"That which you do not resist and mobilize to stop you will learn – or be forced – to accept.”
To the Anti-War Movement in the United States:
Barack Obama is sending a surge of 20,000 troops to Afghanistan.
An antiwar movement that does not move immediately to oppose the Obama doctrine of shifting the central front of the war on terror to Afghanistan, no longer deserves to be called an anti-war movement.read more...
The World Can’t Wait organizes people living in the United States to repudiate and stop the fascist direction initiated by the Bush Regime, including: the murderous, unjust and illegitimate occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; the global “war of terror” of torture, rendition and spying; and the culture of bigotry, intolerance and greed. This direction cannot and will not be reversed by leaders who tell us to seek common ground with fascists, religious fanatics, and empire. It can only be possible by the people building a community of resistance - an independent mass movement of people - acting in the interests of humanity to stop, and demand prosecution, of these crimes.
Many people in this country are aware of the atrocious conditions and treatment of adult prisoners in the U.S. war of terror. These prisoners have been held at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, and other hellholes run by the U.S. But few are aware that thousands of children have also been taken by the U.S. and its allies in this war of terror.
The U.S. government’s case against Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani who holds an advanced degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will go to the jury Monday in federal court here in New York City. I’ve been in the courtroom, and several times in the overflow room with dozens of supporters and reporters.
Even when we are only watching the trial through cameras in the overflow rooms, we are forced to give ID to enter, all to bolster the impression that Dr. Siddiqui is a dangerous terrorist, and that we are dangerous for caring what happens to her. Everyone entering the courthouse goes through airport style security screening, but to go into her trial, one must be searched again.
The U.S. military, in league with South Korea, is planning to use a new naval base to be built on the beautiful Jeju Island just south of the Korean peninsula. Jeju is known as the peace island. My friend, Kyle Kajahiro, with American Friends Service Committee in Honolulu, writes that “Jeju … has beautiful volcanic peaks and semi-tropical weather, pristine waters abundant with sea food and a deeply spiritual and independent people who resisted the Japanese occupation as well as repression by the military government of South Korea. The famous women pearl divers have historically been the leaders of their struggles and embodiments of their tough, fighting spirit.”
Now, according to the plan, all that will be either destroyed or seriously endangered by a missile defense system with Aegis destroyer warships docked there. Although this is advertised as Korean and “eco-friendly”, the common wisdom is that it will be mainly used as the basis for the U.S. to contain China. (More on this below.) The base port will accommodate 20 warships and two 15,000 ton cruise liners. It will bring in submarines and nuclear powered ships, further destroying what the U.N. has called an environmentally pristine location.
According to a report in the Washington Post on January 19, 2010, the FBI routinely claimed false “terrorism emergencies” to illegally collect thousands of phone records of Americans between 2002 and 2006 by abusing an already expansive PATRIOT Act power. The PATRIOT Act was rushed through Congress after 9/11 and gave the federal government broad authority to spy on all of us.
The law was a virtual wish list of all those who had dreamed of creating a national security state in the U.S. One of the new spy tools was the use of “national security letters.” By utilizing “exigent letters,” or emergency letters, to gain private records for investigations when no emergency existed, the FBI regularly violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The FBI also routinely issued National Security Letters (NSLs) after the fact in an attempt to “legitimize” the use of exigent letters.
I am hearing from around the world, and especially Pakistan, that our protest against U.S. drone bombings was much appreciated. We got as close to CIA headquarters as we could, then marched to Dick Cheney's new house.
Drones and artificial intelligence are the weapons of choice for US investment in expanding empire and occupation. We should and will be doing a lot more visible protest of the military and CIA drone programs... (read more at debra.worldcantwait.net)
On January 18th, a group of anti-abortion religious fundamentalists came to Houston to protest at a new Planned Parenthood facility. These people call Planned Parenthood’s new Houston location an “abortion super center” because of its 78,000 square feet, and they call the location of the building itself racist because it is situated near Black and Chicano neighborhoods.
They claim that Planned Parenthood chose this location to target neighborhoods of the oppressed for abortions. Their agenda is to enslave women. Those of us who support a woman’s right to choose, who stand in opposition to the oppression of women, came out in support of abortion rights and Planned Parenthood.
We want to be able to search everything, so we could see if Mohammed Atta ever got a parking ticket in Roselle. You can’t connect the dots if you can’t see them. -- Richard Kelly, New Jersey Regional Operations Intelligence Center’s Director
[E]ach day [the NSA] collects four times the volume of information stored in the Library of Congress – Matthew Aid, Intelligence Historian
[If a terrorist incident has a] one percent chance of occurring, then it need[s] to be treated as a certainty. – Dick Cheney
As ridiculous as Cheney’s one percent doctrine sounds, his approach is that of our government, under both Republicans and Democrats, in gathering information about possible threats.
The devastation and death that has occurred this week in Haiti has made me cry as I read accounts and see pictures of the tragedy there. The numbers of dead will likely be in the tens of thousands, if not higher. The whole world is watching and people want to do what they can to help the Haitian people.
But as the Haitian people suffer, the U.S. government is conducting what amounts to a military invasion of a suffering population, and accompanying this with a public relations campaign to portray the U.S. military and U.S. imperialism as some sort of humanitarian saviors. We must not forget the real role played by the U.S. war machine around the world and also in Haiti.
On January 9, 2010 the United States and the Karzai Afghan puppet government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which allegedly will turn over the operation of the U.S. military prison at Bagram, Afghanistan to Karzai’s government. This move is meant to deny the prisoners their legal rights.
Last night, on both coasts, World Can’t Wait, Code Pink and other people of conscience demanded the prosecution of John Yoo, the principal legal architect of the justification of torture by the United States.
In Berkeley, where Yoo’s 2010 class schedule called for the first class of the semester, UC officials made the location secret, they said, because of “concerns for students’ safety.”
One might note that it would be more dangerous for a law student to be taught Constitutional law by someone who opposed international law on the subject of torture (not to mention U.S. law) than for those students to encounter advocates against torture.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
