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News and Notes from Chelsea Neigbors United Against the War
Extraordinary rendition lawsuit also window into low point for American experiment
September 4, 2011 |
from Salon.com
http://salon.com/a/sBUMfAA
A lawsuit between two aviation companies concerning a couple hundred thousand dollars in unpaid expenses has inadvertently led to the publicizing of a great deal of information about the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. (The program involved the illegal transport of thousands of terrorism suspects to secret CIA prisons in foreign nations and then to countries where suspects could be tortured. It is basically "kidnapping" followed by "torture" but the CIA did it so no one went to jail for it.)
The records from this lawsuit between two sub-contractors involved in the renditions will eventually be taught in an undergrad history course titled "America: Where It All Went Wrong." Detainees were transported by the same companies that fly billionaires on private jets to their resort vacations. (The CIA doesn't have an air force, so they relied on massive government contractor DynCorp, which... just rented some private planes.)
CIA provided the flights with letters from a fictional State Department official (the State Department was almost certainly not involved in the rendition program) providing diplomatic cover.
We learn that one the planes used to transport a suspect (Abu Omar, captured in Italy and tortured in Egypt) was owned by the co-owner of the Boston Red Sox. The plane sported a Red Sox logo on the tail. I mean a Yankees plane might've been more poetically apt but either way it seems like such a pat symbol of America's behavior in the wretched first decade of the 21st century that I'd roll my eyes at it if it turned up in a piece of fiction. An executive's private plane, sporting the logo of a rich baseball team and carrying an Imam captured overseas by the CIA, touches down in Egypt, a nation led by an American-backed strongman, where the Imam is to be tortured. What preachy liberal hack dreamed up that one? (The executive also owns part of Liverpool FC, because we can't forget Great Britain's help in all this.)
Then the hedge funds took an interest in privatized torture:
DynCorp was purchased in 2003 by Computer Sciences Corp., another leading federal contractor, in a $940 million merger. Computer Sciences Corp. then took on a supervising role in the rendition flights through 2006, according to invoices and emails in the court files. CSC sold three DynCorp units in 2005 to Veritas Capital Fund, a private equity firm, for $850 million, but retained ownership of other parts of the old company. Veritas in turn sold the restructured DynCorp — now known as DynCorp International — for about $1 billion in 2010 to Cerebrus Capital Management, another private equity fund.
So at least a couple rich people got even richer off of our national shame. There's an upside to everything.
* Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene[at]salon[dot]com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More: Alex Pareene You now can write to Bradley Manning
April 29, 2011 | Chelsea Neighbors United to End the War has learned that
a Fort Leavenworth mailing address has been released for Bradley Manning:
Bradley Manning 89289
830 Sabalu Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027
Please consider sending him a letter ASAP. National Anti-War Rally in NYC on Satuday, April 9
March 27, 2011 | Dear Peace Activists,
Please help spread the word! The major national Antiwar Rallies in NYC at Union Square, on Saturday, April 9 and in San Francisco on Sunday, April 10 are just 2 weeks away. Momentum is building based on the urgency of responding to the new attacks in Libya, no end to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, more attacks and threats to Gaza, ugly attacks on Muslims, new attacks on unions and collective bargaining and a new rounds of cutbacks of every possible social program, particularly hitting the Black and immigrant communities and the unemployed.
This week has seen student demonstrations all across the country against the devastating attacks on education. Students, teachers and parents are asking why is there always money for another war, for more Tomahawk cruise missiles, aircraft carriers, destroyers, nuclear submarines and F-16 bombers, while schools are closing, tuition increasing and faculty facing unprecedented layoffs.
BY BUS, TRAIN & IN CONTINGENTS
In New York City we are hearing reports of buses coming from the up and down the East coast and the Mid-West as far as Minneapolis. Cars, vans and Peace Trains on all the commuter lines into NYC are scheduled.
We are hearing of lots of plans for contingents of organizations and activists. Plans include a Asia contingent, Palestine contingent, Brooklyn for Peace contingent, South Bronx community contingent, and Irish contingent, various student contingents, and large union delegations. Groups in New Jersey, in Jersey City and Newark and on Long Island are holding morning rallies and heading to Union Square in large delegations. (Please be sure to post your information by clicking here for the transportation form)
MUSLIM SOLIDARITY
Because of the dangerous escalation of attacks on Muslims across the U.S., solidarity and unity of the antiwar movement with our Muslim sisters and brothers has become a major focus of these 2 major national rallies.
Last week a leader of United National Antiwar Committee and a leader of the Muslim Peace Coalition, USA spent 6 days meetings with leaders of the Muslim community in the New York City area. More than 75,000 leaflets were distributed at the mosques for Saturday, April 9th and the Muslim community in New York is organizing buses from the entire area.
The Muslim community is organizing for April 9th because they are for peace and they have seen the peace movement stand behind them and fight against Islamophobia.
LABOR SUPPORT
Over 500 organizations have now endorsed the rallies on April 9th in New York City andApril 10th in San Francisco including significant labor unions like 1199 SEIU East, which organizes health-care workers, Transport Workers Union, Local 100, which organizes NYC bus and subway workers, Teamsters, Local 808, which organizes workers on the commuter trains in New York. On the West Coast, the 25,000 member SEIU local 102 1 has endorsed as has the International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 10 and others.
It is time that the antiwar movement was out in the streets in big numbers to stand with those calling to Bring the Troops Home Now, in support of those fighting Islamophobia, along side those fighting for democracy throughout the Arab World and with working people and unions fighting to preserve collective bargaining and for a decent life.
LOGISTICS
The web site (www.UNACpeace.org) now contains logistics information including NYC bus drop off and pick up areas. It lists hundreds of endorsing organizations. Please take a minute to check and be sure that you are listed. If your organization is not listed, please endorse by clicking here (http://app4.websitetonight.com/projects2/2/8/0/5/1725082/Page_2.html).
If your organization has already endorsed please immediately activate your lists to get solid head counts of who is coming. Plan to bring lots of signs and banners so that the media will see the wide range of areas, issues and organizations. Tell us your needs and plans. Email us at: UNACpeace@gmail.com.
We also need lots of volunteers. Please volunteer for the day of the rally and/or before by clicking here (http://www.jotform.com/form/10804714127).
Click here for the Facebook UNAC group.
(http://www.facebook.com/#%21/home.php?sk=group_157059221012587¬if_t=group_activity)
Click here for the Facebook April 9th/10th event
(http://www.facebook.com/#%21/home.php?sk=event&id=122588664475910&ap=1)
We are on twitter here.
(http://twitter.com/UNACPeace)
Please donate by clicking here. (http://nationalpeaceconference.org/Donate.html) We urgently need money for the rallies.
In NYC, on Saturday, April 9, Union Square at 14th St & Broadway is the site of the 12 noon opening rally, followed by a march down the packed shopping streets of Broadway to Foley Square. At Foley Square a second rally is planned with speakers and music, along with a Peace Fair of tables, booths and displays. Please bring tables and literature from your group.
In San Francisco on Sunday, April 10 the march and rally will begin at 12 noon at Delores Park at 18th St. and Mission St. followed by a 1:30 march through the streets of San Francisco’s historic Mission District and returning to Delores Park for a closing rally at 3 PM. (for San Francisco information, call 415-49-no-war).
FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
February 21, 2011 | FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, has spent over eight months in solitary in Kuwait and Quantico sleep deprived in a constantly lit cell, barred from exercising in his cell, and subjected to suicide watch—-his clothing and glasses removed-—as pretrial retaliation.
U.S. Bill of Rights: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.” Writ of Habeas Corpus: ”a person has a right to be accused of a crime, brought to court to defend himself, and not be locked away indefinitely.” The prisoner, or anyone acting on his behalf if he is incommunicado, may petition the court, or a judge, for a Writ of Habeas Corpus. Can the government argue that the military serving their country should give up their Constitutional rights?
Suffering what international and U.S. law recognize as torture to elicit a confession, Manning still refuses to lie for leniency. The abuse—under investigation by the U.N., nonprofits, journalists, and activists—is to coerce him to implicate Julian Assange of WikiLeaks in inducing him to leak documents and videos of the Iraq and Afghan wars, helicopter murders, and State Department cables.
In a ”crisis of conscience” believing that war crimes were being concealed, Manning had tried to get the attention of his superiors. NBC news correspondent Jim Miklaszewski reported that Pentagon investigators have been unable to directly connect Manning’s alleged leaking of documents and Assange, hampering the Justice Department in charging Assange with espionage.
Without Manning claiming that Assange paid him, the U.S. Justice Department may try to destroy a
legitimate public information outlet and its founder but has no espionage case nor can it accuse
Assange of theft of government “property” if information was provided to WikiLeaks gratuitously.Assange denies knowing Manning or having him as the source of documents that WikiLeaks released.
Under house arrest in the U.K., Assange is fighting extradition to Sweden on suspicious claims of sexual misconduct. British Women Against Rape stated that those charges and Swedish authorities use of an Interpol Red Alert to incarcerate him are suspect.
After WikiLeaks revealed the U.S. helicopter gunship video depicting the slaughter of 11 unarmed Iraqi civilians and two journalists from Reuters that Pentagon agents had been hunting down, in
addition to military action reports and State Department cables, the U.S. government pressured banks, Amazon, Visa, and Mastercard not to process donations to WikiLeaks.Prolonged tortuous confinement is a tactic of a totalitarian government not one which claims free speech, justice, and freedom of the press.
To support Manning, go to: Bradley Manning Support Network
Call the White House switchboard: 202-456-1414 / 202-456-1111
“Free Bradley Manning, President Obama, Order Charges Dismissed!”
Quantico public affairs: 703-432-0289
write: base commander Colonel Choike at 3250 Catlin Ave, Quantico, VA 22134
write: brig commander CWO4 Averhart at 3247 Elrod Ave, Quantico, VA 22134
Send this message: ”We ask that Bradley Manning’s human rights be respected while he remains in custody; specifically, that he be allowed social interaction with inmates, that he be allowed meaningful physical exercise, that approved visitors be allowed to see him without interrogation and harassment, and that the “Prevention of Injury” order (the military’s basis for extreme pre-trial punishment) be lifted.” — Kevin Zeese
PROTEST TO FREE BRADLEY MANNING
January 27, 2011 | Blowing whistles, activists rallied at Quantico to protest the prolonged solitary confinement and harsh punishment threatening the sanity of whistleblower, Army Intelligence Analyst, Bradley Manning, in pretrial detention for allegedly providing classified documents to WikiLeaks. Although Article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice bans pretrial punishment, Manning has been isolated in the brig since May.
“Anybody getting out information about the illegality of the wars that the U. S. is engaged in is not somebody who should be behind bars,” said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink: Women for Peace. “He’s a hero to us. The real war criminals should be behind bars—not the whistleblowers. Enduring solitary confinement 23 hours a day is inhumane.”
CIA ex-officer/activist, Ray McGovern, held up the sign: FREE BRADLEY MANNING! “Keeping people alone in a small, windowless, constantly lit cell, forbiding exercise except for an hour a day, is cruel and inhumane treatment not allowed for our troops or for prisoners of war much less for prisoners of conscience which Bradley Manning is.”
Call the White House switchboard 202-456-1414/202-456-1111:
“Free Bradley Manning, President Obama, Order Charges Dismissed!”
Take action of behalf of Bradley Manning
Quantico public affairs: 703-432-0289
write: base commander Colonel Choike at 3250 Catlin Ave, Quantico, VA 22134
write: brig commander CWO4 Averhart at 3247 Elrod Ave, Quantico, VA 22134
write: ”We ask that Bradley Manning’s human rights be respected while he remains in custody; specifically, that he be allowed social interaction with inmates, that he be allowed meaningful physical exercise, that approved visitors be allowed to see him without interrogation and harassment, and that the “Prevention of Injury” order (the military’s basis for extreme pre-trial punishment) be lifted.” — Kevin Zeese
His Congressman, Chris Van Hollen tel: 202 225-5341 / fax: 202 225-0375
His Senator, Barbara Mikulski tel: 202 224-4654 / fax: 410 962-4760
His Senator, Benjamin Cardin tel: 202 224-4524 / fax: 202 224-1651
Ask them to: Join Manning’s legal counsel and Psychologists for Social Responsibility Revise conditions of his incarceration while he awaits trial.
Demand due process under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Demand speedy adjudication of the motions filed on Manning’s behalf. "Should Corporations Decide Our Elections" Free Forum Friday, October 15
October 9, 2010 | "Should Corporations Decide Our Elections"
Friday, October 15, 2010
All Souls Unitarian Church
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
1157 Lexington Ave. (at 80th St.), NYC
A Provocative Symposium
With panelists: Thom Hartmann, Lawrence Lessig, & Zephyr Teachout
Moderated by: Laura Flanders of GRITtv
A discussion of how the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision affects elections, lobbying, and the mixture
of money and politics. Q&A period will follow.
Admission is free.
This Big Apple Coffee Party event is co-sponsored by the Peace and Justice Task Force
and Lifelines Center of All Souls Unitarian Church.
For information and to rsvp: 212-252-2619 or bigapplecoffeeparty@gmail.com
www.bigapplecoffeeparty.org
Dear Chelsea Neighbor, friend and supporter
May 25, 2010 |
May 25, 2010 · Tuesday, May 18, 2010 marked five years plus two weeks that Chelsea Stands Up Against The War has been taking place each and every Tuesday from 6 until 7 pm at the northwest corner of 8th Avenue and 24th Street. So if you were concerned that we haven't been able to continue, don't worry that hasn't been the case yet.
It was a remarkable evening partly because the driving gusts of wind made the heavy rains that more intense. Trucks and cars and taxis were honking their horns, people gave us the peach sign and thumbs up at we struggled to keep the banner open. It was too wet and windy for us to distribute fliers or put out buttons and petitions on our table. A man walked up to us in the driving storm and pressed some money into one our our hands and said, "I was in the 101st Airborne, I know what this is about."
Others stopped and thanked us for being there. A few stopped and applauded. The thoughtfulness by the passersby were greatly appreciated by us. The "us" this past week was made up of Roberto Rodriguez, Hillary Weiss and Chuck Zlatkin.
While the news media, the dawn of the 2010 election cycle, the elevation of the Tea Party, pressing issues like finance reform, charter schools, health care, and the criminal oil spill in the Gulf have pushed war from center stage, the importance of resistance to permanent war (the Bush-Obama years) has never been more urgent.
Billions more to be spent, more lives to be lost, families decimated as "progressives" do back-flips trying to justify the escalation under Obama, means that protesting war is needed now more than ever.
Please consider joining us on any Tuesday that you can. We are getting into the summer months where some of our regulars are looking to take some vacation. We need you to help out. Even if you an come by once for just 15 minutes or so it will be a meaningful assist.
You weren't wrong. Going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan made no sense It is a waste of lives and resources. It is no more justifiable with Barack Obama as president then it was when George W. Bush was president. Stop the funding, stop the wars.
People say, "Where is the anti-war movement?" Well part of it is on the northwest corner of 8th Avenue and 24th Street in NYC every Tuesday from 6 until 7 pm.
Join us. You might feel better, I know for sure that we will.
Peace,
Chuck for
Chelsea Neighbors United to End the War
Chelsea Neighbors United To End The War
P.O. Box 821
JAF Station
New York, NY 10116-0821
212-726-1385
http://www.chelseaneighborsunited.org
join our listerv: ChelseaNeighborsUnited-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com Chelsea Stands Up Against The War Commemorates 5 Years
May 3, 2010 | Chelsea Stands Up Against The War Commemorates 5 Years
Who: Chelsea Neighbors United to End the War
Where: Northwest corner of 8th Avenue and 24th Street, NYC
When: Tuesday, May 4, 2010 from 6 until 7 pm
What: The 260th Consecutive Week of Chelsea Stands Up Against The War. Community residents
displaying their opposition to war, rain or shine, holding banner that states
WE THE PEOPLE OPPOSE THE WAR BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW
Why: Members of the Chelsea community made a pledge in May of 2005 that they would Stand Up Against The War
until the war ended and the troops were home safely. While other vigils and Stand Ups have ended, this one continues. The Roots of War
April 12, 2010 | By Barbara Ehrenreich, The Progressive
Only three types of creatures engage in warfare -- humans, chimpanzees, and ants. Among humans, warfare is so ubiquitous and historically commonplace that we are often tempted to attribute it to some innate predisposition for slaughter -- a gene, perhaps, manifested as a murderous hormone. The earliest archeological evidence of war is from 12,000 years ago, well before such innovations as capitalism and cities and at the very beginning of settled, agricultural life. Sweeping through recorded history, you can find a predilection for warfare among hunter-gatherers, herding and farming peoples, industrial and even post-industrial societies, democracies, and dictatorships. The good old pop-feminist explanation -- testosterone -- would seem, at first sight, to fit the facts.
But war is too complex and collective an activity to be accounted for by any warlike instinct lurking within the individual psyche. Battles, in which the violence occurs, are only one part of war, most of which consists of preparation for battle -- training, the manufacture of weapons, the organization of supply lines, etc. There is no plausible instinct, for example, that could impel a man to leave home, cut his hair short, and drill for hours in tight formation.
Contrary to the biological theories of war, it is not easy to get men to fight. In recent centuries, men have often gone to great lengths to avoid war -- fleeing their homelands, shooting off their index fingers, feigning insanity. So unreliable was the rank and file of the famed eighteenth century Prussian army that military rules forbade camping near wooded areas: The troops would simply melt away into the trees. Even when men are duly assembled for battle, killing is not something that seems to come naturally to them. As Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman argued in his book "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society" (Little, Brown, 1995), one of the great challenges of military training is to get soldiers to shoot directly at individual enemies.
What is it, then, that has made war such an inescapable part of the human experience? Each war, of course, appears to the participants to have an immediate purpose -- to crush the "Hun," preserve democracy, disarm Saddam, or whatever -- that makes it noble and necessary. But those who study war dispassionately, as a recurrent event with no moral content, have observed a certain mathematical pattern: that of "epidemicity," or the tendency of war to spread in the manner of an infectious disease. Obviously, war is not a symptom of disease or the work of microbes, but it does spread geographically in a disease-like manner, usually as groups take up warfare in response to war-like neighbors. It also spreads through time, as the losses suffered in one war call forth new wars of retaliation. Think of World War I, which breaks out for no good reason at all, draws in most of Europe as well as the United States, and then "reproduces" itself, after a couple of decades, as World War II.
In other words, as the Dutch social scientist Henk Houweling puts it, "one of the causes of war is war itself." Wars produce war-like societies, which, in turn, make the world more dangerous for other societies, which are thus recruited into being war-prone themselves. Just as there is no gene for war, neither is there a single type or feature of society -- patriarchy or hierarchy -- that generates it. War begets war and shapes human societies as it does so.
In general, war shapes human societies by requiring that they possess two things: one, some group or class of men (and, in some historical settings, women) who are trained to fight; and, two, the resources to arm and feed them. These requirements have often been compatible with patriarchal cultures dominated by a warrior elite -- knights or samurai -- as in medieval Europe or Japan. But not always: Different ways of fighting seem to lead to different forms of social and political organization. Historian Victor Hansen has argued that the phalanx formation adopted by the ancient Greeks, with its stress on equality and interdependence, was a factor favoring the emergence of democracy among nonslave Greek males. And there is no question but that the mass, gun-wielding armies that appeared in Europe in the seventeenth century contributed to the development of the modern nation-state -- if only as a bureaucratic apparatus to collect the taxes required to support these armies.
Marx was wrong, then: It is not only the "means of production" that shape societies, but the means of destruction. In our own time, the costs of war, or war-readiness, are probably larger than at any time in history, in relation to other human needs, due to the pressure on nations not only to maintain a mass standing army -- the United States supports about a million men and women at arms -- but to keep up with an extremely expensive, ever-changing technology of killing. The cost squeeze has led to a new type of society, perhaps best termed a "depleted" state, in which the military has drained resources from all other social functions. North Korea is a particularly ghoulish example, where starvation coexists with nuclear weapons development. But the USSR also crumbled under the weight of militarism, and the United States brandishes its military might around the world while, at this moment, cutting school lunches and health care for the poor.
"Addiction" provides only a pallid and imprecise analogy for the human relationship to war; parasitism -- or even predation -- is more to the point. However and whenever war began, it has persisted and propagated itself with the terrifying tenacity of a beast attached to the neck of living prey, feeding on human effort and blood.
If this is what we are up against, it won't do much good to try to uproot whatever war-like inclinations may dwell within our minds. Abjuring violent speech and imagery, critiquing masculinist culture, and promoting respect for human diversity -- all of these are worthy projects, but they will make little contribution to the abolition of war. It would be far better to think of war as something external to ourselves, something which has to be uprooted, everywhere, down to the last weapon and bellicose pageant.
The "epidemicity" of war has one other clear implication: War cannot be used as a means to prevent or abolish war. True, for some time to come, urgent threats from other heavily armed states will require at least the threat of armed force in response. But these must be very urgent threats and extremely restrained responses. To indulge, one more time, in the metaphor of war as a kind of living thing, a parasite on human societies: The idea of a war to end war is one of its oldest, and cruelest, tricks.
Barbara Ehrenreich is a columnist for The Progressive. She is the author of "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" (Metropolitan Books, 2001) and "Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War" (Henry Holt, 1997).
© 2010 The Progressive All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/15604/ Cindy Sheehan's PEACE OF THE ACTION
February 13, 2010 | Dear Friend,
I have been on the national board of Voters for Peace since its inception and believe strongly in the Pledge for Peace. I have not voted for a pro-war candidate since.
Unfortunately, many people are still mired in fear-based voting. Elected in 2008, our new president has continued and expanded the path of war begun by Bush and Cheney. He is also increasing military and nuclear budgets as he escalates our troop and contractor commitments in the Middle East.
Peace of the Action is a new peace group that I am putting together with the help and encouragement of Voters for Peace. Our first large event will be Camp OUT NOW, an anti-war camp that we will be setting up on the lawn of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., on March 13th. We are focusing our attention on the wars in which our nation is incredibly mired and will be doing civil resistance on a daily basis until our demands are met. This is a sustained action.
I am writing to invite you to come for all or part of Camp OUT NOW. Please visit our website so you can get more information or donate to this very worthy cause.
In love, peace, and solidarity!
Cindy Sheehan
National Director of Peace of the Action
www.PEACEOFTHEACTION.ORG
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