Martha’s Vineyard?

In a "tongue-in-cheek letter to the White House" (SojoNet, 6/4/01), Ken Sehested of the Baptist Peace Fellowship suggested "a novel solution" to the conflict over U.S. naval training on Vieques (now slated to continue until 2003).

"Puerto Ricans have carried the load of our military training needs for more than 60 years," he points out. "Why not approach the citizens of other U.S.-owned islands and request their help in shouldering this burden?

"For instance, there is the Acadia National Park off the coast of Maine. ... Off the coast of Massachusetts is Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Islands. Block Island is off the coast of Rhode Island. Long Island, N.Y., is large enough to allow shared use by the Navy and private citizens. There are hundreds of miles of beachfront (especially useful for practicing marine amphibious landings) on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Georgia offers St. Simons Island and Jekyll Island. In the Florida Keys are literally dozens of islands. Then there’s Padre Island off the Texas coast and the Channel Islands and Catalina Island off California. ...

"I am quite confident that after all these negotiations are completed, the U.S. Navy would have several hundred years of assured access to proper training environments. And after all have taken a turn, the people of Vieques could again be approached to begin a second round of shared responsibility for national defense."

Price of prisons

A new searchable database on prisons was launched by motherjones.com this summer. "Debt to Society: The Real Price of Prisons" reports that:

– spending on prisons nationwide has grown six times faster than spending on higher education in the last 20 years;

– many states have seen an actual drop in spending on higher education while prison spending has soared everywhere;

– the most extreme disparities between white and nonwhite incarceration rates are not in the south, but in northeastern Democratic strongholds like Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Journalists targeted

Covering the July 6 killing of a Colombian radio news director, The New York Times reported that the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists considers Colombia to be the most dangerous country for journalists in Latin America.

Despite his family’s fears for his safety, "Jose Dubiel Vasquez continued disseminating news about local corruption and the conflict between rebels and paramilitary groups," The Times reported (7/11/01). "On Friday, Mr. Vasquez paid the price, colleagues and relatives said. As he drove home with a fellow reporter after the morning broadcast, a gunman stepped up to Mr. Vasquez’s car and shot three bullets into his head. He died immediately, becoming the second news director from Caracol Radio to be gunned down since December.

"Mr. Vasquez was the sixth Colombian journalist slain this year. One was shot to death two days later, the fourth in 12 days, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York. In all of last year, seven journalists were killed, at least three as reprisals for their work, the committee said. ..."Press freedoms are being attacked as Colombia suffers a wave of political violence. Armed groups – mostly right-wing death squads, rights groups say – focus on labor advocates, professors, student leaders and human rights workers.

"‘The parties in the conflict care a great deal about how they are portrayed in the media,’ said Marylene Smeets, who oversees the committee’s research in Latin America. ‘So the parties in the conflict are willing to force journalists to spread their word. They are also punishing those journalists who don’t give out the message they would like to give out.’"

Opposing a marriage amendment

The Interfaith Working Group (IWG), a Philadelphia-based progressive interfaith organization representing 22 religious organizations and congregations and 77 clergy from 16 religious traditions in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, issued a statement in July in response to an announcement that a coalition of conservative religious organizations will be proposing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

"The U.S. Constitution is not a dictionary, a religious document, or a tool for oppression," their statement says. "The proposed amendment would give the civil institution of marriage a religious definition that is not shared by all religions. This is oppressive to religious and governmental bodies that may wish to define marriage differently, and to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans who will be denied equal protection under the law."

School bus pollution

The Union of Concerned Scientists is asking citizens to lobby for a federal grant program to put cleaner, safer school buses on the road (Earthwise, Summer 2001).

"Most of the 442,000 school buses on the road today are aging diesel vehicles built to outmoded health and safety standards," they say. "Throughout the school year, they emit clouds of cancer- and smog-causing pollution that harm our kids and the environment.

"Diesel emissions include soot and smog-forming nitrogen oxides. Soot, which evades the body’s defenses to lodge deep in the lungs, has been linked to chronic bronchitis, pneumonia and heart disease. Smog impairs the respiratory system, exacerbating asthma and other diseases. And more than 40 of the compounds found in diesel exhaust are classified as toxic air contaminants.

"Diesel emissions pose an especially high risk to children because their respiratory systems are still developing, they spend more time outdoors than adults, and they breathe more air per pound of body weight. ... Natural gas school buses, which are already on the road in many communities, offer significant reductions in dangerous emissions. In addition, they provide an interim step toward fuel-cell buses, since the two technologies require similar fueling facilities. Fuel-cell buses, when they become available, will provide virtually pollution-free transportation.

"UCS is working to establish a federal grant program to replace the dirtiest diesel buses with clean, safe school buses. Let your members of Congress know that you want them to fund this important program. Write your senators at U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510 and your representatives at U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. 20515."

Subvertising

"I think America today is essentially no different from McDonald’s or Marlboro or General Motors," said Kalle Lasn, a former advertising executive who cofounded the Media Foundation and now edits its magazine, Adbusters, in an interview with The Sun (July 2001). "It’s a product image that’s sold to us and to consumers worldwide. The American brand is associated with catchwords like ‘democracy,’ ‘opportunity’ and ‘freedom,’ but, like cigarettes that are sold as symbols of vitality and youthful rebellion. America in reality is very different from its brand image. The real America has been subverted by corporate agendas. Its elected officials bow down before corporations as a condition of their survival in office. America isn’t really a democracy anymore: It’s a corporate state."

The Media Foundation engages in "culture jamming" through "subvertisements" – ads intended to subvert consumer culture, interviewer Derrik Jensen explains. "Nearly everyone is familiar with Joe Camel, the cartoon camel used by RJ Reynolds for 10 years to sell cigarettes – especially to children, critics said," Jensen writes. "In response, Lasn’s Media Foundation gave us Joe Chemo, a bald camel lying in a hospital bed with IVs in both arms. Another cigarette-ad parody showed a Marlboro Man look-alike smoking a limp cigarette over the caption ‘Smoking Causes Impotence.’ Still other counterads have taken on alcohol (a battered child seen through a vodka bottle, with the caption ‘Wipe That Smirkoff’), food monopolies, the fashion industry, and consumer culture in general."

Arms transfers code

"Led by Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace prize winner, an international group of arms control, human rights and development organizations recently began an effort to solicit support for a revision of an arms transfers code of conduct first introduced in 1997," the newsletter of the Council for a Livable World reports (Arms Trade News, May 2001). "The proposed "Framework Convention on International Arms Transfers" outlines a broad set of principles based on international humanitarian law that would require states to adopt mechanisms banning arms transfers that could be used to violate international standards of human rights and non-aggression.

"The Convention outlines responsibilities states have, deemed by international law, to make a case for limitations on weapons transfers that ‘could have an adverse impact on sustainable development or regional peace and security, would facilitate the commission of violent crimes, or could be easily diverted to such ends.’"