Commentary
Charles R. Larson
May 4, 2007
WASHINGTON -- When viewed through American eyes, the recent protests in Istanbul and Tel Aviv demanding that their governments become accountable are truly impressive and extraordinary.
For a US liberal - which is what I consider myself to be - the Israeli and the Turkish protests are also a disturbing reminder that Americans have apparently forgotten one of their constitutional rights: the right to protest. Americans are loud at proclaiming their rights, but, lately, they have been reluctant to practice them. Indeed, a couple of years ago, when Iraq was writing its new constitution, a joke was frequently repeated in limited circles: "Why not give them the US constitution, since we're not using it?"
The George W. Bush presidency has articulated, ad nauseam, America's plan for exporting democracy to the rest of the world - especially to the Middle East. Yet, rarely does the Bush administration proclaim the need for democracy outside of areas where oil is of our concern.
Take Africa, for example. A couple of years ago, it was Liberia, which, under Charles Taylor, became one of the most wretched places for human rights in the world. Taylor could have been unseated quickly and expeditiously with minimal force, and the United States certainly had historical reasons for "liberating" Liberia from its monstrous dictator. But Taylor stayed in power until he wrecked his country, at which stage the US sent in a handful of marines to make a belated push to force Taylor to leave.
More recently, Zimbabwe and Nigeria ought to be of major concern regarding constitutional abuses, but Robert Mugabe still reigns supreme in the former country (that has no oil) and the rigged election in Nigeria two weeks ago, which ought to have triggered a barrage of criticism from the American State Department, resulted in hardly a puff of smoke. (Actually, in the case of Nigeria - one of America's major oil suppliers - it looks as if oil did contribute to Bush's decision to do nothing.)
But it is the war in Iraq that ought to have led to major protests in the United States by now, because of the administration's "selective" push for democracy around the world.
Three weeks ago, a lone gunman at Virginia Tech murdered 32 innocent students and faculty members, triggering a massive outcry for a few days, but no one expects that America's obsession with guns is about to change. One hundred US soldiers have died in Iraq in the last month alone, and there is nary a protest or airing of concern from Americans, who have clearly stopped paying any attention to the debacle - except to say that they "want our soldiers to come home."
Americans have so compartmentalized the war that hardly anyone pays attention to what's happening in Iraq, except the families of the 150,000 US soldiers who are dying there. Most other Americans have stopped reading articles in the newspapers about the war and muted their TV sets during the evening news when the declining minutes of daily coverage are broadcast.
In part, the utter lack of concern about the war is because Americans are convinced that it has nothing to do with them economically - they have certainly not been asked to make any sacrifice to pay for the war. So, the war continues to drain the country of billions of dollars, while the American consumer continues to prop up the economy by increasing personal debt. That is, of course, a mirror of the government's own massive debt because of Bush's folly.
And it is not just the war that Americans are reluctant to protest about - but just about everything else involving George W. Bush's vision for the country and the world. The country's top law enforcer, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been disgraced by recent partisan acts that clearly were designed to support the Republican agenda. Yet, Gonzales is praised almost daily by President Bush, while he violates other parts of the constitution in acts that have systematically eroded all of our individual rights.
Paul Wolfowitz, head of the World Bank, is similarly lauded by President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, though Wolfowitz has also compromised his position and run the morale of the World Bank into the ground.
The list of abuses at the hands of the neocons in their attempt to cram right-wing conservatism down the throats of every American are so ubiquitous that the only pleasure a sane person can take these days is the occasional smile, and the remark, "I told you so," which echo a bumper sticker seen on many vehicles in the country for the past six years: "If You're Not Outraged, You're Not Paying Attention."
Americans are asleep. They have tuned out and shut down to recent events because of the staggering amount of outrage and abuse by their government during the past half-dozen years. Even in the best of times, a large portion of the population pays little attention to world events. If you visit the outlying sections of the country and pick up a local newspaper, you might conclude that the readers of that gazette were only concerned about local events. An international incident, which ought to be of concern for everyone, is either given no attention at all or buried in a minor paragraph at the back of the paper.
One wonders what kind of outrage would finally draw Americans into the streets as the citizens of Istanbul and Tel Aviv did earlier this week.
Charles R. Larson is Chair of the Department of Literature at American University in Washington, DC. He is a frequent Contributor to Salon, The Nation, and The Washington Examiner magazines. He submitted this commentary to the Middle East Times.
Showing posts with label protest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label protest. Show all posts
Friday, May 4, 2007
Monday, April 30, 2007
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Takes a Bullet in Israel
On April 21st, 2007, in the Village of Bil’in, Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Northern Ireland, was shot with a rubber-coated steel bullet by Israeli Forces an hour after delivering this message at a peace press conference:
“Thanks to the media here for telling the truth… Bring this truth to whatever country you come from. Non-violence will solve the problems here in Israel and Palestine. Often, the world sees only violence. But Palestinians are a good people, working towards non-violence. This Wall must fall! It is an insult to the human family and to the world that we are building Apartheid Walls in the 21st Century! More than forty years of Occupation and Land Appropriation.”
Since 2004, in Bil’in, every Friday afternoon after prayers at the mosque, Palestinian farmers, workers, mothers, and students, together with Israeli and International volunteers, have been braving teargas, beatings, bullets, arrest, and even death to rise up against the well equipped Israeli army with nothing more than their own bodies.
Last Friday afternoon after prayers at the mosque in Bil’in …
Blocking the path with armed soldiers about 100 meters before the Wall, soldiers began to fire tear gas into the crowd of 400 or so protesters. The crowd would disperse, covering their faces with bandannas and onion slices to dilute the suffocating gases. But the crowd would regroup and continue, Ghandi-style, their non-violent procession to the Apartheid structure.
Israeli forces kept this up for quite some time, but as demonstrators reached closer to their goal, the occupiers added more ingredients to their recipe– this time using rubber-coated steel bullets. Several patches of demonstrators in different parts of the olive grove were screaming in Arabic, Spanish, Hebrew, English, and others, ‘Don’t shoot! We’re non-violent!’
But the triggers of the occupier’s guns pulled anyways– the weapon of non-violence needed to be dismantled…It is illegal under Israeli military law to shoot rubber bullets from a distance under 40 meters. They are considered lethal otherwise…I saw Tomas from Denmark fall to the ground, Dawood from the UK hit on the inner thigh near his groin, Ali from Palestine hit in the leg, and tear gas canisters were oozing with white smoke from what seemed like every inch of the land. Suddenly, Ms. Maguire, the Irish Nobel Peace prize winner was shot in the leg. Two other street medics carried her to safety and the army continued to fire into the non-violent crowd.
The resilience was astounding. The demonstrators kept regrouping. Even Ms. Maguire, after being shot and with red, watery tear-gassed eyes — she rejoined the march.…An estimated 25 people were either hit with rubber bullets, soldier batons, or received medical care from tear gas inhalation.
Máiread once wrote: “Hope for the future depends on each of us taking nonviolence into our hearts and minds and developing new and imaginative structures which are nonviolent and life-giving for all. Some people will argue that this is too idealistic. I believe it is very realistic. I am convinced that humanity is fast evolving to this higher consciousness. For those who say it cannot be done, let us remember that humanity learned to abolish slavery. Our task now is no less than the abolition of violence and war…. We can rejoice and celebrate today because we are living in a miraculous time. Everything is changing and everything is possible.
While Governments can make a difference, in the final analysis it is the individual — that is each one of us — that will bring the dream of a nonviolent world to reality. We, the people must think and act nonviolently. We must not get stuck in the past as to do so will destroy the imagination and creativity which is so n a new future together…
To change our world we need a spiritual and a political evolution. The political steps are often very obvious: uphold Human rights, and International Laws, demand our Governments meet their obligations under these Laws, support and reform United Nations, etc., However, all the legislation, resolutions, and fine talk will be of no use, if we do not as men and women evolve and become transformed, so that we, the human family, achieve a more enlightened and humane way of living together, and solving conflicts.
In 2004 the International Court of Justice ruled that The Wall is a violation of International Law because it cuts through the West Bank appropriating Palestinian land and destroying Palestinian villages and economy to make way for further Israeli illegal settlements.
My first trip to Bil’in, where Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maried Maguire was shot, was in January 2006; my second time upon the potholed unpaved roads to this agricultural village near Ramallah was on November 10, 2006.
Bil’in is one of many villages in the occupied Palestinian territories where locals, Israelis and Internationals have been nonviolently and creatively resisting “The Wall” which in Bil’in is an electrified fence and miles of rolled barbed wire.
The electric fence and the Israeli army prevents the indigenous people to care and harvest their olive groves and 2,003 dunums of land have already been confiscated for The Wall/Fence and 750 settlers apartments have been built and are now occupied which the indigenous people are forbidden to enter.
In Bil’in, the Green Line is five miles from The Wall/electric fence and the Popular Committee in Bil’in has been nonviolently fighting the illegal actions of the Israeli government with nonviolent demonstrations and legal actions. Three court cases have been filed regarding the route of The Wall, the illegal settlements and land ownership. The Israeli government uses the Ottoman Law that states if the landowner doesn’t tend his land it can be confiscated by the State. The Israeli army and the electrified fence have effectively prevented the indigenous people from accessing and caring for their olive tree crop, depriving them of food and income.
The indigenous people of Bil’in brought their case to the Israeli Municipal Court and the High Court. Both courts agreed the building of the settlement dwellings was indeed illegal and ordered the construction to cease in January 2006. Construction continued and now that the settlers have moved in, the High Court has chosen to accept these “facts on the ground” and the colonists have been allowed to remain and the indigenous people have not received any compensation.
Abdullah and Mohammod, the local Coordinator’s of The Popular Committee Against The Wall in Bil’in informed me that 1,700 people live there and legally own 4,000 dunums of property. By erecting The Wall on Palestinian land, the Israeli government has effectively confiscated 2,003 dunums of prime agricultural land.
Beginning in 2004, every Friday afternoon in Bil’in after prayer at the mosque the ritual is for locals, Israelis and Internationals to march in solidarity to The Wall/Electric Fence while singing and chanting in Arabic slogans such as: “The wall will fall in Bil’in; the wall will fall like in Berlin!”
On November 10, 2006, I was one of over 40 internationals from the UK, France, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Netherlands and the US who marched with dozens of Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall and over 300 locals down the dirt road to The Wall/Electric Fence. Soldiers hid behind trees to the right and to the left of us while over five dozen well armed soldiers stood on the other side of The Wall/Fence while one videotaped us. Jonathan Pollak, an Anarchist Against the Wall/AAtW, that I met during his USA speaking tour was also there.
After chanting a while in front of the soldiers, Jonathon was the first down the steep rocky hill and over a metal railing to grab the roll of razor sharp barbed wire that is in front of the electrified fence in order to shake it. He was immediately joined by a few dozen locals and other AAtW who were swiftly greeted by the first of dozens of sound bombs-thick orange plastic grenades that hit the ground with a deafening sound.
I was half way down the hill when a teenager next to me threw a rock at a soldier and I know that action alone can get one killed or arrested, so I headed back up the hill before the tear gas assaulted the crowd at the barbwire.
By the time I made it up the hill the first of hundreds of rubber bullets were being shot into the crowd. Only two internationals were hit that day, but last Friday in Bil’in, an estimated 25 people were either hit with rubber bullets, soldier batons, or received medical care from tear gas inhalation.
PHOTOS of Maried and the FULL story of April 20, 2007 demonstration:
Other Source:
Memoirs of a Nice Irish-American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory
Monday, April 23, 2007
All we had for breakfast was tear gas
April 21st, 2007 |
by ISM Martinez 20 April 2007
“Thanks to the media here for telling the truth…Bring this truth to whatever country you come from!”
Ms. Macguire escorted to safety after being shot by Israeli army
These were Mairead Maguire’s words, a Nobel Peace Prize winner from Northern Ireland, just one hour before she was shot with a rubber-coated steel bullet by Israeli Occupation Forces.
At a press conference next to the Apartheid Wall in Bil’in, she stood beside Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian Information Minister.
Press conference near Apartheid Wall
“Non-violence will solve the problems here in Israel and Palestine,” Ms. Macguire continued. “Often, the world sees only violence. But Palestinians are a good people, working towards non-violence. This Wall must fall! It is an insult to the human family and to the world– that we are building Apartheid Walls in the 21st Century! More than forty years of Occupation and Land Appropriation”
Ms. Macguire demanded her viewers of the world to stop Israel’s “mild dictatorship” and “total Israeli government control.”
Dr. Barghouti thanked her and the 500 attendees of the Second Bil’in International Conference on Non-violence. Regarding the Wall, he stated that it was an “instrument of ethnic cleansing, the same as what happened in 1948.” Barghouti suggested to read Illan Pappe’s book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine for a clear explanation.
Barghouti stated that the Apartheid Wall is being used to suffocate the idea of a 2-state solution and an independent Palestinian state.
Describing the Wall, Barghouti said that it was 850 km in length, which is three times the length of the Green Line (the 1967 Armistice line), that the wall surrounds and imprisons cities and villages. Qalqilia was mentioned, a city of 46,000 Palestinians, which is completely surrounded by the Aparthied Wall.
Photo of Apartheid Wall in Qalqilia
“This Wall is being built between Palestinians and Palestinians,” he said. “It is not being built between Palestine and Israel. 850,000 Palestinians are behind this wall. It is destroying Palestinian social, economic, health, and educational systems.”
“It has been condemned by every major legal body, including the International Court of Justice, and it must be removed!”
“You will see the Israeli military practice violence here today.”
After 60 years of dispossession and 40 years of Occupation, Dr. Barghouti joined Ms. Macguire in Bil’in, as “a symbol of the Palestinian non-violent struggle,” he said. He also demanded the release of British BBC journalist Alan Johnson, “who did everything he could to bring the truth, a wonderful being which (he) knew well, a fantastic journalist. We demand his freedom. It continues to hurt the image of the Palestinian people.”
Barghouti closed by saying that there is no propaganda needed– just to show the pictures of the wall and checkpoints, for they speak for themselves.
Israeli high-powered water tank at Apartheid Wall
Just before the press conference ended, a huge Israeli high-powered water police-tank rolled through the opening in the Wall, demanding that all the vehicles of the press leave the premises.
Further beyond the Wall, Tito, a Puerto Rican activist was waiting for his cue. After the press conference ended, he climbed the sky-scraping Israeli military tower housing the military camera, which watches over the village of Bil’in like the all-seeing-eye of the pyramid, recording every movement of the cages Palestinians in Bil’in.
Tito on the top of military tower hanging Palestinian flag
Cheering, “Tito! Tito!,” friends and activists snapped photos and a crew of supporters lingered below the massive tower. Military vehicles dispatched themselves to try and prevent the too-quick climber of Puerto Rico.
As he reached the top, the cheers grew louder and waving high and proud over the beautiful village of Bil’in were the colors of red, white, green and black.
It would be another five hours before Tito descended the tower.
On the other side of the village, Friday prayers at the mosque were ending, and hundreds of Palestinians, Israelis, and international solidarity activists would march down the road towards the Apartheid Wall.
Non-violent demonstrators march to the Apartheid Wall
But even with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti present and with the Irish Nobel Peace Prize Winner joining the non-violent demonstration, Israeli Occupation Forces utilized their usual violent tactics to try and quell the resistance.
Israeli Occupation Forces fire tear gas at demonstrators
Blocking the path with armed soldiers about 100 meters before the Wall, soldiers began to fire tear gas into the crowd of 400 or so protesters. The crowd would disperse, covering their faces with bandannas and onion slices to dilute the suffocating gases. But the crowd would regroup and continue, Ghandi-style, their non-violent procession to the Apartheid structure.
Israeli forces kept this up for quite some time, but as demonstrators reached closer to their goal, the occupiers added more ingredients to their recipe– this time using rubber-coated steel bullets.
Several patches of demonstrators in different parts of the olive grove were screaming in Arabic, Spanish, Hebrew, English, and others, “Don’t shoot! We’re non-violent!”
But the triggers of the occupier’s guns pulled anyways– the weapon of non-violence needed to be dismantled.
Rubber-coated steel bullet wound to the leg
And from 10 meters away, filmmaker Asusena Fernando from Spain was hit on the left leg with one of these rubber-coated steel bullets. She said to me, “He looked straight into my eyes. I asked him not to shoot but he took aim anyways.”
Moments later, Masid Abu Tamer, a Palestinian Israeli a journalist for British Channel 2 was shot in the head with a rubber bullet. The Palestinian Red Crescent placed him on the stretcher and loaded him into the ambulance.
Palestinian-Israeli shot in head with rubber bullet
“He’s the second one it 3 minutes that they’ve shot in the head!” yelled someone next to me.
It is illegal under Israeli military law to shoot rubber bullets from a distance under 40 meters. They are considered lethal otherwise. Lymor Goldstein was shot by Israeli forces in the head last August from a distance of 10 meters with a rubber bullet. The bullet penetrated his skull and entered his brain. Luckily, he is still around and is serving as Tito’s lawyer right now as I am writing this.
I saw Tomas from Denmark fall to the ground, Dawood from the UK hit on the inner thigh near his groin, Ali from Palestine hit in the leg, and tear gas canisters were oozing with white smoke from what seemed like every inch of the land.
I exited the street to find a group of 8 Palestinian, Israeli, and internationals with their hands raised high to the sky, shouting not to shoot. Because of my medic background, and because of the recent shootings previously mentioned, I hovered nearby.
Suddenly, Ms. Macguire, the Irish Nobel Peace prize winner was shot in the leg.
Two other street medics carried her to safety and the army continued to fire into the non-violent crowd.
The resilience was astounding. The demonstrators kept regrouping. Even Ms. Macguire, after being shot and with red, watery tear-gassed eyes– she rejoined the march.
Eventually, there was an ad-hoc town hall meeting. Habibi, a Palestinian from Jenin stood atop a dirt mound and announced that we were moving forward. “We need internationals to join us! We are going to cross to the other side. Let’s just move quickly as one group and we will make it!”
On the other side of army lines stood Dr. Barghouti, the crowd below Tito, and other activists who were being harassed by the soldiers.
So we charged forward, through clouds of tear gas, and reached the hill toward the Wall. Soldiers refrained from firing tear gas now since we stood just inches away. The canon of the water tank moved its aim from the demonstration towards this new crowd of activists forming on the hill near the jeeps.
Occupation forces started throwing people around, threatening them with arrest. Soldiers were swinging their batons. A young Palestinian boy was hit and was carried away over someone’s shoulder.
Palestinian boy is carried away after being beaten by Israeli forces
“Shame!,” someone exclaimed to a soldier, “Is that how the moral Israeli army treats Palestinians children?”
The soldiers were trying to force the activists apart but they locked arms and became one solid unit that the army just could not dismantle. When the soldiers turned their attention on a singular activist and charged at him, the line of activists unlocked arms and puppy-piled on top of him, saving him from the soldiers’ abuse.
Tear gas and rubber bullets continued to be fired at the demonstration back across the path. Those who saw that we made it across attempted to join us but the army was determined to not let this happen. And there was Tito was up on that tower.
When a Palestinian teenager fainted from tear gas inhalation, demonstrators called for Dr. Barghouti. He came to the boy’s assistance, checked his jugular pulse, splashed some water on his face, and helped him off to safety. Others throughout the demonstration were treated with tear gas inhalation.
Three internationals were detained, handcuffed, and brought to one of the army jeeps. Another was de-arrested by the group who made it to the hill. Soldiers were confining these activists to a small space.
I could see them whispering to each other and it became clear to me that the water canon was pointing directly at the activists. (Water canons can knock the wind out of you and cause serious damage). And the soldiers kept backing away as if they didn’t want to get splashed. “Follow the soldiers!” one of the activists yelled. The soldier in the water tank would be less inclined to shoot at the activists if they were adjacent the soldiers. So no water was fired as the activists followed the soldiers’ steps, still locking arms.
After some time, a Palestinian from the organizing committee amplified his voice over the bullhorn, saying that the demonstration should come to an end. He negotiated with the soldier that they would not fire at the activists during the retreat.
As they left, they moved away the barbed wire that the soldiers had used as a roadblock. The demonstrators from the other side of the road marched towards the ones who had crossed the army line.
Chanting ensued and the two groups rejoined. After a quick decision, the whole of the group marched back towards the jeeps and soldiers and immediately sat on the ground, locking arms. Over the loud speaker, someone told Tito’s story— of a man who came all the way from Puerto Rico to stand in solidarity, to climb the tower to hand the Palestinian symbol of independence, and to risk arrest and deportation. The crowd answered back, “Tito! Tito! Tito!”
Then, the three men who were arrested were released and rejoined the demonstrators.
At this point, the Bil’in’s Second Annual Conference on Non-violence came to an end. The soldiers exited the gate in the Apartheid Wall. The demonstrators went to tend their wound, to expel the tear gas powder from their noses and lungs. Others, like Ursula from Switzerland, went to the hospital because she was shot in the stomach with a rubber bullet.
Ana Maria, a 63 year old retired lawyer from Spain, tended to her stomach after also being hit with a rubber bullet.
Rubber-coated steel bullet wound on stomach
An estimated 25 people were either hit with rubber bullets, soldier batons, or received medical care from tear gas inhalation.
And Tito remains in prison. It is the first time that the military commander has used a practice for an international that is normally used against the Palestinians. When a Palestinian is arrested, the army usually hold the person for 96 hours before even seeing a judge. The commander can then extend that 96 hours for and another 96 hours. With Israelis or internationals who are arrested in similar situations, they are usually released before 24 hours.
Lymor Goldstein, Tito’s lawyer, has said that the court may deport Tito tomorrow, even though Tito was scheduled to leave Palestine on Sunday (tomorrow) anyways.
The people of Bil’in and their Israeli and international solidarity friends will be back next Friday, to continue their non-violent struggle against Israeli Apartheid and land theft.
Peace campaigner shot by Israelis: Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan
[Published: Sunday 22, April 2007 - 09:28]
Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan has been shot by Israeli troops during a protest on the West Bank, according to peace activists.
The Nobel laureate from Belfast was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet when a protest exploded into violence last Friday near Ramallah on the West Bank, said fellow protesters.
The veteran peace campaigner had been in the Palestinian village of Bil'in last week to speak at an international conference.
For the past two years the village has been the scene of weekly protests against security fences erected by Israel.
Speaking after the incident on Friday, Mrs Corrigan who was later treated in hospital, said she wanted to say that "this separation wall, contrary to what the Israelis say, will not prevent attacks and violence.
"What will prevent attacks and violence is a peace agreement between the two peoples, and I am sure the Israeli people, like the Palestinian people, want peace."
Campaigners said that 24 demonstrators, including Corrigan, were hurt when Israeli troops blocked the protest march last Friday afternoon.
One campaigner, from the International Women's Peace Service, who took part in the protest told how troops fired between 30 and 50 canisters of tear gas into the crowd before opening fire with rubber bullets.
Speaking from Haris, she told Sunday Life: "Mairead was able to walk after being hit by the rubber bullet, but she was clearly suffering badly from the effects of tear gas.
"(The disturbance happened) when soldiers prevented people getting to the wall. The soldiers then started throwing gas canisters into the crowd."
Corrigan shared the Noble Peace Prize in 1976 for her work with the Peace People.
Mass Murderers
By Cindy Sheehan
“Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.”
~Chief Seattle~1855
Last night, at the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner, we did not get the usual “stellar” comedy performance from George Bush in deference to the Virginia Tech tragedy. Who can forget that “uproariously hilarious” bit he did looking for WMD under the couch in his office in 2004 shortly before my son was killed in Iraq by this joker in chief? How nice that George reined in his comedic impulses for the families and friends of the murdered VT students…because I can assure you, their families are finding nothing funny right now.
Troops dying unnecessarily every day in Iraq has not even slowed down this annual event with correspondents and George Bush has not found it in the slight bit crucial to temper his comedy routines in deference to the families that he has destroyed by his war for profit in Iraq .
By all accounts, the mass murderer of VT’s horrific events on Monday was a disturbed loner and there was plenty of warnings and hints that he may do something violent, but no one could predict the magnitude of the horror.
From accounts of George Bush’ early life (Bush on the Couch, Dr. Justin Frank) from thinking it was funny to put firecrackers in the anus’ of frogs and blowing them up to burning pledges to his fraternity with cigarettes and his alcohol and cocaine abuse…we, as a nation, should have seen his mass murderous tendencies coming from leagues away. Instead we rolled over and played apathetic when he was unconstitutionally selected by the Supreme Court as President in 2000. He gleefully made fun of people he was about to execute as governor of Texas , and he and Al (“I don’t recall”) Gonzales never had an ounce of compassion for a single soul condemned to death.
In early August of 2005, 21 Marines from Ohio were murdered by their Commander in Chief’s homicidal tendencies and there was no national mourning for them. Not one elected official called for a nation-wide lowering of flags to half mast for these brave souls who were mortally abused by George’s war of terror. The cable news networks did not go on 24 hour reportage of the events, and person, who killed them. There were no profiles of their lives. No bereaved family member had the opportunity to tell America what a wonderful son, friend, lover, student, athlete, was lost in the desert of Iraq : too young, and just as random, violently, or senselessly as the ones killed in Blacksburg , Va. last week.
My friend, Vickie Castro’s son, Jonathan, was one of 14 soldiers killed in a mess tent incident shortly before Christmas in 2004. Jon was Vickie’s only child. He was a brilliant, handsome man with a bright future ahead of him. He made a horrible, but honorable, mistake by enlisting in the US Military to be sent off to war to die to enrich Dick and George and their buddies, and he and his family paid dearly for that honest mistake. The flags may have been lowered in his hometown, but no one, but Jonathan’s closest friends and family mourn him to this day in this country. Jonathan’s coffin wasn’t even allowed to be photographed and his body was returned to his grieving family with the utmost secrecy as if to cover the shame of this rogue state.
We, as a nation, were rightly shocked, saddened and repulsed by the murders of 33 students and faculty at Virginia Tech. My heart grieves with the friends and families of the fallen. I know what a ghastly path they have been forced to step off on by a maniac who unthinkably had easy access to weapons of limited (but infinite) destruction.
Another sociopathic killer with inexplicable and unconstrained access to the planet’s most deadly arsenal, George Bush, has condemned 100 times 33 of our nation’s bravest and brightest to death and most people walk around indifferent to the fact that our White House is inhabited by a serial killer of historic proportions. Bloody King George has even more tragically claimed the lives of more than 20,000 times 33 innocent victims in Iraq . Where is the public horror and outrage over these killings? Where was the 24 hour news coverage this past week when over 500 people were killed in Baghdad and 65 decomposing bodies were found?
I was in DC this past week when George’s bullet proof entourage (he always travels like he is outside the Green Zone in Iraq—how sad to have so many enemies you have to be put in a prison of your own making) hurried down to Blacksburg to participate in memorial services for the slain—yet, he has not attended one service for one of his murder victims in Iraq.
Many people will justify this reaction to the crimes at Virginia Tech and lack of reaction to our murdered soldiers and people of Iraq by saying that our troops volunteer and the people of Iraq are uncounted collateral damage. Consequently, because we have an all volunteer military our children are getting what they deserve and because BushCo took another tragedy of 9-11 and exploited those needless deaths to invade a country that had nothing to do with it, the people of Iraq deserve this constant violence? Thirty-three dead is sickeningly yet realistically a good day in Iraq . When do we Americans rise up and insist the carnage end for our brothers and sisters there?
Life is life and it is all precious—whether students in college, soldiers in the field, or inhabitants of an occupied, defenseless country. Until we as a nation wake up to the fact that our state’s directed violence to any human demeans and implicates each and every one of us in these crimes, the actions of April 16th and state sponsored horrors that have been perpetrated on a daily basis since Sept 11, 2001, will continue. True peace and true justice are not possible when our national compassion is limited to a certain demographic of victim.
Until we wake up and abhor and are appalled at violence even when it is not directed at unborn babies, or mostly white Americans, we are all condemned to living under regimes that condone, profit from, order and commit mass murder.
Please join Cindy, The Camp Casey Peace Institute, Gold Star Families for Peace, CODEPINK , Congress Reps John Conyers (D-Mi) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), and others, as we march on the Nation’s Capital on May 14th demanding an end to the violence in the Middle East and for the impeachment of the Bush Regime.
“Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.”
~Chief Seattle~1855
Last night, at the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner, we did not get the usual “stellar” comedy performance from George Bush in deference to the Virginia Tech tragedy. Who can forget that “uproariously hilarious” bit he did looking for WMD under the couch in his office in 2004 shortly before my son was killed in Iraq by this joker in chief? How nice that George reined in his comedic impulses for the families and friends of the murdered VT students…because I can assure you, their families are finding nothing funny right now.
Troops dying unnecessarily every day in Iraq has not even slowed down this annual event with correspondents and George Bush has not found it in the slight bit crucial to temper his comedy routines in deference to the families that he has destroyed by his war for profit in Iraq .
By all accounts, the mass murderer of VT’s horrific events on Monday was a disturbed loner and there was plenty of warnings and hints that he may do something violent, but no one could predict the magnitude of the horror.
From accounts of George Bush’ early life (Bush on the Couch, Dr. Justin Frank) from thinking it was funny to put firecrackers in the anus’ of frogs and blowing them up to burning pledges to his fraternity with cigarettes and his alcohol and cocaine abuse…we, as a nation, should have seen his mass murderous tendencies coming from leagues away. Instead we rolled over and played apathetic when he was unconstitutionally selected by the Supreme Court as President in 2000. He gleefully made fun of people he was about to execute as governor of Texas , and he and Al (“I don’t recall”) Gonzales never had an ounce of compassion for a single soul condemned to death.
In early August of 2005, 21 Marines from Ohio were murdered by their Commander in Chief’s homicidal tendencies and there was no national mourning for them. Not one elected official called for a nation-wide lowering of flags to half mast for these brave souls who were mortally abused by George’s war of terror. The cable news networks did not go on 24 hour reportage of the events, and person, who killed them. There were no profiles of their lives. No bereaved family member had the opportunity to tell America what a wonderful son, friend, lover, student, athlete, was lost in the desert of Iraq : too young, and just as random, violently, or senselessly as the ones killed in Blacksburg , Va. last week.
My friend, Vickie Castro’s son, Jonathan, was one of 14 soldiers killed in a mess tent incident shortly before Christmas in 2004. Jon was Vickie’s only child. He was a brilliant, handsome man with a bright future ahead of him. He made a horrible, but honorable, mistake by enlisting in the US Military to be sent off to war to die to enrich Dick and George and their buddies, and he and his family paid dearly for that honest mistake. The flags may have been lowered in his hometown, but no one, but Jonathan’s closest friends and family mourn him to this day in this country. Jonathan’s coffin wasn’t even allowed to be photographed and his body was returned to his grieving family with the utmost secrecy as if to cover the shame of this rogue state.
We, as a nation, were rightly shocked, saddened and repulsed by the murders of 33 students and faculty at Virginia Tech. My heart grieves with the friends and families of the fallen. I know what a ghastly path they have been forced to step off on by a maniac who unthinkably had easy access to weapons of limited (but infinite) destruction.
Another sociopathic killer with inexplicable and unconstrained access to the planet’s most deadly arsenal, George Bush, has condemned 100 times 33 of our nation’s bravest and brightest to death and most people walk around indifferent to the fact that our White House is inhabited by a serial killer of historic proportions. Bloody King George has even more tragically claimed the lives of more than 20,000 times 33 innocent victims in Iraq . Where is the public horror and outrage over these killings? Where was the 24 hour news coverage this past week when over 500 people were killed in Baghdad and 65 decomposing bodies were found?
I was in DC this past week when George’s bullet proof entourage (he always travels like he is outside the Green Zone in Iraq—how sad to have so many enemies you have to be put in a prison of your own making) hurried down to Blacksburg to participate in memorial services for the slain—yet, he has not attended one service for one of his murder victims in Iraq.
Many people will justify this reaction to the crimes at Virginia Tech and lack of reaction to our murdered soldiers and people of Iraq by saying that our troops volunteer and the people of Iraq are uncounted collateral damage. Consequently, because we have an all volunteer military our children are getting what they deserve and because BushCo took another tragedy of 9-11 and exploited those needless deaths to invade a country that had nothing to do with it, the people of Iraq deserve this constant violence? Thirty-three dead is sickeningly yet realistically a good day in Iraq . When do we Americans rise up and insist the carnage end for our brothers and sisters there?
Life is life and it is all precious—whether students in college, soldiers in the field, or inhabitants of an occupied, defenseless country. Until we as a nation wake up to the fact that our state’s directed violence to any human demeans and implicates each and every one of us in these crimes, the actions of April 16th and state sponsored horrors that have been perpetrated on a daily basis since Sept 11, 2001, will continue. True peace and true justice are not possible when our national compassion is limited to a certain demographic of victim.
Until we wake up and abhor and are appalled at violence even when it is not directed at unborn babies, or mostly white Americans, we are all condemned to living under regimes that condone, profit from, order and commit mass murder.
Please join Cindy, The Camp Casey Peace Institute, Gold Star Families for Peace, CODEPINK , Congress Reps John Conyers (D-Mi) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), and others, as we march on the Nation’s Capital on May 14th demanding an end to the violence in the Middle East and for the impeachment of the Bush Regime.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Protests in Russia: The Real Story
The heavy-handed response by Russian authorities to last weekend’s demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg is just another illustration of a tightening-up of the Russian political space. A Jeffersonian democracy Putin’s Russia is not. Just the other day the leader of the newly-created Just Russia opposition—yet pro-Putin—party, Speaker of the Council of the Federation Sergei Mironov, suggested extending Putin’s term and reminded us all that according to a recent public opinion poll, 69 percent of Russians are in favor of keeping the president in power, even if it would require changes to the constitution. Putin so far has firmly rejected this possibility, but informed sources in the Kremlin suggest that discussion of how to keep Putin as a dominant figure is growing, whether it would require amending the constitution to permit him to stay president or finding some other arrangement that would allow him to stay in charge.
It is perfectly appropriate, and indeed necessary, not to whitewash Russian domestic practices, as President George W. Bush once did. What is not appropriate, however, is to accuse Putin and his government of all kinds of terrible deeds—often providing highly misleading information in the process—just because he is supposed to be undemocratic. And that is clearly what happened with coverage of last weekend’s protests in much of the mainstream media in the United States. The Wall Street Journal editorial page—which believes that Vice President Dick Cheney is a wise statesman, John Bolton an effective diplomat and Paul Wolfowitz a model anti-corruption reformer—has predictably adopted the cause of their regular contributor, former chess champion Garry Kasparov, who was one of the leaders of the opposition marches. Mr. Kasparov was a great chess player. He is also a man of courage and determination. But anyone familiar with his career in politics, and as a matter of fact, in chess long before it, would know that he has a strong propensity for theatrics and artificial confrontation. Quoting Mr. Kasparov as a dispassionate commentator on his own struggle, as The Wall Street Journal editorial page did, is unpersuasive.
But, being persuasive is in the eyes of the beholder, and editorial pages by definition are entitled to their opinions. Not so the news pages. In the case of The Washington Post, news stories regarding the April 14 and 15 events in Moscow and St. Petersburg were written as if they were coordinated with the notoriously anti-Putin attitude of The Washington Post editorial page. In their April 18 article, " Kremlin Says Riot Police Overreacted ", by Peter Finn, both the text and the photographs present a highly misleading picture. The photographs show Garry Kasparov appealing to the menacing-looking police officers. It also shows the police in anti-riot gear overwhelming a long-haired, bespectacled young man. And talking about the organizers of the marches, Mr. Finn refers to Garry Kasparov and former–Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov—and nobody else. He does not mention at all that another organizer—and a key ally of Mr. Kasparov and Mr. Kasyanov—was Eduard Limonov, leader of the nationalist and militantly anti-American outlawed National Bolshevik Party. As the photographs accompanying this article show—and these pictures come from grani.ru , an online anti-government publication to which Mr. Limonov is a columnist—a significant, and the most assertive, part of the demonstrators marched under the Nazi-style banners of the National Bolshevik Party, where the hammer and sickle replace the swastika. And some of the demonstrators did not just march, according to the opposition paper Novaya Gazeta, where Anna Politkovskaya used to work before she was murdered last fall. In a number of instances they also attacked the police, who were trying to block their path when they took an unauthorized route.
When the Russian government was deciding how to respond to last weekend’s marches, they had to take into account what had happened at the March 3 demonstrations of the same coalition in St. Petersburg, where Mr. Limonov’s militants overran police lines and roughed up some of the officers. In Mr. Limonov’s own words on that occasion, "the activists of the National Bolshevik Party have fully justified our hopes. They really were on March 3 the avant-garde’s strike battalion, a hot shell, in all confrontations the first and most militant." Limonov added that in addition to their own flags in St. Petersburg, they were marching under the black, gold and white banners of the Russian empire, which Mr. Limonov’s party wants to recreate. He talked about the spirit of "revolution" and put Moscow authorities on notice that they better not interfere with the April 14 march if they wanted to avoid the same assault to which police were subjected in St. Petersburg on March 3. Mr. Kasyanov and Mr. Kasparov apparently came to the conclusion that almost nobody is bad enough not to be an acceptable ally against the Putin government. Traditional liberals with strong democratic credentials such as Yabloko and the Union of the Right Wing Forces (SPS) refused to cooperate with Mr. Limonov.
That still would not justify a crackdown against peaceful demonstrators and would justify even less the tendency of the Moscow city authorities to tightly control where the opposition can meet and march, often, as I have witnessed myself in the past, with transparently false excuses such as closing the street for repairs for several hours just to make an opposition march impossible. Police violence there certainly was, but to put things in perspective, Mr. Kasparov was detained and released several hours later with a fine of $40. Mr. Limonov was also detained for a number of hours, but has not been fined so far. Both he and Mr. Kasparov were summoned to appear before post-KGB Federal Security Service officials. Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov was protected against the police by his own security detail. One assumes that if detaining him would be a priority, it could somehow be arranged.
Why the police overreacted this time, as President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has acknowledged, to the relatively small demonstrations of a few thousand people at most is anybody’s guess. Perhaps it can be explained partly by a concern of how far Mr. Limonov and his militants would be prepared to go if allowed the freedom to move around Moscow. Perhaps there was a sentiment typical in Russian security agencies that not doing enough is more dangerous vis-à-vis one’s superiors than doing too much. Perhaps some in the Russian government were provoked by exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s statements on the eve of the march that he was providing funds for a revolution, which was supposed to start precisely with marches like those that Mr. Kasparov, Mr. Kasyanov and Mr. Limonov were organizing in Moscow. And quite possibly some in the Russian government saw the protests as a welcome opportunity to show that might is always right in Russia and any resistance, particularly violent resistance, is hopeless and will be crushed at the outset.
This is not a pretty picture just as the violent clashes between police and protesters in Genoa over the G-8 and in Washington at the World Bank and IMF were not pretty by most accounts. Some overreaction clearly took place, but I still wonder whether a demonstration in Berlin with neo-Nazi symbols appealing to recreate the Third Reich would generate the same kind of an outcry as in the case of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Actually, there is no need to wonder; we all know the answer.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Nobel peace laureate Corrigan injured in anti-fence protest
Noble Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan was treated for injury in leg sustained by rubber bullet Ali Waked Published: 04.20.07, 16:47 / Israel News
Nobel Peace Prize Mairead Corrigan has been injured during confrontations between security forces and left-wing activists protesting the security fence route near Bilin, activists said.
Corrigan, who won the prize in 1976 for her work in encouraging a peaceful solution to the Northern Ireland dispute, was hit in the leg by a rubber bullet and was transferred to a hospital for treatment. She was also said to have inhaled large quantities of teargas.
Policemen and soldiers used teargas grenades and rubber bullets to disperse the routine Friday protest against the security fence near the Palestinian village of Bilin and were confronted by a hail of stones.
Two Border Guard policemen were lightly injured by stones.
The security forces say the area where activists hold their protest is a no-access military zone which they have to evacuate of Palestinian and Israeli protesters every Friday.
Activists say the fence route near Bilin was designed to expropriate Palestinian farm land which will be used to expand a Jewish settlement in the area.
Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti and Deputy Prime Minister Assam al-Ahmad also took part in the protest.
"I salute the residents of Bilin for their peaceful struggle in a region that is so violent and I call on the Israeli public, whom I know
Tito Kayak was also there
"I want to say that this separation wall, contrary to what the Israeli say, will not prevent attacks and violence. What will prevent attacks and violence is a peace agreement between the two peoples, and I sure the Israeli people, like the Palestinian people, wants peace," Corrigan added.Puerto Rican peace activist Tito Kayak climbed a tower on which the army had planted security cameras and hoisted a Palestinian flag.
"All I did was to express my identification with the villagers against the wall which is believed to evil and illegal by the whole world and many leaders like Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and the United Nations," Kayak said.
Kayak, who was arrested in 2000 for climbing to the top deck of the Statue of Liberty in New York, was apprehended along with six other activists by policemen.
Kayak was a key figure in the 1999 Navy-Vieques protests in Puerto Rico against the US Navy's use of the Vieques Island for bombing exercises. The protests forced the US to end its activities on the Island.
Monday, April 16, 2007
War Objector's Dad Becomes a Critic
Monday April 16, 2007 10:31 AM
By BRIAN CHARLTON
Associated Press Writer
HONOLULU (AP) - Ever since Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada refused to go to Iraq, his father has toured the country to criticize the war and gain support for his son.
Bob Watada said his life dramatically changed after his son became the first military officer to face a court-martial for publicly refusing to deploy to Iraq.
He researched events leading up the war, started criticizing the Bush administration on its reasons for invading Iraq and spent much of the past year traveling with his wife to speak about his son and raise money for his legal costs.
``It was because of him that I've gone out and educated myself,'' s't want to commit acts that he felt could be war crimes. He faces charges of missing movement and conduct unbecoming an officer. If convicted, he could be sentenced to six years in prison and be dishonorably discharged.
He faces a second court-martial July 16 after his first military trial in February ended when the judge said he didn't believe the soldier fully understood a pretrial agreement he signed.
His lawyers have advised him to stop talking about the case, his father said.
``My son has somewhat backed off a little bit,'' Watada said. ``He's somewhat become afraid of what people are going to do to him right now. He's become very cautious.''
Bob Watada, however, continues to attract attention despite canceling many of his appearances after his wife had a stroke. He said he still gets about 30 e-mails a day.
Watada, who had seven brothers in the military, also opposed the Vietnam War and extended his education to avoid the draft, claiming that that war was illegal.
He said he discussed his opinions on war with his son when Ehren decided to join the Army. ``He felt there were terrorists out there and he wanted to do his part,'' Watada said.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
200,000 March Against Turkey’s Leader
By SUZAN FRASER
ANKARA, Turkey _ More than 200,000 Turks protested against Turkey's Islamic-rooted prime minister Saturday, demonstrating the intense opposition he could face from Turkey's secular establishment if he decides to run for president next month.
Protesters called on the government to resign and chanted slogans including, "We don't want an imam as president."
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has brandished his strong religious convictions while at the same time pushing Turkey toward European Union membership, represents a challenge to secularists' traditional approach to government in this 99-percent Muslim country. Many fear that if he or someone close to him wins the presidency, the government will be able to implement an Islamist agenda without opposition.
But with Erdogan's popularity and firm control over parliament, his opponents may have little power to stop him if he does decide to run. His party was elected to an overwhelming majority in parliament and can appoint whomever it wants to the presidency.
The pro-secular military retains a strong influence over politics, however, and in 1997 generals pressured Erdogan's mentor out of the prime minister's office because he was viewed as excessively religious. Any serious tensions between the government and the military could have a serious effect on the economy, analysts warn.
Tens of thousands traveled from across the country overnight to attend the rally in downtown Ankara. Police cordoned off the meeting area _ near the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered founder of modern Turkey and the symbol of its secular identity. Police on the scene estimated the crowd at more than 200,000.
Many residents in the capital hung flags out of their balconies or windows in support of the rally. Protesters shouted, "Turkey is secular and will remain secular." Many draped themselves in Turkish flags and carried posters of Ataturk.
"I'm here to prevent Recep Tayyip Erdogan from becoming president," said Serkan Ozcan, a 30-year-old engineer who traveled nearly 370 miles from Izmir to attend the rally. "Never has someone of that mentality been president and never will there be."
Turkey's staunchly pro-secular president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, said Friday that the threat Islamic fundamentalism posed to the country was higher than ever _ a warning clearly directed at Erdogan.
"For the first time, the pillars of the secular republic are being openly questioned," Sezer said in an address to military officers.
Erdogan's government denies it has an Islamic agenda, but critics say the government is inching the country toward increased religious rule.
The prime minister has stoked secularist concerns by speaking out against restrictions on wearing Islamic-style head scarves in government offices and schools and taking steps to bolster religious institutions. He also tried to criminalize adultery before being forced to back down under intense EU pressure, and some party-run municipalities have taken steps to ban alcohol consumption.
Sezer steps down on May 16. Parliament, which is dominated by lawmakers from Erdogan's party, will elect the new president early next month. Erdogan's party was expected to announce its candidates for the position this month.
"We hope that someone who is loyal to the principles of the republic _ not just in words but in essence _ is elected president," Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the military, said Thursday in a statement widely interpreted as a warning to Erdogan not to run.
The fiercely secular generals staged three coups between 1960 and 1980, and in 1997 led a campaign that pressured Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan's pro-Islamic government out of power.
The rally was organized by Sener Eruygur, president of the Ataturk Thought Association and former commander of Turkey's paramilitary forces.
Although largely ceremonial, the presidency has become a symbol for secularism under Sezer. A former Constitutional Court judge, he has vetoed a record number of laws he deemed to be in violation of the secular constitution and has blocked efforts to appoint hundreds of reportedly Islamic-oriented candidates to important civil service positions.
Adding to secularists' concerns over an Erdogan run, some members of Erdogan's party have floated the idea of moving Turkey toward a U.S.-style presidential system with a more powerful executive rather than the current parliamentary system.
The generally pro-government newspaper Zaman reported Friday that Erdogan had ordered his party to avoid talk of moving toward a presidential system until after the elections.
Associated Press writers Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara and Benjamin Harvey in Istanbul contributed to this report.
A service of the Associated Press(AP)
ANKARA, Turkey _ More than 200,000 Turks protested against Turkey's Islamic-rooted prime minister Saturday, demonstrating the intense opposition he could face from Turkey's secular establishment if he decides to run for president next month.
Protesters called on the government to resign and chanted slogans including, "We don't want an imam as president."
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has brandished his strong religious convictions while at the same time pushing Turkey toward European Union membership, represents a challenge to secularists' traditional approach to government in this 99-percent Muslim country. Many fear that if he or someone close to him wins the presidency, the government will be able to implement an Islamist agenda without opposition.
But with Erdogan's popularity and firm control over parliament, his opponents may have little power to stop him if he does decide to run. His party was elected to an overwhelming majority in parliament and can appoint whomever it wants to the presidency.
The pro-secular military retains a strong influence over politics, however, and in 1997 generals pressured Erdogan's mentor out of the prime minister's office because he was viewed as excessively religious. Any serious tensions between the government and the military could have a serious effect on the economy, analysts warn.
Tens of thousands traveled from across the country overnight to attend the rally in downtown Ankara. Police cordoned off the meeting area _ near the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered founder of modern Turkey and the symbol of its secular identity. Police on the scene estimated the crowd at more than 200,000.
Many residents in the capital hung flags out of their balconies or windows in support of the rally. Protesters shouted, "Turkey is secular and will remain secular." Many draped themselves in Turkish flags and carried posters of Ataturk.
"I'm here to prevent Recep Tayyip Erdogan from becoming president," said Serkan Ozcan, a 30-year-old engineer who traveled nearly 370 miles from Izmir to attend the rally. "Never has someone of that mentality been president and never will there be."
Turkey's staunchly pro-secular president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, said Friday that the threat Islamic fundamentalism posed to the country was higher than ever _ a warning clearly directed at Erdogan.
"For the first time, the pillars of the secular republic are being openly questioned," Sezer said in an address to military officers.
Erdogan's government denies it has an Islamic agenda, but critics say the government is inching the country toward increased religious rule.
The prime minister has stoked secularist concerns by speaking out against restrictions on wearing Islamic-style head scarves in government offices and schools and taking steps to bolster religious institutions. He also tried to criminalize adultery before being forced to back down under intense EU pressure, and some party-run municipalities have taken steps to ban alcohol consumption.
Sezer steps down on May 16. Parliament, which is dominated by lawmakers from Erdogan's party, will elect the new president early next month. Erdogan's party was expected to announce its candidates for the position this month.
"We hope that someone who is loyal to the principles of the republic _ not just in words but in essence _ is elected president," Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the military, said Thursday in a statement widely interpreted as a warning to Erdogan not to run.
The fiercely secular generals staged three coups between 1960 and 1980, and in 1997 led a campaign that pressured Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan's pro-Islamic government out of power.
The rally was organized by Sener Eruygur, president of the Ataturk Thought Association and former commander of Turkey's paramilitary forces.
Although largely ceremonial, the presidency has become a symbol for secularism under Sezer. A former Constitutional Court judge, he has vetoed a record number of laws he deemed to be in violation of the secular constitution and has blocked efforts to appoint hundreds of reportedly Islamic-oriented candidates to important civil service positions.
Adding to secularists' concerns over an Erdogan run, some members of Erdogan's party have floated the idea of moving Turkey toward a U.S.-style presidential system with a more powerful executive rather than the current parliamentary system.
The generally pro-government newspaper Zaman reported Friday that Erdogan had ordered his party to avoid talk of moving toward a presidential system until after the elections.
Associated Press writers Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara and Benjamin Harvey in Istanbul contributed to this report.
A service of the Associated Press(AP)
Monday, April 9, 2007
Houston Freeway Protest Against Israel
April 8, 2007
This blurb comes from a relative in the Houston area about a small bunch of people protesting the Palestinian occupation and any attack on Iran on a bridge. This is just for people in the Houston area to join in if you are against these actions.
This blurb comes from a relative in the Houston area about a small bunch of people protesting the Palestinian occupation and any attack on Iran on a bridge. This is just for people in the Houston area to join in if you are against these actions.
D I S T R I B U T E W I D E L Y , the announcement goes about a Planned Houston Freeway Protest Against Israel. The pictures show past protests.
FREEWAY BLOGGING (PROTESTS WITH SIGNS) IN HOUSTON, TEXAS ON MANDELL BRIDGE (NOT WOODHEAD) OVER HWY. 59 (SOUTHWEST FREEWAY) ALL INVITED. Photos of previous Wednesday protests show the site.
WHEN: Every Wednesday until further notice (starting Wed. 4-04-07)
TIME: 5:00 to 6:15pm
THEME: ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE--STOP ISRAELI CRUELTY--NO WAR WITH IRAN.
THE RESPONSES TO OUR SIGNS FROM THE CARS ON THE FREEWAY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN OVERWHELMINGLY POSITIVE AND GROWING, BUT WITH PATIENCE, IT WILL TAKE TIME TO PUT A DENT IN THE 4 DECADES OF SKEWED PRO-ISRAELI MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE ISRAEL/PALESTINE CONFLICT WHERE A MINIMUM OF 3 PALESTINIANS HAVE BEEN KILLED TO 1 ISRAELI, BUT IN TIME,THE PALESTINIANS WILL BE FREE SOMEDAY.
The SIGNS:
STOP U.S./ISRAEL WARS
STOP ISRAELI CRUELTY
PALESTINE SUFFERS
FREE PALESTINE
ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE
U.S. STOP FUNDING ISRAEL
THANK YOU FOR SAYING NO TO WAR
NO WAR WITH IRAN
READ CARTER'S BOOK ON PALESTINE
HANDS OFF THE PEOPLE OF IRAN
It reads on....
Why are we on the bridge protesting the U. S. unconditional political and economic support (approx. 10 million per day) to the Israeli Government when they continue the oppression, war crimes, and atrocities against the Palestinian people?
The average American doesn't know the extent of the suffering of the Palestinians and that this oppression is a predominant cause of radical Muslim terrorists, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism. When our government and Congressmen are unwilling to tell the truth about this conflict, and with the corporate media, which is highly biased in favor of Israel, this gross injustice is effectively kept under cover to "protect and defend" our twin brother, Israel. Even KPFT cooperates in this cover-up, inadvertently or intentionally, by canceling Flashpoints, which boldly attacks injustice where it exists, in Haiti, Darfur, or in Palestine. With our (US) phony "defense and protection" policies for our friend Israel, rather than defending and protecting, would not it be ironic if we contribute to its demise.
Injustices cannot last forever. History and inviolate laws inform us that the oppressor may become the oppressed. The Palestinian people are not going away.
Our efforts on the bridge may be slight but with malice toward none we would attempt to strike at the root of evil rather than hack at the branches and create a dialog for honest discussion to balance biased media coverage.
So if you’re in the Huston area, drop over on Wednesday afternoons and join in.
Hundreds of thousands turnout for anti-US rally
Huge turnout for anti-US rally
Staff and agenciesMonday April 9, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Iraqi Shia supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr wave the Iraqi national flags during an anti-US rally in Najaf. Photograph: Qassem Zein/AFP
Hundreds of thousands of supporters of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr took to the streets of two Shia holy cities in Iraq today and protested against "US occupiers".
The rally was called by Mr Sadr, who said in a statement yesterday that his militia followers should redouble efforts to drive US forces out of Iraq, describing them as "your arch-enemy".
Today, clad in Iraqi flags, demonstrators marched from the city of Kufa to neighbouring Najaf, which is 100 miles south of Baghdad, shouting "we obey your call" and other slogans against the US "occupiers".
BBC News reported that up to 1 million Shias were expected to take to the streets in Najaf.
Yesterday thousands of residents in Baghdad's largest Shia slum, Sadr City, boarded buses and minivans bound for Najaf for today's rally, which was choreographed to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad's fall.
Leaflets fluttered through the breeze reading: "Yes, Yes to Iraq" and "Yes, Yes to Moqtada. Occupiers should leave Iraq."
The demonstration was peaceful, with two cordons of Iraqi police lining the route. Two ambulances could be seen moving slowly with the marching crowd, poised to help if violence or stampedes broke out.
Mr Sadr commands an enormous following among Iraq's majority Shia population and has close allies in the Shia-dominated government.
As he marched, politician Nassar al-Rubaie, head of Mr Sadr's bloc in parliament, said: "The enemy that is occupying our country is now targeting the dignity of the Iraqi people ... After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded."
Mr Sadr's statement yesterday called for Iraq's army and police to join him in defeating the US.
Today some Iraqi soldiers in uniform joined the crowd, which was led by at least a dozen turbaned clerics - including one Sunni.
Many marchers danced as they moved through the streets.
Security was tight across Iraq, with vehicles banned from the streets in areas affected by the protest march and in Baghdad.
Reacting to the plans for the rally, the government had quickly reinstated today as a holiday, just a day after it had decreed that April 9 no longer would be a day off.
Mr Sadr had reportedly ordered his militia to disarm and stay off the streets during a Baghdad security crackdown by the US and Iraqi forces that began February 14.
However, the cleric has nevertheless recently issued a series of sharp anti-American statements, demanding the immediate withdrawal of US troops.
US officials have said Mr Sadr left Iraq for neighbouring Iran after the start of the Bush administration's "surge" of almost 20,000 new troops in the capital, but his followers say he is in Iraq.
Yesterday's statement from the cleric was apparently issued in response to three days of clashes between his Mahdi army militiamen and US-backed Iraqi troops in Diwaniya, which is 80 miles south of Baghdad.
American troops continued operations in Diwaniya today, detaining four guards at a the office of a Shia political party and scouring two neighbourhoods in the city's northern and eastern sections, Iraqi police said. At least 24 suspects were detained, police said.
Also yesterday, Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, warned that Iraq should not become a crucible for the US and its regional foes Iran and Syria. He said Iraq's security should be the "only issue on the agenda" of a major international conference aimed at finding ways to stabilise the strife-torn country.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Tacoma to Send Pentagon the Bill for Policing Antiwar Port Protests
Last updated April 2, 2007 10:20 p.m. PT
Anti-war protests cost Tacoma $500,000
TACOMA -- Tacoma police say last month's 12-day anti-war protests cost the city an unbudgeted $500,000 to provide a large-scale law enforcement presence.
The rough estimate covers overtime, regular compensation, equipment and food for hundreds of workers from Tacoma police and other agencies, Assistant Chief Bob Sheehan said.
The city plans to ask the Port of Tacoma and the military to cover some of the costs.
"That's a tremendous hit on our budget -- a half-million dollars of unexpected expense," said Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma, adding that the military would get the first invoice.
"I think our request is justifiable," Baarsma said. "I would expect that we would be reimbursed. I would be surprised if we weren't."
Police increased law enforcement at the Port of Tacoma during the convoying and storage of Army Stryker vehicles from March 3 until a ship carrying the military equipment left for Iraq on March 14.
Protesters were there each night.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Video: Students Pelt Karl Rove In Protest
nbc4.com
Video: Students Pelt Karl Rove In Protest
Video: Watch The Report
Slideshow: Images From Scene
No Arrests Were Made
POSTED: 12:21 am EDT April 4, 2007
UPDATED: 8:29 am EDT April 4, 2007
WASHINGTON -- White House Advisor Karl Rove was the target of a protest on the American University campus Tuesday night, News4 reported.
Rove was on the campus to talk to the College Republicans, but when he got outside more than a dozen students began throwing things at him and at his car, an American University spokesperson said.
The students then got on the ground and laid down in front of his car as a protest.
The students said security officials picked them up and carried them away so Rove could leave.
Police said they have dealt with a lot of protests on campus and this one was handled peacefully.
No one was arrested.
Copyright 2007 by nbc4.com. All rights reserved.
Video: Students Pelt Karl Rove In Protest
Video: Watch The Report
Slideshow: Images From Scene
No Arrests Were Made
POSTED: 12:21 am EDT April 4, 2007
UPDATED: 8:29 am EDT April 4, 2007
WASHINGTON -- White House Advisor Karl Rove was the target of a protest on the American University campus Tuesday night, News4 reported.
Rove was on the campus to talk to the College Republicans, but when he got outside more than a dozen students began throwing things at him and at his car, an American University spokesperson said.
The students then got on the ground and laid down in front of his car as a protest.
The students said security officials picked them up and carried them away so Rove could leave.
Police said they have dealt with a lot of protests on campus and this one was handled peacefully.
No one was arrested.
Copyright 2007 by nbc4.com. All rights reserved.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
NYPD spied broadly on citizens before '04 GOP convention
Report: NYPD Watched RNC-Bound Activists
Sunday March 25, 2007 7:31 AM
NEW YORK (AP) - Undercover NYPD officers traveled around the U.S. and even to Europe to observe activists who planned to protest at the 2004 Republican National Convention - including hundreds who showed no sign of illegal intent, a newspaper reported.
Posing as activists or sympathizers, the officers attended meetings of political groups in at least 15 states and filed reports with the police department's intelligence division, The New York Times reported on its Web site Saturday.
The officers involved in the ``RNC Intelligence Squad'' then identified certain groups as potential threats, the Times reported, citing hundreds of still-secret reports it had viewed from the police department's intelligence division. The police often shared information with departments in other cities.
Police spokesman Paul Browne said the activities were legal. He said the operation was an essential part of preparations for the huge crowds that came to the city during the convention.
``Detectives collected information both in-state and out-of-state to learn in advance what was coming our way,'' Browne told the Times.
The secret digests said some of the groups planned acts such as blocking intersections and hacking into Web sites. But the Times reported that the vast majority of the reports it viewed described people who gave no obvious sign of wrongdoing, such as members of the satirical performance-art group ``Billionaires for Bush'' and a group that had planned concerts peppered with political speeches.
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the revelations of ``spying'' were shocking.
``The New York Civil Liberties Union condemns this operation and is considering legal action against the police department,'' she said in a statement.
More than 1,800 people were arrested at the four-day convention at Madison Square Garden, where President Bush accepted his party's nomination for a second term in office. The convention was policed by as many as 10,000 officers.
Pending civil rights lawsuits have challenged the legitimacy of the arrests. Documents released under a court order in January showed that arrested protesters were held before their initial court appearances for up to six times longer than those arrested on charges unrelated to the convention.
The documents also show that the 2001 terrorist attacks heavily influenced the city's decision to detain and fingerprint hundreds of protesters at the convention.Thursday, March 22, 2007
What's red, white and blue with black eye?
Tamara Dietrich
March 21 2007
Patriots can suffer all manner of indignities for their country. Nathan Eckstrand is no exception.
The 23-year-old philosophy student is one of about 90 people from Hampton Roads who joined 30,000 others from around the country to march in the nation's capital Saturday against the Iraq war. It wasn't his first demonstration.
Somewhere between 21st and 22nd streets along the march route, Eckstrand says, counter-demonstrators awash in black leather, camouflage, Marine insignias and the American flag lined both sides of a sidewalk.
It was a gantlet of abuse.
"They were literally shouting in our ears," recalls Eckstrand, who is volunteering at a Mediation Center in Norfolk before starting grad school this fall. Eckstrand's mother marched a couple of paces ahead.
"One of them I guess was carried along with momentum and the feeling of hatred on their side," he says. "He spat on me. And as I was walking away I heard him call me a traitor."
He called Eckstrand another name as well. Expletive deleted.
Nice.
Clair Langford of Poquoson marched the gantlet, too. She's 26-year-old student government vice president at Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton.
She's also an Army veteran. So she was placed with other veterans near the head of the march.
Langford had never demonstrated before and had high hopes. When she first got off the bus, she was so overwhelmed, so grateful to see so many people of like mind that she wept.
Later, at the gantlet, tears streamed down her face again. But they were tears of another sort.
"There was so much anger and so much hate," Langford says. "They were cursing us. They were flipping us off, spitting. That was very difficult for me to go through because there was so much hate in the air."
So much hate, heading into the fifth year of a quagmire.
So many towns and cities feeling the hurt.
While Eckstrand and Langford marched for peace, Smithfield was mourning a young man killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq just days before he planned to marry. Army Sgt. Michael Peek is the latest of 28 men with connections to Hampton Roads to die in this war.
And on Monday, the fourth anniversary of U.S. bombs dropping on Iraq, reporter Stephanie Heinatz profiled just a few of countless local impacts.
A local military mother and retired Navy captain who had to face her own son's deployment. A war widow who is learning to love again. An employer buckling down to cover for a worker called up for his third tour. High-school students struggling to grasp the ethics versus realpolitik of war.
After four years, communities here and all over this country know the reality down to their bones. They've buried their share, too.
They've also taken in thousands of men and women so badly broken from combat that they will never be the same. Lost limbs, scarred souls. Brain trauma, post-traumatic stress.
Everyone hopes that the spilled blood and torn flesh, the body bags and the grieving at gravesides won't be in vain.
A sizable portion of the population fears that it will.
It's fear that put protesters and counter-protesters in Washington on Saturday. One side afraid that good men and women are dying for no good reason. The other side afraid that that will be the verdict of history - and furious at the prospect.
So, with no clear enemy to engage, they bully the peacemakers.
With a tragically flawed grasp of the individual rights their own country stands for, they try to choke off protest and dissent.
As if the loudest voice wins. As if pinning a flag to your chest makes you a patriot.
As if American-style democracy is forcing everyone to goose-step to the same tune.
Or else.
The ones who spit on their own countrymen for the sin of marching for peace, for calling for our servicemen and women to be brought home safe and soon, and for indicting the president and his cabal for instigating chaos need a more robust appreciation of democracy.
Eckstrand, for instance, didn't want to lash out at the man who spat upon him, but talk with him.
"On one hand, I'm actually glad they showed because I think it's always healthy for democracy to see disagreement," Eckstrand says.
"But obviously the way he expressed it was way over the line. His side was trying to shut down disagreement. Disagreement is a good thing. It's out there and they need to respect it, appreciate it.
"The American flag doesn't mean anything if you don't put any faith in it."
Tamara Dietrich can be reached at tdietrich@dailypress.com or 247-7892.
March 21 2007
Patriots can suffer all manner of indignities for their country. Nathan Eckstrand is no exception.
The 23-year-old philosophy student is one of about 90 people from Hampton Roads who joined 30,000 others from around the country to march in the nation's capital Saturday against the Iraq war. It wasn't his first demonstration.
Somewhere between 21st and 22nd streets along the march route, Eckstrand says, counter-demonstrators awash in black leather, camouflage, Marine insignias and the American flag lined both sides of a sidewalk.
It was a gantlet of abuse.
"They were literally shouting in our ears," recalls Eckstrand, who is volunteering at a Mediation Center in Norfolk before starting grad school this fall. Eckstrand's mother marched a couple of paces ahead.
"One of them I guess was carried along with momentum and the feeling of hatred on their side," he says. "He spat on me. And as I was walking away I heard him call me a traitor."
He called Eckstrand another name as well. Expletive deleted.
Nice.
Clair Langford of Poquoson marched the gantlet, too. She's 26-year-old student government vice president at Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton.
She's also an Army veteran. So she was placed with other veterans near the head of the march.
Langford had never demonstrated before and had high hopes. When she first got off the bus, she was so overwhelmed, so grateful to see so many people of like mind that she wept.
Later, at the gantlet, tears streamed down her face again. But they were tears of another sort.
"There was so much anger and so much hate," Langford says. "They were cursing us. They were flipping us off, spitting. That was very difficult for me to go through because there was so much hate in the air."
So much hate, heading into the fifth year of a quagmire.
So many towns and cities feeling the hurt.
While Eckstrand and Langford marched for peace, Smithfield was mourning a young man killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq just days before he planned to marry. Army Sgt. Michael Peek is the latest of 28 men with connections to Hampton Roads to die in this war.
And on Monday, the fourth anniversary of U.S. bombs dropping on Iraq, reporter Stephanie Heinatz profiled just a few of countless local impacts.
A local military mother and retired Navy captain who had to face her own son's deployment. A war widow who is learning to love again. An employer buckling down to cover for a worker called up for his third tour. High-school students struggling to grasp the ethics versus realpolitik of war.
After four years, communities here and all over this country know the reality down to their bones. They've buried their share, too.
They've also taken in thousands of men and women so badly broken from combat that they will never be the same. Lost limbs, scarred souls. Brain trauma, post-traumatic stress.
Everyone hopes that the spilled blood and torn flesh, the body bags and the grieving at gravesides won't be in vain.
A sizable portion of the population fears that it will.
It's fear that put protesters and counter-protesters in Washington on Saturday. One side afraid that good men and women are dying for no good reason. The other side afraid that that will be the verdict of history - and furious at the prospect.
So, with no clear enemy to engage, they bully the peacemakers.
With a tragically flawed grasp of the individual rights their own country stands for, they try to choke off protest and dissent.
As if the loudest voice wins. As if pinning a flag to your chest makes you a patriot.
As if American-style democracy is forcing everyone to goose-step to the same tune.
Or else.
The ones who spit on their own countrymen for the sin of marching for peace, for calling for our servicemen and women to be brought home safe and soon, and for indicting the president and his cabal for instigating chaos need a more robust appreciation of democracy.
Eckstrand, for instance, didn't want to lash out at the man who spat upon him, but talk with him.
"On one hand, I'm actually glad they showed because I think it's always healthy for democracy to see disagreement," Eckstrand says.
"But obviously the way he expressed it was way over the line. His side was trying to shut down disagreement. Disagreement is a good thing. It's out there and they need to respect it, appreciate it.
"The American flag doesn't mean anything if you don't put any faith in it."
Tamara Dietrich can be reached at tdietrich@dailypress.com or 247-7892.
Copyright © 2007, Daily Press
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Activists Assail AIPAC Agenda
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2007, pages 46-47
Northern California Chronicle
Women in Black Spread Message of Peace, Opposition to War, Violence
By Elaine Pasquini
 |  |
Passing a San Francisco cable car and with a police motorcycle escort, Bay Area Women in Black march silently amid holiday shoppers the day after Thanksgiving (Staff photo P. Pasquini). | |
CONTINUING a six-year tradition, some 40 members of Bay Area Women in Black paraded silently through the heart of San Francisco’s shopping district the day after Thanksgiving to bring attention to their message of peace, and opposition to the Iraq war and to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and killing of Palestinian civilians. Dressed in black, the women, and also several men, carried signs reading, “War is Terror,” “We Refuse to Be Enemies,” “Mothers Are Grieving in Israel and Palestine,” and “Support Our Peacemakers.” Motorcycle patrolmen accompanied the group as it was dogged by a noisy handful of pro-Israel hecklers.
Activists Assail AIPAC Agenda
 | |
Demonstrators outside an AIPAC fund-raising luncheon held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center (Staff photo S. Twair). | |
Californians opposed to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) influence on U.S. foreign policy and the $3 billion in annual U.S. aid to Israel protested at the pro-Israel lobby’s recent Northern California membership fund-raisers. Some 70 activists demonstrated outside Sacramento’s Radisson Hotel Dec. 3, while an equal number protested at Santa Clara’s Convention Center the same day. The following day, while AIPAC supporters dined inside San Francisco’s Moscone Center, demonstrators outside the tony fund-raiser venue held a large banner reading “AIPAC DOES NOT SPEAK FOR US.” Later that evening more than 75 activists rallied outside Oakland’s Marriott City Center. The two-day campaign against AIPAC was organized by StopAIPAC.org, a group of Bay Area peace and justice activists. Through the fiscal sponsorship of The Rebuilding Alliance, www.rebuildingalliance.org/>, the group placed a full-page statement of conscience endorsed by 200 individuals in the Nov. 29 edition of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Calling on congressional representatives to “reject the dangerous politics of militarism and confrontation promoted by AIPAC,” the group demands that their representatives “support a new foreign policy based on respect for human rights and international law.”
War Vets, Resisters Speak in San Francisco
|  |
Darrell Anderson (r) with IVAW musicians atop their bus at a rally in San Francisco (Staff photo E. Pasquini). | |
“Action is the only thing that’s going to stop this war,” Iraq war veteran Darrell Anderson told some 75 supporters at San Francisco’s War Memorial Veterans Building Dec. 9. The Purple Heart recipient was discharged from the Army in October 2006 after he returned to the U.S. from Canada, where he fled the night before he was to return to Iraq for his second tour of duty in January 2005. The 24-year-old armored vehicle specialist is presently a member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) cross-country bus tour designed to raise awareness and support military resisters and their families.
Army Pfc. Kyle Snyder, 23, AWOL since April 2005, addressed the crowd by telephone. “I just couldn’t be a part of what I believe to be an illegal and immoral war,” he said of his decision not to fight in Iraq.
Standing in front of the IVAW bus parked on the street across from City Hall, Bob Watada and Rosa Sakanishi, father and stepmother of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the Army’s first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq, spoke to their supporters and the media. “Lack of courage is not Ehren’s reason for refusing to serve in Iraq,” Sakanishi said. “He should not be punished for raising his voice and taking a stand, but that’s what he’s facing.” The 28-year-old Hawaiian faces court martial for his decision to go absent without leave.
Courage to Resist and the Lt. Ehren Watada Support Committee (SF) co-hosted the event. For more information visit www.couragetoresist.org/x/> and www.thankyoult.org>.
Consular Corps Ladies Hold Holiday Bazaar
The Ladies of the San Francisco Consular Corps held their second annual holiday bazaar Dec. 2 at San Francisco’s City College. Susan Somaya, wife of Honorary Consul of Mauritius Jitu Somaya, chaired the bazaar, which featured crafts, gifts, and holiday traditions from San Francisco’s 76 international consulates. Proceeds from the event benefited local charities, including St. Anthony’s Foundation and the Tenderloin After School Project. The non-profit group also will fund a City College scholarship for foreign students.
Emphasizing that the group ignores political differences, Somaya explained, “We wish to give something back to the community we all live in.”
Among the items for sale were a specially designed Christmas tree ornament featuring a dove with the words “Peace on Earth,” and The Diplomatic Apron, a cookbook of recipes from the members’ various kitchens. The Egyptian and Indian consulates offered delicious native cuisine. Music and dancing completed the event along with a silent auction and raffle.
ACCC Celebrates Christmas, Eid al-Adha
|  |
Sandra, one of the ACCC’s young Arabic-language students, makes holiday crafts at the Dec 16 bazaar (Staff photo E. Pasquini). | |
On Dec. 16 San Francisco’s Arab Cultural and Community Center (ACCC) hosted a holiday bazaar celebrating Christmas, the New Year, and Eid al-Adha, which occurred on Dec. 30. Beautiful handcrafted jewelry, crafts, purses, scarves and other items from the Arab world were offered for sale. Children from the ACCC’s weekly Saturday Arabic class enjoyed making holiday cards and decorations after their morning lesson. All the guests appreciated the holiday sweets and lively Arab music provided courtesy of ACCC youth program assistant director Ahmed Hashem, who acted as deejay for the afternoon celebration.
The Islamic holiday Eid al-Adha occurs on the 10th day of the Islamic month Dhul-Hijjah, the last month of the Islamic calendar. It commemorates the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Isma’il in response to a command from God, and God’s mercy in substituting a lamb for Isma’il. Occurring at the end of the hajj (the annual pilgrimage to Mecca), one of the five pillars of Islam required of all Muslims at least once in a lifetime if finances and health permit, this holiday is observed by sharing food with family and friends, and giving gifts to children.
The ACCC may be reached at (415) 664-2200; via e-mail at info@arabculturalcenter.org>; or through its Web site, www.arabculturalcenter.org>. The holiday bazaar was sponsored by the San Francisco Foundation. http://www.sff.org>.
Elaine Pasquini is a free-lance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Activists Assail AIPAC Agenda
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2007, pages 46-47
Northern California Chronicle
Women in Black Spread Message of Peace, Opposition to War, Violence
By Elaine Pasquini
| |
Passing a San Francisco cable car and with a police motorcycle escort, Bay Area Women in Black march silently amid holiday shoppers the day after Thanksgiving (Staff photo P. Pasquini). | |
CONTINUING a six-year tradition, some 40 members of Bay Area Women in Black paraded silently through the heart of San Francisco’s shopping district the day after Thanksgiving to bring attention to their message of peace, and opposition to the Iraq war and to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and killing of Palestinian civilians. Dressed in black, the women, and also several men, carried signs reading, “War is Terror,” “We Refuse to Be Enemies,” “Mothers Are Grieving in Israel and Palestine,” and “Support Our Peacemakers.” Motorcycle patrolmen accompanied the group as it was dogged by a noisy handful of pro-Israel hecklers.
Activists Assail AIPAC Agenda
| |
Demonstrators outside an AIPAC fund-raising luncheon held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center (Staff photo S. Twair). | |
Californians opposed to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) influence on U.S. foreign policy and the $3 billion in annual U.S. aid to Israel protested at the pro-Israel lobby’s recent Northern California membership fund-raisers. Some 70 activists demonstrated outside Sacramento’s Radisson Hotel Dec. 3, while an equal number protested at Santa Clara’s Convention Center the same day. The following day, while AIPAC supporters dined inside San Francisco’s Moscone Center, demonstrators outside the tony fund-raiser venue held a large banner reading “AIPAC DOES NOT SPEAK FOR US.” Later that evening more than 75 activists rallied outside Oakland’s Marriott City Center. The two-day campaign against AIPAC was organized by StopAIPAC.org, a group of Bay Area peace and justice activists. Through the fiscal sponsorship of The Rebuilding Alliance, www.rebuildingalliance.org/>, the group placed a full-page statement of conscience endorsed by 200 individuals in the Nov. 29 edition of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Calling on congressional representatives to “reject the dangerous politics of militarism and confrontation promoted by AIPAC,” the group demands that their representatives “support a new foreign policy based on respect for human rights and international law.”
War Vets, Resisters Speak in San Francisco
| |
Darrell Anderson (r) with IVAW musicians atop their bus at a rally in San Francisco (Staff photo E. Pasquini). | |
“Action is the only thing that’s going to stop this war,” Iraq war veteran Darrell Anderson told some 75 supporters at San Francisco’s War Memorial Veterans Building Dec. 9. The Purple Heart recipient was discharged from the Army in October 2006 after he returned to the U.S. from Canada, where he fled the night before he was to return to Iraq for his second tour of duty in January 2005. The 24-year-old armored vehicle specialist is presently a member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) cross-country bus tour designed to raise awareness and support military resisters and their families.
Army Pfc. Kyle Snyder, 23, AWOL since April 2005, addressed the crowd by telephone. “I just couldn’t be a part of what I believe to be an illegal and immoral war,” he said of his decision not to fight in Iraq.
Standing in front of the IVAW bus parked on the street across from City Hall, Bob Watada and Rosa Sakanishi, father and stepmother of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the Army’s first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq, spoke to their supporters and the media. “Lack of courage is not Ehren’s reason for refusing to serve in Iraq,” Sakanishi said. “He should not be punished for raising his voice and taking a stand, but that’s what he’s facing.” The 28-year-old Hawaiian faces court martial for his decision to go absent without leave.
Courage to Resist and the Lt. Ehren Watada Support Committee (SF) co-hosted the event. For more information visit www.couragetoresist.org/x/> and www.thankyoult.org>.
Consular Corps Ladies Hold Holiday Bazaar
The Ladies of the San Francisco Consular Corps held their second annual holiday bazaar Dec. 2 at San Francisco’s City College. Susan Somaya, wife of Honorary Consul of Mauritius Jitu Somaya, chaired the bazaar, which featured crafts, gifts, and holiday traditions from San Francisco’s 76 international consulates. Proceeds from the event benefited local charities, including St. Anthony’s Foundation and the Tenderloin After School Project. The non-profit group also will fund a City College scholarship for foreign students.
Emphasizing that the group ignores political differences, Somaya explained, “We wish to give something back to the community we all live in.”
Among the items for sale were a specially designed Christmas tree ornament featuring a dove with the words “Peace on Earth,” and The Diplomatic Apron, a cookbook of recipes from the members’ various kitchens. The Egyptian and Indian consulates offered delicious native cuisine. Music and dancing completed the event along with a silent auction and raffle.
ACCC Celebrates Christmas, Eid al-Adha
| |
Sandra, one of the ACCC’s young Arabic-language students, makes holiday crafts at the Dec 16 bazaar (Staff photo E. Pasquini). | |
On Dec. 16 San Francisco’s Arab Cultural and Community Center (ACCC) hosted a holiday bazaar celebrating Christmas, the New Year, and Eid al-Adha, which occurred on Dec. 30. Beautiful handcrafted jewelry, crafts, purses, scarves and other items from the Arab world were offered for sale. Children from the ACCC’s weekly Saturday Arabic class enjoyed making holiday cards and decorations after their morning lesson. All the guests appreciated the holiday sweets and lively Arab music provided courtesy of ACCC youth program assistant director Ahmed Hashem, who acted as deejay for the afternoon celebration.
The Islamic holiday Eid al-Adha occurs on the 10th day of the Islamic month Dhul-Hijjah, the last month of the Islamic calendar. It commemorates the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Isma’il in response to a command from God, and God’s mercy in substituting a lamb for Isma’il. Occurring at the end of the hajj (the annual pilgrimage to Mecca), one of the five pillars of Islam required of all Muslims at least once in a lifetime if finances and health permit, this holiday is observed by sharing food with family and friends, and giving gifts to children.
The ACCC may be reached at (415) 664-2200; via e-mail at info@arabculturalcenter.org>; or through its Web site, www.arabculturalcenter.org>. The holiday bazaar was sponsored by the San Francisco Foundation. http://www.sff.org>.
Elaine Pasquini is a free-lance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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