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War is Coming

Well I guess war is coming. George Bush made that perfectly clear last night that war with Iraq is all but certain, it will happen this week.

Bush has (in my opinion) not only undermined the UN, but will also destroy our country. Our economy is a mess, our education system is in a shambles, health care for every American doesn't exsist. Nearly half a million people are without jobs, gasoline prices are most likely going to increase by summer.

This reckless and blatant disregard tor the will of the Amercian people and the world is not a surprise. Remember, Bush did not win the popular vote in 2000, if I remember correctly, over 500,000 people voted for Al Gore. So of course, Bush doesn't care one bit about the people. He doesn't care one bit about diplomacy, or about our relations with other nations like France and Germany.

He has no respect for civil and constitutional rights of the people in this country. John Ashcroft, the fueherer of the Justice Department, is working overtime to get policies and legislation passed that would allow the Department to basically do whatever it wants to whomever, without just cause or due process.

Professors for Peace call for General Strike!

When the U.S. government announces the commencement of the war against Iraq, go on strike. Take your car and park in the nearest major intersection.

Block our freeways, bridges and subway entrances. Close down our cities. If you have no car, find a group of like-minded people and lie down in an intersection. No more business as usual. Close down our cities and stop the war machine!

Nonviolent civil disobedience is an American tradition 150 years old. First coined by Henry David Thoreau, adopted by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, it has been credited for the success of Gandhi's independence movement, the U.S. civil rights movement, and the South African campaign against apartheid.

There is nothing to be afraid of. Towing your car might cost between $85 and $110, but with the streets totally jammed they can't tow us. This war will cost you much more than $110. And what's more valuable, your car or human lives? Put your body on the street. Call out to all those who are against this war to join you. Let those who support this war see our power.

International Solidarity Movement Activist Killed in Gaza by Israeli Forces

Today a young woman was killed in Gaza. Young women, but more often young men, get killed in Gaza and the West Bank every day, and the world pays no attention. What was different today is that Rachel Corrie was an American, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, the group that I’m here with in occupied Palestine. And her death is a particularly horrifying example of the cold blooded dehumanization that characterizes this occupation. Rachel was trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah, Gaza According to the other activists who were with her, she was in dialogue with the operator in the spirit of nonviolence that is a guiding principle of the ISM, which provides support for Palestinian civilians and for nonviolent efforts to bring about justice for Palestine. She climbed up on the bulldozer, to talk to the soldier in the cockpit. She climbed down. She sat in front of the bulldozer. The soldier in control of the huge machine drove it deliberately over her.

Act Now: Say no oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge!

Congress may vote this week on a budget bill for 2004 that includes new provisions to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  And late reports indicate that the U.S. Senate might be just one vote away from voting to open up the Arctic Refuge to oil companies.

This comes despite thousands of e-mails to Congress opposing Arctic Drilling from Environmental Defensemembers, strong public opposition, and a long-awaited new report from the National Academy of Sciences highlighting damage to wildlife and the environment caused by years of oil drilling in areas near the Arctic Refuge. 

Send a free fax: actionnetwork.org/campaign/arctic_drilling0303?source=an1

NCAA vs Iraq War

For a number of years, 18, I have worked a Saturday night through Sunday morning job in addition to a regular job.  We put together various out-of-town newspapers and load them on trucks.  Last night, the fellow who delivers the Dayton paper was worried.  He said he was concerned, and so wasn't the paper owners, that the attack on Iraq might happen today. 

  Why was he worried?   Well, he explained, the "bracket day," when what teams will play in the NCAA tournament is drawn up, is tomorrow.  That is the best-selling paper day of the year.  The day the war starts, they anticipate allot of papers will be sold then too, but not as many as bracket day.  If both events are covered on the same day, then only one day will be a big paper day instead of two, so it would be better to bomb Iraq on a different day than bracket day for the paper business!

  He did not express an opinion as to whether there should be a war. 

Pres Bush Reminds World of Iraq’s Crimes Against Humanity That His Father Failed To Punish

President Bush started beating the war drums Saturday in an attempt to win support for a war that many people here and throughout the world believe is unjustified. In his weekly radio address Saturday, Bush dug deep into the past; reminding the public that last weekend marked the 15-year anniversary of the poison gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabia by Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein.  

The attack was indeed an act of brutality and a gross violation of human rights. But what Bush failed to tell the world in his radio address was that it was his father, the former President Bush Sr., who punished Saddam Hussein with a mere slap on the wrist because Bush Sr. did not want to jeopardize United States-Iraqi relations. Today, Iraq does not pose an imminent threat to the U.S. Evidence to suggest otherwise is non-existent. Simply put, this is a case Bush tidying up unfinished business. It’s these past crimes, that Bush’s father turned a blind eye to, that the current president believes gives him the right to start a war with Iraq today. But there is no justification for waging such a war now.  

Sick Caesar: Remove Bush from office

It’s time for U.S. citizens to demand that President George W. Bush’s cabinet invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment and remove him from office. By a majority vote of the cabinet and the Vice President, transmitted in writing to both the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, the President may be declared “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Increasingly, journalists are willing to admit that the cognitively-impaired President may indeed be mentally ill.

What would drive a President who lost an election by over half a million votes to attack the arch-enemy of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, rather than to pursue the 9-11 terrorists in the Al Qaeda network? What would cause a President to ignore his generals, his own intelligence agencies, the major religious leaders of the world and the vast majority of the world’s people in pursuing an unnecessary and destabilizing war that is likely to plunge the world into chaos for the next hundred years?

The emerging Superpower of Peace

Amidst the agonizing crisis over Iraq, the violent contortions of the world's only military superpower have given birth to a transcendental force:  the global Superpower of Peace. 

That George W. Bush's obsession with Saddam Hussein has become a global issue at all is perhaps the most tangible proof of this new superpower's potential clout.

Only one thing has slowed (or stopped) Bush from launching this attack:  the economic, political, moral and spiritual power of an intangible human network determined to stop this war. 

Bush has amassed the most powerful killing machine humankind has ever created.  He's set its fuse on the borders of an impoverished desert nation with no credible ability to protect itself from this unprecedented attack.  His military henchmen believe the conquest of this small country can be done quickly, with relatively few casualties on the the attacking side (though many civilians would die on the Iraqi side, as they did in the 1991 Gulf War I).

The potential prizes are enormous:

· Outright control of the world's second-largest oil reserve; 

Freep Heroes

Freep Heroes: Germany and France

The Freep chooses to honor the governments of Germany and France who refused to sanction the Bush administration's war-mongering imperialist dreams in the Middle East. Drunken frat-boy foreign policy, fermented by what psychologists call "dry-drunk" syndrome, was slowed down and possibly halted by the heroic resistance of the French and German people. It's one thing for traditional enemies like China and Russia to resist the United States. It's a new and positive development when our closest European allies refuse to accept the folly and lies of the Washington warmongers.

The Free Press Salutes:

The folks at Victorian's Midnight Cafe

Dog-fighting

When my parents and I moved to our present home, on the near east side of Columbus, there was a place off the alley across the street that was notorious as a dog-fighting site. I guess humans like to watch dogs rip into each other, or they make a lot of money betting on it. Both are beyond my comprehension. Not that I am an actual fan of dogs (they've tried to chase me in the park a few times, but Daddy fended them off with a large walking stick) but I don't think it's right to pit pit bulls, or any other kind of dog, against each other to the death. Not for anybody's amusement or profit!

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