[A-List] Fw: REPORT FROM ICPJ

["Christopher Black" <bar@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: <icpj@xxxxxxx>
To: <icpj@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2003 10:31 PM
Subject: REPORT FROM ICPJ


International Council for Peace and Justice
3020 El Cerrito Plaza, No. 195,
El Cerrito, CA 94530
icpj@xxxxxxx
http://icpj.org/appeal.html

REPORT AND APPEAL TO MEMBERS AND SUPPORTERS OF ICPJ


Dear Friends:

The Bush administration has succeeded in conquering Iraq, causing
unbelievable destruction and untold death and suffering to the people.  The
number of civilian casualties is yet unknown.  We do know from articles and
photos carried in newspapers of many countries---but not the U.S.---that
children have been especially victimized by the daisy cutter and cluster
bombs and other horrific weapons used by the U.S. military.

Widespread looting, encouraged by the U.S. military, has extended the
devastation. The pillage of the Baghdad library and museum where thousands
of years of priceless history of this "cradle of Western civilization" has
been obliterated, amounts to cultural genocide. In the coming weeks,
disease, hunger, and suffering will spread.  More children will be injured
or killed by the bomblets from cluster bombs.  People will die from
inadequate medication.  There will be a great increase in illnesses,
cancers, birth defects, and other detrimental health effects, due to the
greater than ever use by the U.S. military of radioactive depleted uranium
armaments on densely populated areas.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is quickly establishing its military occupation.
Presiding over the occupation is former U.S. Army Lieutenant General Jay
Garner who is on leave from the defense company L-3, which is reaping
profits from the war.  Garner, who is rabidly anti-Palestinian and
anti-Arab, has openly identified with Israel's Sharon. This is the man
chosen to head up the occupation of an Arab nation. A handpicked Iraqi
exile is being put forward as a figurehead to take the reins of government.
The leading candidate is Ahmad Chalabi, head of the U.S.-supported Iraqi
National Congress, who has been convicted in Jordan and sentenced in
absentia to 22 years for bank fraud amounting to millions of dollars.

We can expect an Afghanistan-type scenario, including the unleashing of
fratricidal warfare among various factions and tribal groups.  This is the
inevitable outcome of the divide-and-conquer tactics historically used by
imperialist powers.

Now, after laying waste to the cities of Iraq, U.S. companies, which were
granted contracts by the Bush administration to "rebuild" Iraq, will make
super profits paid for, in large part, by our tax dollars. Not
surprisingly, these companies include a subsidiary of Halliburton, formerly
headed by Dick Cheney and from which he still receives a million dollars a
year. Bechtel Corp is another of the enterprises close to the Bush cabal,
which has a rebuilding contract.  Also waiting in the wings is DynCorp---a
private company made up of former military brass---which carries out
actions in other countries without having to account to the U.S. people.
DynCorp is involved in military operations in Colombia, and elsewhere.  It
provides protection to Afghanistan's puppet ruler Karzai and runs the
police forces in Kosovo and Bosnia.  During the hostilities in the former
Yugoslavia, it provided military training and was directly involved in
operations such as in the "largest-ever" ethnic cleansing of Serbs from
Kraijina region of Croatia.   In recent months, DynCorp was implicated in
the trafficking and sexual exploitation of women (mostly eastern European)
in Bosnia.Destroying and then rebuilding is enormously lucrative.  But the
workers, through their taxes, will foot the bill----along with the Iraqi
people.

Above all, the giant oil conglomerates and financial institutions intend to
reap the full profits from the treasure trove of "black gold." U.S. and
British oil companies have seized Iraq's vast oil fields with its easily
and cheaply extractible reserves second only to those of Saudi Arabia.
Thereby, they also will be in a position to weaken OPEC and to control
worldwide oil prices. Equally important:  they will have pushed out the
large competing oil companies of France, Russia and China.  And they will
now be able to shift Iraq's oil revenues and transactions to the dollar
instead of the Euro to which Saddam Hussein had transferred them.  This
move to the Euro was perhaps Saddam's greatest transgression so far as the
Bush administration and U.S. corporations were concerned.Furthermore, the
U.S. has now positioned itself for full hegemony over the Middle East.  It
has established a springboard for conquests elsewhere.

These are matters of supreme importance to Wall Street and they are key to
the U.S. drive to total world dominance!

The war against Iraq was really against the Iraqi people (not Saddam
Hussein.)  This has been true from the time that oil was first discovered
in Iraq after WWI. The British imperialists bombed, strafed, and gassed the
people who were demanding the benefits from their national petroleum wealth
and resisting the puppet Hashemite monarchy put in place by the British and
Americans.Beginning in 1959, the CIA set out to overthrow the popular
government that, in 1958, had deposed King. Faisal II and was moving to
nationalize the oil. Saddam Hussein was one of six men hired by the CIA to
assassinate Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim. The assassination was
carried out in February 1963. After the forces backed by the U.S. and
connected with Hussein came to power, they slaughtered thousands of
communists, leftists, trade unionists, and intellectuals, using lists
provided by the CIA.

So, not only did the U.S. support Saddam's regime during the Iran-Iraq war
and supply it with the components of weapons of mass destruction during the
1980s, and so forth, but Saddam Hussein was a creature of the U.S. in the
first place! Given this history, it is easy to see why Bush and the
corporate forces behind him give paramount importance to occupying Iraq.
They intend to control its people in order to re-establish U.S. and British
oil companies in that country and thereby reap the maximum profit from the
petroleum fields.

We know that Bush and his cabinet were planning an attack on Iraq even
before he took office ---so much for excuses about alleged weapons of mass
destruction and connections to the 9/11 terrorism.  The plan reveals that
Bush and this team of neocons were intent on taking military control of the
Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power.**

Flush with the "glories" of victory, Bush and his cohorts have lost no time
in beating the war drums of pre-emptive war against Syria and Iran and
north Korea. Meanwhile, U.S.- controlled NATO has been moving eastward at
warp speed engulfing the former socialist countries and former Soviet
republics.  U.S. bases and  military access agreements have significantly
proliferated around the world. The policies of full-spectrum military
dominance and pre-emption carry with them the ever-increasing global threat
of nuclear conflagration.

Clearly, there must be increased, united, and unprecedented worldwide
actions to stop this perilous march of U.S. imperialism!
Such resistance is growing!

The imperial designs of the Bush cabal and its Wall Street backers will not
come to fruition easily.

Already, popular resistance is underway in Iraq. The United Nations is
balking at U.S. moves to take over the oil.  Russia, for example, is
calling for continuing the oil-for-food program until UN inspectors can
complete their weapons inspections.

This position was strongly echoed at a recent meeting called by Saudi
Arabia and attended by representatives of Iran and Turkey as well as the
Arab nations (many of which had even supported the U.S. to one degree or
another).  They called for the U.S. and U.K. to leave Iraq immediately.

THE MIGHTIEST-EVER PEACE MOVEMENT IN THE U.S. AND AROUND OUR PLANET,
ENCOMPASSING TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, MUST CONTINUE!

IT MUST GROW AND BROADEN! ABOVE ALL, IN ORDER TO ULTIMATELY PREVAIL.
IT MUST DEEPEN BY TAKING ON AN INCREASINGLY CONSCIOUS ANTI-BUSH,
ANTI-CORPORATE, ANTI-IMPERIALIST CHARACTER!  In most parts of the globe
that awareness is already widespread.

The challenge is to accomplish this in the U.S. as well!

Everything should be done to try to dispel any mood of defeatism.  Some
people may tend to be discouraged because Bush, Blair and most U.S.
senators and members of Congress ignored the voices of the majority of
humankind, nation-states, religious leaders, and so forth. They may feel
overwhelmed by the massive pro-war media propaganda that appears to have
won large sections of the American people.

The public mood will certainly shift as workers, the poor, and the
oppressed, continue to pay an intensifying price for Bush's endless wars---
They are paying the price in taxes siphoned from their tax pockets to the
military and then into the coffers of the military-industrial corporations.

·They are paying the price in the "shock and awe" destruction of social
programs, including education, health-care, housing, jobs creation, and
consumer and environmental protection.   ·They are paying the price in the
unprecedented budget deficits of cities and states.

·They are paying the price in the dangerous erosion of civil liberties.
·They will be paying the price in the inevitable growing economic crisis,
which the ruling elite seeks to increasingly shift to the shoulders of
workers, poor and the oppressed in the U.S. and worldwide.
The Bush cabal is striving to stave off this escalating economic crisis
through war and imperialist adventures.  But, this time it is virtually
inevitable that the crisis will continue and deepen!

The U.S. movement has an historical responsibility!  In addition to the
critically important "street-heat," one of the few ways in which these Bush
policies can be stopped is through the U.S.  Congress. So too, the defeat
of Bush and his entourage is essential---either through impeachment or in
the electoral arena.This reality is hard for some to swallow because of
justifiable disgust with the acquiescence by most Democrats in Congress to
the Bush war program. So too, many may be discouraged by the realization
that Bush managed to by-pass democratic elections in a coup that placed him
in office.  Understandably, many of us are fed up!

Nevertheless, we have little choice.  Even the street demonstrations and
civil disobedience are aimed at changing U.S. policies. Both street-heat
and pressure on elected officials and candidates are necessary as never
before.
IN THE COMING CRITICAL PERIOD, THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL/CENTER FOR PEACE
AND JUSTICE PLEDGES TO:

--Greatly increase our efforts to provide maximum in-depth information and
education on peace, justice and related issues:

·        through our articles, which appear in publications in the U.S.
and around the world;
·        by publishing our book: "Blood  for Oil Profits;"
·        by improving  and  widely publicizing our website  http://icpj.org

·        through a list-serve to send out to subscribers important articles
from around the world;
·        by continuing to take part in, and organize, teach-ins and public
meetings;
·        by increasing our speaking engagements and radio interviews;

--Intensify our international solidarity work, including with labor
organizations, and strengthen our relationships and participation with
national and international peace and justice organizations including the
World Peace Council (ICPJ is a member organization of WPC)

--Take part, when possible, in key international gatherings such as the
follow-up to the conference in Porto Alegra, Brazil with its rallying cry,
"Another World is Possible!".

In this regard, there will be special emphasis on solidarity with the
struggles in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Colombia, Korea and West Africa
and with the people of Cuba and Venezuela;

--Resume our involvement with the United Nations and its agencies;

None of this is possible without an adequate financial base! Today, more
than ever, it is impossible to rely on volunteer help.  It is necessary to
pay someone to write, to maintain the website and list serve, to organize,
etc.

We know you understand.  We do not have the billions at the disposal of the
war makers, the mass media and the heavily funded rightwing organizations.
The strength of our movement is PEOPLE.

BUT WE MUST RAISE MONEY, TOO.

OUR MINIMUM GOAL---TO CARRY ON OUR WORK FOR THE NEXT SIX MONTHS-- IS
$10,000.

Please send us your donation. Anything that you can contribute will help
and will be greatly appreciated.

PLEASE SEND CHECKS TO: ICPJ, 3020 El Cerrito Plaza, #195, El Cerrito, CA
4530.

THANK YOU!

Karen Talbot
International Council for Peace and Justice


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