CODEPINK's topics - tribe.net

Help a student out by contributing to research on women's attitudes!

2009-03-02T02:49:19Z

My name is Katherine Wilson and I'm a graduate student in San Francisco studying Psychology. I'm trying to gather information about women's attitudes regarding current societal issues. If you would like to participate in this study, the survey is listed here: womensattitudesresearch.webs.com/. It shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to complete and you can enter to win a $20 gift certificate at Amazon.com.

Thanks!
Katherine

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the Pink Revolution... Are you on the bus?!

2009-01-07T17:45:49Z

The PINK REVOLUTION is putting together a bus trip from SF to DC to be part of the historical Obama Inauguration day.

A few phone calls ago, I find myself in the living room of Suzi Chang. The founder of the suhweeet PINK REVLOUTION!

SUZI IS A REAL LIVE COMINC BOOK CHARACTER.

Just to give you an idea of what she is all about:

*** The Pink Revolution is a mind, body, spirit movement of love, healing, humanity, and raising consciousness. It's the Evolution we are secretly yearning for and dreaming about. It is happening regardless of our beliefs. It's that feeling deep inside of you, it's pure joy and love, the absence of fear. So many people around the world are waking up to this every day, realizing this feeling, realizing that we are living in the middle of a dimensional transition in the path of human spiritual evolution. People of all ages, all places, all beliefs, are joining together in this wonderful manifestation of light. We are all connected as one, lets let love take us there together. Viva la Revolution! ***

I am spreading the word, calling out the supporters, collecting tea, and, why yes... I am jumping on the bus. Want to come too? We're leaving asap! We need artists, musicians and visionaries of all flavors.

We will be stopping in Austin, New Orleans, Montgomery, Santa Fe as well as others. Our grand array of lovelies will of course be ending in the District Of Columbia -- Hopefully by January 17th!
Mi/Our Hometown!

I HAVE TO GO. I HAVE TO SURRENDER, I HAVE TO TRUST IN THIS AMAZING UNIVERSE!
Are you in?

YOU ARE INVITED TO COME TOO!

** PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!! **

See us here to help! www. myspace. com/pink_revolution

Our paypal account is live and active:
humanpinkslip@gmail.com

xxxO,
--kp--Agent PEACH

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10,000 in Germany protest Afghanistan war

2008-10-04T21:19:27Z

10,000 in Germany protest Afghanistan war
Published Oct 4, 2008 12:01 AM

http://www.workers.org/2008/world/germany_1009/

More than 10,000 protesters took to the streets of Germany’s capital Berlin and the southern metropolis Stuttgart on Sept. 17 to demand the withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan.

All surveys and opinion polls show that a majority of people living in Germany oppose the country’s massive participation in the illegal occupation of Afghanistan, although only a minority in the Bundestag (Parliament) reflect this position. Here, the demonstrators from the Left Party carry a banner that reads: “Federal Army out of Afghanistan.”

Many of the NATO countries are participating in the occupation of Afghanistan, even if their governments refused to join the occupation of Iraq or have withdrawn from Iraq. In these countries the anti-war movement focuses on demands that the troops be withdrawn from Afghanistan.

Beside this protest in Germany, there is another set for Canada, whose troops have taken relatively heavy casualties. The Canadian Peace Alliance and Collectif Échec à la Guerre are calling for a pan-Canadian day of action on Oct. 18 to end the war in Afghanistan and bring Canadian troops home.

—John Catalinotto

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Articles copyright 1995-2008 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Join the *~U.S. and Allies Out of Afghanistan!!~* tribe
http://tribes.tribe.net/outnow

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THIS is the fastest way to build the world we need!

2008-09-26T17:21:41Z

We have a huge, idealistic, smart, practical "movement" going, over on Facebook: The Next Step Together. There are more than a thousand folks in the group now, About 100 joining daily. There's proposal on the table to run our own presidential "election", and we are trying to enroll the entire world! Join us and bring in all your friends! It's all about acting PRACTICALLY, QUICKLY, WITH HUGE NUMBERS... So job ONE is getting EVERYONE IN!

Learn about the Next Step Together at http://nextsteptogether.net
Join the Next Step Together Group on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24568801853

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -Mahatma Gandhi

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DNC Protest, Split, and the Principled Stand of Cynthia McKinney

2008-08-17T18:57:37Z

DNC Protest, Split, and the Principled Stand of Cynthia McKinney

By Steven Argue

Protest plans have been in the works against the Democratic National Convention (DNC) for some time now, with organizers opposing the Democrat Party’s policies of war and occupation, backing of continued corporate policies that cause global warming, and their attacks on immigrants.

The people who have been organizing the protest schedule formed a coalition called Recreate ‘68. A rightward split has occurred in this coalition, and another group has also been formed called the Alliance for Real Democracy. The Alliance for Real Democracy is organizing their own separate events, one of which is a reception for Democrat Party delegates complete with drinks and BBQ.

The Alliance for Real Democracy is made up of the Colorado Green Party, Code Pink, United for Peace and Justice, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, the American Friends Service Committee, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Colorado Street Medics, and Students for Peace and Justice.

While the Alliance for Real Democracy consists largely of white liberals who are trying to influence the hopelessly corporate run Democrat Party, Recreate ‘68 is made up primarily of minorities, socialists, anarchists, communists, and other radicals who have fewer illusions in reforming the Democrat Party and who instead want to organize the power of the people.

Glen Spagnuelo, spokesperson of Recreate ‘68, says he’s not bothered by the formation of the Alliance for Real Democracy, because both groups oppose the war in Iraq and neither is advocating a violent protest.

Yet, the Alliance for Real Democracy has gotten extensive coverage in the corporate media of Colorado for their violence baiting of Recreate ‘68. The stand of Recreate ‘68 is, however, one where they simply explain that they are not planning violence, but if the police attack them, they do not disavow the right of protesters to self-defense.

As Benjamin Whitmer of Denver explained in the letters column of the Rocky Mountain Times in a June 5, 2008 letter entitled, “Re-create 68 members aren't violent extremists”:

“I’m a little confused as to the media’s portrayal of Glenn Spagnuolo and the members of Re-create 68 as violent extremists. Though Mr. Spagnuolo is getting painted as Vlad the Impaler with a bag full of severed heads, I’ve yet to hear of him engaging in a single act of violent protest. Moreover, I’ve attended several Re-create 68 meetings – meetings which, it’s worth noting, are never without a media presence – and have yet to hear a single suggestion of violent protest from him or from anyone else attending.

“The controversy seems to stem from Re-create 68’s refusal to disallow the right to self-defense to its members. Re-create 68’s explanation of this refusal is clear. There will be people protesting with Re-create 68 arm-in-arm with their children and elders. In large part, these will be representatives of communities which have most suffered from the never-ending betrayal of the Democrats. To attempt to deny them the right to defend themselves is to deny a fundamental human right.”

Yet, the Alliance for Real Democracy is demanding everyone roll over and die when and if they are violently attacked by the police, and painting those who do not have such a commitment as “violent”. The coverage their denunciations have received in the corporate media play into the hands of government attempts to deny permits, and, ultimately plays into the hands of police violence if the government does decide to physically attack these protests. In fact, the Alliance for Real Democracy’s denunciations of the right to self-defense and denunciations of Recreate ‘68 as “violent” creates a ready made excuse for the police and government that may actually cause police violence.

In addition, the Green Party of Colorado has issued false statements to the press and all over the internet claiming that Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney will not be participating in the Recreate ’68 events. Here is one such statement from Dave Chandler, co-chair of the Colorado Green Party, Green Party candidate for U.S. Congress in the Seventh Congressional District, and supporter of a Denver ballot measure that would seize the vehicles of illegal immigrants:

“Cynthia McKinney, Green Party candidate for President, and Rosa Clemente, Green Party candidate for Vice President are NOT participating in any Recreate ‘68 activities. Both candidates, and the Green Party of Colorado, are refuting this announcement and are stating that neither candidate, nor the Green Party of Colorado, are in any way associated with Recreate ’68, nor will any of their candidates be speaking at or attending any event, nor are they in any way associated with the group Recreate ’68.”

This is a blatant lie. Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente will be speaking at the Recreate ’68 events.

Liberation News does not endorse the Cynthia McKinney campaign, partly because she is running on the Green Party ticket, a capitalist party. Yet, she has the right positions on many issues, and does show what a candidate who is not beholden to corporate interests can speak out on, such as for single payer healthcare, immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and for freeing political prisoners in the U.S. like Mumia Abu-Jamal.

It is for these reasons, and the good principled stand that McKinney is taking on the protests at the Democrat National Committee, standing up to the leadership of the Green Party of Colorado, that Liberation News prints Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente’s statement on the DNC in full:

*******
Open Letter from Cynthia McKinney

As the United States activated Navy ships and the Air Force to begin an airlift of non-specified goods into the former Soviet state of Georgia, and military exercises began in the Persian Gulf near Iran, I received communications from certain individuals among the Colorado Greens who were organizing campaign support events there, suggesting that I not participate in an anti-war program being organized by other individuals in Colorado.

Perplexed, I began to do my research to understand the nature of the fissure that I seemed to be placing myself in the middle of. The communications to me about not participating in one of the scheduled events became more and more shrill. The events ran through August 26th. When the lineup of speakers, including Rosa and me, was announced for the events in question, I received multiple communications stating in various ways that the sender from the Green Party of Colorado, was on the verge of desperation over the latter.

Within a few hours, I was reading messages stating that the Green Party of Colorado would be ruined if I participated in the End the Occupations/End the War march and rally slated to take place on the morning of August 24th on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol, or if Rosa participated in a Freedom March and Rally for Human Rights and Political Prisoners at Civic Center Park the following day.

An article appeared in a local Colorado newspaper stating that Rosa and I would not appear at the events for which we had been scheduled. Rosa responded to our Colorado Green Party contact that yes, indeed, we were appearing at the two events. Both Rosa and I then received messages demanding to know by a time certain what our plans were, and asserting that the Green Party of Colorado would be totally ruined if we associated with the group sponsoring the events. In addition, we were told that at least one resignation and sustaining membership would be tendered to the Party, and that Rosa and I could expect no support on the ground in Denver from the Green Party of Colorado, including a planned fundraiser and a place to stay.

Without receiving any additional response or information from either Rosa or I, the correspondent sent a message informing us that all Green Party of Colorado events previously scheduled for us had been canceled. Further, the message stated that ballot access petitioning by Green Party of Colorado would cease in neighboring Wyoming and that all efforts would be made to remove Rosa's and my names from the ballot in Colorado. The message also noted that the Colorado delegation overwhelmingly supported Elaine Brown at the Green Party Convention.

With the e-mail messages flying "fast and furious," I hope I have mentioned the highlights of this episode in somewhat chronological order. What Rosa and I would like to address now, is the ideological and rational order that produced this outcome. At the very first Green Party debate held in San Francisco earlier this year, I pleaded for unity of action and purpose as we face the challenges that confront us as a country. Rosa and I are proud to join with others who are sick and tired of war, occupation, human rights abuses, and the continued incarceration of our political prisoners. We are proud to join with others who are willing to do something about it. In the context of activities in Denver, that means cooperating with some organizations new to us and others with which Rosa and I have had a long-standing relationship. Let me explain some of those relationships.

I am proud to have received a Backbone Award from the Backbone Campaign, one of the co-participants of the anti-war, anti-occupation events in question, according to the organizers.

Rosa and I are pleased to have received the endorsement of M-1 of Dead Prez, who put out a video of endorsement and is rallying other conscious Hip Hop, Generation X voters to the Green Party with Rosa and I as its nominees. Rebel Diaz was on the stage with Rosa as she accepted her Green Party nomination for Vice President. Both Dead Prez and Rebel Diaz are participating in the events in question, according to the organizers.

Fred Hampton, Jr.'s mother, a victim of COINTELPRO, came to Georgia in the mid-1990s to help me gain reelection after a malicious redistricting case that went all the way up to the Supreme Court. Ward Churchill has traveled to my Congressional district to educate my former constituents on the COINTELPRO of yesterday and the COINTELPRO of today. Natsu Saito introduced me to other victims of COINTELPRO. I asked Kathleen Cleaver to co-author a report that was submitted to Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights at the time of the World Conference Against Racism, on the unsolved murders of Black Panther Party members who were victims of COINTELPRO. Fred Hampton, Jr., Ward Churchill, Natsu Saito, and Kathleen Cleaver are all participating in the events in question, according to the organizers.

As a Member of Congress, I supported the release of all political prisoners and welcomed information from the American Indian Movement about Leonard Peltier. I have at many times in my political career been allied with the ACLU, and have always supported Pam and Ramona Africa and the MOVE Organization. The American Indian Movement of Colorado, King Downing of the ACLU, and Pam and Ramona Africa of MOVE are all participating in the events in question, according to the organizers.

Mumia Abu Jamal has endorsed the Power to the People Campaign and my Green Party candidacy. According to the organizers, Mumia will transmit a message to all of us participating in the events in question.

Finally, I have appeared on various stages with many Palestinians; I have proudly spoken at rallies organized by Larry Holmes. Debra Sweet with World Can't Wait was among the very first to my knowledge to organize around impeachment as an imperative and I support hers and all other impeachment groups in their efforts. And finally, I have known Ben Manski for a long time as a socially conscious activist who is also a member of the Green Party. According to the organizers, a Palestinian refugee is slated to speak at the events in question, as well as Larry Holmes, Debra Sweet, and Ben Manski.

Rosa and I have not been given any rational, ideological, or strategically-acceptable reason by the Green Party of Colorado to dissociate ourselves from the movement that this country so desperately needs and that these individuals and organizations participating represent, as we all attempt to hold the Democratic Party accountable for its complicity in all of the crimes of the Bush Administration. Therefore Rosa and I will keep our appointments in Denver and we hope that the members of the Green Party of Colorado will attend our sessions and listen to what we have to say. I have faith that by taking principled stands against war and occupation, human rights abuse, the prison-industrial complex, and in support of freedom for political prisoners, the Green party will emerge stronger.

Cynthia McKinney
Green Party Nominee for President of the United States

Rosa Clemente
Green Party Nominee for Vice President of the United States

*******
Liberation News endorses and encourages people to attend:
Recreate ‘68 Protest: Speakers and Free Concerts Schedule
http://recreate68.com/?p=135

FYI:
Alliance for Real Democracy: drinks and BBQ for Democrat Party delegates and their other scheduled events:
http://slapstickpolitics.blogspot.com/2008/07/alliance-for-real-democracy-dnc.html

This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

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New tribe against the occupation of Afghanistan

2008-07-27T06:26:40Z

New tribe against the occupation of Afghanistan
http://tribes.tribe.net/outnow#

Massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan began in 1978 and continues to this day. The ongoing war in Afghanistan continues to kill thousands of Afghan civilians and cause extreme suffering due to horrendous injuries, the displacement of people from their homes and livelihoods, home invasions, sexual abuse, arbitrary arrests and torture, and the general humiliation of the Afghani people.

As this author stated for Liberation News on September 12, 2001:

“Americans watched in horror as the World Trade Center collapsed. Yet it was a horror no different from what the U.S. government has done with it's bombing of civilian populations in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea. The U.S. bombings of just these countries, not to mention many other U.S. acts of war, murdered millions of civilians. Terror against civilians is never justified…

“Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.

“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen. With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing women for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.

“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate [oil pipeline] interests.” Steven Argue, Liberation News, September 12, 2001

The Taliban was put in power by U.S. intervention. U.S. occupation today is a cause for war and continues to keep an extremely reactionary religious government in power. Afghanistan had secular governments with much wider women's rights before the U.S. began its massive intervention in Afghanistan in the 1970's. All U.S. imposed governments have been religious and anti-women. In Afghanistan, the Afghanis are better qualified to solve the problems caused by U.S. imperialism than U.S. imperialism is.

Yet rather than get out of Afghanistan Obama and McCain are proposing more troops, more helicopters, and more war.

NO TO THE BIPARTISAN OCCUPATION OF AFGHANISTAN!!!!

NO TO OBAMA and MCCAIN'S PROPOSED SURGE IN AFGHANISTAN!

U.S. OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW!

*~U.S. and Allies Out of Afghanistan!!~*
http://tribes.tribe.net/outnow#

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Obama, the prince of bait-and-switch: Afghanistan

2008-07-26T20:41:56Z

Obama, the prince of bait-and-switch
John Pilger

http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2008/07/pilger-obama-afghanistan-news

Published 24 July 2008

78 comments Print version Listen RSS I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children to a US bomb - but mass murder in Afghanistan isn't news

On 12 July, the Times devoted two pages to Afghanistan. It was mostly a complaint about the heat. The reporter, Magnus Linklater, described in detail his discomfort and how he had needed to be sprayed with iced water. He also described the "high drama" and "meticulously practised routine" of evacuating another overheated journalist. For her US Marine rescuers, wrote Linklater, "saving a life took precedence over [their] security". Alongside this was a report whose final paragraph offered the only mention that "47 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday".

Slaughters on this scale are common, and mostly unknown to the British public. I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children. A 500lb US Mk82 bomb was dropped on her mud, stone and straw house. There was no "enemy" nearby. I interviewed a headmaster whose house disappeared in a fireball caused by another "precision" bomb. Inside were nine people - his wife, his four sons, his brother and his wife, and his sister and her husband. Neither of these mass murders was news. As Harold Pinter wrote of such crimes: "Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."

A total of 64 civilians were bombed to death while the Times man was discomforted. Most were guests at a wedding party. Wedding parties are a "coalition" speciality. At least four of them have been obliterated - at Mazar and in Khost, Uruzgan and Nangarhar provinces. Many of the details, including the names of victims, have been compiled by a New Hampshire professor, Marc Herold, whose Afghan Victim Memorial Project is a meticulous work of journalism that shames those who are paid to keep the record straight and report almost everything about the Afghan War through the public relations facilities of the British and American military.

The US and its allies are dropping record numbers of bombs on Afghanistan. This is not news. In the first half of this year, 1,853 bombs were dropped: more than all the bombs of 2006 and most of 2007. "The most frequently used bombs," the Air Force Times reports, "are the 500lb and 2,000lb satellite-guided . . ." Without this one-sided onslaught, the resurgence of the Taliban, it is clear, might not have happened. Even Hamid Karzai, America's and Britain's puppet, has said so. The presence and the aggression of foreigners have all but united a resistance that now includes former warlords once on the CIA's payroll.

The scandal of this would be headline news, were it not for what George W Bush's former spokesman Scott McClellan has called "complicit enablers" - journalists who serve as little more than official amplifiers. Having declared Afghanistan a "good war", the complicit enablers are now anointing Barack Obama as he tours the bloodfests in Afghanistan and Iraq. What they never say is that Obama is a bomber.

In the New York Times on 14 July, in an article spun to appear as if he is ending the war in Iraq, Obama demanded more war in Afghan istan and, in effect, an invasion of Pakistan. He wants more combat troops, more helicopters, more bombs. Bush may be on his way out, but the Republicans have built an ideological machine that transcends the loss of electoral power - because their collaborators are, as the American writer Mike Whitney put it succinctly, "bait-and-switch" Democrats, of whom Obama is the prince.

Those who write of Obama that "when it comes to international affairs, he will be a huge improvement on Bush" demonstrate the same wilful naivety that backed the bait-and-switch of Bill Clinton - and Tony Blair. Of Blair, wrote the late Hugo Young in 1997, "ideology has surrendered entirely to 'values' . . . there are no sacred cows [and] no fossilised limits to the ground over which the mind might range in search of a better Britain . . ."

Eleven years and five wars later, at least a million people lie dead. Barack Obama is the American Blair. That he is a smooth operator and a black man is irrelevant. He is of an enduring, rampant system whose drum majors and cheer squads never see, or want to see, the consequences of 500lb bombs dropped unerringly on mud, stone and straw houses.

http://www.johnpilger.com

Also see:

Obama Lays Out Plans for Continued War
by Steven Argue
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/07/14/18516240.php

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Obama Lays Out Plans for Continued War

2008-07-15T16:13:08Z

Obama Lays Out Plans for Continued War

By Steven Argue

In a July 14, 2008 New York Times Op Ed, Barack Obama says:

"As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces."

In other words, he does not plan to get all of the troops out of Iraq and he will only get most of the troops out in two years. And what does he explain he will do with these troops? Redeploy them. Redeployed where? His rhetoric has been clear: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.

Obama goes on to call for a surge in Afghanistan as well as war in Pakistan:

"Ending the war [in Iraq] is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan [...] As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters [...]"

U.S. intervention has also been very bad for the people of Pakistan. It is US intervention that has kept a long series of dictators in power there. The US has no right to intervene against those fighting that dictatorship that it labels "terrorists". Likewise, it is US intervention in support of a long series of Pakistani dictators that is the cause of Bhutto's death, brutal repression against the majority, exploitation, and poverty, all of which has resulted in rebellion against the Pakistani government. The US has already harmed the Pakistani people enough with massive aid to dictators and would do more harm by sending in troops.

NO TO OBAMA’S PROPOSED MILITARY INTERVENTION IN PAKISTAN!

Massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan began in 1978 and continues to this day. The ongoing war in Afghanistan continues to kill thousands of Afghan civilians and cause extreme suffering due to horrendous injuries, the displacement of people from their homes and livelihoods, home invasions, sexual abuse, arbitrary arrests and torture, and the general humiliation of the Afghani people.

As this author stated for Liberation News on September 12, 2001:

“Americans watched in horror as the World Trade Center collapsed. Yet it was a horror no different from what the U.S. government has done with it's bombing of civilian populations in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea. The U.S. bombings of just these countries, not to mention many other U.S. acts of war, murdered millions of civilians. Terror against civilians is never justified…

“Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.

“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen. With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing women for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.

“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate (oil) interests.” Steven Argue, Liberation News, September 12, 2001

The Taliban was put in power by U.S. intervention. U.S. occupation today is a cause for war and continues to keep an extremely reactionary religious government in power. Afghanistan had secular governments with much wider women's rights before the U.S. began its massive intervention in Afghanistan in the 1970's. All U.S. imposed governments have been religious and anti-women. In Afghanistan, the Afghanis are better qualified to solve the problems caused by U.S. imperialism than U.S. imperialism is.

Yet rather than get out of Afghanistan Obama is proposing more troops, more helicopters, and more war.

NO TO OBAMA”S PROPOSED SURGE IN AFGHANISTAN!

U.S. OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW!

In addition, at AIPAC, Obama’s speech laid the groundwork for war with Iran:

“The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. [...] The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.”

A war on a major oil producing nation under the imperialist excuse of weapons of mass destruction. Sound familiar? Bush would have a good case for a charge of plagiarism against Obama.

And what will the Iranians think of more imperialist intervention?

In 1953 the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and put the brutal dictatorship of the Shah in power. Mossadegh had plans to nationalize the Iranian oil fields, a plan that would have taken a good chunk of the oil profits out of the private control of major international oil companies. Such nationalizations have greatly helped people in other countries, such as Venezuela, where oil wealth is used to better the conditions of the poor and provide needed programs like healthcare.

The CIA sponsored overthrow of the Mossadegh government paved the way for 26 years of dictatorship under the U.S. backed Shah. Freedom of speech did not exist under the Shah, and the CIA participated in the torture of political opponents to the Shah. Meanwhile, U.S. oil corporations made massive profits from Iranian oil while the vast majority of the Iranian people lived in extreme poverty and did not benefit from the oil wealth.

The Iranian people rightly saw the Shah as a puppet of U.S. imperialism, and finally overthrew his dictatorship in 1979. Unfortunately, repression was so bad under the Shah that the only place that people could organize opposition was in the Mosques. This gave the Mullahs a tremendous advantage in taking control of the revolution. The Islamic nature of the revolution led to a deterioration of women's rights and socialists, many of whom had naively supported the Islamic Revolution, were executed by the clerical fascist state.

Despite the brutal nature of the new Iranian government, in that respect the same as the old regime the U.S. had supported, the U.S. was not satisfied. The new regime nationalized the Iranian oil fields under government control. In addition, the new government was full of anti-imperialist rhetoric and took American hostages; a natural result of 26 years of U.S. imposed dictatorship and exploitation. The U.S. government hated the Iranian revolution most for nationalizing the oil, and they feared that the Iranian Revolution may become an influence for similar anti-imperialist revolutions in the region.

As a result, the U.S. encouraged then ally, Saddam Hussein, to send Iraqi troops to invade Iran. During the war, the U.S. armed both sides, but most armed Iraq and provided Iraq with military intelligence. The Iraqi invasion of Iran began on September 22, 1980 and the war continued until 1988. As a result of the war, between half million and a million and a half people died. This U.S. support to Iraq also helped enable Iraq to murder between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds in the Anfal campaign of 1988. At the time, the U.S. corporate media was silent about this crime, and only exposed it later when U.S. alliances changed.

So U.S. intervention against Iran imposed decades of dictatorship, repression, war, exploitation, poverty, and, just in the Iran-Iraq war alone, the deaths of around a million Iranian people. Like Iraq, U.S. troops on the ground in Iran will not be treated as liberators.

The Iranian working class has many scores to settle with their Iranian rulers, but as bad as the current regime in Iran is, Iranians need only look across the border into Iraq to see that U.S. occupation will be much worse. War, a puppet capitalist regime, a million dead, torture, millions of refugees, and an occupier mainly interested in privatization to loot resources. As Iraq shows, there is no liberation at the hands of U.S. occupation. And as the CIA’s Shah showed; there is no liberation under a U.S. imposed puppet. Only anti-imperialist socialist revolution can begin to solve the problems faced by women, ethnic minorities, and the working class of Iran.

NO TO OBAMA’S THREATS AGAINST IRAN!

U.S. HANDS OFF IRAN!

On Iraq, Obama has never promised to fully withdraw. In a debate in September 2007, when asked if he would have U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2013 Barack Obama said "I believe that we should have all our troops out by 2013, but I don't want to make promises not knowing what the situation's going to be three or four years out." ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC", New York Times 9/26/07).

The U.S. must leave by air, sea, and land as quickly as possible. U.S. imperialism has created a horrible situation, but that is no excuse to stay, and U.S. troops, Halliburton, etc. are only making matters worse. Over a million Iraqis are dead. These deaths are not just caused by the civil war that the U.S. has ignited, nor are they just caused by the death-squad government that the U.S. has put in power. U.S. guns and bombers are also the direct cause of a large number of deaths. Iraq needs to be turned over to the Iraqi people through immediate withdrawal.

In addition, Obama has directly supported the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq by voting in the Senate to fund it. If it were not for the Democrat votes in congress, the recent $162 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would have never passed.

This most recent New York Times Op Ed from Obama continues on with a pro-war position. Obama is clear. He wants a gradual redeployment of the majority of troops to fight other wars while calling for continuing to keep some troops fighting in Iraq.

On Blackwater mercenaries fighting in Iraq, Obama also refuses to support a ban, and promised to continue to use Blackwater when he becomes president (Democracy Now!, June 2, 2008).

The US government has no right to be in Iraq murdering, torturing, and humiliating their people while making massive profits for the military industry and other contractors. The U.S. is attempting to privatize Iraqi oil to eliminate Iraqi control over this most important resource and give U.S. and British oil companies control over the oil. The puppet government the US has set up is a death squad government that should not be protected by U.S. troops. Continued occupation of Iraq is a continued attempt to subvert the national will of the Iraqi people and it must end immediately, yet Obama's plan is to only leave, partially, after a couple years, and this, assuredly, only after the oil law has been passed and oil ownership handed over to the multi-nationals. This, as Obama's own use of the term "redeployment" indicates, will free U.S. troops up for other oil wars.

NO TO OBAMA’S “PHASED REDEPLOYMENT”!

U.S. OUT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN NOW!

U.S. HANDS OFF THE WORLD!

Another major cause for war in the Middle East is U.S. military support to the racist regime in Israel. Obama promises to continue this practice. At AIPAC Obama promised:

“Defense cooperation between the United States and Israel is a model of success, and must be deepened. As president, I will implement a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade — investments to Israel's security that will not be tied to any other nation. First, we must approve the foreign aid request for 2009. Going forward, we can enhance our cooperation on missile defense. We should export military equipment to our ally Israel under the same guidelines as NATO.”

This despite Israel’s recent war of aggression against Lebanon, a war that, if it were not for the heroic resistance of Hezbollah fighters, would have ended in another Israeli occupation like Israel’s brutal occupation of Lebanon that took place in the 1980’s. That occupation included crimes against humanity committed by Israeli and allied Christian Phalangists when they massacred thousands of Palestinians in cold-blood at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps.

In addition, Obama’s speech made no reference to the suffering faced by the Palestinian people as a result of the creation and continuation of the Jewish state. Israel is a state that created a homeland for one people, through force and violence, by denying the homeland of Palestine’s original inhabitants. Also missing from Obama’s speech was the brutal blockade currently being carried out against Palestinians in Gaza. Obama expressed zero sympathy for the Palestinians and other Arabs, only promises to supply Israel with the weapons to kill more Arabs.

Massive U.S. military aid helps keep the repressive governments of Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia in power. Instead of promising more U.S. military aid, that aid should be cut off to better allow the people of the Middle East to decide their own future.

NO TO OBAMA’S PROMISE OF BILLIONS TO ISRAEL!

Another indicator of where Obama stands on imperialist war is how he sees the past wars of the United States. Of H. W. Bush and his war on Iraq Obama recently stated, "I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush. I don't have a lot of complaints about their handling of Desert Storm." (Barack Obama, from David Brooks article, "Obama Admires Bush, NY Times, May 16, 2008)

Leading up to that war, Kuwait was slant drilling into Iraqi Ramaila oil fields. Iraq saw this as theft. In addition, the Kuwaiti monarchy went against OPEC quotas and increased oil production by 40%, bringing down the price of oil on the world market, something Saddam Hussein called economic warfare.

Before Iraq invaded Kuwait, Saddam Hussein was, at that time an ally of the United States in the wars against Iran and the Kurds. He had received massive U.S. military backing in those wars. When he assembled troops on the Kuwaiti border, US ambassador April Glaspie met with Saddam Hussein and told him, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."

Saddam Hussein saw this as a green light from his powerful U.S. ally to invade Kuwait. Soon after, he did.

But Saddam Hussein was set up by the United States because the U.S. wanted a war. The reason for this was to prop up the profits of the military industrial complex. The Soviet Union had just fallen, and the military industries needed an excuse to keep spending billions of dollars of our tax dollars on the military.

Saddam Hussein was the perfect boogie-man to meet their needs. The U.S. corporate media pointed out that he had murdered tens of thousands of Kurds, never mentioning why they were silent when the operations were taking place with weapons supplied by the United States.

The U.S. corporate media also claimed that premature babies in Kuwait had been taken out of incubators and left to die so that the incubators could be shipped back to Baghdad. The whole story was a complete fabrication, and the corporate media even admitted it after the war, but the lie served its purpose in swaying many people who otherwise questioned going to war for the repressive Kuwaiti monarchy.

In addition, President H.W. Bush claimed as reason for war, "Within three days, 120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks had poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia. It was then that I decided to act to check that aggression." This was based on supposed Pentagon satellite photos. Yet, from commercial satellite photos acquired by the St. Petersburg Times, this was proven to be a lie, the desert Bush senior and the Pentagon referred to was nothing but empty desert.

While playing up false stories of baby killers and the new Hitler that was going to march across the Middle East, the U.S. corporate media ignored Kuwait’s theft of Iraqi oil as well the historic claim of Iraq to Kuwait, with Kuwait being a construct of British imperialism to divide the territory and limit Iraqi access to the sea.

In addition, the U.S. corporate media completely ignored the repressive nature of the Kuwaiti monarchy that U.S. troops were sent to fight and die for. The vast majority of those living in Kuwait were denied the right to vote and other more basic rights. This included women and people labeled foreigners, many of whom had been in Kuwait for generations. Some who had ancestors in Kuwait prior to 1920 were even denied Kuwaiti citizenship. Palestinian workers built modern Kuwait, but they were kept in second class status. This situation was so bad that many Palestinians aided the Iraqi troops and saw them as a liberation army. After the U.S. re-installed the monarchy, most Kuwaiti Palestinians were driven out of Kuwait.

For women in Kuwait the Iraqi invasion also brought hope. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Under Saddam Hussein, over 50% of Iraqi doctors were women. Iraqi women were allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They were allowed to drive. Iraqi women could even freely criticize men. In addition, Iraqi women had the right to work and control their own funds. This was in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive monarchy of Kuwait where women had / have no rights what-so-ever.

In carrying out the war to defend the Kuwaiti monarchy the U.S. used depleted uranium (DU) weapons that have contaminated Iraqi water, soil, and food with radiation. This radiation has caused large numbers of birth defects and other diseases for the Iraqi people. In addition, U.S. soldiers were not given protection and, as a result, became ill in massive numbers with the symptoms of radiation poisoning. Like Agent Orange poisoning in Vietnam, the military brass pretended they had no clue to the cause of this illness that became dubbed “Persian Gulf War Syndrome”. Yet this was later exposed as a lie when reports were made public warning the military brass of the health risks of DU weapons before the war.

Government demographer Beth Osborn Duponte lost her job when she estimated the civilian loss of life in Iraq to be around 83,000, 13,000 directly from U.S. bombing and another 70,000 civilians dead as a result of U.S. targeting of civilian necessities such as water treatment facilities, medical facilities and supplies, and the electric power grid.

In addition, Duponte estimated deaths of Iraqi troops to be around 40,000. Many of the Iraqi troops killed were buried alive. In defense of U.S. actions Col. Lon Maggart said, "People somehow have the notion that burying guys alive is nastier than blowing them up with hand grenades or sticking them in gut with bayonets, well it's not."

So Obama has no problems with Bush targeting civilians, irradiating U.S. troops and the Iraqi people, burying people alive, lying to the American people, and re-installing a repressive monarchy in Kuwait. In addition, Obama wants to escalate the war in Afghanistan, send troops into Pakistan, is already threatening Iran with war, will never fully pull out of Iraq and only promises to pull out most troops in two years after an extended gradual re-deployment of troops to other wars, will continue to use murderous Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq, and promises billions in military aid to Israel. Enough said.

Obama will be nominated the presidential candidate of the Democrat Party on August 24-28 at the Democrat Party National Convention (DNC). In opposition to the DNC convention, protests are being organized, with organizers stating:

"On August 24-28, the ruling elite and their defenders will converge in Denver Colorado, in an attempt to recuperate the gains of global social movements and produce another myth of progress. Lip service to global warming, the economic crisis and the war will endow them with the magic to spread amnesia across the hearts and minds of North America... Outside those doors, however, so many will exclaim, smash and sing a harmonious ‘no.’...”

In addition, there will be protests at the equally pro-war Republican National convention being held September 1-4 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Although virtually ignored by the corporate press, there are other presidential candidates who are running in opposition to the Democrats and Republicans who are for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. These include Cynthia McKinney running on the Green Party ticket, Brian Moore of the Socialist Party, Gloria La Riva on the Party for Socialism and Liberation ticket, and Róger Calero on the Socialist Workers Party ticket. Corporate controlled elections and media assure that these authentic anti-war candidates will not get elected, but these candidacies do help expose people to positions of politicians not controlled by corporate interests and the pro-war Democrat Party machine. In addition, through some of these campaigns, more people become exposed to socialist ideas and the ideas of class struggle methods to bring about change.

A vote for Obama or McCain is a vote for war! So that's what, in active terms, you're really voting for when you vote Democrat or Republican. Those of us voting for third parties in order to try to help build the kinds of parties and ideas that would really bring change, and those of us refusing to vote in order to not participate in such a blatantly rigged system, neither will change the country through these up-coming elections either, but at least we won’t be dumb enough to vote for own oppressors and exploiters that are waging imperialist war. And we will not be drawn into making apologies for imperialist war politicians like Obama. Instead, we will have the sense to be working for something different.

And those of us in unions should be angry that our hard earned union dues are being squandered on the Democrat Party when that money should instead be put into stronger strike funds to strengthen our ability to fight for better contracts, for socialized medicine, and for bigger strikes against the wars.

Build the Anti-War Movement! For More Strikes for Immediate Withdrawal Like the May 1st ILWU Anti-War Strike That Shut Down 29 Ports! Support Soldiers Refusing to Fight Including the 10,000 U.S. Soldiers Who Have Gone AWOL! Build the Socialist and Anti-Imperialist Movements! U.S. Hands off Iran! U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan Now!

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US longshore union leader slams Obama on war

2008-07-12T19:25:29Z

US longshore union leader: "don't vote for Obama"

SHORT VIDEO OF JACK HEYMAN'S COMMENTS ON OBAMA AT PERMANENT REVOLUTION WEEKEND SCHOOL IN LONDON

Try either of the links below for the video

http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=2202

http://www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/2202

Also from Jack Heyman, see:

Longshoremen to close ports on West Coast to protest war

http://uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/0de5539d-06be-406e-a4a8-e45eaef28b9f

******************************************

Distributed by Liberation News:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

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Viagra and birth control

2008-07-10T22:17:41Z

From NARAL Pro-Choice America, via MySpace:

You gotta love it.

McCain's own top advisor (Carly Fiorina) didn't even know his record on birth control coverage.
When chatting with reporters, she said:
"a real, live example which I've been hearing a lot about from women: There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won't cover birth-control medication. Those women would like a choice."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/07/AR2008070702265.html

Yes, those women would like a choice.
Too bad McCain voted against a proposal that would have required insurance companies to cover prescription contraception in the same way they pay for Viagra. [Clinton/Reid amendment to FY'06 Budget Resolution, S.Con.Res.18, 3/17/05.]

I guess insurance companies covering birth control is just so undenisbly reasonable that Fiorina figured even McCain couldn't oppose it. Whoops, think again.
If his own staff doesn't even know his horribly anti-choice record, how do we expect the public to know the truth? Oy.
http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/meet-the-real-mccain/learn_more.html

posted in CODEPINK - 1 reply

Carol Kreck = Awesome

2008-07-09T04:11:14Z

Librarian with ‘McCain=Bush’ sign charged with trespassing at public campaign event.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/07/librarian-with-mccainbush-sign-kicked-out-of-public-campaign-event/

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Democrats back $162 billion more war funding

2008-06-22T20:30:18Z

[The U.S. must leave by air, sea, and land as quickly as possible. U.S. imperialism has created a horrible situation, but that is no excuse to stay, and U.S. troops, Halliburton, etc. are only making matters worse. Over a million Iraqis are dead. These deaths are not just caused by the civil war that the U.S. has ignited, nor are they just caused by the death-squad government that the U.S. has put in power. U.S. guns and bombers are also the direct cause of a large number of deaths. Iraq needs to be turned over to the Iraqi people through immediate withdrawal. -Steven Argue]

Democrats back $162 billion more war funding

by Yosef M

News sources on the Web report that on Thursday, June 20, the US House of Representatives approved Iraq and Afghanistan war funding of $162 billion. The legislation was passed without any timetable for US military withdrawal from the two conflicts. The bill, supported by the US House Democratic leadership Pelosi and Hoyer, will fund US wars in the two Middle Eastern countries through the middle of 2009. House Democrats, who were sent to Washington with a single mandate from the US electorate in 2006, to extricate the US from the two wars in the Middle East, consistently support legislation to continue those very wars. The vote is instructive; it reflects the same pattern we saw in the passage of the government spying bill the next day. If the Democrats had voted as an opposition, against war funding, the bill would have failed to pass, with 188 Republicans in favor and 235 Democrats opposing. And there would have been nothing Bush could have done: he can veto what Congress passes, but no President can veto what Congress refuses to pass.

What happened instead is that 80 Democrats joined the Republicans to approve the funding and continue US wars of aggression against the long-suffering peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq. As has already been noted in the press, Bush's popularity has fallen to historic lows;
it is also true that a majority of US residents have opposed US intervention in Iraq for many years, a fact not reflected in the US press until after the Democratic sweep of Congress in the 2006 elections. As other people have noted, there is no way the thoroughly despised lame duck Bush can hurt Congressional Democrats now. If the Democrats go on funding Bush's wars, and they are and will, it is because they want to. All of which makes it inexplicable that most of the US "left" is ga-ga over the Democrats and their candidate this election year.

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Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

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Iraqi Oil Workers Tell Chevron "Hands Off Iraq"

2008-05-26T22:15:54Z

Iraqi Oil Workers Tell Chevron "Hands Off Iraq"

In a letter to Chevron executives and shareholders (and to ExxonMobil, who meet the same day), Iraqi Oil Workers Unions call on Chevron to end the occupation and stop pushing for the Iraq Oil [Theft] Law. This message will be delivered by antiwar, environmenta, and labor organizers as a protest converges on Chevrons annual shareholder meeting. Their message is below. This event will be on Wednesday May 28, at 7am at Chevrons Corporate headquarters in San Ramon. For more information, see: http://bayareadirectaction.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/may-28-demand-justice-from-chevron/

******************
To: The Shareholders of ExxonMobil and Chevron Corporations and All Peace Loving People of the World

From: Hassan Juma’a Awad, President, Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU)

We call upon the governments, corporations and other institutions behind the ongoing occupation of Iraq to respond to our demands for real democracy, true sovereignty and self-determination, free of all foreign interference.

Five years of invasion, war and occupation have brought nothing but death, destruction, misery and suffering to our people. In the name of our “liberation,” more than a million of our citizens have been killed or wounded, our nation’s schools, hospitals and other infrastructure have been destroyed, our neighbourhoods have been bombed, our homes have been broken into, our children have been traumatized, many of our family members and neighbours have been assaulted and arrested, our national treasures have been looted, and nearly twenty percent of our people have been turned into refugees.

The continued occupation fuels the violence in Iraq rather than alleviating it. The occupation has helped to foment and then exploit sectarian divisions and terror attacks where there had been none.

The Ba’athist legislation of 1987, which banned trade unions in the public sector and public enterprises (80% of all workers), is still in effect and continues to be enforced against us. Our union offices have been raided. Union property has been seized and destroyed. Our bank accounts have been frozen. Our leaders have been beaten, arrested, abducted and assassinated. Our rights as workers are routinely violated. This is an attack on our rights and the basic precepts of a democratic society. It is a grim reminder of the shadow of dictatorship still stalking our country.

We call upon you and all the world’s peace-loving peoples to help us to end the nightmare of occupation and restore our sovereignty and national independence so that we can chart our own course to the future.

1) We demand an immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from our country, and utterly reject the agreement being negotiated with the USA for long-term bases and a military presence. Iraq must be returned to full sovereignty.

2) We demand the passage of a labour law promised by our Constitution, that adheres to ILO principles to protect the rights of workers to organize, bargain and strike, independent of state control and interference and on which Iraqi trade unionists have been fully consulted.

3) We demand an end to meddling in our sovereign economic affairs by the International Monetary Fund, the USA and UK, and multinational energy corporations, and recognition that no major economic decisions concerning our services and resources can be made while foreign troops occupy our country.

4) We demand that the US government, oil companies and others immediately cease lobbying for the oil law which would fracture the country and hand control over our oil to multinational companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron. We demand that all oil companies be prevented from entering into any long-term agreement concerning oil while Iraq remains occupied. The Iraqi government must tear up the current draft of the oil law, and begin to develop a legitimate oil policy based on full and genuine consultation with the Iraqi people. Only after all occupation forces are gone should a long term plan for the development of our oil resources be adopted.

We seek your support and solidarity to help us end the military and economic occupation of our country.

We look forward to the day when we have a world based on co-operation and solidarity.

We look forward to a world free from war, sectarianism, competition and exploitation.

******************
Also See:

Take the Profit Out of Global Warming and War, Nationalize the Oil Industry
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/05/24/18501994.php

Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/02/10/18478172.php

Join the Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

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NYT: Obama admires Bush Sr.: ''no complaints about handling of Desert Storm"

2008-05-17T18:50:52Z

Support for Empire is support for Empire -- any way you cut it. There's a reason Corporate American bankrolled Obama's campaign
...
**************
"I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush. I don't have a lot of complaints about their handling of Desert Storm."

Source:
- Barack Obama, from David Brooks article, "Obama Admires Bush, NY Times, May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/opinion/16brooks.html?em&ex=1211169600&en=1577a90ae5048a04&ei=5087%0A

See:
Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming
by STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/02/10/18478172.php

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Working Women Organization of Pakistan

2008-03-09T13:07:17Z

Working Women Organization of Pakistan
APPEAL

We Want Peace

This year, March 8th, International Women's Day. takes place in a world where the flames of war are rising all over the world:

We have heard the statements threatening the Chavez government of Venezuela, of war, because it does not accept the orders of imperialism.

We have all seen the terrible pictures of Palestinian women and children running under the fire of missiles and bombs provided by U.S. imperialism and fired by the armed forces of the Israeli state.

Those terrible scenes are the same as those of people of Afghanistan whose villages have been burned and reduced to rubble by the U.S. air force because they were charged with "hiding terrorists."

Military occupation of Afghanistan has now been going on for 6 years and it only brings along with it never-ending destruction and war. That war is now spreading into Pakistan.

To spread the flame of war, imperialism is attempting to break up our countries to sow the seeds of hatred and fear between people who want to live together in peace and making use of differences of language, religion and gender. We, the women are those who suffer first and most from the situation created by imperialism and which is prevailing in all our countries.

On the occasion of the 8th of March, it is time to launch an Appeal of Women against War for Peace, for peaceful and friendly relations between all the peoples and the nations of our area. We want peace.

It is a woman's appeal, because women have always stood in the first line of the struggle against wars.

We women are the first victims of so-called "ethnic cleansing' of massacres under cover of religion.

We women are opposed to wars, to the waste of human lives sacrificed to imperialist greed: these lives are those of their sons and daughters, of their fathers, their brothers and their husbands.

Let's unite because we want peace, we want to live peacefully, to live in conditions where our children are fed and can be educated, in conditions where we are no longer facing violence and harm on a daily basis because we are women.

We women know that the domestic civil repression is intrinsically linked to the violence of war.

We are aware that the situation of women in our countries exists in the larger context of the global history of our continent, of colonisation and its consequences: partition, displacement, forced migrations and expulsions, all elements which imperialism uses today.

And we know that wars can only worsen that situation.

We need peace, we know it can be safeguarded only by the united action of all the peoples of our sub-continent.

That is why we are resisting against the moves of imperialism to gain strategic influence in our area to control our natural resources, not the least of which is oil.

That is why we fight against the plans of the IMF and the World Bank which aggravate the poverty and misery in each of our countries and create the conditions which allow war, conflicts and barbarism to develop. In fact, terror roams the world in many guises and is perpetrated under various banners, but the root of evil, of war and misery is imperialist domination, a system ready to crush millions of lives for the sake of profit.

As working class activists from all the sub-continent stated at the end of the Mumbai conference for a "fraternal alliance of the peoples and the organisations of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, for peace and unity of the people.":

"War, occupation, military presence are used to aggravate in each and every country the conditions of the working class, to attack its rights, to intensify its exploitation.

"Workers of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, have the same interests. ...

"Imperialism today is everywhere fostering conflicts on so-called ethnic or religious basis. But in the class struggle, the workers are united. Those who have organised the partition, to weaken the people at the time of independence, today intend to aggravate chaos and division."

That holds true for women. Women are in the first line of the victims of that system.

We call upon women in India, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, in Sri Lanka, in Nepal, irrespective of their creed, of their language, of their geographical location to unite, to say together: We want peace, we want democracy, we want equality.

We can be at the vanguard of the struggle of the people of our sub-continent so that instead of wars, conflicts, we build together a friendly and peaceful alliance of all the oppressed and exploited who share the same interests.

We, women, will continue to fight in defence of our rights.

We calls upon all women militants of the world to act jointly with men inside trade unions, to resist the capitalist globalisation, the imperialist wars and the destruction of the environment and to demand trade union and democratic freedoms.

We women, on the occasion of March 8th 2008, International Women's Day, state our determination to fight against war, against all attempts to divide us, on the basis of "ethnicity", religion or language. We stand against war for the unity of our people, for democracy and for equal rights.

Rubina Jamil,
Working Women Organisation

----------

I wish to endorse the appeal

"South Asian Women Against War, for Peace, for Unity of all the People of our Sub-continent, for Democracy, for Equality of Rights.

Name:

Organization Name:

Address:

Town:

Country:

Email:

Tel:

Cell Phone:

Fax:

WWO
93 A Nawab Town,
Raiwind Road,
Lahore, Pakistan
Tel: 5311319-5313906 Fax: 92-42-5314365
Email: rubinawwo@nexlinx.net.pk

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Conspiracy History compilation DVDs torrents

2008-03-06T15:07:10Z

**************************************************

Greetings to all my relations.

This is the last step of our project History Watch. If History is
defined and known by the texts, we can now add to this definition the
recorded events of the filmed archives. Animated images are harder to
deny than printed words. Our objective is to spread out freely some of
the little broadcast, even hidden informations about our collective
History.

We put online a collection of 391 documentaries and other selected and
recut videos, to offer to a wide public the best of the infos
available on the net in english and in french. If you are interested,
you have the time, the right equipment and connection, all you have to
do is open the joint document and decompress it if needed (but normaly
your system should do it automaticaly). You'll find therein nine links
that will open the torrents for the nine DVDs we compiled (around 4.6
Gig each, for a total of a little over 41 G, being over 100 hours of
videos).

Otherwise, you can go directly to btjunkie.com and search for these titles.

11 Septembre 2001 - 9-11
Bush family & friends
Capitalist & Communist regimes
Capitalist conspiracy
Mind Kontrol - Secret Programs
New World Order - Secret Societies
Secret services - cover up - covert ops
Secret weapons - UFO
Terrorism Theories propaganda

Torrents are a system of peer to peer data transfer. The more people
download a torrent, the faster it spreads and the longer it stays on
the net. If you don't have a bittorrent software, we suggest that you
download uTorrent on utorrent.com. If you want to participate in
facilitating the diffusion of these infos about our collective
History, download these torrents on as many computers as possible,
whether it is in cybercafes. It takes one or two minutes to open up
the links and the downloading will keep proceeding on its own.

Please spread this out, take part in this action for social education
on a planetary scale. Thanks.

For more info: watch.history@gmail.com History Watch

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Details- Communikey show- Persian Naropa play- Laughing Goat Barista- Make signs Mar 10 for protest Mar16 Denver, Friend us we are NEW to TRIBE!!! PEACE SHANTI NAMASTE! AHO! IN- LA KECH_

2008-03-03T04:43:23Z

Details- Communikey show- Persian Naropa play- Laughing Goat Barista- Make signs Mar 10 for protest Mar16 Denver, Friend us we are NEW to TRIBE!!! PEACE SHANTI NAMASTE! AHO! IN- LA KECH_

Check our myspace comments for cool upcoming things 3/20/ Comminikey show a m ust if you like electronic music.

also a super cool play before the show is a musy.

CODEPINK SAYS DO MORE THAN HOPE 4 PEACE.
<a href="http://s245.photobucket.com/albums/gg50/codepinkcolorado/?action=view&current=code-pinkJ27-29.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg50/codepinkcolorado/code-pinkJ27-29.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

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ILWU to Shut Down Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan

2008-03-02T18:21:24Z

Can Codepink plan actions to coincide with this? -Steven Argue

[Liberation News is in agreement with the following article of the Internationalist Group and both have also actively advocated these kinds of industrial actions.]

For Workers Strikes Against the War!

ILWU to Shut Down West Coast Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan

In a major step for the U.S. labor movement, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down West Coast ports on May 1, to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East. In a February 22 letter to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, ILWU International president Robert McEllrath reported that at a recent coast-wide union meeting, "One of the resolutions adopted by caucus delegates called on longshore workers to stop work during the day shift on May 1, 2008 to express their opposition to the war in Iraq."

This is the first time in decades that an American union has decided to undertake industrial action against a U.S. war. It is doubly important that this mobilization of labor's power is to take place on May Day, the international workers day, which is not honored in the U.S. Moreover, the resolution voted by the ILWU delegates opposes not only the hugely unpopular war in Iraq, but also the war and occupation of Afghanistan (which Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain all want to expand). The motion to shut down the ports also demands the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the entire region, including the oil sheikdoms of the strategically important Persian/Arab Gulf.

The Internationalist Group has fought from the moment U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in September 2002 for American unions to strike against the war. Despite the fact that millions have marched in the streets of Europe and the United States against the war in Iraq, the war goes on. Neither of the twin war parties of U.S. imperialism - Democrats and Republicans - and none of the capitalist candidates will stop this horrendous slaughter that has already killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The only way to stop the Pentagon killing machine is by mobilizing the power of a greater force - that of the international working class.

The action announced by the powerful West Coast dock workers union, to stop work to stop the war, should be taken up by unions and labor organizations throughout the United States and internationally. The ILWU should be commended for courageously taking the first step, and it is up to working people everywhere to back them up. Wherever support is strong enough, on May 1 there should be mass walkouts, sick-outs, labor marches, plant-gate meetings, lunch-time rallies, teach-ins. And the purpose of such actions should be not to beg the bourgeois politicians whose hands are covered with blood, having voted for every war budget for six and a half years, but a show of strength of the working people who make this country run, and who can shut it down!

Now is the time for bold class action. Opposition to the war is even greater in the U.S. working class than in the population as a whole, more than two-thirds of which wants to stop the war but is stymied by the capitalist political system. In his letter to Sweeney, the ILWU president asked "if other AFL-CIO affiliates are planning to participate in similar events." Labor militants should make sure the answer to that question is a resounding "yes!"

There should be no illusions that this will be easy. No doubt the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) bosses will try to get the courts to rule the stop-work action illegal. The ILWU leadership could get cold feet, since this motion was passed because of overwhelming support from the delegates despite attempts to stop it or, failing that, to water it down or limit the action. And the U.S. government could try to ban it on the grounds of "national security," just as Bush & Co. slapped a Taft-Hartley injunction on the docks during contract negotiations in the fall of 2002, saying that any work stoppage was a threat to the "war effort," and threatened to occupy the ports with troops!

The answer to every attempt to sabotage or undercut this first labor action against this war, and against Washington's broader "war on terror" which is intended to terrorize the world into submission must be to redouble efforts to bring out workers' power independent of the capitalist parties and politicians. If the ILWU work stoppage is successful, it will only be a small, but very important, beginning that must be generalized and deepened. It will take industrial-strength labor action to defeat the imperialist war abroad and the bosses' war on immigrants, oppressed minorities, poor and working people "at home."

ILWU in the Forefront of Labor Action Against the War

Workers strike action against imperialist war isn't new - it just hasn't happened here for a long, long time. During World War I there were huge mass strikes in Germany against the battlefield carnage, culminating in the downfall of the kaiser in November 1918. A year earlier in Russia, working-class opposition to the war led to the overthrow of the tsar and the October Revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky's Bolsheviks. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International call today for transport workers to "hot cargo" (refuse to handle) war shipments. In the early 1920s, Communist-led French dock workers did exactly that, boycotting ships carrying war materiel to suppress a colonial rebellion in the Rif region of Morocco, as they
also did during France's war in Indochina in the 1950s.

In the U.S., the ILWU struck in 1948 amid Cold War hysteria and in defiance of the "slave labor" Taft-Hartley Act to defend its union hiring hall against the bosses and government screaming about "reds" in the union leadership. In 1953, at the height of McCarthyite witch-hunting, the ILWU called a four-day general strike in Hawaii of sugar, pineapple and dock workers over the jailing of seven union members for being communists. During the Vietnam War, socialist historian Isaac Deutscher said that he would trade all the peace marches for a single dock strike. The ILWU was the first U.S. union to oppose the Vietnam war, but during war and especially during the 1971 strike union leader Harry Bridges refused to stop the movement of military cargo. (Ship owners made use of this by falsely labeling cargo as "military" to evade picket lines and undermine the strike.) This betrayal went hand in hand with a "mechanization and modernization" contract that slashed union jobs.

As the U.S.-led imperialist invasion of Iraq was looming, in January 2003 train drivers in Scotland refused to move a freight train carrying munitions to a NATO military base. The next month, Italian railroad unionists and antiwar activists blocked NATO war trains by occupying the rails. In the United States, ILWU dock workers were a target of "anti-terrorist" government repression, as police fired supposedly "less than lethal" munitions point blank at an antiwar protest on the Oakland, California docks, injuring six longshore workers and arresting 25 people (who eventually won their legal case against the police). And every year since the war started, the San Francisco/Oakland ILWU Local 10 has voted for motions for labor action against the war. Usually they were voted down at caucuses and conventions of the ILWU, but not this time.

Last May, Local 10 longshoremen and Local 34 ships clerks refused to cross picket lines set up by the Oakland Teachers Association and antiwar activists, defying arbitrators' orders by refusing to work ships of the notorious antiunion outfit, Stevedoring Services of America (see "Oakland Dock Workers Honor Picket, Shut Down War Cargo Shipper," The Internationalist No. 26, July 2007). In the aftermath of that action, the union issued a call for a Labor Conference to Stop the War that would "plan workplace rallies, labor
mobilizations in the streets and strike action against the war." The Call to Action stated:

"ILWU Local 10 has repeatedly warned that the so-called 'war on terror' is really a war on working people and democratic rights. Around the country, hundreds of unions and labor councils have passed motions condemning the war, but that has not stopped the war. We need to use labor's muscle to stop the war by mobilizing union power in the streets, at the plant gates and on the docks to force the immediate and total withdrawal of all U. S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq."

As the conference date approached, the union was the target of several police attacks, including a vicious cop assault on two black dock workers from San Francisco working in the port of Sacramento. Some 250 demonstrators from every ILWU local in Northern California rallied in their defense outside the courthouse. Their trial to be set march 18 at a hearing will encounter even larger demonstrations.

The Internationalist Group and its union supporters helped build and attended the October 20 conference, along with some 150 labor and socialist activists from the Bay Area, elsewhere in California and across the country. At the meeting, a particular focus was resistance to the Transportation Workers Identification Card (TWIC), which threatens minority workers and the union hiring hall, and which the Democratic Party in particular has been pushing in order to carry out a purge of dock workers in the name of the "war on terror."
Not long after that conference, a federal judge ordered Local 10 elections canceled and replaced by a Labor Department-run vote, on the eve of 2008 contract bargaining. Federal agents even invaded the union hall to enforce their order. This action is a threat to the independence of all unions.

This set the stage for the recent longshore-warehouse caucus, which voted a motion for a 24-hour "No Peace, No Work Holiday" against the war. The resolution was introduced in Local 10 by Jack Heyman, who also presented the motion for the 24 April 1999 coast-wide port shutdown demanding freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther and renowned radical journalist who has been on Pennsylvania's death row for the last quarter century. Although the union tops maneuvered to prevent Heyman from being elected as a delegate to the Coast Caucus, the motion passed in Local 10. At the Caucus, the delegate from Local 34 referred to the October Labor Conference to Stop the War as the origin of the motion.

At the close of the Caucus on February 8, there was a vigorous debate on the resolution. The union tops tried to stop it, to no avail. They kept asking, "are you sure you want to do this action." The delegates overwhelmingly said "yes." Even conservative trade unionists, including veterans of the Vietnam War, were getting up saying the government is lying to us, we've had it with this war, we've got to put a stop to it now. So instead the bureaucrats tried to gut the motion, which was cut down from 24 hours to 8, and changed into a "stop-work" meeting (covered by a contract clause) instead of a straight-out shutdown, thinking that this would lessen opposition from the employers. In the end there was a voice vote and only three delegates out of 100 voted against.

The efforts to undercut the motion continue, as is to be expected from a leadership which, like the rest of the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy, seeks "labor peace" with the bosses. In his letter to Sweeney, ILWU International president tried to present the action as an effort to "express support for the troops by bringing them home safely," although the motion voted by the delegates says nothing of the sort. Playing the "support our troops" game is an effort to swear loyalty to the broader aims of U.S. imperialism. It aids the warmongers, when what's needed is independent working-class action against the system that produces endless imperialist war. Yet despite the efforts to water it down and distort it, the May 1 action voted for by the ILWU delegates is a call to use labor's muscle to put an end to the war.

Mobilize Labor's Power to Defeat the Bosses' War!

For the West Coast dock workers union to shut down the ports against the war means a big step forward in the class struggle. The Internationalist Group has uniquely fought for workers strikes against the war, when all the popular-front "peace" coalitions dismissed this and even some shamefaced ex-Trotskyists refused to call for it, saying it had "no resonance" among the workers (see our October 20007 Special Supplement to The Internationalist, "Why We Fight For Workers Strikes Against the War [and the opportunists Don't]"). With signs, banners and propaganda we have sought to drive home the central lesson that it is necessary to defeat the imperialist war abroad and the bosses' war "at home" by mobilizing the power of the workers movement independent of and against the capitalist parties.

That means fighting the war mobilization down the line. First and foremost, this means actively joining the struggle for immigrant rights as the government turns undocumented working people into "the enemy within." Class-conscious workers should demand full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Last year, San Francisco Local 10 voted to stop work and join marches for immigrant rights on May 1, but this was opposed by the employers PMA and sabotaged at the last minute by the union tops. Shamefully, Local 13 in Los Angeles, a majority Mexican American port, made no protest when police attacked immigrant rights protesters that same day. Today, as the ICE immigration police stage Gestapo-style raids across the country, organized labor should take the lead in organizing rapid response networks to come into the streets to block the raids. Despite the campaign by the capitalist media and politicians to whip up anti-immigrant hysteria, there is widespread disgust among American working people toward the jackbooted storm troopers who are terrorizing immigrant communities.

At the same time, the unions should use the power to put a halt to the attacks on civil liberties which are part of the home front of the imperialist war. Driver's licenses with biometric data, TWIC identification cards with "background checks," warrantless spying and phone tapping, setting up special military tribunals for "trials" in which defendants are denied the right of habeas corpus, to know the "evidence" or even the charges against them - all these are part of a drive that is in high gear pushing the United States toward a full-fledged police state. There have been scores, perhaps hundreds of resolutions by unions and city, county and state labor bodies against the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, showing that labor activists are well aware of the danger. But just as is the case with the countless union antiwar resolutions, there has been no labor action. It is commonplace in the labor movement to bemoan the lack of real action when Reagan broke the 1981 PATCO air traffic controllers' strike, paving the way for massive union-busting, takeaways and racist attacks all down the line. Let's not let the labor bureaucrats bury the vital struggles of today.

Now is the time to turn words into deeds, to speak to the capitalist rulers in the only language they understand. The imperialist war parties must be defeated by a class mobilization of the working people at the head of all the oppressed. The ILWU motion to stop work on May Day to put a stop to the war can provide working people everywhere with the opening to turn from impotent protest to a struggle for power. For that the key is to build a class-struggle workers party fighting for a workers government, for socialist revolution here and around the world, that will put an end once and for all to the system of endless war, poverty and racism.

This is an Article of the Internationalist Group:
www.internationalist.org

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Codepink meeting in DEnver 2/28 6:30p; Let'splan for the DNC!! Friend us on our new myspace page from codepinkcolorado! Hollar 4 peace! pass it on!!

2008-02-26T22:19:12Z

DON'T BUY BUSH'S WAR!

GET INVOLVED WITH CODEPINK

___________________________________________

LET'S JOIN TOGETHER TO TAKE LOCAL ACTION

WHAT: Denver/ Boulder CODEPINK Local Chapter Meeting

WHEN: Thursday, February 28th, 6:30pm *

WHERE: Mercury Cafe; 2199 California St., Denver (303-294-9253)

MEETING MISSION:

Build the Boulder/ Denver CODEPINK chapter
Plan action for March 15th to protest 5 years of occupation in Iraq
Begin organizing for a strong CODEPINK presence at the Democratic National convention
Connect with other progressives who also want to speak out for PEACE!

CODEPINK is a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end the war in Iraq, stop new wars, and redirect our resources into healthcare, education and other life-affirming activities. We reject the Bush administration's fear-based politics that justify violence, and instead call for policies based on compassion, kindness and a commitment to international law. With an emphasis on joy and humor, CODEPINK women and men seek to activate, amplify and inspire a community of peacemakers through creative campaigns and a commitment to non-violence.

Please join us and check out www.codepink4peace.org for more information about the movement.
Questions about the meeting? Call: Anne Toepel (303-915-1660) or Alison Walker (720-297- 4494)

* If you would like to carpool from Boulder, meet at Folsom Street Coffee at 5:45.

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"Tribe" Backs Anti-Palestinian Racists

2008-02-23T16:07:53Z

Message from "Free Palestine End Zionism" moderator:

This is being sent to you because you were a member of my tribe, Free Palestine End Zionism. I would like you to know that I was notified today by a representative of tribe.net that my tribe was "anti-semitic" and that they removed it!

I am sending this so you will know why the tribe does not exist any more and so you will bear witness to the evident censorship and lack of the freedom of speech on tribe.net, plus the fabricated excuse to silence my tribe.

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V to the Tenth: Vagina Monologues

2008-02-13T10:03:43Z

find the V-Day event nearest you:: www.vday.org and events.vday.org/search.php and v10.vday.org/

V-Day is a global movement to end violence against women and girls that raises funds and awareness through benefit productions of Playwright/Founder Eve Ensler’s award winning play The Vagina Monologues.

Since 1998, thousands of V-Day events have taken place all over the world, Shenzhen, China to Stockholm, Sweden from Canberra, Australia to Lagos, Nigeria. In 2007 alone, more than 3000 V-Day events took place around the world and in all 50 of the United States. 2008 will be V-Day’s biggest year to date as we come together to celebrate the last ten years of ending violence against women and girls and go forward into the next ten years.

To date, the V-Day movement has raised over $50 million and educated millions about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it, crafted international educational, media and PSA campaigns, launched the Karama program in the Middle East, reopened shelters, and funded over 5000 community-based anti-violence programs and safe houses in Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq.

V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM) and sexual slavery.

Through V-Day campaigns, local volunteers and college students produce annual benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities.

find an event near you::
v10.vday.org/
vday.org

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FEB 15: Protest at Hollywood Military Recruitment Center

2008-02-13T06:04:06Z

Protest at Hollywood Military Recruitment Center
Resist War & Racism! Stop Military Recruitment!

Friday, Feb. 15, 3pm
7080 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles (La Brea in Hollywood)
Map and Directions Public Transportation

Join anti-war groups, including initiating organization World Can't Wait, plus Codepink, Addicted to War and the ANSWER Coalition at a protest action against the U.S. military's aggressive targeting of youth. This action is in solidarity with the Iraq Moratorium happening earlier that day.

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Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming

2008-02-10T17:20:41Z

Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming

By STEVEN ARGUE

Today, every national academy of science of the industrialized world recognizes human caused global warming as a fact. These include the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences who explicitly use the word "consensus" on the issue.

The problem of global warming is one that will, and is, devastating the planet’s environment, causing mass extinction of species while also destroying agricultural and habitable land through rising oceans, more severe hurricanes, droughts, more unpredictable weather, increases in tropical diseases, year round freezing weather with a potential ice age in the northern hemisphere combined with higher temperatures closer to the equator, and the potential of runaway global warming with the melting of the ocean’s methane hydride that could actually cause the extinction of the human species.

Despite the severity of the problem, and despite the United States being the biggest contributor to global warming in the world, the U.S. government and corporate leaders continue to do worse than nothing, through blocking and sabotaging all potential solutions for the past fifty years up until the present. This is due to the massive profits that continue to be made by the big oil corporations, and the political strength they have in being able to buy the politicians in Washington.

On the biggest question facing humanity, human caused global warming, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are ignoring the urgent proposals of global warming experts and instead put forward conservative proposals of carbon credit trading for big corporations and proposals for so-called “cleaner” fuels for cars. Carbon credit trading, giving big corporations the “right” to buy and sell the “right” to pollute, will undermine the ability to pass other legislation that can better curb carbon pollution. And the “cleaner” bio-fuels being proposed make no substantial difference because it takes energy involving carbon emissions to grow the plants used to make bio-fuels. In addition, rainforests that would help remove global warming causing carbon from the atmosphere are being cleared to grow bio-fuels. To make matters worse, converting food-stuffs and croplands to bio-fuels increases world food prices, causing increased world hunger.

What is really needed, as opposed to the pro-oil industry measures of Obama and Clinton, is an immediate emergency program to begin the process of reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 through converting to green technologies such as solar, energy conservation, and eliminating the combustion engine by going electric and cleaning up the grid. Such a program would also create jobs and could be paid for through cutting the military budget. To develop this program it will be important to nationalize the energy industries under the democratic control of society in order to run them for human and environmental needs, and to eliminate private energy’s corrupting influence on politics, where they promote policies of war and pollution. Socialists offer these real solutions. Meanwhile, the Democrats and Republicans have made human caused global warming a reality by promoting the policies that have caused it, even though the problem was known 50 years ago. Once again in this election, the Democrats have offered no real solutions to this problem that we are running out of time to address.

Just as the energy industries are promoting the destruction of the planet through carbon emissions, they, along with the powerful weapons industries, promote the mass murder of war as well.

In September 2007, when asked if he would have U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2013 Barack Obama said "I believe that we should have all our troops out by 2013, but I don't want to make promises not knowing what the situation's going to be three or four years out."

Similarly Hillary Clinton Said, “I agree with Barack” ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC", New York Times 9/26/07).

The U.S. must leave by air, sea, and land as quickly as possible. Citing fear of violence and civil war is the oldest trick in the dirty book of imperialist oppression. U.S. imperialism has created a horrible situation, but that is no excuse to stay, and U.S. troops, Halliburton, etc. are only making matters worse. Over a million Iraqis are dead. These deaths are not just caused by the civil war that the U.S. has ignited, nor are they just caused by the death-squad government that the U.S. has put in power. U.S. guns and bombers are also the direct cause of a large number of deaths. Iraq needs to be turned over to the Iraqi people through immediate withdrawal.

Not only do Obama and Clinton make no promise to get out of Iraq, both have both voted for war appropriations. This puts them both in the position of having directly supported the war.

In addition, Clinton voted to invade Iraq. Obama was not yet in the Senate, so he didn’t vote on that resolution. Yet on the verge of the U.S. war of aggression against Iraq Barack Obama repeated Bush’s lies at an anti-war rally stating, “He [Saddam Hussein] has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.” (Obama, 10/2002 Speech, Federal Plaza)

Last year Hillary Clinton stated she has no remorse for her murderous decision of voting to invade Iraq saying, "Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since. No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade." (Hillary Clinton, “No regret on Iraq Vote”, CNN.Com)

In trying to let themselves off the hook many Democrats claim that Bush "did not fairly represent intelligence". Feeble cries by these politicians today that their votes for war weren't their fault because they were lied to by Bush not only make them look stupid, they are an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

While the Democrats helped promote the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had no right to defend itself, Liberation News pointed out that it is the United States that has the weapons of mass destruction. Instead of war, we supported the right of Iraq to acquire the weapons necessary to defend themselves from U.S. aggression. There can be little doubt that if Iraq had acquired those weapons they might not be in the mess they are now.

Yet for the Democrats a Republicans Iraqi weapons were never the real motive for mass murder in Iraq. The capitalist ruling class, and their Democrat and Republican representatives, thought that they could use their superior military power to quickly move into Iraq and establish by force a stable neo-colonial puppet regime, and then make massive profits from the privatization of the Iraqi economy, especially oil. It is the failures of this imperialist plan, in the face of Iraqi resistance and growing unpopularity at home, that has forced some Democrats to pretend to distance themselves from the same Bush policies that they actually support.

Just as Liberation News opposes the U.S. occupation and corporate looting of Iraq, we also denounced the starvation blockade that was carried out through the UN by the Bill Clinton administration. That blockade cost the lives of about a million people, many of them children. While the number of deaths was partly due to the capitalist nature of Iraqi economy, and a socialist economy like that of Cuba could have made sure that everyone in Iraq had food, blame for this mass murder should also be put on the Bill Clinton administration. Likewise, it was this Clinton starvation blockade that also weakened Iraq for the Bush invasion.

Today, while the U.S. occupation of Iraq has murdered well over a million people and the U.S. starvation blockade of Iraq murdered a million or more, the U.S. government and its puppets in Iraq had the nerve to put Saddam Hussein on trial, and execute him, for propaganda purposes. Yet the worst crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime were also carried out when he was directly backed by the United States. In the 1980's the U.S. was giving massive military assistance to Iraq to help Saddam Hussein commit genocide against Kurds and carry out a bloody war with Iran at a time when Saddam Hussein was being used as an asset of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Likewise, the CIA helped Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party come to power, supplying them with the names of 5,000 socialists and labor leaders that the Ba'athists subsequently rounded up and executed.

Yet to those who claimed that an invasion of Iraq would be a chance for the U.S. to finally set things straight and set up a democracy in Iraq, Liberation News responded before the U.S. invasion saying:

"In the 1970s Iraq nationalized its oil fields. This helped the Iraqi people by taking a chunk of the profits made off of oil out of the hands of the international oil monopolies and instead keeping them in Iraq. This money helped pay for free healthcare and education. As such this was a socialist measure carried out by Saddam Hussein's capitalist government. It was also a measure that stood up to the interests of the rich and powerful nations. For both reasons, socialists supported the nationalization of Iraqi oil while those measures infuriated the imperialists...

"While defending Iraq against imperialist attack, and supporting their right to defend themselves, socialists also recognize that Saddam Hussein is a capitalist leader and that the Iraqi people have their own scores to settle with him. Yet any government set up by a US occupation army will not be democratic and will only lead to the privatization of the resources that American oil monopolies intend to steal..."

"U.S. imperialism will never solve the question of women's liberation in the Middle East. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Over 50% of Iraqi doctors are women. Iraqi women are allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They are allowed to drive. Iraqi women can even freely criticize men. In addition Iraqi women have the right to work and control their own funds. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive U.S. backed governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where women have no rights what-so-ever.

"The U.S. ruling class hates governments like Iraq, Libya, and Venezuela who use the profits of their oil resources partly to benefit the people with social programs. Likewise, they love governments like that of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that strip the people of all their rights and keep the oil profits in the hands of the international oil monopolies and their corrupt local servants. Today in the United States we face unemployment, homelessness, and a lack of health care. The billions of dollars the U.S. will squander on killing Iraqis to steal their resources should be spent to benefit the working class and poor of the United States instead." -From Liberation News: What Is Socialism, and Why We Oppose The Invasion of Iraq

What was predicted is reality. Those predictions were not from a crystal ball. They were accurate because they were based on the past behavior of U.S. imperialism. Today in Iraq the U.S. has set up a puppet Islamic government with functioning death squads and torture chambers. Socialists have been excluded from participating in elections and unarmed demonstrators have been shot down and murdered in the streets by U.S. troops and troops of the puppet Iraqi government. The puppet Islamic government also opposes women's rights and women's rights have deteriorated dramatically since the U.S. invasion. The rebuilding of basic infrastructure, such as electricity, has lagged way behind what was rebuilt by Saddam Hussein after the massive U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 1992. The invasion has also set off a civil war that, combined with U.S. bombings and other murder, has killed over a million Iraqis, and forced millions more to flee their homes as refugees.

With the exception of the privatization of Iraqi oil, all of the predictions have shown themselves to be true and the only reason that Iraqi oil isn't completely under the direct control of U.S. oil monopolies now is because of the union resistance of 23,000 organized oil workers as well as the general resistance by the Iraqi people to the idea of Iraq's resources being looted by U.S. corporations.

For the working class in the United States there is ever growing frustration with a war that is costing many lives and nearly half-a-trillion dollars while needed programs for healthcare, jobs, the environment, and disaster relief do not get the funding they need. Just as the new imperialist masters of Iraq have shown a criminal lack of interest in the rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure, so too they left the people of New Orleans to die.

Yet for the ruling class, their failure in Iraq is not in the murderous, undemocratic, and anti-woman puppet regime they have set up and the money that has been squandered in doing it, but in the failure of that regime to deliver the stability needed to acquire the oil loot. They complain that oil production in Iraq is below prewar levels and the occupation by U.S. and British troops serve as targets for the insurgency.

The words of Hillary Clinton make abundantly clear that what she opposes is not the oil war itself, but the fact that Bush is not winning it:

"Let us not confuse the leadership's failures with either the remaining mission in Iraq or the war on terrorism or with our support for our troops. What we have here is a failure of leadership to accomplish that mission. What was hailed as our shortest war has now become one of our longest. What was hailed as a model of democracy teeters on the brink of complete anarchy. What was the leadership that quickly claimed credit for success has been lethargic in the face of misjudgments and setbacks." Hillary Clinton

Likewise, Barack Obama has made similar complaints, saying that Bush should have sent more troops into Iraq.

Unlike Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, socialists see nothing good that can come from the continuation of the U.S. war against Iraq. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is doing nothing for anybody except the capitalists that are profiting from the war and the tax dollars of the American people. We call for no support to the Democrats and we demand: Iraq to the Iraqis! U.S. Out Now!

Liberation News calls for ending the war and global warming through becoming better organized; building the mass movement in the streets; striking with political demands against arms producers and polluters; hot cargoing war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks as has been done on a few occasions along the west coast; becoming ungovernable; and building towards a general strike against the war. Likewise, we support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist these wars. We support students, such as those at UC Santa Cruz who have repeatedly driven military recruiters off campus. And we call for the nationalization of the energy industry, building the socialist movement, voting socialist, and ultimately ending imperialism and environmental destruction through a socialist revolution holding high the principles of an egalitarian socialist economy used for human and environmental needs rather than profit, an economy controlled by the people through full democratic rights and universal suffrage.

Also see:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

Closing Our Eyes Won’t Make Racial and Ethnic Inequalities Disappear
by STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/21/18473855.php

This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

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Michelle Obama, Oprah, Maria Shriver etc. at UCLA

2008-02-04T23:23:06Z

***seriously POWERFUL women*** tremendous.

i was at this event at ucla yesterday!!
to be in the same room with Oprah + Michelle Obama was AMAZING!!! and their speeches- truly epic.
(i was in the back- behind them-- can u believe Michelle didn't have any notes!!?)

::we can change the world::
:what are you ready for?:

Oprah:::: http://youtube.com/watch?v=a_FJQMriZUg

Michelle:: 5 min clip:: http://youtube.com/watch?v=K1J54St7ZYY
::full speech--three 10 min clips-- fuzzy picture (can also FF 'full rally' vid to the Michelle section)
part 1:: http://youtube.com/watch?v=3MHnf7usrVU
part 2:: http://youtube.com/watch?v=HiwBT8o9kP4 (my favorite!!)
part 3:: http://youtube.com/watch?v=I8krZtPED9g

Maria Shriver:: http://youtube.com/watch?v=62_ajoKkuHA

**UCLA full rally : 75 mins: http://youtube.com/watch?v=JZiNtTq10i0 (Michelle not-blurry speech here) **

*****************************extra**********
music video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

Song & video, featuring a star cast, by Will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas. Inspired by Barack Obama's 'Yes We Can' speech.

http://www.yeswecansong.com

http://www.barackobama.com/

http://factcheck.barackobama.com/

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

How Israel Promotes Anti-Semitism

2008-01-14T14:27:29Z

How Israel Promotes Anti-Semitism
By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/13/18472076.php

Today, in an attempt to smear me, posts have gone up all over the internet accusing me of being an anti-Semite. Pieces of the following essay are posted with other words inserted that are not my own. In addition, accusations have been made that I have attempted to delete the following essay from the public record. To contradict this smear tactic, and to prove that opposing Zionism is not anti-Semitic, I am reposting the entire essay in full.

I wrote the following essay early in 2001 as part of a discussion on the violence and repression taking place in Israel at the time. Yet, the essay is still entirely relevant, because it takes a historical look at the roots of the conflict, and discusses how the Zionist movement has been harmful to both Arabs and Jews alike.

How Israel Promotes Anti-Semitism (Part 1)

In this mailing: Pro-zionist Letter on Israel from Becky Johnson and Response by Steve Argue.

Letter to Editor,

You have to go back and read your history books. Palestine was the name the British gave to the mandate they took over (in typical British imperial fashion) from the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Palestinians at the time included everyone who lived there, including the Jews. Palestine ceased to exist when Israel was formed in 1948. The plan
from the UN was to have the state of Palestine right next to Israel. But all the Arab neighbors (and the Arab population within the borders of the new state of Israel) rejected this two state solution and responded by out and out war waged on the Israelis.

The Palestinians (Arabs who live or lived within the boundaries of Israel) didn't even start to call themselves that until 1968--- twenty years after the establishment of Israel. Basically the concept of Palestine is a manufactured one to drum up support for these Arabs and to decrease support for Israel by the claim that Israel is on THEIR land.

Remember, the Arabs and muslims [sic] who did not flee in 1948, but stayed in Israel have full citizenship, have freedom to practice their religion, own property, vote, have representation in the Knesset, and compose 18% of the population.

There is no Palestine. And there never was except as a British invention.

---Becky Johnson

Steven Argue responds:

Actually, history is one of my strong points. You state that I need to consult my history books, yet you make statements that are inarguably historically incorrect. Palestine was in existence as a recognized territory of the Ottoman Empire long before British control and even before the beginnings of Jewish colonization by the Zionist movement.

These inhabitants of the region also had Arab nationalist sentiments that opposed the control of the Ottoman Empire before the creation of the Zionist State and have since opposed many of the U.S., French, and British imposed kings, crown princes, emirs, sheiks, etc. that Zionists like to claim represent the aspirations of the Arab people.

Your attempt to deny a people of even the name of their homeland is consistent with an ideology that denies an entire people of the right to their homeland. The fact that bloody repression and horrible discrimination has driven the majority of Palestinians from large parts of their homeland without the right of return is not enough. The Zionist movement wants to wipe away the rightful name of the land they have conquered by re-writing history and denying there ever was a Palestine.

From its beginnings in the eighteen hundreds the Zionist movement had little concern for the Arab inhabitants of the Palestinian land they would settle. Instead, they appealed to imperialist powers as potential allies against the Arab people in setting up their Zionist state. For example, Zionist leader T. Herzl stated around 1897: "If his majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could undertake to regulate Turkey's finances. For Europe, we would constitute a bulwark against Asia down there; we would be the advance post of civilization against barbarism. As a neutral state, we would remain in constant touch with all of Europe, which would guarantee our existence" (Rodinson, "Israel a Colonial Settler State?").

By being “neutral”, Herzl is obviously referring to the Zionist dealings with powers of Europe, and not to the colonial "barbarians" already in and around the land he would settle and conquer.

An Arab leader in Jerusalem named Nassif Bey al-Khalidi who tried unsuccessfully to work out an agreement between Arabs and the Zionist movement warned the Zionists with the following statement, "Be very careful, Messieurs Zionists, governments disappear, but peoples remain. The Jewish immigrants came to Palestine believing it to be a desolate, sparsely inhabited country. They were too busy with their own business and too ignorant of Arabic to notice what was going on around them. Since it was the Turks who ruled Palestine, they turned all their attention toward the Turks. This did not make them popular with the Arabs" (Neville Mandel, "Chapters of Arab-Jewish Diplomacy 1918-1922").

The Jewish immigrants never became integrated in any way with the native Arab population. This was true economically, politically, socially, and linguistically. These Jewish immigrants were so separate from the Palestinian people that they were only Palestinian to the extent that they were physically living in Palestine.

It took the weakening of the Sultan during the First World War for Europe (specifically England) to move in and grant the colonial framework for Jewish colonization that aimed itself at the goal of an exclusively Jewish state. This framework was set forth in a British political charter in November 1917 called the Balfour Declaration which stated, "His Majesty's government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

Within this framework an exclusive Jewish state was the stated goal of all but a small minority in the Zionist movement, a goal that obviously would be at the expense of the Arab people already living in Palestine. In order to placate the Palestinians, however, the Balfour declaration stated, "It should be clearly understood that nothing should be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine."

While Britain was trying to placate the Arabs, Zionist leader Jabotinsky was very clear on Zionist intentions, stating in 1923 in his Book the "Iron Wall", "There can be no discussion of voluntary reconciliation between us and the Arabs, not now, and not in the foreseeable future. All well meaning people, with the exception of those blind from birth, understood long ago the complete impossibility of arriving at a voluntary agreement with the Arabs of Palestine for the transformation of Palestine from an Arab country to a country with a Jewish majority. Each of you has some understanding of the history of colonization. Try to find even one example when the colonization took place with the agreement of the native population."

In understanding the existence of a Palestinian people and the struggles yet to come, Jabotinsky went on to state, "They have the precise psychology we have. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux upon his prairie. Each people will struggle against colonizers until the last spark of hope that they can avoid the dangers of conquest and colonization is extinguished. The Palestinians will struggle in this way until there is hardly a spark of hope."

Jabotinsky's view, and the policy that would later be carried out against the Palestinians, could not be made any clearer than his following statement from the same writing: "We can not give any compensation for Palestine, neither to the Palestinians nor to the other Arabs. Therefore a voluntary agreement is inconceivable. All colonization, even the most restricted, must continue in defiance of the native population. Therefore it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall through which the Arab population can never break through. This is our Arab policy. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy."

In explaining the differences between Zionist factions in dealing with the Palestinians Jabotinsky stated, "Force must play its role - with strength and without indulgence. In this, in this there are no differences between our militarists and our vegetarians. One prefers an Iron Wall of Jewish bayonets; the other prefers an Iron Wall of English bayonets."

On these issues Rabbi Judas L. Magnes, President of the Hebrew University Jerusalem wrote, "by definition a Jewish state means that Jews will govern other people, other people who live in this Jewish state…Jabotinsky knew this long ago. He was the prophet of the Jewish state...In his early writings he said: 'Has a people ever been known to give up its territory of its own volition? Likewise, the Arabs of Palestine will not renounce their sovereignty without violence.'"

On the morals of Jabotinsky's plans and his desire to extinguish all hopes of the Palestinian people he is as clear in the "Iron Wall" as Hitler is of his intentions in "Mein Kampf" with Jabotinsky stating: "To the hackneyed reproach that this point of view is unethical, I answer 'absolutely untrue.' This is our ethic. There is no other ethic. As long as there is the faintest hope for the Arabs to impede us they will not sell these hopes - not for any sweet word nor for any tasty morsel, because this is not a rabble but a people, a living people. And no people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions, except when there is no hope left, until we have removed every opening visible in the Iron Wall."

In 1940 Jabotinsky states in "The Jewish War Front": "Since we have the moral authority for calmly envisaging the exodus of the Arabs, we need not regard the possible departure of 900,000 with dismay. Herr Hitler has recently been enhancing the popularity of population transfer."

While the Arabs of Palestine were extremely tolerant of the Zionists who were moving in to take their land and their hopes, the Zionist movement was never interested in forming any sort of alliance with the Arab people. Instead, the Zionist movement from its inception was openly anti-Arab and pro-imperialist, even though those same imperial powers were the same ones who were carrying out pogroms against the Jews in the ghettos across Europe. This pro-imperialist policy included close relations with the pogromist leaders of anti-Semitic Czarist Russia who murdered tens of thousands of Jews, and later Zionist support and deals that aided the fascist death camps of Nazi Germany.

Jews, in fact, are victims of Zionism along side Arabs. From the beginning of Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 the Zionist movement lent their support to the Nazis, support which lasted until at least 1944 when they aided Hitler's "final solution" in Hungary killing 800,000 Jews. On the surface, the idea of Zionist relations with the Nazis may sound illogical and seem made up. Those relations, however, are well documented.

Hitler seized power in 1933 with a clear fascistic program that called for the annihilation of all socialists, communists, labor leaders, and Jews. Despite this fact, the Zionist Federation of Germany sent the Nazi Party a memorandum on June 21, 1933 stating: "…a rebirth of national life such as is occurring in German life … must also take place in the Jewish national group. On the foundation of the new [Nazi] state, which has established itself on the principle of race, we wish to fit our community into the total structure so that for us, too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible…." (Brenner, Zionism, pg. 48)

The policy of supporting Hitler was later upheld at the World Zionist Organization Congress in 1933, where a motion to take action against Hitler was defeated 240 to 43. Thus, the Jewish boycott of the German economy at a time of economic weakness and vulnerability was broken with the World Zionist Organization's Anglo Palestine Bank resuming trade. In fact, the World Zionist Organization became the principal distributors of Nazi goods in Northern Europe and the Middle East.

Feivel Polkes was a member of Zionist leader Jabotinsky's Haganah militia. He was sent by Jabotinsky to Berlin to inform Nazi leader Adolf Eichman of his intention to spy for the S.S. in exchange for the release of the money of German Jews for use on the Zionist project. Zionist Feivel told Nazi Eichman, "Jewish Nationalist Circles are very pleased with the radical German policy, since the strength of the Jewish population in Palestine would be so far increased thereby that in the foreseeable future the Jews would reckon upon numerical superiority over the Arabs" (Brenner, "Zionism" pg. 99).

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, felt so fond of the Zionist movement and their close working relations that he wrote a 12 part report in Der Angriff (The Assault) praising the Zionist movement, and ordered a medallion struck with a swastika on one side and the Zionist Star of David on the other.

Collaboration included an agreement in Hungary between Zionist agent Dr. Rudolph Kastner and Nazi leader Adolph Eichman. Under the 1944 agreement the Nazis would murder 800,000 Hungarian Jews without Zionist interference and with complete silence from the Zionist movement. In exchange, 600 prominent Jews would be freed from Hungary. The Nazis then opened up a Rescue Department in Hungary headed by Kastner. These facts were exposed by a survivor named Malchiel Greenwald who was subsequently sued by the Israeli government, sued by the same leaders that had fashioned the deal made by Kastner in the first place.

Kastner's collaboration with the Nazis was confirmed with the Israeli court stating, "The sacrifice of the majority of the Jews, in order to rescue the prominents was the basic element in the agreement between Kastner and the Nazis. This agreement fixed the division of the nation into two unequal camps, a small fragment of prominents, whom the Nazis promised Kastner to save, on the one hand, and the majority of Hungarian Jews whom the Nazis designated for death, on the other hand." (Judgment given on June 22, 1955, Protocol of Criminal Case
124/53 in District Court, Jerusalem; cited in Ralph Schoenman’s “Hidden History of Zionism”)

The Zionists subsequently ignored a plan drawn up by the resistance that could have saved many, if not most, of Hungary's Jews. The Zionist silence and lack of action against Nazi atrocities in fact characterizes their stance throughout the entire holocaust. A plan, complete with maps, was drawn up that would blow-up railroad tracks to the death camps and crematoria and airdropped ammunition to the 80,000 Jews in Auschwitz. Part of the plan also included the parachuting of saboteurs to blow up the Auschwitz facility that was murdering 13,000 people a day. Had the Zionist movement not been so intent on fighting the Arabs, rather than the real anti-Semite butchers of Europe, they could have gathered the resources to carry out such operations. Likewise, Great Britain and the United States could have carried out the proposed measures as well, but chose not to save the Jews, and felt no pressure from the silent Zionist movement to do so.

This caused Rabbi Weismandel, who had drawn up the plans against Auschwitz, to ask of the Zionists in July 1944, "this special message to inform you that yesterday the Germans began deportations of Jews from Hungary. … The deported ones go to Auschwitz to be put to death by cyanide gas. This is the schedule, of Auschwitz from yesterday to the end: Twelve thousand Jews - men, women and children, old men, infants, healthy and sick ones, are to be suffocated daily. And you, our brothers in Palestine, in all the countries of freedom, and you ministers of all the Kingdoms, how do you keep silent in the face of this great murder. Silent while thousands upon thousands, reaching now to six million Jews, are murdered? And silent now, while tens of thousands are still being murdered or waiting to be murdered? Their destroyed hearts cry out to you for help as they bewail your cruelty. Brutal, you are and murderers, too, you are, because of the cold bloodedness of the silence in which you watch, because you sit with folded arms and do nothing, although you could stop or delay the murder of Jews at this very hour. You, our brothers, sons of Israel, are you insane?" (Shoenman, "The Hidden History of Zionism?")

The Zionists also opposed the immigration of Jews to other countries where they could escape extermination. Explaining their policy of pressuring Great Britain and the United States not to adopt immigration policies that would have saved the lives of Jews, Zionist leader Ben Gurion stated in 1938, "If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I would opt for the second option" (Brenner, "Zionism", pg. 149).

The ability of the Zionist movement to sacrifice the lives of millions of Jews for the settling of Palestine had a consistent inner logic. That logic speaks volumes. While some of the first victims of these Zionist madmen were the Jewish people, the Palestinians were next. And today, the continued Zionist mistreatment of the Palestinian people is one of the biggest threats to the lives of Jewish people because some of the Arab victims of Zionism now do not differentiate between the crimes of Zionism and the Jewish people. In addition, the Israeli government aided in the formation of the anti-Semitic organization Hamas, and today uses their suicide bombings against civilians as a way to gain sympathy and support in the Zionist war against the Palestinian people (more on this later). Objectively, the Zionist capitalist state is, in fact, the common enemy of both Jews and Arabs.

In the 1940s Jews were only one third of the population of Palestine. The Arab majority had not yet been driven from their land. The British, in considering their entire imperial interests in the Middle East and their need for good relations with Arabs had backtracked from their original support of a Jewish state in Palestine. Thus the Zionist minority carried out a war of independence against Britain in order to set up the Jewish state. The Palestinian people, the majority of the population, were not consulted by the Zionists on what kind of future they would like to have for their homeland and had little involvement in the war, although a few did side with British forces.

After independence from the Britain in 1948, the Zionist state began a massive expropriation of Palestinian land that has not ended. Becky Johnson's claim that, "the Arabs and Muslims who did not flee in 1948, but stayed in Israel have full citizenship, have freedom to practice their religion, own property, vote, have representation in the Knesset, and compose 18% of the population" is so utterly untrue as to defy common sense. Besides defying the facts, which we shall establish, I ask why most of an entire people would voluntarily flee the land in which they had built flourishing towns, a rich agriculture, and a vibrant cultural life with nowhere else to go? The short answer is that they did not flee voluntarily. They had met the "Jewish bayonets" of Zionist Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall". To deny this fact comes in on the same level as those who deny the Holocaust of Europe.

The humiliating conditions of the Palestinian people were recently observed by former anti-Apartheid fighter Archbishop Desmond Tutu who wrote:

"I have been very deeply distressed by my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young police officers prevented us from moving about.

"On my visit to the Holy Land I drove to a church with the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. I could hear tears in his voice as he pointed to Jewish settlements. I thought of the desire of Israelis for security. But what of the Palestinians who have lost their land and homes?

"I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and said: 'Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is now occupied by Israeli Jews.'

"My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?"

Although the Israeli government claims that Palestinians have the right to own property, this is a lie. Ever since 1948, Palestinians in Israel do not have the right to own land, because their land is often confiscated by force for Hebrew speaking settlement and agriculture. Water rights have been systematically cut off and diverted away from Palestinian lands and given to stolen Hebrew owned lands. Palestinian laborers are then denied by law the right to work the Hebrew owned agricultural lands, although they are sometimes illegally employed as cheap labor with no labor rights.

Palestinians do not have the right to freely travel. Reminiscent of chattel slavery, Palestinian families are often separated by Israeli officials who commonly do not grant necessary permits for Palestinians to enter neighborhoods or towns where wives, husbands, or children live. In contrast, the Hebrew speaking population has full rights to travel.

Palestinians often do not have the right to keep their own homes, which are often confiscated or bulldozed. The bulldozing of houses is a common punishment of families whose children are accused of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. Recently, in Jenin, houses were bulldozed with people inside, an act that besides killing people, also made an estimated 4,000 people homeless.

Palestinians do not have the right to freedom of speech and regularly face arrest, torture, and even death for their political views. Even Hebrew speakers who support rights for Palestinians, or an end to Israeli wars, have, at times, had their press shut down by the Israeli government, or had their demonstrations attacked and beaten by Israeli soldiers.

Palestinians do not have the same right to an education as Hebrew speaking people, based on the fact that higher education is paid for through the forced military inscription of Hebrew speakers, while Palestinians are generally excluded from the military. While most Palestinians can’t serve, so-called “Israeli Arabs” have the choice of serving, but it would, in fact, make no sense for Palestinians to serve their military, since humiliation, brutality, and outright terror against Palestinians is a part of every day duty for an Israeli soldier. Likewise, few blacks served in the Apartheid military of South Africa. In Israel, this is used to deny Palestinians their right to education.

Those Palestinians who are then driven out of what was once Palestine usually are not allowed to return, while Jews who have never set foot in Israel are granted automatic citizenship, with the exception of two Jewish supporters of Palestinians named Ralph Shoenman and Mya Shone, who have the honor of not being allowed into Israel because of their excellent writings. Those Palestinians who are forced from Israel are often bombed by Israel in their refugee camps or massacred in other ways. In the 1982 case of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, Palestinians were rounded up and systematically slaughtered in the thousands by Israeli troops and their Phalangist Militia allies.

As survivor Mrs. Sersawi testified in a Belgium appeals court on the Israeli governments war crimes:

"The Lebanese forces militia [Phalangists] had taken us from our homes and marched us up to the entrance of the camp where a large hole had been dug in the earth. The men were told to get into it. Then the militiamen shot a Palestinian. The women and children climbed over bodies to get to this spot, but we were truly shocked by seeing this man killed in front of us and there was a roar of shouting and screams from the women. That's when we heard the Israelis on a loudspeaker shouting, 'give us your men.' We thought, 'thank God, they will save us.'

"We were told to walk up the road to the Kuwaiti Embassy, the women and children in front, the men behind. We had been separated. There were Phalangist Militiamen and Israeli soldiers walking alongside us. I could still see Hassan (her husband with whom she was 3 months pregnant) and Faraj (her brother-in-law). It was like a parade. There were several hundred of us. When we got to Cite Sportif, the Israelis put us women in a big concrete room and the men were taken to another side of the stadium. There were a lot of men from the camp and I could no longer see my husband. The Israelis went around saying 'Sit, sit.' It was 11 AM. An hour later we were told to leave. But we stood outside amid the Israeli soldiers, waiting for our men.

"Some men came out, none of them younger than 40, and they told us to be patient, that hundreds of men were still inside. Then about 4 PM an Israeli officer came out. He was wearing dark glasses and said in Arabic: 'What are you waiting for?' He said there was nobody left, that everyone had gone. There were Israeli trucks moving out with tarpaulin over them. We couldn't see inside. And there were jeeps and tanks and a bulldozer making a lot of noise. We stayed there as it got dark and the Israelis appeared to be leaving and we were very nervous. But when the Israelis had moved away, we went inside. And there was no one there. Nobody. I had been only three years married. I never saw my husband again."

Sabra and Shatila are only one of the massacres of people done by the Israeli government in the past 54 years of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Today, all of the Palestinian towns of historic Palestine are either occupied by Israeli troops who are killing people, or surrounded by Israeli troops and tanks who are poised to attack. While Israeli troops are claiming that they are only killing combatants, Human Rights Watch has documented the following crimes in Jenin alone: murders of civilians including children, the old, and the disabled; summary executions; the bulldozing of houses with people in them; and the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields.

The cities of Ramallah and Jenin have been laid to waste by the Zionists just as the Nazis smashed the towns of Guarnica and Lidice in the name of collective punishment. Likewise, the heroic resistance of Palestinian fighters in the face of superior military force is reminiscent of the Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto and Vilna.

The Israeli offensive will not stop those willing to do suicide missions against civilians, attacks that are futile attempts to combat the genocide Palestinians face. The Israeli offensive does the opposite, in deepening the conditions that created suicide bombers in the first place. The anger created is by escalated Israeli murder is actually more likely to increase the number of tragic attacks on Hebrew speaking civilians. At the same time, Israel has not targeted the main base of the suicide bombers, Gaza, where Hamas is heavily organized. In fact, the murderous Israeli repression really isn't meant to stop attacks on Hebrew speaking civilians because these bombings by Hamas actually play right into the Zionist government's aims and objectives in dividing Arab and Hebrew speaking peoples, diverting international sympathy for the Palestinian cause, and potentially pushing for a “final solution” against the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian Authority, who the Israeli government consistently blame for the attacks by Hamas.

Hamas is an anti-Semitic fundamentalist religious organization that killed 150 Israeli civilians through suicide bombings between 1994 and 1998 alone. From its beginnings as the Mujama in the 1970s to this day, Hamas does not face the same kind of repression as any other Palestinian group. In addition, Hamas reportedly receives $28 million dollars a year from another key U.S. ally in the region, Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. and the Saudi Arabian monarchy work together closely to systematically loot Saudi Arabia's oil resources for the profits of U.S. oil monopolies, while the vast majority of the Saudi people live in poverty. In addition, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Hamas worked together closely in the U.S. war drive to destroy the left progressive PDPA government that held power in Afghanistan from 1978 to 1992. This was a war where the U.S. government and Saudi Arabia gave billions of dollars of military aid to Osama Bin Laden and the Islamic fundamentalists of the Mujahedin who were waging a holy war against the advances in women's rights, including women's literacy, that were occurring under the PDPA government. Tactics of the Mujahedin included throwing acid in the faces of women liberated from the veil and murdering women for teaching little girls how to read and write. Fearing a Mujahedin government right on its border, and defending the PDPA government from U.S. aggression, the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan in 1979. Although these Soviet troops were invited by the Afghan PDPA, U.S. propaganda called this a “Soviet invasion”.

An estimated 100,000 of the Islamic fundamentalists who fought in Afghanistan were recruited by the CIA outside of Afghanistan. Hamas participated in this activity. As John Cooley from ABC news pointed out on March 13th, 1996 in the International Herald Tribune:

"A key Hamas organizer was Abdallah Azzam. He was a tough, brilliant and charismatic Palestinian from Jordan. He supervised training for the CIA's Afghan guerrillas in Peshawar, Pakistan, where a car bomb killed him in 1989. In the earlier 1980s he toured the United States, recruiting Arab-Americans for the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan."

Just as the United States used Hamas against the Afghani people and the leftist PDPA government, Israel has used the religious fundamentalists of Hamas as a club against the socialist and secular nationalist movements in Palestine that Hamas has violently opposed. It is those secular and socialist movements that Israel has seen as more of a threat in terms of winning the masses of people, including Hebrew speakers, over to positions of sympathy and solidarity with the Palestinians. Hamas's suicide bombers against civilians instead serve Zionist interests in driving a larger wedge between Palestinians and Hebrew speakers, people who will need to unite against their common oppressor and killer, the Israeli Zionist government.

Early Israeli support for Hamas included in 1978 the granting of Mujama charitable status in Gaza while other organizations, especially political organizations as Mujama was, could not get such status. In 1979, Israeli collusion with the Mujama movement set up the Islamic University of Gaza, whose anti-PLO and anti-socialist slogan was: "How can uncovered women and men with Beatle haircuts liberate our holy places?" Students who did not tow the Islamic line were disciplined through brutal beatings and sometimes had acid thrown in their faces. In addition, Mujama mobs were allowed to violently attack and burn down PLO controlled institutions at a time when other street demonstrations were not allowed or tightly controlled by the Israeli authorities.

In 1979 the Mujama movement burned the Palestinian Red Crescent Society's (PRC) building to the ground. In response, the PRC issued the following statement, "The tacit approval of the authorities, if not their actual connivance in what happened, was displayed in their attitude of non-interference. While they usually display great alertness to combating even peaceful demonstrations of young students within schools, here they stood indifferently watching a violently destructive demonstration march to its objectives."

In 1988 Hamas was formed out of Mujama. While PLO supporters were organizing mass demonstrations in the streets, Hamas was instead focusing on shooting Israeli soldiers. Despite this fact, Hamas had top-level meetings with the Israeli government while that same government would not even meet with the PLO. Milton Edwards in "Islamic Politics In Palestine" noted the relationship:

"The relationship between Hamas and the Israeli authorities was, however, at the strongest during the second year of the Intifada. The Israelis had been quick to extend legitimacy status to Hamas in an attempt to marginalize the PLO. Leaders of Hamas were regularly filmed at meetings with top-level Israeli officials and the message the Israelis were sending out was that they regarded Hamas as the type of people with whom they could work…

"In addition the Israelis continued turning a blind eye to large amounts of money coming into the country destined for Hamas coffers, while at the same time stopping the flow of PLO funds in support of the
Intifada."

In 1994, Hamas began its indiscriminate attacks on Hebrew speaking people through suicide bombings. Those suicide bombings had been stepped up by Hamas in the beginnings of the Intifada 2 uprising in September 2000, but then ended due to an agreement between Arafat's Palestinian Authority and Hamas. While this agreement was in effect world attention became focused on the gunning down of Palestinian children by Israeli sharp shooters on the West Bank. For the Zionist government this was becoming a public relations disaster.

Israeli Prime Minister Sharon needed a new provocation he could use as propaganda to escalate the war against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority (P.A.). To create this provocation he took action to end the truce between the P.A. and Hamas on ending the suicide bombings of civilians. On November 23rd Israeli security forces assassinated Hamas leader Mahmud Abu Hunud. On November 25th, 2001 right-wing Israeli journalist Alex Fishman accurately observed in the "Yediot Achronot", "Whoever gave the green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman's agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line."

Of course no one but Sharon could have given the green light for such an important operation. Sharon's provocation against the Hamas anti-Semites had its intended affect. Within days Hamas resumed attacks against Israeli civilians. In March a Hamas bomber killed 25 civilians in the Passover attack that was then used by Sharon as his excuse to attack the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority while leaving the Hamas stronghold of Gaza untouched.

The U.S. government's massive military support to the Zionist State and, to a lesser extent to the repressive Saudi Arabian monarchy, is responsible for the bloodshed in Palestine. The racist state of Israel currently receives 300,000 dollars per hour in U.S. military and economic aid. The F-16 bombers and Apache and Cobra helicopters used in the latest attacks are just some of the weapons used to kill Palestinians that are made in the United States.

Socialists stand for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel and all of the crowned princes, sheiks, emirs, and Islamic fanatics of the Middle East. We understand that these U.S. policies are the policies of both the Democrat and Republican Parties. Imperialist policy isn't the result of some misunderstanding by these parties of the wealthy. Instead, the repressive and genocidal policies of U.S. imperialism flow from the drive for profits by the rapacious U.S. capitalists that rule America and much of the world. From this understanding, socialists know that the only way we will get a just foreign policy, fair treatment of workers and the poor, and sound ecological policies, is through a socialist revolution in the United States.

---Steve Argue, for Liberation News

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posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

No to Rightist Ron Paul, How We Can Really End the War

2008-01-12T07:30:36Z

"I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it." Socialist Anti-war Candidate Eugene Debs (who garnered nearly a million votes while he sat in prison for opposition to U.S. involvement in World War One).

"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action" wrote Ron Paul, who voted against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in Congress, the act that gave Blacks the right to vote, quote from his “Ron Paul Newsletter”.

No to NYC Indymedia Censorship, How We Can Really End the War

By STEVEN ARGUE

Claiming that only an alliance with Ron Paul conservatives can end the war, New York City Indymedia volunteers have allowed blatant slander against Liberation News and have censored attempts to respond to those lies. Among the slanders posted were accusations that Liberation News is opposed to Ron Paul because we support Hillary Clinton and her healthcare program. I tried posting the following response, but it was censored on the site:

Ron Paul supporter: “it's pointed out that yes Ron Paul is a racist but Stevies candidate Hillary is even worse.”

Steven Argue: “I don’t support Hillary Clinton. Never have, but you don’t listen. This is pure slander.”

They then repeat their slander that I support Hillary Clinton for her healthcare plan saying, “It's pointed out that Stevie is willing to sacrifice liberty for a bogus health care plan”

Steven Argue: “Hillary Clinton opposes both socialized medicine and single payer healthcare. She supports insurance company healthcare, the kind that is killing untold millions in the United States. This is one of many reasons I oppose her.”

“And no, I don't see Clinton as a first step towards socialized medicine. Her promise to force people to buy insurance has nothing in common with socialized medicine, nor partially socialized medicine (i.e. single payer). I’m clear about this in my article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It, By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

“As for Ron Paul, he wants to privatize everything, including public education, Social Security, and Medicare, eliminate the Voting Rights Act and Roe V Wade in the name of "states rights", signed on to the "Marriage Protection Act", would eliminate every environmental and labor protection, etc. etc. etc. This is a prescription for the slavery of the majority to protect the “liberty” of a tiny handful of capitalists to exploit.

“I oppose both Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul. But I’ve already made that clear as being my position. These accusations are slanderous.”

Ron Paul supporter: “Then Stevie moves the goal posts again. Waaa. He's being censored.”

Steven Argue: “I repeatedly posted a response to the slander that I support Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan, and the response is censored every time. I have no motive to make that up. I mentioned it because I wanted people to see my response. Frankly, I’m quite surprised it is happening. Let’s see if this one goes up.”

That response, as I feared, was also censored. Revealing the reasons behind the Ron Paul censorship at the site, the Ron Paul backers posted the following:

“Get off your sectarianism.

“What you don’t get is that there are only two ways we're going to end the occupation of Iraq:

“1.) A recession, and a bad one.

“2.) Convincing the vast majority of conservative Americans it's wrong. Ron Paul reaches these people. The guy with the Free Mumia shirt selling the "Socialist Worker" doesn't.

“To get anything done in a democracy you're going to have to work with people you don't agree with and people you might not even like. People in grown up countries do this all the time. They're called "coalitions".

“The Labor Party in Israel, for example, makes alliances with the ultra orthodox. The Liberal Democrats have made common cause with the Tories in the UK. The left made common cause with Vicente Fox to get the PRI out of power in Mexico.

“It's only in the puritan USA where everybody thinks you have to like all your political allies and agree with them on everything.”

Besides the fact that the majority of Americans already oppose the war; and besides the fact that these points show a total lack of understanding of the bourgeois nature of the coalitions in the countries mentioned; and besides showing a total lack of understanding of what it will take to end the war (I discuss this at the end of the article); New York City Indymedia’s lack of confidence in the ability of people to change has caused them to build a coalition with a capitalist politician who is a racist, homophobic, anti-worker, anti-environmental, bible thumping, sexist, anti-labor, anti-poor, free-market privatization fanatic. On top of that, they censor the left in order to achieve that coalition.

While a Ron Paul presidency would likely end the war, at what price would this come?

Ron Paul uses the term liberty a lot, so let’s take a look at what he means by liberty.

The liberty Ron Paul demands is:

The liberty of the capitalists to exploit without labor laws and environmental protections;

The "state’s right” to prevent Blacks from voting without the interference of the Voting Rights Act (voted against its renewal in Congress);

The "states right" to ban abortions without the interference of Roe v Wade;

The freedom of the government to deny same-sex rights (was an original sponsor of the "Marriage Protection Act");

The freedom of children not to attend schools (would abolish public education);

The freedom of the elderly and disabled to starve (would abolish Social Security);

The freedom of the sick to die (would abolish Medicare);

The freedom of the U.S. to destroy the planet without even the most basic limits on carbon emissions (opposes signing on to Kyoto and all other carbon limitations);

This is, in short, the liberty of a wealthy minority to make their money from the exploitation of labor and the environment with zero interference from labor laws, environmental laws, and the IRS. While his program is liberty for a minority of rich white heterosexual males, it is slavery for the majority.

Simply put, Ron Paul’s promises to end the war are not enough when one looks at the fact that he would eliminate two centuries of hard fought social progress in the United States.

Some of the anti-war backers of Ron Paul argue that we don’t have to worry about these things because Ron Paul will never be elected. They think that backing his campaign is a way to win over his supporters. What is clear is that such arguments could only come from people who are utterly lost and rudderless, which leaves unclear the question of what they are winning Ron Paul supporters over to. They are supporting a candidate whose program is George Wallace on crack cocaine! Yet, the ultimate absurdity is the fact that they are backing a candidate whose most reassuring feature is that he won’t get elected! Is this point lost on these people? And is the chance that their support may help him get elected a chance they really want to take? Nobody thought that third party candidate Jesse (the body) Ventura would get elected in Minnesota either, but he was, and as soon as he was elected he discarded his libertarian values on drug legalization and prostitution and instead proceeded to carrying out attacks on labor and carrying out disastrous cuts in education and other social spending.

Others argue that if Ron Paul is elected, he will easily be able to pull the troops out of Iraq, but congress will block him on the other issues. There is no doubt that they would block parts of Ron Paul’s program in order to prevent the social unrest such measures would cause, but with the ruling class’s desire to step up the exploitation of labor and the environment through eliminating regulation and through privatization, there can be little doubt that if he is able to maintain his presidency without being shot, aspects of Ron Paul’s domestic program would be implemented.

Today, in the United States we have two rightwing capitalist parties that rule. The activists who run New York Indymedia are floating around utterly lost and rudderless. On the one hand, their anarchist philosophy prohibits them from putting forward their own leadership or supporting socialist candidates; and on the other hand, they are stuck in the “real politic” of supporting “lesser evil” capitalist politicians. It is these characteristics that made them susceptible to being swept up on the Ron Paul band wagon. Despite their “libertarian” values of “freedom”, they have now taken this to the point where they are even willing to censor critics of Ron Paul on their website.

While Ron Paul, the only Republican candidate opposed to the war, is not worth supporting, the front running Democrats are also very bad. Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, are all pro-war. Both Edwards and Clinton voted for the war. Obama supporters claim that Obama never supported the war. While Obama was not yet in the Senate at the time of the Iraq war vote, Obama, Edwards, and Clinton have all voted for war appropriations. This puts them all in the position of having supported the war. Over a million Iraqis are dead due to the U.S. invasion and occupation, and billions of dollars have been squandered. Obama, by helping pay for the war, has his hands in this mass murder just as Clinton and Edwards do.

Obama’s Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007 supposedly would have begun troop withdrawal in May 2007. Yet, it didn't call for full nor immediate withdrawal. In addition, under the bill, the withdrawal could be halted if the Iraqi government met a number of criteria laid out by the Bush administration. These included a broad number of things such as changes in the use of oil revenue, government reforms, an end to sectarian violence, and other economic and reconstruction criteria. In Obama’s bill we have a crystal ball into the future. The excuses laid out in the bill will be heard once again as Obama, Clinton, or Edwards explain why they are keeping the troops in Iraq for their entire presidency; that is unless other actions are taken by the people to stop the war.

This brings us to the fundamental question of how to stop the war. If we are to listen to the Ron Paul censors / supporters at NYC Indymedia the only thing we can do to stop the war is support Ron Paul or hope for (pray for?) economic collapse. Yet, this ignores other less damaging possibilities. These include the troops refusing to fight, a general strike, strikes against the movement of war materials, or socialist revolution.

1. The troops refusing to fight. This worked in the struggle to end the U.S. aggression against Vietnam. It was the socialist movement who were the primary organizers of the anti-Vietnam War movement. That movement, immediately after the government’s murders at Kent State in May 1970 had 8 million students out on strike, and some Universities, such a Berkley, were taken over by students and faculty as anti-war universities. After May 1970, the majority of those drafted were already opposed to the war before they got to Vietnam. Refusal to fight was widespread, and the fragging of pro-war officers was common. Nixon could not continue to wage a war with soldiers who refused to fight. This, along with the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese, brought an end to the war in Vietnam.

Troops refusing to fight also helped bring an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, and helped bring down two pro-war governments in 1917.

2. A general strike or strikes against the movement of war materials. Strikes with such political demands have a long history of success. France has many good social programs because the workers there were willing to shut down their country to achieve them; and they are still willing to do the same to protect those hard fought gains.

3. Socialist revolution. The October Russian Revolution achieved an end to Russian involvement in the First World War. This was a good thing, despite the undemocratic nature of the revolution. Learning from those lessons, Liberation News opposes the dictatorial system of one party rule and raises the banner of revolutionary democratic socialism, while at the same time learning from many of the revolutionary strategies of Lenin and Trotsky.

Protests, pickets, information distribution, building a socialist movement, and answering pro-Ron Paul and pro-Obama-Clinton-Edwards propaganda all help towards building the momentum needed in achieving the kinds of actions that can end the war. Putting support behind Ron Paul only helps an extreme rightwing movement achieve the mantel of leadership for an anti-war sentiment that already represents majority public opinion. In addition, backing a guy like Ron Paul who just crossed a picket line to appear on Jay Lenno’s “Tonight Show” destroys the anti-war strategy of reaching out to the working class, as does backing a racist candidate like Ron Paul hurt the ability to reach out to the multi-racial working class.

No to the Democrats and Republicans!

U.S. Out of Iraq Now!

No to Insurance Company Healthcare, For Socialized Medicine!

Save the Planet, Curb Carbon Emissions Now!

Vote Socialist, Build the Labor Movement, Build the Anti-War Movement, Build the Socialist Movement.

[Note, small changes were made to the response that was censored at NYC Indymedia to make it more readable within the format of this article. Those wishing to see the original version will be given it upon request. Likewise, anyone wishing further sources will be provided them upon request]

This is an article of Liberation News, a low volume newsletter, Subscribe free!
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

2008-01-09T23:57:02Z

The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

By STEVEN ARGUE

For the most part the Iowa caucuses were business as usual for the Democrat and Republican Parties. Among the Democrats, “Anti-war” and “pro-single payer health care” Democrat Dennis Kucinich put his support behind pro-war anti--single payer health care, Barrack Obama. Yet on the far right, anti-war Libertarian and Republican Ron Paul gained a stunning 10% of the vote.

Seeing the failure of the Democrats to deliver a candidate worth supporting; some left leaning individuals have been suggesting support to Ron Paul. One is anti-war Vietnam veteran Stan Goff, who suggested in his January 4, 2008 article ”Monkey Wrenching the System, Ron Paul’s Revolution” that people vote in the primaries for Ron Paul, switching party registration right away if they live in a state where such a move is necessary to vote in the Republican primaries.

At the root of the Ron Paul "revolution" is the dismantling of Social Security and the Department of Education as well as other basic social programs, and the elimination of worker and environmental protections. Advances like single payer health care? No way. Ron Paul's message is that you need to take care of yourself, and that there shouldn't be such government programs, nor such interference with private profit. While he puts forward reasons for not supporting going to war abroad, his domestic policies would ignite civil war at home.

In addition to pretending he's against all government, he's for outlawing abortion and supports the continued ban on same-sex marriage. He was one of the original co-sponsors of the "Marriage Protection Act".

He's also a religious extremist who thinks that creationism should be taught in the schools.

On race, Ron Paul was one of 33 Congress members to vote against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, an act that was first passed to give Blacks in the south the right to vote. On a similar note, he says the Civil Rights Act violates the Constitution and impedes on individual liberties. Speaking of Blacks in Washington DC he states in campaign literature, "95 percent of African Americans in are semi-criminal or entirely criminal".

No wonder the American Nazi Party has close relations with him (see letter from Nazi Commander Bill White below). In addition, Ron Paul has the support of other white supremacists such as David Duke, and has knowingly taken donations from former KKK Grand Wizard Don Black.

Hell would freeze over before I'd support Ron Paul. And being an atheist; that will be a long time.

There are plenty of candidates to the left of the Democrats worth considering supporting who oppose the war, would preserve public education and Social Security, who would provide single payer or socialized medicine, and who aren’t raving racist, homophobic, and sexist “Libertarian” fanatics. Why not look at them rather than someone from the loony right?

I discuss some of the campaigns that may be worth supporting in the following article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States,
And the Struggle to Achieve It
By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

Or here is a different version of the same article:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/01/93820.html

*****************
American Nazi Party Chief says Ron Paul is one of us

Bill White, commander of the American National Socialist Worker’s Party, aka The American Nazi Party, wrote the following on the Nazi Vanguard News Network:

Comrades:

I have kept quiet about the Ron Paul campaign for a while, because I didn’t see any need to say anything that would cause any trouble. However, reading the latest release from his campaign spokesman, I am compelled to tell the truth about Ron Paul’s extensive involvement in white nationalism.

Both Congressman Paul and his aides regularly meet with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review, and others at the Tara Thai restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, usually on Wednesdays. This is part of a dinner that was originally organized by Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, and has since been mostly taken over by the Council of Conservative Citizens.

I have attended these dinners, seen Paul and his aides there, and been invited to his offices in Washington to discuss policy.

For his spokesman to call white racialism a “small ideology” and claim white activists are “wasting their money” trying to influence Paul is ridiculous. Paul is a white nationalist of the Stormfront type who has always kept his racial views and his views about world Judaism quiet because of his political position.

I don’t know that it is necessarily good for Paul to “expose” this. However, he really is someone with extensive ties to white nationalism and for him to deny that in the belief he will be more respectable by denying it is outrageous — and I hate seeing people in the press who denounce racialism merely because they think it is not fashionable.

Bill White, Commander
American National Socialist Workers Party

*********
Poor Bill White. He’s having trouble with his brand of racism, anti-Semitism, mass extermination, and genocide not being "in fashion". But hey, you've got to thank the knuckleheaded Nazi for confirming our suspicions on Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan! -Steven Argue

Liberation News
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in CODEPINK - 1 reply

U.S. Backed Turkish Government Bombing Iraqi Kurds

2007-12-30T21:00:30Z

With the genocidal U.S. backed Turkish government now bombing Iraqi Kurds, I thought it would be a good idea to repost my following article. -Steven Argue

Kurdish Culture, Repression, Women’s Rights, and Resistance

By Steven Argue

The Kurdish people number at an estimated at 25-30 million people. They live in eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, northwest of the Zagros Mountains in Iran, and in Armenia. They also have a large émigré population in Western Europe. With 4-5 million people and 15-20% of the population the Kurds are the largest non-Arab minority in Iraq (CIA Iraq, 2007). They are also the largest non-Turkish minority in Turkey comprising 20% of the population (CIA Turkey, 2007). The Kurdish speaking people are 9% of the Iranian population (CIA Iran, 2007). In Syria, the Kurds are the largest minority with about 1.75 million people comprising about 10% of the population (Lowe 2006). The rise of nationalist xenophobia and war in Armenia after the fall of the Soviet Union has pushed most Kurds out of Armenia, but around 30,000 Yezidi Kurds remain comprising about 1% of the population (CIA Armenia, 2007).

The language of the Kurds, called Kurdish, is distinct from the Persian of Iran, the Arabic of Iraq and Syria, and the Turkish of Turkey. Thus the common language of the Kurds both separates them from the dominant cultures in the nation-states where they live and unites the Kurdish people as a nationality without a nation-state.

While being distinct the Kurdish language is most closely related to Persian, yet the origins of the varied Kurdish culture is partially influenced by the absorption of characteristics of the differing nationalities and cultures that have historically surrounded them.

In terms of religion the Kurdish people are mostly Muslim with both Shia (primarily of the Alevi sect), Sunni (primarily Shafi’i). There is also a large Sufi influence among many Kurdish Muslims, often cited as a moderating influence on Islamic fundamentalism. A small number of Kurds are also Yezidi Muslims and Christians. The Kurds also have a history that has included secular and atheist political leaderships.

The differing Kurdish religious identities have, at times, been a political factor both in divisions among the Kurdish people and in divisions, which distinguish them from the dominant nationalities. The strong Kurdish national identity is based on mutual language and a history of oppression. These factors hold the Kurds together as a people.

For the Kurdish people outrageous acts of oppression in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, and Syria have included mass murder, suppression of language rights, exploitation of Kurdish resources with nothing but poverty given in return, deprivations of national citizenships, and the brutal suppression of political representation.

Despite the oppression the Kurdish people have faced, they continue to speak their language and organize politically and, at times, militarily to fight back everywhere they continue to live as a native population.

The Kurdish people are, in fact, the largest national minority in the world that has no homeland. Yet, it is largely their mutual language as well as their mutual oppression and a large amount of mutual poverty (despite some class differences) that continues to unite the Kurdish people. They desire borders that would change the map of the Near East. A better understanding of the Kurdish people is a key to understanding the entire region.

Kurdish Language and Literature

While being most closely related to Persian; the language of the Kurds, called Kurdish, is distinct from the Persian of Iran, the Arabic of Iraq and Syria, and the Turkish of Turkey. Historically many Kurdish intellectuals have written both in Kurdish in as well as in the languages of the dominating cultures (Blau 2007).

Despite a long history of oppression that includes the banning of the written and spoken Kurdish word, the Kurdish people have a rich literary history. Ell Herirl (1425-1495) is the first well-known Kurdish poet (Blau 2007). He, like the many patriotic Kurdish poets that followed, wrote of his love of Kurdish lands and its women (Blau 2007).

Up until very recently the Kurdish language was brutally suppressed everywhere in its native range except the Soviet Republic of Armenia. Armenian Kurds enjoyed special status as an ethnic minority in the Soviet Union including special programs for economic development. The Kurdish language, far from being banned, enjoyed sponsorship through state-sponsored Kurdish radio, a Kurdish newspaper, and Kurdish cultural events. After the fall of the Soviet Union Armenian Kurds lost language rights and other protections and most Kurds have been forcefully deported or have fled to Germany and other west European countries as well as to Russia (Mehrdad [date?]).

In Turkey, the Kurdish language was illegal up until 1991 when political and armed struggle forced the Turkish government to recognize some Kurdish language rights. Kurds and international human rights organizations, however, still complain of an oppressive situation imposed by the Turkish government (Human Rights Watch 2006).

In Iraq, Saddam Hussein, as a U.S. backed ally at the time, is famous for committing mass murder against the Kurdish speaking population. Today Kurdish literature is still repressed with a number of Kurdish journalists jailed by what the Kurdish leftist opposition considers to be a puppet government of the United States and central government.

Iranian policy forbids the Kurdish language and has attempted to assimilate the Kurds into the dominant Persian culture. Besides the state of war between Iraq and the Kurds in the Iran-Iraq war, there was also a state of war between the Iranian government and Iranian Kurds at that same time. More recently in 2005 the Iranian government opened fire on Kurdish protesters with attack helicopters killing 20 and wounding 200 (Amnesty International 2005). Despite the attempts by the Iranian government to stomp out Kurdish culture, Kurdish literature and histories are available in Iran in both Kurdish and Persian (Blau 2007).

In Syria, the written Kurdish language has been banned since 1958. In 1987 that ban was extended to Kurdish music and Kurdish videos (Amnesty International 2005). Hundreds of thousands of native Syrian Kurds have no citizenship rights, the Kurdish flag is illegal (but still flown), and numerous acts of repression have been documented.

Due to the fact that Kurdish culture is horribly repressed in all of their native lands, today it is the Kurdish Diaspora living in Europe, the United States, and Australia that create most of the new Kurdish literature. This includes poetry, children’s books, newspapers, and magazines. Sweden, with a very enlightened policy towards immigrant populations, encourages Kurds and other groups to continue their languages and cultures and allocates a large amount of money to the relatively small Kurdish population for Kurdish language publications (Blau 2007). In addition works in the Kurdish language are being produced in other countries where funding is harder to come by.

The tenacity of Kurdish culture owes much to its extensive historic roots, pride of its people in their literature and language, and refusal to die in the face of attempts at forced assimilation and brutal repression.

Kurdish Modes of Production and Their Development

Kurdish lands are rich and productive, and they sustain the Kurdish people both through pastoral activity as well as through agriculture (Izady 1992). The gathering of wild nuts, berries, and truffles are also important sources of food and income for the Kurdish people, especially in forested regions (Izady 1992). In addition some of the Kurdish lands are rich in oil resources, but the Kurds have been denied access to this oil wealth.

It is established that a number of domestic animals as well as cereal crops used around the world were first domesticated in Kurdish lands (Izady 1992).

Kurdish pastoralism takes place primarily in areas not suitable for agriculture because they are too high in elevation, to steep, or too low in precipitation (Izady 1992). Pastoral activities were once nomadic, but now encompass only lands within a few days of permanent dwellings. As a result some lands that were traditionally grazed are no longer used (Izady 1992).

Kurdish lands grow large amounts of wheat, barley, rice, cotton, tobacco, sugar beets, olives, corn, sunflowers, soybeans, fruits, and nuts. Many of these are cash crops sold to other areas of the Near East where there is far less arable land (Izady 1992).

In many areas of Kurdistan agriculture is still practiced with ox, mule, or donkey drawn wooden ploughs (Jaff 2007).

A merchant class of Kurds has arisen since the 1950s making a living off of capitalist exchanges (Marriage and Family Encyclopedia 2007).

While participating in the broader economy, household families are the most basic economic unit for rural Kurds. Such households are patrilocal containing the first son and his wife and their children. Households participate in reciprocal non-capitalist labor exchanges and share what the household earns. Urban Kurds often continue this family communal structure, but it sometimes falls apart in the face of wage earners no longer wishing to share their income (Marriage and Family Encyclopedia 2007).

Many rural Kurds also seasonally participate in construction labor in the cities, bringing additional income back to their families (Marriage and Family Encyclopedia 2007).

Reciprocal exchanges are not just confined to households. They also take place between neighbors and kin in a village, and are expected. These communal exchanges also take place among urban Kurds (Marriage and Family Encyclopedia 2007).

In addition tribal Kurds are expected to work for landlords and tribal leaders, with durations of labor not clearly defined (Marriage and Family Encyclopedia 2007).

The labor structure in Kurdish villages reflects the labor-intensive, technologically primitive, agriculture forced on them by the neglect of the oil rich nations many Kurds are part of. Meanwhile, due to discrimination, the petroleum and mining operations in Kurdish areas rarely hire Kurds (Jaff 2007). This contributes to Kurdish poverty in regions that are rich in natural resources; fueling resentment and separatist desires.

Kurdish Sexuality, Birth, Domestic Life, Descent, and Kinship

The Kurdish people are organized in patrilineal clans (Refugee Health 2007). As such there is patriarchal control of marriage and property, with women treated in many ways like property. In addition, political status is often the product of patrilineal descent (Refugee Health 2007). It is a male dominated culture where female sexuality is repressed and women are oppressed.

Rural Kurdish women are allowed to mingle with males, but they are not allowed to make their own decisions regarding sexuality or husbands (Hassanpour 2001). Marriage for Kurdish women is a form of bondage traditionally decided upon by the male members of her family (Hassanpour 2001). These decisions have often been made in the girl’s childhood, and sometimes even before she is born (Hassanpour 2001). In Kurdish Iraq such practices of arranged marriage have been on the wane for a number of years, but family permission and payments for brides are still the rule (Refugee Health 2007).

Rural Kurdish marriages are patrilocal (Hassanpour 2001). The family receiving the bride pays the family she came from (Hassanpour 2001). This price is seen as payment for the labor that will be lost when she moves to live with the groom’s family (Hassanpour 2001). To hold onto the wealth of the village marriages within the village are preferred and marriages between first cousins are often arranged (Refugee Health 2007). Families also sometimes exchange sons and daughters with the same family to save on expenses (Refugee Health 2007).

The male families of urban Kurds do not pay a bride price at the time of marriage. Yet if the male decides to divorce the woman, his family is contractually obliged to pay her family. Urban Kurdish women are also not permitted to ask for a man’s hand in marriage, nor decide to divorce. Divorced women do not have a right to custody of the children (Hassanpour 2001).

Polygamy also sometimes occurs amongst Kurds. In such cases the wives are ranked in status by their age (Hassanpour 2001). While polygamy is not the norm, up to four wives are allowed (Refugee Health 2007).

Like marriage, men hold women’s sexuality under a strict ideal of shame and constraint, including virginity before marriage (Hassanpour 2001). This “ideal” is upheld under the threat, and use of, male violence against women. Such violence includes beatings, pouring acid on faces, shaving heads, and even “honor” killings where women are murdered to by family members to bring back the family’s good name (Kurdish Women’s Rights Watch 2007).

While Kurdish women may be murdered for adultery, no similar treatment is dished out to Kurdish men for the same act (Hassanpour 2001).

Kurds tend to see having large families as the ideal. This grows out of the material need for more laboring hands in the rural areas where most Kurds live, as well as from religious beliefs that consider birth control immoral by Islamic law. Yet there are growing numbers of young couples that ask aid workers for birth control. The birth of a child is celebrated with a feast. (Refugee Health 2007)

While the Kurdish people are oppressed and denied many fundamental rights, Kurdish women are doubly oppressed. While some Kurds have claimed better treatment of women than most of the Islamic world, treatment of Kurdish women does appear to have many similarities to those of the dominating cultures. One difference with Iranian treatment is that Kurdish women are not forced to wear the veil and are generally allowed freer movement than in many traditionally Muslim societies including Iran (Refugee Health 2007).

In Iraq, however, Kurdish women are not historically better off. Currently the Kurdish nationalist parties in power, working with the U.S. occupation, have done much to undermine the gains made for women’s rights during the rule of Saddam Hussein. Under Saddam Hussein’s secular government, Iraqi women had many rights found nowhere else in the historically Islamic world except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Over 50% of Iraqi doctors were women. Iraqi women were allowed to walk unescorted in the streets, to drive, to freely criticize men, and the right to work and control their own funds. Today the Kurdish parties that the U.S. has put in control of Iraqi Kurdistan are working towards adding brutally anti-woman Sharia (Islamic Law) to the constitution that would strip women of more rights. Similar moves are being made by the U.S. imposed central government in Iraq.

In Turkey, it is well documented that the Turkish government has routinely used rape as a weapon in the their counter-insurgency measures against Kurdish separatists (Hilton 2002).

There are many historical examples of Kurdish nationalists and communists speaking out for women’s rights (Hassanpour 2001). Additionally Kurdish parties in Iraq that advocate women’s rights, such as the Worker’s Communist Party of Iraq, have been excluded by the U.S. occupation from participation in elections. Besides in Iraq, the use by the United States of rightwing misogynist Islamic forces against socialists and nationalists with progressive stands on women is well established, with the U.S. bankrolling of the Mujahideen holy war against women’s rights in Afghanistan in the 1980’s being another well known example.

Kurdish women, with the exception of those that lived in Soviet Armenia, have not had the benefit of the feminist movements of the west nor the social revolutions of the Soviet Union and China that greatly advanced women’s rights in those societies. While not achieving perfection, the Chinese and Soviet revolutions outlawed forced marriages and made other giant strides towards women’s equality including in the areas of women’s education, employment, and reproductive rights.

While outsiders may find it easy to judge Kurdish treatment of women, it is worth noting that up until now the Kurdish nation has been denied the right to make any fundamental decisions regarding any policies in their land without outside control. Given the record of the dominating countries, including the United States, it appears that it is only within the context of Kurdish self-determination that the problems of women’s oppression can be solved by the Kurdish people themselves.

Kurdish Political Organization

The Kurdish people have organized themselves into many political organizations that advocate language rights, freedom from the social chauvinism and violence of the dominant cultures, Kurdish independence, and in many cases socialism. These Kurdish political organizations often exist in direct contradiction to widespread feudal village structures and the oppression of women.

The Kurdish Worker’s Party (KKP), one of the main Kurdish resistance groups in Turkey, sees the continuation of feudal political structures on the village level as being the result of oppression and exploitation from the Turkish State. The following emic from the program of the KKP spells out this point of view:
"National oppression exercised by Turkish state through massacres, compulsory resettlement and forced immigration goes on brutally. This oppression manifests itself economically in the fact that Kurdistan is a domestic market for Turkey, plundered and destroyed; politically in the fact that the Kurds are under the oppression of a foreign state, and denied of national sovereignty; and socially and culturally in the national humiliation and cultural backwardness created by continuing tribalism, widespread ignorance and forced assimilation." (The Kurdish Worker’s Party Programme)

The KKP is one of nineteen different Kurdish parties in Turkey (Turkey 2004). Of these thirteen have been declared illegal by the central government, including the KKP (Turkey 2004). On the other hand the Democratic People’s Party, one of the few legal Kurdish parties, does participate in Turkish elections (Turkey 2004). They are a member of the reformist and generally pro-capitalist Socialist International. Parties with stronger political programs for Kurdish independence and for socialism are banned and communities identified with them have faced brutal counter-insurgency methods that have included massacres, the raping of women, and execution of leaders.

In Iraq, two Kurdish parties, working with the U.S. occupation, rule Iraqi Kurdistan. These are the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and three minor Kurdish parties that have participated in an electoral alliance with the PUK and KDP called National Democratic Kurdish List. In the Kurdish area the National Democratic Kurdish List received 89.55% of the vote in the 2005 elections (Iraq 2005).

While the 2005 vote may appear to show widespread support among Iraqi Kurds for the KDP – PUK –USA government, other reports contradict this. Mass protests have erupted in Kurdish areas against the occupation-imposed lack of electricity and water (Worker-Communist Party of Iraq 2007). In response the KDP – PUK –USA government has used violence against protesters and arrested a number of journalists (Worker-Communist Party of Iraq 2007). Involved in these protests is the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, a political party with members across Iraq of all ethnicities that supports Kurdish rights. In Kurdistan the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq has protested U.S. policy on Kurdistan where they point out that although the Kurdish people in Iraq had gained a high level of economic independence in the last two decades, U.S. policy has in effect annexed Iraqi Kurdistan back into the central government (Worker-Communist Party of Iraq 2007).

Unlike the KDP and PUK, the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They did this while also opposing the government of Saddam Hussein. In addition the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, at great risk to their lives, is carrying out a campaign in Kurdistan against the imposition of Sharia (Islamic Law) through the constitution of the puppet KDP and PUK government. They see this as horribly anti-woman and also argue that it will also further increase sectarian violence (Worker-Communist Party of Iraq 2007).

Syria has fourteen different Kurdish political parties (Syria 2004). These organizations are banned in a country where it is illegal to even raise the flag of Kurdistan, yet Syrian Kurds continue to struggle for a homeland.

Iran has five different Kurdish political parties (Iran 2004). These have been involved in a number of uprisings against the central government in the last few years that have faced brutal repression (Kamala 2004). One of these organizations leading the uprisings is the Kamala (Revolutionary Organisation of Toilers of Iranian Kurdistan), a socialist grouping that has been organizing armed struggle against the central Islamic regime. As strong advocates of women’s rights the Kamala were the first Kurdish organization to integrate women into their armed forces (Kamala 2004).

Prior to the 1979 Islamic revolution the Kamala was also one of many leftist and pro-woman organizations struggling against the brutal U.S. imposed monarchy of the Shah of Iran, but in a great tragedy for women and for Kurds, it was chauvinistic Islamists that got the upper hand (Kamala 2004). In their assessment of the Islamic regime the Kamala states, “The Iranian regime has imposed the a series of discriminative policies in Kurdistan, which has ultimately resulted in the military occupation of Kurdistan, widespread poverty amongst this massive population, the suppression of Kurdish culture, drug addiction (especially amongst youth), religious suppression, forced migration, imprisonment, terror, torture, and the Killing of whoever opposing these tyrannical policies."

Armenian Kurds have suffered as well. While Kurds were given special language rights in Soviet Armenia, after the capitalist counter-revolution Kurds in Armenia faced mass violence and forced deportations. I have found no evidence Kurdish political organization in Armenia today.

The fate of Armenia’s largely ethnically cleansed Kurds is what has been attempted by all other countries that dominate the Kurds, elimination of the Kurdish question through violence and forced assimilation. Yet there is stubborn resistance in the will of the Kurdish people that refuses to give up. Instead many Kurds become resistance fighters that are bold enough to see a redrawn map where Kurdistan gains its independence from Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. In addition many are also bold enough to see that future as one that ends feudal backwardness, promotes education, builds socialism, and brings equality for women.

The Socialization of Kurdish Children in Language and Culture

The defining trait of Kurdish culture is their language. The education of Kurdish youth in their native tongue is an essential component, not only in the preservation of Kurdish culture, but also simply in giving the best education to young Kurds. The reason for this is that young people often have many difficulties learning when they are taught in a foreign tongue.

In the early part of the 20th century British colonial authorities in charge of education in Iraq referred to the Kurdish language as “vernacular”. Their educational model was one of teaching in the Kurdish language only at the primary school level, with all higher education in Arabic (The Education of Kurdish Language, 1995-2003).

In 1926 the famous Kurdish nationalist Huzni Mukriyani suggested in a fictional conversation between a Kurdish father and son that ignorance was better than being taught in a foreign tongue. The father states, “My dear son, I like education and I am not an enemy of knowledge and enlightenment, but it is better for you to remain ignorant than to be unaware of your identity, not to study in your language and to serve the strangers...” (The Education of Kurdish Language, 1995-2003).

This emic view of Huzni Mukriyani’s of the over riding importance of children learning in Kurdish wasn’t just based on a nationalistic or romantic desire for cultural preservation, but also grew out of the practical desire of having Kurdish children be able to understand the language they were being taught in. This point was driven home in another line of the fictional conversation where the father states to his son, “You had better become a shepherd, [Or] do ploughing for me. These are better than taking lessons and not understanding them” (The Education of Kurdish Language, 1995-2003).

In the 1950’s, in Iraqi Kurdistan, demands by the Kurdish community for more education in Kurdish began to bear some fruit, but many instructors had difficulty teaching in Kurdish because they had been instructed in Arabic (The Education of Kurdish Language, 1995-2003).

In Turkey, Iran, and Syria education in the Kurdish language has been even more wanting. The Kurdish language was illegal in Turkey up until 1991 and education in the Kurdish language is still lacking (Human Rights Watch 2006).

Yet, as an oppressed people without many educational opportunities, Kurdish children continue to learn their language from their families and communities even when formal education is lacking. Thus, the Kurdish language continues to be passed on to the children, partly out of necessity, partly out of a nationalistic pride and refuses to die or be forcefully assimilated.

Religion In Kurdistan, Belief and Disbelief

Kurds practice a variety of monotheist religions including a number of varieties of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. In addition some Kurdish nationalist movements led by socialists have a strong history of atheism and secularism.

The wide variety of Kurdish religions is due, in part, to the absorption of differing religions from surrounding nationalities. These religions have moved through the region over differing historical times. The predominance of Islam began in the seventh century when most Kurds were converted (Encyclopedia Britannica 2007).

Most religious Kurds are Muslim of the Sunni denomination (Encyclopedia Britannica 2007). Kurdish Sunnis predominantly belong to the Shafi’I sect. Another Islamic denomination found among the beliefs of the Kurdish people is the Shia, primarily of the Alevi sect. A small number of Kurds are also Yezidi Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

There is also a large Sufi influence among many Kurdish Muslims, often cited as a moderating influence on Islamic fundamentalism in many areas, including the oppression of women. Others see that religious moderation; to the point it does exist among the Kurds, is the result of heavy influences from atheistic socialist forces leading many of the struggles against Kurdish national oppression.

While information on the rarest and most obscure religions is often very easy to come by, demographic assessments of atheism are difficult to nearly impossible to obtain for much of the world. This lack of important anthropological data is due, in part, to the fact that atheists are oppressed in much of the world and afraid to identify themselves when attempts are made at collecting such data. But, in addition, there is a glaring shortage of writings that attempt to look at the role of atheism on individual cultures. Perhaps this is due, in part, to the universality of atheism and its lack of quaint provincial deities, sects, or rituals as are found in the thousands of religions of the world.

A look at the political programs the socialists that are playing a leading role in the nationalist liberation movements of Kurdistan does, however, reveal a strong influence of atheism and secularism in their advocacy of women’s rights and opposition to Islamic Law.

It is a tendency found in many mainstream anthropological writings to play up the role of various religions in different societies while ignoring the influences of atheism. Yet it has been atheistic leadership that has led major advances in women’s rights for much of the world’s population. Well known examples are the Chinese and Russian revolutions that outlawed forced marriages, bride prices, and other manifestations of female slavery still suffered by most Kurdistani women.

Likewise it is popular groups with atheistic programs, such as the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) in Turkey, that advocate full emancipation for women. As the PKK states in their program:

“All laws reflecting male domination should be annulled. Violence against women, all forms of control on women’s bodies and lives resulting from outdated custom and traditional habits, and bride’s price should be forbidden.” (KKP Program, 2003)

This program of the PKK is in stark contrast to the harsh anti-woman positions of the Islamic capitalist governments of Iran, Turkey, and Iraq.

While there is good reason to study the role of religions in various societies, anthropological studies are often incomplete if they ignore the role atheism. Kurdish society is no exception where religious belief is mixed with a strong peppering of disbelief.

U.S. Imperialism and the Kurdish Question

While the regime of Saddam Hussein was no friend to the Iraqi Kurdish people, this of course has nothing to do with why the United States government hated Saddam Hussein. This hatred by the U.S. capitalist government is not based on humanitarian concerns. They hated Saddam Hussein for the good things he did, such as the nationalization of Iraqi oil that benefited the people of Iraq by keeping oil wealth in the country for social programs and benefited of the Iraqi economy.

America’s so-called concern for human rights can be seen in the past US interventions in Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party first came to power in 1963. Immediately after taking power, based on lists provided by the CIA, they rounded up 5,000 leftists and trade-union leaders and murdered them. After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait we were shown pictures of Iraqi Kurds killed by poison gas in the U.S. media. What we were not told is why the US was silent when this was happening and the fact that the US supplied the gas to kill the Kurds and to kill Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war. While we are now told of the Iraqi repression of the Kurdish people we are not told of how the Turkish government is carrying out the same policies of genocide against the Turkish Kurds, and doing it with U.S. weaponry.

In addition to these proxy genocides by the U.S. government on the Kurdish people the U.S. government has participated directly in the war on Kurds. This occurred on February 15, 1999 when U.S. forces kidnapped Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan and turned him over to the genocidal Turkish government. Subsequently Abdullah Ocalan was sentenced to death for his role in defending Kurdish territory in Turkey from the murderous Turkish military. This U.S. kidnapping was admitted on CNN TV by former Turkish President and ethnic cleanser Suleyman Demiral.

Today, in Iraq, the basic question of Kurds getting a piece of the oil wealth is not on the imperialist agenda. Instead they are pushing through their puppet governments and outside pressure for the oil wealth to be privatized and turned over to U.S. corporations.

Many of the Kurds know that their national interests will never be served by the “liberating” forces of Turkey and Iran or British and American imperialism. This will only be established by the Kurds themselves and by the alliances they build with other anti-imperialist forces. British imperialism divided Kurdistan, a country with its own unique language and culture, into a minority inside the nations of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran. Today the Kurds are the largest nation without a homeland in the world. Imperialism, with its motto of divide and conquer, never has and never will solve the Kurdish question. A free and united Kurdistan will only be born through a sweeping socialist revolution that overthrows the capitalist regimes of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria while challenging the military dictates of the United States.

The mutual language and oppression shared by the Kurdish people has solidified the Kurdish identity, even though they have differing religions, and even though they are spread out into five different countries of origin where they are an ethnic minority in each.

Facing violence and attempts at forced assimilation there is stubborn resistance in the will of the Kurdish people that refuses to give up. Instead many Kurds become resistance fighters that are bold enough to see a redrawn map where Kurdistan gains its independence from Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. In addition, many Kurds are also bold enough to see that future as one that ends feudal backwardness, promotes education, builds socialism, and brings equality for women.

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posted in CODEPINK - 2 replies

Iraq War Vet Speaks Out on Vet Homelessness

2007-12-24T21:21:04Z

Coming Home: Iraq Vets Confront Alienation & Homelessness

by Ross Caputi / December 2007 issue of Socialist Action newspaper

Recently a friend from my former platoon e-mailed an article to me about the recent rise in homeless veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In the subject column, he appropriately wrote “the glory of it all.”

The article stated that 23% of the homeless population in the United States are veterans, 89% of whom received honorable discharges, and 33% of whom were stationed in war zones. Of all homeless vets 76% experience drug, alcohol, or mental problems.

The overwhelming majority of homeless veterans are from the Vietnam era. But there has been a recent surge of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan showing up in homeless shelters across the country, proof of the possibility of a whole new generation of homeless veterans across the country.

It seems strange that a country like America could let its service members slip so easily through the cracks, and it’s hard to imagine that the ragged looking creatures that most of us pass by everyday without throwing a nickel to once wore a uniform. But when I think about how recruiters go to high schools and job fairs to target people with no options, it’s amazing to me that only 23% of the homeless population are veterans.

It’s the poor people, the have-nots of America, who enlist and get sent to foreign countries to fight wars and promote democracy under false pretenses - disguised with words like duty, sacrifice, and patriotism. We are the burden bearers of this society. This nation’s dirty work is done by our hands and it sits on our conscience.

We’re asked to do things that are not humanly possible, to be animals one day and civil the next. If we fail, we face the brig or losing our benefits, both of which are crippling to young men and women. Those of us lucky enough to make it out in one piece are left with only our sense of pride and self-reliance, and miles of red tape between us and our benefits.

In 1st Battalion 8th Marines Alpha Company, my old unit, we used to joke about ending up homeless. We had come out of the second battle of Fallujah with comparatively low casualties, and when we returned to the United States whatever conflicted or confused feelings we had about the war were overshadowed by the fact that we had survived. For a while we felt invincible. We celebrated with family and friends for weeks and drank ourselves stupid until the nostalgia of being home wore off and we just drank for the sake of drinking.

The majority of us still weren’t even 21 years old, but before we realized it, we were bent on a path of self-destruction. We drank and reminisced about Fallujah so much that almost every conversation ended up as war stories.

Iraq consumed our thoughts, and our celebratory drinking soon turned into depressed and introverted drunkenness. Some of us felt patriotic about what we had done in Iraq, others didn’t, but nobody could argue with the fact that it changed us. We struggled with the day-to-day stresses of military life and often lost our tempers for no reason.

The rules and regulations of the Marine Corps drove us crazy and we yearned for freedom, but at the same time feared the day when we would no longer have a room in the barracks and a guaranteed paycheck on the 1st and the 15th of every month.

Most of us had no education and no skills that were relevant in the corporate world, and we almost all had new demons to deal with.

After enough time had passed we settled with the fact that we were indeed war veterans, some even feeling that they no longer belonged in society. Many Marines volunteered to go back to Iraq as soon as possible. Things began to snowball, and within a year 21 of us were discharged for drug use and one Marine drank himself to death.

The 1st Battalion 8th Marines is currently in Iraq again, and for many of the Marines in that unit it’s their second time. For those of us who got out, honorably or not, it’s been three years since Fallujah. Almost all of us drink too much, myself included, and some have drug problems. To my knowledge, none of us are living on the streets yet, but we’re all back to where we started before we joined - working construction and hauling trash, attending state colleges and dropping out.

We’re the poor and the have-nots of America, the only people desperate enough to sign their life over for a room in the barracks and the GI Bill. Ahhh, the glory of it all.

Human Needs, Not War and Profits!

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Dictators in the Empire's Employ by Mumia Abu-Jamal

2007-11-25T21:04:59Z

Dictators in the Empire's Employ
[col. writ. 11/18/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal

With the teeth of the Pakistani dictatorship now bared, we are beginning to see a mirror image of most of U.S. history throughout the last century.

Although perhaps best seen in the vicious wars of Latin America, it is a fact that the U.S. government supported brutal, violent dictatorships on every continent, almost always against popular, and especially workers movements.

Although most Americans would be hard pressed to actually recall the names of 4 U.S. backed dictators of the 20th century, it is a safe bet that the people who tried to survive in those countries will remember them for the rest of their lives.

From Haiti's infamous Duvaliers, to Cuba's Batista, there were no dictators too wretched, too violent, too vicious for the U.S. to support.

There's a good reason why when President Lyndon B. Johnson took the Oval Office after John Kennedy's assassination, he told one of his aides, "We've been running a damned branch of Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean."*

That's because Washington was essentially internationalizing its program of repression and McCarthyism, according to at least one Latin American country. Scholar (and former diplomat) Clara Nieto wrote, in her remarkable 2003 work, Masters of War, the story of how the U.S. got almost the entire continent to go its way:

At the Tenth Inter-American Conference requested by {former State Dept. chief John} Dulles and held in Caracas in 1954, he easily persuaded the meeting to adopt a declaration condemning international communism and advocating hemispheric solidarity and mutual defense against "Communist aggression." The chancellor of Guatemala, Guillermo Toriella, warned that on "the pretext of combating Communism, fundamental principles of democracy can be contravened, violations of human rights justified, and the principle of non-intervention infringed upon." The declaration, he argued was "the internationalization of McCarthyism." The majority - all dictatorships - supported it; Argentina (under Peron) voted against it and Mexico abstained. Costa Rica did not attend the meeting, since Jose Figueres refused to participate in this "assembly of dictators in a country governed by the most brutal and corrupt of them all, General Perez Jimenez" {C. Nieto, pp.138-139}.

Thus, generations were subjected to the terrorism of their own governments, their own armies, paid, and trained by the Americans. These U.S. trained terrorists launched wars against their own people; students, teachers, trade unionists, writers, intellectuals, priests, Indians, and beyond.

Yet, that was then. What now?

Despite all the gas and rap about "freedom", "democracy", and the like, the U.S. is, once again, depending on a dictator who has essentially shut down the Supreme Court, whipped lawyers in the streets, waged fraudulent elections, exiled his political opponents, and ruled with an iron fist. The differences between Burma and Pakistan could be measured in inches.

Yet, none of this really matters to the White House. What matters is what has always mattered. That the dictator do the bidding of his imperial masters - the people be damned.

There's a reason why Latin America has elected predominantly anti American governments in the past decade, and it had nothing to do with the easy media fiction that Hugo Chavez made them do it. For millions of people, they remember the so called 'secret wars' waged by armed puppets of the Americans-and they want no more of it.

Dictatorship 2 -- Democracy 0.

--(c) '07 maj

*[Source: Nieto, Clara, Masters of War: Latin America and the U.S. Aggression (From the Cuban Revolution Through the Clinton Years) {New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003} ]

*********
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner in the United States, framed and in prison, with what could be the final decision on his legal appeals possibly coming down soon. That decision could give Mumia his freedom, a new trial, life in prison, or execution. It is time to turn up the heat against this injustice.

Free Mumia!

For more on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal read:

Top Ten “Fry Mumia” Myths Debunked
(Myth #1) “Five eyewitnesses saw Mumia shoot officer Faulkner.”
http://indybay.org/newsitems/2007/07/19/18436405.php

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posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Rape Epidemic in Congo

2007-11-21T13:51:32Z

(what can we possibly do about this? awareness at LEAST- please tell everyone)

October 7, 2007

Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/jeffrey_gettle
man/index.html?inline=nyt-per> , New York Times

BUKAVU, Congo — Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to
listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore.

Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his
hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out,
butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their
reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.

“We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said
Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape
epidemic. “They are done to destroy women.”

Eastern Congo is going through another one of its convulsions of violence,
and this time it seems that women are being systematically attacked on a
scale never before seen here. According to the United Nations
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_
nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org> , 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in
2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the
total number across the country.

“The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,” said John Holmes,
the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. “The
sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity — it’s
appalling.”

The days of chaos in Congo were supposed to be over. Last year, this country
of 66 million people held a historic election that cost $500 million and was
intended to end Congo’s various wars and rebellions and its tradition of
epically bad government.

But the elections have not unified the country or significantly strengthened
the Congolese government’s hand to deal with renegade forces, many of them
from outside the country. The justice system and the military still barely
function, and United Nations officials say Congolese government troops are
among the worst offenders when it comes to rape. Large swaths of the
country, especially in the east, remain authority-free zones where civilians
are at the mercy of heavily armed groups who have made warfare a livelihood
and survive by raiding villages and abducting women for ransom.

According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the
Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the
forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are
notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up
anybody who gets in their way.

United Nations officials said the so-called Rastas were once part of the
Hutu militias who fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994, but
now it seems they have split off on their own and specialize in freelance
cruelty.

Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and
downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided
in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was
tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The
men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said.

“I’m weak, I’m angry, and I don’t know how to restart my life,” she said
from Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where she was taken after her captors freed
her.

She is also pregnant.

While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that
Congo’s problem has metastasized into a wider social phenomenon.

“It’s gone beyond the conflict,” said Alexandra Bilak, who has studied
various armed groups around Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. She said
that the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to
be going up and that brutality toward women had become “almost normal.”

Malteser International, a European aid organization that runs health clinics
in eastern Congo, estimates that it will treat 8,000 sexual violence cases
this year, compared with 6,338 last year. The organization said that in one
town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women reported being sexually brutalized.

At Panzi Hospital, where Dr. Mukwege performs as many as six rape-related
surgeries a day, bed after bed is filled with women lying on their backs,
staring at the ceiling, with colostomy bags hanging next to them because of
all the internal damage.

“I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, a patient who
was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her
husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes,
they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot
him anyway.

In almost all the reported cases, the culprits are described as young men
with guns, and in the deceptively beautiful hills here, there is no shortage
of them: poorly paid and often mutinous government soldiers; homegrown
militias called the Mai-Mai who slick themselves with oil before marching
into battle; members of paramilitary groups originally from Uganda and
Rwanda who have destabilized this area over the past 10 years in a quest for
gold and all the other riches that can be extracted from Congo’s exploited
soil.

The attacks go on despite the presence of the largest United Nations
peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 17,000 troops.

Few seem to be spared. Dr. Mukwege said his oldest patient was 75, his
youngest 3.

“Some of these girls whose insides have been destroyed are so young that
they don’t understand what happened to them,” Dr. Mukwege said. “They ask me
if they will ever be able to have children, and it’s hard to look into their
eyes.”

No one — doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers — can
explain exactly why this is happening.

“That is the question,” said André Bourque, a Canadian consultant who works
with aid groups in eastern Congo. “Sexual violence in Congo reaches a level
never reached anywhere else. It is even worse than in Rwanda during the
genocide.”

Impunity may be a contributing factor, Mr. Bourque added, saying that very
few of the culprits are punished.

Many Congolese aid workers denied that the problem was cultural and insisted
that the widespread rapes were not the product of something ingrained in the
way men treated women in Congolese society. “If that were the case, this
would have showed up long ago,” said Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a
sexual violence program in Bukavu.

Instead, she said, the epidemic of rapes seems to have started in the
mid-1990s. That coincides with the waves of Hutu militiamen who escaped into
Congo’s forests after exterminating 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during
Rwanda’s genocide 13 years ago.

Mr. Holmes said that while government troops might have raped thousands of
women, the most vicious attacks had been carried out by Hutu militias.

“These are people who were involved with the genocide and have been
psychologically destroyed by it,” he said.

Mr. Bourque called this phenomenon “reversed values” and said it could
develop in heavily traumatized areas that had been steeped in conflict for
many years, like eastern Congo.

This place, one of the greenest, hilliest and most scenic slices of central
Africa, continues to reverberate from the aftershocks of the genocide next
door. Take the recent fighting near Bukavu between the Congolese Army and
Laurent Nkunda, a dissident general who commands a formidable rebel force.
Mr. Nkunda is a Congolese Tutsi who has accused the Congolese Army of
supporting Hutu militias, which the army denies. Mr. Nkunda says his rebel
force is simply protecting Tutsi civilians from being victimized again.

But his men may be no better.

Willermine Mulihano said she was raped twice — first by Hutu militiamen two
years ago and then by Nkunda soldiers in July. Two soldiers held her legs
apart, while three others took turns violating her.

“When I think about what happened,” she said, “I feel anxious and
brokenhearted.”

She is also lonely. Her husband divorced her after the first rape, saying
she was diseased.

In some cases, the attacks are on civilians already caught in the cross-fire
between warring groups. In one village near Bukavu where 27 women were raped
and 18 civilians killed in May, the attackers left behind a note in broken
Swahili telling the villagers that the violence would go on as long as
government troops were in the area.

The United Nations peacekeepers here seem to be stepping up efforts to
protect women.

Recently, they initiated what they call “night flashes,” in which three
truckloads of peacekeepers drive into the bush and keep their headlights on
all night as a signal to both civilians and armed groups that the
peacekeepers are there. Sometimes, when morning comes, 3,000 villagers are
curled up on the ground around them.

But the problem seems bigger than the resources currently devoted to it.

Panzi Hospital has 350 beds, and though a new ward is being built
specifically for rape victims, the hospital sends women back to their
villages before they have fully recovered because it needs space for the
never-ending stream of new arrivals.

Dr. Mukwege, 52, said he remembered the days when Bukavu was known for its
stunning lake views and nearby national parks, like Kahuzi-Biega.

“There used to be a lot of gorillas in there,” he said. “But now they’ve
been replaced by much more savage beasts.”

posted in CODEPINK - 1 reply

OCT 14+16: Iraq War: town hall meeting and Mass Convergence- los angeles

2007-10-09T01:39:30Z

Sunday, October 14
Iraq War Town Hall

What: Majority Leader Karen Bass & the 47th Assembly District People's Council host a town hall with panelists Congresswoman Diane Watson and Major General Paul Eaton and show excerpts from the award-winning documentary 'No End in Sight' by Charles Ferguson.
When: October 14th 3:00pm - 5:00pm
Where: Hamilton High School Auditorium 2955 South Robertson (Two blocks north of the 10 Freeway)
Why: To discuss recent headline Iraq War news such as the Congressional hearings on Blackwater, the 180,000 "military contractors" now in Iraq, the privatization of the military, what's really happening in Iraq and how the war affects our community.
RSVP to Sarah @ 310.403.9760 or sarahcodepink@gmail.com
**Join the People's Council to help collect items for care packages for the troops in Iraq. Please bring any of the following to the town hall meeting: Disposable cameras, prepaid phone cards, travel-size board games, hand and foot warmers, energy bars, candy.

Tuesday, October 16
Mass Convergence at City Hall

What: End the War L.A.'s mass convergence at the Los Angeles City Council meeting. The L.A. City Council is voting on on a resolution to bring the troops home from Iraq. Many cities, including Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia have already done it, now it's our turn to make our voices heard!
When: October 16th 9:15 am
Where: Meet on City Hall lawn at Tom Bradley Blvd & Main (formerly 1st and Main). Parking is available in several affordable lots on Los Angeles street.
Why: We need your help to remind our government representatives that the people will not cease in their calls for an end to this war!
RSVP to Sarah @ 310.403.9760 or sarahcodepink@gmail.com

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codepink action this week! sept24-29

2007-09-24T00:16:56Z

Shoe Drive for "A Walk In Their Shoes"

Who: CODEPINK, Students for a Democratic Society and American Friends Services Committee
What: Please donate your old shoes for this display honoring Iraqis who have lost their lives in this devastating war and occupation. Any size, any style any condition.
When: Saturday, Sept 22- Monday, September 24
Where: Drop off locations include the CODEPINK tent at Wilshire and Veteran, AFSC office (634 S. Spring Street Los Angeles, Ca 90014 3rd floor during regular business hours) and the CODEPINK house at 2010 Linden Ave Venice, CA 90291.
Contact: Ally Herskovitz, alexandra13.1984@gmail.com, 310.579.7331
*all shoes will be donated to the LA Mission after exhibit

Cheering For Peace!

What: Radical Cheer Leading Camp
When: 1 pm
Where: CODEPINK camp @ Wilshire and Veteran
Why: Because cheer leading isn't just for the popular girls anymore! We will be practicing our cheers to "BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW" so that we can help spread joy in the march on Saturday. Now you can wear a tutu, shake pompoms and strut your stuff for social justice! Wear comfy clothes. No experience is necessary. Every age and gender is welcomed and ENCOURAGED! RSVP to karin@codepinkalert.org

Monday, September 24, 2007

"A Walk In Their Shoes" Reading

What: Reading of the names of Iraqi civilians killed during the occupation
When: 3 pm - 3:30 pm
Where: Downtown Federal Building (300 N. Los Angeles St.) @ the main stage
Why: To honor those whose lives have been lost as a result of this bloody war

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Cheering For Peace!

What: Radical Cheer Leading Camp
When: 2 pm
Where: CODEPINK camp @ Wilshire and Veteran
Why: Because cheer leading isn't just for the popular girls anymore! We will be practicing our cheers to "BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW" and spread joy in the march on Saturday. Now you can wear the tutu and strut your stuff for social justice! Wear comfy clothes, no experience necessary and every age and gender is welcomed and ENCOURAGED! RSVP to karin@codepinkalert.org

Saturday, September 29, 2007

March to "Lead Us Out Of Iraq"

What: A mass March to the Federal building to demand that our leaders
"LEAD US OUT OF IRAQ!"
When: 12 pm
Where: Olympic and Broadway
You MUST RSVP to karin@codepinkalert.org so that we can let you know where to meet us. Wear all your favorite pink gear, we will have apparel for sale and signs to share. Volunteers opportunities include: photographers, sign making, banner making, people to shoot video, bloggers (folks to write about the march), song/chant leaders (we can provide the songs and chants!) and musicians.

In Solidarity,

Azadeh, Ally, Jodie, Karin, Linda and Susan

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Uncensored Iranian Voices- bookclub

2007-08-10T04:55:12Z

CODEPINK Women for Peace

While Congress is on vacation in August, we activists need to rest and renew as well. What better way to relax than with a good book?

This summer, CODEPINK is launching our first ever book club. We have chosen My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices edited by Lila Azam Zanganeh as our first book club pick. We hope you'll join us in reading this groundbreaking anthology. (http://www.codepinkalert.org//article.php?list=type&type=323)

Lila Azam Zanganeh has assembled a compelling mix of Iranian writers, artists, and activists-including Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis, Reza Aslan, author of No god but God, and Oscar nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo--who share their experiences of and hopes for Iran. As we move forward with our campaign to prevent war with Iran (http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?list=type&type=135), let's educate ourselves about the reality of Iranian life. This anthology will open your eyes, open your heart, and help dispel any misconceptions you may hold of the country.

We have invited editor Lila Azam Zanganeh and hope she--and perhaps other contributors to the anthology--will be able to join us in a conversation. Click here (http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/codepink/signUp.jsp?key=2513) to join the CODEPINK reading community so we can send you information about how to log in to our nation-wide conversation about the book later this month.

You can also connect with your local CODEPINK (http://www.codepink4peace.org/section.php?id=4) to discuss the book in person, or start your own local CODEPINK book club. For inspiration, take a look at CODEPINK Boston's well-established book club, which meets monthly at a local bookstore to discuss politics and feminism and literature (http://www.codepinkboston.org/bookclub/). We'd love to hear about your own local CODEPINK book club experiences--please send your reports or questions to karin@codepinkalert.org.

We wish you happy, peaceful reading!
Dana, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Jodie, Karin, Liz, Medea, Nancy, Pamela, Patricia, Rae, Samantha, and Vanessa

P.S. As we reach out to learn more about others, our government is cracking down on our conversations with others. Read a New York Times editorial here (http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/07/3033/) to learn more about the recent vote to expand Bush's power to spy on Americans, and click here (http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/codepink/postcard.jsp?postcard_KEY=250) to send your Congressperson an email to say "Stop spying on me!"

Congrats to CODEPINK Florida for achieving a meeting with Senator Bill Nelson (http://www.wesh.com/news/13841343/detail.html) as a result of their Florida for Peace: Focus on Nelson Campaign (http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?list=type&type=312). We are so proud of and inspired by you! May other communities rise up to hold our leaders accountable!

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CODEPINK truck to the USSF! via Santa Fe!

2007-06-18T08:42:22Z

It's time for a road trip for the CODEPINK truck! For those of you who don't know, one of the local coordinators in the San Francisco bay area has a big moving truck painted pink with slogans and a tally of the war dead. She drives it around the country to actions, transports people's items when they need to move, and more.

I'll be riding along with her from Berkeley to Atlanta through the southern part of the United States, and we'll be making an extended stop in Santa Fe, NM on-and-around the 21st. I'm excited about this opportunity to ride with the CODEPINK truck! Come by and say hey, when you see the truck roll through town. It'd be awesome to meet other women also for pink.

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Pro-War Democrats Battle for the Presidency

2007-06-09T02:04:48Z

Pro-War Democrats Battle for the Presidency

By Steven Argue

Every four years the American people are subjected to the farce of bourgeois democracy, a “democracy” where only the candidates chosen by the very wealthy have any chance of being elected. That season of nicely dressed pathological liars and false hopes is now upon us.

Since the corporate media of the United States has long ago abandoned any semblance of reporting on anything of substance about candidates such as voting records and actual political views, it is up to the journalists of the left press and Indy-media to do so.

A front-runner in the race is pro-war Democrat Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton has voted for every war the United States has carried out since she came into office in 2000. Those pro-war votes include the Iraq war. She also voted to take away our civil liberties by supporting the “Patriot Act” and its renewal. Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats, pounds the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. In addition she voted for the anti-immigrant wall.

In her recent successful run for Senate Hillary Clinton amassed more than 22 million dollars, making her the biggest campaign finance recipient running for Senate in the country. Her money came from such corporate interests as drug and hospital conglomerates, Wall Street finance interests, real estate developers, and rightwing corporate media mogul, Rupert Murdoch.

Barack Obama

Another front-runner and “rising star” of the Democrat Party is Barack Obama. Like Hillary Clinton, Obama has voted for the Patriot Act by voting to renew it in 2006. He also voted for the racist anti-immigrant wall as well as the “guest worker” program that denies immigrants rights, but allows them to come to this country to be exploited and under-paid. Obama also voted for the so-called “Class Action Fairness Act” that makes it harder for the people to sue corporations.

One might think that Obama, as a black man in racist America, might have something to offer on issues dealing with the suffering caused by the racist police state, mass incarceration of the poor, lack of healthcare, and dramatic drop in the standard of living of the multi-racial working class and poor. Instead Barack Obama plays into racist stereotypes, blaming the victims of racist America rather than the corporate criminals, stating:

"Such wisdom might help us move beyond ideological bickering and serve as the basis of a renewed effort to tackle the problem of inner-city poverty. We could begin by acknowledging that perhaps the single biggest thing we could do to reduce such poverty is to encourage teenage girls to finish high school and avoid having children out of wedlock. . ." Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, pps. 255-256

The inner cities of America have, by and large, been abandoned by the same capitalists that got rich off of the jobs they have now exported, just as the victims of hurricane Katrina were left to die by this same racist system. Yet the best thing to do according to Barack Obama is for black girls to stop having children out of wedlock.

In his book Uncle Obama not only lets this racist system off the hook, but he praises one of the worst anti-working class reforms of the Clinton administration stating, "we should also acknowledge that conservatives-and Bill Clinton-were right about welfare as it was previously structured." Bill Clinton’s welfare reform has caused homelessness, hunger, and less access to other basic necessities for the poor in America, but Barack Obama says Bill Clinton and the conservatives were right.

Both Obama and Clinton have voted for war appropriations. The fact that they both decided at the last minute to vote against war appropriations in the most recent vote on supplemental war appropriations is a symptom of the fact that the war has not gone as planned. The war has not gained the desired oil loot for U.S. corporations and has caused a number of growing problems for U.S. imperialism including internal dissent in the United States. And while Clinton and Obama have finally voted against war appropriations this time, their pro-war Democrat Party garnered plenty of other votes to keep the imperialist war going.

In his book, Barack Obama makes clear his support for the billions being squandered on lining the pockets of the military contractors stating, “given the depletion of our [military] forces after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we will probably need a somewhat higher [Pentagon] budget in the immediate future just to restore readiness and replace equipment.” (Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, p 307).

Joe Biden

Another Democrat candidate is Joe Biden. Unlike many Democrat presidential candidates that have tried to distance themselves from the war that they voted for to begin with, in the most recent vote on war appropriations Joe Biden voted with the majority of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate putting billions of dollars towards the continued U.S. imperialist slaughter of the Iraqi people.

John Edwards

Another presidential candidate with a pro-war record is John Edwards. Edwards voted for the war against Iraq and campaigned as a vice presidential candidate on the pro-war John Kerry ticket. At that time both candidates defended their votes for the war. John Edwards has since apologized for his vote for unprovoked military aggression and mass murder (without using that wording and without recognizing that his vote for war was a criminal act).

Yet when Edwards was running for the position of vice president in 2004 this what he had to say on his pro-war vote:

“We need to stick to this [defending their Iraq war votes]. We should stand by our votes, say we would vote that way again. If you admit a mistake, it shows weakness in time of war. That's what the Republicans want us to do.” (John Edwards's changing tune on the Iraq vote, Scot Lehigh, The Globe, April 17, 2007)

Bill Richardson

Another candidate trying to paint himself as an antiwar candidate of the people is presidential candidate and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. Richardson doesn’t call for immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but instead calls for a slow withdrawal. In the early 1990s he did vote against the U.S. war to reinstate the anti-woman pro-U.S. corporate oil monarchy in Kuwait, but later said he regretted that vote. In addition Richardson is a strong supporter the pro-corporate anti-worker NAFTA, GATT, and WTO. On the death penalty Richardson, like many Democrats, says it is a good thing.

Well over one hundred inmates in the United States have had their convictions overturned as a result of new DNA evidence being brought to light, with some of these being death penalty cases. Still prosecutors have fought against the use of DNA evidence to overturn old convictions, even when the lives of innocent people are on the line. In racist America, death penalty juries are always more likely to convict because all who oppose the death penalty are excluded from these juries, making them juries that are more biased towards supporting the prosecution. Blacks often face all or mostly white death penalty juries. These are juries likely to contain a number of people who think that all Black people are criminals, making these jurors incapable of weighing the evidence and understanding the concept of reasonable doubt even in those rare circumstances when the evidence is fairly presented.

Why would anybody support the death penalty being carried out by a system that has been proven to make so many mistakes? The answer lies in the fact that the death penalty is an instrument of terror used by the American ruling class against the working class, poor, and people of color. On the one hand when such innocent people are executed it has no importance to the likes of Joe Biden because to them the lives of the poor and people of color are cheap. But for the ruling class, the added bonus of the death penalty is when it is used in political cases to silence dissent such as with the executions of Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, the Haymarket martyrs, and the threatened execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal. As governor, the fact that Joe Biden has no problem with the death penalty means that he already has blood on his hands.

Dennis Kucinich

Likewise Dennis Kucinich is portraying himself as the standard bearer of peace, love, and liberalism, but has voted in favor of the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The resolution Kucinich voted for falsely claims, “Mumia Abu-Jamal stood over Officer Faulkner and shot him in the face, mortally wounding him…” Yet this is not what the eyewitnesses said. For instance eyewitness William Singletary says, "Mumia Abu-Jamal didn't shoot Daniel Faulkner. The passenger in the right-hand side of the Volkswagen [that Faulkner had stopped] got out of the car and shot him. When Mumia came on the scene, we [Singletary and another man] were on the police radio trying to radio for help." ("Witness: Abu-Jamal didn't do it" Philadelphia Daily News Dec. 8, 2006)

In the last presidential election Dennis Kucinich portrayed himself up as an anti-war candidate of the Democrat Party. Yet on his web site the Kucinich campaign stated that Kucinich, “Supports a strong and efficient military. He believes that the current practice of procuring ever more costly weapons has the effect of weakening military readiness. As the cost of new weapons systems rise, the cost of merely replacing aging weapons with new ones becomes prohibitively expensive. As a result, U.S. military forces shrink, while they become at the same time more expensive to maintain and more prone to failure.”

So Kucinich advocates more frugal and efficient spending on imperialist terror and murder.

This is the same position taken by two U.S. generals waging the war in Iraq. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq General Stanley McCrystal complained, "It was enough for the enemy to show a little resistance and some creative thinking as our technological superiority begun to quickly lose all its meaning. Our expenses are not justified by the obtained results. The enemy is using an order of magnitude cheaper weapons to reach the same goals for which we spend billions on technological whims of the defense industry!"

Similarly General Richard Mayers commented on precision-guided munitions, "The rate of their use is incompatible with the obtained results. We are literally dropping gold into the mud!"

The contradiction here was purely limited to the difference between the pure profiteering of the military industrial complex and the desire for actual cost effective results for imperialist victory on the battlefield.

Dennis Kucinich spoke to a gathering of the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action claiming, "We [he and the congress] did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan. We did not authorize the Administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases. We did not authorize war without end. We did not authorize a permanent war economy. Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy."

Yet that is exactly what Kucinich and the rest of the congress, with the exception of California Democrat Barbara Lee, agreed to with their votes authorizing Bush’s endless war on the world. The entire Democrat Party in both the Senate and Congress, with only one exception, voted for Bush's war.

Since a different vote was later taken authorizing the US war in Iraq, the most practical application of this vote by Kucinich was to authorize the US war in Afghanistan.

In stark contrast to Kucinich’s vote for war Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote on March 2002:

“When U.S. President George W. Bush spoke about an "endless war," some took it as mere political speech, or rhetoric designed to gain the top spot on the evening network news. I did not. "W" is an agent of his class, the wealthy oil merchants of the land, and his intentions are to press for an ever-wider war in all corners of the earth, to make the world safe for capital exploitation and unbridled commerce. This will eventually become a war that reaches into a slew of countries in the Middle East, on behalf of the rich and powerful elites who rule. Make no mistake: this is a war that has nothing to do with democracy. The U.S. enters the region, armed to the gills, not to defend democracies, but to defend theocracies; to defend kings, princes and sultanates; to defend U.S. access to vast oil resources in the region.” Mumia Abu-Jamal

The U.S. war in Afghanistan has in fact killed tens of thousands of civilians and brought the Afghan nation back to the chaos of fragmented warlord rule last seen after the various U.S. trained and financed Mujahideen forces defeated the Soviet backed PDPA government.

The day after the September 11 attack this author wrote:

“Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.

“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen (from which the Taliban were later formed). With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing woman for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.

“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate (oil) interests” Steven Argue, Liberation News, September 12, 2002

Kucinich, the “peace candidate”, as much as he may now want to deny it, voted for the war in Afghanistan and played his part in making it happen.

On the war in Iraq Kucinich now states, "There is only one way in which the United States will withdraw from Iraq, prior to the end of President Bush's term: Congress must vote to cut off funds." (Rep. Kucinich, The Huffington Report) This position not only ignores the role of the people of the United States, Britain, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere rising up and resisting the war and imperialist occupations, but it is also is being put forward by a politician that voted for the war in Afghanistan, wants a leaner meaner imperialist military, voted for the racist legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and who has worked hard to bring the anti-war movement back into the pro-war Democrat Party.

Some may argue that Kucinich is not perfect, but he’d make a better president than Bush. Yet it is unlikely that Kucinich has any intention of winning the presidency. His role is one of bringing the anti-war movement and others who are breaking from the establishment and the twin parties of war and racism back into the fold of the pro-war Democrat Party. Kucinich makes this point clear when he states, "The Democratic Party created third parties by running to the middle. What I'm trying to do is to go back to the big tent so that everyone who felt alienated could come back through my candidacy" (Counter Punch, April 2003).

Yet that tent Kucinich speaks of is one that, despite its name, is not democratic. It is a tent dominated by big capital and the politicians subservient to it. It is under this tent that the ruling class would like to swallow up the legitimate opposition of the people towards war and turn us into the water boys for the “responsible” politicians of the Democrat Party.

It is such "responsible" politicians, including Kucinich, that voted in their vast majority to back the racist legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal. It is outrageous that that the Democrat party would vote in its House majority to condemn a French city for daring to make an issue of this racist legal lynching, while at the same time doing nothing about the liar and killer, Bush. But then again that should be no surprise either since the Democrat Party voted in its majority for the war in Iraq.

Hillary Clinton

In a press conference on August 21, 2006 George Bush Jr. finally admitted what Liberation News has been pointing out since before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. Yet Bush had used a supposed connection as a pretext for the U.S.’s unprovoked aggression against Iraq. In addition, Bush Jr. also admitted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

Most of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, Hillary Clinton included, supported going to war with Iraq. Today Hillary Clinton has no remorse for that murderous decision stating, "Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since. No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade." Hillary Clinton: No regret on Iraq Vote, CNN.Com

In trying to let themselves off the hook many Democrats claim that Bush “did not fairly represent intelligence”. Feeble cries by these politicians today that their votes for war weren’t their fault because they were lied to by Bush not only make them look stupid, they are an insult to the intelligence of the American people. Clinton, however, is worse in not even distancing herself from this “justified invasion” and “weapons of mass destruction” lies.

While the Democrats helped promote the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had no right to defend itself, Liberation News pointed out that it is the United States that has the weapons of mass destruction. Instead we supported the right of Iraq to acquire the weapons necessary to defend themselves from U.S. aggression. There can be little doubt that if Iraq had acquired those weapons they might not be in the mess they are now.

Yet for Bush Jr. and Hillary Clinton Iraqi weapons were never the real motive for mass murder in Iraq. The capitalist ruling class, and their Democrat and Republican representatives, thought that they could use their superior military power to quickly move into Iraq and establish by force a stable neo-colonial puppet regime, and then make massive profits from the privatization of the Iraqi economy, especially oil. It is the failures of this imperialist plan, in the face of Iraqi resistance and growing unpopularity at home, that has forced some Democrats to try to rethink, or at least distance themselves from, the Bush policies they have supported.

Just as Liberation News opposes the U.S. occupation and corporate looting of Iraq, we also denounced the starvation blockade that was carried out through the UN by the Bill Clinton administration. That blockade, partially due to the capitalist nature of the Iraqi economy under Saddam Hussein, cost the lives of about a million people, many of them children. While a socialist economy like that of Cuba could have made sure that everyone in Iraq had food, blame for this mass murder should also be put on the Bill Clinton administration. Likewise, it was this Clinton starvation blockade that also weakened Iraq for the Bush invasion.

Today, while the U.S. occupation of Iraq has murdered well over 655,000 people and the U.S. starvation blockade of Iraq murdered a million or more, the U.S. government and its puppets in Iraq had the nerve to put Saddam Hussein on trial, and execute him, for propaganda purposes. Yet the worst crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime were also carried out when he was directly backed by the United States. In the 1980’s the U.S. was giving massive military assistance to Iraq to help Saddam Hussein commit genocide against Kurds and carry out a bloody war with Iran at a time when Saddam Hussein was being used as an asset of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Likewise the CIA helped Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party come to power, supplying them with the names of 5,000 socialists and labor leaders that the Ba’athists subsequently rounded up and executed.

Yet to those who claimed that an invasion of Iraq would be a chance for the U.S. to finally set things straight and set up a democracy in Iraq, Liberation News responded before the U.S. invasion saying:

“In the 1970s Iraq nationalized its oil fields. This helped the Iraqi people by taking a chunk of the profits made off of oil out of the hands of the international oil monopolies and instead keeping them in Iraq. This money helped pay for free healthcare and education. As such this was a socialist measure carried out by Saddam Hussein’s capitalist government. It was also a measure that stood up to the interests of the rich and powerful nations. For both reasons socialists supported the nationalization of Iraqi oil while those measures infuriated the imperialists...

“While defending Iraq against imperialist attack and supporting their right to defend themselves socialists also recognize that Saddam Hussein is a capitalist leader and that the Iraqi people have their own scores to settle with him. Yet any government set up by a US occupation army will not be democratic and will only lead to the privatization of the resources that American oil monopolies intend to steal...”

“U.S. imperialism will never solve the question of women’s liberation in the Middle East. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Over 50% of Iraqi doctors are women. Iraqi women are allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They are allowed to drive. Iraqi women can even freely criticize men. In addition Iraqi women have the right to work and control their own funds. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive U.S. backed governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where women have no rights what-so-ever.

“The U.S. ruling class hates governments like Iraq, Libya, and Venezuela who use the profits of their oil resources partly to benefit the people with social programs. Likewise they love governments like that of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that strip the people of all their rights and keep the oil profits in the hands of the international oil monopolies and their corrupt local servants. Today in the United States we face unemployment, homelessness, and a lack of health care. The billions of dollars the U.S. will squander on killing Iraqis to steal their resources should be spent to benefit the working class and poor of the United States instead.” -From Liberation News: What Is Socialism, and Why We Oppose The Invasion of Iraq

What was predicted is reality. Those predictions were not from a crystal ball. They were accurate because they were based on the past behavior of U.S. imperialism. Today in Iraq the U.S. has set up a puppet Islamic government with functioning death squads and torture chambers. Socialists have been excluded from participating in elections and unarmed demonstrators have been shot down and murdered in the streets by U.S. troops and troops of the puppet Iraqi government. The puppet Islamic government also opposes women’s rights and women’s rights have deteriorated dramatically since the U.S. invasion. The rebuilding of basic infrastructure, such as electricity, has lagged way behind what was rebuilt by Saddam Hussein after the massive U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 1992.

With the exception of the privatization of Iraqi oil, all of the predictions have shown themselves to be true and the only reason that Iraqi oil isn’t completely under the direct control of U.S. oil monopolies now is because of the union resistance of 23,000 organized oil workers as well as the general resistance by the Iraqi people to the idea of Iraq’s resources being looted by U.S. corporations.

For the working class in the United States there is ever growing frustration with a war that is costing many lives and billions in dollars while needed programs for healthcare, jobs, the environment, and disaster relief do not get the funding they need. Just as the new imperialist masters of Iraq have shown a criminal lack of interest in the rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure, so too they left the people of New Orleans.

Yet for the ruling class their failure in Iraq is not in the murderous, undemocratic, and anti-woman puppet regime they have set up and the money that has been squandered in doing it, but in the failure of that regime to deliver the stability needed to acquire the oil loot. They complain that oil production in Iraq is below prewar levels and the occupation by U.S. and British troops serve as targets for the insurgency.

The words of Hillary Clinton, an icon of Democratic Party liberalism, makes abundantly clear that what she opposes is not the oil war itself, but the fact that Bush is not winning it:

“Let us not confuse the leadership’s failures with either the remaining mission in Iraq or the war on terrorism or with our support for our troops. What we have here is a failure of leadership to accomplish that mission. What was hailed as our shortest war has now become one of our longest. What was hailed as a model of democracy teeters on the brink of complete anarchy. What was the leadership that quickly claimed credit for success has been lethargic in the face of misjudgments and setbacks.” Hillary Clinton

As a result of imperialism’s failure in Iraq some Democrats that voted for the war like John Kerry have called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year. Yet the Kerry-Feingold plan actually calls for keeping troops in Iraq that are "critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces." The Kerry-Feingold plan also calls for "an over-the-horizon" troop presence in the region that could come to the aid of a failing puppet government in Iraq as well as intervene elsewhere in the so-called war on terror. (Lawmakers begin Bitter Debate on U.S. Troop Withdrawal Plan for Iraq, FOXNews, online report, June 2, 2006)

Hillary Clinton even opposed the Kerry-Feingold plan and voted against it arguing against any withdrawal timeline.

Unlike Hillary Clinton and the leading Democrats, Liberation News sees nothing good that can come from the continuation of the U.S. war against Iraq. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is doing nothing for anybody except the capitalists that are profiting from the war and the tax dollars of the American people. We call for no support to the Democrats and we demand: Iraq to the Iraqis! U.S. Out Now!

Liberation News calls for ending the war through building the mass movement in the streets; striking against arms producers; hot cargoing war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks; and building towards a general strike against the war. Likewise we support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war. We support students, such as those at UC Santa Cruz that have repeatedly driven military recruiters off campus. And we call for building the socialist movement to end imperialism through socialist revolution.

The Role of Peace Action (Formerly Sane / Freeze)

Hillary Clinton’s record is clearly pro-imperialist war. Yet the group “Peace Action” gives Hillary Clinton the passing grade of voting for peace 89% of the time. Other Democrats are given similar scores by these political hacks.

“Peace Action” is deceiving the anti-war vote. Why? Because Peace Action is a pillar of the status quo that sees no alternative to delivering votes to what they see as the “lesser evil” Democrat Party, even when the Democrats are equally pro-war. This strategy has made “Peace Action” an obstacle to peace and a pillar of the status quo of war.

Every few years the ruling class of the United States parades its selected representatives in front of the American people to give us the chance to vote for their so-called “lesser” and “greater evil” representatives in the Democrat and Republican Parties. The corporate media and liberal pro-war groups like “Peace Action” ignore the real anti-war candidates and back pro-war Democrats by misrepresenting their records to the people.

Liberation News urges all of the super-exploited workers that go door to door raising money for the Peace Action bureaucracy to quit your meaningless jobs and look for better work while looking for ways to hook up with the real anti-war/anti-imperialist movement that is marching in the streets. Likewise we urge all of the liberal and leftist minded people that give money to Peace Action to stop doing so and instead participate in the mass anti-war movement in the streets with your bodies, minds, and your money if you can afford it.

No to the twin parties of war and oppression! Yes to the independent organization and mobilization of working people!

Obama, Clinton, and Richardson, Supporters of Racist Israel

Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats, has pounded the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. The U.S. gives Israel billions of dollars in military aid every year and Senator Clinton’s vote backs that money for death. Israel is a racist settler state established in 1949 that has denied the original inhabitants, the Palestinians, many basic rights, often including the basic right to live. Besides denying Palestinians the same rights to travel, jobs, housing, and education as allowed Jews, the racist and religious Zionist State has used massacres and other forms of terror, wars, and torture to drive out the original Palestinian inhabitants.

Likewise Israel is always at war with its Arab neighbors. Israel’s recent attack against Lebanon where their aerial bombardment of the civilian population murdered 1,150 people and destroyed vital infrastructure is only the latest such terrorism by Israel. Yet Hillary Clinton recently told a pro-Israel rally “We will stand with Israel because Israel is standing up for American values as well as Israeli ones.”

She’s got it wrong, the mass murder and racism of Israel are in league with the values of American ruling class, as has been seen in Iraq, but these are not the values of the American people.

Claims of Israel being the victim, bombing and invading Lebanon on the pretext of two Israeli soldiers taken prisoner do not hold water in light of the fact that Israel is holding 2,000 Lebanese prisoners in their torture chamber dungeons from their previous invasion of Lebanon. In addition numerous reports say those two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanon, not in Israel. Those reports are from such sources as AP, Hindustan Times, and AFP.

On Israel “anti-war” Richardson shares Hillary Clinton’s views stating, “I am firmly committed to one of the United States' closest and most important allies - the State of Israel. Throughout my career, I've steadfastly supported Israel, obtaining a consistently pro-Israel voting record in Congress and defending Israeli interests as Ambassador to the United Nations.”

Barack Obama also backs racist Israel stating, “The United States and Israel share important interests - promoting a peaceful Middle East, combating terrorism, and encouraging reform in the Arab and Muslim world.” Likewise as a senator he has backed the massive military aid the United States gives Israel every year and says he will continue this policy as president stating he will, “insist on fully funding military assistance to Israel”.

For Socialist Democracy!

Let me be clear on this point, Obama and Clinton, and the rest of the pack will not betray us. They cannot betray us because they were never with us. Under the current politics most Americans would never have heard their names if they were on our side.

A truly democratic society would eliminate corporate control of the elections by nationalizing the corporate media and allowing all candidates equal access to the airwaves, cable, and print. Likewise a truly democratic society would carry out a sweeping “campaign finance reform” through the nationalization of the means of production (using that wealth for human and environmental needs rather than decadence and deception).

Up against the likes of Hillary Clinton, with her millions of dollars in corporate bribes, a sympathetic corporate media, growing police state, and increasing electoral fraud, it will take a socialist revolution to bring democracy to the United States.

How we can all resist:

Tell the truth!

Build the mass movement in the streets!

Strike against arms producers!

Become ungovernable!

Hot cargo war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks!

Build towards a general strike against the war!

Support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war!

Drive military recruiters off campus!

No tolerance or excuses for the pro-war, racist, and capitalist Democrat Party!

Build the socialist movement to end imperialism, racism, environmental destruction, and capitalism!

End U.S. imperialism through socialist revolution!

Subscribe to Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Art for Women's Charity

2007-06-03T20:39:45Z

Hi,
I'm Angela- new to the tribe. Art can be seen at: http://angelaulett.artspan.com.

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Bay Area CODEPINK on myspace

2007-05-18T19:42:22Z

If anyone on here is also a member of myspace, check out the San Francisco bay area chapter of CODEPINK's new page on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/codepinkbayarea

(Disclaimer: I know, I know, mypace is painful and an easy target for scorn. It does hit different demographic groups than Tribe does, though, and that's part of why we put a page for Bay Area CODEPINK up on there.)

If anyone is inspired, please pass on any suggestions or advice for online organizing... It would be much appreciated. :)

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Remembering Jesse and update on Suzanne

2007-05-06T00:56:46Z

Remembering Jesse and update on Suzanne, the rough unedited version....
Today is a hard day for Suzanne.
She is in limbo once again in Virginia this time. She has finished her classes, but they informed her the day before she was to come home on leave that she did not pass her PT test. Physical Training Tests are one of those things that triggers Suzanne's ptsd. MLester, her main tormentor and abuser, used PT as a way to punish Suzanne in Iraq. He would make her do PT( physical training) by herself while he watched over her for hours. Then the very next day test her and she would fail because of fatigue and he would write her up again. They call this "counseling." The very thought of PT tests creates huge anxiety in Suzanne to the point where she cannot sleep well and feels very stressed. The Army officials waited until the non-refundable ticket was purchased to tell her that she was not going home on April 26th. In fact they have changed her testing date 3 times now and she is very sad and stressed just wanting to come home and be with her family. I immediately wanted to jump in and save her, but Suzanne said, "No, mom. I will deal with this."
I asked her what her plans for the weekend were, she replied, " Sit in my room alone and drink. Saturday will be a sad day for me." Then I remembered that May 5th 2004 was the day Jesse Buryj died in Iraq and how that effected all of the soldiers and families of the 66th MP company. She asked me to call Jesse's mom and I told her I would. I told her she could call. She replied that she just would not know what to say and that she is just too sad. You have all heard about the Pat Tillman cover up? The same thing happened to Jesse. The military lied to his family and to this day his mother still does not know the whole truth about how her son died in Iraq. As I was talking to my husband this morning about our sadness, he replied, " I am sure that every day of the year another military family feels like this, Sara." The effects of this war are so detrimental. The loss of 3,404 troops as of today, does not include the ones that have committed suicide or died after they arrived home. We do not talk about the Iraqi deaths. We talk about the physically injured and the substandard care, but what about post traumatic stress and military sexual trauma? The families that have to care for the soldiers and their wounds, both physically and spiritually, every day.

Our Nation has to start doing more for peace, and more for our ravaged troops.

In some ways I feel like taking off my emotional armor and losing my anger and just weeping. Weep to the politicians who have allowed the deaths of our children and are facilitating the spiritual death of our beautiful nation. Weep to the world that we are sorry and there are people in the United States that want peace. Right now, most of all, my heart is heavy for Jesse and his family. And for my brave soldier girl crying alone in her room hoping that the alcohol numbs her pain just for today.

There are times when my heart is so heavy I feel like I can't move.

And yet we go on......

Peace~

Sara Rich, M.S.W

posted in CODEPINK - 1 reply

Rally for Pro Choice!! VERY IMPORTANT! GO TO DOWNTOWN SF NOW!

2007-04-19T22:49:23Z

Rally opposing the Supreme Court! Uphold Roe v Wade
START DATE: Thursday April 19
TIME: 5:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Location Details:
Civic Center, near Polk Street
Event Type: Protest
Contact Name Laura Hahn
Email Address
Phone Number (415) 890-1020.
Address
We urgently need you TODAY! April 19, at 5:00 p.m. at
the Civic Center in San Francisco! Join us for a rally
opposing the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the
dangerous Federal Abortion Ban.

Yesterday morning, the Supreme Court voted to put women's
health in danger by eroding the protections of Roe v.
Wade. In a 5-4 decision, the Court upheld the Federal
Abortion Ban passed by Congress and signed into law by
President Bush in 2003. The ban is now federal law
that will come into effect within a few weeks. It will
trump California's strong pro-choice laws and ban
certain abortions, without an exception to preserve
the health of the woman.

Our legislators need to know that California will not
stand for anti-choice politicians interfering in
women's private medical decisions.

Please join us tomorrow at the Civic Center in San
Francisco at 5:00 p.m. We need your support to make
our voices heard.
We will have signs ready and pro-choice speakers to
discuss the ban's implications for California and
nationwide. For more information, call NARAL
Pro-Choice California at (415) 890-1020.

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

FREE Documentary and Activism Panel on 4/13 at 2:00pm at Little Roxie Theater-SF

2007-04-13T05:58:33Z

Friday, April the 13th, 2-4pm, at Little Roxie Theatre
DOCUMENTARY AND ACTIVISM PANEL
We live in an age where documentary films have the power to inform the masses on hot topic issues from global warming, preserving freedom of speech to genetically modified food debate. SFWFF will host a panel dedicated to “Filmmaking and Activism.” Local Filmmakers, Karil Daniels, Carolyn Scott, Deborah Koons-Garcia, Connie Field and Dorothy Fadiman will be on hand to show some clips, talk about their films and take your questions.

For the complete schedule and full details about the San Francisco Women's Film Festival 2007, visit the
website at:
http://www.sfwff.com

DISCOUNTED TICKETS FOR INFO:
You can receive $2 off admission, when purchasing tickets for the following shows in advance online by
entering coupon code: festivalfriends07

Sat. 4/14, 8 pm - DOCUMENTARY AND ACTIVISM FILMS at
the SF Women's Building, 3543 18th St. #8, SF.

Sun. 4/15, 7 pm - CLOSING NIGHT FILMS, TRIBUTE & PARTY
at 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna St., SF.

For the complete schedule and full details about the
San Francisco Women's Film Festival 2007, visit the
website at:
http://www.sfwff.com

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Survey on Bisexuality- Participants Needed!

2007-03-26T19:14:34Z

Are you a bisexual female and at least 18 years old?

- You are invited to participate in an anonymous
online survey concerning sexuality and feelings.

- This research is being conducted by a graduate student at the
California School of Professional Psychology/Alliant International
University.

- Participation will take approximately 60 to 70
minutes

- All Participants will be entered in a lottery for a
chance to win one of two raffle prizes for $100

- If you are interested, go to
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=165663204675

- For more information or questions email:
bisexualityresearch@yahoo.com

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Code Pink Camp Pelosi action in SF

2007-03-23T05:13:09Z

hello all,

New to this tribe, thought i'd sign on to post this latest on Code Pink, getting coverage all the way in the back pages of
the spineless NY Times and on the headlines of :

http://indybay.org/

Camp Pelosi is a pretty sharp angle to put the pressure on for peace ... if ya got time to give your support!!

jam On,

pod p

posted in CODEPINK - 2 replies

Antiwar Protests Against Obama, Clinton, McCain, Farr, and Others

2007-02-10T18:22:53Z

In this mailing:
1. Santa Cruz California action against Sam Farr
2. Antiwar Protests Against Obama, Clinton, McCain and Others

Protest To Bring The Troops Home Now!

Friday Feb. 16,
Santa Cruz County Building, 701 Ocean Street

Sit in at Representative Sam Farr’s Office to Demand:

Cut Off The War Funds!

Sam Farr has voted a number of times for the billions of dollars that have been used to wage war and murder hundreds of thousands in Iraq. He has promised to vote against the $93 billion emergency war appropriations bill that Bush has forwarded to congress, but Farr still consistently supports and votes for massive general appropriations for the military budget. These are votes for war.

The People of Santa Cruz Demand No Money For War!

This protest is part of the growing national movement demanding that representatives, like Sam Farr, that claim to oppose the war stop funding it.

Money For Jobs, Healthcare, Housing, and Education! Not a cent for war!

People holding all political philosophies in opposition to the war are welcome. This includes those that think that Democrats like Sam Farr can be persuaded or pressured into opposing the war as well as others that want to expose the Democrats as useless and put forward mass action, strike action, direct action, green, anarchist, and socialist alternatives towards ending the war.

This is being organized as a nonviolent event, but we cannot guarantee the conduct of the Santa Cruz Police.

Friday Feb. 16, Santa Cruz
Meet 1:00 PM on the front steps of the county building, 701 Ocean Street.

Sponsored by Liberation News
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

******
Project Occupation has been staging protests/sit-ins/demonstrations nationwide targeting the offices congresspersons that support the Iraq war by funding it.

In addition the Troops Out Now Coalition will be marching on the offices of Hillary Clinton on March 17 starting at Times Square (43rd and Broadway) at 1 PM. For more on Hillary Clinton's pro-war record see: Pro-War Hillary Clinton, What Are The Alternatives?
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/77262.html
Here are some actions that have already happened or are underway:

St. Louis has an feature about an action at Rep Russ Carnahan's office:
http://www.stlimc.org/newswire/display/2840/index.php

Senator John McCain's (R-AZ) DC Offices
http://wmass.indymedia.org/newswire/display/1711/index.php

Barrak Obama’s and Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) offices in Chicago
(which resulted in 8 arrests)
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2007/02/82702.shtml

The San Francisco offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA). For more on Senator Diane Feinstein's pro-war record read: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/08/28/18302034.php

The Portland office of Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR). More actions are planned (or underway)
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/02/353477.shtml

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Seattle, WA
http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2007/02/257544.shtml

Rep. Mike Honda in the South Bay (by Raging Grannies!)
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/02/08/18359668.php

Rep Matsui in Sacramento, CA
http://pdamerica.org/articles/news/2007-01-28-22-10-01-news.php

De Moines, IA
http://www.kcci.com/news/10965748/detail.html (very brief)

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Congress Votes 368-31 to Back Mumia’s Racist Frame-up

2006-12-21T15:37:26Z

Congress Votes 368-31 to Back Mumia’s Racist Frame-up

By Steven Argue

On December 6th Congress voted 368 to 31 to back the racist frame-up of Mumia Abu Jamal by condemning the decision of the French city of St. Denis to name a street after the innocent death row inmate. This anti-Mumia resolution, HR 1082 (also called HR 407), asks the French government to intervene against the city.

Voting against the resolution were members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Congressperson Robert Scott. He argued that the case was still being decided in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and that it was inappropriate for Congress to take a position.

In reality Mumia’s case is such a blatant and outrageous frame-up that it should be considered the responsibility of Congress to intervene on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal in particular and against the racist death penalty in general. Yet under the current racist government of Democrats and Republicans Robert Scott is correct in opposing Congress’s intervention. As Pam Africa, chair of the International Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, has pointed out, “the House action is designed to weigh in on and promote an atmosphere in the U.S. judiciary that is prejudicial to Mumia's receiving any form of justice today.”

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals will be hearing arguments in January. This is Mumia’s final appeal. It will decide if Mumia is set free, given a new trial, held in prison for life, or executed.

The resolution falsely claims, “Mumia Abu-Jamal stood over Officer Faulkner and shot him in the face, mortally wounding him…” Yet this is not what the eyewitnesses said. For instance William Singletary says, "Mumia Abu-Jamal didn't shoot Daniel Faulkner. The passenger in the right-hand side of the Volkswagen [that Faulkner had stopped] got out of the car and shot him. When Mumia came on the scene, we [Singletary and another man] were on the police radio trying to radio for help." ("Witness: Abu-Jamal didn't do it" Philadelphia Daily News Dec. 8, 2006)

31 Democrats in Congress voted nay while 151 voted for the resolution. All Republicans voted for the resolution as did fake Vermont “socialist” Bernard Sanders (really just a rightwing social democrat).

Those voting against were Abercrombie, Clay, Cleaver, Conyers, Cooper, Davis (IL), Grijalva, Hinchey, Honda, Jackson (IL), Johnson, E. B., Kilpatrick (MI), Lee, McKinney, Meeks (NY), Nadler, Oberstar, Owens, Pastor, Payne, Rangel, Rush, Scott (VA), Serrano, Stark, Towns, Udall (NM), Velázquez, Waters, Weiner, and Woolsey.

Joining in the racist lynch mob voting for the blood of an innocent black man was Democrat House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi. She has also announced that she and the other Democrats will continue funding the war in Iraq. In voting against Mumia Abu-Jamal Nancy Pelosi has voted for the death of an actual anti-war and anti-racist leader of the people, while her career has been firmly planted atop the corpses of over 650,000 dead Iraqis by her continuation of the slaughter.

It is outrageous that that the Democrat party would vote in its House majority to condemn a French city for daring to make an issue of a racist legal lynching, while doing nothing about the liar and killer, Bush. But then again that should be no surprise either since the Democrat Party voted in its majority for the war in Iraq.

The Democrat Party was also involved in the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal from the beginning. Democrat Ed Rendell was the Philadelphia district attorney that successfully worked to frame Mumia Abu-Jamal in 1982. Later, with a lynch mob attitude created by the lies of the corporate press, he successfully ran for mayor of Philadelphia on a platform that included promoting the murder of Mumia Abu-Jamal. He was Mayor from 1992-1999. Bill Clinton then helped get him the position of chair of the National Democratic Committee. Since 2003 he has been the Governor of Pennsylvania. In addition Ed Rendell is a member of the Fraternal Order of Police that is calling for Mumia’s blood while his wife is an appellate judge on the Third Circuit US Court of Appeals that is going to hear Mumia's appeal. Besides framing Mumia, Rendell also presided over the police bombing of the MOVE home in Philadelphia in 1984, resulting in 11 deaths and 65 homes destroyed.

California representative Sam Farr [D] was among the eight that voted “Present”, choosing not to vote for or against the resolution. This despite Sam Farr sending this author a letter promising to back the Congressional Black Caucus’s position, that having been a position in support of framed political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Sam Farr also sent a copy of a letter that he sent to the Congressional Black Caucus with the same promise. These promises, as it turns out, were nothing but lies.

This vote by the racist US Congress was also an affront to the people of St. Denis that have chosen to support and honor Mumia. Would Sam Farr stand aside in a similar way if a resolution came before him that called for action against his constituents in the City of Santa Cruz, where the city has also passed resolutions in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal?

Mumia is innocent, and much of the world knows it.

Here is the response the City of St. Denis had to earlier attempts to coerce them into ending their support for Mumia Abu-Jamal:

“The city hall of Saint Denis denounces the manipulations of certain ultra-conservative pressure groups, and reasserts its commitment in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal

“The city hall of Saint Denis re-affirms yet again its support to the women and men who are demanding Mumia Abu-Jamal be treated with fairness and justice. The picket this 30th day of November 2006 has been organized to protest against the pressure brought to bear on the city of Saint Denis by members of the American extreme right in order to bring about the cancellation of our decision to name one of our streets after an African American militant who has been unfairly incarcerated and sentenced to the death penalty.

“This ultra conservative pressure group, based in Philadelphia, has not hesitated to make use of the grossest manipulations. Thus, the widely disseminated information according to which the city of Philadelphia is suing the cities of Saint Denis and Paris, because of their commitment in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal - is nothing but a lie. The Mayor of Philadelphia, as well as the president of its city council, informed the city of Saint Denis that they never intended to file any kind of suit, and have absolutely nothing to do with this campaign.

“This manipulation was unmasked, and it should be know that the Philadelphia politician who initiated it, though a member of George Bush's party, was defeated during the recent American elections.

“Whatever the case may be, the city hall of Saint Denis is proud to have named a street of this city in honor of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has become one of the symbols, of the struggle for justice and the abolition of the death penalty in the US and throughout the world.

“It is not the first time that an international mobilization has taken place in favor of American citizens who are unfairly sentenced in their own country. Such was the case for Nicola Sacco, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, between 1920 and 1927, for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who died on the electric chair in 1953, and subsequently in 1972 for Angela Davis initially sentenced [sic, she was actually never sentenced] for murder, before being acquitted of all charges.

“The city hall of Saint Denis will steadfastly pursue the struggle to save Mumia Abu-Jamal, so that this man incarcerated for a quarter of a century for a crime he has always claimed he did not commit - be reinstated in his human rights.

“Saint Denis 30th of November 2006”

The people of the world should not forget this hypocritical act of the US Congress, a governing body of a nation that falsely claims to uphold the values of human rights on a world scale. Likewise this once again exposes the need for the American people to build a socialist alternative to racist and repressive Democrat and Republican Parties.

As Mumia Abu-Jamal says, “Conventional wisdom would have one believe that it is insane to resist this, the mightiest of empires. But what history really shows is that today's empire is tomorrow's ashes, that nothing lasts forever, and that to not resist is to acquiesce in your own oppression. The greatest form of sanity that anyone can exercise is to resist that force that is trying to repress, oppress, and fight down the human spirit...”

Mumia stands up for unions, against war, against racism, equality for gays and lesbians, for the poor, and against the many injustices of the so-called criminal justice system. Mumia speaks up on many of the issues ignored, lied about, or glossed over by the corporate media and the corporate politicians. We need Mumia, yes we need him alive, but we also need him free. Yet all of the evidence shows that Mumia won't get justice in America unless we turn up the heat.

********************
For a complete listing of individual votes see: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll527.xml

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner in the United States on death row. For more information on Mumia's case and how to get involved, check out the following web sites:

Yet Another Witness Comes Forward and Refutes The Frame-Up Of Mumia
Abu-Jamal! By Steven Argue
http://www.freemumia.com/policecoercion.html

Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.laboractionmumia.org/

International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.mumia.org/freedom.now/

Free Mumia Coalition, NYC
http://www.freemumia.com/

San Francisco Free Mumia Site
http://www.freemumia.org

Chicago Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.chicagofreemumia.org/

This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

UH OH! "they were wearing pink, they were laughing and they were clearly happy.”

2006-12-14T16:34:21Z

Published on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Peace Women, Convicted of Trespassing, Teach the US Government a Lesson in Diplomacy
by Medea Benjamin

It must sound absurd, perhaps even unbelievable, that four peace women were arrested and put on trial for attempting to deliver a peace petition to the US Mission to the United Nations. But while our arrests reflect the “shoot first, ask questions later” style of George Bush and outgoing UN Ambassador John Bolton, we ended up teaching the government a lesson in diplomacy.

On March 6, 2006 CODEPINK organized a group of about 40 women, including a delegation from Iraq, and held a press conference in front of the United Nations in New York City to call for an end to the war in Iraq and commemorate International Women’s Day. The group then marched a few blocks to the US Mission to deliver a petition signed by 72,000 women from around the world.

The previous year on International Women’s Day, CODEPINK had delivered a similar petition without incident, with government representatives from the diplomatic office coming outside to greet us in a freak blizzard. This year, to our surprise and horror, we found the building had been locked up to keep us out and we were surrounded by armed police and security guards. After an hour of urging them to either let a small group inside or have someone come down to “just accept the damn piece of paper,” the four women representatives—myself, peace mom Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Family member Missy Beattie, and Reverend Patti Ackerman—were handcuffed and dragged to a police wagon. We were booked and kept overnight in the over-crowded, roach-infested jail called “The Tombs.” We were charged with trespassing, two counts of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and obstructing government administration.

Nine months later, the trial of the “CODEPINK Four” started in the Manhattan Criminal Court and dragged on for over a week. Day after day, the prosecution trotted out police officers, security guards and US Mission staff to testify that we never intended to deliver the petition but instead had planned to get arrested as a publicity stunt. They insisted that we were trespassing on private property (the US Mission is a government office but is currently housed in a commercial building), that we blocked the entrance to the building, and that we resisted when the police swarmed in to arrest us.

The head of communications for the US Mission, Richard Grenell, was the most absurd of the witnesses. While a videotape we introduced as evidence showed a group of about 40 mostly middle-aged women strolling toward the Mission singing Give Peace a Chance, Mr. Grenell testified that he found the group threatening because "they were wearing pink, they were laughing and they were clearly happy.” When one of our stellar lawyers, Robert Gottlieb, asked incredulously how a happy group of women dressed in pink could possibly be threatening, Grenell gravely replied, “You had to be there to understand.”

In a way, he’s right. You had to be there and then in the courtroom to understand how ridiculous it was for the US diplomatic office to refuse our petition, how absurd it was for the private security to lock down the building, for the NY City police to haul us off to jail, for the DA’s office to pile on extra charges, and for the jury, the prosecutors, eleven witnesses, our wonderful lawyers and ourselves to have to waste tens of thousands of dollars on such a frivolous case. It should have been George Bush, not us, being prosecuted for truly criminal actions that are maiming and killing people every day.

If the government intended to use this high-profile case with well-known “peace mom” Cindy Sheehan as a way to intimidate anti-war activists, the tactic backfired. The jury acquitted us of the more serious misdemeanor charges and found us guilty of trespassing, a violation akin to a parking ticket. After paying a $95 court fee, we were free. The prosecutor wanted us sentenced to some days of community service—an irony for a group of women who have more or less devoted our lives to community service, but the judge required us only to pay a $95 court fee and set us free.

The arrest also backfired because we left the courtroom outraged that we had ever been arrested in the first place, and that we had been convicted of trespassing for being outside a government office that should be open to the public.

So as soon as the court adjourned, we immediately returned to the same US Mission to deliver the same petition.

This time, when we read our petition outside the building, no one threatened to arrest us. This time, when the same four women tried to get in the building, we were ushered in. This time, the two members of the US Mission staff, who only days before had testified against us, were now waiting cordially in the lobby to greet us. This time, they smiled and accepted our petition. No arrests. No hassle. No bad press for the Mission.

Perhaps this new lesson in diplomacy, coupled with the departure of Ambassador Bolton, can help nudge the US Mission onto a more diplomatic path. For CODEPINK, it only strengthens our resolve to promote non-violent conflict resolution, not war.

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Perpetuating the cycle of military sexual violence....

2006-11-28T07:42:24Z

Perpetuating the cycle of military sexual violence....
171 days since Suzanne's "arrest" and the Army, General Dubick and Colonel Miller specifically, are bound and determined to ignore the fact that their Sergeant sexually abused my daughter. Instead, they are making her abuser's prophetic words to me daughter a reality. " Swift, you look like you are going to tell someone about what happened between us. Nobody will believe you." Suzanne believed him then and now she is seeing that he was speaking from experience. By ignoring the fact that Suzanne was sexually abused in a combat zone in Iraq by her squad leader, an Non Commissioned Officer who took an OATH to protect the soldiers working beneath him, they are giving other sexual predators in the military the green light that victims of sexual abuse in the military are systematically punished and not believed while the perpetrators go free to abuse again. Shame on them. When listening to story after story the same thing comes up, the perpetrators use fear and intimidation and tell the victim that no one will believe them. This is a monstrous epidemic and still the lack of care and understanding shocks me. Even though we know this is not a gender specific occurrence, the majority of military sexual violence is perpetrated against women. It is true that women are not safe to serve their country in the military. Especially, while we have command staff that continue to "sweep under the carpet" these victims stories, both ignoring their painful traumas and exacerbating the pain and suffering by not believing them.

Suzanne's last few months have been a horrifying roller coaster ride. She was charged with missing a movement and for going absent without leave. Since then her future has been more unclear than ever. One day we are being told she will be home by Halloween the next that she is going to prison. Then one day she is told there is a deal on the table. A deal? Well, I was very skeptical of that. The deal was that Suzanne stay in the military for her remaining 19 months, no reduction in rank, a summary court-martial, no assurance she would not be re-deployed and here is the kicker, Suzanne would sign a statement saying she was not raped in Iraq. I did not know about the statement until a few days later and Suzanne called me and was very upset. Here was my 22 year old daughter making huge life decisions and she was distressed. First, she felt that after all this struggle to stay in the military would be too hard and scary, but she was willing to do it until they told her about the statement. When she heard about it her immediate thought was, "here it goes, this is the part where the abuse gets swept under the carpet." I asked her what she wanted to do. She said she did not want to sign it because it was not true and she was not going to lie. Once again, I say shame on the military for re-victimizing this young soldier who according to her team leader was the best soldier he had and her Major who said she acted admirably in combat. And Suzanne did see combat. She told her little cousin who is ten the other day when he asked her about her time in Iraq that she was fired at more times than she can remember. I know my daughter better than anyone else in the world. I know the good the bad and the ugly. I also know that it was her complete intention to go on that January 2006 deployment to Iraq. She had sent some of her most precious possessions over ahead with her Unit. The same Unit that divvied up her belongings and left some of her childhood treasures to the trash heap in Iraq. I saw the look of terror and fear in her eyes while she was standing in our kitchen trying to say goodbye to me. Her fear and anxiety are real and her stress levels increase daily as does her depression. I had some trust in the system that they would care for my daughter, not allowing my daughter to be used and abused by seasoned predators in a combat zone. Then to only add to injury when she finally does use the proper channels and makes a formal complaint she is humiliated and treated like a traitor for telling. Boys will be boys, ya know.

Does anyone get this? Why in the world are our federal elected officials not stopping this? Why do my please for help fall on ears that seem unable to hear me. How is it that these commanders can go home at night knowing what hundreds of women are going through while they are systematically abused by the perpetrators and re-abused by the lack of care of the command. I know my Grampa, who was a Colonel in the Army, is turning in his grave by this thoughtless and destructive manner in which General Dubick and Colonel Miller are toying with my daughter's mental health. She has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder twice now and yet they continue to move forward with a court martial and threat of prison time.

Something even more disturbing was brought to my awareness a few weeks ago. A dear family friend came to me in tears because she was so scared for Suzanne's safety while she is in the Army. One of her relatives just returned form a tour in Iraq. He was furious to find that she was friends with "Suzanne Swift." He does not know Suzanne personally and now he hates her and what she represents. He told our friend that while he was in Iraq he was at a training, a sexual abuse "prevention" training. In this training the trainer used Suzanne's name, Suzanne Swift, and her case, as an example of what little lying whores do to "good soldiers." This second hand story scared me to the very core. If this is what is being taught to other soldiers, especially in Iraq, I fear for Suzanne's very life in the military. She has now at least once been de-humanized and demonized by others in the military and she is not safe. I was asked to find out names and get the facts, but our family friend was scared to death to tell us what she did. I could not ask her to find out more and put herself at risk. Now we have two demons that our soldiers are hating in Iraq, "Hodgis" and "Suzanne Swift." What is our world becoming where we are not only re-victimizing but demonizing victims of a crime.

So, as we have been on this very long and painful journey, I travel around the country talking about military sexual violence and how we must change the system I have met some incredible people. One minute we think Suzanne will be free in a few weeks, so I slow down and stop the frantic fundraising, the next I am hearing we are going to court-martial and I need to have $5,000 immediately or else. I want to send out a huge appreciation to everyone who has supported Suzanne with prayers, thoughts, words, finances, actions, and letters. Please keep Suzanne's website, http://suzanneswift.org/, set as your home page so we can all remember to DO something everyday. Take actions by calling your Congressional Representatives and Senators demanding a significant change in the way military sexual abuse survivors are treated. Ask them if they know about Suzanne's case and what they are doing to help her. Call Ft. Lewis and ask for General Dubick and Colonel Miller and ask them if they are going to bring swift justice to Suzanne so she can be free to heal from the trauma she experienced fighting two battles at once in Iraq. The numbers are all on Suzanne's website. Write to your editorial board and ask them to cover military sexual violence or depleted uranium poisoning and how we do not care for or believe our soldiers pain from serving in a combat zone.

This year has been incredibly stressful on our family. Despite it all we are blessed beyond belief. I will continue to work tirelessly as an advocate for my daughter, seeing her free of this cruel system that punishes victims while perpetrators are allowed to go free. Seeing her free for the holidays so she can be here when her sister, Sonja, who is due to give birth on Christmas day, goes into labor and is surrounded by her whole family to welcome our new little miracle boy into the world.

Peace on Earth good will to men AND women...right?

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Give Peace A Vote-Please Sign and Forward if you haven't already!

2006-09-22T19:15:53Z

Dear Friend:

Aren't you ready to let the politicians know that we, the majority of Americans, want an end to the ongoing war in Iraq? Then please join me, along with Yoko Ono, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, Dolores Huerta, Cornell West, my friends at CODEPINK, and MANY MORE in signing Give Peace a Vote.

This is a Voters Pledge that we will only vote for candidates who publicly call for a speedy withdrawal from Iraq and will keep us from engaging in future unjustified wars. Let's send a clear message this November and beyond, that we believe in international law and diplomacy over aggression.

Please sign the Voters Pledge and ask at least 10 of your friends to sign as well. With millions of peace voters, we can elect leaders who will Give Peace a Chance. That's all we are saying.

Simply copy and paste this url in the address bar of your web browser to sign up NOW: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/codepink/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=295&t=GPV.dwt

Thank you for taking action!

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

A Full Month of Bay Area Events!

2006-09-01T18:04:04Z

Saturday, September 9:

* CODEPINK, Veterans for Peace and more groups march to Power of the Peaceful Festival in SF, Ashbury between Oak and Fell 10:00am

* Power to the Peaceful Festival, Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park 11:00am-5:00pm

Thursday, September 14:

* Jesse Manibusan in Concert for the Declaration of Peace 6:45-9:00pm, St. John the Baptist, 264 East Lewelling Blvd, San Lorenzo, $10.00 (510) 351-5050

Tuesday, September 19:

* East Bay Coalition to Support Self-Rule of Iraqis Vigil & Speak-Out, 1301 Clay Street, Oakland Federal Building, 12th St. BART 12:00-2:00pm

Thursday, September 21:

* Noon-2pm Peace Vigil at San Francisco Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate at Polk

* Reception for Peace Quilt at Supervisor Chris Daly's Office, San Francisco City Hall, 4:30-6:30pm

* Candlelight Vigil, in front of SF City Hall, Polk Street, 6:00-8:30pm

Friday, September 22:

* Declaration of Peace Activist Event, 7:00pm, 1924 Cedar, Berkeley, contact (510) 495-5132

* Congressional Call-In Day: Tell your Representatives and Senators to support, endorse and sign onto the Declaration of Peace (800) 839-5276

Saturday, September 23:

* Celebration of Peace with Country Joe McDonald, The Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Avenue, Oakland 10:00-11:30am, $10-100.00 sliding scale, to RSVP or table at this event email: peace@globalexchange.org

* Non-violence Training, Unitarian Church, 1187 Franklin (at Geary), San Francisco 1:00-5:00pm sschwartz@afsc.org

Sunday, September 24:

* Special prayer service, TBA

Monday, September 25:

* Highway bridge banners, 7:00-9:00am, contact eboardman@sbcglobal.net

* American Friends Service Committee sponsored action with trespass (CD) at Military Recruiting Center, Stonestown Shopping Center, 561 Buckingham Way, San Francisco 4:00-6:00pm, contact sschwartz@afsc.org

Tuesday, September 26:

* Congressional Call-In Day: Tell your Representatives and Senators to support, endorse and sign onto the Declaration of Peace (800) 839-5276

Wednesday, September 27:

* "No Thanks, Bechtel" at war profiteer Bechtel Headquarters, 50 Beale Street, San Francisco 4:00-6:00pm (Embarcadero BART) contact butterfly@lacy.com

Thursday, September 28:

* Non-violent direct action to make our elected officials accountable to the antiwar majority in the U.S. TBA

Friday, September 29:

* Critical Mass bike ride for peace, 5:00-7:00pm, meet at foot of Market Street at Embarcadero, San Francisco

For more info www.declarationofpeace.org

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Free Suzanne Swift tribe! Please join!!!

2006-07-31T15:39:07Z

Hey there.

Suzanne and I were together this weekend trying to figure out how to get more people to help us get her free of the Army. If you do not know what happened to her, check out suzanneswift.org
She deserves to come home. Her mental/emotional and spiritual health is starting to deteriorate and I am scared for her. She needs the trauma healing that an Iraq Vet who has been raped deserves.

Peace and let's show our support for Suzanne by making this a huge tribe full of love, support and ACTION for her.
Thank you all...

Sara

posted in CODEPINK - 2 replies

TROOPS HOME FAST

2006-06-25T15:26:46Z

Following are details for SF's local action. For full info on this new July 4 Code Pink campaign, www.troopshomefast.org

Welcome Home Diane - Now Bring the Troops Home Fast
Wednesday July 5, 2006 5:15pm
Lyon & Vallejo Streets, San Francisco, CA

Join CODEPINK in a house warming party for Senator Diane Feinstein.
Meet outside of Lyon & Vallejo Streets as we encourage her to bring the
troops home fast.

Senator Diane Feinstein recently voted against John Kerry’s amendment
calling for the troops to come home. Let’s make sure she doesn’t
disappoint her constituents again. Gather with us, as we encourage her to
co-sponsor the Harkin bill (S. CON. RES 93) - no permanent military
presence or military bases in Iraq; no attempt to control the flow of Iraqi
oil; and Armed Forces should be redeployed from Iraq as soon as
practicable after the completion of Iraq's constitution-making process or
December 31, 2006.

Schedule of Events

Wednesday July 5, 2006 - Lyon and Vallejo Streets
5:15pm Vigil
6:30pm Last Hurrah! Party’s Over!
7:00pm Press Conference & Rally
Camp DiFi - 24 hour hunger strike
(Bring your sleeping bags & tents)

July 6th - 12th, 2006 - Senator Diane Feinstein’s Office, One Post Street
Daily 8am-8pm Rolling Fast

July 12, 2006
Culmination Ceremony - Time TBA

Endorsed & Supported by: Immigrant rights lawyer and organizer, Renee
Saucedo; Performer & Musician, Francisco Herrera; Father Louie Vitale;
Will Durst, Political comic, columnist and talk show host; Colonel Ann
Wright; Iraq veteran Geoffrey Millard; former CIA analyst Ray McGovern;
Lt. Ehren Watada, Iraq war refuser; San Francisco Public Defender Jeff
Adachi; San Francisco City Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi;
Veterans for Peace Chapter 69 and more!

To RSVP and sign-up for the rolling fast contact:
codepinkbayarea@riseup.net or call 415.575-5555. For more info
www.troopshomefast.org

posted in CODEPINK - 2 replies

upcoming bay area events

2006-04-24T16:44:42Z

SATURDAY APRIL 29 - 4 PM - 6:30 PM
Friends Meeting House, 65 Ninth St. S.F.
WHAT CAN CONGRESS DO ABOUT THE WAR? How Can We Make Them Do More? Presenters: Ted Lewis (Global Exchange & Progressive Democrats of America), Rick McDowell (Friends Committee on National Legislation), Miguel Bustos (Deputy District Director for Congresswoman Barbara Lee); Moderated by Nancy Mancias (CodePink Women for Peace)

MONDAY, MAY 1 - 11 a.m.
CONVERGE at EMBARCADERO, SF
INT’L WORKERS DAY/GENERAL STRIKE FOR IMMIGRANT RIGHTS May 1st actions all over the By Area will culminate in a mass, peaceful march starting at Embarcadero at 11am and going to the
Civic Center.

MONDAY, MAY 1 - 7:00pm
First Unitarian Universalist Church 1187 Franklin St. S.F.
END THE WAR BOOK TOUR AND MAY DAY CELEBRATION OF LABOR AGAINST THE WAR WITH CINDY SHEEHAN Cindy Sheehan, Anthony Arnove, Yvonne Latty, Aimee Allison, Todd Chretien, David Bacon for a May Day rally to end the war in Iraq. Special musical guests. Cosponsored by The New Press, City Lights Booksellers & Publishers, PoliPointPress, International Socialist Review, In These Times, AlterNet, Campus Antiwar Network, CODEPINK. Sliding scale $5 - $20, NO ONE turned away for lack of funds. http//:www.citylights.com/events.html#sheehan

MONDAY, MAY 15th - INTERNATIONAL CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR DAY Oakland City Center, 12th and Broadway - Rally 4 pm - 5 pm March to Recruiting Center 21st and Broadway
www.couragetoresist.org

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

All Anti-Alito, All the Time!

2006-01-24T01:29:51Z

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/12/26/1901/9763

Tons of info about Alito and lots of contacts. Also, John Kerry has a new petition and will be entering the opposition into the Congressional record - please sign it and share it and visit action alerts often!

http://actionalert.blogspot.com/2006/01/kerry-entering-alito-opposition-into.html

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Obscenity Prosecutions

2005-12-08T15:50:07Z

Alberto Gonzales has a long list of people he's going to censor.

And this is why TRIBE is now censoring your civil rights....

Wave of Obscenity Prosecutions Leads to Closure and Self-Censorship of Websites

Contact:
Susan Wright, NCSF Spokesperson
(917) 848-6544

October 20, 2005
October 20, 2005 - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has announced that his office will specifically target "bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior" in pursuing new obscenity prosecutions. The Department of Justice began recruiting in late July for a new anti-obscenity squad to pursue obscenity prosecutions, and the FBI announced in September that it was forming an anti-obscenity task force to crack down on pornography.

Any website that has content containing "bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior" should be forewarned that prosecution is possible. Additionally, Federal sentencing guidelines state that any obscenity- related punishment should be "enhanced for sadomasochistic material."

Forty people and businesses have been convicted of obscenity since 2001, and 20 additional indictments are pending according to Andrew Oosterbaan, chief of the Justice Department's child exploitation and obscenity section. There were only four obscenity prosecutions during the eight years of the Clinton administration.

Though adult content is, in theory, protected by the First Amendment, only a jury can determine if a work is obscene or not under the subjective set of standards that vary from one community to the next established in the 1973 Supreme Court ruling, Miller v. California.

Text is not inherently more protected than images when it comes to obscenity charges. The erotic fiction website Red Rose Stories is facing obscenity charges after federal agents raided the owner's home on October 3rd, taking computer equipment and diskettes that contained all of their files and site information.

The Department of Justice is clearly hoping that websites will self-censor or remove their content entirely. Midori, a fetish model and SM educator who teaches classes on bondage, has removed her website, BeautyBound.com, citing fear of obscenity prosecution. The owner of three SM websites, known as GrandPa DeSade, removed his websites from the Internet. SuicideGirls.com also announced they are self-censoring their materials over concerns about a possible obscenity crackdown.

Recent prosecutions of obscenity on websites include: A former police officer in Lakeland, Florida, was arrested on October 7th on over 300 obscenity-related charges for the sexual content posted on his website. The same day, webmaster Chris Wilson, owner of amateur website NowThatsFuckedUp.com, was raided on charges of obscenity by a local Sheriff s office.

"I think it's crucial for us to stand up for consensual sadomasochism and other alternative sexual practices," says Barbara Nitke, fetish photographer. "This is a battle worth fighting, and I hope everyone who can will just censor out the most provocative material from their websites, but keep them up. I also appeal to the lawyers in our community to help us find ways to keep people's websites up."

Barbara Nitke and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF) have proactively challenged federal obscenity laws as applied to the Internet, arguing that obscenity laws based on "local community standards" are too vague and their existence burdens protected speech, resulting in self-censorship due to the fear of prosecution. A district court three-judge panel in New York ruled that while Nitke and the NCSF members were at risk, more proof was needed that obscenity laws cause otherwise protected speech to be restrained through acts of self-censorship. The case is currently on appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

"The effect of silencing alternative lifestyle speech was exactly why we brought the lawsuit," says attorney John Wirenius, lead counsel for NCSF. "The self- censorship we are seeing underscores the importance of supporting our ongoing obscenity challenge."

To contribute to the appeal of the CDA lawsuit, go to: www.ncsfreedom.org/donations.htm

Barbara Nitke - www.barbaranitke.com

###

A project of NCSF and the NCSF Foundation

The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is a national organization committed to creating a political, legal, and social environment in the United States that advances equal rights of consenting adults who practice forms of alternative sexual expression. NCSF is primarily focused on the rights of consenting adults in the SM-leather-fetish, swing, and polyamory communities, who often face discrimination because of their sexual expression.

National Coalition for Sexual Freedom
822 Guilford Avenue, Box 127
Baltimore, MD 21202-3707
410-539-4824
media@ncsfreedom.org
www.ncsfreedom.org

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Bring Home Calif. National Guard: a Code Pink campaign

2005-10-05T20:52:01Z

http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/10/1772664.php

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

New tribe for Commander in Chief

2005-10-05T20:04:03Z

If anybody wants to discuss, rave about, gush about, or trash the show. :)
http://tribes.tribe.net/commanderinchief

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Queer Handywomen Sought

2005-09-23T02:09:04Z

Blue Star Builders is a group of skilled trades-women who wish to help rebuild in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Our goal is to rebuild the homes (using “green building” techniques)of two older, lesbian women of New Orleans—women who have lost everything in recent Gulf Coast disaster. Blue Star Builders was founded by two women from the California Bay Area and consists of concerned members of the gay community from throughout the United States. Every member of our crew will volunteer their skills and time. All money for, and materials donated to, this effort will be put directly in to covering the costs of this project.
If you are interested in joining the BSB team in any aspect please email us at bluestarbuilders@gmail.com

thanks!
Jes Muse
Head Handy Dandy & Co-Founder

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

SF SEPT 26 CALL TO ACTION

2005-08-11T20:19:25Z

Call to Action: Defund the War--Defend Our Communities
United for Peace and Justice/Bay Area
Monday, September 26th
Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco

September 24, 25, and 26 are National Days of Action Against the War in Iraq. Monday the 26th is designated "Lobby Day, Mass Nonviolent Direct Action, and Civil Disobedience.” Let’s come together that afternoon, encircle the Federal Building with our Community Quilt panels, speak out about each of our communities’ vital needs, and send a clear message to Nancy Pelosi and to the world: END THE WAR NOW!

Why Nancy Pelosi? She says the war in Iraq is a "grotesque mistake,” but continues to vote “Yes” for every war budget. Last November, 63% of voting San Franciscans passed Prop. N, calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. As the Democratic Party leader of the House of Representatives, Pelosi presents herself as the leader of the opposition, as OUR leader. Join us in calling on her to LEAD. Lead Congress to set a date for full and immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Lead Congress to redirect the war budget to where it belongs: healthcare, education, housing, jobs, and social services.

Leading up to September 26th we invite you to:
• Call on Nancy Pelosi to set up a Town Hall meeting about the war -- a meeting she said was needed, but has not acted on
• Prepare a panel to represent your organization for the Community Quilt (separate page attached)
• Collaborate on materials about Pelosi’s voting record and the human cost of war at home
• Collaborate on outreach to the media and to other community groups
• Join the mass demonstration against the war on Saturday, September 24th
• Participate in interfaith activities against the war on Sunday, September 25th

On September 26:
Plan to take off the afternoon of Monday, September 26th and be present at the Federal Building. Reach out to the members of your union, school, office, and family to join us. If Pelosi’s response to the call for a Town Hall meeting has been positive, it will be an occasion for praise and celebration. Otherwise, the unified message from our diverse communities will be: her constituents expect her to lead us out of war, towards building a healthy future here.

For more information, http://www.upj-bayarea.org
Message phone 415 565-0201 ext. 23
Quilt info/tech support http://www.zanshinart.com/quilt.html

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

ONLINE "WHY WE NEED TO GET OUT OF IRAQ" FORM

2005-07-29T15:20:21Z

this came in today
As we have been touring around the country with our new book Stop the Next War Now, we find an interesting phenomena: while polls show that we now represent the majority -- 6 out of 10 Americans would like the US troops to come home -- people feel isolated from each other and feel their voices are not being heard. So we have created an exciting new campaign called ONEMILLIONREASONS.ORG, where you can post on-line YOUR reason why the US should get out of Iraq, and read what other people all over the world have to say. On September 26 we will hand deliver the signatures and messages directly to the White House.

(LINK: http://www.onemillionreasons.org/article.php?list=type&type=69 )

You'll be amazed at the array of voices already posted on ONE MILLION REASONS, including Congresswomen Barbara Lee, former CIA Director John Deutch, Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, Indian writer Arundhati Roy, US soldier Camilo Mejia, Iraqi blogger Riverbend, and actress Carrie Fisher.

Please add your name and reason today, and then send it on to your friends, family and co-workers. This rising chorus of voices will help bring to an end this illegal, immoral and unwinnable war that is taking the lives of so many Iraqis and US soldiers.

Spreading the word of peace, see you in the streets of DC September 24-26.
Dana, Farida, Gael, Jodie, Medea, Nancy, Rae, and Tiffany

P.S.
If you cannot join us in DC, collect and post reasons from at least 20 members of your community and we will personally deliver them to your congressional representative on September 26, along with a request that they promote legislation to get us out of Iraq.

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

CodePink Austin event Sunday (pre-event Sat.)

2005-07-23T07:49:54Z

Saturday, July 23, 6:30 pm
In line with the 2-year anniversary of the Downing Street memo's
release, locally-run http://www.liberationvideo.com is hosting a
viewing of the Downing Street Basement Tapes, based on a recent
congressional forum and rally to demand a resolution of inquiry and a
full investigation. Did the president commit impeachable offenses in
conjunction with the Iraq War? www.afterdowningstreet.org
LOCATION: La Terraza Fresca at Guadalupe and 37th St.

Sunday, July 24, 5-8pm
Potluck House Party with Ann Wright
http://www.swingthevote.us/wright.html -1 of 3 former US Diplomats who
resigned over the US attacking Iraq- is coming to Texas on a speaking
tour and as Ms. Wright is also an active CodePink member, CodePink
-Austin will be hosting a house party where she will speak about her
resistance. She is currently bringing much attention to the Downing
Street memo—timely as the 23rd marks the 2-year anniversary of its
release. Please bring a dish or feel free to donate to CodePink Austin!
LOCATION: 4506 Ave. B

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Paramount pictures trial date set...

2005-06-14T20:28:19Z

Paramount pictures trial date set for 8/23/05 in Las Angelas, CA.

To: Those who care about "PINK LADIES" Rights

"Pink Ladies" mark as we know it is at stake.

We, the undersigned, acknowledge the "Pink Ladies" mark to be other then Grease the Movie Properties.

Paramount Pictures Corporation the owner of "Grease" the movie is claiming rights to the mark PINK LADIES due to the characters of the movie.

Stating that all merchandise with mark "pink ladies" on it is
considered to be "Infringing Products" to the "Grease
Properties".

As most of us know, PINK LADIES has a very broad meaning to many people and has been recognized by millions to be other than Grease properties.

How can we ignore the millions and millions of woman who call themselves PINK LADIES and pledge to Fight Breast Cancer? How about the millions of girls who just love the color pink? How about the Models and Cheerleaders? None of the above mentioned PINK LADIES have a direct connection nor has anything to do with Paramount, Viacom or Grease.

Action must be taken.

Are we ready to Fight For "PINK LADIES"?
Really now, are we all Greasers? I think not and I am sure many of you will not also. Many woman have worked hard to make their mark as PINK LADIES and many have formed Organizations that have been around for more than 30+ years.

Lets not let the
Big Corporations step all over our Rights.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?plrights
View Signatures then sign.

Please sign the petition. They don't own Pink Ladies wordwide but want to. Must be stoppped!!!!!!!!!!!!!

posted in CODEPINK - 2 replies

Make your voice heard in sacramento on June 7th

2005-05-11T16:21:00Z

On Tuesday, June 7, we will storm Sacramento to protect access to birth control and reproductive health services. We'll arrange meetings with California legislators for you to lobby on the critical issues California's women face today. Don't miss this exciting opportunity to educate state legislators on the issues that matter most to women!

Be one of the voices that helps pass SB 644*
This is one of the most important things you can do for choice this year! It's critical that we have a large group of advocates on the Capitol steps to truly send the message to Sacramento that we are serious about defending our reproductive freedoms.

For more info on SB644 go here: www.prochoicecalifornia.org/s05f...heets/200504181.shtml
to sign up go print this out and mail it in!
www.prochoicecalifornia.org/asse...iles/lobbydayform.pdf

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Governator in SF Tues April 5

2005-04-08T15:43:37Z

From United Educators of San Francisco
SF LABOR RALLY TO PROTEST GOV. SCHWARZNEGGER, TUES. 4/5
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Labor activists from around California will protest against Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger $100,000 a plate dinner on Tuesday, April 5 at 6:00 p.m. in front of the Ritz Carlton on Stockton at California where the governor will be holding an exclusive fundraising event.

Donors are expected to contribute up to $89,200 per head to hobnob with the governor. In exchange, he has put the health and safety of our state on the auction block to the highest bidder.

We call on the Governor to:
Respect the law, and enforce the Safe Staffing Law as ordered by the courts
Stop his plan to privatize retirement security.
End his corporate auction of Californians.

posted in CODEPINK - 1 reply

Fight for "Pink Ladies" Rights!

2005-03-23T17:39:48Z

Sign the "Pink Ladies" Rights petition at www.pinkladies.com

It is all explained there on the site. We need to speak up now!

Pink Ladies mark is free and should remain that way unless we let the big corporation take it.

posted in CODEPINK - 1 reply

Well?

2005-03-23T03:07:44Z

"CHICKS WITH BRAINS WHO WANT TO USE THEM!"

But no one's saying anything.
What's a boy to think?

I'm just sayin' .................... :)

posted in CODEPINK - 6 replies

Rally and March for Women's Health and Rights

2005-03-23T03:05:41Z

Join The San Francisco Area Pro-Choice Coalition, with Code Pink San Francisco Bay Area and a long list of cosponsors, in a rally and march for women's health and rights on January 22nd, in opposition to a planned right wing antichoice rally.
Details at http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/01/1713069.php
Downloadable flier at http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/01/1713105.php

posted in CODEPINK - 3 replies

Blessed be from new member

2005-03-22T09:01:43Z

Blessed be. sisters!

I am a Pagan Feminist sister committed to social change for sustainable, peaceful culture.

I've followed and admirted the work of Code Pink for a while now, and I'm glad to have a chance to connect with you all.

Catsseye ( (!) )

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Code Pink in Portland OR

2005-02-20T01:45:02Z

I just wanted to make sure folks know Code Pink Portland
meets on the 1st Wednesday at 6pm at SE 37th & Hoawthorne
for an action and then a meeting at In Other Words bookstore.

Maybe I'll see some of you tomorrow night?

More details about our activities is available at:
codepinkportland.org

posted in CODEPINK - 1 reply

New movement to co-opt corporations for change

2004-11-14T14:19:45Z

I have a passion for life - for my life, my kids ’lives, and all of our lives …so I have to share my passion and my vision (that follows) with you …hoping that it might lead you to more hope-filled, joyful and sustainable lives.

First, for perspective, the next paragraph is the important part of world history in a single paragraph. Then, I hope to enlist you in joining the Aikido Activism Movement, a movement that can face today ’s deepest challenges with the most empowered approach to change.

THE IMPORTANT PART OF WORLD HISTORY IN A PARAGRAPH
Humanity has passed from a first great era of primarily physically-mediated conflict to one today of primarily economically-mediated conflict (see for example, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins - http://www.tinyurl.com/4tebc or http://www.tinyurl.com/5t8j9 ) and NOW we can and must advance to an era of primarily reason-mediated conflict. In each of the earlier eras people by and large did the best they could with what they had (as they will today and in the future only now with much better tools for communication which MUST be used for increased understanding, which -- fortunately -- can naturally translate to caring). The problem of capitalism today was less a problem when it was invented as a solution to feudal imperialism (with regular physical conflict). Economic imperialism has yet further removed the suffering from view of the beneficiaries of economic imperialism; but, in order to link with economic subjects, a global network has been built that can actually be used to bring people together -- and while inter-tribal, international, and intercorporate engagements in ages of primarily physically-mediated and primarily economically-mediated conflict have a history of being quite exploitive (if not deadly), engagements in the dawning age of reason can evolve to be much more like a dance, yet still a dance of joy or survival depending on one's viewpoint. The key should be seeing the power of inclusion, which can bring joy and unity -- replacing profit maximization with fruition maximization as a necessity for sustainability/survival and joy in a globalizing era.

My passions have been channeled into writing about a systematic solution to this systemic problem of today: that corporations do both the most good and the most bad, but it is their ability to hide bad things in the complexity of corporate behavior and in the popular but treacherous myth they promulgate -- "greed is good" -- that has led to essentially all major world problems.

Efforts to overpower corporations with grass roots public fervor or death-of-their-excesses by a thousand cuts from non-profits or NGOs appear to be having little effect, so why not turn the tools of corporations (and their economic might) against their regressive practices? This is Aikido Activism, my passion that I hope will become yours in a budding movement that everyone should want to join - and that anyone and everyone with a computer and Internet access is empowered to advance by sharing parts of the puzzle (how Aikido Activism can be applied in their field and applying it), supporting other Aikido Activists, getting the word out electronically, etc.

Change is possible. Find out who some Aikido Activists are who are working for progressive transformation of outworn social traditions –and please share any comments, ideas, connections, at the new wiki-website http://aikidoactivism.xwiki.com/ where there is a growing amount of information begun to be collected and organized online to advance the Aikido Progressive Movement – to understand our past and build a promising opportunity for our future.

Spidey

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

New movement to co-opt corporations for change

2004-11-14T14:19:29Z

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

assault on birth control

2004-10-26T19:53:48Z

please read this...
Action is needed because the media ignores this--see end of this
letter--

October 22, 2004

To Women and the Men Who Love Us:

Do you know how thin the line is today between our “right’ to
birth
control--and the political “right” to take it away?

Nationwide, a growing number of doctors and pharmacists with
extreme
religious views about women are claiming birth control is
“against
Christian
values”. Emboldened by the current administration’s attitude,
the
national
“Pharmicists for Life” is refusing to fill birth control
prescriptions.

Thousands of physicians have pledged not to provide birth
control.
These
doctors and pharmicists refuse to dispense the “morning-after
pill” to
prevent pregnancy even in cases of rape or incest.

"Refusing women access to the Pill is a very disturbing trend,"
says a
woman’s health advocate. "The war on choice is not just about
abortion
anymore. It's about our right to birth control."

Getting rid of birth control has always been the ultimate goal
of the
anti-abortion groups who believe it causes “silent abortions”
for the 12

million women who use it. Their influence is far-reaching and
disproportionate to their size, and they have gained enormous
political
clout because of President Bush’s support. In his first budget
to
Congress,
he stripped out a provision that required insurance companies
participating
in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program to cover
contraceptives.
Prevention Magazine reports that federal and state legislators
are
quietly
adopting similar anti birth control views.

As more and more zealots who support these anti-women religious
views
are
elected to both Congress and our state legislatures, the chances
are
growing
stronger of the passage of the so-called “Human Life Amendment”
to the
Constitution, which would outlaw birth control.

This amendment defines a “person” as being present at the moment
of
conception (NOTE: Not all major religions, or respected
scientists,
agree
with this). It would outlaw abortion for ANY reason, even to
save the
life
of the mother. It would ban most birth control as weapons of
murder,
because the pill and the IUD prevent a fertilized egg from
implanting
in
the uterus. The Republican Party, its platform, Bush and Cheney
ALL
SUPPORT
this proposed amendment which would lead to inestimable
tragedies in the

lives of women and girls.

Let me tell you a personal story to show you what can happen
when
religious
beliefs supercede science. This happened to me during the time
abortion
was
still illegal. I was four months pregnant when the fetus died.
My
doctor
was not allowed to remove it from my body, as the LAW said I was
pregnant.
I had to go for a pregnancy test every week, and until the
hormones were
out
of my system and a test finally came back negative, my doctor
was not
allowed to use his best medical judgment for my care.
Politicians’
religious beliefs superceded my doctor’s medical judgement. I
was
forced to
carry something within my body that was an increasing danger to
my
health--because politicians didn’t care about real women then
either,
just
religious dogma. Many other women have told me similar horror
stories.

And politicians are still continuing to “play doctor” and make
anti-women
laws. Did you know that bills were introduced in Congress to
ban
medical
schools from teaching D&C procedures, because the techniques can
also be

used for performing abortions? How many women would have bled
to death
without a D&C? Did you know that right-to-life lawyers are
getting
themselves appointed by right-wing judges as guardians of
fetuses of
women
they don’t even know, to force and/or forbid medical procedures
on
mentally
competent women?

The Republican-controlled Congress, government agencies, and
judges are
already stripping from women and their doctors the right to make
critical
life decisions, and it’s going to get worse unless we vote them
out.
How
can a politician say he values women when he’s willing to let
them die
rather than have an abortion, willing to deny them access to
birth
control,
and is unwilling to see women as adults capable of making moral
decisions?

It is insane that there is little media coverage of the growing
power of

these right-wing religious extremists (I’m a “political junkie”,
yet had

never heard of “Pharmicists for Life” until two days ago). But
we can
change women’s lack of information immediately: We can send
this
message
quickly through the internet, and we can use the power of the
vote on
November 2nd.

Polls indicate women hold the key to this election, and we must
vote
based
on things which impact women directly. Not much will change in
Iraq for

years, no matter who is elected. But the lives of women here in
America
are
at stake now, as is our right to birth control. We must not
allow
anti-women “Taliban” beliefs to take over this country.

This is an absolutely critical election for women. You don’t
want your
daughter’s or granddaughter’s doctor to have to say to her some
day, if
she
has a life-threatening pregnancy, “We have a way to save your
life, but

sorry--the government’s decided you have to die.”

Sincerely,
Lorelei Kraft Park Rapids, MN

There is alot of fictitious “information” being circulated
anonymously
before the election, so I am signing my name to this to give
credibility
to
what I am saying. You can also check this information at
http://www.prevention.com/cda/feature2002/0,2479,s1-7342,00.html.

PLEASE: Send this on IMMEDIATELY to friends, and ask them to
send it on

right away as well. There is still time to spread the word
around the
country before the November 2nd election. Then talk to
coworkers and
neighbors! We CAN stop this religious extremism through the
POWER of
our
VOTES. This issue has to be our bottom line--if religious
extremists
can
make the health decisions and control the lives of our daughters
and
sisters
and wives, every other issue is meaningless.

My permission is given to copy this.

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

CODE PINK Hauled Away for Interrupting President

2004-09-04T12:27:22Z

S.F. Woman Hauled Away for Interrupting President
by Carla Marinucci

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0903-02.htm

NEW YORK — -- It was more than a shock to end up on the floor of Madison Square Garden, five rows from the president, with a protester on top of me -- and security guards struggling to contain her.

But that happened Thursday night at the front of the California delegation section when -- in the middle of Bush's speech -- June Brashares, 40, of San Francisco, an activist with Code Pink, stood up on her chair and unfurled a banner that read, "Bush lies, people die.''

Just minutes before, the blue-suited Brashares had been in the crunch of delegates and press in the aisle when former Gov. Pete Wilson graciously offered his seat with a prime sight line to President Bush. Brashares was wearing an alternate delegate pass, and I stepped aside to let her sit down.

It was 50 feet from the president and three rows behind Gerald Parsky, the chairman of the California delegation and chairman of the UC Board of Regents.

Brashares looked grateful and said her feet were killing her. During the speech, she started to stand up on her seat numerous times, holding onto cardboard signs of support for the president. She waved a tiny American flag.

Just more than 40 minutes into Bush's speech of longer than an hour, Brashares jumped on the chair, yelling "Bush lies," and holding up her homemade banner.

Within seconds, she was overcome by half a dozen burly security men who wrestled her into the crowd as the crowd, sensing a disturbance, yelled "four more years" to drown her out. She sent me sprawling into KCBS radio reporter Doug Sovern. They hustled her out in a matter of moments.

The president paused, briefly looked confused by the cheering during a serious moment of his speech, then continued.

Later, another Code Pink activist, Jodie Evans, 49, of Los Angeles, stood up in a seat under the Fox News skybox and pulled off her dress, exposing her pink lingerie with a hand-written message: "Fire Bush - Women say bring the troops home now."

The crowd around her began the "four more years" chant and security dragged her out.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, told The Chronicle later that she was elated with Brashares' success in getting a national platform, even for a few seconds.

"This is the third day in a row that Code Pink has penetrated the convention,'' she said. "My question to President Bush is, if he can't secure his own convention, how can they bring security to their own nation?''

Chronicle reporter Zachary Coile contributed to this report.

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Protester beat up a cop.....?

2004-09-03T09:02:00Z

I don’t know how many of you have been following the Republican National Convention, or the counter actions of (against?) the RNC in New York City. I watched footage of a recent protester incident that I feel I must clear the air on, and make sure everyone knows what really happened that night. If you watched the recent footage of the young man beating up a cop at a protest, I want to tell you my version of what happened that night.

I was walking down Broadway St. In NYC not really with a destination in mind, just kind of taking in the scenery, and happened to run into a protest march that was headed to the same place that earlier I attended an action to. So I decided to join in on the march. We marched down the streets of Manhattan, chanting and bonding, until we reached to almost the end. As we walked across the street, the police ran the barricades across the street behind us. The crowd was confused with what just happened. They, we, chanted “Who’s Streets? OUR Streets! Who’s Streets? OUR Streets!...”, The Whole world is watching! The Whole world is watching!...”

Maybe 20 minutes went by, the crowd confused, and protesting that we be reunited with the other group on the other side of the barricade. Then we suddenly heard sounds of motorcycles in the distance. The sound gets louder and louder then suddenly I see a man charging his bike into the crowd of protesters. I was there, 2 feet away! I saw a man, in plain street clothes, riding his motor bike into a packed group of protesters, stretching only a block long. This man repeatedly charged into the crowd, assaulting us with this vehicle, threatening our lives. He fell off his bike, and at that point I was thrown aside by someone from the media, so I did not see what happened when the young man started beating up the man on the bike. My boyfriend lifted me up to try to see all the chaos around us, but all I saw were the flashes from the cameras surrounding the incident.

Later on, as things died down a little bit, we mingled; we played music and sang in the streets. We talked about what happened earlier, we talked to the press, and we ended the night peacefully.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I watched the news (CNN) and saw the footage of the young man beating up the cop. I must admit that I was outraged by what I saw on the news that morning. I was there! I was 2 feet away, and all anyone bothered to show on the news was the negative aspect of it. As I remember they described it as a crazed protester beating up a cop. But, honestly no one knew that man was a cop! And the media is focusing on one incident, of one person, of over 500,000 people protesting. This man, this cop, was assaulting and not protecting the safety of the public. And I feel the media has wrongfully portrayed this story to mainstream America. I want everyone to know what I witnessed, and what I feel is a betrayal from the police.

Over 1600 people have been arrested in NYC, and not all of them have been protesters. The police have been blocking off crosswalks, forcing people to detour all over the city, pushing pedestrians walking on the sidewalks around, threatening to arrest people for standing on the sidewalk that are having a conversation amongst 3-4 people and not blocking pedestrian traffic at all. Our rights have been violated here, with no justification. I have been here from the beginning.

This is what I know to be true, and I wish everyone to know what really happened that night that the young man beat up the cop. I do not justify him using violence in any way. The vast majority of the people that have come from all over the world to New York City are peaceful and non-violent. I ask that you do not compare us to the actions of one person and tell the full story to the people.

In Peace, Elizabeth Payne

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Fire Rumsfeld ! ! !

2004-05-13T00:51:18Z

May 12, 2004

Dear Camille,

Disgusted with the torture of Iraqi prisoners? The disastrous situation in Iraq? The guys who got us into this war? The lack of accountability and responsibility? Are we going to let 21-year-old girls be the only people held responsible? Or those who set the example by acting with disrespect since they were appointed?

At CODEPINK we are outraged and appalled and have launched a vigorous campaign to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, with a new website www.FireRumsfeld.org that is full of action ideas.

Our first action is to make this a nonpartisan issue. Only Democrats have come out against Rumsfeld. We’ve got to get some Republicans on board. Our first focus is on Senator Chuck Hagel, a senior Republican Senator from Nebraska who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a decorated Vietnam veteran. He is well respected in Congress and has begun to question whether Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, in light of the revelations about the torture of Iraqi prisoners, can continue to command the respect and trust of the military and the American people.

We are urging Senator Hagel to step forward to call for new Pentagon leadership. Please go to website www.FireRumsfeld.org, sign up to send the letter, and ask ten of your friends to do the same.

Let’s seize the momentum and help give Rummy his pink slip!

In Peace,
Andrea, Bonnie, Carol, Claire, Gael, Jodie, Lora, Medea

Quick Links

Visit us on the web at: www.codepinkalert.org
Subscribe to this mailing list at: http://codepink.kintera.org/updates
Donate to CODEPINK at: http://www.donate.kintera.org/codepink
New items at the CODEPINK Store: http://www.codepink.kintera.org/store

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

CODEPINK update 5/4

2004-05-06T05:30:23Z

just the lastest and greatest from CODEPINK
 if your not already on, it's a good email (1XS per month)
 
 ciao,
 xcam
 
 May 4, 2004
 
 Dear Camille,
 
 The recent photos of Iraqis being humiliated and tortured by U.S. soldiers are atrocious and are yet another example of how this occupation often flouts human rights and international law. CODEPINK has seen many examples of such violations on our delegations to Iraq. While we've encountered horrible atrocities, we are heartened by the acts of great conscience and bravery taken by some soldiers, such as those of Stephen Funk and recently Camilo Mejia Castillo.
 
 Camilo is an Iraq war veteran and conscientious objector. Recently, CODEPINK women sent hundreds of emails to him supporting his brave decision to take a stand against an illegal invasion and unjust occupation. We also sent letters to his Commanding General, Major General William G. Webster, Jr., demanding he accept Camilo's conscientious objector application. We heard from Camilo's mother, Maritza, who told us how moved and bolstered Camilo was by our words and actions.
 
 Sadly, Camilo is going on trial May 19th. He needs our support now more than ever.
 
 We are calling CODEPINK women to come to the trial in Ft. Stewart, GA to support this courageous man and his family as he defends his right to object to an occupation that is fast spiraling into violent chaos. Our goal is to fill the court with a sea of friendly, pink-clad faces. Remember, if this case is won it could have a ripple effect, paving the way for more soldiers to speak according to their conscience without fear of retribution.
 
 Please read the letter below from Camilo's mother, Martiza Castillo. For information about hotels in the area and more details about the trial, go to: <a href="http://www.codepinkalert.org." target="_blank">www.codepinkalert.org.</a>
 
 Stay tuned for more ways you can speak out about the torture and escalating violence in Iraq. And don ’t forget another important way you can take a stand against the war and war profiteering –the protest at the Halliburton shareholder ’s meeting in Houston, TX, also on May 19th. For more details, go to <a href="http://www.codepinkalert.org/National_Actions_War_Profiteer_Protest.shtml" target="_blank">www.codepinkalert.org/Nationa...tions_War_Profiteer_Protest.shtml</a>
 
 In Peace,
 Andrea, Carol, Claire, Gael, Jodie, Medea
 
 
 Please come to Ft. Stewart, GA from May 19-21 to support the trial of my son, Camilo Mejia Castillo
 
 April 30, 2004
 Dear Friends,
 
 I want to thank the thousands of people who have expressed their support for my son's decision not to return to the war in Iraq, and invite you to attend his trial in Ft. Stewart, GA that begins on May 19.
 
 My son, Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, is a soldier with the Florida National Guard who has served in both the Army and National Guard for over eight years. He served in Iraq from March to October 2003. He returned to the U.S. for a two-week leave in October and decided he could not, in good conscience, return to the "illegal and immoral war in Iraq." He went AWOL and then on March 15, reported back to the military authorities and applied for conscientious objector status. On March 25, the Army charged him with desertion and placed him in military custody at Ft. Stewart, Georgia.
 
 His trial will begin at 9 am on Wednesday, May 19 at Ft. Stewart, and it will be open to the public. On behalf of my family, I am asking the organizations and individuals who support my son's case to join us at this historic trial. The trial will last at least three days. If you are flying in, the closest airport is Savannah, GA. There are several inexpensive hotels near the base (in the town of Hinesville —see below). We plan to hold vigils in the evenings, starting the evening of May 18. Below you will find more information about the trial and logistics.
 
 Camilo is the first Iraq War veteran to publicly refuse further military service. We will have many expert witnesses testifying on behalf of our argument that his orders to deploy were illegal under US and international law. The most recent US polls show that the majority of the public are now starting to oppose this war. Camilo's trial can contribute significantly to the growing momentum to end the occupation and bring the troops home. This is why it is so important to show strong public support for his courageous stand.
 
 Together we can say NO to this immoral war, and YES to granting Camilo conscientious objector status. Together we can say bring our soldiers home, and return sovereignty to the Iraqis.
 
 Thank you so much for your support. If you have questions or plan to join us, please contact me at SolaBay@aol.com.
 
 In peace,
 Maritza Castillo

posted in CODEPINK - 0 replies

Love the Banner

2004-04-05T03:47:34Z

Can bush be defeated?

posted in CODEPINK - 1 reply

CODEPINK's topics - tribe.net

Help a student out by contributing to research on women's attitudes!

the Pink Revolution... Are you on the bus?!

10,000 in Germany protest Afghanistan war

THIS is the fastest way to build the world we need!

DNC Protest, Split, and the Principled Stand of Cynthia McKinney

New tribe against the occupation of Afghanistan

Obama, the prince of bait-and-switch: Afghanistan

Obama Lays Out Plans for Continued War

US longshore union leader slams Obama on war

Viagra and birth control

Carol Kreck = Awesome

Democrats back $162 billion more war funding

Iraqi Oil Workers Tell Chevron "Hands Off Iraq"

NYT: Obama admires Bush Sr.: ''no complaints about handling of Desert Storm"

Working Women Organization of Pakistan

Conspiracy History compilation DVDs torrents

Details- Communikey show- Persian Naropa play- Laughing Goat Barista- Make signs Mar 10 for protest Mar16 Denver, Friend us we are NEW to TRIBE!!! PEACE SHANTI NAMASTE! AHO! IN- LA KECH_

ILWU to Shut Down Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan

Codepink meeting in DEnver 2/28 6:30p; Let'splan for the DNC!! Friend us on our new myspace page from codepinkcolorado! Hollar 4 peace! pass it on!!

"Tribe" Backs Anti-Palestinian Racists

V to the Tenth: Vagina Monologues

FEB 15: Protest at Hollywood Military Recruitment Center

Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming

Michelle Obama, Oprah, Maria Shriver etc. at UCLA

How Israel Promotes Anti-Semitism

No to Rightist Ron Paul, How We Can Really End the War

The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

U.S. Backed Turkish Government Bombing Iraqi Kurds

Iraq War Vet Speaks Out on Vet Homelessness

Dictators in the Empire's Employ by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Rape Epidemic in Congo

OCT 14+16: Iraq War: town hall meeting and Mass Convergence- los angeles

codepink action this week! sept24-29

Uncensored Iranian Voices- bookclub

CODEPINK truck to the USSF! via Santa Fe!

Pro-War Democrats Battle for the Presidency

Art for Women's Charity

Bay Area CODEPINK on myspace

Remembering Jesse and update on Suzanne

Rally for Pro Choice!! VERY IMPORTANT! GO TO DOWNTOWN SF *NOW*!

FREE Documentary and Activism Panel on 4/13 at 2:00pm at Little Roxie Theater-SF

Survey on Bisexuality- Participants Needed!

Code Pink Camp Pelosi action in SF

Antiwar Protests Against Obama, Clinton, McCain, Farr, and Others

Congress Votes 368-31 to Back Mumia’s Racist Frame-up

UH OH! "they were wearing pink, they were laughing and they were clearly happy.”

Perpetuating the cycle of military sexual violence....

Give Peace A Vote-Please Sign and Forward if you haven't already!

A Full Month of Bay Area Events!

Free Suzanne Swift tribe! Please join!!!

TROOPS HOME FAST

upcoming bay area events

All Anti-Alito, All the Time!

Obscenity Prosecutions

Bring Home Calif. National Guard: a Code Pink campaign

New tribe for Commander in Chief

Queer Handywomen Sought

SF SEPT 26 CALL TO ACTION

ONLINE "WHY WE NEED TO GET OUT OF IRAQ" FORM

CodePink Austin event Sunday (pre-event Sat.)

Paramount pictures trial date set...

Make your voice heard in sacramento on June 7th

Governator in SF Tues April 5

Fight for "Pink Ladies" Rights!

Well?

Rally and March for Women's Health and Rights

Blessed be from new member

Code Pink in Portland OR

New movement to co-opt corporations for change

New movement to co-opt corporations for change

assault on birth control

CODE PINK Hauled Away for Interrupting President

Protester beat up a cop.....?

Fire Rumsfeld ! ! !

CODEPINK update 5/4

Love the Banner

Rally for Pro Choice!! VERY IMPORTANT! GO TO DOWNTOWN SF NOW!