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April 18, 2000

Lethal Law: America Must Follow International Lead, Abolish Death Penalty

“The deliberate institutionalized taking of human life by the state is the greatest conceivable degradation to the dignity of the human personality,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg wrote in a 1976 article in the Boston Globe. Echoed by all Western democracies except the United States, Goldberg’s words aptly describe the tragedy promised if Mumia Abu-Jamal is executed.

For 17 years, Jamal, a journalist and political activist, has been on death row in Pennsylvania for the murder of a police officer. Judge Albert Sabo, who presided over Jamal’s trial, has presided over more trials resulting in death judgments than any other U.S. judge.

Sabo rejected all of Jamal’s new evidence introduced at his 1995-96 post-conviction review hearings in state court. This new evidence included witnesses who wanted to recant their testimony implicating Jamal, who testified about police coercion of false testimony, who knew about police suppression of exonerating evidence, and who saw another man shoot the officer.

Unfortunately for Jamal, federal review of his incomplete state record is now threatened. Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, federal judges must give a presumption of correctness to state court factual findings in criminal cases.

U.S. District Court Judge William H. Yohn will decide whether to limit Jamal’s federal habeas review to Sabo’s state court record or whether to re-open the federal court record. The record as it stands would virtually ensure execution. Six former Philadelphia prosecutors have sworn in court documents that no accused could receive a fair trial in Sabo’s court.

International treaties and customary norms have consistently condemned capital punishment. One of Jamal’s 29 claims in his federal habeas corpus petition is that his death sentence is unconstitutional under evolving standards of international law.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a major international treaty, provides, “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”

In the Second Optional Protocol to this covenant, the U.N. General Assembly stated, “No one within the jurisdiction of a State Party to the present protocol shall be executed.” It further mandates that, “Each State Party shall take all necessary measures to abolish the death penalty within its jurisdiction.”

Capital punishment is not one of the penal options available to the International Criminal Court. It likewise is not available to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, established to prosecute serious violations of international humanitarian law in the former territory of Yugoslavia.

Significantly, in Protocol No. 6 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Concerning the Abolition of the Death Penalty, the European Convention stated, “The death penalty shall be abolished. No one shall be condemned to such penalty or executed.”

According to last week’s report of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, capital punishment is becoming obsolete among its 54 active members, although a handful, including the United States, continues to use the death penalty.

Amnesty International reported that four of the countries that executed people in 1998 – the United States, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia – accounted for 85 percent of all executions.

The U.N. Human Rights Committee found the United States to be noncompliant with its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty ratified by the United States, because of its excessive number of offenses subject to the death penalty and the number of death sentences imposed.

The United States has no uniform law on the death penalty: Each state is free to choose whether or not to execute its residents. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that this discrepancy violates the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, which the United States signed.

In 1997, the U.N. Special Rapporteur reported to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights that “race, ethnic origin, and economic status appear to be the key determinants of who will, and who will not, receive a death sentence” in the United States. The commission responded by calling for an immediate moratorium on capital punishment.

Also in 1997, the American Bar Association, concerned about incompetency of counsel in death penalty cases and racial bias toward either the victim or the defendant, called for a moratorium on the death penalty.

Since 1976, 75 people in the United States have been released from death row as a result of DNA and other exonerating evidence. Several others, however, have been mistakenly executed. And, two months ago, Illinois Gov. George Ryan, dismayed that his state had proven innocent nearly as many death row inmates as it had executed, announced a moratorium on executions.

A recent study in Texas, which leads all other states in the number of people executed, showed that the current capital punishment system is an outgrowth of the racist “legacy of slavery.”

The Marquis de Lafayette, speaking to the French Chamber of Deputies in 1830, years after witnessing the excesses of the French Revolution, said, “I shall ask for the abolition of the punishment of death until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me.”

The United States must fall in line with the prevailing principles of international law and the community of civilized nations by abolishing the death penalty. As Justice William Brennan wrote in his dissent in Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361 (1989), “the choices of governments elsewhere in the world also merit our attention as indicators whether a punishment is acceptable in a civilized society.”

Treaties ratified by the United States become the law of the land under the Constitution. In honoring these treaties, norms of international law must also be followed regarding international displeasure with the death penalty. Even Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sandra Day O’Connor have considered international law in their rulings.

For instance, in a case last October that challenged the lengthy delays in execution as cruel and unusual punishment, Justice Breyer looked to Jamaica, Zimbabwe and international treaties in arguing, albeit unsuccessfully, that the Court should give “decent respect to the views of mankind.”

Like virtually all other civilized countries, the United States must take the high road and abolish the death penalty. We must choose and affirm life, not death.

March 21, 2000

No “Victor’s Justice” in Yugoslavia: NATO Must be Held Accountable for Its War Crimes

After World War II, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal was established to try Japanese military and political leaders accused of committing atrocities. The United States, which was responsible for at least two of the greatest war crimes in the history of the world – the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – was not brought before the tribunal. Only the vanquished Japanese were held accountable for their war crimes. In the words of dissenting Judge Radhabinod Pal of India, this was “victors’ justice.” The United States – and its “victorious” NATO allies – will once again escape responsibility for war crimes, this time for those committed against the people of Yugoslavia.One year ago, 120 countries adopted the Statute of the International Criminal Court as a multilateral treaty. Established under the aegis of the United Nations to operate independently starting in five years, the ICC will be the first permanent international body to try suspected war criminals. Its jurisdiction extends to genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. Art. 5(1), Statute of the International Criminal Court, U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 183/9 (17 July 1998). Seven countries – including Libya, Iraq, China, India, Sudan, Israel and the United States – voted against the establishment of the ICC. The U.S. sought to ensure the legal processes of the ICC would not jeopardize its role as global superpower, insulating its soldiers and policy-makers from becoming defendants in war crimes prosecutions.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

In 1993, the U.N. Security Council – with significant financial aid from the leading NATO governments – set up the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, or ICT-Y. S/RES/827 (1993), 32 ILM 1203 (1993). It has jurisdiction over grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, violations of the laws or customs of war, genocide and crimes against humanity, committed in the former Yugoslavia since 1991. The tribunal rightfully indicted President Slobodan Milosevic and other Yugoslav officials for war crimes. But thus far there have been no indictments against NATO for war crimes it committed during its 11-week aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia.

Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, had warned NATO it might be held accountable for war crimes after two buses in Kosovo were bombed, killing more than 50 civilians. She said “People are not collateral damage. They are people who are killed, injured, whose lives are destroyed.”

Article 3 of the ICT-Y Statute prohibits “devastation not justified by military necessity.” NATO bombs killed an estimated 1500 civilians and injured thousands more. “Smart” laser-guided weapons hit 50 bridges, 12 railroad lines, five civilian airports, 50 hospitals and clinics, 190 educational institutions, 16 medieval monasteries and shrines, and several factories, power plants, water mains, major roadways, media stations, libraries and homes. NATO Commander Wesley Clark said the goal was to disrupt, degrade, devastate and destroy the infrastructure of the country.

The United States used that same strategy in Iraq in 1991. When asked five years later on “60 Minutes,” about the half million Iraqui children who had died as a result, Madeleine Albright said, “We think the price is worth it.”

Spanish Captain Adolfo Luis Martin de la Hoz, who participated in NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia, reported that NATO consciously chose non-military targets and “every single” mission was planned by high U.S. military authorities.

Also prohibited by Article 3 of the ICT-Y Statute is the “employment of poisonous weapons or other weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.” NATO used cluster bombs banned by international conventions. Children (i.e., “soft targets,” according to the manufacturer) are being mutilated and killed when unexploded bomblets blow up in their hands. Equally troubling is NATO’s use of depleted uranium weapons, condemned in a 1991 U.S. Nuclear Defense Agency report as a “serious health threat.”

One speck of DU dust lodged in a lung upon impact or ingestion can cause cancer. This deadly compound, first used on a large-scale by the United States during the Gulf War, has been linked to Gulf War Syndrome and high levels of stillbirths, birth defects and leukemia among Iraqui children.

On April 18, 1999, NATO bombed three major industrial plants in Pancevo, a city near Belgrade. Levels of the carcinogen vinyl-chloride monomer (VHM) released into the air reached 10,600 times more than accepted safety levels. This has poisoned the air, the land, the crops and the Danube River. Teams from the U.N. Environmental Programme and the U.N. Centre for Human Settlements in Yugoslavia warn of the dangers of “miscarriages, birth defects and incurable diseases of the nervous system and liver.”

Physicians in Pancevo have recommended privately that all women who were present in the town the night of the bombing avoid pregnancy for the next two years. They also advised women less than nine months pregnant to obtain abortions. Most have reportedly complied.

Dr. Slobodan Tosovic, chief ecotoxicologist at Belgrade’s Public Institute of Health, said, “It’s enough to make me believe the Americans and NATO were making a biochemical experiment with us.”

The United States was well aware of the consequences of bombing the petrochemical complex. “The Americans built that factory, so they knew precisely what was inside when they bombed it,” said Pancevo Mayor Mikovic.

A recently released U.N. report said the 11 weeks of NATO air strikes have had “a devastating impact” on the environment, industry, employment, essential services and agriculture of Yugoslavia.

Walter Rockler, former prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal said, “The Nuremberg Court found that to initiate a war of aggression, as the U.S. has done against Yugoslavia, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime.” Rockler also claims the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia violated the U.N. Charter and the charter of NATO itself, prohibiting aggression and forceful military intervention.

Bombing the infrastructure of Yugoslavia went beyond legitimate military targets. “The notion that humanitarian violations can be redressed with random destruction and killing by advanced technological means is inherently suspect,” Rockler wrote in an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune. “This is mere pretext for our arrogant assertion of dominance and power in defiance of international law.”

Article 18 of the ICT-Y Statute requires the Prosecutor to “initiate investigations” ex-officio or “on the basis of information obtained from any source, particularly from Governments, United Nations organs, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations.” Upon determining that a prima facie case exists, the Prosecutor shall prepare an indictment.

Complaint Lodged with ICT-Y Prosecutor

In May of 1999, a group of Canadian lawyers and professors as well as the American Association of Jurists, a non-governmental organization with consultative status before the U.N. Social and Economic Council, lodged a complaint with the tribunal. It asked Prosecutor Louise Arbour to “immediately investigate and indict for serious crimes against international humanitarian law” the 67 named heads of state, ministers and NATO officials.

The alleged crimes include “willful killing, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly, employment of poisonous weapons or other weapons to cause unnecessary suffering, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity, attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings, destruction or willful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art and science.”

The complaint also charges “open violation” of the U.N. Charter, NATO’s own treaty, the Geneva Conventions and the principles of international law recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal. It points to the bombing of civilian targets and alleges that NATO leaders “have admitted publicly to having agreed upon and ordered these actions, being fully aware of their nature and effects.”

The Independent Commission of Inquiry Indictment

It is unclear whether the Prosecutor will initiate an investigation of these allegations. However, on July 31, 1999, the International Action Center in New York convened the Independent Commission of Inquiry Hearing to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against the People of Yugoslavia. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark prepared a multi-charge indictment, naming President William J. Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, various U.S./NATO generals and others, as defendants for their part in the war against Yugoslavia.
The charges are based on crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Commission of Inquiry will examine the laws of armed conflict, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Tribunal, the U.N. Charter, the NATO Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international treaties and international law as well as the Constitution and domestic laws of the United States. Several months of mass hearings will be held followed by a War Crimes Tribunal. Hearings have been scheduled in several countries. The Commission will ask internationally acclaimed jurists, human rights activists, trade unionists, leaders of civil rights and women’s organizations, members of parliaments and others to review the body of evidence and issue a public verdict.

It is incumbent upon the ICT-Y prosecutor to take the complaints seriously and initiate an official investigation into NATO’s war crimes. We must not allow “victors’ justice” to repeat itself in Yugoslavia.

March 16, 2000

Punishment Politics: Tug of War Over Cuban-Boy Refugee Is Symbolic of U.S.-Cuba Embargo Problems

Elian Gonzalez, a 6-year-old Cuban boy, was found floating on an inner tube off the coast of Florida on Nov. 25, 1999, his mother and 10 others from Cuba having perished in a boat accident. Elian was rescued and is staying in Florida with relatives of his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, a hotel doorman in Cuba. Elian’s father has demanded the return of his boy to Cuba. The case has become a cause celebre in Cuba, where hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand Elian’s return to his homeland. In the United States, Elian is the political flash point for an illegal and inhumane U.S. policy toward Cuba.

U.S. politicians who seek to prevent Elian from returning to Cuba point to the large numbers who have fled Cuba in recent years, many risking and some losing their lives in unseaworthy crafts to reach the shores of Florida. The desperate economic conditions in Cuba are a direct outgrowth of U.S. policy toward Cuba, which in turn mirrors the strength of the Cuban-American voting lobby. Because it is a potent political force in U.S. electoral politics, Congress and all presidents since 1959 (the year of Fidel Castro’s Marxist revolution) have been loathe to cross the Cuban-American lobby.

The Cubans who left Cuba after the revolution have wielded a powerful sword on the U.S. political scene. L.D. Mallory, a state department senior official, wrote in a 1960 memorandum that, “the majority of Cubans support Castro,” and “there is no effective political opposition.” Thus, he maintained, “the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” He stressed that “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba,” and he proposed “a line of action that makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the government.”

Later that year, the Eisenhower Administration declared a partial embargo on trade with Cuba in an attempt to pressure Cuba to change its form of government. Vice President Richard Nixon described this policy as an “all-out ‘quarantine’ – economically, politically and diplomatically – of the Castro regime.” The Kennedy Administration in 1962 announced a total embargo of trade with Cuba.

Successive administrations have maintained this embargo, and the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 was the first Congressional legislation to expand the scope of the embargo. It strengthened further in 1996 with the adoption of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, commonly known as the Helms-Burton Act, which empowers the U.S. government to cancel foreign aid to nations that grant preferential treatment to Cuba.

According to Richard Garfield, of the Columbia University School of Nursing in New York, the U.S. government used “Mafia-type pressure tactics” to dissuade foreign sales to Cuba of ingredients for making soap and detergents. An amendment to the act that would have carved out an exception to the embargo for the sale of medicine and food to Cuba lost in the House of Representatives. In the past seven years, the United States has extended the reach of the embargo by attempting to force foreign countries and corporations to participate in the economic blockade of Cuba.

The United States embargo – or economic blockade – of Cuba has had disastrous effects on the Cuban people. Its restriction on the sale of food, medicine and medical equipment is unprecedented. Even the U.N. sanctions against Iraq do not ban the sale of food or medicine, because, as stated in a 1991 article in the New York Times, it is internationally “unacceptable to cause the wide-spread suffering among civilians through impeding the shipment of foods and medicines” to a civilian population.

In 1997, after conducting a 12 month investigation into the Cuban health system, the American Association for World Health found the U.S. embargo “has caused a significant rise in suffering – and even deaths – in Cuba.” The AAWH report also states that, since the enactment of the Cuban Democracy Act, Cuban “patients going without essential drugs or doctors performing medical procedures without adequate equipment . . . has sharply accelerated.” According to the AAWH, Cuba has access to less than half the new medicines on the world market, and it cannot buy some life-saving medical supplies anywhere. Fatal heart attacks in Cuba have increased because the U.S. pacemaker monopoly will not sell to Cuba. New anti-cancer and AIDS drugs are not accessible to Cubans. The CDA’s prohibition on the sale of food, fertilizer, pesticide and animal feed to Cuba has resulted in a 33 percent drop in caloric intake. The AAWH also found that food shortages have caused low birth weight in babies and a significant increase in nervous disorders.

The economic blockade against Cuba is a crime against humanity, defined by the Nuremberg Principles as “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds . . .” For 39 years, the U.S. government has punished the Cuban people because it dislikes their political system.

In 1948, the United Nations passed the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. The United States and Cuba signed and ratified it, and it took effect in 1950. The Convention guaranteed “the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores . . . intended only for civilians . . .” and “. . . essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under 15, expectant mothers and maternity cases.” A blockade on food, medicines and other objects indispensable to survival is not permitted even in times of war.

The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly has condemned the embargo annually for the last eight years. This year, only the United States and Israel voted against the U.N. resolution. Ill. Gov. George Ryan, whose delegation visited Havana in October, recently urged an end to the economic embargo against Cuba. He observed that it “has been largely driven by political strength of the Cuban exile community in South Florida.” Ryan’s report states, “Clearly the 40-year-old U.S. policy of embargo and isolation against Cuba has not succeeded in driving Castro from power, and it is unlikely to ever be successful.”

Meanwhile, the embargo continues to take its toll on the people of Cuba. In addition, the U.S. government broadcasts anti-Cuba and pro-U.S. propaganda to Cuba on Radio Marti. As a result, many Cubans have left, crossing the Florida Strait in unsafe boats. In 1994, the United States and Cuba issued a Joint Communique, providing that “migrants rescued at sea attempting to enter the United States will not be permitted to enter the United States.” Cuba pledged to try to prevent unsafe departures using mainly persuasive methods. A joint statement between the United States and Cuba in 1995 stated that “Cuban migrants intercepted at sea by the United States and attempting to enter the United States will be taken to Cuba.” The “wet feet-dry feet” policy, however, allows only Cubans caught on U.S. shores to become permanent U.S. residents and legal workers. Those intercepted at sea go back.

Although rescued at sea, Elian Gonzalez has not gone back to Cuba. Immigration and Naturalization Service Director Doris Meissner acknowledges that “U.S. law, and I think Cuban law, says a parent [Elian’s father in Cuba] has the primary custody right. But we will create an opportunity for those who have an interest in the boy’s well-being to be heard,” Lawyers for Elian’s Cuban-American relatives have filed a political asylum claim on his behalf. They claim Elian has a “well-founded fear of persecution” in Cuba if he returns, which can depend on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

Judging from the Cuban outpouring of support for Elian, no one seems to have a “well-founded fear of persecution.” The frivolous asylum claim made by Elian’s American relatives has served to focus attention on the economic deprivation in Cuba, which caused his mother to flee with him and others in an unseaworthy craft. The U.S. economic blockade of Cuba has led to the tragic conditions in Cuba. The blockade must end at once. Elian Gonzalez must go back to his homeland.

May 21, 1999

The Dark Side of the Bombing of Kosovo

The bombing of Kosovo is being justified as a tactic to prevent “ethnic cleansing.” But the primary motivation is to use NATO to secure the U.S. as the sole superpower. The U.S. has historically used its military force for intervention to protect its own economic and political interests. According to a 1996 New York Times article, “Now, in the years after the cold war, the United States is again establishing suzerainty over the empire of a former foe. The disintegration of the Soviet Union has prompted the United States to expand its zone of military hegemony into Eastern Europe (through NATO) and into formerly neutral Yugoslavia. And – most important of all – the end of the cold war has permitted America to deepen its involvement in the Middle East.”

Why does the U.S. desire control over Eastern Europe? Because the Caspian Sea region rivals the Middle East with its extremely rich oil and gas resources, estimated at $4 trillion by U.S. News and World Report. The American Petroleum Institute, the Washington-based voice of the biggest U.S. oil companies, called the Caspian Sea region, “the area of greatest resource potential outside of the Middle East.”

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, there has been an ongoing competition between Russia and the West for access to this oil. Retired Navy Admiral T. Joseph Lopez, who until recently oversaw all U.S. naval forces in Europe, including the Caspian area, said, “I think within the next decade, the Caspian and Black Sea area will become the next Persian Gulf, with the same enormous potential for positive engagement as well as trouble.”

The Caspian Sea is landlocked between Russia and a group of former Soviet republics (including Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan). The key problem is how to transport this oil to world markets. Russia wants the pipelines to run through its territory, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The U.S. wants them to go through its ally,Turkey. If the U.S. were truly concerned about ethnic cleansing, it would not do business with Turkey. In recent years, that country has prosecuted its own ethnic cleansing campaign, killing 100,000 Kurds and forcing millions more off their land. That vile campaign has not daunted the U.S.; Turkey is the third largest recipient of U.S. financial aid.

Five years ago, Clinton became aware of the importance of Caspian Sea oil. Former National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, sent by Clinton as an emissary to Azerbaijan, observed, “Clinton became rather directly involved.” Clinton created an ambassadorial position in the State Department to deal with Caspian projects. Richard Morningstar, Clinton’s Caspian energy advisor, was a keynote speaker at “The U.S. Caspian Ambassadors’ Tour,” held in New Orleans earlier this month. He outlined Clinton’s goals of providing commercial opportunities to U.S. firms, mitigating regional conflicts among Caspian nations and promoting energy security for the U.S. and its allies. “For these countries to be independent, the resources have to be able to get out freely without undue influence from competitive countries,” Morningstar noted.

Interestingly, former U.S. Secretaries of State Alexander Haig and James Baker as well as Brzezinski have earned large consulting fees for oil companies working in the region.

NATO, in its eastward expansion, has incorporated the former Soviet nations that border the Caspian Sea, into its sub-group, Partnership for Peace. Former U.S. ambassador to NATO, Robert E. Hunter, described the difference between membership in NATO and PFP as “razor-thin.”

How does Caspian oil tie in to the war in Kosovo? The April NATO bombings of bridges at Novi Sad and other points on the Danube River blocked international cargo traffic moving to the Black Sea. The Danube crosses from Yugoslavia into Romania just east of Belgrade, and carries oil from the Caspian into Europe.

The U.S. is attempting to establish military dominance at the choke point for Caspian Sea oil, thus assuming effective military control over all of the oil resources for the entire industrialized world.

Russia and China have been particularly threatened by the new NATO expansion and the air war in Serbia. Russia’s defense minister, Igor Sergeyev, worries the situation in Yugoslavia “could happen anywhere.” Many Russians are concerned NATO could use Kosovo as a precedent to intervene in Russia’s breakaway province of Chechnya, also a hot spot along proposed routes for oil pipelines from the Caspian Sea. Last year, Boris Yeltsin told an interviewer, “Some seek to exclude Russia from the game and undermine its interests. The so-called ‘pipeline war’ in the region is part of this game.”

And China, whose Belgrade embassy was bombed recently by NATO, is the subject of a formal protest by Azerbaijan for reported arms deliveries to Azerbaijan’s rival Armenia, claiming China is trying to disrupt Caspian oil exports.

Even though the Soviet Union has dissolved and Russia is weakened by internal economic and political problems, the U.S. is vying to maintain its status as sole superpower in the world. Meanwhile, the people of Serbia suffer. The bombing must stop.

May 4, 1999

Stanford Redux: Staying True to the April Third Movement

The April Third Movement was a life-changing experience for hundreds of Stanford students in the 1960s and 1970s. Sent to Stanford by our parents who anticipated we would receive a top-notch education, we found ourselves transforming the very world we were studying. As we read about the War in Southeast Asia, we came to understand the role of the United States, and of Stanford University, in conducting and perpetuating that War. We saw films of the Vietnamese people, living and working and educating their children under ground, to avoid the bombs being dropped by the United States. We witnessed the destruction of their small country, as the bombs devastated the crops and the countryside and the people. We were haunted by anguished women and children running from U.S. planes loaded with deadly napalm.

Our reactions to what we saw and read were colored by our knowledge that Stanford University was complicit in this war on the people of Southeast Asia. We learned that research to develop chemical, biological and other high-tech weapons, as well as electronic warfare and counter-insurgency techniques, was being conducted at Stanford. The War was being waged in our own backyard. And we felt personally responsible.

We spent countless hours studying, discussing and strategizing to end the War. No action was taken without lengthy study and debate as we tried to implement “participatory democracy.” Hundreds of students sat in buildings, occupied the Stanford Industrial Park and defended ourselves against tear gas when the police reacted to our civil disobedience. We risked our futures as many of us were arrested or disciplined by the Stanford power structure.

Our political awakening was inextricably bound up with our personal development. We found ourselves in the midst of a cultural revolution, as we questioned authority, elevated love over destruction and underwent profound transformation in our lifestyles. We strove for equality – between races, between sexes and between classes. We studied together, we worked together, we lived together. Our values were reflected in the music we loved, performed by the poets of our time – Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Simon and Garfunkel, Nina Simone, Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead.

Ultimately, we were successful. Our efforts contributed to ending the War. But it didn’t stop there. Many of our lives have been guided by the values we internalized during our days in the April Third Movement (named for the date in 1969 when we decided to sit in at the Applied Electronics Laboratory; the occupation lasted eleven days). We have continued to do progressive work as community organizers, educators, lawyers, journalists, farmers, doctors, poets, politicians and scholars (to name a few). And we salute the activism of the current Stanford students as you try to make the world a better place, by supporting workers, minorities, gays and lesbians and environmentalists in their struggles for justice.

The University must be a laboratory for both theory and practice. It is here we have the opportunity to study; but it is here we also have the responsibility to use our knowledge to change ourselves, and in turn, our community. Please join us this weekend as we look back at the 60s and 70s as well as ahead to the next century. Let us work together to make the world a more humane place for all.

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