tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57510789869248934772024-03-14T02:23:38.265-07:00For a ChangeThis blog is written by Joe Lombardo, a peace activist from the Capital District of New York (Albany). It reflects his views on the peace and justice movement and politics and will report on peace and justice activity in the Capital District.Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-69263377551759088692010-10-14T07:22:00.000-07:002010-10-14T07:23:13.971-07:00Thoughts on the October 2nd One Nation Working Together RallyThoughts on the October 2nd One Nation Working Together Rally<br /><br />For quite some time, activists in the labor movement have been urging the AFL-CIO leadership to organize a Solidarity Day III rally as a way of fighting back against the attacks on working people and to counter the mobilizations of the right-wing. My own labor council, the Troy Area Labor Council, sent such a request to the national AFL-CIO leadership, urging them to call a national demonstration around the demands of Jobs, Peace and Healthcare. Our resolution was picked up by other labor councils from around the country, and a number of such resolutions were adopted by various labor bodies. <br /><br />So we were thrilled when we heard that 1199 SEIU and the NAACP were organizing such a rally and that the AFL-CIO was joining the effort. We were sure that this combination between the unions and the largest civil rights organization in the country would attract hundreds of thousands to Washington, maybe more than a million. The reality of this event, unfortunately, fell far short of what it could have been, both in numbers and in political content. <br /><br />Although it is always great when unions and civil rights organizations call people out to the streets to demonstrate, I found the rally disappointing. In working to build the demonstration, I found that the AFL-CIO seemed to be supporting it only half heartedly. I heard comments to the effect that the day could have been better spent going door-to-door for the candidates. <br /><br />The politics were also not clear. There was resistance to including peace in the call, and there was a clear absence of any demands on the government. The One Nation Working Together web site had the generic slogans of “good jobs, equal justice, and quality public education.” Of course, we are all for these things but just cheerleading while making no specific demands around which to mobilize people will get us nowhere. <br /><br />The turnout--somewhere between 100,000 – 150,000—also was disappointing. The organizers claimed that 170,000 people came. Commentators, like the Associated Press, said there were fewer people than those who’d shown up at the Glen Beck rally in August. Glen Beck had the audacity to hold a rally on the same day and at the very spot where Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech. Glen Beck rallied in opposition to everything that Martin Luther King fought for. King was a champion for civil rights, labor rights, and peace; Beck represents hatred, prejudice, and war. But the labor movement and the left were unable to effectively oppose him, which shows how very weak both are.<br /><br />Labor is under attack: union membership has dropped to less than 14% in the US; for the private sector, it is below 8%. The so-called economic crisis has allowed the government to attack the public employee unions that were always considered secure. So teachers as well as municipal, state, and federal workers are all under attack. There are layoffs, furloughs, and changes to retirement and healthcare benefits being demanded as private contractors are taking union jobs. This is happening under Republicans as well as Democrats, such as the state government of New York, where I live. It is only through mobilization of the working people that we will be able to stave off these attacks. The October 2nd rally did nothing to point us in this direction. <br /> <br />The national leadership of the labor movement can see only one way forward, which is through the vehicle of the Democratic Party. However, this is not how labor won earlier gains such as the right to organize and collective bargaining. It did so through mobilization, strikes, sit-downs, and even general strikes and organized defense against goon squads. All that we were told at the Oct. 2nd rally was to get out the vote for the Democrats. Yet, for the last two years the Democrats have controlled both houses of congress and the executive branch. Therefore, to make demands of the government means making demands on the Democrats, this could hurt their chances in November. So there were no demands, thereby sacrificing a great opportunity for us for the sake of the Democrats, who have done nothing on our behalf. <br /><br />In New York State we have a $9 billion deficit while New York’s contribution for the wars for this fiscal year will be $15 billion. Yet not one Democrat, Republican, or major labor leader dares to point out this glaring contradiction.<br /><br />Despite the rally’s shortcomings, the peace movement had an important presence. We organized peace rallies and than marched as a contingent to the main rally. This along with the distribution of signs and literature gave an antiwar presence at the rally. This is very important, because during this period of neo-liberal globalization, as jobs and investment go overseas our economy will require continued war to protect US corporate interests abroad. This is why it is essential to connect the issues of jobs and the wars. <br /><br />Some hoped that the October 2nd mobilization would lead to an ongoing coalition between labor, peace activists, and the communities under attack. The only convergence that can come out of this rally is a convergence around electing more democrats, which will not further the fight for jobs or peace. Instead, we need to build movements that are independent of either party and our unions need to learn to rely on the strength of their own membership and allies.Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-22603472839510092362010-08-06T10:03:00.000-07:002010-09-21T05:52:30.973-07:00Report on the National Peace Conference<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyAj3fjkot2NqLNa9H0Fa9pxAflOCQOnCB7hEhA-lda4nLt6XIcLWyYPba-wPvHhxDJCglSaEYDo_n_uS8ixd7LJCljObc9UmAe6C-_6LL3kM0bhhyphenhyphenCi_En0aioFWzuncVZBhm0y_P29oW/s1600/conference.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyAj3fjkot2NqLNa9H0Fa9pxAflOCQOnCB7hEhA-lda4nLt6XIcLWyYPba-wPvHhxDJCglSaEYDo_n_uS8ixd7LJCljObc9UmAe6C-_6LL3kM0bhhyphenhyphenCi_En0aioFWzuncVZBhm0y_P29oW/s320/conference.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5502345830741695250" /></a><br />Below is a report I sent to the various Albany, NY area listservs on the United National Antiwar Conference that took place in Albany on July 23 - 25. <br /><br />The United National Peace Conference in Albany brought together people from around the country and overseas. Although two people from India were denied visas to come to the conference, 520 pre-registered and 256 additional people registered at the door, for a total of 776 participants. <br /><br />The Sanctuary for Independent Media provided live-streaming of major segments of the conference to the Internet, provided a place for people to upload pictures and tweets and posted major presentations on Youtube. The day after the conference, the Youtube videos got over 17,000 hits, making them the most viewed videos from a non-profit organization for that day. This enabled thousands who could not physically make it to the conference to nonetheless experience it.<br /><br />The core leaders of the anti-war movement were all there, including Media Benjamin, Col. Ann Wright, Kathy Kelly, Dahlia Wasfi, Michael McPherson from UFPJ and VFP, Kevin Martin from Peace Action, Blasé Bonpane, Mark Johnson from Fellowship of Reconciliation, Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report and Black is Back, Kevin Zeese, Fahima Vorgetts, Mike Ferner, Michael Eisencher from US Labor Against the War, Larry Holmes from the International Action Center, Nada Khader, Debra Sweet, Leila Zand, and others. Cindy Sheehan also came but had to leave immediately when her daughter went into labor back in California. Additionally, Ethan McCord, a former soldier on the ground in Iraq who was seen on the first leaked Wikileaks video, spoke out publicly for the first time. War resisters, GIs who have refused to deploy, skyped into the conference from Canada, since they could not be there in person. <br /><br />Leaders of other movements were also at the conference; these include leaders of the Labor movement, such as Donna Dewitt, President of the South Carolina AFL-CIO,. Leaders of SEIU/1199 came to ask the peace movement to support their upcoming October 2nd, 2010 march on Washington. The conference was welcomed by Mike Keenan, president of the Troy Area Labor Council. Present were Margaret Flowers and other leaders of the single payer movement, as well as Lynda Cruz, Teresa Gutierrez, and other leaders of the immigrant’s rights movement. Palestinian rights activists played a big role in the conference, as did leaders of the movement against intervention in Iran, Columbia, Honduras, and Haiti. Leaders of the environmental movement were present as were leaders of the Muslim solidarity movement and student leaders like Blanca Missa, one of the central leaders of the recent student protests on the Berkeley campus against California’s cuts to education. Dr. Margaret Flowers, a central leader of the movement for single payer healthcare led a workshop with other healthcare advocates and spoke at the press conference that preceded the conference at which she made a strong connection between the movement for universal healthcare and peace. <br /><br />Noam Chomsky spoke Saturday morning via video. Following by another keynote address given by Donna Dewitt, President of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, and leading member or the National Assembly and US Labor Against the War. We listened to Mumia Abu-Jamal’s audio taped message to the conference from death row and to the narration of Imam Aref’s, one of the wrongly prosecuted Muslims from Albany from his prison cell. Ralph Poynter, husband of imprisoned civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart, read her message to those assembled. Lynne was a member of the administrative body of the National Assembly to End US Wars and Occupations, the group that had initiated the conference. She was also a founding member of Project Salam, one of the other 31 co-sponsoring groups.<br /><br />During panels held on Friday night and Saturday, movement leaders discussed the future direction of the anti-war movement. Throughout the weekend, the backdrop to the stage and podium was a beautiful 40 foot mural painted by Mike Alewitz and Jerry Butler, who teach art at Central Connecticut State University. Mike was an anti-war leader at Kent State University 40 years ago, during the period when National Guardsmen killed four student anti-war protestors. Jerry was at Jackson State when, 10 days later, police shot and killed students on that campus.<br /><br />The conference presented thirty-three workshops on topics related to war and social justice. Presenters came from a range of perspectives, faith-based peace groups, immigrant’s rights advocates, the Palestinian rights movement, the labor movement, active duty GIs and veteran’s movements, and many more. The workshops and presenters are listed on the conference web site (http://www.nationalpeaceconference.org). <br /><br />The conference operated democratically, with every person in attendance having a voice and a vote. Out of this process came an Action Proposal and a set of resolutions. All of this material will be posted in the near future on the national peace conference web site (www.nationalpeaceconference.org). Basically, the Action Proposal calls for local actions in the fall and bi-coastal demonstrations in New York City and California in the spring. The spring actions will be accompanied by separate and distinct non-violent civil disobedience actions. The proposal also calls for support of and collaboration in building the mobilizations being called by the labor and civil rights movements in the coming months. These include demonstration planned for Washington and Detroit on August 28 and a large October 2nd demonstration being organized by SEIU/1199, AFL-CIO, the NAACP, and others. The action proposal includes a strong stand in support of Palestinian rights and against the threats directed at Iran. It calls for coordinated teach-ins, lobbying efforts, and campaigns to pass city, town, and village resolutions on the issue of war spending and its impacts on the economy.<br /><br />One theme running throughout the conference was the connection between the anti-war movement and the Muslim solidarity movement. Both the wars and the attacks on Muslims are the products of Washington’s phony war on terror. The wars have been called preemptive wars, and the prosecutions of Muslims have been labeled preemptive prosecution. These concepts are used by the government as theoretical justifications for the wars going on at home and abroad. The Muslim solidarity issue was highlighted at a poignant and symbolic march from the peace conference to the Masjid-Al Salam mosque on Central Avenue where the imprisoned Albany Muslims used to worship. At the Mosque, a rally was held where family member and supporters of the wrongly prosecuted Muslims spoke along with leaders of the anti-war movement such as Kathy Kelly, Medea Benjamin and Sara Flounders of the International Action Center. Also, on Saturday, a lunch time presentation was given by Shamshad Ahmad, the president of the mosque. A statement was read by Imam Aref, the former Imam of the Mosque, now in prison for 15 years<br /><br />Why Albany? Some people have asked why the conference took place in Albany. My answer is that it could not have happened any where else. On the national level, the peace movement has been weak and unable to capitalize on the fact that the majority opposes the wars and the fact that trillions is being spent on war as education, healthcare and other human needs are being cut. Consequently, the National Assembly to End US Wars and Occupations decided to forgo its own national conference in favor of building a unity conference of the entire anti-war movement, understanding that the lack of unity in the US anti-war movement has been a major factor in the weakness of our movement. The Albany area has a strong peace movement in which all of the groups work together. In addition, when Muslims were attacked in our community, the peace movement and eventually the media and large sections of the non-Muslim community stood behind them. In many other areas of the country, this didn’t happen, as some peace groups felt that being associated with the unjustly prosecuted Muslims might alienate them from the politicians and others in the non-Muslim community. But what people in Albany realized is that the wars and the pre-emptive prosecutions of Muslims are two of the faces of the same phony war on terror. So as we took up the fight against the attacks on Muslims and the racism these attacks have engendered, we undercut the war on terror justification for the wars of occupation while, at the same time, finding new allies in the struggle for peace. Building bridges between the Muslim and the non-Muslim communities is exactly the opposite of what the government wanted, with its use of agent provocateurs and fabricated terror plots, <br /><br />The conference was the right thing to do at the right time; it came to a close literally hours before the explosive Afghan War Diaries were published by Wikileaks and right before Congress voted for additional funding for the perpetual U.S. wars and occupations. The conference gave our movement a powerful voice at a very critical time. It also succeeded in bringing together thirty-one peace groups with diverse perspectives. We brought together the peace movement with leaders of other movements that have mobilized millions in their own right. In doing so, we took a step forward not only for peace but also for human rights and justice in general.<br /><br />There also were some shortcomings. Outside of some alternative media, the conference was not covered by the national media, in stark contrast to the coverage of the Tea Party convention which, despite having fewer in attendance, was given prime time live coverage by CNN and other outlets. Maureen Aumand who, along with Mary Finneran, organized the media in Albany alerted the New York Times to the conference on several occasions. The Times tried to explain to her why they would not cover the conference, but the real reason it wasn’t covered is because the powers running the corporate media in the US want to build a right-wing, not a progressive, left-wing movement. <br /><br />In addition, our audience was mostly older and white. Although polls show anti-war sentiment being greatest among youth and African Americans, we haven’t seen a lot of participation in the anti-war movement from these groups, and this was reflected at the conference, as well. <br /><br />Finally, there were some tests of our unity at the conference, the most significant one being around the issue of Palestine. Important leaders of the Palestinian movement were in attendance, and a caucus was formed by Palestinian rights activists to discuss how best to integrate the Palestinian issues with the broader peace issues. They put together a resolution and an amendment to the Action Proposal on Palestine, which passed by a large majority. However, some felt that the wording was too strong and therefore fought to change it. This was a serious disagreement, and my hope is that it will not cause any deterioration in our unity. <br /><br />Pulling together a unity conference with thirty-one different groups, each with its own perspective on how to bring about peace, was a real achievement. However, our true test will be in how united we remain as we build future actions to end the wars. Towards this end, the conference passed a proposal for a continuations committee that will be chaired by Jerry Gordon. It will meet for the first time on August 16th, with the goal of continuing our work and broadening it to include other forces at the local and regional levels. <br /><br />The peace conference came together at just the right time and place. It happened at the same time when other progressive forces (like the labor and civil rights movements) also are mobilizing (on August 28 and October 2). The labor and civil rights leaders who have called these actions may see them in the context of the mid-term election but they come at a time that millions are being victimized by the wars at home and abroad and are looking for a way to fight back. The unity we attained with the conference was significant. If we can continue and broaden this unity with our allies within and outside of the peace movement we can change the world.Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-64934893647998929962010-04-11T12:48:00.000-07:002010-06-12T08:06:44.274-07:00How to Fix the New York State Budget<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCkc4_NpUMzvtx5WbgRsyh5JYXMIbpG_yzzSICAYDLTxE-DpdX6ZTIf_zoRkNrCOtZ_t421FQntO4BgKB_oGo4QGQX1MX_wbj9uujcnpzJeuwzitAMPohHBNC_FPJlttZisCSEe7IfvMst/s1600/workerprotest.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 187px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCkc4_NpUMzvtx5WbgRsyh5JYXMIbpG_yzzSICAYDLTxE-DpdX6ZTIf_zoRkNrCOtZ_t421FQntO4BgKB_oGo4QGQX1MX_wbj9uujcnpzJeuwzitAMPohHBNC_FPJlttZisCSEe7IfvMst/s320/workerprotest.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458974224756998146" /></a><br />The following is a letter that appeared in the Albany Times Union newspaper with the exception of the last paragraph on war spending; this they cut. All solutions that are being project by the media and the politicians to fix the state budget are solutions that fall on the backs of working people and the poor such as tuition increases at the State Universities, layoffs of state workers or asking them for give backs or decreasing the amount of school aid. This letter takes a different approach <br /><br />In the April 1 article “Paterson warns of ‘massive’ state layoffs,” the governor is reported as proposing delaying the 4 percent raise due to state workers. Once again working people are asked to assume the entire burden of a financial crisis that we had no hand in creating. In reality, there is no budget crisis; we are the richest country in the world and can afford a bigger share of the pie for the working people and the poor.<br /><br />Why not ask the rich to assume a fairer share of the burden? Over the past years, tax rates have been significantly flattened in favor of the rich so they pay a New York State tax rate not that much different than the poorest New Yorkers. Let’s tax the rich.<br /><br /><br />While an Albany resident pays 8% tax when they buy a shirt, the less than 1% tax on a stock trade is completely rebated to the payer. Let’s tax stock trades.<br />According to a Government Accountability Office study, 2/3 of corporate taxes are not paid as Corporations seek tax shelters and other gimmicks to avoid paying taxes. Let’s tax the greedy corporations.<br /><br />While our state claims a budget deficit of 13 to 18 billion dollars, our state’s share for the illegal and immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is over $87 billion. Let’s end the wars. <br /><br />Anyone of these alternatives can save our schools, save our jobs and save our state, but it seems that all options that don’t put the entire burden on working people and the poor are off the table<br /><br /><br />References:<br />2/3 of corporations pay no taxes: http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/12/news/economy/corporate_taxes/<br /><br />States cost for war spending: http://www.costofwar.com/ <br /><br />Tax on stock trades is rebated to the payer: http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/stocktransfertax.pdfJoe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-62810010155030459892010-03-06T07:37:00.000-08:002010-03-30T16:25:00.222-07:00Left/Right dialogue on War<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsLjYx62T66oC5kFCGQvI5asJ-B-BuQc9vXsBgLHqKs9Ki53EamIHDy1Lft0HWAzZHkL2d0pnwBfC8F5z1L-H6jySfqcEZ_sVa8NdS8KLCZ39Y1rNHhu06yoHo04OzombcSQdlv0GBd-JC/s1600-h/demo.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsLjYx62T66oC5kFCGQvI5asJ-B-BuQc9vXsBgLHqKs9Ki53EamIHDy1Lft0HWAzZHkL2d0pnwBfC8F5z1L-H6jySfqcEZ_sVa8NdS8KLCZ39Y1rNHhu06yoHo04OzombcSQdlv0GBd-JC/s320/demo.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5445547448897132386" /></a><br /><br /><br />In Albany, the left and the Tea Party folks have been having a dialogue. So far there have been 3 forums, the first on health care the second on climate change and the third on war. Below is my 5 minute opening remarks as part of the panel for the left side of the discussion on war.<br /><br />Years ago, when I worked against the Vietnam War, the political and economic context of our struggle was very different than it is today. During Vietnam, for example, we had a growth economy; people were able to get jobs; factories were booming. Today, few factories exist in the US. There are few options for young people other than the military. Today, we have an economic draft instead of a real draft as during Vietnam. <br /><br />Also the cost of today’s wars fall more on the backs of working people and the poor than during Vietnam. Back then, taxes on corporate profits accounted for over 30% of the total tax revenue; today they accounts for less than 8%. Today, nearly 2/3 of all Corporations-- because of tax havens and other tax trickery -- pay no taxes. The tax structure was also much more progressive in the 1960s and 70s with the highest earners paying more of a fair share of the taxes. Today the tax rates have been significantly flattened putting more of a burden on working people and the poor. The disparity between the rich and the poor has increased in the US to the point where today the top 1% is wealthier than the bottom 95%. As the burden of paying for these illegal and immoral wars falls more and more on working people and the poor we see failing state budgets, cuts to social services and deterioration to our country’s infrastructure.<br /> <br />Military expenditures in the US are more than those of all the rest of the countries in the world combined. They account for more than 50% of our present federal budget. Yet, in these hard economic times as people are losing their homes, their healthcare and their jobs, Obama tells us in the state of the Union address that everything will be frozen or cut, except for the military. I think he has his priorities backwards.<br /> <br />The flight of US industry from US shores to find cheaper resources and labor, with no unions, and no environmental or health and safety regulations -- a process known as globalization -- has required new military thinking. To protect US corporate interests abroad we now have our military in over 135 countries with over 800 permanent, foreign military bases. Our now globalized economy will mean permanent war as the US corporate controlled government seeks to protect US corporate interests abroad. As native populations in these countries seek to reclaim their national resources and wealth for the people or their own counties, they will be accused of terrorism and so, as Bush told us, we will have a permanent war on terror. War will be a permanent part of the politics in this country from now on and so the anti-war movement must become a permanent part of politics in opposition to these policies of exploitation and violence.<br /> <br />The war on terror is a fiction. No country can stand against the military might of the US in a battle field as in WWI and WWII. So the wars will be more guerilla warfare with small irregular bands of people seeking to protect their families and communities from US invasions and occupations and foreign corporate exploitation. As the US violently suppresses those who fight back, more anger and resistance will be engendered causing an ever increasing spiral of violence. We will not end terrorism with war we will only end it with peace and collaboration for the good of all. But peace and collaboration stand in stark contrast to the US corporate grab for foreign resources, markets and cheap labor.<br /><br />The fake war on terror has also justified attacks on our civil liberties at home and abroad. We have seen the continuation of the policies of the Bush administration of warrantless wiretaps, secrecy, arrests without charges and trials with secret evidence. We have seen the scrapping of Geneva Accords, a continuation of black sites, extraordinary renditions and torture. All of this does not end terror; it is terror and gives justification to those who seek violent opposition to the US and its policies.<br /> <br />So, the anti-war movement must continue to connect the dots between the wars, the economic crisis, the attacks on civil liberties and other policies that are affected by these wars. In building the anti-war movement we must insure that our strategy and tactics flow from the idea that while these wars may be in the interest of the multi-national corporations and the few at the top, they are not in the interest of the vast majority of the people of this country or around the world. Therefore, our movement must seek international ties and employ tactics that involve the masses of people for whom war is not in their interest. These tactics must put at their center mass mobilizations that seek to bring these people into political motion instead of having them sit on the sidelines waiting for their political leaders or others to end the wars.<br /> <br />To this end, there will be a mass demonstration in Washington March 20, the 7th anniversary of the war on Iraq. Please see people at the Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace table to get a seat on the bus<br /><br />Additionally, this summer on July 23 – 25, there will be an historic unity conference in Albany of the national anti-war movement more details will follow soon. <br /><br />Joe LombardoJoe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-56076070087151513812010-01-19T11:45:00.000-08:002010-01-19T11:47:07.833-08:00HaitiIt must be a tremendous insult to the Haitian people that president Obama appointed George W. Bush along with Bill Clinton to head up relief efforts for Haiti. Although Clinton has a dubious history with Haiti too, Bush is seen as the enemy of Haiti by a great number of people in that country. It was under the Bush administration that the US military was sent to Haiti in the middle of the night to kidnap their elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Aristide was put on a US military plane and dropped in the Central African Republic and left there. Aristide had been a very popular president but one the US government didn’t like because of his anti-globalization stand and his insistence that Haiti’s resources and production to be used to better the Haitian people not the multi-national corporations. <br /><br />Bush also had less than a good record for his administrations response in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. There, mercenaries from the Blackwater corporation along with National Guard were sent in to keep order as a priority over meeting the needs of the people. The same seems to be happening in Haiti today.<br /><br />As many are calling for the return of Aristide as a way of unifying the country, the US has sent in the military, supposedly in a humanitarian mission. Other countries did not send their militaries; they sent doctors and disaster recovery experts. The first move the US military did was to take over the airport. As stated in an AP article on January 18, 2010, “Some aid groups and foreign officials have blamed the U.S. military for slowing down aid deliveries, saying the American units that took charge of the small Port-au-Prince airport last week gave priority to U.S. military flights.” In a country where possibly 200,000 have died, where the people are in great need of aid the US is emphasizing security. Is the US afraid that the Haitian government has collapsed and the people might rise up and overthrow the US supported government and perhaps bring back Aristide? <br /><br />Maybe, with his record in Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans, Obama sees Bush as just the right man for the job.Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-56823703974543324192010-01-17T09:43:00.001-08:002010-01-17T09:49:56.225-08:00AVATARYes, the 3D in the movie AVATAR was incredible as was the world created as the backdrop for the story. But mostly, I liked the politics.<br /><br />Here is the story where the natives win. It is a story where the invasion and occupation of a foreign land for mineral rights and profit is defeated and the destruction of the environment for profit does not succeed as the entire planet rises up to defeat the invaders and destroyers. <br /><br />We have all heard of the effort of a true genius, James Cameron, who spent year envisioning this movie and waiting for the technology to catch-up with his ideas. But politically, this movie could not have been produced at any other time. It came out just as the Copenhagen talks on climate change were concluding with an agreement by the rich countries to continue to destroy the planet for profit. It came out as the US is escalating the war in Afghanistan with powerful technologies that the native people of Afghanistan can not match. The themes in AVATAR are exactly parallel.<br /><br />These themes of US aggression and environmental destruction were not coincidental. This was shown by one of the characters referring to the invasion of the planet as “Shock and Awe,” the term used by the Bush administration to describe the US invasion of Iraq. <br /><br />Part of the genius of Cameron was how he got the viewer on the side of the indigenous people and against the greed and violence of the corporation and the American mercenaries. Though it was not stated, these were clearly Americans, the shots are called by the representative of the corporation that is trying to exploit the minerals on the planet and the soldiers are clearly mercenaries similar to the Blackwater mercenary bands that have been running lawlessly through Iraq and Afghanistan.<br /><br />So, the movie is a must see for every science fiction fan and everyone trying to save our environment and bring about a peaceful world.Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-57057347910610942872009-12-17T12:33:00.001-08:002010-03-06T08:22:05.774-08:00What is Democracy?I, along with a number of activists in the Albany area, have formed a socialist discussion group in which we read material and hold a discussion on the reading and issues of the day. One new member of our group e-mailed me and asked my opinion on democracy. He asked if there are any examples of democratic functioning states. He also suggested that it might be good to have a 4th branch of government comprised of scientist and other experts who might be better able to respond to climate change and similar issues. Below is my response to his e-mail. <br /><br />Your e-mail brings up many questions. First of all, I don’t think that we need a panel of experts, such as scientists, as a 4th branch of government. I think that if people were given the facts, we can make decisions that are in our own interest and the interest of all. This is why there is secrecy in our country, they don’t want people to know the truth, it would expose too much. They don’t want people to see the pictures of torture or hear the facts about global warming, etc. Too often we are told that we are too stupid to make decisions for ourselves. This is one way they take democracy away from us; they tell us to leave it in the hands of the experts or the politicians. <br /> <br />I think there have been very few examples of a true democracy in the modern world. In fact, maybe you can’t have a true democracy in a class society because the ruling class, if it is a minority, as in this country, would not want to see its power taken away. On the other hand, if the working class truly took power, the only way we could rule would be democratically because we are the vast majority. There is actually a lot more to talk about here like what happened in the Soviet Union, etc., but that would better be discussed at another time because there is a long history about this. <br /> <br />Although there have been no real models of democracy in the modern world, there have been many attempts that give us a glimpse of what a true democracy might look like. The Paris Commune, where workers took over Paris and parts of France before being crushed by invading armies was one example. Some attempts in Cuba, Nicaragua and other places helped give us a glimpse of what democracy could look like. Basically, Marxist don’t typically equate voting and democracy, like we do in the US. Voting is part of democracy. But in most other industrial countries they have a better system of voting such as proportional representation, requirements for equal access to the media and less involvement of money. In the US, you have to be rich or supported by the rich to run for national office. This is a filter that insures the interests of the rich will be those represented by the government. <br /> <br />In some of the places mentioned above, they tried to organize people on a block by block level. In Cuba, these block committees were called Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. They discuss everything from health care and education in their communities to international politics. They then elect representatives to committees organized on a regional level who elect people to the national level. These are in addition to direct national elections. Additionally, they helped organize women’s organization, labor, farmers, youth and other constituency groups. These groups discuss issues related to their constituencies and also elect people to the regional and national governing bodies. <br /> <br />Additionally, Cuba included the right to have a union as a democratic right. The right to a job is also seen as a democratic right. There are many other areas, besides elections where equality needs to be seen as a democratic right. <br /> <br />I have a friend at work who comes from China. He and many others at our work had a big problem with one of our managers. But nothing could be done about it. Work in the US is a dictatorship. He told me in China, if the workers did not like a manager they would have a meeting and decide that the manager was not good and would be able to get rid of him. In the US, he says, you can criticize the president, which you can’t do in China, but you can not criticize your manager, which you can do in China. Perhaps, if we did not have a capitalist society where work means making a profit for the boss, we would be able to criticize our manager too. <br /><br />So, I think that in a socialist society, democracy would mean something very different. Since we grew up in a capitalist society we think of it as being the same as voting. In the original US constitution, only white men who owned property could vote. Later, through amendments we allowed all adults citizens to vote. After an uprising the first amendment was added to the constitution which included other rights like the right to free speech and assembly, which we now call democratic rights, but were not there in the beginning. But in a socialist society, we may add the right to housing, healthcare, a job, the right for women to control their own bodies, the right for gays to marry, etc. <br /> <br />Also, in a non-hierarchical society the entire idea of democracy would be different and less adversarial. <br /> <br />So, that’s a longer answer to your e-mail than I intended, but much shorter than needed. Perhaps it would be a good topic to discuss at one of our meetings. <br /><br />Joe LombardoJoe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-10076587755135112972009-11-26T09:39:00.000-08:002009-12-04T13:48:03.464-08:00Meeting of the National AssemblyFor the last 4 days, I was in San Francisco for a meeting of the coordinating committee of the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations. Of the 45 members of the coordinating committee, about 30 people from across the country were present (we also hold meetings once per month by phone conference). One member of the coordinating committee who was not present was Lynne Stewart. As you know, Lynne, a now-disbarred attorney, is in jail, having been convicted of aiding terrorism for defending her client, who was accused of being involved with the plot to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. (For more information on that case and Lynne’s situation, please go to www.lynnestewart.com.) The group gathered at the meeting sent Lynne a note of support, and each of us who know her also wrote a personal note. Mine was also from the Muslim Solidarity Committee, a group that she always thought was doing exemplary work. Lynne let us know that she would like protests at federal buildings on her behalf. People who want to send her a message can write to: Lynne Stewart, 53504-054, MCC-NY, 150 Park Row, New York, NY 10007.<br /><br />There were two important points that came out of the meeting. The first is that we decided to endorse the call from the ANSWER coalition to have demonstrations on March 20 to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the Iraq War. The National Assembly would have preferred that the ANSWER coalition not put out this call unilaterally but rather to work in conjunction with other national anti-war groups, including the National Assembly, before deciding what to do on the 7th anniversary of the Iraq war. But in the interest of promoting unity in the anti-war movement—a principle that the National Assembly was founded on--we agreed to support and build this action and to try to get other forces to join us. <br /><br />The second point of importance that came out of the meeting was that we agreed to hold our 3rd national conference in Albany, New York on July 23rd-25th, 2010. This means that national leaders along with hundreds of peace activists from around the country will be coming to meet in Albany. Also present will be members of the peace and progressive movements from other countries. The main function of the National Assembly conference is to assess the state of the movement and to decide on a program of actions during the upcoming period. This will occur during plenary sessions where everyone present will have voice and vote. Additionally, there will be workshops and a large public meeting on Saturday night, along with a panel discussion on Friday. Besides having a fairly strong peace movement in the Capital District, we have done some very good defense work with Muslims who have been attacked in our area and have done some important work with Iraqi refugees. It would be important to showcase this work for the rest of the country and international guests.<br /><br />The San Francisco meeting also heard reports and discussed situations in Iraq, Afghanistan/Pakistan, Palestine, and Honduras. In addition, we had a discussion on the current state of the anti-war movement. As we all know, the anti-war movement is at a low point. Some of the national groups are not functioning well, if at all. Despite polls that continue to show that the majority are against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and occupations, anti-war demonstrations and rallies have been much smaller recently than in the past. On October 17, demonstrations took place in 54 cities around the country, but all of them were small. However, discontent with U.S. policies is growing, especially given the present economic environment. We can expect to see a surge in Afghanistan soon, and cities all across the country are preparing a response. The National Assembly believes that this is a very important moment when we must continue to build anti-war organizations and activities in preparation for what we believe will be an inevitable explosion of anti-war sentiment and activity as the wars continue and the honeymoon with the Obama administration ends. <br /><br />You have probably heard about the explosion of protests on the California campuses after the California a 33% tuition increase was announced. While in California, I was able to take two trips to the Berkley campus, where students have been demonstrating and occupying buildings. These activities are going on throughout the state. The students tie their protest in to the issue of the war using slogans like “Money for schools not for war.” They are also chanting, “This is what democracy looks like,” and “The people united will never be defeated.” Some can argue that the birth of the student movement of the 60s and 70s began with the Berkley Free Speech movement. The students are also aware of the connection of their movement to the plight of union workers who are being laid off; the biggest cheers at their rally came when some fired janitors spoke. Teachers and other workers throughout California are suffering from the cutbacks and protesting too. California reflects the future of all states across the country, as our nation's corporate elite try to shift more and more wealth from the working people and the poor to the corporations and the already obscenely rich. People working on all issues, from war to healthcare to tuition hikes, need to come together and join in one fight against a common enemy. With this understanding in mind, the National Assembly sent a message of support to the striking students.<br /><br />There are many union activists on the coordinating committee of the national assembly, included the presidents of two state-wide labor federations. The group took note of the resolution that came from our own Troy Area Labor Council calling for the AFL-CIO leadership to organize a mass action around the issues of jobs, the war, and health care. A similar call was passed by the Wisconsin state AFL-CIO federation, the San Francisco Labor Council and a number of other labor groups. We see such calls as extremely hopeful signs and as a way forward for the movement as a whole. They point toward our developing a real fight-back against the attacks being directed at the American people today. The Albany conference in 2010 will be a very important step in that direction, as well. I hope all activists in our area will join me in building this conference.<br /><br />Peace,<br />Joe LombardoJoe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-38674292678727173412009-10-12T15:24:00.000-07:002009-10-15T06:42:51.877-07:00Health Care CostsThe following is a letter of mine that was in the Albany Times Union today. The letter is on healthcare costs and advocates for a single payer solution. The only piece that the editors took out of my letter was a sentence where I supported my statement that the insurance executives get "over-the-top salaries and bonuses" by using the example of Stephen Hemsley, CEO of United Healthcare who makes $102,742.00 per hour <br /><br /><br />Health plan may benefit wealthy<br />First published: Monday, October 12, 2009<br /><br />In "Health costs hit home" (Oct. 3), the Times Union reports that <br />health care costs will rise steeply again this year. This is at the <br />same moment when health care reform bills are making their way through Congress without serious consideration being given to single-payer health care or even the nebulous public option.<br /><br />With the way things are headed, it looks like people who can barely <br />afford the co-pay for a visit to their doctor will be mandated to buy <br />a defective and exorbitant health insurance policy or else face a <br />fine. This is a huge giveaway to the health insurance industry and, <br />like the recent corporate bailouts, is essentially another transfer of <br />wealth from working people and the poor to the rich.<br /><br />A recent study comparing the U.S. health care system to that of five <br />other industrial countries, reported by the New York Daily News, <br />concludes that ours is twice as costly per capita as any of the others <br />and has worse outcomes, to boot. The other five countries all have <br />some form of single-payer system.<br /><br />The high cost of health care in the U.S. is the direct result of <br />greedy insurance companies, with their high overhead and over-the-top salaries and bonuses for their executives.<br /><br />Health care costs more in this country than any place else on the <br />planet because we put the profits of the corporations above the needs of the people. The only way to remove the insurance companies -- the Number One enemy of meaningful health care reform in this country -- from the equation is to adopt a single payer system.<br /><br />Joe LombardoJoe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-36080480507311906272009-09-12T18:03:00.001-07:002009-11-19T09:14:05.399-08:00Right-wing Mobilizes in WashingtonToday, tens of thousands of right-wing tea bag supporters marched on Washington. From the images I saw on the internet, there were well over 100,000 (it turned out that the images I saw on the internet were forged. They were of a previous demonstration and the tea-bag demo had far few people). While we on the left debate whether demonstrations do or don't work, the right-wing is mobilizing and is out on the streets like I have never seen them do before in my lifetime. These mobilizations have had a big effect. They have moved the healthcare debate to the right and taken the momentum that the left felt with the ending of the Bush administration and the election of a Black president and turned it into a right-wing momentum against any progressive change. <br /><br />One of the key differences between a right-wing government and a fascist movement is that a fascist movement gets people mobilized in the streets. When they get strong enough, they break up union meetings and physically attack their political opponents. I characterize the right-wing mobilizations that we have seen as an incipient fascist movement. It is clear to me that there are people, such as the talk show hosts, who are trying to build such a movement. This is both a huge threat and a big challenge to the left. During this period of history, I believe we are the ones who will literally make the decision of whether or not humankind is going to make it. The only way we'll survive is if we can stop the ravages of war, build a peaceful world without nuclear weapons, put the brakes on global warming and the end the depletion of our natural resources. <br /><br />These right-wingers are motivated in part by the realities of our times. The lives of working people are getting worse and worse as healthcare becomes less affordable, people are losing their jobs due to corporate greed, and the living standard of the vast majority of the working class continues its downward slide. In this rampantly racist country, we've elected a black president, signaling to the right wing that they are losing what blacks are gaining. Besides the blacks, they scapegoat immigrants and Muslims, whom they blame for their misery. It is this anger that is moving them into the streets.<br /><br />The left should always be able to out-mobilize the right even though we don’t have corporate wealth and the media behind us like they do. This is because our issues of peace and justice speak to the real needs of people and to viable solutions to our collective problems. It's also because our movement is inclusive of everyone--young or old, black or white, gay or straight, Christian, Muslim, or atheist.<br /><br />I urge people to get out in the streets. Join your local peace vigil; come to the events sponsored by our progressive organizations; join the picket line of the hotel workers at the Holiday Inn Express in Latham as they fight to form a union. I urge you to join in our local anti-war protest on October 17, which will coincide with similar rallies throughout the country (see www.nepajac.org). The right is taking our tactic of mass mobilization and using it their advantage. Let's not let that happen.Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-25051819296204923562009-08-30T10:18:00.000-07:002009-09-04T08:03:41.114-07:00Health Care Town Hall Meetings<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEV3w17zAJSqvIQUbOT5Och7VD3o0cI_c6ABmG5fAekNlvOz_sohzUoGJJn4XzPgHSkHn1l6EWCkGqHYJ38w_rXLF3AIwH7T4DEiMX_86kiE9ZG45uTKQf-FnOeUFV5iqK1v2irCNytjep/s1600-h/pict0070_1.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEV3w17zAJSqvIQUbOT5Och7VD3o0cI_c6ABmG5fAekNlvOz_sohzUoGJJn4XzPgHSkHn1l6EWCkGqHYJ38w_rXLF3AIwH7T4DEiMX_86kiE9ZG45uTKQf-FnOeUFV5iqK1v2irCNytjep/s320/pict0070_1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375811263804376866" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAOIKmerMRT0ccp8ny5J7yv6UIAZ7jKHZtMUxUvHy8h8Lnq3ldI3KBUTOAd3lw1u8AvZDgg9ILC_VelXMH67BllM0Hiu_U3RPtf6ZiVkhGyRBtuHMCzGodwwxAWd0XrRddCaGcp43GSQjN/s1600-h/pict0036_1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAOIKmerMRT0ccp8ny5J7yv6UIAZ7jKHZtMUxUvHy8h8Lnq3ldI3KBUTOAd3lw1u8AvZDgg9ILC_VelXMH67BllM0Hiu_U3RPtf6ZiVkhGyRBtuHMCzGodwwxAWd0XrRddCaGcp43GSQjN/s320/pict0036_1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375811081134139634" /></a><br />In the Capital District we have had a series of congressional town meetings like those in other areas; however, in our case, the right-wing has not been allowed the upper hand and hasn't been successful in disrupting the meetings. At the two town hall meetings that I attended, progressives have outnumbered the right-wing and prevented them from shouting down single-payer or government option opinions. <br /><br />The left needs to take stock of what is going on at these meetings and insure that they are not disrupted by these modern day Brown Shirts. There are fewer and fewer places for public debate in this country, as the media becomes more and more tightly controlled and as public spaces give way to privately owned malls. So, when congress members come back to their districts to hold town hall meetings to hear what their constituents think, we should use them to make our progressive voices heard and not allow them to be taken over by the right-wing. <br /> <br />These right-wingers must be confused and demoralized when they find themselves outnumbered at these meetings. If their primary news sources are FOX News and the fascist minded talk show hosts, they must not understand a forum where opposing voices are allowed to be heard and where the propaganda that they hear gets challenged. The right-wing talk show hosts use the technique of talking over opinions that they don’t want you to hear, and so their listeners try to do the same thing at these health care reform meetings. But when we outnumber them, they can't get away with this.<br /><br />Additionally, some who come from the Ron Paul or Libertarian perspective agree with us on many issues like the ending the wars and occupations or opposing the bank bailouts. They typically support gay rights and the right to abortion. Others are against any government healthcare option or single-payer because they believe that they will pay for abortions. We should exploit these differences, divide them from each other and even make common cause with some where we can. <br /><br /><strong>Can Government Do Anything Right?</strong><br /><br />Although there are many issues that bring right-wingers to these town hall meetings with obvious anger and passion, when you cut away the lies and misinformation, the main issue is mistrust of government. Some of this is justified; there is reasonable anger from both the right and the left over the bank bailouts and the welfare for the rich, for example. However, when this criticism comes from the right, it takes the form of scapegoating. Many of the right-wingers that I see at these meetings look like they are not well off. One man told me that it was a government lie that 50,000,000 people don’t have health care in the US. During the discussion, he admitted that he himself did not have healthcare. But he sure as hell did not want any “illegal aliens” to get it, and his unrestrained racist anger at Obama was clearly coming from the same racist position, where he believed people whom he considered beneath him were getting ahead of him. It is this same racism, along with anti-Semitism and sexism and homophobia that has always fueled right-wing movements.<br /><br />The difference between the right-wing and left-wing positions on the failures of our government is this: the right insists that the government do nothing, while the left demands that the government does what it is supposed to do: provide for human needs that the people cannot do for themselves, like building the roads and bridges, organizing fire departments, running schools, and making sure that we all have healthcare. <br /><br /><strong>The Downside</strong><br /><br />While the local meetings are forcing progressives to mobilize in response to the right-wing mobilizations, and while we support the kind of participatory democracy that these meetings may represent, there are downsides to these meetings too. They have shifted the health care debate to the right. There are many who support a single-payer option but feel a need to defend the public option because that is the brunt of the attack from the insurance companies and the Republicans. So the debate has become the status quo verses the public option, and single-payer has become marginalized. However, at the meetings I attended, if there had been a vote on what the people wanted, I'm pretty sure that single-payer would have won. Because of this, those of us who support single-payer must be bold in expressing this at these meetings and elsewhere.<br /> <br />Another downside of these meetings is that the centrality of the health care debate during this period has pushed other issues to the side. This is most apparent with anti-war issue; while the wars continue to escalate, our attention has been focused on healthcare. As a result, terrible decisions have been coming out of the Obama administration, with little opposition. These include escalating the wars, continuing of extraordinary renditions, continued cover-ups of war crimes, etc. The fall anti-war actions will be an important step towards moving these issues back to center stage (see www.nepajac.org.<br /><br /><strong>Mobilization</strong><br /><br />It is important that we continue to mobilize when these types of situations arise. By doing so, at least in this area, we have been able to change the news coverage from the national perspective of mobs of people opposing any government involvement in health care to one of a public debate on healthcare. A debate on the issue will always work in our favor, since it allows us to show the superior single-payer type systems that exist in other countries. <br /> <br />During these mobilizations, single-payer advocates have made common cause with government option advocates in opposition to the misinformation and behavior of the right-wing. In my opinion, this is good and necessary. It would be a mistake for us to allow ourselves to be split from good folks with whom we can work on a number of issues. The divide and conquer tactic of the US government in Iraq and Afghanistan has been used very effectively. It has also been used in the US anti-war movement, where some coalitions will not even admit the existence of other peace coalitions let alone join in actions with them. We cannot let this happen to the healthcare movement. I say this even though I believe that the only viable option is the single-payer option, since a government option would still keep the insurance companies in the picture, keep health care costs high, and continue to allow abuses, which will eventually lead to a rejection of any public option and prove the right-wing's point that government can’t do anything right.<br /><br />It is very important for people to understand that voting or having one's own position on an issue is not enough. It is important for people to understand that they need to act and that their actions have an effect. This is not taught by the media, the government, or the schools. We learn that democracy equals voting; then you go shopping or watch commercials on TV and let the elected officials do the work for you. As we mobilize for these town meetings, we feel our strength. We see that our mobilization is able to change the character of these meeting. Although we don’t have the money or control that the insurance companies and other private corporations have, and we don’t have the lobbying power or money to make the large campaign contributions, the power of a united people is the greatest power of all. Just by putting our hands in our pockets and refusing to cooperate, we can bring the country to a standstill. So as people start demanding to take the profit out of healthcare and see resistance from the government and the corporations, we become a little more conscious of the fact that we are not on the same side and that they are not working for our benefit. It brings us a little closer to understanding that if we are to make the basic changes that we need, the only thing we can rely on is our own collective, organized strength.<br /><br /><strong>Single-payer verses Socialized Medicine</strong><br /><br />A single-payer system is what we need to fight for now. It is the demand that addresses the concerns of the American people, including rising medical costs, rising unemployment, and increasingly unscrupulous practices of the insurance companies during this period of neo-liberalism. However, what single-payer does is replace the insurance industry with the government. Despite the rhetoric of the right-wing, it is not socialized medicine. The hospitals and the pharmaceutical companies and other health care services will still remain private, for-profit organizations. These institutions will continue to put profit over the needs of people. This will remain an obstacle to providing quality healthcare, even with a single-payer system. During this debate, we should point out that the right-wing claims that a public option or single-payer system is socialized medicine are wrong and use the debate to talk about what a real socialize system would look like and tie it into the devastating effects that private industry has had in all areas from Enron to the bank bailouts.<br /> <br />The debate around healthcare will push the debate around what kind of society we need in general.Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-63945706908109741332009-08-12T06:17:00.000-07:002009-10-07T06:49:19.341-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdAnLCeYYqRu39ocPSfCfAPlNjyRDsL56JjJOSLLY48QOSE4WMAtreJ6WVCgI2tOLVkK1f6-RGzJmqWZxzfAXp6sx_F1aF9AXMoVCqw146cxPQwiI-_61gqqgNIkNaEefziAe5gnjTlkKC/s1600-h/aref1.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 82px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369073615678173298" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdAnLCeYYqRu39ocPSfCfAPlNjyRDsL56JjJOSLLY48QOSE4WMAtreJ6WVCgI2tOLVkK1f6-RGzJmqWZxzfAXp6sx_F1aF9AXMoVCqw146cxPQwiI-_61gqqgNIkNaEefziAe5gnjTlkKC/s320/aref1.JPG" /></a><br /><div><div><strong>Thoughts on the 5th anniversary of the arrest of Yassim Aref and Mohammed Hossain.<br /></strong><br />On Tuesday, August 4, 2009 over 100 people marched through the streets of Albany, New York to protest the FBI's tricking Yassim Aref and Mohammed Hossain into doing something that could look as if it was illegal and then putting them in jail for 15 years. The protesters marched from downtown Albany to a rally at the Masjid As-Salam Mosque, where both men used to worship. The march and rally was sponsored by the Muslim Solidarity Committee and a number of other local peace and justice groups, including my own, Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace. The Troy Record article on the march and rally can be found at the link below:<br /><br />http://www.troyrecord.com/articles/2009/08/05/news/doc4a78fd56e5a06730396981.txt<br /><br />Five years ago, I was with Mark Dunlea, an Albany activist, and Dave McReynolds, a peace activist (who was then the Green Party candidate for Senator from New York), when we heard that two "terrorists" had been arrested in Albany and that there would be a press conference about the arrests. The three of us jumped into my car and drove down to the press conference, where we found Governor Pataki, New York Senator Schumer and Albany Mayor Jennings talking tough about fighting terrorist activity in Albany. We decided to go to the mosque that had been attacked to hear their side of the story. When we arrived, we found a wall of cameras and press from everywhere in the country taking pictures of the inner-city, store-front mosque. The door was locked, but we noticed that there was a grocery store next to the mosque in which there were several men wearing Muslim garb. We went in and found that one of the men, named Faisal, was the son of the president of the mosque. We talked a little about what had happened, and it became clear to me that the arrested men were victims, not criminals, and needed support, especially from the non-Muslim community. I exchanged contact information with Faisal. A few weeks later, he and a couple of others from the mosque joined a support meeting at the Women’s Building on Central Avenue that had been called by Erin O’Brien and me. At the meeting, Faisal welcomed our support, but he was not sure about conducting a public campaign, so we agreed to stay in contact and to continue to discuss what we could do.<br /><br />From the very start of this case, it was clear to me that this case had nothing to do with terrorism. This is because:<br />1. I was an anti-war activist, and as such, I had thought about the phony War on Terror and had come to understand it as the US government’s justification for its imperial wars;<br />2. I had been involved in defending another man from the same mosque, Imam Umar, who was also attacked for fabricated reasons used to justify their war on Terror.<br /><br /><strong>The Case of Imam Umar<br /></strong><br />Imam Umar had worked for 25 years as a Muslim chaplain in the New York state prison system, eventually becoming the head of all chaplains in the state prisons. He was one of the first two Muslim chaplains in the US prisons; he founded the National Association of Muslim Chaplains and became its president. After the attacks on 9/11, the U.S. government sought to foster an atmosphere of fear in this country as a way of mobilizing people for war. The targets of their fear campaign were Arabs and Muslims in this country and around the world, who were branded as terrorists or supporters of terrorism. President Bush claimed that the US was attacked because these people hated our freedom and democracy. Imam Umar explained that this was not true, that people throughout the world all love freedom and democracy but that many people, especially in the third world, have legitimate grievances against the United States. Unless these were seriously addressed, he believed, we could never hope to stop terrorism.<br /><br />This kind of talk coming from a Black man and a Muslim could not be tolerated during the US build up for war, so Imam Umar was attacked by the government and the news media. They characterized him as promoting terrorism within the Muslim prison population. Articles attacking him appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other news media. New York Governor Pataki and Senator Schumer spoke out against him. Pataki denied him access to the New York State prisons, and Schumer called for the firing of all Muslim chaplains in the New York state prison system.<br /><br />Eventually, police raided Imam Umar’s home and carted away books, tapes, computers, financial records, his kids' game systems, and other personally possessions. They charged him with owning a .22 caliber rifle and a shot gun, which he had owned for several decades, since the time he had owned a farm in upstate New York. This was a crime, according to a law that Imam Umar wasn't aware of, which didn't allow him to own guns because he'd been arrested on a felony charge as a teenager over 38 years earlier. The government prosecuted him on this charge and tried to get him put in jail for 10 years.<br /><br />Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace (BNP) organized a defense. It was a very public defense with rallies, press conferences, petitions, and letter writing campaigns. We had Imam Umar speak at anti-war demonstrations, and we mobilized public support for him. We organized people to attend the court appearances in Manhattan. The government tried to get Imam Umar to take a plea deal requiring him not to appeal his conviction and to serve a little over a year and a half in prison. Umar refused the plea deal, and he went to trial, where he admitted owning the rifle and shotgun. BNP then organized a campaign to send letters to the judge asking for leniency in his sentencing. Letters came from neighbors, teachers, professors, doctors, and others representing a broad cross section of the population in the Bethlehem and Albany communities.<br /><br />At the sentencing hearing, Umar gave a political talk explaining what the prosecution of him was about. Then the judge gave a long talk that was sympathetic to Imam Umar; the judge seemed to understand that he had done nothing wrong and took the prosecution to task for prosecuting the case. For Imam Umar's “crime,” he received a $100 fine and one-year's worth of home imprisonment with very liberal exceptions. Umar was allowed to leave home to work, for medical reasons, and for religious practice. Umar then stood up in court and told the judge that he would refuse to wear an ankle bracelet, a device used to ensure that he is where he is mandated to be. He stated that this ankle bracelet was a throwback to the shackles worn by slaves, and he would not allow his children to see him this way. The judge agreed that he did not have to wear the ankle bracelet.<br /><br />Today, Imam Umar is back in court, but this time, Umar is the plaintiff and the government is the defendant. The government has refused to return Umar’s belongings, which they took when they raided his home and have never returned.<br /><br /><strong>Forming the Muslim Solidarity Committee<br /></strong><br />After the arrests of Aref and Hosssain, and after the first meeting at the Women’s Building, a second meeting was held at the Quaker Meeting House, on Washington Avenue in Albany, to form a defense committee for Aref and Hossain. About 50 people attended this meeting, including five or so from the mosque. Cathy Callan and May Safar took the leadership of the organization and were essential in its initial development. Cathy had experience as a member of the Imam Umar defense committee, which had been organized earlier by Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace, and the Muslim Solidarity Committee took a similar open and public posture. We organized petitions, rallies, and public meetings. We reached out to the media, and as the trial started, we organized vigils outside of the court house and packed the court room with supporters.<br /><br />In an Alice in Wonderland trial where everything was upside down and inside out, Aref and Hossain were convicted. The trial was tainted by secret evidence, “experts” with no knowledge of the field they were supposedly expert in, mistranslations, a government witness who was also a criminal, and a judge who instructed the jury that they could not hear all the evidence because it was classified, although he assured them that the unseen evidence was good. Above all, there had been no crime.<br /><br />What the FBI had done was to invent a crime and then did what it had to do to make it look like Aref and Hossain went along with it. The FBI did this so they could make Americans feel we are in danger from Muslims and that we should therefore support the murders of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan and willingly sign away our civil liberties here at home. They used a tactic described as “pre-emptive prosecution," which has as much validity as the “pre-emptive wars” that the U.S. has been fighting, neither of which make the people of the United States any more safe or secure--in fact, quite the opposite.<br /><br />The brief details of the case are that the government caught a Pakistani man name Malik selling illegal drivers licenses to other immigrants. They told him he was facing long prison time, but they could make the crime and prison time go away if he would participate in a sting operation to put Aref and Hossain in jail. When all of this started, Hossain, who owned a local pizza place, was having financial trouble. Malik started going to the mosque, befriended Hossain, and offered to loan him money. In the Muslim religion, interest on a loan is not permitted, so Malik made other arraignments: he would give Hossain more than the $5,000 he needed, and Hossain would return the rest. He explained that having money come from Hossain in this way was something that was needed for his import business. Hossain agreed, but he wanted it all in writing and wanted Aref, the Imam of the mosque, to validate that it was all legal according to Islamic law. This is a common practice among Muslims. All the meetings between Malik and Hossain, and later with Aref, were taped by the FBI.<br /><br />Slowly, as the meetings progressed, Malik started telling Hossain that he was going to use some of the money returned from Hossain for a hand-held missile to be used against a Pakistani official. Hossain objected, but continued with the loan arrangements and didn’t turn Malik in, so he was an accessory to a phony terrorist plot invented by the FBI. Aref claims that he did not know about the hand held missile but the government claims that he did. Although the government was taping the meetings the tape that had the “proof” that Aref knew had a problem and the “proof” never got taped. However, Malik’s FBI handler claimed that he was listening over Milik’s wire from his car and he heard Aref being told about the plot. Aref and Hossain were convicted in an atmosphere of fear and anger directed towards Muslims after 9/11.<br /><br />The Muslim Solidarity Committee organized the community to send letters to the judge, just as we had done with Imam Umar. We packed the courtroom during the sentencing and had others outside the court holding a vigil. Aref and Hossain made statements at the sentencing hearing Aref’s statement was defiant and political; he condemned the government as the real criminal. The federal sentencing guidelines called for each man to be sentenced to 30 years in prison, but the judge recognized mitigating circumstances, including the large amount of community support, and instead sentenced each man to 15 years in prison.<br /><br />The sentence of Aref and Hossain not only was a tremendous blow to them and to all Muslims and justice loving people, but it was tremendously devastating to their families. The Muslim Solidarity Committee and other community members have been doing their best to support the families. We have helped them with housing, schooling for their children, visits to the prisons, and other basic needs. If the aim of the FBI was to create a wedge between the Muslim and non-Muslim communities, they did not succeed.<br /><br />As the Muslim Solidarity Committee took form with listservs, websites, and a group of very committed people, we started learning about other similar cases in upstate New York and throughout the country. As a result, on the fourth anniversary of the arrest of Aref and Hossain, the Muslim Solidarity Committee held a conference with others working on similar cases. There, the Muslim Innocence Project, which became Project Salam (<a href="http://www.projectsalam.org/">http://www.projectsalam.org/</a>), a web site that seeks to collect Muslims throughout the country who also have been wrongly prosecuted, was formed. We hope to use this project as a way to further expose the government's crimes.<br /><br />As a result of this effort to reach out to others who have been wrongly prosecuted, we came in contact with the other groups of Muslims in similar situations, including a group from Newburgh, New York that the FBI and Malik tricked, and another group from Philadelphia known as the Ft. Dix Five. Family members and supporters of these groups joined our march and rally in Albany. While at the rally at the mosque, I spoke to one of the supporters from Philadelphia. He was trying to figure how the Muslim Solidarity Committee had accomplished so much. He mentioned that in Philadelphia, the mosques would not touch the case of the Fort Dix Five and would never have held a rally for the wrongly prosecuted Muslims. He was very impressed that non-Muslims and Muslims were working together and marching together for justice.<br /><br />Thinking about his question inspired me to write up this account. I think the answer to his question is our decision to be very public with our campaign and because we have incredibly committed people.<br /><br /><strong>Going Public</strong><br /><br />It is not always obvious to people that they should run a public campaign to defend someone who has been wrongfully prosecuted. Some people think that if you were to go public, you could anger the prosecution and the judge and they might therefore be harsher on the defendant. Lawyers sometimes advise against doing a public defense campaign, believing that they can make the best arguments to sway the court and that a public campaign could hurt their efforts. In my experience, both of these positions are wrong. They come from the notion that the government and the prosecution must have just made a mistake and so, with enough logic and argument, we could point this out to them and they would then do the right thing. I don’t think so. The firing of federal prosecutors who refused to conduct political prosecutions under the Bush administration is a clear sign that they know exactly what they are doing. Unfortunately, under the Obama administration, the same group of federal prosecutors is still doing the same thing as they did under Bush.<br /><br />The analysis presented in this article takes the position that the government and the prosecution know they are going after innocent men, are doing it for their own political reasons, and will not be swayed by argument. What might sway them is shining the light of day to their crimes, exposing their egregious violations of civil liberties and due process rights. This might cause them to back off, because the only power that can oppose the power of the courts, the police, and the government is the power of the people. This can happen only if people see the truth of what is going on and thus have a consciousness raising experience. Our campaigns in support of Aref and Hossain and other wrongfully prosecuted Muslims have helped expose the misdeed of the government. The government and the FBI have been made to pay a price, which they are still paying.<br /><br /><strong>Committed people<br /></strong><br />To conduct such a public campaign requires committed and brave people. The Muslim Solidarity Committee consists of such courageous people. It includes lawyers who have given of their time and efforts, for no pay, to achieve justice. We have the brave people from the Mosque who attended our rally and prayed and ate with us on August 4th, at a time when Muslims are still being set up. We have courageous and articulate defendants like Hossain and Aref, and a great group of people organizing meetings, web sites, transportation, editing writings and raising money.<br /><br />It is my hope that some of the lessons of our experience will be learned and replicated throughout the country. If this were to happen, the government would think twice about wrongfully prosecuting people. They would have to decide if they have more to lose than gain. </div></div>Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-85372937735517530032009-07-15T12:01:00.000-07:002009-07-20T06:14:03.123-07:00National Assembly Conference Report<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvExQEwmXlVcsFi1vfE8JajaQwcupkCZxOluXeHuz7kab5pEmz22wx7gOJ03Jh6xtRcZKGInIXdWKzxFlrE2smzqZhq6oyUNQZaxzhhyV27bSVRWAq_NK1LJg9XTl8Tz-haJKdDCFnVtzV/s1600-h/pittsburghjuly101209.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360529845962259218" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 170px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvExQEwmXlVcsFi1vfE8JajaQwcupkCZxOluXeHuz7kab5pEmz22wx7gOJ03Jh6xtRcZKGInIXdWKzxFlrE2smzqZhq6oyUNQZaxzhhyV27bSVRWAq_NK1LJg9XTl8Tz-haJKdDCFnVtzV/s320/pittsburghjuly101209.png" border="0" /></a><br /><div>Last weekend, July 10 – 12, the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations held its 2nd national conference. Although recently there has been a downturn in anti-war and other protest activity in the U.S., even as the conference was going on, the people of Honduras were fighting against a right-wing coup, Iranians were taking to the streets, efforts were being made to break the blockade of Gaza, and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan were continuing to escalate.<br /><br />The Conference was attended by more than 250 people including people from all of the major national coalitions: ANSWER, UFPJ, The World Can’t Wait, Bail and Out the People Coalition, and others. There also were members of Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War. Code Pink, American Friends Service Committee, Peace Action, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, US Labor Against the War, Pax Christi, the Iraq Moratorium, Progressive Democrats of America, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Green Party, and other national groups. People from local peace groups across the country, including Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace members Tim Herr, Trudy Quaif, and I, were present, as well. BNP set up its literature table and did brisk business throughout the weekend.<br /><br />The conference was held at LaRoche College in Pittsburgh and was hosted by the peace committee of the Thomas Merton Center, the main peace group in Pittsburgh. National leaders in attendance included Cindy Sheehan, Col. Ann Wright, and long time peace activist Molly Rush of the Plowshares 8, who also is a founding member of the Thomas Merton Center.<br /><br />Keynotes and talks were given by Michael McPhearson, Executive Director of Veterans for Peace and Co-Chair of UFPJ, Iraqi poet and National Assembly leader Zaineb Alani, National Assembly leader and human rights attorney Lynne Stewart, Michael Zweig, an economics professor and leader of U.S. Labor Against the War, and a others. A special presentation was given by Elie Domota, the General Secretary of the General Union of Workers of Guadalupe, which recently conducted a 45-day general strike on the Island of Guadalupe, where they are fighting against French colonial domination. There were also representative of the peace and labor movements from Canada and Haiti.<br /><br />All those in attendance had a voice and a vote in all proceedings of the conference.<br /><br />The main plenary sessions were dedicated to 1) developing an action proposal for the coming period; 2) deciding on an structure proposal for the National Assembly, including electing an Administrative Body to lead the organization until our next conference. The National Assembly continues to aim to bring unity to the anti-war movement in the US and hopes to do this around specific actions. The action proposal, in particular, was discussed in this light.<br /><br />Five action proposals were circulated to the activists who were present. One, from the National Assembly leadership, had been worked out over the prior four months. A second was withdrawn at the conference. The remaining three came from David Swanson, an author and activists and leader of the After Downing Street group; the World Can’t Wait coalition; and a group of 9/11 truth activists. All proposals were discussed and debated, and in the end, in the spirit of unity, all of the resolutions, with the exception of the proposal from the 9/11 truth activists, were consolidated into a unified action proposal. That proposal calls for building a series of actions in the fall and holding a national action next spring around the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The fall actions will take place on two dates: the first is September 24-25, when the G-20 summit will be held in Pittsburgh, and the second is October 17, around the anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan. The National Assembly will build the October 17th actions around the following demands:<br /><br />Immediately and unconditionally withdrawal of all U.S. troops, military personnel, bases,<br />contractors and mercenaries from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan!<br />End U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine! End to the siege against Gaza!<br />U.S. hands off Iran and North Korea!<br />Self-determination for all oppressed nations and peoples!<br />End war crimes, including torture!<br /><br />In addition, the National Assembly will support and endorse a two-week period of united mass actions beginning October 3 and culminating on October 17. This includes Monday, October 5, as the date for a national mass march and non-violent civil resistance at the U.S. House of Representatives office buildings and at the White House.<br /><br />This is an ambitious program of action, but there are enough people and groups committed to working on it, and every effort will be made to bring the entire anti-war movement into unified actions around these dates. The larger than expected attendance at this conference and the statements made there by leaders of the national anti-war groups suggests that we will be successful in this effort. To help build these actions, the National Assembly will sponsor a national speaking tour of one or more prominent people during the fall.<br /><br />In addition to the action proposal and the structure proposal, the conference also passed resolutions on the Honduras, Palestine, and Haiti and had a discussion and debate on the situation in Iran. These resolutions, along with this report, are posted on the Northeast Peace and Justice Action Coalition web site at <a href="http://www.nepajac.org/">http://www.nepajac.org/</a>. They also will be posted on the National Assembly web site at <a href="http://www.natassembly.org/">http://www.natassembly.org/</a>.<br /><br />The Iran discussion was friendly, although vastly differing opinions were expressed. Some felt that the anti-war movement must stand strong with the demonstrator in the streets in Iran while others believed that doing so could open the door to US or Israeli intervention. This issue could not be fully resolved at the conference, but all agreed on the importance of opposing any outside intervention in the Iranian struggle. The conference, therefore, supports the position of US hands off Iran! No Sanctions, No Intervention! Self determination for the Iranian people!<br /><br />The leadership body of the National Assembly is called the Continuations Body. It is comprised of representatives of national and local groups from throughout the country. I would encourage you to have a representative of your group on the Continuations Body. The Continuations Body meets monthly through a conference call.<br /><br />Finally, the conference elected a 14 member Administrative Body. The fourteen members are:<br /><br />Colia Clark – Chair, Richard Wright Centennial Committee; Grandmothers for Mumia Abu-Jamal<br />Alan Dale – Iraq Peace Action Coalition (Minnesota)<br />Donna Dewitt – President, South Carolina AFL-CIO<br />Mike Ferner – President, Veterans for Peace<br />Chris Geauvreau – Connecticut United for Peace<br />Jerry Gordon – National co-coordinator of the Vietnam-era National Peace Action Coalition and member of US Labor Against the War steering committee<br />Marilyn Levin – Boston United for Justice and Peace<br />Joe Lombardo – Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace (Albany, NY)<br />Jeff Mackler – Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice (San Francisco)<br />Fred Mason – President, Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO and co-convener of US Labor Against the War.<br />Mary Nichols-Rhodes – Progressive Democrats of America (Ohio)<br />Peter Shell – Thomas Merton Center Anti-war Committee (Pittsburgh)<br />Ashley Smith – International Socialist Organization (Vermont)<br />Lynne Stewart – Human Rights Attorney (New York)<br /><br />There were also a series of workshops at the conference on issues including the economy, Iran, Women and War, Students and many more. At the G-20 workshop, some of the first organizing for the G-20 demonstrations in Pitssburgh took place. An important workshop for our area that I attended was called Torture, Renditions, Detentions, Guantanamo and Wrongful Prosecutions: Holding Those Who Give the Orders Accountable. This workshop discussed many of the cases of Muslims who have been unjustly targeted which we in this area have been involved in. The workshop included Lynne Stewart; Jules Lobel, law professor University of Pittsburgh, author "Less Safe, Less Free," U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights litigator; Janet McMahon, Manging Editor, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs; David Swanson, confounder After Downing Street and Katherine Huges from the Dr. Dhafir Defense committee in Syracuse. The workshop was very well attended.<br /><br />I would like to have a NEPAJAC meeting in the near future to start discussions among all peace and justice groups in the Capital District of the actions planned for this fall. Although it is now the summer and anti-war activity is at a low point, the issues that brought us together in this struggle have not gone away. There is an escalation of the wars at a time of economic crisis that that is deeper than most of us have ever seen before. We have celebrated the end of the Bush era. It is now time to get back out in the streets.<br /><br />Peace,<br />Joe Lombardo</div>Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-64245651741320314862009-06-25T12:51:00.000-07:002009-06-26T06:01:11.397-07:00Thoughts on the Events in Iran<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYdZ4m_euzKws6OBshspL-8O1Lcn-EK9G6seEPnOXcjEDX71xXXEsDfvwXwkuXR0KnxrNxX-3odVTjdlicM7Z7BdpOYLCKFss9538ofFQhpa7nNfCobPzFQbUMdb5eyUexucs-BBslFPSn/s1600-h/Iran-protests-001.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5351359114958987602" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 192px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYdZ4m_euzKws6OBshspL-8O1Lcn-EK9G6seEPnOXcjEDX71xXXEsDfvwXwkuXR0KnxrNxX-3odVTjdlicM7Z7BdpOYLCKFss9538ofFQhpa7nNfCobPzFQbUMdb5eyUexucs-BBslFPSn/s320/Iran-protests-001.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>The elections as a whole were not democratic. The Mullahs, the Guardian Council, decided who can run and who couldn’t; this excluded most people who wanted to run. Those who were allowed to run were all people who the Mullahs could support. Mousavi is not much of a radical or moderate and not someone deserving of our support.<br /><br />In many ways, this is like the election between Kerry and Bush. Kerry would have carried out Bush’s agenda as is Obama because they are all representative of the Capitalist class. All the candidates in Iran are representative of the theocracy that rules there.<br /><br />In the US, it is not the Mullahs, but the capitalist class that decides who can run. In the US it is not done by decree, but through money, as is the preferred way in a capitalist democracy.<br /><br />Although the elections in Iran were rigged from the start, the Iranian system is more democratic than in other countries that the US does support such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia.<br /><br />Although the Iranian elections were rigged, I think there is mass support for Ahmadinejad. I think he probably won the election. This is not like the case in Mexico in 2006 where Calderon was declared the winner but most observers felt that Obrador won. In the Mexican case there were huge demonstrations for a long period of time but they were not looked at favorably by the US government or the US media unlike the Iranian demonstrations that are looked at favorably by both. In the case of Mexico, the opposition was deserving of our support.<br /><br />This is also unlike the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. There, the 2 candidates got about equal vote in the election but the US had a lot of influence in that country and was interested in furthering the break-up of the Soviet Union. The US played a crucial role in the Ukraine organizing demonstrations for the pro-western candidate and financing the opposition. As a result, today, the Ukraine is pro-US imperialism and supports the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the US is pushing to have them join NATO. In the Ukraine I think it would have been better for the Pro-US candidate to lose.<br /><br />In Iran, neither candidate is pro-US. In fact, Mousavi, who was the prime-minister in Iran during the 1980s, has been one of the biggest advocates for pushing Iran’s nuclear program. I don’t believe that the US wants to see him in any more than Ahmadinejad. Also, the US does not have the same influence in Iran as it had in the Ukraine. The US cannot direct the mobilizations as it did in the Ukraine. I think this is why the US response has been muted, unlike in the Ukrainian situation.<br /><br />Also, I think that the US assessment of the situation in Iran is that Mousavi will not be put in office and will not win this round with Ahmadinajad. So, by giving him support, they will not gain. All the US can hope for in Iran is to use it for propaganda value to build more support for invasion.<br /><br /><br />The main point about the US and the Iranian situation is that the US government would love an excuse to invade Iran. We, in the US, must build opposition to any moves to invade. This is one of the reasons that it is important to maintain a strong anti-war movement in the US. War will continue to be an ever-present part of US foreign police.<br /><br />I think it is important for us to point out the hypocrisy of the US in this situation. It was the US government who overthrew the democratically elected, secular Mossadegh government in Iran and installed the brutal Shah in power. When the Iranian people went out into the streets and overthrew the Shah, his forces shot them down by the thousands but we saw no outcry from the US politicians or the media.<br /><br />So, I think the position of the US left should not be in support of the Ahmadinejad regime because they “won the elections,” or because they will be more anti-imperialist than Mousavi. I think neither is true. The elections were not democratic from the start, and Mousavi will stand up for the theocracy and against the US to the same extent as Ahmadinejad – and maybe as a better representative for them than Ahmadinejad. And the theocracy running the country makes Iran a not so good anti-imperialist power in any case. Eventually the Iranian people will need to overthrow the theocracy, but that is not the fight going on in Iran today regardless of the fact that many in the streets want to overthrow them.<br /><br />Similarly, I don’t think that the left should support the opposition because it will not lead to change for the Iranian people and it will be wrong to imply that it will.<br /><br />That said, I think that many people in Iran who are opposed to the repression in Iran have been drawn into the demonstrations. It is always possible that people in motion can take a situation further than it was intended to go. I think it is important to watch this process in Iran as it develops.<br /><br />Joe Lombardo</div>Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-74732922009470690462009-06-07T09:58:00.000-07:002009-07-23T10:28:59.408-07:00Who are the Terrorists?I was unable to find the word “terrorist” in my local paper, the Times Union, in the AP article on the murder of Dr. George Tiller. I was terribly shocked at this brutal murder of a man who devoted his life to helping women, but I was also shocked to see his killer described as “An activist abortion opponent.” Why not terrorist?<br /><br />Is this word reserved only for Muslims? Is the murdering of doctors who perform abortions terrorism? Is the bombing of abortion clinics terrorism? Was the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics terrorism? What about the bombing of the federal building in Okalahoma city or the bombing of Black churches in the South or the killing of gays because they are gay? Are these acts terrorism? Is it because these perpetrators are Christians that they are not called terrorists?<br /><br />The most terror that this world has seen has been from Christian groups like the Nazi’s and fascists in Europe, like the inquisitions of the Catholic Church or the cross burnings of the KKK or the killings and bombings of US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-40140437503784109552009-05-06T14:22:00.000-07:002009-05-06T14:27:01.218-07:00Swine Flu and Economic MeltdownThere is a connection between the economic meltdown that is bringing the economies of the world to their knees and the swine flu. The connection is deregulation. Many are now calling the swine flu the NAFTA flu because it is believed to have started on a pig farm in Mexico owned by the US pork giant Smithfield Farms. The first known case of the swine flu was in the Mexican town of La Gloria, near the farm. Hundreds of other people in that town were infected. <br /> <br />In 1985, Virginia-based Smithfield Farms was fined by the EPA for dumping toxic hog waste into the Chesapeake Bay. In 1994, soon after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed, Smithfield Farms moved its operations to Mexico, where it would not have to follow strict environmental regulations. This move not only cost the US jobs but may now have cost us our health.<br /> <br />The Smithfield Farms facility in Mexico is an environmental nightmare. A Mexican paper described it as, “Clouds of flies emanate from the rusty lagoons where the Carroll Ranches business tosses the fecal wastes of its pig farms.” <br /> <br />Deregulation similarly affected the financial industry in the US and brought down the rest of the world’s economies. It was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act in 1999, a law geared to protect bank deposits from the speculative activity of investment bankers that contributed to the present economic crisis. It was congressional legislation forbidding the regulation of exotic financial dealings like Collateralized Debt Obligations(CDOs) and Credit Default Swaps (CDS) that put our economy at risk. <br /> <br />Yet, there has been no move to repeal NAFTA, reinstate Glass-Steagall, or outlaw CDOs or CDSs. Instead we ask working people to weather the flu and give our tax dollars to bail out the financial institution, so they can keep doing what caused the crisis in the first place. Instead of stopping the evils of unbridled capitalism, we ask state workers to accept layoffs, pay lags, and wage freezes. Perhaps its time to rethink these policies.Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-81277376269157022262009-04-15T18:36:00.001-07:002009-05-15T07:47:52.300-07:00Pirates, Terrorists and War LordsAlthough we are all relieved by the release of Captain Richard Phillips from his Somalia captors, there seems to be much more to the story than is being reported. First of all, Captain Phillips' ship, the Maersk Alabama, is part of the fleet owned by the Denmark-based Moller-Maersk company, which is one of the US Department of Defense’s primary shipping contractors. However, according to the DoD, it was not under contract at the time it was overtaken. But the Maersk Alabama, a ship used by the US DoD and carrying an all American crew, was supposedly delivering food aid to Kenya and going right through the so called pirate infested waters off Somalia. Why did they not simply avoid those waters? Some have suggested that it was a provocation, done as a prelude to a US military intervention on the horn of Africa. As former UN Ambassador John Bolton said on April 11, we need a “coalition of the willing” to invade Somalia.<br /><br />Other important questions are, who are these pirates? Why do other countries not have such bands of pirates? Recently, a New York Times article quoted one of them, Sugule Ali, as saying, “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits...we consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump wastes in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.” Every country claims 12 miles beyond its shores as its territorial waters and an additional 250 miles as its “exclusive economic zone.” Each country is allowed to control all economic activities in these waters.<br /><br />After the Somali civil war in the late 1980's, the central government was no longer able to patrol and control activity in these waters. Fleets from other countries started fishing in this area, devastating the Somalia fishing industry; other countries started dumping industrial waste off the Somalia coast, including nuclear waste that sickened the coastal populations. Around that time, the Somalia fishing cooperatives banded together to patrol their waters and save their industry and people. Instead of the US and other advanced countries' condemning and stopping the illegal activities of other countries off the Somalia coast, they branded the Somalian protectors as "pirates," and they are now on a full scale campaign to stop them.<br /><br />The word pirate is just one in a growing lexicon used by our government and the media to sway public opinion. If we don’t like a government, its leaders are "war lords." If a band of people don’t like what the US is doing in their country and try to stop it, they are "terrorists," and if fishing cooperatives band together to protect their territorial waters, they are "pirates."<br /><br />Certainly, some of these so called pirates are out for their own economic gain. But there is illegal activity in all devastatingly poor areas around the world, including in inner cities of the US. Using strong-armed tactics against the Somalian people will never correct the situation, because it doesn’t deal with the underlying problem of the wealthy nations taking advantage of the poor.Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-47931098993491112112009-03-24T18:55:00.000-07:002009-04-17T13:12:45.793-07:00Protests on the 6th Anniversary of the Iraq Invasion<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyT8DOM_xex4VZ4l-TCSARDRCWXhGnc2nzIEcCa9tE5R-gy2Ds6i-igKbqkUb6JKvLsHVoGna5vMM4tQ4dWS4jy6pd_6ArDdtGYAJmy5xIf-OC8As9QAYdU2uN6x_xvjCu8rZeMcLgHTit/s1600-h/3-21.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyT8DOM_xex4VZ4l-TCSARDRCWXhGnc2nzIEcCa9tE5R-gy2Ds6i-igKbqkUb6JKvLsHVoGna5vMM4tQ4dWS4jy6pd_6ArDdtGYAJmy5xIf-OC8As9QAYdU2uN6x_xvjCu8rZeMcLgHTit/s320/3-21.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316939873417999474" /></a><br /><br /><br />The March 21 anti-war rally in Washington was an important success, but smaller than past rallies. It was very important that it happened because if not, there would have been no national action on the 6th anniversary of the war in Iraq in the country that is responsible for the war, the US. Actions also took place in San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as several other places. Other important features of the march were the diversity and youthfulness of the demonstrators. <br /><br />We had a bus from Albany. There were also a few from Albany who could not get on our bus and went with a bus from Kingston, some left from the Yankee Trails bus barn in East Greenbush. Other area buses that I am aware of are 2 from Rochester, 1 from Ithaca, 1 from Syracuse and 3 from Hartford. Our bus included a number of students from SUNY, Siena and Bethlehem High School. About half of our bus was students. A number of others from our area came down by their own means and I saw several at the rally.<br /><br />The march was very long and took us past a number of corporate war profiteers where we left coffins to show the effects of their work. <br /><br />At the demonstrations there were provocations, ostensibly organized by anarchists. Below is a quote from a report by Jerry Gordon, a central leader of the National Assembly, based upon a discussion with Brian Becker, a leader of the ANSWER coalition.<br /><br />“In D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles, there were planned provocations ostensibly conducted by anarchists but actually the work of police agents and the Feds. In D.C. this group put up a mesh fence which prevented marchers from passing without doing a detour around the obstruction. Those participating in the provocation yelled out slogans denouncing and redbaiting ANSWER and other forces as racists. But when the march reached the corporate headquarters of one of the big plane manufacturers, five of the "anarchists" showed their police credentials and were admitted into the building. Pictures of this were taken by demonstrators and when this was discovered, a frantic but unsuccessful effort was made by the cops to seize the pictures. In the course of this, a cop had a gun pointed only inches from Brian's face. ANSWER has the pictures and will launch an initiative to pull together a coalition of civil liberty groups to cope with and expose an evolving trend of federal law enforcement and local police activity designed to disrupt peaceful antiwar demonstrations”<br /><br /> <br /><br />Besides the importance of the national peace movement demonstrating on the 6th anniversary of the war, I believe that building the demonstration was essential for the peace movement. It was difficult to build the rally even though sentiment in this country against the wars has never been greater. People organizing the rally nationally like ANSWER and the National Assembly, which I was working with, understood that the rally would be smaller because of the political period that we are in. Obama is still in his honeymoon period with the American people who are convinced, in their majority, that he is ending the war in Iraq. There also appears to be less violence in Iraq. The government and media attribute this to the surge; however, most observers in the peace movement understand that it has to due with other factors including the success of US government’s tactic of divide and rule. This has manifested itself in Iraq through outright bribery of Sunni leaders outside of Baghdad and ethnic cleansing in Baghdad. The ethnic cleansing has reduced the population of Baghdad from roughly 50% Sunni to 10% Sunni. It has caused millions of refugees and thousands of deaths. Additionally, I think other factors contributed to the size of the rally including the economic meltdown which has dominated the media and the thinking of the American people. Also, as you know, the divisions in the anti-war movement have had an effect as UFPJ moves away from the issue of the wars and the bitter split between ANSWER and UFPJ continues. It will take some time for these factors to play out.<br /><br /> <br /><br />If there was no national demonstration on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the anti-war movement would become invisible. It would go into retreat and have to be rebuilt at a future date. As it stands now, the organizing for this demonstration has kept the issues in front of the American people and helped build a new young leadership for our movement that is beginning to step forward. In July, the National Assembly will hold its second nation conference. All national and local anti-war groups will be invited. As with the first conference anyone who comes will have voice and vote. Here we hope to assess where the anti-war movement is and how to move forward. If you are interested in coming to this conference in Pittsburg, please let me know. <br /><br /> <br />Peace,<br />Joe LombardoJoe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-79306675717943265252009-02-08T15:31:00.000-08:002009-04-29T13:12:22.096-07:00Battered Women, Child Custody and the Progressive MovementOver the weekend of January 9th – 11th, 2009, I attended the 6th Annual Battered Mothers Custody Conference in Albany, NY. I had also attended the previous five conferences. Each conference was organized by my partner, Dr. Mo Hannah, a professor of psychology at Siena College, near Albany.<br /> <br />I have been a political activist all my life. I grew up in a family of political activists, and I have devoted my entire life, as my parents did, to making the world a better place. During my journey, I have learned much that is deplorable about our government and its institutions. Yet even I had a hard time believing the cruelty and injustice of the family court system toward battered mothers and their children, which this conference is dedicated to exposing. Today, I am a believer.<br /> <br />The stories I heard each year at the conference go something like this:<br /><br /><em>I was in an abusive marriage and finally found the courage to leave. I was living in fear of my husband but afraid to leave. I didn’t know what he would do to me and I had no means to live on my own. But, when I discovered that he was abusing our daughter, I knew I had no choice. I came to the shelter and I filed for divorce.</em><br /> <br /><em>In the course of the divorce hearing, when I told the judge of the abuse that my daughter and I suffered at my husband’s hands, he seemed skeptical. Although he seemed to understand that there was some abuse, he said that he did not see a “pattern” of abuse and thought I was “overreacting.” I was accused of “parental alienation,” meaning he thought that I was trying to keep my child away from her father out of vindictiveness. As a result, my husband was given custody of our daughter and I was given supervised visitation.</em><br /><br /><em>When they came to get my daughter and bring her to her father, she tried to hold onto me and she cried and begged me to not let her go. I tried not to cry and told her I would do everything I could. When she left, I did to cry, and I still cannot stop crying. How can they prevent me from protecting my daughter? How can I survive knowing what she is suffering at the hands of her abuser, and I am not allowed to help her?</em><br /><br />You can hear some of these mothers telling their stories at: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5viwjaIorU8">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5viwjaIorU8</a><br /><br />One such story at this year’s conference was told by Jennifer Collins (<a href="http://americanchildrenunderground.blogspot.com/">http://americanchildrenunderground.blogspot.com/</a>). Jennifer is a 22 year old woman who survived this kind of experience as a child. When she told her mother that her father was hurting her and her brother, her mother, Holly, told this to the judge. The judge told Holly that she was “overreacting,” probably because she was abused herself as a child. Jennifer, who was seven years old at the time, and her brother were taken from their mother and given to their father. Jennifer described the abuse in her father’s home including the time her father broke her brother’s skull by knocking his head against the wall. Holly was given supervised visitation. At one visit, when Jennifer told her mother that her father was hitting her and showed her mother the bruises, the supervisor told Jennifer that she cannot talk to her mother about that. After 18 months, Jennifer and her brother snuck out of their father’s home and found their way to their mother’s house. Their mother took the kids and ran. Eventually, she was discovered in the Netherlands. The US demanded Holly’s extradition in order to prosecute her for child kidnapping. For three years, she fought the extradition while she and her kids lived in a Dutch refugee camp with refugees from Somalia and other repressive governments. After three years, the Dutch government granted them asylum.<br /><br />Jennifer is now a 22-year old adult who travels throughout the United States speaking out against family court injustice. She has formed an organization of adult children who have “aged out” of the court system’s jurisdiction. The name of her organization is “Children Against Court Appointed Child Abuse – CA3” (<a href="http://www.ca3cacaca.blogspot.com/">www.ca3cacaca.blogspot.com/ </a>). A similar organization called Courageous Kids (<a href="http://www.courageouskids.net">www.courageouskids.net</a>) was formed several years earlier by other adult child victims. Several members of the Courageous Kids group were at this and previous conferences.<br /> <br /><strong>Why?</strong><br /><br />For many who hear about these travesties the question is, why? Why would the courts respond to domestic violence victims this way? The question of “why” is always difficult to answer because those running the courts, and judges, like other abusers, deny the abuse and therefore see no need to explain their actions.<br /> <br />The most important thing allies of abused women and children can do for them is to keep on believing them. It took a very long time for the criminal courts to believe the victims of domestic violence or rape. They would often blame the victim or dismiss the case as a “domestic situation,” telling the parties to go home and resolve their issues. This has changed somewhat in the criminal courts over the past two decades, largely due to the women’s and domestic violence movements. But the family courts still have a long way to go.<br /><br />In custody situations, the presumption once was that the mother would get custody because she was the primary care giver for the children. That has now changed. In the overwhelming majority of cases the mother is still the primary care giver but the courts have changed from the presumption that the mother should have custody to a presumption that it is better for the children if both parents have equal access to the children. This is fine when there are two loving and caring parents, but when the children are used as pawns in on-going disputes between the divorcing parents or when there is domestic violence or child abuse involved, equal access and joint custody are the exact wrong solutions. <br /> <br />We live in a country facing tremendous economic and social pressures, a society that glorifies violence and remains in a state of almost perpetual war. These features have contributed to the epidemic of domestic abuse we see today. However, family courts continue in their refusal to acknowledge this reality, and judges with no understanding of domestic violence continue to re-victimize battered mothers and their children with their disastrous court decisions.<br /><br />A woman who has been abused is not only hurt physically but also mentally and emotionally. Many display symptoms similar to the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms that soldiers returning from war zones exhibit. When these women go before a judge and are confronted with the possibility that their children may be taken from them and given to their abuser, they often become emotional. The abusive partner, on the other hand, may come across as cool, calm, and logical. While the mother’s emotion may be taken as a negative, if the father shows emotion it is usually viewed far more sympathetically as if it shows he is a good father and cares about his children. The judge may, therefore, see him as the better parent.<br /> <br />All through the family courts there is a double standard that works against mothers. If she is emotional, it's a negative; if she is not emotional, it's also a negative. If she has a job, she cares more about her work than about her children; if she doesn't work for a living, she's seen as unable to adequately provide for her children. If she does not fight to keep her children away from the abuser, she is accused of "failure to protect"; if she does fight for them, she is seen as trying to alienate the children from their father or not being open to his having "equal access" to them. Protective mothers find themselves in a Catch 22 hell in family court.<br /> <br /><strong>Parental Alienation Syndrome</strong><br /><br />The rationale often used for taking children away from a protective mother and giving them to an abusive father is called "parental alienation syndrome" (PAS). Parental alienation syndrome is the invention of an anti-Semitic, quack, now-deceased psychiatrist named Richard Gardner. PAS is based on pseudo-science and not accepted as a credible syndrome by any of the relevant psychiatric or psychological associations. While it is possible for one parent to speak badly of the other in the course of divorce proceedings and probably happens often, to claim that this is a psychological syndrome, a "disorder" that makes its sufferer an unfit parent is both fraudulent and absurd. Gardner actually claimed that PAS does more damage to children than real physical and sexual abuse. <br /> <br />PAS is almost never used against men. It is not uncommon for abusive fathers to claim that they are not abusive and that the mother is only saying so to discredit them in the course of the custody hearing. According to an American Psychological Association's report of a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s study, “Fathers who batter the mother are twice as likely to seek sole physical custody of their children than are nonviolent fathers.” Various other studies report that these men will get custody in anywhere from 33% to 70% of the cases, depending on the study. In these cases PAS is typically used to support their position.<br /> <br /><strong>The Father Supremacy Movement</strong><br /><br />PAS is championed by the so called Fathers Rights movement (FRs), also known as the Father Supremacy movement. These groups claim that men are as likely as women to be victims of domestic violence--this despite U.S. Dept. of Justice statistics that show women as the victims of domestic violence in 86% of cases. FRs claim that most reports of domestic violence are false and that these false claims, rather than domestic violence, are the real problem. However, numerous studies have shown that false claims of rape or domestic violence are uncommon. The Father Supremacy groups direct batterers towards legal services that will help them build a PAS argument in their cases and teach them how to use their typically superior financial positions to harass their former partners through the court system, driving them into bankruptcy in their quest to hurt these women the most--by taking their children away from them. <br /><br />Many men who have gone through a divorce, including this author, are repulsed by the belligerent, vindictive, anti-women tone of these organizations and their many web sites. These groups are organized remnants of the fight against equality for women. They are throwbacks to a time when women and children were considered the man’s property. These men become incensed when “their” woman stands up to them on behalf of herself and her children. This anger is what drives these groups: one of the last vestiges of male supremacy in our society. Unfortunately, these men all too often find a receptive ear in the family court system.<br /> <br /><strong>The case of Barry Goldstein</strong><br /><br />Sometimes family court judges go so far as to discipline lawyers for vigorously defending protective mothers. Such is what happened to attorney Barry Goldstein, who has defended many victims of domestic violence and has been a tireless advocate for them inside and outside the courtroom.<br /><br />Barry was, for awhile, the attorney for Genia Shockome, a protective mother living in Dutchess County, New York. Genia is a Russian born engineer whose ex-husband, Tim Shockome, had two prior foreign brides before he married Genia. They had two children together before Genia filed for divorce and custody of the children, stating that he had been abusing her for years. At one point, he was convicted in criminal court for harassing her, but in family court, he was able to use Parental Alienation against Genia, and he eventually won sole custody of the children. The case was described in an article in Newsweek magazine (<a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/35157">http://www.newsweek.com/id/35157</a>). <br /> <br />At one point, while 8 month pregnant, Genia was appearing on her own behalf in front of the family court judge, who ruled that her ex-husband could move away with the children to Texas. After Genia persisted in objecting to the judge's ruling thinking she was establishing a record for an appeal, the judge ordered her jailed for one month. Barry then posted an article on an internet blog criticizing the judge’s action.<br /> <br />In retaliation, this same judge filed attorney disciplinary charges against Barry, claiming that his statements on the blog were false. The appellate court of the State of New York convicted Barry of this and other charges and suspended Barry's license to practice law for an astonishing five years. The message this sends to other attorneys in these cases is don't defend your clients too strongly and you don't have first amendment rights to speak to the public if the court disagrees with what you are saying.<br /><br />At the Sixth Battered Mothers Custody Conference, a resolution supporting Barry Goldstein and condemning the decision of the appellate court was proposed and passed. The text of the resolution, signed by the Battered Mothers Custody Conference, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and NOW New York State, was sent to the justices of the appellate court, the New York State Attorney General and the Governor of New York. <br /> <br /><strong>The Progressive Movement, Domestic Violence, and Child Custody</strong><br /><br />The issues addressed by the Battered Mothers Custody Conference that are affecting thousands of women today are not typically addressed by the progressive movement in this country but ought to be. Some may believe that these issues are personal, not political. The same justification was used by many progressives in the early days of the women’s movement. Today, however, we understand that much of what is considered personal is political. Those of us who fight for social justice are motivated by the image of a society where there is true equality. We envision a world where people are not driven by economic needs, fear and insecurity, which play a big part in divorce proceedings. In such a society human relations will change; Violence would be an anathema. In such a society, the need of the small elite, who rule today, to divide and conquer, will wither away and equality for all will become the norm. In such a society, the concept of the family will change as will divorce and custody issues. However, the fight to achieve such a society is embodied in each and every struggle for equality and justice--including the struggle on behalf of protective mothers and their children. <br /> <br />The web site for the Battered Mothers Custody Conference is <a href="http://www.batteredmotherscustodyconference.org/">http://www.batteredmotherscustodyconference.org/</a>. I urge those in the peace and justice movement and other progressive causes to go to the web site, consider attending the next conference and to use the weight of your organizations to support women in your community who are facing this abuse from their partner or the family court system. <br /><br />Joe LombardoJoe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-7895724778831402222009-01-04T12:20:00.000-08:002009-02-09T16:55:29.390-08:00A program to save the working people of New YorkThe following is flyer that I and others wrote and handed out at a mass rally of New York State workers opposing the Governor's Budget cuts. <br /><br />New York, thanks to the worldwide economic crisis, faces a projected state budget shortfall of over $13 billion. In a move worthy of Herbert Hoover, Governor Paterson wants to cut education, healthcare and local government and levy new taxes on everything form haircuts to cable TV. <br /><br />Working people already bear the brunt of this crisis. A trillion-dollar “bailout” of our tax money has already gone to the titans of Wall Street. Yet the Governor wants New York’s public employees to shoulder more than others. He wants to confiscate a week’s pay, a “lag,” meaning we work a week but don’t get paid for it until we die or retire. He wants us to re-open union contracts to give back what we won at the bargaining table and earned through hard work.<br /><br />The gap between the rich and the poor in the United States has never been so severe. Today the top 1% of the population is wealthier than the bottom 95%. The richest 400 people possess more wealth than the bottom 150,000,000 people, combined. But the rich are not being asked to pay for the crisis their own greed created -- we have bailed them out. Now Governor Paterson asks us for further sacrifice. Instead, we can make New York a better place to live and work!<br /> <br /><strong>A 4-point plan to solve the state’s fiscal crisis:</strong><br /> <br /><strong>Tax the Rich!</strong><br />Those with top incomes in the state previously paid over 15% in taxes. Today they pay less than 7%. More than 400 New Yorkers make over $35 million per year. By requiring those who make over $250,000 per year to pay their fair share in taxes, and with an additional 1% income tax surcharge for those with incomes over $1 million per year, the state would erase the projected budget shortfall.<br /> <strong><br />Tax All Financial Transactions!</strong><br />When you buy a new shirt you pay sales tax (8% or more for 85% of New Yorkers). However, when a Wall Street investor buys or sells $1 million in stocks or futures or bonds or interest rate swaps, he pays no tax. All financial transactions should be charged a minimum tax, for example a national tax of one-half of 1%, an amount estimated to yield over $150 billion in national revenue. This would also deter the day trading and speculation that exacerbates wild price swings. New York would completely rescue its state budget with a tiny state tax of just 5/100ths of 1% per financial transaction. <br /> <br /><strong>End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!</strong><br />The Iraq war costs around $5,000 per second. The US plans to further escalate the war in Afghanistan. New York National Guard members fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and US troops are stationed in over 120 countries around the world. We can no longer tolerate spending trillions for war. New York’s share for the war in Iraq alone has been more that $66 billion, $12 billion this fiscal year. If the taxes paid by New York residents for war in Iraq and Afghanistan went into the state treasury instead, it would balance the state budget.<br /> <br /><strong>Single-payer healthcare!</strong><br />When we lose our job we lose our health insurance. A single-payer health system, like proposal in Congressional bill HR 676, will insure that ALL people have ALL necessary medical care. It would also yield a massive economic stimulus, liberating money that now goes to out-of-pocket health expenses and creating healthcare jobs. It would remove the confusion, waste, advertising and profit of private health insurers. A single-payer medical care system would reduce health spending in New York by at least $20 billion annually.Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-64760381523689389182008-12-19T13:22:00.000-08:002008-12-19T13:26:53.337-08:00United for Peace and Justice National ConferenceThe national conference of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) took place in Chicago over the December 12 – 14 weekend. The conference was attended by around 200 people, including Trudy Quaif, Tim Herr, and me (Joe Lombardo) as representatives of Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace. BNP also brought along its literature table, which did a brisk business. <br /> <br />At the conference, we discussed a number of documents prepared by the UFPJ steering committee and elected a new steering committee to serve until the next conference. The UFPJ steering committee documents included a unity proposal, a structure proposal, and a proposal for action. Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace joined with 18 other UFPJ groups in proposing two amendments to the documents. <br /> <br />The first amendment was on Afghanistan. In the UFPJ documents, the war in Afghanistan seems to be downplayed. While the UFPJ documents still called for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, they did not do so for Afghanistan. Our amendment basically said that Afghanistan is not the “good war,” as some contend, and that UFPJ should call for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. Ashley Smith from Vermont presented the motivations for passing this amendment, which appeared to have strong support. After some discussion, the UFPJ leadership decided to accept the amendment as "friendly," which means that it got adopted.<br /> <br />The second amendment was on unified spring actions around the anniversary of the war in Iraq. Specifically, the amendment called for UFPJ’s support for a March 21 demonstration at the Pentagon, which is being supported by a broad array of peace groups, including ANSWER, the National Assembly, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and others. Although IVAW did not formally attend the conference, a flyer was circulated from their National Board of Directors calling for UFPJ to support the March 21 action. The UFPJ document that we sought to amend called for a number of actions on various issues leading up to a rally on Wall Street on April 4th around the issues of “re-ordering of economic priorities.” The supporters of our amendment were not opposed to any of the actions that the UFPJ leadership proposed, so we asked that we not counter-pose the resolutions and simply include one more action in the UFPJ proposal, March 21. The UFPJ leadership said that it would be too much to work on their actions plus March 21, so they wanted the two proposals to be counter-posed. That means that the delegates had to vote for one or the other, but not both.<br /><br />Motivations for our amendment were given by Marilyn Levin from Boston. There were three speakers for the amendment and three against. There were three Iraqis at the conference; all of them supported our March 21 amendment. The three speakers for our amendment included two of the Iraqis and me. There was then a motion to have open discussion for a half-hour. That motion was defeated, and so the discussion ended. The vote was 49 for March 21 and 111 against.<br /> <br />There was also a discussion around the structure of the steering committee. The UFPJ leadership proposed having 40 members, 20 voted by the conference and 20 permanent positions from the national groups that support UFPJ. The discussion was mainly opposed to this structure, so the proposal was dropped. I was nominated for the UFPJ steering committee but was not elected. <br /><br />All of the above was placed in the context of the recent elections. The UFPJ leadership felt that we are now in a new political period brought on by Obama's election and by the movement that his campaign engendered. They believe that there are now massive numbers of young people and African Americans who became politically active around the campaign and that this requires a new orientation for UFPJ. Although this was never said explicitly, I interpreted this to mean that they did not want to put forward positions that might be construed as opposing Obama. I believe this is why the Afghanistan war was downplayed, why they moved away from the anti-war issue as being central to their orientation in the coming year, and why they did not want to have a demonstration in Washington.<br /> <br />Immediately after the conference, the call for the March 21 Pentagon march was solidified. I’m sure that many of you saw the e-mail that came from the ANSWER coalition. Below is the call from the National Assembly. An ad hoc coalition is being set up to build the action, and a web site is being created. <br /> <br />I strongly believe that as long as we have troops occupying two countries, we must keep a strong anti-war movement that is visible and out in the streets. As the Iraqis who spoke for the March 21 resolution told the UFPJ conference, the Iraqi and Afghan people need to see a strong movement against the war in the US. The present condition of the economy and the people coming into political motion around the Obama campaign simply mean that we have a greater opportunity today to build the anti-war movement and relate the war to the fiscal crisis, jobs, and other issues that have become pressing during this period.<br /><br />Although I will encourage the anti-war movement to build the March 21 action, I think that organizations, especially those close to New York City, should also participate in any Wall Street action that develops out of the UFPJ call. Although we did not achieve formal unity this spring, those of us who support unity should practice it by supporting the Wall Street action. Perhaps we can build an anti-war contingent with a slogan like, “Money for jobs, not for war.”<br />If you would like to discuss any of these developments with me, please contact me at jlombard@nycap.rr.com or 518-439-1968<br /><br />Peace,<br />Joe Lombardo<br /><br /> <strong>March on the Pentagon! March 21, 2009</strong><br /><br />The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations is joining with other coalitions, organizations, and networks in a united MARCH 21 NATIONAL COALITION to organize the broadest mobilization of people across the United States to take part in a March on the Pentagon on the sixth year of the military invasion and occupation of the Iraq War: Saturday, March 21.<br /> <br />Demonstrations will also be held on that date in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities across the U.S. <br /> <br />These actions will remind the nation that all U.S. military forces must be brought home from Afghanistan and Iraq, and that the U.S. antiwar movement – marching behind a banner demanding “Out Now!’ – will intensify its struggle to make it happen. <br />The actions are needed to assure the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries threatened by Washington’s expansionist policies that tens of millions of people in this country support their right to settle their own destinies without U.S. interventions, occupations and murderous wars. International law recognizes – and we demand – that the U.S. respect the right to self-determination. We reject any notion that the U.S. is the world’s self-appointed cop. <br /> <br />The March 21 united mass actions are also needed at this time of economic meltdown to demand jobs for all; a moratorium on foreclosures; rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure; guaranteed, quality health care for all; an end to the ICE raids and deportations; and funding for sorely needed social programs. So long as trillions of dollars continue to be spent on wars, occupations, and bailouts to the banks and corporate elite, the domestic needs of the people of the U.S. can never be met.<br />The So-called Status of Forces Agreement<br /><br />As for Iraq, the so-called “Status of Forces Agreement” offers proof positive that far from ending the U.S. occupation, the plan is to extend it indefinitely. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops and mercenary soldiers will be maintained to carry out a number of stated missions, but in reality their aim is to carry out the one mission that is not stated: Ensure the U.S. subjugation of Iraq to exploit its oil resources and dominate the Middle East.<br /><br />Any doubt about Washington’s intentions should be dispelled by the statement by Gen. Raymond Odierno who said on December 13, 2008 that U.S. forces would remain indefinitely in dozens of bases in Iraq cities, despite the language in the Status of Forces Agreement that appears to require a withdrawal from urban areas by next summer. (Wall Street Journal 12/15/08)<br /><br />As for Afghanistan, it is not the “good war” claimed by the Obama administration and the power structure, which plans to increase the number of U.S. troops in that country by 20,000. Afghanistan will prove to be another U.S. Vietnam. The Soviet Union’s intervention in Afghanistan resulted in a million Afghanis being killed, along with 15,000 Soviet troops. The U.S. war will only result in a continuation of the slaughter that has been the hallmark of all previous occupations by foreign powers.<br /><br />The daily U.S. bombing and killing of Afghanis attending weddings, classes, funerals, or simply trying to survive shows how cruel and deadly this war is. It is directed against the same forces that the U.S. armed, financed, and helped bring to power.<br /><br />Why is the U.S. at war against Afghanistan? To gain control of a pipeline across that country. (See the 1998 statement submitted to Congress by the Union Oil Company of California, which later merged with Chevron, stressing the need to build a natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan. And note Dick Cheney’s 1998 statement made when he was chief executive of a major oil services company: “I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian,” which led the Guardian newspaper to remark “But the oil and gas there is worthless until it is moved. The only route that would make both political and economic sense is through Afghanistan.”) <br />The March 21 demonstration will also highlight the dangers of expanding Washington’s two wars to Iran and Pakistan. It will also condemn U.S. support for the continued occupation of Palestine.<br /><br /><strong>The National Assembly</strong><br /><br />From its inception, the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations has called for united antiwar demonstrations this spring. We urge the entire movement to unite now around March 21. We will do everything possible to make this unity a reality.<br /> <br />Think of the civil rights, union, anti-Vietnam War, women’s liberation and gay rights movements. They would not have achieved victories without having built truly massive movements that were able to organize repeated and powerful independent mobilizations in the streets.<br /><br />Why the demonstration in Washington? Because it is the seat of power, where foreign and domestic policies are decided, where money for war is allocated, and bailouts of the banking industry and corporate rich are given away.<br /><br />Join us in mobilizing the largest possible outpouring of antiwar opposition built by a united movement on March 21. Let’s march and continue to march until all U.S. forces come home, U.S. bases are dismantled, and the sovereign people of the world have the right to control their own resources and determine their own futures.<br />To endorse the March 21 March on the Pentagon, please click here. <br /><br />To send a contribution to support the National Assembly’s work, please click here.<br /><br />For more information, please visit the National Assembly’s website at www.natassembly.org or write natassembly@aol.com or call 216-736-4704.Joe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-70215274259417999882008-10-15T13:48:00.000-07:002008-10-15T13:49:21.031-07:00The Crisis of CapitalismThe present economic crisis is not only a periodic crisis in the economy but also a crisis of capitalism itself. For the past few weeks and months, we have been told that it is a credit crisis – which it is – but it is also a crisis in other sectors of the economy, as seen by the huge losses in auto, airline, construction and other industries. In the past, the financial industry represented only about 2% of the US economy; today it is around 40%. Given this situation, the collapse of the financial industry has a much greater impact than it has in the past. <br /><br />The only solutions we are being presented with are solutions that fall within the framework of the capitalist system. The politicians talk about bailouts and rescue plans that ask working people to assume the bad debt while bailing out the wealthiest layer of society. This allows the wealthy to make additional fortunes using the same methods that got us into this crisis in the first place. Repeating the same actions and expecting different results is a well-accepted definition of insanity. <br /><br />Europe is doing the bailouts differently, because it has always had a stronger worker’s movement than does the US which has fought for a bigger portion of the pie for the European working class. They are nationalizing many of the financial institutions or requiring that the public get a return as shares of the companies. That means that if the financial institutions ever return to profitability, the profit will go to the government, not to just the capitalist classes in those countries.<br /><br />As the crisis deepens, the US, too, is thinking that it may need to nationalize all or part of some banks and financial institutions. But isn’t nationalization of industry equivalent to Socialism? Well, not really. Nationalization under a capitalist government would be used to support the capitalists, the same people who rail against socialism, even as they clamor for it for themselves. For nationalization to work for the majority, it needs to be administered by a worker’s government that will use the profits for the good of the working people.<br /><br />The US is the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world and the one with the biggest disparity between the rich and the poor. In the US, the wealthiest 400 people are wealthier than the bottom 150 million people. During the past 8 years, these top 400 have increased their wealth by about $700 billion, the exact amount of the bailout. Maybe they should bailout their ailing financial industry instead of us; they will still have more money than they can count in several lifetimes. But instead, it is our tax dollars that are being used. They don’t even pay much in taxes themselves and have been the recipient of the bulk of the tax givebacks. As New York Times tax columnist David Cay Johnston explained in his book, “Perfectly Legal,” taxes from corporate profits used to account for 45% of the countries tax revenue; today it accounts for only 7.5%. Yet the corporations take advantage of the services provided by our taxes, such as roads to transport their goods, education to obtain qualified workers, and the military to defend their interests overseas. We have a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. We need a government of, by, and for the working people.<br /><br />For the past twenty years or so, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, there has been an orgy of deregulation that allowed the corporations and financial institution to play loose and gamble away our money and security. There has been deregulation of the financial industry, the media, the utilities and of other necessary services and industries. We were told it would bring prices down due to competition. Instead, prices went up, safety and service went down, and competition decreased as companies took over their competitors. Thanks to deregulation, our food, prescription drugs, and workplaces are no longer safe.<br /><br />It is time we turned this situation around. Even the corporate media is now musing that a socialist solution is being used to bailout capitalism. We should start talking about how socialism can and should be used to make a better life for the vast majority--the working class. We already have many socialized institutions, such as public schools, the fire department, social security, and other government sponsored programs. Why not socialize healthcare, as do most other advanced industrial countries? Why not socialize public education through college, as is the case in most other advanced countries? Instead, both Democratic and Republican administrations have pushed for privatization of almost everything from jails to the military to social security. These are plans to make the rich richer and put working people at the mercy of the same type of capitalist schemes that created the present financial crisis. <br /><br />It is time for the left to start talking about socialism as the solution to the present crisis. Let’s build a society that puts human needs before profit.<br /><br />One aspect of people’s lives in the US in recent times is the fact that we are under increasing stress. People go bankrupt when they get very sick, even with “good” medical insurance. Social programs and safety nets have been cut. People’s homes are being foreclosed. Retirement has moved from company sponsored guaranteed programs to Individual Retirement Accounts and 401K plans, which increase people’s financial insecurity. Perhaps these are the reasons that the U.S. has the highest rate of mental illness of 26 countries recently studied.<br /><br />Given this situation, perhaps one way to talk about socialism is to talk about relationships between people and between ourselves and the earth. I strongly believe that what some people consider human nature is actually social conditioning. Today we live in our own isolated houses, travel in our isolated cars, and are responsible for our own problems, even when they are not of our own making such as with the present economic crisis. Despite the fact that pre-class societies were technologically backward, human relationships were more functional then they are today. In pre-class societies, no person was considered superior to others; each one was valued for what they could contribute to the community. In such societies, crime was rare and seen as a mental illness. The family was defined much more broadly, and the idea of the whole community raising a child was accepted. In fact, in some of these societies, the name for an adult male and for a father were the same, as was the name for an adult female and a mother. <br /><br />As we point out what is wrong with capitalism, we should also project the image of what could be. We could build a world where the resources of society were used not for the profits of a few but for the needs of the many. There would be universal healthcare, a secure retirement, adequate housing, food, and other necessities for all. In such a society, humans could reach their full potential. There would be no need for us to be divided by race, gender, or sexual orientation. Instead of fearing each other, we could enjoy the diversity of humankind. There would be no need for war. A good education would be available to all, not just the rich, allowing us a better chance to solve pressing problems like global warming and peak oil. <br /><br />Today, capitalism not only threatens the world with economic disaster, nuclear weapons and war but also stands in the way of seriously addressing the problems that threaten our very existence. There are only two paths forward: socialism or barbarism. It’s time to engage in the fight for socialism.<br /><br />In Solidarity,<br />Joe LombardoJoe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-41174010745913598642008-10-11T14:00:00.000-07:002008-10-24T12:02:21.726-07:00Why I will vote for NaderBelow is reply to someone who e-mailed me asking why I would support Nader who he called a "spoiler"<br /><br />I understand your position, but don't agree with it. The Democrats did not lose the last 2 elections, especially the 2000 election -- an election where Gore won the popular vote by 1/2 million votes -- the elections were stolen. But even if they weren't, I would have not voted for either of the democrats in the last 2 elections because they supported the war and supported the kind of corporate deregulation that has led to the economic crisis that we are now facing. In fact, most of the deregulation that caused this crisis was done under Clinton.<br /><br />Exit polls of Nader voters pretty much confirmed that he took as many votes from the Republicans has he did from the Democrats. The Reform Party, which came from the Republican Party, endorsed him in the last election. Many Greens, who would not vote for the Democrats for the reasons I said above, also supported him. In this election Ron Paul has given some tacit support to Nader. Ron Paul is a Republican. <br /><br />The problem is with the electoral system in this country, not Nader. The electoral system is undemocratic. It requires so much money to run for office that you have to be rich yourself or be supported by the rich. The media is corporate controlled and the debates are no longer run by a non-partisan group. It is also a winner take all system insuring that a 3rd party candidate will not get a good hearing because of the fears you expressed. This situation allows the major candidates to not support the positions of the majority (anti-war, single payer healthcare, etc.) in deference to their corporate backers.<br /><br />In countries where they have a more democratic parliamentary system, there are 12 or 15 parties that run. Voters don't need to vote for the person they dislike the least, they can actually vote for someone they like. As a result, they get a bigger percentage voting in these countries and have reforms like socialized healthcare, free higher education, etc. The top vote getter in these kinds of electoral systems puts together a coalition of the parties closest to them to get a majority and therefore, many points of view are represented in the government which guards against the kind of right-wing extremism that we have seen for the past 8 years. <br /><br />The only way to change this situation is to start to change it by voting for who you want, not the lesser of the 2 evils. The lesser evil politics has brought us to where we are today - continued wars, a planet heating up and a crashing economy.<br /><br />Unlike the Republicrats, Nader has been warning against these problems for years. He has been the one person who has been talking about the close relationship between the corporations, the financial institutions and the government. Elections give him a bigger platform, even as the corporate media and Democratic and Republican parties vilify him. This platform can help build a movement that can actually fight for the changes that this world needs to survive. <br /><br />If you are afraid that Nader may cause Obama to lose, I would urge you to fight for a more democratic election system: get rid of the electoral college; stop the voter "cleansing"; take money out of the elections; demand third parties in the debates; end the laws that make it extremely difficult for 3rd parties to get on the ballot; stop gerrymandering; push for instant runoff elections and fight for a system closer to what other, more democratic countries have.<br /><br />In solidarity,<br />Joe LombardoJoe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-78479638583144173862008-09-27T11:31:00.000-07:002008-10-01T12:53:34.239-07:00Meeting with President AhmadinejadOn Wednesday evening, September 24, I was one of over one-hundred activists who met for two hours with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran. President Ahmadinejad was in the US for a General Assembly meeting at the United Nations. Leila Zand, an Iranian woman from the Capital District who is the Iran Program Director for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), organized the meeting. The next morning, anti-war group members who had attended Wednesday’s meeting met again to discuss how to organize against an attack on Iran.<br /><br />I attended both meetings as a representative of Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace and of the Muslim Solidarity Committee. Also at the meeting was Priscilla Fairbank from Women Against War (WAW). Over 100 different anti-war organizations from across the country were represented, including, the Syracuse Peace Council, and Rochester Against War from upstate, NY.<br /><br />After welcome addresses from FOR and the Iranian ambassador, eleven people, including Priscilla Fairbank of WAW, asked questions of the Iranian president.<br /><br />President Ahmadinejad’s started his formal address by thanking those who were gathered for their work on behalf of peace. He observed that World War II took the lives of over 60,000,000 people, more than the number killed in all previous wars combined, and was then followed by additional wars in Korea, Vietnam, Granada, and elsewhere. He had determined, therefore, that it was not enough to fight against a single war; rather, the peace movement must address the causes of war in general and work towards ending all war.<br /><br />He stated that, in his opinion, war has two major causes:<br /><br />1. Greed, or the desire of one country to take the resources of another; and<br />2. Geographical expansion, or one country trying to take over the territory of another.<br /><br />He said that the only war that modern Iran was involved in was the eight-year war with Iraq, which was started by the “professional criminal,” Saddam Hussein. Saddam, he said, started that war with the encouragement and support of the US. As a result, over 200,000 Iranians died, including many killed by chemical weapons supplied by the US.<br /><br />President Ahmadinejad stated that the reason Iran is against war is because, in Iran, politics and religion are not separate. He said that all the great religions have a common moral code and that unless politics is based on a moral code, war will continue. He also said that Iran is against nuclear weapons and implied that nuclear weaponry violates the religious beliefs of Islam.<br /><br /><br />One of the questions asked of President Ahmadinejad involved the recent demonstration at the national political conventions and the number of arrests (over 800 were arrested in St. Paul including legal observers, medical helpers and reporters). The questioner asked about similar political repression in Iran. President Ahmadinejad replied that they have demonstrations in Iran, including two annual demonstrations that attract millions of people. He said political demonstrations are allowed in Iran. However, one Iranian women at the meeting the following morning stated that there have been non-government sanctioned demonstrations in Iran that have been broken up by authorities.<br /><br />Another questioner asked about the role of women, youth, and gays in Iran. Ahmadinejad replied that Iranian youth are very involved in politics and that a national youth organization advises him. He said that people can vote in Iran at the age of 15.<br /><br />President Ahmadinejad said that two of his vice-presidents are women and that women make up 70% of the university students and perhaps a majority of all professions. Women can work at all jobs , including taxi driving and truck driving. He noted, however, that he did not think it was a good thing for women to be taxi drivers and truck drivers, as he believes women should not do hard labor and represent beauty and the finer things in society. (I also noticed that all the dignitaries who came with him were men.)<br /><br />He did not answer the question about gays although he did answer that question on Democracy Now the following morning. He stated that although he does not approve of homosexuality, gays are not discriminated against in Iran. What people do in their own homes is their own business, he said. Amy Goodman had a picture of two gays that she said were hanged in Iran. President Ahmadinejad responded that he did not believe that; people in Iran are only executed for murder or rape.<br /><br />He was asked why Iran supports nuclear power instead of renewable energy. He said that he thought it was strange that the U.S., Britain, and other countries supported Iran’s nuclear power programs under the US supported dictatorship, but that once Iran had elections, these same countries no longer supported it. He said that they spend three times as much on renewable energy than they spend on nuclear power. He felt that both renewable and nuclear energy were necessary for Iran’s energy future.<br /><br />Medea Benjamin of Code Pink asked why it is difficult for Americans to get visas to visit Iran. She said that they had sponsored tours of Iran but she herself had been denied a visa. President Ahmadinejad said that he did not know and instructed the Iranian ambassador to open up the process for Americans. He then told us that we should now go to our own government and ask why Iranians can’t get visas to come to the US.<br /><br />President Ahmadinejad stated that the demise of the old Soviet Union started with their protracted war in Afghanistan. He believes that the US is going through a similar process. He said that the $700 billion bailout of US financial institutions could be better used by the poor around the world and that the $700 billion was more than the budgets of over 100 countries in the world. Because of the crisis, the US would not be able to have another war for perhaps a decade, he said. He also stated, “Iran will not seek war with anyone, ever.”<br /><br />After meeting with Ahmadinejad, I had the opportunity to hear Bush’s televised address on the economic bailout. The contrast was clear: Bush spoke with the expressionless face of a psychopathic liar. Ahmadinejad spoke with expression and emotion, like a normal person. Although I disagree, at times strongly, with many of the points Ahmadinejad has made, I believe the U.S. campaign of vilification against the Iranian president is designed to build up a case for war against Iran.<br /><br />The most important human right is the right to live. Any movement toward war by the U.S. against Iran would bring mass destruction and death. The role of the peace movement in the U.S. is to strongly oppose a war against Iran not criticize Iran, which will just add to the US villification of Iran and support the US war effort. As long as the US continues to threaten Iran, the Iranian people will band together to defend their country, and all their other progressive struggles in Iran will be postponed.<br /><br />At the meeting the following morning, over 60 people representing a wide array of the national peace movement met at a church in the East Village. FOR has many ties to the religious peace movement ,and so a number of religious peace leaders were there along with most of the secular peace groups. Ahmadinejad’s comments about religion and politics became a topic of discussion at the meeting. Most people clearly disagreed with Ahmadinejad’s perspective, although some thought that his perspective comes from Iranian traditions where there is not a concept of separation of church and state.<br /><br />One Iranian woman mentioned that she spoke to the Iranian ambassador during the meeting and he asked her if some of the people who attended the meeting would be arrested for attending. Perhaps this comment says a lot about the real political situation in Iran<br /><br />There was discussion about legislative initiatives and about the importance of people to people contact between the two countries. There was not a lot of time for strategizing; however, FOR plans to keep us in contact with each other as a national network opposing an attack on Iran.<br /><br />The meeting with President Ahmadinejad was filmed. FOR will let us know how we can get copies of the video.<br /><br />On October 18, 2008 there will be a conference on Iran and strategies to end war in our area. Information can be found at the link below. Please join us to further discussion of avoiding war with Iran.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.endusmilitarism.org/how_to_prevent_war_101808.html">How to Prevent War on Iran and the Constitution </a><br /><br />Peace,<br />Joe LombardJoe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751078986924893477.post-49253887003763375652008-08-17T08:48:00.000-07:002008-08-18T11:42:54.485-07:00Georgia vs RussiaAs George Bush and virtually all other American politicians and news media express their support for Georgia and condemn Russian “aggression” in the conflict between the two counties, it seems some important facts are being ignored. It was not Russia who started this fight, but Georgia by its unprovoked attack of South Ossetia. According to Associated Press interviews with survivors of the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, the city was left in flames with hardly a single building left untouched. The parliament, the university and the main hospital were all totally destroyed. According to Eduard Kokoitym, the South Ossetian leader, more than 1,400 civilians were killed in this Georgian assault. Yet these facts seem to be unnoticed as the US continues to insist that Russia is the aggressor.<br /><br />South Ossetia, along with the neighboring region of North Ossetia-Alania has been an autonomous region for over 70 years, including under the old Soviet Union. The Ossetians are a distinct nationality with their own Persian-related language and culture. The Georgian attempt to annex this region is in clear contrast to the wishes of the Ossetian people who have fought Georgia’s attempts at annexation since the break-up of the Soviet Union.<br /><br />The US is not innocent in this conflict. The Georgian government is an ally of the US and had 2,000 troops in Iraq at the time of their invasion of South Ossetia. The US has armed and trained the Georgian armed forces. There are US military advisors in Georgia today and just before Georgia invaded South Ossetia, one thousand US Marines left the country after conducting joint military maneuvers called “Operation Immediate Response.” In the period leading up to the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia, the US supplied the Georgian military with hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery weapons, rocket launchers and dozens of combat helicopters and anti-aircraft missile systems. These were used in the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia.<br /><br />Additionally, the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia comes at a time that the US is pushing for Georgia and the Ukraine to join NATO, an act that Russia sees as a threat. It also happens at a time that the US is installing missiles and listening systems in Poland and the Czech Republic causing Russia to threaten to aim its missiles at these countries in response.<br /><br />The timing of the Georgian attack on South Ossetia is also of concern. The attack happened on the opening day of the Olympics as all eyes were on China and Bush sat watching the opening ceremonies. As Russia is fixing its attention on Georgia and South Ossetia, the US is amassing a huge armada off the coast of Iran. Three carrier groups with 39 Navy vessels prepare for something just outside the territorial waters of Iran. This armada includes nuclear weapons and weaponry that can reach all parts of Iran.<br /><br />Is a Fall surprise being prepared by the Bush administration?<br /><br />Joe LombardoJoe Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09342488272545560820noreply@blogger.com2