Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.
Teaching for Change
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posted by: Whitebeard at 21:58 |
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us, culture, democracy, resisters
The Fog of War (2004)
Dear all,
Our Eyes Wide Open film series continues Sunday, May 4 at 8pm with the
Academy Award winning documentary "The Fog of War" by Errol Morris. (In
English with Italian subtitles)
The Fog of War (2004)
Sunday, May 4, 8pm
Arcobaleno
Via Pullino, 1 (metro Garbatella, see directions below)
Film synopsis:
"It is the story of America as seen through the eyes of the former Secretary
of Defense, Robert S. McNamara. One of the most controversial and
influential figures in world politics, he takes us on an insider's view of the
seminal events of the 20th Century. From the firebombing of 100,000
Japanese civilians in Tokyo in 1945 to the brink of nuclear catastrophe
during the Cuban missile crisis to the devastating effects of the Vietnam
War, The Fog of War examines the psychology and reasoning of the
government decision-makers who send men to war. How were decisions
made and for what reason? What can we learn from these historical
events?
As American forces occupy Iraq and the possibility of additional military
conflict looms large, The Fog of War is essential viewing for anyone who
wants to understand how the American government justifies the use of
military force."
More on the film at: http://www.sonyclassics.com/fogofwar/
See reviews at Rotten Tomatoes:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fog_of_war/
Join us for this interesting documentary followed by a lively discussion!
Arcobaleno requires a 5 Euro/year membership card, which is good for
discounts at exhibitions, theatres, etc.) Drinks and/or a light dinner available
during the screening.
GETTING TO ARCOBALENO (see map: http://tinyurl.com/2cfl3m)
By metro: Take the B Line to the Garbatella stop, exit towards via Pullino,
turn right and continue (200mt) across Piazza Albini to Arcobaleno.
By bus: Buses 673 from the Colosseum area and 716/715 from Piazza
Venezia. See the ATAC web site for more options: http://www.atac.roma.it/
Upcoming films:
May 18 - John Pilger´s The War on Democracy
See our web site for more information:
http://www.peaceandjustice.it/film-series7.php
See you this Sunday!
Chérine, David, Gene and Ilona (Film Committee)
--
U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice - Rome
info@peaceandjustice.it
http://www.peaceandjustice.it
posted by: Whitebeard at 08:52 |
link | comments |
us, war
No peace no work
May day 2008
West Coast Dockers to Shut Ports on May Day to Protest the Iraq War & Occupation
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/index.php
posted by: Whitebeard at 18:27 |
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iraq, us, peace, war, resisters
11,000 prisoners in Israeli jails
More than 11,000 prisoners in Israeli jails. Among them, Marwan Barghouti, candidate to the PNA Presidency.
The appeal by Members of the EU Parliament: «Justice for the Palestinian prisoners »
By Luisa Morgantini*
Published in Italian Newspaper 'Liberazione' 18th April 2008
The last time that Widad hugged her son was eight years ago, in a prison in Ashkelon, Israel: for many years since she wasn’t allowed to see him, as the Israeli Authorities repeatedly denied her the permit for "security reasons".
Widad Naief Mohammad Atabeh lives in Nablus, is 78 years old, suffers from hypertension, diabetes and her sight has strongly worsen since the last time she saw Saed: « He hugged me and said that in that moment he was born again to life. Those minutes for us were the most precious, but the moment we had to depart from each other was the hardest and most disappointing». This is what she writes today in an appeal to all mothers in the world, in an effort to put pressure on the Israeli Authorities to allow her to see Saed for the last time making her dream come true.
Saed Wajih Saed Atabeh, arrested in July 29th 1977, is 52 years old and spent 32 years of his life in a prison cell.
He is the Palestinian prisoner to be detained for the longest time in an Israeli jail and –his mother adds - in the villages he is known as “the Mandela from Palestine”.
During all these years, Israeli Authorities have not allowed Widad to visit him. Thus, despite her physical illnesses, she continues to call for justice from her home in Nablus, a town under siege because of continuous Israeli raids: “While Yegal Amir, the killer of the Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, receives regular visits from his family, has married and had a son in jail, Saed is not even given the opportunity of a last hug from his mother. How can this be?”
According to the last UN reports on human rights in the Occupied Territories, more than 11,000 Palestinians are prisoners in Israeli jails, including thousands with illnesses, 376 children, 118 women and 47 Parliamentarians.
Since 1967, more than 700,000 Palestinians have been arrested over a population of 3,5 millions: these data make Israel unique for the number of reprimands by the UN Council for Human Rights, a criticism that is ignored by the Israeli Government and forgotten by the International Community.
Nothing has been done to prevent the Israeli systematic use of administrative detentions, a practice that allows for many Palestinians – 813 at the end of January 2008- to be detained for renewable periods of up to six months and resulting in years of detention with no trial nor the possibility of legal support. We can't tolerate these violations of human rights: that is why a group of 46 Members of the European Parliament, belonging to different political forces, has promoted a parliamentary inquiry of the EU Council and EU Commission on the abuses of administrative detention. These include the hundreds of Palestinian children who are detained and subjected to inhuman treatments, harsh interrogations, deprived of food, sleep and exposed to illnesses which are hard to be treated in a jail, where they are kept together with adults, with no psychological support nor the opportunity to continue their studies. Additionally, they are often threatened and beaten, in explicit violation of the UN Convention on Child's Rights, adopted by Israel in 1991 but de facto never implemented. Further, during the years of this second Intifada, more than 6,000 have been put in jail. Palestinian children are also suffering heavy consequences since permits to visit detainees are denied to their mothers, wives, brothers or sisters. Because of these restrictions, children are the ones to visit their relatives, having to wake up in the middle of the night to travel alone on buses for hours with the fear of check points and of Israeli soldiers, and bearing the responsibility to be the only link between the family and their imprisoned brothers or fathers. They deliver bags full of medicines, food, cigarettes and the words that their mothers can't say directly. When they come back home, they are shocked, hardly speak, feel nervous, troubled, exhausted: this causes them to miss school, often a week of absences per month is caused by this avoidable, extraordinary adventure. As members of the European Parliament we call for justice and legality, waiting for clear answers by the EU Commission and Council in particular regarding the implementation of article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement (which includes a suspension of the agreement in case of Human Rights violations) on what kind of actions need to be undertaken to achieve the realization of International laws and Conventions ratified by the State of Israel.
Yet, the initiative should start within the same Israeli Government, which continues to ignore all peace commitments it has made: they should listen to the appeal launched by Marwan Barghouti, a parliamentary abducted in 2002 and condemned to 5 life sentences, who, from his cell, asks Israel to honor its 60 years by "signing a peace accord, recognizing the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, ending the military occupation and releasing the 11,000 prisoners". This would allow Widad and many other mothers to hug their beloved and would guarantee children’s right to a secure and peaceful childhood.
Yesterday was a day dedicated to Palestinian Political prisoners, thousands of Palestinians asked for their freedom: we should join them in this quest and don't leave them alone. We should endorse the call for the release of Marwan Barghouti, a leader who can represent the unity of the Palestinian people and Territory, fundamental for any peace negotiations, especially with the coming Presidential elections of January 2009 in which he could participate as a candidate, hopefully by then as a free man.
18/04/2008
*Vice President of the European Parliament
( Translated by Luisa Morgantini’s Office and Corinna Giorgi)
****************************
APPEAL FOR THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF MARWAN BARGHOUTI
BY MEPs TO BE SIGNED BY MEPs
Dear colleagues,
To follow up the hearing on situation of Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons, organised in DROI on 27th February 2008, with Mme Fadwa IBRAHIM, lawyer, representing "Free Marwan Barghouti Campaign"; I invite you to sign the following appeal calling for the immediate release of Marwan Barghouti.
MEPs’ APPEAL FOR THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF MARWAN BARGHOUTI
The European Parliament has repeatedly called for the liberation of all Palestinian parliamentarians. April 15th marks the sixth anniversary of the imprisonment of the first parliamentarian to be abducted by Israeli forces since the outbreak of the Second Intifada. His arrest and subsequent transfer to Israel, carried out without any regard to his status as an elected representative, violates the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as the Oslo Accords. We, as Members of the European Parliament, have decided to take advantage of this opportunity to call for the immediate release of Marwan Barghouti.
Marwan Barghouti was crucial in inspiring and drafting the "Prisoner's Document" which served as a basis for the Palestinian National Reconciliation Document. Because of his popularity, which far exceeds political party lines, his liberation would decisively contribute to the achievement of national reconciliation.
Marwan's credibility among Palestinians and his commitment to a just and lasting peace with the Israelis makes him an asset to the ongoing peace process which shall lead to the end of the occupation and the coexistence of two states living side by side in peace and security. Many leaders from all around the world, along with important members of the Israeli Cabinet, have called for his release. This release would represent an implementation of Palestinians' legitimate rights and would thus contribute to the confidence building measures that need to be undertaken urgently to allow the realization of a peace agreement responding to both peoples' needs.
Hélène Flautre
First signatory
Borrell Fontelles Josep
Cohn-Bendit Daniel
De Keyser Véronique
Flautre Hélène
Frassoni Monica
Gruber Lilli
Hammerstein David
McMillan-Scott Edward
Morgantini Luisa
Napoletano Pasqualina
Patrie Beatrice
Saïfi Tokia
Swoboda Hannes
Triantaphyllides Kyriacos,
Wurtz Francis
posted by: Whitebeard at 23:11 |
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israel, palestine
May 1, 2008 - strike into West Coast ports
Dear peace activists,
In their last assembly, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union
voted overwhelmingly for an 8-hour strike to shut down West Coast ports on
May 1, 2008 in protest of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (May 1 is not a
holiday in the US). There is also a call for the anti-war movement to show
support through solidarity statements and actions.
This is a major step up in opposition to the war and we´d like to show our support by:
1) translating the resolution and getting the word out in Italy about this strike;
2) sending our own solidarity statement to the ILWU.
If you would like to help in translating the resolution (English to Italian) or drafting our solidarity statement (English), please let us know: info@peaceandjustice.it
May 1st also marks the 5th anniversary of Bush´s infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech and comes as Congress prepares to vote up to $178 billion to continue the occupation of Iraq. People in the US are
mobilizing against the funding bill, for impeachment, etc. and this would present a good opportunity for us to be in the streets as well.
Please let us know if you are interested in organizing a solidarity action here in Rome on Thursday, May 1, and we can discuss options:
info@peaceandjustice.it
More information at on the dockworkers´ strike:
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?=1&cache=0&id=15686
Excerpts from the ILWU resolution:
...
WHEREAS: Many unions and the overwhelming majority of the American
people now oppose this bipartisan and unjustifiable war in Iraq and
Afghanistan but the two major political parties, Democrats and Republicans
continue to fund the war;
...
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That it is time to take labor's protest to a
more powerful level of struggle by calling on unions and working people in
the U. S. and internationally to mobilize for a "No Peace No Work Holiday"
May 1, 2008 for 8 hours to demand an immediate end to the war and
occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U. S. troops from
the Middle East;
...
Read the full resolution at:
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=15428
Anna, Gene, Maria, Maria Chiara and Stephanie
---
U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice - Rome
info@peaceandjustice.it
http://www.peaceandjustice.it
posted by: Whitebeard at 22:33 |
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us, peace, war, resisters
Ballot against bullet
Obama
by Michael Moore
April 21st, 2008
Friends,
So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will you please cast my vote -- and yours -- on Tuesday for Senator Barack Obama?
There are those who say Obama isn't ready, or he's voted wrong on this or that. But that's looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.
'Mike, what have the Democrats done to deserve our vote?' That's a damn good question. In November of '06, the country loudly sent a message that we wanted the war to end. Yet the Democrats have done nothing. So why should we be so eager to line up happily behind them?
I'll tell you why. Because I can't stand one more friggin' minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world. I'm almost at the point where I don't care if the Democrats don't have a backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little heads. Just as long as their name ain't "Bush" and the word "Republican" is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that's good enough for me.
I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled senseless for 8 long years. That's why I will join millions of citizens and stagger into the voting booth come November, like a boxer in the 12th round, all bloodied and bruised with one eye swollen shut, looking for the only thing that matters -- that big "D" on the ballot.
Don't get me wrong. I lost my rose-colored glasses a long time ago.
Pennsylvania, the state that gave birth to this great country, has a chance to set things right. It has not had a moment to shine like this since 1787 when our Constitution was written there. In that Constitution, they wrote that a black man or woman was only "three fifths" human. On Tuesday, the good people of Pennsylvania have a chance for redemption.
posted by: Whitebeard at 14:04 |
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us, democracy, peace, war, elections, resisters
Holy Name 6
On my email
Urbano
Thank you for adding your voice to the petition to defend the Holy Name Six. As we reported after the Easter Mass action, "5 years have gone by and 1.3 million people are now dead. Something like 6 million people are displaced. Violence and chaos has been unleashed on a country the size of California on a scale that we really can't comprehend in our comfort and security living here in the US - with no end in sight!!"
Send a message asking your friends to support the Holy Name 6 in this easy form.
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Any anti-war protester threatened with years in prison should be supported and defended as a matter of principle. But more than that, as one of the more than 1400 signers of the petition wrote, "The war itself is immoral. To not do everything in your power to stop it is also immoral." Truly, we need more of the righteous moral clarity expressed by the Holy Name Six. Not only did they challenge business as usual, but they also challenged "protest as usual," and this is why we must support them.
Another signer wrote, "It's obvious that many people inside the church were made very uncomfortable by the action, but that's the point. Americans need to feel uncomfortable about the murder taking place in their name. What is a shame that these young people, in trying to bring attention to the horror of Iraq, are going to have the book thrown, while the real criminals in the White House and in Congress will remain untouched."
Those who recognize the need to stir up controversy, challenge people who are sitting by in silent complicity, and feel inspired by the bravery of the six members of Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War must go to others very quickly (while this is still fresh news) and urge those standing on the sidelines to act.
Crimes? Let's talk about crimes… send this petition to 10 of your friends and let them know where you stand. (Click here to forward) Send your messages of support to the Holy Name Six at holyname6 (at) riseup.net. Let them know they have right on their side!
Join World Can't Wait (if you haven't already done so)! Only through an independent movement of the people can we end the war crimes and the whole trajectory that the Bush regime has taken the country on. Click here to become a member.
Ask Your Friends to Support the Holy Name 6 in this easy form
Sincerely,
Jill McLaughlin & Lina Thorne, Chicago chapter, the World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime
posted by: Whitebeard at 08:23 |
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iraq, us, civil rights, democracy, peace, war, vatican, resisters
propaganda war - torture shame
*Scott Ewing, who served for three years as a cavalry scout in the U.S. army, described his unit's "block-by-block" raid of the entire city of Talafar in September of 2005. Ewing said tactics were particularly brutal in the Sarai neighborhood of the city, which the U.S. military had identified as an insurgent stronghold.
The only war our country has really waged well
is a propaganda war on its own people.
He said.
Note to those of you in the NYC area: Vice President "Dick" Cheney is appearing at a luncheon on Park Avenue Monday April 21
With the direct involvement of Bush and Cheney in directing torture now documented,
With the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on their hands, We must protest!
Converge 10 am 71st & Park
Contact 347-678-5905 NYC Chapter WCW
posted by: Whitebeard at 19:32 |
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iraq, us, war
Hamas
Hi all,
see below a petiton by Just Foreign Policy and Jewish Voice for Peace
calling on the 3 US presidential candidates to support Jimmy Carter and his
call for talks with Hamas, citing the recent poll in which 64% of Israelis
support direct talks with the Hamas government.
You can sign here:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/involved/carter.html
or here:
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
Stephanie
posted by: Whitebeard at 11:32 |
link | comments |
us, israel, palestine
PRESS RELEASE
BY
LUISA MORGANTINI
(GUE/NGL)
Vice President of the European Parliament
Why is there no protest when a former US President and Nobel Peace
Prize laureate is denied entry to Gaza?
20 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers have been killed, and in the Gaza Strip people continue to die. The International Community and EU must work for a cease-fire and an end to the siege.
Rome, 17th April 2008
Prize laureate is denied entry to Gaza?
20 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers have been killed, and in the Gaza Strip people continue to die. The International Community and EU must work for a cease-fire and an end to the siege.
Rome, 17th April 2008
"While the Israeli Government continues its policy of isolation and collective punishment towards the Palestinian civil population in Gaza, it has also prevented to a former Head of State to visit the Gaza Strip. This unprecedented decision was adopted in the case of Jimmy Carter, former US President and 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Carter has always declared himself a sincere supporter of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, based on the creation of two people and two states, and has denounced the policies of Apartheid.
Moreover, Carter was a mediator in the 1978 Camp David negotiations; the first agreement signed by Israel and an Arab State, Egypt. If this decision had been made by any other country, it would have provoked a real protest in the international media. Meanwhile, the situation in the Gaza Strip becomes more desperate
every day: the International Community and the European Union must work for an immediate cease-fire and toward an end of all acts of violence. Once again, the price is paid by the civilian population.
every day: the International Community and the European Union must work for an immediate cease-fire and toward an end of all acts of violence. Once again, the price is paid by the civilian population.
Each military action that involves civilians, as was the case yesterday in the Gaza Strip, must be condemned in adherence to International Humanitarian Law.
In addition, essential services are nearing collapse due to a lack of fuel supplies. This is the result of Israel's April 9th decision to cease the fuel distribution to Gaza, although today the fuel supply only for the Gaza's only electric power station was reopened. In a press release yesterday, 8 UN Agencies denounced the fuel restrictions because they endanger the basic needs of the civil population. PMRS, one of the major NGO's providing health services in Gaza and the West Bank, has also launched an appeal regarding the immediate
"humanitarian disaster" and is at risk of having to suspend all its activities. A statement by the Popular Committee against the Siege of Gaza (PCAS, part of the ongoing campaign in Gaza, www.freegaza.ps)
says that more than 85 % of private vehicles and more then 65% of sanitary transport vehicles are unusable because of the lack of fuel.
"humanitarian disaster" and is at risk of having to suspend all its activities. A statement by the Popular Committee against the Siege of Gaza (PCAS, part of the ongoing campaign in Gaza, www.freegaza.ps)
says that more than 85 % of private vehicles and more then 65% of sanitary transport vehicles are unusable because of the lack of fuel.
Palestinians in Gaza are denied the most basic necessities and the possibility to lead a dignified life. Once again the Palestinian population is suffering from massive collective punishment, explicitly illegal under International law. Yesterday, Physicians for Human Rights, an Israeli NGO, and the Campaign for the end of the siege in Gaza (www.end-gaza-siege.ps) denounced the DCO's (Israeli Defence Coordination Office) umpteenth refusal to allow Palestinian medical patients to enter Israel or the West Bank for medical care and treatments. Since the siege started 133 Palestinians have died as a result of these kinds of refusals and
today 1,562 patients are waiting to leave Gaza for urgent medical care.
today 1,562 patients are waiting to leave Gaza for urgent medical care.
On April 13th for the forth time Islam Alassouli, a 4 years old child from Khan Younis was not allowed to pass the Eretz crossing into Israel for a bone marrow transplant. He received no explanation for the refusal.
The kind of transplant needed by Islam is impossible in Gaza's hospitals: because of the total closures imposed by Israel, elaborate medical equipment is unavailable and even vital medicines are nowhere
to be found.
to be found.
The International Community and the European Union have no more excuses: they must intervene immediately, in a stronger and more effective way, for the immediate opening of all of Gaza's border
crossings (according to the obligations of an occupying army under International Law), and for an immediate cease-fire by both sides.
Further information: Luisa Morgantini 0039 348 39 21 465 or Rome Office 0039.06.69950217
posted by: Whitebeard at 16:24 |
link | comments |
us, europe, israel, palestine, resisters
peace activists
Dear peace activists,
Our last general meeting was held April 9, 2008 (please see meeting minutes: http://www.peaceandjustice.it/meeting-090408.php; also pasted below).
As decided at our last meeting, members of the group took the opportunity yesterday – April 15th, dubbed War Tax Day – to call attention to how our tax dollars are spent (both in the US and in Italy) as well as how we can take action to call on Congress to stop funding the war and redirect military spending to social needs. Flyers, both in English (aimed mainly at US tourists and residents) and in Italian, were handed out throughout many of Rome’s main tourist attractions and hang-outs. See http://www.peaceandjustice.it/war-tax-day-2008.php for a short description of the action and to view the information-packed flyers.
Another important item discussed at our last two general meetings is the group’s decision to organize a Palestine/Israel event. A working group has been created with the task of presenting the group with a more concrete plan soon, and with hopefully staging our first event(s) by early June. Various ideas have been suggested, but there is still plenty of room for involvement by other group members. All suggestions and any participation you would like to offer would be most welcome; please contact the working group at palestine-israel@peaceandjustice.it and become involved!
We look forward to receiving your comments and suggestions.
Anna, Gene, Maria, Maria Chiara and Stephanie
U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice - Rome
info@peaceandjustice.it
http://www.peaceandjustice.it
U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice - Rome
info@peaceandjustice.it
http://www.peaceandjustice.it
posted by: Whitebeard at 09:26 |
link | comments |
us, civil rights, democracy, peace, war, censored news
Berlusconia
14 Aprile
postato da stigli
Berlusconia
LLUÍS BASSETS 15/04/2008
No se ha producido el vuelco, que por otra parte nadie esperaba ni las encuestas adelantaban. Todo ha salido a pedir de boca para Silvio Berlusconi y los suyos. Contará con una mayoría para su investidura y para gobernar en las dos cámaras. Amplia en la Cámara de Diputados, debido a la prima mayoritaria que da el 55% de escaños al vencedor, y más estrecha en el Senado, de unos pocos escaños, pero en todo caso más holgada que la que tenía Romano Prodi (158 frente a 156). Suficiente en todo caso para emprender esta nueva manga política con las manos libres, si acaso atadas a la peligrosa Liga Norte de Umberto Bossi, que viene con la cartera llena de facturas: federalismo fiscal, límites a la inmigración, políticas antieuropeas, seguridad en las calles... Con un objetivo personal que no puede diferir, después de dos oportunidades perdidas (en 1994 y luego entre 2001 y 2006) y en total seis años de responsabilidad de Gobierno: adquirir algo de respetabilidad y conseguir un balance presentable, como mínimo ante los partidos de derecha del resto de Europa y esa prensa económica internacional tan prestigiosa que no pierde ocasión para declararle incapaz para gobernar.
La tentación que le rondará, y que cultivarán sus aliados Gianfranco Fini de Alianza Nacional y Umberto Bossi de la Liga Norte para obtener a cambio sus propias ventajas, será su perpetuación en el poder como presidente de la República, dentro de cinco años, cuando prácticamente coincidan las fechas de caducidad de la legislatura (en el caso excepcional de que se consuma entera) y de la presidencia de Giorgio Napolitano (con 83 años, una edad muy avanzada como para no excluir una vacante prematura). En cualquier caso, aunque limite sus ambiciones a gobernar el actual periodo y no aspire a mayores glorias, está bien claro que la Italia del cambio de siglo, entre la fecha de 1994 en que se lanzó a la política desde los negocios televisivos para fundar Forza Italia y 2008, cuando inaugura su tercer periodo como presidente del Consejo, está marcada por el triunfo del berlusconismo y su adopción como difusa ideología mayoritaria consagrada por la sociedad italiana.
Una de las cosas más inexplicables para esa mitad de Italia abiertamente hostil a la permanente confusión entre sus intereses privados y las responsabilidades políticas es el nulo precio pagado por sus errores y desbordamientos verbales ante la otra mitad que le ha dado por tercera vez la confianza y le ha propulsado al Gobierno. Hay que partir de la base de que la inteligencia política de este personaje, al que el cineasta Nanni Moretti ha identificado con El Caimán, es enorme. Ha ganado ahora esta elección porque ha sabido enfrentarse con Veltroni prematuramente antes de dejar margen a que su Partido Democrático creciera suficientemente y a que el débil Gobierno de Romano Prodi tuviera la oportunidad de consolidar un balance, sobre todo económico, más fácil de explicar a los ciudadanos.
Le ayudó la reforma electoral por él promovida al término de su anterior etapa en el Gobierno, bautizada como porcata o cerdada desde sus propias filas, que para su mayor fortuna tampoco se ha vuelto en su contra ahora como podía esperar el centroizquierda. Así hubiera sido en caso de un empate virtual en el Senado, que habría dejado la mayoría en manos del pequeño grupo de senadores vitalicios, formado por los ex presidentes de la República y unas pocas personalidades de la élite intelectual y política. El único consuelo para esa mitad de Italia que no se identifica con Berlusconia radica en la fortaleza de la oposición y de su líder emergente. El Partido Democrático (PD), tal como subrayó ayer Veltroni en el discurso de reconocimiento de la derrota, es "la mayor fuerza reformista que jamás haya tenido este país".
Es un consuelo para la izquierda moderada, aunque todavía un motivo de mayor amargura para la izquierda más radical, que ya atribuye a Veltroni la derrota, por su decisión de presentarse en solitario y cortar amarras con la Refundación Comunista de Fausto Bertinotti. A la izquierda más pura poco le importa que el PD haya superado a la coalición del Olivo en seis puntos y haya recuperado unos quince desde lo que le daban las encuestas antes de la campaña hasta ahora. O que haya superado en casi cinco puntos a su remoto antecedente, el Partido Comunista Italiano, que sólo alcanzó 33,3% y realizó lo que se llamó el sorpasso, o superación de la Democracia Cristiana, en unas elecciones europeas en 1984, a los pocos días de la muerte de su líder, Enrico Berlinguer y de que empezara el camino hacia su desaparición.
Pero la victoria que significa lanzar y rodar una fuerza con vocación y capacidad de Gobierno no se la puede negar la izquierda a Veltroni sin mirarse en el espejo del tercer Berlusconi. La momentánea indefinición del Pueblo de la Libertad, la formación improvisada para acudir a las urnas frente al PD, con su Forza Italia y la Alianza Nacional de Fini, le permite además a Veltroni presentarse de momento como el dirigente del primer partido político de Italia. A su izquierda pueden seguir los otros remando al viento. Al miedo le acompaña, pues, la esperanza.
posted by: Whitebeard at 17:13 |
link | comments |
italy
Route 181
Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel.
The series of films on Palestine organized by AssoPace, Aktivamente and
Wael Zwaiter continues this Monday (April 14) with the film "Route 181,
Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel." This is an epic documentary (4
hours!) that will be split in two separate screenings, part 1 this Monday and
part 2 the following Monday (April 21).
Due to the good turnout last week, they have decided to do two screenings
per night, 8pm and 10pm.
The film is in Hebrew and Arabic with Italian subtitles. And it comes highly
recommended.
Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel (Part 1)
Monday, April 14, 8pm and 10pm
Libreria Flexi, via Clementina 9, metro Cavour (http://www.libreriaflexi.it)
Free entry
Stephanie
Synopsis:
"Route 181" offers an unusual vision of the inhabitants of Palestine-Israel, a
common vision of an Israeli and a Palestinian. In the summer of 2002, for
two long months, Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi travelled together from the
south to the north of their country of birth, traced their trajectory on a map
and called it Route 181. This virtual line follows the borders outlined in
Resolution 181, which was adopted by the United Nations on November
29th 1947 to partition Palestine into two states. As they travel along this
route, they meet women and men, Israeli and Palestinian, young and old,
civilians and soldiers, filming them in their everyday lives. Each of these
characters has their own way of evoking the frontiers that separate them
from their neighbours : concrete, barbed-wire, cynicism, humour,
indifference, suspicion, aggression...Frontiers have been built on the hills
and in the plains, on mountains and in valleys but above all inside the
minds and souls of these two peoples and in the collective unconscious of
both societies. "Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel"
takes us on a disorientating journey across this tiny territory with vast
ramifications.
posted by: Whitebeard at 16:01 |
link | comments |
israel, palestine
The shell game
To My Readers:
The SHELL GAME
The events of September 11th, 2001...the invasion of Iraq...the threat of radical Islam...an impending showdown with Iran. What do these situations have in common?
Oil. And the world is running out.
The SHELL GAME is far more than a thriller, it is a MUST-READ cautionary tale that exposes the next “9/11 event” a deception that will lead to a retaliatory chemical weapons strike on Iran and the terrorist elements the regime supports. Though the novel is written as fiction, it is filled with all-too-real details provided by insiders in the oil industry, military, and Middle Eastern affairs that extrapolates real events from the past and present that will lead us down a path of self-destruction...unless we stop the insanity now!
The story opens in 2007 when two CIA spooks meet with an American Colonel in military intelligence. The war is going badly, and President Bush, who steadfastly refuses to back down, remains unchallenged at home as Democrats and Republicans continue to toss verbal grenades – positioning themselves for the 2008 elections. Meanwhile, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear energy will yield enriched uranium within five years -- uranium that can be used to manufacture suitcase nukes.
The United States’ military is too drained to invade Iran, and a preemptive strike is out of the question...unless a nuclear detonation were to occur on in American city -- the enriched uranium traced back to Iran. A U.S. reprisal would strike a death-blow against radical Islam, quell the insurgent violence in Iraq...and yield more oil. Yes, the cost is unthinkable – but if we sit back and do nothing then one day a dozen suitcase bombs could go off in a dozen American cities – bringing with it anarchy and the collapse of Western civilization.
December 2011: Ashley “Ace” Futrell is an oil expert working for PetroConsultants, married to Kelli Doyle, a former National Security Advisor and one of the CIA spooks from the opening scene. When Kelli threatens to expose the plot, Ace finds his existence hurtling down a rabbit’s hole of deceit where the orchestrated lies of the powerful few could lead to the darkest days of human existence... and the death knell for billions.
The SHELL GAME will debut January 2008
posted by: Whitebeard at 23:39 |
link | comments |
iraq, us, war, censored news, iran, nineleven, resisters
1st National Coalition 9/11 Truth Action
Join the 1st National Coalition 9/11 Truth Action
TO BREAK THE MEDIA BLOCKADE !!
A historic action coalition involving all the diversity of the 9/11 mass movement has joind together to succeed: Richard Gage (ae911truth.org), WeAreChange Seattle, Prof. Jones, Paul Craig Roberts, Peter Phillips, Dylan Avery / Korey Rowe (Loose Change), Daniel Sunjata (9/11 activist / star of Fox TV “Rescue Me”), radio host Jack Blood, actress/activist Lana Wood, Kyle Hence, David Ray Griffin; Janice Matthews (911truth.org)…and many more!
Recently, New York Times best selling author, Steve Alten, released an explosive edu-tainment thriller of historic proportion that extols the 9/11 research of David Ray Griffin and Mike Ruppert, revealing 911 truth INTO THE MINDS OF AMERICANS WHO WOULD NEVER LOOK AT HARD DOCUMENTARIES… BUT WHO LOVE ACTION THRILLERS.
Since its release, Alten has stunned national radio and corporate TV audiences charging that 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB !! See his latest TV and national radio interview links at http://weekoftruth.org/
“Shell Game is grounded theory leading to fictional interpretations of the abuse of power by the Global Dominance Group within the US . . . This is a book that needs to be read and understood by all Americans.”
Alten’s book has been requested by both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, as well as venues like Good Morning America . . . HOWEVER, producers rarely select novels – unless they FIRST appear on the TOP 10 OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER LIST.
Working on a unified front, the 9/11 truth movement have the power to drive a book THE SHELL GAME to the TOP 10 and finally have a mainstream voice that address millions of uninformed Americans. (see Alten’s interviews where he urges listeners/viewers to respect and explore the 9/11 truth movement’s work) As such, there is an organized national effort underway to create a MASS BUY-IN FOR TRUTH during the week of April 16 to 22nd.
Never before has such a 9/11 truth coalition formed, and never before have we had an opportunity to reach and affect the mass public thru corporate media channels with hard truths.
Learn all about this urgent campaign, and Alten’s media courage, and what you can do at: http://weekoftruth.org/
-- Peter Phillips; Director Project Censored
posted by: Whitebeard at 22:27 |
link | comments |
us, civil rights, war, torture, censored news, nineleven, resisters
Nothing is being said about getting out of Iraq
Dear USC4P&J members,
Reminder: Our next general meeting will be Wednesday, April 9 at 7pm. It
will be held at Marilee´s apartment in San Saba/Piramide. Everyone on the
mailing list is welcome.
Important: Please RSVP for the exact address and so we will have an idea
of how many are coming: info@peaceandjustice.it.
The agenda for the meeting includes:
1. Organize for April 15 War Tax Day; discuss and decide what sort of
action we can take, and form a working group to work out details.
(http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=3869)
2. Organize a Palestine/Israel event (debate/discussion panel) in English;
firm up ideas and possible date/venue, and form a working group so this
can begin to get off the ground. (See minutes of last meeting
http://www.peaceandjustice.it/meeting-120208.php).
3. Using the primary season to pressure candidates; nothing is being said
about really getting out of Iraq, about the fourteen permanent bases there,
about the largest Embassy in the world being built in Baghdad (bigger than
Vatican City). How can we, as peace activists, help force these issues into
the campaigns?
4. Discussion of film series, evaluation of new venue and suggestions for
other potentially better venues/times for future series. Do we have viable
alternatives? And if so, who will look into them?
5. Misc. business (including upcoming USC4P&J elections in June) and
suggestions from the membership.
Please let us know if you have anything to add to the agenda.
USC4P&J General Meeting
Wed, April 9, 7pm
Marilee´s apartment in San Saba/Piramide.
RSVP for exact address: info@peaceandjustice.it
For any questions, contact us at info@peaceandjustice.it.
See you Wednesday!
Anna, Gene, Maria, Maria Chiara and Stephanie
---
U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice - Rome
info@peaceandjustice.it
http://www.peaceandjustice.it
posted by: Whitebeard at 09:40 |
link | comments |
iraq, us, israel, italy, peace, war, palestine, iran, resisters
YOU can send an email
AT
YOU can send an email and fax
to your own representatives
or to whoever you chose.
LanceCiepiela
posted by: Whitebeard at 17:35 |
link | comments |
us, democracy
Catholic Schoolgirls Against The War
Catholic Schoolgirls Against The War
March 23 -- Six members of the anti-war group "Catholic Schoolgirls Against The War" staged a dramatic die-in during the 11AM Easter mass at Holy Name Cathedral, Chicago's most prominent Catholic parish -- and the home of one of the nation's most conservative church leaders, Cardinal Francis George
The action was staged in the Gold Coast cathedral's parish center, an auditorium where mass is being said while the main cathedral undergoes renovation. Easter services at Holy Name are traditionally one of the most heavily attended masses of the year, and this mass was no exception, with people packed wall to wall for today's Easter morning holiday service.
The group of young men and women, dressed in their Easter best, sat through the 11AM mass until George reached the homily. A few seconds into the cardinal's main holiday message, the protesters rose from their seats, turned to address the thousands of parishioners in the auditorium, and talked about the continuing death of both Iraqis and Americans in Iraq as the war enters its sixth year. The group also decried George's January 7 meeting with Mayor Daley and President Bush.
See Youtube
posted by: Whitebeard at 10:38 |
link | comments |
iraq, us, democracy, war, vatican
Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man
Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man
Barbara A. Reynolds 
Dr. Barbara Reynolds, an Italian scholar, lexicographer and translator, was a close friend of Dorothy L. Sayers. A graduate of University College, London, Dr. Reynolds was Lecturer in Italian at Cambridge for twenty-two years, and later Reader in Italian Studies at Nottingham. She holds three honorary degrees, and was honored by the republic of Italy for her significant contributions to the field of Italian literature. Her most significant academic achievement may be her general editorship of the Cambridge Italian Dictionary: Vol. 1 (1962) and Vol. 2 (1981).
An internationally recognized Dante scholar, Dr. Reynolds has made significant contributions in this field of studies. She completed Dorothy L. Sayers's translation of Paradiso, the third volume of Dante's Divine Comedy, after Sayers's death in 1957. Dr. Reynolds has also translated Dante's La Vita Nuova, as well as Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, for Penguin Classics. Most recently, she has published a provocative biography, Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man.
Dante, famously, insisted on the truth of everything described in the Commedia. Whether that truth was literal or metaphorical is, of course, another question. Jorge Luis Borges asks us to imagine in an oriental library a panel painted many centuries ago, which, the more we examine its "serene labyrinth", the more we come to realise that there is nothing on earth that is not there. The magical work he has fantasised, a panel whose edges enclose the universe, is Dante's poem. Nearly seven centuries after its completion, the amount of commentaries on that poem, and the putative life of its author, have become legion; they resemble the unlimited and cyclical realm hypothesised by Borges in his Library of Babel. No one knows how many words have been written on Dante; certainly, no one has read them all. Nevertheless, it is entirely possible, as Reynolds claims in the introduction to her Dante, "to present a portrait of Dante, the poet, the political thinker and the man, which has not been seen before". Almost every chapter of her book, she says, "contains new ideas and fresh insights, some of them radical, many controversial".
The Commedia contains many cruxes of interpretation. One of the most notorious occurs in the first canto of the Inferno, where the "Dante" of the poem is confronted by a she-wolf which might represent Avarice, whereupon he is told by "Virgil" that she will be overcome by a figure who has been taken, among others, to be Cangrande della Scala of Verona, Mussolini, or Dante himself. The key line is 105, "e sua nazion sarà tra feltro e feltro", translated by Dorothy Sayers as "twixt felt and felt his naissance will be found". Some commentators would capitalise the two nouns "Feltro" and "Feltro", to indicate the northern Italian towns of Feltre and Montefeltro. Others take the words to refer to Dante's birth-sign of Gemini, the Twins, who are sometimes represented as wearing felt caps; or to felt-lined election boxes; or to the habits of the mendicant orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans; or to coarse cloth in general. Sayers herself offers an alternative translation: "in cloth of frieze his people shall be found".
But the real explanation behind this "conundrum unsolved for nearly seven hundred years", according to Reynolds, is "very simple, so simple it has been overlooked". It refers to paper-making, she says, since in medieval times the sheets of paper were interleaved with felt, pressed, and then hung to dry. "Between felt and felt one found paper, that is to say, texts ... In other words, the remedy for avarice is to be found precisely where, in Il Convivio, Dante said it was: in the texts of canon and civil law." Problem solved, at least to Reynolds's satisfaction.
In another context, Borges suggests that uncertainty is part of Dante's design. And perhaps we could see Dante's tendency to riddling ambiguity as endemic to the supposed traits of a Gemini: skilful, versatile, intellectual, more interested in political theory than direct action, but also fickle, cunning and evasive. A Gemini is ruled by Mercury, or Hermes, the god of commerce and music, but also of thieves, tricksters and liars.
Elsewhere Reynolds forms the interesting hypothesis that the vision of the Trinity that concludes the Commedia might have been induced by psychedelic substances: "From the early 14th-century manuscript Tractatus de Herbis it is evident that the plant Canapa (Cannabis sativa) was known and available. So too was Aloe vera ... Another plant was called "grains of Paradise" ... Aldous Huxley, to take a 20th-century example, experimented with altered states of consciousness by taking mescalin (obtained from the aloe)."
Mostly, Reynolds's account of Dante is a dutiful chronological trek through the works, a combination of quoted lines, prose paraphrase and historical and critical commentary. We are told, for instance, that "it is evident that in writing his verse, he was listening to the effect it would have when read aloud. That is why he varies it in level and tone, making it now colloquial and conversational, now horrific, now delicate and lyrical, all styles inviting the acting talents of the reader, probably himself in the first instance." Just so.
Rarely do we get a glimpse of the Dante envisioned by the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam: "If the halls of the Hermitage were suddenly to go mad, if all the paintings of all the schools and the great masters were suddenly to break loose from their hooks, and merge with one another, intermingle and fill the rooms with a Futurist roar and an agitated frenzy of colour, we would then have something resembling Dante's Commedia."
See http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1793871,00.html
Note
Dr Barbara Reynolds’ research indicates that Dante may have smoked cannabis to write La Divina Commedia. Italian accademics answer her: talk nonsense!
Apart the piquant notices of mass media, the book is serious,and very interesting. Easy to read. Recommended. Consigliato.
posted by: Whitebeard at 17:20 |
link | comments |
culture, italy, dante
The largest Embassy in the world
Dear USC4P&J members,
Our next general meeting will be Wednesday, April 9 at 7pm. It will be held
at Marilee´s apartment in San Saba/Piramide. Everyone on the mailing list
is welcome.
The agenda for the meeting includes:
1. Organize for April 15 War Tax Day; discuss and decide what sort of
action we can take, and form a working group to work out details.
(http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=3869)
2. Organize a Palestine/Israel event (debate/discussion panel) in English;
firm up ideas and possible date/venue, and form a working group so this
can begin to get off the ground. (See minutes of last meeting
http://www.peaceandjustice.it/meeting-120208.php).
3. Using the primary season to pressure candidates; nothing is being said
about really getting out of Iraq, about the fourteen permanent bases there,
about the largest Embassy in the world being built in Baghdad (bigger than
Vatican City)? How can we, as peace activists, help force these issues into
the campaigns?
4. Discussion of film series, evaluation of new venue and suggestions for
other potentially better venues/times for future series. Do we have viable
alternatives? And if so, who will look into them?
5. Misc. business (including upcoming USC4P&J elections in June) and
suggestions from the membership.
USC4P&J General Meeting Wed, April 9, 7pm Marilee´s apartment in San Saba/Piramide.
For any questions, contact us at info@peaceandjustice.it.
See you next Wednesday!
Anna, Gene, Maria, Maria Chiara and Stephanie
---
U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice - Rome
info@peaceandjustice.it
http://www.peaceandjustice.it
posted by: Whitebeard at 16:18 |
link | comments |
iraq
School of the Americas
School of the Americas
There is no different American criminal gang, except the Congress (Mark Twain)
click the photo
SOA: School of the Americas
WHINSEC: Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation
Il lupo cambia il pelo, ma non il vizio
the wolf change the fur, but not the bad habit
Torture doesn't require a definition. You know it when you see it. Or feel it.
With all the media coverage of "waterboarding" and all the congressional questioning of government officials about their views on the subject, I imagine that by now many people think that waterboarding must be the worst kind of torture that the United States has engaged in, and that if waterboarding is in fact not torture then the idiot king is correct when he says: "We don't torture." This is the way myths are born, so let's try and squash this particular one while it's still young.
Here in capsule form is a sample of some of the acts carried out in recent years by American military forces, their contract employees, and the CIA against detainees in one or another edifice of the sprawling global prison complex maintained by the United States in occupied Iraq, occupied Afghanistan, occupied Cuba, and various other secret prisons occupied by the CIA around the world. It may be torture to read but the point needs to be made. Lest we forget.
Standing or kneeling or forced into contorted, painful positions for many hours ... in leg shackles and handcuffs with eyes, ears and mouth covered, exposed to extremes of heat or cold ... stripped naked, led around with a dog leash ... deprived of sleep, kicked to keep them awake for days on end, subjecting them to a 24-hour bombardment of bright lights or blaring noise ... guards staging races of detainees in short leg shackles, violently punishing them if they fall ... withholding painkillers and other medications from the injured ... sensory deprivation, with all human contact cut off ... made to lie naked on a sheet of ice ... fake blood smeared on Muslim men when they are about to pray, telling them that it's menstrual blood.
The Iraqi general "was put headfirst into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord and knocked down before the soldiers sat and stood on him. The cause of death was determined to be suffocation."
Chained to the ceiling, shackled so tightly that the blood flow stops ... shackled to the floor in fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time, left without food and water, and allowed to defecate on themselves; a detainee found with a pile of hair next to him; he had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night ... wrapping a prisoner in an Israeli flag ... use of unmuzzled, growling dogs to frighten, in at least one instance actually biting and severely injuring a detainee ... burn marks on their backs ... detainee left at an Iraqi hospital, comatose, with massive head trauma, burns on the bottoms of his feet caused by electrocution, bruises on his arms ... more than a hundred detainees have died during interrogations ...
The death of two captives in Afghanistan: one from "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease"; an autopsy showed that his legs were so damaged that amputation would have been necessary; the other captive suffered from a blood clot in the lung that was exacerbated by a "blunt force injury" ...
Kicks to the groin and legs, shoving or slamming detainees into walls and tables, forcing water in their mouths until they could not breathe ... He had his hands handcuffed behind him and was suspended by his wrists -- "His arms were so badly stretched I was surprised they didn't pop out of their sockets." ... forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped ... seven naked Iraqis piled on top of each other in a pyramid ... detainee punched in the chest so hard he almost went into cardiac arrest ... forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear.
The report by General Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees, threatening male detainees with rape, sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, raping female prisoners ...
Eighteen days naked and alone in a cell, often with his hands and feet bound together, frequently beaten ... "He locked his arm under mine and holding the back of my head he beat my head against the doors of the cells" ... his hands and feet were pushed through the metal bars of the cell door and then tied together.
Six weeks after his release, he says he has lost the will to live. He is too ashamed to be seen by his friends and family and has not seen or spoken to his fiancée. The wedding is off. "I was a man before, but my manhood was taken away. Since this happened to me, I consider myself dead. My life feels over."
Iraqi prisoners were forced to crawl through broken glass and wear women's sanitary products ... two drunken interrogators took a female Iraqi prisoner from her cell in the middle of the night and stripped her naked to the waist ... an Iraqi woman in her 70s was harnessed and ridden like a donkey ... detainees were pressed to denounce Islam, or force-fed pork and liquor ...
Jamadi died an hour after his arrival at Abu Ghraib in early November 2003; he had been beaten while in CIA custody and then hung by his wrists, with his arms crossed across his back. US Army guards at the prison then packed his body in ice and posed with the corpse in mocking photographs.
"They forced us to walk like dogs on our hands and knees ... and we had to bark like a dog, and if we didn't do that they started hitting us hard on our face and chest with no mercy." ... "Do you believe in anything?" the soldier asked. "I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So he said, 'But I believe in torture and I will torture you'."
Taken out and tied to a post, rubber bullets were fired at them; made to kneel in the sun until they collapsed ... "They tied my hands to my feet behind my back. My left hand to my right foot and my right hand to my left foot. I was lying face down and they were beating me like this" ... inmates kept in wire cages with concrete floors and no protection from the elements.
"They actually said: 'You have no rights here'. After a while, we stopped asking for human rights -- we wanted animal rights" ... crosses shaved into their scalp or body hair ... dislocated his arms, beat his leg with a bat, crushed his nose, and put an unloaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger ... Six Kuwaiti prisoners said they were severely beaten, given electric shocks and sodomized by US forces in Afghanistan ...
The Afghan detainee had been captured in Pakistan along with a group of other Afghans. His connection to al Qaeda or the value of his intelligence was never established before he died. "He was probably associated with people who were associated with al Qaeda," one US government official said. ... numerous suicide attempts ...
And here's George W. in 2004: "The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. The world is better off because he sits in a prison cell. Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist."[15]
Bryan Whitman, spokesman for the US Department of Defense, 2005: "The United States treats all detainees in their custody with dignity and respect."[16]
It should be noted that the CIA has been treating (real and alleged) opponents of American imperialism with similar dignity and respect ever since the Agency's founding.[17] Police and prisons within the United States have been torturing for even longer.[18]
Now for the good news: The Bush administration, trying to shore up support for its military-trial procedures, has cabled US embassies with instructions that evidence obtained through torture will not be allowed. But evidence obtained through treatment considered "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" is to be allowed.[19]
Dedicated to John Negroponte
posted by: Whitebeard at 10:07 |
link | comments |
us, torture
A People's History of American Empire
A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn
People speak
Empire or Humanity?
What the Classroom Didn't Teach Me About the American Empire
By Howard Zinn
With an occupying army waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with military bases and corporate bullying in every part of the world, there is hardly a question any more of the existence of an American Empire. Indeed, the once fervent denials have turned into a boastful, unashamed embrace of the idea.
However, the very idea that the United States was an empire did not occur to me until after I finished my work as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force in the Second World War, and came home. Even as I began to have second thoughts about the purity of the "Good War," even after being horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after rethinking my own bombing of towns in Europe, I still did not put all that together in the context of an American "Empire."
I was conscious, like everyone, of the British Empire and the other imperial powers of Europe, but the United States was not seen in the same way. When, after the war, I went to college under the G.I. Bill of Rights and took courses in U.S. history, I usually found a chapter in the history texts called "The Age of Imperialism." It invariably referred to the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the conquest of the Philippines that followed. It seemed that American imperialism lasted only a relatively few years. There was no overarching view of U.S. expansion that might lead to the idea of a more far-ranging empire -- or period of "imperialism."
I recall the classroom map (labeled "Western Expansion") which presented the march across the continent as a natural, almost biological phenomenon. That huge acquisition of land called "The Louisiana Purchase" hinted at nothing but vacant land acquired. There was no sense that this territory had been occupied by hundreds of Indian tribes which would have to be annihilated or forced from their homes -- what we now call "ethnic cleansing" -- so that whites could settle the land, and later railroads could crisscross it, presaging "civilization" and its brutal discontents.
Neither the discussions of "Jacksonian democracy" in history courses, nor the popular book by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Jackson, told me about the "Trail of Tears," the deadly forced march of "the five civilized tribes" westward from Georgia and Alabama across the Mississippi, leaving 4,000 dead in their wake. No treatment of the Civil War mentioned the Sand Creek massacre of hundreds of Indian villagers in Colorado just as "emancipation" was proclaimed for black people by Lincoln's administration.
That classroom map also had a section to the south and west labeled "Mexican Cession." This was a handy euphemism for the aggressive war against Mexico in 1846 in which the United States seized half of that country's land, giving us California and the great Southwest. The term "Manifest Destiny," used at that time, soon of course became more universal. On the eve of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Washington Post saw beyond Cuba: "We are face to face with a strange destiny. The taste of Empire is in the mouth of the people even as the taste of blood in the jungle."
The violent march across the continent, and even the invasion of Cuba, appeared to be within a natural sphere of U.S. interest. After all, hadn't the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 declared the Western Hemisphere to be under our protection? But with hardly a pause after Cuba came the invasion of the Philippines, halfway around the world. The word "imperialism" now seemed a fitting one for U.S. actions. Indeed, that long, cruel war -- treated quickly and superficially in the history books -- gave rise to an Anti-Imperialist League, in which William James and Mark Twain were leading figures. But this was not something I learned in university either.
The "Sole Superpower" Comes into View
Reading outside the classroom, however, I began to fit the pieces of history into a larger mosaic. What at first had seemed like a purely passive foreign policy in the decade leading up to the First World War now appeared as a succession of violent interventions: the seizure of the Panama Canal zone from Colombia, a naval bombardment of the Mexican coast, the dispatch of the Marines to almost every country in Central America, occupying armies sent to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As the much-decorated General Smedley Butler, who participated in many of those interventions, wrote later: "I was an errand boy for Wall Street."
At the very time I was learning this history -- the years after World War II -- the United States was becoming not just another imperial power, but the world's leading superpower. Determined to maintain and expand its monopoly on nuclear weapons, it was taking over remote islands in the Pacific, forcing the inhabitants to leave, and turning the islands into deadly playgrounds for more atomic tests.
In his memoir, No Place to Hide, Dr. David Bradley, who monitored radiation in those tests, described what was left behind as the testing teams went home: "[R]adioactivity, contamination, the wrecked island of Bikini and its sad-eyed patient exiles." The tests in the Pacific were followed, over the years, by more tests in the deserts of Utah and Nevada, more than a thousand tests in all.
When the war in Korea began in 1950, I was still studying history as a graduate student at Columbia University. Nothing in my classes prepared me to understand American policy in Asia. But I was reading I. F. Stone's Weekly. Stone was among the very few journalists who questioned the official justification for sending an army to Korea. It seemed clear to me then that it was not the invasion of South Korea by the North that prompted U.S. intervention, but the desire of the United States to have a firm foothold on the continent of Asia, especially now that the Communists were in power in China.
Years later, as the covert intervention in Vietnam grew into a massive and brutal military operation, the imperial designs of the United States became yet clearer to me. In 1967, I wrote a little book called Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. By that time I was heavily involved in the movement against the war.
When I read the hundreds of pages of the Pentagon Papers entrusted to me by Daniel Ellsberg, what jumped out at me were the secret memos from the National Security Council. Explaining the U.S. interest in Southeast Asia, they spoke bluntly of the country's motives as a quest for "tin, rubber, oil."
Neither the desertions of soldiers in the Mexican War, nor the draft riots of the Civil War, not the anti-imperialist groups at the turn of the century, nor the strong opposition to World War I -- indeed no antiwar movement in the history of the nation reached the scale of the opposition to the war in Vietnam. At least part of that opposition rested on an understanding that more than Vietnam was at stake, that the brutal war in that tiny country was part of a grander imperial design.
Various interventions following the U.S. defeat in Vietnam seemed to reflect the desperate need of the still-reigning superpower -- even after the fall of its powerful rival, the Soviet Union -- to establish its dominance everywhere. Hence the invasion of Grenada in 1982, the bombing assault on Panama in 1989, the first Gulf war of 1991. Was George Bush Sr. heartsick over Saddam Hussein's seizure of Kuwait, or was he using that event as an opportunity to move U.S. power firmly into the coveted oil region of the Middle East? Given the history of the United States, given its obsession with Middle Eastern oil dating from Franklin Roosevelt's 1945 deal with King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, and the CIA's overthrow of the democratic Mossadeq government in Iran in 1953, it is not hard to decide that question.
Justifying Empire
The ruthless attacks of September 11th (as the official 9/11 Commission acknowledged) derived from fierce hatred of U.S. expansion in the Middle East and elsewhere. Even before that event, the Defense Department acknowledged, according to Chalmers Johnson's book The Sorrows of Empire, the existence of more than 700 American military bases outside of the United States.
Since that date, with the initiation of a "war on terrorism," many more bases have been established or expanded: in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, the desert of Qatar, the Gulf of Oman, the Horn of Africa, and wherever else a compliant nation could be bribed or coerced.
When I was bombing cities in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and France in the Second World War, the moral justification was so simple and clear as to be beyond discussion: We were saving the world from the evil of fascism. I was therefore startled to hear from a gunner on another crew -- what we had in common was that we both read books -- that he considered this "an imperialist war." Both sides, he said, were motivated by ambitions of control and conquest. We argued without resolving the issue. Ironically, tragically, not long after our discussion, this fellow was shot down and killed on a mission.
In wars, there is always a difference between the motives of the soldiers and the motives of the political leaders who send them into battle. My motive, like that of so many, was innocent of imperial ambition. It was to help defeat fascism and create a more decent world, free of aggression, militarism, and racism.
The motive of the U.S. establishment, understood by the aerial gunner I knew, was of a different nature. It was described early in 1941 by Henry Luce, multi-millionaire owner of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, as the coming of "The American Century." The time had arrived, he said, for the United States "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit, and by such means as we see fit."
We can hardly ask for a more candid, blunter declaration of imperial design. It has been echoed in recent years by the intellectual handmaidens of the Bush administration, but with assurances that the motive of this "influence" is benign, that the "purposes" -- whether in Luce's formulation or more recent ones -- are noble, that this is an "imperialism lite." As George Bush said in his second inaugural address: "Spreading liberty around the world… is the calling of our time." The New York Times called that speech "striking for its idealism."
The American Empire has always been a bipartisan project -- Democrats and Republicans have taken turns extending it, extolling it, justifying it. President Woodrow Wilson told graduates of the Naval Academy in 1914 (the year he bombarded Mexico) that the U.S. used "her navy and her army... as the instruments of civilization, not as the instruments of aggression." And Bill Clinton, in 1992, told West Point graduates: "The values you learned here… will be able to spread throughout the country and throughout the world."
For the people of the United States, and indeed for people all over the world, those claims sooner or later are revealed to be false. The rhetoric, often persuasive on first hearing, soon becomes overwhelmed by horrors that can no longer be concealed: the bloody corpses of Iraq, the torn limbs of American GIs, the millions of families driven from their homes -- in the Middle East and in the Mississippi Delta.
Have not the justifications for empire, embedded in our culture, assaulting our good sense -- that war is necessary for security, that expansion is fundamental to civilization -- begun to lose their hold on our minds? Have we reached a point in history where we are ready to embrace a new way of living in the world, expanding not our military power, but our humanity?
Howard Zinn is the author of A People's History of the United States and Voices of a People's History of the United States, now being filmed for a major television documentary. His newest book is A People's History of American Empire, the story of America in the world, told in comics form, with Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle in the American Empire Project book series. An animated video adapted from this essay with visuals from the comic book and voiceover by Viggo Mortensen, as well as a section of the book on Zinn's early life, can be viewed by clicking here. Zinn's website is HowardZinn.org.
posted by: Whitebeard at 08:51 |
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» Chapter I - The valley enclosed">
» Chapter II - The sword in the valley
» Chapter III - Castles of the Guidi
» Chapter IV - Pratovecchio and Romena
» Chapter V - The castles of the western valleys
» Chapter VI - Poppi and Campaldino
» Chapter VII - The Rock of San Francesco
» Chapter VIII - Dante in the valley
» Chapter IX - Camaldoli, Badia Prataglia, Vallombrosa
» Chapter XII - Farewell to the valley
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