FEINSTEIN TARGETED

[shane que hee]

OUT AGAINST WAR TARGETS FEINSTEIN                    PRESS  RELEASE   September 26, 2014
Contacts:  Shane Que Hee  oa...@hotmail.com; Bill Kaiser  Phone: (818) 953-5096

Out Against War, Los Angeles' LGBT antiwar organization, held an emergency protest at U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein's office in Los Angeles midday on Thursday September  25.  The focus was the new expansion of war and militarism by the U. S. government, at the cost of providing needed help and services at home, including AIDS research for a cure.

While a number of placard-holding demonstrators picketed outside the building, long-time Gay activists and spokespersons for Out Against War, Shane Que Hee and John O'Brien, hand-delivered a letter to Senator Feinstein's office and gave out flyers to the staff with six demands: Fund AIDS research - not war-to find a real cure; Release Chelsea Manning; Drop all charges against Edward Snowden; End the Patriot Act (that expires on December 18 unless renewed);
End the militarization of local police forces; and Stop funding U.S. President Obama's declared and undeclared wars.

Shane Que Hee, an AIDS activist and educator, explained why Senator Feinstein was selected as the focus of these protests and these demands. The senator's position as chair of the Intelligence Committee and being a member of the Expropriations Committee (and former Chair) makes her a key player in all six of these issues.  Senator Feinstein has been very public in demanding maximum punishment for whistleblowers Chelsea (Bradley) Manning and Edward Snowden, but she has remained silent on funding for a real cure for AIDS.  She has also remained silent on the Michael Brown murder in Ferguson Missouri that brought to public attention the widespread militarization of local police forces. 

Senator Feinstein's memberships on the U. S. Senate Appropriations Committee and Armed Services Committee have facilitated big funding for such merchant of death companies as General Electric and Raytheon providing them historic profits, while needed funding for AIDS research for a cure goes wanting.  And now the U. S. Congress (including Senator Feinstein) is approving the spending of the obscene costs for the missiles and jets used in Iraq and Syria and an additional 500 million dollars to fund various Islamic opposition groups in Syria - many who have carried out murder and torture of LGBTs- and the Iraq government that was revealed as having active death squads to detect and torture and murder Iraqi LGBTs.

John O'Brien, a leading participant in the Stonewall Rebellion and long-time LGBT activist including for international LGBTs, wanted to know why there is funding for these known extremist religious-based hate groups who want to enforce Sharia Law at the expense to the rights of women and Gays, while the same Congress keeps stating they do not have funds to do needed research for a cure to AIDS and to do AIDS education. O'Brien pointed out "President Obama and the Congressional leadership can seem to find money to waste on proven failed efforts of bombing, occupying and setting up unpopular nation puppets in the Middle East, while they claim that needed services for Americans must go without."

O'Brien went on to explain how historically such militarist doctrines failed, only leading to much pain and the wasted lives of both Americans and to people in the Middle East.  "We should have learned by now after a string of failures from Vietnam to Iraq to Libya - that we do not need to add Syria to this sorry record", stated O'Brien.

OAW activist Robert Brown added  "Last year the majority of Americans correctly opposed President Obama and his congressional allies when they wanted to attack and bomb the Syrian government, so as to aid the very same rebel groups that now the same U. S. president wants to bomb.  It seems the focus of U. S. foreign policy is threatening or carrying out military attacks, instead of promoting rights and justice. We are only creating more enemies with a militarist foreign policy."

"We see the same failed government policies over and over again.  We first supported partners like Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, former Panama dictator Manuel Noriega, and former Iraqi prime minister Anwar Malaki.  We then turned our military weapons against these same folks.  We should be aiding and defending women and Gays and not more dictators and gangster outfits who portray themselves as religious believers, when they are just mainly poor uneducated youth with no jobs and no hope,  lured by promises of some paradise by religious charlatans", stated Brown.    
 
John O'Brien expressed fear "that once the U. S. military had defeated the relatively small organized forces of ISIS and some of the other fifty jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq, that the same U. S.  forces by early 2015, will then come into active conflict with the Syrian government military." Should the U. S.  government arrange with a section of the Syrian military and Bathist leaders to topple dictator Bashir al-Assad", O'Brien went on to state "the new then U. S. -approved Syrian leader will be viewed as a puppet when rejecting the needed demands and aspirations of a Syrian populace, that has endured much suffering and this will inevitably lead then to a growing active resistance among Syrians, as occurred in Iraq and is now playing out in Libya.  All this does is to create new enemies". 

O'Brien emphasized that we witnessed over five decades of such failed policies based on militarism and war.  He stated "these short-sighted actions and responses might aid the policies of the governments of Israel, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia - but do not help the average American and makes us all less secure."

The OAW leaders all emphasized that LGBT people,  as with most people in the USA and around the world, do not benefit by warfare that benefits large corporation shareholders and dictators.  Instead, the U.S. should cooperate, educate, provide jobs and hope,  to those many Arab youth now facing the same desperation of our own nation's poor youth-- no hope, no jobs and a poor future.  The ISIS are just gangsters who use the same methods as USA inner city gangs.

We can and must do better as a nation and a people.  Perhaps LGBT people can provide that needed leadership, of offering cooperation and hope to others who have also been disenfranchised- as have many poor LGBT people in both the
USA and other parts of the world.  War is not the answer and Eternal War will definitely not create a better world.  Militarism creates nations with less civil liberties and fewer rights, and does not extend and enforce rights.