Medea Benjamin's Blog, page 14

It’s time to put an end to Israel’s ‘don’t ask-don’t tell’ nuclear policy

By Medea Benjamin & Pam Bailey

The negotiations this week in Geneva between Iran and the “P5+1” (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany) offer a promising vehicle for avoiding another destructive war. The talks came on the heels of a virtual uprising by the American people that stopped President Barack Obama’s plan to attack Syria, clearly demonstrating their desire to solve conflicts at the negotiation table rather than at the point of a gun.

However, Israel and its allies in the U.S. Congress continue to lobby against a deal that would meet Iran in the middle, insisting on a “zero-enrichment” policy that is a deal-breaker for Iran.

The Israeli cabinet said in a statement Tuesday that “Israel does not oppose Iran having a peaceful nuclear energy program. But as has been demonstrated in many countries, from Canada to Indonesia, peaceful programs do not require uranium enrichment or plutonium production. Iran’s nuclear weapons program does.”

The ‘elephant in the room’: Israel and the bomb

The Israeli cabinet’s statement is more than ironic, in light of Israel’s own nuclear-weapons program — often called the world’s “worst-kept secret” because of the taboo surrounding any public discussion of its existence.

The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus is one of the few journalists openly questioning this obvious hypocrisy. He writes, “When the Israeli prime minister asked (at the UN), ‘Why would a country that claims to only want peaceful nuclear energy, why would such a country build hidden underground enrichment facilities?’ I thought Dimona.”

Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona, a city in the Negev desert, reportedly has six underground floors dedicated to activities such as plutonium extraction, production of tritium and lithium-6, for use in nuclear weapons.

Whereas Iran signed the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), giving the international community the right to demand inspections and controls, Israel has not — and is therefore not subject to external oversight.

According to Avner Cohen, author of “Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb,” David Ben-Gurion began planning how to arm Israel with a nuclear shield even before the creation of the Jewish state, soon after the United States dropped its own atomic payload on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first president of Israel took action to initiate a nuclear-development project by the end of the new state’s first decade, with its successful “birth” on the eve of its 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The U.S. government got wind of the project and objected strenuously. But when the Israelis brought it to fruition regardless and refused to give up their new arsenal, a covert agreement was struck between Prime Minister Golda Meir and President Richard Nixon – rather like the old U.S. policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” for gays in the military. The Israelis agreed to keep their newfound strength under wraps, and the Americans pledged to pretend it didn’t exist.

Cohen uses the Hebrew term amimut (opacity) to describe the taboo that developed within Israel around any sort of public acknowledgement of its nuclear arsenal – which estimates peg at up to 200 warheads. To this day, there is total censorship within Israel of any mention that the weapons exist, and the United States actively plays along.

Edward Snowden’s predecessor

In fact, there is an eerie similarity between the stories of Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, a nuclear technician who revealed details of Israel’s nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986, and Edward Snowden. Both held junior positions in organizations serving the defense industry, in which they had access to sensitive national secrets. Both became convinced their employers were responsible for immoral acts and decided to violate their oaths of secrecy to tell the world about them. They both shared what they learned with a British newspaper and set off an international storm. And both have been persecuted since then by their governments, in retaliation for their leaks.

While Snowden has so far evaded capture by his government, Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 in solitary confinement. Although released in 2004, he has been subjected to a broad array of restrictions on his speech and movement, including several re-arrests for giving interviews to foreign journalists and attempting to leave Israel. Yet, just as activists, foreign governments and others would never have known the U.S. government is tapping their emails and phone calls without Snowden, the world would have known very little – if anything – about Israel’s weapons of mass destruction without Vanunu.

‘Blowback’ from Israel’s nuclear lead

Although Israel, the United States and its European allies continue to dance around the subject, Israel’s nuclear capacity is widely known and has changed the dynamics in the region in dangerous ways. On Sept. 19, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that “Syria came into possession of chemical weapons as an alternative to Israel’s nuclear weapons.”  (It’s also worth noting that while Israel was one of the first countries to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993, it remains one of only six countries that has not ratified it.)

Some analysts believe that Israel’s insistence on zero enrichment for Iran is designed to ensure that no deal is struck at all – allowing Israel to maintain its military superiority in the region. “Netanyahu ultimately fears the success of diplomacy, not its failure,” explains Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, in Foreign Affairs.  “Israel…understands that a resolution to the nuclear standoff would significantly reduce U.S.-Iranian tensions and open up opportunities for collaboration between the two former allies. This is what Israelis refer to as the fear of abandonment — that, once the nuclear issue is resolved or contained, Washington will shift its focus to other matters while Israel will be stuck in the region facing a hostile Iran, without the United States by its side.”

Neither the world, nor Israel, is served legally or morally by continuing to condone a practice of don’t ask-don’t tell for an issue that is so central to global security and safety. As long as Israel refuses to acknowledge its possession of nuclear weapons or even that it has produced weapons-grade materials, it is difficult, if not impossible, to engage it in any meaningful arms control or other nuclear-related diplomacy. It certainly makes it impossible to move towards a nuclear-free Middle East—a goal to which the entire international community should aspire, and that has been endorsed by the new Iranian president.

Isn’t it time for the world to start asking, and for Israel to tell?

 

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange.

Pam Bailey is a freelance journalist and activist who has lived and worked in the Gaza Strip.

Boycott Activists Join Forces Asking CEOs to Stop Business with SodaStream

Friends of Sabeel, an organization that promotes a just peace in the Holy Land, has orchestrated a campaign bringing together SodaStream boycott activists from across the nation. Together this coalition comprised of CODEPINK and others inflated the mailboxes of CEOs that carry the product in their stores. Letters were sent to 14 CEOs from large companies such as Crate and Barrel, Target, and Costco just to name a few.

However, the responses to our cry for human rights was countered by Crate and Barrel with rhetoric pertaining to how the company does its best to uphold ethical business practices—so long as it does not involve politics. Rich Cohrs, director of corporate communications at Crate and Barrel, writes, “We have well documented compliance and corporate governance procedures enforcing our core values, as well as internationally-recognized best practices for sustainability, social compliance, non-discrimination, diversity and human rights. We do not engage in political debates, and we select our vendors based on product, performance and international social compliance standards. ”

However, to be a self-proclaimed company that strives to endorse ethical business practices, non-discrimination, and human rights, taking a non-political stance is simply contradictory. If a product is selling well, companies won’t remove them from shelves no matter how beautifully written their ethical business clause is. That being said, I am reminded of the great power of civil society and the influence of the consumer. Buyers can cause a product to fail and that is something we all must recognize. In our efforts to end the financial prosperity of companies such as SodaStream and Ahava that profiteer by destroying Palestinian livelihoods, we all ought to be concerned and promote the boycott campaign at the grassroots.

This holiday season, starting from Black Friday, November 29 until December 10, SodaStream activists are planning to bring awareness to the SodaStream boycott and we need your help! We want to get the word out to the surge of holiday season shoppers who may be considering purchasing SodaStream makers as gifts. We will be online and tweeting about how SodaStream is detrimental to Palestinian human rights and self-determination while also making a physical presence outside of Target stores. Stay connected with Codepink via facebook, twitter, and codepink.org for more information about how you can create a public action in your own community or utilize social media as a tool for change. Together we can resist corporate power and those who profit from human rights violations.

By Linda Tenerowicz

Help an Iraqi single mother!

Help an Iraqi single mother!

In the lawsuit against the Bush war criminals, Saleh v. Bush, single mother of five, Sundus Shaker Saleh alleges the Iraq War was a premeditated war against the Iraqi people.

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Sundus Saleh with her four children

Here's Yes Magazine's account of Saleh's story:

"Prior to the arrival of U.S. forces, Saleh said, Iraq was safe. People slept with their doors open at night. There were no militias, no checkpoints, no threats. All of that came to a halt following the U.S.-led invasion. Airstrikes damaged or destroyed vital infrastructure including highways, bridges, and wastewater treatment facilities. Diseases like typhus became commonplace. The swift collapse of a functioning government created an environment ripe for internecine warfare. Saleh's twin brothers were both shot by militia members, and she no longer felt safe in her own home.

So in 2005, Saleh fled Iraq. She was not alone. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, over 2 million people left the country, and over 2.7 million were internally displaced, including up to 40 percent of the Iraqi middle class. 

To seek legal redress, chief counsel Comar Law is invoking the Alien Tort Statute, a law passed in 1789 that permits a non-U.S. national the ability to sue in federal court for injuries "committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." The case was filed on March 13, 2013, with the U.S. District Court in Northern Calif.

On August 20th Law revealed in a press release that: "The DOJ claims that in planning and waging the Iraq War, ex-President Bush and key members of his Administration were acting within the legitimate scope of their employment and are thus immune from suit," By signing this petition you are helping CodePink keep the pressure on these war criminals. We won't stop fighting until those who suffered from US-led war and abuses have justice. 

Another way that you can support  this effort is by sharing the intake process for Iraqi nationals who emigrated during the Iraq war.

 

Sign the petition to support Sundus’ lawsuit & help us reach our goal of 5000 signatures! We are half way there!


Like the “Justice for Sundus” Facebook Page!


Forward the shareable image on Facebook!

 

 

Dick Cheney & Torture Team Laugh It Off!

Dick Cheney & Torture Team Laugh It Off!

“They’re wrong. Waterboarding is torture,” Obama said. “Anybody who has actually read about and understands the practice of waterboarding would say that that is torture. And that’s not something we do — period.” –Laura MacInnis, Reuters

In March 2008, hundreds gathered in Washington DC for the Winter Soldier gathering to hear eyewitness accounts of the US-occupation of Iraq given by military service men and women. Former Army Sergeant Domingo Rosas gave a first person account of handling Iraqi prisoners and implementing the torture technique of sleep deprivation while prisoners were held inside a shipping container. He describes the mishandling of dead bodies and witnessing the horrific torture of prisoners by government agents. Watch Former Army Sergeant Domingo Rosas chilling testimony!

Five years later, inside the luxurious Plaza Hotel in New York City, torture supporter & former VP Dick Cheney was celebrated or roasted by colleagues at an event sponsored by the Commentary magazine. Apparently, the roast went sour when presenters made obscene jokes about waterboarding. Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith writes, “There were some waterboarding jokes that were really tasteless,” the guest said. “I can see the case for enhanced interrogation techniques after Sept. 11 but I can’t really endorse sitting there drinking wine and fancy dinner at the Plaza laughing uproariously about it.”

On December 15, 2011, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta declared the war in Iraq over. Even though the war is officially over, there’s nothing funny about torture, the murder of over 100,00 innocent Iraqis, the killing of over 4,000 soldiers and the trillions of dollars wasted. Yet Dick Cheney and his band of torture advocates live freely in the United States cracking jokes.

Support the efforts of the Lawyers Against War in Canada calling on PM Stephen Harper to bar Dick Cheney from Canada and to arrest him on entry!
Protest Dick Cheney in Toronto, Oct. 31, 2013!

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Birthday Greetings to Lynne, with love from CODEPINK

Who was there to care when most Americans turned their backs on the poor and the weak?

Lynne Stewart.

Who was there to protect those brutalized by state repression?

Lynne Stewart.

Who was there to defend those victimized by racism?

Lynne Stewart.

Who was there to uphold the ideals of justice for all, ideals that the United States is supposed to stand for?

Lynne Stewart.

Who was there to push our government to respect the US Constitution and international law?

Lynne Stewart.

Who used the courts to bring justice back into the judicial system?

Lynne Stewart.

Who fought fiercely to hold the powerful accountable for their misdeeds?

Lynne Stewart.

Who devoted her life to the collective dignity of all people, the liberation of all people, the “pursuit of happiness” for all people?

Lynne Stewart.

That’s why we love you, Lynne; we honor you, Lynne; and we send you birthday greetings from your sisters at CODEPINK.

Fact Sheet on Iran Sanctions

The United States has a drawn-out history of imposing sanctions on Iran and has tightened these measures over time due to its alliance with Israel. The motives behind these sanctions are hyped as measures to prevent Iran from pursuing its enrichment program because of the perceived threat this program poses to Israel in the region. A closer look at what are touted as alternatives to war, have had equally severe consequences for the Iranian people at the expense of their civil liberties and livelihoods.

These sanctions have not only violated their fundamental rights to live economically free lives but are also now proving to have deemed and disregarded Iranian citizens as second class citizen of the world due to the inherent suppression the coded nature of these sanctions subjugates them to. The following list provides some direct insight into how these horrendous sanctions are directly affecting them:

Sanctions have slowed Iran’s industrial and economic growth, considerably limited foreign investment and triggered national currency devaluation, hyperinflation, declining GDP and, last but not least, reduction of oil and gas production and export.
Inflation has skyrocketed 18%. Sanctions have caused prices for food, rent, fuel and other basic necessities to rise steeply, by 100% in some instances.
Oil sales, which account for 80 percent of the government’s revenue, have been cut in half.
Unemployment has risen sharply, especially among youth, and inflation is likely to get even worse because of the depreciation of Iranian currency. Penalties are enacted on anyone facilitating “significant” transactions in the rial or holding significant amounts of the currency outside Iran. Intensifying sanctions against the country have sent the Iran’s rial into an unprecedented free-fall, causing it to plummet in value by 80% since the start of 2012.
A US official said the move would force institutions to dump rial holdings and weaken the currency further. This is the first time the US has directly targeted the Iranian currency. “This promises to make Iran’s weak currency, even weaker and more volatile,” the US official was quoted as saying.”The idea here is to make the rial essentially unusable outside of Iran.”The Iranian currency has fallen significantly against the US dollar over the past couple of years, hurt by a slew of sanctions against Tehran’s key sectors.
Unemployment is thought to be around three times higher than the official rate of 12%, and millions of unskilled factory workers are on wages well below the official poverty line of 10m rials (about $300) a month.
Despite subsidies intended to help the poor, prices for staples, such as milk, bread, rice, yogurt and vegetables, have at least doubled since the beginning of 2012. Chicken has become so scarce for the average citizens, that when scant supplies become available they prompt riots. In some instances police in Tehran have had to fire tear-gas at people demonstrating over the rial’s collapse. The city’s main bazaar has had to be temporarily closed because of the impossibility of quoting accurate prices.
Ordinary Iranians completely unconnected to the government have had their lives effectively ground to a halt as the sudden and unprecedented collapse of the financial system has rendered any meaningful form of commerce effectively impossible.
The effects of sanctions in Iran, in addition to expensive basic goods, include an aging and increasingly unsafe aircraft fleet. “According to reports from Iranian news agencies, 17 planes have crashed over the past 25 years, killing approximately 1,500 people.” The U.S. forbids aircraft manufacturer Boeing to sell aircraft parts to Iranian aviation companies.
With businesses unable to fully function and the resulting downturn in domestic production, wages have decreased and the unemployment rate has increased. Economic sanctions on Iran ban Europe-based companies from providing raw materials to Iranian car manufacturers. As a result, Iranian companies have faced numerous problems in producing cars over the past few years. Subsequently, the country’s car exports have decreased by over 98% and thus resulted in heavy losses for the industry. These sanctions threaten to increase the already high unemployment rate, as the car manufacturing industry is the second largest employer in the country after the oil industry.
 Another particularly devastating effect of these financial sanctions is the inability of pharmaceutical companies to purchase and import basic life saving medicines, ranging from Tylenol to cancer medicine and even prenatal vitamins. Iranians have had to resort to the black market for access, which not only serves to strengthen informal power structures, but can also be medically dangerous. Even relatives in the U.S. are unable to send needed medicine to family members as USPS and other postal carriers interpret this as banned by the sanctions.
 Young people have also been blocked from leaving the country to study abroad as foreign universities have become overly cautious about admitting Iranian students and have cited sanctions as the reason. In a prominent case, a graduate student received a rejection letter from a university in Europe.  The department chair specifically said that he wanted to extend an offer, but his hands were tied due to the sanctions.
 So horrific is the human suffering brought about by such sanctions regimes that some are beginning to argue that killing Iranians with an air attack would be more humane. That was the argument advanced several days ago by the managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine, Blake Hounsehll, who mused that he was “beginning to wonder if limited airstrikes on Iran may actually be the more morally sound course of action.” He was contemplating airstrikes, he then explained, because “a couple thousand deaths” might be worth it to avoid “the livelihoods of 75 million people destroyed”.
 What’s most extraordinary about all of this is that the extreme human suffering caused by US-led sanctions is barely acknowledged in mainstream American political discourse. One reason that Americans were so baffled after the 9/11 attack (why do they hate us?) is the same reason they continue to be so baffled by anti-American protests in the Muslim world (what are they so angry about?): namely, most Americans literally have no idea, because nobody ever told them, that their government’s imposition of sanctions in Iraq led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children, and they similarly have no idea that the suffering of ordinary Iranians is becoming increasingly substantial.

As mentioned above, U.S. officials have made their intentions clear about how these sanctions are designed to “make Iran’s weak currency even weaker and more volatile,” in  order to punish the Iranian people. The Iranians’ suffering will persist while the government goes about further increasing sanctions and as U.S. and Israel come closer to military attack. In this context, it is important to note that maintaining the sanctions and continuing the Iranian people’s oppression has counter-productively made the Iranian government more convinced that the United States is not serious about engagement and is committed to following its own agenda at their expense.

 

References:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/07/iran-santions-suffering

http://www.alternet.org/world/us-sanctions-hurt-iranian-people

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22763075

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/5518/sanctions-against-iran_a-duplicitous-alternative-t

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/04/iran-sanctions-consequences-list.html

http://www.cfr.org/iran/sanctions-affect-irans-economy/p28329

http://www.heraldboy.com/iranian-car-manufacturers-losing-market-share-in-iran/1330/

Hungry for justice: an interview with CloseGitmo hunger striker Cynthia Papermaster

by Janet Weil

Cynthia Papermaster, a retired law librarian, has been a stalwart SF Bay Area organizer and local group coordinator (Golden Gate local) for nearly a decade. In June 2013, she escalated her years-long opposition to the horrors of indefinite detention and torture in Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo), taking on a hunger strike in solidarity with over 100 detainees on hunger strike. Her fast lasted until late September. Cynthia lost 30 pounds — and gained much in her journey for justice for the prisoners at Gitmo.

I asked Cynthia about her motivation, her experiences on 300 or fewer calories per day, and what she will do going forward in her quest for justice for Gitmo prisoners, over 80 of whom have been cleared by the US government – and still not released.

1- Going on a hunger strike is a brave and extreme thing to do – what motivated you?

I don’t feel brave, but yes, an 84-day hunger strike is extreme. It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done in my many years of activism. It put me on the national stage, gave me a platform for educating people about Guantanamo.

The extreme part was interesting… I’m sure many viewed me as crazy. After all, how many of us give up food, the pleasure and comfort of food, for a cause? I learned a lot about hunger strikes, joined a long tradition with my hunger strike.

For years I’ve been working on the issue of accountability for US torture policy. The situation at Guantanamo is heavily connected with torture. My work is mainly focused on prosecutions for government officials who conspired to torture, such as law professor John Yoo, Judge Jay Bybee, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, David Addington, Steven Haynes, Condoleeza Rice.

I also initiated the Berkeley City Council Resolution, passed in 2011, which welcomes cleared Gitmo prisoners to resettle in Berkeley with private money, and have been raising money for the prisoners and awareness of the Resolution.

When I saw a photo of my CODEPINK sister Diane Wilson sitting in front of the White House with a sign saying she was on a hunger strike I was inspired to join her. Others joined the strike– Elliott Adams and Tarak Kauff of Veterans for Peace, S. Brian Willson of Portland, Leslie Angeline of CODEPINK, John Pope of Florida, Cynthia Johnson of Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, to name some. We became a nationwide support group for each other, focused on closing Gitmo, ending the indefinite detention, solitary confinement, and torture there, and embracing the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike in California prisons as well.

2 – What and who kept you going through this difficult summer of living on 300 calories a day?

Well, once I made a commitment it was fairly simple to stick with it and not eat, but what really helped was hunger strike support from the folks in www.closegitmo.net, especially Andres Thomas Conteris, Sherri Maurin, Elliott Adams, Brian Willson, Les Angeline, Diane Wilson, Cynthia Johnson, John Pope. The hunger was difficult, but manageable. The payoff was so gratifying, knowing that people were calling the White House, signing the CODEPINK petition to Clifford Sloan.

Berkeley artist Doug Minkler stepped forward to do a poster of Gitmo prisoner Djamel Ameziane, who was cleared for transfer in 2008, but who remains in Gitmo indefinitely, without hope of freedom. We communicated to him, via his lawyers, the Center for Constitutional Rights, that we were raising money for his resettlement and pressuring Obama to release him. I organized a postcard-writing campaign to send him messages of courage.

My friends, especially the ones who DIDN’T try to talk me out of fasting, were supportive, loving, caring, available. Jimminywinks [her dog] never wavered in her support, but left home for 24 hours one day because I was on edge emotionally. Warning: starvation will make you emotional, often angry, impatient. I was angry at someone, and she doesn’t like disharmony,  so she went out the open back door, out the open side gate, and over to the park nearby where she was spotted and taken to the Berkeley animal shelter. I got her back the next morning when my friend Mark called me and said “She’s here! She’s at the shelter!”

3 – Going forward, how do you see the Close Gitmo struggle?

We must continue to push Obama to stop the forced feeding, release the cleared-for-transfer prisoners, charge and try the remainder, and close the prison. I’m willing to go on another hunger strike, but I think instead that I will lobby the Democrats who represent me in Congress– Congresswoman Lee and Senators Feinstein and Boxer– and get them to talk to their man Obama, get him to take action. Feinstein actually sounds like ME re Guantanamo. She’s a good potential ally on this issue, so I’m going to exploit that as much as possible.

Hope of Healing for Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi Mother by Alice Walker

When the US invaded Iraq in 2003 Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother of five, lost her home and her property, and was forced to flee to Jordan. 

A decade later, Saleh is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against six key members of the Bush administration. They’re arguing that, since the war was not conducted in self-defense, and did not have the appropriate authorization by the United Nations, it constituted a “crime of aggression” under international law.

On August 20th the United States Department of Justice requested that George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz be granted procedural immunity in the case alleging that they planned and waged the Iraq War in violation of international law. 

We can’t accept this. We demand that these war criminals come forward and hold themselves accountable for the tragic consequences that the war had for Saleh’s family and countless other Iraqi civilians

 

Hope of Healing

for Sundus Shaker Saleh, Iraqi Mother, with my love.

©2013 by Alice Walker

 

In our despair that justice is slow

we sit with heads bowed

 

 wondering

how

even whether

 we will ever be healed.

 

Perhaps it is a question

only the ravaged

the violated

seriously ask.

And is that not now

almost all of us?

 

But hope is on the way.

 

As usual Hope is a woman

herding her children

around her

all she retains of who

she was; as usual

except for her kids

 

she has lost almost everything.

 

Hope is a woman who has lost her fear.

 

Along with her home, her employment, her parents, her olive trees, her grapes. The peace of independence; the reassuring noises of ordinary

neighbors.

 

Hope rises, She always does,

did we fail to notice this in all the stories

they’ve tried to suppress?

 

Hope rises,

and she puts on her same

unfashionable threadbare coat

and, penniless, she flings herself

against the cold, polished, protective chain mail

of the very powerful

the very rich – chain mail that mimics

suspiciously silver coins

and lizard skin -

and all she has to fight with is the reality of what was done to her;

to her country; her people; her children;

her home.

All she has as armor is what she has learned

must never be done.

Not in the name of War

and especially never in the

name of Peace.

 

Hope is always the teacher

with the toughest homework.

 

Our assignment: to grasp

what has never been breathed in our stolen

Empire

on the hill:

 

Without justice, we will never

be healed.

 

The organization, Iraq Witness, has filed suit against the Bush Administration on behalf of an Iraqi single mother, Sundus Shaker Saleh. Saleh alleges that the Iraq War was a premeditated war against the Iraqi people — and now she is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against six key members of the Bush administration. 


 

For more information about this inspiring standing up of a mother of five, visit the CODEPINK website.

 

Sign the petition to support Sundus’ lawsuit & help us reach our goal of 5000 signatures! We are half way there!


Like the “Justice for Sundus” Facebook Page!


Forward the shareable image on Facebook!

 

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Iraq struggle continues!

When US Labor Against the War (USLAW) learned that Iraqi unions had been invited to attend last months AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles, but were offered no financial assistance to travel, a decision was made to use USLAW Labor Solidarity Fund resources to underwrite the expenses of at least one union leader.  USLAW decided to pay the expenses for Hassan Juma’a Awad, President of the Iraq Federation of Oil Unions, to come to the US, attend the convention and then speak at events in LA, the Bay Area and New York City. CODEPINK and Iraq Veterans Against the War joined as a co-sponsors of Hassan’s West Coast speaking events.

In his 2005 Guardian UK Op-ed “Leave our country now” Hassan Juma’a Awad compares life under Saddam Hussein’s government and the US-British military occupation. Under Saddam, a worker’s right to organize a strike were basically robbed. Today, Hassan continues the same struggle for rights under the Nouri al-Maliki government.

Last month, Hassan spoke to a group of Iraq war veterans, peace activists and labor workers at a union hall in San Francisco, California. He talked about the hardships experienced under the Maliki government with the lack of labor laws and government push-back on legislation. Transition into the new government hasn’t been smooth for union organizers especially when a new Parliament comes to office. Unions have to re-start the process of gaining rights, which could potentially lead to prosecution if the government feels the economy and state are under threat by the workers.

US-British occupation still plays a role in post-invasion Iraq. Paul Bremer, former US diplomat, notable for his role as civil governor of Iraq, had refused to let the unions organize. He spent time developing other laws which Iraqi’s consider useless. Hassan explains that his country is still unstable. It doesn’t have 24-hours of electricity, the children live in miserable conditions and unions don’t have health insurance. Under the Maliki government, Hassan faces threats of jail and fines for challenging the treatment of workers and the give-away of Iraqi oil to private corporations. He does not see democracy in Iraq as long as the country continues to be occupied.

As part of Hassan’s speaking events, members of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War presented the Right to Heal campaign. It’s a campaign cooperative with the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) and Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) that bridges a demand for reparations for civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and veterans who served in either war.

Additionally, Inder Comar introduced a suit against the Bush Administration on behalf of an Iraqi single mother, Sundus Shaker Saleh. Saleh alleges that the Iraq War was a premeditated war against the Iraqi people — and now she is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against six key members of the Bush administration.

Sign the petition to support Sundus’ lawsuit & help us reach our goal of 5000 signatures! We are half way there!


Like the “Justice for Sundus” Facebook Page


Forward the shareable image on Facebook!

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A Call for US Action for Peace in Syria

by Phyllis Bennis -Director, New Internationalism Project for the Institute for Policy Studies

(This version has been slightly edited for length, with italicizes additions made by Janet Weil of CODEPINK.)

1.    The U.S. should, first, do no harm. NO U.S. military strikes or any further military intervention in Syria. Support UN decision-making, international law and diplomacy instead of military force.

2.   The U.S. should call for an immediate ceasefire by all sides and a comprehensive international arms embargo.  Announce plans to stop sending or facilitating any arms to rebel forces or allowing U.S. allies to do so, and urge Russia and Iran to stop sending any arms to the Syrian government.

3.   The U.S. should immediately re-open plans with Russia for international diplomatic negotiations towards a political solution in Syria, including all sides in Syria, including non-violent Syrian civil society, and representatives of Syrian, Palestinian, and other refugees and IDPs. The U.S. team should support plans to insure that the settlement provide protection for all communities in Syria and the return of refugees, and not exclude whole categories of people who may have served in the government, the army, or armed opposition militias. The U.S. should also support efforts towards accountability and justice for all war crimes that have been committed in the Syrian war.

4.   The U.S. should announce a major increase in refugee and humanitarian assistance coordinated through the United Nations, and call on other countries to increase aid and coordinate through the UN.

5.   The U.S. should support the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons to lead and oversee the transfer of chemical weapons to international control to be safely destroyed or removed. The U.S. should support further disarmament efforts by endorsing calls for a Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone throughout the Middle East, with no exceptions.