Recently in nonviolence site news Category
For those wanting good activist news, the Dave the Quaker Agitator is always on top of current events and the Fellowship of Reconciliation's new'ish group blog at FORPeace.net is a great addition to the peace blogging scene. Archive posts from Nonviolence.org have been migrated here to the Ranter.
Back in the late 1980s when I was a Villanova University undergrad, sexual assault didn’t happen. True story.
It will surprise no one to learn that I co-edited an alternative, “underground” weekly junior and senior year. We called it The VACUUM, a name whose acronym changed every issue. Reading about an early “date rape” study in my feminist studies class I extrapolated how many rapes should reasonably be expected to occur on a campus of Villanova’s size. I added a few anecdotes from my all-male dorm experience and published it in The VACUUM. A short while later some friends of mine who edited the official student paper picked up the story and even cited an anonymous quotation from me in what is probably the only official documentation of the VACUUM’s existence in the V.U. archives.
Right around this time a female student brought her allegations of an on-campus sexual assault to the local police. Campus officials feigned surprise and provided the local media with parroted quotes: “In all my xyz years working here I have never ever heard of an allegation of rape.” Chief of Security, Dean of Students, etc., all delivered the same line, clearly coached by a public relations team, with only the years changed to reflect their campus tenure. Thousands of students, dozens of years, hundreds of frat parties, tanker-fulls of cheap beer and not a hint of impropriety.
Last night I chanced on my alma mater’s website and saw a link right there on the homepage to an article mysterious titled Recent Campus Incident (generic URL, probably designed to disappear soon). It documented an alleged assault on a female student by three members of the football team last month. The announcement reports that the University found them in violation of the campus’s Code of Conduct and “rescinded the admission of the three young men.”
A Google News search turns up that this has been extensively covered by the media with almost 500 hits. The Delco Times reports that the 1990 Clery Act and its amendments have made university cover-ups illegal and required reports and specific protocols for responding to campus crimes. The current media spotlight and long-standing federal laws certainly account for much of Villanova’s 2007 enlightenment. Whatever the source of change, it’s nice to see. Even three players from the beloved football team can get the boot (sorry, have their admissions rescinded) for criminal behavior. Better still, the university can fess up to the crime and take some responsibility. The times, they have a’ changed.
Just a little note to everyone that I’ve blogged a couple of posts over on Nonviolence.org. They’re both based on “peace mom” Cindy Sheeran’s “resignation” from the peace movement yesterday.
It’s all a bit strange to see this from a long-time peace activist perspective. The movement that Sheehan’s talking about and now critiquing is not movement I’ve worked with for the last fifteen-plus years. The organizations I’ve known have all been housed in crumbling buildings, with too-old carpets and furniture lifted as often as not from going out of business sales. Money’s tight and careers potentially sacrificed to help build a world of sharing, caring and understanding.
The movement Sheehan talks about is fueled by millions of dollars of Democratic Party-related money, with campaigns designed to mesh well with Party goals via the so-called 527 groups and other indirect mechanisms. Big Media likes to crown these organizations as the antiwar movement, but as Sheehan and Amy Goodman discuss in today’s Democracy Now interview, corporate media will end up with much of the tens of millions of dollars candidates are now raising. Sheehan makes an impassioned plea for people to support those grassroots campaigns that aren’t supported by the “peace movement” but this reinforces the notion that its the moneyed interests that make up the movement. I’m sure she knows better but it’s hard to work for so long and to make so many sacrifices and still be so casually dismissed—not just me but thousands of committed activists I’ve known over the years.
There are a few peace organizations in that happy medium between toadying and poverty (nice carpets, souls still intact) but it mystifies me why there isn’t a broader base of support for grassroots activism. I myself decided to leave professional peace work almost a decade ago after the my Nonviolence.org project raised such pitiful sums. At some point I decided to stop whining about this phenomenon and just look for better-paying employment elsewhere but it still fascinates me from a sociological perspective.
I’ve teamed up with ChipIn.com to launch a small fundraising campaign. I’m looking to raise $500 by the end of May, which is enough to cover Nonviolence.org and its sister sites for about six months. I’m between jobs and need supporters to step up and cover expenses for awhile. Whatever you can do to raise the thermometer graphic would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Martin Kelley, publisher
Three thousand faces of American military casualties. Is the world safer yet. Our prayers for the families of the dead of all nationalities.
Things have been quiet here on Nonviolence.org. The simple truth is that I’m increasingly needing to focus on income-generating work (two kids will do that!). If you like what you see here, please consider hiring me as a webmaster. The better my personal finances, the more time I’ll have to devote to side projects like Nonviolence.org. Information about my web design services is located on the new martinkelley.com.
Direct donations are also always welcome and will help insure that the lights don’t go out when the next bill comes due (it costs about $65/month to keep the Nonviolence.org cluster of sites going).
A new poll out there shows that only 64% of Americans believe that the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. One wonders what the numbers would have been if “people living in the United States” were replaced by “Americans.” Even so, 64% approval is pretty low in these fear of terrorism times.
Some random chatter on the blogs: Americablog’s New domestic spying poll numbers are very bad for Bush, Ezra Klein’s Trust, But Verify & Stephen Kaus at Huffington’s Popping the Wrong Question, Instapundit’s cryptic I guess Kaus was right and Michelle Malkin’s Sorry NYTimes: America is OK with the NSA.
Hi QuakerRanter friends: I’ve been busy today covering the Quaker response to the Christian Peacemakers Teams hostages. Two sites with a lot of overlapping content:
Both of these feature a mix of mainstream news and Quaker views on the situation. I’ll keep them updated. I’m not the only busy Friend: Chuck Fager and John Stephens have a site called Free the Captives — check it out.
It’s always interesting to see the moments that I explictly identify as a Friend on Nonviolence.org. As I saythere, it seems quite appropriate. We need to explain to the world why a Quaker and three other Christians would needlessly put themselves in such danger. This is witness time, Friends. The real deal. We’re all being tested. This is one of those times for which those endless committee meetings and boilerplate peace statements have prepared us.
It’s time to tell the world that we live in the power that takes away the occasion for war and overcomes our fear of death (well, or at least mutes it enough that four brave souls would travel to dangerous lands to witness our faith).
I’ve moved Nonviolence.org onto a new server this week. There were some glitches but I think everything’s back to normal now. For those keeping track, this makes the fourth server in Nonviolence.org’s ten year history. Please let me know if problems remain and please considering contributing today to help defray the $50/month cost of this site. Thanks!
Martin Kelley, Nonviolence.org
The Nonviolence.org bank account is once more depleted. Please consider donating $20 or more to cover us for the next month’s web rent. The Nonviolence.org project will be celebrating its ten-year anniversary this fall. A whole decade of keeping it all patched together month-to month, that’s something! The more you give the more I’ll be able to focus on the work. Thanks everyone! In peace, Martin Kelley
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| An early edition of “Nonviolence Web Upfront,” which debuted December 29, 1997. |
I think is less a coincidence than a confirmation that many of us were trying to figure out a format for sharing the web with others. Below is an excerpt from the email announcement for “Nonviolence Web Upfront.” The reliable Archive.org has index of Upfront’s second week, whose feature was a guest piece by John Steitz, Is the Nonviolence Web a Movement Half-Way House that sounds eerily similar to recent discussions on Quaker Ranter.
There’s $7 in the Nonviolence.org Palpal account, not even enough to cover the current monthly charge to the web host. The world’s top-ranked Nonviolence website with over 5000 visitors a day is about to wink out of existence because of lack of funds. Maybe that’s appropriate. Lots of people talk about peace but the near-complete failure in fundraising for this project points to a reality that we don’t really care enough to give serious support for these sorts of projects. My posts have been dropping off lately simply because I have to work my paying job to make ends meet (even so they barely meet but that’s a different story).
If you think it’s worth supporting major publications for peace, you can make a donation here. Twelve dollars will keep it going another month. Even better, U.S. citizens can look at their recent income tax charges, half of which went to support military spending. Why don’t you give ten percent of that half to Nonviolence.org and other worthy peace projects?
When you’ve acknowledge the Power, what does faith become? It becomes a testimony to the world. The Quaker way breaks through both the religious and activist narrow-mindedness of our day. We’re not talking about faith without action and we’re not talking about action without faith. Either one without the other is sacrilege. Combine the two and you have something real, something powerful.
The Nonviolence.org discussion board was hit a few days ago by the very pervasive Santy worm (BBC report, Kaspersky Labs).
Update: the Board is back but all the old discussions are gone. A fresh slate for a new year. Enjoy!
Martin Kelley, Nonviolence.org publisher.
Nonviolence.org readers may not be aware that my personal site has been the talk of the political internet for the last few days. Since posting an account of getting a phone call from a CBS News publicist, I’ve been linked to by a Who’s Who of blogging gliteratti: Wonkette, Instapundit, The Volokh Conspiracy, Little Green Footballs, RatherBiased, etc. For a short time yesterday, the story was a part of the second-ranked article on Technorati’s Politics Attention index.
A hack from CBS News called me to say they were doing a program on an issue that’s central to Nonviolence.org’s mandate: conscientious resistance to military service. After looking over the material, I thought the interviews of resisters who have fled to Canada would be interesting to my readers and so wrote a short entry on it. Thinking it all a little funny that a publicist would care about Nonviolence.org, I mentioned the incident in the “Stories of Nonviolence.org” section of my personal site. One by one the leading political sites of the blogosphere have run the story as further proof of the vast left-wing mainstream media conspiracy. It’s rather funny actually.
I have to wonder is who’s kidding who with all this feigned outrage? For those missing the irony gene: the Nonviolence.org PayPal account currently has a balance $6.18, the bulk of which comes from the last donation—$5.00 back on November 20th. My corner of the left wing conspiracy is funded by the vast personal wealth I accumulate as a bookstore clerk.
Wonkette’s pages advertise “sponsorship opportunities,” she’s a recent cover girl on New York Times Magazine, her husband is an editor at New York magazine and in October she cashed out her blogging fame for a $275,000 advance for her first novel (“It’s not Bridget Jones does Washington, it’s Nick Hornby does politics”: good grief). Eugene Volokh has clerked on the U.S. Supreme Court (for Sandra Day O’Connor), teaches law at UCLA and just had a big op-ed in the Times. Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds teaches law at the University of Tennessee, has served on White House advisory panels, and is a paid correspondent for MSNBC. Yet he, like the others, calls a two minute phone call “recruiting”?
I’m beginning to think the real interest comes from the fact that this top tier of bloggers is totally in bed (literally) with the MSM. Their income comes from their connections with media and political power. Their carefully-crafted fascade of snarkish independence would crumble if their phone logs were made public. They’re not really blogging in their pajamas, folks.
By mentioning the existance of blog publicists, I’ve threatened to blow their cover. Pay no attention to the men behind the curtains: my social gaffe was in publicly admitting that the mainstream media courts political blogs. Kudos to journalist Derek Rose on admitting the practice:
But why shouldn’t a news organization’s publicity department court bloggers? As a MSM member, I get emails from TV flacks all the time promoting their scoops. From ABC, for example, I’ve received emails regarding a tape they got of the Beltway sniper’s call to the Rockville police; Barbara Walters’ Hillary Clinton interview; and their ‘Azzam the American’ video … as well as a Rush Limbaugh drug laundering story that never panned out. I even got attention from publicists when I was working for a newspaper that didn’t have a 20th of the circulation of Instapundit…
Rose aside, there’s incredible distortion in the “reporting,” a term I have to use very loosely. Wonkette says “Kelley claims that a CBS minion put the screws to him to post something about a ‘60 Minutes’ package on conscientious objectors” yet all readers have to do is follow the link to see I never said anything like that. Why do the cream of bloggers feel like a posse of self-absorbed seventh graders? When I started Nonviolence.org back in 1995, I thought the brave new political world of the internet might be All the President’s Men. Boy was I wrong: it turns it’s just Heathers. God help us.
My regular readers may not be aware that Quaker Ranter is the talk of the political internet for the last few days. Since posting my “account of getting a phone call from a CBS News publicist”, I’ve been linked to by a Who’s Who of blogging gliteratti: Wonkette, Instapundit, The Volokh Conspiracy, Little Green Footballs, RatherBiased, etc. For a short time yesterday, the story was a part of the second-ranked article on Technorati’s Politics Attention index. See The Left Wing Conspiracy Revealed by Nonviolence.org on the main site.
Support Nonviolence.org by buying a timely bumpersticker. Also available is Tolerance is a Moral Value. Tour all of the Nonviolence.org products and support nonviolence!
Nonviolence.org has been a little quiet lately. Donations are down and our normally loyal readers aren’t giving enough to pay the internet bill. This is an all-volunteer project and expenses not covered by donations comes out of the pocket of yours truly, Martin Kelley. Please consider a donation today and show that you care about nonviolence!
On our sister site, Mordechai Vanunu’s photos of the Israeli nuclear facility, the very pictures that got him locked up.
Mordechai Vanunu brought his camera to work in late 1985, shortly before leaving his eight-year stint as a technician at Israel’s nuclear weapons factory at Dimona.
While their publication resulted in Vanunu being locked away for an 18-year prison sentence, his photographs of Israel’s nuclear weapons factory - a bold statement against nuclear secrecy and for the abolition of nuclear weapons - are here for all to see.
I am shocked and horrified by the decapitation of Nicholas Berg in Iraq, but not for the chest-puffing reasons the folks at Fox News are. U.S. military proxies held Berg without charges for an extended period of time and there are too many questions about when he was released and who he might have been released to. I’m not one for conspiracy theories but there are real questions as to how Berg ended up in front of those anonymous, hooded butchers. Whatever the answers, the U.S. military is involved in his detention, as is the FBI (who made him miss a plane that was supposed to take him out of Iraq last month), as is the U.S. government back home who didn’t cooperate with his family to get him out of there.
My major piece on this is over on the main Nonviolence.org site: US military proxies held Berg before decaptiation; who were his executioners?
I’m sure to get even more hate mail than usual for this but I’ll also be watching the mainstream media coverage. I only know of many of these details because Berg was local and Channel 10 News gave background to Berg’s detention. Here’s my prediction from past experience: this story will be too hot for the mainstream media to question for a few days and then it will only be to report that there are some nutcases asking questions. Only after a few days of this kind of second-hand question will the national media drop the fascade and start asking the questions themselves. It should be a fun week ahead.
I’ve been finding it a bit difficult to comment on all the recent news on the iraq front. So much of it isn’t so much news as it is details. We’ve long known the Bush Administration cooked the data on Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. It was no secret that key people in his Administration spent the 1990s planning a war against iraq and it’s no surprised that they saw the 9/11 terrorist attacks as there way of whipping up war fever against an uninvolved country.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that there is a strong iraqi opposition to the American occupation. We could have predicted that Afghanistan would festers largely ignored, mired in lawlessness after the Bush Administration turned it’s hungry eyes to iraq. Do we really think American citizens as somehow incapable of the gross human rights violations when put in charge of unmonitored iraqi prisons? Ever since Saddam Hussein’s government fell, the U.S. has been puting his key military aids in charge of much iraq, so why are we suprised that the once-fearsome Republican Guard has been reconstitute as an American-controlled force to put down Fallujah’s rebellion? Militarism is militarism and the flag on a soldier’s uniform doesn’t provide any guarantee that a stated desire for human rights or democracy will be put before the military insistance on psychological and physical control.
What then should the peace movement’s response to all this be?
We need to not get too caught up in the details. We’ve known what’s been happening for years and we know what happens in military occupations. If there’s one theme I come back to again and again on Nonviolence.org, it’s that wars start decades before the first shots are fired. Christians will argue that wars are rooted in our lusts (James 4:1-3) but even the most pragmatic secularlist should agree that our S.U.V.-driving, energy-wasting lifestyles are behind our recent oil wars, geopolitical battles fought on territories vital to the resource needs of the U.S. and its allies.
Pacifists need to start focusing on and shouting about the root causes of our wars. We need to stop not only the current ongoing wars in iraq and Afghanistan, but the future wars whose seeds are being sown now in places like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine and Indonesia.
We also need to broaden our definition of “nonviolence.” While we work with “anti-war” coalitions, we are not the same as them. We are not just against particular wars, but all wars and not just the ones fought with bullets between nation states. We are against the everyday wars of people oppressing other people through economics, sexism, racism, ageism and a thousand other mechanisms. When we speak out about environmental damage, we are stopping war. When we talk about lifestyle choices like vegetarianism and living car-free in transit-friendly cities, we are stopping war. When we fight for minimum wage and for stopping third-world sweatshops, we are stopping war. A few protests in Washington, D.C. won’t stop our wars and neither will intricately-argued essays on Bush Administration manipulations. We need to build a culture of pacifism, we need to become conscientious objectors to the consumerism of our society.
I’d be curious to hear what other pacifists are doing these days. Over the past six months I’ve been focusing more on the roots of my pacifism, the Quaker peace Testimony (and exploring an unexpected expression of anti-consumerism in a re-examination of the Quaker tradition of plain dress). The most exciting essays I’ve read lately were from a collection of talks in the 1950s. I suspect other nonviolent activists have been looking at roots in the wake of these wars. What are other folks doing?
PS: The eternally-underfunded coffers of Nonviolence.org are dwindling again and we might not be able to pay this month’s bill. Donations would be muchly-appreciated, thanks!