Posts
Holiday Greetings!I received a poignant Christmas card in the mail this month. In it,Mary and the baby Jesus are nestled in a refugee tent on the sandsof Gaza. Behind them, a military bulldozer approaches to tear downthe tent. What a powerful reminder that Jesus was a refugee in theMiddle East two thousand years ago, and I believe would still cometo us as such today.I had hoped maybe now that I was back in the States and had a postalservice not inhibited in its function by warfare, that I would beable to send all sorts of cards and correspondence out this fall.However, in the past five years I've lost some of my sense oftiming. Fortunately, I notice that some cards from others are stillfiltering in, several days after Christmas. That is a sign ofgrace. Still, it is time to face the facts. I have put away thehigh ideals and for the most part I am resorting to email thisyear. Maybe next year I'll be fully back in the swing of things.Perhaps the big news is that I will be starting candidacy in theMetro Chicago synod and be training for ordained ministry. Some ofyou know that my synod in Iowa told me six years ago that peacepeople like me were not needed in the parish and that what we neededwere rural pastors, not urban or international pastors.Fortunately, I think I finally found the right crowd of people atseminary and in Chicago to tell me that this was not the case. I'mreally excited by the open thinking and being surrounded bysupportive people who know how to get things rolling.I am very much in love with seminary living and can't imagine livingin the States during these times were I not in this community.Since getting to campus I have been staying in trouble by organizinga peace and justice group for both the Lutheran and Presbyterianseminaries on campus. A Presby girl I was working with on theU.S./Mexico border this summer is at McCormick and we are co-conspiring on all of this. It's been a good way to channel myactivist energies. I've also been writing a number of articles forthe seminary newspaper, mostly about peace issues but also some oncampus issues and some humor articles just for fun. It's beenincredibly therapeutic, and I have learned once again that writingout the thoughts crashing around in my head keeps me from ruminatingon them all day and getting nothing else done!I am now living in a third-floor apartment across the street fromthe seminary. They are early 20th-century brown brick buildings andI share with two other single female roommates. Kimberly is 35 andfrom Cleveland, and Alissa is 22 and just graduated from LutherCollege. We are getting along mostly pretty well and enjoy theliving arrangements. Weekly, the `girls' get together to snack andwatch `Desperate Housewives' and appreciate that we are all stillsingle. There are two families in our building, one from SouthAfrica and the other from Korea. Both have young girls who like tocome visit and make cookies and watch videos often.Otherwise, I am also singing in the Chapel Choir and the GospelChoir, which meet on Monday nights. Chapel Choir is a moretechnically difficult choir, which makes me realize how out ofpractice I've been since high school. In Gospel Choir , I only haveto worry about singing loud. And hitting the high note when themain high-note singer isn't there. Ha!Most of you will be overjoyed to hear that I will not likely be backin Iraq anytime soon. I have recently resigned from three years inCPT and will be looking at next steps when I get back to campus. Itwas definitely getting time to move on, for my own health, energy,and well-being. I am still hoping to run delegations toPalestine/Israel with different groups that are going, but maybealso branch out into totally different areas. Still, I miss Baghdadliving terribly, especially the winter weather there–and friends ofcourse, and the wonderful grilled fish. I am coping with thecultural re-adjustment by shopping with my best Palestinian buddyDina at the Arab groceries and attending Arabic-speaking church afew times a month. I'm up to reading and writing basic Arabicthrough my class and this helps a lot, too.
My hope is that we may all work towards peace in this new year!Blessings,Le Anne
Friday, December 31, 2004
Friday, December 10, 2004
Le Anne's CNN Moment (2004)
Greetings everyone, I was looking through old files this morning and came across this transcript from the 2004 interview during the Abu Ghraib crisis. It did bring back quite a few memories. I never did get to see the video itself. The other folks they interviewed, particularly the psychologist, are fascinating. Anyway, here's a bit, and the full text is permalinked here: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0405/10/asb.00.html
CNN NEWSNIGHT AARON BROWN
Bush Backs Rumsfeld; What Is on Still Unreleased Abu Ghraib Photos, Video?; Interview With Janis Karpinski
Aired May 10, 2004 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[...]
From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.(COMMERCIAL BREAK)BROWN: The reality of the prison abuse story is that without the pictures there really would be little story, at least not the sort that would dominate the news for more than a week and counting.The military announced in January that an investigation was underway and, while it was reported here and reporters were working on it, the story didn't really stick. Tonight more evidence that without the pictures there would be little fuss. The Red Cross has been complaining about serious and systemic abuse at the prison since the beginning.Here's CNN's Ben Wedeman.(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Soon after U.S. forces reopened Abu Ghraib Prison last summer, Iraqis began to claim abuse of detainees was common. The Red Cross, Amnesty International, local Iraqi human rights groups and activists urged the coalition to investigate those claims.Last month, Abdel Basset al-Turki resigned in frustration from his post as Iraq's Human Rights Minister. He tells of meetings with senior coalition officials, including Chief Administrator Paul Bremer, during which he raised concerns over torture and abuse in American-run prisons in Iraq. The response, "I believe it was indifference combined with disregard" he told me. "Coalition officials were much more interested in documenting human rights violations under Saddam than in what has happened since" he says. Leanne Clausen of Christian Peacemakers tried working with the coalition to ensure proper treatment of prisoners.
LEANNE CLAUSEN, CHRISTIAN PEACEMAKERS: Coalition officials on the whole they were very cordial but they were generally not helpful. They either said that there really was not a problem within the system, that they were following all the Geneva Conventions that they felt obliged to follow.WEDEMAN: A confidential report from the Red Cross, leaked to "The Wall Street Journal" indicate the group's concerns over mistreatment go back more than a year and aren't limited to Abu Ghraib.
NADA DOUMANI, INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS: The abuses at Abu Ghraib were not individual cases. Unfortunately, this looks more like it was a pattern and it has been occurring in other places too.WEDEMAN: Coalition spokesmen insist they were listening all along.DAN SENIOR, COALITION SPOKESMAN: But I can tell you when these complaints were raised and we looked closely at them, we pursued improvement of the situation, correction of any problems. This is something that's been going on that everyone has been involved with for a number of months.
WEDEMAN: Scant satisfaction for those who wait every day outside Abu Ghraib in the heat and dust for news of those inside or for detainees pictured in those now infamous photos.(on camera): The consensus among human rights activists is that the U.S.-led coalition was unwilling to take their concern seriously until those photos emerged from behind these walls. And now with the abuse scandal snowballing they can only say we told you so.Ben Wedeman, CNN, outside Abu Ghraib Prison.
(END VIDEOTAPE)BROWN: Back now to an aspect of the story that we've all had a hard time reconciling over the past couple of weeks. How do people who seem just like anybody else do what the pictures show them doing and, if they were ordered to do what they did, what made it so hard for them to say no?Reports are only two refused. Of all the people who were at the prison only two said no. Nearly 33 years ago, Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University conducted an experiment that at the very least has an eerie resonance with the news of today.The professor is recent past president of the American Psychological Association. He's been a professor at Stanford sine 1968 and we are delighted to have him with us tonight. Basically, I want to try and shorthand this. You set up a prison and you had some students as guards and some students as prisoners and in very short order you learned what?
PHILIP ZIMBARDO, PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, we had set up a prison to run for two weeks and I had to terminate it after six days because it was out of control. What's really critical and I think the parallel with the Iraqi prison is that we knew that going into the prison our situation, we had selected boys who were normal and healthy in every way and we randomly assigned them to be prisoners and guards and we put them in so we had good apples to begin with.We put them in this bad barrel of prison and what came out were corrupted young men. In our prison the parallels were our guards stripped the prisoners naked, put bags over their heads, exactly as in Abu Ghraib, enforced sleep deprivation. These are things the guards thought of on their own, had them clean toilet bowls out with the bare hands and it was a gradual process. Each day it got worse and worse, so each day was a platform on which they built the creative evil of new things to do the next day.
BROWN: Just a couple of quick question on what you've said so far. But basically what you conclude is that it is not the character of the individual, these people may all be of wonderful character but the situation itself they are in that determines their behavior?ZIMBARDO: Absolutely. That is the whole purpose of our study was to demonstrate how powerful situational forces can be sometimes to overwhelm the best and the brightest, to overwhelm personality when you're in a novel situation that you have a variety of social factors operating.What was unique about our study we knew exactly what the subjects were like before they went in because we gave them a personality test. We interviewed them. They had no negative background characteristics because we eliminated that and what came out was at the end our guards were forcing the prisoners to engage in simulated sodomy, exactly as in this prison.
BROWN: That's unbelievable.ZIMBARDO: And these are college students doing it to other college students.BROWN: Is it necessary that, I guess it's not based on the study, that the guards see the prisoners as less than human or that they are dehumanized in some way?ZIMBARDO: That happens automatically, yes. You can't do this if you see these as college students. You have to see it as dangerous prisoners. In fact, in our prison the guards didn't allow the prisoners to bathe, so they smelled badly.BROWN: Yes. ZIMBARDO: They didn't allow them to go to the toilet. They had buckets in their cells so they urinated, defecated in this so the whole place smelled terrible and the guards began to think of the prisoners as animals, exactly as in the Iraqi prison where some of the guards reputedly said look at these animals. Look at the terrible things they're doing.
BROWN: Just one more quick question, is it, does it have to be a group? Does the fact that there is a group at play help determine the behavior?ZIMBARDO: Yes. It very rarely happens when it's an individual. Where you have a group, you have group camaraderie. You have new group norms about -- that determine what is acceptable, what is appropriate and then the group puts pressure on one another.You also typically have one or two people who lead the way. We call that social modeling. They're going to display, you know, the kinds of things that are now acceptable in that situation.The other thing that happened in the Iraqi situation is you have a veil of secrecy, which actually cloaks all prisons, so nobody knows on the outside what's happening. Once the people inside know that they know they can get away with anything, including "getting away with murder" because there's no accountability.
BROWN: Professor, it was fascinating 33 years ago. It remains fascinating today. Thank you, sir. It's good to talk to you.ZIMBARDO: Thank you and I hope the message gets carried to the public.BROWN: It just did. Thank you, sir, very much.ZIMBARDO: You're welcome.BROWN: Coming up tonight on the program something we've heard a lot from viewers, why show these pictures at all? Jonah Goldberg joins us to talk about that.And next the power of pictures down through the years, we'll take a break first.This is NEWSNIGHT.(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CNN NEWSNIGHT AARON BROWN
Bush Backs Rumsfeld; What Is on Still Unreleased Abu Ghraib Photos, Video?; Interview With Janis Karpinski
Aired May 10, 2004 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[...]
From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.(COMMERCIAL BREAK)BROWN: The reality of the prison abuse story is that without the pictures there really would be little story, at least not the sort that would dominate the news for more than a week and counting.The military announced in January that an investigation was underway and, while it was reported here and reporters were working on it, the story didn't really stick. Tonight more evidence that without the pictures there would be little fuss. The Red Cross has been complaining about serious and systemic abuse at the prison since the beginning.Here's CNN's Ben Wedeman.(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Soon after U.S. forces reopened Abu Ghraib Prison last summer, Iraqis began to claim abuse of detainees was common. The Red Cross, Amnesty International, local Iraqi human rights groups and activists urged the coalition to investigate those claims.Last month, Abdel Basset al-Turki resigned in frustration from his post as Iraq's Human Rights Minister. He tells of meetings with senior coalition officials, including Chief Administrator Paul Bremer, during which he raised concerns over torture and abuse in American-run prisons in Iraq. The response, "I believe it was indifference combined with disregard" he told me. "Coalition officials were much more interested in documenting human rights violations under Saddam than in what has happened since" he says. Leanne Clausen of Christian Peacemakers tried working with the coalition to ensure proper treatment of prisoners.
LEANNE CLAUSEN, CHRISTIAN PEACEMAKERS: Coalition officials on the whole they were very cordial but they were generally not helpful. They either said that there really was not a problem within the system, that they were following all the Geneva Conventions that they felt obliged to follow.WEDEMAN: A confidential report from the Red Cross, leaked to "The Wall Street Journal" indicate the group's concerns over mistreatment go back more than a year and aren't limited to Abu Ghraib.
NADA DOUMANI, INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS: The abuses at Abu Ghraib were not individual cases. Unfortunately, this looks more like it was a pattern and it has been occurring in other places too.WEDEMAN: Coalition spokesmen insist they were listening all along.DAN SENIOR, COALITION SPOKESMAN: But I can tell you when these complaints were raised and we looked closely at them, we pursued improvement of the situation, correction of any problems. This is something that's been going on that everyone has been involved with for a number of months.
WEDEMAN: Scant satisfaction for those who wait every day outside Abu Ghraib in the heat and dust for news of those inside or for detainees pictured in those now infamous photos.(on camera): The consensus among human rights activists is that the U.S.-led coalition was unwilling to take their concern seriously until those photos emerged from behind these walls. And now with the abuse scandal snowballing they can only say we told you so.Ben Wedeman, CNN, outside Abu Ghraib Prison.
(END VIDEOTAPE)BROWN: Back now to an aspect of the story that we've all had a hard time reconciling over the past couple of weeks. How do people who seem just like anybody else do what the pictures show them doing and, if they were ordered to do what they did, what made it so hard for them to say no?Reports are only two refused. Of all the people who were at the prison only two said no. Nearly 33 years ago, Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University conducted an experiment that at the very least has an eerie resonance with the news of today.The professor is recent past president of the American Psychological Association. He's been a professor at Stanford sine 1968 and we are delighted to have him with us tonight. Basically, I want to try and shorthand this. You set up a prison and you had some students as guards and some students as prisoners and in very short order you learned what?
PHILIP ZIMBARDO, PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, we had set up a prison to run for two weeks and I had to terminate it after six days because it was out of control. What's really critical and I think the parallel with the Iraqi prison is that we knew that going into the prison our situation, we had selected boys who were normal and healthy in every way and we randomly assigned them to be prisoners and guards and we put them in so we had good apples to begin with.We put them in this bad barrel of prison and what came out were corrupted young men. In our prison the parallels were our guards stripped the prisoners naked, put bags over their heads, exactly as in Abu Ghraib, enforced sleep deprivation. These are things the guards thought of on their own, had them clean toilet bowls out with the bare hands and it was a gradual process. Each day it got worse and worse, so each day was a platform on which they built the creative evil of new things to do the next day.
BROWN: Just a couple of quick question on what you've said so far. But basically what you conclude is that it is not the character of the individual, these people may all be of wonderful character but the situation itself they are in that determines their behavior?ZIMBARDO: Absolutely. That is the whole purpose of our study was to demonstrate how powerful situational forces can be sometimes to overwhelm the best and the brightest, to overwhelm personality when you're in a novel situation that you have a variety of social factors operating.What was unique about our study we knew exactly what the subjects were like before they went in because we gave them a personality test. We interviewed them. They had no negative background characteristics because we eliminated that and what came out was at the end our guards were forcing the prisoners to engage in simulated sodomy, exactly as in this prison.
BROWN: That's unbelievable.ZIMBARDO: And these are college students doing it to other college students.BROWN: Is it necessary that, I guess it's not based on the study, that the guards see the prisoners as less than human or that they are dehumanized in some way?ZIMBARDO: That happens automatically, yes. You can't do this if you see these as college students. You have to see it as dangerous prisoners. In fact, in our prison the guards didn't allow the prisoners to bathe, so they smelled badly.BROWN: Yes. ZIMBARDO: They didn't allow them to go to the toilet. They had buckets in their cells so they urinated, defecated in this so the whole place smelled terrible and the guards began to think of the prisoners as animals, exactly as in the Iraqi prison where some of the guards reputedly said look at these animals. Look at the terrible things they're doing.
BROWN: Just one more quick question, is it, does it have to be a group? Does the fact that there is a group at play help determine the behavior?ZIMBARDO: Yes. It very rarely happens when it's an individual. Where you have a group, you have group camaraderie. You have new group norms about -- that determine what is acceptable, what is appropriate and then the group puts pressure on one another.You also typically have one or two people who lead the way. We call that social modeling. They're going to display, you know, the kinds of things that are now acceptable in that situation.The other thing that happened in the Iraqi situation is you have a veil of secrecy, which actually cloaks all prisons, so nobody knows on the outside what's happening. Once the people inside know that they know they can get away with anything, including "getting away with murder" because there's no accountability.
BROWN: Professor, it was fascinating 33 years ago. It remains fascinating today. Thank you, sir. It's good to talk to you.ZIMBARDO: Thank you and I hope the message gets carried to the public.BROWN: It just did. Thank you, sir, very much.ZIMBARDO: You're welcome.BROWN: Coming up tonight on the program something we've heard a lot from viewers, why show these pictures at all? Jonah Goldberg joins us to talk about that.And next the power of pictures down through the years, we'll take a break first.This is NEWSNIGHT.(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
Friday, September 10, 2004
irreverent daydreams while sitting in chapel
Irreverent Thoughts while sitting in Chapel
September 9, 2004
Hi everyone,We have Chapel here five times a week, I think. (If I show uptomorrow and there isn't one, well, I guess I'll go back to bed).The understanding so far is that Chapel isn't required, but neitheris it optional. Hmmm... But it has on the whole been quiteworthwhile, and really I do try to pay attention and not let my mindwander. (Luther wrote about that, I learned this week. He said youcan't help it, but that doesn't mean you should stop goingaltogether, or something like that, I think).The other day I noticed the shoes of the seniors who were leadingworship. I notice what pastors wear on their feet often, and havedone so ever since Jack forgot he was wearing bright orange skisocks, which showed up nicely from the pulpit. That was eight yearsago. Anyway, this girl was wearing three-inch strappy heels underher robe. I am not sure whether this was to help her see up overthe pulpit, or to keep her from tripping on the hem of her robe. Ipersonally have not yet worn a robe without tripping over the hem,no matter what I do. Often while carrying the processional cross.If any of you were at Trinity when I was 11, 12, or 13 years old andheard a metallic 'ka-chunk' punctuate the opening hymn on thoseoccasions, that was me, tripping over the hem of my robe andsimultaneously smacking the cross into the top of the doorway.Sorry about the dents.So, I wondered, was that her robe or a stock one from the closet?It actually seemed to fit her. But the other guy's robe only came tohis knees it looked like. Is there a day when we get robes aroundhere? Does it come free with your seminary education? Or is thatordination? Is there a class on how not to trip, or at least how tohem? Does the Altar Guild have a seamstress on call for thesesituations? Why don't they cover these important questions duringorientation?Speaking of things they didn't cover in orientation, what aboutgenuflection? Everybody else crosses themselves during chapel. Thenthere's times when they don't. But by that time I am just catchingon to doing and then I'm the only one. What did I miss? I do tryto show up on time...I told my roommate I watched pastors' feet a lot and she said shedid also, and recounted several interesting cases. (Men with hairylegs, please do not ever wear shorts. It just isn't right). Anyway,Ah. I am not wierd. Actually, I think all of us here at theseminary are getting the affirmation that we are not wierd. Or atleast that we are all wierd together. It seems really necessary bythe time you get here. I remember the guy in college who wrote anote to a friend which I later saw, which said, "There's this cutegirl here but she wants to be a missionary or something, and that'sjust too wierd." Well, at least he thought I was cute. He would'vebeen no good for me anyway, so there.Yesterday we all went to buy books. They were having a party in thebookstore with a 25% discount on all texts. It was wall to wallpeople. That was not so good. There was abundant food, and evenwine and cheese. That was good. We needed it while we stood inline. One of the admissions counselors came down to hang out. Thatwas good too. By the time we'd all stood in line for half and hourand hadn't moved three feet, we needed him to remind us why wesigned up to come to seminary in the first place. I found Icouldn't squeeze between the other people in the bookshelves and getto what I still needed with my backpack on, so I took it off and setit under a table. No one minded, so Aha! I dumped my stack of booksunder there too and just waited until I was almost at the front toretrieve them again. Hands-free, and all the better to eat browniesand taco dip with, my dear. And my mood was much lighter thaneveryone who was still loaded down. I also plied the girl who heldmy place in line with plenty of that free wine, so she wasn'tbitter.I think I'm going to like worship class. Dina warned me about thisclass, and Dr. Bangert warned us all again on the first day that hisclass had a reputation for being strenuous. We have to chant (but Ilike chanting); we have to memorize all the liturgies in all thehymnals and get videotaped doing them. In fact, we memorize themall and on test day, we show up and he'll tell us which one he wantsus each as an individual to run through an entire service for, onsaid tape. Complete with hand motions. No offering collectionallowed, though. (Geez..) That test is just before ThanksgivingBreak. Trinity friends, take note: I'll be in fine form thatweekend if you need help, or if testing goes badly I guess I'll needa hug.I asked if we could practice giving funerals for all the finches whohave hit our new windows (sniffle--adding in yesterday's windstormand a carnivorous crow who snapped one up in front of me as I washeaded to Chapel, it really was genocide. When is the class wherewe learn why God didn't make crows vegetarian? Cruel world). Hedidn't laugh, but he didn't excommunicate me either so I guess thatis good. Oh, and he was going to see about getting some paper birdcutouts to stick in the windows to keep the birds from smacking intothem, so the conversation was not in vain. We also learned a littleabout exorcisms yesterday ("The ones featured in the old movie arejust the extreme form") and the Collect--which we now call Prayer ofthe Day. It's a formula prayer which can be extremely useful whendoing hospital bedside ministry, we learned. In fact, if we use theformula, he said, it will make us sound a lot less like a bumblingidiot. Ah. Guess I'll study that.Bangert said, "There are still some churches out there who primarilyuse the LBW and With One Voice hymnals."Some?Anyway, we have six volumes of 'Renewing Worship' to read throughthis term. And 'Sundays and Seasons,' which looks to me a littlelike a Lutheran 'Dial-A-Prayer' book. Not that that's bad. WeLutherans are not terribly creative folks, especially in the middleof winter.And a WOV and the LBW Minister's Desk Edition. If LBW is obsolete,why didn't we get a discount on the book? Amazon said it was out ofprint. Have any of my pastor friends got an extra on their shelf,gathering dust? I can still return mine to the bookstore in thenext two weeks. How about an Anchor Bible Dictionary?I've noticed that something is causing us to develop dark green'crop circles' on our school courtyard. But I have to wait untillater to write on that one. It's closing time in the computer lab.Good night!
September 9, 2004
Hi everyone,We have Chapel here five times a week, I think. (If I show uptomorrow and there isn't one, well, I guess I'll go back to bed).The understanding so far is that Chapel isn't required, but neitheris it optional. Hmmm... But it has on the whole been quiteworthwhile, and really I do try to pay attention and not let my mindwander. (Luther wrote about that, I learned this week. He said youcan't help it, but that doesn't mean you should stop goingaltogether, or something like that, I think).The other day I noticed the shoes of the seniors who were leadingworship. I notice what pastors wear on their feet often, and havedone so ever since Jack forgot he was wearing bright orange skisocks, which showed up nicely from the pulpit. That was eight yearsago. Anyway, this girl was wearing three-inch strappy heels underher robe. I am not sure whether this was to help her see up overthe pulpit, or to keep her from tripping on the hem of her robe. Ipersonally have not yet worn a robe without tripping over the hem,no matter what I do. Often while carrying the processional cross.If any of you were at Trinity when I was 11, 12, or 13 years old andheard a metallic 'ka-chunk' punctuate the opening hymn on thoseoccasions, that was me, tripping over the hem of my robe andsimultaneously smacking the cross into the top of the doorway.Sorry about the dents.So, I wondered, was that her robe or a stock one from the closet?It actually seemed to fit her. But the other guy's robe only came tohis knees it looked like. Is there a day when we get robes aroundhere? Does it come free with your seminary education? Or is thatordination? Is there a class on how not to trip, or at least how tohem? Does the Altar Guild have a seamstress on call for thesesituations? Why don't they cover these important questions duringorientation?Speaking of things they didn't cover in orientation, what aboutgenuflection? Everybody else crosses themselves during chapel. Thenthere's times when they don't. But by that time I am just catchingon to doing and then I'm the only one. What did I miss? I do tryto show up on time...I told my roommate I watched pastors' feet a lot and she said shedid also, and recounted several interesting cases. (Men with hairylegs, please do not ever wear shorts. It just isn't right). Anyway,Ah. I am not wierd. Actually, I think all of us here at theseminary are getting the affirmation that we are not wierd. Or atleast that we are all wierd together. It seems really necessary bythe time you get here. I remember the guy in college who wrote anote to a friend which I later saw, which said, "There's this cutegirl here but she wants to be a missionary or something, and that'sjust too wierd." Well, at least he thought I was cute. He would'vebeen no good for me anyway, so there.Yesterday we all went to buy books. They were having a party in thebookstore with a 25% discount on all texts. It was wall to wallpeople. That was not so good. There was abundant food, and evenwine and cheese. That was good. We needed it while we stood inline. One of the admissions counselors came down to hang out. Thatwas good too. By the time we'd all stood in line for half and hourand hadn't moved three feet, we needed him to remind us why wesigned up to come to seminary in the first place. I found Icouldn't squeeze between the other people in the bookshelves and getto what I still needed with my backpack on, so I took it off and setit under a table. No one minded, so Aha! I dumped my stack of booksunder there too and just waited until I was almost at the front toretrieve them again. Hands-free, and all the better to eat browniesand taco dip with, my dear. And my mood was much lighter thaneveryone who was still loaded down. I also plied the girl who heldmy place in line with plenty of that free wine, so she wasn'tbitter.I think I'm going to like worship class. Dina warned me about thisclass, and Dr. Bangert warned us all again on the first day that hisclass had a reputation for being strenuous. We have to chant (but Ilike chanting); we have to memorize all the liturgies in all thehymnals and get videotaped doing them. In fact, we memorize themall and on test day, we show up and he'll tell us which one he wantsus each as an individual to run through an entire service for, onsaid tape. Complete with hand motions. No offering collectionallowed, though. (Geez..) That test is just before ThanksgivingBreak. Trinity friends, take note: I'll be in fine form thatweekend if you need help, or if testing goes badly I guess I'll needa hug.I asked if we could practice giving funerals for all the finches whohave hit our new windows (sniffle--adding in yesterday's windstormand a carnivorous crow who snapped one up in front of me as I washeaded to Chapel, it really was genocide. When is the class wherewe learn why God didn't make crows vegetarian? Cruel world). Hedidn't laugh, but he didn't excommunicate me either so I guess thatis good. Oh, and he was going to see about getting some paper birdcutouts to stick in the windows to keep the birds from smacking intothem, so the conversation was not in vain. We also learned a littleabout exorcisms yesterday ("The ones featured in the old movie arejust the extreme form") and the Collect--which we now call Prayer ofthe Day. It's a formula prayer which can be extremely useful whendoing hospital bedside ministry, we learned. In fact, if we use theformula, he said, it will make us sound a lot less like a bumblingidiot. Ah. Guess I'll study that.Bangert said, "There are still some churches out there who primarilyuse the LBW and With One Voice hymnals."Some?Anyway, we have six volumes of 'Renewing Worship' to read throughthis term. And 'Sundays and Seasons,' which looks to me a littlelike a Lutheran 'Dial-A-Prayer' book. Not that that's bad. WeLutherans are not terribly creative folks, especially in the middleof winter.And a WOV and the LBW Minister's Desk Edition. If LBW is obsolete,why didn't we get a discount on the book? Amazon said it was out ofprint. Have any of my pastor friends got an extra on their shelf,gathering dust? I can still return mine to the bookstore in thenext two weeks. How about an Anchor Bible Dictionary?I've noticed that something is causing us to develop dark green'crop circles' on our school courtyard. But I have to wait untillater to write on that one. It's closing time in the computer lab.Good night!
Friday, September 03, 2004
Head swimming in seminary
Hi everyone,Well, orientation week is almost over and it's been wonderful exceptthat my brain is so extremely full. My class has just declareditself the "most awesome class ever." So far, I cannot argue. Wehave some amazing people and have bonded very quickly. Today, infact, we all went to the bookshop and revived one another as we oneby one felt rather faint over the sticker shock of the texts. Youknow, in college, religion books were the cheapest of any major andI think this is how God pays us back.Meanwhile, I have one of the most unusual seminary course loadsever: Beginner's Arabic 1, Jesus and Mohammed, Christians andMuslims, Worship, and Pentateuch. I will be trying to test out ofChurch History and need to cram before September 10th. Wish I wouldhave discovered this sooner. Later, I can take advanced Luther,Paul, and Ethics, maybe advanced Prophets, and many more oddconfigurations. I am grateful not to have to think of those justright now, though.My 'present' roommate and I are getting along swimmingly. (Not sosure yet about 'absent' roomate, who has been so thus far bothphysically and relationally. I guess getting engaged does that topeople). Anyway, we acheived making supper the other night, and hada glass of wine to celebrate our urban domesticity. She is fromsouthwest Wisconsin and as such had a bottle of wine called 'BadgerBlush.' My cross-cultural education continues, and it wasdelicious.Speaking of cross-cultural education, today we had a workshop onhearing the diverse voices at the seminary. To my surprise, thefirst speaker was a conservative white man. He said that he wasplanning to vote for Bush in the next election, knew of no facultymembers who shared his views, and only four students out of thewhole student body. Wow. Aside from a gut sense of relief (thoughI'm no great supporter of Kerry, either), I thought it was actuallyquite good for him to identify and speak about that experience. Iknow I chose to come here over other seminaries precisely because itwas liberal, global, and ethnically diverse, and was overjoyed tosee how much of my class was just such. Incidentally, anotherstudent identified as the 'gay Norweigan man' and said that he roomswith the conservative and has not killed him yet. Yet anotherstudent got up and said he embodied the 'straight white guy' whofelt last year that because of his role of majority power insociety, had less or nothing constructive to contribute to thediscussion, but ultimately found his voice. The third speakerthat really caught my attention as unusual for a forum like this wasthe Masters of Divinity Diaconal Ministry student--there's only fouron campus, and are not really understood yet by the rest of thecommunity. Myself, I think it's a beautiful idea. I'm actuallylooking at changing over shortly. Another reason why my head isswimming and my course schedule is a little disjointed.I speak here about Iraq on the 14th over lunch to kick off the'Global Table Talks,' and my advisor would like me to speak at leasttwo other times this year on CPT and Israel/Palestine. Maybe I'lldo a joint fourth talk with a Presbyterian student who was also inArizona with me this summer.One of my classmates told me yesterday I was her new hero. Yikes.It's flattering, but I don't think I'm ready for that here. When doI get a hero? Being in Iraq is a real conversation-stopper, I'vediscovered. I haven't had anyone say anything that wasn't extremelypositive and supportive, but I do feel a little set apart. It'stempting in some ways for me to not mention it at all, to blend in,to not take the responsibility for speaking out and educating thatcomes with it. But, I think I've already figured out that I willstand out here, no matter what I do, and maybe that is not such abad thing. At least I've found community.We've started a women's Bible study which met for the first timelast night and includes both seminary students and wives-of. It'sreally good, and is also functioning a bit as a support group forus. One of the women talked about how coming here is like being aplant getting watered. I liked the image and went home and got mycrayons and drew a Le Anne-plant under the watering can. I havebeen realizing how in this past year of working in the desert, howlittle 'water' there really was.I am not sure if I mentioned earlier that I have had many fineopportunities to get lost in our building. The most excitingadventure was being locked in a stairwell for half an hour lastweekend. I didn't realize when I left the computer lab that theyclose off all but the main stairwell on the weekends for securitypurposes--there weren't any signs. So, once I got in, I went fromfloor to floor and ended up at the bottom in a glass box with a doorwhich had a sign on it saying "DO NOT EXIT or alarm will sound." Ithought to myself, 'how much more embarrassing do I want to makethis experience?' So I waited until a teenage girl walked by andthen waved to her frantically. She waved back and kept walking. SoI pounded on the door and that got her attention, then she wentaround upstairs and held the door open for me to escape. I thankedher profusely. She was one of the professors' kids.There are many extremely nice kids around here: three teen boyscarried a very bulky cabinet up to our third-floor apartment theother night and I fed them cake and ice cream afterwards. Then whenroomie returned, they bounded down and brought up the groceries fromher car two blocks away. Last night, we had three young neighborgirls in our apartment, one making chocolate chip cookies with usand the other two watching Disney movies. One of the younger girlsasked me which languages I spoke. I replied that I spoke Arabic,German, and a little Spanish. She replied, "I speak Zulu, and shespeaks Korean." At the time, the other girl was on the phone to herfather and I could see that for myself. All three breeze betweentheir mother languages and English. The two Zulu-speakers are fromSouth Africa and live just downstairs. The girl who asked me aboutlanguages, who is perhaps seven, also told me my room was verymessy. Hmm. Maybe tonight I'd better finish unpacking. At lunchtoday another student said his room was a disaster also. Since he'ssure he wants to get ordained, we suggested he hire a churchsecretary sooner rather than later.peace,Le Anne
Thursday, August 19, 2004
The move to Chicago
The move to Chicago
August 18, 2004
Hi everyone,I have arrived at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago in HydePark and am unpacking the last few boxes. Please come by if you are in the area! All are welcome! Ahlan wa Sahlan!It is true what they say about Middle East full-time CPTers: unpacked, my new place does look like a Palestine museum and/or pottery shop.I am surely living in the right apartment building as my downstairs neighbors lived in Egypt for twenty years, and my next door neighbor, Dr. Vogelaar saw our van and U-Haul pull up late Monday night and jumped in to help carry up boxes, fix the lightbulb outside our door, and even brought over a box of ice cream for ustired movers. He also lived in Egypt and the region several yearsand speaks fluent Arabic (this means that he can pronounce 'Baghdad' correctly), and clearly has held onto middle eastern hospitality. Dina took me out for a 'welcome' dinner at Cedars of Lebanon and thefood there was a strong antidote for all of my middle easternhomesickness.The best news is that the seminary is starting Arabic languageclasses this fall as part of its world religions department! Thesecond best news is that a bunch of the people I've already metsince moving in want me to come speak about life in Iraq and CPT. Isee that I am going to be busy...Finally, yesterday every muscle in my body was engaged innot-so-nonviolent protest and I had still not unpacked the box withthe ibuprofen. Today is much better with only a strained calfmuscle. It was the combination of books and three flights of stairsthat really did me in. Meanwhile, I've been lost about five timesin the seminary building already even after finding my way aroundthe world. Good thing folks here are pretty friendly. Just gotinvited to partake in a Korean/Indian lunch here in the computer laband think I am going to get along just fine!peace,Le Anne
August 18, 2004
Hi everyone,I have arrived at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago in HydePark and am unpacking the last few boxes. Please come by if you are in the area! All are welcome! Ahlan wa Sahlan!It is true what they say about Middle East full-time CPTers: unpacked, my new place does look like a Palestine museum and/or pottery shop.I am surely living in the right apartment building as my downstairs neighbors lived in Egypt for twenty years, and my next door neighbor, Dr. Vogelaar saw our van and U-Haul pull up late Monday night and jumped in to help carry up boxes, fix the lightbulb outside our door, and even brought over a box of ice cream for ustired movers. He also lived in Egypt and the region several yearsand speaks fluent Arabic (this means that he can pronounce 'Baghdad' correctly), and clearly has held onto middle eastern hospitality. Dina took me out for a 'welcome' dinner at Cedars of Lebanon and thefood there was a strong antidote for all of my middle easternhomesickness.The best news is that the seminary is starting Arabic languageclasses this fall as part of its world religions department! Thesecond best news is that a bunch of the people I've already metsince moving in want me to come speak about life in Iraq and CPT. Isee that I am going to be busy...Finally, yesterday every muscle in my body was engaged innot-so-nonviolent protest and I had still not unpacked the box withthe ibuprofen. Today is much better with only a strained calfmuscle. It was the combination of books and three flights of stairsthat really did me in. Meanwhile, I've been lost about five timesin the seminary building already even after finding my way aroundthe world. Good thing folks here are pretty friendly. Just gotinvited to partake in a Korean/Indian lunch here in the computer laband think I am going to get along just fine!peace,Le Anne
Thursday, August 12, 2004
Najaf and the Shrine of Ali
Najaf and the Shrine of Ali
August 11, 2004
Hi everyone,This morning I knew I needed to drag myself out of bed, finishsanding down old furniture and get it painted before this weekend'smove to seminary. However, the news on NPR kept me listening, asthey described hundreds dead in Najaf already and preparations toattack the Shrine of Ali. This is terrible news. I can only thinkthe governor of the city in Sistani's absence (due to heart surgery)agreement to allow the military to do so is to prevent wholesaledestruction of the city and mass civilian killings as happened inFallujah in April. Please read below for more details which Ireceived today from Voices in the Wilderness, which helped turn myfeeling of helplessness back here at home into ideas for action. Aphone call need last only five minutes today.peace,Le Anne
------------------------- Original Message -------------------------Subject: Voices in the Wilderness - Najaf - The Shrine of AliFrom: "Voices in the Wilderness" <emaillist@vitw.org>Date: Wed, August 11, 2004 0:45To: leanneclausen@cpt.org--------------------------------------------------------------------Dear friends,As the fighting and crisis intensifies in Najaf, Voices in theWilderness calls for nonviolent acts demanding an end to thefighting. Call your Congressional Representative, US Senator andJohn Kerry’s campaign headquarters in your state to demand that theypublicly call for an end to all US military actions in Najaf,against its citizens and at the Imam Ali Mosque. Call candidates forfederal office in your state and issue the same demand. If theydon’t respond positively, initiate nonviolent direct actions attheir offices. Such nonviolent actions can include: an occupation oftheir office; a daily vigil outside of their office; a fax campaignto their office demanding they issue the statement; or a phone callcampaign to their office. Also, write letters to the editor of yourlocal newspapers and hold vigils in your local community. The timeto act is now.Our country’s military now declares preparations to attack theShrine of Ali in the city of Najaf in Iraq. Our country stands onthe precipice of declaring war on Islam. An attack on the Shrine ofAli is an attack on the heart of Islam and must be nonviolentlyresisted in our country.The US military is urging civilians to leave Najaf. We take this asa signal that our country is preparing to turn Najaf into a freefire zone, in which all who move, civilian or not, are targeted forattack. A free fire zone and an attack on the Shrine wouldsignificantly escalate the violence throughout Iraq, increasing thedanger for all Iraqis.Voices in the Wilderness calls upon all US governmentofficials—elected or appointed—to publicly declare their oppositionto any attack by US military forces against the Shrine of Ali. Wefurther call upon US military forces to withdraw from the holy cityof Najaf and to cease all military operations against the city, itscitizens and at the Imam Ali Mosque.The Shrine of Ali is the holiest of shrines in Shia Islam. It is theburial place for Imam Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the ProphetMohammed. The shrine is sacred to both Shia and Sunni Muslims.Attacking the Imam Ali Mosque is akin to bombing the burial site ofJesus for people of the Christian faith or the Western Wall forpeople of the Jewish faith.An attack on the Mosque would also replicate the history ofoppression of Shia under Saddam Hussein. In 1991, Shia rose upagainst Saddam Hussein, at the urging of the first President Bush.As US warplanes flew overhead, not intervening, Saddam’s helicoptersmassacred Shia on the ground below. Saddam attacked the Imam AliMosque during this time, killing those inside.As US citizens we must say "no" to this threatened attack on theheart of Islam. We will use all nonviolent means available to us toresist it.The violent overthrow of the Iraqi government and the subsequentmilitary occupation of Iraq have not lead to freedom, security, andprosperity for the Iraqi people. Neither have they created theconditions in which freedom, security, and prosperity can be sownand nurtured. Quite the opposite: the threat and reality of violenceis commonplace. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed orinjured. To this threat of violence, add the increased threat ofwater-borne disease and the weight of a collapsed electrical grid.The Iraqi people are our sisters and brothers. Our humanity demandsthat we begin to act as if lives of Iraqis and their faith trulymatter to us. As US citizens we must respond without equivocationand act to end this war and occupation.Voices in the Wilderness was formed in 1996 in response to the USeconomic sanctions against Iraq. Voices has sponsored over 70delegations to bring humanitarian supplies to Iraqi citizens despiteUS law. Voices currently faces a $20,000 fine for deliveringmedicine and other humanitarian supplies to Iraq.Kathy Kelly, Tess Kleinhaus, Jeff Leys, Danny Muller, Chuck Quilty,David Smith-Ferri, and Scott Blackburn for the Voices in theWilderness Chicago office<><><><><><><>Video: Justice and Courage in Occupied Iraq: Challenges for theanti-war movementMichael Birmingham of Voices in the Wilderness speaks about theoccupation of Iraq and resistance to Empire in the US, Iraq andelsewhere. This is from a talk that both Michael Birmingham andKathy Kelly gave in Chicago, IL, July 7th 2004. You can view thevideo at http://vitw.org/video/Audio: To listen to the complete audio of Justice and Courage inOccupied Iraq: Challenges for the anti-war movement please go tohttp://vitw.org/audio/ <><><><><><><><><><><><><><>Please pass this information on to others. You can visit our emailarchive at http://vitw.org/emailarchives.html and use "Send thismessage to a friend" located at the bottom of each archived email.<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>Our home page http://vitw.org/letters from Iraq http://vitw.org/letters/about us http://vitw.org/who_we_are/recent updates http://vitw.org/updates/<><><><><><><>--To unsubscribe from: Voices in the Wilderness eMail List, justfollow this link:http://vitw.org/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?f=u&l=vitwlist&e=leanneclausen@cpt.org&p=6\007882Click this link, or copy and paste the address into your browser.
August 11, 2004
Hi everyone,This morning I knew I needed to drag myself out of bed, finishsanding down old furniture and get it painted before this weekend'smove to seminary. However, the news on NPR kept me listening, asthey described hundreds dead in Najaf already and preparations toattack the Shrine of Ali. This is terrible news. I can only thinkthe governor of the city in Sistani's absence (due to heart surgery)agreement to allow the military to do so is to prevent wholesaledestruction of the city and mass civilian killings as happened inFallujah in April. Please read below for more details which Ireceived today from Voices in the Wilderness, which helped turn myfeeling of helplessness back here at home into ideas for action. Aphone call need last only five minutes today.peace,Le Anne
------------------------- Original Message -------------------------Subject: Voices in the Wilderness - Najaf - The Shrine of AliFrom: "Voices in the Wilderness" <emaillist@vitw.org>Date: Wed, August 11, 2004 0:45To: leanneclausen@cpt.org--------------------------------------------------------------------Dear friends,As the fighting and crisis intensifies in Najaf, Voices in theWilderness calls for nonviolent acts demanding an end to thefighting. Call your Congressional Representative, US Senator andJohn Kerry’s campaign headquarters in your state to demand that theypublicly call for an end to all US military actions in Najaf,against its citizens and at the Imam Ali Mosque. Call candidates forfederal office in your state and issue the same demand. If theydon’t respond positively, initiate nonviolent direct actions attheir offices. Such nonviolent actions can include: an occupation oftheir office; a daily vigil outside of their office; a fax campaignto their office demanding they issue the statement; or a phone callcampaign to their office. Also, write letters to the editor of yourlocal newspapers and hold vigils in your local community. The timeto act is now.Our country’s military now declares preparations to attack theShrine of Ali in the city of Najaf in Iraq. Our country stands onthe precipice of declaring war on Islam. An attack on the Shrine ofAli is an attack on the heart of Islam and must be nonviolentlyresisted in our country.The US military is urging civilians to leave Najaf. We take this asa signal that our country is preparing to turn Najaf into a freefire zone, in which all who move, civilian or not, are targeted forattack. A free fire zone and an attack on the Shrine wouldsignificantly escalate the violence throughout Iraq, increasing thedanger for all Iraqis.Voices in the Wilderness calls upon all US governmentofficials—elected or appointed—to publicly declare their oppositionto any attack by US military forces against the Shrine of Ali. Wefurther call upon US military forces to withdraw from the holy cityof Najaf and to cease all military operations against the city, itscitizens and at the Imam Ali Mosque.The Shrine of Ali is the holiest of shrines in Shia Islam. It is theburial place for Imam Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the ProphetMohammed. The shrine is sacred to both Shia and Sunni Muslims.Attacking the Imam Ali Mosque is akin to bombing the burial site ofJesus for people of the Christian faith or the Western Wall forpeople of the Jewish faith.An attack on the Mosque would also replicate the history ofoppression of Shia under Saddam Hussein. In 1991, Shia rose upagainst Saddam Hussein, at the urging of the first President Bush.As US warplanes flew overhead, not intervening, Saddam’s helicoptersmassacred Shia on the ground below. Saddam attacked the Imam AliMosque during this time, killing those inside.As US citizens we must say "no" to this threatened attack on theheart of Islam. We will use all nonviolent means available to us toresist it.The violent overthrow of the Iraqi government and the subsequentmilitary occupation of Iraq have not lead to freedom, security, andprosperity for the Iraqi people. Neither have they created theconditions in which freedom, security, and prosperity can be sownand nurtured. Quite the opposite: the threat and reality of violenceis commonplace. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed orinjured. To this threat of violence, add the increased threat ofwater-borne disease and the weight of a collapsed electrical grid.The Iraqi people are our sisters and brothers. Our humanity demandsthat we begin to act as if lives of Iraqis and their faith trulymatter to us. As US citizens we must respond without equivocationand act to end this war and occupation.Voices in the Wilderness was formed in 1996 in response to the USeconomic sanctions against Iraq. Voices has sponsored over 70delegations to bring humanitarian supplies to Iraqi citizens despiteUS law. Voices currently faces a $20,000 fine for deliveringmedicine and other humanitarian supplies to Iraq.Kathy Kelly, Tess Kleinhaus, Jeff Leys, Danny Muller, Chuck Quilty,David Smith-Ferri, and Scott Blackburn for the Voices in theWilderness Chicago office<><><><><><><>Video: Justice and Courage in Occupied Iraq: Challenges for theanti-war movementMichael Birmingham of Voices in the Wilderness speaks about theoccupation of Iraq and resistance to Empire in the US, Iraq andelsewhere. This is from a talk that both Michael Birmingham andKathy Kelly gave in Chicago, IL, July 7th 2004. You can view thevideo at http://vitw.org/video/Audio: To listen to the complete audio of Justice and Courage inOccupied Iraq: Challenges for the anti-war movement please go tohttp://vitw.org/audio/ <><><><><><><><><><><><><><>Please pass this information on to others. You can visit our emailarchive at http://vitw.org/emailarchives.html and use "Send thismessage to a friend" located at the bottom of each archived email.<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>Our home page http://vitw.org/letters from Iraq http://vitw.org/letters/about us http://vitw.org/who_we_are/recent updates http://vitw.org/updates/<><><><><><><>--To unsubscribe from: Voices in the Wilderness eMail List, justfollow this link:http://vitw.org/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?f=u&l=vitwlist&e=leanneclausen@cpt.org&p=6\007882Click this link, or copy and paste the address into your browser.
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Look what I found...
Cute. I always wondered what happened to that CNN interview. I'mguessing my clip ran all of ten seconds. It was a ten minuteinterview. Wonder what ever happened to ABC?http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0405/10/asb.00.htmlAt the end of the interview, the somewhat slimy reporter promised mefame and fortune if I could bring him a woman who was raped by U.S.soldiers. That was a pretty easy decision not to sell out. Yuck!peace,Le Anne
Sunday, July 18, 2004
In the press in Arizona
In the press in Arizona
July 17, 2004
Hi everyone,I made it home today from Arizona and am gearing up for a bigspeaking blitz in Iowa City over the weekend. Meanwhile, my AuntJane said she was surprised to find me on the front page of theArizona paper. Link below. I am at my desert camping frumpiest,sporting what looks like dreadlocks but is really only dust andwind. And it's not so much a beer belly as it is poor posture.Despite these disclaimers, it was kind of fun. I don't know thatthe reporter really had us figured out, but it wasn't so bad anarticle. We also made the paper in Douglas where we're stationed.That was a less good article, but no problem because it's notonline.peace,Le Anne
_More border Aid www.azstarnet.com ®_(http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/29181.php)
July 17, 2004
Hi everyone,I made it home today from Arizona and am gearing up for a bigspeaking blitz in Iowa City over the weekend. Meanwhile, my AuntJane said she was surprised to find me on the front page of theArizona paper. Link below. I am at my desert camping frumpiest,sporting what looks like dreadlocks but is really only dust andwind. And it's not so much a beer belly as it is poor posture.Despite these disclaimers, it was kind of fun. I don't know thatthe reporter really had us figured out, but it wasn't so bad anarticle. We also made the paper in Douglas where we're stationed.That was a less good article, but no problem because it's notonline.peace,Le Anne
_More border Aid www.azstarnet.com ®_(http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/29181.php)
Saturday, July 03, 2004
Greetings from the border
Greetings from Arizona!July 2, 2004The following is the press release my delegation has written aboutour experience here in the desert. The migrants we are comingacross have been in really bad physical shape, and have horrorstories to tell, as you will read below. They are also some of themost gentle spirits I have met. We have been talking to ranchers,vigilantes, the Mexican Consulate, the US Customs and BorderProtection, individual Border Guards, refugees, peace workers, youname it. What an amazing week! What's odd is that regardless ofpolitics or nationality, everyone seems to agree that a real guestworker program that protected migrant's rights (as well as allworkers' rights)is necessary, and that all nations have the right toprotect their borders from criminals, but we must treat the peopleinvolved as human beings. There is more common ground here thanpeople seem to realize.If you would like to distribute this release to press, please feelfree. My number here is 520-364-8033, and the team email (whichgets checked more frequently) is cptaz@cpt.org. If you are feelingmoved to come down here, call the office now at 773-277-0253 andsign up for the delegation leaving July 24 for a week.The desert suits me well here and the high temps are not really sobad. I saw my first real roadrunner, jackrabbit, tumbleweed, andcyclone-style dust storms all in the past 24 hours. I'm still hereuntil July 15.peace,Le Anne--------------Desert Fast Calls Attention to Migrants’ Plightby Sara RickardJuly 1, 2004DOUGLAS, AZ–Members of the Christian Peacemaker Team and visitingdelegation began a six-day fast in the desert to pray for the safetyof migrants crossing the U.S.--Mexico border and to raise awarenessof unjust border policies.The CPT fast is part of a series of actions coordinated with No MoreDeaths/No Mas Muertes, a Tucson-based coalition working to end thedeaths of migrants through direct humanitarian intervention, supportto migrant centers on both sides of the border, and advocacy forhumane border policy.To alleviate the physical suffering of migrants, participants in thefast offer survival food, water, and medical attention to those whopass their camp. By the end of the first day, CPT members haddistributed their entire supply of food and water and had seen morethan 20 migrants pass through the immediate area. Some migrantswandered in alone, after having been separated from their travelingcompanions, and asked to have the Border Patrol contacted to takethem back across the border. One woman who was abandoned by hercoyotes said that they had raped migrants women from Honduras who’dbeen traveling with them. Human rights activists claim that, inthis area of the desert, 20-30% of migrants are assaulted on thetrail.According to Mexican Consular officials, 49 migrants in CochiseCounty and over 200 migrants total died while crossing the borderthis year. Most of last year's deaths occurred during the month ofJuly. Eight Mexican migrants have died already in the county thisyear. While delegates visited Thursday, the Mexican consulatereceived a call reporting the death of a woman from Zacatecas.Aside from the inhospitable climate, migrants face the dangers oftraveling with often-unreliable coyotes (paid guides), theconfrontation of bandits on both sides of the border, andmistreatment by Border Patrol agents and local vigilante landowners.“As a nation, we discuss immigration in economic terms and securityterms, but we rarely discuss the issue in human terms,” said Le AnneClausen, Mason City, IA. “Being in the desert puts a face on thisvery human reality.”CPTers Mark Frey (Chicago, IL) and Ron Friesen (Loveland, CO) arefasting in the desert for the first three days, and Scott Kerr(Evanston, IL) and Le Anne Clausen (Mason City, IA) will fast duringthe second three days, when the camp will be moved to a new locationand designated a sanctuary for migrants. The CPTers are beingjoined in the fast by delegates and visited by interestedorganizations and community members.Current CPT delegation members include Clausen, Tim Kortenkamp(Santa Cruz, CA), Paul Horst(Evanston,IL), and Sara Rickard,(Chicago, IL). The delegation is in Arizona from June 26–July 3,2004.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Enjoying the Borderlands
Hi everyone,I just wanted to let you know that I have arrived safely in Arizonaand am now situated in the Sonoran Desert borderlands. Outside ourwindow is where the Rockies leave off and the Sierra Madres begin.Absolutely beautiful.The delegation I am leading is going very well and it has been anincredibly eye-opening experience for me. I got to practice plentyof my rusty Spanish in Nogales yesterday, when we crossed the borderand visited several small Mexican organizations trying to heal thebroken bodies which are returned to the city after deportation fromthe United States. I promise to write in detail later, but for nowI must say this--In the end, that's all the immigration debate boilsdown to: the simple right to be treated like human beings, and ourduty not to further others' deaths or suffering by our policies andpractices.While in Nogales, we also visited a squatter's camp of families fromthe South who served us a wonderful lunch. Especially good were thenapales, or cactus. The appearance is a little like stewed greenpeppers, but mighty tasty. I also had fifteen minutes for souvenirshopping and got an overpriced serape and an underpriced beadedbracelet.Here we are staying quite generously in the snowbird home of anolder Quaker couple from northwestern Iowa, who happen to be quiteactive on migrant issues since migrants began coming to her door inneed of water, food, and medical attention. I hope to meet her whenI get back in state. Several of the church women and peace peoplewe have met so far have been about retirement age. Our neighboracross the street is turning 75 tomorrow. Who says you must beyoung for this kind of work!I should get to bed and off the phone line now. Email may be a bitsporadic in access here, and I will be out in the desert sanctuarytent over the weekend I believe. You may call atAZ phone: 520-364-8033 (okay to leave message) if you like. I amhere until July 15th.If anyone sees my younger brothers James and Andrew, please tellthem to call soon to discuss Milwaukee trip arrangments. I had hopedthey could join me at the Global Mission Event this year, but wecould only come up with possibly half the tuition required. Theywere also my ride to speak at the event, which complicates things abit! Life does seem awfully complicated these days. Ack.Meanwhile, I get to try my hand at 'The Lutheran''s onlinediscussion boards next week about my article. I got a nice noteback from a Lutheran, out there somewhere, who wants me to comespeak now. Hope he writes back to tell me where he is. I amnervous about maybe getting hate mail through the web boards, as amI a bit nervous about being able to juggle it with project. Ithought this was going to start July 16--23, so I timed my projectstay in Arizona accordingly, but they published it as July 6-13,which is my last week here. Uff-da! Again, life is complicated, butmy teammates are supportive.Oh dear, I think this was a rather Lutheran prolonged farewell.Really, I'm signing off now.peace,Le Anne
Saturday, May 22, 2004
Forget Not Sudan
Forget Not Sudan
May 22, 2004
Forget Not Sudanby Le Anne ClausenSome readers of our team's reports may wonder about the update from ourtime in Jordan. We wrote about our encounters with Palestinian refugees,Filipino and Indian house servants at church, and other people who arenot Iraqi and were not discussing Iraq. A teammate asked me, "So whywrite about it on our list? What does it have to do with Iraq?"This is why:I spoke with a Sudanese man who was staying in the same hotel as our teamand was trying to find work in Jordan. He told me, "In every Arabcountry, you will find Sudanese people, because there is nowork for us."He also said he had been in the Sudanese military but desertedbecause he didn't like what they were doing. "The government sends youfrom problem to problem, and you are killing the people. It's not good."He added that military salaries were not enough to live on at fiftydollars per month. "If you have a family, the moneyis gone after ten days." He said that military service is mandatory forboth men and women, before they can go to university. "Evensmall children are fighting in the military now," he said, adding that hethought the government was particularly bad because of this policy.He also spoke of women's conditions in Sudan, saying "Women have nofreedom now. They can't do anything or go anywhere. Many women begothers to marry them long enough to get out of the country so they canfind work and have a life." He also spoke of many women being raped andimpregnated, especially women who are taken to the south of the countrywhere the conflict is worst. "It is very bad," he said.Although of African ethnicity, the man spoke fluent Arabic. Heexplained this was the language of commerce in the capital citywhere he lived. He also explained how a prominent political leader inhis country encouraged the people into repression of womenseveral years ago, and filled the government with his followers.However, the leader decided that he had been wrong and tried tochange the government back to what it once was. His followersbecame angry and would not let him.Several larger human rights groups and UN officials have recently namedArab militias backed by the Sudanese government as responsible forintentionally starving African-descent nationals and a resulting massiverefugee crisis. I would not have known about this had I not by chancetuned in to a documentary about the crisis on the radio one afternoon.Sudan is not far from Palestine or Iraq, where I have lived these pastfour years. However, only recently have I become aware of the ethniccleansing in the southern provinces of the country. Iconfess to having 'tunnel vision' as a field worker, limited to thecountries in which CPT works.Although I know CPT is too small to be everywhere just yet, Sudan hasbeen on my conscience ever since. Let us not forget them, for they areour neighbors also.
May 22, 2004
Forget Not Sudanby Le Anne ClausenSome readers of our team's reports may wonder about the update from ourtime in Jordan. We wrote about our encounters with Palestinian refugees,Filipino and Indian house servants at church, and other people who arenot Iraqi and were not discussing Iraq. A teammate asked me, "So whywrite about it on our list? What does it have to do with Iraq?"This is why:I spoke with a Sudanese man who was staying in the same hotel as our teamand was trying to find work in Jordan. He told me, "In every Arabcountry, you will find Sudanese people, because there is nowork for us."He also said he had been in the Sudanese military but desertedbecause he didn't like what they were doing. "The government sends youfrom problem to problem, and you are killing the people. It's not good."He added that military salaries were not enough to live on at fiftydollars per month. "If you have a family, the moneyis gone after ten days." He said that military service is mandatory forboth men and women, before they can go to university. "Evensmall children are fighting in the military now," he said, adding that hethought the government was particularly bad because of this policy.He also spoke of women's conditions in Sudan, saying "Women have nofreedom now. They can't do anything or go anywhere. Many women begothers to marry them long enough to get out of the country so they canfind work and have a life." He also spoke of many women being raped andimpregnated, especially women who are taken to the south of the countrywhere the conflict is worst. "It is very bad," he said.Although of African ethnicity, the man spoke fluent Arabic. Heexplained this was the language of commerce in the capital citywhere he lived. He also explained how a prominent political leader inhis country encouraged the people into repression of womenseveral years ago, and filled the government with his followers.However, the leader decided that he had been wrong and tried tochange the government back to what it once was. His followersbecame angry and would not let him.Several larger human rights groups and UN officials have recently namedArab militias backed by the Sudanese government as responsible forintentionally starving African-descent nationals and a resulting massiverefugee crisis. I would not have known about this had I not by chancetuned in to a documentary about the crisis on the radio one afternoon.Sudan is not far from Palestine or Iraq, where I have lived these pastfour years. However, only recently have I become aware of the ethniccleansing in the southern provinces of the country. Iconfess to having 'tunnel vision' as a field worker, limited to thecountries in which CPT works.Although I know CPT is too small to be everywhere just yet, Sudan hasbeen on my conscience ever since. Let us not forget them, for they areour neighbors also.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Coming Home
Coming Home
May 20, 2005
Hi everyone,Just a quick note to let you know I made it back home last night a littlebefore midnight. I flew into Chicago Monday afternoon, where we had apleasantly unintended vacation at the seminary a few days while waitingfor the car to be fixed--it broke down on the freeway when my welcomewagon was trying to pick me up at O'Hare!Spending the days there was really great too--though I didn't get to seeeveryone I was hoping to see! It did get my mind on track for the falland soothe some of the anxieties about fitting in. My Palestinian friendfrom Ramallah, Dina, took me to several international student gatheringsand I made fast friends. I have people to speak Arabic with, and peoplewho understand what's happening in Iraq because the same thing happened intheir own countries, often because of our country's corporate policies.They were from Sudan, Madagascar, Tanzania, Guyana. Wow. I was not aware.I recently wrote a reflection for CPT on how I was largely unaware of theethnic cleansing in Sudan until just this spring, then several chancehappenings have raised it to my consciousness. If I have not yet done so,I will send it on.Life is pretty much still--all--up in the air. Whether I continue to workwith CPT, whether I can afford to go to seminary next year, when I can goback to the middle east. I have so many beautiful things I could do, ifonly plans work out. I just don't know. I think I've done everything Ican to search for the answers, and now it is just wait and see.For now, I am getting settled in for the summer. I am thinking of gettingbig cans of wildflower seeds and doing some 'Guerrilla Gardening.' I amtrying to weigh much-needed downtime with the current national awarenessof the prisoner human rights abuses that has been our work on team allyear. I have been enjoying some fantastic hate mail in the local paperafter an article about my work on team with the detainees. It is good toknow that I am just as 'Anti-American' as Amnesty International, HumanRights Watch, and the International Red Cross. I really look up to thosegroups, so it was rather an honor. I am suprised he did not list Jesus,but that would have been extremely humbling. In the meantime, I wonderwhen sexual assault became a patriotic duty. Oh well, whatever.Anyway, I am still doing alright and it's good to be home. I am hoping toreceive many visitors here this summer while here! Beitna beitcou--ourhome is yours.peace,Le Anne
May 20, 2005
Hi everyone,Just a quick note to let you know I made it back home last night a littlebefore midnight. I flew into Chicago Monday afternoon, where we had apleasantly unintended vacation at the seminary a few days while waitingfor the car to be fixed--it broke down on the freeway when my welcomewagon was trying to pick me up at O'Hare!Spending the days there was really great too--though I didn't get to seeeveryone I was hoping to see! It did get my mind on track for the falland soothe some of the anxieties about fitting in. My Palestinian friendfrom Ramallah, Dina, took me to several international student gatheringsand I made fast friends. I have people to speak Arabic with, and peoplewho understand what's happening in Iraq because the same thing happened intheir own countries, often because of our country's corporate policies.They were from Sudan, Madagascar, Tanzania, Guyana. Wow. I was not aware.I recently wrote a reflection for CPT on how I was largely unaware of theethnic cleansing in Sudan until just this spring, then several chancehappenings have raised it to my consciousness. If I have not yet done so,I will send it on.Life is pretty much still--all--up in the air. Whether I continue to workwith CPT, whether I can afford to go to seminary next year, when I can goback to the middle east. I have so many beautiful things I could do, ifonly plans work out. I just don't know. I think I've done everything Ican to search for the answers, and now it is just wait and see.For now, I am getting settled in for the summer. I am thinking of gettingbig cans of wildflower seeds and doing some 'Guerrilla Gardening.' I amtrying to weigh much-needed downtime with the current national awarenessof the prisoner human rights abuses that has been our work on team allyear. I have been enjoying some fantastic hate mail in the local paperafter an article about my work on team with the detainees. It is good toknow that I am just as 'Anti-American' as Amnesty International, HumanRights Watch, and the International Red Cross. I really look up to thosegroups, so it was rather an honor. I am suprised he did not list Jesus,but that would have been extremely humbling. In the meantime, I wonderwhen sexual assault became a patriotic duty. Oh well, whatever.Anyway, I am still doing alright and it's good to be home. I am hoping toreceive many visitors here this summer while here! Beitna beitcou--ourhome is yours.peace,Le Anne
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Tortured at Abu Ghraib
Photographed Prisoner Describes Torture at Abu Ghraib
May 11, 2004
[CPT workers Le Anne Clausen and Stewart Vriesinga recorded the following
testimony of a man who identified himself in one of the photographs of naked, hooded
prisoners. The testimony was recorded on May 9th, 2004 at the office of an
Iraqi human rights organization in Baghdad. The testimony was simultaneously recorded
in Arabic.]
“Before I was tortured, I was a physical laborer. I could carry over 100lbs.
Now my back is ruined, I can’t lift anything. I can’t travel far because I cannot
control my bladder. One day recently, I was walking and I had to run into a
hotel and beg them to let me use the bathroom.
“I was held for four months and six days.
“I spent eighteen days naked. For eighteen days I was talking without control.
I answered ‘yes’ to all their questions. They asked me if I was part of Ansar
Islam (a Kurdish militia). I said yes. They asked me if I was in Mohammed’s Army
(another militia). I said yes. Al Qaeda, and so forth. I admitted to every
charge. I said, “I know al Qaeda. Just kill me and get it over with.”
“After interrogation, they gave me a bottle of water. A guard came up to me,
took it from my hands, and dumped it on my head.
“They took me to a special room called the ‘presser,’ where they played sounds
at high volumes. They would only turn it off for one hour every night so I could
sleep. At the same time, my hands and feet were bound in this small room and I
had to sit with my arms and legs partially flexed for the twenty-three hours in the
day. I was in this room for twenty-eight days.
“They tied me into a pose called the ‘Scorpion,’ where they made me lie on my
stomach and tied my hands to my feet behind me so my back was curved. They kept
me like this for ten to fifteen hours at a time.
“One soldier kicked me in the jaw while I was lying down, and broke two of my
teeth. After two days, I couldn’t eat anything and they took me to an Iraqi doctor
inside the prison. He treated me with injections and tablets. After fourteen days, my
teeth were not improving so he removed them. My lips were badly swollen from
being crushed during the kicking.
“One day they gave me an injection. The next day they gave me five injections.
I couldn’t control my arms or my legs. “When they forced us to make the human
pyramids, they put bags on our heads. We were naked. They pushed us in the
back until we lined up, then they pushed us, we would trip on things on the floor.
Then they instructed us to climb on to one another into the pyramid.
“They would also [when hooded and naked] push us from behind until we walked
into the back of another prisoner. Then they would order us to have anal sex with
that person.
“This is the time that they would also put a rope around us, either by the neck
or under our arms, and drag us across the floor.
“They said many insulting things to us regularly, such as “Shut the f--- up,”
“You are shi--,” “Son of a b----,” and “Bastard.”
“Later I was sent to Camp 42, a smaller camp. There was no questioning about
possible charges against me here. I became nervous and said, “Look, I’m Osama
bin Laden. Just kill me now.”
“There were rules: for three months, there was no talking, no praying, and no
reading Qu’ran. The only things allowed were breathing, eating, using the
toilet. You could pray and recite Qu’ran in your heart, but not out loud. You could
sleep for one hour.
“If you were caught talking, one punishment was to chain one hand to the floor
and one hand from the ceiling and stretch your arms apart for an extended time.
Another punishment was to put water on you, to completely soak your clothes, and to put water in your bed.
“I never knew the charges against me during this time until three days before my
release. Then they said they thought I may have been in the former military.
“I asked a soldier there, “Why?” and he told me his orders came from high up.
“The International Committee of the Red Cross came different times, a woman
named Eva. During the visit, they would take a group of us who had been tortured, six
or seven of us, out of the visiting room and replace us with other prisoners who
hadn’t been with us. Afterwards, they would punish all the prisoners if anyone spoke
to the ICRC. They hung us by our wrists from the ceiling.
“We were fed pork for two days, then for a while we were given only one item out
of an Army meal once per day.
“Our method of eating was sh--. We had no utensils, they took these out of the
Army ration, we just had to eat it like babies. Our hands were bound. Later, we got
two Army rations per day, twelve hours apart.
“We heard from the other prisoners about the demonstration they organized on the
first day of Eid after Ramadan. The U.S. guards shot and killed four prisoners.
The prisoners who were there told us that afterwards, a black U.S. soldier
apologized for the killings and played a recording of Qu’ranic verses on the
loudspeaker system for all of us.
“Sergeant Joyner, Sgt. Bair, and Knockley, who has two ‘bars’—he is the level
below sergeant—were some of the soldiers who abused me. I witnessed Knockley rape a
woman in front of her father and brother. I know [Brigadier General Janis] Karpinski
saw what was happening to us.
“Among my interrogators there were Staff Sgt. Kris, a woman; Mr. Carlos, and Ms.
Liz. When Ms. Liz left, she was replaced by Ms. Sarah. Mr. Carlos hated me, he
was very bad. Kris was better than him, when Mr. Carlos left me she would come and
wash the blood off my face and give me cigarettes afterwards. Also Sarah was better
than Liz.
“I am willing to take CPT to another person who was tortured worse than me. They
broke his ribs. I also want to take you to the family of a man who was with me
who died during his torture. His young daughter saw the U.S. soldiers take her
father away. Now, every time she sees soldiers, she asks them, “Where is my father?
He went with you.”
“I was a political prisoner under the old regime, and I was a political prisoner
now. I was taken in 1999 and held at the Olympic stadium complex where Uday
[Hussein] was. There was also much mistreatment there but nothing like this.
There, they tried to kill me, but they didn’t try to humiliate me like this. I,
and every Iraqi now, equate the two regimes, old and new.
“My documents say that I was in Abu Ghraib from December 1st to March 28th.
However, that is just the time that I spent in that camp. I was arrested two
days earlier before I was transferred to the camp.
“My wife left me after I returned home because I had so many psychological and
physical problems. Really, this is the least of my problems, because everything
else was so severe.”
--------------------------
‘Salaam,’ who asked not to speak to reporters, was detained from November 29th
2003 to March 28th of this year in various detention centers, including two months in
Camp 7 of the Abu Ghraib prison camp. He also spent one month and ten days in a
military hospital for treatment of injuries he sustained under torture.
May 11, 2004
[CPT workers Le Anne Clausen and Stewart Vriesinga recorded the following
testimony of a man who identified himself in one of the photographs of naked, hooded
prisoners. The testimony was recorded on May 9th, 2004 at the office of an
Iraqi human rights organization in Baghdad. The testimony was simultaneously recorded
in Arabic.]
“Before I was tortured, I was a physical laborer. I could carry over 100lbs.
Now my back is ruined, I can’t lift anything. I can’t travel far because I cannot
control my bladder. One day recently, I was walking and I had to run into a
hotel and beg them to let me use the bathroom.
“I was held for four months and six days.
“I spent eighteen days naked. For eighteen days I was talking without control.
I answered ‘yes’ to all their questions. They asked me if I was part of Ansar
Islam (a Kurdish militia). I said yes. They asked me if I was in Mohammed’s Army
(another militia). I said yes. Al Qaeda, and so forth. I admitted to every
charge. I said, “I know al Qaeda. Just kill me and get it over with.”
“After interrogation, they gave me a bottle of water. A guard came up to me,
took it from my hands, and dumped it on my head.
“They took me to a special room called the ‘presser,’ where they played sounds
at high volumes. They would only turn it off for one hour every night so I could
sleep. At the same time, my hands and feet were bound in this small room and I
had to sit with my arms and legs partially flexed for the twenty-three hours in the
day. I was in this room for twenty-eight days.
“They tied me into a pose called the ‘Scorpion,’ where they made me lie on my
stomach and tied my hands to my feet behind me so my back was curved. They kept
me like this for ten to fifteen hours at a time.
“One soldier kicked me in the jaw while I was lying down, and broke two of my
teeth. After two days, I couldn’t eat anything and they took me to an Iraqi doctor
inside the prison. He treated me with injections and tablets. After fourteen days, my
teeth were not improving so he removed them. My lips were badly swollen from
being crushed during the kicking.
“One day they gave me an injection. The next day they gave me five injections.
I couldn’t control my arms or my legs. “When they forced us to make the human
pyramids, they put bags on our heads. We were naked. They pushed us in the
back until we lined up, then they pushed us, we would trip on things on the floor.
Then they instructed us to climb on to one another into the pyramid.
“They would also [when hooded and naked] push us from behind until we walked
into the back of another prisoner. Then they would order us to have anal sex with
that person.
“This is the time that they would also put a rope around us, either by the neck
or under our arms, and drag us across the floor.
“They said many insulting things to us regularly, such as “Shut the f--- up,”
“You are shi--,” “Son of a b----,” and “Bastard.”
“Later I was sent to Camp 42, a smaller camp. There was no questioning about
possible charges against me here. I became nervous and said, “Look, I’m Osama
bin Laden. Just kill me now.”
“There were rules: for three months, there was no talking, no praying, and no
reading Qu’ran. The only things allowed were breathing, eating, using the
toilet. You could pray and recite Qu’ran in your heart, but not out loud. You could
sleep for one hour.
“If you were caught talking, one punishment was to chain one hand to the floor
and one hand from the ceiling and stretch your arms apart for an extended time.
Another punishment was to put water on you, to completely soak your clothes, and to put water in your bed.
“I never knew the charges against me during this time until three days before my
release. Then they said they thought I may have been in the former military.
“I asked a soldier there, “Why?” and he told me his orders came from high up.
“The International Committee of the Red Cross came different times, a woman
named Eva. During the visit, they would take a group of us who had been tortured, six
or seven of us, out of the visiting room and replace us with other prisoners who
hadn’t been with us. Afterwards, they would punish all the prisoners if anyone spoke
to the ICRC. They hung us by our wrists from the ceiling.
“We were fed pork for two days, then for a while we were given only one item out
of an Army meal once per day.
“Our method of eating was sh--. We had no utensils, they took these out of the
Army ration, we just had to eat it like babies. Our hands were bound. Later, we got
two Army rations per day, twelve hours apart.
“We heard from the other prisoners about the demonstration they organized on the
first day of Eid after Ramadan. The U.S. guards shot and killed four prisoners.
The prisoners who were there told us that afterwards, a black U.S. soldier
apologized for the killings and played a recording of Qu’ranic verses on the
loudspeaker system for all of us.
“Sergeant Joyner, Sgt. Bair, and Knockley, who has two ‘bars’—he is the level
below sergeant—were some of the soldiers who abused me. I witnessed Knockley rape a
woman in front of her father and brother. I know [Brigadier General Janis] Karpinski
saw what was happening to us.
“Among my interrogators there were Staff Sgt. Kris, a woman; Mr. Carlos, and Ms.
Liz. When Ms. Liz left, she was replaced by Ms. Sarah. Mr. Carlos hated me, he
was very bad. Kris was better than him, when Mr. Carlos left me she would come and
wash the blood off my face and give me cigarettes afterwards. Also Sarah was better
than Liz.
“I am willing to take CPT to another person who was tortured worse than me. They
broke his ribs. I also want to take you to the family of a man who was with me
who died during his torture. His young daughter saw the U.S. soldiers take her
father away. Now, every time she sees soldiers, she asks them, “Where is my father?
He went with you.”
“I was a political prisoner under the old regime, and I was a political prisoner
now. I was taken in 1999 and held at the Olympic stadium complex where Uday
[Hussein] was. There was also much mistreatment there but nothing like this.
There, they tried to kill me, but they didn’t try to humiliate me like this. I,
and every Iraqi now, equate the two regimes, old and new.
“My documents say that I was in Abu Ghraib from December 1st to March 28th.
However, that is just the time that I spent in that camp. I was arrested two
days earlier before I was transferred to the camp.
“My wife left me after I returned home because I had so many psychological and
physical problems. Really, this is the least of my problems, because everything
else was so severe.”
--------------------------
‘Salaam,’ who asked not to speak to reporters, was detained from November 29th
2003 to March 28th of this year in various detention centers, including two months in
Camp 7 of the Abu Ghraib prison camp. He also spent one month and ten days in a
military hospital for treatment of injuries he sustained under torture.
Monday, May 10, 2004
Release: Prisoners tell their stories of abuse
Released Detainees Tell Public of Torture, Mistreatment by U.S. Soldiers
By Le Anne Clausen
May 10, 2004
BAGHDAD—Dozens of former detainees and their families came forward Sunday to
tell
their experiences of physical, sexual, and psychological torture at the hands of
U.S. soldiers in Iraqi prison camps. The press conference was organized jointly
by
several Iraqi and international human rights organizations who have been
documenting
violations against detainees and their families since last summer.
One man lifted his shirt to show the long scars across his back from a whipping
he
said he received from U.S. forces. He said, “They beat me…urinated on me…broke
my
arm…and raped me. When they stopped my truck at the checkpoint and searched it,
all
they found was an Islamic magazine. Now I am psychologically unstable.” The
man
was released April 24th. While he spoke, a female relative in the audience wept
and
called out, “Allahu Akbar,” (God is greater).
A fifty-year-old man in traditional dress who was in Abu Ghraib prison camp last
winter testified that U.S. soldiers herded detainees into a room in groups of
ten to
twenty men and stripped them naked. The soldiers ordered one detainee to rape
the
others. The soldiers then ordered half of the detainees to sit on the ground
and
engage in oral sex with the standing detainees. The man identified the woman
shown
in many of the photographs as one who carried out the torture he experienced.
The
man also described how soldiers gave the detainees two full Army ration meals
and
ordered them to eat the entire quantity of food within two minutes. He said
they
were similarly forced to consume three liters of water. The man also described
how
soldiers would form a ball of fabric and shove it into the detainees’ anuses.
After
this, soldiers would remove the ball and put it into the detainees’ mouths,
“covered
with filth.” He explained that soldiers also gagged them with rags soaked in
hot
peppers, and held their nostrils under a running water faucet.
“During Ramadan [November 2003], the detainees held a demonstration and the
soldiers
killed four men. I knew these men…until now, none of the bodies of these men
have
been returned to their families.”
“Still there was a younger man with me, very handsome. The soldiers stripped
him
naked…when he refused [sexual advances from the soldiers], they tortured him for
three days. A woman soldier blindfolded him and led him naked into the women’s
prison. He was there for twenty days, naked. He witnessed the sexual abuse of
the
women detainees by the U.S. guards.”
A third released detainee, in his mid-thirties, described starting his time in
Abu
Ghraib in a group of detainees standing naked outside for three days, without
sleep,
food, or being able to sit down. He testified that soldiers poured cold water on
the
detainees’ bodies during this time.
Yet another man said, “I spent five months in Abu Ghraib, and I witnessed abuse
similar to that in the pictures. Officer Meagan was one of those responsible.
The
soldiers left me naked on the ground with the dogs. They didn’t give me food or
water for three days. Later, the food was so bad I couldn’t eat it. We got one
small blanket in the winter. It wasn’t enough. They did not differentiate
between
women or men, old or young—they tortured all.”
He added, “If you ask any detainee why he is there, he will tell you, ‘I don’t
know,
they didn’t say. I was sleeping when they arrested me and brought me here.’”
Many families spoke of the destructive house raids in which U.S. soldiers
arrested
their relatives in the first place, taking women’s jewelry, purses, cash, and
family
documents. In several cases, families described how soldiers completely
destroyed
their homes and belongings. “My wife was holding tightly to her purse. They
ripped
it from her. They pulled so hard, I thought they would rip off her arm,” said
one
man. Another testified that U.S. soldiers raided and destroyed their home and
killed their fifteen-year-old son on February 23rd, in Abu Ghraib village near
the
prison camp. Two days later, soldiers returned to apologize for raiding the
wrong
house.
“I have one question,” she asked. “Is this the free democracy of the West?”
By Le Anne Clausen
May 10, 2004
BAGHDAD—Dozens of former detainees and their families came forward Sunday to
tell
their experiences of physical, sexual, and psychological torture at the hands of
U.S. soldiers in Iraqi prison camps. The press conference was organized jointly
by
several Iraqi and international human rights organizations who have been
documenting
violations against detainees and their families since last summer.
One man lifted his shirt to show the long scars across his back from a whipping
he
said he received from U.S. forces. He said, “They beat me…urinated on me…broke
my
arm…and raped me. When they stopped my truck at the checkpoint and searched it,
all
they found was an Islamic magazine. Now I am psychologically unstable.” The
man
was released April 24th. While he spoke, a female relative in the audience wept
and
called out, “Allahu Akbar,” (God is greater).
A fifty-year-old man in traditional dress who was in Abu Ghraib prison camp last
winter testified that U.S. soldiers herded detainees into a room in groups of
ten to
twenty men and stripped them naked. The soldiers ordered one detainee to rape
the
others. The soldiers then ordered half of the detainees to sit on the ground
and
engage in oral sex with the standing detainees. The man identified the woman
shown
in many of the photographs as one who carried out the torture he experienced.
The
man also described how soldiers gave the detainees two full Army ration meals
and
ordered them to eat the entire quantity of food within two minutes. He said
they
were similarly forced to consume three liters of water. The man also described
how
soldiers would form a ball of fabric and shove it into the detainees’ anuses.
After
this, soldiers would remove the ball and put it into the detainees’ mouths,
“covered
with filth.” He explained that soldiers also gagged them with rags soaked in
hot
peppers, and held their nostrils under a running water faucet.
“During Ramadan [November 2003], the detainees held a demonstration and the
soldiers
killed four men. I knew these men…until now, none of the bodies of these men
have
been returned to their families.”
“Still there was a younger man with me, very handsome. The soldiers stripped
him
naked…when he refused [sexual advances from the soldiers], they tortured him for
three days. A woman soldier blindfolded him and led him naked into the women’s
prison. He was there for twenty days, naked. He witnessed the sexual abuse of
the
women detainees by the U.S. guards.”
A third released detainee, in his mid-thirties, described starting his time in
Abu
Ghraib in a group of detainees standing naked outside for three days, without
sleep,
food, or being able to sit down. He testified that soldiers poured cold water on
the
detainees’ bodies during this time.
Yet another man said, “I spent five months in Abu Ghraib, and I witnessed abuse
similar to that in the pictures. Officer Meagan was one of those responsible.
The
soldiers left me naked on the ground with the dogs. They didn’t give me food or
water for three days. Later, the food was so bad I couldn’t eat it. We got one
small blanket in the winter. It wasn’t enough. They did not differentiate
between
women or men, old or young—they tortured all.”
He added, “If you ask any detainee why he is there, he will tell you, ‘I don’t
know,
they didn’t say. I was sleeping when they arrested me and brought me here.’”
Many families spoke of the destructive house raids in which U.S. soldiers
arrested
their relatives in the first place, taking women’s jewelry, purses, cash, and
family
documents. In several cases, families described how soldiers completely
destroyed
their homes and belongings. “My wife was holding tightly to her purse. They
ripped
it from her. They pulled so hard, I thought they would rip off her arm,” said
one
man. Another testified that U.S. soldiers raided and destroyed their home and
killed their fifteen-year-old son on February 23rd, in Abu Ghraib village near
the
prison camp. Two days later, soldiers returned to apologize for raiding the
wrong
house.
“I have one question,” she asked. “Is this the free democracy of the West?”
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Back to Baghdad
Back to Baghdad
May 6, 2004
Hi everyone,
I've been back in Baghdad since Monday afternoon and pretty busy. When the
pictures of prisoners being abused came out in the media last week, we
started getting flooded with phone calls. As most of you know, our team
has been investigating prisoner abuses last September and has been
advocating for prisoner system reforms directly with leaders
in the Coalition Provisional Authority since that time. The photos
were not surprising to us at all other than that they were released in the
first place. Unfortunatlely, human rights abuses are a fairly common
experience for the roughly 20,000 Iraqi citizens who have been through the
US prison camps this past year. I am so frustrated that the military is
trying to cover this up by repeatedly saying it's just a few individuals.
The Arab world isn't buying it either, and I think Bush's speech actually
made things worse.
That said, I am dying to talk to Iowa media. I've heard a rumor that the
Globe Gazette is under pressure not to write about my work in Iraq any
more. I don't know, but I haven't heard from them in a while. The
Register has written and also talked to a teammate of mine who's home
right now. However, if any of you have a local newspaper or radio station
who would like an "Iowan on the ground" perspective, feel free to give
them my number. They can also go to the website http://www.cpt.org/iraq
which has a lot of the prisoner testimonies we took. Look in the archives
for CPTnet and on the Iraq page.
Meanwhile, we had a car bomb at the CPA this morning at 7:30 while I was
on the phone with the office. Later a friend came over and we discussed
how when a big bomb goes off, you can feel the air suck out of the room
just a second before the 'boom.' It's eerie, but normal. Five more
explosions at the CPA just went off a minute ago here while I am typing
this letter.
Still, our friends and the people we work with are ecstatic that we've
come back. They want to put us to work all over the place. We spent all
morning in a human rights group's office going over cases. Our house was
full within fifteen minutes of our return.
I've got ten days left in Iraq and somehow have to manage focusing our
project to keep up with the times, saying goodbye to all my friends, and
maybe getting a few small souvenirs. I don't know when I'll return. I'm
applying for the position of Iraq project support coordinator, who would
arrange the schedules for team members and do media outreach and a lot
else. Then I could come back to the middle east in early summer and
perhaps Januarys. Since I don't have enough money to go to seminary
full-time next year, the position would be a way I could still do peace
work and attend classes half-time, allowing me enough time to study and
working around my class schedule. Otherwise, I will probably work a
couple years full-time elsewhere until I can afford to study full-time and
have adequate time to do a good job. So, we wait and see.
When I return, I hope to take June as a rest month and not do any
speaking. If all works out with the two Global Mission Events for the
ELCA, those are in July. Then I move to Chicago in August for seminary.
Four years in the middle east went awfully quick.
peace to you,
Le Anne
May 6, 2004
Hi everyone,
I've been back in Baghdad since Monday afternoon and pretty busy. When the
pictures of prisoners being abused came out in the media last week, we
started getting flooded with phone calls. As most of you know, our team
has been investigating prisoner abuses last September and has been
advocating for prisoner system reforms directly with leaders
in the Coalition Provisional Authority since that time. The photos
were not surprising to us at all other than that they were released in the
first place. Unfortunatlely, human rights abuses are a fairly common
experience for the roughly 20,000 Iraqi citizens who have been through the
US prison camps this past year. I am so frustrated that the military is
trying to cover this up by repeatedly saying it's just a few individuals.
The Arab world isn't buying it either, and I think Bush's speech actually
made things worse.
That said, I am dying to talk to Iowa media. I've heard a rumor that the
Globe Gazette is under pressure not to write about my work in Iraq any
more. I don't know, but I haven't heard from them in a while. The
Register has written and also talked to a teammate of mine who's home
right now. However, if any of you have a local newspaper or radio station
who would like an "Iowan on the ground" perspective, feel free to give
them my number. They can also go to the website http://www.cpt.org/iraq
which has a lot of the prisoner testimonies we took. Look in the archives
for CPTnet and on the Iraq page.
Meanwhile, we had a car bomb at the CPA this morning at 7:30 while I was
on the phone with the office. Later a friend came over and we discussed
how when a big bomb goes off, you can feel the air suck out of the room
just a second before the 'boom.' It's eerie, but normal. Five more
explosions at the CPA just went off a minute ago here while I am typing
this letter.
Still, our friends and the people we work with are ecstatic that we've
come back. They want to put us to work all over the place. We spent all
morning in a human rights group's office going over cases. Our house was
full within fifteen minutes of our return.
I've got ten days left in Iraq and somehow have to manage focusing our
project to keep up with the times, saying goodbye to all my friends, and
maybe getting a few small souvenirs. I don't know when I'll return. I'm
applying for the position of Iraq project support coordinator, who would
arrange the schedules for team members and do media outreach and a lot
else. Then I could come back to the middle east in early summer and
perhaps Januarys. Since I don't have enough money to go to seminary
full-time next year, the position would be a way I could still do peace
work and attend classes half-time, allowing me enough time to study and
working around my class schedule. Otherwise, I will probably work a
couple years full-time elsewhere until I can afford to study full-time and
have adequate time to do a good job. So, we wait and see.
When I return, I hope to take June as a rest month and not do any
speaking. If all works out with the two Global Mission Events for the
ELCA, those are in July. Then I move to Chicago in August for seminary.
Four years in the middle east went awfully quick.
peace to you,
Le Anne
Sunday, May 02, 2004
Editorial: true courage of a soldier
The soldier who turned in photographs of his colleagues torturing Iraqi
prisoners demonstrated true courage. He took no small risk in speaking
his conscience, as there are many who would not want these photos
released. Patriotism is speaking out and holding your country accountable
to the highest possible standards, not concealing and making excuses for
its flaws.
General Kimmit and President Bush have done our country no favors in
dismissing these acts as isolated and carried out by a few people. Since
the beginning of this war and occupation, human rights organizations have
documented a disturbing pattern of U.S. military human rights abuses
against Iraqi citizens—including physical and psychological torture and
sexual abuse. These acts occur in the prison camps, during nighttime
house raids, at checkpoints, and in the streets. Top Coalition officials
our organization has met with deny that international human rights
standards apply to them. With minimal human rights training for soldiers
and dysfunctional accountability mechanisms, the system guarantees these
abuses will continue.
These acts are also not isolated from the recent uprising that is killing
so many of our troops. Sexual abuse of prisoners was a large part of the
public discourse in the days prior to the uprising. Iraqi families are
terrified that the victims of these acts are their loved ones. This fuels
support for the resistance, which will continue to send home more soldiers
dead or wounded.
I encourage North Iowans to read reports by Amnesty International, Human
Rights Watch, and Christian Peacemaker Teams. Rather than liberating
Iraq, our administration has humiliated and oppressed its people. These
policies do not support our troops or create security for our nation. We
need to start evaluating our war on terrorism by the measure of human
rights. Our ignorance is costing us ever more American lives.
--
Le Anne Clausen
prisoners demonstrated true courage. He took no small risk in speaking
his conscience, as there are many who would not want these photos
released. Patriotism is speaking out and holding your country accountable
to the highest possible standards, not concealing and making excuses for
its flaws.
General Kimmit and President Bush have done our country no favors in
dismissing these acts as isolated and carried out by a few people. Since
the beginning of this war and occupation, human rights organizations have
documented a disturbing pattern of U.S. military human rights abuses
against Iraqi citizens—including physical and psychological torture and
sexual abuse. These acts occur in the prison camps, during nighttime
house raids, at checkpoints, and in the streets. Top Coalition officials
our organization has met with deny that international human rights
standards apply to them. With minimal human rights training for soldiers
and dysfunctional accountability mechanisms, the system guarantees these
abuses will continue.
These acts are also not isolated from the recent uprising that is killing
so many of our troops. Sexual abuse of prisoners was a large part of the
public discourse in the days prior to the uprising. Iraqi families are
terrified that the victims of these acts are their loved ones. This fuels
support for the resistance, which will continue to send home more soldiers
dead or wounded.
I encourage North Iowans to read reports by Amnesty International, Human
Rights Watch, and Christian Peacemaker Teams. Rather than liberating
Iraq, our administration has humiliated and oppressed its people. These
policies do not support our troops or create security for our nation. We
need to start evaluating our war on terrorism by the measure of human
rights. Our ignorance is costing us ever more American lives.
--
Le Anne Clausen
Iowa woman to return to Iraq
Hi everyone, here's our latest press release, please feel free to
distribute it to your local media outlets.
May 1, 2004
IRAQ: Christian Peacemaker Teams to Return to Iraq on May 3, 2004
On May 3rd, two members of Christian Peacemaker Teams will return to Iraq
to explore conditions for the team's full return. Stewart Vriesinga
(Lucknow,ON) and Le Anne Clausen (Mason City, IA) will consult with Iraqi
and international human rights workers, religious leaders, and other Iraqi
community representatives to determine current priorities for CPT's
violence-reduction work, and the ability of the team to operate under
current conditions. Additional team members in Amman are prepared to
enter Iraq if circumstances allow.
Given the special risks to foreigners in the past month as well as
concerns of the team's family, friends, and colleagues, members of CPT
Iraq have prepared the following statement in preparation for their
return. This release is being distributed to international and Iraqi
media sources.
CPT Iraq Statement of Conviction:
CPT Iraq evacuated to Amman on April 14th, at the urging of our Iraqi
partners and friends due to the deteriorating conditions within the
country. Now, with support from our Iraqi contacts, we are returning to
determine whether we can continue our work of witnessing to justice and
peace where there is violence.
We are aware of the risks both Iraqis and internationals face at this
time. However, we are convinced that these risks are not disproportionate
to our purposes in returning, nor greater than the risks faced by
soldiers, other armed actors, or fellow human rights workers.
Iraqi friends and human rights workers have welcomed us as a nonviolent,
independent presence. They ask us to tell their stories, since they
cannot easily be heard, nor can most flee to a safer country. They ask us
to be the eyes and ears recording the abuses of the occupation and the
devastating effects of violence. Especially when other international
monitoring bodies have pulled out, our presence provides a vital
link between people in North America and Iraq.
We believe that all life is sacred, regardless of one's country or
religion. As a peacemaking team we need to cross boundaries, trust that
both soldiers and militia are human beings capable of compassion, and
invite them to refuse unjust orders. We need to help preserve what is
human in all of us and so offer glimpses of hope in a dark time.
We reject the use of violent force to save our lives should we be
kidnapped or caught in the middle of a violent conflict situation. We
also reject violence to punish anyone who harms us, and we ask that there
be no retaliation against such a person's relatives or property. We
forgive those who consider us to be their enemies. Therefore, any response
should be in the form of rehabilitation rather than in the spirit of
revenge.
We hope that in loving both friends and enemies and by intervening
nonviolently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, we can
contribute in some small way to transforming this volatile situation.
(Signed)
Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq:
Matthew Chandler (Portland, OR)
Le Anne Clausen (Mason City, IA)
Sheila Provencher (South Bend, IN)
Greg Rollins (Surrey, BC)
Stewart Vreisinga (Lucknow, ON)
distribute it to your local media outlets.
May 1, 2004
IRAQ: Christian Peacemaker Teams to Return to Iraq on May 3, 2004
On May 3rd, two members of Christian Peacemaker Teams will return to Iraq
to explore conditions for the team's full return. Stewart Vriesinga
(Lucknow,ON) and Le Anne Clausen (Mason City, IA) will consult with Iraqi
and international human rights workers, religious leaders, and other Iraqi
community representatives to determine current priorities for CPT's
violence-reduction work, and the ability of the team to operate under
current conditions. Additional team members in Amman are prepared to
enter Iraq if circumstances allow.
Given the special risks to foreigners in the past month as well as
concerns of the team's family, friends, and colleagues, members of CPT
Iraq have prepared the following statement in preparation for their
return. This release is being distributed to international and Iraqi
media sources.
CPT Iraq Statement of Conviction:
CPT Iraq evacuated to Amman on April 14th, at the urging of our Iraqi
partners and friends due to the deteriorating conditions within the
country. Now, with support from our Iraqi contacts, we are returning to
determine whether we can continue our work of witnessing to justice and
peace where there is violence.
We are aware of the risks both Iraqis and internationals face at this
time. However, we are convinced that these risks are not disproportionate
to our purposes in returning, nor greater than the risks faced by
soldiers, other armed actors, or fellow human rights workers.
Iraqi friends and human rights workers have welcomed us as a nonviolent,
independent presence. They ask us to tell their stories, since they
cannot easily be heard, nor can most flee to a safer country. They ask us
to be the eyes and ears recording the abuses of the occupation and the
devastating effects of violence. Especially when other international
monitoring bodies have pulled out, our presence provides a vital
link between people in North America and Iraq.
We believe that all life is sacred, regardless of one's country or
religion. As a peacemaking team we need to cross boundaries, trust that
both soldiers and militia are human beings capable of compassion, and
invite them to refuse unjust orders. We need to help preserve what is
human in all of us and so offer glimpses of hope in a dark time.
We reject the use of violent force to save our lives should we be
kidnapped or caught in the middle of a violent conflict situation. We
also reject violence to punish anyone who harms us, and we ask that there
be no retaliation against such a person's relatives or property. We
forgive those who consider us to be their enemies. Therefore, any response
should be in the form of rehabilitation rather than in the spirit of
revenge.
We hope that in loving both friends and enemies and by intervening
nonviolently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, we can
contribute in some small way to transforming this volatile situation.
(Signed)
Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq:
Matthew Chandler (Portland, OR)
Le Anne Clausen (Mason City, IA)
Sheila Provencher (South Bend, IN)
Greg Rollins (Surrey, BC)
Stewart Vreisinga (Lucknow, ON)
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Heading back
Greetings everyone,
Our team has decided that I and my teammate Stewart Vreisinga will return
to Baghdad this weekend to re-assess conditions for the rest of our team
to return and resume work. Our friends in Iraq are telling us they are
overwhelmed with human rights testimonies to record. Please pray for our
safe travels, the well-being of all civilians, especially the Iraqi
children in Fallujah and Najaf; and that the U.S. stands down from its
sieges of Fallujah and Najaf. Our soldiers are dying only for the
stubborn pride of our administration. Pray also for their families who
struggle with the loss.
There are far less violent and deadly ways to arrest those wanted for the
killing of the four U.S. armed security guards, or Sadr, who is wanted on
a murder conspiracy charge. What if we used the same tactics every time a
person was wanted on a murder charge in New York City?
For those of you who feel led to speak out further against the violence,
you may wish to use the recent CPT releases I have sent you to write a
letter to the editor of your local paper. Many people who feel that all
U.S. uses of violent force in Iraq are justified will still resonate with
the suffering of soldiers and their families. Speak to those what they
will hear.
waiting, working, searching for peace,
Le Anne
Our team has decided that I and my teammate Stewart Vreisinga will return
to Baghdad this weekend to re-assess conditions for the rest of our team
to return and resume work. Our friends in Iraq are telling us they are
overwhelmed with human rights testimonies to record. Please pray for our
safe travels, the well-being of all civilians, especially the Iraqi
children in Fallujah and Najaf; and that the U.S. stands down from its
sieges of Fallujah and Najaf. Our soldiers are dying only for the
stubborn pride of our administration. Pray also for their families who
struggle with the loss.
There are far less violent and deadly ways to arrest those wanted for the
killing of the four U.S. armed security guards, or Sadr, who is wanted on
a murder conspiracy charge. What if we used the same tactics every time a
person was wanted on a murder charge in New York City?
For those of you who feel led to speak out further against the violence,
you may wish to use the recent CPT releases I have sent you to write a
letter to the editor of your local paper. Many people who feel that all
U.S. uses of violent force in Iraq are justified will still resonate with
the suffering of soldiers and their families. Speak to those what they
will hear.
waiting, working, searching for peace,
Le Anne
Friday, April 23, 2004
Waiting... (on exile in Amman)
Hi everyone,
We have been in Amman now, our Iraq-team-in-Diaspora, for a little over a
week, waiting for the time when we can return to our work.
It is difficult to be waiting.
First of all, we are spending more time around each other than ever, and
therefore have more time to get into arguments, or ponder, “What exactly
did he mean by that?” Perhaps I am more vulnerable to this than my
teammates. And then there is Matthew, who is a philosophy major just out
of college last year and still eager to debate. Without the interference
of actual work or war zones, there have been some pretty intense
hashings-out. Still we are friends. Hopefully, we are getting to a point
where we can begin to laugh about this. Myself included.
Jeering travelers call this place the ‘Hashemite Kingdom of Boredom,’ a
waiting room, a crossroads to more interesting places and people to do
those things with. It still strikes me as amazing that cars are lined up
across the street to Syria, Lebanaon, and Saudi Arabia—it’s as close as a
car ride away now, but also as far as arranging a visa in times like
these. I also then remind myself that I have team responsibilities—and so
could not even begin to fathom such a fantastic trip. Even a quick zip
into Palestine (which is never really a quick zip when dealing with
Israeli border security) is just far enough beyond me as I cannot just
ditch the team for a few days.
Fortunately, there are meetings with other humanitarian workers who have
departed Baghdad, once a week. Sometimes we can go to meetings twice a
week. At least one of my teammates is going because there are cookies. I
am going partly to keep up on what they are doing, and partly just to see
some other like-minded souls. Thursday nights include plenty of social
invitations from the other organizations also, and these have been much
welcome. Throughout the week, friends we didn’t know were here have been
showing up to take us to dinner, to tea, to watch a video, even some of us
went to the Dead Sea. We haven’t been for lack of things to do, actually.
We are still working, yes, but we are doing so while sitting in a hotel,
which makes you feel like you’re not working, and then you wonder why you
are tired.
A good chunk of our work is discernment about the timing of our return,
and indeed the future of this project. Discernment is difficult. It was
unnerving trying to do discernment in a country about to blow apart, and
it is equally difficult to do so in this vacuum of a country, although in
different ways. We are meeting roughly two hours per day.
Baghdad, as with the region, was and is quite a high-pressure environment.
We do wonder if we ourselves and each other are up for the task of
returning.
In Baghdad, we were waiting for a plane, or waiting for trouble to show up
at our doorstep before we could get to the plane, or—could we still
imagine?--waiting for things to get better. The waiting there was
draining enough in itself, probably a good additional reason for our
tiredness now. We were running so much on adrenaline, and eventually the
adrenaline stops.
Our team is tired—deeply tired, we tend to hold our meetings in horizontal
positions, sprawled across the beds in my room by the end. We each zonk
out in the afternoons for a few hours. We’re almost too tired to go see
the ruins downtown, which are actually interesting.
It is difficult to get through on the phone lines to Baghdad. We have
been able to communicate with far fewer of our friends and neighbors than
thought. This also adds to our sense of limbo, not having known what is
really happening on the ground for such a long period of time.
Finally today, we got through and got some solid news to go on. That in
itself is quite energizing. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
Our Iraqi friends are saying it’s calm in Baghdad now but give it a few
days. Our landlord’s family misses us. Our friendly taxi-arranger at the
hotel here says the same thing. Our international colleagues who were
hunkering down, then wrote to say they were flying out to join us, then we
didn’t hear from them for several days—finally also, contact at last.
They are well. They are able to do some work, but still it’s difficult
for them to leave the house.
Perhaps we will not be waiting forever.
We have been in Amman now, our Iraq-team-in-Diaspora, for a little over a
week, waiting for the time when we can return to our work.
It is difficult to be waiting.
First of all, we are spending more time around each other than ever, and
therefore have more time to get into arguments, or ponder, “What exactly
did he mean by that?” Perhaps I am more vulnerable to this than my
teammates. And then there is Matthew, who is a philosophy major just out
of college last year and still eager to debate. Without the interference
of actual work or war zones, there have been some pretty intense
hashings-out. Still we are friends. Hopefully, we are getting to a point
where we can begin to laugh about this. Myself included.
Jeering travelers call this place the ‘Hashemite Kingdom of Boredom,’ a
waiting room, a crossroads to more interesting places and people to do
those things with. It still strikes me as amazing that cars are lined up
across the street to Syria, Lebanaon, and Saudi Arabia—it’s as close as a
car ride away now, but also as far as arranging a visa in times like
these. I also then remind myself that I have team responsibilities—and so
could not even begin to fathom such a fantastic trip. Even a quick zip
into Palestine (which is never really a quick zip when dealing with
Israeli border security) is just far enough beyond me as I cannot just
ditch the team for a few days.
Fortunately, there are meetings with other humanitarian workers who have
departed Baghdad, once a week. Sometimes we can go to meetings twice a
week. At least one of my teammates is going because there are cookies. I
am going partly to keep up on what they are doing, and partly just to see
some other like-minded souls. Thursday nights include plenty of social
invitations from the other organizations also, and these have been much
welcome. Throughout the week, friends we didn’t know were here have been
showing up to take us to dinner, to tea, to watch a video, even some of us
went to the Dead Sea. We haven’t been for lack of things to do, actually.
We are still working, yes, but we are doing so while sitting in a hotel,
which makes you feel like you’re not working, and then you wonder why you
are tired.
A good chunk of our work is discernment about the timing of our return,
and indeed the future of this project. Discernment is difficult. It was
unnerving trying to do discernment in a country about to blow apart, and
it is equally difficult to do so in this vacuum of a country, although in
different ways. We are meeting roughly two hours per day.
Baghdad, as with the region, was and is quite a high-pressure environment.
We do wonder if we ourselves and each other are up for the task of
returning.
In Baghdad, we were waiting for a plane, or waiting for trouble to show up
at our doorstep before we could get to the plane, or—could we still
imagine?--waiting for things to get better. The waiting there was
draining enough in itself, probably a good additional reason for our
tiredness now. We were running so much on adrenaline, and eventually the
adrenaline stops.
Our team is tired—deeply tired, we tend to hold our meetings in horizontal
positions, sprawled across the beds in my room by the end. We each zonk
out in the afternoons for a few hours. We’re almost too tired to go see
the ruins downtown, which are actually interesting.
It is difficult to get through on the phone lines to Baghdad. We have
been able to communicate with far fewer of our friends and neighbors than
thought. This also adds to our sense of limbo, not having known what is
really happening on the ground for such a long period of time.
Finally today, we got through and got some solid news to go on. That in
itself is quite energizing. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
Our Iraqi friends are saying it’s calm in Baghdad now but give it a few
days. Our landlord’s family misses us. Our friendly taxi-arranger at the
hotel here says the same thing. Our international colleagues who were
hunkering down, then wrote to say they were flying out to join us, then we
didn’t hear from them for several days—finally also, contact at last.
They are well. They are able to do some work, but still it’s difficult
for them to leave the house.
Perhaps we will not be waiting forever.
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Lead-up to Evacuation
Still Just Fine
April 9, 2004
Greetings all,
Just a quick note to let you all know I am fine here and our neighborhood
is unusually deadly quiet. We are being cautious of course but our
neighbors and friends are checking in regularly. Tonight Sheila and I are
singing in the church choir. Have a blessed Easter weekend!
peace,
Le Anne
---
Evacuations Begin
April 13, 2004
Hi everyone,
Most of the international humanitarian community here in Iraq has decided
to evacuate. We may still have an option to provide a violence-reducing
presence in other cities in the coming days, at which point we would move
our project there. Otherwise, we plan to depart to Jordan by this weekend
and stay for at least a week. There is a long backlog of humanitarian
workers and Iraqis trying to leave the country.
The consensus of the international humanitarian community about the
situation in Iraq is that aggressive U.S. military tactics in the past
week have escalated the violence, leaving many innocent civilians dead and
injured, has led to the increased threat against humanitarian workers in
particular. Statements such as Gen. Sanchez' vow to kill or capture Sadr
are not helpful in reducing violence or improving security in Iraq. Stay
tuned to the cpt website for our Urgent Action call-in to your members of
congress for the U.S. military to cease its 'offense strategies'in
military action, and I will try to pass along our latest release about the
massacre in Fallujah. Until Friday, you may contact our team via phone at:
1-914-822-9707 (is a U.S. cellphone which works in Iraq)
011-964-1-716-7163 office/house phone
011-790-1-33-9537 Iraqi cell phone
Please feel free to invite press contacts of yours to call for an interview.
April 9, 2004
Greetings all,
Just a quick note to let you all know I am fine here and our neighborhood
is unusually deadly quiet. We are being cautious of course but our
neighbors and friends are checking in regularly. Tonight Sheila and I are
singing in the church choir. Have a blessed Easter weekend!
peace,
Le Anne
---
Evacuations Begin
April 13, 2004
Hi everyone,
Most of the international humanitarian community here in Iraq has decided
to evacuate. We may still have an option to provide a violence-reducing
presence in other cities in the coming days, at which point we would move
our project there. Otherwise, we plan to depart to Jordan by this weekend
and stay for at least a week. There is a long backlog of humanitarian
workers and Iraqis trying to leave the country.
The consensus of the international humanitarian community about the
situation in Iraq is that aggressive U.S. military tactics in the past
week have escalated the violence, leaving many innocent civilians dead and
injured, has led to the increased threat against humanitarian workers in
particular. Statements such as Gen. Sanchez' vow to kill or capture Sadr
are not helpful in reducing violence or improving security in Iraq. Stay
tuned to the cpt website for our Urgent Action call-in to your members of
congress for the U.S. military to cease its 'offense strategies'in
military action, and I will try to pass along our latest release about the
massacre in Fallujah. Until Friday, you may contact our team via phone at:
1-914-822-9707 (is a U.S. cellphone which works in Iraq)
011-964-1-716-7163 office/house phone
011-790-1-33-9537 Iraqi cell phone
Please feel free to invite press contacts of yours to call for an interview.
Evacuation, U.S. Massacre at Fallujah
Hi everyone, here is the release I just finished. Now time to go home and
pack. The humanitarian orgs here are urgently appealing for a UN (NOT US
military) airlift, otherwise it's Royal Jordanian at big bucks. I don't
think a single humanitarian worker would have their dead body carried out
on a U.S. plane at this point, considering the army's absolute stupidity
this week.
not feeling too peaceful at the moment,
Le Anne
-----------------------------------
Peace Worker Details Massacre in Fallujah
by Le Anne Clausen
April 12, 2004
IRAQ—“U.S. Marine snipers are firing at everyone moving,” report
colleagues of CPT who returned Sunday from an overnight humanitarian
mission to Fallujah. Six international and six Iraqi peace volunteers
entered the city on Saturday, April 10 in a bus loaded with medical
supplies from agencies in Baghdad. The city has been under siege for the
past six days.
Hospital workers report 518 Iraqis killed by U.S. fire as of Sunday,
including at least 157 women and 146 children. Of the children, one
hundred are under age twelve and of those, 46 are under age five. More
than 1,200 have been wounded. The casualties continued to rise through
press time.
U.S. forces bombed and destroyed the main hospital in Fallujah earlier
this week. Medical staff opened a makeshift clinic in an area garage, but
the volunteers report there are no sanitary facilities there in which to
work. Aid is getting through, but the clinic needs more supplies, such as
blood donation and testing kits, tracheotomy kits, and Cesarean section
tools. There are neither anesthesia nor blankets in the medical center.
Exhausted doctors struggled to respond to the constant streams of wounded.
The volunteers saw several older women and two children arrive with
numerous gunshot wounds. The two children died. The volunteers saw one
man who was burned from head to foot, and another who was bleeding from
several wounds. The men reported being injured by a cluster bomb.
One of the volunteers accompanied an ambulance crew to pick up a woman who
was going into premature labor. On the way, U.S. snipers began firing at
the ambulance. The ambulance turned off its sirens, then its lights, but
the soldiers continued firing. The ambulance began backing away from the
soldiers, but they continued firing and blew out the vehicle’s tire. The
crew escaped without injury, but they were unable to reach the woman.
Elsewhere in Fallujah, Marines granted the volunteers permission to
evacuate wounded persons, women, children, and the elderly from houses. An officer added, “We’re going to begin ‘clearing’ the houses shortly.” When the volunteers
pressed for details, the officer explained that they would go from house to house to
pick up any men of fighting age and any weapons. They described men of fighting age as “anyone under 45.” Jo Wilding, one of the volunteers, later said, “not all men
are armed and not all want to fight. Still, they are trapped.”
The volunteers also retrieved bodies of Iraqis killed. One body of an
unarmed man lying face-down in the road had only a small bullet entry hole in his
back, but massive abdominal ‘exit’ wounds, indicative of high-velocity bullets.
When the volunteers turned the body over to reveal the wound, children in the
nearest house began screaming and crying “Baba! Baba! (Daddy! Daddy!)” The volunteers
loaded the body into a pickup truck and evacuated the wife and children. The family
said their father had just stepped out of house when he was shot. The family had no
way to reach the body in the street before the volunteers secured permission from
the Marines.
The volunteer team recovered two additional bodies lying near a U.S.
checkpoint, but abandoned a completely burnt third body, due to outbursts of gunfire and the Marines' return fire. “We don’t know if that is friendly or hostile fire,
so we have to respond,” the soldiers said.
On Sunday, the volunteers returned to Baghdad with fourteen wounded people. As they passed the checkpoint out of Fallujah, they saw long lines of people
waiting to flee. The volunteers hope to return, although deteriorating conditions
within the city may prevent them from carrying out further work.
“This was a massacre,” said Wilding, “and it will get worse.”
pack. The humanitarian orgs here are urgently appealing for a UN (NOT US
military) airlift, otherwise it's Royal Jordanian at big bucks. I don't
think a single humanitarian worker would have their dead body carried out
on a U.S. plane at this point, considering the army's absolute stupidity
this week.
not feeling too peaceful at the moment,
Le Anne
-----------------------------------
Peace Worker Details Massacre in Fallujah
by Le Anne Clausen
April 12, 2004
IRAQ—“U.S. Marine snipers are firing at everyone moving,” report
colleagues of CPT who returned Sunday from an overnight humanitarian
mission to Fallujah. Six international and six Iraqi peace volunteers
entered the city on Saturday, April 10 in a bus loaded with medical
supplies from agencies in Baghdad. The city has been under siege for the
past six days.
Hospital workers report 518 Iraqis killed by U.S. fire as of Sunday,
including at least 157 women and 146 children. Of the children, one
hundred are under age twelve and of those, 46 are under age five. More
than 1,200 have been wounded. The casualties continued to rise through
press time.
U.S. forces bombed and destroyed the main hospital in Fallujah earlier
this week. Medical staff opened a makeshift clinic in an area garage, but
the volunteers report there are no sanitary facilities there in which to
work. Aid is getting through, but the clinic needs more supplies, such as
blood donation and testing kits, tracheotomy kits, and Cesarean section
tools. There are neither anesthesia nor blankets in the medical center.
Exhausted doctors struggled to respond to the constant streams of wounded.
The volunteers saw several older women and two children arrive with
numerous gunshot wounds. The two children died. The volunteers saw one
man who was burned from head to foot, and another who was bleeding from
several wounds. The men reported being injured by a cluster bomb.
One of the volunteers accompanied an ambulance crew to pick up a woman who
was going into premature labor. On the way, U.S. snipers began firing at
the ambulance. The ambulance turned off its sirens, then its lights, but
the soldiers continued firing. The ambulance began backing away from the
soldiers, but they continued firing and blew out the vehicle’s tire. The
crew escaped without injury, but they were unable to reach the woman.
Elsewhere in Fallujah, Marines granted the volunteers permission to
evacuate wounded persons, women, children, and the elderly from houses. An officer added, “We’re going to begin ‘clearing’ the houses shortly.” When the volunteers
pressed for details, the officer explained that they would go from house to house to
pick up any men of fighting age and any weapons. They described men of fighting age as “anyone under 45.” Jo Wilding, one of the volunteers, later said, “not all men
are armed and not all want to fight. Still, they are trapped.”
The volunteers also retrieved bodies of Iraqis killed. One body of an
unarmed man lying face-down in the road had only a small bullet entry hole in his
back, but massive abdominal ‘exit’ wounds, indicative of high-velocity bullets.
When the volunteers turned the body over to reveal the wound, children in the
nearest house began screaming and crying “Baba! Baba! (Daddy! Daddy!)” The volunteers
loaded the body into a pickup truck and evacuated the wife and children. The family
said their father had just stepped out of house when he was shot. The family had no
way to reach the body in the street before the volunteers secured permission from
the Marines.
The volunteer team recovered two additional bodies lying near a U.S.
checkpoint, but abandoned a completely burnt third body, due to outbursts of gunfire and the Marines' return fire. “We don’t know if that is friendly or hostile fire,
so we have to respond,” the soldiers said.
On Sunday, the volunteers returned to Baghdad with fourteen wounded people. As they passed the checkpoint out of Fallujah, they saw long lines of people
waiting to flee. The volunteers hope to return, although deteriorating conditions
within the city may prevent them from carrying out further work.
“This was a massacre,” said Wilding, “and it will get worse.”
Sunday, April 04, 2004
On Armies and Palm Sunday
Hi everyone,
It does feel like I'm counting the weeks until the end of my time here,
but at the same time, I'm floating right along in the midst of things.
It's been a good week. The delegation is here and I tried to attune them
to the culture and lay of the land. I also tried to cook biryani, which
is the Iraqi national dish, for their first night here. It didn't turn
out quite right, so I called it 'yani', which in Arabic means, 'whatever.'
They still liked it.
It is Palm Sunday today and I am hoping that the church will have a
processional. They didn't have a separate Ash Wednesday service, which
was disappointing for me. They have plenty of palm trees around here
anyway though, so I am hopeful.
This next week promises to be tough. After hearing increasing stories of
Iraqi women being sexually abused by U.S. troops in prisons and around the
country, I am trying to follow up and collect testimonies. I half don't
expect people to agree to be interviewed, not because I don't believe
these things are happening, but because so much shame is attached,
particularly in this culture. One lead is a woman impregnated in prison
and since released. There is certainly no such thing as a consensual sex
act when you are in prison. The other lead is a teenage boy who was
gang-raped by several soldiers and is quite out of his head since then. I
am working through friends of the families to arrange the interviews. I
don't have much else to say at this point except that I hope to see truth
and justice prevail whatever the stories' details.
I am writing the team updates right now and the stuff we are seeing and
hearing is just stunning. I will try to forward some of these to you so
you see what I mean. I guess what I have recently been reflecting on is
that soldiers are soldiers no matter what the nationality and no matter
Injustice, secrecy, and abuse of power are endemic to the systems of
militarism. It is never a matter of 'a few bad eggs.' Having lived in
two war zones for so long and having seen such breadth and depth of human
rights abuses, and having researched other conflicts in the past century,
no, I will never be able to believe that again. I think rather it is a
matter of a few good souls struggling to do good in the larger mechanisms
which in their very nature produce suffering and death.
Late one night then last week, I wrote the following poem. I don't claim
that it is a good poem, but it expresses what I needed to say. Maybe I'll
add more to it later.
In the meantime, team life has been wonderful. We're pretty small right
now, but it's beautiful to get to really know a few other people so well.
As a team we have spent much time talking about how to celebrate life in
the midst of so much death. Ritual becomes so important in marking the
hours in the midst of cycles of destruction. We are learning to set aside
time to be together and have fun. It is so easily lost working here, when
everything seems so urgent and the work never stops. But you can become
death like the death around you, or you can choose life and hope others
around you will follow.
We finished our vigils in Tahrir Square and will now spend the next three
days 'on the road' in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad, Abu Ghraib prison
camp, and in Kerbala between the twin shrines to the Shi'a martyrs Ali and
Hussein. On Saturday, we hope to vigil at the children's prison here in
Baghdad. It also seems to be the senior citizens' prison as well.
According to lists from the CPA, some 400 Iraqis between ages 85-95 are in
the U.S. detention system. Stewart has been pretty amazing with crunching
statistics out of the information we can get. Either the number
represents a colossal problem with accurate recordkeeping, or they are
going after far more than terrorists and Baathists.
I think I will try to squeeze in a Sunday afternoon nap, and get the
laundry done as well.
Peace,
Le Anne
----
What is an army?
It is all the dignity and refinement of a high school locker room, dressed
in brown uniforms and given weapons and authority over the populace of a
small, demonized country.
And that is why Iraqi women are being raped and impregnated in the prison
camps.
And that is why children are blown to pieces while riding in their cars or
sleeping in their homes.
And that is why young men are beaten and drowned,
And old men are suffocated with plastic sandbags pulled over their heads
Dying in their pleading sons’ arms
And the system feels no remorse nor need to explain.
Because all our good American fathers and sons and brothers and nephews
and boyfriends
Couldn’t possibly ever do a thing like that
The things which happen every day
Here in Iraq
Now and thirteen years ago
There in Viet Nam,
Korea, Japan,
There in Germany
Where we also fought to ‘liberate’ the masses
“Allies” is such a deceptively friendly term
when we bombed the churches
and rained fire on innocents
When will we ever come to terms with all that we have done?
It does feel like I'm counting the weeks until the end of my time here,
but at the same time, I'm floating right along in the midst of things.
It's been a good week. The delegation is here and I tried to attune them
to the culture and lay of the land. I also tried to cook biryani, which
is the Iraqi national dish, for their first night here. It didn't turn
out quite right, so I called it 'yani', which in Arabic means, 'whatever.'
They still liked it.
It is Palm Sunday today and I am hoping that the church will have a
processional. They didn't have a separate Ash Wednesday service, which
was disappointing for me. They have plenty of palm trees around here
anyway though, so I am hopeful.
This next week promises to be tough. After hearing increasing stories of
Iraqi women being sexually abused by U.S. troops in prisons and around the
country, I am trying to follow up and collect testimonies. I half don't
expect people to agree to be interviewed, not because I don't believe
these things are happening, but because so much shame is attached,
particularly in this culture. One lead is a woman impregnated in prison
and since released. There is certainly no such thing as a consensual sex
act when you are in prison. The other lead is a teenage boy who was
gang-raped by several soldiers and is quite out of his head since then. I
am working through friends of the families to arrange the interviews. I
don't have much else to say at this point except that I hope to see truth
and justice prevail whatever the stories' details.
I am writing the team updates right now and the stuff we are seeing and
hearing is just stunning. I will try to forward some of these to you so
you see what I mean. I guess what I have recently been reflecting on is
that soldiers are soldiers no matter what the nationality and no matter
Injustice, secrecy, and abuse of power are endemic to the systems of
militarism. It is never a matter of 'a few bad eggs.' Having lived in
two war zones for so long and having seen such breadth and depth of human
rights abuses, and having researched other conflicts in the past century,
no, I will never be able to believe that again. I think rather it is a
matter of a few good souls struggling to do good in the larger mechanisms
which in their very nature produce suffering and death.
Late one night then last week, I wrote the following poem. I don't claim
that it is a good poem, but it expresses what I needed to say. Maybe I'll
add more to it later.
In the meantime, team life has been wonderful. We're pretty small right
now, but it's beautiful to get to really know a few other people so well.
As a team we have spent much time talking about how to celebrate life in
the midst of so much death. Ritual becomes so important in marking the
hours in the midst of cycles of destruction. We are learning to set aside
time to be together and have fun. It is so easily lost working here, when
everything seems so urgent and the work never stops. But you can become
death like the death around you, or you can choose life and hope others
around you will follow.
We finished our vigils in Tahrir Square and will now spend the next three
days 'on the road' in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad, Abu Ghraib prison
camp, and in Kerbala between the twin shrines to the Shi'a martyrs Ali and
Hussein. On Saturday, we hope to vigil at the children's prison here in
Baghdad. It also seems to be the senior citizens' prison as well.
According to lists from the CPA, some 400 Iraqis between ages 85-95 are in
the U.S. detention system. Stewart has been pretty amazing with crunching
statistics out of the information we can get. Either the number
represents a colossal problem with accurate recordkeeping, or they are
going after far more than terrorists and Baathists.
I think I will try to squeeze in a Sunday afternoon nap, and get the
laundry done as well.
Peace,
Le Anne
----
What is an army?
It is all the dignity and refinement of a high school locker room, dressed
in brown uniforms and given weapons and authority over the populace of a
small, demonized country.
And that is why Iraqi women are being raped and impregnated in the prison
camps.
And that is why children are blown to pieces while riding in their cars or
sleeping in their homes.
And that is why young men are beaten and drowned,
And old men are suffocated with plastic sandbags pulled over their heads
Dying in their pleading sons’ arms
And the system feels no remorse nor need to explain.
Because all our good American fathers and sons and brothers and nephews
and boyfriends
Couldn’t possibly ever do a thing like that
The things which happen every day
Here in Iraq
Now and thirteen years ago
There in Viet Nam,
Korea, Japan,
There in Germany
Where we also fought to ‘liberate’ the masses
“Allies” is such a deceptively friendly term
when we bombed the churches
and rained fire on innocents
When will we ever come to terms with all that we have done?
Monday, March 29, 2004
Ending the Fast
Hi everyone,
As you know, I've been doing a liquids-only fast for the past month or so.
It has been both wonderful and terrible. Wonderful for seeing the ways in
which the body changes and adapts to the lack of food; curious to see the
wierd emotional and deep memory-probing effects it has had on me, and
terrible to become quite ill actually. I have run into trouble with anemia
twice in the past month, and a possible electrolyte imbalance. The
light-headedness and sharp headaches were really the most disturbing,
because I could not keep up with the work. The fast was not the only
contributing factor, but it was adding on to other physical strains and
aggravating the problems. I could basically choose to start taking lots of
electrolyte and vitamin drinks and pills, etc., to keep going, or return
to food. The Lenten fast for Eastern Christians is to abstain from all
animal products and sweets for fifty days. So I am doing what I can,
within the confines of responding gracefully to Iraqi hospitality. As a
team, we learned that our fast was causing strain to our relationships
with our Iraqi friends. Our refusal of their hospitality and invitations
was doing more harm than good. Making allowances for the sake of right
relationships, I think, is also a form of spiritual discipline.
I was feeling quite guilty about ending the fast though, or adapting it in
any way. Part of the baggage comes from fasting in Hebron during Ramadan,
where two teammates were actually kind of cruel in calling fasters who had
to adapt later or needed to talk about the experience of being hungry
'hypocrites.' They were not fasting themselves and wanted to hear nothing
about it. At that time, I was beginning to develop ulcers and needed to
stop. They were not sympathetic. By the time their comments finally
reduced me to tears, they then began to stop and think. When I think back
to life in Hebron, there are both impassioned loves and deep hurts. The
fasting did help me to connect with those deep hurts, the ones I thought
I'd forgotten. Yet I think that love and hurt is team life, and community
life. It is human life. Though I remember that hurt, I still love my
teammates.
I still feel guilty though, especially when looking at the two other
liquids-only fasters on the team. They are doing well, but they have done
long fasts before. I would definitely fast again, maybe even several times
a year, but perhaps I will only do so for a week at a time.
It is getting to that point while I am on project when I find it hard to
write. Things settle into a sense of normalcy, even when life is far from
normal. For this reason, I believe no peace worker should stay in a war
zone for more than three months at a time. One forgets what needs to be
explained to those people who need to know what is going on in the world.
Returning home and coming back allows me to see with North American eyes.
What good is salt once it loses its saltiness? Yet, unlike salt, a peace
worker can be re-charged and renewed. It just takes time and a place of
refuge, a return to what is peaceful and healing. At the same time,
especially for Americans, you cannot stay in those small places of refuge
and forget the troubles in the world. Americans are constantly in danger
of this. I recently heard a song by Bruce Cockburn called “Where the
Death Squads Live.” The key verse is,
“When you think you’ve lost the difference
between right and wrong,
just go down
to where the death squads live.”
When you get too comfortable, you need to go out and become afflicted again.
I don’t know if I wrote before about my practice of the rosary. I began
last fall here when I could hear the shelling every night and would stay
awake worrying about those who were being killed. After many sleepless
nights, Anne showed me a way of saying the rosary beads that worked well
for Protestants. I guess I’m not the only one. If you look at the ELCA
website, there is actually a ‘Lutheran Rosary’ for Lent. I took what was
helpful from there, and it has been really good. I told someone the other
day that I was a Lutheran, “but a very Mennonite Catholic Muslim
Lutheran.”
>From my point of view and experience these past four years, it makes
perfect sense.
The other week, Sheila and I went to Baghdad al Jdida (New Baghdad) with
her host mother to do some shopping. Al Jdida is a sprawling souk a
little like Hebron or the old city of Jerusalem, so I loved it. Prices
are reputed to be a third of those in other places around town. In the
car each way, I had one of those moments of pure amazement that I am
really in Baghdad, and what a fantastic city it is, even after so many
wars. It is so beautiful. I forget to write about this. Some of it is
like Shalala Street in Hebron, with ornate, Venetian stone houses and iron
grillwork; some is gritty yet vibrant like East Jerusalem; some is
stuccoed and sandy like Gaza City; and some, like the expressways and
industrial yards, is very much like Chicago. Baghdad is a good crossroads
kind of city to live in, and very appropriate place for me to be while
facing this cross-roads of so many different places in my life.
In only six weeks, I will leave international living behind. I am fearful
that I’ll also be leaving community life behind—what will happen if my
housemates at the seminary all want to cook for themselves and stake out
their own ‘space?’ Is it possible to create intentional community in a
seminary apartment? I am afraid of being lonely. I am also afraid of
overwhelming my new roomies with my CPT friends, constant organizing of
activities, being totally in touch with global culture and totally out of
touch with pop culture; and my odd way of keeping house and home which
blends North American and Arab living. By the end of this paragraph, I
realize I am headed for a full-blown panic.
At the same time, I am eager to be in Chicago. I have had this in my
sights for four long years abroad. I need the time to process all I have
seen before I return overseas again. I think about how much I would like
to return to Palestine when I am done with seminary, but also how much I
would like to go even further east, or south. I am not sure I can stand
living and working in the U.S. before I am forty.
There are many beautiful places of retreat where I have been and wish I
could return. Last spring I was at a German Brothers’ monastery at Latrun
north of Jerusalem. There were quiet stone cells and sprawling flower
gardens for reflecting, writing, and drawing. There was Aunt Dar’s house
after September 11th, a refuge from the rising tide of nationalism. If I
did not wish to spend as much time as possible this summer with friends
and family, I would move into the Catholic Worker in Waterloo (IA) or
Toronto, or head to the first organic farm community with an open door.
Our office is a cool refuge from the ever-hotter Baghdad afternoons;
Seminary will be a refuge from the war, the war was a refuge from the
U.S., Canada was a refuge from all which is ugly and rationalized as
‘patriotism.’
My teammate Stewart commented just now that the situation in the U.S. now
“is McCarthyism on steroids.” Never mind that Stewart is Canadian, I
thoroughly agree. Why is it, though, that we have not found a way to name
this great darkness? Shall we just call it Empire, the sum of McCarthyism
and the Cold War and the arms race and the death squads and the whole
Doctrine of National Security? Were the citizens of Rome aware in the
first century of the repression of the Jews during the spread of the
grand, ill-fated Pax Romana?
I am just starting a book called _Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus
Christ_, by Klaus Wengst. I wonder if there are not hundreds of books
like this which Lutherans have never read or looked for. When I find
books like these, it is like cool water in the desert. That may sound
like a cliché, but it represents a very true and deep feeling. There is a
small oasis where the world of Christianity and the search for peace and
justice intersect, and that is where writings like these are found. I feel
the same way about Sojourners magazine. I think to be twenty-six years
old and have this feeling means that I have found a right path in life,
but a path that will be painfully misunderstood by many other people I
meet.
The weather here lately is extremely dry, and I am beginning to feel like
the alligator in the Lubriderm lotion commercials. Bleh! We had a dust
storm last Friday. My skin and lips and hair and nails are all almost
painfully dried out, in ways they never were last September at 120-30
degrees. There is also a massive amount of chlorine in the water this past
week, and just as there's nothing like downing a nice tall glass of (ugh)
bleach on a warm day, I think that is a contributing factor to my dermal
suffering. A shopkeeper handed me a bright orange tin of locally-produced
balm and for 75 cents it works surprisingly good. It is cool here in the
evenings still and I am also needing a shawl inside most days. It's been
windy, which also brought in the dust storm.
I understand all of Yahoogroups got an odd virus last week and some of you
got strange fake emails from me. Ah, technology.
Letters get long quickly and I think I should stop. It is time for church
tonight, 5 p.m. at St. Raphael’s, when the rush of the day is over in
Baghdad.
Peace to you,
Le Anne
As you know, I've been doing a liquids-only fast for the past month or so.
It has been both wonderful and terrible. Wonderful for seeing the ways in
which the body changes and adapts to the lack of food; curious to see the
wierd emotional and deep memory-probing effects it has had on me, and
terrible to become quite ill actually. I have run into trouble with anemia
twice in the past month, and a possible electrolyte imbalance. The
light-headedness and sharp headaches were really the most disturbing,
because I could not keep up with the work. The fast was not the only
contributing factor, but it was adding on to other physical strains and
aggravating the problems. I could basically choose to start taking lots of
electrolyte and vitamin drinks and pills, etc., to keep going, or return
to food. The Lenten fast for Eastern Christians is to abstain from all
animal products and sweets for fifty days. So I am doing what I can,
within the confines of responding gracefully to Iraqi hospitality. As a
team, we learned that our fast was causing strain to our relationships
with our Iraqi friends. Our refusal of their hospitality and invitations
was doing more harm than good. Making allowances for the sake of right
relationships, I think, is also a form of spiritual discipline.
I was feeling quite guilty about ending the fast though, or adapting it in
any way. Part of the baggage comes from fasting in Hebron during Ramadan,
where two teammates were actually kind of cruel in calling fasters who had
to adapt later or needed to talk about the experience of being hungry
'hypocrites.' They were not fasting themselves and wanted to hear nothing
about it. At that time, I was beginning to develop ulcers and needed to
stop. They were not sympathetic. By the time their comments finally
reduced me to tears, they then began to stop and think. When I think back
to life in Hebron, there are both impassioned loves and deep hurts. The
fasting did help me to connect with those deep hurts, the ones I thought
I'd forgotten. Yet I think that love and hurt is team life, and community
life. It is human life. Though I remember that hurt, I still love my
teammates.
I still feel guilty though, especially when looking at the two other
liquids-only fasters on the team. They are doing well, but they have done
long fasts before. I would definitely fast again, maybe even several times
a year, but perhaps I will only do so for a week at a time.
It is getting to that point while I am on project when I find it hard to
write. Things settle into a sense of normalcy, even when life is far from
normal. For this reason, I believe no peace worker should stay in a war
zone for more than three months at a time. One forgets what needs to be
explained to those people who need to know what is going on in the world.
Returning home and coming back allows me to see with North American eyes.
What good is salt once it loses its saltiness? Yet, unlike salt, a peace
worker can be re-charged and renewed. It just takes time and a place of
refuge, a return to what is peaceful and healing. At the same time,
especially for Americans, you cannot stay in those small places of refuge
and forget the troubles in the world. Americans are constantly in danger
of this. I recently heard a song by Bruce Cockburn called “Where the
Death Squads Live.” The key verse is,
“When you think you’ve lost the difference
between right and wrong,
just go down
to where the death squads live.”
When you get too comfortable, you need to go out and become afflicted again.
I don’t know if I wrote before about my practice of the rosary. I began
last fall here when I could hear the shelling every night and would stay
awake worrying about those who were being killed. After many sleepless
nights, Anne showed me a way of saying the rosary beads that worked well
for Protestants. I guess I’m not the only one. If you look at the ELCA
website, there is actually a ‘Lutheran Rosary’ for Lent. I took what was
helpful from there, and it has been really good. I told someone the other
day that I was a Lutheran, “but a very Mennonite Catholic Muslim
Lutheran.”
>From my point of view and experience these past four years, it makes
perfect sense.
The other week, Sheila and I went to Baghdad al Jdida (New Baghdad) with
her host mother to do some shopping. Al Jdida is a sprawling souk a
little like Hebron or the old city of Jerusalem, so I loved it. Prices
are reputed to be a third of those in other places around town. In the
car each way, I had one of those moments of pure amazement that I am
really in Baghdad, and what a fantastic city it is, even after so many
wars. It is so beautiful. I forget to write about this. Some of it is
like Shalala Street in Hebron, with ornate, Venetian stone houses and iron
grillwork; some is gritty yet vibrant like East Jerusalem; some is
stuccoed and sandy like Gaza City; and some, like the expressways and
industrial yards, is very much like Chicago. Baghdad is a good crossroads
kind of city to live in, and very appropriate place for me to be while
facing this cross-roads of so many different places in my life.
In only six weeks, I will leave international living behind. I am fearful
that I’ll also be leaving community life behind—what will happen if my
housemates at the seminary all want to cook for themselves and stake out
their own ‘space?’ Is it possible to create intentional community in a
seminary apartment? I am afraid of being lonely. I am also afraid of
overwhelming my new roomies with my CPT friends, constant organizing of
activities, being totally in touch with global culture and totally out of
touch with pop culture; and my odd way of keeping house and home which
blends North American and Arab living. By the end of this paragraph, I
realize I am headed for a full-blown panic.
At the same time, I am eager to be in Chicago. I have had this in my
sights for four long years abroad. I need the time to process all I have
seen before I return overseas again. I think about how much I would like
to return to Palestine when I am done with seminary, but also how much I
would like to go even further east, or south. I am not sure I can stand
living and working in the U.S. before I am forty.
There are many beautiful places of retreat where I have been and wish I
could return. Last spring I was at a German Brothers’ monastery at Latrun
north of Jerusalem. There were quiet stone cells and sprawling flower
gardens for reflecting, writing, and drawing. There was Aunt Dar’s house
after September 11th, a refuge from the rising tide of nationalism. If I
did not wish to spend as much time as possible this summer with friends
and family, I would move into the Catholic Worker in Waterloo (IA) or
Toronto, or head to the first organic farm community with an open door.
Our office is a cool refuge from the ever-hotter Baghdad afternoons;
Seminary will be a refuge from the war, the war was a refuge from the
U.S., Canada was a refuge from all which is ugly and rationalized as
‘patriotism.’
My teammate Stewart commented just now that the situation in the U.S. now
“is McCarthyism on steroids.” Never mind that Stewart is Canadian, I
thoroughly agree. Why is it, though, that we have not found a way to name
this great darkness? Shall we just call it Empire, the sum of McCarthyism
and the Cold War and the arms race and the death squads and the whole
Doctrine of National Security? Were the citizens of Rome aware in the
first century of the repression of the Jews during the spread of the
grand, ill-fated Pax Romana?
I am just starting a book called _Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus
Christ_, by Klaus Wengst. I wonder if there are not hundreds of books
like this which Lutherans have never read or looked for. When I find
books like these, it is like cool water in the desert. That may sound
like a cliché, but it represents a very true and deep feeling. There is a
small oasis where the world of Christianity and the search for peace and
justice intersect, and that is where writings like these are found. I feel
the same way about Sojourners magazine. I think to be twenty-six years
old and have this feeling means that I have found a right path in life,
but a path that will be painfully misunderstood by many other people I
meet.
The weather here lately is extremely dry, and I am beginning to feel like
the alligator in the Lubriderm lotion commercials. Bleh! We had a dust
storm last Friday. My skin and lips and hair and nails are all almost
painfully dried out, in ways they never were last September at 120-30
degrees. There is also a massive amount of chlorine in the water this past
week, and just as there's nothing like downing a nice tall glass of (ugh)
bleach on a warm day, I think that is a contributing factor to my dermal
suffering. A shopkeeper handed me a bright orange tin of locally-produced
balm and for 75 cents it works surprisingly good. It is cool here in the
evenings still and I am also needing a shawl inside most days. It's been
windy, which also brought in the dust storm.
I understand all of Yahoogroups got an odd virus last week and some of you
got strange fake emails from me. Ah, technology.
Letters get long quickly and I think I should stop. It is time for church
tonight, 5 p.m. at St. Raphael’s, when the rush of the day is over in
Baghdad.
Peace to you,
Le Anne
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
After One Year, Still No Human Rights in Iraq
Hi everyone, I thought I might pass this latest bit of work I've been
doing on to you. (If you want to know the rest of my daily life, you have
to subscribe to the cpt_iraq list).
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [cpt_iraq] BAGHDAD: "After One Year, Still No Human Rights" From:
"cptgettingintheway"
Date: Wed, March 24, 2004 1:35 am
To: cpt_iraq@yahoogroups.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Iraqi Human Rights Groups: "After One Year, Still No Human Rights for
Iraqis"
by Le Anne Clausen
March 19, 2004 [delayed due to technical difficulties]
BAGHDAD—Nearly one year has passed since the beginning of the U.S.- led
war against Iraq. It was a war that the U.S. claimed would
liberate the Iraqi people from a regime which abused their human
rights.
While human rights activists around the world come together this
week to remember the beginning of the war and military occupation of
Iraq, a number of Iraqi and international human rights organizations have
also joined efforts in Baghdad to declare that the Iraqi people still
live without freedom and without human rights.
Since Tuesday, these groups have sponsored "Days of Solidarity with Iraqi
People Suffering Under Occupation," outlining the human rights abuses
under the U.S. occupation and demanding corrective action. Special
emphasis has been placed on Coalition officials' failure to compensate
for killings of civilians or destruction of civilian
property, and the abuses and lack of due process for Iraqi detainees in
U.S. prison camps—including withholding information from family members
about the state of detainees' health or the charges against them.
"Last spring after the fall of the old regime, I heard many Iraqis
express hope that their situation would improve and they would live in
freedom," said CPT member Stewart Vriesinga (Lucknow, ON), while speaking
at the event. "As each month passes, I see more people
lose that hope every day."
On Thursday, CPT combined its regular Lenten vigil with the
solidarity day activities. After a discussion session with human rights
workers and families of detainees about abuses in the
morning, the groups gathered at Tahrir Square. Dozens of human
rights workers, families, and supporters held signs calling for
human rights and photos of detained loved ones. At 1 p.m., the
vigil culminated in a march across the Tigris River to the
headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). People came
from all over central Iraq--from Karbala to Fallujah-- to
participate in the event.
The solidarity week has not gone unnoticed by U.S. forces stationed in
Baghdad. On Thursday night at 8 p.m., soldiers entered the
property of the human rights organization at which the event
activities were being held, questioned several members of the
organization, and tore down some of the posters discussing specific human
rights abuses perpetrated by the military.
"The most hopeful thing in all of this is the energy and dedication of
the various Iraqi human rights groups cooperating in this cause. It is
exciting and an honor to work with them." said CPT member Le Anne
Clausen, who also helped with the event.
doing on to you. (If you want to know the rest of my daily life, you have
to subscribe to the cpt_iraq list).
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [cpt_iraq] BAGHDAD: "After One Year, Still No Human Rights" From:
"cptgettingintheway"
Date: Wed, March 24, 2004 1:35 am
To: cpt_iraq@yahoogroups.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Iraqi Human Rights Groups: "After One Year, Still No Human Rights for
Iraqis"
by Le Anne Clausen
March 19, 2004 [delayed due to technical difficulties]
BAGHDAD—Nearly one year has passed since the beginning of the U.S.- led
war against Iraq. It was a war that the U.S. claimed would
liberate the Iraqi people from a regime which abused their human
rights.
While human rights activists around the world come together this
week to remember the beginning of the war and military occupation of
Iraq, a number of Iraqi and international human rights organizations have
also joined efforts in Baghdad to declare that the Iraqi people still
live without freedom and without human rights.
Since Tuesday, these groups have sponsored "Days of Solidarity with Iraqi
People Suffering Under Occupation," outlining the human rights abuses
under the U.S. occupation and demanding corrective action. Special
emphasis has been placed on Coalition officials' failure to compensate
for killings of civilians or destruction of civilian
property, and the abuses and lack of due process for Iraqi detainees in
U.S. prison camps—including withholding information from family members
about the state of detainees' health or the charges against them.
"Last spring after the fall of the old regime, I heard many Iraqis
express hope that their situation would improve and they would live in
freedom," said CPT member Stewart Vriesinga (Lucknow, ON), while speaking
at the event. "As each month passes, I see more people
lose that hope every day."
On Thursday, CPT combined its regular Lenten vigil with the
solidarity day activities. After a discussion session with human rights
workers and families of detainees about abuses in the
morning, the groups gathered at Tahrir Square. Dozens of human
rights workers, families, and supporters held signs calling for
human rights and photos of detained loved ones. At 1 p.m., the
vigil culminated in a march across the Tigris River to the
headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). People came
from all over central Iraq--from Karbala to Fallujah-- to
participate in the event.
The solidarity week has not gone unnoticed by U.S. forces stationed in
Baghdad. On Thursday night at 8 p.m., soldiers entered the
property of the human rights organization at which the event
activities were being held, questioned several members of the
organization, and tore down some of the posters discussing specific human
rights abuses perpetrated by the military.
"The most hopeful thing in all of this is the energy and dedication of
the various Iraqi human rights groups cooperating in this cause. It is
exciting and an honor to work with them." said CPT member Le Anne
Clausen, who also helped with the event.
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