Last weekend, CounterPunch featured Howard Zinn’s introduction to elin o’Hara slavick’s book of cartographic drawings of American aerial bombing, Bomb after Bomb. I agree with Mark Brady that this is one of the best things that Zinn has ever written. Some of the most important stuff in the essay has to do with patriotism, the conflation of the country with the State, and the criminality of aerial warfare as such. A sample:

We have had enough experience, with the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi leaders, with the bombings carried out by the Allies, with the torture stories coming out of Iraq, to know that ordinary people with ordinary consciences will allow their instincts for decency to be overcome by the compulsion to obey authority. It is time therefore, to educate the coming generation in disobedience to authority, to help them understand that institutions like governments and corporations are cold to anything but self-interest, that the interests of powerful entities run counter to the interests of most people.

This clash of interest between governments and citizens is camouflaged by phrases that pretend that everyone in the nation has a common interest, and so wars are waged and bombs dropped for national security, national defense, and national interest.

Patriotism is defined as obedience to government, obscuring the difference between the government and the people. Thus, soldiers are led to believe that we are fighting for our country when in fact they are fighting for the government — an artificial entity different from the people of the country — and indeed are following policies dangerous to its own people.

My own reflections on my experiences as a bombardier, and my research on the wars of the United States have led me to certain conclusions about war and the dropping of bombs that accompany modern warfare.

One: The means of waging war (demolition bombs, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, nuclear weapons, napalm) have become so horrendous in their effects on human beings that no political end– however laudable, the existence of no enemy — however vicious, can justify war.

Two: The horrors of the means are certain, the achievement of the ends always uncertain.

Three: When you bomb a country ruled by a tyrant, you kill the victims of the tyrant.

Four: War poisons the soul of everyone who engages in it, so that the most ordinary of people become capable of terrible acts.

Five: Since the ratio of civilian deaths to military deaths in war has risen sharply with each subsequent war of the past century (10% civilian deaths in World War I, 50% in World War II, 70% in Vietnam, 80-90% in Afghanistan and Iraq) and since a significant percentage of these civilians are children, then war is inevitably a war against children.

Six: We cannot claim that there is a moral distinction between a government which bombs and kills innocent people and a terrorist organization which does the same. The argument is made that deaths in the first case are accidental, while in the second case they are deliberate. However, it does not matter that the pilot dropping the bombs does not intend to kill innocent people — that he does so is inevitable, for it is the nature of bombing to be indiscriminate. Even if the bombing equipment is so sophisticated that the pilot can target a house, a vehicle, there is never certainty about who is in the house or who is in the vehicle.

Seven: War, and the bombing that accompanies war, are the ultimate terrorism, for governments can command means of destruction on a far greater scale than any terrorist group.

These considerations lead me to conclude that if we care about human life, about justice, about the equal right of all children to exist, we must, in defiance of whatever we are told by those in authority, pledge ourselves to oppose all wars.

— Howard Zinn, Introduction to elin o’Hara slavick’s Bomb after Bomb

Read the whole thing.

(Via Mark Brady @ Liberty & Power 2007-12-15.)

Pretty Bird Woman House is a women’s shelter on the Standing Rock Lakota Sioux reservation in South Dakota. The refuge was opened in January 2006 against incredible odds and with almost no resources in one of the poorest places in the United States — 45% of Native American women in South Dakota live in poverty, and the unemployment rate on Standing Rock Reservation is 71%. But they stayed open continuously, thanks in part to creative outreach efforts for grassroots funding through the Internet. This year, with a staff of three women, the shelter answered nearly 400 crisis calls, helped 16 women get medical assistance, and gave emergency refuge to 188 women and 132 children. For these courageous and life-saving efforts, they have had to face down the hatred of some violent, controlling men. After two break-ins at the shelter house, the staff went back to using an old, unheated office space and transferring women to far-away shelters off the reservation. The day after they evacuated, the building was firebombed and burned down. They have been operating without an on-site house out of an unheated office in below-zero temperatures, while they reach out to find the money to build a new sanctuary from violence.

In order to rebuild, PBWH is trying to raise $70,000 by the end of next month. They have raised over $50,000 and you can help them reach their goal. Any donation will help immensely (most of what they have raised so far has come from small donations). To learn more about Pretty Bird Woman House, or to follow their progress, you can read more at their blog. Andy Ternay at Street Prophets has an in-depth history of Pretty Bird Woman House, an overview on the violence faced by women on Standing Rock Reservation, an explanation of the shelter’s immediate needs, and comments from the director, Georgia Little Shield.

You can make a contribution immediately online through PayPal:

Or you can send a check made out to Pretty Bird Woman House to:

Pretty Bird Woman House
P.O. Box 596
McLaughlin, SD 57642

All donations are tax-deductible. Please give whatever you can. And please use your blog, e-mail, or whatever means you have at your disposal to let your friends and contacts know about this effort. Pretty Bird Woman House must, and will, rise from the ashes, and together we can help make that happen as soon as possible.

We identify with all women. We define our best interest as that of the poorest, most brutally exploited women. —Redstockings Manifesto (1969)

GT 2005-12-17: December 17th is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

December 17th is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. The commemoration began from the Sex Workers' Outreach Project's memorial and vigil for the victims of the Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer. Since then its purpose has expanded to a memorial for, and protest against, all forms of violence against women in prostitution and elsewhere in the sex industry.

I'm opposed to prostitution as an industry, on radical feminist grounds. I frankly have very deep and sharp differences with the organizers of the event, and I'm iffy at best towards the rhetorical framework of sex work as a whole, for reasons that are way beyond the point of this post). But so what? The day is an important one no matter what differences I may have with the organizers. Real steps towards ending the ongoing daily violence against women in prostitution and elsewhere in the sex industry are more important than that; here as much as anywhere — probably more than anywhere else — women's lives are at stake.

You can read the rest at the original post. Any serious commitment to freedom for, and an end to violence against, women, means a serious commitment to ending violence against women who work in the sex industry. All of it. Immediately. Now and forever.

And that means any kind of violence, whether rape, or assault, or robbery, or abduction, or confinement against her will, or murder. No matter who does it. Even if it is done by a john who imagines that paying for sex means he owns a woman’s body. Even it is done by a cop or a prosecutor who calls the violence of an assault, restraint, and involuntary confinement an arrest or a sentence under the color of The Law. The Law has no more right to hurt or shove around a woman than anyone else does.

In honor of the event, in memory of the 48 women murdered by Ridgway, and in solidarity with the living, I have contributed $120.00 tonight to Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive, a harm reduction group that provides counseling, safety resources, clothing, and food to prostitutes on the streets of the Washington, D.C. area, and $120.00 to Alternatives for Girls, whose Street Outreach Project provides similar services out of a van along the Cass Corridor in downtown Detroit. For other groups that provide similar resources and mutual aid, you can check out the links at the end of my original post.

Elsewhere:

• Google Blog Search: End Violence Against Sex Workers on December 17th

Perhaps it makes me an anti-American scumbag to point this out, but I don’t especially support these efforts by lying creeps and transphobic adolescent Internet trolls in uniform to protect my freedom:

US military personnel at Guantanamo Bay called Fidel Castro a transsexual and defended the prison for terrorism suspects in anonymous web postings, an internet group that publishes government documents said today.

The group, Wikileaks, tracked web activity by service members with Guantanamo email addresses and also found they deleted prisoner identification numbers from three detainee profiles on Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia that allows anyone to change articles.

Julian Assange, who led the research effort, said the postings amount to propaganda and deception.

This is the American government speaking to the American people and to the world through Wikipedia, not identifying itself and often speaking about itself in the third person, Assange said in a telephone interview from Paris.

Army Lt Col Ed Bush, a Guantanamo spokesman, said there is no official attempt to alter information posted elsewhere but said the military seeks to correct what it believes is incorrect or outdated information about the prison.

Bush declined to answer questions about the Castro posting.

Assange said that in January 2006, someone at Guantanamo wrote in a Wikipedia profile of the Cuban president: Fidel Castro is an admitted transexual, the unknown writer said, misspelling the word transsexual.

The US has no formal relations with Cuba and has maintained its base in the south-east of the island over the objections of the Castro government.

Comments on news stories were posted by people using apparently fictitious names to news sites–and were prepared by the Guantanamo public affairs office, according to Wikileaks.

A comment on a Wired magazine story about a leaked Guantanamo operations manual that was recently posted on the Wikileaks website urged readers to learn about Guantanamo by going to the public affairs website, adding that the base is a very professional place full of true American patriots.

— The Age (2007-12-16): Gitmo troops vandalise Wikipedia

(Via Dan Clore (2007-12-13) on LeftLibertarian2.)

Kyrie eleison.

Forensic teams in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico are unearthing more than 4,000 bodies buried in common graves.

A local government official said DNA samples from the bodies would be compared to those of missing persons.

It is thought that some of the bodies could belong to women killed in a wave of unsolved murders that began in the city in 1993.

The official said the corpses were buried in common graves because they had not been claimed after 90 days.

The bodies being exhumed were buried between 1991 and 2005 – all unclaimed bodies buried since 2005 have been identified first.

More than 300 women have been murdered in the town in Chihuahua state since 1993, and an unknown number have gone missing.

There is no generally accepted motive for the killings.

They have been variously attributed to serial killers, drug cartels and domestic violence. Some of the killings are believed to have been sexually motivated.

Many of the victims were poor working mothers employed in factories in the industrial city, which is on the border with Texas.

There have been several arrests, but the killings have continued.

— BBC News 2007-12-05: Bodies in Juarez graves exhumed

In southern Iraq:

BAGHDAD (AP) — Religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year in the southern Iraqi city of Basra because of how they dressed, their mutilated bodies found with notes warning against violating Islamic teachings, the police chief said Sunday.

Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf blamed sectarian groups that he said were trying to impose a strict interpretation of Islam. They dispatch patrols of motorbikes or unlicensed cars with tinted windows to accost women not wearing traditional dress and head scarves, he added.

The women of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior, Khalaf told The Associated Press. He said men with Western clothes or haircuts are also attacked in Basra, an oil-rich city some 30 miles from the Iranian border and 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Those who are behind these atrocities are organized gangs who work under cover of religion, pretending to spread the instructions of Islam, but they are far from this religion, Khalaf said.

Throughout Iraq, many women wear a headscarf and others wear a full face veil although secular women are often unveiled. Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the rise of a Shiite-dominated government, armed men in some parts of the country have sometimes forced women to cover their heads or face punishment. In some areas of the heavily Shiite south, even Christian women have been forced to wear headscarves.

Before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, was known for its mixed population and night life. Now, in some areas, red graffiti threatens any woman who wears makeup and appears with her hair uncovered: Your makeup and your decision to forgo the headscarf will bring you death.

Khalaf said bodies have been found in garbage dumps with bullet holes, decapitated or otherwise mutilated with a sheet of paper nearby saying, she was killed for adultery, or she was killed for violating Islamic teachings. In September, the headless bodies of a woman and her 6-year-old son were among those found, he said. A total of 40 deaths were reported this year.

We believe the number of murdered women is much higher, as cases go unreported by their families who fear reprisal from extremists, he said.

— Sinan Salaheddin, Associated Press (2007-12-10): Vigilantes Kill 40 Women in Iraq’s South

(Via Feminist Law Professors 2007-12-10 and Majikthise 2007-12-10.)

Further reading:

• GT 2007-12-06: Day of Remembrance
• GT 2007-11-25: International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
• GT 2006-05-08: Why We Fight
• GT 2003-05-29: Rumsfeld: What an Awful Outcome