10 Questions for David Rovics

It is truly a huge pleasure for me to publish this Q&A with David Rovics, a phenomenal artist whose music I have only recently discovered, and about whom I wrote a piece entitled "David Rovics - the beautiful voice of the American Resistance". Three months have passed since I wrote this piece. I discovered more of David's songs and I came to the conclusion that he is probably the most talented American singer I have ever heard, bar none.

For those of you who have not listened to his music yet, I have selected what I think are 52 of his very best songs, archived them into one zipped file, and made them available for download here (enter the word "saker" next to "Пароль на файл:" and then enter the number you see next at the right of "Код безопасности" in the box "Введите код: and hit "enter", and the download will start in 5 sec). Alternatively, you can also download it from here. (Note: all the songs which I refer to in this Q&A are included in this archive)

I contacted David and asked him to agree to a Q&A exchange for my blog. He kindly agreed and here is the result of our exchange:

Q: Please tell us something about your family background: where were you born, what was the ethnicity/origin of you mom and dad, do you have any siblings, what kind of education did you get, were did you go to school, etc.?

A: I was born in New York City and raised in the well-off, white suburbs of Wilton, Connecticut. My parents are both classical musicians who taught at the University of Long Island. I wasn't brought up with any particular religion but my father is of Jewish lineage and my mother's family was Episcopalian, though she later became a Quaker. I have a sister named Bonnie, 3 years younger, who is also a leftwing musician among other things. I was educated in primary school in a wonderful hippie place called the Learning Community. After that I went to Wilton public schools and then briefly to Earlham College and Evergreen State College, but never got a BA.

Q: Who are the main influences of your art in terms of ideas, of course, but also in terms of music? What are your favorite authors/poets and what kind of music do you listen to most?

A: Musically I've been influenced profoundly by Appalachian music, bluegrass, traditional and contemporary Irish music, the singer-songwriter scene, nueva cancion, African music, all kinds of stuff. If I were to name a single songwriter who has impacted me most profoundly it would be Jim Page, with many others close behind.

Q: You are clearly not afraid of singing about topics and people which no other artist would ever dare touch, not with a 10 foot pole. For example, "Jenin" is about a Palestinian suicide-bomber, "Burn It Down" is about what the Uncle Sam would call "eco-terrorism", "Song for Ana Belen Montes" is about a top DoD official who spied for the Cuba not for money, but because her conscience told her to do so, "Lebanon 2006" is about Hezbollah and "International Terrorists" is about the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines! Even though these are some of your most powerful and beautiful songs, I know that they sometimes deeply offend, scandalize and infuriate people. Are you concerned about such reactions?

A: There are also many songwriters and other artists who would and regularly do write about all of those things. The ones who are scared of them usually either don't know enough about the issues or they're afraid of losing their record contract. The independent musicians like me don't have such concerns, for better or for worse, so our only concern might be for our safety. I don't think I have much to worry about in that regard. I can't think of a single instance of an artist in the US being killed for his or her art. Harassed, audited, spied on, phones tapped, passports taken and maybe jailed briefly (in the 1950's) but these are not serious concerns for anyone who gives a shit about humanity. And anyway, I rarely have the pleasure of reaching audiences beyond those who are already part of the progressive community, so I rarely cause controversy of any kind, unfortunately.

Q: Your music is very clearly American in style - it covers a wide breadth of American music styles - and I suppose that this choice an expression of your love for this land, its people, their culture and its landscapes. Yet at the same time you are clearly dismayed by the history of what the ruling elites have done to your country ("Parking Lots and Strip Malls", "Everything Looks the Same", "Before they nuke DC", "Floating Down the River"). How do you personally deal with the pain of seeing the country you love also being the "homeland" of the ideology which you despise so much? Have you ever considered leaving the USA and going into permanent exile? ("I think of moving eastward, Maybe Gant or Amsterdam, Far from Ronald McDonald, And his greedy Uncle Sam") or do you feel that your place is fundamentally here?

A: There are many places in the world I'd love to live. The US (or parts of it anyway) is only one of those places where there are wonderful people, lots of natural beauty, and other good things in life. Basically it's a beautiful world, and the US is beautiful too, it's just that the government is a neo-fascist empire bent on wiping out life on Earth. I feel like the place I can be most effective is in the US, where I'm from, which is one of the reasons I stay. Though of course I leave often, for tours... As for playing a distinctly American kind of music, nah. If I sang with an Irish accent or an English accent it'd be Irish or English music. There are lots of people there who like bluegrass and play guitar the way I do. Is bluegrass American? Sort of. At least to the extent that Irish immigrants and African slaves were/are American. The banjo is an African instrument.

Q: Some of your songs are amazingly optimistic ("We Are Everywhere", "Shut Them Down"). Considering what is going on in the world, how do you overcome a sense of despondency, of doom and gloom ("The Draft Is Coming")? Do you do that by seeking beauty and peace in the people we love ("Life is Beautiful") or do you see objective reasons to continue to hope that things will eventually change for the better ("Minimum Wage Strike", "The Pirate Radio Song", "Who Will Tell The People")?

A: There are all kinds of ways things can go at different places and times in this world, and what's certain is that mass movements are necessary to make things go in a positive direction. What's also certain is that music needs to be part of any movement. So I do my thing, hoping for the best. Things look pretty grim in the US, Europe and a lot of other places right now. The neoliberals and the xenophobes seem to get more powerful every day. On the other hand there is South America, where real changes are happening real fast. South America is the beacon of hope for the future of planet Earth at this time, it's largely where my hope for the future comes from right now, on a macro scale, but in little ways my hope for the future comes every day I have the pleasure of interacting with more kind and generous human beings, who are everywhere.

Q: One of your songs ("Whoever Wins in November") ends with the words "whoever wins in November, Neolib, neocon, Stands only for death, Whichever face he has on, We will build a new world, And set us all free, Once we drive the whole lot of them, Right out of DC". I personally fully agree with you in that I see no hope whatsoever in this corrupt system or in the naive hope that the elites which run it will somehow "reform themselves". But how do you think can they be "driven right out of DC"? Do you still believe that a 3rd party candidate can eventually win, do you believe in a Gandi-like satyagraha peaceful civil resistance or do you believe that only violence can and will eventually bring down this entire system?

A: Of course the first step in the process is education. People need to understand that the two-party system is hopelessly corrupt, and give up on it. Then there's the possibility for change in all kinds of ways. There's the possibility of a third party movement, of a mass nonviolent movement, of a violent uprising, who knows? All kinds of ways change can happen. I think it would be silly and dishonest to predict how that change might come about or which kind of change will be most effective, because we don't know the future or the circumstances it will involve yet, but change can happen in all kinds of ways. Not through voting for Democrats though.

Q: Your songs are a wonderful education tool for children. I have three kids whom I homeschool; they listen to your songs every day and constantly ask me questions about the events or people you refer to. I cannot think of a better history, civics or social sciences "curriculum" than your songs (-: "Homeschoolers for David Rovics!" - what a slogan :-). When you wrote these songs, did you just speak about the issues which were dear to you, or did you make a conscious effort to educate people or their kids?

A: I'm so glad you think my songs work well for educating children, 'cause home school vs. school is a constant theme in my life, having a little girl myself. I'm more in favor of home schooling, though right now she's part-time at a Waldorf place she seems to like (when she gets enough sleep). I didn't write these songs with children in mind, but I did write them with the idea in mind of communicating the most essential aspect of a story and not complicating it too much with tangents. I think songs about historical or current events tend to work best that way. That also works well for kids, at least if they're old enough to have some idea of the context. Of course I also write songs that are explicitly for kids, little kids, where I'm making different assumptions in terms of awareness of context, more appropriate for the age group.

Q: Your songs are extremely "singable" in the sense that they have simple choruses and melodies which are ideally suited to group singing (we often sing them with my wife and kids during car trips and we have a great deal of fun doing this). This is something which the vast majority of singers seem to have totally forgotten, that songs are not only meant to be listened to, but actually sung. Many popular music traditions aboard (Latin America, Celtic countries, Russia, Greece, etc.) also share that feature of being "singable", but in the USA you are one of the very few artists who cares about this. Why is it? Is that something you deliberately decided to include in your songs?

A: Interesting you say this, because I just did a tour of Tvind schools in Denmark and some of the headmasters complained that though they liked my songs, they were often not singable enough. It's all relative... Compared to many modern singer-songwriters my songs are singable. Compared with, say, songs of the civil rights or union movements, my songs are completely obtuse and not very singable. I like writing some songs that are easy to sing along with, and I like writing songs that aren't very good for that as well. But the thing is that if you like a song enough any song can be good for singing along, even if it doesn't have a chorus!

Q: Your entry in Wikipedia says that you are Jewish and in one of your poems you write "I think of the walls around our own ghetto, And how we had to crawl through the sewers, Looking for rats to eat, While we could hear their children playing, On the other side". Do you consider yourself Jewish and, if yes, what does it mean to you? Some "Jews" such as Shlomo Sands or Gilad Atzmon do not even believe that there is such thing as an ethnic Jew, that being "Jewish" is in reality a cultural/tribal self-identification, something one chooses but not something which one "is". You are not religious (at least according to the Wikipedia) and you very clearly abhor the Zionist ideology as in the same poem you say "I feel sick, Sick of your displaced anger, Sick of your self-deception, Sick of your attempts to deceive the rest of the world, Sick of your accusations of anti-semitism, Sick of your occupation, Sick of your apartheid state, Sick of Zionism". But then who is the "we" that you speak of in this poem? Can there be a way of being Jewish other than an ethnic, religious or ideological one?

A: I'm Jewish in the sense that I'm Jewish enough to have been gassed in Hitler's gas chambers and Jewish enough for Israeli citizenship. I'm also Jewish in the sense that I was told about this heritage and what it meant from birth by my father's mother especially. In terms of religion I'm an atheist. In terms of ethnicity I don't know if such a thing exists on a scientific basis or how that would be defined. There are genetic differences between people from one village to the next. At what point is an ethnicity constituted? Who knows? Personally I just don't care, I think it's all silly, but it would be equally silly to say that I'm not Jewish. What would that mean? Just as little or as much as being Jewish means. But certainly it's mostly a political and to some extent cultural definition, not genetic or religious in nature, at least not as far as I'm concerned.

Q: You wrote only one song about 9/11 - but an extremely powerful one (Reichstag fire). The chorus of this songs is "I am left to wonder, As the flames are reaching higher, Was this our latest Lusitannia, Or another Reichstag Fire?" Are you still wondering about this, or have you come to some conclusion?

A: I think there are many unanswered questions around what happened on 9/11. I think there are many people who have come to all kinds of unsubstantiated and unsubstantiatable conclusions based on guesses and not concrete facts, which is unfortunate for all of us. But there are certainly unanswered, important questions, and I imagine that will continue to be the case for a long time.
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If you want to find out more about Rovics and his music, the following ressources are available on the internet:

http://www.davidrovics.com (main web site)
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/davidrovics (weekly radio show, every Monday 11AM PST)
http://www.soundclick.com/davidrovics (his music)
http://songwritersnotebook.blogspot.com (his blog)
http://www.myspace.com/davidrovics
http://www.facebook.com/davidrovics
http://twitter.com/drovics
http://davidrovics.guestbooks.cc

"GAZA: LIFT THE BLOCKADE" - The Relief Convoy on its way

(Source: Gush Shalom mailing list and website)
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Click here to watch video from the convoy (sorry, Hebrew only)

The initiative for the large action that took place today (26.1.08) started when the well-know psychiatrist, Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj, the human-rights activist from Gaza, met in the Gush Shalom office with a small group of Israeli peace activists, in order to tell them about the desperate situation in the strip. It was decided on the spot to organize in Israel a relief convoy for the Gaza Strip people, and to fight by all political and juridical means for the right to get it in. It was agreed that two parallel protest rallies would be held simultaneously on the two sides of the wall.

26 Israeli peace groups joined the initiative, under the single slogan: "Gaza: Lift the siege!" Many activists from different organizations worked day and night. Gush Shalom prepared a special poster and started a fund-raising campaign among its sympathizers. Hundreds of checks came pouring in from Israel and a dozen other countries, enabling the Gush to carry alone the full costs of the supplies. Many added words of thanks for the opportunity given them to express their opinion this way and join the struggle.

Warm thanks to all of them!

In consultation with Dr. al-Sarraj it was decided to buy not only five tons of essential foodstuffs - flour, sugar, rice, oil, salt, beans and lentils - but also water distillers. "The water in the Gaza Strip is undrinkable," al-Sarraj reported, "therefore there is an urgent need for distillers."

The weather forecasts promised rain and thunderstorms all over the country. In spite of this, old and young peace activists came to the starting points in six towns. As requested by the organizers, hundreds of families came in their private cars. Together with the people who came by bus, their number reached about two thousand.

"In the night we were woken up by strong thunderbolts. It started to rain cats and dogs, and we were very worried: who is going to get up early on Shabbat morning in such stormy weather in order to participate in an open-air protest rally and carry sacks of food?" recounted one of the organizers.

Ya'akov Manor had the idea to ask the demonstrators to bring private relief parcels and to add personal letters "from family to family". The response was beyond all expectations. Families brought not only food and mineral water, but also blankets, warm clothing and many other useful articles, even electrical stoves. The parcels were fastened to the tops of the cars or put in the baggage holds of the buses. They added up to two tons.

When the demonstrators assembled in the towns - Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Nazareth and others - a slight rain was falling. But all who hoped for a brightening up were soon disappointed: during the drive to the Erez border crossing, a very heavy rain started to pour down, making it almost impossible to see the road, and slowed down the huge convoy towards the Gaza strip extremely difficult.

About half of the protesters were Jewish, the other half Arab. The rally was conducted the same way: Side by side with the Jewish speakers - Uri Avnery, Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Professor Jeff Halper and former minister Shulamit Aloni (who was ill and sent a written speech, read by Teddy Katz), speeches were made by advocate Fatmeh al-Ijou, and MKs Izzam Mahul and Jamal Zahalke.

At the height of the rally, the moderator, Huloud al-Badawi, called Dr. Sarraj by cellular phone. He was participating at the parallel rally in Gaza and his words were conveyed by loudspeaker. They amounted to a stirring call to the Israeli peace camp to support the Palestinians in their struggle against the blockade.

A sensation was caused by a young woman from Sderot, Shir Shusdig, who called out: "For seven years I am suffering from the Qassams in Kibbutz Zikim and Sderot. I know that the people on the other side are also suffering very much. That's why I am here!"

Jeff Halper mentioned that demonstrations of solidarity with the people of Gaza were taking place in dozens of cities around the world. Advocate al-Ijou pointed out that the Attorney General had asserted in a Supreme Court hearing that the blockade on Gaza was similar to the boycott against the former apartheid regime in South Africa. "This is absurd when it comes from a government which is building apartheid roads all over the West Bank!"

Miraculously, the rain stopped just before the rally, and started again a few minutes after it was finished.

Since the Israeli army has not allowed the relief supplies into the Gaza strip, they were stored in a neighboring kibbutz. If the military will not permit their transfer to Gaza in the next two days, we shall apply to the High Court of Justice and start a legal fight until we succeed.

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Uri Avnery's speech at the rally:

Three days ago, a wall fell here – Just as the Berlin Wall fell, Just as the apartheid wall will fall, And just as all walls and fences in this country Will come down.

But the inhuman blockade That has been imposed on A million and a half human beings in Gaza By our government By our army, In our name – This siege is continuing in its full cruelty. We, Israelis from various political camps, Have come to bring basic supplies And to say to the Israeli public And to the whole world: We will not participate in crime! We are ashamed of the blockade!”

Our hearts are with our Palestinian brothers Who are at this moment demonstrating with us On the other side of the fence – Don’t lose faith that one day We will meet together in this place Without fences, without walls, Without violence, Without fighting, The sons of two peoples living next to each other In peace, in friendship, in partnership.

Our hearts are with our brothers, the residents of Sderot – The threat of Qassams must stop! It won’t stop by a policy of “an eye for an eye”, Or a hundred eyes for one eye, Or a thousand eyes for one eye, Because that only leaves us all blind. It will end when we speak to the other side – Yes, yes, even with Hamas! And we'll together create a total and mutual ceasefire – Without Qassams, without murderous incursions, Without mortars, without extrajudicial assassinations, Without blockade, without starvation.

This is our call, this is our demand: Set up an immediate ceasefire! Open the crossings immediately! Make peace with all parts of the Palestinian people! MAKE PEACE!”

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Uri Avnery

26.01.08

Worse than a Crime

IT LOOKED like the fall of the Berlin wall. And not only did it look like it. For a moment, the Rafah crossing was the Brandenburg Gate.

It is impossible not to feel exhilaration when masses of oppressed and hungry people break down the wall that is shutting them in, their eyes radiant, embracing everybody they meet - to feel so even when it is your own government that erected the wall in the first place.

The Gaza Strip is the largest prison on earth. The breaking of the Rafah wall was an act of liberation. It proves that an inhuman policy is always a stupid policy: no power can stand up against a mass of people that has crossed the border of despair.

That is the lesson of Gaza, January, 2008.

ONE MIGHT repeat the famous saying of the French statesman Boulay de la Meurthe, slightly amended: It is worse than a war crime, it is a blunder!

Months ago, the two Ehuds - Barak and Olmert - imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, and boasted about it. Lately they have tightened the deadly noose even more, so that hardly anything at all could be brought into the Strip. Last week they made the blockade absolute - no food, no medicines. Things reached a climax when they stopped the fuel, too. Large areas of Gaza remained without electricity - incubators for premature babies, dialysis machines, pumps for water and sewage. Hundreds of thousands remained without heating in the severe cold, unable to cook, running out of food.

Again and again, Aljazeera broadcast the pictures into millions of homes in the Arab world. TV stations all over the world showed them, too. From Casablanca to Amman angry mass protest broke out and frightened the authoritarian Arab regimes. Hosny Mubarak called Ehud Barak in panic. That evening Barak was compelled to cancel, at least temporarily, the fuel-blockade he had imposed in the morning. Apart from that, the blockade remained total.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid act.

THE REASON given for the starving and freezing of one and a half million human beings, crowded into a territory of 365 square kilometers, is the continued shooting at the town of Sderot and the adjoining villages.

That is a well-chosen reason. It unites the primitive and poor parts of the Israeli public. It blunts the criticism of the UN and the governments throughout the world, who might otherwise have spoken out against a collective punishment that is, undoubtedly, a war crime under international law.

A clear picture is presented to the world: the Hamas terror regime in Gaza launches missiles at innocent Israeli civilians. No government in the world can tolerate the bombardment of its citizens from across the border. The Israeli military has not found a military answer to the Qassam missiles. Therefore there is no other way than to exert such strong pressure on the Gaza population as to make them rise up against Hamas and compel them to stop the missiles.

The day the Gaza electricity works stopped operating, our military correspondents were overjoyed: only two Qassams were launched from the Strip. So it works! Ehud Barak is a genius!

But the day after, 17 Qassams landed, and the joy evaporated. Politicians and generals were (literally) out of their minds: one politician proposed to "act crazier than them", another proposed to "shell Gaza's urban area indiscriminately for every Qassam launched", a famous professor (who is a little bit deranged) proposed the exercise of "ultimate evil".

The government scenario was a repeat of Lebanon War II (the report about which is due to be published in a few days). Then: Hizbullah captured two soldiers on the Israeli side of the border, now: Hamas fired on towns and villages on the Israeli side of the border. Then: the government decide in haste to start a war, now: the government decided in haste to impose a total blockade. Then: the government ordered the massive bombing of the civilian population in order to get them to pressure Hizbullah, now: the government decided to cause massive suffering of the civilian population in order to get them to pressure Hamas.

The results were the same in both cases: the Lebanese population did not rise up against Hizbullah, but on the contrary, people of all religious communities united behind the Shiite organization. Hassan Nasrallah became the hero of the entire Arab world. And now: the population unites behind Hamas and accuses Mahmoud Abbas of cooperation with the enemy. A mother who has no food for her children does not curse Ismail Haniyeh, she curses Olmert, Abbas and Mubarak.

SO WHAT to do? After all, it is impossible to tolerate the suffering of the inhabitants of Sderot, who are under constant fire.

What is being hidden from the embittered public is that the launching of the Qassams could be stopped tomorrow morning.

Several months ago Hamas proposed a cease-fire. It repeated the offer this week.

A cease-fire means, in the view of Hamas: the Palestinians will stop shooting Qassams and mortar shells, the Israelis will stop the incursions into Gaza, the "targeted" assassinations and the blockade.

Why doesn't our government jump at this proposal?

Simple: in order to make such a deal, we must speak with Hamas, directly or indirectly. And this is precisely what the government refuses to do.

Why? Simple again: Sderot is only a pretext - much like the two captured soldiers were a pretext for something else altogether. The real purpose of the whole exercise is to overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza and to prevent a Hamas takeover in the West Bank.

In simple and blunt words: the government sacrifices the fate of the Sderot population on the altar of a hopeless principle. It is more important for the government to boycott Hamas - because it is now the spearhead of Palestinian resistance - than to put an end to the suffering of Sderot. All the media cooperate with this pretence.

IT HAS been said before that it is dangerous to write satire in our country - too often the satire becomes reality. Some readers may recall a satirical article I wrote months ago. In it I described the situation in Gaza as a scientific experiment designed to find out how far one can go, in starving a civilian population and turning their lives into hell, before they raise their hands in surrender.

This week, the satire has become official policy. Respected commentators declared explicitly that Ehud Barak and the army chiefs are working on the principle of "trial and error" and change their methods daily according to results. They stop the fuel to Gaza, observe how this works and backtrack when the international reaction is too negative. They stop the delivery of medicines, see how it works, etc. The scientific aim justifies the means.

The man in charge of the experiment is Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a man of many ideas and few scruples, a man whose whole turn of mind is basically inhuman. He is now, perhaps, the most dangerous person in Israel, more dangerous than Ehud Olmert and Binyamin Netanyahu, dangerous to the very existence of Israel in the long run.

The man in charge of execution is the Chief of Staff. This week we had the chance of hearing speeches by two of his predecessors, generals Moshe Ya'alon and Shaul Mofaz, in a forum with inflated intellectual pretensions. Both were discovered to have views that place them somewhere between the extreme Right and the ultra-Right. Both have a frighteningly primitive mind. There is no need to waste a word about the moral and intellectual qualities of their immediate successor, Dan Halutz. If these are the voices of the three last Chiefs of Staff, what about the incumbent, who cannot speak out as openly as they? Has this apple fallen further from the tree?

Until three days ago, the generals could entertain the opinion that the experiment was succeeding. The misery in the Gaza Strip had reached its climax. Hundreds of thousands were threatened by actual hunger. The chief of UNRWA warned of an impending human catastrophe. Only the rich could still drive a car, heat their homes and eat their fill. The world stood by and wagged its collective tongue. The leaders of the Arab states voiced empty phrases of sympathy without raising a finger.

Barak, who has mathematical abilities, could calculate when the population would finally collapse.

AND THEN something happened that none of them foresaw, in spite of the fact that it was the most foreseeable event on earth.

When one puts a million and a half people in a pressure cooker and keeps turning up the heat, it will explode. That is what happened at the Gaza-Egypt border.

At first there was a small explosion. A crowd stormed the gate, Egyptian policemen opened live fire, dozens were wounded. That was a warning.

The next day came the big attack. Palestinian fighters blew up the wall in many places. Hundreds of thousands broke out into Egyptian territory and took a deep breath. The blockade was broken.

Even before that, Mubarak was in an impossible situation. Hundreds of millions of Arabs, a billion Muslims, saw how the Israeli army had closed the Gaza strip off on three sides: the North, the East and the sea. The fourth side of the blockade was provided by the Egyptian army.

The Egyptian president, who claims the leadership of the entire Arab world, was seen as a collaborator with an inhuman operation conducted by a cruel enemy in order to gain the favor (and the money) of the Americans. His internal enemies, the Muslim Brothers, exploited the situation to debase him in the eyes of his own people.

It is doubtful if Mubarak could have persisted in this position. But the Palestinian masses relieved him of the need to make a decision. They decided for him. They broke out like a tsunami wave. Now he has to decide whether to succumb to the Israeli demand to re-impose the blockade on his Arab brothers.

And what about Barak's experiment? What's the next step? The options are few:

(a) To re-occupy Gaza. The army does not like the idea. It understands that this would expose thousands of soldiers to a cruel guerilla war, which would be unlike any intifada before.

(b) To tighten the blockade again and exert extreme pressure on Mubarak, including the use of Israeli influence on the US Congess to deprive him of the billions he gets every year for his services.

(c) To turn the curse into a blessing, by handing the Strip over to Mubarak, pretending that this was Barak's hidden aim all along. Egypt would have to safeguard Israel's security, prevent the launching of Qassams and expose its own soldiers to a Palestinian guerilla war - when it thought it was rid of the burden of this poor and barren area, and after the infrastructure there has been destroyed by the Israeli occupation. Probably Mubarak will say: Very kind of you, but no thanks.

The brutal blockade was a war crime. And worse: it was a stupid blunder.

permlink http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1201278309/

Finally, Action! Ron Paul Introduces Bill to Defend Constitution!

by Naomi Wolf

It's not every day that there is something concrete you can do to save democracy in one powerful stroke and make sure your kids don't come of age in an American in which we are no longer protected by the rule of law. I have been writing about the terrifying and precipitous assault on our liberties and our very system of checks and balances; I have crossed the country with this message -- today I am in Boston -- and I have heard across the nation that (as usual) the people are ahead of the leaders and the pundits. Americans of all backgrounds are alarmed and outraged and ready to take action against these vicious assaults on the rule of law. But what I hear again and again is: "What can we do?"

Here is what you can do, and it is big, big news. If we do this together in our millions we are safer; and if we fail to act we miss an historic opening and risk far worse to come.

There are two new organizations that are driving a grassroots push to restore the rule of law: the American Freedom Agenda was started by leaders who are conservative: Bruce Fein, who was a Reagan administration official in the Department of Justice, and others. The American Freedom Campaign was started by progressives. Both groups advance comparable 10 point legislative agendas that would stabilize democracy long enough for us to forestall the worst and regroup for more long-term reparation of the Constitution and the rule of law. Both would, if passed, protect Americans from the scary stories of abuse and recrimination I am hearing every single day -- journalists intimidated, prisoners tortured, innocent citizens spied on by the State in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Both would make it illegal for any administration to commit the kinds of crimes against America and its constitution that we have seen under this one: the innocent lawyer Brandon Mayfield's home broken into, the innocent software engineer Maher Arar kept prisoner by U.S. agents in an interrogation cell in a U.S. airport and prevented from calling his lawyer, and journalists reporting on abuses by the government threatened by the state with prosecution that could keep them in jail for a decade. Urgently it would close the horrific legal possibility for the president to call you or me an "enemy combatant" tomorrow -- JUST BECAUSE HE SAYS SO -- and lock us up in solitary confinement for years.

Passing the legislative agenda of either group would make it clear that American citizens -- in spite of a heretofore craven and compliant Congress -- refuse to stand by silently while a group of criminals systematically violates the core structure of the democracy our Founders put in place for us.

The big news is that this idea can now become a law and a law creates a reality.

On Monday, Rep. Ron Paul, the outsider Republican presidential candidate who has long upheld these values and who was an early voice warning of the grave danger to all of us of these abuses, introduced the AFA's legislative package into Congress. (The mainstream press has an irrational habit of disparaging outsider candidates -- as if corrupt money and machine endorsements equal seriousness of purpose -- even though the Founders hoped that the system they established would lead citizens, ideally those unembedded in the establishment, to offer their service to the nation.) It is the American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007 [PDF], and you should read it in its entirety: just as accounts of the recent abuses send chills down your spine, this beautifully argued document feels historic and has the ring of great power to correct great injustice.

What does it do? According to an alert put out by the American Freedom campaign, it would accomplish the following:

"The American Freedom Agenda Act would bar the use of evidence obtained through torture; require that federal intelligence gathering is conducted in accordance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA); create a mechanism for challenging presidential signing statements; repeal the Military Commissions Act, which, among other things, denies habeas corpus to certain detainees; prohibit kidnapping, detentions, and torture abroad; protect journalists who publish information received from the executive branch; and ensure that secret evidence is not used to designate individuals or organizations with a presence in the U.S. as foreign terrorists."

Ron Paul was the first of all the presidential candidates, red or blue, to step up in this way -- and all credit is due to him for getting there first. May the others of both parties race to follow his lead. These days, as we have seen from how reluctant some candidates have been -- even on the Democratic sign -- even to sign a mere pledge to uphold the Constitution, it takes some courage to stand fast against the assaults of this administration -- and their manipulations of the terms "patriotism" and "terror threat" -- and insist with legislation on the Founders' vision and on restoring democracy.

A groundswell of millions of Americans of all parties rising up to insist on passage of the AFA legislation means that we are awake -- we get it -- and that we assert that an alert citizenry, not a whipped-dog Congress or a violently abusive executive, decides what happens in this nation still. I am not a voter on his side of the ballot -- but I will move heaven and earth to support the passage of this lifesaving agenda. (Interestingly when I run into Paul's supporters -- who are deeply alert to the abuses of democracy -- and I demur by saying I am a Democrat, it is they who rightly assure me that these issues transcend party).

There is no way to overstate how crucial this piece of legislation is. We are at a turning point, and without the restoration of the rule of law the "blueprint" for what I have called a "fascist shift" -- the closing down of democracy -- calls for scarier recriminations against citizens, greater tightening of social controls -- the ever-growing, disturbingly political TSA watch list is, alarmingly, due to go from the airlines' administration to that of the TSA itself -- and more corruptions of the electoral process. Blackwater is a truly terrifying wild card. Without the rule of law we will be powerless as each of these assaults on liberty continue to escalate. With it we can fight back.

This is the answer both to those who say "What we can do?" and to those who claim (actually, sometimes whine) "there is nothing we can do." And if we don't act on this now we will get the democracy we deserve -- which is no democracy at all.

Put aside your partisan ideal world -- sometimes issues simply transcend partisanship -- and if ever there is an issue that is above and separate from party politics, it is the restoration of the democratic system we inherited. There are good people and passionate patriots across the political spectrum.

We at the AFC are putting out a call to pass this set of laws. Pick up the phone -- every day. Email your representative -- every day. Let them hear from millions of Americans a day. Let them hear from twenty. Please play hardball -- the times demand it and nice girls and boys have managed to get this Congress to do literally nothing at all to protect liberty.

Congressmen and women say off the record that they can't support liberty, much as they'd like to, because they are scared of "looking soft on terror" and they want to run out the clock -- a naive and self-serving posture in a time of crisis. Make them more scared of you if they don't. Tell them you will bombard their donors with the message that they have sold out liberty. Tell them you will denounce them as traitors to the Constitution in your local and regional letters to the editor and op-eds. Tell them they are unpatriotic to stand by while liberty is disemboweled. Tell them you will stop at nothing to ensure their future defeat unless they support this and make it the law of the land.

Let's do it. There is no excuse now. The restoration of democracy is up to you -- as the Founders intended it should be.

Neocon propaganda chief challenged in New York

Watch how Podhoretz is unable to answer his critics at a New York Barnes&Noble:

Protester Waves Blood-Colored Hands in Rice’s Face

(Reuters) - An anti-war protester waved blood-colored hands in U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's face at a congressional hearing on Wednesday and shouted "war criminal!", but was pushed away and detained by police.

Rice, an architect of President George W. Bush's Iraq policy, appeared unfazed by the incident, which occurred when she entered a House of Representatives meeting room to testify at a hearing on U.S. Middle East policy.

"Out!," shouted the chairman of the Foreign Relations committee, Rep. Tom Lantos, as police moved in to hustle the woman protester away.

Lantos, a California Democrat, also demanded the removal of several other demonstrators from the Code Pink organization, an anti-war group that often disrupts hearings on Capitol Hill.

"What are you doing, what are you doing?" the protesters screamed as police dragged them away.

Capitol Police said later three people were arrested and charged with disruption of Congress.

Support the American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007

by Rep. Ron Paul

I am introducing a comprehensive piece of legislation to restore the American Constitution and to restore the liberties that have been sadly eroded over the past several years.

This legislation seeks to restore the checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution by our Founding Fathers to prevent abuse of Americans by their government. This proposed legislation would repeal the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and re-establish the traditional practice that military commissions may be used to try war crimes in places of active hostility where a rapid trial is necessary to preserve evidence or prevent chaos.

The legislation clarifies that no information shall be admitted as evidence if it is obtained from the defendant through the use of torture or coercion. It codifies the FISA process as the means by which foreign intelligence may be obtained and it gives members of the Senate and the House of Representatives standing in court to challenge presidential signing statements that declares the president’s intent to disregard certain aspects of a law passed in the US Congress. It prohibits kidnapping and extraordinary rendition of prisoners to foreign countries on the president’s unilateral determination that the suspect is an enemy combatant. It defends the first amendment by clarifying that journalists are not to be prevented from publishing information received from the legislative or executive branch unless such publication would cause immediate, direct, and irreparable harm to the United States.

Finally, the legislation would prohibit the use of secret evidence to designate an individual or organization with a United States presence to be a foreign terrorist or foreign terrorist organization.

I invite my colleagues to join my efforts to restore the US Constitution by enacting the American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007.

Ron Paul introduces the 'American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007' to the House

H.R. 3835: To restore the Constitution's checks and balances and protections against government abuses as envisioned by the Founding Fathers

Bill Status

Introduced:	Oct 15, 2007
Sponsor:	Rep. Ronald Paul [R-TX]
Status:	Introduced
	Go to Bill Status Page

Introduced in House: This is the original text of the bill as it was written by its sponsor and submitted to the House for consideration.

Text of Legislation

HR 3835 IH

110th CONGRESS1st Session H. R. 3835

To restore the Constitution's checks and balances and protections against government abuses as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

October 15, 2007

Mr. PAUL introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition to the Committees on Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Select Intelligence (Permanent Select), for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

---

A BILL

To restore the Constitution's checks and balances and protections against government abuses as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007'.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSE.

(a) Findings- Congress makes the following findings:

(1) Unchecked power by any branch leads to oppressive transgressions on individual freedoms and ill-considered government policies.

(2) The Founding Fathers enshrined checks and balances in the Constitution to protect against government abuses to derail ill-conceived domestic or foreign endeavors.

(3) Checks and balances make the Nation safer by preventing abuses that would be exploited by Al Qaeda to boost terrorist recruitment, would deter foreign governments from cooperating in defeating international terrorism, and would make the American people reluctant to support aggressive counter-terrorism measures.

(4) Checks and balances have withered since 9/11 and an alarming concentration of power has been accumulated in the presidency based on hyper-inflated fears of international terrorism and a desire permanently to alter the equilibrium of power between the three branches of government.

(5) The unprecedented constitutional powers claimed by the President since 9/11 subtracted national security and have been asserted for non-national security purposes.

(6) Experience demonstrates that global terrorism can be thwarted, deterred, and punished through muscular application of law enforcement measures and prosecutions in Federal civilian courts in lieu of military commissions or military law.

(7) Congressional oversight of the executive branch is necessary to prevent secret government, which undermines self-government and invites lawlessness and maladministration.

(8) The post-9/11 challenges to checks and balances are unique in the Nation's history because the war on global terrorism has no discernable end.

(b) Purpose- The American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007 is intended to restore the Constitution's checks and balances and protections against government abuses as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

SEC. 3. MILITARY COMMISSIONS; ENEMY COMBATANTS; HABEAS CORPUS.

(a) The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is hereby repealed.

(b) The President is authorized to establish military commissions for the trial of war crimes only in places of active hostilities against the United States where an immediate trial is necessary to preserve fresh evidence or to prevent local anarchy.

(c) The President is prohibited from detaining any individual indefinitely as an unlawful enemy combatant absent proof by substantial evidence that the individual has directly engaged in active hostilities against the United States, provided that no United States citizen shall be detained as an unlawful enemy combatant.

(d) Any individual detained as an enemy combatant by the United States shall be entitled to petition for a writ of habeas corpus under section 2241 of title 28, United States Code.

SEC. 4. TORTURE OR COERCED CONFESSIONS.

No civilian or military tribunal of the United States shall admit as evidence statements extracted from the defendant by torture or coercion.

SEC. 5. INTELLIGENCE GATHERING.

No Federal agency shall gather foreign intelligence in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (50 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.). The President's constitutional power to gather foreign intelligence is subordinated to this provision.

SEC. 6. PRESIDENTIAL SIGNING STATEMENTS.

The House of Representatives and Senate collectively shall enjoy standing to file a declaratory judgment action in an appropriate Federal district court to challenge the constitutionality of a presidential signing statement that declares the President's intent to disregard provisions of a bill he has signed into law because he believes they are unconstitutional.

SEC. 7. KIDNAPPING, DETENTIONS, AND TORTURE ABROAD.

No officer or agent of the United States shall kidnap, imprison, or torture any person abroad based solely on the President's belief that the subject of the kidnapping, imprisonment, or torture is a criminal or enemy combatant; provided that kidnapping shall be permitted if undertaken with the intent of bringing the kidnapped person for prosecution or interrogation to gather intelligence before a tribunal that meets international standards of fairness and due process. A knowing violation of this section shall be punished as a felony punishable by a fine or imprisonment of up to 2 years.

SEC. 8. JOURNALIST EXCEPTION TO ESPIONAGE ACT.

Nothing in the Espionage Act of 1917 shall prohibit a journalist from publishing information received from the executive branch or Congress unless the publication would cause direct, immediate, and irreparable harm to the national security of the United States.

SEC. 9. USE OF SECRET EVIDENCE TO MAKE FOREIGN TERRORIST DESIGNATIONS.

Notwithstanding any other law, secret evidence shall not be used by the President or any other member of the executive branch to designate an individual or organization with a United States presence as a foreign terrorist or foreign terrorist organization for purposes of the criminal law or otherwise imposing criminal or civil sanctions.

Prominent Americans Ask Military To Refuse To Attack Iran

By Webster Tarpley

Supporters of the August 26 Kennebunkport Warning welcome the statement issued by David Swanson entitled " Leading Americans Ask U.S. Military to Refuse Orders to Attack Iran, (http://www.dontattackiran.org) and signed by a group of well-known personalities. The massive evidence of this danger which existed at the end of August has become still more massive over the past five weeks, and we are glad that these signers have seen their way clear to launch an initiative on this critical front.

Just a few days after the Kennebunkport Warning was issued, on August 30, a rogue B-52 flew across the United States carrying six nuclear armed cruise missiles from Minot, North Dakota to Barksdale, Louisiana. According to many analysts, these weapons were destined to be used in a nuclear sneak attack on Iran, which may have been planned for September 6, the day that Israel launched its own aerial sneak attack into Syria and perhaps also Iran . (Even more heinous uses of these cruise missiles here inside the United States can also not be excluded, given the insistence of the Cheney Doctrine on a terrorist act in the US to be blamed on Iran as the immediate pretext for the Iran war ­ as Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate Foreign relations Committee on Feb. 1, 2007.) Many sources (see Wayne Madsen Report, September 24) agree that the transfer of these nuclear weapons to Iran was blocked by US Air Force personnel, backed up by anti-Cheney factions in the intelligence community, who refused to obey an illegal order, just as the Kennebunkport Warning had urged on August 26. It is also important to note that some half dozen personnel linked to the Minot and Barksdale air bases have died under mysterious circumstances since July, raising the sorts of questions that make a large-scale Congressional investigation of this entire incident absolutely imperative. It is odd that the new statement, while urging the military to disobey illegal orders, offers no support or recognition to those courageous persons who appear to have already done just that; it is more than odd that this incident, which was extensively reported in a cover-up published on the front page of the Washington Post of Sunday, September 23, is not mentioned at all in the new statement.

Unfortunately, the "Leading Americans" document comes too late to influence the B-52 incident itself. We would urge the "Leading Americans" signers to take note of the fact that the loyal USAF personnel who stopped the rogue B-52 from being used for high treason, and to demand that an investigation be started.

We would also urge the signers to add the decisive question of the false flag event, be it a new 9/11 and/or a new Gulf of Tonkin provocation, to their statement. This is the heart of the Kennbunkport Warning, but is not mentioned in the new statement. As Steve Clemons recently wrote in salon.com, it is unlikely that a sneak attack on Iran could get through the normal channels of the US national security interagency process. The realization of Cheney's war plan depends upon an outside manufactured event, along the lines of 9/11, which could be used to engineer the typical neocon end run around the standard operating procedures and launch the wider war. As Clemons wrote:

We should also worry about the kind of scenario David Wurmser floated, meaning an engineered provocation. An "accidental war" would escalate quickly and "end run," as Wurmser put it, the president's diplomatic, intelligence and military decision-making apparatus. [] That kind of war is much more probable and very much worth worrying about.

The failure to identify this critical feature of the false flag, even in the wake of the rogue B-52 incident and Israeli attack on Syria, is a key difference between the new statement and the Kennebunkport Warning.

The new statement constantly narrows its subject matter to "any preemptive U.S. attack on Iran ," which seems to suggest that there might be some other kind of attack on Iran that would be more acceptable, and to which this statement might not apply. Bush (in his "nuclear holocaust" speech of August 28), Cheney, Petraeus, Odierno, Mrs. Clinton, and all the usual suspects are already busy arguing that the looming US attack on Iran will not be preventive, but a retaliation against alleged Iranian arms shipments into Iraq, training of Iraqi resistance fighters, etc. According to Congressman Kucinich, the top leadership of the Democratic Party has already given its approval for an attack of this type. In opposition to this prevarication, it is important to stress that ANY AND ALL ATTACKS on Iran are not only unjustified, but would also represent national suicide for the United States and a slide into a third world war in which the US would be not just the aggressor, but also the sure loser. There must in short be no US attack on Iran , Syria , Pakistan , Lebanon , Sudan , or any other country under any pretext whatsoever.

Finally, the Kennebunkport Warning called for the immediate impeachment of Cheney as an urgent measure of war avoidance ­ to keep Cheney's finger away from the nuclear button, just as Secretary of Defense James Rodney Schlesinger did in regard to Nixon during the final weeks of Watergate in 1974. This is something that everyone can and should work for. At the Actindependent.org website, where the Kennebunkport Warning is posted, dedicated activists who really want to stop World War III are urged to declare their candidacies for the US House and Senate immediately, as the only means of getting the attention of the two corrupt and bankrupt political parties, thus contributing to a people's candidates' movement that will eventually be able to go beyond appeals to incumbents to contest the issue of political power in this country.

We agree with the new statement's stress on the idea that illegal orders must be countermanded. But we would also submit that loyal military personnel who take such actions deserve the full support of a growing political movement which aims at impeaching and removing the current regime from office, and bringing them to justice for their crimes, including war crimes and the misprision of treason around 9/11. The Kennebunkport Warning puts the burden of impeachment on the Congress, where it belongs. Military people who refuse to act as pawns of the Cheney are pledged the support of a civilian political movement. The new statement appears to let the Congress and the two corrupt political parties off the hook, while shifting the entire burden of resistance to individual military people. The military do have a special role in this, but is the civilian political movement of candidates which has to give them cover, and not the other way around.

We urge the sponsors of the new statement to increase the effectiveness of their intervention by including these points in their text, to which they are offered in the spirit of friendly amendments.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Swanson <_>
(mailto:david@davidswanson.org)
Date: Oct 2, 2007 11:15 AM
Subject: [Activists] Prominent Americans Ask Military to Refuse to Attack
Iran
To: _activists@lists.mayfirst.org _ (mailto:activists@lists.mayfirst.org)


Leading Americans Ask U.S. Military to Refuse Orders to Attack Iran Country music legend Willie Nelson, literary icon Gore Vidal, Gold Star Mother Cindy Sheehan, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright, former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega, author and radio host Thom Hartmann, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Rabbi Steven Jacobs, and dozens of other prominent Americans have signed a letter asking the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all U.S. military personnel to refuse orders to launch an aggressive war on Iran. The letter has been posted as a petition for others to sign at _http://www.dontattackiran.org_ (http://www.dontattackiran.org/) The text of the letter follows: ATTENTION: Joint Chiefs of Staff and all U.S. Military Personnel:

Do not attack Iran.
Any preemptive U.S. attack on Iran would be illegal.
Any preemptive U.S. attack on Iran would be criminal.

We, the citizens of the United States, respectfully urge you, courageous men and women of our military, to refuse any order to preemptively attack Iran, a nation that represents no serious or immediate threat to the United States. To attack Iran, a sovereign nation of 70-million people, would be a crime of the highest magnitude.

Legal basis for our Request - Do not attack Iran:

The Nuremberg Principles, which are part of US law, provide that all military personnel have the obligation not to obey illegal orders. The Army Field Manual 27-10, sec. 609 and UCMJ, art. 92, incorporate this principle. Article 92 says: "A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the law of the United States ..."

Any provision of an international treaty ratified by the United States becomes the law of the United States. The United States is a party and signatory to the United Nations Charter, of which Article II, Section 4 states, "All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state..." As Iran has not attacked the United States, and as the U.S. is a party and signatory to the Charter, any attack on Iran by the U.S. would be illegal under not only international law but under the U.S. Constitution which recognizes our treaties as the Supreme Law of the Land. When you joined the military, you took an oath to defend our Constitution.

Following the orders of your government or superior does not relieve you from responsibility under international law. Under the Principles of International Law recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal, complicity in the commission of war crime is a crime under international law.

Background:

The Bush Administration's charges against Iran have not been proven. Neither the development of nuclear weapons, nor providing assistance to Iraq would, if proven, constitute justification for an illegal war.

An attack on Iran might prompt the formidable Iranian military to attack U.S. troops stationed in Iraq. Thousands of our soldiers might be killed or captured as prisoners of war. A U.S. attack against Iranian nuclear facilities could also mean the deaths, from radiation poisoning, of tens of thousands of innocent Iranian civilians. The people of Iran have little control over their government, yet would suffer tremendously should the U.S. attack. Bombing raids would amount to collective punishment, a violation of the Geneva Convention, and would surely sow the seeds of hatred for generations to come. Children make up a quarter of Iran's population.

Above all, we ask you to look at the record of our actions in Iraq, which U.S. intelligence admits is "a cause celebre for jihadists" - a situation that did not exist before we attacked. We must face the fact that our rash use of military solutions has created more enemies, and made American families less safe. Diplomacy, not war, is the answer.

Know the Risks Involved in Refusing an Illegal Order or Signing This Statement:

We knowingly and willingly make this plea, aware of the risk that, in violation of our First Amendment rights, we could be charged under remaining sections of the unconstitutional Espionage Act or other unconstitutional statute, and that we could be fined, imprisoned, or barred from government employment.

We make this plea, also aware that you have no easy options. If you obey an illegal order to participate in an aggressive attack on Iran, you could potentially be charged with war crimes. If you heed our call and disobey an illegal order you could be falsely charged with crimes including treason. You could be falsely court martialed. You could be imprisoned. (To talk to a lawyer or to learn more about possible consequences, contact _The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors_ (http://www.girights.org/) , _Courage to Resist_ (http://www.couragetoresist.org/) , _Center on Conscience and War _ (http://www.centeronconscience.org/) , _Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild_ (mailto:mlhiken@mltf.info) 415-566-3732, or the GI Rights Hotline at 877-447-4487.) **

Final request:

Our leaders often say that military force should be a last resort. We beg you to make that policy a reality, and refuse illegal orders to attack Iran. We promise to support you for protecting the American public and innocent civilians abroad.

Our future, the future of our children and their children, rests in your hands.

You know the horrors of war. You can stop the next one.

Sincerely,

Daniel Ellsberg, Thom Hartmann, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Rabbi Steven Jacobs,
Cynthia McKinney, Willie Nelson, Cindy Sheehan, Norman Solomon, Elizabeth de
la Vega, Gore Vidal, Ann Wright,
James Abourezk, former U.S. Senator, (D) South Dakota
Stacy Bannerman, Author, "When the War Came Home", Military Families Speak
Out Charter Board member
John Bonifaz, constitutional attorney and author of "Warrior-King: The Case
for Impeaching George W. Bush."
Amy Branham, Gold Star Mother of
Sgt. Jeremy R. Smith, US Army Reserves, Nov. 1981-Feb. 2004
Blase Bonpane, Ph.d, Director OFFICE OF THE AMERICAS
David Clennon, Actor/activist
Tim Carpenter, Executive Director, Progressive Democrats of America
Daniel Ellsberg, author of "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon
Papers."
David Cobb, 2004 Green Party Presidential Candidate
Jeff Cohen, author/media critic
Elizabeth de la Vega, former federal prosecutor and author of U.S. v. George
W. Bush
Karen Dolan, Director, Cities for Progress/Cities for Peace
Anne Feeney, activist/folksinger or Local 1000, AFM
Mike Ferner, Navy corpsman; Secretary, Veterans for Peace
Bob Fertik, President _Democrats.com_ (http://democrats.com/)
Laura Flanders, Radio Host on Air America
Bruce K. Gagnon, Coordinator Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power
in Space
Lila Garrett, KPFK Host of "Connect the Dots"
Liberty Godshall, writer, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense
Council
Hon. Jackie Goldberg, California Assembly Member (AD 45), retired.
Kevin Alexander Gray, writer, and organizer with the Harriet Tubman Freedom
House Project
Representative Betty Hall, Hillsborough District 5, New Hampshire General Court
David L. Harris, MD
Tom Hayden
Thom Hartmann, author and Air America radio host
Valerie Heinonen, o.s.u., Ursulines of Tildonk for Justice and Peace
Jenny Heinz , member of CodePink, member of Granny Peace Brigade Rabbi
Steven Jacobs, Los Angeles
Michael Jay, Steering Committee, Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles
Charles Jenks, co-founder and editor of _traprockpeace.org_
(http://traprockpeace.org/)
Justice Through Music
Antonia Juhasz, author, The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at
a Time
Jerry Kass, playwright and professor at Columbia University
Dr, Nazir Khaja ,Chairman, Islamic Information Service, Los Angeles, CA.
Mimi Kennedy, National Chair, Progressive Democrats of America
Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun and Chair, the Network of Spiritual
Progressives
Summer Lipford, Gold Star Mother,NC 28677
David Lindorff, Author, The Case for Impeachment
Alice Lynn, Delegate, California Democratic Party (41st AD)
Ben Manski, Executive Director, Liberty Tree
Ray McGovern, Army infantry/intelligence officer, 1962-64; CIA analyst
1964-90.
Cynthia Mckinney, former Congresswoman
Barbara Mills-Bria, Be The Change-USA
Bill Moyer, Executive Director, Backbone Campaign
Willie Nelson, Entertainer, Peace Activist Annie Nelson, Sustainable
Biodiesel/Peace Activist
Honorable Eric Oemig - Washington State Senator
Geov Parrish, Executive Director Peace Action of Washington
Jacob Park, Founder, A28.
Brad Parker, Officer of the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic
Party
Bill Perry, Director, Delaware Valley Veterans For America
Gareth Porter, investigative journalist and historian
Marcus Raskin, member of National Security Council Staff under President
Kennedy
Dorothy Reik, President, Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains
Coleen Rowley, retired FBI Agent and former Chief Division Counsel of
Minneapolis Division of the FBI
Bill Scheurer, Editor, PeaceMajority Report
Randi Scheurer, IL-Dist. 8, Congressional Candidate
Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Families for Peace
Alice Slater, Abolition 2000 New York
Norman Solomon, Author and syndicated columnist
David Swanson, _Afterdowningstreet.org_ (http://afterdowningstreet.org/)
John Stauber, Co-author, "Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda
in Bush's War on Iraq"
Jonathan Tasini, PDA NY
Ethel Tobach, Ph. D., member of Psychologists for Social Responsibility
Tina Richards CEO Grassroots Americaredith, Gold Star Mother, Proud Mom of
Lt Ken Ballard- KIA 5.30.04
Gore Vidal, Author
Marcy Winograd, President, Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles
Ann Wright, US Army Colonel (Retired) and US diplomat who resigned in March,
2003 in opposition to the Iraq war.
Kevin Zeese on behalf of Voters for Peace and Democracy Rising
Velvet Revolution

"I HOPE IT'S YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS THAT DIE" - US Representative Dana Rohrabacher

By US Army Reserves Colonel (Retired) Ann Wright

"I HOPE IT'S YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS THAT DIE" said US Representative Dana Rohrabacher to American citizens who questioned the Bush Administration’s unlawful extraordinary rendition policies.

Congressional hearings provide a deep insight into the inner spirit of our elected representatives-and sometimes, the insight is not pretty.

On April 17, we witnessed Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) unleash his unbridled anger onto members of the European Parliament’s committee on Human rights who were invited guests and witnesses in the House Foreign Affairs European subcommittee hearing. The European Parliamentary human rights committee had issued a report in January, 2007 sharply critical of the Bush administration’s extraordinary rendition program in which persons from all over the world were detained by either CIA or local police and then flown by CIA jet (torture taxi) to other countries where they were imprisoned (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Libya, Djibouti, Morocco, Yemen. The report was equally critical of European governments for allowing the unlawful flights to take place.

From 2001 through 2005, the governments of fourteen countries in Europe allowed at least 1,245 CIA flights with illegally abducted terrorist suspects to be flown through their airspace or to land on their territory. Germany, Britain, Ireland and Portugal allowed the highest numbers of covert flights. As well as at least 1,245 flights operated by the CIA, there were an unspecified number of US military flights for the same purpose.

The European Parliament report differeniated between lawful extradition of criminal suspects for trial in another country and the unlawful abduction, sending to a third country usually noted for torture of prisoners and imprisoning for years without trial persons suspected of criminal terrorist acts.

The report acknowledged that terrorism is a threat to European countries as well as to the United States, but the European Parlimentary committee said that terrorist acts must be handled lawfully by both European countries and by the United States. The report said: "After 11 September 2001, the so-called 'war on terror' - in its excesses - has produced a serious and dangerous erosion of human rights and fundamental freedoms." The extraordinary rendidition program undercuts the exact liberties we are defending, the rule of law, the right for a fair and speedy trial, the right to know the evidence on which one is held and prosecuted.

Some who were kidnapped ended up in Guantanamo. Others were flown to prisons in other countries for interrogation and torture. Many of those who were subjected to extraordinary rendition are still in Guantanano. Many have been there for over 5 years. Over 400 of the 770 persons who have been imprisoned in Guantanamo over the 5 years it has been opened, have been released. Only 380 are left imprisoned in Guantanamo. Only 3 have been charged by the Military Commission and only one tried in Guantanamo. After five years of being held prisoner, Australian citizen David Hicks was convicted in March, 2007 of material support to terrorism and sentenced to only seven months further imprisonment which he is serving in Australia. The Bush administration has said it will try only 50-70 of the 380 remaining in Guantanamo. That means that of 770 who have been in Guantanamo, on 50-70 will be tried. The others eventually will be freed due to lack of evidence of a crime. Many will have spent five years or more in imprisonment.

According to virtually every prisoner that has been released, they were tortured while imprisoned in countries such as Syria, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some prisoners say they were tortured by police or interrogators. Some say they heard American voices in the background while they were tortured. None were charged with any crimes. None went to trial. They were abducted by CIA or local authorities at the request of the United States. The United States did not present evidence of criminal actions nor request extradition from the country where the person was detained. Nor did a central approving authority look at the rationale for spiriting a person to the control of a third country for interrogation. Persons were “rendered” many times on the say-so of junior CIA officials.

Back to the Congressional hearing. With eyes narrowed and mouth in a contorted grimace, Congressman Rohrabacker attacked the two British and one Italian members of the European Parliament who testified before the committee. Reminding one of Joe McCarty in tone and substance, Rohrabacker demeaned and degraded the report and chastised, belittled and berated the Parliamentarians. Remarkably, Rohrabacker said the most of the CIA private flights that landed in Europe were to transport CIA agents all over the world, not to move prisoners. Yet the logs of the 1245 flights have been tied by date and location to the movement of specific individual prisoners from one location to another.

Rohrabacher railed against anyone who questioned the right of the Bush administration to do whatever it wanted, legal or illegal, to prevent terrorist acts and said that by not supporting the Bush policies was consigning their country to the terrorists. In particular he said that any Americans who questioned the extraordinary rendition were un-American.

Citing historic examples of other countries kidnapping persons, Rohrabacker said Israel had every right to kidnap Nazi official Adolph Eichmann from Argentina, bring him to Israel and execute him. Rohrabacher conveniently forgot to mention that the Israeli government did put Eichmann on trial, a trial which none of those who have been extraordinarily rendered have had. Rohrabacher then attacked and belittled the European Community for outlawing the death penalty saying that “You in the European community won’t stand up to evil people, you won’t execute them. Eichmann deserved to be executed, just like these terrorists must be executed.”

Rohrabacher never once mentioned due process, the rule of law, right to a trial for anyone picked up in the extraordinary rendition program. Merely because persons were “rendered” and imprisoned by the US meant to Rohrbacker they were guilty.

Rohrabacher said if European countries did not cooperate with the United States and go along with whatever the Bush administration wanted, they were condemning their countrymen to death by not using extralegal methods to imprison terrorist suspects. When citizens attending the hearing, including members of Codepink Women for Peace and Veterans for Peace, heard Rohrabacher’s statement, they collectively groaned. Then, much to the shock and disbelief of everyone in the hearing room, Rorhbacker said to those who had expressed displeasure at his statements: "I hope it’s your family members that die when terrorists strike."

At that point, I had had enough of Rohrabacher. I stood up and said "I did not serve 29 years in the US military and 16 years in the US diplomatic corps to see demise of the rule of law and violation of our own laws. Rohrback’s statements are outrageous. No wonder the world hates us!"

Chairman Delahunt gaveled for me to stop speaking and I was escorted by the police out of the committee room. I was not arrested.

Remarkably, I do agree with one thing Rohrabacker said. "They hate us."

Rohrabacker finished his sentence with "They hate us because they hate our way of life." Unfortunately, many people do hate us, but it’s not for our way of life.

Its for exactly the talk and actions that Rohrabacker and the Bush administration represent: illegal and unlawful actions, an arrogant attitude that America is always right and everyone else is wrong, that the world’s resources are for the exclusive use of the United States and we have the right to invade and occupy any country.”

Until we change the manner in which Presidential administrations and the Congress operate and the way we approach our membership in the community of nations, the world will continue to question what America stands for.

About the Author: Ann Wright retired as a Colonel after serving 13 years on active duty and 16 years in the US Army Reserves. After 16 years in the US diplomatic corps, she resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She had been assigned in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She helped reopen the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December, 2001.