THE NEW PEACE MOVEMENT

Representative Jack Brooks (Texas) - Instead of operating within rules and law, we have been supplying lethal weapons to terrorist nations, trading arms for hostages, involving the U.S. government in military activity in direct contravention of the law, diverting public funds into private pockets and secret unofficial activities, selling access to the President for thousands of dollars, dispensing cash and foreign money orders out of a White House safe, accepting gifts and falsifying papers to cover it up, altering and shredding national security documents, lying the Congress. Now, I believe that the American people understand that democracy cannot withstand that kind of abuse.

"When you got back to examining what they had done, they systematically destroyed and shredded all of the documentation, as much as they can get, hours of shredding, altering some of the documents that have remained, stole what they couldn't shred; now this gives you an indication that there maybe a few things that they didn't want the public to know." - Jack Brooks - (Texas)
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Concord protest and injuries

In 1987, while engaged in a protest of U.S. weapons to Central America, an action publicized in advance, Willson and other members of a Veterans Peace Action Team were blocking the train tracks at the Concord, California Naval Weapons Station. Due to a government policy decision, the train refused to stop, and the veterans were injured when the train did not slow down as they expected. Willson was hit, run over, and nearly died. Ultimately, he survived but lost both legs below the knee while suffering a severe skull fracture with loss of his right frontal lobe, among other injuries. Subsequently, he discovered that he had been identified for more than a year as an FBI domestic "terrorist" suspect under President Reagan's anti-terrorist task force provisions and that the train crew that day had been ordered to not stop the train to prevent any Hijacking attempts. Willson filed a law suit contending that the Navy and individual supervisors were given ample warning of their plan to nonviolently remain on the tracks, and that the crew had plenty of time to stop--which the subsequent official Navy report confirmed. Surprisingly, the train crew filed a law suit against Willson, requesting punitive damages for the "humiliation, mental anguish, and physical stress" they suffered as a result of the incident. Their suit was dismissed. Willson later agreed to settle his lawsuit against the Government and train crew for $920,000. He now walks with prostheses.
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Veterans For Peace was founded in 1985, as a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization and recognized as a United Nations Non-governmental organization (NGO) in 1990, where it has represented since at least 2003. Chapters and members are active in communities throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. National conventions are held annually and members communicate through quarterly newsletters as well as daily list-serve news, online discussions groups as well as the national and chapter websites. Veterans for Peace has a national office in Saint Louis, Missouri and members across the country, both organized in chapters and at-large.
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On March 16, 2003, Corrie was in a group of seven ISM activists (three British and four Americans) attempting to disrupt the actions of Israeli bulldozers. After several hours of activity at the site, Corrie sat in the path of a bulldozer, where she was fatally injured. According to an ISM activist, Joseph Smith, Corrie fully expected the bulldozer to stop just in front of her. Smith recounted afterward "We were horribly surprised. They had been careful not to hurt us. They'd always stopped before."[5] Corrie was transported to a Palestinian hospital. Accounts vary as to whether she died at the scene, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, or at the hospital.[5]

The events surrounding Corrie's death are disputed. ISM eyewitnesses assert that the Israeli soldier driving the bulldozer deliberately ran Corrie over twice while she was acting as a human shield to prevent the demolition of the home of Samir Nasrallah, a local pharmacist.[6][7] The Israeli Government and the IDF denied that version of events and described Corrie's death as an accident. The official Israeli response stated that Corrie was killed by falling debris pushed over by the bulldozer whose driver did not see her, and that the bulldozer was clearing brush and not engaged in a demolition when Corrie blocked its path, while other reports say the Israeli government charged that the house being demolished contained a tunnel used for smuggling weapons from Egypt.[8]

The major points of dispute are whether the bulldozer driver saw Corrie, and whether she died after being hit by the blade or by falling debris, or whether she was crushed under the bulldozer tracks or the blade. In an interview the day after Corrie's death, eyewitness Joseph Smith stated, "The driver lost sight of her."[5] Because the Caterpillar D9 bulldozers have a restricted field of vision with several blind spots, Israeli army regulations normally require that other soldiers assist in directing bulldozer drivers, but the Israeli army commander of the Gaza Strip said in an interview broadcast on Israeli television that, on the day of Corrie's death, soldiers had to stay in their armored vehicles and were not able to direct the bulldozer, or arrest the protesters, because of the threat of Palestinian snipers. He also said that Israeli soldiers may have been handling other ISM activists instead of watching over the bulldozer.[citation needed] In an statement issued the day after Corrie's death, the ISM said that, ``when the bulldozer refused to stop or turn aside she climbed up onto the mound of dirt and rubble being gathered in front of it ... to look directly at the driver who kept on advancing."[9]

The IDF produced a video about Corrie's death that includes footage taken from inside the cockpit of a D9. It makes a "credible case," Joshua Hammer wrote in Mother Jones, that "the operators, peering out through narrow, double-glazed, bulletproof windows, their view obscured behind pistons and the giant scooper, might not have seen Corrie kneeling in front of them."[10] The website Israel Behind the News has said that images on the ISM website, and subsequently used by Reuters, give a misleading impression of the incident.[11]
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The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was founded in 2001 by Ghassan Andoni, a Palestinian activist; Neta Golan, an Israeli activist; Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American; and George N. Rishmawi, a Palestinian activist. Adam Shapiro, an American, joined the movement shortly after its founding and is also often considered one of the founders.

The organisation calls on civilians from around the world to participate in acts of non-violent protests against the Israeli military in the West Bank and previously the Gaza Strip. The group has attracted criticism as well as praise for its peaceful methods. It has recently been criticised for working alongside other groups to pressure Palestinian artists to boycott the One Voice Peace Summit and for helping to prevent the Summit from going forward by creating a competing event. ISM and affiliated groups critical of the Summit say that One Voice fails to fully support Palestinian rights guaranteed under international law.
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Noteworthy ISM events (Democracy group)

* The ISM received extensive media coverage of its presence in Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah and at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
* On April 2, 2002, Australian ISM volunteer Kate Edwards sustained severe internal injuries from rounds fired by Israeli forces during a protest in Beit Jala.[citation needed] The incident was captured on film and appears in the documentary by Palestinian film-maker Leila Sansour, Jeremy Hardy vs the Israeli Army.[1]
* On March 16, 2003, ISM volunteer Rachel Corrie was killed while trying to block an IDF armoured bulldozer engaged in demolishing a house. See below.
* On April 5, 2003, ISM volunteer Brian Avery was shot in the face by machine gun fire from an IDF armoured personnel carrier while he was outside in the street escorting Palestinian medical personnel.
* On April 11, 2003, ISM volunteer Thomas Hurndall was left clinically brain dead after he was shot in the head by an IDF soldier. Initially the soldier claimed the shooting occurred during an armed firefight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian soldiers. Later he admitted firing at an unarmed civilian as a "deterrent". Hurndall died on January 13, 2004.
* ISM was nominated for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize by Svend Robinson, a former New Democratic Party Member of the Parliament of Canada.[citation needed]
* Cofounder Ghassan Andoni was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize along with Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions by the American Friends Service Committee.[2][3]
* On Aug. 8, 2006, ISM activist Adam Shapiro announced that a group of ISM activists was traveling to southern Lebanon to attempt to deliver aid and show solidarity with suffering residents. [4]
* On September 6, 2007, ISM activist Akram Ibrahim Abu Sba’ was killed by members of Islamic Jihad in the north Palestinian city of Jenin.[5]

Goals

ISM calls the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land the main obstacle to peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The group states four goals:

* To report the conditions under which Palestinians live and to protect them from physical violence by Israeli soldiers and settlers in alliance with Palestinian peace activists and through "creative resistance" efforts.
* To pressure international news media to provide coverage of "the illegality and brutality of the Occupation" in an effort to change public opinion regarding Israel's non-compliance with international law and U.S. foreign aid to Israel.
* To recruit volunteers from other nations to participate in non-violent resistance to the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
* To establish divestment campaigns in the U.S. and Europe to put economic pressure on Israel in the same manner that international sanctions were applied against South Africa during the Apartheid era.
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Special Assistant to President Bush

President George W. Bush appointed Abrams to the post of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations at the National Security Council on 25 June 2001.[20] Abrams was appointed Special Assistant to the President and the NSC's Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs on 2 December 2002.[21] Some human rights groups and commentators considered his White House appointment controversial due to his conviction in the Iran-Contra Affair investigation and his role in overseeing the Reagan administration's foreign policy in Latin America.[22][23]
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January 24, 1948) is an American lawyer who has served in foreign policy positions for two Republican U.S. Presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

During Bush's first term in office, he was appointed the post of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs. At the start of Bush's second term, Abrams was promoted to be his Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy, responsible for advancing Bush's strategy of advancing democracy abroad. Although Abrams is considered a leading neoconservative,[1][2] his appointment by Bush was controversial due to his conviction in 1991 on two misdemeanor counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra Affair investigation.

Early years

Abrams was born into a Jewish family in New York and he understands Hebrew.[3] His father was an immigration lawyer. Elliott received his B.A. from Harvard College in 1969, a Master's degree in international relations from the London School of Economics in 1970, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1973. At Harvard, he was a roommate of Steven Kelman, founder of the Young People's Socialist League campus chapter. Together they penned an article on the 1969 Harvard strike for The New Leader, "The Contented Revolutionists."[4] He practiced in New York--in the summers for his father, and then briefly on Wall Street--but found that he preferred politics. He worked on Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson's brief campaign for the 1976 Democratic nomination, after which he served as special counsel and ultimately as chief of staff for the then-new Senator Daniel Moynihan.

Through Senator Moynihan, Abrams was introduced to Rachel Decter, the stepdaughter of Moynihan's friend, Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary Magazine and the "godfather" of neo-conservatism. They were married in 1980. The couple has three children: Jacob, Sarah and Joey.[5]

Abrams first came to national prominence when he served as Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs in the early 1980s and later as Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs. His nomination to Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs was unanimously approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 17 November 1981.[6] Abrams was Reagan's second choice for the position; his first nominee, Ernest W. Lefever, had been rejected by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 5 June 1981.[7]
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Land Rights
After centuries of power-grabbing and territory inequity, the Sandinsta revolutionary government in 1979 embarked on an uphill struggle for agrarian reform and land rights. However, when the conservative political party took over in 1990, the switch back to a market economy again re-distributed the parceled land. In many cases the land was simply been reversed back to the same private and corporate ownership. For example, in 1983, the Sandanista government set aside a nature preserve in the San Cristobal-Casitas volcanic complex in order to protect the remaining forest cover. As policy shifted, 85% of the land that formed part of the reserve on the San Cristobal volcano now belongs to one private owner. Government control of the remaining 15% is all but non-existent. Landless peasants, large coffee growers, and cattle ranches are slowly settling into these public lands, such as San Cristobal, and the government is failing to stop it.

Most of Nicaragua’s land issues constitute an expanding gap between landless farmers and commercial logging, mining and agricultural interests. In this sense, access and rights to land in Nicaragua becomes a human rights concern as well as an environmental issue. When the Chamorro government created the Bosáwas Biosphere Reserve in 1991, the territory encompassed 1.8 million acres – 7% of Nicaragua’s land, including a rich section of rainforest. However, they neglected to inform the Mayangna and Miskito indigenous peoples living there that the land was now federally protected (and hence, off-limits from their traditional uses of fishing, hunting and crop-raising).

Because the Mayangna and Miskito did not own papers for their land, the debate was brought to court. Nicaragua’s Civil Code mandates that all land that is not officially titled become state land. The law presented an enormous loophole by which the Nicaraguan constitution and the 1987 indigenous people’s autonomy law could not dispute. Several prominent nonprofits fought to establish the indigenous communities’ legal claims, including the US Nature Conservancy.

Recently, two surprise victories for indigenous peoples’ land rights were accomplished by grassroots movements:

• In September 2001, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights - the highest tribunal in the Americas – determined that the Mayagna community of Awas Tingni had customary rights to property. The Nicaraguan government was ruled to have violated these rights by granting concessions to a Korean lumber company. The Awas Tingni had been fighting for their land since 1992.

• In December 2002, the "Demarcation Law Regarding the Properties of the Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Communities of the Atlantic Coast, Bocay, Coco and Indio Maiz Rivers," was enacted. The new law allows indigenous peoples’ “free determination of the use of their territories and the management of all natural resources found on their land" (NNEC 2003).

Yet recent reports indicate half of Nicaragua’s farmers do not own the land they work, or own only small, low-quality parcels. A more equitable distribution of land and regulations enforcing and supporting sustainable agriculture could accomplish a great deal toward alleviating both poverty and environmental degradation.