The Peace Movement

May, 2003 ANSWER Conference: Activists Move From Anti-War to Anti-Imperialist

by Deirdre Griswold, New York, May 24, 2003

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_239.shtml

Political Action

Help stop the deportaton of Amer Jubran!

Please help us stop the deportation of a courageous activist and our good friend, Amer Jubran.  The U.S. Government is attempting to deport him, solely because of his political work on behalf of the people of Palestine. They failed in their first attempt in April, 2001 because of all the wonderful people who protested his detention.  But this time they might succeed, unless we do everything we can to defeat them again.  Amer's case is scheduled for July 24, 2003.

Please visit our website at: http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_244.shtml, to read the background of Amer's case and see what you can do to help with our call-in, letter-writing and e-mail campaign.  If you live in the Boston Area, please contact the AJDC to see how you can participate in the protest we will be conducting on July 24.

Thanks very much - Les Blough

Economy

U.S. rich-poor gap "unsustainable"- Fed's McDonough, Reuters, May 22, 2003

Washington - A large gulf between the rich and poor can tear at a society's fabric, departing New York Federal Reserve Bank President William McDonough said on Thursday, calling U.S. income disparity "unsustainable." http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/030522/economy_fed_poverty_1.html

No Fiscal Sense in Tax Plan, LA Times Editorial, LA Times Editorial, May 22, 2003

The new $350-billion House-Senate package is yet another boon to the well-to-do.

If a family is running a huge credit card debt, does it make sense to call Visa or MasterCard to order a fistful of gold cards? That's just what the Bush administration and Congress are doing. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified again to Congress on Wednesday that deficits "do matter" because they create pressure to increase interest rates. No matter. -more...

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-taxes22may22,1,538402.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2Deditorials

Civil Rights

 

Freedom of Speech, Oxygen Media, May 25, 2003

Freedom of Speech: It is one of America's most treasured ideals. While we all talk about it, how well do you really understand it? Take the First Amendment quiz at Axis of Logic and find out.

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_250.shtml

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Democracy is the road to socialism

                                              ~Karl Marx

 

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War Crimes

Red Cross denied access to PoWs, by Ed Vulliamy, The Observer, May 25, 2003

The United States is illegally holding thousands of Iraqi prisoners of war and other captives without access to human rights officials at compounds close to Baghdad airport, The Observer has learnt. There have also been reports of a mutiny last week by prisoners at an airport compound, in protest against conditions. The uprising was 'dealt with' by the Americans, according to a US military source.

http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,963176,00.html

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Reason for the most part, merely finds arguments for its conclusions

~William James

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The Environment

 

Earth's Vital Signs Show the Pain of Poverty, by J.R. Pegg,

Environmental News Service, May 25, 2003

Washington (ENS) - An examination of Earth's "vital signs" reveals alarming trends of poverty, disease and environmental decline that threaten global stability, according to the Worldwatch Institute's annual report on trends shaping the world's future.

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_252.shtml

Iran

With US Pressure Set to Intensify, Iran's Political Crisis Edges to Showdown, AFP News, Khaleej Times Online, 25 May 2003

Iran is now facing the kinds of allegations leveled at Iraq before the US attacked. Washington has accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and hosting Al Qaeda operatives. The Washington Post is reporting that the US government had ended discreet contacts with Iran and is considering "public and private actions" to destabilize the Iranian government -- a process that many Western diplomats here see as already underway.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2003/May/middleeast_May526.xml&section=middleeast

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New Front Sets Sights On Toppling Iran Regime,The Forward,

by Marc Perelman, May 16, 2003

A budding coalition of conservative hawks, Jewish organizations and Iranian monarchists is pressing the White House to step up American efforts to bring about regime change in Iran.

For now, President Bush's official stance is to encourage the Iranian people to push the mullah regime aside themselves, but observers believe that the policy is not yet firm, and that has created an opportunity for activists. Neoconservatives advocating regime change in Tehran through diplomatic pressure � and even covert action � appear to be winning the debate within the administration, several knowledgeable observers said.

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience.

Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.

~Hal Borland

Palestine

Israeli Cabinet Approves Landmark Peace Blueprint, Reuters, Khaleej Times Online, 25 May 2003

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won cabinet approval Sunday for a US-backed "road map" for peace in a breakthrough that formally committed Israel for the first time to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Sharon reluctantly accepted the plan following Washington's announcement it would address Israel's reservations about the road map as it was being implemented. Some political commentators said Sharon was making a tactical move, banking on Abbas, a reformist with a weak power base, ultimately failing to carry out a mandated crackdown on militants. In a separate vote of 16-1, the cabinet rejected any Palestinian right of refugee return to what is now the Jewish state, a proviso likely to be a bump on any road to peace.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2003/May/middleeast_May528.xml&section=middleeast

Ariel Sharon Interview: 'Iraq war created an opportunity with the Palestinians we can't miss',

by Ari Shavit, Ha'aretz, May 23, 2003

Sharon:  "...So the removal of Iraq as a threat is definitely a relief. However, this does not mean that all of the problems we are facing have been removed. Iran is making every effort to produce weapons of mass destruction and is engaged in making ballistic missiles. Libya is making a very great effort to acquire nuclear weapons. What is developing in these countries is dangerous and serious. In Saudi Arabia, too, there is a regime that grants sanctioned aid to terrorist organizations here."

Read the entire interview at:  http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_203.shtml

Iraq

Red Cross Denied Access to POWs, by Ed Vulliamy in Baghdad, The UK Observer, 25 May 2003

The International Committee of the Red Cross so far has been denied access to what the organisation believes could be as many as 3,000 prisoners held in searing heat. All other requests to inspect conditions under which prisoners are being held have been met with silence or been turned down. The Observer notes that the US is illegally holding thousands of Iraqi prisoners of war and other captives without access to human rights officials at compounds close to Baghdad airport. There have also been reports of a mutiny last week by prisoners at an airport compound, in protest against conditions. The uprising was 'dealt with' by the Americans, according to a US military source.

http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,963108,00.html

Chaos in Iraq: Just What the US Wanted?, by Steve Perry, Babelogue.com, published in Information Clearing House, 21 May 2003

The Bushmen make official that they will be overstaying their welcome, and--phone the NRA!--taking away Iraqi citizens' guns. Perry says, "I think the administration has done exactly what it set out to do, which was to seize the country rapidly and then unveil by degrees its plan for a long-range military and business presence there. No central government? No problem." Here's a great overview of the present Iraq situation by Patrick Cockburn. http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/sperry/2003/05/21

Victims of the Peace Decide Americans Are Worse Than Saddam, by Anthony Browne in Khan Bani Saad, UK Times Online, 23 May 2003

"The small dank cells with cold stone floors, tiny windows and iron bars of the Khan Bani Saad prison is filled with families who are victims, not of the war, but of the peace." So writes Anthony Browne, who interviewed members of the Arab Saraefien tribe who had actually welcomed the American invasion of Iraq. Hadeb Hamed Hamed, the tribe's sheikh, said, "It is the allied forces that have done this to us. When we run out of food...we will fight the Americans even if they kill us. It is better than sitting here with nothing and just dying."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-689414,00.html

Blix Suspects Iraq May Have Had No Banned Weapons, NBC San Diego, 23 May 2003

Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, says he's starting to suspect Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Blix also says he would return to aid in the U.S. search for banned weapons if asked.

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/2224108/detail.html

War profiteers Shell, Bechtel, Fluor take record of terror from Africa to Iraq, by Dena Montague, San Francisco Bay View,May 24, 2003

Ken Saro-Wiwa, spokesman for the Ogoni people, speaks to his people in Ogoni, Nigeria, in January 1993. As Bush creates a corporate protectorate in Iraq, many companies who stand to benefit from reconstruction and oil exploration there are familiar to Africans. Shell, Bechtel and Fluor are all associated with massacres and crimes against humanity in Africa.

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_227.shtml

Pentagon

A Spy Machine of DARPA's Dreams, by Noah Shachtman, Wired News, 20 May 2003

The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index all the information and make it searchable. It's called LifeLog, and it will "dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read." John Pike, director of defense think tank GlobalSecurity.org, said he finds the explanations "hard to believe. It looks like an outgrowth of Total Information Awareness and other DARPA homeland security surveillance programs." http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,58909,00.html

Dark Places

The Masters of the Universe, by Pepe Escobar for Asia Times, published in Information Clearing House, 21 May 2003

What were Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle doing from May 15-18? They were at the Trianon Palace Hotel near Paris for the annual meeting of the Bilderberg club. The club is regarded by financial and business elites as the high chamber of the high priests of capitalism. The meetings are shrouded in the utmost secrecy. Some of the Western world's leading financiers and foreign policy strategists attend, in their view, to polish and reinforce a virtual consensus, an illusion that globalization, defined under their terms - what's good for banking and big business is good for everybody else - is inevitable and for the greater good of mankind.

Escobar says, "These crucial developments were discussed behind closed doors. The hotel was closed to the public and all non-Bilderberg guests had to check out. Part-time employees were sent home. The ones who remained were told that they would be fired if caught revealing anything about the meeting. They couldn't speak to any Bilderberger unless spoken to. They couldn't look anybody in the eye. Armed guards completely isolated and cordoned off the hotel. Members of the American corporate press were there - but the public will never know about it: Bilderberg news is not fit to print - or broadcast. No journalists from any media controlled by Bilderberg multinational tycoons such as Rupert Murdoch were or will be allowed to report it. Even if they somehow managed to crash the party. There's no business like (private) elite business."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3490.htm

Here is Leonard Cottrell's description of the Ceylonese city of Annadhapura, roughly contemporaneous in the west, with Alexander the Great: ". . . the palaces would have made Diocletian's palace seem a poor thing by cmparison, their great dagobas, artificial hills of masonry supporting shrines and reliquaries, were sometimes over three hundred feet high, and can be compared with the pyramids of Egypt.  There hydraulic engineering has no parallel, save in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries . . ." Today, in the ruined tanks of those great Sinhalese cities, the bear alone stands upright, and leopards drink from the few puddles that remain . . 

by Loren Eiseley, from his book, The Night Country