On August 15^th activists and community members from around the Bay Area will be joining Richmond, California residents to protest the Chevron corporation’s devastating environmental and human rights record around the world.  They’ll be working with a coalition of dozens of social justice and environmental organizations, called the Mobilization for Climate Justice, to highlight and stop Chevron’s legacy of criminality. From faulty environmental impact reports for a dirty crude expansion and ongoing pollution in Richmond, to using the Nigerian military to murder environmental activists in the Niger Delta, to toxic waste sites and subsequent harm to human health (that dwarfs the Exxon-Valdez spill) in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Chevron is responsible for a substantial roster of injured people and denuded environments throughout the globe.  Not the least of which are the lands and people of Iraq; which is why it’s important for anti-war activists to work with environmental and labor groups to oppose Chevron this August. 

Anti-war groups should join the August demonstrations because Chevron is directly responsible for the war in Iraq.  From the era of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship, Chevron has worked diligently to gain access to Iraqi oil. (The relationship started even earlier, following World War I, as Gulf Oil, which became Chevron, maneuvered to control Iraq’s oil in the Mandate period.)  Since then it has created marketing agreements to sell Iraqi oil, working around the US imposed sanctions with the UN Oil for Food program, deemed genocidal by two directors of the program who resigned is disgust.  At the same time, Chevron illegally bribed Iraqi officials to sell oil outside of the program, making the government an estimated $11 billion, strengthening the dictatorship. 

Chevron was also instrumental in preparing the illegal aggression and occupation of Iraq.  Part of the infamous “Cheney Energy Task Force” that met just days after George W. Bush was inaugurated, the Task Force worked with the National Security Council to merge “operational policies toward rogue states” with “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”  Since the invasion Chevron has pushed heavily for production contracts and production sharing agreements through the failed Iraq Oil Law.  Now western oil companies’ best hope to directly extract Iraqi oil is the second round of extraction and production negotiations set for November.  All the while Chevron maintains its marketing agreements with Iraq, refining millions of barrels of Iraqi oil at its Richmond refinery, profiting from the US war and occupation.

Besides the direct ties to the Iraq war, there are other reasons for anti-war groups to work on climate change issues, namely, US wars of aggression are often driven by our addiction to fossil fuels.  As these resources deplete, the competition for them intensifies, furthering conflict and the resort to military “solutions.”  The government spends trillions of dollars on the wars, and corporations reap record profits in the billions, while spending for social infrastructure, health care, schools, and investments to green our economy dwindle.  Oil companies like Chevron profit from the wars, profit from the oil extraction, and profit while their actions heat the planet to unprecedented levels.  Ultimately, ending the wars and cooling the planet are part of the same struggle, as unaccountable corporations poison our environment, disregard our future, and use government military intervention to acquire more oil.  They must be stopped; at the top of the list is Chevron.

Please join us to protest Chevron.

actforclimatejustice.org/west

actaginstwar.net

SATURDAY, AUGUST 15
11:30am at RICHMOND BART
16th St. & Macdonald Ave., Richmond, CA

Co-Signers:

Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice

Code Pink – Bay Area

Courage to Resist

Direct Action to Stop the War

Global Women’s Strike

Iraq Veterans Against the War – Bay Area

Peace Action West

United for Peace and Justice – Bay Area

War Resisters League – West

Join Us! Shoes provided or BYOS. Prizes. Music. Fun.

Sat., Jan. 17, Noon-3pm, Justin Herman Plaza (Embarcadero BART), SF
Sun., Jan 18, Noon-3pm, Justin Herman Plaza (Embarcadero BART), SF
Tues. Jan 20th, 7am-Noon, UN Plaza, near the public Obama inauguration simulcast event at SF Civic Center Plaza

Iraqi Journalist Muntader al-Zaidi threw his shoes at Bush while saying, “This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq.” We symbolically join him as Bush leaves office. We also throw shoes for the widows, families, and US servicepeople killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We throw shoes for those who are hurting while billions of dollars are wasted for war instead of bailing out those of us lacking food, housing, healthcare, jobs, and education.

We take Obama seriously when on election night he said, “This victory alone is not the change we seek; it is only the chance for us to make that change.” Will you join us in publicly committing that “we the people” will organize ourselves and take action to make those changes? We agree with Obama’s statement, “I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.”

Here are 5 key changes that will begin to do this.

1) ALL TROOPS HOME FROM IRAQ NOW!
Including “non-combat” troops & private contractors (i.e. Blackwater), and close all US military bases in Iraq.

2) HELP REBUILD IRAQ
Give reparations for the human and structural damages Iraq has suffered, and stop the corporate pillaging of Iraq so that its people can control their own lives and future.

3) NO ESCALATIONS, NO NEW WARS
* No escalation of war in Afghanistan; troops should be withdrawn.
* Stop attacks inside Pakistan. Don’t attack Iran.
* Cut military aid to governments that violate human rights or international law, such as Israel in what Amnesty International calls an “unlawful attack on Gaza.”
* Close Guantanamo and all secret prisons

4) FROM GLOBAL MILITARY INTERVENTION TO REAL SECURITY AT HOME
* Close all 800 foreign US military bases.
* Reduce military budget and troops; stop wasting hundreds of billions needed for healthcare, housing, education, and green energy/jobs.

5) SUPPORT VETERANS
* Amnesty for all GI resisters who refuse illegal war.
* Full benefits, adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicepeople.

Gaza Action, a coalition of Arab, Jewish, and allied anti-occupation groups, is organizing a response to the ground invasion of Gaza. We invite your organization to co-sponsor and to attend the civil disobedience planned for Monday. We will host both arrestable and non-arrestable actions. We also encourage your organization to form an affinity group and select specific targets for hard blockades.

In the last week Israel has shown the brutality of its illegal war against the people of Palestine. And we have witnessed the US government’s unwavering support for these crimes. It is up to us to stop them. By targeting business a usual in San Francisco we up the social cost war-makers must consider when planning these assaults. By targeting the Congressional leadership based in San Francisco we send a clear message: “End US support for Israel. Stop the $3 billion in yearly military aid to Israel. End the assault, end the siege, and end the occupation.”

For more information go to
araborganizing.org
actagainstwar.net

or email
gazaaction@gmail.com

if your affinity group would like to co-ordinate actions email
dasw.media@gmail.com

Gaza Action is: Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Al-Awda, Free Palestine Alliance, Arab American Union Members Council, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the ANSWER Coalition, Direct Action to Stop the War, Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism, Women in Black, International Action Center

5PM Monday Dec. 29th – Montgomery and Market

Bring candles, posters, and banners; wear black.

Rain or Shine

UPDATE: Civil disobedience planned, contact media.dasw@gmail.com or bay.ijsn@gmail.com

Co-Sponsored by Direct Action to Stop the War; the Middle East Children’s Alliance; Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism; SF Women in Black; Break the Silence Mural Project; Global Exchange; International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network; San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper; Beacon Presbyterian Fellowship; Jewish Voice for Peace – Bay Area; American Friends Service Committee SF Office.

We condemn the missile strikes that have killed hundreds of Palestinians in the Gaza strip as a brutal and murderous form of collective punishment. The strikes in heavily populated areas display a reckless disregard for the civilians of Gaza and are part of an ongoing war by Israel not against Hamas or terrorism, but against the Palestinian people. The following text is from a BBC eyewitness report in Gaza City:

“Doctors say the operating rooms are full and the morgues are full and they have no place to put the dead bodies. They are asking for every doctor who is not working today to come and help. We have seen in the streets of Gaza today and this evening many funerals . . . It’s a very bad situation . . . There were Israeli aeroplanes everywhere, hitting everywhere. You could see smoke from north to south, from west to east. The people are really in a panic. The main object for the people now is to find a secure place to secure their family. Gaza has no shelters, it has no safe places. The Hamas security compounds are in the middle of the city – it’s not the kind of place where you see compounds outside the cities.”

This recent offensive against people in Gaza is only the latest in the Israeli government’s continued occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. With the siege of Gaza Israel has shown a consistent disregard for the human rights of Palestinians leading to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the Strip. Malnutrition rivals that found in sub-Saharan Africa, as Gazans cannot receive necessary food, fuel and medical supplies. The effects of the siege will greatly impact the hundreds of civilians injured by the missile strike.

We recognize that the US Government is complicit in these crimes against the people of Palestine. We call on the US government to end its support of the Israeli occupation, to stop the billions of dollars in military aid sent to Israeli, and to end Israel’s criminal raids and siege on the people of Gaza. We gather outside Senator Feinstein’s office to send this message. We stand in solidarity and sympathy with the innocent civilians being bombed in Gaza.

If your group wishes to co-sponsor email dasw.media@gmail.com

http://bayareadirectaction.wordpress.com/

Hello to all our friends and supporters,

In the last week, eight people affiliated with the RNC Welcoming Committee were arrested in their homes or picked up off the streets and charged with conspiracy to riot and furtherance of terrorism.  The Welcoming Committee was a group that formed to facilitate logistics (food, housing, convergence center) around the 2008 Republican National Convention Protests in Saint Paul, Minnesota.  Most of them were arrested in the days leading up to the convention, and many had their homes raided by law enforcement.  They were being held in the Ramsey County jail but as of Thursday were all released on bail or bond.  They are now facing serious criminal charges and the potential of a protracted and expensive legal battle.

This case is potentially dangerous not just for these individuals but for organizers and activists all over the country.  It represents a seemingly coordinated effort between state and federal agencies to crack down on organizers as a way of intimidating and systematically repressing movement building in all its forms.  It now falls to all of us to fight these charges not just for these eight people but to protect our friends, our movements and our communities.

Currently, our immediate need is for financial resources.  We are asking for people to donate money or set up benefits in their own communities.

You can donate by going to www.nornc.org and clicking on the “Donate to RNC Welcoming Committee Legal Support” button.

To check out ongoing updates on the case visit www.RNC8.org.

Thank you so much for your support.

In solidarity,
The Friends of the Welcoming Committee

As the spectre of the electoral farce looms on the American horizon, we who would imagine democracy to look otherwise, harbor not the audacity of blind hope, but of negation. We who watch, from within dying cities and hollowed-out towns the economic decline of the American Imperialist beast know the charades of Denver and St. Paul to be so much deck chair rearranging on this sinking ship. We know the militarism, imperial forays and consumer extremism to be the last gasps of a self-imploding world order. We watch with sardonic smiles maybe, knowing the world will be better for it! The time has never been more ripe nor more urgent for organized mass resistance, so we converge on Denver and St. Paul this summer to be the no to their affirmations of capitalist exploitation, imperialism, and the systemic violence of racism, sexism and homophobia therein. To manifest our alternative visions and actualize, if only for a transitory moment, prefigurations of mutual aid and autonomy. Our strength lies foremost in our asymmetry, in our ability to be not like them. Our resistance refuses the roles the police state would enjoy us to assume. In challenging the spectacles of both conventions, as well as the protests that counter them, we must constantly remake ourselves, push our conceptual limits and be what is least expected. We, with Unconventional Action in the San Francisco Bay Area (UA in the Bay), seek to remake and re-imagine street actions while drawing upon the rich legacy of the global anti-capitalist movement. In the spirit of the RNC Welcoming Committee’s efforts to playfully detourne the discourse of mass protest, we claim sector 4 and propose to add a little friendly competition (however un-anarchist that may sound) to the mix of mayhem in the streets of St. Paul. The name of the game: Barricade Building Contest! We will swarm, we will seize and our presence will stay. Special categories include Biggest, Baddest Barricade, Best use of found materials, Best use of vehicle(s), Best strategic Location, Greenest Barricade, Most difficult to remove. Contest open to all comers of all locations. No limit on number of entries submitted. Winners to be determined by GOP delegates based on their inability to attend the convention. The Prize: Total Freedom (naturally).

The time is nigh to re-establish the barricade in the popular American imaginary–to call upon this particular tactic of resistance that has the unique capacity not only to disrupt the convention, but also to remake the urban space, to reorient psycho-geography along lines incongruous to capitalist production modes and notions of private property. To reclaim the urban commons with a collective agenda, through autonomous self-determination. And to experience the ways our bodies react to moving outside of dead time and economic constraints. Barricades have comprised the front lines of resistance from Oaxaca to Argentina. From Spain 1936 to France 1968. From the communards to the piqueteros. The barricade flashes up at a moment of danger, connecting us to a historical narrative that is still being written. A las barricadas! No pasaran! Sous les paves la plage! Que se vayan a todos! We build up the barricades to bring down the capitalist war machine. Join Sector 4 on September 1st, where the streets are ours, the sky is the limit and the medium the message. Up against the barricades motherfucker! See you in St. Paul! See you at the Barricades!

UA in the Bay, Sector 4 meeting in St. Paul:

Saturday, August 30th at 2pm, 627 Smith Ave S

www.indybay.org/conventions2008

Read on August 6, 2008, the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, at an action against the profiteers from Americas Army military recruitment computer video game that targets teens. After the rally in San Francisco’s South Park a march targetted South Park war profiteer game companies Ubisoft, Gameloft, and Secret Level.

Two of the major landmarks in the Bay Area are San Francisco Zen Center and Lawrence
Livermore Labs. The labs are where Edward Teller and Co. designed the hydrogen bomb
in the 1950s, after breaking off from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico
where the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were designed and partiallyTK
manufactured. The first atomic bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay, 63 years ago
today, in Hiroshima,. Three days later a second one was dropped on Nagasaki.

Thirteen years ago, I heard a Nagasaki survivor tell her story of what she saw, and
she spoke so slowly that I was able to write as she spoke. I go back to my
transcript almost every year about this time and hear again her sweet, clear, voice
with its delicate accent:

The city was a flat sea in flames
and the dust from the sky
is complete
Sky is black

That time we don’t feel anything.
Not fear
I do not feel pain

Under the house they are screaming Help me, help me
but there is no way I can help them.
Some of them they crawl because foot is smashed
And on the way is dead I had to pass one by one
After three days is smell….
from the dead people,
Even the clothes, even the money smell for long after
You could wash yourself, you smell
They bring body, part of body, and cremate it in open sky
and I hear that noise, I can’t forget that noise—
excuse me but like a barbeque.
I couldn’t touch the meat for many years.

Every time I see–I don’t want to remember–but after fifty years I say, If I don’t
tell them who will?
I lose six members of my family and I can’t cry, I am in shock, I say maybe it was
burned, that’s why I can’t cry
[burnt man full of maggots screaming Help, please kill me]

I was drinking the dirty water because we had no water–no food, no medicine
Next thing I see body floating down towards me in the water

Most of the half-burned body is that way–eyes open, surprised

I was drinking the dirty water because we had no water–no food, no medicine
Next thing I see body floating down towards me in the water

Most of the half-burned body is that way–eyes open, surprised

My mother starts getting very sick
pimple spots all over
stomach is bloated
Every day she is by the train: Father come home
Of course he didn’t come
And her condition was so bad that no one would go near….
smell like decay
from her nose it looks like black oil comes out
Whatever comes out is turned to black
I don’t  understand it

Uncle took back to his my grandmother’s home
and on the way she drink the spring water
and she say
delicious
and those were her last words.
Then she was at peace
She had been in hell.

When I saw those bones I thought, I said
Am I living
or am I dreaming,
in other world
and that’s why I am here speaking.

That’s the American nuclear-bomb-making industry, managed by UC Berkeley, as seen by
the recipient of one of its creations. One version of American culture sent to
Japan. Not the only one here in the land of the Underground Railroad and Cesar
Chavez and Human Rights Watch, but one of them. And we here are heirs to all of
them; we cannot shirk this mixed-up legacy; we have to lift it up and reconcile it,
in our own lives as well as our nation.

It’s easy to live in the Bay Area and be smug about how antiwar we all are. But if
you become a little more aware of this place we’re responsible for, you see the bomb
design labs in the southeast bay and the great war machine that is Silicon Valley;
you see Lockheed Martin in the South Bay; you see the war profiteer Chevron in the
North Bay; you see Bechtel Corporation, a war contractor in Iraq, a few blocks from
here; you see that the practice of confining and crushing awareness is also going on
here, lucratively, extensively, and you see that we have a lot to do here in the
homeland of the atom bomb.

I started by saying that there are two sites to think about today in the San
Francisco Bay Area: the bomb factory and then at Laguna and Page in the lower Haight
is San Francisco Zen Center, where one of the jewels of Japanese culture—as Zen
Buddhism—came to America. More specifically one small Japanese man, Shunryu Suzuki
Roshi came fourteen years after Hiroshima, bringing ideas that have mattered a lot
in the forty-nine years since. Paul Haller, the current Abbot of San Francisco Zen
Center,  calls Buddhism “the practice of awareness.”

“The practice of awareness” is a goal that Buddhism shares with art, or at least the
art that I value. This is the art that works to wake you up, to make you more aware
of the systems we’re part of, to extend the boundaries of your empathy, your
understanding, your humanity. But this has not been the task of all art. The
cartoons of squinting, crouching Japs during World War II helped Americans
dehumanize and then imprison their neighbors; the constant comparisons of Jews to
insects in the Third Reich led to exterminating them with insecticide in the showers
of the death camps; the pervasive  media—movies, tv, ads, books, websites—that help
create a real world in which women are disposable toys that are fun to torture.

Here’s the description of two games made by Ubisoft, which also makes military
recruitment games:

Prowl the waters as the captain of a German submarine in a never-before-seen theatre
of operations – the Indian Ocean. Take part in the war against British supply lines
off the coast of North Africa and support the Japanese war against the U.S. Navy

There’s only one way to the top ranks of the underground world of paid assassins and
it’s going to get messy.

And then there’s Ubisoft’s game developed with the US army: Built in partnership
with the U.S. Army, this game offers the most true to life Army experience, allowing
you to create a soldier and take him through the high risk excitement of an Army
career. Intense single player missions and high adrenaline multiplayer action build
the skills of your soldier and advancing him through his career.

It doesn’t include, I suspect, chances to kill unarmed civilians, to get raped by a
superior officer, to be so injured in combat you survive with multiple missing limbs
and disabilities or severe brain damage, it doesn’t include simulations of trying to
get VA benefits, or living disabled, or becoming homeless or committing PTSD-related
domestic violence. To say the least, its version of what being a modern soldier
entails is incomplete.

Art matters. Plato was wrong; it’s not separate from life; it guides and feeds and
sometimes strangles it. There is the practice of awareness and of unawareness, and
there is an art of unawareness, the propaganda, the caricatures, the distortions,
the games, that teach us not to feel, to exclude this group from our compassion and
that from human rights, that leads to the war that is mass murder by a noble
nationalist name.

We are kind by nature. We have to be taught to be callous, to hate, to kill, to lose
empathy, to ourselves be dehumanized. The murdered are alive until the end, but
their killers have died a little already as their humanity shrank from their victims
and from their own hearts and souls. And today, we’re here in front of a place that
uses technology to help bring kids into the military where they’ll learn not to feel
long enough to kill but they will feel, and feel shame, feel guilt, feel horror,
feel stuck in the nightmare that is war, feel so overwhelmingly that a lot of them
from this war have chosen to kill themselves to end the awareness and the empathy
that couldn’t be rooted out but became unbearable.

Like the mother who died in Nagasaki, like millions in Iraq now, they have been in
hell, and here we are at one of its gates. At the gates of this hell I want to say
to you not Dante’s old Abandon hope ye who enter here, but abandon apathy, delusion,
and all the impediments to the practice of awareness for all beings—not the theory,
but the practice with all its practical consequences, our neverending task.

This August 6, on the 63rd Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, come out and ask the Producers and developers of America’s Army to stop helping the Army recruit children. 

We are asking you to consider three steps:

1.  Support for our campaign against America’s Army

2.  Sign our letter and endorse this campaign.

3.  Participate in our upcoming event on Hiroshima Day (Wed., Aug. 6), at noon, in South Park (btw 2nd/3rd, Bryant/Brannan), asking these companies to either withdraw from their Army contracts or provide a warning label: “This game is designed to recruit children in violation of international law.  Military service can be hazardous to your health.”