A concentration camp in Poland. AkzuzkA/shutterstock.com

What’s more, this history is often told in figures too large to comprehend on the human scale. Large numbers – like the infamous 6 million people murdered – obscure the significance of key operations that shaped this genocide, leaving instead just a vague characterization of a massively devastating event.

In a digital age, mathematics, data science and visualization can help make sense of these events for new generations. By examining a rare and neglected dataset of human train deportations from the period, my study, published on Jan. 2, begins to uncover the true scale of slaughter.
 

Operation Reinhard

My work investigates a period in 1942, referred to as Operation Reinhard, when the Nazis efficiently shuttled about 1.7 million victims, often whole Jewish communities, across the European railway network in train carriages to Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. Almost all of those who arrived at these death camps were murdered, usually within hours, in the gas chambers. Because the Nazis destroyed nearly all records of the massacre, it is important to try to uncover what actually happened at the time.

My study looks at the “kill rate,” or murders per day. This reveals a sudden massive slaughter after Hitler “ordered all action speeded up,” as one SS officer put it, on July 23, 1942. Approximately 1.5 million Jews were murdered in only 100 days, including in shootings outside the death camps, with nearly 500,000 victims killed each month during August, September and October. That’s approximately 15,000 murders every day.

The slaughter then soon terminated, as there were hardly any Jews remaining in the area to kill.

The full scope of this genocidal slaughter appears to be undocumented in history. Available information before this study was mostly reconstructed indirectly, partially conjectured, and usually given on an annual timescale, rather than daily or monthly. That meant completely missing the three-month slaughter.

My analysis was based on carefully compiled train records presented in a 1987 book by Holocaust historian Yitzhak Arad. Arad documents approximately 500 transportations from some 400 different Polish Jewish communities, recording for individual days the location, number of victims of each transportation and final death camp destination.

My analysis required carefully sorting and working with the dataset, as well as including other surviving data. In addition, I generated a spatio-temporal map and film of the data. These visualizations plotted the 400 communities on a map of Poland and indicated the time sequence of all deportations to the death camps over the whole year 1942.

While Operation Reinhard is considered the largest single murder campaign of the Holocaust, the extraordinary speed at which it operated to obliterate the Jewish people has been poorly estimated in the past and almost completely unknown to the general public. This massacre of unparalleled scale took place in just three short months, and was only captured through analysis of Arad’s dataset.

This minimal time indicates the enormous coordination involved by a state machinery responsive to the Fuhrer’s murderous will to eradicate a people. The train records show how zones were emptied of Jewish communities one by one in an organized manner and how intense kill rates were achieved in targeted areas that only slowed as victims ran out. My plots of the data highlight the pace and frenzy of this mass murder.
 

Measuring genocide

Despite more than 70 years of research into the Holocaust, this appears to be the first attempt to graph aggregated data of the genocide, chronologically and spatially. My data-driven approach captures Operation Reinhard in a different perspective to the volumes of historical reports.

Genocide scholars often compare rates of recent genocides to the rate at which the Nazi Holocaust occurred, treating the latter as a kind of benchmark for genocide severity. As such, currently many social scientists maintain that the Rwandan genocide was the most “intense genocide” of the 20th century, with a sustained period of murders occurring at a rate three to five times more rapid than the Holocaust.

However, my work shows that while the Rwanda massacre killings were 8,000 victims per day for a 100-day period, the Holocaust was nearly double this rate during a similar 100-day period in Operation Reinhard.

That suggests that Holocaust kill rate has been underestimated on an order of six to 10 times. In my view, these sorts of comparisons have limited usefulness, and clearly diminish the Holocaust’s historical standing.

The Holocaust stands out as a demonstration of how the efficient machinery of government was turned on people in an unparalleled way. It transcended in its ruthlessness and systemic efficiency. This is the key lesson of the Holocaust that I believe must not be forgotten.

Lewi Stone, Professor of Biomathematics, RMIT University
 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Image Courtesy: PTI
 
November brings back memories of fallen heroes of World War II. It has a special significance for two minority communities – the Jews and the Sikhs.
 
It triggers the ugly flashback of their persecution at the hands of dominant communities who were backed by the state.
 
This year marks the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht or the night of broken glass, when violence against Jews broke out on November 9, 1938, following the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a Polish Jew teenager.
 
This was in retaliation of the expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany. Since the assassin’s parents were among those expelled, he shot at Ernst Vom Rath, a diplomat attached to the German embassy on November 7. Rath died two days later after which the Nazis organized a pogrom against the Jewish population accusing them of a wider conspiracy against Germany. Their homes, businesses and places of worship were destroyed while dozens of Jews were killed. The night of broken glass is a reference to the glass found littered on the streets following the bloodshed.
 
Likewise, the Sikhs were also targeted during the first week of November 1984 after the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984, at her official residence. Her bodyguards were outraged by an army invasion on the holiest shrine of the Sikhs in Amritsar in June that year. Gandhi had ordered a military attack to flush out religious extremists who had stockpiled weapons inside the place of worship. The ill-conceived army operation had left many innocent worshippers dead and some important buildings heavily destroyed. This had enraged the Sikhs all over the world.
 
Gandhi’s murder was followed by well-organized anti-Sikh massacre across India by the slain leader’s Congress party. Although it claims to be secular, the Congress went the Nazi way and attacked the Sikh homes, businesses and gurdwaras to punish the entire community.
 
Sikh women were raped. About 3,000 people were killed in the national capital of New Delhi alone. Unlike in Germany, New Delhi streets were littered with more than broken glass. After all, tyres and kerosene were used to kill innocent Sikhs by way of necklacing. 
 
In both cases, the Nazis and the Congress party systematically made scapegoats of the two minority groups and consolidated their power by othering them in the eyes of the majority Germans and Hindus, while the police and firefighters remained mute spectators.
 
This month, the two communities came together at Gurdwara Singh Sabha in Surrey to commemorate the victims of the two holocausts that took place in different parts of the world.
 
Genocide Remembrance: Moving From Darkness To Light that was mainly organized by a Sikh activist and researcher Sukhvinder Kaur Vinning and was attended by an award-winning social justice Jewish educator Annie Ohana. The two women never forget to acknowledge the cultural genocide of other groups, including the Indigenous Peoples of Canada and believe that remembrance is important to challenge the attempts to make people forget the history and move on.
 
Indeed, people who forget history are condemned to repeat it and that’s the reason why bigotry continues to grow unchallenged.
 
November is not just an occasion to remember the past but also an occasion to reflect on the present. Not only racism against Jews remains alive, considering the recent murders of 11 Jewish worshippers at a Synagogue in Pittsburgh by an anti-Sematic white supremacist, the attacks on non-Hindus, especially Muslims, Christians and Dalits or untouchables as they are called, have grown in India under a right-wing Hindu nationalist government which is clearly taking advantage of a culture of impunity started by the Congress in 1984.
 
The current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is widely blamed for repeating 1984 in 2002 against Muslims in Gujarat where he was the then Chief Minister. 
 
It is hypocritical to see the privileged society keeps telling the minority communities to forgive and forget, but never fail to forget Remembrance Day or even the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Busloads of tourists are brought to the former residence of Indira Gandhi which has now been turned into a museum and yet the Sikhs are repeatedly lectured to bury the past. Those who are scared to discuss these dark chapters of history need to shed this fear and accept the reality of an unevenly divided world living with selective memory and a false sense of belonging. To change this discourse, we need to first recognize all the historical wrongs and fix them through reconciliation and then make sure they are not allowed to be repeated by populist leaders such as Trump and Modi.

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‘Anti-Semitism is treatable’ – a banner at a Warsaw demonstration. Reuters/ Agencja Gazeta

This caused immediate outrage around the world and nowhere more so than in a country that has been, until now, a close ally of Poland: Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the bill as “distortion of the truth, the rewriting of history and the denial of the Holocaust.”

And yet, 10 days later, Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, signed the bill into law retorting that “the historic truth is that there was no systematic institutionalized participation among Poles [in the Holocaust].”

What is happening? Why, over 70 years since the end of the Second World War, is this argument taking place?

I am a sociologist who has studied controversies around the memory of the Holocaust in Poland. For me, this dispute is more than a crisis in Polish-Jewish relations. It is, above all, a crisis in Poland’s national identity.
 

The memory of World War II in Poland

This is not the first time the Poles have legislated against what they see as defamation of Poland’s record in World War II, but it is certainly the most wide-reaching. Under this new law, the punishment for people claiming that “the Polish Nation or the Republic of Poland is responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich” carries a possible prison sentence of up to three years.

The timing of the vote was no accident. The government used the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day as a platform to denounce the misnomer “Polish death camps” that some – including former President Barack Obama – have used to refer to Nazi concentration camps in occupied Poland.
The Polish government, along with other Polish organizations, has been fighting the use of that expression in foreign media for several years, and with considerable success. Most American newspapers and other major media outlets have updated their stylebooks to stop those words being used.
Nevertheless, given the growing controversy, the German minister of foreign affairs took it upon himself to declare that the Germans bore the entire responsibility for the extermination camps. But then he added that “the actions of individual collaborators do not alter that fact.”
And therein lies the rub.

Many Poles find it difficult to accept they could have played a role in the Holocaust. That is because, unlike many other nations, the Polish state did not collaborate with the Nazis. Considered an inferior race by the Nazis, Poles were targeted for cultural extermination to facilitate German expansion to the East. Polish elites were systematically murdered. Tens of thousands of Poles were imprisoned in concentration camps or were forced into slave labor.

The Old Town burns during the Warsaw Uprising, August 1944. Museum of Warsaw

Poland’s losses in World War II were enormous: Approximately 6 million Polish citizens were killed in the war, over half of whom were Jewish. Warsaw was left in ruins, and its 1944 uprising alone cost the lives of about 150,000 citizens.

The dominant Polish narrative of World War II is, therefore, about victimhood, which fits squarely into its broader national mythology of martyrdom.

Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) Unknown

Repeatedly invaded by its powerful neighbors, the Polish state disappeared from the European map for over a century – from 1795 to 1918. Poland’s national bard, the 19th century poet Adam Mickiewicz, described his country as a “Christ among nations.” In this telling Poles are a chosen people, innocent sufferers at the hands of evil oppressors.

“Revelations” of crimes committed against Jews by Poles tarnish this narrative and shake Polish national identity to its core.
 

Narrative shock

The fact is, however, as historians have shown, crimes committed against Jews by Poles were much more prevalent and widespread than most people realized.

Perhaps the most controversial and impactful research is that of the Polish-born Princeton University professor, Jan T. Gross.

In his 2000 book “Neighbors,” Gross recounts in painful detail the violent murders of Jews by their ethnically Polish neighbors in the small town of Jedwabne on July 10, 1941.

The book marked a watershed in the public debate about Polish-Jewish relations.

On July 10, 2001, roughly a year after the publication of Gross’ book, the Polish government acknowledged the murders and erected a monument at the site where several hundred Jews were forcibly brought to a barn and burned alive. Although the monument’s inscription fails to explicitly indicate that it was ethnic Poles and not Germans who committed the crime, the official apology by then-President Aleksander Kwaśniewski was unequivocal. “Here in Jedwabne,” he said, “citizens of the Republic of Poland died at the hands of other citizens of the Republic of Poland.”

The Jedwabne memorial. Genevieve Zubrzycki, Author provided

Such was the shock the story of Jedwabne caused that it is possible to distinguish between Poland “before and after” the appearance of Gross’ book. As leading Catholic journalist Agnieszka Magdziak Miszewska put it: “Facing up to the painful truth of Jedwabne is … the most serious test that we Poles have had to confront in the last decade.”
 

Law and Justice’s politics of history

It is that test, arguably, that the ruling Law and Justice party is failing.

In the battle over Polish collective memory, the party has been promoting the stories of the Poles who rescued Jews – and who are honored by Israel as the “Righteous Among Nations” – by creating museums and monuments in their name.

Through the new “Holocaust Law,” the government is, in effect, trying to repress knowledge of crimes committed against Jews by Poles. The defense of the law, however, goes one step further. In a remarkable case of what I would describe as manipulating the message, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki issued a video statement claiming that it is the Poles who are the guardians of historical truth and fighters against hatred.

And yet, the same politicians remain silent when their supporters express anti-Semitic and anti-refugee views. On Feb. 5, for example, demonstrators impatient for President Duda to sign the Holocaust law gathered in front of the Presidential Palace chanting anti-Semitic slogans and demanding that he “remove [his] yarmulke and sign the law!”

The president did sign the law, but he also sent it to the country’s constitutional court for examination.

Those Poles opposed to the law – and there are many, judging by the number of organizations and public figures denouncing it and the number of petitions circulating – hope that it will be deemed unconstitutional because it represses freedom of speech and could significantly curtail academic research.
Regardless of the ultimate outcome, however, the government’s politics of history will continue to be waged on many other fronts. What is at stake, in my view, is nothing less than the definition of Polish national identity. This is why, for all the international outrage, the controversy about the Holocaust law is hottest inside Poland, among Poles who are now debating what it means to be Polish and where Poland is going.

Geneviève Zubrzycki, Professor of Sociology, Director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, University of Michigan

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Passports were never supposed to be forever. www.shutterstock.com

The first passport conference was held in Paris in 1920, under the auspices of the League of Nations (the predecessor of the United Nations). Part of the Committee on Communication and Transit’s aim was to restore the pre-war regime of freedom of movement.

Indeed, for much of the 19th century, as an International Labour Organisation report stated in 1922:

Migration was generally speaking, unhindered and each emigrant could decide on the time of his departure, his arrival or his return, to suit his own convenience.

But the World War I brought harsh restrictions on freedom of movement.

In 1914, warring states France, Germany, and Italy were the first to make passports mandatory, a measure rapidly followed by others, including the neutral states of Spain, Denmark and Switzerland.

At the end of the war, the regime of obligatory passports was widespread. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations, stipulated that member states commit to “secure and maintain freedom of communications and of transit”.

Freedom of movement was on the agenda at the Treaty of Versailles. Imperial War Museum London

Fences are easier to build than to dismantle. The 1920 Paris conference recognised that restrictions on freedom of movement affect “personal relations between the peoples of various countries” and “constitute a serious obstacle to the resumption of normal intercourse and to the economic recovery of the world”.

But its delegates also assumed that security concerns prevented:

for the time being, the total abolition of restrictions and the complete return to pre-war conditions which the Conference hopes, nevertheless, to see gradually re-established in the near future.

To facilitate freedom of movement, participants agreed instead to establish a uniform, international passport, issued for a single journey or for a period two years. This is how we ended up with the format of the passports we use today.
Participants also decided to abolish exit visas and decrease the cost of entry visas.
 

Close but no cigar

During the conferences that followed, several resolutions again highlighted the goal of abolishing passports, but concluded that the time was not yet right. In 1924, the International Conference of Emigration and Immigration in Rome maintained that “the necessity of obtaining passports should be abolished as soon as possible” but in the meantime advocated other measures to facilitate travel. These measures included an increase in the number of offices delivering passports, allowing emigrants to save time and money.

In Geneva in 1926, Polish delegate, Franciszek Sokal, opened proceedings by bluntly asking the parties to adopt “as a general rule that all States Members of the League of Nations should abolish passports”.
At that time, passports and visas were still regarded as a serious obstacle to freedom of movement, as a Mr Junod from the International Chamber of Commerce said:

Could not the Conference adopt a resolution contemplating the abolition of passports at the earliest possible date? Public opinion would regard this as a step in the right direction.

But by then, most governments had already adopted the uniform passport and some of them saw it as an important document that was meant to protect emigrants. As the Italian delegate reminded the conference that conditions had changed after the war and the passport was “particularly necessary as an identification document for workers and their families; it provided them with the protection they needed, enabled them to obtain permits of sojourn.”
Another delegate alluded to the Soviet Union when he refused to restore the pre-war regime. He said:

conditions had changed so much since the war that everyone had to take into consideration a good many things they could formerly ignore.

Discussions about passport abolition resumed after World War II.

In 1947, the first problem considered at an expert meeting preparing for the UN World Conference on Passports and Frontier Formalities, was “the possibility of a return to the regime which existed before 1914 involving as a general rule the abolition of any requirement that travelers should carry passports”.

But delegates ultimately decided that a return to a passport-free world could only happen alongside a return to the global conditions that prevailed before the start of the first world war. By 1947, that was a distant dream. The experts advised instead a series of bilateral and multilateral agreements to attain this goal.

World leaders were still talking about banning passports as late as 1963, when the UN Conference on International Travel and Tourism recognised “the desirability, from both an economic and social point, of progressively freer international travel”. Once again, it was estimated that “it is not feasible to recommend the abolition of passports on a world-wide basis.”

Now, neither the public nor governments consider passports as a serious obstacle to freedom of movement, though any would-be traveller from Yemen, Afghanistan or Somalia would no doubt argue differently.
It takes less than a century, it seems, to see the absence of freedom as a natural condition.

Author is Associate Professor of Political Sciences, Université Paris Descartes – USPC

This article was first published on The Conversation

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I am also very troubled by the way Bush officials have tried to justify this war on the grounds that Saddam is allied with Osama bin Laden or will be soon. There is simply no proof of that, and every time I hear them repeat it I think of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. You don’t take the country to war on the wings of a lie.

— Thomas Friedman, New York Times, February 19, 2003.
 

I stand here today as a member of Military Families Speak Out. We are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters and other relatives of military men and women on active duty who will be in harm’s way if the United States launches an illegal and immoral first strike war against the people of Iraq. I have two points to make today. The first has to do with feelings about my stepson. The second has to do with the true roots of this proposed war with Iraq.My stepson is in the U.S. Army and will be a participant if war is launched. I am of course concerned about his safety. While he will be assigned command and control duties in Kuwait in support of ground combat troops, away from front lines, he still may find himself under attack with biological or chemical weapons, and may be carrying one of those defective suits we have been talking about today.

But even more than that, deeper than that, I am concerned about the defective mission upon which President Bush is sending him. His dedication to country is being abused by a President hell-bent on an unjustified, unnecessary and – it is fair to say – a triumphalistic religious war being waged by a fundamentalist Commander in Chief who seems to believe he is on God’s own mission to save the world from the evil doers and heathen.

So I am concerned that this patriotic young man willing to sacrifice for his country, along with many other honourable soldiers, will see his military career squandered and corrupted.

I am also concerned because I know – from the evidence of history, from the past Gulf War and the slaughter of 400-1,500 women and children at the Amariyah bomb shelter in Baghdad – that if we go to war in Iraq, the loss of innocent civilian lives will be high and horrific, and that our government will never tell us the whole truth about that. They are basing this war on a big lie that Iraq threatens us now, and they will surely lie as to its consequences for the innocent. However, the soldiers in the area will know what they have done. They will see it with their own eyes, or they will see it in the eyes of their fellow soldiers.

So I pray every day. I pray for my son’s safety, for his family, his wife and three children. I pray for the safety of Iraqi children and their families. I pray that this war can be averted. I cry out to God to grant all these prayers, because I fear that my son, if this war goes forward, may carry in his heart for the rest of his natural life the burden of innocent lives he helped to destroy. And he has such a good heart.

That’s my first point. Secondly I want to say there is something I fear for more than the dangers our soldiers face from a government throwing them into a war with faulty equipment.

My deepest fear is for America, as we have known it, as it has been handed down to us and protected and defended by people like my father and many millions who fought a true threat of tyranny in World War II. I fear for America and its hard-won democracy, its precious freedoms, because our government has been seized by far right zealots who wish to impose upon the rest of the world what they call a "benevolent global hegemony." They won’t call it "empire" because that’s not good PR. They are zealots who are willing to run roughshod over American freedoms to get their way. They are willing to push aside the Constitution and the Bill of Rights if necessary to achieve their agenda. They are right now cooking up Patriot Act II – which as an executive order, not even a law, could strip any one of us of our citizenship and send us into a "disappeared" status as terrorist sympathisers if the Attorney General decides to call us such.

When they were out of power, these people pushed their ideas though a think tank called the Project for the New American Century. The white papers of that think tank have formed the basis of our current national security policy that calls for a worldwide "constabulary" role for the American military. It was within the Project for the New American Century that the doctrine of pre-emptive war was first hatched. Who are they? They are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Jeb Bush, among others – and of course George W. Bush, although he is not the leading intellectual light of this group by any means. To these we can add a bevy of Iran-Contra principals who participated in illegal acts and human rights abuses in Central America: Admiral Poindexter, who sits in the Pentagon still working to launch fully a Total Information Awareness Program to watch over us all; Elliott Abrams, also of the New American Century group, whose professional contempt for and assault upon human rights has earned him a position inside President Bush’s inner circle; and even our ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte. These are people willing to destroy the UN to get their way. They are willing to destroy historic alliances, bribe and coerce small nations, and do whatever else is needed to achieve a war in Iraq that will set the terms for their New American Century.

I’ll tell you this. It outrages and saddens me that my son and many others are being called to duty to carry out the agenda of these right wing zealots, and I will not stand by silently and let that happen. It outrages me that as they are thrown into harms way they are being told to duct tape the cracks in their suits. It saddens me that fear has gripped our land to the point we are asked to duct tape ourselves into our homes and cower there.

I share the view of an Italian peace activist who said on February 15, "You fight terrorism by creating more justice in the world." For me that starts with fighting this unjust war, and the fight will not end until we have removed from power the people who are ruining my beloved America.

(Stephen Cleghorn is a member of military families speak out).
http://www.mfso.org/

‘Our voice will not be silenced’

NACY LESSIN AND CHARLEY RICHARDSON

(Statement at a press conference at the National Press Club on January 15, 2003.)

Charley and I are here today to speak out against war in Iraq. Speaking out against war is not new for us. What is new is the very personal stake we have in this current conflict.

My stepson, Charley’s son Joe, is 25 years old and in the Marines. I helped to raise this extraordinary young man since he was five years old. He shipped out at the end of August 2002. He is now in the Persian Gulf, being prepared for battle.

As military families we have both a special voice and a special need to speak out against the rush to war. For this reason, Charley and I were co-founders of Military Families Speak Out, an organisation of people who are opposed to war in Iraq, who have loved ones in the military.

We notice that those who say, "We gotta go to war" aren’t going anywhere – nor are their loved ones. It’s other people’s children who are being sent – our loved ones.

We invite others across the country in a similar position to contact us, to help build the voice of Military Families against this war. Together we will not feel so alone; collectively, we can make a difference. Visit our website at www.mfso.org or call us at 617-522-9323.
We worry about Joe. We don’t want him to be wounded or die. We don’t want him to be forced to wound or kill innocent Iraqi civilians. That would kill a part of him – and a part of us.

We are not pacifists. As Joe’s grandfather, a World War II veteran, said when talking about his own opposition to this war: "War is never a good thing, although sometimes it is necessary. This is not one of those times." Those who say war in Iraq is necessary, is defence of the US, is a blow against terrorism, need to look harder at the facts and think again. The cost will be high. Despite the talk of drones and smart bombs, there will be men, women and children dying.

If the United States engages in a unilateral war on Iraq (or a war with a few, arm-twisted allies), the Marines (including Joe) will not be defending this country. They will be there serving the interests of oil companies, financiers and power brokers.

They tell us that this war is about making the world safe from terrorism. What we know is that if tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians are killed or injured, we will not be safer. If the U.S. leads the way into Iraq, we will be more, not less, of a target.
Some say that opposing this war is unpatriotic, and unsupportive of Joe and the others who are preparing for battle. But we know that the epithets "unpatriotic" and "unsupportive" are being used to silence voices of protest. Our voice will not be silenced.

We know that the most loving and supportive thing we can do for Joe is to keep writing him, sending him cookies and brownies, and fighting to stop this war from ever happening – to keep yet another generation from being put in harm’s way for the wrong reasons.
So we will continue to protest. And we will love Joe, hold him close in our hearts, and anxiously await the day when we can hold him close in our arms.

(http://www.mfso.org)

Archived from Communalism Combat, March 2003 Year 9  No. 85, Cover Story 5

The post On the wings of a lie appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The signers of this statement call on the people of the US to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11, 2001, and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world.

We believe that peoples and nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers. We believe that all persons detained or prosecuted by the United States government should have the same rights of due process. We believe that questioning, criticism, and dissent must be valued and protected. We understand that such rights and values are always contested and must be fought for.

We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do — we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name. Thus we call on all Americans to RESIST the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral, and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world.

We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11, 2001. We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the terrible scenes of carnage — even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City, and, a generation ago, Vietnam. We too joined the anguished questioning of millions of Americans who asked why such a thing could happen.

But the mourning had barely begun, when the highest leaders of the land unleashed a spirit of revenge. They put out a simplistic script of "good vs. evil" that was taken up by a pliant and intimidated media. They told us that asking why these terrible events had happened verged on treason. There was to be no debate. There were by definition no valid political or moral questions. The only possible answer was to be war abroad and repression at home.

In our name, the Bush administration, with near unanimity from Congress, not only attacked Afghanistan but arrogated to itself and its allies the right to rain down military force anywhere and any time. The brutal repercussions have been felt from the Philippines to Palestine, where Israeli tanks and bulldozers have left a terrible trail of death and destruction. The government now openly prepares to wage all-out war on Iraq – a country which has no connection to the horror of September 11. What kind of world will this become if the US government has a blank check to drop commandos, assassins and bombs wherever it wants?

In our name, within the US, the government has created two classes of people: those to whom the basic rights of the US legal system are at least promised, and those who now seem to have no rights at all. The government rounded up over 1,000 immigrants and detained them in secret and indefinitely. Hundreds have been deported and hundreds of others still languish today in prison. This smacks of the infamous concentration camps for Japanese-Americans in World War II. For the first time in decades, immigration procedures single out certain nationalities for unequal treatment.

In our name, the government has brought down a pall of repression over society. The President’s spokesperson warns people to "watch what they say." Dissident artists, intellectuals, and professors find their views distorted, attacked, and suppressed. The so-called USA PATRIOT Act – along with a host of similar measures on the state level – gives police sweeping new powers of search and seizure, supervised if at all by secret proceedings before secret courts.

In our name, the executive has steadily usurped the roles and functions of the other branches of government. Military tribunals with lax rules of evidence and no right to appeal to the regular courts are put in place by executive order. Groups are declared "terrorist" at the stroke of a presidential pen.

We must take the highest officers of the land seriously when they talk of a war that will last a generation and when they speak of a new domestic order. We are confronting a new openly imperial policy towards the world and a domestic policy that manufactures and manipulates fear to curtail rights.

There is a deadly trajectory to the events of the past months that must be seen for what it is and resisted. Too many times in history people have waited until it was too late to resist. President Bush has declared: "you’re either with us or against us." Here is our answer: We refuse to allow you to speak for all the American people. We will not give up our right to question. We will not hand over our consciences in return for a hollow promise of safety. We say NOT IN OUR NAME. We refuse to be party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name or for our welfare. We extend a hand to those around the world suffering from these policies; we will show our solidarity in word and deed.

We who sign this statement call on all Americans to join together to rise to this challenge. We applaud and support the questioning and protest now going on, even as we recognise the need for much, much more to actually stop this juggernaut. We draw inspiration from the Israeli reservists who, at great personal risk, declare, "there IS a limit" and refuse to serve in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

We also draw on the many examples of resistance and conscience from the past of the United States: from those who fought slavery with rebellions and the underground railroad, to those who defied the Vietnam war by refusing orders, resisting the draft, and standing in solidarity with resisters.

Let us not allow the watching world today to despair of our silence and our failure to act. Instead, let the world hear our pledge: we will resist the machinery of war and repression and rally others to do everything possible to stop it.

From:

James Abourezk Michael Albert Mike Alewitz, Labor Art & Mural Project, Aris Anagnos Laurie Anderson Edward Asner, actor Russell Banks, writer Rosalyn Baxandall, historian Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange Jessica Blank, actor/playwright William Blum, author Theresa & Blase Bonpane, Office of the Americas Fr. Bob Bossie, SCJ Leslie Cagan Kisha Imani Cameron, producer Henry Chalfant, author/filmmaker Bell Chevigny, writer Paul Chevigny, professor of law, NYU Noam Chomsky Ramsey Clark David Cole, professor of law, Georgetown University Robbie Conal Stephanie Coontz, historian, Evergreen State College Kia Corthron, playwright Kimberly Crenshaw, professor of law, Columbia and UCLA Culture Clash Kevin Danaher, Global Exchange Barbara Dane Ossie Davis Mos Def Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, professor, California State University, Hayward Bill Dyson, state representative, Connecticut Steve Earle, singer/songwriter Eve Ensler Leo Estrada, UCLA professor, Urban Planning Laura Flanders, radio host and journalist Elizabeth Frank Richard Foreman Terry Gilliam, film director Charles Glass, journalist Jeremy Matthew Glick, editor of Another World Is Possible Danny Glover Leon Golub, artist Juan Gómez Quiñones, historian, UCLA Jessica Hagedorn Sondra Hale, professor, anthropology and women’s studies, UCLA Suheir Hammad, writer Nathalie Handal, poet and playwright Christine B. Harrington, Director of the Institute for Law & Society, New York University David Harvey, distinguished professor of anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center Tom Hayden Edward S. Herman, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Susannah Heschel, professor, Dartmouth College Fred Hirsch, vice president, Plumbers and Fitters Local 393 bell hooks Rakaa Iriscience, hip hop artist Abdeen Jabara, attorney, past president, American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Fredric Jameson, chair, literature program, Duke University Harold B. Jamison, major (ret.), USAF Erik Jensen, actor/playwright Chalmers Johnson, author of "Blowback" Casey Kasem Robin D.G. Kelly Martin Luther King III, president, Southern Christian Leadership Conference Barbara Kingsolver Arthur Kinoy, board co-chair, Center for Constitutional Rights Sally Kirkland C. Clark Kissinger, Refuse & Resist! Yuri Kochiyama, activist Annisette & Thomas Koppel, singers/composers David Korten, author Barbara Kruger Tony Kushner James Lafferty, executive director, National Lawyers Guild/L.A. Ray Laforest, Haiti Support Network Jesse Lemisch, professor of history emeritus, John Jay College of Justice, CUNY Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor, TIKKUN magazine Barbara Lubin, Middle East Childrens Alliance Staughton Lynd Dave Marsh Anuradha Mittal, co-director, Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First Malaquias Montoya, visual artist Tom Morello Robert Nichols, writer Kate Noonan Rev. E. Randall Osburn, exec. v.p., Southern Christian Leadership Conference Ozomatli Grace Paley Michael Parenti Jeremy Pikser, screenwriter Jerry Quickley, poet Margaret Randall Michael Ratner, president, Center for Constitutional Rights Adrienne Rich David Riker, filmmaker Boots Riley, hip hop artist, The Coup Matthew Rothschild Edward Said Susan Sarandon Saskia Sassen, professor, University of Chicago Jonathan Schell, author and fellow of the Nation Institute Carolee Schneeman, artist Ralph Schoenman & Mya Shone, Council on Human Needs Mark Selden, historian Alex Shoumatoff John J. Simon, writer, editor Michael Steven Smith, National Lawyers Guild/NY Norman Solomon, syndicated columnist and author Scott Spenser Nancy Spero, artist Starhawk Bob Stein, publisher Gloria Steinem Oliver Stone Peter Syben, major, US Army, retired Marcia Tucker, founding director emerita, New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY Gore Vidal Anton Vodvarka, Lt., FDNY (ret.) Kurt Vonnegut Alice Walker Rebecca Walker Naomi Wallace, playwright Immanuel Wallerstein, sociologist, Yale University Rev. George Webber, president emeritus, NY Theological Seminary Leonard Weinglass, attorney Haskell Wexler John Edgar Wideman Saul Williams, spoken word artist S. Brian Willson , activist/writer Jeffrey Wright, actor Howard Zinn, historian. Organisations for identification only – representative list as of July 17, 2002. n

Since then, 30,000 others have added their names.
To add your name, and for additional information:
(http://www.notinourname.net/all_to_Conscience.html)

Archived from Communalism Combat, March 2003 Year 9  No. 85, Editorial 2

The post Not in our name appeared first on SabrangIndia.

MILITARY intervention against Iraq would be a crime against peace demanding vengeance before God, the head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has said.

"War is a crime against peace which cries for vengeance before God," said Archbishop Renato Raffaele Martino, speaking on Vatican Radio.

He stressed the deeply unjust and immoral nature of war, saying it was condemned by God because civilians were the worst sufferers.

Martino, formerly Vatican permanent representative to the United Nations, strongly denounced the determination of the United States and its allies to disarm Iraq by force.

"Do not reply with a stone to the child who asks for bread," he said. "They are preparing to reply with thousands of bombs to a people that have been asking for bread for the last 12 years."

Stressing the Roman Catholic church would continue to insist on the need and the urgency of peace, he said: "As always, it will be the Good Samaritan who will bind the wounds of a wounded and weakened people."

Pope John Paul II, one of the most prominent opponents of war on Iraq, urged UN Security Council members yesterday to continue negotiations on the disarmament of Iraq and avert a looming military conflict.

"I want to remind UN members and particularly those who make up the Security Council that the use of force is the last resort after having exhausted all peaceful solutions, as stipulated by the UN charter," the Pope told tens of thousands of worshippers gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

"I lived through World War II and I survived the Second World War. For this reason, I have the duty to say ‘Never again war’. We know that it is impossible to say peace at any price, but we all know how important our responsibility is."

(From correspondents in Vatican City)
(http://www.theaustralian.news.com)

‘Illegal, unwise, immoral’

(A statement from religious leaders in the United States and United Kingdom)
November 26, 2002

"Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." (Isaiah 2:4)

As the calls for military action against Iraq continue
from our two governments, despite the new opening for UN weapons inspections, we are compelled by the prophetic vision of peace to speak a word of caution to our governments and our people. We represent a diversity of Christian communities — from the just war traditions to the pacifist tradition. As leaders of these communities in the United States and the United Kingdom, it is our considered judgement that a pre-emptive war against Iraq, particularly in the current situation would not be justified. Yet we believe Iraq must be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction; and that alternative courses to war should be diligently pursued.

Let there be no mistake: We regard Saddam Hussein and his regime in Iraq as a real threat to his own people, neighbouring countries, and to the world. His previous use and continued development of weapons of mass destruction is of great concern to us. The question is how to respond to that threat. We believe the Iraqi government has a duty to stop its internal repression, to end its threats to peace, to abandon its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, and to respect the legitimate role of the United Nations in ensuring that it does so.

But our nations and the international community must pursue these goals in a manner consistent with moral principles, political wisdom, and international law. As Christians, we seek to be guided by the vision of a world in which nations do not attempt to resolve international problems by making war on other nations. It is a long-held Christian principle that all governments and citizens are obliged to work for the avoidance of war.

We therefore urge our governments, especially President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, to pursue alternative means to disarm Iraq of its most destructive weapons. Diplomatic cooperation with the United Nations in renewing rigorously effective and thoroughly comprehensive weapons inspections, linked to the gradual lifting of sanctions, could achieve the disarmament of Iraq without the risks and costs of military attack.

We do not believe that pre-emptive war with Iraq is a last resort, could effectively guard against massive civilian casualties, would be waged with adequate international authority, and could predictably create a result proportionate to the cost. And it is not clear that the threat of Saddam Hussein cannot be contained in other, less costly ways. An attack on Iraq could set a precedent for pre-emptive war, further destabilise the Middle East, and fuel more terrorism. We, therefore, do not believe that war with Iraq can be justified under the principle of a "just war," but would be illegal, unwise, and immoral.

Illegal

Whether we oppose all war, or reluctantly accept it only as a last resort, in this case the U.S. government has not presented an adequate justification for war. Iraq has not attacked or directly threatened the United States, nor is it clear that its weapons of mass destruction pose an immediate and urgent threat to neighbouring countries or the world. It has not been credibly implicated in the attacks of September 11. Under international law, including the U.N. Charter, the only circumstance under which individual states may invoke the authority to go to war is in self-defence following an armed attack. In Christian just war doctrine, there are rigorous conditions even for an act of self-defence. Pre-emptive war by one state against another is not permitted by either law or doctrine. For the United States to initiate military action against Iraq without authorisation by the United Nations Security Council would set a dangerous precedent that would threaten the foundations of international security. And under our domestic governance, the US Congress and the UK Parliament must also play a key role in authorising any contemplated military action.

Unwise

The potential social and diplomatic consequences of a war against Iraq make it politically unwise. The US and the UK could be acting almost entirely alone. Many nations, including our European allies and most of the Arab world, strongly oppose such a war. To initiate a major war in an area of the world already in great turmoil could destabilise governments and increase political extremism throughout the Middle East and beyond. It would add fuel to the fires of violence that are already consuming the region. It would exacerbate anti-American hatred and produce new recruits for terror attacks against the United States and Israel.

A unilateral war would also undermine the continued political cooperation needed for the international campaign to isolate terrorist networks. The US could very well win a battle against Iraq and lose the campaign against terrorism. The potentially dangerous and highly chaotic aftermath of a war with Iraq would require years of occupation, investment, and a high level of international cooperation — which have yet to be adequately planned or even considered. And the Iraqi people themselves have an important role in creating non-violent resistance within their own country with international support.

Immoral

We are particularly concerned by the potential human costs of war. If the military strategy includes massive air attacks and urban warfare in the streets of Baghdad, tens of thousands of innocent civilians could lose their lives. This alone makes such a military attack morally unacceptable. In addition, the people of Iraq continue to suffer severely from the effects of the Gulf War, the resulting decade of sanctions, and the neglect and oppression of a brutal dictator. Rather than inflicting further suffering on them through a costly war, we should assist in rebuilding their country and alleviating their suffering. We also recognise that in any conflict, the casualties among attacking forces could be very high. This potential suffering in our own societies should also lead to prudent caution.

We reaffirm our religious hope for a world in which "nation shall not lift up sword against nation." We pray that our governments will be guided by moral principles, political wisdom, and legal standards, and will step back from their calls for war.

United States

Philip A. Amerson, president, The Claremont School of Theology.
David Beckmann, president, Bread for the World.
Peter Borgdorff, executive director of ministries, Christian Reformed Church in North America.
Ronald Brugler, president, The Swedenborgian Church.
John A. Buehrens, past president, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
Tony Campolo, professor emeritus, Eastern University.
John Bryson Chane, bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Washington.
Canice Connors, OFM.Conv., president, Conference of Major Superiors of Men .
John P. Crossley,director, School of Religion University of Southern California.
Robert Edgar, general secretary, National Council of Churches.
Joseph A. Fiorenza, bishop, Catholic Diocese of Galveston – Houston.
Jim Forest, secretary, Orthodox Peace Fellowship.
Robert Franklin, president, Interdenominational Theological Center.
Linda C. Fuller, co-founder and president, Habitat for Humanity.
Millard Fuller, founder and president, Habitat for Humanity.
Michael J. Gorman, Ph.D., Dean, The Ecumenical Institute of Theology.
St. Mary’s Seminary & University.
Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary, Reformed Church in America.
Richard L. Hamm, general minister and president, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the U.S. and Canada.
Stan Hastey, executive director, The Alliance of Baptists.
Thomas L. Hoyt, Jr., bishop, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
President-elect, National Council of Churches.
William C. Imes, president, Bangor Theological Seminary.
Thomas H. Jeavons, general secretary, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
Holly H. Johnson, president, Blanton-Peale Institute of Psychology and Religion.
Norman J. Kansfield, president, New Brunswick Theological Seminary.
Michael Mata, director, Urban Leadership Institute.
Felton Edwin May, bishop, Baltimore-Washington Conference United Methodist Church.
A. Roy Medley, general secretary, American Baptist Churches USA.
John W. Oliver, coordinator, Orthodox Peace Fellowship in North America.
Glenn Palmberg, president, Evangelical Covenant Church.
Robert M. Parham, executive director, Baptist Center for Ethics.
Judy Mills Reimer, general secretary, Church of the Brethren General Board.
David Robinson, national coordinator, Pax Christi USA.
Cheryl J. Sanders, professor of Christian Ethics, Howard University School of Divinity Senior Pastor, Third Street Church of God.
William J. Shaw, president, National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
Carole Shinnick, SSND, executive director, Leadership Conference of Women Religious.
Ronald G. Sider, president, Evangelicals for Social Action.
Glen Stassen, Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics Fuller Theological Seminary.
Walter F. Sullivan, bishop-president of Pax Christi USA , bishop, Catholic Diocese of Richmond.
John H. Thomas, general minister and president, United Church of Christ.
Joe Volk, executive secretary, Friends Committee on National Legislation.
Jim Wallis, executive director/editor, Sojourners.
Barbara G. Wheeler, president, Auburn Theological Seminary.
Mary Ann Zollmann BVM, president, Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

United Kingdom
Peter Price, bishop Of Bath and Wells.
Michael Langrish, bishop of Exeter.
Stephen Venner, bishop of Dover.
Michael Dunelm, bishop of Durham.
Michael Scott-Joynt, bishop of Winchester.
Colin Bennetts, bishop of Coventry.
Keiran Conry, bishop of Arundel and Brighton (RC).
Peter Selby, Bishop of Worcester and Bishop to HM Prisons, Church of England.
Jonathan Bailey, bishop of Derby.
John Perry, bishop of Chelmsford.
John Hind, bishop of Chichester.
Tim Stevens, bishop of Leicester
Keith Sutton, bishop of Lichfield.
John Saxbee, bishop of Lincoln.
Anthony Pierce, bishop of Swansea & Brecon.
John Gladwin, bishop of Guilford.
Christopher Herbert, bishop of St. Albans.
John Stewart Davies, bishop of St Asaph.
The Rt Rev’d Dr Barry Morgan, bishop of Llandaff.
Most Rev Andrew Bruce Cameron, bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney.
Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.
Michael Hare Duke, retired bishop of St Andrews.
Maurice Taylor, bishop of Galloway, Scotland (RC).
Alan D McDonald, convener, Church and Nation Committee
Church of Scotland.
Dr Nigel Goring Wright, president of the Baptist Union of Great Britain.
C Rosemary H Castagner, clerk, Ireland Yearly Meeting’s Committee.
Canon Andrew White, coventry Cathedral Reconciliation Centre.
Pat Gaffney, general secretary, Pax Christi UK n

(http://www.sojo.net/action)

Archived from Communalism Combat, March 2003 Year 9  No. 85, Editorial 3

The post War crime in Iraq: Vatican appeared first on SabrangIndia.

March 17, 2003

I am finally ready to admit what for months I have kept hidden: I am terrified. I am more scared than I have ever been in my adult life. For weeks now I have felt a new kind of free-floating terror at what has been unfolding, as the Bush administration has made it clear that nothing would derail its mad rush to war. 

Until now, I have not spoken of it. In organising meetings or talks to community groups or rally speeches, I held back. The task was to build the antiwar movement, and I worried that talking too much about my fear might undermine that. People need to feel empowered, hopeful, I told myself; we should be talking about the potential of the movement. 

That hasn’t changed. We have to continue to build the movement, which has enormous potential over the long-term to turn this society away from war and profit, toward peace and the needs of people. We cannot abandon our commitment to the people of the world, the work of education and organising that we all must do if we are to make good on that commitment. 

But I no longer think we can build such a movement by suppressing or keeping quiet about this fear we feel. In the past few weeks I have seen this fear so clearly in the eyes of my friends, heard it in the nervous comments of strangers, and been surprised by it in the unease with which even many supporters of the war talked.

 I knew it when this past weekend my father — a conservative, Republican small-town businessman and World War II-era veteran — tried to convince me that Bush wouldn’t really start a war, that he was bluffing, just being cagey. Even my father was scared of the plans of the man he voted for. 

I think people all over the world whose capacity to feel has not been occluded by power or hate are feeling something like this. It is not a fear of terrorists or weapons of mass destruction or even necessarily of this particular war, as frightening as all those things may be. I believe it is a fear of something more difficult to pin down, a fear of the forces that will be unleashed when the United States defies the world and launches a war that — while couched in talk of protecting people from threats — is so obviously about projecting US power to achieve a kind of world domination that was never possible before. 

Bush and his advisers proudly announce that they have cast aside any commitment to collective security, real diplomacy, and international law. Will the United Nations survive? Will there be anything left of an international system when Bush and his gang are finished? Will there be any hope for the peaceful settlement of disputes? Of course none of these concepts has ever been fully implemented, and we all know that the international institutions have flaws. But will anyone feel safer in a world in which the law comes only from the blade of the American sword, permanently drawn? 

This fear I feel is not just of power-run-amok but of an empire with the most destructive military capacity that has ever existed — an empire with thermobaric bombs and cruise missiles, cluster bombs and nuclear "bunker busters." No matter how hard the government works to try to keep us from seeing the results of those weapons — and no matter how much the news media cooperate in that project — we understand how many civilians could die under the onslaught of these horrific weapons. They can censor the pictures, but not our imaginations. 

This fear I feel is not just of the unchecked power of the United States but of the fact that Bush and his advisers seem to think they understand their own power and can control it. It is the arrogance of virtually unlimited power married to lifelong privilege. It is hubris, and in a nuclear world there is no sin that is potentially more deadly. 

This is the fear that I feel, that I think so many of us feel. The Bush administration wants us to be afraid, but remain quiet about it. Our power will come not from denying the fear but in confronting, and overcoming, it. So, we must speak of it, not to scare others but to bring us closer together. Our only hope against the fear is in each other, in our organising, in our resistance. And if we can confront our fears, we can confront this empire. 

If you feel this fear and aren’t sure that, in the face of it, you can remain involved — or get involved for the first time — in the antiwar movement, all I can say is, "Where else will you go?" If we retreat into our private spaces, thinking we can hide, we will find out quickly that this fear will follow us everywhere. 

Our only way out is together, in public, facing not only our fears but the fears that others will project onto us, and inviting them to join us. It will be painful. It will carry with it certain risks. But it is the only way we can hang onto our own humanity.

 I am scared, and I need help. We all do. Let us pledge not to let each other down — for our own sake, and for the sake of the world. 

 (Robert Jensen is a founding member of the Nowar Collective (www.nowarcollective.com), a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.)

Archived from Communalism Combat, March 2003 Year 9  No. 85, Cover Story 10

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