Dear Peacemakers,
It's been a while since I posted one of these, eh? I spent 3 weeks on the Wheels of Justice bus tour as the Iraq speaker and then came home to a house full of college students doing alternative spring break at the farm. Now I'm coordinating Sami (Muslim Peacemaker Teams) Rasouli's Wisconsin tour and trying to help with maple syrup back at the ranch. The most exciting project, however, is just around the corner.
We are putting up a new building at Anathoth. We have long outgrown our existing workspaces so we are putting up a farm center. The purpose is not only to give us more room for all that we do here but to keep pushing the envelope on renewable, sustainable building practices. We have been doing some fund raising and the great news is we got a donation from a long time acquaintance of ours, Jim Cargill, for $50,000. This brings our total to $65,000 and are working hard to come up with more. It feels like when we started the farm 20 years ago. We had an idea, the cash came in, and we really had to do it.
To embark on a project of this scale, at this time, is both exciting and a little unnerving. The global economy continues to unwind. Four airlines went belly up last week because fuel became too expensive. Bernanke, Paulsen, and the plunge protection team have been working overtime to save the banks and their Wall St. pals. Meanwhile 80,000 more people lost their jobs. If that isn't enough to make your knees quiver Muqtada al Sadr and the Mahdi army kicked butt in Iraq demonstrating yet again the myth of the US surge and their puppet government of Iraqi quislings. The US is never leaving Iraq. Get used to it.
An opportunity that is coming up fast is a workshop on Alternatives to Violence that Anathoth folks are doing at the West Denmark Parish Hall on April 26 and 27. The cost is $25 for the weekend including food and lodging (at the farm) if you are coming from out of town. Contact us for details. The same training in the cities will set you back $85 so we are offering quite the bargain. As times get tougher the ability to constrain violence through these kinds of techniques is going to be increasingly valuable. Contact us right away. If we don't get a minimum of ten people to sign up we will reschedule at a later date.
Good night and Good Luck,
Mike and Barb
Northwoods Peace Initiative
Sami Rasouli's Schedule for Wisconsin
April 24-UW Whitewater 2:15 pm Lynn. Milwaukee. Peace Action. 7pm UWM Student Center.
April 25- Maybe on campus during the day?? Madison. WNPJ. 8 pm Grand Hall Meriter.
April 26- Dodgeville. Kent Mayfield. Lunch event.
April 27- Janesville. 6 pm. UCC Church 54 Jackson St. Sue Nelson.
April 28- Fond du Lac. Marian College.
April 29- Rhinelander. Nicolet Technical College. David Kast.
April 30-Merrill. Merrill Middle School Library. 7pm Paul and Susanna Gilk
May 1-Wausau. 5 pm interview WPR. St Anne parish 7pm 700 W. Bridge St. Carol Lukens
The latest on Iraq
This is a great article on Muqtuda al Sadr. It shows that he is not the "radical cleric" but that he is the voice of the national Iraqi resistance who is opposing the drive to divide Iraq into a tri-partitioned state. The civil war is not about Sunnis against Shiites but Nationalists (the majority of Iraqis) against Separatists (the US/Israeli/al Qaeda position to divide Iraq).
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"While the majority of Iraqis know that the current Sunni-Shiites tension did not exist before 2003, no one can deny that after five years of U.S. occupation, sectarian tension is now a reality. Sectarianism is another disaster that was brought to Iraq by the war and occupation of Iraq."
Iraq's "Hidden" Conflict. Raed Jarrar. March 18, 2008
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"The omens of bad things to come were strengthened after US vice president Dick Cheney's visit to Baghdad last week. Iraqis dread the outcome of visits by senior occupation figures to Baghdad, particularly visits by Cheney or former ambassador Negroponte, who is seen by many Iraqis as "the main architect of divide and rule policies and terrorist attacks on Shia, Sunni or Christian targets". They point to major sectarian attacks, including the blowing up of the Samarra Shia shrine, during or days after each such visit. Following the bombing of the shrine, Moqtada al-Sadr himself accused the occupation of being behind the attacks - a position echoed by some Sunni clergy and secular forces. He later accused the US of sabotaging his attempts to unite with Sunnis."
'No, no, to the new dictatorship' Guardian Unlimited. Sami Ramadani. March 25,2008
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"What happened in Iraq this week was a beautiful lesson in the weird laws of guerrilla warfare. Unfortunately, it was the Americans who got schooled. Even now, people at my office are saying, "We won, right? Sadr told his men to give up, right? Wrong. Sadr won big. Iran won even bigger. Maliki, the Iraqi Army, Petraeus and Cheney lost." How the U.S. Just Got Schooled by a 'Rag-Tag' Neighborhood Army in Iraq. Gary Brecher. The Exile. April 4 2008
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Go Figure
According to AFP Robert Gates Says the Iraqi Army did a "pretty good job" attacking al Sadr
While Reuters says "Nuri al-Maliki's crackdown on militias in the southern oil port of Basra appears to have backfired, exposing the weakness of his army and strengthening his political foes ahead of elections."
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"Iraqi military commanders tell The New York Times that more than 1,000 soldiers and police officers either deserted or refused to fight during last week's crackdown on Shiite militants in the southern city of Basra."
Report: More than 1K Iraqis deserted, refused to fight in Basra. USA Today. April 4, 2008
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And what the heck is this?????
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