Monday, Feb.
8
The Yakima Valley Peace Advocates
Network
(YVPAN) will have its monthly
meeting at the Unitarian
Universalist Church, 225 N. 2nd St.
in Yakima, 6:30-8:00 p.m.
Enter from the alley in back of the
church. YVPAN is the
group that plans local peace
actions, such as military counter-recruitment and signing for peace at street
corners. All who wish for peace and are willing to work for it are welcome to
attend the meetings. Why not join us and help plan? To find out
more
about YVPAN, as well as peace
activities in the Northwest,
go to www.yvpan.net. At the same
website, you can reach
links to national peace
organizations, such as Veterans for Peace.
Also, you can now read The
Jackrabbit News online.
Tuesday, Feb.
9
The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) is
holding public
hearings on the Draft Tank
Closure and Waste Management
Environmental Impact Statement for
the Hanford Site,
Richland, Wash. The document
analyzes these three key areas:
(1) retrieval and management of
waste from 177 underground storage tanks at Hanford and closure of the
single-shell tanks;
(2) decommissioning of the Fast Flux
Test Facility and its
auxiliary facilities; (3) ongoing
and expanded solid waste
management operations on site,
including the disposal of
Hanford’s wastes and limited volumes
of waste from other
DOE sites. At the Columbia Gorge
Hotel, 4000 Westcliff
Drive, Hood River, OR. 6:00 p.m. —
Register to provide oral
comments, view materials, and speak
informally with project
pensonnel. 7:00 p.m. — DOE
presentation, followed by public
comment session. The comment period
for both oral and
written comments ends on March 19,
2010.
Wednesday, Feb.
10
Same information as above, except
that the hearing will
be held at the Doubletree Hotel
Portland, 1000 NE Multnomah
St. in Portland. The time and
program will be the same.
Sunday, Feb.
21
Signing for peace at the
intersection of S. 16th Ave. &
Nob Hill Blvd. in Yakima, 12 noon to
1:00 p.m. You can bring your own sign or use one of ours. We need more
participants to take the places of several of our elderly peace stalwarts who
have literally given their all for peace and now can’t come due to health
problems. They would feel honored and delighted if new recruits for peace action
would step up to fill the ranks.
Jan.
2010
Sunday, Feb.
28
Signing at the corner of Nob Hill
Blvd. & Fair Ave.
to protest the gun show taking place
at the Sundome.
A loophole in the gun laws allows
guns to be sold at gun shows without background checks. For more information
on
this action, check the YVPAN
website, www.yvpan.net.
Colombia — an Obama
change (of mind)
(Based on information
from Witness for Peace)
In April, 2008, Barack
Obama said, "And I’ll also
oppose the Colombia
Free Trade Agreement....because the
violence against
unions in Colombia would make a mockery
of the very labor
protections that we have insisted be
included in these
kinds of agreements"
In January, 2010,
President Obama said, "We have to seek new markets aggressively....[that is] why
we will
strengthen our trade
relations....with partners like South
Korea, Panama and
Colombia."
In his State of the
Union speech, Obama suggested that he would advance the stalled Colombia free
trade
agreement. This was
contrary to his campaign promises
of 2008. He should be
reminded that most Americans are
opposed to so-called
free trade agreements, along with
millions of Colombian
farmers, Afro-Americans and union
people.
As with NAFTA, the
proposed trade agreement with Colombia would facilitate agricultural dumping,
driving
thousands of Colombian
farmers out of work and worsening
the country’s
displacement crisis. It would also drive up the
cost of medicines,
jeopardize access to water, and subvert
democratically enacted
laws to the interests of foreign
corporations.
To urge President
Obama to honor his campaign
promise and reject the
agreement, you can call the White House at (202)
456-1414.
Supreme Court bows to
corporations
The
Republican-dominated Supreme Court, in ruling that corporations can spend
unlimited amounts of money on
political advertising,
has struck a blow against democracy.
Corporations will
essentially be able to buy seats in Congress,
and state
legislatures. They will be able to saturate TV and radio with ads for their
candidates — nearly all Republicans, of course.
Alaska senator wants to stifle
EPA
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of
Alaska has introduced a resolution to prevent the
Environmental
Protection Agency from taking any
action to regulate
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases. The Supreme Court in 2007 gave the EPA the authority to regulate
such
emissions. 35 Republicans and three
Democrats have
signed on to Murkowski’s resolution
so far.
The EPA has announced plans to use
the Clean Air Act to reduce global warming emissions from the largest sources,
such as vehicles and power plants. The Washington Postreported that
industry lobbyists wrote part of Murkowski’s proposal. These lobbyists were
high-level
officials in President Bush’s EPA.
Now they are looking for a repeat performance of the good old days, where Bush
presided over a massive assault on the environment at the behest of timber, oil,
gas and coal interests.
Murkowski’s resolution is likely to
come before the Senate in March. In the meantime, we can be calling
our
Senators to urge them to oppose the
measure. If all 41
Republican senators stick together
and are joined by a few
more conservative Democrats, the
measure could pass in the Senate. You can reach any member of Congress by
calling the Capitol Switchboard at 1-202-224-3121 and asking
to
be switched to his or her
office.
Scientists say no mountaintop
mining
A group of hydrologists, ecologists
and engineers
in January issued a paper in the
journal Science. The
scientists said that mining for coal
by destroying mountaintops to get at the coal seams should stop
immediately.
They cited the growing evidence of
threats to human health and the environment, and they urged the Environmental
Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
to reject all new mountaintop mining
permits.
The EPA has been issuing permits for
some mining projects while rejecting others. The agency recently granted a
permit for a large mountaintop removal mine in West
Virginia. West Virginia’s residents
are not wealthy. Many
are dependent on the mines for jobs,
so they have no choice
but to sacrifice their natural
heritage to make a living.
In mountaintop mining, the tops of
coal-bearing
mountains are blasted off. The
debris falls into the valleys below, polluting the streams and destroying
habitat.
The article
in Science showed environmental
degradation at mining sites and
downstream, "including
harmful consequences for both
aquatic and terrestrial
ecosystems." The paper also found
health problems in the
Appalachian region, where most of
the mountaintop mining takes place. These problems include high death rates,
lung cancer and kidney disease in coal-producing
communities.
"The scientific evidence of severe
environmental
and human impact from mountaintop
mining is strong and irrefutable," said Margaret Palmer of the University
of
Marland. She is the lead author of
the paper.
U.S. won’t sign landmine
treaty
The Obama administration has
announced that it will not sign the international convention banning landmines.
The Mine Ban Treaty bans the use, stockpiling, production
or
transfer of antipersonnel mines.
Millions of landmines were planted during 20th Century wars, and the grim
harvest of thousands of dead or maimed bodies contines to this
day.
As of Nov. 25, 2009, the only
countries in the world that have refused to sign the treaty are the United
States and
Somalia. Besides signing the treaty,
156 have ratified it. But
39 countries, including the U.S.,
China and Russia, have not.
The U.S. is the only country that
has announced that it will
never join the international
convention banning landmines.
A recent report by the international
campaign to ban landmines found that landmines remain planted in more
than
70 countries and that they killed
over 1200 people and wounded nearly 4000 in 2008.
Steven Goose, Director of Human
Rights Watch’s
arms division and a leader in the
campaign to ban landmines,
was interviewed by Amy Goodman on
Democracy Now! in Nov. of last year. She asked Goose to comment on Obama’s
decision to follow Bush and not sign the treaty.
"We really see this as just an
appalling decision, an
appalling decision that has been
based on an apparently very flawed decision-making process," said Goose. "It is
a decision completely lacking in vision. It’s lacking in compassion, and
frankly, lacking in common sense."
"I think we just had a very hasty
and cursory review
of U.S. policy," continued Goose.
"Certainly, they did not
consult with key legislators on
Capitol Hill. They did not
consult with major military allies.
They did not consult with
outside experts, those who have been
involved in this issue for decades, literally, and instead, it seems that they
have simply
decided to allow the Pentagon to
dictate terms."
Goose said that the world, including
the U.S., is
pretty much in compliance with the
treaty already. He said that the treaty has resulted in a huge drop in the use
of landmines.
The U.S. military has not used
landmines since the Gulf War in 1991. We have not exported any of these weapons
since
1992, and we haven’t produced any
since 1997. We haven’t used them in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the
govern-
ments of both of those countries
have joined the mine ban treaty and have banned any possession of
them.
Any country that would use landmines
these days
would be stigmatized by the rest of
the world. The U.S. would
certainly not want to be in this
position, so it is hard to see why
we should want to hang on to these
weapons.
Another
refusal
Another treaty that the U.S. and
Somalia are alone in refusing to sign is the Convention on the Rights of the
Child, which is UNICEF’s guiding document for the
protection
of chidren throughout the world.
UNICEF’s mission is to
advocate for the protection of
children’s rights, to help meet their basic needs, and to expand their
opportunities to reach
their full
potential.
America’s push-button
war
(Based on an article by Jane Mayer
in the Oct. 26, 2009
New
Yorker
plus news
reports.)
The U.S. is heavily involved in
using unmanned aircraft
to kill suspected Taliban and Al
Qadea members in Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Waziristan. These
remote-controlled planes, called
drones, have been used extensively
in the region.
The use of drones has increased
dramatically since
President Obama took office. During
his first 9 1/2 months
months as president, Obama has
authorized as many CIA drone
attacks as Bush did in his last
three years in office. There is now such a big demand for Predator drones that
their manufacturer,
General Atomics Aeronautical
Systems, can barely keep up
with the
orders.
There are actually two drone
programs — one run by the U.S. military and the other by the CIA. The military
one
operates in Iraq and Afghanistan,
targeting enemies of U.S. troops stationed there. The CIA program, which is much
more secretive, is anti-terrorist, aimed at terrorist suspects around the world.
The CIA controls the drones from its headquarters in
Langley,
Virginia.
The CIA carries out its drone
missions with two sets of operatives. One set has its drone "pilots" located
near hidden
airfields in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, handling takeoffs and
landings. Once a drone becomes
airborne, control is switched to the CIA in Langley. There, the plane’s "pilot",
who needn’t
have had conventional pilot
training, is able to maneuver his craft, using a joystick similar to those in
video games. He sits next to intelligence officers and watches a big TV screen
that shows what the drone’s camera sees. It is then determined whether or not to
lock on to a target and fire the plane’s missiles.
A former CIA officer, who viewed a
Predator strike by means of a small monitor when he was stationed in
Afghanistan, said, "You could see the little figures scurrying, and
the
explosion going off, and when the
smoke cleared, there was just rubble and charred
stuff."
The drone attacks kill many people
along with their
intended targets. A suspected
terrorist isn’t standing out in a field alone, but is often surrounded by his
family or villagers
who may have nothing to do with his
activities.
While drones with their cameras make
it easier to
recognize the targeted persons, they
aren’t of much help in
choosing who should be targeted in
the first place. The CIA
and the military rely on informants,
who are notoriously
unreliable. They might finger their
personal or tribal enemies to get rid of them, or they might be just be
interested in the money
they can earn as an
informant.
An example of how misinformation can
lead to tragic
consequences is the air strike last
September in Afghanistan,
which killed between 70 and 125
people, including many
civilians. They were bombed by an
F-15E fighter plane whose
pilot believed he was killing
Taliban insurgents. It turned out that they were villagers helping themselves to
fuel from two mired oil trucks. The bombing created such a jumble of human body
parts impossible to sort out, the village elders had to dole them out randomly
to the family members of the victims.
Predator drones have proven to be
more accurate than fighter jets, yet they too have gone astray in their
killing
assignments. In 2008, the CIA set
out to kill Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan. It took 16
missile strikes and 14 monthes before he was finally killed by a Predator in
Waziristan. Along the way, between 207 and 321 other people were
killed.
Piecing together international and
Pakistani news
accounts gives us some basic details
of the hunt for Mehsud:
On June 14, 2008, a drone strike
killed one unidentified person.
On Jan. 2, 2009, four more
unidentified people were killed.
On Feb. 14, more than thirty people
were killed. On April 1,
a drone attacked Mehsud’s deputy,
but killed ten or twelve of his followers instead. And so it went, one miss
after another,
until the CIA finally caught up with
Mehsud lying on his father- in-law’s roof top in Waziristan. Two Hellfire
missiles
from a Predator wiped him out, along
with his father-in-law, his wife, his mother-in-law, a lieutenant and seven
bodyguards.
On one of the attempts to get
Mehsud, the CIA
targeted mourners at a prayer
service who were remembering
those killed in a previous air
strike. Possibly as many as 86
mourners were killed by missiles
launched by the drones.
The
News
, a Pakistani newspaper, reported
that ten children and four elderly tribal leaders were among the dead.
An
editorial in The
News denounced the strike as sinking to the level of the
terrorists.
The missile strikes have provided
the Taliban with an
opportunity to rouse the Pakistani
public against President
Zadari’s administration. In several
cities, large protest rallies against the drones have been held. Militants are
now
depicting their bombings in Pakistan
as "revenge for the
drone attacks," and using the drone
attacks to arouse hatred of the U.S. and to gain more recruits. Obviously, the
drones are not the way to win the hearts and minds of the
people.
Most Americans have remained
indifferent to the moral implications of the drone strikes, perhaps because the
CIA has maintained such a tight seal of secrecy. No CIA footage of the strikes
have been shown on American TV.
It’s a case of "out of sight, out of
mind." Americans have been insulated from the human
toll.
Most Americans probably still recoil
at the word
"assassination," which brings to
mind close-up murders by
guns or knives, but assassination
from the air has become
acceptable. Yet, there are voices
speaking out against the idea of targeting one person for death, especially when
it involves killing and wounding innocent people.
Philip Alston, an investigator for
the U.N. Human Rights Council, said that unless the Obama
administration
explains the legal basis for
targeting individuals and the
measures it is taking to comply with
international humanitarian
law, which prohibits arbitrary
executions, "it will increasingly be perceived as carrying out indiscriminate
killings in violation of international law."
There is a real danger that as the
number of drones
increases, so will the number of
chosen targets. Will their use
be limited to killing people in
Afghanistan and Pakistan?
"These strikes are killing a lot of
low-level militants,
which raises the question of whether
they are going beyond the authorization to kill leaders," said Peter Bergen,
co-author of a study by the New America Foundation.
The Obama administration has
expanded the authorized list of drone targets to include drug lords in
Afghanistan
suspected of giving money to help
finance the Taliban.
President Karzai’s running mate,
Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim, and Karzai’s own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai,
are
suspected of being drug lords.
Should we bomb them too?
Where is the expansion going to
stop? Are suspected
terrorists in Yemen next on the
list? How about South
America? The U.S. military is moving
more heavily into
Colombia. Will we be targeting the
rebels and those drug
traffickers in competition with
those in the Colombian
government? And will we be reaching
across borders to zap
people in Venezuela? Once we set
foot on that slippery slope,
it’s hard to say where we will end
up.
(Editor’s note: On April 16 - 19,
2010, there will be
a regional conference, "Challenging
Robotic Warfare and
Social Control." The conference will
be held in Hood River,
Oregon. More about this in the next
issue of the Jackrabbit.)
Warfare is not
cheap
Tea Party people are wondering why
the U.S. keeps sinking further and further into debt with no end in sight. Here
are some clues that might help: In December, Congress passed and the President
signed a budget bill that provides $636.3
billion for the military in fiscal
2010. This includes $128.3
billion for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. In just a few days,
President Obama is expected to ask
for a supplement of $33
billion to pay for the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Since the Sept. 11 attack, we have spent $748 billion on
the war in Iraq and $300 billion for the war in Afghanistan, acccording to the
Congressional Research Service.
The War Resisters League has
calculated that slightly more than half of our income taxes go to the U.S.
military.
To see how the WRL arrived at their figures, go to
their website atwww.warresisters.org and click
on pie
chart.
Quotes of the
month
Every gun that is made, every
warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a
theft
from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are
cold and are not
clothed.
................Dwight D.
Eisenhower
We have grasped the mystery of
the atom and
rejected the Sermon on the Mount.
Ours is a world of
nuclear giants and ethical
infants. We know more about war than we do about peace — more about killing than
we do about living.
............General Omar
Bradley
About the
Jackrabbit
The Jackrabbit News, now in
its 31st year, is published by the Jackrabbit Alliance of Yakima. We are
truly
independent, not affiliated with any
political party or
commercial enterprise. We accept no
advertising. We have nonprofit status, but we are not tax
exempt.
The Jackrabbit runs on goodwill
donations. We try to economize and use our funds wisely. Up until
recently,
recyclables could be left in the
name of the Jackrabbit
at Michelsen, 202 N. 2nd Ave. in
Yakima, and the company
would periodically send us checks.
Michelsen no longer sends checks to small organizations like the Jackrabbit, but
some
recyclers send us the amount they
are paid.
We wish it were possible to thank
everyone personally
— the many loyal and generous readers, the
dedicated
recyclers and the diligent mailing
crew.
The Jackrabbit has a varied
collection of materials we are happy to share — books, magazines, videos, CDs,
DVDs, government reports, pamphlets, clippings files and much
more.
Just ask and ye shall receive. These
items deal with issues
covered in the Jackrabbit, such as
energy, conservation,
nuclear weapons, nuclear power
plants, politics, death
penalty, peace action, global
warming, pollution, corruption
in government, world peace,
international treaties, missile
defense, Iraq War, Afghanistan War,
human rights, School
of the Americas, World Trade
Organization, NAFTA,
CAFTA, torture of prisoners,
religious fanaticism, North
Korea, Iran, Middle East, population
explosion, oil industry,
depleted uranium, cluster bombs,
landmines, Hanford
pollution and cleanup, universal
health care, etc., etc.
Here are some titles of recently
acquired DVDs:
Soldiers Speak
Out
(soldiers tell what war is really
like),
Sir! No
Sir!
(how soldiers rebelled in the
Vietnam War),
Before You
Enlist
(what prospective military recruits
should
know), War Made
Easy (the media’s complicity in promoting
war), Rethink
Afghanistan (what we’re getting into in
Afghanistan), Blood and
Oil (how the quest for oil, especially
in the Middle East, has driven the
foreign policy of every
U.S. president from FDR to the
present)
We also have a series of four DVDs
produced by
Robert Greenwald for the American
Civil Liberties Union:
The Supreme Court, Religious
Freedom, Youth Speak,
and
Gay & Lesbian
Rights.
Some items are kept near the Ann
Ingham Room at
the Unitarian Universalist Church in
Yakima. Other materials
can be found at the home of Gene
Rupel, 7200 Midvale Rd.
If you don’t live near Yakima,
that’s O.K. We are happy to
mail the items to you, but just be
sure you return them.
To contact The Jackrabbbit
News: Address,
P.O. Box 772, Yakima, WA 98907.
Phone/FAX,
509-965-6061.
E-mail, geno1924@aol.com.
Yours for peace on a
healthy Earth,
The Jackrabbit News, an independent newspaper, is
published by the Jackrabbit Alliance of Yakima. You can help by sending in a
contribution or by recycling at Michelson, 202 N 2nd Ave, Yakima.
Leave in the name of the Jackrabbit: newspapers, cardboard, #1 plastic (pop and
juice bottles), #2 plastic (milk & water jugs). The two kinds of plastic
need to be separated. The paper items can be mixed, but just be sure it’s only
paper—no plastic or metals. Phone/fax, 509-965-6061. Email, geno1924@aol.com