Wisconsin Native, Peace Activist Tom Laughlin Dies at 82

Update: NYT: Tom Laughlin, 82, Star of ‘Billy Jack’ Movie Series, Dies

No cause for grief or sorrow.

Work for peace and justice, as Laughlin until his death.

In an interview by phone in 2005 Laughlin recalled to me old high school football games in Milwaukee (Milwaukee's Washington High School) during which he often got into fights during games after the opposing teams' players called his teammates, "niggers," a common occurrence in Milwaukee at the time. Laughlin never did like racists, in real life and in film.

Reprinted below is a 2005 piece, during the depths of the Iraq Invasion.

By Jackie Captain and Michael Leon

In 1951 an intense young man named Tom Laughlin was a brilliant student-athlete at UW-Madison after UW coaches talked the Milwaukee native into transferring from Indiana to play football for the Badgers the night before the Indiana-Wisconsin game in Bloomington.

Twenty years later Laughlin made cinematic history producing and starring in the anti-racism, peace film Billy Jack that for decades was the most successful independent film ever produced.

The iconic Billy Jack title character played by Laughlin became a model for the martial-arts Norris-Stallone-Seagal portrayals of the solitary hero inclined to kick the crap out of all manner of bigoted, war-mongering, corporate bad guys.

Now, as the American peace movement is criticized as for its lack of vibrancy, Laughlin is producing a sequel to Billy Jack while simultaneously launching a nationwide campaign with the express purpose of alerting the nation to the dangers the Bush administration poses to the republic and halting the war in Iraq.

Before you smile inside and think “Yea, good luck,” know that the man and his people are deadly serious, and that from a marketing perspective, Laughlin is considered a pioneering whiz whose innovations in marketing the Billy Jack series have been adopted as routine by an initially-skeptical Hollywood.

“Laughlin has broken box office records on long shots. The conditions are perfect for Laughlin’s Iraq campaign. Bush politically is as weak as he ever has been. Delay and Rove are scandals waiting to explode. The majority of Americans for the first time realize they have been lied to, and even congressional Republicans are beginning to see Iraq as a political liability,” said Michael Victor, an activist hosting a meet-up of investors in the Billy Jack sequel in Madison on July 22, 23. “Laughlin can capture imaginations in a way that few artists can. And the brand value of Billy Jack is gold worldwide. The movie is a slam dunk; ending the war, no kidding, is fifty/fifty.”

The focus of a fawning June 20 New York Times 1,162-word feature by Sharon Waxman, Laughlin - reached by phone for two one-hour interviews from his California home outside of Los Angeles on July 4^th weekend - sounds like one-third filmmaker, one-third peace activist, and one-third, controlled-but-very-angry citizen resembling in some ways his Billy Jack character of the 1970s.

“Let me be real clear. We are out now fighting for America. This is a war, what’s going on in this country is terrifying beyond terrifying. We are going to take this country back,” said Laughlin, emphasizing every syllable and sounding with his crisp diction like a beefy Carl Sagan.

The still-handsome 73-year-old writer activist defied industry experts 34 years ago and demolished every production and creative obstacle to his stunning cinematic success, and has dedicated his work to peace as he and his wife Delores Taylor are taking a final grand swing for the fences.

Ending the Iraq War

Laughlin and his organization plan to demonstrate conclusively to mainstream America that Bush lied America into war, launch a full-fledged, intricate campaign to end the war and hold Bush accountable for what he asserts are Bush’s lies.

Following the campaign he will release the film, and is now raising $12 million through his website BillyJack.com and EndtheIraqWar.com, where details on his peace plan can also be found.

“What we are doing is we are starting this national crusade end the war in Iraq and to bring the troops home by Christmas. To prove to the American people that it is incredibly doable, that it’s not silly, that it’s not wild-eyed. The bottom line we are doing a five-step national event program, taking full-page ads, TV spots, sending out DVDs, proving beyond any question that this war was to occupy Iraq as an oil colony,” said Laughlin.

Laughlin’ peace plan:

• Demonstrate that Bush invaded Iraq to establish an oil colony through publishing six full page national ads of meticulously-researched facts, and an aggressive media campaign.
• Hold a 10-million, 100-city End the War rally on Patriots Day, 9/1Hold a nationally-televised People’s Hearing on the war 
• Consolidate the internet peace movementAnd expand outreach through the worldwide, simultaneous release of the movie “Billy’s Jack’s Crusade to the End the War and Restore America to Its Moral Purpose” 

Laughlin is preaching to the choir worldwide and the majority of Americans nationally; and his ambition is that come Christmas, public opinion will overwhelm an already-weak presidency, forcing Bush to succumb to domestic and worldwide demands.

Child Activist Becomes Intellectual and Filmmaker

Since junior-high school when he became best friends with the only black kid in school in what remains the most segregated city in America - a racist-infected Milwaukee - Laughlin has taken on the odds and befriended the underdog in what he sees as the American way.

“For me, this is not a matter of working for peace and justice as if peace and justice were some sort of a separate arena. Peace is nothing more than respecting the rights of others,” said Laughlin who identifies himself closely with what he sees as America’s revolutionary and spiritual origins. ‘Peace is nothing more than what makes the true American. The ultimate test of what makes a true American is not freedom of speech, other countries have that. It is my determination, ‘though I detest what you say,’ as Patrick Henry said, ‘I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ Peace is the necessary dialogue that must take place with criticism and dissent in a peaceful, respectful way.”

Laughlin says that George W. Bush/Karl Rove - aligned with what he views as rapacious corporate interests and the religious right – attack dissent and criticism in a manner that comprises a threat to America more calamitous than even McCarthyism and Richard Nixon.

“I lived through McCarthy; I was at Madison during that time. But this is the worst, this is truly frightening,” said Laughlin. “We’re out now desperately trying put this together. Raising money for the film, raising money for the campaign. McCarthy was nothing compared to Bush and Rove. We’re out of time. We need patriots to act now to save this country.”

Laughlin’s sense of urgency is obvious in his voice especially when the self-taught Jungian scholar talks about George Bush personally. He sees the American president as suffering from a personality disorder stemming from inadequacy and believes Bush to be a genuinely delusional person, isolated in the presidential cocoon.

“Bush is really a paranoid personality. He has the most dangerous inferiority complex. He is a guy who is desperate to be king, but there is nothing royal in him. The ‘mother complex’ in Bush is frightening. Everything he is doing is he is trying to prove he is a man. To him, really and truly, he is so delusional that he thinks war is a video game, and he’s John Wayne. And worse is the evil Karl Rove behind Bush,“ said Laughlin.

Laughlin brands the Bush administration as anti-American politics incarnate, eroding the right to dissent in America, and the right of Americans to fulfill themselves in an era where smearing gays and peace activists is the predominant mode of communication in the Republican Party.

“I think America is the only truly liberated society on earth. By liberated, I mean you are able to develop your capacity to the fullest without interference. It is the only country in the world that was formed specifically for a moral purpose, that every person had this right. That has been taken away by a thousand forms of corruption, all that have gotten much worse under Bush. We have no time left,” said Laughlin.

As a young man, athletics came to bore Laughlin [Laughlin calls himself a “tramp athlete” back then] and so did school, and he went into filmmaking, bringing with him his commitment to protecting the rights of others honed since grade school.

Now, Laughlin speaks of his country as one of his earliest inspirations.

Jefferson Memorial

“Way back in my 20s, I had made my first film and I was in Washington showing it. I went over to the Jefferson Memorial, and I went into that monument about midnight, no one was there. I read on the top of that monument: ‘I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man’. That was like Paul on the way to the Damascus. I was struck dumb. I stayed there for at least three hours. I wept. I read all of the stuff and just said ‘Who is this guy? Who is this guy? He is America,’” said Laughlin.

Those wishing to contribute to the film and the peace campaign can visit the BillyJack.com and EndtheIraqWar.com websites for more information.

America's Teachers—Makers, Not Takers

Americans come together to oppose
Gov. Scott Walker and the Koch brothers
 - March 12, Madison, Wisconsin [Photo: Leon]

Make that heroes, teachers are heroes.

Paul Ryan, Scott Walker (and Mitt Romney as well) and the rightwing stand mute as their political glory, flying under the banners of liberty, the NRA, ALEC/Koch brothers/Bradley and the Tea Party, now aim to silently rig our democracy, or be doomed as a political force.

Maybe they're quiet because they know they went a little too far in demonizing those who called for peace and the common good as unAmerican the last 20 years.

Now, check out the BradBlog to see the shooting gallery America has become.

As the LGBTQ Americans fight for rights, the blacks and browns fight for their right to vote, women fight for their rights to choose, and a major political party—the Republican Party and its sick ally, the Tea Party—pile on the hate to their diminishing white majority, to the point of demonizing even teachers, there are consequences.

Of course, James Dobson blames marriage equality, civil rights and a woman's rights to choose as the causes of the massacre of children.

Horrifying acts are the "consequences," in Dobson's world as Americans unwisely stand up for each others' rights.

The GOP continues demonizing the other, while glorifying guns and the Volk common man, the real Americans; so the religious right points to disfavored human beings, less-than human in the eyes of its chosen metaphysical power looking over the 'real America'.

Check this guy out at the 07:09 mark in this linked video from western Pennsylvania extolling the American volk during the 2008 presidential campaign:

"It's the common man. It's the common man. He's (Obama) never lived the life. He's grown up in cities in his own entire life. This is country. This is God's country. He's never seen it. He can't relate with us. We're the back-bone of this country; we hard-working, blue-collar workers that keep this country running. He talks like he know us; he doesn't know us."

Most of these idiots are not organized. The SPLC does keep taps of the ones who are organized. Check out the Google ad above you might see; might read asking the reader if she wishes to secede from the Union, at Liberty.com. [See also G. Pascal Zachary's The Will to Secede in In These Times]

The point here is that by demonizing teachers, demonizing anyone for political purposes, hateful disease-filled minds will act.

We ought to endlessly remind ourselves of the words of Ralph McGill: "It is an old, old story. It is one repeated over and over again in history. When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe." (Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 13, 1958)

The next time the GOP provides itself as a ready vehicle to relay hate; to inflict its "toxic brand of political fundamentalism -- heartless and historically unprecedented," as Paul Fanlund points out, -- it ought to consider that dividing Americans and stoking hate among people will sow a harvest.

Solidarity, community and free association have always been the better route. Even Ronald Reagan acclaimed the importance of, "... restoring one of the most elemental human rights—the right to belong to a free trade union."

Solidarity, human rights, community and unions—the opposite of paranoid, delusional mad dog minds who must be stopped.

Obama: We will have to change

President Obama at vigil, Sunday night

“Newtown, you are not alone”

Grew up on WW II movies.

Recall parents telling us how—imperfectly but with common effort—people joined the war effort against the fascists.

Dramatization, rhetoric and culture matter.

A couple of old quotes follow; and some of President Obama's words tonight. Think they matter.

Sometimes you need the help of other people ... more than anything else ... but you have to let them get close enough to help.
- I don't want any help.
I found when I was deeply troubled ... that I needed people very badly. People want to be needed. I found that out, too.
(Lewis Gilbert, Sink the Bismarck, 1960)

Anything can happen in a war. Slap in the middle of absolute insanity people pull out the most extraordinary resources: ingenuity, courage, self-sacrifice. Pity we can't meet the problems of peace in the same way, isn't it?
(J. Lee Thompson, Guns of Navarone, 1961)

On caring for our children

“It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right,” Obama said, asking: “Can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we are doing enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from harm?”

Mr. Obama asked whether the nation is doing enough to give all children a chance at a good life with “happiness and with purpose.” “If we are honest with ourselves, the answer is no,” he said. “We are not doing enough, and we will have to change.” (Landler, Baker. NYT)

On Guns, Hate and Fear—The Common Effort

National rally for peace; D.C., October 2003

Update: I recommend Richard Falk's column on the massacre, as typical an analysis springing from reason and empathy. Writes Falk: "No amount of tears, however genuine, can make our children and citizens safer in the future, and even gestures of gun control seem likely, if treated as solutions rather than palliatives, are likely to be no more than a spit in a national ocean of sanctioned violence." 
---
I know many people who own guns.

And I can guarantee to a moral certainty none of these people would cause harm in the course of firing guns.

Had a spirited conversation in 2008 with a friend who advocates a complete ban on guns in America.

Still, I believe such policy is wrong.

One problem with gun control is the lack of an accompanying discussion of criminal sanctions. Do we really want to make criminals out of people who own guns?

No.

The answer to the mindless menace of violence—including especially the prison-industrial complex—is to organize a society based upon rights, love and peace.

Not exactly a new idea, but one that American politics systemically suppresses—attempts to think and imagine are seen as needed to be stricken from discourse as 'socialist,' 'European,' 'radical,' any term connoting something alien and scary.

Hate and dehumanization have consequences. In the words of RFK:

I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by his assassin's bullet. ... We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort.

We learn to share only a common fear - only a common desire to retreat from each other - only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.

But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek - as we do - nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

- RFK, April 5, 1968

Marvin Gaye: What's Going On

Marvin Gaye - Stop war ... forever

"If you cannot find peace in yourself, you will never find it anywhere else."

- Marvin Gaye, 1939-1984

Afghanistan: Out now

Peace: Now.

Thank you, Marvin and Obie.

What's Going On
By Marvin Gaye and Renaldo "Obie" Benson (May 21, 1971)

Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today - Ya

Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what's going on
What's going on
Ya, what's going on
Ah, what's going on

In the mean time
Right on, baby
Right on
Right on

Father, father, everybody thinks we're wrong
Oh, but who are they to judge us
Simply because our hair is long
Oh, you know we've got to find a way
To bring some understanding here today
Oh

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me
So you can see
What's going on
Ya, what's going on
Tell me what's going on
I'll tell you what's going on - Uh
Right on baby
Right on baby

Year In Review—Nice on DADT and NewStart, Naughty on Afghanistan, Palestine, and Wikileaks

There's been a few pieces of good news as this year draws down. But in most ways, this year has been a really hard one, even as the international Palestinian solidarity and anti-war movements have consolidated, predictably earning the enmity of the FBI. Wikileaks, aka CableGate, has been exposed as an "orchard of exposés over-ripe for cherry-picking"—disinformation meant to incite and disinform

Repeal of Don’t Ask Don't Tell, New Start

There's been a few pieces of good news as this year draws down. The repeal of Don’t Ask Don't Tell sets an important marker in the struggle to end official homophobia and anti-gay discrimination in the U.S. That's huge. (And an Obama campaign promise realized — that's huge too.) And the passage of New Start means at least a symbolic gesture towards Obama’s claimed vision of a nuclear-free world.

But in most ways, this year has been a really hard one.

Talking Points -- By Phyllis Bennis

In Afghanistan the latest "review process" resulted — surprise, surprise! — with the announcement that the U.S./NATO occupation will continue at least until 2014. Another four years of war, death, and devastation for the people of Afghanistan as well as for the young U.S. soldiers drafted by poverty and lack of opportunity and sent to kill and die there in escalating numbers.

Oh, that earlier promise of July 2011 as the pull-out date? That one was always at least partially a sham — designed to pacify Obama's powerfully anti-war base, the language even when first announced was a carefully ambiguous version of "July 2011 will start a process to determine whether conditions might allow preparation for beginning consideration of when the partial transfer of control to Afghan forces might allow for a partial withdrawal of a few U.S. troops…"

This time around the Obama administration continued their pattern of claiming success regardless of the situation on the ground. If violence rises, as it has so dramatically this year (with over 2,500 Afghan civilians killed so far, and almost 700 U.S./NATO troops) it's because "we're taking the fight to the enemy." If violence drops, it's because "our strategy is winning."

This is a war we cannot "win" and we cannot afford. In 2011 we're going to have to take our anti-war fight to different places too — specifically, with the new Congress even less likely to respond to the 60% of people in this country who now believe the war in Afghanistan "is not worth fighting." We're going to have to broaden our targets to new and different centers of power. That means working locally to get "Cities for Peace"-style anti-war resolutions in city councils and mayors' resolutions, moves in state assemblies to demand the return of state funds and National Guard contingents, and much more.

Israel-Palestine

On Israel-Palestine, we had the announcement that the Obama administration has abandoned its already-failed effort for an Israeli settlement "freeze." That's not going to change much (if you didn't get a chance to see it before, my discussion of this issue on al-Jazeera a couple of weeks ago might be interesting). When The Washington Posteditorialized against U.S. aid to Egypt, claiming all such aid should be linked to human rights, and criticizing how Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak was rude to President Obama, I got this letter published in the Post:

A Double Standard on Middle East Aid

December 3, 2010

The Post editorial board is absolutely right that the Obama administration should consider the $1 billion a year in U.S. aid to Egypt in the context of Egypt's domestic repression and the role of its military, and that Congress should "link military funds to human rights, as it has for several democracies that are U.S. allies" ["Mr. Mubarak vs. Mr. Obama," editorial, Nov. 27]. And yes, President Obama should "make it clear that he will not be dismissed or pushed around" by regional leaders.

Shall I assume The Post's next lead editorial will say the same thing about the $3 billion in military aid (and potentially $3 billion more in "incentives") that the Obama administration will give to Israel this year?
Phyllis Bennis, Washington

Cablegate

Beyond Israel-Palestine, there have been some interesting developments in these last weeks. The Wikileaks "Cablegate" documents, a new trove of State Department correspondence from, to, between, and about U.S. diplomats, their Washington superiors and a host of global leaders, continues to provide new glimpses of how, sadly, U.S. diplomacy continues to be used in the interest of war, not to find ways of preventing wars.

My Wikileaks piece in The Huffington Post was titled "War, Diplomacy, and the Search for Ban ki-Moon's Toothbrush."

Let's start with what the WikiLeakstrove of diplomatic cables is not. It's not a collection of documents whose release will undermine all potential for solving global problems through diplomacy rather than war. It's not a set of shocking revelations of positions or opinions that completely reverse our understanding of global issues. And it's not a bunch of documents providing nothing but new justifications for going to war against Iran.

What it is is two things. First, it is an ineffably sad body of evidence that President Obama's promise to engage with the world in a whole new way still remains unfulfilled, and that continuity, rather than change, still shapes the Obama administration's foreign policy. And second, it is an orchard of exposés over-ripe for cherry-picking.

And cherry-picking they are. If you watched only Fox News or some of the outraged-but-gleeful mainstream pundits, you would believe that all the documents prove the dangers of Iran's nuclear program and world-wide support for a military attack on Iran. If you read only the Israeli press, you would think the documents provide irrefutable proof that "the entire world is panicked over the Iranian nuclear program."

Certainly this first batch of Cablegate includes some seemingly startling remarks on Iran -- the king of Saudi Arabia calling on the U.S. to "cut off the head" of the Iranian "snake," the leaders of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates supporting more aggressive U.S. action against Iran. But those positions are not in fact new. Arab leaders have longstanding hostile relations with Iran; virtually every Arab government supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. The significance of the new documents lies far more in their secrecy -- demonstrating once again the huge chasm between the U.S.-armed and U.S.-backed Arab leaders, and the views of the people over whom they rule ... .

And at IPS we held at four-part panel discussion on Wikileaks, with my colleagues Emira Woods, Sanho Tree, and Daphne Wysham. We included some assessments of the value and limitations of the leaks, as well as some of what we can learn from Cablegate about U.S. policy in the Middle East, Africa, and global climate change.

One other place you can join me. On Sunday, January 2nd starting at 12 noon est. I'll be featured on a three-hour BookTV special on C-Span. The program is "In Depth," and we talk about all the books I've ever written, and the issues those books examine: Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, the United Nations, U.S. foreign policy…and more. It's a call-in show, so please tune in and CALL IN too!

And of course, I remain grateful for all of your support and solidarity. To those who have contributed to help my New Internationalism Project continue it's vital work, my deepest thanks. For anyone still able to do so, please give what you can.



And have a fabulous holiday season, with joy and some time with family and friends to prepare for what lies ahead.

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author with David Wildman of the new Ending the U.S. War in Afghanistan: A Primer.

Two Veterans Awarded Wisconsin Peacemakers of the Year

Two Wisconsin veterans will be among those awarded "for their lifetimes of activism on Oct. 3 by the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice (WNPJ), a statewide network of 170 organizations working for social change."

Vietnam War veteran Will Williams of DeForest, Wisconsin (at right) and Iraq War veteran Jason Moon of Milwaukee are well-known in the peace and justice community for their tireless efforts in support of peace.

Jason Moon, 35, is a leader in Milwaukee’s chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Veterans for Peace (VFP) and the board of VFP’s Homeless Veterans Initiative to find and assist homeless veterans in the Milwaukee area. He testified at the national Winter Soldier hearings in 2008, at which Iraq and Afghanistan veterans told of their experiences.

Will Williams, 65, a member of Madison’s Veterans for Peace chapter, uses his own experience in Vietnam to speak and counsel young people about the realities of military service and challenge promises of recruiters. He has spoken across the state, linking peace, prison reform, and immigrant rights.

Iraq Invasion veteran Jason Moon of Milwaukee said his service in Iraq from July 2003until Aug. 2004 left him bitterly opposed to the Iraq war that most Americans regard as a lie sold to the American people.

From the Fond du lac Reporter:

Moon said the soldiers deployed in the summer of 2003 were ordered to run over children if they ran into the road, take the lives of civilians in terms he disagreed with and were ordered to not give food or water to civilians along the roadside.

'I told my superiors I wouldn't kill anyone,' Moon said. 'I entertained the troops with singing and playing my guitar. I taught Korean soldiers English and did whatever I could to remain useful on base. They understood I wasn't going to shoot anyone, so they gave me jobs. I tried to become a conscientious objector while I was over there, but they told me if I did that I would still be in Iraq after my unit came home.'

For more information, see Peacemakers honored for lifetimes of work.

Happy Year ... Without Any Fear

War is over, if you want it.

"Nam, Nehnu Nastatyeh!" Is Arabic for "Yes, We Can!"

Update: Protest boat arrives in Gaza, despite Israel's vow to block it (Barak Ravid, Haaretz)

The Palestinians in Gaza will not stop believing that they are human beings.

By Ramzi Kysia

GAZA CITY, FREE PALESTINE (29 October 2008) - This morning I walked to the Indian Ocean and made salt in defiance of the British Occupation of India.

This morning I marched in Selma, I stood down tanks in Tiananmen Square, and I helped tear down the Berlin Wall.

This morning I became a Freedom Rider.

The Freedom Riders of the 21st Century are sailing small boats into the Gaza Strip in open defiance of the Israeli Occupation and blockade.

This morning I arrived in Gaza aboard the SS Dignity, part of a Free Gaza Movement delegation of twenty seven doctors, lawyers, teachers, and human rights activists from across the world, including Mairead Maguire - the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

When I close my eyes, I still hear the crash of ocean waves, I still feel the warm sun on my face, and I still taste salt from the sea spray. When I close my eyes, I can still see the Israeli warship that tried to intimidate us when we reached the twenty-mile line outside Gaza, and I can still see a thousand cheering people crowding around our ship when we refused to be intimidated and finally reached port in Gaza City.

Today, the proudest boast in the free world is truly, "Nam, Nehnu Nastatyeh!" - "Yes, We Can!"

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, an independent member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, sailed aboard the Dignity, along with six other Palestinians from the West Bank, from 1948/inside the Green Line, and from countries in Europe. What should have been a ninety-minute drive from Ramallah to Gaza City became a three day odyssey as he travelled from the West Bank to Jordan, then flew to Cyprus, before finally coming aboard the Dignity for the fifteen hour sea voyage to Gaza.

"We're challenging Israel in a manner that is unprecedented, " said Dr. Barghouti. "Israel has prevented me from visiting Gaza for more than two years now. I am so pleased that we managed to defy Israel's injustice so that I can see all the people I love and work with in Gaza. Israel's measures are meant to divide us, but it is our defiance and resistance which unite us. "

This is a resistance which can and should light the fire of all our imaginations, and bring hope not just to Palestinians, but to peoples suffering the terrible tides of oppression and injustice the world around.

After watching the Dignity's arrival, Fida Qishta, the local coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the Gaza Strip, said "If Gaza is free then it's our right to invite whomsoever we wish to visit us. It's our land and it's our sea. Now more groups must come, not only by sea but also the crossings at Erez and Rafah must be opened as well. This second breaking of the siege means a lot, actually. It's the second time in two months that people have come to Gaza without Israel's permission, and that tells us that Gaza will be free."

For over forty years, Israel has occupied the Gaza Strip. Despite the so-called "Disengagement " in 2005, when they shut down their illegal settlements here, Israel maintains absolute control over Gaza's borders and airspace, severely limiting the free movement of goods, services, and travel. Israel is still an occupying power.

For over two years, Israel has maintained a brutal blockade of Gaza. Less than twenty percent of the supplies needed (as compared to 2005) are allowed in. This has forced ninety-five percent of local industries to shut down, resulting in massively increased unemployment and poverty rates. Childhood malnutrition has skyrocketed, and eighty percent of families are now dependent on international food aid just to be able to eat. An hour after we arrived, I watched a teenage boy digging through the garbage, looking for something he could use.
Israel's siege isn't simply illegal - it's intolerable.

Renowned human rights activist Caoimhe Butterly also sailed aboard the Dignity, and will remain in Gaza for several weeks as Project Coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement. But, said Butterly, "My feelings are bittersweet. Although we're overjoyed at reaching Gaza a second time, that joy is tempered by the fact that the conscience of the world has been reduced to a small boat and 27 seasick activists. This mission is a reminder of not only the efficacy of non-violent direct action, but also of the deafening silence of the international community."

Our first voyage in August, the first voyage of any international ship to Gaza in over forty years, showed that it was possible to freely travel. This second voyage shows that it is repeatable, and this sets a precedent: The Siege of Gaza can be overcome through non-violent resistance and direct action.

Today, the Free Gaza Movement has a simple message for the rest of the world: What are you waiting for?
-------
Ramzi Kysia is an Arab-American writer and activist, and one of the organizers of the Free Gaza Movement.

To find out more about Free Gaza and what you can do to help support their work, please visit http://www.freegaza.org/

Wisconsin lawmakers participate in "Bring the Guard Home" campaign

The Iraq Waris largely silent at the Democratic Convention in Denver.

From WIBA Radio (Madison, Wisconsin):

State Rep. Mark Pocan (Madison) drafting a bill to strip the feds of its power to send National Guard troops to Iraq
By The Wheeler News Service

An anti-war group wants state lawmakers around the nation to strip the federal government of its power to send National Guard troops to Iraq. The "Bring the Guard Home campaign" held a news conference in Denver today near the DNC site. Mark Pocan, a state representative from Wisconsin, was one of the speakers. He says Wisconsin is one of eleven states where bills are being drafted aimed at ending the deployment of National Guard troops to Iraq. The bill could be introduced this year.

Pardon Leo Burt and All Johnson/Nixon War Criminals

Update: Tip on fugitive charged in 1970 UW bombing doesn't pan out

Leo Burt, one of the four people who bombed the Army Math Research Center on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus on Aug. 24, 1970 during the height of anti-war protests is the subject of buzz that the DoJ and FBI are honing in on his whereabouts.

From this morning's Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), Ed Treleven reports:

If something is stirring in the case of Leo Burt, missing for decades after he allegedly took part in a Vietnam-era bombing on the University of Wisconsin campus, federal prosecutors and the FBI weren 't saying on Monday.

But on Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Grant Johnson filed a motion in Burt 's long-dormant federal criminal case seeking somebody 's fingerprints. The sealed motion, filed in the dusty case that has been pending against Burt since 1970, is titled "Application for Production of Fingerprints. "

Johnson said he couldn 't elaborate on what was contained in the motion. "If I could I wouldn't have had it sealed, " he said Monday.

Some who have followed the case, however, said it could mean that authorities want fingerprints from someone close to the case, possibly someone suspected of being Burt himself.

The bomb, made of more than a ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer soaked in fuel oil and delivered in a van, ripped apart the UW physics department in the basement and first floor of Sterling Hall and killed 33-year-old physics researcher Robert Fassnacht.

The Armstrongs and Fine were convicted and punished for their roles in the bombing. Burt, however, has never been found and his fate remains a topic of speculation among those who lived in Madison at the time and followed the anti-war movement.

Leo Burt was the only one of the four who has escaped the U.S. government's pursuit of the perpetrators of the bombing, which inadvertently resulted in the tragic killing on a researcher working in the early morning.

I say the DoJ has a bit too much time on its hands.

If criminal violence during the Vietnam War period is really a concern of the government, there are many possible targets who served in the Johnson and Nixon administrations that perpetrated this criminal war under false pretenses and myriad misrepresentations made to the American people.

You want to go after them?

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Anti-war Sentiment Towards Iraq War at Record High

Yeah. Maybe this will inject some spine into the Dems' next week House vote.

Reports Katy Byron from CNN:

Opposition to the war in Iraq has reached an all-time high, according to
the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll released Thursday morning.

Support for the war in Iraq has dropped to 31 percent and the 68 percent who oppose the war is a new record.

Despite the drop in violence in Iraq, only one quarter
of Americans believes the U.S. is winning the war. There has been virtually no change in the past month in the number of Americans who believe that things are going badly for the U.S. in the war in Iraq.

The public also opposes U.S. military action against Iran. Sixty-three percent oppose air strikes on Iran, while 73 percent oppose using ground troops as well as air strikes in that country.

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Democrats.com: No War, No Wiretaps, No Torture

Who are these guys? Against war, against illegal wiretapping, and against torture.

Via Democrats.com

27 Anti-War Protests - Let's Hit the Streets
Submitted by Bob Fertik

This Saturday, October 27, people from all walks of life will gather in 11 cities around the country in a national expression of the breadth and depth of antiwar sentiment in this nation. For any people, it will be their first step in transforming their antiwar feelings into antiwar action. Regional actions will enable much larger numbers of people to participate.

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