Washington Peace Center - Education and Action for Social Justice

John Cusack's War: The Actor Battles to Un-embed Hollywood With "War, Inc."

Fri, 16 May 2008 22:02:36 -0400

By Jeremy Scahill
t r u t h o u t | Film Review

Friday 16 May 2008

Back in 1989, in his smash hit, "Say Anything," John Cusack famously stood with a boom box above his head outside the home of the woman he loved blasting Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." With his latest films on the Iraq war, Cusack is standing outside Hollywood with a TV above his head broadcasting his political movies calling on the public to wake up and "Do Something."

John Cusack began working on his new film, "War, Inc.," which premieres in LA and New York May 23, about a year into the US occupation of Iraq. From the moment US tanks rolled into Baghdad, Cusack was a voracious consumer of news about the war. He took it deadly seriously, regularly calling independent journalists and asking them questions as he sought as much independent information as he could. Watching the insanity of the erection of the Green Zone and the advent of the era of McWar, complete with tens of thousands of "private contractors," Cusack set out to use the medium of film to unveil the madness. He wanted to do on the big screen what independent reporters like Naomi Klein, Nir Rosen and Dahr Jamail did in print. Over these years of war and occupation, Cusack has become one of the most insightful commentators on a far-too-seldom-discussed aspect of the occupation: the corporate dominance of the US war machine.

Of War and Golf - Olbermann Indignant

Fri, 16 May 2008 07:12:50 -0400

By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown

Wednesday 14 May 2008

Transcript:

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on two topics a lot of us had foolishly thought, had naively hoped, we would not again have to address… and a third topic nobody thought a president would ever seriously mention in public unless perhaps he'd just been hit in the head with something and was not in full possession of his faculties - how he expressed his "empathy" to the families of the dead in Iraq - by giving up golf.

Report from Vietnam

Tue, 13 May 2008 12:48:53 -0400

5/13/08 Vietnam

When I was 14, my dad took me to Tahiti and Bora Bora. Vietnam reminds me of Papeete (extended for many miles). Lush, green, monster trees, banana trees, coconut trees, bougainvilla and hibiscus, tiny shops, swift rain squalls, people with big smiles who love to test their English on you, motor scooters (multiplied by several million).

[I had my first ride on a motor scooter behind a polyn/asian girl in Papeete. Come to think of it, it was my most recent, as well.]

We're guided by Mr. Loc (pronounced "Lo") of the YMCA, and driven everywhere through the honking streets in a big maroon van by Mr. Thong. Those accompanying us are Sayuri and Eiko of the Dream Bridge Project, and Kozumi of Toyama YMCA. Sayuri and I have a room three times the size of our hotel rooms in Tokyo (about which Jay remarked, "I found the closet, but where's the room?").

The scooters are an overwhelming force here. I stepped out on the balcony at 6 am and rush hour had already started, four lanes plus two sidewalks of motor scooters weaving perilously between buses and cars. Other than a few lights on the main roads (fortunately all one-way) there are seemingly no traffic laws. Traffic circles are bedlam, but Mr. Thong negotiates them with aplomb, a horn, and a shocking lack of alarm as others surge toward him. Many people wear face masks. The pollution is horrid!

The food is marvelous, particularly the noodles. Breakfast yesterday was truly french rolls with butter and pate, pineapple, papaya. Lunch was on the Saigon River, one course after another, starting with the sweetest grapefruit juice imaginable. Grapefruits are the size of bowling balls. Green coconut milk for dinner through a straw, then the waiter lopped the top off the coconut and I scooped out the jelly for dessert. Trees reach to the heavens. There's a huge lumpy green fruit at stands along the roadside in the poorer section (where migrant workers and the YMCA reside), which I'm told smells like Camembert but tastes delicious. I can't wait to try it.

I wish I could stay a month, walk the streets rather than zooming past, rent a scooter, talk to the people. This is a tour, Japanese style, very directed. Not much time for aimless gawking.

Anyhow, having painted the scene, I want to get to the story.

Yesterday we visited four of the projects of the YMCA, which was resurrected in 1992 after a hiatus of 17 years. Between 1968 and 1975, the YMCA was active in Vietnam helping young orphans of the war and providing refugees medical and emergency services, but it became outspokenly anti-war, and Hanoi shut it down after the Americans left. Their purpose is to help poor children develop their gifts in safety, particularly focused on providing a loving environment for disabled children.

We visited a vocational school which housed the students for free during one year courses in motorcycle and scooter repair (a mainstay of the economy, it seems from all the workshops that line the roads), computers, industrial electricity, refrigerator repair, industrial sewing. We visited a club for physically disabled people who learn embroidery and beadwork and computers.

The most inspiring part of the day was when we visited a school for 23 blind children, ranging from ages 9 to 27, who learn English, computers (which require English), produce books in braille, and study music together. They also learn to give massage. The idea is to make the children self-sufficient and happy. The school is the inspiration of a marvelous man, Thien An, who lost his eyesight 17 years ago after an accident. He had already learned French, English, computers, and music. The children are marvelous musicians, and perform publicly. Many of these children have been blind since birth (blindness occurs at a rate five times higher than other countries, and Agent Orange genetic defects are mostly to blame).

The reason Jay and I were blessed with this opportunity is because of the Dream Bridge Concert we have agreed to facilitate this November 15th at UDC.

The purpose of the concert is to raise money for a new project of the Vietnamese YMCA (Youth Movement for Cooperative Action) and the Japanese Dream Bridge Project. We want to help them establish a community center and restaurant for the graduates of the school for the blind, who will help provide good food, music, and massage and live in dormitories at the center, which is near a national tourist site. Whatever money comes in will be applied to construction and provisioning of the community center until it becomes self-supporting.
Let's make this concert a huge success. We need to make broad contacts in the DC community, and keep everyone updated through a web page. We also need to find performers equal to those we've seen in Japan, and Vietnam.

Off to the Mekong Delta. More later.

My Experience with Nargis

Tue, 13 May 2008 07:59:56 -0400

This account is written by my friend Dawn_109, living in Yangon, the capital of Myanmar...

There had already been warnings of the cyclone Nargis lurking around the coast since the end of April, but I had thought that it won't come our way because in my life time, a cyclone had never reached us in Yangon. Previously, most of the storms that occured in the Bay of Bengal mostly went into Bangladesh or India, or sometimes, into the coast of Rakhine. At that time, we were reading reports from several weather agencies online that the cyclone will pass between Rakhine state, and Ayewarddy Division. But almost only at the last minute that the storm changed directions.

Downtown Library Plan Scrapped in Favor of Luxury Hotel

Tue, 13 May 2008 07:53:47 -0400

By David Nakamura and Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 12, 2008; 10:42 AM

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty is announcing today that the city will not build a new downtown library on the site of the old convention center, and instead has reached an agreement with a developer to construct a four-star, 400-room hotel on the prime downtown parcel.

Fenty's predecessor, Anthony A. Williams, proposed a grand new library at the convention center site during his tenure, saying a state-of-the-art facility would draw crowds to the heart of downtown and boost civic and cultural pride.

Burma, Day 10: Answering Your Question on Aung San Suu Kyi

Sat, 10 May 2008 15:14:18 -0400

Dear friends,

Many thanks to all of our supporters who are now holding events across the country to help raise funds for victims of the Cyclone. The situation gets more dire everyday. It appears that still only a trickle of humanitarian aid is reaching the people most in need, and yesterday even the United Nations World Food Program briefly suspended shipments of aid to Burma after the military regime impounded aid planes. Reports indicate that supplies that should be reaching the Burmese people are literally sitting on the tarmac.

We are going to send you a full update about the Cyclone, we are pulling it together right now. For a quick moment though, we wanted to answer a question that hundreds of you (including many journalists) have been asking us: what is the condition of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma's struggle for human rights and democracy and the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient?

Article: War dead cremated at facility for pets (story link)

Sat, 10 May 2008 12:56:26 -0400

Link here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004404786_cremains10.html

How bad does it have to get before we finally say Enough.?

How much disrespect do they have to demonstrate? How much will we tolerate?

Who can justify this Administration?

Article text:

By Ann Scott Tyson

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military has, since 2001, cremated some of the remains of U.S. service members killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in a Delaware facility that also cremates pets, a practice that ended Friday when the Pentagon banned the arrangement.

The Expressions of Nakba Washington DC Exhibit

Fri, 09 May 2008 17:34:31 -0400

Start: May 13 2008 - 7:00pm

End: May 15 2008 - 9:00pm

Timezone: Etc/GMT-5

Body:

May 13th-15th, 2008 5:00PM-9:00PM

Josephine Butler Parks Center
2437 15th Street NW
Washington, DC 20009
* Exhibit opening reception May 13th, 7:00PM
* Nakba Commemoration May 15th, 7:00PM

EXPRESSIONS OF NAKBA is an international competition and exhibition to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Nakba; the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948. The exhibit strives to present the extraordinary narrative of a dispossessed people through a diverse range of expressions that interpret the collective identity, historic struggle, and emotional experience of the Nakba for the Palestinians.

Despite Bush Administration Pressure, the Japanese People Continue to Say ‘No More War’

Thu, 08 May 2008 19:43:14 -0400

by Ann Wright

Published on Monday, May 5, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

After the end of World War II, the Japanese constitution, written by the United States for the defeated Japanese, rejected war as a solution for conflict. Article 9 states: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

Hillary confronted on threat to attack Iran

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:07:27 -0400

Link to Video clip here:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=11442

Iran Protesters Interrupt Clinton Fundraiser

by Aaron Bruns

WASHINGTON — Seconds into HIllary Clinton’s remarks at a fundraiser for women in Washington, she was greeted with a silent protest by one of the few men in attendance — who stood on his chair to unfurl a huge black banner reading “Obliterate Iran? Apologize” in bold pink lettering.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Doesn’t Mince Words About War and Justice

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:34:42 -0400

by Olga Bonfiglio

Shirin Ebadi wants Americans to do what they can to stop the Bush administration’s threats to bomb Iran as punishment for presumably making nuclear weapons.

“Nuclear weapons are not a daily concern of the people,” said Ebadi. “They want jobs; they want houses; they want health; they want more freedom.”

However, she predicted that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would whip up nationalistic support if Iran were forced into a face-off with the United States, just as it did when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980. The invasion resulted in an eight-year war between the two countries.

Greetings from Guantanamo Bay ... and the sickest souvenir shop in the world

Wed, 07 May 2008 09:42:40 -0400

By ANGELA LEVIN - More by this author » Last updated at 00:06am on 4th May 2008

Mockery: A child's T-shirt proclaiming the camp a tourist spot

The sands are white, the sea laps gently and crowds of bronzed Americans laze in the Caribbean sunshine.
They have a cinema, a golf course and, naturally, a gift shop stocked with mugs, jaunty T-shirts and racks of postcards showing perfect sunsets and bright green iguanas.
Only the barbed wire decoration, a recurring motif, hints at anything wrong.
Welcome to "Taliban Towers" at Guantanamo Bay, the most ghoulishly distasteful tourist destination on the planet.
As these astonishing mementoes show, the US authorities are promoting the world's most notorious prison camp as a cheap hideaway for American sunseekers – a revelation that has drawn international anger and condemnation.
Just yards from the shelves of specially branded mugs and cuddly toys, nearly 300 "enemy combatants" lie sweltering in a waking nightmare.
It is six years since foreign prisoners, many captured in Afghanistan, were first taken to this US-occupied corner of Cuba. Yet even now, no charges have been brought against them.
While the detainees lie incarcerated, visitors can windsurf, take boat trips and go fishing for grouper, tuna, red snapper and swordfish.
The United States' 1.5million service personnel and Guantanamo's 3,000 construction workers are eligible to visit the "resort", which boasts a McDonald's, KFC and a bowling alley.
They even have a Wal-Mart supermarket.
The vacation comes at a knock-down price: just $42 (£20) per night for a suite of air-conditioned rooms, including a kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedrooms.
But it is the souvenirs that have led to the greatest criticism. One T-shirt from the gift shop is decorated with a guard tower and barbed wire. It reads: "The Taliban Towers at Guantanamo Bay, the Caribbean's Newest 5-star Resort."
Another praises "the proud protectors of freedom". A third displays a garish picture of an iguana and states: "Greetings from paradise GTMO resort and spa fun in the Cuban sun."
A child-sized shirt says: "Someone who loves me got me this T-shirt in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."
Scroll down for more...

Exposed: An array of the ghoulish gifts on sale at the Guantanamo Bay 'resort' catering for American sunseekers

Al-Nakba Comemoration: Palestine, 60 Years of Ethnic Cleansing

Tue, 06 May 2008 14:41:54 -0400

Al-Nakba Comemoration: Palestine, 60 Years of Ethnic Cleansing 1948 – 2008 Where: Washington, DC On the National Mall. West of the Reflecting Pool in view of the U.S. Capitol, Jefferson Dr SW and 3rd St SW When: Saturday May 17th, 2008 Time: 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM As Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, Palestinians worldwide commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Nakba "the catastrophe": The expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and land, and the destruction of their villages in 1948.

Torture is Terrorism Vigil: CIA

Tue, 06 May 2008 11:27:22 -0400

Start: May 31 2008 - 11:00am

End: May 31 2008 - 5:00pm

Timezone: Etc/GMT-5

Body:

Hello friends,Are you ready to express your complete opposition to state-sponsoredtorture, extraordinary rendition and continual detention in Guantanamo and nefarious black sites without official charge? Join us as we take our message to The CIA: TORTURE IS TERRORISM!11 months ago we held a 10-hour vigil in front of the CIA on Dolley Madison Blvd (193), and CLOSED their entrance. We did not enter onto their property, but were simply adjacent to it. At times there were as many police as there were vigilers. Some wore orange jumpsuits and black hoods, others simply carried signs or banners. We stayed in the brutal sun that day, and thousands passing by had to notice -- including CIA employees turned away from this main entrance.That was the first time in 20 years the CIA closed one of its entrances. Let's do it again, nonviolently but with passion in our hearts!pax,Pete

Article 9 Conference: Updates from Japan

Sat, 03 May 2008 17:27:03 -0400

Washington Peace Center Coordinator Jay Marx and Proposition One Committee Director Ellen Thomas are presently in Japan for the Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War. They arrived on Friday, May 2, and the conference runs from Sunday, May 4, until Tuesday, May 6.As they have time, Jay and Ellen will post reports, photos, and other information to this blog, and they will deliver a full report-back about the Conference and their other journeys upon their return.Please continue checking below for updates.Cheers! JM & ET