Green Dove Peace Magazine - Volume 1, Issue 7-3, Early Winter 2003

GREEN DOVE PEACE MAGAZINE

E'tokmit e'k, rangimarie, hedd, pace, tutquin, shanti, vrede, paquilisli, MNP, Onai rahu, amani, kev sib haum xeeb,salam, shalom, shaantiM, hedd, gutpela taim, lalyi, pesca, damai, raha, fred, eirni, pax, mir, peace, heiwa, amn, nabad, rauha, paz, frid, paco, shAnti, paqe, danh tu, ittimokla, rahu, paix, beke, shalom, mnonestotse, kapayapaan

"The choice is not between violence and nonviolence, but between nonviolence and nonexistence." Martin Luther King

Page 3

"Peaceful View" by O.M.

UPCOMING EVENTS
THE GREEN DOVE CALENDAR CONTAINS A WIDER LISTING OF COMMUNITY AND NATIONAL EVENTS OF INTEREST

January 17-19: Coordinated Local and Regional Actions around Martin Luther King Day, Jobs & Peoples' Needs, Not War, Defend Civil Liberties and Civil Rights

Poets for Peace -Dec 12th and every Second Friday, monthly in the Runcible Spoon Coffeehouse, 412 E. 6th Street, Bloomington, In. Come and share your own or another's poetry. Read short poetic essays, tell stories or sing songs with themes of non-violence, tolerance, war, and peacemaking, or come just to listen. All interested in peacemaking are welcome For info. contact mailings@greendove.net.

*On December 26th join the Runcible Spoon Poetry Series as it host a Peace Poets Writing Workshop.

Last Update from Starhawk on the FTAA in Florida

At last hearing, everyone is out of jail. Many have had their charges dropped, others will need to return and be involved in lengthy court battles. Money can still be donated at www.unitedforpeace.org. The political battle is now shifting to pressure for a congressional investigation. Check www.starhawk.org, www.unitedforpeace.org or www.ftaaindymedia.org for updates on how to help. Thanks to all who have called, written, donated, and offered support, Starhawk

Last Miami Update 11/23-25

I¹m in the state of post-action rage that I recognize and still don¹t know quite what to do with, in spite of being 52 years old, and my decades of experience transmuting rage and anger to creativity, in spite of my considerable ability to ground and stay calm and centered in crisis. I really want to just hit something. I¹m at the School of the Americas protest, which has been linked this year to the Miami actions, with people encouraged to come to both. The School of the Americas is the enforcement arm of global corporate capitalism, the U.S. military school that trains Latin Americans and others in Œcounterinsurgency¹ techniques‹read torture and assassination. The death squads of Colombia, the torturers and kidnappers and political terror squads of Nicaragua and El Salvador, all originated here. READ ARTICLE

IRAQ: Destruction at Duluhaya
by Le Anne Clausen
November 22, 2003

[Note:Photos corresponding to this release will be posted shortly on
www.cpt.org/gallery.]

Recently, Anne Montgomery and I traveled north to the
village of Duluhaya to
document human rights abuses committed by the US
military.

On the road, traffic was at a standstill for hours due
to the ambush of a US
military Humvee by Iraqi insurgents. It was taking
unusually long for a
helicopter to arrive to transport the wounded. I
realized what this meant:
the soldiers were probably dead.

We next visited a farm near the village, hit by US
shelling on September
29th when most of the family were in the home. The
family members also took
us to document bulldozed walls around the village.
"Any graffiti that opposes the US military's presence, they bulldoze the wall," said one relative. "They could use paint if they wanted to, but they want to teach a lesson." On one such wall, which fronted the
village's school building,
someone had written, "This is Democracy?"

Next we traveled to a date Continued in column below

WEB ONLY ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE

I couldn't conceive of continuing to make peace without having the blessing of community. Phillip Berrigan

Love, American Style
by Daniel Patrick Welch

Can the Brits feel the love yet? Exporting democracy, it turns out, means more than just showing unfortunate non-westerners the joys of having someone else write a decent constitution for them. We have now advanced to the point where we can tell even the land of the Magna Carta just where they went wrong. Apparently, they are so inept at running their own country that George Bush and his coterie of war criminals need to tell them just how to tailor democracy to American tastes.

READ ARTICLE

Culture Change Letter #44
Sustainable Energy Institute

Overpopulation's toll
WATER PRIVATIZATION AND THE RISING CONFLICT

by Jan Lundberg

Your water is being stolen from you. The latest, greatest crime is called privatization. That people already have to pay for water through a utility seems outrageous, if we stop and question it: To look at waste in tax revenue, water could and should be free of charge. But in the U.S., for example, hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted in such time-honored programs as building new roads, making more weaponry, and chasing terrorists in the wrong places.

People accept such a screwing from government and its cronies just, in part, to be patriotic and go with the mainstream. But even those who have observed trends critically find it is shocking that among our rights that are diminishing, we are losing an assured supply of water. If we are rich, we don't have to be concerned. But over nine out of ten of us have to start worrying and taking action. It's part of the war of the rich against the poor.

Also during these modern times, pollution of our water has increased to the point that in countless cities, a person had better be able to afford a water filter or bottled water. Many of us are long since dispossessed of our birthrights as human beings. Didn't you grow up thinking ample, clean water was a right? Our masters wish us to revise that notion. Because of so many similar developments in the overall trend of corporate hegemony, the recent Culture Change Letter on nanotechnology stated as its title, "They're coming for you." Will you defend your land and water, or are most of the elements of life mere abstractions thanks to consumerism?

No one has a right to own the water. But this is what is well underway. Privatization used to mean that a government's transit department, for instance, would be taken over by a company that supposedly runs things more efficiently. Now, water supplies and water delivery systems are bought and sold by extremely large corporations that are often beyond any nation's laws. Their handmaidens are governments, banks, and others.

"Water, say the World Bank and the United Nations, is a 'human need,' not a 'human right.'... A human need can be supplied in many ways, especially by those with money. No one can sell or trade a human right." - Maude Barlow, co-author of Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World's Water.

Clean fresh water has been becoming scarce due to overpopulation for several decades. It is also true that waste and greed are creating artificial shortages of water, as happens with food. But, behavior resulting in injustice is a symptom of overpopulation and is aggravated by population growth. One sad result of greed, waste, and overpopulation is that mismanagement and skewed priorities deprive over one billion people of access to clean fresh water... (read remainder of column at
<http://www.culturechange.org/e-letter-water.html#bmk>)

*****

References and recommendations (see www.culturechange.org for links):
- A new Gandhian movement is explored in a prior Culture Change Letter, #42
- Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO)
- International Rivers Network briefing kit
- Recent water privatization articles are in Resurgence magazine's July-August issue, available through the Resurgence website.
- Jim Hightower on Bolivia says No to Globaloney
- Susan Bryce's history article from Nexus Magazine
- Waterways are a source of drinking water, and are being attacked and defended: See WaterKeeper Alliance.
- yellowtimes.org regarding African water privatization
- Global Warming Crisis Council
- Overpopulation: Resources for Understanding and Taking Action

*****

The next Culture Change Letter is on mass brain-control via toxic chemicals.

Sustainable Energy Institute / Culture Change is a nonprofit charity 501(c)(3) California corporation.
To make a donation: http://www.culturechange.org/funding.htm

Please forward to a friend who might be interested in the connections between oil, war, terrorism, and climate change. This e-newsletter's writer and publisher, Jan Lundberg, co-founded the Lundberg Letter, called "the bible of the oil industry," in 1973 and founded the Sustainable Energy Institute (SEI) in 1988.

SEI/Culture Change: P.O. Box 4347, Arcata, California 95518 USA Fax: (603) 825-2696 E-mail: <info@culturechange.org>
Website: http://www.culturechange.org/

IRAQ: Destruction at Duluhaya Continued

palm grove where US military had destroyed more than a thousand trees and two houses because, according to the military, an insurgent fired upon US troops from the grove. Eighty families nearby depended on the income from the trees, which must grow for fifteen years before they are able to bear dates.

Our final stop for the day was a funeral. We met the family of the man killed by US forces as he was trying to protect his wife from being beaten by the soldiers. The soldiers shot their 12 year-old son, wounding him in the shoulder, torso, and thigh. They also shot up and
ransacked the house and took $1,500 and several family photographs. Just before we left, the dead man's friends brought out a letter to show us, signed by 1st Lt. Justin Cole at a nearby US military base. The letter, bearing the dead man's photograph, stated that the man had been helpful to US troops previously. The letter closes, "Please treat this gentleman with the dignity and respect that he deserves."

Most of the human rights abuses I saw carried out in Palestine by the Israeli military during my two years with CPT there I have seen carried out in Iraq by US forces in just two months since I arrived here. Many Iraqis speak of initially welcoming the US troops, who removed Saddam. They were hopeful for a peaceful, prosperous life on their farmland with their families. What they received instead was house raids, and dead wives and children. Now they support the armed resistance.

Traveling back along the road blocked earlier by the Humvee ambush, we noted that all evidence of the ambush were gone--even the burn marks on the road. It is a practice designed to increase morale of the soldiers who must still patrol the area and to remove any signs which might raise the morale of the resistance.

How much more will we pretend has never happened, and at what cost?

Photos corresponding to this release will be posted shortly on
www.cpt.org/gallery

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an initiative among Canadian and U.S. churches committed to active peacemaking, which prepares small teams to intervene in violent and militarized regions using active nonviolence.

Stop FBI Spying on Anti-War Movement
Dismayed by growing opposition to the occupation of Iraq and its militaristic foreign policies, the Bush administration has now resorted to spying on the antiwar movement under the cover of fighting "terrorism." On November 23, the New York Times disclosed a confidential FBI memorandum detailing FBI efforts to engage in coordinated, nationwide surveillance of United for Peace and Justice and other organizations in the peace movement. Defend your right to express opposition to the Bush Administration's policies. Take Action: Sign UFPJ's online petition urging the Senate and House Judiciary Committees to stop all surveillance of the anti-war movement and to launch an investigation into these spying activities. Read

The U.S. Occupation of Iraq - Our $6 Billion Per Month Price Tag

A central goal of the war is to privatize (i.e., steal) Iraq's vast oil fields for the benefit of U.S. corporate and banking elites who in turn are plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into George W. Bush's campaign coffers.

At the cost of $6 billion per month (that is $1.5 billion each week) the price tag for the U.S. occupation of Iraq is being paid for by dramatic budget cuts in primary education and at the college level, as well as in health care, housing, veterans benefits, and other programs that assist working and poor people.

The occupation of Iraq must end. While we demand that the obscene expenditure of $6 billion each month be used instead for jobs, education, housing and health care, we are clear that our opposition to the occupation is not simply that working people in the U.S. have to bear the financial burden. The occupation is a violation of the Iraqi people's fundamental right to self-determination by the U.S. government which pursues Empire in the interests of the U.S.-based corporate and banking elites.

This was never a war to defend the United States from the supposed "grave and imminent danger" posed by Iraq. That claim was a bold-faced lie. Killing tens of thousands of Iraqis and sacrificing a growing number of U.S. soldiers - who are being killed or maimed in the interests of Halliburton, Bechtel, Exxon/Mobil, Citibank and Chase - is what reveals the criminal character of the whole endeavor.

- Reprinted from the International A.N.S.W.E.R. website

NEW PEACE ART and POETRY IN THE GALLERY
ART and Poetry of Mehra Rooma - from India

"Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one's whole being into the being of another." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

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