It's the WAR DEPARTMENT

Guantanamo Newsletter #3

2012-01-21T12:15:00.000-06:00

OMNI GUANTANAMO NEWSLETTER #3, January 21, 2012. Compiled by Dick Bennett, for a Culture of Peace. Guantanamo: A Disaster from the War on Terror and the US Culture of War. (#1 March 3, 2011; #2 Dec. 11, 2011)

Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/

See Torture, War on Terrorism and other related newsletters.

Contents of #1 March 3, 2011

Film: Worthington, Stories from Guantanamo

Books: Kurnaz; Mayer; Worthington

Transferring Prisoners for Trial

CCR Close Guantanamo Statement

Return Guantanamo to Cuba

No End Soon

Investigative Reporters: Andy Worthington, Carol Rosenberg

Chinese Torture Techniques

Prisoners

Violation of Due Process

Wendell Griffin on Habeas Corpus

Contents of #2 Dec. 11, 2011

WikiLeaks on Guantanamo

NYT Criticism

False Imprisonment

Awal Gul, 7th to Die

Close Guantanamo Statement

Witness Against Torture

What Obama Should Have Said and Done

Books: Hansen, Guantanamo; Smith, Eight O’Clock Ferry

Contents of #3

Bush, Congress, Courts, Obama, Public Lawlessness

Kurnaz, Gitmo Survivor After 5 Years

Obama Signs “Battlefield Bill” for Indefinite Detention

January 11 Resistance Coalition

Witess Against Torture and Catholic Worker: January 11, 2012

Witness Against Torture and War Resisters League

In Addition to Gitmo: US Terrorism Prison Complex

Greenwald Book on Bush/Obama

Bush, Congress, Courts, Obama

NPR Partner content from:

“Guantanamo, 10 Years And Counting” by David Cole

The Nation (January 23, 2012).

Read Another Opinion On The 10-Year Anniversary Of Guantanamo

David Cole is The Nation's legal affairs correspondent. He is the author, most recently, of The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable.

[See OMNI’s Newsletters on Afghan War, Iraq War, Torture, War on Terrorism, and other related newsletters and OMNI Blog entries.]

January 11 marked a decade since the first of the men we once called "the worst of the worst" were brought to Guantanamo Bay, a location handpicked by the Bush administration so that it could detain and interrogate terror suspects far from the prying eyes of the law. In the intervening years much has improved at this remote U.S.-controlled enclave in Cuba. Allegations of ongoing torture have ceased; the detainees have access to lawyers and court review; and more than 600 of the 779 men once held there have been released.

But in another way, Guantanamo is a deeper problem today than it ever was. No longer a temporary exception, it has become a permanent fixture in our national firmament. And although at one time we could blame President George W. Bush's unilateral assertions of unchecked executive power for the abuses there, the continuing problem that is Guantanamo today is shared by all three government branches, and ultimately by all Americans. With President Obama's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on New Year's Eve, the prison is sure to be with us — and its prisoners sure to continue in their legal limbo — for the indefinite future.

President Bush undoubtedly committed the original sin. Had he followed the rules governing wartime detention from the outset, Guantanamo would not be an international embarrassment. It has long been established that in an ongoing war a country may detain the enemy for the conflict's duration. But the laws of war require that we afford hearings to those whose status is in doubt, that we release them when the conflict ends and that we treat them humanely throughout. Bush refused to provide hearings, asserted the prerogative to hold people during a never-ending "war on terror" and authorized systematic cruel and inhuman treatment. For years, Guantanamo was synonymous with Bush's defiantly lawless approach to the "war on terror."

But we can no longer point the finger only at Bush. He's been out of office for three years, and Guantanamo is still very much with us. Congress, with the support of many Democrats, has adopted a shortsighted "not in my backyard" attitude, making it impossible for President Obama to deliver on his promise to close Guantanamo. In provisions recently renewed in the NDAA, Congress has barred any transfer of Guantanamo detainees to a U.S. prison, even for criminal trial, and radically restricted the president's authority to transfer detainees to foreign countries, essentially requiring impossible guarantees that they won't ever pose a threat to the United States. As a result, even though more than half of the remaining detainees — eighty-nine of 171 — have been fully cleared for release by a joint review conducted by the military, CIA, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, they remain stuck there. Locking up people we concede need not be held is the very definition of arbitrary detention, but that has become the norm at Guantanamo.

The courts are also implicated. The Supreme Court twice sought to ensure that Guantanamo would be subject to law. In 2004, in a case brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which almost no one thought could be won, the Court ruled that the detainees had a statutory right to challenge the legality of their detentions by filing writs of habeas corpus. When Congress repealed the statutory basis for that decision, the Court in 2008 held that the detainees had a constitutional right to seek judicial review — the first time the Court had extended constitutional rights to foreign nationals outside our borders.

But the Court left the details to be worked out by the lower courts, and because all habeas cases must be filed in the District of Columbia, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit — the very court the Supreme Court overturned in its habeas rulings — must hear all appeals in the Guantanamo cases. In a series of decisions that come close to echoing the South's resistance to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the DC Circuit has rendered virtually meaningless the judicial review the Supreme Court says the Constitution guarantees. The DC Circuit allows indefinite detention based on notoriously unreliable intelligence reports, to which it accords a "presumption of regularity," while denying the detainee an opportunity to confront or rebut them. It upholds indefinite detention based on a mere "preponderance of evidence," and several judges have said they would not even require that minimal showing. As Judge Laurence Silberman candidly stated, "I doubt any of my colleagues will vote to grant [release] if he or she believes that it is somewhat likely that the petitioner is an al-Qaida adherent or an active supporter."

D.C. district courts have granted habeas in more than thirty cases, but the DC Circuit court has vacated or reversed every order the government has appealed. The Supreme Court, once celebrated for reintroducing the rule of law to Guantanamo, has now rendered judicial review a charade by repeatedly declining to intervene.

What seems to drive Congress and the courts is the desire to eliminate any risk, no matter how remote, that a detainee might harm us in the future. Neither Congress nor the courts, however, seem to have any problem with the countervailing risk, namely that we may be needlessly and arbitrarily locking up human beings for years who pose no threat whatsoever.

Meanwhile, despite his assessment that "the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained," Obama appears to have abandoned his promise to close the prison. He vowed to veto the NDAA because of its restrictions on his authority vis-a-vis detention and trial of al-Qaida suspects, but he reversed course and signed the bill after a House-Senate conference committee watered down some of its worst provisions. The bill is better because of his veto threat, but it still assures Guantanamo's continued existence.

At the same time, Obama has blocked all efforts at accountability for the abuses committed there. Even though the vast majority of detainees have been released, suggesting they were not "the worst of the worst" after all, and even though it is widely acknowledged that detainees held there were abused and in some instances tortured, the executive has issued no apologies. Guantanamo apparently means never having to say we're sorry.

We used to be able to blame the Bush administration for Guantanamo. No more. And although the executive, legislative and judicial branches are all deeply implicated in the ongoing injustice, we can't really lay the blame on the government. Guantanamo is our problem as citizens. No doubt because only foreigners are held and tried there, Americans have consistently looked the other way, even as the world calls for it to be closed. A 2010 CNN poll found that 60 percent of Americans favor keeping the prison there. Guantanamo will not close until we insist that our government heed the calls for justice that the world has rightly made.

Related NPR Stories

Guantanamo At 10: U.S. Weighs Future Of Detainees Jan. 11, 2012

Nuremberg, Tribunals And 'Justice And The Enemy' Jan. 11, 2012

A Look At Gitmo, 10 Years Later Jan. 11, 2012

Notes From a Guantanamo Survivor
Murat Kurnaz, The New York Times, Jan. 8, 2012, RSN
Kurnaz begins: "I left Guantanamo Bay much as I had arrived almost five years earlier - shackled hand-to-waist, waist-to-ankles, and ankles to a bolt on the airplane floor. My ears and eyes were goggled, my head hooded, and even though I was the only detainee on the flight this time, I was drugged and guarded by at least 10 soldiers."
READ MORE http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/304-justice/9331-notes-from-a-guantanamo-survivor

Obama Signs Homeland Battlefield Bill Into Law Sara Sorcher, National Journal , Dec. 31, 2011, RSNPresident Obama today signed the highly controversial War Spending Bill. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), with its so-called Homeland Battlefield provisions, allows the unconstitutional indefinite detention of US citizens by the US military.
READ MORE http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/316-20/9200-breaking-obama-signs-homeland-battlefield-bill-into-law

JANUARY 11 IS THE 10^TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF GUANTANAMO BAY PRISON for U.S. ILLEGALLY IMPRISONED AND TORTURED “DETAINEES” FROM AROUND THE WORLD. A coalition of groups including Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, the Catholic Worker, and War Resisters League are planning events. Contact www.amnestyusa.org/; www.witnesstorture.org; www.nrcat.org

The Oct.-Nov. 2011 no. of THE CATHOLIC WORKER announced:

TEN YEARS TOO MANY: NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION TO SHUT DOWN GUANTANAMO AND END TORTURE. In D. C. a human chain representing the people still detained without charge or fair trial at Guantanamo and Bagram to stretch from the White House to the Capitol. For more info. read the article in the above no. of CW or visit the website www.witnesstorture.org or write to Witness Against Torture care of Catholic Worker,

55 E. 3rd St.

, NY, N 10003.

FROM WAR RESISTERS LEAGUE

10 Years of detention and torture: Witness Against Torture January actions . January 2-12 Witness Against Torture will spend two weeks in Washington D.C. leading up to the 10 year commemoration of the Guantanamo prison and along with it a system of indefinite detention and torture that targets Arab, South Asian, and Muslim men and necessitates the spread of rampant Islamophobia that we have seen escalating over the last decade. January 3rd marks the beginning of a jury trial of 14 WAT activists who disrupted a session of Congress to demand that they stop permanent funding for Guantanamo prison. On January 11th, the date that marks 10 years of detention and torture at Guantanamo Bay, activists will gather for a demonstration against U.S. detention policies and form a human chain from the White House to Congress. Sign-up to join the protests and/or the fast that begins on January 2nd at www.2012.witnesstorture.org

Beyond Guantanamo, a Web of US Prisons for Terrorism Inmates “

Scott Shane, The New York Times, Dec. 1, 2011, RSN

The report begins: "It is the other Guantanamo, an archipelago of federal prisons that stretches across the country, hidden away on back roads. Today, it houses far more men convicted in terrorism cases than the shrunken population of the prison in Cuba that has generated so much debate. An aggressive prosecution strategy, aimed at prevention as much as punishment, has sent away scores of people. They serve long sentences, often in restrictive, Muslim-majority units, under intensive monitoring by prison officers. Their world is spare."

END GUANTANAMO NEWSLETTER #3

Afghan/Pakistan Newsletter #15

2012-01-19T16:47:00.002-06:00

OMNI NEWSLETTER ON AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN #15, January 18, 2011, Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace (#8 April 15, 2011; #9 June 10, 2011; #10 July 3, 2011; #11 July 13, 2011; #12 Sept. 5, 2011; #13 Oct. 2, 2011; #14 Oct. 15, 2011)

Here is the link to all the newsletters archived in the OMNI web site.

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/

How understand this catastrophic invasion and occupation?

Instead of Defense Department, Say War Department.

Instead of Taliban, Say Afghan Resistance.

Contents of #15

Taliban Peace Talks

McChrystal, Petraeus

Chomsky: World Militarism

Voices for Creative Nonviolence: Women and Children

PBS Film: We Take Our Stand

Merkley Afghan Withdrawal Amendment Passes Senate

Cortright, Ending Obama’s War

Pakistan After NATO Attack

Protest New Military Budget

Petitions

Afghans Hungry This Winter

US Torture (3)

IED Soldiers’ Deaths

Dear Dick,

Tell your representatives to support peace talks to end the war in Afghanistan.

Take Action The Obama Administration has been working to initiate peace talks with the Afghan Taliban. Such talks could be critical to ending the war in Afghanistan, which is what the majority of Americans want. But Mitt Romney and some in Congress are trying to undermine the prospects of peace talks to end the war.

Will you join us in pressing Congress not to sabotage the peace talks?

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/romneypeacetalks

A key element of the Administration's plans to initiate peace talks is a proposal to transfer Afghan Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo to another country, probably Qatar. But Reuters recently reported that some in Congress have attacked the idea of transferring the prisoners out of Guantanamo, and threatened to try to block the transfer. [1] Meanwhile, Romney has attacked the Administration for talking to the Taliban, even though, as David Ignatius noted in the Washington Post, two of Romney's key foreign policy advisers have long advocated for exactly the policy of talks that the Obama Administration says it is pursuing. [2]

Romney's attack might be mostly campaign posturing, but because it is so prominent, it can still have an effect on Members of Congress, especially if they aren't hearing from anyone that they support peace talks to end the war. The longer peace talks are delayed, the more American soldiers and Afghan civilians will die needless deaths.

Join us in pressing Congress to back peace talks to end the war in Afghanistan by using the link below.

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/romneypeacetalks

Thank you for all you do to help bring about a more just foreign policy,

Sarah Burns, Chelsea Mozen, Megan Iorio and Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy

References:

1. "Lawmakers may seek to block Taliban transfer," Mark Hosenball and Missy Ryan, Reuters, Fri, Jan 6 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/06/us-usa-afghanistan-transfer-idUSTRE80524I20120106

2. "Romney's misfired zinger on Taliban talks," David Ignatius, Washington Post, 01:01 PM ET, 01/17/2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/romneys-misfired-zinger-on-taliban-talks/2012/01/17/gIQAgYpq5P_blog.html

“McChrystal, Petraeus and Afghanistan, the Inside Story” by Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone, January 8, 2012, RSN

Intro: "In April 2010, Rolling Stone contributing editor Michael Hastings spent a month with Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Europe and Afghanistan, reporting on a profile of the supreme commander of all NATO forces in what had become

America

's longest-running war. To Hastings' astonishment, McChrystal and staff had plenty to say about the White House and its handling of the war - none of it complimentary, much of it contemptuous, and almost all of it on the record."

Noam Chomsky, “A Global Program of World Militarization”

Noam Chomsky, Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, RSN, Dec. 16, 2011

Intro: "This is a transcript of a conversation between members of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Noam Chomsky, which took place on September 21, 2011. Each question was asked in Dari and translated by Hakim."

Whatever Happened to Women and Children First? (guest post) November 4, 2011 at 7:06 pm by Mickie Lynn

By Johnny Barber
http://warisacrime.org/content/what-ever-happened-women-and-children-first

“All wars, whether just or unjust, disastrous or victorious, are waged against the child.” Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children, 1919.

In Kabul, the children are everywhere. You see them scrounging through trash. You see them doing manual labor in the auto body shops, the butchers, and the construction sites. They carry teapots and glasses from shop to shop. You see them moving through the snarled traffic swirling small pots of pungent incense, warding off evil spirits and trying to collect small change. They can be found sleeping in doorways or in the rubble of destroyed buildings. It is estimated that 70,000 children live on the streets of Kabul.

The big news story on CNN this morning [October 16, 2011] is the excitement generated as hundreds of people line up to buy the newest iphone. I can’t stop thinking of the children sitting in the dirt of the refugee camp, or running down the path pushing old bicycle tires, or the young boy sitting next to his overflowing sacks of collected detritus. He has a deep infection on the corner of his mouth that looks terribly infected. These images contrast with an image of an old grandfather, dressed in a spotless all white shalwar kameez squatting on the sidewalk outside a huge iron gate, embracing his beautiful young grand daughter in a huge hug, each smiling broadly, one of the few moments of joy I have witnessed on the streets of Kabul.

Afghanistan

, one in five children die before their 5^th birthday, (41% of the deaths occur in the first month of life). For the children who make it past the first month, many perish due to preventable and highly treatable conditions including diarrhea and pneumonia. Malnourishment affects 39% of the children, compared to 25% at the start of the

U.S.

invasion. 52% don’t have access to clean water. 94% of births are not registered. The children are afforded very little legal protection, especially girls, who are stilled banned from schools in many regions, used as collateral to settle debts, and married through arranged marriages as young as 10 years old. Though not currently an issue, HIV/AIDS looms as a catastrophic possibility as drug addiction increases significantly, even among women and children. Only 16% of women use modern contraception, and children on the streets are vulnerable to sexual exploitation. This is why the “State of the World’s Mothers” report issued in May 2011 by Save the Children ranked Afghanistan last, with only

Somalia

providing worse outcomes for their children.

Retired Army Col. John Agoglia said, “A key to America’s long-term national security and one of the best ways for our nation to make friends around the world is by promoting the health of women and children in fragile and emerging nations”–in Afghanistan, this strategy is failing. Not a single public hospital has been built since the invasion. It is not an impossibility; it is a matter of will. Emergency, an Italian NGO, runs 3 hospitals and 30 clinics throughout

Afghanistan

on a budget of 7 million dollars per year. This is ISAF’s (NATO’s International Security Assistance Force) monthly budget for air-conditioning.

Polls have consistently shown that over 90 percent of Americans believe saving children should be a national priority. Children comprise 65% of the Afghan population.

Afghanistan

was named the worst place on earth to be a child. In Afghanistan children have been sacrificed by the

United States

, collateral damage in our “war on terror”.

The mothers of these at risk children are not faring any better. Most are illiterate. Most are chronically malnourished. 1 woman in 11 dies in pregnancy or childbirth, this compares to 1 in 2,100 in the

(the highest of any industrialized nation). In Italy and Ireland, the risk of maternal death is less than 1 in 15,000 and in

Greece

it’s 1 in 31,800. Skilled health professionals attend only 14% of childbirths. A woman’s life expectancy is barely 45 years of age.

Women are still viewed as property. A law has been passed by the Karzai regime that legalizes marital rape, and requires a woman to get the permission of her husband to leave the house. Domestic violence is a chronic problem. A women who runs away from home (even if escaping violence) is imprisoned. Upon completion of her sentence she is returned to the husband. Self-immolation is still common as desperate women try to get out of impossible situations.

Shortly after the U.S. invasion, Laura Bush said, “The plight of women and children in

Afghanistan

is a matter of deliberate human cruelty, carried out by those who seek to intimidate and control.” President Bush said, “Our coalition has liberated Afghanistan and restored fundamental human rights and freedoms to Afghan women, and all the people of

Afghanistan

.” Actually, the former warlords responsible for the destruction, pillage, and rape of Afghanistan were ushered back into power by the

United States

. In 2007, these very same warlords, now Parliamentarians, passed a bill that granted amnesty for any killings during the civil war. A local journalist said, “The killers are the ones holding the pens, writing the law and continuing their crimes.”

When Malalai Joya addressed the Peace Loya Jirga convened in December, 2003, she boldly asked, “Why are we allowing criminals to be present here?” She was thrown out of the assembly. Undeterred, she ran for Parliament, winning in a landslide. She began her maiden speech in Parliament by saying, “My condolences to the people of

Afghanistan

…” As she continued speaking, the warlord sitting behind her threatened to rape and kill her. The MP’s voted her out of Parliament and Karzai upheld her ouster. In hiding, she continues to champion women’s rights. She has stated that the only people who can liberate Afghan women are the women themselves. When we spoke briefly to her by phone, she stated that she was surprised to still be alive, and needed to cancel our meeting, as it was too dangerous in the current security situation. The Red Cross states that the security situation is the worst it has been in 30 years.

America

, as our total defense budget balloons to 667 billion dollars per year, women and children are faring worse as well. In the “State of the World’s Mothers” report,

America

has dropped from 11^th in 2003 to 31^st of the developed countries today. We currently rank behind such luminaries as Estonia, Croatia, and

Slovakia

. We fall even farther in regards to our children, going from the 4^th ranked country to the 34^th. Poverty is on the increase with an estimated 1 child in 5 living in poverty. More than 20 million children rely on school lunch programs to keep from going hungry. The number of people living in poverty in

America

has grown by 2.6 million in just the last 12 months.

Dear reader, I hesitate to bother you with so many statistics, I eliminated the pie charts and graphs, and this report is still dull. After all, the new iphone has Siri, a personal assistant that understands you when you speak. You can verbally instruct it to send a text message, and it does! Now that’s excitement! CNN states there is no need to panic; the Atlanta store has plenty of phones to fill the demand.

Looking only at numbers it is easy to avoid the truth of the enormous amount of human suffering they envelop. Drive through the streets of any American city and these statistics come alive in the swollen ranks of the homeless. Drive through the streets of Kabul and these statistics come alive in the forms of hungry children begging for change.

It is difficult to ascertain what benefit America is deriving from our continued military presence in

Afghanistan

, though exploitation of natural resources certainly plays a role. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent in a military strategy that is failing by all indicators. Yet the politicians in this country continue to back this strategy. Arms dealers and contractors, like G.E. and Boeing, all with lobbyists on Capitol Hill, continue to reap big financial rewards and in turn reward politicians with financial support. Our politicians claim to be “tough on terror” and profess we are “winning”. But by what measure do they ascertain this? The only Afghan people benefiting from our presence are the people supporting the occupation forces, the warlords, and the drug lords. As the poppy fields produce record yields “poppy palaces” are springing up all over Kabul, ostentatious signs that someone is benefiting from our interference.

One measure to judge the success of a nation is its ability to protect its most vulnerable populations.

America

is not succeeding. The plight of women and children in

Afghanistan

is still a matter of deliberate human cruelty, carried out by those who seek to intimidate and control. When will our politicians hear the desperate cry of the street children of

Afghanistan

, who, with all the incense in the world, simply can’t ward off the evil of our occupation?

To support the vital work of Voices for Creative Non-Violence please see http://www.vcnv.or g

Posted in Afghan Peace negotiations, Afghan women, Afghanistan, Cost of war, Women's issues, children's issues, human rights, maternal health and reproductive rights | 3 Comments

AFGHAN/IRAQ WARS FILM

PBS broadcast of This is Where We Take Our Stand

Dwayne Knox via uark.edu 12-12-11 dwayne@ritternet.com

Dear Friends,

I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that This is Where We Take Our Stand, the film about the Iraq Veterans Against the War Winter Soldier/Iraq & Afghanistan Investigation, has now been distributed to every PBS station in the country for broadcast in January and February. Funded by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and distributed by the National Educational Television Association (NETA), the film finally has the chance to be seen by people all across the country.

The bad news is that every individual PBS station can choose whether or not they will air the film. And in today's political climate, we know that many, even most stations will not want to touch this compelling, vital film about the reality of America's wars in the Middle East. We need your help to convince them that they must show this film.

CONTACT PBS LOCAL STATION AND URGE THEM TO SHOW THE FILM,

Also, please forward this email to your list and to everyone you know.

As we wrote in a letter to PBS programmers,

These aren't political or theoretical arguments, but the eyewitness accounts of men and women who thought they were fighting for their country and learned that, as Jason Washburn, a Marine veteran with three tours in

Iraq

put it, "We were on the bully's team, and that's not what I signed up for." It is a wrenching, painful, and necessary story.

This film reminds us that nothing is over. And it asks us to question what has changed. Certainly not the war in Afghanistan, which has expanded in the past three years, and not the killing and misery in Iraq, unleashed by 8 years of military occupation.

This is Where We Take Our Stand is the story of hundreds of Iraq War veterans who risked everything to publicly tell their stories of killings of civilians, torture, and the widespread degradation and destruction of Iraq that was brought on by the policies of their government. And it is a story that needs to be told especially today. These brave soldiers and veterans are challenging a complacency that runs very deep underscoring a willingness to accept unspeakable horrors committed in our name-as long as we don't know about them.

Go to http://www.thisiswherewetakeourstand.com to watch episodes of the web series that the film is based on, and http://ivaw.org for information about Winter Soldier.

Thank you for your help. In the coming weeks we will send out announcements of where and when This is Where We Take Our Stand will be broadcast.

David Zeiger and Bestor Cram

Co-Producers

AFGHANISTAN

Merkley Amendment Passes Senate by Voice Vote

In a stunning development, the Senate today approved the Merkley Amendment to the NDAA, calling for an expedited military withdrawal from

Afghanistan

, by voice vote. Previously, 27 was the high water mark of Senators urging a speedier withdrawal. JustForeignPolicy 11-30-11

On a voice vote. How did Pryor and Boozman vote?

PAKISTAN

Washington Frets Over

Pakistan

Response to Soldiers’ Deaths

Jim Lobe, News Report, NationofChange, Nov. 29, 2011: “As the Pentagon scrambled Monday to satisfy Pakistani demands for a full accounting of Saturday's lethal air attack on two border posts, official Washington expressed hope that Islamabad's retaliation will be limited in both time and scope. Whatever actually took place, however, the attack appears to have brought relations between Washington and Islamabad – already badly battered by a series of incidents earlier this year – to a new low.” READ | DISCUSS | SHARE http://www.nationofchange.org/washington-frets-over-pakistan-response-soldiers-deaths-1322582891

Cortright, David. Ending Obama’s War. Paradigm, 2011.

Home ›› Research ›› Faculty Books ›› Ending Obama's War: Responsible Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Ending Obama's War: Responsible Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan

From Paradigm Publishers (2011)

During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly criticized the Bush administration’s policy of invading and occupying Iraq, but he was equally firm in declaring his support for the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan.

In his widely quoted speech at a Chicago antiwar rally, Obama declared, “I’m not opposed to all wars. I am opposed to dumb wars.” It was thus no surprise that President Obama expanded the U.S. military commitment in March and then again in December 2009. And now, smart or not, Afghanistan is Obama’s war.

When Obama announced his intention to begin military withdrawals from Afghanistan just 18 months after sending more troops to the country, the reactions ranged from ridicule to disbelief. Why send tens of thousands of additional troops only to remove them soon afterward? To many critics, the announcement seemed to continue the folly of Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq.

In these pages, David Cortright offers a critical analysis of U.S./NATO military policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and examines alternative strategies for preventing terrorist insurgency and advancing development and human rights. He critiques the strategic and political assumptions undergirding military surge policies and illuminates the worsening security situation and growing influence of the Taliban.

Cortright pays particular attention to the status of women and shows how responsible military withdrawal enhances their chances instead of risking them as often disingenuous critics contend.

Cortright’s goal is not only to hold Obama to his stated intention to withdraw from Afghanistan beginning in July of 2011, but to do so in a way that yields true human security—better political leaders, more aid workers, and many more educated Afghans, women as well as men. As a longtime peace activist and advocate of diplomatic alternatives, Cortright speaks with a moral authority unrivalled among the chorus of commentators castigating Obama’s policies.

Reviews:
"In his new book, David Cortright makes a compelling case for a comprehensive calibrated strategy of military disengagement that offers the U.S. and its partners the most realistic chance of achieving their objectives in Afghanistan and the region in a cost effective and timely manner.” — Lawrence Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense

"A balanced, well-documented critique of the war in Afghanistan combined with a thoughtful plan for reducing our military footprint responsibly. Essential reading for those seeking a new way forward in Afghanistan." — Lt. General (USA, Ret.) Robert G. Gard, Jr., Ph.D.

Pakistan

Stops Supplies After Deadly NATO Attack

Shams Momand, Reuters, Nov. 26, 2011, RSN

Momand reports: "NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military outposts in northwest

Pakistan

on Saturday, killing as many as 28 troops and plunging US-Pakistan relations, already deeply frayed, further into crisis. Pakistan retaliated by shutting down vital NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, used for sending in almost half of the alliance's non-lethal material."

Not Thankful for the 2012 Defense Budget! Call Your Senators Today ! 11-21-11 From Historians Against the War

While the “Super” Committee works on the federal budget for FY 2013 and beyond, under the radar the Congress is moving forward with another huge Defense budget for FY 2012. When it returns from Thanksgiving break, the Senate will be voting on a $682.5 billion Defense Authorization bill.

This continues the war in

Afghanistan

and wastes unconscionable amounts of money at a time when there are massive cutbacks in domestic programs at the federal, state and local levels.

Senator Jeff Merkley (OR) has just introduced Amendment No. 1174, requiring the President to present a plan “for an expedited withdrawal from

Afghanistan

prior to 2014.” Co-sponsors are Senators Brown, Durbin, Gillibrand, Harkin, Lee, and Udall. For complete text

http://fcnl.org/issues/afghanistan/Afghanistan_Amendment_to_NDAA_DAV11E52.pdf

If your Senators are not on this list, please call them today and ask them to co-sponsor Amendment No. 1174 to the 2012 Defense Authorization bill. Remind them squandering billions of dollars on a failed war is against the best interest of American and Afghan people. Use the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) toll free number 1-877-429-0678 to call the congressional switchboard and ask to be connected to your Senators

While on the phone, it would be great if you could also urge your member of Congress to co-sponsor Rep. Barbara Lee’s excellent bill: HR 780 Responsible End to the War in Afghanistan Act, which specifies that funding for US armed forces in Afghanistan shall be limited to the “safe and orderly withdrawal” of all US troops and Defense Department contractors. List of co-sponsors (65):

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR00780:@@@P

Please send any helpful feedback to hiscze@aol.com .

Carolyn Eisenberg on behalf of Historians Against War Steering Committee

The Next Wars to End

Petitions for Diplomacy Now!

"This may definitely not be over, and it may not be over for a long time. Nine-and-a-half years later, it is most definitely not over. So, what we have to do is I think demonstrate the strategic patience that is necessary to win a long war."

~US Ambassador to

Afghanistan

Ryan Crocker on the Long War (September 5, 2011)

While monitoring possible deception during the Iraq pullout, it is important for the peace movement to engage in the effort to end the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Experience shows that a vibrant anti-war movement is a necessary element in ending these wars. Here are some steps:

1. Out of Afghanistan: 33,000

troops by next year, the rest by 2014. Demand the end of torture, and advocate peace diplomacy now. Sign and circulate this petition: Prevent Afghan Torture, Enforce Leahy Law. http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/prevent-afghan-torture-enforce-leahy-law.html

2. Pakistan, where the immediate issue is to block a further

escalation of ground troops, as well as the rising number of drone attacks. Please sign and circulate this petition: No US Escalation in

Pakistan

. http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/no-u-s-escalation-in-pakistan.html

Continue reading... http://tomhayden.com/home/the-next-wars-to-end.html

AFGHANS HUNGRY WINTER 2011-2912

“2 Million Afghans Face Hungry Winter.” ADG (11-19-11). The UN is trying to raise $142 million for them. The peace movement might reply with a statement and a question: End the war and convert the killing money to food money. The famine is mainly in Tajik north

Afghanistan

. What about the Pashtuns, the main ethnic group and source of the Taliban?

“The UN Torture Report

Stirring Pressure for Congressional Response”

Ten years after promising that human rights would be protected in Afghanistan, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has verified "systemic torture" by Afghan security forces trained and funded by the

United States

The UN report, described in a lead New York Times story on October 10, is triggering calls once again for enforcement of the so-called Leahy Law, passed in the 1990s, which prohibits any

funding, weapons or training to security force units in other countries committing gross human rights violations. A loophole in the Leahy Law, however, allows Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to waive the ban by issuing a finding that the Afghan government is taking remedial measures, including bringing responsible members of the torture units "to justice," and that "all necessary corrective steps have been taken."

Sign the petition against torture in

Afghanistan

...

(See: Tom Hayden, Peace Exchange Bulletin, October 21, 2011

Prevent Afghan Torture: Enforce the Leahy Law

A recent United Nations report suggests that the United States and NATO allies are outsourcing torture and human rights violations in

Afghanistan

. The report concludes that there is a continuing pattern and practice of "systematic" torture in spite of repeated efforts at reform. (UN Assistance Mission in

Afghanistan

, October 2011)

Current

policy violates the Leahy Amendment to the Foreign Appropriations Act and Defense Appropriations Act (Sec. 563, P.L. 106-429 and Sec. 8092, P.L. 106-259, 2001).

To Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Patrick Leahy:

We, the undersigned, call on you to immediately invoke the Leahy Amendment to end funding or training for units of the Afghanistan National Security Directorate, armed forces, and police engaged in torture or gross violations of human rights until all necessary corrective steps have been taken, including steps to bring those responsible to justice.

Sign the petition against torture in Afghanistan...

From Tom Hayden, The Peace Exchange Bulletin, Oct. 21, 2011

“UN Finds 'Systematic' Torture in

Afghanistan

”

Alissa J. Rubin, The New York Times October 10, 2011 RSN

Alissa J. Rubin reports: "Detainees are hung by their hands and beaten with cables, and in some cases their genitals are twisted until the prisoners lose consciousness at sites run by the Afghan intelligence service and the Afghan National Police, according to a United Nations report released here on Monday."

IED Improvised Explosive Device Weapon of

Iraq

and Afghan RESISTANCE

Cockburn, Andrew. “Search and Destroy: The Pentagon’s Losing Battle Against IEDs.” Harper’s Magazine (Nov. 2011). The Pentagon by 2008 had spent “at least $60 billion to combat IEDs” and in 2012 it “plans to spend at least $10.1 billion” more—and the results have been “dismal.” By May 2007 “nearly 70,000” IEDs had been planted in

Iraq

by an enemy consisting of “’multiple small independent groups” able to adapt rapidly to changed tactics. And many of these groups “were bitterly antagonistic—Shia, Sunni, Al Qaeda, and so forth”—yet they shared information about IED techniques within “days or even hours.” What does work technically is the skill of low-tech bomb specialists, Much of the article is about Master Sergeant Tano Chavez, a brilliant specialist in disarming IEDs. But the attacks continue, and Sergeant Chavez, who suffered several severe concussions and other wounds, returned home suffering from many maladies (traumatic brain injury TBI, PTSD, hearing loss), and now “non-deployable.” Assassinations of High Value Targets, “the ultimate objective of our entire counter-IED strategy,” also have not worked against IEDs, but have even increased them. After assassinations, “IED attacks did not go down” in the vicinity; rather, “They went up—by a lot.” This article damns indirectly the occupation and directly “the techno-war that keeps the money flowing.”

END OF NEWSLETTER #15 ON AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN

US "War on Terrorism" and Islamophobia

2012-01-19T10:33:00.000-06:00

OMNI NEWSLETTER #4 ON US WAR ON TERRORISM, January 19, 2012. Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace.

Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/

Related Newsletters: Afghanistan, Air War, Bases, Bush, CIA, Homeland Security, Imperialism, Indefinite Detention, Iraq, Lawlessness, Militarism, National Security State, 9-11, Obama, Pakistan, Pentagon, Secrecy, State Terrorism, Surveillance, Terrorism, Torture , War Crimes, Wars, and more.

Contents of #4

Cole and Lobel, Less Safe, Less Free

Costs of Privatized War on Terror

Klare: Al Qaeda to China

Obama, Oil, China

Allende to Bin Laden

Mother Jones: FBI vs. Muslims, Continued Rendition

JPN: Islamophobia Around the World

Younge: Bigotry and Europe’s Terrorists

FAIR: Perceiving “Islamic Terror” in Norway

Cole, David and Jules Lobel. Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror. National Books, 2008.

One of the most important critiques to be put forward so far from the civil libertarians, [Cole and Lobel] offer unsparing criticism, muster their arguments with skill and artistry, and most importantly they offer constructive criticism of the current Bush administration model.
_—_HARPER’S
Highly recommended . . . clear, incisive, and informative.
_—_{LIBRARY JOURNAL}
A resounding argument contra administration policy, more effectively stated than Alan Dershowitz’s recent Preemption.
_—_KIRKUS
[Cole and Lobel] argue eloquently and forcefully that preventive war makes flawed foreign policy.
_—_PITTSBURGH_POST-GAZETTE

Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror, 2008.

NOW IN PAPERBACK — Winner of the first Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties prize, the book Zbigniew Brzezinski calls "a timely and unsparing exposure of the disastrous consequences of the 'war on terror' demagogy of the Bush administration"

If [terrorists] do attack again, I hope we will have the likes of David Cole and Jules Lobel to help us think through our response.
_{—THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS}

In this brilliantly conceived critique, two of the country’s leading constitutional scholars argue that the Bush administration’s preemptive approach to domestic and international security has not only compromised our character but has in fact made us more vulnerable to future terrorist attacks.

In a groundbreaking analysis of efforts employed in the name of protecting its citizens—preventive detention, coercive interrogation, pretextual prosecutions, registration of Arab and Muslim men, and preventive war—law professors David Cole and Jules Lobel expose the government’s abysmal record of failed prosecutions and empty successes. The authors argue that these results, when coupled with the resentment such coercive tactics have engendered throughout the world, have left us less safe than we would be had we employed a more sensible and less controversial preventive strategy. The book concludes by proposing an alternative preventive strategy to guide us into the future.

Already standard reading for those who question the idea that “war” is the appropriate response to terrorism, Less Safe, Less Free offers an eloquent and original argument for a return to the rule of law.

David Cole is a professor of law at Georgetown University, the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, and the author, most recently, of the American Book Award–winning Enemy Aliens. He lives in Washington, D.C. Jules Lobel is a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh, a constitutional lawyer, and an expert on emergency powers and the laws governing war. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“Privatizing the War on Terror”

John W. Whitehead, Antiwar.com, RSN, January 18, 2012

Whitehead reports: "America's troops may be returning home from Iraq, but contrary to President Obama's assertion that 'the tide of war is receding,' we're far from done paying the costs of war."

FROM AL-QAEDA TO CHINA: Michael Klare

December 6, 2011
Tomgram: Michael Klare, A New Cold War in Asia?

Last Friday, the U.S. military formally handed over its largest base in Iraq, the ill-named “Camp Victory,” to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The next morning, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius officially declared counterinsurgency wars in the Middle East dead in -- if you don’t mind an inapt word -- the water. (He is personally in mourning.) He quoted one unnamed official describing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s planning for the new Pentagon budget in this fashion: “It’s not going to be likely that we will deploy 150,000 troops to an area the way we did in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

No indeed. As a result, in the inter-service scramble for the biggest slice of the Defense Department’s budgetary pie, the winners, Ignatius tells us, are going to be the Air Force and the Navy. Translated geopolitically, this means that the focus of future military planning will switch to the Pacific -- with this country’s largest foreign creditor, China (not al-Qaeda), as the new enemy.

In the what's-old-is-new category, this is priceless. In the spring of 2001, the Bush administration was focused on a strategic review of global military policy, led by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, which “concluded that the Pacific Ocean should now become the most important focus of U.S. military deployments, with China now perceived as the principal threat to American global dominance” and its number one enemy. In response, the Chinese were already issuing their own threats. (Terrorism, the Bush administration then felt, was for wusses and Democrats, which is why they paid next to no attention to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, despite warnings from officials of the outgoing Clinton administration, the CIA, and others.)

September 11, 2001, of course, sent them in quite another direction that -- we can only assume -- left China’s leaders thanking their lucky stars, while the U.S. military bogged itself down in two disastrous wars in the Greater Middle East. A decade later, the U.S. is economically weaker, a battered former “sole superpower” still in need of an enemy, still thinking about global energy supplies, and, if anything, more reliant than ever on a military-first policy in the world. As always, TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, is ahead of the curve in grasping just what’s at stake and why we should be worried as the Obama administration pivots, readying itself for its return to the pre-9/11 Bush moment. Sigh. (To catch Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Klare discusses the American military build-up in the Pacific,
click here or download it to your iPod here.) Tom
“Playing With Fire: Obama’s Risky Oil Threat to China “
By Michael T. Klare
When it comes to China policy, is the Obama administration leaping from the frying pan directly into the fire? In an attempt to turn the page on two disastrous wars in the Greater Middle East, it may have just launched a new Cold War in Asia -- once again, viewing oil as the key to global supremacy.
The new policy was signaled by President Obama himself on November 17th in an address to the Australian Parliament in which he laid out an audacious -- and extremely dangerous -- geopolitical vision. Instead of focusing on the Greater Middle East, as has been the case for the last decade, the United States will now concentrate its power in Asia and the Pacific. “My guidance is clear,” he declared in Canberra. “As we plan and budget for the future, we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region.” While administration officials insist that this new policy is not aimed specifically at China, the implication is clear enough: from now on, the primary focus of American military strategy will not be counterterrorism, but the containment of that economically booming land -- at whatever risk or cost.
The Planet’s New Center of Gravity
The new emphasis on Asia and the containment of China is necessary, top officials insist, because the Asia-Pacific region now constitutes the “center of gravity” of world economic activity. While the United States was bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the argument goes,

China

had the leeway to expand its influence in the region. For the first time since the end of World War II, Washington is no longer the dominant economic actor there. If the United States is to retain its title as the world’s paramount power, it must, this thinking goes, restore its primacy in the region and roll back Chinese influence. In the coming decades, no foreign policy task will, it is claimed, be more important than this.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.

DESAPARECIDOS USA: BIN LADEN, Allende

In 1973, with CIA, Kissinger, and Nixon in close support, General Pinochet’s troops overthrew and murdered the elected president of

Chile

, Salvador Allende. His body was dumped in a grave by the sea, the first of the Desaparecidos Pinochet would hide away.

MAJOR INVESIGATIONS BY MOTHER JONES (Sept.-Oct. 2011).

MASSIVE FBI ATTACKS ON MUSLIMS

“The Informants: The FBI Has Built a Massive Network of Spies to Prevent Another Domestic Attack. But are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?” By Trevor Aaronson. “Our yearlong investigation into the FBI’s vast program to infiltrate and spy on

America

’s Muslim communities, Plus 508 prosecutions, 158 stings, 49 agent provocateurs: We crunch the numbers.?”

“Locked Up (for the FBI) Abroad. The feds’ secret program to have American citizens detained and interrogated by foreign governments.” “Inside ‘rendition-lite.’”

ISLAMOPHOBIA IN NORWAY AND AROUND WORLD, Jewish Peace News jpn@jewishpeacenews.net to jbennet 7-27-11

I'm enclosing a few of the better articles describing and providing analysis for the mass murders in Norway, as well as to the reactions to them in the US.

The last link below describes some of the reactions in Israel.

An outstanding feature of reactions everywhere has been the tendency to blame Muslims, even before any actual information was available. Then, once it was known that the murderer was a white Christian, many still insisted that this, too, was somehow (at least in part) the fault of Muslims.

Additional interesting characteristic of much of mainstream commentary is the wish to use the terms 'terrorist'/'terrorism' exclusively to acts performed by Muslims - another symptom of deeply internalized racism.

Racheli Gai, JPN

Max Blumenthal: Anders Behring Breivik, a perfect product of the Axis of Islamophobia (http://maxblumenthal.com/2011/07/anders-behring-breivik-a-perfect-product-of-the-axis-of-islamophobia/ )

Glen Greenwald: The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of "Terrorism" http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/23/nyt/index.html )

And from

Israel

, Yossi Gurvitz: http://972mag.com/israelis%E2%80%99-perverse-support-of-terrorism/

Racheli. http://www.thenation.com/article/162270/europes-homegrown-terrorists

Gary Younge: Europe's Homegrown Terrorists

July 25, 2011

Two weeks after the fatal terrorist attacks of July 7, 2005, in London, and one day after another failed attack, a student, Jean Charles de Menezes, was in the London Underground when plainclothes police officers gave chase and shot him seven times in the head.

Initial eyewitness reports said he was wearing a suspiciously large puffa jacket on a hot day and had vaulted the barriers and run when asked to stop. Anthony Larkin, who was on the train, said he saw “this guy who appeared to have a bomb belt and wires coming out.” Mark Whitby, who was also at the station, thought he saw a Pakistani terrorist being chased and gunned down by plainclothes policemen. Less than a month later, Whitby said, “I now believe that I could have been looking at the surveillance officer” being thrown out of the way as Menezes was being killed.

The Pakistani turned out to be a Brazilian. Security cameras showed he was wearing a light denim jacket and clearly in no rush as he picked up a free paper and swiped his metrocard.

“The way we see things is affected by what we know and what we believe,” wrote John Berger in Ways of Seeing. “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”

When some Western commentators see a terrorist attack they are apparently far more comfortable with what they believe than what they know.

So it was on Friday when news emerged of the appalling attacks in

Norway

that have left an estimated seventy-six dead and a nation traumatized. Rupert Murdoch’s Sun in Britain (the bestselling daily newspaper) ran with the headline “Al Qaeda massacre: Norway’s 9/11.” The Weekly Standard insisted: “We don’t know if al Qaeda was directly responsible for today’s events, but in all likelihood the attack was launched by part of the jihadist hydra.” Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post then claimed: “This is a sobering reminder for those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists.”

In just a few hours an entire conceptual framework had been erected—though hardly from scratch—to discuss the problem of Muslims in particular and non-white immigration in Europe in general and the existential threat these problems pose to civilization as we know it.

Then came the fact that the terrorist was actually a white, fundamentalist Christian and a neo-Nazi, Anders Breivik, raging against Islam and multiculturalism. Unlike Muslims in the wake of Islamist attacks, Christians weren’t called upon to insist upon their moderation. No one argued that white people had to get with the Enlightenment project. But the bombings—and the presumptions about who was responsible—suggest that the true threat to European democracy is not Islam or Muslims but, once again, fascism and racists.

The belief that Muslims must have been involved chimes easily with a distorted, hysterical understanding of the demographic, religious and racial dynamics that have been present in Europe for well over a generation, variants of which are also at work in the United States today.

The general framing goes like this. Europe is being overrun by Muslims and other non-white immigrants, who are outbreeding non-Muslims at a terrifying rate. Unwilling to integrate culturally and unable to compete intellectually, Muslim populations have become hotbeds of terrorist sympathy and activity. Their presence threatens not only security but the liberal consensus regarding women’s rights and gay rights that Western Europe has so painstakingly established; and overall, this state of affairs represents a fracturing of society that is losing its common values. This has been allowed to happen in the name of not offending specific ethnic groups, otherwise known as multiculturalism.

One could spend all day ripping these arguments to shreds, but for now let’s just deal with the facts.

There have been predictions that the Muslim population of Europe will almost double by 2015 (Oner Taspiner, the Brookings Institution); double by 2020 (Don Melvin, the Associated Press); and be 20 percent of the continent by 2050 (Esther Pan, Council on Foreign Relations). Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum told Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches: “The number I heard is every 32 years the population, the European population of Europe will be reduced by 50 percent. That’s how bad their birthrates are. This is in many respects a dying continent from the standpoint of European-Europeans.”

This is nonsense. The projections are way off. While Muslims in Europe do have higher birthrates than non-Muslims, their birthrates are falling. A Pew Forum study, published in January 2011, forecast an increase of Muslims in European population from 6 percent in 2010 to 8 percent in 2030.

The Norwegian terrorist Breivik feared a Muslim takeover. But Muslims make up 3 percent of Norway. Black Americans have a greater presence in Alaska.

But even if these predictions were true, so what? There’s nothing to say Europe has to remain Christian or majority-white.

Nor do immigrants struggle to integrate. In Britain, Asian Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus all marry outside of their own groups at the same rates as whites. For most ethnic minorities in Britain, roughly half or more of their friends are white. Only 20 percent of those born in Britain have friends only from their own group. According to a Pew Research Center survey, the principal concerns of Muslims in France, Germany and Spain are unemployment and Islamic extremism.

In most of Europe the official politics of multiculturalism that the likes of Breivik and more mainstream politicians rail against—a liberal, state-led policy of encouraging and supporting cultural difference at the expense of national cohesion—is an absolute fiction. Last year German chancellor Angela Merkel claimed the “multikulti” experiment had failed. Earlier this year, British Prime Minister David Cameron said the same thing. The truth is that neither country ever tried such an experiment. “We never had a policy of multiculturalism,” explains Mekonnen Mesghena, head of migration and intercultural management at the Heinrich Böll Foundation. “We had a policy of denial: denial of immigration and of diversity. Now it’s like we are waking up from a long trance.”

The real object of their ire is the existence of “other”—meaning non-white—cultures and races in Europe: the fact of “other” cultures, not the promotion of them. The single greatest obstacle to integration in most of Europe is not Islam or multiculturalism but racism and the economic and academic disadvantage that comes with it.

And, finally, Muslims are nowhere near the greatest terrorist threat. According to Europol, between 2006 and 2008 only .4 percent of terrorist plots (including attempts and fully executed attacks) in Europe were from Islamists. The lion’s share (85 percent) were related to separatism. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. But it’s not on the scale or of the nature that those first out of the gate on Friday claimed it was. Put bluntly, if you have to assume anything when a bomb goes off in Europe, think region, not religion.

But there are some in Europe who are struggling to cope with the changes taking place—who are failing to integrate into changing societies and who harbor deep-seated resentments against their fellow citizens. That is a sizeable and growing section of the white population so alienated that it has once again made fascism a mainstream ideology on the continent.

In Germany the bestselling book since the Second World War by former Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin blames inbreeding among Turks and Kurds for “congenital disabilities” and argues that immigrants from the Middle East are a “genetic minus” for the country. “But the subject is usually hushed up,” he wrote. “Perish the thought that genetic factors could be partially responsible for the failure of parts of the Turkish populations in the German school system.”

A poll published in the national magazine Focus in September 2010 showed 31 percent of respondents agreeing that Germany is “becoming dumber” because of immigrants; 62 percent said Sarrazin’s comments were “justified”. In Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and Italy, hard-right nationalist and anti-immigrant parties regularly receive more than 10 percent of the vote. In Finland it is 19 percent; in Norway it is 22 percent; in Switzerland, 29 percent. In Italy and Austria they have been in government; in Switzerland, where the anti-immigrant Swiss People’s Party is the largest party, they still are.

Breivik was from a particularly vile strain of that trend. But he did not come from nowhere. And the anxieties that produced him are growing. Fascists prey on economic deprivation and uncertainty, democratic deficits cause by European Union membership and issues of sovereignty related to globalization. Far right forces in Greece, for example, are currently enjoying a vigorous revival. When scapegoats are needed they provide them. When solutions are demanded they are scarce.

Jewish Peace News editors:

Joel Beinin, Racheli Gai, et al.

Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/

“Seeing 'Islamic Terror' in Norway: Learning no lessons from Oklahoma City mistakes” from fair@fair.org; http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4359 7/25/11

Right-wing terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik reportedly killed 76 people in Norway on Friday, by all accounts driven by far-right anti-immigrant politics and fervent Islamophobia. But many early media accounts assumed that the perpetrator of the attacks was Muslim.

On news of the first round of attacks--the bombs in Oslo--CNN's Tom Lister (7/22/11) didn't know who did it, but knew they were Muslims: "It could be a whole range of groups. But the point is that Al-Qaeda is not so much an organization now. It's more a spirit for these people. It's a mobilizing factor." And he speculated confidently about their motives:

You've only got to look at the target--prime minister's office, the headquarters of the major newspaper group next door. Why would that be relevant? Because the Norwegian newspapers republished the cartoons of Prophet Mohammad that caused such offense in the Muslim world.... That is an issue that still rankles amongst Islamist militants the world over.

CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank (7/22/11) took to the airwaves to declare that "

Norway

has been in Al-Qaeda's crosshairs for quite some time." He added that the bombing "bears all the hallmarks of the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization at the moment," before adding, almost as an afterthought, that "we don't know at this point who was responsible."

On Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor (7/22/11), guest host Laura Ingraham declared, "Deadly terror attacks in

Norway

, in what appears to be the work, once again, of Muslim extremists." Even after Norwegian authorities arrested Breivik, former Bush administration U.N. Ambassador John Bolton was in disbelief. "There is a kind of political correctness that comes up when these tragic events occur," he explained on Fox's On the Record (7/22/11). "This kind of behavior is very un-Norwegian. The speculation that it is part of right-wing extremism, I think that has less of a foundation at this point than the concern that there's a broader political threat here."

Earlier in the day on Fox (7/22/11), Bolton had explained that "the odds of it coming from someone other than a native Norwegian are extremely high." While he admitted there was no evidence, Bolton concluded that "it sure looks like Islamic terrorism," adding that "there is a substantial immigrant population from the Middle East in particular in

Norway

An early Wall Street Journal editorial (7/22/11) dwelled on the "explanations furnished by jihadist groups to justify their periodic slaughters," before concluding that because of

Norway

's commitment to tolerance and freedom, "Norwegians have now been made to pay a terrible price."

Once the alleged perpetrator's identity did not conform to the Journal's prejudice, the editorial was modified, but it continued to argue that Al-Qaeda was an inspiration: "Coordinated terrorist attacks are an Al-Qaeda signature. But copycats with different agendas are surely capable of duplicating its methods."

Many pundits and outlets had to scramble to justify their ideological presumptions in the wake of the unexpected suspect. Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin (7/22/11) had called the Norwegian violence "a sobering reminder for those who think it's too expensive to wage a war against jihadists," citing Thomas Joscelyn of the Weekly Standard's assertion that "in all likelihood the attack was launched by part of the jihadist hydra." In a follow-up post (7/23/11), Rubin insisted that even though she was wrong, she was right, because "there are many more jihadists than blond Norwegians out to kill Americans, and we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West."

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat (7/25/11) likewise argued that we should respond to the horror in

Norway

by paying more attention to the alleged perpetrator's point of view:

On the big picture, Europe's cultural conservatives are right: Mass immigration really has left the Continent more divided than enriched, Islam and liberal democracy have not yet proven natural bedfellows and the dream of a postnational, postpatriotic European Union governed by a benevolent ruling elite looks more like a folly every day.... Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have an obligation to acknowledge that Anders Behring Breivik is a distinctively right-wing kind of monster. But they also have an obligation to the realities that this monster’s terrible atrocity threatens to obscure.

The New York Times' July 23 report explained that while early speculation about Muslim terrorists was incorrect,

there was ample reason for concern that terrorists might be responsible. In 2004 and again in 2008, the No. 2 leader of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, who took over after the death of Osama bin Laden, threatened Norway because of its support of the American-led NATO military operation in Afghanistan.

Of course, anyone who kills scores of civilians for political motives is a "terrorist"; the language of the Times, though, suggested that a "terrorist" would have to be Islamic.

The Times went on:

Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking Al-Qaeda’s brutality and multiple attacks.

"If it does turn out to be someone with more political motivations, it shows these groups are learning from what they see from Al-Qaeda," said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation in Washington.

It is unclear why any of Breivik's actions would be considered connected in any way to terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, which certainly did not invent the idea of brutal mass murder. But the Times was able to turn up another expert the following day who saw an Islamist inspiration for Islamophobic terrorism (7/24/11):

Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, said the manifesto bears an eerie resemblance to those of Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders, though from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view. Like Mr. Breivik’s manuscript, the major Qaeda declarations have detailed accounts of the Crusades, a pronounced sense of historical grievance and calls for apocalyptic warfare to defeat the religious and cultural enemy.

"It seems to be an attempt to mirror Al-Qaeda, exactly in reverse," Mr. Hegghammer said.

To the paper's credit, the Times' Scott Shane wrote a strong second-day piece (7/25/11) documenting the influence of Islamophobic bloggers on Breivik's manifesto:

His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch website, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.... Mr. Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among websites.

(Spencer was one of the anti-Muslim pundits profiled in FAIR's 2008 report, "Meet the Smearcasters: Islamophobia's Dirty Dozen.")

Shane's piece noted that the document, rather than being an Al-Qaeda "mirror," actually copied large sections of Ted Kaczynski's 1995 Unabomber manifesto, "in which the Norwegian substituted 'multiculturalists' or 'cultural Marxists' for Mr. Kaczynski’s 'leftists' and made other small wording changes."

It is not new for media to jump to the conclusion that Muslims are responsible for any given terrorist attack; the same thing was widespread after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings (Extra!, 7-8/95). "It has every single earmark of the Islamic car-bombers of the Middle East," syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer (Chicago Tribune, 4/21/95) asserted. "Whatever we are doing to destroy Mideast terrorism, the chief terrorist threat against Americans, has not been working," wrote New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal (4/21/95). "Knowing that the car bomb indicates Middle Eastern terrorists at work, it's safe to assume that their goal is to promote free-floating fear," editorialized the New York Post (4/20/95). It is unfortunate that so many outlets have failed to learn any practical lessons from such mistakes--or question the beliefs that drive them.

END TERRORISM NEWSLETTER #4

Military Suicides

2012-01-13T10:19:00.000-06:00

OMNI NEWSLETTER #1 MILITARY SUICIDES, January 13, 2012. COMPILED BY DICK BENNETT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE.

Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ Offering knowledge as a foundation for peace and justice action.

See related OMNI Newsletters: PTSD, Consequences of Wars, Pentagon

Contents

Daily Suicides

Daniel Chen

Sharp Increase 2009

Drugs Instead of Therapy

Record High Summer 2011

Increasing Medication

AVERAGE NUMBER OF

U.S.

VETERANS WHO COMMIT SUICIDE EACH DAY: 18. “Harper’s Index,” Harper’s Magazine ( Feb. 2012) p. 11.

NY family: Army investigators said teen private who shot himself was abused almost daily Article by: DEEPTI HAJELA , Associated Press

Updated: January 5, 2012 - 6:39 PM

NEW YORK - A teenage Army private who committed suicide just weeks after getting to Afghanistan had been mistreated by comrades on an almost daily basis, his family and community representatives said investigators told them.

Daniel Chen's parents and other members of Manhattan's Chinese community held a news conference Thursday to disclose what they had learned from Army investigators at a meeting the day before.

"Almost immediately after he arrived, Danny was required to do exercises which quickly within a few days crossed into abuse," said Elizabeth OuYang, a community activist representing his parents.

The family was briefed on the results of Regional Command South's administrative investigation into Chen's death, Army spokesman George Wright said. A criminal investigation is ongoing.

The Army did not disclose details of what its investigators told the family.

OuYang said investigators had told the family that the 19-year-old Chen was subjected to excessive sit-ups, push-ups, runs and sprints carrying sandbags, among other things, and that rocks were thrown at him to simulate artillery. She said the investigators reported he also was called racial slurs and was forced to work additional details.

When the soldiers were putting up a tent, Chen was forced to wear a construction hat and give instructions in Chinese, even though none of the other soldiers spoke the language, she said investigators told his relatives.

On Oct. 3, Chen was found dead in a guardhouse in Afghanistan with what the Army said apparently was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had arrived in Afghanistan in August.

On the day of Chen's death, OuYang said investigators told the family, he had reported to the guard tower without his helmet or adequate water. She said he was forced to crawl 100 meters on gravel with his equipment on as his comrades threw rocks at him.

Eight soldiers are facing charges ranging from dereliction of duty to involuntary manslaughter in connection to Chen's death.

The eight soldiers are part of an infantry regiment based in Fort Wainright, Alaska. They are from Maryland; Port Arthur, Texas; Aberdeen, S.D.; Youngstown, Ohio; Brooklyn, Iowa; Hendersonville, Tenn.; Greenville, Pa.; and Fowler, Ind.

The soldiers are still in Afghanistan but have been relieved of their duties and confined to a different base, the military said. The next step is a hearing to determine if there is enough evidence for a court martial. The proceedings are expected to be held in Afghanistan.

Chen's family and the community members are calling for the hearings to be held in the United States, saying that to do otherwise would be unfair.

http://www.startribune.com/nation/136741908.html

MENTAL SUFFERINGS AND SUICIDES OF US TROOPS 2009. A sharp increase of soldier suicides has occurred recently, to an all-time high. In one period more suicides than combat deaths in Iraq and

Afghanistan

combined. Growing evidence of neglect of PTSD soldiers showing suicidal signs. Mark Benjamin’s study on salon.com examines ten cases. For example, Adam Lieberman’s strong symptoms of mental illness following his return from

Afghanistan

were treated by the Army as non-combat. He turned to alcohol and prescription drugs and killed himself. Benjamin found many cases of depression, violence, self-medication prior to suicide. Interv. Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, 2-20-09.

PTSD, SUICIDES, MILITARY CHOICE OF DRUGS OVER THERAPY

(from Citizen Soldier Reports 2011)

Soldier suicides increasing. 2009 rate highest since Army began keeping records in 1980. “In April 2010, the VA reported that an average of 18 veterans kill themselves each day; that’s 6,500 a year.”

Half of veterans who need treatment seek it, fearing damage to their careers. Only about half of these receive adequate care.

Drugs instead of therapy. The military over-prescribes drugs like Paxil and Zoloft to “treat” PTSD despite warning of the risk of suicide. Prescribing psychiatric medications for soldiers and dependents has increased 42%.

Drugs are preferred at many military clinics because “psychotherapy would make them ineligible for deployment and would be much more costly than drugs.”

Citizen Soldier: http://www.citizen-soldier.org/

“Army suicides set record in July”

By Greg Jaffe, Washington Postd, August 12, 2011

The U.S. Army suffered a record 32 suicides in July, the most since it began releasing monthly figures in 2009.
The high number of deaths represents a setback for the Army, which has put a heavy focus on reducing suicides in recent years. The number includes 22 active-duty soldiers and 10 reservists. The previous record was 31, from June 2010.
Army officials cautioned that investigations are underway in most of the deaths to confirm the exact cause.
“Every suicide represents a tragic loss,” Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the vice chief of staff of the Army, said in a written statement. “While the high number of potential suicides in July is discouraging, we are confident our efforts . . . are having a positive impact.”
Over the past several years, the Army has launched a major effort to institute new training to improve soldiers’ ability to bounce back from stress, and setbacks in combat and in their personal lives. It has hired hundreds of mental health and substance abuse counselors and has launched a push to convince soldiers that seeking help for mental health problems will not have a negative impact on their careers.
The service also has tapped the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct a five-year, $50 million study and statistical analysis of suicide in the Army, an effort that includes surveys, data mining and medical testing.
Chiarelli, meanwhile, has devoted hundreds of hours to studying the suicide problem and its possible links to post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries caused by battlefield explosions.
So far, the efforts have not resulted in a significant change in the suicide rate in the Army. Over the first seven months of 2011, about 160 active-duty and reserve soldiers have committed suicide, which is about on par with the number of troops taking their own lives during the same months in 2009 and 2010.
The Marine Corps, which does not release monthly suicide statistics, has posted annual suicide rates similar to the Army’s.
Senior Army officials had hoped that the slowing pace of combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan might reduce the overall strain on the force and help drive down the rate of soldier suicides. The extra time at home, however, does not appear to have had a significant impact on the suicide rate.
In recent years, the Army’s suicide rate has surpassed the rate for the overall population. Comparing suicide rates among soldiers is difficult because the latest national suicide statistics, which are compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are about three years old.
If the suicide rate among troops is compared to a population that is similar to the military in terms of age, race and sex, the rate in the Army and Marine Corps appears to be about the same or slightly lower than the population at large, according to the Rand Corp., a government-funded think tank.

From Citizens Commission on Human Rights International

http://www.cchrint.org/2011/06/24/u-s-troops-reportedly-taking-more-medication-than-ever/

U.S. Troops Reportedly Taking More Medication Than Ever

“Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Salem News by Marianne Skolek
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.) – Fox News reports that U.S. military troops are taking more prescription medication than ever. US troops Heavily Medicated on Prescription Drugs, the report warns.
The bottom line is that the men and women of the US armed forces are taking more addictive medication than they ever have in the past.
The Daily reported Wednesday, that the US Department of Defense doesn’t keep track of those medical prescriptions doled out to service members in combat. This, despite ongoing pleas from federal officials to record the data. The military’s 2012 budget report from the House Appropriations Committee, cited how the prescription of pain management drugs is not handled consistently, particularly in battle. According to The Daily, the report includes an ultimatum. The committee expects concrete information within two months of the budget’s approval, detailing “the required steps and potential obstacles toward electronic transmission of prescription drug data.”
In 2010 a US Army study revealed how 14 percent of soldiers have been prescribed an opiate painkiller. 95 percent of those prescriptions were for oxycodone, a notoriously-addictive pharmaceutical best known by the brand name OxyContin. And since 2001, military spending on prescription medication has skyrocketed. Orders for antipsychotics like Seroquel are up 200 percent, and demand for anti-anxiety drugs like Valium has increased by 170 percent, according to Defense Logistics Agency records. Many of the antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs and anti-anxiety drugs prescribed are highly addictive. Potential side effects include dulled reaction times, irritability and a heightened risk of suicide. “The medications they use shouldn’t be so heavily prescribed in combat,” said Dr. Judith Broder, a psychiatrist and founder of the Soldiers Project, a nonprofit counseling service.
“But they can’t afford to send anyone home. They need the bodies — health and welfare are secondary,” she said.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/june232011/drugged-soldiers-ms.php

END MILITARY SUICIDES NEWSLETTER

PTSD

2012-01-12T08:58:00.002-06:00

OMNI PTSD NEWSLETTER #1, JANUARY 12, 2012. Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace.

Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change.

Hidden Battles Documentary Film

Suicides

Poster Girl Documentary Film

IVAW Outreach

VETS AROUND THE WORLD SEEK TO HEAL

“Hidden Battles”: Veterans Living With the Consequences of War

November 10, 2011 at 9:18 pm by Mickie Lynn

Documentary about bringing war home.

Last Thursday I saw a film called “Hidden Battles.” It had a really strong impact on me and on everyone in the audience. This fairly brief but intense documentary followed the lives of five veterans of very different wars and showed how they struggled to come to terms with their combat experiences after they returned home.
What made this film, released in 2011, so powerful was the vivid look at the internal struggles that manifested and continued long after these men and woman left the battlefield. The universal cost of war and the long suffering that took place after killing another human being was examined through the experiences of an Israeli officer, A Palestinian member of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a woman Sandinista rebel, a US Vietnam Veteran, and a US veteran of the war in Somalia.
Documentary maker, Victoria Mills, included scenes and recollections from their original battles and then followed their lives after they returned home. We saw intimate details of their lives at intervals. In every case we came to understand just how deeply their response to killing another human being continued to haunt them. Some of them returned to the scene of the battles. This was healing in many ways. One of them moved to a peaceful place in another country where healing could take place for him and his family. One of them took on the task of helping other veterans to cope with homecoming. Several of them chose creative or artistic careers or avocations that helped them to heal.
How do I know how others responded to the film? There was a discussion facilitated by John R. Ostwald, a columnist for the Troy Record newspaper who also teaches psychology at Hudson Valley Community College. He’s a Vietnam era veteran who studied the healing of PTSD with Dr. Edward Tick who’s well known for his work with traumatized veterans.
There were two major reactions from audience members who hadn’t gone to war. One was extreme sadness at the suffering of not only the veterans but of their families and those that they loved. I was specially saddened by the effects on the children and the way that the trauma was passed on down the generations. There were several combat veterans in the audience. One was in his 70′s and had fought in Vietnam. He hadn’t realized until fairly recently that he was suffering from PTSD when it was pointed out by another vet. He spent several months in treatment in a VA setting and is now doing much better. Another was a Gulf War Veteran who still struggles with his trauma but also helps other veterans and works to end the current wars and prevent others.
Another strong reaction to the film was anger at the waste of human lives and the damage done by sending our citizens to war without a real need or basis for such wars. One fact that came up in the discussion was the fact that our current wars have been going on longer than WWII and Vietnam combined and that the soldiers who are coming back are very traumatized and often suffering from traumatic brain damage as well.
A recent report indicated that over 2 million US military have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but when they return to the US they are often injured and don’t receive the care that was promised to them. One third of these veterans come home with serious medical conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, amputations, and Traumatic Brain Injury. But even though President Obama increased the budget for the Department of Veterans by $25 Billion over 5 years in 2009 the programs are still not adequate for wounded warriors. There are still long waits and bureaucratic hurdles for care.
This morning I listened to part two of a series on Making Contact called Veterans of Occupation from Iraq to Wall Street. Here’s the link to the whole presentation. Segment two, (minute 29 to the end) has the facts and stories about returning veterans while the first part tells about vets joining the growing Occupy movement. http://www.radioproject.org/2011/11/veterans-of-occupation-from-iraq-to-wall-street

Vets Occupy Wall Street, twitter photo

Not only do vets have to deal with trauma and injury but they often find that they’re isolated because those at home don’t understand their experiences. The journalist who narrated the second segment, Aaron Glantz, also talked about the trauma for journalists returning home after witnessing violence and death all around them. He found that continuing to tell other people’s stories was healing for him.
So here are a few facts about veterans returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars:
More than 200,000 veterans sleep homeless on the streets of the United States on any given night.
Vets of Iraq and Afghanistan are becoming homeless more quickly than those from previous wars.
More than ¼ of returning veterans suffer from either or both PTSD or TBI and less than ½ are getting the care that they need.
In 2008 more than 18 US veterans committed suicide each day, and that’s only those tracked by the VA system. In 2011 the number of active duty and veteran suicides continues to increase. Most states aren’t tracking these deaths.
There are many veterans who come home but don’t end up in the VA system. They land either in a work setting, school setting, at home with family, or on the streets. So different support systems are badly needed in each setting. In one story of “tragedy, hope and triumph” a great program available at a few colleges is described. It’s called “boots to books” and provides a chance to share experiences, community, counseling and other supportive services for vets in college. Sounds like an excellent model that needs more funding.
I also heard on this morning’s news that the percentage of veterans in New York State that are unemployed is currently 12%, well above the 9% general rate and that more programs are needed to provide jobs for returning veterans.
In the Making Contact segment about veterans there was a quote to the effect that it’s easy to honor the dead since it takes no money or ongoing commitment but honoring the living and wounded veterans takes real patriotism and effort. I think that both forms of honoring and remembering are important but the need to care for our returning veterans is the most vital task. Also needed is passionate and ongoing work to end these unjustified and endless wars that kill, maim and injure our soldiers and also require them to serve in hellish situations over and over again in a way that’s never happened before.

Posted in Afghanistan, Cost of war, Enlisted men/women, Iraq, Pakistan, Peace Through Art, Vietnam, War, effects of military violence, people with disabilities, post-traumatic stress disorder | 13 Comments

SUICIDE

Army Faces Upsurge in Suicides

Hal Bernton, The Seattle Times August 19, 2011

Hal Bernton reports: "During the past two years, the Army has embarked on wide-ranging efforts to reduce suicides. At Lewis-McChord, those efforts include repeated mental-health evaluations for soldiers. Despite these programs, the Army suicide rates remain high. During the first seven months of 2011, the Army investigated 109 deaths throughout the service that may have been suicide, compared with 91 during the same time period in 2010. July's suspected suicides hit a record."

The number of suicides (of US soldiers) in 2010 was 407 to those killed in action of 455. Harper’s Magazine (April 2011)

Book: Philipps, David. Lethal Warriors: Uncovering the Tragic Reality of PTSD. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Rev. The IRE Journal (Winter 2011) Several Best Documentary awards. Not for children.

FROM VETERANS FOR PEACE

2. About PTSD _ Nominated for an Oscar_ Poster Girl From: VFP

4. "Army Trauma Unit's Woes Detailed," N.Y. Times, January 26, 2011 From: Mike Woloshin

6. Effects of Deployments on Military Families From: James

POSTER GIRL FILM

Introduction

The story of Robynn Murray, an all-American high-school cheerleader turned “poster girl” for women in combat, distinguished by Army Magazine’s cover shot. Now home from Iraq, her tough-as-nails exterior begins to crack, leaving Robynn struggling with the debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Shot and directed by first-time filmmaker Sara Nesson, POSTER GIRL is an emotionally raw documentary that follows Robynn over the course of two years as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and redemption, using art and poetry to redefine her life.

Poster Girl documentary (female hero PTSD on return home)(film directed by niece of Ralph Nesson, Fayetteville, AR)

Washington GIs and Veterans are headed to Texas

IVAW webmaster@ivaw.org via uark.edu to jbennet

Dear James ,

Preparing to Expand Operation Recovery Campaign to "the most troubled base in the military"

Last weekend, members of IVAW's Seattle and Joint Base Lewis-McChord chapters held a training where they learned outreach techniques for reaching active duty soldiers. This is the first step in our preparations to expand our Operation Recovery campaign to end the deployment of traumatized troops to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA.

Lewis-McChord is a military base that is plagued by the effects of untreated Post Traumatic stress and other war traumas. There are multiple active investigations into suicides and acts of violence by service members stationed at Lewis-McChord. In 2011, it had the highest suicide rate in the military. All of this points to a serious lack of accountability by the leadership and a culture of denial at the base. It is also the inevitable effect of sending troops on multiple deployments to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2011 the military paper, Stars and Stripes, rated Lewis-McChord as the most troubled base in the military. http://www.stripes.com/joint-base-lewis-mcchord-rocked-by-scandal-1.130065 So GIs and the surrounding community there weren't surprised that Benjamin Barnes, Iraq war veteran accused of killing a Mount Rainier park ranger and wounding four others had been stationed there. See this MSNBC article on the connection between Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Barnes.

Next month, Washington IVAW members are headed to Fort Hood, Texas, to visit IVAW's active duty chapter there. They will learn about how the Operation Recovery campaign is being implemented at the largest military base in the United States, and take lessons to apply back home at Joint Base Lewis McChord.

If you made an end-of-year donation to support our continued efforts to expand Operation Recovery from Fort Hood, Texas to Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, we thank you. If you haven't yet given, any donation you make before January 15 will be matched dollar-for-dollar by another donor.

Thank you for your continued support.

In Solidarity,

Iraq Veterans Against the War

END PTSD NEWSLETTER

Fascism USA?

2012-01-10T11:55:00.000-06:00

OMNI NEWSLETTER ON FASCISM #1, January 10, 2012. Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace

Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/

Contents #1

Characteristics of Fascism

Essence of Fascism

Chomsky: Fascism in USA?

Book to Film:The End of America: 10 Steps to Fascism

Militarism USA

Preparations for Martial Law

US Army vs. Posse Comitatus

Internet Control

“Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism” By Lawrence Britt

Free Inquiry Magazine ("Fascism Anyone?," Spring 2003, page 20)

http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm

Ideologies of War Newsletter to jbennet

oanderson@ideologiesofwar.com

THE MEANING OF FASCISM: Review-Essay

by Richard Koenigsberg of Modernism & Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Fascism by Roger Griffin

ROGER GRIFFIN, Professor in Modern History at Oxford Brookes University, is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on Fascism. In Modernism & Fascism, Griffin describes how modernisms’ roots lay in the human need to perceive a transcendent meaning—and to restore purpose in times of social breakdown. . . .

"This is an extraordinary book, the most important to appear on the history of fascism in a decade or more..."—Stanley G. Payne, author of A History of Fascism, 1914-1945'

Based on comprehensive research conveyed in numerous books and papers, Roger Griffin has developed a generic theory of fascism. He claims to have identified a core myth that lies at the root of various historical instances. One may say that at certain times in certain societies this myth is enacted.

Fascist ideology, Griffin finds, revolves around the vision of a nation being capable of “imminent phoenix like rebirth” from a crisis. The quest for rebirth gives rise to a revolutionary new political and cultural order that embraces “all of the ‘true’ members of the national community.” Fascism, in short, constitutes a radical form of nationalism growing out of the perception that one’s country is in imminent danger. Fascism seeks resurrection of one’s nation.

Griffin calls fascism an “identificatory ideology” encouraging “total symbiosis with the ideological community.” Rudolf Hess introduced his Fuhrer by declaring “Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler.” Within fascist ideology, however, it is expected that not only the leader, but each and every individual will seek fusion or merger with the nation. Fascism encourages the individual, Griffin says, to “subsume his or her personality within the greater whole of the national community.” The creation of a “charismatic national community” is the ultimate goal of fascism.

Griffin observes that the enormous destructive power of fascism arises out of the “concept of the nation as an organic entity. . . .

Griffin finds that the other side of the coin of the belief that the nation is an organic entity—and the desire to maintain the life of this organism—is belief that the nation is beset by forces that threaten to “extinguish the nation forever.” Without “drastic intervention by the forces of healthy nationalism,” the nation might fade away or die. Fascism is revolutionary nationalism seeking to prevent the death of one’s country.

Hitler odyssey began with such a belief—that his nation was in mortal danger—on the verge of death. He claimed that the German people found itself in the midst of a “process of dissolution” and spoke of the “rapidly falling to pieces of the organic structure of the nation.” Fascism, one might say, seeks to put humpty dumpty back together again.

Fascism often is bound to racism, but what exactly does this mean? The Other is identified as the cause or source of the nation’s decline. If actions are not taken to thwart the destructive Other, the nation might die. Hitler wrote and spoke continually about the Jew as a “ferment of decomposition” and “disintegrator of peoples.” If Germany was to survive, it was necessary to “bar the spread of the process of disintegration” by establishing a “separation between the two races.” Only by overcoming the Jewish ferment of decomposition, Hitler said, could the nation “rise again.”

Hitler declared that the objective of National Socialism was to “maintain the life of the people,” that is, to “prevent our

Germany

from suffering, as Another did, the death upon the cross.” Hitler acknowledged that in order to achieve the tasks set before him, it might be necessary to engage in forms of behavior ordinarily considered immoral. But he did not flinch, proclaiming: “We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany then we have achieved the greatest deed in the world.

This statement captures the essence of Fascism—allowing us to understand why Fascism and violence are inextricably linked. Fascism revolves around the struggle to rescue one nation from death—a demise that seems imminent. In order to save one’s nation, one must perform acts of violence whose purpose is to eliminate or destroy malignant Others identified as threatening the nation’s life. The resurrection of one’s nation requires eradication of these enemies.

What distinguishes Fascism from ordinary nationalism is the level of threat experienced and conveyed by the leaders of Fascist movements. Hitler identified an attack leveled “against the very substance of peoples, against their internal organization.” This attack, he said, was so embracing that it drew into the field of its action “almost all the functions of life, while no one can tell how long this fight may last.” Only rarely, Hitler proclaimed, did peoples suffer from such convulsions that the “deepest foundations of the social order are shaken and threatened with destruction.” Out of such perceptions or imaginings do Fascist movements arise: seeking to confront and overcome the dangers in order to rescue the life of the nation.

This message was sent to jbennet@uark.edu from:

LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE |

9230 56th Ave, Suite 3E

| Elmhurst, NY 11373

Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in

America

Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive

Noam Chomsky, the leading left-wing intellectual, warned last week that fascism may be coming to the

United States

WOLF’F THE END OF AMERICA ON FILM

Dear CCR Supporter,

We are excited to announce the web release of "THE END OF AMERICA" - a feature-length documentary based on Naomi Wolf's bestselling book of the same name - this coming Tuesday, October 21. Our own Michael Ratner and Maria LaHood as well as our client Maher Arar are featured, and CCR is privileged to partner in the online premiere of this powerful and provocative film.

Naomi Wolf, a long-time supporter and ally of CCR, set out on a national tour over the past year to discuss the evolution of America from a functional democracy into a closed, fear-driven society with a terrifying absence of due process. She lays out what she calls the 10 steps necessary to end a democracy and shows us just how close we are to completing them:

Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
Set up an internal surveillance system.
Harass citizens' groups.
Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
Target key individuals.
Control the press.
Treat all political dissents as traitors.
Suspend the rule of law.

In her film, Naomi Wolf makes a plea for Americans to stand up and fight for our most cherished rights. One thing you can do is check out our new 100 Days Campaign (with this link) and stay tuned for ways to get involved in telling the next administration what they must to do to restore, protect and expand our constitutional rights.

You can also screen THE END OF AMERICA for your friends and neighbors one of two ways - you have a unique opportunity to get a copy of the film now before it hits stores in early 2009. Host a free public screening of the film before November 4, 2008 and they'll provide you with a free DVD. Show it at school, work or place of worship; take it to your local coffee shop or bar; urge organizations you're a member of to host a free screening. They'll send you posters and postcards to promote your event. For more information contact myamerica@katahdinproductions.com. You can also support the project by purchasing a special Election Edition DVD, available to Center for Constitutional Rights members through this indiepix films on-line store link.

Stay tuned for an email next week with details of how to view THE END OF AMERICA online this Tuesday.

Sincerely,

Annette Dickerson
Director of Education and Outreach

	This email was sent to the address: jbennet@uark.edu. Click here to unsubscribe from CCR Emails.
	Center for Constitutional Rights ll 666 Broadway 7th floor NY, NY 10012 ll 212-614-6464 ll www.ccrjustice.org

MILITARISM

USA

: OBAMA SPEAKS AT THE PENTAGON

Below: Tomgram: Michael Klare, Energy Wars 2012

Posted by Michael Klare at 9:37am, January 10, 2012.

Tom Engelhardt (Tomgram): Last week, the president made a rare appearance at the Pentagon to unveil a new strategic plan for U.S. military policy (and so spending) over the next decade. Let’s leave the specifics to a future TomDispatch post and focus instead on a historical footnote: Obama was evidently the first president to offer remarks from a podium in the Pentagon press room. He made the point himself -- “I understand this is the first time a president has done this. It’s a pretty nice room. (Laughter)” -- and it was duly noted in the media. Yet no one thought to make anything of it, even though it tells us so much about our American world.

After all, when was the last time the president appeared at a podium at the Environmental Protection Agency to announce a 10-year plan for a “leaner, meaner” approach to the environment, or at the Education Department to outline the next decade of blue-skies thinking (and spending) for giving our children a leg-up in a competitive world? Or how about at a State Department podium to describe future planning for a more peaceable planet more peaceably attained? Unfortunately, you can’t remember such moments and neither can America’s reporters, because they just aren’t part of Washington life. And strangest of all, no one finds this the tiniest bit odd or worth commenting on.

Over the last decade, this country has been so strikingly militarized that no one can imagine 10 years of serious government planning or investment not connected to the military or the national security state. It’s a dangerous world out there -- so we’re regularly told by officials who don’t mention that no military is built to handle the scariest things around. War and the sinews of war are now our business and the U.S. military is our go-to outfit of choice for anything from humanitarian action to diplomacy (even though that same military can’t do the one thing it’s theoretically built to do: win a modern war). And if you don’t believe me that the militarization of this country is a process far gone, check out the last pages of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent piece, “America’s Pacific Century,” in Foreign Policy magazine. Then close your eyes and tell me that it wasn’t written by a secretary of defense, rather than a secretary of state -- right down to the details about the “littoral combat ships” we’re planning to deploy to Singapore and the “greater American military presence” in Australia.

Of course, the irony of this American moment is that the Republicans, those supposed advocates of “small government,” are the greatest fans we have of the ever increasing oppressive powers of the biggest of governments. In recent years, have they seen a single enhanced power they didn’t put their stamp of approval on or enhance further? Predictably, no sooner did the president’s Pentagon press briefing end than assorted Republicans began attacking Obama and his relatively modest Pentagon plan for reshuffling military funds -- from House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (“a lead from behind strategy for a left-behind America”) and Senator John McCain (“greatest peril”) to presidential candidate Mitt Romney (“inexcusable, unthinkable”) -- as if it were a program for unilateral disarmament.

So when the U.S. faces a problem in the world -- say, keeping the energy flowing on this planet -- the first thing that’s done is to militarize the problem. It’s the only way Washington now knows how to think. As Michael Klare -- whose upcoming book The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources will certainly be a must-read of the season -- makes clear, a further militarization of oil and gas policy is underway with an eye to the Pacific, and we have another anxious year on the horizon. (To catch Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Klare discusses the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, click here, or download it to your iPod here.) Tom

“Danger Waters: The Three Top Hot Spots of Potential Conflict in the Geo-Energy Era” By Michael T. Klare

Welcome to an edgy world where a single incident at an energy “chokepoint” could set a region aflame, provoking bloody encounters, boosting oil prices, and putting the global economy at risk. With energy demand on the rise and sources of supply dwindling, we are, in fact, entering a new epoch -- the Geo-Energy Era -- in which disputes over vital resources will dominate world affairs. In 2012 and beyond, energy and conflict will be bound ever more tightly together, lending increasing importance to the key geographical flashpoints in our resource-constrained world.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175487/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_energy_wars_2012/#more

PREPARATIONS FOR MARTIAL LAW?

Vaslett: It's been a long slide to tyranny, but now, the setup is almost complete. Here is a good rundown of the laws, presidential signings, plans, and detention camps put together by a program host at KPFK (Pacifica Radio) in Los Angeles. I think this should make it very clear.

“One Step Guide to Martial Law”

Written By: Cary Harrison January 4, 2012

Reality Check with Harrison Pres. Obama Signs Ground-breaking Unlimited Detention Law for US Citizens by Cary Harrison

While this handy one-sheeter isn’t entirely comprehensive, it is intended to offer a quick highlight reel of laws and presidential directives capable of triggering martial law. Keep in mind, the loss of Habeas Corpus and Posse Comitatus, coupled with a new definition of “torture” are just the tip of the prickly authoritarian iceberg.

Equally, through July 11, 2006, George W. Bush had enacted 807 presidential signing statements negating or reversing, by fiat, specific provisions in Congressional Bills signed by him. This volume, in those short 5½ years of initial presidency, dwarf that of any other president in U.S. history. In fact, it is greater than all previous forty-one presidents combined, whose signing statements totaled slightly fewer than 600. Both the frequency and tone of Bush’s statements have been the cause of much legal concern as they allow, at his pleasure, much of US law and the Constitution to be ignored or circumvented.

In fact, on July 24, 2006, the American Bar Association (ABA) issued the report of a Blue-Ribbon Task Force on Bush’s signing statements that concluded:

“Presidential signing statements that assert President Bush’s authority to disregard or decline to enforce laws adopted by Congress undermine the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers… To address these concerns, the task force urges Congress to adopt legislation enabling its members to seek court review of signing statements that assert the President’s right to ignore or not enforce laws passed by Congress, and urges the President to veto bills he feels are not constitutional”.

LET US BEGIN HERE:

“Bush tells U.S. Supreme Court: Manual vote recounts violate U.S. Constitution,” –CNN, November 23, 2000. Stealing the 2000 presidential election in Florida (with the help of Florida’s Secretary of State Katherine Harris (co-chair of the Florida Bush Election Campaign) plus five regressive Supreme Court Justices appointed by Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I.

Organization of the National Security Council System (February 13, 2001) This is the first in a series of National Security Presidential Directives that “…shall replace [all previous US Presidents’] Presidential Decision Directives and Presidential Review Directives as an instrument for communicating presidential decisions about the national security policies of the United States. The NSC shall meet at my direction. When I am absent from a meeting of the NSC, at my direction the Vice President may preside.”

9-11 Attacks (September 11, 2001) Pres. Bush had been warned numerous times since Jan. 2001.

GWOT – Global war on Terror The Bush-Cheney officially-declared policy: “You’re either with us, or with the terrorists!”

Patriot Act I The stated purpose of USA Patriot Act (USAPA) PUBLIC LAW 107-56 (H.R. 3162) passed by Congress on October 25, 2001, was the Uniting and Strengthening [of] America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act. Additionally, the Act was intended to “deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.”Compare to: The Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State (Reichstag Fire Decree), Germany, February 28, 1933

Presidential Executive Order 12958 (March 25, 2003), The National Security Agency (NSA) may read any email without warning, warrant, or notice. They may do this without any judicial or legislative oversight. “Throughout our history, the national defense has required that certain information be maintained in confidence in order to protect our citizens, our democratic institutions, our homeland security, and our interactions with foreign nations. Protecting information critical to our Nations security remains a priority.”

U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing Policy [Supersedes Presidential Decision Directive 23] (April 25, 2003) The fundamental goal of this policy is to advance and protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests by maintaining the nation’s leadership in “remote sensing” space activities, and by sustaining and enhancing the U.S. remote sensing industry. United States Government use of commercial remote sensing space capabilities.

Homeland Security Presidential Directive/Hspd-6 Integration and Use of Screening Information (September 16, 2003) “…to (1) develop, integrate, and maintain thorough, accurate, and current information about individuals known or appropriately suspected to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism; and (2) use that information as appropriate and to the full extent permitted by law to support (a) Federal, State, local, territorial, tribal, foreign-government, and private-sector screening processes, and (b) diplomatic, military, intelligence, law enforcement, immigration, visa, and protective processes.

Bush Signs Bill Expanding FBI Authority (December 14, 2003) AP: “The bill expands the number of businesses from which the FBI and other U.S. authorities conducting intelligence work can demand financial records without seeking court approval. … Under current law, ‘national security letters’ can be issued to traditional financial institutions, such as banks and credit unions, to require them to turn over information. The bill expands the definition of financial institution to include other businesses that deal with large amounts of cash.”

2004 Presidential Election Widely believed to have been stolen using the critical election state of Ohio, with full complicity of Ohio’s Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, also the co-chair of the “Committee to re-elect George W. Bush”.

2004 Authorization Bill for Intelligence Agencies, (Nov. 19, 2004) The measure gives the Federal Bureau of Investigation greater authority to demand records from businesses in terrorism cases without the approval of a judge or a grand jury. While banks, credit unions and other financial institutions are currently subject to such demands, the measure expands the list to include car dealers, pawnbrokers, travel agents, casinos and other businesses

Patriot Act II – USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 Presidential Signing Statement The “President’s Statement on H.R. 3199, the ‘USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005′”: “The executive branch shall construe the provisions of H.R. 3199 that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch, such as sections 106A [ p.10 ] and 119 [ p.29 ], in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive’s constitutional duties.

Homeland Security contract to KBR (January 24, 2006) for construction of “detention centers” across the U.S. Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps in the United States. In 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his desire to see camps for U.S. citizens deemed to be “enemy combatants.” On February 17, 2006, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the harm being done to the country’s security, not just by the enemy, but also by what he called “news informers” who needed to be combated in “a contest of wills.” According to a press release posted on the Halliburton website, “The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention and Removal Operations (DRO), or to support the rapid development of new programs. Jamie Zuieback, spokeswoman for ICE, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.

A comprehensive list of existing detention locations at end of page…

(Oliver North’s famous exercise (FEMA AND THE REX 84 PROGRAM), which practiced suspension of the Constitution, led to a line of questioning during the Iran-Contra Hearings concerning the idea that plans for expanded internment and detention facilities would not be confined to “refugees” alone. And since September 11, the Bush administration has implemented a number of interrelated programs that were planned in the 1980s under President Reagan. Continuity of Government (COG) proposals—a classified plan for keeping a secret “government-within-the-government” running during and after a nuclear disaster—included vastly expanded detention capabilities, warrantless eavesdropping, and preparations for use of martial law. Reagan-era COG planning included Cheney and Rumsfeld (Rumsfeld, now a highly-paid Defense Department primary “consultant”) both remain largely in control of the U.S. government today.)

National Security Presidential Directive-46/Homeland Security Presidential Directive-15. (March 8, 2006) Also referred to as the “War on Terror” directive, it reflects a desire by the White House to better orchestrate activities across a wide range of bureaucratic jurisdictions — including diplomatic, legal, financial and military. Fred Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to comment on the new decree, citing a White House policy of not discussing classified directives.

Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD 15 U.S. Strategy and Policy in the War on Terror (classified directive) (March 6, 2006) Centralizes power to the National Counterterrorism Center, headed by Adm. Scott Redd, to make sure each entity does what it has been ordered to do, fusing intelligence from all the disparate U.S. intelligence and law enforcement entities and conducting “strategic operational planning” across all agencies to ensure there is a common plan. No further information available.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006. Just two weeks prior to the 2006 midterm elections, Congress passed legislation that permitted the administration to detain, at its own discretion, anyone the executive branch – specifically, Mr. Bush as the commander in chief – deemed to be a terrorist. Once the law was signed by Mr. Bush, both Congress and the commander in chief were on record as agreeing habeas corpus was another quaint and expendable formality. That was rather convenient and timely for the White House because it was becoming increasingly apparent by that time the administration had been sanctioning, even directing, illegal detentions for at least three years before Congress obliged them by providing after-the-fact, retroactive legal cover.

****John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 (September 30, 2006) Empowers President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist “incident” or if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of “public order” or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations. These changes would allow Bush, whenever he thinks it necessary, to institute martial law–under which the military takes direct control over civilian administration. It took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to destroy one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president’s ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the permission of Congress. But there was a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act. Quietly slipped into the law at the last minute, at the request of the Bush administration, were sections changing important legal principles, dating back 200 years, which limit the U.S. government’s ability to use the military to intervene in domestic affairs.

National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 51. National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 & Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20 ***National Continuity Policy*** (May 9, 2007) Declares that in the event of a “catastrophic event”, the entire government is immediately taken over and sole power is given over to the Executive Branch, led by George W. Bush: “The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government.” This directive, given no scrutiny by Congress, gives the White House literal control over the government and the country, bypassing the US Congress and purging all remaining separation of powers. The directive also places the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of all domestic “Security”.

Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq, (Tuesday 17 July 2007) “It is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004.” This order empowers/instructs “… officers and agencies of the United States Government …” to assist in its enforcement, ultimately judgment is rendered to members of the executive branch, each of whom serves at the pleasure of Mr. Bush. Since the order seeks to circumvent both judicial and Congressional oversight, it renders unto the executive branch, and ultimately Mr. Bush, absolute power of law.

Executive Order #13422 – Total Control Over Agencies (Feb. 01, 2007) Federal regulators will answer to a new set of Bush Political appointees in each agency, who will determine whether their proposed rules properly serve the Bush agenda. As Peter Strauss of the Columbia Law School told the New York Times, “Having lost control of Congress, the president is doing what he can to increase his control of the executive branch.” Bush’s administrative power grab points to a serious flaw in the American system: our uniquely powerful, politically unaccountable executive.

InfraGard (2007) 23,000 Businesspeople Get Threat Info from FBI Before Public. In Turn, They Supply Tips to FBI. Two Members of Private Sector Group Say They Have “Shoot to Kill” Permission in Emergency. Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.

HR 1955: The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 has a subheading even more frightening: “To prevent homegrown terrorism, and for other purposes.” What other purposes? This bill, sponsored by Bush Ally—California Democratic Congresswoman, Jane Harmon, was passed by 94% of Congress—the majority of which, sadly, are Democrats. And it says specifically, quote: `(3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.” Here’s the rub… by purposefully not suggesting that the Internet propaganda is coming from overseas… our Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act… or… Thought Crime Prevention Act’ focuses not on stereotypical shadowy Muslim figures… or even gun-totin’ Timothy McVeigh-types. This bill, already percolating in the Senate, looks to be aimed at the ever-increasing progressive and Constitutional protectionist movement. Representative Jane Harman, its prime sponsor, was one notable Democrat who was privy to Bush Administration torture information in 2002. Its Senate counterpart, S. 1959, is still in committee.

Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD 23 (January 8, 2008) Computer Network Monitoring And Cyber-Security $6 billion built a secretive system monitoring all U.S. communication networks, including all telephone, email, texting, video, Internet, chat, and the capability to record all keyboard strokes as citizens’ type personal documents in their homes.

Federal 4th Circuit Appeals Court gives the president sweeping power to deprive anyone — citizens as well as noncitizens — of their freedom. The designation “enemy combatant,” which should apply only to people captured on a battlefield, can now be applied to ANY people detained inside the United States.

National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD – 59 & Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD – 24 ”Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security” (June 5, 2008) Directed against US citizens and adopted without public debate or Congressional approval. Info on the private lives of each citizens in minute detail. The directive uses 9/11 as an all-encompassing justification to compile blood-type, DNA, physical & medical data, and face and eye-recognition technology against citizens. The stated intent of NSPD 59 is to protect America from terrorists, but in fact the terms of reference include any person who is deemed to pose a threat to the Homeland. Beyond biometric data is “contextual data” including information on date and place of birth, citizenship, current address and address history, current employment and employment history, school report cards, current phone numbers and phone number history, complete history of all items purchased in grocery and hardware stores, video rentals (commercial and porn), Internet purchases and all variations of Websites browsed, use of government services and tax filings, bank account and credit card histories, criminal database records on a local, state, and federal levels, legal judgments or other public records documenting involvement in legal disputes, child custody records, and marriage or divorce records.

Heroes Act of 2008, passed by Congress June 17, 2008. Stops your money — or at least a good portion of it — at the border, should you decide to flee the US. (The headlines in the press release about the law were about the increased benefits for veterans and families of deceased military). Anyone voluntarily giving up his or her citizenship will be taxed on ALL of his assets as if he or she had sold them.

FISA “Reform” Act (not only granted retroactive AND FUTURE immunity to telecoms for their complicity in Bush’s violations of the original FISA Law, but also, implicitly, to Bush, as well as gutting the Fourth Amendment guarantee of privacy).

Homeland Security Directive: Travelers’ Laptops May Be Detained At Border. (July 16, 2008) No suspicion required under Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policies. Federal agents can take a traveler’s laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed. Also, officials can send copies of any American citizen’s laptop contents with other agencies and private entities for “language translation, data decryption or other reasons”, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

OTHER EXECUTIVE ORDERS CURRENTLY IN EFFECT

10990 Allows the government to take control over all modes of transportation, highways, and seaports.

10995 Allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

10997 Allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels, and minerals.

10998 Allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

11000 Allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.

11001 Allows the government to take over all health, education, and welfare functions.

11002 Designates the Postmaster General to operate national registration of all persons.

11003 Allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.

11004 Allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.

11005 Allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways, and public storage facilities.

11051 Speciﬁes the responsibility of the Ofﬁce of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or ﬁnancial crisis.

11310 Grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.

11049 Assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a ﬁfteen year period.

11921 Allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and ﬂow of money in the U.S.A. ﬁnancial institution in any undeﬁned national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months.

Proposed: House Joint Resolution (H. J. Res. 24), 109th Congress: “Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution,” February 17, 2005. Repeal would remove the two-term limit on the Bush Presidency. (Introduced by Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (R-MD); Co-Sponsors (4): Reps. Howard L. Berman, Howard L. (CA), Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ), Martin Olav Sabo (MN), and F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (WI). Status: April 4, 2005, referred to House Subcommittee on the Constitution.

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,’ Bush screamed back. ‘It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!’ –Reported in Capitol Hill Blue, December 9, 2005.

FEMA CampSTATE-BY-STATE INDEX OF POTENTIAL US DETENTION CAMPS

Many locations were verified by William Pabst’s research and testimony of Provost Marshal, US 5th Army HQ, Pentagon; and Mr. Fennerin, 300th Army MP. . . .

ARMY DOMESTIC POLICE VS. POSSE COMITATUS

First army unit assigned to permanent duty for civil unrest and crowd control (Democracy Now 9-22-08).

Pros. Attorney Charlotte Dennett will indict Bush for crimes if she is elected; see Bugliosi. (also DN 9-22).

NEXT - THE INTERNET!

Timothy Vaslett via uark.edu

As we have all been discovering these last few years the internet has become an immensely powerful tool that makes available, instantaneously, around the world any and all events, real news, histories that have been heretofore unavailable, exposes of abuse and wrongdoing by governments, police, and military, etc. You can bet the shadow elite want this stopped NOW! Below are a few links to information on this matter.

http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2011/the_internet_s_intolerable_acts_61289

http://americancensorship.org/

http://www.cdt.org/report/list-organizations-and-individuals-opposing-sopa

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/as-major-companies-plan-blackout-protest-where-has-the-mainstream-media-been-on-coverage-of-sopa/

END FASCISM NEWSLETTER #1

Convert Pentagon Budget from Conquest and Killing to Human Needs

2012-01-09T18:58:00.000-06:00

      Wage Peace, a campaign of the American Friends Service Committee
    No more of the same in Pentagon spending
Peter Lems and Mary Zerkel, American Friends Service Committee actioncenter@afsc.org via uark.edu 1-9-12

Dear james,
While the Obama administration’s new Defense Guidance document has been portrayed as moving to significant cuts in the Pentagon budget, the President himself tells a starkly different story. At last week’s rollout, he said:
“Over the past ten years, since 9/11, our defense budget grew at an extraordinary pace. Over the next ten years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this—it will still grow... In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush Administration.”
What does that mean? We will continue to spend $2.1 million every minute of every day on the military – an unethical and unsustainable policy. Yet lawmakers are already clamoring to oppose the proposal, suggesting it would hobble US defense, cripple innovation, and cost jobs.
Please write your local paper to set the record straight: Slowing the growth of the military budget is not a cut in a budget that already has doubled since 9/11 and consequently has devastated spending on human needs.
Nearly every other area of federal spending - investing in jobs, health care, affordable housing, and education – has been cut, putting real security more at risk.
Investment in people and communities, increased reliance on diplomacy, and supporting sustainable human security by meeting human needs at home and abroad is what will ultimately make our world more safe and stable.
The Obama administration’s new strategy remains ominously more of the same.
It plans to focus more resources on naval and air power in the Strait of Hormuz to contain Iran and in Asia to manage China’s rise. It envisions the use of more drones and more covert operations with Special Forces. It calls for increased investment in cyber and space war capabilities. It affirms that the United States will continue to be the world’s leader in deadly arms sales and transfers.
After agreeing to increase spending on nuclear weapons by $85 billion, the Guidance document calls for unspecified reductions on this project. It seeks to pass troop burdens to allies, particularly those in Europe.
It envisions fewer wars like Iraq, and more wars like Afghanistan, where coordination between the Pentagon and the CIA is the model. For more on the insidious linkages between the two agencies, see our resources from our Afghanistan 101 blog and the audio from the Legacies of War in Iraq discussion.
Your voice is needed to change the course ahead. Write your local newspaper to remind everyone real security lies not in more military spending, but in more investment in our communities and the next generation.
Wage Peace,
Peter Lems and Mary Zerkel
American Friends Service Committee

Forward this message to your friends.
Help support AFSC's worldwide work for peace, justice and human dignity. Make a donation today.
American Friends Service Committee
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Philadelphia, PA 19102
http://www.afsc.org/

Conversion from War to Peace Economy

2012-01-08T16:38:00.000-06:00

Moving from a War Economy to a Peace Economy

by: Mary Beth Sullivan

Published in the January / February 2012 Humanist

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Behind every question about how to get the United States back on track and improve the lives of average Americans (the so-called 99 percent) lies the necessity for economic conversion—that is, planning, designing, and implementing a transformation from a war economy to a peace economy. Historically, this is an effort that would include a changeover from military to civilian work in industrial facilities, in laboratories, and at U.S. military bases.
To that end, I am compelled to share what I’ve learned from reading Seymour Melman, the most prolific writer on the topic.
Melman was a professor emeritus of industrial engineering at Columbia University. He joined the Columbia faculty in 1949 and, by all reports, was a popular instructor for over five decades until he retired from teaching in 2003. (He died a year later.)
Melman was also an active member of the peace movement. He was the co-chair of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), and the creator and chair of the National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament. It is reported that Melman was under surveillance by the FBI for much of his career because of his work criticizing the military-industrial complex—a sure sign that there must be something worth hearing in his work. What did he say that the power structure feared?
The economic conversion movement in past decades played a valuable role in bringing together the peace movement and union leadership to do the heady work of imaging how this country could sustain industrial jobs when, as it was envisioned, the United States would cease production of the weapons of the Cold War. It is a history that should not be forgotten.
Melman noted that U.S. industry had historically followed an established set of market rules: industry created products consumers needed or wanted, sold those products, made a profit, and then used those profits to improve production by upgrading the tools for more efficient production.
Military production for World War II began to change these rules of industry, which were later institutionalized in the 1960s when Robert McNamara was secretary of defense. McNamara, who came to the Pentagon after his tenure as an executive at Ford Motor Company, implemented some critical changes.
Within the Pentagon, civilian and uniformed officials were in conflict about the procedures for how to determine the costs of weapons to be contracted for manufacturing. On the one side, led by an industrial engineer, the idea was to base costs on the formulation of alternative designs and production methods—a competitive approach that promoted economic growth. The other side proposed generating costs based on what was previously spent. For the Pentagon, this meant following the “cost-plus” system used during World War II, also known as cost maximizing. As Melman put it in his 2001 book, After Capitalism, “contractors could take the previous cost of making a product for the Pentagon and simply add on an agreed-upon profit margin.”
McNamara opted for the second option. The result was that by 1980, the cost of producing major weapons systems had grown at an annual rate of 20 percent. Melman observed that by 1996, the cost of the B-2 bomber exceeded the value of its weight in gold.
McNamara went on to model the Pentagon after a corporate central office, defining policy, appointing chiefs of subordinate units, and maintaining accounting and management functions with huge discretion. Each military service participated in the process of acquiring material and weapons. This process resulted in tens of thousands of employees becoming hundreds of thousands, paid with U.S. tax dollars, to maximize the profits of weapons producers.
Melman minced no words in articulating the consequences in the opening of his book, Pentagon Capitalism (1970) and later in The Demilitarized Society (1989):

The operation of a permanent military economy makes the president the chief executive officer of the state management controlling the largest single block of capital resources…this combination of [economic, political, and military] powers in the same hands has been a feature of statist societies—communist, fascist, and others—where individual rights cannot constrain central rule.
…Nowhere in the constitution is top economic power conferred.

Among the many critical consequences of the state-controlled industry described by Melman in After Capitalism:

Firms were no longer efficiency-oriented—rather, industry produced increasingly complicated goods.
Production had nothing to do with meeting the needs of ordinary consumers. Melman pointed out that even though a nuclear-powered submarine is a technological masterpiece, consumers can’t eat it; can’t wear it; can’t ride in it; can’t live in it; and can’t make anything with it.
Labor lost control of any decision-making it had over production. With the influx of capital came an influx of white-collar middle managers, and the alienation—or disempowering—of workers.
Where the U.S. was once a top producer and exporter of tools needed for production of consumer goods, the complexity of military production focused industry on specialized machinery and tools that have no utility in meeting consumer needs.
The Pentagon consumed the talents of U.S. scientists and engineers whose skills were needed in other sectors of society.

In one of Melman’s last articles, published in the political newsletter Counterpunch in March of 2003, his frustration was palpable. He noted that New York City put out a request for a proposal to spend between $3 and $4 billion to replace subway cars. Not a single U.S. company bid on the proposal—in part because the nation no longer had the tools it needed to build its subway trains. In the article, titled “In the Grip of a Permanent War Economy,” Melman calculated that if this manufacturing work were done in the United States, it would have generated, directly and indirectly, about 32,000 jobs. “The production facilities and labor force that could deliver six new subway cars each week could produce 300 cars per year, and thereby provide new replacement cars for the New York subway system in a twenty-year cycle,” Melman wrote, noting that such an endeavor would depend on well-trained engineers but that “it is almost twenty-five years since the last book was published in the United States on [urban public transportation].”
Percolating within the economic conversion movement that began some four decades ago was a vision to reduce the economic decision-making power of the wartime institutions. The plan was to set up a highly decentralized process, based on “alternative-use committees,” to implement the changeover from military to civilian work in factories, laboratories, and military bases. Half of each alternative-use committee would be named by management; the other half by the working people. There would be support of incomes during a changeover.
Nationally, a commission chaired by the secretary of commerce would publish a manual on local alternative-use planning. It would also encourage federal, state, and local governments to make capital investment plans, creating new markets for the capital goods required for infrastructure repair.
Three principal functions would be served by economic conversion: First, the planning stage would offer assurance to the working people of the war economy that they could have an economic future in a society where war-making was a diminished institution. Second, reversing the process of economic decay in the U.S. economy, particularly in manufacturing, the national commission would be empowered to facilitate planning for capital investments in all aspects of infrastructure by governments of cities, counties, states, and the federal government, which would comprise a massive program of new jobs and new markets. (Melman frequently referred to the annual “report card” published by the American Society of Civil Engineers to highlight the declining U.S. infrastructure—deteriorating roads, bridges, schools, and so on—a situation that continues to worsen.) And third, the national network of alternative-use committees would constitute a gain in decision-making power by all the working people involved.
Melman worked with students, union leaders, the peace movement, and with Congress to create momentum around these ideas. There were some key events along the way.
In 1971, George McGovern included the idea of economic conversion when he announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. His statement included this position:

Basing our defense budget on actual needs rather than imaginary fears would lead to savings. Needless war and military waste contribute to the economic crisis not only through inflation, but by the dissipation of labor and resources and in non-productive enterprise…
For too long the taxes of our citizens and revenues desperately needed by our cities and states have been drawn into Washington and wasted on senseless war and unnecessary military gadgets… A major test of the 1970s is the conversion of our economy from the excesses of war to the works of peace. I urgently call for conversion planning to utilize the talent and resources surplus to our military… for modernizing our industrial plants and meeting other peacetime needs.

In 1976, SANE held a conference in New York City titled “The Arms Race and the Economic Crisis.” Melman was a featured speaker. This conference was instrumental in winning an economic conversion plank in the Democratic Party platform that year. A decade later, in 1988 and ’89, Melman had several meetings with then Speaker of the House, Rep. Jim Wright (D-TX). Wright convened a meeting of certain members of Congress who were committed to supporting the economic conversion bill proposed by Rep. Ted Weiss (D-NY). Speaker Wright told Melman that, in his opinion, the arms race had taken on dangerous but also economically damaging characteristics and that military spending “sapped the strength of the whole society.”
On the first day of the opening of the 101^st Congress, Speaker Wright convened a meeting of members who had proposed economic conversion legislation, along with their aids. The purpose was to ensure that all proposals be joined into one, and that this legislation be given priority. To dramatize the importance of this bill, it would be given number H.R. 101.
Melman and SANE were elated. And then reality hit. As Melman reported: “Supporters of such an initiative did not reckon with the enormous power of those opposed to any such move toward economic conversion. In the weeks that followed, these vested interests waged a concerted and aggressive campaign in Congress and the national media to bring down Jim Wright over allegations of financial misconduct.”
The allegations had little substance, but Newt Gingrich, representing a headquarters district of Lockheed Martin, led the Republican attack. Sadly, they won. According to Melman, “Their media campaign drowned out any further discussion of economic conversion… A historic opportunity had been destroyed.”
Even so, economic conversion plans were being developed in California and beyond. A 1990 Los Angeles Times article reported that

Irvine, California Mayor Larry Agran planned to make his home town a national model for economic conversion by using what all presumed would be “under-worked” defense companies to build a major monorail project. He envisioned a major local mass-transportation industry. His proposed Irvine Institute for Entrepreneurial Development would also look for ways to push local rocket scientists toward environmental cleanup, healthcare, and other such enterprises.
In Los Angeles, Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, with the support of the International Assn. of Machinists, convened a committee to study prospects for converting aerospace jobs to establishing an electric car-manufacturing industry. They argued that there were linkages in technologies and skills across industries.
On the state level, California Assemblyman Sam Farr promoted a package of bills that required the governor to 1) convene an “economic summit” on conversion, 2) appoint a council to study the issue, and 3) come up with a means of facilitating the transfer of military technology to the civilian sector.

At the federal level, Senator Weiss continued to push economic conversion legislation until his death in 1992. (To my knowledge, no other member of Congress has taken on this issue.) But George H.W. Bush’s attack on Iraq in the 1990 Persian Gulf War was a critical nail in the coffin of the national economic conversion movement.
That’s not to say there haven’t been some in the peace movement who have continued to keep the embers of economic conversion alive. In Groton, Connecticut, for example, the local peace community organized a “listening project” to engage the community about what economic conversion might look like for General Dynamics’ Electric Boat Company, builder of submarines for the U.S. Navy. For more than thirty years, the Peace Economy Project in St. Louis has been advocating for conversion from a military to a more stable peace-based local economy. The Woodstock, New York, peace community held a conference in 2009 focused on the conversion of Ametek/Rotron, a local manufacturer that makes parts used in F-16 fighter planes, Apache attack helicopters, tanks, and missile delivery systems. Certainly there are others out there engaging their home communities in envisioning alternatives to continued production for endless war.
My partner, Bruce Gagnon, is the coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and has been organizing around conversion since the 1980s. His typical question to any audience is: “What is the United States’ number one industrial export?” Audiences across the country shout out “weapons.” He then asks them to consider that if weapons are the number one industrial export, what is the global marketing strategy? “Endless war” becomes the refrain.
In 2003 Bruce and I moved to Maine, in part to be near Bath Iron Works (BIW), the General Dynamics-owned production facility for naval destroyers that are deployed with Aegis weapons systems. These Aegis destroyers are part of the “Star Wars” or missile defense vision; they rely on space satellites when launched toward their targets. Bruce and I joined the vigils organized by peace groups in Bath, and Bruce organized some vigils for the Global Network. We would hold signs critical of the purpose of the Aegis destroyer (after all, it’s not about defense but destruction) and would offer an alternative vision for the factory (build wind turbines, not destroyers). Initially, people laughed, scoffed, scorned, and some spewed hateful things at us.
In 2007 we bought a big house in Bath with a friend, tore down a wall to create a community room, and began hosting conversations about the idea of economic conversion. We interviewed people who had lived in the community for some time. We interviewed workers at BIW, including Peter Woodruff, who joined our conversion study group early on. Broken-hearted by the role of the Aegis destroyers in the shock and awe campaign on Iraq, he has been a brave and creative organizer inside the shipyard.
As BIW copes with episodic layoffs and a diminishing need for U.S. warships, fewer people scoff at our signs and message. Envisioning a future for BIW in a peace economy is an essential asset to the community.
Meanwhile, there is momentum in Maine to generate wind power options. A professor at the University of Maine is experimenting with composite materials to create a prototype for an offshore wind turbine, and a former governor has created a private company to position wind turbines throughout the state.
As a friend who was an employee at BIW many years ago points out, BIW did convert years ago—from making commercial ships to naval destroyers. Can it experience another conversion now, making wind turbines and other renewable energy products? What if BIW converted to making hospital ships?
The idea of transforming the U.S. military to a humanitarian relief organization is not unheard of; Maine author Kate Braestrup spoke at the state’s Veterans for Peace PTSD conference this year and told the story of her Marine son who has experienced a number of deployments focused on disaster relief. She asked him how he could do humanitarian relief using former instruments of war. He told her it took some creativity, but they were able to transform their equipment to rebuild infrastructure. Braestrup then asked this question: given that devastating extreme weather events will continue to occur, why don’t we build hospital ships at BIW to meet the need for disaster relief—and if we need to adapt the material to fight wars, then certainly we can figure out how to do that, right?
It behooves the peace movement to create a vision that the populace can get excited about—a vision that will capture people’s imagination. A vision that sees the skills and talents of our engineers and scientists creating the renewable energy infrastructure critical to surviving the twenty-first century; a vision that engages peace activists, environmentalists, labor, students, artists, and food security folks in creating plans for how we will warm, feed, and transport people in the year 2040. This is the true security need for the United States, and the world.
Economic conversion is an idea whose time has come. As evidence, I submit that we have an ally in none other than Deepak Chopra, the preeminent leader in the field of mind-body medicine. Few people know that, after the 2008 election, Dr. Chopra sent a public letter to Barack Obama that he called “Nine Steps to Peace for Obama in the New Year.” Asserting that it was an anti-war constituency that elected Obama, Dr. Chopra invoked the spirit of Dwight D. Eisenhower in insisting Obama move from an economy dependent on war-making to a peace-based economy. Dr. Chopra’s recommendations included writing into every defense contract a requirement for a peacetime project; subsidizing conversion of military companies to peaceful uses with tax incentives and direct funding; converting military bases to housing for the poor; phasing out all foreign military bases; and calling a moratorium on future weapons technologies.
The vision is clear, it is obvious, it is mainstream. An important next step for us is to determine what we can do in our home communities to empower local unions and workers, environmentalists, healthcare workers, social workers, secular and spiritual leaders alike, and the neighbors next door to engage—to look around, determine the needs, create the collaborations, and wrestle the funds away to start building a survivable future.

Mary Beth Sullivan lives in Bath, Maine, near the General Dynamics-owned Bath Iron Works, where naval destroyers, fitted with Aegis weapons systems, continue to be built. She is a social worker who attempts to serve the needs of a growing homeless population in a time of diminishing resources. She is also active with the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

Drone War, Mainstream Media Support

2012-01-07T19:33:00.000-06:00

Time Cheers the Drone War

01/03/2012 by Peter Hart

The new issue of Time magazine promises on its cover "Essential Info for the Year Ahead." One apparently essential report: U.S. drones are awesome.
The report--written by Mark Thompson, available to subscribers only explains that a "hot military trend" this way:

Today's generals and admirals want weapons that are smaller, remote-controlled and bristling with intelligence. In short, more drones that can tightly target terrorists, deliver larger payloads and are some of the best spies the U.S. has ever produced, even if they occasionally get captured in Iran or crash on landing at secret bases.

And also, you know, kill innocent civilians.
There's no time to dwell on that, because there are too many good things to say about our remote-control war. "Drones had a big year in 2011," Thompson writes, and 2012 will be even bigger. As Time readers learn, "Unlike humans, these weapons don't need sleep."
And best of all, apparently, the military aren't the only ones doing the killing:

America's arsenal has become so small and lethal, you don't need the U.S. Army--or any military service at all, in fact--to field and wield them. The CIA, which used to be limited to derringers and exploding cigars, is now not very secretly flying drones. With little public acknowledgment and minimal congressional oversight, these clandestine warriors have killed some 2,000 people identified as terrorists lurking in shadows around the globe since 9/11.

The British Bureau of Investigative Journalism's investigation of the CIA drone program in Pakistan (8/10/11) stressed less of the gee-whiz and more the real-life consequences of the attacks. Estimates of civilian deaths range from 390 to 780-- including almost 200 children. U.S. officials, for the record, were once making absurd claims that no innocents were killed.
As for the apparent enthusiasm for waging a war where "you don't need the U.S. Army" at all--that is precisely one of the criticisms of the drone program; some legal experts argue that non-military personnel are not legal combatants, and therefore killing every one of those 2,000 "people identified as terrorists" was a war crime. Others point out that employing drones outside an active combat zone could also violate international law. But none of that is "Essential Info" for 2012.

Pentagon Budget, Small Cut, Two Wars Scam

2012-01-05T20:22:00.000-06:00

Heather Hurlburt: Pentagon Strategy Review: Why It Matters2012 and 2013 Pentagon spending will represent the first real declines in military spending in more than a decade; but the total 8% cut envisaged is less than the Reagan defense builddown of the 1980s. Even if the more dramatic cuts in the Budget Control Act sequester were enacted, they would only return the Pentagon to 2007 levels.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-hurlburt/pentagon-strategy-review-_b_1184685.html

Mark Thompson: The Two-MRC Strategy: Major Regional Contingencies, Or Mythical Routine Canards?Thompson argues that the claim that the U.S. could win two major wars at once was never really true, it was just an excuse to justify Pentagon budgets, so formally abandoning the claim is not that big a deal.
http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/01/04/the-two-mrc-strategy-major-regional-contingencies-or-mythical-routine-canards/

Pentagon Budget Must be Reduced

2012-01-03T14:17:00.002-06:00

Robert Dreyfuss

NationofChange / Op-Ed

Published: Tuesday 3 January 2012

Even some traditional conservatives and Tea Party rebels have begun to side with liberal Democrats such as Representative Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) to propose much larger cuts in defense spending than either the Obama administration or Congress as a whole is likely to consider this year.

Panetta’s Sacred Hippopotamus

Militarism USA, Another Nail

2012-01-02T20:29:00.000-06:00

Wolf writes: "Perhaps Congress assumes that it will always only be 'they' who are targeted for arrest and military detention: but sadly, Parliamentary leaders are the first to face pressure, threats, arrest and even violence when the military obtains the power to make civilian arrests and hold civilians in military facilities without due process. There is no exception to this rule."

Naomi Wolf, speaking at the National Lawyers Guild Forum in New York, 01/23/09. (photo: Thomas Good/NLN)

NDAA: Congress Signed Its Own Arrest Warrants

By Naomi Wolf, Naomi Wolf's Blog

02 January 12

Responding to the Senate's overwhelming passage of the 'Homeland Battlefield' bill, Ms. Wolf first published this piece on December 12, 2011. However, her argument took on new relevance over the weekend when President Obama used the media blackout of the holiday season to quietly sign the bill during a vacation in Hawaii. - JPS/RSN

never thought I would have to write this: but - incredibly - Congress has now passed the National Defense Appropriations Act, with Amendment 1031, which allows for the military detention of American citizens. The amendment is so loosely worded that any American citizen could be held without due process. The language of this bill can be read to assure Americans that they can challenge their detention - but most people do not realize what this means: at Guantanamo and in other military prisons, one's lawyer's calls are monitored, witnesses for one's defense are not allowed to testify, and one can be forced into nudity and isolation. Incredibly, ninety-three Senators voted to support this bill and now most of Congress: a roster of names that will live in infamy in the history of our nation, and never be expunged from the dark column of the history books.

They may have supported this bill because - although it's hard to believe - they think the military will only arrest active members of Al Qaida; or maybe, less naively, they believe that 'at most', low-level dissenting figures, activists, or troublesome protesters might be subjected to military arrest. But they are forgetting something critical: history shows that those who signed this bill will soon be subject to arrest themselves.

Our leaders appear to be supporting this bill thinking that they will always be what they are now, in the fading light of a once-great democracy - those civilian leaders who safely and securely sit in freedom and DIRECT the military. In inhabiting this bubble, which their own actions are about to destroy, they are cocooned by an arrogance of power, placing their own security in jeopardy by their own hands, and ignoring history and its inevitable laws. The moment this bill becomes law, though Congress is accustomed, in a weak democracy, to being the ones who direct and control the military, the power roles will reverse: Congress will no longer be directing and in charge of the military: rather, the military will be directing and in charge of individual Congressional leaders, as well as in charge of everyone else - as any Parliamentarian in any society who handed this power over to the military can attest.

Perhaps Congress assumes that it will always only be 'they' who are targeted for arrest and military detention: but sadly, Parliamentary leaders are the first to face pressure, threats, arrest and even violence when the military obtains the power to make civilian arrests and hold civilians in military facilities without due process. There is no exception to this rule. Just as I traveled the country four years ago warning against the introduction of torture and secret prisons - and confidently offering a hundred thousand dollar reward to anyone who could name a nation that allowed torture of the 'other' that did not eventually turn this abuse on its own citizens - (confident because I knew there was no such place) - so today I warn that one cannot name a nation that gave the military the power to make civilian arrests and hold citizens in military detention, that did not almost at once turn that power almost against members of that nation's own political ruling class. This makes sense - the obverse sense of a democracy, in which power protects you; political power endangers you in a militarized police state: the more powerful a political leader is, the more can be gained in a militarized police state by pressuring, threatening or even arresting him or her.

Mussolini, who created the modern template for fascism, was a duly elected official when he started to direct paramilitary forces against Italian citizens: yes, he sent the Blackshirts to beat up journalists, editors, and union leaders; but where did these militarized groups appear most dramatically and terrifyingly, snapping at last the fragile hold of Italian democracy? In the halls of the Italian Parliament. Whom did they physically attack and intimidate? Mussolini's former colleagues in Parliament - as they sat, just as our Congress is doing, peacefully deliberating and debating the laws. Whom did Hitler's Brownshirts arrest in the first wave of mass arrests in 1933? Yes, journalists, union leaders and editors; but they also targeted local and regional political leaders and dragged them off to secret prisons and to torture that the rest of society had turned a blind eye to when it had been directed at the 'other.' Who was most at risk from assassination or arrest and torture, after show trials, in Stalin's Russia? Yes, journalists, editors and dissidents: but also physically endangered, and often arrested by militarized police and tortured or worse, were senior members of the Politburo who had fallen out of favor.

Is this intimidation and arrest by the military a vestige of the past? Hardly. We forget in America that all over the world there are militarized societies in which shells of democracy are propped up - in which Parliament meets regularly and elections are held, but the generals are really in charge, just as the Egyptian military is proposing with upcoming elections and the Constitution itself. That is exactly what will take place if Congress gives the power of arrest and detention to the military: and in those societies if a given political leader does not please the generals, he or she is in physical danger or subjected to military arrest. Whom did John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, say he was directed to intimidate and threaten when he worked as a 'jackal', putting pressure on the leadership in authoritarian countries? Latin American parliamentarians who were in the position to decide the laws that affected the well-being of his corporate clients. Who is under house arrest by the military in Myanmar? The political leader of the opposition to the military junta. Malalai Joya is an Afghani parliamentarian who has run afoul of the military and has to sleep in a different venue every night - for her own safety. An on, and on, in police states - that is, countries with military detention of civilians - that America is about to join.

US Congresspeople and Senators may think that their power protects them from the treacherous wording of Amendments 1031 and 1032: but their arrogance is leading them to a blindness that is suicidal. The moment they sign this NDAA into law, history shows that they themselves and their staff are the most physically endangered by it. They will immediately become, not the masters of the great might of the United States military, but its subjects and even, if history is any guide - and every single outcome of ramping up police state powers, unfortunately, that I have warned for years that history points to, has come to pass - sadly but inevitably, its very first targets.

Iraq War Debacle

2011-12-31T08:57:00.000-06:00

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2011 title

From a State Department insider, the first account of our blundering efforts to rebuild Iraq—a shocking and rollicking true-life tale of Americans abroad
Charged with rebuilding Iraq, would you spend taxpayer money on a sports mural in Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhood to promote reconciliation through art? How about an isolated milk factory that cannot get its milk to market? Or a pastry class training women to open cafés on bombed-out streets without water or electricity?
According to Peter Van Buren, we bought all these projects and more in the most expensive hearts-and-minds campaign since the Marshall Plan. We Meant Well is his eyewitness account of the civilian side of the surge—that surreal and bollixed attempt to defeat terrorism and win over Iraqis by reconstructing the world we had just destroyed. Leading a State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team on its quixotic mission, Van Buren details, with laser-like irony, his yearlong encounter with pointless projects, bureaucratic fumbling, overwhelmed soldiers, and oblivious administrators secluded in the world's largest embassy, who fail to realize that you can't rebuild a country without first picking up the trash.
Darkly funny while deadly serious, We Meant Well is a tragicomic voyage of ineptitude and corruption that leaves its writer—and readers—appalled and disillusioned but wiser.

Praise

One diplomat’s darkly humorous and ultimately scathing assault on just about everything the military and the State Department have done — or tried to do — since the invasion of Iraq. The title says it all.” --Steven Myers, New York Times
"In this shocking and darkly hilarious exposé of the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq, former State Department team leader Van Buren describes the tragicomedy that has been American efforts at nation building, marked by bizarre decisions and wrongheaded priorities… "We made things in Iraq look the way we wanted them to look," Van Buren writes. With lyrical prose and biting wit, this book reveals the devastating arrogance of imperial ambition and folly."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"One of the rare, completely satisfying results of the expensive debacle in Iraq."—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

US Wars Kill Women and Chidren

2011-12-30T18:43:00.000-06:00

Whatever Happened to Women and Children First?November 4, 2011 at 7:06 pm by Mickie Lynn

Absence, by Jane Norling, from Windows and Mirrors of Afghanistan

By Johnny Barber
http://warisacrime.org/content/what-ever-happened-women-and-children-first
“All wars, whether just or unjust, disastrous or victorious, are waged against the child.” Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children, 1919.
In Kabul, the children are everywhere. You see them scrounging through trash. You see them doing manual labor in the auto body shops, the butchers, and the construction sites. They carry teapots and glasses from shop to shop. You see them moving through the snarled traffic swirling small pots of pungent incense, warding off evil spirits and trying to collect small change. They can be found sleeping in doorways or in the rubble of destroyed buildings. It is estimated that 70,000 children live on the streets of Kabul.
The big news story on CNN this morning [October 16, 2011] is the excitement generated as hundreds of people line up to buy the newest iphone. I can’t stop thinking of the children sitting in the dirt of the refugee camp, or running down the path pushing old bicycle tires, or the young boy sitting next to his overflowing sacks of collected detritus. He has a deep infection on the corner of his mouth that looks terribly infected. These images contrast with an image of an old grandfather, dressed in a spotless all white shalwar kameez squatting on the sidewalk outside a huge iron gate, embracing his beautiful young grand daughter in a huge hug, each smiling broadly, one of the few moments of joy I have witnessed on the streets of Kabul.
In Afghanistan, one in five children die before their 5^th birthday, (41% of the deaths occur in the first month of life). For the children who make it past the first month, many perish due to preventable and highly treatable conditions including diarrhea and pneumonia. Malnourishment affects 39% of the children, compared to 25% at the start of the U.S. invasion. 52% don’t have access to clean water. 94% of births are not registered. The children are afforded very little legal protection, especially girls, who are stilled banned from schools in many regions, used as collateral to settle debts, and married through arranged marriages as young as 10 years old. Though not currently an issue, HIV/AIDS looms as a catastrophic possibility as drug addiction increases significantly, even among women and children. Only 16% of women use modern contraception, and children on the streets are vulnerable to sexual exploitation. This is why the “State of the World’s Mothers” report issued in May 2011 by Save the Children ranked Afghanistan last, with only Somalia providing worse outcomes for their children.
Retired Army Col. John Agoglia said, “A key to America’s long-term national security and one of the best ways for our nation to make friends around the world is by promoting the health of women and children in fragile and emerging nations”–in Afghanistan, this strategy is failing. Not a single public hospital has been built since the invasion. It is not an impossibility; it is a matter of will. Emergency, an Italian NGO, runs 3 hospitals and 30 clinics throughout Afghanistan on a budget of 7 million dollars per year. This is ISAF’s (NATO’s International Security Assistance Force) monthly budget for air-conditioning.
Polls have consistently shown that over 90 percent of Americans believe saving children should be a national priority. Children comprise 65% of the Afghan population. Afghanistan was named the worst place on earth to be a child. In Afghanistan children have been sacrificed by the United States, collateral damage in our “war on terror”.
The mothers of these at risk children are not faring any better. Most are illiterate. Most are chronically malnourished. 1 woman in 11 dies in pregnancy or childbirth, this compares to 1 in 2,100 in the US (the highest of any industrialized nation). In Italy and Ireland, the risk of maternal death is less than 1 in 15,000 and in Greece it’s 1 in 31,800. Skilled health professionals attend only 14% of childbirths. A woman’s life expectancy is barely 45 years of age.
Women are still viewed as property. A law has been passed by the Karzai regime that legalizes marital rape, and requires a woman to get the permission of her husband to leave the house. Domestic violence is a chronic problem. A women who runs away from home (even if escaping violence) is imprisoned. Upon completion of her sentence she is returned to the husband. Self-immolation is still common as desperate women try to get out of impossible situations.
Shortly after the U.S. invasion, Laura Bush said, “The plight of women and children in Afghanistan is a matter of deliberate human cruelty, carried out by those who seek to intimidate and control.” President Bush said, “Our coalition has liberated Afghanistan and restored fundamental human rights and freedoms to Afghan women, and all the people of Afghanistan.” Actually, the former warlords responsible for the destruction, pillage, and rape of Afghanistan were ushered back into power by the United States. In 2007, these very same warlords, now Parliamentarians, passed a bill that granted amnesty for any killings during the civil war. A local journalist said, “The killers are the ones holding the pens, writing the law and continuing their crimes.”
When Malalai Joya addressed the Peace Loya Jirga convened in December, 2003, she boldly asked, “Why are we allowing criminals to be present here?” She was thrown out of the assembly. Undeterred, she ran for Parliament, winning in a landslide. She began her maiden speech in Parliament by saying, “My condolences to the people of Afghanistan…” As she continued speaking, the warlord sitting behind her threatened to rape and kill her. The MP’s voted her out of Parliament and Karzai upheld her ouster. In hiding, she continues to champion women’s rights. She has stated that the only people who can liberate Afghan women are the women themselves. When we spoke briefly to her by phone, she stated that she was surprised to still be alive, and needed to cancel our meeting, as it was too dangerous in the current security situation. The Red Cross states that the security situation is the worst it has been in 30 years.
In America, as our total defense budget balloons to 667 billion dollars per year, women and children are faring worse as well. In the “State of the World’s Mothers” report, America has dropped from 11^th in 2003 to 31^st of the developed countries today. We currently rank behind such luminaries as Estonia, Croatia, and Slovakia. We fall even farther in regards to our children, going from the 4^th ranked country to the 34^th. Poverty is on the increase with an estimated 1 child in 5 living in poverty. More than 20 million children rely on school lunch programs to keep from going hungry. The number of people living in poverty in America has grown by 2.6 million in just the last 12 months.
Dear reader, I hesitate to bother you with so many statistics, I eliminated the pie charts and graphs, and this report is still dull. After all, the new iphone has Siri, a personal assistant that understands you when you speak. You can verbally instruct it to send a text message, and it does! Now that’s excitement! CNN states there is no need to panic; the Atlanta store has plenty of phones to fill the demand.
Looking only at numbers it is easy to avoid the truth of the enormous amount of human suffering they envelop. Drive through the streets of any American city and these statistics come alive in the swollen ranks of the homeless. Drive through the streets of Kabul and these statistics come alive in the forms of hungry children begging for change.
It is difficult to ascertain what benefit America is deriving from our continued military presence in Afghanistan, though exploitation of natural resources certainly plays a role. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent in a military strategy that is failing by all indicators. Yet the politicians in this country continue to back this strategy. Arms dealers and contractors, like G.E. and Boeing, all with lobbyists on Capitol Hill, continue to reap big financial rewards and in turn reward politicians with financial support. Our politicians claim to be “tough on terror” and profess we are “winning”. But by what measure do they ascertain this? The only Afghan people benefiting from our presence are the people supporting the occupation forces, the warlords, and the drug lords. As the poppy fields produce record yields “poppy palaces” are springing up all over Kabul, ostentatious signs that someone is benefiting from our interference.
One measure to judge the success of a nation is its ability to protect its most vulnerable populations. America is not succeeding. The plight of women and children in Afghanistan is still a matter of deliberate human cruelty, carried out by those who seek to intimidate and control. When will our politicians hear the desperate cry of the street children of Afghanistan, who, with all the incense in the world, simply can’t ward off the evil of our occupation?
To support the vital work of Voices for Creative Non-Violence please see http://www.vcnv.or g

Posted in Afghan Peace negotiations, Afghan women, Afghanistan, Cost of war, Women's issues, children's issues, human rights, maternal health and reproductive rights | 3 Comments

We Have Outlawed War

2011-12-30T18:13:00.000-06:00

AlterNet / By Bruce E. Levine

32 COMMENTS

When the World Outlawed War: An Interview with David Swanson

For those who know war only through television, criminalizing it sounds like proposing to criminalize government. But there was a time when the masses made war illegal.

November 21, 2011 |

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David Swanson’s recently released book, When the World Outlawed War, tells the story of how the highly energized peace movement in the 1920s, supported by an overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens from every level of society, was able to push politicians into something quite remarkable—the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy. The 1920s “War Outlawry” movement in the United States was so popular that most politicians could not afford to oppose it.

David Swanson, since serving as press secretary in Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, has emerged as one of the leading anti-war activists in the United States. While Swanson has fought against the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and tried to alert Americans to the fact that U.S. military spending is the source of most of our economic problems, his anti-war activism goes much deeper. He wants to stigmatize militarist politicians as criminals. In his previous book War is a Lie, Swanson made the case for the abolition of war as an instrument of national policy, and When the World Outlawed War provides an historical example of just how powerful war abolitionism can be.

Bruce Levine: At a college lecture that you recently gave, you asked the students and professors if they believed war was illegal or if they had ever heard of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and only about 2 or 3 percent of a large group raised their hands. But what really seems to have disturbed you is when you asked if war should be illegal, and only 5 percent thought that it should be.

David Swanson: Well, both responses bothered me somewhat, but only one surprised me at all, and only one offended me. I knew people in the United States did not believe war was illegal. I knew that only the most serious peace activists had heard of the Kellogg-Briand Pact and that even they didn’t recognize its value, including the degree to which it is stronger than the U.N. Charter in its prohibition of all wars, not just certain kinds of wars.

But why wouldn’t people want war to be made illegal? To my ear that sounds like not wanting slavery or rape or torture to be illegal. And I’m still in the camp that considers torture irredeemably evil, by the way. At the end of the 19th century, when the United States snatched up Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Panama, etc., there was a popular love for war in the air. At the end of World War I, war was widely viewed as an evil disease to be eradicated. From World War II forward to today there has been an ever increasing tendency to view war as ordinary, necessary, and patriotic—if not a war in Vietnam or Iraq, then certainly some other war.

For war’s victims and most of its participants it always turns out to be the horror it appeared in 1918. But for those who know war only through U.S. television, the idea of criminalizing it sounds almost like proposing to criminalize government. That state of affairs is what I find disturbing, the realization of how normal it is to think of government as essentially responsible for large-scale killing. This is miles away from Warren Harding’s return to “normalcy” after World War I. Since World War II we have never returned to normalcy.

BL: People have a difficult enough time today believing that they have enough power to stop a single senseless war. Did the peace movement in the 1920s really believe they could abolish war?

DS: The thinking of the peace movement of the 1920s comes out of a different world, and getting back into it may be difficult for a lot of people. One doorway in, I am hoping, is through realization that a law still on the books outlaws war. While banning war may be unimaginable, war is in fact already banned. Every war since 1929 has been illegal. Every act of war has been illegal.

Ending Poverty, Hunger, and Wars

2011-12-30T15:45:00.001-06:00

HUNGRY FOR PEACE
How you can help end poverty and war with Food Not Bombs

Our new book about Food Not Bombs written, designed and illustrated by Food Not Bombs cofounder Keith McHenry
ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY

Food Not Bombs has proven to be an effective project for social change. Hungry For Peace passionately makes the case that we should take action to end hunger, poverty and war providing shocking evidence that our future is in peril if we sit by and do nothing. This book will motivate you to take acting and provides hope. This new 180 page Food Not Bombs handbook with 120 photos and illustrations, vegan recipes to provide meals for groups of 100 and families of 6 people with metric and U.S. measurements, the 30 year history of the movement and logistics on how to start a local Food Not Bombs group, how to prepare meals for hundreds, how to organize meetings, tours, gatherings and successful campaigns of nonviolent direct action. This 8 1/2 by 11 inch book also provides flyers you can reprint, the time line of major events in the history of the movement and many other useful details to help change society. This book will help you and your friends do your part to participate in the global uprising.

DISPLAY ADS TO PROMOTE THE BOOK

"I wanted to write and express my sincere thanks for sending me the new Food Not Bombs book. It 's beautifully written and was a great inspiration to me. There aren't many books that made me cry and be encouraged at the same time. Ironically, as I was reading I was also watching the police tear down the kitchen at Occupy Denver."
Hillary, Boulder Colorado

"Sharing food is a basic human function, and peace is humankind's highest aspiration. Food Not Bombs brings both of these together in a powerful way, providing a recipe not only for great vegan meals but for creating a better world right here and now. This book will serve you well! "
Randall Amster, J.D., Ph.D. Graduate Chair of Humanities Prescott College Executive Director, Peace & Justice Studies Association
Please consider helping build the Food Not Bombs Movement by placing a display ad in your newsletter, zine or on your website or blog. (Email us if you need help.)

CLICK HERE TO REVIEW A PDF ON LINE NOW FOR FREE
PAPER BACK out this Fall - ISBN 978-1-937276-06-5 - Price $18.95 per copy.

THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION AVAILABLE NOW! - ORDER A COPY TODAY!
Our first book helped hundreds of people start local Food Not Bombs groups and introduced thousands of others to the movement for to social change. With the addition information in our new book we expect to encourage another wave of interest. We sold 10,000 copies of "Food Not Bombs, How to Feed The Hungry and Build Community " and we were down to the last 100 books realized we need to write a new edition to make it current. So many things have changed since 1992 when the first editon of "Food Not Bombs, How to Feed The Hungry and Build Community "was published. This new book includes over 100 diagrams and photos, outlines how you can recover, prepare and share vegan meals with the hungry. Our details on how to start a local group now include the use of the web, email and other technologies not available in 1992. We also added recipes for 6 people along with our tasty recipes for 100 and also include metric measurements to make the book universal. Instead of a focus on American law as we did in the 1992 book we are including information about possible legal issues in countries all over world based on Keith's experience cooking and sharing meals with Food Not Bombs groups during his travels. We also include a history of the first 30 years of Food Not Bombs. There are many flyers and forms you can reprint to help your Food Not Bombs group be as effective as possible.

" Food Not Bombs is a glistening, beautiful arrow pointing us toward another way, rooted in belief that we are all part of one another and that we actually can feed a hungry world while helping our planet survivee. Simplicity, service, sharing and sturdy nonviolent resistance to war and weapons are among the ingredients that guide adherents to one of the finest movements of our time. I 'm delighted that Keith McHenry 's book, Hungry for Peace, will help usher us toward sanity and real security."
Kathy Kelly co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence

"Over and over, we hear the refrain: 'The problems are so big. How can I make a difference?' Keith McHenry and Food Not Bombs answer this question every single day, in words and actions. Face to face with those in need and in the face of those who oppress, McHenry and FNB have blazed a path for 21st century direct action. Their work is based on a truly holistic activist perspective - linking and defying all forms of violence and subjugation. The next time someone asks you what they can do, you might wanna give them a copy of Keith's book 'Hungry For Peace' and start taking action yourself."
Mickey Z., author of "Darker Shade of Green" (Raw Dog Screaming Press)

"The beauty and power of Food Not Bombs is that while serving food is meeting a community need, it is also building community. It is no coincidence that Food Not Bombs has become a mainstay within countless social movements around the world. From street corners to punk houses to mass protests, the humility and compassion shown by giving free food, and helping one another, is inspirational. In 'Hungry for Peace,' Keith McHenry charts the history and vision of Food Not Bombs while also providing the tools needed to get out and--without bosses, leaders or approval - do it yourself."
Will Potter, author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege

"I have worked with Keith and the wonderful people of Food Not Bombs all over the country - the organization is a courageous model for grassroots organizing for effective and positive change. I honor the work and recommend this book!"
Cindy Sheehan - Gold Star Families for Peace and Founder of Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas

VISIT HUNGRY FOR PEACE ON FACEBOOK

The first book, "Food Not Bombs, How to Feed The Hungry and Build Community " is out of print. Please make a contribution to help us distribute our new book to people interested in starting a local Food Not Bombs group. We will be publishing the first edition of "HUNGRY FOR PEACE- How you can help end poverty and war with Food Not Bombs." soon.

MORE BOOKS BY SEE SHARP PRESS - TUCSON

Occupy Wall Street Library Reportedly Thrown Away By NYPD
"HUNGRY FOR PEACE"WAS AN EARLY CONTRIBUTION TO THE LIBRARY AT OCCUPY WALL STREET.

The idea of occupations are explained on Page 86 of Hungry for Peace and included in a number of places in the history section starting on page 103 about the 1989 Tent City Protests in San Francisco and New York City. Copies of Keith McHenry's first book "Food Not Bombs, How to Feed The Hungry and Build Community " were also among the books destroyed.

Taos author"s new book focuses on feeding the hungry - By Ariana Kramer of the Taos News December 10, 2011

"it will be a great day when our schools get the money they need & the air force
has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."
The poster that inspired the founding of Food Not Bombs.

Food Not Bombs
P.O. Box 424, Arroyo Seco, NM 87514 USA
575-770-3377
1-800-884-1136
menu@foodnotbombs.net
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/index.html

| Start a Food Not Bombs | Main Menu | Food Not Bombs Contacts | Donate A Dollar For Peace |

It's the WAR DEPARTMENT

Guantanamo Newsletter #3

Bush, Congress, Courts, Obama, Public Lawlessness

Kurnaz, Gitmo Survivor After 5 Years

Obama Signs “Battlefield Bill” for Indefinite Detention

January 11 Resistance Coalition

Witess Against Torture and Catholic Worker: January 11, 2012

Witness Against Torture and War Resisters League

In Addition to Gitmo: US Terrorism Prison Complex

Greenwald Book on Bush/Obama

“Guantanamo, 10 Years And Counting” by David Cole

FROM WAR RESISTERS LEAGUE

Beyond Guantanamo, a Web of US Prisons for Terrorism Inmates “

Scott Shane, The New York Times, Dec. 1, 2011, RSN

READ MORE http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/345-justice/8855-beyond-guantanamo-a-web-of-us-prisons-for-terrorism-inmates

END GUANTANAMO NEWSLETTER #3

Afghan/Pakistan Newsletter #15

Here is the link to all the newsletters archived in the OMNI web site.

Ending Obama's War: Responsible Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan

From Paradigm Publishers (2011)

US "War on Terrorism" and Islamophobia

Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/

Military Suicides

Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ Offering knowledge as a foundation for peace and justice action.

“Army suicides set record in July”

placeAd2(commercialNode,"tooltile",false,"");By Greg Jaffe, Washington Postd, August 12, 2011

U.S. Troops Reportedly Taking More Medication Than Ever

PTSD

OMNI PTSD NEWSLETTER #1, JANUARY 12, 2012. Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace.

Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change.

Contents

VETS AROUND THE WORLD SEEK TO HEAL

“Hidden Battles”: Veterans Living With the Consequences of War

Introduction

Fascism USA?

Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/

Convert Pentagon Budget from Conquest and Killing to Human Needs

Conversion from War to Peace Economy

Moving from a War Economy to a Peace Economy

Drone War, Mainstream Media Support

Time Cheers the Drone War

Pentagon Budget, Small Cut, Two Wars Scam

Pentagon Budget Must be Reduced

Panetta’s Sacred Hippopotamus

Militarism USA, Another Nail

NDAA: Congress Signed Its Own Arrest Warrants

Iraq War Debacle

Praise

US Wars Kill Women and Chidren

Whatever Happened to Women and Children First?November 4, 2011 at 7:06 pm by Mickie Lynn

We Have Outlawed War

When the World Outlawed War: An Interview with David Swanson

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Ending Poverty, Hunger, and Wars

By Greg Jaffe, Washington Postd, August 12, 2011