If you are sick of the slaughter in Gaza, and want to take action, this is your link.
Showing posts with label action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label action. Show all posts
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Friday, January 25, 2008
Criminalizing Anti-Torture Efforts: Is This America???
Please check out this important article in the Nation.
On Monday, January 28th, Joanne Anderson, Ozone Bhaguan, Le Anne Clausen, Elizabeth Klancher, Art Landis, Ed Lewinson, Chris Lieberman, Diane Lopez Hughes, Tiel Rainelli, Gus Roddy and Stephen Schweitzer will face federal criminal trial for trespass - punishable up to six months in federal prison.
These eleven human rights activists are part of the faith-based group SOA Watch which stages annual protests and vigils calling for the School of the Americas to be closed down on the amply documented grounds that its alumni--Latin American soldiers from various US allies--are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Central and South America.
...
Click here to learn more about SOA Watch, click here to make a contribution to support the group's efforts, click here if you'd like to join SOA Watch's Research Working Group and click here if you'd like to volunteer on one of the organization's campaigns.
On Monday, January 28th, Joanne Anderson, Ozone Bhaguan, Le Anne Clausen, Elizabeth Klancher, Art Landis, Ed Lewinson, Chris Lieberman, Diane Lopez Hughes, Tiel Rainelli, Gus Roddy and Stephen Schweitzer will face federal criminal trial for trespass - punishable up to six months in federal prison.
These eleven human rights activists are part of the faith-based group SOA Watch which stages annual protests and vigils calling for the School of the Americas to be closed down on the amply documented grounds that its alumni--Latin American soldiers from various US allies--are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Central and South America.
...
Click here to learn more about SOA Watch, click here to make a contribution to support the group's efforts, click here if you'd like to join SOA Watch's Research Working Group and click here if you'd like to volunteer on one of the organization's campaigns.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Be A Voice Against Torture
On Wednesday evening, the House of Representatives passed an Iraq withdrawal bill that provides interim funding for the hostilities in Iraq and calls for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. It includes an anti-torture provision that would require all government agencies - including the CIA - to follow the Army Field Manual when conducting interrogations. In doing so, it would prohibit torture and other such "harsh" interrogation techniques. Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that he will bring this bill before the Senate today (Friday, November 16, 2007).
Don't let the Senate debate a bill that relates to torture without expressing your support for the anti-torture provisions in the bill.
Please contact - by phone or by email - your Senators to express your support for the provision that would require the CIA and other government agencies to abide by the restrictions in the Army Field Manual on Interrogations. You can contact your Senators by calling the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121, or you can look up their direct lines and their email addresses at this website.
Don't let the Senate debate a bill that relates to torture without expressing your support for the anti-torture provisions in the bill.
Please contact - by phone or by email - your Senators to express your support for the provision that would require the CIA and other government agencies to abide by the restrictions in the Army Field Manual on Interrogations. You can contact your Senators by calling the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121, or you can look up their direct lines and their email addresses at this website.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Axis of Global Warming: Axis of Evil - Planetary Defenders, Arise!
If you didn't think Bush-Cheney and his international cronies who have a stake in the oil industry, among other things (doesn't the oil feed his war horses?), are going to fight tooth and nail against the IDEA of global warming, as a buffer against the action they do not want the international community to take on their client polluter-industries, well ... welcome to planet Mars...
For those of you who still prefer Earth as a planet of residence, there's a great movement going on against Bush's latest tactic - an international, grand-scale tactic - against planet Earth and its defenders, whom he views as "enemies" of his international police force/oil-profit force/ world-domination scheme. Of course, his gain is the planet's loss. So they have a Plan: it's called the Axis of Global Warming.
Note the name, so apropos: "Axis" as in WWII "Axis Powers" and his own term "Axis of Evil." Yes, he's finally upfront - this is truly an Evil plan, if evil means destructive.
Then, linked with "Global Warming" as it is, the name literally implies "Axis of those determined to bring about global warming in spite of all efforts against it - by denying it, doing nothing about it, and letting it just happen." But we can, and MUST do all we can to stop them.
Enter Avaaz, an organization with many people but a low budget and a few (9) doing all the fancy footwork, or office work, as the case may be. They also have a plan - work hard against Bush-Howard's plan to fast-forward pollution and back-pedal safeguards for the planet - in their own words:
"There's a new threat to progress on climate change -- and it could undermine all of the work we've done so far. President Bush and his allies have recognized that the the movement against climate change is too powerful to be directly confronted. So Bush, Australia's John Howard, and a small group of other high-pollution governments are using back-channel pressure to build a bloc of countries--call it an "Axis of Global Warming"--that plans to sabotage the negotiations on a binding climate treaty.
"It's an extraordinary danger.They must be stopped. And we've got a plan to do it. We're laying plans for a massive, country-by-country pressure campaign to block the Axis of Global Warming--and we need your help to make it work.
A donor has pledged to match all contributions up to 100,000 Euros. Can you donate now to help save the planet?https://secure.avaaz.org/en/axis_of_warming/b.php/?cl=15435385
There's strength in numbers--already this year, half a million of us have taken climate actions with Avaaz. We've run television ads, delivered massive petitions, marched in the streets and flooded governments with email messages. Now, if enough of us can contribute 50, 20 or even 1 Euro, we'll have the resources to take all of these tactics to a new level--and add some spectacular new ones.
Our strategy is simple: expose Bush's plan, and help citizens in "swing countries" like Japan and Canada to pressure their governments not to join the Axis of Global Warming. Bush can only succeed if he rallies enough governments to join his side. But if we show these governments that there's a price to be paid for abandoning the planet, people power can prevail.The next five months are key. Here are the most critical moments:
September: Australia's John Howard hosts the Asia-Pacific APEC summit, gathering leaders of 21 countries including the US, China, Japan, Russia, and Canada. We need to shame the Axis of Global Warming, disrupt their alliance-building and persuade the swing voters to stay strong for a UN process--and we're working with Australian campaigners GetUp on a spectacular plan to spoil Bush and Howard's party in Sydney.Then we'll burst into the UN Secretary-General's emergency session on climate change--100 heads of state invited, and your voice will be heard there too.
October/November: a "Major Emitters" conference of the biggest polluters, called by Bush after the G8 meeting in June. This is likely to be the public unveiling of Bush's plan. In the lead-up, we'll empower Avaaz members in each of our countries, pressing national leaders to commit publicly to a real deal--and reject Bush’s game.
December 3-14: UN-led negotiations begin in Bali, Indonesia for a global climate change treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. This is the big one: the key to ending the climate crisis. We'll be there in force, virtually and for real. Every nation gets a voice in Bali--and because we have members in every nation, so do we. Avaaz will work outside and inside to influence the negotiations as they happen, day to day and hour by hour. These are the moments that will define whether the climate crisis can be stopped -- and our ability to influence them together will be determined in part by our resources.
For example, we need:
25,000 Euros to build tools enabling Avaaz members to directly contact their leaders--tools capable of sending millions of messages to hundreds of governments in a dozen languages, fast.
8,000 Euros to mount a major stunt at the Asia-Pacific summit in Sydney, grabbing the attention of leaders and the media
5,000 Euros each to buy full-page newspaper ads in key "swing voter" countries like Japan, Canada or China.
Avaaz has a lot of members, but a small staff--currently just nine people, working from five cities on three continents. We're laser-focused on squeezing every bit of impact we can from every Euro or dollar we spend. This is a David and Goliath struggle, the people of the world versus the Axis of Global Warming--and we simply can't afford to lose. Can you help, by donating whatever you can?
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/axis_of_warming/c.php/?cl=15435385
Climate change is a threat that affects us all. But it's also an opportunity to build a different kind of world, where each of us recognizes our connections, and our responsibility to each other.Imagine looking back, twenty years from now, and remembering how we won. Remembering the moment when citizens from every nation joined to save our planet and ourselves."
For those of you who still prefer Earth as a planet of residence, there's a great movement going on against Bush's latest tactic - an international, grand-scale tactic - against planet Earth and its defenders, whom he views as "enemies" of his international police force/oil-profit force/ world-domination scheme. Of course, his gain is the planet's loss. So they have a Plan: it's called the Axis of Global Warming.
Note the name, so apropos: "Axis" as in WWII "Axis Powers" and his own term "Axis of Evil." Yes, he's finally upfront - this is truly an Evil plan, if evil means destructive.
Then, linked with "Global Warming" as it is, the name literally implies "Axis of those determined to bring about global warming in spite of all efforts against it - by denying it, doing nothing about it, and letting it just happen." But we can, and MUST do all we can to stop them.
Enter Avaaz, an organization with many people but a low budget and a few (9) doing all the fancy footwork, or office work, as the case may be. They also have a plan - work hard against Bush-Howard's plan to fast-forward pollution and back-pedal safeguards for the planet - in their own words:
"There's a new threat to progress on climate change -- and it could undermine all of the work we've done so far. President Bush and his allies have recognized that the the movement against climate change is too powerful to be directly confronted. So Bush, Australia's John Howard, and a small group of other high-pollution governments are using back-channel pressure to build a bloc of countries--call it an "Axis of Global Warming"--that plans to sabotage the negotiations on a binding climate treaty.
"It's an extraordinary danger.They must be stopped. And we've got a plan to do it. We're laying plans for a massive, country-by-country pressure campaign to block the Axis of Global Warming--and we need your help to make it work.
A donor has pledged to match all contributions up to 100,000 Euros. Can you donate now to help save the planet?https://secure.avaaz.org/en/axis_of_warming/b.php/?cl=15435385
There's strength in numbers--already this year, half a million of us have taken climate actions with Avaaz. We've run television ads, delivered massive petitions, marched in the streets and flooded governments with email messages. Now, if enough of us can contribute 50, 20 or even 1 Euro, we'll have the resources to take all of these tactics to a new level--and add some spectacular new ones.
Our strategy is simple: expose Bush's plan, and help citizens in "swing countries" like Japan and Canada to pressure their governments not to join the Axis of Global Warming. Bush can only succeed if he rallies enough governments to join his side. But if we show these governments that there's a price to be paid for abandoning the planet, people power can prevail.The next five months are key. Here are the most critical moments:
September: Australia's John Howard hosts the Asia-Pacific APEC summit, gathering leaders of 21 countries including the US, China, Japan, Russia, and Canada. We need to shame the Axis of Global Warming, disrupt their alliance-building and persuade the swing voters to stay strong for a UN process--and we're working with Australian campaigners GetUp on a spectacular plan to spoil Bush and Howard's party in Sydney.Then we'll burst into the UN Secretary-General's emergency session on climate change--100 heads of state invited, and your voice will be heard there too.
October/November: a "Major Emitters" conference of the biggest polluters, called by Bush after the G8 meeting in June. This is likely to be the public unveiling of Bush's plan. In the lead-up, we'll empower Avaaz members in each of our countries, pressing national leaders to commit publicly to a real deal--and reject Bush’s game.
December 3-14: UN-led negotiations begin in Bali, Indonesia for a global climate change treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. This is the big one: the key to ending the climate crisis. We'll be there in force, virtually and for real. Every nation gets a voice in Bali--and because we have members in every nation, so do we. Avaaz will work outside and inside to influence the negotiations as they happen, day to day and hour by hour. These are the moments that will define whether the climate crisis can be stopped -- and our ability to influence them together will be determined in part by our resources.
For example, we need:
25,000 Euros to build tools enabling Avaaz members to directly contact their leaders--tools capable of sending millions of messages to hundreds of governments in a dozen languages, fast.
8,000 Euros to mount a major stunt at the Asia-Pacific summit in Sydney, grabbing the attention of leaders and the media
5,000 Euros each to buy full-page newspaper ads in key "swing voter" countries like Japan, Canada or China.
Avaaz has a lot of members, but a small staff--currently just nine people, working from five cities on three continents. We're laser-focused on squeezing every bit of impact we can from every Euro or dollar we spend. This is a David and Goliath struggle, the people of the world versus the Axis of Global Warming--and we simply can't afford to lose. Can you help, by donating whatever you can?
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/axis_of_warming/c.php/?cl=15435385
Climate change is a threat that affects us all. But it's also an opportunity to build a different kind of world, where each of us recognizes our connections, and our responsibility to each other.Imagine looking back, twenty years from now, and remembering how we won. Remembering the moment when citizens from every nation joined to save our planet and ourselves."
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
One Way to Fight Against Torture
Valtin's diary at The Daily Kos presents an extremely important issue about torture that we can all take action against: the American Psychologists' Association (APA) and their support of the government's position on torture, especially at Guantanamo. As we know, the U.S. government is heavily involved in torture of detainees at Gitmo and elsewhere, relying heavily on psychological torture and mind torture in combination with physical torture. As we should know, in many ways, psychological torture in combination with physical torture is the worst there is. But what most of us don't know, is that the APA is actually involved in facilitating that torture, while, in typical hypocritical fashion, posturing that they are against torture, but merely assuring that what goes on is "ethical". The facts should show you the "values" behind those "ethics": money and power.
The APA basically started to congenially take apart that resolution on petty grounds, such as stating this should be up to individual psychologists rather than taken as an action by the organization, or challenging the meaning of such terms as "foreign detainees" and "detention centers".
But most importantly, they defined "torture" in such a way that it did NOT include psychological torture, specifically such things as sexual humiliation, forced nudity, sensory deprivation, "moral" degradation (direct attack on victim's moral sensibilities), use of extreme temperatures, drugs and other injected materials (such as saline to induce uncontrolled urination and thus degradation), food and mental-stimulus deprivation, isolation, sleep deprivation, threat of torture and abuse, constant lights and loud noise, and much more...
These are the forms of psychological torture that the Bush administration finds acceptable and that the APA also condones, but in such a way as to appear to not condone. Abu Ghraib was no "rogue camp" and the scandal that ensued was not because this was an exception to the rule - no, this is psychological torture in action, your administration in action, and this is approved from the highest levels in government and the military, and of course, the Commander-in-Chief. This type of thing goes on daily right now at Gitmo. Facilitated by the APA.
Join Valtin, Stephen Soldz (who wrote an excellent article that gives important background about this issue), and others in this campaign to take action against torture by writing to the APA expressing your outrage that they participate in any way with the U.S. torture program now in place (the following is taken from Valtin's DailyKos diary):
We can help to stop this.
Here's How...
Now, psychologists at the American Psychological Association are trying to
stop members from participating in this criminal process, just as members of
other health organizations have so prohibited their members.
The psychologists are fighting what seems like a losing battle. But the struggle
isn't finished. It is time to reach out to the public to exert their influence
on the insular APA leadership. What follows is a brief description of the
situation, followed by a direct action call for messages to be sent to key
figures at APA...
One year ago (!), Neil Altman, an APA psychologist, presented a resolution
that was non-binding, but called for APA to take a stand against psychologist
participation in foreign intelligence interrogations, after the passing of the
Military Commissions Act of 2006 made clear that cruel and unusual methods of
interrogation, if not outright torture, would be allowed, and that Bush would
decide what met Geneva treaty norms and what didn't.
APA leadership could have fast-tracked this resolution, but they sunk it under a thousand tons of bureaucratic verbiage and the full weight of the serpentine process that is approval of a proposal at APA.
The APA basically started to congenially take apart that resolution on petty grounds, such as stating this should be up to individual psychologists rather than taken as an action by the organization, or challenging the meaning of such terms as "foreign detainees" and "detention centers".
But most importantly, they defined "torture" in such a way that it did NOT include psychological torture, specifically such things as sexual humiliation, forced nudity, sensory deprivation, "moral" degradation (direct attack on victim's moral sensibilities), use of extreme temperatures, drugs and other injected materials (such as saline to induce uncontrolled urination and thus degradation), food and mental-stimulus deprivation, isolation, sleep deprivation, threat of torture and abuse, constant lights and loud noise, and much more...
These are the forms of psychological torture that the Bush administration finds acceptable and that the APA also condones, but in such a way as to appear to not condone. Abu Ghraib was no "rogue camp" and the scandal that ensued was not because this was an exception to the rule - no, this is psychological torture in action, your administration in action, and this is approved from the highest levels in government and the military, and of course, the Commander-in-Chief. This type of thing goes on daily right now at Gitmo. Facilitated by the APA.
Join Valtin, Stephen Soldz (who wrote an excellent article that gives important background about this issue), and others in this campaign to take action against torture by writing to the APA expressing your outrage that they participate in any way with the U.S. torture program now in place (the following is taken from Valtin's DailyKos diary):
We can help to stop this.
Here's How...
- Write or call the APA:
American Psychological Association 750 First Street, NE Washington, DC 20002-4242 - (800) 374-2721 (202) 336-5500
Write and call, now. Let them know how upset you are. - Send an email to the Public Affairs Office of the APA, expressing your outrage:
public.affairs@apa.org - Phone the Ethics Office directly at (202) 336-5930 or use APA's toll free number (800) 374-2721, extension 5930, and give them a piece of your mind.
- And finally, write to the President of the APA, Dr. Sharon Stephens Brehm. Be nice, be polite, but be firm (this is true for ALL communications). Dr. Brehm has a web page, Ask the President. Follow the link to leave an email message directly for her.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
If we apply enough pressure, it might make the APA stand up and take notice. And, don't forget to write your congressman/congresswoman and senator, too! Even make others aware of the issue in a Letter to the Editor in your local newspaper. Or include this campaign on your blog.
WE CAN DO IT!
We don't have to be powerless. We aren't helpless. Write, call, email today.
I want to see APA inundated with thousands of messages saying "Stop torture. Stop psychologist participation in coercive interrogations. Support Dr. Altman's moratorium".
Together, we can prevail.
I hope that We the People will be more than just some words on an historical document. I hope our democracy will prevail over this newfound rush to militarism, torture, and absolute government, friendly to xenophobia, and antagonistic to human rights and civil liberties. In the heady days when this country was founded, those ideals were not considered "patriotic" or "American" per se.
They were human values that our nation's founders hoped would one day be shared by the whole world. Now we have reversed that idea and decided that such rights and liberties are not "human rights", a word maligned as "leftist" and "liberal" - read "against national security" - no, now these are for the chosen few, for "Americans only" and "like-minded people only", even going to far as to wish to deprive such rights to those one disagrees with.
We are not at war with Al-Qaeda per se any more. That is just a public prop to drum up public support for another agenda. We are at war with our own values, on every street, under every bed, inside every email, and behind every wizard-of-oz surveillance/omniscience campaign. The only thing saving us at times is the sheer incompetence of execution. But don't rely on that. When it comes to torture, the execution is pretty competent. They've succeeded in destroying many innocent people's lives in the name of national security. And they're not worried...
Machiavelli in hand, Rove leads the charge: The end justifies the means! But he never asks what, pray tell, is the end??? It seems rather obvious: money and power. National security has never been worse. Helped by torture??? Apparently someone forgot that we lasted as a nation for over 225 years in spite of abuses, not because of some infallible national security plan, not because of torture - we supposedly didn't do it - but because we were able to maintain our moral stature in the world. We had not only power, but respect.
Now that's gone.
Dear We the People: Please show your conscience and write to stop the promotion and support of torture!
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