Nonviolent Resistance

"Brownbaggers Not Teabaggers!" | Press Release
Vigils Against War Funding Spread Across Nation

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) organized "brownbag" lunch vigils against war funding at noon on Wednesday, January 20th, at the district offices of 22 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

On February 17th, PDA will be joined by CODEPINK, AfterDowningStreet, Democrats.com, the California Nurses Assn./National Nurses United, and United for Peace and Justice in holding brownbag vigils outside (or inside) at least 36 congress members' offices.

Brownbaggers are demanding commitments to vote against more money for war. Slogans on their posters include: "Healthcare not Warfare," "Corporations out of Politics," "Bailout Main Street not Wall Street," and "Brownbaggers not Teabaggers".

Vigils have been planned in the following districts: AZ-5, CA-6, CA-9, CA-10, CA-18, CA-22, CA-23, CA-40, CA-42, CA-45, CA-46, CA-48, CA-50, CA-53, FL-9, FL-10, FL-17, ID-01, IN-9, MA-1, MA-2, MA-3, MA-10, MI-9, NY-18, NY-28, OH-13, OH-17, PA-02, PA-7, PA-15, WA-2, WA-3, WA-6, WI-3, WI-7. These are almost all at noon on Wednesday the 17th, but a few are at odd times, so check the details: http://tinyurl.com/brownbagvigil

Brownbaggers are asking members of the House to publicly commit to voting No on any bills that fund wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen, and to publicly urge their colleagues and the House leadership to make the same commitment. As lesser steps in the same direction, PDA is encouraging congress members to cosponsor HR 2454, calling for an exit strategy from Afghanistan, and HR 3699, prohibiting any increase in the number of U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan. Congress members' commitments are tracked at http://defundwar.org

"We have to choose between jobs and wars," said PDA's national director Tim Carpenter. "The American people are on one side, but our so-called representatives in Congress are on the other. The Supreme Court is busy increasing corporate control of our elected officials. We need to be busy enforcing the people's control before it is too late."

"Without wasteful war and military spending," said PDA's deputy director Laura Bonham, "we could have healthcare, jobs, housing, education, retirement security, environmental sustainability, diplomacy and foreign aid. No longer will we take seriously anyone's claim to support these things while voting to fund more war."

Jeff Cohen is a media critic and lecturer, founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, where he is an associate professor of journalism. Cohen founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986.

Vicenza, Italy: 50 activists enter site, chain themselves to cranes to stop military base
By Kyle | DMZ Hawaii

Fifty women and men of Vicenza entered today in the construction site of the new US military base at Dal Molin and chained themselves to the cranes and the working machineries used to build the foundations of the military installation, and that every day are damaging the “vicentina” groundwater. Recent surveys have produced evidence of unjustified increase of water level in some residential areas.

"Today we want set legality as first priority – they declared passing the fence of the site – the construction site must stop in order to defend health, safety and history of the “vicentina” community: groundwater resources and archeological findings must be preserved. Since the early days of this story we stated that this territory has a priceless value for the local community; but, at the same time, it’s particulary fragile, delicate, because under the green carpet it preserves one of the essential elements of life, water." Read more.

Guam may host Army fast ships
By Gaynor Dumat-ol Daleno | Pacific Daily News

Guam is one of several areas being considered as a station for up to a dozen high-speed catamaran-style military ships each capable of transporting more than 300 people per ship, according to an Army Environmental Command announcement.

Hawaii, San Diego and Seattle are also being considered, according to the command’s announcement, which was issued as an advertisement in the Pacific Daily News to solicit public comments.

A cooperative effort between the Navy and the Army, the Joint High Speed Vehicles, or JHSVs will be used for fast intra-theater transportation of troops, vehicles and equipment, according to an earlier Defense Department announcement of the program on defenselink.mil.

“JHSVs will be capable of transporting 700 short tons (within) 1,200 nautical miles at an average speed of 35 knots, and can operate in shallow-draft ports and waterways, interfacing with roll-on/roll-off discharge facilities, and on/off-loading a combat-loaded Abrams Main Battle Tan k,” according to the Defense Department.

These ships all give commanders the ability to roll on a company with full gear and equipment, or roll on a full infantry battalion if used only as a troop transport, haul it intra-theater distances, then move their shallow draft safely into austere ports to roll them off, according www.defenseindustrydaily.com.

Initial uses of the high-speed vessels have led to a $1.6 billion program called the Joint High Speed Vessel, which could involve up to 10 ships, according to defenseinustrydaily.com.

The Army Environmental Command notice for public comment says up to 12 Joint High Speed Vessels will be stationed. Read more, submit comments.

Sanders Introduces Major Solar Energy Initiative | Press Release

WASHINGTON, February 4 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate’s green jobs subcommittee, today introduced legislation with nine cosponsors to encourage the installation of 10 million solar systems on the rooftops of homes and businesses over the next decade.

“At a time when we spend $350 billion importing oil from Saudi Arabia and other countries every year, the United States must move away from foreign oil to energy independence,” Sanders said. “A dramatic expansion of solar power is a clean and economical way to help break our dependence on foreign oil, reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, improve our geopolitical position, and create good-paying green jobs.”

At a Senate committee hearing today, Sanders questioned Energy Secretary Steven Chu about President Obama’s budget for next year. The White House requested $2.4 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. The requested 5 percent boost overall included a 22 percent increase for solar power.

The potential for solar power also was the subject of testimony last week before Sanders’ green jobs subcommittee by Jeff Wolfe, chief executive officer of groSolar in White River Junction, Vt. Wolfe said Sanders’ bill “would help homeowners and small businesses stabilize their energy costs.”

Sanders’ bill would authorize rebates which, along with other incentives, would cover up to half the cost of the 10 million solar power systems and 200,000 water heating systems. Non-profit groups and state and local governments also would be eligible. The legislation would ensure that participating homeowners and businesses also receive information on incentives to improve energy efficiency.

Sanders said a recent report shows that solar power could help make every state more energy independent if solar units were installed on available rooftop space, because every state can meet 10 percent or more of its electricity needs just through rooftop solar. Moreover, because solar energy creates more jobs per megawatt than other energy sources. Sanders’ bill could create hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next ten years in the solar industry.

The legislation’s cosponsors include Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.).

Sanders’ measure is patterned after successful state programs promoting solar energy in New Jersey and California, where prices have fallen as the number of solar units increased.

To read a copy of the bill, click here.

"Every citizen is a media outlet" | The Economist

Excerpt: ...In the Green Movement, however, the dynamics of organisation are yet more diffuse, hard to pin down and, thus, harder for the regime to break. Mr Mousavi has been criticised by many, most of them outside Iran, for excessive caution in his rhetoric. But it appears there was no need for him to be any more radical than he has been. Why should he risk arrest by trying to radicalise the masses with fiery rhetoric? Through Facebook, sms and Twitter, his movement has radicalised itself. Read more.

Blair War Crimes Foundation Announcement | UN Observer & International Report

The Blair War Crimes Foundation (which aims to bring Tony Blair to trial) is pleased to announce that we are now utilising our resources for Bill Bowring, Professor of International Law at Birkbeck College, University of London, and his colleagues, in their submission to the International Criminal Court at The Hague asking for a preliminary investigation of Blair and his colleagues for war crimes committed in 2003-4.

The Foundation's Declaration has been signed by Derek Jacobi, Naji Haraj, John Pilger, Noam Chomski, Ben Griffin, Bruce Kent, Ken Loach, Haifa Zangana, Tahrir Swift, and 6,113 other signatories.

It is hoped that the unexpected revelations emerging from the Chilcot Inquiry, added to the Report prepared by Prof Bowring and his colleagues in 2004, will help to persuade the Prosecutor at the ICC to commence an investigation. The Report not only found substantial evidence of commission of war crimes, but also asserted that under the international legal principle of "joint enterprise", Blair and others could be held liable for crimes committed by US forces, since both the USA and UK had embarked on an illegal course of action.

Signed by Joint Secretaries the Blair War Crimes Foundation, Dr. David Halpin and Nicholas Wood on behalf of 6,113 other signatories (as of 2 Feb 2010).

Please also see:

• Iraq inquiry - day by day timeline of evidence given

• Chilcot War Inquiry: Professor to launch 'Nuremberg' war crimes prosecution against Blair

So, Where Is The Peace Movement?
By Steve Fine

Our Neighbors for Peace and Justice, San Fernando Valley weekly peace vigil has been running continuously in Studio City, California, since November of 2002, which makes it one of the oldest in the Los Angeles area, if not the country. But as a vigil, it is not unique, rather one of thousands that rose up spontaneously during the lead up to the Iraq war, as average people from all walks of life came together on the local level to protest. In the process, the people at our vigil who kept coming formed bonds of friendship and camaraderie that have sustained us through thick and thin.

For those who are unaware of the vigils movement, a quick definition: A neighborhood peace vigil is a rally with signs, banners and candles held on a weekly basis at the same location, most commonly organized by one or two people who are not professional activists. (Nor are they dupes of corporate financed astro-turf grassroots propagandists, the right wing equivalent.) Each “vigil” is independent, since they are neighborhood based, and yet, they all do the same thing; thus each becomes a model for expanding to more areas. In the Los Angeles area during the lead up to the Iraq War the expansion was so sudden and explosive that there was an attempt to establish a coordinating network. Something similar needs to be created now on a national level, but this time it would be to nurture the growth of a vigils’ revival via an online service that could provide an organizational framework in which each group becomes part of a dynamic grassroots mobilization. The goal would be to force into the mainstream a debate about war spending and the domination of militarism over our government.

During the Bush years and continuing to this day, the media’s tendency to ignore the neighborhood vigil’s call for peace has been all but guaranteed while they have lavished coverage upon the slightest belch coming from the right. So it’s not surprising we are not the first thing that comes to peoples’ minds when they think of the peace movement. Still the corner, as we call our location in Studio City, continues to get its message across to thousands of motorists every Friday night. And like many other vigils we also put on community forums and coordinate with other groups’ activities. So we do have an impact at the local level, which is the whole point.

We’ve become such a well-known fixture in the community that everyone in the valley knows us. This is something other long-standing peace vigils can attest to around the country. So never minimize the impact one small vigil can have even when there isn’t a coordinating structure on a national level. In short, we keep the movement alive while others try to figure out if it even exists.

Today, in the hopes of finally seeing justice, we are petitioning the United States Supreme Court to hear Mr. Arar’s extraordinary rendition case and we urgently need you to take action.DescriptionIn 2002, Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was detained at JFK airport while on his way home to Canada from abroad. He was interrogated, detained in the U.S. for 2 weeks, denied his right to go to court and then secretly rendered to Syria where he was tortured and held in a grave-like underground cell for over ten months. He was never charged with a crime.  You can learn more about Mr. Arar’s case by clicking here.

In a disturbing decision last November, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed CCR’s civil case Arar v. Ashcroft in a 7-4 decision.  In a strongly worded dissent, Judge Guido Calabresi wrote, “I believe that when the history of this distinguished court is written, today’s majority decision will be viewed with dismay.” We are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review Maher Arar’s case and allow him his day in court.  No one should ever be rendered to torture and those who have suffered at the hands of the U.S. government are entitled to redress.

You can help CCR fight for justice for Maher Arar. Tell Attorney General Eric Holder to stop defending the Bush administration’s wrongs and urge him to:

• Acknowledge the wrong done to Maher Arar in a public apology;
• Remove Maher Arar from the US Terror Watch List;
• Appoint outside special counsel to investigate and prosecute crimes relating to Maher Arar’s rendition;
• Remedy the harm done to Maher Arar; and
• Ensure that the US does not send anyone to torture or arbitrary detention.

Click here to write to Attorney General Holder. Thank you for standing with us in the ongoing fight against torture and impunity.

NEW YORK PEACE GRANNIES TO MARK 1000TH AMERICAN DEATH IN AFGHANISTAN AT ROCKEFELLER CENTER | Press Release

As the American military death toll nears the 1,000 mark in Afghanistan, anti-war grandmothers and their supporters are preparing in advance to mark the grim occasion. The grannies held special commemorations for the 3,000th and 4,000th American death in Iraq, and now are planning to perform the same heartbreaking task for those unfortunate soldiers sacrificed to the war in Afghanistan.

"Perhaps most of the public is not much concerned with these wars and their casualties, but the peace grannies always have been, are now and will continue to be until they are stopped," said 94-year-old Lillian Pollak, an active member of the Granny Peace Brigade, one of the organizers of the event. "We will publicly acknowledge the carnage in the hope that we will awaken citizens to the fact that the wars are still being waged with their resultant unjustified death and destruction -- not only of our own young people but of countless innocent civilians. We must not let up in our efforts to end these immoral occupations."

Please be advised that a special memorial will be held the day AFTER the 1,000th fatality is announced. People are asked to meet at 5:30 p.m. at the site of the regular Wednesday Rockefeller Center Grandmothers Against the War vigil -- the west side of Fifth Ave. between 49th and 50th Sts. They will vigil there for approximately one hour and then slowly walk to the recruitment center in Times Square for a short appearance. The grannies will be joined by Veterans for Peace, who regularly stand with them on Wednesdays, and other loyal followers.

It is requested that people bring candles and flashlights. Names of the dead will be read. Celebrated persons in in the arts and government have been invited to eulogize the lost lives.

The count is as of this date (Feb. 1) 977, so it is likely that the 1,000th death will occur within the next month or two. Those who plan to attend are asked to be vigilant in observing the count so that they can participate at the right moment.

Regretfully, the casualties continue to mount in Iraq, as well, though not to the extent they have in the past. American deaths there now total 4,375. Hopefully, the U.S. will have pulled out before the total reaches the dreaded 5,000. Rest assured, the indomitable grannies will continue their non-stop efforts to make this a reality.

DATE: The day AFTER the 1,000th American casualty is reached in Afghanistan
TIME: 5:30 - 6:30 P.M.
PLACE: West side of 5th Ave. between 49th and 50th Sts. -- then walk to Times Square Recruiting Center, 44th and Broadway

###

CONTACT: Joan Wile -- 917-441-0651

What I Have Learned Doing Civil Disobedience for Single Payer
by Carol Paris | Common Dreams

Note: During President Obama's recent visit to Baltimore, Drs. Margaret Flowers and Carol Paris attempted to deliver to an explanation of why Single-Payer is comprehensive and cost-effective, and better serves the needs of the nation's patients and doctors. They were prevented from delivering their message to the President, despite his invitation that if someone has a better plan than the one cobbled together in Congress he "wanted to hear it." ~Chip :)

"People should go where they are not supposed to go, say what they are not supposed to say, and stay when they are told to leave." --Howard Zinn

Well, that quote pretty well sums up "what to do." But my biggest challenge is "how." Specifically, how do I neutralize some pretty powerful fear?

I was scared Friday when I joined Margaret Flowers to attempt to deliver a message to the President. My thoughts raced. We're talking secret service.

"How do I get myself into these things?"

"This is crazy."

"This is pointless."

"I can't even make sensible statements; I know what I want to say but I'm so nervous."

"Other people are so much more knowledgeable and speak so much more eloquently."

"But I am doing it!"

We stood in front of the Harbor Hotel in Baltimore clutching a banner that read "Letting you know. Medicare for all" and Margaret's letter for the President written in response to his appeal for solutions to health reform. The hotel manager, police and secret service surrounded us and asked us to move.

If you watch the video, you'll see that there was a point, a moment, which felt suspended in time, when Margaret looked at me and I looked at her and we both knew "we ain't goin' across the street." Read more.

This is the resistance to our empire that is sweeping the globe, unbeknownst to most of us in the United States:

This is footage from today in Vicenza, Italy, where 50 women and men entered the construction site of the proposed mammoth new US military base in a location called "Dal Molin".  They chained themselves to cranes and other machines.

Background: http://afterdowningstreet.org/vicenza

The campaign we need to support: http://www.nodalmolin.it

What Americans can do: http://peaceoftheaction.org

9/11, Deep Events, and the Curtailment of U.S. Freedoms
A talk delivered to the New England Antiwar Conference, MIT, January 30, 2010.
by Prof Peter Dale Scott | Global Research

Hello everyone! I’m honored to be invited to this important anti-war conference. As I am in the final stages of editing my next book, The Road to Afghanistan, I have been turning down invitations to speak. But I was eager to accept this one, and to join my friends and others in debunking the war on terror, the false justification for the Afghan-Pakistan war.

Let me make my own position clear at the outset. There are indeed people out there, including some Muslim extremists, who want to inflict terror on America. But it is crystal clear, as many people inside and outside government have agreed, that it makes this problem worse, not better, when Washington sends large numbers of U.S. troops to yet another country where they don ‘t belong.[1]

A war on terror is as inappropriate a cure as a U.S. war on drugs, which as we have seen in Colombia makes the drug problem worse, not better. The war on terror and the war on drugs have this in common: both are ideological attempts to justify the needless killings of thousands – including both American troops and foreign civilians -- in another needless war.

Why does America find itself, time after time, invading countries in distant oil-bearing regions, countries which have not invaded us? This is a vital issue on which we should seek a clear message for the American people. Unfortunately it has been an issue on which there has been serious disagreement dividing the antiwar movement, just as it divided people, even friends, inside the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s.

Perhaps many of you in this room know that there was disagreement between Noam Chomsky and myself in our analysis of how America entered the Vietnam War. This did not stop Noam and I from speaking out on the same platform against the war, or remaining friends, even after our public disagreements. There was too much on which we agreed.

Let me turn to today’s topic, the war on terror, by reading a long quote from Noam Chomsky in 2002, with which I fully agree:

"the war on terrorism was not declared on September 11 [2001]; rather, it was redeclared, using the same rhetoric as the first declaration twenty years earlier. The Reagan administration, as you know, I'm sure, came into office announcing that a war on terrorism would be the core of U.S. foreign policy, and it condemned what the president called the "evil scourge of terrorism. " …. International terrorism was described as a plague spread by "depraved opponents of civilization itself," in "a return to barbarism in the modern age.”"[2]

Today it is easy to see the falsehood of the government rhetoric in the 1980s about heroic freedom fighters fighting the “evil scourge of terrorism.” Most of the CIA money in the 1980s went to the terrorist drug trafficker Gulbeddin Hekmatyar, remembered for his habit of throwing acid in the faces of women not wearing burkas. Hekmatyar did not represent Afghan aspirations for freedom, but the interests of the U.S. ally Pakistan. As a true Afghan leader said in 1994, “We didn't choose [him]. The United States made Hekmatyar by giving him his weapons.”[3] To describe Hekmatyar’s men as freedom fighters was a fraud. Read more.

The logic of (counter) terrorism, as practiced by the US government
By Michael Schwartz

Keep in mind that well known sociological studies (enshrined in a famous movie starring Will Smith) demonstrate all people on earth are separated by only “six degrees of separation”. This means that careful work by the intelligence agencies can place almost anyone into a network of associates with any suspect. This means that, in practice, the construction of these suspicious networks will sweep up pretty much everyone in the vague social vicinity of a terrorist suspect.

In a recent Harper'’s article, Petra Bartosiewicz explains, in excruciating detail, the incredible saga of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist who trained and worked in the United States for eleven years, and who “vanished from her hometown in Pakistan in 2003,” and re-appeared in 2008, accused of the attempted murder of U.S. intelligence agents who were apparently interrogating her for the umpteenth time during what was likely five years of imprisonment by various authorities, mainly the Pakistani and U.S. intelligence agencies. The whole story is bizarre, and even Bartosiewicz is still confused about what actually happened, though it is entirely possible that Siddiqui is innocent of all allegations and charges. Of course, there is no guarantee that the pending trial will clarify anything.

One thing is, however, crystal clear: that the secret “counter” “terrorist” “intelligence” network created by the U.S. practices every form of brutality that it accuses its targets of utilizing. And it does this on a scale that Al Qaeda and its allies can only dream about.

But there is a much larger significance to the prevalence of these practices, and this larger significance lies much more in the process of “disappearing” innocent citizens in every country of the world than in the particularities of how they are treated once they are captured and incarcerated. The logic behind this practice of the mass arrest of innocents was made explicit by an FBI document filed in the U.S. court a few years back. Here is Bartosiewicz's’ account of that document:

“When the FBI detained more than a thousand Muslim immigrants in 2001, for instance, it provided judges at secret detention hearings an affidavit explaining that ‘the business of counterterrorism intelligence gathering in the United States is akin to the construction of a mosaic’ and that evidence ‘that may seem innocuous at first glance’ might ultimately ‘fit into a picture that will reveal how the unseen whole operates.’ The FBI reasoned that even the possessors of this intelligence might not be aware of the significance of what they knew, and so they could be detained simply because the agency was ‘unable to rule out’ their value.”

Witness Against Torture and Peaceable Assembly Campaigns in Washington, DC
By Joy First | January 20-29, 2010

As our government continues to engage in illegal actions that cause suffering to so many people around the world, we must continue in our struggle for peace and justice. And so to that end, I have been engaged in a couple of campaigns this month. This involved spending ten days in DC where I was arrested in an action of nonviolent civil resistance.

Joy First wrote: You may have heard that this past Thursday, January 28th, Josh Brollier and Brian Terrell were sentenced to two weeks in the Dane County jail here in Madison, WI. They were given the time because they did not pay a $75 fine after being found guilty of trespass for an action at Fort McCoy here in Wisconsin in August of 2008.

Please remember them and consider sending them a card or letter. Information on writing to them is below.

Thursday’s hearing before Judge Magistrate Stephen Crocker in US District Court was a resentencing motion filed by the government against the two for failure to pay the $75 fine imposed by the court in a bench trial last January. Judge Crocker began by hearing from Terrell on his motion opposing the resentencing. Terrell argued that it would be improper to impose a jail sentence at this stage since jail was not a sentence that could have been imposed at the time of the original sentencing under the Monroe County trespassing ordinance. (In the bench trial before Judge Crocker in January 2009, for instance, defendants were not offered representation by public counsel, specifically because jail time was not a potential consequence for the alleged crime.)

Further, Brollier and Terrell contested the government’s contention that “alternatives to jail are not sufficient deterrence”. Terrell spoke eloquently about the example of friends and mentors like Dorothy Day, Daniel and Phillip Berrigan and Daniel Ellsberg. He noted that “putting these people in chains and locking them in cages” served not as a deterrent to him and others, but rather as an inspiration to act with similar courage.

Brollier noted that their actions of August 8, 2008 did not take place in a vacuum, and that the state of the world must be considered along with their actions. It is not permitted to yell fire in a crowded theater if there is no fire. But if there is a fire, we are duty bound to alert people to the danger.

SPENDING THE HOLIDAYS IN DC JAIL
By Ellen Barfield

Here is my jail report for those of you who knew I WAS in jail, and word from me for those of you who are wondering why you didn't hear from me over the holidays!

The anti-war action which eventually landed me in jail from 14 December to 5 January was interrupting a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing on the Afghan war/occupation last May, with Senator John Kerry chairing and Admiral Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifying. Four of us had agreed to do an action against the Afghan war, and settled on this specific hearing just a day or 2 before we did it.

My colleagues were Eve Tetaz, Steve Mihalis, and Pete Perry, who I know through years of activism and the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance. Eve and I threw dollar bills stained with our own blood into the aisle of the hearing room (not AT anyone as was later assumed by the prosecutor and judge) and cried out to stop spending blood money. Pete recited to Senator Kerry his own words from the Viet Nam era about telling the last soldier he is dying for a lie, and Steve added his condemnation of the war. We were whisked out of the hearing room in seconds. Senator Kerry had only said to remove, not arrest, us, but the police chose to arrest.

The formal charge was "unlawful conduct on Capitol grounds", serious enough to get a jury trial in October. Eve and I were mildly surprised we were not charged with more serious assault charges for the bloody money, even though the blood was long dry and we are old women with no communicable diseases. I represented myself at trial, as I have often done, with advice from Attorney Advisor Ann Wilcox. Eve and Pete had other attorneys. Steve's charges were dropped because the government used a C-span video as their evidence, and you could not hear Steve well on the video. We were bemused that the government did not trust their own Capitol police to testify as to what they saw us do.

By Pat Elder

The Armed Service Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is a public service provided to high schools free of charge. The program helps teens find their strengths and helps them set goals for their future.

Officials try to keep recruiters away from the test as much as possible.

— DoD statements on the ASVAB

Every school year hundreds of thousands of high school students across the country are encouraged — and often required — to take a four-hour military exam during school hours. The test, with a name few can remember (the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB), is an integral part of the Pentagon's overall recruitment program. Heightened public concerns about the administration of the school testing program are contributing to its decline, particularly in the last few years.

Many school officials, persuaded by claims that the ASVAB helps students choose appropriate careers, encourage students to take the test. Since 1968 the Pentagon has used the ASVAB to gather a treasure trove of data on 16- and 17-year-olds. ASVAB data goes beyond the name, address, and phone numbers of high school students that military recruiters may receive as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001. Students who take the ASVAB divulge their Social Security number, gender, race, ethnicity, birth date, statement of future plans, and, significantly, their aptitude in ten critical subtest areas.

HISTORIAN ZINN SAID “LARGEST LIE” WAS U.S. “WAR ON TERRORISM”
By Sherwood Ross

The “largest lie,” wrote hisorian Howard Zinn who died yesterday at age 87, is that “everything the United States does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a ‘war on terrorism.’”

“This ignores the fact that war is itself terrorism, that the barging into people’s homes and taking away family members and subjecting them to torture, that is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more security but less security.”

In an article published previously in “The Long Term View” magazine of the Massachusetts School of Law, Zinn said that in the Fallujah area of Iraq Knight Ridder reporters found there was no Ba’athist or Sunni conspiracy against the U.S., “only people ready to fight because their relatives had been hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home searches and road stops.”

Zinn, popularly known as the people’s historian, pointed out that the U.S. may have liberated Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein but afterwards it became Iraq’s occupier. He noted this is the same fate that befell Cuba after the U.S. liberated it from Spain in 1898. In both nations, the U.S. established military bases and U.S. corporations moved in to profit from the upheaval.

Zinn recalled the words of then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before the NATO ministers in Brussels in June, 2002, “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” of weapons of mass destruction. “That explains why this government, not knowing exactly where to find the criminals of September 11, will just go ahead and invade and bomb Afghanistan, killing thousands of people, driving hundreds of thousands from their homes, and still not know where the criminals are,” Zinn wrote.

“This explains why the government, not really knowing what weapons Saddam Hussein is hiding, will invade and bomb Iraq, to the horror of most of the world, killing thousands of civilians and soldiers and terrorizing the population,” he continued.