1. Ben Marx on "Iraqi Vets Say; 'Bring Home the Troops Now!'"

Benjamin Marx is a former U.S. Army officer and veteran of two combat tours to Iraq and the Global War on Terror. During his final assignment he commanded a convoy security company providing armed security escort within Iraq 's Sunni Triangle to soldiers and civilian contractors of the Coalition Forces. His unit conducted hundreds of combat missions, covering thousands of miles on the roads of Iraq . He is a native of Bellingham , WA and attended Seattle University prior to accepting a commission in the U.S. Army.

Ben resigned his commission during his final tour in Iraq and has since been an outspoken opponent to the occupation. He has leant his voice to Veterans for Peace, United for Peace and Justice , Iraq Veterans Against the War and various community organizations in an effort to bring our soldiers home and take care of them upon their return.

2. Amin Odeh on "End the Occupation of Palestine"

Amin is a former Palestinian refugee from Aida camp near Bethlehem.  His family lost their home in 1947 to Israeli settlers and they were forced to move to a refugee camp. This is where Amin lived the majority of his life.   In the first Palestinian uprising, he was detained several times by the Israeli Army for resisting the military Occupation.

In 1990 Amin moved to the United States to pursue his education.  While living in Seattle, Washington he continued to be active in educating the public about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. 

After the second Intifada (uprising) started in Palestine, he and other local Palestinians helped start a group called Voices of Palestine ( www.voicesofpalestine.org).  The group's mission is to educate the public about the struggle of the Palestinian people for Justice and peace.

3. Fatimah Magsombol on "Fight for the Right to Self-Determination of Filipino Muslims"

Fatimah Magsombol,  a second year public interest law

student, is co-convener of Mindanao Bangsamoro Caucus, a member organization of the Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines, which advocates for the support of the Moro struggle

for self-determination. She is also a member of

Kabataang maka Bayan (Pro People Youth) which seeks to

empower the youth and the community in the United

States by educating, training, organizing, and

mobilizing

the youth and the grassroots to create

systemic change.

              

She integrated with the Muslim families in Mindanao, Philippines—the supposed terrorists, to know not only their culture but also their day to day struggles for genuine peace in their land.

4. Emily Gaggia

She is an organizer from  Comite Pro-Aministia General y Justicia Social and have been very active against the ongoing raids and deportations of immigrants.

Welcome Speaker: Rev. Beverly Speakers, an ordained minister of the University Baptist

Church

Moderator: Jane Cutter, coordinator, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism- Seattle

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Climate Change & War Workshop

11 am Sunday, 10-28-07 (morning after Rally)

Asteroid Café, 3601 Fremont Ave N (bus 28, 26)

Duff Badgley & Maryrose Asher

    * Founder, organizer for One Earth, climate change action group;

    * Founder, organizer for Citizens' Coalition for Trees, a Seattle-wide pro-tree advocacy group;

1. *Board member of and chief watchdog for Heron Habitat Helpers, a group protecting the Great Blue Herons of
   

2. *Kiwanis Ravine in Magnolia;
   

    * Member of Stand-Up Seattle, a local peace activist group.

CLIMATE CHANGE & WAR (excerpts) 

Independent (U.K.), 6-21-07

Climate change has become a major security issue that could lead to "a world going up in flames", the United Nations' top environment official has warned. From rising sea levels in the Indian Ocean to the increasing spread of desert in Africa's Sahel region, global warming will cause new wars across the world, said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). 

"People are being pushed into other people's terrain by the changing climate and it is leading to conflict," he said. "Societies are not prepared for the scale and the speed with which they will have to decide what they will do with people."

The world was already experiencing its first war partly caused by climate change, he said.

Dramatic changes to the environment in the Darfur region of Sudan helped lay the ground for today's conflict which has displaced more than 2.5 million people and killed at least 200,000…

Counterpunch, 10-25-07 

The ecological effects of war, like its horrific toll on human life, are exponential. When the Bush Administration and their Congressional allies sent our troops in to Iraq to topple Saddam's regime, they not only ordered these men and women to commit crimes against humanity, they also commanded them to perpetrate crimes against nature…

In the early 1990s the U.S. drowned at least 80 crude oil ships to the bottom of the Persian Gulf, partly to uphold the U.N.'s economic sanctions against Iraq. Vast crude oil slicks formed, killing an unknown quantity of aquatic life and sea birds while wrecking havoc on local fishing and tourist communities…

When the tank-busting bombs explode, the depleted uranium oxidizes into microscopic fragments that float through the air like carcinogenic dust, carried on the desert winds for decades. The lethal bits when inhaled stick to the fibers of the lungs, and eventually begin to wreck havoc on the body in the form of tumors, hemorrhages, ravaged immune systems and leukemias. 

Seattle Times, 10-13-07

"Climate change is and will be a significant threat to our national security and, in a larger sense, to life on Earth as we know it to be," retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan, former Army chief of staff, told a congressional panel last month…

"What we're facing is the greatest humanitarian crisis in history," said Philip E. Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust….

He said Somalia and Darfur had already shown "the impacts that desertification and lack of water can have on peace and security." 

Reuters, 6-18-07

If rising sea levels force the people of the Maldive Islands to seek new homes, who will look after them in a world already turning warier of refugees? 

The daunting prospect of mass population movements set off by climate change and environmental disasters poses an imminent new challenge that no one has yet figured out how to meet. 

People displaced by global warming - the Christian Aid agency has predicted there will be one billion by 2050 - could dwarf the nearly 10 million refugees and almost 25 million internally displaced people already fleeing wars and oppression…

The focus should be on contingency plans for nightmare scenarios that could prove all too real… 

Independent (U.K.), 10-5-07 

Vast areas of Brazil and Paraguay and much of Bolivia are choking under thick layers of smoke as fires rage out of control in the Amazon rainforest, forcing the cancellation of flights. 

Satellite images yesterday showed huge clouds of smoke and much of the Amazon basin burning as fires (more than 10,000 points of fire) originally set by ranchers to clear land, have raged into the forest itself…

But this age-old cycle has spun out of control as deforestation and climate change have created a tinderbox… 

Independent (U.K.), 2-3-07

The world will be a much hotter place by 2100. This will be the impact ...

+3.4°: Rainforest turns to desert

The Amazonian rainforest burns in a firestorm of catastrophic ferocity, covering South America with ash and smoke. Once the smoke clears, the interior of Brazil has become desert, and huge amounts of extra carbon have entered the atmosphere, further boosting global warming. The entire Arctic ice-cap disappears in the summer months, leaving the North Pole ice-free for the first time in 3 million years. Polar bears, walruses and ringed seals all go extinct. Water supplies run short in California as the Sierra Nevada snowpack melts away. Tens of millions are displaced as the Kalahari desert expands across southern Africa…

only.one.earth@hotmail.com

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