'War will not bring peace'

Deb Storie has an opionion piece in today's Age about the war in Afghanistan:

'WHAT is Kevin Rudd like?" "What type of man is he?" "Will he win the election?" Afghan friends and colleagues assailed me with these questions when I returned to Afghanistan in October last year. Their obsession with our federal election bemused me. Ten years ago they didn't know when Australian elections were or that Australia had a prime minister.
My friends explained: "Your next prime minister is very important to us. We need to know whether he will be someone else who believes that guns are the answer to everything. You see if he is different, and if the next American president is different, if they are people of peace, then maybe there is hope for us."

Read the whole article here.

Rudd's inconsistency on capital punishment

During Kevin Rudd's election campaign last year he told Robert McClelland off for saying that the Labor Party would advocate for an end to capital punishment in Southeast Asia.
The Bali bombers execution could occur today, and Mr Rudd has been saying that, 'They deserve the justice that we delivered to them.' But he also says, 'We are universally opposed to the death penalty.'
That makes no sense!
If you're confused, you can write the PM an email here.

Click here to read an article from ABC News about Ali Imron, one of the Bali bombers who is now campaigning against terrorism. It's from last year, but is still worth a read.

Pine Gap Four charges dropped!

Got this message from Simon about an hour ago:

Pine gap 4's
convictions quashed
and retrial refused!
Woo hoo!

(Me and Simon and the other Simon went and visited the US Consulate last year during the initial trial, to talk with them about the Pine Gap military base.)

Media coverage:
'Christian activist 'curious' about jail' - ABC News
'Pine Gap activists to appeal convictions' - ABC News
'Court hears appeal from Pine Gap protesters' - ABC News
'Australian Christian anti-war activists appeal prosecution' - Ekklesia
'Pine Gap protesters' convictions quashed' - Herald Sun
'Court finds in favour of Pine Gap protestors' - ABC Darwin

What is our stance on capital punishment?

Barney Zwartz has an article in today's Age about how the Catholic Church is asking Kevin Rudd to appeal for the Indonesian government to spare the lives of the Bali bombers:

The church's move comes after Labor's election campaign altercation on the issue, when Mr Rudd publicly rebuked his then foreign affairs spokesman, Robert McClelland, for saying the Bali bombers should not die — a statement consistent with Labor's long-standing opposition to the death penalty.
At the time, Mr Rudd accused Mr McClelland of insensitivity for flagging a regional campaign against the death penalty just before the fifth anniversary of the 2002 Bali attack.
Weeks later, Mr Rudd's new Government voted at the United Nations for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty.
Last night a spokesman for Mr Rudd said he stood by his October 9 statement that he would never intervene to save a terrorist's life.
('Spare the Bali bombers, says Catholic Church')

I am going to send Kevin Rudd a letter asking him to appeal for the lives of the Bali bombers. If you would like to write to him, you can do that here.

'"Love thy enemy" -- U.S. soldier gets discharge'

A U.S. soldier who said his Christian beliefs compelled him to love his enemies, not kill them, has been granted conscientious objector status and honorably discharged, a civil liberties group said on Tuesday.
Capt. Peter Brown -- who served in Iraq for more than a year and was a graduate of the elite U.S. military academy West Point -- said in a statement issued by the New York Civil Liberties Union that he was relieved the Army had recognized his beliefs made it impossible for him to serve.
"In following Jesus' example, I could not have fired my weapon at another human being, even if he were shooting at me," said Brown, who plans to continue seminary classes he began by correspondence while in Iraq.

Read the rest here, at Yahoo News. (Props to Jarrod.)

Pakistan's state of emergency

Just gotten an email from Avaaz about what's going on in Pakistan at the moment. (President General Pervez Musharraf has imposed martial law, sacked the Supreme Court and shut down the media and basic freedoms, saying that it's necessary for the War on Terror.)
This is from an email written by Asma Jahangir (head of the Pakistani Human Rights Commission and the UN's Special Rapporteur for freedom of religion worldwide), who is under house arrest in Lahore:

There is a strong crackdown on the press and lawyers... The Chief Justice is under house arrest (unofficially). The President of the Supreme Court Bar (Aitzaz Ahsan) and 2 former presidents, Mr. Muneer Malik and Tariq Mahmood have been imprisoned for one month under the Preventive Detention laws...
There are other scores political leaders who have also been arrested. Yesterday I was house arrested for 90 days... the President (who has lost his marbles) said that he had to clamp down on the press and the judiciary to curb terrorism. Those he has arrested are progressive, secular minded people, while the terrorists are offered negotiations and ceasefires.
Lawyers and civil society will challenge the government and the scene is likely to get uglier. We want friends of Pakistan to urge the US administration to stop all support of the instable dictator, as his lust for power is bringing the country close to a worse form of civil strife...

There is a petition here that you can sign, asking other countries to stop supporting Musharraf with military aid.

Heroin in The Age

Yesterday The Age ran a number of articles about Afghanistan's heroin industry and the recent increase of heroin on Melbourne's streets:

Hammer horror - the curse of the streets returns
MELBOURNE is set to be caught up in an international tidal wave of high-purity Afghan heroin flooding world markets — with local addicts confirming the more lethal drug is already available on the city's streets.
The potential influx of Afghan heroin — produced from record opium crops flourishing in regions under Taliban rule — has sparked fears that Melbourne could once again become a destination for cheap, high-purity heroin as it was in the late 1990s.

A scourge woven into the fabric of Afghanistan
THE opium poppy symbolises the complexities and dilemmas confronting Afghanistan and its allies.
There are no easy answers in dealing with the crop that has made Afghanistan the world's largest opium producer, supplying 93 per cent of the illegal opium trade.
Opium cultivation accounts for 60 per cent of the Afghan economy and 90 per cent of its exports. More than three million people, 14 per cent of the population of 23 million, depend on it for their income.

Nothing but hits and memories
We cannot allow a repeat of the late '90s heroin scourge
Tragically, smack is coming back and drug experts such as Nick Crofts, from the Turning Point centre in Fitzroy, say we need to do some serious thinking about our treatment service. It is, he says, inadequate and struggling to cope with existing demand, let alone with what is yet to come. Says Dr Crofts: "We are working in a policy environment where the previous premier (Steve Bracks) said very clearly heroin is gone and the only problem we have now is amphetamines. Which is utterly wrong. State Government support for both medical treatment for people with addictions and the pharmaco-therapy program is pathetic."

A few days back it also mentioned Family First senator Steve Fielding's rebuke of the Labor Party for considering giving the Greens preferences, because of the Greens' harm minimisation policies:

'Outrage' at Greens preference deal
"It is absolutely outrageous to think that Kevin Rudd would want to preference the Greens, knowing their stance on drugs, free injecting rooms in streets, free heroin," Senator Fielding told ABC television...
...Senator Brown responded that the Greens' policies on drugs were for harm minimisation.
"Free heroin on the streets - that's absolutely wrong," he said.
"I'm a doctor. I hate drug addiction.
"But we've got to have sensible policies to meet it and we will make sensible policies."

(You can read the Greens' drug policy here.)

John Howard and the death penalty

I wouldn't have expected John Howard to support the death penalty. But this is what he said regarding the Bali bombers:

"The idea that we would plead for the deferral of executions of people who murdered 88 Australians is distasteful to the entire community," Mr Howard said.
"I find it impossible myself as an Australian, as Prime Minister, and as an individual, to argue that those executions should not take place when they have murdered my fellow countrymen and women."
'PM slams Rudd over death penalty' - The Age

(The Labor Party's foreign affairs spokesperson, Robert McClelland, has promised that a Labor government will campaign against capital punishment in south-east Asia.)

I think this story from ABC News is worth a read: 'Bali bomber now campaigns to stop terrorism'

With us or against us?

Last week we had four people staying with us at Urban Seed for Mission Exposure, which is a time for people to find out a bit about what we do, and the ideas behind what we do. We started off the week by each sharing a bit about our faith journies, particularly how different things have influenced how we see God, the world and our place within the world. We tend to end up with some fairly diverse ideas in the room, so I started off the sharing time with some thoughts on some things Jesus said:

Then some people brought to Jesus a man who was blind and could not talk because he had a demon. Jesus healed the man, so that he was able to talk and see.
The crowds were all amazed at what Jesus had done. 'Could he be the Son of David?' they asked.
When the Pharisees heard this, they replied, 'He drives out demons only because their ruler, the Devil, gives him power to do so.'
Jesus knew what they were thinking, and so he said to them, 'Any country that divides itself into groups which fight each other will not last very long. And any town or family that divides itself into groups which fight each other will fall apart. So if one group is fighting another in Satan's kingdom, this means that it is already divided into groups and will soon fall apart! You say that I drive out demons because the Devil gives me the power to do so. Well, then, who gives your followers the power to drive them out? What your own followers do proves that you are wrong! No, it is not the Devil, but God's Spirit, who gives me the power to drive out demons, which proves that the Kingdom of God has already come upon you.
'No one can break into a strong man's house and take away his belongings unless he first ties up the strong man; then he can plunder his house.
'Anyone who is not for me is really against me; anyone who does not help me gather is really scattering.'
(Matthew 12:22-30)

An argument broke out among the disciples as to which one of them was the greatest. Jesus knew what they were thinking, so he took a child, stood him by his side, and said to them, 'Whoever welcomes this child in my name, welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me, also welcomes the one who sent me. For the one who is least among you all is the greatest.'
John spoke up, 'Master, we saw a man driving out demons in your name, and we told him to stop, because he doesn't belong to our group.'
'Do not try to stop him,' Jesus said to him and to the other disciples, 'because whoever is not against you is for you.'
(Luke 9:46-50)

This is a bit confusing, because it seems like Matthew has Jesus saying that people who aren't part of your group are against you, and as though Luke has Jesus saying that people from other groups are really trying to do the same things as us.
In 2001, after the terrorist attacks in the United States, George Bush paraphrased Jesus, saying to the nations of the world, 'Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.'
However, in both of these stories Jesus is actually working against division. In Matthew's gospel Jesus tells those who are trying to demonise him that he's doing the same thing as them, and that his power comes from the same place.
In Luke's story, Jesus' disciples are arguing about who's the best, and straight afterwards they're wanting to stop people who aren't part of their group from doing good things. Jesus tells them that just because someone is from a different group doesn't mean we're in competition with them.

Pine Gap vigil

So, today we (about a dozen of us, including kids) were in Bourke Street Mall from 12 noon till 2pm, reading out the names of people who've been killed in Iraq (coalition forces and Iraqis), praying and talking to people about Pine Gap. It was pretty full-on reading out the names of the people killed, and reading about who they were how they had died. A majority of the Iraqis were civilians - farmers, clerics, students, children.


Most of the people walking past ignored us (which wasn't surprising), but we still got to talk to a fair few people about Pine Gap, including one guy who lives in Alice Springs.
Also, we got a message from friends in Alice Springs, saying that the prosecutors were unsucessful in putting the Pine Gap Four under house arrest, which is good news.
For about the second hour we were down there it was raining, so this sign was a bit worse for wear by the end:

Support the Pine Gap 4

Next Tuesday May 29th 2007, four Christians will go on trial for attempting to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the Pine Gap military base in the Northern Territory. They face seven years' imprisonment for their actions, and we invite you to lend your support. Join us on Tuesday in Bourke Street Mall as real human toll of the war in Iraq interrupts business as usual...
From 12pm, we will be conducting a prayer vigil, including reading aloud the names of many of those killed in the conflict so far. Please feel free to join us, and by your presence be a voice for peace.
Pine Gap is a joint US/Australian military facility that has played a significant role in the Iraq war. Its existence and activities call into question Australia's sovereignty as a nation, and make us complicit in the many war crimes that have already taken place in Iraq in the last four years.
There's more info about the Pine Gap 4 here.
There's also stuff going on in Cairns, Newcastle, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra, Adelaide and Baghdad, which you can find out about at the Pine Gap Six livejournal.
Have peace,
Christop
(wearing my Christian Activist Network hat)

Esther: genocide

This is a picture of the last four Tasmanian Aborigines, including Truganini.

I read some more of the book of Esther on the bus to Batmania this morning.
In Chapter 2, the King starts to miss his wife (who he may or may not have had killed). So there's a beauty contest to try and find a new Queen. Esther 'wins', (Susan posted a little while ago on just how 'lucky' Esther probably was) but nobody knows that she's a Jewish exile, because Esther is a Babylonian name. (Her Jewish name was Hadassah.)

Grant Wildman from Tabor in Adelaide reckoned this was kind of like if during the war against the Aborigines someone who was part Aboriginal managed to gain a lot of influence in white society, due to the fact that they just seemed Caucasian.
(One of my friends wanted to do a theatre production based on Esther's story, and asked Grant for any ideas.)

In Chapter 3, Mordecai finds out that Haman, the King's favorite nobleman, wants to kill all the Jewish people, because Mordecai refused to bow to him. He asks the King if he can, and the King says he can.

I found it interesting what Haman said to the King to convince him:

There is a certain people dispersed and scattered among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom whose customs are different from those of all other people and who do not obey the king's laws; it is not in the king's best interest to tolerate them.
(Esther 3:8)

Just reminded me heaps of the paranoia toward Muslims and Arabs in Western countries since the War of Terror began.

Revenge of the Sith

Went and saw Revenge of the Sith this morning at 12:01 am. Easily the best of the recent films. The opening battle sequence is the best Star Wars battle sequence.

Before the film started, Greg and Sean (two guys from Theatre Performance) had a lightsaber duel on the stage*. There were Mexican waves. There was much rejoicing at significant moments during the film**.

I reckon there were a number of War on Terror references. John reckoned I was reading into it to much.

*The cinema in Ballarat has a stage, because it used to be a theatre.
**For example, the Dolby Digital bit.