This is quite obscene. Solitary confinement is a form of torture and must be eliminated. Subjecting an 83 year old, non-violent peace activist to it is beyond obscene... Words fail me.

I wish I had his courage...

yet another testament to the corrupt nature of our judicial system. activists like bix must be made an example of to dissuade others from participating in nonviolent civil disobedience. how any cop or jailer could find comfort in the fact that they're intentionally abusing an 83 year old jesuit priest, who has dedicated his life to pursuing peace and social justice, is astonishing. let the truth prevail - power to the people. thank you father bichsel.

...peace...

Abbyyyyy, get your facts straight. He wasn't protesting a "a proposed nuclear power plant in Tennessee" . He was protesting "a new nuclear weapons manufacturing facility". Which makes lot more sense.

Maybe he could protest against the investment policies and actions of the catholic church

here's just one example of the RCC investing in arms production

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8180739.stm

Researching this news story pushes my buttons. Badly!

Power corrupts. Somewhere in Tacoma is a bastard working for some halfway house whose corruption by petty power needs 1) to be exposed to the general public, 2) subjected to correction by hand bombing with balloons full of urine, whenever the scrote emerges from his home.

This individual enforced some arbitrary and capricious policy of a 72 hour isolation from =visitors= by new arrivals at the halfway house. But on the evening of Fr. Bischel's arrival, a pair of Buddhist monks and a small group of students, on their way to a local protest, “made a small detour and stopped by the house, to drum and pray for him outside the building for a few minutes.” The halfway house scrote called other scrotes. Bix was not only returned to SeaTac prison, he was placed in solitary confinement to teach him a lesson about violating capricious policies in halfway houses? Is Warden Feather out of his effing mind?! And you can bet this halfway house scrote would have enforced the arbitrary policy had a visitor to Father Bischell showed up at 71 hours and 59 minutes. "These people have to be taught a lesson" is the mantra of wussy weenie wannabes.

The warden had better pray that this well-known American Jesuit, moral martyr does not die in his custody for this pissing contest at a Tacoma halfway house.
Trylon

Our prayers are with you Fr. Bichsel. Truly a Catholic priest who lives the gospel, suffers for the Truth, and walks the way of the Cross. You are not alone in your cell, but then again, you already know that. The angels will sustain you and may God's hand hold your shackled hand and give you ....

Peace

Of course he needs to be shackled. He's against thermonuclear war, he must be dangerous!

What's wrong with this picture; when a peacemaker is incarcerated, shackled and placed in solitary confinment and a war maker that has murdered and continues to murder thousands of our soldiers and innocent civilians...IS AWARDED THE PEACE PRIZE?

It's a disgrace. This is all I can say.

Could people start telling him he needs to eat? He's better off to the world alive. This really will kill him within days. A girl starved herself when I was in high school simply because she felt she was fat (she wasn't.) it took her two weeks - feeding her after the first week and a half was useless, her body had already started shutting down and they couldn't save her. She didn't want to die.

This man is most likely already dizzy and hallucinating. His organs will start shutting down pretty soon. This is NOT good. He's better off to the world alive. I'm guessing since he's older and doesn't have much fat on him, he will not make it 3 weeks. He's 83.

It's great to know that a dangerous person is in solitary. Guess that means that the Shrubber and Cheney and Kissinger won't be free for long. What would we do without the LAW?

Just want to let everyone know that to the best of our knowledge, Bix has ended his fast. In a letter he said he would be ending it on the evening of January 25th. We hope to have confirmation soon on this and Bix's overall health and wellbeing once his attorney is able to visit him. As for his fast, Bix said that the goal was to unite us as one and strengthen resolve against nuclear weapons. Our vigil and call for people to contact government officials was not to protest Bix's confinement in Solitary, but to ensure that he received adequate blankets and that all prisoners be treated humanely. Bix is currently in prison for participating in the Y-12 resistance action (Y-12 Bomb Plant, Oak Ridge, Tennessee). His previous jail time was for the Plowshares action at the Bangor Trident nuclear submarine base. You can learn more about Bix , Disarm Now Plowshares and more at http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/ .

Bix,
I'm glad that you are following your conscience of love for all humanity. Your love touches me. I wish I had your courage and fortitude. But your life is a continued reminder to me of how important to speak with our actions primarily; then the voice will fall in line. I'm glad that you got those blankets. Once my brother was in jail and had no blankets. I was amazed, brought him blankets and told the head of the jail to keep them for the next incumbent.

Mucha gracias padre Bix, and I am in awe of our peace peace makers, Fr. Steve Kelly, Sr. Ann Montgomery and many other peace makers for their deep compassion and love of Jesus Christ's teachings. But in the same moment how so-called Christians continue to crucify, torture and lynch the innocents around the world...In the games of the empire.

Poor George Washington, Thomas Paine, et al, if Great Britain had drones the terrorists would have never gotten America....Our American (pirate ship) is sinking and we squabble who going to be its captain...

Sr. Jackie Hudson is our the Captain of our ship of kindness and compassion. For readers not familiar with Sr. Jackie Hudson..just goggle her name.

Yesterday at a senior citizens social gathering two 84 year old World War II veterans told me how grateful they were to Truman for dropping the nuclear bomb. One of the veterans was seriously injured when his plane was shot down and the other was grateful that his orders to go into battle were canceled. Both are devoted Catholics. I wanted to say that I heard that the Japanese were ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped and ask them why more than one bomb was dropped, but what's the use? They know that I am a peace activist. They have enjoyed a long comfortable life unlike the untold numbers of innocent victims of the nuclear bombs. And now there are untold numbers of Japanese who are dead and suffering from the nuclear plant earthquake disaster. One of the men told me there is nothing I can do and I said because no one cares. But I am wrong. Many people care but are silenced by the power structures who make money building and supporting weapons of war and dangerous energy plants. God Bless Bix Bichsel

Praise be to the real heroes. It is a true priest who practices Thomas á Kempis's _The Imitation of Christ_ so well that he appears before the Pontius Pilate: “I was asked by the Lieutenant at SeaTac, ‘Why are you doing this?’ I answered, ‘Conscience.’ She responded, ‘This has nothing to do with conscience – this is a matter of policy.’ I replied, ‘You said it well – you have divorced policy from conscience.’”

That the Nuclear Newt fares so well in his candidacy for President, shows us so clearly how befuddled Americans have become since that divorce.

I had the honor of dining with Father "Bix" at the Catholic Worker home in Tacoma a few years ago when my daughter was doing Jesuit Volunteer Corps-NW and lived next door.

He is the most peaceful, kind and intelligent person one could hope to ever share a meal with. He is the embodiment of the peace of Christ in our midst.

I don't recall seeing in any of the comments about a Fascist state that the real abomination of his being in solitary is that other people were demonstrating in front of the jail. That is what is wrong with this picture.

He is being punished because other people object to his being punished. It is something out of Lewis Carroll.

It's remarkable how few people of real courage there are in the US.

Unfortunately I am not among them.

We really could change the world over night if we wanted to, but our desire to continue living comfortable lives and turn away from all the horrible things done on our behalf prevents anything from changing.

While a priest sits in jail for advocating peace we celebrate Kardashians, and football, and raise narcissism up as the highest achievement. There is something fundamentally twisted in the American mind. We've become so used to our lives that we must descend into some form of pathology in order to create the blind spot that obscures the truth.

Father Bichsel,

I have just heard about your heroic actions of nonviolent civil disobedience at military bases, nuclear weapons manufacturers, and the School of the Americas. I want to commend you for your courage in standing up to the institutionalized evil of nuclear power, nuclear weaponry, and more broadly, the entirety of U.S. foreign policy. Truly, you speak for millions of us who are unable to be there with you, and in some cases too timid and unwilling.

Your actions are the visible manifestation of God’s justice in our world. It is my prayer that the consciences of millions of others will awaken and begin to put their bodies on the line, into the gears of this cruel, despotic system, which masquerades as a “democracy” while systematically eliminating every truly democratic government that gets in the way of its global corporate agenda in the world.

I will pray for you to remain strong and to abide in God’s loving grace through all your days.

In peace and solidarity,

Memory_Hole

To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, how come there are so few Christians in Christianity? I believe what Mr. Emerson meant by that statement...was Christ- Ones. I think he would agree that Father Bix would be a Christ- One.

"Your honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the form of our present government; that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in the change of both but by perfectly peaceable and orderly means....

I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and factories; I am thinking of the women who, for a paltry wage, are compelled to work out their lives; of the little children who, in this system, are robbed of their childhood, and in their early, tender years, are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon, and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the machines while they themselves are being starved body and soul....

Your honor, I ask no mercy, I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never more fully comprehended than now the great struggle between the powers of greed on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of freedom. I can see the dawn of a better day of humanity. The people are awakening. In due course of time they will come into their own.

When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the Southern Cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches the Southern Cross begins to bend, and the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of Time upon the dial of the universe; and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the look-out knows that the midnight is passing – that relief and rest are close at hand.

Let the people take heart and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning."

Eugene Victor Debs
At his sentencing hearing

You all have the courage to do as Bix, you are only choosing not to implement your innate courage.

What a courageous guy Bix is, and he's got a real conscience, to boot. All the best to him. Here's hoping he lives, because the world needs more people like him, although I admittedly don't advocate starving myself to the point of ill-health and emaciation.

In the blessed work of the Berrigans, ML King, Jackie Hudson, Che Guevara, the nuns and priests who have died south of our border, and so many more ...presente. And to Father Bix and Carol and Ardeth, and many elderly who are laying their lives down in prisons all across the US, many from the Catholic Worker, and Ground Zero, to end this insanity. You are all brave and an inspiration to those of us on the verge of taking the next shift. Bless you.

Evil Rules
Corruption Wins
Ignorance Follows
War Is Profitable

i can find no evidence for the belief in god, but everywhere . . .the belief in satan

We need more heroic people like Father Bichsel to resist nuclear madness. Many counries, including Iran, will seek what we have and what Israel has in Dimona. I think it's clear that no one will bomb North Korea, a nuclear country. The only answer is nuclear disarmament worldwide. Who will lead?

I am very pleased to read iowablkbrd and others who are discussing the plowshares and ground zero groups...I've seen 99% awesome commenting here this time. Nice. And thank you Father 'Bix'

Hope and change has brought us ever closer to being a fascist state.

The apostles wanted their church leaders to be unmarried precisely because the Roman military state might torture or kill them for speaking and doing their beliefs. Father Bix is a priest. He is only doing the work that is given to him. Wow!

It's unjust to have a killing machine (the nuclear football) that wipes two or more people off the map for the actions of one person. Who made the second person guilty?

Torturing a Roman Catholic priest because of the actions of Buddhists is, um, quite ecumenical on the part of the authorities.

when a man thinks killing is wrong why do they lock him up with murderers?