Given Bellingham’s reputation, it is an especially stinging affront that four AWOL soldiers of conscience have been housed in our jail. Most of us in this city consider people like Robin Long and Cliff Cornell heroes for their refusal to bear arms and kill. … As it stands, law enforcement is under no obligation to report AWOL soldiers to the military. We are asking our city to abstain from doing the military’s job. These individuals have broken no law. Our local resources should not be spent on their apprehension and detention.

On October 9, 2006, Bellingham became the first city in the state of Washington to pass a Troops Home! Resolution.  The issue now is a sanctuary resolution.  “The ordinance is not about adjudication” states Marie Marchand in her op-ed. “The Sanctuary City Movement … is not asking police to break the law.” Tim Carpenter, a Whatcom County resident and Vietnam veteran who wrote the opposing view Sanctuary city Con: Sanctuary idea would do more harm than good has a different take on the question of law:

Federal law provides, under the category of Treason, Sedition and Subversive Activities, that it is a crime for any person to advise, counsel or urge insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny or refusal of service; to conspire to commit those acts; or to harbor any person who commits such an act. Does the city council’s involvement facilitate and abet treason?

He attempts to paint proponents of the sanctuary resolution as “emotional rather than rational” and finds that their arguments “rely on unsubstantiated statistics, or attempt to reach a logical conclusion built upon an inherently false premise”.   He really doesn’t cite anything to support this, just innuendo.

On the issue of Free Speech (around which Ithaca’s Sanctuary Resolution turned) he writes that “This is not a ‘free speech’ issue. The right of free speech is not absolute. Speech that advocates the commission of a crime is not protected.”

The attendant legal questions appear to be the most productive ones to pursue, and it would be well worth the effort for sanctuary supporters in the Ithaca area to engage  in the debate in Bellingham not only out of solidarity, but also to hone our own arguments for what may lie ahead.  It is easy to imagine a similar scenario developing in Ithaca were war resisters jailed here, or were the city sanctuary resolution strengthened to explicitly instruct law enforcement not to arrest anyone on the basis of their military status when had not broken the law.   (As an aside, I recall that Trevor Loope was arrested in St. Lawrence County on bogus charges of bounced checks, not for being AWOL).  It would be really good to solicit wider legal opinion on this debate over what the law requires.

Wing-nuts seem to dominate the story chat on the Bellingham Herald (just like in Ithaca).  It only takes a few minutes to register in order to comment.  Pleasew consider doing so.

Russell Brown has been blogging on the situation in Bellingham on adoptresistance.org.  You can also follow posts on the website/blog of Veterans For Peace Corporal Jonathan Santos Memorial Chapter 111 in Bellingham. –Cris McConkey

By Mary Anne Grady Flores

I was deeply saddened to see that it was our friend Bassam Abu Rahmah that was killed this past Friday, April 17th, 2009, in the village of Bil’in, Palestine. He was killed by an Israeli soldier firing a high velocity tear gas canister into his chest from only 100 feet away!  This happened during a non-violent protest at the illegal barrier fence which cut off Bassam’s village land by 60%, so that an Israeli settlement can be built on it.

We, Americans, just paid for this crime when we paid our taxes last Wed, April 15th, with $10 million a day that we give Israel! We, Americans, must inform our leaders of these crimes and re-direct our money to peace making, to building schools and hospitals, and to our own infrastructure. We should not be paying for racist policies of Israel to wantonly kill Palestinians, as was done under “Operation Lead Cast”, killing 1,400 in Gaza, and as was done to Bassam, and many others in the West Bank.  I plead, too, with Israeli soldiers to please gain courage to say no to the illegal and racist commands of the Israeli Military.

In 2007, three Puerto Rican activists, including Tito Kayak, Dara Guadalupe and Ivan Torres and I met Bassam in Bilin, Palestine. He was an enthusiastic, gentle big man with a warm smile and an eagerness to reach out to us internationals. Bassam traded t-shirts with Tito in the patio of the international house. Tito wore the Gush Shalom shirt which has a circle with both the Palestinian and Israeli flags within its circumference, signifying the two peoples living in peace side by side. Tito wore that shirt as he climbed the Israeli surveillance tower unfurling a Palestinian flag that very day.   Bassam wore a shirt from our Catholic community in Puerto Rico, the Community of Jesus the Mediator, commemorating the Feast of the Three Kings.
Bassam Abu Rahmah and Dara Guadalupe in the yard where we stayed. Bassam is wearing the t-shirt of the three kings.

Another time with the Gush Shalom t-shirt that he gave to Tito.

I’d like to briefly tell of these three kings who came to Jerusalem from foreign lands to ask where to find the new born king Jesus, that they learned of from the bright star they had followed. The local King Herod, a puppet of the Roman empire, was surprised and jealous to learn of the birth of a new king and asked the three kings to return and inform him of his where abouts, so he, too, could give homage to the child. After seeing the baby, the three kings were visited by an angel who warned them not to return because Herod wanted to kill the child, so they took a different route home.

There is great significance to this feast in that it is a signal to turn another way, the non-violent way, which is what Bassam and the people of Bil’in have chosen, and as people throughout all of Palestine have chosen in their struggle against the Israeli occupation for the last 60 years. There are brave Israelis and Internationals standing with our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Bil’in and in many other villages that are under attack, under seige, having their lands taken bit by bit. The US must stop supporting Israel’s racist policies.

We must continue non-violent resistance here in our streets, in our congressional and senate offices, in our local newspaper offices demanding that the story be covered,and in front of our Israeli embassies. We must not let business go on as usual. No more military aid to Israel. We must hold citizen tribunals on the war crimes of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank and expose the truth to our own citizens, as we all pay for these crimes.

Our delegation, three Puerto Ricans and one Irish, were apart of the peaceful demonstration with Israelis, Internationals, media and with the Palestinian people who live in Bil’in, who’s land has been stolen. The Israeli High Court ruled that the barrier fence must be moved to give back the land to the people of Bil’in. We demonstrated to have the land returned peacefully, marching, chanting, singing and holding banners. There is no need for Israeli guns, tear gas or their live bullets. Bassem wore the Gush Shalom t-shirt with the hope of peace for both peoples.

This shooting will not bring peace. Only justice and peaceful tactics will bring peace. Keep on struggling for Peace in Palestine.  Please read below and look at other photos of Bassam when he was shot in Friday’s protest.

Salaam, Shalom,
Mary Anne Grady Flores

Palestinian killed in Bilin protest

Local demonstrator seriously injured by tear gas canister hit to his chest during anti-fence rally, dies of wounds shortly after reaching hospital. IDF says protest was violent. Demonstrators: We’re like sitting ducks; soldiers fire at anything that moves; army, PA investigating

Ali Waked and Anat Shalev Palestinian sources reported Friday that a local demonstrator was killed after being hit in the chest by a tear gas canister during a protest against the separation fence in the West Bank village of Bilin. The man, 30-year-old Bassem Ibrahim Abu-Rahma from Bilin, was evacuated to a Ramallah hospital in serious condition, where he then died of his wounds. The army confirmed the report of Abu-Rahma’s death. Representatives of the IDF and the Coordination and Liaison Authority met with Palestinian officials later in the day as part of the joint investigation into the incident. Palestinians reported that IDF and Border Guard officers used live fire, rubber bullets and tear gas against the protesters, and claimed that the shooting began while those present were in the middle of their Friday prayers.

A left wing-activist who took part in the demonstration called the IDF’s conduct “murderous,” adding “we are like sitting ducks.” Roni Barkan, a member of the “Anarchists Against the Fence” group, told Ynet that the rally was peaceful and that “no stones were thrown.” “The soldiers, who were standing less than 30 meters (about 100 feet) from us, immediately began to throw stun grenades in our direction,” he said. “A few minutes later I overheard the commander tell the soldiers to prepare to throw tear gas canisters. There were two or three shots, and then Abu-Rahma was hit. I tried to stop the bleeding.”

‘I tried to stop the bleeding.’ Abu-Rahma after being hit (Photo: Lazar Simeonov)

According to Barkan, “it seems that since Operation Cast Lead IDF soldiers and commanders have been conducting themselves in an even less moral and humane manner; they are firing at anything that moves.”

I cannot fathom a worse resolution for the House to pass. I urge you to contact your representatives right away and urge them not to support this resolution. Here is the link on thomas.gov:
http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:h.res.00034:

I am starting a forum discussion on this topic, so that we can collectively dissect and counter point by point. Perhaps that will help with our discussions with our respective representatives. In that regard, we can use this abomination of a house resolution as a tool to expose the flawed thinking behind it.

Obviously, Rep. Pelosi isn’t too concerned with Jimmy Carter.

The problem was that the only time you saw the screen was on a long shot. With telephoto lens on the candidate, only a small portion of the screen appeared. During McCains acceptance speech, there was an image of a suburban home with green grass, but all that was visible for a backdrop on a close shot was a uniform green color from the grass in telephoto and out of focus. It was ugly. It reminded me of the Nixon Kennedy debate where Kennedy wore a blue shirt which showed up bright and crisp on black and white t.v. where as Nixon looked crumpled and grungy. McCain looked bad with this terrible background and I wondered right then as I watched the acceptance speech live if perhaps this would signal McCain’s downfall in the election.

Ugly green screen. At least that is what appeared live on PBS. In later video clips carried by the networks, the green was replaced by blue –an easy fix in most professional video editing programs. I noticed the switch and imagined the McCain campaign calling the media and demanding a color correction. The blue background was not as pukey as the green, but either way –blue screen or green screen– I wondered why no one picked up on that and did some creative keying, replacing the green or blue screen with their own video of choice. I was disappointed that Youtube was not awash with all sorts of creative derivative work. I was surprised. Maybe it was too obvious?

Well, finally someone did use the green screen as providence intended.

I was adding new action alerts and removing old ones on the tompkinsagainstwar.org web site when I clicked on the “Support the RNC 8″ link in the sidebar. The page opened to the Friends of the RNC 8 web site and there embedded on the page was a video by Glass Bead Collective and Twin Cities Indymedia “Terrorizing Dissent”. If you click the link above instead and go to the web page for the film, and watch the trailer, you will see creative use of green screen keying.

The Republicans were just asking for it. Terrorizing Dissent was scheduled to be out in October, before the election. But the movie also gives play to the Democratic Convention as well. You can watch both low and high resolution versions from the website.

As for the RNC 8, they had a day in court TODAY, Dec. 17, and I missed the call-in.

We should all check the web tomorrow to see what happened in court earlier today. Thus far, there is no report on Twin Cities Indymedia.

As well, I am waiting to hear what the outcome of Adam Kokesh’s trial Dec. 11th in Heamstead, L.I. where IVAW had been engaged in non-violent action during the final presidentail debate. The vets had notified debate moderator that they had one question for McCain and one for Obama. They made an effort to enter the hall, were blocked from doing so, and then were assulted by police. According to a Veterans for Peace email, a police officer in the cavalry charged and one of the vets had his jaw displaced by a horse’s hoof with his head on the ground.

Were the police unrestrained, secure in knowing that Homeland Security money would pay for any subsequent legal entanglements? Apparently that was the situation in St. Paul.

In March 2007, the US Department of Homeland Security designated the 2008 Republican and Democratic National Conventions as National Special Security Events (NSSE). As a result of the NSSE status, the United States Secret Service became the lead agency in charge of security planning. The City of Saint Paul Police Department (SPPD) is the lead local agency.

The City of Saint Paul received a $50 million federal grant to pay for all local security costs associated with hosting the convention. Approximately 3,000 to 3,500 officers from 80 law enforcement agencies from across Minnesota will be needed for the event.
http://www.stpaul.gov/index.asp?NID=2198

–Cris

Good question! Artists always dream of saving the world, whether they live in Cuba or the US, Afghanistan or even Irak. But, why this article now on music in Cuba?

by Pablo Menéndez
Havana, Cuba
16 Dec, 2008

Time magazine prints over 4 MILLION copies in the US alone. This week’s cover story, Can Music Save Cuba?, by a writer who totally misses the true story, sure makes me feel that it is really important that I keep presenting my lectures up there when ever I can. The editors of Time seem to agree that this subject is very important.

I will be touring the US for around 3 weeks in late March / early April. Can you organize a lecture for me at your school?

I am the only person born and raised in the US who has been living and working as a musician / band leader IN CUBA, for over 40 years now. My work takes me all over the world performing as a Cuban musician. When I saw in Oct. 2003 that BUSH stopped giving visas to enter the US to ANY Cuban artists or intellectuals, since I am one of the only Cuban artists who CAN get in (I have a US Passport, a SS number and a US address), I decided to try to visit the US at least once a year to speak on this very subject:

MUSIC AND CULTURE IN CUBA TODAY!

Maybe the title of my talk could be, “Can Cuba’s Music Save the US?”
or
“Why don’t they want you to hear or see Cuban artists performing live in the US and why don’t they want you to visit Cuba either?”

What Keeps Us Apart? is one of my songs that I usually sing at the end of my lectures.

Who knows how many people read each of the 4 million copies of Time. At least YOU can help your students have a more balanced picture. One of president elect B. Obama’s campaign promises was to open up more relations between the US and Cuba.
We can start right now!

I will be touring the US for around 3 weeks in late March / early April.

Can you organize a lecture for me at your school?

Pablo Menendez
www.myspace.com/cubafusion
see 5 live concert videos of our band, Mezcla

By the way, in today’s world, we mostly feel powerless to change things. Reading this letter written by me at home in Havana, you can see how we can use today’s technology to turn that around. Feel free, in all senses, to send this letter to 4 million of your friends.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Pablo Menéndez
Havana, Cuba

I can think of two scenarios to explain this. Either the opinion page editor knows something the rest of us don’t, or the OPE has been swayed by inaccurate media coverage and decided to go with uninformed media spin, including a patently false AP article, thereby making the paper conform to a media reality that is something different that what has actually occurred.

ANATOMY OF A SPIN

The Syracuse Post Standard was first to publish on December 3. Rebecca James’ article appears factually correct, balanced and objective, but it framed things in a slightly odd way with the justaposition of two lines:

I’m definitely not asking for harbor,” the soldier said. “I’m trying to get some support so that when I go back they’ll be more wary about trying to treat me badly.”

But that may not be the sort of support the city of Ithaca is prepared to provide. (my emphasis)

This was unfortunate because the A.P., which prides itself on the professionalism of its organization and correspondents, came out with an article on Dec. 4, Ithaca says sanctuary law not for AWOL soldier, that was patently false. Perhaps the writer ignored the NOT in Trevor Loope’s quote “I’m definitely not asking for harbor” and read into it what he wanted for a story. There ought to be some sort of sanction for this sort of shoddy reporting.

The article begins:

ITHACA, N.Y. — An AWOL soldier from Fort Drum has asked the city of Ithaca to give him sanctuary.

But city officials say their sanctuary law wasn’t meant to provide safe haven for AWOL soldiers and their hands are tied.

and continues:

On Wednesday night, Loope and his lawyer asked city officials to help him avoid criminal charges by invoking Ithaca’s new “Community of Sanctuary” law.

There is absolutely no factual basis for this assertion. If you doubt me, you can watch the video from the December 3 Ithaca Common Council meeting posted on the tompkinsagainstwar.org web site.

Once AP got it wrong, the spin was cast. Ithaca Journal readers were spared because the paper had no reason to publish the AP article given its own coverage.

I think that the OPE consciously or sub-consciously is trying to stir up controversy over something that has been resolved in order to cater to a particular subset of its readers. Be that as it may, there could come a time when the Ithaca Common Council as a body might decide to take action on Trevor’s case or in support of another soldier. But for the time being, council members have considered and deliberated and come to a consensus on how they will respond to the circumstance that was before them. The Ithaca Journal OPE should respect this.

—Cris McConkey, webmaster, tompkinsagainstwar.org

I’d like to see a series of workshops in Syracuse, Rochester,
Binghamton, Ithaca, and any other location where there is sufficient
interest to help content producers become more versatile, organizations
become more effective in their media outreach, and the general public
better educated in how to access indepenpendent media.

Some of my particular interests are:

• Bridging the gap between public access television and internet
  video.
• Fostering a regional network for distribution and promotion of
  video.
• Supporting Community Radio and efforts to train newsgatherers.
• Educating the public about Miro as an alternative or supplement
  to cable/satellite.
• Further eroding the distinction between broadcast/cable and
  interbet video by finding a workable hardware solution for watching
  internet video on a TV set.
• Encouraging a new regional programming service to supply
  programming to the ‘extra’ digital channels managed by PBS affiliates
  in our region.

Do you have more to add?

–Cris

It is a little more than a month since the world watched a bloody confrontation unfold between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia.  The conflict was sparked by a miscalculation on the part of Mikhail Saakashvili, President of Georgia, who apparently felt emboldened by perceived US backing, despite State Department warnings not to provoke Russia.  Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin responded, predictably, in a crushing display of strength and aggression, and Russia remains an occupying force in some parts of Georgia today.  This lopsided struggle is only one in a long history of lopsided struggles that Georgians would wish to be over with once and for all.

The Georgian-Russian situation is an extremely difficult conflict to solve: Georgia will continue to assert its territorial integrity and independence from Russia, which  dominated it for the last 200 years; at the same time Russia feels threatened by the increasing  prospect of  its near-abroad being comprised of NATO countries.  Both parties have legitimate security concerns.  While the Russian response to the Georgian action in South Ossetia was largely disproportionate, it is hard to imagine that future actions will be any less extreme as long as the West is intent on making a show of bringing Georgia and Ukraine swiftly into NATO.

Neither the Russian approach – aggression and occupation of an independent state – nor the Western approach – NATO as an enforcer—will work.  Unfortunately the Russian-NATO polemic is the one dominating our international policy debate.   And little has been discussed, thus far, about a concept that has been around for a decade.  Suggested in 1997 by Dr. Johan Galtung, founder of Oslo Peace Institute, the South Caucasian countries of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia would form a demilitarized Peace Zone.  Today we should look toward creating a Peace Zone in the two breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  Russians and Georgians must put down their arms, disperse their armies and establish a process for community-based dialogue to foster peace-building between the parties.  International peacekeepers, that include neither Russians nor Georgians, led by EU would maintain the peace as the dialogue for lasting conflict resolution proceeds.
Peace Zones, or Zones of Peace, have been defined in many ways, depending on their usage. For many years the term has been used mainly for the protection of places of worship and cultural sites. Accordingly, the Zones of Peace International Foundation (ZOPIF) defines the term as “a site with sacred, religious, historic, educational, cultural, geographical, or environmental importance; protected and preserved by its own community and officially recognized by a governmental authority.  It is not merely a Demilitarized Zone, but a sanctuary that operates within ethical principles of non-violence, and is free from weapons, acts of violence, injustice and environmental degradation.”  This definition denotes how Peace Zones should not be seen simply as areas devoid of violence, but as havens where positive peace – dialogue fostering mutual understanding and inter-communal linkages – can develop and thrive.

• In October 1986, the UN General Assembly declared the Atlantic Ocean situated between Africa and South America as the “Zone of Peace and Cooperation of the South Atlantic.
• In 1988, the city of Naga in the Philippines was declared as the country’s first Peace Zone. It was established as a result of an intensified internal armed conflict and the failure of the cease-fire agreement between the government and the opposition party, the National Democratic Front (NDF).
• In late 1995, backed by Galtung’s idea, Conservation International (CI) suggested the establishment of the Bi-national Ecological Park to solve the Peru-Ecuador conflict. According to the (CI) proposal, the advantage of having the park was to create a border market for eco-tourism that would highly benefit both countries. After two years of resistance and disagreement from both countries, a Peru-Ecuador peace agreement was finally signed in 1998. It called for the creation of a demilitarized ecological protection zone.
• In 1995, inspired by the successful creation of the Peace Zones in Maladeg, Philippines, a peace pact was signed between Christian and Muslim inhabitants of the Barangay. The creators of this Peace Zone include different clans, and the armies and the commanders of both the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)

These are few good examples.  The country of Costa Rica under Dr. Arias, by all means, must be considered a Peace Zone as well.  This is to say that there are some successful examples of peace zones around the world.
Ambassador John W. McDonald, Chairman of the Institute for Multi Track Diplomacy has been working with different Georgian governments on the idea of Peace Zones since 2002.  Today it looks like with the active participation of EU this could be the only way to solve this conflict.
Both the EU and OSCE are already playing an active role in trying to resolve the current crisis, and together with the UN they are the ones who can bring an end to the conflict by being guarantors of the Peace Zones in the separatist regions.  Both the US and Russia can play an active roles in promoting peace zones.   American energy interests would be protected in the Peace Zones, and Russian security interests would not be threatened by a NATO military force established in the Caucasus.

Contact us if you’d like to help –any help is appreciated and important!  Whether you want to help with office work, programming, databases, web sites, technical aspects of radio, etc., it’s all important.

We are now assembling a group of experienced radio producers (the Finger Lakes Sound Posse) that will help teach interested people how to produce our own shows for 88.1 and 91.9. If you’re interested in producing a radio program dealing with news, issues or local arts and culture (no commercial DJ wannabees please!) drop us a line describing your program idea at our electronic mail info-at-ithacaradio-dot-org.

The new 91.9 transmitter will be located west of Walkins Glen.  The signal will also be carried by ICR’s 88.1 FM translator in Ithaca.  Until the new transmitter is built, ICR will continue to re-broadcast WEOS, the Hobart & William Smith Colleges station in Geneva, on ICM’s 88.1 FM translator in Ithaca.  During this interim period, ICR will develop a webcast so that people interested in doing shows can learn skills while providing local coverage on the internet.   This will help ensure a smooth transition to a full power broadcast radio station.

ICR could benefit from partnerships with folks at I.C. and the Independent Media Center in developing the new station. This is  about opportunity and transferring skills, to give people with something to say a platform along with the skills they need to become citizen journalists,  ICR needs people with developed skills to help train and empower others who don’t, This is also about building a local institution for democratic media.  There is much to learn here by being part of this effort that would be transferrable to other situations and locations.