Sequoia Newsmagazine

How Stupid or Cruel can County Workers Be?

2010-05-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

Elderly Gay Couple Victimized by the County

by: Brian Leubitz Mon Apr 19, 2010
End of life situations can often be even more tragic for LGBT couples. We are far less likely to have children to care for our elderly, and the current generation of LGBT senior citizens is still dealing with a lot of entrenched homophobia from their peers. However, a recent case shows just how difficult this situation can be. Kate Kendall of NCLR wrote about the story of one Sonoma County couple that was tragically separated at the end of their lives:

Without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold's possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold's lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county's actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property. The only memento Clay has is a photo album that Harold painstakingly put together for Clay during the last three months of his life.

Take a moment to read the whole article, or find more information at NCLR's Elder Law Project. Basically, Harold broke his hip, and the County determined that both of them needed to go to nursing homes. They packed them off to different nursing homes that didn't respect their relationship. Furthermore, they were not granted access and the respect that they deserved, both under common decency as well as under the legal documents that they had signed.

Would such a scenario have occurred with a straight couple? It seems doubtful, and this is the crux of the problem that we face. Not only is our situation simply out of the norm for social workers, but lack of resources means that training is falling behind. There is no way to make up for such a tragedy, but Sonoma County should at the very least start with an apology to Clay and work towards helping him recover as much of his stuff as possible.

Thing is, Sonoma County was well outside of the lines of the law in this case, so legislation can only partly address the situation. The most obvious solution would be marriage equality, and the respect of same-sex marriages. But, we need to ensure that those on the front lines are adequately aware of the laws already on the books and how to treat LGBT couples. This is a shameful story that should never be repeated.

Cross posted from the Prop 8 Trial Tracker, a project of the Courage Campaign.

Some books that you may want to read

2010-04-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

HOPES AND PROSPECTS

By NOAM CHOMSKY
Forthcoming May 10th! Newly Released
In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky surveys the dangers and prospects of our early twenty-first century. Exploring the growing gap between North and South, the Obama administration, the fiascos of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the recent financial bailouts, he also sees hope for the future—in the democratic wave in Latin America and in the global solidarity movements that suggest “real progress toward freedom and justice.”

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THE CASE FOR SOCIALISM

By ALAN MAASS, Afterword by HOWARD ZINN
"Is socialism an impossible, discredited dream or the only realistic path for human survival? If you're not sure of the answer, or are just curious about what the left really believes in, you need to read Maass. He's the Tom Paine of the contemporary American left." —Mike Davis

"A vivid, fluent, and rare book about socialism for those uninterested in tracts and excited by new prospects" —John Pilger
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Pray for Peace with justice

2010-04-01T16:58:00.000-07:00

World Week for Peace in Palestine Israel

29.05.10 - 04.06.10 Worldwide

During the week of 29 May to 4 June, church organizations, congregations, and people of faith are encouraged to make a common witness by participating in worship services, educational events, and acts of advocacy in support a just peace for Israelis and Palestinians.

long,sad story of largely US Jewish settlers vs. Palesintians

2010-01-23T11:30:00.000-08:00

CPTnet22 January 2010
[ the Christian Peacemakers Team in the Hebron area has had participants from the Bay area for many years, including Lorin Peters most recently and Esther Ho in previous years. They try to restrain by their reports like these, the largely US Jews who built illegal settlements on Palestinian land and too often attack or harass the long term inhabtants, Christian and Muslim Palestinians, mainly farmers, in self righteous mission by claiming "God's promise of the Land" to them as Jews, a little late after several millennia since the original claim was made and Jews did settle Israel as part of the Middle East. But the actual historic process was peaceful most historiians claim, and not by "divine right violence"
. Modern Christian and Jewish Zionists need to rethink what they are doing agianst international law and my understanding of God's will, for peaceful settlement of disputes using neutral mediation or arbitration, not violence of any kind.. --Bob F. ]

AT-TUWANI UPDATE: October-December 2009

[Note: According to the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, and numerous United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Most settlement outposts are considered illegal under Israeli law also.]
SUMMARY
During this fall, Israeli soldiers and settlers continued to push Palestinians off their roads and grazing lands. Soldiers vandalized and destroyed Palestinian vehicles, invaded villages, continued to deny Palestinian children access to schools, and consistently rejected Palestinians the right to graze on their own land. Israeli occupation authorities continued to prevent development of Palestinian infrastructure in the South Hebron Hills through a policy of withholding building permits and issuing demolition orders for structures built without permits. The Israeli authorities carried out this policy to the point of confiscating Palestinian-owned materials and equipment.
    Settlers also used physical violence against Palestinians and their international accompaniers. Enhancement of settler mobility continued with use of high-power all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) that have frightening speed on hilly, boulder-strewn terrain. As usual, settlers were often masked and armed with guns or slingshots.
    Despite these challenges, Palestinians in the At-Tuwani area continued to organize local marches, plowing actions, and joined in nonviolent actions with other Palestinian communities committed to resisting nonviolently Israeli occupation.
    On team during this period were volunteersTarek Abuata, Janet Benvie, Laura Ciaghi, Jessica Frederick, Maureen Jack, Steve Heinrichs, Joshua Hough, Sarah MacDonald, Sam Nichols, Michael Sharp (intern), Ryan Shiffer and Melanie Southworth.. Members of Operation Dove (the Doves) were also in the village.
Israeli settlers continue harassment and attacks on Palestinians and internationals
Sunday, 4 October
In the morning, while two young shepherds from Tuba village were grazing their flocks in Umm Zeituna Valley, accompanied by Benvie and a Dove, a settler on a four-wheel ATV chased the shepherds and their flocks. After school, three settlers rode their ATVs on the north side of the Havat Ma'on settlement outpost, near the gate where Palestinian children were awaiting their Israeli army escort home. Three Israeli settler automobiles and an ATV came up from the settler highway, toward the children and CPTers, but turned and went southward around the outpost.
Wednesday, 14 October
Shepherds in a valley near Tuba told accompanying CPTers, Frederick and Hough, that they had postponed grazing their usual land in Umm Zeituna Valley because recent maneuvers by settlers on ATVs had so severely affected the pregnant sheep that some had miscarried. Because many sheep were still pregnant, the shepherds chose to avoid Umm Zeituna .
Sunday, 18 October
CPTers and Doves documented more instances of shepherds retreating to avoid settlers and soldiers. They also learned that on the previous Thursday settlers had plowed fields in Umm Zeituna, which is privately owned by Palestinians from Yatta.
Wednesday, 21 October
A shepherd from Maghayir Al Abeed, accompanied by Shiffer and Nichols, was initially observed by an Israeli settler who made calls from his mobile phone, and later approached by three soldiers in a jeep. He quickly moved his flock toward home, as the soldiers watched to ensure that he left the area.
Tuesday, 27 October
For the second consecutive day, Israeli soldiers were absent for both the morning and afternoon escort of children from Tuba and Maghayir al Abeed, resulting in the students being vulnerable to settler attack. In the morning, the children, accompanied by Shiffer and a Dove, took a much longer route in an attempt to avoid settler harassment, but were nonetheless blocked by four settlers, one masked and armed with a slingshot. The children turned around and ran back to Tuba, missing school.
Wednesday, 28 October
The children in Tuba wanted to head for school at 7:00 am instead of waiting for soldiers they suspected would not come. Frederick and Nichols accompanied them from Tuba. After walking partway and seeing an Israeli settler shepherding a flock, they detoured even farther through the hills. Later, a UK television crew from SkyNews visited Tuba and walked with the children in order to create a news broadcast. This broadcast can be viewed here.[you must go to the CPT website: http://www.cpt.net/ ]

Sunday, 8 November
After the morning school escort, two CPT Doves accompanied shepherds on in Umm Zeituna Valley. Four young settlers came on a tractor, threw rocks and chased the shepherds away. Through the next several hours, the settlers plowed the large cultivable area along the bottom of the valley which is privately-owned Palestinian land. The Doves called and reported this illegal activity to Israeli police, who did not respond. (See the 9 November CPTnet release, "Israeli settlers plow privately-owned Palestinian fields; Israeli police fail to intervene.")
Thursday, 12 November
Settlers again appeared near Mashakha, where Maghayir al-Abeed and Tuba shepherds were grazing, accompanied by Ciaghi and Shiffer. The settlers phoned the settlement security guard, who drove up and scared the shepherds away.
Tuesday, 17 November
About 11:00 a.m., in a valley south of At-Tuwani where Tuba residents often pass because Israeli settlers confiscated their only road, Ciaghi and MacDonald encountered two young parents with three small children on their way home to Tuba. Because the CPTers had recently seen settlers nearby, they walked with the family. Four settlers appeared about fifty meters away, and the CPTers tried to position themselves between the settlers and the family. A fifth settler appeared and the whole group ran to encircle the family and CPTers.
     When the Palestinian man told the settlers that they were only trying to go home, a settler shoved him. Ciaghi tried to intervene, but the settler pushed her down the hillside. The settlers then attacked both CPTers, dragging, hitting and kicking them, stealing their two video cameras, and finally disappearing in the direction of the outpost. The Palestinian family reached home safely.
     Later, Israeli police arrived to take the CPTers' testimony. To date they have not apprehended any suspects. (See the 18 November CPTnet release, "Israeli settlers threaten Palestinian family, beat and rob CPTers")
Wednesday, 25 November
Heinrichs and a Dove went with an Israeli peace activist accompanying a Palestinian water delivery convoy to the remote village of Bir al-'Id, which is completely without water. A settler vehicle came and blocked the convoy part-way down the road, followed by Israeli soldiers and police, who delayed the convoy three and a half hours, before the Israeli DCO came and decided it could proceed. This was the first of multiple attempted convoys that have successfully reached Bir al-'Id.
Thursday 3 December
Nichols and Southworth accompanied Palestinians plowing land between Qawawis and Susiya. After a few hours of plowing, Israeli settlers from Mizpe Yair (Magen David) forcibly stopped the plowing. One settler stood in front of the tractor while the other stole its key. Shortly after the settlers made several phone calls, the military, police, and District Coordinating Office (DCO, the branch of the Israeli military which deals with Palestinian civilian affairs in Area C) arrived. The DCO prohibited the Palestinians from plowing the plot. Instead, the military allowed Palestinians to plow only a small additional portion of the field.
Saturday 5 December
Palestinians living in Yatta attempted to plow the field between the Palestinian village of Um Fagarah the Israeli outpost of Avigail. Israeli settlers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, forcibly stopped the work of the Palestinians. The settlers brought aggressive dogs and ignored the Palestinians' and internationals' requests to control them. After several minutes of arguing, a soldier jumped up on the tractor and screamed orders and threats at the Palestinian driving the truck. After this incident, the Palestinians decided to return home instead of risking the confiscation of their equipment.
    The same day, Palestinians also attempted to plow a valley between the Palestinian village of Shiâ€™b Al-Butum and the Israeli outpost of Mizpe Yair (Magen David). Settlers and the outpost security guard immediately approached the farmers and remained present until a group of Israeli soldiers arrived. The soldiers immediately stopped the work, simply claiming that plowing in the area was forbidden. The soldiers refused to look at the landownerâ€™s paperwork, which showed him to be the owner of the entire valley. Officers from the DCO arrived and spoke with the settlers and the Palestinian landowner. The DCO officers told the landowner that he could plow no closer to the outpost than he had already plowed. The landowner told CPTers that until two years ago he was able to plow all the valley, up to the outpost. The last two years, the Israeli military has prohibited him plowing all of the land that he owns.
    The same DCO officers stopped another Palestinian man from plowing his land on an adjacent hillside. The DCO officer detained the ownerâ€™s son, who was driving the tractor, and threatened to arrest him and confiscate the tractor if he continued to plow. The officer chided the driver, telling the young man he did not want to be a bad boy by disobeying an officer. The officer said he was prohibiting the work was because the man was plowing on the hillside, claiming that Palestinians could only cultivate privately owned land in a valley.
Sunday 6 December
Israeli settlers plowed privately owned Palestinian land in Umm Zeituna valley. In 1999, Palestinian families living in Umm Zeituna were forced off the land by settler violence. The Palestinian landowners have been reluctant to return to their land because of continuing settler violence and harassment. The owners have filed multiple complaints to the police regarding the violence against them and the confiscation of their land. However, no legal action has been taken against the settlers.
Wednesday 30 December
An Israeli settler from the Israeli outpost of Havat Ma'on chased and attacked Palestinian schoolchildren from the villages of Tuba and Maghayir al-Abeed while the children were waiting to walk to school. Tareq Ibrahim Abu Jundiyye reported, "The younger kids started crying as we were running away because they were afraid the settler would catch them. I mean, we had to run away, if I would have stayed I would have been struck on the head by a rock." The Israeli army exposed the children to this attack by arriving more than ninety minutes late to escort them to school. (See the CPTnet release, "AT-TUWANI: Israeli army negligence permits Israeli settler attack on children" and video testimony of the incident.)

Israel keeps more people out of occupied Palestine

2010-01-22T16:43:00.000-08:00

. Israel Bars American Working With Lutheran World Federation in Bethlehem

Faith Rowold, a U.S. volunteer for Lutheran World Federation, was denied re-entry into Israel January 14 when she attempted to return from a vacation. Faith had been working as a volunteer on a religious worker visa in Bethlehem.
A number of U.S. citizens have been denied entry or face deportation recently. An American journalist Jared Malsin, who works for the Palestinian news agency Maan, also was detained and denied entry into Israel last week.
According to Haaretz, the Israeli "Interior Ministry has stopped granting work permits to foreign nationals working in most international nongovernmental organizations operating in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem." Now the ministry is granting NGO employees tourist visas only, which bar them from working.
A Washington Post article reports that "Since the summer, dozens of Palestinian and Israeli activists have been picked up…"

--this news item from Churches for Middle East Peace email today, Jan. 22,2010

local Muslim doctor's views of healh care reform

2009-09-26T11:19:00.000-07:00

The Helping Hands of the Community for the Poor
by Dr. Amer Araim,
President of the Islamic Community Outreach of California.

The current debate on health care for all should avoid accusing or labeling those concerned about the poor and needy as "socialist". In all faith traditions, which preceded the socialist thoughts that have emerged in Europe and the United States since the eighteenth century, there has been and is still emphasis on the the responsibility of the community to take care of the poor and the needy. While for some, the charity and alms giving are considered personal or private initiative, in Islamic tradition they are both a private responsibility of the individual before Allah as well as it is the responsibility of the community. Therefore in Islam alms giving is called Zakat, which means purification of the wealth by sharing it with the poor and the needy. The Quran (the Holy Scripture of Islam) commands Muslims that there is an obligation toward the poor and the needy as in the following text: "There is a known right in their wealth for the needy both for those who asked and those who do not ask." The Prophet of Islam Muhammad took care of the slaves, the poor and the needy and established the tradition for the community to do so. He said " The best among the people are those who benefit other people the most." The term people describes all people and on non-discriminatory basis. The Rightly Guided caliphs who followed Prophet Muhammad maintained that tradition of helping the poor and the needy.

Today, there are accusatory voices trying to prevent the government from proceeding with health care reform and other social programs by labeling such initiatives as socialist or aiming at eliminating private ownership or private initiative. For me the issue is how to take care of the poor and the needy. All the proposals on the table are not aiming at harming medical practices. On the contrary, these proposals particularly "the public option" are providing insurance coverage for more than forty million Americans who are without insurance today. This will enhance medical practice and relieve the burden from the local authorities. More than sixty percent of physicians approve "the public option."

As I stated before we established the Islamic Community Outreach of California to help the poor and the needy and to cooperate with members of the community to achieve that goal.

We hope that debates on economic and social issues avoid labeling others. Such debate should concentrate on the best ways to serve the community.

BAy area observeer Lorin P, observes Israeli skirmish with Palestinians

2009-08-23T16:03:00.000-07:00

CPTnet 21 August 2009 AL-KHALIIL/HEBRON:
Israeli settlers plant trees on Palestinian land
by Aida Hayes

On 7 August 2009, for the second Friday morning in a row, Israeli settlers planted trees in the Beqa'a Valley near Hebron on land belonging to a Palestinian family.

About 10:30 a.m., a Palestinian farmer in the Beqa'a called the team to say settlers were on his family's land.Â Aida Hayes, John Harris, and Lorin Peters arrived just as the last three police officers were leaving.Â The head of the Palestinian family recounted the following events:

An Israeli Defense Force (IDF) jeep came at 3:00 a.m. and took some photos, then returned about 6:00 a.m. and sat waiting at the junction of the village road with Bypass Road 60.Â Forty or fifty settlers arrived between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m., accompanied by about twenty IDF soldiers in six or seven jeeps.

Settlers planted about sixty pine seedlings, each about seventy-five cm in height and with a cone-shaped root ball, on the third terrace directly above the family's home.Â The Israeli army protected the settlers and prevented the Palestinian family from talking to the settlers.Â The settlers left about 11:00 a.m.Â

A representative of the Civil Administration (the Israeli military administration of the West Bank) reportedly told the family that the settlers should not be planting trees there.Â The family was just finishing uprooting all the trees up when CPT arrived.Â They said settlers had done the same thing the previous Friday.

When asked why the settlers were planting trees there, one brother in the family said, "First they plant trees.Â After awhile, they put up a hut.Â After another while, they bring in caravans (mobile homes).Â Then they build a settlement."

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CPT's MISSION: "Getting in the Way." What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war? Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) seeks to enlist the whole church in organized, nonviolent alternatives to war and places teams of trained peacemakers in regions of lethal conflict.

COMMENTS: To ask questions or express concerns, criticisms and affirmations send messages to peacemakers@cpt.org.

Sequoia rises to a new day, still alive!

2009-08-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

[here is a recent, rather sad account by friends of mine who volunteer as observers of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, in its most illegal and confiscatory form, settlers who do what we did to the Americas, plant ourselves as the new "owners" of land where Palestinian Arab families have lived for centuries, as in our American case we did that on land that Native Americans had lived on for millenia, after their eerlier migration from Asia, but in gentle, smaller ways, by gfoot, with few if any weapons, and simply settling on land that was pretty vacant.
Read this report on Israeli settlers, often American Jews of very orthodox or conservative stripe, who are claiming ownership by right of God's gift of this land centuries ago to the early ancestors of 21st century Jews, like my four grandkids.
Native Americans have not followed their bad example and pitched tents or trailers on lovely hilltopsin California or New England, and claimed it from their ancestors early occupation in Biblcal days. Many of our suburbs would be Native American settlements by now if they had sone so. --Bob F.]

CPTnet 7 August 2009 SOUTH HEBRON HILLS: Israeli police and military use settler's map to restrict Palestinians' access to their land
[Note: According to the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, and numerous United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian territories are illegal. Most settlement outposts are considered illegal under Israeli law.]
TUBA, SOUTH HEBRON HILLS, PALESTINE â€“ During the morning of 31 July 2009, Israeli police detained Palestinian shepherds, CPTers, and Israeli activists for over two hours while Palestinians attempted to access their land in the Umm Zeituna area, located near the Israeli settlement of Ma'on.
Palestinian shepherds from the village of Tuba were grazing their sheep in Umm Zeituna when the Israeli military arrived, followed by an Israeli settler from the Israeli outpost of Havat Ma'on, a settler security agent from Ma'on, and Israeli police.
The police took the IDs and passports of the Palestinians, Israelis, and CPTers (respectively) and detained the group for over two hours.
The Israeli District Coordinating Office (DCO) arrived and the settler from Havat Ma'on then produced a map, claiming that it forbade Palestinians from grazing their sheep in the area. The DCO, army, and police refused to show the Palestinians the map, which the Israeli authorities claimed showed the boundaries of where Palestinians could graze their sheep. Instead the police gave verbal direction to the shepherds, saying they were allowed only in the valley nearest Tuba. The shepherds insisted on seeing the map to know the boundaries of where they could go, but the police continued to refuse. Instead, they insisted that the entire area of Umm Zeituna was closed to Palestinians.
Palestinians from Tuba use a foot path through Umm Zeituna to go to the nearby city of Yatta. Several years ago the DCO declared the public road that once connected Tuba to Yatta (through the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani) off-limits to Palestinians. When he heard the foot path through Umm Zeituna was also closed, one of the shepherds asked, "How should we go to Yatta? Should we fly?" The police then took this shepherd to the Kiryat Arba police station. A police officer told CPTers that he was "helping" the shepherd get to the police station, because he had "too many questions" that he needed to ask the police commander.
By the evening of 31 July, the shepherd's family members had still received no word of what happened to him in the Kiryat Arba police station.

Surprise! CBS News reveals Israeli soldiers' behavior

2009-01-26T17:50:00.000-08:00

"I've been waiting for over 30 years for 60 minutes to do something like this !
If this isn't proof that we are finally breaking through in the mass media, I don't know what is! "
- Gene St. Onge [whose Lebanese heritage helps him pay attention to what the Israeli Defense Force is doing, not only in Lebanon, but also in the West Bank and Gaza and Jerusalem. He has waited a long time for the main Big Corporation-owned media to join him is paying attention to how Israel behaves in the Middle East. Surprise: 60 Minutes revealed what goes on thanks to IDF soldiers where Palestinians live.
--BobF.]

CLICK HERE TO WATCH LAST NIGHT'S CBSNEWS PROGRAM: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4752349n

and read here much of what 60 Minutes' Boib Simon reported:

Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?

60 Minutes: Growing Number Of Israelis, Palestinians Say Two-State Solution Is No Longer Possible
January 25, 2009

TRANSCRIPT:

(CBS) Getting a peace deal in the Middle East is such a priority to President Obama that his first foreign calls on his first day in office were to Arab and Israeli leaders. And on day two, the president made former Senator George Mitchell his special envoy for Middle East peace. Mr. Obama wants to shore up the ceasefire in Gaza, but a lasting peace really depends on the West Bank where Palestinians had hoped to create their state. The problem is, even before Israel invaded Gaza, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians had concluded that peace between them was no longer possible, that history had passed it by. For peace to have a chance, Israel would have to withdraw from the West Bank, which would then become the Palestinian state.

It's known as the "two-state" solution. But, while negotiations have been going on for 15 years, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have moved in to occupy the West Bank. Palestinians say they can't have a state with Israeli settlers all over it, which the settlers say is precisely the idea.

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

Daniella Weiss moved from Israel to the West Bank 33 years ago. She has been the mayor of a large settlement.

"I think that settlements prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the land of Israel. This is the goal. And this is the reality," Weiss told 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon.

Though settlers and Palestinians don't agree on anything, most do agree now that a peace deal has been overtaken by events.
"While my heart still wants to believe that the two-state solution is possible, my brain keeps telling me the opposite because of what I see in terms of the building of settlements. So, these settlers are destroying the potential peace for both people that would have been created if we had a two-state solution," Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, once a former candidate for Palestinian president, told Simon.

And he told 60 Minutes Israel's invasion of Gaza - all the death and destruction - convinces him that Israel does not want a two-state solution. "My heart is deeply broken, and I am very worried that what Israel has done has furthered us much further from the possibility of [a] two-state solution."

Palestinians had hoped to establish their state on the West Bank, an area the size of Delaware. But Israelis have split it up with scores of settlements, and hundreds of miles of new highways that only settlers can use. Palestinians have to drive - or ride - on the older roads.

When they want to travel from one town to another, they have to submit to humiliating delays at checkpoints and roadblocks. There are more than 600 of them on the West Bank.
Asked why there are so many checkpoints, Dr. Barghouti said, "I think the main goal is to fragment the West Bank. Maybe a little bit of them can be justified because they say it's for security. But I think the vast majority of them are basically to block the movement of people from one place to another."

Here's how they block Barghouti: he was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Jerusalem and worked in a hospital there for 14 years. Four years ago he moved to a town just 10 miles away, but now, because he no longer lives in Jerusalem, he can't get back in - ever.

He says he can't get a permit to go. "I asked for a permit to go to Jerusalem during the last year, the last years about 16 times. And 16 times they were rejected. Like most Palestinians, I don't have a permit to go to the city I was born in, to the city I used to work in, to the city where my sister lives."

What he's up against are scores of Israeli settlements dominating the lowlands like crusader fortresses. Many are little cities, and none of them existed 40 years ago. The Israelis always take the high ground, sometimes the hills, and sometimes the homes. And sometimes Arabs are occupied inside their own homes.

One house for example is the highest house on the highest hill overlooking the town of Nablus. 60 Minutes learned that Israeli soldiers often corral the four families who live there and take over the house to monitor movement down below.

Simon and the 60 Minutes team went to an apartment owned by a Mr. Nassif. That morning, Israeli soldiers had apparently entered the apartment, without notice, and remained there when Simon knocked on the door.

"We cannot speak with you, there are soldiers," Nassif told Simon. "We are in prison here."

Asked what was happening, Nassif says, "They are keeping us here and the soldiers are upstairs, we cannot move. We cannot speak with you."

Nassif said he couldn't leave the house and didn't know how long he'd have to stay in place. Asked if they were paying him any money, he told Simon, "You are kidding?"

Abdul Nassif, a bank manager said he had to get to his bank to open the safe, but one of the soldiers wouldn't let him go. He told 60 Minutes whenever the soldiers come they wake everybody up, and herd them into a kitchen for hours while soldiers sleep in their beds. They can't leave or use the phone, or let 60 Minutes in.
He sent 60 Minutes downstairs to see if his brother would open the door so we could ask the soldiers why they keep taking over this house. But the brother told Simon, "The soldiers close the door from the key. They take the key."

So Simon and the crew left, and that night, so did the soldiers. But when 60 Minutes returned two days later, the soldiers were back for more surveillance. This time they kept the women under house arrest, but let the men go to work and the children go to school. When the children returned, we caught a glimpse of two armed soldiers at the top of the stairs.

Then more children came home, but the soldiers wouldn't open the door again.

A commander told Simon that he and the crew would have to go back behind a wall in order for the children to be let in.

The commander declined to talk to 60 Minutes. "But we are talking to you now," Simon pointed out, standing outside. "Why don't you tell us what you are doing here? Have you lost your voice? Well they've closed the door now, they've closed the window so I guess if the children are going to get home now we have to leave, so that is what we will do."

An army spokesperson told us the army uses the Nassifs' house for important surveillance operations. The Nassifs told 60 Minutes that soldiers usually stay for a day or two, always coming and going in the middle of the night. When they do go, the Nassifs never know when they will be occupied again. It could be tomorrow, next week, or next month. The only certainty, they say, is that the soldiers will be back.

Another crippling reality on the West Bank is high unemployment, now about 20 percent. So some Palestinians can only find jobs building Israeli settlements. They're so ashamed to work on the construction sites that they asked 60 Minutes not to show their faces.

The settlers now number 280,000, and as they keep moving in, their population keeps growing about five percent every year. But the 2.5 million Arabs have their strategy too: they're growing bigger families.

Demographers predict that within ten years Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Without a separate Palestinian state the Israelis would have three options, none of them good. They could try ethnic cleansing, drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank, or they could give the Palestinians the vote. That would be the democratic option but it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Or they could try apartheid - have the minority Israelis rule the majority Palestinians, but apartheid regimes don't have a very long life.

"Unfortunately, and I have to say to you that apartheid is already in place," Dr. Barghouti argued.
Apartheid? Israel is building what it calls a security wall between the West Bank and Israel. The Palestinians are furious because it appropriates eight percent of the West Bank. Not only that. It weaves its way through Palestinian farms, separating farmers from their land. They have to wait at gates for soldiers to let them in. Settlers get a lot more water than Palestinians, which is why settlements are green and Arab areas are not.

Moderate Israelis who deplore the occupation used to believe passionately in a two-state solution. That is no longer the case.

Meron Benvenisti used to be deputy mayor of Jerusalem. He told Simon the prospects of the two-state solution becoming a reality are "nil."

"The geopolitical condition that¢s been created in '67 is irreversible. Cannot be changed. You cannot unscramble that egg," he explained.

Asked if this means the settlers have won, Benvenisti told Simon, "Yes."

"And the settlers will remain forever and ever?" Simon asked.

"I don't know forever and ever, but they will remain and will flourish," Benvenisti said.

"The settlers, the attitude that I present here, this is the heart. This is the pulse. This is the past, present, and future of the Jewish state," Daniella Weiss told Simon.

She says the she and the settlers are immovable. "We will stay here forever."

But one very important Israeli says she intends to move them out. She's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a candidate to become prime minister in elections next month. She's also Israel¢s chief negotiator with the Palestinians, and she told 60 Minutes peace is unthinkable with the settlers where they are.

"Can you really imagine evacuating the tens of thousands of settlers who say they will not leave?" Simon asked.

"It's not going to be easy. But this is the only solution," she replied.

"But you know that there are settlers who say, 'We will fight. We will not leave. We will fight,'" Simon asked.

"So this is the responsibility of the government and police to stop them. As simple as that. Israel is a state of law and order," Livni said.
It's also a state of law and disorder. When the army evicted just nine families from a West Bank settlement called Amona three years ago, it was chaos. It was the first time since the creation of the state that Jews were in pitched battles against Jews. To Israelis of all stripes, it was not a pretty picture. And it made the government loath to try again.

Officials fear that more battles to empty settlements could rip Israel apart. They're afraid that religious officers in the army - and there are an increasing number of them - would disobey any order to evict settlers.

The army is evicting Arabs from their homes in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hoped to make their capital. Outraged, Arabs tried to save their homes, but the Israelis have the guns. Israel demolished more than 100 Arab homes in the past year, ruling they had been illegally built. Arabs say this is just another tactic to drive them out. But officials say they also knock down unauthorized Jewish buildings on the West Bank. They're put up by youngsters, the next generation¢s campaign to populate the land.

Daniella Weiss told 60 Minutes they will not be stopped.

Despite the army tearing down a structure, the settlers began rebuilding it on the same day. "We will have the upper hand," Weiss vowed.

"But the army will tear it down again," Simon pointed out.

"And we will rebuild it," Weiss said. "The experience shows that the world belongs to those who are stubborn, and we are very stubborn."

Stubborn, she says, because they were ordered to populate this land by no less an authority than God. "This is the mission of our generation and I want to emphasis the most important point is to this," Weiss said, picking up some soil, "to hold strong to the soil of the Holy Land."

Alice Walker speaks for many of us

2008-11-18T15:16:00.000-08:00

Alice Walker's open letter to Obama
from the FOR.org web site

Nov. 5, 2008

Dear Brother Obama,

You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It
is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors
of hope, previously only sung about.

I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance.

A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large.

We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.

I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.

A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker

Source: http://www.theroot.com/id/48726

latest story from Lorin Peters in Hebron

2008-11-01T23:51:00.000-07:00

An Unsuccessful Olive Harvest
Lorin Peters [retired Bay area Catholic high school teacher, visiting Hebron]
2008 October 18

Tel Rumeida is the 200-foot high round hill half a mile southwest of Abraham and Sarah’s Tomb. Remnants of an ancient city wall and gate lie near the top of the tel
(archeological mound). Everyone believes King David’s first palace must have stood
somewhere on it.

David, the great warrior, slayer of Philistines (Palestinians in English) and unifier of ancient Israel, is the archetype and hero and role model of the Hebron settlers. For them this tel is therefore of inestimable value. They have tried to buy out the Palestinian families living on top of the tel, unsuccessfully. So they have harassed those families almost daily for the past two decades.

The east slope of Tel Rumeida is covered with terraced olive groves. Some of the trees appear to be at least 500 years old, if not older. When the current CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) delegation (first-time visitors) discovered there would be an olive harvest on the tel, they rearranged their schedule.

The delegation leader asked me to lead the group up the tel. The best route is also the route where two of us were stoned heavily two years ago. So this morning, when I woke three hours earlier than usual, I knew exactly why I felt anxious. I prayed for an hour. I repeated my mantram for two hours. In the end I chose to face, as best I could, my fears.

At 8:30 am, five delegates and I walked through the Old City / Kasbah, out the Ibrahimi Mosque Gate, then back along Shuhada Street, where Palestinians, and sometimes internationals, are not allowed. As we passed several pairs of soldiers, and several groups of settlers, I greeted them “Shabbot shalom” (Sabbath peace). Somewhat unexpectedly, they all returned my greeting. I felt somewhat relieved.

We paused at Avraham Avinu to read the settler billboard claiming that “this land was stolen from the Jews in 1929”. There was a massacre of Zionists in that year, but their Muslim neighbors saved virtually all of the native Palestinian Jews. Then we started up Tel Rumeida itself, pausing again at Abraham’s Well, an ancient cave with a small pool of clear water at its bottom.

When we arrived at the top of the tel, we found perhaps five internationals, 10
Palestinians, and 15 Israelis already picking olives, plus perhaps 10 photojournalists busy taking pictures. The local Palestinian organizer asked our CPT delegation to work about 100 meters back down at the bottom of the olive grove.

The owner had already spread tarps and old rugs under one tree. So we began picking the small dark olives from the lower branches. One person stood on a ladder, another found an old chair, another climbed up into the tree. We dropped the olives into old buckets. But a fair number fell onto the tarps, so some of us crawled around picking up these
loose olives.

We had been picking about an hour when, suddenly, we heard cries behind us. Abed, a
Palestinian photographing harvesters in a tree 20 meters away, had just been attacked by four tall settlers wearing their kippas and long white shirts. They had knocked him to the ground and were kicking and hitting him savagely.

Jan, a petite but tough Scotswoman, and I, the two CPT members, rushed over and up the steep terrace. As Jan arrived, one settler had taken Abed’s large professional camera away. She asked him to return it. As he swung the camera away behind himself, its strap swung all the way around. Just as I snapped a photo, Jan grabbed the strap. The settler instantly swung his right fist into her right cheek, full force, knocking her off her feet.

As I looked up from my camera, the settler was swinging his hand toward me. For an
instant I thought he was going to deck me also. But he actually was hurling Abed’s large professional camera as far as he could down into the rocky terrace behind and below me, apparently hoping to damage or destroy it.

About that moment, the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) soldiers arrived. Jan shouted, “That man attacked me. Detain that man!” But the soldiers made no effort to detain the attackers. When the attackers left the scene, I walked over to retrieve Abed’s camera. Thankfully, it appeared to be unbroken. One soldier later said to Jan, “We stopped the fighting. Don’t ask for anything more.”

When the Israeli police arrived, they declared Tel Rumeida a “closed military zone”,
meaning that all non-residents have to leave. Of course the settlers were already gone.
Most of the Israeli peace activists wanted to continue the harvest. But Israel has a law banning all Israelis, other than settlers, from entering Palestinian areas. The effect, and probably the intent, of this law is to make it difficult for Israelis who oppose Israel’s occupation to meet and work with Palestinians. Eventually the Israeli police began detaining the 15 Israeli activists and escorting them out of Tel Rumeida.

The police left us alone. But they called our landowner over and spoke to him. When he returned, he said that we should stop working soon. Five minutes later he served us Arabic tea and cookies. After another ten minutes, he suggested we exit the olive grove through his basement. Perhaps he was protecting us from the police.

We had picked only one tree, collecting maybe eight gallons of olives. The four young settlers got what they presumably wanted. The olive harvest was stopped. Today’s harvest was mostly unsuccessful.

Except that the harvest is not really about olives. It is actually about the struggle for power and control over the land. And the settlers may have miscalculated. A half-dozen of the other photojournalists were standing 15 meters away on the terrace above the attack, with their video cameras running.

That same evening Jan and I were chatting with the manager of our hostel in Jerusalem, when we suddenly saw ourselves on the TV in the hostel lobby. Al Jazeera and the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) both broadcast, worldwide, the complete footage of both attacks.

The settler movement was extremely embarrassed, and immediately began making false
allegations. They claimed we had “marched” through “their” street, “throwing stones” and “provoking” them to defend themselves. But the next morning the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz carried an extensive front-page story, and four-color photos, of the settler attack.

Blessed are the gentle, nonviolent ones; they shall inherit the earth...
Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called the children of God.

When Israeli soldiers come to call

2008-10-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

“The Soldiers Are in Your House!”
Lorin Peters, Bay area retired Catholic high school teacher, living and observing life in Hebron, a good sized Palestinian city with several hundred angry, illegal Jewish settlers living on a hill in the center of the city, near the Tomb of Abraham and Sarah --- 2008 October 17

I went on a long shopping walk this morning – a pharmacy, a hardware store, a leather shop, a dairy shop, and the farmers’ market. As I turned into our alley, a young Palestinian friend said, “The soldiers are in your house!” And, just as he said, when I rounded the last bend, there they were.

Two Israeli soldiers were standing, guns drawn, in our street doorway. We choose to keep this door unlocked during the day. Four more soldiers were standing in our stairwell.
But right above them stood two of our CPT women, Laura, an Italian, and Jan, a Scot, and our Palestinian neighbor woman who shares our stairwell, arguing with the captain.
Johann, a Canadian teammate, was taking digital photos.

Actually, when they first heard and saw the soldiers, Laura hid our three computers. Jan called our lawyer in Israel-Palestine. What this poor officer, who struggled to speak English, did not know is that these two women love to argue with soldiers. They have
both been doing this for two years.

“I need to check your house.”
“Why?”

“To check security for the settlers.” (This is Sukkot week, which brings many Jewish visitors to the settlements.)
“What about security for the Palestinians?”

“That is not our mission.”
“It should be. The Geneva conventions say that an occupying army is responsible for the security and safety of all the civilians under its control.”

“I’m just following orders.”
“”Soldiers, especially Jewish soldiers (after the Holocaust) should know better than to ‘just follow orders’.”

“I would be willing to discuss that some other time and place.”
“What about Israeli law? Some of the settlements here in Hebron are unrecognized and illegal even under Israeli law.”

“Hebron is a closed military zone right now.”
“Where are your orders?”
“No papers are required.”
Soldiers are required to present and allow photos of military closure orders and maps.
Jan called a contact with the Israeli military, who later confirmed that this closure was authorized.

“Our only view of the settlers and “their” street is from our rooftop, not from our
windows.”
“May two soldiers go to your rooftop?”
“OK.”

I finally thought to serve the soldiers coffee (an idea I read in Michael Nagler’s
Nonviolence course at UC Berkeley seven years ago.) I began preparing six cups of coffee (instant, not Arabic, unfortunately).

Just before I finished, the soldiers were gone. The captain had finally agreed to not search our apartment at all. Our Palestinian neighbor had agreed to allow the captain to search her apartment alone, as long as some CPTers accompanied him. He accepted that arrangement.

Afterwards, I thought I could have proposed another solution: “Our House is a
weapons-free zone. One soldier stays outside with all your guns. The rest of you come in, without your guns, for coffee.”

Blessed are the gentle, nonviolent ones; they shall inherit the earth...
Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called the children of God.

Some days we have GOOD NEWS

2008-10-24T00:04:00.000-07:00

A Successful Olive Harvest
Lorin Peters [retired teacher at Bishop O'Dowd High School, Oakland]
2008 October 3

Olive trees are the pride and joy of every Palestinian family. They know which ancestor planted each of their trees, and when. Some trees bear fruit for 500 or more years.

So one of the more painful injuries of the military occupation of Palestine is the felling, burning, bulldozing, uprooting, or even stealing, of olive trees. And one of the more insidious tactics of the settlers is the interruption of the olive harvest. If they can prevent a farmer from tending his land for three years, he loses his land to the State of Israel, and then it is sometimes transferred to the settlement that interrupted the harvest in the first place.

The olive harvest will officially begin October 11 this year. But the Ja’abari land and trees are the only obstacle to the merger of two major settlements one mile northeast of the Tomb of Abraham and Sarah. So local Palestinian leaders decided to harvest these trees today, before the settlers might try to harvest them or otherwise interrupt their owner.

When I was still teaching school, I could never be here in October. This was going to be my first olive harvest. Unfortunately, I developed a secondary infection and fever last night, so my teammates requested I stay home and rest. They left without me at 8 and returned about 11:30 this morning, glowing with joy.

About 20 Israelis and internationals showed up to help the Ja’abaris with the harvest, and about 20 photojournalists showed up to record the event. About 20 settlers, with several children and babies, showed up to interrupt the harvest, and 40 to 60 Israeli soldiers and police also showed up.

The settlers generally try to provoke a violent reaction – by name-calling, swearing, threatening gestures, covert kicking, hitting, shoving, or stoning. Usually, the police and soldiers just watch until a scuffle or fight or other violence begins. Then the settlers immediately scapegoat a harvester and demand the police arrest him. Typically, in recent years, the police detain the scapegoat, declare a closure so everyone has to go home, and then release the scapegoat.

Today, however, the police did not just watch and wait. They assigned a specific officer to each of the known violent settlers in advance. Each officer kept himself between his assigned settler and the olive harvesters. Whichever way the settler moved, the officer mirrored that movement. This mirroring went on throughout the harvest. My teammates said the entire event resembled a huge, intricate, unending ballet.

The scene was in fact quite chaotic, with dust flying everywhere. The settlers did in fact shout and swear and pull out the tarps catching falling olives and rush at harvesters, trying to obstruct and interrupt. But they apparently had been told, perhaps by the police, perhaps by their own leadership, to not touch. Public opinion in Israel has apparently been shifting against the settlers, or at least against settler violence.

A few harvesters were covertly kicked or shoved or knocked down. But Rabbi Arik Asherman, one of the leaders of Israeli resistance to the occupation of Palestine, kept saying, “No matter what they do, just keep picking.” One Israeli was detained and questioned when the settlers accused him of violence. He had tried to prevent a known settler from snatching a full bucket of olives. But he was then released. Videotape later showed that he had not in fact been violent.

The harvesters felt the police and soldiers did the best job they have seen so far of controlling the settlers and allowing the owner of the land to harvest his olives. After two and a half hours, the owner served tea to all the harvesters, to thank them. They had finished five trees, and harvested two large bags (perhaps 40 gallons) of olives.

Blessed are the gentle, nonviolent ones; they shall inherit the earth...
Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called the children of God.

latest news on how Israeli settlers and army act

2008-10-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

CPTnet
19 October 2008
HEBRON: Israeli settlers beat up Palestinian reporter during olive harvest, punch woman CPTer

On the morning of Saturday 18 October 2008, a group of four Israeli settlers beat up a Palestinian reporter, Abed Hashlamoun, in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron. He required hospital treatment for his injuries.

Hashlamoun had been photographing Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals harvesting olives together in an event organized by Tel Rumeida Palestinian ARab landowners. Hashlamoun was walking alone through the olive groves when male settlers knocked him to the ground and began beating and kicking him.

Several of the olive pickers heard his cries and ran to help him. One of the settlers seized Hashlamoun's camera. CPTer Janet Benvie approached the settler and asked him to return the camera, but he did not respond. When Benvie took hold of the camera strap the young man punched her in the face, knocking her to the ground. He then hurled the camera into the rocky field below.

The settlers were still nearby when Israeli soldiers arrived. "I repeatedly asked the soldiers to detain the men who attacked us, but instead they permitted the attackers to leave the scene," said Benvie.

The Israeli military declared the area a closed military zone, ordered an end to the olive picking, and required the Israeli and international olive pickers to leave the area.

Photographs are available at http://cpt.org/gallery/album261

Hashlamoun was taken to hospital for treatment, but released shortly after. Benvie sustained a cut and bruising to her face, but did not require medical treatment.

[[Editorial note: Ir ia fascinating to me that while leaders of Israel are taking a fresh look at the 6 year old Saudi Peace Proposal for ending all angry and too often violent interactions between the Arab nations and Israel, the Israeli settlers, often immigrants from the USA or Russia, the latter often looking simply for subsidized brand new housing, but some US settlers are eager to pick a fight with Palestinians daring to still remain on the land they have lived on and owned legally for generations and even centuries. They are breaking "God's command to allow this to be the Jewish Promised Land forever and ever" even tho the Roman empire took it over in the first century, destroyed the Temple and much of Jerusalem, and Jews have never had any real occupation of any numbers since 2000 years ago.
Most of us live like the Palestinians on land we took away by force from the Native Americans, with the complication that the Palestinians were the Natives of the land that Israel now occupies, part of it legally with UN blessing in 1948 after the Holocaust, but the other half promised to the "natives", the Palestinian inhabitants. So the Israelis are the very recent, 60 year re-occupiers of their ancient homeland, so they are newcomers at what we have done with Native Americans for 5 or 6 centuries, but they are very quickly pushing them into the modern equivalent of Reservations called Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem, all lands that the Saudi proposal proposes be returned fully to the Palestinian owners and inhabitants, and rooting out the Settlers illegally building homes with Israeli government assistance and encouragement. And sometimes using physical violence to keep the "natives" out of "their land of Isreal" -- promised to them by God, of course.
But that is the same line we used in the 1500s and 1600s as we former Europeans invaded and took over the Natives' land we now live on: "this is the land Promised to us by God when we read the Bible in Europe", and as Christians assumed we were the new Chosen People of God. Heaven help us in our various misreadings far too literally of Holy Scriptures, and with muskets in one hand and Bible in the other.]]

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CPT's MISSION: "Getting in the Way." What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war? Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) seeks to enlist the whole church in organized, nonviolent alternatives to war and places teams of trained peacemakers in regions of lethal conflict.

COMMENTS: To ask questions or express concerns, criticisms and affirmations send messages to peacemakers@cpt.org.

Please try to attend this Berkeley meeting Saturday

2008-10-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

What can we do now to end the war?

A strategy discussion for anti-war activists.

Saturday, October 18, from noon to 4 pm.
Noon to 1 â€“ light potluck
1-4 â€“ Discussion.

1744 University Avenue, between Grant and McGee.
About a ten-minute walk from downtown Berkeley BART. Street parking available.

Speakers:
David Raymond, Iraq Initiatives Project.
Helena Cobban, author of Re-Engage! America and the World After Bush.

Our challenge and our opportunity for peace.
Less than one month from now, Barack Obama will probably win the presidential election. Yet this will not by itself end the war in Iraq. Obama plans to withdraw only half the troops (combat troops) within 16 months. There are powerful forces that will fight withdrawal from Iraq. The U.S. military will not allow itself to be "defeated," and oil companies finally see a chance to profit from the invasion.

Yet we now have a better chance than ever before to end the war in Iraq quickly and completely.
The Obama campaign is, in Tom Haydenâ€™s words, the largest political movement since the 1960s. Thousands of new activists, experienced at winning, can be mobilized next year to help end the war.
The American people are angry about the economic crisis. People will not tolerate another $200 billion spent on the war in Iraq next year when that money is desperately needed here at home.
In Iraq, major political parties and religious leaders (Ayatollah Sistani) have finally had enough and have called for a national referendum on the U.S. occupation.
Around the world, people are angry about the economic crisis that began in the U.S. and literally threatens many peopleâ€™s lives. Ending the Iraq War is a litmus test for whether they can trust the new Obama administration to support their interests.

HOW CAN WE TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THESE20NEW OPPORTUNITIES TO BUILD A MOVEMENT THAT CAN FINALLY BRING AN END TO THE IRAQ WAR?

PLEASE JOIN US.

For more information and to RSVP, email: draymond@sfsu.edu.

David Raymond is the co- founder of the Iraq Initiatives Project, which calls for a democratic, international solution to the Iraq War. He has been an activist for peace and justice for thirty years. Helena Cobban is a Quaker activist and an expert on the Middle East. She writes the Just World News blog

Sponsored by the Ecumenical Peace Institute/Clergy and Laity Concerned, and the Iraq Initiatives Project.

From a statement that Alameda Peace Network member Susan Toth will read to the Alameda City Council on Tuesday night. She alone gathered 500 signatures on the petition to place an anti-war initiative on the Alameda ballot.

"The majority of Alameda residents I approached eagerly signed the petition. [They were particularly concerned about the terrible impact of the war on the economy and on funding for schools and health care and other services.] Lots of people said just give me the petition and Iâ€™ll sign it.
I met a couple whose son is fighting in Iraq. The parents told me about the constant fear and anxiety they experience every time the telephone of the doorbell rings or when they get their mail. The father asked, "Why is this war going on? What did the Iraqi people do to us? Why do we have to bomb and kill them?"

"I talked to the sister of a sergeant who said that her brother is still alive, but last time he came home he was no longer himself. He was traumatized and sick. He constantly talked about his buddies being maimed, blinded, or killed. He talked about dead bodies, car bombs, being baked in blood, heat, sweat and sand. She broke down and cried and said, "Is this happening for the sake of oil? What are we doing in Iraq?"

I also met two soldiers who came home for a few weeks. One of them was newly married and his wife was pregnant. They said that the morale of the soldiers is very bad and they do not want to return to fight this war. In the beginning of the war they believed that the aim was to bring democracy and freedom to Iraq and do away with Saddam. However, instead of peace, stability and democracy there is endless war and the Iraqi people do not want the U.S. occupation to continue. The two soldiers said Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld lied to us. "This war is about expansion and greed."

Who needs military protection from Israeli soldiers?

2008-10-14T16:39:00.000-07:00

: Israeli military escort continues to fail to protect
Palestinian children from settler attacks
14 October 2008

Israeli settlers from the settlement of Ma’on in the South Hebron Hills
attacked Palestinian schoolchildren on their way home from school on
Tuesday 14 October 2008. The children were returning from school in the
village of At-Tuwani to their homes in villages of Tuba and Maghaer al
Abeed. Two adult Israeli settlers waited for them near the end of the
settlement, threw stones at the children and chased them towards Tuba.
“The children were very afraid when they arrived home,” said O, one of the
children’s fathers.

This attack happened in spite of the fact that the Israeli military is
responsible for escorting the children past the settlement of Ma’on and
settlement outpost of Havot Ma’on. Both the settlement and the outpost are
illegal in international law and the outpost is also illegal according to
Israeli law. Despite the fact that there have been repeated attacks on the
Palestinian elementary schoolchildren, and despite Palestinian, Israeli
and international representations, the Israeli military continues to fail
to escort the children safely past the settlement. Their vehicles almost
always stop and turn before the end of the route, which leaves the
children to walk alone on a part of the route where Israeli settlers have
attacked them several times. Internationals monitoring the school escort
cannot see the children in this area.

Settler attacks on the schoolchildren from Tuba and Maghaer al Abeed hav
been a recurrent problem for years, and the implementation of an Israeli
military escort has failed to solve the problem. Last year, the 2007-2008
academic year, settlers attacked the children a total of fourteen times,
as documented in the report “A Dangerous Journey: Settler Violence Against
Palestinian Schoolchildren Under Israeli Military Escort.”

Please contact Christian Peacemaker Teams for any further information.

Contacts:
Team mobilephone in At-Tuwani +972 (0)54 253 1323
Email: cpttuwani@cpt.org

For background information: www.cpt.org

AIPAC pro-Israel Lobby no longer scares Congress

2008-10-13T22:14:00.000-07:00

A Grassroots Victory: Democrats Shelve Iran Resolution

The American peace community, fired by a strong and substantial grassroots base, effectively managed to pressure Congress into shelving a resolution (H. Con. Res. 362), which would have opened the door for a naval blockade on Iran. This resolution, proposed in May and strongly advocated by the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, would have imposed "stringent inspection requirements" on trade with Iran, making a military blockade and the legal use of force very likely.

However, just as the bill was set to pass through the House, the peace community, comprised of peace groups, religious organizations, Iranian Americans and Jewish Americans, coordinated a counter strategy and flooded the representatives' offices with phone calls, e-mails, and visits to Congressional offices. Their message was clear: though the language of the bill may imply that it simply strengthens sanctions, it actually could only be implemented by military means. Prominent military experts and military personnel agreed with the peace community and joined in opposing the legislation. It was a unique expression of grassroots power and reflected a remarkable convergence of interests between the military and the peace community.

Additional Resources:

“Deploying diplomacy against Iran.” By M.J. Rosenberg. haaretz.com. October 10, 2008.

"In Reversal, Democrats Shelve Iran Resolution." By Maya Schenwar. truthout.org. October 10, 2008.

Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, The Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace
11 E. Adams Street, Suite 707
Chicago, IL 60603
Phone: (312) 341-1205
Fax: (312) 341-1206
info@btvshalom.org
www.btvshalom.org

The newest book of this trio, by Van Jones, who I nominate for US Pres. after Obama

2008-10-07T22:57:00.000-07:00

Climate change, the energy crisis, and the lack of opportunity in many Black communities are serious problems that might seem disconnected. In reality, they're not. The Green Jobs movement, pioneered in large part by Van Jones (one of ColorOfChange.org's co-founders), calls for a shared solution to these problems. [Van Jones is also the founder and head of the Ella Baker Center, on 40th St. in Oakland, where he and his flock of Ivy League trained Black attorneys and at least one Korean American exec, are laying the ground work for the Second Civil Rights Movement, called the Green Jobs Revolution, and such similar names. They have persuaded the city of Oakland, the California legislature and the US Congress to move ahead, along with unions, spending money and offering apprenticeships to ghetto young men who are now training for Green Jobs in energy-saving and renewable energy using items such as solar panels, insulation, wind turbines. etc. Check this out on www.EllaBakerCenter.org ]

Van has written an amazing new book that connects the dots between the two crises we face: our failing economy and the devastated environment--and lays out a visionary solution for both. And it speaks to a way of getting our economy back on track, from the bottom up.

The Green Collar Economy comes out today, October 7th -- we're inviting you to get your own copy (and for your friends or family as well) from Amazon at a discount! We're hoping that the book will sell a lot of copies in the first few days which could help it make the bestsellers list-- increasing exposure for the plan and creating a platform for Van and others to speak about the solution.

You can be one of the first to get a copy, here:

http://colorofchange.org/greencollareconomy/?id=1865-567855&v=0

Green collar jobs are gaining support among politicians, but we need a grassroots movement that says "we're ready"--to transform our economy into something that works for all people and doesn't destroy our planet. Van's book gives us the tools we need to push policy makers to engage solutions that are possible.

Here's what folks are saying about the book:

"Van Jones' authentic and passionate arguments trump the status quo. In The Green Collar Economy he holds the welfare of our neediest people front and center as he lays out a viable plan for the remainder of the 21st century."

-- Tavis Smiley, Author, Television and Radio Host

"Around the world, people of African descent are creating exciting, new environmental movements: from Kenya's Wangari Maathai to the South Bronx's Majora Carter. To that list, we now can add a new name: Van Jones. In The Green Collar Economy, he shows how "green" can be good for people of ALL colors. "

- Kerry Washington, actor

"This book illustrates the link between the struggle to restore the environment and the need to revive the US economy. Van Jones demonstrates conclusively that the best solutions for the survivability of our planet are also the best solutions for everyday Americans."

-- Al Gore

For more on The Green Collar Economy or to get your copy, click here:

http://colorofchange.org/greencollareconomy/?id=1865-567855&v=0

Thanks and Peace,

-- James, Gabriel, Clarissa, Andre, Kai, and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
October 7th, 2008

2 authors I respect talk about their new books

2008-10-07T22:40:00.000-07:00

Thomas Friedman and Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria: Author One-to-One, on how to help America survive and thrive

by Anne Bartholomew on September 07, 2008 from her Blog for Amazon.com

With both party conventions behind us, we are now in the thick of the election year, the world around us crackling with dialogue, debate, and diatribe as the issues and headlines heat up. On those issues--particularly the future of our economy and the heady questions around America's rank and influence as a global power--there are few authors more knowledgeable or passionate than Thomas Friedman (his newest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded challenges us to lead the green revolution) and Fareed Zakaria, whose Post-American World poses salient questions about America's future that everybody (and perhaps especially our Democratic candidate) wants to answer. In the spirit of the season, we invited Friedman and Zakaria to strike up a conversation, which we're pleased to share with you here exclusively. --Anne

Fareed Zakaria: Your book is about two things, the climate crisis and also about an American crisis. Why do you link the two?

Thomas Friedman: You're absolutely right--it is about two things. The book says, America has a problem and the world has a problem. The world's problem is that it's getting hot, flat and crowded and that convergence--that perfect storm--is driving a lot of negative trends. America's problem is that we've lost our way--we've lost our groove as a country. And the basic argument of the book is that we can solve our problem by taking the lead in solving the world's problem.

Zakaria: Explain what you mean by "hot, flat and crowded."

Friedman: There is a convergence of basically three large forces: one is global warming, which has been going on at a very slow pace since the industrial revolution; the second--what I call the flattening of the world--is a metaphor for the rise of middle-class citizens, from China to India to Brazil to Russia to Eastern Europe, who are beginning to consume like Americans. That's a blessing in so many ways--it's a blessing for global stability and for global growth. But it has enormous resource complications, if all these people--whom you've written about in your book, The Post American World--begin to consume like Americans. And lastly, global population growth simply refers to the steady growth of population in general, but at the same time the growth of more and more people able to live this middle-class lifestyle. Between now and 2020, the world's going to add another billion people. And their resource demands--at every level--are going to be enormous. I tell the story in the book how, if we give each one of the next billion people on the planet just one sixty-watt incandescent light bulb, what it will mean: the answer is that it will require about 20 new 500-megawatt coal-burning power plants. That's so they can each turn on just one light bulb!

Zakaria: In my book I talk about the "rise of the rest" and about the reality of how this rise of new powerful economic nations is completely changing the way the world works. Most everyone's efforts have been devoted to Kyoto-like solutions, with the idea of getting western countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. But I grew to realize that the West was a sideshow. India and China will build hundreds of coal-fire power plants in the next ten years and the combined carbon dioxide emissions of those new plants alone are five times larger than the savings mandated by the Kyoto accords. What do you do with the Indias and Chinas of the world?

Friedman: I think there are two approaches. There has to be more understanding of the basic unfairness they feel. They feel like we sat down, had the hors d'oeuvres, ate the entrée, pretty much finished off the dessert, invited them for tea and coffee and then said, "Let's split the bill." So I understand the big sense of unfairness--they feel that now that they have a chance to grow and reach with large numbers a whole new standard of living, we're basically telling them, "Your growth, and all the emissions it would add, is threatening the world's climate." At the same time, what I say to them--what I said to young Chinese most recently when I was just in China is this: Every time I come to China, young Chinese say to me, "Mr. Friedman, your country grew dirty for 150 years. Now it's our turn." And I say to them, "Yes, you're absolutely right, it's your turn. Grow as dirty as you want. Take your time. Because I think we probably just need about five years to invent all the new clean power technologies you're going to need as you choke to death, and we're going to come and sell them to you. And we're going to clean your clock in the next great global industry. So please, take your time. If you want to give us a five-year lead in the next great global industry, I will take five. If you want to give us ten, that would be even better. In other words, I know this is unfair, but I am here to tell you that in a world that's hot, flat and crowded, ET--energy technology--is going to be as big an industry as IT--information technology. Maybe even bigger. And who claims that industry--whose country and whose companies dominate that industry--I think is going to enjoy more national security, more economic security, more economic growth, a healthier population, and greater global respect, for that matter, as well. So you can sit back and say, it's not fair that we have to compete in this new industry, that we should get to grow dirty for a while, or you can do what you did in telecommunications, and that is try to leap-frog us. And that's really what I'm saying to them: this is a great economic opportunity. The game is still open. I want my country to win it--I'm not sure it will.

Zakaria: I'm struck by the point you make about energy technology. In my book I'm pretty optimistic about the United States. But the one area where I'm worried is actually ET. We do fantastically in biotech, we're doing fantastically in nanotechnology. But none of these new technologies have the kind of system-wide effect that information technology did. Energy does. If you want to find the next technological revolution you need to find an industry that transforms everything you do. Biotechnology affects one critical aspect of your day-to-day life, health, but not all of it. But energy--the consumption of energy--affects every human activity in the modern world. Now, my fear is that, of all the industries in the future, that's the one where we're not ahead of the pack. Are we going to run second in this race?

Friedman: Well, I want to ask you that, Fareed. Why do you think we haven't led this industry, which itself has huge technological implications? We have all the secret sauce, all the technological prowess, to lead this industry. Why do you think this is the one area--and it's enormous, it's actually going to dwarf all the others--where we haven't been at the real cutting edge?

Zakaria: I think it's not about our economic system but our political system. The rhetoric we hear is that the market should produce new energy technologies. But the problem is, the use of current forms of energy has an existing infrastructure with very powerful interests that has ensured that the government tilt the playing field in their favor, with subsidies, tax breaks, infrastructure spending, etc. This is one area where the Europeans have actually been very far-sighted and have pushed their economies toward the future.

Friedman: I would say that's exactly right. It's the Europeans--and the Japanese as well--who've done it, and they've done it because of the government mechanisms you've highlighted. They have understood that, if you just say the market alone will deliver the green revolution we need, basically three things happen and none of them are good: First, the market will drive up the price to whatever level demand dictates. We saw oil hit $145 a barrel, and when that happens the oil-producing countries capture most of the profit, 90% of it. So, some of the worst regimes in the world enjoy the biggest benefits from the market run-up. The second thing that happens is that the legacy oil, gas and coal companies get the other ten percent of the profit--so companies which have no interest in changing the system get stronger. And the third thing that happens is something that doesn't happen: because you're letting the market alone shape the prices, the market price can go up and down very quickly. So, those who want to invest in the alternatives really have to worry that if they make big investments, the market price for oil may fall back on them before their industry has had a chance to move down the learning curve and make renewable energies competitive with oil. Sure, the market can drive oil to $145 a barrel and at that level wind or solar may be very competitive. But what if two months later oil is at $110 a barrel? Because of that uncertainty, because we have not put a floor price under oil, you have the worst of all worlds, which is a high price of dirty fuels--what I call in the book fuels from hell--and low investment in new clean fuels, the fuels from heaven. Yes, some people are investing in the alternatives, but not as many or as much as you think, because they are worried that without a floor price for crude oil, their investments in the alternatives could get wiped out, which is exactly what happened in the 1980s after the first oil shock. That's why you need the government to come in a reshape the market to make the cost of dirty fuels more expensive and subsidize the price of clean fuels until they can become competitive.

Right now we are doing just the opposite. Bush and Cheney may say the oil market is “free,” but that is a joke. It's dominated by the world's biggest cartel, OPEC, and America's biggest energy companies, and they've shaped this market to serve their interests. Unless government comes in and reshapes it, we're never going to launch this industry. Which is one of the reasons I argue in the book, "Change your leaders, not your light bulbs." Because leaders write rules, rules shape markets, markets give you scale. Without scale, without being able to generate renewable energy at scale, you have nothing. All you have is a hobby. Everything we've doing up to now is pretty much a hobby. I like hobbies--I used to build model airplanes as a kid. But I don't try to change the world as a hobby. And that's basically what we're trying to do.

Zakaria: But aren't we in the midst of a green revolution? Every magazine I pick up tells me ten different ways to get more green. Hybrids are doing very well...

Friedman: What I always say to people when they say to me, "We're having a green revolution" is, "Really? A green revolution! Have you ever been to a revolution where no one got hurt? That's the green revolution." In the green revolution, everyone's a winner: BP's green, Exxon's green, GM's green. When everyone's a winner, that's not a revolution--actually, that's a party. We're having a green party. And it's very fun--you and I get invited to all the parties. But it has no connection whatsoever with a real revolution. You'll know it's a revolution when somebody gets hurt. And I don't mean physically hurt. But the IT revolution was a real revolution. In the IT revolution, companies either had to change or die. So you'll know the green revolution is happening when you see some bodies--corporate bodies--along the side of the road: companies that didn't change and therefore died. Right now we don't have that kind of market, that kind of change-or-die situation. Right now companies feel like they can just change their brand, not actually how they do business, and that will be enough to survive. That's why we're really having more of a green party than a green revolution.

Zakaria: One of your chapters is called "Outgreening Al-Qaeda." Explain what you mean.

Friedman: The chapter is built around the green hawks in the Pentagon. They began with a marine general in Iraq, who basically cabled back one day and said, I need renewable power here. Things like solar energy. And the reaction of the Pentagon was, "Hey, general, you getting a little green out there? You're not going sissy on us are you? Too much sun?" And he basically said, "No, don't you guys get it? I have to provision outposts along the Syrian border. They are off the grid. They run on generators with diesel fuel. I have to truck diesel fuel from Kuwait to the Syrian border at $20 a gallon delivered cost. And that's if my trucks don't get blown up by insurgents along the way. If I had solar power, I wouldn't have to truck all this fuel. I could—this is my term, not his—‘outgreen' Al-Qaeda."

I argue in the chapter that "outgreening"--the ability to deploy, expand, innovate and grow renewable energy and clean power--is going to become one of the most important, if not the most important, sources of competitive advantage for a company, for a country, for a military. You're going to know the cost of your fuel, it's going to be so much more distributed, you will be so much more flexible, and--this is quite important, Fareed--you will also become so much more respected. I hear from law firms today: one law firm has a green transport initiative going for its staff--they only use hybrid cars--another one doesn't. If some law student out of Harvard or Yale is weighing which law firm to join--many will say today: "I think I'll go with the green one." So there are a lot of ways in which you can outgreen your competition. I think "outgreening" is going to become an important verb in the dictionary - between "outfox" and "outmaneuver."

Zakaria: Finally, let me ask you--in that context--what would this do to America's image, if we were to take on this challenge? Do you really think it could change the way America is perceived in the world?

Friedman: I have no doubt about it, which is why I say in the book: I'm not against Kyoto; if you can get 190 countries all to agree on verifiable limits on their carbon, God bless you. But at the end of the day, I really still believe--and I know you do too--in America as a model. Your book stresses this--that even in a post-American world we still are looked at by others around the world as a role model. I firmly believe that if we go green--if we prove that we can become healthy, secure, respected, entrepreneurial, richer and more innovative by greening our economy, many more people will follow us voluntarily than would do so by compulsion of a treaty. Does that mean Russia and Iran will? No. Geopolitics won't disappear. But I think it will, speaking broadly, definitely reposition us in the world with more people in more places. I look at making America the greenest country in the world like running the Olympic triathlon: if you make it to the Olympics and you run the race, maybe you win--but even if you don't win, you're fitter, healthier, more secure, more respected, more competitive and entrepreneurial, because you have given birth to a whole new clean power industry--which has to be the next great global industry--and put your economy on a much more sustainable footing. So to me, this is a win-win-win-win race, and that's why I believe we, America, need to take the lead in it. In the Cold War we had the space race with Russia to see who could be the first to put a man on the moon. Today we need an earth race with Japan, Europe, China and India--to see who can be the first to invent the clean power technologies that will allow man to live safely and sustainably on earth.

Two low blows, below the belt in Ohio Pres. campaign

2008-09-28T20:28:00.000-07:00

Wanted: A Congressional resolution condemning the distribution of hate DVD's

A natural and expected progression.
Ohio is a "swing" state (polls show that it can go for Obama or McCain in
November).

In this state hundreds of thousands of the anti-Muslim/Arab DVD
"Obsession" were distributed in newspapers by a shady "non-profit"
"Clarion"(with the obvious purpose of swaying the election, in direct
violation of non-profit laws.)

[we will try to give the URL for learning more about the DVD. ]

Now we have this story of an attack on Muslim families in Dayton. This is
the news account in the Dayton Daily News (a paper that included the DVD a
few weeks ago)
Baboucarr Njie was preparing for his prayer session Friday night, Sept. 26,
when he heard children in the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton coughing.
Soon, Njie himself was overcome with fits of coughing and, like the rest of
those in the building, headed for the doors.

"I would stay outside for a minute, then go back in, there were a lot of
kids," Njie said. "My throat is still itchy, I need to get some milk."

Njie was one of several affected when a suspected chemical irritant was
sprayed into the mosque at 26 Josie St., bringing Dayton police, fire and
hazardous material personnel to the building at 9:48 p.m.

Someone "sprayed an irritant into the mosque," Dayton fire District Chief
Vince Wiley said, noting that fire investigators believe it was a hand-held
spray can. More at http://tinyurl.com/3gag6m

Here is a first hand description not in the news. It was posted at "Daily
Kos", a progressive forum that is mostly follows the Democratic Party line.
But they really came out against this bigotry in a strong way, so props for
that. Anyway, here is the description as related by the post, that was
related by an email to the poster:

"She told me that the gas was sprayed into the room where the babies and
children were being kept while their mothers prayed together their Ramadan
prayers. Panicked mothers ran for their babies, crying for their children so
they could flee from the gas that was burning their eyes and throats and
lungs. She grabbed her youngest in her arms and grabbed the hand of her
other daughter, moving with the others to exit the building and the
irritating substance there.

"The paramedic said the young one was in shock, and gave her oxygen to
help her breathe. The child couldn't stop sobbing.

"This didn't happen in some far away place -- but right here in Dayton,
and to my friends. Many of the Iraqi refugees were praying together at the
Mosque Friday evening. People that I know and love.

"I am hurt and angry. I tell her this is NOT America. She tells me this
is not Heaven or Hell -- there are good and bad people everywhere.

"She tells me that her daughters slept with her last night, the little
one in her arms and sobbing throughout the night. She tells me she is
afraid, and will never return to the mosque, and I wonder what kind of
country is this where people have to fear attending their place of worship?

"The children come into the room, and tell me they want to leave America
and return to Syria, where they had fled to from Iraq. They say they like
me, ... , and other American friends -- but they are too afraid and want to
leave. Should a 6 and 7 year old even have to contemplate the safety of
their living situation?

"Did the anti-Muslim video circulating in the area have something to do
with this incident, or is that just a bizarre coincidence? Who attacks women
and children?

"What am I supposed to say to them? My words can't keep them safe from
what is nothing less than terrorism, American style. Isn't losing loved
ones, their homes, jobs, possessions and homeland enough? Is there no place
where they can be safe?

"She didn't want me to leave her tonight, but it was after midnight, and
I needed to get home and write this to my friends. Tell me -- tell me --
what am I supposed to say to them?"

Some wise, sensitive words on 9/11 from 2001

2008-09-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

Message from Deepak Chopra re:Tuesday's WTC tragedy

The Deeper Wound,

As fate would have it, I was leaving New York on a jet flight that took
off 45 minutes before the unthinkable happened. By the time we landed in
Detroit, chaos had broken out. When I grasped the fact that American
security had broken down so tragically, I couldn't respond at first. My
wife and son were also in the air on separate flights, one to Los Angeles, one
to San Diego. My body went absolutely rigid with fear. All I could think
about was their safety, and it took several hours before I found out that their flights had been diverted and both were safe.

Strangely, when the good news came, my body still felt that it had been
hit by a truck. Of its own accord it seemed to feel a far greater trauma that
reached out to the thousands who would not survive and the tens of
thousands who would survive only to live through months and years of hell. And I
asked myself, Why didn't I feel this way last week? Why didn't my body go stiff
during the bombing of Iraq or Bosnia? Around the world my horror and worry
are experienced every day. Mothers weep over horrendous loss, civilians
are bombed mercilessly, refugees are ripped from any sense of home or
homeland. Why did I not feel their anguish enough to call a halt to it?

As we hear the calls for tightened American security and a fierce military
response to terrorism, it is obvious that none of us has any answers.
However, we feel compelled to ask some questions. Everything has a cause,
so we have to ask, What was the root cause of this evil? We must find out not
superficially but at the deepest level. There is no doubt that such evil is
alive all around the world and is even celebrated. Does this evil grow from
the suffering and anguish felt by people we don't know and therefore
ignore? Have they lived in this condition for a long time?

One assumes that whoever did this attack feels implacable hatred for
America. Why were we selected to be the focus of suffering around the
world? All this hatred and anguish seems to have religion at its basis Isn't
something terribly wrong when jihads and wars develop in the name of God?
Isn't God invoked with hatred in Ireland, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan,
Israel, Palestine, and even among the intolerant sects of America? Can any
military response make the slightest difference in the underlying cause?
Is there not a deep wound at the heart of humanity? If there is a deep wound,
doesn't it affect everyone?

When generations of suffering respond with bombs, suicidal attacks, and
biological warfare, who first developed these weapons? Who sells them? Who
gave birth to the satanic technologies now being turned against us? If all
of us are wounded, will revenge work? Will punishment in any form toward
anyone solve the wound or aggravate it? Will an eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth, and limb for a limb, leave us all blind, toothless and crippled?

Tribal warfare has been going on for two thousand years and has now been
magnified globally. Can tribal warfare be brought to an end? Is patriotism
and nationalism even relevant anymore, or is this another form of
tribalism?
What are you and I as persons going to do about what is happening? Can we
afford to let the deeper wound fester any longer?

Everyone is calling this an attack on America, but is it not a rift in our
collective soul? Isn't this an attack on civilization from without that is
also from within? When we have secured our safety once more and cared for
the wounded, after the period of shock and mourning is over, it will be
time for soul searching. I only hope that these questions are confronted with
the deepest spiritual intent. None of us will feel safe again behind the
shield of military might and stockpiled arsenals. There can be no safety until
the root cause is faced. In this moment of shock I don't think anyone of us
has the answers. It is imperative that we pray and offer solace and help to
each other. But if you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

Love,
Deepak
[credit for my learning about this wonderful letter goes to our daughter, Barbara]

what about 9 months of camp, 3 of school? [see last paragraph]

2008-08-24T14:45:00.000-07:00

This I Believe [from NPRadio series, see: www.thisibelieve.org ]

Contributor: Robert Kent ( RK@peacecampinitiative.org )
Location: Menlo Park, CA

I believe in Summer Camp. In the simple joys of sunshine and sports and a spring-fed mountain lake. I believe in kids learning to live together, to play together, and to face challenges together.

I believe that kids learn who they are, and who they want to be, while immersed in intense activities of their choosing – where joy and challenge combine in equal measure to forge, one experience at a time, the responsible and caring adult each child will become.

I believe that school may be good at filling heads, but that camp is better at filling hearts.

I believe that a few weeks away from home and from parents is a great opportunity to explore who you want to be when it comes time to be on your own; indeed that only by establishing a context away from your familiar home is it possible to see past everyone’s expectations and examine who you really are.

I believe that kids are tribal – that they will be irrevocably influenced by their peer groups, and that the only way for this to be a good thing is for the peer groups to have leaders who are both cool enough to inspire and experienced enough to be safe. I believe that kids want and need healthy leadership from someone they can imagine becoming – someone younger than their parents and older than their peers.

I believe that kids need someone in their lives besides their parents, someone who doesn’t have to care about them, but does anyway. Someone who can accept them as they are, and convince them that they are already worthy of respect, affection, and dignity. Someone who, while accepting their present, inspires their future.

I believe that the incandescent joy of a happy child transcends every ethnic and economic distinction humankind has invented to keep us apart. I believe that every prejudice, every oppression, every resentment, and every misunderstanding can be cured more quickly by mixing everyone’s children together, making two teams, and letting them play than by any form of conflict resolution, court intercession, or legislation we’ve come up with so far.

Summer camp, it seems, is primarily and originally an American institution, with a few camps, including my own, with histories and traditions that date back more than a hundred years. Many camps attract not only staff from many countries, but also an international contingent of campers from families who want their children to grow up able to speak English and to have American friends. I have, conversely, been able to travel all over the world, connecting with camp friends in Spain, England, Switzerland, Japan, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands – not bad for spending summers in upstate Pennsylvania.

I believe that every kid would prefer that school lasted for three months, and summer lasted for nine. Not a ringing endorsement for how we run schools, but proof we all could, and should, learn something from summer camp.

------------------------------------------
This essay is copyrighted material; no reproduction or excerpting is permitted without written consent from This I Believe, Inc. Unless otherwise noted, this essay is reprinted just as it was submitted by the writer.

Gaza leader greets nonviolent "liberators"

2008-08-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

- 21:56 23/08/2008

Haniyeh: Arrival of blockade-busting boats spells end of Gaza siege

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz [Israel] Correspondent and The Associated Press

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Saturday welcomed two boats that sailed from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip in efforts to break the Israeli-imposed blockade on the Palestinian territory, saying that the arrival of the boats signaled the end of the siege.

The 70-foot (21-meter) Free Gaza and 60-foot (18-meter) Liberty left the southern port of Larnaca about 10 a.m. Friday for the estimated 30-hour trip. The activists planned to deliver 200 hearing aids to a Palestinian charity for children and hand out 5,000 balloons.

The 46 activists from 14 countries belonging to the U.S.-based group Free Gaza include an 81-year-old Catholic nun and the sister-in-law of Mideast envoy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
T
he arrival of the boats is another "nail in the coffin of the blockade," Haniyeh said in an interview with the Qatari-based television network Al Jazeera.

He urged the head of the Arab League Amr Moussa to come to Gaza and called on Egypt to open the Rafah border crossing, which the Egyptians closed in 2007 when Hamas violently seized control over the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also lauded the activists, who docked at Gaza City's tiny port Saturday evening, receiving a warm welcome from thousands of jubilant Palestinians after a two-day journey marred by communications troubles and rough seas.

"We were all dizzy, nauseous. We were all tired. But in the last hour it was like we were recharged," said Ayash Daraj, a journalist with al-Jazeera who sailed with the activists.

Since setting sail from Cyprus early Friday, the Free Gaza mission had been in question. Israel initially hinted it would prevent the vessels from reaching Gaza, and on Saturday, the group accused Israel of jamming its communications equipment.

But late Saturday, Israel said it would permit the boats to dock in Gaza after determining the activists did not pose a security threat. Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said Israel wanted to avoid the media provocation that the activists were seeking. He said he had no knowledge of attempts to harm the boats' communications.

He went on to say that the authorities in Greece and Cyprus inspected the vessels and their passengers before they set sail from the port of Larnaca in Cyprus Friday morning, and assured Israel that they carried no weapons.

Israel decided to permit the Free Gaza boats to sail into the Strip as a one-time measure and announced that similar missions in the future would be examined individually. It was further announced that the boats would be inspected upon their return to ensure they were not carrying wanted militants or weapons.

Israel has led an international boycott of the Gaza Strip since the militant Muslim group Hamas seized power of the territory in June 2007. Israel closed its trade crossings with the coastal territory, while neighboring Egypt sealed its passenger crossing, confining Gaza's 1.4 million residents. Israel has allowed little more than basic humanitarian supplies into Gaza, causing widespread shortages of fuel, electricity and basic goods. Only some people are allowed to leave Gaza for medical care, jobs abroad and the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

Under a June truce deal which halted a deadly cycle of bruising Palestinian rocket attacks and deadly Israel airstrikes, Israel has pledged to ease the blockade, but Palestinians say the flow of goods into Gaza remains insufficient and there has been little improvement in the quality of life. Israel has periodically closed the cargo crossings in response to sporadic Palestinian rocket fire that violated the truce.

Earlier Saturday, the Free Gaza activist group accused Israel of sabotaging the mission, saying that Israel had jammed the boats' electronic communication systems.

"I can't think of any other reason or any other party with an interest," said Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, the group's spokeswoman in Israel. She accused Israel of jeopardizing the activists' safety, and appealed for international assistance.

Israel has denied interfering in the boats' communications.

In a statement, the activists said their communications systems had been jammed and scrambled and said they were victims of electronic piracy.

"We are not experienced sailors. As a results, there is concern about the health and safety of the people on board," the statement said.

"We are following the development and if they are looking for a provocation, we will know how to avoid it," Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Merkel said Saturday.

Another spokesman for the ministry, Aviv Shiron, said Friday that all options were being considered when asked whether Israel intended to use force to turn the boats away.

In Gaza City, meanwhile, a small boat zoomed off the coast waving a Palestinian flag as a crowd of activists and journalists gathered in the tiny fishing port hoping to glimpse the vessels.

"I brought the kids so if they [the activists] arrive, I can tell them welcome - and thank you for not forgetting us," said Jamila Hassan, a 42-year-old Gaza resident who brought along her 14-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter to the port.

Hamas policemen controlled traffic in and out of the Gaza City port in anticipation of the boats' arrival. Youths leaped off high rocks into deep water nearby. Two large tents were set up for people to watch the scene.

"Nobody thinks that these boats will break the siege in a practical way, but this is a moral message - what is happening [in Gaza] is illegal and inhumane, and must be halted," said Raji Sourani, a prominent human rights activist.

On Friday, organizer Paul Larudee said the group expected Israeli authorities to intercept the boats and arrest those on board. He said it was highly unlikely the Israeli navy would fire on them.

The boats departed after last-minute engine repairs to the Liberty, passenger safety drills and a final inspection of the vessels' hulls by Cyprus Marine Police divers. Group members sang a peace song in Arabic and formed the peace sign with their fingers before boarding the boats.

peaceful "invasion" of Gaza by international crew

2008-08-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

Activist boats reach Gaza Strip

via BBC news [will US news media ever tell?]

The boats are carrying 40 activists, 200 hearing aids and 5,000 balloons

Two boats carrying members of a US-based pro-Palestinian group have arrived in the Gaza Strip, despite an Israeli blockade of the territory.

Israel earlier said they would be let in, saying they would not be given the chance to have a "provocation at sea".

The boats left the port of Larnaca in Cyprus on Friday morning.

The Free Gaza protest group said about 40 activists from 14 countries were on board the boats to highlight the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza in June 2007 when the militant group Hamas took control of the territory by force.

Since then, Israel has allowed in little more than basic humanitarian aid as a means of isolating Hamas and persuading militant groups to stop firing rockets into Israel.

The closure of Gaza's borders by the Israeli and Egyptian authorities has also meant that very few Gazans have been able to leave.

'No provocation'

Before Free Gaza's boats set sail on Friday, the Israeli foreign ministry had said they wanted the activists to steer clear of the Gazan coastline, which it said was "the subject of an [Israeli Navy] advisory notice" that warns off foreign vessels from the "designated maritime zone".

But on Saturday, an Israeli spokesman said they would be allowed in.

"They wanted provocation at sea, but they won't get it," foreign ministry spokesman Aviv Shiron told the AFP news agency.

"We know who the passengers are and what they are bringing with them and so we have no problem letting them through."

Truce barely eases Gaza embargo

Guide: Gaza under blockade

The two vessels - named Liberty and Free Gaza - are carrying 200 hearing aids for children and 5,000 balloons.

"No matter what happens we have already achieved our goal by proving that ordinary citizens with ordinary means can mobilise a defence of human rights for Palestinians," organiser Paul Larudee [SF Bay area activist] told the AFP news agency.

"We want people to see the Palestinian problem as one of human rights, not feeding them rice," he added.

The activists on board the boats include Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of UK former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is now an international Middle East peace envoy. Also on board is left-wing Greek MP Tasos Kourakis.

Israel withdrew its settlers from Gaza in 2005, but it still controls its coast, airspace and borders, and, until a ceasefire with Hamas was agreed in June, carried out regular military operations in the territory.

However, correspondents say the truce has not improved the situation for Gaza's population, except to reduce the number of Israeli incursions and the number of rockets fired by Palestinian militants.

Jewish prophets are rotating in their graves. waiting for Israeli justice to 'roll down like waters'

2008-07-05T14:03:00.000-07:00

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

SUMMARY: During recent weeks, Palestinians have documented via video threats and violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers in the South Hebron Hills. Settlers have committed these acts both against Palestinians and Palestinian property. Palestinians have passed this footage onto the media, as well as various human rights groups and lawyers who are working to pressure different Israeli bodies and officials to take legal action against the settlers. Including the incidents described in this update, CPT has received information about or witnessed settlers threatening and/or attacking Palestinians and their property ten times during this month. Most of these incidents occurred while Palestinians were grazing sheep. Despite these violent episodes, Palestinian shepherds continued to graze with their flocks in these areas and regularly confronted settler intimidation using the video camera and international accompaniment.

Summary of Settler violent attacks during one month, June 2008
(and what Israeli police and army did about it)

Sunday 1 June 2008

At around 5:00 pm, a settler car had hit five goats out of a flock of eleven, belonging to a man from Ma'in Village.

Thursday 5 June

At nearly 11:00 a.m., the Israeli military constructed a six-foot tall roadblock on the main road to Yatta.

Sunday 8 June

Four settlers attacked four Palestinian shepherds grazing near the village of Susiya. Six masked settlers arrived on a tractor, and four got off the tractor and beat an old woman, her husband, her nephew, and nephew's wife with wooden clubs. The old woman was beaten unconscious and taken to the hospital in Beersheva. The old man and his nephew went to the Hospital Al Ahli in Hebron. Paramedics treated the nephew's wife, who filmed the attacks (later used by the media and Israeli police), at the scene. The police who arrived at the scene told the family that it was "probably Arabs" that beat them up. The family lives on the other side of Suseya settlement in Wadi Ijhaash, isolated from the other Susiya families by a thirty-minute walk. After the video appeared in international media, the Israeli police took into custody two settlers from Suseya settlement.

Wednesday 11 June

Settlers entered the village of Tuba and accused the villagers of stealing clothing and other things from the Hill 833 outpost settlement (called by the settlers, Havat Ma'on.) Palestinians from the village filmed the settlers as they entered Tuba. The settlers threatened to come back at night, because the Palestinians filmed them, but did not return.

Thursday 18 June

In Mashakha valley, three settlers with slingshots chased a Palestinian shepherd and his sheep. Benvie taped the incident and the Palestinian has secured a lawyer to take up his case with the Israeli police.

Tuesday 24 June

Israeli settlers beat two Palestinians near the village of Qawawis. The two men were hospitalized in Yatta with a rib and an eye injury, respectively.

Thursday 26 June

The Israeli military delivered demolition orders for the newly built cistern in and a house in Tuwani, and four buildings in the Palestinian village of Umm Faggarah.

Friday 27 June

The Israeli military constructed a new barrier on the road from Tuwani to Yatta

Sunday 29 June

Palestinians in Tuba reported that at least ten Israeli settlers from the settlement of Ma'on stole four camels and a baby camel, belonging to nearby Bedouins. The camels roam free during the day and return to the Bedouin village in the evening. The camels' owner has since called the Israeli police, but the camels remain in the possession of Ma'on settlers. A Palestinian from Tuba said two years ago, settlers stole camels from the Bedouin. The military and police got involved, and they supported the settlers, insisting that the Bedouin pay 2,000 NIS for the return of their own camels.

At approximately 5:00 p.m., the Israeli military created another roadblock on alternative route Palestinian cars were taking to Yatta.

Let us know if you ever see this in your news media

2008-06-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

CPTnet 30 June 2008 AT-TUWANI:
Israeli military issues demolition orders and again blocks main access road in South Hebron Hills

On 26 June 2008, the Israeli military issued a demolition order on the partially constructed water cistern in the village of At-Tuwani, built with financial support from a Spanish NGO. If completed, the cistern will provide a vital additional water source in the arid region of the South Hebron Hills.

Also on 26 June, the Israeli military issued a demolition order on a home in At-Tuwani and on four homes in the nearby village of Umm Faggarah.
The following day, 27 June 2008, at 9:00 a.m., the Israeli military returned to the area and blocked the road between At-Tuwani and Yatta. A bulldozer massed a four-foot-high mound spanning the width of the road using boulders and earth. The roadblock not only prevents vehicular access, but also makes movement by foot and donkey extremely difficult. The same bulldozer also closed several tracks used by tractors and trucks to access nearby small dwellings.

[This bulldozer was made by the Caterpillar Tractor Co. here in the USA, against whom both Jewish Voice for Peace and the Presbyterian Church USA have been working for many years to persuade that company to stop selling these superdestructive armored vehicles, used now for decades against international laws to destroy and harm civilian buildings, orchards, olive groves, etc. in Israeli army occupied locations in the Palestinian lands invaded and still dominated by Israeli military troops, with our annual tax payer support of 5 billion dollars.
Do you detect terrorism, trying to drive out nomadic shepherds from the rural area in South Hebron? Let Obama, as well as Nancy Pelosi know how you feel about this. Barbara Lee is aware of and working on stopping this disgrace and illegal use of our aid money. Let each of these folks know what you think. --Bob F.]

Besides being the main economic hub for the region, Yatta is also the principal provider of critical services such as hospitals, secondary schools, and public administration offices.

Several communities in the South Hebron Hills are again cut off from basic supplies such as water and animal feed, because road is the main artery for the supply of water to the South Hebron Hills, which is currently experiencing a severe drought. According to Palestinian residents of the area, roadblocks have doubled the commercial price of water. A UN worker reported that roadblocks on this thoroughfare will increase by thirty percent the cost of transporting essential water aid to the area.

The new roadblock is the latest in a series of roadblocks erected by the Israeli army. The most recent, on the same site of today's roadblock, was removed by the army on 12 June. The local population removed previous roadblocks through nonviolent direct actions.
[this news item, from the Christian Peacemaker Teams, who have a small team living in Hebron in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, not far from Jerusalem. SF Bay area residents Esther Ho and Lorin Peters have been part of that changing team in recent years, carrying on their nonviolent witness and reporting.]

urgent appeal from London labor leader Eric Lee

2008-06-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

The Turkish government has jailed a young woman, Meryem Özsögüt, trade union leader and management board member of PSI's affiliate SES in Turkey (the trade union of public employees in health and social services) was arrested on the morning of January 8 following her participation in a press conference on 14 December 2007 to denounce the killing by the police of activist Kevser Mizrak, , and has kept her in detention for nearly six months.
------ copy this URL to learn more and act:
www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.
cgi?c=394

Meryem is a leader of the public employees union SES, and we've been asked by Public Services International (PSI) to launch a big online campaign demanding her release.

This campaign will not take off, and we will not secure Meryem's release, unless we can mobilize thousands of our members around the world.
Please do what you can to help this campaign go viral -- forward it to your email lists, post information on your union websites, pass out flyers at events, use new tools like Twitter, Facebook and blogs to spread the word.
Meryem needs our help. I know that I can count on all of you.

Some sardonic humor from Hebron in Palestine

2008-06-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

To a Palestinian Child--Instructions for Living in the South Hebron Hills
by Laura Ciaghi

Do not go into nearby orchards to steal cherries. Twenty-five heavily armed adults from the neighboring Israeli settlement may attack your village, screaming, pushing and threatening your parents while soldiers and police stand and watch.

Make sure to have unarmed internationals with you on your way to school. When adult settlers attack you, the internationals might end up as battered as you, but their injuries will give you your only chance to have the media tell your story.

Do not get sick (or try to be born) at inappropriate times such as nights, Jewish holidays, U.S. presidential visits-or when the local military commander has planned a checkpoint between your house and the hospital for no particular reason. You will make the soldiers feel uncomfortable when, following mandatory security policies, they refuse to let you pass by foot or in your parent's arms, because they suspect you may have swallowed a bomb. If you cough, vomit or look sad, you might confirm their suspicions.

Learn by heart some good invocations to chase away bad dreams. When soldiers come to your house in the middle of the night, aim their rifles at your elder brothers whom they have pushed against the wall, and then detonate sounds grenades as a way of saying "goodbye," you will fall asleep again afterwards and wake to be a cute, joyful, polite child the following morning.

----------------------------------------------
CPT's MISSION: "Getting in the Way." What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war? Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) seeks to enlist the whole church in organized, nonviolent alternatives to war and places teams of trained peacemakers in regions of lethal conflict.

COMMENTS: To ask questions or express concerns, criticisms and affirmations send messages to peacemakers@cpt.org.

NEWSLETTER: To receive CPT's quarterly print newsletter fill out the form at http://cpt.org/participate/subscribe

Been to any Commencements in prison lately?

2008-06-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

Seminary at Sing Sing

by Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine, and taken from his blog, an online newsletter from his Sojourners Community in a poor section of Washington DC

The months of May and June are always a special time for school commencements. And, each year, I really enjoy my opportunities to give commencement addresses at universities and seminaries across the country. But the one I gave last week was very special indeed.

Last Wednesday evening, June 11, I was blessed and honored to give the commencement address at Sing Sing Prison. The New York Theological Seminary offers a program of theological study leading to the degree of Masters of Professional Studies, with all courses taking place inside the walls of the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. In twenty-six years this extraordinary and courageous seminary training program has graduated hundreds who then go on to ministry, both inside the prison system of New York and back in the community when their sentences are finished.

I have often told the story of the first time I visited this unusual and inspiring program at Sing Sing. My book, The Soul of Politics, was being read by the students as part of their seminary curriculum, and I received a letter from the prison inmates themselves, inviting me to meet with them and discuss my book. It sounded interesting, so I wrote back to ask when they would like me to come. A young man wrote to me on behalf of his fellow Sing Sing students saying, "Well, we're free most nights!" He went on, "We're kind of a captive audience here!" The prison authorities were very accommodating and I got to spend several hours with about 70 guys in a crowded room deep in the bowels of the infamous penal institution.

The animated book conversation was one of the most stimulating and rigorous of any I've ever had. I vividly remember much of that discussion, and especially the riveting comment of one young man who said to me, "Jim, most of us at Sing Sing come from just about four or five neighborhoods in New York City. It's like a train. You get on the train in my neighborhood when you are nine or ten years old, and the train ends up here....at Sing Sing." But this young man had experienced a spiritual conversion inside of that prison, and was now enrolled in the New York Seminary program training pastors to work inside the prison system and to go back and work in those neighborhoods from which they had come. After the session that night, the young man came up to me to say goodbye, looked me in the eye, and said, "When I get out, I am going to go back and stop that train."

A few years later, I was in New York City to speak at a town meeting on poverty. Guess who was up front, helping to lead the meeting? I immediately recognized two of the young men I met that night at Sing Sing--Julio Medina and Darren Ferguson. Last week, Julio came back to the commencement at what NYTS calls their "North Campus," now as an illustrious alumnus who spends his days running a very successful drug rehabilitation program in NYC. Darren was being the newly installed pastor of a church in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Queens where some recent shootings had him out on the streets that night instead of at the Sing Sing commencement.

These are very special graduates. To get to where they were last Wednesday night, twelve men had to overcome so many obstacles. I told them, in my commencement address, that they "had an advantage." The advantage they have is in knowing what faith really means, how much it costs, and how it can completely change your life and the world. They know that faith is for the big stuff. And they know that if you have faith, even the size of a grain of mustard seed, you can move mountains. And that's what these men had to move to get to this place on a warm Wednesday night in the visitors' room inside Sing Sing prison. They got to take off their prison jumpsuits, and put on shirts, ties, and graduation robes to wear in front of their beaming and tearful mothers and fathers, wives and children, extended family, and so many friends.

Theo Harris was selected by his fellow students to give the "class reflection." He spoke of the "School of Hard Knocks" whose three core curricula were "street education, peer pressure, and ghetto economics." He said all his fellow class members had to go through the school of hard knocks before they got to go to this school of preparation for the ministry. Theo said he had learned "the greatest lesson of my life....that no one is beyond redemption. That is what sustained me, that is what motivated me, and that is what brought me to where I am today: redeemed." He then named each of his fellow graduates, observed their special gifts and vocations, and then concluded, "We have expressed our desire to make a meaningful contribution to our community. Now, all that remains is for us to go out among them, roll up our sleeves, and really make a difference."

It was a night of rich gratitude and profound hope. And while I have often been inspired by the faces of the young bright graduates facing me on brilliant spring days of school commencements, I have never felt more grateful and more hopeful than I did looking into the spiritually-chiseled faces of these redeemed graduates on a summer's night at Sing Sing prison. Thanks be to God.

Do you have a knapsack full of privileges?

2008-06-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

A Black woman doctor and incoming president of the California Council of Churches, Ramona Tascoe, who is also in charge of International Ministry at Allen Temple Baptist Church, as an ordained minister, told me about this Knapsack. I think it is a courageous effort by Peggy McIntosh to be honest and clear about her efforts to get justice for women, stuck in a male dominant society, now realizing that she has inherited the "secret" and rarely examined White Dominance that most of us take for granted. I dare you to read her list of 26 Privileges in this long piece, or when we get the final print issue of Sequoia out in July you'll see them there also. I don't think your life will be as comfortable as we prefer to have it now. That knapsack is a very heavy burden, "white man's burden" especially, and I hope we all can help unpack it, share the power we have inherited like royalty, and the nobility of old, and bring about God's will of equality for all, and American constitutional law too.

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
by Peggy McIntosh, Wellesley College

I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group

Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are over privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to improve women's status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that,
since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there are most likely a phenomenon of white privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see on of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in Women's Studies
work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who
writes about having white privilege must ask, "Having described it, what will I do to
lessen or end it?"

After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly
advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see
myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will.
My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out:
whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average,
and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which
will allow "them" to be more like "us".

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions which I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographical location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can see, my African American coworkers, friends and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place, and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

I usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work to systematically over-empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure renting or purchasing housing in an
area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be
followed or harassed.
5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people
of my race widely represented.
6. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown
that people of my color made it what it is.
7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to
the existence of their race.
8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented,
into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural
traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
10. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to
work against the appearance of financial reliability.
11, I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not
like them.
12. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without
having people attribute these choices to the bad morals,the poverty, or the
illiteracy of my race.
13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who
constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for
such oblivion.
17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and
behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to "the person in charge," I will be
facing a person of my race.
19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure
I haven't been singled out because of my race.
20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys,
and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
21. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat
tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, out numbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on
the job suspect that I got it because of race.
23. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot
get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against
me.
25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode
or situation whether it has racial overtones.
26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in flesh color and have them more or less
match my skin.

I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.

In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience which I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.

In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit in turn upon people of color. For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred systematically.
Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantages which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement.
At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power which I originally saw as attendant on being a human being in the U.S. consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.

I have met very few men who are truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance and if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the U.S. think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.

Difficulties and dangers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantaging associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage which rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex and ethnic identity than on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the Combahee River Collective Statement of 1977 continues to remind us eloquently. One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms which we can see and embedded forms which as a member of the dominant group one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.

Disapproving of the systems won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes. But a white skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems.

To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these taboo subjects.
Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to be now to be about equal
opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of
dominance exist.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power, and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.

Though systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and I
imagine for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.

This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer list of privileges.

British report on Israeli army assault on orphanage

2008-05-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

Hebron orphanage
Seth Freedman
Guardian daily UK

May 1, 2008 8:00 AM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/seth_freedman/2008/05/hebron_orphanage.html

Supporters of the Israeli authorities love to blame the country's poor reputation as being a result of woeful PR, believing that all that is required to redress the balance is a slick hasbara campaign. However, given the harsh reality of the occupation, to suggest that a superficial gloss job would do the trick is to totally miss the wood for the trees.

I found as much on Sunday, when I went to Hebron as a guest of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT), who are desperate to highlight the plight of a Palestinian orphanage threatened with closure by the IDF. For nearly a month, the scores of children have been living with a sword of Damocles over their heads, after the army issued an eviction order, claiming that the Islamic Charitable Society (ICS) - which runs the orphanage - is a front for Hamas.

According to an army spokesman, ICS "masquerades as a charity organisation in order to cover its activities of increasing support of the Hamas terror network", and as such any property connected to the charity must be seized in order to maintain the "general order ... and security of the area". To that end, the IDF ordered several facilities on the site to be evacuated, setting April 28 as the final deadline before they would begin the closure.

Despite a legal challenge in the Israeli high court, "our chances of stopping the eviction are nil", said Rasheed Rasheed, who teaches English at the ICS boys' orphanage up the road. Since the case is terror-related in the eyes of the IDF, the army lawyers aren't required to let the defence see their classified "evidence". Thus there is no way for the ICS legal team to defend themselves against the charges.

He noted that this was the first time an entire organisation had been targeted in such a way by the IDF: "It's a new trend - they used to arrest individuals; now they're taking on the institutions themselves," he said, surmising that "maybe it's their way of trying to break the bones of Hamas".

As we toured the orphanage, we were mobbed by dozens of bright-eyed students, all eager to greet their visitors and beaming as they ran excitedly round the playground. They are all local children, who either lost their parents or, due to financial crises, can't live at home, and the ICS has stepped into the breach to rebuild their lives and offer them a better future by way of education and employment.

To support the orphanage's vital work in the community, the ICS runs several small businesses to raise funds, such as a bakery, sewing workshop and a warehouse where goods from foreign donors are stored. I was taken to see the results of the army's heavy-handed treatment of these facilities, and the results weren't pretty, to say the least.

The bakery looked as though it had been on the receiving end of a D9 - huge chunks missing from the masonry, debris everywhere, and the coup de grace being the torched skeleton of the industrial-sized oven, which the soldiers poured petrol over and set alight in order to totally destroy the bakery's ability to function. Similar treatment was meted out to the warehouse, where around $300,000 worth of donations were commandeered and confiscated by the army, who smashed up the storeroom's interior and left it utterly ruined.

Next up was the sewing workshop, which was still in operation when I visited it, with several local women hunched over their machines turning out intricately-embroidered dresses. The army had warned that the workshop would suffer the same fate as the bakery and warehouse and ordered that every piece of equipment and fabric be left in place so that it could be sequestered by their troops when they decided to pounce. [UPDATE - two days after our visit, the army came in the dead of night and made good its threat, confiscating everything within the workshop's four walls, despite the staff's plaintive appeals]

Ghassan Mohammed, one of the orphanage's supervisors, told me in desperate tones that "the organisation [ICS] has no connection whatsoever with Hamas", and that the army clearly knew that, "otherwise they'd have brought the world's media to see the evidence they'd uncovered". As far as Mary Anne, one of the CPT team, was concerned, the IDF's motivation was simply "sociocide - they want to chip away at the Palestinian infrastructure in order to take over the whole area".

She said that any time the Palestinians find a way to stand on their own two feet - such as supporting the weaker elements of their society, such as the orphans, or educating their children and building up their economy - the Israeli authorities sought to find a way to crush their efforts. "This area is meant to be under Palestinian control according to the Oslo Accords," she said, "but the Israelis are still here; still asserting their authority."

Rasheed agreed: "Most of us have got over what happened in 1948," he remarked, "and we are ready for a state based on the 1967 borders. The question is, do the Israelis even want to give us that? I don't think so."

Just as he is resigned to justice not being done by the Israeli courts, similarly he has little hope in the Israeli government standing by its promises to give the Palestinians independence.

And his scepticism is now being recreated among the next generation, namely the orphans whose lives are being turned upside down by the army's actions. "Our kids are terrified when the soldiers come," said Rasheed, "and all they ask is 'why?'." One 13-year-old student in the boys' orphanage told us: "This is my home - if they come to shut us down, I won't leave." His predicament, as well as his youthful defiance, should serve as a warning to the Israeli authorities as to what really causes animosity towards Israel from the Palestinian population.

As I wrote in Occupation Breeds Terror, punitive measures such as the orphanage eviction will never win the hearts and minds of the Palestinians, and will only serve to strengthen the extremists, who will point to such actions as proof that the Israelis couldn't care less about the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. Similarly, when Israel's supporters think it's all about PR, they should look behind the headlines and see whether the source of all the smoke is actually the ever-smouldering fire in the West Bank and Gaza.

Until they do, the Israeli authorities will continue to get away with their sadistic treatment, and the pressure will be ratcheted up another notch on the Palestinian street. Which will only bring more death, more misery, and more retaliation on both sides - leaving the likes of CPT to wonder how they can ever achieve their goal of bringing peace to a region that so desperately cries out for it.

Israeli army fear Palestinian orphan girls?

2008-04-12T00:56:00.000-07:00

CPTnet
10 April 2008
HEBRON: Press conference for Hebron orphanages

The Popular Committee for Supporting the Orphanages hosted a press conference at the Hebron Girls Orphanage on 7 April 2008. Approximately seventy people attended, including independent media, internationals, and clergy. The Israeli military had given orders to shut down the orphanages and schools run by the Islamic Charitable Society by 7 April.

The lawyer representing the Islamic Charitable Society spoke of the its work, which serves 2,500 children, 240 of them orphans, and aids an additional 4,000 students and 5,000 needy families. The society also runs a dairy, two bakeries, a warehouse, and four small storefronts that serve the schools and orphanages in the Hebron area. The Israeli military raided the warehouse, bakeries, and the storefronts on 6 March 2008, confiscating food, clothing, school supplies, refrigerators, and two buses worth $300,000.

The lawyer also noted that certified public accountants audit and the Palestinian Authority monitors the monies donated to support the orphanages and schools. The books are open for the Israeli government to audit as well. Twenty percent of the monies donated come from the Hebron local community. The other eighty percent comes from Europe, the U.S., and Middle Eastern countries. The Islamic Charitable Society enjoys the respect of both locals and non-governmental organizations such as Catholic Charities.

During the conference, BAy area born Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights addressed the audience via speakerphone, saying that under Jewish law, evidence and witnesses must be brought before the court to support an accusation. Because the Islamic Charitable Society has threatened no human life, Ascherman contended, the Israeli authorities cannot cite security issues to justify a closure.

Members of CPT and other internationals have slept at the orphanages to accompany the staff and children and to document any possible incursion by the Israeli military. By midnight of 7 April, the attorney for the Israeli military had asked for an extension to prepare and submit to the court a full justification for the closures of the schools and orphanages. [Lots of luck! --Bob F.]

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

Gaza is an Israeli-guarded prison. We might change that.

2008-04-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

From Cairo: The People in Gaza Challenge Sham Peace Process

About 3:00 am on Wednesday morning Jan. 23, well-coordinated explosions demolished the iron wall built by Israel to seal the southern border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt (the Philadelphi axis). Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed across the border and entered the Egyptian side of the town of Rafah, which had been bisected by the wall, in search of food, gasoline, and other basic commodities which have been in short supply for many months in Gaza. The first wave of Palestinians to cross consisted of hundreds of women who were met with water canons and beatings by Egyptian security forces.

The wall was the starkest expression of the international boycott of Hamas imposed by the United States, Israel, and the European Union after Hamas won a majority of the seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections of January 2006 and formed a government the following March. Hamas has been in sole control of the Gaza Strip after it executed a coup d'état against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007. Since then, Israel has tightened the siege of Gaza which had been in effect since June 2006.

In response, Hamas and Palestinian Jihad militants have fired thousands of Qassam missiles on the town of Sderot and other Israeli population centers near the Gaza Strip. According to the 2007 annual report of B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, Hamas and Jihad killed twenty-four Israeli civilians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during 2006 and 2007 and thirteen Israeli military personnel.

In retaliation, Israel escalated the pace of its targeted assassinations of Hamas and Jihad militants, killing hundreds of civilians in the process. Based on B'Tselem's 2007 annual report, a Ha-Aretz investigation (Jan. 14, 2008) concluded that Israeli forces killed 816 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during 2006 and 2007; at least 360 of them were civilians not affiliated with any armed organizations; 152 of the casualties were under age 18, and 48 were under the age of 14.

Despite the siege, Israel continued to provide electricity and water to the Gaza Strip, allowing people to live on the edge of survival, hoping that the economic pressure would bring down the Hamas government. Half the population now depends on charity handouts from the UN refugee relief organization and other humanitarian NGOs. Four days before the wall came crashing down, Israel sharply cut back fuel and water supplies, imposing a harsh collective punishment on the entire population of 1.5 million.

According to Ha-Aretz columnist Amira Hass (Jan. 24, 2008), for several months Hamas leaders had been discussing measures to end Gaza's torment, described by Rela Mazali, an Israeli feminist peace activist with the New Profile organization and an editor of Jewish Peace News, as "an abomination." Apparently, Hamas decided that four days of hermetic closure, following months of siege, created conditions in which Egypt and the international community would be willing to accept bringing down the wall. Hamas did not take official responsibility for blowing up the wall, but praised the action.

The Egyptian press reported that several days before the wall was blown up the General Guide of the Muslim Brothers, the largest opposition force in Egypt, spoke by telephone to Khaled Mash'al, the head of the Political Bureau of Hamas who resides in Damascus. Hamas emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brothers; and there is a high likelihood that the actions of the two organizations were coordinated. Following this consultation, the Brothers began to organize demonstrations throughout Egypt beginning on Friday, Jan. 18. The number of its supporters in the street gradually increased, culminating on Wednesday. Jan. 23. That morning, thousands of Egyptian security forces surrounded Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo and arrested hundreds (according to some reports thousands) of people who were attempting to demonstrate in solidarity with the people of Gaza. The demonstration was supported by both the Muslim Brothers and secular nationalists.

Meanwhile, at Rafah Egyptian security forces initially tried to stop the Palestinians from streaming across the border. But as the numbers swelled to tens of thousands, the government had no choice but to acquiesce. President Hosni Mubarak told journalists that he had instructed the security forces to: "Let them come in to eat and buy food" and return "as long as they are not carrying weapons."

What are the implications of these developments?

It appears that the Annapolis summit and the sham "peace process" it was supposed to have reinvigorated are dead - killed by tens of thousands of unarmed Palestinians crossing the boarder into Egypt to meet their basic human needs. Shortly before President George W. Bush's visit to the Middle East, Israel began an expanded campaign of pressure on the Gaza Strip, including an escalation in targeted assassinations. Hamas has sent several signals that it was prepared for an informal cease fire with Israel. But the political perspective articulated at Annapolis and its aftermath requires that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas cooperate with Israel in crushing Hamas rather than try to restore Palestinian national unity. Egypt's task in this drama is to stand silently by.

This is an impossible task and cannot in any way contribute to peace. Even if Mahmud Abbas were to come to terms and sign an agreement with Israel, it would have no credibility and would be very short lived without some degree of approval and participation from Hamas. A government of national unity that represents all the factions of the Palestinian people is the only entity capable of signing a viable peace agreement with Israel.

The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert opposes the kind of agreement that a Palestinian national unity government would demand, as has every previous government of Israel. Such an agreement would require recognition of Palestinian national rights rather than paternalistic "concessions" granted by a magnanimous but ultimately all-powerful Israel.

The limited capacity of the Egyptian government to acquiesce to this program has been exposed. The Mubarak regime would like very much to see Hamas crushed, since it is an ally of the Muslim Brothers, its most substantial domestic opposition force. But the Palestinian cause is too popular and emotional an issue in Egypt for Mubarak to appear to be assisting Israel in starving the people of Gaza. Moreover, some of the demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza also raised slogans against the drastic rise in the price of food in recent months and against Husni Mubarak himself. Opposition demonstrations linking the Palestine cause with domestic economic issues and autocracy have the potential to threaten a regime whose legitimacy is already minimal.

Palestine, Israel, and Egypt after the fall of the Gaza wall are more unstable than before. It is desirable, but alas unlikely, that this instability will bring the leaderships to their senses and impel them to negotiate a just peace for the benefit of all. But it is more likely that Olmert, Abbas, and Mubarak - all weak and discredited leaders - will seek to hold onto power by clinging to the United States, which has a long record of opposing Palestinian-Israeli peace. The people of the Gaza Strip have taken their survival into their own hands and have shown that the power of ordinary people is more likely to shape the future than polished diplomatic formulas.

Joel Beinin [Stanford professor on 2 year leave]
Cairo, Jan. 24, 2008

Lift the Gaza blockade: Call on Congress to speak up and join us in the streets!

© Copyright by JewishVoiceForPeace.org

US Caterpillar bulldozers do the dirty work again, destroying a dozen Palestinian homes

2008-03-25T23:33:00.000-07:00

CPTnet
25 March 2008
AT-TUWANI: Palestinians to rebuild homes demolished by Israeli military in Qawewis

Palestinian villagers from throughout the South Hebron Hills will gather Friday, 28 March 2008, in the village of Qawewis to begin rebuilding homes demolished on 19 March 2008 by the Israeli military.

The Israeli military used two bulldozers to demolish eleven structures in the agricultural villages of Qawewis, Imneizil, Ad Deirat, and Umm Lasafa. Nine of the structures demolished were homes and two were livestock enclosures. The structure demolished in Umm Lasafa was the home of a large extended family, with an estimated area of 240 square meters.

The Israeli military has repeatedly demolished homes and other structures in the South Hebron Hills in recent years, including three structures Qawawis during February of 2007.

According to Amnesty International, Israel has demolished at least 7000 Palestinian homes since 1967. Not only does international law forbid such actions, but the Fourth Geneva Convention requires Israel as an occupying power to protect the civilian population under its rule and provide for its welfare. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly forbids collective punishment, and the demolition of houses constitutes a grave violation of Article 53.

What media don't tell us about Obama's pastor

2008-03-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

Report from two white members of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church

A word of interest and insight in the midst of all the Obama/Wright furor. Jane
Hoffman is our So.Cal. UCC Interim Conference Minister who is both white and a former
member of Jeremish Wright's congregation. There is far more to Wright than the sound
bites!

-----Forwarded Message-----
>From: Jane Fisler Hoffman
>Sent: Mar 18, 2008 4:20 PM
>Jane Fisler Hoffman, Interim Conference Minister
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Hello, dear Southern California Nevada Colleagues,
>
>As you know, much is being said around the country about one of our United Church of Christ congregations and one of our pastors, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright. I have been hearing from some of our church folk who only know what they are hearing in the news and are concerned about our UCC faith family and who want to understand more fully. All of this is happening in the context of the national political arena and, in my view, our church and pastor are being used by the media and political forces. I don't intend to comment on that aspect. But I can speak personally about the church and the pastor. Some of you know that my husband and I are still members of Trinity UCC and Dr. Wright was our pastor. We hold him in high regard and are stunned by the way his long, respected and honorable ministry is being assaulted by selecting a handful of 'sound bites' from thousands of sermons made over 40 years >of ministry. These out of context moments do not begin to express the biblical prophetic foundations and African American experience from which Rev. Wright speaks.
> I know that some of you have gone to the Trinity UCC website to seek the complete sermons and were not able to access them but I am told that soon 50 of Rev. Wright's sermons will be accessible there. You can also find more from the national UCC at ucc.org.
>
>Finally I just want briefly to voice my own experience as a member of Trinity United Church of Christ. (By the way, I have spoken with several reporters about our experience at Trinity but am never referred to in print, I presume because my experience is POSITIVE!) Milt and I are members there very intentionally because it is a Christ centered, Spirit filled congregation where the worship is powerful; the preaching is spiritually insightful and prophetic; the welcome to all is warm and embracing; >mission is both local and global ; tithing is encouraged and expected; members bring and read their Bibles; and disciples are nurtured in the faith. Yes, we are among just a few 'white' members. And yes, sometimes in worship I hear a painful biblical challenge to the white privilege that has been part of my own life and to the racism that is so destructive in our culture. That challenge has helped to shape my own journey in following Jesus as I try to live and minister in ways that contribute to a more loving and just world. But never---NEVER-have Milt or I felt unwelcome or unloved at Trinity because of the color of our skin. To the contrary, we consistently have felt loved and embraced because of our oneness with our sisters and brothers through Jesus Christ. Our church family has prayed for us when our granddaughter was ill and Rev Wright has pastored me through some personally challenging times.
> Milt and I have visited a village in Ghana West Africa where Trinity UCC has helped to build a community center with a library, provided computers for a classroom and a generator for the small hospital and they have strongly supported our UCC related Inanda School, for girls, in South Africa, in addition to significant support of Our Church's Wider Mission.
>
>Let me close by telling you one story from our experiences at Trinity that demonstrates the kind of radical hospitality the Spirit offers through the congregation. On one Sunday we went to worship with a group of young Germans, about ten people who had come to Chicago as 'emerging leaders in Germany'. A friend of mine was hosting them and wanted to give them an experience visiting an African American church. We were able to arrange for Pastor Wright to meet with them before worship and after he came into the room he greeted them in German and prayed with us, in German.
After sharing some background of the church, the UCC and the African American church tradition, we all went to worship. The service was, as always, uplifting---lively gospel singing by the 300 voice choir, a moving infant dedication service, etc. Then, part way through the service, we noticed that Rev. Wright was again speaking>in German, welcoming the German guests (in addition to the usual warm welcoming of all guests). The next thing we knew, the choir was singing God's praise in an anthem in German! (Wunderbar, Sie Nommen Wunderbar!). Tears came to some of the guests' eyes and to mine. Radical hospitality. A reality quite different from the cruel characterization of the church as hateful or separatist.
>
>Do I agree with every word from Rev. Wright's mouth? No. (No more than I agree with every word my husband says! ) But I have seen and experienced the dominant direction of his whole ministry which is toward love and justice and peace for all
people in the name of Jesus Christ. That is what I respect.
>
>Holy Week Blessings,
>Jane Fisler Hoffman
>Interim Conference Minister

Cost: $3 (or 5 or 7)Trillion for George W's "pay for itself" war

2008-03-04T17:02:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON — When U.S. troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, the Bush administration predicted that the war would be self-financing and that rebuilding the nation would cost less than $2 billion.

Coming up on the fifth anniversary of the invasion, a Nobel laureate now estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing America more than $3 trillion.

That estimate from Noble Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz also serves as the title of his new book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War," which hits store shelves Friday.

The book, co-authored with Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes, builds on previous research that was published in January 2006. The two argued then and now that the cost to America of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is wildly underestimated.

When other factors are added — such as interest on debt, future borrowing for war expenses, the cost of a continued military presence in Iraq and lifetime health-care and counseling for veterans — they think that the wars' costs range from $5 trillion to $7 trillion.

"I think we really have learned that the long-term costs of taking care of the wounded and injured in this war and the long-term costs of rebuilding the military to its previous strength is going to far eclipse the cost of waging this war," Bilmes said in an interview.

The book and its estimates are the subject of a hearing Thursday by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

The White House doesn't care for the estimates by Stiglitz, a former chief economist of the World Bank who's now a professor at Columbia University.

"People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can't even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9-11," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto, conceding that the costs of the war on terrorism are high while questioning the premise of Stiglitz's research.

"It is also an investment in the future safety and security of Americans and our vital national interests. $3 trillion? What price does Joe Stiglitz put on attacks on the homeland that have already been prevented? Or doesn't his slide rule work that way?"

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a decorated Marine Corp colonel and Vietnam veteran, welcomed the effort by Stiglitz and Bilmes to quantify how much the wars will cost taxpayers.

"It's astounding that here we are about to mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and this administration still refuses to acknowledge the long-term costs of the war in Iraq," he said.

By any estimate, the Bush administration's predictions in March 2003 of a self-financing war have proved to be wildly inaccurate. Stiglitz cites operational spending to date of $646 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, working off estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, presumes that spending on these wars over the next decade probably will amount to another $913 billion.

Pentagon officials had no immediate comment on Stiglitz's book or his estimates.

Stiglitz and Bilmes first estimated war costs of $1 trillion in January 2006. Their research proved controversial and sparked debate about the costs of replacing equipment used by the regular armed forces and National Guard. In the new book, they offer a figure of $404 billion for replacing equipment, planes and tanks and bringing military hardware back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In an interview, Stiglitz said that too much of the public debate had been over the wars' operational costs while the real budget strains would show up only years from now.

"The peak expenditures are way out," he said, noting that the peak expenditures for World War II vets came in 1993.

The pair estimated that future medical, disability and Social Security costs for veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan range from a best-case $422 billion to what they call a more probable long-term expense of $717 billion.

It's why the two call in the book for creating a Veterans Benefits Trust Fund to set aside money in a "lock box" to pay for future health-care needs of Iraq and Afghanistan vets. Although veterans' health care amounts to a future promise, they said, it isn't an entitlement and instead is funded through discretionary spending. In the future, funding for vets will compete with other government programs.

"We should not have an unfunded entitlement program like this," Stiglitz said. "This is more like deferred compensation. . . . We require corporations to put money away but we don't require the government to put money away, and we should be doing that . . . so when the focus turns away to some other problem, veterans aren't given the shaft."

The book divides war costs into two main categories: budgetary and social. The budgetary costs are the more quantifiable spending on operations, equipment, future benefits paid to veterans and the like. In a best-case scenario they total about $1.7 trillion; in a more probable scenario almost $2.7 trillion.

The social costs that Stiglitz and Bilmes offer are more theoretical, and represent the thought-provoking part of their war-cost argument.

When a soldier is killed in combat, they said, the U.S. armed forces pay a $100,000 death gratuity and make a $400,000 payment to his or her survivors in the equivalent of insurance for an unexpected death.

If these men and women had died in private-sector employment or in some kind of disaster, compensation to family members generally would be settled in court after determining what economists and lawyers call "the value of statistical life." This measures the economic contribution that a person would have made over the rest of his or her life if they hadn't died.

Stiglitz and Bilmes settled on a statistical value of life that they say the Environmental Protection Agency uses when people are killed in environmental disasters: $7.2 million.

There have been 4,456 U.S. military fatalities in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to Feb. 26, 2008. The direct cost to the Pentagon from these deaths has been $2.2 billion, but if lives are valued as they are outside the armed forces, the researchers conclude, the hypothetical economic cost rises to more than $30 billion. Include contractors killed while working for U.S. operations and the number rises to more than $50 billion.

In a best-case outlook, the social and societal costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would be $295 billion; $415 billion in a moderate-realistic case scenario.

McClatchy Newspapers 2008

Let's stop killing kids with little bomblets

2008-02-28T11:11:00.000-08:00

WCC (World Council of Churches) says a proposed new treaty to ban cluster munitions must be strong

22.02.08

The WCC Central Committee this week condemned a whole category of peculiarly indiscriminate weapons known as cluster munitions. A cluster munition scatters many small bombs in order to kill and injure people over a wide area. The church debate in Geneva coincided with a world conference on banning the weapons that stirred deep debate between governments and NGOs meeting in New Zealand.

"We believe that cluster munitions must be eliminated because their use causes indiscriminate civilian casualties", the WCC said. Even though they are developed for military purposes, the group noted, "Fully 98 percent of the casualties caused by cluster munitions are civilians."

The WCC called for "a legally binding international treaty" that would ban cluster munitions, assist survivors and ensure that contaminated land is cleared. The position aligns churches with the many civil society groups and governments that are seeking to achieve a restrictive treaty this year in the face of calls by certain states for exemptions. The WCC commended the leaders of the treaty initiative, including Norway, New Zealand, the Holy See, and a civil society coalition that includes church-related organizations and WCC member churches.

The current fast-track negotiations were spurred by international reaction at the end of the 2006 war in Israel and Lebanon, when some four million cluster bomblets were dropped on southern Lebanon.

How close is Afghanistan to San Francisco?

2008-02-20T10:59:00.000-08:00

Afghan American Muslim Outreach Conference, 2/17/08

ING speaker, Ameena Jandali addressed an audience of around eight hundred Afghani Americans at a first of its kind gathering in Fremont on Sunday, February 17. The Afghan community in the Bay Area is one of the largest outside of Afghanistan, numbering around 60,000. The conference was attended by families and included all ages , including many elderly Afghans. The half day conference about family included a diverse array of speakers, including Imam Sadullah Khan from the Islamic Center of Irvine and Imam Zaid Shakir from Zaytuna Institute addressing topics relating to youth, parent-child relations, and other issues of importance to the community. Ameena spoke about the challenge for women of balancing faith, family, and community, in which she emphasized the need for giving each realm of one’s life its proper due, without ignoring one aspect for the other. She encouraged attendees to contribute in any way they can to improving this world, no matter how small the effort.

[ING is a South Bay area organization, one of several with highly talented Muslim young women, helping the rest of us to understand and appreciate Islam, and to learn how to be part of the world's and SF Bay area's nature as a multi-faith community. You can learn more about ING by going to: www.ing.org
Two other similar, outstanding groups are: CAIR.org and WAH.org --Bob F.

A Jewish Woman's view of Palestine

2008-02-04T14:34:00.000-08:00

Amnesty International, Global Exchange, the American Friends Service Committee,
and Jewish Voice for Peace present a FREE lecture/presentation by Anna Baltzer:

Life in Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories & Photos

When: Wed, Feb. 13 @ 7:30 pm

Anna Baltzer is a 28-year-old Jewish American Columbia graduate, Fulbright scholar, and author of Witness in Palestine: A Jewish Woman in the Occupied Territories.
She is a three-time volunteer with the International Women's Peace Service, where she
documented human rights abuses in the West Bank.

For more information, and details of Anna's other speaking events:
www.AnnaInTheMiddleEast.com

Anna's presentations are personal, moving and educational. During a talk in a church in Minneapolis on January 23, anna said, "This week, our country celebrated Martin
Luther King Day and the official end to segregation and racial discrimination in this
country. As we celebrate certain historic advances, we mustn't forget that these policies are far from over in this country, and that as we struggle against one injustice we are perpetuating another system of discrimination and segregation on the other side of the world in Occupied Palestine, a land where there are separate roads, schools, hospitals, neighborhoods, and legal systems, access to which depends on one's ethnicity or religion."

Other points she has highlighted in her talks:

"Over the past five years, close to 20,000 Palestinians have been made homeless and
thousands of others have lost their livelihood as the Israeli army has destroyed over
4,000 homes, vast areas of agricultural land and hundreds of other properties"
[Amnesty International].

Roughly 40% of the adult Palestinian male population has spent time in Israeli detention [ Nelson Mandela].

The proposed Wall will separate 34.4% of Palestinians from each other or their land, and Israel will annex approximately 15% of the West Bank, including 60-80% of the region's most fertile land and water resources [UN OCHA].

How long it took us to get out of Vietnam, and Why

2007-12-31T12:16:00.000-08:00

Both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon promised to stop the bloody war in Vietnam we were caught up in back in 1968, and the election that year was heavily based on who would do it better, and faster we hoped. But it was 1973 before we could agree to a cease-fire and withdrew almost all our troops, and it was only in 1975, a whole seven years later before we finally left, in defeat -- as we could have done in 1968 and not lose 20,763 more U.S. drafted soldiers.

This Week magazine had an enlightening summary of what took so long in its Feb.7, 2007 issue, which I condense here, since I hope it will help us to avoid the tricky Dick and Kissinger underhanded maneuvers this time:

March 1968 - Johnson announces he was stopping bombing of North Vietnam, was starting negotiations for an end to the war, and he was not going to run for re-election. We had 540,000 troops there. The public outcry for getting out of Vietnam had persuaded LBJ finally, after many years.

May 1968 - negotiations began in Paris, and Johnson resumed bombing to persuade the North Vietnamese to speed up the talks. They came back to the table in October, but the South Vietnamese derailed the talks, with an assist from Richard Nixon during the last weeks of his very tight race against Hubert Humphrey for president.

October 1968 - Nixon sends his secret envoy, Anna Chennault, to tell the South Vietnamese president that he would offer them a better deal than the Democrats then in the White House would in the peace treaty.

Nov. 2, three days before the election, South Vietnam's president Thieu announced that they were pulling out of the peace negotiations, killing the prospects of peace being successfully accomplished by the Democrats. LBJ phoned Nixon, threatening to blame him, but never was able to pull together enough proof. Nixon's aids joined him in laughter after that phone call. Weeping went on for years across the country

It took him five more years before Nixon and Kissinger managed to get a "deal" that did not look like a total defeat, with the result that Vietnamese on both sides, and our soldiers as well, died by the tens of thousands so Nixon could win his election.

It took the approaching re-election campaign of 1972 and Nixon's secret bombings of Laos and Cambodia Viet Cong hideouts to speed up the negotiations, and even then the agreement was not signed until March, after a cease fire in January 1973. We brought thousands of refugees from that war to our shores, but left even more thousands behind who wanted to escape revenge by the Viet Cong.

We have not done that well in our war in Iraq, where millions are refugees, and we have taken only some hundreds so far. Can we learn something from this history? May God help us and the Iraqis to do so. We now count Communist VietNam as a friend and trading partner, along with China, whom we feared would pose a terrible threat. How long before we trade and talk with Iran and a working government of Iraq? and poor old Afghanistan which produces most of the opium poppies in the planet as their only trade now. And the Taliban have come back to oppress women and effectivley govern much of the country there. What good have our military operations produced?

Cheney's lies about Iran nukes declared false

2007-12-03T21:51:00.000-08:00

Monday, December 3, 2007

from Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org

U.S. Report Stating Iran Halted Nuke Program Finally Released

The New York Times lead headline this afternoon on its website was
"U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work:
Report Contradicts Prior Intelligence Assessment."

The report in question is the National Intelligence Estimate, "Iran:
Nuclear Intentions and Capablities," which is now available at:
REESE ERLICH, rerlich@pacbell.net,
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.iran28nov28,0,5197104.story

Foreign correspondent and author of the new book The Iran Agenda:
The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis, Erlich is
available for a limited number of interviews. He said today: "The NIE
released today has been suppressed by the Bush Administration since
February. It clearly indicates that the White House, and Vice President
Cheney in particular, have been lying about the nuclear threat from Iran
as part of a conscious effort to whip up public support for bombing
Iran. But the 'realist' wing of the White House seems to be prevailing
for the moment. The official press release emphasizes negotiations, not
bombing.
"Yet the U.S. continues its covert war against Iran, using Kurdish
and other minority group organizations to blow up buildings, kill
soldiers and civilians. All factions in the White House continue to seek
the overthrow of the Iranian government, in complete violation of
international law and the 1981 Algiers Accords signed by the U.S. and
Iran, which prohibit political or military interference in the internal
affairs of Iran."

MUHAMMAD SAHIMI, moe@usc.edu
Sahimi is professor of chemical engineering at the University of
Southern California. His articles on U.S./Iranian relations include "The
follies of Bush's Iran policy" -- which he co-wrote with Nobel Peace
Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. Also: "Norman Podhoretz's War Prayer,"
.
Sahimi said today: "After nearly two decades of accusing Iran of
having a secret nuclear weapon program, the United States is finally
acknowledging that Iran does not have such a program. This is completely
in line with what the Iranian government has been saying all along, that
its nuclear facilities that have been declared to the International
Atomic Energy Agency are the only facilities that it has, and because
they are safeguarded and monitored by the IAEA, they cannot be used in
illicit weapon activities. The time has come for direct negotiations
between Iran and the United States to resolve the outstanding issues
between the two nations, which will help the peace and stability in the
Middle East."

CARAH ONG, cong@armscontrolcenter.org, http://irannuclearwatch.blogspot.com
Ong is Iran Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and
Nonproliferation and is writing regularly on Iran's nuclear program; her
most recent piece is "Long-Awaited National Intelligence Estimate on
Iran Finally Released." Ong said today: "This NIE, which represents the
consensus view of all 16 American intelligence agencies, says that Iran
halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains
on hold. This new assessment contradicts the 2005 NIE, which assessed
with 'high confidence' that Iran was determined to have a nuclear weapon
and was working inexorably towards this end."

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

One more glimpse of the horror of a civil war we pay for

2007-12-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

CPTnet
3 December 2007
COLOMBIA REFLECTION: Endangered Light

by Sarah MacDonald

I'll call her "Luz" ("Light") because that is what I wish for her
-- 14 years old and small for her age, she looks about eleven.
Yet, as one CPTer says, "She's lived too much for fourteen."
Prostituted as a child, sexually abused by a neighbor, Luz lives
in the Colombian countryside with her elderly grandparents.
Her age and family situation make Luz a target for abuse.
In a community suffering displacements, death threats and poverty
-- a community clinging to the edge of survival--Luz is one of the
most vulnerable members.

At her family's home, I noticed how withdrawn and quiet Luz is,
her gaze often averted, her spirit folded tightly inside her.
Life, it seems, has already taught Luz to make herself small.
When my teammate and I played games with the other children,
we invited Luz several times before she would join us.
But when she finally came to play, I saw an occasional smile
flash across her face, as if a candle had been lit inside her.
How I longed to fan that tiny flame of joy--hope for a young girl
who already knows too well the roughness of life.

A couple weeks later, I traveled with another teammate to the
region of Tiquisio, where we accompany the Citizens' Process
of Tiquisio, a movement of community organization, self-
determination and development. Like other communities CPT
accompanies, Tiquisio has been the site of struggle between
armed groups; residents here suffer forced displacements and the
disintegration of community services and human rights. The
Citizens' Process aims to mend this torn, unraveling social fabric.

One day, members of the Citizens' Process presented a workshop
on sexual health as a human right. Most of the topics were grim:
unchosen pregnancies, domestic violence, AIDS and other STDs.
When a woman listed a few statistics of sexual ill health in
Tiquisio, I saw why this workshop was needed.
At least 50% of children throughout Tiquisio get abused by
adults, she said. The number still jars me. Fifty percent. At least. More children are
abused than not in this region--and I can't believe Tiquisio is
unique in war-racked Colombia.

I think of Luz, and I imagine thousands of children like her.
Thousands of flickering, fragile points of light, in danger of
being irrecoverably snuffed out. Though perhaps less visible
than the guns and landmines of the armed conflict, such violence
is no less vicious. It is also directly connected, since domestic
violence and sexual abuse happen more frequently in communities
battered by the violence of war. Here in Colombia, there is
the further tragedy of legal and illegal armed actors seducing
children from their homes. The likelihood of children suffering
sexual abuse is frighteningly high.

How do we get in the way of this violence?

Peacemaking is a complicated and dangerous business

2007-12-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

CPTnet [Christian Peacemaker Teams]
1 December 2007
IRAQ UPDATE: 11-24 November 2007
[Turkey, the US who needs them as an ally and a base, and the Kurds in
the northern section of Iraq, are enmeshed in one of the tricky conflict
places with too little peacemaking going on. This report suggests why
that's so, when US peacemakers join with Muslim peacemakers and try to
start some new work. --Bob F.]

Sunday 11 November
Peggy Gish, Michele Naar-Obed and Cliff Kindy met with the Director of
Security for Suleimaniya. The meeting focused on the work of CPT in
Kurdistan, the situation of internally displaced persons, tension on the
Turkish border and the presence of the U.S. in the Kurdish north. When the
team asked about traveling outside of the Kurdish region, he recommended
that they not travel to the borders.  However, he suggested that they go to
Kirkuk, saying that "one cannot see the war from the map room."  Unless
willing to travel with private security, he informed CPT that he could not
guarantee their safety.

Tuesday, 13 November
Anita David attended the morning session of the human rights training for
security officers set up by a local human rights group and reported that
many of the men appeared to be well engaged in that session's presentation.

David and Gish attended a trade fair in Suleimaniya.  Many Middle Eastern
companies were at the fair as well as a representative from the South
African Embassy.

Wednesday, 14 November
The passport office informed Gish that she was not approved for her
residency card.  She was told that she could talk with the passport office
manager to appeal.
After much preparation, the team gave its presentation at the human rights
workshop.  This training was the first of a series and the team was invited
to present at the next one.

Thursday, 15 November
Gish went to the residency office to talk with the
manager.  David accompanied her and the two were sent to the security office
to meet with a high-ranking officer.  After waiting three hours, they were
told to return in four days.

Friday, 16 November
The team had tea with two Iranian students from Suleimaniya University and
discussed political tensions in the Middle East.
Kindy, Gish and Naar-Obed hiked in the hills surrounding the city of
Suleimaniya with two Kurdish families.  The group spoke about the genocidal
tactics that Saddam used against the Kurds in the "Anfal campaign" during
the 1980s.  While discussing the team's intention to listen and give voice
to the stories of the Kurdish people, one of the friends said that his
experiences abroad made him feel that "no one wants to hear us."

Saturday, 17 November
Naar-Obed, Gish and Kindy looked at an office offered to the team by a
member of an independent NGO, Women's Alliance for Democracy in Iraq.

Sunday, 18 November
David and Gish reported back to the Security Office to deal with the
residency issue. A security officer told them that CPT must first register
as an NGO in order to get residency.  In the meantime, the team can apply
for another visa extension.
  The team met with the coordinator at the International Red Cross and
discussed the IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) issue, events at the
borders and the team's plans to work on a reconciliation process.

Tuesday, 20 November
Naar-Obed and David began the process of registering CPT as an NGO.  An
official told them to return for a meeting with the Minister of Interior.
 Naar-Obed and David met with a representative from one of the nearly
twenty-five women's rights groups in Suleimaniya. This group does advocacy
and counseling and hopes to start a women's sewing collective but needs
funding for the project.  She was glad to hear that CPT would collect the
stories of Kurds who had suffered in the Anfal and thought this action would
be a good step towards healing and reconciliation.
  The team attended the birthday party of eight-year-old Rawa who is the
youngest child of a woman who had befriended Gish, David and Naar-Obed on
the bus.  The team arrived at their door singing "Hamu sallee bachushee"
("happy birthday to you.")

Thursday, 22 November
Kindy spoke with Muslim Peacemaker Team member Sami Rasouli and learned that
US forces had raided the house of a sheik who had worked with CPT in
Fallujah and that another MPTer had received death threats and will move to
the north.
  The team met with two legal counselors at the Ministry of Interior to
discuss registering CPT as an NGO.  Both seemed eager to simplify the
process in order for the team to work.  However, the team learned it must
submit more paperwork.

Saturday, 24 November
The team took its first examination in writing Kurdish.
Naar-Obed, Gish and Kindy met with two independent journalists who are
trying to challenge new legislation that will make it illegal for
journalists to have freedom of expression in Kurdistan.
  David started the paperwork to get the team's NGO registration
transferred from Baghdad to Suleimaniya.

Why do twice as many U.S.Iraq vets as civilians commit suicide?

2007-11-24T21:35:00.000-08:00

EACH WEEK in 2005, 120 persons who had served in the US military
killed themselves according to a recent CBS news report. 
That is 6,256 suicides in 2005--a rate twice as high as the
general population.

What is the meaning in these statistics? How do we explain this
collapse of faith?  How does that place within where hope lives
disappear into a vacuum bereft of love, compassion, and belief
in life?  Is the participation in war too painful to bear?
  The thought of these soldier victims takes me back to the
soup kitchens where I served occasionally since coming back from
Viet Nam in 1967. In those lines, I met homeless soldiers who
did not take their own lives, but may have contemplated doing so
and, in any case, were psychologically devastated.
 Some watchers estimate that more than three times as many
veterans from the war in Viet Nam have committed suicide as
the 58,000 who lost their lives in direct combat.

Whether it takes the form of soldiers killing themselves because
of internal breakdowns or militants blowing themselves up because
they believe in their cause, suicide is also the abandonment of
hope in civil society to provide meaning and justice.  It is a
reminder that a hollowness remains in the most advanced society
and the most devout of religious faiths.  It reminds us that a
patriotism promoting warfare as its supreme test of loyalty has
deep, decaying cavities.
-------------------------------------
This is a small part of a longer piece by Gene Stoltzfutz, a
long-term member and former director of the Christian Peacemaker
Teams [CPT], described in some of our earlier pieces.
Look at his Sept. 20th piece on Myanmar/Burma in Blog Archives.

To read Gene's full text, go to his blog: 
http://www.gstoltzfus.blogspot.com/

from editor of Sojourners magazine, in DC poverty area

2007-11-15T10:33:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Race and the Wealth Gap (by Jim Wallis)

New studies managed by the Pew Charitable Trusts show us how far the country still needs to go in achieving economic equality. A major finding is that the while overall incomes are rising, the income gap between African American and white families is also rising.

Incomes have increased among both black and white families in the past three decades - mainly because more women are in the work force. But the increase was greater among whites, according to the study being released Tuesday.

One reason for the growing disparity: Incomes among black men have actually declined in the past three decades, when adjusted for inflation. They were offset only by gains among black women.

And, the studies showed that African Americans have more difficulty passing on their economic accomplishments to their children.

Nearly half of African Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults, according to a new study - a perplexing finding that analysts say highlights the fragile nature of middle-class life for many African Americans.

Overall, family incomes have risen for both blacks and whites over the past three decades. But in a society where the privileges of class and income most often perpetuate themselves from generation to generation, black Americans have had more difficulty than whites in transmitting those benefits to their children.

Along with the income gap, there is a wealth gap.

Another reason so many middle-class blacks appear to be downwardly mobile is likely the huge wealth gap separating white and black families of similar incomes. For every $10 of wealth a white person has, blacks have $1, studies have found.

After the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and Voting Rights Act in 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. next turned his attention to issues of economic justice. Forty years after his death, we still have a long way to go.

2007-10-31T10:58:00.000-07:00

Interfaith Peace-Builders &

American Friends Service Committee

Olive Harvest Delegation

Report One: Facts on the Ground

Tuesday, October 30, Jerusalem

Hanging onto Hope

In our first full day here we learned and experienced a great deal about a complicated situation. Looking at many maps in two presentations, from both the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and the United Nations Office on Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), we saw the geography: the land controlled by Israel, and that of the Palestinians; the security barrier, 450 miles of cement wall and electric fence, separating people from jobs and fields; the Israeli settlements, more than 300 in the West Bank alone; the access roads linking these settlements and the major cities, mostly forbidden to Palestinians to drive on; the checkpoints, 100 in the West Bank, through which Palestinians must pass to get to work, school, fields. Facts on the ground, unarguable.

We also visited several settlements, including Ma’ale Adumim, which will be larger in area than Tel Aviv when completed. It looked like a segment of America, with a big swimming pool, beautiful landscaping, and modern malls. A nearby Palestinian neighborhood has no trash collection.

When we see the shape of the barrier snaking its way across the map, it’s obvious that its real purpose is not securing the borders – if so, it would just run along the border. It is obvious that its real purpose is to isolate, contain, and eventually push out the Palestinian people, and that the clock is ticking for these people to remain here. Both sides have deeply felt stories, and they are so irreconcilable that optimism about achieving peace here seems real foolishness.

And so are many of us feeling when Tom, in our evening meeting, reads a talk by Desmond Tutu, archbishop and peacemaker from South Africa. After saying that he is not optimistic about an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he continues, “However, that does not mean I am without hope. I am a Christian. I am constrained by my faith to hope against hope, placing my trust in things as yet unseen. Hope persists in the face of evidence to the contrary… I believe a resolution will be found. It will not be perfect, but it can be just; and if it is just, it will usher in a future of peace… God has a dream for all of his children. It is about a day when all people enjoy …security and live free of fear… God’s dream is about a day when all people are accorded equal dignity because they are human beings. In God’s beautiful dream, no other reason is required….God’s dream begins with the mutual recognition – we are not strangers, we are kin…”

My husband Mike and I hesitated about coming on this trip, fearing that we would be taking into ourselves a heart-breaking situation that felt hopeless. So must the South African situation have felt before peace was achieved there. If Desmond Tutu could hang onto hope then, and now, then we must too…

--Judy White

Facts on the Ground

There are few conflicts layered with so much mythology or governed by such contradictory narratives as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. People who have not chosen to study the conflict or are not able or willing to closely observe current events demonstrate or sometimes discover to their own surprise strongly held views that influence how they view and assess the conflict. To understand what is going on there, it is best, if nigh unto impossible, to clear one’s vision of unconscious clutter before approaching the situation or attempting to imagine a solution to a century’s conflict over this small piece of earth.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions has a very useful approach to understanding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Rather than starting with an understanding, explanation or analysis, ICAHD looks closely at “the facts on the ground.” ICAHD (its founder and coordinator Jeff Halper, and the other staff and advisors) then builds an understanding of what is being attempted or accomplished based on what is readily observed.

During our delegation's first day in Jerusalem, we got a full dose of exposure to the facts on the ground. We began with an orientation by Lucia Pizzaro, coordinator of international programs for ICAHD. Lucia gave a riveting description of what sense ICAHD has been able to make of Israel’s “matrix of control” over the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). She employed the metaphor of a prison, in which the inmates may well control more than 90% of the facility’s space, but the guards control the population by controlling the perimeter, corridors and doors. So too, Pizzaro explained, the Israeli state has instituted effective control over the entire West Bank, even those areas putatively assigned to Palestinian control. This system includes the Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, a network of Israeli only “by-pass roads” connecting the settlements to Israel within its 1949-1967 borders (and a new parallel system of Palestinian only bypass roads, bridges and tunnels connecting isolated Palestinian communities just beginning construction), closures, roadblocks and checkpoints restricting movement of Palestinians within the areas in which they live (as opposed to between occupied Palestinian lands and Israel proper), restrictive planning law and building permits, and house demolitions, and the new security or separation barrier snaking along what most believe will be the new border between Israel and the OPT.

As a convert “by conviction to Judaism” and a new immigrant to Israel, Lucia described her discovery of a nation “desperate to ‘Judaize’ this place.” Judaization amounts to taking any measures necessary to guarantee a “Jewish majority” in the population. The Israeli government has, with support of a national consensus, constructed a “boring, administrative system” that creates “facts on the ground that physically prevent creation of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.”

Despite the domination of public discourse with “security” for the Jewish people, in the West and the USA as well as in Israel, Pizzaro made the startling statement that, according to ICAHD’s observation and analysis, none of the measures taken by Israel in the OPT and against the Palestinians can be explained or justified by security. This observation is true of the demolition of Palestinian houses, the “wall” that is effectively annexing another 10% or more of the OPT to Israel (as opposed to a security barrier that respects and follows Israel’s internationally recognized border), hundreds of actions disrupting movement within and between Palestinian communities (as opposed to movement of Palestinians into Israel), or the series of seven settlement blocs that place hundreds of thousands of Jewish civilian communities deep into hostile Palestinian territory. While doing little to enhance and sometimes putting Israel more at risk, such measures have expanded Israel’s territory and control of water and other resources, further divided the Palestinian population from its land and from one another, and rendered a Palestinian state impossible.

For those of us hoping for a diplomatic resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lucia Pizzaro’s presentation was quite sobering. The following three hour bus tour of Jewish settlements around East Jerusalem with ICAHD staffer Sliman Khader reinforced the ominous picture that Lucia had painted for us. Sliman is an East Jerusalemite but his family were refugees from a village inside what became Israel following the 1948 war (what the Israeli’s call “the War for Independence” and Palestinians call “al Nakba” or “the catastrophe”). His family was again uprooted from their home in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem following the 1967 war and moved to Shuafaat Refugee Camp north of Jerusalem. Sliman now lives in Anata, next to Shuafaat.

Sliman provided commentary as we stopped at several Jewish settlements planted in the midst of or above Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem including Nof Zion, Ras al Amud [Hebrew name “Scent of Olives”], and Silwan. We also drove through Ma’ale Adumim, a major settlement city with land area larger than Tel Aviv expected to grow to 80,000 inhabitants by 2010. We not only saw the wall, bypass roads and other mechanisms of splintering the Palestinian population and guaranteeing Israeli Jewish control, but also saw homes that had been demolished, the beginnings of a new parallel road system where still another wall separates cars from Palestinian communities from those traveling to/from the Jewish settlements. We learned that Palestinian Arabs constitute 30% of the population of ‘greater Jerusalem,’ pay 40% of taxes, and receive only 8% of the services delivered by the municipality. Sliman commented that there are 36 municipal or public swimming pools in Jewish West Jerusalem, and none in Palestinian East Jerusalem. He ran off a series of other comparable statistics revealing an extreme disparity in delivery of services and quality of life between the Jewish and Palestinian sectors.

ICAHD’s claims and our observations were confirmed by an hour and a half briefing provided by Ray Dolphin of the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. His work’s primary focus is to determine and evaluate how access -- the restricted flow of the Palestinian population, goods and services within the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- impacts the economic life and humanitarian situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Dolphin’s detailed presentation included detailed maps and aerial photographs overlaid with symbols and representation of Israel’s dozen or so means of restricting access, such as formal checkpoints, trenches, mounds of dirt or large concrete blocs closing roads to vehicular traffic, large metal gates, the separation barrier, bypass roads, etc. His presentation, available on the web, graphically represented the dismembering of the West Bank into a series of isolated enclaves. It showed how Palestinians are choked by the sophisticated system of bypass roads, settlements, the “separation barrier” or what many Palestinians call “the apartheid wall,” and other means.

Dolphin asserted that establishing security checkpoints on the internationally recognized border between the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel is a legitimate action taken by Israel. Indeed it is a responsibility of a nation to provide protection to its population. But, reiterating a point made earlier by ICAHD’s Pizzaro and Khader, only 17 of some 600 various means of impeding Palestinian movement and restricting access are situated on the border. The vast majority are located inside of, around or between Palestinian communities. These obstacles make the movement of people and goods uncertain if not impossible, in turn inducing economic collapse and a growing humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian population. While our focus with Dolphin was the West Bank, he assured us that Israel’s continued control of the borders of the Gaza Strip has the same effect there. Despite suggestions by the USA and announcements by Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert that Israel would be easing such restrictions as a confidence-building measure in anticipation of November peace talks, the number of obstacles to access have actually increased since June of 2007.

Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion is famously reported to have observed, "It doesn't matter what the Gentiles say; what is important is what the Jews do.” This statement seems to sum up the Israeli government’s prevailing attitude about creating “facts on the ground.” Such “facts” as the Jewish settlements in the OPT have more to do with shaping political options than diplomatic rhetoric. Such “facts” as the bypass roads point to the future being built in the Palestinian territories more than stated goals such as improving the quality of life for Palestinians under occupation. Such “facts” belie the stated intentions of Israel and the US that they support a Two State Solution, while American diplomatic, military and financial power have supported four decades of occupation that has made such a political solution unlikely if not impossible.

Such “facts on the ground” compellingly argue that the road to peace at this point is far steeper than generally acknowledged -- if not a dead-end.

--Scott Kennedy [director, Santa Cruz CA Resource Center for Nonviolence]

Join a delegation to Israel/Palestine

IFPB upcoming delegation dates:

2008 dates:

March 29 - April 12

May 24 - June 7

July 26 - August 9

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Interfaith Peace-Builders

1326 9th St., NW

Washington, DC 20001

phone: 202.244.0821

fax: 202.232.0143

office@ifpbdel.org

www.ifpbdel.org

Need help in understanding Burma/Myanmar?

2007-09-28T10:23:00.001-07:00

CPTnet
28 September 2007
BURMA REFLECTION:
Monks, soldiers, and civilians on the march

by Gene Stoltzfus of Christian Peacemaker Teams [Brethren, Mennonites, Quakers]

[Note: CPT Director Emeritus Gene Stoltzfus worked in Southeast Asia during
the 1960s and 1970s. The reflection below is adapted from a longer piece
available at http://www.gstoltzfus.blogspot.com/]

Burma marches on to the world stage every other decade. Two groups with
countrywide power and influence in modern Burma are now facing each other
across potholes in the streets. The military with Chinese-supplied weapons,
is determined to retain the grip it has had on the nation since 1962. The
Buddhist movement, with an institutional life going back more than 1000
years, is led by monks armed with spiritual disciplines and a commitment to
an ethical system that combines practical living with a deep sensitivity to
all of creation. The Buddhist way is nonviolence empowered by love, honed
by teaching and meditation. However, this does not mean that monks are not
tough, persistent, and even militant. In response to military actions on
Saturday, Sept. 22, 2007, Buddhist monks withdrew spiritual services for all
military personnel in Burma.

Buddhist teachings and values are ingrained in Burmese society. In the
practice of Burmese Buddhism, people frequently leave the routine of their
lives for a few weeks to become monks. With shaved heads and begging bowls,
they examine their lives, perhaps in the hope of more spiritually centered
living, or to move along in their personal cycle of karma. Some of the monks
walking in the demonstrations now are almost certainly people who have
recently joined the monastery for a brief break, but the arrest of monks
still creates a shocking dissonance in the minds of the Buddhist population.

Of the fifty-five million Burmese people, about one person in a hundred is
in the military and its security apparatus. The Burmese military has a long
history of violently dispersing protesters. On the surface, the military
seems unified and has given little indication of a willingness to create an
opening for democratic rule. However, the present military leaders of Burma
were low and mid-level officers in 1988 when their commanding officers told
them to kill thousands of nonviolent marchers. They know that their regime
will pay a heavy price in even deeper discontent at home and greater
isolation abroad for a repeat performance.

The road ahead is not pleasant. When change comes, those who replace the
military will have to deal with a privileged, often corrupt, military
institution that has dictated policy in all areas of society. New habits
will take years to put into place. Long suspended ethnic conflicts will
find ways to resume patterns of violent and nonviolent engagement, but at
the same time, people may gain the space to rediscover traditional forms of
conflict resolution.

What we witness in Burma today is one step in a longer process. While it
might lead to immediate change, that is not likely. The marches, the risk
taking, the international support, are building. It may be weeks or years
before change occurs. But the days of soldiers with crisp, medaled uniforms
ruling the country are numbered. Perhaps the final push will come from the
monks, or the wider population--or their children. When it does come, then
the real work will begin.

How Bush stretches the truth

2007-09-15T22:32:00.000-07:00

FactCheck
"Operation Iraqi Gloss-Over"
September 14, 2007
The president cites shaky facts as he makes a case for keeping high levels of troops in Iraq.
Summary
President Bush played loose with the facts in his address to the nation Thursday night as he tried to convince the American public that the surge in U.S. troops in Iraq has made the country more stable.

* He said "36 nations ... have troops on the ground in Iraq." In fact, his own State Department puts the number at 25.
* He said “ordinary life” was returning to Baghdad. Perhaps. In fact, news reports describe the city as starkly segregated with Shiites and Sunnis living in separate neighborhoods, which are walled off from one another with huge concrete barricades.
* He said Baqubah in Diyala province was "cleared." But the Washington Post quotes a State Department official as saying the security situation there was not stable.
* He said that “the Iraqi Army is becoming more capable,” which may be true. But the Iraqi defense minister says it’ll be 2012 before the army will be even 60 percent capable of protecting the nation from external threats.

Analysis
The president argued that the pumped-up level of U.S. forces has been a success and things are improving in Iraq. At times he overreached.

Overstating international support

Bush expressed gratitude to a number of nations for having troops in Iraq – but used a figure much larger than the State Department will support.

The president thanked “the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq.” But the State Department’s “Iraq Weekly Status Report" dated Sept. 12 says the number of countries with forces in Iraq, in addition to the U.S., has dwindled to 25. The figure was 27 a year ago and 29 a year before that. The total number of non-U.S. troops has been cut nearly in half during that time, from 23,000 in September 2005 to 11,732 most recently.

We called the White House to find out the reason the president used a number of 36 nations. According to a National Security Council spokeswoman, Bush arrived at 36 by adding the State Department's 25, plus the African nation of Tonga (which is not on State's list), plus three countries participating in a United Nations training mission, plus another seven that are taking part in a NATO training mission. But the White House sent us a document that clearly lists only 26 countries with "troops on ground in Iraq."

"Ordinary" Life in Baghdad

Things are looking up for residents of Baghdad, Bush told us.

Bush: Many schools and markets are reopening. Citizens are coming forward with vital intelligence. Sectarian killings are down, and ordinary life is beginning to return.

That's painting a very rosy picture, even for Baghdad, where more than half the troop surge has been targeted. If things haven't improved there, it would be a real mark of failure for Bush's strategy. But "ordinary" life? According to numerous news reports, Baghdad is increasingly segregated, with Shiite militias forcing Sunni residents out of mixed neighborhoods into all-Sunni enclaves, which aren't safe either. American troops have put up huge, concrete barricades walling neighborhoods off from each other as a way to reduce the violence.

It's true that within neighborhoods, some schools and shops are reopening. Of course, it's anybody's guess what will happen in this deeply divided city if the American troops leave.

Measuring the Level of Violence

As for Bush's statement that "sectarian killings are down," the president started touting this claim as early as May. And he has said so repeatedly. In an Aug. 28 speech to the American Legion National Convention, Bush said, “Sectarian violence has sharply decreased in Baghdad.”

But other reports contradict this claim or call it into question. The Washington Post has reported the monthly number of unidentified bodies found on Baghdad streets, according to Iraqi Health Ministry statistics. “Unidentified corpses, which are often found bearing signs of torture, are generally an indicator of sectarian violence,” the Post reported in an Aug. 5 story. The number of unidentified bodies found in July, while lower than the number found in June, was still 50 percent higher than the 272 bodies found in March, the first month after the troop increase, the paper said.

The bottom line is that it’s difficult to measure sectarian violence, and there’s no way to thoroughly vet the White House or Pentagon numbers. The Post has also quoted a “senior intelligence official” who questioned the methodology of the sectarian death count, saying that, for instance, Iraqis shot in the back of the head count as sectarian victims, but not Iraqis shot in the front of the head. Those are considered victims of “crime.” Iraq Body Count compiled figures that show some lessening of violence against civilians, but the group adds that "the first six months of 2007 was still the most deadly first six months for civilians of any year since the invasion."

Other factors that affect the level of sectarian violence include the increased division of Baghdad into purely Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods and a substantial increase in the number of Iraqis fleeing their homes.

Giving the All Clear

The president also painted a rosy picture of the security situation in Baqubah, capital of Diyala province.

Bush: “One year ago, much of Diyala province was a sanctuary for al Qaeda and other extremist groups, and its capital of Baqubah was emerging as an al Qaeda stronghold. Today Baqubah is cleared.”

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler fact-checked this item in today’s paper, writing: “But in a meeting with reporters on Aug. 27, the head of the State Department team in Diyala said the security situation was not stable, hampering access to food and energy, though he acknowledged that commerce was returning to Baqubah.” Kessler quoted John Melvin Jones has having said, "It's going to take a while before the security situation gets stable enough so that you can have a lot of these other agencies [such as USAID] involved." That doesn’t sound like Baqubah has been “cleared” to us.

Troop Levels in Context

The president backed Gen. David Petraeus' recommendations for withdrawing some of the troops from Iraq, saying that 2,200 Marines would leave this month as scheduled, an Army brigade would come home by Christmas and that "by July we will be able to reduce our troop levels in Iraq from 20 combat brigades to 15." It's unclear how many troops that includes. Press estimates put it at between 21,000 and 30,000 military personnel.

But this is hardly news. Some drawdown was scheduled to occur anyway, unless commanders decided otherwise. Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, asked Gen. Petraeus about this during the commander’s testimony on Capitol Hill this week.

Reed: …unless tours were extended, 30,000 troops are coming out of there beginning in April next year regardless of the situation on the ground.

Petraeus: Again, certainly the active brigade combat teams were going to come out of there. Again, I'm not aware of what is available in terms of battalions, brigades or what have you.

Reed: My sense is that the Reserve and National Guard forces are not available to --

Petraeus: I think that's the case, but again, I don't know because I have not asked.

Lowering Expectations

The president modified his own measurements for political progress, citing Iraqi actions in his speech last night that he didn't think were good enough a month ago.

Bush: Yet Iraq's national leaders are getting some things done. For example, they have passed a budget. They are sharing oil revenues with the provinces. They are allowing former Ba'athists to rejoin Iraq's military or receive government pensions.

But Bush very recently used a different standard for measuring progress. In his Aug. 18 radio speech, he cited the passage of laws governing the sharing of oil revenues among Iraq’s provinces and de-Baathification as steps the Iraqi government needed to take in order to show progress. They are both among the benchmarks the U.S. set to measure success.

Bush (radio address, Aug. 18): Unfortunately, political progress at the national level has not matched the pace of progress at the local level. The Iraqi government in Baghdad has many important measures left to address, such as reforming the de-Baathification laws, organizing provincial elections, and passing a law to formalize the sharing of oil revenues.

Bush noted in that address that “despite the lack of oil revenue law on the books, oil revenue sharing is taking place.” He made no mention of the need for a law in his speech last night. And progress on that front is deteriorating: This week, the New York Times and United Press International reported that acceptance of the legislation appeared to be crumbling.

Forward March?

Bush and others have always said that Iraqi security forces must get up to speed so coalition forces can hand things over to them. There has been progress. But Bush failed to note just how far these forces still have to go.

Bush: According to General Petraeus and a panel chaired by retired General Jim Jones, the Iraqi army is becoming more capable, although there is still a great deal of work to be done to improve the national police.

The Independent Commission on the Security of Iraq, led by retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, did say in its report dated Sept. 6 that the Iraqi Army is improving. But the Iraqi Security Forces, of which the Army is a major part, “will not be able to progress enough in the near term to secure Iraqi borders against conventional military and external threats,” the report said. And further:

Commission Report: The Iraqi Minister of Defense seemed to recognize both the progress the Iraqi Army has made and the remaining challenges when he predicted to Commissioners that the Army would be 60 percent capable of independently protecting Iraq from external threats by 2012 and entirely independent in this regard by 2018.

That's five and 11 years away. And as for the police:

Commission Report: Despite coalition efforts to retrain the national police and emphasize human rights and the rule of law, it is not clear that this element of the Iraqi security forces, in its current form, can contribute to Iraqi security and stability in a meaningful way.

The police in many areas of the country, according to the report, won't leave their stations and have been infiltrated by insurgents and militias. It's so bad, in fact, that the panel recommended disbanding the national police force.

As yet another indication of the continuing struggle in Iraq, the president cited success in Anbar province – “Anbar province is a good example of how our strategy is working” – but also mentioned the killing early Thursday of a prominent sheikh in that province who led an alliance of Sunnis fighting against al Qaeda.

– by Viveca Novak and Lori Robertson

Sources
United States Department of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. “Iraq Weekly Status Report.” 12 Sept. 2007.

United Stated Congress. Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Petraeus-Crocker Report on Progress in Iraq. Transcript. 11 Sept. 2007.

“Report: Iraq oil-sharing law in shambles.” United Press International. 13 Sept. 2007.

United States. The White House. “ Setting the Record Straight: Iraq Is The Central Front of Al Qaeda’s Global Campaign.” 3 May 2007.

International Organization for Migration. “ 2007 Iraq Displacement Mid-Year Review.”

Glanz, James and Farrell, Stephen. “ More Iraqis Said to Flee Since Troop Rise.” The New York Times. 24 Aug. 2007.

Robinson, Linda. "A Year of Living Dangerously," U.S. News & World Report, 17 Sept. 2007.

Fadel, Leila. "Little reason for optimism in Iraq," McClatchy Newspapers, 7 Sept. 2007.

Myers, Steven Lee and Hulse, Carl. " Success Allows Gradual Troop Cuts, Bush Says." The New York Times. 14 Sept. 2007.

Baker, Peter and DeYoung, Karen. " Bush Tells Nation He Will Begin to Roll Back 'Surge'" The Washington Post. 14 Sept. 2007.

Copyright © 2003 - 2007, Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania
FactCheck.org's staff, not the Annenberg Center, is responsible for this material.

If you watch Katie Couric from Baghdad, read this first

2007-09-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

Reporting From Baghdad:
"Why do Americans keep dying?"
Scott Ritter, formerly UN inspector in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction

Posted on Sep 6, 2007

We invited the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to join us in toppling Saddam. Based out of Iran, functioning as a de facto arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command, SCIRI did as we asked. Why, then, are we shocked when SCIRI maintains ties with the very entity that created and nurtured it? It is Iraqi Shiites who are killing Americans, not Iranians. And they would kill us with or without the support of Iran.
==========

It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration’s newest military-man-of-substance-turned- political lapdog, General Petraeus, maintains that the situation in Iraq is not only salvageable, but actually improving, due to the "surge" of U.S. combat troops into Iraq over the past year. All the president and his collection of GI Joe hand-puppets ask for is more time, more money and more troops.

There is no reason to believe that the compliant war facilitators who comprise the "anti-war" Democratic majority in Congress will do anything other than give the president what he is asking for. No one seems to want to debate, in any meaningful fashion, what is really going on in Iraq.

Why would they? The Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, have invested too much political capital into fictionalizing the problem with slogans like "support the troops," "we’re fighting the enemy there so we don’t have to fight them here," and my all-time favorite, "leaving Iraq would hand victory to al-Qaida."

There simply is no incentive to put fact on the table and formulate policy that actually seeks a solution to a properly defined problem. Like the Republicans before them, the Democrats today seek not to govern with the best interests of the people in mind, but rather to game the system in order to consolidate political power. Political sloganeering has so trumped reality that any political backlash that is generated from the so-called "Petraeus Report" will be limited to how the Democrats could better sustain a conflict that kills American troops, since no mainstream Democratic leader has expressed a true "get out of Iraq now" policy.

Nearly 4 1/2 years after President Bush’s ill-fated (and illegal) decision to invade and occupy Iraq, few people in a position to influence policy formulation and implementation in America have actually grasped the horrible truth about what has transpired, and what is transpiring, in Mesopotamia today. As the United States places the finishing touches on Fortress America, the new half-billion-dollar Embassy complex in the heart of the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad, and more troops pour into mega-bases throughout Iraq, the reality (and futility) of permanent occupation has yet to sink in. What could be going through the minds of those members of Congress who keep signing blank checks for the president? Is there no oversight of how and why this money is spent? How can someone fund permanent infrastructure one day, then speak of the need to get out of Iraq the next?

The compliant mainstream media, of course, is no help. The war in Iraq has become a major generator of advertising revenue for these corporations, so there is no incentive to actually report the truth, but rather manipulate the fiction. Iraq has become a prestige destination for every aspiring journalist or struggling anchor, determined to get "the big story." The most recent manifestation of this syndrome is CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who earlier this week traveled to Iraq because she was (in her own words), "Curious about very basic questions regarding living conditions, about how much fear there is in the street, about how the soldiers really are doing." That the situation in Iraq has been boiled down to these three big, burning issues (living conditions, fear in the streets, and how the troops are really doing), and that CBS is sending their multi-million-dollar investment to investigate, speaks volumes about the truly degenerate state of American journalism today.

The real big three she should be addressing are "Why do Americans keep dying?" "Who is killing them?" and "Why?" Of course, answering these questions would undermine the very fantasy world Couric is being sent to cover, one where Americans are doing good deeds in the name of peace and justice for downtrodden Iraqis. Couric’s jaunt is fraud on a massive scale. Ironically, she herself acknowledged this when she admitted that her upbeat reports from Iraq were reflective of what the U.S. military wanted her to see, and not honest "reporting" on her part.

If Couric and her ilk won’t answer these questions, I will. "Why do Americans keep dying?" Simple: Because we are in Iraq. We don’t belong there. Our presence is derived from our own violation of law, not someone else’s, and as such any effort to sustain our presence is tainted by this same foundation of illegitimacy. In short, Americans will keep dying in Iraq as long as we remain in Iraq. If Katie wanted to really get to the bottom of this story, she could venture out on her own to any one of the villages and towns where Americans have been killed recently. Of course, she would probably end up dead herself, which would defeat the purpose of trying to report the story.

"Who is killing them?" Another easy answer: Iraqis. We are occupying their homeland. We are violating their sovereignty. We are butchering, abusing and torturing their citizens. Our continued presence is an affront to the socioeconomic-political fabric that is (or was) Iraqi society. If someone occupied my hometown in the same manner Americans occupy Iraq, I’d be killing them any way I could. And I would be called a hero by my own people, not a terrorist. The Bush administration, in an effort to deflect public attention away from this reality, has created the fiction of a massive al-Qaida presence in Iraq, working in parallel with a similarly large Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command presence, which apparently is responsible for the majority of anti-American violence and dead U.S. troops.

Rhetoric aside, however, American officials who make these claims have been unable to back them up with hard facts and figures. There is an al-Qaida presence in Iraq. However, the majority of what is known as "al-Qaida in Iraq" is composed of Iraqis, not foreigners. The whole phenomenon is a direct result of the American occupation of Iraq, and would dissipate the moment America left the country. Likewise, the accusation of direct Iranian involvement in anti-American violence is questionable. Iranian political support of Iraqi Shiite groups who violently oppose the American occupation of Iraq is real, but then again we know this: We invited the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to join us in toppling Saddam. Based out of Iran, functioning as a de facto arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command, SCIRI did as we asked. Why, then, are we shocked when SCIRI maintains ties with the very entity that created and nurtured it? It is Iraqi Shiites who are killing Americans, not Iranians. And they would kill us with or without the support of Iran.

Now we come to the third and perhaps most difficult question: "Why?" In some odd way, Katie Couric’s jaunt to Iraq answers that question: Because Americans truly don’t care. Oh, we care about vague softball issues, such as "conditions in the street," "fear," and of course, "how the American troops are really doing," especially when they are fed to us in 30-second sound bites or three-minute "in-depth" stories. Little feel good segments planted in between commercials, designed not to infringe on our intellectual curiosity for more than 30 minutes so we don’t loose our focus watching the latest "reality" show or made-for-television drama.

The fact is, Couric’s made-for-television news is to what is really happening in Iraq as "CSI: Las Vegas" is to what is really happening on the streets of Sin City. CBS knows that, which is why they are packaging Katie in this fashion. The shame is that for most Americans watching, they think they’re getting the real deal. They are not, but will continue to wallow in their ignorant indifference. Katie will struggle to tell us that our kids keep dying in Iraq to "improve the quality of life" and "reduce the level of fear" on the streets of Baghdad. She solemnly informs us that "our boys and girls" are suffering, but they know it is in support of a just and noble cause. Katie will continue to report the story in Iraq from the perspective of an American political dynamic, not Iraqi reality.

She won’t go visit one of the American mercenary units in Iraq, the private military contractors who challenge the American military for numerical supremacy. She won’t burrow into the never-never land of legal ambiguity that allows these mercenaries to commit murder at will, to treat Iraq (and Iraqis) as second-class citizens in their own nation, and whose continued abuse of Iraq results in a deep and undying hatred for all things American. Katie may catch a movie in a hardened underground theater on one of the Pentagon’s mega-bases, or go shopping in a PX inside the "Green Zone" to get a "feel" of life for our troops, but she won’t venture up north, into Kurdistan, where other secure outposts of foreign occupation sit, out of sight and mind. If Couric would visit the Iraqi Oil Ministry, she might be shocked to witness the legal maneuvering and exploitation carried out by foreign oil companies (including, directly or indirectly, American oil companies).

Working with local Kurdish officials, small oil exploration and drilling camps are sprouting up all over northern Iraq, where they siphon off the wealth of the Iraqi people. Shipped out of Iraq via Turkey and (surprisingly) Iran, using long-established smuggling routes, these illegal ventures are generating billions of dollars in income for oil companies, and because these ventures aren’t supposed to exist, this income goes unreported. You can’t miss these sites. Any review of Google-Earth imagery would show these facilities springing up like mushrooms over the last few years. The U.S. military knows about them, and yet does nothing. Note to Richard Kaplan (Katie Couric’s producer): If you want to investigate this story, I’ll provide you with the geographic coordinates. Drive up and try to talk your way into the security perimeter. Position Katie well for the camera shot and demand answers. Just look out for the Canadian, South African or American mercenaries who are charged by "Big Oil" to keep this dirty little secret "secret."

Instead of going to Iraq to report on why Americans keep dying, Katie could just stay here, in America. There are any number of corporations whose boardrooms she could visit. Or she could smooth-talk her way into a number of country clubs, to interview the human face of the "military industrial complex" that President Eisenhower warned us about a half-century ago. She might take a look at congressional campaign financing, where the profits from these corporations fund the campaigns of the politicians who continue to do nothing about Iraq. Then, and just then, would Katie come close to answering the question of "Why?"

But she won’t. Or should I say, she can’t. CBS is owned by General Electric. GE is working hard to get favorable trading status with any number of foreign trading partners. The U.S. trade representative is working hard on GE’s behalf. Hard-nosed "reporting" by the likes of Couric would not go over well in the bowels of the White House, where instructions to the U.S. trade representative are issued. "I’m Katie Couric," her broadcast could begin. "Tonight I am declaring independence from corporate control over how I report (i.e., read) the news." Answering the "why" of Iraq requires confronting the layers of corruption and corporate domination of America on so many levels that even if Katie wanted to, she couldn’t—at least not from her perch as anchor of the CBS Evening News.

In a way, Iraq is a manifestation of all that ails America today. A complete breakdown of fundamental societal checks and balances brought on by greed and hubris. From General Petraeus who will give it, to the mindless corporate-owned minions who populate much of Congress who will receive it, to the entertainment-as-news media which will report on it, and to the American people who will consume it with no foundation upon which to evaluate it, the "Petraeus Report" will have little relevance to what is really going on in Iraq. Once again, Americans will be searching for a solution to a problem they have yet to properly define.

Another view of the 'good news' from Iraq

2007-09-10T21:54:00.000-07:00

Fallujah, Pummelled Into Submission, Now a Potemkin Village
By Ali Al-Fadhily, IPS News
September 5, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/61740/

A brave new attempt is under way to project that all is well now with Fallujah. Residents know better -- or worse.

Former Iraqi minister of state for foreign affairs Rafi al-Issawi visited Fallujah, 60 km west of Baghdad, Aug. 22. Issawi, who resigned Aug. 1 when the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front withdrew from the government, visited the city with other members of the Sunni Accordance Bloc, al-Tawafuq.

The group toured the city and met with senior officials and community leaders in a show of conversion of the city from the most violent to the most peaceful in Iraq.

The Iraqi Islamic Party's TV channel, al-Baghdad, accompanied Issawi on his tour and broadcast some of the scenes from inside Fallujah. The footage exposed the painful truth of the real situation here. The streets were deserted, shops were closed, and people appeared with sullen faces.

"Of course we are happy to have our city peaceful, but not this way," lawyer Ahmed Hammad told IPS. "The local police guided and supported by the American Army have prevented car movement for nearly three months now [in reality "guided and supported by" means ordered and enforced by the Americans]. They should not be proud of having the city quiet in a way that kills everybody with hunger and disease."

Hammad referred to the vehicle ban which was imposed by the U.S. military in Fallujah in May.

Some residents in Fallujah praised the police, others described policemen as savages.

"Those who are not Fallujah citizens in the force must be expelled and replaced by our own men," Nassir al-Dulaymi, a former police officer, told IPS. "They swear at people in the street and arrest people as they please, and of course there is no real government to hold them accountable for their crimes. Probably they would be rewarded for their savage acts."

An article titled 'Fallujah Catches Its Breath' in the independent Salon.com magazine Aug. 21 described the improving situation in Fallujah.

"Fallujah, once the symbol of everything gone wrong with the American mission in Iraq, seems to be breathing again," wrote David Morris, a former Marine who works as an embedded reporter with U.S. forces in Iraq. "About half the shops are open. Groups of children wave heartily at American convoys driving by." [Note that this was written by someone who is 1) a former Marine, 2) imbedded with U.S. forces, 3) naive or dishonest enough to pretend that the children "wave heartily" because the JUST LOVE what the Americans have done for their city.]

A journalist who lives in Fallujah told IPS that several local journalists had been detained and warned of trouble for them if they reported anything other than "good news" about Fallujah.

"The media in the west are lying about Fallujah by saying everything is well," said the journalist. "What is so good about a city that lives with no electricity, no water, no fuel, very expensive life necessities, and most important, with no vehicles? Moreover the unemployment is incredibly high."

Others said members of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic party and the Sunni Accordance Bloc are weak and self-interested politicians.

"The Islamic Party and its allies convinced us that the situation would be much improved after the elections, and we fell for it," 60-year-old shopkeeper Sulayman Mahmood told IPS. "All they did was give cover to the sectarian government as well as getting rich, and having thousands of bodyguards."

A tour of the city on foot gives the impression of the dark ages. People are back to riding donkeys. [I saw a story recently in the American media that actually implied that the return to donkey power was "cute" and "quaint" and portrayed it as showing how the people of Falluja were so very willing and able to accept and adapt to whatever conditions the Americans imposed to make their city peaceful. I am surprised they did not include a paragraph about how much the people of Falluja had appreciated having most of their city flattened, and having to turn two of their soccer fields into mass graveyards in 2004.]

Everyone IPS spoke with complained of the extremely high price of basic goods, and a lack of work that could raise money to meet those needs.

"A cylinder of cooking gas costs 22 dollars, and it is less than half full," said Um Ali from the Shurta district west of the city. "Groceries are too expensive, and we do not know what to eat, especially since the food ration is practically nothing. Our sons are either unemployed or in jail."

A report released by Oxfam International Jul. 30 said eight million Iraqis (in a population of 24 million) are in need of emergency aid.

"Iraqis are suffering from a growing lack of food, shelter, water and sanitation, healthcare, education, and employment," the report said. "Of the four million Iraqis who are dependent on food assistance, only 60 percent currently have access to rations through the government-run Public Distribution System (PDS), down from 96 percent in 2004."

The report said 43 percent of Iraqis suffer from "absolute poverty", and over half the population are unemployed.

The city has also been affected by the U.S. and Iraqi authorities' dependence on tribes in Fallujah and throughout Iraq's western al-Anbar province. Sheikhs are the real leaders now. [Don't worry, that will backfire on the Americans eventually. It is pretty clear who is using whom.]

"They are taking us back to the British occupation period when the British gave power to ignorant sheikhs of tribes instead of politicians and academics," Shakir Ahmed, a historian in Fallujah told IPS. "This is a terrible conception that will take us back to the dark ages instead of the promised progress and prosperity. These men are highly respected for being what they are, but never to lead a city, a province and a country."
http://www.alternet.org/story/61740/

When will USA and Israel stop Torturing prisoners?

2007-08-21T11:44:00.000-07:00

Ex-prisoner Lu'ay Al Ashkar

leaves Israeli detention in a wheelchair

Posted by: "clreiners@aol.com" clreiners@aol.com

[Christy Reiners is a good friend, a Presbyterian who visits Israel and Palestinian territories often, and knows too well about this kind of event, and the Israeli secret police system, like our CIA's, of putting suspects in prison for months or years with no trial!]

Mon Aug 20, 2007 10:06 pm (PST)

Ex-prisoner Lu'ay Al Ashkar leaves Israeli detention in a wheelchair
Monday August 20, 2007 12:22 by Maisa Abu Ghazala - IMEMC News _nisreen at
imemc dot org_ (mailto:nisreen%20at%20imemc%20dot%20org)

(http://www.imemc.org/report_posts?subject=Abusive Post Report: Story 49979 with title: Ex-prisoner Lu'ay Al Ashkar leaves Israeli detention in a wheelchair&message=Abusive Post Report: Story 49979 with title: Ex-prisoner Lu'ay Al
Ashkar leaves Israeli detention in a wheelchair
http://www.imemc.org/index.php?obj_id=53&story_id=49979&

The lawyer for the ex-prisoner Luâ€™ay Al Ashakr has brought criminal charges
against Israeli officials in the hope of gaining compensation for his client.

Al Ashkar entered detention with full use of his legs, but after repeated
torture was released paralyzed from the waist down.

Bishara Jabali, Al Ashkarâ's lawyer, has initiated a lawsuit against the
state of Israeli, the previous head of Shabak (Avy Dekhter), the current head of
Shabak (Youval Desken) and the investigators of Shabak, asking for the
compensation of his client.

Al Ashkar, who was held for two years, was kidnapped from his home in April
2005 on suspicion of involvement in an explosion in Israel.

After undergoing medical tests in prison which proved his good health, Al
Ashkar sustained a broken back after being tortured for three consecutive days.

Two months later, the prison administration allowed the man to enter a
hospital in Haifa for medical treatment, after which Al Ashkar regained the use of
his legs. After returning to the detention centre, Al Ashkar was again
subjected to various forms of tourture and again lost the ability to walk.

Since his release, the man has reported that Israeli authorities have banned
him from traveling to Jordan for medical treatment and have barred from
entering Israeli hospitals. [Do none of these authorities study Torah, and know about
the compassion of God, and God's judgment on cruel, illegal treatment of others? -rf]

Lu'ay finished by calling on the Palestinian President and all relevant
organizations to support him and all the Palestinians prisoners.

Translated by - Nisreen Qumsieh

Another occupied land; white settlers on Navajo land

2007-07-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

Life on the Reservation
The story of my month on the Navajo reservation
by a Church of the Brethren volunteer

Rena Babbitt Lane is a Navajo Elder living on a remote rim of Black Mesa. She is a "resister" for refusing to leave her ancestral land to make way for Peabody Coal Company. My name is Charles and I had the privilege of being of a "supporter" for her.

Rena is an amazing grandmother fiercely dedicated to the land and her traditional culture. She lives a largely traditional life style with no running water or electricity. She tends a flock of sheep and goat from which she spins wool, weaves blankets, and gets meat for daily life and ceremony. Along with herding she plants corn and other crops in the rainy season.

For the past thirty years or so the land her she lives on has been under dispute. Distant governments and corporations haggle over where imaginary lines are drawn and who gets what. Slowly, fences have started to decorate the landscape. Prickling and taut, they slice their way through families' historic grazing and agricultural lands. Along with the fences come a litany of laws and agreements that similarly bisect traditional culture. With the laws comes enforcement!

From the Navajo/Hopi partition land, to the Israel/Palestine Green line, from the US/Mexico boarder to the Economic Summit barricades, fences make more enemies than friends. With the sprouting of fences come the flowering of guns and the smell of fear and harassment.

A few days after her 84th birthday, Rena was assaulted by 3 BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) Hopi Rangers. It all started when a couple of Rena's young goats scooted under a fence that stretches across her historic grazing area in search for better forage and water. Though she is an amazing and capable grandmother, her vaulting of fences days are over, so she got a hacksaw, cut the fence and herded her goats back across the fence. Being tired after this work, she retired to her house for a nap.

While she was lying down, three BIA Hopi Rangers barged into her home, pushed her around and forced her outside while they searched her house. While outside they threatened to arrest her and let the coyotes eat all her sheep (her only means of support). Eventually the Rangers left. Feel scared and in pain from her rough treatment, she walked miles down a rugged dirt road to a neighbor's place.
Eventual she was taken to town and admitted to the hospital having suffered a mild heart attack during this incident.

You can read more about the incident at:
Nov 24th
http://www.gallupindependent.com/2006/nov/112406jch_biaabuse.html

Nov 27th
http://www.gallupindependent.com/2006/nov/112706jch_mtngasslt.html

While in route to the reservation with FIRE UP! Work Crew (which I was a part of) we got news of Rena's assault. FIRE UP! had some projects lined up with other relocation resisters. The first few days I was on the Reservation I worked with the Crew fixing a road re-mudding a Ceremonial Hogan and working on a couple cars. Rena was in need of support so another supporter named Megan and I went up to her homesite. For the next month, Megan and I lived with Rena.

Along with lending our white privilege as a shield to prevent further abuse, we herded sheep, fixed meals and took on many of the daily chores. No other rangers came by during this time and life was fairly quiet. Though there were no more altercations with the rangers, Rena struggled with the trauma of the incident and often complained of pain related to her rough treatment. In our time there we visited the hospital many times to help Rena cope with the pain she is going through.

Just before we left, Rena was served with papers to appear in Hopi court on charges of criminal trespass. Of course the Rangers have a dramatically different story about what happened on Nov 4th. Her court date is set for early January. I am sure she would be grateful for and all prayers of support. May the courts rule justly and the abuse of the elderly be reprimanded.
I pray for all those who lives are disrupted by fences and walls!
I pray for safety and healing for all those who have been abused!
I pray for a world where all life can be free!

==================================================

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How the 23,000 residents of Fallujah felt about our US troops invading their city in 2004

2007-06-24T19:48:00.000-07:00

There Are No Words - posted by Tom Fox, of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, who lived in Iraq with other CPT volunteers,

and who was taken hostage, and eventually killed, but with his advance request that no punishment be imposed on anyone who
harmed or killed him, and that we should forgive such a person He was willing to give his life in his nonviolent work for peace in Iraq, a peace between Iraqis and Americans, overcoming all fears and anger, and desire for revenge, but instead working steadily for reconciliation and mutual forgiveness. [see next story by Tom Fox, with more info about him more recently.]

“The ongoing difficulties faced by Fallujans are so great that words fail to properly express it.” Words from a cleric in Fallujah as he tried to explain the litany of ills that continue to afflict his city one year after the U.S.-led assault took place.

“All the men in the mosque were from my neighborhood. They were not terrorists.” Words from a young man who said he left a room of men either injured or homeless thirty minutes before the raid on his mosque, the same mosque shown in the now-famous videotape of an American soldier shooting unarmed men lying on the mosque floor.

“There haven’t been any funds for home reconstruction available since the change in Iraqi government last January.” The words of a civic leader from Fallujah as he showed CPTers the still-devastated areas of his city.

There are no words. A city that has been demonized by Americans and many Iraqis, using the words “the city of terrorists.” A city that its residents call “the city of mosques.” A city that even its residents have to enter at checkpoints, often taking up to an hour to traverse. A city that is being choked to death economically by those same checkpoints.

CPTers and a member of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams came to Fallujah to meet with friends and contacts to ask them if the city was planning on doing something in remembrance of the tragic events of last November when U.S. forces attacked their city of 300,000 to root out, by U.S. estimates, 1,500 terrorists.

What we heard in response were words of remembrance, resistance and resilience. The cleric said that a number of civic leaders had come to him with a proposal for an action in remembrance of the anniversary. Their proposal was to raise funds to contribute to relief efforts for the victims of the earthquake in Pakistan. He said that a teaching of Islam is to always look to aid others in need before asking for aid yourself.

The cleric said that he recently traveled to another Middle Eastern country and during his visit he met with a cleric from Libya. The Libyan cleric said that in his city, and in other places in Libya, parents are naming newborn girls “Fallujah” in honor of the city. The cleric said that more than 800 girls had been named Fallujah in his city alone.

Words are inadequate, but words are all we have. Words like “collective punishment” and “ghettoize” come to mind for the current state of life in Fallujah.

What words or deeds could undo the massive trauma faced by the people of Fallujah every day? Everywhere we went during the afternoon young boys listened to our words and the words of those with whom we were meeting. I kept wondering what was going on in their minds as they relived the events of a year ago and the ensuing trauma. What effect will these events have on their lives as they grow up?

There are no words.

How Palestinian refugees from Baghdad got to Canada

2007-06-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

[This is a report from a martyr of the Christian Peacemaker Teams [CPT], Tom Fox in his 60s, just before he was kidnapped in the fall of 2005, and later murdered by some angry haters of what Americans have done to Iraq. As you can read, he was camping with a bunch of refugees from similar angry murders in Baghdad, trying to get into Syria -- who finally are now arriving in Canada, where refugees are welcomed more than they are in the USA, unfortunately and sadly, with all our fears of Arabs and Muslims, and immigrants in general. The report helps us understand a bit more what a complicated and little understood mess our troops have helped create in Iraq, and why they should be returned to their homes and families for their own sakes, as well as to stop the multi-sided civil war going on, with most guns and bombs aimed at US troops these days, but others are killed and wounded also, as the report by Tom Fox from his visit to Fallujah details in the other entry today.]

Friday, October 21, 2005

Faces of Desperation by Tom Fox, CPT volunteer in Baghdad

We are gathered around a campfire sharing chai (tea) and fellowship. “We” consists of nineteen Palestinian men women and children (ages one to thirteen) who have either been born in or have lived most of their lives in Iraq. “We” also consists of three CPTers, one member of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams and CPT’s translator (who is also Palestinian). We are camped at the Al Walid border crossing between Syria and Iraq and are awaiting news from the Syrian government. News of whether or not the Iraqi Palestinians, who are currently barred from entering Syria, will be granted refugee status by the United Nations, which will be recognized by the Syrian government.

But why would these people want to leave Iraq now? Iraq is now on its way to democracy. The tyrannical régime of Saddam Hussein has been gone for two and one half years. The reason is quite simple; the new Iraq government’s security forces have made Iraqi Palestinians primary targets for harassment, arbitrary arrest, torture-induced confessions to crimes they didn’t commit and in some cases death. All in the name of demonstrating how well the government’s campaign of ridding Iraq of foreign terrorists is going.

But why the Iraqi Palestinians? First they are easy to find. Most live in two large compounds in Baghdad. Second, they are defenseless. Iraqi Palestinian’s are barred from owing firearms. Third, they have no political clout. They can’t vote, own property or even own a car. Fourth, they are small in numbers. The total population in Iraq is around 23,000. Fifth, Saddam used them to promote his political prestige with Sunni Arabs in the Middle East by giving them subsidized housing, a fact that was resented by many Iraqis. They were forced out of those apartments during the first months of the U.S. led invasion.

So here we are gathered around a campfire in the desert. We spent the first night sleeping on the sidewalk at the Syrian side of the border crossing. Trucks roared by all night making sleep almost impossible. Yet several said it was the best nights sleep they had gotten in months. No sirens, no gunfire, no house raids in the middle of the night, no one being hauled away by Iraqi security forces perhaps never to be seen again.

Now into our eighth day we are living in tents provided by the UN. We are eating two meals a day in the border-crossing cafeteria thanks to the UN as well. My teammate, Shelia Provencher, and our translator have started a one-hour “school” each day for the children. As I am writing this the men are playing a game of soccer and we wait. Wait to see if the UN and Syria can reach a solution to this humanitarian crisis.

I asked one man what he would do if the UN and Syria were unable to reach a solution and they were told to return to Iraq. Would he, and his family, return? “Never”, he said, “We will either stay here or die before we return to the certain death of Iraq.” I cannot imagine the level of desperation a person must reach in order to make such a statement. And yet, I don’t need to imagine it at all. I see it one the faces of the community we are part of every day

Hopeful Analysis of Gaza mess, Peace plan

2007-06-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

U.S. Policy and the Situation in Gaza
by Amjad Atallah

Looking at the violence in Gaza right now, one might be forgiven for feeling confusion, and a certain despair. How can there ever be peace and security between Israel and the Palestinians, if the Palestinians are killing each other? And furthermore, isn’t this internecine bloodshed precisely what the Palestinian Unity Government was meant to forestall?

If we look at the situation carefully, however, it becomes clear that what we see now in Gaza is the logical conclusion of a series of conflicting plans put in motion upon Hamas’ electoral victory a year and a half ago.

When Hamas won the January 2006 elections, their plan was based on an understanding that the Israeli government wasn’t actually interested in a two-state solution (despite rhetoric to the contrary), but was, in fact, most interested in security. They believed this desire could lead to the establishment of a hudna or long-term ceasefire that would give Israel what it needed, while Hamas would not have to sign off on anything that might compromise Palestinian rights. They didn’t realize that the Israeli government would in fact choose insecurity over security, insecurity over a deal with Hamas.

They didn’t realize, further, that the US Administration’s plan would involve falling back on old habits, leading an international economic boycott of Hamas and supporting and funding Fatah much in the same way it once funded the Nicaraguan Contras, in an effort to oppose the democratically elected government.

And Fatah, for it’s part, didn’t really have a plan. In a state of disarray, they were essentially left with nothing, and so the reasoning of many was “we must confront Hamas and defeat them, and we have to find some way (legal or not) to assume control.” That’s where the American-funded rebuilding of their security services came in, fitting nicely with US intentions.

Oddly enough, the Israelis, for the first time in my memory, didn’t have a plan either. There was a weak government in place, with no clear position – and thus, they found it very easy to follow the American lead. We don’t know if Israel would have gone in the direction of a ceasefire with Hamas, but we know for sure the US prevented them from doing it had they been willing.

Then along come the Saudis and other Arab states who recognized that Fatah was in no position to win a civil war with Hamas. They were very concerned that Gaza and the West Bank would become like Iraq and Afghanistan, and so they decided to facilitate the creation of a unity government, to give Fatah the time to rebuild their security services and their ability to confront Hamas at a later date. And we can see how well that’s worked out.

And so Hamas finds itself in a box, with no clear vision of how to get out, certainly as long as they don’t have the cooperation of Fatah. But Fatah isn’t interested, and in their current state of collapse, the only way for Fatah to compete with Hamas in a legitimate fashion is military confrontation. And you’ll notice that Fatah, in fact, started the fight with Hamas, and then Hamas did what everybody knew Hamas would do: attack Israel, to draw Israel into the conflict in order to show Palestinians that Israel and Fatah are fighting together, against Hamas. A bleak picture.

But the linchpin in this bleak picture is the US. Indeed, Fatah wouldn’t have attacked Hamas, it wouldn’t think that it could wage a civil war, if it didn’t feel it had White House support.

Now that’s good news for us, because we all happen to be Americans, and this is our country, and we have a say in it. And that’s why it’s very, very important to focus our efforts on changing policy here.

The majority of Americans believe in a negotiated solution, and further, a recent poll by the Arab American Institute and Americans for Peace Now showed that the majority of American Jews and Arab Americans are also on the same page on the question of a two state solution, security for Israel, recognition of Israel, recognition of Palestine.

Moreover, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has clearly become an ally of the heart. Very recently, she essentially said to Israel, “ok, you can talk to Syria but don’t drop the ball on the Israel-Palestine conflict; that’s the core issue,” directly contradicting White House rhetoric. She believes she can create a Palestinian state by the end of Bush’s term. But she doesn’t know how to implement it – she doesn’t have the support of the president or the White House staff. So we need to give her our support, as much as we possibly can. It’s a long shot, I’ll admit, but it’s possible. All it would take is for President Bush to dedicate himself to it in the same way he dedicated himself to getting us into war in Iraq.

There’s no doubt, in fact, that he could do it, because the majority of Israelis and the majority of Palestinians, the moment they saw that kind of American resolve, the silent majority, the peace camps in both communities that are hiding in their houses right now, they would rise up. They would fill Rabin Square, they would fill Ramallah, they would do whatever they had to do to make sure this happened, and they would get rid of anyone who stood in the way in their own political establishments.

But the only people who can convince President Bush to do that, is us, Americans. And we have a responsibility. We cannot say we are citizens of this country and are not responsible for actions the government takes. Right now the United States is the single greatest destabilizing force in the world, in Somalia, in Lebanon, in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and these are problems that are causing ripple effects all over the world. We have an opportunity to start on a new track. We have to try to convince him, in every way possible, that he’s got to do this.

An Arab-Israeli peace agreement, in which all the Arab states are at peace with Israel, in which Israel is finally living in security and in which Palestinians are finally living in freedom and dignity, that would be a proud stable foundation for the next administration to begin repairing the damage to American security interests worldwide. I think each of us as an individual American has a moral responsibility and patriotic duty to do everything possible to convince this administration what it needs to do, and if it doesn’t then have an emergency plan of what the next administration needs to do.

This piece was adapted from a Brit Tzedek Townhall conference call with Amjad Atallah conducted on May 31, 2007. Click here to read a complete transcript of the call. The opinions expressed herein are not neccesarily those of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom.

Amjad Atallah is founder and President of Strategic Assessments Initiative (SAI), a non-profit organization committed to providing legal and policy assistance to parties involved in negotiations in conflict and post-conflict situations.

Prior to founding SAI, he advised the Palestinian negotiating team, and later Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas' office, in peace negotiations with Israel on the issues of international borders, security, and constitutional issues. Mr. Atallah travels regularly between Washington and the Middle East.

Resources:

UN was pummelled into submission, says outgoing Middle East special envoy, ynetnews.com, June 13, 2007

Takeover by Hamas Illustrates Failure of Bush's Mideast Vision by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, June 15, 2007

Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, The Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace
11 E. Adams Street, Suite 707
Chicago, IL 60603
Phone: (312) 341-1205
Fax: (312) 341-1206
info@btvshalom.org
www.btvshalom.org

2007-05-30T07:53:00.000-07:00

CPTnet      29 May 2007
HEBRON REFLECTION: Tortured in an Israeli prison
[ Chritian Peacemaker Teams -CPT have a small group of observers living in
Hebron, an ancient Palestinian city of tens of thousands of Palestinians,
with a few hundred extremist Israeli settlers camped in the center of their
city, and a similar number of Israeli soldiers present throughout the city,
occupying it to protect these illegal settlers under international law.-rf]

by Mary Yoder

Two weeks ago, Paul Rehm and I escorted ten young boys to a soccer field in
another part of the city, away from Israeli soldiers, settlers, and guns.

We sat in the shade of a cypress tree. A college student sat next to us and
asked, "Who are you, what do you do here?"

After explaining the work of CPT He said, "Your government is bad!  What are
you doing about it?"

I explained the process we take to petition our government officials.

But he had an "edge" to him; a passionate "edge", that I have seen many
times.

After some time he drew several straight lines on a piece of paper.  He
asked for the English word.

"Prison?"  I said.  "Have you been to prison?"

"Yes," he said, "for two years.  First, I go for six month; no reason, I
don't know why.  Then Shabak (roughly analogous to the FBI in the U.S.)
come, I said to them, 'why am I here?'"

"They say it is secret and they give no answer."

I noticed a nervous look in his eyes and a slight tremor in his hands.

He made a clenched fist and aimed it toward his head.  "The word?"  He said.

"Beat?  So they beat you in the head?"  I asked

"Yes," he replied.  "And they put electricity on my hands, my feet, and my
back."

My new friend told me how the Shabak, asked him to go to Gaza for a secret
mission.  When he refused, his interrogators again beat him.  He received a
six-month extension on his sentence and still did not know his charges.

After one year, Shabak told him that he would have a court hearing.  They
said he needed to confess to prior bombing attack.  Again, he refused and
this time, the Shabak said they would kill him.  He served one more year and
his interrogators told him he could never return to the city of his family
when he was released.  But he returned to his family anyway.

I saw his college textbook and told him that I hope he has a good future.  I
told him that we are Christians, that we care about everyone.  "Everyone is
equal; we believe in peace.  We respect your beliefs and your people."

His eyes turned red, but he did not cry.  He said nothing.  Slowly a smile
returned to his face and his hands stopped trembling.

The questions he then asked me were typical questions I get from most
Hebronites.  "Are you married?  Why not?  You don't have children?"

Finally, the soccer team finished their game; Paul and I left this man in
the shade of a beautiful cypress tree.  The sunny weather and spring breeze
made it one of those "perfect" days.

I prayed in my heart for healing of this person's spirit and mind.  I prayed
for healing of this land and a return to springtime.

2007-05-24T00:49:00.000-07:00

Terror and Starvation in Gaza

by John Pilger

New Statesman
22 May 2007

In an article for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes how Gaza in
Palestine has come to symbolise the imposition of great power on the
powerless, in the Middle East and all over the world, and how a vocabulary
of double standard is employed to justify this epic tragedy.

John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker,
is one of only two to have twice won British journalism's top award; his
documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New
Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind
Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. "John Pilger," wrote Harold Pinter,
"unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him."

Web link
http://www.newstatesman.com/200701220021

____________________________________________________________

Israel is destroying any notion of a state of Palestine and is being allowed
to imprison an entire nation. That is clear from the latest attacks on Gaza,
whose suffering has become a metaphor for the tragedy imposed on the peoples
of the Middle East and beyond. These attacks, reported on Britain's Channel
4 News, were "targeting key militants of Hamas" and the "Hamas
infrastructure". The BBC described a "clash" between the same militants and
Israeli F-16 aircraft.

Consider one such clash. The militants' car was blown to pieces by a missile
from a fighter-bomber. Who were these militants? In my experience, all the
people of Gaza are militant in their resistance to their jailer and
tormentor. As for the "Hamas infrastructure", this was the headquarters of
the party that won last year's democratic elections in Palestine. To report
that would give the wrong impression. It would suggest that the people in
the car and all the others over the years, the babies and the elderly who
have also "clashed" with fighter-bombers, were victims of a monstrous
injustice. It would suggest the truth.

"Some say," said the Channel 4 reporter, that "Hamas has courted this
[attack]..." Perhaps he was referring to the rockets fired at Israel from
within the prison of Gaza which killed no one. Under international law an
occupied people has the right to use arms against the occupier's forces.
This right is never reported. The Channel 4 reporter referred to an "endless
war", suggesting equivalents. There is no war. There is resistance among the
poorest, most vulnerable people on earth to an enduring, illegal occupation
imposed by the world's fourth largest military power, whose weapons of mass
destruction range from cluster bombs to thermonuclear devices, bankrolled by
the superpower. In the past six years alone, wrote the historian Ilan Pappé,
"Israeli forces have killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, half of them
children".

Consider how this power works. According to documents obtained by United
Press International, the Israelis once secretly funded Hamas as "a direct
attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO [Palestine
Liberation Organisation] by using a competing religious alternative", in the
words of a former CIA official.

Today, Israel and the US have reversed this ploy and openly back Hamas's
rival, Fatah, with bribes of millions of dollars. Israel recently secretly
allowed 500 Fatah fighters to cross into Gaza from Egypt, where they had
been trained by another American client, the Cairo dictatorship. The
Israelis' aim is to undermine the elected Palestinian government and ignite
a civil war. They have not quite succeeded. In response, the Palestinians
forged a government of national unity, of both Hamas and Fatah. The latest
attacks are aimed at destroying this.

With Gaza secured in chaos and the West Bank walled in, the Israeli plan,
wrote the Palestinian academic Karma Nabulsi, is "a Hobbesian vision of an
anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed, ruled by
disparate militias, gangs, religious ideologues and extremists, broken up
into ethnic and religious tribalism and co-opted collaborationists. Look to
the Iraq of today..."

On 19 May, the Guardian received this letter from Omar Jabary al-Sarafeh, a
Ramallah resident: "Land, water and air are under constant sight of a
sophisticated military surveillance system that makes Gaza like The Truman
Show," he wrote. "In this film every Gazan actor has a predefined role and
the [Israeli] army behaves as a director... The Gaza strip needs to be shown
as what it is... an Israeli laboratory backed by the international community
where human beings are used as rabbits to test the most dramatic and
perverse practices of economic suffocation and starvation."

The remarkable Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has described the starvation
sweeping Gaza's more than a million and a quarter inhabitants and the
"thousands of wounded, disabled and shell-shocked people unable to receive
any treatment... The shadows of human beings roam the ruins... They only
know the [Israeli army] will return and they know what this will mean for
them: more imprisonment in their homes for weeks, more death and destruction
in monstrous proportions".

Whenever I have been in Gaza, I have been consumed by this melancholia, as
if I were a trespasser in a secret place of mourning. Skeins of smoke from
wood fires hang over the same Mediterranean Sea that free peoples know, but
not here. Along beaches that tourists would regard as picturesque trudge the
incarcerated of Gaza; lines of sepia figures become silhouettes, marching at
the water's edge, through lapping sewage. The water and power are cut off,
yet again, when the generators are bombed, yet again. Iconic murals on walls
pockmarked by bullets commemorate the dead, such as the family of 18 men,
women and children who "clashed" with a 500lb American/Israeli bomb, dropped
on their block of flats as they slept. Presumably, they were militants.

More than 40 per cent of the population of Gaza are children under the age
of 15. Reporting on a four-year field study in occupied Palestine for the
British Medical Journal, Dr Derek Summerfield wrote that "two-thirds of the
621 children killed at checkpoints, in the street, on the way to school, in
their homes, died from small arms fire, directed in over half of cases to
the head, neck and chest - the sniper's wound". A friend of mine with the
United Nations calls them "children of the dust". Their wonderful
childishness, their rowdiness and giggles and charm, belie their nightmare.

I met Dr Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist who heads one of several children's
community health projects in Gaza. He told me about his latest survey. "The
statistic I personally find unbearable," he said, "is that 99.4 per cent of
the children we studied suffer trauma. Once you look at the rates of
exposure to trauma, you see why: 99.2 per cent of the study group's homes
were bombarded; 97.5 per cent were exposed to tear gas; 96.6 per cent
witnessed shootings; 95.8 per cent witnessed bombardment and funerals;
almost a quarter saw family members injured or killed."

He said children as young as three faced the dichotomy caused by having to
cope with these conditions. They dreamt about becoming doctors and nurses,
then this was overtaken by an apocalyptic vision of themselves as the next
generation of suicide bombers. They experienced this invariably after an
attack by the Israelis. For some boys, their heroes were no longer football
players, but a confusion of Palestinian "martyrs" and even the enemy,
"because Israeli soldiers are the strongest and have Apache gunships".

Shortly before he died, Edward Said bitterly reproached foreign journalists
for what he called their destructive role in "stripping the context of
Palestinian violence, the response of a desperate and horribly oppressed
people, and the terrible suffering from which it arises". Just as the
invasion of Iraq was a "war by media", so the same can be said of the
grotesquely one-sided "conflict" in Palestine. As the pioneering work of the
Glasgow University Media Group shows, television viewers are rarely told
that the Palestinians are victims of an illegal military occupation; the
term "occupied territories" is seldom explained. Only 9 per cent of young
people interviewed in the UK know that the Israelis are the occupying force
and the illegal settlers are Jewish; many believe them to be Palestinian.
The selective use of language by broadcasters is crucial in maintaining this
confusion and ignorance. Words such as "terrorism", "murder" and "savage,
cold-blooded killing" describe the deaths of Israelis, almost never
Palestinians.

There are honourable exceptions. The kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston is
one of them. Yet, amidst the avalanche of coverage of his abduction, no
mention is made of the thousands of Palestinians abducted by Israel, many of
whom will not see their families for years. There are no appeals for them.
In Jerusalem, the Foreign Press Association documents the shooting and
intimidation of its members by Israeli soldiers. In one eight-month period,
as many journalists, including the CNN bureau chief in Jerusalem, were
wounded by the Israelis, some of them seriously. In each case, the FPA
complained. In each case, there was no satisfactory reply.

A censorship by omission runs deep in western journalism on Israel,
especially in the US. Hamas is dismissed as a "terrorist group sworn to
Israel's destruction" and one that "refuses to recognise Israel and wants to
fight not talk". This theme suppresses the truth: that Israel is bent on
Palestine's destruction. Moreover, Hamas's long-standing proposals for a
ten-year ceasefire are ignored, along with a recent, hopeful ideological
shift within Hamas itself that amounts to a historic acceptance of the
sovereignty of Israel. "The [Hamas] charter is not the Quran," said a senior
Hamas official, Mohammed Ghazal. "Historically, we believe all Palestine
belongs to Palestinians, but we're talking now about reality, about
political solutions... If Israel reached a stage where it was able to talk
to Hamas, I don't think there would be a problem of negotiating with the
Israelis [for a solution]."

When I last saw Gaza, driving towards the Israeli checkpoint and the razor
wire, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering from
inside the walled compounds. Children were responsible for this, I was told.
They make flagpoles out of sticks tied together and one or two will climb on
to a wall and hold the flag between them, silently. They do it when there
are foreigners around and they believe they can tell the world.

____________________________________

What our US tax dollars are supporting in Colombia

2007-05-15T11:31:00.000-07:00

CPTnet   14 May 2007
COLOMBIA: Mining leaders under military pressure
by Joel Klassen

On Saturday, 28 April at approximately 2:30 p.m., Sgt. Vargas of the
Colombian Army's Nueva Granada Battalion stopped mining leaders Emiliano
Garcia, Omar Nuñez, and Orlando Roa, as well as CPTers Joel Klassen and
Doug Pritchard, as they were all walking to the miners' homes in the
mountains of the south of Bolivar.

Vargas recorded their names, home communities, and identification numbers in
a fresh notebook containing no other names. The CPTers noted that Vargas
stopped only the group of mining leaders, allowing other people to pass
along the path unmolested.

While Sgt. Vargas was detaining the group, mining leaders conversed with
him, saying that in the past, the military has taken down people's names,
and then passed them to armed paramilitaries, who subsequently killed people
from the list in the nearby town of Santa Rosa.  The army sergeant listened
attentively, expressing his agreement that such acts were wrong, but
claiming that his unit did not do this.

CPT has heard from mining zone residents that soldiers of the Nueva Granada
Battalion have been saying that the "Black Eagles" will come to the area
after them.  The Black Eagles are a paramilitary group re-formed out of the
groups that recently demobilized, and are appearing in certain parts of
Colombia.  One resident told CPTers that he saw a Black Eagles armband
hanging on a tree beside a path in the mining zone.

Pritchard and Klassen spoke the next day with Captain Cruz, naming their
concern regarding his order to his sergeant to record certain citizens'
names.  Cruz claimed that people who have nothing to hide should not worry
about giving their names, and that taking down names formed part of "active
military control" of the zone.
CPT is very concerned that the Colombian army is conducting itself in a way
that is creating an atmosphere of fear among the communities of the south of
Bolivar, especially among the Federation of Agricultural Miners of the South
of Bolivar.
The incident at the checkpoint occurred as the Federation leaders were
returning from a cancelled meeting with the national government related to
human rights and mining.  The very day of the meeting, Federation president
Teofilo Acuna, a well-known community leader, was arrested on charges of
rebellion. Numerous people approached CPTers during their time in the mining
zone to express their concern for Acuna.

Federation leaders have said to CPT that they are concerned the army is
persecuting them because of their work to preserve and enhance their way of
life, and their resistance the entry of the multinational AngloGold Ashanti
into the zone.

Members of the Nueva Granada Battalion killed leader Alejandro Uribe on 19
September 2006, claiming that he was a guerrilla. Hundreds of enraged miners
immediately went to Santa Rosa for a forty-day-long action calling for an
investigation into Uribe's killing.  The government has yet to complete this
investigation.
_______________
Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) seeks to enlist the whole church in
organized, nonviolent alternatives to war and places teams of trained
peacemakers in regions of lethal conflict.  Originally a violence-reduction
initiative of the historic peace churches (Mennonite, Church of the Brethren
and Quaker), CPT now enjoys support and membership from a wide range of
Christian denominations.

Arabs say No Thanks to US interference

2007-05-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

Arab Nations Say "No Thanks" to American Democracy Promotion
By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 10 May 2007

The US war to bring democracy to Iraq has caused a large majority of Middle Eastern Arabs to reject any similar American campaigns in their countries.

This is among the principal findings of a new attitude survey of Arabs in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon. The survey findings were presented by Dr. James J. Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, in testimony last week before two subcommittees of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Zogby appeared before the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight and the Subcommittee on Middle East and Asia.

"In almost every case, Arabs still admired American values, people, culture and products. But they did not like US policies. And it was this that drove down America's overall favorable ratings and drove up US negatives," Zogby said.

He added that Arabs are judging the US not on how Americans live or what they say about themselves, but on how the US treats them - how they perceive America is applying its values to them.

When asked whether their overall attitude toward the US was shaped by our stated values or our policies, "Arabs by significant majorities indicate that it is our policies that are decisive," Zogby said.

He told the Congressional committee that the survey showed the most significant policy issues shaping negative attitudes were "our treatment of the Palestinians, our policy in Iraq, and our overall treatment of Arabs and Islam in general - sometimes citing specific practices (detention, torture, etc.) These negative behaviors combine to call into question our adherence to our stated values."

"Our polling has shown us that Arabs, like people all over the world, have, as their principal political and personal concerns, issues related to their families and their economic well-being, health care and the educational opportunities available to themselves and their children," Zogby said.

But, he testified, Arabs - even those disposed to like Americans - overwhelmingly rejected (US) help in dealing with matters of internal reform. Even those who value (America's) "freedom and democracy" did not want our assistance in promoting democracy in their country.

Those who sought our assistance wanted two things, Zogby said. "They want us to help solve the Arab-Israeli conflict; and they want assistance in capacity-building - expanding employment, and improving health care and education."

These are the customary objectives of America's traditional foreign aid programs.

"Make no mistake," Zogby declared. "The situation of the Palestinians, (US) actions and policies in Iraq, (America's) perceived complicity in last year's war in Lebanon, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, secret prisons, and last year's Dubai Ports World debacle have taken and continue to take a toll on America's standing" in the Arab world.

"When Arabs think about America, it is in terms of how (US policies) have impacted their region and lives," he said.

He explained that poll results from four Arab countries "establish the striking difference between attitudes toward American science, freedom and democracy, people and movies, on the one hand, and America's Middle East policies on the other."

Describing the numbers as "startling," he said 52 percent of Saudis like our values of freedom and democracy, but only eight percent support our policy toward Arabs. Sixty-three percent of the Lebanese people like Americans, while only six percent approve of our policy toward the Palestinians. Seventy-two percent of Egyptians like American science and technology, and 60 percent like Americans; yet only one percent feel favorably about our policies toward Arabs and the Palestinians."

The polling organization, Zogby International, has been conducting similar surveys for a number of years. During these years, America's "negatives" have been steadily rising.

Zogby said that in earlier polls the "American people" were viewed positively in most Arab countries. But by December 2006 only "American education" received a net favorable rating.

"This represents a drop in favorability ratings from 52 percent to 22 percent for American movies in Saudi Arabia; in Lebanon, the favorable rating for the American people dropped 19 percent; and in Egypt the favorable rating for the American people dropped from 60 percent to only 23 percent. In Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, the majority view of "American freedom/democracy" and "American products" is positive. In earlier polls, the "American people" were viewed positively in most Arab countries. In 2006, this is the case only in Lebanon," he said.

He said the results of the current survey "establish the striking difference between attitudes toward American science, freedom and democracy, people and movies, on the one hand, and America's Middle East policies on the other. For three-quarters to five-sixths of Arabs, our policies are more determinative of their attitude toward us than our values."

But Arab nations are not homogenous, he said, citing variations in the order given to these priorities in different Arab countries.

Rank orders can change over time in response to local events, he said. "For example, in 2005 the survey found that Egyptians ranked expanding employment and health care as their top priorities with improving education second. But in the same year in the United Arab Emirates, improving education was the number one concern, followed by employment and health care. In Saudi Arabia, where in 2004 the top-rated issues were health care, expanding employment, and improving education in that order. But after the May 2005 terrorist attack in the Kingdom, our 2005 survey found that combating extremism and terrorism jumped to second place (from number seven in 2004) as a national priority."

In most Arab countries, he said, "Up until the disastrous summer of 2006 (with the wars in Lebanon and Gaza, and the escalation of civil conflict in Iraq), our respondents answered what we call the 'Reagan questions' in the affirmative. They indicated that they felt 'better off than they were four year ago' and expected that they would be better off in the next four years. By December of 2006, however, this sense of satisfaction and optimism had changed dramatically, sliding downward in most countries."

"In Morocco, on the Western edge of the Arab world, 32 percent say our democratic values are important to how they view the US versus 88 percent who say our Iraq policy is important in how they view America. In the United Arab Emirates, on the Eastern edge of the Arab world, 23 percent say our democratic values and love of freedom are important in their perceptions of the US, but seventy-three percent say that our treatment of Muslims and Arabs is significant in how they view our country."

The shift from "values" to "policies" has had a major impact on Arab attitudes, he said. For example:

There is a hardening of negative attitudes toward the US, and now even a downward slide in attitudes toward our people, culture, values and products.

There is less confidence that there will be peace and stability in the region in the next five years, with growing concern in several countries about the regional consequences of an Iraqi civil war; the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and a mounting concern about Iran's intentions and US-Iranian tensions.

There is a turning inward. Arabs are investing more in their own economies instead of in the West, and more engaged than ever with problems closer to home.

There is a turning away from the US, as Arabs are factoring the East (China, India and Southeast Asia) more significantly into their future investment strategies.

There is growing public pressure on Arab governments, especially those who maintain strong ties to the US, to distance themselves from our policies.

America's reputation in the Arab world, Zogby said, could be improved if we "listen to what Arab opinion is telling us, and take their concerns seriously. What they want from us is to play the role of peacemaker in working to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict; to find a responsible end to the Iraq war that promotes national reconciliation and regional security; to find support for regional capacity-building that works to expand employment, improve health care, and increase educational opportunities; and an application of our values to our relationships with the people and countries of the region that establishes us as a partner in their efforts to improve the quality of their lives and defeat the extremists who threaten our mutual security."

Opposition to US democracy-promotion programs is not limited to the Arab world. Activist and attorney Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman and first Iranian to win the Nobel Peace Prize, was asked by a PBS "NewsHour" interviewer if US-funded programs of this type would be helpful in her country.

Ebadi replied, "No, I don't think that it benefits me or people like me, because whoever speaks about democracy in Iran will be accused of having been paid by the United States. Democracy promotion is seen as a euphemism for regime change. You cannot deliver democracy with guns and bombs."

William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East and in many other parts of the world for the US State Department and USAID for the past thirty years. He began his work life as a journalist for newspapers and for The Associated Press in Florida. Go to The World According to Bill Fisher for more.

Minnesota Grandmothers speak up

2007-04-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

Grandmas in Minnesota

Mar 31, 2007

Regrets for the long delay in writing. Three weeks ago I was in Minnesota. Since returning home my days have been busy with work and I’ve been missing putting these words together. I’ve been wanting to tell about two grandmothers I met.

One spoke up at the luncheon at church. The congregation had started a “Reconciling in Christ” study to see if the church wanted to make a formal declaration of welcome to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. I’d already preached earlier in the morning and talked about how this kind of welcome literally saves lives. Too many LGBT people are receiving messages from churches that God hates them. After the worship service a dad came up to me with tears in his eyes, “Our family drove an hour-and-a-half to be here this morning. At our Lutheran church at home the pastor tells me I’ve done something wrong to cause my son’s homosexuality, and that my son can be, should be, cured of his homosexuality.”

Now Grandma was speaking up at the luncheon, “Reconciling in Christ doesn’t just save gays and lesbians,” she began. “Reconciling in Christ saved me, too. My husband divorced me five years ago, against my wishes. After that I believed that God hated me. Not until we began the Reconciling in Christ work here did I really understand that God loves us all, including me.”

Maybe hearing Grandma speak these words meant so much to me because of the questions I get about advocating for LGBT equality. Yes, it’s for LGBT people, but, it’s for all of us, about creating the kind of world where there’s a place for everyone.

After the luncheon another Grandma came up to me. “My husband he asks why I come to these meetings. He’s not going to attend.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“I think the difference is that I was raised as a missionary child, around all sorts of different people. My husband was raised in a very strict church. I think that makes us see things differently.” And then she smiles. “Nothing’s keeping me away from these meetings. I’m making my own decisions.”

More stories. Always more stories. Blessings for the telling and the hearing.

Lars Clausen [ a Lutheran pastor, I believe. --Bob F.]

This is our life, in Hebron

2007-03-07T10:48:00.000-08:00

By Abigail Ozanne

One morning recently, I was reflecting that in the nearly four months I
had been in Hebron I have been cursed, insulted, spat at, pushed, threatened
with arrest, detained, tear gassed, had my home invaded by soldiers, stoned,
and threatened with death. But if I had been a Palestinian, things would
have been worse.
Recently the soldiers arrested a Palestinian journalist for taking pictures.
The soldiers grabbed him, handcuffed and blindfolded him, and led him away.
I expressed how sorry I was to his brother. The brother replied, "This is
our life." He said that at different times in the past Israeli forces had
shot, beaten, and arrested him.
Last month, after I was present in a situation where soldiers beat two
men--one to unconsciousness, tear-gas everyone in an enclosed space, and
arrest several people, including the journalist, I said what a terrible day
it had been. Our Palestinian neighbor answered, "This is our life.">
I am a member of the Undoing Racism Working Group in CPT. Through this work,
I have become more aware of my unearned privilege as a white American. In
Palestine this means that I am asked for my ID less. The soldiers cannot
arrest me although police can. The soldiers are not likely to beat me. If
I am arrested, I do not need to fear being tortured. I am allowed to go
most places in the West Bank. Soldiers are less likely to invade our home.
If they do invade, they are not likely to ransack it. If I am hurt,
arrested, or killed, the international community will say that it is wrong.
The racist Israeli military control of the West Bank and Gaza does not grant
the Palestinians we work with any of these privileges. As I go about my work, I
seek to stand with the oppressed and dare to be vulnerable. I try to listen to our Palestinian partners and friends about
their experiences. I try to understand. And I acknowledge that what I
experience is only a portion of the suffering Palestinians experience. I
have privileges here not shared by the majority of the population.
Additionally, at the end of my time in Palestine, I can go home. For the
Palestinians, this is their life.
_______________

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) seeks to enlist the whole church in
organized, nonviolent alternatives to war and places teams of trained
peacemakers in regions of lethal conflict. Originally a violence-reduction
initiative of the historic peace churches (Mennonite, Church of the Brethren
and Quaker), CPT now enjoys support and membership from a wide range of
Christian denominations.

To receive news or discussion of CPT issues by e-mail, fill out the form
found on our WEB page at http://www.cpt.org/subscribe.php

Beware the false leads in NY Times and Wash.Post

2007-02-11T22:56:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to direct you to two reports on this week's dose of Bush administration red herring offerings on the weekend's menu for mass reading and believing. Next week they'll offer the Brooklyn Bridge for sale, I suspect:

'NYT' Reporter Who Got Iraqi WMDs Wrong Now Highlights Iran Claims*

Hold your nose and pay attention to the track record of reporter Gordon, who believed the WMD lies and passed them on fully, with little or no checking four years ago. "When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?" is the theme song for the Times in particular, who already apologized for Gordon and Judith Miller's errors four years ago. May they sharpen their investigative journalism quickly this week, and may Democrats do some sharp question asking, which the reporters did or could not do, and whose cell phones and other recording equipment was taken away from them as they listened to anonymous sources, one of whom the Iraqi media revealed, and criticized for going down a military direction rather than using diplomacy. May we learn from the weary, bloodied Iraquis who failed to defeat Iran in a tragic war that we encouraged by helping our former buddy Sadaam Hussein with chemical weapons, before we decided he was our enemy, and our convenient excuse for protecting our oil interests in Iraq by invading and bombing with great Shock and Awe, that also failed badly, except in profits to armaments manufacturers. Even the oil wells are producing less petroleum than they did under Sadaam, despite our overpaid contractors and Bush oil expert friends' efforts during these four expensive years. How much more can we afford of Shrub & Co.?

URGENT! free lectures in Berkeley today Wed.1/24-Th. 1/25

2007-01-24T03:41:00.000-08:00

If you live near Berkeley CA and are free at 9 this morning or 1:45 this afternoon, or at 9 or 1:45 tomorrow, Thursday, Jan. 25th, think about coming to the free lectures given to us all by the Pacific School of Religion, part of the Graduate Theological Union, related to UC Berkeley, and sitting right next door to it. [If you can't come, wait a few days and look at and listen to the PSR website: www.psr.edu to hear all the lectures from earlier in the week by Robert Bellah, Dr. Mahmood Ayoub, a Muslim scholar of religions, both older men worth listening to, and a new professor of New Testament at PSR, Dr. Tat-siong Benny Liew, a pioneering young man.] The series is called "All the Rivers of Paradise: Christian Responsibilities in an Interfaith World ".
The lectures are actually given in a large church auditorium/sanctuary of the First Congregational Church where Bill Coffin used to preach frequently, located at the corner of Durant Ave. and Channing Way, just a couple blocks south of Bancroft and the UCB campus. The #51 ACTransit bus will take you to the corner.
The lecture this morning from 9 am to 10:30 is by Rev. Bernice Powell Jackson, the African American president of the World Council of Churches for North America, and for many years a top officer of the United Church of Christ but currently helping re-start a UCC church in New Orleans after their flood. She will also deliver the Thursday afternoon sermon tomorrow at 1:45 in the same location, closing the series of lectures.
The afternoon lecture at 1:45 is given by PSR's longtime faculty member, Dr. Choan-Seng Song, Taiwan's gift to the US, and a world known speaker and leader in the realm of Asian and Pacific theology and church life and Asian religions.
There will be a closing panel at 9 am on Thursday with Rev. Paul Chaffee, founder of the Interfaith Center at the Presidio in SF, Maha ElGanaidi, founder of the Islamic Networks Group [ING], and Quaker Matthai Chakko Kuruvila from South India, religion editor for the SF Chronicle, and Yolanda Trevino, an indigenous Mayan from Guatemala who has worked for years to introduce members of indigenous traditions to one another and to us latecomers to the Americas, who have had a bad habit of genocide of such folks. These panelists will deal with "Scenarios for an Interfaith Future".
Even if you do not manage to come to these live presentations, I encourage you to at least take 10 minutes or more to look at the PSR website, www.psr.edu with dozens of past Earl Lecture and some anti-war presentations that you can hear, and download to your computer, and also look at the other free offers of church bulletin inserts from the Progressive Christian Witness, the R2W Youth programs of a pioneering sort for minority young people with a generous summer program at PSR and a blog worth looking into. I once thought my going to Yale Divinity School was part of future looking theological education, but PSR and the GTU are way ahead of my Eastern, stodgy Yale efforts to be "with it". Do get a glimpse of the exciting and revolutionary offerings found here in the East Bay.

want to join a new "change the world" web group?

2007-01-24T01:31:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my friends in the Network of Spiritual Progressives [NSP], the new name and wider network than the old name Tikkun Community could handle, or be understood quickly, given its wonderful but mysterious Hebrew word Tikkun, part of the powerful phrase Tikkun Olam which Jews use to describe what God does and we are called to join in: Heal [or Transform] the World, I am now signed up as at least a tentative new member of another online network, which you may want to explore also: www.zaadz.com which uses the less mysterious Dutch word for Seeds = Zaadz.
You can also explore www.tikkun.org and www.nsp.org to learn more about the Network that was born in the 1,500 person gathering at the UC Berkeley campus in the summer of 2005, upon Lerner and Co's invitation with folks like Jim Wallis of Sojourners, Sister Joan Chittester, retired leader of progressive nuns, Cornell West at Princeton, and formerly Harvard and Yale [with whom I once enjoyed getting arrested in New Haven along with our Supt. of Schools, many other clergy, etc. in a protest demonstration trying to get Yale to stop investing in apartheid-plagued South Africa] and many other progressive folks.
The Zaadz folks sound a bit like Buddhists, somewhat New Age, and quite a bit like SiliconValley folks, who hope to make a profit from this venture, but also change the world, healing it and ourselves in the process, and they sound very much like Rabbi Michael Lerner in their Conscious Capitalism talk. He uses New Bottom Line [no longer mainly Profit and Power, but much more Generosity, Compassion, Sharing and Social Responsibility; Caring about one another as members of the worldwide human family....] and Global Marshall Plan as the first priority for US politics, replacine War on Terror, or US against the Evil Axis, whatever the latest mumbo jumbo from the White House is, with all their talk about Liberty and Freedom borrowed from Orwell's 1984, meaning let us run the world while you keep silent and obedient to our Empire building, and we all enjoy "freedom" to step on one another in Savage Capitalism's pyramid of a few wealthy and powerful folks on top, running things and getting most of the benefits of an economic and political system that sucks labor and oxygen out of the rest of us who mostly dwell at the bottom of the pyramid, and get very little of the benefits of being part of the Human Family, Children of God, or however we name ourselves and understand ourselves.
It is also part of George Lacock's insight to the two understandings of human "family": one that is dominated by a Stern Father [ruler, king, Boss] - the early Hebrew Torah /Old Testament vision of God before the 23rd Psalm, and the 8th century BCE Hebrew Prophets started their work, giving us the progressive vision of a loving, compassionate Nurturing Parent whom Jesus called Abba, Daddy, but is much more a Mother God in my imagination, and in the minds of a lot of feminist theologians.
But let me stop trying to explain my take on Zaadz.com and quote the CEO himself, Brian:

Welcome! Let's Change the World.

This is Brian, your friendly Philosopher & CEO here at Zaadz. On behalf of our entire team, I’d like to welcome you to our little Oasis on the web. Thrilled you’ve found us. Here’s a quick intro to what we’re up to:

Our Name. We’ll start with the name. zaad. It’s Dutch for “seed.” Amazing how much potential is in a tiny seed, eh? We think so, too. That power reminds us of the amazing potential within each of us. We thought the idea of creating a company that inspires and empowers you to bring your “seed” to actualization would be pretty powerful. So, we created “Zaadz.”

Our Mission. We’re gonna change the world. Our math goes like this: you be the change + you follow your bliss + you give your greatest strengths to the world moment to moment to moment + we do everything in our power to help you succeed + you inspire and empower everyone you know to do the same + we team up with millions like us = we just affected billions = we (together) changed the world.

Our Plan. Ours involves Conscious Capitalism infused with Spirituality and a healthy dose of Enthusiasm, Love, Service, Inspiration, Passion, Humor and Teamwork. People CRAZY enough to think they can change the world, Courageous enough to do something about it, AND Committed enough to stick to it when they feel like giving up.

We’re in the process of building THE most inspired community of people in the world…social networking with a purpose, a community of seekers and conscious entrepreneurs circulating wisdom and inspiration and wealth and all that good stuff. We’re passionate about inspiring and empowering people to bring their dreams to life, learning and growing and getting paid to do what they love, using their greatest gifts in the greatest service to the world. (And having fun in the process!)

Our Community. You (& Your Friends). Yes, you. You want more than the 9-5, the house and the car, the conditioning. The blah! Life is to be lived - Fully. In spirit. In love. In service. In celebration. (You’ve already swallowed the red pill, so let’s go…)

Us. A community of Leaders, Visionaries, Thinkers, Artists, Writers,
Healers, Teachers, Conscious Entrepreneurs, and Many (many!) Others. People
of many ages (from 12 to 90), many nationalities, from different countries
(over 110!) and different backgrounds. Some already making huge differences
in thousands of lives, others working to make a difference starting with themselves.

We’re thrilled you’ve joined us so early on and are excited to change the world together.

Namaste,

Brian Johnson, Philosopher & CEO

“In the faces of men and women I see God.”
~ Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass

All you need to do next is take a look at www.zaadz.com, and tikkun.org and nsp.org. Then let us know using the Comments boxes here, telling us what you think and what you learn and want to share with us.

Israeli soldiers become jailers briefly

2007-01-02T11:22:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, January 02, 2007 9:51 AM
Subject: AT-TUWANI REFLECTION: Standing in the cold rain
and nonviolently ending cruel and unusual punishment

Our Christian Peacemaker Team in At-Tuwani,
a village south of Hebron, in the Palestinian occupied territories got a
call last week saying there was trouble at the La Safer checkpoint, and
that a man would come and pick us up and take us there.
Three of us went with him. We did not know what to expect when we
got there. All we understood was that we should walk up to the checkpoint
at the Green Line.
It didn't take us long to figure things out. We immediately saw about
thirty Palestinian men standing behind a razor wire enclosure. An icy wind
was blowing hard at the top of the hill. Thankfully for all of us, the rain
had temporarily stopped. I walked up to the men and greeted them. They
said they had been standing there in the cold and rain for five hours,
waiting to have their IDs returned.

My other two teammates, John Funk and Allan Slater, talked to the soldiers
who said these men were coming back home from working illegally in Israel.
The soldiers were making the men stand in the cold rain for three hours to
punish them for their illegal activity. "This is how we control the
situation," the soldier said. The soldier did not mention that
extrajudicial punishment is illegal, or that mistreating people causes
resentment and anger.

The soldier did not say that Israel needs these "illegals" to do their dirty
work for low wages in the same way American businesses need "illegal"
Mexicans to do their dirty work at low wages while both the Israeli and
American governments look the other way. The only difference here is that
the Israeli military can impose additional punishment by making Palestinian
laborers stand in the cold rain for three to five hours.

Soon after we arrived, the soldiers began returning the men's IDs and let
them head toward cars waiting to take them home. In ten to fifteen
minutes, all of them were released.
We walked back to the small Palestinian village of Beit Yatir, sleet
stinging our faces as we walked.

One more timely book

2006-11-27T03:42:00.000-08:00

Sequoia in its print version has already reviewed this book, but it needs lots of plugging and then lots of people reading and acting on its suggestions: Beyond Prisons: a new interfaith paradign for our failed prison sysems. Written in good part by Laura Magnani, who has been working on this matter for many years here in the Bay area, on the staff of AFSC to deal with criminal [in]justice matters.
The book proposes that we recognize both how sinfully expensive prisons are, costing $30,000 a year to keep someone locked up and guarded, the same as a Stanford U education. Why don't we send more people to Stanford or less expensive colleges, so they can get decent jobs and don't get involved in drugs, car theft, burglary, white collar crimes, etc. The book's thesis is that reform of young people who get caught in any of these crimes, if we haven't prevented them by making sure everyone can get decent housing and naborhoods and schools and family life, with jobs for one or both parents if needed.
We must also offer full respect for Black and Hispanic young men and women and families, seeing them as necessary part of our state's economy as skilled workers in the future, not as handy arrestees to keep our prison guards employed with heavy sentences for crack cocaine sale on streeet corners, and a pat on the wrist for cocaine powder in college dorms, etc.
What helps people to reform [as reformatories are supposed to help bring about] or be sincerely pentitent [as Quaker- encouraged "penitentiaries" were intended to do, with cells like monastic cells for meditation and Bible reading and prayer. Seen much of that lately at San Quentin and the rest of our expensive prison "campuses"? Not likely.
But we could do more of what Oakland police dept. and others like Sherrif Hennesy in SF do to give first time offenders lots of help in trying out going straight, working with and in the system that pays salaries or wages, getting enough training so they can contribute useful service to other human beings in schools, hospitals, playgrounds, clinics, rec centers, etc. -- even churches and synagogs and mosques! It takes a lot of community welcome and support to those who "graduate" from whatever institutions we support to help young people become helpful citizens, and not nasty criminals, with alcohol and drug and gambling problems, and little or no family responsibilities to help pass on their adult values to youngsters coming along.
So let's toss out expensive prisons and create new ways for us all to help one another be fully welcomed members of our society, not lifetime lepers with an arrest record to haunt any job application. Buy the book for $15 from AFSC, or a bookstore or online. [Fortress Press, 204 pp, paperback]

TWo more books of great interest to me

2006-11-27T02:22:00.000-08:00

Here is a book I hope to acquire soon, but I have seen the three authors on CSPAN2, also known as BookTV, well worth looking for on your cable system, to meet authors and hear their free discussions of issues that TV does not always show us, like the Berkeley meeting sponsored by KPFA and shown on BookTV recently on the scientists and other researchers who have written a book called "9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out" which raises serious questions about how much our President and VP knew in advance about the 9/11 events in NY and DC and made full use of them to give an excuse for their old plan to "finish" the war on Iraq that George H.W.Bush did not finish by not invading Baghdad, etc. Prof. David Ray Griffin, retired Claremont CA theologian, and Richard Faulk, Princeton faculty, were joined by a Mormon physicist, and an Underwriters Lab manager fired for getting too nosy about the towers' neat collapse in place, when UL had tested the firecoated steel girders in those buildings, and they should not have simply fallen down in a compact pile unless explosives were planted in advance in the building; and they also ask why VPCheney in DC kept all our military planes grounded, not even investigating what the four hijacked airliners were doing and where they were going, and why the Secret Service allowed Pres. Bush as seen on TV to stay for more than half an hour in the Texas school, reading to children, a sitting duck target for one of the planes ....

START YOUR OWN FAITH CLUB - Last month The Faith Club: A Muslim, a Christian, a Jew – Three Women Search for Understanding was published. The book is the work of Muslim Ranya Idliby, Catholic Suzanne Oliver, and Jewish Priscilla Warner. Three friends who began writing a children’s book about different religions, they found themselves drawn into a deep exploration of their own faith and each other’s. The book is utterly engaging and the transformation the women go through deeply moving. You can learn about starting your own Faith Club at http://www.TheFaithClub.com. Press kits and sample copies of the book are available from Shannon Gallagher at Simon & Schuster. Contact her at 212-698-1287 or at Shannon.Gallagher@simonandschuster.com.