Mayor Ed Johnson, City Manager Terry Reidy, terrestrial beings and other-worldly spirits celebrated the launch of Paranormal Books & Curiosities’ new Paranormal Museum, Friday (Nov 13, appropriately) and its first exhibition – “The Jersey Devil: Expedition of 1812.” 

WHERE WILL THIS HOTTIE BE ON SATURDAY AND WHAT DOES HE HAVE PLANNED FOR YOU? ALSO, LOCAL INVENTOR DISHES ABOUT SUNDAY'S AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS' SWAG TENT: ALL WILL BE REVEALED IN THE COASTER AND THEBPLOT, WEDNESDAY (NOV. 25)

“The museum is the culmination of years of work and research,” said Kathy Kelly, curator and owner.  “Everyone is invited to come, explore and decide for themselves.” 

The museum – great for all ages – reveals many little-known and never-before-known facts about the Leeds Devil (aka the Jersey Devil) and every confirmed sighting across the state.  It seems the Devil gets around more than an Asbury Park hooker, my friends – it doesn’t limit itself to the Pine Barrens.

Hottie Josh Gates of SyFy Channel’s “Destination Truth” just spent a day at the museum researching the Jersey Devil and taped an episode to air in March, according to the show’s website.

Check out photos from the event - only at TheBPlot:

More info:  Paranormal Museum, Paranormal Books & Curiosities. 

Richard@TheBPlot.com

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On Thursday, June 18 GRIID had the opportunity to interview Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Non-Violence. Kathy recently returned from Pakistan where she spoke with refugees who have been displaced by the US bombing campaigns that are being conducted by US Predator Drones. We talked about what she learned for the refugees and what the implications of US policy are for this escalating war of the Obama administration. Click here to watch the interview.

Kathy also spoke to about 40 people at Trinity United Methodist Church that evening. The event was hosted by the Brunch & Revolution, which is organizing around the US wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to become involved you can contact them at brunchandrevolution@gmail.com.<

A message from AntiWar.com: Act now to keep the voice of peace alive.

When Antiwar Radio started in 2007, we didn’t know what to expect. Sure, we had veteran radio personality Scott Horton at the helm, but would big-shot reporters, pundits, academics, and government officials make time for an upstart Internet radio program?

They certainly have. Rep. Ron Paul, Noam Chomsky, John Cusack, Juan Cole, Frida Berrigan, Chris Floyd, Lew Rockwell, Patrick Cockburn, Andrew Bacevich, Russell Means, Scott Ritter, Philip Weiss, Lawrence Wilkerson, James Bamford, Sibel Edmonds, Robert Pape, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Kathy Kelly… the hits keep coming.

Chalmers Johnson, author of the Blowback trilogy, says that

“Antiwar Radio has been one of the few media in which power considerations and domestic U.S. politics have not had their pull on the programming and the commentator. … Scott Horton has established a very high standard for truly original points of view on American foreign policy and critical analysis of the failures of the American establishment.”

Journalist James Bovard calls Horton “one of the best-read, hardest-hitting hosts in the biz.” As the Austin Chronicle put it when giving us their award for “Best Iraq War Insight and Play-by-Play“:

“Antiwar Radio offers high-caliber commentary and guest interviews on the ongoing Mideast misadventure. Host Scott Horton, armed to the teeth with little-reported news and info, jettisons the pleasantries and PC radio lingo and tells listeners how it really is. As an added bonus, Horton often verbally lays waste to those seeking to prolong the billion-dollar bloodbath.”

But for all its acclaim and promise, Antiwar Radio could end. If we can’t pay the bills, then we’ll have to start downsizing our already overworked staff.

We can’t make it another quarter without your help, and we believe we’ve earned it. Are you willing to give up Antiwar Radio — and perhaps even more? If not, then don’t delay.

The late Studs Terkel provides us with reasons to keep the faith in this memorable book.

By any definition, it is safe to say that we are living through tough times.

The global economy is in one of the most extended downturns in decades. 

 Whole industries that once were the backbone of American industrial capitalism-automobile makers come to mind here-are teetering on the verge of outright extinction.  Global warming continues without abatement, the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq grind on, and the violence in Sri Lanka has recently reached alarming levels. 

Here in Chicago, unemployment rates in black communities like Englewood are estimated to be as high as 33 percent.  To give an historical perspective, the peak unemployment rates during the Great Depression were in 1932, when 25 percent of the nation’s work force was unemployed.

Given all this evidence, some people understandably are feeling despair, President Obama’s bromides about the audacity of hope notwithstanding.

Yet there are reasons for optimism, and a book by the late Studs Terkel is one of them.

Studs died just four days before Obama’s historic election last November, but there was no mistaking who he supported. 

The legendary and Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian, who produced such memorable books as Working, The Good War, and Race, focused his attention shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the often elusive but undeniably real quality of hope.

 Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith During Difficult Times, a work that informs, teaches, inspires and reminds us what a treasure Studs was, is what resulted.

 Studs dedicates the book, which draws its title from a quote by farm worker Jessie de la Cruz, to Virginia and Clifford Durr, long-time advocates for peace, justice and equality in the American South. 

In the introduction Studs cites their “radiant vision, affirming themselves, saying no to the official word. 

“They may always have been in the minority, but it was a prophetic one,” Studs wrote.

Hope Dies Last is written in that spirit. 

In typical Terkel fashion, the book is sprinkled with well-known figures like Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Pete Seeger, Frances Moore Lappe, and former California Gov. Jerry Brown, each of whom share their thoughts about where we are as a nation, their own journeys and how the two intersect.

Yet the book also has plenty of people who are less renowned and have at least as important things to say. 

These include a pair of married undocumented immigrants from Guatemala talking about struggling to make it in America, Will Campbell, a white southern minister who talks about how his grandfather taught him to respect black people, and a university student who was galvanized into supportive action during a staff strike at Harvard and who acknowledges that he saw the workers differently after getting involved in their efforts. 

Chicagoans will enjoy reading the words of local griot Timuel Black, who continues to publish oral history books of his own as he approaches 90 years of age.  Black talks about his relationship by blood to former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who in his youth was a Ku Klux Klan member.  Black recounts his skepticism at his father’s ultimately accurate insistence that the former KKK members would turn out all right as well as his initial meeting with Studs on the way to the 1963 March on Washington.

Others may want to read the words of Kathy Kelly, whom Studs calls The Pilgrim and whose words he uses to close the book.  Founder of Voices in the Wilderness, Kelly has not paid taxes to the U.S. government for nearly three decades and has shown her willingness to oppose war and fight for peace by being arrested countless times and serving multiple prison stints.

After one three month sentence in federal prison, she returned to Chicago by train.

Studs was there, holding a single rose.

As with his other works, Terkel’s presence animates the entire work.  Like few before, he was able to listen with insight, without judgment and with an intertwined sense of history, story and identity. 

His book reminds us that others before us have been through much more difficult times and survived, that the goal, at times, as expressed in the words in words of organizer Eliseo Medina, can be “to inspire other people to cotinue with the struggle,” and that we are truly privileged both to have Studs for as long as we did and to have access to the rich body of work he left behind.

Are you hopeful about the present? About the future? Why or why not?

What Studs Terkel memories do you have?

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

KATHY KELLY, of VOICES OF WILDERNESS: ON PEACE

     Today’s e-mail brought an announcement that peace activist and educator Kathy Kelly will be the Sister Mary Schmidt Lecture Series speaker on March 24, 2009, at 7:00 p.m. (See end of this post for further information). Kathy helps coordinate the Voices for a Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end military and economic warfare against Iraq. This three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee has participated in nonviolent direct action teams in Haiti, Bosnia, and Iraq.
     When my husband Monte and I were traveling New England in the fall of  2003, we found ourselves in Lewisberg, Maine. There, I spotted a meeting announcement on a grocery store bulletin board. The speaker was Kathy Kelly. Below is my journal entry on that evening.
 
     One night I suggested to Monte that we attend a meeting where a woman from Iraq was speaking about her experiences being in that country during the war. Since the meeting was preceded by a pot-luck dinner, we purchased an adorable yellow-iced cake with brown mice on it. After all, we were traveling and our cooking facilities were limited.  (view photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolyncholland/3347179523/in/photostream/ )
     When we arrived, the activity seemed very loosely run, so much so that I felt uncomfortable. No one seemed to know what was going on, and there seemed to be no “leader.” I finally asked someone what we should do, and he pointed us to a table where food items were being set and people coming in were filling plates. We followed suit, and took seats across from a young man. He said he was from either California or Florida, and explained that the 75-100 people coming together were from all over the country, gathering to protest the launching of a ship at the Bath Marine company the next morning. A couple from Albany told us that the ship could launch nuclear weapons sixteen times as powerful as that used on Nagasaki, and asked if it wouldn’t be better to spend the money on medical or other types of ships. We learned that the protesters were from Florida, Colorado, New York as well as the local area. Later media news reports said several of these people were arrested during the demonstration, because they didn’t keep their demonstration behind the proper lines.
     In addition to the meal, the group had a guest speaker, Kathy Kelly ( view photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolyncholland/3347186471/ ). She is a well-known peace movement leader of a loosely knit organization known as Voices of Wilderness. She shared some of her experiences with us.
     Kathy was in a seven-story family-run Muslim owned hotel during the bombing of Iraq. She said 900 tons of depleted uranium was remained after the $1 billion of explosives were laser pointed on Baghdad, and asked: What if that money had been directed to educational and social services?
     She talked about being with the Iraqi families, and the effect of the bombing on them. “It’s hard when all you can do is wait for the city to be bombed,” she said.
     Before the attack, eight women went to the maternity hospital to have their babies by C-section. They felt it was better than having them during the expected bomb bombardments.
     A group of teens became engrossed in playing a game of Risk. When they were told it was bedtime, and that they could finish the games the next day, and an 8-year old responded: We might not be here tomorrow.    
     Babies were grinding their teeth morning, afternoon and night.
     Some of the peace persons placed themselves as human shields, and were issued fines of $10,000, which they still owe. Voices of Wilderness was fined $20,000 for bringing medicine and toys to Iraq.
     Kathy asked: With no news, how do civilians know NOT to approach guarded posts?
     When an ob-gyn doctor in Florida was fined $100,000 for sending medications to Iraq, Florida newspapers didn’t publish the story. Later in a motel room we saw a television interview with Kathy. She said they had no intention of paying the fines because they didn’t want to support the war.

Kathy’s message was an eye-opener. To hear about her experiences in person, plan to attend the Sister Mary Schmidt Lecture Series at Seton Hill University(Greensburg, PA) in Cecilian Hall on March 24, 2009, at 7:00 p.m. Sister Mary Schmidt Lecture Series. For further information contact Susan Isola, 724/836-0486 or e-mail sisola@scsh.org.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Writer’s calls for submissions, competitions & events March 1, 2009

The Battle for Peace: A Book Review

KEEPING PEACE IN SOUTH AFRICA Part 1

KEEPING PEACE IN SOUTH AFRICA Part 2

I BELIEVE GOD INVENTED DANCING

QUINTESSENCE

JUST ANOTHER WEEKEND IN PARADISE

COLORING OUR CHILDREN

I HAVE A PERMIT TO CARRY…

QUINTESSENCE

IN NEW ENGLAND, HISTORY CONFLICTS WITH PROGRESS

I BELIEVE GOD INVENTED DANCING

A DOVE STORY RETOLD: JASMINE AND JEWEL

ON THE EVE OF 27

A PASTOR’S ROLE IN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Part 2

CHILD ABUSE AND SCRIPTURE

Ashes to Ashes: A Devotion for Ash Wednesday

WHAT DO YOU SEE THROUGH YOUR CAMERA LENS?

CHILD ABUSE DEFINITIONS

TYPES OF ABUSE

THE SWEETNESS LASTS A LIFETIME!!! An Adoption Reunion Story

ALL SUMMER IN A DAY: The Use of Descriptive Language

SITE LINKS:

www.beanerywriters.wordpress.com/

www.carolyncholland.wordpress.com

www.beanerywriters.wordpress.com/

www.carolyncholland.wordpress.com

www.barbarapurbaugh.com

www.pennwriters.com

ellenspain.com

sunset in nablus

i am so hoping that spring is here early. the sun has been out every day and it has been a warm sun again. it feels amazing. i know we have a regional drought here, but we can have rain and sun at the same time. i spent the afternoon today at the yaffa cultural center in balata refugee camp. they asked me the other day to teach an english language tawjihi class so today was our first meeting. there are about 15 students in the class. about half boys and half girls. the girls seem to have a better command of the language than the boys, however. i noticed in the group that two girls, who were obviously sisters given their faces, looked familiar. the older of the two was helping to translate for the students who needed help. at the end of the class i asked them what their family name is and then i realized why they looked familiar. they are the daughters of hussam khader. i remember their faces from the day i went to welcome the political prisoners who were released from israeli colonialist prisons last august. i have met hussam a few times because we have mutual friends, but i haven’t seen his daughters since that day. after the class hussam and some other fathers were waiting in the office drinking tea and smoking cigarettes and i went in to join them.

hussam’s life is a typical story for many palestinians dedicated to liberating their land, especially refugees dedicated to that goal. he has been in and out of israeli colonial prisons for much of his adult life:

Hussam Khader, who was born on Dec. 8th 1961 in the Palestinian village Kofr Romman, graduated from the Najah University in Nablus in Business Management and Political Sciences. He became a member of the Fatah party, to which Yassir Arafat belongs, too, in 1978. Before the 1st Intifada he was already arrested 23 times by the Israeli occupation forces, detained for 10 years, as well as placed under house arrest for one year.

At the beginning of the 1st Intifada, he became one of the founders of several of the youth organisations (including in Balata Refugee Camp, of which he is a resident) that were to play a crucial part in the popular uprising. He was also involved in the Student Council of Najah University. On Jan. 1st 1988 he became the first activist to be deported from Palestine. After being wounded in a demonstration he was brought to South Lebanon by the Israeli occupation forces.

there are details about his so-called “trial” on the samoud website. an najah university also has a report on his case as he is an alumus. on the day of his most recent arrest in 2003 here is what happened:

Hussam Khader, an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), has been accused by Israeli authorities of “directing and financing terror in the Nablus area”. Khader is the second member of the PLC to be arrested, after Marwan Barghouti last April, and he has been held in the Peta Tikva detention camp since his arrest in Balata camp, near Nablus, on 17 March 2003.

Khader’s brother Ghassan said that the arrest took place at about 4am when Israeli soldiers broke down the door of his house and started shooting. “It was dark and bullets were flying everywhere, they even fired shots into the bathroom and the kitchen,” he said. “Everything was destroyed, it’s a miracle no one was killed.” Before reaching Hussam Khader’s house, the soldiers raided seven neighbouring homes. It later became clear, however, that Khader was the only man they were after. “They were shooting just to provoke us,” his brother said.

When the soldiers identified Khader, they pushed him against a wall, saying repeatedly that he was a terrorist and they were arresting him. All of his personal papers, his computer and files were confiscated. He was taken away in a military jeep, leaving behind his wife and three young children. His family has not been allowed to see him since.

he is not typical of fatah, i should point out:

Khader is one of several men in a younger generation of Fatah leaders who command support on the streets and who are pushing for major reform within the movement. He still rails against Fatah corruption, though it remains to be seen whether in the months ahead he can bring any significant change to a situation in stalemate. Since his release, thousands of supporters have descended on his small home in the Balata camp, in Nablus, to talk about the future at a time of deep division between the two leading Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, and deadlock in the peace negotiations.

“The situation has got worse because of the separation and fighting between Fatah and Hamas,” Khader said. “We don’t have a state yet, but we have two heads in this state and this will push us back to square one in our struggle. It’s a very, very dangerous point that we have reached.”

Khader was arrested at his home in March 2003 and convicted of being a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of the Fatah movement that played a key role in the second intifada, and of helping fund the group through connections to Hizbullah and Iran. He was sentenced to seven years in jail but released after five and a half. It was his 24th time in an Israeli prison – he was first arrested at age 13 for taking part in a demonstration against the Israeli occupation.

but all of this is about hussam and who i really want to talk about is his daughter. i spent about an hour with her after the class. i was blown away by this young woman who, if she were a university student now, would far surpass all of the students i’ve taught at an najah thus far. like her father she grew up with the knowledge that education is a part of resistance. she is a stellar student, plays the violin, and wants to be a rapper. she attended a hip hop workshop in deheishe refugee camp last summer. she wrote some beautiful raps about her father, who was still in prison at the time. on the day of the final performance at the summer workshop she had to leave as they were allowed one of the rare prison visits–those visits that make families wake up at 4 am and if they are lucky get to see their loved ones for a couple of hours several hours later. so she brought her rap to the prison and performed it for her father and his friends instead, which is, i think, far more powerful and amazing. she asked me to help her translate the raps, which i am so delighted and eager to do. she’s completely proficient in english, but she wants help working out the rhythm of the raps to match the rhythm of the arabic.

amani also told me about her school life here. she’s a senior in high school and unlike the other students in my tawjihi english class, she doesn’t go to one of the unrwa schools. she goes to a private school in nablus. the stories she shared with me about her peers and their ideas of who refugees are were unreal. i mean, of course, i have been blogging for months now about the racism i witness here that is directed at refugees. but in her experience she also sees the ignorance that is at the core of this racism. for instance, she told me that there are many students in her school who think that refugees still live in tents. now this is just shocking because in the city of nablus itself, including balata, the camps are on main roads that everyone drives by. how you can think this is bizarre to me. she tells me that her peers think that she shouldn’t live in the camp because that is where the “bad people” live. this is how the racism here–even though it is intra-racial–functions just like in the u.s.: just because there may be a couple of “bad people” the entire camp population–or all the camps–get labeled as such. but there are no more “bad people” than in the city of nablus. and this is how americans often rationalize their racism against brown people who live in the inner cities; they say the same things to rationalize their racism by deciding that it is a place that is “unsafe” or that it is full of “criminals.” imagine that she has had to deal with this sort of discrimination while living through most of her girlhood with her father in prison. in prison for fighting for all palestinian rights–not just refugees. her father whom she calls her best friend. and it was so lovely to see them together, to see how loving they are, how close they are. it is visible. beautiful. this is the feeling of warmth that was far more powerful than the sunshine that emanated from the skies today. i feel so much more comfortable in the camps than i do elsewhere in palestine. i feel so grateful that i was asked to teach this class and that i will be spending more time there now.

my frustration about these divisions are numerous, but it often baffles me here because, as i have said before, unlike some other cities in palestine, it is not only the refugee camps that are invaded every night by israeli terrorists. here ordinary nabulsis are also regularly kidnapped as with today, including a student from my university:

Israeli forces arrested three Palestinians from Nablus and the neighboring villages of Salem and Beit Wazan on Saturday morning.

Thirty-two-year-old Imad Abu Eisha from Beit Wazan reported the detentions, saying Israeli forces stormed his village at 3:00am and ransacked several homes before arresting a 23-year-old girl identified as Rima Abu Eisha, a student at An-Najah National University in Nablus.

Local sources in the village of Salem east of Nablus told said Israeli forces arrested 24-year-old Ali Ishtayya from his home after they raided the village.

In Nablus, 22-year-old Abdullah Al-‘Ikir was seized on Asira Ash-Shamaliyya street after several Israeli military jeeps stormed the city.

and meanwhile in gaza israeli terrorists continue to attack palestinians with their american-made weapons:

Israeli forces launched an overnight airstrike on a carpentry workshop in the Jabalia refugee camp injuring six people Saturday morning.

Palestinian medical sources said the carpentry and several neighboring houses sustained severe damage and six people sustained mild to moderate wounds. They were all evacuated to hospital.

On Friday, a Palestinian was killed and two others injured as Israeli warplanes targeted a motorcycle in the southern Gaza Strip in the town of Abasan Al-Kabira, which east of Khan Younis.

and so the numbers keep rising, the numbers of the martyrs in gaza:

The death toll of the Gaza war reached 1,374 Friday as Egyptian medical sources announced the death of a Gazan woman injured during Israel’s 22-day offensive on the Gaza Strip.

Director of ambulance and emergency service in the Palestinian health ministry Muawiya Hassanain identified the victim as 24-year-old Nay Fayiz Hasan. She had been transferred to the Egyptian hospital mid-way through the war.

and those who remain in gaza are struggling to deal with its aftermath as mike kirsch reports on al jazeera:

but it is not just gaza where this ethnic cleansing project goes on. sometimes they do it with murder, sometimes with theft, sometimes with both. today they engaged in more theft of land in beit lahem:

About 300 Israeli settlers escorted by IOF troops and border guards invaded Friday several areas in the Artas village, south of Bethlehem, and set up several tents on these areas which are threatened with annexation.

This Israeli escalation came after Israeli bulldozers established 800-meter road linking the area of Khalat Al-Nahl in the village with the Efrat settlement built on the territory of several villages in the area including Artas and Khadr.

notice that israeli colonist terrorists and israeli terrorist forces work in cahoots here. they are one in the same. they all have blood on their hands. they all participate, daily, together in their murder-theft colonial project. for instance, palestinian fisherman continue to be fired upon in the waters of gaza:

Dr. Mohammed Al-Agha, the Palestinian agriculture minister in Gaza, has denounced the Israeli occupation forces’ continued shooting at Palestinian fisherman and their boats off the Gaza coasts.

Agha in a statement on Saturday said that the IOF gunboats on Saturday morning opened intensive fire at fishermen damaging ten fishing boats and scores of fishnets, which were left behind by the fishermen after they were forced to jump into sea.

gaza panorama

i quoted a few weeks back someone from amnesty international saying that you cannot capture the devastation in gaza with a single camera lens because the destruction is so widespread. but someone managed to find a way to do this. the above photograph is from gaza panorama, but you must go to the website to see what photographer andreas lunde has done. it is a constant panorama of johr al deek in gaza in which you can use your mouse to move the image around. it is remarkable.

but what is most remarkable is the constant resiliency and ingenuity of palestinians in gaza. for instance, the community bakery created to meet people’s need for bread with few resources:

In a region where cooking gas is either non-existent or exorbitantly-priced, where firewood is scarce and burnables becoming scarcer, where electricity cuts occur regularly, and where bread is a staple food, people strive to find practical solutions to the bread crisis.

During Israel’s 3 weeks of brutal attacks on Gaza’s civilians, the bread crisis was heightened by 16 hour blackouts in the cities, complete blackouts in the majority of the Strip, and depleted wheat stocks. Those with flour handouts convoyed to the few places with electricity, including hospitals, to bake bread via a small, electric griddle.

likewise the tunnels or an amazing sign of resiliency and act of resistance given the never-ending blockade and siege on gaza as mohammed omer reports:

Tunnel owners earn $300 for each 100 pounds of goods smuggled in. (Smuggling animals for Gaza’s zoo can net up to $3,000 each!) With this revenue Abu Khaled supports 20 workers: diggers who do the dirty work, and runners who transport the goods.

As he separates bags of smuggled goods for distribution throughout the Strip, Abu Khaled points to his jeans. “These jeans I am wearing cost Egyptian pounds ($11), including the [Egyptian] merchant’s profit,” he explains, “but now I can sell them for 120 Israeli shekels ($34).”

Not only jeans, but shoes and underwear are brought through the tunnels and resold at high mark-ups. In addition, Abu Khaled notes, “We get medicine, gasoline, food, dried milk and monocycles” through the tunnels—which also serve as the conduit for sending money to merchants in Egypt to pay for the goods smuggled back into Gaza.

Islam frowns upon alcohol and drug use, although pharmaceuticals—even Viagra—continue to be smuggled in. According to Abu Khaled, Hamas police “control what we get in. Weapons and drugs are prohibited.” Rafah municipal officials confirm that they regulate tunnel operations, which they classify as an “investment project.”

In a society where the average family lives on $2 a day or less, tunnel work is a way out of poverty and a means to feed one’s family. Nader, a 20-year-old tunnel digger, admits he can make between $80 and $110 a day. “It depends on how many feet I dig in the ground,” the young man explains, adding that he usually spends 12 hours a day digging underground, in poorly ventilated conditions.

kathy kelly imagines what would happen if americans had to send its weapons of mass destruction to the zionist entity through a tunnel:

With the border crossing at Rafah now sealed again, people who want to obtain food, fuel, water, construction supplies and goods needed for everyday life will have to increasingly rely on the damaged tunnel industry to import these items from the Egyptian side of the border. Israel’s government says that Hamas could use the tunnels to import weapons, and weapons could kill innocent civilians, so the Israeli military has no choice but to bomb the neighborhood built up along the border, as they have been doing.

Suppose that the US weapon makers had to use a tunnel to deliver weapons to Israel. The US would have to build a mighty big tunnel to accommodate the weapons that Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar have supplied to Israel. The size of such a tunnel would be an eighth wonder of the world, a Grand Canyon of a tunnel, an engineering feat of the ages.

Think of what would have to come through.

Imagine Boeing’s shipments to Israel traveling through an enormous underground tunnel, large enough to accommodate the wingspans of planes, sturdy enough to allow passage of trucks laden with missiles. According to the UK’s Indymedia Corporate Watch, 2009, Boeing has sent Israel 18 AH-64D Apache Longbow fighter helicopters, 63 Boeing F-15 Eagle fighter planes, 102 Boeing F-16 fighter planes, 42 Boeing AH-64 Apache fighter helicopters, F-16 Peace Marble II and III Aircraft, four Boeing 777s, and Arrow II interceptors, plus Israel Aircraft Industries-developed Arrow missiles, and Boeing AGM-114 D Longbow Hellfire missiles.

In September of last year, the US government approved the sale of 1,000 Boeing GBU-9 small diameter bombs to Israel, in a deal valued at up to $77 million.

Now that Israel has dropped so many of those bombs on Gaza, Boeing shareholders can count on more sales, more profits, if Israel buys new bombs from them. Perhaps there are more massacres in store. It would be important to maintain the tunnel carefully.

Raytheon, one of the largest US arms manufacturers, with annual revenues of around $20 billion, is one of Israel’s main suppliers of weapons. In September last year, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency approved the sale of Raytheon kits to upgrade Israel’s Patriot missile system at a cost of $164 million. Raytheon would also use the tunnel to bring in Bunker Buster bombs as well as Tomahawk and Patriot missiles.

Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest defense contractor by revenue, with reported sales in 2008 of $42.7 billion. Lockheed Martin’s products include the Hellfire precision-guided missile system, which has reportedly been used in the recent Gaza attacks. Israel also possesses 350 F-16 jets, some purchased from Lockheed Martin. Think of them coming through the largest tunnel in the world.

Maybe Caterpillar Inc. could help build such a tunnel. Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of construction (and destruction) equipment, with more than $30 billion in assets, holds Israel’s sole contract for the production of the D9 military bulldozer, specifically designed for use in invasions of built-up areas. The US government buys Caterpillar bulldozers and sends them to the Israeli army as part of its annual foreign military assistance package. Such sales are governed by the US Arms Export Control Act, which limits the use of US military aid to “internal security” and “legitimate self defense” and prohibits its use against civilians.

Israel topples family houses with these bulldozers to make room for settlements. All too often, they topple them on the families inside. American peace activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death standing between one of these bulldozers and a Palestinian doctor’s house in 2003.

yes, caterpillar. that company that barack obama–that president of change for koolaid drinkers out there–visited last week:

Over the objections of church groups, peace organizations and human rights activists, President Barack Obama decided to return to Illinois to visit the headquarters of the Caterpillar company, which for many years has violated international law, U.S. law and its own code of conduct in selling its D9 and D10 bulldozers to Israel.

In his speech on Thursday, Obama praised Caterpillar, saying “Your machines plow the farms that feed our families; build the towers that shape our skylines; lay the roads that connect our communities; power the trucks that deliver our goods.” He failed to mention that Caterpillar machines have been used to level homes, uproot olive orchards, build the illegal separation wall and, in some cases, kill innocent civilians, including a 23-year old American peace activist.

that same president who is continuing george bush’s legacy of bombing pakistan:

At least 27 people have been killed in a missile attack by an unmanned US drone in a tribal district of Pakistan, Pakistani officials have told Al Jazeera.

The raid destroyed a house in the northwestern town of Ladha, a base for Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani Taliban leader accused of plotting the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan, an official said.

www.democracynow.org

January 27, 2009

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama has dispatched George Mitchell on his first trip as Middle East envoy. Mitchell is set to begin in Egypt today, followed by Israel, the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Speaking at the White House, Obama said Mitchell will be charged with bringing about “genuine progress.”

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The charge that Senator Mitchell has is to engage vigorously and consistently in order for us to achieve genuine progress. And when I say “progress,” not just photo-ops, but progress that is concretely felt by people on the ground, so that people feel more secure in their lives, so that they feel that the hopes and dreams and aspirations of their children can be met. That is going to be our task. It is not something that we’re going to be able to do overnight, but I am absolutely confident that if the United States is engaged in a consistent way and an early—in early fashion, that we can make genuine progress.

Now, understand that Senator Mitchell is going to be fully empowered by me and fully empowered by Secretary Clinton. So when he speaks, he will be speaking for us. And I’m hopeful that during this initial trip, one of the earliest initiatives that we have taken diplomatically, that not only is he able to communicate effectively how urgent we consider the issue, but that we’re also going to be able to listen and to learn and to find out what various players in the region are thinking. And more immediately, we hope that Senator Mitchell will be able to give us some ideas in terms of how we can solidify the ceasefire, ensure Israel’s security, also ensure that Palestinians in Gaza are able to get the basic necessities they need and that they can see a pathway towards long-term development that will be so critical in order for us to achieve a lasting peace.

AMY GOODMAN: George Mitchell has no immediate plans to visit the Gaza Strip, site of the three-week-long US-backed attack that killed more than 1,300 people, injured more than 5,000. A State Department spokesperson said Mitchell might make it to Gaza.

Well, my next guest has just returned from Gaza. She witnessed the Israeli attack. Kathy Kelly is executive director of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, veteran peace activist, founder of Voices in the Wilderness, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times. She joins us in our firehouse studio.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Kathy.

KATHY KELLY: Good morning, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: How long were you in Gaza, and how did you get in?

KATHY KELLY: We were there, Audrey Stewart and I, for a total of six days, and we had entered after going back up to Cairo and getting an official-stamped letter. You had to swear before the United States embassy in Cairo that you were going in on your own responsibility.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you see? Where did you go?

KATHY KELLY: We went to Rafah, and we were very fortunate. A family that had fled from their own home and was living in a home that was lent to them in-laws invited us to stay with them. And we were immediately outside the area where people were told to evacuate. And so, we timed it. Every eleven minutes, there would be a huge bomb thudding down on the neighborhood. This was very close to where the tunnel industry had been in full activity prior to the December 27th attacks.

And so, we heard many of the bombs falling, we heard Apache helicopters firing, and then traveled with young people, students, up to Gaza City after the ceasefire was in place and the roads had been cleared and could see just how stunned the students were at the extent of the devastation. And then, from there, we visited inside the hospital, the burn unit, in a major—Shifa Hospital in Gaza, and then went up to Beit Lahiya and Audrey over to Tufa to further see the extent of the damage.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking with doctors in the hospital, seeing patients, what struck you most?

KATHY KELLY: The doctors said that the majority of their patients were non-military. They were civilians, grandmothers, teenagers, children. They were shaking with rage, honestly, because the world had watched for twenty-two days while this affliction just went on and on. They talked about patients lying on the floor, dying before their eyes, because they couldn’t open up operating rooms, they didn’t have enough materials to try to save all of the people who were coming in desperate need.

They said they had never seen injuries like this before, doctors with fifteen, twenty, thirty years of practice, particularly with regard to the burns. They’ve now, they believe, proven that white phosphorus was used. They had sent one patient’s tissue out for a biopsy in Egypt, and elements of white phosphorus were found in the tissue. And what actually kills people, when the white phosphorus, which is poisonous, goes into the circulatory system, is that the liver can’t process it. And two of their patients died of cardiac arrest after being transported to Egypt.

They also told about the way that surgeons had to work as teams—a vascular surgeon, a neurosurgeon, an orthopedic surgeon—trying desperately to save lives. And the extent of the wounds that each patient came in with, they said, was nothing like they had ever experienced before.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Kathy Kelly, about this brewing controversy in Britain. Two of Britain’s major broadcasters, the BBC and Sky, are continuing to come under criticism for refusing to air a charity appeal for the victims of the Israel attack on Gaza. The appeal was put together by the Disasters Emergency Committee, or DEC, which includes thirteen of Britain’s main charities. The DEC asked broadcasters to air the three-minute appeal during primetime on Monday, seeking donations for Palestinians affected by the conflict. The appeal aired on many British channels last night, but the BBC and Sky refused. This is an excerpt of the appeal.

DEC APPEAL: The children of Gaza are suffering. Many are struggling to survive, homeless and in need of food and water. Today, this is not about the rights and wrongs of the conflict. The hospitals have been overwhelmed with the number of casualties and need more resources to treat them. This is why the DEC has launched this appeal.

AMY GOODMAN: Again, the BBC has come under broad criticism for its decision not to air the appeal. This is Caroline Thomson, chief operating officer for the BBC.

CAROLINE THOMSON: It is a matter of a big national, international controversy. There is a big debate about the rights and wrongs of the war and the causes and so on, and we would want that to have stabilized and the situation on the ground to have stabilized before we could reconsider and feel it was something we could do.

AMY GOODMAN: And here is what the BBC’s director-general Mark Thompson had to say.

MARK THOMPSON: We believe that the BBC’s reputation of impartiality is so important and so integral to the BBC’s reputation and its trustworthiness here and around the world that it’s very important that we adhere strictly to our principles.

AMY GOODMAN: Again, the charities behind the appeal include the Red Cross, Oxfam, Save the Children and Christian Aid. Kathy Kelly, your response?

KATHY KELLY: Well, many of those charities had even prior to the December 27th attacks issued a scathing report showing how the economic war, the state of siege that had been imposed on Gaza, was something that was in violation of international law. I think that these charities have had on-the-ground experiences, and they should certainly be listened to.

Surely, the humanitarian is political. That’s just a reality that we should all accept. But I think that the journalistic integrity would be most respected if in fact there would be clear reporting on the ways that these assaults, the Israeli assaults on a civilian population, 50 percent of whom are children, violated international law and any standards of human decency and, I believe, should be examined under the questions of genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: Israel said that they would stop during that attack if Hamas stopped launching the rockets. What was the response of Palestinians inside? Has Hamas increased in popularity or decreased?

KATHY KELLY: It’s difficult to answer that question. I, myself, sensed that when people heard the word “victory,” that gave people pause. I mean, you couldn’t look at the extent of the damage and devastation and the amount of time it will take to repair and speak of victory, if in fact you are going to live in that situation for a long time. But I think that the rage that was felt in every conversation that I heard, in terms of the international community allowing this devastation to go on for twenty-two days without stepping in, was a cause of ongoing chagrin. Now, how that will affect Hamas’s political standing, it’s difficult to say.

AMY GOODMAN: How did this compare to your experience of other conflict situations? I mean, you’re famous, Kathy, for traveling the world to conflict zones. You were in Iraq before the invasion and during. You were in Lebanon in 2006.

KATHY KELLY: You know, in Iraq, when people were trapped under the economic sanctions, it seemed as though there was nothing that average, ordinary people could do except be punished again and again and again.

I was impressed by the tunnel industry. In the town of Rafah, which is bisected by the border, people have found a way to deal with the state of siege that was imposed on them imposing collective punishment. And they created a network of tunnels so that—actually, the first day that people could kind of basically come out after the bombing had ended, the stalls in Rafah were pretty stacked with goods. And I thought, well, how did they ever get there? And people just said, “The tunnels.” And so, I think where there’s tremendous need, people don’t like the idea of burrowing underground in order to get food and water and benzene and needed goods, but I think that there’s a great survival ethos that is—

AMY GOODMAN: Israel said the tunnels are used for weapons smuggling, and Tzipi Livni came to the US in the amidst of the attacks to get the US to vow they would stop this weapons smuggling.

KATHY KELLY: But oughtn’t we just use that as a segue into understanding the extent of the United States weapon delivery to the Israeli government? I mean, the planes that were flying overhead were using aviation fuel given free of charge by the United States taxpayers. The drones that are flying overhead doing surveillance represent state-of-the-art modern technology. The amount of money the United States gives annually, $2.6 billion, to Israel—this is a delivery that doesn’t even require any kind of smuggling, because the world has said, yes, the United States and Israel can collaborate, and they can beat up on Palestinian people, pounding them into the ground as much as they want, and there will be complicity.

AMY GOODMAN: What about George Mitchell going to Israel now, going to the occupied West Bank, but at least at this point they’ve not announced plans for him to go to Gaza?

KATHY KELLY: He has such an opportunity to make tracks out of the comfort of offices and salons in Tel Aviv and go to Gaza. Ban Ki-moon did it. My hope is that he would go and stay for several days, that he would make a thorough tour of the Gaza Strip. And I hope that everybody in the United States who’s tuned into his travel will encourage him to avail himself of what is a crucial opportunity to state his own desire to listen, as the President has instructed him to do. He should be listening to the mothers, to the children, to the doctors, to the people who are trying to now rebuild after a fierce and horrible assault.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did you leave Gaza?

KATHY KELLY: You know, the electricity was sporadic. The internet connections were not so available. We felt we had a story to tell, and so we decided—it was a difficult decision to make. We decided, though, that it might be best to leave. But also, the people giving us hospitality, I think, were a bit worried that they were becoming too high-profile. I’ll have to acknowledge that people are afraid of what the Hamas authorities might think of what they’re doing in housing two Westerners, and, you know, shepherding them around the area was perhaps, with students, beginning to become worrisome.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask what you think of your fellow Chicagoan who has just become President of the United States, Barack Obama, who says he will double the force, for example, in Afghanistan, though has vowed to draw down troops in Iraq.

KATHY KELLY: This is a grave disappointment. I think we can still hold out hope in the reports that he said once, maybe four years ago, that his leading lights were the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi. But I think that the pressure that he has buckled under, in terms of adhering to the demands of people who are weapon makers and war makers, is a pressure that won’t bring security to his fellow citizens in the United States or to the world. I hope he’ll step away from US exceptionalism and see the United States as part of the family of nations, not as a nation that has an indispensable role in the world.

AMY GOODMAN: I’ll never forget, not that I was there in Iraq when you were, right before the invasion, but the scene described—I think we talked to you around then—of you holding a protest outside the US embassy right before the attack and the journalists surrounding you, almost attacking you, for what you were doing. Can you explain that scene? They were calling you a collaborator with Saddam Hussein for protesting the imminent attack.

KATHY KELLY: I have a pretty vivid memory of that day, as well. We were in front of the United Nations compound, and we had a big sign that said “No blank check for war.” And Jeremy and others—Jeremy Scahill—had gone over to the prison just prior to that where people had been released by Saddam Hussein. And I remember John Burns, in particular. He was so angry with—

AMY GOODMAN: John Burns of the New York Times?

KATHY KELLY: Yeah—with my belief that in fact, you know, we had a prison-industrial complex in the United States that perhaps should bear scrutiny and attention and that maybe what Saddam had done might be something that the United States could consider, as well. But I have to say that after the war, after John Burns was kind of stuck in the Palestine Hotel in a staircase, at some point, at some risk to his own life, he pulled me over while he was with another group of reporters, and he said, “This is the person to go to if you want to hear the humanitarian story in Iraq.” So, you know, I should probably add that part, too.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you saying he was, in a sense, apologizing to you?

KATHY KELLY: Oh, that might be a stretch. But at any rate, it didn’t seem to be a relationship fraught by conflict.

AMY GOODMAN: And what was the anger that was being expressed to you right before the invasion? I mean, these reporters were supposed to be covering your point of view, but they were arguing with you.

KATHY KELLY: Well, I think that the reporters were very, very angry at Saddam Hussein’s regime, in part because they would be bounced out every ten days and have to pay enormous amounts of money, which all went—in order to come back into the country every ten days. And that went to the Ministry of Tourism. Well, believe me, there was no tourism in Baghdad before the war. So, in a sense, it went right into the pockets of the Mahabharat, the secret service agency that was hounding them and tracking their every step. They were very, very angry, and I think they had a right to be. Saddam Hussein’s regime was ruthless and horrible.

But it wasn’t fair to say that we were the silent servants of Saddam Hussein. We were trying to say that you don’t punish children; children couldn’t be held accountable for that government. And John Burns deemed the demonstration we had as a demonstration that Saddam Hussein loved to see, but we saw the headline that he used as a headline that George Bush loved to see. And these kinds of—

AMY GOODMAN: And what was that?

KATHY KELLY: Oh, it was a headline, exactly that, saying that it was a demonstration Saddam loved to see.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, with Barack Obama now the President of the United States, are you strategizing differently? You are one of the most well known international peace activists.

KATHY KELLY: I think if we take a wait-and-see attitude, that could quickly morph into inertia. And so, I think it’s just as imperative and as much of a responsibility for adults in the United States to keep trying to identify the grave dangers that exist as we continue to pour resources into military projects. And I think we should continue to say, “Abandon these military projects.” They don’t bring us security. And at a time when there are so many environmental concerns, when the financial collapses of so many industries are affecting people, we should be taking that money that we’ve given to the Defense Department and putting it into things that really ensure security and then continuing to demand that President Obama pay attention to these kinds of vital concerns.

We camped outside his home for nineteen days in Arctic temperatures in Chicago—I left in the middle to go to Gaza—what we called Camp Hope. And we did want to be respectful of the neighbors of the Obama family, of all the many people who are feeling great congratulatory happiness. But I think that we have to recognize where—well, that President Obama has now become the chief arms exporter in the world. He’s in charge of the most massive killing machine in the world. And it’s our responsibility to continue to hold forth those visions of another way without extending the arm of imperial menace and might all over the world—instead, to be extending a hand of friendship and to share resources as best we can.

AMY GOODMAN: Kathy Kelly, I want to thank you for being with us. Kathy Kelly is executive director of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a veteran peace activist, founder of Voices in the Wilderness. She has just returned from Gaza. She lives in Chicago, when she’s ever home.

Kathy Kelly | Counterpunch, January 22, 2009

Rafah, Gaza.

Traffic on Sea Street, a major thoroughfare alongside Gaza’s coastline, includes horses, donkeys pulling carts, cyclists, pedestrians, trucks and cars, mostly older models. Overhead, in stark contrast to the street below, Israel’s ultra modern unmanned surveillance planes criss-cross the skies. F16s and helicopters can also be heard. Remnants of their deliveries, the casings of missiles, bombs and shells used during the past three weeks of Israeli attacks, are scattered on the ground.

Workers have cleared most of the roads. Now, they are removing massive piles of wreckage and debris, much as people do following an earthquake.

“Yet, all the world helps after an earthquake,” said a doctor at the Shifaa hospital in Gaza. “We feel very frustrated,” he continued. “The West, Europe and the U.S., watched this killing go on for 22 days, as though they were watching a movie, watching the killing of women and children without doing anything to stop it. I was expecting to die at any moment. I held my babies and expected to die. There was no safe place in Gaza.”

He and his colleagues are visibly exhausted, following weeks of work in the Intensive Care and Emergency Room departments at a hospital that received many more patients than they could help. “Patients died on the floor of the operating room because we had only six operating rooms,” said Dr. Saeed Abuhassan, M.D, an ICU doctor who grew up in Chicago. “And really we don’t know enough about the kinds of weapons that have been used against Gaza.”

In 15 years of practice, Dr. Abuhassan says he never saw burns like those he saw here. The burns, blackish in color, reached deep into the muscles and bones. Even after treatment was begun, the blackish color returned.

Two of the patients were sent to Egypt because they were in such critical condition. They died in Egypt. But when autopsies were done, reports showed that the cause of death was poisoning from elements of white phosphorous that had entered their systems, causing cardiac arrests.

In Gaza City, the Burn Unit’s harried director, a plastic surgeon and an expert in treating burns, told us that after encountering cases they’d never seen before, doctors at the center performed a biopsy on a patient they believed may have suffered chemical burns and sent the sample to a lab in Egypt. The results showed elements of white phosphorous in the tissue.

The doctor was interrupted by a phone call from a farmer who wanted to know whether it was safe to eat the oranges he was collecting from groves that had been uprooted and bombed during the Israeli invasion. The caller said the oranges had an offensive odor and that when the workers picked them up their hands became itchy.

Audrey Stewart had just spent the morning with Gazan farmers in Tufaa, a village near the border between Gaza and Israel. Israeli soldiers had first evacuated people, then dynamited the houses, then used bulldozers to clear the land, uprooting the orange tree groves. Many people, including children, were picking through the rubble, salvaging belongings and trying to collect oranges. At one point, people began shouting at Audrey, warning her that she was standing next to an unexploded rocket.

The doctor put his head in his hands, after listening to Audrey’s report. “I told them to wash everything very carefully. But these are new situations. Really, I don’t know how to respond,” he said.

Yet he spoke passionately about what he knew regarding families that had been burned or crushed to death when their homes were bombed. “Were their babies a danger to anyone?” he asked us.

“They are lying to us about democracy and Western values,” he continued, his voice shaking. “If we were sheep and goats, they would be more willing to help us.”

Dr. Saeed Abuhassan was bidding farewell to the doctors he’d worked with in Gaza. He was returning to his work in the United Arab Emirates. But before leaving, he paused to give us a word of advice. “You know, the most important thing you can tell people in your country is that U.S. people paid for many of the weapons used to kill people in Gaza,” said Dr. Saeed Abuhassan. “And this, also, is why it’s worse than an earthquake.”

Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, is writing from Arish, a town near the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza. Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola New Orleans and Audrey Stewart are also in Egypt and contributed to this article. Kathy Kelly is the author of Other Lands Have Dreams (published by CounterPunch/AK Press). Her email is kathy@vcnv.org

Palestinians at a United Nations food center at Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. (Photo: AP)

15 January 2009, www.truthout.org Arish, Egypt – Yesterday, en route to the Rafah border crossing that leads into Gaza, our driver pointed to a long line of trucks laden with goods that are desperately needed in every area of Gaza. “You see,” he said, “all of this is to help people.” Generous people, around the world, want Gazans to have food, shelter, fuel, medicine and water while the Israeli military ruthlessly attacks their homes and neighborhoods. The aid shipments will surely save lives and ease affliction. Nevertheless, this relief will meet only a fraction of the need. What’s more, the Egyptian government’s recent decision to allow humanitarian goods into Gaza through the Rafah border crossing – a border over which they have sovereign control – is a departure from the normal state of siege that Gazans have endured for most of the past sixteen months.

    A friend, Caoihme Butterly, who had lived in Gaza during the period when the borders were sealed, told me that the limited access to food drove up the prices for basic foods. “A kilo of lentils cost $4, but the average person lived on less that $2 per day. Gazans don’t want to live on charity,” said Caoihme, “but the humanitarian provisions become political. We were campaigning just to have the border open once a week, but we didn’t succeed.”

    It seems that mutual understanding about the need to open Gaza’s borders had been achieved in the negotiations that established a June 19, 2008, cease-fire agreement between Israel and Gaza. A blogspot for the Working Group on the Middle East Peace Process listed the conditions for the six-month cease-fire which expired on December 19, 2008. Israel agreed that 72 hours after the mutual agreement took effect, crossing points into Gaza would open up to allow 30 percent more goods to enter Gaza. Thirteen days later, all crossing points would be open between Gaza and Israel, and Israel would allow “the transfer of all goods that were banned or restricted to go into Gaza.” ( -posted on January 12, 2009)

    Jimmy Carter, in a January 8, 2009, Washington Post article entitled “An Unnecessary War,” noted that if importation of humanitarian supplies had returned to the normal level that had existed before Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, 700 trucks would have passed through the opened borders every day, carrying food, water, medicine and fuel. Carter writes that, following the June 19 agreement, “rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on November 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.”

    It’s true that Hamas’s consequent decision to fire primitive rockets into Israeli villages caused terror, panic and demoralization amongst Israelis living in those villages. I believe it’s wrong to use weapons under any circumstance. Attacks against civilians prompt spiraling, hideous waves of retaliation and revenge. But Israel responded with a disproportionate capacity to inflict harm and suffering by imposing a state of siege, targeting innocent civilians by denying them essential medicines, health care delivery, fuel, water and food.

    I learned about the horrors of economic warfare during repeated visits to Iraq, when civilians suffered under economic sanctions, when pediatric wards in hospitals were like death rows for infants and hundreds of thousands of children were punished to death. But I was a shamefully slow learner. In 1991, after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and before the United States began bombing Iraq, I was part of the Gulf Peace Team, an assembly of international peace activists camped on the Iraq side of the border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. “What alternative does the US have?” reporters asked us. “Do you think the US should just sit back and allow Iraq to illegally invade another country?”

    ”The economic sanctions are a viable alternative,” I said. “Continued use of economic sanctions would be a less-violent way to persuade Iraq’s government to leave Kuwait.”

    What a foolish and uninformed statement I’d made. Iraq was subjected to thirteen years of the most comprehensive state of siege ever imposed in modern history, and the sanctions directly contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. Now, many people committed to peacemaking understand that economic warfare can be just as brutal and devastating as bombing, although news coverage generally recedes and then disappears once the bombing wars stop.

    This morning, an Egyptian friend corrected me when I questioned him about the June 9, 2008, cease-fire negotiation between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas government. “In fact there was no cease-fire,” he said. “The war became an economic war, and it targeted civilians who had committed no crime, particularly children.”

    People who live on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing understand the impact of the bombing. At a tea shop and a barber shop, windows are cracked. An owner of a small shop near the border told me that his children can’t sleep at night because they hear constant explosions. The Egyptian community of Rafah has also witnessed, previously, month after month of quiet inactivity at the Rafah border crossing, during the period when the Egyptian and Israeli governments agreed to seal the border. Trapped, isolated, hungry and desperate, Gazans endured economic warfare while the world ignored their pleas for relief from slow-motion death. We must call for an immediate cease-fire and a “cease-siege.” As the June 19, 2008, agreement made clear, a cease-fire for Gaza cannot only mean an end to bullets and bombs, but must also end the less visible – but equally destructive – economic violence. I hope that trucks like the ones our driver pointed to will be lined up for months and years, carrying tons of cement and reconstruction materials, along with humanitarian relief, as Gazans rebuild, above ground, constructing a peaceful future.

    ——-

    Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She and Audrey Stewart are at the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing.

by: Kathy Kelly, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Published on Sunday, August 10, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

The Big Voice

by Kathy Kelly

About six months ago, Dan Pearson, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, swiveled around in his office chair in our tiny “headquarters” to ask what we thought about organizing a walk from Chicago to St. Paul, arriving just before the Republican National Convention. (www.vcnv.org). A dedicated group of volunteers joined Dan to plan a project, which, to me, is one of the best organized efforts I’ve ever encountered, all aimed at voicing a witness against war, particularly in Wisconsin, where 3,500 National Guard troops are on alert for a call-up to combat duty, in Iraq, in 2009. Generally, three to five “day walkers” will join our core group of nine walkers. We walk about fifteen miles each day carrying signs that call for an end to the war and for keeping Wisconsin National Guard troops home. The sign I carry on this walk reads “Rebuild Iraq, rebuild the U.S.” Another of our signs, decorated with the obligatory elephant and donkey, reads “We hold both parties responsible.” We began walking on July 12, 2008 and will arrive in St. Paul Minnesota on August 30th.

Our “Witness Against War” walk is in Wisconsin, traversing traditional land of the Ho-Chunk Nation, also known in English translation as “People of the Big Voice.” In 1836, U.S. settlers, including farmers and miners, coveted this lush farmland and its rich mining resources and forced the Ho-Chunk to sell it all for a pittance. The US government imposed repeated roundups and “removals” on them, resettling them from Wisconsin to Iowa, from Iowa to Minnesota, then to South Dakota and onward, in dangerous, and for some deadly forced transports. “In the winter of 1873, many Ho Chunk people were removed to the Nebraska reservation from Wisconsin, traveling in cattle cars on trains,” according to the Nation’s website (www.ho-chunknation.com). “This was a horrific experience for the people, as many elders, women and children suffered and died.” Some of the transports were imposed to remove the Ho-Chunk people from conflicts with other nations – conflicts created by previous forced transports.

But after the removals by train, they walked back on foot to Wisconsin, to reclaim their former homes, It’s a tale of immeasurable suffering, but because of these walks back they are still here, as the “Ho-Chunk Nation” in this beautiful Wisconsin land where their ancestors were buried.

And we’re here too, walking on behalf of people in Iraq who’ve been made refugees to escape U.S. violence, and also the sectarian violence made inevitable by the U.S. government’s wholesale dismantling of their country, whether achieved deliberately or through incompetence we can’t know. We’re walking for people who, like the Ho-Chunk people, were told that if they didn’t cooperate with a U.S. project to seize their precious and irreplaceable resources, we would kill them.

The name of the “Ho-Chunk” nation means “People of the Sacred Language,” or “People of the Big Voice.” And when no-one was listening to them, they spoke to each other and chose to return, and strengthened each other for the return here where their action spoke louder than words and they eventually, after eleven removals and five weary returns, were ceded parts of their original land.

I and my companions here think of deliberate nonviolent action as a sacred language. Tomorrow we’re crossing the line into Fort McCoy to protest the cynical use of our young men and women, many of them seeking opportunities denied them in their communities, to kill and dispossess members of the Iraqi nation, to drive them into refuge in Jordan and Syria, to drive them into conflict the one against the other arming first this faction and then that with more and more weapons in the name of establishing “security forces,” so that we will have an excuse to occupy this oil-rich region for ages to come, whatever platitudes our leaders may offer now about eagerness some day to withdraw. Several of us may face several months in jail. Our leaders will continue to use these lands for wrongful purposes and we will keep walking back, until enough of our fellows join us that we are allowed to reclaim these lands, and our resources, to be the refuge and the comfort of all.

The United States is called a democracy. That means “People of the Big Voice.” A sacred language. But we as a nation are not yet ready to use our voices loud enough to be heard, or to use our feet, when our voices are ignored, in the sacred language of nonviolent direct action, in resistance to the greedy powerful few who would limit our choices to choices of war and claim all lands, heedless of the voices of the people living in them, for the purposes of greed. The world looks to us, much of it in genuine pain and anguish, asking when are we going to rescue them from our government, by expressing our wish for peace at long last in the Big Voice we have always claimed as our heritage?

Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org).

Published on Sunday, July 6, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

Cold Shoulders

by Kathy Kelly

Over the past two years, here in Amman, Jordan, I’ve regularly visited the family of Umm Hamdi, an Iraqi woman forced out of her native Iraq four years ago by terrifying death threats after her husband, very likely prey to that same threatened violence, disappeared. Although often met with the proverbial “cold shoulder” when trying to improve conditions for her family, she persists,–in the daytime she does child care for another family and, in the evening, she knits, sews, and makes handicrafts to sell in a local market. Umm Hamdi is tough, strong and fiercely determined to provide for her children. Nevertheless, she’s wretchedly insecure as a single mother and one more refugee among thousands in a country where resources to cope with her anxious needs are very slim. And she is worried for her son who is still in Iraq.

Two nights ago, I turned up to her small bare apartment during an evening when her young daughters were out in the care of a local charity and she was home alone. I saw how worn out she was from working to support them – but more telling on her is the frustration and remorse she feels for Hamdi, her teenage son, who is barred from entering Jordan because he is a young man over 15 years of age, and whether for fear of spillover violence or from a wish to concentrate its taxed charitable resources among women and children, Jordan’s policy strictly bars him entry. In Iraq, Hamdi lives with a family that resents him for his unemployed status, (there are no jobs), and can barely spare the little support they offer him.

Umm Hamdi is stricken with remorse over separation from her son. In regular phone calls, he learns that his sisters are going to school, that one has completed a vocational training program, and that when the oldest daughter was recently married the family did everything they could to give her a traditional wedding. The anguish overwhelms her as she recounts their latest conversation: “You do everything for your daughters,” he had shouted, over the phone: “everything for them, but what about me? What about me? I am your son!” She clutches her hands over her eyes. Between sobs, she repeats, “My son, my son.”

Her son is one of many thousands in Iraq who are out of luck, out of work, undereducated, and lonely for parents and siblings lucky enough to escape to neighboring countries.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says that poverty is driving Iraq’s boys and young men, out of desperation, into the militias. A 2007 IOM report noted that “militant fighters sometimes buy the loyalty of displaced persons by providing them some of the things they need, such as food and shelter. More and more children are joining these armed groups, the militias and the insurgents,” said IOM officer Dana Graber Ladeck. “Sometimes they do it for money and sometimes for revenge, but we’re finding more and more child soldiers, so to speak.” (January 30, Voice of America interview)

Some youngsters agree to carry guns and to man checkpoints for the strongest and most heavily armed militia in their country, the U.S. military. Reporting for Reuters, Adrian Croft recently wrote about a “ragtag band of men toting AK-47s at a checkpoint in Baghdad’s Sadr City,” some of 500 youngsters the US had recruited as part of a new plan to “strengthen the Iraqi army’s hold” in the backyard of U.S. rival Moqtada Sadr. (Jordan Times, June 27). New recruits risk their lives to earn $300 a month, guarding these checkpoints. It’s undoubtedly one of the best jobs in town. Will this option, will one like it, attract Umm Hamdi’s son?

Other Iraqi youngsters have been swept up by the U.S. military and sent to prisons, without charge, as a measure to prevent them from joining an Iraqi militia. On May 19, 2008, Fox News reported that the U.S. military is holding about 500 juveniles suspected of being “unlawful enemy combatants” in detention centers in Iraq. In August of 2007, in anticipation of the “troop surge,” CNN reported that the US had imprisoned, without charge, 800 Iraqi youngsters (or “security risks”) between the ages of 11 and 17, in a “prison school,” to prevent them from lending their bodies to militias as decoys or snipers. The CNN reporter said that, within the school, textbooks and classrooms were another “weapon” against terror. Commanding officer Lt. Glenn expressed his goal: “We ensure that when they are released that they don’t – they pick up a book instead of an AK-47 or laying an IED. And that’s what this really gets back to.” And when it gets back to young men like Hamdi, the message is perfectly clear: the U.S. will supply plenty of guns and explosives as long as the attacks are done in the name of protecting U.S. “security.”

Umm Hamdi doesn’t want her son to pick up a gun or lay an explosive device, for Iraq or for anyone. She would rather see him pick up a book. She cries herself to sleep at night wishing she could just see him. But she can’t bring her daughters back to the maelstrom of violence her native country has become with the U.S. invasion. And with Jordan straining to contain the refugees it has absorbed, she can’t bring her son out of Iraq.

Would it reassure her to think that Hamdi might find more secure shelter and achieve some educational goals if U.S. military jailers could imprison him for a year or so? Would it help if I told her that millions of impoverished parents in the U.S. worry that their sons might land in jail, and that many see the military as a better option?

I talked with her for a while longer. Her daughters returned from the event the charity had hosted for them, their faces sparkling with glitter and their arms colorful with painted designs. Umm Hamdi wiped away tears from a suddenly, forcedly, cheerful expression. She fetched a small ball of yarn – royal blue – and started rapid work to knit me a sweater, a parting gift I will take with me when I leave here. “It’s cold in Chicago, very cold!” she said, laying down the needles and yarn. She grabbed her shoulders to help me understand that she didn’t want me to have cold shoulders. “No, we don’t want you to be cold.”

Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)

The wonderful new blog The Olympic Effect posts detailed analysis on who’s who in the runup to the USA’s selection of its athletes for the 2008 Olympic team.

It also goes way in depth about the potentially harmful media effects on young athletes, spotlighting the stories of Vanessa Atler and Kristie Phillips.

Atler went as far as to refer to uneven bars as ‘the devil’ in her online diary. Atler’s coach, Steve Ryabcki, remained determined to prove that she could complete the skill. His insistence lasted three years and resulted in a nationally-televised explosion at the 1999 Nationals. Even though NBC muted most of Rybaki’s comments, the damage was done.

“Steve cursed me out at the meet and then refused to talk to me for days,” says Atler. “To his credit, it was the only time he ever did anything like that. Unfortunately, I was devastated. I was the perfect student and worked so hard for them for so long, but still got screamed at.”

Bela Karolyi sensed Atler might quit the sport and phoned her agent, Sheryl Shade, immediately. Karolyi, Shade and Atler’s mother, Nanette, met several times throughout the championship to discuss Karolyi coming out of retirement to coach Atler. This was unprecedented; Karolyi had refused a substantial salary from Dimitru Moceanu to continue coaching Dominique [Moceanu] following the Atlanta Games. With their plan in place, Atler promptly left the Rybakis.

It was not to be.

“We couldn’t get in touch with Bela for weeks,” recalls Atler. “I got a call from the women’s elite program director, Kathy Kelly, who told me that Bela didn’t want me and had never agreed to coach me.”

Shade received a similar call from then-USA Gymnastics President Bob Collarassi.

Vanessa Atler, 1999 U.S. Championships Finals, Uneven Bars:

The blog also reports that Atler had a few things to say about Valeri Liukin’s treatment:

Atler landed out of bounds on a floor exercise mat that failed to meet regulations. Landing on wood instead of padding, Atler’s left ankle chipped off pieces of bone. A USAG doctor misdiagnosed it as a sprain, but x-rays after the World Championships required two surgeries to remove the bone chips.

“When I arrived in Texas after worlds, Bela picked me up at the airport,” recalls Atler. “He saw me on crutches and was pissed that I had surgery.”

New coach Valeri Liukin was equally upset, especially when Atler gained four pounds during her recovery. Liukin’s gym weighs its gymnasts three times per day; the coach instructed his athlete not to drink water.

“I am the type of person who eats when I’m stressed,” admits Atler. “Valeri had his wife take me to a sauna for a half-hour after each work out. I became bulimic and binged for comfort. My weight kept going up and down, and my conditioning suffered.”

And Liukin’s reaction to Atler not making the Olympic team:

“Valeri came up to me the second the cameras went off and told me I didn’t make it because I was fat. He can be a great coach, unless you embarrass him. There was a lot of pressure on him and he’s one of the most competitive people I’ve ever met.”

It’s interesting that Atler never gave any hint that things were horribly wrong when she was writing in her online diary during her elite days. Perhaps it was just one more vestige of her trying to maintain that everything in her life was “perfect.”

Liukin, however, occasionally appears tempermental, particularly when his gymnasts don’t do well. His coldness toward daughter Nastia after she bobbled on balance beam during her last routine of the 2006 U.S. Championships is proof of that.

Nastia Liukin, 2006 U.S. Championships Finals, Balance Beam:

—written by Carolyn C. Holland

During a discussion on peace issues this evening, Monte and I told others of a meeting we attended in Bath, Maine while traveling through New England in 2003. I told the others at the meeting that I would post my travel journal report on the Peace Meeting in the Beanery Online Literary Magazine.

One night I suggested to Monte that we attend a meeting where a woman from Iraq was speaking of her experiences being there during the war. It included a pot-luck dinner, so we purchased an adorable yellow-iced cake with brown mice on it.

When we arrived things seemed like they were loosely run, and I felt uncomfortable. No one seemed to know what was going on. The speaker turned out to be Kathy Kelly, a well-known peace movement leader of a loosely knit organization known as Voices of Wilderness.Most of the 75-100 people in attendance were there to protest the launching of a ship at the Bath Marine company the next morning. A couple from Albany told us the ship can launch nuclear weapons sixteen times as powerful as that used on Nagasaki, and he protesters believed that it would be better to spend the money on medical or other types of ships. Protesters came from Florida, Colorado, New York as well as locally. Later news reports said several of these people were arrested during the demonstration, because they didn’t keep their demonstration behind the proper lines.

Kathy Kelly was in a seven-story family-run Muslim-owned hotel during the bombing of Iraq. She said $1 billion of explosives were laser pointed on Baghdad, and 900 tons of depleted uranium was left. Kathy asked: What if that money had been directed to educational and social services?

She talked about being with the Iraqi families, and the effect of the bombing on them. “It’s hard when all you can do is wait for the city to be bombed,” she said.

Before the bombing, eight women went to the maternity hospital to have their babies by C-section. They felt it was better than having them during the expected bomb bombardments.

Babies were grinding their teeth morning, afternoon and night.

A group of teens became engrossed in playing a game of Risk. When they were told they could finish the game the next day, and an 8-year old responded: We might not be here tomorrow.

Civilians put themselves in danger by approaching guarded posts. Kathy asked: With no news, how do civilians know NOT to approach guarded posts?

Some of the peace persons placed themselves as human shields in there, and were issued fines of $10,000, which they still owe. Voices of Wilderness was fined $20,000 for taking medicine and toys to Iraq.

When an ob-gyn doctor in Florida was fined $100,000 for sending medications to Iraq, Florida newspapers didn’t publish the story.

Later in a motel room we saw an interview with Kathy. She said they had no intention of paying the fines because they didn’t want to support the war.

When it comes to the Anit-War crowd, One thing they agree on, though, is mistrust of Hillary Clinton. Everett Fell, a former sportswriter from New Jersey who moved to Iowa as an organizer for AAEI, reflects a common view when he says, “I like all the other candidates, but I have a problem with Hillary.” “At least in Iowa, the peace community is thoroughly disillusioned with her,” says Jeremy Jansen, a young organizer from Wisconsin who moved to Iowa as part of AAEI’s Iraq campaign. On November 8 nine war protesters, led by Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, occupied Clinton’s campaign office in Des Moines for more than seven hours, placing Support the Troops, End the War signs out front and, once inside, reading the names of dead American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. It’s telling that they initially chose to target Clinton, along with the office of Rudy Giuliani. “We did this because Hillary voted for the war in Iraq and refuses to apologize for it, because her rhetoric…is not only imprecise but also contradicts her public comments that she won’t withdraw all the troops before 2013, because she voted for pro-war with Iran measures…and for her general hawkish foreign policy stances,” wrote David Goodner, a senior at the University of Iowa and a member of its antiwar committee. “She floats so quickly, vacillates so often, that I don’t think people have any confidence that she will expedite the end of the war,” says Ed Fallon, a former state representative and candidate for governor who has endorsed Edwards.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071217/berman