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TechnoratiNo to War, No to NATO
With President Obama announcing his new strategy for US/NATO escalation in Afghanistan, the April 3-4 NATO Summit in Baden-Baden and Kehl, Germany, and in Strasbourg, France, takes on added urgency -- as will the demonstrations by thousands of protestors from over 20 European countries and the US.
Member states will attempt to use the summit as an occasion to celebrate the alliance's 60th anniversary, France's return to NATO, and perhaps offer a new "Strategic Concept" as an interventionist force around the world. Activists will articulate an alternative vision focused on securing global peace and confronting domestic challenges at home, including a call for the dissolution of NATO.
Beginning April 1, a diverse coalition of activists will participate in training camps, demonstrations, conferences, workshops, and non-violent blockades. At a moment when international cooperation on economic and human security interests is needed more than ever, the protestors view a US-led, expansionist NATO as destabilizing and dangerous. What was originally designed as a defense alliance against the Warsaw Pact has taken on a very different post-Cold War, global interventionist role.
Activists see a NATO with bases on every continent; a military force that organizers say accounts for more than 75 percent of global military expenditures and drains resources that might otherwise address needs like education, job creation, and poverty; "out of area" operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan, the Mediterranean Sea, and a training mission in Iraq; a destabilizing presence pushing a "missile defense" system, ignoring international law, expanding to Russia's doorstep, and maintaining a first-strike option -- all fueling a renewed arms race. (Recently, popular opposition to the proposed Czech-based radar system for US missile defense was a key factor in bringing down the ruling government there. Peace activist Jan Tamas led a hunger strike that galvanized opposition and he will be speaking at the "counter summit" in Strasbourg.)
Elsa Rassbach, a US citizen and filmmaker who has lived much of the time in Berlin since the mid-1990s, is a member of the International Coordinating Committee that is planning many of the activities of this broad coalition. She said that the need to respond to the occasion of NATO's 60th anniversary has brought "a lot of different strands" together to collaborate since last June. "For example," she said, "in the German peace movement -- not only the large peace organizations and some Members of the German Parliament, but also smaller groups concerned about military bases used to conduct US/NATO wars, people concerned about atomic weapons...the social movements -- the fact that militarization is costing too much. German youth and people concerned with soldier resistance and conscientious objector issues.... We're bringing disparate movements and organizations together -- both large and small -- for the NATO action."
Participants will include national and international groups representing the peace, human rights and anti-globalization movements, as well as students and youth groups. Also represented are trade unions, parliamentary Left and Green parties, and Attac. In all, 600 organizations from 33 countries -- including Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, Georgia, Brazil, Guinea, the Philippines and Turkey -- have endorsed the campaign's "No to War, No to NATO" appeal.
US participants include United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), Code Pink, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Iraq Veterans against the War (IVAW), Peace Action, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and others.
Perhaps no issue will be more prominent at the Summit and the protests than the War in Afghanistan and Pakistan. EU and NATO troops and resources are key to President Obama's new plan for escalation, and most Europeans are strongly opposed to the war (though many favor humanitarian aid, reconstruction projects, etc.) In Germany, for example, surveys suggest opposition as high as 70 percent.
Andreas Speck, member of the International Coordination Committee, and also the War Resisters' International which is participating in non-violent, civil disobedience, said: "This Summit is really important to NATO for taking its next step in becoming a global intervention force -- obviously, NATO's operation in Afghanistan will be an important topic. We want to show that Afghanistan is no better than Iraq -- it's a war that is not justified and we are completely opposed to this military operation."
Rassbach agreed. "We want Americans to understand that the reason this opposition to NATO is emerging is that NATO -- originally supposed to be a defensive alliance -- is being converted into a very aggressive force to intervene around the world, and Afghanistan is a prime example," she said. "Afghanistan is a key test for the ‘out of area' intervention concept."
The current schedule calls for: a camp near Strasbourg April 1-5; a conference on NATO and Human Rights on April 1; a hearing on the War in Afghanistan in Karlsruhe, Germany on April 2; a congress/counter summit of leading intellectuals, activists, and representatives of European political parties in Strasbourg on April 3 and April 5; actions in Baden-Baden on April 3 in conjunction with German Chancellor Merkel's dinner for the heads of state; and also on the morning of April 4 in Strasbourg when a photo-op is scheduled at the pedestrian bridge Passerelle des deux Rives, and the NATO Summit begins in the Palais De La Musique Et Des Congres; the climactic international demonstration in Strasbourg on the afternoon of April 4.
The organizing challenges are enormous.
Just for the civil disobedience coalition -- "Block NATO", which is smaller than the broader coalition -- Speck said there will be thousands of people coming in from Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Britain "and a few other countries."
"It's a big challenge for us in terms of communication -- during the actions, the trainings, and the conference" he said. "Because we will need translation for a lot of these things."
The coalition has also reached out to the French police to let them know they will be protesting non-violently. They will meet with them on the morning of April 1.
"We fear that the police will not act non-violently against us, so we want them to know that there's no threat from our side," Speck said. "The problem is we never know what the police will do and also if they will use agent provocateurs to create the images that they want."
Perhaps even more pressing is the proposed route for the larger demonstration. The French authorities have relegated it to the outskirts far from the cordoned off Strasbourg city center where the Summit will be held. (The security within the city is extreme and controversial. The French court is currently hearing complaints from residents who are already being asked by police to take down peace flags hanging from their balconies, and who will be forced to wear badges during the summit to move about the city.) Under French law, there are no opportunities to appeal the demonstration route but organizers continue to press their case.
"Nobody's demanding that we demonstrate very close to the Summit, just something reasonably close," Speck said. "My fear is that if it's very far out then people will not accept this.... And maybe that's what [the authorities] want -- a confrontation. Because then you have people upset, trying to make their way to the center of the city, and that will give the police the opportunity to provoke some violent confrontation. I hope that's not going to happen, we don't want this to happen."
(Speck said people in the US can help by writing the French Embassy and speaking out against this infringement on the human right to freedom of expression and assembly.)
Of course, there will be no such negotiations regarding time and place for acts of civil disobedience. "The aim is... to effectively blockade the NATO summit venue basically with our bodies... And to obstruct the functioning of the summit by cutting off the leaders from the infrastructure that they need. There will be no material-blockades or actions which, for example, attack the police."
Joanne Landy, co-director of the Campaign for Peace and Democracyin the US, said these events and the fervor surrounding them are something the US should be paying attention to. "NATO is very much part and parcel to how the US tries to marshal other countries to do some of the heavy-lifting for an imperial policy," she said. "This imperial policy is catastrophic for us.... it completely distorts our resources, and it's just fundamentally the wrong relationship to have with the rest of the world. I would like to have a world in which we could actually be in solidarity with labor movements and women's movements and so forth. But right now whatever the US does is suspect and for good reason. So you really need a very different foreign policy all together in which the military wouldn't play the role that it does now, and where the US could really support the needs of ordinary people everywhere."
"American activists can see this anti-NATO protest as how Europe is protesting the Afghanistan War," Rassbach said. "But it's also more than that. It's against all the military costs and the military bases in Europe and NATO's nuclear first-strike policy that includes the proposed missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Cold War is over, so why should NATO continue?"
There is another important achievement here that the American peace movement is working towards as well.
"For many people it's new to work in such a broad coalition," Speck said. "Sometimes there is quite a bit of tension in the international committee. But on the other hand, everyone wants to work together, with our differences, to counter what NATO is doing, what the EU is doing, and all the militarization that we see going on.... That's what our work in diverse movements is about, to deal with the differences. We want to create a much more diverse and democratic society so we need to learn to live with these kinds of differences."
30 Comments so far
Show AllNo to War, No to NATO by Katrina vanden Heuvel
The time for kick starting this campaign was back when Bill Clinton was President. What was Katrina vanden Heuvel up to back then though?
I don't remember The Nation or Katrina too big on stopping Nato's interventions back then against Iraq (with economic warfare and no fly zones) and Yugoslavia (through bombs and partition)? I do remember them pushing the Democratic Party though. Aren't they happy with what their 'vote' got?
The new NATO is a U.S. and imperial pitbull. It is currently helping rearm the world, encouraging the military buildup of the former Baltic and Eastern European Soviet satellites--now U.S. and NATO satellites--working closely with Israel as that NATO partner ethnically cleanses and dispossesses its untermeschen--helping its master establish client states on the Russian southern borders, officially endorsing the U.S. placement of anti-ballistic missiles in Poland, the Czech Republic, Israel, and threateningly elsewhere, at a great distance from the United States, and urging the integration of the U.S. plans with a broader NATO “shield.” This virtually forces Russia into more aggressive moves and accelerated rearmament (just as NATO did in earlier years).
And of course NATO supports the U.S. occupation of Iraq. NATO secretary-general Scheffer regularly boasts that all 26 NATO states are involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom, inside Iraq or Kuwait. Every single Balkan nation except for Serbia has had troops in Iraq, and now has them in Afghanistan. Half of the former Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States have also provided troops for Iraq, with some of these also in Afghanistan. These are training grounds for breaking in and “inter-operationalizing” the new “partners,” and developing a new mercenary base for the growing “out of area” operations of NATO, as NATO participates more actively in the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As noted, NATO brags about its role in the Balkans wars, and both this war and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have violated the UN Charter. Lawlessness is built-in to the new “strategic concept.” Superceding the earlier (fraudulent) “collective self defense,” the ever-expanding NATO powers give themselves the authority to conduct military campaigns "out-of-area" or so-called "non-Article V" missions beyond NATO territory. As the legal scholar Bruno Simma noted back in 1999, "the message which these voices carry in our context is clear: if it turns out that a Security Council mandate or authorization for future NATO 'non-Article 5' missions involving armed force cannot be obtained, NATO must still be able to go ahead with such enforcement. That the Alliance is capable of doing so is being demonstrated in the Kosovo crisis." ("NATO, the UN and the Use of Force: Legal Aspects," European Journal of International Law, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1999, reproduced at http://www.ejil.org/journal/Vol10/No1/ab1.html).
The new NATO is pleased to be helping its master project power across the globe. In addition to helping encircle and threaten Russia, it pursues “partnership arrangements” and carries out joint military maneuvers with the so-called Mediterranean Dialogue countries (Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania and Algeria). And NATO has also established new partnerships with the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates), thereby expanding NATO's military ambit from the Atlantic coast of Africa to and throughout the Persian Gulf. In the same time frame there has been a unbroken series of NATO visits to and naval exercises with most of these new partners as well as (this past year) the first formal NATO-Israeli bilateral military treaty.
The pitbull is well positioned to help Israel continue its massive law violations, to help the United States and Israel threaten and perhaps attack Iran, and to enlarge its own cooperative program of pacification of distant peoples in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and no doubt elsewhere—all in the alleged interest of peace and that “wider stability” mentioned in Strategic Concept. NATO, like the UN itself, provides a cover of seeming multilateralism for what is a lawless and virtually uncontrolled imperial expansionism. In reality, NATO, as an aggressive global arm of U.S. and other local affiliated imperialisms, poses a serious threat to global peace and security. It is about to celebrate its 60th anniversary, and while it should have been liquidated back in 1991, it has instead expanded, taking on a new and threatening role traced out in its 1999 Strategic Concept and enjoying a frighteningly malignant growth.
Good posts all. NATO is a disgrace, put in place primarily to allow the US to prevent homegrown, popular Communist and Socialist movements from having any role in executive governance in the immediate postwar period in those countries (especially Italy and France) where they played a particularly important role in the antifascist Resistance struggle. De Gaulle understood this gambit on the part of the Americans, and that is why he, certainly no leftist, refused to have any part in it. No matter. Sarkozy's current cuddling up to NATO is all the more disgraceful for that reason. He has thrown in France's lot with the U.S. and Zionism at a moment when such powers have displayed their genocidal murderousness without restraint. At least after WWII one might be forgiven for having considered the American empire a benign force, whereas now there is simply no excuse for it.
Who will lead the blind out of the ashes of the concentration camps? Not its political class!
Germany is an occupied country in every sense of the word. First the 268 pieces of real estate under the US military Industry authority within the Federal Republic. These people will kill you if you try to enter their property. Secondly Germans are occupied mentally and spiritually in the sense that they were totally defeated in the Second World War and are still being very effectively milked by the Zionist intellectual apparatus put in place at every level of society, both east and west just one example the Springer/CIA publications empire set up directly after the war by the CIA. Tits and bums "news" for the masses to keep the debate quiet.
The Holocaust monologue drones from every channel at least once a day imbuing each new generation with this poisonous guilt. This alone ensures that good Germans will continue to fund and tolerate the present Jewish Holocaust being perpetuated in apartheid Palestine. Conditioning works and works very well. US and German society are proof positive of that.
Take away NATO (North American Terror Organisation) and the Germans would be free for the first time since 1933. That won't be happening any time soon. At least in Ireland (non NATO member and Lisbon slavery treaty nay sayer) activists were prepared to go over the fences at Shannon Airport (US military stop off point for Iraq slaughter) and physically attack and disable US military hardware.
The Irish have a long tradition of resisting empire and its brutality the Germans unfortunately have none. Although many USans are ignorant of their geography and place on the planet, many more German youth when asked will answer that Afghanistan is in the Atlantic and hence the need for their beloved NATO to "protect" them.
Pavlov's dog is barking loud and clear in Germany and this particular canine will be tugging at the leash from the pigs side of the battle lines this coming week in Baden-Baden.
Hey, The Nation is not perfect. Are you or I. But, there is an important point. NATO should be disolved. I know I might be a tad paranoid, but sometimes i think that there are trolls that appear as superradicals or reasonable moderates in disguise. I won't name names because I'm not that smart. But, to deny that The Nation is an important ally for progressive causes is illusionary.
My son once told me he thought one of the worst things is ALLIANCES.
I was lucky to have a really good 8th grade social studies teacher. Mr. Scott delineated 4 main causes of war: militarism, nationalism, alliances, & the spark(enter yellow journalism).
So yeah, i think the world would be better without NATO.
Sorry, if you don't like Katrina, you can kiss my a**
Nato was not started as a defense against the Warsaw pact, since the Warsaw pact did not exist when Nato was founded.
North Atlantic Terror Organization is just another coalition of accessories to war crimes.
No to Katrina and no to The Nation--Go back to sipping your Long Island Ice Teas up in your ritzy upper west side Manhatten pad.
Poet
And you, Poet, can go back to sipping your Kool-Aid.
Certainly I share the anger that many posters here have directed against Nation generally and Ms. vanden Heuvel in particular. I was bamboozled enough in 2007 to take out an "Associate" membership with the magazine, but became thoroughly disillusioned with the Obama-fawning "Progressives for Obama" (what an oxymoron!) stance of the editors. Accordingly, I didn't renew my associate membership and received a letter asking me either to renew or to explain why I wasn't. One paragraph of my response:
"I have grown profoundly disillusioned with Nation’s retreat from its historical journalistic role of being a promoter of progressive views in American public life. It appears to me that, in its eagerness to help Barack Obama first to be elected and then to promote his agenda, the magazine has lost sight of that role. Well enough to take a principled stance of choosing a “lesser of two evils” politically, but it’s inexcusable that the publication refuses in any consistent way to name and denounce such “evils” as Obama’s refusal to put truly universal health care or a true withdrawal from imperialistic misadventures on the “table” of the national political agenda."
All that said, I think we who knew Obama's game "from the start" must recognize with some generosity of spirit those like vanden Heuvel (as well was David Lindorff in another posting today) who are johnnies-come-lately to Obama criticism, even though it may be confined to specific issues like the AfPak escalation, Accordingly, I'm happy to see an article like this that informs the public at least about the actors and their strategies and their problems in their efforts to stave off an "expansionist" NATO involvemet in this escalation.
Europeans recognize that NATO's Cold War mission is over. Americans and Mr. Obama apparently do not. NATO is now being used by the U.S. as a military tool in American imperialism, extending the sphere from the North Atlantic then into Southwest Asia now where you have pathways for Caspian Sea oil and gas through the area to ports for Western and Asian markets. The Taliban and Al-Qeida threat is a great smoke screen to justify our presence there. But the Pakistani and Israeli nuclear threat should not be forgotten, WMD in the hands of unstable governments. It will be interesting to see what Mr. Obama's response will be to European demonstrators, if any, when he's over there, and whether the Western media will even cover the demonstrations at all.
I wish the protesters great success in this. With a little luck maybe their efforts could lead to the Europeans disbanding NATO. They have a better chance than we here in the U.S. do since we are much more reliant economically on militarism.
To understand NATO expansionism, it helps to understand SCO reactionism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_cooperation_organisation
btw- excellent article Katrina
Some wish to include India, Israel, & Japan into NATO. But, why not Togo & Fiji?
Is it just me or is KVH even more deluded than usual? First, she ignored Paul and Kucinich in the primaries as if they didn't exist and then she ignored Nader, Mckinney, Paul, and even Barr who finally got something into his brain right, during the general election. Barry already made his intentions during the campaign clear and he's getting ready to dump more US soldiers and mercenaries into Iraq and Afghanistan with the added possibilities of Pakistan and Iran. I'm sorry but Barry's already making himself to be the next war zombie Dubya ! I hope Europe wakes up and doesn't support this sham so that perhaps Barry can be forced to stop more of this genocide against the middle east.
KVH is always somewhat deluded. Her job is pretending to stand up for pretty principles, while supporting Democrats who will betray those same principles at the drop of a hat. This kind of job requires skill at managing one's own cognitive dissonance. Katrina is probably a real expert at this.
It no doubt makes it easier, that she enjoys being a minor celebrity, & getting invited to all those nice Manhattan dinner parties. She has a nice life. She likes stylish clothes (especially those leather jackets!), & gets to see her name in print all the time. Stuff like that makes it easy to manage one's own cognitive dissonance.
Thanks Dave for the info on KVH. I admit that it made me laugh for a minute and yet it reminded me of why my father hates her. He's a conservative as it is but when he complained about her always mentioning victims as the only reason and seeing her talk on abortion all the time, he called her "abortion lady". I later asked him about it and he told me that all she does is go on the air for 15 minutes of fame every time. He was upset that KVH never discussed non-gender issues such as labor unions or that she never gave credit to even the few Republicans who actually did support maintaining women's rights to choose in the past. I couldn't convince him to vote for Nader no matter how hard I begged him or my mother to listen to his take on the issues as it was. I've heard of cognitive dissonance when reading George Lakoff. While he never intended that to be misused for spinning, I'm afraid the so-called "progressives" such as the Nation and KVH are copying the Right on this.
The problem with the wars is that they are the major activity left that provides work and sustains economic activity.
Now if only National Security could be recast as bringing home the troops to defend the Homeland, have them build a high security electrical transmission system, contract the automakers for electrical vehicles, build wind and solar power farms, secure, build and defend the vital infrastructure of the Homeland.
Oops, excuse me I dozed off into a daydream.
"...The problem with the wars is that they are the major activity left that provides work and sustains economic activity..."
- They also provide superficial feelings of "patriotism," which are easily exploited by the Establishment to suppress dissent, & dull the population's political consciousness. Ignorant people (ie, most Americans) are easily persuaded that "in time of war, we must follow our leaders, rather than criticize them." Under these conditions, it's easy to obscure the connection between the wars and our govt's domestic failures (rotten economy, corporate welfare, failing health care system, etc).
Sioux Rose
DAVE B: You could take your concluding sentence and expand it. Given that Naomi Klein outlines a set of strategies that PURPOSELY lead to a "rotten economy" so that a few money-vultures standing by are positioned to profit by it, in other words the economy is not set to ruin by accident, it's been willfully directed there to open the doors to the implementaion of policies consistent with "Disaster Capitalism." It seems to me a slightly updated version has been DELIBERATELY used on the U.S. and the persons who engineered it are STILL at the wheel telling the populace how they intend to fix things (the economy), as the money just disappears. Barnum meets Jessie James magnified to the 10th power. The ones involved in this inside job must tell themselves they can't believe how easy it is.
How very true. Sometimes it seems like these conscienseless elite predators won't rest until the world is a giant slum with a few castles from where the rich can watch us tear each other apart while they make sidebets on which guttersnipe wins today. Unless we just say no to materialsm, the elite will accomplish their destructive and devisive task.
Thanks anyway for your words. They give me some hope.
This article misses the boat completely. There is no "War in Afghanistan and Pakistan".
There is only the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which currently takes place actively in Af-Pak. It takes place elsewhere as well.
America attacked into Syria last year. Somalians have been killed. Troops will be kept in Iraq to combat 'terrorism'.
This is a global conflict against those groups held responsible for 9/11.
It is also an idiotic unwinnable war that Congress allowed Bush to get us stuck in and now nobody in Washington can or wants to find the way out.
No attempts to withdraw from Afghanistan will succeed until America comes to grips with the nature of its struggle there and elsewhere.
The nature of the struggle is that America is incapable of eradicating al-Qaeda around the world and forever.
The only item of interest here is the attention given to the upcoming NATO get-together. America just escalated more troops into Af-Pak and desperately hopes that NATO does likewise.
"NATO...originally designed as a defense alliance against the Warsaw Pact"
NATO started in 1949, the Warsaw Pact in 1955.
Let me see if I can help you Mr. More. The Atlantic is a really, really big ocean. Despite that, Afghanistan does not border ANY portion of the Atlantic, much less the North Atlantic. Therefore, Ms. vanden Heuvel is pointing out the danger and absurdity of using NATO as a cudgel with which to pound people in Afghanistan. Ergo, Ms. vanden Heuvel's contribution is not drivel: it seems as if most Americans are not aware of the danger and/or absurdity of the situation; therefore, by considering Ms. vanden Heuvel's points, some might be motivated to pressure their country to change course.
"...by considering Ms. vanden Heuvel's points, some might be motivated to pressure their country to change course..."
- Except for one little problem: there's no such thing in the United States as ordinary citizens "pressuring their country to change course." And this, in turn, is because there are only 2 parties, & both of them act purely as agents of the corporate elite.
And this state of affairs is able to continue without serious challenge, in part because organs like 'The Nation' sustain the delusion that the Democratic Party can be "pressured" to act as something other than a pack of spineless corporate whores -- which it can't.
So you're right that in this particular case, vanden Heuvel's antiwar anti-NATO position is not drivel. But in the larger picture, she supports & sustains the two-party tyranny, which guarantees the defeat of antiwar voices (like her own). In effect, she's on both sides at the same time, contributing to a larger delusion that defeats her antiwar instinct.
Thanks for the response Dave. I agree...sadly...with your larger point.
Katrina vanden Heuvel and her _Nation_ magazine endorsed Obama (during the primaries, no less) as the "progressive" and "anti-war" candidate. I say, stop talking about organizing; you deserve what you voted for!!!
*And I still can't believe that you can't bring yourself to critique Obama directly for being a war hawk and criminal (i.e. the not-so-secret war against Pakistan he continues to wage).
Here's a measure for you whenever you feel outraged. Ask yourself: "What if Bush did it?"
No one should listen to you, Katrina, until you publish a piece in your magazine saying that you were mistaken about Obama and apologize to your readers.
"Progressives" who stumped for Obama haven't apologized because they feel that McCain-Palin winning the presidency would have been far worse. At least that's what I typically hear.
However, Obama has already embarked on a damaging course that we could very well imagine McCain-Palin doing: continuing the wars, continuing habeas corpus violations, continuing the extraordinary rendition policy, etc.
The damage of the Obama administration to the progressive cause is overwhelming. An apology and retrenchment would be highly appropriate for the Obama campaign apologists to do - just to set the record straight and clear the air. But we haven't seen it, for the most part.
In the future, all progressives should keep in mind the Hippocratic oath: First, do no harm. If Obama said he'd attack Pakistan and Afghanistan during the campaign (which he did), no progressive should have voted for him. Period. It's tough to have that righteous anger when a candidate does what he said he would do.
-TIA
As if that wasn't bad enough, they ignored Nader and Mckinney throughout the general election. They even ignored Cindy Sheehan. I lost my faith in "The Nation" in 2004 when they were silent on the Democrats kicking Nader off the ballot in as many states possible. Even more than apologizing about Obama, Katrina should be one of those ready to apologize to the public for leaving off Ralph Nader whose courage saved this country a lot of living hell as if there isn't enough of it already.
More Heuvel childish drivel.
You've not made your point, TM. What Katrina wrote is just a straight report of organizing in Europe, which is quite impressive compared with similar efforts in the United States. Can't fault it.
-TIA