Phil Worden: Hands of Peace acceptance

Published on October 27, 2007 in Podcasts and Uncategorized. 1 Comment

2007 Harvest Supper graphicThis special podcast features Maine attorney and civil liberties champion Phil Worden. Phil Worden, along with his colleague, attorney Lynne Williams, received the 2007 Hands of Peace award from the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine. This program is Phil Worden’s short but powerful acceptance speech given at the Center’s annual Harvest Supper event at the Unitarian Universalist church on Park Street in Bangor, Maine on Saturday October 13, 2007.

Update 12/28/2007: The shameless reactionary Jonah Goldberg has published a book called “Liberal Fascism.” Sheesh, what passes for conservative intellectualism these days! The blog Sadly, No! explains the folly here. Phil Worden would find the musings of Goldberg and the insufferable Glenn Reynolds beyond the pale in ignorance about the nature of real fascism. Orcinus explains that Goldberg merely repeats propaganda the Nazis created about themselves beginning eight decades ago.

 
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Bangor peace rally on Sept. 29

Published on October 1, 2007 in Featured, Iraq, Local event reporting and Podcasts. 4 Comments

“It is because of us that the Euphrates River runs thick with red blood” –Mary Alice Horrigan

Incredible coverage in the October 1, 2007 edition of The Bangor Daily News, please click image for newspaper’s website

Rally in Bangor 9-29-2007
Re-raising Lady Liberty

Below is the order of events at the rally with the beginning time of each segment in the 53-minute-long mp3 file. Audio of the eight-minute speech by Gold Star mother Mary Alice Horrigan (discussed in the incredible Bangor Daily News article linked to above) begins at 23:12 with her introduction by Doug Allen.

End the War – Build the Peace

Rally & demonstration, Saturday September 29, 2007 at the “Paul Bunyan” park on Main Street in Bangor

Drumming — Peter Baldwin and Friends Tolling of Bells by area churches (audio not included here)

0:00 Introduction—Doug Allen, Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, Maine Peace Action Committee (MPAC)

10:12 The Economic Costs of War—U Maine Students of Maine Peace Action Committee

17:46 “The Circle is Broken”—David McLean, singer, song-writer with Maria Irrera

23:12 Mourning the Iraq War Dead—Mary Alice Horrigan, Gold Star Mother

31:02 Reading of Names of Iraq War Dead—Members of Military Families Speak Out and Veterans for Peace (participants lie down to represent war dead or stand silently as mourners).

Bagpipe tribute—Peter Beckford, Simon Beckford and Ursa Beckford (audio not included here)

37:23 Mourning the loss of civil liberties—Lady Liberty in State—Peter Baldwin Responsive reading of parts of the Declaration of Independence

42:05 Rise up with signs and symbols of alternatives to war and sing along “Women’s Peace Prayer,” “We are One” “Peace, Salaam, Shalom” Voices for Peace and Women with Wings (end of audio file)

Chain of Concern—line up along Main Street with signs and symbols

 
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Interview with Shenna Bellows

Published on September 1, 2007 in Featured, Podcasts, Spying and Torture. Closed

Hepting v. AT&T; FISA revision; Military Commissions and torture

My interview with Maine Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Shenna Bellows (recorded Thursday August 30) is available below for direct listening or download. This is a 128 kbit/44 kHz file (53 MB, mp3). The entire program runs about 1 hour.

This program broadcasts on WERU Community Radio, Blue Hill, Maine on the Weekend Voices program for Saturday September 1, 3pm.

Below the fold are additional notes and links for clips and news stories heard or referenced during the interview.

 
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Hiroshima Commemoration

Published on August 16, 2007 in Featured, nuclear and Podcasts. Closed

Bangor, Maine; August 6, 2007

This is a broadcast-quality version (320 kbits, stereo) of the 1/2-hour WERU Voices special for Tuesday, August 14. It contains excerpts of the No More Hiroshimas programs held in Bangor on August 6.

A lower-bitrate version is archived HERE at WERU. If speed or space are a concern, the WERU file is much smaller.

 
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The Adventures of EFCA Man

Published on July 14, 2007 in Video. Closed

Working people’s musical theater

Here is what you’ve all been waiting for–the Eastern Maine Labor Council & Food AND Medicine production of “The Adventures of EFCA Man” performed at the 2007 4th July Solidarity Celebration in Brewer, Maine. You have a choice of Windows Media or mp4 (playable with a QuickTime plugin).

Most of you should be able to play one or the other format in your browser with your broadband connection. Sorry if you have dial-up, you probably won’t see much. You get the full 34-minute performance, including the catapulting. The whole files are quite large, so full downloads will take a while, even at broadband speed. Be patient, then enjoy!

 
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U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud speaks on labor

Published on July 8, 2007 in Video. Closed

At Eastern Maine Labor Council 4th July Solidarity Celebration

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July 4, 2007 / Brewer, Maine

U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud (D-ME, 2nd District) gave a short, meaty speech on Independence Day at a labor solidarity family celebration sponsored by the Eastern Maine Labor Council and Food AND Medicine. Mike spoke about the recent announcement by Quaker Fabrics of Fall River, Massachusetts that it is expecting to close due to free trade policies, the effect of NAFTA on immigration, and terrible labor repression in Colombia.

Mike referred to recent activity by trade unionists to convince the Democratic Congress that approving a free trade agreement with Colombia is not a good idea at the same time it appears to be open season on union organizers in that country. (See also, media file associated with THIS June 28, 2007 hearing in the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittees on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight, Bill Delahunt [D-MA], Chairman, and on the Western Hemisphere, Eliot L. Engel [D-NY], Chairman.)

Also included with this post is a downloadable audio-only mp3 file of Mike’s July 4 speech.

Additional links to news stories are below the fold. U.S. companies are alleged to be implicated in the murder of Colombian labor leaders. (Mike mentions “Operation Dragon” in his speech–”an effort to neutralize 175 social and labor leaders,” according to a USW press release.)

 
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Friday garden blogging

Published on July 6, 2007 in Nature photography. Closed

Mourning the cucumbers

July 6 hail damage
Garden pummeled

A freak hail storm seemed to pick out just our backyard and our neighbors for its worst random fury. I don’t think the cucumbers are going to make it. They are the darker green mass in the lower left. The broccoli looks okay, except for this one.

Iraqi oil workers

Published on July 6, 2007 in Energy and External podcasts. Closed

Democracy Now! had a very illuminating program featuring Faleh Abood Umara, the general secretary of the Federation of Oil Unions and a founding member of the oil workers union in Iraq and Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein, president of the Electrical Utility Workers Union and the first woman to head a national union in Iraq.

At one point, Faleh Abood Umara calls the US-written and US-backed Iraqi Oil Law “robbery.”

FALEH ABOOD UMARA: [translated] With regards to the situation of the Iraqi oil workers, they’re persevering in their work and preserving the Iraqi oil wells. The reason we went on strike was to make twenty-seven demands, which we submitted to the Iraqi prime minister. He agreed to them, but the minister of oil did not implement the demands that led to the strike.

The most important point or one of the most important points is our demand not to rush through the new Iraqi oil law, because we believe that this oil law does not serve the interests of the Iraqi people. So we ask our friends in the United States, as well, to stand in solidarity with us and publicize the ill effects of this law, so that it never is agreed upon in the parliament….

HASHMEYA MUHSIN HUSSEIN: [translated] As a part of the Iraqi society, they suffer like everybody else, but also there were laws that were issued under the occupation that specifically targeted women, especially Law No. 137, which canceled the old civil law and delegated all issues that have to do with civil law to the local communities and religious communities, religious authorities. We took this very seriously and went out in demonstrations until the new law was canceled, but it was reintroduced through the new constitution, and we now demand the cancellation of this article.

As far as women’s rights are concerned, women are not completely suppressed. As you can see, I am right here in front of you. And we have 25% of the parliament members who are women, and we seek, we hope that it will soon become 40%. And this is a result of our struggle and determination that women in Iraq will have their rightful place.

 
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Shenna Bellows on Disappearing Civil Liberties

Published on June 30, 2007 in Featured, Podcasts and Torture. Closed

Abuse of power post 9/11; Updates included

Shenna Bellows, Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, gave a talk on October 26, 2006 at the University of Maine in Orono, Maine. This program originally appeared in two parts on the WERU Community Radio Voices programs with Amy Browne. Archives are located HERE and HERE.

The podcast posted today includes an extended introduction with important updates. The continuing hot issues to which Ms. Bellows lends sharp analysis in this program are two of the most vicious assaults on civil liberties in our times: destruction of the 4th amendment to the US Constitution through warrantless government surveillance and indefinite imprisonment and torture of terror war suspects. Discussion of events on these fronts subsequent to Ms. Bellows presentation with links for key news stories appears below the fold.

 
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Nuclear primacy is not security

Published on June 30, 2007 in Featured, nuclear and Opinion/op-ed. Closed

The Bush–Putin agenda in Kennebunkport, Maine this weekend should include critical unfinished business of the post-Cold-War era: immediate steps to outlaw nuclear weapons. However, the US is pursuing a different path.

“… [The United States] [b]ehaving as a superpower that seeks perpetual dominance, … that considers itself and its allies as exempt from international law, will not make us more secure. It will only provoke proliferation, just as our invasion of Iraq has not reduced terrorism but has instead created new grievances and new bands of terrorists. By trying to reap maximum benefit from our temporary role as sole superpower, our government is acting like the terrorist we fear, and in the process is making more likely the very things we fear the most: nuclear terror and a new arms race.”

The excerpt above is from an op-ed published in the Saturday/Sunday June 30–July 1, 2007 edition of the Bangor Daily News. My friend Mike Howard and I co-wrote the piece. The full text (as submitted) of the op-ed is below the fold. The piece does not yet appear on line at the newspaper’s site. If it does, I will post an update.

Update: Posted at Bangor Daily News, HERE.
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