Emergency Petition for Ceasefire

Dear friends,

The Gaza crisis has exploded -- put your name to our emergency petition demanding a ceasefire. We'll deliver it immediately to the UN Security Council, the Arab League, the US and other world leaders!
Take Action Now
As we watch the Gaza bloodshed with horror, appalled at how the crisis is spiraling further out of control, one thing is clear -- this violence will only lead to further civilian suffering and an escalation of the conflict.

There must be another way. Over 280 are dead so far in the Gaza Strip and hundreds more injured -- rockets are striking Ashdod deep inside Israel for the very first time, and the sides are mobilising for invasion. A global outcry has begun, but it'll take more than words -- the immediate violence won't end, nor will wider peace be secured, without firm action from the international community.

Today, we're launching an emergency campaign which will be delivered to the UN Security Council and key world powers, urging them to act to ensure an immediate ceasefire and address the growing humanitarian crisis -- only with robust international oversight and action can civilians on all sides be protected and real steps be taken toward a wider peace. Follow this link now to sign the emergency petition and send it to everyone you know:

Click here to go to petition

After Gaza's bloodiest day in recent memory and eight or more years of ineffective US and global diplomacy, we need to get world leaders to do more than issue statements if they're to ensure a lasting ceasefire.1 Through the UN Security Council and other international bodies, the world can provide the help and pressure needed to stop the violence and change the situation on the ground in Gaza -- preventing the rockets and incursions, re-opening crossing-points under international oversight so that instead of weapon-smuggling, the 1.5 million ordinary people of Gaza can get the fuel, food and medicines they so desperately need.

All sides to the conflict will continue to act as they have in the past if they believe that the world will stand by and allow them to do so. We mobilised for a ceasefire in 2006's Israel-Lebanon war and succeeded, but this time the international community must not delay -- let's raise a truly worldwide outcry. 2009 is a year that things can be different. As we face this crisis, and the possibilities of a new year, it's time for us everywhere to work together to stop this violence.

With hope and determination,

Brett, Ricken, Alice, Ben, Pascal, Paul, Graziela, Paula, Luis, Iain and the whole Avaaz team


1 Further actions could include: a formal resolution from the Security Council rather than issuing a press statement as was done on 28 December 2008; explicit private and public international pressure on the parties to end the hostilities including developing clear terms for the resumption of negotiations; proper international oversight of the Rafah border; and in time, a detailed Security Council resolution setting out the terms in international law for a permanent peace between Israel and Palestine. For background, see this Jerusalem Post article, "No international pressure to end op"

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ABOUT AVAAZ Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Buenos Aires, and Geneva.

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.

Claims of child abuse are proving a fertile pretext to menace the Aboriginal communities lying in the way of uranium mining

John Pilger

The Guardian, Friday October 24 2008

Its banks secured in the warmth of the southern spring, Australia is not news. It ought to be. An epic scandal of racism, injustice and brutality is being covered up in the manner of apartheid South Africa. Many Australians conspire in this silence, wishing never to reflect upon the truth about their society's Untermenschen, the Aboriginal people.

The facts are not in dispute: thousands of black Australians never reach the age of 40; an entirely preventable disease, trachoma, blinds black children as epidemics of rheumatic fever ravage their communities; suicide among the despairing young is common. No other developed country has such a record. A pervasive white myth, that Aborigines leech off the state, serves to conceal the disgrace that money the federal government says it spends on indigenous affairs actually goes towards opposing native land rights. In 2006, some A$3bn was underspent "or the result of creative accounting", reported the Sydney Morning Herald. Like the children of apartheid, the Aboriginal children of Thamarrurr in the Northern Territory receive less than half the educational resources allotted to white children.

In 2005, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination described the racism of the Australian state, a distinction afforded no other developed country. This was in the decade-long rule of the conservative coalition of John Howard, whose coterie of white supremacist academics and journalists assaulted the truth of recorded genocide in Australia, especially the horrific separations of Aboriginal children from their families. They deployed arguments not dissimilar to those David Irving used to promote Holocaust denial.

Smear by media as a precursor to the latest round of repression is long familiar to black Australians. In 2006, the flagship current affairs programme of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Lateline, broadcast lurid allegations of "sex slavery" among the Mutitjulu people in the Northern Territory. The programme's source, described as an "anonymous youth worker", was later exposed as a federal government official whose "evidence" was discredited by the Northern Territory chief minister and the police.

The ABC has never retracted its allegations, claiming it has been "exonerated by an internal inquiry". Shortly before last year's election, Howard declared a "national emergency" and sent the army to the Northern Territory to "protect the children" who, said his minister for indigenous affairs, were being abused in "unthinkable numbers".

Last February, with much sentimental fanfare, the new prime minister, Labor's Kevin Rudd, made a formal apology to the first Australians. Australia was said to be finally coming to terms with its rapacious past and present. Was it? "The Rudd government," noted a Sydney Morning Herald editorial, "has moved quickly to clear away this piece of political wreckage in a way that responds to some of its own supporters' emotional needs, yet it changes nothing. It is a shrewd manoeuvre."

In May, barely reported government statistics revealed that of the 7,433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors as part of the "national emergency", 39 had been referred to the authorities for suspected abuse. Of those, a maximum of just four possible cases of abuse were identified. Such were the "unthinkable numbers". They were little different from those of child abuse in white Australia. What was different was that no soldiers invaded the beachside suburbs, no white parents were swept aside, no white welfare was "quarantined". Marion Scrymgour, an Aboriginal minister in the Northern Territory, said: "To see decent, caring [Aboriginal] fathers, uncles, brothers and grandfathers, who are undoubtedly innocent of the horrific charges being bandied about, reduced to helplessness and tears, speaks to me of widespread social damage."

What the doctors found they already knew - children at risk from a spectrum of extreme poverty and the denial of resources in one of the world's richest countries. Having let a few crumbs fall, Rudd is picking up where Howard left off. His indigenous affairs minister, Jenny Macklin, has threatened to withdraw government support from remote communities that are "economically unviable". The Northern Territory is the only region where Aborigines have comprehensive land rights, granted almost by accident 30 years ago. Here lie some of the world's biggest uranium deposits. Canberra wants to mine and sell it.

Foreign governments, especially the US, want the Northern Territory as a toxic dump. The Adelaide to Darwin railway that runs adjacent to Olympic Dam, the world's largest uranium mine, was built with the help of Kellogg, Brown & Root - a subsidiary of American giant Halliburton, the alma mater of Dick Cheney, Howard's "mate". "The land grab of Aboriginal tribal land has nothing to do with child sexual abuse," says the Australian scientist Helen Caldicott, "but all to do with open slather uranium mining and converting the Northern Territory to a global nuclear dump."

What is unique about Australia is not its sun-baked, derivative society, clinging to the sea, but its first people, the oldest on earth, whose skill and courage in surviving invasion, of which the current onslaught is merely the latest, deserve humanity's support.

www.johnpilger.com

Soliders ask fundamental question: To kill or not to kill

Reviewed by CLAIRE SCHAEFFER-DUFFY
Published:
October 21, 2008

Director Catherine Ryan in Hinesville, Ga., the day after the court martial of conscientious objector, Kevin Benderman. (Photo by Gary Weimberg)Director Catherine Ryan in Hinesville, Ga., the day after the court martial of conscientious objector, Kevin Benderman. (Photo by Gary Weimberg)A review

“Soldiers of Conscience,” the latest documentary by husband and wife filmmakers Gary Weimberg and Catherine Ryan, looks at how individual combatants grapple with war’s fundamental question — to kill or not to kill. Made in cooperation with the U.S. Army, the film profiles eight American soldiers, four who become conscientious objectors and four who believe in the duty to kill when necessary. All wrestle with the morality of killing, not as an abstraction but as soldiers experience it. Interspersed with the soldier’s narratives are images of casualties from the Iraq war not seen on our nightly news and some intriguing background on conscientious objection.

The film’s focus makes “Soldiers of Conscience” accessible to pacifists and warriors alike. The soldiers’ candid and deeply personal reflections remind us that in war human beings make choices they must live with the rest of their lives.

Early in the film, we learn a little-known stat from a U.S. Army study conducted during World War II: Less than 25 percent of US soldiers fired on their enemies, even when under attack. To overcome this inhibition toward the taking of human life, the military developed a technique known as “reflexive fire training.” Disturbing footage of combat training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, provides a glimpse of what this conditioning entails. Fresh-faced recruits gun down tin silhouettes of humans and shout “Kill! Kill! Kill without mercy!” While such “training” has dramatically increased soldiers’ firing rates in combat (upwards to 90 percent in Vietnam), it has not freed them from the burden of conscience, as evidenced in the revealing reflections of the eight men featured in the film.
Watch the trailer

Two of the conscientious objectors, Joshua Casteel, an Evangelical Christian, and Aidan Delgado, a Buddhist, are given honorable discharges for their refusal to kill. But the military imprisons Camilo Mejia, the first Iraq combat veteran to publicly refuse to return to war, and Kevin Benderman, a 10-year Army sergeant from Tennessee. All four eloquently describe their transformation from willing enlistee to refusenik. Delgado encounters Iraqi prisoners of war, who look just like the men in his own unit “but with brown skin,” and the fighting spirit “bleeds” out of him. The war’s devastating affects on civilians, leads Benderman to ask, “Why are we even doing this anymore?”

The awful but necessary choice of war can be a moral imperative when the weak need protecting and human rights are violated, argues Major Peter Kilner, a West Point ethics professor and former 82nd Airborne Infantry Commander. For drill sergeant Jaime Isom, pulling the trigger in battle has little to do with God or country; it’s about “defending the man to the left and right of you.” Isom admits to killing a 10-year Iraqi boy who held a grenade that would have killed his men. “I got no regrets,” he says, “but looking back at it, that’s when the demons come back. That’s when it haunts us.”

The candor of these soldiers evokes questions that haunt us. What are we asking of those ordered to kill on our behalf?

The film’s thoughtful interest in the soldier’s perspective is resonating with people who differ on the morality of war. The documentary, which airs on PBS stations this week, has been circulating among churches, peace groups, and VA Hospitals where clinicians are showing excerpts to soldiers struggling with combat trauma. In November, the film will screen at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. In January, it will be shown at a major conference for chaplains in the armed forces.

Claire Schaeffer-Duffy lives in Worcester, Mass. and writes frequently for National Catholic Reporter. US