Has John F. Burns' become a "hopless prat?" That's what Pru wonders. Maybe he's just been confined to the Green Zone for so long that he's lost it? That would explain today's article.
"Democracy has come to Iraq" is the spin and certainly Burns is too smart to get away with pimping it (though he tries). But it's an interesting sort of Operation Happy Talk. In fact, it's as if Spike TV were covering the election. No, wait, they'd be sure to provide shots of busty females.
Burns has no females, busty or otherwise, speaking in his article. One woman, a wife, was close enough that he could have spoken to her. Did he? She's the only woman mentioned in the article.
Does Burns see anything wrong with relying on all male voices for this article? Iraqi women, where are they?
Who has the most to lose? Iraqi women. Under Saddam Hussein's rule, they did have certain rights, enshrined in their constitution. Life for Iraqi women?
Burns doesn't seem to give a damn.
He can find an nine-year-old male.
He can quote him at length.
Now does the nine-year-old really know anything of value in terms of the election?
No, Burns is using him to represent 'the future of Iraq.' It's a journalistic device that Burns uses to spin, let's be obvious. There's no reason to open with a child. But Burns does. And he sees the future of the country in this child.
This male child.
What's the future of the country for women?
Burns' silence on that topic may be telling.
Though it's doubtful he noticed it. He's too busy penning nonsense like this:
On a day when the high voter turnout among Sunni Arabs was the main surprise, Ali and his posse of friends, unguarded as boys can be, acted like a chorus for the scene unfolding about them.
"Unguarded as boys can be"? And the girls? Like the women, they don't speak in the text. They aren't even represented. You get a teacher (male), you get a kid (male), you get a government official (male), a grocery store owner (male), a sheik (male), a merchant (male, with his wife who apparently wasn't asked for comment). Six speakers. The youngest is nine-years-old, the oldest is eighty-years-old. Not one female in the bunch.
I guess the new government will have no impact on women and they have no interest in it? Is that how Burns sees it?
One might argue that Burns is suffering from a Peter Pan complex, but at least J. M. Barrie let Wendy visit Neverland.
From children's books to cartoons, think of Mr. Magoo as Eric Schmitt outlines how the Bully Boy ended up admitting defeat and supporting McCain's amdendment's that's seen as a torture ban. Let's note the article:
The agreement will also extend to intelligence officers a protection now afforded to military personnel, who if accused of violating interrogation rules can defend themselves if a "reasonable" person could have concluded they were following a lawful order. But Mr. Hadley conceded that the administration was unable to get a grant of immunity for C.I.A. interrogators, which he said "was a legitimate thing to consider in this context."
I don't expect that Schmitt would normally read The Nation, but Anthony Lewis, who worked for the paper, does have an article in the December 26, 2005 issue -- "The Torture Administration."
You'd think the paper might be interested in it. Lewis is calling for a special prosecutor. (He offers other means to address the issue but that's the one he feels is "most effective.") If, as Schmitt tosses out, the CIA would be under a policy similar to the military, who will be doing the reviewing? Lewis notes:
A soldier who tortured would still be subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But under this legal theory [C.I.: Bully Boy's since 9/11] no criminal law would apply to a CIA torturer.
Lewis argues that's why Dick Cheney was against the McCain proposal. But if we're going to say that they're under the same "code," where's the enforcement for those who torture? It's not as the UCMJ has been all that effective thus far. Right under the half a page on which Lewis' article ends, Tara McKelvey's begins. Her article's entitled "Brass Tacks: When the military investigates torture allegations, procedures are crude and justice elusive." She reviews how evidence is "lost" and how it can "accidentally" explode. Evidence in allegations of detainee abuse (including abuse resulting in death). Now put McKelvey's article with the main editorial in the same issue, "Conspiracy to Torture."
It's a building block. In terms of punishing those who torture, Lewis makes a convincing argument for a special prosecutor. Short of that, has anything changed? Considering that survivors of torture in Central America still haven't seen justice after all these years (and were, in fact, ignored in a confirmation hearing this year), I'm not sure that anything's changed. Short of Lewis' recommendation, maybe nothing will?
While the torture bill may never get paid, Leslie notes Danny Schechter's "With Ten Shopping Daze to Xmas" (News Dissector, MediaChannel.org) which addresses who does pay:
Norfolk is still a military town, proud of its naval bases and memorial to World War 2. There is a memorial to super-soldier turned renegade General Douglas MacArthur who was fired by President Harry S Truman for defying his authority and advocating an invasion of China during the Korea war.
Unfortunately this military town is also still a slave town only, today, it is the whole population that is enslaved-- by debt.
Drive around as we did yesterday for a film I am making on America's credit squeeze and you practically see a check cashing joint or pawn shop on every corner. "Support Our Troops" has a different meaning to this acne of predators who target the sailors and marines here with high interest loans that keeps them trapped in an avalanche of debt that nobody seems to be doing much about. There were 3 pay day lenders five years ago; there are 26 today.
Then, of course, there's the debt and punishment we inflict upon ourselves, such as reading one of Bob Woodward's "books." That's the topic of Mia's highlight. From Lawrence Velvel's "A Bore Called Bob" (CounterPunch):
I have tried unsuccessfully to read some of Woodward's more recent books. I cannot get through them, for reasons that are not entirely clear. Maybe it is that, although they supposedly are books, they read like horrendously long, rather uncritical newspaper articles. Could one really get through an 80,000-word or 100,000-word or 120,000-word or however many word newspaper article? Much less one that is a puff piece for the heroes?
There is a long provenance, stretching back nearly 30 years, to the fact that Woodward's books are a bore. A bit after his great success with Carl Bernstein in All The President's Men, Woodward published his third book, called The Brethren (which he co-authored with Scott Armstrong). It was about the Supreme Court. In those days, several friends and I were greatly interested in the Supreme Court. We had imbibed this interest at fancy pants law schools that focused in varying degrees, sometimes extensively, on the work of that Court, as lawyers in the Department of Justice who consorted with Department (and other) lawyers who did work that was presented to the Court, and, in some instances, as writers of work that, after much alteration, was eventually presented to the Court by the Department.
So we looked forward to reading The Brethren. Imagine the horror when we--even we--found Woodward's book to be a bore. One of my friends summed it up this way: "When I first started reading The Brethren, I thought it would be of interest to people all across the country. After reading it awhile, I thought it would be of interest only to people inside the Beltway. After reading it some more, I thought it would be of interest only to people located within a block of the Supreme Court."
Woodward, this writer of boring books that in effect heroize the heroes, has, of course, become the paradigmatic Washington media man on the make in the last 30 years. Dull though he seems when one sees him on the tube, he has become wealthy and famous by parlaying articles, books, television appearances, expensive speeches and what not into much money and special treatment at The Post. Pushiness and immodesty are among his traits. His and Bernstein's pushiness in the Watergate matter is the stuff of legend. Nor was it out of character when one read--after Mark Felt was revealed to be Deep Throat--that Woodward, as part of his long-term effort to get ahead, while still in the Navy, had (rather obnoxiously) pushed himself on Mark Felt, whom he did not know, when both were sitting and waiting in an antechamber outside the White House Situation Room. No surprise there. But what was a surprise was to recently learn the extent to which Woodward has become an immodest megalomaniac.
From the torture of reading bad "books" back to real torture, Keesha highlights Margaret Kimberley's "Condi, Torture and Christmas" (Freedom Rider, The Black Commentator):
Insane American Christians are spending this Christmas season torturing and defending the use of torture. Condi Rice, church going queen of torture, traveled to Europe where she tried to justify extra judicial kidnappings and secret prisons. She began her visit by scolding uppity Europeans who took exception to the American inquisition. She told them that interrogations and renditions were saving their wimpy, unappreciative lives.
It was a bit inconvenient for Dr. Rice when Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen, sued former CIA director George Tenet during her European tour. El-Masri was accused of being a terror suspect upon entering Macedonia. He was flown to a CIA run prison in Afghanistan, where he was denied access to counsel or any contact with the German government. His imprisonment lasted for a total of four months. George Tenet kept him behind bars even after his identity and proof of his innocence in any wrong doing were confirmed.
The ACLU is representing El-Masri in his lawsuit against Tenet. When El-Masri attempted to attend a press conference in Washington to announce his lawsuit, he was denied entry into the United States. Embarrassing the United States government and trying to attend a press conference all in the same week was just too much for the powers that be.
Condi's latest European trip was rocky from the start. After meeting with Rice, new German chancellor Angela Merkel stated that Rice had admitted a mistake in the El-Masri case. It isn't clear if Merkel intentionally outed Rice or if she hadn't yet learned the diplomatic art of being a good liar.
As soon as the press conference ended, Rice's flacks went into action. They vehemently denied that Rice had made any such admission – but it was too late. Steven Watts, El-Masri's attorney, had this to say: "We have never heard such a public statement from a head of government. We will add Ms. Merkel's words to our evidence. They support Khaled el-Masri's position".
Don't forget to check out Democracy Now! today.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
the new york times
john f. burns
eric lichtblau
anthony lewis
tara mckelvey
the nation
danny schechter
lawrence velvel
margaret kimberley
Friday, December 16, 2005
NYT: "Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say" (James Risen & Eric Lichtblau)
Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval represents a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.
"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."
That's the spotlight story. James Risen and Eric Lichtblau's "Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say" in this morning's New York Times. And let's put that with what's waiting in the Senate, and could come up for a vote, the renewal of the Patriot Act.
Does Hatch-et face want to cop to knowing about the above? What about John Corny? I know members in his state aren't pleased with this. They're wondering where Corny was on this?
So maybe the things is Hatch-et and his other boy toys who echo every word and dance everytime he pulls the string didn't actually know about it?
So that might indicate that *they need to pause* before they attempt to force through a vote in the Senate to reauthorize an act that they have been woefully negligent in providing oversight on, an act whose impact they've been happy to take the White House's word on.
Hear's another thought, how many more "misdeeds" (that's being charitable) is Bully Boy going to be caught committing before Congress gets serious about their duties?
Moving from the destructive gang in the White House to the myth of Rebuild LA, Oscar e-mails to note Tom Hayden's "The Myth of the Super-Predator" (Common Dreams):
But there was no peace dividend, and the truce eventually dwindled, though it never completely died. The plan to privatize urban reconstruction after the 1992 riots -- the Rebuild LA initiative that promised $6 billion in private investment to create 74,000 new jobs in five years in the riot zone -- was a sham that closed down a few years later. The riot zone lost 50,000 jobs in that decade. In the vacuum, youthful rage exploded again in gang warfare.
Around that time, conservatives such as William Bennett and James Q. Wilson began attaching the label of "super-predator" to all the Tookie wannabes. Their notion seemed to be that a fixed percentage of kids were natural-born killers who just couldn't be helped by better schools or jobs -- a neo-Darwinian philosophy that fit neatly with the de-industrialization and budget cuts that swept across inner cities like chain saws through old-growth forests.
The super-predator thesis justified the most massive prison expansion in American history, with its epicenter in California, where there were about 150,000 inmates in any given year, two-thirds of them reputed gang members. Prosecutors and politicians pursued the vertical model of the 1920s, going after the alleged godfathers, but in fact the new gangs were replenishing themselves from the outcast underclass. Last year in Los Angeles, there were 93,000 youths between 18 and 24 who were out of school and out of work. Statewide, the number was 638,000.
How is the city of L.A. addressing the gang problem? The city budget reveals that the priority is to suppress and incarcerate, not to turn troubled lives around. Fifty-five million dollars go to LAPD gang suppression efforts, a token $12 million to prevention programs for little kids, and a bare $2 million for intervention programs meant to channel teenagers away from violent paths.
Billie recommends everyone check out NARAL's "Waiter, There's a Moderate In My Soup."
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
the new york times
james risen
eric lichtblau
tom hayden
naral
waiter, theres a moderate in my soup
[Note from Shirley: "*they need to pause*" added per C.I.]
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval represents a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.
"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."
That's the spotlight story. James Risen and Eric Lichtblau's "Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say" in this morning's New York Times. And let's put that with what's waiting in the Senate, and could come up for a vote, the renewal of the Patriot Act.
Does Hatch-et face want to cop to knowing about the above? What about John Corny? I know members in his state aren't pleased with this. They're wondering where Corny was on this?
So maybe the things is Hatch-et and his other boy toys who echo every word and dance everytime he pulls the string didn't actually know about it?
So that might indicate that *they need to pause* before they attempt to force through a vote in the Senate to reauthorize an act that they have been woefully negligent in providing oversight on, an act whose impact they've been happy to take the White House's word on.
Hear's another thought, how many more "misdeeds" (that's being charitable) is Bully Boy going to be caught committing before Congress gets serious about their duties?
Moving from the destructive gang in the White House to the myth of Rebuild LA, Oscar e-mails to note Tom Hayden's "The Myth of the Super-Predator" (Common Dreams):
But there was no peace dividend, and the truce eventually dwindled, though it never completely died. The plan to privatize urban reconstruction after the 1992 riots -- the Rebuild LA initiative that promised $6 billion in private investment to create 74,000 new jobs in five years in the riot zone -- was a sham that closed down a few years later. The riot zone lost 50,000 jobs in that decade. In the vacuum, youthful rage exploded again in gang warfare.
Around that time, conservatives such as William Bennett and James Q. Wilson began attaching the label of "super-predator" to all the Tookie wannabes. Their notion seemed to be that a fixed percentage of kids were natural-born killers who just couldn't be helped by better schools or jobs -- a neo-Darwinian philosophy that fit neatly with the de-industrialization and budget cuts that swept across inner cities like chain saws through old-growth forests.
The super-predator thesis justified the most massive prison expansion in American history, with its epicenter in California, where there were about 150,000 inmates in any given year, two-thirds of them reputed gang members. Prosecutors and politicians pursued the vertical model of the 1920s, going after the alleged godfathers, but in fact the new gangs were replenishing themselves from the outcast underclass. Last year in Los Angeles, there were 93,000 youths between 18 and 24 who were out of school and out of work. Statewide, the number was 638,000.
How is the city of L.A. addressing the gang problem? The city budget reveals that the priority is to suppress and incarcerate, not to turn troubled lives around. Fifty-five million dollars go to LAPD gang suppression efforts, a token $12 million to prevention programs for little kids, and a bare $2 million for intervention programs meant to channel teenagers away from violent paths.
Billie recommends everyone check out NARAL's "Waiter, There's a Moderate In My Soup."
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
the new york times
james risen
eric lichtblau
tom hayden
naral
waiter, theres a moderate in my soup
[Note from Shirley: "*they need to pause*" added per C.I.]
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Indymedia, the war at home
Nashville, TN--Veterans and local members of the grassroots organization MoveOn.org Political Action, gathered Wednesday to urge Representative Jim Cooper and others in Congress to support an Iraq exit strategy with a timeline that brings the troops home by the end of 2006. Several constituents gathered at Tennessee Congressman Cooper's Nashville office with an "Out in '06" petition while MoveOn members did the same in front of other congressional offices across Tennessee and across the country.
The campaign comes as political parties in Iraq, some Republicans and many Democrats in Congress support an exit strategy with a timeline. Conservative Democratic Congressman John Murtha (HJ Res 73), a decorated Vietnam War veteran and long time supporter of the war, and Republican Representative Walter Jones (HJR 55) of North Carolina whose district includes Camp Lejeune, a major marine base, have both introduced proposals for an exit from Iraq."It is important for Representative Cooper to take a stand against Bush's failed 'stay the course' policy in Iraq," said Phillip Vest, MoveOn member from Nashville. "That's why more than 897 constituents signed a petition to urge him to support an exit strategy with a timeline that brings our troops home by the end of 2006," Phillip Vest concluded.
The above, sent in by Richard, is from Chris Lugo's "Cooper Urged to Support Iraq Exit Strategy" (Tennessee Independent Medica Center). In this indymedia roundup, we focus on the domestic (United States) reactions to the continued occupation of Iraq. In case you've missed it, a weak wave of Operation Happy Talk is rolling through the mainstream media yet again. It's weak because even they know they've been burned everytime in the past. However, it is still present. Hopefully, there's something here that will make you think or feel inspired.
There has been positive feedback regarding everyone attempting to find at least one more person to address the issue of the war with. In this community, we're not staying silent but we need to carry it beyond this community. Make your voice heard. Constituents are making sure Cooper hears them. In Maine, they're making sure their senators hear them. We learn of that in Claire's highlight, Sara Donnelly's "A Somber Occupation" (Portland Phoenix):
Last December, 13 anti-war activists gathered in Senator Susan Collins's office in Portland. They read the names of the American soldiers who had died to date in the Iraq War, as well as an equal number of Iraqi civilians who died. They occupied Collins's office for roughly four hours and, before they left, asked the senator to hold a "town meeting" to discuss the war with her constituents.
On February 4, 17 Maine peace activists gathered in the Portland offices of Senator Olympia Snowe. Again, they read the names of the American soldiers who had died in the Iraq War and an equal number of Iraqi names -- over 2000 total by that date. This time, after someone read the name of each war-dead, they marked an X, in red or black marker, on a giant sheet of cloth to demonstrate the enormity of the loss. They then asked Snowe to meet with her constituents in a town meeting on the war.
On March 18, 35 people gathered in Representative Tom Allen's Portland office. They repeated the February action's format.
The names of the war dead were read, X marks were drawn on a white sheet, and, at the end, the request for a town meeting.
On June 23, 100 people gathered to protest the war in front of Collins's Bangor office.
About a month later, on August 26, another occupation occurred in Collins's Lewiston office. Someone brought a bell, which rang after each name was read.
Then again on October 14, at Snowe's office in Biddeford. The names, the sheet, the bell, the request for a town meeting.
All told, there have been six nearly identical occupations of Maine's congressional delegates' offices (as well as several informal meetings with US Representative Mike Michaud), each lasting between four and six hours, each designed to slowly and somberly disrupt business as usual. It's all part of a statewide, coordinated action called the "Frequent Visit Program," founded a year ago by some of the state's most fervent anti-war activists.
Billys e-mails to note Ted Rall's "We're Looking For A Few Good Refuseniks: Support the troops who won't fight for Bush" (Boise Weekly):
NEW YORK--"Support the Troops, Oppose Their Actions," reads the oxymoronic headline of an April 2005 essay at antiwar.com. In a column titled, "Support Our Troops, Not Our President," liberal columnist Richard Reeves worries about Iraq war vets: "They will come home to be called 'torturers,' as Vietnam vets were called 'baby killers.'" To avoid repeating the supposed excesses of the '60s peace movement, today's antiwar groups praise the soldiers fighting the wars they abhor.
"What if they gave a war," a poster of the Vietnam era asked, "and nobody came?" If we are, as Jean-Paul Sartre posited, defined by our actions, most of the blame for the murder of more than 100,000 Iraqis belongs to our top government officials. But Bush's armchair warriors couldn't have invaded Iraq without a compliant and complicit United States military--one that, it should be noted, is all volunteer. These individuals, who enjoy free will, fire the guns and drop the bombs. If personal responsibility is to have any meaning, the men and women of our armed forces have to be held individually accountable for the carnage.
"Supporting our troops while opposing their actions may seem contradictory," argues Joshua Frank in the antiwar.com article. "The duties of U.S. soldiers in Iraq are wrong and many may be committing horrible crimes against humanity. True. But soldiers are mostly not bad people (though, of course, some are)." How is a person who voluntarily commits "horrible crimes against humanity" not a "bad person"?
Even if U.S. forces were not violating the rules of war in Iraq--torturing, maiming and murdering POWs, robbing and subjecting civilians to collective punishment, dropping white phosphorus and depleted uranium bombs on civilian targets--the war itself, based on false pretenses and opposed by the United Nations, would remain a gross violation of American and international law.
Soldiers, they say, must obey orders. However, "just following orders" wasn't an acceptable excuse at the Nuremberg trials, where the charges included waging a war of aggression. Do our government's poorly paid contract killers deserve our "support" for blindly following orders?
Finally, we turn to the issue Rall touched on (what if no one showed up for war) via Tori's highlight, Paul Fleisher, Emily Kimball and James' "Workshop on Alternatives to Military Service Planned - assistance needed" (Richmond IMC):
DO YOU HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF RECRUITMENT BY THE US ARMED FORCES AT LOCAL HIGH SCHOOLS? Please post what you know as a comment to this annoucement and help Richmond Friends Meeting and the Richmond Peace Education Center organize its two day workshop on alternatives to military service for young people. The workshops will counter military recruiters' efforts to fill their quotas, especially through local high schools.The final planning meeting for this event will be at Richmond Friends Meeting's regular Social Concerns meeting on Tuesday January 10th. Information shared on this site between then and now will be helpful.To learn how you can volunteer, please contact us.
The program will be held at the Friends Meeting, 4500 Kensington Ave. on Friday, January 27th from 7-9 p.m. and continue Saturday, January 28th from 9:30 a.m. to -12:30 p.m. At the evening presentation on Friday the 27th participants will learn about different programs being carried out on counter recruitment and alternatives to the military. The Friday evening session will offer an opportunity to design a plan of action for the Richmond community. The Saturday session will help participants refine their skills for engaging with people with differing views through interactive, participatory exercises.
The workshop, Fostering Constructive Conversations, is based on the premise that “You cannot teach a man [woman] anything. You can only help them find it for himself.” (Galileo.)Presenters Scilla and Paul Wahrhaftig of the American Friends Service Committee, Pittsburgh are both trained in mediation, dialogue and listening. This training is already being used extensively in the work on Alternatives to Military Service in Pittsburgh.Families and high school age youth are encouraged to participate in this special event in the Friends’ Peace Lecture series.
For more information, contact:
Emily Kimball etkimball(at)aol.comor the Richmond Peace Education Center at 232-1002, rpec.1 (at) juno.com
Presenters biographies:
SCILLA WAHRHAFTIG
Scilla Wahrhaftig has a long history of Quaker activism, in England, Zimbabwe and the US. In November 2001 she spent nine months as staff for the Quaker United Nations Office in New York working on the issues arising from 9/11. Scilla also served on the Peace Issues Working Group of Friends World Committee for Consultation that put on a major peace conference in Guilford, North Carolina in January 2003, "Friends Peace Witness in a Time of Crises".
She is also on the planning committee for the Quaker conference on Torture to be held in Guilford in June 2006.
She is presently working as staff person for the American Friends Service Committee Pennsylvania Office. The focus of the work is peace building through dialogue and listening. She has been trained in conflict resolution, mediation and dialogue. Together with her husband Paul has developed a training, Fostering Constructive Conversations, for refining skills for communicating with people with differing views from your own.
PAUL WAHRHAFTIG
Paul Wahrhaftig has been active in organized conflict resolution since its modern beginnings in the early 1970s, both as a practi-tioner and organizer/networker. Beginning in 1972 he helped popularize the new concept of community dispute resolution programs. He has served on many task forces and planning groups that have helped chart the field. As President of the Conflict Resolution Center International, (1981-2003) Paul actively chronicled and highlighted the major issues and developments in conflict resolution around the globe in the publication he edited, Conflict Resolution Notes. He co-authored The MOVE Crisis in Philadelphia: Extremist Groups and Conflict Resolution, which has become a standard text. His most recent book is Community Dispute Resolution, Empowerment and Social Justice.
Paul is an active practitioner with over two decades of experience in the practice of mediation, handling family, workplace, community and multiparty conflicts. He has conducted trainings on three continents and has taught conflict resolution at Carnegie Mellon University. He drew on his roots in conflict resolution to design, along with his wife Scilla Wahrhaftig, Fostering Public Conversations training. FCC helps people turn potential conflict situations into constructive dialogue.
In 1999 he was honored with the Margaret Herrman Award by the National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution for his lifetime contributions to the conflict resolution field.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
counterrecruiting
protest
peace
war
anti-war
iraq
indymedia
The campaign comes as political parties in Iraq, some Republicans and many Democrats in Congress support an exit strategy with a timeline. Conservative Democratic Congressman John Murtha (HJ Res 73), a decorated Vietnam War veteran and long time supporter of the war, and Republican Representative Walter Jones (HJR 55) of North Carolina whose district includes Camp Lejeune, a major marine base, have both introduced proposals for an exit from Iraq."It is important for Representative Cooper to take a stand against Bush's failed 'stay the course' policy in Iraq," said Phillip Vest, MoveOn member from Nashville. "That's why more than 897 constituents signed a petition to urge him to support an exit strategy with a timeline that brings our troops home by the end of 2006," Phillip Vest concluded.
The above, sent in by Richard, is from Chris Lugo's "Cooper Urged to Support Iraq Exit Strategy" (Tennessee Independent Medica Center). In this indymedia roundup, we focus on the domestic (United States) reactions to the continued occupation of Iraq. In case you've missed it, a weak wave of Operation Happy Talk is rolling through the mainstream media yet again. It's weak because even they know they've been burned everytime in the past. However, it is still present. Hopefully, there's something here that will make you think or feel inspired.
There has been positive feedback regarding everyone attempting to find at least one more person to address the issue of the war with. In this community, we're not staying silent but we need to carry it beyond this community. Make your voice heard. Constituents are making sure Cooper hears them. In Maine, they're making sure their senators hear them. We learn of that in Claire's highlight, Sara Donnelly's "A Somber Occupation" (Portland Phoenix):
Last December, 13 anti-war activists gathered in Senator Susan Collins's office in Portland. They read the names of the American soldiers who had died to date in the Iraq War, as well as an equal number of Iraqi civilians who died. They occupied Collins's office for roughly four hours and, before they left, asked the senator to hold a "town meeting" to discuss the war with her constituents.
On February 4, 17 Maine peace activists gathered in the Portland offices of Senator Olympia Snowe. Again, they read the names of the American soldiers who had died in the Iraq War and an equal number of Iraqi names -- over 2000 total by that date. This time, after someone read the name of each war-dead, they marked an X, in red or black marker, on a giant sheet of cloth to demonstrate the enormity of the loss. They then asked Snowe to meet with her constituents in a town meeting on the war.
On March 18, 35 people gathered in Representative Tom Allen's Portland office. They repeated the February action's format.
The names of the war dead were read, X marks were drawn on a white sheet, and, at the end, the request for a town meeting.
On June 23, 100 people gathered to protest the war in front of Collins's Bangor office.
About a month later, on August 26, another occupation occurred in Collins's Lewiston office. Someone brought a bell, which rang after each name was read.
Then again on October 14, at Snowe's office in Biddeford. The names, the sheet, the bell, the request for a town meeting.
All told, there have been six nearly identical occupations of Maine's congressional delegates' offices (as well as several informal meetings with US Representative Mike Michaud), each lasting between four and six hours, each designed to slowly and somberly disrupt business as usual. It's all part of a statewide, coordinated action called the "Frequent Visit Program," founded a year ago by some of the state's most fervent anti-war activists.
Billys e-mails to note Ted Rall's "We're Looking For A Few Good Refuseniks: Support the troops who won't fight for Bush" (Boise Weekly):
NEW YORK--"Support the Troops, Oppose Their Actions," reads the oxymoronic headline of an April 2005 essay at antiwar.com. In a column titled, "Support Our Troops, Not Our President," liberal columnist Richard Reeves worries about Iraq war vets: "They will come home to be called 'torturers,' as Vietnam vets were called 'baby killers.'" To avoid repeating the supposed excesses of the '60s peace movement, today's antiwar groups praise the soldiers fighting the wars they abhor.
"What if they gave a war," a poster of the Vietnam era asked, "and nobody came?" If we are, as Jean-Paul Sartre posited, defined by our actions, most of the blame for the murder of more than 100,000 Iraqis belongs to our top government officials. But Bush's armchair warriors couldn't have invaded Iraq without a compliant and complicit United States military--one that, it should be noted, is all volunteer. These individuals, who enjoy free will, fire the guns and drop the bombs. If personal responsibility is to have any meaning, the men and women of our armed forces have to be held individually accountable for the carnage.
"Supporting our troops while opposing their actions may seem contradictory," argues Joshua Frank in the antiwar.com article. "The duties of U.S. soldiers in Iraq are wrong and many may be committing horrible crimes against humanity. True. But soldiers are mostly not bad people (though, of course, some are)." How is a person who voluntarily commits "horrible crimes against humanity" not a "bad person"?
Even if U.S. forces were not violating the rules of war in Iraq--torturing, maiming and murdering POWs, robbing and subjecting civilians to collective punishment, dropping white phosphorus and depleted uranium bombs on civilian targets--the war itself, based on false pretenses and opposed by the United Nations, would remain a gross violation of American and international law.
Soldiers, they say, must obey orders. However, "just following orders" wasn't an acceptable excuse at the Nuremberg trials, where the charges included waging a war of aggression. Do our government's poorly paid contract killers deserve our "support" for blindly following orders?
Finally, we turn to the issue Rall touched on (what if no one showed up for war) via Tori's highlight, Paul Fleisher, Emily Kimball and James' "Workshop on Alternatives to Military Service Planned - assistance needed" (Richmond IMC):
DO YOU HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF RECRUITMENT BY THE US ARMED FORCES AT LOCAL HIGH SCHOOLS? Please post what you know as a comment to this annoucement and help Richmond Friends Meeting and the Richmond Peace Education Center organize its two day workshop on alternatives to military service for young people. The workshops will counter military recruiters' efforts to fill their quotas, especially through local high schools.The final planning meeting for this event will be at Richmond Friends Meeting's regular Social Concerns meeting on Tuesday January 10th. Information shared on this site between then and now will be helpful.To learn how you can volunteer, please contact us.
The program will be held at the Friends Meeting, 4500 Kensington Ave. on Friday, January 27th from 7-9 p.m. and continue Saturday, January 28th from 9:30 a.m. to -12:30 p.m. At the evening presentation on Friday the 27th participants will learn about different programs being carried out on counter recruitment and alternatives to the military. The Friday evening session will offer an opportunity to design a plan of action for the Richmond community. The Saturday session will help participants refine their skills for engaging with people with differing views through interactive, participatory exercises.
The workshop, Fostering Constructive Conversations, is based on the premise that “You cannot teach a man [woman] anything. You can only help them find it for himself.” (Galileo.)Presenters Scilla and Paul Wahrhaftig of the American Friends Service Committee, Pittsburgh are both trained in mediation, dialogue and listening. This training is already being used extensively in the work on Alternatives to Military Service in Pittsburgh.Families and high school age youth are encouraged to participate in this special event in the Friends’ Peace Lecture series.
For more information, contact:
Emily Kimball etkimball(at)aol.comor the Richmond Peace Education Center at 232-1002, rpec.1 (at) juno.com
Presenters biographies:
SCILLA WAHRHAFTIG
Scilla Wahrhaftig has a long history of Quaker activism, in England, Zimbabwe and the US. In November 2001 she spent nine months as staff for the Quaker United Nations Office in New York working on the issues arising from 9/11. Scilla also served on the Peace Issues Working Group of Friends World Committee for Consultation that put on a major peace conference in Guilford, North Carolina in January 2003, "Friends Peace Witness in a Time of Crises".
She is also on the planning committee for the Quaker conference on Torture to be held in Guilford in June 2006.
She is presently working as staff person for the American Friends Service Committee Pennsylvania Office. The focus of the work is peace building through dialogue and listening. She has been trained in conflict resolution, mediation and dialogue. Together with her husband Paul has developed a training, Fostering Constructive Conversations, for refining skills for communicating with people with differing views from your own.
PAUL WAHRHAFTIG
Paul Wahrhaftig has been active in organized conflict resolution since its modern beginnings in the early 1970s, both as a practi-tioner and organizer/networker. Beginning in 1972 he helped popularize the new concept of community dispute resolution programs. He has served on many task forces and planning groups that have helped chart the field. As President of the Conflict Resolution Center International, (1981-2003) Paul actively chronicled and highlighted the major issues and developments in conflict resolution around the globe in the publication he edited, Conflict Resolution Notes. He co-authored The MOVE Crisis in Philadelphia: Extremist Groups and Conflict Resolution, which has become a standard text. His most recent book is Community Dispute Resolution, Empowerment and Social Justice.
Paul is an active practitioner with over two decades of experience in the practice of mediation, handling family, workplace, community and multiparty conflicts. He has conducted trainings on three continents and has taught conflict resolution at Carnegie Mellon University. He drew on his roots in conflict resolution to design, along with his wife Scilla Wahrhaftig, Fostering Public Conversations training. FCC helps people turn potential conflict situations into constructive dialogue.
In 1999 he was honored with the Margaret Herrman Award by the National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution for his lifetime contributions to the conflict resolution field.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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