HEBRON—At least fifteen people are dead and fifteen more wounded after a shooting attack Friday evening, November 15th, at 7:15pm. Palestinian gunmen opened fire and threw grenades at a group of Israeli settlers and soldiers walking to the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba after Shabbat services at the synagogue in the Tomb of the Patriarchs/Ibrahimi Mosque complex. The dead include nine Israeli soldiers and border policemen, three armed Israeli settler security, and three Palestinians believed to have perpetrated the attack. Colonel Dror Weinberg, commander of the Israeli forces in Hebron, was one of the victims. At least five of the wounded are soldiers in serious condition according to reports received by the team. The Palestinian militia Islamic Jihad has confirmed responsibility for the attack, claiming retribution for the Israeli military assassination of its leader Iyad Sawalha in Jenin late last week.

The United Nations Security Council (UN) in all its pompous and hypocritical glory passed Resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002. The resolution endorses unrestricted access by weapons inspectors to any sites in Iraq and “…warns Iraq that it will face serious consequences” for failure to comply. The next day 1200 anti-war activists rallied at the Ohio Statehouse, many pledging to refuse and resist, and some vowing to oppose this war by any means necessary.

And here’s the reason why: the one country in the world that Resolution 1441 is most applicable to is George Bush’s United States of America. Bush the Lesser, a victim of “dry-drunk syndrome,” told an invitation-only audience of Fourth Reich fanatics in Cincinnati, Ohio on October 7, 2002 that Iraq posed “clear evidence of peril.” That very same day, CIA Director George Tenet wrote a letter to Congress refuting everything that Bush had told his adoring Deutschlanders.

Freep Hero: U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV)

While most of the Senate Democrats sit idly by looking for their spines, Sen. Robert Byrd nearly single-handedly fights to protect the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights from the smiley-faced friendly-fascist assault by the Bushmen. Byrd also revealed on September 27 that government documents establish that the Reagan-Bush administration sent numerous shipments of biochemical agents to the government of Iraq. After U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said he had no knowledge of any U.S. shipments to Iraq, Byrd revealed that between 1985-88, the nonprofit American Type Culture Collection made eleven shipments to Iraq, with the government’s approval, of biological warfare pathogens. These include anthrax, botulinum toxin and gangrene. Also, between January 1980 and October 1983 the Federal Center for Disease Control shipped a variety of toxin specimens to Iraq including West Nile virus and Dengue Fever. The Center for Disease Control was forced to deny that the current outbreak of West Nile virus in the U.S. is linked to the shipments it made to Iraq.

The Free Press Salutes

I scream FREE AMERICA, barely legible on the wall —
and I get one word, one rat, one care,
and an angry and ignorant old-world glare,
a smile here, bewilderment there —
And it seems there is nothingness everywhere.

*

What compels one to erase signs of peace everywhere?
What once blared out is no longer there.
A sigh for the next lost soul that’s to come,
and a sign that will be erased, but that might
reach some.
My voice, it will echo and the image linger on,
for this image isn’t mine, for my words will not end,
for Hell is war, and this war
can’t be won.

-- Melanie Gnosa, poetforhumanity@yahoo.com

First, the big anti-war demonstrations in Washington D.C., and San Francisco a couple of weeks ago; then, the Election Day sweep by Bush and the (prime) party of war and then, ... in my case, a concert by Merle Haggard in my local town of Eureka, Calif., Wednesday night.

When it comes to the big themes of love and war and history, nothing concentrates the mind like a few songs by Merle, whose 1969 pro-war country anthem "Okie from Muskogee" lambasted the dope-smoking hippie peaceniks and earned the former resident of San Quentin a full pardon from Governor Ronald Reagan.

Merle's political positions have evolved somewhat since the late Sixties, as we'll see, but sitting there in a mostly white working class audience even a tad older than the equally white crowd listening to Bob Dylan in Berkeley a few weeks ago, an obvious question bulked as large as the Stars and Stripes hanging above Merle: Are we seeing the birth of a new anti-war movement as potent as the one that prompted Merle to riposte with "Muskogee" and "The Fighting Side of Me"?