In Search of Peace and Flowers

``regime change begins at home``

``Significantly, the biggest demonstrations were in London, Rome and Madrid, whose national governments side with the White House.

The continent has not seen protests on that scale in memory.

The crowds were so vast in Barcelona and Madrid that they jammed the streets and were unable to march. Protest organizers usually exaggerate numbers, but from official accounts alone at least three million people marched across Europe.

Other nonpartisan accounts put the total at between four and six million.

Even in Italy, which has sought to qualify its support for the United States, at least 600,000 people and possibly many more thronged Rome.

The breadth and magnitude of the demonstrations opened a rift between ruler and the ruled, convincing many

that street protest had overtaken conventional democracy in expressing the popular will.

``The real question is not about intervention,`` said John Game, 38, a doctoral student at London University, gesturing to the crowd around him as he marched yesterday.

``It`s about why Tony Blair is not listening to the people of Britain. That`s not democracy; this is what democracy looks like.``

Among the demonstrators` posters were some that read, ``Regime change begins at home.``(NYT)

regime change in Washington DC -- in 2004

Ras,
The potential Iraq war is one issue on which Indians and Pakistanis have a common perspective - we do not support this war. The Indian government will not be joining in any action, but I am rather disappointed in the Pakistani government. As a nuclear power with a strong military, I thought that Pakistan would be in the forefront of the anti-war movement. Instead I read in Dawn that Pakistan will actually be participating in this venture, in terms of sharing military advice. One continuously reads articles from retired Pakistani generals criticizing India and imploring Pakistan to be prepared. Why are they silent on this matter or is their passion only directed against India ?

#10 - couldnt agree more with Saminasha(#14)Ignorance is bliss as they say..
wonder what you thought of Secretary Powell`s plagiarised document?
The ``Jihadistan`` you refer to, why the ``istan`` may i ask? that seems to be a highly biased opinion..
The fact that ``moderate`` muslims want to participate in peace rallies just irks you rightwing people because you want the world to think we all believe in killing all nonmuslims and we`re just binladen`s with masks.. well I for one have an opinion and I love the west and tolerance and marches and democracy and right to voice my opinion and if people like you want to think that its all an act - well go right ahead! The rallies will continue and I will continue to participate. You know they were effective in the vietnam war and all these ppl making noise is bound to make you and yr precious president incomfortable.So be it!

finally an arab with some balls. and a smart one to boot. and the perfect solution to iraq crises:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=540&ncid=736&e=10&u=/ap/20030215/ap_on_re_mi_ea/saudi_iraq

Saudi Prince Calls Arab Troops in Iraq
Sat Feb 15,12:55 PM ET


DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Arab states should send military troops to Iraq immediately to forestall a foreign invasion, a liberal Saudi prince said Saturday.

``We call on all the Arabs to make this demand, and we call on the noble Arab leaders to make this demand a reality,`` Prince Sultan bin Turki said in a statement issued in Geneva and faxed to The Associated Press in Dubai.

``_ _ _The Arabs should not wait. The Arab people should be the main player in resolving this case, rather than have the colonial solution be imposed on us,`` the prince said in his statement.
The prince said the Iraqi government and people should accept his proposal as to do otherwise would leave the country vulnerable to ``American or international`` intervention, he said.

_ _ _ Arabs must choose ``to be or not to be,`` he said. ``The good of the Arab nation and the Iraqi people demands that its destiny be placed in its own hands to save it from the catastrophe it has been in since the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) and to drive out foreign forces from the Arab region.``

He also called for lifting the U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq since its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

A NEW Superpower to take on the US Superpower

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 — The fracturing of the Western alliance over Iraq and the huge antiwar demonstrations around the world this weekend are reminders that there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.

In his campaign to disarm Iraq, by war if necessary, President Bush appears to be eyeball to eyeball with a tenacious new adversary: millions of people who flooded the streets of New York and dozens of other world cities to say they are against war based on the evidence at hand.

Mr. Bush`s advisers are telling him to ignore them and forge ahead, as are some leading pro-war Republicans. Senator John McCain, for one, said today that it was ``foolish`` for people to protest on behalf of the Iraqi people, because the Iraqis live under Saddam Hussein ``and they will be far, far better off when they are liberated from his brutal, incredibly oppressive rule.``

That may be true, but it fails to answer the question that France, Germany and other members of the Security Council have posed:

What is the urgent rationale for war now if there is a chance that continued inspections under military pressure might accomplish the disarmament of Iraq peacefully?

The fresh outpouring of antiwar sentiment may not be enough to dissuade Mr. Bush or his advisers from their resolute preparations for war.

But the sheer number of protesters offers a potent message that any rush to war may have political consequences for nations that support Mr. Bush`s march into the Tigris and Euphrates valleys.(NYT)

Ah -- poor Mr McCain -- he tried to ``liberate`` the people of Vietnam with Naplam and Agent Orange -- saying the same thing -- ``they will be far, far better off when they are liberated from his (uncle HO) brutal, incredibly oppressive rule.`` -- and then ended up signing a document denouncing his own US government -- as a POW of the Vietnamese.

Now the injury induced amnesiac Senator -- would again like to ``liberate`` the Iraqi people with laser bombs and daisy cutters -- from a safe chair of the US Senate -- it`s understandable.

Letter to a War Protester
By Michael P. Tremoglie
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 17, 2003

Dear Kathie,

Last week you sent me an email asking me to join you in marching for peace on the 15th in Center City Philadelphia. I explained to you about the leadership of these protests. I explained that these people were communists and anti-Americans who have an axe to grind. I explained that my research about them leads me to believe that their cause has more to do with discrediting and destroying capitalism, democracy, and the United States than peace.

I told you I would be more than happy to express my desire for peace. However, peace is not what these leaders want. You started spouting specious arguments comparing Iraq to North Korea and about oil-the usual canards and fallacies that this crowd spouts. You replied that the leadership did not matter. It did not make a difference they were communists. The ultimate objective was peace.

You told me that you were at a forum the week before at the White Dog Café. Medea Benjamin was the guest speaker. You said Medea fascinated you. You remarked about how compassionate her speech was. You told me that she went to Iraq and met nice Iraqis.

My reply was that I did not think she was invited to Iraq to meet members of the secret police and the Republican Guard. Of course, there are nice Iraqis, I said. I know some Iraqis. They are the salt of the earth. So what? Saddam Hussein has murdered many nice Iraqis lately. Then again, a lot Iraqis have been murdering other people.

Once again, I reiterated that these pacifists were really Communists. You said that Communism was no longer a threat and reiterated that the leadership of the rallies did not matter only what their objective was. You proffered a sort of ends “justifies the means” thesis.

My rejoinder was that the rally leadership did matter and that these rally leaders deceive. These rally leaders idolize those who kill and enslave.

Well Kathie, here is a concrete example of why the leadership is important. These are excerpts from a Sunday, February 16, 2003, Washington Post article written by Evelyn Nieves. Even you will believe the Washington Post Kathie. I know normally you do not believe me when I tell you something. You did not believe me when I told you that ANSWER was affiliated with a Stalininst/Kimist organization. You did not believe me when I told you that Not In Our Name was affiliated with a Maoist group. You learned I was correct. However, I do not believe that you will question the Washington Post.

In her article entitled Antiwar Organizer`s Politics Cause Rift, Nieves wrote, “. . . few of the tens of thousands of marchers had even heard of International ANSWER., one of the main organizers.. ANSWER`s politics seemed moot…(ANSWER) has defended dictators such as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and North Korea`s Kim Jong Il and decried the state of Israel…the last several days, ANSWER`s politics have created a rift within the leadership of the antiwar movement…Rabbi Michael Lerner, one of the nation`s most prominent liberal Jewish leaders and editor of the San Francisco-based magazine Tikkun, went public to complain that he was ``banned`` from speaking at the Sunday rally here, because ANSWER objected to his positions on Israel.”

According to Nieves’ article, ANSWER and other rally organizers, said Lerner was not invited to speak because he had previously ``attacked`` ANSWER`s positions. Lerner had criticized ANSWER for allowing too many speakers who believe that the United States is threatening to attack Iraq because Israel wants the war. Nieves quoted Lerner as saying ``There are good reasons to oppose the war and Saddam. Still, it feels that we are being manipulated when subjected to mindless speeches and slogans whose knee-jerk anti-imperialism rarely articulates the deep reasons we should oppose corporate globalization.``

Nieves then quoted a news release by the four coalitions organizing the antiwar demonstrations -- Bay Area United Against War, Not In Our Name project, United for Peace and Justice and International ANSWER. The communication stated, ``When members of the Tikkun community, who have actively participated in the organizing meetings for Feb. 16, suggested to Bay Area United for Peace and Justice, that it propose Michael Lerner as a speaker, it was explained by members of UFPJ that since he had publicly attacked ANSWER in both the New York Times and Tikkun community e-mail newsletters, his inclusion in the program would violate the agreement among the Feb. 16 organizing groups.``

Then Nieves states what is the crux of the issue-why leadership matters. In one sentence Nieves expressed the Orwellian world of the organizers when she wrote, “In other words, dissent among dissenters was not allowed.”

See what I mean Kathie.

You and your colleagues say it does not matter who the leaders are. Yet it does. Here is a perfect example. The anti-war leadership who organized the February 15 rally would not permit a particular anti-war activist to speak because they do not like his politics and because he criticized them.
The people who believe in free speech really do not think speech is free.

These are your associates Kathie, deny it though you may. They are as every bit as ruthless, despotic, and deceitful as the genocidal totalitarians they admire. Remember Medea Benjamin was originally Susie Benjamin and chose the name of an infanticidal character of Greek mythology. These are not the people who will bring peace on earth.

You want peace Kathie? Join me in a rally. My march will be to protest the real villain in this drama -Saddam Hussein. Join me in telling him to destroy his WMD’s. Then there will be peace AND FREEDOM.

DISARM NOW SADDAM!

Dear Soldotna,

I regret to inform you that the letter you chose to post is symbolic of the closed ended and anti debate corporate media agenda that IS the apparatus of our lone and spluttering Bush administration. Unfortunately, we`ve all been forced to become witnesses to the kinds of DISinformation that streams out of supposedly ``mainstream`` press. In fact the situation has become so bad that to even point out that ``mainstream`` sources do not force govt. officials to provide conclusive and unquestionable evidence of say, those blurry sites where weapons of mass destruction are being built, or academic research from grad students conducted more recently than 10 years ago, or even two Arabic guys from anywhere who could be discussing anything, renders any reasonable and intelligent person a ``radical`` or a ``communist``. Its a sad and badly manipulated state of affairs when to ask is to be forced into some hawkish definition. Your columnists, who grow even shriller and more hateful as we get our US identity cards, as corporations get tax breaks while social services makes up the balance, as CNN/FOX news trots out another celebrity who says-``I`m here because you wont book Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn or Norman Finkelstein or Edward Said`` and is dismissed with the patently FALSE answer of ``yes we do`` when records show that these shows have NOT booked these historians, political scientists, intellectuals who have the scholarship to back their interpretations up-your columnists are wetting their Depends diapers because a GROWING NUMBER OF AMERICANS are opposing the Bush Administrations bay for war. WE ARE NOT ACCEPTING THE BUSH NARRATIVE. So, throw out whatever bs of so and so is a commie-and even compare the last two consecutive articles in the New York Times Mag in which the RSS and teenage Jewish extremist vigilante settlers in Isreal are stealing land from Palestinians-and check out the barely surpressed fawning tone of the writer of that article-your columnist`s definitions will not hold. The people are speaking-and they seem to know a hell of a lot more than your columnists...
Toodles!

Anti-War Rallies Held Around the Globe
By Robert Barr, The Associated Press

LONDON (Feb. 15) - Millions of protesters - many of them marching in the capitals of America`s traditional allies - demonstrated Saturday against possible U.S. plans to attack Iraq.

In a global outpouring of anti-war sentiment, Rome claimed the biggest turnout - 1 million according to police, while organizers claimed three times that figure.

In London, at least 750,000 people demonstrated in what police called the city`s largest demonstration ever. In Spain, several million people turned out at anti-war rallies in about 55 cities and towns across the country, with more than 500,000 each attending rallies in Madrid and Barcelona.

Spanish police gauged the Madrid turnout at 660,000. Organizers claimed nearly 2 million people gathered across the nation in one of the biggest demonstrations since the 1975 death of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco.

More than 70,000 people marched in Amsterdam in the largest Netherlands demonstration since anti-nuclear rallies of the 1980s.

Berlin had up to half-a-million people on the streets, and Paris was estimated to have had about 100,000.

In New York, rally organizers estimated the crowd at up to 500,000 people. City police provided no estimate of the crowd, which stretched 20 blocks deep and two blocks wide.

``Peace! Peace! Peace!`` Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said while leading an ecumenical service near U.N. headquarters. ``Let America listen to the rest of the world - and the rest of the world is saying, `Give the inspectors time.```

In Los Angeles, thousands of chanting marchers filled Hollywood Boulevard from curb to curb for four blocks. Organizers estimated the crowd at 100,000, although police put it at 30,000.

London`s marchers hoped - in the words of keynote speaker the Rev. Jesse Jackson - to ``turn up the heat`` on Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush`s staunchest European ally for his tough Iraq policy.

Rome protesters showed their disagreement with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi`s support for Bush, while demonstrators in Paris and Berlin backed the skeptical stances of their governments.

``What I would say to Mr. Blair is stop toadying up to the Americans and listen to your own people, us, for once,`` said Elsie Hinks, 77, who marched in London with her husband, Sidney, a retired Church of England priest.

Tommaso Palladini, 56, who traveled from Milan to Rome, said, ``You don`t fight terrorism with a preventive war. You fight terrorism by creating more justice in the world.``

Several dozen marchers from Genoa held up pictures of Iraqi artists.

``We`re carrying these photos to show the other face of the Iraqi people that the TV doesn`t show,`` said Giovanna Marenzana, 38.

Some leaders in German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder`s government participated in the Berlin protest, which turned the tree-lined boulevard between the Brandenburg Gate and the 19th-century Victory Column into a sea of banners, balloons emblazoned with ``No war in Iraq`` and demonstrators swaying to live music. Police estimated the crowd at between 300,000 and 500,000.

``We Germans in particular have a duty to do everything to ensure that war - above all a war of aggression - never again becomes a legitimate means of policy,`` shouted Friedrich Schorlemmer, a Lutheran pastor and former East German pro-democracy activist.

In the Paris crowd at the Place Denfert-Rochereau, a large American flag bore the black inscription, ``Leave us alone.``

Gerald Lenoir, 41, of Berkeley, Calif., came to Paris to support demonstrators.

``I am here to protest my government`s aggression against Iraq,`` he said. ``Iraq does not pose a security threat to the United States and there are no links with al-Qaida.``

In southern France, about 10,000 people demonstrated in Toulouse against the United States, chanting: ``They bomb, they exploit, they pollute, enough of this barbarity.``

Police estimated that 60,000 turned out in Oslo, Norway; 50,000 in bitter cold in Brussels, Belgium; and about 35,000 in frigid Stockholm, Sweden.

About 80,000 marched in Dublin, Irish police said. Crowds were estimated at 60,000 in Seville, Spain; 40,000 in Bern, Switzerland; 30,000 in Glasgow, Scotland; 25,000 in Copenhagen, Denmark; 15,000 in Vienna, Austria; more than 20,000 in Montreal and 15,000 in Toronto; 5,000 in Cape Town and 4,000 in Johannesburg in South Africa; 5,000 in Tokyo; and 2,000 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

``War is not a solution, war is a problem,`` Czech philosopher Erazim Kohak told about 500 people in Prague, the Czech Republic.

In Mexico City, as many as 10,000 people - including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu - snarled traffic for blocks before rallying near the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy. Demonstrators beat drums, clutched white balloons and waved handmade signs saying, ``War No, Peace Yes.``

In Baghdad, tens of thousands of Iraqis, many carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles, demonstrated to support leader Saddam Hussein and denounce the United States.

``Our swords are out of their sheaths, ready for battle,`` read one of hundreds of banners carried by marchers along Palestine Street, a broad Baghdad avenue.

In Damascus, the capital of neighboring Syria, an estimated 200,000 protesters chanted anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli slogans while marching to the People`s Assembly.

Najjah Attar, a former Syrian cabinet minister, accused Washington of attempting to change the region`s map.

``The U.S. wants to encroach upon our own norms, concepts and principles,`` she said in Damascus. ``They are reminding us of the Nazi and fascist times.``

An estimated 2,000 Israelis and Palestinians marched together against war in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.

In Ukraine, some 2,000 people rallied in snowy Kiev`s central square. Anti-globalists led a peaceful ``Rock Against War`` protest joined by communists, socialists, Kurds and pacifists.

In divided Cyprus, about 500 Greeks and Turks braved heavy rain to briefly block a British air base runway.

Several thousand protesters in Athens, Greece, unfurled a giant banner across the wall of the Acropolis - ``NATO, U.S. and EU equals War`` - before heading toward the U.S. Embassy.

U.S. Ambassador Thomas Miller said the Greek protesters` indignation was misplaced.

``They should be demonstrating outside the Iraqi embassy,`` he said before the march.

About 900 Puerto Ricans chanted anti-war slogans against the possible invasion of Iraq. One man waved a U.S. flag on which the stars were replaced with skulls.

In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva began efforts to unite South American nations against a possible U.S.-led attack on Iraq. Police estimated 1,500 marchers.



My fav. Feb. 15th moments?
Running across some Pakistani friends on 65th and 3rd ave (we were a mile from the stage because of all the people who came), seeing some witty signs that said: ``Got Diplomacy?`` ``Empty Warheads`` (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield pictured), ``Got Duct Tape?`` with a pic of Curious George with some across his mouth, several people lifting a huge cloth white dove, a Latino contingent marching and playing drums, the two pretty young women in front of us sharing a revolutionary kiss...

Good reportage Ras

South Asian Literary Evening on Sat, Feb 22, 4 pm, Gates 104, Stanford U.
FOSA (Friends of South Asia)
Invites you to a memorable and first-of-its-kind
South Asian Literary Evening
On
Saturday, February 22, 2003
4:00 pm
Room 104
Gates Computer Science Bldg
Stanford University
(http://campus-map.stanford.edu/campus_map/results.jsp?bldg=Gates&dept=&addr=)
The following poets and writers will read their work:

Deepak Goel (Hindi poetry)
Sardar Piara Singh (Punjabi poetry)
Nofil Fawad (Urdu humor)
Bukhshee Sindhu (Punjabi prose-poetry)
Usha Gupta (Hindi poetry)
Ravi Rajan (English story)
Ghulam Qadir Khan (Urdu poetry)
Bhashwati Sengupta (Hindi prose)
Nilu Gupta (Hindi prose-poetry)
Ali Hasan Cemendtaur (Urdu short story)
Farook Taraz (Punjabi poetry)
Nikhil Krishnan (English songs)

FOSA
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/

from The Guardian:

We Are the People
Saturday`s march was a protest with no leaders and little to say. The `little` it had to say was `No`. Simple as that

by Madeleine Bunting

There will be millions of people who will never forget Saturday February 15 2003. It was an extraordinary combination of the utterly prosaic and the deeply moving: a bursting bladder and the nearest toilets several hours` walk away in Hyde Park, an aching back and blisters, and then the remarkable sight of a heaving mass of people along the Embankment converging with crowds pouring across Waterloo bridge. Everywhere there were astonishing juxtapositions: the body-pierced peaceniks alongside the dignified Pakistani elder with white beard; the homemade placard ``The only bush I trust is my own`` drawing surreptitious giggles from a group of veiled Muslim women.

This was a day which confounded dozens of assumptions about our age. How much harder it is today than a week ago to speak of the apathy and selfish individualism of consumer society. Saturday brought the entire business of a capital city to a glorious full-stop. Not a car or bus moved in central London, the frenetic activities of shopping and spending halted across a wide swathe of the city; the streets became one vast vibrant civic space for an expression of national solidarity. Furthermore, unlike previous occasions when crowds have gathered, this was not to mark some royal pageantry, but to articulate an unfamiliar British sentiment - one of democratic entitlement: we are the people.

That is why Saturday was a defining moment in contemporary political culture - whatever it achieves in the debate on the war with Iraq. First, it shifted the tone of what Britain believes itself to be. Are we to be cowed by security threats and fear of our neighbors, our political culture crippled by suspicion into campaigns of ugly persecution? Saturday`s march was a defiant no. The very best of Britain was on the city`s streets (and for every person marching, there were more in sympathy at home): we showed ourselves to be a nation that is at ease with itself, compassionate, multicultural and tolerant. One of the day`s many ironies was that this was the Britain which is so frequently exhorted in ministers` speeches. Among Saturday`s demonstrators were New Labour`s natural allies - fair-minded, decent people, the kind who don`t walk on the other side of the street. They were beautifully British - patiently waiting when the march ground to a halt, politely apologetic if they bumped into you, and not overly friendly, the reserve only cracking briefly and occasionally.

Second, Saturday proved that the decline of democracy has been overstated. What has changed is the pattern of participation; political parties and turnouts may be declining, but intense episodic political engagement is on the increase. In recent years we have seen both the lowest turnouts and the biggest demonstrations in British political history - there`s a conundrum to keep hundreds of political scientists busy.

Third, there was another intriguing characteristic of this protest. As we shuffled along the Embankment, someone yelled through a loudspeaker that we were too quiet, he urged us to shout. In reply, came a roar of noise which could be heard slowly rippling along the length of the march. No words, no slogans, just a roar which quickly subsided. For the next five hours, there were no loudspeakers until we finally arrived at Hyde Park just as the speeches finished - and we weren`t even the last, the streets were packed behind us. Thousands of people on Saturday never heard a speech. Did it matter? Did we miss anything? No, because if truth be told, the speakers were a B-list of political has-beens and celebrities, and their speeches were pretty dreadful. This was a protest with no leaders and with little to say; it was not interested in debate. The ``little`` it had to say, was NO. It was as simple as that.

This was the most important aspect of all. The demonstration was driven by one very powerful and very accessible emotion: a deeply felt revulsion against modern warfare. Over the course of the 20th century, as our technological ingenuity made war ever more brutal, we discovered that it was the weakest civilians who suffer the most - the old, the young and the sick. As the sophistication of the weapons developed - cluster bombs, landmines - we learned that the killing goes on long after the peace treaties are signed. And when images are relayed all over the world within minutes, we have understood how violence in one part of the globe can destabilize and radicalize another, setting off uncontrollable chain reactions of more violence.

All of this knowledge is underpinned by something much more visceral. It is a sensibility formed by scores of war films such as Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, and thousands of TV images of the suffering of war`s victims. How can we endure the suffering of Iraqi civilians on our television screens in two months` time? The tears which have embarrassed us in our cinema seats and in our armchairs may have been manipulated by Hollywood or newsmen, but they have enlarged our emotional imagination. We can now imagine, in a way that no previous generation has done, the families - just like our own - in a Baghdad suburb whose lives are now hanging in the balance. And we can imagine the suffering of those who prosecute the war, the sons and lovers - just like our own - bracing themselves to kill, and to die.

This groundswell of emotion doesn`t generate anger - there wasn`t much in evidence on Saturday - so much as stubborn resistance. That makes Tony Blair`s battle to convince the British public all the harder. You can argue with people who are angry - there`s a debate to be had, but you can`t argue with ``No``. This is the politics of emotion which is fed, inspired and manipulated by mass communications. Blair is fighting against the images of war`s victims which we hold in our heads - such as the one the Daily Mirror published of a sick child on its front cover on Saturday.

You can`t use arguments about international law against such an emotional opposition, as Blair now appreciates - in his speech on Saturday, he switched to the moral ground. This is where debates about war end up, even if it isn`t where they start.

But this is the hardest ground of all for Blair to win on; the onus lies with him to prove that war will cause less suffering than Saddam Hussein will, an impossible task given the huge uncertainties of the war`s conduct, let alone its impact on the Middle East and relations between Islam and the west.

Not one bomb has been dropped on Iraq, not one shot fired and already there has been the biggest global protest movement ever seen. What happens once the orphans, the widowed and the killed appear on our screens? Then, the stubbornness will become anger. We said No, Not in our Names and we meant it. Blair will never be forgiven. A tragic end to a good prime minister who was swept to power on a promise that ``things will only get better``.

Dear all,

let me just say that this ``report`` did get a bit too personal and even
made it to the Opinion pages of at least one publication.

I appreciated the feedback from those that read it but
soldotna`s replies still have me a bit puzzled.

But then again, everyone is entitled to their views.

PEACE

Ras

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Marching for Saddam: Who are the ``Leaders`` & Who Is Paying for it All
By J. Michael Waller / Insight Magazine / Feb. 17, 2003

Meet the ``leaders``

Meet the ``leaders`` of the antiwar protests who sought to spread their defense of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein worldwide on Feb. 15-16, going to the streets with a style and message that seemed eerily familiar:


One urged U.S. troops to mutiny and murder their commanding officers.


One is a leader of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslavian leader on trial for war crimes.


One was made an ``honorary nephew`` of North Vietnam`s Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War, returned home wearing a ring made from the wreckage of an American fighter plane and later became executive director of an alleged Soviet front organization that reportedly took its marching orders from the KGB.


Several organized protests in solidarity with the FARC narcoterrorists of Colombia.


Others have been waging campaigns in support of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.


Many of the most influential are professional radicals with a fanatical devotion to the late North Korean communist dictator Kim Il-sung and his communist dictator son, Kim Jong-il.


None has criticized Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

In a globally coordinated campaign, these and other aging veterans of Cold War ``peace`` protests are running today`s antiwar movement. This has other antiwar activists pulling at their hair. They argue that the affiliations and extremist positions of the current organizers risk discrediting the cause. Some even have gone public with these complaints. Writing in the Washington Post, sixties-era historian Michael Kazin, a professor at Georgetown University, says the American left is ``sharply divided`` about leadership of the protests. ``The organizers of the recent Washington and San Francisco marches refuse to say anything critical of Saddam Hussein,`` Kazin lamented.


Who`s Paying for it All?


But the critics don`t have much clout with the ``antiwar`` leadership, as they themselves recognize, because they aren`t doing the organizing or paying the expenses to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people into the streets. Today`s protests require huge amounts of work and are coordinated worldwide. United for Peace and Justice (UPJ), one of the two main groups that ran the Feb. 15-16 protests across the United States, claims simultaneous demonstrations were held around the world in more than 300 cities, including Baghdad.

Peace activists are torn between joining the Axis of Evil or not protesting at all. Some look the other way. Some rationalize involvement. ``We can`t divide the peace movement, you know,`` said a paid antiwar organizer at Our Lady of Mercy Church in wealthy Potomac, Md.

The demonstration planners are, in fact, professional agitators who have mass protest down to a science, having participated in or run grass-roots mobilizations since before most of today`s picketers were born. Critical authorities on U.S. radicalism say the track record of the leaders reveals not a principled opposition to war but a calculated commitment to undermining U.S. security and foreign policy, regardless of their ideology, and exploiting the naïveté and idealism of whatever influential or mainstream people can be persuaded to join them. That`s how a group such as the International Action Center (IAC) could support Milosevic`s mass murder of Muslims on the one hand, and back Islamic terrorists and Saddam on the other.

The organizers divide into two distinct groups: the IAC and Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, known as International ANSWER, lead one group, and UPJ heads the other. IAC and ANSWER are front groups of the Workers World Party (WWP), a tiny Marxist-Leninist group whose leaders display a fanatical devotion to the late North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung and his son and successor, Kim Jong-il (see sidebar). According to longtime homeland-security analysts, UPJ`s leaders built their political-organizing careers in the old Soviet-funded Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

Indeed the very concept of ``front groups`` -- umbrella organizations set up by communists to trick liberals and innocents into supporting the party line -- has been a veritable hallmark of Marxist agitation since the 1920s.

Many are tempted to laugh off the idea that graying old extremists are running current protests, and they roll their eyes at hearing the ``C``-word, even Moscow having given up communism. But many others, especially liberals in the peace movement, are not at all amused. ``I think the demonstrations would have been twice as big had the organizers been from a wider range of antiwar groups and not so dominated by this tiny Marxist-Leninist faction,`` said Stephen Zunes, chair of the peace- and justice-studies program at the University of San Francisco.

The IAC has felt the sting. In a statement it blasted those who ``dishonestly claim that ANSWER is a `front` group in order to diminish the coalition,`` though it acknowledges ``the presence of socialists and Marxists, in particular members of the Workers World Party.`` Their critics, IAC says, are racists: ``Those who claim that ANSWER is a `front` organization demonstrate their own racist and elitist perception of reality.``

And ANSWER has ripped what it calls ``a repugnant red-baiting campaign against the ANSWER coalition because of its role as a principal organizer of the mass grass-roots movement of opposition to war throughout the United States.``

The WWP is nothing if not consistent. According to a 1974 congressional report, it split from the Socialist Workers Party in 1959 in a dispute over the Soviet invasion of Hungary three years before. The Socialist Workers opposed the invasion, while Workers World partisans supported it. ``In 1968, the Workers World Party supported the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the communist Warsaw Pact armies,`` the report continued. The party, which never numbered more than a few hundred people, supported the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army against the United States during the Vietnam War, according to the congressional report. Some of its activities were coordinated with enemy military actions. An April 8, 1972, internal letter ``To All Branches`` of the party urged participation in ``antiwar`` demonstrations in support of a Viet Cong offensive in South Vietnam. The letter`s author, John Catalinotto, remains in the party as managing editor of its weekly Workers World ``newspaper,`` and occasionally represents the IAC.

Party members received revolutionary training in Cuba as members of the Venceremos Brigades in the 1960s and early 1970s, and at about that time the party oriented itself ideologically with North Korea. Deirdre Griswold Stapp, a voice of the party and currently editor of Workers World, described how the party functioned in a 1972 report to the Cuban Communist Party. Explaining its ``international relationships,`` she told Cuban leaders about the WWP`s new contacts with North Korea, via a front group called the American Servicemen`s Union, according to congressional investigators. ``The chairman of the American Servicemen`s Union, Andy Stapp, recently visited the Democratic People`s Republic of Korea and opened friendly discussions with the party there,`` she wrote. She later married Stapp.

In a speech to the 6th Congress of the League of Socialist Working Youth of Korea, the youth branch of North Korea`s ruling party, Andy Stapp praised ``Comrade Kim Il-sung, ever victorious, iron-willed, brilliant commander and outstanding leader of the international communist and working-class movements,`` according to a transcript published in a congressional report. ``As instructed by Marshal Kim Il-sung, the outstanding leader of the international and working-class movements, the No. 1 target of all the revolutionary people in the world is U.S. imperialism. In order to avenge the many oppressed people who have died a bloody death, and in order to build a new society in America in which everyone enjoys happiness, as in Korea, I recognize the great juche idea of Marshal Kim Il-sung as the Marxism-Leninism of the present time.``

Stapp committed himself and his organization to armed violence and to promoting mutiny within the U.S. military. According to the transcript of his speech broadcast over Radio Pyongyang, Stapp stated, ``The American Servicemen`s Union will study as documents, that must be read, the works of genius of Marshal Kim Il-sung. ... With the juche idea as the guiding compass of struggle, we will consolidate the branches of the American Servicemen`s Union in order to rally more soldiers around the organization. In this way the American GIs will fight against their real enemies, against the policy of aggression and war enforced on them by the U.S. ruling circles and the fascist military officers.``

He added that his goal was ``to build a powerful American Servicemen`s Union that will turn the guns against their fascist officers. ... If the American Servicemen`s Union cuts the windpipe of U.S. imperialism inside the army while at the same time it is mutilated in all parts of the world, U.S. imperialism will surely perish forever.``

Today, the WWP and its fronts claim to be nonviolent, but they remain as enthusiastic as ever about North Korea. Visiting Pyongyang to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung in April 2002, Griswold Stapp signed a statement denouncing President George W. Bush`s ``notorious antiterrorism war`` and demanding that ``the Korean peninsula be reunified without fail under the wise leadership of the respected leader Kim Jong-il following the banner of the Three Charters for the national reunification set forth by the great President Kim Il-sung.`` Filing an article from the North Korean capital for the July 23, 2002, issue of Workers World, Griswold Stapp called Pyongyang ``truly one of the most beautiful cities in the world.``

Brian Becker, a WWP secretariat member and a director of ANSWER and the IAC, visited North Korea in March 2002 to denounce the United States, discredit the presence of U.S. troops in South Korea and reaffirm a commitment to reunify the divided peninsula along the lines of the plan set by Kim Jong-il. Becker serves as a spokesman for the IAC and its antiwar campaign.

The second major coordinating faction of the present-day antiwar movement, headed by UPJ under Leslie Cagan`s leadership, has its roots in the old Soviet ``active-measures`` agitprop networks, say homeland-security experts.

Insight has traced Cagan`s career to Cuba, where in the early 1970s as a member of the Venceremos Brigades she received revolutionary training and indoctrination. In the last years of the Cold War, Cagan organized mass protests from an office called Mobilization for Survival, according to former congressional investigators. She coordinated with Soviet international front organizations and the CPUSA as the vanguard element of broader-based demonstrations around the world against U.S. resistance to Soviet expansion. This magazine has obtained Mobilization for Survival documents from the 1980s that show the group`s support for Marxist-Leninist insurgencies and terrorist groups in the Third World, Middle Eastern terrorists (including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), Soviet-backed dictatorships in Africa and Latin America, and Soviet-inspired campaigns for the unilateral disarmament of the United States.

In 1990-91, when the United States led an international coalition to free Kuwait from the Iraqi military, Cagan coordinated the National Campaign for Peace in the Middle East to organize grass-roots opposition to the liberation. Also in 1991, when the CPUSA broke into two factions, Cagan cofounded the splinter group, called the Committees of Correspondence. Now she runs the UPJ, coordinating opposition to the war on terrorism in general and the effort to destroy Saddam`s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

Meanwhile, longtime Cagan associate Michael Meyerson is helping to run protests in New York, according to the Associated Press. Formerly a member of the national council or ``Politburo`` of the CPUSA, Meyerson has been involved in protests since at least 1960. It was Meyerson who, in a 1965 visit to Hanoi, was made an ``honorary nephew`` of North Vietnamese Communist Party leader Ho Chi Minh. He returned home to attend ``antiwar`` protests sporting a Viet Cong cap and the ring he famously said was made from the wreckage of an American fighter plane. He ran the U.S. Peace Council, the New York-based branch of the World Peace Council, a Soviet international front organization that, according to 1982 CIA and FBI testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, received covert funding and direction from the KGB.

Amit #18:

The US only needs two types of countries support to carry out this war. One is itself, and the other group are the Muslim countries surrouding Iraq.

It cannot launch an attack against Iraq without placing troops in Turkey or Jordan or Kuwait et. It cannot win the whole war by just using Aircraft carriers.

I think Pakistan is trying hard to somehow or the other get out of this situaiton. No one in Pakistan wants to support this war, however the Pakistani govt. has always been dead scared of USA economic hold over Pakistan. They fear the USA can bring the country to a halt economically. Hence, the Pakistani arm can be twisted quite easily. I think Pakistan will try to stay out of this conflict. I hope it doesn`t vote in favor as a rotating member of the Security Council.

The country that is really surprising me is Turkey. It has an outright Islamic govt. now. Turkey is a torn state, with its military forcing it into secularity, with a population going competely in the other direction due to the corruption of the secular govts. it has had. However, it is rumored that Turkey is willing to supply bases at a price of $26 billion dollars.

I suppose everyone has a price.

This is what happens when countries are themselves weak economically. They can either be bought or threatened. The only Muslim leader going from one corner to the other opposing this war is Mahatir of Malaysia. It is no coincidence that his is the only Muslim country that has a strong economic base.

All the talk about Islamic this and that, amongst governments is a hoax. Most Islamic governments in the region are all heridatory dictatorships - a concept that is forbidden in Islam to begin with. So much so that the rulers of Saudi Arabia call themselves Khadim-al-Hurmain (the Servants of the Religous houses of Islam), instead of calling themselves Kings. What hypocricy!

The only Islamic group that genuinely opposes this war are the people of these countries. I think it is time that Pakistan stood up for what is right, come hell or high water. Scared followers can never be leaders, not even of themselves.

Pakistan should vote against an attack against Iraq. At the same time it should strongly support the removal of Saddam, but not in the, ``blink of an eye`` method of the USA. Saddam can be removed slowly. I don`t think the USA is going to destroy Pakistan, if it votes against something. I think Pakistanis do not understand the USA well enough. It has 150 countries to handle. Pakistan is just one of them. It is not that important as far as the USA is concerned.

Sooner or later, countries have to take their own destiny in their own hands. It may seem difficult in the short term, but it will pay huge benefits in the long run. If Turkey gets 26 billion today and sells itself, it will benefit in the short term. However, in the long term, its society will become even more divided and torn, with the clean shaven maulvis of today replaced by the bearded variety.

I think Pakistan needs to disassociate itself with all these, ``Islamic`` hyporcite states, only dealing with them for economic purposes. Saudi Arabia has funded Pakistan into potential fundamentalism. The only good to come from Afghinstan are pomegranates and melons. Hardly any of them raise their voice for Kashmiri rights (including Yasir of Palestine), while we cry ourserlves hoarse for all of them. The Middle Eastern shiekhdoms send 2 million for zoos in USA, and 50,000 when floods hit Pakistan.

The only Islamic countries Pakistan needs to associate in a philosophical, soical and intellectual sense and religious sense are Bangladesh, Iran, Malaysia and Indonesia (and Turkey, if its fanatic secularitics, who are as dangerous as religious fanatics ever let go of their country) - all non-Arab cultured states. Pakistan should try to become the leader of the pathetic, though rich, Middle Eastern shiekhdoms, and not try to follow them.

Every course I have taken, every profession I have been a part of, I have seen Pakistanis leave all these guys in the dust. I am surprised Pakistan as a nation doesn`t have more confidence.

Dear marcher, please answer a few questions

David Aaronovitch / The Guardian / February 18, 2003



If I`d been a marcher, I would gloat, too. Ever since the weekend it`s been like one long sugary Coca-Cola ad: ``We are the world, we are the people...`` All those years demonstrating about everything from abortion to Zimbabwe and now, when there is the biggest demo in British history, I can`t clap along.

Leaving the war aside for a moment, something is definitely happening. The past 12 months have seen three of the greatest public demonstrations in British history: last Sunday`s rally, the Countryside march and the Queen Mother`s walk-past. The governing cynicism of the 90s, as exemplified by writers such as PJ O`Rourke, has given way to the desire to give personal witness to historical events. It is now actually fashionable to pick up a placard with a slogan on it and walk for a few miles in the company of thousands of others. People want to say they ``were there``. I cannot see that as a bad thing.

Even so, some things get up an old marcher`s nose. The Sunday Telegraph had no trouble in finding what it called ``moderate`` protesters, such as 57-year-old Chelsea businessman Jonathan Callow, who had been on only one previous demonstration - with the Countryside Alliance. Sourly, I wondered how he had resisted all those entreaties we had made for him to support the anti-apartheid movement after Sharpeville and Soweto, or to march against the endless Vietnam war, and yet now was turning out every three months or so. Another woman more or less explained it. ``Saddam is not threatening us,`` she told the Telegraph reporter, ``The government should spend the money on British jobs, hospitals and the rural economy.`` Not in my name. Not in my back yard.

So, in this moment of extraordinary success, I wanted to ask those who went on the demonstration some questions. I wanted to ask whether, among your hundreds of thousands, the absences bothered you? The Kurds, the Iraqis - of whom there are many thousands in this country - where were they? Why were they not there? When Tony Benn was confronted by a young pro-war Iraqi woman on Channel 4 news on Saturday night, why did he describe the organisations of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition as ``CIA stooges``?

Did some of the slogans bother you? Do you really believe that this parroted ``war about oil`` stuff is true? If so, what were the interventions in oil-less Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan about? What did you feel about the marchers wearing stickers bearing the Israeli flag and the words ``the fascist state``? Did you say to yourself, ``Actually, there`s only one fascist state in this equation, and it`s the one we`re effectively marching to save``?

If you got to Hyde Park, did some of the speeches bother you? How about the equivalence used by Tony Benn, as in, ``If there are inspectors in Iraq, I want to see inspectors in Israel, inspectors in Britain and inspectors in America``? Name Welsh villages attacked with chemical weapons by British bombers in the past 20 years.

Do you agree with Harold Pinter that the US is ``a country run by a bunch of criminals ... with Tony Blair as a hired Christian thug``? Is there any word in that sentence, apart from Tony, Blair and Christian, that isn`t quite mad? What about rail union leader Bob Crow`s suggestion that the government be brought down by civil action? Are you up for that?

If you think that it`s all nonsense but you don`t mind, then perhaps you can explain the extraordinary speech by Charles Kennedy MP. Here is the boss of a top party, yet one cannot tell what his view on war against Saddam actually is. Instead his speech was all about how unconvincing Blair`s arguments were. ``I have yet,`` he said, ``to be persuaded that the case for war against Iraq has been made.`` It`s been made, Charles, and if you don`t agree with it, why don`t you just say so? Stop blathering on about how ``people are suspicious and scared`` and tell them what you think ought to be done. Or is there a serious case for war, but you didn`t want to say so in front of a million demonstrators?

Back to those demonstrators, and just to ask, do you believe that Blair should act on your demands because so many people turned out on Saturday? If so, do you also think he should halt plans for the housing of asylum seekers in Lee-on-Solent because, at the same time as you marched, one-third of Lee`s entire population took to the streets to demand no asylum seekers in their town? Did the way the demo was reported in Baghdad bother you? Not your fault, but did you have any worry afterwards that it might make Saddam more obdurate and not less? Or maybe, like Benn, you don`t much care.

While we`re about it, why do you think Saddam readmitted inspectors after nearly five years in the first place? Was it because he felt it was the right thing to do? Or was it because of the threat of force? If it was the latter, what does this tell you? Should your protest bear fruit, are sanctions part of your preferred containment strategy (should you desire one)? If not, what replaces them? What do you mean, you don`t know?

Finally, what are you going to do when you are told - as one day you will be - that while you were demonstrating against an allied invasion, and being applauded by friends and Iraqi officials, many of the people of Iraq were hoping, hope against hope, that no one was listening to you?

You could still be right and I could be mistaken. A war could be far bloodier than I imagine, the consequences far worse than I believe they will be. It is just possible that a new Iraqi government, instead of moving towards democracy, might be a corrupt oligarchy. All I can say is that the signs look relatively promising in both Kosovo and Afghanistan.

On the other hand, what if you are wrong?