Rodney Reed is innocent! Stop his execution on 5 March!
Rodney Reed, on Texas’ death row since 1998, is facing wrongful execution on 5 March 2015. He was convicted by an all white jury of murdering Stacey Stites in the small town of Bastrop, Texas. Rodney Reed is Black, Stacey Stites was white, and her fiancé Jimmy Fennel was a white police officer. There is some evidence to suggest that Fennel murdered Ms Stites.   Mr Reed's case is a troubling mix of prosecutorial misconduct, police corruption, poor defence, and institutional racism. Evidence of Rodney’s innocence is overwhelming and the need for a new trial is indisputable. DNA on some crucial pieces of evidence has never been tested. Three leading forensic experts doubt the reliability of his conviction. More than a dozen relatives of Stacey Stites have also stated that they do not believe Rodney Reed is guilty of her murder.
CALL FOR INTERNATIONAL ACTIONS So far there will be a gathering in PARIS (Place de la Concorde 6-8pm) and in LONDON on Wednesday 4 March (US Embassy, Grovesnor Square, W1A 2LQ, 5-6pm), in BERLIN on 1st March. (US embassy 3pm) If you organise an action in your city please let us and the Justice for Rodney Reed Campaign know so we can publicise it.
Rally at the Bastrop Co. Courthouse	There has been a lot of support for Rodney as well as national media attention for his case. But more is needed. We must demand that Gov. Abbott and the State of Texas stop the execution, ensure the DNA is tested and that Rodney has the day in court that he deserves. Test the DNA! Drop the Date!
More info on Rodney Reed case here Watch a 5 min video "I'm not giving up" – Rodney Reed A conversation with Rodney's mother and brother
·  Sign the online petition here ·  Write to Rodney ·  Read Amnesty International's action alert and send a letter for clemency.	More information and actions at Justice for Rodney Reed website
Issued by Payday a network of men working with the Global Women's Strike payday@paydaynet.org  www.refusingtokill.net

 

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Free Chelsea Manning-President Obama Pardon Chelsea Now! 

Chelsea joins Guardian as contributing opinion writer

February 11, 2015 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
Wikileaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning will be joining The Guardian as a contributing opinion writer for the site’s US website. Chelsea will be writing from prison in Fort Leavenworth, KS, and will focus on topics related to war, gender, and freedom of information.  Her articles will not be scheduled at regular intervals, but rather will appear infrequently. She will not be paid for her work.
The Guardian‘s editor-in-chief, Katherine Viner, made the announcement yesterday, February 10, over Twitter:
“Delighted to announce: Chelsea Manning joins @GuardianUS as a contributing opinion writer, writing on war, gender, freedom of information”
Chelsea has published three other op-eds since her imprisonment in Fort Leavenworth:

• New York Times, “The Fog Machine of Far”
• The Guardian, “How to Make ISIS Fall on its Own Sword”
• The Guardian, “I am a Transgender Woman and the Government is Denying my Civil Rights”

To provide support to Chelsea in prison, maximize her voice in the media, continue public education and build a powerful movement for presidential pardon we must raise another $120,000 this year.

Please help us fight the legal and political battle to free Chelsea, not only for her sake, but for all those she’s helped, and all whistleblowers endangered by her unjust conviction.

Please donate today!

Free Chelsea Manning-President Obama Pardon Chelsea Now! 

Chelsea’s appellate attorneys on the Espionage Act, the appeals process

Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea’s legal fees! Donate today!

February 19, 2015 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network

Nancy Hollander & Vincent Ward

“But if we’re going to have freedom of speech… we have to know what our government is doing, and we clearly didn’t know what our government was doing… We are all thankful to Chelsea for opening this up… and now it’s up to us to do her appeal, it’s up to everyone to support her.”Nancy Hollander, Chelsea Manning’s attorney for her upcoming legal appeals

On Tuesday, February 17th, Chelsea Manning’s appellate attorneys Nancy Hollander and Vincent Ward joined Trevor Timm (Exec. Dir., Freedom of the Press Foundation) for a panel discussion at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco.  The panel focused on the expansion of the Espionage Act under the Obama Administration, the threat to journalists and future whistleblowers provided by the government’s continually modified position on national security, the selective prosecution of individuals for government leaks, and more.
Hastings Law Professor Ghappour moderated the discussion, sponsored by the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.

Watch the complete video of the panel discussion here

Prof Ahmed Ghappour, Chelsea Manning’s appellate attorneys Nancy Hollander & Vincent Ward, and Exec Dir, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Trevor Timm at a panel discussion at Hastings College of Law Feb 17, 2015

Excerpts from Nancy Hollander:

“This is a law that was poorly written in the beginning and is clearly becoming more and more abused. It was meant to punish spies and saboteurs during the war in 1917, during the World War. But the way the courts have interpreted the law, it’s really become little more than a trap to ensnare those that embarrass the government and that’s exactly how it was used in this case.

We have to appeal this on Chelsea’s behalf. And we have to appeal this for all of our sake, and that’s because there is no public interest defense. Chelsea wasn’t even allowed to put on the defense of why she felt it important for the public to know about these human rights abuses. That she could only put it on during her sentencing and not during the case. And this is not the first time this has happened. This has happened in federal court and in other cases, and we really have to stop this because it is illegal for the government of the United States to classify info that embarrasses the government. That’s a violation of the law and yet that’s what we’re seeing. That’s what we saw in this case, that’s what we saw in other cases, we see it in the Guantanamo cases where the us has classified the thoughts, memories, and observations of people who were tortured by the United States.

So, the problem for Chelsea and for any whistleblower like Chelsea is one that we really have to attack. And this of course… really could involve journalists. And it makes it difficult for people to report on what the US is doing. And one of the other ways that this becomes a problem is that it becomes illegal, it is illegal for someone to expose national security information.

But the question is, “what is national security information?” It’s the government that decides that and I can give you an example of why this is a problem. You all recall that recently the US traded 5 Guantanamo prisoners that were allegedly Taliban with a prisoner of war. Before those prisoners were moved out of Guantanamo we were all told, oh they’re forever prisoners, we can never let them go because it would harm the national security of the us and then all of a sudden well, it’s really okay- our national security will be okay if these 5 men are released so what that tells us is the concept of national security itself is a moving target and the government gets to decide how big it is and how small it is.”

Excerpts from Trevor Timm:

“The government classifies whole subjects of classified material, whether we’re talking about foreign policy or national security, where it’s almost impossible to do national security reporting without touching on classified information. You know, we hear about these giant leaks, we were talking about Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, but if you open up the Washington Post or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or basically any national newspaper on any given day, you’re likely to find classified information on the front page. This has been true not just in the last decade, but for decades, centuries even. And with the- especially with the Obama administration’s approach to prosecuting leaks the amount of information the public is used to knowing about foreign policy subjects is under threat.

We have seen, under the Obama administration, that they have prosecuted more sources of journalists than all administrations before it combined. There was actually only three prosecutions under the Espionage Act, as horrible as the law was, during the WW1 era and just after.

…Another thing that defendants are not allowed to talk about in Espionage Act trials is harm to national security. This happened in Chelsea Manning’s case as well. You know, the government was screaming from the rooftops at first when the Wikileaks cables first started coming out that Julian Assange and Wikileaks had blood on their hands, that this was going to cause catastrophic damage to national security. It came out that no one died because of Chelsea Manning’s leaks and they couldn’t prove any harm, yet this was inadmissible during her trial. It was only until after she was found guilty during the sentencing this was allowed to be brought up.

You know, this has happened over and over again in Espionage Act trials and it makes it easier for the government… The government has such a low burden to get a guilty verdict in these cases that it’s almost impossible for the defendant to overcome. That in turn makes it easier for them to bring prosecutions which then makes it much more chilling on the journalists that are trying to talk to sources even about innocuous information that’s not classified. And so it’s kind of a vicious circle that ends up not only harming the government employees that are trying to expose wrongdoing, but it harms the journalists that are spied on as a result, and then the public that loses out on the information that they should be knowing from the start”

Excerpts from Vincent Ward:

“I think one of the issues that people don’t think about as much… are do service members get a fair shake in the court-martial system and did Chelsea get a fair shake? One of the issues in Chelsea’s trial is, if you look at Chelsea’s sentence in comparision with other Espionage Act cases it isn’t even in the same stratosphere. So I think it leads to an appropriate discussion of whether that’s the product of an unfair military system.
..The kinds of issues you should all be aware of that the appeal will deal with are things like- Chelsea sat in a military brig for over a year awaiting charges… In our legal system people are entitled to a speedy trial, and proponents of the military justice system often argue that one of the benefits of the military justice system is that people can get a trial faster than if they were in federal or state court system. But if you look at Chelsea’s case, she sat there for a really long time awaiting charges- is that fair? Did the court deal with it appropriately? That will be one of the issues on the appeal.
One of the issues that Nancy spoke about, the way Chelsea was treated, when she was in pre-trial confinement… As Nancy describes it, it was torture. Is that appropriate for a service member who wasn’t at that time wasn’t found guilty of anything, to be treated like she was? That’s an issue that will be addressed on appeal.”

Watch the complete video of the panel discussion here

Photos/Video: Boston Protest Against War Authorization Bill In Congress
by Michael Borkson for Boston Indymedia Email: nosanctions (nospam) yahoo.com	22 Feb 2015
Feb. 21, 2015-Boston Common: About 20 anti-war protesters held a speakout against Obama's request for authorization to use military force against Iraq and Syria.
Click on image for a larger version Photos/Video Boston Protest Againt War Authorization Bill In Congress
Feb. 21, 2015-Boston Common: About 20 anti-war protesters held a speakout against Obama's request for authorization to use military force against Iraq and Syria. Braving the cold sub-freezing temperatures, activists spoke out against the prospect of endless war this authorization would give the US. Here are links to photos and a video I took, and below,the details in the event announcement. photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/protestphotos1/sets/72157650501897027/ video: http://youtu.be/w8zddW04Pkk Saturday, February 21, 2015, 1:00 pm Park Street Station • Park & Tremont Streets • Boston co-sponsored by United For Justice With Peace www.justicewithpeace.org and Committee For Peace And Human Rights Boston(sat. weekly peace vigil at Park St.) www.stopallwars.com President Obama has asked Congress for authorization to carry out an ever-expanding war in Iraq and Syria – and to spread that war to neighboring countries. Our leaders say that these new wars will last for years. But over the past 13 years, this country has already spent one trillion, five hundred billion dollars for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and other parts of the Middle East and South Asia. That much money could build schools, fix our infrastructure, jumpstart jobs and a green economy, and alleviate poverty and hunger worldwide! These military actions have brought hundreds of thousands of deaths, but neither peace nor security. The current campaign to sell this war has nothing to do with protecting us or the people of the area. Instead, it is intended to secure control of the area by repressive governments and sectarian militias allied (for the time being) with Washington. The current bombing campaign is a violation of the U.N. Charter and the U.S. Constitution. Is bombing an answer to these sectarian conflicts? Do these actions reflect the interests of the people of the U.S. or the peoples of the Middle East? We should not be involved militarily in a sectarian conflict that our war in Iraq set off. Any real and lasting solution to the problems in the region must come from the peoples of that region themselves, not from the Pentagon. Call Congress toll-free at (877) 429-0678 and say: “I want you to speak out strongly and to vote against against proposals that authorize use of military force and support for armed groups in Syria and Iraq. ”
Click on image for a larger version Photos/Video Boston Protest Againt War Authorization Bill In Congress
Click on image for a larger version Photos/Video Boston Protest Againt War Authorization Bill In Congress
Click on image for a larger version Photos/Video Boston Protest Againt War Authorization Bill In Congress

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program- Nine –To Be Judged By One’s Own    

No question, no question at all that Robertson Edgars, twenty-two,  all sable warrior tough, six-two, two hundred and forty pounds, who had played some ball in high school, a rumbling, tumbling, stumbling break back fullback, the worst kind,  who devoured opposing linemen, was every white man’s nightmare, every white man’s nightmare dream that if he, Robertson Edgars, came into that white man’s range, say his neighborhood at dusk or dawn, never mind into his curtilage anytime, that he would sweat, sweat like hell, about what to do with the bastard, especially if the wife and kids were there to see him sweat, sweat death fear sweat. And no question either that every white woman, every white women, mothering woman, feared, feared that black night fear when she came within fifty feet of a monster like the brother. (Well, maybe not everyone since Brother Edgars had had a bed full of white chicks, white chicks who status conscious in high school craved amazing break-back fullbacks and others later craved that ersatz black man experience when the times dictated that as a rite of passage experience among certain white educated women, and a few not so well educated too, although nothing steady, that was strictly black stuff, strictly, some educated, some not)

So Robertson’s lawyer, his mother downtown red brick textile sweat shop crimp and save bought lawyer, Jim Everett,  was surprised (and in fact had tried like hell to argue him out of the decision, tried to explain one more time the what and why of the white man’s justice system that even he, an honored white man, knew, knew not just in his bones but through his pile of black convictions and the many years prison time was stacked again him) when he had told him that he preferred to have his case, his burglary case tried before a jury rather than a judge (the judge in this case, Judge Abbott, notorious in the Court of Common Pleas, for his quick dispatch of young men into the Texas prison system night with heavy terms, and fines too).              

And here was the rub. In Macomb County even though blacks outnumbered whites about three to two the jury pool would probably wind up being majority white. Robertson’s argument that a few black mothers empaneled might take pity on him since he actually was innocent and had an alibi (a black alibi but an alibi nevertheless) and although he had some priors (a couple of drug busts, a couple of DUIs, kids’ stuff really) he thought he could survive that information if the situation came to that since those mothers would perhaps have had their own crimp and save son in trouble woes, or knew of such doings) time came for that. His back-up was that maybe some black father (although not Robertson’s, his father had died in some stinking jungle hellhole in Vietnam in 1971) worried about his own son might see where Robertson had been framed, framed like a million other black kids. Jim thought he was foolish to believe that might happen but he kept it to himself once Robertson made it plain he was adamant on the question.        

On the day set for trial Judge Abbott, according to Jim Everett, seemed to be in a particularly bad mood. He was known to be ill-tempered even on his good days and was deliberately rude to Jim when he requested dismissal of the charges for lack of evidence, some standard Jim argued not met by the prosecution, and he ruled that motion down in about two seconds with no arguments heard. This action by the judge only confirmed in Robertson’s mind the wisdom of his choice. Shortly thereafter the jury selection proceeded and from the start things went badly when a young white woman was dismissed for some cause and then a young black woman who looked like she was making eyes at Robertson (neither of those two women would be picked, or have survived challenge, under any circumstances, black or white, being young was a bar to selection, an unwritten law). By noontime the jury had been selected and Robertson almost, as big as he was, cried. Not only in three to two black Macomb County was the jury all- white it was ten men and two women. And the two women might as well have been men because they looked and acted like they were prison guards at the women’s prison or some such thing. Robertson reached back as he was walking outside for a cigarette before the start of the trial itself that afternoon and said out loud to himself Paul (his black brother alibi) better come through, he had better come through…               

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[39][40]

 

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

 

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

 

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

 

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

 

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

 

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

 

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

 

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

 

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

 

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

 

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

 

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

 

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

 

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

 

We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

 

This Land IS Your Land- With Folk Troubadour Woody Guthrie In Mind.                   

      

Some songs, no, let’s go a little wider, some music sticks with you from an early age which even fifty years later you can sing the words out chapter and verse. Like those church hymns that you were forced to sit through (when you would have rather been outside playing before you got that good dose of religion which made the hymns make sense), like the bits of music you picked up in school from silly children’s songs in elementary school to that latter time in junior high school when you got your first does of the survey of the American and world songbook once a week for the school year, or more pleasantly your coming of age music, maybe like me that 1950s classic age of rock and roll when certain songs were associated with certain rites of passage, mainly about boy-girl things. One such song from my youth, and maybe yours too, was Woody Guthrie surrogate “national anthem,” This Land is Your Land. (Surrogate in response to Irving Berlin’s God Bless America in the throes of the Great Depression that came through America, came through his Oklahoma like a blazing dust ball wind.    

Although I had immersed myself in the folk minute scene of the early 1960s as it passed through the coffeehouses and clubs of Harvard Square (and got full program play complete with folk DJs and for a time on television via the Hootenanny show) that is not where I first heard or learned the song. No for that one song I think the time and place was in seventh grade in junior high school where Mr. Dasher would each week in Music Appreciation teach us a song and then the next week expect us to be able to sing it without looking at a paper. He was kind of a nut for this kind of thing, for making us learn songs from difference genres (except the loathed, his, rock and roll) like Some Enchanted Evening from South Pacific, Stephen Foster’s My Old Kentucky Home, or Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade and stuff like that. So that is where I learned it.

Mr. Dasher might have mentioned some information about the songwriter on these things but I did not really pick up on Woody Guthrie’s importance to the American songbook until I got to that folk minute I mentioned where everybody revered him (including most prominently Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott) not so much for that song but for the million other songs that he produced seemingly at the drop of a hat before the dreaded Huntington’s disease got the better of him. Almost everybody covered him then, wrote poems and songs about him, sat at his feet in order to learn the simple way that he took song to entertain the people with.                 

It was not until some time later that I got the drift of his early life, the life of a nomadic troubadour singing and writing his way across the land. That is what the serious folk singers were trying to emulate, that keep on moving thing that Woody perfected as he headed out of the played-out dustbowl Oklahoma night, wrote plenty of good dustbowl ballads about that too, evoking the ghost of Tom Joad in John Steinbeck’s’ The Grapes Of Wrath  as he went along. Wrote of the hard life of the generations drifting West to scratch out some kind of existence on the land, tame that West a bit. Wrote too of political things going on, the need for working people to unionize, the need to take care of the desperate Mexico braceros brought in to bring in the harvest and then abused and left hanging, spoke too of true to power about some men robbing you with a gun others with a fountain pen, about the beauty of America if only the robber barons, the greedy, the spirit-destroyers would let it be. Wrote too about the wide continent called America and how this land was ours, if we knew how to keep it. No wonder I remembered that song chapter and verse.             

Dear All, The U.S. Congress is considering another "Authorization for the Use of Military Force" -- a broad approval for more war. Click here to oppose any new AUMF. This is the last thing we need. These wars are not making us safer but generating enemies. They are not surgical operations, but mass killings, as well as assaults on the natural environment and the public budget -- not to mention excuses for curtailing civil liberties. Please click here to sign the following statement for delivery to the media and Congress: We oppose any new authorization for the use of military force and call for the immediate repeal of the authorizations passed by Congress in 2001 and 2002. This petition will be a powerful tool as it is being jointly promoted by Conference of Major Superiors of Men, Iraq Veterans Against the War, KnowDrones.com, Military Families Speak Out, Peace Action, Peace Action Montgomery, RootsAction.org, United National Antiwar Coalition, Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones, U.S. Labor Against the War, and World Beyond War. After signing the petition, please forward this message to your friends. You can also share it from the webpage after taking the action yourself. Humbly for Peace, Kevin Martin Executive Director Peace Action P.S. This petition was created by RootsAction. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, and many others. Take Action: Add your voice to the opposition to a new Use of Military Force CONNECT TO US:  Find us on Facebook  Follow us on Twitter  Read our blog  Contact us You are subscribed to Peace Action's Action Alert Network. You can unsubscribe here.

Fri, Feb 20, 2015 09:00 AM

New European Initiatives for Palestine Tuesday, February 24 @ 7:00 pm Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston Street (Copley T) and lunchtime discussion Tuesday, February 24 @ 12:00 noon First Church in Cambridge, 11 Garden St (Harvard T), Hastings Room - RSVP requested The Palestine/Israel Working Group of Massachusetts Peace Action invites you to hear Dr. Phyllis Starkey, former British M.P. Dear Al, Dr. Phyllis Starkey was a Labour Member of Parliament from 1997 to 2010, and ministerial aide in the British Foreign Office from 2001-2005. Throughout her parliamentary career, she kept a focus on Palestine and the Middle East, chairing the All-Party Parliamentary Palestine Group and visiting the region many times.  She is a trustee of Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and speaks frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Earlier this month, Dr. Starkey spoke at Oxford University on “How European Governments subcontract policy on Israel/Palestine to parliamentarians, civil society, and businesses.” “Israel’s continued deepening of the occupation, failure to make any positive moves in political negotiations, and growing threats to formally annex Area C of the West Bank demonstrate that Europe must use its leverage as Israel’s biggest trading partner and take more robust action.”   — May 2014 “Europe needs to use its economic levers to hold Israel to account. Firstly it must suspend all arms sales to Israel today – not when the next conflict begins. Secondly the EU should propose a strict timetable for easing the blockade (coupled with an offer to meet Israel’s genuine security concerns) and for wider negotiations to end the entire occupation.”   — September 2014 OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Lunch Discussion: $5 Donation and RSVP requested Evening Program: $10 donation requested - $5 for MAPA members and low income For peace and justice, David Zackon Palestine/Israel Working Group contact us at pi@masspeaceaction.org Join Massachusetts Peace Action - or renew your membership today!   Dues are $40/year for an individual, $65 for a family, or $10 for student/unemployed/low income.  Members vote for leadership and endorsements, receive newsletters and discounts on event admissions.  Donate now and you will be a member in good standing through December 2015! Your financial support makes this work possible! Massachusetts Peace Action, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138 617-354-2169  • info@masspeaceaction.org • Follow us on Facebook or Twitter Click here to unsubscribe