the u.s. wall

On October 4th, the president signed into law a bill that allows for and begins funding the construction of about 700 miles of wall between Mexico and the United States. It appears that the U.S. government wants to more closely imitate the government of Israel.

Of course, this newly approved wall does not snake miles into Mexico, stealing land, creating more illegal settlements, and destroying houses, businesses, and agricultural lands, while separating families, neighbors, and communities like the other wall does. However, this development is something about which to be deeply concerned. And it does divide communities and neighbors along the border, as well as indigenous people*, like the Tohono O'odham and Yaqui, whose lands stretch across the border.

I do not want to be part of a country that builds walls. It's that simple. Walls like this are always about those with money, power, and privilege and those without. In the case of the wall in Palestine, it is the Palestinians who have next to nothing; in the example here at home, it is the non-privileged classes in Mexico who in many ways are like their siblings in Palestine. And it is corporations that will see the benefit of building this wall, in the form of profit. We need to take part in resisting the building of this wall, just as Israeli citizens should protest the wall in Palestine (and some are).


A large section of the wall being built by Israel, a portion that completely encloses the town of Qalqilya in the West Bank, is being constructed by a U.S. corporation (Detektion). Likewise, U.S. corporations will be making huge profits by building the wall along our border. Boeing has already received a contract for $67 million; the bill allocates an initial $1.2 billion for construction, although the total cost will be much higher and numerous sources have predicted the total to be from $7 to $9 billion. It is a policy that fills the pockets of rich corporations and attempts to garner votes by playing on hyped-up fear, all the while alienating humans from one another and showing the true nature of our government.

Presently, borders are at best imaginary lines that are respectfully seen as increasingly unnecessary and archaic; at worst they are lines drawn in the sand, built up with concrete and steel walls, rimmed with razor wire, all for the purpose of severing and destroying communication, friendship, respect, knowledge, and community. It is clear the
direction the U.S. is choosing.


*Three Native American nations and 23 tribes live in borderlands of Mexico and the United States. The three nations that will be impacted and divided by the wall are O’odham, Cocopah, and Kickapoo.

habaes corpus anyone?

Detainees Deserve Court Trials
By P. Sabin Willett Monday, November 14, 2005; Page A21

As the Senate prepared to vote Thursday to abolish the writ of habeas corpus, Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl were railing about lawyers like me. Filing lawsuits on behalf of the terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Terrorists! Kyl must have said the word 30 times.

As I listened, I wished the senators could meet my client Adel.

Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken.

The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later. And these facts would still be a secret but for one thing: habeas corpus.

Only habeas corpus got Adel a chance to tell a federal judge what had happened. Only habeas corpus revealed that it wasn't just Adel who was innocent -- it was Abu Bakker and Ahmet and Ayoub and Zakerjain and Sadiq -- all Guantanamo "terrorists" whom the military has found innocent.

Habeas corpus is older than even our Constitution. It is the right to compel the executive to justify itself when it imprisons people. But the Senate voted to abolish it for Adel, in favor of the same "combatant status review tribunal" that has already exonerated him. That secret tribunal didn't have much impact on his life, but Graham says it is good enough.

Adel lives in a small fenced compound 8,000 miles from his home and family. The Defense Department says it is trying to arrange for a country to take him -- some country other than his native communist China, where Muslims like Adel are routinely tortured. It has been saying this for more than two years. But the rest of the world is not rushing to aid the Bush administration, and meanwhile Adel is about to pass his fourth anniversary in a U.S. prison.

He has no visitors save his lawyers. He has no news in his native language, Uighur. He cannot speak to his wife, his children, his parents. When I first met him on July 15, in a grim place they call Camp Echo, his leg was chained to the floor. I brought photographs of his children to another visit, but I had to take them away again. They were "contraband," and he was forbidden to receive them from me.

In a wiser past, we tried Nazi war criminals in the sunlight. Summing up for the prosecution at Nuremberg, Robert Jackson said that "the future will never have to ask, with misgiving: 'What could the Nazis have said in their favor?' History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. . . . The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength."

The world has never doubted the judgment at Nuremberg. But no one will trust the work of these secret tribunals.

Mistakes are made: There will always be Adels. That's where courts come in. They are slow, but they are not beholden to the defense secretary, and in the end they get it right. They know the good guys from the bad guys. Take away the courts and everyone's a bad guy.

The secretary of defense chained Adel, took him to Cuba, imprisoned him and sends teams of lawyers to fight any effort to get his case heard. Now the Senate has voted to lock down his only hope, the courts, and to throw away the key forever. Before they do this, I have a last request on his behalf. I make it to the 49 senators who voted for this amendment.

I'm back in Cuba today, maybe for the last time. Come down and join me. Sen. Graham, Sen. Kyl -- come meet the sleepy-eyed young man with the shy smile and the gentle manner. Afterward, as you look up at the bright stars over Cuba, remembering what you've seen in Camp Echo, see whether the word "terrorist" comes quite so readily to your lips. See whether the urge to abolish judicial review rests easy on your mind, or whether your heart begins to ache, as mine does, for the country I thought I knew.

The writer is one of a number of lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay prisoners on a pro bono basis.

philo

be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

flyingears

Yesterday, I was thinking about the upcoming Columbus Day when I received an email from a friend who is from Nablus in the West Bank. It was really sad and frightening.

Essentially, Israel and the United States have been creating and maintaining a situation (part of which is cutting off all aid to the Palestinian government, outright theft of money from banks in the West Bank, and all the usual things that go along with the occupation) that is successfully producing an incredibly dire and desperate life for Palestinians. One of the goals of these policies is Palestinians fighting Palestinians, so that the U.S. and Israeli governments can point and say to the world “look, Palestinians don’t want peace. It looks like we’ll just have to maintain the occupation (while continuing to enlarge and build settlements in the West Bank, construct the wall, and confiscate more land)”.

Anyway, the email was about how difficult it was to see and feel what is happening and trying so hard to help and not knowing what will come of it. Like I said, I was really saddened and angered by it and wanted to share something about it with someone out there.

And then, later in the day, I realized for the first time who Pitkin Street (a street not far from where I live) is named after: Frederick Pitkin. A lot of folks probably already know this, but I didn’t and, since it’s not too removed from Columbus Day, I want to share it. Pitkin was a lawyer who moved to Colorado where he became a wealthy mine investor. He was one of the rich Euro-Americans who managed to take a portion of the San Juan Mountains, an area that made up about a quarter of reservation land in which many Ute people had already been confined, from the Ute people who were living there. Shortly after Colorado became a state, Pitkin became governor. A few years later, in relation to the Ute people in Colorado near the White River (in present day Rio Blanco County), he wrote: “My idea is that, unless removed by the government, they must necessarily be exterminated.” He writes a few sentences later: “The advantage that would accrue from the throwing open of 12,000,000 acres of land to miners and settlers would more than compensate all the expenses incurred.”

I wonder how many streets and buildings and other parts of our city and campus are named after people like this?

For the record: “U.S. declares Iraqis can not save their own seeds”

"As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds, which include seeds the Iraqis themselves have developed over hundreds of years. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo:Pay Monsanto, or starve .""The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection'. The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, and is the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, to be now illegal.. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified (GM) seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from seeds developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, and shared freely like agricultural 'open source.'"

Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses November 13, 2004"

According to Order 81, paragraph 66 - [B], issued by L. Paul Bremer [CFR], the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.
The paragraph states, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph [C] of Article 14 of this chapter."
Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 [C] to paragraph [B] of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/or jail time."
Iraqis Can't Save Seed January 19, 2005

The original article on this topic: Iraqi farmers aren't celebrating October 15, 2004