We often hear about the trauma inflicted on those who fought in some of the U.S.’s less glorious wars—Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Less often do we hear about the toll that World War II exacted on the souls of those who came home alive and “victorious.” It doesn’t take defeat and rampant war crimes inflicted on non-Europeans to damage a psyche. This remarkable video, from the people at Story Corps, reminds us how even the most ordinary act of killing in a “good” war leaves the survivor scarred forever.
86-year-old World War II veteran Joseph Robertson fought at the Battle of the Bulge. Over 60 years later, he still can’t forget one soldier he killed there.
Around 200 people blocked the entrance to the Parliament House in Canberra Australia this morning to press Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to secure a strong, legally binding treaty at the upcoming UN Climate Meeting in Copenhagen. Police arrested approximately 150 people taking part in the nonviolent direct action.
Four people were arrested yesterday morning after they walked into Fort Benning during a protest against the activities of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which has a record of training some of the most brutal Latin American military officers. This year marked the 20th annual protest at Fort Benning, which was sparked after six Jesuit priests were massacred in El Salvador in 1989.
Hundreds of clergymen, congregants and reform advocates lined the sidewalks outside Independent U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman’s Stamford home Sunday night in a show of support for universal health care.
Low-wage workers and community supporters gathered in more than forty cities across the U.S. on Thursday to condemn wage theft, the illegal underpayment or non-payment of wages. The National Day of Action to Stop Wage Theft was organized by Interfaith Worker Justice, a national alliance. Wage theft is a national crime wave that robs millions of workers of billions of dollars.
Employers were creative in stealing wages: promising higher wages but paying only the minimum, paying less than minimum wage, not paying for all hours worked, misclassifying workers as exempt from overtime pay, deducting equipment or transportation “fees” from paychecks, stealing tips, misclassifying workers as independent contractors, or simply not paying workers at all.
In July, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) introduced the Wage Theft Prevention Act (H.R. 3303), which begins the statute of limitations from the date the employer is notified instead of the date of the theft. Under current law, delays result in permanent loss of back pay. Legislation is also moving at the state-level. In Ohio this week, State Senator Morano introduced the Wage Protection Act, empowering the state commerce department to investigate more complaints.
But advocacy for workers happens at the day-to-day level by affiliates of the national Interfaith Worker Justice, such as the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers’ Center, which canvassed yesterday across the city to reach low-income workers. Since 2005, the small organization has taken over 500 wage theft reports and helped recover over $500,000 in unpaid wages. The Cincinnati group aims to empower workers to challenge dangerous working conditions and educate workers about how to defend their rights, including the rights of immigrants.
“I had to make decisions on whether to pay rent or buy food,” said Cincinnati resident Frazier Kidd, who explained his struggle after being cheated of promised wages. “Thou shalt not steal,” said Kim Bobo, Director of the national Interfaith Worker Justice. “It’s a pretty straightforward message.”
I’ve got a story in latest issue of The Indypendent, fresh off the press today in fact, about the evolution of climate activism. It’s been in the works for several months and is an amalgamation of the many protests covered on this site, as well as a dozen or so interviews with leading voices like Bill McKibben, longtime organizers like Mike Roselle and even one of The Yes Men.
I think it does a good job of explaining the differing tactics and approaches taken by climate activists around the world and how it all adds up to a fresh new global movement intent on forcing the necessary changes—both political and societal—to prevent climate change.
Launched on the eve of Veteran’s Day last week, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” the latest in “first-person shooter” video games, raked in an unbelievable $310 million in its first day on the market.
The game – already the subject of controversy over a scene where the player indiscriminately mows down innocent civilians in an airport that looks like LAX in Los Angeles – is supposed to be one of the most realistic war games yet. As Peter W. Singer describes it:
As part of a US special operations team, the player roams everywhere from Afghanistan to the Caucasus, winning hearts and minds with a mix of machine pistols and Predator drone strikes. The players also fight out in range of potential new conflict zones, from the rough urban favelas of Brazil to a simulated Russian invasion of Washington, D.C., and the Virginia suburbs (This is actually a major flaw in the game; any invasion force would clearly get stuck in traffic at the Interstate 95 Mixing Bowl).
While we would normally critique these violent video games for desensitizing kids to killing or for not making killing realistic enough, The Onion has put out this hilarious video (above) with a very original critique on how unrealistic these games really are of real modern warfare. Hope you enjoy!
SPAIN – The Saharawi non-violent activist Aminatou Haidar, who is also known as the Saharawi people’s Gandhi and was recognized with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 2008, remains on a hunger strike – which she began on Sunday – at the Lanzarote airport in Spain after Morocco expelled her by force from the Western Sahara Occupied Territories last Saturday. The story has been reported by human rights organizations, the Spanish police, Communicators for Peace and the Saharawi Journalist and Writers Union (UPES).
Despite the fact that doctors are worried about her health – since she suffers a stomach ulcer – Haidar assures that she is not going to abandon her demonstration until the Spanish Government allows her to take a flight to return to her home in the capital of the Saharawi Territories, El Aaiun, which has been occupied by Morocco since 1975, in violation of United Nations resolutions and international law.
Haidar states that she feels kidnapped in the Lanzarote Airport and denounces how the Spanish government has cooperated with Morocco to keep her out of Western Sahara. Moroccan authorities took her passport and all her documentation. Subsequently, Spain accepted her entrance to the country without any documents.
Haidar told the captain of the aircraft that she was forced to take the flight and she did not want to go to Spain, but to Western Sahara – one of the last African colonies according United Nations resolutions. Currently, the Spanish government forbids her to take any flight to Western Sahara or to other airports where she could get access to other flights to come back home.
Morocco deported Aminatou Haidar to Lanzarote after the police tried to force her to sign a document admitting that Western Sahara is a Moroccan territory. Haidar refused to sign and argued that Western Sahara is a territory under the custody of the United Nations, that is waiting for a decolonization process. United Nations resolutions and international law back up the Saharawi activist, but Morocco considered her refusal to sign enough reason to deport her without any argument or judicial guarantee.
Now, Haidar is sleeping on the street in front of the airport because the Spanish police forbid her to sleep at night inside the airport. Haidar is being supported at the airport by Saharawi and Spanish organizations and pacifists. Next to her, the Saharawi journalist Man Chagaf is backing her and helped us to translate a short interview with Haidar, which could not be longer due to her health problems.
Journalist: When is your hunger strike going to end?
Haidar: I am going to continue until the Spanish government permits me to go home. I will not stop the hunger strike. Although I have health problems, I am going to continue. Yesterday night, the police (Guardia Civil) kicked me out, and I had to sleep on the street. But I want to continue.
Journalist: Do you believe that the non-violent struggle is going to have any result? What would you say to the Saharawi population that is suffering from exile and the occupation?
Haidar: I am very grateful for all the kindness and affectionate signs. I am receiving calls and messages from all over the world. I believe firmly that the Saharawi peaceful struggle is a fair cause and, as Gandhi did, I have absolute faith in nonviolence for a better world and for real peace.
About 2,000 students blocked the exits of a building where University of California regents voted to hike tuition 32 percent next year. After the vote was announced students lay down en masse to symbolize what they called the death of an affordable UC education.
Greenpeace activists released a floating banner inside the Chamber of Commerce Regional Government Affairs convention in San Francisco yesterday to protest Chamber president Tom Donahue’s lobbying for big polluters. The banner read “Donahue’s Climate Lies: Bad for Business, Bad for America.”
Two priests and 25 tribal leaders from Mindoro Island (200 kilometres south of Manila) have gone a hunger strike to stop three nickel mine operations that will eventually cover almost 20 per cent of the island’s land mass.
The question of what to wear at a protest—and more specifically how to appear serious without looking slightly deranged—came up in a recent fashion advice column over at the Guardian. The mostly snarky response raises some interesting points:
…no facial jewellery, no dreadlocks, no glow in the eye of self-righteous indignation fed with the oxygen of half-formed arguments, which is only just about acceptable in stoned undergraduates and is certainly not in anyone over the age of 21… Plain and practical are the obvious styles to aim for, but nothing in army green because that risks you being mistaken for a rent-a-protester, army green generally being their chosen colour. Similarly, no T-shirts or other paraphernalia that indicate you have frequented other protests: you think it proves your passion, others think you’re just a protest slut in it for the exercise and the day off work.
I tend to agree that plain and practical attire is best. It’s important to look like the people you are trying to influence. This was obviously a key strategy in the Civil Rights Movement. When millions of Americans watched well-dressed, well-mannered, black people get beaten by white Southerners on their television sets, it no doubt inspired a strong sense of empathy.
Some organizers have started to call for a return to the formal attire of the civil rights era perhaps as a way to avoid the “radical anarchist” or “crazy hippy” labels that the media have pinned on anti-globalization activists. People attending the Capitol Climate Action in DC last March were told to wear “their Sunday best.” I think this was probably a good decision since, as the first mass act of civil disobedience for the climate movement in this country, it would be defining the image and tone.
There are, however, times when I think emulating the attire of the civil rights movement would have the effect of over-dressing. Activists with crazy facial hair in a suit don’t look convincing. They look like they are mocking something. Futhermore, suit-wearing was more common in 60s. What passes for nice attire today is obviously much less formal and I think activists should at least be striving for that much.
What do you think? I’d love to hear people’s thoughs on this question.
A recent AFP article looks for answers to this question by talking with activists from the Vietnam War-era and students involved in opposing the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There are of course many reasons for the decline of activism at universities, which have historically been a hotbed for anti-war activity.
Mounting economic and academic pressures on today’s youth, intimidation by authorities, online distractions and conflicted views about the “good” war in Afghanistan, not to mention other causes such as health care and slashed school budgets clawing for attention, have conspired to snuff out anti-war activism on campus, experts and students say.
Tom Hayden, one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the 1960s, pinned it squarely on the privatization of conflict.
“Students were the bulwark of the anti-Vietnam war movement because students were being drafted, full stop,” Hayden said. “Ending forced conscription radically diminished the possibilities of future student anti-war protests.”
The article also points out that young people today are “marching with their fingers instead of their feet.”
Some, including myself, question how much pressure this type of activism really puts on those in power to change course.
Stanley Aronowitz, a Vietnam anti-war organizer, insists online petitions do nothing but entrench users in the “anti-reality” of Internet activism.
“I don’t believe petitions do anything,” he said. “They are what middle-class people and intellectuals do to convince themselves they’re getting somewhere.”
Aronowitz, now a sociology professor at City University of New York, acknowledges that new social technologies on the Web — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube — have mass mobilization potential.
“But they also privatize people’s lives to much more of a degree than when people had to go to meetings and act collectively.”
A student who runs the Student Peace Action Network also suggests that the use of new “non-lethal” weapons, like the taser, keeps some from taking to the streets or speaking out.
If that is the case, however, I think it simply reveals the lack of conviction of young people today, because activists in the 60s often risked their personal safety to challenge to the war in Vietnam.
On Monday morning, CNN had this amazing segment about Will Phillips, a 10-year-old boy in Arkansas, who is refusing to say the pledge of allegiance due to discrimination against gays and lesbians.
Why, in particular, did he decide to take this stand?
“There really isn’t liberty and justice for all,” Phillips told host John Roberts. “Gays and lesbians can’t marry. There’s still a lot of racism and sexism in the world.”
Phillips also mentioned wanting to be a lawyer when he grows up, and the fact that he already has a lot of friends who are gay.
“I think they should have the rights all people should,” he continued. “And I’m not going to swear that they do,” until it’s a reality.
It’s clear after watching the boy that he is brilliant. In fact, I found his eloquence almost hard to believe. What is more remarkable, however, is his morality and willingness to take such a bold move for his convictions at his young age. His parents should be proud.
This story actually reminded me of one of the first times I addressed a grade school class about nonviolence.
Several years ago, I was invited by one of my best friends to talk with his students at a Catholic school on the south side of Chicago.
I got there early, and at the spur of the moment, decided to remain sitting when the class stood for the pledge. I then began by explaining why I did this. I argued that if you are really a Christian, you cannot pledge allegiance to any flag or country. Our allegiance is to a different kingdom. We obey a higher law. The country for which our flag stands, I explained, has done and continues to do some terrible things that I could not vouch for and that were simply contrary to Jesus’ teachings.
At the time, I don’t remember getting any serious reaction. However, my friend told me that for the rest of the year one of his students, who I stayed in touch with after my visit, did not say the pledge for the rest of the year.
And even though it was just one student, I was thrilled. That’s where it starts.
The world would truly be in better hands if there were only more children – and adults, for that matter – with such sensibilities.
Low-wage workers and community supporters gathered in more than forty cities across the U.S. on Thursday to condemn 
A recent 