This isn’t getting any easier. I’ve always loved writing editorials for this newsletter, but after about 200 of them, it seems they should just spring onto the page. Of course, it also seems that my material might be getting a little stale, and that’s the least of my problems with world leaders continuing to surprise me with limitless greed and self-righteousness and the ability to revel in violence.

I feel some urgency to get this issue into the mail, perhaps because I worried so little about it during the month of December. Nancy and I were isolated from the news for almost a week before we left Mexico. When I saw a newspaper in the airport, it was screaming about the death of Benazir Bhutto and the subsequent violence in Pakistan. Welcome back to Media Planet.

Material. Is that something new or more of the same? The assassination of Bhutto is plenty for an editorial, but it’s a little early to sort out the facts and perpetrators, even if I have long been disgusted by U.S. support for the regime in Pakistan, and am well aware of the “weevil” nature of Bhutto’s leadership.

Meanwhile, little glimmers of hope keep popping up within the Israeli-Palestinian cauldron. And I continue to believe there will be no significant change until one side or the other has the courage and vision to seek healing and reconciliation rather than retribution after a major and insulting wound.

And, how dare I presume to instruct petty, poor and insecure states about security policy when my own great nation roves the globe with mercurial hobnail boots? Surely we can find a cure for a few of the little annoyances...like torture, executions, war as a first option, nuclear weapons. Then we could address the big problems like democracy, leadership, and the ecological time bombs. Waiting for something good to happen seems awfully precarious when the need for health care, alternative energy, and caring communities slaps us in the face every day.

On my good days at the editorial desk, I do little more than repackage what I continue to learn from Jesus, Gandhi and King. The recurring problem each January is that Martin Luther King Day is upon us, and I haven’t done enough to get King’s core message out. We’ll have another relatively well-attended MLK Day in Spokane, folks will congratulate each other on a job well done, and we’ll go home without grasping King’s vision, determination or courage. Precious few of us will even acknowledge that he was an enemy of the establishment, hated by the princes of the economy and despised by the lords of the military.

Being in the midst of a presidential campaign that began too soon and offers too many very scary choices, we fail to ask, “What would Hillary (or Obama or Giuliani or McCain, ad naseum) do? We’re still asking what Jesus and MLK would do, when it takes so little research to find what they did. I’m still gonna vote. I love to vote, but I insist upon voting for someone I’d like to win instead of someone who has a chance to win.

And, I think it’s more important to my country to reform the way elections are bought, paid for, and conducted, than to have 20 percent of the voters elect a person who really, really wants to be president.

It’s an election year, and I’m excited, but you and I have more important things to do than pay for a tv ad or ten gallons of gas for a candidate. Sure, it’s up to us to tell people how to vote, but they’re not going to get it until we show them how to live.

As I try to ease myself away from this editorial desk, I need to thank some of the folks who have showed me some important things about living and about approaching issues and taking chances. This seems a good time to mention three diverse wise men who have given me valuable counsel, each in his own way. If you ever get a chance to discuss adversity or life in general with Al Mangan, Bill Niggemeyer, or Tom Westbrook, don’t pass it up.

Thank you for getting us to 2008, and Happy New Year! - Rusty

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Think...Act...Think...Act...Think...Act...Think...Act...Think...Act...

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One of the genuine heroes of nonviolence, Kathy Kelly, will speak in Spokane at 7:00 pm, Friday, January 25th, at Gonzaga University’s Jepson Auditorium. Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end U.S. military and economic war in Iraq, Kathy became an important lightening rod for peace activists all over the world when she defied U.S. restrictions and threats to take aid to victims of the deadly sanctions against Iraq after Desert Storm and then send courageous dispatches, written and video, to those of us who had few other options to learn the truth.

Voices in the Wilderness was the organization leading the effort to end economic sanctions, and it has been updated to keep up with the bizarre policies of the U.S. in the Middle East. To see that VCNV is doing the right thing, one might notice that Kathy has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize and fined, threatened and imprisoned by the U.S. government.

Some of Kathy’s essays, letters, and memoirs from Iraq, Palestine, and prison are in her book, Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison. She has also written the introduction to this year’s War Resisters League calendar, which is on the theme of “Nonviolence and Resistance in the Middle East and Beyond.”

Nancy had the audacity to think PJALS should invite Kathy Kelly to speak. When we tracked her to Sweden, that was good news and bad. She had accepted an invitation to speak there, after all, but how much consideration could Spokane expect as she moved on to Jordan? Kathy did her own correspondence and suggested we book her while she was in Washington to speak at Evergreen State College and made it all easy for us.

After a dozen or so emails, I feel like we’re old friends, and I only regret that she will be in and out of Spokane so quickly.

We had expected to invite her later in the year and try to put together a large event, but we could not resist the opportunity she offered and hope only to draw the 200 people to pack Jepson. If you won’t be able to attend, be sure you spread the word.

Her book is published by Counterpunch, and I can share my copy. It’s an easy and compelling read, and I was moved as much by her prison experiences and commentary as the Iraq narratives, with which I was familiar.

Plans for outstanding speakers in our area are being made, but I can’t think of anyone I’d rather hear right now than Kathy Kelly. -RN

Rev. Dr. Ray Keeble, 1912-2007

Ray Keeble died in the first hours of the last day of the year, leaving a peculiar hole in the life of our community. Peculiar because Ray had a low profile as a clergyman but a very strong grip upon the affections of a tiny and unique congregation.

It’s a bit strange to put the title in front of Ray’s name. As a PJALS steering committee member and as pastor of a small flock, he was automatically and unassumedly, Ray. But he was very proud of his doctorate because of his friendship with his most memorable teacher, Paul Tillich. His thesis was on Tillich’s theology, and that was enough to either horrify some Spokane area Christians...or put them to sleep, but he was not a stuffy person or preacher.

His pulpit manner was not flamboyant but it didn’t take long to know that he was passionate about music and peace and justice.

The enduring image for many of us is this fragile-looking little man sitting at the piano and changing his eyeglasses before turning into Vladimir Horowitz. His stunning renditions of great music continued into his 90s, long past the time he guided small choirs through ambitious anthems and routinely played the hymns for congregational singing.

For someone who retired to Spokane, Ray didn’t get much of a shot at retirement, although his job with Shalom Church was part-time. He immediately became involved in PJALS because he had been caught up in the civil rights and peace movements as a pastor in Chicago.

In the Royal Canadian Air Force, he had taken an opportunity to return to civilian life and pursue ministry when Canada entered WWII, and he stuck with the path of nonviolence. That and 25 years of ecumenical and interfaith involvement in Spokane helped make Ray Keeble an enduring asset to the faith and peace and justice communities of our area and an inspiration to peacemakers. - RN

I Am a Mute Iraqi, With a Voice

I am an Iraqi
but was never asked, personally,
what was better? 
Saddam threatening to destroy me if I crossed him, politically?
Or tons of depleted uranium, napalm,
bullets, explosives
and other unfamiliar concoctions,
besieging me
at some hidden corner of my street?

I am an Iraqi,
but was never asked, personally,
what did I want? 
Freedom to vote for men and women I know little about,
who may or may not better my life,
or to safely be able to step out of my house?

I am an Iraqi,
but was never asked,
do I want democracy
or the tradition of my ancestry?

I am an Iraqi,
but was never asked, personally,
by those who've come to rescue me,
"have we really benefited you, my dear,
since the day we came near?
Or have we simply made a mess
of your country?

El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido

(A people united will never be defeated)

Krista Benson, who has been on both staff and steering committee at PJALS, wrote this piece to
accompany this interview.

Media sources, particularly those owned or controlled by the government, are notorious all over the world for their poor coverage of social movements. It’s understood that these television stations, newspapers, and radio stations are simply not places where the common person can find any sort of reliable information about movements that may oppose the government. Many of us have come to accept this as an unfortunate but unavoidable truth.

Some women of Oaxaca de Juárez disagree. On August 1st, 2006, these involved members of the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos (APPO) or Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, took an all-woman cacerolazo (stew-pot banging march) to the doors of the television station known as CORTV. These women, outraged by the coverage of the popular movement active in Oaxaca, demanded a slot on CORTV to address the misinformation they saw spread by the government-controlled station.

When they were informed that there was no slot available for them, the women simply marched in, took the station over, and brought in friends to broadcast live. Although the satellite connections were cut, the women held 60 employees of the station until the lines were reestablished and they were able to broadcast freely. At that point, they released the employees to the Red Cross and broadcast what they started calling “the people’s television.”

This is not something that we can imagine happening just anywhere. Not every city in the world is a place where people take response to oppression into their own hands. Not every city in the world is a place where people will rise and respond to what they believe is wrong, occupy the city center, and take over the state-owned television station.

Oaxaca de Juárez, the capital city, is exactly that kind of city. For the last 18 months, it has also been the site of some of the most grassroots-based movements in the world.

I had the opportunity to travel to Oaxaca in the fall, to visit both friends and colleagues. The first thing that I noticed when I got off the bus was the people. There’s something about the way that people in the city of Oaxaca walk and interact with each other–it’s a city of more than 1 million people, but it doesn’t feel like other similar-sized cities. It took most of my visit to figure out what it was I was seeing. I think it is a deep, strong pride in place. Oaxaqueñ@s, the people of Oaxaca, are a bit like New Yorkers in the US. They are not just from Oaxaca, they are proud of Oaxaca. They want to tell you about Oaxaca, about their people, about their home.

It is the kind of city that responded on June 14, 2006, when Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz ordered a peaceful protest of teachers to be forcibly removed. It is the unique kind of place that fostered a people who created a movement from a day of injustice.

At 3:30 am on June 14th, Ruiz sent in Oaxacan police to forcibly move protestors out of the zócalo, the city center. Police arrested and shot cans of tear gas into crowds of peaceful teachers demanding better wages. These teachers had been on strike for 23 days with demands of higher wage, salary rezonification in the state, and increased educational resources.

The police failed to remove the teachers from the plaza, and the teachers were able to expel the police from the entire center of the city. By 7:00 am of the same day, hundreds of Oaxaqueñ@s had joined the teachers in the zócalo in a show of solidarity. This was also the point where some of the protestors and signs began to speak about human rights abuses, in response to those teachers who had been beaten, gassed, or harmed in the earlier confrontation.

These supporters were the base for APPO. APPO, created and convened on June 17, 2006, is a coalition of social organizations and individuals from all over the Oaxacan social spectrum, a group formed with the explicit purpose of addressing human rights abuses in the conflict between police and to call for the resignation of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz Ortiz. APPO’s political organizing comes out of indigenous political practices called “usos y costumbres” (traditional usages and customs) that have been incorporated into the municipal level government of Oaxaca. These practices differ from traditional Western electoral politics in their rejection of secret ballots or voting procedures and their embrace of dialog and open meetings in decision-making.

From June to October, there were ongoing skirmishes between local police and members of APPO. Barricades were erected throughout the city by APPO members to belabor the harassment and arrests. For the most part, the conflicts remained heated, but more or less non-violent. On October 28, 2006, all of that changed. Governor Ruiz appealed to the federal government for assistance and, on October 28, thousands of federal police were sent to occupy the city. The murders, physical harm to and disappearance of the protestors have only deepened the resolve of the movement as a whole.

The occupation of these federal police lead to a critical confrontation on November 2. The university had been overtaken by APPO members and students and the radio station that had been the backbone of the protest organizing for the past five months was inside. The station, Radio APPO, and the university were under siege all day. Despite overwhelming odds, Radio APPO did not cease to broadcast and the people did not cease to defend it.

This struggle has not ended. Although Ruiz remains in power and roadblocks have been taken down, APPO continues to organize. In July, APPO proposed an alternative to the annual Oaxacan Guelaguetza festival, the Guetlaguetza Populár. On July 16th, federal police surrounded the Fortin Mountain outside Oaxaca, preventing people from entering the alternative festival. When people attempted to enter despite police presence, the police responded with tear gas and unidentified projectiles. An unknown number of people were injured and detained and at least one person was confirmed dead.

According to Diego Cavallos’ article in The InterPress Service, reposted on commondreams.org Newscenter (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/) the impact of this ongoing conflict has been unimaginable. Beyond the economic impact, social changes, and the psychological impact of living in a city under siege, there are also stark numbers. Conflicts between Oaxaqueñs and the police and the Federal Preventative Police have lead to 20 dead, 349 under arrest, and 370 injured.

In most parts of the world, ongoing conflicts such as these would have lost steam. News of upcoming events and coverage of abuses would be suppressed, limiting the movement’s ability to mobilize. In Oaxaca, however, a strong collective media presence has helped support the movement, not only by sharing information about upcoming events, but by recording and spreading news of confrontations.

Part of this media movement is a collective of independent filmmakers who call themselves Mal de Ojo (The Evil Eye). The collective was responsible for film coverage on the first June 14th conflicts and continues to provide media sources, individuals, and activists with a first-person account of the struggles in Oaxaca.

A Conversation with a Member of Mal de Ojo

In September, I spoke with a member of Mal de Ojo, a Oaxaqueño who has stepped forward to speak about APPO, Oaxaca, and the media:

Thanks for doing this conversation with me.

You’re welcome. I’m glad to do it.

Seeing your videos and talking to you about all of this, I’m seeing just how little coverage of this happened in the United States at all. One of the things I keep having to explain to people in the U.S. is that the teacher’s strike happens every year, right?

Yeah. And then on June 14th at 4:00 in the morning, the police took out the radio. I’m quite convinced that was the main objective, to keep anyone from getting the word out.

The teachers, they had to be shocked.

At this moment, at 4:00 in the morning, these are just teachers.

Yeah, just unarmed teachers doing a regular, peaceful protest.

And then, by 7:00 in the morning, people were coming in.

What was the official explanation for why they moved the police in?

They wanted to clear the zócalo for the tourists.

So, by 7:00 am, this was still mostly teachers. Other people have come in to support them, but the majority is still teachers. And the police here are all local police. You could tell that they weren’t really ready to do what they did. They even started shooting tear gas without protecting their own faces – there were police using handkerchiefs to protect their faces because they didn’t have proper protection.

And by 11:00, it was not mostly teachers anymore.

So within seven hours, people knew what was going on and came in to support the teachers?

Yeah and they took back the zócalo. You can see in the videos how different it was, to see the people at the protests in June from the people in October. In June, these are still almost entirely teachers, just middle-class people.

Still, see the city here? It was more or less plain, there’s not a lot of graffiti. But then this happened, and the people started coming. And then the whole environment changed. There was graffiti, the people at the protests were different people. All over the walls, there were APPO slogans and graffiti calling for the removal of Ortiz, the return of the disappeared.

People really started getting mad because people get tear gas in their houses.

In June, we could get really good footage of the police. Because they didn’t realize how big this was going to get, we could still shoot video really close to the police, too, so we have a lot of their actions. But not anymore.

I’m pretty impressed with that, with how close your cameras were able to get without them breaking your cameras.

It definitely changed, as everything changed. In the next few weeks, there were less and less teachers and more people coming in to support. And the tactics changed, too. You can see in the videos from even late June that people are trying to prepare for tear gas, they know what’s probably coming.

People just lost fear from tear gas in the first weeks. You just became used to it. They weren’t just using tear gas, either – they were using buckshot and real bullets, too.

People were saying things like “If they want to kill our teachers, then they will kill us, too. They don’t know what we are capable of.” And, really, nobody did until this happened.

It was amazing. This movement took all of the legal measures, did all the right things to have their needs addressed. And it didn’t matter, they just denied and denied and denied them. And then they said “They are the radicals” when it was really just based very much in how the law should have worked. It’s not like it was an armed struggle, they were armed with the constitution and non-violence.

On the same day as the first protests, there was a call from the people to support the teacher’s unions in Tlahuitoltepec Mixe, an indigenous village 5 hours from Oaxaca. They wrote a letter to support the teachers and against the government. Four hours later, these people have organized to support the teachers and to take all the police from the village. They disarmed the police and banned the police that day, even burning the uniforms. Even now, they do not have police in that village.

And by June 16, just two days later, we had 500,000 people marching to support teachers, to support human rights. It took eight hours just to get through the city. After eight hours of marching, people were still going. Businesses had signs in the windows saying “This business supports teachers.” It was already a movement by then, so quickly. It was pretty amazing.

So, you’ve said that the teachers used to be the majority at the protests, but that changed. Did the teachers stay in with the APPO?

Yeah, for a while.

But did it get too radical for them?

Yeah, it stopped being what they needed, you know?

Watching your videos, the ones from the actual protests, one of the things I noticed was the huge presence in women and children and elders are the core of the people in these pictures.

Yeah. There were a lot of elders, children. You know, these were just everyday people, that’s the amazing thing.

The people at many of these protests, they were just people? They weren’t professional movement people?

No, no. At the largest protest, there were marches of eight hours of people marching, like 800,000 people in the street or something like that. And a lot of them were people whose family members were disappeared. There were people looking for their 40 year old mothers, like this one. (shows a photo of a man holding a sign) It says: “Guatelupe Ortiz: 40 years old. Housewife, mother, we need you back home.” She was disappeared. At the end, they found her in jail, but she was so injured by the torture that they didn’t say that they had her.

Because they couldn’t release her like that.

Exactly. So that’s why they are saying: “They took her alive, we want her back.” That is why that family was there, but everyone had a story, a reason.

How many people do they think were disappeared during the height of all of this?

Officially, they have recognized only two who they recognized as “guerilla people.” The state says “Well, we assume they are disappeared, we don’t have them.” There were more, but some were released. As of now, more or less, there are 20-25 people who nobody knows where they are.

And lots of people were arrested with no justification or charges or trial, right?

500 people in the year were arrested directly related to the movement. November 25 was the worst – 250 people taken on that day. Most of them were not even related with the process, they were just walking on the street and they picked them up.

How did media – photos like these or videos you showed me – play a role in the movement?

All of the people that were making videos of the protests and the police involvement came together in a group called Mal de Ojo. We put our stuff together and tried to get things out as soon as possible. So there were videos circulating two days after the protests on the black market, after tons of hours of battles with the police.

Wow, so these videos, of police repression, of them beating old women and threatening teenagers, this was circulating two days after this happened?

Yeah, we realized that if we gave it to the pirate radio stations and the black market, it would move more quickly. It was all over the country. It was amazing.

It was weird. People started staring at me on the streets because they’d seen me on the videos, I’d walk by a store and see my face on a television. It was so weird.

And it all changed when they brought the federal police in?

Well, it was already happening but, yeah, it changed. People were more angry, the police conflicts were maybe more violent. It was crazy. When they brought the federal police in, the people were waiting at the edges of the city for them.

And, again, it’s clear from the videos that these are the men who drive busses and elder women and the people that sell stuff in the zócalo. These aren’t people who get paid to be here – the videos and the pictures make that so much clearer to me.

That’s what we were trying to do, to get those images out to people who weren’t here. Because it’s so much stronger when you can see it. You can see the crowds of people listening to elder women and respecting what they say, listening to the kind of people that you don’t see in most social movements, not anywhere. None of these people were professional movement people, you know? That was one of the most amazing things that happened here, that it was not a structured political movement. It was the people saying “that’s it.”

And it’s pretty amazing to see the group of people behind them, listening. I don’t know if I could have understood just how moving it is without seeing it.

Yeah, it happened just in every corner, it was just people coming together. It was awesome. It was also amazing, after they brought in the federal police, to see the number of police they needed to take back the city.

Yeah, to take it back from unarmed people – children and women and old men.

People were confronting the police, all the time. This one woman was yelling at them, about responsibility and accountability, with a camera around her neck.

God, there are places in the States where that would get you shot.

That was all before the action. Now here comes the action. I was trapped in Mexico City–all my friends and family were here. It was scary, I didn’t know how anyone was doing.

So it was all a kind of slow boil from June to October of 2006, right?

The federal government was saying “It’s not our problem, it’s about the south area.” But then them came into the city in October.

So there was resistance and there were confrontations before, but the real violence started happening in October?

No, there was violence before then. The local police were there–for four months, there was no police and no government. And then after that, they brought in the military police.

So many of these protestors and the police are just teenagers, just kids.

There were police helicopters that were shooting tear gas into the crowds. They couldn’t see who was there, if they were hitting children. But they did it anyway.

It seems like the police were very unprepared for people who are resistant but not violent.

Yeah, they didn’t know what to do with that. There was no response that recognized that this was mostly a peaceful resistance.

A lot of what we’ve talked about has been based on the videos you’ve shown me, the ones put out by your collective, Mal de Ojo. So how did this collective start?

Well, we got together with some other people who were there on June 16th and we just turned to each other and said “Wow, were you there, did you get stuff? Yeah, it was crazy, right? What can we do?” And then one guy said that he had a contact with a pirate television station and he said that we should put our footage together and make something to get the word out, to make it impossible for them to say that nothing happened. We put it together and nobody wanted to sign it, to put their name on it because it wasn’t safe. So we decided to form the collective.

We printed like four or six copies of the first video and I don’t know how it got out – we gave one to the teachers union, I kept the master, other guys kept other ones and they started copying and it was everywhere in a week.

Do you think the collective will still be active without the protests? Will there still be educational opportunities?

Yeah, what we’re doing now is instead of making the next-day stuff after protests, just showing what happened, we’re trying to produce videos that tell a story and not just the pieces of a day.

Spanish Language References:

Oaxaca Libre: http://www.oaxacalibre.org/

Mexican League for Defense of Human Rights: http://www.espora.org/limeddh

Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca: http://www.asambleapopulardeoaxaca.com/

Indymedia Oaxaca: http://www.mexico.indymedia.org/Oaxaca

Colectivo CASA (Colectivos de Apoyo, Solidaridad y Acción): http://www.colectivocasa.org/

Radio Planton: http://www.radioplanton.net/index2.html

Radio APPO: http://www.asambleapopulardeoaxaca.com/

Narco News (Espanol): http://www.narconews.com/es.html

English Language References:

El Enemigo Común: http://www.elenemigocomun.net/

“Oaxaca Fights Back,” Foreign Policy in Focus: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3688

Narco News: http://www.narconews.com/en.html

Radio APPO (English translation): http://www.iteration.org/radioappo.txt

Oaxaca Study Action Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oaxacastudyactiongroup/

Oaxaca Revolt: http://www.oaxacarevolt.org/

Krista Benson is a program associate at The Berkana Institute and the North American Illuminator. Krista’s work touches all of the Berkana programs, including technical and communications support. She received her Master’s of Arts in Women’s Studies and Feminist Research from the University of Manchester in 2005 and continues her work with women and the voices of the oppressed in her personal life and at Berkana.

WHAT’S PAKISTAN GOT TO DO WITH IT?

By any standard, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the inevitable avalanche of violence which followed was a huge tragedy, and not just for Pakistan.

It is hard to imagine any semblance of peace and reconciliation for the factions of that volatile country, especially with the recent history of bitterness, violence and distrust between political parties. I didn’t trust Bhutto, as much as I admired the way she presented herself to the international media and expressed her positions in an appealing way. Of course, I trust President Musharraf even less and find it appalling that my country is banking upon him to bring some sort of respectability to a government we wouldn’t even recognize under whatever might pass for normal circumstances.

It doesn’t take some kind of troublemaker or wild-eyed radical to speculate that Musharraf might have had a great deal to do with Bhutto’s death. One even hears the opinion that the U.S. might have taken a hand in the act, whether it was by concussion or gunshot.

Without any expertise or extraordinary sources, I’m willing to bet that U.S. agents were not involved in this particular murder. It seems to me that it was in the Bush administration’s interest to have Bhutto safe and engaged in Pakistan’s government.

It appears Musharraf was more welcoming of the bloodbath between parties than he has been of offers to investigate Bhutto’s death. If the president’s hands are clean, he’s acting strangely. If they are not, the U.S. has been caught, again, with a strange and toxic bedfellow in our ongoing quest for democracy around the world.

Nothing we’ve almost gained in Afghanistan can justify our role as a pal of the deadly dictator of Pakistan. - RN

GUANTANAMO

As of January 11, it’s six years of terror at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. And it’s hard to imagine that freedom can be grasped by anyone in this country as long as we insist upon operating such a facist-friendly gulag.

But, we are not through with our efforts to shine light upon Guantanamo, and this is the time for action. Witness Against Torture is organizing demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, Paris, and London for January 11, and we in Spokane must also speak out. Please stay in touch, and we’ll share our plans which have not been processed as we go to press.

Last year, PJALS had an invigorating romp through downtown, including the skyway system, on a very cold day. Unfortunately, there were very few people to see our orange jumpsuits, black hoods and white chains. It was only in Riverpark Square that we received some attention, but the security guard was not interested in our motivation or our good citizenship.

You may expect a visit on this January 11th to the office of Mitchell and Jessen, Spokane psychologists who consult with the nether parts of our federal government to find new euphemisms for torture and refine old fashioned torture into state-of-the-art interrogation methods. These guys have been pointed out as pariahs by their colleagues in the field of psychology, but they’re still valued assets where torture is favored.

In D.C. there will be a demonstration on the Mall, followed by an orange jumpsuit procession to the Supreme Court. In Spokane, we may act on a smaller scale with less orange and fewer jumpsuits, but we will have plenty of passion and determination to be part of the change that is coming. Guantanamo must be closed, and we can do something to hasten its final days.

Be in touch, wear orange, stand up against torture. PJALS has an extra jumpsuit.

IMPEACHMENT

[Bush, Cheney and Rice] have committed
violations and subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America, in an attempt to carry out with impunity crimes against the peace and humanity of the people of the US and other nations, and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rights of said people, by assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary, and those reserved to the people of the United States…

This is part of the Resolution for Impeachment prepared for the consideration of the Spokane City Council.

While many people, even in the peace movement, still roll their eyes everytime impeachment comes up, some renegade Spokanites have decided there’s no reason to give their elected leaders a pass when city officials elsewhere have passed resolutions in favor of impeachment. And for those who fear impeaching President Bush because Cheney would inherit the position, they’ve included not only the Vice President, but Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, as well.

If you would like to read the resolution or get involved in presenting it to the council and helping get it recognized, let us know at PJALS.

Some strong opponents of the administration favor dropping the idea of impeachment and simply counting down the days to next January. They might well consider one of the final clauses in the resolution. It comes after 28 impeachable acts are listed, and it says, “Whereas, Failure to impeach these people would pave the way for further such actions by their successors…”

Congress won’t impeach. It may be our duty to press this issue, just as it is our duty to inform ourselves and vote with integrity.

Some Talking Points On Iran

Concerned that the war-mad occupants of the White House might launch yet another disastrous war with a fusillade of lies? You have every right to be. The propaganda campaign is well under way, and Congress is (surprise!) not offering much resistance. Yet. They need the public to show them how.

Yes, it's time once again to go chasing after a bunch of scurrilous war-happy lies with a dose of, well, you know, reality. With much of the military hierarchy itself opposed to attacking Iran, public sentiment might actually make a difference this time. Talk up the insanity of a military attack on Iran. Talk about it with your friends, neighbors, students, co-workers, relatives, strangers on the street. Here are a few things you can offer up:

The Bush administration has 3 major arguments for war with Iran: Its nuclear program, alleged support for Iraqi insurgents, and its fundamentalism/support of allied terrorist groups.

Iran is five to ten years away from having usable nuclear weapons. That's not a crisis; there's plenty of time for solutions other than military force. Iran is cooperating with the IAEA (the U.N.'s arms control agency). It is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and so far its nuclear program is completely legal within the framework of the NPT. The U.S. is threatening war against Iran, yet the three countries known to have nuclear weapons in defiance of international law -- Israel, India, and Pakistan -- all now receive military aid from the U.S.

The U.S. has claimed Iran is arming insurgents against U.S. troops in Iraq, but the majority of attacks are from Sunni militias that are also opposed to Shiite Iran. There is an enormous black market in weapons in Iraq, including some Iranian weapons but mostly American ones. There’s no evidence the Iranian government is connected to Iranian weapons in Iraq.

The Iraqi militia most closely aligned with Iran (the Badr Organization) is sponsored primarily by the largest faction in Prime Minister al-Maliki's (American-supported) Iraqi government. Many countries sponsor or "harbor" terror groups, including countless U.S. allies and almost every U.S. ally in the Middle East. We don't attack them to solve the problem. Iran has some measure of democracy, and U.S. hawkishness has undermined reform and strengthened hardliners. Iran has never attacked the US and poses no threat. How can we trust any intelligence, prediction, or analysis from this administration after Iraq?

An attack against Iran would be unpopular, immoral, illegal, and would have enormous ramifications within and beyond the Middle East. The doctrine of "preemptive attack" against a country that has not attacked the U.S. and is not in imminent danger of doing so is by definition illegal under international law, as well as deeply immoral. Congress has never authorized war with Iran; an attack on Bush's sole authority would be unconstitutional. Even if Congress did authorize it, such a war would be an illegal war of aggression. The war with Iraq is already widely opposed by the American public. An attack on Iran would also be broadly unpopular, both in the U.S. and throughout the world. As with Iraq, most of the casualties from an attack on Iran and the resulting regional war would be civilian. The loss of life would likely be massive. Attacking Iran without provocation would further damage U.S. moral, political, and economic standing around the world. The U.S. would become a pariah nation. An attack on Iran and the resulting war would be staggeringly expensive. If Iran's chief export were salt, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Iran has oil deals with Russia and China, both of whom oppose a U.S. attack. The threat to Middle East oil could make oil and gas much more expensive, triggering a global economic crisis.

An attack against Iran is likely to be militarily disastrous. Iran is much larger and more populous than Iraq, with a stronger economy and a large military. The reported Bush administration goals of wiping out the Iranian military in a short air attack and encouraging a spontaneous overthrow of the Iranian regime are fantasy. Iran could and would retaliate, and the Iranian public would likely rally around its government. Iran is unconquerable with the resources available to the U.S.; once begun, war could end only with U.S. retreat or the nuclear annihilation of Iran. The possible use of nuclear weapons against Iran would end all pretense of nuclear disarmament in the world, and lead to a global nuclear arms race that would be exponentially worse for long-term U.S. national security. The U.S. military is already exhausted and stretched thin, and cannot sustain an additional war against Iran. An attack and the inevitable war that would follow would decimate the U.S. military and leave it unable to respond to any emerging threats. The only way the U.S. military can muster the manpower needed to fight such a war is through resumption of a draft. Iran can retaliate in numerous ways: directly against U.S. planes, directly or through sympathetic Iraqi militias against U.S. forces in Iraq; against U.S. tankers and warships in the Persian Gulf or by blocking oil traffic in the Strait of Hormuz; by launching strikes against Saudi or Gulf State oil facilities or Israel; or through terror attacks by allied groups such as Hezbollah. Attacking Iran would put U.S. soldiers in Iraq in even greater danger, and destroy any remaining credibility the U.S. has with the Iraqis. Iran and Syria have a mutual defense pact. War with one means war with both. Given the above scenarios, an attack on Iran almost certainly would lead to a wider conflagration including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States. Attacking Iran would enflame and embolden anti-American Islamism throughout the Islamic world. The results could well additionally emperil U.S.-allied governments in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and especially Afghanistan and nuclear-equipped Pakistan. Islamist control of Pakistan, potentially putting nuclear weapons at the disposal of terror groups, is a much more imminent threat to U.S. security than Iran's fledgling nuclear program. As with Iraq, an attack on Iran would be a boon to recruiting and funding efforts by Islamic terrorist groups. Attacking Iran would encourage a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and around the globe, particularly between Israel and Islamic states wanting a deterrent to Israeli and U.S. force.

There are better ways to deal with U.S. concerns regarding Iran. Iran has repeatedly stated its willingness to engage in direct talks with the United States. The Bush administration has consistently rejected direct diplomacy and undermined European attempts at diplomacy. The Bush administration is treating war as a first, rather than a last, resort. War is in and of itself immoral, and a flawed way to resolve conflict. Negotiation, diplomacy, and goodwill work. We should use them.

                     --Geov Parrish, Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia, http://www.seanacc.org/

2008 War Tax Boycott

After nearly two years of planning, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee has launched the 2008 War Tax Boycott to enlist a broad range of Iraq war opponents in war tax resistance and redirection. The campaign is collecting pledges that ask participants to commit to resisting any amount of taxes in April 2008. A brochure, "Getting Started in War Tax Resistance," describes types and levels of resistance, and recommended redirection projects for Iraq war refugees and Katrina recovery.
Unlike previous campaigns promoting mass war tax resistance, the boycott is specific about time, not method. In the past, we’ve promoted a specific symbolic resistance on an ongoing basis. This campaign invites participants to choose their level and method, embracing both symbolic and higher risk WTR. On the other hand, the campaign only asks for a year commitment. Organizers hope this one-year campaign will introduce WTR to a large number of activists who can then incorporate it as an ongoing part of their lives and anti-war activism.
The war tax boycott has reached out to direct action anti-war groups and gained significant support. Current endorsers include the War Resisters League, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Vets for Peace, and the Nonviolent Direct Action Working Group of United for Peace and Justice. There’s also an Internet presence with background, on-line pledge forms, introductory WTR information, and downloadable outreach materials. It all looks good, including flyers that can be handed out at local events.

                   -- Carolyn Stevens, Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia.

Vote for Peace

Clueless observers are sometimes surprised to find that PJALS people vote. We certainly can’t get smug just because Bonnie Mager dispatched an entrenched county commissioner and Lisa Brown has become an institution in state government, but we can do more, and we need to do it together, even across party, county, and state lines.

Stay involved in the election process, but don’t forget to insist upon change. The way election campaigns are (over) financed is a crime against democracy. The system has much to gain and nothing but excess baggage to lose with instant run-off voting, and there are other reforms to be articulated and championed by voters with high standards.

While you’re weighing the pros and cons of worthy candidates, see if it works for you to pledge your vote only for candidates who are committed to peace and justice. It’s about time people who can envision peace at home and around the world had a little representation at every level of government.

Unless we teach our children peace, someone else will teach them violence. Unless we redirect our tax money toward peace, someone else will waste it on killing.

- Colman McCarthy, former Washington Post Columnist and now Director of the Center for Teaching Peace.

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Think Globally...Act Locally...Think Locally...Act Globally...

Think...Act...Think...Act...Think...Act...Think...Act...Think...Act...

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2008 in Spokane

The theme for the observance this year is “Silence is Deafening: Stand Up and Speak Out!” and the featured speaker is Constance Rice, the wife of former Seattle mayor Norm Rice. Other speakers will be Bishop William Skylstad, Rabbi Jack Issacson, and Rev. Ezra Kinlow.

Holy Temple Church of God in Christ, 806 W. Indiana, will host the service of commemoration on Sunday the 20th at 4 pm, with youth and community choirs. The Monday events begin at 10 am at the INB Performing Arts Center. The march will take participants to Riverpark Square for music, speakers, and the resource fair.

PJALS is pleased to encourage everyone to be a part of this community celebration and continues to hope that someday we can join in embracing the courage and spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. to resist racism, militarism, and materialism.

Listen to what may be his most powerful speech,
The one they don't want you to hear, ever,
And note how interchangeable are the words
                    Vietnam & Iraq.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence