Democracy for New Mexico

Cindy Sheehan Cancels NM Events to Meet With Iraqi Parliament Members in Jordan

As reported in our earlier post, Cindy Sheehan was scheduled to participate in the August 5th Day of Action in Taos and the August 6th Hiroshima Day Memorial in Los Alamos. She had to cancel her attendance at those events, but plans to reschedule a visit to New Mexico sometime in September. Cindy will be a joining a delegation of peace activists from CodePINK and other groups that will travel to Jordan on August 4th to meet with Iraq Parliament members at their invitation. They'll be discussing the goal of ending the violence and bringing our troops home as soon as possible.

Here's how she describes the visit to Jordan in a Truthout post:

Recent polls showed that 72% or our troops wanted to start coming home by the end of this year and 83% of the Iraqi people want the occupation to end. Those numbers are significant if only for the fact that they are probably low - soldiers and occupied peoples have never felt at liberty, or even secure to share their feelings with the oppressors.

To this end of creating a peace plan that the Iraqi people want and can feel comfortable and secure with (it is, after all, their country), a contingent of peace activists, including myself, will travel to Amman, Jordan, to meet with Iraqi parliamentarians who don't parrot what BushCo wants them to say and would actually like coalition forces to be removed from their country. It is a historic and significant step in this abominable and shameful episode of our history. The meeting is also highly significant since our State Department has been transformed into an adjunct of the War Department and is headed by the Deputy Secretary of War, Condi Rice. We have no diplomats in our country: just warmongers who can clear brush, shop for shoes, and laugh at gullible Americans all the way to the bank while they are depositing their war profits.

We will be meeting with the Iraqi representatives in Amman on August 4th, and many of us will return to Camp Casey in Crawford on August 6th to outline the plan and present a way that Americans and Iraqis can work together to end the killing on both sides of the conflict. August 6th is also a very meaningful date for me because it is the same day, one year ago, that I originally sat in the ditch with other peacemongers and we were eventually joined by thousands of peacemongers from all over the world.

On that day, we will ask to meet with George again to brief him on our meeting with real Iraqis who live, work, and raise their families outside of the Green Zone and outside of the influence of DC. Judging by past performance, I don't think he will meet with us (not very neighborly), but I am sure he will know that we are there and we have an Iraqi-driven plan when his only plan is to kill more people because so many have already been killed - which is what "stay the course" and "honor the sacrifices of the fallen" really mean. George is so comfortable cutting and running from Crawford when he feels threatened by the truth, I wish he would cut our soldiers loose from the nightmare of occupation and allow Iraqis to run their own country.

CodePINK has been holding a Troops Home Fast protest across from the White House for almost a month. During Iraqi prime minister Maliki's recent visit to America, they also set up a Camp Maliki across from the Iraqi Embassy in an effort to set up a meeting with him. Although that didn't happen, they were treated with respect by the Iraqi delegation. The interaction led to an invitation to travel to Jordan to meet with five like-minded members of the Iraqi parliament who are working on a reconciliation plan to end the violence in their country. Several members of Congress, academics and noted journalists have also been invited to travel to the meeting with the activists. Exciting news indeed.

CodePINK also bought a full-page ad in an Iraqi newspaper in the form of an open letter to the prime minister expressing support for an Iraqi reconciliation plan that includes the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

Note: Check out the website of our Albuquerque CodePINK group and get involved locally!

Bush: Ain't Gonna Manage Calm No More

Here's Bush rambling on incoherently with immature, muddled and often straw-man arguments at his press conference this past Friday about his strategies for Iraq and the Middle East. Can you imagine what people with intelligence and common sense around the world think of the United States and our president? As I watched this video, all I could think was that it's come to this. Our ancestors must be rolling in their graves at the destruction of critical thought and nuanced communication that marks this era in the U.S. And remember, "THEY've always been violent."

Video: Medea Benjamin Interrupts Iraqi PM

Medea Benjamin of CodePINK and Global Exchange, who is fasting to bring our troops home from Iraq with lots of other people, chanted the following at Malaki's speech to Congress yesterday:

"The Iraqis want the troops to leave. Bring them home now…"

Thank goodness someone was brave enough to counteract Malaki's "war on terror is a success" speech (rumored to be written by someone in the Bush administration) with some reality-based messaging straight from the grassroots.

Our Own Private Syriana

With all the 24/7 coverage of the carnage in Lebanon and Israel, not much attention has been paid to the deepening disaster in Iraq. An LA Times article describes the escalating, cold-blooded violence that took another 100 lives in Iraq on Sunday alone:

Victims of the Sadr City bombing, which residents attributed to a suicide bomber, included poor Shiite teenagers who operate vending stands selling groceries to support their families during summer break. Officials said 70 people were wounded in the bombing.

... Many U.S. and Iraqi officials say Shiite militias, many with ties to the highest echelons of political power, represent a greater danger to Iraqi security than Sunni insurgents. At least 21 bodies of men believed to be Sunni Arabs were discovered in western and central Baghdad on Sunday, all of them shot in the head and bearing signs of torture in the style attributed to Shiite militiamen with possible ties to the Interior Ministry.

This is how a Reuters story describes the rapidly deteriorating situation:

Iraqi leaders have all but given up on holding the country together and, just two months after forming a national unity government, talk in private of "black days" of civil war ahead. Signalling a dramatic abandonment of the U.S.-backed project for Iraq, there is even talk among them of pre-empting the worst bloodshed by agreeing to an east-west division of Baghdad into Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim zones, senior officials told Reuters.

... Broadly speaking Iraq could split in three: a Shi'ite south, Kurdish north and Sunni Arab west. But there could be fierce fighting between Arabs and Kurds for Mosul and for Kirkuk's oil as well as urban war in Baghdad, resembling Beirut in the 1970s.

If anyone can figure out what's in the minds of Bush and the neocons other than a pathological hunger for some sort of demented, nihilistic oil empire that flourishes amid total cultural breakdown, let me know.

Think: the utter destruction we've caused in Iraq has unleashed the Shi'ite militias there, yet we're making emergency shipments of bunker buster bombs to the Israeli military to drop on Shi'ite neighborhoods in Lebanon. We're allegedly seeking to construct democracies by winning hearts and minds, yet every strategy we pursue seems designed to stir up more anti-American fervor and radicalize even moderates. Nothing is being built except American military bases. Stability in the region decreases with each passing day. Hatred is suckled. Order is deconstructed. There are needless and brutal deaths on all sides.

More and more, Bush's complicated weaving of various strains of corruption, chaos, cold-blooded opportunism and wreckless violence into an ugly patchwork quilt of aggression and greed resembles the portrait of oil mongering insanity presented in the movie "Syriana."

We watched it this weekend and thought it captured the deadly and confusing madness of the Bush era to a tee. The shots of George Clooney in Beirut were especially jarring given recent events. Have you seen it? The film's blurbs: This is about our interests in the region. Oil is running out and 90% of what's left is in the Middle East. This is a fight to the death. Everything is connected."

ABQ CodePINK's Saturdays in the Park Continue

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The Downtown Growers' Market every Saturday morning from 7:00 to 11:00 AM provides the perfect setting for us to prominade very pinkly. The market is in Albuquerque at Robinson Park on Central between 8th and 9th. It has wonderful produce, artisans, pastries, coffee and music. And, importantly, it has lovely shade. We can stroll and shop and then sit under the big trees -- and attract attention. We can collect signatures for The Voters' Pledge and The Declaration of Peace. Free parking is available in a lot just north of the park. Bring a folding chair and wear your pink.

Peace,
Rebecca Wilson
Albuquerque Coordinator
CODEPINK Women for Peace
Albuquerque, NM
505.463.7172
abqcodepink@mac.com
www.albuquerquecodepink.info

CODEPINK is a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end the war in Iraq, stop new wars, and redirect our resources into healthcare, education and other life-affirming activities. CODEPINK rejects the Bush administration's fear-based politics that justify violence, and instead calls for policies based on compassion, kindness and a commitment to international law. With an emphasis on joy and humor, CODEPINK women and men seek to activate, amplify and inspire a community of peacemakers through creative campaigns and a commitment to non-violence.

Iraq Occupation, Not Iraq War

The always compelling analysis of George Lakoff is applied here to what's really going on in Iraq:

Occupation: The Inconvenient Truth About Iraq: It is time to tell an inconvenient truth about Iraq: it is an occupation, not a war. In wars, armies fight to dominate land. The US won the war three years ago when Bush said, “Mission Accomplished”. Then the occupation started, and our troops were not trained or equipped for an occupation under predictably hostile circumstances. Finally getting the courage to tell the truth that the US is an occupying force drastically changes the picture in Iraq. You cannot “win” an occupation. “Cut and run” does not apply to an occupation. Occupiers have to leave; the only question is when and how. Progressive Democrats agree that it should be soon; they only disagree on details. Political courage is called for. Truth now!

Question: if this is an occupation and no longer a war, does Bush have a leg to stand on when he claims he has extensive and unprecedented "war powers"? Read the rest of his article.

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Meanwhile, numerous peace activists and ordinary citizens are participating in the Troops Home Fast, coordinated by CodePINK. You can join the fast in front of the White House until August 14, when it will move to Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, or organize or participate personally in your own hunger strike locally. Long-term fasters include:

Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange and CODEPINK co-founder
Tiffany Burns, CODEPINK
Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon whistleblower
Dede Miller, Gold Star Families for Peace
Jodie Evans, CODEPINK co-founder
Dick Gregory, comedian/civil rights activist
Raed Jarrar, Iraqi analyst, Global Exchange
Maggie LeBlanc, CODEPINK Wichita
Geoffrey Millard, Iraq Veterans Against the War
Gael Murphy, CODEPINK co-founder
Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Families for Peace
Father Louie Vitale, Franciscan priest
Diane Wilson, environmental activist
Ann Wright, Colonel and former US Diplomat

The list of those pledging to do at least a 24-hour fast for peace grows daily, including those listed here and many more:

Willie Nelson
Alice Walker
Danny Glover
Dolores Huerta
Susan Sarandon
Sean Penn
Ed Asner
Michael Franti
Graham Nash
Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
Michael Berg, Father of Nicolas Berg, who was killed in Iraq
Rev. Al Sharpton
Arun Gandhi, President, Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence
Jim Hightower, Writer
Howard Zinn, Author
Greg Palast, Author
Marianne Williamson, Author
Julia Butterfly Hill, environmentalist
Kim Gandy, National Organization for Women
Dr. E. Faye Williams, National Congress of Black Women
Laura Flanders, Air America talk show host
Peter Yarrow, Musician
Jonathon Tasini, U.S. Senate candidate, New York challenging Hillary Clinton

Independence Day: Liberty, Truth, Justice

(Fascism is a radical totalitarian political philosophy that combines elements of corporatism, authoritarianism, extreme nationalism, militarism, anti-rationalism, anti-communism and anti-liberalism. ~Wikipedia)

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object. ~Thomas Jefferson

Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people. ~Abraham Lincoln

Of the tyrant, spies and informers are the principal instruments. War is his favorite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader. ~Aristotle

In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle! Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either rods or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. ~Frederick Douglass

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed persons can change the world. Indeed it's the only thing that ever has. ~Margaret Mead

Our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past, while we silence the rebels of the present. ~Henry Steele Commager

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality. ~George Washington

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.  ~William Faulkner

The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation ~Jimmy Carter

Where liberty is, there is my country. ~Benjamin Franklin

Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. ~Cesar Chavez

... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. ~Voltairine de Cleyre

Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers - and before it can be his, it is hers alone.  ~Margaret Sanger

If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. ~James Madison

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness. ~H.L. Mencken

Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation. ~Coretta Scott King

If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means – to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal – would bring terrible retributions. ~Justice Louis Brandeis

America's adventure in free government [is threatened by a] military industrial complex. . . We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. ~ Susan B. Anthony

... it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds ... ~Samuel Adams

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. ~Thomas Jefferson

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun. ~Katherine Hepburn

Checking The Decider

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I've been enjoying Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson's musings of late. He has a terrific take on the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision against the Guantanamo military tribunals, which also lays down the law generally on Bush's claims that because we are "at war" he can do anything he damn well pleases. Robinson begins his latest column this way:

Finally.

It seemed almost too much to hope for, but the Supreme Court finally called George W. Bush onto the carpet yesterday and asked him the obvious question: What part of "rule of law" do you not understand?

... the fundamental message is clear: Despite his outrageous claims of virtually unlimited presidential power, the self-proclaimed Decider doesn't get to decide everything.

This decision strongly insists that, despite the eternal "war on terrorism," the executive branch must work in tandem with the congressional branch, and the judicial branch retains its oversight powers -- thus trimming Bush's sails as he continues his quest to become emperor, clothed or not. It also limits BushCo's ability to claim that the president's "war powers" allow him to circumvent FISA court approvals for such things as wiretaps. Blogging attorney Glenn Greenwald provides a detailed legal analysis of the decision that includes this gem:

... the President "may not disregard limitations that Congress . . . in proper exercise of its own war powers" imposes. That principle is based upon "the powers granted jointly to the President and Congress in time of war." Thus, even if the President possesses the power "absent congressional authorization" to, for instance, eavesdrop (or torture people), "he may not disregard limitations that Congress" imposes on such powers.

Chalk one up for the rule of law and against the Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Gonzales all-powerful executive branch cabal. I notice that AG Alberto Gonzales is already whining about the decision, so it will be interesting to see how BushCo responds to the new limitations on its "inherent" powers. Perhaps the neocons and their media cronies can accuse the Supreme Court of "treason," as they are with the New York Times because of its story about Bush's financial tracking program. After all, anything that doesn't signal blind acceptance of Bush's deeds is treason in their eyes. Seekers of unbridled power are like that.

Breaking: Cindy Sheehan to Lead Protests in Taos, Los Alamos

UPDATE: Cindy Sheehan had to cancel her New Mexico events because she was invited to travel to Jordan to meet with Iraqi parliament members and peace activists. She'll be rescheduling a visit here for sometime in September.

WELCOME CINDY SHEEHAN TO TAOS
A Day of Action: Saturday, August 5th

3 PM: Cindy protests at Rumsfeld’s home

6 PM: Speak Out by Cindy at KTAO’s Solar Center - The
Patty Mac and Dr. Dave’s Concert for Peace. Scheduled
Musicians include: David and the Infidels & Tabularrasa

7 PM: Speech at the TCA: a Crawford
House fundraiser - $10, students free

Events are cosponsored by the Action Coalition of Taos and Veterans for Peace. For more information call 505-766-1932. Click for a flyer (pdf) and pass it on.

It's also being reported that Cindy will appear in Los Alamos on Sunday, August 6th, in connection with the event to memorialize the Hiroshima atomic bomb anniversary that's being organized by the Los Alamos Study Group and others. More info to come.

Democrats Win Iraq Debate: Iraq Peace Plan Echoes Kerry/Feingold

I thought that headline would grab your attention. It's actually from an excellent post on Daily Kos by beachmom and details the Iraqi government's plan to end the war, achieve peace and assert its sovereignty on the ground. The entire post is well worth a read as we head into the weekend. Excerpt:

What is truly incredible is how this Iraq Peace Plan includes key components to the Kerry/Feingold amendment:

https://www.johnkerry.com/...

The Iraqis did indeed have a summit, will give the U.N. the central role to execute all aspects of the plan, and most importantly, makes a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops they key to get Sunni insurgents to lay down their weapons.

As John Kerry said on the Senate floor two nights ago, while having a brilliant, dramatic, and compelling debate with Senator Warner of Virginia (from Thomas):

Years later, we read in Robert McNamara's book how he knew, as Secretary of Defense, while he was sending troops over there, that we weren't going to be successful. Now, from 1968 until 1975, when we left in that dramatic helicopter moment off the embassy, almost half of the people who died were lost in that period of time--for a policy that our leaders knew wasn't working.

I am not going to be a Member of the Senate in good standing and in good conscience and support a policy in Iraq that I believe is going to add people to whatever Iraqi memorial will be created, at a time where I am convinced this isn't going to work for them and it is not going to work for the Iraqis. I believe we have a moral responsibility to those soldiers who died to do our best to get it right, and I just don't believe staying the course, more of the same, is getting it right.

Ladies and gentlemen: with this Peace Plan, the Iraqi government has more or less adopted the Democratic position on Iraq. The Kerry/Feingold amendment was more muscular than the Levin/Reed amendment. Nevertheless, both amendments changed the conversation from "Stay the Course" to troop withdrawals. The Iraqis agreed.

After reading the rest of the post, be sure to check out the Republican Iraq War Plan. Ain't it da trute?

(Iraq - U.S. peace sticker image from PeaceSymbol.org.)