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News &
Letters to the Editor
01-23-02
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Afghanistan massacre, not war
A senior U.S. military official defends the U.S. using Afghan resistance groups to do the
main fighting on the ground, with the following remark: “The U.S. does not want to be
seen as an occupying army, as the Soviet Union was for ten years.” Good idea, very
considerate, now the world and especially people in the Middle East will not hate us.
Is the Pentagon trying to portray themselves as being nice? We are dropping thousand-pound
bombs and killing thousands of innocents, but at least we are not as bad as the Russians.
Remember we are the good guys. I don't think Gandhi or Mother Theresa would be impressed
with the Pentagon's attempt at humanitarianism.
The Pentagon also says, “We want to avoid the perception of being yet another foreign
conqueror who has come to take ground in Afghanistan.” Sorry, again no points for
attempting to be considerate.
These remarks of course have nothing to do with why we are not taking the lead on the
ground. The United States is not on the ground doing the bulk of the fighting because it
is dangerous, plain and simple. Afghan life is expendable in America, that is why Afghans
are doing dirty work.
Just as we have attacked Iraq, Yugoslavia and now Afghanistan—through the
air—this is a cowardly approach that puts civilians in harms way.
And this is or was not a war. If anything, it's a massacre, but not a war, not even a
conflict. A war is when both sides engage, both sides take large casualties. Anyone that
calls this a war is confused and should be embarrassed.
The United States also does not want to take the lead into the caves at Tora Bora,
“too dangerous” says the Pentagon. They want the Afghan fighters to go first.
Again this is cowardly. What the hell is the billion dollar military for? If you are going
to have a sick, paranoid society that spends billions of dollars on a high powered
military, I think you just might have to use it, to do your own dirty work. But no, the
United States with all its fancy weapons wants the rag tag Afghans to search the caves. Of
course the theme is the same, Afghan life is worth less than American life.
Frank Erickson
Minneapolis |
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It isn’t easy to tell what kind of peace
movement exists in this country. National polls say that the majority of the country
supports the war in Afghanistan. A Washington, D.C.,-based BBC reporter phoned Veterans
for Peace, a national organization of U.S. military veterans who support peace and
nonviolence, to ask where the dissent was—she said the U.S. media wasn’t showing
any. Is it because there isn’t any? Apparently, for example, thousands demonstrating
in Orange County (California) against the war at the end of September received virtually
no coverage.
Whether the peace movement is large or small in relation to the rest of the country, there
has been an upsurge of interest in nonviolence since 9-11, according to Joe Johnson of the
local VFP chapter. Four hundred new VFP members nationwide since then can be attributed in
large part to an extraordinary event.
On Sept. 13 Greg Nees, a former U.S. Marine Sergeant, honorably discharged in 1970, wrote
a letter to President Bush imploring him not to waste one single innocent life in pursuit
of the perpetrator of the WTC destruction. Extremely eloquent, the letter illuminates the
kind of mentality that would lead to world peace. Besides the president, Nees e-mailed the
letter to a few friends and one of them suggested publishing it in the New York Times.
A Japanese environmental activist, farmer and mother of four saw the e-mail and posted the
letter on a Web site. Pretty soon it had circled the globe. Enlisting the help of a
well-known grassroots rescue and recovery organizer from the Kobe earthquake, she created
an ad hoc organization, the Global Peace Campaign, whose main purpose was to raise money
for an ad in the New York Times.
Before the Japanese group could move ahead, they needed an American sponsor. Vets for
Peace was a natural connection because “their work and philosophy was aligned with
the energy of Nees and his letter. VFP helps countries who’ve been hurt in U.S. wars
and they investigate and protest militarism, advocating non-military approaches to global
relations,” said a friend of Nees. The connection might have been influenced as well,
suggested Joe Johnson of the local VFP, by VFP’s formal apology made to Japan at the
50th anniversary remembrance of Hiroshima in Japan.
Together, the Global Peace Campaign and Veterans for Peace raised the $100,000 necessary
for the NYT full page ad and when money continued to pour in decided to run a full page ad
in the Los Angeles Times as well. They also ran ads, commentaries against war in general,
in a paper in Italy and one in Germany.
The New York Times ad, run on October 9, John Lennon’s birthday, was a copy of the
letter to Bush from Nees and the story of the ad and a blurb about Vets for Peace.
Woody Powell, national administrator of Vets for Peace, said the negative response came
first—phone calls, mostly e-mail and some snail mail. “You’re not really
vets, Did you ever see combat? You’re cowards and traitors.” The largest
response was by regular mail and was positive and appreciative.
Another response came in the form of invitations: From the FOX network, the Boston Globe,
Denver Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Powell spoke with all of them.
The woman from Japan, Yumi Kikuchi, who created the Global Peace Campaign, was in charge
of the L.A. Times ad. A professional writer was hired to depict the plight of the Afghan
people and the effects that war would have on them. Entitled “Halt the Bombing to
Save a People,” it ran on Nov. 11, Veteran’s Day. The response was slightly less
than to the first ad but the pattern was the same, said Powell: The negative response came
first. A positive response was that, pushed by the ad, there was a resurgence of VFP
chapters on the west coast.
Nees had never done anything like write a letter to the president protesting war. It was
an instinctive, nonpolitical, heartfelt statement that coincided amazingly with the views
of Veterans for Peace. Barry Riesch, former national president of VFP, likened Nees’
letter and the peace effort it has generated to the “ripple effect of tossing a
pebble into a pond.” He said, “People don’t write [letters] and don’t
act because they think it won’t make a difference.”
As far as Nees’ original intention to impact President Bush goes, Nees received the
generic thank you form letter from the executive office. pulse
The complete text of the letter can be seen on a number of Web sites. I searched for
“greg nees” (use the quotation marks) and came up with many different copies.
Shiny copies in the actual ad size are available at VFP for $3. Call 612-821-9141.
Veterans for Peace works toward increasing public awareness of the costs of war; to
restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of
other nations; to end the arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear
weapons; and to abolish war as an instrument of international policy. |
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On Fri., Jan. 18, members of the Somali Justice
Advocate Center and their supporters gathered at the St. Anthony Main movie theater to
kick off their boycott of the new Hollywood release, “Black Hawk Down.” The
sensationalized account of Mark Bowden’s book is not an accurate depiction of what
actually happened in the 1993 war in Somalia, says Omar Jamal and other spokespeople for
the center.
Jamal and others say the movie lacks the political circumstances surrounding this tragic
moment, and has the potential to mislead anyone who is not familiar with that
circumstance. Supporters of the local Somali community believe that the movie poses a
danger to their community, especially after the raids on West Bank money-wiring
businesses, potentially linking some Twin Cities Somalis to fundamentalist Islamic groups
in the Middle East and northern Africa.
Jamal, who appeared on CNN on Tuesday morning to talk about “Black Hawk Down,”
cautions people to not buy into the stereotypes of Somali people and encourages them to
explore the more complex history of Somalia, particularly this event.
In that spirit, the Somali Justice Advocate Center released a statement clarifying what
happened in Moqdisho in 1993. It reads:
“On December 4, 1992, President Bush announced he was sending up to 28,000 U.S.
troops to Somalia to help provide humanitarian relief in a strife-torn country where
hundreds of thousands of innocent people had died of starvation. Somali descended into
anarchy after the collapse of the regime in 1991. Other countries also pledged to send
troops to Somalia: Pakistan, Italy, France and Turkey. The mission was divided into many
phases, the first one called UNISOM I was to feed the starving. The UNISOM II phase, the
U.S. handed over to the U.N. on May 4, 1993. General Adid was very much aware of the move
of the U.N./U.S. and soon was to be forcefully disarmed and marginalized. General Adid
started accusing the U.N. as an occupying forces through his radio called “Radio
Adid” and called upon the Somalis to defend their country. The attempt by the U.N.
and U.S. envoy Robert Gosende to destroy “Radio Adid” led to the deaths of 25
Pakistani soldiers.
“The Pakistan envoy and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Madeline Albright presented
security council members with a draft resolution naming Adid as responsible for the
attacks and thus demanded his arrest. From there on, the U.N./U.S. mission created more
anarchy than what Somalia had already had.”
The Center of Somali Justice Advocacy plans to host lectures to shed more light on war for
both Americans and Somalis. pulse
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Visitors to Walker Community Church Thursday
night were greeted by the pungent smell of smoke used to ready the audience and the
church’s small basement meeting room in a spiritual ceremony that Jim Anderson
(cultural chair of the Mendota Mdewakanton tribe) called “smudging.” “Kind
of like a spiritual shower,” explained Anderson.
The church hosted local American Indians opposing the University of Minnesota’s
proposed involvement with the Mount Graham Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. Raleigh
Thompson, an Apache tribal leader visiting the Twin Cities from “Geronimo
country,” made the journey to discourage the University’s participation in the
controversial enterprise, originally known as the “Columbus Project.”
The gathering opened with Indian songs and drumming, and Anderson began the proceedings by
offering information regarding the Mt. Graham telescope. The University of Arizona’s
telescope is located on the summit of Mt. Graham, a mountain known by the Apache as Dzil
Nchaa Si’An. One of the four sacred mountains of the Apache people of that region,
Graham was part of the original Apache reservation formed in 1871. The reservation was
subsequently divided several times in violation of the original treaty, and now consists
of approximately half of the total original land area, according to literature released by
the Mt. Graham Coalition in Phoenix, Arizona.
The telescope site, located within a 472 acre spruce-fir forest that biologists term a
“sky island,” is habitat to the endangered Mt. Graham Red Squirrel. Among 18
forms of plant and animal life unique to the area, it is the population of the squirrel
which has drawn the attention of preservationists to the Mt. Graham site. “Seven
generations ahead we have to look,” Anderson said during his welcoming,
“otherwise we’re lost.”
Raleigh Thompson was introduced by Clyde Bellacourt, founder of the American Indian
Movement. Bellacourt began with stories of American Indian struggles in Minnesota, dating
to the War of 1862. Identifying with his guest from Arizona, Bellacourt exhorted the
audience, “The blood of Crazy Horse, the blood of Sequoia, the blood of Hole in the
Day, the blood of Geronimo—still runs in our veins today. Based on that alone, we
have a responsibility to help our brother.”
Proponents of the Mt. Graham undertaking have said that stakeholders in the telescope
project would be willing to co-exist with the Apache people in the area. However, the
University of Arizona declared in 1997 that Apaches wishing to visit the sacred Mt. Graham
site would first have to receive prayer permits from the observatory’s site manager.
In September of that year U of A police arrested an Apache man for walking on a summit
access road, though the road was located on federally protected public lands. The man was
later acquitted of criminal trespassing.
Pointing out that the U of A has invested over ten years and millions of dollars in
construction, lobbying, and legal fees in support of the project, Bellacourt joked,
“you think they’re going to let us run around there?”
Introducing himself as a man “on a mission for elders and babies that haven’t
been born,” Raleigh Thompson’s talk was more cultural exchange than formal
lecture. Thompson, whose first language is his native Apache, learned English as a child
in day school on his reservation. The culture and religious practices of his people are
what are most endangered by the presence of the Mt. Graham telescope, said Thompson.
“At that place, I have birds, herbs, trees, headdress. People used to go up there and
pray for four days,” he said, seeming genuinely vexed by the assault on his
people’s native lands by the University of Arizona and the other national and
international interests vested in the telescope’s operation. “How could a people
do that,” asked Thompson, “Why would they do that?”
“I’m happy to be alive in the year 2000, at the turn of the century,” said
Thompson, “things are so modern, I enjoy it.” But he qualified this, telling the
group, “The Apache, my people, they’re a simple people. They don’t have no
reason to go to the moon.” Thompson closed with a prayer in his native tongue for all
those in attendance.
Bellacourt urged the crowd to use whatever resources and connections it had to influence
President Mark Yudof and the University of Minnesota to follow the lead of UW Madison,
Harvard, Yale, Michigan, MIT, Illinois, Indiana, and Penn State, among other nationally
renowned universities, in withdrawing its involvement with the Mt. Graham telescope.
Before the group went out from the warm confines of the Walker Church basement, a blanket
was laid out on the floor in the center of the room and a final song played to take up a
collection to help defray the cost of Thompson’s airfare. The modest pile of ragged
dollar bills provided sharp contrast to the millions earmarked for investment by the
University of Minnesota for scope time on Mt. Graham. pulse
On Wed., Jan. 23, Native American students, supporters, and community leaders will be
gathering to ask U of M President Mark Yudof to hear the religious claims of Apache
spiritual leaders before joining the Mt. Graham project. A demonstration and 24 hour vigil
will begin at 3 p.m. on Wednesday in front of the President’s House, Eastcliff, 176
Mississippi Blvd.) to demand inclusion in the decision making process. |
Rally draws attention to
Marlboro’s marketing to teens |
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Activists, students and community leaders from
Minneapolis are delivering hundreds of signed messages to Kraft and Phillip Morris
decision-makers to demand that Phillip Morris retire the Marlboro Man, arguably the
world’s leading source of youth tobacco addiction. The community activists gathered
at a rally aimed at pressuring executives at a local Phillip Morris facility to withdraw
the Marlboro Man ad campaign and educating passersby about the lure of the Marlboro Man,
which has made Marlboro the #1 cigarette brand among U.S. kids.
As local retailers such as Cub Foods and Rainbow Foods are taking down their Marlboro Man
ads in response to community pressure, activists are coordinating their efforts in 10
cities across the United States as part of a campaign led by Infact, a national corporate
accountability organization which has been exposing life-threatening abuses of
transnational corporations since 1977.
“If Phillip Morris wants to improve its image, it needs to start by doing the right
thing and retiring the Marlboro Man advertising campaign. Today’s grassroots
mobilization, including actions to escalate the Kraft boycott, demonstrates that people
across the United States are demanding real change, not a name change,” said Rob
Meyers, a member of the Students’ Cooperative that recently joined the Kraft boycott.
Deb Roberts, a member of Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, who also participated in
the Kraft boycott agrees, that “Phillip Morris uses the Marlboro Man to spread
addiction, disease and death across the globe while it hides behind Kraft’s positive
image. Today we are sending a clear message to Phillip Morris and Kraft decision-makers:
Give the Marlboro Man the boot!”
Through the Kraft boycott, Infact has involved millions of consumers in challenging
Phillip Morris to stop addicting new young customers with images like the Marlboro Man,
and to stop interfering in public health policy. Endorsed by more than 200 institutions
and prominent individuals, the Kraft boycott appears to be a growing liability for Phillip
Morris. Despite a 1,712 percent increase in spending on corporate advertising between 1998
and 2000, Phillip Morris’ efforts to bolster its public image may be backfiring. A
recent Harris interactive poll found that 16 percent of respondents familiar with Phillip
Morris had boycotted its products in the past year. pulse |
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