February 2, 2010

Here in Colorado Springs, student and community organizers recently invited me to try and help promote their campaign against a proposed “No Camping” ordinance, a law to ban the homeless from sleeping on sidewalks or public lands within the city limits. The organizers insist it’s wrongful to criminalize the most desperate and endangered among us, that it instead seems quite criminal to persecute people already in need of far more care and compassion than we’ve been willing to offer, especially during these bitterly cold winter months. But others in the area are intent on eliminating the tent encampments near the Monument Creek and Shooks Run trails, complaining that the encampments mar natural beauty, deter tourists, create fire hazards, and degrade the environment by strewing heaps of trash and debris near the creek and even in it.

February 1st, 2010

By Jeremy Scahill
The Nation.

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Mohammed Kinani

Blackwater’s Youngest Victim

Every detail of September 16, 2007, is burned in Mohammed Kinani’s memory. Shortly after 9 am he was preparing to leave his house for work at his family’s auto parts business in Baghdad when he got a call from his sister, Jenan, who asked him to pick her and her children up across town and bring them back to his home for a visit. The Kinanis are a tightknit Shiite family, and Mohammed often served as a chauffeur through Baghdad’s dangerous streets to make such family gatherings possible.

Mohammed had just pulled away from his family’s home in the Khadamiya neighborhood in his SUV. His youngest son, 9-year-old Ali, came tearing down the road after him, asking his father if he could accompany him. Mohammed told him to run along and play with his brothers and sister. But Ali, an energetic and determined kid, insisted. Mohammed gave in, and off the father and son went.

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by Eileen Hanson

Today’s hearing before Judge Magistrate Stephen Crocker in US District Court was a re-sentencing motion filed by the government against the two for failure to pay the $75 fine imposed by the court in a bench trial last January. Judge Crocker began by hearing from Terrell on his motion opposing the re-sentencing. Terrell argued that it would be improper to impose a jail sentence at this stage since jail was not a sentence that could have been imposed at the time of the original sentencing under the Monroe County trespassing ordinance. (In the bench trial before Judge Crocker in January 2009, for instance, defendants were not offered representation by public counsel, specifically because jail time was not a potential consequence for the alleged crime.)

The severity of the charges and the harsh conditions of the D.C. jails may have been designed to deter activists from traveling to Washington, D.C. to exercise their right to free speech and participate in nonviolent direct action.

January 26, 2010

Washington D.C. – The Twin Cities Peace Campaign and other Minnesota peace groups, aligned with the Peaceable Assembly Campaign, organized a civil disobedience action today, in Washington, D.C. 13 nonviolent activists were arrested in front of the White House protesting US militarism. Beginning at 10:30 a.m., over thirty participants read names of 77 Minnesotans killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with the names of Iraqis and Afghans killed in the U.S. wars. After each name was read, a bell was rung and the participants said “We Remember You.” A banner that read, “Occupation” was pelted with shoes inscribed with anti war slogans. Finally, the 13 walked onto the sidewalk and laid down in remembrance of the war dead. Father William Pickard anointed the “dead” with olive oil.

The Washington D.C. Park Police arrested all 13 lying on the pavement. Vickie Andrews, John Braun, Marie Braun, Lori Blanding, Ward Brennan, Stephen Clemens, Diane Haugesag, Maxine McNamara, Ceylon Mooney, Joe Palen, Mary Percich, Father William Pickard and Cornelia Sullivan were first taken to the Anacostia Police station. Then they were transported to Washington D.C. District 1 police station only to be taken later to the Washington D.C. lock up. They have been told they will remain there until they appear before a judge on January 27, 2010.

VIDEOS OF THE ACTION

“Obama is the Arms-Exporter-In-Chief!”

Minnesotan’s for Peace Participate in the Peaceable Assembly Campaign

January 26th, 2010
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The intensification and spread of the armed conflict in Afghanistan continued to take a heavy toll on civilians throughout 2009. At least 5,978 civilians were killed and injured in 2009, the highest number of civilian casualties recorded since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. Afghans in the southern part of the country, where the conflict is the most intense, were the most severely affected. Nearly half of all civilian casualties, namely 45%, occurred in the southern region. High casualty figures have also been reported in the southeastern (15%), eastern (10%), central (12%) and western (8%) regions. Previously stable areas, such as the northeast, have also witnessed increasing insecurity, such as in Kunduz Province. In addition to a growing number of civilian casualties, conflict-affected populations have also experienced loss of livelihood, displacement, and destruction of property and personal assets.

By Jerica Arents
January 24, 2010

In the absence of an intact corpse, families often gather for memorial services rather than funerals.

The families of Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani – three Guantánamo prisoners whose earlier purported suicides were declared “asymmetrical warfare” by the Bush Justice Administration – received Salah’s, Mani’s and Yasser’s broken and lifeless bodies. Previously the families had gathered to wake their loved ones, after authorities in their countries informed them that their sons had died in Guantánamo.