In this Issue:

The Fatherland: Commentary by Rev. Michael Piazza
H4PJ Presents Valhalla: Tickets on sale for epic comedy
Monday Night with Mike: Dallas Mixer October 2
Powell says detainee plan would hurt US: Explains public break with Bush
Fighting terror with fear: NY Times Commentary

Commentary: The Fatherland
by Rev. Michael S. Piazza

Last Thursday, as I listened to the President speak to reporters, I felt a chill go down my spine. George W. Bush is not generally that stimulating a speaker, but this time he struck genuine fear in my soul. He was speaking to reporters at the Capital where he had gone to lobby for the passage of his so-called anti-terrorism plan. What he really wanted was for them to pass a bill that will allow him to defy the Geneva Conventions, continue torturing prisoners, and try the prisoners without allowing them to even hear the evidence against them.

After a partisan, closed-door meeting, Bush told reporters that he, “Reminded [Republican leaders] that the most important job of government is to protect the homeland.” As he said those words, my mind reverberated with old newsreels I had seen in school with translations of speeches by Adolph Hitler. He came to power by dividing people into us and them, exploiting fears, and committing all kinds of atrocities in the name of “defending the fatherland.” Now, let me hasten to add that it is unfair hyperbole to carry this analogy too far. Although the Vice President, Secretary of Defense and even the President seem to have no qualms about casting everything in terms of good and evil, and labeling anyone who disagrees with them as evil, that conversation is not really productive.

What actually frightened me about Mr. Bush’s words was not that I believe he is intent on doing evil, but that he is completely unaware of the lessons of history. He actually believes that political leaders ought to “protect the homeland” even if it means committing immoral acts, destroying the image of America around the world, or behaving much like those we oppose. Defending the country is important, but I believe our elected officials must also defend us from abandoning long-held sacred values. Americans do not torture people … even murderers. As Senator John McCain points out, “This is not about who THEY are; it is about who WE are.” Our political leaders also have a responsibility not to allow one branch of government to usurp the power of the others. Already, the Supreme Court has ruled the Administration’s treatment of prisoners as unconstitutional, but now the Congress is being coerced to create a system that ignores the Court’s guidelines and our nation’s values.

Jesus said, “What does it profit a person to gain the whole world but lose their own soul?” That is the very question we should be asking. What does it profit us to gain all the security in the world, but lose the very values that make this the country that we love? You can lose your country in more than one way, and it seems that, by exploiting our fears, those who probably genuinely love America pose the greatest danger for destroying her.

This past week, Former Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote a letter opposing President Bush’s proposal, on the grounds that weakening the Geneva Conventions would jeopardize the treatment of our own troops in the future. Texas Senator John Cornyn, who has proven to be the most unquestioning loyalist in the Senate, said we needn’t worry about that because Al Qaeda doesn’t take prisoners. Please join me in reminding the good Senator that this is bigger than the war on terrorists, and, ultimately, it isn’t about who THEY are. It is about who WE are. Despite what the Texas Senator thinks, he isn’t representing Texans by supporting torture.

H4PJ Online Action Center Speak Out Against Breaking Geneva Convention

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H4PJ Presents Valhalla
Tickets on Sale for Epic Comedy
Sunday, October 15, 7 pm
Trinity River Arts Center | $35

Support Hope for Peace & Justice by attending a special performance of Uptown Players’ production of Paul Rudnick’s epic comedy Valhalla. By purchasing your tickets to Valhalla through H4PJ, you help us raise money for important programs, seminars and workshops that help people find peace and work for justice. Your $35 ticket includes an invitation to a post-show dessert reception.

Valhalla intertwines two stories: the life of Ludwig of Bavaria, the 1880s Mad King responsible for building a series of storybook castles inspired by Wagnerian operas, and the fictional adventures of James Avery, a wild Texas teenager of the 1940s. These two characters are tracked from childhood through their deaths, and while they embody separate eras, they are ultimately revealed as time-traveling soul mates.

The play explores questions of beauty and madness, as both Ludwig and James pursue lives of operatic passion, bringing them in contact with such diverse figures as a high-school quarterback, the prettiest girl in Dainsville, Texas, most of the characters of Lohengrin, and princess Sophie, who declares herself “the loneliest humpback in Europe.” Valhalla is an epic comic tale that cleverly reveals the price to be paid for getting what you most desire. If you love camp, or wacky spins on literary history or gay stories with heart and LOTS of laughs, you’re gonna love Valhalla.

Click here to purchase your tickets.

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Monday Night with Mike
Dallas Mixer October 2
5-7pm | Gloria’s Restaurant

Our next “Monday Night with Mike” will be October 2 at Gloria’s Restaurant, located at 4140 Lemmon Avenue, Dallas, TX 75219, at the intersection of Lemmon and Wycliff. The event will begin at 5pm and last until around 7pm. There will be a cash bar, with, of course, chips, salsa and Gloria’s famous black bean dip.

Monday Night with Mike is a free event, to which everyone is invited! This is a great way to meet other people who are passionate about peace and justice issues, and an excellent opportunity to introduce your friends to the work that we are doing. Rev. Michael Piazza, President of Hope for Peace & Justice, will speak about current issues and give an update on his new book, The Real antichrist. Please mark your calendar for this special event. Invite your friends and family and then stay for dinner to brainstorm what you can do to work for peace and justice.

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Powell says detainee plan would hurt U.S.
Ex-secretary of state explains public break with Bush
Originally Published by The Washington Post
by Karen DeYoung and Peter Baker

Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he decided to publicly oppose the Bush administration's proposed rules for the treatment of terrorism suspects in part because the plan would add to growing doubts about whether the United States adheres to its own moral code.

"If you just look at how we are perceived in the world and the kind of criticism we have taken over Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and renditions," Powell said in an interview, "whether we believe it or not, people are now starting to question whether we're following our own high standards."

Powell, elaborating on a position first expressed last week in a letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), also argued that the administration's plan to "clarify" U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions would set a precedent for other nations that would endanger U.S. troops.

"Suppose North Korea or somebody else wants to redefine or 'clarify' " Geneva Conventions provisions prohibiting "outrages against personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment" of prisoners, he said.

Powell's opposition marks a rare public breach with the administration he left 20 months ago. As secretary of state, he repeatedly clashed privately with Vice President Cheney and others who had more hard-line foreign policy views. But since leaving office he has declined nearly all opportunities to publicly criticize even those policies he opposed internally.

Powell has said he regrets that the Iraq invasion was launched on the basis of false intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs and Hussein's relationship with al-Qaeda, information that he vouched for in an address before a hostile United Nations. He has also said that he believes the administration should have sent more troops to invade Iraq and provided a better postwar plan.

Powell also allowed his name to be identified among those opposed to Bush's nomination of his former State Department subordinate, John R. Bolton, as Washington's U.N. ambassador.
But he has reserved his strongest opposition for administration efforts to preserve controversial methods for interrogating terrorism suspects, techniques that others have defined as torture.

While it is not clear exactly what techniques the White House wishes to keep, sources have said those previously used include nakedness, prolonged sensory assault and deprivation, the imposition of "stress" positions, and water submersion to the verge of drowning. Bush has said none of those amounts to torture.

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Fighting terror with fear
Originally published by The New York Times

Stampeding Congress
We'll find out in November how well the White House's be-very-afraid campaign has been working with voters. We already know how it's working in the U.S. Congress. Stampeded by the fear of looking weak on terrorism, lawmakers are rushing to pass a bill demanded by President George W. Bush that would have minimal impact on anti-terrorist operations but could cause profound damage to justice and the American way.

On Thursday, the president himself went to Capitol Hill to lobby for his bill, which would give congressional approval to the same sort of ad hoc military commissions that Bush created on his own authority after 9/ 11 and that the Supreme Court has already ruled unconstitutional. It would permit the use of coerced evidence, secret hearings and other violations of American justice.

Military legal experts have formed one of the most influential bulwarks against the administration's attempt to rewrite the rules to make its recent behavior retroactively legal. This week, the White House sank so low as to strong-arm the chief prosecutors for the four armed services into writing a letter to the House of Representatives that seemed to endorse the president's position on two key issues. Congressional officials say those officers later told lawmakers that they did not want to sign the letter, which contradicts everything the prosecutors, dozens of their colleagues, former top commanders of the military and a series of federal judges have said in public.

The idea that the nation's chief executive is pressing so hard to undermine basic standards of justice is shocking. Any argument that these extreme methods would be used only against the most dangerous of international terrorists has been destroyed by the handling of hundreds of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, many of whom appear to have been scooped up in Afghanistan years ago with little attempt to verify any connection to terrorism, and now are in danger of lingering behind bars forever without a day in court.

To lend his lobbying an utterly false sense of urgency, Bush announced last week that he had taken 14 dangerous terrorists from the secret CIA prisons where he had been holding them for years and sent them to Guantánamo to stand trial. But none of the prisoners is going anywhere. Timetable is related only to the election calendar.

The Geneva Conventions
One section of the administration bill would put American soldiers in grave jeopardy by rewriting the Geneva Conventions, condoning the practice of hiding prisoners in secret cells and permitting the continued use of interrogation methods that violate the Conventions at the CIA prisons.

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