Rebecca MacNeice: Cindy Sheehan's Arrest at UN
On Monday, March 6th, Cindy Sheehan and three others were arrested while attempting to deliver a petition to the US Mission at the UN. t r u t h o u t's Rebecca MacNeice was on the ground and filmed the arrests.
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Discrediting People for Peace
by Missy Comley Beattie
http://www.opednews.com/
We invited her to discuss her concerns with a US Mission employee. She chose not to come in but to lay down in front of the building and block the entrance. It was clearly designed to be a media stunt, not aimed at rational discussion. This is the statement of Richard Grenell, spokesperson for the United States Mission to the UN. And it's a lie. I know because I was arrested with Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin, and Rev. Patti Ackerman as an attempt was made to deliver a petition signed by more than 100,000 women who are calling for peace. (www.womensaynotowar.org) If you haven't signed, please do this immediately.This is a spokesman for our government and he blatantly misrepresented our efforts. We did not lie down and we did not block entry. That would be impossible since there are so many doors on both sides of the building. Medea worked to negotiate with the security agents. She told them we didn't want to be arrested. She and Cindy were to accompany the Iraqi Women's Delegation to Washington that same day. Medea asked one of the guards to take the petition inside for us. He went in, came back out, and told us this was denied.It is they who designed a 'media stunt,' orchestrated to intimidate. Why? Because they can. They are at liberty to call the NYPD to rush in and arrest anybody who tries to assemble and enter a government building, our building. They are at liberty to tell us we can't march peacefully on a public sidewalk. As they assume more power, we're given less. Every single day this administration remains in office, ordinary citizens lose more liberties. Apparently the First Amendment no longer applies.Furthermore, the government is at liberty to make false statements to media outlets--statements printed in newspapers that lose their credibility each time they publish an article without a commitment to accurate reporting. These papers should have asked the many people and the press who witnessed the event and could testify to the treatment we received. This is also the kind of propaganda spewed by the Bush pompom shakers, O'Reilly, Coulter, and Hannity who try to undermine Cindy Sheehan and say that she is no longer grieving the loss of her son Casey--that her agenda is ego-craving media attention. They are so wrong. Cindy is one of the most dignified women I've ever known. The 16 women who shared our cell at the Criminal Courthouse in Manhattan would attest to this. A force for peace and truth, Cindy must be a frightening threat to George W. Bush. That's one of the reasons his administration is trying to discredit her and anyone else who attempts to hold BushCo. accountable for its many crimes.
Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She's written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she's a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,'05, she has been writing political articles
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There Are Criminals, and Then There Are CRIMINALS
By Cindy Sheehan
As I lie here in bed recuperating from the injuries that I received from a federal agent and the NYPD in front of the US Mission to the UN (USUN) the other day, I have had time to reflect on the experience, the state of our union and its descent into a fascist state.
The plain-clothes police or US Dept of State Diplomatic Security agent with the cell phone is the one who assaulted Cindy Sheehan and Ann Wright in New York.When the four of us. Missy Beattie, Rev. Patricia Ackerman, Medea Benjamin, and I, were arrested the other day, I was singled out for federal police brutality. The other three ladies were picked up, noth gingerly, though, and I was dragged across the pavement and treated very, very roughly—having both arms wrenched out from beneath me. I looked to my doctor as if I had been beaten. My daughter, Janey, asked if I had been resisting arrest, I told her if one considers going into a fetal position and saying, "Please don't hurt me anymore!" resisting, then I guess I was.
Why was I targeted for the abuse? Is it revenge for my work at exposing the lies of BushCo, of which John Bolton is a leading co-criminal? Or is it to discourage other activists from taking the same path I have taken: demanding an end to the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq, and demanding that our freedoms be returned to us? I wish the Senate had the courage to stand up to the fascists in our government—or are the 90 who voted "Yea" to extend the Patriot Act also co-slitherers into fascism?
Neocon John Bolton has had a long and checkered career of lying and doing dirty work for the regime. In 1994 he harassed and terrified whistle-blower Melody Townsel who worked for US AID. She urged the Senate Foreign Relation Committee not to approve Bolton's nomination and she wrote in a letter to them: "John Bolton put me through hell - and he did everything he could to intimidate, malign and threaten not just me, but anybody unwilling to go along with his version of events. His behavior back in 1994 wasn't just unforgivable, it was pathological." Not only has John Bolton not been punished for this incident and other involving harassment and abuse, he was rewarded with a recess appointment to the UN when George Bush, again, circumvented our political processes.
L. Paul Bremer slunk, under the cover of darkness, out of Iraq two months after my son, Casey, was killed there with $8.8 BILLION missing from the Coalition Provisional Authority. Has L. Paul been held accountable for the missing money? No, as a matter of fact, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and is a highly paid speaker on the rubber chickenhawk Republican circuit.
Such war profiteers as Halliburton are raping the American tax payer of billions of dollars as a matter of company policy. A Halliburton whistle blower accused the company of charging us $45.00 per case of soda and ten thousand dollars a night to stay in Kuwait's finest hotels. They charge immoral prices to feed our soldiers who often complain of rotten food. Our young people even have to pay to have their laundry done by these outrageous over-chargers. Have they been punished or monetarily penalized for these crimes? No, as a matter of fact, Halliburton gets awarded more no-bid contracts in America and around the world.
A book could be written about the felonies of the Bush Crime Family and their mafia-style buddies, but I am running out of space. George Bush has committed crimes against humanity and high crimes and misdemeanors in his tenure as (P)resident of the White House. Has he been held accountable for any of this? No, he spends his nights and days comfortable and content in the fact that he is a lame duck, already rich, and knowing that Congress is spineless and he won't be impeached for his transgressions that have caused the deaths of so many thousands of people worldwide.
When we were in the cockroach and feces-decorated jail system in NYC the other night, we met some other women who felt they had to resort to crime to try to survive in BushWorld. We met intelligent young women who felt their last resort was to resort to victimless crimes. Now for their petty thefts, they will have to spend months in institutions where they are stripped of any human dignity or comfort. All of the women we met knew they broke the law and were resigned to their punishment but where is the justice in our system where all people are supposedly equal?
However, we four white, middle-class women were the lucky ones. We only had to spend one night in jail and we knew our lawyers would be there in the morning to spring us. When we were heading for court, we walked by our sisters in the holding cell and our hearts sank, because we know what it is like to spend even one night in jail. Our souls also connected with our sisters and brothers all over the world who are imprisoned in far worse conditions by the policies of BushCo and are being inhumanely tortured by these same medieval and draconian policies.
Even if John Bolton, L. Paul Bremer, George Bush, Halliburton execs, etc. ad nauseum are ever punished, we all know the conditions won't be (but should be) as harsh as those of the other people who live in subhuman conditions because of them. These people operate on the standard of having all the money and all the power and they don't care for anyone who they victimize on their way to obtaining their obscene and ill-gotten gains.
One of our so-called crimes in front of USUN was "Obstructing Governmental Administration." I say "Hell, yes! Anyone with a conscience or any moral courage should be doing everything in his/her power to obstruct the administration of the Bush government. Only massive, peaceful, non-violent resistance to his calamitous policies will be able to stem the dreadful tide!
That is why we need to stand up to the neo-fascists and take our humanity back.
While we are still able. I will stand up to them again and again, I just hope next time that they drag me by my good arm!
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Violence Won't Win
By Mike Hersh
I spoke with Cindy Sheehan just before she had to leave for medicaltests in the DC area. She was badly hurt, much worse than when she wasroughed up and jailed for wearing a t-shirt at the State of the Union. Isaw her just before and after that fiasco as well. She showed me herbruises which hadn't fully healed before this latest brutality.
The violence against Cindy and others keeps escalating in parallel withthe violence against our freedom and our Constitution. Bush, Cheney andthe thugs working with them feel our pressure and they're respondingwith even more cruelty. It won't work. It never does. The more violentand irrational the criminals become, the more sleeping Americans willwake up and say, "Not in our name!"
I met Iraqi women who say the same is happening in their country. Underour flag and using our money, people who claim they protect us andrepresent us are killing and terrorizing men, women, and children inIraq. Even as they're brutalizing peaceful people in the US. Not in ourname. Increasingly criminals in power are oppressing Iraqis andAmericans. These criminals won't stop on their own. We must make themstop. Together, we will make them stop.
This is one of the defining moments in our history. Anyone who cares atall about America and what our flag stands for must stand with us andmake the thugs stop. Anyone who won't join us in non-violent adamantopposition against fascism and oppression - anyone who will not supportus in our struggle for freedom and democracy - should be ashamed ofthemselves. Will the US be the US or will we become a neo-con / theo-confascist tyranny?
Any NSA spies or pro-Bush trolls reading this, tell your masters thetruth: Cindy is not intimidated and neither are the millions who agreewith her that this war is wrong. This occupation is wrong. She's stillthe same ol' Cindy I met last year. She's hurt but she's still smilingand joking. She's not going away. She's getting more support every day.She is not afraid of you and neither am I. Feds tried to intimidate mein early 2001, and do you think it worked? Hell no.
Hundreds of people marched from the Iraqi embassy to the White Housethis week to deliver more than 100,000 Women Say No to War signatures.We'll be back on the 14th to shame the Bush Regime about their plans toevict Katrina survivors. Bush supporters understand this: You are on thewrong side of history. You will lose this struggle. We the people willnot let you win.
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