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Announcement :: Peace |
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Emergency Response Rally To Oppose War On Iraq |
Current rating: 0 |
by Brooke Anderson
Email: brooke (nospam) shout.net (unverified!) |
05 Feb 2003
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Voice your opposition to the war! |
Delivered-To: PRC-L (at) listproc.prairienet.org
Delivered-To: prc-l (at) prairienet.org
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 09:52:56 -0600
From: Progressive Resource/Action Cooperative <xx308 (at) prairienet.org>
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
To: prc-l (at) prairienet.org
Subject: Emergency response rally to oppose war on Iraq
Sender: owner-prc-l (at) prairienet.org
Status:
NO WAR AGAINST IRAQ!
EMERGENCY RESPONSE RALLY TO OPPOSE BUSH'S WAR ON IRAQ
12 NOON * Day after the war begins * University of IL Quad
Join with others in voicing your opposition to the war!
-- NO to unilateral, pre-emptive military aggression against Iraq
-- NO to further endangering the lives of the Iraqi people
-- NO to sending our children and loved ones to die in war
-- NO to the elimination of civil liberties at home
-- NO to an expanded military budget when we need health care & jobs
-- YES to peace, justice, democracy, and civil rights for all!
For more information or to be placed on the EMERGENCY RESPONSE PHONE
TREE, contact the PRC at (217) 352-8721 or e-mail prc (at) prairienet.org.
The phone tree will be used to notify people of the date and others
details of the rally as soon as the war begins.
Organized by the Progressive Resource/Action Cooperative (PRC).
Co-sponsored by: 85% Coalition, Activist Forum, AWARE, Campus Greens, Central Illinois Mosque and Islamic Center (CIMIC) Association, Champaign County Health Care Consumers, Channing-Murray Foundation, El Centro por los Trabajadores , Feminist Majority, Illinois Disciples Foundation , Independent Media Center, Iota Phi Theta, La Casa Cultural Latina, Men Against Sexual Violence, Muslim Student Association, Not Your Average Student Organization, Rainforest Action Group, School for Designing a Society, Sexual Violence Workers for Social Justice, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., South Asian Collective, St. Jude?s Catholic Worker House, Student Peace Action, Students Improving the Lives of Animals, Teachers for Peace and Justice, U-C Friends Meeting, Unitarian Universalist Social Action Committee of U-C, Vietnam Veterans Against the War - C-U Chapter, Women's Direct Action Collective, World Church Service Illinois Region.
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Points of unity in opposition to a U.S. war against Iraq
********************************************************
The Progressive Resource/Action Cooperative (PRC), with a long
history of organizing for peace with social justice, is absolutely
opposed to President Bush's intentions to launch a new war against
Iraq. We call on the American people and the world community to:
-- Oppose a U.S. pre-emptive war against Iraq when Iraq has neither
threatened to attack the U.S. or other countries, nor been shown to
possess weapons of mass destruction;
-- Condemn the U.S.'s violation of international law and treaties and
self-appointed role as "world cop," acting without the support or
consensus of the United Nations;
-- Speak out against the U.S.'s own build-up of nuclear weapons;
-- Reject the use of a "voluntary" military designed to give young
people access to educational opportunities, but which actually pulls
them away from school, and which additionally enlists poor, non-white
Americans for economic reasons while the advocates of war in
corporate America benefit without suffering, and which additionally
provides inadequate benefits to veterans;;
-- Oppose an astronomical increase in the U.S. Military budget at the
expense of funding for domestic programs such as education, health
care, and jobs;
-- Work to end the on-going sanctions leveled against the Iraqi
people that have been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands
of Iraqi children;
-- Resist the use of the new "war on terrorism" as reason to
eliminate the civil liberties and rights of the American people;
Further, we call on all people of conscience to:
-- Educate yourself about Bush's war plans and the emerging anti-war
movement. We suggest visiting www.unitedforpeace.org, www.moveon.org,
and www.alternet.org/waroniraq;
-- Join with others in advocating for an alternative, socially-just
U.S. foreign policy as a means of averting terrorism;
-- Contact your local representatives and tell them that you oppose the war:
Sen. Dick Durbin: (202) 224-2152, dick (at) durbin.senate.gov
Sen. Peter Fitzgerald: (202) 224-2854,
senator_Fitzgerald (at) fitzgerald.senate.gov
Rep. Tim Johnson: (202) 225-2371, rep.Johnson (at) mail.house.gov;
-- In the event that the war occurs, attend PRC's emergency anti-war
rally at 12 noon on the University of Illinois Quad the day after the
war begins;
-- Attend PRC's educational panel discussion, "Against Bush's
Military Adventures: Voices of Resistance" on Saturday February 22nd
at 12 noon at the Illinois Disciples Foundation.
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Comments
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Time To Cut Our Losses |
by l00ka
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -3
07 Feb 2003
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Teh movement has focused way to much on anti-war lately.
Bush is going to get his war it looks like even Russia is
probably going to go along with it the last I heard. Activists
need to focus back on what causes these wars - capitalism. |
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Capitalism Causes War? Dude, Get A Clue ! |
by Utterly Amused
Chicagofreeper (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: -5
08 Feb 2003
Modified: 10:18:54 AM |
You need to quit drink the bong water dude.
Islamifascists and Socialists are at the root of every war on this planet. Saddam's Socialist Ba'ath Party Controls Iraq. Al-Qaeda are state sponsored terrorists.
Time to grow up, expand your knowledge. Grab the remote control, change the channel from MTV to (horror of horrors!) FoxNews. |
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Find Some New Mantra, This Is TOO Easy To Refute! |
by Utterly Amused
chicagfreeper (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: -3
08 Feb 2003
Modified: 10:32:26 AM |
Saddam and Terrorism: No lack of evidence
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/toptease_2.html
By Christopher Holton
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, February 6, 2003
Yesterday morning Secretary of State Colin Powell masterfully presented the United Nations Security Council with evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs and efforts to hide those programs from U.N. inspectors.
Faced with an obvious impending plethora of evidence showing the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in the form of ballistic missiles, chemical agents and biological weaponry, foes of toppling Saddam will no doubt change tactics. They will now focus on what they claim is a lack of evidence linking Iraq to the September 11th terrorist attacks and Al Qaida.
First of all, links to Al Qaida are not the question. Our enemies in this conflict are Islamic militants ("Jihadists") from several groups, including Hizbullah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Al Qaida who have been at war with the United States since at least 1982.
An odd alliance of Buchannanite neo-isolationists and radical Hollywood leftists, such as Susan "What did Iraq do to us?" Sarandon, would have you believe that Saddam Hussein has virtually nothing to do with terrorism and is an arch-enemy of the Jihadists. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Investigative reporters, intelligence operatives, authors and politicians from both the left and right for years have documented Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorist groups. In fact, only recently have neo-isolationists and Hollywood radicals called his ties to terrorism into question.
As part of the cease-fire agreement that stopped the Gulf War in 1991, as contained in U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 (April 3, 1991), Iraq agreed that it must not commit or support terrorism or allow terrorist organizations to operate in Iraq. Along with virtually every other condition in that resolution, Iraq has violated this one early and often.
Despite what you may read in your newspaper or see on television news, Iraq has a long history as a state sponsor of terrorism. In fact, Iraq has been included on our State Department's list of terrorist sponsoring nations for two decades-long before the Gulf War. Now, suddenly, critics of U.S. policy are all but claiming that Saddam Hussein has no ties to terrorism. Their mantra seems to be: "Where is the proof?'
Why are the neo-isolationists and Hollywood radicals asking for "proof" of Saddam Hussein's ties to Al Qaida and other terrorist groups? Because they know that it will be virtually impossible to produce. As former CIA director James Woolsey once said: "Hearsay is not admissible as evidence and almost all intelligence is hearsay. Evidentiary standards are the wrong standards."
Had we insisted upon hard, courtroom evidence, the Taliban regime would still be in power in Afghanistan today.
The fact is, Iraq shelters known, wanted terrorists, allows terrorist groups to maintain offices within its borders and operates a terrorist training camp at Salman Pak, complete with the fuselage of an airliner for practicing hijacking.
According to the State Department, among the terrorist groups that continue to maintain offices in Baghdad are the Arab Liberation Front, Abu Abbas' Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), and, at least until the recent suicide (?) of its leader, the Abu Nidal Organization.
It has also been reported that members of the Jihadist Palestinian terror group Hamas trained at Salman Pak and that Saddam has paid large sums of money to surviving family members of suicide bombers.
One indisputable terror crime that Iraq was involved in was the attempted assassination in 1993 of former President George H. W. Bush during his visit to Kuwait. In fact, President Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile strike in retaliation for that failed plot, which was put together by Iraqi intelligence.
In the past few years, two independent investigators have uncovered evidence that would seem to indicate Iraqi involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Dr. Laurie Mylroie published a book entitled "Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America." That book details evidence of Iraqi involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The book has been updated and republished as "The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks." William F. Buckley, Jr. said that Mylroie's book "reports persuasively that Saddam Hussein was the sponsor of the 1993 attempt on the World Trade Center." Lest you believe that Mylroie is just an arch-conservative ideologue writing in support of the Bush administration, you may want to know that this book was published in 2000, before George W. Bush was even elected. Furthermore, Mylroie is a former adviser to none other than Bill Clinton. Most importantly, however, in her book, Dr. Mylroie reveals that Jim Fox, the director of the New York FBI at the time of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, concluded that Iraq was behind the bombing. Moreover, one of the suspects still wanted in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, Abdul Yasin, is known to have fled the country and is now in Baghdad. That fact alone puts Iraq in violation of UNSCR 687.
We here at Nationalsecurityonline think Susan Sarandon should pick up a copy of Dr. Mylroie's book to find an answer to her favorite question ("what did Iraq DO to us?").
Investigative reporter Jayna Davis uncovered evidence of Iraqi complicity in the Oklahoma City bombing. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has asked the FBI to reopen the Oklahoma City case based on the evidence Davis provided.
While the evidence these two investigators uncovered may not stand up to the standard of a court of law, it is convincing enough to prompt former CIA Director Woolsey to call for a reopening of the official investigations into both incidents.
The Al Qaida connection
Not only does Saddam Hussein have active and long-standing ties to international terrorist organizations, he has ties to Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaida network.
There have been various reports of contact and meetings between Al Qaida members and Iraqi officers, including a 1998 meeting in Afghanistan between Osama Bin Laden himself and the deputy chief of Iraqi intelligence.
Even though CIA director George Tenet has downplayed the Iraq-Al Qaida link, investigative reporters provided detailed accounts from different eyewitnesses of close cooperation between Al Qaida and Iraq. In March 2002, the New Yorker published a 16,000 word article by Jeffrey Goldberg, which cited Iraqi-Al Qaida joint operations in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. Goldberg wrote a follow-up article for the February, 2003 edition of the magazine and had some startling quotes from an October 2002 letter from CIA Director George Tenet (a Clinton appointee) to Florida Senator Bob Graham (then Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee). That same letter was referred to in a February 3, 2003 Wall Street Journal article written by journalist Robert L. Bartley:
"We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaida going back a decade. Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression. We have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaida members, including some who have been in Baghdad. We have credible reporting that Al Qaida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs. Iraq's increased support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with Al Qaida, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action."
Goldberg reports that C.I.A. theories on Jihadism and state sponsors of terrorism are evolving. Not long ago, the C.I.A. insisted that the ideological differences between secular leaders like Saddam and Islamic radicals like Al Qaida and Hezbullah would make alliances between them unlikely. It was also widely believed within the agency that Sunni Muslim extremists like Al Qaida and Shi'ite Muslim extremists like Hizbullah would not be likely to form alliances. All of that is changing. Evidently, interrogation of high-level Al Qaida operatives captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere has caused the C.I.A. to rethink. More and more intelligence analysts now subscribe to the notion that the existence of a common enemy in the United States overrides religious differences.
On September 5th, 2002, Micah Morrison provided another, shorter account of Iraqi-Al Qaida ties in The Wall Street Journal. Eight days later, on September 13, 2002, Stephen F. Hayes provided more evidence in The Weekly Standard.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal on October 7, 2002, Senator Joseph Lieberman informed us that "we have evidence of meetings between Iraqi officials and leaders of Al Qaida, and testimony that Iraqi agents helped train Al Qaida operatives to use chemical and biological weapons. We also know that Al Qaida leaders have been, and are now, harbored in Iraq."
In dual articles in the December issue of Vanity Fair magazine and the December 9, 2002 edition of the London Evening Standard, investigative journalist David Rose discloses that CIA files actually contain information on 100 separate meetings between Iraqi officials and Al Qaida operatives dating all the way back to 1992, before anyone in the West even heard of Al Qaida. This includes two meetings between three of the 9-11 hijackers and officers of Iraqi intelligence in the United Arab Emirates and Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Rose has investigated the Iraqi terrorist angle as thoroughly as anyone and wrote a related piece for The Guardian entitled "The Iraqi Connection." In that article, Rose makes a startling revelation about the 2001 anthrax attacks in the U.S.:
"Many still suspect the anthrax which has so far killed four people in America has an ultimate Iraqi origin: in contrast to...denials made by senior FBI officials, CIA sources say there simply is not enough material to be sure. However, it does not look likely that the anthrax sample sent to a newspaper in Karachi can have come from the source posited by the FBI-a right wing U.S. militant. 'The sophistication of the stuff that has been found represents a level of technique and knowledge that in the past has been associated only with governments,' former vice-chairman of the UNSCOM, the U.N. weapons inspection team, Charles Duelfer said. 'If it's not Iraq, there aren't many alternatives.'"
More linkage between Saddam and Al Qaida comes to us from the U.S. Congress' top terrorism adviser, Yossef Bodansky, who recently published a book, "The High Cost of Peace," in which he reports that Iraq has provided training in the use of weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaida terrorists. As we shall see, others, including the Director of the CIA confirm that assertion.
In his book, "The War Against the Terror Masters," American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael A. Ledeen, a noted Middle East expert details Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaida and other terrorist groups. In fact, he documents that links between Al Qaida and Iraq date back to the early 1990s when Al Qaida was based out of Sudan and Iraqi intelligence was active there. He also completely debunks the theory that Saddam could never and would never form an alliance with Jihadists:
"For Iraq, the network offered a way to defeat America. It would be a grave mistake to imagine that Saddam's animus against Saudi Arabia or his secular disposition would prevent him from working with the Wahhabi religious establishment. Saddam's regime has lately encouraged the rise, in Iraq's northern safe haven, of Salafism, a puritanical sect tied to Wahhabism that hitherto had been alien to Iraq...one of these Salafi movements turns out to be a front for bin Laden."
Ledeen goes on to say: "Saddam uses terrorists to intimidate other countries near him, to demonstrate that he is a major player in the Arab world and in the struggle against Israel, and above all to avenge personal affronts. By far the most important of these is the Gulf War...That is why he ordered his intelligence service to kill the elder Bush...and he continued to seek revenge thereafter.
That he played a role in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 is highly likely,...and a relationship with bin Laden is as close to certain as you can get in the world of clandestine operations. His intelligence service certainly had contacts with Al Qaida in Sudan, and Saddam has recently embraced extremist Islam, another element that points to a working relationship with Osama."
And, finally, with regard to Al Qaida, Ledeen reports:
"Iraq, along with Syria and Iran, helped Al Qaida fighters relocate to Lebanon after their defeat in Afghanistan."
Former CIA Persian Gulf analyst and staff member of the Clinton National Security Council, Kenneth M. Pollack, makes the most exhaustive case for the forcible overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. Dr. Pollack is the author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq." In his book, Dr. Pollack actually downplays the significance of Saddam Hussein's terrorist ties in light of his other crimes and threats. However, Pollack does identify Saddam's long-standing ties to terrorism and Al Qaida in particular:
"Iraq is now, and has been throughout Saddam's reign, a state sponsor of terrorism."
Pollack reports that Saddam granted safe haven to the murdering Palestinian terrorists of the Arab Liberation Front who hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro and that Saddam began giving support to Hamas in 2000. Pollack writes that there have been connections between Iraq and Al Qaida and he also quotes CIA Director George Tenet on Saddam's ties to the terrorist group:
"Iraq has also had contacts with Al Qaida. Their ties may be limited by divergent ideologies, but the two sides' mutual antipathy toward the United States and the Saudi royal family suggests that tactical cooperation between them is possible..."
Ominously, Pollack identifies the potential advantages for Saddam of using terrorists to carry out attacks with weapons of mass destruction (WMD):
"Under present circumstances, Saddam's ability to employ his WMD to pursue foreign policy ends, let alone do massive damage with them is fairly circumscribed. But if Saddam were willing to give WMD to terrorists to employ against cities in the region or the United States, he might be able to do far more damage."
More recent reports of the Iraqi-Al Qaida connection have surfaced:
On December 12, 2002, the Washington Post reported credible intelligence indicated that Iraq had delivered the highly lethal chemical nerve agent VX to an Al Qaida cell in Lebanon, presenting the U.S. and our allies with an unprecedented, ominous threat.
On January 29 of this year, British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon declared that his government was aware of strong links between Iraq and terrorist groups. And Prime Minister Tony Blair of the Labor Party specifically stated that "we do know of links between Al Qaida and Iraq.
During his recent trip to Switzerland, Secretary of State Colin Powell told an audience that "Iraq has clear ties to terrorist groups, including Al Qaida." So much for the argument that Saddam Hussein is not tied to terrorists.
To summarize, we have statements from politicians, authors, journalists and intelligence analysts from both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Atlantic which all support the belief that Saddam Hussein is up to his eyeballs in international terrorism.
Do we have a "smoking gun" that points to Iraqi involvement in the 9-11 attacks? Of course not. We'll never find a smoking gun for 9-11. That prompts us to close with a telling quote from another former CIA Director, Robert Gates:
"I have always argued, in light of my fairly detailed knowledge of the shortcomings of our intelligence capabilities, that the fact that we don't have reliable human intelligence that proves something conclusively is happening is no proof at all that nothing is happening. In these situations, the evidence is almost always ambiguous. On capabilities, it's not ambiguous. Can Saddam produce these weapons of mass destruction? Yes."
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Yeah, Only The Gullible Believe Powell; He Is Easy To Refute |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -1
08 Feb 2003
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I don't think anyone here is impressed by the "evidence" presented by Powell. Any kid with Photoshop could have done just as good, and just as unbelieveable, a job.
See:
http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display/9342/index.php
Republicans are getting pretty good at creative writing lately. Here's another example (maybe from the same crew that wrote Powell's speech?):
http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display/9297/index.php |
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Re: Emergency Response Rally To Oppose War On Iraq |
by Peace Observer
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
09 Feb 2003
Modified: 01:46:39 AM |
Kudos to PRC and to the many co-sponsors of this mobilization against the war campaign. Special thanks and congrats to the following co-sponsors: Champaign County Health Care Consumers, Channing-Murray Foundation, Illinois Disciples Foundation , Independent Media Center, Vietnam Veterans Against the War - C-U Chapter, Women's Direct Action Collective. Fighting for peace is the most honorable and dignifying fight humanity has ever known--keep up the good work!
Peace Observer |
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Re: Emergency Response Rally To Oppose War On Iraq |
by Celeste
Divinebluelight (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
17 Mar 2003
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Today is Monday, the day Bush calls his 'moment of truth'. Where can I find out about the anti-war protest in Toronto, Canada? When is the next one and what is the schedule?
These anti-war rally needs to be mentioned on TV before a few days BEFORE the actual protest. Many folks in Toronto do not know that there is going to be an anti-war protest.
Bush and Blair must be stopped! There is no excuse for the killing of human beings. Man must start to live in peace and harmony with one another. Its the only way this planet will survive.
Thank you.
Peace and Blessings to you and everyone that is trying to stop this war.
Celeste
Toronto, Canada |
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Celeste, Try This |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
17 Mar 2003
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Look around on this link to the Ontario IMC:
http://ontario.indymedia.org/ |
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Re: Emergency Response Rally To Oppose War On Iraq |
by John Rambo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -2
20 Mar 2003
|
Looks like Sadaam is getting disarmed.
John Rambo |
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Re: Emergency Response Rally To Oppose War On Iraq |
by Adlin John
adisbaby (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
23 Mar 2003
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Bush is one of the most cruel dictators of all times.The Un security council should mandate that he meet Saddam in a hand to hand fight,winner takes it all!!!! |
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