[Stopwar-l] News & Updates

Wed Mar 31 22:06:31 PDT 2010

1.War Resisters Support Campaign - appeal and update

2. SFPIRG
application callout: Usamah Ansari Creative Justice Award 

3.DAY OF
ACTION: SATURDAY, MARCH 27th
 TELL MOUNTAIN EQUIPMENT CO-OP TO
 STOP
SUPPORTING ISRAEL'S WAR CRIMES! 

4. Call out to Support Unions in Iraq

5. News Update: "Pacified" By Kathy Kelly 

6. AN OPEN LETTER from
SFPIRG

*************************************************

1. 

WAR
RESISTERS SUPPORT CAMPAIGN - VANCOUVER

  E-MAIL YOUR M.P. NOW TO SUPPORT
IRAQ WAR RESISTERS AND BILL C-440

 In only a matter of a few weeks,
Parliament could be debating and voting on Bill C-440, a bill that would
make legally binding two motions that have already passed in the House of
Commons in support of U.S. Iraq War resisters. Bill C-440 sends a message
to the Harper government that the will of the majority in support of war
resisters cannot be ignored.

 In addition to the nearly 10,000 Bill C-440
postcards that supporters are gathering across Canada, we are asking you to
take a few minutes today and directly contact your M.P. to ask them to
support Bill C-440. 

 Here's the form on-line; it only takes a few minutes
to e-mail your M.P.:
 http://letthemstay.ca/action/email-your-mp/ [1]

Canadians are proud of the fact that we refused to send our soldiers into
an unsanctioned and immoral war. Even a majority of Americans think Canada
did the right thing by not participating. Canada has an honourable
tradition of offering sanctuary to Americans who object to wars not
sanctioned by the United Nations and want to live a life of peace, free
from persecution. During the Vietnam War, Canada welcomed tens of thousands
of American war resisters who have contributed greatly to our society.

U.S. Iraq War resisters still face deportation and the threat of jail for
doing the right thing. Take action today to make sure your M.P. knows you
want Bill C-440 passed.

 Send an e-mail to your M.P. here:

http://letthemstay.ca/action/email-your-mp/ [2]

 For more information and
updates on Bill C-440:
 http://www.letthemstay.ca/ [3]

 Organized by the
War Resisters Support Campaign:
 http://www.resisters.ca/ [4]

War
Resisters Support Campaign

 Vancouver

 http://vancouverwarresisters.org
[5]

 Tel: 778-837-1475

 c/o 1143 E Pender St
 Vancouver BC V6A 1W6

***********************************************************************

2.

THE SIMON FRASER PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH GROUP WOULD LIKE TO INFORM
YOU OF A NEW $500 AWARD CREATED IN THE MEMORY OF ONE OF OUR ORGANIZATION'S
DEDICATED VOLUNTEERS. 

The _Usamah Ansari Creative Justice Award__
_honours Usamah's work as an activist and poet. Following the concentration
of his personal accomplishments, this award will be given in the support of
artistic initiatives by individuals or groups committed to social justice.
Communities of color, refugees and youth with be prioritized in the
selection process. Artists from all disciplines are encouraged to apply,
including visual art, poetry, music and writing.  

The deadline April 6th,
2010, Usamah's birthday. Thus, those interested are urged to submit
applications as soon as possible. Applications Forms can be found online at
www.sfpirg.ca [6] 

Attached is a poster with information about the award.
Please post and distribute widely.  

For further information please
contact donations (at) sfpirg.ca [7], 778-782-4360 [8].   

Simon Fraser
Public Interest Research Group (SFPIRG)
 ~For a just, sustainable, and
meaningful world~

 http://www.sfpirg.ca [9] (778) 782-4360 [10] 

********************************************************************* 

3.

 DAY OF ACTION: SATURDAY, MARCH 27th
 TELL MOUNTAIN EQUIPMENT CO-OP TO

STOP SUPPORTING ISRAEL'S WAR CRIMES!

 +
 Saturday, March 27th, 1pm - 4pm

Please join us for pickets at MEC locations, including:
 Victoria,
Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton

 Please contact us for more details if you
can join us at these or other MEC
 locations.
 Email:
boycottapartheid at gmail.com [11]
 Website:
http://boycottisraeliapartheid.org [12]
 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++

 On Saturday, March 27th information pickets will be held
outside Mountain
 Equipment Coop (MEC) stores, asking shoppers not to buy
Israeli goods at
 MEC.

 This action is in solidarity with the Second
Global BDS Day of Action that
 Palestinian civil society has called for
March 30, 2010. The first Global
 Day of Action for BDS (Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel
 came in the wake of last year's
brutal 3-week assault on Gaza. The Israeli
 military killed more than 1400
Palestinians, at least 80% of them
 civilians, according to the Israeli
human rights group B'tselem
 (http://btselem.org [13]).

 Judge Goldstone's
500-page report to the UN concluded that Israel's attack
 was "designed to
punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population."
 More than one year
later, Israel continues its suffocating blockade of the
 Gaza Strip which
has been described by Jimmy Carter as "one of the greatest
 human rights
crimes on Earth."

 Over the last year, the global movement calling for
Boycott, Divestment and
 Sanctions has accelerated, with the explicit aim
of forcing Israel to comply
 with international law. In Canada, members
have been asking MEC to end its
 "partnerships" with Israeli factories,
including military contractors, that
 produce MEC branded seamless
underwear and hydration systems. These
 partnerships are antithetical to
MEC's promotion of itself as an
 organisation with "rigorous ethical
sourcing requirements," and a "business
 [that] can advance human
rights."

 MEC's house brand "partner" for hydration systems is Source
Vagabond, an
 Israeli military designer and contractor that boasts on its
website
 (http://source-military.com [14]) "[Founder] Yoki and most of the
members of our

R">**********************************************************************************

4.

SUPPORT UNIONS IN IRAQ

Iraqi workers are struggling to re-form their
unions after years of
dictatorship, followed by the war and an occupation
during which the
repressive laws regarding trade unions were maintained and
enforced by US forces and then by the new Iraqi government.

Iraqi unions
are asking for your support in placing international pressure on their
government to provide for a free and democratic trade union movement. 30
seconds is all it
takes.

http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/cgi-bin/campaign1.cgi>http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/cgi-bin/campaign1.cgi
*************************************************************************************

5.

PACIFIED
March 30, 2010 By Kathy Kelly

If the U.S. public looked long
and hard into a mirror reflecting the civilian atrocities that have
occurred in Afghanistan, over the past ten months, we would see ourselves
as people who have collaborated with and paid for war crimes committed
against innocent civilians who meant us no harm. 

Two reporters, Jerome
Starkey (the Times UK), and David Lindorff, (Counterpunch), have
persistently drawn attention to U.S. war crimes committed in Afghanistan.
Makers of the film "Rethinking Afghanistan" have steadily provided updates
about the suffering endured by Afghan civilians. Here is a short list of
atrocities that have occurred in the months since General McChrystal
assumed his post in Afghanistan. 

December 26th, 2009: US-led forces,
(whether soldiers or "security contractors" (mercenaries) is still
uncertain), raided a home in Kunar Province and pulled eight young men out
of their beds, handcuffed them, and gunned them down execution-style. The
Pentagon initially reported that the victims had been running a bomb
factory, although distraught villagers were willing to swear that the
victims, youngsters, aged 11 - 18, were just seven normal schoolboys and
one shepherd boy. Following courageous reporting by Jerome Starkey, the
U.S. military carried out its own investigation and on February 24th, 2010,
issued an apology, attesting the boys' innocence. 

February 12, 2010:
U.S. and Afghan forces raided a home during a party and killed five people,
including a local district attorney, a local police commander two pregnant
mothers and a teenaged girl engaged to be married. Neither Commander
Dawood, shot in the doorway of his home while pleading for calm waving his
badge, nor the teenaged Gulalai, died immediately, but the gunmen refused
to allow relatives to take them to the hospital. Instead, they forced them
to wait for hours barefoot in the winter cold outside. 

Despite crowds of
witnesses on the scene, the NATO report insisted that the two pregnant
women at the party had been found bound and gagged, murdered by the male
victims in an honor killing. A March 16, 2010 U.N. report, following on
further reporting by Starkey, exposed the deception, to meager American
press attention.

Two weeks later: February 21st, 2010: A three-car convoy
of Afghans was traveling to the market in Kandahar with plans to proceed
from there to a hospital in Kabul where some of the party could be taken
for much-needed medical treatment. U.S. forces saw Afghans travelling
together and launched an air-to-ground attack on the first car. Women in
the second car immediately jumped out waving their scarves, trying
desperately to communicate that they were civilians. The U.S. helicopter
gunships continued firing on the now unshielded women. 21 people were
killed and 13 were wounded. 

There was press attention for this atrocity,
and U.S. General Stanley McChrystal would issue a videotaped apology for
his soldiers' tragic mistake. Broad consensus among the press accepted this
as a gracious gesture, with no consequences for the helicopter crew ever
demanded or announced. 

Whether having that gunship in the country was a
mistake - or a crime - was never raised as a question. 

And who would
want it raised? Set amidst the horrors of an ongoing eight-year war, how
many Americans think twice about these atrocities, hearing them on the
news.

So I'm baffled to learn that in Germany, a western, relatively
comfortable country, citizens raised a sustained protest when their leaders
misled them regarding an atrocity that cost many dozens of civilian lives
in Afghanistan.

The air strike was conducted by US planes but called in
by German forces. On September 4, 2009, Taleban fighters in Kunduz province
had hijacked two trucks filled with petrol, but then gotten stuck in a
quagmire where the trucks had sank. Locals, realizing that the trucks
carried valuable fuel, had arrived in large numbers to siphon it off, but
when a German officer at the nearest NATO station learned that over 100
people had assembled in an area under his supervision, he decided they must
be insurgents and a threat to Germans under his command. At his call, a
U.S. fighter jet bombed the tankers, incinerating 142 people, dozens of
them confirmable as civilians. 

On September 6, 2009, Germany's Defense
Minister at the time, Franz Josef Jung, held a press conference in which he
defended the attack, playing down the presence of civilians. He wasn't
aware that video footage from a US F15 fighter jet showed that most of the
people present were unarmed civilians gathering to fill containers with
fuel. 

On November 27, 2009, after a steady outcry on the part of the
German public, the Defense Minister was withdrawn from his post, (he is now
a Labor Minister), and two German military officials, one of them Germany's
top military commander Wolfgang Schneiderhan, were forced to resign. 

I
felt uneasy and sad when I realized that my first response to this story
was a feeling of curiosity as to how the public of another country could
manage to raise such a furor over deaths of people in faraway Afghanistan.
How odd to have grown up wondering how anyone could ever have been an
uninvolved bystander allowing Nazi atrocities to develop and to find
myself, four decades later, puzzling over how German people or any
country's citizenship could exercise so much control over their
governance.

Today, in the US, attacks on civilians are frequently
discussed in terms of the "war for hearts and minds." 

Close to ten
months ago, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters at a June 12,
2009 press conference in Brussels that General Stanley McChrystal "would
work to minimize Afghan civilian casualties, a source of growing public
anger within Afghanistan." 

"Every civilian casualty -- however caused --
is a defeat for us," Gates continued, "and a setback for the Afghan
government." 

On March 23rd, 2010, McChrystal was interviewed by the
Daily Telegraph. "Your security comes from the people," he said. "You don't
need to be secured away from the people. You need to be secured by the
people. So as you win their support, it's in their interests to secure you,
…. This can mean patrolling without armored vehicles or even flak jackets.
It means accepting greater short-term risk - and higher casualties - in the
hope of winning a "battle of perceptions and perspectives" that will result
in longer-term security." 

And on March 2nd, 2010, he told Gail McCabe
"What we're trying to do now is to increase their confidence in us and
their confidence in their government. But you can't do that through smoke
and mirrors, you have to do that through real things you do - because
they've been through thirty-one years of war now, they've seen so much,
they're not going to be beguiled by a message." 

We're obliged as
Americans to ask ourselves whether we will be guided by a message such as
McChrystal's or by evidence. Americans have not been through thirty-one
years of war, and we have managed to see very little of the consequences of
decades of warmaking in Afghanistan.

According to a March 3, 2010 Save
the Children report, "The world is ignoring the daily deaths of more than
850 Afghan children from treatable diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia,
focusing on fighting the insurgency rather than providing humanitarian
aid." The report notes that a quarter of all children born in the country
die before the age of five, while nearly 60 percent of children are
malnourished and suffer physical or mental problems. The UN Human
Development Index in 2009 says that Afghanistan is one of the poorest
countries in the world, second only to Niger in sub-Saharan Africa. 

The
proposed US defense budget will cost the U.S. public two billion dollars
per day. President Obama's administration is seeking a 33 billion dollar
supplemental to fund wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Most U.S. people are
aware of Taleban atrocities, and many may believe the U.S. troops are in
Afghanistan to protect Afghan villagers from Taleban human rights abuses.
At least the mainstream news media in Germany and the UK will air stories
of atrocities. The U.S. people are disadvantaged inasmuch as the media and
the Pentagon attempt to pacify us, winning our hearts and minds to bankroll
ongoing warfare and troop escalation in Afghanistan. Yet it isn't very
difficult to pacify U.S. people. We're easily distracted from the war, and
when we do note that an atrocity has happened, we seem more likely to
respond with a shrug of dismay than with a sustained protest. 

At the
Winter Soldier hearings, future presidential hopeful John Kerry movingly
asked Congress how it could ask a soldier "To be the last man to die for a
mistake," while contemporary polls showed less prominent Americans far more
willing to call the Vietnam war an evil - a crime - a sin - than "a
mistake." The purpose of that war, as of Obama's favored war in
Afghanistan, was to pacify dangerous populations - to make them peaceful,
to win the battle of hearts and minds. 

Afghan civilian deaths no longer
occur at the rate seen in the war's first few months, in which the civilian
toll of our September 11 attacks, pretext for the war then as it is now,
was so rapidly exceeded. 

But every week we hear - if we are listening
very carefully to the news, if we are still reading that final paragraph on
page A16 - or if we are following the work of brave souls like Jerome
Starkey - of tragic mistakes. We are used to tragic mistakes. Attacking a
country militarily means planning for countless tragic mistakes.

Some of
us still let ourselves believe that the war can do some good in
Afghanistan, that our leaders' motives for escalating the war, however
dominated by strategic economic concerns and geopolitical rivalries, still
in some small part include the interests of the Afghan people. 

There are
others who know where this war will lead and know that our leaders know,
and have simply become too fatigued, too drained of frightened tears by
this long decade of nightmare, to hold those leaders accountable anymore
for moral choices. 

It's worthwhile to wonder, how did we become this
pacified? 

But far more important is our collective effort to approach
the mirror, to stay in front of it, unflinching, and see the consequences
of our mistaken acquiescence to the tragic mistakes of war, and then work,
work hard, to correct our mistakes and nonviolently resist collaboration
with war crimes.

Kathy Kelly (kathy at vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for
Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) and helps promote the Peaceable
Assembly Campaign, a Voices project to end U.S. funding for war and
occupation. 

************************************************************

6.

*PLEASE FORWARD AND POST WIDELY*

If you have been supported by
SFPIRG and/or support the work of SFPIRG, please take a moment to make your
voice heard on our endorsement page today (http://iheartsfpirg.ca/?p=13
[20]) . If you have already done so, please accept our sincerest thanks!

_Recently, there has been an allegation that threats have been made
against an individual who has been publicly critical of SFPIRG. The SFPIRG
board and staff wish to make clear that neither we, nor anyone we are aware
of, have ever encouraged, planned or undertaken any kind of violence -
whether physical or verbal - towards any persons who disagree with or have
criticisms of our work as an organization. We do not condone any of the
actions or threats that have allegedly been made on our behalf. If anyone
has experienced threats or harassment we encourage you to contact campus
security or the police._

AN OPEN LETTER FROM SFPIRG IN RESPONSE TO PLANNED
"COUP D'ETAT" AND FAILED FEE REFERENDUM  

On February 10, a group of
students intentionally disrupted SFPIRG's Annual General Meeting as part of
a larger agenda to take down the organization. The agenda was later
revealed in a blog (vanmaren88.blog.ca [21]) written by two of the
attending students, Sam Reynolds [22] and Jonathon Van Maren . According to
the blog, two students 

"Sam Reynolds and Robert Lutener…began formulating
plans to orchestrate a coup d'etat _[the wording has since been changed to
'action']_ against the group. They worked hard to solicit support from like
minded people, such as Jonathon Van Maren…organizing on Facebook in
complete secrecy." 

Directly after the AGM, Van Maren presented a motion
at the SFSS board meeting to put SFPIRG fees to referendum this March. The
motion did not pass and the board decided that a petition by 5% of the
student body was needed. (see Peak Article:  _Fervent student-group debate
erupts during board meeting_ [23]) The group did not obtain the necessary
amount of student signatures for the petition to be successful during this
election period. 

SFPIRG welcomes open and constructive dialogue about our
work and structure. However, we do not consider the ill will and secretive
method of organizing used by this group of students as representative of
SFU's student body in general. SFPIRG was established through student
organizing in 1981 as an autonomous organization specifically mandated to
advocate for social and environmental justice. This means we work to
empower student leadership in affecting change towards the full respect of
human rights and environmental sustainability. 

SFPIRG offers a wide range
of resources which include a Social Justice Lending Library; a bike tool
co-op; and workshop trainings on anti-oppression, consensus
decision-making, facilitation and creative media. In addition SFPIRG has
the popular Action Research eXchange (ARX) program, which allows students
to apply and develop their research skills in the real world through
partnerships with community organizations. SFPIRG is home to a number of
student-organized action groups on campus including Climate Change, Ancient
Forests, Voice for Animals, and Letters for the Inside (a research
initiative that helps prisoners access information to facilitate their
rehabilitation process). 

SFPIRG further supports local and on-campus
initiatives to achieve social and environmental justice through donations,
including in the areas of housing and homelessness, indigenous rights,
welfare of women and children, community health, and others. Students who
wish to attend social and/or environmental justice conferences or organize
action groups can also apply to us for funding support. 

Students are
integral at every level of SFPIRG - as board members, workers, volunteers
and service users. We operate using consensus, a democratic practice that
requires everyone's voice and active consent in the decision-making process
and outcome. We have three part-time staff to coordinate resources, provide
organizational continuity, and mentor student organizers. We also have 5 to
7 paid student positions in any given semester. 

Similar to The Peak [24]
and CJSF [25], SFPIRG is funded by a student levy. Full time students pay
$3.00 and part-time students pay $1.50 each semester. In November 2007, the
newly formed Graduate Student Society voted on all student fees and SFPIRG
received 71.3% votes in favour of continued funding. Any student who
doesn't support SFPIRG can request a refund of their levy during the fourth
week of the semester. We publicize this information at the start of each
semester. 

The students who came to disrupt our AGM have accused SFPIRG of
withholding information and being an undemocratic "exclusionary ideological
clique". We want to respond to these charges. At the AGM, we provided a
detailed annual report [26] of all our work in 2008-2009. We also provided
copies of our financial statements, which according to the BC Societies
Act, we are not required to audit. No charges, complaints or concerns have
ever arisen about SFPIRG's financial systems. All of these documents are
available on our website. [27] 

On February 10th, SFPIRG proposed several
bylaw changes to guarantee annual board elections and outline the
nominations process and voting on candidates at future AGMs. Currently
elections occur only when there are more people interested than there are
positions. The proposed amendments would have created a nominations process
and an opportunity for members to vote on board candidates at annual
elections. They were publicized on our website three weeks prior to the
AGM. We respect the outcomes of the voting process at our AGM, where they
did not pass in large part due to the disruption we experienced. Our next
nominations round for the board will be this summer. 

We find it
hypocritical for a small group of students plotting in secrecy and abusing
the platform of democracy to try and remove a critical space of leadership
development, social responsibility and empowerment for all students. SFPIRG
has championed social and environmental justice at SFU for the past 29
years and we believe the majority of students at SFU share our values
around human rights and sustainability. We are surprised by the
forcefulness of anti-community sentiment amongst the small group of
students organizing against us. Interconnection between campus and
community - both of which contextualize and shape students' lives - _is
_essential for genuine democracy. Students do not exist in a vacuum and the
campus is meaningless without the multiple civic spaces that we inhabit in
our daily lives. 

If you have concerns or questions, _come talk to us_.
Show your support for SFPIRG by signing this statement of endorsement [28]
and visit www.iheartsfpirg.ca [29] for more ways to get involved. 

In
solidarity with you for a more just, sustainable and meaningful world,

Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group  

Links:
------
[1]
http://letthemstay.ca/action/email-your-mp/
[2]
http://letthemstay.ca/action/email-your-mp/
[3]
http://www.letthemstay.ca/
[4] http://www.resisters.ca/
[5]
http://vancouverwarresisters.org/
[6]
http://sfpirg.ca/index.cgi?d=&g=/pirg/donations.html
[7]
http://sfpirg.ca/
[8] http://roundcube.resist.ca/callto:+1778-782-4360
[9]
http://www.sfpirg.ca/
[10]
http://roundcube.resist.ca/callto:+1778%29%20782-4360
[11]
mailto:boycottapartheid%40gmail.com
[12]
http://boycottisraeliapartheid.org/
[13] http://btselem.org/
[14]
http://source-military.com/
[15] mailto:boycottapartheid%40gmail.com
[16]
mailto:dLabistour%40mec.ca
[17] mailto:boycottapartheid%40gmail.com
[18]
http://boycottisraeliapartheid.org/
[19]
mailto:boycottapartheid%40gmail.com
[20] http://iheartsfpirg.ca/?p=13
[21]
http://vanmaren88.blog.ca/2010/02/11/party-at-the-pirg-7987371/
[22]
http://samreynolds.ca/
[23] http://www.the-peak.ca/article/21024
[24]
http://www.the-peak.ca/
[25] http://cjsf.ca/
[26]
http://iheartsfpirg.ca/?p=12
[27] http://sfpirg.ca/
[28]
http://iheartsfpirg.ca/?p=13
[29] http://iheartsfpirg.ca/
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