The Capital Times :: SAVVY :: 1C
Thursday, December 1, 2005
By Mary Bergin The Capital Times
The sale of a kilo of coffee or a $15 purse means a family of four in Chiapas, Mexico, will have enough rice, beans and vegetables for a week.
The sale of one weaving from Ainaro, East Timor, means one child can go to school for three months. Only 25 percent of rural students attend school.
This is how what you buy can make a difference. This year's Fair Trade Holiday Fair, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Madison Area Technical College downtown campus, will have more than two dozen vendors. Many of the items for sale were made by people in impoverished nations, and their advocates are eager to share the stories.
Example: Whenever DOERS (Doers Offering Emergency Relief Support) makes $112 in profits from the sale of Afghanistan crafts, it pays for a widow in that country to take 15 months of classes in sewing, embroidery and literacy.
"At the end, she receives a sewing machine and work table," says Phyllis Hasbrouck of DOERS. "She will have a decent way to provide for her family, instead of turning to begging or prostitution, as many of Afghanistan's 1 million widows are forced to do."
Weavings are "one of the few sources of monetary income for rural Timorese women and their families," many of whom are subsistence farmers, says Diane Farsetta, Madison-Ainaro Sister City Alliance coordinator, whose fair trade merchandise is purchased from a women's weaving cooperative.
Janet Niewold of Global Reflections will sell art from Mexico and Guatemala. She talks of the ceramic sculptor who - because of bird ornament sales - has been able to add a room to his two-room house "and now has a vent to send the smoke from the wood stove in his kitchen to the outside." He has a wife and four children, one of whom is an infant.
This is where a purchase of $700 in goods from a craftswoman could be enough to pay about one-half the cost of a two-room brick and cinderblock home. The next step would be to add running water.
"A Tibetan refugee couple imports rugs and blankets to help their family and friends who are still there," says Carol Bracewell of Community Action on Latin America, an event organizer. "They don't have a retail business, per se, they just do fairs like ours."
The other holiday fair vendors, and their products, include:
Equal Exchange, tea/coffee/cocoa/chocolate; Family Farm Defenders, Wisconsin cheese/gift boxes; Global Express, global imports; Just Coffee, locally roasted coffee; Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition, CSA shares/cookbooks; Madison Arcatao Sister City Project, Salvador crafts.
Potters for Peace, Nicaraguan pottery; SERRV International/A Greater Gift, global gifts/chocolates; UNICEF, cards/gifts; Scotch Hill Farm, goat milk soap; Hmong Pandua, locally made textiles; Terra Experience, Guatemalan textiles; Rainbow Bookstore, books; Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, T-shirts/yard signs.
Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, calendars; Infoshop/Madison Fair Trade Action Alliance, fair trade information; Madison Area Peace Coalition, fair trade information; Cloudforest Initiative, Chiapas metalwork/coffee/posters; Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Palestinian crafts; Dawa Phuntsok, Tibetan rugs/sweaters; Bali & Soul, textiles/gifts; Puente de Paz, Guatemala earrings; Prayas Inc. Foundation, gift bags/wrapping; Marketplace of India, textiles.
MATC's Global Horizons Program is a co-sponsor of the event. There also will be fair trade workshops during the day.
\ E-mail: mbergin@madison.com.
Wisconsin State Journal :: FRONT :: A1
Friday, December 2, 2005
DOUG ERICKSON derickson@madison.com 608-252-6149
Barbara Parsons bowed her head Thursday and began 25 hours of prayer and fasting at the headquarters of the Catholic Diocese of Madison.
A lifelong Catholic, she came to pray for Robert Morlino, bishop of the Madison Diocese and a new member of a federal advisory committee for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
The facility, operated by the U.S. Army in Columbus, Ga., trains Latin American military, civilian and government leaders.
Parsons, who just returned from her third protest trip to the institute, said she was filled with deep sorrow and would be praying for Morlino to renounce the school.
"There have been just a whole host of horrors that have come out of that school," said Parsons, 72, of Platteville, a retired college professor. "It just grieves me to think the bishop of our diocese would associate himself with that entity."
Morlino is attending his first two-day meeting of the board Thursday and today in Columbus. Since his September appointment, he has faced harsh criticism from some people, both within and outside his denomination. Critics say graduates of the facility, which once was known as the School of the Americas, go on to commit atrocious crimes of torture and murder.
Fifteen people began the fast at 5 p.m. in the chapel of the Bishop O'Connor Catholic Pastoral Center, which diocese officials welcomed the group to use, said the Rev. Jim Murphy, priest of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Portage and the event's organizer. He declined further comment, saying he prefers to communicate directly with the bishop about his concerns.
The 13-member board of visitors is an independent watchdog group created by Congress in 2001 to review practices at the institute. Morlino is the first bishop to serve on the board, although there have always been clergy among its members, said institute spokesman Lee Rials.
Morlino declined to comment. Diocese spokesman Bill Brophy said he expects the bishop will talk with the media upon his return next week, when he can share his first impressions of board service.
In an October interview on Relevant Radio, a Catholic station at 1240 AM, Morlino stressed that the board of visitors is a group of outsiders whose role is to advise Congress on correcting any problems at the institute. Morlino said he has never spoken with anyone connected to the institute and that he is in no way becoming part of the institute's leadership.
"This was an opportunity to serve my country by providing expertise in terms of an evaluation of an institution in the areas of morality and justice."
Morlino said he did not volunteer for the position, but was appointed by the secretaries of Defense and the Army. He said he knew about the allegations against the School of the Americas.
"If I thought for a minute that someone were trying to manipulate me personally, I would not accept this," he said, adding that he appreciates that the Catholic perspective is so welcome.
Parsons said that while Morlino may feel he can improve the facility, the school is beyond reform. "This is going to sound very strong, but it's comparable to having a board of visitors for the Nazis dealing with the Jews," she said.
The Rev. Frederick Trost, 69, of Middleton, former president of the Wisconsin Conference of the United Church of Christ, said Morlino perhaps is not aware of "the enormity of the viciousness and treachery" the school has inspired.
"We pray that the school, by whatever name it is called, may die and be buried, never to return to haunt the Earth," said Trost, who is taking part in the vigil.
Sister Maureen McDonnell, a member of the campus ministry staff at Edgewood College in Madison, said Thursday she is more hopeful now about Morlino's service on the board than in October, when she called his acceptance of the appointment "a real betrayal."
Morlino's public statements since his appointment show his desire to bring the Catholic teachings of social justice to bear on the facility's operations, McDonnell said.
"I take him at his word that he sincerely will try to do that," she said.
\ Army school
The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning is the U.S. Army's principal Spanish-language training facility for Latin American military and government personnel.
It instructs up to 1,000 students annually, with the goal of "strengthening democracy, instilling respect for the rule of law and honoring human rights," according to its Web site. The institute teaches leadership, disaster relief, military oversight and other courses.
It succeeded the School of the Americas, which operated from 1946 until it was shut down by Congress in 2001.
Critics draw little distinction between the two, saying graduates from both facilities have participated in some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America, including the rape and murder of four American churchwomen in El Salvador on Dec. 2, 1980.
However, Lee Rials, an institute spokesman, said Thursday "there is not even one example of anyone taking a course at the school or this institute and later using that information to commit a crime."
The Capital Times :: METRO :: 1B
Friday, December 2, 2005
By Pat Schneider The Capital Times
Marian Fredal says she's not certain yet what will be the upshot of Bishop Robert Morlino's involvement with an infamous military training center in Georgia. But she was at the Madison Diocese's headquarters Thursday to voice her concerns and join a dozen of the faithful in what was to be a 25-hour vigil.
"I pray the bishop will reject the culture of death," Fredal said.
The group gathered for a press conference at Bishop O'Connor Catholic Pastoral Center before entering a chapel there for a rite of fasting and watchfulness aimed at dramatizing to Morlino, local Catholics , and the community at large the seriousness of what is at stake.
Morlino was in Fort Benning, Ga., Thursday for his first meeting as a member of the advisory Board of Visitors of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the U.S. Army School of the Americas.
Critics say the school trains torturers and assassins for death squads that have killed thousands in Central and Latin America.
"Anyone who has paid attention over the past quarter-century knows that this institute stands in a tradition of murder and violence," Rev. Frederick Trost said.
"Some of us pray to God that Bishop Morlino may not be fooled, as so many before him have been fooled, by the rhetoric and lies that make evil good, that make war peace, that make of abominable cruelty justice," Trost said.
In his first public remarks upon being named bishop of Madison by Pope John Paul II in May 2003, Morlino spoke of the need for the church community to counter a "culture of death" that reveals itself in abortion, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.
"Catholics need to support life at all stages," Dennis Collier of Madison, a member of Pax Christi, an international peace organization, said Thursday.
Local Catholics are not certain if Morlino was aware of the significance of associating with the institute when he accepted a position on the13-member board in October.
"I don't think he understood the political implications and how much people care about this," said Fredal, who describes herself as a Catholic peace and justice activist.
Madison area Catholic activists have long protested the School of Americas, which changed its name in 2001. Groups of them have often journeyed to Fort Benning for demonstrations marking deaths at the hands of those trained there.
Those holding vigil today will end their demonstration with a memorial service for four American nuns -- Dorothy Kazel, Ita Ford, Jean Donovan and Maura Clark -- who were raped and killed by National Guardsmen in El Salvador on Dec. 2, 1980.
A 1995 United Nations report linked School of America graduates to their deaths, as well as to the assassination of Salvadoran Bishop Oscar Romero that year and the slayings of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in 1990 in El Slavador.
When Morlino visited Christ the King Catholic Parish in McFarland on Oct. 30 to speak on moral theology, he was pressed to talk about his appointment to the board, Fredal said.
Morlino at that time expressed skepticism over previous reports on the institute and reported that military chaplains call the criticism exaggerated, Fredal said.
"He wants to see for himself," she said.
Rev. Jerry Folk said the documentation of crimes by School of Americas graduates is so convincing that "anyone, no matter how skeptical, would be hard pressed to deny it -- even to themselves."
What's more, techniques "field-tested" at the School of the Americas are used in places like Abu Ghraib in Iraq and hidden prisons in Europe, Folk said.
Fredal said local Catholics hold a gamut of opinions on Morlino's involvement.
"Some think he's very sincere and wants to find out what the school is about, and others feel he is very pro-military and supportive of the school. We really don't know."
Some wonder if he is being manipulated to lend the imprimatur of the Church to the institute. Morlino rejected that idea in an interview in the Nov. 3 Catholic Herald. "If I thought someone were manipulating the Office of the Bishop, I would be furious and I would never cooperate."
Morlino has refused to make further public statements until after his meeting with the Visitors Board, an arm of the Defense Department that he says advises Congress.
"He'll finally find out what the advisory group does, and he said he'll give interviews after that," spokesman Bill Brophy said.
The community wants to know if the members of the advisory board will have the staff and money to conduct their own investigation into the institute's activities. "How will they know they're not being used?" Fredal asked.
One benefit of the whole thing has been that people are making the effort to learn more about the history of the School of the Americas, Fredal said.
Barbara Parsons, a retired UW-Platteville professor, called for the school's closing, which has failed before Congress several times.
"It's time to end this taxpayer funded school for terrorists," she said.
\ E-mail:pschneider@madison.com
The Capital Times :: FRONT :: 1A
Tuesday, December 6, 2005
By Aaron Nathans The Capital Times
An anti-war group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says it is the target of harassment by campus police and the Dean of Students Office.
But police say the group has consistently crossed the line between protest and intimidation; the Dean of Students Office says it needs to balance the right of free speech with the right of the university to go about its business.
The student group planned to rally at 2 p.m. today on Library Mall, and march to Bascom Hall.
The group, Stop the War, protested at three career fairs and picketed the campus ROTC offices this year, and members said they encountered resistance from campus police at each event. At the career fairs, the group was protesting military recruiters who had set up tables there.
"We feel this is a pattern of systematic intimidation of anti-war activists," said Bill Anderson, a member of Stop the War. "There's something seriously wrong saying military recruiters have free speech rights and we don't."
At the first such incident, at a career fair at the Memorial Union on Feb. 16, protesters chanted and stood near the Navy table, Anderson said. University police arrested a woman for disturbing the peace. The group says the woman was so shaken by the arrest that she has left the group.
The group also demonstrated at career fairs on Sept. 28 at the Kohl Center and Oct. 10 at the Memorial Union, and had confrontations with police at each event.
Lt. Bill Larson of the University Police said that if the group had protested quietly and off to the side, chances are they wouldn't have encountered police resistance. But at each event, they chanted loudly and approached the tables, he said.
"They're welcome to be there, to protest, to do what they need to do, but if they're disruptive, and vendors become disturbed by their behavior, that's where the violation of law occurs," Larson said.
The group is under investigation by the Dean of Students Office, particularly for a rally outside the ROTC offices on Nov. 2. An unnamed person in the military science department complained that during the rally, the group "jeopardized the safety" of several employees there.
The complaint alleged that members attempted to enter the building by pounding on doors and windows, and attempted to destroy university property. The group denies the charges, arguing that high school protesters unaffiliated with the group did most of the pounding on doors.
Larson said that detail doesn't matter.
"That's a very fine line. It's their event, so you're responsible for the actions of people attending your event," Larson said.
During that incident, a high school student was detained, brought to University Police headquarters, and later released. Larson said he was suspected of throwing something against a window, but after it was found to have been a penny, and there was no damage, he was released without being charged.
Elton Crim, associate dean of students and director of student advocacy and judicial affairs, said: "The university has a long history of student activism, and we embrace that history. We have absolutely no interest in preventing anyone from voicing their views and concerns about this war issue.
"We want to make sure the university buildings and the people in them are able to conduct university business as they normally would."
\ E-mail: anathans@madison.com
By Rob Zaleski
December 7, 2005
OK, truth be known, being handcuffed and shackled for two hours and spending a night in the Muscogee County Jail in Columbus, Ga. - as he did on Nov. 20, after being arrested at the facility formerly known as the School of the Americas at Fort Benning - wasn't a whole lot of fun.
He is, after all, just nine months shy of his 80th birthday, Madison resident Fred Brancel noted with a wry smile during an interview this week.
And no, he's not thrilled by the possibility of spending anywhere from three to six months in a federal penitentiary, says Brancel, who was among 41 people - including five others from Wisconsin - charged with civil disobedience during the protest and who will return to Georgia on Jan. 30 to stand trial.
But if people want to know if he regrets crawling under three 10-foot high barbed-wire fences to gain access to the base, Brancel says, "Not for a moment."
This was, he points out, the third time he's participated in protests calling for closure of the facility - now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security - which has been a training ground for Latin American assassins and military thugs, including former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and Roberto D'Aubuisson, architect of El Salvador's right-wing death squads.
And, after clearing the idea with his wife, Mary Ann, he decided it was time to do something dramatic to draw attention to: A. the U.S. military's longtime involvement in torture; and B. the impact of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower had warned about in the 1950s - which Brancel describes as "growing deficit, growing disparity, growing distrust and growing discord and animosity."
What's more, Brancel says he's disturbed about the rampant materialism in this country, and the fact that the United States has just 5 percent of the world's population but consumes 25 percent of the world's oil.
(For what it's worth, he says he was not protesting the decision of Madison Bishop Robert Morlino to serve on the institute's advisory board. While he's troubled by it, Brancel says he's willing to give Morlino the benefit of the doubt - for now anyway - and believes he could have a positive effect on the school's policies.)
"I'm not predicting Armageddon," emphasizes Brancel, who calls himself "a realist, not a pessimist." But he says he fears that Americans "aren't going to wake up until we're bankrupt and go the way of other empires. I don't know if it will happen in our lifetime, but I think it will come more quickly than we anticipate."
Taking a stand isn't anything new for Brancel, who grew up on a farm in Marquette County and is a 1951 graduate of UW-Madison. He spent 20 years in Africa (1951-1971) as an agriculture missionary for the Methodist Church and was imprisoned for nearly three months in Portugal in 1961 for being an "instigator" in the Angola independence movement.
Just last year he spent two weeks in Baghdad with a Christian Peacemaker delegation trying to get a true assessment of the Iraq war.
What he found, he says, is that almost all Iraqis, regardless of their background, are overjoyed that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. At the same time, the vast majority of those he talked to were not happy about the U.S. occupation.
"I'd say the Iraqis distrust our motives for being there," he says. "They feel that their oil reserves are a big part of it. And I think they're not likely to give in, because they are a people with a long, proud history."
One of their biggest fears, Brancel says, is that Baghdad International Airport is being converted into a permanent U.S. military base serving the entire Mideast region - a story, he notes, that hasn't gotten much play in the U.S. media.
As troubling as all that is, Brancel says his focus right now is on his upcoming court date and how it might affect his future.
"I mean, I'm 79. My time's running out."
But he says he isn't scared and, like any good activist, even believes some good may come of it. Especially if he's allowed to serve his time at the Oxford Federal Correctional Institute in Adams County, which is just 10 miles from his family's farm.
He notes that he's been reading the new book, "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It," by Jim Wallis, and finds it incredibly inspiring.
No, nobody actually looks forward to prison, Brancel says.
"But, as Wallis points out, some of the best conversations occur behind bars."
Correction: In my Monday column, I wrote that the AR-15 was one of the many assault weapons that were illegal in this country until last year, when the Republican-controlled Congress allowed a 10-year ban to expire. In fact, as dozens of my gun pals have pointed out, the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban prohibited the manufacture of the Colt AR-15 and 18 other assault weapons but not the possession of such weapons.
The Dec. 4 editorial opposing a Milwaukee vote on U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq missed the mark ("Council should reject Iraq measure").
The Editorial Board has forgotten that opponents of their own country's military adventures must always overcome enormous resistance before sanity is restored. Yes, Japan and Germany came to their senses - by about 1946. And Vietnam-era America did, too, after 10 years of war.
When we point to the false rationales for this war, the ongoing effort to suppress information that conflicts with President Bush's fantasies about it and the reasons we believe Bush's plan for its future aren't grounded in reality, we are predictably met with charges that all this analysis is just masked cowardice. "Cut and run" is the fashionable cliché.
The commitment of the anti-war movement is to end the senseless slaughter as soon as possible. That will require changing the minds of a substantial number of Americans. But coming to see one's own country's war-making as nearer to evil than glorious is hard mental work. For many, it will always be too much.
That is why the anti-war movement must state its case early and often, in as much detail as people can hear and in every forum we can possibly get.
Chuck Baynton
Whitefish Bay
Dear Editor:
Today is Human Rights Day. In 1948 on this date, the United States, along with 47 other members of the United Nations, adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Almost all new members of the United Nations have adopted it since. As citizens, we can affirm the importance of human rights by urging our government to do the following:
Adopt the McCain legislation banning torture. This amendment is attached to the defense authorization bill, which is moving through Congress right now. Although it appears obvious that the United States, a purported champion of human rights, should ban torture in its national legislation, the Bush administration has been fighting this step.
Oppose the Graham amendment, also attached to the defense authorization bill, which would suspend habeas corpus rights for those detained at Guantanamo Bay. Without the right to challenge their detention or treatment, people can be held indefinitely by the United States and possibly mistreated or tortured, with no recourse, whether guilty or innocent.
Oppose the practice of rendition, in which the government sends prisoners to countries suspected or known to practice torture. Hiding behind diplomatic assurances that they will not be mistreated is unacceptable. The international legal ban on torture prohibits transferring people, regardless of their suspected crime, to a place where they would be at risk of torture.
Abolish the practice of secret detention. Allegedly an unknown number of "war on terror" detainees are being held secretly in undisclosed locations. Holding people in custody without disclosing where they are or even that they are being held amounts to "disappearing" them. This itself constitutes torture or ill treatment of them and the families who have no information about them.
Prohibit the use of statements obtained under torture and cruel treatment, such as waterboarding, regardless of where the interrogation occurred. These statements are often useless anyway because people will say whatever they think the interrogators want to hear, true or not, just to make the torture stop.
Jean McElhaney Lone Rock
The Capital Times :: FRONT :: 1A
Thursday, December 15, 2005
By Steven Elbow The Capital Times
A Madison anti-war protest was one of many such gatherings investigated by the Department of Defense as the military stepped up monitoring of civilian activities, according to a classified database obtained by NBC News.
"This is just a further example of how a war abroad creates paranoia at home," said Ashok Kumar, a member of the Student Labor Action Coalition, which, along with Stop the War, a UW student group, coordinated the April 26 rally that came under Pentagon scrutiny.
NBC listed a sampling of about 1,500 "suspicious incidents" on file with the Department of Defense Talon Program, which tracks unconfirmed reports of threats to defense facilities. The Madison rally was included in the sampling.
"It says a lot about what the Pentagon thinks about anti-war activity," said Paul Pryse, a member of Stop the War.
Both Pryse and Kumar fear that awareness of the existence of what amounts to an informal spy network will chill anti-war activism both locally and on a national scale.
"I'm not sure exactly what they're doing to acquire this information," Pryse said. "We'll have to be more careful who we talk to and how we give out information."
Participants in the rally numbered only about 20, but a planned Air Force recruiting drive was abandoned as a result.
The database listed the type of threat posed by the event as "anti-DOD vandalism" and marked the source as "not credible."
The case, however, was left on a status of "open/unresolved."
"People always talk about it," Kumar said of government spies. "But I never took it too seriously -- until now."
He added: "It's what happens in other countries. People are intimidated into silence. This a cracking down on free speech."
Pryse viewed the revelation of the military database as part of a widespread effort that includes ROTC personnel and university officials to stifle anti-war activities.
Pryse is currently being investigated by the UW Dean's Office after a military science professor filed a complaint over a Nov. 2 protest.
"They claim that Stop the War members were threatening the safety of members of the military science department and causing property damage," he said.
Counterterrorism: Pentagon officials said Wednesday they had ordered a review of the Talon Program, which is aimed at countering terrorist attacks but has also kept information on peace protesters and others whose activities posed no threat.
The move followed an NBC News report Tuesday.
Although officials defended the Pentagon's interest in gathering information about possible threats to military bases and troops, one senior official acknowledged that a preliminary review of the database indicated that it had not been correctly maintained.
"On the surface, it looks like things in the database that were determined not to be viable threats were never deleted but should have been," the official said. "You can also make the argument that these things should never have been put in the database in the first place until they were confirmed as threats."
The Talon Program is part of a broader effort by the Pentagon to gather counterterrorism intelligence within the United States. It has prompted concern from civil liberties activists and members of Congress in recent weeks.
To some, the Pentagon's current efforts recall the Vietnam War era, when defense officials spied on anti-war groups and peace activists. Congressional hearings in the 1970s subsequently led to strict limits on the kinds of information that the military can collect about activities and people inside the United States.
The review of the program, ordered by Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone, will focus on whether officials broke those rules, a Pentagon statement said.
The regulations require that any information that is "not validated as threatening must be removed from the TALON system in less than 90 days," it said.
The Capital Times :: EDITORIAL :: 7A
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Marilee Harrison, Madison
Dear Editor: Everyone is busy this time of year, I know. But I would like to add one more idea for our "to do" lists as we prepare for or recover from our celebration of choice, be it Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Humanlight, Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, or simply the lifting of seasonal affective disorder. Contact your senators and congressional representatives. Need ideas? Here are a few possible issues and recommendations to discuss.
Torture: Don't.
Extraordinary rendition: End it.
CIA secret prisons: Close them.
Red Cross access to prisoners: Allow it.
Geneva Convention: Abide by it.
NSA domestic spying without a warrant: Stop it.
FBI files on legal domestic groups: Burn them.
FBI surveillance of legal domestic groups: Quit it.
Checks and balances: Have them.
Iraq war: Come home.
Human services funding: Restore it.
George W. Bush:
(Multiple choice)
a. Investigate him
b. Censure him
c. Impeach him
d. All of the above
There -- now that the wheels are rolling, call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121. Tell them where you live, and they will direct the call to the appropriate offices. Modify or elaborate the messages as you wish.
By all means, let's celebrate in ways that promote peace and happiness for ourselves and our families. Let's also engage in our democracy for the benefit of all.
Madison Capital Times
December 26, 2005
At risk of fueling the smoldering ethanol debate, here are some issues that Americans should examine.
First, from the reports I have read, sugar cane and sugar beets produce more gallons of ethanol per acre than corn. Therefore, Brazil, with an abundance of sugar cane, can produce ethanol at 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of ethanol produced from corn in the United States. Brazil is the leading producer of ethanol in the world.
Second, Cargill and other transnational corporations are importing ethanol from Brazil by way of El Salvador and Jamaica. They are doing this to take advantage of the recently passed Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Because of this and earlier agreements countries in Central America can export quantities of ethanol to the United States without paying a tariff. By shipping hydrous ethanol from Brazil and dehydrating it in El Salvador and Jamaica, transnational corporations like Cargill can take advantage of this loophole and not pay any tariff when they import the ethanol which originates in South American countries. On top of this they also receive the federal subsidy for this ethanol.
Third, when and if the Free Trade Area of the Americas is agreed upon, then the flood of cheap ethanol from Latin American countries could overwhelm our locally produced corn ethanol.
How long will Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill and other ethanol processors buy Wisconsin corn ethanol when they can readily get ethanol at a cheaper price directly from Brazil? Their "loyalty" to American farmers will last until the cheaper ethanol has tariff-free access to our markets. Shades of the Wal-Mart's "Buy American" campaign of the 70s and 80s.
Fourth, ethanol is just one of the complex relationships created by these so-called free trade agreements. It seems to me that if we want to protect investments in Wisconsin corn produced ethanol then we must oppose FTAA and work to limit the access of ethanol from Brazil. Both U.S. Senators from Iowa have bills to limit such imports.
One thing is certain. Cargill and ADM are looking out for their bottom line. The aim of FTAA is to help these transnational corporations. The well being of local family farmers and local investors in Wisconsin ethanol plants will not be part of their bottom line considerations.
Hiroshi Kanno,
Wisconsin Dells
WNPJ member groups Madison-Rafah (Palestine) Sister City Project and the Madison-Arcatao (El Salvador) Sister City Project are featured in this Madison Capital Times Op-Ed
The Capital Times :: EDITORIAL :: 9A
Monday, December 26, 2005
Barbara Olson, Marc Rosenthal
Last month, in a move that has become sadly routine, some members of the City Council again tried to cut all funding for Madison's sister city program.
Fortunately, the sister city funding, which represents just 0.0076 percent of the city budget and provides each official group with $500, survived the budget ax.
This debate also presents another opportunity to celebrate and explain the importance of the program.
Some of Madison's many sister city relationships produce valuable business, professional or educational connections. Others facilitate cultural and artistic exchanges, tourism or humanitarian programs.
At its most basic level, sistering builds people-to-people connections at the grass roots. Sister cities allow people from all over the globe to meet and exchange ideas and experiences. Sistering also lets us humanize, support and learn from other people -- including those who are resisting oppression and struggling to build a better future.
Sistering has always been inseparable from international peace and justice issues. Historically, sistering with Latin American communities was part of the resistance to the Reagan era wars against popular movements in places like El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Even after these shooting wars gave way to "neo-liberal" economic and political warfare against the poor, sistering has continued to provide a vital connection between global north and south.
Today, a shooting war has erupted full-force in the Middle East, where violence is the daily cost of the dual occupations of Iraq and Palestine. The reinvigorated imperial ambitions of the same cast of older-but-not-wiser characters from the Reagan era threaten to expand the war to countries like Iran and Syria.
We believe that in the Middle East, no less than in Latin America and other parts of the "Third World," sistering helps us reach out to those who have been demonized in order to justify what would otherwise be unacceptable.
Sistering also challenges the structural injustice that underlies both the drive for war and the "ordinary" economic and political inequality between the "haves" and the "have-nots." It builds on the dignity and self-determination of both partners. It is a model of dialogue, joint planning and, above all, friendship between peoples that stands in sharp contrast to relations of dominance and exploitation.
Working together, sister cities try to counter the profit-driven globalization of the corporate elites with globalization from below, helping to forge a new global model for economic development and political relationships based on human and environmental needs.
The Madison-Arcatao Sister City Project is one of Madison's oldest official sister cities, with an established track record of helping to save lives and bring an end to war in Central America. The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project is one of the newest. The first Madison sister city ever denied official status, it has nevertheless completed almost three years of humanitarian and educational activities connecting Madisonians to people in the Middle East.
The members of these two projects and those who support us celebrated earlier this month at the first People-to-People Seasonal Dinner Dance at the Casbah restaurant.
At a time when the U.S. image is deservedly at an all-time low around the world, and the American people find themselves dangerously uninformed and cut off from their counterparts in other nations, this type of "citizen diplomacy" could not be more important.
Barbara Olson and Marc Rosenthal are founding members of the Madison-Rafah (Palestine) Sister City Project. Rosenthal is also a longtime member of the Madison-Arcatao (El Salvador) Sister City Project.
WNPJ member Buzz Davis of Stoughton is featured in this Madison Capital Times Editorial
Friday, December 30, 2005
The dwindling circle of right-wing defenders of the Bush-Cheney presidency would have Americans believe that only the most reckless partisans would even consider the prospect of censuring -- or perhaps even impeaching -- the president and vice president. But the prospect of officially sanctioning Bush and Cheney, as has now been proposed by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is gaining ground in unexpected quarters.
Nation magazine editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel argues that, as 2005 gives way to 2006, the outrage level is rising. "The I-word," writes vanden Heuvel, "has moved from the marginal to the mainstream." Editor & Publisher magazine, the journal of the newspaper industry, agrees, pointing out that a "sudden outbreak of anger or candor has been sparked by the uproar over revelations of a White House-approved domestic spying program."
Indeed, the outbursts of anger and candor that once came only from the left are now coming from across the political spectrum -- from one of the nation's most respected academics, from a courageous former White House aide, from a conservative business journal, and from a growing number of Wisconsinites.
The academic is Jonathan Turley, the George Washington University School of Law professor who is widely recognized as one of the nation's most learned experts on civil liberties and surveillance issues. Turley says that, with his decision to have the National Security Agency secretly wiretap the phones of American citizens, the president not only "violated federal law" but raised "serious constitutional questions of high crimes and misdemeanors."
High crimes and misdemeanors are, of course, the raw material of impeachment. And Turley is not the only one speaking up about them. Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean has long argued that the president and vice president have committed impeachable offenses that are worse than those that led to the Watergate era effort to impeach President Richard Nixon.
What's really remarkable, and heartening, is the fact that the concerns of Turley and Dean are being echoed by some traditionally conservative voices.
Barron's, the business journal that is published by the Wall Street Journal and has a track record of erring on the right in most public policy debates, argued in a Dec. 24 editorial:
"Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.
"It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the acts that he and his predecessors signed into law."
The evidence shows that serious wrongdoing has occurred. And those responsible need to be held to account -- not just by academics, former White House aides and national publications but by the citizens who can persuade members of Congress to become the watchdogs on executive wrongdoing that the founders intended.
In the Madison area, activists will begin the new year by holding a town hall meeting on the question of impeachment as part of a national campaign to turn up the heat at the grass roots. The Madison event will take place at 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 7, at the Labor Temple on South Park Street. For more information on the local event, e-mail Stoughton activist Buzz Davis at DBuzzdavis@aol.com. For more information on the national campaign, visit the www.censurebush.org Web site.