Category: Uncategorized

August 2 , 2006

Dear Supporter,

I never thought when I embarked on my water-only hunger strike to bring the troops home fast that on day 30 Id be leaving on a journey to the Middle East to meet with Iraqi members of Parliament. As a shrimper from a small fishing town in Texas, I dont have ways to get in touch with these folks from Iraq. I dont speak their language. I certainly dont have their emails or phone numbers! But today, Ill be traveling with a group of 14 other Americans, to meet with these Iraqis and learn about their ideas to end the fighting and the occupation of their country. Thats why Ive always said that when you embark on a hunger strike, you have to believe and open up the space for new and amazing things to happen. And sure enough, thats whats happening.
As hunger strikes go, this one hasnt been easy. We sit outside the presidents house for 9 hours every day and watch the snipers walk the roof. Then, too, for the past month, (because were BUSY fasters) weve paraded down the halls of Congress trying to convince those people to pull our troops out of Iraq and visited an embassy or two. The President certainly doesnt talk to us. Congress wasnt budging an inch and when we talk with the aides theres a lot of eyes rolling. Then when the Iraqi Prime Minister came to Washington, he pretended he was gonna meet with us and then he never came to the meeting.

But suddenly we heard from this group of Iraqi members of Parliament. They were moved by our sacrifice when our own government couldnt care less. They were anxious to meet with us when our own leaders refused to meet. And while our own government just talks about war and more war, these Iraqis have been talking about peace, about a peace plan to stop the violence and end the occupation.

Were thrilled to have to honor to meet with these Iraqis working on a Reconciliation Plan, and to bring their ideas back home. Were excited that well be able to break our 30-day fast with them. And some of us will be going on to Lebanon to try to promote a ceasefire and help the folks who are suffering there, because we cant sit around feeling sorry about all the killing. Weve got to do something to stop it.

I said when I started this fast that we who want the killing to stop have to be as committed to peace as those who are committed to war. Many of yall joined in this hunger strike to show your commitment. So we ask that yall continue to participate in the fast — perhaps one day a week, or a rolling fast in your community, until we formally end the fast on September 21, International Peace Day.

When we launch the Declaration of Peace on September 21, well be asking yall to show your commitment again. Were hoping to organize sit-ins in ALL the offices of Senators who refuse to call for an end to the occupation. If youre willing to join us by sitting in for peace, contact info@codepinkalert.org.

I don’t know what the final outcome of this trip to meet with the Iraqis or our journey to Lebanon will bring. But were certainly not about to leave our future in the hands of George Bush! When our leaders wont build the future we want to see, weve got to do it ourselves. So thank you all for your support of our fast, our journey, and unreasonable women — and men — who wont take war for an answer.

Love and adios,
Diane Wilson
http://www.codepink4peace.org/

By Greg Moses

Dissident Voice / Big Brass Alliance / CounterPunch /

GlobalResistanceNetwork

Actually that wasn’t the headline. According to Yahoo News, the
USA President thinks intelligent design should be taught in
schools. That was the headline. And I have no problem with that. In a perfect
world, it would be taught in schools. And for
just the reasons that Bush gives to the AP:

"I think that part of
education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush
said. "You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to
different ideas, the answer is yes."

To comment on this article, please visit the comment blog.
But in which class should intelligent design be taught, and under which
subject? It might be mentioned in physics class, the way that
Stephen Hawking’s wonderful book History of Time mentions the
anthropic principle. But it’s
not really physics so much as one of those things that physics yields
to the delight of inquiring minds.

As I understand it, the anthropic principle states that chances
of us being here are narrow enough to indicate some bias
in the order of things. It’s like the universe played favorites
with our parameters of existence and served them up in a 9 billion year
recipe.

But you don’t go around hiring physicists to give you definitive
answers on things like the anthropic principle, and you don’t
qualify as a physicist for developing an opinion on the question
either. Likewise with intelligent design. A physicist such as Hawking may
hold an opinion on the matter, but it wouldn’t be something proper to
the study of physics.

So if intelligent design doesn’t belong in physics class, how about
biology? Here again the case is quite the same. Oh, wow, we
were created as some intelligent design, or not. Either way, how
does the answer to that question help with any of the crucial questions
of biology?

So if science class is not the place for intelligent design, what would
be the place to teach it? I think the obvious answer is philosophy. And
in a perfect world, philosophy would be universally taught for reasons that the President shared with the Texas press corps.

Also in a perfect world, George W. Bush will be spending decades in
prison for his part in launching at least one cold-blooded and illegal
war. So in the perfect world that Bush is helping to shape, why
couldn’t he teach intelligent design in prison, too? It will make
a fine seminar for war criminals.

If to you it sounds a little crude for me to wish life in prison for Bush, let me
explain that it has taken me months to calm down to this level of
compassion. Honestly, my first reaction upon viewing a video of
Fallujans filling body bags was to wish a Walls Unit future for our War
Criminal in Chief. That’s the name of the prison in Huntsville
where they strap killers down and inject them.

In a perfect world there won’t be a Walls Unit, of course, so in the
scenario of intelligent design that we’re pursuing here, there won’t be
a Walls Unit for Bush either.

But it is so humanly tempting to settle for something a little less
than perfect now and then, just to see the same man, who as Governor of
Texas authorized so many Walls Unit killings, be placed on trial under
Texas capital punishment statutes for conspiring to kill and
loot. Although as I say it is tempting to embrace the not quite perfect
impulse for capital punishment, I did manage to keep these thoughts
well-hidden on my hard
drive until Bush shared with Texas journalists his notion that teaching
intelligent design would be good for kids. That put me
in a more perfect mood.

So to complete our picture of the perfect world, if the infamous Downing Street memo
turns out to be connected to court-worthy evidence of a cooked-up
war. And if there is some human authority with enough
jurisdiction and guts to prosecute. And if intelligent design
includes a robust consciousness of justice. Then all the lines of
perfection for these past 9 billion years have been converging inescapably on Bush teaching intelligent design
from prison. Why not report that news in advance?

By Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.

A congressionally backed dictator has begun to violate Texas soil. Shame on the dictator! Shame on the Congress! Shame on Texas! Shame on all of us!

How is it possible that a hurricane can come into the Rio Grande Valley…providing a “Wake Up Call” to the region, the State of Texas and the Federal Government…and all the above do nothing to wake the hell up?

–Read the full column and view the photo album at Brenda Norrell’s Censored News.

–Also check out this link that Jay sent us to a film about the border wall: “The Border Wall is a new documentary from filmmaker Wayne Ewing about the attempt by the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Michael Chertoff to erect 670 miles of walls along the 2000 mile southern border of the United States in the waning days of the Bush administration.”

–And be sure to heed this most righteous warning from the Ministry of Culture here at the Texas Civil Rights Review. If you haven’t heard The Tommy Castro Band’s “Painkiller” CD, then, my friend, it is not yet too late to get yourself right with the blues muse. Congratulations Tommy on your award for BB King Entertainer of the Year! If you’ll keep people on their feet, Jay will keep them walking!–gm

Excerpt from New York Times Editorial (Aug. 1, 2008).

The harsh prosecution [of workers] at Postville is an odd and cruel shift for the Bush administration, which for years had voiced compassion for exploited workers and insisted that immigration had to be fixed comprehensively or not at all.

Now it has abandoned mercy and proportionality. It has devised new and harsher traps, as in Postville, to prosecute the weak and the poor. It has increased the fear and desperation of workers who are irresistible to bottom-feeding businesses precisely because they are fearful and desperate. By treating illegal low-wage workers as a de facto criminal class, the government is trying to inflate the menace they pose to a level that justifies its rabid efforts to capture and punish them. That is a fraudulent exercise, and a national disgrace.

Note: The only thing we quibble with is the editorial board’s use of the word “now” and the allegation that Postville marks a “shift” from previously compassionate federal immigration enforcement. We invite the editors to hang around here and read up on what’s been going down in Texas –gm:

On second thought, maybe the New York Times should have been paying more attention to what’s been going on in Brooklyn. Here’s a clip from New York Magazine about a young immigrant named Rasha and her family, and what happened to them in 2002:

“They learned that they’d all be going to a facility in New Jersey, except for Wassim, who was under 18 and thus bound for a juvenile-detention center in Pennsylvania. Being split up was a fresh horror. Through her own waterlogged eyes, Rasha watched her family collapse in tears.

“At the jail in Bergen County, Rasha and her mother and sister were strip-searched and photographed before being taken to a filthy and overcrowded holding area. Everybody seemed nasty or catatonic. This is just like prison on television, Rasha thought. A corrections officer opened the door and told them to get inside. The door locked behind them.

“After six hours, they were herded into another holding cell, teeming with even more people, where they would stay for two days. Rasha’s mother raged and yelled until she was able to place a call to her brother-in-law about her youngest sons. Rasha, Reem, and their mother were eventually moved again, to a larger wing of the facility, where they were again strip-searched, then given beige jumpsuits and black-and-white Converse-style shoes and assigned to cells. The INS official who had told them at Federal Plaza that they would be deported within days was clearly wrong. When they joined the general population, Rasha realized with dread, they were going to stay for a while.”

From “How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America,” by Moustafa Bayoumi (forthcoming from Penguin Press).