tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-117374202024-03-04T22:19:03.444-08:00Youth Activists of AustinYAAustinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462257864058224671noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1153265256490060832006-08-12T16:18:00.000-07:002006-08-15T12:38:02.626-07:00YAA and military recruitment in the pressYouth Activists of Austin hasn't been especially active this summer, but YAA and military recruitment have come up recently in the local and national media, respectively. Here are some links and choice excerpts:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A384125">AISD: Students Rein in Military Recruiters</a>, Austin Chronicle July 7<br /><blockquote><p>The phrase <b>"No Child Left Behind"</b> takes on a particularly Orwellian undertone when you consider that the sweeping education law <i>requires</i> schools to allow the military to <b>recruit on campus</b>. Uniformed visitors are a regular sight at all 11 AISD high schools, where they try to sell students on a career that can bring college tuition dollars and an early retirement – or (generally left unmentioned) an early death... She and her fellow concerned students, known collectively as <b>Youth Activists of Austin</b>, contacted the elder peaceniks at <b>Nonmilitary Options for Youth</b>, and together they pressured AISD into passing an official military recruiting policy. The policy, adopted by the board on June 12, is so tame that it's actually a bit alarming that students considered it necessary. It essentially requires that recruiters will act like any other school visitors. They must check in at the front office, get a visitor's badge, and recruit in a designated area. And they will leave students alone who make it clear they aren't interested.</p></blockquote></li><li><a href="http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2247">SERGANT, GET A HALL PERMIT</a>, Texas Observer June 30 <blockquote>When Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, it added a particularly onerous, little-known provision that requires high schools to release student names to the military. The Pentagon has used such sensitive information as grades, ethnicity, Social Security numbers, cell phone numbers, and e-mail addresses to create a database of 30 million young people. Although they can’t change federal law, a group of activist students has managed to convince the Austin Independent School District to place limits on military recruiting at AISD campuses. The new guidelines, which take effect in the fall, will establish uniform (so to speak) rules for on-campus recruiting. From now on, recruiters will have to check in at the principal’s office, pick up a visitor’s badge, and limit their recruiting to designated areas. Overzealous military recruiters (and the principals who have been happy to accommodate them) are not to contact students who have made it clear that they don’t want to be contacted. Parents will be notified of their right to ask the school not to release their children’s names. School district trustees have also called for information about alternatives to the military to be readily available to students.</blockquote></li></ul>And, turmoil in the messy, discriminatory world of military recruitment:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060814/ap_on_go_ot/military_recruiters&printer=1">[Increase in] Misconduct by Military Recruiters Cited</a>, Associated Press<br /><p></p><blockquote><p>Military recruiters have increasingly resorted to overly aggressive tactics and even criminal activity to attract young troops to the battlefield, congressional investigators say.</p> <p>Grueling combat conditions in Iraq, a decent commercial job market and tough monthly recruiting goals have made recruiters' jobs more difficult, the Government Accountability Office said Monday. This has probably prompted more recruiters to resort to strong-arm tactics, including harassment or criminal means such as falsifying documents, to satisfy demands, GAO states.</p> <p>The report was done at the behest of lawmakers who were concerned that not enough was being done to curb aggressive recruitment practices.</p> <p>"Even one incident of recruiter wrongdoing can erode public confidence in the recruiting process," the GAO warned.</p> <p>According to service data provided to the GAO, substantiated cases of wrongdoing jumped by more than a third, from about 400 cases in 2004 to almost 630 in 2005. Meanwhile, criminal cases — such as sexual harassment or falsifying medical records — more than doubled in those years, jumping from 30 incidents to 70.</p> <p>There are some 22,000 personnel working for the military's recruiting program, which cost more than $1.5 billion this year. On staff are some 14,000 "frontline" recruiters who must enlist two applicants per month.</p> <p>"Given the large numbers of service members DOD must recruit every year, there is ample opportunity for recruiter irregularities to occur," the report said, using the acronym for the Department of Defense.</p></blockquote></li><li><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/washington/15discharge.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=us&pagewanted=print">Military's Discharges for Being Gay Rose in '05</a>, New York Times<br /><blockquote>The Defense Department discharged 726 service members last year for being gay, up about 10 percent from 2004, figures released by a gay rights group show.<br /><br />The group, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, obtained the information through a Freedom of Information Act request. A spokeswoman for the Defense Department, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, confirmed that it had released the information.<br /><br />On Monday, the legal group released a breakdown of discharges by installation. A sharp increase occurred at Fort Campbell, Ky., where in 1999 a soldier was bludgeoned to death in his barracks by fellow soldiers who thought he was homosexual. In 2004, 19 service members from the base were discharged, a number that climbed to 49 last year.<br /><br />Fort Sill, Okla., had 27 dismissals last year, up from 8 in 2004. Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., had 60 dismissals, up from 40 in 2004, and the Marine base at Parris Island, S.C., discharged 22, up from 12.<br /><br />The Army, by far the largest branch of the military, discharged more gay personnel last year than the other branches with 386, the figures show, followed by the Navy with 177, the Air Force with 88 and the Marines, the smallest force, with 75.<br /><br />The overall number of men and women dismissed because they were found to be gay or because they disclosed their sexuality fell in the three years from 2002 to 2004. From Sept. 11, 2001, through last year, the discharge rate dropped 40 percent.<br /><br />The total of such discharges in 2004 was 653. That compares with 770 in 2003, 885 in 2002 and 1,227 in 2001.<br /><br />Under a policy introduced by the Clinton administration known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the military cannot inquire into service members’ sex lives unless there is evidence of homosexual conduct.<br /><br />Those who volunteer the information have to be discharged. More than 11,000 members have been discharged for that reason, the legal group said. </blockquote></li></ul>YAAustinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462257864058224671noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1146243709691594192006-04-28T09:58:00.000-07:002006-04-28T10:20:52.070-07:00AISD news, Invisible Children and Darfur ralliesYAA members and Nonmilitary Options for Youth volunteers met with the AISD legal counsel again this past Wednesday to discuss what kind of policy on military recruiters the district should have. You can compare the district draft policy to our original proposal <a target="_blank" href="https://webspace.utexas.edu/ajh495/images/yaacomparison2.JPG">here</a>. We would like to hear as much student feedback as possible before we proceed - please e-mail us with your thoughts, preferrably this weekend.<br /><br />A few events this weekend you might like to know about:<br /><br />Youth Benefit Concert:<br />The Youth Media Collective of Austin, a project of YAA and Austin Indymedia, is having a benefit concert tonight at Quack's Bakery. Bands performing include: Misspent Youth, Offisaurs, Toejammers, and Crystal Bedford. Funds raised will go to the purchasing of equipment that youth can use to document their lives and local activism.<br />When: Tonight, 6pm<br />Where: Quack's Bakery 1400 E. 38th 1/2 St<br />For more information, contact Kate Kelly at riot.kate@gmail.com.<br /><br />Invisible Children Night Commute:<br />Every night in northern Uganda, thousands of child refugees walk for miles from their homes into camps to avoid abduction and abuse by the so-called Lord's Resistance Army. A recent study found that the death rate in Uganda is three times what it is in Iraq. Students will be meeting at UT on Saturday to walk to the Capitol in solidarity with the children and raise awareness of their struggle. Many will even spend the night outside on the Capitol steps.<br />When: Saturday (4/29), beginning at 6pm<br />Where: UT Tower, proceeding to the Capitol steps<br />For more information, contact Timothy Bray at timothycbray@gmail.com. To learn more see the <a href="http://ugandacan.org/">UgandaCAN blog</a>.<br /><br />Rally to Save Darfur:<br />400,000 people have been killed. 3.5 million displaced from their homes. The UN has just cut food rations in half for the refugees, who are spilling into neighboring Chad. A slow genocide has been occuring over the past four years in the western Darfur region of Sudan. Rallies are being held across the country on Sunday to raise awareness of their plight and call for action to end the genocide.<br />When: Sunday, 1-3pm<br />Where: South Capitol steps, 11th St.<br />For more information, contact Ansel at ansel@riseup.net To learn more check out the <a href="http://www.genocideintervention.net/index.php">Genocide Intervention Network</a>.YAAustinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462257864058224671noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1145926606041894842006-04-24T17:53:00.000-07:002006-04-24T17:57:30.390-07:00"Texas Youth Fight the War Aimed At Them"<a href="http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/35144/">http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/35144/</a><br />By Jordan Buckley<br /><blockquote><h5 style="margin: 0px 0px 20px;"></h5> <p> A suburban packed full of high school students barreled south toward the Mexican border Tuesday, and while several of the same gaggle of youth had missed classes the week before -- then marching nearly nine miles through the Texas heat from their campus to the state capitol in protest of proposed immigration reforms -- this time around, their absence is excused.</p><p>Today, they will present on their dynamic involvement within the so-called "counter-recruitment movement" at the Women and War Conference hosted by South Texas College in McAllen, situated six hours from their home in Austin.</p><p>Seldom are teenagers invited to speak at collegiate academic conferences, but the <a href="http://yaaustin.blogspot.com/">Youth Activists of Austin</a> (YAA!) are growing accustomed to blazing new trails. YAA! -- a citywide coalition of mostly high school-aged social justice enthusiasts -- have drawn broad attention to what they argue are the unacceptable practices of military recruiters within their schools.</p><p>Indeed, the pervasive misconduct of military recruiters on a national scale spurred the U.S. Army Recruiting Command to declare a <a href="http://usmilitary.about.com/od/armyjoin/a/recpause.htm">one-day abstention</a> from pursuing enlistments last May, instead allowing them to "refocus on their values."</p><p>In January, YAA! unleashed a new campaign to urge the Austin Independent School District (AISD) to follow the lead of other school districts across the country by placing reasonable restrictions on the on-campus activities of military recruiters.</p><p>Recently, grassroots campaigns in a number of towns have resulted in policy changes. In Tucson, Ariz., students must initiate interactions with recruiters and not the reverse; in Princeton, N.J., recruiters can only meet with students in the presence of guidance counselors; in Madison, Wis., recruiters are limited to three high school visits a year, and guidance counselors are required to provide information to students on alternatives to military service.</p><p>Spurred by these reforms and abuses they had witnessed firsthand, YAA! members drafted a <a href="http://yaaustin.blogspot.com/2006/02/draft-of-military-recruiter-policy-at.html">ten-point platform</a> outlining policy changes that they determined fair and necessary to ensuring healthily maintained schools. They began by attending AISD board meetings and relaying their concerns to administrators en masse.</p><p>One plank of their proposed platform -- banning military hardware from campuses -- stems from recruiters' attempts to seduce enlistees through the use of spectacular technical equipment, which functions as aggressive advertising for military service and the war rather than examples of technological achievement with academic merit, YAA! argues.</p><p>Recently, Travis High School, a predominantly lower-income and nonwhite school located in southern Austin, was visited by one of the <a href="http://www.objector.org/recruiting-vans/army.html">Army's Cinema Vans</a> -- a multimillion-dollar 18-wheeler containing highly sophisticated war simulation video games. Educators there informed students that they had to "sign up" for the van to get credit for P.E. class -- a move which put the students' personal information in recruiters' hands, thereby better enabling them to contact these students individually and convince them to enlist.</p><p>Other components of YAA!'s proposed platform include: requiring recruiters to check-in at the front office and wear a name tag upon every campus visit, requiring parental consent for administration of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test, allowing students to "<a href="http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/32417/">opt-out</a>" of releasing their personal information to recruiters while remaining eligible for contact from universities, and forbidding recruiters from classroom and school assembly presentations unless the content of their speech is directly applicable to class curriculum.</p><p>For YAA! member Timothy Bray, a senior at Westlake High School, the latter plank responds to an episode at his school where administrators afforded a military recruiter a gymnasium filled with captive audience members to mark Veterans Day.</p><p>But in addition to navigating the traditional channels for institutional change, YAA! also operates on a number of different fronts to raise consciousness about (and to consequently interrupt) recruiters' quest for youthful enlistees.</p><p>After recruiters plotted a visit to Austin Community College in December, YAA! members hung a banner from the roof of one of the schools' buildings that read "Homophobic War Recruiters Off ACC!" -- the recruiters relocated to another campus only to be confronted there by dozens of quickly mobilized counter-recruitment activists.</p><p>YAA! has elicited media attention for staging "read-in" protests outside of the AISD headquarters. The "Better Well-Read Than Dead" vigils alert passersby to YAA!'s opposition to unduly aggressive campus recruitment while reinforcing the group's top priority -- fair access to education.</p><p>Likewise, later this month YAA! will launch the "Enlightenment not Enlistment Program" whereby students may trade in military recruitment literature mailed to their houses at local participating bookstores to receive a 10 percent discount on purchases.</p><p>On Saturday, YAA! will reveal their newest tactic to combat those trying to put them in a war zone -- Protest-in-a-can. The ready-to-go kit easily fits in a locker and contains all necessary materials to demonstrate against recruiters' sudden presence on a campus: a banner, tape recorder, chant list, media call list and counter-recruitment literature. The cans will be piloted in two high schools before possibly being amended and reproduced for further use throughout Austin, says LBJ High School freshman Kate Kelly.</p><p>Already, YAA! appears to have made real advances in their campaign with AISD. The school district's attorney, Mel Waxler, has disseminated YAA!'s platform to the principals at all of AISD's 12 high schools and will soon make a recommendation of reforms to the board of trustees based on YAA!'s proposal.</p><p>Until then, <a href="http://yaaustin.blogspot.com/">YAA!</a> remains poised to continue countering the government's efforts to shuttle youth abroad for war-making -- whether it takes them to the school district headquarters, their schools' hallways, the city streets or the riverbanks of the Rio Grande.</p></blockquote><p> </p> <p><i> Jordan Buckley is a writer based in Austin, Texas, who also works as a guest teacher for the Austin Independent School District.</i></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1143265858211339412006-03-24T21:26:00.000-08:002006-03-24T22:56:17.196-08:00Hey AISD, limit the military!YAA students staged another successful event outside AISD headquarters today to promote education over warfare. We quietly read books, finished up some homework, and engaged in a discussion about military recruiter access in our schools. FOX 7 News devoted several minutes of coverage to the event in its nightly news program. Low-quality recorded video is below (turn up your volume, click the gray play button). As soon as FOX publishes a full transcript of the segment we'll quote that here as well.<br /><br /><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kpBFdzwh03Y"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kpBFdzwh03Y" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="350" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />You can read the new policy we are proposing to AISD in full <a href="http://yaaustin.blogspot.com/2006/02/draft-of-military-recruiter-policy-at.html">here</a>. Let us know in the comment section or at yaaustin@gmail.com what you think. YAA will be meeting again next Friday on the southwest Capitol lawn, as usual, to continue our resistance to military recruiters on behalf of the students they seek to send to war. Anyone is welcome to attend.<br /><br />We give FOX 7 a big thumbs-up for their coverage of today's protest - however, a small correction. At the beginning of the segment the news anchor says that "two student groups" want to limit recruiter access in AISD schools. In fact, YAA is the only youth/student group actively working on this specific issue (while having the support of other student groups in the Austin area). The group that we have had the privilege to partner with in this AISD campaign is <a href="http://www.progressiveaustin.org/nmofy/drupal/">Nonmilitary Options for Youth</a>, a group of concerned parents and veterans who go into schools to raise student awareness of non-violent alternatives to military service.<br /><br />Also, for the record, today's protest was utterly and completely peaceful, like all YAA events.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1140195850785531012006-02-17T09:03:00.000-08:002006-02-25T17:06:52.966-08:00No meeting todayLate announcement: This week's (2/17) YAA meeting has been rescheduled because of the Historians Against War conference. Instead we'll be meeting on Sunday at about 4 pm. If you'd like to attend let us know in the comments and we can forward you more information.<br /><br />And a quick update about our campaign to limit military recruiter access in AISD schools: YAA members and Nonmilitary Options for Youth met with AISD general counsel Mel Waxler on Wednesday to discuss the legal implications of our proposed limitations (see below). Mr. Waxler informed us that our proposal was being taken into consideration and he would make a recommendation to the board at some point in the near future. He also confirmed, to our surprise and delight, that AISD is already moving towards a modified version of the SR-290 opt-out form that makes clear military recruiters' access to student information. The new form may even provide students and parents the opportunity to separately and exclusively opt-out from sharing their information with military recruiters - who would use such information, for instance, to call you on your birthday telling you to join the military, an unpleasant experience that interrupted a YAA member's birthday party just last year.<br /><br />The struggle continues, even though there's no meeting today.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1139243754689592272006-02-06T08:28:00.000-08:002006-02-06T09:08:25.386-08:00Draft of military recruiter policy at AISDIn the interest of openness and providing the public the opportunity to give us feedback, we decided at the last YAA meeting to publish our draft list of proposals for military recruiter limitations at AISD. We'd like to emphasize that this is our draft and is <span style="font-style: italic;">subject to revision as negotiations with AISD continue</span>. It's likely that this list would be substantially altered before being implemented as AISD policy. Stay tuned for updates, and in the meantime, please let us know what you think in the comment section.<br /><br />Here is the draft:<br /><br />Prepared by Youth Activists of Austin and Nonmilitary Options for Youth for discussion with members of AISD school board - January 2006<br /><ol><li>Military recruiters will check in at the schoolÂs administrative office and get a visitor badge every time they go onto school property.</li><li>Military recruiters will be restricted to designated areas in the schools, such as career centers. One-on-one visits will be monitored by a counselor or another school staff person.</li><li>Military recruiters will not approach students in hallways, and the student will be the one to initiate discussion with a military recruiter.</li><li>The SR-290 form will be revised to clearly state that military recruiters are among the organizations that request student directoryinformation, and we would prefer that there be a military-only opt-outprovision (that is, a way for students to withhold their directory information from military recruiters while allowing it to be given to college and job recruiters).</li><li>All guidance counselors will be made aware that students who sign up for the military through the Delayed Entry Program (DEP) are legally allowed to separate from the program if they change their minds prior to their report dates for basic training, and counselors will be able to guide students through the separation process.</li><li>The ASVAB test (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) will not be administered during class time or without parental approval to students under 18.</li><li> There will be no military hardware, military vehicles or military recreational equipment on school campuses (eg. Army Cinema Vans, humvees, helicopters, video game systems or rock-climbing equipment), and no recruitment posters featuring weapons will be displayed in schools.</li><li>Military recruiters will not speak in classrooms or school assemblies unless their presentations correspond to class curriculum.</li><li>Schools will continue to allow information about alternatives to the military to be made available to students in a manner and location similar to recruiting information.</li><li>Military recruiters who violate these policies will be disallowed from visiting schools within the district for a determined length of time.<br /></li></ol>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1138735742920706362006-01-31T11:28:00.000-08:002006-01-31T11:33:12.946-08:00Campaign to limit military recruiters at AISDYAA has been working with coalition of parents, teachers, and veterans, and the group <a href="http://www.progressiveaustin.org/nmofy/drupal/">Nonmilitary Options for Youth</a> over the past few months to develop a policy proposal for Austin Independent School District (AISD) that would lay down some rules regarding what military recruiters can and cannot do in Austin-area schools. For example, we've proposed a provision that would direct military recruiters to confine their activities to the career center, like most other college or job recruiters, and prevent them from roaming the hallways to harass students. The Austin-American Statesman had an <a href="http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/01/30military.html?UrAuth=%60N%60NUO%60NTUbTTUWUXUWUZTZUUWUbUVUZUcU%5DUcTYWVVZV&urcm=y">article</a> in yesterday's local section that does a good job of summarizing some of our efforts so far, most recently a meeting we had with two AISD school board members. The article is quoted in full below:<br /><blockquote>Austin students seek to limit military's recruiting access<br />Youth group working with local activists to set rules on where contact can take place.<br /><br />By Raven L. Hill<br />AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF<br /><br />Monday, January 30, 2006<br /><br />Garza High School senior Will Martin does not have a problem with students who want to join the military.<br /><br />But he does think there should be limits on recruiters' access to students.<br /><br />Martin and a small group of about a dozen other students in the Austin school district are working with two local groups, Nonmilitary Options for Youth and Youth Activists of Austin, in support of a proposed districtwide policy on recruiting tactics.<br /><br />"We're not trying to take away the option of joining the military, but I do feel that students should be educated about decisions before they join," Martin said.<br /><br />Recruiters' access to students has become a contentious issue, particularly as the U.S. military's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan continues and the government falls short of its recruitment goals. Though significant support remains for the military's efforts overseas, a small but growing number of Austin parents and students are voicing their displeasure about recruiter tactics they say are aggressive.<br /><br />Public high schools must provide the military with students' contact information unless parents request otherwise in writing under the federal No Child Left Behind law. And recruiters often have broad access to students at school.<br /><br />Throughout Central Texas, principals have discretion in granting access to school grounds. They decide whether recruiters are limited to specific areas of the school, such as counselor offices, or whether they can approach students in the hallways during lunch. They decide whether recruiters are limited to certain times of the year, such as college and career events, or whether they can make monthly trips to the school.<br /><br />In San Marcos, for example, recruiters are allowed to take students off campus for lunch with parental consent.<br /><br />Nonmilitary Options for Youth and Youth Activists of Austin have submitted proposals to Austin district officials that call for limiting recruiters to campus career centers, prohibiting them from bringing military hardware into schools and ensuring that counselors are informed about procedures for release from military contracts.<br /><br />They also would like to make sure that parents are aware of the opt-out provision in the federal law that requires schools to share student contact information. The district's current policy is "all or nothing": Parents cannot specify which organizations they want to have their child's information.<br /><br />The inconsistencies across campuses are troublesome, Martin said, adding that in some instances, military recruiters have more access to students than colleges or local companies.<br /><br />"We think the military should have the same access as other recruiters," he said. "They shouldn't have the special right to roam the halls when other recruiters don't."<br /><br />The groups' proposals are based on policies in other school systems across the country.<br /><br />In Madison, Wis., recruiters are allowed in high schools only three days a year, and guidance counselors must provide information about alternatives to military service. The Tucson, Ariz., district requires students to initiate appointments with recruiters. Students in Princeton, N.J., can meet with recruiters only if a guidance counselor is present.<br /><br />Lt. Col. Ronald McLaurin, commander of the Texas Army National Guard Recruiting Battalion, said that it has been difficult to recruit in some schools but that administrators have been mostly supportive.<br /><br />"I can empathize with the position that principals are put in," McLaurin said. "No school has ever said flat out 'no' to us. We appreciate the access we get."<br /><br />San Marcos officials - and those in some other area school districts -say they have not heard complaints about military access at their schools.<br /><br />Austin district officials are exploring changes for next year that would make it clearer to parents that they have the option to withhold information and that would allow parents to specifically opt out of giving the military information, said Mel Waxler, the school district's attorney.<br /><br />Waxler said that he has never received a complaint from a parent about unauthorized access from military recruiters and that the district tries to provide groups with equal access.<br /><br />"If the military has a brochure that is featured in one part of the campus, then Nonmilitary Options for Youth would have the same access and same right," Waxler said. "If there are career days and the military has one of the booths, then Nonmilitary Options for Youth has a booth."<br /><br />McLaurin said he would offer an alternative perspective to those seeking to limit access.<br /><br />"If access to National Guard recruiters is limited, you are limiting the opportunity for some students to have a great way of life and to be part of something bigger than themselves," he said. "You are limiting opportunities for citizens to serve their communities."</blockquote>YAA's next meeting is this Friday at 6:30 at a new, more central location: <a href="http://www.littlecity.com/home.php">Little City</a> on Congress in downtown Austin. Look for us at the back. All are welcome to attend!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1134010978023558212005-12-07T18:49:00.000-08:002006-02-06T11:25:24.283-08:00Still going strong!Apologies for the lack of website updates during the past several weeks. We're happy to report that the counter-recruitment movement is still going strong nationwide, and especially here in Austin. Below is a snapshot of a <a href="http://www.dailytexanonline.com/media/paper410/news/2005/12/07/TopStories/Locals.Students.Protest.Military.Recruiters.At.Acc.Campus-1123265.shtml?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.dailytexanonline.com">Daily Texan story</a> about our joint protest with <a href="http://utcameo.blogspot.com/">CAMEO</a>, <a href="http://ivaw.net/">IVAW</a>, and several other local groups of a recruitment fair that was held at the ACC Eastview campus yesterday. (The story was featured prominently on the front page in today's issue of the Texan.)<br /><br />Some of you might have also seen a <a href="http://www.kvue.com/news/local/stories/120605kvueArmyprotest-cb.268ebd3.html">lengthy news segment</a> that the local KVUE station aired last night about the Solomon amendment and the protest. I didn't see the segment myself, but I understand that KVUE might have portrayed us youth activists as being disorganized in some way. Here's the full story:<br /><br />101X DJs, whose station was sponsoring the recruiters, repeatedly said on air in the days prior that their staff and the recruiters would be setting up at the ACC Rio Grande campus. A group of YAA members, other protesters, and the media all showed up on schedule outside the Rio Grande campus, but the recruiters were nowhere to be found. We got word that the recruiters had instead gone to the ACC Eastview campus, about a fifteen minute drive (or bike ride) away. After dropping a banner that read "Homophobic War Recruiters Off ACC" from the roof of a building opposite the campus, we all headed over to the Eastview campus.<br /><br />There we found a 101X tent with military propaganda and two recruiters in the middle of a largely empty courtyard. As we held signs, engaged the 101X representatives in discussion, and chanted in protest, the recruiters stood off to the side talking with one another and doing nothing. A young guy working for 101X told me that they were told at the last second to switch locations from Rio Grande to Eastview - presumably by the recruiters. Sounds to me like the recruiters noticed the press release we sent out about our protest the night before and changed sites in a sad attempt to avoid us.<br /><br />The protest was a success, then. We executed a targeted protest with extensive media coverage and the recruiters were denied the level of access to students that they've come to expect.<br /><br />Here's a choice snippet of the Texan article:<blockquote>The protest was in response to a campus recruitment fair that included two military recruiters and the radio station 101X. Protestors also targeted the station because of its involvement in the recruitment fair.<br /><br />"If [101X] is going to affiliate themselves with the war, then they are part of the problem," said Will Martin, a Garza High School senior and a member of Youth Activist of Austin, one of the protesting groups.<br /><br />"I think it is hypocritical of 101X to support the government's wars when they call themselves the 'alternative.' They aren't promoting the alternative, they are promoting the American ideal of war. We are supporting the alternative, peace."<br /><br />Representatives of 101X would not comment.<br /><br />The students protested that the Solomon Amendment supports the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" discriminatory policy. Students were also concerned with recruitment officers who promise recruits specific jobs or opportunities to avoid combat. </blockquote>The next YAA meeting is in two days! We have several campaigns planned for the coming year - we'd love to see some new members come out.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1128392387317316362005-10-03T18:59:00.000-07:002005-10-05T06:05:04.916-07:00Wrap-up of Saturday's march and rally<span style="font-weight: bold;">Updated Wednesday, October 5</span><br /><br />A mostly-complete list of those who spoke at the open-mic session at Republic Sq. Park and also at City Hall is at the bottom of this post.<br /><br /><a href="http://austin.indymedia.org/">Austin Indymedia</a> has some excellent coverage of last Saturday's event, with <a href="http://austin.indymedia.org/newswire/display/21557/index.php">great pictures</a>. Also, here is the rough text of another speech, this time given by YAA member and high school student Ross Blair. It does a good job of summing up the reasons for the protest and continuing counter-recruitment activities.<br /><blockquote>I'm Ross Blair from the Youth Activists of Austin. As everyone here is aware there is an extremely disturbing trend in America today concerning its youth and military recruiters in our schools. YAA organized this protest because we are outraged that the millitary thinks of students as untrained soldiers instead of tomorrow'ss scientists, enginneers, and writers. They act as if schools exist for the express purpose of helping meet their recrutment quotas. As we have seen in the past few months recruiters are relying on increasingly unethical and socialy destructive methods of recruiting students. Such actions are unacceptable! We must protect our students, by demilitarizing our schools! We're here to demand that AISD and other schools serve the best intrests of their students and stop such aggressive millitary recruitment. We want schools to fight the No Child Left Behind Act's pro-recruitment agenda by limiting recruiter access to schools and protecting students contact information.<br /><br />Though there is some debate in the counter-recruitment movement about whether recruiters should be given equal access or thrown out completely, but we shouldn't have to fight ourselves before we fight them. I hope this is only the beginning of a campaign that will successfully and quickly demilitarize our schools.</blockquote>The Students Not Soldiers: Demilitarize Our Schools event was a modest success. By our count, one hundred people showed up to protest the lies that military recruiters are telling students here in Austin and all over the country, and their unreasonable access to students and their personal information.<br /><br />At Republic Square Park under the shade of a big tree, the group gathered for an open-mic speak out, during which everyone from high-school students to elderly men and women shared their experiences with recruiters. A veteran of the Gulf War warned of false promises of benefits and the true horrors of war, a young high school student talked about the implicit racism of recruiters against poor Latinos and blacks, and a professor from UT expressed her outrage over the military's discrimination against homosexuals, and several more students got up to speak as well.<br /><br />From the park we began our march down sixth street, looping down to Cesar Chavez and Austin City Hall, where the rally resumed. We chanted slogans like "College Not Combat" and "1234, We don't want your dirty war, 5678, Organize and Stop the Hate," and took up an entire lane.<br /><br />Once at City Hall, we had several speakers, including Susan Van Haitsma from <a href="http://www.progressiveaustin.org/nmofy/">Non Military Options for Youth</a> and Dave Bills of <a href="http://www.ivaw.net/">Iraq Veterans Against the War</a>, and we closed out the event with some music. The local news station KXAN incorporated a lengthy segment on recruitment examining different sides of the issue into their coverage of the event.<br /><br />The full transcript of the speech I gave, about recruiters and their deceptive marketing strategies, is <a href="http://austin.indymedia.org/newswire/display/21560/index.php">here</a>. An excerpt from the beginning:<br /><blockquote>The title of this event is Students Not Soldiers: Demilitarize Our Schools. We say that schools should be places where young people can go to learn, make friends, and figure out what they want to do with their lives, without being badgered by military recruiters who roam the halls and interrupt classes.<br /><br />But even beyond that, we say that schools should places for truth. Not half-truths, not deceptions, and not lies (no intelligent design either).<br /><br />Yet, the very presence of recruiters on the school grounds transforms schools into a marketing playground, where military service is sold by whatever means necessary. And recruiters are both compelled and unofficially encouraged to lie, cheat, and falsify documents in order to get students through the enlistment process.<br /><br />Even setting aside all the lying and cheating, we're still left with basic recruiting techniques that are fundamentally dishonest. These techniques are, in essence, marketing strategies, and service in the military treated as a mere product that must be sold.</blockquote>This was a good beginning of what could be a powerful counter-recruitment movement here in Austin. We at YAA will continue to attend AISD public meetings and to call for change. Our meetings are every Friday at the Maplewood Elementary School at 6:30, and you can always find Timothy or myself at the weekly anti-war vigil in front of the Capitol just before that on the same day.<br /><br />Some of the speakers:<br /><br />Andy Peterson - Garza student<br />Charlie Rose - Garza student and a mother<br />Cindy Beringer - High school teacher at Manor ISD and a member of ISO<br />Dave Bills - Gulf War veteran, Iraq Veterans Against the War<br />Alberto Gonzalez - parent of two students in AISD<br />Susan Van Haitsma - Nonmilitary Options for Youth<br />David Morris - Vietnam veteran, Austin Agsinst War<br />Tomas Heikkala - Vietnam veteran, Nonmilitary Options for Youth<br />Ross Blair - Waldorf student, YAA member<br />Ansel Herz - UT student, YAA and CAMEO memberUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1125688614224047242005-09-02T19:03:00.000-07:002005-09-22T18:37:12.266-07:00Students Not Soldiers - Demilitarize Our SchoolsUpdate: See the Austin Chronicle's latest piece: <a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-09-23/pols_feature9.html">Youth Activists: Demilitarize Our Schools!</a><br /><br />Do you wish college and job recruiters would replace military recruiters in our schools? You're not alone, so join us...<br /><br />WHEN: 4-7 PM on October 1<br />WHERE: Republic Square Park (4th and Guadalupe), march to and rally at Austin City Hall<br /><br />The rally begins at 4 PM at <a href="http://austin.citysearch.com/map?mode=geo&id=11358849&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;map_lat=302674&map_lon=-977469&fid=10&">Republic Square Park</a> - we will gather there with fellow students, teachers, parents, and concerned citizens to call for the demilitarization of schools and protest the deceitful practices and false promises of military recruiters.<br /><br />Several speakers and booths will have information on how to pay for college or secure a job after high school, without joining the military and being sent off to fight wars for corrupt leaders.<br /><br />The event has been endorsed by: Austin Against War, Austin ISO, CAMEO, Educators for Change, Issue Magazine, Non-Military Options for Youth, Texans for Peace, UT Watch, UT Student Labor Action, and more!<br /><br />Fresh and fruity drinks will provided by Daily Juice, and we'll have live music from David Rovics and local bands.<br /><br />Download and distribute flyers!<br /><a href="http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y69/yaaustin/4x4.jpg">Flyer 1</a><br /><a href="https://webspace.utexas.edu/ajh495/snsfull.pdf">Flyer 2 (PDF)</a><br /><a href="http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y69/yaaustin/snsban2.jpg">Flyer 3</a><br /><br />Prior notes:<br /><br />As you can see, I've posted our preliminary flyer for the event to the right. For the past several weeks YAA has been busily organizing a major march and rally scheduled to take place on October 1. The primary purpose of the event is to spotlight the harmful and deceptive practices of the military in America's schools, and to demonstrate local support among youth and adults alike for the growing counter-recruitment movement. We will gather initially at Republic Square Park at 4:00 pm, from which we will march across the downtown to the City Hall, where students and activists will rally and hear from assorted speakers, including students, parents, teachers, and veterans. Not only that, but there will also be live music from, among others, <a href="http://www.davidrovics.com/">David Rovics</a>, who performed here in Austin just two days ago at the Cindy Sheehan event.<br /><br />Endorsements for the rally already include <a href="http://www.texansforpeace.org/">Texans for Peace</a> and <a href="http://www.vvaw.org/">Vietnam Veterans Against War</a>, with many more official endorsements to be announced in the coming weeks. I'll continue to update the site here with more details about the event as they become available.<br /><br />This will be Austin's first massive counter-recruitment event. Be there.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1120192769098041982005-06-30T18:14:00.000-07:002005-07-01T14:07:49.486-07:00Well, not really.The Washington Post, and the mainstream media in general, aren't looking closely enough at the numbers, as usual. The media has reported that the Army and Army reserves met their recruiting goals in June. The reality, however, is that they simply lowered their recruiting goals month before--by over 1300 recruits. A short paragraph in a recent New York Times article notes, <blockquote>"Early last month, the Army, with no public notice, lowered its long-stated May goal to 6,700 recruits from 8,050. Compared with the original target, the Army achieved only 62.6 percent of its goal for the month."</blockquote> Even with that lower goal, the Army still didn't reach their goals in May. Now, they're declaring that 6,150 June recruits is a success. As alluded to in the article in Will's post but not spelled out, <blockquote>"the Army is at barely 50 percent of its goal. Recruiters would have to land more than 9,760 young men and women a month, on average, to reach the 80,000 target by the end of September."</blockquote>They're still way behind, and the recruiting in June didn't get them much closer. The military recruitment establishment layers the deception on so thick sometimes, it's easy to get the wrong impression. That's where we activists come in. For more information about the real story on June recruitment, see <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/6/30/72514/6238">DailyKos</a> and <a href="http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1579">Needlenose</a>.<br /><br />By the way, whatever promises military recruiters make about benefits, bonuses, and now, even post-war healthcare for veterans, really can't be trusted. Over the past few months, the Bush administration and Republican House leadership have been busy <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blogs/outrage?bid=13&pid=4010">screwing over</a> veterans (including the wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan):<br /><blockquote>By now, it should be obvious that the "pro-defense" party doesn't give a damn about our troops, least of all veterans. <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">House Republicans ousted fellow conservative Chris Smith as chairman of the Committee on Veterans Affairs for his tireless advocacy of veterans rights. Current Chairman Steve Buyer was promoted, in the words of one Republican aide, "to tell the veterans groups, 'Enough is enough.'"</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Senate Republicans have repeatedly voted down funding increases for vets to keep pace with inflation and meet rising needs.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The Bush Administration tried to add an enrollment fee and double the prescription co-payment for VA health care.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And now the VA admits it is $1 billion short on health care funding for this year alone. </p> After months of dodging Congressional questioning, VA undersecretary for health Jonathan Perlin finally gave the House VA Committee an unexpectedly honest answer last week. It turns out the $1.6 billion spending increase promised last year has been a matter of accounting trickery, achieved by shifting money from one account to another, and cutting almost $1 billion for medical administration, facilities and prosthetic research.</blockquote>That's part of the problem with the military service in this country. When you sign that contract with the military, what happens to you not only depends on the decisions and practices of your immediate superior officers, but even more so on the civilian political leadership in Washington. The point was made many times during last season's election campaign that General Shinseki recommended many more troops in Iraq to better pacify the country after the invasion; he was ignored and forced out by Donald Rumsfeld. The President, who at the moment happens to have been a draft-dodger during Vietnam and has no military experience whatsoever, is the 'commander-in-chief,' of course. If he and his advisers happen to decide (whether on the basis of politics of supposed national security) that the military needs to begin an unprecedented stop-loss deployment policy in order to maintain an open-ended occupation in a foreign country full of guerillas, there's virtually nothing a soldier can do to determine the course of his or her life in the following months or years. Once you're in the military, your life is, to a disturbingly large extent, not in your own hands any more.<br /><br />So, let's really support the troops: bring 'em home, and stop recruiting people through <a href="http://yaaustin.blogspot.com/2005/06/skepticism-is-good-thing.html">deception</a> and <a href="http://yaaustin.blogspot.com/2005/06/pentagon-creating-student-database-to.html">invasions of privacy</a>. YAA has a meeting tomorrow at 6:30 at Quack's. Come get involved if you're not already!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1119662520131282032005-06-24T18:13:00.000-07:002005-06-24T18:25:24.720-07:00New meeting time!We've decided to move back our weekly meeting time one hour so that people who wish to attend the meeting can also participate in <a href="http://austinagainstwar.org/">Austin Against War</a>'s anti-war vigil in front of the Capitol building every Friday from 5-6. I'll be at the vigil regularly (I usually get there at about 5:15 depending on the buses).<br /><br />Afterwards, I'll bike over to the YAA meeting, which is now <span style="font-weight: bold;">every Friday at the area around Quack's Bakery in Maplewood at 6:30 PM</span>. You can stay as long as you like. The bakery itself has been closing early lately, so if we're not there, walk east past the railroad tracks and look up at the school playground area on your left. We meet at the school when the bakery closes. (A map of the area is <a href="http://mq-mapgend.websys.aol.com/mqmapgend?MQMapGenRequest=FDR2dmwjDE%3byt29%26FDJnci4Jkqj%2cMMCJ%3aHOEvq%3ba7lhab%3a%29fta9yb%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40y%3aqyb%3al4b%3aTD%15JFE%3aHOHQJ%3ba7lhab%3a%29fta9yb%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40%24x9%40">here</a>.)<br /><br />We're planning multiple events for this summer and fall, so please come join us and be a part of the action.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1118421004144178722005-06-20T09:26:00.000-07:002005-06-20T00:08:10.246-07:00Skepticism is a good thing.<blockquote>Rachel Rogers, a single mother of four in upstate New York, did not worry about the presence of National Guard recruiters at her son's high school until she learned that they taught students how to throw hand grenades, using baseballs as stand-ins. For the last month she has been insisting that administrators limit recruiters' access to children.<br /><br />Orlando Terrazas, a former truck river in Southern California, said he was struck when his son told him that recruiters were promising students jobs as musicians. Mr. Terrazas has been trying since September to hang posters at his son's public school to counter the military's message.</blockquote>So begins a long Times article entitled "<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0603-02.htm">Growing Problem for Military Recruiters: Parents</a>." It documents how many local PTA/PTSA groups are passing resolutions to protest the unreasonable amount of access recruiters to have to schools-- and some of the recruiters' more questionable tactics. Stories like those described above, in which recruiters make empty promises to students (jobs as musicians?) or try to seduce them with flashy demonstrations (throwing grenades?) are becoming more and more frequent as the military continues to miss its recruiting goals. YAA has learned from speaking with Nonmilitary Options for Youth that recruiters will often purposely manipulate the facts to hide from recruits the possibility that they might be sent to war, as shown in <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/07/1334238&mode=thread&tid=25">this exchange</a> between war resister Ryan Johnson and 'Democracy Now!' host Amy Goodman:<br /><p></p> <blockquote> <p>AMY GOODMAN: And what did they tell you? </p> <p>RYAN JOHNSON: Well, they, you know, they promised everything. They said that, you know, I could get a big bonus for joining, and they have non-combat jobs, so, you know, there's no -- there's a less likely chance of going to Iraq or anything like that. And -- </p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: Did they say you would go to Iraq? </p> <p>RYAN JOHNSON: Well, actually my father is deceased, and I told them that, and they said, “Oh, well, you know, since your father's deceased, you won't have to go, because there is a clause that says that if you have a family member that is deceased, you won't have to go.” But that’s only if it’s after you join the military they died and they had to have died in combat. They didn't tell me that. So I was under the impression that I wouldn't go. </p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: And what did you think you would be doing? </p> <p>RYAN JOHNSON: Well, the job that I was signed up for was warehouse worker, so being a warehouse worker I figured I wouldn't really be seeing combat in Iraq anyway. That’s how they made it sound. </p> </blockquote>Later on in the interview, Johnson says that the main reason he joined the military was to get the $40,000 bonus for to help pay for college tuition. However, he was denied permission to go to college because of the deployment to Iraq that the Army sprung on him. "And your commander has to okay for you to go to college. But no one was being okayed to go to college because we were just so busy with the deployment."<br /><br />As the military continues to become more desperate in its search for new recruits, students should be seriously skeptical of whatever claims a recruiter may make. The Army <a href="http://rncwatch.typepad.com/counterrecruiter/SchoolRecruitingProgramHandbook.pdf">recruiters' handbook (PDF)</a> specifically directs recruiters to go after students who cannot afford to go to college, and to become involved with those who play sports, including football, track, baseball, and basketball. Of the "college recruitment market" itself, the handbook says, "This market is an excellent source of potential Army enlistments due to the high percentage of students who drop out of college, particularly during the first 2 years." Recruiters are instructed to hone in on each student's vulnerabilites and inclinations and exploit them to their advantage, making the military appear to be the best possible option for the future.<br /><br />This is never the case, of course. There are always other paths to take. For more information, check out <a href="http://www.progressiveaustin.org/nmofy/drupal/">Nonmiliary Options for Youth</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1118801415479314192005-06-14T19:09:00.000-07:002005-06-14T19:42:09.560-07:00No kidding.<a href="http://images.ucomics.com/comics/nq/2005/nq050614.gif"><img style="width: 427px; height: 144px;" src="http://images.ucomics.com/comics/nq/2005/nq050614.gif" /></a><br />(Click to enlarge)<br /><br />I'll have a post about recruitment soon. In the meantime, check out <a href="http://rncwatch.typepad.com/counterrecruiter/">CounterRecruiter</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1117263003553846302005-05-27T21:49:00.000-07:002005-06-02T08:09:57.196-07:00America, human rights, and the "war on terror"(Cross-posted at <a href="http://ajherz.blogspot.com/">Uncertainty and confusion...</a>)<br /><br /><a href="http://amnesty.org/">Amnesty International</a> just released its <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/report2005">2005 comprehensive report</a> on human rights around the world. I watch C-SPAN a lot now, and the executive director of AI's USA division, William Schulz, was on Washington Journal yesterday morning answering questions from the program's host and callers. Was really interesting, and you can watch it by going to C-SPAN's "Recent Programs" <a href="http://www.c-span.org/videoarchives.asp?CatCodePairs=,">page</a> and finding the today's WJ program with Schulz listed as a guest, then skipping about two hours into the program to when he comes on. Several viewers called in from Mississppi and Alabama and accused him with much flair of being anti-American because he had criticized our country's record and continuing policies on torture, to which he responded very well; citing the Bybee memo, Rumsfeld's instructions on the 27 techniques that could be used in interrogations, the military's refusal to allow Amnesty to investigate the prisons, and so on. I can't find an official transcript of the program anywhere, so I went back and watched the program and recorded some of the exchanges which I thought were most interesting. If you get the chance, though, watch the entire segment.<br /><blockquote>CALLER: I was interested in the status of human rights in Tibet. We don't hear as much as we used to about Tibet. If you could possibly address that, thank you.<br /><br />WILLAM SCHULZ: Tibet remains a place of real concern to Amnesty International. There continues to be torture, often of Tibetan nuns and monks, some of them very young in age, many who have not committed violent crimes, some of whom may hold a political position at odds with the Chinese government, some who support the independence of Tibet, but who are not themselves involved with violence. that kind of torture which includes the use of electroshock, continues. We also know there are efforts by the Chinese government to undermine if not entirely to eradicate Tibetan culture, to eradicate the cultural roots that support the Tibetan people, by moving Han Chinese into Tibet in large numbers. So Amnesty continues to raise serious concerns about the problems in Tibet...<br /><br />HOST: The Wall Street Journal on the other hand wrote an editorial, and in just the last paragraph they say "It's old news that Amnesty International is a highly politicized pressure group, but these latest accusations amount to pro-al Qaeda propaganda. A "human rights" group that can't distinguish between Stalin's death camps and detention centers for terrorists who kill civilians can't be taken seriously."<br /><br />SCHULZ: The notion that Amnesty International is pro al-Qaeda or pro-terrorism is about the most absurd charge leveled at Amnesty and believe me, I've heard them all. ... If indeed amnesty and others are not permitted to criticize human rights violations by the United States or its allies in the course of conducting the so-called war on terror, then what do our freedoms mean, what are human rights about? Human Rights provide a universal standard that ought to be applied to all countries and all parties, and that's all that amnesty is about. And those people like Bill O'Reily and others who have claimed that Amnesty is somehow anti-American, I'd like to know where they were when I personally confronted Sudanese officials with their human rights violations in Darfur, Sudan. Where were they when I and Amnesty have been attacking Cuba for its atrocious violations of human rights in Cuban prisons, with the retention of Cuban dissidents. Where have they been when I have been attacking China and North Korea for its atrocious human rights policies. Amnesty is in no way anti-American, we are pro-human rights everywhere.</blockquote>Indeed. I have nothing but respect for Amnesty International, especially after reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0802135749/qid=1117261780/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-3258097-2619122?v=glance&s=books&n=507846">Palden Gyatso's book</a>, which he was only able to write because AI secured his release from the prison in Tibet where had been beaten, tortured with the electoshocks mentioned above, and was about to be executed. Gyatso was released in the early '90s, and to hear that those same atrocities are continuing even to this day is depressing. While I've read that the situation in Tibet has improved over the years in some ways, the <a href="http://www.tibet.com/NewsRoom/tchrd2.htm">death of Rinzin Wangya</a>l in February, which I <a href="http://ajherz.blogspot.com/2005/02/nothing-has-permanence-all-is-empty.html">noted</a> on this blog, and this testimony by an Amnesty director confirm that the Tibetan people and culture continue to be repressed, albiet without much noise. I plan to start a Students for a Free Tibet Chapter here in Austin over the summer after I raise some money for the Genocide Intervention Fund.<br /><br />I haven't read Amnesty's entire report, but I did browse the reports on the <a href="http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/countrylist-eng">countries</a> that I know a little about: Nepal, Sudan, China, Vietnam, Bhutan, Israel, Uzbekistan, to name a few. Below are some sections I found to be interesting; I've italicized the especially important parts.<br /><br />On Nepal:<br /><blockquote>The army continued to receive military equipment from abroad, including attack helicopters made in India with parts manufactured by European companies <span style="font-style: italic;">and thousands of rifles from India and the USA.</span><br /><br />(RNA), the Armed Police Force (APF) and the civilian police. AI recorded 418 “disappearances” between the end of the ceasefire in August 2003 and 30 August 2004, and the NHRC reported 707 cases over the same period.<br /><br />Around one third of the “disappeared” were eventually released or located, sometimes after several months in secret detention.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Disappearances” were facilitated by the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Control and Punishment) Act (TADA) 2002, which allowed the security forces to arrest suspects without warrant and detain them without charge. Following its expiry, the TADA was replaced in October by a new Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Control and Punishment) Ordinance (TADO), which increased provision for detention without charge or trial from 90 days to one year.</span></blockquote>On China:<blockquote>China postponed the visit of the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, scheduled for June, but the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) visited China in September.<br /><br />International human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) continued to be denied access to the country to conduct independent research.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The authorities continued to use the “global war on terror” to justify harsh repression in Xinjiang, resulting in serious human rights violations against the ethnic Uighur community. The authorities continued to make little distinction between acts of violence and acts of passive resistance.</span> Repression resulted in the closure of unofficial mosques, arrests of imams, restrictions on the use of the Uighur language and the banning of certain Uighur books and journals.<br /><br />Arrests of so-called “separatists, terrorists and religious extremists” continued and thousands of political prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, remained in prison. Many of those charged with “separatist” or “terrorist” offences were reportedly sentenced to death and executed. Uighur activists attempting to pass information abroad about the extent of the crackdown were at risk of arbitrary detention and imprisonment.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">China continued to use “counter-terrorism” as a means to strengthen its political and economic ties with neighbouring states.</span> Uighurs who had fled to Central Asia, Pakistan, Nepal and other states, including asylum-seekers and refugees, remained at serious risk of forcible return to China. China continued to put pressure on the USA to return 22 Uighurs held in the US detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In June, the US authorities stated that the Uighurs would not be returned to China due to fears that they would be tortured or executed.</blockquote>On Uzbekistan:<blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">The authorities linked the attacks to Uzbekistan’s participation in the US-led “war on terror” and claimed that members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Zhamoat had been trained in al-Qa’ida camps in Waziristan, Pakistan.</span> A special commission headed by President Karimov oversaw the investigations into the violence.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In June, during the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional “anti-terrorist” centre was opened in Tashkent.</span> The centre was to coordinate the fight of SCO member states – China, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – against the so-called “three evils of extremism, separatism and terrorism” as part of the “war on terror”. <span style="font-style: italic;">During the two-day summit in Tashkent, Uzbek law enforcement forces prevented demonstrators from protesting against human rights violations in Uzbekistan.</span><br /><br />Despite Uzbekistan’s cooperation in the US-led “war on terror”, the US State Department in July decided to stop aid to Uzbekistan. The State Department said that the US Secretary of State was unable to certify that the Uzbek government had made “substantial and continuing progress” in meeting its commitments made to the USA under the joint Declaration on the Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Framework, signed in March 2002. This followed an unprecedented decision in April by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to cut aid and investment because of the Uzbek government’s failure to meet the EBRD’s human rights benchmarks. <span style="font-style: italic;">However, the Uzbek government continued to receive substantial military aid from the US Department of Defense.</span></blockquote>Notice a trend here? Nepal, China, and Uzbekistan all use the ambiguous "war on terrorism" as the primary justification for their human rights violations, just as we have. While there are separatists and small bands of rebels in all of those countries, particularly in Nepal and Uzbekistan, these governments are evidently using them to dismantle civil liberties and get away with more torture, more unlawful killings, more executions, and more oppression. Uzbek troops just<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/international/asia/17uzbek.html?ex=1273982400&en=733e27e3a1cc35a8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss"> massacred</a> hundreds of civilians in the name of crushing the "terrorists," and yet the White House's <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blogs/outrage?bid=13&pid=2603">first response</a> was to essentially blame the rebels: "We have some concerns about human rights in Uzbekistan, but we are concerned about the outbreak of violence, particularly by some members of a terrorist group freed from prison." Similarly, the administration has said very little about the terrible situation that has evolved in Nepal since the King dissolved parliament, sent troops into the street, isolated the country from the outside, and declared martial law and emergency powers. How did the King defend his actions? By declaring the parliament's ineffectiveness in dealing with Maoist rebels and annoucing a greater offensive to "destroy the terrorists." Don't forget how we routed the terrorists in Iraq by <a href="http://ajherz.blogspot.com/2004/11/down-down-down.html">destroying</a> the city of <a href="http://ajherz.blogspot.com/2004/11/iraqi-freedom.html">Fallujah</a> last November.<br /><br />I don't want to belabor the point; I suspect most the readers of this blog already understand. Any time you hear a country blaming "terrorists" and doing questionable things in the name of a "war on terror," beware. This is the result of the path the Bush administration chose after Sept. 11 and the media's blind acceptance of its rhetoric. When I first saw "the war on terrorism" or "terror" in the newspaper I thought it was some sort of joke, but I soon realized that the media elite had legimitized this rhetorical ploy as a war that actually exists. In reality, of course, the "war on terror" has always been an fluid, phantom war, one that has no actual boundaries or definite warring sides. I think everyone would be served better if the phrase was simply eliminated from the public discourse; that way we could all speak about particular groups of rebels and fighters, the two separate and illegitimate invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan wouldn't be conflated together as part of some broad war, and you wouldn't have countries around the world conducting what amounts to state-sponsored terrorism in the name of destroying it.<br /><br />As noted in the Amnesty reports above, the U.S. government gives military aid to both Uzbekistan and Nepal. This leads us to the number one recipient of American military aid: Israel. Here's what AI has to say:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">The Israeli army killed more than 700 Palestinians, including some 150 children. Most were killed unlawfully — in reckless shooting, shelling and air strikes in civilian residential areas; in extrajudicial executions; and as a result of excessive use of force. Palestinian armed groups killed 109 Israelis — 67 of them civilians and including eight children — in suicide bombings, shootings and mortar attacks.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Stringent restrictions imposed by the Israeli army on the movement of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories caused widespread poverty and unemployment and hindered access to health and education facilities. </span>The Israeli army destroyed several hundred Palestinian homes, large areas of agricultural land, and infrastructure networks. Israel continued to expand illegal settlements and to build a fence/wall through the West Bank, confining Palestinians in isolated enclaves cut off from their land and essential services in nearby towns and villages. Israeli settlers increased their attacks against Palestinians and their property and against international human rights workers. <span style="font-style: italic;">Certain abuses committed by the Israeli army constituted crimes against humanity and war crimes, including unlawful killings; extensive and wanton destruction of property; obstruction of medical assistance and targeting of medical personnel; torture; and the use of Palestinians as “human shields”. </span>The deliberate targeting of civilians by Palestinian armed groups constituted crimes against humanity.</blockquote>158 children killed, 150 of those by the Israeli military. Children. Unbelievable.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1116315220420043992005-05-16T20:32:00.000-07:002005-05-17T15:57:49.286-07:00Protest Halliburton's corruption on Wednesday!Halliburton has been one of the most prominent corporations to take advantage of the illegal war on Iraq. No wonder, since Vice Pres. Cheney is a former executive of the company. Based here in Texas, Halliburton has earned more than $7 billion under its 2001 logistics contract with the U.S. military. Despite shoddy work by Halliburton's subsidiary firm working in Iraq, KBR, and numerous "errors" in accounting in which the company overcharged the government by millions of dollars, the military has just <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050510/pl_nm/iraq_halliburton_dc_9">awarded</a> Halliburton a $72 million bonus. Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg says it best:<br /><blockquote><p>"It is outrageous that the Bush Administration would give Halliburton a bonus after we have seen its overcharges, sloppy accounting and kick-back schemes in Iraq," Lautenberg said. "Giving Halliburton a bonus is like giving your worst employee a raise."</p><p>KBR's logistics deal with the U.S. military has been in the spotlight from the outset in Iraq, with allegations by auditors that they overcharged for some work, including dining services.</p> <p>In addition, investigators are looking into whether the Texas-based firm charged too much to supply fuel to Iraqi civilians, a claim the firm says is not justified.</p> </blockquote><a href="http://www.counterbias.com/293.html">More</a> on Halliburton's overcharging and corruption over at CounterBias.<br /><br />Coincidentally, Halliburton is holding its annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday at the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown (correction!) Houston. This is the perfect opportunity to protest what Austin Spokes calls the "corporate occupation of Iraq." We will call for the company to withdraw from its participation in the illegal occupation of Iraq, which in turn would speed a total withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the country. The time and location of the protest is below, and for more information see the <a href="http://www.austinspokes.org/">Austin Spokes Council website</a>.<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"><b></b><blockquote><b>WHEN</b>: Wednesday, 18 May 2005; 8:00 AM<br /> <b>WHERE</b>: Gather at the green space located at 1000 Crawford (Crawford and Lamar), in front of the statue of George R. Brown. March to the Four Seasons Hotel, 1300 Lamar Street, Houston, Texas<br /> <b>WHAT</b>: Hundreds of peace, labor and consumer rights activists will gather outside the annual Halliburton shareholders meeting in Houston, Texas on May 18 to protest war profiteering and corporate cronyism as exemplified by Halliburton.</blockquote></span>Hope to see you there!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1115439293756583912005-05-06T19:14:00.000-07:002005-05-06T21:14:53.760-07:00Upcoming meeting!Our next meeting will be this <span style="font-weight: bold;">Friday, May 13, at 5:30pm</span>. The location is the Quacks Bakery in Maplewood. The bakery's address is 1400 East 38th 1/2 Street.<br /><br />For your convience, here is a map. The star shows the location of the bakery. Click to enlarge.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://mq-mapgend.websys.aol.com/mqmapgend?MQMapGenRequest=FDR2dmwjDE%3byt29%26FDJnci4Jkqj%2cMMCJ%3aHOEvq%3ba7lhab%3a%29fta9yb%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40y%3aqyb%3al4b%3aTD%15JFE%3aHOHQJ%3ba7lhab%3a%29fta9yb%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40%24x9%40"><img style="width: 407px; height: 310px;" src="http://mq-mapgend.websys.aol.com/mqmapgend?MQMapGenRequest=FDR2dmwjDE%3byt29%26FDJnci4Jkqj%2cMMCJ%3aHOEvq%3ba7lhab%3a%29fta9yb%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40y%3aqyb%3al4b%3aTD%15JFE%3aHOHQJ%3ba7lhab%3a%29fta9yb%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40%24x9%40" /></a></center>YAAustinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462257864058224671noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1112666742379224262005-04-05T20:31:00.000-07:002005-04-05T20:51:24.496-07:00A wrong war gone horribly wrong"Today In Iraq" is an <a href="http://www.dailywarnews.blogspot.com/">excellent blog</a> for up-to-date news and opinions about Iraq. The author is a former officer of the Army who remained on active duty for 27 years, fought in the first Gulf War, and strongly opposed the latest war on Iraq. While he usually summarzies the day's events with links to news articles and editorials, several days ago he posted a letter which he wrote back to a pro-occupation critic who accused him of being "un-American."<br /><br />What the letter helps to demonstrate is that even if a young person joins the military in the hopes of serving our country honorably, that person who becomes a soldier can end up being misused and abused as a result of faulty defense policies administered from the top of the political chain. While the Bush administration presses blindly forward with plans to build massive new weapons systems, including the failed "missile defense shield" which violates international law, it was widely reported a few months ago that the soldiers' Humvees in Iraq were not properly armored for combat. This was a widespread problem in which the vehicles were not even minimally protected against potential incoming fire. Nobody knows how many injuries or deaths that could have been prevented resulted from this travesty in military planning.<br /><br />But there were even larger problems than that one. The neoconservative ideology and ignorance of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld led him to ignore military officials' advice on how to minimize casualties and properly bring peace to a post-invasion Iraq. The letter below delves into this issue in more detail, but to summarize, there was a debate before the invasion of Iraq about just how many troops were needed to successfully invade and occupy. Rumsfeld and his associates wanted to show that they could complete the mission with a small invading force, while established military officials including now-retired Gen. Shinseki insisted that at least 400,000 troops would be necessary to "secure the peace." Rumsfeld's position won out simply because he has more power over policy than anyone else, and the results have proved distasterous. The extreme instability and lawlessness in Iraq that followed immediately after Baghdad fell have given rise to the chaos that continues to this day. The relevant portions of the letter itself are below:<br /><blockquote>After 27 years of active duty, I know a bit about US Army operational doctrine and force structure planning. You don’t make a deep attack on a strategic objective along a single axis of advance, and you always build your force structure with sufficient resources to protect your lines of communication during the campaign and to secure your objective after you’ve taken it. Despite the advice of the uniformed officers, Rumsfeld and his civilian political appointees (most of whom never served a day in uniform unless they were Boy Scouts or worked at Burger King) insisted on a minimal force structure and a single attack route to Baghdad.<br /><br />A brief review of the campaign might be helpful.<br /><br />During the initial high-intensity combat phase of the campaign in March/April 2003, the 3d Infantry Division crossed the LD at the Kuwaiti border and attacked along the Euphrates river on a planned line of advance through Nasiriyah - Samawah - Najaf - Hilla - to the strategic objective of Baghdad. The attack stalled at Najaf, less from to Iraqi resistance than poor logistical support due to Rumsfeld’s faulty force structure. As a result, the US follow-on exploitation force, 1st Marine Division, swung right across Tigris river at Kut and attacked Baghdad from the east bank of the Tigris, drawing off defending Iraqi units from 3ID. Re-supplied, 3ID continued the attack and Baghdad fell.<br /><br />Although 3ID and 1MD took Baghdad, they lacked the resources to secure Iraq. Weeks of looting, murder, rape, riot and disorder followed, all directly attributable to Rumsfeld’s failure to follow the advice of the professional officer corps. Before the war, General Shinseki, US Army Chief of Staff, warned Congress that a successful conquest and pacification of Iraq required at least 400,000 troops, would take a minimum of five years, and would cost $100 billion annually. Rumsfeld and his buddies went apeshit and a Republican Congress ignored the General. Paul Wolfowitz said GEN Shinseki was “wildly off the mark.” Larry DiRita said GEN Shinseki was a political partisan. Dougie Feith publicly called GEN Shenseki a liar. GEN Shinseki made the honorable decision to retire. No civilian political appointee from Rumsfeld’s office attended GEN Shinseki’s retirement ceremony, presumably just to spite an American officer who disagreed. They didn’t hear GEN Shinseki say, “Beware the twelve division strategy for a ten division Army.” The American people didn’t hear that waning either, because our media was too busy yapping about “shock and awe.”<br /><br />Since the fall of Baghdad, the occupation has been bungled at every step. The troops have performed like professional soldiers and Marines. In my opinion, the performance of the Reserve Component has been particularly impressive. But the troops are being abused through back-to-back deployments, stop-loss, and involuntary recall.</blockquote>Youth Activists of Austin has been opposed to the illegal and immoral war and occupation of Iraq ever since they began in March of 2003. At least 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died because of our country's inexcusable actions in Iraq. More than 1,500 young men and women have died as well; a number that might have been far lower if the administration had taken the proper precautions, or alternatively, if it had withdrawn the troops by now and ended the occupation.<br /><br />All of the mistakes involved in the Iraqi war planning could very well happen again if we were to invade Syria or Iran, or become involved in another conflict. The Marines and soldiers on the ground almost never have any direct control over how they are equipped and used in war. They are subject to the whims, and in the case of Iraq, ideologies of those who make wars: usually the warmongers themselves.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1112382429899865722005-04-01T11:04:00.000-08:002005-04-01T20:58:32.333-08:00Iraqi malnutrition rates have nearly doubled......according to the U.N., as reported by <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-03-30-iraq-malnutrition_x.htm">AP</a>: <blockquote>Malnutrition among the youngest Iraqis has almost doubled since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, a hunger specialist told the U.N. human rights body Wednesday in a summary of previously reported studies on health in Iraq. <br /><br />By last fall, 7.7% of Iraqi children under 5 suffered acute malnutrition, compared to 4% after Saddam's ouster in April 2003, said Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food.<br /><br />Malnutrition, which is exacerbated by a lack of clean water and adequate sanitation, is a major killer of children in poor countries. Children who survive are usually physically and mentally impaired for life, and are more vulnerable to disease. <br /><br />The situation facing Iraqi youngsters is "a result of the war led by coalition forces," said Ziegler, an outspoken Swiss sociology professor and former lawmaker whose previous targets have included Swiss banks, China, Brazil and Israeli treatment of Palestinians.</blockquote>As you may have heard in the course of last year's presidential race, there was never a defined plan to restore much of Iraq's energy and water infrastructures after we bombed them to bits during the invasion. The task of getting electrcity generators back online, for example, was eventually contracted to the multinational corporation Bechtel for billions of dollars. The company quickly fell behind schedule in its repairs. Because of mismanagement like this, Baghdad and the outlying cities surrounding it have only intermittent electricity totaling at about seven or eight hours per day. Not only does this make life difficult for ordinary Iraqis at home, obviously, but also for hospitals, police stations, and stores. The power outages and also lack of running water, therefore, affect the availability and quality of healthcare, the competence of security forces, and the Iraqi economy itself. <br><br>What is the result of all this? More Iraqi children are sick or going hungry than ever before: "more than a quarter of Iraqi children don't get enough to eat." As long as the occupation continues and the corporations control the infrastructure, it's unlikely that this state of affairs will improve in the near future. This then, is yet another reason to speak out and oppose the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq.<br><BR>Today and every other Friday until the occupation ends, you can come help protest at the weekly peace vigil at the Capitol adjacent to 11th St. and Congress. You don't need to bring anything to prepare; Austin Against War provides the signs and posters. The vigil is from 5-6PM, but you can stay for as long or as short as you wish. Hope to see you there.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1112337792155952702005-03-31T22:40:00.000-08:002007-08-21T10:23:39.882-07:00Contact YAAIf you would like to be representative for Youth Activists of Austin at your school, or have any further questions or comments, please email YAA at the address shown in the sidebar. (yaaustin@gmail.com)<br /><br />We'd all love to help you get involved.<br /><ul> </ul>YAAustinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462257864058224671noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1112382623290150502005-03-27T11:09:00.000-08:002005-04-01T11:10:23.303-08:00Occupational hazardsIf you've kept up with the news since Friday, March 4, then you've probably heard how U.S. soldiers in Iraq shot at a car carrying a just-released hostage as it approached a checkpoint outside an airport, killing the veteran Italian intelligence agent who had negotiated the release of the hostage. A state funeral was held for <a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apmideast_story.asp?category=1107&slug=Italy%20Agent%20Profile">Nicola Calipari</a> in Rome yesterday, and thousands of Italians, a majority of which opposed the war back in 2003, mourned for him. <blockquote>Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu also visited Calipari's home on Friday, describing the agent as "the most true and human hero of this tormented story."<br /><br />Calipari, who is about 50, was married and had a 19-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son. He was a 20-year veteran of the police force, and before moving on to Italy's secret services he had headed the immigration office for Rome's police.</blockquote> Friday's shooting was a terrible tragedy; a good man was killed. But, despite the media's myopic focus on how this will affect Italy-U.S. relations or the overall strength of the shrinking "coalition," I'm just reminded once again of the utter injustice and arrogance associated with this entire occupation, the military checkpoints being one of its most dangerous aspects. Probably because in this instance a European was killed, the checkpoints are being scrutinized a little more now. And yet, they have always been a source of constant heartache for ordinary Iraqis since the occupation began nearly two years ago.<br /><br />(Remember <a href="http://ajherz.blogspot.com/2005/01/spreading-freedom.html">this girl</a>, and her dead parents? They were killed under similar circumstances: some soldiers on a routine foot patrol were under orders to stop and examine any oncoming vehicles, essentially creating makeshift checkpoints. The car that held the parents and six children was "speeding" towards the soldiers, so they shot at it, killing the parents and splattering their blood all over the children. I often wonder where this girl and her siblings are now, and how they are doing.)<br /><br />The checkpoints are terrible, for both the troops and the Iraqis. While their contribution to the security of Iraq is certaintly questionable, they have a history of causing the deaths of innocent people. U.S. troops are told to err on the side of "safety" and are thus more inclined to shoot at oncoming cars, frequently resulting in the horrific tragedies described above, while at the same time, the checkpoints themselves provide excellent targets for suicide bombers. <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0307/p01s04-woiq.html">This article</a>, which I found through <a href="http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/">this excellent blog</a>, is a very telling firsthand account of what the checkpoints are like.<br /><blockquote>As an American journalist here, I have been through many checkpoints and have come close to being shot at several times myself. I look vaguely Middle Eastern, which perhaps makes my checkpoint experience a little closer to that of the typical Iraqi. Here's what it's like.<br /><br />You're driving along and you see a couple of soldiers standing by the side of the road - but that's a pretty ubiquitous sight in Baghdad, so you don't think anything of it. Next thing you know, soldiers are screaming at you, pointing their rifles and swiveling tank guns in your direction, and you didn't even know it was a checkpoint.<br /><br />If it's confusing for me - and I'm an American - what is it like for Iraqis who don't speak English?<br /><br />In situations like this, I've often had Iraqi drivers who step on the gas. It's a natural reaction: Angry soldiers are screaming at you in a language you don't understand, and you think they're saying "get out of here," and you're terrified to boot, so you try to drive your way out...<br /><span class="text"><p>Another problem is that the US troops tend to have two-stage checkpoints. First there's a knot of Iraqi security forces standing by a sign that says, in Arabic and English, "Stop or you will be shot." Most of the time, the Iraqis will casually wave you through.</p> <p>Your driver, who slowed down for the checkpoint, will accelerate to resume his normal speed. What he doesn't realize is that there's another, <i>American</i> checkpoint several hundred yards past the Iraqi checkpoint, and he's speeding toward it. Sometimes, he may even think that being waved through the first checkpoint means he's exempt from the second one (especially if he's not familiar with American checkpoint routines).</p></span></blockquote> The author goes on to recount her firsthand experience with the two-stage checkpoint complication. And not only that, but "under Saddam, idling was risky. <span class="text">This feeling is a holdover from the days of Saddam, when driving slowly past a government building or installation was considered suspicious behavior." Clearly, everything about the checkpoints increases the potential for disaster. The Iraqi civilians are confused and the troops are on edge. We can only speculate as to exactly why the troops fired at that family's car back in January; the military has kept the official 'rules of engagement' under which soldiers are to operate at all checkpoints classified. The parents who were driving cannot give us their perspective on what happened, because they were killed.<br /><br />This time, however, some adult passengers in the vehicle being shot at survived. Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian hostage who had just been freed, has described in interviews how Calipari shielded her with his body and died on top of her. She has also said, contrary to the military's version, that the vehicle was driving at regular speed and that there was no warning before the bullets began to rain down. U.S. forces had already been informed by the Italians that they were approaching the checkpoints, the car had already cleared previous checkpoints before being shot at. Here is a transcript of a recent statement by Sgrena:</span><span class="text"><br /></span> <blockquote>[Translated from Italian] We were on our way to the airport, and we thought we were finally safe, because the area where we were was under the control of the United States. We therefore thought we had escaped the gravest area and entered into a more friendly area, although I was still nervous as my hostage takers had warned me to be careful, because it was the Americans who did not want me to be free, and returned to Italy alive. I just took that as a last threat from my hostage takers and did not really take it seriously. But then suddenly we found ourselves under an immense amount of bullets, something terrible, without any warning, and we realized that nearby there was an American tank which was shooting at us.</blockquote> Sgrena has questioned whether she was deliberately targeted because the Italian government probably paid a significant ransom, in the millions of dollars, to the her kidnappers, the "Mujaheddin Without Borders." The U.S. and the military have made public their opposition to any negotiations or ransom-payments with hostage-takers.<br /><br />I would add to the question of purposeful targeting the fact that Sgrena has written numerous anti-occupation reports, including detailed accounts of civilian casualties in Fallujah this past November and elsewhere, for her Italian newspaper. It's clear to me that U.S. forces in Iraq have not hesitated to kill journalists <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050307&s=scahill">in the past</a>:<br /><blockquote> Consider the events of April 8, 2003. Early that morning, Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayyoub was reporting from the network's Baghdad bureau. He was providing an eyewitness account of a fierce battle between US and Iraqi forces along the banks of the Tigris. As he stood on the roof of the building, a US warplane swooped in and fired a rocket at Al Jazeera's office. Ayyoub was killed instantly. US Central Command released a statement claiming, "Coalition forces came under significant enemy fire from the building where the Al-Jazeera journalists were working." No evidence was ever produced to bolster this claim. Al Jazeera, which gave the US military its coordinates weeks before the invasion began, says it received assurances a day before Ayyoub's death that the network would not be attacked. <p>At noon on April 8, a US Abrams tank fired at the Palestine Hotel, home and office to more than 100 unembedded international journalists operating in Baghdad at the time. The shell smashed into the fifteenth-floor Reuters office, killing two cameramen, Reuters's Taras Protsyuk and José Couso of Spain's Telecinco. The United States again claimed that its forces had come under enemy fire and were acting in self-defense. This claim was contradicted by scores of journalists who were in the hotel and by a French TV crew that filmed the attack. In its report on the incident, the Committee to Protect Journalists asserted that "Pentagon officials, as well as commanders on the ground in Baghdad, knew that the Palestine Hotel was full of international journalists." </p> The US military has yet to discipline a single soldier for the killing of a journalist in Iraq. While some incidents are classified as "ongoing investigation[s]," most have been labeled self-defense or mistakes. Some are even classified as "justified," like the killing of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, shot near Abu Ghraib prison when his camera was allegedly mistaken for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Also "justified" was the killing of Al Arabiya TV's Mazen al-Tumeizi, blown apart by a US missile as he reported on a burning US armored vehicle on Baghdad's Haifa Street.<br /></blockquote> Just because the military won't admit to repeatedly shooting journalists in Iraq doesn't mean it hasn't happened. If you're still not convinced that journalists have been deliberately targeted in the past, then try reading Steve Weissman's <a href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022405A.shtml">multi-part story</a> about investigating the issue. I asked my journalism professor what he thought this past week, and he replied that it was obvious that journalists have become a legitimate target in Iraq for U.S. troops. He went on to say that the media industry will not complain too much because it derives its advertising revenue from the corporations with ties to Washington; witness Eason Jordan's recent resignation over the mere suggestion that journalists have been deliberately targeted during a public argument. The targeting itself is intended to intimidate journalists in Iraq from going out into the field and covering the carnage that comes with this war, all that "collateral damage" that the administration doesn't want you or me to see. Giuliana Sgrena was one such journalist, one who had written numerous graphic reports about civilian deaths in Fallujah for an Italian socialist newspaper that has long opposed the occupation. The shooting of her car at the checkpoint was designed to send a message: That she should not have been out in the field in Iraq covering the war, because 1) she was writing anti-war reports that "undermined" the occupation and 2) she ultimately caused the Italian government to negotiate with the "insurgents." The death of Calipari was probably an unintended side effect of the violent signal the military wanted to send. The war in Iraq, then, has also been and continues to be a literal war on independent and critical journalism, which makes it all the more egregious.<br /><br />The occupation should end immediately for these and other reasons, so make sure you protest somehow on March 19. The date will mark the end of the second year of occupation and the two-year anniversary of when the bombs began to fall on Baghdad. I'll be out in downtown Austin, marching.<br /><br />Correction (made above): The war started in March 2003, so this has been the second year of the occupation, and the third year is about to begin. What the heck.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11737420.post-1112748664211691682005-03-06T19:14:00.000-08:002005-05-06T21:13:10.183-07:00Upcoming meeting!YAA meeting time has changed!<br /><br />Our next meeting will be this <span style="font-weight: bold;">Friday, May 13, at 5:30pm</span>. The location is the Quacks Bakery in Maplewood. The bakery's address is 1400 East 38th 1/2 Street.<br /><br />For your convience, here is a map. The star shows the location of the bakery. Click to enlarge.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://mq-mapgend.websys.aol.com/mqmapgend?MQMapGenRequest=FDR2dmwjDE%3byt29%26FDJnci4Jkqj%2cMMCJ%3aHOEvq%3ba7lhab%3a%29fta9yb%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40y%3aqyb%3al4b%3aTD%15JFE%3aHOHQJ%3ba7lhab%3a%29fta9yb%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40%24x9%40"><img style="width: 407px; height: 310px;" src="http://mq-mapgend.websys.aol.com/mqmapgend?MQMapGenRequest=FDR2dmwjDE%3byt29%26FDJnci4Jkqj%2cMMCJ%3aHOEvq%3ba7lhab%3a%29fta9yb%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40y%3aqyb%3al4b%3aTD%15JFE%3aHOHQJ%3ba7lhab%3a%29fta9yb%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40%24x9%40" /></a></center>YAAustinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462257864058224671noreply@blogger.com