Kairos America - Notes on the Theory of the Actor Network

Kairos America - Buddhist Illogic -- A Critical Analysis of Nagarjuna’s Arguments

Kairos America - Ulrich Duchrow

Kairos America - God or Mammon? a confessional issue for the churches in the context of social movements

Ulrich Duchrow, representing Kairos Europa at the 2002 Soesterberg consultation, examines the following issues:

Becoming a confessing church

What churches must publicly and unequivocally reject

What practical steps churches can take

Alliance building for an economy serving life

Kairos America - 'Looters and Thugs and Inert Women Doing Nothing?: Racialized Communities in Capitalist America

Mike Cole

Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies

Volume 4, Number 1 (March 2006)

ISSN 1740-2743

Kairos America - Next Meeting

Kairos America - Fear

1. stretching definitions of violence to include more minor incidents that girls in relative terms are more likely to commit;


2. increased policing of violence between intimates and in private settings (for example, home, school) where girls' violence is more widespread


3. less tolerant family and societal attitudes toward juvenile females.

16 April 2006

OPEN LETTER TO  Ambassadors to the United Nations: H.E. Mr. Fermin Toro Jimenez of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and H.E. Mr. Orlando Requeijo Gual of the New York Permanent Mission from Cuba.

Your Excellency,

We appeal to you to bring a motion of censure against our country, the United States of America, for abuse of its citizen Carol Fisher that we believe is in violation of the United Nations' charters. Though Ms Fisher was abused by a local constabulary, four members of the Cleveland Heights, Ohio USA police department, her case reveals a pattern of state sponsored abuse of human rights, by the Bush Regime, with active or tacit endorsement by all levels of government in our country. This action also reveals the disdain for women as full citizens with a voice of their own that characterizes this regime.

Carol Fisher, a 53 year-old cancer survivor and activist with World Can't Wait: Drive Out the Bush Regime, was brutalized and arrested by a phalanx of Cleveland Heights Police. The events, in brief summary are as follows:

• She posted signs demanding that US President George Bush step down.

• A policeman demanded that she remove the signs.

• She agreed to remove the signs, and moved to do so.

• A policeman threw her against a building.

• A policeman threw her to the ground.

• A policeman forced her face into the pavement.

• A policeman told her, "I am sick of this anti-Bush shit!"

• As she complained, verbally, to bystanders a policeman threatened "Shut up or I will kill you!"

• Later, in the hospital emergency room, when medical staff had her disrobe so they might evaluate her injuries, the 4 policemen insisted on watching.

Ms Fisher's account and a recent update on her case, in her own words, are attached as ref_01.pdf.

We have carried our appeal to the judicial, legislative and executive authorities who dictate in such matters and their response has been to hand down false charges of felonious assault, that carry a minimum 3 year prison sentence, and rush her case to trial while suppressing exculpatory evidence that the defense must have to mount its case. Text of the transcript of our appeal to the City Council of Cleveland Heights is attached (as ref_02.pdf).

Please consider our appeal in the context of United Nations' condemnation of the following:

"Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life."

United Nations, Article 1 "Declaration concerning the Elimination of Violence Against Women" Resolution 48/104 20, Dec., 1993.

Also please consider, based in Articles 1, 3 and 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, wording that denounces any form of violence against women which implies a threat to her life, freedom or personal safety, or may constitute torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment goes against the principles of this Universal Declaration. Consequently the state members that do not apply an adequate policy to prevent and prosecute violence against women are failing to fulfill their international duties in relation with this Declaration.

Note please, with particular urgency, that the humiliation visited on Ms Fisher in the University Hospitals of Cleveland emergency room required some degree of cooperation of the hospital, persons in hospital administration, persons on the hospital legal staff, and medical and nursing staff. We know all too well the rapid progress from cooperation in humiliation of patients to participating in their torture. These matters demand a hearing in the world court of public opinion.

We are aware that our plea comes to you in the ambit of a world beset by grave threats many of which emanate from our country. Some of these we acknowledge in the appended Context document. Carol Fisher is persecuted here because she speaks against our criminal regime. In our American plutocracy many forces conspire to keep her one voice small. Make it great! Let her case be heard before the world that wants these criminals brought to account.

This Appeal is Endorsed by These Persons

Craig Bourne
Cleveland Heights, OH USA

Tina Bush
Cleveland, OH USA

Tiesha Cole
Newburgh Heights, OH USA

Eliska Dalirev
Cleveland Heights, OH USA

Mary Jo Muser
Cleveland OH, USA

Carol Steiner
Cleveland Heights, OH USA

Lee Thompson
Cleveland, OH USA

Rebekka Willow
Cleveland, OH USA

Context Document

The repressive acts of our government against its citizen, Carol Fisher, are not isolated. They are not the most extreme, in their results on her person, of the depredations visited on individuals, indeed on whole populations, by our government. But they are significant. We are caught in the rising tide of plutocracy and theocracy that floats the Bush Regime's boat of tyranny. Ms Fisher's case exemplifies the plight of one who stands against this rising tide.

This brief document articulates some matters forming, in part, the context of her case. Our plea for your move to censure her state sanctioned abuse does not require this. But the urgency of these matters requires that they be brought forward. Do not let this cloud the focus of our appeal. Among all who are abused by the state each is worthy of our support. If we do not stand with one, can we stand with any? If we do not do it now, when will it be done?

PERSECUTION AND INTIMIDATION OF PEACEMAKERS

• 18 March 2006. Fifty One Arrests at Pentagon Highlight Nonviolent Resistance Actions on Third Anniversary of War (Cindy Sheehan and fifty others are arrested this day).

• 6 March 2006. Cindy Sheehan, Missy Comley Beattie, Rev. Patricia Ackerman, and Medea Benjamin are arrested, at the US Mission to the United Nations, for trying to present a petition, signed by 100,000 women from all the world, demanding an end to the war in Iraq. Ms Sheehan, whose son was one of the US soldiers killed in Iraq, was injured as she was dragged down the steps by the arresting officers.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

• 30 January 2006 and 10 January 2006. Acting on their preliminary findings, The International Commission Of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration of the United States serves indictments on both Counsel to the President Harriet Miers and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. (preliminary findings attached as ref_03.pdf)

• 29 July 2004. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that American doctors and nurses were complicit in torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. This and later articles point to a pattern of guiding medical personnel from the sort of state directed humiliation with cooperation and sanction from medical professionals and medical institutions that Ms Fisher suffered, to participation by doctors and nurses in torture and killing of those they are obliged to care for. The actions against Carol Fisher by University Hospitals of Cleveland and its professional staff were not isolated from these trends. They were the first step in training to torture. (attached as ref_04.pdf)

• 29 January 2004. OPEN LETTER FROM FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL RAMSEY CLARK to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, members of the UN Security Council and President George W. Bush calling for the indictment of Bush as a war criminal, the particulars listed include waging a war of aggression against Iraq, not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime. (attached as ref_05.pdf)

List of attachments

1. ref_01.pdf   Carol Fisher's statement regarding events of 28 January 2006.

2. ref_02.pdf   Transcript of the 6 February 2006 meeting of the Cleveland Heights, OH USA City Council.

3. ref_03.pdf   Preliminary findings of The International Commission Of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration of the United States

4. ref_04.pdf   The article Doctors and Torture by Robert Jay Lifton, M.D New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 351, No. 5, 29 July 2004.

5. ref_05.pdf   OPEN LETTER FROM FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL RAMSEY CLARK to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, members of the UN Security Council and President George W. Bush.