so yesterday, i had some women over to talk about the war. i knew a few of them had expressed (mild) opposition to it. i wasn't sure about the others.
but we need to be taking this topic to the people in our lives (close and more distant) because we need to take the opposition to a new level. i think it worked. there were 2 (out of 30) who were for the war. the rest were against it. we spoke of why we felt the way we did. we spoke of what was going on that bothered us the most.
consider it my attempt to steal goldie's house party.
but what goldie (and her mother marlene) had in mind worked and we all need to be attempting that.
so i did wednesday afternoon and it went very well. i hope you'll try something similar.
until we're all talking, nothing's going to change.
1 woman said it best, for me, when she said, 'we're at war and it's like we can't talk about it but we can spend hours obsessing over american idol.'
you're the 1 who can change that. only you. it doesn't matter what i do. it doesn't matter what someone else does. you have a power and you have a voice.
wednesday night kpfa's flashpoints had 2 women on discussing these sort of gatherings. 1 was an iraqi-american and the other was with christian peacemarker teams. listen to the interview and maybe you'll agree or maybe you'll disagree. but we need to be trying something.
i'm not spitting on the peace movement. i think united for peace & justice and others like codepink have done a wonderful job. but we need to be taking it into our neighborhoods. not just to the big rally in our area or the national rally. this issue needs to be something we discuss.
how are you with children being killed? is it okay to kill some children? that's one of the issues the 2 women addressed.
on monday, ray mcgovern was a guest discussing confronting donald rumsfeld last thursday. that's another thing people should be doing if they have the opportunity and, if they don't, they should be talking about it. even if it's just 'can you believe ray mcgovern confronted donald rumsfeld?' some 1 may ask you why. that's the perfect time to explain.
or some 1 may find some courage hearing of mcgovern.
you never know.
look at what kat's done since saturday:
"Kat's Korner: Pink's not dead or silent"
"Kat's Korner: Need deeper? Check out Josh Ritter's The Animal Years"
"Kat's Korner: Richie Havens: The Economical Collection"
"Kat's Korner: Neil Young's Living With War -- key word 'Living'"
the war is in every 1 of those reviews.
i feel like i'm preaching to the converted here.
let me post c.i.'s iraq snapshot from today:
Chaos and violence continue.
Today? The parliament continued to make the issue of who heads the Iraqi oil ministry the main topic. (Does that not demonstrate how important that position is?) As the AFP notes, yesterday was the self-imposed deadline the US backed Iraqi prime minister designate Nuri al-Maliki had set for finaliing his cabinet. The deadline was missed.
This as Rod Barton, an Australian Defence sciene intelligence officer, has made statements that Australia was lied into war. Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Company's Kerry O'Brien, Barton also addressed the issue of US torture:
KERRY O'BRIEN: Why do you believe he was beaten to death and how clear is the evidence that he was beaten to death?
ROD BARTON: I now know, and I didn't know this when I wrote the book, that he underwent a process called purgatory when he was arrested. Purgatory is, again, by this Special Forces 626. When they arrest the person they're trying to disorient the person. They put a hessian bag over the person's head and for three days or more the person is beaten, deprived of food and sleep and so on. There was a lot of stuff he was involved with. He developed poisons for assassination purposes. But I believe, I now know, that he knew about actual operations of assassinations of Iraqi dissidents overseas. And I believe that was the information that they were trying to get from him when they beat him again. The autopsy showed that he died not of a brain tumour or a brain aneurysm, or whatever they told me - not of natural causes, but the autopsy showed he died of blunt force trauma to the head. In other words, someone hit him too hard on the head.
Back in Iraq, as factions move towards the consolidation of militaries, Grand Ayatolla Hli al-Sistani has "ordered all Shi'ite mosques to close for three days" in Zubayr reports the Associated Press. This as AFP is reporting that "official sanction" will be needed for clerics in Iraq. As part of the agreement, "capital and Iraqi forces" cannot raid mosques without US troops being present. Presumably 'sanctioning' of cleric will take place with US permission as well. (US military spokesperson, Rick Lynch, stated of the deal: "That's news to me, that's a surprise to me.")
In Baghdad, as noted on KPFA's The Morning Show newsbreaks anchored by Sandra Lupien and by CNN, roadside bombs have claimed the lives of at least three American troops today (Lupien also noted the death of two Iraqi soldiers from a roadside bomb -- as does Reuters). The Associated Press notes a roadside bomb took the lives of five "municipal workers." (CNN also puts the number of dead at five and notes one wounded.) Reuters, which puts the previous number at four, reports assailents shot and killed a "judicial investigator near a courthouse." Courthouses and schools continue to be the targets for violence. And the corpse of a police officer was discovered ("hands bound, signs of torture and shot in the head").
In Baquba, Reuters notes that a school teacher was killed and her fourteen-year-old nephew wounded by assailants. Is this the same woman, Widad al-Shimri, whose death the AP reports? They identify her as a Shi'ite "history professor" and note that her seven-year-old daughter was also killed. So at least one educator was killed in Baquba, possibly two. Also in Baquba, at least twenty-five men, suspected gunmen, have been arrested "wearing army uniforms" but not with the army.
In Haqlaniyah, US troops have fired on abandoned hotel where resistance fighters were believed to be while, in Kirkuk, assailants "ambushed and killed a police lieutenant colonel."
that's what's going on.
that's what we have brought about.
so let's get creative on getting the word out.
