Adopt Resistance

some 'hope' from Occupy Canada

2012-01-03T11:30:00.001-05:00

To our courageous men and women in Canada, a message from Don Davies

2012-01-03T00:43:00.004-05:00

Thank you, all of you. I will always regret that I didn't find the courage found by you and your families. Every day I think of all of you and the Vietnamese, the Iraqis and Afghanis, all the victims and heroes

Russell Brown

The Most Important News Story of the Day/Millennium

2011-12-05T17:36:00.002-05:00

by Bill McKibben

The most important piece of news yesterday, this week, this month, and this year was a new set of statistics released yesterday by the Global Carbon Project. It showed that carbon emissions from our planet had increased 5.9 percent between 2009 and 2010. In fact, it was arguably among the most important pieces of data in the last, oh, three centuries, since according to the New York Times it represented “almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution.”

What it means, in climate terms, is that we’ve all but lost the battle to reduce the damage from global warming. The planet has already warmed about a degree Celsius; it’s clearly going to go well past two degrees. It means, in political terms, that the fossil fuel industry has delayed effective action for the 12 years since the Kyoto treaty was signed. It means, in diplomatic terms, that the endless talks underway in Durban should be more important than ever--they should be the focus of a planetary population desperate to figure out how it’s going to survive the century.
350.org

But instead, almost no one is paying attention to the proceedings, at least on this continent. One of our political parties has decided that global warming is a hoax--it’s two leading candidates are busily apologizing for anything they said in the past that might possibly have been construed as backing, you know, science. President Obama hasn’t yet spoken on the Durban talks, and informed international observers like Joss Garman are beginning to despair that he ever will.

Who are the 99%? In this country, they’re those of us who aren’t making any of these deadly decisions. In this world, they’re the vast majority of people who didn’t contribute to those soaring emissions. In this biosphere they’re every other species now living on a disorienting earth.

You think OWS is radical? You think 350.org was radical for helping organize mass civil disobedience in DC in August against the Keystone Pipeline? We’re not radical. Radicals work for oil companies. The CEO of Exxon gets up every morning and goes to work changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere. No one has ever done anything as radical as that, not in all of human history. And he and his ilk spend heavily on campaigns to make sure no one stops them--the US Chamber of Commerce gave more money than the DNC and the RNC last cycle, and 94% of it went to climate deniers.

Corporate power has occupied the atmosphere. 2011 showed we could fight back. 2012 would be a good year to step up the pressure. Because this time next year the Global Carbon Project will release another number. And I’m betting it will be grim.

Occupy Buffalo sets up another community structure for the winter

2011-12-05T15:34:00.004-05:00

Closing statement of Elliot Adams, Hancock 38 defendant, at the end of the trial in November, 2011

2011-12-05T15:32:00.003-05:00

Why I arrested Donald Rumsfeld

2011-12-04T22:01:00.002-05:00

by Nate Goldshlag -- one of several members of Veterans for Peace who disrupted Donald Rumsfeld's book tour event in Boston this week.

“As a Veteran for Peace, I consider the lies we were told by the Bush administration made the Iraq invasion a war crime.”

On Monday 26 September, three members of Veterans For Peace and a member of Code Pink confronted Donald Rumsfeld at a Boston stop of his book tour. I attempted to make a citizen's arrest. Police hustled all four of us out, while a hostile rightwing crowd shouted and jeered. To get in, we had to dress nicely, pay $50 and give Rumsfeld a standing ovation so that we did not stand out from this crowd. The $50 got you a copy of his book, which I could not stomach taking. Once Rumsfeld started talking, at two-minute intervals, one of us got up to confront him.

Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and the rest of this crew are war criminals, according to international law. They lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They lied about Saddam Hussein being linked to 9/11. They lied about mobile weapons labs, yellowcake from Niger, how painless a war would be and countless other things. They instigated a program of torture in Guantánamo, Bagram and who knows how many other black sites. These lies were used as a pretext for initiating a war of aggression against a sovereign nation – an international war crime.

They are also guilty of violating the UN convention against torture (ratified by the US) and are responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and 5,000 Americans. Iraq has been devastated to the extent that, years later, many of its people still do not have 24-hour access to electricity. Much other infrastructure is destroyed in one of the oldest civilisations on the planet. Millions of Iraqis are refugees in other countries.

War criminals such as these need to be confronted at every opportunity. This is already happening. They cannot travel freely in Europe for fear of being arrested. However, the problem is not restricted to the Bush administration. Barack Obama is also guilty of war crimes, as he has continued and expanded the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. In all these countries, war and/or drone strikes have killed thousands of innocent people while doing nothing good and creating more people who hate American policy.

The real problem is the corporate-controlled government here and the military-industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about in 1961. The multinational corporate elite need to continue this policy of endless war, for profit, for resources like oil, and for global economic control. The military-industrial complex and the national security apparatus set up after 9/11 consume more than $1tn a year, while pensions, social security and Medicare are under attack. Rarely if ever mentioned by the corporate-controlled mass media is the enormous cost to taxpayers of war, the military and the national security state.

I became an activist in college at Harvard in 1968, at a time when there was a huge antiwar movement that, along with GI mutinies, stopped the Vietnam war. After being drafted into the US Army, I co-founded an underground GI newspaper in Germany. Militant mass nonviolent resistance – people demanding and creating real participatory democracy – is rising again against militarism and corporatism, and for human needs not corporate greed. Events in Tahrir Square have sparked the occupation of Wall Street in New York. An occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, will begin on 6 October. As Bob Dylan wrote many years ago, "the times they are a-changin'."

PEACE NOT WAR

2011-12-04T21:55:00.002-05:00

December 1st at Hancock Air Base home of the killer robotic Reaper drones.

2011-12-02T23:46:00.008-05:00

Syracuse Veterans For Peace joins demonstration at Hancock Air Base in Syracuse protesting the Reaper drones being operated at the base, killing innocent people in foreign countries. It was Dec 1st and they also were support the defendants of the Hancock 38. The verdict were to be handed down later that day.

Defendants and supporters demonstrate on road across from the main gate at Hancock Air Base. Later that evening they would fill the courtroom for judge Gideon's verdict.

Leonard Cohen: Democracy

2011-11-28T12:00:00.003-05:00

-thanks to noracallahan

451 at Zuccotti Park

2011-11-28T08:21:00.006-05:00

"Where man starts by burning books he ends up by burning people."

by PETER LINEBAUGH

The cowardly, nocturnal destruction of more than 5,000 volumes of “the People’s Library” last week, a repository of knowledge gathered by the Occupy Wall Street assembly at Zuccotti Park requires the most vigorous push-back. Mayor Bloomberg of New York ordered the destruction which was certainly coordinated with Wall Street and the White House.

Let the number 451 become his license plate; let it become his Social Security Number; let it become the password to his billions; let it become his total ID, for now the world knows him as the one who realized the dystopia of book-burning described in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) known to every American high school student.

Or, one might liken the destruction at Zuccotti Park to the burning of the books in Germany in 1933. The German burning inspired a comrade of 1968 to place at the site of the Nazi’s hideous deed a plaque with Heinrich Heine’s words, written in 1821,
… wo man Bücher verbrennt, Verbrennt man Auch am Ende Menschen.
which roughly means, ‘where man starts by burning books he ends up by burning people.’
There is, of course, a difference between 1933 and 2011. The distance between the gasses of the holocausts and the burning of pepper spray is substantial but it is a distance upon a similar chemical continuum and it shares the same fear of ideas. Though the plutocrats are still leagued with the war-mongers they are no longer organized as national and social capital; capitalism now is globalized they constantly tell us, not national and not social. However, we the 99% too are world-wide and becoming more and more social.

The books at Zuccotti Park were hauled away in dumpsters belonging to the sanitation department. The pretext of the destruction was “cleaning” the park which, the Mayor said, was filled with “filth”. This is the rhetoric of Mein Kampf. But no one is deceived. These acts are deliberate attempts to destroy the ideas and the many “yesses” of the movement against neo-liberalism, and our utter negation of the blasphemous notion that rule by the 1% with its wars, debts, and work is inevitable and eternal.
The trashing of the books is a sign of our times as surely as the deliberate destruction of the antiquities and national library of Baghdad. In the case of Mesopotamia the books held the knowledge of the first cities of human history; in the case of Zuccotti Park the knowledge was surely of the next cities of human history. Well, not only cities. Obviously the country and the seas and the stratosphere are planetary sites of filth and destruction in need of repair. Even the Biblical jubilee of debt forgiveness, manumission, and land restoration entails a time of fallow, to give the earth a rest.

Nowadays the 1% expect all the respect, as if money conferred it, while we, the 99%, are degraded and devalued. Our wealth is not filthy lucre. Our wealth consists of ideas, it consists of our books, it consists of our prefigurments in our relations with one another. Our wealth consists of our assemblies where the “people’s microphone” returns to the Greek etymology of the assembly, the ecclesia, which meant to “call out.”

Within a few hours the call went out again and people re-gathered to re-constitute the movement to occupy Wall Street. Among the signs was one which surely is a call-out, “Arrest one of us; two more appear. You can’t arrest an idea!” Ideas are not “absolutely dead things,” as Milton said (Areopagitica 1644), “they are as lively, as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon’s teeth, and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.” He was writing in the midst of civil war; we may say that we are armed with books and with ideas. Our occupations, up and down and everywhere, embody them. You have only to witness the soft-spoken eloquence and the powerful composure of the librarians of the OWS Library at their press conference of the day before yesterday to understand this ecclesia.

This – the relation between words and deeds - is the essential point. The Occupation of Wall Street tended towards a unity of action and talk, because the action of occupation created the assembly where speaking out and speaking up could transpire. The resulting discourse creates knowledge of the revolutionary future. The struggle for ideas is a struggle for space: it was so with the hills and mountains of the liberating guerrillas, it was so with the peasants and soldiers in the soviets, it was the case with the congregations of the yeomen and artisans in the English civil war; it was the case with the tennis court where the French Revolution of 1789 began; it was so with the zocolo in Oaxaca; it was the case with the numberless encampments of history in forest and field from Kett’s Rebellion to the Zapatistas of Chiapas. In all of these it was the combination of ideas and assembled people in some actual, occupied space that was creative: ideas alone quickly become smothered in isolated study carrels, crowds alone quickly become mindless in the stadiums of authorized sport. When they are united our movement lives up to its name. History can begin. Hence, our enemies need to repress our deeds and our ideas. The protection of this relation of ideas and assembly is what the US Constitution forgot and had to be repaired right away in the very first amendment.

Peter Linebaugh teaches history at the University of Toledo. The London Hanged and (with Marcus Rediker) The Many-Headed Hydra: the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. His essay on the history of May Day is included in Serpents in the Garden. His latest book is the Magna Carta Manifesto. He can be reached at: plineba@yahoo.com

-thanks to Counterpunch

Einstein: "It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

2011-11-28T08:11:00.002-05:00

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

Love & Shadow in the Occupy Movement - Michael Stone

2011-11-26T22:55:00.003-05:00

Love in Action: Occupy Spoken Word Piece with Drew Dellinger

2011-11-26T22:45:00.004-05:00

To the Winter Patriot

2011-11-25T09:18:00.004-05:00

by Abby Zimet

An impassioned open letter from Army vet and PhD economics student Mitch Green to his "brothers and sisters in the armed forces," asking, What will you do when your bosses call you to put down the Occupy movement? Powerful.

"Sadly, society has placed a twin tax upon you by asking that you sacrifice both your body and your morality...Now, more than ever we need your sacrifice. But, I’m asking you to soldier in a different way. If called upon to deny the people their first amendment right to peaceably assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievance, disregard the order. Abstain from service. Or if you are so bold, join us."

-thanks to Commondreams

Daniel Ellsberg: pepper spray = "police torture"

2011-11-25T00:45:00.000-05:00

Michael Moore: Don't Sit This One Out - What's Your Vision for Occupy Wall Street?

2011-11-25T00:02:00.009-05:00

Filmmaker Michael Moore talks to protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement at Zuccotti Park in New York, Oct. 20, 2011.

(Photo: Michael Kirby Smith / The New York Times)

Tuesday 22 November 2011
by: Michael Moore, MichaelMoore.com | Op-Ed

This past weekend I participated in a four-hour meeting of Occupy Wall Street activists whose job it is to come up with the vision and goals of the movement. It was attended by 40+ people and the discussion was both inspiring and invigorating. Here is what we ended up proposing as the movement's "vision statement" to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

"We Envision: [1] a truly free, democratic, and just society; [2] where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus; [3] where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility and participate in decision making; [4] where we learn to live in harmony and embrace principles of toleration and respect for diversity and the differing views of others; [5] where we secure the civil and human rights of all from violation by tyrannical forces and unjust governments; [6] where political and economic institutions work to benefit all, not just the privileged few; [7] where we provide full and free education to everyone, not merely to get jobs but to grow and flourish as human beings; [8] where we value human needs over monetary gain, to ensure decent standards of living without which effective democracy is impossible; [9] where we work together to protect the global environment to ensure that future generations will have safe and clean air, water and food supplies, and will be able to enjoy the beauty and bounty of nature that past generations have enjoyed."

The next step will be to develop a specific list of goals and demands. As one of the millions of people who are participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement, I would like to respectfully offer my suggestions of what we can all get behind now to wrestle the control of our country out of the hands of the 1% and place it squarely with the 99% majority.

Here is what I will propose to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

10 Things We Want

A Proposal for Occupy Wall Street

Submitted by Michael Moore

1. Eradicate the Bush tax cuts for the rich and institute new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations, including a tax on all trading on Wall Street (where they currently pay 0%).

2. Assess a penalty tax on any corporation that moves American jobs to other countries when that company is already making profits in America. Our jobs are the most important national treasure and they cannot be removed from the country simply because someone wants to make more money.

3. Require that all Americans pay the same Social Security tax on all of their earnings (normally, the middle class pays about 6% of their income to Social Security; someone making $1 million a year pays about 0.6% (or 90% less than the average person). This law would simply make the rich pay what everyone else pays.

4. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, placing serious regulations on how business is conducted by Wall Street and the banks.

5. Investigate the Crash of 2008, and bring to justice those who committed any crimes.

6. Reorder our nation's spending priorities (including the ending of all foreign wars and their cost of over $2 billion a week). This will re-open libraries, reinstate band and art and civics classes in our schools, fix our roads and bridges and infrastructure, wire the entire country for 21st century internet, and support scientific research that improves our lives.

7. Join the rest of the free world and create a single-payer, free and universal health care system that covers all Americans all of the time.

8. Immediately reduce carbon emissions that are destroying the planet and discover ways to live without the oil that will be depleted and gone by the end of this century.

9. Require corporations with more than 10,000 employees to restructure their board of directors so that 50% of its members are elected by the company’s workers. We can never have a real democracy as long as most people have no say in what happens at the place they spend most of their time: their job. (For any U.S. businesspeople freaking out at this idea because you think workers can't run a successful company: Germany has a law like this and it has helped to make Germany the world’s leading manufacturing exporter.)

10. We, the people, must pass three constitutional amendments that will go a long way toward fixing the core problems we now have. These include:

a) A constitutional amendment that fixes our broken electoral system by 1) completely removing campaign contributions from the political process; 2) requiring all elections to be publicly financed; 3) moving election day to the weekend to increase voter turnout; 4) making all Americans registered voters at the moment of their birth; 5) banning computerized voting and requiring that all elections take place on paper ballots.

b) A constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people and do not have the constitutional rights of citizens. This amendment should also state that the interests of the general public and society must always come before the interests of corporations.

c) A constitutional amendment that will act as a "second bill of rights" as proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt: that every American has a human right to employment, to health care, to a free and full education, to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food, and to be cared for with dignity and respect in their old age.

Let me know what you think. Occupy Wall Street enjoys the support of millions. It is a movement that cannot be stopped. Become part of it by sharing your thoughts with me or online (at OccupyWallSt.org). Get involved in (or start!) your own local Occupy movement. Make some noise. You don't have to pitch a tent in lower Manhattan to be an Occupier. You are one just by saying you are. This movement has no singular leader or spokesperson; every participant is a leader in their neighborhood, their school, their place of work. Each of you is a spokesperson to those whom you encounter. There are no dues to pay, no permission to seek in order to create an action.

We are but ten weeks old, yet we have already changed the national conversation. This is our moment, the one we've been hoping for, waiting for. If it's going to happen it has to happen now. Don't sit this one out. This is the real deal. This is it.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

-thanks to truth out and michaelmoore.com

End international lynching. Pete Bianco, Hancock 38 drone trial defendant, makes closing statement explaining US violations of our Constitution . . .

2011-11-24T22:48:00.004-05:00

. . . international treaties, the UN Charter, etc.

-thanks to Veterans for Peace

Drones on Trial

2011-11-24T22:26:00.004-05:00

-thanks to Veterans for Peace

Come support the Hancock 38 for the verdict

Thursday, Dec. 1 at 5 pm at Town of DeWitt Courthouse (5400 Butternut Dr., East Syracuse, NY)

Join a vigil before the verdict from 3-4 pm at Hancock Air Base in Mattydale
Sponsored by Veterans for Peace and the Syracuse Peace Council.

Background of Hancock 38 Trial

2011-11-23T23:33:00.011-05:00

photo from Syracuse Peace council

Tuesday, November 1 marked the first day of the trial of the Hancock 38 Drone Resisters, activists from upstate New York and well beyond who participated in a “die-in” at the main entrance of Hancock Air National Guard Base just outside Syracuse last April. The corpses symbolized the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan by hunter-killer reaper drones and protested the reaper here at Hancock and elsewhere. The defendants also attempted to deliver an indictment to the base commander focusing on the illegality of the drones; the indictment was taken by law enforcement and thrown to the ground, violating the Hancock 38's First Amendment right to petition the government in redress of grievances.

This was the first civil resistance action at Hancock since it became a major player in drone warfare over the last few years. Pilots stationed at the base fly the reaper over Afghanistan via satellite links and the base boasts of a national school for training drone maintenance technicians as well as drone pilots and sensor operators.

Prior to the trial, the defendants made multiple court appearances, as they argued motions to join their cases together for a single trial (accepted) and for their defense to include testimony about the illegality of drone warfare, as well as the necessity of breaking a law in order to prevent something worse from happening (both denied). Several days before the trial, a new charge was added. The final charges were “obstructing vehicular or pedestrian traffic” and “refusing to comply with a lawful order of the police to disperse” (both low-level charges). Thirty-two people ended up going to trial – ten represented by lawyers and twenty-two representing themselves.

photo from Syracuse Peace council

The defendants’ goal has been to put the drones on trial. The group argued that they were innocent of the “lawful order to disperse” charge because the order was actually not lawful. It contradicted the Nuremberg Principles, which forbid wars of aggression, attacks on civilians and extrajudicial assassinations - all actions associated with drone warfare. Citizens have a duty to act where they can to prevent violations, even if the violations are committed by their government.

The defendants argued that the “obstructing vehicular or pedestrian traffic" didn’t hold up either because there was no vehicular or pedestrian traffic to obstruct. In preparation for the legal rally preceding the action, base security and police had shut down the main entrance and parked many police cars in the driveway – so the die-in there would not have been able to inconvenience the public.

A trial highlight was the testimony of former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. At a press conference before court, Ramsey stated, “Drones inherently violate the laws of the United States and international law,” and quoted from Dante’s Inferno: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of moral crisis, do not act.”

After the court spent more than two hours qualifying Ramsey as an expert witness in the principles of international law and defining what the precise scope of his testimony would be, Ramsey testified that the defendants’ actions were justified under international law as embodied in the Nuremberg Principles. Judge Gideon later asked Ramsey to address international law in relation to local action. Ramsey testified that the Nuremberg Principles are the ”supreme law of the land,” and that all courts at every level – federal, state and local – must act in the context of these principles.

The defense started late Friday and went from 9 am Saturday til about 9:30 pm (after which the closing arguments began). The defendants testified that the drones are illegal and that it was their duty under the
Nuremberg Principles and international law to act to prevent drones from the killing of innocents.

After closing arguments, Judge Gideon announced that he would give the verdict on Thursday, December 1 at 5 pm at the DeWitt Courthouse.

-thanks to Veterans For Peace (several members of VFP were among the defendants)

Join us for the verdict on Thursday, Dec. 1 at 5 pm at Town of DeWitt Courthouse (5400 Butternut Dr., East Syracuse, NY)
Join a vigil before the verdict from 3-4 pm at Hancock Air Base in Mattydale
Sponsored by Veterans for Peace and the Syracuse Peace Council.

2011-11-23T23:28:00.001-05:00

Come Support the Hancock 38 Drone Resisters - Hear the Verdict!

Thursday, Dec. 1 at 5 pm at Town of DeWitt Courthouse (5400 Butternut Dr., East Syracuse, NY)

Join a vigil before the verdict from 3-4 pm at Hancock Air Base in Mattydale
Sponsored by Veterans for Peace and the Syracuse Peace Council.

One of the Hancock 38 pro se defendants, Brian Terrell, makes closing statement at the trial

2011-11-23T23:25:00.001-05:00

Gen. Smedley Butler speaking at the Bonus Soldiers camp in DC.

2011-11-23T22:50:00.001-05:00

-thanks to Ward

New spy towers pitched for sovereign Tohono O'odham Nation, after billion dollar boondoggle

2011-11-23T22:16:00.013-05:00

Copyright by Brenda Norrell, Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION -- (Nov. 23, 2011) The US Homeland Security is now pitching new spy towers to the Tohono O'odham, after Homeland Security wasted billions on the last boondoggle of Arizona spy towers that did not function.

Previously on the Arizona/Mexico border, Homeland Security's Secure Border Initiative spy towers were pointed at the people of the community in locations like Arivaca and not at the border.

Those spy towers, including one on the Tohono O'odham Nation south of Sells, Arizona (shown below) were fashioned after Israeli's Apartheid Wall. Those spy towers were built by Boeing and the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems.

US spy tower on Tohono O'odham land 2007.

Photo copyright Brenda Norrell

Then, Homeland Security announced in Jan. 2011, the replacement of the previous boondoggle SBInet with the Alternative Southwest Border Technology. It also referred to as Arizona Border Surveillance Technology.

Homeland Security is now presenting new spy towers, shown below (at top of post on this blog), to Tohono O'odham districts for approval. [READ MORE]

-thanks to Brenda Norrell, Censored News

Another Iraq war vet, Kayvan Savehgi, beaten by Oakland police. The people of Oakland have to deal with these same armed, mindless gunmen daily.

2011-11-22T10:10:00.002-05:00

Wild Law - Cormac Cullinan speaks at the World People's Summit on Climat...

2011-11-21T22:45:00.001-05:00

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi takes a "walk of shame" hours after peacefully seated students were pepper sprayed by ruthless cops at UC Davis.

2011-11-20T19:24:00.015-05:00

-thanks to Wayne Moore

In a demonstration of support for the Occupy movement, a small group of protesters was sitting, arms linked together. Campus police told them to move. The students didn't. And that's when an officer walked down the line of seated men and women, pepper-spraying them. Some took it straight in their faces. Many of the several hundred others who were there screamed in terror and frustration.

Campus police said the officers had been surrounded by protesters and commanders have defended their actions. So did university Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi — which led to a call from the school's faculty association for her resignation. Katehi has since said she wants an outside, independent panel to review what happened and that she doesn't plan to step down.

"...no, we've asked her to be silent respectfully"

On Saturday, after a news conference she held, Katehi remained inside one of the university's buildings for a couple hours. Outside, protesters regrouped. And when she emerged, there was one of the most amazing scenes so far related to the Occupy movement. As Katehi and another woman walked three blocks to an SUV, they passed through a gauntlet of several hundred students — who remained silent in a powerful show of their disdain

-thanks to npr

video: Resistance at Jeju

2011-11-09T21:24:00.007-05:00

-thanks to Bruce Gagnon , coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

Malcolm X: “You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you’ll do anything to get your freedom; then you’ll get it.

2011-10-31T22:53:00.003-04:00

“You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you’ll do anything to get your freedom; then you’ll get it. When you get that kind of attitude, they’ll label you as a ‘crazy Negro,’ or they’ll call you a “crazy n——r”—they don’t say Negro. Or they’ll call you an extremist or a subversive, or seditious, or a red, or a radical. But when you stay radical long enough, and get enough people to be like you, you’ll get your freedom…. So don’t you run around here trying to make friends with somebody who’s depriving you of your rights. They’re not your friends, no, they’re your enemies. Treat them like that and fight them, and you’ll get your freedom; and after you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you. And I say that with no hate. I don’t have hate in me. I have no hate at all. I don’t have any hate. I’ve got some sense. I’m not going to let anybody who hates me tell me to love him.”

-thanks to Dave Zirin of the Nation

D.C. Superior Court Rules Sidewalks Trump Free Speech Rights

2011-10-31T22:35:00.003-04:00

The D.C. Superior Court ruled last Friday that possible pedestrian inconvenience was more important than the US Constitution or stopping wars.

Arrested during a White House demonstration on March 19, 18 defendants, including 8 members of Veterans For Peace, were found guilty by Judge Canan, Friday, of “failure to obey” and “blocking/incommoding” and fined $150.

The defendants argued for their 1st Amendment right to petition their government for redress of grievances.

They called on the US Government to obey the domestic and international law and to stop its crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The government argued that protecting Constitutional rights and ending war crimes were less important than assuring that a potential pedestrian would not be delayed by a few seconds passing in front of the White House.

During the 4 day trial Richard Duffee, who worked under Benjamin Ferencz (the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor), submitted a motion for international law experts to be allowed in the court. The US Constitution makes the Geneva conventions and other elements of international law the supreme law of the land and enforceable in every court. But the Judge denied the motion. Duffee later said, “For the last thirty years, the United States has been reneging on the basic commitment it made after WWII to develop international legal institutions, because we want to be the judge in our own case.”

The defendants maintained a focus on the US Constitution, that international law is enforceable in every court and on the cost of war. The court heard personal stories from several vets. Chuck Heyn, a Vietnam veteran, said “When I left Vietnam I pledged to the guys I served with who did not come back that I would speak out against my country when ever my country decided to commit our troops to war based on lies”

It was a pro se defense (the defendants acted as their own lawyers) ably assisted by attorney-advisors Ann Wilcox, Deborah Anderson and Mark Goldstone.

Judge Russell F. Canan, Jr., Associate Judge of the DC Superior Court found the defendants guilty on all charges, fining them $50 plus $100 court fees. Defendant Bev Rice chose to go to jail rather than pay a fine for an unjust law. The case will be appealed.

-thanks to Veterans for Peace

If you can't occupy Wall St, keep Wall St occupied

2011-10-30T14:15:00.001-04:00

VFP/IVAW Member, Scott Olsen, Seriously Injured @ Occupy Oakland

2011-10-28T09:38:00.004-04:00

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Jay Finn

Veterans For Peace & IVAW member, Scott Olsen, former U.S. Marine and Iraq war veteran, lies on the street after being struck by a police projectile in Oakland, California, during eviction of the Occupy Oakland encampment.

Scott Olsen being carried away after being hit by projectile

Scott Olsen has been twice deployed to Iraq, is in the hospital in stable but serious condition with a fractured skull. He was struck by a police projectile fired into a crowd in downtown Oakland, California in the early morning hours of October 26th.

Please contribute to the Scott Olsen Fund to offset any medical expenses.

-thanks to Veterans For Peace

Brian Willson video interview, Part 1 & part 2.

2011-10-27T00:14:00.010-04:00

Brian Willson is coming to visit with us in Buffalo. He will be at the WNYPC Annual Dinner on Saturday evening, Nov 5th, with Cindy Sheehan.

On Sunday evening, Nov 6th Brian will speak on "Dignity Trumps Longevity" at the First Presbyterian Church, 1 Symphony Circle, Buffalo (at Porter & Richmond). Come listen to his story and share your questions and comments with him and the community from 6 to 9 pm.

Brian will also talk about his book, Blood on the Tracks, which will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

Earlier in the day you invited to bring a vegan dish to OccupyBuffalo at 3 pm to share with Brian and Becky, the occupiers and the rest of us.

Brian Willson interview Part 1

Blood on the Tracks - part 1 - S. Brian Willson - Sept. 2, 2011 from Maverick Media on Vimeo.

Brian Willson interview Part 2

Blood on the Tracks - part 2 - S. Brian Willson - Sept. 2, 2011 from Maverick Media on Vimeo.

Bring a vegan dish to OccupyBuffalo to share with the occupiers, Brian and Becky, and the rest of us at 3 pm.

Occupy Oakland: Iraq war veteran in critical condition after police clashes

2011-10-26T23:40:00.009-04:00

Scott Olsen, 24, in hospital with fractured skull and brain swelling after allegedly being hit by a police projectile in Oakland

Occupy Oakland: Scott Olsen suffered the head injury during protests on Tuesday evening. Photograph: screengrab via YouTube

Adam Gabbatt · 26/10/2011 · guardian.co.uk

An Iraq war veteran has a fractured skull and brain swelling after allegedly being hit by a police projectile.

Scott Olsen is in a "critical condition" in Highland hospital in Oakland, a hospital spokesman confirmed.

Olsen, 24, suffered the head injury during protests in Oakland on Tuesday evening. More than 15 people were arrested after a crowd gathered to demonstrate against the police operation to clear two Occupy Oakland camps in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Jay Finneburgh, a photographer who was covering the protest, published pictures of Olsen lying on the ground.

"This poor guy was right behind me when he was hit in the head with a police projectile. He went down hard and did not get up," Finneburgh wrote.

Olsen was taken to Highland by fellow protesters.

The Guardian spoke to people with Olsen at the hospital. Adele Carpenter, who knows Olsen through his involvement with anti-war groups, said she arrived at the hospital at 11pm on Tuesday night.

Carpenter said she was told by a doctor at the hospital that Olsen had a skull fracture and was in a "serious but stable" condition. She said he had been sedated and was unconscious.

"I'm just absolutely devastated that someone who did two tours of Iraq and came home safely is now lying in a US hospital because of the domestic police force," Carpenter said.

Olsen had only moved to Oakland in July, Carpenter said. He is a member of Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War, and met Carpenter through her work with the civilian soldier alliance.

Keith Shannon, who served with Olsen in Iraq, arrived at the hospital after protesters contacted him through Facebook. He confirmed Olsen had a fractured skull, and said he had been told by a doctor Olsen also had brain swelling.

A neurosurgeon was due to assess Olsen to determine if he needed surgery, Shannon said.

"It's really hard," Shannon said. "I really wish I had gone out with him instead of staying home last night."

Shannon, who is also 24, said he had seen the video footage showing Olsen lying on the floor as a police officer throws an explosive device near him.

"It's terrible to go over to Iraq twice and come back injured, and then get injured by the police that are supposed to be protecting us," he said.

He said Olsen had served two tours of Iraq, in 2006 and 2007. Olsen was in 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines with Shannon before leaving the military in 2010.

He moved to the San Francisco area in July and works for Opswat, a software company, living with Shannon in Daly City, just south of San Francisco.

Shannon said Olsen was hit in the head by a tear gas canister or smoke canister shot by a police officer. He said Olsen had a curved scar on his forehead consistent with a canister.

Protesters who had accompanied Olsen to Highland hospital got in touch with Shannon through Facebook, after Olsen said he lived with someone called "Keith". Shannon said he was told Olsen was unable to say his surname.

Olsen is originally from Wisconsin and some of his family were planning to fly out to California to be with him, Shannon said.

Video footage published to YouTube shows Olsen lying prone in front of a line of police. Around 10 people gather around him in an apparent attempt to provide aid, before a police officer throws an explosive device into their midst, scattering the group.

Footage captured after the explosion, which appears to be from a flash bang grenade, shows Olsen being carried away by a group of people.

Oakland police confirmed at a press conference that they used tear gas and baton rounds, but said they did not use flash bang grenades. Police could not be immediately reached for comment.

-thanks to the Guardian

Splitting the Sky Speaks At the Arrest Bush Protest in Surrey, British Columbia

2011-10-26T22:35:00.007-04:00

-thanks to Globalization 1492

Howard Zinn on direct action

2011-10-26T00:22:00.001-04:00

Last April the Hancock 38 served this indictment on the 'chain of command' responsible for crimes committed with the drones. Trial begins November 1st

2011-10-24T08:56:00.023-04:00

Drones on Trial

The messengers, the Hancock 38, were arrested while the war criminals remain free and many continue to murder people and devastate and terrorize communities around the world.

The Hancock 38 trial begins at 5pm, Nov 1st at the Dewitt Town Court, near Syracuse, NY.

Indictment for Violations of Human Rights

Transcribed from a photograph taken of the Indictment at the April 22, 2011 drone event in Syracuse NY.
The Indictment was created by the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones & End the Wars.
An attempt was made to present this document to the Air National Guard stationed at Hancock Field, Mattydale, NY -- near Syracuse, NY

We charge the chain of command from President Barack Obama, to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, to Commander Kevin Bradley, to every drone crew:

With the following crimes: extrajudicial killings, violation of due process, wars of aggression, violation of national sovereignty, and the killing of innocent civilians.

We charge that these crimes are committed in violation of the Constitution of the United States of America, Article I, Section 6.11, the Charter of the United Nations, Article 2, Section 4, the Golden Rule and International Law, to which we are especially bound by Article 6 section 2 of the Constitution which states

“...all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and Judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

We demand they immediately stop these crimes.
And be accountable to the people of the United States and Afghanistan.

We appeal to all citizens of the United States, military and civilian, and to all public officials, that we are required by the Nuremburg Principles I - VI and by Conscience to refuse to participate in these crimes, to denounce them and to resist them nonviolently.

Indictment

We charge the Air National Guard of the United States of America, headquartered at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, home of the 174th Fighter Wing of the Air National Guard, under the command of 174th Fighter Wing Commander Col. Kevin W. Bradley, is maintaining and utilizing MQ-9 Reaper Drones for use in combat.

Extrajudicial targeted killings by the use of unmanned aircraft drones by the United States of America are intentional, premeditated and deliberate use of lethal force in violation of the US and international human rights law.

The US has used drones for targeted killing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Pakistan with no legal basis for defining the scope of the area where drones can and cannot be used, no rigorous

criteria for deciding which people will be targeted for killing, no procedural safeguards to ensure the legality and accuracy of the killings, and no mechanisms of accountability.

In support of this indictment we cite the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, who has said that the use of drones is

“...a highly probable blurring and expansion of the boundaries of the applicable legal frameworks – human rights law, the laws of war, and the law applicable to the use of inter-state force...The result has been the displacement of clear legal standards with a vaguely defined license to kill, and the creation of a major accountability vacuum.... In terms of the legal framework, many of these practices violate straightforward legal rules..”

See United Nations General Assembly Human Rights Council Study on Targeted Killings, 28 May 2010. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/14session/A.HRC.14.24.Add6.pdf

Let all accused in this indictment understand that our words are spoken nonviolently. All are invited to stop the use of drones and refuse to participate in illegal warfare.

2. 3.

---------------------------------------

References

Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nüremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal, 1950: http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/390

Charter of the United Nations: http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/index.shtml

National Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution: http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html/art6_user.html#art6_hd4

-thanks to the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars

occupy wall street - USMC Sgt Shamar Thomas

2011-10-22T23:17:00.000-04:00

Statement from Veterans For Peace Regarding the Incident in Boston Last Night, by Acting Director, Mike Ferner

2011-10-11T23:20:00.007-04:00

Last night in Boston, our members displayed real courage, standing nonviolently between police and people in the Occupy Boston protest. Police were given orders to clear the park and initial reports I've heard say that some VFP members and perhaps others were injured by the police and that fifty people were arrested. If there were injuries, we hope they were minimal. VFP never condones the use of violence.

We need to keep in mind that police officers are in the same 99% as we are, providing the muscle, sweat, blood and money used by the 1% who own and govern. The most important thing we share with the police is our humanity. We appeal to police in every corner of America to maintain their humanity and think about it when they consider orders they are given.

Last night in Boston, our members displayed real courage, standing nonviolently between police and people in the Occupy Boston protest. Police were given orders to clear the park and initial reports I've heard say that some VFP members and perhaps others were injured by the police and that fifty people were arrested. If there were injuries, we hope they were minimal. VFP never condones the use of violence.

We need to keep in mind that police officers are in the same 99% as we are, providing the muscle, sweat, blood and money used by the 1% who own and govern. The most important thing we share with the police is our humanity. We appeal to police in every corner of America to maintain their humanity and think about it when they consider orders they are given.

The largest democratic uprising in U.S. history was that of the Populists in the late 1800's. Of them, Lawrence Goodwyn, author of "The Populist Moment," wrote that they "...created the psychological space to dare to aspire grandly." That is what the dozens of "Occupy" movements are doing throughout America today -- daring to aspire grandly and aspiring to the grandest ideal of our nation, which is democracy.

We are just at the beginning stages of a powerful, new rising of democratic energy and ideals. We will remain human but we will remain silent no longer.

-thanks to Veterans for Peace

Chris Hedges: Why the elites are in trouble

2011-10-11T22:59:00.011-04:00

Chris Hedges:

Ketchup, a petite 22-year-old from Chicago with wavy red hair and glasses with bright red frames, arrived in Zuccotti Park in New York on Sept. 17. She had a tent, a rolling suitcase, 40 dollars’ worth of food, the graphic version of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and a sleeping bag. She had no return ticket, no idea what she was undertaking, and no acquaintances among the stragglers who joined her that afternoon to begin the Wall Street occupation. She decided to go to New York after reading the Canadian magazine Adbusters, which called for the occupation, although she noted that when she got to the park Adbusters had no discernable presence.

The lords of finance in the looming towers surrounding the park, who toy with money and lives, who make the political class, the press and the judiciary jump at their demands, who destroy the ecosystem for profit and drain the U.S. Treasury to gamble and speculate, took little notice of Ketchup or any of the other scruffy activists on the street below them. The elites consider everyone outside their sphere marginal or invisible. And what significance could an artist who paid her bills by working as a waitress have for the powerful? What could she and the others in Zuccotti Park do to them? What threat can the weak pose to the strong? Those who worship money believe their buckets of cash, like the $4.6 million JPMorgan Chase gave* to the New York City Police Foundation, can buy them perpetual power and security. Masters all, kneeling before the idols of the marketplace, blinded by their self-importance, impervious to human suffering, bloated from unchecked greed and privilege, they were about to be taught a lesson in the folly of hubris.

Even now, three weeks later, elites, and their mouthpieces in the press, continue to puzzle over what people like Ketchup want. Where is the list of demands? Why don’t they present us with specific goals? Why can’t they articulate an agenda?

The goal to people like Ketchup is very, very clear. It can be articulated in one word—REBELLION. These protesters have not come to work within the system. They are not pleading with Congress for electoral reform. They know electoral politics is a farce and have found another way to be heard and exercise power. They have no faith, nor should they, in the political system or the two major political parties. They know the press will not amplify their voices, and so they created a press of their own. They know the economy serves the oligarchs, so they formed their own communal system. This movement is an effort to take our country back.

This is a goal the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished. It will not stop until there is an end to the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in our black sites. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students no longer have to go into debt to be educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are radically reconfigured. And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in trouble. That is why they keep asking what the demands are. They don’t understand what is happening. They are deaf, dumb and blind.

“The world can’t continue on its current path and survive,” Ketchup told me. “That idea is selfish and blind. It’s not sustainable. People all over the globe are suffering needlessly at our hands.”

The occupation of Wall Street has formed an alternative community that defies the profit-driven hierarchical structures of corporate capitalism. If the police shut down the encampment in New York tonight, the power elite will still lose, for this vision and structure have been imprinted into the thousands of people who have passed through park, renamed Liberty Plaza by the protesters. The greatest gift the occupation has given us is a blueprint for how to fight back. And this blueprint is being transferred to cities and parks across the country.

“We get to the park,” Ketchup says of the first day. “There’s madness for a little while. There were a lot of people. They were using megaphones at first. Nobody could hear. Then someone says we should get into circles and talk about what needed to happen, what we thought we could accomplish. And so that’s what we did. There was a note-taker in each circle. I don’t know what happened with those notes, probably nothing, but it was a good start. One person at a time, airing your ideas. There was one person saying that he wasn’t very hopeful about what we could accomplish here, that he wasn’t very optimistic. And then my response was that, well, we have to be optimistic, because if anybody’s going to get anything done, it’s going be us here. People said different things about what our priorities should be. People were talking about the one-demand idea. Someone called for AIG executives to be prosecuted. There was someone who had come from Spain to be there, saying that she was here to help us avoid the mistakes that were made in Spain. It was a wide spectrum. Some had come because of their own personal suffering or what they saw in the world.”

“After the circles broke I felt disheartened because it was sort of chaotic,” she said. “I didn’t have anybody there, so it was a little depressing. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

“Over the past few months, people had been meeting in New York City general assembly,” she said. “One of them is named Brooke. She’s a professor of social ecology. She did my facilitation training. There’s her and a lot of other people, students, school teachers, different people who were involved with that … so they organized a general assembly.”

“It’s funny that the cops won’t let us use megaphones, because it’s to make our lives harder, but we actually end up making a much louder sound [with the “people’s mic”] and I imagine it’s much more annoying to the people around us,” she said. “I had been in the back, unable to hear. I walked to different parts of the circle. I saw this man talking in short phrases and people were repeating them. I don’t know whose idea it was, but that started on the first night. The first general assembly was a little chaotic because people had no idea … a general assembly, what is this for? At first it was kind of grandstanding about what were our demands. Ending corporate personhood is one that has come up again and again as a favorite and. … What ended up happening was, they said, OK, we’re going to break into work groups.

“People were worried we were going to get kicked out of the park at 10 p.m. This was a major concern. There were tons of cops. I’ve heard that it’s costing the city a ton of money to have constant surveillance on a bunch of peaceful protesters who aren’t hurting anyone. With the people’s mic, everything we do is completely transparent. We know there are undercover cops in the crowd. I think I was talking to one last night, but it’s like, what are you trying to accomplish? We don’t have any secrets.”

“The undercover cops are the only ones who ask, ‘Who’s the leader?’ ” she said. “Presumably, if they know who our leaders are they can take them out. The fact is we have no leader. There’s no leader, so there’s nothing they can do.

“There was a woman [in the medics unit]. This guy was pretending to be a reporter. The first question he asks is, ‘Who’s the leader?’ She goes, ‘I’m the leader.’ And he says, ‘Oh yeah, what are you in charge of?’ She says, ‘I’m in a charge of everything.’ He says, ‘Oh yeah? What’s your title?’ She says ‘God.’ ”

“So it’s 9:30 p.m. and people are worried that they’re going to try and rush us out of the camp,” she said, referring back to the first day. “At 9:30 they break into work groups. I joined the group on contingency plans. The job of the bedding group was to find cardboard for people to sleep on. The contingency group had to decide what to do if they kick us out. The big decision we made was to announce to the group that if we were dispersed we were going to meet back at 10 a.m. the next day in the park. Another group was arts and culture. What was really cool was that we assumed we were going to be there more than one night. There was a food group. They were going dumpster diving. The direct action committee plans for direct, visible action like marches. There was a security team. It’s security against the cops. The cops are the only people we think that might hurt us. The security team keeps people awake in shifts. They always have people awake.”

The work groups make logistical decisions, and the general assembly makes large policy decisions.

“Work groups make their own decisions,” Ketchup said. “For example, someone donated a laptop. And because I’ve been taking minutes I keep running around and asking, ‘Does someone have a laptop I could borrow?’ The media team, upon receiving that laptop, designated it to me for my use on behalf of the Internet committee. The computer isn’t mine. When I go back to Chicago, I’m not going to take it. Right now I don’t even know where it is. Someone else is using it. But so, after hearing this, people thought it had been gifted to me personally. People were upset by that. So a member of the Internet work group went in front of the group and said, ‘This is a need of the committee. It’s been put into Ketchup’s care.’ They explained that to the group, but didn’t ask for consensus on it, because the committees are empowered. Some people might still think that choice was inappropriate. In the future, it might be handled differently.”

Working groups blossomed in the following days. The media working group was joined by a welcome working group for new arrivals, a sanitation working group (some members of which go around the park on skateboards as they carry brooms), a legal working group with lawyers, an events working group, an education working group, medics, a facilitation working group (which trains new facilitators for the general assembly meetings), a public relations working group, and an outreach working group for like-minded communities as well as the general public. There is an Internet working group and an open source technology working group. The nearby McDonald’s is the principal bathroom for the park after Burger King banned protesters from its facilities.

Caucuses also grew up in the encampment, including a “Speak Easy caucus.” “That’s a caucus I started,” Ketchup said. “It is for a broad spectrum of individuals from female-bodied people who identify as women to male-bodied people who are not traditionally masculine. That’s called the ‘Speak Easy’ caucus. I was just talking to a woman named Sharon who’s interested in starting a caucus for people of color.

“A caucus gives people a safe space to talk to each other without people from the culture of their oppressors present. It gives them greater power together, so that if the larger group is taking an action that the caucus felt was specifically against their interests, then the caucus can block that action. Consensus can potentially still be reached after a caucus blocks something, but a block, or a ‘paramount objection,’ is really serious. You’re saying that you are willing to walk out.”

“We’ve done a couple of things so far,” she said. “So, you know the live stream? The comments are moderated on the live stream. There are moderators who remove racist comments, comments that say ‘I hate cops’ or ‘Kill cops.’ They remove irrelevant comments that have nothing to do with the movement. There is this woman who is incredibly hardworking and intelligent. She has been the driving force of the finance committee. Her hair is half-blond and half-black. People were referring to her as “blond-black hottie.” These comments weren’t moderated, and at one point whoever was running the camera took the camera off her face and did a body scan. So, that was one of the first things the caucus talked about. We decided as a caucus that I would go to the moderators and tell them this is a serious problem. If you’re moderating other offensive comments then you need to moderate these kinds of offensive comments.”

The heart of the protest is the two daily meetings, held in the morning and the evening. The assemblies, which usually last about two hours, start with a review of process, which is open to change and improvement, so people are clear about how the assembly works. Those who would like to speak raise their hand and get on “stack.”

“There’s a stack keeper,” Ketchup said. “The stack keeper writes down your name or some signifier for you. A lot of white men are the people raising their hands. So, anyone who is not apparently a white man gets to jump stack. The stack keeper will make note of the fact that the person who put their hand up was not a white man and will arrange the list so that it’s not dominated by white men. People don’t get called up in the same order as they raise their hand.”

While someone is speaking, their words amplified by the people’s mic, the crowd responds through hand signals.

“Putting your fingers up like this,” she said, holding her hands up and wiggling her fingers, “means you like what you’re hearing, or you’re in agreement. Like this,” she said, holding her hands level and wiggling her fingers, “means you don’t like it so much. Fingers down, you don’t like it at all; you’re not in agreement. Then there’s this triangle you make with your hand that says ‘point of process.’ So, if you think that something is not being respected within the process that we’ve agreed to follow then you can bring that up.”

“You wait till you’re called,” she said. “These rules get abused all the time, but they are important. We start with agenda items, which are proposals or group discussions. Then working group report-backs, so you know what every working group is doing. Then we have general announcements. The agenda items have been brought to the facilitators by the working groups because you need the whole group to pay attention. Like last night, Legal brought up a discussion on bail: ‘Can we agree that the money from the general funds can be allotted if someone needs bail?’ And the group had to come to consensus on that. [It decided yes.] There’s two co-facilitators, a stack keeper, a timekeeper, a vibes-person making sure that people are feeling OK, that people’s voices aren’t getting stomped on, and then if someone’s being really disruptive, the vibes-person deals with them. There’s a note-taker—I end up doing that a lot because I type very, very quickly. We try to keep the facilitation team one man, one woman, or one female-bodied person, one male-bodied person. When you facilitate multiple times it’s rough on your brain. You end up having a lot of criticism thrown your way. You need to keep the facilitators rotating as much as possible. It needs to be a huge, huge priority to have a strong facilitation group.”

“People have been yelled out of the park,” she said. “Someone had a sign the other day that said ‘Kill the Jew Bankers.’ They got screamed out of the park. Someone else had a sign with the N-word on it. That person’s sign was ripped up, but that person is apparently still in the park.

“We’re trying to make this a space that everyone can join. This is something the caucuses are trying to really work on. We are having workshops to get people to understand their privilege.”

But perhaps the most important rule adopted by the protesters is nonviolence and nonaggression against the police, no matter how brutal the police become.

“The cops, I think, maced those women in the face and expected the men and women around them to start a riot,” Ketchup said. “They want a riot. They can deal with a riot. They cannot deal with nonviolent protesters with cameras.”

I tell Ketchup I will bring her my winter sleeping bag. It is getting cold. She will need it. I leave her in a light drizzle and walk down Broadway. I pass the barricades, uniformed officers on motorcycles, the rows of paddy wagons and lines of patrol cars that block the streets into the financial district and surround the park. These bankers, I think, have no idea what they are up against.

-thanks to Nation of Change

Countries that hold detainees arrested as part of the US War on Terror

2011-10-10T15:47:00.003-04:00

-thanks to Costs of War

Veterans for Peace Issues Position Statement on US Attack in Yemen

2011-10-04T21:43:00.005-04:00

Coming soon to a neighborhood near you?

VETERANS DENOUNCE OBAMA’S CLAIMED AUTHORITY TO KILL ANYBODY
HE WANTS TO, AS LONG AS THEY ARE OVERSEAS.

October 4, 2011

As of September 29, 2011, we are only one step away from a government where the top official can kill anybody, anywhere, any time he feels it necessary – and do it in complete secret.

With last week’s lawless killings of two U.S. citizens living in Yemen, Anwar Al-Awlaqi and Samir Khan, among others, President Obama took another step closer to that frightful day by assuming the roles of judge, jury and executioner. The two citizens were reportedly executed by a combined drone strike and the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden earlier this year.

Veterans For Peace believes these killings, which violated domestic and international law, expose yet another true cost of war – we can see our nation drift ever closer to the terrible waters of tyranny. The Obama administration claims evidence that shows Awlaqi and Khan were violent, implacable foes of the U.S. But isn’t one of our most basic beliefs, enshrined in our Bill of Rights, the principle that all accused deserve a fair trial and that all, no matter how dreadful the allegations against them, are innocent until proven guilty? The summary killing of two citizens without trial abandons that principle and charts a course to a totalitarian government.

According to McClatchy Newspapers, “Awlaqi spent his first seven years in the United States, before his family moved back to Yemen. He returned in 1991 to attend Colorado State University, and then earned a master's degree at San Diego State University. He married and had three children in the United States before leaving the country in 2003.”

Khan, born in NY, moved with his family to Charlotte, NC in 2004, where he edited an English-language magazine for Al-Qaida. A spokesman for the Islamic Center of Charlotte told the Charlotte Observer last year that Khan's views were “widely rejected in the local Muslim community (and) Khan was not allowed to speak at any of the major mosques.”

The Obama administration said the authority to execute citizens was first given to George W. Bush by Congress after the attacks of 9/11. Consequently, the U.S. Department of Justice argued last October that “The (president's) judgment as to whether force is authorized against (al Qaida) or any other organization is informed by changing circumstances and sensitive intelligence that cannot be disclosed.” In other words, Obama contends that the authority to execute citizens without trial still stands, even if circumstances have changed. Furthermore, he is not required to explain anything.

That Justice Department’s argument was made in opposition to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Awlaqi’s father in an attempt to save his son. But Judge John Bates dismissed the lawsuit, stating he lacked the authority to get involved, ruling “There are circumstances in which the (president's) unilateral decision to kill a U.S. citizen overseas is…judicially unreviewable.”

ACLU Deputy Legal Director, Jameel Jaffer, said the administration’s targeted killing program allows the government to execute American citizens far from any battlefield with no judicial process and on evidence “…kept secret not just from the public but from the courts.”

The Obama administration maintains that none of this matters as long as the proper secret procedures are followed. This is indeed a frightening notion.

It is time to bring all of our troops home from Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and elsewhere. We must return to a civil society that takes care of its people, not a militarized one that inches closer to despotism by the day.

Chris Hedges from NYC

2011-10-01T21:37:00.004-04:00

Occupation Video: sign at occupation, “Financial district is responsible for most of the poverty and suffering on this planet !”

2011-09-27T11:31:00.003-04:00

video streaming the Wall Street occupation

2011-09-26T15:45:00.003-04:00

video: Armed with Art: Another Revolution is Necessary

2011-09-26T15:26:00.005-04:00

-thanks to bmediacollective

Fundraiser in Support of Accused WikiLeaks Whistle Blower PFC Bradley Manning

2011-09-12T23:23:00.010-04:00

Ethan McCord, Kevin Zeese, and James Spione will join us at this Potluck Dinner, Silent Auction, and Screening of the Documentary Short: “Incident in New Bagdhad”.

Friday, September 16, 6:30 - 9:00 pm
Delmar Reformed Church
386 Delaware Ave, Delmar, NY

Ethan McCord spoke out about the civilian massacre documented in WikiLeaks April 2010 video disclosure of Apache helicopter footage of a New Baghdad attack that took place in 2007, allegedly released by PFC Brad Manning. He served on the ground in Iraq during an attack on civilians by a U.S. military helicopter and was pictured removing an injured Iraqi child from a vehicle in a film circulated by Wikileaks. He is an active member of the Bradley manning Support Committee.

McCord's story was delivered to attendees of the United National Peace Conference, which took place in Albany NY in July 2010. See WikiLeaks' Collateral Murder: U.S. Soldier Ethan McCord's Eyewitness Story produced by the United National Peace Conference Media Project, powered by The Sanctuary for Independent Media and the Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center. Ethan's experience, is the subject of a new documentary titled: "Incident in New Baghdad" 2011, which recently won Best Documentary Short at the Rhode Island Film Festival. The film also won Best Documentary Short at the Tribeca Film Festival this year. We will screen this short film. James Spione, Director of the film, will join us and speak about the film.

Long time peace and justice activist, Kevin Zeese, will also join us. He is a Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee member and director of Come Home America. Zeese is also one of the organizers of the October 2011 protest coming up in the fall in Washington, DC.

Please join us for a very special pot-luck dinner and fundraiser for Bradley Manning. The Manning Support movement has had a significant success in having Bradley removed from a degrading, torturous solitary confinement to a more normal military confinement while awaiting a Court Martial. But we are now confronted, after a year and a half of pre-trial confinement, by the prospect of a court martial before the end of the year in a case where the commander-in-chief of the members-to-be of the jury has already declared the defendant guilty! The civilian defense of Bradley Manning will be extremely costly. A year ago BNP raised more than $1,000 for the defense; we hope to improve significantly on this record.

Any contributions to this event, in excess of the cost, will go to the the Defense Committee. Please bring a pot luck dish to share. Food Not Bombs will also provide some food. Donation of $5 requested, $2 for students, but no one turned away. Individual contributions of items or services to the Silent Auction, or direct monetary contribution to the Bradley Manning Defense Fund would also be welcome. Co-sponsored by BNP, Tom Paine Chapter of Veterans for Peace and other local peace groups. Information: 466-1192.

Come, view the film, listen to the speakers and bid on items at the Bradley Manning Silent Auction.

Chris Hedges/A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe.

2011-09-11T23:44:00.015-04:00

The following article was in Nation of Change. They got it from truthdig. I spent half an hour trying to get the original from truthdig, but it turned out to be impossible. All you get is: "Database Error: Unable to connect to your database. Your database appears to be turned off or the database connection settings in your config file are not correct. Please contact your hosting provider if the problem persists. "

You can make your way to read the other articles on truthdig and they are worth it. Maybe it will be fixed by tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is a copy/paste from Nation of Change.

by Chris Hedges

I arrived in Times Square around 9:30 on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. A large crowd was transfixed by the huge Jumbotron screens. Billows of smoke could be seen on the screens above us, pouring out of the two World Trade towers. Two planes, I was told by people in the crowd, had plowed into the towers. I walked quickly into the New York Times newsroom at 229 W. 43rd St., grabbed a handful of reporter’s notebooks, slipped my NYPD press card, which would let me through police roadblocks, around my neck, and started down the West Side Highway to the World Trade Center. The highway was closed to traffic. I walked through knots of emergency workers, police and firemen. Fire trucks, emergency vehicles, ambulances, police cars and rescue trucks idled on the asphalt.
The south tower went down around 10 a.m. with a guttural roar. Huge rolling gray clouds of noxious smoke, dust, gas, pulverized concrete, gypsum and the grit of human remains enveloped lower Manhattan. The sun was obscured. The north tower collapsed about 30 minutes later. The dust hung like a shroud over Manhattan.
I headed toward the spot where the towers once stood, passing dazed, ashen and speechless groups of police officers and firefighters. I would pull out a notebook to ask questions and no sounds would come out of their mouths. They forlornly shook their heads and warded me away gently with their hands. By the time I arrived at Ground Zero it was a moonscape; whole floors of the towers had collapsed like an accordion. I pulled out pieces of paper from one floor, and a few feet below were papers from 30 floors away. Small bits of human bodies—a foot in a woman’s shoe, a bit of a leg, part of a torso—lay scattered amid the wreckage.
Scores of people, perhaps more than 200, pushed through the smoke and heat to jump to their deaths from windows that had broken or they had smashed. Sometimes they did this alone, sometimes in pairs. But it seems they took turns, one body cascading downward followed by another. The last acts of individuality. They fell for about 10 seconds, many flailing or replicating the motion of swimmers, reaching 150 miles an hour. Their clothes and, in a few cases, their improvised parachutes made from drapes or tablecloths shredded. They smashed into the pavement with unnerving, sickening thuds. Thump. Thump. Thump. Those who witnessed it were particularly shaken by the sounds the bodies made on impact.
The images of the “jumpers” proved too gruesome for the TV networks. Even before the towers collapsed, the falling men and women were censored from live broadcasts. Isolated pictures appeared the next day in papers, including The New York Times, and then were banished. The mass suicide, one of the most pivotal and important elements in the narrative of 9/11, was expunged. It remains expunged from public consciousness.
The “jumpers” did not fit into the myth the nation demanded. The fate of the “jumpers” said something so profound, so disturbing, about our own fate, smallness in the universe and fragility that it had to be banned. The “jumpers” illustrated that there are thresholds of suffering that elicit a willing embrace of death. The “jumpers” reminded us that there will come, to all of us, final moments when the only choice will be, at best, how we will choose to die, not how we are going to live. And we can die before we physically expire.
Most news sources are funded by corporations and investors. Their goal is to drive people to advertisers while pushing the corporate agenda. NationofChange is a 501(c)3 organization funded almost 100% from its readers–you! Our only accountability is to the public. Click here to make a generous donation.
The shock of 9/11, however, demanded images and stories of resilience, redemption, heroism, courage, self-sacrifice and generosity, not collective suicide in the face of overwhelming hopelessness and despair.
Reporters in moments of crisis become clinicians. They collect data, facts, descriptions, basic information, and carry out interviews as swiftly as possible. We make these facts fit into familiar narratives. We do not create facts but we manipulate them. We make facts conform to our perceptions of ourselves as Americans and human beings. We work within the confines of national myth. We make journalism and history a refuge from memory. The pretense that mass murder and suicide can be transformed into a tribute to the victory of the human spirit was the lie we all told to the public that day and have been telling ever since. We make sense of the present only through the lens of the past, as the French philosopher Maurice Halbwachs pointed out, recognizing that “our conceptions of the past are affected by the mental images we employ to solve present problems, so that collective memory is essentially a reconstruction of the past in the light of the present. … Memory needs continuous feeding from collective sources and is sustained by social and moral props.”
I returned that night to the newsroom hacking from the fumes released by the burning asbestos, jet fuel, lead, mercury, cellulose and construction debris. I sat at my computer, my thin paper mask still hanging from my neck, trying to write and catch my breath. All who had been at the site that day were noticeable in the newsroom because they were struggling for air. Most of us were convulsed by shock and grief.
There would soon, however, be another reaction. Those of us who were close to the epicenters of the 9/11 attacks would primarily grieve and mourn. Those who had some distance would indulge in the growing nationalist cant and calls for blood that would soon triumph over reason and sanity. Nationalism was a disease I knew intimately as a war correspondent. It is anti-thought. It is primarily about self-exaltation. The flip side of nationalism is always racism, the dehumanization of the enemy and all who appear to question the cause. The plague of nationalism began almost immediately. My son, who was 11, asked me what the difference was between cars flying small American flags and cars flying large American flags.
“The people with the really big flags are the really big assholes,” I told him.
The dead in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania were used to sanctify the state’s lust for war. To question the rush to war became to dishonor our martyrs. Those of us who knew that the attacks were rooted in the long night of humiliation and suffering inflicted by Israel on the Palestinians, the imposition of our military bases in the Middle East and in the brutal Arab dictatorships that we funded and supported became apostates. We became defenders of the indefensible. We were apologists, asChristopher Hitchens shouted at me on a stage in Berkeley, “for suicide bombers.”
Because few cared to examine our activities in the Muslim world, the attacks became certified as incomprehensible by the state and its lap dogs, the press. Those who carried out the attacks were branded as rising out of a culture and religion that was at best primitive and probably evil. The Quran—although it forbids suicide as well as the murder of women and children—was painted as a manual for fanaticism and terror. The attackers embodied the titanic clash of civilizations, the cosmic battle under way between good and evil, the forces of light and darkness. Images of the planes crashing into the towers and heroic rescuers emerging from the rubble were played and replayed. We were deluged with painful stories of the survivors and victims. The deaths and falling towers became iconographic. The ceremonies of remembrance were skillfully hijacked by the purveyors of war and hatred. They became vehicles to justify doing to others what had been done to us. And as innocents died here, soon other innocents began to die in the Muslim world. A life for a life. Murder for murder. Death for death. Terror for terror.
What was played out in the weeks after the attacks was the old, familiar battle between force and human imagination, between the crude instruments of violence and the capacity for empathy and understanding. Human imagination lost. Coldblooded reason, which does not speak the language of the imagination, won. We began to speak and think in the empty, mindless nationalist clichés about terror that the state handed to us. We became what we abhorred. The deaths were used to justify pre-emptive war, invasion, Shock and Awe, prolonged occupation, targeted assassinations, torture, offshore penal colonies, gunning down families at checkpoints, massive aerial bombardments, drone attacks, missile strikes and the killing of dozens and soon hundreds and then thousands and later tens of thousands and finally hundreds of thousands of innocent people. We produced piles of corpses in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and extended the reach of our killing machine to Yemen and Somalia. And by beatifying our dead, by cementing into the national psyche fear and the imperative of permanent war, and by stoking our collective humiliation, the state carried out crimes, atrocities and killings that dwarfed anything carried out against us on 9/11. The best that force can do is impose order. It can never elicit harmony. And force was justified, and is still justified, by the first dead. Ten years later these dead haunt us like Banquo’s ghost.
“It is the first death which infects everyone with the feelings of being threatened,” wrote Elias Canetti. “It is impossible to overrate the part played by the first dead man in the kindling of wars. Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim. It needs not be anyone of particular importance, and can even be someone quite unknown. Nothing matters except his death; and it must be believed that the enemy is responsible for this. Every possible cause of his death is suppressed except one: his membership of the group to which one belongs oneself.”
We were unable to accept the reality of this anonymous slaughter. We were unable because it exposed the awful truth that we live in a morally neutral universe where human life, including our life, can be snuffed out in senseless and random violence. It showed us that there is no protection, not from God, fate, luck, omens or the state.
We have still not woken up to whom we have become, to the fatal erosion of domestic and international law and the senseless waste of lives, resources and trillions of dollars to wage wars that ultimately we can never win. We do not see that our own faces have become as contorted as the faces of the demented hijackers who seized the three commercial jetliners a decade ago. We do not grasp that Osama bin Laden’s twisted vision of a world of indiscriminate violence and terror has triumphed. The attacks turned us into monsters, grotesque ghouls, sadists and killers who drop bombs on village children and waterboard those we kidnap, strip of their rights and hold for years without due process. We acted before we were able to think. And it is the satanic lust of violence that has us locked in its grip.
As Wordsworth wrote:
Action is transitory - a step, a blow, The motion of a muscle - this way or that - "Tis done; and in the after-vacancy We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed: Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And has the nature of infinity.
We could have gone another route. We could have built on the profound sympathy and empathy that swept through the world following the attacks. The revulsion over the crimes that took place 10 years ago, including in the Muslim world, where I was working in the weeks and months after 9/11, was nearly universal. The attacks, if we had turned them over to intelligence agencies and diplomats, might have opened possibilities not of war and death but ultimately reconciliation and communication, of redressing the wrongs that we commit in the Middle East and that are committed by Israel with our blessing. It was a moment we squandered. Our brutality and triumphalism, the byproducts of nationalism and our infantile pride, revived the jihadist movement. We became the radical Islamist movement’s most effective recruiting tool. We descended to its barbarity. We became terrorists too. The sad legacy of 9/11 is that the assholes, on each side, won.

-thanks to truthdig and Nation of Change

Hancock 38 article in Syracuse' The Post-Standard

2011-09-06T01:35:00.012-04:00

Court Notebook: Ramsey Clark unfamiliar to prosecutor, irrelevant to protesters' trial

by Jim O'Hara / The Post Standard

photo: Dick Blume / The Post-Standard

Assistant District Attorney Maggie Welch: Ramsay Clark was before her time.

Syracuse, NY - Assistant District Attorney Maggie Welch confessed she was stumped when told the anti-drone protesters arrested at the New York Air National Guard base at Hancock Field in April mentioned plans to call Ramsey Clark as a witness at trial.You know, the U.S. attorney general under President Lyndon Johnson who went on to become an active peace advocate and vocal critic of U.S. military action?

The 30-year-old Welch candidly admitted she had no idea who Clark was. After doing a little research, she concluded he apparently was important “long before” she was born. But she also wondered why an anti-war protest group would want to associate with a lawyer who more recently helped represent former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein at trial.

Well, Welch won’t have to bone up on the 83-year-old Clark’s background because DeWitt Judge Bob Jokl recently rejected the defense pitch to call an international law expert as a witness. The judge also rejected the “necessity” defense the protesters wanted to present at trial to show their “die-in” conduct was justified to prevent a greater harm.

The prosecution dealt them another recent blow when Welch used her prosecutorial discretion to drop obstruction charges that would have allowed a jury trial. The remaining disorderly conduct charges get them only a non-jury trial before DeWitt Judge Dave Gideon set for the evenings of Nov. 1 to 3.

Of the original 38 protesters arrested, 33 remain to stand trial. Welch said four others pleaded guilty and one man suffering from Alzheimer’s was granted an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal.

Welch noted the trial might prove to be colorful, literally, as many of the protesters wore blue scarves during their recent court appearance. Carol Baum of the Syracuse Peace Council said that’s to show solidarity with the young members of a peace group in Afghanistan.

-thanks to The Post-Standard of Syracuse

Drone Camp in upstate NY

2011-09-05T22:35:00.045-04:00

One . . .

Two . . .

Three . . .

Nick built a model of a Reaper drone.

The Reapers (and Predators) are use to track and kill people around the world. They are used to assassinate people. assassinate. That's a word that makes one think of gangsters or terrorists. But US America is now about assassinating people they label as our enemies. Somebody sits thousands of miles away safe in front of a computer screen tracking and killing people then goes home to have dinner with the family. The killer's family sits at the table, chatting and eating, while that very moment the killer's victims might be a family blown apart and scattered about. It's outrageous and seems inconceivable - but it happens all the time.

Aside from the concept of killing people for any reason, four obvious (to me) problems with this new kind of warfare are:

1. When they track a target in a vehicle or to a building, the operator throws a switch and blows up his/her target. The operator has no idea whether there are other people in the vehicle or building. In fact, thousands of innocent people (not the targets) are murdered by these operators.

2. The operators can not be sure the target is the same person they thought they were targeting and hoping to kill. It might have looked like the 'enemy' or a paid informant may have identified the wrong person or place by accident or on purpose just to collect some money or settle an argument.

3. What ever happened to 'innocent until proven guilty'. Obama has the CIA and the military murdering innocent people at a rate several times greater than the Bush administration. If the people accused Bush of being a 'war criminal', certainly Obama deserves the same label.

4. It is a war crime and a violation of international law.

When Hancock Field at Syracuse became a base for the Reapers, New Yorkers (and others) became more concerned. The military was killing innocent people right from Syracuse. We were now directly involved in this new kind of war-fighting.

Protesters at the gate of Hancock Field in Syracuse

Protests and vigils were held at the gate on a regular schedule and there were large demonstrations at the entrance to the base. This past April, two groups of walkers walked from Ithaca and Ganondagan to Syracuse. Protestors from around the state joined with them and walked to the base on April 22nd. After listening to speakers at the gate, many of these protestors lay in the street blocking the gates. Thirty-eight (38) men and women were arrested.

The Hancock 38 trial begins in the evening on November 1 at the DeWitt courthouse.

Meanwhile people decided to build several of these model drones so they could be used in communities around the state to educate the people.

Nick removes his mask to discuss an issue.

They constructed and fit the parts . . .

painted everything . . .

put the wings together . . .

replaced the wheels . . .

touched up the surfaces . . .

spoke with their shirts . . .

fitted the wings . . .

fitted more wings . . .

and another wing . . .

Sandy served salad . . .

Peg served arms . . .

mounted hellfire missles and bombs . . .

. . . and they were ready.

In a formation . . .

and in the field . . .

The work was done.

The drone camp was organized and the models were constructed under the direction of Nick. It started out difficult with extremely uncooperative weather, but the last day was excellent as we assembled, painted, mounted and completed the final touches.

Resolutions Approved At The 2011 Veterans For Peace National Convention

2011-08-17T08:43:00.003-04:00

(click on each one to read the details)

Resolution 2011-2 - US Military Budget Resolution (2011)

Resolution 2011-3 - Abolition Of Corporate Personhood

Resolution 2011-4 - Abolishment Of Nuclear Power Plants

Resolution 2011-5 - Resolution On The Abolition Of Nuclear Weapons By The Year 2020

Resolution 2011-7 - Impeachment Of President Barack H. Obama For War Crimes

Resolution 2011-8 - U.S. Dumping Of Toxic Chemicals In South Korea

Resolution 2011-11 - Supporting Red Por La Laz Y La Justica (Network For Peace And Justice) In Mexico

Resolution 2011-12 - Depleted Uranium Suppressed Study

Resolution 2011-14 - Support Of Palestinian Rights Under International Law

Resolution 2011-15 - Clinical Research On The Consequences Of Inhaling Depleted Uranium Dust

Resolution 2011-17 - AGENT ORANGE LEGISLATION: VICTIMS OF AGENT ORANGE RELIEF ACT OF 2011, HR 2634, SUPPORT FOR – 2011

video from the October 2011 Coalition

2011-07-23T23:37:00.004-04:00

-thanks to Vernon Huffman

Ethan McCord On 'New York' Magazine Profile of Bradley Manning: It 'Erases' His Political Motives

2011-07-22T15:26:00.009-04:00

Greg Mitchell, July 10, 2011:
For months I have followed the story of Ethan McCord, a former US Army specialist who took heroic actions to help save the two children in the van badly injured in the incident captured in the “Collateral Murder” video released by WikILeaks in April 2010. He has since spoken out against the Iraq war and is featured in a new documentary that won a top prize at the recent Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

Now he has responded to the lengthy profile of Bradley Manning published in last week's New York magazine. On its site the magazine has printed brief excerpts, but we have obtained the full letter and here it is (below).

By Ethan McCord

Serving with my unit 2nd battalion 16th infantry in New Baghdad Iraq, I vividly remember the moment in 2007, when our Battalion Commander walked into the room and announced our new rules of engagement:

"Listen up, new battalion SOP (standing operating procedure) from now on: Anytime your convoy gets hit by an IED, I want 360 degree rotational fire. You kill every [expletive] in the street!"

We weren't trained extensively to recognize an unlawful order, or how to report one. But many of us could not believe what we had just been told to do. Those of us who knew it was morally wrong struggled to figure out a way to avoid shooting innocent civilians, while also dodging repercussions from the non-commissioned officers who enforced the policy. In such situations, we determined to fire our weapons, but into rooftops or abandoned vehicles, giving the impression that we were following procedure.

On April 5, 2010 American citizens and people around the world got a taste of the fruits of this standing operating procedure when WikiLeaks released the now-famous Collateral Murder video. This video showed the horrific and wholly unnecessary killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists.

I was part of the unit that was responsible for this atrocity. In the video, I can be seen attempting to carry wounded children to safety in the aftermath.

The video released by WikiLeaks belongs in the public record. Covering up this incident is a matter deserving of criminal inquiry. Whoever revealed it is an American hero in my book.

Private First Class Bradley Manning has been confined for over a year on the government’s accusation that he released this video and volumes of other classified documents to WikiLeaks — an organization that has been selectively publishing portions of this information in collaboration with other news outlets.

If PFC Bradley Manning did what he is accused of doing, then it is clear—from chat logs that have been attributed to him—that his decision was motivated by conscience and political agency. These chat logs allegedly describe how PFC Manning hopes these revelations will result in “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.”

Unfortunately, Steve Fishman's article Bradley Manning's Army of One in New York Magazine (July 3, 2011) erases Manning’s political agency. By focusing so heavily on Manning's personal life, Fishman removes politics from a story that has everything to do with politics. The important public issues wrapped up with PFC Manning’s case include: transparency in government; the Obama Administration’s unprecedented pursuit of whistle-blowers; accountability of government and military in shaping and carrying out foreign policy; war crimes revealed in the WikiLeaks documents; the catalyzing role these revelations played in democratic movements across the Middle East; and more.

The contents of the WikiLeaks revelations have pulled back the curtain on the degradation of our democratic system. It has become completely normal for decision-makers to promulgate foreign policies, diplomatic strategies, and military operating procedures that are hostile to the democratic ideals our country was founded upon. The incident I was part of—shown in the Collateral Murder video—becomes even more horrific when we grasp that it was not exceptional. PFC Manning himself is alleged to describe (in the chat logs) an incident where he was ordered to turn over innocent Iraqi academics to notorious police interrogators, for the offense of publishing a political critique of government corruption titled, "Where did the money go?" These issues deserve “discussion, debates, and reforms” — and attention from journalists.

Fishman's article was also ignorant of the realities of military service. Those of us who serve in the military are often lauded as heroes. Civilians need to understand that we may be heroes, but we are not saints. We are young people under a tremendous amount of stress. We face moral dilemmas that many civilians have never even contemplated hypothetically.

Civil society honors military service partly because of the sacrifice it entails. Lengthy and repeated deployments stress our closest relationships with family and friends. The realities, traumas, and stresses of military life take an emotional toll. This emotional battle is part of the sacrifice that we honor. That any young soldier might wrestle with his or her experiences in the military, or with his or her identity beyond military life, should never be wielded as a weapon against them.

If PFC Bradley Manning did what he is accused of, he is a hero of mine; not because he's perfect or because he never struggled with personal or family relationships—most of us do—but because in the midst of it all he had the courage to act on his conscience.

Greg Mitchell

-thanks to The Nation

Pride, a picnic

2011-07-18T23:30:00.039-04:00

photo from Wikipedia

Every once in a while I wander out to a sidewalk in Buffalo and hold up some signs about the drones - "Ground the Drones" or "Stop the Assassinations". I get to chat with people who pull over in their cars or stop as they walk along the sidewalk. I am still surprised that so many ask what a drone is. Most people are friendly and interested, but I used to think everyone knew about them.

If my sign said “Ground the MQ-9 Reapers or the MQ-1 Predators, I would expect less familiarity, but “Drones”. How come everybody doesn’t know about them. The people in other countries know about them. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen to name a few. Obama uses them to assassinate innocent people in these countries all the time.

I shared a booth yesterday at the Pride Picnic in Rochester with an ex-corpsman (3-tours) who deserted before his enlistment was up for principled reasons. He now works with Rochester IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War). He is one of those people easy to talk with, built solid on principles and yet manages to avoid the crippling rigidity of sectarianism. Although the world is full of wonderful people like him I was lucky to spend a few hours with him. The other person at our table was a woman from MFSO (Military Families Speak Out). Another wonderful person. She glowed with relief when she talked about her son completing his four years in the near future. Later, when I dropped the literature off at her house, I had the added pleasure of viewing and shooting some pictures of her fun, colorful hubcaps posted around her yard.

At the picnic, I put up a banner about Bradley Manning. Handed out some stickers. Talked to people

Nobody knew who Bradley Manning was. I wished I had a stack of dvd’s of “Collateral Murder”. I will definitely have them the next time I do a table. That’s the video they arrested him for. Locked him up in May, 2010. He spent some time at Quantico being tortured by Marines. Now he is locked up at Leavenworth. Still no trial.

photo from The New Yorker

The video was automatically filmed and recorded by a military camera on an Apache helicopter. Like those cameras they have on police cars. If in fact Bradley leaked it to Wikileaks as they suggest, he should be recognized as a hero for exposing war crimes. Instead there are members of Congress who want him executed.
Watch the video and decide for yourself.

http://www.collateralmurder.com/

While you are at the site, watch the interview with Ethan McCord. He was the marine who came upon the site of the massacre and rescued the little boy and girl who were severely wounded in the van. They are both ok now thanks to him. He was chewed out on the scene for paying attention to the kids.

You don’t see Obama pinning any medals on Ethan.

Congratulations to peace activist, Brian Willson

2011-07-16T23:55:00.018-04:00

He just completed his 800 mile handcycling book tour from Portland, OR to San Francisco, CA.

photo: Brant Ward / The Chronicle

by Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer, Friday, July 15, 2011

Gliding slowly along the back roads of the Bay Area this week is a white-haired man on a strange, low-slung tricycle powered by hand cranks. His two metal prosthetic legs poke out under his shorts to rest in stirrups, and he never musters more than 10 mph.
Most drivers have blown by in Sonoma, Marin and Contra Costa counties with barely a glance. Some stare. The cyclist never notices, cranking, always cranking - and usually with a big smile on his face.
Little do they know this is one of the most renowned antiwar protesters of the past quarter-century.
He is Brian Willson, and he is on a tour to promote the autobiography he released this month, "Blood on the Tracks." It's a book 24 years in the making - ever since Sept. 1, 1987, when he was run over by a munitions train at the Concord Naval Weapons Station while trying to block it from delivering bombs headed for Central America.
Lost his legs
Willson lost both legs below the knees and suffered a fractured skull that day. In the years since, he has been in demand at lecture halls and hailed as a pre-eminent voice of peace advocacy by people ranging from activist actors Ed Asner and Kris Kristofferson to Pentagon Papers figure Daniel Ellsberg, who wrote the foreword to his book.
But now, at the age of 70 - his birthday was the Fourth of July - and living in a solar-powered house he built three years ago in Portland, Ore., Willson feels his life is about more than peace protest.
His 440-page book traces his journey from high school baseball star in Ashville, N.Y., to Air Force captain in Vietnam to antiwar figure - and on to today, when he says his most important message is that "we have to all live more simply, because our lifestyle in America is totally unsustainable."
Living small
"After all the things I've experienced in my life, I think the neolithic village is our model," Willson said the other day as he stopped for lunch at the Sebastopol home of a longtime protest pal, Eszter Freeman. "We'd all be better off living in small, local, self-sufficient communities, using simple tools.
"The lifestyle we've had for the past century, based on fossil fuels that are disappearing and polluting our planet and causing wars, is unhealthy and killing the earth," Willson said. "There's only one ultimate solution - radical downsizing of our lives."
That, Willson said, is why he has undertaken this book tour not in rented cars or buses, but by hand-cycling the 800 miles from Portland to San Francisco, with side routes, over the course of a month.
He started June 25 and will speak at San Francisco's First Unitarian Church at 12:30 p.m. Sunday. After hitting a few final lecture spots, he will board a train July 23 headed back home.
Appeal to young
He said younger people at his book stops often tell him they didn't know who he was before seeing notices advancing his appearances. The conflicts from the 1980s over El Salvador and Nicaragua have long since given way to arguments over Afghanistan and Iraq, and though Willson still rails against war, his wider mantra of going green and questioning authority means more to some of them than peace activism.
"Brian was much more focused on Central America 25 years ago, but now he's gone deeper into the American way of life," said David Hartsough, a fellow protester in 1987 who protected Willson's exposed brain as he lay, head cracked open, on the tracks.
On Wednesday, Willson's journey brought him back for the first time in many years to the Concord Naval Weapons Station, now mostly shuttered and awaiting civilian re-use. He and Hartsough had a few hours before a book talk, so they drove up to the exact spot where Willson's life changed 24 years ago.
Visit from the law
They'd been on the tracks for one minute before six Contra Costa County sheriff and U.S. Army security cars swarmed them. They wanted to know if the man with the artificial legs and his companion were terrorists - a label once used by the military to describe Willson back when he was blocking munitions trains.
The whole thing blew over quickly. One cop called Willson "a legend when I was in school," and said he was glad to meet him.
"After all these years, to be stopped like that again," Willson mused with a small chuckle. "I mean really - after all these years?"
Tour blog
A trip blog, tour schedule and description of "Blood on the Tracks," by Brian Willson, can be found at:
http://bloodonthetracks.info.

E-mail Kevin Fagan at kfagan@sfchronicle.com
-thanks to SF Gate

A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn

2011-07-15T22:36:00.003-04:00

by Henry Holt

-thanks to Henry Holt and his YouTube channel

Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now! talking about the CIA's secret sites in Somalia. Parts 1 & 2

2011-07-13T22:44:00.011-04:00

Part 1

Part 2

-thanks to Democracy Now!

Three short videos about drones, the assassination weapon.

2011-07-13T00:09:00.012-04:00

Ed Kinane:

"Bob Miller. a Syracuse University photojournalism student, shadowed some of us local drone activists a few weeks ago and made three short videos with footage from interviews and our drone tableaux."

Drones: Part 1: The Robotics Revolution from Bob Miller on Vimeo.

Drones: Part 2: Accountability from Bob Miller on Vimeo.

Drones: Part 3: Responsibility from Bob Miller on Vimeo.

DC TRIAL POSTPONED AFTER IMPASSE IN COURTROOM

2011-07-12T17:52:00.008-04:00

Charges of "Disorderly Conduct-Blocking Passage" Not Presented in Timely Fashion by Prosecution

On March 19, 2011, 113 activists were arrested while demonstrating, and petitioning our government, to end the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to free whistleblower Bradley Manning. The protestors were challenging the U.S. government's effort to quash their right to "petition for redress" by arresting them while peacefully assembled at the White House fence. Demonstrators included whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, philosopher Chris Hedges, and health care activist Dr. Margaret Flowers, members of Veterans for Peace, and other long-time peace activists.
Washington, DC—The pro se trial scheduled to begin today for 19 peace activists – including members of Veterans for Peace and one World War II veteran – stemmed from arrests made on March 19, 2011, on the sidewalk near the White House, and has been postponed after the two sides disagreed on the version of the law that should be used in the trial.

DC Superior Court Judge Russell F. Canan continued the trial until 9:30 am, Monday, August 29, 2011 – only after defense attorneys Ann Wilcox and Deborah C. Anderson raised concerns that Assistant Attorney General for the District of Columbia, Tamara Barnett, brought forth new charges just days before the start of the trial date. The judge was concerned that the defendants had not been properly arraigned and notified of these charges.

Judge Canan chastised defense for not checking the filing of the charges even though prosecution did not attempt to deliver these charges until the weekend before today's trial. Wilcox and Anderson are concerned that the new law will make it easier to convict the defendants, and asked for additional time to investigate which law should be used and to prepare their clients for a pro se trial.

Prosecutors strongly urged Stay Away orders from the White House for all defendants, but Judge Canan did not grant their request.

-thanks to Veterans for Peace

Music video: War is Not the Answer, Never Was, Never Will

2011-07-06T12:23:00.004-04:00

Alice Walker: At Sea on the Audacity of Hope

2011-07-05T00:04:00.014-04:00

By Alice Walker, Reader Supported News, July 2, 2011

Alice Walker posted the article and poem below on the Facebook page, US BOAT TO GAZA. The page has recently been updated to announce:
"Our boat's captain has been put in jail, charged with disturbing sea traffic - which includes endangering the lives of those on the ships - and disobeying a police order to remain at dock. The crew is being detained on the boat, which is being held at a military dock just outside Athens. Most of the 36 passengers remain on the ship in solidarity with the captain and crew."

Today is, I think, the 31st of June (Friday?) or is it the 1st of July?

We have been in Athens since the 21st - trying to get to Gaza. Many impediments orchestrated by the Israeli government. But what a wonderful group of humans.

Therefore: We've won. We're in Gaza. To be in Gaza is to feel this love. To know there is always a part of humanity that is awake even though the overburdened or the bewitched remain sleeping.

My throat is sore from breathing the tear gas that drifted into our hotel windows, as Greeks, mostly young, battle police, their brothers and sisters who are paid to keep them in line. This is the tragedy. I feel so much compassion for both sides my eyes tear and not only from the gas.

It was hard to breathe. My lungs were fighting hard to protect me. How I adore them, my lungs. And so many of our group tried to protect us, my lungs and me, too. A lovely young man named Steve gave me his own gas mask and someone else, a beautiful young woman with straw colored hair and blue gray eyes gave me the benefit of her knowledge of how to wear it.

I do not like calling such angels "blonde" as I feel the word is so loaded now and it sets them outside of Nature and somehow diminishes them.

I spent a blissful hour yesterday massaging Hedy's feet. She has the most wonderful gray eyes - full of humor and light. She'd never had a foot massage before, she said. And she is eighty-seven! Hard to imagine.

Hedy, I said - when she told everyone who passed by us: "I'm being spoiled" - I have a full body massage at least once a week!

This was a high point for me, as it is well established by now in myself and among my friends, that I like to massage the feet of anyone who stands up for us. Humanity, I mean.

Or the other animals.

Hedy, holocaust survivor, inhaling the gas in Greece, but even more poignant, anticipating being tear gassed by the Israelis who are doing everything they can to threaten our boat.

I have no computer - they said not to bring one on the boat because it would likely by destroyed or confiscated - only this small notebook in which I have been avoiding writing the poem that starts and stops in my head:

US writer Alice Walker in Gaza City in 2009. Photograph: AP

Sailing the Hot Streets of Athens, Greece

It has been so
hot!
Is it hot
where you are?
Penned up
in a destroyed
place?
In Gaza?

The whole world
distracted
by its weathers
& other
disasters
still is watching
us,
Gaza,
as we yearn
towards each other.

Trying to embrace
each other
to give each
other,
to ourselves
united,
a simple
hug.

The whole world
is watching
Gaza
& it is
wondering how
things
will
turn out.

They are making
it hard
for us to move
Gaza
& sometimes
we are
in despair
but I remind
us
that you
of all people
understand
obstruction.

They know this place
we are in
of not
being able to move.
They know it
intimately.
This place of stalemate
& stagnation, so unbearable
to any heart
that's free
is where they
hourly
live.

They will forgive
us
if we do not
arrive
on time.

Furthermore,
having left our
own homes
we are
already
there.

I believe
with all my heart
in the magic
and the power
of intention.

The women & men
with cameras
come
to record
our dreams
& our frustrations.
most of them are
young
& we are glad
of this.

We want them
to see their
counterparts
& their elders
attempting to make
this voyage
to endure
this crossing.

We pray they
are of good heart
& balanced
mind.
Even
the spies
among them
we hope
will learn
something
they may never
have guessed
before:

That a boat
filled
with love letters
from children
is a threat
to those
with
apparently
little memory
of youth
or experience
of love.

I have given
my word that I would
sail
and so I do - if not
on our boat
that is not so far
allowed to go
to sea,
then through
the air sending
thoughts and feelings
I sail:
We all sail.
We sail the hot, sticky
streets
of Athens, Greece
longing to see
the faces
& deliver
love letters
to the people
of Gaza.

Written on our beautiful boat whose canopy is a giant peaceful American flag, as we sail the waters off the coast of Greece and are intercepted by the Greek coast guard.

Supporters of our war resisters gather in Toronto.

2011-06-30T23:25:00.009-04:00

The following report is from Bruce Beyer:

I first met John Liss here in Buffalo in 1967.We became friends quickly in the months before he left the States and went to Canada. When I went underground and fled to Montreal, John was instrumental in helping me get to Stockholm. Last night was the first time I'd seen since the mid seventies. What a thrill to introduce him to my daughter Elizabeth and wife Mary.

In a large, three story brick building, nestled into a shaded residential neighborhood two blocks from Toronto’s Spadina Avenue bustling Chinese community, sixty people gathered to show their support for the War Resisters Support Campaign (WRSC) on Wednesday evening, June 29. Housed on the third floor of this Canadian Steelworkers Union Hall are an array of peace, justice, and human rights organizations including the Campaign office. The Canadian Steelworkers Union has been a long time supporter of the call for humanitarian asylum for American soldiers seeking refuge from American interventionist war. (FYI: The American Steelworkers Union recently gave Iraq Veterans Against the War a $10,000 grant to help fund their Wounded Warriors Project).

This Canadian union doesn’t give lip service to Iraq war resisters. They are actively involved in financially supporting the WRSC efforts to win asylum for Americans who for reasons of conscience have refused to continue to participate in the war and occupation of Iraq. By helping to underwrite rent, telephone expenses and printing costs, the Steelworkers have stood squarely behind the efforts of the Campaign as have so many other progressive Canadians.

On this gorgeous June evening, as the bustle of Toronto streets began to subside, my wife Mary, out daughter Elizabeth and I joined with Vietnam era draft resisters and deserters, Iraq war resisters, Quakers, Bradley Manning supporters, and stalwart members of the Campaign to share a simple and delicious meal. The purpose of the evening was to raise much needed funds for the Campaign’s ongoing efforts, but it turned out to be an evening of far greater importance.

There were no “hard rock speeches”, just a simple sharing of support and information. The event began with the introduction of recently reelected Parkdale New Democratic Party (NDP) Member of Parliament, Peggy Nash. Ms. Nash represents the ridin (electoral district) with the largest concentration of Iraq war resisters in all of Canada. She spoke of the NDP’s solidarity and support of Iraq war resisters and took the time to thoughtfully answer questions. We were entertained by the lush songs of longtime Campaign supporter Sarah Marlowe and the beautiful vocals of Kimberley and Alyssa Manning. (Alyssa is the amazing attorney who so ferociously represents Iraq war resisters.)

As a Vietnam era draft resister, I am drawn to support Iraq war resisters simply as an act of solidarity. In each of the resisters I have come to know over the past seven years, I see a bit of myself, my parents, and so many other Vietnam era resisters. I know what my refusal cost me and my family. I know only too well what it is costing these young, courageous resisters to the Iraq war as they struggle to survive in a political and legal limbo with such far reaching international repercussions.

Imagine living your life under the threat of being deported and jailed. How do you maintain a balance between living and fear? How do you survive the pressure of supporting yourself or your young family and maintaining a positive outlook? If you are like Jeremy Hinzman, you have been doing this for the last seven years, every day, every week, every month. At any moment, each of these resisters may be ejected from Canada and thrown into some US military gulag to be harassed and punished for refusing to kill people.

To sit in a Canadian union hall, with a roomful of Canadians who have come together to raise funds to support a group of young American war resisters is absolutely without parallel. These Canadians have wrapped their arms around our sons and daughters! On every level - emotionally, spiritually, and financially - they have given their love and support to these courageous young military veterans who have chosen to lay down their weapons. They have asked nothing from their American counterparts.

The War Resisters Support Network, a Task Force of the Western New York Peace Center is proud to stand with our Canadian friends. We are proud of our geographic location in history. We are honored by our members who resisted the Korean war. We are proud of out assistance to young men and women who fled the US because of their opposition to the illegal, immoral, and unjust war in Vietnam. We are proud of our members who ransacked draft board offices in the sixties and destroyed Selective Service files. We stand beside our members who risk imprisonment for their opposition to drone warfare and targeted political assassinations.

We cannot let the Canadian people carry the support of our resisters alone. Iraq war resisters are in Canada, jailed, or living underground for us. We must be here for them!

PS: As I wrote this, I received an email from the Campaign saying they raised $2,390.00 last night.

Border Patrol protesters not guilty, new action targets Wackenhut profiteers

2011-06-29T23:53:00.006-04:00

O'odham and Navajo who locked down at Border Patrol last May

Article by Brenda Norrell - Censored News

O'odham and Navajo lockdown protesters were found not guilty today in federal court Tucson! In a separate action, today 16 people were cited for trespass at Wackenhut, the company that profiteers from transporting migrants from the border in buses.

O'odham and Navajo protesters locked down in Border Patrol Headquarters in May of 2010, demanding an end to the militarization of the border and a halt to the abuses of Indigenous Peoples by border agents.

Wackenhut split into two companies earlier, one to profiteer from the transport of migrants at the border with the buses, and another, GEO, to profiteer from imprisoning migrants and all people of color, in private prisons in the US. Wackenhut security is now owned by G4S based in London and profiteers from the misery of migrants and people of color around the world.

Photo: Wackenhut bus at Three Points, Ariz. by Brenda Norrell

AIM's "Jimbo" Simmons on Gaza Freedom Flotilla

2011-06-29T23:38:00.004-04:00

Jimbo Simmons is a member of the Choctaw Nation and of the Governing Council of the American Indian Movement, which resists colonization, respects traditional knowledge and self-determination, and raises awareness on issues that concern Indians of the Americas, from racism to protection of sacred sites, the rights of the child, treaties, political prisoners, police brutality, immigration and militarization, climate change and the United Nations General Assembly "Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He is in solidarity with Palestinians and all indigenous peoples that are subjected to expulsion and ethnic cleansing.

Yvnonne Swan, Indian activist and member of the Colville Indian Nation, said, "I respectfully honor my long time friend and compatriot Bill 'Jimbo' Simmons of AIM West for representing us, the indigenous nations of the Western Hemisphere, as he joins all the people who are rightfully and peacefully protesting the blockade of Gaza. My prayers go up for each and everyone of these courageous and dedicated people and for the Palestine Freedom Movement."

-thanks to Brenda Norrell at Censored News

video: S Brian Willson (Feb 21, 2009) "We have to wage peace in the most extraordinary way whether the government wants it or not."

2011-06-27T22:14:00.010-04:00

S. Brian Wilson, a Vietnam veteran, discusses how he believes that Americans and our violation of basic moral imperatives is placing our country on an ultimate path of destruction. He wants Americans to stop and consider how we can view ourselves as citizens of the world and not just of the United States.

-thanks to Denver Open Media

See Brian's book tour facebook page:

Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson

Tim DeChristopher: This Hero Didn’t Stand a Chance

2011-06-21T22:45:00.015-04:00

Published on June 20, 2011 by truthdig

Tim DeChristopher

by Chris Hedges

Tim DeChristopher is scheduled to be sentenced in a Salt Lake City courtroom by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson on July 26. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine for fraudulently bidding in December 2008 on parcels of land, including areas around eastern Utah’s national parks, which were being sold off by the Bush administration to the oil and natural gas industry. As Bidder No. 70, he drove up the prices of some of the bids and won more than a dozen other parcels for $1.8 million. The government is asking Judge Benson to send DeChristopher to prison for four and a half years

His prosecution is evidence that our moral order has been turned upside down. The bankers and swindlers who trashed the global economy and wiped out some $40 trillion in wealth amass obscene amounts of money, much of it provided by taxpayers. They do not go to jail. Regulatory agencies, compliant to the demands of corporations, refuse to impede the destruction unleashed by the coal, oil and natural gas companies as they turn the planet into a hothouse of pollutants, poisoned water, fouled air and contaminated soil in the frenzied quest for greater and greater profits. Those who manage and make fortunes from pre-emptive wars, embrace torture, carry out extrajudicial assassinations, deny habeas corpus and run up the largest deficits in human history are feted as patriots. But when a courageous citizen such as DeChristopher peacefully derails the corporate and governmental destruction of the ecosystem, he is sent to jail.

“The rules are written by those who profit from the status quo,” DeChristopher said when I reached him by phone this weekend in Minneapolis. “If we want to change that status quo we have to step outside of those rules. We have to put pressure on those within the political system to choose one side or another.”
[READ MORE]
-thanks to Chris Hedges and truthdig

Two day Anti-Drone Protest, an Encampment and Sit-In at Beale Airforce Base (Reconnaissance Drone Base for the Global Hawk Drone

2011-06-21T22:00:00.017-04:00

People in Pakistan and around the world will be protesting the drones. Find some people in your community and make a statement. Whether it's two people on a corner with some signs demanding an end to targeted assassinations or a large demonstration -

speak out! Saturday June 25th.

DRONE RESISTANCE AT BEALE:

Begins
Friday 3pm, June 24th, including pm rush hour vigil,
candlelight night protest and encampment.

Ends
Saturday morning, following a 7:00-10:00am morning vigil.

Join us for all or part of this important protest!

Why?

In solidarity with the planned June 25th, 3rd monthly mass protest by tens of thousands of Pakistanis that have been demonstrating in different cities monthly since April, including holding sit-ins on NATO truck supply routes, and recent multiple surprise protests throughout Pakistan. They are expressing outrage over their government's complicity
with the U.S. "War on Terror" and drone assassination programs. It is estimated that 34,000 civilians have been killed by drone attacks and the U.S. War on Terror. In solidarity with the Pakistanis who are subjected to this violence we say ENOUGH!

Please join CodePink, Veterans for Peace, Peace Center of Nevada County, Military Families Speak Out and others.
Mark your calendars. Spread this around to all of your lists.
Bring 3 others with you. If you can't come for both days, come for one.
Let the Pakistanis know that their lives are as important as ours!

ONE PEOPLE, ONE PLANET!

Contacts:

Toby Blome: ratherbenyckeling@comcast.net or call: 510-215-5974
Martha Hubert: mhubert7@earthlink.net
Eleanor Levine: dreleanorlevine@yahoo.com

Please note this will be a stepping stone to a July 26th mass protest which
will include direct action at Beale AFB !!!!

BackGround: Imran Khan & PTI (Movement for Justice) announced 3rd Sit-in Protest against US Drone Strikes in Multan, Pakistan on June 25th, 2011

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and Imran Khan announced 3rd Sit-in Protest againt US Drone Strikes in Multan, Pakistan on June 25th, 2011. PTI demands an end to illegal drone strikes that are killing thousands of innocent women & children civilians. These extrajudicial killings are against all International laws, with no arrest, no judge, no jury, no trail, no innocent until proven guilty, just dead.. based on mere suspicion. PTI & Imran Khan requests responsible citizens of this world to stand up against this injustice, as today US is killing suspected militants in Pakistan; but tomorrow any other country will follow suit, killing anywhere else and making this planet a law of jungle, where might makes right.

Please come forward to stand together with Imran Khan & PTI to protest these extrajudicial killings through US Drone Strikes, and to force US & Pakistani government to make a peaceful settlement on this war against terror through negotiations. With 10 years of ongoing war in Afghanistan & Pakistan, numerous civilians killings (34,000 civilians killed in Pakistan only since 9/11), economic disaster for both Pakistan & US and no end to this war in sight; Imran Khan & PTI demands change of strategy to bring peace to this shattered region, rather continuing counter-productive strategy of slaughtering innocent civilians through unmanned machines. Which will prove disastrous for both countries & will rise in radicalization of societies.

Ray McGovern tells us why he will be aboard "The Audacity of Hope", the US boat to Gaza and why those who are "not aboard" should be concerned.

2011-06-19T21:12:00.021-04:00

Saturday 18 June 2011
by: Ray McGovern, Consortium News | Op-Ed

Israeli soldiers in the port of Ashdod stand next to a ship which was part of a flotilla heading to Gaza, Tuesday, June 1, 2010. The wheelchairs in the foreground were offloaded from one of the ships. (Photo: Rina Castelnuovo / The New York Times)

Despite opposition — and even warnings — from the U.S. government, a group of Americans will join a small flotilla of boats challenging Israel’s blockade of the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains why he is joining this protest.

Stuffing my backpack before setting out to board “The Audacity of Hope,” the U.S. boat to Gaza, I got a familiar call from yet another puzzled friend, who said as gently as the words allow, “You know you can get killed, don’t you?”

I recognize this caution as an expression of genuine concern from friends. From some others — who don’t care about Gaza’s plight or who do not wish us well – the words are phrased somewhat differently: “Aren’t you just asking for it?”

That was the obligatory question/accusation at the end of a recent interview taped for a BBC-TV special scheduled to air this coming week as we put to sea to break — or at least draw attention to — Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza and the suffering it inflicts on the people there.

I also have been cautioned by a source with access to very senior staffers at the National Security Council that not only does the White House plan to do absolutely nothing to protect our boat from Israeli attack or illegal boarding, but that White House officials “would be happy if something happened to us.”

They are, I am reliably told, “perfectly willing to have the cold corpses of activists shown on American TV.”

I mention this informal warning for the benefit of anyone who may have harbored hope that the U.S. government would do something to protect us American citizens from the kind of violence used by the Israelis against last year’s flotilla. Better to be up front and realistic about what to expect.

[READ the rest of the article]

Little Known Facts
–Israel itself helped to create Hamas in 1987 as a Muslim fundamentalist, divide-and-conquer counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
–The bulk of Hamas’s popular appeal — like that enjoyed by Hezbollah in Lebanon — stems not from the crude rockets fired toward Israel, but rather from the tangible help they give to oppressed Palestinians.
And don’t take my word for it. Here’s what James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, included as a sort of afterthought at the end of his 34-page “Worldwide Threat Assessment” before the House Intelligence Committee on Feb. 10, completely missed, for some reason, by the FCM:
“We see a growing proliferation of state and non-state actors providing medical assistance to reduce foreign disease threats to their own populations, garner influence with affected local populations, and project power regionally. …
“In some cases, countries use health to overtly counter Western influence, presenting challenges to allies and our policy interests abroad over the long run.
“In last year’s threat assessment, the Intelligence Community noted that extremists may take advantage of a government’s inability to meet the health needs of its population, highlighting that HAMAS’s and Hizballah’s provision of health and social services in the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon helped to legitimize those organizations as a political force.
“This also has been the case with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.”
I hope readers were not shocked by the diabolically clever way these “terrorist” movements garner public support by providing people life-saving medical care.
--It was on that public-service record (and also because of wide awareness of flagrant corruption in the PLO), that Hamas won a key parliamentary election in January 2006, defeating the PLO-affiliated Fatah party. While the election results were not disputed, they were not what the U.S., Israel, and Europe wanted. So the U.S. and the EU cut off financial assistance to Gaza.
–Confidential documents, corroborated by former U.S. officials, show that thereupon the White House had the CIA try in 2007, with the help of Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, to defeat Hamas in a bloody civil war. That, too, did not go as expected. Hamas won handily, leaving it stronger than ever. (See “The Gaza Bombshell” by David Rose, in Vanity Fair, April 2008, for the entire sad story.)
–Israel and Egypt then imposed an economic blockade on Gaza eventually reducing virtually all Gazans to a bare subsistence level and 45 percent unemployment.
–From Dec. 27, 2008, to Jan. 18, 2009, while President George W. Bush was a lame duck, Israel launched an armed attack on Gaza, killing about 1,400 Gazans compared to an Israeli death toll of 13. Israel’s stated aim was to stop rocket fire into Israel and block any arms deliveries to Gaza. President-elect Barack Obama said nothing.

[READ Vanity Fair article, "The Gaza Bombshell" here]

Howard Zinn: "Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. . ."

2011-06-08T23:47:00.005-04:00

Howard Zinn:

"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem."

Second Annual Peter De Mott Peace Trot 5k Memorial Run, Trot, Walk, or Crawl - Ithaca NY, June 19th

2011-06-08T22:20:00.009-04:00

Sunday, June 19th, 2011

Father's Day!

Race check-in from 8:30 - 9:45 a.m.

Race starts at 10:00 a.m.

More info and Registration here

'Blood on the Tracks' Book Tour with S. Brian Willson

2011-06-08T21:18:00.015-04:00

Blood on the Tracks tour dates:

JUNE 11 Saturday — Brian will give a brief Sneak Preview talk (no books available yet) at Veterans For Peace Gimme Peace! Fun-raiser, 6:00-9:00 pm, Metanoia Peace House, 2116 NE 18th Avenue, Portland, OR. Book exchange (donate old books; pick up new ones for a few bucks), silent auction & raffle. Potluck. Iced mint tea. Beer & wine available for donation.

JUNE 24 Friday — First public reading and book signing. 7:00-8:30 pm, People’s Food Co-op Community Room, 3029 SE 21st Ave., Portland, OR.

JUNE 25 Saturday — Cycling Tour Kick-off. 8:00 am, near PSU campus (exact location to be announced). Cyclists welcome to join Brian and Joel on their first day’s ride to Newberg, OR.

JUNE 28 Tuesday — Book-signing event. 5:00 pm, Tsunami Books, 2585 Willamette Street, Eugene, OR 97405. Info: 541-345-8986.

JULY 17 Sunday — Book-signing event sponsored by Unitarian Universalists for Peace–San Francisco. 12:00 noon, First Unitarian Church, 1187 Franklin Street (at Geary), San Francisco, CA 94109.

KILLER DRONES IN PLACE OF WAR. Why it is important we work to have them grounded.

2011-06-06T12:26:00.011-04:00

I attended a meeting in Rochester yesterday. It was an opportunity for the Hancock defendants to get together and discuss their court dates and strategy. It was also gave the defendants and supporters a chance to discuss future ways to learn and educate our communites about the perils of the drones and what could be done to ground them. Doug Noble presented this short paper in which he does a great job of summing up why we need to stop their deployment in and out of war zones.

Doug Noble, June 5, 2011:

Ever since becoming involved with the protest activities at Hancock Field I have been trying to get some clarity about my objections to drones. A new children’s book on Predator Drones explains, “The US military is always looking for ways to reduce risks for soldiers and to keep pilots safe. This is why unmanned drones are important.” This seems right, but consider that, due to overwhelming US air power superiority, there hasn’t been a US Air Force plane lost in combat in nearly 40 years, and so there is negligible difference in risk between piloting a drone aircraft and flying a fighter jet. Add to this the fact that Predator drones are used most frequently in sovereign nations – Pakistan, Yemen, Libya - with which the US is neither at war nor has any official boots on the ground. So there are no US soldiers to keep safe in these places. It seems that neither US pilots nor soldiers are made safer by most drone deployments. And still their use has skyrocketed.

What is different about this latest weapon of war that we oppose so stridently? True, they are remotely controlled by a risk-free videogame mentality that makes killing easy, even fun, with the trigger as far away our very backyard here in Upstate New York. But anyone who has viewed the Wikileaks footage of young helicopter gunship pilots picking off unarmed civilians, following orders issued in real time from afar, will recognize that this is not unique to drone pilots. Many of us cry out about the horrendous “collateral damage” of drones - the devastating civilian casualties and misidentified targets and technical disasters resulting in countless (because uncounted) innocent deaths. The targeted killing of Al Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud, for example, took 16 missile strikes over 14 months, with well over two hundred mistaken deaths.

But if the drones were made more precise and effective, with fewer casualties and more accurate target identification, would we then find them more acceptable? Would drones simply be seen as another weapon of war, whose casualties are not inherently different from such deaths caused by other horrendous weapons of war? Why do we focus on drones as somehow uniquely diabolical?

The answer is this: Predator Drones are not primarily weapons of war, as usually defined, but instead are automated technologies designed for convenient, targeted killing or assassination outside of war zones. As mentioned, the usual targets are in countries we aren’t at war with, far from usual areas of armed conflict, with organized armed groups engaged in intense fighting. .And Predator drones in these countries are not even operated by the US military, but rather by the CIA and its private contractors like Blackwater, acting covertly, without uniforms or legal code and beyond any accountability. The US military has its drones, too, of course, for surveillance and some bombing in Afghanistan, but the real show, now and in the future, is the covert use of Predator drones for large-scale extrajudicial assassination and targeted killing, under the cover of a global war on terror.

Drones, with their low cost and low risk, make targeted killing more convenient and more likely. The recent assassination of Osama bin Laden was carried out by elite special forces instead of drones in order to avoid collateral damage in a heavily populated area and to ensure positive evidence that bin Laden had been killed. But such elaborately orchestrated killings, without the host country’s knowledge, are not feasible for the CIA’s campaign of large-scale targeted killings. That is why drones are uniquely worthy of our attention, because their use has reconfigured war into a worldwide landscape of silent, targeted killings from above, whose victims could be anyone the CIA adds to its hit list of potential threats or terrorists.

There has been an unprecedented increase in CIA assassinations. In 2010 every day witness killing of almost 3 persons in drone attacks, occurring every 3rd day throughout the year in Pakistan. Under president Obama the use of drones in Pakistan has escalated dramatically, from once a week to every other day. Drones are now the weapon of choice, “the only game in town,” And demand for drone technology has been called “insatiable.”

The US keeps widening the definition of acceptable targets for drone killings. Though the CIA’s methodology is secret and remains unknown, the Pentagon maintains a complex taxonomy of targets and elaborate formulas to determine its kill list, which includes mere foot soldiers, ordinary fighters as well as top commanders. Drone consultant Bruce Riedel likened the drone attacks to “going after a beehive, one bee at a time.” A former National Security Council official has stated, “Not every target has to be a rock star.”The Pentagon’s list of approved targets in 2009 was even expanded to include Afghan drug lords funding the Taliban. More sobering still, the CIA requested and was given permission in 2008 to target not just individuals but also entire locations linked to al Qaeda, turning targeted killings into mass killings of suspected militants in an area.

Is any of this legal? Kill lists maintained both by the CIA and the covert military unit Joint Special Operations Command, using secret criteria, condemn even US citizens to summary execution - without charge, trial or conviction. No standards are disclosed under which someone becomes targeted for death, as the ACLU has found in trying unsuccessfully to obtain this information. Such killing violates US Constitution due process protections as well as international law, which labels premeditated killing of an individual by a government a homicide unless it takes place within an armed conflict. The UN Charter requires there be evident self-defense, Security Council authorization, or invitation by the sovereign host country, clearly missing in the case of Pakistan.

Prior to 9/11 the CIA director George Tenet argued that it would be “a terrible mistake” for the CIA to use a weapon like Predator drones. But after 9/11, Bush’s legal advisers modeled a new rationale on Israel’s use of drones against terrorists in Gaza and elsewhere, arguing that the US had the right to use lethal force against suspected Al Qaeda terrorists in what it called “anticipatory self-defense.” Gary Solis, former director of the law program at US Military Academy, describes the Predator targeted killing program as a “sea change,” a policy that the US had only recently abhorred in Israel. Of course, Israel’s use of targeted assassination goes back at least as far as the 1970s, when it systematically went after and assassinated all the suspects behind the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes, reenacted in the film Munich.

Israel claimed implausibly back then that its post-Munich assassinations were not for revenge but only for deterrence, as “pre-emptive self-defense.” The US claims, too, that assassinations and targeted killings are very different acts. Assassination is defined as murder and is prohibited by US law. But targeted killing in self-defense is different. The killing of an al Qaeda member is technically not a revenge killing or an assassination, which applies only to politically inspired killings of people who are not combatants. Gary Solis of the US Military Academy says, “Nobody in the US government calls it assassination.” It’s all in the name of deterrence or self-defense.

Journalist Jane Mayer, who has studied the use of Predator drones extensively, insists they represent not just an extension of conventional warfare, but instead “a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force.” Noam Chomsky, in his recent talk in Syracuse, reminded us that US leaders during World War II identified what they called a "Grand Area" that the U.S. would dominate in perpetuity, including much of the globe. Within this Grand Area, the U.S. would maintain "unquestioned power," while ensuring the "limitation of any exercise of sovereignty" by any nations that would dare to interfere. It would enable US military intervention at will to ensure "uninhibited access to key markets and resources” and "to shape events that will affect our livelihood and our security." The unbounded use of Predator drones for targeted killing in the manner of Rambo or Terminator, justified as self-defense and deterrence in the so-called war on terror, carries this global strategy of world domination into the present moment.

The Center for Constitutional Rights warns of a “boundless war without end.” But this is no longer war at all, as typically defined. And it will not just be perpetrated by the US. More than 40 countries currently fly drone aircraft, and within 20 years there will be swarms of bug-sized drones and many autonomous fighters and bombers in use around the globe.

A UN Human Rights report conceded in 2010 that “a missile fired from a drone is no different from any other commonly used weapon, legal so long as it complies with international law requiring discrimination, proportionality, necessity and precaution.” But the report also states that drones are unique because of their “playstation mentality to killing” that makes “it easier to kill without risk” and so tempts commanders “to interpret who can be killed and under what circumstances, too expansively.” Drone weapon systems, especially as they become increasingly autonomous to the point of making life and death decisions themselves, may well be uniquely dangerous. In fact the UN report concludes that drones might, like cluster bombs and landmines, be banned for being “so cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance.” We are absolutely correct to focus our energies opposing Predator drones, and I hope it’s now clearer why.

Create an outdoor billboard in Washington, DC supporting Bradley Manning, accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower

2011-05-24T21:45:00.004-04:00

Support the campaign here.

Pearl Jam: Masters of War

2011-05-24T21:21:00.004-04:00

Lyrics

Come you masters of war

You that build all the guns

You that build the death planes

You that build all the bombs

You that hide behind walls

You that hide behind desks

I just want you to know

I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin'

But build to destroy

You play with my world

Like it's your little toy

You put a gun in my hand

And you hide from my eyes

And you turn and run farther

When the fast bullets fly.

Like Judas of old

You lie and deceive

A world war can be won

You want me to believe

But I see through your eyes

And I see through your brain

Like I see through the water

That runs down my drain.

You fasten all the triggers

For the others to fire

Then you set back and watch

When the death count gets higher

You hide in your mansion'

As young people's blood

Flows out of their bodies

And is buried in the mud.

Let me ask you one question

Is your money that good

Will it buy you forgiveness

Do you think that it could

I think you will find

When your death takes its toll

All the money you made

Will never buy back your soul.

How much do I know

To talk out of turn

You might say that I'm young

You might say I'm unlearned

But there's one thing I know

Though I'm younger than you

That even Jesus would never

Forgive what you do.

And I hope that you die

And your death'll come soon

I will follow your casket

In the pale afternoon

And I'll watch while you're lowered

Down to your deathbed

And I'll stand over your grave

'Til I'm sure that you're dead.

-thanks to the Stop the War Coalition (this was posted last fall)

Immediate Action: Tell your member of Congress to vote "yes" on amendments that will help end the U.S. war in Afghanistan. AFGHANISTAN

2011-05-20T07:34:00.003-04:00

MAY 18, 2011
Immediate Action: Tell your member of Congress to vote "yes" on amendments that will help end the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

AFGHANISTAN

Week of Action

May 23-27, 2011

Veterans For Peace is joining groups around the country in mobilizing our members to demand that Congress end the war in Afghanistan. The National Defense Authorization Act is scheduled to be on the floor in the House the week of May 23; we expect that several key amendments that could help end the U.S. war in Afghanistan will come up. We believe that two of these amendments are extremely critical: Rep. McGovern/Jones’ Exit Strategy Bill, H.R. 1735 and Rep. Garamendi’s troop withdrawal amendment. While it is not yet clear if both will be brought to the floor, we must ensure our members of Congress know that this war is unacceptable.

Take Action: Tell your member of Congress to vote “yes” on amendments that will help end the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

The U.S. war in Afghanistan was launched only weeks after 9/11, presumably to get the perpetrators of that terrible attack. Now, almost ten years later, it is the longest war in U.S. history, has cost half a trillion dollars, killed 1,580 Americans and tens of thousands of Afghans. Although Osama bin Laden is dead and there are less than 100 members of al Qaeda left in Afghanistan—not enough to make up a decent marching band—the war goes on. Administration officials openly talk about continuing military operations through 2014 and beyond. President Obama has said that the upcoming July withdrawal will not be a “token gesture,” but the Pentagon is pushing back hard, advocating withdrawing as few as 10,000, mostly “non-combat”, troops. We will not be fooled by a symbolic withdrawal.

Veterans For Peace has known from the beginning that Afghanistan was not “the good war,” and has been opposed to this illegal, immoral, and unwinnable war from the outset. The majority of Americans now understand what we have known all along and are demanding that Congress end this horrible waste of lives and treasure. Our push for withdrawal is gaining momentum.

TAKE ACTION: This week we need you to add your personal voice to that call; Tell your member of Congress a token withdraw is unacceptable.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Call your representative today at 1-800-427-8619. Ask your Representative to support the legislation that will help end the war. The more members of Congress that go on the record to end the war in Afghanistan, the more pressure there will be on the administration to end the war.

2. Write a Letter to the Editor. The Letters to the Editor section is one of the most widely read sections of the newspaper, and can help shape the opinions of both the public and policy makers. Congressional staffers search newspapers looking for their boss’ name so it is a good idea to include your representative’s name in the body of the letter.

3. Use Social Media. Use Facebook and twitter to help us to send this message to the White House: Facebook: “President Obama: It's time to exit Afghanistan. Time is money ($10 billion/month) and it's time to stop wasting it. It's time to bring the troops home.”
1. Post the above message and these instructions as your Facebook status
2. Change your profile picture to this: http://tinyurl.com/3zhvp26

Twitter: @BarackObama: This is the year. #Time2exit #Afghanistan. $10 billion a month for an endless war?

Thank you for taking action!

-thanks to Veterans for Peace

Obamacide - Afghan Guantanamo Detainee 'Commits Suicide'

2011-05-20T00:00:00.007-04:00

Published on Thursday, May 19, 2011 by Al Jazeera English

The inmate was found unconscious while an investigation is under way to determine the exact cause of the death.

An Afghan detainee at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has died in an apparent suicide, the US military said.

The prisoner, identified as Inayatullah, a 37-year-old accused of being a member of al-Qaeda, was found dead by guards conducting routine checks at the facility on Wednesday.

"An investigation is under way to determine the exact circumstances of what happened," Navy Commander Tamsen Reese, a spokeswoman at the Guantanamo Bay US naval base, said.

The prisoner was not conscious or breathing when guards checked on him in the morning, and they immediately tried to resuscitate him, US Southern Command said in a statement.

"After extensive lifesaving measures had been exhausted, the detainee was pronounced dead by a physician," the statement said.

Inayatullah is the eighth prisoner to die at the detention centre since the United States began sending foreign captives with alleged al-Qaeda or Taliban links to Guantanamo Bay in January 2002.

Five others died of apparent suicides and two died of natural causes.

'Cover-up'

Last year, a US federal judge dismissed a complaint by the families of two Guantanamo detainees who claimed that their deaths in 2006 had been covered up when the Pentagon ruled them suicides.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service will conduct an investigation after an autopsy by a military pathologist, the military said. Inayatullah's body will then be prepared for repatriation to Afghanistan.

Inayatullah had been held without charge at Guantanamo since September 2007. The military said he was an admitted planner for al-Qaeda operations, and acknowledged facilitating the movement of foreign fighters.

The prison camp, located in Cuba, has held 779 foreign captives since the United States invaded Afghanistan to oust al-Qaeda and its Taliban protectors following the September 11, 2001 attacks. It now holds 171 inmates.

US president Barack Obama had tried and failed to overcome objections by opposition Republicans and some of his fellow Democrats in Congress to transfer some detainees to US prisons.

Last month, the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks released more than 700 leaked classified military files that indicated that the US held dozens of innocent men at the Guantanamo prison for years.

At least 150 people were innocent Afghans or Pakistanis, including drivers, farmers and chefs, who were rounded up as part of frantic intelligence gathering, and then detained at the prison.

© 2011 Aljazeera.net

Aljazeera video from March 2011

-thanks to Aljazeera

". . . I know that I do believe."

2011-05-18T21:01:00.000-04:00

Remembering the Nakba

2011-05-17T23:28:00.003-04:00

MAY 15, 2011
Statement from Israel/Palestine Working Group on Remembering the Al Nakba

Remembering the Nakba

About this time each year, millions of Israelis and Jews around the world celebrate Israel ’s independence in 1948. But what is a time of celebration for Jewish Israelis is a very different kind of anniversary for over one and a half million Palestinians in Israel, over four million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza - 40% of whom live in refugee camps, some 650,000 in refugee camps elsewhere in the middle east, and over 3 million around the world with UN-registered property claims against Israel who are now living in what is known as the Palestinian Diaspora. For them - the largest and longest-standing registered refugee population in the world - March 14 marks the remembrance of their greatest collective tragedy.

Before May 1948, three Zionist militias had carried out a violent and ruthless ethnic cleansing campaign against a third of the Palestinian population. Those groups – the Haganah, Irgun and LEHI (known to the British as the Stern Gang) – were designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations in a comprehensive report and chronology issued in October 1948.

From March through December 1948 these well-armed Zionist militias, which after May became armed forces of the new state of Israel, completed the violent expulsion of over 750,000 indigenous inhabitants of Palestine and the seizure of their land and properties. Most of these refugees were driven into 59 refugee camps hastily constructed to accommodate them by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

This is what Palestinians call “al Nakba” – their "catastrophe".

By the end of the ethnic cleansing campaign, the Zionists had destroyed and/or dispossessed the populations of 531 Palestinian villages and eleven urban areas, and had committed 33 documented massacres, which killed some 13,000 largely defenseless Palestinians.

Reports of these massacres terrorized other Palestinian villages into fleeing their homes in the path of approaching Jewish forces. (This has been used by Zionist propagandists to falsely claim that the Palestinians left voluntarily or unnecessarily upon direction by their leaders.)

Recognizing that justice and human rights is a necessary precondition to peace, in December 1948 the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 17 of this declaration states that no one may be arbitrarily deprived of his property, and Article 13 states that everyone may leave and return to his country. In that same month the UN passed Resolution 194 applying that right specifically to the Palestinian refugees, fulfillment of which became a condition of Israel ’s 1949 admission to the UN.

This obligation remains unfulfilled, and the Right of Return originating in the Nakba and refused by Israel has remained the central roadblock to peace for six decades. Consequently, Israel ’s independence celebration is an occasion of mourning for the 20% Palestinian minority in Israel, occupied and blockaded Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinians displaced abroad in the diaspora.

Palestinians recognize Nakba Day on May 14, the date Israel declared its statehood. On March 22, 2011, the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) passed a bill to severely penalize any commemoration of Nakba Day in Israel.

Veterans for Peace (VFP) chooses to remember these historic violations of Palestinian human rights and deplores the continuing violations of Palestinian human rights today. Since Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign assistance and the United States routinely protects Israel from international justice through its UN Security Council vetoes, VFP believes the American public has a right to know these facts and encourages VFP members nationwide to use this anniversary to inform their communities.

...Israel/Palestine Working Group

2011-05-17T08:37:00.005-04:00

GN’s 2011 Space Conference

June 17-19, 2011

North Andover, Massachusetts

Global Network 19th Annual Space Organizing Conference

Raytheon, Missile Offense, and Endless War

June 17-19 North Andover, Massachusetts
Working together to demilitarize and create a sustainable future

See: Getting to Andover | Events and Program
More on Raytheon | Raytheon's Andover Facility Named IndustryWeek 'Best Plant'

2011 marks the 19th anniversary of Global Network’s organizing efforts to build an international constituency to Keep Space for Peace. Each year we gather to share the latest international developments on Pentagon and aerospace industry plans for the militarization of space. We approach this conference with clarity that U.S. “missile defense” programs are actually key elements in overall Pentagon first-strike planning. The Raytheon Company, which had 2009 sales of $25 billion, is a leading builder and promoter of the missile “offense” program. Headquartered in Massachusetts, Raytheon has a manufacturing plant in Andover that builds the Patriot (PAC-3) system that is now being used by the Pentagon to help encircle Russia and China.

Vigil: On Friday, June 17 from 3:00 - 5:00 pm a vigil will be held at the gates of the Raytheon production plant as the workers leave for home. Local activists have been holding vigils at the facility for years. (NW corner of Rt 133 and I-93 intersection)

Conference: Saturday, June 18 day-long conference with panel discussions and workshops held at Merrimack College. Key Global Network activists from around the world speaking about current U.S. and allies space weapons technology developments and strategies.

Concert: Tetsu Kitagawa, one of Japan's leading peace and justice singer/songwriters has been described as Japan's Bob Dylan -- early Dylan, the one engaged with people's movements. On tour in the U.S. as part of his 100 consecutive concerts for peace, nuclear abolition, and defense of Japan’s peace constitution, Kitagawa will be joined by Pat Scanlon and other musical friends for a concert on June 18 at 8:15 pm (North Parish Old Center Hall, North Andover). Open to the community, as well as to conference participants, tickets will be available at the conference and at the door for $10.

Cost: Registration for the conference is on a sliding scale. Please pay what you can best afford between $15 - $100. Registration fee includes three meals on June 17-18. (Suggested fee is $50 which covers our basic costs.)

Event Co-Sponsors: AFSC Disarmament Program; Alliance for Peace & Justice, Western Mass.; Essex Unitarian Universalist Church; House of Peace; Maine Campaign to Bring Our War $$ Home; Maine Veterans for Peace (VFP); Merrimack Valley People for Peace; New England Peace Pagoda; New Hampshire Peace Action; North Shore Coalition for Peace and Justice; Office of Mission and Ministry, Merrimack College; Peace Action Maine; Salem Peace Committee United for Justice with Peace (Greater Boston); Veterans for Peace Chapter 9 Smedley Butler Brigade; Veterans for Peace Chapter 45 Samantha Smith; War Resisters League New England.

more information

Past president of the National Lawyers Guild, Marjorie Cohn on "The Targeted Assassination of Osama Bin Laden".

2011-05-14T21:14:00.009-04:00

by Marjorie Cohn / Published on Tuesday, May 10, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

When he announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed by a Navy Seal team in Pakistan,
President Barack Obama said, “Justice has been done.” Mr. Obama misused the word, "justice" when he made that statement. He should have said, "Retaliation has been accomplished."
A former professor of constitutional law should know the difference between those two concepts. The word "justice" implies an act of applying or upholding the law.

Targeted assassinations violate well-established principles of international law. Also called political assassinations, they are extrajudicial executions. These are unlawful and deliberate killings carried out by order of, or with the acquiescence of, a government, outside any judicial framework.

Extrajudicial executions are unlawful, even in armed conflict. In a 1998 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions noted that
“extrajudicial executions can never be justified under any circumstances, not even in time of war.”
The U.N. General Assembly and Human Rights Commission, as well as Amnesty International, have all condemned extrajudicial executions.

In spite of its illegality, the Obama administration frequently uses targeted assassinations to accomplish its goals. Five days after executing Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama tried to bring “justice” to U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who has not been charged with any crime in the United States. The unmanned drone attack in Yemen missed al-Awlaki and killed two people “believed to be al Qaeda militants,” according to a CBS/AP bulletin.

Two days before the Yemen attack, U.S. drones killed 15 people in Pakistan and wounded four. Since the March 17 drone attack that killed 44 people, also in Pakistan, there have been four drone strikes. In 2010, American drones carried out 111 strikes. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that 957 civilians were killed in 2010.

The United States disavowed the use of extrajudicial killings under President Gerald Ford. After the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed in 1975 that the CIA had been involved in several murders or attempted murders of foreign leaders, President Ford issued an executive order banning assassinations. Every succeeding president until George W. Bush renewed that order. However, the Clinton administration targeted Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, but narrowly missed him.

In July 2001, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel denounced Israel’s policy of targeted killings, or “preemptive operations.” He said “the United States government is very clearly on the record as against targeted assassinations. They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that.”

Yet after September 11, 2001, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer invited the killing of Saddam Hussein: “The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less” than the cost of war. Shortly thereafter, Bush issued a secret directive, which authorized the CIA to target suspected terrorists for assassination when it would be impractical to capture them and when large-scale civilian casualties could be avoided.

In November 2002, Bush reportedly authorized the CIA to assassinate a suspected Al Qaeda leader in Yemen. He and five traveling companions were killed in the hit, which Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz described as a “very successful tactical operation.”

After the Holocaust, Winston Churchill wanted to execute the Nazi leaders without trials. But the U.S. government opposed the extrajudicial executions of Nazi officials who had committed genocide against millions of people. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served as chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, told President Harry Truman: “We could execute or otherwise punish [the Nazi leaders] without a hearing. But undiscriminating executions or punishments without definite findings of guilt, fairly arrived at, would … not set easily on the American conscience or be remembered by children with pride.”

Osama bin Laden and the “suspected militants” targeted in drone attacks should have been arrested and tried in U.S. courts or an international tribunal. Obama cannot serve as judge, jury and executioner. These assassinations are not only illegal; they create a dangerous precedent, which could be used to justify the targeted killings of U.S. leaders.
Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past President of the National Lawyers Guild, is the deputy secretary general for external communications of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd). Her anthology, The U

nited States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse, is now available. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com

Iraq veteran and subject of "Poster Girl" Robynn Murray supports U.S. Iraq War resisters in Canada

2011-05-13T22:20:00.005-04:00

I've seen Robynn speaking at a couple of venues. She has so much to share and covers so many aspects of what is wrong with the military, the occupations and the treatment of soldiers and veterans. I appreciate that such a dynamic and courageous woman would address the courage of the GI war resisters in Canada. Thank you for being with them, Robynn.