America Is Under Attack — but THE QUESTION is — by Whom?

Almost everyone in America now believes that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill President John F. Kennedy. We believe it was a conspiracy. We suspect it was the CIA or FBI who killed our own president.

And even now, every mainstream newspaper, radio station and TV station stands by the ridiculous Warren Commission report.

Comparisons with the absurd state of the press in the failing Soviet Union at the state of its collapse are unavoidable.

At the time of the assassination almost everyone in America believed that Oswald did in fact kill JFK.

The only reason we are closer to the truth now is due to the work of many independent journalists, researchers who have devoted entire lives to the truth. The reason we did not know the truth at first is because of the laziness, the "complicitness," the lack of real journalistic work done by America's newspapers, TV news programs and radio — perhaps because of the many CIA agents disguised as "journalists" throughout America.

The New American Dream website exists because we think the truth is important.

With the election of Barack Obama we thought this would be a good time to burst like formerly blind bats from the dark cave of depression and lies and oppression and death of the Bush years.

Some things just are not talked about in America, either at Thanksgiving dinner or press conferences in Washington, D.C.

No public discussion beyond a whisper concealed by a hand.

Mention something outside the boundaries of accepted chit chat and your relatives, with one roll of the eyes, send you on a long slow train to Siberia.

It's effective.

The simple American roll of the eyes makes a person not want to talk about some things. Who wants to be thought of as a crazy person? Who wants to think of oneself that way?

But the result is that we end up not daring to ever mention important things that have an influence on our times and our lives and the lives of our children.

And in the process the pages of our history books become junk food, Twinkies and Ho Ho's for our minds.


So ... that is the reason for this website, which has been running since January 1, 2009 — to open the floor for discussion, to talk about some things — to say there are no wrong questions.

This is America and we are Americans and we are still alive and so we still have a chance to do something good.

The old American Dream had to do with gaining riches — going to work, maintaining a routine, a job, a house, a lawn — and trying to forget about the rest of the world, letting others live their lives in poverty — just so long as we and ours did not.

The New American Dream is that we will truly become the good people we have always imagined ourselves to be.

Please take time to explore this website. There is a lot here.

We hope you will enjoy it.

Thank you. .... and .... and ... and ... and ....

Also

In the archives below you will find exclusive NAD interviews with these interesting folks:

Elena Siff Erenburg, political fine artist living in Los Angeles.

Allen Ruff, bookstore worker and author in Madison

Len Osanic, Black Op Radio, Vancouver, Canada

Levi Asher, a writer and literary critic in New York City

Geov Parrish, Seattle journalist, activist

Bill Polonsky, Yukon 9/11 Truth

Daphne Webb, Denver writer, activist, green wedding planner

Michael Boldin, a populist blooms in L.A.

Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher magazine

Will Braun, editor of Geez Magazine, Canada

Ben Heine, political artist in Belgium

Matt Sullivan, editor of The Rock Creek Free Press, Washington, D.C.

Sam Smith, editor of The Progressive Review, from Maine

Jarek Kupsc, 9/11 Truth filmmaker, "The Reflecting Pool"

Bill O'Driscoll, arts editor, Pittsburgh City Paper

Gerry McCarthy, editor of The Social Edge, Canada

Jim Cullen, editor of The Progressive Populist magazine, Austin, Texas

Bartcop, old-school blogger from Tulsa

Lee Rayburn, radio show host from Madison, Wisconsin

Aimee England, bookseller in Michigan

Al Markowitz, poet for the working woman & man

Timbre Wolf, a Tulsa peace minstrel goes to Hawaii

Steven Stothard, a radical grows in Indiana

Dale Clark, an artist in the desert near Bisbee, Arizona

Jacqui Devenuau, Green Party organizer in Maine

Don Harkins, co-editor of The Idaho Observer

Stewart Bradley, independent film producer in Indiana

Rick Smith, Cleveland area radio host

William P. Meyers, independent book publisher, political activist in California

Ian Woods, Canadian publisher, 9/11 Truth activist

Richard D. Brinkman, Edmonton, Canada 9/11 Truth

Lynn Berg, New York City actor

Alejandro Rojas, of MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network

Brian Kasoro, publisher of The Liberator magazine, Brooklyn, New York

Brother Raymond, walked from Denver to D.C., for truth

Korey Rowe, one of the producers of Loose Change, New York State

Dave Zweifel, editor of The Madison Capital Times

Cathleen Howard, expatriate, from Tucson to Mexico, to pursue her dreams

Sander Hicks, Brooklyn radical entrepreneur, writer, publisher

Joe Bageant, America's blue-collar author, living in Belize

Frida Berrigan, a lifetime of faith, hope and love, living in NYC

Denise Diaz, brewing up a revolution, at The Ritual Cafe in Des Moines

Deanna Taylor, Green Party activist, teacher, in Salt Lake City

Rossie Indira-Vltchek, writer, filmmaker in Jarkarta, Indonesia

Nora Barrows-Friedman, Pacifica reporter in Gaza, sometimes in California

Delaney Bruce, Friends of Peltier

Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs, in Taos, New Mexico

Michael Sprong, South Dakota Catholic Worker

Brian Terrell, Des Moines Catholic Worker

Bob Graf, One of the Milwaukee 14

Loren Coleman, Bigfoot researcher, living in Maine

Monty Borror, Sci-Fi artist from Virginia

David Ray, Great American Poet, in Tucson

Jack Blood, radio show host, in Austin, Texas

Danny Schechter, A Real Reporter, from New York City

Bob Kincaid, host, Head-On Radio Show

Tony Packes, Animal Farm Radio Host, Keeping An Eye on Big Brother

Richard Flamer, Working With the Poor in Chiapas

David Ray Griffin, 9/11 Truth activist author, from Isla Vista, California

Barry Crimmins, U.S. comedian, author, social activist

Bret Hayworth, political reporter for the Sioux City [IA] Journal

Lisa Casey, publisher of website All Hat No Cattle, Florida

Joe & Elaine Mayer, activist couple in Rochester, Minnesota

Fr. Darrell Rupiper, U.S. priest revolutionary [deceased]

Whitney Trettien, MIT student, Green Party activist

Meria Heller, radio show host, in Arizona

Phil Hey, professor, poet, Sioux City, Iowa

John Crawford, book publisher, Albuquerque

Steve Moon, Iowa Bigfoot researcher

Carol Brouillet, California social activist, 9/11 Truth

Russell Brutsche, Santa Cruz artist

Kevin Barrett, professor, radio show host, 9/11 Truth activist, in Wisconsin

A'Jamal Rashad Byndon, social activist in Omaha

Chris Rooney, Vancouver, Canada Catholic Worker, website publisher

Marc Estrin, political novelist, from the left, in Vermont

Peter Dale Scott, poet, professor, author, activist, in California

Anthony Rayson, anarchist zine publisher, works with prisoners, from Chicago

Alice Cherbonnier, editor of The Baltimore Chronicle, an independent newspaper

We Celebrate Thirty Years of Resistance to the United States military at Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha, Nebraska

THE Frank Cordaro File

Happenings, notices passed along by
Frank Cordaro of the Des Moines Catholic Worker
— THE most dynamic peace group in the world.

___________

30 Years
At Offutt Air Force Base

Since 1979, many, many people have vigiled,
been arrested, served jail & prison time
in opposition to the United States military
— in THE belly of the beast, just south of Omaha, Nebraska.

For a slide show on this year's demonstration — as well as a slide show of the 1979 demonstration — go HERE, to the Des Moines Catholic Worker website.

________

Warfare State Winners

WINNERS AND LOSERS IN THE AMERICAN WARFARE STATE

by Sherwood Ross

“On my last day in Iraq,” veteran McClatchy News correspondent Leila Fadel wrote August 9th, “as on my first day in Iraq, I couldn’t see what the United States and its allies had accomplished. …I couldn’t understand what thousands of American soldiers had died for and why hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been killed.”

Quite a few oil company CEO’s and “defense” industry executives, however, do have a pretty good idea of why the war Fadel deplored is being fought. As Michael Cherkasky, president of Kroll Inc., said a year after the Iraq invasion boosted his security firm’s profits 231 percent: “It’s the Gold Rush.” What follows is a brief look at some of the outfits that cashed in, and at the multitudes that got took.

“Defense Earnings Continue to Soar,” Renae Merle wrote in The Washington Post on July 30, 2007. “Several of Washington’s largest defense contractors said last week that they continue to benefit from a boom in spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…” Merle added, “Profit reports from Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin showed particularly strong results in operations in the region.” More recently, Boeing’s second-quarter earnings this year rose 17 percent, Associated Press reported, in part because of what AP called “robust defense sales.”

But war, it turns out, is not only unhealthy for human beings, it is not uniformly good for the economy. Many sectors suffer, including non-defense employment, as a war can destroy more jobs than it creates. While the makers of warplanes may be flying high, these are “Tough Times For Commercial Aerospace,” Business Week reported July 13th. “The sector is contending with the deepening global recession, declining air traffic, capacity cuts by airlines, and reduced availability of financing for aircraft purchases.”

The general public suffers, too. “As President Bush tried to fight the war without increasing taxes, the Iraq war has displaced private investment and/or government expenditures, including investments in infrastructure, R&D and education: they are less than they would otherwise have been,” write Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes in “The Three Trillion Dollar War”(Norton). Stiglitz holds a Nobel Prize in economics and Bilmes is former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce. They say government money spent in Iraq does not stimulate the economy in the way that the same amounts spent at home would.

The war has also starved countless firms for expansion bucks. “Higher borrowing costs for business since the beginning of the Iraq war are bleeding manufacturing investment,” Greg Palast wrote in “Armed Madhouse”(Plume). And when entrepreneurs---who hire so many---lack growth capital, job creation takes a real hit.

We might recall too, the millions abroad who filled the streets to protest President Bush’s impending attack on Iraq and who have quit buying U.S. products, further reducing sales and employment. “American firms, especially those that have become icons, like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, may also suffer, not so much from explicit boycotts as from a broader sense of dislike of all things American,” Stiglitz and Bilmes write. “America’s standing in the world has never been lower,” they say, noting that in 2007, U.S. “favorable” ratings plunged to 29 percent in Indonesia and nine percent in Turkey. “Large numbers of wealthy people in the Middle East---where the oil money and inequality put individual wealth in the billions---have shifted banking from America to elsewhere,” they say.

Because the Iraq war crippled that country’s oil industry, output fell, supplies tightened, and, according to Palast, “World prices leaped to reflect the shortfall…” What’s more, he points out, after the Iraq invasion the Saudis withheld more than a million barrels of oil a day from the market. “The one-year 121% post-invasion jump in the price of crude, from under $30 a barrel to over $60, sucked that $120 billion windfall to the Saudis from SUV drivers and factory owners in the West.” Count the Saudis among the big winners.

The oil spike subtracted 1.2% from the gross domestic product, “costing the USA just over one million jobs,” Palast reckoned. Stiglitz and Bilmes said the oil price spike means “American families have had to spend about 5 percent more of their income on gasoline and heating than before.” Last year, the Iraq and Afghan wars cost each American household $138 per month in taxes, they estimated. Count the Joneses among the big losers.

Palast writes, “It has been a very good war for Big Oil---courtesy of OPEC price hikes. The five oil giants saw profits rise from $34 billion in 2002 to $81 billion in 2004…But this tsunami of black ink was nothing compared to the wave of $120 billion in profits to come in 2006: $15.6 billion for Conoco, $17.1 billion for Chevron and the Mother of All Earnings, Exxon’s $39.5 billion in 2006 on sales of $378 billion.

Palast notes the oil firms have their own reserves whose value is tied to OPEC’s price targets, and “The rise in the price of oil after the first three years of the war boosted the value of the reserves of ExxonMobil oil alone by just over $666 billion…Chevron Oil, where Condoleezza Rice had served as a director, gained a quarter trillion dollars in value…I calculate that the top five oil operators saw their reserves rise in value by over $2.363 trillion.” Who’s surprised when Forbes reports of the ten most profitable corporations in the world five are now oil and gas companies---Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and Petro-China.
“Since the Iraq War began,” Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive wrote, “aerospace and defense industry stocks have more than doubled. General Dynamics did even better than that. Its stock has tripled.” An Associated Press account published July 23rd observed: “With the military fighting two wars and Pentagon budgets on a steady upward rise, defense companies regularly posted huge gains in profits and rosier earnings forecasts during recent quarters. Even as the rest of the economy tumbled last fall, military contractors, with the federal government as their primary customer, were a relative safe haven.”

Among the big winners are top Pentagon contractors, as ranked by WashingtonTechnology.com as of 2008. Halliburton spun off KBR in 2007 and their operations are covered later. Data was selected for typical years 2007-09.

1.Lockheed Martin
2. Boeing
3. KBR
4. Northrop Grumman
5. General Dynamics
6. Raytheon
7. SAIC
8. L-3 Communciations
9. EDS Corporation
10. Fluor Corporation

# Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, Md., a major warplane builder, in 2007 alone earned profits of $3 billion on sales of nearly $42 billion.

# Boeing, of Chicago, saw its 2007 net profit shoot up 84% to $4 billion, fed by “strong growth in defense earnings,” according to an Agence France-Presse report.

# Northrop Grumman, of Los Angeles, a manufacturer of bombers, warships and military electronics, had 2007 profits of $1.8 billion on sales of $32 billion.

# General Dynamics, of Falls Church, Va., had profits in 2008 of about $2.5 billion on sales of $29 billion. It makes tanks, combat vehicles, and mission-critical information systems.

# Raytheon, of Waltham, Mass, reported about $23 billion in sales for 2008. It is the world’s largest missile maker and Bloomberg News says it is benefiting from “higher domestic defense spending and U.S. arms exports.”

# Scientific International Applications Corp., of La Jolla, Calif., an engineering and technology supplier to the Pentagon, had sales of $10 billion for fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2009, and net income of $452 million.

# L-3, of New York City, has enjoyed sales growth of about 25% a year recently. Its total 2008 sales of $15 billion brought it profits of nearly $900 million. Its primary customer is the Defense Department, to which it supplies high tech surveillance and reconnaissance systems.

# EDS Corp., of Plano, Tex., purchased by Hewlett-Packard in May, 2008, had 2007 sales of nearly $20 billion. Its priority project is building the $12 billion Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, said to be the largest private network in the world.

# Fluor Corp., of Irvine, Tex., an engineering and construction firm, had net earnings of $720 million in 2008 on sales of $22 billion.

The good times continue to roll for military contractors under President Obama, who has increased the Pentagon’s budget by 4 percent to a total of about $700 billion. One reason military contractors fare so well is that no-bid contracts with built-in profit margins tumble out of the Pentagon cornucopia directly into their laps. The element of “risk,” so basic to capitalism, has been trampled by Pentagon purchasing agents even as its top brass rattle their missiles at socialist governments abroad. If this isn’t enough, in 2004 the Bush administration slipped a special provision into tax legislation to cut the tax on war profits to 7% compared to 21% paid by most U.S. manufacturers.

Former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, according to author Pratap Chatterjee in his “Halliburton’s Army”(Nation Books), raked in “more than $25 billion since the company won a ten-year contract in late 2001 to supply U.S. troops in combat situations around the world.” As all know, President Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney previously headed Halliburton (1995-2000) and landed in the White House the same year Halliburton got its humungous outsourcing contract. Earlier, as Defense Secretary, (1989-1993) Cheney sparked the revolutionary change to outsourcing military support services to the privateers. Today, Halliburton ranks among the biggest “defense” winners of all.

Halliburton’s army “employs enough people to staff one hundred battalions, a total of more than 50,000 personnel who work for KBR, a contract that is now projected to reach $150 billion,” Chatterjee writes. “Together with the workers who are rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure and the private security divisions of companies like Blackwater, Halliburton’s Army now outnumber the uniformed soldiers on the ground in Iraq.”

Accompanying Pentagon outsourcing, Chatterjee writes, “is the potential for bribery, corruption, and fraud. Dozens of Halliburton/KBR workers and their subcontractors have already been arrested and charged, and several are already serving jail terms for stealing millions of dollars, notably from Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.”

There’s likely no better example of how Halliburton/KBR literally burned taxpayers’ dollars than its destruction of $85,000 Mercedes and Volvo trucks when they got flat tires and were abandoned. James Warren, a convoy truck driver testified to the Government Affairs Committee in July, 2004, “KBR didn’t seem to care what happened to its trucks…It was common to torch trucks that we abandoned…even though we all carried chains and could have towed them to be repaired.”

Bunnatine Greenhouse, once top contract official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, made headlines by demanding old-fashioned free enterprise competitive bidding. She told a Senate committee in 2005: “I can unequivocally state the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed” in 20 years of working on government contracts. Greenhouse was demoted for her adherence to the law, Chatterjee said, but she became a cover girl at “Fraud” magazine and was honored by the Giraffe Society, a tribute to one Federal employee who stuck her neck out.

Tales of Halliburton/KBR’s alleged swindles fill books. Rory Maybee, a former Halliburton/KBR contractor who worked at dining facilities in Camp Anaconda in 2004 told the U.S. Senate Democratic Policy Committee “that the company often provided rotten food to the troops and often charged the army for 20 thousand meals a day when it was serving only ten thousand.” Food swindling, though, is small potatoes. Say Stiglitz and Bilmes: “KBR has also been implicated in a lucrative insurance scam that has gouged U.S. taxpayers for at least $600 million.”

To fatten profit margins, contractors who cheat U.S. taxpayers apparently think nothing of underpaying their help. “While the executives of KBR, Blackwater, and other firms are making profits, many of those performing the menial work, such as cooking, driving, cleaning, and laundry, are poorly paid nationals from India, Pakistan, and other Asian and African countries,” Stiglitz and Bilmes write. “Indian cooks are reported to earn $3-$5 a day. At the same time, KBR bills the American taxpayer $100 per load of laundry.” Blackwater, the security firm repeatedly charged with shoot-first tactics, fraudulently obtained small-business set-aside contracts worth more than $144 million, they assert.

According to “Blackwater”(Nation Books) by Jeremy Scahill, the security firm in 2004 got a five-year contract to protect U.S. officials in Iraq totaling $229 million but as of June, 2006, just two years into the contract, it had been paid $321 million, and by late 2007 it had been paid more than $750 million. Scahill reports an audit charged that Blackwater included profit in its overhead and its total costs. The result was “not only in a duplication of profit but a pyramiding of profit since in effect Blackwater is applying profit to profit.” Scahill writes, “The audit also alleged that the company tried to inflate its profits by representing different Blackwater divisions as wholly separate companies.”

“As of summer, 2007, there were more ‘private contractors’ deployed on the U.S. government payroll in Iraq (180,000) than there were actual soldiers (160,000),” Scahill said. “These contractors worked for some 630 companies and drew personnel from more than 100 countries around the globe. …This meant the U.S. military had actually become the junior partner in the coalition that occupies Iraq.” And each Blackwater operative was costing the American taxpayers $1,222 per day. The Defense Department remains, of course, America’s No. 1 Employer, with 2.3 million workers (roughly twice the size of Wal-Mart, which has 1.2 million staffers) perhaps because America’s biggest export is war.
“Who pays Halliburton and Bechtel?” philosopher Noam Chomsky asks rhetorically in his “Imperial Ambitions” (Metropolitan Books). “The U.S. taxpayer,” he answers. “The same taxpayers fund the military-corporate system of weapons manufacturers and technology companies that bombed Iraq. So first you destroy Iraq, then you rebuild it. It’s a transfer of wealth from the general population to narrow sectors of the population.” It’s also been a body blow to Iraq, killing a million inhabitants, forcing two million into exile and millions more out of their homes. Incredibly, the U.S. proposed to reconstruct the nation it invaded with their oil revenues---and then, after taking perhaps $8 billion left the job undone. (Since the U.S. kept no records of how the dough was dispensed, it is not possible to identify the recipients.)

As Stiglitz and Bilmes remind us, “The money spent on Iraq could have been spent on schools, roads, or research. These investments yield high returns.” In an article in the August 24th Nation, policy analyst Georgia Levenson Keohane cites the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to the effect that 48 states are reporting deficits totaling nearly $166 billion, projected to reach, cumulatively, $350 billion-$370 billion by 2011. “Although many states have attempted tax increases, these are politically challenging and often insufficient to close the gaps. Consequently, statehouses have been forced to cut vital services at a time when the need for them is ever more desperate,” Keohane writes.

In the same issue, reporter Marc Cooper notes the poverty rate in Los Angeles county borders on 20 percent; that California’s schools are ranked 47th nationally; that the state college system has suspended admissions for Spring, 2010; that thousands of state workers are being laid off and/or forced to take furlough days; that unemployment has reached 12 percent; that state parks are being closed; that personal bankruptcies peaked last; that one in four “capsized mortgages in the U.S. is in California.” Plus, California’s bond rating is just above the junk level and it faces a $26 billion budget shortfall.

California’s woes need to be examined in the light of the $116 billion the National Priorities Project of Northampton, Mass., says its taxpayers have shelled out for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Those same dollars roughly would put four million California students through a four-year college. Bear in mind, too, outlays for those wars are but a fraction of all Pentagon spending, so the total military tax bill is far higher than $116 billion to California.

In calling for a reduction in military spending, Rep. Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) said, "The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy….(American] well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face." On the other hand, maybe Americans want to keep paying to operate 2,000 domestic and foreign military bases and spend more money on armies and weapons of death than all other nations combined. Maybe they like living in the greatest Warfare State the world has ever known. My hunch, though, is a lot of Americans haven’t connected the country’s looming bankruptcy with the greedy, gang from the military-industrial complex out to control the planet, its people, and its precious resources.

After the long-suffering civilian population of Iraq, whose crime was having oil---a country Steiglitz says that has been rendered virtually unlivable---the big losers are the American taxpayers who are bleeding income, jobs, and quality of life, not just sacrificing family members, on behalf of a runaway war machine. California’s plight is being repeated everywhere. A great nation is being looted and millions of its citizens are being pauperized before our eyes. #

(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations consultant who has worked as a reporter for major dailies, a publicist in the civil rights movement, and as a wire service columnist. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com or visit his web site Sherwood Ross Associates.)

NINE ARRESTED — in Wisconsin at U.S. military base

Wisconsin Peacemakers: Janet Parker, (Madison – 2nd from left), Bonnie Urfer, (Luck – center), Joy First (Monona 2nd from right) , and Tom Haebig (not in the photo) crossed the line at Ft. McCoy today – to call for an end to wars, occupation, and militarism. Other anti-war activists crossing the line were Vicki Andrews of Grand Rapids, MN (left to right) , Alice Gerard of NY, Brian Terrell of Iowan, Gerald Paoli of Chicago, and Dylan Parkes, also from Iowa.


AUGUST 10, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: NUKEWATCH 715-491-3813
-or- Wisc. Net for Peace Justice 608-250-9240

NINE ARRESTED AT END OF 3-DAY
PEACE WALK TO FORT McCOY

TOMAH, Wisconsin – Nine anti-war activists were detained at Mt. McCoy after walking onto the central-Wisconsin base to protest the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the continued U.S. possession of nuclear weapons.

Five of the nine were ticketed and released from the site after being permanently banned from entering the base again.

Four of the group were taken by U.S. marshals to Madison where they face federal trespass charges in U.S. District Court. The four had previously been banned from the base for earlier protests.

All nine were part of a three-day walk for peace that began Aug. 7 near Camp Williams.

The walk was also a commemoration of the U.S. atomic attacks bombings of the cities of Hiroshima August 6, and Nagasaki August 9, 1945, and an appeal for a moratorium on the use of armor-piercing shells made from waste uranium-238 known as “depleted uranium” munitions.

Walkers carried dozens of placards along highways 12 and 21, principle among them were pleas: to bring all the troops home; to compensate the victims of the U.S. military occupations; to abolish nuclear weapons; and to inform the National Guard troops of all their legal rights.

The four activists being held in federal custody in Madison pending arraignment are Brian Terrell, 53, of Maloy, Iowa; Bonnie Urfer, 57, of Luck, Wis.; Alice Gerard, 52, of Grand Island, New York; and Joy first, 55, of Madison, Wisc.

The five ticketed and released pending arraignment are Gerald Paoli, 49, of Chicago, IL; Janet Parker 41, of Madison; Dylan Parker, 20, of Davenport, IA; Vicki Andrews, 64, of Grand Rapids, MN; and Tom Haebig, 72, of West Bend, Wisc.

-end-

--
Nukewatch
740A Round Lake Road
Luck, WI 54853
(715) 472-4185
www.nukewatch.com

CARL KABAT — an American Hero we have never heard of — over 17 years in prison for fighting the U.S. military — headed to Colorado to do it again

THE Plowshares 8

[Fr. Carl Kabat at far left]

September 9, 1980: Daniel Berrigan, Jesuit priest, author and poet from New York City; Philip Berrigan, father and co-founder of Jonah House in Baltimore, MD; Dean Hammer, member of the Covenant Peace Community in New Haven, CT; Elmer Maas, musician and former college teacher from New York City; Carl Kabat, Oblate priest and missionary; Anne Montgomery, Religious of the Sacred Heart sister and teacher from New York City; Molly Rush, mother and founder of the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh and John Schuchardt, ex-marine, lawyer, father and member of Jonah House, entered the General Electric Nuclear Missile Re-entry Division in King of Prussia, PA where nose cones for the Mark 12A warheads were made.

They hammered on two nose cones, poured blood on documents and offered prayers for peace. They were arrested and initially charged with over ten different felony and misdemeanor counts. In February 1981, they underwent a jury trial in Norristown, Pennsylvania. During their trial they were denied a "justification defense" and could not present expert testimony. Due to the Court's suppression of individual testimony about the Mark 12A and U.S. nuclear war-fighting policies, four left the trial and returned to witness at G.E. They were re-arrested and returned to court. They were convicted by a jury of burglary, conspiracy and criminal mischief and sentenced to prison terms of five to ten years. They appealed and the Pennsylvania Superior Court reversed their s. conviction in February 1984. The State of Pennsylvania then appealed that decision. Following a ruling in the fall of 1985 by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in favor of the State on certain issues (including the exclusion of the justification defense), the case was returned to the Superior Court Appeals Panel. In December of 1987, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania refused their appeal, but ordered a re-sentencing. This ruling, however, was appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In February 1989 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied a hearing of any further issues in the case, and on October 2, 1989 the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would not hear the Plowshares Eight Appeal.

On April 10, 1990 the Plowshares Eight were resentenced by the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas in Norristown and, with neither the prosecutor nor G.E. making any recommendations or asking reparations, paroled for up to 23 and 1/2 months in consideration of time already served in prison. Judge James Buckingham listened attentively to statements by defendants, attorney Ramsey Clark, Dr. Robert J. Lifton, and Professors Richard Falk and Howard Zinn, placing the "crime" in the context of the common plight of humanity, international law, America’s long tradition of dissent, and the primacy of individual conscience over entrenched political system.

Make Sure To See
UPDATE Below!!!!

Father Carl Kabat OMI celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood. His half-century of ministry as missionary, pastor, teacher and social activist inspires all who know him.

His religious community celebrated, his family celebrated, and finally his Catholic Worker family celebrated. The picture above is typical Catholic Worker liturgy... Joyful - loving - informal. Carl is our spiritual leader, our brother, our friend. He lives among us and he leads us in love of Jesus by word and example.

Carl Kabat, OMI 72; from St. Louis, Missouri; 47 years a Roman Catholic priest; worked as a missionary in the Philippines and Brazil; participated in the first plowshares/pruning hooks action in 1980 and the first Silo Pruning Hooks action in 1984 and other plowshares actions; served about 16 years in jails and prisons.

We are fools and clowns for God and humanity's sake. Over 2,500 American soldiers have died because of nuclear weapons in the past several years in Iraq . I remember Eisenhower who said that every weapon that is made is a theft from the poor. The only condemnation of Vatican II was that nuclear weapons are a crime against humanity and are to be condemned unreservedly. — Carl Kabat, OMI

__________

Carl Kabat will turn 76 in October,
and he figures to be in jail again by then.

In fact, he's headed to Colorado today
to commit a crime, the
same crime he's been committing for the last 25 years.

He intends to attack a missile silo.

He's a Roman Catholic priest involved in the
Plowshares movement,
which is named after the passage from Isaiah:

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks."

__________

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Aug. 3, 2009


"Anti-nukes priest here readies for next arrest"
by Bill McClellan


http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/billmcclellan/story/
4540F6EFB0C2CC0F862576060073D993?OpenDocument

Carl Kabat will turn 76 in October, and he figures to be in jail again by then. In fact, he's headed to Colorado today to commit a crime, the same crime he's been committing for the last 25 years.

He intends to attack a missile silo. He's a Roman Catholic priest involved in the Plowshares movement, which is named after the passage from Isaiah: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks."

He was resting Sunday, preparing for the long drive today. I visited him at a home owned by the Catholic Workers on the city's near north side. We sat at a picnic table in the backyard. He was wearing a green and white pullover shirt and a pair of tattered shorts. I asked if he ever wore his Roman collar.

"When I break the law," he said, and then he laughed. He seemed to be in a very good mood.

He was raised on a farm near Mount Vernon, Ill. He celebrated the 50th anniversary of his ordination a couple of weeks ago with a Mass at the picnic table in the backyard. He very seldom goes to a traditional church. Still, he remains in good standing with his order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

In the early days of his priesthood, the order sent him to the Philippines and then to Brazil. He came back to this country in 1973 just as the Vietnam war was winding down and the peace movement was losing steam. Nevertheless, he found a niche — the anti-nuclear weapon movement.

With all the evils in the world, it's hard to pick one, he told me, but if this one doesn't get solved, it could mean the end of everything.

He also talked about the need for individuals to act before there is a nuclear holocaust. He said we can't ask God to stop this because God didn't start it. We started it, and we have to stop it, Kabat said.

He seemed serene about getting arrested again. How much time did he expect to get?

"Somewhere between 18 years and 15 months," he said, and he laughed.

He was given an 18-year sentence for taking a jackhammer to a silo in 1984 — the sentence was reduced on appeal and he did less than 10 years — and he was given a 15-month sentence in 2006 for attacking a silo in North Dakota.

Maybe the country is becoming more sympathetic toward your cause, I said. Speaking of change,

I asked if the election of Barack Obama seemed auspicious for the Plowshare folks.

He dug through some papers he had in front of him, found a newspaper article in which Obama
talked about the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. Kabat read it aloud, quoting Obama: "I am not naive. This goal of a nuclear-free world will not be reached quickly, perhaps not even in my lifetime."

__________

"Basically, I want to help Obama.
I'll take one off-line."

__________

Then Kabat looked up and smiled. "Basically, I want to help Obama. I'll take one off-line."

I asked if he expected to go to a minimum security prison camp, or a medium security federal prison. He shrugged, and said it didn't really matter. He said that in some ways, he got along better with poorer inmates. The more downtrodden, the more supportive they were of him,
he said.

He spoke almost wistfully of a stint he did in a Washington jail. He said that in a minimum security camp, the inmates tended to be better off. Crooked businessmen, he said. Right-wingers tended not to be sympathetic toward his ideas, he said.

I asked if he had seen "Dr. Strangelove."

No, he had not, he said. He didn't see many movies. He said he didn't seem to have the time.

"I have to get back to jail so I can get back to reading and writing," he said, and he laughed again.

He's been out of prison for almost two years. His last incarceration had to do with an attack on a silo in North Dakota, a state that has long fascinated him. He once told me that if North Dakota were to secede from the union, it would be the third greatest nuclear power in the world.

During his next attack, which he figures will take place on Thursday, he intends to wear a clown costume. He first wore a costume when he attacked a silo in North Dakota with a sledge hammer in 1994. That attack occurred on Good Friday, which was also April Fool's Day.

"Weare fools for God's sake," he said, and I must have looked mystified, because he then added that the quote came from the New Testament. He got five years for that attack.

Kabat is odd, but smart, and he knows that many people think it's silly to attack missile silos with sledgehammers, and to go to jail for doing so. Tilting at windmills might make more sense.

But he does it, he said, out of love.

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy. I don't want to be apathetic," he said.

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Related Posting:
Short slide show of Fr Carl Kabat's 50th Anniversary Celebration at
the St Louis CW July 18, 2009
http://groups.google.com/group/National-CW-E-mail-List/browse_frm/thread/cdc9ac23045dee26#

UPDATE!!!!

Carl entered the site at about 8:00 a.m. By 8:34 a.m. he had hung banners and had begun to symbolically disarm the missile. As of 8:57 a.m. the security forces were beginning to move in.

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Fr Carl's statement to press


We are Fools and Clowns For The Holy One And Humanity's Sake


I Father Carl Kabat O.M.I. come to this evil place today as a Roman Catholic priest, of fifty years, to show what insanity is in the ground here and other silos in our beautiful country.

President Barack Obama has stated, "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act...So today I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment and desire to seek the peace and serenity of a world without nuclear weapons."

The Roman Catholic Church, of which I am a priest, at the close of its Vatican Council II in 1965 condemned nuclear bombs as a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY and are to be condemned unreservedly.

The World Council of Churches has proclaimed that "the manufacture, deployment or use of nuclear bombs is a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY"

I support President Barack Obama's desire and have attempted to do my little bit in his effort.

The nuclear bomb that is in the ground here is more than 20 times more powerful that the atomic bombs we dropped on the Japanese. Each of those bombs killed more than 100,000 people. At lest twenty times that number totals more than 2 million people.

The Bible says in the words of Isaiah "They shall beat their spears into pruning hooks and their swords into plowshares".

May the Holy One have mercy on us for not doing so.


Fr Carl Kabat O.M.I., the man who was arrested this morning at a Weld County Missile Silo.

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Aug 6, 2009
Greeley CO Tribune

Priest arrested for breaching missile silo


http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20090806/NEWS/908069993/1002/NONE&parentprofile=1001


A Roman Catholic priest was arrested this morning after cutting a hole in a fence in a Weld County missile silo and entering the facility.


Weld Sheriff deputies responded to a missile silo between Weld County Roads 86 and 88 along Weld County Road 113 at 8:50 this morning on report of a man trespassing.

There, they found a 75-year-old man inside the perimeter of the fence, and was arrested without incident.

The silo is one of 150 missile silos patrolled by security teams from Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne. All silos have sensors, which alert the base to someone's presence.

Warren authorities expected the breach after an article that ran in the Monday edition of the St. Louis Dispatch, stating Carl Kabat, a Roman Catholic priest, was planning the breach to cap off 25 years of nuclear protests.

WE reject any notion that Paul Tibbets is an American Hero — we must stop calling killers heroes

Paul Tibbets

Paul Tibbets

"Little Boy"

Hiroshima Dead

A Poem to Paul Tibbets, by Nora Nickerson

American To American

Nora Nickerson writes poetry in her spare time and has been published in Laughing Dog, River Library Anthology and has been a featured poet against war on Human Harmony, a cable television program. She works as a nurse practitioner at the Veteran's Administration medical center in Tucson where she hopes to influence military minds to consider peaceful means to conflict.

__________

"Here it is and it is not a short one. I spent some time researching this poem and was astounded at Paul Tibbets and his life/words/attitude and inabilty to ever offer any apology to those who survived.

The whole freudian bit (naming the bomber after his mother and the bomb "little boy") is my interpretation but seemed obvious when I read about his life.

It is a bit dark. Anyway, feel free to use it!

Best Wishes and keep up your really good work!

— Nora Nickerson

__________

Paul Tibbets,
On Little Boy’s Sixtieth Birthday

"We’ve never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn't kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the shit, ‘you've killed so many civilians,’ that's their tough luck for being there.”
— Paul Tibbets to Studs Terkel

“The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
— Dwight Eisenhower

It was all so Oedipal:
the imperfect hero, puppet of fate,
mixed with tragic flaws, irony, hubris.

The characters, Enola Gay, the housewife,
your stay at home mom, Dad the good husband,
father. Thought he ran the show, ruled the roost.

Mom didn’t love Dad, not really, you knew that.
But she loved her Little Boy, her little Paul.
And you loved that Enola Gay, the big bellied
mama, who said, it’s all right son, drop
out of medical school and be a fighter pilot.

Say no to Daddy. He can’t tell you what to be.
You didn't really like Daddy anyway, wanted
him out of the way. Wanted to stand up, say no,
join the Air Force, kill the enemy, kill daddy.

Mama always understood, you wanted to be a real man,
wanted to knock up Enola Gay so you knocked her up good
with that nine thousand pound bouncing Little Boy.

You said, “There's only one way to do things, that's the right way.”

And that's just what you did, rode mama just right
until she dropped Little Boy right over that city.

You said, “it was one hell of a big bang.”

You swore you saved thousands of lives on that mission.

You would have “done anything to get to Japan and stop the killing.”

Doesn't make sense Paul, two hundred thousand died,
bodies charred, skin peeled off like wallpaper, arms stiff
outstretched, wandering ghosts in that atom sputtering fury.

But you sure did show Daddy what you could do that day
and Mama was tickled pink,“should have seen
the old gal’s belly jiggle on that one.”

It was just another mission if you didn't let imagination run away with your wits.”

I guess that's why you said you “graduated
with honors in psychic numbing,” as if that explained it all.

God, time flew, ninety years old this year and Little Boy is sixty.

Mama and Daddy dead and all those ghosts out there,
just waiting for you to open your eyes and see, waiting
for you to say, I'm sorry, maybe they're just waiting for you.

At least Oedipus knew what to do, he knew his mistaken vision
led straight to tragedy.

But after all these years, you're so numb,
you haven't figured out that you never could see.