Chris Mills' resources for peace and justice issue # 79


>Homepage > Archives > Chris Mills' email digest # 79	February 21, 2005
Dear Peacefolk - Sorry if this is a bit long. I'll be out of the country a while, so this will be my last digest until late March. Be well. Make peace. Chris	Calls to Action
	Here's a URL for flyer announcing the March 17 ethical trade forum I mentioned in the last digest. Join the International Days of Action against War, March 19-21, 2005. Looking for some songs for the next peace demo? Try some from the Raging Grannies. The No to BMD Campaign is working to get Liberal delegates to reject missile "defence" at their policy convention March 3 - 6. End the clawback of the National Child Benefit Supplement from families on social assistance. Be part of an international campaign to Make Poverty History.
	News /information
	Camilo Mejias, a US soldier who filed an application for conscientious objector status, has been released after serving a year in prison for refusing to return to fight in Iraq. Here is an article describing the peacebuilding work of the Canada International Scientific Exchange Program (CISEPO), involving Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian health professionals. Canada's initiative to end the moratorium on the use of "terminator technology" in genetically engineered crops failed at the recent United Nations interim meeting on the Convention on Biological Diversity in Bangkok. Sister Dorothy Stang, fearless defender of the poor of the Amazon rainforest, was murdered on February 12. See also Scary news from the Council of Canadians: "A confidential document from the Task Force on the Future of North America confirms the Council of Canadians’ worst fears: Canada’s business elite are planning to push the country toward deeper integration with the United States, including abandoning protections for culture and fresh water."
	Commentary/inspiration
Let no one be discouraged by the belief that there is nothing one person can do against the enormous array of the world's ills, misery, ignorance, and violence. Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. And in the total of all those acts will be written the history of a generation. - Robert Francis Kennedy	An editorial in the British medical journal, The Lancet, notes that donor contributions to the UN World Food Programme for the emergency operation in Darfur amount to only half of what is needed and calls for "long-overdue peace enforcement backed up by adequately funded humanitarian assistance and a long-term commitment to reconstruction." David J Hornsby says that Kyoto and NAFTA are on an "ideological and legal collision course...If the Canadian government is serious about Kyoto, then it has to make Kyoto and NAFTA consistent." The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) says the Canadian government must do more to protect education in the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) negotiations. Bob Herbert writes that the Bush administration is "trying to have it both ways in its so-called war on terror. It claims to be fighting for freedom, democracy and the rule of law, and it condemns barbaric behavior whenever it is committed by someone else. At the same time, it is engaged in its own barbaric behavior, while going out of its way to keep that behavior concealed from the American public and the world at large." Janet Eaton sent me this link to Gary Trudeau's take on a kinder, gentler Rumsfeld. And the following riddle: What's the difference between Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address? One involves a meaningless ritual in which Americans look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication and the other involves a groundhog. An interview with Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! the only "daily, grassroots, un-embedded, international, independent news hour" in America today. In another AlterNet interview, Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, "dissects the fundamentalist antipathy to free thought – and discusses how dangerous the 'God is on our side' philosophy is to government." (I'm watching for a satirical self-help book based on Thomas Harris' I'm OK - You're OK The title would be I'm OK -You're Going to Burn in Hell) Maureen Dowd on the White House's brazen manipulation of the media.
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