war

Joshua Casteel will be the keynote speaker at Pax Christi NJ’s upcoming spring assembly to be held on March 28, 2009 at Felician College in Lodi, NJ. Joshua will also be making himself available for other speaking engagements at the end of March. For more information or to book Joshua contact
Kathy O’Leary 908-273-0751 kathy-wargo@comcast.net

About Joshua Casteel
Joshua is a former interrogator at Abu Ghraib turned conscientious objector and a recent convert to Catholicism. He gave witness at Winter Soldier and traveled to Rome in March of 2007 with the Catholic Peace Fellowship to meet with Pope Benedict XVI and members of the Vatican to advance the issue of conscientious objection. He is featured along with Camilo Mejia and six other CO’s in the documentary Soldiers of Conscience which will air on PBS’s P.O.V. on October 16th.

His book Letters from Abu Ghraib is available on Amazon.com and Small Press Distribution.

Videos of Joshua Casteel

Despite the limited amount of time left to the Bush administration, I worry about what might happen before he leaves office. In addition to signaling that he will support an attack by Israel on Iran, he's supporting aggression within Iran right now, as detailed in Acts of War by Scott Ritter, Truthdig, July 29, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080729_acts_of_war/

Scott Ritter is a former UN arms inspector who accurately diagnosed, as it was taking shape, the fakery that led to the US invasion of Iraq. He's a very large ex-Marine, former Republican, and a forceful speaker. He lives right next to Albany NY's southwest border in the hamlet of Delmar, where I do my supermarket shopping, in the little town of Bethlehem (roughly 30,000 population).

I recommend that everyone read this article. Ritter's been warning of war against Iran since early 2005 and this is his latest update.

It begins with some things that have been reported before but have not been taken up by most of the media: the current US acts of war going on within Iran.

What's most interesting, however, is his account of what he says is the fabricated evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran, former or current.

Tell Congress: "Saber-rattling and threats towards Iran without diplomacy is not working. Please support a new direction towards Iran and demand President Bush get Congressional authorization before getting us into another war."

Dear MoveOn member,
By all accounts, the news coming out lately about Iran is scary. Iran is testing more missiles, and the Bush administration is promising swift retribution for any attack on the US or our allies.

To top it off, John McCain keeps joking about killing the Iranian people—discussing rising U.S. exports of cigarettes to Iran, he joked, "Maybe that's a way of killing them." And we all remember McCain's infamous, "Bomb Iran" song. (See video below)1

War is not a joke. The truth is that the Bush-McCain policy of reckless saber-rattling and threatening doesn't work—it just makes things worse and increases tensions in the region. What we need is serious, tough, and smart diplomacy—not another war.

Right now, Congress is considering bills that could clear the way for escalation or war. But they can act to make sure President Bush and John McCain don't lead us into another reckless war. Can you sign this petition asking Congress to push for diplomacy and demand Congressional authorization before getting us into another war? Clicking here will add your name:

http://pol.moveon.org/diplomacyiran/

In an interview shown by ABC's Good Morning America this past Wednesday, the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed the overwhelming opinion of the American people with the response, “So?” Here is exactly what was said:
CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.
RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
CHENEY: So?
RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?
CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

If these numbers existed in Congress it would be a veto-proof majority and the war could end now. Most everyone read the election results two years ago as a referendum on the war and expected the new Congress to act. So perhaps it is understandable that the Vice President is not too concerned about public opinion since even when it is expressed through the democratic process it is still largely ignored.

In a recent interview with Ann Curry, President Bush claimed that the poor performance of the economy had more to do with building too many houses than with spending on the Iraq war. He claimed that military spending was creating jobs, ignoring the fact that home construction likewise creates jobs. His statement also showed a severe lack of moral judgment elevating work to destroy life and property over work to create a basic need for people. As the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq marks its fifth anniversary, we have become all to familiar with this sort of convoluted morality from the president. His current budget request before Congress demonstrates more of the same.

Ethics is the application of philosophy; morality is philosophy (or theology) in action. Thus, budgets are moral road maps. They prescribe how one wants to put one's thinking into action. As Jesus said, “you shall know a tree by its fruit.” So what is the fruit of the president's budget? It will mean more spending on war, less on health care and children, and less revenue collected from those most able to afford to give it.

Tomorrow in the Bay Area, Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's documentary "Nanking" will open in the Bay Area. Featured in the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, it chronicled the invasion by the Imperial Japanese Army of the city Nanking in December 1937 and the devastation that the Japanese Army wrecked upon the Chinese inhabitants. In the official website(http://www.nankingthefilm.com/synopsis.aspx) the film is summarized as such:

"By November 12th, Shanghai had fallen and by December 13th, the Japanese had defeated the defending Chinese army and invaded the city of Nanking.

The events now known as ‘the rape of Nanking’ lasted approximately six weeks. The city was looted and burned, and marauding Japanese soldiers unleashed a staggering wave of violence on Nanking’s population. According to the summary judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East – also known as the Tokyo Trials, 'estimates indicate that the total number of civilians and prisoners of war murdered in Nanking and its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. Approximately 20,000 cases of rape occurred in the city during the first month of the occupation.'

I hope you all don't mind. I came into Crossleft to listen to Progressive ideas, but I'm also an artist. I'm a big fan of the great political cartoonists and lately I've been putting more of my politics into my art. I also do illustrations for my church bulletin. Hope you enjoy my art.

If I had the talent of Sam Clemens, I'd write a scathing prayer to match the famous Mark Twain prayer for victory in war (http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/mtwain/bl-mtwain-war.htm). Prompted by the jingoism of the Spanish-American War, it went unpublished until after his death.

I'll content myself with giving thanks for the bounty of this great land and for the opportunity our European founders were given to steal it from its original unworthy inhabitants who didn't know how to exploit its resources to the maximum; and for the means of accomplishing that great transfer -- the guns, steel, and germs that made genocide feasible and a continental empire possible. And the Bible that was used to bless it.

Lest in our tales of Pilgrims and Savages we forget the other great member of the trinity that provided the material foundations of our great nation, I also give thanks for the slavery that enriched both North and South -- the one through wise, enriching participation in the great trans-Atlantic Triangle Trade of slaves, molasses, and rum; the other through the clever use of unpaid labor to build the region's wealth.

Zion's Zealots

[Miami, Fl. November 6, 2007] The James L. Knight Center was packed to the rafters with John Hagee's tribe of Christian Zionists and south Florida's right wing Jewish community. Zion's Fire Banners, dancers, singers and a band whipped the crowd into a frenzy of spinning, jumping, clapping, twirling and moved the rotund Hagee to link arms with men in skull caps and dance the Hora-not to Hava Nagila, but to repeated choruses of:

Shout for joy and victory! Bat Yerushalyim

From one end of the stage to the other, the largest American and Israeli flags I have ever seen were draped side by side and by the end of the evening I imagined every star on the red-white-and blue had morphed into the Star of David.

Miami-Dade County Commissioner Joe Martinez pointed to the flags and exclaimed: "Isn't that beautiful up there together? I get goose bumps! All nations have been created by an act of man, except Israel was created by an act of God."

Published first on 09/28/07 @
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/09/28/p1982...

The Political Question and Moral Accountability
eileen fleming

"My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast." ~ Unamuno, wall graffiti in Paris, May 1968

Last week in the Al Bureij refugee camp, in central Gaza, a USA made Caterpillar bulldozer was the weapon that brutally murdered 19 year old Mahmoud Khafafi. Bulldozers and tanks entered Mahmoud's farmland village at dawn and uprooted olive trees, razed the land and demolished thirteen homes. Young Palestinians threw stones at the tanks, which began shooting in return. The victim ran behind an olive tree and when the bulldozer began to uproot the tree, Mahmoud was shot in the neck, yet attempted to flee until the blade cut his head off and his brains spilled out. [http://www.mezan.org human rights organization in Gaza gathered the details]