I've been thinking a lot about courage.

A message from Howard Zinn, Jewish Voice for Peace .

This message was sent to Abe Quadan Peacefriends

I've been thinking a lot about courage.

Right now, while I'm snug and fed this Thanksgiving holiday in the comfort of my home, halfway around the world a group of teenagers is sitting in a jail cell today, demonstrating the very definition of courage and sacrifice. It's frustrating. Humbling. And I'm damn glad to have the chance to do something big about it.

Send a letter to the
Israeli Minister of Defense now.

I am Raz Bar-David Varon.
I am one of the Shministim.
I need your help.

See that fresh-faced, bold young woman on the right? Her name is Raz Bar-David Varon. She's an 18-year-old Israeli who just graduated from 12th grade. And as I write this, she's sitting in jail in Tel Aviv because she refuses to join the Israeli army.
In my day we called them the "refuseniks" and here in the U.S. they're "conscientious objectors." In Israel, they're still in high school and they are the Shministim. Get used to that word because I'm going to ask you to know it, to say it, to use it. You see, Raz Bar-David Varon and another dozen or so Shministim have asked Jewish Voice for Peace for our help and this is one request we can't refuse.
The Shministim - all about ages 17, 18, 19 and in the 12th grade - are taking a stand. They believe in a better, more peaceful future for themselves and for Israelis and Palestinians, and they are refusing to join the Israeli army. They're in jail, holding strong against immense pressure from family, friends and the Israeli government. They need our support and they need it today.
They have asked people like us to let the Israeli government know we are watching, and that we support their courage. They're hoping to receive hundreds of thousands of postcards to be delivered to the Israeli Minister of Defense on December 18th, when they will hold a huge rally and press conference. They're hoping to stand strong on the steps of this majestic building - and on the steps of history - representing not only the thousands of refusers who came before them, not only the many young people to whom they are an example of a better world, but also to represent us. They have asked you, me, and every person who strives for peace to be on those steps with them, on that day. I will be there. See:

Will you join me? It's simple. Sign a letter now. And don't stop there - ask your loved ones to join you. During this week of giving thanks, signing a letter is the least we can do to give thanks for the courageous among us.
Raz is a Shministit. Raz is Courage. And with our support of her today, you and I are Shministim too.
Thank you - and go sign that letter.

Howard Zinn

Asylum Seeker Documentary Provokes

Media Release

“Australians urgently need to encourage the Government to
continue with immigration reforms” ERC's Glendenning
Sydney, Thursday 20th November 2008

Edmund Rice Centre director, Phil Glendenning today called for Australians to make known to the Federal
Government, their support for the process of reform of the Howard Government's immigration regime and it's inhuman treatment of asylum seekers.
Mr Glendenning was responding this afternoon to enquiries to the Edmund Rice Centre following last-night's national screening on SBS-TV of the documentary A Well-Founded Fear.
"Centre staff have today taken literally hundreds of phone calls, emails and web responses from members of the public calling for justice to be afforded to the refugees and rejected asylum seekers who were deported to danger". he said.
"We're getting some calls just asking what they can do to help - and others are calling because they really need to vent their outrage at how our nation has treated these people." he added.
The documentary portrays the human stories behind the research work the Centre has conducted following up on Australia's treatment of rejected asylum seekers.
"Over the past six years, Centre staff have conducted interviews in 22 countries - making contact with over 250 rejected
asylum seekers." Mr Glendenning stated.
"We have published the formal reports - Deported to Danger I & II - but even though this hard data has been available for some time, too often it is not until you have seen the faces and heard the stories that you can really understand the
human impact that these Howard government policies had on the real lives of real people! This is what came through in the documentary and this is why our phone lines and website are so overwhelmed today!"
"Such a strong response is an indication of the emerging movement towards a more decent and humane approach in our treatment of refugees, asylum seekers and other vulnerable people.”Mr Glendenning said.
Responding to the calls for action Mr Glendenning said: “There are three ways people can help. The first and simplest
thing is to sign the online petition on the Edmund Rice Centre's website www.erc.org.au ."
"Secondly, you need to write to your Federal MP and to Senator Evans, calling for an urgent reopening of the cases of
the asylum seekers removed to danger from Nauru. Australians urgently need to encourage the Government to continue
with immigration reforms.”
"Finally, this work is desperately difficult to resource and yet urgently needs to continue. If you are able to support this
work, please donate via the Edmund Rice Centre website www.erc.org.au/donate or mail a cheque to the Centre."
[Ed: see address below!]
"Any and all donations will ensure that this process of identifying, naming and advocating for those removed to danger will continue."
"Quite frankly, we need your help and we need it now." he concluded.

For further information, or to arrange an interview contact:-
Phil Glendenning,
Director, Edmund Rice Centre
Phone: (02) 8762 4200
Mobile: 0419 013 758
PO Box 2219
Homebush West, NSW 2140

Clean up own backyard says Pat Dodson

Tony Stephens

The Age, November 5, 2008

AUSTRALIA was trying to strut the international stage, talking about improving the world, when problems needed fixing in our backyard, Aboriginal leader Pat Dodson said yesterday.

Australia risked being condemned as a pariah nation unless it ratified the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights, passed last year, he said.

"We don't come to the table with clean hands," he said. "We behave schizophrenically. Internationally, we present a front about Australia as a tolerant nation, about mateship and the land of the fair go. But domestically we don't acknowledge that we are swimming in a backwater because we haven't advanced our social discourse on change."

Mr Dodson was speaking before his delivery tonight of the Sydney Peace Prize Lecture and his receipt of the 2008 prize tomorrow night from the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

He said the nation would lose absolutely if the riches of one of the world's oldest living cultures were squandered, abused or simply denied.

"We have had opportunities to address this: Mabo, Wik, the report of the stolen generations, the royal commission into deaths in custody, the reconciliation process itself, the national apology in Canberra. But we keep dropping the ball."

Of government intervention in indigenous communities, he asked: "Do you want the army, police or bureaucrats taking control of people's lives, or to work out a way that involves Aboriginal leadership, who could then collaborate with everything else?"

The problems in remote Australia were a failure of the federal system of government: "In the Kimberley, we are controlled by people in Perth and Canberra." Investment should be in the human capital of health, education and cultural values rather than controlling mechanisms.

Mr Dodson is co-convenor, with former West Australian governor John Sanderson, of The Australian Dialogue, which aims to move on from the apology. Governor-General Quentin Bryce gave her support last week.

Pat Dodson was seen as the father of reconciliation before the 1997 Reconciliation Convention, when then prime minister John Howard took water from Aboriginal elders to his lips.

However, he fell out with the Howard government and then focused his efforts in the Kimberley. Now he expects to return to more prominence.

"We seem to be stuck in a mentality of interventionism that has a poor view of who the indigenous people are," he said.

"We need to look towards the substantial contribution Aboriginal Australians can make and have made towards this nation."

The difference between Australia in 1997 and now, he said, was that an introspective nation now realised it was more closely linked to the rest of the world, through globalisation, climate change and economic problems.

He conceded that reconciliation needed to take place within Aboriginal communities — Warren Mundine criticised him last week as outdated — as well as with non-indigenous Australians.

South Africa could have blown itself apart if Nelson Mandela and other leaders had not risen above their prejudices to create a new republic, he said.

Movement to Ban Cluster Bombs Gains Momentum

Lisa Schlein

November 4, 2008 by Voice of America

Activists are urging governments to sign an international treaty to ban the use, production and stockpiling of cluster bombs one month from now in Oslo. The Cluster Munition Coalition says global momentum is growing to put an end to these weapons, which the group says mainly maim and kill civilians. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.



Cbu97 Cluster Bomb


A Group of Governmental Experts is meeting at the United Nations to negotiate a treaty on cluster munitions. The agreement aims at striking, what it calls, a balance between military and humanitarian considerations.

The Cluster Munition Coalition calls the process flawed. It says the draft text being discussed will do nothing to stop the death and destruction from cluster bombs. It says the text proposes a 13 to 20-year transition period in which States would be able to continue to use, produce, stock pile and trade these weapons.

On the other hand, Coordinator of the Coalition, Thomas Nash, says the Oslo treaty offers a holistic solution because it will ban an entire category of weaponry before it gets out of control.

"It has been largely preventive in nature," he said. "Unlike the landmine problem, which spread to around 80, 90 countries before an international treaty was agreed to prohibit that weapon. So far, cluster munitions have only affected-I say only, it is already too much of a problem, but, only around 32 States or territories have been affected. So, in many ways, we are acting before the problem gets to the scale of landmines. Far too many people have been killed or injured by this weapon. "

The Coalition says about 76 countries have stockpiled cluster bombs. It says it is the billions of sub-munitions contained within these weapons that create all the damage. It says the U.S., with nearly one billion sub-munitions, possesses the biggest arsenal in the world.

It says 34 countries produce cluster bombs. The biggest producers are the United States, Russia and China. Others include Britain, Germany, France, Israel and Brazil. It says the number of victims is unknown, but may be in the hundreds of thousands.

About 100 countries are expected to sign the Oslo Treaty next month. The U.S., Russia and China are major holdouts. Co-Chair of the Coalition, Steve Goose, agrees this is problematic. But, says it will not lessen the impact of the agreement.

"We believe in the power of the stigma against the weapon," said Steve Goose. "We have seen this very clearly with anti-personnel landmines. That same litany of States that we just ran through-U.S., Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel-none of those States are part of the landmine treaty either 10 years later. And, yet, we see that the stigma of the weapon has had a very powerful deterrent affect on those States."

Goose says the United States has not used, produced and traded in landmines since the treaty was signed. And, it has destroyed millions of its stockpiles.

He says almost none of the 39 countries that did not join the agreement have used this weapon. He says Burma was the only State that used landmines in any significant way last year.

He says even those States that stay outside the treaty have to bend to the new standard of behavior that is being established internationally.