They’d rather die: brief lives of the Afghan slave wives

The Sunday Times November 05, 2006

They’d rather die: brief lives of the Afghan slave wives

Christina Lamb



THE first thing one notices about 16-year-old Gul Zam is her eyes, pretty and dark yet as watchful as a hunted animal’s. But then the scarf covering her head shifts slightly, exposing a livid red scar on her neck. The hands that play nervously in her lap are ridged with pink burns that reach up her arms, across her chest and down her legs.

Three months ago Gul Zam poured petrol over her body and set herself alight. To her it was the only way out of a marriage so abusive that her husband Abdul had beaten her until her clothes were soaked in blood.

“I felt all other ways were blocked,” she whispered. “My husband and his family treated me like a slave. But I could not go back to my family because of the shame that would bring. So I crawled into the yard, poured a can of petrol over me and lit a match.”

Five years after the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, the number of Afghan women setting fire to themselves because they cannot bear their lives has risen dramatically.

Gul Zam’s husband and in-laws watched her burning and did nothing. She was saved by a neighbour who poured a bucket of water over her, wrapped her in a sheet and rushed her to hospital. After the doctors removed the sheet, tearing the blisters, she spent 10 days in a coma. Her head had been fused to her chest by the burns. She has endured several operations and will need at least six more before she can move her arms.

“This is a society where being born a woman is not a gift,” said Alberto Cairo, an Italian doctor who runs the Red Cross clinic in Kabul where Gul Zam is being treated. His room is full of fairy lights and a laughing Christmas tree that he has kept up all year because “there didn’t seem to be much happiness”.

A report last week by the UK-based charity Womankind Worldwide said cases like Gul Zam’s were becoming more common because between 60% and 80% of all marriages in Afghanistan were forced. More than half of all girls are married off before the age of 16, some as young as six. Many of these marriages are to settle debts or feuds between tribes. The women are regarded as commodities rather than wives and are often treated like slave workers by their new families.

Those who try to escape often end up in prison like 13-year-old Shabano, jailed in Kandahar for running away from the 50-year-old man to whom her father had sold her. “We don’t have democracy in this country if someone wants a love marriage,” she said, nibbling at grimy nails in the dark, dirty cell. “My father exchanged me for a teenage bride for himself.”

Gul Zam was lucky. Not only was she saved, but unusually her family have decided to support her and her father demanded a divorce. But her story is an indictment of the international community’s failure to improve the lives of Afghan women.

In 2001 the West’s most-cited criticism of the Taliban regime was its oppression of women. Not only did the Taliban forbid women from working and girls from being educated, they also beat them for wearing lipstick or shoes that clicked on the ground. The all-encompassing burqa, with its ugly shape and cage-like grille over the eyes, became a symbol for a heartless regime.

Laura Bush, America’s first lady, took over her husband’s weekly radio address to highlight the plight of Afghan women. Cherie Blair made an impassioned speech at 10 Downing Street, saying: “Women could have their nails torn out for wearing nail polish.”

“The recovery of Afghanistan must entail the restoration of rights of Afghan women,” insisted Colin Powell, then the US secretary of state.

Five years on there is just one woman in government — the minister for women’s affairs. Symbolic photographs of women throwing off their burqas after the Taliban had fled were no more than that. Apart from a small educated elite in Kabul, the overwhelming majority of women are still forced to cover their entire bodies and faces. The United Nations recently circulated a memo to all staff in Afghanistan, advising women to cover their heads even in Kabul.

Watching boys flying kites over the Bala Hissar fort or chattering girls streaming to school, white scarves over heads and rucksacks on backs, to say there have been no improvements since November 13, 2001, when the Taliban fled the capital, would be wrong. Millions of Afghans voted for a new president in 2004 and a parliament in 2005 in which 25% of the MPs are women. Five million children, of whom 1.5m are girls, are enrolled in school.

But there is a huge gap between the reality on the ground and the “remarkable progress” claimed by western diplomats who sit in fortified compounds behind guards and concrete blocks and who never leave Kabul. The only area in which the country could really be said to have made remarkable progress is in growing the poppy. Under British supervision, Afghanistan has become the world’s biggest opium producer. Last year it produced 6,100 tons — 92% of world supply.

Afghanistan is engulfed in its bloodiest violence for 10 years. At least 3,000 people have been killed this year — more than twice last year’s total.

For all the talk of girls’ education, only 5% of those of secondary school age are enrolled. More than 300 schools have been burnt down this year or shut after threats from militants, leaving 200,000 pupils with nowhere to go.

There have been no significant water or power projects and two highways built with western aid have become almost no-go areas. The Kabul to Kandahar road is plagued by Taliban militants setting up fake checkpoints, killing Afghans accused of collaborating.

Two weeks ago I drove on the other new road from Jalalabad to Kabul, wearing a burqa because of warnings of foreigners being kidnapped. I was stopped at three checkpoints set up by police to extract bribes. As for the much-heralded parliament, it has more warlords and people charged with human rights abuses than women MPs. It has yet to create any legislation, though it has voted in pay rises for its members.

“Parliament is just a showpiece for the West,” complains Malalai Joya, one of the female MPs. “Women do not have liberation at all. People in power, whether in government, parliament or governors, are warlords and jihadis who are no different in their outlook from Taliban.”

The 27-year-old MP has received so many death threats for her outspokenness that she has to sleep in a different place every night. To meet her involves going to a spot, then following an old man on a motorbike. She will not give out her address. The house is surrounded by sandbags and guards who search visitors before they can enter.

Inside Joya sits in a room that is bare of decoration apart from a black and white photograph of King Amanullah, under whose reign in the 1920s women were given equal rights and strict dress codes were abolished. She tells me she has just returned from visiting a five-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and raped in Kabul by a local commander. “The killing of women is like killing a bird for these men,” she said. “We have no value.” When she tries to speak in parliament, she is physically attacked by fellow MPs. “When I speak, they pelt me with water bottles,” she said. “One shouted, ‘Take and rape her!’ “The West talks of Afghan women having freedom and going outside without a burqa but I tell you the burqa was not the main problem for women. Look at the high rate of suicide among our women. The real problem is security and more and more are returning to the burqa.”

In the south, Nato forces seem hell-bent on proving the alliance can fight at least as well as the Americans. What was supposed to be a reconstruction mission has morphed into combat producing high casualties.

But the violence is no longer confined to the southern and eastern provinces. Somehow the Taliban, who were driven out of Afghanistan by US-led forces and B-52 bombers in just 60 days, are creeping nearer the capital. According to a US military official, nine of the 21 districts in Ghazni, which is less than 60 miles south of Kabul, now have “significant Taliban influence”.

Even Kabul, which was an oasis of calm, has become a jumpy place where people live behind high walls and sandbags after suicide bombs rocked the capital.

Although the number of foreign troops has risen to 37,000, it is generally accepted that it was too little too late and the distraction of the war in Iraq allowed the Taliban to regroup. Neighbouring Pakistan, from where the Taliban emerged, has proved an ideal haven and training ground.

“The desire for a quick, cheap war followed by a quick, cheap peace is what has brought Afghanistan to the present, increasingly dangerous situation,” says the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

David Richards, the British general who commands the Nato forces, admits he was shocked by the lack of basic development when he arrived in Afghanistan in April.

He has created a Policy Action Group, a kind of war cabinet chaired by President Hamid Karzai, bringing together ministers and international donors to “bump-start” development. “If we don’t act soon, we risk more and more people turning to the Taliban,” he warns.

Aside from such grievances and the worsening security, the other main problem is corruption. Public institutions are weak or nonexistent. Where institutions do exist, they are so corrupt that people wish they were not there.

In the ante-room to Karzai’s office, it is common to see people offering bribes to get relatives lucrative posts or arrange for them to be let off crimes. Karzai has refused to act against senior government officials or his own relatives, whom the international community says are involved in the narcotics trade.

“I am very unhappy,” complained Younus Qanuni, speaker of the parliament. “The past five years we’ve had a golden opportunity in Afghanistan. Instead I feel once again terrorism is returning: narcotics, increasing daily corruption while in people’s lives there are no changes. Things are moving in the wrong direction.”

For girls like Gul Zam facing years of operations and stigma as a divorcee, the end of the Taliban was never meant to be like this.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


Discovered this article by reading
http://www.snohwomen.blogspot.com/

"Raytheon Six² Defendants Get Community Service; Four of Five Charges Dismissed.

"Raytheon Six² Defendants Get Community Service; Four of Five
Charges Dismissed.

by Jack and Felice Cohen-Joppa

Four Tucson residents were each sentenced November 2 to eight
hours of community service for their part in a nonviolent protest at
the Raytheon Missile Systems Plant south of Tucson last March 20, the
third anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Pima
County Justice Court judge Maria Felix accepted their pleas of no
contest to a charge of obstructing a highway, a class 3 misdemeanor.
Two co-defendants who could not be in court today will be sentenced
at a later date.
The sentences came as a result of a plea agreement that
included dismissal of four of the five original charges laid against
each the anti-war activists: unlawful assembly, disorderly conduct,
being a public nuisance and being a pedestrian on a roadway.
Before the formal hearing, the court invited Tucson¹s Raging
Grannies to sing. The Grannies were among nearly two dozen
supporters who had rallied outside the court house prior to the
hearing, and now filled the small courtroom. They obliged with one
of their trademark anti-war parodies, ³God Help America.²
The four sentenced today were Gretchen Nielson, age 73,
Bill Moeller, age 52, Pat Birnie, age 76, and Jack McPherson, age 61.
Before pronouncing sentence, Judge Felix invited the defendants to
address the court. The statements of Pat Birnie and Jack McPherson
follow, along with a poem by Gretchen Nielsen that concluded her own
brief statement. Bill Moeller chose not to address the court.

Poem read as part of sentencing statement of Gretchen Nielsen

HELL'S GETTING READY
to be lit with missiles
built by robots
programmed with misconceptions
(while ridiculed into silence
the wise watch wordless)
bombs are bought and sold
by parents
still not knowing what they're doing
'til the children they have nurtured
scream in fiery beds

Hell's getting ready
to be lit by leaders
proud and vengeful
still not knowing what they're doing
'til they're judged as they've been judging
watch their children's children burn
(while the merciful moan in madness
anguished with compassion)
wealthy preachers mock the truth
the pope parades in a funny hat:
prophecy fulfilled

(wise and ridiculed
merciful and mad)
Where is the leader of the meek?

Gretchen Nielsen (1980)

=============
Sentencing statement of Pat Birnie

I strongly oppose the U.S. invasion and continuing violent occupation
of Iraq, a sovereign country that threatened no provocation to our
country.
Because I consider the U.S. military actions in Iraq to be immoral
and illegal by U.S. law as well as International law, I am ashamed
and distraught that a local business, Raytheon Missiles Systems, is
participating in and profiting from the human suffering their
products cause in Iraq.

I have tried to communicate my angst via direct correspondence with
Raytheon management, letters and phone calls to our elected
officials, letters to the editor (unpublished!) of our local
newspapers, and regular legal protests at Raytheon Missiles Systems
factory.
Because these efforts have failed, I had to resort to my least
-favored form of free-speech, to put my body on the line.
I will not willingly allow, by my silence, these atrocities to continue.

========
Sentencing statement of Jack McPherson

My participation in the blockade of the Raytheon munitions plant was
done to express solidarity with the tens of thousand innocent
civilian victims in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I do believe it is my moral obligation:
To speak out against - war crimes
To speak out against - war profiteering
And to speak out against - weapon contracts emanating from huge
political contributions.
Raytheon is not as they would have you believe a defender of freedom
and democracy, but rather are in the business of killing for profit.

U.S. DU Death Toll Tops 11,000

U.S. DU Death Toll Tops 11,000

Nationwide Media Blackout Keeps U.S. Public Ignorant About This Important Story

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/du_death_toll.html

By James P. Tucker Jr.
The death toll from the highly toxic weapons component known as depleted uranium (DU) has reached 11,000 US soldiers and the growing scandal may be the reason behind Anthony Principi’s departure as secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department.

This view was expressed by Arthur Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter.

“The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given,” Bernklau said. “However, a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the U.S. military.”

The “malady [from DU] that thousands of our military have suffered and died from has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. . . . The terrible truth is now being revealed,” Bernklau said.

Of the 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are now dead, he said. By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. More than a decade later, more than half (56 percent) who served in Gulf War I have permanent medical problems. The disability rate for veterans of the world wars of the last century was 5 percent, rising to 10 percent in Vietnam.

“The VA secretary was aware of this fact as far back as 2000,” Bernklau said. “He and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret’s report, it is far too big to hide or to cover up.”

Terry Johnson, public affairs specialist at the VA, recently reported that veterans of both Persian Gulf wars now on disability total 518,739, Bernklau said.

“The long-term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence,” Bernklau said. “Marion Fulk, a nuclear chemist, who retired from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, and was also involved in the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in the soldiers [from the second war] as ‘spectacular’—and a matter of concern.’ ”

While this important story appeared in a Washington newspaper and the wire services, it did not receive national exposure—a compelling sign that the American public is being kept in the dark about the terrible effects of this toxic weapon. (Veterans for Constitutional Law can be reached at (516) 474-4261.)


Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute - as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003

So What Happens The Day After The Election?

I haven’t blogged in a while. I had to take a break so I could turn on the old wisdom crock pot and attend to healing after a year of ill health, personal loss, family upheaval, and near constant political action. So I ruminated and allowed myself the utter luxury of doing whatever the hell I felt like for a few months so I could have the energy and inspiration to face whatever situation presented itself the after the election.

This is basically the same thing I did before the 2004 election. I just started gearing up for the long haul of what would be needed AFTER the 2004 election so I could jump in with whatever was needed when most folks were burned out from putting all their energy into the election.

Here I am again.

So what are we going to do if votes actually cast next Tuesday have no relationship with who “wins” in these U.S. elections?

What are we going to do if token Democrats win but no Progressive voice travels with them to D.C.?

So what are we going to do if U.S. people start being “disappeared?”

We must not lose high-level, integrated focus and descend into a mire of liberal bickering over petty details.

Last week’s approval of the use of military force against our own citizens just before the most critical elections in our country for almost a century is a very dark cloud on the horizon. We have to work together.

The following is from an email I received this morning from The People’s Email Network:

If there were ever a more urgent reason to replace each and every member of Congress virtually without exception, one need only look at the breathtaking new martial law powers granted to the Bush administration this month. It has always been a sacred tenet of our Democracy that the U.S. military should not be deployed AGAINST American citizens. But literally in the dead of night and almost without comment, an amendment to the Insurrection Act was slipped into the just passed Defense Authorization bill stating, and get this:

"the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when . . . the President determines that domestic violence has occurred"

So let's just say for example that the electronic election results in 8 days are so far out of line with pre-election and exit polling data so as to defy credulity. And let's just say that people organized massive peaceful protests of the theft of their elections. And let's just say that the Bush administration provoked "police" riots, or even had their own provocateurs commit violent acts so as to justify a military crackdown. Voila . . . now you have American soldiers shooting at otherwise peaceful political protesters. And you thought Kent State was a party!

And if you don't think that could ever happen, then why the hell have they pushed for such changes, which are now the law of the land?

The whole concept of the president as an unaccountable determiner, or "decider", insulated from any kind of oversight by Congress or the Courts has been the hallmark of the Cheney/Bush executive coup, which just keeps steamrollering along while our presumptive protectors in Congress are asleep at the switch, or cowering in their cloakrooms.

Some of you will who know me personally will remember when I spent several years on a project in which I attempted to salt our cultural milleau with real information about the various cohorts that comprised the boom in births that occurred after WWII. (Yes, I’m digressing, but stay with me…) I coined and forwarded the term Late Boomers to describe the last half of the Baby Boom Generation. Another person, Jonathan Pontel (sp?) forwarded the term Generation Jones to describe this same group. I felt that Jonathan (a child-roofing safety latch tycoon) was doing this, I felt, for some sort of financial gain or personal aggrandizement. This morning I became certain of it when I saw him on FOX. He was spouting about how a surprise win by the Republicans next week will show the power and conservatism of Generation Jones. My disgust meter went haywire. I suspect he is making these statements so that he will be credited with foresight if the elections are stolen again. But it reminded me of how important the Late Boomers, who have really never shown their strength, will be in the next few months.

How history remembers the various cohorts within the Baby Boomers will probably hinge around this election. That much is true. My take on this is totally different from Jonathan’s. I happen to believe that THE test of the moral fiber (not to be confused with religious faith) of the Woodstock Generation, the Late Blooming Late Boomers, and Generation X sll will be tested in these next few months. How history remembers us will be determined by next summer. In these next few months I need to be writing on my blog about how to undermine the DLC death grip on the Democratic Party but I fear I will be writing about the manifestation of fascistic Bushist doctrine into military coercion and the use of military force against our own people.

The activist community has been abuzz about detention centers being built by KBR for almost a year now. It is quite likely that if force is used against our own people those forced and fired upon by our own military in our own streets will be sent to detention centers that have supposedly been built to house “illegal aliens.”

That is right, the“Detention Centers” are ready. (Built by KBR.)

This of course can only be achieved if the People of the United States allow and enable it. But
collaborators are already proudly wearing their brown shirts and acting as though they were military police. Remember when folks in a taxpayer funded event in Denver last year were removed from the gathering because of some printed slogans? They were removed by some political hacks masquerading as secret service agents under the direction of event organizers (The White House).

“Leslie Weise and Alex Young, two of the three people removed from the taxpayer-funded event, are suing two Denver men for actually ousting them. But they believe a White House official gave the order.”

These are the type of cases that must be pursued. Only by establishing locally grown and based enclaves of sanity and justice will democratic principles survive when and if elections are stolen again. These enclaves must be able to stand up to being labeled as "Fifth Columnists."

Just a reminder. I’m not a Marxist. I’m not a Communist. I’m not a Terrorist. I’m a life-long registered Democrat whose ancestors met the Puritans (who comprise another part of my ancestral tree) as they arrived in this land almost 400 years ago. I oppose not only this goon squad of a Republican Congress, but also the DLC’s usurping the guidance of Democratic Party and the lame response by the DNC. The Republican Party that is largely composed of honest, albeit misguided, folks. Same can be said of most Democrats.

My own take on why this is happening (which I like to think of as network theory, not conspiracy theory) is that Al Gore wasn’t the only politician aware of global warming and the dramatic changes our human culture will experience in the next few decades. Policy makers, scientists and social theorists have known about the degradation of Earth’s current biosphere for decades. We discussed, diagramed and debated aspects of it in my university classes in the late 1970s. The powers that be have been incorporating it into planning strategies for decades. Remember when Jimmy Carter promoted the use of solar energy and energy conservation? That was right before Papa Bush negotiated with terrorists in Paris (arms for hostages) and thus insured the hostages would not be released during the Carter term of office.

Those with the money and position to shape society (real political power) who understood this coming time of global change seem to have a couple different strategies dependent upon whether they are good or evil. (Sorry, but it does boil down to that.) Gore represents one group, and Bush represents another. (Remember --- Grandaddy Bush traded with the Nazis during WWII -- a treasonous offense.) We can work with each other to create the best response we can to environmental degradation and political instability in our vastly over-populated and divisive world (Gore’s strategy); or, those with power and global network access can consolidate their power and wealth within their very small clan before the “apocalypse” (the Bush Cheney Rumsfeld Rove response.)

I have come to classify this dichotomy as Gaia versus God. Friends tell me not to use the word Gaia as it is a parochial concept. I vehemently disagree with many of the assumptions required to make that statement. Gaia is a semiotic concept of the process that is reality, life, and the World as we know it. The time for preoccupation with things is coming to an end. Being and Becoming as it was called by one great mind (Dr. Earl Count) by which I was fortunate enough to be given undergraduate instruction, is what we do. Focus on “what we are” is based in illusion as “are” implies orientation from a static point in time that does not and never has existed. We can accept our growing understanding of interconnection and simultaneity or we can focus on “things” which are no more than deathly slices of being.

Acceptance of Gaia is acceptance of the Earth, our Mater Terra, as a living system. It says nothing of worship, or omniscience, benevolent or otherwise. It also alludes to a feminine wisdom. In my mind we could use a little bit more of that… no matter what the outcome of next week’s U.S. election.

So what do I suggest we do with all this? I have to Laugh Out Loud, as this is what we always face in planning for any future. We can be Luke and Leahs, or we can align with their father. (Sorry but I had to put in some popular culture reference and it was either Star Wars or a John Water’s reference, so I chose Star Wars.) We can be pie eyed optimists backed by fierce, righteous knowledge, or we can submit to evil. Doesn’t really matter how you do it, the thing is that you do it. It is much better if we don’t all do the same thing.

So I will keep on doing my more or less independent, silly little metaphoric actions and writing. That is what I’ve always done and I doubt I will change at this point.

I’ve endowed Pederson with the balls to stand up against the Iraq War (Pink Balls of Courage) – and I’ve told Gabby Giffords, in person, on more than one occasion that we need her to stand up against the war and gett our troops out of Iraq now even if that means withdrawing all funding for the war. All I’ve gotten are mushy canned responses in return. I’ve given Pink Balls to Gabby’s staff too.

I’m just an iconoclast. I’m also an intelligent woman and a fairly good researcher who is well-trained in social theory as well as several methodologies for evaluating (not measuring—I really don’t give a rat’s ass about quantification) patterns of behavior. I’m relatively harmless… just like the man in the following story:

Steve Howards says he used to fantasize about what he’d say to President Bush or Vice President Cheney if he ever got the chance. That opportunity arrived on June 16, the same day he says he read about U.S. fatalities in Iraq reaching 2,500......... “I didn’t even know he was in town,” Howards says. “He was walking through the area shaking hands. Initially, I walked past him. Then I said to myself, ‘I can’t in good conscience let this opportunity pass by.’ So I approached him, I got about two feet away, and I said in a very calm tone of voice, ‘Your policies in Iraq are reprehensible.’ And then I walked away. Howards says he knew the Administration has a_ “history of making problems” for people who protest its policies, so he wanted to leave off at that. But the Secret Service did not take kindly to his comment. “About ten minutes later, I came back through the mall with my eight-year-old son in tow,” Howards recalls, “and this Secret Service man came out of the shadows, and his exact words were, ‘Did you assault the Vice President?’ ” Here’s how Howards says he responded: “No, but I did tell Mr. Cheney the way I felt about the war in Iraq, and if Mr. Cheney wants to be shielded from public criticism, he should avoid public places. If exercising my constitutional rights to free speech is against the law, then you should arrest me.” Which is just what the agent, Virgil D. “Gus” Reichle Jr, proceeded to do.

I guess we should keep on exercising our rights to free speech after the election next week. Loudly. Publicly. That is the best and most important thing we can do. (But you may want to wear your best running sneakers and have a vinegar dampened cloth to put over your face when the pepper spray comes out.

Peace my friends, I bid you peace.

Performance of "I Am Rachel Corrie" in the Heartland

I attendeded a performance of " I am Rachel Corrie" last evening at Purdue University. The Semiotic Society of America is having their annual meeting at this fairly conservative university so I was quite heartened to see an organizer of the SSA encouraging attendance at Katherine Burke's solo production of this play by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner (produced with permission of Rachel's family) about a young woman's life (and death).

This play is not about Palestine and Israel - it about a young woman's maturation as chronicled through her writings from age twelve through 23 when when her young life ceased was crushed under an Israeli tank in front of a Palestinian home she was attempting to protect as an ISM member. Youth, self-awareness, recognition of mortality, the sadness that comes with wisdom, family, desire for some modicum of fairness in a world that has none -- these are all themes, strings, and tendrils of meaning that regularly wander in and out of her expressed thoughts as depicted in her journals, emails, and miscellaneous writings through this amazingly aware and articulate young woman explored more deeply, broadly and with more passion in her short life than do most people who live 4 times longer than she did.

This play is not about all the things the hoopla about it imply. It is about a life. See it if you can. Put on your own production of it. Read it.

A soldier's dilemma and honorable action.

Justin Watts is an honorable man. A local Tucson man showed a strength of character that few possess and fewer still can maintain when confronted with horrific knowledge that if disclosed will permanently alter untold numbers of lives and indeed the course of a nation.

Justin is the man who voiced his concern about what his brothers in arms appeared to have done -- raped a young teenage girl and then killed her and her family. The story is here in the Arizona Daily Star.

What amazed me is comment 63 on this story.

I'm very happy this man [Justin] was so brave to come forward. He is a hero to me and to my kids now. He will never know how much he helped my family alone. One of the soldiers he told on is my husband. He used to beat me and make me sleep on the floor while pregnant. In april he was home on a leave and he wanted me to be alone with him but i said no. I've been trying to divorce him for more than 2 years now and i had a restraining order against him. He violated it so many times that I had to move. I told the army what was going on and they did not help at all. they left me with no option but to run and hide. Now thanks to Justin watt, my children are safe and so am I. God bless him and I hope things get better for him.

This is a neglected aspect of the horrific situation our country faces. Violence begets violence. Allowing violence upon women is symptomatic of a cultural suppression of morality. Thank you Justin for keeping the tiny spark of belief in the essense of good alive within me. This heinous war is creating a generation of military vets who have been wounded in unimaginable ways -- scars unlike anything ever before seen are forming.

Thank you Justin for showing me that although our troops are being asked to ignore international law and conventions, and because of this evil cultivation are having their darkest sides emerge that men and womenof character are refusing to go along with an immoral status quo. Justin and those others who will now step forward because of his bravery, along the folks who are refusing to go back to fight in this immoral attrocity, are showing that Americans still have among them the best, the brightest, and the most honorable citizens who serve because they believe in justice and what Americans hold in their hearts as the essence of what our country is and can be.

Let us all send safe energies to him, pray for his safety, and for this shining example of courage to be followed and to inspire other soldiers to do what is right and just.

Breathe in courage. Breathe out action.

Tucson. Tonight. Peace. At The Loft.

Tonight!

Two Must See Videos

Two must see shorts:

Allegory - above most heads?

If you didn't see V for Vindetta, or didn't "get" it -- watch this clip.

I am NOT a "9/11 Truth" type, but V for Vindetta wasn't created as a narrow conspiracy awareness tool but as a broad-based allegory.

Straight shooting commentary

Keith Olbermann's now historic speaking truth to power commentary.

I'm ba-aack -- without guilt.

Yep, I took a long vacation and relaxed for several weeks. Shame on me, right? How could a progressive blogger take a vacation before a critical election? Well, I am in this for the long haul and I am living a relatively new approach to U.S. politics but a millenia old approach to life. I call it the sane woman's approach to life. I do it all-- but unlike the male-mimicking old order 70s superwoman clad in a gray flannel suit, when I begin to stress out and am unable to live with joy and creative energy, I step back to doing only personal life essential tasks.

That beleif, that we have to bring about whole life work life integration and do what preserves our sanity, is what got our species through several extinction level events --- and that is what we have to do to get us through this BRC (bush rumsfeld cheney) extinction level event. I'm not joking. This is about species survival and approaches to life itself. We have to do what keeps us alive. For me I cannot live without creative joy. That is what drew me to CODEPINK in February of 2003 and what has made me step back from it a bit too. I live from my heart and go to where my spirit tells me to go. I live by women's rules.

I will be talking about what i did during this this vacation, eventually. It is too long and divergent a topic for right now. For right now just let me say...

Jeff Latas is still the best AZ CD 8 Democratic Candidate. I stilll think Gabbie Giffords is a Republican in Democratic clothing who left the Republican Party only because of her support for the pro-woman's right to control her own body. There are Pro-choice Republicans. Why didn't she stick with her life-long political affiliation and fight for truth and justice within her network. She jumped ship and went with what she thought was the easy route to power. If she had been all about representing beliefs she would have fought for women's rights within the Republican Party. What turn will she take next?

Pima County Supervisors are corporatist pigs -- they will not stop the destruction one of the most beautiful natural spots left in the world -- the Santa Ritas -- by letting a Canadian Company strip mine the Santa Ritas that is one of the premier birding spots in the world that still is part of a complex functioning ecosystem.

Oh... oh the places we'll go. (That is a paraphrase of one of my favorite authors."

Terror Storm --The Full Length Movie Exploring Government False Flag Ops

This morning a friend sent me a link to this full length Alex Jones video that I watched, then put up a link to on digg.com. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but the several things I doubled checked for accuracy were easily verified. Some of the people interviewed are extremely competent and widely respected people who have credible stories. This is a very recent release. I recommend watching it if you have access to broadband internet. I'm not an Alex Jones fan... I really can't stand "talk" personalities of any persuasion, but I recommend just ignoring his irritating voice and presentation style and watching and listening for facts that can be proven or disproven. Then do your own research.

This is what I posted on digg with the link:

The full film, not just a clip from it, but a full 1:52:21 of web broadcast documentation that builds an eerily Orwellian case for False Flag Ops being used to control public sentiment so as to support diminished civil liberties. The wealth of historical film clips and easily verified references make this a must watch film.

read more | digg story

NH Phone Jammer To Argue Entrapment,Saying Bush Admin. Approved Scheme

Why isn't this a bigger story?

via digg.com
The fourth man indicted in a New Hampshire phone-jamming scheme -- in which Republican operatives jammed the phone lines of Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts in a 2002 Senate race -- will argue at trial that the Bush Administration and the national Republican Party gave their approval to the plan according to a motion filed by his attorney.

read more | digg story

US government studying ways it can limit the Freedom of Information Act

Why do I find it difficult to believe limiting the FOIA is not to suppress terrorist info gathering but regular old citizen's access to information? If protecting water sources was in the forefront of concern Tucson wouldn't be drinking openly transported sludge they call CAP delivered water.

from digg:
The Defense Department is sending St. Mary's University School of Law 'Center for Terrorism Law' $1 million to 'help fight terrorism' by studying ways to limit the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.

read more | digg story

Robert Sawyer wins best sci-fi novel aware for Mindscan

(From digg.com review:) With this win, Sawyer, of Mississauga, Ont., becomes one of just seven writers - and the only Canadian - to have won all three of the top science fiction awards for novel of the year.
Other authors with the hat trick are David Brin, Arthur C. Clarke, Joe Haldeman, Frederik Pohl, Kim Stanley Robinson and Connie Willis. (topic: books)

read more | digg story

Robert Sawyer wins best sci-fi novel aware for Mindscan

With this win, Sawyer, of Mississauga, Ont., becomes one of just seven writers - and the only Canadian - to have won all three of the top science fiction awards for novel of the year.
Other authors with the hat trick are David Brin, Arthur C. Clarke, Joe Haldeman, Frederik Pohl, Kim Stanley Robinson and Connie Willis. (topic: books)

read more | digg story

FBI plans new Net-tapping Legislation Push

This was just "dugg" today.... We have to raise hell about this before they can slip it through!

The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned.

read more | digg story

Fascist Goon Squads Go Mainstream

Glenn Greenwald, author of How Would A Patriot Act?, discusses the teetering stance we in America have as we dance on the top of a pivot point of unfathomable importance between liberty and oppression in a recent post The thug and intimidation tactics of the Far Right go mainstream.

I've been beating this drum for well over a year. The storm trooper-esque para-military tactics of intimidation of individuals is coming to a street near you... (They are called Goon Sqauds in case you don't know.) In fact it may be coming to your house if you don't support Horowitz, White supremacist, extremist pro-life groups and other people in America masquerading as mainstream folks who want to force everyone to live by their rules that are in strict conflict with the intent and letter of our constitutional rule.

I've had police intimidate my family when I'm not home. "We can arrest her if anyone presses charges," announced cops who showed up at my door last year apparently just to f*ck with my family. Rather senior friends of mine, elderly ladies who reside together, have had men show up at their door asking why they aren't patriotic and why they don't support the troops... A man dressed head to toe in full desert fatigues, who I could name but refuse to as I will not sink to their level, has insinuated that I should be executed as a traitor (hung actually) when I've held the sign "Bring the Troops Home Now" at Wednesday morning counter-recruiting protests here in Tucson. Another man insults me about body odor, of all the ridiculous things, for having raised arms as I hold up a sign. He yells in my face, steps into my space (within an inch of touching me) as the underage teens who do his bidding come to stand behind me and effectively "surround" me. The pro-war folks, who proudly "report back" on Free Republic also call the women peace folks by first name in a clear intimidation tactic to let us they know exactly who we are.

It is interesting to note that this surround and intimidate tactic is the very same tactic that was used on me by the recruiters the first time I interacted with them. I naively went to them to find out how to get my at that time 15 yr. old kid's name off an Army mailing list that was trying to get more information through freebie offers.

That horrible experience convinced me I had to start protesting recruiting tactics. I was distraught when I went in and was very angry but the recruiters only intentionally fed on my anxiety and revved up my anger. All I wanted was a phone number, which one recruiter had started to find for me, when another one signaled his buddies to gather round and encircle me. I sat down in a chair and said I would wait for the number to get my kid off the list. They called the cops on me. I left. These jokers are the lowest rung on Donald Rumsfeld's fascist ladder and seem to immediately choose intimidation tactics whenever dealing with any situation that isn't their control. I wasn't a counter-recruiting activist at that point - I had mixed feelings about "supporting our troops." But after that horrible treatment and intimidation I began to attend the protest occasionally but kept clear of the recruiters.

I became even more convinced that I had to be there in protest after I was arrested almost a year ago along with five Raging Grannies. I was not protesting that day and was just taking pics for this blog of what turned out to be the first attempt by any group of Raging Grannies to enlist in the U.S. Army when the same recruiter who had decided to intimidate a mother coming in to get some info from them singled me out from all the press there to call onto private property and have arrested. (The cops later decided to arrest other journalists to cover their asses when I asked why I was the only non-granny being arrested. I still feel bad about that.)

It is just a suspicion, based on observation, and I can't prove it, but I think the recruiters are training these supposed counter-protesters in military tactics "appropriate" to use on the peace protesters. I also cannot prove it, but neighbors in the area who have to remain anonymous for fear of eviction or retaliation have stated that the extremist owner of the property that houses the recruiting center offices actually pays at least some of the pro-war people to protest. It is interesting that so many middle aged right wing folks and families can afford to protest during the work day. Most of the peace folks are retired and that is why they can afford to be there every week.

We have to stop this emergent police state and militarization of the entire border region... NOW. It may take a while to get to the heartland, and for middle America to wake up-- unless this gets coverage and massive grassroots email awareness campaigns --and by then it will be too late.

Cindy Sheehan Uses Jedi Mind Tricks on Conservative MSNBC Reporter (VIDEO)

Cindy is a remarkably calm and articulate woman. Even when facing one of those "leftist" talking heads. A digg.com entrry phrases it this way:

"It is amazing how Cindy Sheehan maintains her composure, position and intelligence in this interview with an obviously conservative lapdog reporter on the dark side. The reporter really just ends up embarrassing herself... seriously, is this chick trying to land a job at Fox?"

read more | digg story

2 American Officials Apologize for Crime Against Iraqi People

This from the NYT via a digg entry:

"The United States ambassador and the top American military commander here together issued an unusual apology on Thursday for the rape and murder of a young Iraqi woman and the killing of her family, saying that the crime, in which at least four soldiers are suspects, had injured the "Iraqi people as a whole." "

read more | digg story

The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Speaks to American Fascism (Are We Training a Fascist Army?)

This 2004 Common Dreams article by Thom Harmann deserves a re-read as more people in 2006 are catching on to what he knew in 2004.

I do recommend reading the entire piece, follow the link above, and review what the Republican Party is NOW about and has been about for the last few years. Fascism is not a liberal buzzword -- this is a real threat to the America that valued constitutional liberty just as it was when it arose last century. With the army recruiting Neo-Nazis and Gangstas you have to wonder what Rumsfeld wants to do once he has these thugs under his control. Don't laugh. We have been warned.

Excerpt from the Common Dreams article:

"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."

In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word "fascist" - the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word. (It was actually Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia Italiana that said: "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Mussolini, however, affixed his name to th entry, and claimed credit for it.)

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this. In a 1923 pamphlet titled "The Doctrine of Fascism" he wrote, "If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government." But not a government of, by, and for We The People - instead, it would be a government of, by, and for the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.

In 1938, Mussolini brought his vision of fascism into full reality when he dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the "Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni" - the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their money to folks like Tom DeLay and covertly write legislation, they were openly in charge of the government.

Vice President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his concern about the same happening here in America:

"If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ... They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."

Nonetheless, at that time there were few corporate heads who had run for political office, and, in Wallace's view, most politicians still felt it was their obligation to represent We The People instead of corporate cartels. "American fascism will not be really dangerous," he added in the next paragraph, "until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information..."

Noting that, "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggest that fascism's "greatest threat to the United States will come after the war" and will manifest "within the United States itself."

Excerpt from New York Time article by John Kifner:

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.

"We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," the group quoted a Defense Department
investigator as saying in a report to be posted today on its Web site, www.splcenter.org. "That's a problem."

Army Recruits Neo-Nazis

A New York Times article cites a 'report that quotes Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator, saying, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members."'

Somehow this doesn't suprise me. Paramilitary goon squads are already operating as extensions of recruiting efforts in Tucson (you can read about this at the end of this blog entry.) The freepers even issue "reports" along military lines although this freeper-writer can't seem to decide whether he wants to be a creative writer, propagandist, para -military leader.