« April 2005 | Main | September 2006 »
December 16, 2005
Fasting in Solidarity with Witness Against Torture
In case you didn’t hear about the Witness Against Torture, please have a look at their website:
witnesstorture.org
Twenty-five Catholic Workers went to Cuba on December 6 to march from Santiago to Guantanamo Bay. They hoped to be allowed inside the prison to observe conditions and bring some comfort to the prisoners, many of whom are hunger striking. Many prisoners have been there for over three years—none have been charged with crimes. The US government has been playing both sides of the fence, treating them like criminal prisoners or military enemy combatants, but in reality, adhering to neither international nor US legal standards for either type of prisoner.
The Witness Against Torture people were not allowed into the prison, once they arrived on December 10, Human Rights Day. So, they vigiled, fasted and prayed outside the prison for three days. Most have returned as of today. I have been fasting in solidarity with them
Tomorrow morning I will be interviewing Jackie Allen-Doucot, one of the 25. She runs the St.Martin de Porres Catholic Worker with her husband Chris (who led the first Voices in the Wilderness delegation I went on). The interview will be aired on Saturday, on WSCA-LP, my local community station. As always, I will be dropping the audio file out on radio4all.net. Search “Joe Public” or “Tom Jackson” and links to all the radio interviews I’ve done will come up. (That includes Kathy Kelly, Denis Halliday, John Perkins, to name a few.)
Posted by Joe Public at 03:22 AM | Comments (0)
Response
The following is a letter to the editor that may have been published by now in the Manchester Union Leader. It is a response to a very hostile letter written about Anne Miller from Peace Action NH. We believe the hostile letter ran on December 8. Basically, McNulty calls Anne all kinds of names, and says that she's anti-American because she spoke out against the continued occupation of Iraq, and led a vigil when the US troop death toll reached 2000.
*The Union Leader has a 200 word limit on letters to the editor.
To the editor,
Sgt. Nick McNulty’s recent letter about New Hampshire Peace Action director Anne Miller has several inaccuracies. Myriad polls from across the political spectrum show that the majority of Americans don’t support the occupation of Iraq. Furthermore, a majority don’t support George W. Bush. His popularity is in the 30% range, the lowest since Nixon resigned.
Like Bush administration officials, McNulty insists on discussing the occupation within the context of the“war on terrorism”, even though there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11. Blurring the lines between eradicating terrorism and what we have done in Iraq only serves to keep US troops in unnecessary danger.
Anne Miller joined with thousands of people across the country in observing the 2000th US troop death in Iraq. The observance was done out of deep concern for the suffering in Iraq.
McNulty’s energy would be better spent deriding the politicians who have hijacked our country. When their cynical, criminal policies are challenged, they hide behind our soldiers, saying, “support our troops”, thereby using them as human shields in an attempt to squelch dissent. How anti-American is that?! Meanwhile the death toll grows in Iraq, as Halliburton, Bechtel, and oil companies collect enormous profits, courtesy of an administration with over forty former oil executives in its highest positions. In my opinion, they are the ones he should be mad at.
Posted by Joe Public at 03:16 AM | Comments (0)
US Out of Iraq Now
The following is an address I gave at a program called Project SEARCH, which brings high school classes to the campus of the University of New Hampshire. The program had a speaker who did a history of Iraq, a speaker who advocated staying in Iraq, and me. I had 10 minutes...
The United States must begin moving troops out of Iraq immediately. What does that mean? Logistically, it is not a situation where we can start moving out tonight and be gone by tomorrow. What we must do is publicize and follow a plan of withdrawal, make clear that there will be no permanent US military bases in Iraq, AND we must also present a clear plan for assisting in any way that a majority of Iraqis request for rebuilding infrastructure in Iraq, and for working with the international community on a fair and equal basis to rebuild Iraq, and begin implementing it immediately.
We must also renounce the edicts and "rules", imposed by interim leader Paul Bremmer just after the invasion of Iraq. They are still in place. These decrees opened all Iraq's public assets to foreign corporate ownership. They allow 100 percent of the country's industries – banking, oil, food, whatever - to be owned by foreigners. Also, Bremmer ruled that 100 percent of the profits that foreign investors make in Iraq can now be taken out of Iraq - there's no requirement that any of these profits be reinvested, and the investors do nothave to pay a penny in taxes on their profits. These rules leave the people of Iraq, already destitute, with virtually no hope for upward mobility.
We must also remove all US mercenaries and contractors.
Doing these things would undermine the insurgency. General Casey said in a September 2005 hearing, "the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency." In the case of Iraq, the insurgency is primarily Iraqi nationalists with a concentration obviously in the Sunni triangle. Prior to the invasion, Iraq was the most secular country in the area we call the Middle East. The insurgency that exists today is not a jihadist dominated insurgency. Go online and look for the words of former Bush administration top anti-terrorsim advisor, Richard Clarke—he has been speaking out about these facts for some time.
Before I talk about how these changes would help on an international level, I’d like to speak briefly about some of the arguments that the Bush administration is using against the idea of leaving Iraq, dispite over 2100 US troops being killed in Iraq, 50,000 wounded, and Iraqi civilian deaths topping 100,000 by some estimates. First,
Civil War
It is disingenuous for us to now pretend that we care so deeply about other countries’ civil wars--- look at Afghanistan throughout the ‘90s, the Sudan today, Rwanda, places where hundreds of thousands if not millions have died, but since they don’t sit on the second largest oil reserve in the world, we didn’t get involved.
If it is inevitable that the Sunni minority which once was in power will fight shiites and Kurds, it is inevitable whether we are there or not.
The refusal of the Shia to retaliate is the most important factor here and this is primarily the result of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani standing firmly against it.
Last week, incidentally, a gathering in Cairo of Iraqi Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish leaders (under the auspices of the Arab League) called for a timetable for US withdrawal and also said that Iraq's opposition had a "legitimate right to resistance." The Sunni are not going to stop fighting while the occupation continues.
Recently Dick Cheney held up Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as the ultimate threat if we pull out of Iraq. Gen. CASEY stated shortly thereafter: You'd see [Zarqawi] consolidate his position on the ground if we pull out.
This is stuff from the same people who pushed the fear button with “Saddam Hussein's mushroom cloud and the secret Iraqi-Al Qaeda alliance.” Jihadists would like to do this. But Bin Laden couldn’t even do this in his home country of Saudi Arabia. How would it happen in a country that until we invaded was the most secular in the middle east?
Another argument is that the “US will be perceived as weak”. No one will think this. Everyone acknowledges that we are far and away the one and only remaining superpower on Earth. But if the plan is to maintain belligerant attitudes, the fact that we are the big cheese is going to continue to be a serious cause for concern, fear, defensiveness, resentment, etc., for people throughout the world.
We’ve also heard the “irresponsible” word used frequently by Bush officials. I’ll tell you what’s irresponsible: not giving the troops enough armor, cutting VA benefits; and lying to the American public from the run-up to the invasion through today, with talk of weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist (and with Marine officer and former lead UN weapons inspector in Iraq during the 90s, Scott Ritter telling them since 1998 that there was nothing left) to the implications today that we are helping in Iraq.
So, back to what I believe these changes would do internatiuonally:
Making the changes mentioned would also encourage our potential allies and even the UN to participate in rebuilding Iraq, if Iraq wants help. It would show the world that a request for involvement from the US would not just be an invitation to help the US military-industrial complex control Iraq’s oil and privatize its economy for US interests.
I recently heard someone make a simple but important point: “Even oil isn’t just about oil.” Oil is integrated in our lives in virtually every sense of the word. Whoever controls the oil, controls the world.
I have heard Bush officials say that the UN declined to get involved in the US-Iraq “war”, and they leave it at that, implying that the UN is weak and ineffective. In fact, the UN did not want to get involved for a number of reasons, the two most important being the clear illegality of the pre-emptive invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation, and two because it was obvious to the international community (including over 70% of the population in our #1 ally, England) that we were invading to take over the second largest oil reserve in the world, and try to move the middle east into our style of free trade that we’ve imposed on Latin America and some of Eastern Asia.
With the recent statement of Congressman Murtha about the US getting out of Iraq, we are now beginning to hear administration suggestions (and statements from hawkish democrats) of starting to get as many as 50k troops out in 2006. But these illusory statements are made contingent on Iraq “being able to defend itself”. By itself the statement might sound reasonable. But what that statement does is leave the door wide open for moving the timetable ahead again and again. We need an agreement and clear evidence that it is being followed.
What they are talking about is too slow and contingent on too many things. The Iraqi military has gotten worse in the past few months. There were supposed to be 64 battalions ready. A few months ago general Casey said 3 were ready. More recently he said only one is now ready—the other two unraveled. At this rate, after being in Iraq for going on three years, to reach the desired amount of battalions, we will be in Iraq for about 250 years, minimum.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, the lying, spinning, and listening to people who tell them only what they want to hear continues. Just two weeks ago, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld met with Ahmed Chalabi. Ahmed Chalabi, who has been wanted for years in Jordan for defrauding the Jordanian government of hundreds of millions of dollars—he’s supposed to serve 22years hard labor there. Ahmed Chalabi, who lived in London for years and was paid $1million a year by the CIA under the Clinton administration to lead the Iraqi National Congress from a posh hotel suite in London during the 90s. Ahmed Chalabi, who is currently under investigation by our own state dept. for allegedly selling Iraqi secrets to Iran just months ago! And Cheney and Rumsfeld are still taking advice from this guy. Obviously they have learned nothing from their past alliances with the likes of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden during the 1980s.
When we talk about Iraq, we are talking about a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. However, Iraq today is a breeding ground for resentment and hatred. Just after the invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein regime, there were many Iraqis who were glad. But that was almost three years ago, and we have long over-stayed our welcome. Every child who has witnessed their parents or other loved ones dragged outside, beaten, taken away during a house raid; every person who has had loved ones killed during the invasion and occupation, and estimates are at 30K to over 100K civilian casualties, depending on whose #s you believe, all these people are likely to hate us -- forever. Unless we turn things around—unless we finally learn to do business with the rest of the world humanely and practice the human rights we preach throughout the world.
*This piece also is published on NH Peace Action's website: nhpeaceaction.org.
Posted by Joe Public at 03:11 AM | Comments (0)
Holiday Commentary
The following is a commentary I did for Making Waves, a radio news magazine that airs on WSCA in Portsmouth, NH:
The holiday season is upon us! Like many people, I have conflicting feelings dancing in my head.
Here comes Thanksgiving. A day of Eating-- A LOT. A day of telling grade schoolers about Pilgrims coming to the new world and befriending Native Americans—a nice story, but distant from the reality of a genocidal taking of someone else’s homeland.
What can you say about Christmas. It’s a day when when lots of non-Christians buy friends and family members gifts, maybe go to church and definitely eat A LOT. At the risk of sounding like Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady”, I think Jesus of Nazareth might have a bit of a problem with the way we celebrate his birthday. If you disagree, please read the new testament.
Then there’s New Years Eve. A party night, followed by new year’s day, some nursing hangovers, some watching college football bowl games on the TV and most everyone eating A LOT.
Sure, there are other holidays that fall around the same time of year, like Kwanza, Hanakah, and Eid. But let’s face it, we’re all hit every year in this country with a barrage of messages about Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. One of the most prevalent messages being, of course, “buy, buy, buy!”
It’s true there are ways we can make the holidays more meaningful, but what I want to talk about is the idea of celebrating some alternative holidays. Here’s a few ideas that happen to fall around this time of year:
Nov 8 Dorothy Day’s B-day
Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, that started out with one community in New York, based on faith and resistance, and a desire to serve the poor. They not only provided food and clothing to the poor, they invited them to live at their house. There’s CW houses and communities all across the country today, and a few in other countries. Residents take on different aspects of running the communities in an atmosphere of at least voluntary simplicity, if not voluntary poverty. If materialism, greed, war, things like that are getting you down, pay a visit to one of these communities. You’ll be inspired, and you may even want to live at one. You don’t have to be Catholic to be part of this great peace and social justice movement, started as Dorothy Day herself wrote, just sitting around at her kitchen table, talking.
Later in November, there’s the National Day of Mourning:
Every year on Thanksgiving Day, in Plymouth, MA, Native Americans have what they call the National Day of Mourning, when the aforementioned genocide is observed. During this day-long event, there’s Native American speakers and music, followed by a march through town, followed by a terrific meal in a hall with more speakers and music. I visited the NDM for the first time last year, and had the most meaningful Thanksgiving Day I can remember. The speakers make a very clear connection between the western European imperialism of 500 years ago, and what is happening in the world today.
The day after Thanksgiving, we have Buy Nothing Day. This is a nationwide campaign started by AdBusters, and it’s pretty self explanatory. For years, the day after Thanksgiving has been touted as the busiest shopping day of the year. People have recovered from the eating binge of the day before, and they set out to start their Christmas shopping. For those of us who take issue with the commercialism and consumerism of Christmas, Buy Nothing Day rings true. Buy nothing day sends a signal to corporations. Many people have been inspired by this day to simplify their entire holiday season.
Dec 1 Rosa Parks Day
It was on this day the Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, thus breaking a racist, segregationist law, and creating a watershed moment in the history not only of the US civil rights movement, but also in the history of nonviolent civil disobediance. She broke an unjust law, because doing so was less of a crime than the law itself. Thank you, Rosa Parks.
Dec 10 Human Rights Day
What a great concept, especially in this time when too many people define each other in black and white terms like “good” and “evil”. Let’s focus on the rights that we all deserve. Rights that governments don’t “give” to us, but which those governments are compelled to recognize as our entitlements that they should keep their hands off. And while we’re exercizing our right to free speech on Human Rights Day, let’s push for making adequate health care, education, enough food & water and a place to live
inalienable human rights that are observed here in our country.
Dec 21 Winter Solstice
An alternative New Years Eve. Sure, we follow a calendar and January marks the beginning of our new year, but somehow the solstice seems like a more intuitive beginning to a new year. Days start getting longer again. More daylight is good! So, the past few years I’ve been joining my Pagan friends in welcoming in the new season on the Winter Solstice.
Finally, for January, we can go with one widely recognized holiday, observed even here in NH, finally, sort of, MLK Day! The term “modern day prophet” sometimes gets thrown around too much, but Martin Luther King deserves that term. Too often, especially in mainstream media, all we get is a quick sound bite of King saying “I have a dream”. Do yourself a favor this Martin Luther King Day and read the entire “I have a dream” speech. King said so many timeless things about race, class, social justice, war and peace, God, the human spirit, and so many other topics.
One MLK Day several years ago I was in a town where a radio station broadcast all of Kings speeches that had ever been recorded. King was so inspiring. Maybe our community radio station could broadcast his speeches this year!
Whatever holidays you observe this season, I wish you the best. Let’s celebrate in the spirit of bringing peace and justice to the world.
Posted by Joe Public at 03:08 AM | Comments (0)
Happy Decorating, Mrs. Gregg!
New Hampshire's own Senator Gregg continues to dodge the majority who want the US out of Iraq, votes against a low-income heating assistance bill, and wins the lottery!
The United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) rally in Washington, DC back in September was a great success. Peace Action played a major role in the long weekend of activities. Before it all began, organizers predicted 100,000 people would turn out for the Saturday rally to protest the US occupation of Iraq, and by all accounts, somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000 showed up. The lobby day that followed on Monday, September 26, was also a huge success. More than 800 people from across the country visited their representatives that day, demanding an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, no permanent US military bases in Iraq, and an opt-in instead of opt-out provision for parents of children subject to military recruitment, among other demands.
On the UFPJ lobby day, I visited the offices of all four New Hampshire Congressional representatives. The House Representatives' administrative assistants told me in advance that the Congressmen Bradley and Bass would not be available to meet with me personally, and that I could meet with staffers. Senator Sununu's office told me they would do their best to have me meet with Mr. Sununu, but that things often came up. The response to my request from Senator Gregg's office to meet with Mr. Gregg was positive and without reservation. I went to Washington with the impression I would be meeting with him.
While in DC, the Jim Lehrer News Hour contacted UFPJ, asking if they could accompany a group or individual into a pro-war Senator's office and tape the conversation. The News Hour was first directed to the delegation from Indiana, visiting Senator Lugar's office. The News Hour had to check and see if the Senator's office would allow them to tape, but they could do a photo op. As of Friday, the 24th, Lugar's office said no taping. The News Hour checked back in with UFPJ, and was directed to me, for my visit with Judd Gregg.
Senator Gregg's office refused to allow the News Hour to be there-- even for a photo op. As it turned out, the News Hour was allowed to do some taping at Lugar's office.
Additionally, Senator Gregg did not meet with me personally. I was told when I arrived at his office that he "had to go out of town".
What we have here is a pattern - a pattern of refusal to meet and openly debate Senator Gregg's unwavering support for a policy that has resulted in the deaths of over 2000 US troops, and by some estimates, over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. I hereby reiterate the challenge to Mr. Gregg to publicly debate the merits of US-Iraq policy.
While I talked with Gregg's staffers, one of them kept bringing up "democracy", and didn't I think that Iraq was a more democratic place than it was before we invaded and occupied it. Democracy is more than the ability to vote. Democracy is more than a piece of paper that says you're "free". Democracy under occupation is an oxymoron-- when I said that to the staffer, he had no retort. I'm all for genuine democracy--- let's have a referendum in Iraq and in the US. Do you want US troops out of Iraq immediately? Yes or no. I believe in both countries, the ayes would have it by a wide margin.
* * *
What a telling year 2005 has been for Mr. Gregg. Some may say that his is a charmed life, the latest sign being his winning second prize in the Power Ball lottery to the tune of $800,000. His wife was quoted as saying she wanted to redecorate one of their houses with the money. Meanwhile, the same day that he won all that money, he voted against releasing extra funds for low income home heating in a procedural vote. Mr. Gregg voted against a proposal to boost the fiscal 2006 budget for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program from $2.2 billion to $5.1 billion. His alternative bill, which was voted down, would have added a smaller amount to home heating assistance, while cutting other programs to offset the increase. Opponents of Gregg's bill argued successfully that the offset, a 1 percent cut in various assistance programs, would be harmful to those programs, which are already squeezed by tight budgets. It seems the only way someone who has lived his entire life with immense privilege and power (not unlike our president) can offer a crumb to the poor is to hack away at social welfare programs with the other hand. Happy decorating, Mrs. Gregg.
A day after winning the $800,000, Mr. Gregg voted against raising the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, many people die every day fighting against or defending the US occupation of Iraq. Mr. Gregg continues to support this bloody occupation of the country that sits on the second largest known oil reserve in the world.
Occasionally Sen. Gregg has the courage to go against the Bush administration on some environmental issues. On the other hand, he led an end run around the legislative process to open up the pristine Arctic National Wildlife coastal zone to oil drilling earlier this year.
Mr. Gregg is often noted for "getting money" for various entities in the state of New Hampshire. Apparently that doesn't apply to poor people who may have to decide between heat and food this winter. Not to mention that wars for oil and global warming put us at enormous risk, so what difference will money that he gets for other things make if we are destroying the Earth and each other under policies that he supports?
An ever growing number of NH citizens want to hear Gregg speak out against the debacle in Iraq. Will he talk with and listen to us, or continue to communicate only with a tiny group of people with whom he is allied, now widely known as "neocons"? Whose interests will he serve in 2006? Please call, fax, write, visit, email, and otherwise communicate with his offices, and tell him what you think.
This article appears in the winter New Hampshire Peace Action newspaper...
Posted by Joe Public at 01:55 AM | Comments (0)