Catholic Workers at STRATcom HQ against bombing of Gaza, Iraq & Afghanistan

by Gaza Photos Tue Jan 06, 2009 23:48

Photos-Slaughter of the Innocents in Gaza

http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=50434&s2=06

by @Pentagon, D.C. - Dorothy Day CW House DC Wed Jan 07, 2009 15:49

Catholic Workers Vigil for Gaza at the Pentagon http://dccatholicworker.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/we-don...gaza/

by Egypt/Gaza border Mon Jan 12, 2009 19:48

Catholic Worker crew including doctor and Kathy Kelly who testified at the three ploughshares trials in Dublin are attempting to get into Gaza. This is an article by Kathy written form the Egypt/Gaza border.....

http://dccatholicworker.wordpress.com/2009/01/11/tunnel...ence/

by Kathy Kelly Egypt/Arish Thu Jan 15, 2009 09:47 Arish, Egypt

Kathy Kelly reports from Arish/ Egypt-Jan 14th.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/38964

by 10 arrested Sat Jan 17, 2009 08:33

You can read a report of this action on the Voices website:

http://vcnv.org/gaza-10-arrested-at-senator-durbins-off...icago

by Kael Sat Jan 17, 2009 18:26

So much for freedom of speech.
Land of the free.....only if freedom means you conform to imperalism!

by Kathy Kelly reports from Gaza Sun Jan 18, 2009 15:44

Voices for Creative Nonviolence received the following report from
Kathy Kelly at 11:10 a.m. on January 17. She is currently in the city
of Rafah, in southern Gaza.
----------

Dear Friends,

Hello from Gaza. We're in Rafah, in southern Gaza, a small town which
has been fiercely assaulted by the Israeli Air Force for the past
three weeks. Last night, we stayed in a family home about 450 meters
from the border between Egypt and Gaza. We were one block away from
the area between the border and Sea Street, (Rafah's main street). The
Israeli military had dropped leaflets over the area, warning everyone
to leave because Israel planned a fierce assault. Many residents stay
with relatives overnight, but we drove through the area after sunset
and saw numerous children playing in the streets.

Beginning at 12:30 a.m., Israel F-16s and Apache helicopters bombed
the neighborhood once every eleven minutes for about the next 46
minutes. The bombing resumed at about 3:00 a.m. and again at about
5:00 a.m. By morning six family homes were destroyed.

Throughout the day, today, the bombing has continued.

One humanitarian worker told us that he has heard of many groups
speaking about agreements that might be made but he said the only
reality is that people are buried in the ground.

Today, we visited Rafah's hospital, the Abu Yusif Al Najaar hospital,
where we briefly met several people who were injured by the bombing,
including two children and a grandmother. The hospital lacks basic
common surgical tools and the area's pharmacy was destroyed during the
first days of the bombing.

We also visited with Int'l Solidarity Movement workers who told us
that ISM members in the north need more help accompanying ambulances.
At this point, we're told it would be very difficult for us to travel
north because of roadblocks.

At the World Vision office, here in Rafah, the director told us that
not one kilo of cement had come into Rafah over the last two years. He
wondered how they would rebuild after this latest "catastrophic and
unfair war."

Several families displaced by the bombing are living in a primitive
camp, with plastic for doors, and as many as 17 people crowded into
two separate makeshift shelters, - very cramped quarters.

Very best,

Kathy Kelly
Voices for Creative Nonviolence

by K.Kelly Gaza Jan 18 Mon Jan 19, 2009 19:19

Date: Sun, Jan 18, 2009
"Respite in Gaza," by Kathy Kelly.

Kathy Kelly and Audrey Stewart have been inside Gaza for the last
several days. Kathy is with Voices for Creative Nonviolence
www.vcnv.org )

January 18, 2009, 6pm Rafah, Gaza.

Late last night, a text message notified us that the Israeli
government was very close to declaring that they would stop attacking
Gaza for one day. Shortly before midnight, we heard huge explosions,
four in a row. Till now, that was the last attack. Israeli drones
flew overhead all night long, but residents of Rafah were finally able
to get eight hours of sleep uninterrupted by F16s and Apache
helicopters attacking them.

Audrey Stewart and I stayed with Abu Yusif and his family, all of whom
had fled their home closer to the border and were staying in that Abu
Yusif's brother-in-law, who is out of the country, loaned to him.

The family arose this morning after a comparatively restful slumber.
For the first time in three weeks, they weren't attacked by bombs
throughout the night. This morning, while his wife prepared
breakfast, he and the children nestled together, on a mat, lining the
wall. Abu Yusif had a son under each arm, while the youngest son
playfully circled his siblings and then fell into his father's lap.
Umm Yusif prepared a mixture of date preserves and pine nuts, served
with warm bread, cheese and spices. Her daughter smiled in
contentment, while her nephew, her husband and a close family friend
talked about the news.

The family isn't confident that Israel's attacks will end, nor can
they know what Hamas will choose to do, but today residents of Rafah
were able to at least begin assessing the damage. Abu Yusif and his
son took us to their home very close to the border. The house is
still standing, --he'll need to repair broken windows and doors, but
he is better off than many of his neighbors whose houses are now piles
of rubble.

Very near his home are the remnants of tunnels that are now unusable.
A few dozen people picked through the rubble, salvaging wood for fuel.

Young boys carried pieces of wood in remnants of plastic formerly used
to cover tomato plants. An older man told me he is afraid to carry
even a piece of wood. Pointing upward, he explained that the unmanned
surveillance planes circle the skies all day. If it appeared that he
was carrying a rocket instead of a piece of wood, he might be targeted
for assassination.

Sitting around an ashcan fire, people who had maintained the tunnels
tell us that they dream of freedom: freedom of movement and basic
human rights. Every person can dream, but human beings in Palestine
can't dream of anything else but freedom, to sleep without bombing and
to live without suffering from extreme stress. Fida, who translates
for us, tells me she has a terrible headache very day, from the
stress. She feels worse at night. Her little sister is so terrified
that she can't walk a step without help from her mother and sister.

She says that if Israel opens the border there won't be any need to
open the tunnels. If borders don't open, people will rebuild the
tunnels.

Hussein tells us about a doctor who worked in an Israeli hospital.
The doctor is a Palestinian who lived in Rafah. The Israeli hospital
where he works is about 100 meters from where we sat. Last week, the
Israelis destroyed his home and killed his children. "Why do you
destroy my house?" he asks. He lost his children and his home, but he
still works in the Israeli hospital. "Israel is experimenting with
us, using white phosphorous and other new kinds of bombs."

One man, a teacher, says he hasn't had one day without sorrow. He
listens to the children he teaches tell many stories about how their
homes were destroyed. He hopes his own child and other children like
him can live like other children in the world. He hopes his son, his
only child, will have a better life.

"Show the world we are friendly and we don't love war," he tells us.
"Israel forces us to live under these forces. The war is not only
against Palestinians in Gaza. It is against all Palestinians. They
want us to leave this land, but we can't leave it. They don't want us
to wake up safe."

All of the men speaking with us had to leave their homes and find
other places to live.

The drones still fly overhead, promising the possibility of further
attack. If Hamas is accused of breaking the cease fire, the people
will pay. Many of these residents who live near the border also fear
that if they are spotted anything – even carrying even a stick, the
drones overhead will spot them and mistake them for someone carrying a
rocket and they will be attacked again.

Abu Yusif examines the damage done to his house. He tries to fix a
broken water heater. His sons collect a bag of clothing so that
everyone in the family can change clothes for the first time in three
weeks. Maybe, just maybe, they'll have another night of sleep. And,
an even more distant dream, perhaps they'll return to their homes in
peace.

Kathy Kelly
Voices for Creative Nonviolence

by Arrested in Auckland Tue Jan 20, 2009 11:25 Auckland, Aotearoa/NZ

Youtube of Rakon Kills nvda (3 mins)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p47L9INLAw

Still photos
http://indymedia.org.nz/newswire/display/76733/index.php

RAKON GETS A NEW PAINT JOB

Today, at an Auckland protest against the invasion of Gaza and the
contribution of the Rakon company to death and destruction around the
globe, Catholic Worker Tyler Culpepper
was arrested for an act of non-violent direct action.

Tyler climbed onto the roof of Rakon's manufacturing facility and
revealed the true nature of the Rakon company, using red paint to
adjust the building's signage to say 'Rakon Kills', an accurate and
unfortunate reality. This action was taken during a protest of around
400 people opposing the ongoing israeli invasion of GAZA. In addition
to Tylers action others threw water baloons of red paint at the front
of the building. These paint bombs were to symbolise the blood shed of
hundreds of palestineans by israel.

Components manufactured and sold by the Rakon company from right here
in Aotearoa have undoubtedly helped guide the missiles that have
killed and injured thousands of people in the Gaza Strip over the last
three weeks and millions more in Iraq and Afghanistan over the course
of the so-called War on Terror.

Tyler said, "We can't sit back and do nothing when there are people
being slaughtered. Especially when companies in our own country are
helping to facilitate that killing."

The following was written last night as Tyler was preparing for this action:

All the nations will beat their swords into ploughshares and their
spears into pruning hooks.
All wars will stop, and military training will come to an end.
Micah 4:3

Wars today are no longer fought using simple weapons like swords and
spears. Instead, complex weapons, capable of much greater damage are
used. These weapons require complex components from all over the
world, even from here in Aotearoa.

If we are to participate in the fulfilment of this ancient prophesy –
the beating of swords into ploughshares - we must know where to find
these modern swords and spears, including the components essential to
their operation.

The Rakon company supplies crystal oscillators to weapons companies.
These oscillators are used in guidance systems for guided missiles and
munitions systems - weapons of mass destruction. Rakon's components
have undoubtedly been used in the invasion and on-going occupation of
Iraq, as well as in the current invasion of the Gaza Strip. The
invasion of Gaza over the last three weeks has cost the lives of over
1100 men, women and children, and injured thousands more, while Rakon
made record profits last year.

Tomorrow I will take a can of red paint to the rooftop of the Rakon
manufacturing facility and attempt to modify the signs on the front of
the building. It is my intention to reveal the fact that Rakon is
helping to manufacture weapons of war, for those that have forgotten
and those who never knew. Then the process of beating these swords
into ploughshares can begin.

The red paint symbolises the blood that Rakon helps to shed by selling
components to the weapons companies. It stands in contrast to the
sterile white walls of the Rakon factory which give the false
impression of purity, so far removed from the death and destruction
Rakon facilitates.

by K.Kelly Gaza jan 21 Thu Jan 22, 2009 13:47 Gaza

January 21, 2009

Rafah--Traffic on Sea Street, a major thoroughfare alongside Gaza's
coastline, includes horses, donkeys pulling carts, cyclists,
pedestrians, trucks and cars, mostly older models. Overhead, in stark
contrast to the street below, Israel's ultra modern unmanned
surveillance planes criss-cross the skies. F16s and helicopters can
also be heard. Remnants of their deliveries, the casings of missiles,
bombs and shells used during the past three weeks of Israeli attacks,
are scattered on the ground.

Workers have cleared most of the roads. Now, they are removing
massive piles of wreckage and debris, much as people do following an
earthquake.

"Yet, all the world helps after an earthquake," said a doctor at the
Shifaa hospital in Gaza. "We feel very frustrated," he continued. "The
West, Europe and the U.S., watched this killing go on for 22 days, as
though they were watching a movie, watching the killing of women and
children without doing anything to stop it. I was expecting to die at
any moment. I held my babies and expected to die. There was no safe
place in Gaza."

He and his colleagues are visibly exhausted, following weeks of work
in the Intensive Care and Emergency Room departments at a hospital
that received many more patients than they could help. "Patients died
on the floor of the operating room because we had only six operating
rooms," said Dr. Saeed Abuhassan, M.D, an ICU doctor who grew up in
Chicago. "And really we don't know enough about the kinds of weapons
that have been used against Gaza."

In 15 years of practice, Dr. Abuhassan says he never saw burns like
those he saw here. The burns, blackish in color, reached deep into
the muscles and bones. Even after treatment was begun, the blackish
color returned.

Two of the patients were sent to Egypt because they were in such
critical condition. They died in Egypt. But when autopsies were done,
reports showed that the cause of death was poisoning from elements of
white phosphorous that had entered their systems, causing cardiac
arrests.

In Gaza City, The Burn Unit's harried director, a plastic surgeon and
an expert in treating burns, told us that after encountering cases
they'd never seen before, doctors at the center performed a biopsy on
a patient they believed may have suffered chemical burns and sent the
sample to a lab in Egypt. The results showed elements of white
phosphorous in the tissue.

The doctor was interrupted by a phone call from a farmer who wanted to
know whether it was safe to eat the oranges he was collecting from
groves that had been uprooted and bombed during the Israeli invasion.
The caller said the oranges had an offensive odor and that when the
workers picked them up their hands became itchy.

Audrey Stewart had just spent the morning with Gazan farmers in Tufaa,
a village near the border between Gaza and Israel. Israeli soldiers
had first evacuated people, then dynamited the houses, then used
bulldozers to clear the land, uprooting the orange tree groves. Many
people, including children, were picking through the rubble, salvaging
belongings and trying to collect oranges. At one point, people began
shouting at Audrey, warning her that she was standing next to an
unexploded rocket.

The doctor put his head in his hands, after listening to Audrey's
report. "I told them to wash everything very carefully. But these are
new situations. Really, I don't know how to respond," he said.

Yet he spoke passionately about what he knew regarding families that
had been burned or crushed to death when their homes were bombed.
"Were their babies a danger to anyone?" he asked us.

"They are lying to us about democracy and Western values," he
continued, his voice shaking. "If we were sheep and goats, they would
be more willing to help us."

Dr. Saeed Abuhassan was bidding farewell to the doctors he'd worked
with in Gaza. He was returning to his work in the United Arab
Emirates. But before leaving, he paused to give us a word of advice.
"You know, the most important thing you can tell people in your
country is that U.S. people paid for many of the weapons used to kill
people in Gaza," said Dr. Saeed Abuhassan. "And this, also, is why
it's worse than an earthquake."
----------

Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of Voices for
Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) She and Audrey Stewart have been
in Gaza for the past six days.

by Busted at Boeing Fri Jan 30, 2009 20:14

4 Busted at Boeing, Chicago

http://www.cpt.org/cptnet/2009/01/24/chicago-coffins-be...oeing

by CW's Sentenced Fri Mar 13, 2009 18:10 Calfornia, U.S.A.

Martin Sheen Accompanies Catholic Workers to Court as they are Sentenced for VanderburgAFBResistance......

http://www.independent.com/news/2009/mar/12/vandenberg-...ined/