the arabist: five questions few are asking about libya

Yippee, a no-fly zone, because it's much better for the West to kill Libyans than for Gaddafi to do it! Hey, those crazy Arabs can't liberate themselves, you know. They need our help. Just ask the Iraqis! Those who have survived, anyway.

Some excellent analysis by The Arabist: 5 questions few are asking about Libya.

Thanks to Hysperia for the Arabist post.

Also:

Stop the War Coalition (UK): The real reasons behind the United Nations' Libya vote:

A new war has been declared in the Middle East. With the bloody and failing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan still in place, the USA, Britain and France are now committed to an escalating armed intervention in Libya.

Dissident Voice: Mission Creep and Slippery Slopes, Bombs Away Over Libya

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malalai joya denied entry to u.s.: four things u.s. readers can do to help

As you may know, Afghan writer and activist Malalai Joya has been denied entry to the US. Joya opposes the Western occupation of her country, and with a clear majority of USians now opposing the war in Afghanistan, those who profit from the occupation want to prevent her injecting public opinion with facts and motivation.

I saw Joya speak - report here and here - and I know the peace movement in the United States needs her.

When Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's flunky stupidly declared former UK MP George Galloway "inadmissible" to Canada, the ensuing publicity for Galloway's tour became Jason Kenney's nightmare. Eventually that nightmare ended up in court, and Galloway is now a regular guest of peace activists in Canada. I hope the US peace movement will get behind Joya's visit in a similar way. [For details on that, click on the wmtc category "george galloway in canada".]

United for Peace and Justice, the umbrella coalition of 1,400 US anti-war groups, has four ways you can help.

1. Have your elected representatives sign onto a letter urging the US Embassy to reconsider their decision.

Six Congresspeople and three Senators have sent such a letter, which is posted at here and here.

Ask your Senator or Representative to send a similar letter as soon as possible.

2. Sign an online petition demanding Malalai Joya be granted a visa to the US.

Click here to sign the petition.

Share the petition on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, email.

3. Attend one of the many events organized for Malalai around the country.

Whether Joya is allowed to enter the US or not, the events will go on as scheduled, with Joya appearing either live or by video. Transform these events into declarations of your right to free speech and free association.

Tour details here.

4. Demand media coverage of Malalai's visa denial.

Contact local and national media, urge them to cover Malalai Joya's visa exclusion. The denial of a visa to Afghanistan's most intrepid and well known feminist should make headlines! See the Afghan Women's Mission's media release for details.

And I'll add number 5: share this post.

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chuck wiley on the u.s. occupation of iraq: "it's legally wrong, it's morally wrong, and it shouldn't be happening"

As I mentioned last week, US war resister Chuck Wiley is on a speaking tour in Nova Scotia. The schedule of event is posted here; you can still catch him in Halifax today and tonight.

This story ran in the Halifax Chronicle Herald. If you live in Nova Scotia, please consider writing a letter to the editor in support of Chuck's bid to stay in Canada. He needs your support.

By the time he reached the age of 38, Kentucky native Chuck Wiley thought he would be retired from the United States military and working at a civilian power plant "until I was too old to get out of bed."

Instead, the trained nuclear engineer has been living in Canada since 2007. He has not spoken to his parents since moving north and is waiting to learn if he’ll be deported back to the United States, where he’s sure he’ll be jailed as a deserter from the U.S. navy.

A former chief petty officer, Wiley has paid a high professional and personal price for his decision to oppose the Iraq war.

"I wish it could have gone better," he admits. "But at the end of the day, the fundamental problem is that what the military is doing in (Iraq) is wrong. It’s legally wrong, it’s morally wrong and it shouldn’t be happening."

There are about 50 former members of the American military seeking sanctuary in Canada. They are pressuring Ottawa to enact safe haven legislation for anyone who opposes fighting in a war not sanctioned by the United Nations.

But as it stands now, the federal government is moving to deport Wiley and the others back to the U.S.

Wiley is in Nova Scotia this week speaking to various groups about his opposition to the war in Iraq and the push for sanctuary for war resisters through War Resisters Support Campaign.

The sailor is as surprised as anyone that his life has taken such a turn.

Coming from a family with a long history of military service, he happily signed up at age 17 with the consent of his parents.

"It was the honourable thing to do for the men in my family," Wiley said.

He started off in the army in military intelligence but later transferred to the navy where he was trained as a nuclear engineer.

By 2006, he had been promoted to chief petty officer and was sent to Iraq aboard the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier.

Wiley said he spent most of his time in the military doing what was asked of him and not getting mired down in the politics of the war.

"It was easy to stick your head in the sand and not be concerned about what was going on outside the ship," he said.

"At that point, I didn’t see anything wrong with what was going on."

Eventually, though, he started asking questions about certain missions that didn’t seem right, he said. The answers he received didn’t add up and, eventually, he questioned the point of the entire exercise.

"I kind of got into a pissing contest with my chain of command, for lack of a better term. I asked questions and I got responses like, ‘you need to shut up and go back to work. This doesn’t concern you.’ That offended me."

. . .

He said Canada Border Services Agency will interview him next week about why he wants to stay in the country but other American servicemen before him have been sent back and jailed.

While the personal price to object to the war has been high, Wiley said he could not condone what he considers to be an illegal war.

"It wasn’t just that we have found ourselves in the midst of a wrong operation, but the feeling I got from my chain of command is that we’re willingly doing something that we know is wrong," he said.

"That to me, honestly, is exactly what a military force can’t ever be."

Stay tuned for new information about how you can help Chuck and other US war resisters in Canada.

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wikileaks' forgotten man: documentary on bradley manning: watch on tv or online

On CBC this weekend, and online anytime, please watch "WikiLeaks' Forgotten Man", a short documentary about Bradley Manning.

WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange has been cast as a heroic champion of free speech and public enemy number one to the most powerful government in the world. But his ongoing expose of US foreign policy would not have been possible without the work of a young American soldier - Private Bradley Manning. It was Manning who allegedly stole the classified video and documents released to the world by WikiLeaks in 2010.

WikiLeaks' Forgotten Man says the U.S. Army private masterminded the biggest intelligence breach in history from a humble military desk in Iraq - and it tells the story of the man who betrayed him, former hacker Adrian Lamo. In an extraordinary interview Lamo reveals how he came to know Bradley Manning, claiming the soldier openly confessed to his role in the WikiLeaks scandal through online chats that are presented in the film.

Manning is quoted saying "I'm a high profile source...and I've developed a relationship with Assange". He says he released the cables because "I was actively involved in something I was completely against". But one of Lamo's old friends, former hacker Kevin Mitnick, is suspicious of Lamo's evidence and his motives, "I call into question the authenticity of the chat logs, because I know his personality".

While Julian Assange awaits the results of British efforts to extradite him to Sweden for sex charges, Manning now languishes in solitary confinement in a US military prison, facing a possible life sentence. But he's considered a hero to people like Daniel Ellsberg, the whistle-blower who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971. He says "Bradley Manning has shown a willingness to give his life and his freedom for his country. And you can't be more patriotic than that."

Ellsberg writes in support of Manning in The Guardian.

This shameful abuse of Bradley Manning
by Daniel Ellsberg

The WikiLeaks suspect's mistreatment amounts to torture. Either President Obama knows this or he should make it his business

President Obama tells us that he's asked the Pentagon whether the conditions of confinement of Bradley Manning, the soldier charged with leaking state secrets, "are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are."

If Obama believes that, he'll believe anything. I would hope he would know better than to ask the perpetrators whether they've been behaving appropriately. I can just hear President Nixon saying to a press conference the same thing: "I was assured by the the White House Plumbers that their burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's doctor in Los Angeles was appropriate and met basic standards."

When that criminal behaviour ordered from the Oval Office came out, Nixon faced impeachment and had to resign. Well, times have changed. But if President Obama really doesn't yet know the actual conditions of Manning's detention – if he really believes, as he's said, that "some of this [nudity, isolation, harassment, sleep-deprivation] has to do with Private Manning's wellbeing", despite the contrary judgments of the prison psychologist – then he's being lied to, and he needs to get a grip on his administration.

If he does know, and agrees that it's appropriate or even legal, that doesn't speak well for his memory of the courses he taught on constitutional law.

The president refused to comment on PJ Crowley's statement that the treatment of Manning is "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid". Those words are true enough as far as they go – which is probably about as far as a state department spokesperson can allow himself to go in condemning actions of the defence department. But at least two other words are called for: abusive and illegal.

Crowley was responding to a question about the "torturing" of an American citizen, and, creditably, he didn't rebut that description. Prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity – that's right out of the manual of the CIA for "enhanced interrogation". We've seen it applied in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. It's what the CIA calls "no-touch torture", and its purpose there, as in this case, is very clear: to demoralise someone to the point of offering a desired confession. That's what they are after, I suspect, with Manning. They don't care if the confession is true or false, so long as it implicates WikiLeaks in a way that will help them prosecute Julian Assange. [More here.]

"WikiLeaks' Forgotten Man" is available online here.

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bradley manning in his own words: truth-teller speaks out about his prison ordeal

This is the first we've heard directly from heroic war resister Bradley Manning, in his own words, since his prison ordeal began. Please share widely.

Stripped naked every night, Bradley Manning tells of prison ordeal

US soldier held on suspicion of leaking state secrets speaks out for first time about experience

'Stripping me of all of my clothing is without justification'

Bradley Manning, the US soldier being held in solitary confinement on suspicion of having released state secrets to WikiLeaks, has spoken out for the first time about what he claims is his punitive and unlawful treatment in military prison.

In an 11-page legal letter released by his lawyer, David Coombs, Manning sets out in his own words how he has been "left to languish under the unduly harsh conditions of max [security] custody" ever since he was brought from Kuwait to the military brig of Quantico marine base in Virginia in July last year. He describes how he was put on suicide watch in January, how he is currently being stripped naked every night, and how he is in general terms being subjected to what he calls "unlawful pre-trial punishment".

It is the first time Manning has spoken publicly about his treatment, having previously only been heard through the intermediaries of his lawyer and a friend. Details that have emerged up to now have inspired the UN to launch an inquiry into whether the conditions amount to torture, and have led to protests to the US government from Amnesty International.

The most graphic passage of the letter is Manning's description of how he was placed on suicide watch for three days from 18 January. "I was stripped of all clothing with the exception of my underwear. My prescription eyeglasses were taken away from me and I was forced to sit in essential blindness."

Manning writes that he believes the suicide watch was imposed not because he was a danger to himself but as retribution for a protest about his treatment held outside Quantico the day before. Immediately before the suicide watch started, he said guards verbally harassed him, taunting him with conflicting orders.

When he was told he was being put on suicide watch, he writes, "I became upset. Out of frustration, I clenched my hair with my fingers and yelled: 'Why are you doing this to me? Why am I being punished? I have done nothing wrong.'"

He also describes the experience of being stripped naked at night and made to stand for parade in the nude, a condition that continues to this day. "The guard told me to stand at parade rest, with my hands behind my back and my legs spaced shoulder-width apart. I stood at parade rest for about three minutes … The [brig supervisor] and the other guards walked past my cell. He looked at me, paused for a moment, then continued to the next cell. I was incredibly embarrassed at having all these people stare at me naked."

Full story here.

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rap news 5 featuring donald rumsfeld, julian assange and a million dead iraqis

Always late to the YouTube party, I've just discovered Rap News. If you haven't seen this yet, please watch. One bit is a little disgusting, but much less disgusting than the killing, torturing and terrorizing of innocent civilians.

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don't be fooled: support the libyan revolution, oppose a no-fly zone

Progressive people are divided over whether to support a no-fly zone over Libya as a means of supporting the anti-Gadaffi revolution. The Libyan resistance is itself divided on this issue, so for many of us, it's difficult to know who to support.

If you're on the Avaaz mailing list, you've received an urgent request to speak out in favour. Anti-war activists, however, are lining up against.

I was surprised that Avaaz didn't have a more historic view, understanding the long history of Western nations supporting what appears to be a resistance movement, but is in fact a counter-revolutionary party friendly to Western interests. A no-fly zone will not support the Libyan people's revolution. It will ultimately strengthen Gaddafi - and kill Libyans.

John Hilary in The Guardian: Internet activists should be careful what they wish for in Libya: Calls for a no-fly zone over Libya ignore the perils of intervention. Long-term solutions aren't as simple as the click of a mouse

Simon Jenkins, The Guardian: 'No-fly zone' is a euphemism for war. We'd be mad to try it: Cameron's urge to dust himself in military glory may be strong, but he should not interfere in the Libyan rebels' cause

Robert Fisk in The Independent: America's secret plan to arm Libya's rebels: Obama asks Saudis to airlift weapons into Benghazi

My friend Dr. J at your heart's on the left has a good summary of why people of peace and conscience should oppose a a no-fly zone. In short, a no-fly zone would kill Libyans, strengthen Gaddafi, undermine the Libyan revolution, provide a cover for US imperialism, and provide a cover for yet more US-led war.

Dr J: 5 reasons to oppose "no-fly zones" in Libya.

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friends of gaddafi vs friends of the libyan people

From Dr. J at your heart's on the left:

WHERE DOES HE GET ALL THOSE DEADLY WEAPONS?

Photos from the Egyptian Revolution provided a link between Mubarak and his Western backers, as protesters dodged tear-gas canisters with “made in USA” imprinted on them. Now Libyans are fighting against European weapons. According to Britain’s Campaign Against the Arms Trade:

“In the third quarter of 2010, equipment approved for export [from Britain to Libya] included wall and door breaching projectile launchers, crowd control ammunition, small arms ammunition, tear gas/irritant ammunition, training tear gas/irritant ammunition. Ammunition comprised £3.2m of the £4.7m million of military items licensed. Sniper rifles were among the other equipment licensed in 2010.”

Read this excellent post: Responsibility to protect Libyans from our own governments.

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sign the petition: no stealth fighters!

Tell Stephen Harper, other party leaders, and your own MP that you do not support the F-35 Stealth Fighters. Send your letter through Ceasefire.ca by clicking on the graphic above.

The goal is 5,000 signatures. Please march forth, sign and share widely.

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sign up to be heard on march 3rd: say no to the stealth fighters

On Thursday, March 3, Ceasefire.ca and Rabble.ca team up to tell Stephen Harper that we don't want billions of dollars of our money wasted on useless war toys and killing machines.

Join us on March 3rd in a national day of action to tell Stephen Harper and your Member of Parliament, “No Stealth Fighters!”

Ahead of the budget and possible elections, it’s more important than ever to be heard and voice your opposition to this multi-billion-dollar purchase.

The goal of the campaign is to send 5,000 messages to MPs. We need your help to achieve this goal!

Will you help us reach our goal of 5,000 messages to Harper?

Take a minute and sign up here.

More on the stealth fighters:

Steven Staples, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, at Rabble: F-35 stealth fighters are for 'shock and awe' warfare, not Canada's needs

Michael Bueckert, Program Coordinator, Project Peacemakers: F-35 Stealth Fighter: A bad deal for Canada

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ivaw urges national guard to refuse to move against organizing workers

From IVAW, on Common Dreams:

Iraq Veterans Against the War to Troops: “We Are Public Employees Too!”

Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) calls on all U.S. military service members to refuse and resist any mobilization against workers organizing to protect their basic rights. IVAW stands in solidarity with the multitude gathered in Madison, Wisconsin and many other cities to defend their unions.

by Iraq Veterans Against the War

We believe military service members are public employees too. It is dishonorable to suggest that military personnel should be deployed against teachers, health care providers, firefighters, police officers, and other government employees, many of whom are themselves serving in the National Guard.

Workers with prior military service often seek jobs in the public sector because government agencies are the only employers that follow hiring preferences for veterans as a matter of law. According to the Army Times, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are unemployed at a rate of 15.2%, higher than the national average. The picture is even worse for African American veterans who face nearly double the rate of unemployment. Protecting the rights of workers in public sector unions ensures that veterans have a chance to secure a decent job, earning a living wage and good benefits.

Madison, WI is ground zero for a fight that will likely define the relationship between public sector unions and the governments that employ them for decades to come. Similar to the federal government's defeat of the 1980 Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike, which signaled the beginning of a thirty-year decline of real wages, benefits, and union membership for private sector workers, what happens in Madison today is likely to affect whether governments across the country can destroy a decent standard of living for public sector workers in the future.

Governor Scott Walker recently stated that he was preparing the National Guard to respond to “labor unrest” following the introduction of union-busting legislation in Wisconsin. Governor Walker has attempted to justify this attack on collective bargaining by pointing to state budget shortfalls. Missing from this explanation is an acknowledgment that these deficits have been created and exacerbated by the ongoing trillion dollar wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, federal and local governments across the U.S. are cutting back on the public sector.

Troops have been called out in the past against worker strikes, campus protests, and urban uprisings. However, recent events in Egypt and numerous examples from U.S. history have shown that service members have the power to side with the people and refuse to use violence against their fellow citizens. Troops activated for duty in Madison, WI will have to decide if public sector workers are really the enemy. IVAW says they are not and that troops should support workers fighting for decent jobs, wages, and benefits.

We know firsthand that the U.S. military is already overextended from a decade at war. Through our Operation Recovery campaign, we have been fighting for the right of our troops to heal, rather than being involuntarily redeployed with severe physical and psychological injuries. Adding another mission to an already overburdened military for the purposes of suppressing the rights of workers is irresponsible and not worthy of our service.

If you are a service member facing mobilization or know someone in the military who is you can contact IVAW via email at ivaw@ivaw.org or by phone at (646) 723-0989, M-F 10am-6pm EST.

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james loney: "we have been possessed by the demon of war" [updated]

In January, as part of Let Them Stay Week 2011, there was a Day of Action in Toronto in support of US war resisters in Canada. I neglected to post an audio report by John Bonnar, posted at Rabble, along with an excellent photo album.

The audio is a bit under 20 minutes. I'm listening to it right now. It's Jim Loney, first reading from the Bible, with an interpretation that may surprise you, then reading from Joshua Key's The Deserter's Tale.

Loney, of Christian Peacemaker Teams, says, "We have been possessed by the demon of war. We are spending up to a trillion and a half dollars every year on weapons, on death, on occupation, on blood. We have to stop this."

Listen here.

Update: John also wrote this excellent report on Ashlea Brockway's talk. Listening to Ashlea speak about her husband Jeremy's ordeal is heartbreaking. And realizing the Canadian government is refusing to admit the Brockways - and other families like them - to Canada is enraging.

Supporting military resistance to war is a concrete way to support peace.

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in these times: jason kenney cracks down on war resisters to kiss up to u.s.

Here's a tough, somber look at the situation facing US war resisters in Canada. The writer is quite pessimistic, but I still believe that we can do this. Canada, it's up to you.

Sanctuary Denied: America’s war deserters face deportation from Canada — and then prison, from In These Times.

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disunion: celebrating my own freedom to read with history online

I don't know if Freedom To Read Week is purposely timed to coincide with Reading Week, the mid-winter break for university students, but I'm celebrating my own freedom to read by diving headlong into "Disunion". I'm starting at the beginning, with the goal of being caught up with the current post by the time classes resume next week.

My friend Alan With One L should be happy to read this: he learned about Disunion through my post here, and like me, he couldn't just pick up in progress, he had to start with the first post. I have to thank him, too. I thought I was too far behind to get caught up, but his enthusiasm convinced me otherwise. Now we can gush about this together in April.

So far, this blog is amazing, a must-read for history lovers, especially if you're into the 19th Century, as I am. It was no surprise to me to read that political life in mid-1800s America was louder, more divisive and more violent than it is today.

Hurled brickbats, smashed glass and howled curses were the soundtrack of American electoral politics a century and a half ago. The oratorical eloquence that most people today associate with the 19th century — those resonant fanfares of prose carved upon monuments, enshrined in history textbooks, hammered into the brains of 10th graders — often provided little more than the faintest melodic line, drowned out amid the percussive din. Last week’s notorious “head-stomping” incident outside a Senate debate in Kentucky, footage of which has drawn nationwide condemnation and half a million views on YouTube, seems almost gentle in comparison.

On the last Friday night before the 1860 election, Senator William H. Seward delivered a rousing Republican campaign address to a large outdoor gathering on 14th Street in Manhattan. Afterward, crowds of pro-Lincoln “Wide Awakes” fanned out through the surrounding area. Wide Awakes, members of an organization with strong paramilitary overtones, could be a menacing sight: they wore military-style caps and shrouded themselves in long black capes made of a shiny fabric that reflected the flames of the torches they carried. Some strapped axes to their backs, in tribute to their rail-splitting hero.

According to the next day’s Times and other papers, things began to spin out of control when supporters of a rival presidential contender, John Bell, charged toward the Lincoln men, “calling them ‘negro stealers,’ ‘sons of b____s,’ &c.” At the corner of 12th Street and Fourth Avenue, several dozen volunteer firemen — members of Engine Company 23 — joined the fray, swinging roundhouse blows with clubs and heavy iron wrenches that the Wide Awakes tried to parry with their torches. But the tide of battle turned when the young Republicans brought their Lincoln axes into play. They chased the enemy back into the company firehouse and promptly began smashing down its barricaded doors, as other idealistic marchers flung bricks and cobblestones. (News reports are vague about what finally ended the fracas.)

Similar disturbances happened almost daily in various East Coast cities. In Baltimore the previous night, Republican marchers had been pelted with stones and rotten eggs. (That city was justly known as “Mobtown”; dozens sometimes died in a single campaign season there.) In Washington on Election Day itself, pro-slavery forces stormed a Wide Awake clubhouse a block or two from the Capitol. The attackers practically demolished the building and were only narrowly prevented from burning the ruin — along with several Wide Awakes trapped on the third floor — by the timely arrival of police.

There was little talk of bipartisan civility during that particular election cycle.

Right away, we see how all of the US - not only the southern states - was complicit in the slave trade...

If you had risen early on that Sunday morning, you probably would have ventured out to marvel at the wreckage left by the past night’s storm. Trees had toppled; shop signs lay smashed on the cobblestones. All along the wharves of lower Manhattan, ships had lost spars and rigging.

And on the harbor’s restless water, a three-masted merchant vessel tossed and bucked at her mooring lines. If you drew close, you might still have caught a whiff of the distinctive stench that every well-traveled mariner in that day and age knew: the reek of close-packed bodies, of human misery, of captivity and death.

She was the slaver Erie, and she had recently come to New York as a captive herself. A U.S. naval vessel, patrolling for ships engaged in the illicit trade, had seized her off the mouth of the Congo River. Flinging open the hatches to the cargo hold, the officers saw a dim tangle of bodies moving in the darkness, packed so tightly that they seemed almost a single tormented soul. Nearly 900 Africans — half of them children — had been stripped naked and forced below decks at the height of equatorial summer, aboard a vessel barely more than 100 feet long. Just a few days into their weeks-long voyage, a witness later recalled, “their sufferings were really agonizing, and . . . the stench arising from their unchecked filthiness was absolutely startling.” Even after their rescue, dozens died in a matter of days.

It might seem odd today that the American government was freeing slaves across the Atlantic while zealously protecting the “property rights” of slaveholders closer to home. Not long after Congress abolished slave importation in 1808, however, U.S. and British naval vessels had begun policing the African coasts and the waters of the Caribbean, occasionally even bringing the captains and crews back to stand trial under federal law. (The freed captives, no matter where in Africa they had come from, were set ashore in Liberia, often to be set to work there in conditions little better than slavery.) It was one of many such hypocrisies, born of political compromise, that most Americans in 1860 took for granted.

Like the majority of slavers at the time, the Erie had been bound for Cuba, where importation was still legal. Her human “cargo” might have fetched somewhere between half a million and a million dollars there — depending, of course, on how many captives perished during the crossing. A mortality rate of one in five or so was taken for granted in the trade, but the Erie’s record on past voyages had been even worse than this horrific average. Still, enormous profits were to be made. The slaver’s New England-born captain, Nathaniel Gordon, had purchased the Africans with kegs of whiskey. He was now a prisoner in the Eldridge Street jail.

The Erie was no stranger to New York. It was, indeed, her home port, as it was of many such vessels. Nearly 100 clandestine — or barely clandestine — slaving voyages had set out from the city over the past 18 months alone. Notorious traders in human flesh hung out their shingles in front of offices on Pearl and Beaver Streets downtown, scarcely bothering to camouflage themselves as legitimate shipping merchants.

Slavery was in the lifeblood of the metropolis. An editorial in that same Sunday’s New York Herald warned local citizens against electing a candidate like Lincoln who might interfere with the institution in the American South. Slave-grown cotton was one of the greatest sources of the city’s wealth, the paper pointed out. Rashly frightening the slave states out of the Union would be “like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.”

...and how slavery came to be abolished in the US. Even in the first few posts, I see glimpses of how the people's abolition movement pushed leaders in that direction. Older generations of USians learned that "Lincoln freed the slaves," while younger students in more progressive areas learned that Lincoln would have been content to preserve slavery if he could still preserve the Union. Neither is correct.

Throughout most of the nation’s history, it had taken weeks for votes to be counted and for Americans to find out who their new president was. But by 1860, telegraph lines – more than 50,000 miles of them – had spread so far and wide across the country that the results were in the morning editions of the next day’s papers.

In Boston that night, Wendell Phillips strode onstage to address a large audience of abolitionists in the Tremont Theatre, just off the Common. Phillips, one of the nation’s most prominent antislavery leaders, had been skeptical of Abraham Lincoln from the beginning. To him, the unknown Midwesterner – born in Kentucky to Virginian parents, he must have noted with alarm – was going to be just one more mediocre politician to warm the presidential chair for another four years, while black Americans continued to languish in bondage. Addressing an anti-slavery meeting that summer, just after the Republicans announced their nominee, Phillips had sneered: “Who is this huckster in politics? Who is this county court advocate? . . . What is his recommendation? It is that nobody knows anything good or bad of him. . . His recommendation is that his past is a blank.” In an article he wrote for The Liberator, the leading abolitionist newspaper, a month later, Phillips went further still: he turned in a manuscript headlined “ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE SLAVE-HOUND OF ILLINOIS.”

But by November, his feelings had changed. It wasn’t anything the candidate had said – for he had said almost nothing. Rather, it was how Americans had rallied around Lincoln with an outpouring of antislavery feeling. A few weeks earlier, Phillips had watched Republicans parade through Boston carrying banners reading “No More Slave Territory” and “The Pilgrims Did Not Found an Empire for Slavery.” But the most welcome sight of all was the company of “West Boston Wide Awakes”: two hundred black men marching proudly in uniform, keeping stride in perfect tempo with their white comrades, under a banner that said “God Never Made a Tyrant or a Slave.”

So now, less than 24 hours after Lincoln’s election, it was a chastened Phillips who addressed the crowd at the Tremont Theatre. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he intoned as the hall fell momentarily quiet, “if the telegraph speaks truth, for the first time in our history, the slave has chosen a President of the United States.”

So now my reading will take me to 17th Century London and 19th Century America along with 21st Century Canada.

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u.s. war resisters in canada: "in limbo because canada's conscience appears to lie dormant"

From Coquitlam Now, with heartfelt thanks to Jeff Schutts.

Canada's conscience 'in limbo'
by Jeff Schutts

Old news: American soldiers living in Canada seek sanctuary from the Iraq War.

When you heard this news several years ago you probably responded with confusion; unlike during the Vietnam War, the United States now has a volunteer military. And, like most Canadians (64 per cent in a 2008 poll), once you considered the war's controversies, chances are you thought that Canada should allow them to stay.

It hardly seems right that someone should go to jail for refusing to take part in activities like those at Abu Ghraib prison, or otherwise fight in what the United Nations (UN) general secretary deemed an "illegal war." After all, the lack of a UN sanction for the U.S. invasion of Iraq was why the Liberal government of the day declined to participate.

Surely, all that is resolved by now. Barack Obama is president and, as he declared last August, "the American combat mission in Iraq has ended."

From court martials over the illegal use of sniper "bait" to WikiLeaks documentation of needless civilian deaths, the reasons given for soldiers fleeing to Canada have been clearly corroborated. Even Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who wanted Canada to help invade Iraq in 2003, changed his mind five years later and admitted the war "was absolutely an error."

Nonetheless, one American Iraq War veteran turned war resister, Rodney Watson, has been trapped inside a Vancouver church for more than a year, living in sanctuary, his only alternative to avoid being arrested by the RCMP, deported by our government and imprisoned by the U.S. Army.

Jeremy Hinzman, the first American soldier of his generation to seek refuge in Canada, has been living in Toronto for seven years, almost a quarter of his life. He has a steady job and his second child was born here, yet he lives knowing that any day he, too, could be taken across the border to a military prison.

There are about three dozen such Americans living in Canada who have formally applied to be granted refugee status. Realistic estimates suggest a couple hundred others are living here underground. For them, the Iraq War is far from over.

Each of them has their own story of why they joined and then quit the military. Their plight is personal, yet their decision to come to Canada has entangled them in the loftiest dimensions of international law: their right to claim conscientious objection, even as soldiers, is guaranteed by the UN's Universal Declaration on Human Rights, while refugee conventions support their claim to asylum.

They are in limbo today because Canada's conscience appears to lie dormant behind pretensions of upholding international justice.

While lower courts sometimes rule that the refugee and immigration bureaucracies need to judge cases on their merits, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to consider the issue in 2007. And while Parliament twice, in 2008 and 2009, passed resolutions asking that the Conservative government make provisions for them to stay, a similar but binding bill failed last September by seven votes.

After two deportations in 2008, it seems that such high-profile political controversy has stayed the Harper government's policy of sending the war resisters back.

Until a new election results in either a Harper majority or a new coalition government, it seems both the war resisters and Canada's conscience will remain in limbo.

On Tuesday, Feb. 22, Douglas College's Institute for Ethics and Global Justice will host a brown bag lunch forum about these issues at its Coquitlam campus, at 1250 Pinetree Way. For more information, contact Jeff Schutts at schuttsj@douglascollege.ca.

Jeff Schutts is a Douglas College history instructor, as well as a former U.S. Army officer and peace activist.

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bush avoids handcuffs in switzerland, but spain may yet indict

As you may have heard, a former Resident of the White House recently cancelled a trip to Switzerland because he didn't want to be arrested - or humiliated. From The Nation:

George Bush has done a pretty good job of positioning himself as an "elder statesman" in the United States — at least by comparison with Dick Cheney — but the rest of the world has not forgotten the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush-Cheney interregnum.

So the forty-third president will not be jetting off to Switzerland next week, as had been expected.

Bush was supposed to be the star attraction at a fund-raising gala in Geneva February 12. But the news that the former president would be in Switzerland set off a flurry of legal filings — and calls by members of the Swiss parliament — that sought to have Bush arrested upon arrival on torture charges.

Bush has defended the use of waterboarding and other outlawed interrogation techniques in his autobiography, Decision Points, and public statements, effectively admitting that he and his aides approved acts that are banned by the Convention on Torture, the 1987 international pact prohibiting cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment to which the United States and Switzerland are signatories.

The New York–based Center for Constitutional Rights and European human rights groups had planned to submit a 2,500-page complaint against Bush to legal authorities in Geneva Monday. The complaint details mistreatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and was to be brought under the Convention Against Torture on behalf of two men who have been held by the United States — Majid Khan, who remains at Guantánamo, and Sami al-Hajj, a former Al Jazeera cameraman, who was released in 2008.

In addition, a conservative Swiss parliamentarian, Dominique Baettig, had requested that the Swiss federal government arrest of Bush on war crimes charges.

Organizers of the gala event claimed that Bush cancelled his trip in order to avoid protests that might turn violent. But the organizers of the protests, well-known activists on human rights and global justice issues, had actually proposed a symbolic protest that involved nothing more than tossing shoes at the hotel where Bush was scheduled to appear.

Geneva, home to numerous international agencies and tribunals, is arguably more experienced with managing protests than most cities on the planet. The notion that a Bush visit would have been anything more than an annoyance for the gendarmes, and for the broader community, is comic.

Bush decided not to make the trip because, in the words of Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch: "He's avoiding the handcuffs." [See original for more plus links.]

But are the war criminals out of the legal woods yet? In Spain, Judge Eloy Velasco has set a March 1 deadline to decide if he will prosecute the six Bush-era government lawyers, including then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, for violating international law by creating a legal justification for torture. Remember, it was a Spanish court that indicted Pinochet. According to numerous reports, arrests are "highly probable". Documents released by WikiLeaks show that the US has been pressuring Spain to drop the idea. No surprise there!

The US-based group Voters For Peace has written an open letter to the Spanish public: "Dear Spain: Please do what the U.S. won't. Prosecute Torture". The site appears to accept Canadian postal codes, so readers on both sides of the border can add their names.

Although there's little chance these powerful men will be held accountable for their crimes, actions like these help revive memories in our amnesiac world. They should also remind us that the better-looking, smarter-sounding current US administration has not closed the Guantánamo Bay concentration camp, has not ended the occupation of Iraq, and has escalated the occupation of Afghanistan.

In the Canadian blogosphere, I sometimes see references to "the US of 2000-2008," and I wonder, what do they think is different in 2011?

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us war resisters in canada: calling on our government to have courage to let them stay

As part of Let Them Stay Week 2011, war resister Dean Walcott recently spoke at a screening of "War Resisters Speak Out". Dean served two tours of duty in Iraq, but it wasn't until he was stationed at a military hospital in Germany that he saw the true cost of war, in the dead and horribly dying, and their families who had come to say goodbye.

Here's an excellent letter written to The Peterborough Examiner in response to ignorant criticism of Dean and other US Iraq War resisters in Canada. (No link yet.)

Resisters took brave stand and should be welcomed

Re "Desertion is still a crime" (Letter, Jan. 27)

Nick Butler is claiming that war resisters like Dean Walcott should not be admitted to Canada as they have committed the "offence" of refusing to fight in a war that is widely seen as illegitimate. However, there are some considerations that Mr. Butler seems to have overlooked.

The war Mr. Walcott is resisting against is a war that Canada refused to participate in. Canada has a history of allowing war resisters into the country, and not just during the Vietnam War. For example, Canada has allowed Iranian soldiers in after they refused to fight in Iraq. And while the "crime" of desertion is indeed on the books in Canada, the Canadian military does not attempt to track down and punish Canadians who refuse their orders. Yet if resisters like Walcott are sent back to the U.S.A. they will face lengthy prison sentences.

So instead of calling for Walcott to return home and have the courage to face an illegitimate punishment, perhaps we should instead be calling for our government to have the courage to allow these individuals to stay (which shouldn't be hard, given that the U.S. isn't even looking for them), as they have bravely acted according to their conscience.

Matthew Davidson
On behalf of OPIRG-Peterborough

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action alert part 2 of 4: send a letter of support for bradley manning

Bradley Manning is a prisoner of conscience. Accused of leaking the infamous "collateral murder" video that exposed the truth about the US invasion and occupation of Iraq - and vindicated what US war resisters have been saying all along - is not being treated like an ordinary prisoner.

Since July, Manning - without court martial or conviction - has been held in solitary confinement in a 6 x 12-foot cell. He is not allowed to read, to exercise or even to sleep during the day. This was supposedly for his own protection, an excuse the Army continues to use to persecute Manning. Last week, Manning was put on suicide watch - which meant he was stripped to his boxer shorts and his cell stripped of everything, even a blanket. Even his eyeglasses were taken.

At a White House briefing last week, press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about Manning. He said he was unaware of anything about him, but would check. If Gibbs needs information, let's give him some.

From WikiLeaks Is Democracy:

Some have perceived Manning as a traitor. Even if that were true it does not justify pre-trial torture. Others see Manning as a patriot. He is not accused of giving documents to Iran, China or Russia. He is accused of giving them to the media so Americans can see what US foreign policy is doing. He is not accused of trying to become rich by selling the documents. He gave them for free, allegedly, because he wanted to see a debate on U.S. foreign policy so the United States could live up to its highest expectations. He wanted to make the United States better. That is not treason, it is patriotism.

Click here to send a letter to President Obama in support of Bradley Manning. This is an area where public opinion can make a significant difference. Please add your voice to those of Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Chris Hedges, Cindy Sheehan, Col. Ann Wright, Kevin Zeese and so many others.

Click here and add your name.

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father of uk soldier killed in iraq calls blair war criminal, international terrorist

Please watch Reg Keys, who stood for election as an independent candidate against Tony Blair, and whose son was killed in Iraq.

Related: Blair 'gung-ho' on Iraq war a year before invasion

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creskey: a government of "too many deals and not enough ideals": let them stay!

Jim Creskey, an editor of Embassy magazine, has written an excellent piece linking Martin Luther King, Jr., Dwight Eisenhower's prophetic retirement speech, the shamefully US-centric Canadian government, and the plight of courageous Iraq War resisters seeking refuge in this country. This is a brief excerpt; please click through and read the whole piece. It deserves our attention.

Today, both Eisenhower and King would be dismayed by the rampant and excessive militarism of America. The total for military-related spending in the US for 2010 exceeds a trillion dollars.

Canada, allowing itself to be linked to American military adventures, has doubled its direct spending in recent years. The excuses haven't changed since Eisenhower and King's time. The courageous sacrifices of soldiers are still used as justification for bad political decisions. The threat of terror in various forms is still raised and the dangling of military-related jobs in high-unemployment constituencies is still part of the soft-sell.

Martin Luther King would also have a hard time understanding why today's government of Canada is determined to deport American conscientious objectors back to military jails even though most Canadians believe they should be offered asylum. Would he still believe that Canada was another name for heaven?

Too many deals and not enough ideals on both sides of the border have brought both countries to this regrettable place in modern history. The idealistic but profoundly practical words of a former US Republican president and a martyred champion of non-violent resistance could be applied today to good effect.

Thank you, Mr. Creskey! Supportive letters can be sent to letters@embassymag.ca.

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