Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 12. Mars 2006 / Time Line March 12, 2006
Version 3.503/12/2006
To the Family of Tom Fox and to the Christian Peacemaker
Teams
By Cindy Sheehan
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views06/0312-20.htm
To the family of Tom Fox and to the Christian Peacemaker
Teams:
My heart is breaking for Mr. Fox's family and for the world. This
is a dark day for peace and justice. The loss of a man of the
stature of Tom Fox and the loss of his voice for peace and
reconciliation is a tragedy for our country which operates so often
from a paradigm of violence. Every voice for peace is imperative
and needed.
I am always told that I am brave, but what I do pales weakly in
comparison with the actions of Tom Fox and the Christian
Peacemakers who put their actual lives on the line everyday to make
the world a better place and to save lives of our brothers and
sisters who are in danger.
Jesus said: "To give up one's life for a friend, there is no
greater love than this," (John 15:13). This is the same Gospel
passage that was read at my son, Casey's, funeral. Jesus went on to
say that it is even more sacred to give up your life for people you
don't even know.
Tom lived his life out of his moral center and gave freely of his
life to save lives of people he would probably never meet.
Now, the world is begging for the safe release of the other three
Christian Peacemakers who are still held hostage. The way to peace
is not violence. The way to peace is only through peace and a
respect for all life. The killing of Tom Fox does nothing to foster
peace in the Middle East but can be used for a renewed call for the
immediate withdrawal of all coalition troops from Iraq so the
people of Iraq can rebuild their lives and their country. So the
killing of innocents and our American troops can stop.
I did not want my son's death to be exploited to justify more
deaths in Iraq and I am sure Tom and his family would agree. It is
past time for the cycle of violence and killing to stop.
It is time for we peacekmakers and peace activists from around the
world to join our hands and our voices together to demand an end to
the violence and killing.
Tom Fox and his selfless sacrifice for humanity make me proud to be
a human being. I just wish such a holy act of sacrifice was not
necessary or required of Tom.
Tom is at peace now, I pray for this peace for Tom's family and for
our world.
In Peace and Solidarity,
Cindy Sheehan and Gold Star Families for Peace.
03/12/2006
OLDEST UNANSWERED FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUESTS WERE FILED IN
1989
National Security Archive Audit Identifies "10 OLDEST" Requests in
U.S. Federal Government
50 Federal Agencies Reveal Oldest Still-Open Requests; CIA Boasts 4
Out of 10
Washington, D.C., 12 March 2006 - The oldest Freedom of Information
requests still pending in the U.S. government date back to 1989,
before the fall of the Berlin Wall, according to the Freedom of
Information Audit released today by the National Security Archive
at the George Washington University.
In April 2005, the Archive filed FOIA requests for copies of the
"10 oldest open or pending" FOIA requests at 64 federal agencies,
which together handle more than 97% of all FOIA requests. The
Central Intelligence Agency is responsible for four of the ten
oldest requests even though the CIA only handles .08% of the
Freedom of Information Act requests received by the federal
government. Other agencies that have requests more than 15 years
old include the Department of Defense, the U.S. Air Force, the
National Archives and Records Administration, and the Department of
Energy.
The oldest pending request was submitted to the Department of
Defense by a graduate student at the University of Southern
California in March 1989 asking for records on the U.S. "freedom of
navigation" program. So much time has elapsed that the requester,
William Aceves, is now a tenured professor at California Western
School of Law.
This National Security Archive Audit was conducted in order to
investigate whether federal agencies had fixed the backlog problem
identified by the Archive in a previous 2003 FOIA Audit. Comparing
the data from the two studies reveals that many of the oldest
pending requests identified in 2003 are still pending in 2005 and
most federal agencies are maintaining the same or even more sizable
backlogs in 2005 than in previous years.
One request exposed in the Archive's 2003 Audit as one of the
oldest in the federal government was an October 1989 request to the
CIA submitted by Lancaster Pennsylvania's Intelligencer Journal.
The CIA responded to the request almost fifteen years later in
August 2004, saying the agency had not found any documents and was
closing the request.
The single oldest request in 2003 was a 1987 letter from San
Francisco Chronicle reporter Seth Rosenfeld on FBI activities in
Berkeley, California, was not provided by the FBI in their 2005
list of oldest pending requests, indicating that the FBI now
considers this request closed. According to Mr. Rosenfeld, the
November 1987 request, which clarified an earlier 1981 FOIA request
he submitted to the FBI, has not yet completely been fulfilled in
2006.
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