The Student Insurgent (October 2007)

The Insurgent is a newspaper in the Eugene-Springfield, Oregon community. We are unaffiliated with any partisan organization. We seek to provide a forum for those working towards a society free from oppression based on class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, species and free from the threat of ecological collapse.

Subscriptions to the Insurgent are $15 a year by mail. The Insurgent is distributed freely to UO students, the community and prisoners.

Submissions...The Insurgent encourages its readers and supporters to submit news and feature articles, short fiction and poetry, cultural criticism, theory, reviews, etc. Graphics, cartoons and photos are more than welcome. Graphics can be submitted by themselves or with written pieces. All submissions must be 2,001 words or less.

We reserve the right to edit anything and everything we recieve for grammar, clarity or length. All articles, with the exception of unsigned Editorials, reflect the view of their authors and not the rest of us.

Address:

EMU, Suite One
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403–1228
Phone : 541.346.3716
Fax : 541.346.0620
Email: sialtmedia@hotmail.com

Collective:

Editorial:

Hey beloved readers!

The war on fascism rolls on in the offices of the Student Insurgent. A ton of new members have joined the ranks recently and the number of contributors has grown five fold. To cope with the surge of interest a “Second meeting now takes place every Thursday at 5:00PM (in addition to our Monday meetings at 5:00PM). Contributions are always a delightful sight for our editors, who love nothing more then working tirelessly to get you another issue. Submissions can be sent to us in any way conceivable (emailing submissions to sialtmedia@hotmail.com is perfectly acceptable), and we will find a way to get most anything into print; about 500 words or more is preferable (for articles that is). On*a more interesting note, one of our tireless main staff members is leaving and we will be opening up paid leadership positions for qualifying applicants at the end of the term. If your interested in taking on some responsibilities for the paper then that’s all the more reason to stop by.

Over the summer a stack of letters arrived from our imprisoned brethren and many of them have found their way into this issue; be sure to check them out. A big thank you to Rashid Johnson, a prisoner in Virginia, for his awesome writing and artwork. Oh, and we also received a warm salutation from Theodore John Kaczynski, affectionately known as the Unabomber. Cheers man! We know how much you loved our kind in your more active days and, hey, maybe someone in our office could show you how to construct an actually functioning pipe bomb.

Other articles include a return of world news, two book reviews, an opinion piece on aggression, a quick (but detailed) analysis of Iranian history, a contribution on the decline in women’s reproductive rights, and a humorous look at a fascinating new religion (no I don’t mean that someone started worshipping idols of issue 17.4). Give a read to the articles on Blackwater and Iraq, they’re eye openers. We also received a number of radical poems by Brenna Sahatjian of Riot Folk. On a special note, don’t miss our statement of solidarity with the victims of Jena’s unfair and racist justice system. Artwork in this issue was great as well; the centerfold and backcover hit very hard and we love the Halloween-themed cover!

Hope all you students are having a fantastic year so far at the grand old U of O, and if you’re interested in joining our fight then stop by one of our meetings.

Much Love,

SI

Why am I getting this newspaper?

We mail out around 700 copies of our paper every issue. Our LAMP (Left Allemali ve Media Project) sends our paper Io any alternative paper we can find

If you publish something we expect you Io send your paper Io us. We keep a library in our office for University of Oregon people to look. Many of you are not keeping up with us. We read and appreciate your publication. Send it to us!

If you are a prisoner, we send copies free Io you. Send us your address and you should gel on our list If you don’t either we goofed up and lost your address or your institution is not giving it to you. If you don’t get it don’t get mad write again. We try to send this paper Io anyone who wants it (How you’re supposed to know this since you didn’t get the paper we can’t answer.)

If you are an individual, it would be very helpful if you sent us subscription money! Also, if you don’t want this paper for whatever reason, please let us know and we will take you off our list; mailing is expensive.

We want to expand our mailing list to 1000, so if you know someone who would like this paper, tell them to send us a reguest This paper doesn’t do any good if no one reads it

Write to us, tell us your situation. We would like to hear about prisoner abuse and the conditions in prisons generally, especially the privatized prisons. Or anything else.

Your Student Insurgent

News Briefs

BLM Bastards Plan to Cut Remaining Old-Growth

by Isobel Charle

On August 10^th, the Bearau of Land Management (BLM) released a new draft of the Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR), a 1,650 page plan to “manage” the public forests of the Willamette Valley to the Siskyou mountains, over 2.5 million acres of PUBLIC land. The plan will be in effect for the next hundred years and is the result of an agreement between the timber industry and the Bush administration to replace the Northwest Forest Plan. There are four different alternatives in this draft, the most severe of which is alternative 2. This option is preferred by the BLM and calls for a 700% increase in the amount of logging of trees 200 years or older in 10 years. This plan would open up previously protected streamside forests and old growth reserves to clear-cutting. This means that one million acres of ancient national forests in Oregon will be reduced to industrial tree farms or “Timber Management Areas.” Less than 10% of the original old growth in Cascadia now remains, and under alternative 2 of WOPR, it would all be gone in 100 years (www.cascwild.org).

Where has all the old-growth gone? Butchered by corporate hacks!

The BLM refers to clear-cutting as “regeneration harvesting” and claims their new plan would “maintain the current amount of suitable habitat over time” for the northern spotted owl (WOPR Summary, p LVIII). Yet. surprisingly, they have presented NO scientific evidence that proves how it is possible to preserve habitat while at the same time destroying old-growth forests. Alternative 2 would further devastate already struggling owl. salmon and other wildlife populations.

The BLM likes to paint the picture that Oregonians must make a choice between money, jobs and libraries on one side and old growth forests on the other. This is a false dichotomy. Clear-cutting is not sustainable ecologically or economically. What will we log once all the trees are gone? It is possible to log sustainably through selective logging of crowded plantation forests, which would preserve wildlife habitat, protect water sources and fund county budgets. Since half of BLM land that has already been cut currently needs to be thinned, there is no reason to take such a drastic step. Alternative 2 of WOPR would destroy Oregon’s old growth forests and once they’re gone, they’re not coming back.

Tell the BLM to shove it!

The BLM is open to public comment until November 9^th. The BLM’s Eugene District Manager is Ginnie Grilley, so give her a call at 541.683.6600. Go to www.casc- wild.org to send an email. These forests are our heritage; we must save them for ourselves and generations to come. Please help!

Table o’ Contents

Cover by Amy Fox......................... 1

Editorial...................................... 2

BLM Plans to Cut Old Growth...... 3

Letters to the editor...................... 4–5

Local news...................................... 6

National news................................. 7

Women’s rights............................. 8

Commentary................................. 9

Nature of Aggression.............. 10–11

World news: Iraq and Iran..... 12–13

Art by Karam Aldawood......... 14–15

World news............................ 16–17

Protect our Leaders................. 18–21

Poetry by Brenna Sahatjian. 22–23

Humor........................................... 24

Book Reviews............................... 25

DIY and announcments................. 26

Calender...................................... 27

Art by Karam Aldawood.............. 28

Letters to the Editor

Dear sirs,

I would really appreciate it if you would stop sending me the UO Student Insurgent. You are wasting precious natural resources by doing so, because every time I receive a copy, I just throw it straight in the trash. I kept the latest issue only long enough to get your address from it so I could write you this letter.

Ted [“The Unabomber”] Kaczynski

To whom it may concern:

The beautiful people of Eugene, OR, my home. I would like to request a monthly subscription to your paper! It’s the only encouraging thing I’ve got to read in forever plus it’s from home and that’s beautiful. It makes it even better. Hey, if you all do any articles on the fucked up drug laws I’d love to read them. I’m a woman in prison for 10 years, like some kind of dealer, when I was just a junkie who couldn’t resuscitate my friend so I called the fucking ambulance for help, mind you, and now I’m doing a ten year sentence in California near SF. But its retarded especially since I’m sober now and get this I was sober and out in the world for 2 years before they even sentenced me. Now you tell me that isn’t slightly out of proportion. Plus there’s this fortune 500 co. who puts us to work here for $.46 an hour! They are called Unicor, they are 411 they make millions and pay us less than $.50 an hour. Is that the craziest shit you ever heard or what? It makes you wonder why drug policies don’t change’.

Fuck Reagonomics’.

Ellen KriKava Parks

Dear Jesica, Cimmeron, Sam, Natty, Jake, Damian, Don, John, Max, Isobel, Lydia, Lindy, Dave, Eric and Katie,

Hey, hope everyone is doing ok. I’ve been receiving the Insurgent for some time—a couple of years probably. It’s a cool, interesting and informative paper, even for us way out here on the east coast and even for someone in prison. I liked the 18.5 and .6 art material.

It is good to see progressive and real information, news and opinion and in that regard I want to inform you all about a magazine I have a lot to do with—4strugglemag. It is primarily an emag located at www.4strugglemag.org. We do produce hard copies, a lot are sent to prisoners, but some outside subscribers as well. 4strugglemag is a voice of political prisoners in the US. I’m enclosing a flyer announcing the latest issue, number 9. Check it ouut. We keep all back issues posted on the site. Feel free to use any material from any issues if you find it useful. Also feel very free to let friends, readers, etc., know about 4struglemag.

Keep up your positive work and lets end the war! Freedom is a constant struggle!

Jaan Laaman

Comrade,

Hello, my name is Brian. I am confined to this state Gulag which is ran by the Missouri Dept, of Corruption! I am a prisoner rights activist for all the wrongs we endure. How trolls treat us! I would like to receive your newsletter. Last one I received was issue 18.4.1 was great to see you print in there about the comrades protesting at Jefferson City Missouri gulag. All maximum gulags’ trolls don’t follow policies. That’s why I have been fighting these trolls. To make them. Ya’ll did send issue 18.5 but trolls wouldn’t allow it in. I did write
ya’ll asking to remove the page that wasn’t allowed. Don’t do it. Trolls now are trippin about that saying it’s altered. I am fighting trolls on that issue also. When you send an issue please send only one. When I receive more than one on the same day I can only have one. Others are placed in property. I figured I wasn’t receiving any newsletter summer vacation so now that school’s in progress I would like to be placed on your mailing list. I am fighting trolls on the above because I am in the hole. I have been in the hole past 19 months because I refused to be a slave for these trolls. That’s right slavery still exists in the US. The 13^th amendment allows it. Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, wheof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States. Top pay here is $.70 an hour. Some state’s prisoners receive no pay. States and private companies make millions and millions from the prisoners forced slave labor. What it amounts to is like working in a sweatshop you hear about oversas. All prisoners need to unite and fight these trolls to pay us minimum wage. Better working conditions. Prisons aren’t about crime control, they’re about for-profit repression. In fact, they are a huge, government-run, criminal enterprise, wildly profitable and completely paid for by ripped-off taxpayers. The 13^th amendment needs to be abolished. Help spread the word!

No masters, no slaves!

Brian Lester

Peace and revolutionary Greetings,

All praises are due to our most exalted Creator, The King, The reality, The Source of Peace, The Establisher of truth and justice and The Avenger of the Oppressed!!!

I first would like to humbly thank you all for sending me the newsletter the insurgent. I have received about 5 within the last four weeks.

Unfortunately, I have been under gun, lock and key for the last 11 years for failing a drug urinalysis for the use of marijuana. For smoking marijuana, 11 years. I am serving a technical violation of parole.

I am the only person in the United States that is serving this amount of time for such a charge. In the past Otis Lee Johnson was given 30 years for 1 marijuana joint but his case was overturned after a few years and even had the marijuana sentencing restructured because of that injustice. John Sinclair was given 10 years in 1968 for 1 marijuana joint but later had his case overturned after a mass campaign and John Lennon made a song about I after his release.

I am trying to bring public exposure to my case and help me obtain my release. I Have paid $1700 for a parole lawyer and also have B. Kwkau Duren as a loyal comrade helping me also. He has his own law office in Los Angeles, CA. I will be up for parole in 6 1/2 months. Even then, my parole is not guaranteed.

I am asking you to help me bring some exposure to this case and injustice and also if you want you can construct a petition for me as well. If so, I will inform you of my lawyer’s address and what to do. Also, if you can, send me some political books. I leave you with the clenched fist salute!!!

With honor and Loyalty,

And peace-In Struggle-I Remain, X Sharif (Sidney Williams)

Dear Student Insurgent,

My name is James Anderson, I am an activist and environmentalist. 1 have ran with groups such as Earth First and the Earth Liberation Front. I am currently serving 92 months in the federal penitentiary for allegedly rob- bing 28 banks to help fund my cause. A friend of mine gets your Insurgent and he let me read it. I am hooked’. It’s an awesome paper. I saw that its free to prisoners, so I was hoping you would sign me up as a subscriber, please. It would mean a lot to me. I am a warrior for Mother Earth. Please look out for me.

Thank You,

James Anderson

PS It’s time for a revolution!

Hey now Insurgent,

Yes I am writing to request a few copies of your publication. I came across your address in another zine called sm+$= I am an indegent anarchist prisoner who is housed in solitary confinement. If possible please send me as much as you can, I am an avid reader and I can never get enough to read.

Thank you so very much for your time and help in this very important matter.

Yours in the struggle, Robbie Rojo

Ona Move Damian!

My revolutionary greeting of “On the Move” to yourself and all at the Insurgent! I hope all are doin’ well on that end. Family and self are strong on this end also. That is the only way we revolutionaries can ever afford to be and that is Strong if we are to survive and believe me the survival of All of Life depends on our consistent work to bring an end to this rotten ass reform world system that is destroying Life as it rapes it’s way thru the universe with its greed driven ways.

I truly would love to get all of your publications but I tell you these oppressors here try to stop as much mind awakening as possible from coming in. I have to file “Grievance Appeal” for almost every publication

sent to me. The next time I get “With Holding” slip for your publication so you can see what they look like. In fact I have an old one on hand. They have changed the look of it, but still use the same old lies to deny letting publications into the prison. The rotten bastards claim damn near every publication advocates violence or some other excuse. Bullshit they’ll let in all day long. But let it be something mind opening and they come with the excuse to ban it fast as you can blink your eye. Anyway glad that you got my last letter and the articles and information I sent. I’ll enclose more information with this letter. Thanks for your letter and please let all on that end know I send my very best to all. As always take care, stay strong by staying revolutionary and you can be sure that I’ll be doing the same! Ona Move! Yours in revolution, Wm. Phillips Africa

Free the Move 9!

Free Mumia Abu Jamal!

Free All Political Prisoners!

Free All Class and Social Prisoners! Never Forget May 13 th, 1985!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Insurgent Newspaper,

First off, on behalf of the prisoners incarcerated within the walls and bars of Texas prisons, a hats off to you for a beautiful job. Well done!

This paper is the most informative piece of material being circulated here as of the present date.

As you should already be aware, Texas prisoners are the most widely abused within our Nation. Such injustice needs to be exposed and owner’s given to tax payers who are continuously lied to about so called violent offenders.

The State of Texas has a 27 percent parole rate with over 168,000 inmates capacity. This amounts to nothing more than warehousing prisoners and overly punishing minor crimes such as drug possession or other crimes that were non-violent offenses.

To make matters worse, legislators lobbied by TDCJ Committee members have been passing house bills that further punish some offenders based on past criminal history. This in itself is an injustice. People returned to TDCJ who have never been convicted of an offense listed under the laws passed are no longer eligible for mandatory discretionary discharge or early release to parole based on good-time credits.

These good-time credits are worthless to inmates within Texas State Prisons at this time.

Inmates confined in Ad-Seg who earn good-time credits repeatedly have their due process rights violated by TDCJ each month. The administration strip seven days of good-time from each inmate and extends each of the offenders’ release date.

Without any notice or hearings...

We could write a book regarding the numerous injustices occurring on a daily basis within TDCJ and to expose officials who continue to violate and constrain all from their rightful quest for liberty.

Speak out and expose those who violate your rights!

Sincerely,

Mr. CE Dailey

Dear Student Insurgent,

My name is Jaron Lee Mulkey, I would like to get your paper. I am in prison at TRCI, address 82911 Beach Access Rd.,Umatilla OR, 97882. Umatilla. I’ve been down since I was 17 for robbery 1 and assault 3. Since I’ve been down the cops have always messed with people by putting them in the hole for things that they didn’t do. When you go to the hole they give you a fine up to $200.

So when you have people like me that don’t get money that much it is messed up cause when you do get money they take half then at the end of the month they take what you didn’t spend. At this point I owe $2,000 in fines and my family (the little that I do have) won’t send me money ‘cause of the fines. So I’m stuck brushing my teeth with baking soda and washing my hair with Lial Bar Soap. Now these fines didn’t come from breaking anything they’re just ‘cause I came to the hole. If people on the outside would try to help do something we might be able to change that. Can you help?

Also, I was wondering if I send you a picture of myself with a little info about myself would you put it in your paper to see if any one would like to write? I’m a 21 year old white male, 6’2” 2201bs. Blue eyes, brown hair, out date 1-22-09. I’m from St Johns in North Portland.

Thanks so much!!!

Jaron Mulkey

15234659

82911 Beach Access Rd.

Umatilla, OR 97882

Dear Chelsea,
Hello and how are you doing today?
My name is Khalfani Malik Khaldun, an
Indiana Political Prisoner. I recently received

October 2007 Volume 10.2

a copy of your Student Insurgent publication and think that it’s a nice info source. I would love to see your group cover some emergency Prison issues. I am currently housed in one of the state’s control units called the Special Confinement Unit. Where a host of abuses occur regularly but with the lack of outside voices they are slowly swept under the rug. We could use an outlet like the Student Insurgent to galvanize support.

Take care and may you walk in strength. Peace,

Brother Khalfani

Dear Insurgent,

My Name is Charles Hans- comb and I have been an unwilling “guest” of the State of Oregon’s Department of Corrections for the past 23 years and, believe me, I’ve seen pretty much everything! I really enjoyed the copy of “the insurgent” that I read, and I would love to get on the mailing list myself.

Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely

Charles Hanscom

Ciao,

I came across a zine that had reviews and I noticed yours was free. I am in the hole for the next four months and have been since April. I would be interested in receiving issues through November for myself and for my partner who’s been in prison 6 years. Thank you.

Tiffany White

To whom it may concern:

Would you please add me to your mailing list for “The Insurgent”. I’ve read a couple hand me down copies and think they’re great. Keep up the good work. A 53 year old reader,

John Proctor

local news

Che Guevara Documentary Viewing

October 9^th 2007 marked the fortieth anniversary of the death of Cuban revolutionary and historical figure, Ernesto Che Guevara. To mark the occasion the Committee in Solidarity with Central American People (CISCAP) held a documentary showing about his life entitled “CHE,” followed by a question and answer session. Personally, upon attending the event, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew very little about the man other then that he was involved in the communist Cuban revolution in 1959.

As I sat and watched the film, I couldn’t help but be inspired. Che Guevara was truly a man dedicated to the emancipation of the people. Between his time spent trying to overthrow the Batista regime in Cuba, to his participation in events in the Congo and Bolivia, Guevara was a true revolutionary.

At the end, a thoughtful individual asked a question that I found particularly intriguing about the ever popular Che Guevara T-shirt. The event facilitator responded in a tone that gave the impression that she was well aware of the hypocrisy. She commented on Che’s full knowledge of the tendency to idolize historic figures.

Overall the event was inspiring for me personally as it seemed to be for most everyone who attended.

-Steve Berk

GULUWALK 2007 Comes to Eugene

One of the longest running civil wars in African history surges on today, ignored and overlooked by the majority of the world’s population. Uganda, situated on the northern edge of Lake Victoria, has been subject to one of the most atrocious wars of the last half-century. For the past 21 years the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government have engaged in violent conflicts across the northern part of the country. This land is home to the Acholi tribe, a group who stand out for their unique culture, language, and resilience. Both sides of this civil war have carved themselves a place in history next to the Hitler and alongside Stalin. In the past 21 years, over 20,000 children have been abducted and used as child soldiers or sex slaves, thousands of civilians have been massacred, and over 1.6 million people live in appalling conditions in the government run displacement camps. Entire generations have now grown up in these hellholes, many separated from their family and afflicted with HIV/AIDS among other deadly diseases. The complete annihilation of the Acholi culture lies in the world’s investment in these children.

On Saturday, October 20^th over 30,000 people will untie across 15 nations in 90 different cities to walk for the children of Northern Uganda. Eugene ranks among the cities planning to stand up and make a difference in the lives of a forgotten generation. The GuluWalk is a grassroots movement started by Adrian Bradbury and Kieran Hayward in 2005. The two heard the story of the night commuters in Gulu and wanted to understand their experiences. For 31 nights Adrian and Kieran walked into downtown Toronto, slept in front of city hall, then walked back to their homes and continued their daily lives. They wanted to mimic the lives of the 40,000 children who walked from local villages into Gulu each night to avoid abduction by the LRA. In the month of July Adrian and Kieran walked over 480 miles in a total of 154 hours. Since their experience, their idea has evolved into the single-day event called GuluWalk. Walkers are asked to raise awareness and funds for the children in Northern Uganda by signing up online and pledging to walk the three miles on the 20^th.

Eugene’s walk will begin at the EMU Amphitheater at 1pm on Saturday. The walk course goes downtown, around to city hall, then back to the EMU. It spans about 3 miles, and will last about two hours. If you’re interested in making a stand and changing the future for our brothers and sisters of Uganda, please sign up online at www. guluwalk.com. Be an Icon.

-Lindsay Bing

No Pasaran!

On October 12^th the Spanish Falangist (fascist) Movement descended on the city of San Sebastian to commemorate “the Day of the Hispanic World”. Eight busloads as well as many private cars headed off to San Sebastian, they were unable to get to the center of town due to the thousands of people who had apparently taken to the streets and set up barricades on the roads. In the center of town there was an antifascist concert taking place, but when the time them to make way for the fascist march (by order of the police) no one moved and the police attacked in force attempting to disperse the crowd, sparking a riot. The police escorted the fascists out of town, allowing them to hold their rally in the parking lot of a local mall. Reports say the some 80 to 90 year old veterans of the Spanish Revolution participated in the action. It is good to see that the spirit of anti-fascism is alive and well in the tradition of the second Spanish republic.

-Johannes Pederson

Jena Six Solidarity Statement

For those who are unaware we will briefly recount the events in Jena:

At the local high school there is a tree where only the white kids sit during breaks. One day a black student asked the administration if he could sit under the tree. He was told he could sit anywhere. The nest day three nooses hung from the tree. The three white students responsible where briefly suspended, a slap on the wrist considering their actions amounted to a death threat. A few days later the entire black student body sat under the white tree in protest. The result was that the district attorney was called in for an assembly in which he told the students to stop making a fuss and said he could “take away your lives with the stroke of a pen”. The school was on lockdown for the rest of the week. A series of fights followed. A white student was beaten by black students for taunting them with racial slurs and for supporting the placement of the nooses. Six black students were arrested and charged with attempted murder, carrying a possible sentence of twenty-one to one hundred years in prison.

For many the draconian way the justice system dealt with the events in Jena is not surprising, it was not unusual or out of place, it was part of a pattern many have experienced in their own life, distinguishable only in its blatancy. While the boys’ act may not have helped resolve the conflict, it is certainly understandable given the refusal of the authorities to intervene (the superintendent said “adolescents play pranks”). We will stand shoulder to shoulder with the Jena Six and the many unnamed victims of racism until the day when race is no longer an issue.

The Student Insurgent Staff

(inter)national news

Cascade Climate Declaration: Achieving a Sustainable, Just, and Prosperous Future for All

As young citizens of the Pacific Northwest, we recognize that the climate crisis we currently face presents both the defining challenge — and the greatest opportunity — of our generation.

We fully acknowledge the truth that human activity is rapidly driving the climate crisis, and we accept and embrace the moral responsibility that is inherent in that truth: we must act boldly, decisively, and quickly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to a sustainable, just, and prosperous future for all. The window of opportunity with which we can enact real solutions to the climate crisis is quickly closing, and failure to act will condemn our generation and countless more to come to a future of climate disruption, economic decline, growing inequality and insecurity, and the mass extinction of species.

The climate crisis clearly presents a tremendous and pressing challenge. Yet we stand at a key turning point in human history, one that must be faced with an urgent sense of hope and opportunity. We are motivated to rise to this challenge by our love and deep reverence for all life, including that which might be lost forever.

Tackling the climate crisis will require us to break our ‘ current reliance on dirty, unsustainable, and often-imported energy sources and implement a rapid and equitable transition to clean, renewable, and local resources. The technology to begin this transition exists today; all we lack is the political will. This socially just transition to a sustainable energy future will not only greatly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, but will also recharge our economy with investments in energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy, creating millions of new jobs. It will break our addiction to foreign oil, end our reliance on dirty fossil fuels, and forge a new path into a safer, healthier, and more prosperous future for all. This transition also presents an opportunity to reduce our ecological impacts and develop an innovative, sustainable, and socially just new way of life.

This is our urgent opportunity, one that our generation has the ingenuity, hope, and determination to seize.

We recognize that this transition will require change at both the individual and societal levels, and are committed to working towards both. In these efforts, we find solidarity with all who have a stake in making a sustainable, just, and prosperous future a reality and find common cause with youth and impacted communities across the globe and with generations yet unborn.

We, the youth of today, make this pledge to future generations: we will end this climate crisis within our lifetimes, because failing to do so is unconscionable. And we will work to make our vision of a prosperous, just, and sustainable tomorrow a reality.

We recognize these impending responsibilities; however, we cannot do it alone.

One day, our generation will hold positions of power. But unless today’s leaders launch the institutional changes that we are already beginning to make as individuals, communities, and campuses, the window of opportunity will have closed, and we will have been robbed of our chance to fulfill our pledge to future generations. We refuse to be robbed of this opportunity and we pledge to hold current leaders and decision-makers accountable.

We therefore call on today’s leaders and decision-makers to adhere to the following principles, which we, the youth of the Pacific Northwest, believe should guide our rapid transition to a sustainable, just, and prosperous future for all:

1. Real solutions are sustainable and just.

• We acknowledge that our cunent energy production and consumption patterns are not sustainable and that even some of our best alternative technologies are not long-term solutions. We recognize that a massive overhaul of the current energy infrastructure is necessary, but understand that this will not be a short-term process.

• We must first and foremost look to efficiency and conservation in both resource and energy consumption before all other options to meet our needs.

• Secondly, we must prioritize the development of clean, renewable, and local energy resources.

• We believe that real sustainable solutions to the climate crisis require systemic change that fosters social well-being for future generations.

1. False solutions prevent us from building a sustainable, just, and prosperous future.

• Simply replacing one fuel or energy source with another will not solve the problems associated with climate change or energy injustice. Industry proposed solutions such as liquefied natural gas, “clean” coal, nuclear power, large-scale hydro, and biofuels often simply re-distribute the problems.

• Exporting our emissions is not an adequate, appropriate, or acceptable tool in reducing our region’s greenhouse gas emissions.

• Decision makers, including citizens and institutions, have a responsibility to investigate possible solutions and determine their legitimacy through a community-based accountability process that empowers the impacted community.

• The burdens of energy generation should neither fall-on the poor and disadvantaged, both locally and globally, nor on future generations.

1. We value community-based solutions.

• We acknowledge that local communities have valuable knowledge and should be integral to decision-making processes and implementation.

• We seek to engage and develop connections with individuals and communities in which our schools are located. Working in collaboration and acting as allies towards their movements will empower us all to build a sustainable, just, and prosperous Pacific Northwest.

• We value small, locally owned businesses and energy production.

• We support community based planning that prevents sprawl; considers transportation infrastructure; encourages local growth, production, and consumption of food; conserves natural spaces; and includes sustainably designed and constructed buildings.

1. We believe humans are indivisible from.the Earth.

• We acknowledge the fact that society holds a widespread belief that humans are separate and independent from the natural world. This view, as it stands today, emphasizes the perception that humans have ownership over the Earth and view it as a commodity to be exploited. This belief has proven to be dangerous and largely contributes to the climate crisis we face.

• In order to effectively overcome the climate crisis we must fundamentally change this perception and acknowledge our role as a part of a diverse interdependent biological community. We must acknowledge that life is a function of our indivisible community to which all contribute. As humans, we do not have ownership over the earth but are part of a coexistence that must be maintained through a sustainable, symbiotic relationship.

1. Educational institutions should be models and leaders in the transition to a just, prosperous, and sustainable energy future.

• The dynamics of our relationship with the environment is of fundamental importance now and in the future. In order to prepare today’s youth fora livable future it should be standard practice to teach and model environmental sustainability by including it in the curriculum and function of all schools.

• It is the responsibility of educational institutions to prepare children for the future. It is also the responsibility of educational institutions to prepare a livable future for children.

• Campuses and schools should be centers of innovation and hubs of ideas that prepare youth and community members for our roles in this sustainable energy future.

• Youth and students of all ages need to have access and space — both physically and intellectually — to critically engage with the situations that have brought us to our current climate crisis, as well as consider solutions and healthy responses.

Following from the principles listed above, we believe our region must take the following immediate actions to begin a healthy response to the climate crisis. All citizens of the Pacific Northwest have a role in approaching and fulfilling these actions. In particular, we seek commitments from current decision-makers to work towards implementing these immediate actions:

1. Commit to immediately halt all new fossil fuel infrastructural development projects to serve our region’s energy needs.

To meet our energy needs, we should therefore provide strong support for energy efficiency and conservation measures, and re-prioritize the development of clean, renewable, local, and just energy resources.

1. Commit to immediately begin phasing out the importation of fossil fuels into the Pacific Northwest.

To assist this phase-out, we must prioritize the development of a transportation network that is efficient, sustainable and livable. We must also provide incentives and support to consumers and businesses to participate in this transition.

1. Commit to adequately funding educational institutions as centers to train, empower, and otherwise prepare youth and community members for their roles in the transition to a sustainable, just, and prosperous future.

This effort should involve the establishment of a “green job corps” training program to provide vocational training opportunities for the thousands of new jobs this transition will create. In order to ensure a socially just transition to a new energy future, access to these training programs should be prioritized for people in poverty and in situations where the transition will cause them to become unemployed. Continued training opportunities should be provided to ensure upward mobility for workers in this new energy economy.

Finally, fulfilling each of these commitments in a democratic and just manner will require the establishment of a committee or other body that allows the involvement of impacted communities, including youth, in resources decisions that guide our transition to a sustainable

Recent actions taken by the Animal Liberation Front

October 12, 2007 — Ireland

CIRCUS SIGNS DESTROYED

Vegas in Fairyhouse, County Meath were the target of the ALF when about 50 advertising signs were destroyed as a measure to cause them economic sabotage. Circus Vegas are guilty of animal cruelty and will be visited again and again until they stop dragging animals around Ireland.

October 11, 2007 — Norway

FIRE DESTROYS TRUCK AT FUR FEED SUPPLIER

Norwegian media has reported an arson attack on October 8 targeting trucks parked at Midt-Norsk For AL, a fur-feed factory in Trondheim. One truck was destroyed while another was heavily damaged.

Police claim that they found three undetonated incendiary devices, each with battery and timer, strategically placed under other trucks.

Because the trucks were used to deliver feed to local fur farms, police suspect animal liberation activists. This is the 5^th arson attack targeting fur-feed factories in Norway. The factories are owned and operated by fur farmers.

October 10, 2007 — Sweden 800 MINK FREED

“In Hemingsbo just outside Falun (Sweden), the last fur farm in the region Dalarna is located. A farm with small cages and a standing example how the animal welfare laws are constantly ignored. Since 1988 the mink have been guaranteed to behave naturally. But after the politicians betrayal last year about a ban on fur farms there are still 1,5 million mink behind bars. On the night to tuesday around 800 mink finally got to taste freedom when the cages was opened. The slogan ‘Fur farm ban introduced’ was sprayed on a roof of a shed at the farm. From October 9^th 2007 there is a fur farm ban in Dalarna introduced by the only ones the animals can have confidence in — DBF (ALF). With bolt cutters and crow bars we make sure it remains. Always for the animals — DBF”

October 10, 2007 — Sweden

“in mahren in the czech republic at the austrian border, last weekend foxes were liberated from an ex fur farm, the farmer now uses the foxes to train his fox digging and hunting dogs on them, activists took the foxes together with their cages, when suddenly the owner appeared in the night and called the police, but stayed in the background, activists did not, however, lose their cool and took the foxes straight in front of the owner, although only those 6 they had already. 1 fox escaped near the farm in the chaos, the other 5 foxes were set free more than 100 km away from the farm, each fox was let out into the wild separately.”

October 8, 2007 — UK

WILL NOVARTIS PRODUCTS EVER BE SAFE?

“It seems that Novartis were all too quick to remove the tampered with Savlon from store shelves, however, we are the Animal Rights Militia and were prepared for such an eventuality, this original action was only a precursor to a more sophisticated attack.

Over the last three months members of our cell have been inserted into various positions throughout the operations of numerous high street stores and supermarkets such as Superdrug and Tesco. These agents have once again tampered with bottles and tubes of Savlon. This time the tubes of Savlon were infected with sodium hydroxide that had been mixed with a large amount of Savlon in advance.

However, we have not stopped there, we have also tampered with numerous other Novartis products including, but in no way limited solely to, Lypsyl and Lamisil. Firstly the Lypsyl outer packaging was carefully removed and then the tamper-evident packaging on the tube itself was very easily removed, finally the Lypsyl was removed from the tube and then dunked into the contaminated savlon and replaced. The packaging was then glued back in place.

As members of the cell have now infiltrated numerous parts of the supply chain of these stores they were able to not only place the tampered with products on the shelves but also inside the boxes of products in the warehouse and depots ensuring a constant supply of tampered with product since the 1^st of October when we began our operation.

It should be borne in mind that tubes of Savlon have no anti- tampering seal. Pictures are included to demonstrate how easy Novartis’ products such as Lypsyl can be tampered with.

How much is it worth to you to keep dealing with Huntingdon Life Sciences, Novartis? This campaign will continue unabated until you stop paying them to murder animals.

The choice is yours Vasella.

Animal Rights Militia”

October 7, 2007 — Turkey

WINDOWS SMASHED AT PET SHOP anonymous report:

“Some ALF supporters attacked to a pet shop and smashed the windows on 6^th October. They targeted the shop because they sell rare birds and reptiles. One of the activist said, ‘We do this on 6^th of October because its World Bird Watching Day. We will fight until all the imprisoned birds can fly free.’ ALF Istanbul”

October 6, 2007 — Italy

RABBITS LIBERATED, CAGES DESTROYED, TRACTORS SABOTAGED reported by activists in Italy: “Appiano Gentile (Como) — October 5^th

Newspapers reported that in Appiano Gentile, north of Italy, thousands of rabbits have been liberated from a farm.

Slogans have been left such as: ‘farm = concentration camp’, ‘murderers=your property is now free’, ‘eating animals is horrible. Breeding them in this concentration camp is vile. You Suck’.

Among the liberated animals dozen of female breeders have been liberated, breeding cards thrown in the sewage, hundreds of cages destroyed and two tractors sabotaged.

Damages for the farmer amount to many thousands of euro.”

Wise up!

How Women’s rights are diminishing before our eyes by Dominique Rossi

There is a myth that propagates amongst young American women nowadays that their fundamental rights are immune to policy changes or overzealous conservative shifts in the political arena. Even outside of the life/choice dichotomy, a large majority of women find common ground in having the right to readily available contraceptives (including condoms), sexual education beyond abstinence-only programs, privacy of their health records, and keeping emergency contraceptives imperative to post-rape procedures.

This falsehood of safety doesn’t serve the citizens it abates. It was a nai ve notion to hold several years ago when President Bush:

• Canceled the White House’s Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach.

• Zeroed out the nation’s $34 million budget for the U.N. population fund . A program that provided family-planning and reproductive care excluding abortions to some of the world’s poorest women.

• Signed and appealed for the Federal Abortion Ban.

• Saw to it that emergency contraceptive be withheld from national protocol on rape trauma. Ignoring 22,000 to 25,000 women who become pregnant from rape each year.[1] -Reverted to “scientific McCarthyism” by publicly warning health researchers in the field of sex, contraceptives and HIV research that their work may be flagged for anti-choice oversight.

Now in the waning 2007, the bold assaults on women’s rights and the anti-choice sway of the Supreme Court makes clinging to these old misconceptions irrational, humiliating, and dangerous. With a collective unnamed anxiety, women are feeling the burden of these ominous forces play out in their own lives. Our lack of concern in the years beforehand has lead to an insidious spread of the anti-choice agenda which now surrounds us on all sides. Oregon alone has introduced three 2007 bills to give embryos citizen rights. If passed, would further in the pursuit of allowing actions “against” them criminalized. In the professional arena where all federal employees are prohibited from choosing a health-care plan which covers even medically necessary abortions; it is pervasive in private matters where the flourishing of over 4,000 Crisis Pregnancy Centers ( federally funded anti-choice agencies which legally advertise under abortion clinics, provide no legitimate medical procedures, and exaggerate risks during biased advising)[2] are misinforming, degrading and emotionally disturbing women nationwide. Alas, even for those amongst us who are just college students content to stay in an unengaged political bubble, the residue of these larger matters can be tasted in the rising birth control prices.

Now, more then ever, American women must reclaim the rights of choice, health care, and privacy from the ill-guided administration . If the urgency for action is not drumming in our own instincts or those of the nation’s future female citizens, then it has most certainly been pleaded for by the international community fbr six years and counting. Since the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule on Bush’s first day in office, women’s lives have been keeping tally for the defiance of our core democratic principle.

Officially termed the Mexico City Policy, these restictions signed by Bush his first day in office, mandate that no U.S. family planning assistance can be provided to foreign NGOs that use funding from any other source to perform abortions in cases other than a threat to the woman’s life. With the exception of rape or incest, to provide counseling and referral for abortion, or to lobby to make abortion legal or more available in their country[3]. If set in America, the GGR would be superseded by the Constitution which forbids legislature from imposing on organizations rights of free speech. This policy is enforced on some of the world’s poorest nations where unplanned pregnancy perpetuates economic hardships. Many of the agencies targeted by GGR are also at the forefront of AIDS/HIV relief and the pressure of losing funding has caused them to either eliminate services, shut down, or stifle their women, subsequently damaging the nations health.

The GGR affects 59 countries, 35 of which abortion is legal within the nation. How is it that fundamentally unconstitutional U.S. dictation can be imposed to silence and harm the welfare of other nations? Furthermore how can our own rights as American women be systematically diminished after so many hard won battles for autonomy. The answer is submitting to the myth that our voices are no longer needed and our equality resolved. Wise up young women! Any further investment in denial would be a deciding ballot to silence ourselves.

Unite for women’s health and worth at home and abroad. Sign the petition to end the Global Gag Rule circulating here on campus on November 6^th and call Congress directly (202) 224–3121 to give your opinion on domestic policy. Visit feministcampus.org and fight4choice.com for other avenues.

commentary

The War on Patriotism

By: Topher Vollmer

“I love my country, by which I mean I am indebted joyfully to
all the people throughout history who have fought the govern-
ment to make right.”

-Ani DiFranco

Recently, Foxsnews.com ran an article in an effort to smear Senator Barack Obama by attacking the Senator’s patriotism after it was noticed that he no longer wears an American flag pin on his lapel like the majority of the other political stooges in Washington. Two things stood out as particularly depressing about this article. First of all, is this the best news Fox could come up with? It is no secret that Fox is about as fair and balanced as Vladimir Putin and as an organization they are more than happy to bend over for the Republican Party, but what self respecting news organization would really put this useless story front and center on their website? It deserves a brief mention at best. However, Fox’s corruption and partisan propaganda is not breaking news. What I found most depressing about this article is how skewed and distorted America’s sense of patriotism has become. Since when is the amount of ones devotion to America measured by the amount of American paraphernalia they happen to own, or choose to wear? On a side note I believe the answer to this question lays in the presidency of Mr. 666 himself, Ronald Wilson Reagan, but that is a discussion for another time.

True American patriotism is based in dissent, not flocking mindlessly behind shallow symbolism and rhetoric. Throughout the history of our nation, true American patriots from the Revolutionary War to the Counter-Culture Revolution have showed their love for their country by standing up to corrupt and incompetent authority figures. By assembling and expressing their dissent revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Abby Hoffman and the Diggers have all stood up against incompetent leadership for the benefit of their unpatriotic and apathetic countrymen.

Summer of Love and the Fall of the Bushies, patriotism in America has gone completely backwards. True patriots are called America-haters simply because they disagree with a government packed with the weak and the ignorant. Even worse, the self-righteous pseudo-patriotic fools, who blindly follow authority like a pack of lemmings from hell, have suddenly become the standard-bearers of patriotism in America. By draping themselves in the flag,

Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and their minions have turned patriotism, once the slogan of revolution, into the rhetoric of the conservative masses. They hide their inadequacies behind the flag so frequently that Samuel Johnson’s declaration, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” is perhaps more true now then it was over 200 years ago when it first appeared. It is only in this kind of backwards, ignorant culture that a news organization would be allowed to attack the patriotism of a public official simply because he does not wear a flag pin on his lapel.

When asked about the absence of his lapel pin Senator Obama said, “Shortly after 9/11, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.” He added, “I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest. Instead, I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testament to my patriotism.”

That alone makes Senator Obama more patriotic then all of the conservative sheep still clutching desperately to their flags.

Freedom

by: Cimmeron Gillespie

Your Freedoms, those, which are promised in the Constitution of the United States, are not guaranteed. Nay, your beloved freedoms are in your grasp, but not necessarily in your hand. It would seem at first glance that your Freedoms aren’t even yours, they are granted to you by a benevolent government. If a agent of the law decides you no longer have to right to practice the freedom, it is by lawful means lost to you. The officer is, however, only able to control a fraction of Freedom, that which is physical; after all, are your thoughts not your own? A close reflection of freedom reveals that freedom is in the mind and because freedom is in the mind, you are in control of your freedoms.

The freedom is in the mind. Your opinions, your thoughts, are yours solely. Any harm to your body, is separate from the mind and may even reinforce your opinions. The Act of slavery was a degrading inhuman practice, yet many slaves were more free than their so-called masters. In the United States, slave resistance and uprisings were never unheard-of and indeed persisted until the northern army physically removed the shackles. The resistance of any group, the drive for life and subsistence, is the spirit of freedom, which is held in the mind of its holder.

For a people to be free the mind itself must be open. If a person living in squalor caved to a depressive state, accepting squalor as a way of life, then that individually is enslaved. An individual cannot be free who chooses not to make themselves so. When being in a condition of poverty, or falling into a neglected social existence, then is the time to be happy, to practice true mental freedom. If a condition is set upon somebody, they are tfie determinant of weather that situation is one of freedom or slavery. In a system of slavery or oppression, the individual must think, care, and hold onto their freedoms. Why would any body of power be against any line of thought, unless they had something to lose from those thoughts? By subjecting individuals to extremes (housing, nutrition, social, temperature or otherwise), the act is of get an individual to think about their body, and drive away the thought of freedom, purpose, or contentment. By giving drugs, and allowing starvation and poverty the people are distracted from freedom. The individual must choose, must make themselves free of the physical hardships of poverty, and injustice. This does not mean to not resist, by all means, resist; but carry in your mind the freedom that you wish to see. The resistance may itself play a vital roll in the achievement of Freedom. “When somebody tries to take away your rights, the degree to which you resist, is the degree to which you are free” — Utah Phillips.

Despite a will to live, the very spirit of life can be taken from a person, under extreme and inhumane treatment. In Soviet Russia, the torture techniques used were so vile they mentally broke the victim; the torture induced tremendous amounts of pain physically, psychologically or otherwise. After their tortured confessions, many were left begging for death. This result is not the breaking of the spirit, but rather the body, forcing the mind to deal with terrible pain of the body. Under different circumstances the tortured may have not have been so utterly broken. Individuals may have held their wills if they had the ability to separate or stop pain from the body from being recognized by the mind; like the practice of walking across coals or mind over matter. Without feeling the rigor of such terrible pain, their minds would not have been so completely broken. Though perhaps easier said than done, the fact remains: a torture technique, which does not cause suffering to the intended victim, is useless. Thus the mind and the brain can be the key to freedom.

The statement ‘freedom is in the mind’, is countered by the concept that ‘freedom is in the body’. The question here has to do with the value of physical possessions, because if freedom is in the mind, possessions have minuscule value. If however, freedom is in the body, material items are fundamental to happiness. Items which could please the body would be of incredible value. The argument for freedom of body may be the pleasure one feels at having many things, ie the elation of buying. Yet the very stimulus of this pleasure is a result of endorphins in the brain, trained to release by repetitive actions, leading the mind to associate actions with physiological responses. To a people without money, or material goods, how could anyone define freedom without describing it as a state of mind? Certainly primitive societies were not fixated on the mass accumulation of wealth, based on this the movement of such wealth would require the greater consumption of resources. The question of Freedom being in the mind or the body really comes down to practice. If Freedom is in the body, anybody with a more harmful weapon than yourself can oppress you, but if Freedom is in the mind, then only you can oppress you.

Freedom that is in your mind, cannot be taken away by a police officer, or politician, or anyone else! Freedom is the knowledge of your being, your world, the better future; that is something nobody can touch. Freedom is in the mind, the act of cutting off a limb does not destroy the freedom. The destruction of a limb blocks mobility, and forces physical limitations, but cannot touch the Freedom in your mind. The Freedom that you create in your mind, is the one thing that nobody can ever take away, but you.

Nature of Aggression

by Steve Berk

Today, it seems quit clear to me, as it does to most of the world that the United States is at its zenith in power. While thinking of this Zenith in U.S. history, we might think of the Bush administration, the War in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay Prison, Terrorism, etc. But as historians look back they will undoubtedly not put any particular emphasis on any of these things. All history will see is yet another empire engaged in yet another aggressive war. Power and aggression are as old as the first agricultural revolution. Most if not all of the great empires that have ever acquired power over states within their reach have waged aggressive war against them. This continues even today, with the United States involvement in Iraq. And, being that we live in an era in which power has been consolidated so tightly into one government, we have a rare opportunity to study the nature of this power and aggression, and answer the important questions regarding the psychology of those who are in control of it. What has gone through both the conscious and unconscious mind of aggressors throughout history? (Let me clarify early on that the unconscious mind is actually what most people think of as the subconscious mind). Is it that these people simply don’t care about the atrocities they commit? Or do they actually believe that they will ultimately be remembered as heroes? Take the man whom many view as the most powerful individual in the world these days, Dick Cheney. While he may not be the President of the United States, it’s generally agreed that he’s the most powerful Vice President in the history of the country. And it seems quite clear that he, more then any other individual, is responsible for the initial 2003 invasion of Iraq. We need to understand what brought Cheney to his aggresive point of view.

Before I go any further, let me just state that I’m fully aware that this whole article is based on the assumption that the United States is in fact waging a war of aggression. And while it’s true that I can’t prove this with absolute certainty, I can point to the most powerful tool any thinker has: the facts. To begin with, the idea that the vast oil reserves in Iraq were the main reason for the invasion is very much supported by the contract which the U.S. Department of Defense gave to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root without competition. Halliburton of course is the former employer of Cheney right before he was elected to office. We must also recognize — that a preventative war is unprecedented in modem history. Before the initial invasion, Mr. Cheney made the claim that such an attack was justified because Saddam Hussein was making weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s). “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” stated Bush before the invasion. Not only were no weapons found after the invasion, but according to the October 611’, 2004 report on the matter, created by the Iraq survey group that George W. Bush himself commissioned, Hussein’s potential to create such weapons had only decreased as a result of the sanctions during the 90’s. The other claim Cheney had made was that Hussein was linked with September 11^th. But that too was shown to be false on June 16lh 2004, when 9/11 commission, a body thought by many to be in bed with the bush administration, found no “collaborative relationship” between Saddam and Al Queda. Then there’s the claimed intention of bringing democracy to Iraq. This topic is particularly central to my article but for now let’s just consider the facts. As Naom Chomsky states in his book Imperial Ambitions, “It takes a minute’s thought

to see that there is no possible way that the United States and Britain would permit a sovereign, democratic Iraq...First, the state would have a Shiite majority, so it would probably shore up relations with Iran, which also has a Shiite majority...Second, an independent Iraq would try to recover its historic place as a leading force, maybe the leading force, in the Arab world. What is that going to mean? Iraq will rearm and will probably develop weapons of mass destruction, first as a deterrent and, second, to counter the main regional enemy, Israel”. All of these points are key to understanding what has gone through Dick Cheney’s mind, and as such they will each be scrutinized more thoroughly further down. But for now these facts will be adequate to show that this war is little more then an act of aggression.

When I first began researching Dick Cheney I was sure I was going to find evidence to support my hypothesis, that Cheney was a businessman. He was out to make money by any means necessary up to and including war. But this hypothesis didn’t entirely work. The most notable fact that stood in the way was that Cheney got both his bachelors and masters degree in political science, not economics. Combine this with the fact that Cheney’s career in the private sector didn’t begin until the nineties, and it’s hard to deny that Cheney’s initial interest was politics, not business. This by no means disqualifies Cheney’s connections with Halliburton, or the facts which support the idea that the Bush administration is clearly in bed with various major [ U.S. corporations, but it does show that Cheney’s primary career choice was in government.

Of course being a politician doesn’t disqualify a person from likely having committed injustice. And what’s particularly interesting is upon looking at Mr. Cheney’s record in congress during the eighties, one can see how his interest in politics itself might have actu- ally resulted in the human rights abuses that would come two decades later. During this time, ’ Cheney created a record of voting against expanding a large majority of government funded programs, ranging from education to tougher industry regulations. He reputedly opposed funding the Head Start program, and voted against the Fair Housing Amendments. But there was one government run institution that Mr. Cheney never had a problem supporting or funding: the military. He voted to expand military funding during his time in the House of Representatives, and continuously supported the funding of the Contras in Nicaragua, even after legislation was passed to ban it. This tells us that in the game of international relations Cheney strongly believes that the U.S. must do all that it can to benefit itself, regardless of the consequences to other countries. This is by no means new to the world. For ages, empires have justified acts of aggression arguing that it is for the good of the empire, and that that’s all that matters.

In most cases you will find these empires aren’t just aggressing for the sake of aggression. In each scenario the aggressor had some justification for their actions. Spain felt that they were spreading the good word of Catholicism. The French were on a “civilizing” mission. Nazi Germany was fulfilling the glory of the Arian race. And at the same time, Japan was riotously unifying Asia to fight against the communists. Justification is a powerful defense mechanism, which allows people to feel good about themselves even when they’re doing wrong. And, it doesn’t take a lot of thought to figure out what Dick Cheney’s ideological justification as for invading Iraq. It’s the same justification that this country has used for over a century, spanning back to the days of Manifest Destiny during the 19“ century: freedom and democracy.

The question then becomes, does Cheney believe his own rhetoric? To answer this we must begin at the basic principle of utility that all human beings share. Every person on the face of the earth has the ultimate goal of maximizing pleasure, and minimizing pain. On top of the personal desire for utility, it would seem that every one has at least the potential to experience the pain and joy of others, depending on how close to home the people or experiences may hit. For example, a child’s pain, if intense enough, has the potential to cause the child’s mother to break down in tears. The mother would in turn understand the suffering of all mothers in a similar situation. In the case of Cheney and his war, this means that he would have a lot more compassion, if he himself had ever been engaged in military combat because then he would understand on a personal level what war entails. But Cheney was deferred from the draft five times during the Vietnam War, and as a result he has never personally experienced war through his own five senses. Thus, when planning the war in Iraq, the idea remained for him only an abstract one. It was a game.

The second aspect of understanding whether or not Cheney believes his own rhetoric re vol ves around del ving into the moral issue of war and aggression. But what is a moral? Where do morals come from? We must consider all the different morals there are in societies throughout the world. For example many countries in the world today don’t feel it morally justified for a state to attack another state just for the sake of aggression. But this wasn’t always the case. The Viking culture for example saw war as an honorable part of life. If Cheney was the leader of such a culture, there would have been nothing morally wrong with him waging war simply because he wanted to. But in our society, war for the sake of warfare is not acceptable (at least in theory). That is to say that if a politician were to advocate attacking a completely harmless country simply because its fun, they would obviously be met with opposition. Because we have an extensive desire to be accepted as part of the group, we all have a tendency to take whatever morals we hear from those around us, and accept them as our own. Cheney is no different. Regardless of whether he understands the suffering of war. Cheney knows the difference between right and wrong (also, at least in theory). And consequently, because the idea of an invasion of Iraq stands on its own as an act of aggression, Cheney, and all neo conservatives for that matter, needed to justify in there own mind why this war was not an act of aggression, so they would not feel as though they were violating there own morals. Of course you could make the claim that Cheney is not like most human beings. And, whether or not he knows the difference between right and wrong, he simply doesn’t care. He’s only out to make money. This is certainly a possibility to. And 1 can’t deny that there is evidence to support this. But as I said at the beginning, I’m not interested in Dick Cheney the individual, I’m interested in the framework of the aggressive mind. This aggressor could be anyone. And considering the numerous aggressors throughout history, it would seem that we could get more out of studying the plural concept then the individual. Just as in science, if we were to only attempt to understand the scenario at hand, and not for all similar scenarios, we would have to repeat the experiment infinitely .many times.

Queen Isabella didn’t choose to brutally colonize the new world; she was ‘obligated’ to save the local population from heathenism. Ironically, the British didn’t choose it either. They were ‘saving’ it from the brutal Spanish. Even Hitler didn’t choose to start World War Two. He was destined for it as the leader of the great Arian race. Justification is a powerful defense mechanism. It allows people to feel righteous about acts that they themselves might otherwise see as morally wrong. So Cheney and other policy makers like him saw no immorality in their actions. Saddam was a threat to the security of the world. Therefore, the United States had no choice but to invade. It doesn’t matter that ultimately the evidence proves that he was not a serious threat. All that information is pushed back down, deep into the unconscious, through another defense mechanism, repression.

The result is that top government officials wanted to believe so badly that Saddam was making weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al Qaeda that they began to see evidence that wasn’t there. This would ultimately extend to the point where evidence was consciously fabricated with the rationalization that it would be proven after the regime change. Of course when all that didn’t pan out, Cheney fell back on the democratic ideals, which he so strongly believes the U.S. stands for. Now however, we are seeing that too is failing as we look at the internal violence that occurs even under the theoretically democratic government.

Like 1 said, Democracy as an ideological justification is nothing new. It dates back to westward expansion and manifest destiny. The funny thing is that after all these years, this idea has taken on a life of its own. After hearing the same concepts for their entire lives, people such as Mr. Cheney enter into a mindset that Democracy is more then just good, it’s infallible. At this point you can see how the logic might go. Democracy is infallible. The United States is a Democracy. Therefore The United States is infallible. Of course, these aren’t conscious ideas, they only exist on an unconscious level. That is to say, Cheney and other neo-cons like him never realize they’re having them. These basic beliefs are rooted so deeply into Cheney’s psyche that for them to be disproved would be devastating to him. So, after over a century and a half, perhaps its not that Cheney wants war and this is the justification for doing wrong, its that the United States’ can do no wrong, and as a result if the U.S. wants war, it can wage war... without remorse.

There is evidence that contradicts this idea, but for Cheney this is filtered out through repression. Repression is defined as the classical defense mechanism, which protects from impulses or ideas that would cause anxiety by preventing them from becoming conscious. In Dick Cheney’s case and in the case of other policy makers who are of the same state of mind as he is, this means never recognizing* the evidence that the United States is in any way flawed. So, never mind the fact that hundreds of thousands have died in bringing democracy to Iraq, or that democracy in Iraq would likely result in policies that clashed with those of the U.S. Even parts of the U.S. government itself which are unjust, such as gerrymandering and corruption, are repressed in the minds of those in power. Its not that these people are intentionally playing down all these things, it’s that they themselves don’t consciously realize that they exist.

Now we have a situation where high ranking officials in the U.S. government unconsciously believe that the United States isjnfallible. But if the United States is this perfect good, this pure entity that cannot make anyone’s life worse, only better, then how could it possibly have enemies. Who would hate pure good? The answer is that in the same way rationalization has led the United States to become delusionally infallable, the enemies of the U.S. has become the ultimate bad. And of course, all evidence to the contrary becomes repressed. Consider the Iran-Contra affair. As I said earlier, even after the atrocities of the Contras come into the public eye, Dick Cheney still supported funding them. How can this be? We must remember that as horrible as the Contras were, the one thing that they were not was communist. Communism of course being the absolute evil that it was in the unconscious mind of Cheney was undoubtedly worse then any other regime that could be in power. So despite the atrocities the Contras committed, they were not communist, and therefore, were an overall improvement in the mind of Dick Cheney.

This might explain why so many Bush administration officials wanted to believe so badly that Hussein was making WMD’s and was allied with Al Queda. We must remember that the image of Saddam Hussein as a force of evil in the World first came about during the Gulf War when George Bush senior was president. A lot of the policy makers from that administration are also policy makers now, especially Cheney who was the Secretary of Defense. So being that Saddam was the enemy in this war, it would only seem natural that these officials would come to view him as pure evil. And, just because the war ended, doesn’t mean this point of view did. Of course for many of these people, we also must take into account their prior belief that entering Iraq during the Gulf war would have been a mistake. When asked in an interview on CSPAN in 1994 if the U.S. should have continued into Iraq, Cheney argued that it would NOT have been a good idea, saying that, “it would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq,” and worried that, “If you take down the central government in Iraq, you could easily see pieces of Iraq fly off...It’s a quagmire.”

Cheney argues that this change in view point was the result of 9/11. This is a particularly complicated subject to tackle considering that there are three common viewpoints regarding what happened that day. First there’s the point of view that al Queda was responsible, then there’s the view point that the Bush administration was responsible, and then there’s the point of view that for what ever reason, the bush administration knowingly allowed the attacks to take place, although they did not do it themselves. Between those three possibilities and how each one may have individually affected Cheney’s view of Saddam Hussein, it becomes incredibly complicated. But, what we can agree on is that the basic principles of power and international relations did not change with 9/11. Therefore, Cheney’s 1994 comments about the invasion being a quagmire remain just as true. As for the claim that Hussein was a threat to U.S. security, we must ask ourselves how each of the possibilities of what happened that day would affect that idea. Of course if the Bush administration was responsible for 9/11, then this means that to Cheney, there was no change in threat at all. As for the other two options the result is ultimately the same considering that they both involve intentions of the United States’ enemies to violently take down the government. If either was the case, it’s completely understandable how top government officials could have come to incorrectly view Saddam Hussein as involved. Not only is he the same pure evil that plagued these people before under the first Bush administration, but he’s also from the same general region of the world. Even educated elites, who consciously know the difference between Saddam’s secular regime, and religious Islamic fundamentalists, may have a tendency to unconsciously group these two together, because they appear to be of the same flock. They’re not consciously racist, but they are unconsciously. Indeed, we are all prone to racial stereo typing, even the most accepting among us. The conclusion we can come to is that 9/11 was an evil act, therefore Saddam Hussein (in the eyes of Cheney) as an evil man, must have been involved. However the idea that Hussein himself was evil, didn’t really change that much.

But for Cheney, there was one other thing that happened in the years between 1994 and 2003: Halliburton. When Cheney first came to Halliburton he promised to be strict about his policy of not doing business with Saddam Hussein. But the mid nineties was a time of financial trouble for the multinational. And, it was during this time that Halliburton’s non U.S. based subsidiaries sold supplies to Hussein (Common Dreams News Center, October 12^th, 2004). These acts were explicitly in violation of U.N imposed sanctions and inadvertently helped Saddam to exploit the Oil for Food program. But even executives at Halliburton, had their own justifications for their actions. The basic idea is that in the same way that Cheney has come to see the U.S. as a pure good so do Neo-liberals see the free market as a pure good, incapable of hurting anyone.

After seeing his company hurt by the trading restrictions imposed on Saddam, Cheney began to change his view point. He still saw Hussein as a man of pure evil, his mortal enemy, and a general threat to freedom and democracy, but he was now coming to see the free market as even more of a pure good. Granted he had spent most of his career around economic conservatives, so to say that he hadn’t already had this belief would be untrue. But Cheney’s work with Halliburton greatly strengthened it. Thus Cheney came to see Halliburton as an innocent bystander, which had been caught in the cross fire between nations. Of course this it self was no unconscious feeling; it was something he openly admitted. As Jason Leopold writes on Common Dream’s website, “Cheney said sanctions against countries like Iraq were hurting corporations such as Halliburton. They make U’.S. businesses ‘the bystander who gets hit when a train wreck occurs,’ Cheney told Petroleum Finance Week.”

The end result is a situation in which Cheney and other Bush administration officials have come of a state of mind that the United States is an inherently infallable entity. And, being that it is this pure good, what’s good for the United States, is inherently good for the world, and conversely what’s bad for the United States is inherently bad for the world. So, what’s bad for the U.S.? Clearly Saddam Hussein is, as he represents that antithesis to U.S. democracy. Ironically however, his oil is good for business. And being that what’s good for business is good for the country, that oil is good for the country, and consequently the rest of the world. In Dick Cheney’s mind, taking it at any and ail cost was a moral obligation.

As I said at the beginning, this article isn’t intended to better understand the nature of Dick Cheney, its intended to better understand the nature of aggression. We constantly tell each other, that those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it. But then why, if we already have a fairly extensive understanding of history do we repeat it? Dick Cheney strongly believes that while aggression has in the past been done for the wrong reason, his is for the right reason. It’s for democracy. Of course, democracy, in its truest form is a good thing. But what Cheney has to remember is that every aggressor that came before him thought the same thing. The idea of democracy was popularized during the enlightenment. This itself was an era of rebellion against another system which aggressed in the name of what it thought was a pure good: Christianity. And even Christianity was created by a man who rebelled against the powers of his time. If we continue this pattern into the future, inevitably there will be an aggressor who will want to aggress in the name of whatever good ideas we are creating today. It’s for this reason that my biggest concern isn’t the empires of the past or even this current empire. It’s the empires of the future. If we don’t act now, there will inevitably be people who want to aggress in the name of whatever good ideas we come up with today. It’s our job to stop them now.

WAR?
Peace and Freedom,
The choice of the wise,
People standing against
Oppression,
Standing for
Justice.

War and Slavery,
The choice of the blind,
People standing against
Workers,
Standing for
Oppression.

Where do you stand?

world news

Depleted Uranium in Iraq

Birth Defects and Cancer Rates Increasing

by Jessica Brown

On Monday, July 23^rd, Nermin Othman, Iraq’s environment minister blamed U.S. use of depleted uranium (DU) during the 2003 Operation Shock and Awe for increases in cancer rates. The nation currently has 140,000 cases of cancer, with over 7,000 new cases each year. She said that “at least 350 sites in Iraq” have been contaminated by DU during bombing.

The World Health Organization (WHO) conducted a study regarding the use of DU, but according to the study’s main author, Dr. Keith Baverstock, “the report was deliberately suppressed”. According to Baverstock, WHO was pressured by the International Atomic Energy Agency to not release the findings. WHO denies this allegation. The study found that “DU particles were likely to be blown around and inhaled by Iraqi civilians for years to come. Once inside a human body, the radioactive particles can trigger the growth of malignant tumors (Chughtai).” Many sources express concern that the U.S. government and the nuclear industry have covered up the ill health effects of depleted uranium.

Depleted uranium is a radioactive waste product of the nuclear industry. The U.S. military uses it because it is a cheap and effective weapon. It has high density and the ability to penetrate armored vehicles. It is also pyrophoric meaning that it ignites spontaneously. The process of making uranium ‘depleted’ involves removing the fissionable isotope Uranium 235 for use in producing fuel for nuclear reactors. According to one source, “The remaining uranium, which is 99.8% uranium 238 is misleadingly called ‘depleted uranium’. While the term depleted implies it isn’t particularly dangerous, in fact, this waste product of the nuclear industry is ‘conveniently’ disposed of by producing deadly weapons (http://www.synergynet. co.uk/sheffield-iraq/aticles/du.htm).” DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

There is substantial evidence that DU is carcinogenic and a teratogen, meaning it causes birth defects. In Basra, Iraq, a region that experienced heavy bombardment of DU munitions, the rates of birth defects has skyrocketed. Between. 1990–2001 there was a 426% increase in malignancies, 366% increase in leukemias and over 699% increase in birth defects in Basra, Iraq. Dr. Alim Yacoub used hospital records and census data to determine rates of cancer and congenital malformations. While there are limitations to this study, it shows an increase in health problems in an area highly exposed to DU during the 1991 Gulf War. In addition, a research team documented birth defects between 1990 and 2000 and found significant increases during this time. They found that between 1990 and 2000, there was a large increase in incidence rate of congenital malformations. In 1990 it was 3.04 birth defects per 1000 births and in 2000 it was 22.19 birth defects perlOOO births (Hindin).

Many claim that these health problems are the direct result of depleted uranium contamination from the Gulf War. There is a regional correlation between DU sites and high incidences of cancer. These studies do not prove that these birth defects are caused by DU, but it appears to be very likely.

There have also been studies done with Gulf veterans exposed to DU. According to a study, “The Association of Birth Defects Children (ABDC) identified Goldenhar’s as apparently occurring in excess among the offspring of male 1991 Gulf War veterans...Goldenhar Syndrome is a variable cluster of eye, ear, face and vertebral malformations, often includes hydrocephalus.” Hydrocephalus usually manifests itself as an abnormally large head. A follow up study on the ABDC showed that “Goldenhar Syndrome was three fold higher among the 34,000+ offspring of deployed veterans (14.7/100,000) than among the * the 41,000+ offspring of non-deployed veterans (4.8/100,000).”

There have been few studies on the developmental toxicity of uranium. The Depleted Uranium Review could only find two studies to discuss, and they were both experiments done on mice. The studies were conducted by J.L Domingo in 2001 and 2003. “Dose-related fetal toxicity was observed, in the form of reduced fetal body weights and lengths as well as increased abnormalities. At high doses, developmental effects such as reduced bone formation and skeletal variations were also observed. Uranium can cross the placental barrier and enter fetal tissue, and in general uranium exposed litters have earlier neonatal deaths and the survivors grow slower compared to a control group (38–39, DU Review).” The report concludes that “despite the absence of large-scale epidemiological data, there is very good reason to believe that the contamination of modem battlefields with depleted uranium weapons poses a health threat to those living and working in the vicinity (40, DU Review).”

Poisoning can occur via inhalation, ingestion and or contact with fragments or shrapnel. DU can also contaminate food and water sources. It is more mobile in basic soils and “soils that are high in organic matter are observed to possess a higher affinity for uranium, thus causing uranium to be released into the groundwater and plant roots.” Plants can also absorb DU through their roots or stomata. DU is a proven carcinogen when ingested internally. As it decays, it emits alpha particles that can cause DNA damage to nearby cells (29, DU Review).

Sources:

All images from

http://sundaymag.ca/index.php?id=64

Blackwater USA

Iraqi government says contractors killed seventeen civilians

by Jessica Brown

On Monday, September 17*, the Iraqi government revoked the private military contractor Blackwater USA’s license and demanded that all contractors leave the country. Interior Ministry spokesperson Abdul -Karium Khalaf accused Blackwater USA contractors of opening fire in a neighborhood in western Baghdad. The firing resulted in the deaths of seventeen civilians and the wounding of others. The shooting was in response to a car bomb attack against a State Department convoy. Abdul-Karium Khalaf said “we have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory. We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities.” In response, the U.S. temporarily suspended land travel for all contractors and U.S. diplomats.

Blackwater USA is a controversial private military contracting service that has received at least $505 million in contracts from the U.S. government since 2000. Another source says that the U.S. State Department has paid Blackwater over $750 million since 2000. With this money, it “has been able to build the largest base for a private military in the world, acquire a fleet of 20 aircrafts (including helicopter gunships, a Boeing 767, and even a zeppelin), develop its own armored vehicle called the Grizzly, and build up a force of...soldiers (Zlufnick).” It has contracts in Afghanistan, Iraq and post-Katrina New Orleans.

Blackwater USA contractors have been accused of being “trigger-happy”. In 2004 it was Blackwater employees that were killed and had their charred bodies hung from a bridge. There are at least 27 other private security companies working in Iraq. According to its website, Blackwater provides “a spectrum of support to military, government agencies, law enforcement and civilian entities in training, targets and range operations as a solution provider.”

Blackwater USA was founded in 1997 in Moyock, North Carolina by Eric Prince. Prince is a right-wing fundamentalist Christian and former Navy Seal. He has funded republican campaigns, and has also given money to green party campaigns to help defeat democrats. He interned in the white house under George W. Bush, but “complained that it wasn’t conservative enough on gay issues, the budget, the environment (Scahill).”

Many of these contractors have immunity from Iraqi law and are held under little or no legal jurisdiction from US or international law including the Geneva Conventions. Blackwater has repeatedly refused to hand over documents to Congress because it says that they are classified. It trains over 40,000 people a year. There are between 20,000 and 100,000 armed security contractors in Iraq, but no official figures exist.

There is criticism that these contractors are mercenaries, which are illegal during war. A mercenary is a person who engages in armed conflict in a war in order to acquire profit. Mercenaries receive significantly higher pay than soldiers. According to the Geneva Conventions, “A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.” Blackwater employees are paid more than U.S. soldiers. Some of its employees have been paid $365,000 per year, as opposed to the $36,000 average salary of a US soldier.

Blackwater USA came to New Orleans immediately following hurricane Katrina. They were heavily armed. Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional rights had this to say about Blackwater USA: “This vigilantism demonstrates the utter breakdown of the government...These private security forces have behaved brutally, with impunity, in Iraq. To have them now on the streets of New Orleans is frightening and possibly illegal.”

In response to the problems in Iraq, Condoleezza Rice has ordered that video cameras be installed in every Blackwater vehicle and federal agents escort contractors accompaning diplomatic convoys. Other security measures involve recording radio traffic and deploying Diplomatic Security agents to escort contractors. The FBI is investigating the incident but has not found any conclusive findings yet. In addition. the house has passed a bill that will subject all private government contractors in Iraq to U.S. criminal law. The Bush administration and congressional Republicans want to redraft the bill because it could lead to “unintended consequences”. The sponsor of the bill. Representative David Price, called these objections unfounded and said they “should infuriate anyone who believes in the rule of law.”

Sources:

Australia

On October 12, just days before elections, Prime Minister John Howard attempted to reconcile his old discriminatory position against Aboriginal Australians by announcing, “My goal is to see a new Statement of Reconciliation incorporated into the preamble of the Australian Constitution. If elected, I would commit immediately to working in consultation with indigenous leaders and others on this task.” This statement was received with skepticism from most groups working towards tribal and state amends. Although the Prime Minister is now recognizing “the importance of symbolism” for bridging the divide he is sticking to his ethnocentric guns on the government not apologizing for past injustices. A public apology is ultimately crucial for Aboriginals still culturally devastated x by the impacts of the stolen generation.

Source: indymedia

Burma

The recent protests in Burma started on August 19^th due to a massive raise in fuel prices; prices of petrol and diesel were almost doubled, and that of cooking gas increased five-fold without warning. The junta (essentially an illegitimate military government headed by .the three highest ranking generals) refused to acknowledge the victory of the National League for Democracy in the general election of 1990, and the NLD’s head, Aung San Suu Kyi, was not allowed to take power. General Than Shwe, who has been head of state since 1992, heads the military government; Generals Maung Aye and Soe Win are the two other pieces of the three-part government. The junta’s usage of violence is notorious for the crackdown on similar protests of 1988 that ended with the death of more than 3,000 protesters; under their rule Burma has become the “most corrupt government in the world”, according to Transparency International (tied with Somalia). The peaceful protests were met with quick arrests, with about 200 protesters detained on August 19Ih. Tension began to rise when many Buddhist monks joined after the military refused to apologize for beating monks in a protest on September 5^th. Even with threats of violence protests continued to occur almost daily. On September 7^th Burmese monks surrounded the largest monastery in the provincial town Pakokku, trapping about 20 officials inside. Before the situation was defused, the monks burned four of the official’s cars. Although the violence had seemed to have died down with the stopping of the protest, and the arrival of the UN’s envoy, on the 4^th of October reports of further brutality emerged. The crackdown on violence escalated quickly with first reports declaring 9 dead and 11 injured. Recent reports stand at 13 dead. A Japanese journalist, Kenji Nagai, was one of the causalities, and was shown in images to have been shot at point blank range. The junta went to lengths to shut down all Internet and cell phone communications (with the last lines to Thailand cut on October 9lh, and all embassy phones suddenly becoming unreachable), insuring that little first hand information can be released. The UN special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, arrived in Burma on the 29“’ of September however observers were skeptical of any results due to the fact that last year the junta promised progress to Gambari that never occurred. After being stalled for a day, San Thwe promised to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi on the precondition that she renounce her opposition to the junta; she refused these terms. An estimated 6,000 protestors were arrested, with only 2,000 confirmed by the junta. It has been confirmed that at least one prisoner, 42-year old activist Win Shwe, has died during interrogation. A recently released monk told reporters that guards demand information on leaders of the protests and the NLD; if they refuse to talk they are beaten, and denied toilets and medical treatment; they, are fed barely cooked rice. On October 12lh China stopped blocking a UN condemnation of the violent tactics of the Burmese government, and Ibrahim Gambari is set to return. Any real change would require that China, Thailand, and India (the biggest backers of the regime) abandon their financial and military support for the government.

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Eritrea

In October 2007, Girma Woldegiorgis, President of Ethiopia, continued trying to get money from Ethiopia’s parliament in order to build up military forces in preparation for another possible war with Eritrea, its neighboring country. Eritrea, which is twenty times smaller than Ethiopia in population, denies that it’s trying to destabilize Ethiopia. From 1998 to 2000, these two countries fought a war over the specific placement of the border that divides them. Almost 100,000 people were killed during this war. As a result, the border came under the control of the United Nations Mission to act as a medium between the arguing countries.

In July 2007, Eritrea was accused by the United States of supplying weapons to the Somali insurgent group Shabab, who has been tied to al Queda. The United States has more recently threatened to put Eritrea on “the list” of countries sponsoring terrorism.

China

On October 12^th the Chinese government gave notice that it would force four million residents living near the Three-Gorges dam to relocate. Under Chongqing’s 2007–20 rural and urban development plan, more than 4 million people currently living close to the dam’s reservoir will be tolled to resettle in the suburbs of the city, the Sina website reported. This move will take place over the next 10 to 15 years. The Chongqing municipality vice-mayor, Yu Yuanmu, said the move was necessary to protect the ecology of the giant reservoir formed by the dam, according to the Xinhua news agency, “On one hand, the reservoir area has a vulnerable environment, and the natural conditions make large scale urbanization or serious overpopulation impossible here.” No details were given, but the move will add to the population pressures in Chongqing, which is already one of China’s fastest growing cities, and raise new questions about the wisdom of building the Three Gorges Dam. The barrier was designed to control floods on the Yangtze and to reduce China’s dependence on power driven by coal. More than 1.2 million people have already been forced to leave the area because of the world’s biggest hydroelectric project. Initially hailed as an engineering triumph, officials warned last month that the dam could cause an “environmental catastrophe” unless remedial measures were taken. Landslides and pollution were among the “hidden dangers” that have come to light since the barrier’s completion. Because the water flow has been slowed, environmentalists warn the reservoir could stagnate as it fills with human and industrial waste from heavily populated riverside communities.

Darfur

The Sudan Liberation Army claims that the Sudanese army raided the town of Muhajiriya, killing at least 40 civilians. The attack was carried out by either Sudanese aircraft or artillery, along with the military’s allied janjaweed militia. Residents reportedly fled to neighboring villages and the surrounding areas, leaving the town, which had a population estimated at 20,000 inhabitants, completely deserted. Rebels say another 80 people are missing and that the victims look like they have been executed. The African Union has confirmed that an attack took place. On September 29^th, the AU base in Haskanita was attacked and destroyed, killing 10 peacekeepers. A rebel group was suspected of being behind the attack. In the following days, while the government controlled Haskanita, the former rebel-held town was burned to the ground; SLA humanitarian coordinator Suleiman Jamous said 105 people died, and 7,000 residents have fled. The janjaweed is reported to have pulled five sheiks from a mosque and executed them. Jamous also said militias mobilized by the janjaweed along with a small number of army soldiers were still burning villages around Muhajiriya on October 3^rd. “The northern area of North Darfur is under the control of armed opposition groups and it looks as though the Sudan Armed Forces want to attack this area before peace talks scheduled to take place in Libya before the end of the month,” said Tawanda Hondora, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Africa program. Most of those who understand the complex situation believe that the recent rise in attacks is a way for the Sudanese government to gain more bargaining material for the October 27^th A.U. — U.N. meetings in Tripoli.

Sources: AP, AFP, Reuters

Colombia

A mine collapse in Colombia killed 21 workers and injured 18. Initial reports said there were as many as 50 trapped, and rescue workers are still searching for the last 10. Residents began digging when there were reports that gold had been found, causing a landside that collapsed the mine. Such collapses are a common occurrence in Colombia (at least three other mines have collapsed this year alone), where poverty forces many to attempt such dangerous activities in hopes of supporting a family. With little government presence or oversight makeshift mines dot the Colomubian landscape with frequent tragedies such as this.

Source: Al Jazeera

Panama City, Florida

A verdict was made on the case of the beating death of Martin Lee Anderson on October 13lh, acquitting the 7 guards and a single nurse. Anderson was brutally attacked when the guards employed techniques that, “were used for a purpose,” when they believed he was feigning illness. These actions included kicking Anderson while he lay on the ground, and dragging him around the military-style camp’s exercise yard and forcing him to inhale ammonia capsules in what they said was an attempt to revive him; the nurse stood by watching. The defendants faced up to 30 years in prison had they been convicted of aggravated manslaughter of a child. The jury also decided against convicting them of lesser charges, including child neglect and culpable negligence. Defense attorneys argued that the guards properly handled what they thought was a juvenile offender faking illness to avoid exercising on his first day in the camp. Anderson was brought there for violating probation for stealing his grandmother’s car and trespassing at a school. An initial autopsy by Dr. Charles Siebert, the medical examiner for Bay County, found Anderson died of natural causes from sickle cell trait. There were accusations of a cover-up; a second autopsy was ordered and another doctor concluded that the guards suffocated Anderson through their repeated use of ammonia capsules and by covering his mouth. The case is now under review by the Justice Department; the defense believes a civil-rights case to be unlikely.

Source: Florida Today

Israel/Palestine

On October 10lh, the same day that Mahmoud Abbas demanded that Israel return 2,400 square miles of land in West Bank Palestinians, the Israeli army ordered the occupation of 168 hectares of land. Adam Keller of the Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, said the confiscation of land belong- — ing to the villages of Abu Dis, Arab al-Sawahra, Nebi Musa and Talhin Alhamar would “rob many villagers of their sole livelihood,” but would also, “facilitate the big annexation plan known as E-l, which is aimed at linking the settlement of Ma’aleh Adummim with Jerusalem and cutting the West Bank in two.” He said the confiscations were aimed at constructing a “Palestinian bypass road” that would “push the Palestinian traffic between Bethlehem and Ramallah deep into the desert and effectively bar them from the central part of the West Bank”. The E-l area has been marked out on Israeli government maps for years but there has been little large-scale development; the only building to be completed is the proposed headquarters of the Israeli police in the West Bank. The plan for the area envisages 3,500 housing units and dozens of businesses that have yet to be started, although infrastructure such as roads and drainage is being constructed. These events further raise the tension on the US-sponsored meeting between Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, in Annapolis, Maryland, that is supposed to happen before November. “They want to push everything as far as possible before the November meeting because that will be seen as the starting point for everything,” Jeff Halper, a Israeli geographer, said, “anything done before that meeting will be set in stone. In general this has to be seen as part of a timeline in which Israel wants to get all its development of the West Bank finished before Bush leaves office.” Israel says that the security barrier, which is in parts a high concrete wall and in other parts a steel fence with wide ditches, is vital for ensuring security in Israel. However, a PLO statement said that the main aim of the barrier was “to consolidate Israeli control over the most critical parts of the occupied West Bank, including all of Palestinian East Jerusalem and vital land and water resources, all of which severely undercuts prospects for establishing a viable, independent Palestinian state.”

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

feature

Protect our Leaders, Defend our People!

by Rashid Johnson

On January 23, 2007, nine men were charged in what is being called a campaign of “chaos and terror” that saw at least three police killed from 1968 to 1973. Emphasis is being placed on official claims that most of these men were members of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) when the police killings occurred. Eight of them were charged with the August 29,1971 shotgun slaying of San Francisco police sergeant, John Young.

Is it coincidence that the killings of a handful of police over 30 years ago have suddenly become a major concern to the Establishment? Whereas, typical of this very same Establishment is a blatant disinterest in pursuing and prosecuting the legions of police (state and federal) who’ve wantonly murdered multitudes of New Afrikans across Amerika from that time period till today. Indeed, during those same years of targeted BLA activities (1968–1973), the U.S. government, in collaboration with local ‘law enforcement’ agencies, was involved in the murders of prominent Black political leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), Fred Hampton and Mark Clark (1969), George Jackson (1971), and others. In each of these cases, the government’s role in orchestrating, executing and covering up these assassinations has been exposed with unimpeachable proof. I’ll elaborate later.

In fact it was in response to this climate of raw fear, violence and murder of Blacks, that the BLA arose as a defensive arm of the New Afrikan communities. The BLA warriors had summed up from our historical experiences at the hands of white slave patrols, vigilantes, lynch mobs and police that the official ‘enforcers’ of the law could not be looked to to protect Black lives. Instead, they were, for us, a principal source of violence, death and terror. Many of the BLA’s members were victims of such official violence and assassination attempts, often carried out as part of government efforts to destroy the Black Panther Party (BPP), which arose in 1966 to serve poor, urban, Black communities in areas of survival and basic needs that the Establishment could not and would not.

During that era, there was little “sugar-coating” of the raw terror suffered by communities of color living under police occupation, and especially prominent was the open police violence displayed against leading political organizations like the Black Panther Party (BPP), who struggled to serve these communities. John Gerassi, a white journalist and author who lived in that era, witnessed this reality with his own eyes:

(Repression in the United States is worse than ever before and much, much harsher than the world—or most Americans, for that matter—is aware or told. In New Mexico, for example, the Alianza, led by Reies Tijerina, has been hounded relentlessly since 1966; its offices have been dynamited (by policemen at that), its leaders shot, its members jailed on such flagrantly outrageous charges that few Americans would believe—even today—the strictly factual story. At the time of writing, Tijerina himself was locked up for years and his Alianza was flagging. As for the Blacks, their repression is not less brutal, just more widespread. The whole primary and secondary leadership of the Black Panther Party has been jailed on obvious frame-ups. They have been beaten, tortured and murdered. Twice in Oakland, I saw with my own eyes, policemen in official cars zoom by a group of Panthers talking peacefully on a street and open fire at them. Three times I witnessed policemen arrest Panthers, handcuff them, and then pistol-whip them. In over a dozen cases, after seeing Panthers arrested, I have gone to see them in jail and found them bloodied from having “fallen down the stairs” or from having “assaulted a policeman.” And the whole world knows—for this time it was reported in the press—that on-duty Chicago policemen murdered Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in their sleep. By the end of 1969, not a single policeman had been brought to justice for these acts of violence. On the other hand, all of white America’s law enforcement agents, including federal marshals and the FBI, have gone out of their way—and, often, out of their jurisdiction—to arrest Panthers, without having warrants. Federal marshals have even refused to honor a court order not to remove Chairman Bobby Seale from California (which, legally, made the marshals kidnappers). By 1970, twenty-eight Black Panthers had been murdered by the police, some beaten to death after arrest (Charles Cox in Chicago), some in unprovoked police assaults, (seventeen-year-old Bobby Hutton in Oakland, Hampton and Clark in Chicago), most in front of scores of witnesses, who could never testify, as the policemen were never charged. It is little wonder, then, that the Browns and Blacks consider themselves colonized and imperialized, part of the same dominated world as Latin Americans, the Vietnamese, and the Congolese.

-John Gerassi, The Coming of the New International (World Publishing Co. 1971)

The BPP’s deadly experiences were witnessed by the New Affikan communities,- and reported first hand by the Party itself. These experiences served to solidify the communities, raise the consciousness of Black people, and expose the true function of the police as violent oppressors of the poor and protectors of the wealthy ruling class. In the Harris Survey Yearbook of Public Opinion (1970), it was found that 66% of Blacks took pride in the BPP and its strong example in supporting Blacks’ basic rights and needs. But more telling is that 86% of Blacks in that survey answered “yes” to the question: “Even if you disagree with the views of the Panthers, has the violence against them led you to believe that Black people must stand together to protect themselves?” So there was an overwhelming consensus in the Black communities that Blacks must unite to resist violent police oppression. It was during the very same year that the Harris Survey was taken, that many of the most trusted and committed BPP members were pushed out of the Party and went underground to join the BLA.

Every honest witness to and participant of that period acknowledges that the BLA was forced into existence in response to the brutal police murders and attacks on Black political organizations, leaders, and everyday people. But today, after decades of the corporate entertainment media’s romanticizing the roles of police, the image of these occupying forces has been given something of a face-lift to all except the youth of urban communities of color, who still see the same oppressive face of policemen as did our communities of the 1960’s and 70’s. As Comrade Sundiata Acoli has pointed out, this ongoing media effort to clean up the police image was a product of the BPP’s exposing to New Afrikans across Amerika the real face of our occupiers:

One singular indication, although there are others, of the effectiveness of BPP propaganda techniques is that even today, over a decade later, a large part of the programs shown on TV are still ‘police stories’ and many of the roles available to Black actors are limited to police roles. A lot of this has to do with the overall process of still trying to rehabilitate the image of police from its devastating exposure during the Panthers era, and to prevent the true role of the police in this society from being exposed again.

• Sundiata Acoli, A Brief History of the Black Panther Party and its Place in the Black Liberation Movement

But let me return to my original question, whether the recent charges against those nine men are coincidence. I think not. First, let’s consider the timing, which is interesting.

Only once a year is there an official commemoration of any Black personality in Amerika. That would be the third Monday in Januray. Martin Luther King’s birthday (his actual birthday is January 15). Those charges were issued one week after the King holiday. Then, there’s only one time of year that Black history is even acknowledged in Amerika—although not ‘officially’ recognized. That would be Black History Month, which runs through February, the shortest month of each year. The charges were issued a week before the beginning of Black History Month. Hmmm...

In the context of Black History Month, no honest account of Amerika can avoid the fact that ours has been a history of continued suffering and resistance. And the Amerikan Establishment has been both at the root of our suffering and a fierce opponent of our resistance. The latter is demonstrated in its trumping up charges nearly 40 years old to vilify the BLA and its symbol of resistance against brutal national oppression of New Afrikans. This is political persecution plain and simple.

And what of Martin Luther King? Our brotha who was also murdered by government forces, the very same government that was venomously opposed to making his birthday a national holiday. These facts are now beyond dispute, although the mainstream media refuses to report them. Like the BPP. King was a target of the vicious government covert action program called COINTELPRO (the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program). This program, as described in gn internal FBI memorandum dated August 25, 1967, was calculated:

...to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder.

The pernicious background of such groups, their duplicity, and such publicity will have a neutralizing effect. Efforts of the various groups to consolidate their forces or to recruit new or youthful adherents must be frustrated. No opportunity should be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques the organizational and personal conflicts of the leadership of the groups and where possible an effort should be made to capitalize upon existing conflicts between competing black nationalist organizations. When an opportunity is apparent to disrupt or neutralize black nationalist, hate-type organizations through the cooperation of established local news media contacts or through such contact with sources available to the Seat of Government, in every instance careful attention must be given to the proposal to insure the targeted group is disrupted, ridiculed, or discredited through the publicity and not merely publicized.

Intensified attention under this program should be afforded to the activities of such groups as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Revolutionary Action Movement, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, Congress of Racial Equality, and the Nation of Islam. Particular emphasis should be given to extremists who direct the activities and policies of revolutionary or militant groups such as Stokley Carmichael, H. “Rap” Brown, Elijah Muhammad, and Maxwell Stanford.

Another internal FBI memorandum dated March 9, 1968, made clear the Bureau’s meaning and intentions in proposing to “neutralize” those who promoted fundamental changes in the living conditions of the poor and oppressed nationalities. It urged that, “the Negro youths and moderates must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teaching, they will be dead revolutionaries.”

Before his assassination, King was a major target of subversion at the hands of the FBI and other US intelligence agencies, including Military Intelligence Groups. FBI memoranda show orders given to “neutralize”

King as late as one month before his death. A lengthy discussion of some of the many illegal actions against King can be found in the Church Committee’s Congressional Report of 1976, entitled Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Books II and III, especially Book III, pp. 79–184. The report points out that:

[T]he “neutralization” program continued until Dr. King’s death. As late as March 1968, FBI agents were being instructed to neutralize Dr. King because he might become a “messiah” who could “unify, and electrify the militant black nationalist movement, “if he were to abandon his supposed ’obedience’ to ‘white liberal doctrines’ (nonviolence) and embrace black nationalism.” Steps were taken to subvert the “Poor People’s Campaign” which. Dr. King was planning to lead in the spring of 1968. Even after King’s death, agents in the field were proposing methods for harassing his widow, and Bureau officials were trying to prevent his birthday from becoming a national holiday.

King was ideed questioning his earlier assumptions and moving towards a more radical perspective:

By 1964, King was not only firmly established as a preeminent civil rights leader, but was beginning to show signs of pursuing a more fundamental structural agenda of social change. Correspondingly...the [FBI]’s intent had crystallized into an unvarnished intervention into the domestic political process, with the goal of bringing about King’s replacement with someone “acceptable” to the FBI.

• Ward Churchill, et al., The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Dissent in the United States (Boston; South End, 1990), p. 97

Military surveillance of King began far earlier than the FBI operations against him:

The government’s interest in Dr. King went considerably beyond “snooping,” however, to constitute one of the most prolonged surveillances of any family in American history. In the early years of the ,20“| century, Lieut. Col. Ralph Van Deman created an Army Intelligence network targeting four prime foes: the Industrial Workers of the World, opponents of the draft, Socialists and “Negro unrest.” ...Van Deman was much preoccupied with the role of black churches as possible centers of sedition.

By the end of 1917, the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division had opened a file on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s maternal grandfather, the Rev. A.D. Williams, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church and first president of the Atlanta NAACP. King’s father, Martin Sr., William’s successor at Ebenezer Baptist, also entered the army files. Martin Jr. first shows up in these files, (kept by the 111“’ Military Intelligence Group at Fort McPherson in Atlanta), in 1947, when he attended Dorothy Lilley’s Intercollegiate school; the army suspected Lilley of having ties to the Communist Party.

Army intelligence officers became convinced of Martin Luther King Jr.’s own Communist ties when he spoke in 1950 at the 25,h anniversary of the integrated Highlander Folk School in Monteagle. Tennessee. Ten years earlier, an army intelligence officer had reported to his superiors that the Highlander school was teaching a course of instruction to develop Negro organizers in the Southern cotton states.

By 1963, so Tennessee journalist Stephen Tompkins reported in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, U-2 planes were photographing disturbances in Birmingham, Alabama, capping a multilayered spy system that by 1968 included 304 intelligence offices across the country, “subversive national security dossiers” on 80,731 Americans, plus 19 million personal dossiers lodged at the Defense Department’s Central Index of Investigations.

A more sinister thread derives from the anger and fear with which the army high command greeted King’s denunciation of the Vietnam War at Riverside Church in 1967. Army spies recorded Stokley Carmichael telling King, “the man don’t care you call ghettoes concentration camps, but when you tell him his war machine is nothing but hired killers you got trouble.”

After the 1967 Detroit riots, 496 black men under arrest were interviewed by agents of the army’s psychological operations group, dressed as civilians. It turned out King was by far the most popular black leader. That same year Maj. Gen William Yarborough, assistant chief of staff for intelligence, observing the great antiwar march on Washington from the roof of the Pentagon, concluded that the empire was coming apart at the seams. There were, Yarborough reckoned, too few reliable troops to fight in Vietnam and hold the line at home.

In response, the army increased its surveillance of King. Green Berets and other Special Forces veterans from Vietnam began making street maps and identifying landing zones and potential sniper sites in major US cities. The Ku Klux Klan was recruited by the 20“’ Special Forces Group, headquartered in Alabama as a subsidiary intelligence network. The army began offering 30.06 sniper rifles to police departments, including that of Memphis.

In his fine investigation, Tompkins detailed the increasing hysteria of Army Intelligence chiefs over the threat they considered King to pose to national security. The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover was similarly obsessed, and King was dogged by spy units through early 1967. A Green Beret special unit was operating in Memphis on the day he was shot. He died from a bullet from a 30.06 rifle purchased in a Memphis store, a murder for which James Earl Ray was given a 99-year sentence in a Tennessee prison. A court-ordered test of James Earl Ray’s rifle raised questions whether it in fact had fired the bullet that killed King.

• Alexander Cockburn et al.. Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press (Versco, NY 1999)

But more revealing of the government’s role in King’s murder are the findings of attorney William F. Pepper, based on his 25-year extensive investigation of King’s death and the government cover-ups that followed. His findings and the results of a wrongful death lawsuit he filed and won in 1999 on behalf of the King family concerning Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination are exhaustively reported in his 2003 book An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. King’s wife, the late Coretta Scott King, had this to say about Pepper’s book:

For a quarter of a century, Bill Pepper conducted an independent investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. He opened his files to our family, encouraged us to speak with the witnesses and represented our family in the civil trial against the conspirators. The jury affirmed his findings, providing our family with a long-sought sense of closure and peace, which had been denied by official disinformation and coverups. Now the findings of his exhaustive investigation and additional revelations from the trial are presented in the pages of this important book. We recommend it highly to everyone who seeks the truth about Dr. King’s assassination.

From the jacket of the book comes this summary of its contents:

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was in Memphis supporting a worker’s strike. By the end of the day, top-level army snipers were in position to knock him out if ordered. Two military officers were in place on the roof of a fire station near the Lorraine Motel, to photograph the events. Two black firemen had been ordered not to report to duty that day and a black Memphis Police Department detective on surveillance duty in the fire station was physically removed from his post and taken home. Dr. King’s room at the motel was changed from a secluded, ground-floor room to number 306 on the balcony. Lloyd Jowers, owner of Jim’s Grill, which backed onto the motel from the other side of the street had already received $100,000 in cash for his agreement to participate in the assassination. He was to go out into the brush area behind the grill with the shooter and take possession of the gun immediately after the fatal shot was fired. When the dust settled, King had been hit, and a clean-up procedure was immediately set in motion. James Earl Ray was effectively framed, the snipers dispersed, and witnesses who could not be controlled were killed, and the crime scene was destroyed.

William Pepper, attorney and friend of Dr. King and the King family, became convinced after years of investigation that not only was Ray not the shooter, but that King had been targeted as part of a larger conspiracy to stop the anti-war movement, and to prevent King from gaining momentum in his promising Poor People’s Campaign. Ten years into his investigation, in 1988, Pepper agreed to represent Ray. While he was never able to successfully appeal the sentence before Ray’s death, he was able to build an airtight case against the real perpetrators. In 1999, Lloyd Jowers and co-conspirators were brought to trial in a wrongful death civil action suit on behalf of the King family. Seventy witnesses set out the details of a conspiracy in a plot to murder King that involved J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Richard Helms and the CIA, the military, the local Memphis police, and organized crime figures from New Orleans and Memphis. The evidence was unimpeachable. The jury took an hour to find for the King family. But the silence following these shocking revelations was deafening. Like the pattern during all the investigations of the assassination throughout the years, no major media outlet would cover the story. It was effectively buried.

Until now, the details, evidence, and personalities of all these nefarious characters have gone unreported. In An Act of State, you finally have the truth before you—how the United States government effectively shut down one of the most galvanizing movements for social change by stopping its leader dead in his tracks.

The very government that is concerned today with prosecuting the killings of a few anonymous policemen is the same one that continues to effectively whitewash its own role in the assassination of one of Amerika’s most well known Black political and religious leaders, and whose memory it pretends to respect and promote. But the sad irony and bitter contradiction in the entire King affair is toward the end of his life, King acknowledged that, “the greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my own government.” Yet, while denouncing Black self-defense such as that symbolized by the efforts of the BLA, he looked to the very same violent government—indeed the very government that killed him—to defend him against its own violence. So, no, it is no coincidence that just as New Afrikans are commemorating and remembering the birthday of this slain Black civil rights leader and our rich history of struggle and resistance against institutionalized oppression, that the government has instituted show trial proceedings to vilify and persecute the example of New Afrikans who took courage in hand and rose to the challenge of defending us against the “greatest purveyor of violence” against people of color.

And what about the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in 1969? Hampton, the charismatic chairman of the Illinois chapter of the BPP and Mark Clark, Defense Captain of the Peoria Chapter of the BPP, were both assassinated on December 4, 1969 by Chicago police in cooperation with the FBI. Both Comrades Hampton and Clark had been drugged by FBI agent provocatuer and informant William O’Neal and were, as a result, asleep in bed when police shot them at point blank range. Both Illinois state Attorney General Edward Hanrahan and David Goth, the cop who led the raid, were exposed as having given false statements to the media about the raid. A civil suit was filed and won on behalf of the Hampton and Clark families, but none of the involved federal agents and police were ever punished. Yet, today the FBI is heading a witch-hunt against former BLA members.

And what about Comrade George L. Jackson, murdered by San Quentin prison guards in August 1971, which triggered prison uprisings around the country culminating in the Attica rebellion? The facts of the government plot to kill him are set out in the investigative study by Eric Mann in Comrade George: An Investigation into the Official Story of His Assassination (1972). Again no prosecutions are being pursued.

Then there’s the tragedy of the MOVE family, whose Philadelphia, PA headquarters was bombed on May 13,1985 by police, who also fired over 10,000 rounds into the MOVE house. As a result, six adults and five children were murdered. Those who attempted to flee the fire were shot at and only two MOVE members escaped the blaze. Again no police were charged or convicted, however, Ramona Africa, the only adult who survived the fire, was charged and convicted of riot and conspiracy, and was imprisoned for seven years. Upon her release she filed and won a lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia. But no amount of money recovered from litigation can replace the lives of our slain leaders and comrades.

The pattern is unmistakable...

It has always been the case in Amerika, (since racial divisions were first created in the 1600’s by the wealthy ruling class to divide poor white against poor Black, and to empower the whites to violently repress Blacks and other peoples of color), that the lives of poor Blacks have no value in the eyes of those who hold power. From the white slave patrols, to the Klan, to the modem police and even military; deadly violence against the dark faces at by the hands of the armed thugs of the ruling class is part and parcel of the U.S. social contract. However, counter-violence against the same forces in defense of the lives of their Black victims is unacceptable. Just as the routine rape of Black wimyn by white men in the South throughout U.S. history was the expected norm, against which Blacks were forbidden to resist. It took a nationwide campaign to win the acquittal of Joann Little who was charged with murder, for killing a white Richmond, VA sheriff deputy in August 1975., who entered her jail cell and attempted to rape her at knife point.

This completely lopsided power dynamic and the resultant police violence and injustice against Black life, provoked most every major urban Black uprising in Amerika. Many of the major revolts of 1964 through 1958 were provoked by incidents of police violence against or murders of Blacks. Major uprisings followed the assassinations of Dr. King and Malcolm X.

(Malcolm X was another of our leaders murdered with government complicity and even now the government refuses to release most of its over 50,000 pages of intelligence files on Malcolm. The 1991 uprisings in Los Angeles and other cities were incited by the videotaped brutal beatings of Black motorist Rodney King by police. The 2002 uprising in Benton Harbor, Michigan was triggered by the police killing of Black motorcyclist Terrance Shorn. The 2005 uprising in Toledo, Ohio was triggered by the earlier murder of a Black man by police electrocuting him nine times with a taser and the subsequent violent protection by police of a Nazi demonstration, and so on. The cycle repeats, the power imbalance continues, and Black self-defense is vilified and criminalized.

Many of us choose to ignore or forget, some of us simply don’t know and most have been wooed by shows like Cops, CSI, America’s Most Wanted, and so on, into denying the real role that the political police have played in and against the New Afrikan nation in Amerika. They have had a hand in persecuting all of our genuine leaders and in the murders of each one who’s died a violent death; they’ve created and continue the infrastructural deterioration and internal implosion of our communities with narcotics infestations, and they’ve instigated armed violence amongst our youth. With minimal success, Black congressperson Maxine Waters has been trying for years, from within established channels, to expose and compel action against the CIA’s role in creating and continuing the urban crack cocaine epidemic, and arming and instigating major armed gang violence beginning in the early 1980’s; they’re the enforcers of the genocidal policy of depopulating our communities, through arrests and imprisonments, of massive numbers of Black males, thereby undercutting our ability to reproduce, and removing Black fathers and role models from Black social life; they’ve operated inside our communities as an occupying army with their training, postures and methods becoming more and more militaristic every year; and they murder, beat, brutalize and slander us with impunity and total immunity from “legal” challenge. Essentially, they are the hired guns of the wealthy ruling class whose function is that of repressing and containing the poor, marginalized and oppressed lower class sectors.

But nowhere was the repressive function of the political police, and U.S. military, shown more blatantly within Amerika, in modem times, than in the neglect and violence against stranded, sick, hungry, dehydrated and terrified poor Blacks in the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. Outrage over those events spanned the globe. Even the usually apolitical Black entertainers, (who otherwise know enough to keep their mouths closed about Amerika’s duplicitous politics on race, poverty and the brutality of Black life in Amerika), spoke out. In the context of New Afrikan struggle and resistance, that situation is worthy of close scrutiny.

For those that recall, the Louisiana governor declared a “shoot to kill” martial law in New Orleans, upon claims that looting and violence were sweeping the city. Blacks were “looting,” but whites doing the same were simply “finding” food and basic needs for survival. Specifically referred to—as the final incident that triggered the.need for martial intervention—were claims that some “black gang bangers” on an overpass had fired on the US Army Corps of Engineers while busy doing repair work. The army supposedly returned fire, killing several of these youths. Images of these dead youth were beamed into homes across Amerika by the corporate news media. It was declared that under these dangerous circumstances, “rescue and relief’ operations, (which the police—federal and state—were not much involved in), would be terminated and martial law declared to restore order against the unruly Black population.

In the words of Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force, as quoted by the Army Times, “this place is going to look like Little Somalia, we’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

This call to official violence against a desperate, hungry, sick and already officially neglected population is problematic. Not because it departs from the way Black folk in Amerika are already treated, but because of the level of violence called forth and the fabricated justifications made for declaring martial law. First let’s look at the justifications.

Reporter Jeremy Scahill gives a very different account of what happened on that overpass near the Ninth Ward. According to his report, private mercenaries from the Alabama-based company, Bodyguard and Tactical Services (BATS) killed those youth and then casually told both US Army forces and state police, who showed up later, what they’d done. No reports were filed, no questions asked, the army and troopers went their way as did the BATS mercenaries. No one cared that the meres could’ve been lying about why they shot those Black youth. And it seems the U.S. Army decided later to take responsibility. Someone would have to explain the bodies of several Black youth riddled with .223 rounds, which is the standard caliber bullet of U.S. military assault rifles. Scahill’s report, entitled “Blackwater Down,” was printed in the October 10, 2005 issue of The Nation.

This account of the mere’s conduct and the subsequent military bailout, is consistent with the observations of the behaviors of such meres made by Brig. Gen. Karl Horst, deputy commander of the 3ri Infantry Division in charge of security in Baghdad. He stated in September 2005 of such mercenaries operating in Iraq: “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when they escalate force...They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place.”

And what about Brig. Gen. Gary Jones’ remarks that New Orleans would be turned into a “Little Somalia,” that martial law meant not policing the city, but a “military operation”? of course we know that Somalia is an Afrikan country, so Jones’ point of comparison between Somalia and the stranded Black New Orleans population in this regard is obvious. But let’s look at Somalia. What was it that the U.S. military did in Somalia during the 1992 US/UN invasion that he was saying would be repeated in New Orleans?

There were times when [US troops] shot at everything that moved, took hostages, gunned their way through crowds of men and women, finished off any wounded who were showing signs of life. Many people died in their homes, their tin roofs ripped to shreds by high-velocity bullets and rockets. Accounts of the fighting frequently contain such statements as this: “One moment there was a crowd, and the next instant it was just a bleeding heap of dead and injured.” Even with a degree of restraint on the part of the gunners, the technology deployed by the US Army was such that carnage was inevitable.

— Alex de Waal, “U.S. War Crimes in Somalia,” New Left Review, No. 230, July/Au- gust 1998, p. 143

A December 8, 1993 New York Times article reported that the U.S. government estimated “6,000 to 10,000 Somali casualties in four months last summer” alone, with “two-thirds” of these being women and children, compared to 26 U.S. soldiers killed. Also, a July 1993 report Somalia: Human Rights Abuses by the United Nations Forces reported atrocities committed by U.S. and UN soldiers, including shooting into crowds of protesters, attacking a hospital and bombarding political meetings.

To present date, no one knows what the joint martial forces did in New Orleans under martial law. There were reports of combat raids and explosions, but reporters were kept out and recording equipment was often confiscated and smashed by soldiers and meres. No account has been given or even sought of the total death toll in the Gulf region^ nor the causes of these deaths (whether a result of drowning, illness, dehydration, or official violence). I suspect that autopsies would find many Black bodies riddled with shrapnel and .223 rounds. But, of course, no investigations or inquiries are being made. Yet, the FBI, in collaboration with various local police departments, is pursuing criminal proceedings of alleged BLA activities from over 30 years ago.

Scahill’s report closed with a warning quote fro one of the meres in New Orleans, stating, “This is a trend. You’re going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations.

This reality is even more ominous when we look at who most of these meres are; that is, where they come from. The vast majority of these paramilitaries are past members of the U.S. military’s special operations units, like army Rangers (Green Berets), Delta Force, Navy Seals, Force Recon, etc. These units are largely manned by a closed society of white supremacist and racist white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).

Stan Goff, a retired career Special Operations soldier, spanning from the Vietnam era through the 1990’s, describes the special brand of anti-Black racism that pervades this community of Amerika’s most highly trained ground combat forces:

In the world of Military Special Operations, I have seen Anti-Africanism function as the litmus test for assimilation of non-WASP soldiers. Asians, Europeans. Jews. American Indians. Polynesians, Latinos, all can be legitimized in the eyes of their peers by sharing in the Special Ops contempt for African Americans. This is my experience. Black people have a special place in Special Operations—the bottom.

— Stan Goff, Hideous Dreams: A Soldier’s Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti (Soft Skull: Canada, 2000)

Goff pointed out how (and why) Blacks are systematically and quite deliberately weeded out of the elite Special Operations community, and increasingly reduced in the less combat capable conventional ground forces. Goff’s observations bear quoting at length:

When I was in Vietnam, I never saw two Black soldiers greet each other without givin’ up dap. White officers were clearly uncomfortable with it, and some Black NCOs were pressured to put a stop to these elaborate improvisational handshakes.

It never worked. Dap was as much a part of Black GI culture as Motown.

And make no mistake. It was oppositional culture. White officers were right to feel uncomfortable with it. It was an open display of Black solidarity by Negroes with guns. When African American GIs spoke with one another, they referred to one another as “Black” with the same frequency guys call each other “man” (another vestige of Black oppositional culture, as opposed to “black ops”).

This new, super-elite, “black ops” unit’s “operators” will have hardly a Black face to be seen. In the U.S., “black ops” is always done by white operators. No one is going to teach large numbers of African Americans these clandestine skills.

Every time in the history of the United States that Black soldiers have fought in wars, there has been an outbreak of Black resistance afterward. Surely this is no surprise.

I referred earlier to Odoacer, a mercenary in the service of Rome, leader of the Germanic soldiers in the Roman army, who deposed the western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, in 476 AD, and thereby terminated the Western Roman Empire.

There is a limit to how much an oppressed people within a state will take. Rumsfeld and his ilk know this. You can bank on it.

When the Bush regime made the claim that the US was attacked by people who hate freedom and democracy, the irony was not likely lost on African Americans or any other oppressed nationality.

I stress African Americans here because Black people are the very embodiment of white ruling class fear, especially in the military. Three out of ten soldiers in the Army today are African American, as is one out of ten officers. Until you look at Special Operations.

Negrophobia, and not generalized racism, is teristic of special ops units, and the more rarefied the unit, gets—with a few honorary Aryans from Hispano-Latina and ranks. There are special places for Black Soldiers in Special supply rooms, personnel offices, and motor pools.

This lack of “minority” participation as “operators” in Special Operations began to leak some years ago. In 1999, the Rand Corporation released a report that attempted to describe Barriers to Minority Participation in Special Operations Forces (SOF), which attempts to put an empirical mask over SOF racial exclusion, even repeating many of the urban myths within SOF about why Black soldiers are so vastly under-represented there. “They can’t swim,” and so forth.

Horse shit.

When we put two and two together, we will likely end up with four. I saw Special Operations schools’ cadre use every available opportunity, particularly those numerous aspects of periodic evaluations that are subjective, to weed out Black soldiers. Not all of the cadre did it, but there were enough spread out over the process to ensure the “correct” result.

Conventional ground forces were to be held back for any but the most banal military tasks: mop-up and guard duty. The new emphasis on using SOF for any decisive ground combat tasks is partly predicated on the Powell Doctrine fear of US casualties. Interestingly enough, in an article for the Spring 2003 Color Lines, Glen Ford, a veteran of the Vietnam era 82n<1 Airborne Division, showed how conventional combat arms units are now being systematically loaded up with southern whites and Latinos, and lowering Black participation. No reason to take any chances.

The secret fear is BPCSSD. Black post-combat social stress disorder. Not to be confused with PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder.

Black troops who go to war, especially if they are required to fight become restive and uncooperative when they get home. They ask embarrassing questions, like, “where’s ours?” BPCSSD.

fives, when their lives at home mirror the conditions against which their ostensible

Let there be no doubt that the American white terror of Black rebellion still haunts the psyches of our pale ruling class. The U.S. Army has a disproportionate number of Black troops. Having too many of them crossing the psychological barrier against squeezing triggers on human targets can’t strike the Man as a very good idea Vietnam taught the white U.S. ruling class a lot of lessons about the military conscript force of many oppressed nationalities and expose them to combat for colonial objec-

enemy is fighting.

Open and violent rebellion in the form of armed confrontations and fraggings by Black soldiers were common in Vietnam.

By 1973, as U.S. forces were well along in a phased withdrawal from Vietnam.

the U.S. Armed Forces were dumping the draft.

They didn’t want citizen-soldiers any more. They wanted mercenaries. Do what you’re told and collect your check.

And now, with the immense expense of the new higher-tech War Department, whose cost will tear the frayed carpet from under the U.S. working class, with workers of oppressed nationalities hitting bottom first, they sure don’t want a bunch of Negroes with guns coming home with role conflicts.

They don’t need any BPCSSD. In Iraq today, against all Rumsfeld’s calculations. there are thousands of Black folk doing Uncle Sam’s wet work, even as Rumsfeld’s military is attempting to minimize their numbers in combat arms. As th?y are obliged to occupy Iraq, many come from communities that are occupied by the police at home. BPCSSD will be returning from Iraq, soon, at a station near you.

Stan Goff, Full

Spectrum Disorder

Taken together, the foregoing should be unsettling in the extreme to any Black in Amerika with j even a fraction of common sense. Let’s summarize what we have to consider.

-New Afrikans in Amerika have suffered and continue to suffer brutal political, economic, social and cultural oppression at the hands of the Establishment.

-The Establishment’s political police operate as the most direct violent oppressors of New Afrikans.

-Every genuine effort of New Afrikan leaders and common people to speak out against and challenge our oppressor, and to seek the most basic respect of our human rights and improvement of our political| and economic conditions, has been met with official persecution, violence and murder. The Establish- ;

ment then replaces out slain leaders with ones it deems ‘acceptable.’

-While the Establishment has wantonly murdered New Afrikans and our genuine leaders, it criminalizes and vilifies our efforts to defend our people and selves against its murderous violence.

-At the same time that the Establishment is stepping up its militaristic posture and preparedness against New Afrikan communities, it is decreasing the presence of Blacks in its military ground combat forces, excluding us from any operational | training in the combat skills of its most elite ground : combat forces, and nourishing the spread of antiBlack racist sentiment within its military combat {• rank and file.

-The role of mercenaries who harbor anti-Black sentiments is expected to see increased involvement in ‘control’ of urban unrest—the same sort of ‘unrest’ which is repeatedly provoked by

police abuse and murder of Blacks.

-The Establishment’s police forces do not act in the interest of Black people, nor does it effect any positive changes in our communities in relation to “crime : control” or “narcotics control,” nor social stability in general. The police operate instead as an occupying army in our communities and facilitate the spread of J crime and dope to keep our communities divided and unstable and thus unable toa unite and organize.

-The Establishment can and will manufacture false justifications for declaring open war (namely martial law) against New Afrikan communities, and setting loose mercenaries and soldiers who nurture desires to engage Blacks in a genocidal race war.

COINTELPRO is alive and well. The political police are as ac-! in repressing dissent and the liberation struggles of oppressed nationalities j Puerto Rican independista leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios was assassinated 2005 by FBI snipers, provoking outrage across Puerto Rico. Last year, FBI appeared before a senate subcommittee to announce the FBI’s “threat assessment” program: a modern COINTELPRO focusing on subverting the political education of U.S. prisoners, under the pretext of protecting Amerika from possible violent acts of radical prisoners returning to society. This is the very same FBI that targeted Martin Luther King, an avowed pacifist, with the claimed motive of preyenting his potential violence. Our political leaders continue to be persecuted. Indeed one of the men charged on January 23, 2007for alleged BLA actions against police, is our New Afrikan comrade and political prisoner Jalil Muntaqim (aka Anthony Bottom) who recently authored a book on New Afrikan liberation, We Are Our Own Liberators.

We must pay close heed to the words of comrade George Jackson, which are as vital to our survival today as when he first wrote them over 35 years ago:

[I]t should never be easy for them to destroy us. If you start with Malcolm X and count all of the brothers who have died or been captured since, you will find that not even one of them was really prepared for a fight. No imagination or fighting style was evident in any one of the incidents. But each one that died professed to know the nature of our enemies. It should never be easy for them. Do you understand what I’m saying? Edward V. Hanrahan, Illinois State Attorney General, sent fifteen pigs to raid the Panther headquarters and murder Hampton and Clark. Do you have any idea what would have happened to those fifteen pigs if they had run into as many Viet Cong as there were Panthers jn that building. The VC are all little people with less general education than we have. The argument that they have been doing it longer has no validity at all, because they were doing it just as well when they started as they are now. It’s very contradictory for a man to teach about the murder in corporate capitalism, to isolate and expose the murderers behind it, to instruct that these madmen are completely without stops, are licentious, totally depraved—and then not to make adequate preparations to defend himself from the madman’s attack. Either they don’t really believe their own spiel or they harbor some sort of subconscious death wish.

Any questions why we need our own independent Community Security Forces and a New Afrikan National Guard? BPCSSD.

Radical Poetry

Power to the People!

Brenna Sahatjian is an amazing poet and musician. She is part of Riot Folk, a radical collective of musicians. She plays guitar, cello and piano. She is on tour with her newest CD Dream Warriors, which is a collaboration with Tin Tree Factory. They recently played an amazing show at the Lorax, a student co-op in Eugene. You can download her music for free, order stuff or just check her out at www.riotfolk.org.

Separation t>y Train in fibril

Montana cai*e on strong with those exulted peaks and that vigilant spring snow

Fat intricate Rafter that fell on our dark hair so we could see theM but then Montana Rattened out into a vastness that was so Much like lonjinj expanses of seeMinjIy uniforM earth with that brilliant stride at the horizon which for hours was all / could see So Much like (onjin^ because I eventually noticed that the (and in the foreground was not uniforM at all but full of detail a wealth of golden and brown and jreen but still the brilliant j|ow at the horizon

The horsier of hope and growth

On the beach in the careless dunes Mending hopeless clothes black cotton awkwardly tailored feeling dooMed Monstrous c(ouds looMin^ I think of signals piercing through theM satellites everywhere on the other side of the pale blue veil signals sent down like rays of light heavenly angels that sing like sirens congregating on the last frontier to beckon us to soMe weightless and dismal adventure

Death? Mot of one but of everything we have held dear on the ground they launched their own angels to cheer us on we reinvent Meaning east in fiber glass needle pierces fiber signal pierces cloud sent unto Me and the phone that blinks in My bag what fool could I be to (ove anything and feel so strongly vigilance rising in My chest righteous thoughts blooming in My skull only to hit the cold, dark ceiling Icarus falling realizing that I fail More readily than expected waking the next Morning docile and groggy feed and drink and read and mend just get by?

Death? Mot of one but of soMe spirit that aniMates that drives a JuMble of Matter to dancing valiantly that could Make soMethin^ wretched become beautiful the will to Mend to patch a tear repair my being Decay traverses the border of hope and growth Come on. Try.

Hold theM back. Put up a fight.

The same tired old urgent theme

I can’t believe we’re still here all that disaster that’s superimposed on us as we sit in the stillness of artificial peace is still latent the c(oud is fat and heavy SoMe kind of earthquake or bomb Some kind of drought or storM seeMs inevitable

Every Morning / awake to a life in tact I can’t believe we’re still here

Furrowed brow looking at the double exposure of life as it seeMs and knowledge of how it Mfoht actually be Which one will our eyes focus on?

It’s a Matter of these or those Muscles relaxed It’s a Matter of unpredictable electrons jumping off their orbits like suicidal lovers Are they giving in or sucking it up?

It’s the volition undetermined the choice of the MoMent Are we blessed or doomed? Resilient or damned?

I can’t believe we’re still here

When at some point it becoMes necessary to visit the abundance of the grocery store where they politely hold food hostage where they want to know if / aM finding everything alright or they suspect Me of stealing and which do I intend to do?

Up near the security check point the headlines tell Me that half of life will be extinct in 93 years How refreshing, that they stock honest journalism here it refreshes my sense of desperation as I pay too Much for medicine and food

I can’t believe we’re still here

My teeth clenched as I sleep every night and ache every morning

The nukes breathe softly as they sleep pointed at 100 targets

I dream of disMantlinj my jaw a mushroom cloud of relief face coMinj apart in disaster and gore and all I feel is awe that anything is still here

Brenna’s newest CD with Tin Tree Factory

Rotten

Am / that blackberry?

That unfurled petals like flags in an effort to attract that transformed into bulges of dark fruit gleaming ripening in that sun of affection?

Waiting, waiting

petals curved back and dried into that collar that decoration framing the finale the fruit ripening, waiting in sun, in warMth

Were you that cowardly crow or that short, young child?

Unwilling to risk pain for sustenance until you finally reached out to touch Me and I Just fell apart rotten

Baefc to Bacfc Shifts

Back to back shifts riding down eMpty streets (but they’re flooded with feeling) 3am the Moon was overcoMe by the earth’s shadow, then later this Morning

featured a particular young star whose bright performance we are so used to but it’s still fucking remarkable it’s the id” century, and we’re still here, to see that lifeless rock turn dark, and thus become exposed for what it is becoMe so obviously hanging there with the distant coMpany of smothered stars and nothingness

I was still there to howl at that Motherfucker flying down the hill didn’t even have to pedal pulled by that downward tendency soMeone thought they could naMe gravity felt My existence precarious and futile but charged with Meaning like a dead rock holds a charge facilitates something of life like a Moon could hold the light but i too occlude i too wane and wax but the whole is always there whether under a shadow or not and i aM still here at work the next Morning back to back shifts

by Brenna Sahatjian

Had Anyone Ever fatted Her?

Image from anarcha.org

Granda’s gone and you’re out fighting forest fires gone, not like grandpa, god no But away from here in her brand new bright cotton Seaside, OR tourist shorts and T-shirt On such a cold and cloudy coastal day with mon They shivered all the way from breakfast I scolded theM for thinking we were still in the deserts they raised Me in and said goodbye again

II

I went to the beach to Mend clothes in the wind and the sun further down the coast away from all the nonsense and the hotels and the stores where the trees come right up to the coast and I thought of you sowewhere near Sisters, OR fighting so Meth in j like a fire digging soMethinj like a trench / thought of you, and how grandma wants us to give her great grandchildren But in between visits where it all Mijht seen* worth it she would not have to sacrifice and tend to then* relentlessly although, that’s what her life was made of and how she wants us to give her a wedding a warriaje but after the party and in between visits where we seemed like such a handsome couple she would not have to face the inevitable ruin of love the Monotony of each other the chore-like character of our outings only and always us in the Menacing quiet of a shared home of a long marriage although that’s what her Marriage was they always seemed to despise each other but with great care that intiMate conteMpt she had with grandpa

1.

Grandma’s gone again interMittent as always i reMeMber that garage sale we had at her house Me in the back seat of mom’s AltiMa legs propped up against the furniture and the clothes tripping on a Micro dot for the first tiMe headphones full of music and necessary alienation when we stopped at Jack in the box I made sloppy Jokes at mom and brittany and told theM that i loved theM Mouth full of fries How she screamed and called the cops that tiMe Me and mom fought on the driveway the neighbors watching but saying nothing their Judgment echoing off the caul-de-sac Grandma’s were the only letters I could stand to answer when they eventually sent Me away to Utah in her neat but illegible cursive misspelled words outside the punitive systeM My family had devised outside point systeM those MorMons at the home came up with gentle onlooker, furrowed brow, what happened? The only person I’ve ever seen literally wring her hands

1.

Grandma’s gone again
and again, I feel a sense of safety dissipate as I venture back into this regular o(’ world just a Miscreant granddaughter grown she never told stories had anyone ever asked her?

always Just something about an outhouse, over and over

until I pry a little she busts open like a shed door to those 1950 Nebraska soybean fields illuMinated

Where she’s out in the sun picking Married at 18 they were forced to Move in with his rigid Swedish family his Mother had her ironing even the rags 1G hours of ironinj his father crouched at their bedrooM window at night or sneaking in for a cigarette when he don’t smoke hall light behind his tall silhouette her screaming, him apologizing waking to iron even the rags they got out to California like a gentle rebellion that went unforgiven that square, black and white picture her hiding her face in his skinny chest he in that bright white T-shirt standing defiant on the porch, smoking I saw theM in a picture (ike that once

1.

All the while, us there, all of us, latent in their younj struggle?

1.

Grandma’s gone god when she’s gone for good then I’ll really be lost the world’s Just holding on, you know we’re Just stitching things up but we all know it inevitably decays falls apart unMendable too Much washing and wearing and busting and tearing Lord knows we try

I set out mending on the beach this Morninj and thought of you out near Sisters fighting fires joddaMn it put it out and run home hoMe is a place we jotta get to know it could be precious like all things precious, fleeting All the tiMe wondering did we ever have it?

I drift up the coast, lost unsure of where to go, of what I’m doing in this world Wondering if it’s worth the stitching when she was My age she had 1 kids and according to her I can’t even stay fed properly what about my future, she asks If it’d get us all hoMe, together I’d wear an apron and bake a fucking pie I’d bake pies for 1b hours, grandma, if we could all be together but i know it won’t be helped She knew what she was doing, all those years of kneading and ironing and saving and bickering but did she know what she wanted Had anyone ever asked her?

£x Relations

I

I don’t have any expectations Just that we’ll figure soMethinj out in the Midst of which we’ll try to live as free and clear as we can i don’t know if My will is My heart or My gut or My head pushing and pulling so strongly what does it Matter My use of language is a borrowing of words froM a culture we are surviving through on the other side of a sentence there’s a thought or a feeling indescribably occurring as its own silent phenoMenon distracting like a specter haunting whatever i had to say to get by

II

I don’t have any expectations or any children or their observations of Me where i aM when they coMe of age to Make Me at hoMe by way of their perceptions their perceptions are the origin they Make themselves from somewhere like here Still, / Merely ended up here On My way to somewhere else? Or what will I stay for?

1.

Ardent hearts I can’t keep track of them anyway otherwise I’d live on bended knee I swear

All I did would be for theM because I would know it was for Me too All tied together some secret way but they leave swiftly appetites for change and adventure flooding the banks breaching the levees of our lives creating More ocean where (and was so they can sail on past us another undifferentiated wet spot oceanic where we went under the characteristics are now far below so Many (ost cities of character

1.

I can’t keep track

Was there a tiMe when a place Meant soMethin^ More than a chapter in a book of days so Many pages, so Many books what do they Mean?

how Much can a person really read?

I’ve read of a tiMe when we were Made of the (and

the Plants reconstituting us every 7 years rivers and Mountains with naMes (ike family members

people who had seen you change from something to soMethinj else you’d be crazy to leave a place like that I can’t keep track of theM I don’t have any expectations

humor

Touched by a Noodle

By Kevin Roberson

Hello, my name is Kevin Roberson and I am here to talk to you about Rastafarianism. No, I’m not plugging my religion door to door as a solici-vangelist. No, you will never find fliers telling you of the joy filled days of worship and charity you can experience by converting to our church. But everyone else around you will be much happier once you’ve signed on to the least obtrusive and most politically inauspicious faith in the world today.

Rastafarianism is the code of beliefs exclusive to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). The belief system is founded of the principle that the entire .universe was created by a deity, appearing to us as a flying glob of spaghetti, after an excessive round of drinking. The religion’s history is detailed in its primary religious text; The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (don’t turn the page, we’re dead fucking serious, look it up on Amazon.com). The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is brought to us by the FSM’s sole messianic prophet: Bobby Henderson.

Bobby Henderson is a graduate from Oregon State University (but we forgive him). He is deemed by his followers to be a prophet. It is he who started the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The idea came to him after discovering that Intelligent Design was undergoing a hearing, requesting it receive equal class time as evolution in science courses taught in public schools in Kansas. This hearing, by the Kansas State Board ofEducation, would give way to unprecedented religious freedom in the public school system. It set the stage for any concept of universal creation, no matter how bizarre, to be given scientific credibility on the grounds that it was not disprovable. The FSM is an inherently unobtrusive deity. It logically follows that such an entity would not choose to reveal itself to the world until the world had declared that it would accept anything that was simply not disprovable as scientific evidence, no matter how bizarre or under researched.

Bobby Henderson wrote a letter to the Kansas State Board of Education as a reducto ad absurdum argument against the teaching of Intelligent Design as a scientific theory. Henderson appealed to the Board by saying that both his theory and Intelligent Design had equal right to be taught in public schools:

“I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world: One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence. ”

Despite its unassuming beginnings, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has prospered with the publishing of its holy text; The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Skeptics of the scriptures claim that it is far more likely and supported by observable evidence that the creator of the universe appears as human instead of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Rastafarians know that the universes creation by FSM is far more likely and logically supported as even other religious texts claim that the universe and its inhabitants were created in “His” image. This would claim, with observable evidence, that He is composed of mostly open space. I defy you to point out anything that is more insubstantial than a being constructed entirely of carbohydrates. One who follows current scientific research would know that ongoing investigation of what is known as the String Theory shows an interconnected correlation between all things by representing them as strands reverberating through time/space. Perhaps this could have been better named “Noodle Theory.” However, the message stands that if the universe was created in His image, clearly the image of Him more resembles noodles than humans. The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster clearly states that the FSM was alcoholically inebriated at the time of the universes creation, explaining its inherently fucked up nature despite its creator being all powerful. To this effect, many letters were written to scientifically and logically back FSMism’s teachings to the Kansas State Board of Education.

“One of the hardest things to do as a scientist is to put my personal beliefs aside when discussing matters of science. So as a professional, I have to say that both forms of Intelligent Design — ID and ID-FSM are equally valid and if intelligent design is taught in schools, equal time should be given to the FSM theory and the non-FSM theory. But, speaking personally now, it seems to me the FSM theory is MUCH more plausible than the non-FSM ID theory, because it is the only one of the two that takes into account all the discrepancies between ID and measurable objective reality.”

- Professor Douglas Shaw, Ph.D

In efforts to right the wrongs of the universe, the FSM occasionally reaches out his noodly appendage and blesses his people with noodly goodness. It is through such acts that pirates became divine beings and all attempts at carbon dating give false readings to fool us into believing the planet is older than it actually is. In Henderson’s letter to the Kansas State Board of Education, he included a graph showing how recent global warming trends inversely match the trend of declining numbers of pirates since the early 1800’s. Due to these two events we can surmise that pirates are divine protectors of the planet, chosen by the FSM to reverse the effects of global warming. This is determined using the logic of causal relationships outlined in the course curriculum which was proposed to be taught in Kansas public schools at the time.

Global Average Temperature Vs. Number of Pirates

If you too should wish to be a part of the Rastafarian faith, simply start by researching and following FSM’s most basic guidelines. These messages to us from the FSM Himself are crafted from the divine touch of his noodly appendage and brought down to earth by the pirate captain Mosey himself: The Eight “I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts:”

1. I’d really rather you didn’t act like a sanctimonious holier-than-thou ass when describing my noodly goodness. If some people don’t believe in me. that’s okay. Really, I’m not that vain. Besides, this isn’t about them so don’t change the subject.

2. I’d really rather you didn’t use my existence as a means to oppress, subjugate, punish, eviscerate, and/or, you know, be mean to others. 1 don’t require sacrifices, and purity is for drinking water, not people.

3. I’d really rather you didn’t judge people for the way they look, or how they dress, or the way they talk, or, well, just play nice, Okay? Oh, and get this into your thick heads: woman = person, man = person. Sarney = Sarney. One is not better than the other, unless we’re talking about fashion and I’m sorry, but I gave that to women and some guys who know the difference between teal and fuchsia.

4. I’d really rather you didn’t indulge in conduct that offends yourself, or your willing, consenting partner of legal age AND mental maturity. As for anyone who might object, I think the expression is “go fuck yourself,” unless they find that offensive in which case they can turn off the TV for once and go for a walk for a change.

5. I’d really rather you didn’t challenge the bigoted, misogynistic, hateful ideas of others on an empty stomach. Eat, then go after the bastards.

6. I’d really rather you didn’t build multi million-dollar churches/temples/mosques/shrines to my noodly goodness when the money could be better spent (take your pick):

7. Ending poverty

8. Curing diseases

9. Living in peace, loving with passion, and lowering the cost of cable

I might be a complex-carbohydrate omniscient being, but I enjoy the simple things in life. I ought to know. I AM the creator.

1. I’d really rather you didn’t go around telling people I talk to you. You’re not that interesting. Get over yourself. And I told you to love your fellow man, can’t you take a hint?

2. I’d really rather you didn’t do unto others as you would have them do unto you if you are into, urn, stuff that uses a lot of leather/lubricant/Las Vegas. If the other person is into it, however (pursuant to #4), then have at it, take pictures, and for the love of Mike, wear a CONDOM! Honestly, it’s a piece of rubber. If I didn’t want it to feel good when you did it I would have added spikes, or something.

-The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster by Bobby Henderson

I hope I have made clear to you how important the Rastafarian Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is to all of us in our daily lives. To join, we do not require that you give donations or take part in sacrament, communion or evangelism of any sort. All we ask is that you praise the Hying Spaghetti Monster in your own way and never force your beliefs on others. Above all. stop people from forcing their beliefs on you or other innocents like you.

Source:

www.venganza.org

Official website of the Church of The Hying Spaghetti Monster.

reviews

A Crime Called Freedom

By Os Cangaceiros
Translated by Wolfi Landstreicher
Eberhardt Press, 2006, $7
Review by Sam Whitehill

I read a lot of dry radical theory. This is not dry. A Crime Called Freedom is a small pocket-sized collection of the passionate anti-prison/anti- industrial writings of the French group Os Cangaceiros in the late 1980s. Os Cangaceiros was a loose-knit group of delinquents in revolt that grew out of the May 1968 unrest. They took the era’s extreme sloganeering (“Be realistic, demand the impossible!” “Never work!” etc.) seriously by putting it to the test of action. After the 1985 prison revolts across France, they focused on combating prisons through destructive direct actions and by employing such scandals as the illegal distribution of prison blueprints to aid in escape plans. The essays here scream with the uncompromising defiance of the anti-civilization ultra-left milieu, refreshingly written a decade before such ideas were in vogue in radical circles.

Throughout their writings, Os Cangaceiros consistently highlights the links between prison and industrial capitalist society, confirming their absolute refusal of both. As frequent occupants of the prison system, they rightfully view the prison environment as an extension of industrial capitalist control and domination. They recognize that it “is impossible to separate the fate of prisoners inside the walls from the conditions reserved more generally, for the mass of poor people in society” (53). Just as prison is an essential part of capitalist society, it is an apt metaphor for capitalism as a whole. “While society has confined every human prospect to the logic of money, with no conceivable elsewhere, the modem prison necessarily appears as a hermetic universe without any way out” (135). The extreme confinement of the prison cell is the logical conclusion of a regulated and commodified world.

Whereas most prison activists focused on prisoner’s rights and reducing overcrowding, Os Cangaceiros set their sights on the complete abolition of the prison system:

Those who speak to us of overcrowding in the prisons are the very ones who have filled them until they burst! Obviously they are turning the question upside down. For us, it is not a question of building more prisons, but of emptying those that already exist. (76)

Their anti-prison stance was part of a radical opposition to class society, which relies on incarceration as a form of social war. A radical stance must involve the rejection of prison, which is a tool in the class war used to pacify and contain rebellious and disruptive elements of the exploited population.

Os Cangaceiros’ radicalism runs deeper than their rejection of prisons and capitalism. In their essay “Industrial Domestication”, they attempt to put prison in its historical context. In true anti-civilization fashion, they locate industrialism as the root of modem domination and characterize the development of modem industrial technology as “the progress of alienation” (104). They mention the dual, complementary rise of factories and modem prisons as proof that industrial capitalism and the prison system go hand in hand. To counter progressives and orthodox Marxists who view all industrial technology as neutral and potentially liberating, they assert that “the ‘material instruments of production’ are first of all instruments of domestication with a form that is not neutral because it guarantees hierarchy and dependence” (110). However, it seems odd that they characterize a phenomenon (the industrial revolution) caused by capitalism as the “origin of domination”, instead of simply pointing to capitalism as the root of the problem (like most radicals) or even pointing further back in history (like most anti-civilizationists).

Os Cangaceiros does not claim to be a theoretically rigorous group, however, and whatever they lack in theoretical description they compensate with passion and sincerity. What I find most inspiring in their writings is their complete rejection to being organized under any political banner. They fiercely maintain their freedom from any and all political restraints, categorizing themselves only as individual “delinquents”:

Let us point out immediately, once and for all, that we cangaceiros do not come out of the left, anarchist or otherwise; there isn’t a single ex-militant among us. And none of us has ever had anything to do with any political racket whatsoever. We have only one form of relationship with political groups and organizations: war. (94)

For those of us serious about implementing a ruthless critique of everything, this is the mindset to have.

The Portland Red Guide: Sites and Stories of Our Radical Past

By Michael Munk
Ooligan Pres.s, 2007, $16.95
Review by Sam Whitehill

This book is meant to be a guide to Portland radical history. It is divided into six chapters, chronologically dealing with a different period of Portland’s history, from “The Nineteenth Century (Utopians and Marxists)” to “1974-Present (Identities & Protests)”. Each chapter is divided into short blurbs about radical people, events, groups, etc., and includes a general overview of the time, a map guide to the numbered blurbs, and pictures.

In the book’s introduction, author Michael Munk offers a much-needed point of caution before giving his tour through time:

A listing in this book does not attest that a person has an unblemished political and personal history, nor that all the activities of every organization or every radical event were justified or successful. (31)

Munk recognizes he can’t be a nitpicky judge of history and neglect those he disagrees with or looks down upon. However, the major flaw with this book is Munk’s failure to clearly define the term “radical”. At points he seems to imply that a radical is someone who simply works for change, no matter how incremental or reformist the desired change is. This leads to the problem opposite the one he imagines having—he welcomes too many under his radical umbrella. The result is the inclusion of many uninterestingly liberal and reformist groups/people/events in the book, such as maverick politicians and uneventful peace protests.

Additionally, he includes some completely irrelevant and bewildering blurbs that offer nothing discemibly related to political action, radical or otherwise. I’ll quote my favorite example in it its brief entirety:

Hipster protestors with a literary bent hung out at Reuben’s Peace and Pizza Tavern at 1239 SW Jefferson in the early 1970s. Among the regulars were Mike McCusker, John Bertels, Art Honeyman, Wally Chambers, and Walt Curtis. (194–5)

Huh? What could one possibly learn from these two sentences that is of any interest? Who the hell are these hipsters and why were they important? What did they do? I actually laughed out loud when 1 read this.

Another puzzling aspect of the book is Munk’s view of history as a progression away from radical refusal and toward increased social harmony:

The strategy that guided most radical groups through much of the twentieth century—the organization of a popular political movement or party devoted to replacing capitalism with Socialism—has, except for a modest r[ev]ival of anarchism, given way to the goal of reform through interest group pressure on existing political and economic organizations and structures. (213)

This view too closely mirrors postmodernist defeatism for my liking, and it just isn’t true. Also, if Munk really believes radicalism was dying in the late twentieth century, why does he spend an entire chapter on it? Is he inadvertently acknowledging that most of what he is dealing with isn’t radical history at all? I happen to think so.

But regardless of this book’s many downsides, I can still recommend it to all Portlanders out there who appreciate associating their everyday environment with the radical history behind it. For example, 1 was intrigued to learn that Paul Robeson stayed at the home of the Progressive Party’s secretary at 5112 SW Maplewood Road, only a couple blocks from the house I’ve lived most of my life in. Even if I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Progressive Party, I can appreciate that piece of history and it’s connection to me. When I visit home this Thanksgiving, I guarantee you I’ll be taking a walk by that house with an interested eye.

announcements/diy

Food not Bombs

by Steve Berk

Direct action is quite simply action which does. This means that if there’s a problem with society, and there are quite a few, a direct actor might respond by simply fixing it. As the Crimethlnc. Ex Workers Collective writes in Recipes for Disaster, “You can write your congressman, asking him to oppose a law that would allow corporations to cut down old growth forests-but if they still pass that law, you can go to the forests and stop the cutting by sitting in the trees, blockading roads, and monkey-wrenching machinery.”

The problem with direct action is that our society has created a perception that violating laws, regardless of how unjust, is not morally ok. Of course one only needs to look to the Civil Rights movement as the most classic example of how this is flat out untrue. Still, people today don’t seem to find any law so egregious that it must be directly attacked. Granted this is not unique as it seems to happen in every era. The result is that there is a tendency by many to not tolerate direct action.

Enter Food not Bombs: the anarchist organization which began in the early 8o’s has recently begun serving two days, Sundays and Fridays, here in Eugene. Food not bombs is an important collective for two reasons. Of course the most obvious of these is that it feeds those who need to be feed. But even beyond that, Food not Bombs is a form of direct action that cannot be argued against. Why? Because its people feeding people. And while other actions might invoke controversy, it is virtually impossible to successfully argue that feeding people is a bad thing.

My only real critic of Food not Bombs is the fact that it has a name. There are countless chapters of Food not Bombs throughout the world. The name implies that they are all linked under one umbrella. Food not Bombs is not a group, it is not an organization, it’s a movement.

The importance of Food not Bombs is that it teaches people that if they want to help their community, they don’t have to jump through hoops. There are no forms to fill out, no permits to acquire, etc. The spirit of Food not Bombs is that if you want to make change, you simply make change.

VEGAN MICROWAVE BROWNIES

By Benjamin Taylor and Kelly Rini

(Brownies are delicious...but exploiting another living creature to obtain ingredients for those jbrownies is not so delicious. That’s why we’re proud to bring you a most simplistic schematic Tor some chocolaty EDF (egg and dairy free) microwave (yes, no need for even an oven!) .brownies.

Ingredients

1 brownish banana

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup veggie oil or applesauce

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup flour or instant oatmeal

4 tablespoons cocoa

1/2 teaspoon salt

optional to your liking: peanut butter, chocolate chips, various nuts, chunks of candy bars

microwave safe container, greased with oil or cooking spray

Process

First, mash the banana really well. Then, add your wet ingredients together, mix very well, ‘and add your dry ingredients. Mix again! Finally, microwave for 4 minutes, give or take defending on your microwave. Don’t wait for them to cool...it isn’t worth it.

Note

I like to microwave it so that most of it is cooked, but the bottom is still a little gooey. It’s .like upside down frosting.

---

FOOD NOT BOMBS

Fri: 3:30-5pm Rain:

Sat. Market (8^th & Oak)

Sun: Kesey Sq. & Willamette)

Sunday: 3:00–5:00 Washinton-Jefferson Park

(5^th & Jefferson)

George Lives!

By Jim Metsky

An anarchist

is a punk whose been jailed has helmet hair

hasno time

has no CLOTHES

plays with fire

sleeps till noon

Oct-Nov Calendar

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thurday

Friday

Saturday

21

Food Not Bombs: Free Vegan Food. 3–5 pm, Washington-Jefferson Park.

22

National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality

Insurgent Meeting @5 in Suite One of EMU

LGBTQA Meeting at 6:00 EMU Suite 34

Thomas Mullaney, speaking on “Ethnic Categorization and Ethnic Identity

in Contemporary China” at 4 p.m. in 375 McKenzie.

23

24

SPROUT Cinema @ The Lorax (1648 Alder) Showing “Behind the Mask” @ 8 pm

Gender Outlaws/GQ/ Trans Group meets @ 7 in EMU Suite 34

Bicycle Appreciation

S. Shin-Shin Tang, speaking on “Feminist Perspectives on Gender Differences in Traumatic Stress” at noon in 330 Hendricks Hall

25

Insurgent Meeting @5 in Suite One

Survival Center Meetings 5:30 in Suite One of EMU

26

Food Not Bombs: Free Vegan Food.

3:30–5 pm

Rain: Sat. Market (8^th & Oak)

Sun: Kesey Sq. (Broadway & Willamette)

Halloween Critical Mass bike ride 5:30 @ 17^th and Chamelton -wear a costume-

27

28

Food Not Bombs: Free Vegan Food. 3–5 pm, Washington-Jefferson Park.

-•

*

29

Insurgent Meeting @5 in Suite One

LGBTQA Meeting at 6:00 in EMU Suite 34

30

Community Conversations panel on “Slavery Reparations: Historic and Contemporary Perspectives” at 7:30 p.m. in the Ramey Room, Carson Residence Hall.

Bill McKibben Lecture on Global Warming at UO EMU Ballroom

31

Gender Outlaws/GQ/ Trans Group meets @ 7 in EMU Suite 34

Halloween!

(remeber to get more drunk than normal)

1

Insurgent Meeting @5 in Suite One

Survival Center Meetings 5:30 in Suite One

REDOIL speaker at 7pm in PLC 180.

REDOIL is: Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands,

2

Food Not Bombs: Free Vegan Food.

3:30–5 pm

Rain: Sat. Market (8^th & Oak)

Sun: Kesey Sq. (Broadway & Willamette)

Iraq War body count flag volunteers needed @7 am in Memorial Quad of Knight Library

3

Step It Up Rally. Meet at 11 am in the UO amphitheater

4

Food Not Bombs: Free Vegan Food. 3–5 pm, Washington-Jefferson Park.

5

Insurgent Meeting @5 in Suite One

LGBTQA Meeting at 6:00 in EMU Suite 34

Imke Meyer speaking on “Empire’s Remains” noon to 2 p.m. in the EMU Walnut Room

6

7

SPROUT Cinema @ The Lorax (1648 Alder) Showing “Hidden in Plain Sight” @ 8 pm

Joseph Orosco speaking on Cesar Chavez at 4 p.m. in the Knight Library Browsing Room

Gender Outlaws @ 7 in EMU Suite 34

8

Insurgent Meeting @5 in Suite One

Survival Center

Meetings 5:30 in Suite

One

9

Food Not Bombs: Free Vegan Food.

3:30–5 pm

Rain: Sat. Market (8^th & Oak)

Sun: Kesey Sq. (Broadway & Willamette)

10

11

Food Not Bombs: Free Vegan Food. 3–5 pm, Washington-Jefferson Park.

12

Insurgent Meeting @5 in Suite One

LGBTQA Meeting at 6:00 in EMU Suite 34

13

14

Gender Outlaws/GQ/ Trans Group meets @

7 in EMU Suite 34

15

Insurgent Meeting @5 in Suite One

Survival Center Meetings 5:30 in Suite One

16

Food Not Bombs: Free Vegan Food.

3:30–5 pm

Rain: Sat. Market (8^th & Oak)

Sun: Kesey Sq. (Broadway & Willamette)

17

announcements can be emailed to sialtmedia@hotmail.com, dropped off at EMU Suite 1, or called in at (541) 346–3716

PRSRT STD
US POSTAGE

PAID

EUGENE OR
PERMIT NO 908

UO Student Insurgent Suite One

1228 University of Oregon Erb Memorial Union University of Oregon Eugene, Oregon 97403

ph. 541.346.3716

email: sialtmedia@hotmail.com

CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED

[1] “Bush Administration and Congressional Anti-Choice Actions.” NARAL.29 Jan. 2007. 1 <http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/issues>.

[2] Calhoon, Martha. “Federally Funded Lies.” Ms. Magazine. 1 Aug. 2007

[3] “United states failure to adquately address international reproductive health needs.” Congressional Resource Report. 1 1 <http://www.feministcampus.org/know/global/docs/ ReproHealthNeeds.pdf>.

“Restoration of the Mexico City Policy.” MEMORANDUM FOR THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.22 Jan. 2001. 1 <http://www. whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20010123- 5.html>.