War Index (With Apologies To Harper's, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis, et al.)

Source: National Priorities Project Costs of War counter 4/9/17 at 6am EDT

12,192 number of bombs the U.S. dropped on Syria in the final year of the Obama administration

7 number of Muslim majority countries bombed by Obama

59 number of Tomahawk missiles dropped on Syrian government airfield April 6, 2017

$1,590,000 cost of one Tomahawk cruise missile

$93,810,000 total cost of Tomahawk missiles used in April 6 airstrike

2.35% increase in the value of Tomahawk missile manufacturer Raytheon's shares on April 7, 2016

14.03% increase in the value of Dow Jones Aerospace and Defense [sic] index shares since Trump's election

18 number of opinion pieces in favor of the April 6 airstrike on Syria
in the NYT, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post, USA Today and NY Daily News 

0 number of opinion pieces against the April 6 airstrike on Syria
in the NYT, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post, USA Today and NY Daily News 

good thing we don't have govt-controlled media in this country pic.twitter.com/fLkt9lQZa6

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) April 7, 2017

465,000+ number of Syrians killed by civil war since 2010

1,000,000+ number of Syrians injured by civil war since 2010

12,000,000+ number of Syrians driven from home by civil war since 2010

13,210 number of Syrian refugees accepted into the U.S. in 2016

50% share of Syrian population driven from their homes by civil war since 2010

1,000 estimated number of civilians killed by U.S. airstrikes in March, 2017

9 number of children shot and left to bleed out by U.S. Special Forces in Yemen January 29, 2017

$20,400,000 compensation package for Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy in 2015

$19,000,000 compensation package for General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic in 2015

$22,500,000,000 total cost of three Zumwalt destroyer battleships
built by General Dynamics at Bath Iron Work in Maine
$30,510,000 net worth of Maine's congressional delegation in 2014
#1 rank of General Dynamics among campaign donors for Maine's senators in their last election year

28% share of children in Maine whose families receive public assistance

12 number of civil disobedients arrested at General Dynamics Bath Iron Works in 2016

9 number of civil disobedients arrested at General Dynamics Bath Iron Works to date in 2017

#Aegis9 about to be arrested on April 1, 2017 at christening [sic] of destroyer ship

REFERENCES

http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/defense-stocks-rise-after-syria-strike-raytheon-lockheed-martin-boeing-april-7-2017-4-1001906661-1001906661

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-firing-59-tomahawk-missiles-035600272.html

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/05/syria-civil-war-explained-160505084119966.html

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/07/the-spoils-of-war-trump-lavished-with-media-and-bipartisan-praise-for-bombing-syria

http://fair.org/home/five-top-papers-run-18-opinion-pieces-praising-syria-strikes-zero-are-critical

https://news.vice.com/story/trumps-first-terror-raid-killed-one-american-soldier-and-10-women-and-children-in-yemen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer

http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/8857-children-in-families-that-receive-public-assistance

https://www.opensecrets.org

More Troops To #Syria, More Refugees Fleeing U.S. Imperial Violence

Image source: Organizing Notes

Can you find Syria on this map? Can you find the Aegean Sea where toddlers are drowning when boats of refugees capsize fleeing war in Syria? Most in the U.S. could find neither if the map weren't clearly labeled.




When President Obama announces he will send more troops into Syria, do his constituents care? He already sent B-52 bombers to drop weapons of mass destruction this month and there was hardly a peep. People in the U.S. are too busy being super excited about the presidential election which will change nothing in the march toward a third world war.

Liberal Democrats are being outflanked by far right Republicans when it comes to criticizing U.S. imperial expansion abroad. Probably because the project of empire is seen as tremendously expensive and ultimately unsustainable by fiscal conservatives. Some of the criticism is nativist as in "let them kill each other, it's none of our business" which exhibits a deep ignorance of the history of colonialism.

Japan is effectively a U.S. colony and has been since the end of the second world war. Yesterday President Obama threatened North Korea with bellicose rhetoric, saying "the U.S. could destroy" that country. As reported by Reuters via the Huffington Post:

Separately, President Barack Obama said the United States is working on defending itself and its allies against potential threats from what he called an “erratic” country with an “irresponsible” leader. 

On April 15, the North failed to launch what was likely a Musudan missile, with a range of more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles), meaning it could, if launched successfully, hit Japan and also theoretically put the U.S. territory of Guam within range.

Here's the question corporate news has trained the taxpayers who support all these wars never to ask: why would Guam be a U.S. territory? There must be actual human beings on Guam who have the right to govern themselves.

Here's another one: why is the U.S. funding terrorist groups like ISIS on the one hand and bombing them on the other? Don't ask Obama. Ask the CEOs of General Dynamics, Boeing, Lockheed and other "defense" contractors.

I vote we return to calling the Department of "Defense" the Department of War. In this age of information control and euphemisms, this will not happen. In the meantime, I will continue to call out the Pentagon for its crimes against humanity and the environment.

Toddlers will keep drowning, the charade of two corporate parties running against one another will continue to entertain, and the super rich will get even super richer as we escalate the unwinnable "war on terror." If history is any indication, none of this will end well.

What to do? Use the internet while you still have it and use your networks to find real information. Lift up your voice and share some truth.

We Are Now In A Long Era Of Taxation Without Representation

The ongSyrian refugee crisis is epic, and the U.S. had a large hand in creating it.

I just read this excellent report back from a delegation that met with Maine's alleged representative to the U.S. Senate, Angus King.

Meeting with Sen. Angus King on US Syria Policy

A group of Maine peace activists met with Sen. Angus King (I-ME) on March 11 at the public library in Brunswick.  The 45 minute meeting to discuss Syria was attended by Rosalie Tyler Paul (Brunswick), Mary Donnelly (Brunswick), Joanne Hardy (Brunswick), Dud Hendrick (Deer Island) and Bruce Gagnon (Bath).

Sen. King sits on the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees in Washington and was a former governor in Maine.  King told us that he spends 60% of his time on these issues.  He is an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate.

Rosalie began the meeting saying, "I want to speak to the opportunity that awaits our country to move beyond this very adolescent period. We have all the power to lead, we have the money and the muscle but not yet the moral leadership. If there is ever to be a coming of age for our species, we must stop killing each other and begin to cooperate."

We handed Sen. King two recent important articles on Syria and urged him to take the time to read them.  The first one is written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria: They don’t hate ‘our freedoms.’ They hate that we’ve betrayed our ideals in their own countries — for oil. We briefly shared the findings from this excellent piece that ran in Politico with Sen. King - particularly this bit:

Our war against Bashar Assad did not begin with the peaceful civil protests of the Arab Spring in 2011. Instead it began in 2000, when Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500 kilometer pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Qatar shares with Iran the South Pars/North Dome gas field, the world’s richest natural gas repository. The international trade embargo until recently prohibited Iran from selling gas abroad. Meanwhile, Qatar’s gas can reach European markets only if it is liquefied and shipped by sea, a route that restricts volume and dramatically raises costs. The proposed pipeline would have linked Qatar directly to European energy markets via distribution terminals in Turkey, which would pocket rich transit fees. The Qatar/Turkey pipeline would give the Sunni kingdoms of the Persian Gulf decisive domination of world natural gas markets and strengthen Qatar, America’s closest ally in the Arab world. Qatar hosts two massive American military bases and the U.S. Central Command’s Mideast headquarters.

Of course, the Russians, who sell 70 percent of their gas exports to Europe, viewed the Qatar/Turkey pipeline as an existential threat. In Putin’s view, the Qatar pipeline is a NATO plot to change the status quo, deprive Russia of its only foothold in the Middle East, strangle the Russian economy and end Russian leverage in the European energy market. In 2009, Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through Syria “to protect the interests of our Russian ally.”

Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria. It is important to note that this was well before the Arab Spring-engendered uprising against Assad.

The second article we handed Sen. King recently ran in the Boston Globe and was penned by Brown University senior fellow Stephan Kinzer entitled The media are misleading the public on Syria.
Kinzer writes:

Washington-based reporters tell us that one potent force in Syria, al-Nusra, is made up of “rebels” or “moderates,” not that it is the local al-Qaeda franchise. Saudi Arabia is portrayed as aiding freedom fighters when in fact it is a prime sponsor of ISIS. Turkey has for years been running a “rat line” for foreign fighters wanting to join terror groups in Syria, but because the United States wants to stay on Turkey’s good side, we hear little about it. Nor are we often reminded that although we want to support the secular and battle-hardened Kurds, Turkey wants to kill them. Everything Russia and Iran do in Syria is described as negative and destabilizing, simply because it is they who are doing it — and because that is the official line in Washington.

I had the occasion about 18 months ago to have a brief word with Sen. King about Syria and at that time he was holding fast to the line that the US was supporting 'moderate' Syrians in their efforts to overthrow Assad.  This time he never brought up the word - by now alternative media in the US has largely dispelled that notion.  In this meeting I focused in on how ISIS is funded which includes generous contributions of money and weapons from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel and the US.  I mentioned that when Russia first entered Syria to help defend that legitimate government they began bombing ISIS oil truck convoys that were carrying stolen Syrian oil and moving it into Turkey.  Once there President Erdogan's son, who runs an oil distribution company, sold the oil to Japan and Israel and then shared the profits with ISIS.

Sen. King did not dispute any of these points we made about who was funding and arming Syria although he did say that the US too had bombed ISIS oil convoys heading into Turkey with the stolen oil.  "I am not going to defend Turkey but they are a strategic ally," he said.

Mary Donnelly spoke passionately about the refugees in Syria and that greater effort must be made to ensure that supplies of humanitarian aid get through to them.  Due to the recent ceasefire (largely organized by Moscow) some of that aid was now reaching the most hard pressed people inside Syria.

Dud Hendrick shared bits from a letter he handed to Sen. King that called on the US to end its massive and aggressive military empire of more than 900 bases.  Dud graduated from the US Naval Academy and served a tour of duty in Vietnam during that ill-fated war.

Joanne Hardy, an ardent supporter of the Palestinian people, urged Sen. King to push Israel to end its illegal settlement building which continues to displace the people into ever expanding refugee camps.  Sen. King responded, "We've never done anything about Israeli settlements. I'm very sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinians.  One of the problems is that it is easy to say one side or the other is right.  But can you sign an agreement with the Palestinians?  Who do you negotiate with?"

Sen. King did acknowledge that Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu does not appear willing to seriously negotiate a real peace agreement.  King was reluctant to acknowledge that the US has tremendous leverage over Israel when one considers the huge amount of aid given to it every year.

(The main expression of Congressional support for Israel has been foreign aid. Since 1985, it has provided nearly $3 billion in grants annually to Israel, with Israel being the largest annual recipient of American aid from 1976 to 2004 and the largest cumulative recipient of aid ($121 billion, not inflation-adjusted) since World War II. Seventy-four percent of these funds must be spent purchasing US goods and services. More recently, in fiscal year 2014, the US provided $3.9 billion in foreign military aid to Israel. Israel also benefits from about $8 billion of loan guarantees.)

Sen. King praised the Israeli 'missile defense' program called Iron Dome as something "that likely saved my son's life" when he was in Israel during the most recent exchange of Palestinian rockets and IDF counter-attack on Gaza.  While we didn't have time to discuss the merits of Iron Dome an analysis of the system's failures has been written by Subrata Ghoshroy who is a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Program in Science, Technology, and Society.  His article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is called Iron Dome: Behind the hoopla, a familiar story of missile-defense hype.

After Sen. King left the Brunswick library meeting room our delegation remained to evaluate the meeting.  We agreed that unless fellow concerned citizens help by following up on these issues with Sen. King then we will not be able to move things forward.  One in our group remarked that, "Sen. King is still not willing to admit Israel's criminal behavior.  I was put off by his suggestion that the complicated history of the Middle East excuses US behavior in the region."

So we urge those Mainers who care about these complex but important issues in the Middle East to contact Sen. King and share with him your concerns.  You can send him a message at his web site here  https://www.king.senate.gov/contact

Just yesterday Russian President Putin announced a pullout from Syria: "I consider the objectives that have been set for the Defense Ministry to be generally accomplished. That is why I order to start withdrawal of the main part of our military group from the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic starting from tomorrow,” he said.

It will be more than interesting to see what the US and their partners (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Israel) will do next in their effort to topple Assad.  In an article today Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy, writes:

Jeffrey Goldberg’s newly published book-length article on Barack Obama and the Middle East includes a major revelation that brings US Secretary of State John Kerry’s Syrian diplomacy into sharper focus: it reports that Kerry has sought on several occasions without success over the past several months to get Obama’s approval for cruise missile strikes against the Syrian government. 

Goldberg reports that “on several occasions” Kerry requested that Obama approve missile strikes at “specific regime targets”, in order to “send a message” to Assad – and his international allies – to “negotiate peace”. Kerry suggested to Obama that the US wouldn’t have to acknowledge the attacks publicly, according to Goldberg, because Assad “would surely know the missiles’ return address”.

Now is indeed the right time for the peace movement around the world to call on the US to match the move by Russia to lower the military footprint on Syria.  If the world wants to bring peace to the region, and reduce the refugee crisis, then we must speak out now loudly and clearly demanding that the attempts to topple the elected Assad government must end.

Bruce K. Gagnon    Posted 3/15/16 to his blog: Organizing Notes
Coordinator, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

  
After reading Bruce's report I sent King a message. You can, too:

https://www.king.senate.gov/contact

Dear Angus King,
The long U.S. campaign for regime change in Syria may not be apparent to most of your constituents, but the humanitarian crisis of Syrian refugees certainly is. When we use our influence and military power to destabilize a legitimate government seen as a threat to U.S. economic interests -- or the economic interests of U.S. allies like Turkey and Qatar -- it is a disservice to taxpayers. I do not care to defend one nation's right to extract and transport natural gas or any other fossil fuel. The blind allegiance to dinosaur-like energy policies is pushing our planet toward the brink of climate disaster. and no one is the U.S. will be exempt from the negative consequences.

Who determines U.S. policy in southwestern Asia -- Israel? Continuing to arm one of the richest nations in the world as it pushes for war with Iran is dangerous and foolhardy. Continuing to enable Israel's violent occupation of Palestine is likewise dangerous and foolhardy. I have repeatedly heard you mention that your son was in Israel when rockets were being fired by Hezbollah, and Israel was responding by pounding civilian targets in Gaza resulting in the deaths of thousands of children and families. Again, the fact that most of your constituents are fooled into thinking this is a symmetrical conflict can be laid at the feet of corporate "news" media, but some of us are actually paying attention. Why you would use your own family member for propaganda purposes is your business. What you do with the taxes I work hard to pay is very much my business. A teacher and woodworker married couple in Maine pay about 30% of our earnings in federal taxes while many of the corporations who contribute to your campaigns pay nothing.

Your actions and words have shown that you believe you are in the Senate to represent corporate profits, not the people of Maine. That is not what you swore to do when you took the oath of office.

We are now in a long era of taxation without representation. And I think we know where that sort of thing eventually leads.
Lisa Savage
Solon

Crushed Bodies Are The Foundation For U.S. Exceptionalism, #Racism

Frank Zappa famously called politics "the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex." And I'll admit there's an element of entertainment in the chilling performance of star-spangled children dancing and spouting exceptionalist invective at rallies for the demagogue with the bad hair. The lyrics go like this:

Cowardice

Are you serious?

Apologies for freedom, I can’t handle this.

When freedom rings, answer the call!

On your feet, stand up tall!

Freedom's on our shoulders, USA!

Enemies of freedom face the music, c'mon boys, take them down

President Donald Trump knows how to make America great

Deal from strength or get crushed every time

Far from representing a splinter group at this point in history, the demagogue has been elevated by corporate media platforms like Time Magazine to front-runner for the Republican nomination for president.

"Deal from strength or get crushed every time" is ironically well-illustrated by the crushing of Black bodies into for-profit prisons and police custody where they die regularly. I'm reading Ta-Nehsi Coates' long, meditative letter to his teenage son about fear and the impossibility of any meaningful safety for a young Black man in the USA. Between the World and Me explains what Howard University meant to Coates and his extended family as a life-sustaining "Mecca" of inquiry, wisdom and deep love. What are the chances that his Black son will also be able to beat the odds in a country that builds far more prisons than it builds universities? 

The military-industrial complex needs an entertainment division because what they do in the way of business as usual is even more chilling than celebrating racist slogans: they kill people. Lots of people. 

A telling victim was Prince Jones, a classmate of Coates', top scholar and future leader who was stalked and killed by Maryland police in a case of mistaken identity. Or was it? Coates argues convincingly that the Dream of white supremacy and exceptionalism celebrated in campaigns this season is built on the crushed bodies of the human beings relegated to the bottom of the pile.

And this leads me to the refugees pouring out of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Or dying in the rubble thereof.

The Washington DC think tank Council on Foreign Relations published a study of how many bombs my country dropped on the mostly Muslim, mostly brown-skinned people of the oil-rich countries in western Asia last year:

Source: Council on Foreign Relations. Estimate based upon Combined Forces Air Component Commander 2010-2015 Airpower Statistics; Information requested from CJTF-Operation Inherent Resolve Public Affairs Office, January 7, 2016; New America Foundation (NAF); Long War Journal (LWJ); The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ).

The people of the U.S. tolerated this level of bombing civilians and even, in many cases, celebrated it. Because they've been led to believe that killing "them" over there means not having to kill "them" over here. Islamophobic ranting by demagogues suggests that Muslims are a threat to "our" security, and the corporate media reinforce this message 24/7. 

Meanwhile, law enforcement and the judicial system handle the killing over here of those perceived as a threat merely by virtue of their skin color. Upstanding scholars and devoted Christians like Prince Jones look the same as hardened, violent criminals in this context: if they're Black, it's imperative to preserve the power structure that they be held back. 

The U.S. elected its first Black president seven years ago, yet racially-motivated violence has shown no signs of slowing. Like the alleged socialist running for the Democratic nomination this time around (an oxymoron if there ever was one), Obama promised to address poverty and income inequality yet these problems have also grown worse on his watch. 

A recent essay by Michael Glennon in the Boston Globe offered an explanation of why Barack Obama couldn't stop or even slow the wars he campaigned against, or prevent the start of a couple more. "Vote all you want, the secret government won't change" explains that the military and security[sic] bureaucracies are now far more powerful than Congress and the executive branch of government combined. I believe these agencies answer primarily to the corporate interests that fund the entertainment division, and they have momentum that appears to be unstoppable. 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Black leader assassinated by the USA and whose birthday we celebrate on Monday, said in a 1967 speech against the ongoing war on Vietnam, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Amen to that, brother.

Islamophobia And Anti-Immigrant Rants Cover Up Real Fear: Not Being Able To Compete

The false dichotomy that says "we" are not "them" has been getting a lot of play via the demagogue with bad hair whom the corporate media have made the front runner for the Republican Party presidential nomination. It feeds into that other false dichotomy: that there is any fundamental difference between the two corporate parties, the only ones that are allowed to field candidates, the ones that fund the endless wars on terror and also fund terrorist groups like ISIL who keep the wars churning. The parties that can't agree to limit their carbon emissions or even to count the emissions of their sacred Pentagon. The parties that fund mass surveillance of me and thee in the name of "security."

I loved this eloquent rant by British veteran Chris Herbert who lost a leg in Iraq, explaining why it is stupid when people assume he must hate all Muslims:

Getting frustrated by some people expecting racism from me, because I got blown up. Here it is:Yes. A Muslim man blew...
Posted by Chris Herbert on Tuesday, December 8, 2015

I also loved this article in the mainstream regional magazine Down East about an amazing Muslim immigrant in Maine, ZamZam Mohamud. A refugee from war in Somalia, Mohamud settled in Lewiston, an aging mill town that has been revived by decades of receiving immigrants. 

Our governor is from the old Lewiston and is now infamous for his hate speech aimed at immigrants. As usual, he and other Know Nothings trot out the old trope about not being able to afford to take care of "our own." As in, who needs more welfare recipients? And who want the crime rate to soar due to all those unemployed young men? 

These same arguments were used against accepting Catholic immigrants in the 19th century, and against accepting Jewish immigrants in the 20th century.

Facts on the ground in Lewiston show just the opposite. From Jesse Ellison reporting in Down East:

Crime was beginning to decline in Lewiston as its Somalis were first arriving. The state’s second largest city now ranks 26th for crime, well below Bangor, Ogunquit, and Ellsworth, to name a few. Juvenile crime rates — important predictors of future crime statistics — are also on the decline, despite a sizable increase in the number of juveniles. Few will go so far as to credit the city’s new arrivals for its falling crime rate, but many police officials and city administrators have expressed, if delicately, that it’s at least impressive the swelling immigrant population hasn’t caused crime to go up.

ZamZam Mohamud has already served on the Lewiston school board, raised two daughters and sent them to college, served as a translator for the hospital, and formed any number of community groups that bring together, for example, police and Somali immigrants, for dialogue. Clearly she is a highly gifted person, exceptional rather than typical. Or is she?

I have long believed that claiming to fear crime and welfare loafers as the rationale for opposing immigration is false. (Less so the claim of fearing Islam as a cult of violence. More on that in a minute.) What white, working class people really fear -- and they should -- is competing against the self-selected group of people resourceful and determined enough to make it out of their war-torn country. Very often such people are educated already, though they likely won't be able to work in their field. Nearly always they highly value education for their children, and will make any number of sacrifices to see them through college and graduate school. They will start small businesses. They will take the jobs that actual welfare loafers won't do. They will outcompete the drug addicts and alcoholics currently driving up the mortality rate among white people aged 45-54 with only a high school diploma. 

From Olga Kazan reporting in The Nation:

The reasons for the increased death rate are not the usual things that kill Americans, like diabetes and heart disease. Rather, it’s suicide, alcohol and drug poisonings, and alcohol-related liver disease. 

The least-educated are worst off: All-cause mortality among middle-aged Americans with a high-school degree or less increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people between 1999 and 2013, but there was little change in mortality for people with some college. The death rate for the college-educated fell slightly.

Let in Syrian immigrants, and in a generation they may produce another Steve Jobs.

This mural by the artist Banksy depicting Apple's founder as a refugee popped up in a French refugee camp.

Islamophobia though -- what's that all about?

Reference the fear of Catholic immigrants whose Popery was alleged to be a conspiracy to bring down the established WASP order, or of Jewish immigrants, presumed communists.

The masses are easily manipulated by propaganda that says to fear and hate the unfamiliar. Many Israelis, for example (whose government applies the same kind of religious test for immigration as is advocated by the demagogue) say they have never talked with an Arab. Never. Keeping "them" out is a great way to make sure that groups of differing faiths never come together as ZamZam Mohamud would have them do.

What happens when people reach across the divide of religious-based phobias and listen to others tell their stories? Healing occurs. Friendships blossom. And love wins.

For evidence to support my claim, I suggest you watch (or re-watch, as I did this week) Alice Rothchild's documentary Voices Across the Divide. As an American Jew who had visited Israel many times but never met an Arab, Rothchild set out to interview Palestinians of the diaspora about their families' experiences of al-Nakba, the ethnic cleansing that began in 1948 and continues today. Some of those interviewed were Arab Christians, but most were Muslim. By the time you finish watching this powerful film, I think you will feel deeply, as I do, that there is no "them" -- there is only "us."

Image of Palestinian kids in a refugee camp in Rafah from the study guide for  Voices Across the Divide.

#Refugees Are Deserving Of Our Love, So That We Can Remain Human Beings

Several hundred people gathered in Portland, Maine last night to say that our governor is wrong: Maine does welcome Syrian refugees. 

As my family arrived at the event organized by the Portland Racial Justice Congress, a white man sitting on his windowsill above Monument Square began shouting "Send them back! Send them back!" I impulsively yelled back: "Shut up!" and several safety monitors hurried over to admonish me not to respond. The man stopped soon afterwards and a woman at the microphone began offering a prayer (video below).

This morning when I rose it was to this post by a facebook friend sharing news from those meeting the boats full of refugees:

Huwaida Arraf with Adam Shapiro.21 hrs · Friends,
Thanks so much for the great response. After last night, we are compelled to raise our fundraising goal. 

Adam just got off working an early morning shift searching for and meeting boats of refugees. From 4am-11am, at least 12 boats arrived on the shores of Chios, each carrying 50+ people. Amongst those arriving was a 3 month old baby, an 8.5 month pregnant woman from Afghanistan who feared that her baby was no longer moving, an elderly Afghan man who made the journey with his stretcher, and 3 unaccompanied Iraqi siblings – 9 years old, 5 years old and 2.5 years old, who had been separated from their parents, likely by the smugglers, in Turkey. After last night, A Drop in the Ocean is nearly out of supplies (dry clothes that we try to pass out to people when they arrive) and, undoubtedly the Registration Center is going to be a cold, miserable process for those still wet, for those with small children. 

The people of this island are truly wonderful and doing what they can, but more is needed. I want to describe to you what is happening without being overly critical of the international organizations that are here but I'm not sure how. For now, suffice it to say that a woman seeking a jacket for her 2 year old baby should not be turned away by a worker who doesn't understand her, under the pretext that she had already been given dry clothes (although not a jacket). A father of four who had lost all his money at sea shouldn't have to be left wondering how he is going to feed his kids (then told that after a few days, an organization will come to give out food to those that have no money. A few days!) Fleeing war and persecution and the route that these refugees have to travel is scary and dangerous enough, without also having to be humiliating. 

The strength and resilience of the refugees that we are meeting is truly humbling. The 9 year old girl I mentioned earlier just crossed the Aegean Sea with her 5 year old and 2.5 year old brothers and got off the dinghy calm and collected! When her 5 year old brother started crying, she told us “he just misses our mom and dad.” These people are not seeking our charity, but rather our support and solidarity on their journey to find the safety and security that so many of us take for granted every day. 

https://www.crowdrise.com/refugeeemergencyas…/…/huwaidaarraf

Who will remain human in these times? I heard that President Obama was to give a speech on "terrorism" last night at 8pm. I did not bother to listen to the empty words of one who has lost his humanity. What could he say at this point in his warmongering career that I would need to hear?

That the U.S. war machine has created millions of refugees, killed and injured millions, and orphaned millions in the endless war on "terror" was noted in last night's remarks. 

I also heard from a friend last night reports that French police had raided the homes of 4,000 activists. Just as the staged events of 9/11 were the pretext to shred the U.S. Constitution (which one of last night's speakers noted protects everyone in the U.S., not just citizens).

My goals: to remain human, and to use my voice as long as I still have one.

Posted by Lisa Savage on Sunday, December 6, 2015