OMNI MAY 12 NEWSLETTER

Creating a Culture of Peace? Together, you and I, not someone else, but we are responsible. Not the dream of Superwoman/man, who only serves as an excuse for our own evasions. WE, THE PEOPLE, not some great leader, no messiah, but we and our Constitution investing leadership in informed citizens. Not Mein Kampf to guide us, but Jefferson and Madison, for taking responsibility, working with others. We will build a Culture of Peace together, or it will not be done.

IRAQ

IRAN

, TERRORISM

OPEN MIC PEACE COFFEEHOUSE May 7 had good music galore, with Carl Barnwell hosting and singing “I’ve Only Got 10,” “I Won’t Go Huntin’ With You, Dick,” “Some Old Day”; John Ray and Carolyn Swaney “You’ve got to Be Bold,” “This Land Is Our Land” and “I Ain’t Gonna Study War No More”; Bill Orton a song on military recruiting, “Judas Cow,” and “The Joint Beats the Jigger”; Brenda a song on mothers and peace and “Johnny We Hardly Knew Ya”; and more. The Coffeehouse kicked off with the MLKJR. Essay Awards to FHS students of Lynda Brothers, then a poem by Ian Horton. John rule also read a poem about “Encounters” with animals in a forest. A large spread of delicious food from Melanie with muffins by Brenda. A most enjoyable evening.

May 13, Saturday, PROTEST THE WAR ON IRAQ AND THE THREATENED WAR ON IRAN, at Farmer’s Market, 7 to noon. If this is not important what is? so study your priorities and join us for at least an hour. We should have several people at the table…..and two tables. Contact: Barbara Jaquish, jaquish@uark.edu

MAY 13, INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL AT Lake Atalanta in Rogers. OMNI will have a table. Rogers area OMNIers: Visit Gladys and Chris and help promote peace, justice, and stewardship against wars and preparations for wars, climate change, and bigotry.

This Sunday (May 14th) the Video Underground will be showing This Divided State. When liberal filmmaker Michael Moore was invited to speak at Utah Valley State College, it created a firestorm not usually seen in the heart of conservative Mormon country. A media frenzy followed, as did FoxNews’ Sean Hannity, who agreed to speak at UVSC prior to Moore’s engagement. Protests, anger and a bribery attempt by a local businessman to stop Moore’s appearance punctuate this documentary that cuts to the heart of the "red versus blue" rift in the nation. This video is an 88 minute documentary. It will be shown at the OMNI CENTER FOR PEACE, JUSTICE, AND ECOLOGY located at 902 W. Maple in Fayetteville, in the upstairs of the Presbyterian and Disciples Student Center. The event will begin at 7:00 pm. Admission is free, donations are welcomed. View the Video Underground's entire video schedule at: http://omni-vu-films.blogspot.com View the Video Underground's lending library list: http://omni-vu-films.blogspot.comflib.htm .

May 14, Sunday, Fayetteville Dances of Universal Peace will be this Sunday evening in the parish hall at St. Paul's Episcopal Church from 6-8 pm. Espabad will offer Sufi teachings in the library beginning at 5pm. Jamila

At the UALR Donaghey Student Center. For info call the USGBC-AR office at (501) 244-2332.

MAY 16, PROTEST COMMITTEE 6PM AT OMNI. OMNI is committed to a stronger opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq and to the threatened invasion of

Iran

. If you think these actions and policies are wrong, stop griping and do something about them. Help us plan an enlarged and intensified program. At present we are tabling at Farmer’s Market Saturdays, and placarding at Joyce and Mall first Saturdays 10:30 to 12. This must be only the beginning.

MAY 15, MONDAY, 6:00, ADDRESSING INVITATIONS FOR HEROES AWARDS BANQUET, at Karen Kimrey’s, 1642 Charlee, potluck. A large group can make this task go fast. . Please come. We need your addressing-hands. Bring an address book and a friend, if you can.

MAY 19, FRIDAY, ANNA BALTZER, “LIFE IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE: EYE-WITNESS STORIES & PHOTOS,” AT OMNI 7 PM. www.annainthemiddleeast.com From Ms. Baltzer’s flyer: Baltzer is a Jewish-American volunteer for the International Women’s Peace Service, documenter of human rights violations, and supporter of the Palestinian and Israeli non-violent movement against the Occupation. She will present slides, stories, and read from her book, Witness in Palestine, her first-hand experiences living in the West Bank. She hopes to present information difficult to obtain through mainstream media, and to encourage dialog towards taking action. (Ms. Baltzer was speaking in Springfield the 17^th and offered to come through Fayetteville on her way to Wichita.) (This may be the beginning of a series of films and lectures about the people of Israel and the Palestinian territory. A committee is being formed to arrange it, and a coordinator is needed. Contact Dick. )

of Sunday, May 21, 2006 at the Holiday Inn Presidential on I-30 (where the regional conference attendees will stay). Kate Chatman, President, Arkansas NOW

At Hog Haus on Dickson. Mary Lou Miller, long-time Fayetteville educator, will speak. Reservations contact Melanie Dietzel, 442-8600 or melaniedietzel@cox.net, please give no. attending and phone where you can be reached.

Creating a Culture of Peace includes the celebration of peace, justice, and ecology holidays and the transformation of militarized and commercialized holidays. Mother’s Day was created by Julia Ward Howe for peacemaking, and to empower mothers in the global struggle to reduce militarism and violence, and to redirect excessive military spending toward unmet human and environmental needs.

The commodification of everything meaningful includes Mother’s Day. See in TMN: “Mom’s Day Breaks Out with an Updated Look” by Helaine Williams in the series “Dressing Room,” on “fashionable alternatives” to candy, flowers, perfume. Or the ads: Blakeman’s Jewelry’s almost full page “Happy Mother’s Day”? reducing Mother’s Day and mothers to a ring on a finger (even though the value of diamonds has been constructed by billions of dollars in ads and monopolized pricing); or Country Gardens’ ad, “Which Would Mom Love Most?” Teleflora’s Capodimonte Teapot Bouquet or Fenton Art Glass Bouquet? Rather, celebrate moms for their protection of their sons and daughters from lethal false patriotism, recruitment, and wars. Yes, now daughters, for “15% of active-duty U. S. forces are female—202,949” (

USA

Weekend, 5-5/7).

Moms Rising is working to collect 50,000 signatures and comments supporting Moms and American families. Go to:

MAY 21, HOWL: OMNI’s Women’s Open Mic at United Campus Ministry. Every 3^rd Sunday at 6:30. Come read, play, or sing. This month's writing challenge will be to work up something about mothers--Mother Earth, Mother Theresa, your own mother, you as mother, being motherless, etc. We'll do a little tribute to Mothers.

May 21, Nearly a year ago, over 200,000 people made history by walking all around the world to put an end to child hunger. Join Common Cause and the U.N. World Food Programme to help put an end to child hunger. Click here to see how you can participate in Walk the World 2006: http://www.fighthunger.org/wtw06 (List the ways the Bush. Admin. has reduced world hunger and the ways it has increased it, and I’ll print in next newsletter.)

MAY 23, 7 PM, FILM ABOUT the MIDDLE EAST, “RELENTLESS: THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE in the Middle East.” At OMNI at UCM Sanctuary, 902 W. Maple in Fayetteville.. Brought to you by Tal Frankfurt, emissary for the Jewish Agency for Israel Jewish Federation of Arkansas, audience response invited afterward. Quoting from information from Mr. Frankfort: “’Relentless’ is a powerful one-hour documentary using primary source video clips to examine the history of the Middle East conflict and how the Peace Process unraveled in a surge of violence. ’Relentless’ provides Americans…with the balanced, honest facts needed to understand and contextualize the struggle in the Middle East. An acclaimed production for [people] concerned about the struggle within the Middle East and the threat of a broader conflict that could engulf the West.”

MAY 24, WEDNESDAY, 7PM, BOOK FORUM ON THE HUMAN POTENTIAL FOR PEACE by Douglas Fry. At OMNI at UCM Sanctuary. Panelists: Steve Chism, David Hart, Roger Henry, Bettie Lu Lancaster, Randy Schoonover, Bill Symes. Louise Kraemer and Dick Bennett, Moderators. An informal discussion and assessment of the book’ s thesis, evidence, and arguments. This is a momentous book in a world of pessimism about violence and wars. Fry agrees that humans have a propensity for war and violence, but they are not inevitable, for human also have a propensity for peacemaking, conflict resolution, cooperation. Buy the book and come join the forum, or come, hear the discussion and then read the book.

OMNI’S HOME PEACE PLACES NETWORK NOW INCLUDES OVER 20 PEACE GARDENS AND YARDS. Contact Dick to be added to the peace gardeners (name your yard or garden for peace). Of these gardeners, five have chosen to open their peace places to the public. Tickets are $10, to be purchased at the gardens, proceeds to go to OMNI, especially for the upcoming regional peace meeting. Contact Nancy Maier, Marie Riley, Leigh Wilkerson, , Dwayne Cromwell, Dick Bennett.

The toleration learned in a multicultural society is taught in numerous ways in NWA. The UofA has Gamma Eta, a multicultural sorority.

Access Television Centers and community media centers have spent the last thirty years helping people tell their stories and express their opinions. It is the key reason we exist. Around the country, thousands of people each day use our centers in small towns and large cities to engage the public on some issue that matters. So in a time of public policy ferment it is particularly important that we help our elected officials in Congress, in the State House or Senate or in City Hall make the right decisions to benefit our communities. Like Access Producers, we need to tell our stories.

In fact, the future of democracy depends on the focused and successful work of local and national public interest organizations that seek to influence decision makers. Because we don’t have the deep pockets and long term friendships of business interests, we turn to “people power” and out ability to mobilize our members, colleagues, friends and neighbors. Our message is detailed but it boils down to this: media and communications companies must serve “the public convenience and necessity” as required by Congress in 1934.

Below are some links that may serve as tools to monitor the businesses that control the nation’s information pipelines and their government overseers:

On 5-9 as usual an excellent program, including interviews of James Carroll on US imperialism (see below) and Juliet Schor rep. Boston College faculty opposing BC giving Condoleeza Rice an Honorary Degree because she promoted the illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq and defended torture..

If that fails start up Windows media Player, click File, Open URL.Paste the above URL into the window.

As Dwayne fixed the router issues, I added a new play list, and more programs. The newest program is Beyond Treason. The story of Gulf War Illness and how soldiers are experimented on by the government. Tune in over the air to 1610AM, and on the Internet. Jim Hale

Just days ago, a Republican-dominated congressional committee struck a blow to Internet freedom by voting to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment.

The full House will vote on whether to preserve Internet freedom next week. Then, all eyes turn to a key Senate Committee that your Senator, Mark Pryor, sits on. Please call Sen. Pryor first, and then your other members of Congress, today? Urge them to support preserving Internet freedom by supporting Network Neutrality. See their contacts at end.
To maximize impact, please call both their Washington, D.C. and local offices.

If asked for specific bill information, you can urge Sen. Pryor to support the "bipartisan Snowe/Dorgan Internet Freedom Amendment to the COPE telecom law." In the House, Rep. Boozman should support "Rep. Ed Markey's Network Neutrality amendment to the COPE telecom law" when it comes up on the House floor—and oppose any telecom law that doesn't include Markey's Internet freedom amendment.¹Net Neutrality has always been the law of the land until recently being threatened. It guarantees that all online speech is treated equally and prevents Internet providers like AT&T from deciding which websites work best on your computer. Without it, these companies can decide what you see and do online.
As companies like AT&T spend millions lobbying Congress for more control over what you see and do online, high-tech pioneers like Google, eBay, and Amazon fighting alongside our coalition. And just last week, the New York Times wrote a powerful editorial endorsing Net Neutrality. It said:
"Net neutrality" is a concept that is still unfamiliar to most Americans, but it keeps the Internet democratic. ... One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access and slower to navigate. Providers could also block access to sites they do not like.³

The Arkansas Climate Awareness Project (ARCAP) launched its Web site,www.arclimate.org, which provides background information on how global warming works and its impacts on Arkansas.

ARCAP is also sponsoring an Essay Contest: Students Can Learn about Global Warming and Win a $4000 Scholarship.

The “road rage” killing recently in Bentonville inspired the article in TMN (5-9), “Anger, Frustration Often Intersect.” The article asks, “Why Are We So Mad?” and locates the anger shrewdly partly in the belief by some people they “have the right to retribution.” What the author does not do is connect this local focus with our national 100% support of violence as a chief mode of

foreign policy and the basic training of our soldiers to repudiate their lifetime home training against violence and killing and to kill with enthusiasm and impunity.

--“Arkansas Loses 22,000 Jobs in January” (TMN 5-5), mostly seasonal workers apparently, but this means the poor getting poorer.

The Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (Southern SAWG) has announced two part-time job openings. http://www.ssawg.org/

NCJ welcomes submissions of commentary, articles, news, notes, reviews and announcements relating to inter and intra community nonviolent change. Next deadline is August 8.

I watched Russian President Vladimir Putin present his State of Nation Address on C-SPAN, in which he described the

as a wolf and its talk of spreading human rights a cover for aggression, a remark followed by a long description of its responding military improvements.

Just sent you a link to an article called “Whither the CIA?” to add to your growing impeachment file. (

It is a further analysis based upon the NYTimes article today about CIA possibly losing its analysis function to other agencies. With recent public commentary like the “Whither” piece all falling on the same pile, it becomes more and more clear that the use of false intelligence and the outing of Valerie Plame, for example, are part of a continuing effort to silence opposition. The same thing has happened with less publicity in the Forest Service and other agencies where the professionals have to keep the function intact even if the politicos distort the professed direction of the agency. Bush is far from unique in this regard, but he has been much more exhuberant and determined. Best, Rock

The recent annual bird count was happily reported. In the meantime, one in four

U.S.

species is on the decline, primarily because of habitat loss. And that means development mainly, SPRAWL. (In many other countries the causes are wars, poverty, hunger.) Let us enjoy the fun activity of bird-watching in the US, but as a foundation for resisting reckless development and the constant destruction of farmland/species habitat. Support in-building, building upward; resist/reduce outward and horizontal homes on large acreage. Struggle for a consciousness change.

Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now” (5-9) interviewed James Carroll, the author of House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power.

U.S.

post-WWII wars have been illegal, unnecessary wars of aggression.

IRAQ

: THE REAL COSTS

Linda Bilmes, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard, attempted to make a cost analysis of the costs of the

Iraq

war. She published it on the Op-Ed page of the NYTimes (20 August 2005), and that prompted Joseph E. Stiglitz (at Columbia and a 2001 Nobel laureate in Economics) to propose a joint and expanded study. The study is titled "The Economic Costs of the Iraq War," presented this year at the Allied Social Sciences Association meeting. It is a serious and careful attempt to determine all the real costs and their projected effect on the U.S. and global economy. The totals they come up with, not surprisingly, is much higher than anything that has come out of the Pentagon or the White House. Their estimate is about one trillion dollars, and they say "Nobody seriously disputes that. The American Legion has cited the figure in testimony before Congress." Source is the May-June 2006 edition of the Harvard Magazine. The text of the study can be found at

A draft of a “Declaration of Peace” in partnership with other orgs. I found it in The Nuclear Resister magazine (POBox 43383, Tucson, AZ 85733)(nukeresister@igc.org). And contact Ken Butigan of Pace e Bene (kenbutigan@paceebene.org, 360-402-4761). The Declaration will call for a comprehensive exit policy: Withdrawal of U.S. troops, closure of U.S. military bases, support for an Iraqi-led peace process, end to

U.S.

control of Iraqi oil, reparations for the destruction the invasion and occupation have caused, increased support for U.S. vetereans of this war. I am hoping someone will focus on this, as a memember of our Protest Committee.

Here are some notable Iraq-related events from July 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/page/0,12438,793802,00.html
July 28 2003
Tony Blair and other British ministers are accused of crimes against humanity in prosecuting the war against

Iraq

in a case lodged with the international criminal court by Greek lawyers.
July 11 2003
The CIA director, George Tenet, apologises for not preventing George Bush from making use of the British-sourced uranium claims in his state of the union address.
Juy 8 2003
Tony Blair tells a committee of MPs that his evidence for Iraq's attempts to secure uranium from

Niger

did not come from forged documents but "separate intelligence". White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says the report on the uranium "did not not turn out to be accurate".
July 7 2003
Downing Street's communications director, Alastair Campbell, is cleared by MPs of exerting "improper influence" on the drafting of the government's intelligence-led dossier on Iraq but the Commons foreign affairs committee attacks the government over its handling of the affair.
July 6 2003
The BBC's governors issue a pugilistic statement demanding that Downing Street retract its claims of bias against the corporation's journalism.
Former US diplomat Joseph Wilson says it was "highly doubtful" that Niger sold uranium to

Iraq

In the Free Weekly (May 4)regular TMN columnist Doug Thompson edited Kipling’s poem, “The White Man’s Burden,” to apply to

Iraq

Now that the mission - whatever it was - has not been accomplished in Iraq, Bush is setting up a potentially bigger disaster in

Iran

. Last month, Seymour Hersh revealed that the US military is making preparations for an attack on Iran. Recent events confirm Hersh's report. The Bush administration is stepping up the pressure on the Security Council to pass a resolution that the

will use to justify an invasion. John Bolton, the

ambassador to the United Nations, is pushing Council members to vote on a resolution next week. Hersh wrote, "There is a growing concern among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush's ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with

Iran

is regime change." A former defense official who still advises the Bush administration told Hersh that the military planning is grounded in the belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in

Iran

will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." This reasoning is counter-intuitive. Iranians who become the victims of US aggression are much more likely to rally around the Islamic fundamentalist regime in

Iran

and fight to expel the foreign infidels. "Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into

Iran

, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups," Hersh learned from current and former American military and intelligence officials. One of the military proposals calls for the use of bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapons against underground nuclear sites. That would mean "mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years," a former senior intelligence official informed Hersh. A Pentagon adviser said the Air Force would strike many hundreds of targets in

Iran

, 99 percent of which have nothing to do with nuclear proliferation. It would not just be Iranians who take the hits, the Pentagon adviser told Hersh. "If we go [into Iran]," he said, "the southern half of

Iraq

will light up like a candle." Our troops in Iraq would be at risk of retaliation from

Iran

and the Muslim world, according to the Washington Post. For the complete article: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050806Z.shtml

Rep. DeFazio: Only Congress Can Authorize War

http://www.house.gov/defazio/041306GVRelease.shtml

Text of the President of Iran's Letter To President Bush

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12984.htm

West Point Graduates Against the War

http://www.westpointgradsagainstthewar.org/

This Time, It Really Is Orwellian
By Robert Parry, Consortium News

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/051106.html

The airwaves and the headlines are full of talk of a U.S. military strike against

Iran

. That is as it should be - the danger of such a reckless move is real, and rising, and we should be talking about it. The Bush administration claims that negotiations are their first choice. But they have gone to war based on lies before, and there is no reason to believe that they are telling the truth this time. They have put the military - and even, horrifyingly, the nuclear - option at the center of the table. Don¹t worry, they say, even if a

³surgical² attacks on

Iran

's nuclear facilities - no one, they say, is talking about invasion. It can¹t happen, some say. The military brass knows their troops are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, they appear to be strongly opposed to a strike on

Iran

. And we know that any military strike on

Iran

- ANY strike - would be a violation of international law prohibiting preventive war. And George Bush now admits that "preventive war" - not his earlier claim of pre-emptive war - is indeed his strategic doctrine. We know that according to the International Court of Justice, even threatening to use nuclear weapons is a violation of international law - and the Bush administration is threatening to use nuclear "bunker-buster" bombs

to attack

Iran

. We don't hear much about it, but we know the National Academy of Sciences has found that "the use of such a weapon would create massive clouds of radioactive fallout that could spread far from the site of the attack, including to other nations. Even if used in remote, lightly populated areas, the number of casualties could range up to more than a hundred thousandS"

We know all that. But what if the Bush administration orders it anyway? What if they DO carry out just such a strike, nuclear or otherwise? Then what? What happens the day after?

“There's a good article from Minuteman Media in the NWA Times today (9 May), on the editorial page. It advocates US nuclear disarmament as the way to get countries such as Iran to renounce nuclear weapons. It suggests going from our present 10,000 nukes to about 1000, and also suggests ending nuclear power. I mostly disagree with the author about nuclear power, but I certainly agree about nuclear weapons. The administration's

Iran

policy is terrible--as one might expect.” From Art H

"To claim the right of self-defence against a threat that may or may not emerge in five years' time is to claim the right to wage aggressive war whenever one chooses. This was one of the two grounds on which Nazi leaders were convicted and executed at Nuremberg."

"They also note that the failure of the United State to negotiate with Iran is only hardening suspicions that Bush secretly intends a military strike, making it increasingly difficult to isolate Tehran."

TERRORISM

A brilliant brief essay by David Cole, “A Case in How Not to Fight Terrorism,” TMN 5-7, severely questions the Bush Admin.’s leadership regarding security and “war on terror.” 1) The gov’t. prosecutors completely screwed up its Moussaoui case; 2) CIA torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Mohamed al-Qahtani prevented their legal trial; 3) Not one of the 8000 young men called in for interview by the FBI or the 80,000 more for registration “has been convicted of terrorism”; 4) Of the detainees at Guantanamo, labled “the worst of the worst,” 250 have been released, and of those remaining only 8% have been accused; and 5) Jose Padilla, accused of planning to detonate a dirty bomb, is now indicted but not for terrorist acts or associations. It was all a war on our own liberties. Cole, prof. of Law at Georgetown U, is author of Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism. You can buy the book at Hastings or B&N.

--Senator Mark Pryor: Web Site (see contact link): www.pryor.senate.gov ; http://pryor.senate.gov/contact/
Washington Office:217 Russell Senate Office BuildingWashington, D.C. 20510-0403
Phone: (202) 224-2353 Fax: (202) 228-0908
Main District Office:700 W. Capitol, Rm. 2527 Little Rock, AR 72201
Phone: (501) 324-6336 Fax: (501) 324-5320

Lowell office: 479-725-0400. 213 W. Monroe, Suite K, 72745. Steve Gray, coodinator of office. Web site (with contact link): http://www.boozman.house.gov/ Heath Hasenbeck, intern (one of them). Boozman's new office in Lowell is located at 213 West Monroe in Lowell between I 540 and Business 71. To reach that office take Exit 78 off I - 540 and go east. You will be on Hwy 264 which is also West Monroe. The office is in the Puppy Creek Plaza, past the McDonald's on the right. His suite is in the back of the complex to the left.

DC address: 1708 Longworth House Office Bldng., Washington, DC 20515; 202-225-4301. Leslie Parker, appointments secretary: 202-225-4301.

IRAQ, IRAN, TERRORISM

IRAQ: THE REAL COSTS

TERRORISM