MEDIA ALERT

A Call for Light.
Vigil outside the BBC, Bush House, Aldwych, London.

Thursday, 2nd December between 5:30pm and 7:00pm.

THIS IS WHY!

MADE IN USA

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times

It must be read to be believed!

Who Is John Stott?
By DAVID BROOKS
The New York Times

Good 'Globalization'

BERLIN (Reuters) - Lawyers acting for a U.S. advocacy group will Tuesday file war crimes charges in Germany against senior U.S. administration officials for their alleged role in torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

REUTERS

Bowling, rodeo and stunt women!

"Maybe they have been less political but they have been warmer and more human. Last year we had all these films critical of the USA but maybe we're a little bit fed up by that. Also from the United States I got films about bowling, rodeo and stunt women - maybe there's a trend there."

Ally Derks
Director IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)
IDFA Daily

In these very days, massive war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Iraq in our name and with our tax money. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been murdered by the US lead forces. Because of this illegal war and illegal occupation, more than 400,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 are suffering from "wasting", a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein. Most of them will die soon. Poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah, together with phosphorous and napalm weapons. Iraqi men, women and children have been raped, tortured and killed. This just to look at Iraq... But thank God!, we have 'bowling, rodeo and stunt women'...

José Saramago

”I always ask two questions, and only two: How many countries have military bases in the United States? And in how many countries does the United States not have military bases?”

José Saramago, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.

WMD

COUNTRIES WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS:
USA, RUSSIA, CHINA, FRANCE, and UK
The same countries with VETO POWER at the U.N. Security Council

ISRAEL INDIA and PAKISTAN have NUCLEAR WEAPONS too. But 'we are not supposed to know'.

Israel is considered an undeclared nuclear weapon state, and is believed to have 100-200 nuclear weapons. It could deploy these weapons on 255 aircraft (50 F-4E and 205 F-16), 100 missiles and three submarines.

Click here to know more.

What we are not supposed to know

”Poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah,” 35-year-old trader from Fallujah Abu Hammad told IPS. ”They used everything -- tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the ground.” Read the whole article

'Unusual Weapons' Used in Fallujah
by Dahr Jamail
IPS

The revolution televised

Voters in Britain and the US have witnessed their governments lying brazenly about Iraq for over a year in the run-up to war, and with impunity. This is an enormous dysfunction in our own so-called democratic system. Our tendency to paint political fantasies on to countries such as Ukraine which are tabula rasa for us, and to present the west as a fairy godmother swooping in to save the day, is not only a way to salve a guilty conscience about our own political shortcomings; it also blinds us to the reality of continued brazen western intervention in the democratic politics of other countries.

John Laughland
The Guardian

John Laughland is a trustee of www.oscewatch.org and an associate of www.sandersresearch.com

PETITION

World Wide Petition against the Escalation in Iraq
Languages: English|Arabic|Français|Nederlands|Italiano|Deutsch|Espanol
An initiative of the BRussells Tribunal
CLICK HERE TO SIGN ONLINE

THE CLOWNS OF THE DAY

Those hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, whose lives we placed at risk by invading their country, are the reasons we should remain in Iraq, until we can hand over security to a local force. Saving hundreds of thousands of lives is a worthy cause to risk American lives for, even to die for.

Saving the Iraqi Children
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times

But if you really want to reduce world poverty, you should be cheering on those guys in pinstripe suits at the free-trade negotiations and those investors jetting around the world. Thanks, in part, to them, we are making progress against poverty. Thanks, in part, to them, more people around the world have something to be thankful for.

Good News About Poverty
By DAVID BROOKS
The New York Times

Impunity

Impunity - the perception of being outside the law - has long been the hallmark of the Bush regime. What is alarming is that it appears to have deepened since the election, ushering in what can only be described as an orgy of impunity. In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies. At home, impunity has been made official policy with Bush's appointment of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, the man who personally advised the president in his infamous "torture memo" that the Geneva conventions are "obsolete".

Smoking while Iraq burns
by Naomi Klein
The Guardian
Friday, November 26, 2004

Thanksgiving

I want to take time on this Thanksgiving to thank God I live in a country where, despite so much rampant selfishness, the public schools still manage to produce young men and women ready to voluntarily risk their lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to spread the opportunity of freedom and to protect my own.

From In My Next Life
by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The New York Times

THANK YOU MR. FRIEDMAN, IN NAME OF:

- More than 100,000 innocent civilians, most of them women and children, murdered by the US lead forces of this illegal war and illegal occupation.

- More than 400,000 Iraqi children who are suffering from "wasting" a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING AMERICA!

Liberty & Security

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin

The Genocide Continues

BAGHDAD -- Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government. After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting" a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 21, 2004; Page A01

IRAN

The following is not the warning of a "radical" publication, nor is the statement of some anti-war organization. This is the opening of The New York Times Editorial, November 20, 2004.

Stop us if you've heard this one before. The Bush administration creates a false sense of urgency about a nuclear menace from a Middle Eastern country. Hard-liners talk about that country's connections to terrorists. They portray European diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions as a feckless attempt to appease a rogue nation whose word can never be trusted anyway. Secretary of State Colin Powell makes ominous-sounding warnings about new intelligence, which turns out to be dubious. That is how President Bush rushed the country into an unnecessary conflict with Iraq in his first term, and we have been seeing alarming signs of that approach all week on Iran.

Groundhog Day
Editorial
November 20, 2004
The New York Times

A Call for Light!

A Call for Light
Vigil outside the BBC, Bush House, Aldwych, London.
Thursday, 2nd December between 5:30pm and 7:00pm.

To endorse, please e-mail: acallforlight@mail.com

The first barrage of modern warfare is not heard on the battlefield. Instead, it thunders forth from our TV screens and leaves trails of fiery words across the printed page.

It is often said that ‘the first casualty of war is truth’, but we rarely reflect on the bloody reality of these words. During war, more than at any other time, language is twisted, stretched, and degraded. 'Precision airstrikes', 'collateral damage', and 'friendly fire': all phrases thrown over a tragedy like a blanket over a corpse; to blur uncomfortably sharp edges and make tolerable the ugly truth beneath.

The corpses are piling high in Iraq. A conservative estimate calculates 100,000 since our invasion; most killed by 'coalition' forces and most of them women and children (Iraq Mortality Survey, The Lancet, 29 October 2004). Our media continues to bury their bodies.

Who will speak for dead Iraqis when our media will not? Denied their voice, our dead brothers and sisters are 'unpeople': like our own fallen soldiers, just more lives lost to the fires of a 'war' that the UN Secretary-General condemns as 'illegal'. Almost as lost are the voices who oppose this bloody crime: 57%, according to a recent survey in the UK.

As George Orwell once wrote: 'Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose.' A healthy democracy needs a free and investigative media, willing to view our own government with the same scepticism it accords official enemies. Objective reporting requires balance; not only between warring factions, but also between the powerful and the powerless. Our media must be held to this standard, so that no body is hidden and no voice unheard.

Join with us, if you can, and help us shine a light on Iraq, on this 'war', and on ourselves.

All are welcome

* Please bring your family and friends.

* Please stand in silence, to mark the silence of the unreported and of the dead.

* Please come with candles, to light the truth and your own placards, to commemorate the dead in Iraq.

* Please come as an individual, leaving symbols of party or organisation affiliations at home.

To endorse, please e-mail: acallforlight@mail.com

The Wolf

Silvio Berlusconi chose Gianfranco Fini as new Italian Foreign Minister. Mr. Fini, leader of the far right-wing political party Alleanza Nazionale, in 1994 called Mussolini "the greatest statesman of the century".

(In)famous for his attacks on gay and women rights, Mr. Fini has been traveling often to Israel lately to regain some kind of 'respectability'.

To regain his 'virginity', Mr. Fini called the Apartheid Wall an act of 'self-defense' and expressed strong support for Mr. Sharon and his government.

In Italy we have a proverb: "Il lupo perde il pelo ma non il vizio" (free translation: the wolf changes its fur but does not lose the vice)

Afghanistan

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Heroin production is booming in Afghanistan, undermining democracy and putting money in the coffers of terrorists, according to a U.N. report Thursday that called on U.S. and NATO-led forces get more involved in fighting drug traffickers.

U.N.: Afghanistan sees increase in opium
By PAUL GEITNER
Associated Press Writer

"And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies -- and freedom."
President George W. Bush - State of the Union, January 2003

"SUPPORT OUR TROOPS"

"I would have shot the insurgent too. Two shots to the head," said Sergeant Nicholas Graham, 24, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "You can't trust these people. He should not be investigated. He did nothing wrong."

U.S. Marines Rally Round Iraq Probe Comrade
By Michael Georgy
REUTERS

INNOCENCE

(...) this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. (...) But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

James Baldwin

3 STEPS

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals - Nuremberg, Germany 1946

The supreme international crime of the invasion of Iraq needs to be addressed with the instruments of the international law. We, the people around the world who have strongly opposed this invasion, need to have our objective clear in our minds and to focus our energy and time to a sensible and daring plan. It’s time for the international anti-war movement to step in with concrete propositions and face our own responsibilities.

1. Occupation forces have no rights. Occupation forces have only obligations. The first obligation is WITHDRAWING. If United Nations troops are required in the immediate aftermath of the withdrawing, they must exclude totally those from the countries that have been responsible for the supreme international crimes of invasion and occupation.

2. Withdrawing is the first step. The second is REPARATION. The international community has the legal and moral responsibility to provide NOT AID but REPARATION to Iraq and its people. Reparation for what has been done to the people of Iraq since 1990: a brutal and terroristic war of aggression against Iraqi civilians and Iraqi economy that’s been going on for the last 14 years.

3. The third step is the most difficult but at the same time the most important for the prevention of future supreme international crimes. We must bring those responsible for political decisions to JUSTICE, applying to ourselves the same moral and legal standards we always demand from others. International law provides plenty of instruments to do so. The most important of them are:

a. United Nations Charter
b. Universal Declaration of Human Rights
c. International Criminal Court
d. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
e. Geneva Conventions of 1949 and 1977

We, the people of the world who opposed this supreme international crime, must take on ourselves the responsibility of what our governments have done (or have let happened) in our names and with our tax money. We have many peaceful means to do so. Demonstrations, vigils, civil disobedience, strikes, pressure on the media, keep organizing and work together. Martin Luther King Jr. is still reminding us “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Yasser Arafat

PORNOGRAPHY

The only lifelong terrorist to win a Nobel Peace Prize lies comatose in Paris, with his well-heeled wife - for years unwilling to share his privations in Ramallah - screaming at Palestinian leaders on Al Jazeera television that "they're trying to bury [him] alive!" More likely, they may be trying to learn in what secret accounts he buried millions of dollars. Israelis should remember Arafat's one "good deed": four years ago, a soon-to-be ousted Israeli prime minister and a Nobel-hungry U.S. president made the Palestinian Authority an incredibly generous and dangerous offer: dividing Jerusalem, handing over almost all of the West Bank, and even partially establishing a "right of return" for some Palestinians who fled an Arab invasion of the new Jewish state a half-century ago.

After Arafat, Hope
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
The New York Times

Personally, we are really sorry for the family members of Mr. Safire who have no choice but to live with him day after day, year after year. It must not be pleasant. We would like to express them all our solidarity and compassion. Professionally, another sign of the Times.

70%

It is a war the United States cannot win, and which the government of Iyad Allawi cannot survive. Unfortunately, since recent polls show that some 70% of the American people support the war in Iraq, it is a war that will rage until the American domestic political dynamic changes, and the tide of public opinion turns against the war. Tragically, this means many more years of conflict in Iraq that will result in thousands more killed on both sides, and incomprehensible suffering for the people of Iraq, and unpredictable instability for the entire Middle East.

Squeezing jello in Iraq
By Scott Ritter
Aljazeera

The Sign of The Times

Taking Fallujah
A difficult but absolutely essential military operation
The fight for Fallujah will largely, but not exclusively, determine whether that entirely noble aim can be realised.

THE TIMES
EDITORIAL

All the war criminals that's fit to print

The Marine and Army forces now entering Falluja, Iraq have prepared for this fight for some time, and not just since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime last spring. Our military has a long history of training for and battling against unconventional enemies - the Revolutionary War, the Indian wars, Vietnam and, in particular, a battle few American think much about: the invasion of Panama City in 1989. In the effort to topple the corrupt government of Manuel Noriega, the American military pulled off one of the most complex and risky operations in the history of warfare. (...) Why will ordinary Iraqis help? Many reasons, but the most effective tool in any counterinsurgency is money - we will pay, and they will talk - just as sources already have in places like Sadr City.

Rebels, Guns and Money
James A. Marks
The New York Times
James A. Marks, a retired Army major general, was the senior intelligence officer for the coalition land forces during last year's invasion of Iraq.

Bella ciao

"Bella ciao" is the Italian Resistance song during World War II
Italian Resistance (rebels, insurgents or terrorists, according to the terminology adopted these days by mainstream media and democratic institutions in the West) fought a war of liberation against the Nazi occupiers and its Fascist collaborationists.

We like to dedicate this song to the Iraqi Resistance and the City of Falluja. (English translation below)

Una mattina mi son svegliato,
O bella ciao, bella ciao,
Bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
Una mattina mi son svegliato,
E ho trovato l'invasor.

O partigiano portami via,
O bella ciao, bella ciao,
Bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
O partigiano portami via,
Che mi sento di morir.

E so io muoio da partigiano,
O bella ciao, bella ciao,
Bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
E se io muoio da partigiano,
Tu mi devi seppellir.

Mi seppellisci lassù in montagna
O bella ciao, bella ciao,
Bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
Mi seppelisci lassù in montagna
Sotto l'ombra di un bel fior.

Tutte le genti che passeranno
O bella ciao, bella ciao,
Bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
Tutte le genti che passeranno
Mi diranno «che bel fior!».

E questo è il fiore del partigiano
O bella ciao, bella ciao,
Bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
E questo è il fiore del partigiano
Morto per la Libertà.


English translation

This morning I awakened - Oh Goodbye beautiful Goodbye beautiful Goodbye beautiful Goodbye Goodbye - This morning I awakened And I found the invader

Oh partisan carry me away - Oh Goodbye beautiful Goodbye beautiful Goodbye beautiful Goodbye Goodbye - Oh partisan carry me away Because I feel death approaching

And if I die as a partisan - Oh Goodbye beautiful Goodbye beautiful Goodbye beautiful Goodbye Goodbye - And if I die as a partisan Then you must bury me

Bury me up in the mountain - Oh Goodbye beautiful Goodbye beautiful Goodbye beautiful Goodbye Goodbye - Bury me up in the mountain Under the shade of a beautiful flower

And those who shall pass - Oh Goodbye beautiful Goodbye beautiful Goodbye beautiful Goodbye Goodbye - And those who shall pass Will tell you what a beautiful flower it is

This is the flower of the partisan - Oh Goodbye beautiful Goodbye beautiful Goodbye beautiful Goodbye Goodbye - This is the flower of the partisan Who died for freedom

Dear Michael Moore,

Dear Michael Moore,

I am writing you this “open letter” in friendship and solidarity. You are famous, rich and powerful. I am none of the above. But we both belong to the anti war movement and both are working to contribute to a better and more just world.

I have recently read your last two posts in your website. “My first thoughts after the election...” posted on Thursday, November 4th, 2004 and “17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists...” posted on Friday, November 5th, 2004. Since you start with “Dear Friends,” as a friend I would like to answer.

With all the respect, I find both of them dangerous and immoral.

“My first thoughts after the election...” is a list of all the US military personal killed in Iraq. Didn’t you have any thoughts for the 100,000 Iraqi civilians (most of them women and children) murdered by the US lead coalition forces? Any thoughts at all for those Iraqi, men, women and children, raped and tortured by the US military personal?

In “17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists...” you write jokes and, trying to cheer the anti war people up, make fun of the moment. I could understand your point of view (let’s fight with humor and let’s have fun while doing so) before the elections. But now, keep joking and making fun is – in my judgment – completely useless and, frankly, immoral.

Life is a mixture of comedy and tragedy and denying the latter is a tragedy itself. There are moments in history and in our lives when we must look at this tragedy in all its reality, without trying to make it more ‘manageable’. Massive crimes against humanity have been committed. By our governments. In our name. With our tax money. These crimes are going on. It’s time for us, the anti war people around the world, to stop laughing and to assume our responsibility. It’s time to understand the tragedy in all its darkness and enormity. It’s time for outrage. And action.

This may not be the law of the show business. But certainly is the law of human conscience as understood by all the ordinary people around the world, without boundaries.

In solidarity,
Gabriele Zamparini

ALERT

UN chief Kofi Annan has warned Iraqi and coalition governments against an assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja.

Annan plea as Iraq assault looms
BBC NEWS

A hospital has been razed to the ground in one of the heaviest US air raids in the Iraqi city of Falluja.

US strikes raze Falluja hospital
BBC NEWS

Falluja. Remember Guernica? It's time to use our conscience, if we still have one. Organize vigils, protests, sit-in, write your newspapers, call your political representatives, call your friends and colleagues, join anti-war organizations, show your dissent. More than 100,000 innocents have already been murdered. No more blood for oil!

U.S. of Amnesia

The first thing you do is bring the troops home. (...) Another reason we have no past is the fault of the educational system. And then if you have media, to put it politely, that is totally corrupt, easily bought, and if you have a president who tells lies or a whole society who tells lies about itself, then you have a basic unreality. (...) You cannot have a war against an abstract noun — which is what terrorism is. (...) Dean knew intuitively the fact that American people are violently isolationist, and virulently against foreign wars and want to be left alone to do their own business — which is business. (...) But with constant repetition, constantly telling lies, Bush and Cheney have convinced the America people somehow they’re all mixed up together. And they hate us because we’re so good! We’re such a good people. That is cretinism.

U.S. of Amnesia
Gore Vidal
LA Weekly

Gore Vidal is featured in the Award Winning Documentary XXI CENTURY

The New York Clowns

It's tempting to wonder what sort of tributes world leaders would be preparing for the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat if during the negotiations that grew out of the Camp David meeting in 2000, he had somehow found the courage to say yes to Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton. Would we be documenting the life of the father of a nation, the man who, through a singular act of statesmanship, signed off on a final agreement that established an independent Palestinian state on almost all the land occupied by Israel in 1967? It is not often in history that someone's legacy can come down to one single defining moment, to one single critical choice. But such is the story of Mr. Arafat's life, and it is almost unbearably disappointing that four years ago, faced with the admittedly difficult choice of saying yes to Israel, Mr. Arafat said no.

The Man Who Refused to Say Yes
The New York Times
Editorial

If Democrats want to know how to win again, they have a model. It's the British Labor Party.

Time to Get Religion
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times

The fact is that if you think we are safer now, you probably voted for Bush.

The Values-Vote Myth
By DAVID BROOKS
The New York Times

Falluja & our conscience

After a night of air strikes, US forces sealed off the Iraqi rebel stronghold of Falluja today and a US commander said the long-expected offensive on the city would soon be underway.
The Guardian
Friday November 5, 2004

U.S. troops urged civilians to flee Falluja on Friday and launched air strikes on the rebel city ahead of an assault seen as critical to attempts to pacify Iraq before January elections.
Reuters
Friday November 5, 2004

Remember Guernica? It's time to use our conscience, if we still have one. Organize vigils, protests, sit-in, write your newspapers, call your political representatives, call your friends and colleagues, join anti-war organizations, show your dissent. More than 100,000 innocents have already been murdered. No more blood for oil!

RESISTANCE

What the (re)election of George W. Bush means. Unless...

Domestically
The ‘holy alliance’ between the most fundamentalist group in the United States (the Evangelical Christians), the 'new' apostles of the free (sic!) market and the most corrupted leadership in American history has brought the country to a point of non-return. Being the corporate media that excellent servant doing with extreme discipline its job, which is to say the propaganda for its master, the only way to dissent has become an act of resistance. As a result, a large part of ordinary Americans have been transformed in a free-thinking army ready to follow the leader, no matter what. There have been examples in history, but even the worst of them turn pale if one looks at the present moment.

Of course the elites won’t raise their voices. Why should they? The elites, conservative or ‘liberal’, have nothing to loose and all to gain. Some of them will even blame the ‘ignorant people’ who voted for Bush. Do they (the elites) care for the ‘ignorant people’? Why should they? Have ever, anywhere in the world, the elites cared for the people? They have always despised democracy, which they fear. Not a word on the elites’ own functional role. Not a word on their own cowardice. Not a word on the only, real taboo in the United States: the class conflict, the social conflict. Senator Kerry, The New York Times and many others said once again: the real problem now is to find UNITY. Unity of the elites, of course, and unity against popular movement and social justice.

Internationally
Militarism will be the magic word and a perpetual warfare against an abstract enemy will precipitate the human species in an unthinkable darkness. Forget human rights. Forget international law. Forget the International Criminal Court. Forget the United Nations (its Charter and its spirit, because of course the Security Council will find back its discipline). Forget international justice. And about peace, just read Tacitus: "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.”

Iraqi people – those who will be so ‘lucky’ to survive the massive crimes against humanity and genocidal policies perpetrated by Bush, Blair and C. – will be reduced to slaves, their land contaminated forever with nuclear waste (uranium and plutonium), their culture humiliated. Palestinians will follow the Native Americans and the First Australians.

Language
Many important voices of dissent around the world have been making comparisons with the recent past. The words Fascism and Nazism have been used, together with other words such as Empire, Imperialism, Colonialism and Capitalism. The task to describe this new Era is a complicated one. I would suggest the use of ‘Americanism’ as it’s been used by some, for example John Pilger (The New Statesman 26 October 2004).
Americanism – which has nothing to do with ordinary Americans – could summarize the analogies with the recent and less recent past and at the same time explain the level of sophistication reached by this system and its propaganda.

Unless...
It would seem there is no hope left at this point. They have the money, the power, the media, and the guns. Any hope left? Yes, lots of hopes. If only we learn to organize, work together, stop building fictitious walls. If only we learn to stop playing with ‘their’ moral, social and cultural rules. If only we stop following the show business and the star system. If only we go back to think. If only we stop giving them power. Never in recent history have there been so many and so great chances for change. Never in recent history have 'we, the people of the world' been so united. We hold the key. It’s not 'too close to call'. Resistance!

More than 20% of gays vote for Bush

The president received between 21% and 23% of the GLBT vote, about same percentage he received in the 2000 election, according to data from CNN and The Washington Post.

The Advocate

FALLUJA

US forces have stepped up pressure on Iraqi fighters in Falluja, using AC-130 aircraft and tanks to pound eastern and northwestern areas of the town. Witnesses said AC-130s - cargo aircraft equipped with cannon and machine guns - were in action for at least half an hour late on Wednesday while tanks shelled the town on the ground. The bombardment was said to be the heaviest on the town for several weeks.

US forces pound Falluja
Aljazeera

The Voice of the Master

When a victor is finally, officially announced, it is important for the entire country to accept him as the rightful president. We have had enough of rancor for a while, and our greatest hope now is that the next president will earn the right to be seen as leader by all the nation.

The New York Times
Editorial
3 November 2004

Howard Zinn superbly explains the meaning of these few lines in "XXI CENTURY", an Award Winning Documentary on the Voices of Dissent in Bush's America.

Arctic

Global warming is causing the Arctic ice-cap to melt at such an unprecedented rate that by the summer of 2070 it may have no ice at all, according to the most comprehensive study carried out on global climate change in the region. The icecap has shrunk by 15% to 20% in the past 30 years and the trend is set to accelerate, with the Arctic warming almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet, due to a build-up of heat-trapping gases.

Jamie Wilson
The Guardian

Family Values

Red state or blue, north or south, voters around the country found at least one thing they could agree on Tuesday as proposals banning same-sex marriage appeared to be winning in all 11 states where the issue appeared on the ballot.

T.R. Reid
The Washington Post

Stephen Hawking

"If that is not a war crime, what is?"
Stephen Hawking
Trafalgar Square, London
2 November 2004

Trafalgar Square speakers included: Ken Livingstone, (Nobel prize-winner) Joseph Rotblat, Stephen Hawking, Katherine Gunn, Harold Pinter, Michael Mansfield QC, David Hare, Rose Gentle, Neil Pearson, Juliet Stevenson, Susie Orbach, Jeremy Corbyn MP, The Rev Mann, Maxim Gentle, David Hare, Kate Hudson, Tony Flint, Ken Loach, Asha D, Pete Doherty, Jeremy Hardy, Chris Eubank, Tony Woodley, Bill Paterson, Kika Markham and Peter Kennard.

Letter from Fallujah to Kofi Annan

It is more than evident that US forces are committing daily acts of genocide in Iraq. As we write, these crimes are being perpetrated against the city of Fallujah...

By Kassim Abdullsattar al-Jumaily
President, The Study Center of Human Rights & Democracy

We all are moral cowards

The full scale of the human cost already paid for the war on Iraq is only now becoming clear. Last week's estimate by investigators, using credible methodology, that more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians - most of them women and children - have died since the US-led invasion is a profound moral indictment of our countries. (...) But we all are moral cowards when it comes to Iraq. Our collective inability to summon the requisite shame and rage when confronted by an estimate of 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians in the prosecution of an illegal and unjust war not only condemns us, but adds credibility to those who oppose us. (...) Our continued indifference to a war that has slaughtered so many Iraqi civilians, and will continue to kill more, is in many ways an even greater tragedy: not only in terms of scale, but also because these deaths were inflicted by our own hand in the course of an action that has no defence.

Scott Ritter
The Guardian

Scott Ritter - UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998 - is one of the many voices of dissent featured in the Award Winning Documentary "XXI CENTURY"

NAMING THE DEAD

Tuesday 2nd November 2004, 5pm Trafalgar Square, London, and across the UK and in many other countries!!! Trafalgar Square speakers to include: Ken Livingstone, Stephen Hawking, Harold Pinter, Rose Gentle, Neil Pearson, Juliet Stevenson, Susie Orbach, Jeremy Corbyn MP, The Rev Mann, Maxim Gentle, David Hare, Kate Hudson, Tony Flint, Kika Markham, Joseph Rotblat, and Peter Kennard.

On November 2nd 2004 the people of America elect their President.
On that day we will remember those who have died in this war. We know that the occupation forces do not keep a record of those they kill in Iraq but others have gathered together the names of those who have died. That day will be an appropriate moment to commemorate those thousands: the civilians, men, women and children who have been killed through indiscriminate bombing of their homes; those killed in the prison camps of Iraq. We will commemorate the soldiers, aid workers and others of all nationalities who have died. They are also the victims of the policies of George Bush and Tony Blair.