MoPress

Author: mopress

  • Muniz to Schwarzenegger

    Governor Schwarzenegger:

    On December 13, 2005, the state of California will decide whether to execute Stanley "Tookie" Williams, or to grant him clemency. We urge Mexicanos, Hispanics and Latinos to pray for the life of Mr. Williams. My husband, Ramiro "Ramsey" Muniz, Mexicano political prisoner, has actively sent letters requesting that the life of Mr. Williams be spared. He has been holding daily prayer meetings among political prisoners for the life of Mr. Williams.

    We recognize and thank individuals and groups including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Bianca Jagger, the NAACP, Mike Farrell, Snoop Dogg, and William’s attorney, Peter Fleming, Jr. of New York.

    Mr. Williams has written nine books that warn children not to join gangs. Supporters worldwide have nominated Mr. Williams for the Nobel Peace Prize five times. The nomination speaks of the reformed character of Stanley "Tookie" Williams.

    Irma L. Muniz

    http://www.freeramsey.com

  • Profecia by Ramsey Muniz

    Hermanos y Hermanas Mexicanos de Aztlan:

    "The Mexikans (Mexicanos) lived the great philosophical themes with a keenness which no other civilization in the ancient world ever did. For them life was only a brief passage and nothingness ruled the world. But for the Mexikas, (me-shee-kas) those themes were not just philosophical ideas; they were a religion (spirituality), which gave meaning to every moment of their existence. Completely at the mercy of the gods, mortal men lived in somber devotion with a view to the supreme moment when they would once again be joined with their ancestors, in the timeless beyond."
    –The Mexican Dream

    My sisters and brothers, we are presently building a strong Nahualtan attitude in Aztlan and soon we will join nuestra raza in the Holy Land (Mexico). We must remember that our Nahualtan attitude and love in our hearts are the temple and mastermind. The Nahualtan mastermind has always been a harmonious alliance of nuestra raza in Aztlan and the Holy Land. Mexikan thought, culture and spirituality depend on this alliance.

    The presence of our sisters and brothers in the Holy Land means a lot to me in terms of sharing our culture and spirituality. We must fashion our Mexicano spirituality with nuestra raza, or it will come to nothingness.

    There are strong and determined Nahualtan men behind the walls and dungeons. This makes my life and work behind the wire worthwhile. In this development of our Sixth Sun cultural/spiritual movement we must become aware of Hispanic/Latino Pharisees, for they are ex-natives who will work against Aztlan consciousness.

    "Every "la raza" political leader must be the representative of our cultural/spiritual enlightenment or "la raza" leadership is of no value."

    There are many here in Aztlan preparing to carry out "La Profecia" de nuestra gente, as written in the Christian New Testament in the Book of John, which states, "The truth shall set you free." We have truth, destiny, faith, and love on our side and even from the dungeons of this oppressor I have witnessed the visions of the liberation of Aztlan. I have witnessed the reunion of our people in Aztlan with our raza from our Holy Land (Mexico).

    I have witnessed our finally becoming one as we were from the beginning of our creation – Mexicanos/Mexicanas. We were no longer Chicanos, Hispanics or Latinos. We all finally became one and at the same time became one of the most intelligent races on this earth. We were now one! Somos todos uno! No longer were we divided by the oppressor in believing that we are different here, in Aztlan, and from our Holy Land of Mexico.

    The time has come for us to embrace each other as one. We can no longer deny our ancient spiritual/cultural Mexika history. We cannot continue to deny the truth of our lives. Who are we? Why has it taken so long to accept the truth of ourselves? We can never be free nor will the liberation of Aztlan be a reality until we accept our existence on this world of ours.

    In short, I proudly share the words of our last Mexicano Emperor, Cuauhtemoc, as he spoke to our ancestors knowing that at the end he would die at the hands of the oppressor.

    "Fathers and mothers, do not forget to teach their children how it has been until now; this our beloved Anahuac — the defense and protection of our destiny and also our conduct that our ancestors received and our fathers enthusiastically planted into our being.

    Now we mandate our children also not forget to transmit to their children how it will be, how we will reunite, how we will rise again, how we will reach out, and how we will fulfill the great destiny of our race."

    Cuauhtemoc

    "I have been sentenced to death imprisonment. May my Mexika blood be the seed for the Mexicano spiritual liberation of the rising of our Sixth Sun in Aztlan."

    R. Muniz – Tezcatlipoca

    http://www.freeramsey.com

    [via email from Irma L. Muniz, Dec. 5, 2005–gm]

  • Just think of me as your new guidance counselor … Or just think

    By Susan Van Haitsma

    CommonDreams / IndyMedia Austin

    The message printed beneath the image of the stern drill sergeant on the US Marine Corps recruitment poster reads, “Just Think of Me as Your New Guidance Counselor.” The poster is displayed in the administrative area of my neighborhood high school on the office door of the two police officers assigned to the school. The police officer who put it there says that it is not a recruitment poster and that, because he is a Marine, he uses it as motivational for himself. Just down the hall are the school’s actual guidance counselors, and one of them expresses another view about the poster. Studying the image, she says quietly, “He doesn’t look like a guidance counselor. His eyes are steely. He doesn’t look like someone who would listen.”

    Drill instructors are looking toward ever-younger audiences. Among those marching in Austin’s recent Veterans Day parade, I noticed a group of Junior ROTC students who appeared to be child soldiers. I spoke later with one of them, a 6th grader who is enrolled in the program at his public middle school. I asked him what he learns in his JROTC class. “We learn how to march, and, well, we learn everything,” he said. “Everything?” I asked. “We learn how to be in the army,” he replied. Like the strange, contrary slogan, “An Army of One,” the guidance being given to this youngster pretends to offer a world of possibility, but it boils down to one direction.

    The week after Veterans Day, I had an opportunity to speak with US Army Staff Sergeant, Booker T. Newton during a demonstration at his recruiting station on National Stand Down Day. Joined by other activists, parents and veterans, several CodePink women and I, dressed in pink police uniforms, issued citations to the recruiters for morality violations related to their use of deceptive recruitment practices and their roles as accomplices to an immoral war.

    When Sergeant Newton learned that I was involved with Nonmilitary Options for Youth, he wanted to know what kinds of options we suggest. He was asking, he said, because more young people than usual are failing the academic tests required for enlistment, and he wonders what is happening or not happening in Texas schools to prepare students for the future. Like another Booker T. of a century ago, he was genuinely concerned about the state of public education, and although we disagreed about the best course of action, we discovered some common ground. He had guided one young person to a local AmeriCorps program that we promote. “After that, he’ll join the Army,” he said. “Or use his education award to go directly to college,” I countered, and he did not object to that possibility.

    Another recruiter at the station stressed to the assembled media that he was glad we were there, because we were exercising the freedoms that he believed he was defending through his role in the military. This is the standard and puzzling response often given by spokespersons of the military, an institution that suppresses the individual freedoms of its members. We tried to demonstrate that education – guiding one another to think critically – is a foundation upon which freedom depends.

    Last week, the Texas Supreme Court sidestepped an important opportunity to guide the Texas legislature toward improving a public education system that, by some standards, ranks lowest in the country. A friend, writer and educator, Greg Moses has been analyzing the situation in recent articles. He quotes some straightforward language from the Texas constitution of 1875: “A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.” Moses concludes, “Into this succinct line of reasoning is packed a serious claim. Where there is no suitable education, there can be no real hope of preserving rights and liberties.”

    The day before the Texas Supreme Court ruling that left school adequacy and equality issues unresolved, I was visiting a local high school to staff a literature table for Nonmilitary Options during the lunch periods. A fight broke out between two students in the hall near our table. My Air Force veteran colleague and I were the only older adults available at the moment the students began circling each other and putting up their fists. A crowd of students formed quickly around them. My colleague and I decided to place ourselves between the two young men and try to hold them apart. The only thing I could think to say as I held onto the shoulders of one of them was “It’s not worth it.” He would not make eye contact with me, but I sensed he would welcome a way out of the fight. Before long, school officials arrived, and a police officer grabbed the other young man, who resisted, was handcuffed and led away.

    “Books Not Bombs, Conscience Not Combat,” stated the large poster above our table as a backdrop to the fight. But how can I fault those young men for doing exactly what their country guides them to do? They can see plainly enough that the USA jumps right into the ring with fists pounding when there is conflict. The president of their country clearly chooses bombs over books. Young people can see the ways that school officials promote the military at the same time that they punish students for fighting. During the course of our tabling, a teacher stopped by and told us about a recent all-faculty meeting where military recruiters gave a 20-minute power-point presentation offering assistance with discipline in the school.

    Rather than more punishment and rigidity, I have to think that guidance, especially with teenagers, means trying our best to practice what we preach. Young people notice consistency. A role model who comes immediately to mind is a friend and colleague, Susan Quinlan, a former high school teacher who, along with a small group of volunteers at the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors in Oakland, California has developed a program called Alternatives to War through Education (AWE). Quinlan, a long-time war tax resister, is clear with students about her standpoint but encourages them to think for themselves and develop their own positions. Funny and creative, a natural in the classroom, she guides students through interactive exercises that help them explore and express their beliefs about killing and conscience. She also has begun an after-school class for students who are learning to organize events for their peers and facilitate presentations themselves.

    Mainly, Quinlan asks questions and listens to the answers. She is accompanied in the classroom by military veterans and conscientious objectors whose very presence as former soldiers who changed their minds about war is enough to cause students to stop and take notice. Quinlan and the AWE program are much in demand. The evolving curriculum offers a form of guidance that expands the mind, allowing students to follow the twists and turns along the many paths where rights and liberties lead. Students whose views are sought and valued are bound to ask questions in return. Such as why a drill sergeant who orders strict conformity is billed as a protector of freedom, and why schools allow drill sergeants in their hallways in the first place.

    ——-

    Van Haitsma is active with Nonmilitary Options for Youth and Austin Conscientious Objectors to Military Taxation. She can be reached at jeffjweb@sbcglobal.net. For more information about the Alternatives to War through Education (AWE) program, contact awe@objector.org

  • On Napoleon: Brief Remarks by a Friend of Peace (1822)

    Note: I hold in my hands a book printed in 1822 by Philo Pacificus (Noah Worcester) containing his “Solemn Review of the Custom of War” and several issues of the “Friend of Peace” journal. The third number of the journal begins with a lengthy review of “The Horrors of Napoleon’s Campaign in Russia” in the which the following section is inserted, titled:

    BRIEF REMARKS

    In the Russian campaign we have a view of the effects of war on a large scale. It was not a war of “small states in close neighborhood,” which Lord Kames censured as “brutal and bloody;” but it was a “war for glory” between two large empires, remote from each other:–Such a war as his lordship styled “the school of every manly virtue,” in which “barbarity gives place to magnanimity, and soldiers are converted from brutes into heroes.”

    Let Christians then reflect on the scenes which have been exhibited, and ask themselves, whether they wish their children to be educated in such a “school;” whether such a school is adapted to form disciples of Jesus Christ; and whether robbers and pirates were ever chargeable with more flagrant violations of the principles of reason, religion and humanity.

    Let it not be said that war in Russia was of a peculiar character, that French soldiers are worse than the soldiers of other nations, or that Napoleon was the worst of all military men.

    Wars are generally terrible proportional to the numbers actually engaged. The same spirit uniformly prevails in war. Similar scenes of havoc and horror, similar outrages and distresses, have been witnessed in other wars, but commonly on a similar scale. Every war, like that in Russia, is on one side or the other a war of aggression. Every war is carried on by violence, rapine and injustice. The innocent, the aged and infirm–females old and young, and innocent children, fall a prey to the savage vengeance of unprincipled officers and soldiers. In thousands of instances the soldiers of other nations have conducted as bad, according to their numbers, as the French did at Moscow. The people of invaded territories alway complain of the violence and rapacity of invaders; and never have they been without reason for complaint. The cry of “Goths and Vandals!” has been commonly raised, and commonly just.

    It may indeed be true, that Napoleon has caused the death of several millions of his fellow beings; but this does not prove that he is worst of military men. He has been more successful than many others, but not more than others have wished to be. Ambition for military fame is insatiable and never says, “it is enough.” Any man who will sacrifice a single life to his own ambition, is brother to Cain, and to Napoleon; and any man who will excite war to advance his own fame or wealth, is brother to the highway robber.

    It is proper that we should reflect on the righteous retributions of Providence in the Russian Campaign. After the French army had wantonly massacred the people of Moscow—filling the city with distress, murder and violation—and had loaded themselves with plunder, they were compelled to retreat. But the vengeance of God pursued them, overtook them, and overwhelmed them. Those who without mercy had distressed and destroyed others perished without mercy.—Distressed for food, they were compelled to eat their famished horses; and what is still more revolting, they fed on the flesh of their famished and dead brethren. The sword, the famine and the frost, sweeps them off by multitudes, till their terrific army was reduced to a twentieth part of its original number. Such was the terror, frenzy and despair, that they, murdered one another; and “thousands and thousands” plunged themselves headlong into the Beresina.

    Now, what have the French nation gained by all their wars and conquest since their violation? Their wars have been a continual source of misery at home, as well as abroad; and in their turn they have been inundated, harassed and distressed by foreign troops. Such are the genuine fruits of the war spirit and a thirst for military fame.

    The distress of the Russian empire was indeed terrible.—But that empire, like others, had been formed by war, and cemented by blood. In past ages the Russians were a ferocious and bloody people. Their invasion of Poland and their storming of Warsaw, were as unjust and cruel, as the conduct of the French towards them.—Similar complaints may be brought against all the allied powers.

    The people of Great Britain have a tremendous account lying against them. The history for ages is filled with records of blood. They have indeed become a powerful nation; but they are in the hands of God, as clay is in the hands of the potter; and except they repent and abandon the custom of war, their sins will surely find them out. As by war their empire has been widely extended; so by war it will probably be diminished and overthrown—unless they shall awake to righteousness and adopt the path of peace. Above all other nations they now possess the means to give peace to the world. But if they shall refuse to employ their influence for this purpose, their long arrears of blood will probably involve them in ruin. Their pecuniary debt is indeed enormous, but it is nothing compared with their debt of blood. The former may be a means of binding them together for some years to come; the latter is a tremendous millstone about the neck of that nation, from which nothing but reformation and divine mercy can ever relieve them.

    Note: at this point the narrative turns to “An Estimate of Human Sacrifice in the Russian Campaign”