"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.
NEW YORK — On the evening of January 28, at the Revolution Bookstore in the Chelsea area of NYC, people filled the store to hear 2 of the lawyers defending detainees at Guantanamo tell their client’s stories which are in the book, The Guantanamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison, Outside the Law, edited by Mark P. Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz.
Andy Zee of Revolution Books addressed the group first. He pointed out that we can only hear the stories of the prisoners from their lawyers because the prisoners are not allowed to speak. Torture is still dangerous now because it is being denied, it is being codified, and torturers are not being indicted. He asked, what kind of system does this to people? Zee also mentioned the huge loss of Howard Zinn, the people’s historian, who had died the day before.
On January 29, Scott Roeder was convicted of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the courageous doctor who provided abortions for women. Roeder gunned down Dr. Tiller in a church, shooting him in the head on May 31, 2009. A Wichita jury found Roeder, who confessed to the killing, guilty after just 37 minutes of deliberation.
Dr. Tiller, whose watchword was “trust women,” was one of the few doctors in the U.S. who specialized in performing late-term abortions. Women came to him from around the country, often under very stressful medical and/or personal conditions.
What is to be done about the idiocy that has spread, like a poisonous but imperceptible gas, from the Pentagon to Congress, and is now wafting through the White House, deranging all it touches?
As it travels, this dismal infection transforms statistical impossibilities into magic numbers, which appear, to the uninformed observer, to confirm the most shameless lies of former Vice President Dick Cheney: that Guantánamo was teeming with hardcore terrorists, who couldn’t wait to “return to the battlefield.”
Honoring George Bush with a “Pro Life Award” is something like honoring an iceberg for sinking the Titanic--although the cost in human life totals hundreds of thousands, not hundreds. This is to say nothing of the millions of lives disrupted, families broken, and horrendous injuries, both physical and mental.
WAR IS NOT PRO LIFE! BUSH DESERVES PRISON, NOT A PRO LIFE AWARD for
Illegal Wars causing the death of over a million people, including thousands of US deaths, sanctioning Torture, violating our Constitution, and smashing any hopes for world peace into the foreseeable future.
We at World Can’t Wait are excited to announce the new film Abortion, Morality and the Liberation of Women is now available on YouTube!
From the description of the film:
A whole generation of women and men have been kept in the dark from the basic facts around abortion rights, and left disarmed in the face of the anti-abortion, anti-women movement which will not stop nor find common ground with women's right to control the most basic of decisions affecting their lives. This film, Abortion, Morality, and the Liberation of Women, documents an August, 2009 discussion between Susan Wicklund, M.D., author of This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Provider (available at bookstores and on ) and Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution newspaper (find A Declaration: For Women's Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity at revcom.us), and aims to bring scientific and moral clarity to the topic of women's right to abortion.
In memory of
Dr. George Tiller
August 8, 1941 - May 31, 2009
A production of World Can't Wait
Contact us at
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or (866) 973-4463 to organize resistance to the anti-abortion movement and help spread this film, and this message. DVD copies are available to student groups, teachers, and others who want to organize public showings.
You can walk down many of the streets of Port au Prince and see absolutely no evidence that the world community has helped Haiti.
Twenty three days after the earthquake jolted Haiti and killed over 200,000 people, as many as a million people have still not received any international food assistance.
The United States government has held Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Guantanamo ever since his capture in 2003. He was one of many “enemy combatants” held there without charge or trial. Not only did he suffer from this violation of American and international law, but Mohammed suffered through water boarding torture an incredible 180 times in just 30 days.
In November 2009 the Obama administration Justice Department announced that Mohammed would finally be tried in federal court in Manhattan. The courthouse is located just blocks away from the World Trade Center site that Mohammed is now charged with plotting to destroy.
Our lunch-time protest against CBS was very spirited – CBS freaked out and called the police on our relatively small gathering, but 6 of us managed to get in the doors and tried to deliver some of the messages that have been collected demanding the Super Bowl not feature Focus on the Family’s anti-abortion ad.
Shelby Knox was there: especially moving was her story about the 14 year old girl living in Lubbock, TX who ends up in a Crisis Pregnancy Center and is lied to, manipulated and told she just has to give birth. Sunsara Taylor was there too, her usual fiery self. Some NYU students as well as others came out; and a few people stopped on the street and joined on the spot.
The following press release is from the Center for Constitutional Rights
Maher Arar Seeks to Hold U.S. Officials Accountable for Complicity in Torture
CONTACT:
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February 1, 2010, New York – Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) asked the United States Supreme Court to take up the case of Canadian citizen Maher Arar against U.S. officials for sending him to Syria to be interrogated under torture and arbitrarily detained for a year. Lower courts concluded that Mr. Arar’s suit could not proceed because it raised sensitive foreign policy and secrecy issues. If the Court of Appeals’ ruling is allowed to stand, the federal officials involved will effectively be immunized from any civil legal accountability for what they did to an innocent man.
Maher Arar is not available to comment in person, but is issuing the following statement: “With renewed hope I am asking the Supreme Court of the United States to hear my plight and eventually overturn lower courts’ rulings which essentially gave the government the green light to continue the abuse of its executive powers in matters related to National Security.”
This last October, Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah of the Dearborn/Detroit area was killed by the FBI for his so called links to arms dealing and ‘extremism.’ He was a popular leader in the community and active in providing food and shelter for the homeless. I had the chance to meet him on several occasions and I never once got the impression that he was an ‘extremist.’
The one thing he said that really stuck with me is ‘Allah challenges people with racism.’ Does that sound like an extremist to you?
He is back in the news now because the Dearborn police finally released his autopsy report to the Wayne County Medical Center after 3 months. The report revealed that the Imam was shot a total of 21 times, including once in the back. He was also handcuffed and placed into the back of a van. Rather than raising my own immediate questions, I will let friend Dawud Walid, Executive Director of CAIR-MI, speak:
A little over a year ago this week, millions of people in the U.S. greeted the inauguration of Obama with hope. For years people had watched in revulsion as Bush overrode massive public opposition to launch totally unjustified war against Iraq. They watched as he occupied Afghanistan and declared that the U.S. had the right to go to war against anyone it perceived to be even possibly “threatening” it.
They saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib and some heard the tales out of Guantánamo... they watched the basic rights that are supposed to be guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution shredded... and they saw a country rapidly heading in a direction that revolted them.
“Torture...is not a polite debate.
Torture is a crime against humanity.
Torture isn't just a war crime.
Torture is an abomination and a crystallization of everything John Yoo stands for…
It is your responsibility here to not sit politely while John Yoo speaks.” – protester, January 27, Commonwealth Club San Francisco
Wednesday night, January 27, “Torture Memos” author John Yoo was confronted by about two dozen protesters at the San Francisco stop of his national book tour for “Crisis and Command”.
Drone strikes are considered by Washington elites and Senator Lieberman particularly as ‘a critical element in our effort, our campaign, and our strategy to deny the terrorists who are terrorizing the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan.’ Senator McCain also suggested that they’re a ’part of an overall set of tactics which make up the strategy for victory.’
Let’s not be blinded by such rhetoric and propaganda. It’s downright misleading but most of all evil.
Note: The trial of the admitted murderer Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist who says he shot Dr. Tiller last May because he was “saving babies” and is arguing justifiable homicide in the Wichita courtroom started last Friday (on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, ‘coincidentally’). Debra Sweet has a piece about it. You can also see the updates on RH Reality Check.
Right now, the most media buzz about abortion centers around CBS’s decision to reverse their policy of prohibiting all “advocacy” ads during the Superbowl, and accept millions of dollars from Focus on the Family for a 30 second ad attacking women’s right to abortion.
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.
Howard Zinn led a life of principle and resistance. His death today by heart attack is a tremendous loss to the people around the world. Few people so consistently used their platform and respect to shine a light on the crimes being committed in our names, to turn people on to the truths this system tries to hide, and to foster a climate and spirit of resistance and truth-telling. He stood against the U.S.'s unjust wars for empire.
He excavated the buried genocidal history of this country. He challenged generation after generation to read and think outside the margins of acceptable academic discourse. I saw him speak not long ago at University of Chicago and got to watch the reaction of freshmen who'd never heard the kind of history -- radical and truthful history -- that Zinn brought to life... or the humor and friendly challenge to everyone in the audience to make their lives about something more meaningful than just getting a degree, a career, or a way for oneself. Zinn lived a life for the people and for a better future and challenged everyone he met to do the same.
Here is a link to an interview that Raymond Lotta did for the Revolutionary Worker (now Revolution Newspaper) with Howard back in 1998:
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