New Flyer: Free Supplies Available - "Downing Street Handouts"

• New Flyer: Free Supplies Available
  
• Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2005-06-23 21:07.
• Activism
  
• This campaign is being driven by the generosity and creativity of volunteers.
  Dave Stengel has created a new brochure:
• http://www.macplanet.net/brochure.pdf
  
• And he's willing to mail to you for free a supply to distribute. Do not ask for more than you can make good use of. Hand them out at events, or go door to door. Please don't stick them on windshields, which is annoying, where it isn't illegal.
  
• To get a supply, send an Email with the subject "Downing Street Handouts" to dave@macplanet.net
• Or Do As I Did, 'Print It Out' Yourselves, Message Stays The Same ,
  Get The Word Out
• And donate the money you save to AfterDowningStreet.org

"Vietnam Syndrome" haunts Bush

• Iraq: Bush's Vietnam
  
• We are coming together to build real unity in mass protest on September 24th
  
• The "Vietnam Syndrome" - that strange malady in which the people of the U.S. turn decisively against a U.S. war of aggression in a far away third-world country - is coming back, and the White House knows it. The warmakers today will learn, as they did during Vietnam, that it is impossible to sustain such a war as the people of the U.S. turn the issue of the war into an unending "domestic crisis."
  Public opinion has shifted so dramatically against the war in Iraq that Bush and his administration have turned this week into a P.R. campaign to, as the LA Times put it, "salvage public support on Iraq." Faced with a nose-dive in support for Bush's attacks on social programs at home and his imperial conquests abroad, the White House and the Pentagon are afraid of losing their grip and are undertaking a mass propaganda offensive to rein in the one thing they fear the most - the power of the people as they turn against the warmakers. This orchestrated campaign, however, has not begun well for them.
  Today, appearing before a Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing in a failed attempt to paint a positive view of the war, Army Gen. John Abizaid, the top commander for U.S. aggression in the Middle East, was forced to directly contradict Vice President Cheney's recent announcement that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes." Abizaid stated that the power of the Iraqi resistance was undiminished and added, "you'll forgive me from criticizing the vice president." Donald Rumsfeld again had to explain why he has "not resigned," and a Republican lawmaker from South Carolina who supports the war complained in the hearing that "Public support in my state is turning... People are beginning to question. And I don't think it's a blip on the radar screen. We have a chronic problem on our hands."
  On September 24 the people of the U.S. have the opportunity to make history. The mass demonstration in Washington DC initiated by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition in partnership with other organizations who have come together to form the September 24 National Coalition will be a powerful _expression of an increasingly incensed population. This is the political force at home that is the single biggest threat to the ambitions of Bush and the warmakers. In the next months the growing outrage at the grassroots level can develop into a political force as potent as that faced by the Johnson and Nixon administrations three decades ago.
  September 24 will make history for another reason. This demonstration will show what true unity looks like. This is a mass mobilization coming from the grassroots representing the voices of those who are most deeply affected by the U.S. government's assault on people at home and abroad, joining together in solidarity to stop the U.S. war machine. Mobilizing for the September 24 March on Washington are communities, unions, military families, students and youth, and antiwar, social justice and civil rights groups.
  Nothing will be more powerful than to have large numbers from every community marching shoulder to shoulder in opposition to the Bush administration's criminal war against Iraq and in opposition to Bush's global effort to crush all those struggling to exercise their legitimate right of self-determination free from empire and colonial domination.
  The converse of unity is to divide, to segregate, to exclude. While the U.S. wages war against the people of the Middle East, the administration is waging a domestic war against the Arab-American, South Asian and the entire Muslim community inside the United States. It is imperative that everyone stand against segregation. The antiwar movement made a major step forward when it marched 100,000 strong on March 20, 2004, under the banner "Bring the Troops Home Now! End Colonial Occupation from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti and Everywhere!" The Palestinian people affirming their right to return to their homes from which they were evicted, the Haitian people affirming their right to return their democratically elected President, and all of those who are struggling in opposition to colonial occupation and in support of self-determination and peace will march together with those fighting against the war in Iraq and those fighting for social justice at home as all recognize the interconnectedness of the struggle.
  The war for empire and colonial conquest is not only a war against the people of the Middle East and other lands who the U.S. government seeks to subjugate, but it is also a war against the people of the U.S. as the government slashes monies for education, housing, healthcare and jobs to pay for war, intervention and occupation.
• For More Information:
• http://www.answercoalition.org/
• http://www.unitedforpeace.org/index.php

The Thing We Don't Talk About - Must Read, Even Though For Many - Already Known and Understood!!!

• The Thing We Don't Talk About
• By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t Perspective
• http://tinyurl.com/dup88
  
• Thursday 23 June 2005
  
• With the revelation of the secret Downing Street Minutes, which exposed the fact that George Bush and Tony Blair had decided to invade Iraq in April of 2002, a heated debate has blown through media, congressional and activist circles. The decision to go to war in Iraq was made before any public debate was initiated, before the United Nations was brought into the conversation, confirming that Bush's blather about wanting peace and leaving war as the last resort was just that: blather.
  So why did we go?
  It had been suspected, and has now been confirmed by the Minutes, that Bush took us to war on false pretenses and by way of a whole constellation of lies and exaggerations. First it was the weapons of mass destruction that were not there. Then it was connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda that did not exist. Finally, it became about bringing freedom and democracy to the region, which has emphatically not happened.
  Threaded through the discussion was the belief that Bush and his petroleum-company allies lusted after Iraq's oil. There was also the idea that Bush wanted Saddam's head because of the "unfinished business" left by his father in 1991. Some whispered that Iraq had intended to change the monetary basis of its petroleum dealings from the dollar to the Euro, an action that would have spelled financial disaster for the boys in Houston. Finally, many believed Bush ramped up a war push in order to give Republicans a flag-waving platform to run on in the 2002 midterms.
  All of these were on the table as reasons for an invasion, though most of them were not included in public debate. Yet the real reasons behind this war, the real reasons for many of our military actions over the years, were never discussed. As with almost everything we deal with today in the foreign policy realm, the real reasons we invaded Iraq harken back to World War II and the Cold War.
  When the United States jumped into World War II, President Roosevelt ordered the American economy be put on a wartime footing. This was a sound decision: the country had to speed its industrial capabilities up to a sprint in order to manufacture a huge fighting army out of whole cloth. The action was successful beyond measure. The economy was invigorated, the war was won, and in the process the military/industrial complex, so named by President Eisenhower, was established as a power player in the American economy.
  In 1947, President Harry Truman put forth the Truman Doctrine, a broad policy of foreign intervention to combat the feared spread of Communism around the world. The Doctrine was essentially created by a small band of men like Paul Nitze, who were the precursors of what we now call neo-conservatives. Nitze, it should be noted, was the mentor of Paul Wolfowitz, who went on to be the mentor of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
  The establishment of the Truman Doctrine, the establishment of the "permanent crisis" that was the Cold War, required that the American economy remain on a wartime footing. There it has remained to this day, despite the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the threat of a global communist takeover. Ten thousand books have been written on this subject, on the impact of our wartime economic footing upon domestic policy, the environment, global affairs and politics. In the end, however, the fact that our economy is set on a wartime footing means one simple thing.
  We need wars.
  Without wars, the economy flakes and falls apart. Without wars, the trillions of dollars spent on weapons systems, military preparedness and a planetary army would dry up, dealing a death blow to the economy as currently constituted. Without wars or the threat of wars, the populace is not so easily controlled and manipulated.
  Let us be clear, however. When I say "we," I do not refer to your average working man and woman on the street. The man running the shoe store or the woman managing the bar does not need war to remain economically viable. The "we" I speak of is that overwhelmingly wealthy and powerful few who have wired their fortunes into the manufacture of weapons, the plumbing of oil, and the collection of spoils through political largesse.
  These are the people who need war. They need it to pile up the contracts from the Pentagon, to enrich the banking institutions that protect them, to pay the lawyers who defend them, to pay the lobbyists who sustain them, to purchase the politicians who champion them, and to buy up the media that hides them from sight.
  Yet though this group is small in number, they are "we," for they are our leaders and our myth-makers. They have convinced the majority of this population that war is a necessity. They create the premises for combat and invasion, they convince and cajole and, when necessary, frighten us into line. All too often, almost every time, we buy into the fictions they manufacture, thus sustaining the "permanent crisis" mentality and the need for war after war after war.
  The economic need for war creates the required excuses for war. The "permanent crisis" of the Cold War motivated the United States to support the Shah in Iran, a decision that led to the Islamic Revolution and the establishment of Iran as a permanent enemy. The Cold War motivated us to support Saddam Hussein financially and militarily as a bulwark against Iran. The Cold War motivated us to establish the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia to ensure a steady supply of oil. The Cold War motivated us to support Osama bin Laden and the so-called "Jihadists" in Afghanistan in their fight against the Soviet invaders.
  Now, we prepare to invade Iran. We have invaded Iraq for the second time in 15 years. We will never invade Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that this nation's vast wealth and Wahabbist extremists make it the birthing bed of international terrorism. We lost two towers in New York City at the hands of a group that we created in the 1980s to fight the Soviets. Put plainly, the "permanent crisis" of the Cold War created a cycle of military self-justification. We build enemies with arms and money, and then we destroy them with arms and money, thus keeping our wartime economy afloat.
  The Cold War ended more than ten years ago, but we still need war, and we need that "permanent crisis" to continue the cycle of military self-justification. If a legitimate war is not available, we will create one because we have to. We have our new "permanent crisis," which we call the War on Terror, another turn of the cycle created by an attack that our foreign policy and war-justifications of the last 50 years made almost inevitable.
  We need wars. That's why we are in Iraq. This invasion and occupation of that nation has given our economy the war it needs, and has also created the justification for future wars by creating legions of enemies in the Mideast and around the world. Our wartime economy will tolerate no less.
  Talking about Bush's lies regarding weapons of mass destruction, or about bringing democracy to the region, or about the dollar-to-Euro transfer, or about the midterm elections, is window-dressing. We invaded Iraq because we had to. This is the elephant in the room, the foreign policy reality nobody talks about.
  If you want peace, work to change the underpinnings of our economy. Until that change is made, there will always be wars, invasions, and lies to brings such things about. It is what it is.
  
• William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books:
• War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and
• The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

Voluntary Amnesia in the Service of War

• Voluntary Amnesia in the Service of War
• By Norman Solomon t r u t h o u t Perspective
• http://tinyurl.com/bbegx
  
• Thursday 23 June 2005
  
• Forget it!
  
• That seems to be an unstated motto for American media coverage of the Iranian presidential election. The axiom comes down to: "Don't let history get in the way of spin."
  Evasion smoothes the way to the next war.
  For maximum propaganda effect, the agenda-setting must be decoupled as much as possible from clear truths - about the current president's mendacity in connection with Iraq, and about the record of US government actions toward Iran.
  While a seriously discredited President Bush strains to do damage control about his past lies and present machinations on Iraq, the US media coverage typically presents his statements about Iran without so much as a whiff of suspicion. A proven liar is treated like a presumptive truth-teller.
  The ambient noise of American media evokes history - distant or recent - as an option we may choose to decline, like mustard on a burger. We're encouraged to mentally disconnect from relevant historic events. Double standards prevail.
  Red-white-and-blue journalists don't doubt that the past sins of Washington's present-day foes are quite relevant today. So, it's assumed to be incisive when reporters keep reminding news consumers that Saddam Hussein committed huge crimes such as mass killing of Kurds. But what about the fact that most of the worst of those crimes occurred while the United States was supportive of Hussein's regime? That question gets short shrift.
  Likewise - while American viewers, listeners and readers are apt to be aware that in 1979 some radical Iranians took American diplomats hostage at the US embassy in Tehran and held them for more than a year - other historical facts tend to be hazy or entirely absent. That suits the White House just fine. From a Machiavellian standpoint, the best remedy for unpleasant historical facts - distant or recent - is silence about them.
  For instance: Under diplomatic cover, US intelligence operatives engineered a coup that brought down the democratically elected prime minister Muhammad Mussadiq in 1953 and installed the tyrannical Shah, who ruled with an iron and torturing hand until an Islamic revolution triumphed in early 1979. Iranians have ample reasons to be extremely wary of the US government. Yet major American news media scarcely acknowledge that the CIA-organized 1953 coup was a pivotal and destructive event in Iranian history.
  From afar, history is optional. But there's a direct line from the 1953 coup to the predicament that Iranians find themselves in today. Washington installed a dictatorship that gave rise to a revolution that founded the repressive Islamic Republic of Iran. Now, under that regime, advocates for theocracy and democracy are in the midst of an intense struggle.
  A week ago, on June 17, during Iran's first round of voting for president, I visited a few polling stations in neighborhoods of southern Tehran. One of the people who agreed to be interviewed was a 27-year-old woman who gave her name as Leilah. She stood in line with other Iranian women (men had a separate line) waiting to get inside the school to cast their ballots. When I asked who she intended to vote for, Leilah said that she still might choose not to cast a ballot for any of the presidential candidates. "I don't believe in any of them," she said.
  Her evident despair was rooted in history that cannot be understood without reference to the 1953 coup that jolted Iran off its democratic course.
  While routinely omitting even a mere mention of such matters as US support for the overthrow of a duly elected Iranian leader 52 years ago, American journalists - with few exceptions - have kept news coverage of Iran in a zone where history is always pliable. Now you see it, now you don't. Under such conditions of skewed reporting, the deep suspicion that infuses Iranians' views of the US government is apt to seem inexplicable.
  In contrast to claims from the Bush administration (and from avowedly liberal media sources like editorial writers at the New York Times), the Iranian presidential elections this month have included important elements of democratic participation. In recent weeks, Iranians have publicly and intensively debated Iran's domestic policies, with very significant differences between the presidential contenders. While American journalists often seem to be suffering from selective amnesia in their reporting, many Iranians are acutely mindful of the need to understand their country's real history and begin a more hopeful chapter.
  Meanwhile, there are strong indications that the Bush administration is ramping up preparations for some kind of military attack on Iran. The assault could include a sustained series of missile strikes - but even a single day of bombing would have a wide range of grim effects, including severe damage to Iran's fledgling human rights movement. Activists in the United States should work to avert such a catastrophe.
  
• Norman Solomon's new book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death became available this week.
• The book's first chapter is posted at: WarMadeEasy.com.

Conyers at The White House Gate with the Petition After DowningStreetHearings

Petition At White House Gates June 16th '05

• Better Than Stills; Watch, Listen as Petitions With Over 560,000 Citizen Signatures, 122 Congressional Representative Signatures are Delivered To The 'Very Well' Protected 'Peoples' White House:
• http://tinyurl.com/b35uj

We 'All' Share In The Acts Of The Few, And Carry The Guilt

• What Is The Differance In These First Three Reports - Zip, Zero, Nada!!
• On All Sides 'We' All Are Complicit - For These Are Done In All Our Names - Every Act In Wars/Conflicts Everyone Bears The 'Guilt'!!
• Marjorie Cohn Bush Plays Politics with Guantanamo "Gulag"
• http://tinyurl.com/co77z
  
• Iraqi Security Tactics Evoke the Hussein Era
• By Jeffrey Fleishman and Asmaa Waguih
• BAGHDAD - The public war on the Iraqi insurgency has led to an atmosphere of hidden brutalities, including abuse and torture, carried out against detainees by the nation's special security forces, according to defense lawyers, international organizations and Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights.
• http://tinyurl.com/c9kqy
  
  
• Iraqis Found in Torture House Tell of Brutality of Insurgents
• By SABRINA TAVERNISE
• Marines found a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose and handcuffs, and four beaten and shackled Iraqis.
• http://tinyurl.com/eywz3
• We are all complicit in these vile acts of torture
  But what can we do about it?
  
• by Robert Fisk
  
• What can we do? What can we do when an American president dispatches "suspects" to third countries where they will be stripped, wired up, electrocuted, ripped open and tortured until they wish they had never been born?
• http://tinyurl.com/cz4x2