Protest

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The Idea of Enemies is Killing Us | Baltimore Chronicles

By Deb Reich

“In a globally internetworked world, we are all going to learn to work together because there’s no viable alternative.”

Consider this: The “enemies paradigm” and the perspective it represents are obsolete. We humans on this Earth are in the process of moving onward, beyond that worldview, into a different era. In the new era, there will still be groups of people we may see as our adversaries, but they will not be enemies. There will still be bad problems, but we will solve them more ably, working together with the people we used to think of as our enemies. In a globally internetworked world, we are all going to learn to do this because there’s no viable alternative. It begins with adopting a different mental map.

The organizing principle of the new mental map is the idea of No More Enemies. It belongs to everyone on the planet. It’s a simple idea, really. The concept of “enemies” is no longer serving humanity. It has, demonstrably, become very destructive and is overdue for retirement. The old enemies-oriented worldview is being displaced by emergent new paradigms of partnership, shared responsibility, and co-evolving. Humanity is struggling to redesign itself, using new tools. New technologies of medical imaging, for instance, give us a crucial biofeedback loop to evaluate the impact of our own thoughts and cultural habits on our health, our behavior, our society, our planet. That gives us new information to help us co-redesign our way of understanding and interacting with our world. The evidence is there in plain sight…we just have to connect the dots.

“We, the people, are not the problem. The problem is the paradigm: the enemies paradigm.”

As a Jewish American Israeli woman who has spent years living and working with Muslim and Christian Arabs in Israel/Palestine, I know what I’m talking about. We, the people, are not the problem. The problem is the paradigm: the enemies paradigm.

Many of us have already discarded the enemies-based map of reality. We know that we have like-minded partners elsewhere in the Middle East, and far beyond. Our shared mantra, from Rela Mazali: We refuse to be enemies. We are trying to swing the regional momentum away from violence and fear and toward pluralism and equality. But history, the educational system, industry, army, religious extremism and government are all against us (so far). What we mainly have is our vision of a different way: No More Enemies.

“In Israel, successive governments have built a gigantic wall of brutality in the vain hope of protecting the folks on one side from the aspirations on the other side: never a sustainable strategy.”

In Israel, successive governments have built a gigantic wall of brutality in the vain hope of protecting the folks on one side from the aspirations on the other side: never a sustainable strategy. Our wall is like all such walls: constructed and funded by successive regimes, meant to keep at bay those whom the authorities wish to exclude, and to intimidate those who dissent. This wall is made of cement and electronic sensors and barbed wire, but the mortar binding it is made of powerful existential anxieties, of memories of historical suffering and injustice, and of continuing bloodshed mixed with fear, fear, fear.

And now—inevitably—there is this global picket line that has sprung up around Israel in response. BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions), the Palestinian-led boycott movement is a call for equal rights for every person in this land and is supported worldwide by hundreds of thousands of people across a broad political spectrum. Most of them can agree on little else; oppression often makes strange bedfellows. Although not a boycott enthusiast, I have publicly supported this one as a nonviolent way of leveraging policy change here—because the alternative (business as usual) will be much worse for everyone concerned, long-term.

Clearly, things in Israel and Palestine have gone horribly wrong over the years. There has been heroism, and barbarism, on every side (all exhaustively documented). A vast river of self-righteous rhetoric has flowed under the bridge. None of that has mended what’s wrong here, and the situation is surely not going to fix itself. By rejecting Wallmania and working together, however, we can transform this scenario and get a life for us and our neighbors. The dissidents next door are equally committed. Maybe you’ve seen some of them on TV recently. This is deep change coming, which is why it evokes a backlash. We say: No fear. No more enemies.

“Palestinian nonviolence is not new.”

Did you know that the nonviolent Palestinian independence movement is not new? It is not new but it has been successfully smothered for decades, both by the somewhat discredited romance with “armed struggle” and by Israeli government repression. No longer. As its leaders are jailed, harassed, and even killed, this movement only grows stronger. In recent years, significant segments of Palestinian civil society, including young people, have indeed renounced violence. They have renounced it in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. They have done so sincerely, authentically, publicly, and repeatedly until, right now, there may be more Palestinians than Israelis deeply committed to nonviolent change. And—despite the militants who get all the headlines—the Palestinian people’s commitment to nonviolence seems to be increasing, week by week, while the trend in Israel, sadly, seems to be going the other way.

“The world finally seems to be waking up to the fact that justice for Palestinians is an urgent existential necessity—for Palestinians, for Israelis, maybe for the planet.”

The Israeli elite (like other entrenched elites hereabouts) is frightened, and that is dangerous. It’s important for people abroad not to demonize ordinary Israelis now, now that the world finally seems to be waking up to the fact that justice for Palestinians is an urgent existential necessity—for Palestinians, for Israelis, maybe for the planet. The Israeli people need your tough love, not your condemnation. The Israeli legislature, seemingly lacking any imaginative scheme for a different and more constructive shared future with the neighbors, is working hard to criminalize domestic dissent here. And the harder it works to do that, the more unequivocally we who dissent are obliged to declare where we stand.

We stand with all our Palestinian and Israeli sisters and brothers who refuse to be enemies. We stand with the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions of compassion. We stand with the peaceful protestors and nonviolent demonstrators and former combatants who have laid down their guns and are risking their lives for a different future, unarmed. We stand with Palestinians in refugee camps and in the diaspora who have waited for two or three generations now, for a chance to come back home. They are people, people like us, and they are homesick. Why do so many Israelis and Jews abroad insist on seeing them as a threat? They are a huge, untapped resource of vibrant human energy waiting to be allowed the chance to contribute to a more beautiful, more egalitarian, and more sustainable community in Israel/Palestine.

The song humanity needs to be singing now, in our region and elsewhere, is called No More Enemies. The history it will celebrate has only just begun to unfold. This is the new Exodus. As it moves us out of the old landscape of enemies and into new and unknown territory, maybe the right troubadour will appear who can find the words and melody for this song, and help us sing it. In harmony.

Source: Baltimore Chronicle

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The Obama Administration’s War on Civil Liberties and Free Speech | Activist Post

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was praising the role that the internet played in toppling oppressive regimes (ironically enough, close U.S. allies), the Justice Department was in court in Alexandria, Virginia seeking to invade the privacy and political rights of WikiLeaks supporters even as it shields well-connected “War on Terror” fraudsters.

Scarcely batting an eyelash, Madame Clinton told her audience at George Washington University that “the goal is not to tell people how to use the internet any more than we ought to tell people how to use any public square, whether it’s Tahrir Square or Times Square.”

Rich with rhetorical flourishes that should have evoked gales of laughter but didn’t (this is America, after all), Clinton averred that “together, the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association online comprise what I’ve called the freedom to connect. The United States supports this freedom for people everywhere, and we have called on other nations to do the same.”

Really?

Has the honorable Secretary attended a demonstration of late, or found herself on the receiving end of a police baton, a rubber bullet, a jolt from a taser or ear-piercing blast from a “nonlethal” sonic weapon?

Or perhaps Madame Clinton has been served with a National Security Letter that arrives with its own built-in, permanent gag order, had her organization infiltrated by provocateurs, been the focus of “spear phishing” attacks by a secret state agency, say the FBI or one of their private contractors, who’ve implanted surveillance software on her laptop or smart phone, or summoned by subpoena to appear before a Star Chamber-like grand jury?

I didn’t think so. Read more…

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Fresh Violence Rages in Libya | Al Jazerra

Libyan forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi are waging a bloody operation to keep him in power, with residents reporting gunfire in parts of the capital Tripoli and other cities, while other citizens, including the country’s former ambassador to India, are saying that warplanes were used to “bomb” protesters.

A Palestinian student holds up a placard displaying the Libyan flag flanked by the Tunisian (left) and Egyptian (right) flags during a protest against Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi in Gaza City on Tuesday. (AFP/Mahmud Hams) Nearly 300 people are reported to have been killed in continuing violence in the capital and across the north African country as demonstrations enter their second week.

Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has warned that the widespread attacks against civilians “amount to crimes against humanity”, and called for an international investigation in possible human rights violations.

Witnesses in Tripoli told Al Jazeera that fighter jets had bombed portions of the city in fresh attacks on Monday night. The bombing focused on ammunition depots and control centres around the capital.

Helicopter gunships were also used, they said, to fire on the streets in order to scare demonstrators away.

Several witnesses said that “mercenaries” were firing on civilians in the city, while pro-Gaddafi forces warned people not to leave their homes via loudspeakers mounted on cars.

Residents of the Tajura neighbourhood, east of Tripoli, said that dead bodies are still lying on the streets from earlier violence. At least 61 people were killed in the capital on Monday, witnesses told Al Jazeeera. Read more…

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U.S. government now view protesting Americans as terrorists – You’re either with us or against us | Presscore

Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007.  Never heard of it.  That is because the U.S. Senate hasn’t yet passed it but the Obama government is trying to get it passed before the Egyptian revolution, for Change, Liberty and Social Justice lands on U.S. soil.  The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 is a bill sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) in the 110th United States Congress.  Its stated purpose is to deal with “homegrown terrorism and violent radicalization”.  Read more…

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After Weeks of Revolution, ‘Day of Cleaning’ in Cairo | AOL News

At the epicenter of the protest that brought down the three-decade regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, young men and women took to the streets again today — only this time, with a different agenda. Armed with brooms, gloves and trash bags, they launched a massive cleanup following 18 straight days of unrest that debilitated the country.

“We’re taking care of the square, and then we’ll clean up the whole country,” Mohammed El Tayeb said while standing amid the volunteer cleaning crews sweeping up Tahrir Square. “This is a beautiful country. Now it’s ours and we’re going to take care of it.”

Across the crowded square, young men walked with paper signs taped to their chests that read: “Sorry for the disturbance, we’re building Egypt.” After days of protests that had such names as the “Day of Rage” and “Day of Millions,” today’s gathering was called the “Day of Cleaning.” A new era has dawned upon the country of 80 million. Read more…

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U.S. Military Intervention in Egypt: A Chapter in America’s Saudi Arabian End-Game | Collapse.net

By Dale G. Sinner

US military intervention in Egypt is prompting speculation over motives. Extraction of American citizens is the stated objective, but does evacuating the American expat community in Egypt warrant the flotilla of US warships recently positioned in the Suez Canal?  Does evacuating this expat community warrant the helicopters, Special Forces squads, and 2,200 Marines aboard those ships?  Here in the land of endless budget cuts, the obvious answer is “doubtful”.

While protests flare across North Africa, why would the US stir up already seething anti-American sentiment in the region with such a move?  Could today’s intervention lead to a long-term, “stabilizing” US presence in Egypt? Or could these events presage something far greater?  What of Egypt’s neighbor to the East – Saudi Arabia – home to a quarter of world oil reserves?

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is clearly defying US pressure to step down from an office he’s held for nearly 30 years.  Continued port strikes and unrest threaten vital ship traffic along the Suez Canal, and the likelihood of imminent military extraction of American citizens may present a tantalizing opportunity for oil elites to close the circle around the Arabian peninsula and place a major US force presence in Egypt – a presence with a potentially ominous goal: the eventual destabilization and Balkanization of the Arabian peninsula.

The Saudi royals are clearly opposed to US intervention in Egypt.  See here, here, and here.  This opinion regarding US meddling is understandable, as even the slightest provocation could spark similar civilian revolt on the Saudi side of the Red Sea.

US forces were evicted from Saudi Arabia in mid-2003 and relocated to neighboring Qatar, but material and troop strength in US CENTCOM’s theatre of operations – including the permanent US “mega bases” in Iraq, might suggest a more lucrative alternative to Iran as the central target of US military strategic planning (see map below). Read more...

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Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds | Truthout

“A new earthquake” is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be donating 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds, some of them treated with highly toxic pesticides. The MPP has committed to burning Monsanto’s seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation’s presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day.

In an open letter sent May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the executive director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti “a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds … and on what is left our environment in Haiti.”(1) Haitian social movements have been vocal in their opposition to agribusiness imports of seeds and food, which undermines local production with local seed stocks. They have expressed special concern about the import of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

For now, without a law regulating the use of GMOs in Haiti, the Ministry of Agriculture rejected Monsanto’s offer of Roundup Ready GMOs seeds. In an email exchange, a Monsanto representative assured the Ministry of Agriculture that the seeds being donated are not GMOs.

Elizabeth Vancil, Monsanto’s director of development initiatives, called the news that the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture approved the donation “a fabulous Easter gift” in an April email.(2) Monsanto is known for aggressively pushing seeds, especially GMOs seeds, in both the global North and South, including through highly restrictive technology agreements with farmers who are not always made fully aware of what they are signing. According to interviews by this writer with representatives of Mexican small farmer organizations, they then find themselves forced to buy Monsanto seeds each year, under conditions they find onerous and at costs they sometimes cannot afford.

The hybrid corn seeds Monsanto has donated to Haiti are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram.(3) Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs). Results of tests of EBDCs on mice and rats caused concern to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which then ordered a special review. The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them. Pesticides containing thiram must contain a special warning label, the EPA ruled. The EPA also barred marketing of the chemicals for many home garden products, because it assumes that most gardeners do not have adequately protective clothing.(4) Monsanto’s passing mention of thiram to Ministry of Agriculture officials in an email contained no explanation of the dangers, nor any offer of special clothing or training for those who will be farming with the toxic seeds.

Haitian social movements’ concern is not just about the dangers of the chemicals and the possibility of future GMOs imports. They claim that the future of Haiti depends on local production with local food for local consumption, in what is called food sovereignty. Monsanto’s arrival in Haiti, they say, is a further threat to this. Read more…

Source: Truthout

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The Poetry of Death: Patterns of State Terror | Baltimore Chronicle

BY CHRIS FLOYD

The found poetry of state terror continues its strange mutilations of the English language. The bizarre verbal heavings of Donald Rumsfeld, for example, are rightly celebrated as choice examples of the genre. And noted English playwright David Hare once fashioned a whole play built largely on the “thought-tormented music” wrought from verbatim transcripts of the principal authors of the war crime in Iraq.

In this regard, as in almost every aspect of the Terror War, “continuity” has been the hallmark of the Obama Administration. But we would do the progressive, forward-looking president a grave disservice if we were to imply that this dynamic, historic figure has confined himself to mere continuity. No, in field after field of governmental endeavor, Barack Obama has striven mightily not just to uphold the many authoritarian and militarist innovations of the Bush Administration, but to expand them-increasing their scope and depth, codifying, normalizing and making permanent many practices which his predecessors had enshrouded with ambiguity, deception and deliberate murk. Bush and Cheney were afflicted with a vestigial embarrassment at the howling illegality and constitutional subversion of many of their Terror War policies, and seemed to fear these acts would provoke some kind of public outcry or political controversy-or even prosecution-should they be made too explicit.

But our cool, savvy and thoroughly post-postmodern president carries none of that dead lumber from our long-vanished past. Where Bush was content with smirks and hints about his assassination program, Obama is bold, sending his security chief to declare openly before Congress that the president now has the unrestricted right and power to murder anyone, Americans included, in cold blood, by the simple expedient of declaring his victim a suspected terrorist of some vague description. Whereas Bush and Cheney usually resorted to backroom bureaucratic knife-twisting or bombastic but empty public threats to try to silence and cow officials who expose high crimes of state, the Obama Administration brazenly brings down the draconian power of federal prosecution against whistleblowers. Our progressives-in-power will not just take away your government job or bluster at your editors if you give your fellow citizens a glimpse of the blood-soaked sausage-making that goes on behind the imperial curtain; no, they will put you in the penitentiary, to rot away with murderers and child abusers, which is where they rank all such treacherous tellers of truth.

So we should not be surprised to find the Obama Administration outstripping its mentors and models from the Bush years in the production of Orwellian nomenclature. Nor is it remarkable that these perversions of language are leading to further perversions of law, morality and plain common sense.

We refer to the recent story in the Los Angeles Times about the vast expansion of the CIA’s powers to murder people in Pakistan with missiles fired by robot drones. These remote-control killings were originally aimed at specific, known, named individuals suspected of being top “militant” leaders. But now, people are being targeted not because of any action they are known or alleged to have taken, but simply because they seem to fit an arbitrarily designated “pattern of life”-even if the remote-control killers don’t know the victim’s name. Read more…

Source: Baltimore-Chronicle

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The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (Film)

Co-winner of this years Freedom of Expression Award from the National Board of Review (and one of their Five Best Documentaries of the Year), Winner of the Special Jury Award at IDFA, and in contention for the years Best Documentary Oscar, The Most Dangerous Man in America tells the story of Daniel Ellsberg, a high-level Pentagon official and Vietnam War strategist, who in 1971 concluded that the war is based on decades of lies and leaks 7,000 pages of top secret documents to The New York Times, making headlines around the world.

A riveting story of how this one mans profound change of heart created a landmark struggle involving Americas newspapers, its president and Supreme Court. With Daniel Ellsberg, Patricia Ellsberg, Tony Russo, Howard Zinn, Hedrick Smith, John Dean, and, from the secret White House tapes, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who called Ellsberg the most dangerous man in America.

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The American Freedom Campaign Agenda

Editor’s Note: The American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007 (H.R. 3835), which addresses most of the issues outlined below, was introduced by U.S. Rep. Ron Paul on October 15, 2007. Click here to read the text of the bill.

At critical moments in our history, Americans have been called upon to protect our Constitutional guarantees of liberty and justice. We face such a moment today. The American Freedom Campaign is a non-partisan citizens’ alliance formed to reverse the abuse of executive power and restore our system of checks and balances with these ten goals:

  1. Fully restore the right to challenge the legality of one’s detention, or habeas corpus, and the right of detained suspects to be charged and brought to trial.
  2. Prohibit torture and all cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
  3. Prohibit the use of secret evidence.
  4. Prohibit the detention of anyone, including U.S. citizens, as an “enemy combatant” outside the battlefield, and on the President’s say-so alone.
  5. Prohibit the government from secretly breaking and entering our homes, tapping our phones or email, or seizing our computers without a court order, on the President’s say-so alone.
  6. Prohibit the President from “disappearing” anyone and holding them in secret detention.
  7. Prohibit the executive from claiming “state secrets” to deny justice to victims of government misdeeds, and from claiming “executive privilege” to obstruct Congressional oversight and an open government.
  8. Prohibit the abuse of signing statements, where the President seeks to disregard duly enacted provisions of bills.
  9. Use the federal courts, or courts-martial, to charge and prosecute terrorism suspects, and close Guantanamo down.
  10. Reaffirm that the Espionage Act does not prohibit journalists from reporting on classified national security matters without fear of prosecution.