Urban Pro Weekly

DISPARITY DILEMMA: Here we go again!

U W KING Mali intervention conjures up past mistakes

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Building The CSRA’s Community FREE

The CSRA’s FREE WEEKLY WEEKLY

Newspaper Newspaper VOL.2 NO.19 VOL.2 NO.18

ENTERTAINMENT JANUARY 17 - 23, 2013

& the Roots of Nonviolent

resistance

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MLK HOLIDAY EVENTS

Historian and author to speak at annual MLK celebration Dr. Lewis V. Baldwin, a historian and author who specializes in the history of black churches, will be the guest speaker at an annual celebration service in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The event, hosted by Augusta Technical College, Georgia Regents University and Paine College, will be at noon Friday, Jan. 18, at GRU’s Maxwell Performing Arts Theatre.

The public is welcome.

Baldwin, a native of Camden, Ala., participated in civil rights demonstrations as a student in Wilcox County public schools, the heart of the socalled Alabama blackbelt, and at Talladega College in Talladega, Ala. He has co-authored or authored

Historian Lewis Baldwin as authored seven books on MLK. seven books on Dr. King, including There is a Balm in Gilead: The Cultural Roots of Martin Luther King, Jr., which received the Midwest

Independent Publishers Association’s Best All-Around Book and Midwest Book Achievement awards in 1992.

He also recently edited and introduced two volumes of King documents as part of the Beacon Press’s King Legacy Series.

Baldwin has a master of art degree in black church studies, a master of divinity in theology and a doctoral degree in American Christianity.

Baldwin was ordained in 1978 and has preached and appeared on radio and television programs throughout the country and is currently a professor of religious studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He was inducted into Moorehouse College’s

Martin Luther King Jr. International Collegium of Scholars in 2004.

In addition to remarks by Baldwin, the service will feature performances by choruses from GRU and Paine. The Jaguar Express bus will make two runs between the Health Sciences and Summerville campuses, with pick-ups at 11:15 and 11:45 on Laney Walker Boulevard, in front of the old dental school. Another shuttle will pick riders up from the Health Sciences Campus, Annex 1, North Entrance at 11:30 a.m.

For more information, call Felicia Smalls in the GRU Office of the Provost, 706-721-4014.

Martin Luther King Jr. Parade The Augusta Branch NAACP will be hosting the 2013 Martin Luther King, Jr. Parade on Saturday, January 19, 2013. The theme of this year’s event is “Stop The Killings, Stop The Violence, Now.” Details: Line Up at 11:00 AM Parade Begins at 1:00 PM Parade Route: The Parade will start at Dyess Park Community Center, located at 902 James Brown Blvd. The parade will proceed south on James Brown Blvd., then west onto Wrightsboro Road, north onto Augusta Ave., east onto Laney Walker Blvd., north onto 11th Street, and east onto D’Antignac Street. The official viewing stand for the parade will be in front of the Lucy C. Laney Football Stadium. For information, please call 706-724-0390.

A Salute to Our Youths and the Community Organizations Which Serve Them

Monday, Jan. 21 at The Partridge Inn, 2110 Walton Way; 5:30-8:30 p.m.

HBA fundraiser for Unlikely Allies Emerging Leaders Conference Series 2013; jazz by Karen Gordon and Bill Karp; advance tickets only $30 adults, $15 ages 17 and younger; (706) 619-4176, hba@ hbagroup-intl.com

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Alabama State Police clash with nonviolent protesters in Selma, Alabama in 1965.

The Roots Of Nonviolent Resistance “Love in action is often a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky

T

o most Americans, the enduring images of the civil rights movement was the brutality and terror that was inflicted upon unarmed demonstrators by violent mobs often aided and abetted by city and state

police.

The freedom songs that emanated from the jails and picket lines of the 1960s American South echoed a long-standing pacifist tradition that has its roots in American popular activism dating back to the 19th century and beyond.

From American naturalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau whose tome on Civil Disobedience inspired modern activists to Christian activist A.J. Muste, who was an early mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., the nonviolent resistance to war, corporate greed, racist ideologies and U.S. imperialism abroad has always been a part of the ‘American landscape.

Continued on next page

Dorothy Day, founder of The Catholic Worker, was often arrested for her beliefs. She once wrote, “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?” Photo by Bob Fitch

Nonviolent demonstrators face fire hoses in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. Photo by Charles Moore

“To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you.

We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you.

Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer.

One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”

MLK Jr. from “Loving Your Enemies”

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Nonviolent resistance from page 3 Even Mohatma Gandhi, who is most often viewed as the originator of the nonviolent protests typified by leaders like King, was influenced by the world’s more liberal thinkers. Gandhi was influenced by a handful of books, which he repeatedly meditated upon.

They included especially Plato’s Apology, William Salter’s Ethical Religion (1889); Henry David Thoreau’s On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1847); Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1893); and John Ruskin’s Unto this Last (1862).

A U.S. tradition of nonviolence The Reverend “A.J.” Muste was

a Dutch-born American clergyman and political activist born in 1887. He is best remembered for his work in the labor movement, pacifist movement, and worked closely with CORE (The Congress of Racial Equality).

As a labor leader in the 1920s and 1930s, he was himself pulled from the picket line as a strike leader, isolated, and clubbed by police. On one occasion when local police armed themselves with machine guns in anticipation of union violence, Muste and his strike committee elected to make use of nonviolence. Instead of attempting to fight force with force, Muste instead advised the

striking textile workers to “smile as we pass the machine guns and the police.” Despite the efforts of agent provocateurs to inspire violence, Muste and the strike committee were able to avoid the outbreak of violence which would have served to discredit the strikers and their objective and give cause for the physical suppression of the labor action.

From 1940 to 1953, he was the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, during which time he became an advisor to James Lawson and Martin Luther King Jr. He was the author of Non-violence in an Aggressive World (1940).

Gandhi’s uncompromising brand of nonviolence Although Gandhi was not the originator of the principle of nonviolence, he was the first to apply it in the political field on a large scale. The concept of nonviolence and nonresistance has a long history in Indian religious thought and has had many revivals in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Jewish and Christian contexts.

Gandhi explains his philosophy and way of life in his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

Gandhi realized later that this level of nonviolence required

incredible faith and courage, which he believed everyone did not possess. He therefore advised that everyone need not keep to nonviolence, especially if it were used as a cover for cowardice, saying, “where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.”

Gandhi’s views came under heavy criticism in Britain when it was under attack from Nazi Germany, and later when the Holocaust was revealed. He told the British people in 1940, “I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being

useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions... If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.”

In a post-war interview in 1946, he said, “Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s

Martin Luther King Jr., like Gandhi, believed in the power of moral force over violence.

Gandhi has said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” and “There are many causes that I am prepared to die for, but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”

knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs... It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”Gandhi believed this act of “collective suicide”, in response to the Holocaust, “would have been heroism.”

Nonviolent resistance in South Africa and the American civil rights movement During the 1950s and early 1960s, nonviolent protesters challenged legalized racial segregation and discrimination in the only two plces here such blatant manifestations of white supremacy could then be found — ­ the southern United States and the Union of South Africa.

Both movements were inspired to some extent by the same prototype — Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi had first experimented with his nonviolent resistance while a leader of the South African Indian community’s struggle for rights as British subjects in the period between 1906 and 1914.

The ANC’s (African National Congress) ‘Campaign of Defiance against Unjust Laws’ predated SCLC’s Montgomery bus boycott by a few years.

In 1952 some 8,000 blacks

(including Indians and Coloureds as well as Africans) and a handful of whites were arrested for planned acts of civil disobedience against recently enacted apartheid legislation. The campaign did not make the government alter its course, and it was called off early in 1953 after riots broke out in the wake of nonviolent actions in the Eastern Cape. Despite efforts to outlaw such resistance, the ANC and other organizations continued its nonviolent protests into the early 1960s. School boycotts, bus boycotts, non-cooperaiton with the program of removing blacks to new townships and mass marches to protest efforts to force African women to carry passes were among the actions carried out by government opponents.

The South African govern-

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ment stepped up its program of repression which culminated in the 1960 massacre of 69 unarmed protesters at Sharpeville.

Shortly after, the South African government banned the most prominent groups waging the nonviolent protest and drove them underground.

That ended the phase of nonviolent resistance in South Africa and ushered in the era of armed struggle.

The nonviolent phase of the American Civil Rights The Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 in South African effectively movement began with the ended the era of nonviolent protest among those groups that Montgomery bus boycott battled the racist policies of the government. Following the of 1955-56 and culminated banning of civil right organizations, the movement escalated in the great Birmingham, to armed struggle.

Mississippi, and Selma disenfranchisement in the 1964 and 1965, which effeccampaigns of 1963-1965. southern states, the movement tively outlawed Jim Crow and Viewed narrowly as an attack was remarkably successful. It assured southern blacks access on legalized segregation and led to the Civil Rights Acts of to the ballot box.

Publisher Ben Hasan 706-394-9411 Managing Editor Frederick Benjamin Sr. 706-836-2018

Sales & Marketing Phone: 706-394-9411 New Media Consultant Director of Photography Vincent Hobbs

email: Ben Hasan bzhasan54@yahoo.com Frederick Benjamin Sr. editor@urbanproweekly.com Vincent Hobbs photos@urbanproweekly.com

5 UrbanProWeekly • JANUARY 17 - 23, 2013 Jaguars’ forward Travis Keels (R) goes up against Armstrong Atlantic State’s J.C. Winn (#33) during a Peach Belt Conference game at Christenberry Fieldhouse. The Jags crushed the Pirates with a final score of 74-56 in their first game as Georgia Regents University. Photo by Vincent Hobbs/UPW

ASU/GRU Jaguars roll over Armstrong GRU Lady Jaguar Brittany White (L) maneuvers the ball against guard Stephenie Coney (R) during a Peach Belt Conference game against Armstrong Atlantic State. The Lady Jags dominated the game, with a final score of 75-70 in their first game as Georgia Regents University.

Photo by Vincent Hobbs/UPW

UrbanProWeekly • JANUARY 17 - 23, 2013

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Legacy at Walton Oaks

Walton Oaks

Walton Oaks

Bedroom at Walton Oaks

Kitchen and Dining area at Walton Oaks

Living Room at Walton Oaks

Second Bedroom at Walton Oaks

- the first mixed-income public housing community within the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA).

Walton Comminities in partnership with Augusta Housing Authority has completed the first two phases of construction, which include Legacy at Walton Oaks (for seniors) and the first phase of the family housing. The third phase should begin in the fall of 2013.

It is the goal of Augusta Housing Authority to bring to fruition the ideals: “By providing housing to an array of incomes, the development creates a place and sense of community. It promotes the further development for high quality housing and economic development.”

Augusta Housing Authority is working with Walton Communities, the City of Augusta and other area partners within the CSRA on Walton Oaks.

For more information contact Jacob L. Oglesby Executive Director at 706-312-3158 or joglesby@augustapha.org

...in honor and remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...

“...a building is

not well erected without a good, solid blueprint...in your life's blueprint, you must have as the basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor.

You're going to be deciding as the days, as the years unfold what you will do in life — what your life's work will be. Set out to do it well.”

--- excerpt from speech given at Barratt High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967

AUGUSTA Georgia Regents University is going the distance as the new title sponsor of Augusta’s half marathon and 10K. University officials have signed a three-year agreement with the Augusta Sports Council to become the title sponsor of the council’s annual half marathon and 10K, which will be renamed Georgia Regents University Augusta Half Marathon and 10K. The next race is slated for Feb. 24, 2013.

“Georgia Regents University will be committed to promoting an active and healthy lifestyle in the community,” said David Brond, Senior Vice President for Communications and Marketing at GRU. “We’re excited to partner with the Augusta Sports Council, a community organization that strengthens the quality of life and economic well-being of the citizens of Augusta.”

The race, which begins and ends at Enterprise Mill, includes tours through the city’s downtown area and historic Summerville neighborhood.

More than 1,500 athletes are expected to participate in next year’s race.

“It is very exciting to have Georgia Regents University on board as the title sponsor of the Augusta Half Marathon and 10K,” said Augusta Sports Council CEO Brinsley Thigpen.

“The university’s increased emphasis on public health initiatives makes it a perfect partner for the Augusta Sports Council. Working together, we will be able to grow the event and enhance our community.”

The half marathon has been the

fastest growing distance road race in the United States since 2003, according to a national survey by Running USA. Of those surveyed, 35 percent of men and 39 percent of women preferred the 13.1-mile distance to other race distances.

“Our priority has always been the

health and well-being of the athlete,” said Tim McLane, Head Athletic Trainer at GRU’s Sports Medicine Center. “Our team will be there to keep an eye on the runners, educating them on injury prevention and providing first aid, when necessary.

We’re excited for the opportunity

and look forward to continuing our partnership with the Augusta Sports Council for this event.”

Registration for the 2013 Georgia Regents University Augusta Half Marathon and 10K is now open. For more information, or to register, visit www.augustahalf.org.

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Georgia Regents to sponsor half marathon

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UrbanProWeekly • JANUARY 17 - 23, 2013

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Since consolidation, Augusta Richmond has inched its way toward a program that would specifically benefit women and minority-owned businesses. After nearly two decades, a federal lawsuit and hundreds of thousands of dollars already spent, it is faced with the prospect of having to start all over again from scratch.

By Frederick Benjamin Sr. UrbanProWeekly Political Analyst AUGUSTA The attempt by the consolidated government of Augusta to implement a program that would give a greater share of the city’s purchasing pie to women and minority-owned businesses has been an exercise in futility — a willful futility at that.

Simply put, the majority of the serving commissioners from 1995 through 2013 have paid lip service to the concept of having an effective disadvantaged business program, but would put forth neither the funding, the accountability, nor the interdepartmental cooperation that would be needed to pull it off.

That’s an indisputable fact.

Anyone who says different is jiving — pure and simple.

This article could be filled with facts and figures and percentages — all of which don’t amount to a hill of beans — because this issue is not about facts and figures.

It’s about political will, or the lack thereof.

Here’s how serious they are about this issue.

The groundwork for the minority business program was begun in 1994 and by 1997 the concept was approved.

Yet, it wasn’t until 2005 that they hired

someone to implement the program.

That’s sad. Things haven’t gotten much better.

There’s been a lot of stuff done behind the scenes, all with the intent of keeping the pot boiling even though it way on the back burner, but the bottom line is — we are no closer to implementing a program specifically geared toward women and minority-owned businesses than we were in 1997.

How come? A lot of the folks who have taken up space on the AugustaRichmond commission for the past six years have been accountants, business people, multi-million dollar deal-making folks, real, real creative folks. These guys could figure out how to hide a multimillion dollar in a land bank that is supposed to be for distressed properties.

These folks are good. They are real smart. They read all the right books.

They figured out how to get the city to build on property that they don’t even own and then feel good about the whole thing.

So, listen. We’re not dealing with dummies. We’re dealing with people who want to run the city like a business.

These people are about the bottom line. There’s no two ways about that.

This week, some commissioners have begun discussions designed to get this project back on track, but they are already running into foul weather.

Disadantaged Business Enterprise Director Yvonee Gentry provides information and resources to small businesses. Photo by Vincent Hobbs Here’s the deal. If the mayor, the city administrator, the city attorney and at least six commissioners are not behind this thing, then someone is going to wind up getting frustrated and wasting a whole lot of time.

I’ve got a better idea.

Director Yvonee Gentry is a true professional. She shows up to work and labors on behalf of small business owners. Her department needs more

resources.

If the commissioners want to do something right — for a change — they should hire a Contract Compliance Officer this week and then begin implementing the policies that are already in place and dispense with this charade.

And then, when the political climate is more promising, see about “breaking women and minorities off a little som’ som’.”

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UrbanProWeekly • JANUARY 17 - 23, 2013

Disparity dilemma: A study in civic inertia

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UrbanProWeekly • JANUARY 17 - 23, 2013

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Rosa L. Williams to celebrate 37th Pastoral Anniversary at Everfaithful Baptist Everfaithful Missionary Baptist Church is celebrating the 37th Pastoral Anniversay of Bishop Rosa L. Williams, D.D. with a special service and banquet.

The Pastoral Annivrsary Banquet will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 26, 2013 at the Augusta Marriot Hotel located at No. 2 10th Street, Augusta.

On Sunday, January 27, the Bishop Rosa L. Williams 37th Pastoral Anniversary Service will be held at 11 a.m. at Everfaithful Baptist Church.

The speaker for both events will be Evangelist Ruby Holland Hutchins of Memphis, Tennessee.

Tickets for the banquet can be obtained by calling (706) 722-0553.

For further information or questions contact Charlene Crane at (706) 7220553.

Everfaithful Missionary Baptist Church is located at 314 Sandbar Ferry Road in Augusta, Georgia.

Public Information Forum on Saturday There will be a public informatin forum at the Henry H. Brigham Community Center, Senior Citizens Building on Saturday, Jan 19, 2013.

The forum begins at 9 a.m. at which time breakfast will be served.

9:30 A.M. – 10:00 A.M.: Jeff Baker, Project Manager, RCBOE; 10:00 A.M. - 10:30 A.M.: Cedric Johnson, Director of Community Affairs, GHSU; 10:30A.M.-11:00A.M.: Rep. Quincy Murphy, Birthday Tax Reform; 11:15 A.M. – 11:20 A.M.: Remarks, Rep. Quincy Murphy 11:20 A.M. - 11:25 A.M. Remarks, BOE Trustee Patsy Scott 11:25 A.M. - 11:30A.M. Remarks, Commissioner Bill Lockett, District 5 11:30 A.M. Adjourn (All speakers will be available to answer additional questions at the end of the meeting) “Working Together for a Better Community” FACILITATOR: Honorable Bill Lockett; Commissioner District 5

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U W Forum Just Shoot Me – gun paranoia thrives rban Pro

By D.L. Hughley Earlier this week, Matt Drudge posted a headline that President Obama was considering executive action on guns. With Drudge’s characteristic flair for class and understatement, he framed this headline alongside a photograph of Adolf Hitler. I am not a scholar on Naziism, but I feel safe saying that Hitler wouldn’t enjoy seeing a white nation electing a black man to the highest office. (And not just any black man either, but one of mixedrace.) Somehow, in Drudge’s mind, there is significant overlap between Hitler and Obama.

This is why it is so difficult to have a national conversation on guns in this country. One side is interested in reasonable solutions to violence that protect people and protect gun rights. The other side is interested in living in a delusional fantasyland where President Obama is a Marxist, a Nazi, a Kenyan and now, apparently, King George.

They argue that guns are the only thing keeping us from reverting to a 1776 situation -- the very same situation that they regard as the apex of American freedom. If the reasoning is hard to follow, that’s because there isn’t any.

It’s no wonder they fight tooth and nail against getting guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. What would that do to their personal arsenals?

The fantasyland they live in extends to their solutions to the recurring American problem of assault-weapons mass murder. They argue that we should have a country where every schoolteacher is armed, to prevent a Newtown from ever happening again.

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Why is it harder to get two packs of Sudafed than 10,000 bullets? Why does my pharmacist know how many pills I’ve acquired, but no one knows how many military-grade weapons I possess?

And they thought negotiating with the education unions was hard before?

So they want to trust teachers with Berettas, yet they won’t trust them with some books. Ain’t that a bitch?

But these shootings weren’t just in schools, so it wouldn’t just be the teachers who need guns. We’ve had shootings in mosques, we’ve had them in movie theaters, we’ve had them on college campuses. Would we have armed guards in all these places? If your vision of a “free society” involves armed guards everywhere, maybe you need to check your prescription.

I’ve seen that movie. We all have. It describes every film that features a failed apocalyptic society, a nightmare come to life. We want a country where the hills are alive with the sound of music, not the sound of artillery.

Then they point out, correctly, that more people die every year from car accidents. They point out, correctly, that no one is speaking of banning cars. What they don’t understand is that this proves the point that no one wants to ban all guns. A private citizen can’t buy a tank or other military vehicle. That didn’t mean that the government “went after” SUVs next.

There was no “slippery slope” -- and even if there were, the four-wheel

drive would handle it just fine. No private citizen needs an aircraft carrier, or an Apache helicopter, or an assault rifle. If I am in a position where I have to shoot thirty people at once, I don’t need a better clip. I need to move.

Yes, car deaths outnumber gun massacres. So does our inability to prevent car deaths mean we shouldn’t try to prevent gun deaths? Is fewer deaths a bad goal -- or is it the best possible goal? Their argument comes down to, “I get to have an assault rifle because car wrecks happen.” That’s how insane the reasoning is, and it just further proves how crucial the need is for background checks. And we have tried to cut down on car deaths. In my lifetime, we’ve gotten stricter and more informed about drunk driving, and we’ve forced people to wear seatbelts and have airbags. A ban on assault weapons would be the same thing -taking an existing behavior and making it safer for everyone.

Alcohol abuse is a perfect precedent here. We don’t have liquor shows where anyone and everyone can stock up on all the scotch that they want, right? There are many other dangerous substances that are restricted but still legal. Why is it harder to get two packs of Sudafed than 10,000 bul-

lets? Why does my pharmacist know how many pills I’ve acquired, but no one knows how many military-grade weapons I possess? And is that safer for everyone, including myself? Gun nuts claim that they don’t want assault weapons in the hands of the mentally ill -- but that’s all that a background check would prevent. Why are they fighting background checks so hard, if they’re not scared that, just maybe, they won’t make the grade? This is why I think gun shows should be renamed “Swapmeets for Psychos”.

Rather than have an honest conversation, these paranoid nuts constantly muddle the issue. They claim violent video games are the cause. I don’t know if playing a violent video game will make you violent, but I do know that playing them all day will make you unemployed -- and that will make you broke, and that will make anyone violent. Yet these same video games are safely played by broke, unemployed men in other countries. The difference is, those men don’t have access to assault weapons. Our broke, unemployed men do.

Next, they tried to blame Newtown on the shooter’s alleged autism, something which upset me greatly. My son Kyle is autistic, and between him and me only one of us sat outside a dude’s house waiting to shoot him as payback. As I recounted in my book, thankfully I calmed down before ruining two lives. But this proves another point: guns don’t kill people. Assholes kill people. We can’t ban assholes -- but we can sure keep them from unloading a magazine into a crowd of innocent children.

A voice from Afghanistan: ‘US Drones bury beautiful lives’ Why has the U.S. and NATO sent drones to wage war in Afghanistan?

The interview with Raz Mohammad that follows was conducted by Kathy Kelly and Maya Evans, members of the US- and UK-based chapters of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCVN). Raz Mohammad, an Afghan Peace Volunteer, is a Pashtun from Maidan Wardak province in eastern Afghanistan.

Voices for Creative Nonviolence: Raz Mohmmad, what do you think about drones?

Raz Mohammad : I think drones are not good. I remember how, in my village, a drone attack killed my brother-in-law and four of his friends. It was truly sad. A beautiful life was buried and the sound of crying and sorrow arose from peaceful homes. I say that this is inhumane. Today, the idea of humanity has been forgotten. Why do we spend money like this? Why don’t we use an alternative way?

The international community says that drones are used to kill the Taliban. This is not true. We should

see the truth. Today, it’s hard to find the truth and no one listens to the people.

VCVN: How have drones impacted Wardak Afghanistan?

RM: Drones have a negative impact on the lives of the people of Wardak and other provinces in Afghanistan, because drones don’t bring peace. They kill human beings. Drones bring nothing but bombs. They burn the lives of the people. People can’t move around freely. In the nights, people are afraid. Drones don’t improve people’s lives, they limit the people’s lives. The people are not happy with drones. When they hear the sound of drones, they feel sad. Those who live in Kabul and those who live in the provinces especially in Pashtun areas feel differently about drones.

Those in Kabul don’t feel the pain of those in the provinces where there’s war and family members are being killed. It is those families of victims who should be asked and whose

voices should be heard.

VCVN: Are drones Afghanistan safer?

making

RM: No. Drones don’t protect the people of Afghanistan. Instead, drones kill the people of Afghanistan.

You hear in the news and reports that every day, families, children and women are killed. Do you call this safety?

VCVN: Is there a mental impact on Afghans from the presence of drones?

RM: Yes, drones have a negative impact on the mind. For me, when I go home, I recall the incident with my brother-in-law which affected me a lot and changed my life. I don’t have a peaceful mind. When I’m home and study at night, my father & mother are very worried and tell me not to stay up too late because they may make a mistake and bomb the house. When my younger brother knows of a drone

incident, he says he won’t go to school or get out of bed early today because the drones may come. See, how it affects the mind of a 5 or 8 year old child.

VCVN: What do you think about the use of drones after the 2014 withdrawal?

RM: I think that the use of drones today or in 2014 is inappropriate.

Why has the international community sent drones to wage war in Afghanistan? Why have we forgotten the concepts of humanity and the love of humanity? War is not a solution. We can see this from the past 30 years of war in Afghanistan. Wars bring killing and enmity. Drones after 2014 will cause enmity between Pashtuns, Tajiks and Hazaras because those in government use the people for their own benefit. For their own power and lives, they drop bombs on the people, and bring division and inhumanity. As I see it now and after 2014, innocent human beings will be killed.

The west African nation becomes the eighth country in the last four years alone where Muslims are killed by the west.

by Glenn Greenwald As French war planes bomb Mali, there is one simple statistic that provides the key context: this west African nation of 15 million people is the eighth country in which western powers - over the last four years alone - have bombed and killed Muslims - after Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and the Phillipines (that does not count the numerous lethal tyrannies propped up by the west in that region). For obvious reasons, the rhetoric that the west is not at war with the Islamic world grows increasingly hollow with each new expansion of this militarism. But within this new massive bombing campaign, one finds most of the vital lessons about western intervention that, typically, are steadfastly ignored.

First, as the New York Times’ background account from this morning makes clear, much of the instability in Mali is the direct result of Nato’s intervention in Libya. Specifically, “heavily armed, battle-hardened Islamist fighters returned from combat in Libya” and “the big weaponry coming out of Libya and the different, more Islamic fighters who came back” played the precipitating role in the collapse of the US-supported central government. As Owen Jones wrote in an excellent column this morning in the Independent: This intervention is itself the consequence of another. The Libyan war is frequently touted as a success story for liberal interventionism. Yet the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship had consequences that Western intelligence services probably never even bothered to imagine. Tuaregs – who traditionally hailed from northern Mali – made up a large portion of his army. When Gaddafi was ejected from power, they returned to their homeland: sometimes forcibly so as black Africans came under attack in postGaddafi Libya, an uncomfortable fact largely ignored by the Western media. . . . [T]he Libyan war was seen as a success . . . and here we are now engaging with its catastrophic blowback.

Over and over, western intervention ends up - whether by ineptitude or design - sowing the seeds of further intervention. Given the massive instability still plaguing Libya as well as enduring anger over the Benghazi attack, how long will it be before we hear that bombing and invasions in that country are - once again necessary to combat the empowered “Islamist” forces there: forces empowered as a result of the Nato overthrow of that country’s government?

Second, the overthrow of the Malian government was enabled by US-trained-and-armed soldiers who defected. From the NYT: “commanders of this nation’s elite army units, the fruit of years of careful American training, defected when they were needed

Motorcyclists drive past a mural showing Malian soldiers in the Malian capital of Bamako January 13, 2013. REUTERS/Joe Penney most — taking troops, guns, trucks and their newfound skills to the enemy in the heat of battle, according to senior Malian military officials.”

And then: “an American-trained officer overthrew Mali’s elected government, setting the stage for more than half of the country to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists.”

In other words, the west is once again at war with the very forces that it trained, funded and armed. Nobody is better at creating its own enemies, and thus ensuring a posture of endless war, than the US and its allies. Where the US cannot find enemies to fight against it, it simply empowers them.

Third, western bombing of Muslims in yet another country will obviously provoke even more anti-western sentiment, the fuel of terrorism. Already, as the Guardian reports, French fighter jets in Mali have killed “at least 11 civilians including three children”.

France’s long history of colonialization in Mali only exacerbates the inevitable anger. Back in December, after the UN Security Council authorized the intervention in Mali, Amnesty International’s researcher on West Africa, Salvatore Saguès, warned: “An international armed intervention is likely to increase the scale of human rights violations we are already seeing in this conflict.”

As always, western governments are well aware of this consequence and yet proceed anyway. The NYT notes that the French bombing campaign was launched “in the face of longstanding American warnings that a Western assault on the Islamist stronghold could rally jihadists around the world and prompt terrorist attacks as far away as Europe.” Indeed, at the same time that the French are now killing civilians in Mali, a joint FrenchUS raid in Somaliacaused the deaths of “at least eight civilians, including two women and two children”.

To believe that the US and its allies can just continue to go around the world, in country after country, and

bomb and kill innocent people Muslims - and not be targeted with “terrorist” attacks is, for obvious reasons, lunacy. As Bradford University professor Paul Rogers told Jones, the bombing of Mali “will be portrayed as ‘one more example of an assault on Islam’”. Whatever hopes that may exist for an end to the “war on terror” are systematically destroyed by ongoing aggression.

Fourth, for all the self-flattering rhetoric that western democracies love to apply to themselves, it is extraordinary how these wars are waged without any pretense of democratic process. Writing about the participation of the British government in the military assault on Mali, Jones notes that “it is disturbing – to say the least – how Cameron has led Britain into Mali’s conflict without even a pretence at consultation.” Identically, the Washington Post this morning reports that President Obama has acknowledged after the fact that US fighter jets entered Somali air space as part of the French operation there; the Post called that “a rare public acknowledgment of American combat operations in the Horn of Africa” and described the anti-democratic secrecy that typically surrounds US war actions in the region: “The US military has based a growing number of armed Predator drones as well as F-15 fighter jets at Camp Lemonnier, which has grown into a key installation for secret counterterrorism operations in Somalia and Yemen. The defense official declined to identify the aircraft used in the rescue attempt but said they were fighter jets, not drones. . . . .

“It was unclear, however, why Obama felt compelled to reveal this particular operation when he has remained silent about other specific US combat missions in Somalia.

Spokesmen from the White House and the Pentagon declined to elaborate or answer questions Sunday night.”

The Obama administration has, of

course, draped its entire drone and global assassination campaign in an impenetrable cloth of secrecy, ensuring it remains beyond the scrutinizing reach of media outlets, courts, and its own citizens. The US and its western allies do not merely wage endless war aimed invariably at Muslims. They do so in virtually complete secrecy, without any transparency or accountability.

Meet the western “democracies”.

Finally, the propaganda used to justify all of this is depressingly common yet wildly effective. Any western government that wants to bomb Muslims simply slaps the label of “terrorists” on them, and any real debate or critical assessment instantly ends before it can even begin. “The president is totally determined that we must eradicate these terrorists who threaten the security of Mali, our own country and Europe,” proclaimed French defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

As usual, this simplistic cartoon script distorts reality more than it describes it. There is no doubt that the Malian rebels have engaged in all sorts of heinous atrocities (“amputations, flogging, and stoning to death for those who oppose their interpretation of Islam”), but so, too, have Malian government forces - including, as Amnesty chronicled, “arresting, torturing and killing Tuareg people apparently only on ethnic ground.” As Jones aptly warns: “don’t fall for a narrative so often pushed by the Western media: a perverse oversimplification of good fighting evil, just as we have seen imposed on Syria’s brutal civil war.”

The French bombing of Mali, perhaps to include some form of US participation, illustrates every lesson of western intervention. The “war on terror” is a self-perpetuating war precisely because it endlessly engenders its own enemies and provides the fuel to ensure that the fire rages without end.

But the sloganeering propaganda used to justify this is so cheap and easy - we must kill the Terrorists! - that it’s hard to see what will finally cause this to end. The blinding fear - not just of violence, but of Otherness - that has been successfully implanted in the minds of many western citizens is such that this single, empty word (Terrorists), standing alone, is sufficient to generate unquestioning support for whatever their governments do in its name, no matter how secret or unaccompanied by evidence it may be. © 2013 The Guardian

UrbanProWeekly • JANUARY 17 - 23, 2013

The bombing of Mali highlights all the lessons of western intervention

13

Glenn Greenwald is a columnist on civil liberties and US national security issues for the Guardian. A former constitutional lawyer, he was until 2012 a contributing writer at Salon.

His most recent book is, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism.

UrbanProWeekly • JANUARY 17 - 23, 2013

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