We knew before the illegal invasion of Iraq began that the U.S. government would be pushing legislature through Congress, and we agreed that we'd have to pay attention to that. (Please note: This is not a war; Patriot II itself states that the U.S. has not been involved in a war in more than 60 years.) While we mourn for those who are suffering and dying under weapons of mass destruction, let's remain close in our communities and active in our dialogues.
WE ARE ALL TERRORISTS
The first page alone of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (aka Patriot II) is off-the-charts alarming. In defining terrorism, Section 101: Individual Terrorists as Foreign Powers reads, "This provision would expand FISA's definition of "foreign power" to include *all* persons, regardless of whether they are affiliated with an international terrorist group, who engage in international terrorism."
Proceeding to Section 102: Clandestine Intelligence Activities by Agent of a Foreign Power: "FISA currently defines "agent of a foreign power" to include a person who knowingly engages in clandestine intelligence gathering activities on behalf of a foreign power -- but only if those activities "involve or may involve a violation of" federal criminal law. Requiring the additional showing that the intelligence gathering violates the laws of the United States is both unnecessary and counterproductive.. Any person who engages in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for a foreign power would qualify as an "agent of foreign power," regardless of whether those activities are federal crimes."
"Clandestine"?
"Intelligence"?
So, with law out the window, how are these offenses qualified, and by whom? If detainment is at the sole discretion of the Attorney General, and detainees are not only denied the right to trial, but denied contact with *all persons*, then this administration is indeed positioned to detain anyone perceived to be an Other, be it an international resident or a domestic dissident.
"Terrorist"?
You can download Patriot II at
www.public-i.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0 &L5=0
RACIAL PROFILING
"Since September 11, the INS and FBI have detained over 1,200 immigrants, mainly of Arab or South Asian (especially Pakistani) origin. Most are accused only of minor immigration violations, such as overstaying a visa. Despite Attorney General Ashcroft's assurances to the contrary, many are being held without access to legal assistance or proper care."
www.drumnation.org/stopdc.html
"SEVIS is a national computer system operated by the INS.. Under SEVIS, information on every international student is automatically provided to the government via computer. Much more information on each student collected and input. SEVIS works like the Interpol database. The information is shared among federal agencies (and even other countries!), and the student has no control over what is provided."
www.stopsevis.org
SEND A FREE FAX URGING CONGRESS TO STOP THE PROFILING
www.aclu.org/ImmigrantsRights/ImmigrantsRights.cfm?ID=11561&c=95
INS DETAINEES: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
In the two months following the attacks, the Justice Department refused to release specific information about detainees. Groups estimated that more than 1,000 people had been detained, but it was unclear who they were, why they had been detained, or whether any had been released.
www.rcfp.org/secretjustice/terrorism/detainment.html
"The Department of Justice has argued that disclosing the names and other information about post- September 11 detainees held on immigration charges and opening their immigration hearings to the public could compromise its terrorism-related investigations." Yet, "it is difficult to square the Department of Justice's contention that terrorist organizations are extremely sophisticated and could put together bits and pieces of information from hundreds of hearings around the country, with the argument that official disclosure would alert such organizations to who has been detained. Sophisticated terrorist groups likely already know through their own networks whether any of their members or allies have been arrested."
www.hrw.org/reports/2002/us911/USA0802-02.htm#P474_104537
LEGGO MY FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT!
"[T]he DSEA would revoke key elements of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), enacted to prevent government from keeping secrets from the public unless a legitimate security concern exists. Currently, FOIA gives us the right to know if a missing person is in the custody of any government agency. But under DSEA, anyone -- even U.S. citizens -- could be detained secretly in connection with any "terrorist" investigation, a term lacking legal definition.
reclaimdemocracy.org/civil_rights/patriot_act_ii_oped.html
KEEPING THE WORLD SAFE FOR HUMANITY
A NYTimes article reveals that the treatment of U.S. military prisoners at Guantánamo Bay has yielded criticism: "without individual hearings to determine the prisoners' status, without charges and trials, critics see Guantánamo as a synonym for human rights violations. While there is no indication of physical torture.. they still lack the basic legal rights that many countries, including the United States, have agreed are fundamental even to warriors."
Gen. Rick Baccus of the Army, who commands the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, says, "While the public debates the technicalities of how these people should be classified," he said, "we will continue to follow the traditions of humane treatment." He added: "In other countries, these detainees would not be heard from again."
Patriot II would make it possible indeed that these detainees would not be heard from again. Even the directors of the U.S. military's most aggressive jails acknowledge that Patriot II is contrary to USAmerican concepts of justice.
www.nytimes.com/2002/09/16/international/americas/16DETA.html
PRESUMED GUILTY: ANSER MEHMOOD
Anser Mehmood came to the U.S. from Pakistan in 1989. "On [September 11, 2001], he failed to make a scheduled delivery to Washington, DC. Mehmood was taken into custody along with several thousand other men of Middle Eastern and South Asian origin. Mehmood remains here in custody although it turned out that it was his company that cancelled his September 11th shipment to Washington when they learned of the Pentagon bombing."
www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_family2.html
The official charge on Anser Mehmood are an overstayed visa and and altered security card (to secure employment). Uzma Mehmood, Anser's wife, and their children have been forced to return to Pakistan, while Anser remains in a NJ jail. "He is held without a bond on a very specious affidavit put in by an FBI agent. And put in the special housing unit otherwise known as 'The Hole'. It's solitary confinement he's locked down 23 and a half hours a day. He's fed through a slot in the door."
www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_familydivided.html Stories of other innocent detainees are here:
www.hrw.org/reports/2002/us911/USA0802-01.htm#P217_31161
"I DIDN'T SPEAK OUT"
They came for the Communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.
-- Pastor Martin Niemoller
The climate is rapidly changing such that it is more and more likely that a good number of U.S.-born citizens might be subject to detainment. I'm sure I'm a good candidate, with the money I have given and continue to give to organizations such as MoveOn.org and ZNet, which are today considered treasonous at best.
How might they know who I've donated money to? Well for starters, a new security program to be implemented by Delta Airlines later this month will mean that when you book a flight to or from one of three undisclosed airports, you will be subject to a credit check, an investigation of your banking history, and a criminal background check. The controls on how this information will be used has not been adequately defined. This appears to be illegal. It is an egregious invasion of privacy.
www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/business/06FLY.html?ex=1047531600&en=27fa9 893300c6439&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
SAUDI SUSPECTS OFF LIMITS
Maybe one reason the number of detainees is so high is, they're looking for a needle in a haystack: an innocent on whom to pin a colossal, heinous crime. from an interview with journalist Greg Palast:
"In the eight weeks since the attacks, over 1,000 suspects and potential witnesses have been detained. Yet, just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osama Bin Laden's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the White House.
"Their official line is that the Bin Ladens are above suspicion - apart from Osama, the black sheep, who they say hijacked the family name. That's fortunate for the Bush family and the Saudi royal household, whose links with the Bin Ladens could otherwise prove embarrassing. But Newsnight has obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of other members of the Bin Laden family for links to terrorist organisations before and after September 11th.
"This document is marked "Secret". Case ID - 199-Eye WF 213 589. 199 is FBI code for case type. 9 would be murder. 65 would be espionage. 199 means national security. WF indicates Washington field office special agents were investigating ABL - because of it's relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, WAMY - a suspected terrorist organisation. ABL is Abdullah Bin Laden, president and treasurer of WAMY."
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/newsnight/1645527.stm
More from Palast:
"FBI agents had wanted to check into two members of the Bin Laden family, Abdullah and Omar, but were told to stay away by superiors -- until September 13, 2001. By then, Abdullah and Omar were long gone from the United States.
www.guerrillanews.com/government/doc1148.html
"The intelligence agencies had been told to "back off" from investigations involving other members of the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan."
www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,589168,00.html
[Editorial Note: I want to be clear that this reporting is not anti-Saudi; it is of course offered to evidence the lack of integrity and justice in the current U.S. administration]
WHY WAIT FOR PATRIOT II? DETAIN TODAY! Sadly, even without Patriot II, immigrants are being detained on trivial charges, without recourse:
Rules on Detention Widened: FBI, Marshals Can Hold Foreigners: Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has issued orders that allow FBI agents and U.S. marshals to detain foreign nationals for alleged immigration violations in cases where there is not enough evidence to hold them on criminal charges, according to Justice Department officials and a copy of the rules.
www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56948-2003Mar19.html
Registration Program Problems Cited: Immigrants' Attorneys Kept From Investigative Interviews: "The failure to provide clear and explicit directions to local immigration officials is inexcusable given the absolute right to legal counsel," said Lucas Guttentag, director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. He charged that the "foot-dragging" could be explained only by a reluctance to dig into the matter before the registration deadlines have passed.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55994-2003Mar19.html
HOW MUCH BAD HISTORY CAN WE BEAR TO REPEAT? Let's not forget FDR's passage of Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans between 1942 and 1944.
www.sscnet.ucla.edu/aasc/ex9066/
WHO HOW & WHAT 2 RELAY Many thanks to contributors Natasha Dwyer, Allison Cobb, and Tom Orange.
Thanks to everyone for participating. I'm sorry to say that I'm unable to manage unsolicited content for Relay; if you find something to circulate, why not relay it directly to your own address book? We like it when those cats at Clamor Magazine say, Become the Media!
Subscription requests go to mirakove_relay@yahoo.com
TOY SURPRISE! A friend reminded me a few months ago that throughout our fighting and disgust, we need to make a world worth saving. Pursue beauty. Laughter. Celebrate our relationships. In that spirit, I encourage you to visit some terrific NYC subway graffiti from the 1970s:
www.at149st.com/
CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY OBTAINS SECRET DRAFT OF PATRIOT ACT II
The nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity has obtained a draft of a secret document called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. This document is more commonly known as the Patriot Act II, and is designed to "give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information." You can download the document here:
www.public-i.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0 &L5=0
Find an excellent guide to the document by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee at
www.bordc.org/Repeal.pdf
View a quick list of consequences to Patriot II here:
reclaimdemocracy.org/civil_rights/govpower_enhancement_act.html
GRAVE CONCERN #1: SECRECY AND LIES
Patriot Act II reverses the fundamental principles of a liberal, democratic society: rather than citizens living private lives and our government being transparent, we are now to be transparent to government's impenetrable authority. Charles Lewis says, "democracy is supposed to be a contact sport, with many and diverse participants, and we quickly discovered that practically no one on Capitol Hill in either party or in the national news media had ever even heard of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003." So the first concern is, this document is very mature and was kept from nearly everyone on Capitol Hill -- never mind the general public.
When the story broke, Barbara Comstock, director of public affairs for the Justice Dept., said, "Department staff have not presented any final proposals to either the Attorney General or the White House. It would be premature to speculate on any future decisions, particularly ideas or proposals that are still being discussed at staff levels." In fact, the staff at NOW with Bill Moyers had obtained a control sheet that proved the document was delivered to VP Dick Cheney and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert on January 10. Caught red-handed in lies.
www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=506&L1=10&L2=10&L3 =0&L4=0&L5=0
GRAVE CONCERN #2: DIMINISHED CIVIL RIGHTS
Whether you're a liberal, a libertarian, a conservative, an anarchist, all over free enterprise, an electric-triangle prodigy, or an amoeba painter, the Patriot Act II is not your friend! The only group that would be served by this act is one who believes that s/he is best served by a government that operates behind a thick veil, whose authority is beyond reproach and not subject to accountability.
The ACLU has posted an outstanding, detailed analysis of the Patriot II. Here are the basic offenses:
-- diminishes personal privacy by removing checks on government power
-- diminishes public accountability by increasing government secrecy
-- diminishes corporate accountability under the pretext of fighting terrorism
-- undermines fundamental constitutional rights of Americans under overbroad definitions of "terrorism" and "terrorist organization" or under a terrorism pretext; [nb: this topic will be the focus of relay #3 -- carol]
-- unfairly targets immigrants under the pretext of fighting terrorism
www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=11835&c=206
GRAVE CONCERN #3: NO CHECKS NO BALANCE
"Another section would nullify existing consent decrees against state law enforcement agencies that prevent the agencies from spying on individuals and organizations. These consent decrees were crafted because state and local governments illegally invaded the privacy of American citizens and repeatedly violated their civil rights. To make matters worse, the proposed bill prevents courts from issuing injunctions to block future abuses."
www.commondreams.org/views03/0213-09.htm
GRAVE CONCERN #4: CITIZEN ENDGAME
"Perhaps the most troubling section would strip U.S. citizenship from anyone who gives "material support" to any group that the attorney general designates as a terrorist organization. Citizenship is the most basic right for all Americans, one from which other rights -- such as the right to vote, to participate in politics and even to live in this country -- all flow. Under our Constitution, Americans can't be deprived of their citizenship, and the rights that go with it, unless they voluntarily give it up."
www.commondreams.org/views03/0213-09.htm
DEJA VOODOO
If you want to know the future under these new laws, check out the past. Remember COINTELPRO, the FBI counterintelligence program from 1956-1971? Like the Patriot Act, it claimed to be protecting us from evil terrorists and agents of foreign powers. In practice, it was a plan to discredit and neutralize political dissidents at home -- dangerous terrorists like Martin Luther King, the NAACP, and the National Lawyers Guild. Congress and the courts shut COINTELPRO down because it was unconstitutional. Bush, Ashcroft & Co are bringing it back.. on steroids. The report of the Congressional committee that investigated COINTELPRO is surprisingly readable; see www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/cointel.htm. It's an eye-opener.. and it could have been written last week.
THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE "DICTATOR"
John Ashcroft's TIPS program in the original Patriot Act looks an awful lot like Fidel Castro's Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), which the U.S. forcefully condemned. The CDR consists of neighborhood watch groups, which monitor and patrol blocks and barrios in order to enforce sedition acts. Many arrests have been made under their advisement. Behold, The U.S. Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996: SEC. 205. REQUIREMENTS AND FACTORS FOR DETERMINING A TRANSITION GOVERNMENT.
(a) Requirements.--For the purposes of this Act, a transition government in Cuba is a government that--
(1) has legalized all political activity;
(2) has released all political prisoners and allowed for investigations of Cuban prisons by appropriate international human rights organizations;
(3) has dissolved the present Department of State Security in the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, including the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and the Rapid Response Brigades; and
(4) has made public commitments to organizing free and fair elections for a new government--
usinfo.state.gov/regional/ar/us-cuba/libertad.htm
Read what the ACLU has to say about the TIPS program:
www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=10783&c=206
OUR FREEDOM, OUR RESPONSIBILITY
Heriberto Yepez, a writer, translator, and teacher in Tijuana, reports that U.S. flag burning has become common in Mexico. thetijuanabibleofpoetics.blogspot.com/ (see entry 15.2.03) Freedom is a responsibility. We really must reclaim ours. As international citizens, we have a responsibility to stop the violations the U.S. is guilty of, to get out of this isolation that the current administration have thrust us into, and to reinscribe the USAmerican flag with values that Mexico will embrace, not burn.
WHO WHAT & HOW 2 RELAY
Many thanks to contributors Eric Keenaghan and Charles Weigl.
Thanks to everyone for your great response to issue 1! It's excellent that so many of you have expressed offers to submit raw materials for Relay. Unfortunately, I'm too unorganized to manage unsolicited content right now; if you find something worth circulating, why not relay it directly to your own address book? As those tireless cats at Clamor Magazine say, Become the Media! Subscription requests go to mirakove_relay@yahoo.com.
TOY SURPRISE!
Get The First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra into heavy rotation:
www.gemueseorchester.org/anfang_e.htm If they fail to make you giggle with glee, check yr pulse.
[First of a series of email newsletters that poet Carol Mirakove has started circulating and which will be appearing regularly on this site. Great links to substantial articles and essays. There is an email address at the end of the article to which you can send subscription requests.]
SHOULD WE BELIEVE THE EVIDENCE AGAINST IRAQ?
Well, we -know- the US government greatly exaggerated the facts and doctored photos in 1991 in order to justify the Gulf War. Here's only one of many citations: "Purchased by ABC from the Soviet commercial satellite agency Soyez-Karta, the photos were expected to reveal the presence of a massive Iraqi troop deployment in Kuwait, but failed to disclose anything near the number of troops claimed by the Bush administration. ABC declined to use them.." "Two satellite experts who had formerly worked for the U.S. government failed to find evidence of the alleged buildup." www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/papers/gulfwar1.htm
The Guardian published on Fri, Feb 7, that the UK war dossier (you know, the one that's supposedly based on secret intelligence about the current state of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction) was plagiarized from documents that are more than a decade old. "Apart from passing this off as the work of its intelligence services," Dr Rangwala said, "it indicates that the UK really does not have any independent sources of information on Iraq's internal policies. It just draws upon publicly available data." www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,890916,00.html
As for Colin Powell's presentation at the UN, none of the information can be substantiated. Who are "their sources"? Other questions that Colin Powell really needs to be answering are here: www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=2993
Of course, the US government has a long history of this kind of lying. In 1964, President Johnson tricked Congress into okaying the Vietnam War by claiming the North Vietnamese has attacked a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin. As he was well aware, the event never happened -- but that didn't stop him from launching a war that claimed the lives of 57,000 American soldiers and millions of Vietnamese civilians. Are we ready for another one of -those-? www.counterpunch.org/tristam1016.html http://www.fair.org/media-beat/940727.html
EVEN IF THE EVIDENCE IS CREDIBLE, IS WAR NECESSARY?
Despite that this large-scale attack casts us into serious peril, our government officials and our major media channels are telling us that it is necessary. Does it make sense to you that Saddam Hussein -- under UN watch -- is a bigger threat to us than the threat of retaliation? From CNN, "Rumsfeld said: "We are sending very clear messages to people around him that they would be well-advised not to use those weapons. In the event, they do, they would wish they hadn't." Rumsfeld was answering a question that referred to President Bush's statement that Saddam has authorized field commanders to use chemical weapons." www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/07/sprj.irq.rumsfeld.europe/index.htm l
So question one is, why are our officials answering questions about cremating U.S. soldiers who are killed in chemical warfare (in order to get their bodies home for a memorial) rather than answering questions about how to prevent U.S. soldiers from meeting such a fate? Furthermore, what kind of leverage does Rumsfeld imagine he has over Iraq? The U.S. government is openly planning to flatten the nation at the onset, with hundreds of cruise missiles. What would Iraq have to lose in unleashing chemical warfare, on their own land, or on ours? And then, if the U.S. does go ahead and demolish Iraq, retaliation won't be coming from that country alone (do you think the rest of the middle east [and other oil-rich nations] will sit around and wait to be similarly invaded?). Ok -- per the Belfer Center at Harvard's JFK School of Government, Saddam can be contained: bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/publication.cfm?program=CORE&ctype=paper&item_i d=361
U.S. SOLDIERS MADE TO BURY IRAQIS ALIVE IN GULF WAR
Do we want more U.S. soldiers to experience this brutality (not to mention their victims!)? Patrick J. Sloyan, Newsday reporter, broke the story on Sept 12, 1991, that U.S. soldiers were made to bulldoze Iraqi soldiers alive. Timothy McVeigh was among those who received this order. Sloyan's summary of Gulf War bulldozing is here: digitaljournalist.org/issue0211/sloyan.html
From the National Catholic Register, a Gulf War Veteran recounts: "I had to give the order, order men who drove the earth-movers to just cover up the trenches. To bury those poor bastards alive." www.ncregister.com/Register_News/120802war.htm
From Charles Sheehan-Miles, Gulf War Veteran: "The first Gulf War wasn't clean, it wasn't pretty, and it wasn't precise. In the chaos and destruction of battle, anything can happen. We killed a lot of people." www.veteransforcommonsense.org/
FBI, CIA SAY THERE IS NO CONNECTION BETWEEN HUSSEIN AND AL-QAEDA
This has been looked at, continuously, by U.S. intelligence since Sept 11, 2001. "Why the CIA thinks Bush is wrong": www.sundayherald.com/print28384. "No one's got proof": www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/08/26/time.iraq/. But media distortion leads to phenomena such as this: 1,200 US citizens were asked, "To the best of your knowledge, how many of the September 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens?" Of those surveyed, only 17 percent knew the correct answer: that none of the hijackers were Iraqi. 44 percent of USAmericans believe that most or some of the hijackers were Iraqi; another 6 percent believe that one of the hijackers was a citizen of that most notorious node in the axis of evil. That leaves 33 percent who did not know enough to offer an answer. www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/02/06/iraq_poll/
IT IS ABOUT OIL
The U.S. has been long-planning to control and re-map the Middle East. From the Institute for National Defense Strategic Studies: "The overriding American concern was preserving access to Gulf oil at reasonable prices and keeping the region secure from threat or invasion." www.ndu.edu/inss/press/Spelreprts/SR_03.htm
Robert Jensen explains, "No one suggests the United States seeks to permanently take direct possession of Iraqi oil. Instead, policymakers are interested in control over the flow of oil and oil profits.." "U.S. control over Iraq through a compliant regime -- beholden for its very existence to the United States -- dramatically increases U.S. control over oil, and therefore over the world economy." www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2970
Oh yeah!, and then there's the one about George Bush, Senior, and the Bin Laden family sitting together on the board of the Carlyle group: "Carlyle's investors include the Bin Laden family, which has disowned its terrorist son Osama; Bush Sr.; and former Bush inner guard members Nick Carlucci and James Baker. Judicial Watch says all involved stand to benefit from any increase in U.S. defense spending." www.villagevoice.com/issues/0141/gray.php
IRAQIS WANT THE U.S. TO LEAVE THEM ALONE
The NYC-based artist Paul Chan was in Baghdad from Dec 14-Jan 14 with members of the Iraq Peace Team (www.iraqpeaceteam.org/). They broke sanctions, bringing medicine, toys, and art supplies to the people of Iraq. The people of Iraq -like- us; they hate Bush (Senior and Junior). They want the U.S. to leave them alone. In insisting that the Iraqi people experience the same freedoms that we experience, Paul says the U.S. would be delivering liberty and death in a single blow. Please go to Paul's site and experience wonderful images of people living in Baghdad today: www.nationalphilistine.com/
1.2 MILLION IRAQIS HAVE BEEN KILLED SINCE 1992 We don't want any more blood on our hands: U.S. and UK-led, UN sanctions against Iraq have claimed an estimated 1.2 million Iraqi lives. UNICEF estimates that the total number of casualties includes more than 600,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5, with 4,500 dying each month. www.doctorsworldwide.org/projects/iraq.htm
MESSAGE FROM THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: "IF YOU DOUBT THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS, THINK BACK TO SEPTEMBER 11, 2001"
The U.S. is not listening to the UN, it is not listening to the world in protest. If we keep pissing people off & stomping around like a big bully, we are -more- likely to suffer attacks on our landmarks, our homes, our families, our selves. Furthermore, those attacks will be used to justify deeper cuts to our body of civil liberties by our own government. We need to pay attention to, and participate in, our political processes. Robert Jensen recently wrote, "If you doubt the importance of this, think back to September 11, 2001. On that day, we got a glimpse of what it will look like if the empire is dismantled from the outside, if the empire continues to ignore the world. But we have a choice. We, the first citizens of the empire, can commit to dismantling the empire from within, peacefully and non-violently, in solidarity with those around the world struggling for justice." www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=2950
GOOD NEWS: THE UN MAY BE ABLE TO BLOCK THE ATTACKS
"In 1950, the Security Council set up a procedure for insuring that stalemates between countries would not prevent the United Nations from carrying out its mission to "maintain international peace and security." With the United States playing an important role in its adoption, the Council adopted Resolution 377, the aptly named "Uniting for Peace" in an almost unanimous vote." See the Center for Constitutional Rights website: www.ccr-ny.org
SUBSCRIPTION REQUESTS
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