Tag Archives ⇒ united states

War is Just Another Racket

July 20, 2004
· Martin Kelley

In the LA Times, “Advo­cates of War Now Prof­it From iraq’s Reconstruction”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-advocates14jul14,1,614346.story?coll=la-news-politics-national
bq. For­mer CIA Direc­tor R. James Woolsey is a promi­nent exam­ple of the phe­nom­e­non, mix­ing his busi­ness inter­ests with what he con­tends are the coun­try’s strate­gic inter­ests. He left the CIA in 1995, but he remains a senior gov­ern­ment advi­sor on intel­li­gence and nation­al secu­ri­ty issues, includ­ing iraq. Mean­while, he works for two pri­vate com­pa­nies that do busi­ness in iraq and is a part­ner in a com­pa­ny that invests in firms that pro­vide secu­ri­ty and anti-terrorism services.
In Under the Same Sun, “Is This Any Way to Run an Occupation”:http://www.underthesamesun.org/content/2004/07/index.html#000110, links and com­men­tary about how politically-connected U.S. com­pa­nies are pil­fer­ing iraqi oil mon­ey with­out audits, com­pet­i­tive bid­ding or oversight.
Belt­way lawyers might find all this per­fect­ly legal, but where I come from we call these kind of kick­backs good ol’ boy cor­rup­tion. And the rest of the world will just see the famil­iar pat­tern of modern-day colo­nial­ism: a rich Amer­i­can elite get­ting even rich­er by extract­ing third-world resources at gun­point. iraqis will pay for all the Hal­libur­ton yachts with the schools, hos­pi­tals and high­ways they won’t be able to build. “Amer­i­can sol­diers are pay­ing for it by dying”:http://news.google.com/news?q=american+soldiers+killed+iraq&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF‑8&c2coff=1&output=search and the “iraqi chil­dren may or may not be pay­ing for it with sodimized abuse at Abu Ghraib prison”:http://lincolnplawg.blogspot.com/2004/07/is-this-sy-hershs-october-surprise.html. We will all pay for it for gen­er­a­tions because of all the ill-will we’re earn­ing and the igno­rance we’re sow­ing. How many times do we need to prove that war is just anoth­er racket?

Exporting Prison Abuse to the World?

May 8, 2004
· Martin Kelley

An arti­cle on “abuse of pris­on­ers in the U.S.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/national/08PRIS.html?hp in the _NY Times_ shows that Lane McCot­ter, the man who over­saw the reopen­ing of the Abu Ghraib prison in iraq, was forced to resign a U.S. prison post “after an inmate died while shack­led to a restrain­ing chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suf­fered from schiz­o­phre­nia, was kept naked the whole time.” It was Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Ashcroft who hand-picked the offi­cials who went to iraq.
As an Amer­i­can I’m ashamed but not ter­ri­bly sur­prised to see what hap­pened in the U.S.-run pris­ons in iraq. Mil­i­taries are insti­tu­tions designed to com­mand with force and only civil­ian over­sight will ulti­mate­ly keep any mil­i­tary insi­tu­tion free from this sort of abuse. The “Red Cross had warned of pris­on­er mistreatment”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=3&u=/ap/20040508/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_prisoner_abuse but was large­ly ignored. Abu Ghraib is in the news in part because of a leaked Pen­ta­gon report, yet it’s only after CBS News aired the pic­tures and the New York­er quot­ed parts of the reports and turned it into a scan­dal that Pres­i­dent Bush or Defense Sec­re­tary Rums­feld admit­ted to the prob­lems and gave their half-hearted apologies.
_This is not to say all sol­diers are abu­sive or all prison guards are abusive_. Most sol­diers and most guards are good, decent peo­ple, serv­ing out of call to duty and (often) because of eco­nom­ic neces­si­ties. But when the sys­tem is pri­va­tized and kept secret, we allow for cor­rup­tion that put even the good peo­ple in posi­tions where they are pres­sured to do wrong.
It is pre­cise­ly because the Pen­ta­gon instinc­tive­ly keeps reports like the one on the abuse con­di­tions inside the Abu Ghraib prison secret that con­di­tions are allowed to get this bad. That prison, along with the one at Guan­tanamo Bay remain large­ly off-limits to inter­na­tion­al law. It was prob­a­bly only a few Amer­i­cans that gave the orders for the abuse but it was many more who fol­lowed and many many more – all of us in one way or anoth­er – who have gave the go-ahead with our inat­ten­tion to issues of jus­tice in prisons.

iraqi Prisoner Abuse and the Simulacra of Leadership

May 4, 2004
· Martin Kelley

The Gut­less Paci­fist talks about the abuse of iraqi pris­on­ers and asks How high up does it go?
bq. There are many trou­bling polit­i­cal issues com­ing out of both the reports of abuse in iraq and ear­li­er reports of abuse at Guan­tanamo Bay (which are look­ing increas­ing­ly accu­rate). But what is even more trou­bling to me is the larg­er moral issue that each of us who are Amer­i­cans may be in part respon­si­ble for these atroc­i­ties. For it is we who have allowed a cul­ture of death and vio­lence to develop.
Mean­while, a report on the abus­es by “Maj. Gen. Anto­nio M. Taguba”:http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4894033/ is chill­ing in its detail­ing of phys­i­cal and psy­cholo­gial tor­ture report­ed­ly tak­ing place at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad.
Joshua Mic­ah Mar­shal­l’s “Talk­ing Points Memo”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_05_02.php#002909 is keep­ing close tabs on devel­op­ments and reac­tions in Wash­ing­ton, includ­ing the President’s:
bq. The dis­as­ters now fac­ing the coun­try in iraq — some in slow motion, oth­ers by quick vio­lence — aren’t just hap­pen­ing on the pres­i­den­t’s watch. They are hap­pen­ing in a real sense, real­ly in the deep­est sense, because of him — because of his atten­tion to the sim­u­lacra of lead­er­ship rather than the real thing, which is more dif­fi­cult and demand­ing, both per­son­al­ly and morally.
Don’t miss Mar­shal­l’s thought­ful com­par­i­son of “Pres­i­dent Bush to a bad C.E.O.”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_05_02.php#002906.
The oth­er essen­tial read­ing on all this is Sey­mour Her­sh’s “New York­er arti­cle on the tor­ture at Abu Ghraib”:http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/.

Conscientious Objection, After You’re In

April 30, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Here’s a web­site of “Jere­my Hinz­man, a U.S. Army sol­dier who became a a con­sci­en­tious objector”:http://www.jeremyhinzman.net/faq.html in the course of his ser­vice. His appli­ca­tions denied, he moved to Cana­da and is seek­ing polit­i­cal asy­lum there.
I find I can under­stand the issues all too well. In only a slightly-parallel uni­verse, I’d be in iraq myself instead of pub­lish­ing Non​vi​o​lence​.org. My father, a vet­er­an who fought in the South Pacif­ic in World War II, real­ly want­ed me to join the U.S. Navy and attend the Naval Acad­e­my at Annapo­lis. For quite some time, I seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered it. I am attract­ed to the idea of ser­vice and duty and putting in hard work for some­thing I believe in.
Hinz­man’s sto­ry is get­ting a lot of main­stream cov­er­age, I sus­pect because the “escape to Cana­da” angle has so many Vietnam-era echoes that res­onate with that gen­er­a­tion. I wish Hinz­man would flesh out his web­site sto­ry though. His Fre­quent­ly Asked Ques­tions leaves out some impor­tant details that could real­ly make the sto­ry – why did he join the Army in the first place, what were some of the expe­ri­ences that led him to rethink his duty, etc. I’d rec­om­mend Jeff Pater­son­’s “Gulf War Refusenik”:http://jeff.paterson.net/ site, which includes lots of sto­ries includ­ing his own:
bq. “What am I going to do with my life?” has always been huge ques­tion of youth, and today in the wake of the hor­ror and tragedy of New York Sep­tem­ber 11th this ques­tion has increased impor­tance for mil­lions of young peo­ple. No one who has seen the images will ever for­get… If I had­n’t spent those four years in the Marine Corps, I might be inclined to fall into line now. Most of the time my unit trained to fight a war against peas­ants who dared to strug­gle against “Amer­i­can inter­ests” in their homelands-specifically Nicaragua, El Sal­vador, and Guatemala… Faced with this real­i­ty, I began the process of becom­ing un-American-meaning that the inter­ests of the peo­ple of the world began to weigh heav­ier than my self-interest. I real­ized that the world did not need or want anoth­er U.S. troop…
There are bound to be more sto­ries all the time of service-people who find a dif­fer­ent real­i­ty when they land on for­eign shores. How many will rethink their rela­tion­ship to the U.S. mil­i­tary. How many will fol­low Pater­son­’s exam­ple of becom­ing “un-American”?

Quaker publications meeting (QUIP) in Indiana

April 28, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions, bet­ter known as “QUIP,” is a col­lec­tion of 50 Quak­er pub­lish­ers, book­sellers and authors com­mit­ted to the “min­istry of the writ­ten word.” I often think of QUIP as a sup­port group of sorts for those of us who real­ly believe that pub­lish­ing can make a dif­fer­ence. It’s also one of those places where dif­fer­ent branch­es of Friends come togeth­er to work and tell sto­ries. QUIP ses­sions strike a nice bal­ance between work and unstruc­tured time. It has its own nice cul­ture of friend­li­ness and coop­er­a­tion that are the real rea­son many of us go every year.

Quakers Uniting in Publications annual meeting in Richmond Indiana 2004.
Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions annu­al meet­ing in Rich­mond Indi­ana 2004.
The theme of the 2004 annu­al ses­sion was “New Ways to Reach Our Mar­kets in a Chang­ing World” and our guest pre­sen­ters were pub­li­cists Doug and Kate Ban­dos of KSB Pro­mo­tions: http://​www​.ksbpro​mo​tions​.com
The Evans House, built 1855: Gur­neyite high style back in the day… It’s now the home of the Quak­er Hill Con­fer­ence Cen­ter, where we met. The Gur­neyites evolved into Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing and I had some good con­ver­sa­tions with Friends about some of the vision­ing FUM is doing. Pret­ty inter­est­ing stuff, like many Friends they too are try­ing to fig­ure out how to wres­tle more ful­ly with Quak­er tradition. 
Our hosts were the staff of “Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing. The FUM cam­pus in Rich­mond, Indi­ana, is very pret­ty in April, with flow­ers and the crabap­ple trees 
Even pret­tier is the refor­ested trail down to the White­wa­ter Riv­er Falls. 
We wouldn’t be Quak­ers if we didn’t have lots of meet­ings. Left: QUIP clerks Lucy Dun­can, Bar­bara Mays, Eliz­a­beth Cave. 
Philip Arnold from the Quak­er Book­shop in Lon­don, Ann Rap­er of North Car­olina YM (FUM) pub­li­ca­tions com­mit­tee and Liz Yeats, a for­mer FGC employ­ee and long­time QUIP stal­wart (Ann and Liz are also both board mem­bers of “Friends Journal). 
QUIP meet­ings are real­ly all about the con­ver­sa­tions in between ses­sions. Bar­bara Mays of Friends Unit­ed Press talks with the new FUM web­mas­ter Cur­tis Her­mann (who lat­er showed me the secret FUM cof­fee sup­ply and chat­ted about col­lar­less shirt vendors). 
Mar­jorie Ewbank holds up QUIP’s “Quak­er Tapestry”:http://www.Quaker-tapestry.co.uk pan­el, which should be fin­ished by the end of the century. 
Oblig­a­tory pic­ture of Simon, some­times referred to as the “QUIP baby“since his par­ents met at an annu­al QUIP meeting. 
A field trip to the Levi Cof­fin house in Foun­tain City. Run entire­ly by very ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teers, it’s the only home still stand­ing of Levi and Catharine Cof­fin, Friends who helped thou­sands of escaped slaves get to Cana­da through the Under­ground Railroad. 
How many cam­eras does it take to make a group shot? That’s Trish Carn (the UK’s Quak­er Month­ly), Antho­ny Manousos (West­ern US’s Friends Bul­letin) and our very gra­cious photo-taker (who I think might be Ann’s son?). 
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man, Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing char­ac­ter par excel­lence. Sal­ly spent part of the week­end chal­leng­ing me about my plain dress­ing — okay, polite­ly ask­ing me a ques­tion and then fol­low­ing up my answer with her opin­ions. Sal­ly also brought along a par­o­dy she once put togeth­er, a fly­er for an orga­ni­za­tion called some­thing like “The Soci­ety of Sen­ti­men­tal Friends” for all those who want to be Quak­er because their great great grand­par­ents were Quak­er and they like antiques like old musty meetinghouses. 
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man (2)
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man (3)
Bar­bara Hir­shkowitz in front of the falls. I think Friends Gen­eral Con­fer­ence should put in a nature trail near our office too (I vote for bull­doz­ing the “Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion Center”). 

War Tax Resistance overview

April 15, 2004
· Martin Kelley

In hon­or of Income Tax Day here in the U.S., here are some links to sites on war tax resistance.
There are many ways to par­tic­i­pate in mil­i­tarism. The most obvi­ous is to per­son­al­ly fight in a war, but anoth­er way is in financ­ing its deeds. The Unit­ed States mil­i­tary makes up a huge por­tion of the fed­er­al bud­get. It is esti­mat­ed that 53 per­cent of income tax­es go to pay for past, present and future wars. Noth­ing else comes close to this expen­di­ture, and budget-cutting in edu­ca­tion, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and the social safe­ty net is a direct result of deci­sions to put the mon­ey into prepa­ra­tion for war. For more on the rea­sons for this form of protest, check out Nonviolence.org’s own “guide to war tax resistance”:http://www.nonviolence.org/war_tax_resistance.php and the very excel­lent “Phi­los­o­phy of Nonviolence”:http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/philosophy-nonviolence.php.
The “Nation­al War Tax Resis­tance Coor­di­nat­ing Committee”:http://www.nwtrcc.org/ is a coali­tion of local groups, alter­na­tive funds, con­tacts and coun­selors work­ing to sup­port, coor­di­nate, and pub­li­cize con­sci­en­tious objec­tion to the pay­ment of tax­es for war. The NWTRCC coali­tion protests a tax sys­tem that sup­ports war, and it redi­rects tax dol­lars to fund life-affirming efforts.
The “War Tax Resis­tance Penal­ty Fund”:www.nonviolence.org/issues/wtrpf is an orga­ni­za­tion that ties togeth­er war tax resisters and their sup­ports. When penal­ties are levied, all the con­trib­u­tors pay a small amount to help defray the resister’s costs. This is a way for to sup­port the prin­ci­ple of war tax resis­tance for those who don’t feel ready to resist themselves.
“Where Your Income Tax Mon­ey Real­ly Goes”:http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm is a pop­u­lar fly­er from the War Resisters League.
The “Nation­al Cam­paign for a Peace Tax Fund”:http://www.peacetaxfund.org/ advo­cates for leg­is­la­tion enabling con­sci­en­tious objec­tion to war and to have the mil­i­tary por­tion of objec­tors’ fed­er­al income tax­es direct­ed to a spe­cial fund for projects that enhance peace.
The “Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Legislation”:http://www.fcnl.org/ and the “War Resisters League”:http://www.warresisters.org/ both reg­u­lar­ly com­pile sta­tis­tics about mil­i­tary spend­ing as a per­cent­age of income tax.
“Hang up on War”:http://www.hanguponwar.org/ is a cam­paign launched in Octo­ber 2003 by a coali­tion includ­ing WRL and NWTRCC.

Who Was Yassin?

March 25, 2004
· Martin Kelley

From the NYU Cen­ter for Reli­gion and Media, a “fas­ci­nat­ing break­down of press cov­er­age of the killing of Pales­tin­ian leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin”:http://www.therevealer.org/archives/daily_000270.php
bq.. We have to turn to the for­eign press to learn any­thing sub­stan­tial about the reli­gious views of the “spir­i­tu­al leader” whose world­ly ter­ror has been a con­stant fac­tor in U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy.… [W]hy has our press ignored the “spir­i­tu­al” dimen­sions of this “spir­i­tu­al leader”? Two pos­si­bil­i­ties. One is that the jour­nal­ists assigned to cov­er the Mid­dle East are polit­i­cal reporters. They approach reli­gion as sim­ply a veneer for polit­i­cal motives, and rarely both­er to learn its intricacies.
The oth­er, deep­er prob­lem, is with the nar­ra­tives avail­able for reli­gion sto­ries even when a reporter tries to pay atten­tion. Most reli­gion writ­ing is divid­ed between innocu­ous spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and dan­ger­ous fanati­cism, with sub­cat­e­gories for “cor­rup­tion,” “tra­di­tion­al­ism,” and wacky.…
So what does our press do? Noth­ing. A major ene­my of peace in the Mid­dle East has just been killed, and yet we learn almost noth­ing about what made him fight or why he is mourned. Oppo­nents and sup­port­ers of the Pales­tini­ans remain in the dark, unin­formed by a press inca­pable of break­ing the nar­ra­tive to inves­ti­gate — and per­haps help erad­i­cate — the roots of ter­ror­ism. It’s eas­i­er to stick to the “he-said/she-said”-with-guns ver­sion of events that reduces it all to retal­i­a­tion, to hope­less spi­rals of vio­lence and ancient eth­nic hatreds, to enmi­ty with­out reason.
p. Found via “All over the map”:http://kenneth.typepad.com/