2 December 2003

By Kathy Kelly

On Sunday, November 23, I took part in a nonviolent civil disobedience action at Fort Benning, GA, to protest the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation — WHISC)

Shortly after more than two dozen of us entered Fort Benning and were arrested, US Military Police took us to a warehouse on the base for “processing.” I was directed to a station for an initial search, where a woman soldier began shouting at me to look straight ahead and spread my legs. I turned to ask her why she was shouting at me and was ordered to keep my mouth shut, look straight ahead, and spread my legs wider. She then began an aggressive body search. When ordered to raise one leg a second time, I temporarily lost my balance while still being roughly searched and, in my view, ‘womanhandled.’ I decided that I shouldn’t go along with this dehumanizing action any longer.

2 December 2003

The Wheels of Justice Bus Tour has been infiltrated by George Shrub the singing CIA agent. Shrub will join the tour for the month of December, spinning his musical insurgency and edutaining audiences across north/central California. Tune in and beware…see and listen to George at www.davelippman.com before homeland security comes knocking on your door!

3 December 2003

By Kathy Kelly

In a recent article, “Hogtied and Abused at Fort Benning,” I described how US Military Police treated me following an arrest for peacefully entering the Fort Benning military base. I was part of a nonviolent protest, held annually for the past 13 years, calling for an end to Fort Benning’s training of Latin American soldiers at an institution called WHISC (Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation).* The article, posted on the School of the Americas Watch website and on our website, tells about how US Military Police responded when I quietly refused to continue cooperating with an extremely aggressive search procedure. I was pushed to the floor, hogtied, kneed while begging for relief because I couldn’t breathe, hauled while still hogtied to the next “stations,” and threatened with pepper spray if I didn’t cooperate when they uncuffed me for fingerprinting.

by Leah C. Wells

Saddam is gone, but Iraq is not much different. The chaotic post-invasion reality provides good cover for the purely cosmetic reinvention of this nation still at war.

Milan Rai, founder of the UK chapter of Voices in the Wilderness, has painstakingly outlined the international processes involved with the most openly illegal war in recorded history which reinstated many of the same Ba’thist ideologues and henchmen who were supposedly purged.

His book, “Regime Unchanged”, weaves together a shrewd narrative of quotes and analysis from across the political spectrum to demonstrate how the U.S. steamrolled through global opinion on its path toward conquering Iraq. Milan Rai asserts that the war nearly happened without the participation of the British, giving particular attention to the global anti-war movements, most notably within the United States and Great Britain.

13 December 2003

The Wheels of Justice countrywide bus tour recently has been accused of espousing anti-Semitism for its attempt to educate Californians about the current realities of life in Iraq and Palestine. A Davis High School teacher who had invited people on the tour to speak to six of his and his colleagues’ classes was forced to withdraw the invitation due to pressure from some Davis residents.

“Operating on the dual pillars of universal human rights and nonviolence, the Wheels of Justice tour brings into communities eyewitnesses who have seen the effects of war and occupation on civilian populations in Iraq and Palestine,” said John Farrell, a speaker on the tour. “Our programs have included multimedia presentations, talks and nonviolence education at public schools, churches, and community centers.”