Liberal Democrats Take Aim at Funding for War December 5, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan escalation, Afghanistan Obama, afghanistan surge, afghanistan troops, Afghanistan War, anti-war, Barbara Boxer, barbara lee, congress, democrats, joe garofoli, john murtha, liberal democrats, pelosi, Pentagon, pentagon budget, roger hollander, war, war funding
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![[Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland has sponsored a bill to cut off war funding. (Photo: Alex Wong / Getty Images) ]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/barbara_lee.jpg "barbara_lee.jpg")
Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland has sponsored a bill to cut off war funding. (Photo: Alex Wong / Getty Images)“This is not the hope you voted for,” read a sign at an anti-war protest in San Francisco this week.
Congressional leaders predict that Obama will have to ask Congress for supplemental war funding in the next six months to pay for his plan, which his administration estimated would cost $30 billion. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the Pentagon budget, predicts it could top $40 billion.
Bay Area positions
That offers an opportunity for opponents, including Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who has sponsored a bill that would cut off funding for the war, to leverage Congress’ power to challenge the war.
A week after saying there wasn’t Democratic support for an escalation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – typically the president’s biggest backer on Capitol Hill – continued Thursday to offer neutral statements on Obama’s plan except for saying she opposes a proposed war surtax to fund it.
Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ Afghanistan Task Force, worries about the annual cost of $1 million per soldier on the ground in Afghanistan.
Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, added: “I expect more casualties, and I don’t see any end to what has been going on unsuccessfully.”
At a Senate Foreign Relations hearing Thursday, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said “the situation got worse” after she voted to fund Obama’s request to send 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan earlier this year.
“How can we now leap to the conclusion that more troops will mean less violence when the opposite seems to have occurred?” Boxer said.
Coalition abandoned
Obama is abandoning the coalition of liberals who helped elect him, analyst Phyllis Bennis of the liberal Institute for Policy Studies said, by relying on support from “the Pentagon, the Republicans and the right wing of the Democratic Party, who together will claim their due as an empowered pro-war coalition.”
That realignment, she said, could imperil Obama’s domestic agenda – including proposals to reform health care, establish climate change policy and fix the economy – by alienating liberals in his party and adding to the burgeoning federal debt.
“It ruins the potential for his domestic agenda,” Bennis said. “How is he supposed to do health care if he spends another $30 billion on Afghanistan? And if he doesn’t do health care or climate change or his jobs program, then he’s got a big problem politically.”
Grassroots dismay
Obama’s grassroots supporters are dismayed by his plan for a troop surge, even though he consistently called Afghanistan the “central front” in the battle against terrorism during his presidential campaign and has called for sending at least two more brigades, roughly 10,000 soldiers, there since 2007.
“I held out hope that he wouldn’t really do it,” Desiree Aubry, a San Francisco City College student, said at a San Francisco anti-war demonstration Wednesday night that drew 200 protesters.
The liberal organizing hub MoveOn.org wants supporters to lobby Congress to set a firm troop pullout date. And on the Web site of Organizing for America, an extension of Obama’s campaign effort, a poster identified as Jono Shaffer wrote: “This decision on Afghanistan is a slap in the face to those of us who supported you as a peace candidate.”
Still, Congress will give Obama the money needed to fund the expanded Afghanistan operation, said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress who advised Obama on Afghanistan strategy during his presidential campaign. “And I don’t think it is going to have an impact on his domestic agenda.”
They’ll come around
Liberal congressional leaders like Pelosi will eventually support the plan out of political necessity, said Steven Hill, director of the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank.
While Obama’s Afghanistan plan may not be popular with the Democrats’ anti-war wing, it will play better with conservative Blue Dog Democrats. Obama needs those legislators to retain their seats next year to maintain a strong majority in the House, Hill said.
© 2009 The San Francisco Chronicle
Torture a Terrorist for Jesus December 5, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in About Torture, Torture.Tags: democrats torture, fear mongering, fearmongering, geneva conventions, human rights, International law, media torture, nuremberg, republicans torture, roger hollander, torture, torture opinion, torture photos, torture statistic, waterboarding
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Roger Hollander, December 5, 2009
I remember from my studies in political science many years ago coming across a study with respect to the opinion of Americans about the provision of the Bill of Rights (the first ten Amendments to the Constitution). Although when asked if they support the Bill of Rights most answered in the positive, when asked about the views on the contents of the rights contained in the individual Amendments (without identifying them as rights contained in the Bill of Rights), most were not in favor. And this was before the hijacking of the political discourse in the United Sates by the religious radical right.
Some shocking statistics have emerged recently in a study conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Two thousand adults 18 years of age or older living in the continental United States were asked between October 28 and November 8, 2009 their opinions about torture. A majority, 54% opined that torture was often (19%) or sometimes (35%) justified.
I doubt if these figures would have been nearly as high prior to 9/11. There is no doubt in my mind that they are to a large degree a product of the fear-mongering and misinformation that we have been subjected to from the extreme right, the majority of Republican and Democrat politicians, and the lapdog corporate mainstream media.
I would like to see the results of this survey if the respondents were fully informed of the overwhelming opinion of experts in the field that torture is counter-productive in eliciting reliable actionable information and reminded that the victims of torture are “suspects,” not convicted terrorists and that a policy of torture makes American prisoners of war more vulnerable to torture.
I would like to see the results of this survey if the respondents were shown these photos:
I would particularly like to see the results of this survey if the respondents were able to be present in the torture sessions depicted in these photos (of course I would not advocate such an experiment).
More than anything, I would like to see a revolution in thought and action in the United States that reflects a turn from racism, violence, intolerance and greed, away from religious bigotry and twoards truly human values.
Election Report From Honduras: The People Say “We Didn’t Vote!” December 4, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Honduras, Latin America.Tags: democracy, Honduras, honduras coup, honduras election, honduras military, honduras repression, honduras resistance, honduras vote, jackie mcvicar, Latin America, latin america democracy, latin america politics, national party, pepe lobo, roger hollander, zelaya
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| Written by Jackie McVicar | |
| Wednesday, 02 December 2009
www.upsidedownworld.org |
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| Tegucigalpa, Honduras – After a long bus ride back from the north eastern part of the country and the department of Colon, we arrived in the capital today just in time to join a massive caravan organized by the Popular Resistance Front. Like the other demonstrations held since the coup d’etat on June 28, the mobilization winded through the “barrios”, the neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa where supporters left their homes to show their support.
This time, instead of walking, organizers decided to drive their cars in a caravan, to avoid confrontation or repression that they feared by the State security forces. Hundreds of cars and people drove through the streets honking their horns, with flags, horns and music. Both those in the caravan and people yelling support from the streets, “I didn’t vote!” showed their ink-less fingers, to show they had not been registered at a polling station where a finger print as part of your id is normally taken. Though the media is reporting record high turnouts for Sunday’s election, no one is buying it. One woman I interviewed who didn’t want to be identified because of fear (“if they see my picture, they [the military] will come after me”), said, “I have over 150 people in my [extended] family and not one went out to vote.” Another man, when asked what the streets of Tegucigalpa looked like yesterday, said with pride, “The streets were deserted. That is the reality. Those who went to vote were just a few…I didn’t go out to vote, precisely because we don’t support the de facto regime. And conscious people who didn’t vote in Honduras, is 65%. It’s the majority who didn’t go vote and the Tribunal [Supreme Electoral Tribunal - TSE] wants to cheat us by saying the majority went to vote. In Honduras, people are conscious after the 28th of June. And it’s the majority who won, it’s the popular resistance.” On election day at 3pm, the TSE announced that they were having a large turnout and didn’t have enough paper and ink so were going to extend voting by an hour. Others suggest that they extended the voting hour precisely because there wasn’t a large turnout and there are reports that police started going into neighbors’ houses announcing that all citizens must vote. Despite this, many didn’t. One taxi driver I asked from Tocoa, in the department of Colon, said, “I didn’t leave my house yesterday. I shut the door and didn’t open it all day. Who knows what they [State forces] would’ve done.” This driver had reason to be nervous. Five members of our delegation were in Tocoa the day before the election and we saw at least five unmarked trucks and SUVs with tinted windows driving through the small town, reminding those on the streets they were being watched. Some didn’t even bother taking the National Party banner off the vehicles as they drove past folks walking on the streets or pulling up in front of the homes of resistance leaders homes. When our delegation met with the Sub-Chief at the National Police Station in Tocoa on election day, after receiving a call that up to eight people had been illegally detained, he said that the police were, “doing all they could to ensure the safety of citizens.” He noted that the police register any unmarked cars they see to ensure they do not have dangerous materials inside and that they are registered to the right people driving the car. When I asked why the police hadn’t stopped the unmarked vehicles we saw, despite the fact that every other car was being stopped and registered at the police check point, he simply didn’t answer. Later that night, a pipe bomb exploded in the Liberal Party Headquarters in Tocoa and the eight missing still have not been found or the story cleared about their whereabouts. Outside of Tocoa, in the municipality of Trujillo, we visited the community of Guadalupe Carney (named after an Irish American Priest who worked there and who was killed in the 1980s), who had heard the night before that military were encircling the community from both directions. Thankfully, they never raided the community, but they sent a message loud and clear: be careful, we’re not far away. We heard reports that the military in part were camped out a Colonel’s hacienda near by. The police had Guadalupe on their radar and had been “prepared for the worst” in that community, according to Officer Sauceda. When we visited, we saw signs posted: Don’t vote! Of the over 800 families living in the community, they suspect only a handful went to vote. The campesinos in this community know this will be a long battle, but one man, Augustin, age 75, said proudly, “I have seen a lot in my life time. We continue the struggle because it is part of who we are, we are conscious and we believe in the struggle.” In other polling stations, we saw political hype but not too many voters. In Corosito, Colon, we visited the polls with members of the Coordination of Popular Organizations of Aguan (COPA) and saw many empty rooms in the school where the poll had been set up. Military and police guarded the door, the first time for this kind of security during a civilian election. In other parts of the country, including San Pedro Sula where people in resistance had planned a peaceful march to show opposition to the election process, tear gas and water bombs served to control the crowds. Back in Tegucigalpa, there are many unknowns: will Mel Zelaya leave the Brazilian Embassy this week and fulfill his term as President before Pepe Lobo of the opposing National Party takes power at the end of January? What political alliances will be made now that the vote has taken place? Will Canada, the US and other nations go ahead and accept these unfair, unfree elections and accept a highly militarized state and a President elected during a coup d’etat as trade partners and go ahead with business as usual? Will the newly elected National Party be able to convince the world that Honduras’ “problems” are a thing of the past, part of Liberal Party squabbling that have ended? One issue isn’t in question: the strength and courage of the Honduran people. As the caravan ended tonight in front of the Brazilian Embassy, in an act of solidarity with President Zelaya held captive inside, chanting, singing and dancing (there was even a Mariachi band!) could be seen and heard while the police and military called in reinforcements and pointed their 50 mm machine gun at the celebrating crowd. So when it was time, people left – peacefully, just as the caravan had started. They weren’t about to enter a conflict with the military, a physical fight is not what they want. When I asked a young woman in the crowd why she was there, what she wanted, she didn’t surprise me with her answer, “la constituyente” – the constituent assembly that many believe could one day lead to real change in Honduras. Until then the people keep singing, “The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated!”. Just as the graffiti says throughout Honduras, “The Power Is In The Streets.” |
Shell Must Clean up Its Act in Nigeria December 4, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Africa, Environment, Nigeria.Tags: Africa, chima williams, environment, environmental contamination, environmental damage, environmental justice, environmental rights, human rights, niger delta, nigeria, nigeria environment, nigeria oil, oil contamination, oil spills, roger hollander, royal dutch shell, shell nigeria, shell oil, shill pollution, west africa
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As Nigerian villagers take Shell to court over huge oil spills, it’s time for the group to take responsibility for polluting practices
by Chima Williams
This is one of three oil spills in the case against Shell that will begin its first hearing at The Hague civil court this week. Four Nigerian villagers, in conjunction with Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands), are charging Royal Dutch Shell with causing massive oil spills that have resulted in loss of livelihoods. The case provides a snapshot of the environmental and social devastation caused by Shell in the Niger Delta.
The bigger, more disturbing picture is that oil spills have contaminated the once fertile Delta with approximately 1.5m tonnes of crude oil, equivalent to one Exxon Valdez disaster every year for the last 50 years. As Amnesty International pointed out in a report this July, Shell “has failed to respect the human rights of the people of the Niger Delta … through failure to prevent and mitigate pollution”.
The parent company, Royal Dutch Shell, denies responsibility for the pollution of its subsidiary, Shell Nigeria, and is challenging the jurisdiction of the Dutch court over its actions abroad. It also blames oil spills on sabotage to its equipment. It seems that if Shell had its way, no court would have jurisdiction over any violations of human rights and environmental law. In 2005, the federal high court of Nigeria declared Shell’s gas flaring to be a violation of human rights and ordered the company to stop the illegal practice. Shell has still not complied with this court order. With little or no legal remedy in Nigeria, villagers from the Niger Delta have decided to bring their case to The Hague to hold the company headquarters to account.
Should the case go forward, the court would hear about Shell’s systematic pollution across the region. In Goi, a massive oil spill from Shell’s Trans-Niger pipeline caught fire in 2005, incinerating farmland, property and polluting fisheries. It took 33 months before Shell cleaned up the mess. Chief Barizaa, an Ogoni elder, and one of the four plaintiffs in the case said: “I lost everything … the oil flowed into my fishponds and killed all my fish. The five canoes I had in the creeks were consumed by the inferno. I have nothing left to feed my family.”
Another oil spill flowed from a high-pressure pipeline in Oruma, Bayelsa state, in 2005, polluting the land and drinking water of several neighbouring communities. Shell waited 12 days before containing the spill, and four months later it began its clean-up operation by dumping the polluted soil into pits and setting them on fire, causing further damage to the environment.
The oil-rich Niger Delta is prized by multinational corporations; chief among them is Shell, which derives approximately 10% of its global profits from the region. The oil companies have made enormous profits and enriched a succession of Nigerian regimes, but pollution is driving local people into poverty. Until Shell takes responsibility for its impact on the environment and human rights, it can expect legal actions like this one to expose ugly truths about their polluting practices. Shell must bear the cost of its environmental devastation. The alternative is daily injustice on a massive scale.
Blackwater Founder Tells of Extensive Government-Contracted Assassinations December 4, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: Afghanistan casualties, afghanistan occupation, Afghanistan War, afghnaistan, al-Qaeda, arbitrary executions, assassination, Blackwater, cheney, cia, cia assassination, cia contractor, cia targets, civilian deaths, congress, congressional democrats, democrats, drone attacks, drone missiles, erik prince, extrajudicial executions, extrajudicial killings, Feinstein, hellfire missiles, Iraq, Iraq occupation, Iraq war, leon panetta, mercenaries, roger hollander, summary executions, vanity fair, war, xe, yana kunichoff
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by: Yana Kunichoff, t r u t h o u t | Report
December 4, 2009
The head of Blackwater revealed the details of his collaboration with the CIA to locate and assassinate top al Qaeda operatives as part of a covert antiterror operation Tuesday, and blamed Democrats for the leak that ended the program.
In an article published in Vanity Fair, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, spoke about the extent of his involvement with the CIA, which ranged from putting together, funding and executing operations to bring personnel into “denied areas” to targeting specific people for assassination who were deemed enemies by the US government.
Prince was one of a secret network of American citizens with special skills or access chosen to help the CIA access targets of interest. The program was kept secret for nearly eight years until it was revealed to lawmakers in a closed session with the House and Senate Intelligence Committee. During this meeting, CIA director Leon E. Panetta named both Prince and Blackwater as major players.
Prince blames Congressional Democrats for the leak. “[W]hen it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus,” he said. “The left complained about how [CIA operative] Valerie Plame’s identity was compromised for political reasons. Well, what happened to me was worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it.”
According to current and former government officials, former Vice President Dick Cheney told CIA officers in 2002 that they did not need to inform Congress about the program because they were already legally authorized to kill al Qaeda leaders. Under an executive order signed by President Gerald Ford in 1976, the CIA was barred from carrying out assassinations. But President George W. Bush took the position shortly after 9/11 that killing al Qaeda members was comparable to killing enemy soldiers in battle, and therefore assassinations were permissible. Prince was hired in 2004.
A former Navy Seal, Prince said, “I’ve been overtly and covertly serving America since I started in the armed services.” In his role as a contractor for the covert CIA program, according to The New York Times, Prince’s Blackwater employees assembled and loaded Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs onto remotely piloted aircraft – work previously performed by authorized and trained CIA employees.
Prince says he and a team of foreign nationals located a target for assassination in October 2008, but did not complete the job. He alleges two of these trips brought him and his team into Germany and Dubai – without the knowledge of their governments.
He further said that Blackwater resources were never used, but that he used his personal finances and was later reimbursed by the government. Prince has personally spent $45 million to finance a fleet of armored personnel carriers, and according to The Wall Street Journal, Blackwater itself had revenues of more than $600 million in 2008.
Blackwater, now renamed Xe Services for Xenon, the noncombustible gas, was founded in 1997 and has been in Afghanistan since 2002 and Iraq since 2003. In 2004, coalition forces in Baghdad declared private contractors, which included Blackwater employees, immune from Iraqi law.
Largely assigned to act as bodyguards for American diplomats and provide security for military and intelligence stations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Prince’s employees have on more than one occasion been accused of wanton force, which has resulted in civilian deaths.
A shooting by Blackwater bodyguards in Baghdad in September 2009 resulted in the death of 17 civilians, and the Justice Department has since charged six people with voluntary manslaughter, among other offenses, calling the use of force both unjustified and unprovoked.
A contractor also shot and killed a man standing on a roadside, who later turned out to be a father of six, and a bodyguard who was assigned to protect Iraq’s vice president. In both cases, the contractors were fired but not prosecuted.
Following these incidents, Iraqi officials have refused to give Blackwater an operating license. As a result of this, its revenue dropped 40 percent, and Prince says he is now paying more than $2 million a month in legal fees.
“We used to spend money on R&D to develop better capabilities to serve the US government,” says Prince. “Now we pay lawyers.”
The company is also facing a grand jury investigation and bribery accusations along with the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees for Iraqis killed in September 2007.
American agencies have in the past outsourced interrogations , but many worry that the contracting out of the authority to kill brings a new set of problems.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said. “It is too easy to contract out work that you don’t want to accept responsibility for.”
Blackwater, which received more than $1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009, regularly offers its training area in North Carolina to CIA operatives and continues to help fly killer drones along the border between and Afghanistan and Pakistan – President Obama is said to have authorized more than three dozen of these hits.
Philip Alston, an Australian human-rights lawyer who has served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, said that drone attacks also operate in “an accountability void.”
Prince said that until two months ago, he was still working on intelligence-gathering operations from an undisclosed location in America and coordinating the movements of spies who were working undercover in the Axis of Evil countries. However, Prince, who was rejected by the CIA when he applied for a position, now plans to curtail his work with Blackwater and teach economics and history in high school.
CIA Can Expand Using Drones in Pakistan: Report December 4, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Pakistan, War.Tags: aerial drones, al-Qaeda, cia drones, civilian casualties, drone attackes, drone missiles, drones, extrajudicial executions, hellfire missiles, International law, Obama policy, pakistan, pakistan war, Taliban, un-manned drones, us war, war
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WASHINGTON – The White House has authorized the CIA to expand the use of unmanned aerial drones in Pakistan to track down and strike suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda members, the New York Times reported Friday.
![[Pakistani citizens protest the continued use of CIA drones in fall of 2008. The White House has authorized the CIA to expand the use of unmanned aerial drones in Pakistan to track down and strike suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda members, the New York Times reported Friday. (TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/pakistan_drones.jpg "pakistan_drones.jpg")
Pakistani citizens protest the continued use of CIA drones in fall of 2008. The White House has authorized the CIA to expand the use of unmanned aerial drones in Pakistan to track down and strike suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda members, the New York Times reported Friday. (TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images)The Times, citing unnamed sources, said that authorization to expand CIA drone usage in Pakistan’s tribal areas came this week, coinciding with President Barack Obama’s announcement Tuesday of sending 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan.
Washington is also talking with Pakistani officials about using the drones to strike in Baluchistan — a vast region outside of the tribal areas that borders Afghanistan and Iran — where Afghan Taliban leaders are reportedly hiding, the Times reported.
Analysts, intelligence agents and foreign officials have widely reported that Taliban fighters use Baluchistan as a base, crossing over the border into Afghanistan to and from the Taliban’s spiritual capital of Kandahar.
The northwest Pakistan tribal region has seen a surge in the US strikes, which fan anti-Americanism in the nuclear-armed Muslim country, since Obama took office.
While the drone program began under former president George W. Bush, the Obama administration has continued and expanded it.
Drones, usually armed with Hellfire missiles, are launched in the region and frequently controlled remotely from sites in the United States.
As a rule, the US military does not confirm drone attacks, which US officials say have killed a number of top-level militants.
Islamabad publicly opposes their use as a violation of its sovereignty, but analysts say that Pakistani officials give their use tacit support.
Criticism of the strikes in Pakistan has lessened in public since a US drone attack killed Pakistan’s much-feared Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud on August 5.
In late October, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Philip Alston said that drone usage could be breaking international laws.
“The onus is really on the United States government to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary extrajudicial executions aren’t in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons,” he added.
Alston said he had presented a report on the matter to the UN General Assembly.
Since August 2008, at least 65 such strikes have killed around 625 people, although it is difficult to confirm the precise identity of many of those who die given that the remote regions targeted are largely closed to outsiders.
© 2009 Agence France-Press
Behind Bars in Honduras: An Interview with a Women’s Rights Leader Before the ‘Free’ Election December 3, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Honduras, Latin America, Women.Tags: Amnesty International, democracy, femicide, feminism, Honduras, honduras coup, honduras disappeared, honduras election, honduras military, honduras police, honduras repression, honduras women, Latin America, latin america politics, latin america women, latina feminism, merlin eguigure, roger hollander, tamar sharabi, violance against women, women, zelaya
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| Written by Tamar Sharabi | |
| Thursday, 03 December 2009 | |
Photo by Adrian Villalobo
Merlin Eguigure helped organize an event on Nov. 25 for the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The next day while leaving a restaurant in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, members of COBRA, the special police force, ambushed her. They searched her car and detained her and two companions for having spray paint in the car. They were jailed for almost 24 hours. Merlin had used the paint to create artistic banners for the previous day’s activities. The District Attorney’s office charged her with ‘property damage’, but her case is still under investigation, and other charges can still be added.Her real crime is being a part of the “Movement of Women for Peace Visitacion Padilla” and a ‘Feminist in Resistance,’ and for speaking out against the coup regime that took power on June 28. The organization, founded in 1984, is named after a Honduran heroine who fought for women civil liberties and political rights, and was especially vocal in 1924 against the US Marine Military presence in Honduras. Merlin is one of the approximately 5,000 illegal detentions reported by the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared and Detained Persons in Honduras (COFADEH). The following is an interview conducted while she was behind bars in a police station in downtown Tegucigalpa, known as ‘Core 7.’Tell me, how are you? I am OK, so, so. For me this is just a test, and here, you have to resist against the appearance of the rule of law. Of all the impunity, we have nothing left but to resist. Do you have a message you would like to share? I want to say that this is a struggle of dignity against the barbarism, it is the struggle of the power of ideas against the power of arms, and considering this, we have nothing more that we can do, like we say in our organization, but to continue resisting, to continue fighting. Until the rule of law is restored we expect anything to happen, and this [my imprisonment] is an example of that. We didn’t do anything, but regardless we are here. Will you continue in the struggle? Of course, of course, with much more force and more commitment, because one cannot leave the country behind in these conditions. These bars and this prison does not intimidate me to keep me from fighting, my commitment is even stronger, especially when I see that the companions of my organization are here and have been here all day waiting for my release. This makes me even more committed to continue fighting for women’s rights, because women can be recognized as real citizens and because reason imposes over the truth. This is a commitment that I reaffirm, and I see this as a test of tranquility, as further proof of how the coup plotters are mistaken. Why do you think you were arrested? We were in the context of a day of demanding nonviolence against women and since the coup detat occurred, we have been having a huge presence. We have denounced the police brutality, we have condemned their negligence, we have said that they have been complicit in the abuse of women and in human rights violations. Just yesterday we were in the Central Park making a symbolization of what ‘Femicide’ [homicides against women] means, for our homes and for the Honduran society. We were condemning it and we were holding the national police, the armed forces, the direction of criminal investigation and all the groups that form that chain, so that women can identify them. It’s precisely because we were exposing that more than the 350 murders of women so far this year remain unpunished. I think not even 1% of the men have been sentenced. So therefore I believe that now more than ever, I am empowered even more to continue in the efforts for justice in this country, so that human rights of women are not really a theory and discourse, but become a real practice that my daughter, or grandchildren if I ever have some, so that they may enjoy a society where we are not really inferior. That is the purpose. Do you think the situation would be different if you didn’t have so many people protesting outside, demanding your freedom? I believe so, from the information I have regarding legal issues, the situation would be very different. We have received many visits here from international agencies like Amnesty, COFADEH [Committee of Relatives of Disappeared and Detained Persons in Honduras], JEGIL [Center for Justice and International Law], many institutions that promote human rights have come that have been vital. I think at this time, like in the 80’s, international support for the rule of law, was the same as in the 80’s, in the Cold War, it was vital to save lives of many people with the support of the international community. So I have infinite gratitude to those who have come, not to see me, Merlin is only one piece of the whole wave of repression and barbarism that has been implemented. The truth, I’m just a piece, this is really a chain. There are a lot more people who really suffered worse taunts, that have lost their lives. So we have to continue preparing and looking for tools and mechanisms to protect us, because we are women of peace and our struggle is with ideas. We do not have weapons, we do not have bombs, our only weapons are our ideas. Do you think there can be free elections? I, Merlin, freely, will not participate in the electoral process. I will not vote, I will not use my vote to endorse this fraud that has been in the works for some time now. I do not want to be irresponsible with my homeland, I do not think that the solution comes in this way. I think the solution is actually to listen to the people, to listen to its citizens. The elections only try, as the popular saying here is, ‘to cover the eye of a bull’, trying to resolve a crisis with the same hands of those who carried out the coup d´etat. Really the electoral process in the conditions that they are in, give no guarantee other than entrenching the power of those who already have it, and with no doubt increase some levels of repression. Two days before the election, do you think there is still time to solve this crisis? I think there’s always time to solve this problem. The problem of this coup has many roots. The military, the hawks in the USA, the powerful groups in America. So we need those who carried out this coup detat, also to have the strength and values to respect this homeland, because this country may be small but is full of decent and noble people that we love, and we struggle, and we will continue to fight for all the time necessary. But we will not permit them to continue damaging us, especially us. As women we have the name of the first national heroine, teacher Visitacion Padilla, who gave an example of civic citizenship. We are her followers. That is why we proudly carry her name, because we continue to demonstrate that the Hondurans want to do things right, things that we need. Therefore, those who run this country should direct it from the heart, thinking of the people and not thinking about money, not from air-conditioned desks not knowing the reality of this country. Did you ever imagine in your life that you could be put in prison? I believe that those who have taken the path in fighting for justice, at some point we expect something like this might happen to us. The truth, its nothing pleasant (being in prison), but they are the challenges that need to be faced, and which contribute to set precedents for dignity and justice. Do you have any fear for what might happen in the coming days? Well, I have a lot of fear, not personally, but I believe that many worse things may happen in this country. As I have said, fascism is in control of the state at this time, and fascism is quite simply that—fascism; it does not think, there is no reason, it imposes, dominates, and conforms. So I think these two days will be definitive and people have to be very careful. We must be prepared for the worst because all indications suggest that we are under the wave of terror. Tamar Sharabi is a an environmental engineer and freelance journalist living in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. She is originally from Queens, NY. |
Scholar Who Fosters Religious Pluralism Among Young People Wins Grawemeyer Prize in Religion December 5, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Religion.Tags: american muslim, eboo patel, grawemeyer, pluralism, religion, religious extremism, religious pluralism, religious tolerance, roger hollander, tolerance
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Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 4, 2009
Eboo Patel, the founder and executive director of an organization that promotes religious pluralism and is active on 50 American college campuses, will receive the 2010 Grawemeyer Award in Religion, the University of Louisville has announced.
Mr. Patel, a former Rhodes scholar who holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion, was honored for his 2007 autobiography, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation (Beacon Press), in which he describes his own life story as an India-born Muslim raised in America. The autobiography shows how an angry youth can be transformed into a leader for peace, according to the award announcement.
The organization Mr. Patel founded, Interfaith Youth Core, works to build mutual respect and pluralism among young people of different religious traditions by focusing on shared values and community service.
“Religious extremists all over the world are harnessing adolescent angst for their own ends,” Susan R. Garrett, a professor at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary who directs the award, said in the announcement. Mr. Patel “urges us to take advantage of the short window of time in a young person’s life to teach the universal values of cooperation, compassion, and mercy.”
The award is one of five Grawemeyer prizes that are presented each year in recognition of achievements in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The awards were created in 1984 by H. Charles Grawemeyer, a University of Louisville alumnus, and are given by the Grawemeyer Foundation. Each prize carries a $200,000 cash award.
The recipients of the 2010 prizes in music composition, for ideas improving world order, in psychology, and in education were announced earlier this week. More information about the awards and their recipients is available on the organization’s Web site. —Charles Huckabee