Here is the latest from our good friend Jason Laning. While it is definitely rough, I think he makes a good point. Any thoughts?
To see this webcomic in its original size or check out more of his work, stop by his new site. It’s one to keep an eye on.
How do wars impact the soldiers who fight them?
An astounding 37% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans entering US Veterans Affairs hospitals between 2002 and 2008 received mental health diagnoses, according to a new study of 290,000 veterans in the American Journal of Public Health. Over one in five (22%) were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 4 to 7 times the pre-Iraq rate; 17% were diagnosed with depression. Some veterans were diagnosed with both or other conditions. Those with greater combat exposure were more likely to suffer from PTSD.
Meanwhile, an investigation by the Colorado Springs Gazette, entitled, “The hell of war comes home,” found a sharp rise in violent crime among Iraq War veterans. One former soldier, Anthony Marquez, “used a stun gun to repeatedly shock a small-time drug dealer in Widefield over an ounce of marijuana, then shot him through the heart.” Since 2006, ten members of Marquez’s 3,500-soldier unit have been arrested for murder, attempted murder, or manslaughter.
The battalion is overwhelmingly made up of young men, who, demographically, have the highest murder rate in the United States, but the brigade still has a murder rate 20 times that of young males as a whole.
The killings are only the headline-grabbing tip of a much broader pyramid of crime. Since 2005, the brigade’s returning soldiers have been involved in brawls, beatings, rapes, DUIs, drug deals, domestic violence, shootings, stabbings, kidnapping and suicides.
According to Time magazine, “Phase 2 ” of the Iranian protest movement has begun.
Six weeks after millions took to the streets to protest Iran’s presidential election, their uprising has morphed into a feistier, more imaginative and potentially enduring campaign.
The definitive tone of this proclamation is very interesting. For starters, the article doesn’t exactly explain why “Phase 2 ” has begun at this particular moment. Other mainstream media outlets have made similar claims over the past few weeks. And much like the others, Time seems to be relying on wishful editorializing more than concrete reporting.
Tactics may be evolving to deal with the crackdown on mass street protests—such as the boycott of goods advertized on state-controlled television, attempts to overload the electrical grid and “blitz” street demonstrations—but there is little sign of them having any kind of effect on the Iranian regime. And, therefore, it’s hard to imagine a “potentially enduring campaign” emerging.
Furthermore, the situation seems to have changed very little from when it started over a month ago. Back then, Middle East expert and foreign policy analyst Stephen Zunes described the protests as “scattered” and “lacking in discipline.” Time calls “Phase 2 ” as “unorganized” and “largely leaderless.” The only difference between these two descriptions is the conclusion that follows. For Zunes, a scattered and disorganized protest movement is “easily suppressed,” whereas for Time it’s “only just beginning.” Except that it’s not. How can it be the beginning if it’s Phase 2? Read the rest of this article »
In this video, Rainforest Action Network executive director Michael Brune hosts a fireside chat directed specifically at the wife of Royal Bank of Canada CEO Gordon Nixon. RBC is one of the leading financial supporters of the tar sands project in Alberta, widely regarded by environmentalists as the most destructive project on earth.
Brune explains that he is addressing Mrs. Nixon because RAN has been unable to grab her husband’s attention.
My colleagues and I distribute leaflets, maybe dangle banners off buildings and collaborate with RBC shareholders, but you, Janet, you’re obviously a lot closer. You have his ear. So please, Janet, tonight would you ask your husband to stop RBC from financing this horiffic project?
Accompanying this rather humorous video was a stunt at RBC headquarters in downtown Toronto yesterday, where two Indigenous Canadian women scaled flagpoles in front of the main entrance before dropping a banner that read: “Please Help Us Mrs Nixon.com.“
Janet Nixon is known to have played a key role in the development of RBC’s Blue Water Project, which is giving out $50 million over the next 10 years “to help foster a culture of water stewardship.”
While the clear issue involved with the tar sands oil extraction is global warming, RAN has been clever, given Mrs. Nixon’s interests, to stress the clean water implications as well. As Brune notes in the video, “It’s polluting Canada’s clean and precious water rescources.” More specifically, according to RAN’s website, “Indigenous First Nations communities downstream [from the tar sands project] have experienced polluted water, water reductions in rivers and aquifers, increased cancer, and declines in wildlife population that threaten to destroy their traditional ways of life.”
Although the banner dropping created quite a stir during the two hours it remained hoisted—drawing crowds of people, including RBC public relations executives—Mrs. Nixon has yet to issue a response. In fact, considering the video and the action were the culmination of a month-long guerrilla advertising campaign by RAN—which saw them plaster Toronto with posters calling on Mrs. Nixon to help—she’s actually been silent for quite a while.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Will Mrs. Nixon feel forced to make some sort of public effort to be consistent with her environmental beliefs? That’s certainly the hand RAN is forcing by being so determinedly earnest in their appeal.
If she doesn’t show an effort then it will reflect poorly on the Blue Water Project. If she does, but her husband fails to listen, then her perceived power and influence are weakened (hope you like the doghouse Mr. Nixon). That leaves the final option of RBC actually withdrawing support from the tar sands. Even if it’s only a small amount, I think RAN could call this campaign a victory.
No one expects a CEO’s wife to singlehandedly take down the biggest financial boon Canada has ever seen. But any concession on her or RBC’s part would help strengthen the stigma of being involved with the tar sands and thereby help future campaigns against supporters.
Greenpeace activists in China unfurled a banner condemning the use of coal, near one of the Beijing's largest coal-fired power plants.
[Editor's note: Here's a new feature we're trying out in hopes of giving notice to nonviolent actions we may have missed or following up on ones already mentioned in the daily "Experiments with truth" posts. --BF]
An officer who is not displaying badge numbers holds a protester's face for the camera during last year's Climate Camp in Britain.
Greenpeace activists held a sit-in after painting "Hazardous Products" on the roof of Hewlett Packard headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., July 28, 2009. Greenpeace exposed electronics giant HP for backtracking on its public commitment to eliminate key toxic chemicals in its products by the end of this year. The message, applied using non-toxic children's finger-paint, covered more than 11,500 square feet, or the size of two and half basketball courts.
It began with the advice of a federal judge in 1949. If you’re not going to follow United States law and register for the draft, he told the group of Alabaman Quaker farmers before him, “get out of this country and stay out.” So they did. In 1951, along with several dozen family members and fellow Friends, they sold what they had in the States and flew down to a remote mountaintop in Costa Rica. Only a few years before, the country had abolished its military, so there was no threat of conscription. They didn’t know the language or how to farm in a tropical climate. The early years weren’t easy, and the community splintered several times; some moved to Canada, and others became Seventh-day Adventists. But when longtime peace activist John Trostle came to visit their town of Monteverde in 1962, he tells me, “I thought I’d discovered Shangri-La.” There was a school, a cheese factory, and an arts scene on the verge of flourishing. By 1974, he and his wife Sue moved to the community themselves.
The Quakers inadvertently gave rise to an ecotourism mecca. From the beginning, they set aside a large portion of rainforest in order to protect their watershed from pollution—a purely practical decision for a town of farmers. But a few decades later, as biologists learned of it and came to study wildlife living there, the community took up the cause of conservation. Wolf Guindon, one of the original settlers who had spent time in federal prison for resisting the draft, led the charge to build their watershed into the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, which keeps a sizeable chunk of Costa Rican rainforest in perpetuity for visitors and researchers.
Meanwhile, their school has brought up generations of local Costa Rican children with perfect English and a knack for North American sensibilities. By the mid-’80s, tourists followed on the heels of the biologists, and a hospitality industry exploded. Today, backpacker hostels and luxury restorts line the road that the Quakers once had to navigate by oxcart. The original settlers are ambivalent about the endless stream of visitors, which brings jobs to their neighborhood but disturbs its quiet.
The Monteverde Quakers’ quiet is one solution to the problem of militarism. They didn’t come to be beacons of anything, and they shy away from attention. “The people who started this community don’t think of themselves as something special,” Sue Trostle explains. Most of their free time gets consumed by the endless supply of committee work that Quaker community life demands. But their children don’t have to fear a draft, and not one colon of their taxes goes to pay for an army. They’ve built the cheese factory into a collective owned by the local dairy farmers who supply it. Martha Moss, who moved down with the Trostles, brought the Alternatives to Violence Project to Costa Rican prisons. The school doesn’t proselytize Quakerism among its students, but it teaches peace. Militarism florishes now more than ever in the United States. They couldn’t prevent that. But they showed that they could build a life apart from it and flourish.
Marcy Lawton is a biologist who studies birds. She began coming to Monteverde in 1974 as a graduate student at the University of Chicago to do her research, and now she owns a home there with her husband. They’re members of the Quaker Meeting. Her work focuses on brown jays, which are famous for their remarkable acts of altruism—”Quaker birds,” she calls them. Most of the time, her jays are peaceful, community-oriented, and remarkably generous with each other. But after years of observation, she began to notice wrinkles in their behavior. When birds grow up without enough apprenticeship from their elders, they behave differently. They hoard, fight, and even commit infanticide. The more years a bird spends in a nourishing community, she has learned, the more a brown jay’s behavior comes to resemble generous, mysterious love.
Palestinian youth activists Yousef Nijim and Faris Arouri, in collaboration with the Dutch NGO “Send a Message Foundation,” are engaged in a nonviolent campaign to combat the oppressive infrastructure of Israeli occupation. Setting their sites on the separation barrier which destructively meanders through Palestinian life and land, they assert their international solidarity and national identity through graffiti art. Stenciling words, images and ideals loftier than the heights of their concrete canvas, they hope to draw international attention to the plight of the Palestinian people. In an article on the Palestine News Network, Nijim notes that “The messages bond people to this place.” He believes that engaging with the Wall is the best way to resist it. “If you don’t deal with it, it won’t be gone,” he adds.
For around $40, anyone in the world can have a message or slogan painted on the wall, as long as it is not an incitement to hatred, violence or otherwise contrary to the peaceable objectives of the project. The money is used by Arouri and his volunteers for spray paint, gas for their car, and for community-development projects in Palestinian neighborhoods designed to increase youth participation in volunteer activities. According to TIME magazine, nearly 850 messages, ranging in content from the juvenile romantic to the politically poetic, have already been painted. (Check out www.sendamessage.nl to see some works in progress and to find out how you can send your own message.)
This artistic and creative approach to resisting the occupation and denouncing the wall has led to confrontation with Israeli Occupation Forces, yet Nijim notes that the army is generally reluctant to interfere with their projects. “I would say [there have been] a few face to face encounters,” he says. “But the whole project is about media, so they stay away from us.” Criticism of their work is not exclusive to Israeli forces, but also comes from Palestinians who believe they are trying to capitalize on the Wall. On the whole, however, local sentiment continues to be encouraging and supportive of the work that Send a Message is doing.
I recall the moments of my work organizing protests and demonstrations against the wall in Qalqilya and Jayyous with the International Solidarity Movement. I remember the bouts of frustration that led many youth to attempt to dismantle portions of the wall, only to be met with harsh reprisals and collective punishment by the Israeli Occupation Forces. As in Jayyous and other rural areas of the West Bank, not all portions of the barrier are concrete but rather chain link fences reinforced with steel and barbed wire. Graffiti is not an option there. Soldiers would often close the barrier’s entry/exit points and deny farmers access to their lands if they found evidence that locals were attempting to tamper with or destroy any portion of the barrier.
But Palestinians must continue to imbue their own lives with meaning in the ways that they see fit given their circumstances. And those struggling in the path of nonviolence must be even more creative, patient and enduring. The fact remains that the Wall must fall. Whether concrete or fence, none of it is morally sustainable nor can it resist the tides of justice. The writing on the wall reminds us all.
How many workers have gone on strike in the U.K. this year and how does that number compare to recent years? Well, it turns out the British government has kept close track of these kinds of things, and the numbers are pretty shocking. According to Bloomberg News:
In the year through May, 352,000 workers went on strike, continuing a surge that began last year as government-funded workers challenged a clampdown on pay increases. In the year to May 2008, 638,000 workers took industrial action, according to the Office for National Statistics. That compares with the annual average of 201,600 through the 1990s, it said. That’s below the 1980s annual average of 1.04 million.
The article also managed to collect estimates of the financial toll of several recent strikes, which clearly demonstrate just how challenging such nonviolent action can be to both governments and corporations.
Strikes by British government workers this summer, protesting a squeeze on public spending, may end up costing at least 400 million pounds ($658 million), with the latest action by postal workers starting today.
[...]
Protests in 2007 at the government-owned mail carrier cost the London economy 300 million pounds, according to the city’s Chamber of Commerce. In June, a two-day London Underground strike cost the economy 100 million pounds, the chamber said.
[...]
A protest over the use of foreign workers at a Total SA site in eastern England cost the company 100 million euros ($141 million) in extra costs after a June settlement, said the company, Europe’s largest oil refiner.
How do these numbers compare to the United States? After a little digging, I found that the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics does keep track of what they call “major work stoppages,” which include lockouts and strikes that involve more than 1,000 workers. Limiting their records to such large actions no doubt dramatically undercounts the number of workers who go on strike in the U.S. every year, but the official statistics are still quite telling, especially when compared to figures from Britain. According to a Department of Labor press release from February, “Major work stoppages idled 72,000 workers for nearly 2 million work days in 2008.”
But why are so many more workers willing to strike in Britain than the U.S.? One place to start in looking for an explanation is the state of organized labor in both countries. As the Bloomberg article points out: “Currently, 29 percent of workers [in the U.K.] belong to a union, including three in five workers in the public sector and one in five at private companies.” Union membership in the U.S., on the other hand, peaked at 36 percent in the mid-1950s and has since fallen to dismal levels. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 12.4 percent of the overall workforce and only 7.6 percent of the private sector was unionized in 2008.
Hundreds of protesters marched on the Philippines Congress yesterday as President Gloria Arroyo prepared to defend her corruption-laden record in the last state of the nation address before elections next year.
The Center for the Study of Strategic Nonviolent Defense (CSSND) just put out this interview with Gene Sharp, the most influential advocate of strategic nonviolence alive today, as a response to claims by the governement in Tehran and some on the left that he is somehow behind the recent nonviolent uprising against Ahmadinejad.
In the video, which includes subtitles in Farsi, Sharp chuckles at the idea that his work is supported or funded by the CIA. “Well, you’ve seen our office,” he says. “You can see how well-funded we are.”
Sharp, who is now 81-years old, proceeds to give a brief overview of his thoughts on the power of nonviolent struggle and some generic strategic advice to Iranian resisters.
“I dream that the oppressed people of the world will be able to learn from the available records and new experiences that this type of nonviolent struggle can be used to liberate all oppression and replace military and violent conflicts, that you won’t have to carry on struggles against terrorism anymore because the people who might have become terrorists have instead chosen to use this kind of struggle to help out the oppressed people. This can change political systems throughout the world,” Sharp concludes.
I’ve read several books by Gene Sharp and have read with interest his critics as well. While I have no doubt that his writing have found a ready audience in Iran, the arguments against him appear to be specious. From the best that I can tell, Sharp seems to be merely a proponent of nonviolent methods of struggle, who believes that we would be better off if all sides of every conflict would abstain from violence. Promoting nonviolent techniques only fom a strategic perspective, however, means that they can very well be used for causes that progressives abhor – which is one of the problems with his approach. For proponents of principled nonviolence, like Gandhi and King, fighting for a just cause was just as important as what methods are employed.
To read probably the most detailed defense of Gene Sharp, check out Stephen Zunes’ article over at Foreign Policy In Focus.
As a side note, there is next to nothing on the internet about the organization that made this video. Here is what I could find:
CSSND, which has only been in existence for little more than a year and a half, bills itself as “a virtual center that represents an international network of researchers, translators, writers and activists with the common goal of promoting the education of nonviolent action as the most effective method of causing social change” in Iran. They do this by analyzing the effectiveness of nonviolent strategies and tactics, publishing their findings in Farsi and getting them into the hands of Iranian activists. The backbone of CSSND’s curriculum is “based on the latest edition of Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS)’s Student Curriculum.”
Their site does not mention anyone who is involved with the organization by name, and does not disclose its sources of funding. They do, however, mention a working relationship with Voice of America, which suggests that they may be recieving funding from the US. While it may make sense to not provide a list of who is running the organization due to the repression in Iran, they could go a long way to undermining the claims of conspiracy theorists by being more transparent about who is backing them.
Border activists from No More Deaths met with Ken Salazar and the Department of the Interior last week to discuss DOI’s escalating policy of issuing littering tickets to humanitarian aid workers. There is no official word from the meeting, but representatives from No More Deaths at the meeting expressed there was support from Salazar for finding a solution. The request from DOI to meet with No More Deaths follows on the heels of the humanitarian group’s announcement to resume distributing water on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Reserve (BANWR).
On July 9, forty humanitarian volunteers returned the BANWR to place water along the deadly migrant trails that cross the refuge. No More Deaths reports that:
Thirteen humanitarian volunteers received littering tickets after putting out gallon jugs of life-saving water intended for migrants crossing the US/Mexico border.
The citations took place on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, which extends 30 miles north from the border in southern Arizona near the small town of Arivaca. The refuge is in a very active migrant corridor.
The weekend’s weather forecast calls for temperatures reaching 110-degrees in southern Arizona. June and July are the deadliest months for individuals attempting the trek through the desert.
Members from three humanitarian aid groups—No More Deaths, Tucson Samaritans and Humane Borders—attempted to place gallon jugs of drinking water at four locations on trails that migrants follow when crossing the border.
One volunteer reflected on the day’s actions and attempts to provide water for migrants.
Gathered in a circle, Rev. John Fife reminded us of our community’s commitment and responsibility to provide humanitarian aid everywhere that it is needed. We recalled two important anniversaries for human rights: the nearly 20 years that have now passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the arrest of two of our volunteers exactly four years prior to the day. The gathering ended with a prayer led by Rev. Gene Lefebvre, summoning strength for volunteers, relief for migrants on the trails at that moment, and the ability to preserve our desert with the end of deadly border policies.
[...] After nearly four hours we gathered again, this time on the side of the road, to celebrate the courageous resistance of 13 people of conscience and the communities that stand with them. As the caravan departed in mid-afternoon, we left hopeful and still committed, yet at the same time saddened, as dozens of life-giving jugs of water sat confiscated as ‘evidence of a crime’ in the back of a truck instead of on the migrant trail where it is so desperately needed. We also left burdened by the knowledge that, as weekend desert temperatures reach 112 degrees, we will soon hear the news of the next unnecessary deaths that will undoubtedly come. Indeed, as our migrant brothers and sisters continue on this journey, forced to cross in more dangerous areas, we must keep the resolve to continue this work by their side.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America,” has made a name for himself by being tougher on prisoners than on crime. Since 1993, he has overseen law enforcement and county jails in Maricopa County, Arizona, an area of nearly four million people that includes Phoenix. William Finnegan profiles (subscription only) the 77-year-old sheriff in The New Yorker’s July 20 issue.
Arpaio seems to delight in dehumanizing others. After winning his first election in 1993, he built a tent-city jail in an area where temperatures can rise to 135 degrees. He banned cigarettes, hot lunches, coffee, and salt and pepper, rejecting a study he had commissioned when it found harsh jail conditions ineffective at reducing recidivism. He gave inmates just two meals a day, each at 30 cents a head. He instituted black-and-white striped uniforms, but added pink underwear and pink socks. Several times he humiliated prisoners by marching them between facilities in the pink underwear alone. The prisoners nicknamed him “Hitler.”
Deaths and injuries in Arpaio’s jails have already cost Maricopa County taxpayers $43 million in court and settlement expenses. Arpaio’s officers have used stun guns against prisoners who were already immobilized in restraint chairs. As Finnegan writes, “The Phoenix New Times found that, between 2004 and 2008, the county jails of New York, Chicago, Los Angles, and Houston, which together house more than six times as many inmates as Maricopa, were sued a total of forty-three times. During the same period, Arpaio’s department was sued over jail conditions almost twenty-two hundred times in federal district court.”
Inmates in Maricopa County’s jails have shaken off the threat of retaliation and engaged in civil disobedience. In one of the largest US prison hunger strikes this past Cinco de Mayo, 500 inmates refused the morning meal and 900 refused the evening meal. Activists outside the jails have organized candlelight vigils, written letters, demonstrated at county meetings, and picketed Arpaio’s offices. On February 28, the National Day Laborers Organizing Network and El Puente Arizona organized a “March to Stop the Hate” focusing on Arpaio’s treatment of undocumented immigrants. Some 3,000 people rallied in downtown Phoenix.
Zack de la Rocha, of Rage Against the Machine, spoke at that march:
In the latest Arpaio investigation, the US Department of Justice is reviewing his discriminatory profiling in the arrest and treatment of possibly undocumented people. Perhaps we might one day thwart this mockery of a ‘public safety’ official, who takes pride in the detestable quality of his jail food and in situating his open-air tent-city jail beside a dump, who diverts limited county dollars away from investigating violent crime or even responding promptly to emergency calls, to instead raid workplaces in search of undocumented yet taxpaying immigrants.
Who the real “criminal” is, one hardly has to wonder.
