“As an authoritarian regime, Burma was very close to an authoritarian China. As it democratizes, assuming that process continues, where do you see Burma’s international position going. Will it retain close ties with China? Will it draw closer to the United States? How do you see that evolving?”

“I should mention that when Burma became independent in 1948, we became independent as a parliamentary democracy, and we believed in the values of democracy, and although of course you can say we were not a perfect democracy, considering the fact that we had to cope with a lot of internal armed insurgences in those first years, we did well. We certainly felt free. I always remember the days of my childhood as days when people were not afraid to speak out against the government and of articles lampooning the Prime Minister appearing quite regularly in the past and nobody was arrested for that. So we were a practicing democracy, flawed, but still strong and going in the right direction. In those days we were one of the first countries to recognize a communist government of China in the 1950s and we established good relations with China, friendly relations. We maintained a neutral position. We were good friends of India, of China, of countries in our region and also of the western nations. We established good friendly relations with our ex-colonial government, the English. We became very friendly with them. We had good relations with the United States. And now that we are going back towards democracy I would like to think that Burma rather than being a bone of contention between China and the United States would be able to bring those two great countries together. It is in the interest of the world that the United States and China should be friends rather than adversaries. And this is something I would like to see. I would like to see a world where, the greater the powers are the more they realize that they have a responsibility to keep on good terms for the sake of the rest of the world. And I certainly would not like Burma to be in a position where we have to choose between one big power or the other. Or that we can not only be friends with both, but we may be an instrument of bringing them closer together. This may seem very ambitious but I think you have to be ambitious if you want to get somewhere.”

AUTHOR: Dr. Jason Abbott
URL: http://profjabbott.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jason.abbott [at] louisville.edu

Close to 25 self-avowed Christians were arrested and charged with breach of the peace and unlawful assembly for kneeling and praying in front of the taxpayer-funded White House.

On Saturday, members of the group knelt on the sidewalk in prayer and were arrested by Capitol Police. The Christian group says that despite police arrests their public prayer demonstration will be conducted through Oct. 2, 2012.

A non-denominational Christian group known as ActsFive29, who consider themselves protectors of unborn babies, had organized the prayer vigil knowing that they could be arrested by the pro-abortion administration, but they believe the current occupant of the White House is pursuing an anti-Christian agenda and that religious freedom in America is in jeopardy.

This latest Christian incident was ignored by the news media as was pop superstar Madonna’s urging Americans to vote for the “Black Muslim in the White House.” Also, the White House web site contains a separate section for Muslim members of the administration, but no section on Christians and Jews.

“Today our arrests will be voluntary, a living witness to the church and to the government — tomorrow arrest may be the only option if we are unwilling to pay to have someone’s child murdered,” states the group’s web site.

The group uses the New Testament verse Acts 5:29, “But Peter and the Apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men,’” as their motto in their spiritual battle against the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services Obamacare mandate requiring employer-provided health insurance to cover birth control measures and pregnancy terminations.

“These Christians may be on to something that the Republican Party candidate for President fails to address: Obama said over and over again that Obamacare would not mandate taxpayer funded abortions or force private entities to pay for the killing of unborn babies. As usual, Obama lied,” said political strategist Michael Baker.

The group claims that the reason given for their arrests is that the sidewalk in front of the White House is a “restricted zone” for free speech.

A young person paused on the curb and said, “I’m here for my civil rights. It is not okay for the government to tell me what to say, what to buy, and it is definitely not right for them to tell me what faith to be, or how to practice it.”

Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life said, “We have stood up for life and religious freedom in hundreds of cities. Today we do so at the president’s house. I am delighted to be here.”

“These weeks lead up to the most important election of our lifetime, an election that will decide the fate of countless unborn children, and the status of religious liberty in America,” said the activist priest.

Rev. Pavone’s group is supported by Dr. Alveda King, niece of civil-rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who is very outspoken about conservative issues within the African American community.

AUTHOR: Jim Kouri
URL: http://www.renewamerica.com/
E-MAIL: COPmagazine [at] aol.com

Masoud Rajavi

The U.S. State Department on Friday formally removed the Iranian dissident group Mujahadin-e Khalq from its official list of terrorist organizations in a move which, according to political analysts is bound to deteriorate the relations with Iran even further. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the decision, as the State Department stated, in view of the MEK’s public renunciation of violence, the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism by the MEK for more than a decade, and their cooperation in the peaceful closure of their paramilitary base in Iraq, where several thousand members of the MEK got stranded in 2003 after their former mentor, Saddam Hussein, disappeared from the political stage. It seems the remaining MEK-members have agreed to be move to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base under UN-supervision in Baghdad, from where they are expected to be resettled overseas.

Clinton’s decision, which was expected for some time, was sharply criticized. “For my money, the chances of war with Iran only get a boost insofar as Iranians didn’t already assume the worst of U.S. intentions,” wrote Ali Gharib at the Daily Beast already before the Sate Department made its announcement. Others pointed out that the decision to take the MEK from the list of terrorist groups could be used by the Iranian regime as a pretext to renew its crackdown on the opposition in general in Iran, by accusing them of having ties with the MEK. This the more so, since the group was reported to have been involved – in cooperation with Israel – in a recent string of sabotage acts against military objects and assassinations of nuclear scientists in Iran.

The group, which was founded in 1963 as an armed Marxist-Leninist opposition group to the shah, was already terrorist in the 70-ties, with assassinations of American diplomats and personnel, among other things. After the 1979 revolution in which it took an active part, it fell out with the Khomeini-regime and thereafter it became extremely violent. It committed bomb attacks against the Islamic leadership in which hundreds were killed. According to IPS in a thoroughly written profile of the group, this went on in the eighties at a rate of three killings per day. The leaders, the couple Massoud and Maryam Rajavi,  moved to Paris in 1981, but after France recognized the Islamic Republic, they went to Iraq, where the movement got tanks and heavy weapons from Saddam Hussein with which it made frequent incursions into the eastern Kurdish areas of Iran and caused havoc and destruction. Since that time the group is generally perceived by Iranians as a bunch of traitors and quislings.

The internal relations within the group deserve a special mention. I myself interviewed Massoud Rajavi in 1984 in Paris for the Dutch daily ‘de Volkskrant’ and was struck by the cult like way his followers talked  about the fact that his wife Maryam, shortly beforehand, had left her husband in order to marry Rajavi ‘for the sake of the movement’. In later years I heard many stories about the way people were deceived or even duped in becoming members of the MEK. In the 7 June issue of the London Review of Books, Owen Bennet-Jones painted a detailed picture of the movement, including the incredible ways in which it deals with its members.

The lifting of the terrorist status by Hillary Clinton came after several years of lobbying by the MEK itself and a number of influential supporters. Among them, are according to the IPS, which published a profile of the MEK, two former CIA. directors, R. Jame Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; a former F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh; a former attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey; President George W. Bush’s first homeland security chief, Tom Ridge; President Obama’s first national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones; big-name Republicans like the former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Democrats like the former Vermont governor Howard Dean; and even the former top counterterrorism official of the State Department, Dell L. Dailey.” Mitchell Reiss, a top foreign policy advisor to Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan presidential campaign, also spoke on behalf of the group.

IPS notes: One potential explanation for this diverse list of supporters are the large speaking fees the MEK network has offered to big-name public figures. “Your speech agent calls, and says you get $20,000 to speak for 20 minutes,” said a State Department official quoted by the Christian Science Monitor. “They will send a private jet, you get $25,000 more when you are done, and they will send a team to brief you on what to say.”[16] Pro-MEK individuals and organizations also reportedly donated thousands of dollars to the campaigns of several sitting members of Congress, including Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Bob Filner, Ted Poe, Mike Rogers, and Dana Rohrabacher.[17]

The American State Department did keep some distance from the MEK when it took the group from the terrorism list. For instance it commented that  “with today’s actions, the Department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992.” Also it implicitly recognized the sectarian traits of the MEK and the internal terror it exercizes in order to keep the group together when it said that ”the Department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members.” 

Also a State department official stated in a briefing that “We have no evidence and we have no confidence that the MEK is an organization that can promote democratic values that we would like to see in Iran.They are not part of our picture in terms of the future of Iran.” This, however, does not neutralize the fact that the rehabilitation of the MEK is a new dangerous step in the ongoing confrontation between the West ad Iran.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

AUTHOR: Dr. Jason Abbott
URL: http://profjabbott.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jason.abbott [at] louisville.edu

There is the question of what the US authorities would do under the Patriot Act, if a Muslim made a film that defamed Jesus Christ and Christian Western civilization? This is a question that has been raised in the last two decades, given that there have been burnings of the Koran, vehemently vitriolic speeches, writings, and broadcasts against Islam, using ‘terrorism’ as a thin veil for inciting prejudice and hatred, and a systematic policy of persecution not just by the US, but many of Western counties that violate the human rights of Muslims and where hate crimes take place by individuals and xenophobic groups.

The tragedy that erased human lives must be condemned by all, including Muslims no matter how angry they may be with US policy of military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and the entire Middle East that has been an obsession for US balance of power politics and a source for cheap energy in the past sixty years. However, there is a larger question of hypocrisy here, the kind of hypocrisy that keeps repeating itself without end. Why the double-standard in the treatment of Muslims versus non-Muslims?

Another very important issue is that the US has been working with some Islamists in Arab Spring uprisings to bring down regimes it does not favor, including those of Libya under colonel Qaddhafi and now Syria under Assad. Naturally, Obama and Clinton cannot reveal to the world what many know already, namely, that the US has been and continues to work with Islamists, while fighting the ‘war on terror’. Let us not forget that the US once worked with al-Qaeda against the pro-Soviet secular regime in Afghanistan in the 1980′s, and the goals of the US and al-Qaeda have been running parallel in many countries during the Arab Spring uprisings.

Political Islam with which the US often cooperates as well as fights as part of the larger ‘war on terror’ is at some level responsible for breeding violence. To what degree would political Islam be able to gain the kind of broad popular support if it were not for US intervention intended to achieve hegemony at various levels from economic to military in the Middle East? Political Islam is today an instrument of political expression, as it was in the late 19th century Egypt, producing disparate voices from moderate to fanatic, from non-violent to very violent amid the desperation of colonialism by the secular West.

This is not to say that Islamic political opportunists are not using religion for their own ends, but what feeds political Islam is the perpetual quest of the US and to a lesser degree Europe, to exploit and dominate the Middle East and North Africa; domination that translates into exploitation and gradual eradication of indigenous culture. One could rightly argue that the Chinese are just as involved with the Arab world and Africa. True enough, so why do we not see a Muslim movement against China that is interested in a business relationship under the market system, without pursuing a more overall policy of hegemony that includes diluting, if not occasionally insulting the Islamic faith?

Islam was the first force of anti-colonial resistance in the Arab World. After centuries-long tradition of Islamic rule over society, political Islam is an inevitable development in the form of political parties trying to mobilize popular support and win control of the state. The debate of whether political Islam is or is not a legitimate extension of Muslim tradition is one that preoccupies mostly the West, though it is true that Muslims have also dealt with this issue. Naturally, political Islam was fine as long as the rulers were and some who remain Western puppets and permit natural resources and markets to be exploited by the West whose defense and foreign policy they follow.

Political Islam became an anathema only when it became anti-Western, refusing to emulate the political, economic and cultural institutions of the West any more than embrace its values. Political Islam is questionable not because it is political, but because it is anti-West. A reasonable person would think that the US and the West would have learned their lesson in the last ten years in the Muslim World, namely, co-optation under Americanized institutions and values simply will not work nearly as smoothly as expected, and it will definitely backfire as it has repeatedly. I am convinced that policymakers are smart people who know all of this, but what drives them is ideology behind which hide tangible policy and economic interests.

Religious Islam and Peace

Contrary to what many in the West believe, largely because the media and politicians have bombarded them with endless propaganda, Muslims are a people of peace, no different in their quest for survival on this planet than anyone else. They too bleed when punctured, they too feel tragedy when their sons and daughters are shot down by the military of an occupying force, whether that would be NATO, US, or Israeli. The quest to be treated humanely and with respect for their religious and national integrity, to preserve their cultural identity that the West has been violating for more than a century may seem unreasonable to some in the West. Having the West pay tribute and respect and collaborating with a few among the political and business elites in the Arab world while the average Muslim struggles to preserve cultural identity, ethnic integrity, economic and social justice is at the root of the problem of why a person committed to the faith of peace my use it to justify turning to political Islam.

What is Islam? Islam means voluntary submission or surrender to the Will of Allah, but it can also mean peace or safety, under Allah. This third monotheistic religion to come from the Middle East after Judaism and Christianity whose doctrinal roots Islam shares and respects, given that Abraham, Moses and Jesus are regarded as prophets. The Qur’an contains Allah’s revelation as the prophet Mohammad delivered it to the faithful called Muslims. Besides the five pillars of Islam that make up the doctrinal foundation, the religion of Mohammad integrates faith and (Islamic) law, thus providing society with guidelines on all matters from worship to commerce and marriage.

As all religions evolve and theologians provide their own interpretations, similarly Islam has undergone various interpretations in the past 14 centuries. The estimated 25% of the world’s people that follow Islam do not fall into the exact same doctrinal mold any more than Christians or Jews. The interaction of Christians, Jews and Muslims was relatively harmonious from the rise and spread of Islam until the Christian crusades that marked the beginning of religious rivalry, behind which rested commercial ambitions to take over the long-distance trade routes that Muslims controlled along with the lucrative gold trade.

It seems to me that politicians, journalists, academics and clergy should have been promoting peace and harmony among all people, especially after 9/11, instead of joining the bandwagon of the fruitless and destructive ‘war on terror’ that has made a few corporations richer but without making the West any safer. Paying lip service to such concepts as peace, interfaith harmony, etc., so that one appears politically correct is not enough if it means conforming to the ‘war on terror’ policy which is in essence focused on augmenting popularity, strength, purses and prestige of certain narrow groups behind this policy. Engaging in anti-Islam rhetoric and justifying it by supporting the ‘war on terror’ only strengthens political Islam and feeds the cycle of violence.

While there are politicians, a few academics, journalists and clergy honestly committed to the goals of peace and harmony, mainstream political parties, the mass media and organized religion have failed to deliver in practice on what they claims as a key doctrine, namely, peace and harmony. This is because division of people, nationalities, religious and ethnic groups sells and permits those delivering the message of hatred to benefit.In short, conflict results in profits, power and prestige, though it carries many risks as well.

Americans have every right to ask the question of how can this attack on US nationals take place in a country the US helped ‘liberate’, in Benghazi that was a pro-US stronghold during the uprising, and on the anniversary of 9/11. They also have every right to honest answers about US government tactics and goals in Libya during the civil war and since then. Listening to Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama speak about the tragedy in Libya, it simply confirms that the US government is not about to change course of failed policies of the past, policies I fear that will bring a great deal more violence in the region, no matter how much the US tells the world that its only goal is freedom and democracy.

This is not to say that those who committed the acts of violence should not be pursued and tried under Libyan court of law. Nevertheless, I am guessing that Washington’s decision will be to adopt an even more hardline toward Islamic nations in general that do not cooperate with the US, especially given the pressure from Republicans amid the heated campaign season, and Israeli pressure to strike at Iran. In short, a policy not so different from the past. Therefore, the cycle of violence will continue and probably intensify. The worst is yet to come in the Middle East, and not just because Islam the religion of peace has been subverted into political Islam of fanaticism owing solely to internal factors.

AUTHOR: Jon Kofas
URL: http://jonkofas.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jonkofas [at] yahoo.com

The question then is: If a public consensus on the failure of the drug war, why hasn’t anything changed?

Why does the U.S. government continue to send millions of tax dollars to cities to fight the drug war, as they close down schools for lack of funds? Why does it waste more millions financing a bloody war in Mexico? Why does the Mexican government continue to pay the economic and political cost of a disastrous and destabilizing war? The U.S. has spent 2 billion dollars on the Mexican drug war in the past five years, mostly through the Merida Initiative and the Mexican government has spent at least four times that much.

To answer these questions, we have to look behind the scenes of the drug war. There we find that this disastrous policy has some powerful promoters.

Some fans of the drug war are open and upfront. They are politicians with clear ties to the military establishment and the business of war. Their job is to create conflict and then propose military solutions. They funnel government contracts to defense companies, and then the defense companies funnel funds into their political campaigns.

These politicians seem to have written the foreign policy part of the Republican Party platform. They have invented a new menace, “narco-terrorism”, that attempts to convince the public that the production and transit of illicit substances is equivalent to terrorism.

This is false. In Mexico, Latin America drugs are produced and trafficked. It’s an illegal business that thrives off drug prohibition. Terrorism is a violent political agenda. Anyone who cannot tell the difference between these two—drug cartels and terrorist organizations—should not be in a position to make policy.

There is no proof of terrorist cells operating permanently in Mexico or Latin America, but “narco-terrorism” is being used as an excuse to send the military out in these countries. Unfortunately, the Democrats Platform is very similar in its wholehearted endorsement of the military approach to drug trafficking.

The politicians manufacture the war for the companies that manufacture the weapons. In this cycle, the drug war is the latest market for intelligence and spy equipment, military hardware, arms and private security firms like Blackwater.

On this side of the border, security companies and local government offices that receive federal money to fight the drug war have a vested interest in continuing it. They know it doesn’t work. But it works for them.

The prison pipeline is big business now. For certain government bureaucracies, and for the private companies that run our prisons and press for more and bigger jails. They pressure for prison expansion, in places like here in Baltimore, where they figure it’s easier and more profitable to lock kids away then to educate them or provide them with decent jobs—especially African American and Latino youth. In the Southwest where the caravan passed through a few weeks ago, these same companies run the migrant detention centers, where women are raped and prisoners have died from lack of medical treatment. Where prisoners are made to feel, as one woman who had been incarcerated for drugs in New York told us, like “throwaway people”. No one is a throwaway person.

Public security, which should be the goal, is the greatest casualty of the drug war. All these victims are here to attest to the fact that fighting violence with violence generates more violence.

The drug war has also blurs the lines between security forces and criminal forces. Nothing makes sense in this insanity of violence. Two examples prove the point. Several weeks ago members of the Mexican Federal Police chased down and shot at a U.S. Embassy car carrying two CIA agents and a Mexican Navy official. The first question on everybody’s mind was: why were the Federal Police trying to kill the U.S. advisers? Aren’t they supposed to be on the same side in this war? The US has poured millions of taxpayer dollars into funding Mexico’s Federal Police and here they were not only biting, but trying to destroy the hand that feeds them. The second question, much less asked, was: Why were U.S. CIA agents training 18-year old Mexican Navy recruits to shoot their own people?

The second example comes from here in Baltimore. Yesterday we heard about a 16 year-old boy with his whole life ahead of him who was shot by a 14 year-old with an assault rifle. We learned that it’s easier to buy an assault rifle than a tomato in some neighborhoods of this city.

It’s been said before—the war on drugs is a war on people. Today we are surrounded with proof of the insanity of this war. We hear it in the voices of the victims and we see it in their tears. We honor the men and women here who have had to courage to tell these stories and to forge a movement for justice from the raw material of their pain.

No one believes that drug abuse is not a problem or that organized crime is not a problen in Mexico. They are. What we are saying is this way of dealing with real problems is not working. There are far better ways, paths toward an integral human security; health and community-based approaches. We have seen so much needless grief, we have been placed in harm’s way, by bad policy and governments that for the most part, just don’t care, in Mexico and in the United States.

Obama administration officials and those who benefit from the drug war say that the proposal to legalize marijuana is irresponsible. What is irresponsible is to continue a policy for more than 40 years when all available evidence shows it doesn’t work. It kills people. It incarcerates their bodies and lacerates their spirits.

Let us not be ambiguous

We must end the drug war now. We must reform our drug policy that makes drug use criminal and hands criminals a lucrative business. We need to take the multi-billion-dollar market away from the brutal cartels. If we stop the flow of money by ending prohibition, we cut off their lifeline.

We can end the drug war, maybe even before it reaches the ignominious hundred-year anniversary that former mayor Ken Schmoke mentioned. We can build better communities, better nations and a better relationship between our countries. But we can’t do it alone. We need to support our local organizations and we need to reach across borders.

Then we can join together, not just based on our shared sorrow and pain, but based on a common vision of a better future for ourselves and our families.

AUTHOR: Laura Carlsen
URL: www.cipamericas.org and http://americasmexico.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: lecarlsen [at] gmail.com

In his speech, called “A Time to Break Silence”, King cited his reasons to oppose the Viet Nam war. His words apply almost uncannily to the drug war today. Despite the difference in historical contexts and the differences between the two wars, their similarities and the truth of the words stand not only the test of time but the test of conscience as well.

Both wars were, and are, deadly; both unconventional for their time; both fought for motivations distinct from those professed to the people.

The first reason King listed to oppose the war was “the war as an enemy of the poor”. He had watched as advances in fighting poverty and inequality were dismantled to feed the war machine. The trade-off was starkly obvious:

I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.

We also know that today. With a budget in crisis, social programs have been stripped in historic rollbacks of rights and living standards as the defense budget not only maintains its girth but grows. With the Middle East conflicts waning in attention, it’s the drug war that has moved in to justify militarism’s insatiable appetite.

In Mexico, where the financial crisis, free trade and governmental indifference have created some 12 million more poor people in just a few years, the drug war has absorbed an enormous part of the budget. The war economy in both countries has powerful backers, and the added advantage for them of not only keeping the poor poor, but eliminating a large number of them, behind bars or in mass graves.

That’s, of course, his second reason.

[The war] was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.

Today’s drug war doesn’t even have to send young men and women thousands of miles away. It puts them away right here at home. By the millions and with the same discriminatory criteria that sent the poor and African American to fight and die in Viet Nam.

The peace caravan from Mexico marched in a candlelight vigil through the heart of Harlem, Manhattan’s poorest areas. A place where everyday youth are plucked to fill the cells and coffers of a private prison system. Where drug laws do the dirty work of justifying criminalization based on race and poverty and treating victims as villains.

Carol Eady of Woman on the Rise Telling Her Story (WORTH), a former prisoner on drug charges who has kicked drugs and become an educator and community activist, explained at the church,

Many women in New York, and probably all over the world, are usually incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses. Most of the time, they started using drugs due to past abuse, abandonment by parents, victimization and sexual assaults. Instead of treating these occurrences as health hazards or diseases, when we turn to drugs to medicate our pain, they lock us up.  

More than 400 people chanted ‘No More Drug War’ and called for justice in the streets of Harlem. The “cruel manipulation of the poor” that King spoke of is the modus operandi of the drug war and the prisons are the new battlefields where young lives are lost.

King’s third reason stemmed from his deep commitment to non-violence.

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. 

Likewise, if we do not oppose the drug war, we cannot claim to be non-violent and credibly stand up against more conventional wars or invasions or call ourselves non-violent. The U.S. government’s Merida Initiative promotes violence and militarization as a solution to drug trafficking. We either condone that and abandon all pretenses of non-violence or we oppose it despite its political popularity and remain consistent in our beliefs.

By keeping silent since Bush launched the Merida Initiative in 2007, we have allowed the militarized drug war model to spread. Now both political parties have elevated counter-narcotics efforts to national security, as if a white powder used to get high could blow up the world or a corner dealer were tantamount to a terrorist. This is a blatant lie. We are supporting a prohibition model where Mexican communities suffer the presence of violent and corrupt security forces and drug gangs, both funded and armed in part by our country. Violence becomes the norm and moral outrage dulls through endless repetition.

Another reason is the “vocation of sonship and brotherhood”, a religious calling that–when women are added into the language–demands making common cause and understanding the suffering of others. The caravan, above all, has sought over this past month to forge those bonds and bring out that common cause. The victims, with their photos of murdered or missing loved ones and stories of pain, have challenged the U.S. public to consider the devastation wrought by support of a drug war without end. 

The stories at Riverside, 45 years later, again broke the silence about the war. Not a war on a foreign continent, but a crossborder war that rages within our communities from Harlem to Jalisco. As the U.S. government extends the failed drug war from Colombia and Mexico, to Central America, the Caribbean and Africa king’s closing words fit now as then:

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam [in the drug war] and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors.

Annihilation drags us all into more violence. We have alternatives. As hundreds of marchers moved through New York city with the pictures of the victims, calling for an end to the war–again–they carried us closer to what King called “a creative psalm of peace”.

AUTHOR: Laura Carlsen
URL: www.cipamericas.org and http://americasmexico.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: lecarlsen [at] gmail.com

The caravan description reads:

“Led by the poet, Javier Sicilia, the caravan will meet with members of US society through dialogue and peaceful action, carrying proposals to shut off the flow of illegal arms to Mexico, supporting humane and health-oriented alternatives to the prohibition of drugs and demanding effective, non-violent security policies. It will also seek a humane immigration policy.“

The CIP Americas Program–along with some 100 partner organizations of migrants, churches, unions, students, NGOs and community members in the cities along the route–is helping to organize caravan events and give voice to the victims of the drug war. We will be accompanying the caravan on part of its long journey through the country and providing daily blogs, articles and interviews as events unfold.

A handful of U.S. companies that produce weapons and defense and intelligence equipment are raking in taxpayer dollars in government contracts for the drug war, while in Mexico more than 70,000 people have died since the war was launched in December 2006.

Today the face of the U.S. government in Mexico is the face of war. This face is reflected in the vast expansion of joint security operations and direct intervention in Mexico´s counter-narcotics planning and operations. Instead of schools and hospitals, our tax dollars support military helicopters and espionage systems.

The relationship between the two nations has degenerated into a seemingly endless war on drugs, The war is commanded from the north, where enforcing prohibition is considered more important than human lives, and fought in the south, where the long arm of enforcement has left 70,000 dead in the past six years.

Despite tragically negative results, the U.S. government has dismissed calls from citizens in both countries to end the war on drugs and the misguided Merida Initiative that supports it. Instead, we continue on a path that throws U.S. youth behind the bars of lucrative private prisons and feeds defense companies by perpetuating violent conflict in Mexico.

Family members of the thousands murdered, disappeared, attacked and displaced in Mexico’s drug war and their supporters will present a very different, human, face of binational relations. They will meet with families in the United States that have suffered senseless incarceration and violence as a result of criminalizing drugs, rather than supporting communities and individuals to manage the health and social threats posed by consumption and addiction.

Find out what organizations are planning in your community. You are needed to help out with organization of events and logistics for the peace caravan. Please plan to attend the events. Learn first-hand the human costs of the drug war and find out how to make change from your own community on up to the national and international levels.

Here is the caravan schedule. For more information on events in your community, see the caravan website. To volunteer for upcoming caravan events, please write us at: info@cipamericas.org

SCHEDULE:

San Diego, CA – Aug 12 SUN
Los Angeles, CA – Aug 13- Aug 14 MON/TUES
Phoenix, AZ – Aug 15 WED
Tucson, AZ – Aug 16 THURS
Las Cruces, NM – Aug 17 FRI
Albuquerque/Santa Fe, NM – Aug 18 SAT
Santa Fe, NM – Aug 19 SUN
El Paso, TX – Aug 21 TUES
Laredo, TX- Aug 22, WED
Harlingen/Brownsville, TX – Aug 23 THURS
McAllen/San Antonio, TX – Aug 24 FRI
Austin, TX – Aug 25 SAT
Houston, TX – Aug 26 SUN
New Orleans, LA – Aug 27 MON
Montgomery, AL – Aug 29 WED
Atlanta, GA – Aug 30 – 31 THURS/FRI
(Travel Night to Chicago, IL & Rest Day – Sept 2 SUN)
Chicago, IL – Sep 3-4 MON/TUES
Cleveland, OH -Sept 5 WED
New York, NY – Sept 6-7 THURS/FRI
Baltimore, MD – Sept 8-9 SAT/ SUN
Washington, D.C. – Sept 10-12 MON-WED – FINAL CITY

For More Information:

• Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity web site: http://www.caravanforpeace.org/caravan
• Global Exchange,  Co-Organizer of the Peace Caravan http://www.globalexchange.org/mexico/caravan
• Invitation to join the Peace Caravan here.
• Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity’s website (Spanish)
• Sign up to volunteer with the caravan by using this registration form.

Some English-language press on the Caravan so far:

Democracy Now! “Javier Sicilia Brings Peace Caravan to the U.S.to Condemn Deadly Drug War” Aug. 16.  http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/16/mexican_poet_activist_javier_sicilia_brings.  Also see: “Mexican Poet Javier Sicilia Condemns U.S. Role in We¡idening Drug Violence” May 11. http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/11/stop_the_drug_war_mexican_poet

“Cross-country tour to point out the failure of the war on drugs”, Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 12, 2012.  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0812-lopez-moms-20120812,0,6855876.column?page=1

“Mothers share their anguish at losses to Mexico’s violence”, Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 15, 2012. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0815-lopez-mexicomoms-20120814,0,218429.column

The Nation: Can the Caravan of Peace End the War on Drugs?

Los Angeles Times: Mexican activist, poet brings Caravan for Peace to U.S.

AFP: Drug war ‘peace caravan’ woos Hollywood

KPFA 94.1-FM in Berkeley: Victims of US/Mexico Drug War Lead Caravan for Peace

Contacts for Organizing:

1) Kirsten Moller: San Diego, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Jackson, Atlanta, Charlotte
kirsten@globalexchange.org, 415 255 7295

2) Louise Levayer: Tucson, El Paso, Brownsville/Harlingen/McAllen, San Antonio, Austin, Houston
louise.levayer@gmail.com, (415) 575 5531

3) Chelsea Brown: Albuquerque, Santa Fe, New York City, Baltimore
Chelsea.avril.brown@gmail.com, (415) 575 5531

4) Liz Sanchez: Cleveland, Phoenix, Montgomery, Chicago
lizsanchez0916@gmail.com, (415) 575 553

AUTHOR: Laura Carlsen
URL: www.cipamericas.org and http://americasmexico.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: lecarlsen [at] gmail.com

The U.S. government sanctions are being imposed due to Hezbollah providing material support to the government of Syria, according the Treasury Department press statement.

In a press statement, the Treasury Department accused Hezbollah of providing training, advisors and “extensive logistical support” to the Syrian military and police in the regime’s quest to destroy its opposition as a result of the uprising that started more than a year ago.

“Hezbollah [is] directly [training] Syrian government personnel inside Syria and has facilitated the training of Syrian forces by Iran’s terrorist arm, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Qods Force (IRGC-QF),” said the Treasury Department statement.

In addition, the U.S. government alleges that the terrorist group is pushing war refugees out of Lebanon and back into war-torn Syria.

“Hezbollah’s extensive support to the Syrian government’s violent suppression of the Syrian people exposes the true nature of this terrorist organization and its destabilizing presence in the region,” said the statement.

As a result of the Treasury Department sanctions, any assets belonging to Hezbollah or its members under U.S. jurisdiction will be frozen. Also Americans and U.S. businesses are prohibited from doing business with the terrorist group or its affiliates under penalty of federal law.

Hezbollah is already a U.S. Department of State designated terrorist organization which was declared in 2001. Its alleged commander, Hasan Nasrallah, was named a terrorist in 1995 during the Clinton administration.

AUTHOR: Jim Kouri
URL: http://www.renewamerica.com/
E-MAIL: COPmagazine [at] aol.com

All throughout the Northeast there have been single day record breaking heat in July. The climate center reported that in July Washington’s Reagan National Airport hit 105 degrees, Baltimore and Newark recorded 104 degrees, Syracuse hit 101, and New York City’s LaGuardia Airport also saw temperatures of 101 degrees.

The US is not the only nation suffering from drought, extreme dry spells in China, Africa, Russia, Australia and Western Europe may be suggestive of a permanent change in climate patterns.

Last year was no better, as the summer of 2011 was marked by record heat and drought. Russia lost 13.3 million acres of crops, or about 17 percent of its production. Also in 2011, drought was so severe in the Horn of Africa that it killed 60 percent of Ethiopia’s cattle and 40 percent of its sheep.

If it were not for last year and the year before, this year could be easily dismissed as an anomaly. When you have consistent warming and a string of record breaking years for heat and drought all occurring in the last decade, it looks increasing like this represents a disturbing trend that is here to stay.

AUTHOR: Richard Matthews
URL: http://www.thegreenmarketoracle.com
E-MAIL: smallbusinessconsultants [at] gmail.com