Xenophobic attacks

I meant to post this a while ago... These attacks are horrifying but not isolated - the United States has a history of official and unofficial violence on immigrant groups. Again, my question is, what are we so afraid of? Is this just a function of nations and borders and therefore, capitalism? Or is there something deeper that makes us humans want to exclude and hurt each other and look at each other as threats...

From the NYT

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — When Suffolk County prosecutors charged seven teenagers in the deadly assault on Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, in Patchogue, on Long Island, last November, one of the more disturbing accusations was that they engaged in a regular and violent pastime: hunting for Hispanics to attack.

On Wednesday, the prosecutors painted a newly detailed picture of what they said was a yearlong rampage by some of the teenagers, announcing new indictments that accuse the seven defendants in the fatal attack of assaulting or attempting to assault a total of eight other Latino men.

Prosecutors believe that many more teenagers — they are not sure how many — were involved in attacks on Hispanics in and around Patchogue, and are still at large. Investigators believe that there is a separate group of teenagers who roam Patchogue on bicycles attacking Latinos, according to a law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

“There is a lot of work still to be done,” District Attorney Thomas J. Spota said, “to ensure the safety of all the people who choose to call Suffolk County home.”

Five of the defendants — Christopher Overton, Anthony Hartford, Jose Pacheco, Jordan Dasch and Nicholas Hausch — pleaded not guilty in Suffolk County Criminal Court. The other two, Kevin Shea and Jeffrey Conroy, are expected to plead not guilty at arraignments next week. Not all of the defendants are charged in each case.

Jose Perez, a lawyer for LatinoJustice P.R.L.D.E.F., an advocacy group, said the new cases were “the tip of the iceberg” in a pattern of violence against Hispanics, and show that a more aggressive police response to earlier attacks could have prevented Mr. Lucero’s death.

After Mr. Lucero died, many other immigrants came forward to describe attacks. Some had never been reported; others were reported to police at the time, but no one was arrested, in part because language barriers made communication difficult, Mr. Spota said.

Investigators who were searching for new suspects showed more than 20 victims photographs of more than 20 of the defendants’ friends and acquaintances, but none were identified as assailants by any of the victims, the law enforcement official said.

In one of the new indictments, Mr. Pacheco and Mr. Conroy, who is accused of fatally stabbing Mr. Lucero on Nov. 8, were charged with beating Carlos Orellana on July 14, 2008.

Mr. Orellana was one of 11 Latino men who gave detailed accounts of 13 similar attacks to The New York Times for an article published this month. The cases reported in the article are now under investigation, a law enforcement official said.

On June 24, 2008, prosecutors said, a group of teenagers attacked Robert Zumba, kicked him and restrained his arms while Mr. Conroy lunged at him with a knife, cutting him.

Another man, Jose Hernandez, was attacked three times in a week in December 2007 by members of the group, prosecutors said. In one incident, they said, Mr. Conroy held a pipe in one hand and smacked it against his other palm, saying “We’re going to kill you.”

Lawyers for the defendants questioned how the victims could have identified their clients after so long, and suggested that prosecutors were pinning every possible assault on them.

Mr. Spota said prosecutors had considered the possibility that victims only thought they recognized the defendants because they had seen them in media coverage, and were careful to seek corroborating evidence.

The law enforcement official said that photo lineups were used to identify the suspects. In one case, Mr. Hartford, Mr. Hausch and Mr. Dasch are charged with attacking a man prosecutors identified as Petronila Fuentes Diaz on the night that Mr. Lucero was killed. A baseball cap that Mr. Diaz reported missing was found in Mr. Dasch’s car, the official said.

One of the challenges, the official said, was getting teenagers who may have known of the regular attacks to come forward. A few cooperated “reluctantly” with the investigation, recounting how some of the defendants bragged of certain attacks, the official said, but “they were resentful that their friends had been caught.”

Torture at Angola Prison

Torture at Angola Prison:

President Obama promises to close Guantanamo, but a court proceeding in Louisiana exposes brutality closer to home

By Jordan Flaherty

The torture of prisoners in US custody is not only found in military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. If President Obama is serious about ending US support for torture, he can start here in Louisiana.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is already notorious for a range of offenses, including keeping former Black Panthers Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, in solitary for over 36 years. Now a death penalty trial in St. Francisville, Louisiana has exposed widespread and systemic abuse at the prison. Even in the context of eight years of the Bush administration, the behavior documented at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola stands out both for its brutality and for the significant evidence that it was condoned and encouraged from the very top of the chain of command.

In a remarkable hearing that explored torture practices at Angola, twenty-five inmates testified last summer to facing overwhelming violence in the aftermath of an escape attempt at the prison nearly a decade ago. These twenty-five inmates - who were not involved in the escape attempt - testified to being kicked, punched, beaten with batons and with fists, stepped on, left naked in a freezing cell, and threatened that they would be killed. They were threatened by guards that they would be sexually assaulted with batons. They were forced to urinate and defecate on themselves. They were bloodied, had teeth knocked out, were beaten until they lost control of bodily functions, and beaten until they signed statements or confessions presented to them by prison officials. One inmate had a broken jaw, and another was placed in solitary confinement for eight years.

While prison officials deny the policy of abuse, the range of prisoners who gave statements, in addition to medical records and other evidence introduced at the trial, present a powerful argument that abuse is a standard policy at the prison. Several of the prisoners received $7,000 when the state agreed to settle, without admitting liability, two civil rights lawsuits filed by 13 inmates. The inmates will have to spend that money behind bars –more than 90% of Angola's prisoners are expected to die behind its walls.

Systemic Violence

During the attempted escape at Angola, in which one guard was killed and two were taken hostage, a team of officers - including Angola warden Burl Cain - rushed in and began shooting, killing one inmate, Joel Durham, and wounding another, David Mathis.

The prison has no official guidelines for what should happen during escape attempts or other crises, a policy that seems designed to encourage the violent treatment documented in this case. Richard Stalder, at that time the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, was also at the prison at the time. Yet despite – or because of - the presence of the prison warden and head of corrections for the state, guards were given free hand to engage in violent retribution. Cain later told a reporter after the shooting that Angola's policy was not to negotiate, saying, ''That's a message all the inmates know. They just forgot it. And now they know it again.''

Five prisoners – including Mathis - were charged with murder, and currently are on trial, facing the death penalty – partially based on testimony from other inmates that was obtained through beatings and torture. Mathis is represented by civil rights attorneys Jim Boren (who also represented one of the Jena Six youths) and Rachel Connor, with assistance from Nola Investigates, an investigative firm in New Orleans that specializes in defense for capital cases.

The St. Francisville hearing was requested by Mathis' defense counsel to demonstrate that, in the climate of violence and abuse, inmates were forced to sign statements through torture, and therefore those statements should be inadmissible. 20th Judicial District Judge George H. Ware Jr. ruled that the documented torture and abuse was not relevant. However, the behavior documented in the hearing not only raises strong doubts about the cases against the Angola Five, but it also shows that violence against inmates has become standard procedure at the prison.

The hearing shows a pattern of systemic abuse so open and regular, it defies the traditional excuse of bad apples. Inmate Doyle Billiot testified to being threatened with death by the guards, "What's not to be afraid of? Got all these security guards coming around you everyday looking at you sideways, crazy and stuff. Don't know what's on their mind, especially when they threaten to kill you." Another inmate, Robert Carley testified that a false confession was beaten out of him. ""I was afraid," he said. "I felt that if I didn't go in there and tell them something, I would die."

Inmate Kenneth "Geronimo" Edwards testified that the guards "beat us half to death." He also testified that guards threatened to sexually assault him with a baton, saying, "that's a big black…say you want it." Later, Edwards says, the guards, "put me in my cell. They took all my clothes. Took my jumpsuit. Took all the sheets, everything out the cell, and put me in the cell buck-naked…It was cold in the cell. They opened the windows and turned the blowers on." At least a dozen other inmates also testified to receiving the same beatings, assault, threats of sexual violence, and "freezing treatment."

Some guards at the prison treated the abuse as a game. Inmate Brian Johns testified at the hearing that, "one of the guards was hitting us all in the head. Said he liked the sound of the drums – the drumming sound that – from hitting us in the head with the stick."

Solitary Confinement

Two of Angola's most famous residents, political prisoners Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, have become the primary example of another form of abuse common at Angola – the use of solitary confinement as punishment for political views. The two have now each spent more than 36 years in solitary, despite the fact that a judge recently overturned Woodfox's conviction (prison authorities continue to hold Woodfox and have announced plans to retry him). Woodfox and Wallace – who together with former prisoner King Wilkerson are known as the Angola Three - have filed a civil suit against Angola, arguing that their confinement has violated both their 8th amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment and 4th amendment right to due process.

Recent statements by Angola warden Burl Cain makes clear that Woodfox and Wallace are being punished for their political views. At a recent deposition, attorneys for Woodfox asked Cain, "Lets just for the sake of argument assume, if you can, that he is not guilty of the murder of Brent Miller." Cain responded, "Okay. I would still keep him in (solitary)…I still know that he is still trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates. I would have me all kind of problems, more than I could stand, and I would have the blacks chasing after them...He has to stay in a cell while he's at Angola."

In addition to Cain's comments, Louisiana Attorney General James "Buddy" Caldwell has said the case against the Angola Three is personal to him. Statements like this indicate that this vigilante attitude not only pervades New Orleans' criminal justice system, but that the problem comes from the very top.

The problem is not limited to Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola – similar stories can be found in prisons across the US. But from the abandonment of prisoners in Orleans Parish Prison during Katrina to the case of the Jena Six, Louisiana's criminal justice system, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world, often seems to be functioning under plantation-style justice. Most recently, journalist A.C. Thompson, in an investigation of post-Katrina killings, found evidence that the New Orleans police department supported vigilante attacks against Black residents of New Orleans after Katrina.

Torture and abuse is illegal under both US law – including the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment - and international treaties that the US is signatory to, from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ratified in 1992). Despite the laws and treaties, US prison guards have rarely been held accountable to these standards.

Once we say that abuse or torture is ok against prisoners, the next step is for it to be used in the wider population. A recent petition for administrative remedies filed by Herman Wallace states, "If Guantanamo Bay has been a national embarrassment and symbol of the U.S. government's relation to charges, trials and torture, then what is being done to the Angola 3… is what we are to expect if we fail to act quickly…The government tries out it's torture techniques on prisoners in the U.S. – just far enough to see how society will react. It doesn't take long before they unleash their techniques on society as a whole." If we don't stand up against this abuse now, it will only spread.

Despite the hearings, civil suits, and other documentation, the guards who performed the acts documented in the hearing on torture at Angola remain unpunished, and the system that designed it remains in place. In fact, many of the guards have been promoted, and remain in supervisory capacity over the same inmates they were documented to have beaten mercilessly. Warden Burl Cain still oversees Angola. Meanwhile, the trial of the Angola Five is moving forward, and those with the power to change the pattern of abuse at Angola remain silent.

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans, and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience and his reporting on post-Katrina New Orleans has been published and broadcast in outlets including Die Zeit (in Germany), Clarin (in Argentina), Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now. He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org.Research assistance for this article by Emily Ratner.

Resources:
The Angola Three - http://www.angola3.org
Safe Streets Strong Communities - http://www.safestreetsnola.org
Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children - http://www.fflic.org
Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana - http://www.jjpl.org
NOLA Investigates - http://www.nolainvestigates.com
Left Turn Magazine - http://www.leftturn.org
Letter From Angola State Prison, by Nathaniel Anderson, #130547 - http://www.leftturn.org/node/1155

Immigration update

Immigration issues are still on the forefront of politics and news, some updates below:

Democratic Representative Kirsten Gillibrand, who will be taking Senator Hillary Clinton's seat, has come under fire for her restrictive stance on immigration issues. Gillibrand, who was appointed by Gov Paterson, has consistently opposed former Governor Spitzer's proposal to allow undocumented immigrants to get driver's licenses. She has also supported English-only initiatives and opposed any amnesty measures for undocumented immigrants. She also opposes many gun control measures. Her appointment was viewed by many as a slap in the face to immigrant New Yorkers, and many Democrats have expressed disappointment and upset over her appointment, even threatening to run against her next year. Full NYT article here

One week ago, Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) organized over a thousand immigrant rights supporters to march and rally in Washington, DC on Obama’s first day in office. Marchers gathered at L’Enfant Plaza and proceeded to ICE headquarters where faith leaders from across the country called for an end to raids that are destroying immigrant communities and fComment Moderationor “just and humane immigration reform.”

Members of the Restaurant Opportunities Center New York accompanied by Judson Memorial’s Jeff Mansfield, traveled to DC for the march. For a film clip of the rally look here

For more information, please visit these organizations:
FIRM: www.anewdayforimmigration.org
ROC-NY: www.rocny.org

from the BBC

Gaza doctor's loss grips Israelis

By Lucy Ash BBC World Service

I first met Dr Izeldeen Abuelaish eight years ago when I made a radio documentary about his extraordinary life and work.

A Palestinian obstetrician who specialises in treating infertility, he lives in Jabaliya in the Gaza Strip, but used to work part-time in Israel helping Jewish women to have babies.

He also had a clinic in Gaza, taught medical school students there and arranged for seriously ill Palestinian patients to be treated in Israel.

He put up with the tedious and sometimes humiliating border checks with dignity and patience.

He stayed calm when one of his own Palestinian medical students told him she was "very, very angry" that he was helping Israelis to have children.

"What if these babies grow up to become soldiers who kill our people?" asked the young woman.

Despite all the suspicion, the hatred and the barriers Dr Abuelaish continued his work.

In 2001, Dr Gad Potashnik was in charge of the IVF clinic at the Soroka University Hospital in Beersheba.

He described Dr Abuelaish as a "magical, secret bridge between Israelis and Palestinians".

But that "magical, secret bridge" is now close to breaking point.

I have stayed in touch with Dr Abuelaish over the years.

Since we met he has had a number of jobs and research posts abroad.

In September 2008 he was about to start working for the European Union in Africa but had to return home after his wife, Nadia, fell ill with leukaemia.

Israeli patients

She died soon after his return, leaving him a widower with eight children aged three to 20.

In the middle of the recent conflict, I interviewed Dr Abuelaish for the BBC World Service's Outlook programme.

He told me all the glass had been blown out of the windows of his house, he could hear firing and explosions all around and he was desperately worried for the safety of his children.

Then on Friday afternoon, just a day before the ceasefire was announced, his worst nightmare came true.

"My daughters were just sitting quietly talking in their bedroom at home," Dr Izeldeen Abuelaish told me on the phone between sobs.

"I had just left the room, carrying my youngest son on my shoulders. Then a shell came through the wall.

"I rushed back to find their dead bodies - or rather parts of their bodies - strewn all over the room. One was still sitting in a chair but she had no legs.

"Tell me why did they have to die? Who gave the order to fire on my house?"

In a voice cracked with emotion, he added: "You know me, Lucy. You have been to my house, my hospital; you have seen my Israeli patients.

"I have tried so hard to bring people on both sides together and just look what I get in return."

The victims were Bisan, aged 20, Mayar, 15, Aya aged 13 and the physician's 17-year-old niece Nur Abuelaish.

"My eldest daughter was five months away from finishing her degree in business and financial management. She was looking forward to the future and I was so proud of her."

I remember talking to Dr Abuelaish in his house as his children scurried around him asking questions and singing songs.

Bisan was a cheeky, bright-eyed girl, keen to show off her English and read aloud from her school text book.

Audience response

During the recent military campaign, Dr Abuelaish, who speaks fluent Hebrew, had been acting as an unofficial correspondent for a Tel Aviv-based TV station, giving daily updates by phone.

He was determined to let Israelis know as much as possible about the suffering of Palestinian civilians under Israel's bombardment.

Minutes after the shell hit his house, Dr Abuelaish phoned the station's presenter, Shlomi Eldar, to describe what had happened.

The Israeli journalist looked awkward and visibly distressed as the doctor's disembodied voice is broadcast crying: "My daughters, they killed them, Oh Lord. God, God, God."

Mr Eldar mobilised his contacts in the Israel military to open the border and fly the injured girls by helicopter to the Tel Hashomer Medical Centre, the largest hospital in Israel.

He said thousands of viewers had called the station following the harrowing interview with Dr Abuelaish.

"I think this broadcast will change public opinion in Israel," said Mr Eldar speaking by phone from Tel Aviv.

"It feels to me as if some of our audience is seeing and hearing about the high price ordinary Palestinians are paying in this conflict for the first time".

Dr Abuelaish's 17-year-old daughter Shadha is recovering there from an operation which may save her right eye, injured in the blast.

Her 12-year-old cousin Daida is in a critical condition from shrapnel wounds.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said the incident is now under investigation.

"For the time being, all that I can tell you is that our troops fired on the house because they had come under attack from somewhere in the vicinity of the house. Possibly a sniper but I can't confirm that," the spokeswoman said.

Speaking from the hospital, Dr Abuelaish denied that any militants had been hiding in or firing from his house.

"Violence is never the right way. My daughters and I were armed with nothing but love and hope."

Israel's reputation in Europe

Found this originally on MRZine. I found it especially interesting since I grew up learning about how Europe was very anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.. this is definitely a conversation sparker.

Gaza in Europe
by Jacques Hersh

Freedom of expression is once again on the agenda in Denmark. The country received world attention when the rightist newspaper Jyllands-Posten published provocative cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad a few years ago. The cartoons caused widespread protests in the Muslim world, whereas discussions in Denmark and other Western countries revolved around freedom of the press.

This time, a new cartoon controversy was set off by the liberal daily Politiken. The paper's cartoonist Per Marquard Otzen published a cartoon that depicts Israeli soldiers' behavior in the attack on the Gaza Ghetto by drawing upon a 1943 photograph of Nazi persecution of Jewish women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto.

In an open letter of protest to the editors of the paper, Finn Schwartz, a leader of the Jewish community, asked: "Does Politiken really think, as the cartoon implies, that the relation between Israel and Hamas is comparable to that between Hitler's Germany and European Jews?" The letter expressed pain and anger at the message of the cartoon: "For the Jewish community, especially for the Jews who survived the Holocaust, it is inconceivable to make such comparisons between the Israeli army's conduct and the Nazis' attempt at the final solution [Endlosung] of the Jewish people."

In his reply, Politiken editor-in-chief Toger Seidenfaden says that such a comparison is indeed inappropriate in his opinion and would never appear in an editorial of the paper. But he also makes it clear that he doesn't believe the cartoon to be so crude that it should not have been published at all. Nor does he regard a debatable and disproportionate historical comparison as equivalent to anti-Semitism. Furthermore, he points out the fact that most major newspapers in the world have in fact published similar comparisons.

It should be recalled that there has always been a strong pro-Israel public opinion in Denmark since the proclamation of the Jewish state. However, the war on Gaza has created a shift, which can be also observed within the political class. At a relatively large Copenhagen demonstration against Israel's war on January 13, all parties of the opposition (from the center left to the extreme left) had their leading members speak to the 6,000-7,000 people assembled at City Hall Square and in front of the Danish Parliament.

A similar evolution is visible elsewhere on the continent. There has been much unease in Europe about the scope of Israel's military response and the resulting civilian casualties. Event though the "politically correct" position is still that Israel, like any other country, has the right to defend itself, questions about proportions and consequences for civilians are giving rise to debates on the Israeli policy toward the occupied territories, which are in turn creating a new awareness of the Israel-Palestine problem. The mantle of Jewish victimhood, which has long served to cover Israel's occupation in Palestine and its attacks on its Arab neighbors, is in the process of being frayed by Israel's own warfare on a defenseless population.

Israel has lost carte blanche, and that is a positive development. On the other hand, there is also a negative development: there have been attacks on individual Jews and Jewish symbols in most European countries, raising fears of new anti-Semitism. The promise of Zionism that the creation of a Jewish state would bring safety and security to world Jewry has proven to be an illusion. The tragic irony of modern Jewish history is that anti-Semitism may become reinvigorated, or more accurately a new variety of it may grow, as a reaction against the Zionist project. An increasing number of Jews, especially in the diaspora, are aware of this danger. One of the questions raised by Israel's latest war is what form Jewish responses to Zionism, as well as to shifting public opinions about Israel, will take.

Pure Brilliance !!!!

I wish that I wrote this! Or that I could send this directly to some people who really need to read it...

“Some Cyanide to Go With That Whine?: Obama’s Victory and The Rage of the Barbiturate Left” By Tim Wise

By Brian Kelly on November 30th, 2008

My political entry into the left (and by this I mean the real left, beyond the Democratic Party) came a little more than twenty years ago in New Orleans, when, as a college student I became involved in the fight against U.S. intervention in Central America. In particular, the groups of which I was a part sought to end military aid to the death squad governments in El Salvador and Guatemala, and to block support for the contra thugs our nation was arming in Nicaragua, who by that time had already killed about 30,000 civilians in their war with the nominally socialist Sandinista government.

It was the first place where I came into contact with folks who defined themselves as radicals (I had grown up in Nashville, after all, where at that time, even finding “out” liberals was sometimes a challenge), and where I got to experience all the fascinating permutations of Marxism that the left had to offer. In addition to unaffiliated socialists (which I considered myself to be at the time), there were Trotskyites, old-line Leninists, Maoists, and even some bizarre Stalinists in the bunch. Excluding from consideration those among this number who turned out to be FBI spies, there were still plenty of real and interesting ideologues who had valuable insights to offer, even for those of us who didn’t swallow their particular party line.

But despite being interesting, these folks also managed, at least for me, to demonstrate one of the key problems with the left in the U.S. Namely, for the sake of ideological purity few within the professional left expressed any joy about life, or any emotion whatsoever that wasn’t rooted in negativity. They were like the political equivalent of quaaludes: guaranteed to bring you down from whatever partly optimistic place you might find yourself from time to time.

{...}

The humorlessness of the far left–to which I remain connected ideologically if not organizationally–has always struck me as one of its greatest weaknesses. People like to laugh, they like to smile, they like to be joyful, and an awful lot of hardened leftists seem almost utterly incapable of doing any of these things. It’s as if they have all taken a pledge that there should be no laughter until the revolution, or some such shit. No positivity, no hope, no happiness so long as people are still poor and exploited and being murdered by cops, and victimized by United States militarism, or performing as wage slaves for global capital, or eating meat, or driving cars. And they wonder why the left is so weak?

Now, in the wake of Barack Obama’s victory these barbiturate leftists are back in full effect, lecturing the rest of us about how naive we are for having any confidence whatsoever in him, or for voting at all, since “the Democrats and Republicans are all the same,” and he supports FISA and the war with Afghanistan, and all kinds of other messed up policies just like many on the right. Those of us who find any significance in the election of a man of color in a nation founded on white supremacy are fools who “drank the kool-aid,” unlike they, whose clear-headed radical consciousness leads them to recognize the superior morality of Ralph Nader, or the pure “scientific wisdom of chairman Bob Avakian,” or the intellectual profundity of their favorite graffiti bomb: “If voting changed anything it would be illegal.” Yeah, and if body piercings and anarchy tats changed anything, they would be too, and then what would some folks do to be “different?” (Note: there is nothing wrong with either type of adornment, but getting either or both doesn’t make you a revolutionary, any more than voting, that’s all I’m saying).

These are people who think being agitators is about pissing people off more than reaching out to them. So they pull out their “Buck Fush” signs at their repetitively irrelevant antiwar demonstrations, or their posters with W sporting a Hitler mustache, because that tends to work so well at convincing folks to oppose the slaughter in Iraq. But effectiveness isn’t what matters to them. What matters to them is raging against the machine for the sake of rage itself. Their message is simple: everything sucks, the earth is doomed, all cops are brutal, all soldiers are baby-killers, all people who work for corporations are evil, blah, blah, blah, right on down the line. It’s as if much of the left has become co-dependent with despondency, addicted to its own isolation, and enamored of its moral purity and unwillingness to work with mere liberals. In the name of ideological asceticism, they spurn the hard work of movement building and inspiring others to join the struggle, snicker at those foolish enough to not understand or appreciate their superior philosophical constructs, and then act shocked when their movements and groups accomplish exactly nothing. But honestly, who wants to join a movement filled with people who look down on you as a sucker?

If we on the left want those liberals to join the struggle for social justice and liberation, we’re going to have to meet people where they are, not where Bakunin would want them to be. For those who can’t get excited about Obama, so be it, but at least realize that there are millions of people who, for whatever reason, are; people who are mobilized and active, and that energy is looking for an outlet. Odds are, that outlet won’t be the Obama administration, since few of them will actually land jobs with it. So that leaves activist formations, community groups and grass-roots struggles. That leaves, in short, us. Just as young people inspired by the center-right JFK candidacy in 1960 ultimately moved well beyond him on their way to the left and made up many of the most committed and effective activists of the 60s and early 70s, so too can such growth occur now among the Obama faithful. But not if we write them off.

At some point, the left will have to relinquish its love affair with marginalization. We’ll have to stop behaving like those people who have a favorite band they love, and even damn near worship, until that day when the band actually begins to sell a lot of records and gain a measure of popularity, at which point they now suck and have obviously sold out: the idea being that if people like you, you must not be doing anything important, and that obscurity is the true measure of integrity. Deconstructing the psychological issues at the root of such a pose is well above my pay grade, but I’m sure would prove fascinating.

The simple fact is, people are inspired by Obama not because they view him as especially progressive per se (except in relation to some of the more retrograde policies of the current president, and in relation to where they feel, rightly, McCain/Palin would have led us), but because most folks respond to optimism, however ill-defined it may be. This is what the Reaganites understood, and for that matter it’s what Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement knew too. It wasn’t anger and pessimism that broke the back of formal apartheid in the south, but rather, hope, and a belief in the fundamental decency of people to make a change if confronted by the yawning chasm between their professed national ideals and the bleak national reality.

In other words, what the 60s freedom struggle took for granted, but which the cynical barbiturate left refuses to concede, is the basic goodness of the people of this nation, and the ability of the nation, for all of its faults (and they are legion) to change.

{...}

While I would never counsel too much confidence in far-right types to join the struggle for justice–and there, I think skepticism is well-warranted–if we can’t conjure at least a little optimism for the ability of liberals and Democrats to come along for the ride and to do the work, then what is the point? Under such a weighty and pessimistic load as this, life simply becomes unbearable. And if there is one thing we cannot afford to do now–especially now–it is to give up the will to live and to fight, another day.

Full article here

Racial Profiling

Racial profiling in airports is still at large and the Center for Constitutional Rights recently published findings that showed 80% of people that NYPD questions are Black or Latino/Hispanic.

The report said:
“From 2005 to 2008, approximately 80 percent of total stops made were of Blacks and Latinos, who comprise 25 percent and 28 percent of New York City’s total population, respectively. During this same time period, only approximately 10 percent of stops were of Whites, who comprise 44 percent of the city’s population.

“Results show that Blacks and Latinos are significantly more likely to be stopped by the police than Whites; that Blacks and Latinos are more likely to be frisked after a NYPD-initiated stop than Whites; and that Blacks and Latinos are more likely to have physical force used against them during a NYPD-initiated stop than Whites. Yet the rates of summons and arrests from all stops is not only extremely low, but nearly the same across racial categories.”

(Further analysis from Racewire)

I find this all so interesting. Is profiling really anything to do with security? It's obvious that profiling doesn't really reduce harm or crime - sure it catches 'criminals' sometimes because the very bodies who are profiled are often the same bodies who are automatically constructed as criminals regardless.

It seems to me that profiling is more a way to make certain people feel safe and like they are being protected, while simultaneously reminding certain other people that they are not safe, are not protected, and are seen only as a threat. So profiling is about re-establishing the social order and reinscribing privilege and not about securing anything except white privilege and hegemony.

When will Guantanamo end?

January 13, 2009
New York Times

Obama’s Plan to Close Prison at Guantánamo May Take Year

President-elect Barack Obama plans to issue an executive order on his first full day in office directing the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, people briefed by Obama transition officials said Monday.

But experts say it is likely to take many months, perhaps as long as a year, to empty the prison that has drawn international criticism since it received its first prisoners seven years ago this week. One transition official said the new administration expected that it would take several months to transfer some of the remaining 248 prisoners to other countries, decide how to try suspects and deal with the many other legal challenges posed by closing the camp.

People who have discussed the issues with transition officials in recent weeks said it appeared that the broad outlines of plans for the detention camp were taking shape. They said transition officials appeared committed to ordering an immediate suspension of the Bush administration’s military commissions system for trying detainees.

In addition, people who have conferred with transition officials said the incoming administration appeared to have rejected a proposal to seek a new law authorizing indefinite detention inside the United States. The Bush administration has insisted that such a measure is necessary to close the Guantánamo camp and bring some detainees to the United States.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly said he wants to close the camp. But in an interview on Sunday on ABC, he indicated that the process could take time, saying, “It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize.” Closing it within the first 100 days of his administration, he said, would be “a challenge.”

The president-elect drew criticism from some human rights groups Monday who said his remarks suggested that closing Guantánamo was not among the new administration’s highest priorities. But even if the detention camp remains open for months, the decision to address Guantánamo on the day after his inauguration seemed intended to make a symbolic break with some of the most controversial policies of the Bush administration.

[...]

In formulating their policy in recent weeks, Obama transition officials have consulted with a variety of authorities on legal and human rights and with military experts. Several of those experts said the officials had expressed great interest in alternatives to the military commission system, like trying detainees in federal courts, and appeared to have grown hostile to proposals like an indefinite detention law.

They also said the transition officials were intensely focused on new international efforts to transfer many of the detainees to other countries.

Several said the officials appeared concerned that a proposal for a new law authorizing indefinite detention would bring the new administration much of the criticism that has been directed at the Bush administration over Guantánamo. A former military official who was part of a series of briefings at the transition headquarters in Washington said the officials had spoken about the indefinite detention proposal as a way of creating a “new Guantanámo someplace else.”

“That is very much not the desire of the Obama team,” said the former military official, who insisted on anonymity because of his concerns about how the transition officials would react to public discussion of their comments.

Catherine Powell, an associate professor of law at Fordham, said transition officials appeared most interested at a meeting last month in showing international critics that they were returning to what they see as traditional American legal values.

“They are really looking for tools that we have in our existing system short of creating an indefinite detention system,” Ms. Powell said.

Mark P. Denbeaux, a Seton Hall law professor who has been a prominent lawyer for Guantánamo detainees, said that at a briefing he attended with senior officials of the transition last month the officials seemed to have decided to suspend the military commissions immediately.

“Their position is they’re a complete and utter failure,” Mr. Denbeaux said.

[...]

Some human rights groups said Monday that they were alarmed by Mr. Obama’s vague timetable and lack of specifics in his remarks Sunday. They said they worried that the administration might yield to pressure to display its toughness in dealing with terrorism in its detention policies.

“The devil is in the details,” said Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, who has been pressing the new administration to publicly commit to immediately close Guantánamo.

Mr. Romero said he had grown concerned because transition officials had provided details of their plans for dealing with the economic crisis, but had yet to provide details for how they will close Guantánamo, which has brought worldwide criticism.

“Just like we need specifics on an economic recovery package,” Mr. Romero said, “we need specifics on a ‘justice recovery package.’ ”

Full article here

Sikh Solidarity with Palestine

From Racewire

Sikh Solidarity with Palestine

Thanks to Sonny Singh Suchdev for this

After two weeks of relentless attacks and an ongoing siege, the results are sobering: over 880 people dead, 30% of whom are children, and more than 4000 injured; hospitals, schools, universities, local markets, streets, homes and communities crushed to rubble; a blockade on humanitarian relief including food and life-saving medical supplies; a ban on foreign journalists and media entering the area; and a sealed border rendering 1.5 million people imprisoned within the boundaries of a siege. Hundreds of thousands of lives are being destroyed as they are marked dispensable for one reason only: they are Palestinian. The death toll is rising, and Israel has hinted to no end in sight as it continues to expand its offensive by air, land, and sea.

According to Sikhi, all human lives are equal and should be cherished. Right now in Gaza, the lives of an entire people are being deemed worthless. We mourn the recent loss of over 880 Palestinian lives taken by the Israeli military. We also mourn the loss of the 9 Israeli lives taken by Hamas rockets.

We are Sikhs who stand against the brutality of Israeli occupation and the ongoing siege, blockade, and massacre of Gaza. Now more than ever, we call on our Sikh sisters and brothers to think about what our faith and our Sikh identity really means. Why did Guru Nanak Sahib seek to abolish the caste system in South Asia? Why did Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib sacrifice his life for the sake of others’ (non-Sikhs) right to freely practice their religion and live free of persecution? Why did Guru Gobind Singh, our tenth Guru, give birth to the Khalsa – an armed body of full-time revolutionaries – in 1699?

Because for Sikhs, fighting against all forms of tyranny and oppression is a spiritual obligation.

We are inspired by this Sikh tradition of fighting not only for our own rights and our own sovereignty as Sikhs, but for the freedom and rights of all people – sarbat da bhala. Historically, Sikhs have known all too well what state repression and violent hatred look like. Sikhs too, like Palestinians, have faced campaigns of ethnic cleansing by emperors and prime ministers, dictators and elected leaders. Without a doubt, we have struggled and we must continue to struggle for our right to exist and our right to be Sikhs. But we must bring to the forefront our responsibility to fight for the liberation and freedom of all people. When we end ardas with, “Nanak naam chardi kala, tere bane sarbat da bhala,” we must pay attention to the power and weight of these words, take them to heart, and put the concept of sarbat da bhala into practice.

What that means for us now, as Sikhs and as people of conscience, is to stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza, the Palestinians around the world fighting for their right to return home, and the thousands of Jewish and Israeli activists calling for an immediate end to the siege and an end to Israeli apartheid. Together, we must all demand peace and justice.

Get together with others in your community, Sikhs and non-Sikhs alike, and attend a local demonstration against the siege of Gaza. Make a donation to send medical supplies and other humanitarian relief to Gaza (http://www.freegaza.org; http://www.mecaforpeace.org). For those in the United States, call on the Obama administration to make his promise of “change” a reality by stopping the spending of U.S. tax dollars on bombs that kill Palestinians. For those in Canada, call on Harper to condemn Israel’s crimes against humanity and demand an immediate stop to the siege. Pressure both governments to urgently support the global movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel—a strategy that helped to end apartheid in South Africa 15 years ago (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/09-0).

To sign on to this statement, send an email with your name and city to: sikhsolidarity@gmail.com.

True Heroes

It gives me pride and relief to watch this film clip of testimonials from Israeli citizens who refuse to serve in general and in Gaza, now, specifically. Their words are full of wisdom from experience and from pain - it brought me to tears, quite honestly, and renewed my hopes for democracy in Israel. Definitely worth a watch, and the parts that impacted me most were at the end so even though it's seven minutes long, it's worth it.

Accuracy in Reporting of Israel/Palestine - NYT Report Card

I know that statistics don't necessarily prove anything but this is still interesting and relevant. Food for thought, if you will.

The New York Times

Study Periods:
September 29, 2000 - September 28, 2001
January 1, 2004 - December 31, 2004

The New York Times reported the death rates of Israeli and Palestinian children almost identically despite the fact that almost five times more Palestinian children were actually being killed.

Abstract

This study consists of a statistical examination of The New York Times’ news coverage of the first year of the current Palestinian uprising, and of its coverage of that uprising in 2004. The categories examined are coverage in headlines or first paragraphs of conflict deaths and, as a subcategory, children’s deaths. In addition, we studied coverage of deaths in complete articles for a sample month-long sub-study in 2004. Our findings indicate significantly distorted coverage by The New York Times of these topics. In the first study period The Times reported Israeli deaths at a rate 2.8 times higher than Palestinian deaths, and in 2004 this rate increased by almost 30%, to 3.6, widening still further the disparity in coverage. The Times’ coverage of children’s deaths was even more skewed. In the first year of the current uprising, Israeli children’s deaths were reported at 6.8 times the rate of Palestinian children’s deaths. In 2004 this differential also increased, with deaths of Israeli children covered at a rate 7.3 times greater than the deaths of Palestinian children. Given that in 2004 22 times more Palestinian children were killed than Israeli children, this category holds particular importance. We could find no basis on which to justify this inequality in coverage.

Full report here

Reversing Criminalization from the American Journal of Psychiatry

January 2009

"As of June 2007, there were at least 360,000 persons with major psychiatric disorders, and perhaps as many as half a million, in our jails and prisons. With such huge numbers, can we really say that deinstitutionalization has taken place? There numbers underscore a pressing need for reliable hard data about these severely mentally ill persons who have been criminalized. In an article in this issue, Baillargeon et al. provide valuable hard data. They found that inmates with major psychiatric disorders, and especially those with bipolar disorders, had a substantially increased risk of multiple incarceration. Clearly, this study tells us that criminalization is not being reversed... Incarceration poses a number of important problems and obstacles to treatment and rehabilitation. Even when quality psychiatric care is provided, the inmate/patient still has been doubly stigmatized - as both a mentally ill person and a criminal... The correctional facility's overriding need to maintain order and security; as well as its mandate to implement society's priorities of punishment and social control, greatly restricts the facility's ability to establish a therapeutic milieu and provide the necessary interventions for treating mental illness successfully...
"The community treatment of persons with severe mental illness who are or may become offenders has become an increasingly important and urgent issue. Diversion is of little value unless there are community treatment resources to which mentally ill offenders can be diverted. We need a vast expansion of modalities such as assertive community treatment - community-based, sometimes court-ordered, mobile mental health treatment teams that provide an array of treatment, rehabilitation, and housing services that are available 24 hours a day: intensive case management; the ready availability of psychiatric medicines; adequately and appropriately structured and supportive therapeutic housing arrangements; treatment of co-occurring disorders; vocational rehabilitation; and close working relationships between mental health and criminal justice professionals - to name but a few of these needed resources...
"It is essential to facilitate access to psychiatric hospital care for patients who need it. It is important to acknowledge that the community is not necessarily the most benign treatment setting for all mentally ill people at all times. Success in reducing criminalization in this population will require access to hospital care for those who need it, for as long as they need it.
"Currently, a large number of people with severe mental illness receive their acute psychiatric inpatient treatment in the criminal justice system rather than in the mental health system. Clearly, if there were not a shortage of acute inpatient beds in the mental health system, many acutely psychotic persons might not come first to the attention of law enforcement officers, or if they did, they could be transported to acute psychiatric facilities rather than arrested. In most cases, acute psychiatric inpatient treatment should be the responsibility of the mental health system. As Baillargeon et al. point out in their article, acute inpatient beds should be a high priority in community mental health, and lengths of stay should not be unreasonably short.
"Another important resource that can help preevent criminalization is assisted outpatient treatment. Assisted outpatient treatment is court-ordered civil committment that is initiated by the mental health system to ensure that persons with metnal illness and a history of hospitalizations and/or violence participate in services to the community; it is for those who are capable of living in the community with the help of family, frriends, and mental health professionals, but are resistant to psychiatric treatment, including medication. Without such treatment they may relapse and require hospitalization or be arrested, incarcerated, and criinalized. Such at-risk individuals are ordered to participate in outpatient psychiatric treatment with their progress closely monitored by the court..."

The Sulha Peace Project

A little hope in times of terror?

Hello friends and supporters,

We are mourning the loss of lives and are praying for the safety of our friends who are in danger in both Gaza and southern Israel. We pray that both peoples come to true compassion and forgiveness toward the other.

With the only news coming from the from the Holy Land being about the war, we send some news of another picture from the Holy Land. Though we Palestinians and Israelis who work together for peace are being tested more than ever, the relationships we have built stay strong. The Sulha Peace Project continues to aspire to create a new reality and prepare the people in the region for a life of mutual respect and trust.

Not long ago, over three days last August 26-28, thousands of Israelis and Palestinians met for the seventh annual 'On the Way to Sulha' gathering on the grounds of the Latrun monastery between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Sulha Peace Project worked in full partnership with the Palestinian organization, Al-Tariq, to plan the event. Israelis and Palestinans came from all over the Holy Land, and including 200 Palestinians from the West Bank cities of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and Hebron. Our partners in Gaza who have been with us at previous events sent messages of blessing and support from the people of Gaza.

Daily activities included:
- listening circles that brought Israelis and Palestinians together to share with and listen to each others stories.
- the Bereaved Families Forum, with bereaved Israelis and Palestinians sharing their stories and leading discussions
- a children's tent for Israeli and Palestinian children to play and make art together
- workshops in culture and music
- special events each day, such as the men's and women's dialogue circles
- a traditional Bedouin tent, set us to be a space where Arab and Jewish musicians could jam and make music together
- the inter-religious prayer tent with religious Jews praying dialy prayers, followed by religious Muslims praying in same tent
- the Sulhita program, Sulha youth movement worked together where Israeli and Palestinian teenagerson the final evening performance.

The Kitchen, made fully kosher brought Israeli and Palestinian volunteers together to chop vegetables and cook side by side to feed hundreds of peace each meal.

Our special guest was Rabbi Marc Gopin, director of the Center for World's Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. Rabbi Gopin spoke about his work in Syria for building bridges of dialogue. We had a special corner set up at the Sulha gathering for children and adults to write messages of peace that were then delivered by Gopin to the people of Syria. As Marc Gopin is now in the Holy Land, visit his website for his insightful commentary and postcast about the present war in Gaza and south Israel:

http://www.marcgopin.com/

In the prayer tent, we held inter-religious study sessions, with panels on the themes of 'Forgiveness' and 'Religion and Ecology'.

In addition to Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders and scholars from the Holy Land, joining us were Geshe-la Thebten Phelgye a Tibetan lama and member of the Tibetan Parliament, Sheikha Khadija, teacher of Sufism from New York and Rabbi Marc Gopin. On the main stage the final day religious leaders spoke about Sulha, reconciiation, in our religious texts and traditions.

Each evening there were highlights. Sheikh Abu Falastin from Sakhnin led hundreds of us in a Sufi 'zikr' ceremony together, after which Rabbi Menachem Froman led us to chant in unison, calling out Allahu Akbar in Arabic and HaShalom Yinatzeach (Peace will Prevail) in Hebrew.
Later, there was a magical performance by "Acharit Hayamim"- an Israeli religious Jewish reggae band, who performed with an ensemble of refugees from the Darfur region in Sudan. On the final evening, Sheikh Abdul Qarim al-Zorba, Imam of the Dome of the Rock chanted songs from the Islamic tradition.

The 'Sulha Family', Israelis and Palestinians continue to meet, planning events events to heal the wounds and re-build trust between our peoples. After the riots in Acco between Arabs and Jews last Yom Kippur, we organized a peace tent there, with two days of bridge building activities. The 'Sulha Family' met recently, gathering for Shabbat in Jerusalem to support each other during this time. Israeli 'Sulha Family' members are meeting with friends from Palestinian partner organization Al-Tariq. The Sulha Peace Project is joining Middle Way for a peace walk in Jaffa January 9th and setting up a dialogue tent in Jaffa.

Please send a prayer of healing for the children of a Gazan peacemaker who has brought his family to several of our Sulhita youth gatherings. His son and daughter have been seriously wounded in the violence in Gaza.

View this link to see great pictures from the 'On the Way to Sulha' gathering last August, and from the Acco peace tent:

http://flickr.com/photos/jerusalem_peacemakers/sets/72157611868341584/

The Sulha Peace Project is in a deep financial crisis. With the global recession, donations have stopped almost completely. We need your support to continue this important work. Please make a donation small or large to the Sulha Peace Project.

For details about how you can offer a donation, please visit this link:

http://sites.google.com/site/sulhapeaceproject/

Shalom, Salaam,
Eliyahu McLean,
Sulha Peace Project, interfaith coordinator

Jerusalem Peacemakers, co-director

with
Gabriel Meyer, co-founding director, and Ihab Balha, Muslim co-director of the Sulha Peace Project

Some wisdom from the Boyarin brothers

"The solution of Zionism-that is, Jewish state hegemony, except insofar as it represented an emergency and temporary rescue operation- seems to us the subversion of Jewish culture and not its culmination. It represents the substitution of a European, Western cultural-political formation for a traditional Jewish one that has been based on a sharing, at best, of political power with others and that takes on entirely other meanings when combined with political hegemony.
"Let us begin with two concrete examples. Jewish resistance to assimilation and annihilation within conditions of Diaspora, to which we will return below, generated such practices as communal charity in the areas of education, feeding, providing for the sick, and the caring for Jewish prisoners, to the virtual exclusion of others. While this meant at least that those others were not subjected to attempts to Judaize them-that is, they were tolerated, and not only by default of lack of Jewish power-it also meant that Jewish resources were not devoted to the welfare of humanity at large but only to one family. Within Israel, where power is concentrated almost exclusively in Jewish hands, this discursive practice has become a monstrosity whereby an egregiously disproportionate measure of the resources of the state is devoted to the welfare of only one segment of the population. A further and somewhat more subtle and symbolic example is the following. That very practice mentioned above, the symbolic expression of contempt for places of worship of others, becomes darkly ominous when it is combined with temporal power and domination-that is, when Jews have power over places of worship belonging to others. It is this factor that has allowed the Israelis to turn the central Mosque of Beersheba into a museum of the Negev and to let the Muslim cemetery of that city to fall into ruins.33 Insistence on ethnic speciality, when it is extended over a particular piece of land, will inevitably produce a discourse not unlike the Inquisition in many of its effects."

"The inequities-and worse-in Israeli political, economic, and social practice are not aberrations but inevitable consequences of the inappropriate application of a form of discourse from one historical situation to another.
"For those of us who are equally committed to social justice and collective Jewish existence, some other formation must be constituted. We suggest that an Israel that reimports diasporic consciousness-a consciousness of a Jewish collective as one sharing space with others, devoid of exclusivist and dominating power-is the only Israel that could answer Paul's, Lyotard's, and Nancy's call for a species-wide care without eradicating cultural difference.35 Reversing A. B. Yehoshua's famous pronouncement that only in a condition of political hegemony is moral responsibility mobilized, we would argue that the only moral path would be the renunciation of Jewish hegemony qua Jewish hegemony.36 This would involve first of all complete separation of religion from state, but even more than that the revocation of the Law of Return and such cul- tural, discursive practices that code the state as a Jewish state and not a multinational and multicultural one. The dream of a place that is ours founders on the rock of realization that there are Others there just as there are Others in Poland, Morocco, and Ethiopia. Any notion, then, of redemption through Land must either be infinitely deferred (as the Neturei Karta understands so well) or become a moral monster. Either Israel must entirely divest itself of the language of race and become truly a state that is equally for all of its citizens and collectives or the Jews must divest themselves of their claim to space. Race and space together form a deadly discourse. Genealogy and territorialism have been the problematic and necessary (if not essential) terms around which Jewish identity has revolved. In Jewish history, however, these terms are more obviously at odds with each other than in synergy. This allows a formulation ofJewish identity not as a proud resting place (hence not as a form of integrism or nativism) but as a perpetual, creative, diasporic tension. In the final section of this paper, then, we would like to begin to articulate a notion of Jewish identity that recuperates its genealogical moment-family, history, memory, and practice-while it problematizes claims to autochthony and indigenousness as the material base of Jewish identity."

"We want to propose a privileging of Diaspora, a dissociation of ethnicities and political hegemonies as the only social structure that even begins to make possible a maintenance of cultural identity in a world grown thoroughly and inextricably interdependent. Indeed, we would suggest that Diaspora, and not monotheism, may be the most important contribution that Judaism has to make to the world, although we would not deny the positive role that monotheism has played in making Diaspora possible.50 Assimilating the lesson of Diaspora, namely that peoples and lands are not naturally and organically connected, could help prevent bloodshed such as that occurring in Eastern Europe today." - and elsewhere.

Senator Webb speaks about Prison Reform

January 1, 2009

Editorial

Sen. Webb’s Call for Prison Reform

This country puts too many people behind bars for too long. Most elected officials, afraid of being tarred as soft on crime, ignore these problems. Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat of Virginia, is now courageously stepping into the void, calling for a national commission to re-assess criminal justice policy. Other members of Congress should show the same courage and rally to the cause.

The United States has the world’s highest reported incarceration rate. Although it has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it has almost one-quarter of the world’s prisoners. And for the first time in history, more than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars.

Many inmates are serving long sentences for nonviolent crimes, including minor drug offenses. It also is extraordinarily expensive. Billions of dollars now being spent on prisons each year could be used in far more socially productive ways.

Senator Webb — a former Marine and secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration — is in many ways an unlikely person to champion criminal justice reform. But his background makes him an especially effective advocate for a cause that has often been associated with liberals and academics.

In his two years in the Senate, Mr. Webb has held hearings on the cost of mass incarceration and on the criminal justice system’s response to the problems of illegal drugs. He also has called attention to the challenges of prisoner re-entry and of the need to provide released inmates, who have paid their debts to society, more help getting jobs and resuming productive lives.

Mr. Webb says he intends to introduce legislation to create a national commission to investigate these issues. With Barack Obama in the White House, and strong Democratic majorities in Congress, the political climate should be more favorable than it has been in years. And the economic downturn should make both federal and state lawmakers receptive to the idea of reforming a prison system that is as wasteful as it is inhumane.
Originally from the New York Times - here

On Gaza

By Richard Falk
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian
Territories and Professor Emeritus of International Law, Princeton
University

For eighteen months the entire 1.5 million people of Gaza experienced a
punishing blockade imposed by Israel, and a variety of traumatizing
challenges to the normalcy of daily life. A flicker of hope emerged some
six months ago when an Egyptian arranged truce produced an effective
ceasefire that cut Israeli casualties to zero despite the cross-border
periodic firing of homemade rockets that fell harmlessly on nearby Israeli
territory, and undoubtedly caused anxiety in the border town of Sderot.
During the ceasefire the Hamas leadership in Gaza repeatedly offered to
extend the truce, even proposing a ten-year period and claimed a
receptivity to a political solution based on acceptance of Israel's 1967
borders. Israel ignored these diplomatic initiatives, and failed to carry
out its side of the ceasefire agreement that involved some easing of the
blockade that had been restricting the entry to Gaza of food, medicine,
and fuel to a trickle.

Israel also refused exit permits to students with foreign fellowship
awards and to Gazan journalists and respected NGO representatives. At the
same time, it made it increasingly difficult for journalists to enter, and
I was myself expelled from Israel a couple of weeks ago when I tried to
enter to carry out my UN job of monitoring respect for human rights in
occupied Palestine, that is, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well
as Gaza. Clearly, prior to the current crisis, Israel used its authority
to prevent credible observers from giving accurate and truthful accounts
of the dire humanitarian situation that had been already documented as
producing severe declines in the physical condition and mental health of
the Gazan population, especially noting malnutrition among children and
the absence of treatment facilities for those suffering from a variety of
diseases. The Israeli attacks were directed against a society already in
grave condition after a blockade maintained during the prior 18 months.

As always in relation to the underlying conflict, some facts bearing on
this latest crisis are murky and contested, although the American public
in particular gets 99% of its information filtered through an exceedingly
pro-Israeli media lens. Hamas is blamed for the breakdown of the truce by
its supposed unwillingness to renew it, and by the alleged increased
incidence of rocket attacks. But the reality is more clouded. There was no
substantial rocket fire from Gaza during the ceasefire until Israel
launched an attack last November 4th directed at what it claimed were
Palestinian militants in Gaza, killing several Palestinians. It was at
this point that rocket fire from Gaza intensified. Also, it was Hamas that
on numerous public occasions called for extending the truce, with its
calls never acknowledged, much less acted upon, by Israeli officialdom.
Beyond this, attributing all the rockets to Hamas is not convincing
either. A variety of independent militia groups operate in Gaza, some such
as the Fatah-backed al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade are anti-Hamas, and may even
be sending rockets to provoke or justify Israeli retaliation. It is well
confirmed that when US-supported Fatah controlled Gaza's governing
structure it was unable to stop rocket attacks despite a concerted effort
to do so.

What this background suggests strongly is that Israel launched its
devastating attacks, starting on December 27, not simply to stop the
rockets or in retaliation, but also for a series of unacknowledged
reasons. It was evident for several weeks prior to the Israeli attacks
that the Israeli military and political leaders were preparing the public
for large-scale military operations against the Hamas. The timing of the
attacks seemed prompted by a series of considerations: most of all, the
interest of political contenders, the Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in demonstrating their toughness prior to
national elections scheduled for February, but now possibly postponed
until military operations cease. Such Israeli shows of force have been a
feature of past Israeli election campaigns, and on this occasion
especially, the current government was being successfully challenged by
Israel's notoriously militarist politician, Benjamin Netanyahu, for its
supposed failures to uphold security. Reinforcing these electoral
motivations was the little concealed pressure from the Israeli military
commanders to seize the opportunity in Gaza to erase the memories of their
failure to destroy Hezbollah in the devastating Lebanon War of 2006 that
both tarnished Israel's reputation as a military power and led to
widespread international condemnation of Israel for the heavy bombardment
of undefended Lebanese villages, disproportionate force, and extensive use
of cluster bombs against heavily populated areas.

Respected and conservative Israeli commentators go further. For instance,
the prominent historian, Benny Morris writing in the New York Times a few
days ago, relates the campaign in Gaza to a deeper set of forebodings in
Israel that he compares to the dark mood of the public that preceded the
1967 War when Israelis felt deeply threatened by Arab mobilizations on
their borders. Morris insists that despite Israeli prosperity of recent
years, and relative security, several factors have led Israel to act
boldly in Gaza: the perceived continuing refusal of the Arab world to
accept the existence of Israel as an established reality; the inflammatory
threats voiced by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad together with Iran's supposed push
to acquire nuclear weapons, the fading memory of the Holocaust combined
with growing sympathy in the West with the Palestinian plight, and the
radicalization of political movements on Israel's borders in the form of
Hezbollah and Hamas. In effect, Morris argues that Israel is trying via
the crushing of Hamas in Gaza to send a wider message to the region that
it will stop at nothing to uphold its claims of sovereignty and security.

There are two conclusions that emerge: the people of Gaza are being
severely victimized for reasons remote from the rockets and border
security concerns, but seemingly to improve election prospects of current
leaders now facing defeat, and to warn others in the region that Israel
will use overwhelming force whenever its interests are at stake.

That such a human catastrophe can happen with minimal outside interference
also shows the weakness of international law and the United Nations, as
well as the geopolitical priorities of the important players. The passive
support of the United States government for whatever Israel does is again
the critical factor, as it was in 2006 when it launched its aggressive war
against Lebanon. What is less evident is that the main Arab neighbors,
Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, with their extreme hostility toward Hamas
that is viewed as backed by Iran, their main regional rival, were also
willing to stand aside while Gaza was being so brutally attacked, with
some Arab diplomats even blaming the attacks on Palestinian disunity or on
the refusal of Hamas to accept the leadership of Mamoud Abbas, President
of the Palestinian Authority.

The people of Gaza are victims of geopolitics at its inhumane worst:
producing what Israel itself calls a 'total war' against an essentially
defenseless society that lacks any defensive military capability
whatsoever and is completely vulnerable to Israeli attacks mounted by F-16
bombers and Apache helicopters. What this also means is that the flagrant
violation of international humanitarian law, as set forth in the Geneva
Conventions, is quietly set aside while the carnage continues and the
bodies pile up. It additionally means that the UN is once more revealed to
be impotent when its main members deprive it of the political will to
protect a people subject to unlawful uses of force on a large scale.
Finally, this means that the public can shriek and march all over the
world, but that the killing will go on as if nothing is happening. The
picture being painted day by day in Gaza is one that begs for renewed
commitment to international law and the authority of the UN Charter,
starting here in the United States, especially with a new leadership that
promised its citizens change, including a less militarist approach to
diplomatic leadership.