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| Mid-Missouri Fellowship of
Reconciliation The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) is a group composed of people from many faiths, and no particular faith -- all coming together to support nonviolence and justice. Offering people of conscience an action response to a morally-impaired U.S. foreign policy. |
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A Report on the Injustice in the Application of the Death Penalty in Missouri (1978-1996)(Microsoft Word document) News
Common Dreams Background Iraq Crisis Issue Guide by Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies U.S. History with Iraq, 1980 - 2 August 1990 Commentary Common Dreams News Center April 12, 2003 April 8, 2003 March 30, 2003 March 29, 2003 March 25, 2003 March 24, 2003 U.S. steps up secret surveillance March 23, 2003 March 22, 2003 March 20, 2003 |
Local News and Announcements... Don't miss anything...please scroll downJuly 2004 FOR NewsFOR Candidate Survey for 2004 Election The Mid-Missouri FOR sent surveys to various state and federal candidates. We realize there are many worthwhile questions for voters to consider besides the ones we’ve posed, but please keep these answers in mind when you go to the polls. We urge all eligible individuals to exercise their right to vote. The FOR does not endorse any particular candidate. We provide this information to help educate and encourage voters to learn more about the various candidates. Candidates are listed according to the order which they'll appear on the voting ballot and incumbents are designated by (I). State Candidate Survey The survey asked the State candidates to answer the following questions: 1) Would you support or oppose a bill initiating a moratorium on executions in Missouri while a commission studied various sentencing patterns and other issues relating to the state's death penalty? 2) Do you support or oppose abolition of the death penalty? 3) Do you support or oppose the continued deployment of Missouri National Guard units in Iraq? Answers from state candidates... (a pdf file) Federal Candidate Survey The FOR surveyed all candidates for Missouri's contested U.S. Senate seat and the state's 9th District U.S. House seat. Candidates are listed in the order which they'll appear on the voting ballot; incumbents are designated by (I). The FOR does not endorse any candidate.The survey asked the candidates the following questions: 1) Do you support or oppose immediately beginning the full with-drawal of U.S. military troops from Iraq and the closing of new U.S. military bases in Iraq? 2) Do you support or oppose immediately ending the economic em- bargo against Cuba and normalizing relations with that nation? 3) Do you support or oppose a national moratorium of executions while studies are conducted to research sentencing patterns? 4) Do you support or oppose death penalty abolition? 5) Do you support or oppose transporting radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and other sites across country (including on MO high-ways and train tracks)to Yucca Mountain Nevada for long-term storage? Answers from federal candidates (a pdf file) Danny Wolfe Hearing for New Counsel Set for 30 July The Mid-MO FOR encourages all concerned citizens to attend the following court hearing to support Danny Wolfe, most certainly wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Danny Wolfe will finally get his day in court Friday, 30 July. Unfortunately, the court date-- more that a year and a half after the Missouri Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Wolfe-- will focus solely on a fundamental request for new legal representation apart from the public defender system. Consider joining the Mid-Missouri FOR in attending the critical hearing, set for 9:00 a.m. in the Camden County courthouse in Camdenton (south of Lake of the Ozarks). Call Jeff at 573-449-4585 to car-pool from the Columbia area...more Briefs Filed with U.S. Supreme Court in Juvenile Death Penalty Case Death Penalty Documentary to Air 30 July "Deadline," a riveting new documentary on capital punishment in the United States, has its premiere in a special two-hour edition of NBC-TV's "Dateline" at 7:00 p.m.,Central Time, Friday 30 July. The film, from Big Mouth Productions, explores two of the most significant events in the history of the death penal-ty: the abolition of the punishment in 1972 and the momen-tous debate in Illinois in 2002-2003 over Gov. George Ryan's granting clemency for all of the state's death-row prisoners. "Can capital punishment be justified in a criminal justice system so fraught with error that in Illinois, 13" death-row inmates slated for execution were discovered to be innocent and exonerated, during a time, when 12 others were executed in the state? This was exactly the question that former Illinois Gov. George Ryan faced in the final days of his term as he de-cided whether to let 167 people live or die. And it is the ques-tion that U.S. viewers will face July 30 when living rooms are visited by this powerful documentary. The Mid-MO FOR will have a copy of the program avail-able for future viewings. Tune in Friday evening to watch and/or call 449-4585 to borrow our copy. War's Human Devastation and Wise Dissent Poignant postings continue to arrive from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War's e-mail list-serve. Here are blurbs from some and the url's to review the full worthwhile articles: 0 Comments (perma-link) Email this:  
Here are some photos from our action at the recruiting station on Wednesday June 30. And the text of the flyer handed out during the demonstration. Scroll down for more recently posted information about Iraq. 
TORTURED LOGIC IN IRAQ As the Bush adminstration tries to convince the US public that Iraq will now have "full sovereignty" we remind you that sovereignty is defined as "supreme power over a body politic" & "freedom from external control". Sovereign nations do not have 140,000 foreign troops occupying their nation operating under foreign commanders. They don't allow foreign soldiers to break into homes, arrest citizens or shoot Iraqis resisting the occupation of their nation. Nor do they allow them to interrogate or torture their citizens at US run prisons or allow detainees to be secretly flown to other countries where torture is not legally contested. Sovereign nations do not allow other nations to choose former CIA agents like Prime Minister Allawi to head their new govenment or allow US administrator Paul Bremer to issue edicts prohibiting US soldiers, intelligence agents and civilian contractors from being prosecuted for war crimes. TORTURE AS U.S. POLICY While the US prosecutes low ranking military prison guards for torturing and murdering at least 37 detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq their behavior was the direct result of Bush's decision to accept the White House counsel's flawed interpretation of the Geneva Conventions as irrelevant and of Bush and Rumsfeld's orders allowing prisoners to be tortured. We have conveniently forgotten that torture as an instrument of US policy has a long, bloody history. l By the end of 1969, 20,000 Vietnamese had been assassinated during the CIA's Operation Phoenix program. Most were interrogated using torture before being executed. CIA agent Bart Osborne told Congress in 1971 "I never knew in the course of all these operations any detainee to live through his interrogation. They all died. There was never any reasonable establishment of the fact that any one of those individuals was, in fact with the VC (Viet Cong), but they all died and the majority were either tortured to death or thrown out of helicopters". l In 1983 the CIA trained Honduran soldiers in the notorious Battalion 316 in the use of "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations". The CIA Interrogation Manual --"Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual" recommended "arresting suspects early in the morning by surprise, blindfolding them, and stripping them naked. Suspects should be held incommunicado and deprived of any kind of normal routine in eating and sleeping. Interrogation rooms should be windowless and soundproof, dark and without toilets". When no longer suspects were killed and buried at the US built base at El Aguacate. John Negroponte, then ambassador to Honduras ordered an aide compiling stats on human rights abuses to be kept from Congress so that funding Reagans Contra War would continue. In Aug. 2001 mass graves with 185 corpses including 2 Americans were found there. Negroponte's willingness to hide human rights abuses do not bode well for Iraqis as Negroponte assumes his new role as ambassodor to Iraq. l US written manuals used to train the Contra mercenaries against Nicaraqua recommended hiring professional criminals to carry out 'selective jobs', creating a 'martyr' by arranging a violent demonstration that leads to the death of a rebel supporter and sabotage. l In 1996 the Pentagon admitted that manuals condoning "executions of guerrilas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion and false imprisonment" were used to teach Latin Americans at the US Army's School of the Americas. Therefore we call for the immediate withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Tenent to be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Some things you can do to express your concerns and to force change in the interventionist U.S. foreign policy, (including ending the U.S. Occupation of Iraq): *WRITE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR *ORGANIZE YOUR OWN PROTEST and let others know about it OR JOIN OTHER GATHERINGS urging peaceable and just, U.S. international relations: --Saturdays, 10:00-11:00 a.m., Columbia Post Office, Walnut St.; --Tuesdays, 12 Noon-1:00 p.m., Speakers Circle, UMC campus; --Wednesdays, 4:15-5:45 p.m., corner of Broadway and Providence --Third Friday, 6:00-7:00 p.m., corner of Broadway and 9th Street. *CONTACT OFFICIALS AND CANDIDATES for federal office: --LEGISLATORS.. Sens. Kit Bond, phone 202-224-5721,e-mail kit-bond@bond.senate.gov and Sen. Jim Talent, 202-224-6154, senator_talent@talent.senate.gov, Sen._______, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 20510; Rep. Ken Hulshof (or your representative), locally at 449-5111 or 202-225-2956, rep.hulshof@mail.house.gov, Rep. ______, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 -- WHITE HOUSE... Comment Desk: 202-456-1111, FAX: 202-456-2461, president@whitehouse.gov, President George W. Bush, The White House, Washington, DC 20500 For more information contact, with the co-sponsoring organizations, Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation (Jeff Stack 449-4585) or St. Francis House Catholic Worker (Steve Jacobs 443-0096). ---------------------------------- 1 Comments (perma-link) Email this:
From...Occupation Watch Bulletin June 28, 2004 THE SHAM SOVEREIGNTY June 30th will not be a turning point, a new day holding the promise of a bright future in Iraq, notwithstanding the determined dissembling by President Bush and other officials of the US Government. The grim realities of living in a country battered by years of cruel Baathist rule, then a punishing regime of UN sanctions, and now a ruthless occupation will continue for a long time to come. Most of the changes after June 30th will be cosmetic. Patrick Cockburn of The Independent of London writes that the new Interim Iraqi Government (IIG) will have only limited power. The chances that it will succeed are very limited. In a situation dominated by security, or rather the lack of it, the IIG does not have an effective armed force. The pretence of an independent Iraq Rory McCarthy and Jonathan Steele of The Guardian of London note that, far from being able to take over security duties from US troops, up to 30,000 Iraqi police officers are to be sacked before the official transfer of power to the IIG. Many of the new Iraqi recruits are unreliable, while many Iraqi officers either deserted to the insurgents or simply stayed at home during the recent uprisings in Falluja and across the south. Security a shambles ahead of handover Instead of reducing the size of the American occupation force, now numbering 138,000 troops, military planners are preparing for the deployment of additional soldiers: Iraq force may grow by 25,000 Repeating the pattern of past imperial adventures, the US military continues its policy of trying to recruit and train Iraqis to kill other Iraqis on behalf of American domination: Biggest Task for U.S. General Is Training Iraqis to Fight Iraqis Left to the care of the new IIG and its cast of US advisors, plundering of the economy will continue. Naomi Klein notes that "the shameless corporate feeding frenzy in Iraq is fuelling the resistance": The multibillion robbery the US calls reconstruction The costs of the war have been staggering to Iraq, to the United States and to the world. Phyllis Bennis makes a terrifying tally of the totals so far in human costs, security costs, economic costs and social costs: Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War -------------------------------- 2 Comments (perma-link) Email this:
Inside the fireby Jo Wilding US snipers in Falluja shoot unarmed man in the back, old woman with white flag, children fleeing their homes and the ambulance that we were going in to fetch a woman in premature labour. A brave and harrowing report from inside the besieged city of Fallujah where ordinary people are trapped in the cross-fire. 11 April, Fallujah 0 Comments (perma-link) Email this:
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| Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation |
P.O. Box 268 Columbia, Missouri 65205 |
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