July 8, 2006 ... Mahmudiyah

protests every Saturday from noon till night

Press Release Contact:
Nancy Mancias 202-422-8624
Thursday, July
13 Diane Wilson
361-676-0663

Day 11: Anti-war Hunger Strikers Join Homeless Advocates to Show Cost
of War at Home
Ben & Jerry’s Donate New Ice-Cream “American Pie”, calling for poor
to get greater slice of the national budget
WHEN: Friday, July 14, 5 pm

WHERE: Community for Creative Nonviolence Homeless Shelter, 425 2nd
St. NW, Washington DC

WHO: Abdul Nurrididin, Director of the Community for Creative
Nonviolence, Arafa Speaks, Homeless Advocate, CODEPINK fasters Diane
Wilson and Medea Benjamin, Iraqi businessman Andy Shallal

Local homeless advocates and people in their second week of a fast to
bring the troops home from Iraq (see www.troopshomefast.org) will
gather for an ice cream giveaway and a press conference in front of
the Community for Creative Nonviolence, a homeless shelter founded by
Mitch Snyder, another long-term faster and homeless advocate. Ben &
Jerry’s has donated their new ice cream—American Pie—to show how the
billions of dollars we have spent on the war in Iraq has had a
debilitating effect on the poor here at home.

Every year over 2.3 million to 3.5 million people in the United
States experience go homeless, many of them veterans from the Vietnam
war and increasingly veterans from the Iraq war. The homeless rate
in DC has doubled in the last 5 years, with over 16,000 people
becoming homeless and 6,000 actually living in streets, alleys, and
vehicles. Eighty percent of the city’s homeless are African Americans
and 70 percent of the homeless in the DC region suffer from mental
illness. Yet the city of DC has shut down 2 homeless shelters and
scheduled another for closure while at the same time funneling 1.5
billion dollars for the Iraq war effort. That $1.5 billion could have
paid for building 10,000 affordable housing units or provided 375
million meals for the homeless.

“It’s criminal that they’re spending all this money killing people in
Iraq and here at home people are dying on our streets because they
don’t have jobs or housing,” says homeless activist Arafa Speaks.

Diane Wilson, who has been on a water-only fast for 10 days as part
of the Troops Home Fast organized by CODEPINK, “We’d make a lot more
friends in the world feeding people ice cream and bringing joy to the
faces of the poor than bombing villages and abusing prisoners.”

The ice-cream giveaway is part of a new on-going project “I Scream
for the Homeless” organized by Iraqi-American businessman/
restauranter Andy Shallal.

CONTACTS:

Nadia Hijab – Author, human rights advocate, and Steering Committee member of US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/

Phyllis Bennis – Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies. Her newest book is Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy U.S. Power.

http://www.ips-dc.org

Mitchell Plitnick – Director of Education and Policy, Jewish Voice for Peace

http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

Alternative Information Center, http://www.alternativenews.org/

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, http://www.adc.org

American Friends Service Committee
http://afsc.org/israel-palestine/default.htm

Electronic Intifada, http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml

Jewish Voice for Peace
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org

Middle East Children’s Alliance,
http://www.mecaforpeace.org

Stop the Wall Campaign
http://stopthewall.org

Tikkun
http://www.tikkun.org/

US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation,
http://www.endtheoccupation.org/

Download these excellent background fact sheets:

Freezing the Peace Process: Israel’s “Disengagement” from Gaza

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=1147

( Thanks Gael, for the links ;-) ))

greetings

in lafayette park
under some trees
in front of the white house
some
l0 – 15 brave men and women
have been fasting
(since july 3rd)
to bring the troops home
from
this senseless war

some are engaged in a water only fast
others a fruit juice fast

the fast
does take a toll
on their health and energy
and
as the fast grows longer
and
the heat of the summer saps their strength
your kind words of encouragement and support
will be all they have
as they challenge themselves
and
the powers that be
to end this war

the fasters are in front of the white house
10 am – 7 pm everyday

visit them during your lunch hour
or
after work
or
join them
(there are several thousand fasting around the
country)

they need your support
and
your love
in stopping this war
and
the next one

j

(hope you don’t mind I quoted your email, my bro! –
ycw)

Image lovingly ripped off from CODEPINK

IDF RESISTORS: Yesh Gvul


Jewish Voice for Peace

By Colbert I. King
Saturday, July 8, 2006; A15

Please don’t lump what happened in Mahmudiyah with the alleged attacks by U.S. troops on unarmed Iraqi civilians in Fallujah, Haditha, Qaim or Salahuddin province. True, the murders of innocent noncombatants, and the humiliation and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, are deplorable acts deserving condemnation and swift and severe punishment. But the event that occurred in Mahmudiyah, a village south of Baghdad, deserves a category all to itself.

Mahmudiyah wasn’t a case of soldiers exceeding their orders or authority in the interrogation of prisoners—or an example of war-weary, stressed-out troops mistakenly assuming a villager was a member of the insurgency. Neither was it a situation in which U.S. service members, grief-stricken over the loss of a comrade, decided to take out their anguish on people who looked like the enemy.

Mahmudiyah, if the charges are true, was a case of something else; a vile event made all the more disgusting because a soldier, afforded the opportunity to serve his country, chose instead to indulge his private need to hurt, degrade and murder.

Twenty-one-year-old Steven D. Green, honorably discharged from the Army in May for a “personality disorder,” is charged with entering an Iraqi home near Mahmudiyah in March and raping a young woman (Iraqis say she was 15 years old; the U.S. military says 20), shooting her in the head and setting her body aflame—after he was done using it.

But first, it is alleged, he herded the young woman’s mother, father and 5-year-old sister into a bedroom, where he shot and killed them. Arrested by the FBI this week, Green has pleaded not guilty.

The young woman’s body and those of her family were found burned in an effort to cover up what happened. And Green, according to an FBI affidavit, wasn’t the only rapist; another soldier in his unit is said to have taken part in the assault.

Some might call that a tactic of war. It was nothing of the sort. Yes, there are numerous cases of mass rape that were methodically carried out during times of war. Look no farther than Darfur and Kosovo.

But if the reporting out of Iraq is accurate, Mahmudiyah is a tale of sadism and degradation and of the desire of one man and possibly others to display mastery over the weak for reasons having nothing to do with why America is in Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/07/AR2006070701124_pf.html

Brasil pra mim!

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq will ask the United Nations to end immunity from local law for U.S. troops, the government said on Monday, as the U.S. military named five soldiers charged in a rape-murder case that has outraged Iraqis.

In an interview a week after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki demanded a review of foreign troops’ immunity, Human Rights Minister Wigdan Michael said work on it was now under way and a request could be ready by next month to go to the U.N. Security Council, under whose mandate U.S.-led forces operate in Iraq.

“We’re very serious about this,” she said, adding a lack of enforcement of U.S. military law in the past had encouraged soldiers to commit crimes against Iraqi civilians.

Bush’s War on Terra

Theodore Roosevelt Island


Environmentalist President Theodore Roosevelt is honored by a unique national memorial in the middle of the Potomac River.

From the National Park Service Website

“Theodore Roosevelt was a man with vision. He considered the future before making decisions and his legacies still influence us. Perhaps his greatest legacy was in conservation. This wooded island is a fitting memorial to the outdoorsman, naturalist, and visionary who was our 26th President.”

That girl raped and murdered in Mahmudiyah by American soldiers was about the same age as this girl from Poland. [ photo of young girl removed at her email request, replaced by this photo from a year ago ].

“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that a true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.”

Ernesto "Che" Guevara

( shout out to H-DOG from the Walter Reed Vigil for the quote )

An Interview with Howard Zinn

http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=10304&sectionID=1

by Howard Zinn and Shelly R. Fredman
Tikkun May 22, 2006

When I arrived at Boston university in 1978, it was like showing up at a party after all the guests had gone home. The Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War protests were over, and everyone around me was studying business and honing their resumes. The Sixties had died. All the activists were gone.

Except for Howard Zinn. You could sign up for Zinn’s classes, ‘Marxism’ and ‘Anarchism,’ and there, every Tuesday and Thursday, you could hear the stories no one else would tell you: Columbus’s arrival on these shores from the Arawak Indian’s point of view, Emma Goldman’s message to the unemployed in Union Square, black students in Greensboro, North Carolina, who one day sat down at the Woolworth’s counter where only whites could eat. Now, some twenty years later, in the wake of Katrina, mired in Bush’s reckless reign and the ever-escalating death toll in Iraq, it seemed a good time to revisit Zinn.

Best known for A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn has been a professor, radical historian, social activist, and intellectual leader of the Left for forty years. In over twenty books, he has devoted himself to connecting America’s past with its present, providing a frame for left-wing activism and politics.

Praised by academics and lay readers alike, Zinn feels more at home on the streets than in the ivory tower.

Zinn’s message of hope is unflinching, and he is busier than ever. He has written a play, ‘Marx in Soho,’ is producing a People’s History of the United States television series, and his new book, Original Zinn, will be released in July. He seems to have stashed De Leon’s fountain of youth in his back pocket. Though we are seated at a small table drinking coffee, occasionally he still moves his large hands through the air, as he did in class, underscoring the urgency of his words. And at the end of his most radical sentences, a wry smile lights up his eyes, as if he’s imagining the glorious trouble we the people can, and will, make.

Shelly R. Fredman: Since the context of this interview is Tikkun, I’d like to start by asking you about Michael Lerner’s new book, The Left Hand of God. In it, Lerner says that, post 9/11, a paradigm of fear has gripped our culture and been used to manipulate the public into supporting politicians who are more militaristic. How would you characterize the post 9/11 world?

Howard Zinn: Michael Lerner is certainly right about how fear has been used since 9/11 to push the public into support of war. ‘Terrorism’ is used the way ‘communism’ was used all through the Cold War, the result being the deaths of millions and a nuclear arms race which wasted trillions of dollars that could have been used to create a truly good society for all.

SF: Lerner also claims that the parts of our cultural heritage that embody elements of hope are dismissed as naaive, with little to teach us. You must have had your own bouts with critics who see your vision as naïve. How do you address them?

HZ: It’s true that any talk of hope is dismissed as naïve, but that’s because we tend to look at the surface of things at any given time. And the surface almost always looks grim. The charge of naïvete also comes from a loss of historical perspective. History shows that what is considered naaive in one decade becomes reality in another.

How much hope was there for black people in the South in the fifties? At the start of the Vietnam War, anyone who thought the monster war machine could be stopped seemed naive. When I was in South Africa in 1982, and apartheid was fully entrenched, it seemed naive to think that it would be dissolved and even more naive to think that Mandela would become president. But in all those cases, anyone looking under the surface would have seen currents of potential change bubbling and growing.

SF: Has the Left responded adequately to the kind of fascism we see coming from Bush’s people? Street protests seem to be ineffective; it’s sometimes disheartening.

HZ: The responses are never adequate, until they build and build and something changes. People very often think that there must be some magical tactic, beyond the traditional ones-protests, demonstrations, vigils, civil disobedience-but there is no magical panacea, only persistence in continuing and escalating the usual tactics of protest and resistance. The end of the Vietnam War did not come because the Left suddenly did something new and dramatic, but because all of the actions built up over time.

If you listen to the media, you get no sense of what’s happening. I speak to groups of people in different parts of the country. I was in Austin, Texas recently and a thousand people showed up. I believe people are basically decent, they just lack information.

SF: You have been outspoken against the war in Iraq. Despite all the chaos we’ve heard may ensue, do you still believe we should get out of Iraq now?

HZ: Yes, we should immediately withdraw. There will be chaos – it is actually there already, and much of the chaos and violence has come about because of our involvement. But that doesn’t change the fact that our occupation of Iraq is wrong.

What’s more troubling [than a military mistake] is that this is an administration that is impervious to pressure. If you listen to LBJ’s tapes, where he discusses the escalation of the war in Vietnam, you can hear that he is torn.

Still, the good news is that more and more of us are becoming aware of Bush’s true nature. Less than fifty percent of Americans are for the war, and forty percent are calling for [Bush’s] impeachment.

Tikkun… to heal, repair, and transform the world. All the rest is commentary. A Jewish magazine. An Interfaith movement.

SF: Where do you see the Democrats in all this? What of their role, their responsibility?

HZ: The Democratic Party is pitiful. Not only are they not articulating a spiritual message, as Lerner says, they don’t even have a political message. The Democrats are tied to corporate wealth. And they are incompetent when it comes to understanding how to win elections. By the time Kerry ran, the public had actually shifted.

Fifty percent were against the war. The Democrats should have been saying they would end the war, and make those dollars available for healthcare.

SF: What about the upcoming crop of presidential candidates-Hillary Clinton, for instance?

HZ: Hillary Clinton is so opportunistic. She goes where the wind is blowing. She doesn’t say what needs to be said. And Barack Obama is cautious. He’s better than Clinton, but I’d suggest Marian Wright Edelman as the Democratic candidate for president. Shethe epitome of what we need. A very smart black woman who deals with children, poverty… She’s in the trenches, and she ties it in with militarization. But she doesn’t come out of government.

That’s another problem-the Democratic Party is a closed circle. It may take a threatening third party to shake things up.

SF: Many people believe that history is a pendulum, and that we are overdue for a swing to the Left. Lerner, for instance, views American history as an oscillation between the voices of hope and the voices of fear-the fear after the stock market crash in 1929, the hope of the New Deal, the fears of McCarthyism, the hope of the Civil Rights movement and social change movements in the sixties. Is this a compelling view of history?

HZ: Without making it chronological, like a roller coaster, with predictable ups and downs, it’s certainly true that in any period there are voices that demand maintenance of the status quo, and other voices demanding change. In other words, it isn’t so much a period of hope, then a period of fear, etc. But in every period there are both tendencies, with one or another dominant and the dominant characteristic often leads to a simplified picture of an era.

My differences with Lerner, though, reside in the proportion of attention he pays to spiritual values. These are important, but they’re not the critical issue. The issue is how are people living and dying. People are dying in Iraq and our wealth is being squandered on war and the military budget.

Republiscum, with all your flag waving, breast beating, saluting, goosestepping, traditions, and religion, you would think that one of them would intervene in the rape of a female by well fed, well armed, well conditioned paratroopers from the 101st?

CONS will start feeling bad they aren’t intervening and blocking the prosecution of these five or six “heroes” for rape and murder. Insane Republicans see a victim as something not to be, so they become the predator to avoid being the prey.

With all those Bushwipe voters in the US military, all those brave “liberators” in uniform so stoically proclaiming they are saving the Iraqi people, it’s a wonder why it took four months for this to come to light?

When a hero or a filthy low life Republican sees a victim being raped, they see one of two things, depending on the filth.

They see something they don’t want to get involved in and would walk away from a woman or child being raped than speaking up or otherwise prevent it.

Then the other kind of Republican sees the woman or child being raped, and instead of a horrible act of savagery, they see a business opportunity to get some pvssy they don’t have to pay for.

Besides, a CON would be too afraid to change the situation if he saw it was bad for someone else, but didn’t effect him or her personally.

....................../´¯/)
....................,/¯../
.................../..../
............./´¯/’...’/´¯¯`·¸
........../’/.../..../......./¨¯\
........(‘(...´...´.... ¯_{/’...’)
.........\.................’.}./
..........\............... _.·´
............\..............(
..............\.............\..

(image swiped from lame CON blogger)

[ original photo of Polish girl holding similar placard removed at her request. We aim to please. This photo of a Polish family was taken a year ago. ]

To the Editor:

After reading “The Lonely American Just Got a Bit Lonelier,” I remembered how a few years ago, I had a friend visit me here in Pittsburgh, and we went strolling down a street with bookstores and cafes.

After passing a beggar with his can, my friend asked me if I could give him a couple of bucks, and thinking it was for a coffee at the adjacent cafe, I handed him the money.

To my amazement, he returned his steps and handed the money to the beggar. He then struck up a conversation.

A good five minutes later, he walked back toward me, and I told him that if I knew it was to give out free money, I wouldn’t have given it to him.

He answered: “Here in America nobody talks to you. But for two bucks, I bought myself five minutes of conversation.” Alexis Rzewski

Pittsburgh, July 2, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/opinion/l05lonely.html

yellowcakewalk regularly gives a helping hand to the 15,000 homeless in the Washington DC area. Do you hate the homeless? Walk a mile in their shoes sometime. – ycw

Return toYELLOWCAKEWALK  Home Page

no rights reserved

Click on the thumbnails for full-size seditious/patriotic images

yellowcakewalk is a proud member of MadeInBushFreeZone.com, a initiative of independent artists and businesses in Berlin, Tokyo and New York.

Send your own White House protest photos to ycw@yellowcakewalk.net and we will post them on these pages for you. Let our servers do the heavy lifting of giving Bush The Finger in the cyberspace.