Thursday, January 9, 2003

Monkey Wrenches in the War Machine QUOTE OF THE DAY "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events." - - Winston Churchill RHINO HERE: I think Arianna Huffington's been hangin out with Michael Moore. Apparently she got so mad at seeing one too many of those TV drug war ads linking smoking marijuana with financing terrorism that she decided to get creatively indignant. Adopting the same tactics, she's produced some TV ads that point out the much more credible link between driving SUVs and national security. The ads begin running in several major markets this weekend. The girl's got gumption! To view the ads, and to see a list of links to articles about the ad campaign, go to: http://www.ariannaonline.com/suv Anatol Lieven, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace... http://www.ceip.org/ ...& author of the book Chechnya and Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry has a thoughtful piece in the London Review Of Books entitled, "The Push for War", pondering what shrub & company (or as someone else recently coined it, "U.S.A. INC.") hopes to gain from an Iraq attack. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n19/liev01_.html Reuters covered the "Human Shield" movement yesterday in an article entitled, "Human Shield Peace Activists Mobilize for Iraq": http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0108-07.htm If the idea of a trip to Baghdad next month seems a bit extreme, yet you still want to help throw monkey wrenches in the war machine gears, the good folks at MoveOn Pac are scheduling meetings for you, January 21st, with legislators across the U.S. Below the line today is their 'Call To Action'. 9:51:35 AM    comment

Letter From Eli Pariser "Letter From Eli Pariser - International Campaigns Director, MoveOn.org, 1/8/2003" On January 21st, across the country, thousands of us will be meeting with the offices of our members of Congress on the possible war on Iraq. We'll meet with them in district offices from Portland, ME to Portland, OR, and we'll deliver a petition representing hundreds of thousands of us who want our leaders to "Let the Inspections Work." We plan to meet with over 400 Congressional offices, but to do that we'll need everyone to come out. You can register in under five minutes for a meeting in your area at: http://www.moveon.org/inspectionsmeetings/ We are at a critical point in the campaign to resolve the crisis over Iraq through peaceful means. In the UK, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has put the probability of war at under 50%. Mohammad ElBaradei, head of the UN's nuclear inspections program, has said there is "no smoking gun" and no significant evidence pointing to a revitalized Iraqi nuclear program. Numerous newspaper reports have suggested that when Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, talks to the UN Security Council on the January 27th, he will say that Iraq has complied with the inspections. At the same time, reports on the costs of this war in lives, global security, and money continue to come in on an almost daily basis. A Yale economist has placed the total cost of the war at up to $1.6 TRILLION dollars. A UN report argues that as many as 500,000 Iraqi civilians could be killed or seriously wounded in the war, with malnutrition affecting millions. The CIA tells us that the only circumstance under which Saddam Hussein is likely to use weapons of mass destruction is if he is backed into a corner. But President Bush and some of the hawks in his administration still appear eager to go to war, regardless of whether the inspections are working. Many members of Congress are concerned about this, but they're reluctant to challenge the President to commit to the United Nations process and let the inspections go forward. The authority to declare war resides with Congress and Congress alone. Congress authorized the President to use force only as a last resort. We are not at that point -- the weapons inspections are working. It's up to Congress to insist that we let the inspections work, and it's up to us to see that they do. Constituent meetings may be the single most powerful tool we have for doing that. In these meetings, we'll be talking to members of Congress or their senior staff. A team of hard-working MoveOn volunteers has been contacting each office; not all of the meetings are confirmed yet, but by the end of the week they will be. Please DON'T contact the members' office about this -- we're trying to coordinate this so that it's easy for them. After you register, you'll be given contact info for the volunteer coordinating your meeting. ...We're organizing these meetings in conjunction with Win Without War, a coalition of major mainstream membership organizations like the Sierra Club, NOW, the NAACP, and the National Council of Churches. Together, these organizations represent tens of millions of Americans. It's going to be huge. We'd love to see you there. Please sign up today: http://www.moveon.org/inspectionsmeetings/ The Bush Administration has indicated that it will make a firm statement regarding the war on Iraq on January 27th. It's critical that we get Congress to reach out to the President and ensure that he lets the inspections work. We don't have much time, but by meeting with Congress, we could make the critical difference. Please sign up now. Sincerely, Eli Pariser "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. COMMENT ON TODAY'S BLOG / SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. 9:41:06 AM    comment

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