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Speak up on the Palestine/Israel conflict

News media editorials frequently call for an end to the violence in the Middle East and a return to the peace process by the Palestinians and Israelis. (The Palestinians call it the “piece” process—While the negotiators talk, the Israelis grab a piece of land here, a piece of land there, etc.)

I think it is time the third player in this violent conflict, the U.S. Government, started acting responsibly. And, I believe that is not going to happen until individual American taxpayers begin to periodically—once every three months—write or call their elected officials in Washington. Anything less is a passive endorsement of the status quo.

Following is my sample letter to the President, representative, and both senators:

Dear......

O.S.U. professor of military history delivers questionable commentary, and a highly racist remark

Difficult times demand clarity from those who have the ability to express opinions in the media. Often times, media will seek an “expert” or an “informed” opinion to add texture to a particular story of national importance. Not surprising in the least, the lead story in The Columbus Dispatch on Sunday October 14, 2001 was “Testing America’s Resolve.” Within the text, were quotes from professor of military history at The Ohio State University, Allan R. Millett. According to the professor, “The terrorists are ahead of us by 6,000 dead to begin with, and that adds up to a lot of angry Americans.”

Industrial Complex: Expanding into our communities

Roughly 30 years ago prison activists began to promote the concept of “alternatives to prisons.” The alternatives they had in mind were halfway houses, probation, and other less punitive forms of supervision and rehabilitation. “Punishment” was viewed as being detrimental to the concept of rehabilitation. “Treatment” was the new buzzword.

Halfway houses three decades ago were places to live until a parolee was able to find a job and save up enough money to rent an apartment. There were no programs and very few restrictions in halfway houses. Basically they were there to assist parolees until they were financially stable.

Small towns cash in on the Prison Industrial Complex

We are always telling people how the growing prison- industrial complex (PIC) is all about making money off of prisoners, but we need to understand precisely how this is being done so that we can explain it to the general public and show them how detrimental this is to our community.

Many rural towns have traditionally sought prisons as a source of jobs and local tax money. Another way small rural towns benefit from having prisons in their communities is through the U. S. Census report. Prisoners are counted into the census report and increase the population level, which is used to determine how much federal and state funding their town, and county receives. It doesn’t matter that none of the funding is used for the imprisoned population in their areas. It’s a staggering windfall for those small towns and counties that have one or more prisons. It brings millions of dollars into rural communities, and it robs larger urban areas of much needed funds.

Argentina cries out for justice

The current political-economic crisis in Argentina, at first glance, appears to be the resultant snafu of a corrupt government that is itself the legacy of an even more corrupt government which itself arose from the ashes of a military junta that was more preoccupied with killing off any perceived political enemies than in actually running a country. Upon closer inspection, however, the grave state of the Argentinean economy can be blamed almost entirely on self-serving, foreign meddling which, through the powerful vehicle of the International Monetary Fund, prevented Argentina’s leaders from enacting sound economic reforms that may have obviated the debt default, which is now unavoidable.

Columbia: Kill off the food crops and let the US sniff out the coke

I arrived back from Colombia tired but very, very happy with the trip. I have nothing but the highest praise for Witness for Peace volunteers Jess and Julia who organized our delegation to travel and learn about the realities of life for ordinary people — our brothers and sisters — in Colombia. Following are a few observations from Colombia, a country with more School of the Americas (aka Assassins) graduates than any other country:

In Colombia we met with people displaced by the war, human rights workers who risk their lives for peace every day (some of whom are in hiding), campesinos whose corn, beans, banana trees, and yucca have been fumigated — sprayed from the air with Round-Up Ultra (“Ultra” because it has Cosmo-Flux 411F added to it, a chemical that our own EPA has rated as

The top five lies about the war

How many people do you know who claim to be skeptical, who pride themselves on their distrust for authority, who like to pretend that they’re wise to the ways of the world — and then, every time there’s a war, they swallow the lies of the government with all the gullibility of a three-year-old child in the lap of a department store Santa Claus? Don’t fall into that trap yourself! Learn to identify and refute official misinformation when you see it. Let’s count down some of the common misconceptions about this war:

Lie #5: “We’re not at war with the Afghan people — look, we’re bringing them food!”

Reality: Afghanistan is in the midst of a severe drought which threatens literally millions of people with starvation. Even before the threat of US bombing, the World Food Program (WFP) said that nearly 6 million people were in need of immediate food assistance. When the threat of war caused massive movements of refugees and internally displaced people, the WFP raised that number to 7.5 million. UN agencies were keeping huge

The clash of civilizations or politics as power?

Several years ago, while I was a student at Columbia University’s School of In- ternational and Public Affairs, one of the hottest topics of debate was an article Harvard’s Samuel Huntington wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine titled “The Clash of Civilizations?”

The article caused such a furry that a veritable “who’s who” of scholars wrote responses. Never one to pass up an opportunity, Huntington expanded his article into a book by the same title.

After the end of the Cold War, some academics, commentators, and practitioners were optimistic about the positive changes that they vigorously maintained were just over the horizon. Huntington did not see so rosy a picture. In the world now devoid of the two balancing, stabilizing superpowers, Huntington saw a coming clash of ancient, inherently adverse cultures. These cultures, suppressed by the geopolitical realities of the Cold War, would in the post-Cold War world lead to an inevitable and largely unpreventable war between civilizations.

Examining Welfare and Government Spending

There's something happening here

What it is ain't exactly clear ...

It's time we stop, children, what's that sound

Everybody look what's goin' down.

-- Buffalo Springfield

AUSTIN, Texas -- In New York City last year, about 3,000 people died in the attack on the World Trade Center. In New York City last year, 30,000 people came to the new federal limits on welfare. Another 19,000 will lose assistance this year. New York has lost 95,000 jobs since Sept. 11. It lost 75,000 jobs in the year before that. There are now 30,000 people in the city shelters.

Now find the numbers for your town. In Austin, the only organization that provides help to women with breast cancer and no health insurance has just cut its staff from 30 to six, with an equal impact on the help that can be offered. Homelessness is up, shelter populations are up, food distribution centers and soup kitchens are overwhelmed.

And all this is happening in a cruel synergy of inattention,

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