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War in Iraq * Ode to Cynthia * Yucca Action * Vt Energy Fest
25 July 2002
1) The Escalation for War in Iraq
2) Ode to Cynthia
3) Yucca Mt. Nuke Depository Action
4) Vermont Alternative Energy Festival - July 26-28
"It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners."
- Albert Camus
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1) The Escalation for War in Iraq
[The following artle was excerpted, link to Truthout posting at end]
The Coming October War in Iraq
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday, 24 July, 2002
Room 295 of the Suffolk Law School building in downtown Boston was filled to capacity on July 23rd with peace activists, aging Cambridge hippies and assorted freaks. One of the organizers for the gathering, United For Justice With Peace Coalition, handed out green pieces of paper that read, "We will not support war, no matter what reason or rhetoric is offered by politicians or the media. War in our time and in this context is indiscriminate, a war against innocents and against children." Judging from the crowd, and the buzz in the room, that pretty much summed things up.
The contrast presented when Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, entered the room, could not have been more disparate. There at the lectern stood this tall lantern-jawed man, every inch the twelve-year Marine Corps veteran he was, who looked and spoke just exactly like a bulldogging high school football coach. A whistle on a string around his neck would have perfected the image.
"I need to say right out front," he said minutes into his speech, "I'm a card-carrying Republican in the conservative-moderate range who voted for George W. Bush for President. I'm not here with a political agenda. I'm not here to slam Republicans. I am one."
Yet this was a lie - Scott Ritter had come to Boston with a political agenda, one that impacts every single American citizen. Ritter was in the room that night to denounce, with roaring voice and burning eyes, the coming American war in Iraq. According to Ritter, this coming war is about nothing more or less than domestic American politics, based upon speculation and rhetoric entirely divorced from fact. According to Ritter, that war is just over the horizon..
.."If I were an American, uninformed on Iraq as we all are," said Ritter, "I would be concerned." Furthermore, continued Ritter, if an unquestionable case could be made that such weapons and terrorist connections existed, he would be all for a war in Iraq. It would be just, smart, and in the interest of national defense.
Therein lies the rub: According to Scott Ritter, who spent seven years in Iraq with the UNSCOM weapons inspection teams performing acidly detailed investigations into Iraq's weapons program, no such capability exists. Iraq simply does not have weapons of mass destruction, and does not have threatening ties to international terrorism. Therefore, no premise for a war in Iraq exists. Considering the American military lives and the Iraqi civilian lives that will be spent in such an endeavor, not to mention the deadly regional destabilization that will ensue, such a baseless war must be avoided at all costs.
"The Bush administration has provided the American public with little more than rhetorically laced speculation," said Ritter. "There has been nothing in the way of substantive fact presented that makes the case that Iraq possesses these weapons or has links to international terror, that Iraq poses a threat to the United States of America worthy of war."
Ritter regaled the crowd with stories of his time in Iraq with UNSCOM. The basis for the coming October war is the continued existence of a weapons program that threatens America. Ritter noted explicitly that Iraq, of course, had these weapons at one time - he spent seven years there tracking them down. At the outset, said Ritter, they lied about it. They failed to declare the existence of their biological and nuclear programs after the Gulf War, and declared less than 50% of their chemical and missile stockpiles. They hid everything they could, as cleverly as they could. After the first lie, Ritter and his team refused to believe anything else they said. For the next seven years, the meticulously tracked down every bomb, every missile, every factory designed to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weaponry. They went to Europe and found the manufacturers who sold them the equipment. They got the invoices and shoved them into the faces of Iraqi officials. They tracked the shipping of these materials and cross-referenced this data against the invoices. They lifted the foundations of buildings destroyed in the Gulf War to find wrecked research and development labs, at great risk to their lives, and used the reams of paperwork there to cross-reference what they had already cross-referenced.
Everything they found was later destroyed in place...Along with the other mitigating factors described above, it seems clear that 100% compliance under the UNSCOM rules was impossible to achieve. 90-95%, however, is an impressive record.
The fact that chemical and biological weapons ever existed in the first place demands action, according to the Bush administration. After all, they could have managed to hide vast amounts of the stuff from Ritter's investigators. Iraq manufactured three kinds of these nerve agents: VX, Sarin and Tabou. Some alarmists who want war with Iraq describe 20,000 munitions filled with Sarin and Tabou nerve agents that could be used against Americans.
The facts, however, allay the fears. Sarin and Tabou have a shelf life of five years. Even if Iraq had somehow managed to hide this vast number of weapons from Ritter's people, what they are now storing is nothing more than useless and completely harmless goo.
"The research and development factory is destroyed," said Ritter. "The product of that factory is
destroyed. The weapons they loaded up have been destroyed. More importantly, the equipment procured from Europe that was going to be used for their large-scale VX nerve agent factory was identified by the special commission - still packed in its crates in 1997 - and destroyed. Is there a VX nerve agent factory in Iraq today? Not on your life."
This is, in and of itself, a bold statement. Ritter himself and no weapons inspection team has set foot in Iraq since 1998. Ritter believed Iraq technically capable of restarting its weapons manufacturing capabilities within six months of his departure. That leaves some three and one half years to manufacture and weaponize all the horrors that has purportedly motivated the Bush administration to attack.
"Technically capable," however, is the important phrase here. If no one were watching, Iraq could do this. But they would have to start completely from scratch, having been deprived of all equipment, facilities and research because of Ritter's work. They would have to procure the complicated tools and technology required through front companies, which would be detected. The manufacture of chemical and biological weapons emits vented gasses that would have been detected by now if they existed. The manufacture of nuclear weapons emits gamma rays that would have been detected by now if they existed. We have been watching, via satellite and other means, and we have seen none of this.
"If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof," said Ritter, "plain and simple.."
..The removal of Saddam Hussein became a plank in the GOP's race for the Presidency in 2000. After gaining office, George W. Bush was confronted with the reality that he and many within his administration had spent a great amount of political capital promising that removal. Once in power, however, he came to realize what his father and Clinton already knew - talking tough was easy, and instigating pinprick military confrontations was easy, but removing Hussein from power was not easy at all. His own rhetoric was all around him, however, pushing him into that corner which had only one exit. Still, like the two Presidents before him, he treaded water..
..It is of a certainty that few in the Muslim world support another American war with Iraq. Osama bin Laden used the civilian suffering in Iraq under the sanctions to demonstrate to his followers the evils of America and the West. Another war would exacerbate those already-raw emotions. After 9/11, much of the Islamic world repudiated bin Laden and his actions. Another Iraq war would go a long way to proving, in the minds of many Muslims, that bin Laden was right all along. The fires of terrorism that would follow this are unimaginable.
Scott Ritter wants to be present as a witness on Monday when the Foreign Relations Committee convenes its hearing, a hearing that will decide whether or not America goes to war in Iraq. He wants to share the information he delivered in that Boston classroom with Senators who have spent too many years listening to, or propounding, rhetorical and speculative fearmongering about an Iraqi threat to America that does not exist. Instead, he wants the inspectors back in Iraq, doing their jobs. He wants to try and keep American and Iraqi blood from being spilled in a military exercise promulgated by right-wing ideologues that may serve no purpose beyond affecting the outcome of the midterm Congressional elections in November 2002.
"This is not theory," said Ritter in Boston as he closed his comments. "This is real. And the only way this war is going to be stopped is if Congress stops this war."
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Take Action!!!! On the web:
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
http://foreign.senate.gov/committee/
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William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. His new book, 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence,' will be published soon by Pluto Press.
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The original and complete article is posted at TRUTHOUT
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/07.25A.wrp.iraq.htm
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"You've read and heard a great deal about a likely U.S. attack on Iraq. It is coming. I am not giving away any state secrets here. Saddam Hussein knows it is coming, and he is preparing for it. Shortly, some time in the next year, the U.S. will launch an all-out attack on Iraq designed to finish the war we should have finished a decade ago. The objective will be to hunt down Saddam Hussein and his inner circle and kill them all, while simultaneously locating and destroying his growing stockpile of weapons of mass destruction."
--Warren Buffett --the second wealthiest man in the world --
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This following information was received from Charles Jenks, president of Traprock Peace Center
Re: Iraq -- the breaking news is that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is starting hearings today [July 25!!] We just found this out. We had been informed by Sen. Biden's office that they were starting Monday - only today did we learn they are starting earlier. Scott Ritter has not, as of last night, been invited to testify. I feel that it is critically important that he be invited to testify. For more resources and connections to late breaking news on this issue, see: http://www.traprockpeace.org
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Related Article : Iraq War Phase One Is Under Way, Sources Say
Source: Pravda / www.pravda.ru
MOSCOW, Jul 24, 2002 -- Pravda.Ru sources in the Gulf have confirmed that the military build-up by the US Forces has begun, with "tent cities" being built in Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, while in Washington military sources have confirmed that operations have started.
The new French Foreign Minister, Dominique Villepin, told French diplomats that she expected the military action from the USA against Iraq to come "soon" after a meeting with US National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice. Military strategists in Washington have leaked to the press reports that the first strike would be with special forces, possibly Delta Force and CIA operationals, together with British SAS and SBS, setting up blockades along Iraq's road arteries, while aircraft carried out punitive missions and advanced bases were set up in Mosul, in the north and Basra in the south. This, according to Major Charles Heyman, spokesperson for Jane's Information Group, could take place "much sooner than expected", in August or September. These bases would be used in a second phase next Spring with a large invading force of some 250,000 troops liaising with Kurdish and Shi'ite guerrillas. A legitimate basis for such an attack has not yet been declared.
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2) Ode to Cynthia
It's vacation time, and people temporarily disengage from the political razzmatazz for more pacific exploits. But this summer will mark an important, nay, fateful choice in interlinked destinies of America and Palestine. You should not miss it.
Ode to Cynthia
By Israel Shamir
Things must be bad indeed if a woman steps forward to the line of fire. Nature arranged that a woman does not court danger unless her land and her folks are in real trouble. But when she does, she teaches men a lesson of manly behaviour.
When France was fading away, a shepherd girl Jeanne d'Arc took a heavy sword and led the flower of French nobles to assault the walls of Orleans. When cities of Republican Spain was strafed by the Nazi Luftwaffe, it was a woman, Dolores Ibarruri, La Pasionaria, who said to her peopleit is better to die tall, than to live on your knees. In 1990, when Mikhail Gorbachev led his country to disaster and disintegration, a year before the wealth of Russia was embezzled in privatisation spree, only one person has dared to raise her voice against the dictator in the parliament. She was the indomitable Sashie Umalatov, an MP from the Chechen Mountains.
Now it is the turn of the US to feel the chilly wind of eternity on its face. It came from unexpected direction. People of America became hostage in the hands of a few men with too many dollars in their pockets and endless greed in their hearts. For millennia, the difference of income, education, and standard of living was not so vast in one land. The wealth of the nation could provide every American with a superb education, perfect medical care, happy childhood, secure old age, guaranteed home, and free time to open one's mind to new thoughts and old friends. America could be on its way to the Golden Age of universal happiness and wisdom.
Instead of it, a small group of men squeezes the nation in order to add another billion to their coffers. They would surely destroy the US by their limitless greed. The devotees of Mammon, they are totally devoid of compassion to the people they live amongst. They do not see the local people as ‘their own kind'. If they want to show compassion, they send money to Israel. Out of five dollars American taxpayer gives for aid, four dollars land in the coffers of the Jewish state. They appear unstoppable, as the politicians are scared of them and docilely raise their hands and sign the pledge promising to send more money to Israeli generals. Support of Israel is not a foreign policy. It is the covenant of the Mammonites, and you sign it with blood. With Palestinian blood.
But one woman refused to sign the pledge. One woman, Cynthia McKinney, a member for Georgia, dared to refuse. Four hundred congressmen signed it; they preferred their own personal advancement to the good of the country. Ancestors of Cynthia were slaves in her native Georgia. But she is one of a very few free persons in the US Congress. As we Israelis were used to say about our Golda Meir, she is the only man over there. She is a black woman, but she is the whitest man of them all, they would say before the Politically Correct era. She knew the billions of Israeli aid are needed for the poor people of the United States, for her own Afro-American community. She wanted to uphold the sovereignty of the people and congress of the United States, in face of encroaching servility to the Jewish Lobby.
She is not alone. Another wonderful Afro-American congresswoman, Barbara Lee, cast the only vote against the slaughter in Afghanistan; John Conyers, Jessie Jackson Jr, and Maxine Waters supported the cause of Palestine on different occasions. Ron Paul of Texas voted against all-house resolution sending obsequious greeting to General Sharon. Nick Rahall, John Sununu, David Bonior did not bend.
Cynthia was just more outspoken in seeing the evil. She said , "There are many Members of Congress who want to be free. I am one of them. I wanted to be free to vote according to my conscience, but I had been told that if I didn't sign a pledge supporting the military superiority of Israel, no support would come my way. And sure enough, I didn't sign the pledge and no support came my way. I suffered silently year in and year out, because I refused to sign that pledge. And then, like a slave that found a way to buy his freedom... I went to work ... I wanted to be free ... Free to cast the votes in the United States Congress as I saw fit and not as I was dictated to".
Now she stands for re-election, and her chances are dim, as the frightful AIPAC, the spearhead of the organised Jewish community, targeted her. They do not want to see independent and free congressmen on the Capitol Hill. Their huge financial might, network of connections in the media and universities are used to smother every free voice. They succeeded to unseat Earl Hilliard, another Black Congressman, who did not bow to Sharon, and now plan to do Cynthia in. If they succeed, the cause of freedom will suffer a huge setback. If she succeeds, the myth of Jewish omnipotence will evaporate, and America will look towards better days, as support or rejection of segregated Israel speaks volumes about true agenda of a candidate.
..It is paramount to rally around her, as the French nobles rallied to Jeanne d'Arc. Whether you are a descendant of African slaves or Muslim immigrants, a son of Confederacy or a Daughter of American Revolution, a freedom-loving Jew or a born-again Christian - it is the time to unite for Cynthia and for America.
This article was excerpted.. the complete article is posted
http://www.israelshamir.net/english/ode.htm
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Related Alert!!! [from the offices of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney]
Dissent of Rep. Cynthia McKinney
To House Armed Services Committee Consideration of H.R. 4547
The Costs of War Against Terrorism Act
July 22, 2002
The attacks of September 11th, 2001 caused significant changes throughout our society. For our military services, this included increased force protection, greater security, and of course the deployment to and prosecution of the War on Terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Sadly, one of the first acts of our President was to waive the high deployment overtime pay of our servicemen and women who are serving on the front lines of our new War. The Navy estimates that the first year costs of this pay would equal about 40 cruise missiles. The total cost of this overtime pay may only equal about 300 cruise missiles, yet this Administration said it would cost too much to pay our young men and women what the Congress and the previous Administration had promised them.
In another ironic twist, the War on Terrorism has the potential to bring the US military into American life as never before. A Northern Command has been created to manage the military's activity within the continental United States. Operation Noble Eagle saw combat aircraft patrolling the air above major metropolitan areas, and our airports are only now being relieved of National Guard security forces. Moreover, there is a growing concern that the military will be used domestically, within our borders, with intelligence and law enforcement mandates as some now call for a review of the Posse Comitatus Act prohibitions on military activity within our country.
In the 1960s, the lines between illegal intelligence, law enforcement and military practices became blurred as Americans wanting to make America a better place for all were targeted and attacked for political beliefs and political behavior. Under the cloak of the Cold War, military intelligence was used for domestic purposes to conduct surveillance on civil rights, social equity, antiwar, and other activists. In the case of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Operation Lantern Spike involved military intelligence covertly operating a surveillance operation of the civil rights leader up to the time of his assassination. In a period of two months, recently declassified documents on Operation Lantern Spike indicate that 240 military personnel were assigned in the two months of March and April to conduct surveillance on Dr. King. The documents further reveal that 16,900 man-hours were spent on this assignment. Dr. King had done nothing more than call for black suffrage, an end to black poverty, and an end to the Vietnam War. Dr. King was the lantern of justice for America: spreading light on issues the Administration should have been addressing. On April 4, 1968, Dr. King's valuable point of light was snuffed out. The documents I have submitted for the record outline the illegal activities of the FBI and its CoIntelPro program. A 1967 memo from J. Edgar Hoover to 22 FBI field offices outlined the COINTELPRO program well: "The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize" black activist leaders and organizations.
As a result of the Church Committee hearings, we later learned that the FBI and other government authorities were conducting black bag operations that included illegally breaking and entering private homes to collect information on individuals. FBI activities included "bad jacketing," or falsely accusing individuals of collaboration with the authorities. It included the use of paid informants to set up on false charges targeted individuals. And it resulted in the murder of some individuals. Geronimo Pratt Ji Jaga spent 27 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. And in COINTELPRO documents subsequently released, we learn that Fred Hampton was murdered in his bed while his pregnant wife slept next to him after a paid informant slipped drugs in his drink.
Needless to say, such operations were well outside the bounds of what normal citizens would believe to be the role of the military, and the Senate investigations conducted by Senator Frank Church found that to be true. Though the United States was fighting the spread of communism in the face of the Cold War, the domestic use of intelligence and military assets against its own civilians was unfortunately reminiscent of the police state built up by the Communists we were fighting.
We must be certain that the War on Terrorism does not threaten our liberties again. Amendments to H.R. 4547, the Costs of War Against Terrorism Act, that would increase the role of drug interdiction task forces to include counter intelligence, and that would increase the military intelligence's ability to conduct electronic and financial investigations, can be the first steps towards a return to the abuses of constitutional rights during the Cold War. Further, this bill includes nearly $2 billion in additional funds for intelligence accounts. When taken into account with the extra-judicial incarceration of thousands of immigration violators, the transfer of prisoners from law enforcement custody to military custody, and the consideration of a 'volunteer' terrorism tip program, America must stand up and protect itself from the threat not only of terrorism, but of a police state of its own.
There does exist a need to increase personnel pay accounts, replenish operations and maintenance accounts and replace lost equipment. The military has an appropriate role in protecting the United States from foreign threats, and should remain dedicated to preparing for those threats. Domestic uses of the military have long been prohibited for good reason, and the same should continue to apply to all military functions, especially any and all military intelligence and surveillance. Congress and the Administration must be increasingly vigilant towards the protection of and adherence to our constitutional rights and privileges. For, if we win the war on terrorism, but create a police state in the process, what have we won?
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To Sign-up for updates and more on Rep. Cynthia McKinney, visit::
http://www.house.gov/mckinney/welcome.htm
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3) Yucca Mt. Nuke Depository Action
On July 9th, the Senate voted 60-39 to overturn Nevada's veto of the proposed high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain, capitulating to the nuclear industry's well-financed lobby despite broad-based opposition from environmental and public interest organizations.
How did your Senator vote? Visit:
http://action.citizen.org/pc/issues/votes/?votenum=167&chamber=S&congress=1072 .
Take Action! Send a free fax to your Senators to let them know what you think of their vote:
http://www.citizen.org/fax/background.cfm?ID=60&source=19
The commercial nuclear industry, eager to advance its plans for expansion, had pegged the Yucca Mountain decision as a symbolic vote of confidence in nuclear power, and spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising, campaign contributions and lobbyists leading up to the Senate vote. In a statement to the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum Annual Conference in April 2002, Nuclear Energy Institute President & CEO Joe Colvin said, "[Approval of the Yucca Mountain repository] will resolve the main obstacle to widespread deployment of new nuclear facilities in the United States."
In a July 9th post-vote statement, Colvin was quoted saying, "The Senate's approval of the Yucca Mountain resolution is a clear signal of continued congressional support for nuclear energy. . ."
However, the recent vote has not resolved longstanding concerns about the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain dump proposal. Considering the scientific, economic, and policy questions that continue to plague the Yucca Mountain Project, the Department of Energy's repository plans face an uncertain future in upcoming legal, regulatory, and legislative processes. Furthermore, the Yucca Mountain controversy has raised legitimate questions about nuclear power's continued viability in terms of safety, the environment, and dollar costs. As advocates of safe, sustainable, and affordable energy, we will continue to challenge both the dangerous Yucca
Mountain dump and the Bush Administration's irresponsible plan to construct new nuclear power plants. . . which would needlessly exacerbate the nuclear waste problem.
Preeti Prasad
Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program
215 Pennsylvania Ave. SE
Washington, DC 20003
ph. 202-454-5175
FAX 202-547-7392
http://www.citizen.org/cmep
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4) Vermont Alternative Energy Festival - July 26-28
For too long, our dependence on foreign and domestic petroleum has burdened our great country, both socially and economically. Its time to start investing in a Sustainable America, its time for a green solution.
Join us July 26, 27, & 28 to learn about the improvements in Wind and Solar Technologies, and an improved Stirling engine, and other innovative technologies.
For more information and excellent line-up of music performances, see:
http://www.vaef.com
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