By TINA ARNOPOLE DRISKILL

"Let’s not wait until we have [more] hate crime in our community, but confront it head on," says Gladys Williams, president of the Stanislaus Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In an effort to "make problems visible and prevent crime from happening here," the NAACP is sponsoring a Not In Our Town march and rally September 30 beginning with a march at 10 a.m. at Tenth Street Place followed by the rally at Mancini Bowl in Graceada Park, Needham Ave., Modesto.

The rally is tentatively scheduled to include an opening address by California State University Stanislaus President Marvalene Hughes, a panel discussion on "Driving While Black and Brown" with members from the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department, a civil rights musical group from Oakland, and a speaker from the area’s gay and lesbian community.

The proactive protest against hate crime is open to the entire community.

The NAACP also is gearing up for a Not In Our Town poster distribution contest. Organizations could win a $600 original art piece to be awarded to the group responsible for securing the display of the most Not In Our Town posters in the Stanislaus County area. That group, in turn, could use the piece as a fundraiser.

By MONIQUE KAMILLE

This year’s Peace Camp youth program proved to be an exciting learning experience for youth and adults alike. Throughout the camp, attendees worked on a Peace Camp mural constructed by Lynn Lucas. Glitter, beads and paint adorned this beautiful work in progress. Hats off to Lynn for a job well done!

On Saturday, young people learned about Native American arts, crafts, games and customs with Judy and Pete Bunting who came loaded with great ideas and a fun-for-all attitude that was a joy to be part of.

On Sunday, the youth program centered around a presentation given by Corey Hale from Sonoma State University’s Project Censored. Corey spoke about forms of censorship and gave specific examples of important news events that didn’t make it into main-stream media.

Afterward, the youth prepared a presentation based on material gathered from www.fair.org (Fairness and Accuracy in Media). They read and summarized articles and then wrote a news broadcast about them. At the conclusion of Peace Camp 2000, the National Kid Broadcasting Station (NKBS) reported on the following: Welfare Myths (Brianne Parmer, Lydia Strachan, Martha Tyson); How Seventeen Hurts Girls (Tatiana Altman, Anna Meyers, Bridgette Cowan); Racial Profiling in the Media (Nick Altman, Yuki Habib-Sakuma, Gavin Bruce, John Bruce, Emily Bruce); Media Myths Surrounding Iraq (Joshua Parmer, Logan Coats, Zach Tosi, Aaron Lucas, Rachel Tyson); and How Teenagers are Stereotyped in the Media (Phoebe Tyson, Audrey Burgess, Analisa Freitas). Our children’s critical analysis of important social and economic events was surely a reminder of how important the next generation is to furthering the cause of peace and justice in the new millennium.

The Peace Camp 2000 committee thanks all who made this year’s youth program a success!

Myth 1: The sanctions have produced temporary hardship for the Iraqi people but are an effective, nonviolent method of containing Iraq.

Sanctions target the weakest and most vulnerable members of the Iraqi society—the poor, elderly, newborn, sick, and young. While estimates vary, many independent authorities assert that at least 500,000 Iraqi children under five have died since 1990, in part as a result of the sanctions and the effects of the Gulf War. An August 1999 UNICEF report found that the under-five mortality rate in Iraq has more than doubled since the imposition of sanctions. Former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq Denis Halliday has remarked that the death toll is "probably closer now to 600,000 and that’s over the period of 1990-1998. If you include adults, it’s well over 1 million Iraqi people." The UN sanctions committee, based in New York, continues to deny Iraq pencils, computer equipment, spare parts, and air-conditioned trucks, all necessary elements to sustaining human life and society. Agricultural and environmental studies show great devastation, in many cases indicating permanent and irreversible damage.

Sanctions are an insidious form of warfare, and have claimed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.

Myth 2: Iraq possesses, and seeks to build, weapons of mass destruction. If unchecked, and without economic sanctions, Iraq could, and certainly would, threaten its neighbors.

According to former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) chief inspector Scott Ritter, "[F]rom a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has been disarmed. Iraq today possesses no meaningful weapons of mass destruction." While it is certainly possible that Iraq has the seed stock to rebuild its purported arsenal, Ritter has said that Iraq does not currently possess the capability to produce or deploy chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

Myth 3: Iraq has acted in violation of UN resolutions, while the United States has not.

The bombing strikes are a violation of international law. There is NO UN resolution that calls for, allows, justifies, or accepts unilateral acts by a member state against Iraq in retaliation for real or alleged violations. U.S. officials usually refer to two possible UN resolutions to justify military strikes. Both claims are false. The first, Security Council resolution 678, (a U.S. initiated resolution), authorized the use of force against Iraq in response to Iraq’s illegal invasion of Kuwait. That resolution’s authorization inherently expired with the expulsion of Iraqi troops from Kuwait. There are no Iraqi troops in Kuwait, therefore one cannot rely on a legitimating instrument limited to the expulsion of Iraqi troops from Kuwait, to justify bombing Iraq for a different reason eight years later. The second, Council resolution 1154, passed after heated debate and with widespread reluctance, included the threat of "severest consequences" for Iraq if there should be any future violation of Iraq’s commitment to provide access to UNSCOM. However, virtually every Council ambassador, with the exception of those of the U.S. and Britain, stated explicitly that they did not define "severest consequences" to mean automatic authorization for any Member State to use military force on its own. Rather, the definition of "severest consequences" was that, in the event of a further Iraqi violation, the Council must be reconvened to discuss what the "severest consequences" should be.

UN Resolution 687, paragraph 14, calls for regional disarmament as the basis for reducing Iraq’s arsenal. By arming Iraq’s neighbors in the Middle East, the U.S. is utilizing the same UN resolution with which it maintains arguments for sustaining the sanctions. While the United States claims to be encouraging peace in the Middle East by destroying Iraq’s arsenal, it continues to arm Iraq’s neighbors. The U.S. supplies Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran with weapons and technology.

Myth 5: The Iraqi government is deliberately withholding and stockpiling food and medicine to exacerbate the human suffering for political sympathy and to draw attention to the need to lift sanctions.

The United Nations conducts frequent inventories of the food and medicine stored in Iraq. Former humanitarian coordinator Hans von Sponeck and his deputy, Farid Zarif, have repeatedly called for the "depoliticization" of distribution, arguing that stockpiling is the result of Iraq’s damaged infrastructure, rather than malice on the part of the Iraqi government. There is a serious problem, which von Sponeck has referred to as "uncomplimentarity." In many cases, Iraq must purchase goods from foreign suppliers. Items come in pieces; for example, dental chairs arrive but compressors must be ordered from another company, or syringes arrive but needles take longer. Thus, some shipments must be held in Baghdad until they are complete. This happens, von Sponeck explained, with about one-half of the orders. Moreover, the UN sanctions committee takes longer to approve some orders than others, thus forcing Iraq to keep medicine in storage until the complements are approved.

With summers in Iraq bringing temperatures often reaching 130ºF, air-conditioned trucks are essential for shipping perishable goods such as cancer medication and foodstuffs. But the sanctions committee has banned air-conditioned trucks under "dual-use" considerations. Other goods barred as dual-use include: baby food, bandages, gloves, medical syringes, pencils, school books, soap, toilet paper, tooth brushes, toothpaste...

Myth 8: The international community is united in its opposition to Iraq, and favors economic sanctions.

France, China, and Russia are three countries among many that have criticized the economic sanctions against Iraq. As permanent members of the UN Security Council, they have challenged the US and UK position on sanctions and have questioned military strikes. The Pope, more than fifty US bishops, numerous religious leaders, and scores of organizations have condemned and protested both sanctions and military strikes. Two Nobel Peace laureates and five congressional staffers traveled to Iraq in 1999 to promote international concern and understanding for the conditions found in Iraq today. The Arab League has called for the immediate lifting of the economic sanctions.

WE THE UNDERSIGNED CITIZENS & RESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BELIEVE
that economic sanctions, which prevent or otherwise hamper a nation's
ability to provide for the public health, unjustly target civilians. WE NOTE that the economic
sanctions on Iraq have resulted in serious shortages of food, clean water and medicine. Water
and sanitation systems have collapsed, spreading disease. United Nations agencies estimate
over one million fatalities, mostly children under the age of five.

WE CALL UPON THE U.S. Congress to immediately hold fair and objective hearings on the
humanitarian impact of the UN sanctions. Furthermore, WE URGE Congress and the President
to end the ongoing economic sanctions against the people of Iraq.

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