Peace Activists Held In Iraq

Published on Friday, December 2, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Join Arundhati Roy, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Cindy Sheehan, Denis Halliday, Rashid Khalidi, and Many Others in Calling for the Urgent Release of Peace Activists Held in Iraq


An Urgent AppealAdd your name at:http://www.freethecpt.org

Four members of Christian Peacemaker Teams were taken this past Saturday, November 26, in Baghdad, Iraq. They are not spies, nor do they work in the service of any government. They are people who have dedicated their lives to fighting against war and have clearly and publicly opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq. They are people of faith, but they are not missionaries. They have deep respect for the Islamic faith and for the right of Iraqis to self-determination.
C.P.T. first came to Iraq in October 2002 to oppose the US invasion, and it has remained in the country throughout the occupation in solidarity with the Iraqi people. The group has been invaluable in alerting the world to many of the horrors facing Iraqis detained in US-run prisons and detention centers. C.P.T. was among the first to document the torture occurring at the Abu Ghraib prison, long before the story broke in the mainstream press. Its members have spent countless hours interviewing Iraqis about abuse and torture suffered at the hands of US forces and have disseminated this information internationally.
Each of the four C.P.T. members being held in Iraq has dedicated his life to resisting the darkness and misery of war and occupation. Convinced that it is not enough to oppose the war from the safety of their homes, they made the difficult decision to go to Iraq, knowing that the climate of mistrust created by foreign occupation meant that they could be mistaken for spies or missionaries. They went there with a simple purpose: to bear witness to injustice and to embody a different kind of relationship between cultures and faiths. Members of C.P.T. willingly undertook the risks of living among Iraqis, in a common neighborhood outside of the infamous Green Zone. They sought no protection from weapons or armed guards, trusting in, and benefiting from, the goodwill of the Iraqi people. Acts of kindness and hospitality from Iraqis were innumerable and ensured the C.P.T. members' safety and wellbeing. We believe that spirit will prevail in the current situation.
We appeal to those holding these activists to release them unharmed so that they may continue their vital work as witnesses and peacemakers.

Washington's Blue Underground

“Burn down the retinas and shave the ghost!”

Those words came from the oval office as reporters stormed the steps of the White House on Friday. Karl Rove was screaming and swinging a fourteen-pound dumbbell on the desk of the president.

Rove screamed, “I can’t fucking take it anymore. Three hundred and seventy five Iraqi’s ready for combat? What do we have to do go over there and torture the cocksuckers myself? Shit!”

Dick Cheney sat in silence mulling over the freckled face of a senate page on loan from Rick Santorum. The page stood nervously, his feet becoming clammy in anticipation and in fear of the result.

The President snorting lines of cocaine quickly answers the phone and is informed of the reporters storming past the Roosevelt room. The formerly retired Sam Donaldson loses his hairpiece in the struggle. Helen Thomas aboard a motorized scooter whizzes past Bob Woodard who was tripped up by a foaming Bill O’Reilly who keeps exposing himself.

Meanwhile in the residence first lady Laura Bush is crouched above a first century pamphlet on sobriety and tries to pick it up by using neither of her hands.


- Chris Mansel

Be Pro-Life, No Capital Punishment

World AIDS Day

On World AIDS day look into the mirror and ask yourself one question. Do you want to be one of those to die from a disease that has already killed millions?

Randy "Duke" Cunningham Anarchist of the Republican Party

Look up anarchy on the web and you’ll get a varied list from television shows, cookbooks, music, and even sunglasses. Now is that what the anarchists first envisioned? Is that what the Weather Underground envisioned? I doubt it. Anarchy these days seems to be a Republican and to state anything on the record you can possibly dream up however insane it may be. Take Randy “Duke” Cunningham for instance. This guy gives the word anarchy a shiny gleam and pushes the limits of the dictionary form. Quoting from www.dukecunningham.org, here are some quotes:

· In 1998, in the halls of Congress, the Mr. Cunningham used foul and unprintable language with the Secretary of the Army. The Secretary of the Army was trying to prevent sexual assaults on women which Mr. Cunningham wished he’d ignore or condone. Nobody loyal to our armed forces would foul-mouth the Secretary of the Army. [S.D.Union-Tribune, 3/11/1998].

Before a group of elderly cancer patients in Alvarado Hospital, Mr. Cunningham made obscene remarks and gestures. After he said the defense budget was the lowest in 25 years, a member of the audience, Charles Cotton, a WW II veteran, commented that it was “not low enough.” The embarrassed audience was shocked when Mr. Cunningham replied by giving Mr. Cotton “the bird” finger gesture and said “f--k you.”

He later expanded his foul language when questioned by a reporter. Cunningham later claimed he was heckled by Mr. Cotton, but as confirmed by a reporter and others in the audience, Mr. Cotton interrupted Mr. Cunningham but once, and didn’t bash the military or flip him “the bird.”

In an editorial, the Union-Tribune asks “what kind of example does it set . . . when their elected representative uses obscene language and gestures to express himself at a public forum?” [AP 9/8/1998; S.D.Union-Tribune, 9/9/1998 B1,B8, 9/10/1998 B10 (editorial), 9/10/1998 B10].

Mr. Cunningham neglected to mention to the cancer patients, between his swearing episodes, that he tried to reduce cancer research funding [Congressional Record, 104th Congress, 1995, pp. E1584-E1585].

Anyone questioning his getting campaign donor ADCS a Pentagon contract “can go to hell” [Union-Tribune 12/15/1997; 6/25/2005].

“Your son is dead meat.” said Duke Cunningham and other Republicans, who taunted Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI) after he voted against new prescription drug benefits and refused a $100,000 bribe donation to his son Brad’s Congressional campaign (11/22/2003). His son, Brad Smith, was campaigning to replace his retiring father’s seat in Congress [AP 11/24/2003, Bob Novak Chicago Sun-Times 11/27/2003, Slate 12/1/2003, CREW 12/3/2003, commentary, 7/16/2005].


Dictionary.com gives the following definitions of anarchy.

Absence of any form of political authority.
Political disorder and confusion.
Absence of any cohesive principle, such as a common standard or purpose.


The conservative wing of the Republican Party is what it is often called to provide some of the less light bulb chewing nazi a place to run and hide when people like Randy Cunningham speak out. But what these often unremarkable people forget is that once you stand alongside someone like Randy “Duke” Cunningham the stain, the odor and the shame exists forever somewhere on camera. But the real shocker is that Americans elect people like this. These are the people we need to worry about, not the messengers but the message.

- Chris Mansel

Why The Tug At Your Heart Is Never Organic

It is never a problem finding something to write about. The news is almost always bad and there is plenty to be enraged about. There are topics I haven’t even touched. The inhuman trafficking of children for the sex trade, the effect of local politics on the poor, there are so many items.
What about the sex trade? I made mention before about the documentaries made by right-wing news sources who tape Americans traveling to places like Bangkok to have sex with minors, they get the footage and try to dissuade the transaction but just as much goes by and they arrive back in this country and head to their moral high ground to edit the footage of those dirty people and their way of life. What they never seems to explain is the far-reaching effect the local economy has on the people they filmed. You see an ad on television to donate and help this child or that child all the while knowing that you have read reports about how that charity has pocketed the funds and not helped anyone. All you can do is tell someone about it and hope they can see through the so-called generosity and see the charity for what they are, pornographers.
What about the local politics that do more harm than good? You can change a city ordinance to suit a few and end up hurting many, many more. In a town like Florence, Alabama where I live the city council has for years turned away major corporation and business that would have provided several thousands of jobs, jobs that would have paid a wage you could support a family on, and we are left with barely over minimum wage with little hope of insurance. All of those jobs just about drove about 45 minutes to an hour away and have prospered. So now the workers have to drive all these miles everyday. The wear and tear on their vehicles, the cost of gas rising, the possibility of out-sourcing eats away the benefit of that hour drive. Why? Politics.

- Chris Mansel

Blog Success on the Conservative Dime

Since I have been blogging I have made it a point to learn more about this so-called revolution. In fact, words have been revolutionary a hell of a lot longer than the brief existence of the Internet. One thing I have learned is that a successful blog has one thing in common with all other successful blogs. Money. A successful blog has ads from other successful blogs, it courts corporate ads that feature timely films or books, these items are published by corporations who publish books and release movies by the politicians and actors that those same blogs seek to repute and rail against.

Take the Huffington Post for example. The Huffington Post featured a banner ad this evening for a company owned by Siebel. Siebel has been purchased by Oracle. Who is on the board of directors at Oracle? Jack Kemp. One of the organizations listed in the brief bio of Kemp is Empower America Kemp is a co-chair. Empower America’s full name is Freedom Works Empower America. Freedom Works is co-chaired by Dick Armey. On their site, http://www.freedomworks.org/know/index.php is a link to watch Dick Armey and Robert Novak discuss the freedom agenda on CNN. So in short a good liberal blog, the kind that has those ads I mentioned, accepts advertising from conservatives, the same conservatives the Huffington Post seeks to rail against.


- Chris Mansel

The Most Vulnerable Site in AMerica for Terrorist Attack

On any shopping day of the year, especially the biggest, the day after Thanksgiving, the Mall of America is most vulnerable for terrorist attack. According to http://www.mallofamerica.com/ over 320 million people have visited since it’s opening. Without overwhelming security it would be next to impossible for it to defend itself against a terrorist attack. A suicide bomber, or several bombers not unlike those wrecking havoc in Iraq and across the world could simply walk in and kill or maim and untold number of shoppers. Only if a major figure likes a politician visiting would call for extreme security. Nearly 3,000 were killed in the bombings of the Twin Towers, the number of the Mall of America could dwarf that.
Take the Oklahoma City bombing for instance. A truck filed with explosives could tear a huge chunk out of the mall especially if driven into the complex. The scenarios are horrific. The one item on the Homeland Security agenda should be the protection of U.S. citizens. Why not protect them where they assemble, the Mall of America, what bigger symbol of America could you find?


- Chris Mansel

George Orwell

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. - George Orwell,

So Where Are You Mrs. Robinson?

Planned appearances on talk shows, subpoenaed emails, op-ed columns taken for fact, heresay as journalism, this is how politics is carried out in the new century. The old days of twisting the arm of reporters, drinking with the editors of newspapers, bribes and payoffs well, this still goes on as well. The one thing they all have in common with each other are lies. The backroom noise they all hear and never repeat because it is not conducive to their careers. The women of John Kennedy, no one spoke of that because it was a different time is the response you hear. What kind of time is this?

- Chris Mansel

Bush Ghosts

In South America piranha are known as donkey castrators. The donkey swims across the water or wades in to cool off and the piranha swim up and gorges on the penis. If you really think about it, if the piranha went for another orifice it could be described as Bush ghosts. When the Bush ghosts swirls up your rectum they take from you what they find and leave you emaciated body floating down the river carried by the current to unemployment, lack of healthcare and jobless. A piranha/Bush ghost rim job, but look at it this way, at least you could finally have a scientific name for what the Bush administration has done to you.


- Chris Mansel

Thundered On The Flesh: New York Stories

The steakhouse smells of shit and the waiters stand in the corners, darkened by the smoke emitting from the kitchen. Donald Rumsfeld is entertaining foreign heads of state, otherwise known as senate pages, and going on and on about the breakdown in communications since the capture of many members of the terror organizations, which were helpful in the C.I.A. drug trade. Robert Novak arrives and begins throwing peppercorns around the room. He stuffs chervil down the V-neck sweaters of the waiters and kicks at the jukebox, which only plays Carol Channing.
A waiter approaches Rumsfeld and explains he has a phone call. Karl Rove is calling and screams about the press outside the restaurant. Rove down the street in a dusty van pecks at the laptop computer and watches surveillance footage of Judith Miller and Jean Schmidt make out under a streetlight on the dark side of an abandon Maryland highway.
The Machiavellian silence of the press core, the lack of investigative journalism, the reliability of the in-bedded reporters in Iraq twirl on the little finger of the major corporations as they meet in seclusion in New York city. Usually they will just sit around and try and remember who owns what. But today they are discussing whether or not the physical makeup of New Orleans and southern Mississippi will impact their businesses. Business a coy term to explain the root of the term, when you own major corporations and own shares in others your line of influence extends in many directions. You might own the items that fill up the shelves but no the store. You may own the company that supplies the workers but not be responsible for their safety or the healthcare costs. It is a high finance way of hiding income out in the open.
The heads of the major corporations who own shares in the three corporations that are shadow companies that supply income and money laundering for the government are in New York mainly to celebrate finally taking the companies public, but soon the real guests arrive. Politicians from both sides of the aisle and both sides of the pond arrive and await information on the status of the new IPO. Members of the current administration keep up to date by phone.

- Chris Mansel

Lives Lost In The Cleanup of New Orleans

After speaking with someone who has been working in the cleanup of New Orleans I have learned of the true conditions, not of the toxic stew everyone speaks of but the danger and loss of life. There have been several deaths that have not made the news.
One worker was accidentally run over by heavy equipment, another worker was run over by a truck carrying debris. Worst of all a mother and son were killed when a truck turned over and crushed them. CNN and the other news agencies speak of reporters having embedded status and collecting news alongside our troops but no one is reporting of the loss of life after Katrina. Where are the war grizzled journalists in their khaki shirts peering bravely into the camera?


- Chris Mansel

Abramoff's Whores

LINK: http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/gopscorecard.htm

In the fraud case against Jack Abramoff the Washington lobbyist who used to work for Senator Tom Delay has ties to Alabama politics. Senator Richard Shelby accepted contributions from Abramoff and Governor Bill Riley also accepted contributions from Tom Delay’s ARMPAC which has been discovered to have ties to Abramoff. You have to wonder just how far into Alabama politics this money has reached. Accepting or being tied to money from an investigation of this manner suggests some wrong doing by accident or by purpose. The well-known strong-arm tactics of Senator Tom Delay begs the question, if Shelby and Riley both accepted funds were there something that was expected in return?


- Chris Mansel

The Abandonment of Friends

You go to war with the government you have. To even suggest that we can find a peaceful solution to this pre-Armageddon intelligence failure is insane. After years of American forces in Iraq only 500 to 700 hundred Iraqi troops can protect themselves and others. After several years of American forces in Iraq how many terrorists have we created or drawn to the area? More than 500 to 700. A large majority of the world’s terrorists were either financed or trained by the United States, so why would we be so upset when they become disgruntled when we as the employer abandon the employee?


“Abraham Lincoln’s belief that the United States was “the last best hope on earth” seemed an invocation not just of the Republican dream, but of a burdened world at last set materially free.”
Derek Leebaert, The Fifty-Year Wound


And what of that last hope, are as Andre Gregory stated in the film, My Dinner With Andre, that the “sixties represented the last burst of the human being.” Over wrought with their childhood the baby boomer generation romanticizes the turmoil of that generation and cannot see the forests of Iraq and South Africa, of Rwanda or Darfur for the trees of a once promised Eden, a last best hope of a tranquil overcoming of peace on earth or peace with honor. When speaking from the heart the soul gets clouded and experiences weather it cannot explain. The generation that would end the war, the generation that could begin the environmental movement, somehow lost sight of the militancy and the engendered response. Now the same generation trains other generations to kill, to commit acts of aggression. Where’s the love in war? The only rainbows in this troubled planets future watch over the dead and then dissipate until the hard rain comes again.

- Chris Mansel

The Leviathan Who Fought On His Knees ( for Bob KIncaid )

Ok, they have me now, they have worn me down and tied me to the post and hurled their lies and betrayals, perjuries and their lawbreaking has got me down, how can anyone in some resemblance of thought watch Scott McClellan and believe anything he says. How can anyone watch our President utter anything at all and watch him quiver, slither his own brand of ka ka and not be flabbergasted? If anyone can honestly say they believe in this administration avoid them because they may have the bird flu you have heard so much about.
Mine eyes have seen the coming of the fall of the house of Bush. They’ll be throwing bodies out the window as the car careens out of control until the election of 2008. I predict sooner rather than later the Saudi Royal family will summon Bush to their creepy lair and scold him for his actions. Called on the carpet though they be on the walls Georgie boy will hold hands and stagger cocaine bunches up under his lips and call for a moratorium on cannibals in the U.N. He’ll trace the family tree of Dick Cheney back to the original declaration for independence first composed on the Mayflower in blood from a Haitian slave.
Condi Rice will appear in a sex tape with several volleyball players with sand still stuck in their toes. She’ll be seen in the fetal position humping a statue of Ronald Reagan and screaming about the troops overlooking Little Big Horn.
Scooter Libby will consult and be visited often by G. Gordon Libby and develop contacts in the prison drug trade and be tattooed by the Aryan gangs. Upon release he will start a foundation to study the possibility of promoting commercial prison retreats for the wealthily.
The body of William McNamara upon his death will burst into flames and a million North Vietnamese will run out and devour the body of Henry Kissinger asleep in the front row of the memorial service.


- Chris Mansel

A Conservationist's Danny Boy

Alive and dead the seasons are coming
Over the hills and for a while to stay
We’ll watch as the snow turns to rain
And the summer sun turns a ghostly gray
We’ll see the mountains give rivers
And stones turn into clay
And then we’ll go into that earthly heaven
And once more come together to stay

- Chris Mansel

A Blind Eye Over An Open Grave

"Tens of thousands of prisoners around the country are infected with the virus that causes AIDS, making prisons one of the most potentially dangerous incubators of the epidemic," began the editors. Such a concentration of HIV-infected prisoners "means that healthy inmates run an increased risk of catching the disease by having sex or sharing hypodermic needles with them -- behaviors that are illegal but widespread in American prisons." But most prisons "ignore these risks" and do not provide "adequate tools to slow the spread of the virus. Only a few prison and jail systems in the country offer condoms for safer sex or bleach to disinfect needles. This is shortsighted. Officials should not only work to reduce prisoners' risk of catching AIDS in prison, they should also help a captive audience learn about safer practices in a way that would stick when the inmates returned to the community," asserted the editors. Although "the amount of AIDS transmission in prison is unknown... there is anecdotal evidence that people have gotten HIV in prison, and it is very likely that the number is high," the editors wrote. One Tennessee study "found that 28 percent of inmates reported injecting drugs in prison. Since needles are rare behind prison walls, they are almost always shared, accelerating the spread of AIDS," they wrote. The editors also pointed to consensual homosexual behavior and forcible sex as modes of HIV transmission among prisoners.

http://www.thebody.com/cdc/news_updates_archive/may21_01/prisons.html


A Blind Eye Over An Open grave

Once again I am talking about the one item that belittles all others, AIDS. I have written many articles about what is going on in Africa and I have written about conditions in U.S. prisons, they both are spiraling out of control and no amount of pontificating on talk shows, no conferences or books written are going to alleviate the problem any time soon. What it takes is funding and the ability to interpret what must be done. As you read above prisons, very few of them offer any way of combating AIDS to those in incarceration. Going to jail for a minor felony should not be a death sentence.
Like those prisoners who were tricked into subjecting themselves to drug trials in lieu of cash the prisoners in American jails are involved in a total denial by the justice system as to what a hibernation of an incurable illness can generate.
The Black Death, the influenza epidemic all forms of terrorizing outbreaks eventually found cures but it is hard to imagine AIDS as anything but a serious and earth cleansing epidemic. Some of the world’s most dangerous viruses are kept and studied in labs safe from infecting anyone. You can spin it in anyway you like but our government it seems to turn a blind eye to those incarcerated.

- Chris Mansel

HIV Positive and Hurricane Katrina

Ok, let’s imagine you are a HIV patient in New Orleans and you could not afford to leave before Katrina struck. Let’s also imagine that you are African-American. Let’s further imagine that you were sitting out in front of the cameras of CNN as they drove by never stopping. Now politicians are calling you poor blacks, the former first lady Barbara Bush says that you were poor anyway, and now you are not allowed to gain entry to a shelter. You are weak because of your condition, you are hungry and you are thirsty. You sit and watch people panic and loot the buildings around you and you wonder how you will get your medicine. You try to ask a national guardsman about getting your medicine and he tells you to loot a pharmacy.
Now it is a week into the struggle and you are told you will be moved to Houston, Texas. You board the bus shaky and sick. You get to the shelter and you cannot make your way to the food they have for you because there are news cameras and crews stringing their cords all over the floor, the news people are looking for people to interview and bumping into you. You’re still sick.
While you are still in Houston the landlord who discriminated against you because of your condition has moved what possessions you had out of your apartment so he can rent it to someone else. You finally get some help from someone in the Red Cross but you still do not have a place to stay and the shelter is closing because of a sports event or convention. The workers in Houston at the shelter are griping about the cleanup and you are so tired of it all you snap back at them. All you know is that you are an American citizen and the days of Civil Rights were a long time ago, then you hear that Rosa Parks has died.


- Chris Mansel

The Garden Without Any Soil

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. - H.L. Mencken

The only thing that is not inescapable is the balance that cannot hold. Everything else can be accounted for by fear, grief and happiness. When someone promises in a considering tone you must be aware whether or not they can deliver on such a statement. The same goes for the process of government. Government the old saying goes is the compromise, where do the citizens of the United States fit between that narrow area between your side and mine getting what they both want by a process of give and take?
It doesn’t take an entire breath to know that the air is poisoned.
News broadcasts like leaflets in another era come at you from every side. Print media sandwiched between personal ads and the lost and found are no different, the only difference is the quality of the ink in the printer. It is time to recognize that the media has its clutch pulled back so that the engine can pick up speed downhill where the general public lives. If you ever feel helpless in a government office do not worry it’s a familiar situation. It doesn’t get any better when you are employed in such an office. When every thing about you is reduced to ones and zeros where can you hide but in the blackness between the numbers?


- Chris Mansel