[sixties-l] Antiwar News...(# 14) (fwd)

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Date: Sat Oct 20 2001 - 19:20:59 EDT

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    Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 15:01:22 -0700
    From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
    Subject: Antiwar News...(# 14)

    Quote:
    "If it's natural to kill, why do men have to go into training to learn how
    to do it?"
    -- Joan Baez (attributed)
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [multiple items]
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    (Anti-war links/resources at the end.)
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    U.S. Military Response is Wrong -- And It Won't Work

    by Stephen Zunes
    San Jose Mercury News
    October 12, 2001

    The magnitude of the initial U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan raises
    legal, moral and practical questions.

    The use of military force for self-defense is legitimate under
    international law. Military retaliation is not.

    The use of heavy bombers against a country with few hard targets belies
    the Bush administration's claim that the attacks are not against the
    people of Afghanistan.

    The airstrikes are punishing the wrong people -- the Afghan population.
    They have already suffered through a 23-year nightmare: communist
    dictatorship, foreign invasion, civil war, competing warlords and
    fundamentalist rule.

    The Afghan people are the first and primary victims of the Taliban,
    perhaps the most totalitarian regime on Earth.

    It is tragic that the United States is victimizing them further through
    a large-scale military operation that will almost certainly lead to
    widespread civilian casualties.

    The strikes will also do little to root out terrorism.

    The Taliban leaders may escape harm in their bunkers or in remote
    mountain outposts. And the strikes may gain some sympathy for the regime
    and even Osama bin Laden himself, as people under attack tend to rally
    around their leaders.

    The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has given bin Laden and his supporters
    sanctuary, but this is not a typical case of state-backed terrorism. As
    a result of bin Laden's personal fortune and elaborate international
    network, he does not need (and apparently has not received) direct
    financial or logistical support from the Afghan government. Destroying
    the limited government resources in Afghanistan, therefore, may not
    cripple bin Laden and his cohorts.

    Al-Qaida is a decentralized network of underground terrorist cells
    operating throughout Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. It
    does not have much in the way of tangible targets that can be struck as
    if the United States were at war with a government. To target
    Afghanistan seems to be more an act of catharsis than a rational
    strategy to enhance U.S. security.

    If there is any logic to bin Laden's madness, it is his hope that the
    United States will overreact militarily, creating an anti-American
    backlash in the region, which would play right into his hands. This may
    very well happen.

    In order to break up these terrorist cells and bring the terrorists to
    justice, the United States needs the co-operation of intelligence
    services and police agencies in a number of Muslim countries. If the
    ongoing attacks are seen to be excessive and innocent lives are lost, it
    will be politically difficult for these regimes to provide the United
    States with the level of co-operation needed.

    To win the war against terrorism, we need to re-evaluate our definition
    of security. The more the United States militarizes the Middle East, the
    less secure we become. All the sophisticated weaponry, all the brave
    fighting men and women and all the talented military leadership will not
    stop terrorism as long as our policies cause millions of people to hate
    us.

    President Bush is wrong when he claims we are targeted because we are a
    "beacon for freedom." We are targeted because the support of freedom is
    not part of our policy in the Middle East, which has instead been based
    upon alliances with repressive governments and support for military
    occupation. If the United States supported a policy based more on human
    rights, international law and sustainable development and less on arms
    transfers, airstrikes and punitive sanctions, we would be a lot safer.

    America's greatest strength is not its far-flung military might but the
    fortitude and compassion of its people and the democratic values they
    uphold.
    ------------
    Stephen Zunes is an associate professor of politics and chair of the
    Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Kabul's Poorest Have No Escape from U.S. Bombs

    KABUL, Oct 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Only the poorest of the poor
    in the desperately impoverished Afghan capital remained in the city Sunday
    as constant U.S. air raids spread fear and panic among a normally stoic people.

    "Believe me, whenever there's a raid my children start crying. Last night,
    even I cried with them," Mohammad Nabi, 41, an auto spare parts salesman in
    the Qwaee Markaz area of Kabul, was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as
    saying.

    "When women and children scream in the middle of the night, that is
    terrifying enough in itself."

    As U.S. jets buzzed overhead night and day, whether on bombing runs or
    surveillance missions to identify fresh targets, those who could not afford
    to leave were trying to find shelter wherever they could.

    Shopkeepers have moved their stocks to the countryside or boarded up their
    windows.

    "We fear our goods could be looted if there is anarchy," said one merchant
    who did not want to be named.

    Taxi drivers said the city was becoming a ghost town.

    "No one remains in the whole of Kabul to hire a taxi. I have been moving
    around the city all day to find a client but it has become very difficult,"
    said 38-year-old Mushtaba as he sat in his rusty cab.

    "Only those people who get around on foot or bicycle remain in the city.
    After a month you won't see anybody in the city. They may die or leave."

    The Pentagon confirmed Saturday that a 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bomb
    struck a residential area near Kabul, claiming a wrong digit was entered as
    the target's coordinates, killing at least four civilians, injuring dozens
    others and razing at least six houses to the ground, forcing their
    inhabitants to join the scores of already homeless people in a city where
    hundreds of thousands already rely on foreign aid just to eat.

    Thus far, U.S. bombs have killed a reported 400 civilians.

    One such report confirmed that at least 160 people, mainly women and
    children, were killed in a village earlier this week when a U.S. missile
    fell on a neighborhood destroying everything in sight, including a thousand
    head of livestock in the farming community.

    Instead of hitting a military helicopter at Kabul airport, about a mile
    (1.6 kilometers) from the residential area, it landed in an area of
    traditional Afghan mud houses.

    "I do not know whether they are going to eliminate the terrorists or create
    them. We are not terrorists, they have been forcing us to become
    terrorists," said auto parts salesman Nabi, who used to be a schoolteacher.

    "There could be other alternatives. Bombardments won't be the sole
    solution. They should view other options."

    The U.S.-led strikes are designed to force the Taliban to hand over their
    "guest", Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, blamed for the September 11th
    terrorist attacks in New York and Washington which killed more than 5,000
    people.

    But the Taliban leadership says it will never deliver him to his enemies
    unless solid evidence linking him to the attacks is provided.

    After another night of heavy bombardment, residents of Kabul were seen
    moving from one corner of the city to another with their belongings stacked
    in lorries, trucks or wheelbarrows.

    "Our relatives live in Shari Naw. So we will also join them just to be
    close to our relatives," said Hekmatullah, 22, who was pushing a barrow
    full of his belongings.

    "We used to live in Bi Bi Mahro area ... This is the fifth time I have
    moved between our home and our cousins' home."

    As he spoke, Taliban anti-aircraft gunners opened fire on a U.S. jet
    circling the city in the bright afternoon sunshine. Clearly visible, it
    made two or three runs before disappearing over the surrounding mountains.

    By late afternoon, there was a sense of urgency among those still on the
    streets, as they rushed to find a place to settle before nightfall and the
    next round of bombings.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Anti-US protesters condemn airstrikes

    By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff, Boston Globe Correspondent
    10/13/2001

    AWALPINDI, Pakistan - The Muslim day of prayer yesterday became a day of
    protest across Islamic lands of Asia and the Middle East as worshipers
    spilled from mosques to join demonstrations against the ongoing
    American-led air assault on Afghanistan and to renew their calls for a holy
    war against the United States.

    By and large, violent protests were swiftly suppressed by antiriot police.
    In Pakistan, however, anti-US mobs rampaged through the southern port city
    of Karachi, smashing KFC fast-food outlets and torching cars. Protests were
    mostly peaceful elsewhere in the nation, although in Quetta, near the
    Afghanistan border, small crowds vandalized shops selling such American
    products as Hollywood videos and Gillette razors. And everywhere, it
    seemed, demonstrators took up a new rallying cry, ''US is United Satan!''

    In Islamabad, a coalition of radical Islamic parties called for a
    nationwide strike Monday to protest military operations in Afghanistan,
    demanding that US Secretary of State Colin Powell cancel his scheduled
    visit to the federal capital next week.

    ''The nation will not tolerate his unclean feet on our clean land,'' read a
    statement signed by a dozen Muslim clerics on behalf of political parties.

    It was impossible to tell if the relative peacefulness of most
    demonstrations in Pakistan represented a vote of confidence for the
    pro-American policies of General Pervez Musharraf, the country's leader, or
    simply reflected the presence of thousands of heavily-armed police and
    paramilitary soldiers with ''shoot-to-kill'' orders for lawbreaking dissidents.

    Across Asia, tens of thousands of marchers took to the streets in Pakistan,
    Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and the Philippines,
    brandishing photographs of fugitive militant Osama bin Laden, burning
    American flags, and pummeling straw-stuffed effigies of President George W.
    Bush with sticks, metal rods, and rocks.

    It was the largest day of protests in the Islamic world since the United
    States and Great Britain launched airstrikes earlier this week against
    Afghanistan's Taliban regime and bases of bin Laden's Qaeda terror network.
    Friday is the Muslim sabbath, and nearly all the protests were sparked by
    fire-breathing sermons delivered in mosques allied with radical political
    parties.

    American forces eased their strikes yesterday in observation of the prayer
    day, limiting their bombing to a few pre-dawn missiles, and US troops in
    the region readied for widely-expected ground actions meant to root bin
    Laden and his followers from their mountain hideouts.

    About 5,000 people gathered at Cairo's historic al-Azhar mosque, a scene of
    protests after the eruption of the Palestinian uprising last September,
    when security forces fired tear gas to disperse protesters. The government
    was prepared for noon prayers on Friday, sending hundreds of helmeted riot
    police with batons and rifles to the mosque.

    The official sermon, delivered by Sheik Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, did not
    criticize the US attacks. But the crowd was more militant, praising bin
    Laden as a Muslim hero and accusing the United States of terrorism in its
    attacks in Afghanistan.

    ''Give us weapons, give us weapons and take us to Afghanistan,'' the crowd
    chanted.

    The protest was led by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest Islamic
    fundamentalist group and leading opponent of the government. The
    government, sensitive to charges of being too close to US policy, permitted
    the protest to continue, but barred it from leaving the mosque.

    About 3,000 Palestinians stormed out of a mosque in the El Bireh
    neighborhood of Ramallah in the West Bank yesterday chanting against
    America and Israel.

    Supporters of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's Fatah
    movement joined the protesters in their chants. The leader of Fatah's
    Tanzim militias, Marwan Barghouthi, and Hamas spokesman Sheik Hasan Yousef
    walked in front of the marchers behind a large Palestinian flag.

    In the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, police turned water cannons on
    3,000 protesters hoisting banners reading ''Go to Hell America'' outside
    the US Embassy.

    In Indonesia, where hard-line Islamic groups have vowed to expel all
    foreigners, protesters hurled firecrackers and debris against heavily
    guarded walls of the US Embassy in Jakarta before being dispersed by police.

    In Colombo, capital of Sri Lanka, crowds of Muslims waved portraits of bin
    Laden and shouted slogans praising the terror chieftain as an Islamic hero.

    But most attention was riveted on Pakistan, whose strong support of the US
    war on terrorism has enraged some of its citizens and has made Musharraf
    widely loathed by Islamic radicals.

    Police, paramilitary forces, and regular army troops, patrolling in armored
    vehicles mounted with machine guns, were out in extraordinary force - more
    than 1,500 in Quetta alone, backed by larger numbers of army troops. The
    sheer number of police kept many demonstrations from turning into riots.

    The exception was Karachi, where mobs of Afghan exiles and Pakistani
    supporters of the Taliban torched cars, set piles of tires ablaze, and
    smashed the windows of two KFC outlets.

    Most of the protesters appeared to be followers of splinter Islamic parties
    whose mullahs preach that all Muslims are obliged to join a jihad, or holy
    struggle, against the United States to retaliate for the air assaults.

    The fiery sermons came in defiance of Musharraf's demand that religious
    leaders stop fanning flames of civil unrest. At least five people died this
    week in clashes with police in the city of Quetta.

    ''The whole of Pakistan wants action against those who want to disrupt
    peace, trade, and business,'' said Musharraf, ordering authorities to
    ''move firmly, swiftly and efficiently against lawbreakers.''

    Musharraf has infuriated fundamentalist Muslims with his outspoken support
    for the US and British campaign against bin Laden and the Taliban. The
    military leader has not only opened Pakistan airspace to the warplanes
    barreling against targets in Afghanistan but this week - in a politically
    perilous move - allowed the first US combat support troops to take up
    positions at air bases in the country.

    The arrival of American logistic specialists, intelligence officers, and
    battlefield medics at the Jacobabad and Pasni airfields on Thursday
    suggested that commando raids and other ground operations inside
    Afghanistan are likely to begin in the days or weeks ahead.

    The anger in Pakistan's streets reflects the passionate belief of some
    Muslims that the attacks against Afghanistan represent the opening volleys
    of a Western crusade against Islam.

    ''There must be war to the death between our civilizations,'' said Akhtar
    Shaikh, a 22-year-old Pakistani religious student who joined a raucous
    crowd of demonstrators thronging a square in Rawalpindi. ''The decadent
    idolators of Christ will be destroyed by the purity of our faith.''

    Relatively few Pakistani shopkeepers and businesspeople have heeded calls
    for similar strikes in recent weeks, but some are starting to close their
    doors on protest days simply out of fear of being attacked by radicals.

    ''I think the government is losing control of the situation,'' said Yaqueen
    Mumtaz as he shuttered his small plumbing fixtures enterprise in Rawalpindi
    as a chanting crowd approached. ''The radicals have so much hate in their
    hearts for America they could bring our good country to flames. We may yet
    become like Afghans - murdering each other in the streets and calling it
    the will of God.''
    ---------
    Anthony Shadid of the Globe Staff contributed to this report from Cairo,
    Globe Correspondent Said Ghazali from the West Bank. Material from the
    Associated Press was also used.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Protests erupt worldwide against US strikes on Afghanistan

    KARACHI, Oct 12 (AFP) -

    Anger over the US-led strikes on Afghanistan exploded into
    violence Friday as Muslims worldwide marked their first holy day
    since Washington opened the military front of its war on terror.

    US symbols such as fast-food restaurants were singled out as
    Muslim militants in Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia and Malaysia vented
    their fury over five nights of bombs and missiles raining down on
    Afghanistan.

    In Pakistan, whose government has found itself on the front line
    of the US-British campaign after disowning the Taliban regime
    across the border, police fired tear gas at hundreds of
    demonstrators attacking government buildings, shops and vehicles
    in the port of Karachi.

    Islamic radicals defied government warnings of a harsh crackdown
    and the presence of around 20,000 police and paramilitary troops,
    deployed in anticipation of more serious clashes after afternoon
    prayers at mosques across the city.

    Hundreds of people attacked a government complaints office in the
    Lyari district of southern Karachi and attempted to set it on
    fire.

    Tear gas was also used to disperse a crowd of up to 400 people
    who attacked a Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) outlet in Karachi,
    setting it partially ablaze.

    There were also reports of factories being attacked in the
    industrial part of western Karachi, which is dominated by ethnic
    Pashtuns, many of whom are refugees from Afghanistan.

    The Pashtuns are the dominant tribe in Afghanistan and the main
    support base for the Taliban.

    Pakistani's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, has ordered
    security forces to adopt a policy of zero tolerance of any
    protestors engaged in violence after five people were killed
    earlier this week.

    But allies of the Taliban and alleged terrorist mastermind Osama
    bin Laden were gearing up for a full-scale show of force in the
    Pakistani city of Quetta, which is near the Afghan border.

    Thousands of Islamic radicals have streamed into the flashpoint
    city in recent days in support of a call for an anti-US jihad, or
    holy war, and observers said they expected that up to 50,000
    people could protest.

    Islamic radicals' opposition to Musharraf's support for the US
    boiled over in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan, where
    the Pakistani consulate was stoned by an anti-US mob.

    A crowd of some 3,000, mainly Afghan refugees as well as
    Iranians, demonstrated in the streets of Zahedan, crying "down
    with America" and burning effigies of US President George W. Bush
    and the US flag.

    Police in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country,
    fired water cannon when hundreds of protesters set fire to an
    effigy of Bush outside the US embassy.

    Defying hundreds of police in riot gear, 37 armoured cars and
    three water cannon, at least 500 people staged noisy
    demonstrations outside the Jakarta embassy in protest at the US
    air attacks on Afghanistan.

    About 300 members of the Islamic student group Hamas displayed
    the Bush effigy on the hood of a jeep with a "wanted" poster hung
    from its neck.

    Baton-wielding police charged the students in a vain attempt to
    stop them setting it alight. Students counter-attacked with
    bamboo sticks but no serious injuries were reported.

    Outside the capital, an explosion struck a KFC outlet at Makassar
    in South Sulawesi province but no one was injured. In the city of
    Yogyakarta, protesters this week sealed off a McDonald's and a
    Pizza Hut.

    Jakarta police spokesman Anton Bahrul Alam said several groups
    were planning to stage rallies after midday prayers. Police will
    "arrest anyone who tries to create unrest and anarchy", he
    warned.

    Malaysian police also got tough, firing water cannon at some
    2,000 demonstrators protesting outside the US embassy.

    The demonstrators stood their ground after the first blast of
    chemically laced water, defying orders to disperse and chanting
    "Down with America" and "Allahu Akbar" as a helicopter clattered
    overhead.

    But longer salvos backed by the presence of about 100 armed
    police and a riot squad pushed them down the road outside the
    embassy.

    Most of the demonstrators were men wearing skullcaps after Friday
    prayers. They shouted that Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
    Sharon were "the next legitimate targets".

    Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, a staunch critic of
    the West, reaffirmed his opposition to the attacks on
    Afghanistan, saying "I don't think it is going to help in
    combating terrorism."

    India, which is home to the world's second largest Muslim
    population after Indonesia, was set to see mass protests at the
    huge Jama Masjid in the old quarter of New Delhi.

    Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the imam at the mosque and India's top Muslim
    cleric, said 30,000 to 40,000 people would emerge from prayers to
    denounce "America's barbaric attack".

    The US embassy in the Indian capital was under tight guard.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Anti-US Demonstrations All Across The Middle East

    10-12-1

    CAIRO (AFP) - Thousands of Egyptians, Iranians and Palestinians and
    other Muslims staged angry protests following their weekly prayers on
    Friday, five days after the start of the US-led strikes against
    Afghanistan.

    More than 5,000 Egyptians gathered at the al-Azhar mosque, Egypt's
    largest, to vent their anger at the military strikes by the United
    States and Britain.

    "Down with the United States, down with Britain. Long live the
    Muslims," chanted the demonstrators, who included representatives of
    the Muslim Brotherhood and of the Nasserite movement who had arrived
    as guests of the mosque's imam, Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi.

    During his sermon, Tantawi restated his position that "no state has
    the right to punish an entire nation including children, old people
    and innocent women simply through the misdeeds of one criminal."

    He also supported "the right of the Palestinians to defend their land
    and their faith" against Israeli occupation.

    "These are mujahedeen and it is our duty to stand at their side," he
    added.

    The demonstration took place peacefully amid a large police presence,
    with several plainclothes security agents deployed among the faithful
    and anti-riot trucks stationed near the mosque.

    At Saudi mosques, prayers were offered for fellow Muslims in
    Afghanistan and railed against "enemies of Islam" but made no
    explicit mention of the ongoing strikes, which began Sunday after
    Kabul's Taliban regime refused to hand over prime terror suspect
    Osama bin Laden to the United States.

    Sheikh Saud al-Sharim, imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's
    holiest shrine, simply warned Muslims to "steer clear of strife."

    The imam of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina prayed for "Muslims in
    Afghanistan to be spared" and for "the Muslims' enemies to be
    destroyed," again without referring to the US-British blitz.

    Some prayer leaders in the capital's mosques were slightly more
    explicit, urging Muslims to "support their brethren in Afghanistan."

    "It is every Muslim's duty to support his brothers in Afghanistan to
    show them that we are brothers in adversity," said the imam of a
    Riyadh mosque, beseeching God to "bring down the infidels."

    "The blood of Afghan Muslims is being shed," he said.

    In the Iranian capital, Tehran, Culture Minister Ahmad Masjed-Jameyi
    and Trade Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari joined several thousand
    people who marched from Tehran University to the central Palestine
    Square.

    Many held up placards, including ones reading "(US President George
    W.) Bush is the father of terrorism" and "(Israeli Prime Minister
    Ariel) Sharon is the disobedient son of terrorism."

    Others carried ones announcing their willingness to enter a jihad, or
    holy war, against the United States.

    In Zahedan, capital of Iran's southeastern Sistan Baluchistan
    province, a rally by about 3,000 people, including a large number of
    Afghan refugees, turned violent after they attacked the Pakistani
    consulate, police told AFP.

    "Pakistan's consulate was attacked by demonstrators who threw
    stones," a police official said, adding that there were no injuries
    but that the consulate's windows were broken.

    In Jordan, an ally of the United States, the prayer leader at one of
    Amman's main mosques, the King Abdullah Mosque, Sheikh Walid
    Shabsogh, said in his sermon: "We send a sincere message to the
    entire world that it is totally wrong to link Islam with terrorism."

    Meanwhile, at the Al Wahdat Mosque in Al Wahdat Palestinian refugee
    camp, also in Amman, prayer leader Sheikh Samer Mahmood asked
    that "God give victory to our brothers in Palestine and Afghanistan".

    In the West Bank city of Nablus, some 2,000 people gathered and
    carried banners and Palestinian flags, including ones calling the
    United States "the head of terrorism in the world."

    There were similar protests through the streets of Ramallah and
    Tulkarem.

    Palestinian police were given strict orders to take a hands-off
    approach to any demonstrations after last Monday's violent clashes
    with protestors, in which two people were killed.

    And in Lebanon, some 3,000 people led by Sunni Muslim religious
    clerics staged a protest in the northern port city of Tripoli, where
    a number of Sunni fundamentalist groups are based. Many also carried
    portraits of bin Laden.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Iranians Take To Streets In Nationwide Anti-US Protest

    10-12-1

    TEHRAN (AFP) - Tens and thousands of people, including government
    ministers, marched through the streets of Iranian cities on Friday in
    protest at the US-led military strikes against Afghanistan, with
    violence erupting in the southeast of the country.

    In the capital Tehran, Culture Minister Ahmad Masjed-Jameyi and Trade
    Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari joined several thousand people who
    marched from Tehran University to the central Palestine square.

    Many held up placards, including ones reading "(US President George
    W.) Bush is the father of terrorism," and "(Israeli Prime Minister
    Ariel) Sharon is the inobedient son of terrorism." Others carried
    ones announcing their willingness to enter a jihad, or holy war,
    against the United States.

    "If (supreme leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei gives a jihad decree, the
    world's military will not be able to respond," read one sign. Others
    read: "Muslims, Unite, Unite!"

    Other protestors also burned US and Israeli flags, while loudspeakers
    demanded "death" for the two countries.

    A number of Afghan refugees present at the demonstration attacked an
    effigy of Bush, beating and tearing it apart, before setting it
    ablaze and trampling on it and screaming: "We condemn terrorism!"

    Demonstrations were also reported in all major Iranian cities,
    including a violent one in southeastern Zahedan, near the border with
    Pakistan, as well as in northeastern Mashhad near the border with
    Afghanistan.

    Protestors also took to the streets in Isfahan, Tabriz, Shiraz,
    Bushehr, Hamedan, and the southern port city of Bandar Abbas.

    In Zahedan, capital of southeastern Sistan Baluchistan province, a
    rally by about 3,000 people, including a large number of Afghan
    refugees, turned violent after they attacked the Pakistani consulate,
    police told AFP.

    "Pakistan's consulate was attacked by demonstrators who threw
    stones," a police official said, adding that there were no injuries
    but that the consulate's windows were broken.

    The protestors also criticized Pakistan, which formerly supported
    Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime but now backs the US-led
    operations as part of the global "war on terrorism".

    They demanded Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf "step down" and
    chanted "Musharraf, Bisharaf" (dishonourable), in a play on word on
    his name.

    "We are angry because America is bombarding Afghanistan. What
    evidence do they have? Pakistan has done great treachery," a man who
    gave his name as Mohamed from Mazar-e-Sharif said at a rally in
    northern Afghanistan.

    Washington claims to have evidence implicating Osama bin Laden, who
    is being sheltered by Afghanistan, as the mastermind of the September
    11 attacks on New York and Washington.

    The protests come after the nation's Islamic Propaganda Organisation,
    the regime's main propaganda body generally charged with organising
    all kinds of demonstrations and rallies, on Wednesday called for a
    massive turnout against the US-led strikes.

    In a statement distributed at the demonstrations, the protestors
    warned that the "White House is fanning the flames of a crisis, the
    end of which completely unclear."

    "The US, which supports (Israeli) state terrorism, is not suitable to
    lead such a global campaign against terrorism and has no logical
    right to lead the world into crisis with its power-thriving
    policies," demonstrators said in their statement.

    Iran, although hostile to the United States, condemned the September
    11 attacks but has refused to join or assist the US-led military
    actions against Afghanistan that began on Sunday.

    Instead, Tehran has demanded that the international campaign against
    terror declared by Washington be led by the United Nations.

    On Tuesday, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami called for
    an "immediate end" to the strikes, while supreme leader Ayatollah Ali
    Khamenei accused Washington a day earlier of "lying" about its true
    intentions.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Indian Protesters Burn US And British Flags

    By Achmad Sukarsono
    10-12-1

    NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Thousands of Indian Muslims spilled on to the
    streets of major cities on Friday in protests against the U.S.-led
    air strikes on Afghanistan, forcing police to use teargas and water
    cannons to disperse the violent mobs.

    Spilling out of mosques after Friday prayers, the protesters shouted
    anti-U.S. slogans and burned effigies of President Bush, calling the
    bombings on Afghanistan an ``act of terrorism'' and the U.S. ``the
    biggest terrorist.''

    "Death to America. Death to Israel. Taliban, Taliban, we salute you,"
    some 10,000 Muslims chanted at New Delhi's Mughal-era redstone Jama
    Masjid, the country's biggest mosque.

    Violence was also reported in the southern city of Hyderabad and
    Srinagar, summer capital of the revolt-racked northern state of
    Kashmir. In both cities, Muslims pelted stones at police.

    India has thrown its weight behind the U.S.-led strikes on
    Afghanistan in an attempt to flush out Saudi-born militant Osama bin
    Laden, but a section of the country's large Muslim community -- who
    make up about 12 percent of its billion-plus population -- has
    expressed its resentment at India joining the United States' war on
    terrorism.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Thousands in Berlin peace march against Afghan bombing, unrest in Nigeria

    http://www.brecorder.com/story/000000/200110/20011014/200110140120.shtml

    Sunday, October 14, 2001

    .......BERLIN : Thousands joined a peace rally in Berlin on Saturday,
    Germany's biggest protest so far against the bombing of Afghanistan. There
    were modest anti-war rallies in other parts of the non-Islamic world. In
    largely Muslim northern Nigeria, violent unrest erupted for a second day
    running and police issued a shoot-on-sight order after eight people were
    killed by rioters following anti-American protests on Friday.
    .......Berlin protest organisers said some 30,000 people turned out, while
    police put the figure at about 14,000. Protesters came from some 140
    different groups, ranging from far-left Marxist parties to the far-right
    neo-Nazi NPD party.
    .......Hundreds carried anti-war banners, thousands wore peace buttons and
    many chanted slogans criticising the United States and President George W.
    Bush.
    ......."The horror of World War Two makes all of us in Germany leery of
    war," said Hannes Wand, a 54-year-old physician at the rally held under blue
    skies and unusually warm autumn weather. "I'm against this war because it's
    not justified and innocent people are being killed and forced to flee their
    homes."
    .......The demonstrators marched through the government quarter in central
    Berlin and past the Brandenburg Gate, foreign ministry and city hall. There
    were occasional minor scuffles between police and protesters.
    .......Banners read: "War is genocide", "War is not the solution" and "Stop
    Bush's war". Singers performed anti-war folk songs from the 1960s from the
    backs of flat-bed trucks.
    .......German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder criticised the peace rally,
    saying the demonstrators were being misled.
    ......."Turn your focus on those who started this conflict," Schroeder said
    in an interview with Der Tagesspiegel newspaper due to appear on Sunday.
    .......An increasing majority of Germans back possible German involvement in
    US military operations after the September 11 attacks, according to a survey
    published on Friday.
    .......All political parties except the reformed communist Party of
    Democratic Socialism have supported US military strikes and the possibility
    of German involvement.
    .......But pacifism has been strong in Germany in the 55 years since World
    War Two. Some 3,000 marched in front of the American embassy in Berlin on
    Sunday after the first strikes on Afghanistan.
    .......In Berlin, Dorothea Hampel, 42, was carrying a banner that read: "No
    Vietnam in Afghanistan."
    ......."This is a stupid war and it doesn't make any sense to attack
    Afghanistan," said Hampel, a university professor.
    .......Police said about 4,000 also protested in the southwestern town of
    Stuttgart.
    .......In London, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament said it expected more
    than 10,000 people to turn out for a march against the bombing of
    Afghanistan, but police estimated the number at around 3,000 before the
    march left Hyde Park and headed for Trafalgar Square under a sea of
    colourful banners.
    .......About 2,000 Australians, including Muslims and Christians, marched
    from Sydney Town Hall to a tower housing the US consulate to protest against
    the war. Other peaceful peace rallies were held in Melbourne, Perth and
    Adelaide.
    .......The Nigerian army moved into Kano's Sabon Gari market area early on
    Saturday after Christian churches and mosques were set on fire in rioting on
    Friday.
    .......Community leaders said rioters killed at least six female school
    students on their way to take university entrance exams on Friday.
    .......At least 12 people were injured in a clash between Hindus and Muslims
    after Hindus tried to burn portraits of Osama bin Laden, authorities in the
    eastern Indian state of Bihar said.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Yes, there is an effective alternative to the bombing of Afghanistan

    <http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=99442>

    'A lesson could have been learnt from Israel's patient stalking, capture
    and trial of Adolf Eichmann'

    15 October 2001
    by Tariq Ali

    Over the past decade or so, every war fought by the West (in the Gulf, the
    Balkans and now South Asia) has been accompanied by a well-orchestrated
    propaganda campaign. Politics is conducted and presented in the style of
    intelligence agencies: disinformation, exaggeration of enemy strength and
    capability, explanation of a television image with a brazen lie and
    censorship. The aim is to delude and disarm the citizenry. Everything is
    either over-simplified or reduced to a wearisome incomprehensibility. The
    message is simple. There is no alternative.
    As the bombing of Afghanistan continues for the second week, the Pentagon
    has admitted that some bombs went astray. Two hundred Afghan civilians have
    been killed so far and more will die if the bombs continue to fall. During
    the lull before the war, the US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, mused
    in public as to whether Afghanistan had any "assets worth bombing". He knew
    the answer. The fact is that the Anglo-American bombing campaign is in
    clear breach of Articles 48 and 51 of the Geneva Convention as well as the
    Nuremberg Charter. Article 48 insists that: "In order to ensure respect for
    and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties
    to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian
    population and combatants and between civilian objects and military
    objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against
    military objectives."
    Article 51 is equally clear in prohibiting indiscriminate attacks and
    specifies these as attacks "which may be expected to cause incidental loss
    of a civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects or a
    combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete
    and direct military advantage anticipated".
    Was there ever an alternative to the bombing? If the real intention was not
    a crude war of revenge, but to seriously weaken and eliminate terrorism and
    bring to trial those who ordered the crimes committed on 11 September, then
    the answer is yes. The disproportionality of what is taking place speaks
    for itself. If the US judiciary was convinced by the evidence of Mr bin
    Laden's guilt then a warrant should have been issued for his extradition
    and a plan prepared to bring him to trial.
    A lesson could have been learnt from Israel's patient stalking, capture and
    trial of Adolf Eichmann who was accused of a far more serious crime. In
    going to war, Bush and Blair resorted to a mixture of cowboy discourse and
    Old Testament imagery to pre-empt any judicial inquiry or action. The model
    so far has been that of the old lynch-mob, egged on by a populace fed on a
    regular diet of scare stories. Anthrax today and, no doubt, nuclear
    briefcases tomorrow.
    If the real aim is simply an old-fashioned imperialist one, i.e. to topple
    the Taliban regime and replace it with a protectorate considered closer to
    "Western values" (as the Taliban once was), then and only then does the
    bombing make sense as the Northern Alliance, waiting to commence the battle
    for Kabul, realise full well. Its leaders boast they can do it alone, but
    US marines and British commandos are standing by to help them just in case
    the Taliban defeat them as they did once before.
    Meanwhile, there is no news of the pretext for this war. Where is Osama bin
    Laden? Is his capture part two of this operation? And if he is caught will
    he be killed or brought to trial? And, if so, will this entire exercise
    have helped to diminish the attraction for, let alone help to defeat
    terrorism? I think the result will be the exact opposite and especially in
    the Arab and Muslim world.
    Neither George Bush nor Tony Blair appear to appreciate that, like it or
    not, Mr bin Laden has become a hero in many parts of the Third World.
    Young, middle-class graduates in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Maghreb will
    make sure that his martyrdom will not be in vain. Only last week, President
    Bush told journalists: "How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic
    countries there is vitriolic hatred for America? I'll tell you how I
    respond. I'm amazed. I just can't believe it because I know how good we are."
    Mr Blair, his military confederate, had another solution: "One thing
    becoming increasingly clear to me is the need to upgrade our media and
    public opinion operations in the Arab and Muslim world." The simplicity on
    display is frightening. Surely the mandarins in the State Department and
    Foreign Office are aware of the realities. They must know that the
    medium-term solution is political and economic, not military.
    Unless the Palestinians are guaranteed a viable, sovereign state, there
    will be no peace. Mr Arafat may be content with the shrivelled little
    Bantustans at Israeli pleasure, but the Palestinian population is not. The
    latest intifada is also a revolt against the Oslo Accords and the
    corruption of the Palestinian leadership.
    Then there is Iraq. Not a single one of the standard arguments for the
    continuing bombardment and blockade of Iraq stands up. The notion that
    Saddam's cruelties are unique is an abject fiction. The Turkish Generals,
    valued members of NATO, have killed 30,000 Kurds over the past decade and
    denied them the use of their own language. Responsible modernity? Saddam
    never attempted a cultural annihilation of this order. The Saudi Kingdom
    makes not even a pretence of human rights, its treatment of women would not
    pass muster in medieval Russia. As for nuclear weapons, the hawkish Unscom
    inspector, Scott Ritter, insists they cannot be countenanced. Israel,
    however, possesses nuclear weapons without any sanctions whatsoever.
    Double standards of this sort and on this scale drive young people to
    despair. Here is an immediate solution. The lifting of sanctions and a
    permanent halt to the bombing of Iraq would have a positive impact
    throughout the world of Islam, reducing the number of young men prepared to
    sacrifice their own lives for what they regard as a holy cause. It would be
    a small step forward if, as US and British jets are dispatched for yet
    another bombing raid on a the shattered and famished remnant of
    Afghanistan, a few of our political leaders spoke up in the name of reason.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    'Stop bombing Afghanistan!' London protesters say

    http://www.brecorder.com/story/000000/200110/20011014/200110140126.shtml

    Sunday, October 14, 2001

    .......LONDON : Thousands of people, including members of Muslim and
    Christian groups, staged a march through central London on Saturday to
    protest against the bombing of Afghanistan. "We're here because there are
    thousands of people across Britain who know that the bombing of Afghanistan
    is not going to put an end to terrorism," Carol Naughton, chairman of the
    protest organisers, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), told
    Reuters.
    ......."It's not going to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. People who
    commit terrorist acts must be brought to justice through international law,"
    she said.
    .......US-led air strikes on Afghanistan began last Sunday after the ruling
    Taleban refused to hand over Saudi-born fugitive bin Laden, the prime
    suspect behind the suicide hijack attacks on the World Trade Centre and
    Pentagon last month.
    ......."We need to stop the bombing and go right back to diplomatic ways to
    end this crisis," she said.
    .......CND said it expected more than 10,000 people to turn out for the
    protest, but police estimated the number at around 3,000 before the march
    began in London's Hyde Park.
    .......The march headed for Trafalgar Square in London's West End under a
    sea of colourful banners accompanied by chanting against the military
    strikes and calls for a halt to the bombing.
    .......One tearful Muslim woman said: "They will answer for it on the day of
    resurrection. Shame on all of those who are dropping bombs.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    What Can We Do about Terrorism? - Part II of III

    Do We Choose Death or Peace?

         by Harry Browne

    "All that's necessary for the triumph of evil
    is for good men to do the wrong thing."
              -- Lawrence Block, "The Evil Men Do"

    Americans have been sold a fantasy by their government and by the "experts"
    on television.

    The fantasy is that our government will flex its muscles overseas, make
    demands, kill a lot of people, demonstrate that we don't tolerate terrorism,
    "bring the terrorists to justice," and end terrorism forever.

    But for decades, our government has been flexing its muscles overseas,
    making demands, killing people, and teaching terrorists a lesson. And what
    did it achieve?

    It brought about the deaths of 6,000 Americans on September 11.

    Those policies by our government have brought us to where there now are only
    two choices for the future. And you may not like either one of them.

         The Choice for War

    Choice #1 is to bomb Afghanistan "back to the stone age," and maybe Iraq,
    and maybe any other country our government accuses of harboring terrorists.
    (Except the U.S., of course, where many of the terrorists lived safely for
    several years.)

    This choice won't eliminate all the terrorists. It probably won't eliminate
    _any_ of them. But it will make the politicians feel good. And it will
    satisfy the understandable lust for vengeance that so many Americans feel
    right now.

    But not only will foreigners die by the thousands, it will feed the desire
    for vengeance on the part of the terrorists -- and inspire other people to
    help them. The result? . . .

    * We will be attacked on planes, in subways, buildings, schools, sports
    arenas -- in any place innocent Americans can be cornered like lab rats.

    * Our economy will sink further and further downward as people become more
    and more afraid to lead normal lives.

    * We will see Americans die from bombs, from biological warfare, from
    assassinations, and from causes we can't even imagine now.

    Our government will react by escalating the violence still further. And that
    will cause the terrorists to escalate _their_ violence. And with every
    escalation, more of our friends and relatives will die -- and more people
    around the world will come to hate America.

    Choice #1 doesn't lead to anything very pretty. It will be disastrous for
    America. But that's where our politicians are taking us right now.

         The Choice for Peace

    Choice #2 is for our President to be a man and acknowledge to the world that
    our government has made some horrible mistakes in the past -- but that our
    policy is changing.

    He must tell the world that our government will no longer impose its will on
    places like Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Panama, Guatemala,
    Nicaragua, and Colombia. He must say that we're returning to the peaceful
    foreign policy that America followed for its first century -- until
    President McKinley took the country into the Spanish-American War and down
    the road to empire.

    Americans are loved all over the world for what they've done -- producing
    low-cost food and medicines, great entertainment, and the kind of voluntary
    charity that only free and prosperous people can bestow.

    At the same time, foreigners hate our government because it uses "foreign
    aid" and military muscle to impose its way upon the rest of the world.

    Our politicians say that most of the world supports the American military
    campaign. But what they mean is that our government is bribing foreign
    _governments_ to support the military campaign. Meanwhile, a recent Gallup
    poll (www.gallup-international.com/terrorismpoll_figures.htm) revealed that
    individual human beings in 35 major countries _oppose_ American military
    retaliation by better than 3 to 1.

    If American leaders would call a halt to the violence, condemn the terrorist
    attack, and condemn the killing of innocent foreigners by previous U.S.
    administrations, there's a very good chance the cycle of death and
    destruction could end immediately.

         We're at a Crossroads

    Can I guarantee that Choice #2 will lead to peace? Of course not, but it is
    very likely to do so. And what terrorism remains will be relatively minor
    compared to the awful future we face now.

    And I _can_ assure you that Choice #1 will lead to the death of many more
    Americans -- most likely, tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of
    Americans, in ugly and tragic ways.

    The terrorists who weren't killed in the September 11 attacks probably will
    never be caught -- whether we pick Choice #1 or Choice #2. So let's focus on
    assuring that such a thing never happens again.

    But first we must recognize that the fantasy our government is peddling
    now -- of bringing peace by killing foreigners -- is totally impossible.

    We have only two choices -- death or peace. It's unfortunate that it will
    take far more courage to choose peace.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    A war in the American tradition

    The New Statesman
    October 15, 2001
    by John Pilger

    War on Terror: The Big Picture - The ultimate goal of
    the attacks on Afghanistan is not the capture of a
    fanatic, but the acceleration of western power, argues
    John Pilger

    The Anglo-American attack on Afghanistan crosses new
    boundaries. It means that America's economic wars are
    now backed by the perpetual threat of military attack
    on any country, without legal pretence. It is also the
    first to endanger populations at home. The ultimate
    goal is not the capture of a fanatic, which would be
    no more than a media circus, but the acceleration of
    western imperial power. That is a truth the modern
    imperialists and their fellow travellers will not
    spell out, and which the public in the west, now
    exposed to a full-scale jihad, has the right to know.

    In his zeal, Tony Blair has come closer to an
    announcement of real intentions than any British
    leader since Anthony Eden. Not simply the handmaiden
    of Washington, Blair, in the Victorian verbosity of
    his extraordinary speech to the Labour Party
    conference, puts us on notice that imperialism's
    return journey to respectability is well under way.
    Hark, the Christian gentleman-bomber's vision of a
    better world for "the starving, the wretched, the
    dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and
    squalor from the deserts of northern Africa to the
    slums of Gaza to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan".
    Hark, his unctuous concern for the "human rights of
    the suffering women of Afghanistan" as he colludes in
    bombing them and preventing food reaching their
    starving children.

    Is all this a dark joke? Far from it; as Frank Furedi
    reminds us in the New Ideology of Imperialism, it is
    not long ago "that the moral claims of imperialism
    were seldom questioned in the west. Imperialism and
    the global expansion of the western powers were
    represented in unambiguously positive terms as a major
    contributor to human civilisation". The quest went
    wrong when it was clear that fascism, with all its
    ideas of racial and cultural superiority, was
    imperialism, too, and the word vanished from academic
    discourse. In the best Stalinist tradition,
    imperialism no longer existed.

    Since the end of the cold war, a new opportunity has
    arisen. The economic and political crises in the
    developing world, largely the result of imperialism,
    such as the blood-letting in the Middle East and the
    destruction of commodity markets in Africa, now serve
    as retrospective justification for imperialism.
    Although the word remains unspeakable, the western
    intelligentsia, conservatives and liberals alike,
    today boldly echo Bush and Blair's preferred
    euphemism, "civilisation". Italy's prime minister,
    Silvio Berlusconi, and the former liberal editor
    Harold Evans share a word whose true meaning relies on
    a comparison with those who are uncivilised, inferior
    and might challenge the "values"of the west,
    specifically its God-given right to control and
    plunder the uncivilised.

    If there was any doubt that the World Trade Center
    attacks were the direct result of the ravages of
    imperialism, Osama Bin Laden, a mutant of imperialism,
    dispelled it in his videotaped diatribe about
    Palestine, Iraq and the end of America's inviolacy.
    Alas, he said nothing about hating modernity and
    miniskirts, the explanation of those intoxicated and
    neutered by the supercult of Americanism. An
    accounting of the sheer scale and continuity and
    consequences of American imperial violence is our
    elite's most enduring taboo. Contrary to myth, even
    the homicidal invasion of Vietnam was regarded by its
    tactical critics as a "noble cause" into which the
    United States "stumbled" and became "bogged down".
    Hollywood has long purged the truth of that atrocity,
    just as it has shaped, for many of us, the way we
    perceive contemporary history and the rest of
    humanity. And now that much of the news itself is
    Hollywood-inspired, amplified by amazing technology
    and with its internalised mission to minimise western
    culpability, it is hardly surprising that many today
    do not see the trail of blood.

    How very appropriate that the bombing of Afghanistan
    is being conducted, in part, by the same B52 bombers
    that destroyed much of Indochina 30 years ago. In
    Cambodia alone, 600,000 people died beneath American
    bombs, providing the catalyst for the rise of Pol Pot,
    as CIA files make clear. Once again, newsreaders refer
    to Diego Garcia without explanation. It is where the
    B52s refuel. Thirty-five years ago, in high secrecy
    and in defiance of the United Nations, the British
    government of Harold Wilson expelled the entire
    population of the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian
    Ocean in order to hand it to the Americans in
    perpetuity as a nuclear arms dump and a base from
    which its long-range bombers could police the Middle
    East. Until the islanders finally won a high court
    action last year, almost nothing about their imperial
    dispossession appeared in the British media.

    How appropriate that John Negroponte is Bush's
    ambassador at the United Nations. This week, he
    delivered America's threat to the world that it may
    "require" to attack more and more countries. As US
    ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s, Negroponte
    oversaw American funding of the regime's death squads,
    known as Battalion 316, that wiped out the democratic
    opposition, while the CIA ran its "contra" war of
    terror against neighbouring Nicaragua. Murdering
    teachers and slitting the throats of midwives were a
    speciality. This was typical of the terrorism that
    Latin America has long suffered, with its principal
    torturers and tyrants trained and financed by the
    great warrior against "global terrorism", which
    probably harbours more terrorists and assassins in
    Florida than any country on earth.

    The unread news today is that the "war against
    terrorism" is being exploited in order to achieve
    objectives that consolidate American power. These
    include: the bribing and subjugation of corrupt and
    vulnerable governments in former Soviet central Asia,
    crucial for American expansion in the region and
    exploitation of the last untapped reserves of oil and
    gas in the world; Nato's occupation of Macedonia,
    marking a final stage in its colonial odyssey in the
    Balkans; the expansion of the American arms industry;
    and the speeding up of trade liberalisation.

    What did Blair mean when, in Brighton, he offered the
    poor "access to our markets so that we practise the
    free trade that we are so fond of preaching"? He was
    feigning empathy for most of humanity's sense of
    grievance and anger: of "feeling left out". So, as the
    bombs fall, "more inclusion", as the World Trade
    Organisation puts it, is being offered the poor - that
    is, more privatisation, more structural adjustment,
    more theft of resources and markets, more destruction
    of tariffs. On Monday, the Secretary of State for
    Trade and Industry, Patricia Hewitt, called a meeting
    of the voluntary aid agencies to tell them that,
    "since 11 September, the case is now overwhelming" for
    the poor to be given "more trade liberation". She
    might have used the example of those impoverished
    countries where her cabinet colleague Clare Short's
    ironically named Department for International
    Development backs rapacious privatisation campaigns on
    behalf of British multinational companies, such as
    those vying to make a killing in a resource as
    precious as water.

    Bush and Blair claim to have "world opinion with us".
    No, they have elites with them, each with their own
    agenda: such as Vladimir Putin's crushing of Chechnya,
    now permissible, and China's rounding up of its
    dissidents, now permissible. Moreover, with every bomb
    that falls on Afghanistan and perhaps Iraq to come,
    Islamic and Arab militancy will grow and draw the
    battle lines of "a clash of civilisations" that
    fanatics on both sides have long wanted. In societies
    represented to us only in caricature, the west's
    double standards are now understood so clearly that
    they overwhelm, tragically, the solidarity that
    ordinary people everywhere felt with the victims of 11
    September.

    That, and his contribution to the re-emergence of
    xeno-racism in Britain, is the messianic Blair's
    singular achievement. His effete, bellicose
    certainties represent a political and media elite that
    has never known war. The public, in contrast, has
    given him no mandate to kill innocent people, such as
    those Afghans who risked their lives to clear
    landmines, killed in their beds by American bombs.
    These acts of murder place Bush and Blair on the same
    level as those who arranged and incited the twin
    towers murders. Perhaps never has a prime minister
    been so out of step with the public mood, which is
    uneasy, worried and measured about what should be
    done. Gallup finds that 82 per cent say "military
    action should only be taken after the identity of the
    perpetrators was clearly established, even if this
    process took several months to accomplish".

    Among those elite members paid and trusted to speak
    out, there is a lot of silence. Where are those in
    parliament who once made their names speaking out, and
    now shame themselves by saying nothing? Where are the
    voices of protest from "civil society", especially
    those who run the increasingly corporatised aid
    agencies and take the government's handouts and often
    its line, then declare their "non-political" status
    when their outspokenness on behalf of the impoverished
    and bombed might save lives? The tireless Chris
    Buckley of Christian Aid, and a few others, are
    honourably excepted. Where are those proponents of
    academic freedom and political independence, surely
    one of the jewels of western "civilisation"? Years of
    promoting the jargon of "liberal realism" and
    misrepresenting imperialism as crisis management,
    rather than the cause of the crisis, have taken their
    toll. Speaking up for international law and the proper
    pursuit of justice, even diplomacy, and against our
    terrorism might not be good for one's career. Or as
    Voltaire put it: "It is dangerous to be right when the
    government is wrong." That does not change the fact
    that it is right.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    'It was if the rocks themselves were on fire'

    http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=99398

    Eye witness
    Richard Lloyd Parry hears first-hand survivors' tales of the bombing

    14 October 2001

    The young man named Mujawar was bleeding from the head when they pulled him
    out of the rubble in Kabul, and because of the way he stared and muttered to
    himself, they thought that his brain had been damaged.

    Even now, he repeats the same phrases over and over about "the big bang"
    and "the big light". "My head was hurt," he says, or "My friends are gone".
    The doctors found nothing physically wrong. "He doesn't hear what you say,
    he's doesn't really know where he is, he's scared of camera flashes," says
    Dr Abdur Rahim at the Pakistani hospital where Mujawar was brought. "It's a
    case of traumatic shock, and no wonder."

    Until six days ago, Mujawar was a security guard at the offices of the UN
    de-mining operation in Kabul. On Monday night, in the first in a series of
    embarrassments for the war against terrorism, a bomb exploded close by. Four
    other security guards were killed; Mujawar survived and was driven across
    the border to Dr Rahim's hospital in Peshawar.

    All week, since the bombing began last Sunday night, some 1,000 people every
    day have made the same journey. A few have had escapes as remarkable as
    Mujawar's, and many have seen at first hand the devastating effects which
    the attacks have begun to have on civilians. In hospitals, refugee camps and
    in the homes of friends, they describe how it feels to find yourself
    directly below one of the most technologically sophisticated bomb-ing
    campaigns in history.

    The first few days of the bombardment, by general agreement, were a great
    success. Many Afghans are oppressed and exhausted by five years of Taliban
    rule, and all the refugees I spoke to supported the general aims of driving
    them from power and taking out the camps run by Osama bin Laden.

    In the city of Jalalabad, just 50 miles from the Pakistani border, local
    people watched in awe as military landmarks were pulverised, first by cruise
    missiles and then by bombs. The airport was one of the first targets. Ghulam
    Gul was in his family home in the hills above the city. The first that they
    knew of the attacks was when Radio Shariat, the Taliban-controlled
    broadcaster, suddenly and without explanation, fell silent. "We realised
    what was happening when we went outside," he said. "We stood on the roof and
    there we could see the airport, all on fire." The three cruise missiles
    destroyed the airport's radar dishes and gutted the control tower.

    Abdul Mannan, a 23-year old medical student was told by a Taliban radar
    operator that the incoming cruise missile had been detected on the doomed
    radar, allowing most of the military personnel to get out before it struck.
    Having knocked out the Taliban's early warning system, the raids began again
    with bomber aircraft, which wrecked the runway and struck a place in the
    hills overlooking Jalalabad called Torrabora, known by all local people as a
    training camp of the people known in Afghanistan as "the Arabs" the
    followers of Osama bin Laden.

    Torrabora was bombed on on successive nights. "You could see the fire from
    far away," said a 19-year old shopkeeper, Atikullah. "It was as if the rocks
    were burning." Early the next day Ghulam Gul was in the hospital when he saw
    three "Arabs" being carried in on stretchers with shrapnel wounds in their
    stomachs.

    The camp of the Taliban army's 81st Division was also struck on Tuesday, but
    it had long been abandoned. "From just after 11 September, the Taliban were
    moving their heavy equipment up into the hills," said Abdul Mannan. "They
    were even lifting tanks with helicopters. I think that very few of the
    Taliban were killed."

    It was on Wednesday night that the impressive accuracy of the American
    targeters began to fail them. An Afghan truck driver named Fazalur Rehman
    was in Pakistan when the bombings began but travelled back, out of concern
    for his wife and children. To his relief he learned that they had evacuated
    to safer parts of the country. He spent Wednesday night in the home of
    friends on the outskirts of Jalalabad.

    "I fell asleep around 10.00," says Mr Rehman. "We heard a big explosion
    nearby, so we all got up. Then we heard the second plane and suddenly there
    was this great noise and the ceiling fell in." He came to early the next
    morning in one of the city's hospitals, with a broken left arm and a damaged
    right hand, surrounded by people with similar injuries. "They told me that
    150 people were killed in my area and 180 injured."

    Something went terribly wrong at the end of the week. In conversations with
    refugees, a string of names come up again and again: Darunta, Karam,
    Torghar, Farmada insignificant villages where, according to consistent
    accounts by eyewitnesses, as well as those of the Taliban propaganda
    machine, hundreds of civilians were killed.

    The refugees say that Osama bin Laden's cohorts did at one time have camps
    in the devastated villages but that they moved out long ago. Are the
    Americans relying on out-of-date intelligence? Or do they know something
    that local people don't? Either way, it is bringing about a dramatic change
    of heart among the people who now live in terror of their supposed
    liberators.

    "I saw an old woman on the border," said Mr Mannan. "She was crying, 'Allah
    destroy the Americans! Why do they attack ordinary people so cruelly?"

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Building an antiwar movement

    by Laurence Cox

    It's easy to feel despair, isolation and frustration at what's
    presented to us as an inevitable drive into an indefinitely long
    war. The key ingredients of success in building a successful
    anti-war movement are confidence in ordinary people's
    potential, solidarity with each other and a long-term view: we
    have not been able to prevent the first bombs falling, but over
    time we can reverse the dynamic and stop the war.

    Historical experience - desertion and mutinies at the end of World War
    I, the international movement against the war in Vietnam, the
    anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s - shows that movements can stop
    or divert even large-scale processes of militarisation, but only when
    large numbers of ordinary people are actively involved. The
    experience of active involvement in turn gives people more confidence
    in their own capacities to think and act for themselves, which is an
    important element in building a better world. This means:

        1. Making space for a diversity of voices within the movement.
        To insist on expressing only the most radical line will isolate
        activists at the very time when many ordinary people are
        looking for a way out. To insist on being as "mainstream" as
        possible will stop the movement developing and restrict
        participation to a small section of the population. So a good
        "platform" will include as wide a range of anti-war voices as
        possible. This enables the movement to speak to different
        people and is part of learning from each other.

        2. Making sure that the movement emphasises activities which
        everyone can take part in. It's important to remember that most
        actions don't have an immediate chance of stopping the war;
        but if they give people a chance to learn how to become
        active, to gain confidence and to develop their own
        understanding, they can help build a movement that does
        have a chance.

        3. Taking care that the movement isn't run by a handful of
        experienced people to the exclusion of everyone else. While
        activists may have particular skills, their job is to share them
        and pass them on. Stopping this war is likely to be a long
        campaign, so we will need to develop everyone's ability to take
        part at every level.

    In terms of strategy, it's important for people to mobilise within their
    own everyday contexts, both to root the movement in the real world
    and to change the existing social relationships that ultimately give rise
    to war. While the movement will also need to reach out into public
    space and develop a "political" face, this shouldn't become separate
    from the rest of the movement. The point is for ordinary people to
    politicise themselves, not to develop a separate political lite. In
    practice, what we need to do is:

        1. Start by talking to other people at work, in the shops, at
        home, on the bus, in school, online - anywhere where people
        already know us. This may seem challenging at times, but it's
        becoming clear that far more people are uneasy about the
        prospect of war than the media leads us to think. By opening
        up this new space for communication, we undermine some of
        the usual power relationships and creating space for new
        kinds of solidarity and friendship.

        2. Offer people immediate, practical things to do: signing
        something, going on a march, coming to a meeting, putting up
        posters, circulating a letter. We're trying to "push people's
        boundaries" enough so that they feel they are becoming
        active, but not so much that they see activism as beyond their
        reach.

        3. Encourage people to take the next step, and support them if
        they don't yet know how: ask them to speak at meetings or
        write leaflets, help them to put press releases or websites
        together, show them how to organise a public meeting or a
        march. Be careful of patronising people: the trick is to be
        confident that they can do whatever they set their mind to, and
        make sure they have the backup they need to do it. The
        second time somebody does something, we should leave
        them to it!

        4. Educate ourselves: this movement is likely to last a long
        time, and most of us are going to have to find out more about
        all kinds of issues, from foreign policy to Islam to international
        law. This also gives us a chance to build connections by
        inviting speakers from other groups, from local Muslim
        associations to college lecturers to development
        organisations.

        5. Make links: although (almost) anyone who opposes war
        should be welcomed, we should work and argue for making
        links to other issues, most importantly foreign policy,
        "development" and world economics, racism and intolerance,
        and civil liberties. To stop the war and leave the system ready
        for another war tomorrow is not enough.

        6. Try to spread the movement, rather than build little empires.
        Encourage people to take independent action (and support
        them when they do); work to create networks between
        different groups and initiatives, without imposing a single "line"
        that everyone has to follow.

    This war may run for years in various forms, and a movement that can
    stop it will need to include many different social groups. So there's
    space for all sorts of different action, and it's important to respect this,
    because it's how new people will both find their way to the movement
    and how other people can contribute something we might not have
    thought of. Different actions also have different purposes (though
    some overlap):

        Convincing ordinary people: meetings, posters, demos, street
        theatre, leaflets, videos, etc.
        Building the movement: newsletters, mailing lists, teach-ins,
        websites, gatherings, benefit gigs, etc.
        "Stopping the machine in its tracks": 5-minute strikes for peace,
        occupations, peace observers, supporting deserters, blockades,
        etc.
        Influencing governments or the media: petitions, vigils, press
        releases, photo opportunities, etc.

    We learn as movements, not just as individuals, and the dialogue
    between us is important. There is no book that can tell us
    authoritatively how we are going to stop this war; it's something we will
    work out together in practice. We can certainly learn from other
    movements and past history (several campaigns have produced
    excellent "how-to" guides that are a real goldmine of ideas), but at the
    end of the day none of us knows exactly what will work, and we won't
    know until we've managed to stop the war (if then!) In the process,
    though, we are also learning something else of immense value: how to
    treat each other as equals, how to cooperate and communicate
    without bosses and laws, and how to build the kind of world that we
    want to live in.
    -----------
    Laurence Cox (Dublin) has been involved in social movements for
    nearly 20 years, including opposing the Falklands War, the nuclear
    arms race and the second Gulf War. He's an academic specialist in
    social movements research, currently studying working-class
    community politics in Ireland.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Peace Movement Needs to Update Its Message

    <http://commondreams.org/views01/1012-01.htm>

    by Lance Dickie
    Published on Friday, October 12, 2001 in the Seattle Times

    As the United States hunkers down for a long war against terrorism, a
    vibrant, conscience-stirring peace
    movement is more important than ever.
    Informed dissent that protects civil liberties, challenges excessive
    government secrecy and questions a
    wider conflict is a robust expression of democratic business as usual after
    Sept. 11.
    People with the courage to speak out are valued citizens.
    As clear, however, is the peace movement's desperate need for new material.
    Like generals fighting the last war, peace activists who use old templates
    of protests after a murderous
    assault on 6,000 innocent civilians will quickly be judged irrelevant. And
    ignored.
    An exquisite example of nothing to say was a placard at a Seattle rally
    that read: "Stop violence everywhere."
    All that was missing were three more signs: "End Disease," "No More Hunger"
    and "Go M's." That nicely
    covers a spectrum of sentiments and they could carpool.
    If the peace movement wants to be heard, it has to offer a credible
    alternative in frightening, perplexing times.
    Normally articulate people in Seattle's peace movement are tongue-tied by
    events. The stammering and
    silence about what comes next is deafening.
    I find that most reassuring. These are smart, dedicated people whose deep
    intellectual beliefs have collided
    with the reality of evil that kills with ingenuity and resolve.
    The peace movement has to rethink and gain control of its message.
    Any rhetoric that hints of an excuse, rationalization or multi-layered,
    nuanced understanding for religious
    extremists to kill on a massive scale will exile well-intended people to
    the fringes.
    America suffered an atrocity at the hands of madmen not the slightest bit
    interested in giving peace a
    chance. Flying airliners into buildings is not a political science exercise
    to be parsed out and deconstructed.
    I know this is terribly rude and indecorous for Seattle, but tell the
    black-clad anarchist-types to stay home.
    Their masks are cowardly and offensive, especially mixed in with courageous
    people who express strong
    beliefs in emotional times.
    The slightest temptation to blame America for this attack, based on what
    happened in Vietnam, El Salvador, the Brazilian rain forest or on a factory
    floor in Indonesia means losing most of your audience.
    As a local peace organizer noted, it is not America's fault terrorists were
    willing to do insane acts. Keep that in mind.
    If papier-mache turtles and other political theater try to crowd out the
    memory of 6,000 dead, the peace
    community will be contemptuously dismissed.
    Stay focused, don't strain for a unifying theory that binds union
    organizing, free speech, religious freedom,
    reproductive choice and gay rights unless, of course, the point is Osama
    bin Laden and al Qaeda would
    incinerate them all.
    Facile recitations of past U.S. military involvement tend to omit Bosnia
    and Kosovo. If America, and
    European allies, are ripe for criticism in defense of those Muslim
    minorities, it is for averting their eyes for too long.
    U.S. bombing raids, and international ground troops, ended a decade of
    genocide against Muslims, not that
    anyone noticed.
    The measured response of the Bush administration in Afghanistan has
    flummoxed his critics. They are
    pleased and impressed the first aerial bombardment of a ragged nation was
    with food supplies. They even
    want a little credit for the president looking over his shoulder at public
    opinion.
    The core of the peace movement, those dedicated souls who pay attention
    when the rest of us do not, could be saying a form of "I told you so" right
    now.
    They've never stopped preaching against the spread of nuclear weapons. Dirt
    poor Pakistan, the only nation
    to recognize the Taliban, has the bomb.
    They're constantly warning against using the U.S. military as an arm of
    foreign policy and arming others
    without our democratic values. Here we go again, with the Northern
    Alliance, the drug-smuggling, corrupt
    predecessors of the Taliban. No, we don't seem to learn.
    At this moment, a persistent call to stay focused on military targets is a
    message to build upon. Everyone is fearful of more civilian casualties,
    here or abroad.
    I wish the peace movement made a sharper distinction between military
    policy and the immediate members of the armed forces, and their anxious
    families. Recognition of their contributions, fears and sacrifices is
    overdue by those whose hearts bleed for everyone else.
    If the peace movement is looking for a mission in confusing, divisive
    times, make it education. The thirst for
    information and context is acute.
    The trick for the peace movement is to operate as part of the larger
    community, instead of appearing to be
    on the outside looking in.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Ten Principles for Social Justice Organizing in A Time of Crisis

       by Bill Quigley, Loyola Law School, quigley@loyno.edu

       "You are all traitors and should be put in jail!"

       That is what a well-dressed woman in her 40s shouted, as she walked out
    of church, at those of us walking into Loyola's Peace Quad. Wow! Is it
    so threatening to hold a candlelight interfaith march for peace?
    Apparently it is. For columnists or writers that might make a good
    story. For those of us who are trying to work with people to change
    hearts and minds by organizing for social justice, this woman is an
    indicator that things have changed.

       I write to share ten ideas about social justice organizing in this time
    of crisis. I was asked to talk about this and I will. I do not suggest
    I have the blueprint for this task. As far as I can tell, nobody does.
    But I will share with you my reflections on this and I welcome your
    ideas.

       Before September 11, many of us were already working on social justice
    issues. For example, I was working with groups that organizing around
    issues of living wages, labor organizing in the hotel industry, voting
    rights in our state redistricting process, the destruction of public
    housing, welfare reform, civil liberties, immigration, national and
    international human rights, prison reform, peace issues, public
    education, and criminal justice. All of those issues are still
    challenging us.

       After September 11, I have been fortunate enough to work with many
    people who are organizing around a just response to the terrorism which
    has so wounded our country.

       In my experience, and the experience of hundreds of others that I have
    spoken with, our world is a different place since September 11. This is
    true for everyone but it is particularly true for the world of people
    working for peace and justice. Those of us who are working for justice
    and peace face many new issues, and some old ones, in the days ahead.

       Psychologically, the tragic events of September 11 reverberate in all
    our minds on both a conscious and an unconscious level. People are
    having a difficult time concentrating on their work. Teachers tell me
    that students have lost their focus. The people we work with in peace
    and justice organizing are as overwhelmed and as in shock as everyone
    >else in our country. Someone has described these events as always
    present background noise. People have less energy to go to meetings and
    to volunteer for social justice issues. Others have said these events
    are present like deep bass sounds that you can feel more than hear.
    But, however you describe them, these experiences are in the forefront
    of many of our issues and in the background of all of our issues.

       Economically, the damage which was already beginning before September
    11 has accelerated. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs,
    many others are having their work schedule reduced. As in all economic
    distress, the working poor are being hurt the most. For peace and
    justice organizations, fund-raising has been put on the back burner in
    order to allow people to address the immediate hardships caused by the
    terrorist attacks.

       Politically, justice and peace issues have been submerged as elected
    officials and the media spend less time on any issues other than those
    directly related to terrorism and war. Conservatives call us traitors
    and America-haters if we dare to go beyond condemnation of the
    injustices of the terrorists. People who condemn the terrorists but
    also suggest we examine the justice and peace issues in our own country
    and in our own international behavior, and people that say we should
    seriously consider responses other than military responses, are
    n-American, evil, unpatriotic, or even, as Rush Limbaugh said,
    communists! (I wonder what exactly does it take to be a communist
    today, when it seems even the communists are not communists? I will
    leave that to another discussion.)

       It is a different world, clearly. But, at the same time, many justice
    and peace issues remain the same.

    The most vulnerable direct victims of the September 11 terrorist
    attacks are single parent families, those without insurance and pension
    plans and union support. The first victims of the economic
    reverberations after September 11 have also been the working poor: the
    last hired, the least skilled, the least educated, the least organized.
    The first political victims in our country have been the Arab and
    Islamic Americans, who have been subjected to racial profiling, threats,
    assaults and even death.

       But there is good news as well. The American people have responded
    with tremendous generosity to the victims of the terrorists. Our
    firefighters and police and rescue workers have given all of us
    inspiration as they courageously and selflessly worked to help all our
    people in distress. It is a tribute to the progress of those who have
    labored so hard for civil rights that our president and most of our
    public officials have called for religious, racial and ethnic
    olerance. It is a tribute to those who have labored for peace, that
    the initial calls for horrific and indiscriminate retaliation of anyone
    even in the vicinity of terrorists have been declining.

       Because our world is both quite different and yet in some ways the
    same, what are we to do as social justice organizers?

       I suggest ten principles to guide us as we work in our new landscape.

       But first, a note of caution. Each of these principles must be
    implemented in ways that reflect our commitment to justice and peace.
    If we do not organize intelligently and in an anti-racist way, as my
    friend Ron Chisom likes to say, "we will not be organizing, but
    disorganizing." Simply said, there is no shortcut. We cannot organize
    for peace and justice if we do not model peace and justice in our
    organizing.

       Here are the ten principles.

    #1 Be Humble

       We must start by being humble. It is ok to say "I don't know the
    answer." In fact, it might be the smartest thing to say. Nobody has
    been here before. So none of us know exactly what to do. That said, we
    cannot allow ourselves to be paralyzed into inaction.

    #2 Be Quiet and Listen

       Don't talk, listen. This doesn't work for television or columnists,
    but if you believe in real organizing, you should believe that people
    possess an innate wisdom. We must listen to the people for insight and
    wisdom. The people help us discover the way for all of us to go
    forward.

       There are times when we must resist the quick response. There are
    times, as peace activist Daniel Berrigan said, when we should say,
    "Don't just do something, stand there!"

       As an example, when you find yourself in a suddenly darkened room, what
    do you do? While some might rush blindly to where they think the door
    is, others stand still, gather themselves, let your eyes get adjusted to
    the different environment, orient themselves, then cautiously and
    sensitively, move forward.

       Listening is part of our orientation. We listen to pick up clues from
    our fellow seekers about what is the best path, the best next step.

    #3 Be Not Afraid

       Courage is critical. There is a concerted effort to try to intimidate
    and silence people interested in justice and peace. Conservatives
    challenge the patriotism of all who dare to examine and question the
    root causes of why all that America does is not universally admired.
    Conservatives are setting up cardboard liberals who excuse the
    terrorists, hate America, do not support democracy, and are just as
    intolerant as Jerry Falwell. Columnists equate pacifism with treason
    and evil. Those who call for nonviolence or even an international
    police action are not supporting the Commander in Chief, the troops, and
    the families of the victims of September 11. Workers who have struck
    for economic justice since September 11 have been attacked and called
    selfish and not patriotic.

       If working for peace and justice does not meet some conservative's
    narrow definition of patriotism, then they have created too weak a form
    of patriotism. By that definition, Sojourner Truth was not a patriot,
    Abraham Lincoln was not a patriot, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt are
    not patriots, and Martin Luther King was not a patriot. I want to be
    what they are. If they do not meet someone's definition of patriot,
    then I am not interested. True patriotism should allow an appreciation
    for both what is great about our country and what we need to work to
    improve. We cannot allow anyone to silence the voices of peace and
    justice, even if they try to silence them with flag-waving.

       We would do well to remember the agonizing efforts of those who fought
    against slavery, who fought for civil rights, who fought for the right
    to organize, and who fought for the rights of freedom of speech. Those
    were tough and scary fights, but there were successes even in the face
    of fear.

       Peace and justice organizers have to maintain courage despite the
    ongoing attempts to intimidate and silence.

    #4 Rediscover the Community of Social Justice and, by all means, Welcome
    New Seekers

       Prior to September 11, our peace and justice communities were separate
    efforts. The people organizing around welfare reform worked apart from
    those organizing against the death penalty. People working on living
    wages were isolated from those working on voting rights and
    redistricting.

       When times get tough, they are tougher when you are alone. It is time
    to re-connect our justice and peace organizing. As members of a
    community we are much stronger and wiser than when we are alone.

       When the peace community organized a vigil in New Orleans four days
    after September 11, over 200 people showed up. After the vigil, almost
    everyone there said, "It was so good to be among people who were
    interested in peace, because I have been feeling so alone and isolated."

       There are also new members in the peace and social justice community:
    many new people, many young people. We must welcome them and learn from
    them.

       Not all the new arrivals have been welcomed with open arms by the
    existing peace and justice community. Some new people say the wrong
    things. Others do things that are hurtful or disruptive. But, even
    then, the last thing veteran organizers need to tolerate are efforts to
    marginalize or attack new folks for their newness and lack of
    sophistication. There are criticisms that the new people are innocents
    or naive or ill-informed or un-analytical. They are criticized for
    proceeding in a way that does not take into account...take your pick:
    racism, feminism, homophobia, they are too interested in religion, or
    not interested enough in nonviolence, etc.

       I say welcome the new people. Learn from them. Be infected by their
    enthusiasm. Join with them. Share with them. Don't preach at them.
    Work with them. Help them discover the knowledge that others have
    learned the hard way. Certainly people have much to learn from people
    already in social justice work.

       We must clearly understand that these new people have much to teach us
    as well. To go forward in these new times, we need to link up with each
    other in respectful ways that model the just and peaceful community we
    seek to organize.

    #5 Faith-based Social Justice

       There has been an upsurge in people seeking consolation and leadership
    and direction from their churches. The religious community has a big
    opportunity as people search for new meaning: linkages between faith and
    justice and peace. Some churches have spoken eloquently about peace and
    justice issues. Connecting with faith-based social justice people and
    organizations represents an opportunity at this time.

       For social justice organizing, there is an important distinction to be
    made between faith traditions and churches. In my experience, all
    faiths place justice and peace and sacrifice and respect and the common
    good at the very center of their beliefs. The problem is that many
    churches preach and practice a very weak form of their faith. They
    de-emphasize the justice and peace demands of their faith traditions.
    Work for social justice is replaced by church tithing. Working for
    peace is replaced by supporting the church school or church suppers.
    The faith which is meant to afflict the comfortable and comfort the
    afflicted, weakly ends up comforting the comfortable.

       We need to work with people whose interests in justice and peace are
    faith-based. We also need to challenge our church leaders, who tend to
    mute the justice issues in order to accommodate their congregations. We
    also, of course, need to respect all varieties of faiths and we need to
    make sure that the faith-based folks respect those whose dedication to
    peace and justice is not faith-based.

    #6 Prepare for, and Forgive, Mistakes

       Any time we try anything new we are going to make mistakes. That is
    the essence of living a challenging life. Since this is a new
    environment in which we are organizing, we will make mistakes. We would
    be smart to be prepared for our mistakes and also be prepared to forgive
    well-intentioned people who make them.

       Some of the most venomous and counter-productive criticism of social
    justice organizing comes from others of us in the same field. We savage
    each other in ways that Rush Limbaugh and the Wall Street Journal could
    only dream of.

       We need not overlook mistakes. We need to be prepared to learn from
    them. But we also need to be prepared to support those of us who make
    them. This is part of the social justice obligation that we owe each
    other.

    #7 Study History

       We need to study and understand history, real history, not the myths
    spun out by the talking heads on tv.

       Those who say that in time of crisis, Americans always gather around
    our leaders do not know the richness of our history. Those who say we
    historically suspend all questioning of injustice in our country during
    time of crisis, do not know our history.

       A real look at our history will show that while many have exclusively
    rallied round the flag in times of crisis, many others have maintained
    their commitments to peace and justice, even in times of crisis. There
    were demonstrations and draft resistance and even riots among poor and
    working class men in connection with every war ever fought. In every
    war some people said "Not in my name."

       As Tim Rutten and Lynn Smith said recently in the Los Angeles Times,
    "Political dissent in wartime is an American tradition."

       As part of our understanding of history, we must see the legacy of the
    civil rights and peace movements already at work in our midst. While
    some official crazies like our own Rep Cooksey (Diaper and fan belt
    comment) and Jerry Falwell (gays and lesbians and abortionists and the
    ACLU and people for the American way) have been hatefully shameful, it
    is remarkable that numerous officials and leaders have tried to deter
    hate crimes against Arab or Islamic Americans. Also, the widespread
    support for saturation-type bombing, even nuclear responses, has seemed
    to diminish considerably.

       We need the historians in our communities to help us re-discover the
    justice and peace realities of our history, particularly in times of
    crisis.

    #8 Speak to Shared Values

       Part of our challenge as organizers is to communicate. In this time,
    when there is so much official communication about "either you are for
    our war or you are for terrorism" we need new ways to talk.

        I strongly suggest every person interested in social justice
    organizing look at the web site of the group, We Interrupt This
    Message. That organization assists progressives in dealing with the
    media. This discussion of the principle of speaking to shared values is
    taken largely from materials from their website. www.interrupt.org

       In order to communicate, our organizing and media messages should
    respond to questions that speak to values central to both the peace and
    social justice movement and the majority of the general public:
       Thus, "How can we hunt down the terrorists" can be recast as "How can
    we be safe?"
        "How do we protect America" can be "How can we be strong?"
       Instead of "How can we wipe these fanatics out?" we can discuss "How
    can we arrive at justice?"
       Safety, Strength, Respect for Human Life, and Justice are all values
    shared by the peace and social justice movement and the majority of the
    North American public. And our communication and media messages should
    be framed as answers to these questions.
       For example, the courage and sacrifice and discipline of the rescue
    workers shows us a wonderful model for discussing the importance of
    courage and sacrifice in working for justice and peace.

    #9 Make the Social Justice Issue Connections

       The current crisis allows us an opportunity to show that all justice is
    one.
       Racial profiling of Middle Eastern and Muslims has to be fought as part
    of the ongoing struggle against racism, even in the peace movement
    itself. Racism is like being in the Mississippi river, if you are not
    actively struggling against the current, you are drifting along with
    it. The rally in DC was called ANSWER, Act Now to Stop War and End
    Racism. War and racism were linked in their minds for a reason. Martin
    Luther King spoke about the three evils of racism, militarism, and
    materialism, for a reason.
       Attempts to blame these tragedies on Islam, Muslims, Arabs, Jews,
    liberals, and gays and lesbians show us the need to stand up for the
    civil and human rights of all people.
       Generous and fair compensation for victims of terrorism is absolutely
    the right national response to the tragedies. This can lead to further
    discussion of the national struggle for just and fair reparations for
    African-Americans and local calls for assistance to residents of public
    housing who have been displaced by the demolition of their homes.
       Congressional assistance for airline industry of $15 billion that
    leaves out 100,000 workers shows the need to support the struggle of
    workers for union organizing, the right to a job and the search for a
    living wage.
       Those who call for revenge and eye for an eye blind retaliation remind
    us of the need to struggle against the human rights violations of the
    death penalty in our own country.
       All of sudden the USA is interested in international coalitions. This
    is a startlingly new focus. We even paid our UN dues! Now, we are all
    in this world struggle against terrorism together. We are for human
    rights everywhere. Wonderful. What can we learn from the struggles of
    our international sisters and brothers? What does the international
    dimension say to our issues like the death penalty? Environmental
    justice? Worker justice? Civil rights and civil liberties?
       Current developments give us the opportunity to connect the justice
    issues that are so visible and popular with the ones that are less
    visible but no less important.

    #10 Reconsider Strategies & Go Steadily Forward

       I don't know how many of you have had your car stuck in the mud or the
    snow. I have been stuck in both. When your car is stuck in the mud or
    snow, often the best response is not to just smash down harder on the
    accelerator. But I am afraid that many of us are trying to do just that
    at this point.

       Many on the right and left are saying, "Now more than ever....[whatever
    they said before September 11]." Well, why? Really ask the question,
    why? We must challenge ourselves to not just knee jerk say what we said
    before, but to thoughtfully respond to the question, why?

       If our only response to the events of September 11 is to do what we did
    before that, but only harder, I think we will waste a lot of energy. We
    have to thoughtfully and humbly reconsider our strategies and develop
    some new ones. Otherwise we will just remain stuck.

    Conclusion

       These are my thoughts. They may not ring true to others. They may not
    even prove true to me in the days ahead. But I suggest we resume
    reflecting, thinking, acting, and organizing in new ways to make social
    justice a reality.

       We may never persuade the woman who called us traitors, but if we can
    work effectively on social justice issues, we can do our part to make
    this world a better place for her and for us.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anti-war resources:

    New this issue:
    http://www.prairie-fire.org/no-war.pdf
    http://www.legitgov.org/Top5Lies.pdf
    http://www.ten12.com/stickerpage.ten12
    http://www.vsasf.org/
    http://www.peacefulproductions.com/store/
    http://www.justicenotvengeance.org/
    http://www.peopleforpeace.org/
    http://www.commondreams.org/special/feature.htm
    -------
    http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html
    http://www.geocities.com/miriamczc/czcpazsi.htm
    http://www.peacenowar.net/
    http://www.911peace.net/
    http://www.stopwar.org.uk/
    http://www.zmag.org/6reasons.pdf
    http://www.actionla.org/S11/
    http://www.warisnottheanswer.org/
    http://www.9-11peace.org/
    http://pax.protest.net/
    http://www.s29.org/
    http://Antiwar.com
    http://www.luver.org/
    http://www.alternet.org/issues/index.html?IssueAreaID=26
    http://www.sfbg.com/News/altvoices.html
    http://www.peacefuljustice.cjb.net/
    http://www.warresisters.org/attack9-11-01.htm#things
    http://www.legitgov.org/peaceprotests.html
    http://www.igc.org/inkworks/www/downloads.html
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/studentsnowar/files (members only)
    http://www.honoringourhumangoodness.homestead.com/
    http://www.earthflag.net/
    http://www.peaceflags.org
    http://www.mwaw.org
    http://www.stopworldwar3.com/
    http://www.veteransforpeace.org/
    www.internationalanswer.org
    http://www.peace2001.org/
    http://www.justresponse.org/
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