BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo

Subject: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: sing4peace
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 03:03 PM

Greetings to you on this fifth day of October, 2009 -

Thanks to the hard work of many exhausted guardian angels, I have arrived at this, my fifty-sixth birthday. I feel keenly mortal and contemplative and grateful beyond words as I am still here breathing and singing together with you in this most challenging time on our shared planet in distress.

I am inviting you to share in my birthday meditation - one I would share with Phil Berrigan (RIP), also an October fifth baby and in whose name dozens of my friends are risking arrest at the White House today to protest the escalating "war on terror" and to demand the shut down of Guantanamo Bay and the entire network of other such detention camps.

I have spent the better part of the past eight years (and far beyond) bearing public witness to the unfolding crimes against humanity that have grown to be business as usual here in this globalized gladiatorial theater of carnage we have come to accept as the "never ending war".

As part of my response to the persistant affront and constant call to conscience, I helped to organize and sustain a once a week public speakout called the "no time to be silent vigil" where many have met for over five years (since May, 2004) to draw attention to the crimes of the Bush/Cheney administration.

We gather where we do to draw attention to the role that our former Supreme Court Justice, Frank Williams, plays as a judge in the military commissions trials at Guantanamo Bay. Our vigil still continues on now during the Obama administration and will continue on for the foreseeable future. God willing that is, and. as Hank Williams and my Mom always said, if the creek don't rise.

We meet in Memorial Square across the street from the Providence County Courthouse in Providence, Rhode Island in numbers sometimes great and sometimes small - every Saturday - from noon to one - rain or shine. We advocate persistant, courageous and creative non-violence as we stand in solidarity with brothers and sisters around the world speaking to the tyrants of our own time and place.

I am attaching a link here to a statement calling for the closing of Guantanamo that was sent to Bush and Blair from a collection of jurists and international bar associations.
http://www.advokatsamfundet.se/Documents/Advokatsamfundet_sv/Nyheter/Brev_advokatorganisationer_Guantanamo.pdf

If you agree with this statement, I hope you will make three copies - send one to President Obama and the other to Prime Minister Gordan. The third, keep for yourself.

I'm heading out now - out for a walk. I'm carrying a white rose wrapped in a copy of this statement over to the local national guard camp. That would be the 169th military police battalian. The men and women from this little town have been sent repeatedly to Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. I'm leaving this flower and statement tied to the barbed wire fence after I stand vigil for a while.

That, is just part of how I'm spending my birthday as I wander through this day in this smallest town in the smallest county in the smallest state. I hope you will join me in my wishing today. Take a deep breath in.....

Out walking and wishing....

Your sister in perpetual hope and song,

Joyce Katzberg

(for an explanation of why the white rose see the thread on Tattoos...why?)

For my song of the day, please check out "A Lullaby in War Time" at my page here: http://www.myspace.com/joycekatzberg

Subject: RE: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: DougR
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 03:40 PM

Sing4Peace: I'm sure President Obama would be happy to grant you your birthday wish if he could only figure out what to do with those incarcerated there. It seems no one wants them for neighbors.

President Bush would have also, but he had the same problem Obama does.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 08:11 PM

Try them under US laws on American soil!
Give Guantanamo Bay back to its rightful owners, the Cubans!
Problem solved!

Subject: RE: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: Peace
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 01:06 AM

Happy Birthday, joyce. Love your wish.

Subject: RE: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 04:11 AM

birthday greetings & best wishes for your birthday wish

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: Stringsinger
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 02:56 PM

Some of the innocent people incarcerated in Git-mo would probably make good neighbors.
I would prefer to question the "neighborliness" of the ideologues who put them there.

My wish is that war would not be considered as a solution toward foreign policy.

Get out of Afghanistan, Pakistan and stop threatening foreign countries with sanctions that don't work. Take the military bases out of foreign countries. Let's start negotiating with common interests rather than guns and bombs.

The only way to rid groups like Al Quaeda is to educate them out of their intransigence.

Subject: RE: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: DougR
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 03:01 PM

Uh, the inmates at Guantanamo did not commit crimes, they committed acts of war. Big difference.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: sing4peace
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 03:08 PM

Thank you for your wishes -

As I mentioned above, I share my birthday with Phil Berrigan. At least, I used to until he passed away in December,2002. I thought you would appreciate seeing how Phil's family still keeps their eyes on the prize.

This is a link from the UPI coverage of the demonstration in Washington, DC yesterday. http://www.upi.com/News_Photos/News/Dozens-Arrested-in-Front-of-White-House/2336/4/

According to Phil's daughter, Frida, the D.C. police charged on horseback through the crowd of peaceful demonstrators - some with babies in carriages. At least fifty people were arrested.

Obama has already said that he intends to detain some prisoners indefinitely without trial as their testimony might prove embarrassing to the US due to confessions obtained through torture. It doesn't look as if Guantanamo is shutting down in the near future. Here in Rhode Island, our Governor just sent off 200 National Guard military police officers for deployment at Guantanamo Bay for the next year.

For a picture of the flower and banner I left on the barbed wire fence outside off the 169th military police barracks here in my home town: http://myspace.com/joycekatzberg The photos are labeled: how I spent my birthday.

This is no time to be silent (but I did take some time for some birthday cake and a special wish as I blew out the candles...)

In peace and song,
Joyce

Subject: RE: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 04:07 PM

I wonder, Doug, how you would like it if a major foreign power such as China or Russia imprisoned captured American military personnel from the so-called War on Terror for acts of war, kept them in offshore facilities in Cuba or Yemen or some place like that, and tortured them to obtain "confessions" of their misdeeds plus useful miitary intelligence info?

I'm betting you wouldn't like it one bit.

Subject: RE: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 04:35 PM

"President Bush would have also,..."

*trying to remember him even talking about it, much less making any effore to deal with the situation*

Since Cheney was controlling most of that stuff anyway, and Cheney wanted it kept open, NOTHING happened.

"...the inmates at Guantanamo did not commit crimes, they committed acts of war."

SOME did...Bush/Cheney made very little effort to ascertain which ones.

Subject: RE: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 05:35 PM

In any case, the whole thing with setting up these prisons like Guantanamo was started by the American reactions to 911, wasn't it? 911 was NOT an act of war committed by any sovereign nation against the USA, it was a criminal act.

It has been used an excuse to launch 2 foreign wars of aggression against two small nations, neither of which planned or committed the attacks on 911.

Subject: RE: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: sing4peace
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 08:10 PM

Here is the speech that Liz McAlister made at yesterday's demonstration in Washington, D.C. Liz is Phil Berrigan's widow and a spiritual leader in her own right.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/06-10

Peace to all
(and to all a goodnight)
Joyce

Subject: RE: BS: My birthday wish? Shut down Guantanamo
From: Joe_F
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 08:15 PM

Guantanamo, as a location, is not, IMO, the point. We lease the place from Cuba, so I suppose we can put a prison there, or a naval base, or a whorehouse, or a cucumber patch -- whatever we want. What is objectionable is the shysterlike attempt to use the equivocal territorial status of the place to evade judicial scrutiny of what goes on there. That, AFAICT, the present administration has actually renounced, and good riddance!