May
21
2010
As she did last year, Gerri has organized a Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility delegation of doctors and other health care providers to work in hospitals and clinics in Gaza in an effort to directly help the people there and to bring attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis that the Israeli blockade has created. She will be sending back reports from inside the Israeli blockade.
And so to the tunnels.
This is Friday, day of worship in the Muslim world. For our group, a day of rest and a time to take a wider look at the country we are visiting.
We traveled in a large bus with our hosts and friends from the northern border with Israel to the southern border with Egypt.
The crossing between Egypt and Gaza at Rafah. (Bob Haynes photo)
Along the way, we noted the areas where Israeli settlers once lived. In 2005, approximately 5,000 Israelis were evacuated from Gaza – moved by Israel to different homes in the Occupied Territories and Israel.
We learned that, while all of the settler homes were destroyed by Israel when Israel left Gaza to become an external occupier, several lovely schools and most of their greenhouses were left standing. Rubble from the destroyed houses has been cleared from the settler home sites – in part, at least, to use one day in the construction of a port.
Land of the Tunnels: Each structure covers a tunnel. (Bob Haynes photo)
Basic necessities and many other items come through the tunnels: water, cloth, cars, motorcycles, building materials, camels, goats – almost any item that can claim a price. Several times in the last few days, we have seen shiny new cars in Gaza – successful navigators of the tunnels. Even brides have arrived in Gaza through the tunnels – carried sleeping through the underground passage.
While we visited the tunnels, we heard an explosion – we were told this came from the Egyptian side and was probably the destruction of a tunnel – its hiding place found. The tunnels are not legal.
As we traveled north to our hotel in Gaza City, we stopped to enjoy the Mediterranean Sea – with waters too polluted for swimming, the sites and sounds of the sea remain lovely. We shared lunch, games and conversation, then drove along the Sea to stop once more for ice cream and then to say farewell to our hosts.
Seattle delegation and friends by the Mediterranean. (Bob Haynes photo)
Tomorrow is another day for work.
May
20
2010
As she did last year, Gerri has organized a Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility delegation of doctors and other health care providers to work in hospitals and clinics in Gaza in an effort to directly help the people there and to bring attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis that the Israeli blockade has created. She will be sending back reports from inside the Israeli blockade.
Members of our delegation continue to work in their areas of experience.
Howard Putter has been working with other orthopedic surgeons at Al Shifa Hospital. He has seen traffic trauma (the traffic in Gaza is the stuff of legend – there are no traffic lights for the heavy car and cart traffic and children play in and around the streets) and old war injuries. Attending orthopedists and a resident staff provide care – equipment and supplies are needed, but difficult to get during these years of siege.
David Hall taught an enthusiastically-received class on psychotherapy for psychologists, nurses and social workers this morning at the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme Center http://www.gcmhp.net/. Working through a series of translators, the discussion was spirited.
David Hall visits a patient at home. (Bob Haynes photo)
We are making some visits with GCMHP staff to private homes.
Today, we visited some members of a family of 16 who live on the fourth floor of a small concrete building – sleeping quarters are under an open tin roof, while the protected living happens in a space about 12×10.
The father of the family – which is composed of brothers and nieces and nephews as well as the wife and children of this father – is a fisherman. He tells us that the only fish in the waters they are permitted to fish (deep water fishing is prohibited by Israel) are very small and the water is sewage-polluted.
He has no income. The family receives food aid in the form of dry staples every three months from UNRWA http://www.unrwa.org/.
Their life is desperate. Still, the children gather and smile their beautiful smiles. Everywhere we go, people express gratitude that people from the United States have not forgotten them.
May
20
2010
A federal judge Wednesday afternoon ordered filmmaker Joe Berlinger to hand over all of his footage from his documentary Crude to oil giant Chevron.
But early today Judge Lewis Kaplan stayed his decision and any due date for production of the footage until May 31st. But he did not stay his decision pending appeal. Before Judge Kaplan’s ruling, the Ecuadorian plaintiffs suing Chevron for deliberately dumping toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest filed an emergency stay motion with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
The motion says:
“For twent-five years, Chevron dumped billions of gallons of toxic waster into rivers, wells, drinking water and the land of thousands of indigenous residents and farmers in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Now, after seventeen years of litigation, including nine years fighting jurisdiction in the Southern District, and an over seven year litigation in Chevron’s chosen forum of Ecuador involving 200,000 pages of evidence, 63,000 chemical sampling results, testimony from dozens of witnesses, and dozens of judicial field inspections, Chevron seeks to subpoena 600 hours of footage from a prominent documentary filmmaker (Joe Berlinger) whose film, Crude, helped to expose and publicize Chevron’s conduct in the Amazon.”
In the motion to appeal, the plaintiffs argue that Chevron’s demand for the film footage will be a blow against journalists’ rights and will set a dangerous precedent.
May
19
2010
As she did last year, Gerri has organized a Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility delegation of doctors and other health care providers to work in hospitals and clinics in Gaza in an effort to directly help the people there and to bring attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis that the Israeli blockade has created. She will be sending back reports from inside the Israeli blockade.
The stories we are hearing as we go about our work are full of great sadness and often, great courage. This week marked the commemoration of The Nakba (Catastrophe) – the time 62 years ago when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven from their homes as the state of Israel came into being.
Now, while the siege continues, these stories most frequently reflect the pain remaining from the thousands of deaths, tens of thousands of injuries and countless destruction resulting from the December 2008/January 2009 attacks by Israel on Gaza.
A wall painting commemorates the Nakba. (Bob Haynes photo)
Today, several members of our delegation were treated to a visit to a very special place: The Qattan Centre for the Child is directed by Reem, a brilliant woman of purpose.
During the summer, this center hosts 1,000 children per day – children using the library, doing art projects, learning about science, learning to use computers, participating in theatre productions.
The facility was funded by one individual – believing that education of children is the most essential need for a successful community.
This summer, UNRWA will again host the Summer Games for approximately 250,000 children of Gaza. Living only miles from the sea, some participating children will be seeing the Mediterranean for the first time. Swimming in the sea, however, is prohibited due to sewage pollution.
Bombing of Gaza’s infrastructure and prohibition of repair of these facilities due to siege restriction of supplies entering this land mandates that no one swim in the coastal waters of Gaza.
As we travel through Gaza City, we see an occasional new car. These cars enter the Gaza Strip through the tunnels from Egypt. We will visit these tunnels on Friday.
May
19
2010
There have been so many stories recently from oil industry backers pointing out how the environmental disaster caused by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is such a rare thing, that I thought I should run this press release from the Amazon Defense Coalition just as it came in by email this morning. I will update the story tomorrow after the hearing in Manhattan.
New York, New York (May 19, 2009) – Chevron’s attempt to use a U.S. federal court to gain access to more than 600 hours of private video outtakes of its Ecuador environmental disaster from the celebrated filmmaker Joe Berlinger has run into a groundswell of criticism as the issue heads up to an appellate court for judicial review.
A hearing to stay Chevron’s subpoena so the appeals court can consider the issue will take place today (May 19) at 2 p.m. before Judge Lewis Kaplan at 500 Pearl St. in Manhattan.
On Monday, the Ecuadorian plaintiffs suing Chevron for deliberately dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest appealed a decision by Judge Kaplan ordering Berlinger to turn over his entire body of his footage to Chevron. Berlinger shot the footage over a three-year period for a documentary on the lawsuit, Crude, that has garnered several awards and was one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2009.
Lawyers for Berlinger, who has vowed to fight Chevron, filed their notice of appeal last week. Berlinger is backed by the International Documentary Association, a group of filmmakers that includes 20 Academy Award winners, which issued a letter of support last week.
“Let us be clear about the important issue at stake: Chevron is trying to steamroll the First Amendment rights of a noted filmmaker as part of a campaign to evade accountability for an environmental disaster that has devastated the lives of thousands of people in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” said Ilann Maazel, a lawyer who represents indigenous groups suing the oil giant.
Judge Kaplan’s decision is being seen as an attack on the ability of filmmakers and journalists to cultivate sources and play their traditional watchdog role to ferret out corporate and governmental abuse. In interviews, filmmakers Michael Moore (FAHRENHEIT 9/11, BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, ROGER & ME) and Ric Burns (ANDY WARHOL, NEW YORK) condemned the court’s ruling.
“It makes me shudder to think that all that stuff would be turned over…not because of any secrets that are revealed, but because of the killer blow to the trust a filmmaker cultivated, deeply, over a very long period of time,” Burns said in an interview.
Also among those speaking out against the oil giant:
• Journalist Bill Moyers, writing on The Huffington Post, said Chevron’s actions were putting in jeopardy “the whole integrity of the process of journalism…” He also said the case offers a clear argument for a federal shield law to protect journalists. His article can be viewed at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/chevrons-crude-attempt-to_b_576595.html.
• Trudie Styler, a film producer who co-founded the Rainforest Foundation with husband Sting, told Katie Couric of CBS News that Chevron’s move is “unheard of” and added that the oil giant had created a “hell” for the people of Ecuador. Her interview can be seen at http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6481132n.
• Moore, quoted in The New York Times, said of the Kaplan decision: “The chilling effect of this is … the next whistleblower at the next corporation is going to think twice about showing me some documents if that information has to be turned over to the corporation that they’re working for.”
• Burns labeled Judge Kaplan’s decision “insane” and said it could deliver a “killer blow” to how documentary filmmakers work.
Berlinger’s footage chronicles the Ecuador trial phase of the 17-year legal battle between indigenous tribes and the oil giant over massive oil contamination in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest. The case, Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco, is considered the largest environmental action in the world, with damages estimated at up to $27.3 billion.
The case was moved from U.S. federal court to Ecuador at Chevron’s request in 2002. To induce the dismissal, Chevron at the time claimed that Ecuador’s courts were fair and that it would pay any adverse judgment. But now that the scientific evidence at trial proves Chevron is guilty, the company is trying to paint the trial as unfair and wrongly believes it can use the Berlinger footage for that purpose, said Maazel.
“Chevron’s real agenda is to intimidate journalists like Berlinger who have the courage to aim their lens at Chevron and expose the company’s human rights problems,” said Maazel. CRUDE was named one of the best documentaries of 2009 by the National Board of Review and won awards at 27 film festivals, in addition to being an official selection at Sundance.
Berlinger, who has won numerous awards for his documentaries, has credits that include METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER, PARADISE LOST, and BROTHER’S KEEPER. Berlinger is arguing that his footage is covered by First Amendment privileges that protect reporters and others in the newsgathering business from being compelled to reveal confidential sources and material.
The issue has become a flash point recently in the federal judiciary and has led some reporters to spend time in jail rather than disclose the identity of their sources.
The Aguinda plaintiffs separately argued in court filings that Chevron’s attempt to subpoena the footage amounted to little more than a “fishing expedition” designed to “silence filmmakers such as Joe Berlinger whose work (however evenhanded) has helped expose Chevron’s shocking and unconscionable misconduct.”
Chevron has admitted at trial that Texaco deliberately discharged billions of gallons of toxic wastewater into the streams and rivers of Ecuador while it was the exclusive operator of a large concession from 1964 to 1990. Evidence before the court indicates that cancer rates and other oil-related diseases in the area where Texaco operated have skyrocketed, decimating indigenous groups and poisoning the ecosystem in an area the size of Rhode Island.
May
18
2010
As she did last year, Gerri has organized a Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility delegation of doctors and other health care providers to work in hospitals and clinics in Gaza in an effort to directly help the people there and to bring attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis that the Israeli blockade has created. She will be sending back reports from inside the Israeli blockade.
The universal trauma to the people of Gaza continues to be central to the lessons we are learning.
The medicines we brought with us to the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme were received warmly – so many medicines are in short supply here.
The level of unemployment is very high (39% or much more) and we are learning of small businesses that are in development – attempts to provide family security in an insecure environment.
We are continuing with clinic and hospital work – and expanding our connections with the work going on in this imprisoned land.
Dr. Don Mellman (Bob Haynes photo)
This afternoon, most members of our group visited the Islamic University and were treated to the end-of-the year senior science exhibits. Delightful creativity and hope were built into projects designed to improve automatic irrigation, mobile test-taking, emergency phone dialing, home security systems, jar sealing, home lighting control and dozens of others.
The WPSR delegation visits a student science exhibit. (Bob Haynes photo)
Again and again, resilience.
Our group: Physicians: Richard Grady, Pediatric Urology; David Hall, Child and Family Psychiatry; Laura Hart, Urology; Robert Haynes, Cardiology; Donald Mellman, Neurosurgery; Howard Putter, Orthopedics. Minister/counselor: Anne Hall. Nurse consultants: Debra Goff, Gerri Haynes.
May
17
2010
For the next 9 days, Gerri Haynes will be sending back reports from inside blockaded Gaza. As she did last year, Gerri has organized a Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility delegation of doctors and other health care providers to work in hospitals and clinics in Gaza in an effort to directly help the people there and to bring attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis that the Israeli blockade has created.
Working today in Gaza. In clinics and schools and in operating rooms, we are hearing from the people of Gaza about life under siege.
Photo by Sayed Elmasri
While the work for patients diagnosed with cancer is heroic, the treatment center lacks pain medicines, nutritional supplies, chemotherapeutic agents and radiation treatment facilities.
The presence of a cardiologist, a neurosurgeon, two urologists, a psychiatrist, and an orthopedic surgeon in our delegation was advertised in the local paper. People of Gaza are self-referring to be seen while we are here and the list of surgeries to be done in the next week is growing.
In the classes I taught at the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme today, we talked about the ongoing nature of traumatic stress – calling this “Continuous Traumatic Stress Injury”, rather than “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”
Resilience and care for each other from their community are essential parts of a society that is in a daily struggle to survive.
Personnel from the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme are providing ongoing assistance in refining our schedule for this visit – as new opportunities to meet and serve arise.
May
16
2010
For the next 10 days, Gerri Haynes will be sending back reports from inside blockaded Gaza. As she did last year, Gerri has organized a team of doctors and other health care providers to work in hospitals and clinics in Gaza in an effort to directly help the people there and to bring attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis that the Israeli blockade has created.
Again, in Gaza
This morning, our delegation was allowed to pass through Erez Checkpoint into Gaza. On the Israeli side, the director of Erez warmly welcomed us. The open tunnel that leads a walker to Gaza from the Israeli side was completed after our visit last fall. Concrete and barbed wire open to views of desolate land and armed Israeli guard towers.
Members of the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility delegation cross into Gaza. (Bob Haynes photo)
Nine delegates of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility have come here to work with medical and allied health care colleagues. We are to attend to patients, consult and teach – while we learn about life here in 2010.
Our initial meeting with leaders of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, our host organization, was an introduction to the “situation” and to the work of the Mental Health Programme.
The majority of the 1.6 million residents of Gaza are traumatized – either directly by Operation Cast Lead, by the daily threat of further attacks or by the effects of the ongoing siege.
With this nearly universal level of trauma, Gaza Community Mental Health is striving to normalize individual responses to an abnormal situation. They are educating medical and allied health practitioners to care for the highest functioning individuals in primary care clinics. In this way, the most seriously affected individuals may be treated by the limited number of mental health specialists.
The siege, in place since 2007, denies residents of Gaza basic the needs of life: a variety of foods, building materials, electricity, fuel, medicines, school supplies…
We will be in Gaza for ten days, trying to understand. Already, we see the human spirit at work – many programs for children, empowerment clinics for women, reuse of materials retrieved from destroyed buildings, small business ventures in development – all attest to resilience and strength of community.
We are grateful to be here.
May
4
2010
By Deepak Adhikari
KATHMANDU, Nepal – On the afternoon of April 16, I was driving back from my 94-year-old grandma’s house on the outskirts of Kathmandu to my office in the downtown. Driving on the dusty road on the edge of Nepal’s only international airport, I came upon an unusually high number of vehicles. The hitherto empty road was busy with traffic.
My wife, Kabita, who was riding behind me, suspected that something was wrong, saying maybe there’s a strike (called bandh in the local dialect). I dismissed her comment. But as we entered the newly constructed six-lane highway, the situation began to get clearer. The road was a picture of chaos – a blockade had caused a huge back up of traffic. Several vehicles were turning around and many passengers were stranded. In a situation like this, no one can tell you what’s going on. Everyone seems in a hurry either to get beyond the barricade or return to safety.
Protests like this are increasingly common in Nepal as anger over lack of devleopment and bad government increases.
I displayed my press ID and explained to him that it was media people like me who often risked their lives to support their cause. It was merely my trick to persuade him to let me go through, though I am always a supporter of peaceful protests against injustice. But I never approve such unruly acts that create disarray for hundreds of travelers. He did allow me to go forward, but, sensing that the unrest could get worse farther ahead, I asked my wife to get off the bike.
An intersection ahead looked like a battlefield, with stone carrying, and visibly angry protesters on the one side and baton wielding policemen on the other. I was sure from my previous experiences that if I could convince one of the protesters, I would be able to safely cross the tense area. But as I drove my bike, a group of protesters started to throw stones at me. Luckily, a police inspector came to rescue me from the attack and escorted me for a few minutes. I left the area unhurt. But the incident shook me in a way I had never experienced.
I’m narrating the incident in detail not only because impromptu protests like these have become common occurrences in Nepal, but also because it shows how angry and frustrated Nepalese are. Also, my hunch is that the fury was directed less at the law enforcement agency that was unable to punish the guilty (in this case the driver) and more at the way the country is (mal) functioning. Indeed, the country is gradually sliding towards anarchy and lawlessness.
Everyone agrees that it’s not easy being Nepal. It has a herculean task ahead. In less than a month, the deadline to draft a constitution ends. A 601 member constituent assembly that was elected two years ago is tasked with writing the constitution. A decade-long Maoist insurgency and government counterinsurgency has claimed 13,000 lives with thousands injured and hundreds disappeared. Not a single person (neither from the Army nor from the Maoists) has been punished for numerous wartime crimes. Transitional justice is still only in words not in deeds and a culture of impunity has and is likely to prevail.
Thus, Nepalese have paid a heavy price. And peace seems ever elusive with the former rebels threatening to carry out revolt and the political party leaders upon whom the people have placed high hopes have fallen back on their role of bickering and infighting. Corruption is rampant and unemployment is rising.
The largely mountainous country which is bordered in the north by China and elsewhere by India, both emerging Asian powers, has lagged far behind the rest of the world. It still is one of the poorest countries in the world. While the citizens of our neighboring countries are having what seems like a party (with double digit growth and rapid development), we feel like poor cousins who were not uninvited.
But it’s our own making. In Nepal, the hereditary Rana family ruled the country with an iron fist for over a century while India’s infrastructure was laid by the British. Even the end of Rana rule in 1950 could not ensure freedom and democracy, a prerequisite for inclusive growth and overall development. King Mahendra snatched power from a democratically elected government and introduced a party less and autocratic Panchayat system that ruled Nepal for the next 30 years until 1990.
The ruling elite and the Kathmandu bourgeois were the ones who took maximum advantage of those three decades of tyranny. During this period, I grew up in the eastern hills of Nepal, on the margins, reading the regime’s propaganda in the name of text books.
With the reinstitution of democracy in the spring of 1990 came the promise of a new Nepal. But a ‘People’s War’ waged by Maoists in mid-1990s dashed those hopes. The hope was revived after the mass protests in the spring of 2006 that was instrumental in ending both the Maoist insurgency and the 240-year-old monarchy, thereby paving the way for the world’s youngest republic.
But like everything else in Nepal, uncertainty looms large vis-à-vis the dramatic decisions taken during the crucial and transitional period that have had far reaching consequences. The changes have taken place have occurred only as part of negotiations among the various political parties. Therefore, the likelihood of these transformations being retracted (due to lack of commitment and institutionalizing) cannot be fully ruled out. Also, some of the changes are seemingly cosmetic.
And it’s not like Nepal’s lack of social and economic growth can be blamed on a lack of resources. It is, in fact, endowed with immense resources – hydropower, tourism, the export business and agriculture are some of the many untapped sectors. But this is a country whose main exports are human beings. Two million of Nepal’s 28 million people are working on foreign shores. Nepalese migrant workers toil in often sub-human conditions in the Gulf countries and the country’s fragile economy hinges on the remittances they send.
For a country that prides itself in never being colonized when the entire Indian sub-continent was in the grip of the British, its dependence on the international community and the southern neighbor India is an unpleasant fact. So is the fact that one of world’s oldest nation states is grappling with issues like drafting a constitution, restructuring the state and ensuring their deserved place in the new state apparatus to the hitherto marginalized communities.
On that April afternoon, after I arrived at my company office which is the publisher of one of Nepal’s leading dailies, I sat at my desk and gave the incident a hard thought. After a while, I shared my experience – where else? – on my facebook page. Several comments soon popped up with my friends suggesting to me to be careful and play it safe.
Indeed, these are apt suggestions for our leaders and common people alike, in whose hands remain the future of the struggling nation.
Deepak Adhikari is a Kathmandu-based journalist whose stories have appeared in Time magazine, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, OpenDemocracy and others. I met him in the United States when he came here on an Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship.
April
30
2010
(The background on this letter is that the Seattle-based group, Living Judaism, is bringing wounded Israeli soldiers to Seattle in May as part of an ongoing “Hope for Heroism” program.)
I don’t know much but I know this . . . if the cause is not good, then all these guys with their arms and legs chopped off, all these wounded—the king is to blame for that shit.
–Lt. Col. Al Gill, US Army
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
As American Veterans for Peace we welcome you to Seattle this May. We understand you are visiting here as wounded combat veterans. We regret that you were wounded. Based on our experiences we believe it is right and natural for a soldier who has been injured in war to question whether the price paid was worth the reasons given in justification for risking life and limb. Additionally, there are the mental and psychic wounds one experiences by inflicting harm or even death upon another human being.
We have good reason to believe your hosts in Seattle wish to instill or reinforce in you the sense that the wounds you received were for a good cause–to protect Jews in Israel and here from an existential threat. From the safety of Seattle, far from the battlefield, they want to bolster your morale so that you won’t go too far with your questions. They would like you to bury those questions deep down in the recesses of your mind but please consider a letter in the United Nations archives from rabbis of the “old yishuv” in Jerusalem. It is July 1949, less than two years after the proclamation of the State of Israel and less than nine months after the conclusion of armistice agreements. Jerusalem is still divided with the Old City, Gaza, and the West Bank under Arab control. Yet, who do these orthodox Jewish rabbis complain about and appeal for protection from? Not Arabs, not Christians or Muslims, but Zionists and the Zionist state–Israel.
We have learned that in every war wounded and traumatized soldiers return home and the people who start and perpetuate wars worry that those returning soldiers will arrive at the awful truth about war. They worry you will start telling the awful truth to others who are fodder for the meat grinder of modern warfare. They fear you will expose their game. In the simple words of one of America’s most decorated Marines, Major General Smedley Butler: “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.”
Our message to you is simple: Your wars against the Palestinians and other people in the countries near Israel are wrong, just as wrong as the wars American troops fight in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. As you fight because of the poisonous ideology of Zionism, Americans go to war because of the poisonous ideology of Empire. Physical courage in battle is noble but it is no substitute for the ethical courage that is required of veterans and all of us to end the killing. The self-interested fawning praise of others far from the battlefield will never bring real healing to you for the things you have done and experienced in combat. We bring a message of real hope and healing — not a false “Hope for Heroism” — but hope and healing through reconciliation and understanding.
Signed,
Michelle J. Kinnucan
On behalf of Veterans for Peace, Greater Seattle, Chapter 92