Tag: Peace

(Kathy Kelly ([email protected]) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence.  Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, she has often put herself in harm’s way as a witness for peace, most recently in Gaza.)

By Kathy Kelly

People have asked me, since I returned from Gaza, how people manage. How do they keep going after being traumatized by bombing and punished by a comprehensive state of siege? I wonder myself. I know that whether the loss of life is on the Gazan or the Israeli side of the border, bereaved survivors feel the same pain and misery. On both sides of the border, I think children pull people through horrendous and horrifying nightmares. Adults squelch their panic, cry in private, and strive to regain semblances of normal life, wanting to carry their children through a precarious ordeal.

And the children want to help their parents. In Rafah, the morning of January 18, when it appeared there would be at least a lull in the bombing, I watched children heap pieces of wood on plastic tarps and then haul their piles toward their homes. The little ones seemed proud to be helping their parents recover from the bombing. I'd seen just this happy resilience among Iraqi children, after the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing, as they found bricks for their parents to use for a makeshift shelter in a bombed military base.

Children who survive bombing are eager to rebuild. They don't know how jeopardized their lives are, how ready adults are to bomb them again.

In Rafah, that morning, an older man stood next to me, watching the children at work. "You see," he said, looking upward as an Israeli military surveillance drone flew past, "if I pick up a piece of wood, if they see me carrying just a piece of wood, they might mistake it for a weapon, and I will be a target. So these children collect the wood."

While the high-tech drone collected information,– "intelligence" that helps determine targets for more bombing, –toddlers collected wood. Their parents, whose homes were partially destroyed, needed the wood for warmth at night and for cooking. Because of the Israeli blockade against Gaza, there wasn't any gas.

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 rely, increasingly, 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 U.S. weapon makers had to use a tunnel to deliver weapons to Israel. The U.S. 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 UK's Indymedia Corporate Watch, 2009, Boeing has sent Israel 18 AH-64D Apache Longbow fighter helicopters, 63 Boeing F15 Eagle fighter planes, 102 Boeing F16 Eagle fighter planes, 42 Boeing AH-64 Apache fighter helicopters, F-16 Peace Marble II & III Aircraft, 4 Boeing 777s, and Arrow II interceptors, plus IAI-developed arrow missiles, and Boeing AGM-114 D Longbow Hellfire missiles,

In September of last year, the U.S. 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 from them. Perhaps there are more massacres in store. It would be important to maintain the tunnel carefully. Raytheon, one of the largest U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 truth, there's no actual tunnel bringing U.S. made weapons to Israel. But the transfers of weapons and the U.S. complicity in Israel's war crimes are completely invisible to many U.S. people. 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 rely, increasingly, 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 U.S. weapon makers had to use a tunnel to deliver weapons to Israel. The U.S. 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.

The United States is the primary source of Israel's arsenal. For more than 30 years, Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance and since 1985 Israel has received about 3 billion dollars, each year, in military and economic aid from the U.S. ("U.S. and Israel Up in Arms," Frida Berrigan, Foreign Policy in Focus, January 17, 2009)

So many Americans can't even see this flood of weapons, and what it means, for us, for Gaza's and Israel's children, for the world's children.

And so, people in Gaza have a right to ask us, how do you manage? How do you keep going? How can you sit back and watch while your taxes pay to massacre us? If it would be wrong to send rifles and bullets and primitive rockets into Gaza, weapons that could kill innocent Israelis, then isn't it also wrong to send Israelis the massive arsenal that has been used against us, killing over 400 of our children, in the past six weeks, maiming and wounding thousands more?

But, standing over the tunnels in Rafah, that morning, under a sunny Gazan sky, hearing the constant droning buzz of mechanical spies waiting to call in an aerial bombardment, no one asked me, an American, those hard questions. The man standing next to me pointed to a small shed where he and others had built a fire in an ash can. They wanted me to come inside, warm up, and receive a cup of tea.  

When your child asks, in 10 years, “What did you do end the war in Iraq, Daddy? (Mommy?), what are you going to say?

“Well, we worked really hard at it for years.  We marched, and wrote letters, and held vigils, and called up Congress, and did a lot of other stuff — oh, and a lot of meetings, too.  

“So did you keep it up until you made them end the war?”

“Well, not exactly.  See, we worked to elect this guy who was running for president and said he would end the war if he got elected.  And he won.

“So he ended the war and then you could quit protesting?”

“Something like that.  More like we quit protesting and hoped he would end the war.”

“Did it end?”

“Yes, but not right away.  It took a few years.  Quite a few, actually.”

“Do you think maybe you quit too soon?”

“It’s getting pretty late.  How about a bedtime story?”

* * *

Friday, Feb. 20, is Iraq Moratorium #18.

It is not the time to opt out of the effort to end the war and occupation of Iraq.  It is a time to turn up the heat, or, at a minimum, to keep things simmering.  Do something, large or small, to show you want US troops home.  

And, whatever you’re planning, please list it here.

Members of Congress are going to be home next week for a recess.  It’s a great chance to tell them face-to-face that we want our troops home.  And talk to them about spending priorities, using the billions we are wasting in Iraq to do something constructive.

From United for Peace and Justice, the nation’s biggest antiwar coalition:

The time is now to mount a campaign to cut the military budget by ending the war and occupation of Iraq and redirect the spending of our national budget.This is also an opportunity for the antiwar movement to work with economic and social justice groups in organizing joint delegations.

Don’t go to their offices alone!  Join with labor and community groups to make the first recess of the new Congress the beginning of a surge to compel them to end the war, cut the military budget and fund human needs.

If your Congressional representatives refuse to meet, or opposes the need for urgent emergency government action to respond to the economic crisis or bringing all the troops home: picket or vigil outside their office and call the press!

The opening of the debates on priorities for the next Federal Budget will follow this Congressional  recess. We need to make our priorities clear! Ending the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan are the first steps to making larger cuts in the military budget and change the priorities of Federal spending.

That’s just one idea.  There are hundreds of things you can do to observe the Iraq Moratorium.  Need ideas?  Visit the website:   IraqMoratorium.com.

What are you and me gonna do to end the war, Daddy and Mommy?

 

Guilt:

n.

The fact of being responsible for the commission of an offense. See synonyms at blame.

Law. Culpability for a crime or lesser breach of regulations that carries a legal penalty.

Remorseful awareness of having done something wrong.

Self-reproach for supposed inadequacy or wrongdoing.

Guilty conduct; sin.

http://www.answers.com/topic/g…

OK.  I dared to crosspost it:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

I’ve written about Democratic Socialism more than once, citing shining examples of European models that work.

But really, I am a good old communist flower child at heart.

I can look at pictures of glistening cities, pristine example of architecture old and new, filled with lovely dining spots and walk to arts and culture and still be sickened.

I always wonder what their alleys hide, where the people serving the affluent there live like.

Speaking as a supporter who will cut you no slack when you are wrong, I am mighty proud to have you as my President.

(Kathy Kelly, a Chicagoan twice nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, who has devoted her life to promoting peace through non-violence, has often put herself in harm’s way as a witness. She has been in Gaza for six days.)

by Kathy Kelly

January 21, 2009

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 (email: [email protected]) is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She and Audrey Stewart have been in Gaza for the past six days.  

Today (Friday, Jan. 16) is the day:  Iraq Moratorium, a day to interrupt our daily routines and do something, whatever it may be, to call for an end to the war and occupation of Iraq.

Here’s one simple thing you can do that only takes a minute:

With the inauguration of Barack Obama just days away, ask Obama, through his change.gov website, to act at once to begin the process of withdrawing US troops. Tell him how strongly you feel about it.

Here’s another simple, warm, indoor activity, while we in Wisconsin and elsewhere (like the people pictured in Rice Lake WI) endure sub-zero temperatures:   Help keep the woefully underfunded Iraq Moratorium alive with a contribution, large or small, one-time or monthly.   Just click here to donate.  We’ll put it to immediate and effective use in the cause of peace

Whatever you decide to do, please send a report (photos or videos, too, if you have them) by using this brand new, even simpler form.

Folks across the country would like to hear about what you do, even an individual action.  You can inspire others to act.

Thanks for whatever you do in the cause of peace.