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Posted on 01/30/2003 7:51:26 AM PST by Inspectorette
Activist quits her day job to recruit human shields
1/30/03
By LEAH ETLING
Liev Aleo has been on the front lines of Santa Barbara's peace marches for the last five months, singing, shouting and raising her arms in exuberant peace signs.
But the 27-year-old, an Indiana native who has lived in California for just a year, could find herself on the front lines of a war when she goes to Iraq as a human shield in February.
A former secretary at UCSB, Ms. Aleo quit her job in November to focus all her energy on a Web-based peace group she founded last year.
Become the Change asks visitors at www.becomethechange.org to pledge to join a worldwide shield effort.
Her Web site is one of a number around the world, and some are already sending people to Iraq. According to the BBC, two groups of shields equaling about 200 people left the United Kingdom last week. One group is organized by a former United States marine.
A caravan of British citizens organized through www.humanshields.org is going to Baghdad via Paris, Amsterdam and Istanbul. That group hopes to grow to thousands by the time they get to the Middle East.
It's unclear if any Americans have already left for Iraq.
"Mostly it's a word-of-mouth effort," Ms. Aleo said. She broached the idea at a September peace rally downtown and received positive feedback. Establishing a Web site took a few weeks and soon the e-mails were pouring in.
The site asks those who pledge to state how many other human shields would have to go to Iraq for them to feel comfortable going. Some people said five, others 500, others 10,000.
"I beg my loving wife's forgiveness and make this pledge," wrote one New York City man. The U.S. government has told Iraq that using human shields at potential bombing locations will be considered a war crime and there is no guarantee that sites where the shields might take up residence would be spared.
There are nearly 500 messages in her in-box, and Ms. Aleo devotes most of her waking hours to replying to them, contacting other shield coordinators and helping other future human shields with their travel arrangements.
"Once I realized that there was something I could do to stop a war and save hundreds of people from dying, that was all I could morally do," she said of her decision to quit her job.
A friend who supports her cause is providing housing and she has received donations that cover her living expenses while she works on coordinating the shield.
Ms. Aleo would like her shield to have at least 100 people in Iraq at all times. Those who have pledged to join her are asked to organize groups in their own cities or countries.
Many are from Australia and New Zealand. One man e-mailed from China. In California, Bay Area residents make up the majority of pledgers. She says there are lots of human shield pledges from Santa Barbara, but just one other confirmation. That man did not return calls and e-mails.
Most people who are committed to the shield effort, which requires about $2,000 for travel expenses, are making their own plane reservations. Some have found out about the British convoy and joined up with them. Others are flying to Jordan or Turkey and then making their way to Iraq.
Besides the imminent danger of war, Ms. Aleo has received death threats and hate mail from those who disagree with her cause.
"If I get called up, I will shoot every last one of you," one e-mailer wrote. Her Web site is hacked regularly and she fears there may be countless pledges that were sent but never received.
Some people think the movement could play right into Saddam Hussein's hands.
Congressman Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, noted that the Iraqi dictator was quite content to turn his own people into human shields during the Gulf War, placing his weapon stockpiles and command centers atop shelters and hospitals.
"I would not endorse or support (Americans volunteering as human shields). I don't want to see anybody go into harm's way," he said, adding that he hasn't taken a position on military action.
Despite his opposition to their actions, Mr. Gallegly said he respects each person's right to oppose the war in whatever peaceful way they choose.
"Far be it from me to be judgmental on that," he said. "I'm sure the people who are doing that believe very strongly in their decision."
The shields will be given placards in Arabic that say: "Hello! I am a member of the international human shield. Please graciously allow us to live among you in your country until this crisis has passed."
Ms. Aleo hopes that Iraqis will welcome them into their homes. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they will, she said. Her efforts to contact the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, D.C. and the Iraqi government for visas and information have not been successful, but the British human shield group has offered to share their visas with her human shield members.
Though she would grieve if any shield members are killed, Ms. Aleo believes her cause is worth dying for.
"If some of the shield members will die in trying to make the world at least a little better than this, it's a risk we consider worth taking," she said.
She says she's given little thought to the prospect of losing her own life.
"I'm telling people that there's a risk, but I would feel tremendously more guilty by sitting by and doing nothing," she said. "I think it's way nobler for a person to travel to a place for peace rather than to go there for war."
She has based much of her philosophy for Become the Change on a talk she heard Gandhi's grandson, Arun Gandhi, give at Santa Barbara City College in June 2002. Mr. Gandhi, who has endorsed her action, said the only way to peace is through mainstream citizen non-violence.
"It takes Gandhi's message and carries it forward into entirely new proportions, something that will actually stop this war and promote a nonviolence resolution to the conflict," she said.
V.I. Lenin, the founding dictator of the Soviet Union, had a pithy phrase for the Western liberals who took the side of the Soviets in political debates. He called them "useful idiots."
Nice.
Do us all a favor and don't come back!!
Just in case you aren't aware of this traitor...
A former U.S. Marine and veteran of the first Gulf War, O'Keefe renounced his U.S. citizenship in "shame and disgust" in 1999 because, as he wrote in the British newspaper The Observer, "Paying for roads and schools is one thing, paying for `Weapons of Mass Destruction' to the point of insanity and nurturing global oppression is another thing all together." O'Keefe believes the United States was probably complicit in the 9/11 attacks and that the United States has been orchestrating its war for Iraq's oil for a long time.
Doesn't this idiot get it? The "crisis" is that Saddam wants to destroy countries, and has the oompah to do it. The "crisis" is not going to pass until Saddam is disarmed.
Sheesh! Makes me ashamed that I went to UCSB.
No great loss.
He was, apparently...
In 1991, the then 21-year-old Nichols O'Keefe served in the 2nd Battalion of the US Marine Corps as an infantryman on the road to Basra, where the US military killed hundreds of retreating Iraqi soldiers.
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