Pit Stop Ploughshares Update

by Ciaron - Dublin Catholic Worker & Pitstop Ploughshares Mon May 24, 2004 19:15

Sgt. Camilo Mejia
www.refusetokill.net

Sacred Earth & Space Plowshares
www.jonahhouse.org
*Sr. Jackie Hudson
#08808-039
Federal Prison Camp
Victorville
PO Box 5100
Aldento
CA. 92301
USA

*SR. Ardeth Platte
#10857-039
Federal Correction Institution
331/2 Pembroke Station
Danbury
CT. 06811
USA

*Sr. Carol Gilbert
#10856-039
Alderson FPC
Box A
Alderson
W V 24910
USA

Trespass at School of Americas
www.soaw.org
Kathleen Kelly
#04971-045
PO Box 5000
Pekin
IL 61555-5000
USA

by Jonah House Thu May 27, 2004 01:54

Dearest Friends,

This isn't the letter I was expecting to send you this month but sometimes something so horrendous comes along it must take precedence. Such is the following story. In reading my May issue of "Harper's Magazine", I came upon a small piece of interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch researchers in Pakistan and Vivian White, a reporter for the BBC, with recently released prisoners of Camp X-Ray, the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
I was not shocked at the use of tape, cuffs, gas, chains, cages, bright lights, noise, beatings, sleep deprivation and painful positions. What did horrify me were the "injections" and the "pills".

"They injected me. I was unconscious." A. Khan
"They gave us pills that made us feel numb or made us drunk." K.M.
The other method that the guards used to make us quiet was injections. Guards would enter the cell with sticks and masks, and two or three of them would hold a prisoner while one of them injected him in any part of his body. Immediately after the injection, the person would faint. Then he was put into isolation. Twice they injected me and took me to the isolation room, a dark room with cold air blowing." A.K.
"Other countries torture prisoners with electric shocks, but they tortured me with injections. After I received an injection, my eyes would remain fixed upwards, and my muscles would get stiff. I would stay like that for a day and sometimes longer, until I was given another injection, which would relax me, and then I could move my eyes and muscles again. Sometimes they would give me pills after the first injection. I saw other prisoners receive injections as well." S.M.A.
According to the article the U.S. is currently holding about 650 suspects at Guantanamo Bay. These interviews don't sound that different to me than the Nazi experiments. I reflect on the Chinese proverb: " To know what is going on takes sense: to know what to do about it takes wisdom." What do we do with this burden of knowing?

Spring has arrived in all its glory at Alderson. We are in awe as we watch the birds build their nests and smell the lilacs and honeysuckles. The mountains are alive with various shades of green as the trees burst forth. As I write this, I've just seen two Baltimore orioles in one of the huge pines outside the recreation building.

Our population of 1,028 women saw 200 of us sign up for garden plots – two to a plot. We have ordered the seeds and await our planting date. Deep gratitude must go to our team of lawyers who have worked tirelessly with no pay on an appeal these past months. It was submitted on April 30th.

Again, my deepest gratitude to each of you. No one from the S.O. A. (School of the Americas) is coming here and so I sit with the silence and the stillness of within.

I'll close with these words from Historian Howard Zinn, which express our Eternal Now: "To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand, utopian future.

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

With deep love,
Carol

by Ciaron - Dublin Catholic Worker Thu May 27, 2004 03:46

Dear Ciaron May 18 2004
Day One in the dishroom for me - 5 am wake up & work (well, be there) till Noon. Out of 90 days, I'll only have to work a total of 35. Not bad. And plenty to keep me absorbed. as ever, women here are endlessly interesting - the sad new difference is the appallingly long mandotary minimum (sentences) demanded by Ashcroft's new sentencing guidelines. Every day I've met someone with 10 years + more.

Just now, my friend Kim came by, "I can't take it no more. I just can't. Don't you know anyone that can get me home confinement?" Her youngest son was killed in Iraq in March 2004. After being there for 2 weeks, - killed in a training accident. Last night she learned that her older son is in intensive care for back surgery with unexpected complications. And so it goes.....

"Voices (in the Wilderness)" goes before a DC Judge on June 4 (for breaking U.S. sanctions on Iraq through the '90's) - I wonder if a "tableu" outside of the courtroom:
Voices in the Wilderness figures set up with duffel bags of meds Vs. Hooded figures on milk crates & danglin electrodes.
Onlookers: What makes you feel more secure?
WITW disobeying orders/ Military Police following orders???

I'll be eager to know how you and your companions fare before your judge. DISCOVERY is the common demoninator in both cases.

I had a chance to read Saramorga's "Blindness" a few weeks ago. I think he's critiquing Anglo-Saxon ethics and mores. It's a fascinating book. Finished Paradise lost (Milton) shortly thereafter - couldn't help myself rooted for the fallen angels and Eve, - but Milton's gorgeous wording wins out even if his world view is scarey and dodgy.

All the best to you Ciaron. If you see Joe and family please give them my best, Also Marie Fleming, and Caoimhe - deepest thanks to each of you.
With love
Kath

Kathy Kelly spent the first Gulf War in Iraq, iitialy in the peace camp on the Iraq/Kuwait border and then the following 6 months doing service work in Iraq. She returned to the U.S. to found the sanctions busting Voices inthe Wilderness movement. She spent the weekend with the Pit Stop Ploughshares at the Brigid Festival in Kildare ( aweke before we acted at Shannon) en route to Iraq, where she was present throughout the US air war on Iraq.

She was imprioned in the 1980's for trespassing on the Weapons of Mass Destruction at an ICBM missile silo in the midewest U.S. Her recent sentence follows her arrest and hog tieing after tresspass at Ft. Benning on Nov. 16 2003. Ft. Benning is the home of the School of the Americas (see www.soaw.org and where many of the U.S. torurers is Iraq prisos were trained. Many of the soldiers passing through Shannon are commuting from Ft. Benning, Georgia, US to Iraq.

by Ciaron - Pitstop Ploughshares Fri May 28, 2004 02:18

Pit Stop Ploughshares Back in Four Courts June 18th. Report to folow.
Benefit Gig at Mother Redcaps June 8th.

by Ciaron - Dublin Catholic Worker & Pitstop Ploughshares Fri May 28, 2004 09:50

Long-time peace activist Sylvia Boyes has been sent to prison for 14 days.
Sylvia was in court over non-violent anti-war actions before the Iraq war.
She and a friend were ordered to pay compensation to the MOD for attempts to
cut the fence at Menwith Hill and for laying stones on the runway at RAF
Leeming. they had hoped to disable the Tornadoes at Leeming and a satellite
dish at Menwith but were unable to do so. Sylvia refused to fill in a means
form, which can lead to funds being automatically removed from your wages,
and so was sent to prison for one week for each offence. She will likely be
out on Monday 31st.

It's a lonely time in prison and Sylvia is in there because she was doing
good - acting to highlight and ultimately disrupt an illegal and immoral
attack on Iraq. Please spend a bit of time writing a letter, note or card
to let her know we are thinking of her.
You can send letters of support to:
HMP Newhall
Dial Wood
Flockton
Wakefield
West Yorks
WF4 4AX

Thank you.
Yorkshire CND


yorkshire campaign for nuclear disarmament
22 Edmund Street, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD5 0BH
tel:01274 730795 mobile: 07818 411823
e-mail: [email protected] web: www.yorkshirecnd.org.uk

by Pit Stop Ploughshares Fri May 28, 2004 13:17

http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=65272

by Ciaron - Pit Stop Ploughshares Fri May 28, 2004 22:24 087 918 4552

We appeared and have been remanded to June 18th. in the Four Courts. Depending on the judicial review and availability of court rooms our trial maybe in October 2004. If courts aren't available in that session, it should be January 2005!

Meanwhile our bail conditions remain a ban form 5 mile radius of Shannon Airport and signing on twice a week at a Garda Station.

We are in good spirits and are heading up to Mayo for the weekend to participate in the annual Afri Famine walk to Louisburg.

Looking forward to the gig at Mother redcaps on June 8. Organinsing around the Bush visit along with a lot of other good folks.

We will be gathering outside the U.S. embassy with Americans against the War on Monday May 31st. 5-7pm.

Many thanx to all who have support since the disarmament went down...transport, financial, music, vigilling, advocacy, solidarity.

Solidarity with all brothers and sisters before the courts & court martials, in brigs and prisons, conituiong nonviolent resistance to this war.