Maine Talk

Film INSIDE JOB in Somesville Feb. 28

HCCN — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:03:39 +0000

Film INSIDE JOB in Somesville Feb. 28

Eyewitness Gaza, Friday Blue Hill

HCCN — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 03:23:11 +0000

Eyewitness Gaza, Friday Blue Hill Eyewitness Gaza, a documentary directed by Tom Jackson and based upon the photos of Skip Schiel.
Brief reviews follow.

Director Tom Jackson will present his film and provide insight into the life of Palestinian youth under occupation.

AT BLUE HILL LIBRARY, FRIDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 24, 7 P.M.
PENINSULA PEACE & JUSTICE FILM SERIES

From Tom’s blog:
Here is the crew for the Gaza end of production on the documentary being made about the situation there through the lens of photographer Skip Schiel.
Hesham (boom), Jozef (camera), Adham (field director)

In Eyewitness Gaza, Skip conveys his personal observations on events in Gaza, the complexities and consequences of action and reaction at the military and governmental level and its affects on real people. The video graphically depicts the emotional as well as physical affects of violence and offers hope in statements from young people about their commitment to non-violence. Sadly, it also describes how opponents of a peaceful approach discourage such actions. It is a compelling insight into the situation in Gaza.
—Joan Raducha, American Friends Service Committee, Madison Wisconsin, September 2011

Skip Schiel has been documenting the Palestinian and Israeli reality through photographs and journal postings since 2003—work with a better feel for the detailed texture of life in Gaza and the West Bank than any appearing in US media. Schiel spends time where most journalists dare not tread, amidst ordinary Palestinians, sharing in the dangers and frustrations of their lives.
His work has been invaluable for my own. As a writer for a Buddhist publication whose parents were victims of the Holocaust, I try to convey a view of the conflict that differs from the US media’s, which obfuscates the injustices and sufferings inflicted on the Palestinians by Israel. Through his portraits of Palestinian men, women, and children striving to maintain ordinary routines despite harassment and attacks by Israel’s military, Skip reveals to us the true face of Palestinians.
—Annette Herskovits, Consulting Editor, Turning Wheel, the Journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship

4TH WEDNESDAY POETRY

HCCN — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 01:57:00 +0000

THE FOURTH WEDNESDAY POETRY/WRITERS GROUP WILL MEET AT THE MAINE GRIND, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22 AT 6:30 PM – 8 PM. ALL ARE WELCOME TO READ THEIR OWN POETRY/PROSE OR SOMEONE ELSE’S

_______________________________________________ HCCN mailing list HCCN@mainetalk.org http://mainetalk.org/mailman/listinfo/hccn_mainetalk.org

Call 202-647-4000 to Ask State Department Help Activists Remain in Bahrain.

HCCN — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:05:17 +0000

FW: Call 202-647-4000 to Ask State Department Help Activists Remain in Bahrain. Paki Wieland (see below), among the detained activists, is a friend from Northampton, Massachusetts, who is always on the front line for justice.
Please make a call to help if you can. — JR

Kathy Kelly, Cold, Cold Heart

HCCN — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:16:45 +0000

fw: Kathy Kelly, Cold, Cold Heart

Return



Published on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 by Common Dreams
Cold, Cold Heart
by Kathy Kelly

It’s Valentine’s Day, and opening the little cartoon on the Google page brings up a sentimental animation with Tony Bennett singing "why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart."

Here in Dubai, where I’m awaiting a visa to visit Afghanistan, the weather is already warm and humid. But my bags are packed with sweaters because Kabul is still reeling from the coldest winter on record. Two weeks ago, eight children under age five froze to death there in one of the sprawling refugee camps inhabited by so many who have fled from the battles in other provinces. Since January 15, at least 23 children under 5 have frozen to death in the camps.

And just over a week ago, eight young shepherds, all but one under 14 years of age, lit a fire for warmth on the snowy Afghan mountainside in Kapisa Province where they were helping support their families by grazing sheep. French troops saw the fire, and acted on faulty information, and the boys were all killed in two successive NATO airstrikes. The usual denunciations from local authorities, and Western apologies, followed. (Trend News, February 10, 2012).

So I’m thinking about warmth, and who we share it with and who we don’t.

This is an unexpected trip for me. I had first planned to spend this week at home in Chicago, and then, rather suddenly, agreed to join a group of informal human rights observers traveling to Bahrain for the one year anniversary of their brutally repressed "February 17th Revolution" (please follow events there, and demand that the U.S. cease arming Bahrain’s dictatorship, at witnessbahrain.org ). Bahraini authorities declined to issue me a visa, and so I asked the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers if I could change my plans and spend the coming week with them.

My friends tell me that the apartment where I’m headed has been without electricity for several days in a row. The pipes have frozen, so there will be no running water. But in spite of the cold, it’s an especially good time to visit them because twelve of them will be there, on winter vacation from school, including two 14 year old boys I couldn’t meet during my last visit who spent much of the last year away from the others, back home in Bamiyan province, in their mountain villages, supporting their families.

One father left the family to find work elsewhere and is now living in Iran. My young friend doesn’t hear from his father much, but I wonder what he must think as war threatens to move there. The mother launders clothes to help make ends meet, but with one weak arm due to a history of polio, she can’t earn enough for the family’s food. Her son is an excellent student, but she’s had to ask him to give up school and start adult work full time. Older members of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers have worked hard finding him odd jobs in various shops, hoping to put off the day when he will have to start full time work as a shepherd.

I’ve just, by coincidence, read the story of another young man, training for work in the mountains: the article reaches me from friends I have just left in Colorado Springs, and begins: "Pfc. Josh Harris pulled the charging handle of a grenade launcher on Thursday, leaned back and peered through the sights. His orders were clear. “All right,” said Spc. Michael Breton, moments earlier. “There is an ice cream truck out there. So shoot it.” Pressing down with his thumbs, the MK-19 — a machine gun equipped with grenades instead of bullets — launched four training grenades 300 meters down a Fort Carson range." (www.gazette.com/articles/gis-133359-through-peered.html ) This is last-minute training before shipping out with the Fort’s 4th Brigade Combat Team. "By March," the reporter continues, "he’ll likely be watching grenades sail into the hillsides of eastern Afghanistan."

Everyone knows that these attacks will kill civilians – will kill children. If you fire enough bullets where there are children you’re going to hit them. A few days back filmmaker John McHugh described his twelve day stint embedded in the U.S.’ "Operation Mace" in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province: “Over the course of my stay on Mace, I witnessed the truly awesome firepower that the U.S. military brings to a fight. Between their helicopters and jets they had dropped 19 bombs, fired two Hellfire missiles, 205 rockets, 500 rounds of 20 millimeter, and 210 rounds of 30-millimetre cannon. They also discharged 3,750 rounds of 50 caliber machine gun ammunition. And yet, only once, could they confirm that they had killed a single Taliban fighter.” McHugh wrote this for Mideast-based broadcaster Al Jazeera (“The Winter War,” February 9, 2012). Would a Western media outlet have bothered covering the story?

It’s hard to fathom the vast indifference of Western observers to what their militaries are doing in Afghanistan – to the lives lost, the futures broken, the families and friendships and loves torn apart – all of which will occur in the next country we collectively agree to demolish, and the next. Our apathy surely makes it easier for military and political elites to wage multiple wars. They count on us to look out at a world that we have been told is barbaric and feral, addled (unlike ours) with terrifying fundamentalism driving them (unlike us) to incessant violence.

We lull ourselves into a comforting delusion that we’re waging humanitarian wars, and then wonder why people aren’t more grateful. Thinking of ourselves as exceptionally noble, we’re lost in denial masked as civilizing virtue as we hum along with Tony Bennett’s puzzled lyrics:

"I tried so hard my dear to show that you’re my only dream
Yet you’re afraid each thing I do is just some evil scheme.
A memory from your lonesome past keeps us so far apart.
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind, and melt your cold, cold heart?"



Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Kathy Kelly’s email is kathy@vcnv.org

more Kathy Kelly

March Calendar of events

HCCN — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 01:29:35 +0000

Newsletter editors,

Here are some calendar items for March (plus a few earlier and/or later). FEEL FREE TO PICK AND CHOOSE AND NOT USE EVERY ITEM. If you know of things that should be publicized, please send them to me by the 15th of the month preceding the month when the event occurs.

If you know of events coming up, please send these to me so I can include in this calendar. I don’t have time to search for things, so your assistance is really a big help in getting notice of more upcoming events.

Larry Dansinger

February 25 (+ next 6 Saturdays): Lenten Vigil for Disarmament at Bath Iron Works, 11:30-12:30 PM, Washington Street (front of Administration building), Bath. FMI: Smilin’ Trees Disarmament Farm, 763-4062.

February 26: “Mexico’s Tarahumara: Running out of Time” film shown w/Dud and filmmaker Dick Hendrick, 3-5 PM, Curtis Library, Brunswick. Call Dud Hendrick, 348-2511 or dudhe@myfairpoint.net. Also shown Monday, February 27, 5-7 PM, Meg Perry Center, 644 Congress St., Portland. Call 772-1051.

February 28: “Inside Job” film (financial institutions’ manipulation of the economy) shown, Fire Station, Somesville. Call Ed Snyder, 288-8968.

February 28: “Windfall” film shown (problems with industrial wind facilities), 7 PM, Unity Centre for the Performing Arts, Unity. Friends of the Highland Mountains, highlandmts@gmail.com. Also shown on March 1, 6 PM, Skowhegan Library; March 3-4, 2 PM (3rd) and 3 PM (4th), Strand Theater, Rockland; March 4, 2 PM, Dirigo High School, Dixfield; March 7, 7 PM, UMF, Farmington; and March 30, 6:30 PM, Snowmobile Club, Island Falls.

February 28-29: “We Can Feed Maine” conference on soil quality, Bangor Motor Inn, Bangor. Heart of Maine RC&D, www.heartofmaine.org for details.

February 29: “Before the Killing Begins: The Politics of Mass Violence” film, panel, and discussion, 6 PM, Public Library, Bangor. Citizens for Global Solutions, Lee Davis, 866-4785 or shirley.davis@umit.maine.edu.

February 29: Chris Brown talks about farm recycling at Green Drinks, 7-8:30 PM, St. Savior’s Church library, Bar Harbor. Ron Greenberg, ron@benbows.com or greendrinks.org.

March 3: “The Energy Efficient Home” talk and tour, 9 AM-3 PM, New Forest Institute, 66 Monroe Hway, Brooks. Call 722-3625 or newforestinstitute.org. Also New Forest programs on March 13 on “Future Electricity” and March 22 on “Home Scale Photovoltaics.”

March 3-4: “Building Bridges of Communication” workshop with Peggy Smith to benefit WERU community radio, 9 AM-4 PM both days, Peace and Justice Center, 96 Harlow St, Bangor. Call 789-5299 or peggy@opencommunication.org.

March 8: International Women’s Day poetry reading, 2-4 PM, Public Library, Lisbon St., Lewiston. Bibi Krasin, 213-221-5432 or lindiwe.krasin@goddard.edu.

March 9: Vital Connections gathering with short presentations on faith, community building, and hunger prevention, 6 PM (potluck followed by talks), Sweetser, 329 Bath Rd., Brunswick. Call Rosie, 371-2077 for more details.

March 10: Spring Growth conference on “The Tomato” w/various tomato-related workshops, all day, Common Ground Education Center, Unity. MOFGA, 568-4142 or mofga@mofga.org.

March 10: “Class Matters: Tools for Unpacking Privilege” workshop (interactive workshop on class oppression and breaking down barriers) w/Sonia Acevedo, 9 AM-5 PM, New Forest Institute, 66 Monroe Hway, Brooks. Call 722-3625 or newforestinstitute.org.

March 18: “Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy” (globalization and effects on women in Haiti) film shown, 7 PM, Peace and Justice Center, 96 Harlow St., Bangor. Call 942-9343 or info@peacectr.org or www.peacectr.org.

March 20: “March against Fiscal Madness: Fund Human Needs” march and rally for a state budget without painful budget cuts, 2-4 PM, Hall of Flags, Maine Capitol Building, Augusta. Bruce Gagnon, 443-9502 or globalnet@mindspring.com.

March 21: ”Mexico’s Tarahumara: Running out of Time” film shown w/Dud and filmmaker Dick Hendrick, 6 PM, Free Library, Belfast. Call Dud Hendrick, 348-2511 or dudhe@myfairpoint.net.

March 24: Equality Maine’s 28th annual awards dinner, 5:30-9 PM, Holiday Inn by the Bay, 88 Spring St., Portland. Equality Maine, 761-3732 or www.equalitymaine.org.

March 25: Maine Tree Crop Alliance, Maine Seed Saving Network, and MOFGA Seed Swap and Scionwood Exchange day, noon-4 PM, Common Ground Education Center, Unity. MOFGA, 568-4142 or mofga@mofga.org.

Notices:

The newest edition of “Saving Seeds,” from Food for Maine’s Future, has articles on Farmer Dan Brown, being sued by the state of Maine for selling raw milk, challenges to Monsanto’s seed patents, “Occupy the Food System,” and seed saving. Other articles discuss food self-reliance, local food and community self-governance ordinances, the Keystone XL pipeline, and other articles related to local food self-sufficiency and safety. For a copy, or to distribute multiple copies: FMF, 244-0908 or www.savingseeds.wordpress.com.

Three Solidarity scholarships ($500 and 2 x $250) are being offered to members of the Eastern Maine Labor Council or Food AND Medicine and any family member of a laid off worker. Applicants need to define what “solidarity” means to them in their application. Students also need to explain briefly what their education plan is and type their response of about 250-300 words. Send responses by April 25 to Food AND Medicine, 20 Ivers St., Brewer, ME 04412, 989-5860.

A new video on solitary confinement from the National Religious Campaign against Torture is available for showing in Maine. Titled “Solitary Confinement: Torture in Our Backyard,” the 15-20 minute film describes the 2010 campaign in Maine to reduce or eliminate solitary confinement as a form of punishment. The film is available from the Maine Council of Churches, 772-1918 or jsaxby@mainecouncilofchurches.org.

Saint Patricks Peace Parade – Please come to Boston

HCCN — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 04:36:04 +0000

FW: Saint Patricks Peace Parade – Please come to Boston
St. Pats Parade – Flyer (Final).pdf

could you please send out this notice – thanks ron greenberg

HCCN — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:04:18 +0000

Green Drinks

A Social Networking Meeting of Environmental Activist and Enthusiasts

Wednesday, February 29^th, 7pm-8:30pm

Farmer Chris Brown will give a short explanation of his recycling efforts

The remainder of the evening is dedicated to socializing with like-minded people

St. Saviour’s Church Library in Bar Harbor

For more info: greendrinks.org or contact Ron Greenberg: ron@benbows.com

Eric Schneiderman (NY AG) & Rachel Maddow on new atmosphere of accountability

HCCN — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 18:56:23 +0000

Iran

HCCN — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 03:45:03 +0000

FW: Iran

A message from Veterans for Peace