Charity event/The End Game for Democracy

Catch the Charity Flea Market on Sat., Aug. 31 from 9 AM to 1 PM at Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles St.. This is a benefit for Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma. Moyers writes: "The predators in Washington are only this far from monopoly control of our government. They have bought the political system, lock, stock and pork barrel, making change from within impossible." Bill Moyers is interviewed by Val Zavala, 01/06/12. (photo: SOCAL Connection) The End Game for Democracy By Bill Moyers, BillMoyers.com 28 August 13 e are so close to losing our democracy to the mercenary class, it's as if we are leaning way over the rim of the Grand Canyon and all that's needed is a swift kick in the pants. Look out below. The predators in Washington are only this far from monopoly control of our government. They have bought the political system, lock, stock and pork barrel, making change from within impossible. That's the real joke. Sometimes I long for the wit of a Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. They treat this town as burlesque, and with satire and parody show it the disrespect it deserves. We laugh, and punch each other on the arm, and tweet that the rascals got their just dessert. Still, the last laugh always seems to go to the boldface names that populate this town. To them belong the spoils of a looted city. They get the tax breaks, the loopholes, the contracts, the payoffs. They fix the system so multimillionaire hedge fund managers and private equity tycoons pay less of a tax rate on their income than school teachers, police and fire fighters, secretaries and janitors. They give subsidies to rich corporate farms and cut food stamps for working people facing hunger. They remove oversight of the wall street casinos, bail out the bankers who torpedo the economy, fight the modest reforms of Dodd-Frank, prolong tax havens for multinationals, and stick it to consumers while rewarding corporations. We pay. We pay at the grocery store. We pay at the gas pump. We pay the taxes they write off. Our low-wage workers pay with sweat and deprivation because this town - aloof, self-obsessed, bought off and doing very well, thank you - feels no pain. The journalists who could tell us these things rarely do - and some, never. They aren't blind, simply bedazzled. Watch the evening news - any evening news - or the Sunday talk shows. Listen to the chit-chat of the early risers on morning TV - and ask yourself if you are learning anything about how this town actually works. William Greider, one of our craft's finest reporters, fierce and unbought, despite a long life in Washington once said that no one can hope to understand what is driving political behavior without asking the kind of gut-level questions politicians ask themselves in private: "Who are the winners in this matter and who are the losers? Who gets the money and who has to pay? Who must be heard on this question and who can be safely ignored?" Perhaps they don't ask these questions because they fear banishment from the parties and perks, from the access that passes as seduction in this town. Or perhaps they do not tell us these things because they fear that if the system were exposed for what it is, outraged citizens would descend on this town, and tear it apart with their bare hands. http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/19125-the-end-game-for-democracy Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/ "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

My Surprisingly Inspiring Trip to the West Bank: Echoes of Our Civil Rights Movement

http://truth-out.org/news/item/18459-my-surprisingly-inspiring-trip-to-the-west-bank-echoes-of-our-civil-rights-movement My Surprisingly Inspiring Trip to the West Bank: Echoes of Our Civil Rights Movement Wednesday, 28 August 2013 12:54 By Jeff Cohen, AlterNet | Report As I prepared for a grueling fact-finding trip to Israel and the Palestinian West Bank (occupied for 46 years), Secretary of State Kerry announced that Israel and the Palestinian Authority had agreed to resume peace talks without preconditions. On the day my delegation flew to the region, Israel announced that it had approved still more housing for Israeli settlers: “Israel has issued tenders for the construction of nearly 1,200 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank,” reported London’s Financial Times, “defying U.S. and Palestinian opposition to expansion of Jewish settlements three days before the scheduled start of peace talks.” It’s the same old depressing story, with Israel showing little interest in making peace. So before I turn to what’s surprising and inspiring in the West Bank, let’s acknowledge the bad news: Palestinians are slowly being squeezed out of their homes, deprived of their water and centuries-old olive groves, humiliated on a daily basis by Israeli settlers and the Israeli state in a relentless violation of their human rights that gets worse as much of the world looks away. But here’s the good news: Across the West Bank, Israel’s occupation has given rise in recent years to a nonviolent “popular resistance” movement that should be an inspiration to people across the globe. This unarmed resistance has persisted in the face of Israeli state violence (aided by U.S.-supplied weapons and tear gas), lengthy jail sentences for nonviolent protesters and widespread detention and abuse of children. It was fitting to return to the U.S. on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington because Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy of militant nonviolence were invoked by Palestinian activists in virtually every village and town I visited as part of the fact-finding delegation. Like King, leaders of the Palestinian popular resistance – from intellectuals to grassroots villagers who’d been repeatedly jailed – spoke to us about universal human rights, about a human family in which all deserve equal rights regardless of religion or nationality. “We are against the occupation, not against the Jews,” was the refrain among Palestinian activists. “We have many Jews and Israelis who support us.” It was indeed inspiring to meet several of the brave Israelis who’ve supported the nonviolent resistance, often putting themselves in the frontline of marches (their jail sentences are tiny compared to what’s dished out to Palestinians). They are admittedly a small minority, thoroughly ostracized within Israel – a society that seems as paranoid and militaristic today as our country during the McCarthyite Fifties. NABI SALEH: In this village near Ramallah that’s being squeezed by settlers, a leader of the local popular resistance waxed poetic about Israelis who’ve supported their struggle: “After we started the popular resistance in 2009, we saw a different kind of Israeli, our partner. We see them as our cousin – a different view than the Israeli as soldier shooting at us, or the settler stealing, or the jailer shutting the cell on us.” The story of Nabi Saleh was compellingly told in an atypical New York Times Magazine article by Ben Ehrenreich, “Is This Where the Third Intifada Will Start?” “It’s not easy to be nonviolent, but no soldier has been killed by a stone,” said activist leader Manal Tamimi. “We want to show the world we are not terrorists. On CNN, Fox News, we’re just terrorists, suicide bombers. I was in the states; you never hear of settlers attacking Palestinians.” As we were leaving her house, Manal added: “You need to be our messengers because your tax money is killing us. You are our brothers in humanity, but you are part of the killing.” Like our 1964 civil rights martyrs in Mississippi – Schwerner, Cheney and Goodman – Nabi Saleh reveres its martyrs: Mustafa Tamimi and Rushdi Tamimi. BIL’IN: If you saw the Oscar-nominated documentary “5 Broken Cameras,” then you know of the seven-year-long, partly-successful battle by the villagers of Bil’in to drive back Israel’s “separation wall” (aka the Apartheid Wall) – which was positioned to confiscate nearly 60 percent of their land, separating farmers from their fields and olive trees. It’s an inspiring story of courageous nonviolence, with international activists (and Israelis) flocking to Bil’in to support the villagers’ resistance. “Internationals” who live in the West Bank and put their bodies on the line in support of nonviolent Palestinian struggles remind me of the U.S. students and others who “headed south” in the 1960s to support the civil rights movement. We stayed overnight in the homes of Bil’in residents. Iyad Burnat, the brother of “5 Broken Cameras” director Emad Burnat, talked with us past midnight about the importance of media coverage, international support, and creative, surprise tactics in a successful nonviolent movement (like using their bodies to close an Israeli “settlers-only” road). “In Bil’in we don’t use stones. The Israeli soldiers use that – kids throwing stones – to attack our people.” Iyad was one of a dozen Palestinians we met who bristled at their lack of mobility now that their communities are ringed by the wall, settlements, checkpoints and Israeli-only highways. “It’s easier for me to get to the U.S. or the U.K. than to Jerusalem, 25 kilometers away.” Like our Selma martyrs – Jimmy Lee Jackson, Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo – Bil’in has its nonviolent martyrs: Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahmah and Jawaher Abu Rahmah. EAST JERUSALEM: One of the most powerful and educational movies on Israel/Palestine is the 25-minute documentary, “My Neighborhood” – which exposes the Judaization of East Jerusalem by focusing on a Palestinian family facing eviction from their home of 47 years in the middle-class neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. We sat down with the “stars” of the movie, the al-Kurd family, outside the part of the house they still can live in. Absurdly, zealous and aggressive Jewish settlers occupy the front part of the house. As we approached, I caught a glimpse of the settlers behind their Israeli flag. (Watch the movie here.) Middle-aged mom Maysa al-Kurd and her 94-year-old mother told us they’ve lived in their East Jerusalem house since 1956, having been forced to flee Haifa during the 1948 “War of Independence.” Settlers are now using intimidation in hope of forcing them to flee again. With half a home, the al-Kurd family is luckier than dozens of others in Sheikh Jarrah who’ve been driven out of the neighborhood completely. (Many Palestinians are refugees two or three times over.) With the help of Israeli and international activists, the al-Kurd family has fought for years to live in peace and dignity in what's left of their house. If you watch “My Neighborhood,” you’ll see grandson Mohammed, then in the 7th-grade, announcing that he wants to be a lawyer or journalist battling for human rights when he grows up. Two years later, he holds to that dream. Maysa al-Kurd asked us to tell her family's story to President Obama – and, if we can't reach him, to tell their story in social media. She wants to ask Obama "if it would be acceptable to him if his own kids were harassed in their home; if not acceptable for his kids, then he shouldn't be silent" when Palestinian children are suffering. HEBRON HILLS: Near the end of our tour of the West Bank, we visited the beleaguered but unbowed village of Al Tuwani in the South Hebron hills, where expansion-minded (“God gave us this land”) Israelis in nearby settlements have terrorized the village and sabotaged their fields and water. For “lack of a building permit,” Israeli soldiers demolished their village school and mosque. It struck me that being Palestinian in some of these remote locations was akin to being black in rural Mississippi in the 1950s, facing continuous intimidation from lawless Klansmen (like these armed and sometimes-masked settlers) backed up by state power. But Al Tuwani has resisted – with women taking new roles in the economic sustenance of the village, with young Italian solidarity activists (Operation Dove) accompanying the men into the field as a “ protective presence” and videotaping any confrontations, and with Israeli human rights lawyers defending their right to rebuild their community. A woman leader in the village, like so many Palestinians, begged us to return home to contest media portrayals of Palestinians as terrorists: “You’ve seen the true Palestine, not what you see in news media . . . Tell the world the truth.” * * While it was inspiring to see nonviolent “popular resistance” groups persisting across the West Bank, I felt ashamed and angry as a Jew to hear Palestinians document the relentless drive by the “Jewish State” to Judaize East Jerusalem and intimidate and humiliate West Bankers into leaving their cities, towns and villages. Everywhere we went, we heard complaints about day-to-day hardship -- checkpoints, Jewish-only highways, blocked Palestinian roads and how drives to work or school or neighbors that once took 15 minutes now take several hours. Seeing these “facts on the ground,” I kept asking myself NOT “Why have many Palestinians turned to violence and terrorism?” – but rather, “Why so few?” I’m not the first or only one to think that thought. In a moment of candor in 1998, hawkish Israeli politician Ehud Barak admitted to Haaretz reporter Gideon Levy: "If I were a young Palestinian of the right age, I’d eventually join one of the terrorist organizations.” (Barak wasn’t punished for his candor – Israelis elected him prime minister a year later.) As hard as we tried, it was difficult to find a single Palestinian (or Israeli peace and justice activist) with much hope for the Kerry-led peace process; they fear that talks will again be a pretext for continued Israeli expansion into Palestinian land. We were repeatedly reminded that at the beginning of the Oslo “peace process” in 1993, there were about 260,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – and that number increased to 365,000 by the time Oslo fell apart seven years later. Today, there are well over 525,000 settlers. Everywhere you travel in the West Bank, you can see Palestinian villages on hillsides or in valleys – and newer, gleaming Israeli settlements on the hilltops above, startlingly green thanks to abundant, diverted water. During the Oslo talks, then-Israeli foreign minister Ariel Sharon was quoted as telling a rightwing party to "run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements.” Many in the nonviolent Palestinian resistance also have little faith in the Palestinian Authority – seen variously as weak, corrupt, “an Authority with no authority,” and a junior partner in administering the occupation. “We want a third Intifada, the Palestinian Authority wants to prevent it,” an activist told us. Their faith is in spreading the grassroots resistance within Palestine, and gaining international support. We were told over and over: Without outside pressure on Israel, there will be no end to the occupation and no justice. Which is why every Palestinian nonviolent activist urged us to support the boycott of Israel aimed at ending the occupation – and they emphasized that boycotting is a supremely nonviolent tactic. All drew parallels to the successful, international boycott that forced South Africa’s apartheid regime to the bargaining table. And some mentioned another success – the boycott of Montgomery buses led by Martin Luther King. This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. Jeff Cohen is founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College and an associate professor of journalism there. His latest book is Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. He founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986. Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/ "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Heading to War with Syria and the US Media

Published on Wednesday, August 28, 2013 by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) Heading to War with Syria and the US Media by Peter Hart Horrific scenes of dead and injured civilians in Syria have been a part of the conflict there over the past several years, but the reports of a chemical attack of some sort last week in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta have led U.S. policymakers and the Obama White House to threaten to attack in a matter of days. There is still no firm public evidence that would tie these specific attacks to the Assad government. But all around the U.S. media the signs are clear that war is on the way. The front page of USA Today (8/27/13) displays U.S. bombs: While on ABC's This Week (8/25/13) viewers saw a computer simulation of an attack from a U.S. warship: One tendency in the corporate media seemed to be to jump to the conclusion that the chemical attacks were launched by the Assad regime, while admitting that perhaps this was not yet proven. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson (8/27/13) wrote that "Obama has to punish Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's homicidal regime with a military strike"–before admitting: If it is true that the regime killed hundreds of civilians with nerve gas in a Damascus suburb last week–and Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Monday that the use of chemical weapons is "undeniable"–then Obama has no choice. Such use cannot be tolerated, and any government or group that employs chemical weapons must be made to suffer real consequences. Of course, providing convincing evidence that the attacks actually were the work of the Syrian government should be the first order of business. But when news accounts, like one from USA Today (8/27/13), open with this–"A limited strike against Syria might convince the Assad regime not to use chemical weapons again"–it's hard not reach the conclusion that some have already made up their minds. On CBS's Face the Nation (8/25/13), Reuters journalist David Rohde said: "There has to be a price for gassing hundreds of civilians. There has to be." So far, the U.S. government has mostly made emphatic assertions–often anonymously. In the August 26 New York Times, readers learned that "a senior Obama administration official said Sunday that there was 'very little doubt' that President Bashar al-Assad's military forces had used chemical weapons against civilians last week." The report, by Scott Shane and Ben Hubbard, added: The official, in a written statement, said that "bas ed on the reported number of victims, reported symptoms of those who were killed or injured, witness accounts and other facts gathered by open sources, the U.S. intelligence community, and international partners, there is very little doubt at this point that a chemical weapon was used by the Syrian regime against civilians in this incident." The statement, released Sunday morning on the condition that the official not be named, reflected a tougher tone after President Obama's meeting at the White House on Saturday with his national security team, during which advisers discussed options for military action. It is curious that this "tougher tone" comes from officials whom the paper will not name. Today's edition of the Times (8/27/13) gives readers the headline "Kerry Cites Clear Evidence of Chemical Weapon Use in Syria." Earlier versions of the piece were less definitive (the headline read "Kerry Accuses Syria of Chemical Weapons Attack"), and it was difficult to see just what the clear evidence was–other than the acknowledgment that some sort of chemical attack had occurred, which is hardly in dispute. The paper went on to report: In the coming days, officials said, the nation's intelligence agencies will disclose information to bolster their case that chemical weapons were used by Mr. Assad's forces. The information could include so-called signals intelligence–intercepted radio or telephone calls between Syrian military commanders. If there is such evidence, one would assume it would be made public as soon as possible. Instead, unnamed officials are telling the New York Times that they'll share it someday soon. What would more skeptical coverage look like? Patrick Cockburn of the Independent (8/21/13) wrote that it is vital to be skeptical, since "the Syrian opposition has every incentive to show the Syrian government deploying chemical weapons in order to trigger foreign intervention." Cockburn adds that there are plenty of reasons for the Syrian government to not launch a chemical weapons attack, but the obvious fact that for the Syrian government to use chemical weapons would be much against their own interests does not prove it did not happen. Governments and armies do stupid things. © 2013 FAIR Peter Hart is the activism director at FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting). He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra, and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin. He is the author of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly" (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/28-2 Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/ "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Nuke Plant to Shut Doors: Environmental Victory But Vital Work Still Ahead

Published on Tuesday, August 27, 2013 by Common Dreams Nuke Plant to Shut Doors: Environmental Victory But Vital Work Still Ahead Communities celebrate, but demand corporate owners be held accountable for safe decomissioning process and 'just transition' for workers - Sarah Lazare, staff writer In a victory for decades-old movements against nuclear power in Vermont, the state's only nuclear power plant will be permanently shuttered by the end of next year, corporate owner Entergy announced Tuesday. As many celebrate the shutdown of the 'Vermont Yankee' nuclear plant, similar in design to the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi facility currently wreaking environmental and humanitarian havoc in Japan after a 2011 reactor explosion, environmental and workers' organizations acknowledge that the fight to ensure a safe decommissioning process and just transition for workers has only just begun. "We cannot treat these workers like they're disposable," James Haslam of the Vermont Workers Center told Common Dreams. "The plant needs to be decommissioned in a way that promotes healthy community and healthy environment." The New Orleans-based owner of the 4 decades-old facility has been fighting against the state of Vermont since 2010, when the Senate struck down a measure that would have extended plant authorization by decades, citing concerns about the safety and age of the plant. “Each day of news from the widening catastrophe in Japan brings a grim reminder that this design is inherently dangerous and fundamentally flawed, a known fact since the first day Vermont Yankee came on line in 1972,” declared Paul Gunter, director of reactor oversight for Beyond Nuclear. Entergy officials announced that the plant will cease production after it spends its current fuel cycle and decommission at the end of 2014, a process that will be overseen by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Once it ceases functioning, the plant will be in a state of "safe store" and remain shuttered as its radioactive components cool for up to 60 years, the AP reports. The Vermont Yankee plant, which ships nearly all of its power to other New England states, is just one of many nuclear plants across the country shutting its doors as concerns about the dangers of nuclear power grow, Beyond Nuclear reports. Entergy slashed hundreds of jobs over the summer, and ultimately cited "economic performance" as the reason for the closure. Environmental and worker organizations emphasize the importance of holding Entergy accountable throughout the decommissioning process. "We will remain vigilant to ensure that the decommissioning is done responsibly and in the safest way possible," declared Deb Katz of the Vermont Coalition Against Nukes. "Today, we celebrate this milestone in our work to end nuclear power generation in the Northeast and to foster a renewable energy future." "It is going to be necessary to have accountability going forward," Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear told Common Dreams. "The regulations surrounding decommissioning in this country are woefully inadequate, and we are facing leaks of radioactive poisons into groundwater systems. Entergy has not put a single penny into these water systems. The fight is on to make sure the cleanup is comprehensive." Organizers with the Vermont Workers Center say Entergy must not just walk away from the harm done to a community that has already suffered the environmental effects of the plant that includes evidence of radioactive leaks into the ground and surface water. "Entergy is a corporation that has made millions of dollars from our communities and its workers," declared the Vermont Workers Center in a previous statement. "We must hold Entergy accountable to fully fund the decommissioning of Vermont Yankee to make this process safe for our communities." "We know our communities need both good jobs and a healthy environment," the statement continues. "We must transform public, economic, and environmental policy to put people and the planet first." _____________________ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/27-4 Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/ "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

SkyTruth Tracks Fracking from the Edge of Space

SkyTruth Tracks Fracking from the Edge of Space By SkyTruth For the past year, our satellite monitoring of infrared data from around the world has detected immense amounts of light and heat coming from natural gas flares in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale. A recent study concluded that 30 percent of the natural gas produced in North Dakota is being wasted by a process called flaring, and the carbon dioxide emissions alone are equivalent to the annual emissions of 1 million automobiles. This does not even touch the unknown air quality impacts from burning fracked gas in large, open flames at ground-level. To study this issue further, we are teaming up with a non-profit called Space For All to send cameras and instruments on a weather-balloon to the edge of space—well, the upper tropopause—to examine air quality and infrared emissions from oil shale fracking and flaring. But what is flaring and why is it an issue? Flaring is the practice of burning off natural gas to dispose of it, primarily this happens right after a well is put into production or when other methods of using the gas are more expensive to implement than its market value. Operators do not want methane (the primary hydrocarbon in natural gas) accumulating on their wellpads where it can explode, and burning it off is slightly less harmful to the climate than venting it directly to the atmosphere. But there is so much flaring going on that the fields around Williston, ND, positively glow, and there is limited information on other air quality impacts from flaring all of this gas produced as a by-product from fracking for oil. Help us Skytruth the Bakken to find out what is really going on … With your help, we are planning to go to North Dakota to groundtruth satellite detections of flaring, and launch cameras and air quality instruments to the edge of space, tethered to a high-altitude balloon rig. We will combine our ground observations with detections from the balloon rig, and compare that to satellite data to measure the amount of natural gas flaring there. This will help us test the accuracy of our satellite-based flaring detections so we can do a better job of monitoring environmentally damaging (and unnecessarily wasteful) flaring that happens in the Bakken and around the world. The more good data we can collect, the more we can help groups that are working to reduce and eliminate it. This article was published at NationofChange at http://www.nationofchange.org/skytruth-tracks-fracking-edge-space-1377703479. All rights are reserved. Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/ "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

The Kurds: Opportunity & Peril

Published on Portside (http://portside.org) The Kurds: Opportunity & Peril Conn Hallinan Tuesday, August 27, 2013 Dispatches From the Edge For almost a century, the Kurds--one of the world's largest ethnic groups without its own state--have been deceived and double-crossed, their language and culture suppressed, their villages burned and bombed, and their people scattered. But because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Syrian civil war, and Turkish politics, they have been suddenly transformed from pawn to major player in a pivotal part of the Middle East. The Kurds--who speak a language distantly related to Farsi, the dominant language of Iran--straddle the borders of north eastern Syria, northern Iraq, and western Iran, and constitute a local majority in parts of eastern and southern Turkey. At between 25 to 30 million strong, they have long yearned to establish their own state. Now, with their traditional foes weakened by invasion, civil war, and political discord, the Kurds are suddenly in the catbird's seat. But in the Middle East that can be a very tricky place to dwell. The Kurds' current ascent began when the U.S. established a no-fly zone over northern Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War. When the Americans invaded and overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraqi Kurds saw their opportunity: they seized three oil rich northern provinces, set up a parliament, established a capital at Erbil, and mobilized their formidable militia, the Peshmerga. Over the past decade, the Kurdish region has gone from one of the poorest regions in Iraq to one of the most affluent, fueled in the main by energy sales to Turkey and Iran. It is an astounding turn of fate. Twenty-nine years ago the Turkish government was burning Kurdish villages and scattering refugees throughout the region. Some 45,000 people--mostly Kurds-- lost their lives in that long-running conflict. Today, Turkey is negotiating with its traditional nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and trying to cut a peace deal that would deliver Kurdish support to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's push to amend Turkey's constitution and give him another decade in power. In 1988, Saddam Hussein dropped poison gas on the Kurdish town of Halabja, killing between 3,000 and 5,000 people. Today, the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki may be outraged by the Kurds' seizure of oil assets, but the Baghdad regime is so preoccupied by a sectarian-led bombing campaign against Shiite communities that it is in no position to do more than protest. Last November, the Maliki government backed away from a potential showdown with the Peshmerga in the northern town of Tuz Khurmatu. Fifty years ago the Syrian government stripped citizenship rights from 20 percent of its Kurdish minority--Kurds make up about 10 percent of that country's population--creating between 300,000 to 500,000 stateless people. Today, Syria's Kurdish regions are largely independent because the Damascus regime, locked in a life and death struggle with foreign and domestic insurgents, has abandoned the northern and eastern parts of the country. Only in Iran are Kurds in much the same situation they were a decade ago, but with the Teheran government's energy focused on its worsening economic situation and avoiding a confrontation with the U.S. over its nuclear program, that, too, could change. In short, are the Kurds' stars finally coming into alignment? Maybe and maybe not. If the invasion, politics, and civil war have created opportunities for the Kurds, they are fragile, relying on the transitory needs or current disarray of their traditional foes, the central governments of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Turkey is a case in point. Endogen needs the votes of Kurdish parliamentarians to put a new constitution up for a referendum in time for the 2014 elections. Ending the conflict with the Kurds could also boost Turkey's application for European Union membership and burnish Ankara's regional leadership credentials. The latter have been tarnished by a number of Erdogan missteps, including his unpopular support for the Syrian insurgents and his increasingly authoritarian internal policies. Most Kurds would like to end the fighting as well, but that will require concessions by the Endogen government on the issues of parliamentary representation and the right educate Kurds in their own language. But Endogen has balked at these two demands, and the Kurds are growing impatient. PKK leader Cemil Bayik recently warned that "September 1 is the deadline" for a deal and a failure to reach an agreement by then "will be understood that the aim [of the Turkish government] is not a solution." Given the long history of animosity, it would not take much to unravel peace talks between the two parties. Syria's Kurds have threaded a hazardous path between their desire for autonomy--some would like full independence--and not taking sides in the current civil war. Indeed, the fighting going on in northern and eastern Syria is not between the insurgents and the Assad government, but Kurds represented by the Kurdish Democratic Union and the combined forces of the extremist al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, both of which are affiliated with al-Qaeda. Most of Syria's oil reserves are in the Kurdish region and control of them would provide a financial base for whatever side emerges victorious. The Assad regime may have abandoned the north, but Damascus recently has made headway against the insurgency, gains greatly aided by infighting among its opponents. So far the war is a stalemate, but it might not stay that way forever. Even Syrians opposed to the Assad government are tired of the fighting, and most have no love for the sectarian groups that have increasingly taken over the war against the Damascus regime. In short, the current autonomy of Syria's Kurds may be a fleeting thing. Of course, it is possible that the Syrian Kurds might cut a deal with Assad: help drive the insurgents out of the area--maybe in alliance with the Iraqi Kurds--in exchange for greater autonomy. That would enrage both the Turks and the Maliki government, but it is not clear either could do much about it. Erdogen's support for the Syrian insurgents is widely unpopular in Turkey, and any direct intervention by the Turks to block autonomy for Syria's Kurds would put Ankara in the middle of a civil war. With an election looming next year, that is not a move Erdogan wants to make. As for Iraq, thanks to the U.S.'s dismantling of Saddam Hussein's army, Baghdad doesn't have the capabilities to take on the Peshmerga at this point. What will finally emerge is hard to predict, except that a return to the past seems unlikely. Iraq's Kurds can only be dislodged by a major invasion from Turkey in cooperation with the Baghdad government. Given that Kurdish oil and gas are increasingly important to the Turkish economy, and that any invasion would be costly, why would Ankara do that? And cooperation between Baghdad and Ankara has been soured by Turkey's willingness to ignore Baghdad's protests over its exploitation of Kurdish-controlled (but Iraqi owned) oil and Turkish support for the Sunni extremists trying to overthrow Assad. Those same extremists are massacring Shite supporters of the Maliki government in Basra, Baghdad and Karbala. Turkey's Kurds--between 20 and 25 million, the largest Kurdish concentration in the world--are on a knife's edge. There is little doubt that the average Turkish Kurd wants the long-running conflict to end, as do the Turks as well. But Endogen is dragging his feet on the key peace issues, and the PKK may decide it is time to pick up the gun again and return to the old Kurdish adage: trust only the mountains. The solution to all this is not all that difficult. For Turkey, granting Kurdish language rights and cultural autonomy, and reducing the minimum percentage of votes to serve in the Turkish parliament from its current 10 percent, would probably do the job. For Syria, the formula for peace would be much the same, with the added move of restoring citizenship to almost half a million now stateless Kurds. But that is only likely to happen after a ceasefire and a political settlement of the civil war. The Iraqi government will have to bite the bullet, recognize that an autonomous Kurdish area is a reality, and work out a deal to share oil and gas revenue. As long as Iran is faced with an attack by the U.S. and/or Israel, that country's Kurds will be out in the cold. The U.S. and its allies should keep in mind that sanctions and threats of war make a peaceful resolution of long-standing grievances by Iran's minorities, which also include Azeris, Baluchs, and Arabs, impossible. If the U.S. is truly concerned about minorities in Iran it should find a way to negotiate with the Teheran government over Teheran's nuclear program. But the Iranian government, too, would do well to seriously engage with its Kurdish population. Autonomy for the Kurds is out of the bag and not about to go back in, regardless of what the final outcome in Syria and Turkey are. Sooner or later, Iran will have to confront the same issue that governments in Damascus, Ankara and Baghdad now face: recognition and autonomy, or war and instability. Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com Source URL: http://portside.org/2013-08-27/kurds-opportunity-peril Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/ "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

The Wisconsin State Capitol Police Should Be Abolished

Gibson writes: "The Capitol Police have repeatedly violated every part of the oath taken by all law enforcement, are an unnecessary burden on Wisconsin taxpayers and should be abolished." 22 year old Damon Terrell is arrested while taking pictures of a protest in the Wisconsin Capital Rotunda. (photo: Segway Jeremy Ryan) http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/287-124/19108-the-wisconsin-state-capitol-police-should-be-abolished The Wisconsin State Capitol Police Should Be Abolished By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News 27 August 13 "On my honor, I will never betray my badge, my integrity, my character, or the public trust. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions. I will always uphold the constitution, and will remain loyal to my community and the agency I serve." -Law Enforcement Oath of Honor I've written twice explaining the ridiculous lengths Wisconsin State Capitol Police are willing to go to arrest people for singing without a permit. But on August 26th, the Capitol PD escalated it even more, from merely arresting singers and observers to violently attacking them. This excessively antagonistic behavior exhibited when responding to nonviolent protests is only made worse by the department's chief and top deputy both getting questionably large raises in the midst of the crackdown. The Capitol Police have repeatedly violated every part of the oath taken by all law enforcement, are an unnecessary burden on Wisconsin taxpayers and should be abolished. Since July 24, State Capitol Police Chief David Erwin has been ordering the daily mass arrests of singers in the capitol rotunda, issuing over 300 citations for "unlawful assembly." In a 40-page ruling in mid-July, a federal judge threw out the Walker administration's rules that groups larger than four require a permit to assemble in public spaces. Judge Conley also wrote in detail about how the Wisconsin state capitol has traditionally been used as a public forum for the people to meet and peaceably air their grievances to their government without fear of arrest or intimidation. Article 1, Section 4, of the Wisconsin State Constitution prioritizes the rights of free speech and free assembly as fundamental rights of every citizen of the state. By arresting nonviolent dissenters for exercising their constitutional rights, Chief Erwin has betrayed the law enforcement oath, failing to uphold the constitution. Since Judge Conley isn't ruling until January 2014 on new restrictions that forbid groups larger than 20 from assembling without a permit, Chief Erwin is using the lack of judicial precedent to arbitrarily arrest any participant in the Solidarity Singalong. Arrestees have included a sitting city alder, a school board member, two firefighers, teenagers, grandmothers, teachers, journalists, mothers with small children, and many others. On August 26th, two brothers, 25-year-old CJ and 22-year-old Damon Terrell, were both violently arrested in a shocking display of police brutality previously unseen in the state capitol. Even local TV stations have dedicated editorial time to criticizing the Capitol Police Department for "overkill." This video clearly shows police arresting CJ Terrell for singing. He sits down and refuses to cooperate with an illegal arrest, asking instead for his citation to be issued in the rotunda rather than going through the process of being handcuffed and processed in the capitol basement. His younger brother, Damon, was taking pictures and observing when Capitol Police advanced on him. In the video, you can see him backing away with his hands up before four officers tackle him to the ground without provocation. One officer claimed he was injured while arresting Damon, and Damon is being tentatively charged with felony battery of an officer. At the time of this writing, Damon is still being held in Dane County Jail without bond. While some local media chose to only get the DoA's account of what happened, several eyewitness accounts, including my own, attest that Damon's arresting officer got a small cut on his arm from a reporter's watch as he lunged after Damon, whom he decided to blame for the small injury. Through his brutal means of enforcement, Erwin has failed the oath he and his department swore to uphold. Chief Erwin has also directly contradicted Department of Administration policy when it comes to the arrests of singers who don't have a permit. When asked in December of 2011 whether or not violators of the permit policy would be arrested, former DoA spokeswoman Jocelyn Webster said, "There's a fundamental misunderstanding of this policy if there was a belief arrests were going to stem from this policy." She was also quoted in a different report saying, "No one is going to be arrested for not being in compliance with the permit policy. It's kind of funny that anybody even thinks that they would be. The standard by which law enforcement will take law enforcement action remains the same." By violating the policy of the agency that oversees his department, Chief Erwin has violated the law enforcement oath, refusing to hold himself or his deputies accountable for their actions. Chief Erwin was appointed to head the capitol police by Governor Scott Walker after former chief Charlie Tubbs was forced out and shifted to a new position as Dane County Emergency Manager. Many Republicans in Wisconsin were upset at Tubbs' humane treatment of the protesters who occupied the state capitol in early 2011, when he made the decision to talk and reason with the protesters instead of arresting them all and throwing them out. Erwin and the Walker Department of Administration, which oversees the capitol police, are now under scrutiny after it was reported that Erwin and his top deputy, Dan Blackdeer, all engaged in a bureaucratic shell game to circumvent state rules against hefty, spontaneous pay raises for specific individuals. While Walker gave all public employees a 1% raise this year, he moved Erwin and Blackdeer to two "phantom jobs" within the DoA for just one day, then moved them back to their old positions with double-digit pay raises. Chief Erwin now makes over $111,000 a year, $720 of which was retroactive. Some Wisconsin state legislators have called for an investigation into the pay increases to see if they followed state rules, which forbid retroactive pay increases for public employees. Exhibit A in the Kissick v. Huebsch lawsuit filed by the ACLU showed that roughly 90% of all arrests ordered by Chief Erwin were dismissed in court. This is clear evidence that Erwin is not only costing the state more tax dollars through his unjustified and excessive salary increase, but also in superfluous court costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars, incurred through Erwin's unlawful suppression of dissent. In gaming the state out of money for an unjustified raise, Chief Erwin has violated the law enforcement oath by betraying the public trust. Erwin should be fired, and the Capitol Police Department should be abolished. I'm not saying to do away with police protection for elected officials conducting the state's business. But just as the Wisconsin Department of Administration, which oversees the capitol building and the state capitol police, contracts with the City of Madison Fire Department and EMT services, there's no reason they can't also contract with the Madison Police Department for any law enforcement needs. University of Wisconsin Police Chief Sue Riseling summed it up best in her testimony at a July public hearing on the DoA's permitting rules. "It is more important that the principles of democracy remain healthy, than it is for a building interior to remain quiet." _____________________________________ Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at carl@rsnorg.org , and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG. Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News. Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/ "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Baltimore Activist Alert - Aug. 27-28, 2013

43] EMERGENCY DEMO against attack on Syria – ?? 44] Protest for a Living Wage – Aug. 27 45] A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington – Aug. 28 46] "The Healthcare Movie” – Aug. 28 47] Film "Patent Absurdity" – Aug, 28 43] – The Baltimore/D.C. regional International Action Center calls on all concerned organizations and individuals to take a stand and protest against any U.S. intervention and aggression towards Syria. (To sign on to the emergency protests under the banner of U.S. HANDS OFF SYRIA respond to this email or call 443-221-3775.) Join emergency demonstrations the day of any missile attack on Syria in Baltimore, Frederick, Columbia and Washington D.C. and a regional protest the day after in Washington D.C. at the White House. If the U.S. launches a missile attack on a week day, protests will take place between 5 and 7 PM. In Baltimore, meet at the Washington Monument, N. Charles & Centre Sts. The day after join a regional demonstration at the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW from 5 to 7 PM. If the day after is a Saturday, be at the white House at noon. As Dr. King Jr. pointed out, “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government” spoken in New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 – exactly one year before his assassination in Memphis. If a U.S. attack is not launched by the evening of Aug. 27, there will be a conference call of interested groups and individuals. To be included in the conference call contact Steven Ceci at 443-221-3775 or stevenceci1@aol.com. Go to www.iacenter.org. 44] – On Tues., Aug. 27 at 6:30 PM, call for Respect D.C. and D.C. Council Members Vincent Orange & Phil Mendelson and community members. Last month the D.C. Council voted in favor of the Large Retailer Accountability Act of 2013 (LRAA), which calls for large retailers operating stores of 75,000 square feet or more, and whose parent company generates more the $1 billion in revenues annually to provide its workers a “living wage” of $12.50 per hour, including benefits. This bill has still not been signed by the Mayor. There will be a bus leaving from the Pennsylvania Ave. Baptist Church, 3000 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. Email organizer@respectdc.org to reserve a spot! 45] – On Wed., Aug. 28 catch these two events. see the exhibit A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington at the Library of Congress from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM. See the film "From the Vaults: The March" at the National Archives at noon. 46] – The Howard County chapter of the Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign is sponsoring a showing of "The Healthcare Movie" on Wed., Aug. 28 at 6:30 PM at the Main Branch of the Howard County Library, 10375 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, 21045. This documentary shows how the healthcare systems of Canada and the U.S.A., which were virtually identical 50 years ago took very different paths. Canada created a universal healthcare system while we in America are still suffering under profit driven, insurance company dominated care that leaves so many people with limited or no access to healthcare. Go to www.MDSinglePayer.org or info@mdsinglepayer.org 47] – The Baltimore Ethical Society Ironweed Film Club, 306 W. Franklin St., Suite 102, Baltimore 21201-4661, will do a screening on Wed., Aug. 28 at 7:30 PM of "Patent Absurdity," a film that explores the case of software patents and the history of judicial activism that led to their rise, and the harm being done to software developers and the wider economy. Screenings are open to members of BES and the BES Ironweed Film Club. Ask Emil about free membership in the film club at 410-929-3399. Donations are requested for refreshments. To be continued. Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/. "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

The Kurds: Opportunity & Peril

Published on Portside (http://portside.org) The Kurds: Opportunity & Peril Conn Hallinan Tuesday, August 27, 2013 Dispatches From the Edge For almost a century, the Kurds--one of the world's largest ethnic groups without its own state--have been deceived and double-crossed, their language and culture suppressed, their villages burned and bombed, and their people scattered. But because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Syrian civil war, and Turkish politics, they have been suddenly transformed from pawn to major player in a pivotal part of the Middle East. The Kurds--who speak a language distantly related to Farsi, the dominant language of Iran--straddle the borders of north eastern Syria, northern Iraq, and western Iran, and constitute a local majority in parts of eastern and southern Turkey. At between 25 to 30 million strong, they have long yearned to establish their own state. Now, with their traditional foes weakened by invasion, civil war, and political discord, the Kurds are suddenly in the catbird's seat. But in the Middle East that can be a very tricky place to dwell. The Kurds' current ascent began when the U.S. established a no-fly zone over northern Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War. When the Americans invaded and overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraqi Kurds saw their opportunity: they seized three oil rich northern provinces, set up a parliament, established a capital at Erbil, and mobilized their formidable militia, the Peshmerga. Over the past decade, the Kurdish region has gone from one of the poorest regions in Iraq to one of the most affluent, fueled in the main by energy sales to Turkey and Iran. It is an astounding turn of fate. Twenty-nine years ago the Turkish government was burning Kurdish villages and scattering refugees throughout the region. Some 45,000 people--mostly Kurds-- lost their lives in that long-running conflict. Today, Turkey is negotiating with its traditional nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and trying to cut a peace deal that would deliver Kurdish support to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's push to amend Turkey's constitution and give him another decade in power. In 1988, Saddam Hussein dropped poison gas on the Kurdish town of Halabja, killing between 3,000 and 5,000 people. Today, the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki may be outraged by the Kurds' seizure of oil assets, but the Baghdad regime is so preoccupied by a sectarian-led bombing campaign against Shiite communities that it is in no position to do more than protest. Last November, the Maliki government backed away from a potential showdown with the Peshmerga in the northern town of Tuz Khurmatu. Fifty years ago the Syrian government stripped citizenship rights from 20 percent of its Kurdish minority--Kurds make up about 10 percent of that country's population--creating between 300,000 to 500,000 stateless people. Today, Syria's Kurdish regions are largely independent because the Damascus regime, locked in a life and death struggle with foreign and domestic insurgents, has abandoned the northern and eastern parts of the country. Only in Iran are Kurds in much the same situation they were a decade ago, but with the Teheran government's energy focused on its worsening economic situation and avoiding a confrontation with the U.S. over its nuclear program, that, too, could change. In short, are the Kurds' stars finally coming into alignment? Maybe and maybe not. If the invasion, politics, and civil war have created opportunities for the Kurds, they are fragile, relying on the transitory needs or current disarray of their traditional foes, the central governments of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Turkey is a case in point. Endogen needs the votes of Kurdish parliamentarians to put a new constitution up for a referendum in time for the 2014 elections. Ending the conflict with the Kurds could also boost Turkey's application for European Union membership and burnish Ankara's regional leadership credentials. The latter have been tarnished by a number of Erdogan missteps, including his unpopular support for the Syrian insurgents and his increasingly authoritarian internal policies. Most Kurds would like to end the fighting as well, but that will require concessions by the Endogen government on the issues of parliamentary representation and the right educate Kurds in their own language. But Endogen has balked at these two demands, and the Kurds are growing impatient. PKK leader Cemil Bayik recently warned that "September 1 is the deadline" for a deal and a failure to reach an agreement by then "will be understood that the aim [of the Turkish government] is not a solution." Given the long history of animosity, it would not take much to unravel peace talks between the two parties. Syria's Kurds have threaded a hazardous path between their desire for autonomy--some would like full independence--and not taking sides in the current civil war. Indeed, the fighting going on in northern and eastern Syria is not between the insurgents and the Assad government, but Kurds represented by the Kurdish Democratic Union and the combined forces of the extremist al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, both of which are affiliated with al-Qaeda. Most of Syria's oil reserves are in the Kurdish region and control of them would provide a financial base for whatever side emerges victorious. The Assad regime may have abandoned the north, but Damascus recently has made headway against the insurgency, gains greatly aided by infighting among its opponents. So far the war is a stalemate, but it might not stay that way forever. Even Syrians opposed to the Assad government are tired of the fighting, and most have no love for the sectarian groups that have increasingly taken over the war against the Damascus regime. In short, the current autonomy of Syria's Kurds may be a fleeting thing. Of course, it is possible that the Syrian Kurds might cut a deal with Assad: help drive the insurgents out of the area--maybe in alliance with the Iraqi Kurds--in exchange for greater autonomy. That would enrage both the Turks and the Maliki government, but it is not clear either could do much about it. Erdogen's support for the Syrian insurgents is widely unpopular in Turkey, and any direct intervention by the Turks to block autonomy for Syria's Kurds would put Ankara in the middle of a civil war. With an election looming next year, that is not a move Erdogan wants to make. As for Iraq, thanks to the U.S.'s dismantling of Saddam Hussein's army, Baghdad doesn't have the capabilities to take on the Peshmerga at this point. What will finally emerge is hard to predict, except that a return to the past seems unlikely. Iraq's Kurds can only be dislodged by a major invasion from Turkey in cooperation with the Baghdad government. Given that Kurdish oil and gas are increasingly important to the Turkish economy, and that any invasion would be costly, why would Ankara do that? And cooperation between Baghdad and Ankara has been soured by Turkey's willingness to ignore Baghdad's protests over its exploitation of Kurdish-controlled (but Iraqi owned) oil and Turkish support for the Sunni extremists trying to overthrow Assad. Those same extremists are massacring Shite supporters of the Maliki government in Basra, Baghdad and Karbala. Turkey's Kurds--between 20 and 25 million, the largest Kurdish concentration in the world--are on a knife's edge. There is little doubt that the average Turkish Kurd wants the long-running conflict to end, as do the Turks as well. But Endogen is dragging his feet on the key peace issues, and the PKK may decide it is time to pick up the gun again and return to the old Kurdish adage: trust only the mountains. The solution to all this is not all that difficult. For Turkey, granting Kurdish language rights and cultural autonomy, and reducing the minimum percentage of votes to serve in the Turkish parliament from its current 10 percent, would probably do the job. For Syria, the formula for peace would be much the same, with the added move of restoring citizenship to almost half a million now stateless Kurds. But that is only likely to happen after a ceasefire and a political settlement of the civil war. The Iraqi government will have to bite the bullet, recognize that an autonomous Kurdish area is a reality, and work out a deal to share oil and gas revenue. As long as Iran is faced with an attack by the U.S. and/or Israel, that country's Kurds will be out in the cold. The U.S. and its allies should keep in mind that sanctions and threats of war make a peaceful resolution of long-standing grievances by Iran's minorities, which also include Azeris, Baluchs, and Arabs, impossible. If the U.S. is truly concerned about minorities in Iran it should find a way to negotiate with the Teheran government over Teheran's nuclear program. But the Iranian government, too, would do well to seriously engage with its Kurdish population. Autonomy for the Kurds is out of the bag and not about to go back in, regardless of what the final outcome in Syria and Turkey are. Sooner or later, Iran will have to confront the same issue that governments in Damascus, Ankara and Baghdad now face: recognition and autonomy, or war and instability. Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com Source URL: http://portside.org/2013-08-27/kurds-opportunity-peril Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/ "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

"1,000 days of meals to the needy later, and Raleigh wants to arrest us?"

"1,000 days of meals to the needy later, and Raleigh wants to arrest us?" by Patrick O'Neill Garner NC CW - Aug 26. 2013, NewsObserver.com http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/26/3138383/1000-days-of-meals-to-the-nee dy.html (PATRICK O'NEILL of Garner is cofounder of the Fr. Charlie Mulholland Catholic Worker House, an intentional Christian community that helps to feed the hungry at Moore Square.) "I was hungry and you fed me" - Jesus "Feed the hungry and you will be arrested" - Raleigh police That's actually what happened last weekend to several groups of regulars who feed the hungry and homeless at Moore Square. After telling Bill Burkey, a St. Mary Mother of the Church parishioner from Garner who supervises the fourth Saturday meal each month, to leave with his table full of food or face arrest, police officers followed him to a second location near Moore Square - again threatening arrest. Our regular Saturday afternoon group eventually was welcomed onto private property to distribute the food to Raleigh's neediest. The same thing had happened Saturday morning when police officers moved in on Love Wins Ministries and tried to shut down its weekend breakfast meal, which has been going on undisturbed by the powers-that-be for six years of Saturdays and Sundays. The Rev. Hugh Hollowell, founder and director of Love Wins Ministries, asked the Raleigh officer why feeding the hungry was an arrestable offense. "He said that he was not going to debate me," Hollowell wrote on his blog. " 'I am just telling you what is,' the officer said. 'Now you pass out that food, you will go to jail.' " The Saturday afternoon group, founded by the Catholic Worker in 1992, has maintained a 4 p.m. soupline for more than 1,000 consecutive Saturdays. During those years, several hundred volunteers from numerous Wake County congregations have joined in this effort to keep a little decent food in the bellies of our community's poorest, most neglected citizens. In recent years, as we watched the magnificent and swift gentrification of downtown Raleigh, some of us worried that pressure would one day be applied to our work with the poor. As more well-to-do folks moved in, we figured many of them might not want to be confronted with the reality that in their midst are other folks made in the image and likeness of God, who are unable to make ends meet in our wealthy city. Many sleep outdoors year-round. Many are mentally ill. Many suffer from chronic health problems. Many die young. A few times over the years, some local business owners have grumbled that the homeless around Moore Square were hurting their businesses by begging and leaving litter around. We did manage to get the city to give us some extra trash cans, but recently the cans were removed away from where the food is distributed. Once, we were asked to move our soupline a few blocks away from the commercial district. We respectfully refused. Moving the homeless and poor into obscurity (out of sight, out of mind) might assuage the guilt of "we the privileged," but at a great spiritual cost. Jesus said the poor would always be with us, but he also told us what our responsibility is to the poor: to recognize the presence of God in each person we meet, to welcome them as if we were welcoming God, to care for them and to give them food and drink. In other words, the poor provide us with access to God's grace; as we do unto the least of these, we do unto God. So we cut ourselves off from the poor at our own spiritual peril. Those of us who feed the poor at Moore Square have come to realize that perhaps we need the poor even more than they need us. From us they get a good meal. From them, we receive the love of God. For years, I have been reading the good news about downtown Raleigh's being a great place to live and to socialize, about how the economic revival has been a boost to the economy. All that may be true, but in more than two decades at Moore Square, I have seen little or no major improvements to the lives of Raleigh's neediest. Our soupline is still long, homelessness still abounds and the Wake County jail is full of destitute people who don't get the help they need to overcome poverty, substance abuse and sickness. If Raleigh really wants to be a city of distinction, that status is best measured by how we treat the poor among us. Sitting at outdoor cafes, eating good food and drinking fine wine make for a great quality of life if you can afford it. Loving and serving the poor make for a great quality of eternal life. We've been told that the city's law and public safety committee will decide what the future will be for the various Moore Square ministries. Please let Raleigh elected officials know how you feel about threats to arrest those who take food to the poor.

ACLU Reveals FBI Hacking Contractors

http://www.nationofchange.org/aclu-reveals-fbi-hacking-contractors-1377611018#comments ACLU Reveals FBI Hacking Contractors By Pratap Chatterjee James Bimen Associates of Virginia and Harris Corporation of Florida have contracts with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to hack into computers and phones of surveillance targets, according to Chris Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. “Bimen and Harris employees actively hack into target computers for the FBI,” Soghoian told CorpWatch. James Bimen Associates did not return phone calls asking for comment. Jaime O’Keefe, a spokesman for Harris, and Jennifer Shearer, an FBI spokeswoman, both declined to comment for this story. However, the FBI has not denied these capabilities. The agency “hires people who have hacking skill, and they purchase tools that are capable of doing these things,” a former official in the FBI’s cyber division told the Wall Street Journal recently. “When you do, it’s because you don’t have any other choice.” Soghoian verified the information from other sources, after uncovering the information from Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) and other publicly available information. “The government doesn’t have the resources to directly monitor every American or let alone every foreigner but they want to read the communications of every foreigner and they want to collect information on every American,” explains Soghoian. “What do you do when you don’t have the manpower to collect everyone’s communications?” The answer, he says, is spy software. This is not unprecedented among government agencies. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bought commercial products from a company named SpectorSoft in Florida to track five staff whom they suspected of whistleblowing in 2009. The software allowed them to capture “screen images from the government laptops of five scientists as they were being used at work or at home, tracked their keystrokes, intercepted their personal e-mails, copied the documents on their personal thumb drives and even followed their messages line by line as they were being drafted,” the New York Times reported last year. Other companies like Gamma International from Germany and Hacking Team from Italy have also been aggressively marketing their products for purchase by local police officers. A number of national governments like Egypt and Mexico have also reportedly bought such systems that allow them to listen to regular phone and Skype conversations and read email. But what agencies like the FBI are now worried about is that individuals are “going dark” by using freely available encryption software to prevent their email and phone conversations to be captured by law enforcement agencies. In order to combat this, Soghoian says the FBI wanted custom designed products, so they turned to a little known internal team named the “Remote Operations Unit” inside the Operational Technology Division, which set up a project called “Going Dark”. Eric Chuang, the head of the Remote Operations Unit in Quantico, Virginia, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and a law degree from Temple University in Philadelphia, was put in charge of this task. Bimen Associates, which has its headquarters in McLean, Virginia, near the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, provided custom designed software tools developed exclusively for the FBI to crack encrypted conversations, says Soghoian. Agency staff and contractors access computers of suspects remotely to install this software to allow them to watch everything that the target types or says. In February 2008, Bimen Associates hired Amanda Hemmila, a former U.S. Air Force computer technician, who was working on an online undergraduate degree in computer science with Grantham University in Missouri, to help test their new software. Hemmila’s LinkedIn resume says that she was responsible for “building, testing, deploying, maintaining and tracking software kits and hardware deployed from the Remote Operations Unit Deployment Operations Center” as well as training them in “processing and viewing software and providing End User phone support.” She also helped write policies, guidance and training material to keep the software secret. After spending a little over a year at Bimen Associates, Hemmila returned to her studies and graduated in 2012. A few months after she left, Mark Muller, who had an undergraduate degree in information technology from George Mason university, went to work for Bimen Associates in Quantico. Muller says he wrote up the standard operating procedures for the FBI to use proprietary company software “we use to gain access to criminal subject machines in the field.” He also conducted “pre-deployment meetings with the FBI agents and management to coordinate details of a case and implement an operational plan to track a subject(s).” After the agents completed monitoring of a target, Muller says he archived information on “previous implant(s) installed on subject’s machine, if any, as a knowledge base for the field agents.” Bimen Associates does not appear to be a big or well known intelligence contractor – the only public contract that the company has been awarded lists zero income – but it is well connected. Jerry Menchhoff, president of Bimen Associates, has been with the company since it was founded in 1998, after working for Booz Allen Hamilton, a company famous for two other employees – James Clapper and Michael McConnell, both of whom have worked as U.S. director of national intelligence, the top spy job in the country. (Booz also made the news more recently when Edward Snowden, another former employee, blew the whistle on the surveillance activities of the U.S. National Security Agency). The other company that supplies tracking software to the FBI is Melbourne, Florida-based Harris Corporation, which has been awarded almost seven million dollars in contracts by the agency since 2001, mostly for radio communication equipment. In 1999 Harris designed the software for the agency’s National Crime Information Centre database that keeps track of criminal histories, fugitives, missing persons, and stolen property. Harris made it into the news a couple of years ago when the Wall Street Journal revealed that the company was selling a gadget called a “Stingray” to the FBI that allows the agency to track cellphone locations of users without their knowledge. At the time Sherry Sabol, chief of the Science & Technology Office for the FBI’s Office of General Counsel, refused to provide any background on the subject because she said that information about Stingrays and related technology was “considered Law Enforcement Sensitive, since its public release could harm law enforcement efforts by compromising future use of the equipment.” However, legal depositions by FBI agents, together with contract data dating back to 2002, confirmed the existence of the Stingray. The big question is whether or not the FBI obtains warrants before using tracking software. In the case of the Stingray, the agency claimed that it was okay to use such devices without obtaining a warrant, on the grounds that it was like tracking down phone numbers, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled is permissible. But privacy advocates say that tracking the “metadata” of phone and computer communications and the information on it involves a far greater invasion of privacy, and should require a warrant from a judge. (This discussion is still ongoing in the courts, notably after a U.S. court ruled it was okay for the government to track cell phone location data without a warrant). Soghoian believes there needs to be a public debate on the use and potential misuse of these tools. “There hasn’t been a (Congressional) debate about the FBI getting into the hacking business,” Soghoian told attendees at DEFCON, an annual hacker convention that took place earlier this month in Las Vegas. “People should understand that local cops are going to be hacking into surveillance targets. Particularly for dragnet searches where they want to do a keyword search or a social network analysis, you need everyone’s communications.” This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/aclu-reveals-fbi-hacking-contractors-1377611018. All rights are reserved. Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/ "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Baltimore Activist Alert - July 25 - August 8, 2013

27] Trash – July 25 28] Folks need housing – July 25 - 26 29] Bradley Manning sketch artist need rides – July 25 30] DIRTY WARS opens at Charles – July 26 31] Close Gitmo – July 26 32] Justice in Palestine/Israel – July 26 33] Support Bradley Manning – July 26 34] Silent peace vigil against gun violence – July 26 35] Ballroom dancing – July 26 36] Olney Peace vigil – July 27 37] West Chester, PA demo – July 27 38] Rally for Peace in Korea – July 27 39] Protest Drone War Command Center – July 27 40] Silent vigil at Capitol – July 27 41] “Memory of Forgotten War” – July 27 42] Gardening – July 28 43] Peace and Pancakes – July 28 44] Pentagon Vigil – July 29 45] Marc Steiner on WEAA – July 29 – Aug. 2 46] Paid Sick Days Canvass – July 29 47] Pledge of Resistance/Fund Our Communities meeting – July 29 48] Anti-drone ad deadline – July 29 49] Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemorations – Aug. 6 & 8 50] CodePink needs help 51] Max is seeking a place to live 52] Support the Transform Now Plowshares 53] Drones Quilt Project 54] Support Red Emma’s in its move 55] Sign up with Washington Peace Center 56] Join Fund Our Communities 57] Submit articles to Indypendent Reader 58] Donate books, videos, DVDs and records 59] Do you need any book shelves or file cabinets? 60] Join Global Zero campaign 61] War Is Not the Answer signs for sale 62] Fire & Faith 63] Join Peace Park Antinuclear Vigil 27] – Communities on the Frontlines of Environmental Justice, Zero Waste & Climate Resilience are gathering on Thurs., July 25 from 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM at Friends of the Earth, 1100 15th St. NW. Join Institute for Policy Studies for a briefing that will include community organizers and allied groups involved in these struggles, followed by a strategy discussion about reversing this dangerous deregulation of trash. 28] – There are 4-8 people from the Syracuse Peace Council coming down to attend Bradley Manning's trial and rally from July 24-26, and I'm hoping to find them some housing in the Baltimore or D.C. area. They aim to arrive the evening of July 24, attend court (if in session) on July 25, the rally at Ft McNair on the 26th, and then leave that evening. Contact Mike McKee, BMSN, at 215-888-1570 if you can help with housing. 29] – Kay Rudin, one of the sketch artists who's been attending the Bradley Manning court martial and turning out some nice renderings of the proceedings, is seeking housing so that she can stay and cover the rest of the court martial. Can you offer space for her for that full stretch of time to accommodate a guest for a block of 3-4 days at a time. If you can help, call Mike--215-888-1570. 30] – The film "Dirty Wars" opens at The Charles Theatre on Fri., July 26, and is playing until Thurs., July 31; though if ticket sales are strong, it could be extended. It features independent journalist Jeremy Scahill, the New York Times bestselling author of "Blackwater" and now "Dirty Wars" (the book on which the film is based). The film won the Cinematography Prize at Sundance. Variety says it is "astonishingly hard-hitting" and adds: "This jaw-dropping, persuasively researched pic has the power to pry open government lockboxes." You can see the trailer here: http://dirtywars.org/trailer. 31] – A peace vigil takes place every Friday from noon to 1 PM at Lafayette Park facing the White House. Join the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker and friends. On July 26, as it seems the hunger strike continues, the vigil will Support Guantanamo Hunger Strikers--Close Guantanamo & End Indefinite Detention. The men detained at the U.S. prison in Guantánamo are engaged in a large-scale hunger strike, which began in early February. The vast majority of the 166 prisoners have been held for more than 11 years without any charge or fair trial, with no end to their detention in sight. Demand that President Obama use his authority to close Guantánamo! See www.witnesstorture.org. Email h.schietinger@verizon.net. 32] – A vigil for Justice in Palestine/Israel takes place every Friday from noon to 1 PM at 19th & JFK Blvd., Philadelphia (across from Israeli Consulate. It is sponsored by Bubbies & Zaydes (Grandparents) for Peace in the Middle East. Email cswartz@pil.net. Go to http://phillyjewishpeace.org/. 33] – Whistleblower Bradley Manning, after more than 3 years in prison before trial, he still faces possible life imprisonment under the government's "Aiding the Enemy" charge. Join the Bradley Manning support network on Fri., July 26 at 3 PM. Rally near the Waterfront Metro station in Washington D.C. at 4th and P Sts. SW, and march to Ft. McNair to tell Convening Authority Major General Buchanan to do the right thing and free Manning! Convening Authorities regularly reduce the sentence of soldiers convicted at trial, but if he is to make such a brave move Gen. Buchanan needs to hear our voices. 34] – There is a silent peace vigil on Fri., July 26 from 5 to 6 PM outside the Cathedral of the Incarnation, University Parkway and St. Paul St. The vigil is sponsored by Homewood Friends and Stony Run Meetings, and was recently moved because of the construction on Charles St. War Is Not the Answer. End gun violence. 35] – There is an opportunity to participate in ballroom dancing, usually every Friday of the month, in the JHU ROTC Bldg. at 8 PM. Turn south on San Martin Dr. from the intersection of Univ. Parkway and 39th St. Drive on campus by taking the third left turn. The next dance will be July 26. Call Dave Greene at 410-599-3725. 36] – Friends House, 17715 Meeting House Rd., Sandy Spring, MD 20860, hosts a peace vigil every Saturday, 10:30 to 11:30 AM, on the corner of Rt. 108 and Georgia Ave. [Route 97] in Olney, MD. The next vigil is July 27. Call Chuck Harker at 301-570-7167. 37] – Each Saturday, 11 AM – 1 PM, Chester County Peace Movement holds a peace vigil in West Chester in front of the Chester County Courthouse, High & Market Sts. Go to www.ccpeace.org. Email ccpeacemovement@aol.com. 38] – Rally for Peace in Korea on Sat., July 27 at 11 AM at Lafayette Park, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Gather to call on the U.S. to work for peace in Korea. July 27th will be the 60th Anniversary of the signing of the Korean War Armistice - and yet there is still no Peace Treaty to truly end that war, and we remain on the verge of renewed conflict on the peninsula Email endthekoreanwar.org@gmail.com. 39] – There will be a peace vigil on the West Lawn of the Capitol at noon on Sat., July 27. Look for the blue banner with the message, "Seek Peace and Pursue It.--Psalms 34:14." The vigil lasts one hour and is silent except when one responds to the occasional questions. Go to http://www.quaker.org/langleyhill/seekpeace.htm or email seekpeacevigil@yahoo.com. 40] – The monthly demonstrations at Horsham Air Guard Station (Easton & County Line Roads) will continue on the last Saturday of each month through September as part of the campaign to stop the planned drone command center announced to open by October 1. On Sat., July 27 from noon until 2 PM, be at the demonstration at the Horsham Air Guard Station, site of the planned Drone War Command Center, Route #611/Easton Road & County Line Road, Horsham, PA. Visit www.brandywinepeace.com or call 610-544-1818. 41] – See “Memory of Forgotten War” screening on Sat., July 27 at 7 PM at Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Rd. NW. This is part of the Korean Peace Weekend. Following the film, there will be a Q&A with co-director Ramsay Liem and a panel featuring: Stephen McNeil (American Friends Service Committee), Sarah Sloan (ANSWER Coalition), and Hyuk-Kyo Suh (National Association of Korean Americans). There will also be a screening of a short by Veterans For Peace to end the Korean War and a solidarity photo booth. Mail endthekoreanwar.org@gmail.com. 42] – Usually, the Baltimore Ethical Society, 306 W. Franklin St., Suite 102, Baltimore 21201-4661, meets on Sundays, and generally there is a speaker and discussion from 10:30 to noon. On Sun., July 28 the platform address is “Master Gardening and the 'Grow It, Eat It' Project,” led by Rosalie Donatelli, master gardener, BES Member. Donatelli has always embraced the natural path believing that "you are what you eat." She finds true solace and peace working the earth, planting the seed, nurturing the crops, and relishing the harvest. She will share her experience as a Master Gardener - her commitment to the work and the rewards it offers - as well as news about Maryland’s “Grow It, Eat It” project that aims to get 1 million Marylanders to grow edible plants to improve health. Go to http://bmorethical.org/ or Twitter: @bmorethical or Facebook: http://fb.com/bmorethical/or email ask@bmorethical.org. 43] – Join the Kadampa Meditation Center for Peace and Pancakes on Sundays at 10:30 AM at KMC Maryland, 2937 North Charles St. All are invited to participate in guided meditation and chant praying for world peace. There will be a talk based on Buddhist thought followed by brunch. Call 410- 243-3837. Brunch is $5. 44] – There is a weekly Pentagon Peace Vigil from 7 to 8 AM on Mondays, since 1987, outside the Pentagon Metro stop. The next vigil is Mon., July 29, and it is sponsored by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker. Email artlaffin@hotmail.com or call 202-882-9649. 45] – The Marc Steiner Show airs Monday through Friday from 9 to 11 AM on WEAA 88.9 FM, The Voice of the Community, or online at www.weaa.org. The call-in number is 410-319-8888, and comments can also be sent by email to steinershow@gmail.com. All shows are also available as podcasts at www.steinershow.org. 46] – Join a Paid Sick Days Canvass at the screening of “Norma Rae” on Mon., July 29 at 6:30 PM at the National Mall between 7th & 12th St. Join AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps and Jews United for Justice for a Paid Sick Days for All canvass at Screen on the Green. Walk around and tell folks about the importance of Paid Sick Days laws, then sit down -- with snacks and blankets -- and enjoy NORMA RAE. Go to https://www.facebook.com/events/calendar. 47] – The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore usually meets on Mondays at 7:30 PM, and the meetings take place at Max’s residence. There will be a meeting on Mon., July 29. The proposed agenda will include supporting Bradley Manning, Ed Snowden and Julian Assange, DIRTY WARS, GMO legislation and Hiroshima-Nagasaki activities. Call 410-366-1637 or email mobuszewski at verizon.net for directions. 48] – Members and friends of Pax Christi-Baltimore: The deadline for signing on to the anti-drone ad has been extended to Mon., July 29! The goal is 200 to 250 signatures. Pax Christi Metro DC (with the cooperation of Pax Christi Baltimore) is posting an ad in the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) in August, demanding an end to armed drone warfare. Sign-on through www.paxchristimetrodc.org. To sign on and make a donation toward the cost of publication, go to http://www.paxchristimetrodc.org and click on the Donate button on the left, which takes you to a page where you can choose to pay either by PayPal or credit card. Then, click on “Add Special Instructions to the Seller” on the following page, and note that the payment is for the NCR Anti-Drone Ad. State exactly how you would like your name(s) to appear. The suggested donation is $20 for each person or couple signing on to the ad. Look for our ad in the August 16 edition of NCR! 49] – For the 29th year, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee will remember the atomic bombings of Japan on August 6 & 9, 1945, which killed more than 200,000 people. Other organizations involved in the commemorations are Baltimore Quaker Peace and Justice Committee of Homewood and Stony Run Meetings, Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility, Crabshell Alliance and Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore. The HIROSHIMA COMMEMORATION is on Tues., Aug. 6, and starts at 33rd & N. Charles Sts. at 5 PM. Demonstrate against Johns Hopkins University’s weapons contracts, including research on killer drones, commemorate the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and remember the nuclear energy disaster at Fukushima, Japan. At 6 PM, there will be a potluck dinner at Homewood Friends Meeting, 3107 N. Charles Street. At 7 PM, a Hibakusha guest, Setsuko Thurlow, will speak about the atomic bombing. At 7:30 PM, there will be a performance of an anti-killer drone strike play – THE PREDATOR by Jack Gilory. The NAGASAKI COMMEMORATION is on Thurs., Aug. 8 at Homewood Friends Meeting, 3107 N. Charles St. At 7 PM, remember Nagasaki with the DVD showing of THE MAN WHO SA VED THE WORLD, followed by a discussion led by Dr. Art Milholland. At 8:30 PM, join a discussion of the nuclear energy disaster at Fukushima. Call 410-366-1637 or email mobuszewski at Verizon.net. 50] – CODEPINK needs a new office and storage space! The group must vacate its current space by the end of August. Know of any office spaces? How about temporary space to store some of the supplies? The group is also looking for spare computers. Any help you can give is much appreciated. Contact tighecp@gmail.com. 51] – Max is seeking a place to live. Let him know of any possibilities. He can be reached at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.dot net. 52] – You can support the Transform Now Plowshares resisters by writing the judge and the prisoners. Greg Boertje-Obed, Michael Walli and Megan Rice are currently in the Irwin County Detention Facility in Ocilla, GA, awaiting their sentencing on September 23, 2013. The three were found guilty by a jury in Tennessee in May on two counts. Judge Amul Thapar revoked their pre-trial release saying they were technically guilty of a crime of violence and must be held. Here are the addresses: Gregory Boertje-Obed 22090 Irwin County Detention Center 132 Cotton Drive, Ocilla, GA 31774 ***Michael Walli 4444, Irwin County Detention Center, 132 Cotton Drive, Ocilla, GA 31774. Megan Rice 22100, Irwin County Detention Center, 132 Cotton Drive, Ocilla, GA 31774. You must make sure to include your entire return address on the outside of the envelope. No staples or paperclips can be included in your mail; no oversized envelopes. Magazines and books must be sent directly from the publisher or bookstore/Amazon. Photocopies of brief articles are likely to be permitted (based on our past experience). If you include inappropriate material or fail to comply with these rules, your mail will not get through—it will be returned to you. The second thing you can do is send a letter to Judge Thapar. We have suggested guidelines for your letter, and we are asking people to send their letter to Bill Quigley, lawyer for Mike Walli (address below), so they can be collected and delivered to the judge. If you want to send a copy of your letter to us, that would be great—our address is also below. Invite Judge Thapar to think about sentencing in light of the fact that this was an act of nonviolent civil disobedience intended to awaken the conscience of the nation, and no evidence was presented that it was an act of terrorism meant to harm anyone. You could write that you share the court's concern that Congress would write a law that wouldn’t allow a judge to distinguish between peace activists and terrorists, and are disturbed that the government defines the crime they stand convicted of as a violent "crime of terrorism.” As testimony of the defendants showed during trial, they carried out their action in a spirit of nonviolence and hope. Without making it the focus of the letter, you could mention that the action was carried out with the clear understanding of the illegality and immorality of nuclear weapons, and intent to uphold higher laws. Encourage him to consider downward departures from the high guidelines for the charges, and to use his discretion at sentencing to bring more justice into the situation by recognizing that the defendants are NOT violent terrorists as the government has implied through its interpretation of the crime; and remind him of the intentions of the three nonviolent activists: to follow the words of the prophet Isaiah to beat swords into plowshares, and build a safer and more secure world for all. Our purpose with these letters is not to reargue the case, nor is it to condemn nuclear weapons production—the judge is not engaging those issues at this time. Our purpose is to address the legal system’s distortion of the nonviolent action of the TNP resisters and to provide support to the judge for a sentencing decision that takes into account the nature of their action and their nonviolent behavior throughout their action. Letters should be sent to US District Judge Amul R Thapar, c/o Professor Bill Quigley, Loyola Law Clinic and Center for Social Justice, 7214 St. Charles Ave., Campus Box 902, New Orleans, LA 70118. If you care to send a copy to OREPA that would also be appreciated--orep@earthlink.net or OREPA, PO Box 5743, Oak Ridge, TN 37831. 53] – The launch of the website to support the U.S. version of the Drones Quilt Project was developed to memorialize the victims of U.S. combat drone strikes. Leah Bolger has about 185 names, and at present there are over 40 completed blocks. Soon the blocks will be sown together to create panels of quilt blocks. She will create educational information about killer drones to accompany the quilts as part of a traveling exhibit. To support the project visit www.dronesquiltproject.wordpress.com. The completed blocks are shown on the web site. The web site also contains information about creating a block, anti-drone resources and endorsing organizations. Follow the project on Twitter: @dronesproject. 54] – Red Emma's has closed the location at 800 St. Paul St., and is reopening in a much larger new space on North Avenue in the fall. The collective is seeking your help. It's time to reinvent the project started in 2004 to build a self-sustaining progressive space in Baltimore, committed to providing a daily reminder that another world was possible and that there were people working in the city to build it. Here's how you can help: donate money, provide skilled help, and share these needs. Email john@redemmas.org or go to http://indiegogo.com/redemmas2. 55] – The Washington Peace Center has a progressive calendar & activist alert! Consider signing up to receive its weekly email: info@washingtonpeacecenter.org. 56] – Fund Our Communities campaign is a grass roots movement to get support from local organizations and communities to work together with their local and state elected officials to pressure Congresspersons and senators to join with Congresspersons Barney Frank and Ron Paul, who have endorsed a 25% cut to the federal military budget. Bring home the savings to state and county governments to meet the local needs which are under tremendous budget pressures. Go to www.OurFunds.org. 57] – MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD. Baltimore's Indypendent Reader is looking for individuals interested in creating media - written, photo, audio, or video - that relates to issues like...economic justice, race, prisons & policing, environment, gender & sexuality, war & peace and more! If you would like to create social justice media, then email indypendentreader@gmail.com. Visit http://www.indyreader.org. 58] – If you would like to get rid of books, videos, DVDs or records, contact Max at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.net. 59] – Can you use any book shelves? Can you use any file cabinets? Contact Max at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.net. 60] – Join an extraordinary global campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons: http://www.globalzero.org/sign-declaration. A growing group of leaders around the world is calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons and a majority of the global public agrees. This is an historic window of opportunity. With momentum already building in favor of Zero, a major show of support from people around the world could tip the balance. When it comes to nuclear weapons, one is one too many. 61] – WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER signs from Friends Committee on National Legislation are again for sale at $5. To purchase a sign, call Max at 410-366-1637. 62] – Go online for FIRE AND FAITH: The Catonsville Nine File. On May 17, 1968, nine people entered the Selective Service Offices in Catonsville, Maryland, and burned draft records in protest against the war in Vietnam. View http://www.prattlibrary.org/digital/. 63] – Peace Park Antinuclear Vigil takes place every day in Lafayette Park, 1601 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 24 hours a day, since June 3, 1981. Go to http://prop1.org; call 202-682-4282. Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/. "One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better" - Daniel Berrigan

Only a Peace Conference, Not Air Strikes, Can Stop Further Bloodshed

Published on Portside (http://portside.org) Only a Peace Conference, Not Air Strikes, Can Stop Further Bloodshed http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/only-a-peace-conference-not-air-strikes-can-stop-further-bloodshed-8784836.html Patrick Cockburn Monday, August 26, 2013 The Independent UK American, British and French air strikes by planes or missiles look probable in retaliation for the alleged use of poison gas by the Syrian army against people in rebel-held areas of Damascus. Controversy rages about whether or not this is the right thing to do, an argument coloured by memories of official mendacity over Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction in 2003 and Nato's destruction of Muammar Gaddafi's regime in 2011 under the guise of a limited humanitarian operation. What armed intervention by foreign powers in Syria will not do is bring an end to the present bloody stalemate in the two-and-a-half-year-old civil war. But governments in Washington, London and Paris should realise that in one respect the slaughter by chemical weapons of hundreds of people in Damascus on 21 August is an opportunity as well as a crime. It is an opportunity because the chemical weapons atrocity and the crisis it has provoked show that the Syrian civil war cannot be left to fester. Previously, there was a shallow belief that, like the 15-year-long Lebanese civil war between 1975 and 1990, the Syrian war was basically containable. This hope has ebbed over the past year as sectarian and ethnic violence in Syria has spread to Lebanon and Iraq. The use of poison gas is the grossest sign, but not the only one, that the level of violence is spiralling out of control inside Syria. While the world has been focusing on the horrors in Damascus over the past week, anti-government rebels have been carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Syrian Kurds in the north-east of the country, forcing 40,000 of them to flee across the Tigris into northern Iraq in less than a week. So many are trying to escape in what the United Nations says is the biggest single refugee exodus of the war that the pontoon bridge across the Tigris they were using is near collapse and has had to be closed, trapping tens of thousands of terrified Kurds inside Syria. The sense of urgency among foreign powers generated by the present crisis should be used to launch the much-delayed peace negotiations in Geneva. A peace conference between the warring sides was proposed by the US and Russia in May, but has been repeatedly postponed. It is unrealistic to imagine for now that negotiations between people whose prime aim is to kill each other will lead to any long-term political solution for Syria. The priority should rather be to prevent the continuing escalation in the violence and the further disintegration of Syrian society. A ceasefire is the greatest need, in which power-sharing would be geographical with each side holding the territory it controls. Such a truce should put in place and monitored by UN teams. It might not cover all the country and would no doubt be frequently breached, but it would be better than the present bloody anarchy. There were hundreds of ceasefires during the Lebanese civil war and they were regarded with cynicism by the Lebanese, but thousands more people would have died without them. Why has a peace conference not happened before? Within Syria the main reason is that government and opposition each believe they can still win and do not contemplate sharing power with anybody. President Bashar al-Assad's forces have made limited advances since they captured in June the strategic rebel stronghold of Qusayr outside the city of Homs, 100 miles north of Damascus. Most important, Assad's foreign allies - Russia, Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon - have stood firm and shown that they are not going to allow him to be defeated. The rebels do not want to negotiate with government in part because they are so fragmented that they would find it difficult to agree a negotiating team which represented the different strands of opposition. There are 1,200 different rebel military units in Syria by one estimate, varying in size from family bands of a few dozen fighters to small armies of well-organised and heavily armed militiamen deploying tanks and artillery. The most powerful of the latter are the al-Qa'ida-linked al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Speaking of the Free Syrian Army, to which the US and its allies may send arms, a diplomat in Damascus expressed, saying: "How can they support the FSA, which doesn't really exist inside Syria as an institution with any command and control?" Ever since a peace conference was first mooted there has been a strong element of hypocrisy in the Western approach. At first, Britain, among others, said that President Assad would not be part of any political transition in Syria and there were propagandistic discussions in the foreign media about where he and his family might seek refuge. This was at a time he controlled all 14 Syrian provincial capitals (he has since lost one, Raqqa, to jihadi groups). The US is generally negative over whether Iran could attend a peace conference, as Russia insists, though negotiations which exclude any major player in the Syria crisis are not going to achieve anything. Could the US and Russia force their respective allies to attend a peace conference, negotiate seriously and at least agree to a ceasefire? The chances here are better than they look because both the Syrian government and the opposition wholly depend on outside military and financial support. Look how quickly Assad agreed to the UN chemical weapons inspection team being allowed to enter rebel areas in Damascus when Russia and Iran insisted that he should do so. Given the current chaos, the sniping at UN vehicles was predictable. There is greater pessimism about the opposition having the coherence to negotiate and agree to anything. They continue to hope that the US and its allies will be finally forced to intervene militarily and they will be able to advance under an American air umbrella, like the opposition Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in 2002 or the Libyan militiamen in 2011. One of the dangers of the air strikes now being considered by the US is that, unless they are accompanied by a fresh drive towards a peace conference, the opposition thinks it is half way to getting the Western powers to win the war for it. Nevertheless, the opposition can be pressured by their foreign backers, supposing they wish to do so. Peace conferences have the best chance of succeeding when one side knows it has won and wants to formalise its victory while the defeated want the best terms possible. Alternatively, peace negotiations may be productive when both sides are exhausted and come to realise they are not going to win a complete victory. The danger of supplying more weapons to the opposition is that it is not going to enable them to win but will simply fuel the level of the fighting. Syria has a failed government and a failed opposition. As the country disintegrates it is being overrun by warlords with no interest in peace. "They stole all our things, our home, our possessions so even the children start to hate life," lamented one Syrian Kurdish refugee fleeing to Iraq this week. Another talked about those who had driven her from her village: "We don't know them. They just come, take power and give themselves a name." Source URL: http://portside.org/2013-08-26/only-peace-conference-not-air-strikes-can-stop-further-bloodshed Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/ "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs