture, according to Israeli human rights groups.

The Israeli Medical Association (IMA) has ignored repeated requests to examine such evidence, the rights groups say, even though it has been presented with examples of Israeli doctors who have broken their legal and ethical duty towards Palestinians in their care.

The accusations will add fuel to a campaign backed by hundreds of doctors from around the world to force Yoram Blachar, who heads the IMA, to step down from his recent appointment as president of the World Medical Association (WMA).

read the rest here

White House to Hold Firm on European Missile Shield

Mark Knoller
CBS News
July 1 2009

In advance of Pres. Obama’s first trip to Russia next week, the White House is serving notice on the Kremlin that he won’t be making any concessions to win its approval of a U.S. missile shield in Europe or membership in NATO for Russian neighbors Ukraine and Georgia.

“We don’t need the Russians,” says Michael McFaul, special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian affairs on the National Security Council staff.

In a conference call with reporters, McFaul responded with unusually tough talk when asked what reassurances Pres. Obama is prepared to give in his talks starting Monday with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.

read the rest here

Robert Wright interviews Karen Armstrong (1:18:52)

Karen Armstrong, a former nun, teaches Christianity at Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism.

Frida Berrigan 5 Myths of todays Peace Movement

Part 1


Part 2

Weapons: Our #1 Export?

Freda Berrigan
Foreign Policy In Focus
June 30, 2009

The phrase "Obama has a lot on his plate" is the understatement of the year. The president has a to-do list a mile long, and every day a new crisis (like the coup in Honduras) gets added to the list. Can we really fault him if he sneaks the occasional smoke?

But before he heads out to the presidential woods, one of the tasks still undone is to update and revise U.S. arms export policy. The last official version of U.S. arms export policy is from the Clinton years. In addition to the usual rhetoric about promoting regional stability, ensuring U.S. military superiority, and promoting "peaceful conflict resolution and arms control, human rights,democratization," Presidential Decision Directive 34 (February 1995) inserted a new consideration: "enhanc[ing] the ability of the U.S. defense industrial base to meet U.S. defense requirements and maintain long term military superiority at lower costs." In other words, a potential arms sale should be judged in part on whether it is good for weapons manufacturers.

read the rest here

Orthopraxy- Doing the right thing

Richard Flamer
July 1 2009

Friends,

Guadelupe, a school principal, comes to see us monthly to share his problems and to try and get a wider perspective. He teaches in a small village while being in charge of three other Tso Tsil speaking teachers for an elementary and kindergarden complex. Last week he came to borrow a small video camera to record a festival for the upcoming week. We invited him to supper (he always seems to come at the right time) and I asked him how his school and community were faring with the influenza "crisis". Though he struggles for money for school materials he told us that the children now have all the cleaning supplies they need. Each child helps in cleaning the rooms before school starts. Additionally, face masks are worn by each student. They have no cases of influenza but "half the children are still malnourished." (...)

Good order is important, but the world, or at least the 1st World and those from the 2nd World who strive to be amongst the 1st, seem to stress Order and Law at the expense of the poor. Or more properly, they lose sight of the "Natural Contract" (as Gustavo Gutierrez calls it) by concentrating on the "Social Contract." Trying to keep order but at what cost? What good is the influenza free health of 150 Tso Tsil school children if they haven't enough to eat?

Our life continues apace. Araceli is busy with making soaps, finding new recipes, maintaining contact with her cooperative friends while I continue to be a grouch. Of late I have taken to walking the dogs a lot at the farm. Since we have run out of money for the building of Araceli's house I have been frustrated with trying to think of ways to sell one of the trucks. We have one truck sitting at a car lot, we use one daily for going back and forth to the farm and the final one is at the farm but still with Nebraska plates. So I decided to take one of the trucks back to the U.S. to see if I can sell it in Texas.

I have also been busy with collecting my photographic material from storage, etc. I have an ongoing show at a small commercial gallery in San Cristobal which has actually done well. I had an interview with a local radio station following a nice review in the regional newspaper. While the show stays up I have been removing the fotos from the frames of the other works and collected negatives and slides from storage so I figured I would take all that stuff up to Texas and ship it out to Marquette University where my photos will be in the company of the papers of Dorothy Day, of the manuscripts of J.R. Tolkien, of the histories of Catholic Workers, of the papers of Penny Lernoux. Not bad company...

We now have 13 of the "20 Eddies" in my ongoing campaign to ease Araceli's nerves. Thanks for all your prayers and support.

"One works, plans, dedicates a lifetime to tasks that favor the human condition; indeed, one is enjoined to do so. But the work must fall continually under close scrutiny. The carnal ties that bind one's spirit, like a strangling umbilical, to jargon of effectiveness, media hype, goals, quotas, guaranteed results- all forms and visions and expectations of nirvana- these must be discarded, placed to one side in favor of what the Gospel calls 'the one necessary thing'- the values that must survive." Dan Berrigan STEADFASTNESS OF THE SAINTS

Richard Flamer from Chiapas

Italy to Declare Independence from US Military

David Swanson
After Downing Street
July 1 2009

Do they have a fourth of July in Italy? That's not a trick question. This July 4th, Italians plan to gather in Vicenza to take nonviolent action aimed at freeing Italy from U.S. occupation and opposing the proposed construction of an enormous new U.S. military base in a town already swarming with U.S. troops stationed at existing bases. For years now, a major campaign organized by local residents has resisted the construction of the new base. The history of this campaign is chronicled in English here and here. A local referendum voted 95 percent against the base. A leader of the opposition to the base has been elected to the local government. An Italian prime minister has been temporarily thrown out of power. Local activists and members of parliament have visited Washington to oppose the base, and testified before the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs on April 23, 2009. The European media has been unable to avoid the story.

read the rest here

Looking Back In Gratitude

A conversation with Daniel Berrigan

George M. Anderson
America Magazine
July 6th edition

What are you most grateful for as you look back over your long life?” I asked Daniel Berrigan, S.J., who is 88. We were sitting last December in his light-filled living room at the Jesuit residence in Manhattan where he has lived since 1975. He answered immediately: “My Jesuit vocation.” Any regrets? I asked. “I could have done sooner the things I did, like Catonsville,” he replied. That historic act of burning draft files took place in the parking lot of a U.S. Selective Service Office in Catonsville, outside Baltimore, Md., on May 17, 1968. It was one of the earliest and most dramatic of several demonstrations for peace in which Berrigan took part over the years. With him on that day were eight other people, including his brother, Philip, who was a veteran and a Josephite priest; they stood trial that October, the group known as the Catonsville Nine. While free on bail awaiting trial, the two Berrigans spoke at St. Ignatius Church near the Baltimore jail. I had entered the Jesuit novitiate in Wernersville, Pa., that year, and the novice master drove down with me to hear their powerful presentation.

read the rest here

Declaration of Indictment

The unanimous Declaration of the fifty united States of America
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 2009

After Downing Street
July 1 2009

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a gang of lawless thugs and insist on the appointment of a special prosecutor to enforce the laws of the land even against those until recently holding the reins of Power, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Prosecution.

read the rest here

Australian Catholic Workers to Resist Military Excercise & Af/Pak War

Ciaron OReilly
July 1 2009

Talisman Sabre 09
is a biennial exercise that involves 20,000 U.S. & 7,000 Australian troops, fighter jets and warships, it is taking place in July in central Queensland, Australia.

Australian complicity in the U.S. war on the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan includes the present deployment of 600 Australian (SAS, Special Ops and infantry) troops in Afghanistan, detention in Australia of Afghani refugees fleeing the war and daily targeting information for U.S. bombardment coming from the U.S. N.S.A Pine Gap near outback Alice Springs. (...)

Long time Australian Catholic Worker peace activists Jim Dowling and Ciaron O'Reilly are preparing to travel to the Talisman Sabre exercises in central Queensland, Australia to carry out nonviolent resistance to the war machine they see killing again in Afghanistan.

O'Reilly and Dowling first met in custody in 1978 during the anti-nuclear/civil liberties struggles under the corrupt and authoritarian Joh Bjelkle Petersen Queensland government. By 1982 they were living and working at the Catholic Worker community in West End Brisbane and have since carried out nonviolent resistance together to nuclear war preparations, the war on East Timor and in the opening days of the war on Afghanistan.

Jim Dowling presently works and lives outside of Brisbane on the Peter Maurin Catholic Worker farm with his wife Anne and their seven children. He was one of the Christian Against All Terrorism group that broke into the secretive U.S. N.S.A. Pine Gap base near Alice Springs to carry out a citizen's inspection during the recent war on Iraq.

Ciaron O'Reilly spent a year in U.S. prisons as one of the ANZUS Ploughshares convicted of damaging a B52 Bomber in New York on the eve of George Bush Sr.'s war in 1991. O'Reilly was also part of the Pitstop Ploughshares arrested in Ireland in 2003 and charged with $2 1/2 million damage to another U.S. war plane en route to George Bush Jr.'s invasion of Iraq. The group was acquitted of all charges unanimously by an Irish jury in 2006.

O'Reilly stated, "Talisman Sabre is a $250 million exercise in futility. Talisman Sabre is not a game or an exercise it is a fantasy - a war theatre with no civilians! Most of those being killed by American, Australian and Pakistan militaries are innocent civilians, most fatalities have been women and children. The Af/Pak War is presently escalating and expanding. These Talisman Sabre exercises are siginificant preparations for more killing.

The Australian involvement in the war on Afghanistan is now eight years old. U.S. and Pakistani military involvement stretches back over 30 years, from arming and funding the Taliban to now attempting to destroy their own creation with an expanded war against the Pushtun people of northern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan. Ten Australian troops, hundreds of British and U.S. soldiers and thousands of Afghani civilians have been killed, millions of Afghanis and Pakistanis have been made homeless or forced to flee into exile.

Talisman Sabre occurs at a time of major escalation in the war under the Obama and Rudd administrations. The Australian military has a long history of running off to American wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan that have nothing to do with the defense of Australia. By killing more civilians, with the hi tech war machine on display at Talisman Sabre, we will be creating more terrorism and terrorists. It is important to put our bodies on the line in nonviolent resistance to this deadly cycle"

*Grana, 12, is the sole survivor of a coalition bombing in southern Helmand province that took her arm and her leg, and killed nine members of her family

*Background on Jim Dowling

*Background on Ciaron O'Reilly
-Enough Rope interview with Andrew Denton

-Wikipedia entry for Ciaron O'Reilly

Rights group condemns Israeli drone attacks

A new report by Human Rights Watch says missiles fired from Israeli drone aircraft killed many innocent civilians during the war on Gaza.

The unmanned aerial vehicles are supposed to carry the most precise weapons, but the report says most of them ended up destroying the wrong targets.

Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reports from Gaza.

UN demands that Honduras reinstate president

The UN General Assembly has demanded the immediate restoration of Manuel Zelaya, the Honduran president, who was forced out of the country by a military coup on Sunday.

While he has the support of the international community, the ousted leader faces arrest if he returns home.

Al Jazeera's Lucia Newman reports from Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.

Twilight Zone / Black on white (wash)

Gideon Levy
Haaretz
June 28 2009

To judge by the public outcry following the conviction of Brig. Gen. Moshe (Chico) Tamir, the injustice done to the acclaimed officer is no less than the wrong inflicted on Captain Alfred Dreyfus of the French army.

It might be useful to recall who this Tamir is. From his stint as commander of the Golani infantry brigade - when his troops twice shelled the Jenin market (2002), killing several children, including two small brothers - to Operation Autumn Clouds in Gaza (2006) which he commanded, he has been responsible for wanton bloodshed, with at least half the 80 Palestinians killed on his watch being civilians. Nor should we forget the notorious shelling of the Gaza town of Beit Hanun under his command and responsibility (also in 2006), in which a volley of 11 unnecessary shells were fired at a residential neighborhood, in the wake of which the Israel Defense Forces of course blamed the cannon's computer chip instead of the division commander, Chico Tamir. We would do well to pause and wonder why an officer like this, with the blood of innocents on his hands, earns such praise from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. But let that pass.

read the rest here

Culture of Secrecy Backfires Disastrously On U.S.

Sherwood Ross
June 30 2009

The culture of secrecy in Government and Corporate America is a pattern “which deeply and often disastrously affects all of American life,” a law dean writes.

Secrecy really “took off” after the Korean War “with the creation of the American national security state, and got us into trouble time and time again,” observes Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover in his new book “America 2008”(Doukathsan.) (...)

“We had (President Lyndon) Johnson’s secret plans to escalate in Viet Nam, a secret (President) Nixon plan for peace whose actual nonexistence was hidden by its purported secrecy but which helped this disaster get elected, we had secret Nixonian wars in Laos and Cambodia, extensive secret CIA spying on Americans which finally was disclosed in the mid 1970s, secret torture, secret prisons, secret renditions, secret spying on Americans and the rest of the litany of secret horrors associated with (President) G.W. Bush and (Vice President Dick) Cheney,” Velvel writes.

Not confined to government, secrecy American-style exists everywhere, writes Velvel, an award-winning essayist. As examples, he cites pharmaceutical houses that keep undesirable results of pharmaceutical trials secret and the suppression by Congress of testimony whose disclosure could prevent the repetition of military blunders.

By allowing Gen. Douglas MacArthur to testify in secret, Velvel writes, the Congress failed to unmask his gross incompetence. “MacArthur was arrogant, racist, delusional (the word “madness” is often used with regard to him and his top commanders…), not infrequently a liar (like Bill Clinton, he believed the truth was whatever served his purpose at the moment), a demander of yes men and sycophants, and concerned obsessively with his own public relations and image, which were polished by a never ceasing P.R. machine,” Velvel writes.

As a result of his delusions, MacArthur insisted on pursuing the North Koreans across the peninsula to the Yalu River when he could have stopped at a defensible line midway; he also believed the Red Chinese would not invade Korea to oppose his troops and when they did the casualties on all sides were horrific. “The whole (Korean) war was an object lesson in the fact that war is not merely death and horrible injury, it is also death and horrible injury by stupidity,” Velvel writes.

Over and again, Velvel writes, it has been the right-wing of the American political spectrum that has failed to learn the lessons of history. Its advocates’ pushed for allowing MacArthur to march north in Korea into what turned out to be a trap set for his troops near the Yalu River; and it was the right-wing again which, years later, crusaded for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. “We keep getting into wars where we will inevitably have to fight the other guy’s kind of war, as in the guerrilla war in Viet Nam and the insurgency in Iraq ,” Velvel writes. “We keep playing the opponents’ game by getting into war after war where opponents can neutralize our cultural advantages (technological superiority) and employ theirs against us.”

The same kind of delusional thinking MacArthur exhibited was repeated by President George W. Bush in his attack on Iraq . “The WMD miscalculation was simply hoked up bovine defecation,” Velvel writes. What’s more, “The lack of planning for the war’s aftermath was not only stupid in itself, but apparently was based on the preposterous miscalculations that we would be welcomed in Iraq and the Middle East---where many have long hated us as well as our predecessors, the British and French---and that (Ahmed) Chalabi (later deputy prime minister) and his gang would be effective. Our leaders never figured on a fantastic insurgency though there were a few people who warned of the possibility---including, obliquely but in retrospect unquestionably, Saddam (Hussein) himself.”

Velvel charges further U.S. leaders failed to learn from a time in their own history when Americans bridled at having European troops stationed in Mexico, yet today they appear surprised that Iran, once Iraq’s military opponent, switched to befriend the Iraq insurgency when U.S. troops invaded that country “because it does not want on its borders a far distant major power which could, and has even threatened to, attack it, just as we didn’t want England, France or Spain on our borders.”

Author Velvel is dean and cofounder of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover , founded in 1988 for the express purpose of providing a quality, affordable legal education to minorities, immigrants, and students from low-income households who otherwise could not afford to attend law school. Velvel has been honored for his contributions to legal education and his books of essays have won several publishing industry awards.

Bill in Senate Would Allow Prosecution of Bush for Iraq War

David Swanson
After Downing Street
June 30 2009

Senators Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold, and Patrick Leahy have introduced a bill in the United States Senate (S. 1346) that would allow the prosecution of George W. Bush and his subordinates for the invasion of Iraq. Before concluding that the Spirit of Justice has risen from the flames, a few caveats: First, none of these senators intends the bill for this purpose, and they would all vehemently and honestly deny that they had any such thing in mind. Second, the bill still has to pass both houses and be signed into law. Third, it has to be signed without a signing statement completely altering it. Fourth, the same Department of Justice that won't prosecute torturers would have to prosecute those who attacked Baghdad. Nonetheless, the possibilities are worth considering.

read the rest here

A Few Thoughts on the Coup in Honduras

Jeremy Scahill
Rebel Reports
June 29 2009

There is a lot of great analysis circulating on the military coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. I do not see a need to re-invent the wheel. (See here here here and here). However, a few key things jump out at me. First, we know that the coup was led by Gen. Romeo Vasquez, a graduate of the US Army School of the Americas. As we know very well from history, these “graduates” maintain ties to the US military as they climb the military career ladders in their respective countries. That is a major reason why the US trains these individuals.

read the rest here

The Coup in Honduras

Obama's Real Message to Latin America?

Nikolas Kozloff
Counterpunch
June 29 2009

Could the diplomatic thaw between Venezuela and the United States be coming to an abrupt end? At the recent Summit of the Americas held in Port of Spain, Barack Obama shook Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s hand and declared that he would pursue a less arrogant foreign policy towards Latin America. Building on that good will, Venezuela and the United States agreed to restore their ambassadors late last week. Such diplomatic overtures provided a stark contrast to the miserable state of relations during the Bush years: just nine months ago Venezuela expelled the U.S. envoy in a diplomatic tussle. At the time, Chávez said he kicked the U.S. ambassador out to demonstrate solidarity with left ally Bolivia, which had also expelled a top American diplomat after accusing him of blatant political interference in the Andean nation’s internal affairs.

Whatever goodwill existed last week however could now be undone by turbulent political events in Honduras.

read the rest here

Chavez Threatens to Invade as Honduran Army Stages Coup

Venezuelan leader vows to 'act militarily' after leftist ally Manuel Zelaya is overthrown and exiled to Costa Rica

David Usborne
The Independent
June 29 2009

Honduras was plunged into a political crisis that threatened to spill across the region hours after President Manuel Zelaya was thrown out by the army and exiled to Costa Rica prompting his leftist ally in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, to threaten military intervention.

In the first successful military coup in Central America since the end of the Cold War, the army sent masked soldiers into the presidential palace before dawn. The President, who was in dispute with his military about a planned constitutional referendum, was then escorted to a military plane which took him into exile.

read the rest here

175 CHRYSTIE STREET

Catholic Worker odds & ends
June 29 2009

"No one has given a realistic description if our new headquarters, St. Joseph's House at 175 Chrystie Street, and everyone who comes there is shocked at how miserable our surroundings are. If the loft on Spring Street was inadequate and dingy, though spacious, the new site is dingier an smaller. There is a cellar, half of which the landlord uses. When the cellar door fell in, we paid for a new one, seventy-five dollars, so he allows us to use the back of the cellar. Our rent is $275 a month. The ground floor is cemented and impossible to keep clean with hundreds of people tramping in and out each day. We cannot seat more than twenty at a time and others sit on benches toward the front of the store, or go up the one short flight to the 'sitting room' floor where the clothes rooms are, for women and men. On the third floor are offices, and the floors slant, and every time anyone walks across the room the boards shake. From the interstices of the metal ceiling, the rain pours in so that on rainy days we have had three large metal wastepaper baskets filling up with water over and over again. Tarring the roof around the skylight does not seem to have helped much.

read the rest here

For 20 years, Loaves and Fishes has offered a helping hand

Andy Greder
Duluth News Tribune
June 29 2009

No. 1 and No. 2 were a woman and child fleeing domestic abuse in 1989.

No. 3 and No. 4 were young Guatemalan brothers wanting to be reunited with their father in Canada.

Now 20 years later, the number of disadvantaged people assisted by Loaves and Fishes in Duluth has multiplied into the thousands. On Sunday afternoon, the Catholic Worker community, which provides the homeless and others with food and shelter, celebrated its 20th anniversary with a block party on Jefferson Street, where it was founded by Steve O’Neil and his wife, Angie Miller.

“After that start, it grew to single men, single women and families,” said O’Neil, who reported that the first woman is now remarried, her child is in college and the Guatemalan boys met their dad in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

read the rest here

Invitation to the annual Hiroshima and Nagasaki Aug 6 – 9 Commemoration

Vigil and Programs at STRATCom and in Omaha

9 1/2 minute video reenactment on the Hiroshima bombing:


Nebraskan For Peace, DMCW and Omaha CW invite you to join us for our annual 3 1/2 day "shake and bake" vigil at the gates of Offutt Air Force Base, in Bellevue, NE. home of the Strategic Nuclear (StratCom) and the US Military Space Commands.

Come stand, pray and do penance with us. Join us for the evening programs we have planned. Share with us our hope for peace as we commemorate the Anniversary of the USA atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan on Aug 6 and 9, 1945. Contemplate with us the work and mission Offutt AFB's god-awful Commands, the challenges they pose to all life on our planet and the demonic claim the holds on the soul and spirit of our nation.

Over night hospitality is available upon request starting Wednesday evening Aug 5th. Call and let us know you are coming Expect floor space in the basement of St John's Church - Creighton Uni., so bring your own bed roll. If you need a bed, you really need to contact us to insure we find one for you.

Everyone is welcome, especially those in the Omaha area! Come for an hour or for the whole three days.

The schedule for the vigil and evening programs is: (...)

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Aug 5 - Wednesday
Evening – Vigilers arrive in Omaha set up base in basement of St John's Church - Creighton Uni. There is plenty of floor space for any and all who wish to attend from out of town. Anyone needing a bed or any other special accommodations please contact Jerry Ebner and the folks at the Omaha CW.
cwomaha@gmail.com
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Aug 6 - Thursday
8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Vigil at Offutt/STRATCom, the Kenny Gate

6 p.m. - Mass and Potluck at Omaha CW – Contact Jerry Ebner Omaha CW cwomaha@gmail.com
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Aug 7 - Friday
8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Vigil at Offutt /STRATCom, the Kenny Gate

7 p.m. - "StratCom: the Next Generation in War-fighting" a talk by Tim Rinne, NE FOR PEACE Director- St John's Church basement – Creighton Uni.
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Aug 8 - Saturday
8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Vigil at Offutt /STRATCom, the Kenny Gate

7 p.m. Movie Night in Basement of St John's Church at Creighton University showing:

The Original Child Bomb

Inspired by Thomas Merton's poem, ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB shows the human cost of nuclear weapons. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are depicted through declassified footage, photographs, drawings and testimonies of mothers, brothers and soldiers. Ordinary people gaze upon the nuclear past and its terrifying present. They expose the political rhetoric surrounding "security" and "weapons of mass destruction". The film is a wake-up call and an invitation to action

On Paper Wings

In the spring of 1945, a Japanese balloon bomb claimed the lives of the only people killed on the continental U.S. as the result of enemy action during WWII. Forty years later, the decision to fold a thousand paper cranes would unite the Japanese and American civilians who were involved in and affected by this incident. “On Paper Wings“ is the story of four Japanese women who worked on balloon bombs, the families of those killed in the U.S., and the man whose actions brought them all together forty years after WWII, and the balloon bomb project.
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Aug 9 - Sunday
8 a.m. to 11 a.m. Vigil with closing ceremony and prayer (and line crossing if anyone is up to it.)

Co-Sponsored by:
Nebraskan For Peace
Des Moines Catholic Worker
Omaha Catholic Worker

Contact People for more info:
Jerry Ebner, cwomaha@gmail.com ,
Frank Cordaro, frank.cordaro@gmail.com ,
Elaine Wells, mmwells1@cox.net ,
---------------------------------------------------

Slide Show from 2008 Vigil

Democracy Now Aug 5, 2005
Long-Suppressed Nagasaki Article Discovered

Defying US occupation forces, George Weller was the first reporter into Nagasaki after the US dropped the atomic bomb. His 25,000 word report did not get past the US military censors. Now dead, we speak with Weller’s son who has just discovered the carbon copy of the long-suppressed article.

The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today by John Pilger, Aug 06, 2008

The Latest From Iran (as of June 25 2009)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demands a public apology from President Obama for “interfering” in Iran’s affairs, while the crackdown widens in the Islamic Republic. Here’s a report from Bloomberg on the latest happenings in Iran.

Turning Soldiers Into Crusaders

“Fault Lines” has this disturbing look at efforts to transform American soldiers into “government-paid missionaries,” as one Christian fundamentalist group put it. Featuring Truthdig’s Chris Hedges.

Related Truthdig Classic: “The Cancer From Within” by retired U.S. Air Force Col. David Antoon.

The Truth Alone Will Not Set You Free Email this item

Chris Hedges
Truthdig
June 29 2009

The ability of the corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The pernicious idea that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the freedom to accumulate vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others has collapsed. The conflation of freedom with the free market has been exposed as a sham. The travails of the poor are rapidly becoming the travails of the middle class, especially as unemployment insurance runs out and people get a taste of Bill Clinton’s draconian welfare reform. And class warfare, once buried under the happy illusion that we were all going to enter an age of prosperity with unfettered capitalism, is returning with a vengeance.

read the rest here

Bill Moyers on Mideast Violence

http://www.pbs.org/billmoyers Bill Moyers reflects on the recent violence in the Middle East. PLEASE NOTE: This essay contains video and images of the Israeli and Palestinian casualties including children - in Gaza as well as the Pulitzer prize-winning photo of the nude Vietnamese girl running from napalm bombing. Some viewers may find the images disturbing, but they are in context and germane to the subject matter. Bill Moyers Journal airs Fridays at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). For more: http://www.pbs.org/billmoyers

We Were Acquitted of Speaking Against Wars

Laurie Arbeiter
After Downing Street
June 26 2009

I finally settled down since returning from Washington and now have a chance to write and send my appreciation directly to all of you for your support and interest in our trial. I really felt you behind us and that made such a difference.

As you may have already heard that the trial verged on the absurd. What is so shocking is how much leeway the government gets in their incompetence mounting a prosecution. What is more chilling is facing for oneself, what many of us know, that they will blatently lie in order to get a conviction. In our case the personal consequences were relatively minor but I couldn't help but think about so many others, that face much greater harm due to false testimony, day in and day out, in the criminal "justice" system. The officer in our case took his oath and then on the stand proceeded to make up the events and behavior he attributed to us, that the prosecutor hoped would persuade the judge to convict us. We never did get to mount our defense because there was so much else wrong, including the destruction of evidence, that at a certain point, not soon enough, the judge struck the testimony of the witness and the prosecutor threw out the case.

read the rest here

Cheney's Top Torture Lawyers Now Work for Obama

David Swanson
After Downing Street
June 26 2009

We've heard of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales, and maybe even Jay Bybee. Some of us recall John Ashcroft, Michael Mukasey, and even David Addington. William Haynes, Stephen Bradbury, and Douglas Feith occasionally make the news. If I had any say about it all 40 of these facilitators of torture would be universally known -- plus the eight more that readers of this article will call to my attention and angrily accuse me of trying to cover for by only being aware of 40. I would also make universally known the fact that two of the worst now work for President Barack Obama.

read the rest here

The Top Ten Reasons that Havot Ma'on and Ma'on have Got to Go:

Reason Number Four: Havot Ma'on and Ma'on are on Palestinian Land

Joy Ellisson
I Saw it in Palestine
June 29 2009

"Our family used to live in those trees," our partners in Tuba tell us. For some reason, very few people are willing to say this loudly and clearly, but Ma'on and Havot Ma'on are on land that belongs to Palestinians.

According to Israeli organization Peace Now, 16% of Ma'on and Havot Ma'on land is privately owned by Palestinians. 26% of the land is survey land - land seized by the state of Israel for "military purposes", on which it is illegal for anyone to build. (Apparently, that law doesn't apply, in practice, to settlers.) However, 0% of the land is actually privately-owned by Israelis.

read the rest here

A People's History (The 20th Century) - Howard Zinn [1/53]

see all of them here

The Jury Is Out on the Iranian Model of Religion and Politics

So what of the famous revolution? Was it a return to the basic values of Shia Islam?

Robert Fisk
The Indepenent
June 27 2009

The most nauseous photograph to come out of the Iran tragedy was not the bloodied demonstrators in Tehran, but a Reuters picture of former Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, "fighting back tears" in Washington as he declared that Neda Agha Sultan, the young woman shot dead by Ahmadinejad's thugs a week ago, "was now for ever in my pocket". I bet she is, by God! "I have added her to the list of my daughters," the son of the brutal and merciless late Shah, told the world.

read the rest here

CIA Crucified Captive In Abu Ghraib

Sherwood Ross
Information Clearing House
June 29, 2009

"The Central Intelligence Agency crucified a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to a report published in The New Yorker magazine.

“A forensic examiner found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs,” the magazine’s Jane Mayer writes in the magazine’s June 22nd issue. “Military pathologists classified the case a homicide.” The date of the murder was not given.

“No criminal charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A. officer involved in the torture program, despite the fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by agency personnel died as a result of mistreatment,” Mayer notes.

read the rest here

Reciprocity or Death

Leonardo Boff
Theologian
Earthcharter Commission
June 26 2009

When human beings decided to live together, they established an unwritten social contract, setting up norms, prohibitions and common purposes that allowed them to coexist with a modicum of peace. Later on, thinkers appeared, like Locke, Kant and Rousseau, giving the contract a formal status.

Those historic contracts have a common defect: they imply naked and acosmic individuals, who lack even a minimal link with nature or the Earth. The social contracts ignore and totally suppress the natural contract. (...)

Even worse: beginning with Descartes and Bacon, the founding fathers of modernity, the illusion was sown that human beings are above and outside of nature, and that their goal is to dominate and own her.

This project has continued throughout the war of conquest, that continues appropriating all the natural resources and services, always resulting in the devastation of nature and a brutal dehumanization.

Previously, wars were waged to conquer regions and peoples. All Earth's territory has been conquered, and what is going on now is a total war, one without mercy, against the Earth, her goods and services, exploiting them to the point of exhaustion. The Earth can no longer rest: she has no refuge nor space into which to withdraw.

This aggression is worldwide, and the reaction of the Earth - Gaia - is also worldwide. Her reply is a collection of various crises, together forming a devastating planetary warming. It is Gaia's revenge.

There is no way out but to consciously and quickly reintroduce that which we had forgotten: a natural contract articulated with the social contract. We must overcome our arrogant anthropocentrism and put everything in its place, and ourselves as well, as a part of a whole.

What is a natural contract? It is the acknowledgement on the part of the human being that he is integrated into nature, from which he receives all, and the recognition that he must behave as a child of Mother Earth, giving her caring and protection in return, so that she may continue doing what she has always done: give us life and the means to live.

The natural contract, as all contracts, presupposes reciprocity. Nature gives us everything we need, and we, for our part, must respect her and recognize her right to exist and to preserve her integrity and vitality.

To the exclusively social contract we must now add the natural contract, one of reciprocity and symbiosis. We must renounce our drive to dominate and to posses, and enter into a brotherhood with all things. We cannot just use them, but when we do use them, because we need them, we must contemplate them, admire their beauty and their existence as an organism, and we must care for them.

Nature is our generous hostess, and we are her grateful guests. We cannot just seek to establish a truce in this endless war. Rather, we must establish a perennial peace with nature and with the Earth.

At no time did the 1929 economic crisis consider nature or the Earth. Its illusory presupposition was that they would always be there, at their disposal and with infinite resources. Now the situation is different. We can no longer take for granted the Earth, with her goods and services. These have been shown to be finite, and we have already surpassed by 40% their capacity for recuperation.

When will this factor be brought into the debate, into the search for solutions to the present crises? We are dominated by economists -- the great majority of whom are true Fachidioten, (“specialized idiots”), who see only numbers, markets and coins, and forget that they eat, drink, breathe and walk on contaminated soil. In other words: they can only do what they do because they are seated in nature, which allows them to do what they do, primarily, justifying egotism and the barbarities wrought by the present economy, that damages millions and millions of persons and that keeps damaging the base that sustains it.

Either we reestablish the reciprocity between nature and human beings, and rearticulate the social contract with the natural contract, or we must accept the risk of being expelled and eliminated by Gaia. I trust that we will learn from our suffering and that we will use the good sense that we will still have.

Free translation from the Spanish by
contacto@servicioskoinonia.org,
sent by Melina Alfaro, done at
REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas

The necessity of cultural boycott

Ilan Pappe
The Electronic Intifada
June 23 2009

If there is anything new in the never-ending sad story of Palestine it is the clear shift in public opinion in the UK. I remember coming to these isles in 1980 when supporting the Palestinian cause was confined to the left and in it to a very particular section and ideological stream. The post-Holocaust trauma and guilt complex, military and economic interests and the charade of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East all played a role in providing immunity for the State of Israel. Very few were moved, so it seems, by a state that had dispossessed half of Palestine's native population, demolished half of their villages and towns, discriminated against the minority among them who lived within its borders through an apartheid system and divided into enclaves two million and a half of them in a harsh and oppressive military occupation.

read the rest here

The Emperor's Seven Signing Statements

David Swanson
After Downing Street
June 28 2009

Lawless detention is the least of it. State secrets and warrantless spying scrape the surface. Drone attacks and ongoing torture begin to touch it. But central to the power of an emperor, and the catastrophes that come from the existence of an emperor, is the elimination of any other force within the government. Signing statements eliminate congress. Not that congress objects. Asking congress to reclaim its power produces nervous giggles.

read the rest here

7 Years In Chains

Detained At 14, Tortured and Released At 21



more on this here

Some Guantánamo Bay detainees may be held indefinitely

Lara Jakes and Pamela Hess
Seattle Times
June 27 2009

WASHINGTON — Stymied by Congress so far, the White House is considering issuing an executive order to indefinitely imprison a small number of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, considered too dangerous to prosecute or release, two administration officials said Friday.

No decisions have been made about the order, which would be the third major mandate by President Obama to deal with how the United States treats and prosecutes terrorism suspects and foreign fighters.

read the rest here

Hope as Smooth as Silk

Practicing the spirituality of the Lilies of the field

War Resisters League Asheville
June 22 2009

Silk Hope Catholic Worker House, is a permaculture oasis in Chatham County, North Carolina, and a point of light for soldiers seeking counseling about GI Rights and conscientious objection to participating in war.

Catholic Workers Steve Woolford and Lenore Yager are deeply involved in the everyday work of parenting, maintaining a rural homestead, and practicing the skills of simple and sustainable living, all the while keeping open the door of hospitality for folks in need of safe harbor, and being the knowledgably reassuring voices at the other end of the GI Rights Hotline. They offer the service in collaboration with Quaker House, about 60 miles away in Fayetteville, site of Fort Bragg, the home base of U.S. Army Paratroopers and Special Operations Forces.

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Our Political Prisoners

David Swanson
After Downing Street
June 26 2009

Did you know the United States has in recent years prosecuted hundreds of people for political reasons? This is a crime, or rather a crime wave, that has thus far been addressed primarily by ignoring it. You can read a lot about it from bloggers like Larisa Alexandrovna or Scott Horton. But you won't hear the president mention it on TV.

In an attempt to convince the corporate media that this issue ranked right up there with governors' sex lives and celebrities' deaths, a group of notable speakers, judges, attorneys, victims, and witnesses, gathered and spoke on Friday morning at the National Press Club. You can watch the whole forum on C-Span. You won't find it anywhere else. Below is what I blogged from the event:

read the rest here

17 Blackwater Defendants Plead Guilty and were Sentenced, 5 Plead Not Guilty and will go to Trial

Report from Blackwater 22 Court appearance in Galina IL

David Stocker
June 24, 2009

Galena County Courthouse, IL --"I am a third-generation farmer from Iowa. What I did on April 27 was patriotic, and I'm proud of it," defendant Chris Gaunt, 52, from Grinnell, IA, said in her statement before sentencing.

The 22 defendants in the April 27, 2009, Blackwater trespassing action were scheduled for hearing at 10 AM. By that time, the pubic gallery was about halffilled with friends and activists from the peace movement who had come to witness the next step in the process of “throwing a shoe” at Blackwater. On April 25-27, 2009, more than 100 people came to Stockton’s Unitarian Universalist Church to participate in a two-day conference/retreat on Blackwater/ Xe that included an address by author Jeremy Scahill and training for the civil disobedience action, which ended with the arrest of 22 brave souls who tried to serve moral bankruptcy papers and an eviction notice at the N IL Blackwater site. This event, along with actions in Potrero, CA and Moyock, NC, have dragged Blackwater into the national spotlight where its actions are receiving greater scrutiny than it would like. (...)

Blackwater/Xe has been persistently developing a training facility on 80 acres at Skunk Hollow Road near Stockton, Illinois. Without public invitation, Blackwater appeared as an armed force in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Blackwater has also gained lucrative contracts worth billions to perform border security in Southwestern USA and is presently operating in Iraq and Afghanistan under the rebranded title Xe.

As Rock Falls IL, defendant and peace activist Fred Turk, 71 pointed out to the court, “This is part of a B/Xe strategy—to be on the ground floor of corporatization of the national police force.”

The defendants in the Galena action finally entered the courtroom at 11:30 with their attorney Edward L. Osowski, a Chicago-based attorney, familiar with political trials after working on a number of SOA trials. After some awkwardness at seating all 22 defendants in the crowded space available, the "Choice of Plea" appearance began before
Judge Kevin Ward. All were asked if they were fully aware of the charges facing them. All replied that they understood.

The court first dealt with the defendants who wished to plead not guilty. Four defendants asked for a bench trial and entered pleas of not guilty. They were Roberta, 65, and Don, 67, Thurstin-Timmerman of Park Falls WI, (former Milwaukee CWers), Lee Jankowski, 50, itinerate CW home repair person, and Becky Lambert, 25, from the Winona, MN, CW. Their trial is scheduled for September 4 and they will be represented by Edward L. Osowski.

Defendant, Michael Walli, 60, from the Duluth MN, CW, pleaded not guilty buty requested a trial by jury. Walli wearing a bright orange T-shirt with the words “Close Guantanamo,” had traveled from Washington, DC, after appearing in court there pursuant to another civil disobedience action regarding the closing of Guantanamo. As previously agreed, Walli told the Judge while he appreciated his service thus far, he no longer wished to be represented by Edward Ozowski (Osowski had told the group earlier he would not be available for a jury trial) and asked for a court-appointed attorney. Walli told the judge he is a transient missionary with an income of less than $500 per year and had no means to hire an attorney. Judge Ward initiated the process of appointing an attorney for Michael, and his case was put on hold.

The remaining 17 defendants all pleaded “guilty” to a Class B Misdemeanor Criminal Trespass charge with a maximum penalty of $1500 and six months in jail, and a minimum penalty of “court supervision.” In the pre court exchanged between judge , the attorneys and the defendants, Judge Kevin Ward had let it be known that he was going to sentence all who pleaded guilty to pay a combined court cost and fine of $250 with a six-month unsupervised probation, about half of what the State's Attorney was recommending.

After accepting the guilty pleas of all 17 remaining defendants, each defendant was allowed to make a statement before sentencing. Many took the opportunity to speak out against Blackwater and gave reasons why they felt called to do civil disobedience.

New Hope Farm CW defendant, Mary Moody, 44, described coming to the courthouse in February to meet with officials of the county and advise them of plans for the impending action. “We shared information and acted with complete transparency. We followed our agreements. This is in stark contrast to Blackwater, a private corporation which trespasses in foreign nations, enters private homes and is alleged to have taken lives of innocent people. Blackwater violates its own contracts smuggling illegal weapons into and out of Iraq. My plea is to all courts and to all citizens that the same transparency be demanded of these corporate criminals as is being demanded of us who stand before you today.”

Mona Shaw, 58, of the Des Moines CW said, “As I stand here, my heart is filled with regret. Regret for every mother who holds a folded flag, regret for mothers who bury children for lack of healthcare or proper nutrition. I regret that we live in a moral climate where our leaders no longer work for us but rather serve Corporations. We believe that the people have a heart and soul and that the day is coming when truth rather than lies will prevail. However, what I don’t regret is what I did last April 27 at the N IL Blackwater site”

Defendant, Laurel Noblette, 22, of the Champaign IL CW described her motivation, “This action was a personal choice to intervene in the only non-violent way offered to me. We are community organizers, and we represent people without a voice. I accept the penalty in exchange for the opportunity to have you hear me say that Blackwater should be stopped.

Along with speaking out against Blackwater, and knowing that the Judge was inclined to fix a $250 sentence instead of any jail time, many of the defendants stated that as being members of Catholic Worker communities, living and serving the poor as volunteers, asked the Judge for leniency in any fines or penalties.

Two defendants; Frank Cordaro, 58, and Ed Boomer, 62, both Des Moines CWers, told the judge that they would refuse to pay any fines or court costs as a sign of solidarity with the poor. Cordaro told Judge Ward, “As a sign of standing with the poor we serve, who when in similar situations end up going to jail, more often than not, for lack of money to pay their finds and court cost, I will refuse to pay any fines or court costs that may come with my sentence today.”

At the end of defendants' statements Judge Ward sentenced 15 of the defendants, excluding Cordaro and Bloomer to pay court costs of $150 plus a punitive charge of $100. The judge told the defendants that the total fine of $250 must be paid on or before September 4, 2009, for the defendants to avoid further consequence. He also gave them six months unsupervised probation.

Turning his attention to Cordaro and Bloomer, the judge made note that he heard their stated refusal to pay any fines or court costs and subsequently warned them of unfavorable consequences should they fail to pay any of the penalties of their sentence. Then Judge Ward sentenced Cordaro and Bloomer to the same sentence he gave to the other 15 defendants.

The sentence given by Judge Ward, while seeming lenient, was still more than the minimum required by law. And, defendants were not permitted to perform community service in lieu of fine as some had requested.
-------------------------------------------------

Below list of the 17 defendants who plead guilty and sentenced to pay court costs of $150 plus a fine of $100 and were gave six month unsupervised probation.

Eric Anglada, LaMotte, IA, 29 yrs old - New Hope CW Farm
Ed Bloomer, Des Moines CW, 61 yrs old
Kenny Bishop, Champaign CW, 24 yrs old
Frank Cordaro, Des Moines CW, 58 yrs old
Tyler Chen, Champaign CW, 24 yrs old
Elton Davis, Des Moines IA, 47 yrs old - former DMCW
Chris Gaunt, Grinnell, IA, 52 yrs old
Carolyn Griffeth, St Louis CW, 36 yrs old
Lee Jankowski, Dubuque, IA CW, 50 yrs old
Benjamin Johnson, Dubuque CW, 25 yrs old
Chrissy Kirchhoefer, St Louis CW, 31 yrs old
Mike Leutgeb Munson, Rockford MN, 26 yrs old - former Winona CW
Mary Moody, LaMotte, IA, 44 yrs old - New Hope CW Farm
Laurel Nobilette, Champaign CW, 22 yrs old
Nick Pickrell, Kansas City CW, 27 yrs old
Mona Shaw, Des Moines CW, 57 yrs old
Chris Watson, Champaign CW, 22 yrs old
Fred Turk, Rock Falls, IL, 71 yrs old
--------------------------------------------------

List of the 3 defendants who plead not guilty and were given a bench trial date of Sept 4th.

Becky Lambert, Winona CW, 25 yrs old
Don Thurstin-Timmerman, Park Falls WI, 67 yrs old - former Milwaukee CW
Roberta Thurstin-Timmerman, Park Falls WI, 65 yrs old - former Milwaukee CW
---------------------------------------------------

Michael Walli, Duluth CW, 60 yrs old plead not guilty and asked for a jury trial and a public defendant attonrey. Future court dates to be determined.

Belgian campaign forces financial group to cancel settlement loans

Electronic Intifada
June 15 2009

The Belgian-French financial group Dexia has announced it will no longer finance Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories through its Israeli branch, Dexia Israel. This is the result of a months-long campaign in Belgium, supported by non-governmental organizations, political parties, local authorities, trade unions and other organizations. Dexia's management has stated that financing Israeli settlements is indeed against the bank's code of ethics and thusly, it will stop giving loans for this activity.

read the rest here

Israeli Police Detain Arrest Palestinian Children While Grazing Their Sheep

Joy Ellison
I Saw it in Palestine
June 25 2009

[Note: According to the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, and numerous United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Settlement outposts are considered illegal also under Israeli law.]

On the morning of June 25, Israeli police detained two Palestinian children, Ahmed Omar Jundyye, age 15, and Redwan Ibrahim Jundyye, age 16, near the village of Tuba. The young boys, accompanied by internationals, were grazing their flocks near their village of Tuba, located in the South Hebron Hills. Israeli settlers from the illegal outpost, Havat Ma’on, observed the young boys for sometime before the Israeli military arrived.

read the rest here

Catholic Worker Classifides

Poverello House in Tucson AZ looking for 6 mo. volunteers

Br. David Buer OFM
June 25 2009

"Looking for a Catholic Worker wanting to commit to come to Tucson, Arizona for six months to help run Poverello House--a 9 month old daytime house of hospitality for homeless men. About 12 homeless men a day come in (each guest gets one day a week) to wash their clothes, take a shower, have breakfast and lunch, read, watch TV or take a nap. Room and board and traditional CW stipend available.

There is also opportunity to get involved in migrant/border issues.

If interested please contact:

Br. David Buer, ofm
buerofm@gmail.com

Holy New Martyr Lorenzo Rosebaugh pray for us

CBS affiliate TV Broadcast of Lorenzo death in Guatemala

Remembering Saint Lorenzo

A report from June 13 Memorial To Lorenzo Rosebaugh in Milwaukee WI

Bob Graf
Non-Voilent Cow

Dear Friends of the Milwaukee 14 Today

For those of you who were not present at the Memorial To Lorenzo Rosebaugh on June 13th I have put on the web a copy of the program for the Memorial Service for Lorenzo Rosebaugh OMI The words were written by Sister Marion Verhaalen and the pictures were taken by Mark Goff, the same person we knew in 1968.

What I cannot share with you is the heart of the service which was in the sharing of memories of Lorenzo at the service and the conversations with old and new friends at the reception. I met many people who I did not know but knew Lorenzo and some of you from Twin Cities, Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis. Guatemala, El Salvator, prisons, shelters and everywhere. The 150 persons who attended the service and those who have made comments on the Memorial To Lorenzo Rosebaugh are just a fraction of the lives Lorenzo deeply touched. Except for the lack of dancing I think Lorenzo would have really enjoyed the celebration of his life. (...)

The purpose of the Milwaukee 14 Today site is to serve in some way to help bring the values of nonviolence, justice and peace into our daily lives now. I just had a visit from my friends from India that organized the Pilgrimage of Peace to India. Everything they do in everyday life from brushing of teeth with herbal power made from cow dung to the foods they prepare are reminders of the nonviolent way of life they are committed to.

If anyone is interested in tooth power, which has been demonstrated scientifically to be the best there is for gum disease or the soaps or few other products let me know soon. I purchased the Products from the India of Mahatma Gandhi they brought with them to show to Fair Trade Stores. Soon I will display pictures of the products on the
site above.

I know you all, like me, are very busy this summer but if you take time out for silence and reflection remember Lorenzo and ask for his intersection. At the end of the Memorial Service he was a declared a saint by unanimous acclamation of the church present.

Green Peace,
Bob Graf

"I reach out to the entire universe, asking the energy, the love
needed to unite more and more with the people God has placed in my
life and with all creation that yearns to be one. “
---Lorenzo Rosebaugh OMI

Delegation will deliver a message of peace in Japan

John Larson
Tacoma Weekly
June 25, 2009

A delegation of Americans, most from the Tacoma area, will travel to Japan later this summer to issue an apology for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The group will leave on July 31 and visit the two cities on the anniversaries of the bombings.

Most of the participants are long-time peace activists. They hope their visit helps heal some of the deep wounds left over from the attacks and generates support in the United States and around the world for abolishing nuclear weapons.

read the rest here

30 years, thousands of square meals for the homeless

Anne Saker,
The Oregonian
June 25 2009

The place at Northwest Sixth Avenue and Davis Street had not been open an hour one Thursday in early June when the homeless man walked in. Big as a nose tackle, with a long beard and stringy hair, he was hungry. He stepped up to the cash register and pointed at the menu board to order the pasta of the day, two pieces of corn bread and a glass of milk. In return, he got a plastic card bearing the number 22.

He cast his eyes around Sisters of the Road Cafe, already packed with customers. He shuffled around and plopped down at the counter, alternating smiles and mutterings to himself. He said nothing. But for half an hour, he was no longer just another guy down on his luck for too long. He was a regular customer, waiting for a meal.

Social service agencies come and go; charities wax and wane. Yet for 30 years, Sisters of the Road has endured at the same stripped-down corner of Old Town, serving $1.25 lunches and 25-cent squares of corn bread with a mission:

read the rest here

Catholic Worker House's meal reduction angers recipients

Tim Mitchell
The News-Gazette
June 22 2009

CHAMPAIGN – Douglas Gritmacker, a homeless man, showed up at the Catholic Worker House on Sunday like he has nearly every day for three years.

Only this time he said he went away hungry.

"It's very disappointing not getting a lunch today," Gritmacker said.

Father's Day marked the first time in recent memory that the Catholic Worker House served no lunches.

Signs announced that the Sunday lunches had been discontinued at the house, and a rope prevented visitors from entering the facility.

Catholic Worker House steering committee member Leigh Estabrook said the committee voted three weeks ago to stop serving lunches on Sundays beginning on June 21.

read the rest here

Activist Mark Colville attempts to bring medical supplies into Gaza

Dandelion Salad

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


more on all this here

Prayer and Work, the Answer for These Times

An Interview with Robert Waldrop

Mary Kochan
Catholic Exchange
June 23rd, 2009

Robert Waldrop is a fourth-generation Oklahoman whose great-grandparents homesteaded in Oklahoma before statehood. He was born and raised on a farm in southwest Oklahoma close to the Texas border. He is the director of music at the Catholic Church of the Epiphany of the Lord, the founder of the Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House community, and the president of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. He previously served on the Migrants and Refugees Advisory Committee of Catholic Charities OKC, the board of the Oklahoma Sustainability Network, and the Oklahoma Food Policy Council. He lives in an inner city neighborhood, on 1/7th of an acre, where he grows more than 100 different varieties of useful or edible plants. Having followed his work online for a number of years, I thought that the current economic stresses made this an especially good time to interview him and introduce his work to Catholic Exchange readers.

read the rest here

CIA's Panetta Says He Will Continue Renditions, Not Penalize Torturers

Sherwood Ross
June 25 2009

CIA Director Leon Panetta says he is not going to penalize agents who tortured prisoners if they “were doing their duty,” explaining, “If you have a President who exercises bad judgment, the C.I.A. pays the price.”

In an interview published in the June 22nd issue of The New Yorker magazine, Panetta acknowledged to reporter Jane Mayer the CIA may still employ some people tainted by the torture program. Nevertheless, Panetta said, “I really respect the people who say we shouldn’t have gotten involved in the interrogation business but we had to do our jobs.” (...)

This defense, of course, recalls the one used by Nazi Adolf Eichmann, the Holocaust architect responsible for sending countless European Jews to extermination camps. Eichmann said he was just following orders and Panetta implies CIA agents that tortured were just following orders from the Bush White House. Eichmann was found hiding in Argentina and taken to Israel, where he was tried, convicted, and hanged in 1962.

Not only is Panetta excusing CIA criminals but Mayer writes, “Panetta, for his part, has been persuaded that renditions are a tool worth keeping…Panetta told me, ‘The worst part of rendition was rendition to a black site. That will not be the case anymore. If we render someone, it will be to a country with jurisdiction over that individual.’”

“The Obama Administration,” Panetta says, will take precautions to insure that rendered suspects are treated humanely, as the law requires,” Mayer writes. She quotes Panetta as saying, “I’ve talked to the State Department, and our people have to make very sure that people won’t be mistreated. Some places, obviously, it’s more difficult to do. But we’re going to have to press to make sure it doesn’t happen, because it would fly in the face of everything the President has said we stand for.”

To which Mayer adds, “The Bush Administration professed to be taking similar precautions.” Mayer notes during the Bush years, “some of the most horrific allegations of abuse were made by detainees rendered not to black sites but to Egypt, Syria, and Morocco.”

Panetta seems to ignore that rendition on its face is a violation of Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, ratified by the U.S. in 1994. As Wikipedia notes, “Rendered suspects are denied due process because they are arrested without charges and deprived of legal counsel.”

Panetta told The New Yorker, “I’m going to give people the benefit of the doubt…If they do the job that they’re paid to do, I can’t ask for a hell of a lot more.” Mayer points out, “His words echo those of President Obama, who on April 16th promised immunity from prosecution to any C.I.A. officer who relied on the advice of legal counsel during the Bush years.”

Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel pointed out that this is a low standard, given that “what the Justice Department approved was outrageous.”

Panetta further told Mayer once he felt confident that there was no criminal liability inside the CIA he “didn’t want to spend a lot of time dealing with the past and what mistakes were made.”

Under “extreme rendition,” alleged terror suspects have been abducted by the CIA and flown to be tortured (and/or murdered) in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Morocco, Jordan and Uzbekistan, among other places. The practice was started in 1996 under President Bill Clinton and vastly expanded by President George W. Bush after 9/11.

Sandy Berger, Clinton’s National Security Council director, and counterterrorism boss Richard Clarke, have been identified as having approved extreme rendition. Clinton, of course, is also culpable. Italy would like to lay its hands on 22 C.I.A. agents who abducted Milan resident cleric Hassan Osama Nasr for torture in Egypt.

CIA pilots involved in extreme rendition flights, as well as their boss, former CIA Director Porter Goss and CIA ex-counter-terrorism chief Cofer Black could also be called to account if the Obama Administration changes its mind about not “looking backward.” Recall Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA operatives from any law banning torture and Black told Congress, “After 9/11, the gloves came off.” Any European officials who transferred suspects to the CIA are also culpable.

If President Obama does not prosecute CIA agents and others who tortured, he will be in violation of the torture convention which, Mayer says, “requires a government to prosecute all acts of torture; failure to do so is considered a breach of international law.”

June 25th is Torture Accountability Action Day, one that will see demonstrations in many cities, including Washington, D.C., by Americans who still believe in enforcing the laws, even if President Obama does not.

Propping Up Africa's Dictators

Khadija Sharife
Foreign Policy In Focus
June 22, 2009

"We cannot assure our development on our own," stated France's pet dictator and Africa's longest-serving ruler, Omar Bongo. The Gabonese leader was talking about national economic development, but he might just as well have been talking about his own personal economic development. Transparency International's French chapter singled out Bongo, who died this month at 73 after ruling his country for 41 years, for a spectacular misappropriation of state funds. The lawsuit, lodged via civil party petition, charges Bongo, Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Congo, and Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea of acquiring vast patrimonies in France including expensive real estate, capital, villas, and cars that cannot be justified by official income.

read the rest here

Atilla '74: the rape of Cyprus - 1:41:03

Michalis Cacoyiannis' documentary film 'Attila '74: the rape of Cyprus' was made in the immediate aftermath of the Greek junta/EOKA B coup against President Makarios and the barbaric Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Cacoyiannis' film concentrates on the conspiracy to bring down the Republic of Cyprus and the effects of the invasion, the tragedy of the refugees and the missing persons. The film is in English and Greek, with subtitles as appropriate. Attila, for those who don't know, was the codename (appropriately) given to the operation to invade Cyprus by the Turkish armed forces. See also: Helenic Antidote

A Fight for the Amazon That Should Inspire the World

Johann Hari
The Independent
June 24 2009

While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed – yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine.

In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the poorest people in the world have taken on the richest people in the world to defend a part of the ecosystem none of us can live without. They had nothing but wooden spears and moral force to defeat the oil companies – and, for today, they have won.

Here's the story of how it happened – and how we all need to pick up this fight. Earlier this year, Peru's right-wing President, Alan Garcia, sold the rights to explore, log and drill 70 per cent of his country's swathe of the Amazon to a slew of international oil companies. Garcia seems to see rainforest as a waste of good resources, saying of the Amazon's trees: "There are millions of hectares of timber there lying idle."

There was only one pesky flaw in Garcia's plan:

read the rest here

Stateless 'State' of Palestine

[col. writ. 6/15/09]
(c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal

The presidential election of Barack Obama has so electrified the world, that expectations have swept past reality into the realm of the silly.

Some of this is surely driven by the corporate media, which no longer covers the news, but engages in what might be called 'pre-news', as it tends to predict what will (or may) happen, the better to not be scooped by competitors. And as news makes its hard turn to opinion, it sometimes builds up Obama as a world leader, in ways that are simply unreasonable. (...)

This was seen in the run-up to the Iranian presidential elections, where news coverage all but predicted the election of opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Moussavi, and the fall of the irascible Mahoud Ahmadinejad. The result predicted, talking heads opined about the global influence of Obama over the elections. (As for stolen elections, did millions of Americans take to the streets to protest the stolen elections here -- in 2000?

Similarly, much news coverage centered on Obama's hard-line on the Israelis, as in his Cairo address when he called for a freeze in settlements.

So slanted is U.S. policy towards Israel that a halt in construction in illegal settlements is seen as somehow 'hard-line.'

For their part, Israeli right-wingers, many supporters of newly-elected president Binyamin Netanyahu, has postered Tel Aviv with images of Obama wearing an Arab headdress (known as a kaffiyeh),
emblazoned with the words "Jew Hater", and "Anti-Semite" in English and Hebrew (an allusion to his Muslim name and family background)

To "freeze" a situation that is fundamentally unjust, is to preserve the status quo--a state of affairs that leaves the Palestinian people in an unjust and untenable situation.

On top of that, Netanyahu recently announced an essential rejection of Obama's 'freeze', and an alleged support of the establishment of a Palestinian state -albeit a demilitarized one, with foreign affairs to be overseen by Israel.

This is a state only in the sense that the old South African Bantustans were independent territories (that is to say, not at all).

The Palestinians have had their best lands seized and Swiss-cheesed by settlements, their parliament has been cast into prison, their water is rationed, and their homes have been bulldozed, all while western leaders crow about a 'peace process' that is, ultimately, a freeze in oppression.

Meanwhile, Israel, not only the most powerful military in the region, but an undeclared nuclear-armed state, accepts the idea of a Palestinian state, but only if demilitarized -- and this is seen as progress!

--(c) '09 maj

From Bil’in: "We refuse to die in silence."

Joy Ellison
I Saw it in Palestine
June 24 2009

A world-class drama is unfolding in Canada. The Palestinian village of Bil’in is taking two Quebec-based corporations, Green Park International and Green Mount International to court on charges that they are committing war crimes by building on Bil’in farmland as agents of Israel for the illegal settlement of Modi’in Illit. The corporations, assumed to be shell corporations located in Quebec for tax reasons, have been trying to stave off this case by procedural ploys -- including a challenge to the jurisdiction that will take place in the Montreal Courthouse on June 22, 2009. Mohammad Khatib, a Bil’in leader, the Israeli lawyer, Emily Schaeffer, and the Canadian lawyer, Mark Arnold, are traveling across Canada to explain the significance of this case and to raise funds for the court costs.

read the rest here

Call on Israel to Stop Its Violence against Palestinians

An Open Letter to President Obama from Christian Peacemaker Teams:

I Saw it in Palestine
June 24 2009

Dear President Obama,

On Tuesday June 15th, you said of the protests in Iran, “When I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, whenever that takes place, it is of concern to me and it is of concern to the American people.” For the last 13 years, Christian Peacemaker Teams have witnessed the brutal suppression of peaceful dissent here in Palestine. In the city of Hebron and the village of At-Tuwani, CPT supports vibrant Palestinian nonviolent resistance to Israel’s military occupation. Every day, Palestinians hold nonviolent demonstrations and defy curfews and closed military zones. They rebuild demolished homes and work their land despite the threat of arrest and attack. Though their struggle is largely ignored by the media, we find inspiration in the way Palestinians are working for justice and peace.

We are deeply troubled by the way Israeli authorities respond to this nonviolent resistance. On April 22, 2006, Israeli police beat and arrested the mayor of At-Tuwani village and his brother for doing no more than holding a peaceful demonstration against the illegal Israeli wall. CPT has documented the Israeli army demolishing the homes of nonviolent resistance leaders, harassing them at checkpoints, and targeting them for arrest.

read the rest here