Welcome to Daily Fact and Act.
For much more see LMNOP Resources.
Daily Fact & Act Index
Stay Informed | Spread Truth | Act
News you can do something about.
Daily Fact & Act #06
Wednesday, 25 September 1991*
From Harlem
LMNOP - Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace
http://lmno4p.org
*This is 1991, right? Recession, war on Iraq, lower markets, low employment, low job creation, weak dollar, a "president" who is out of touch-- "It's the economy stupid" --with the people, lies and rumors being touted by politicians and the press as truth, government actions causing mass protests in the streets.
Analysis
The current administration is barking for what increasingly looks like an unfounded attack on a sovereign nation which must occur now, this week, today. The urgency of the cabinet members' speeches coinciding with Public Relations firms being hired with taxpayers money to demonize Saddam Hussein, seem purposefully timed to effect November elections. America has kept it's checks and balances throughout its history, rarely giving a majority to both the executive and legislative branches of US government.
WHAT IS THIS WAR ABOUT?
US domination of world oil supplies at the expense of the continued loss of civilian lives.
1). Dictatorships and monarchies abound.
2). UNSCOM admits it is unlikely Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. There were none three years ago when it left, and it takes a lot more than three years to develop a nuclear arsenal.
3). Hundreds of UN Resolutions are ignored daily.
So then, what is this war about? If we do not rightly know, we must not righteously rush in without proper debate and examination of the world-wide repercussions. We are about to flaunt international law. We are about to murder civilians, for this is what "getting Saddam" means.
We know this President is the largest fund raiser in history. We know that much of his funding comes from dubious corporate entities such as Enron. Is this "war" the will of the people, or the will of Enron?
IF WE BREAK INTERNATIONAL LAW
THERE IS NO INTERNATIONAL LAW
Action
1). Call your representative today. You can simply let them know you have reservations about the rush to war and would like Congress to debate the issue more thoroughly. If you are so inclined, you can tell them you are vehemently against this unsupported and uniltateral attack by the US on a soveriegn state, prohibited by International Law. If we break the law, there is no more law.
2). Lobby the Congress by phone through moveon.org
"Being a volunteer lobbyist would take about four hours a week for the next two weeks. You don't need to be in Washington, D.C. -- you'll most likely do your work over the phone. We'll provide a detailed guide and script, but you should be comfortable engaging in a discussion in your own words about the war in Iraq."
Fact
Not in the interest of the United States:
GENOCIDE:
1). 1994 Rwanda: 1,000,000 dead in 100 days.
US GAIN: None.
US HELP: None.
2). 1979(?)-1999 East Timor: Indonesian military killed 200,000 East Timorese, 1/3 of population.
US GAIN: access to vast Indonesian oil reserves.
US HELP: Munitions, funding, coporate technical assistance to the genocidal military.
3). Srebrenica, Bosnia, the world's first United Nations Safe Area, was the site of the worst case of genocide in Europe since World War II. In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army staged a brutal takeover of the small, intimate spa town and its surrounding region. Over a period of five days, the Bosnian Serb soldiers separated Muslim families and systematically murdered over 7,000 men and boys in fields, schools, and warehouses. From 1992-1995 200,000 were killed.
US GAIN: None.
US HELP: None.
4). 1998 Kosovo: Civilian lives and infrastructure of major European city lost. One month after bombing began a vote of the people in the democracy was projected to remove Milosevic by a landslide. Instead US/NATO bombing caused the country to unite (much like the US did on 9/11) and Milosevic was re-elected by a unified population.
US GAIN: Completion of $2 billion oil pipeline on the bottom of the Caspian Sea.
US HELP: Headed relentless allied bombing of Belgrade, capital city of The Repbublic of Yugoslavia (Can you imagine doing that to Paris?).
http://www.jamestown.org/pubs/view/mon/005/019_011.htm<
Other installations:
Congo - Dictator Mobutu amassed wealth from stealing foreign aid to his people, killing those as he felt necessary.
Chile - Pinochet murdered thousands of college students and littered the countryside with their bodies
Marcos - Philipines' Deadly Dictatorship from 1965-1986.
Shah of Iran - Brutally repressive monarchy, esp. in the 1970s.
DEMOCRACY:
1). Saudi Arabia is a monarchy with a legsilature appointed by the King.
2). Kuwait has a legislature that is dissolved by the Emir every two years.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
1). Egypt has chemical weapons.
2). Saudi Arabia has chemical and biological weapons.
3). Israel is the fifth largest nuclear power and has threatened the use of these weapons, unprovoked, on its neighbors, causing much anxiety throughout the region.
4). Weapons of mass destruction are not a peacekeeping or safe in the hands of any government.
5). The US is the only country in the world to have used each category of its weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations repeatedly: nuclear, chemical, biological and unconventional such as depleted uranium tipped bombs used in the Persian Gulf and on the peaceful European city of Belgrade as little as four years ago.
Depleted Uranium Education Project
"The United States has supplied Turkey, Israel, and Indonesia with such weapons and they have used them against civilian populations. But the nation most guilty is our own. No nation in the world possesses greater weapons of mass destruction than we do, and none has used them more often, or with greater loss of civilian life. In Hiroshima hundreds of thousands died, in Korea and Vietnam millions died as a result of our use of such weapons.
Our economic sanctions are also weapons of mass destruction, having resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. Saddam Hussein may well have weapons of mass destruction, he may indeed be inclined to use them, but only the United States is actually using them, and at this very moment, people are dying in Iraq as a result."
Howard Zinn
Sources
East Timor Action Network
http://www.etan.org/timor/uspolicy.htm
The Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor is one of the worst atrocities of this century. It has been made possible with military and diplomatic assistance of the United States.
In 1975, Indonesia launched its invasion hours after President Ford and Henry Kissinger left from an official meeting with Suharto, the Indonesian dictator, in Jakarta. The US then doubled Indonesia's military aid, blocked the United Nations from taking effective enforcement action, and continues, to this day, to transfer new weapons, particularly helicopters.
During the height of the genocide in the late 1970s, when war and famine killed over 200,000 East Timorese, the U.S. obligingly provided equipment like OV-10 Bronco counter-insurgency aircraft.
The History Place
Books
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
Samantha Power, 2/2002
"After much research, she discovered a pattern: "The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred," she writes in this impressive book. Debunking the notion that U.S. leaders were unaware of the horrors as they were occurring against Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Iraqi Kurds, Rwandan Tutsis, and Bosnians during the past century, Power discusses how much was known and when, and argues that much human suffering could have been alleviated through a greater effort by the U.S. This powerful book is a call to make such indifference a thing of the past." Reviewed by Amazon.com staff writer, Shawn Carkonen.
East Timor Violations of Human Rights
Amnesty International Staff
Documentaries
LMNOP Documentaries
SREBRENICA: A CRY FROM THE GRAVE.
LMNOP
LMNOP
http://lmno4p.org
Calendar - Events throughout the San Francisco Bay Area updated frequently.
http://lmno4p.org/calendar.htm
Resources - Up to the minute information in many categories.
http://lmno4p.org/resources.htm
Daily Fact & Act Index
http://lmno4p.org/fa/
Fact & Act produced by Wm Leslie Howard
webmaster@lmno4p.org
LMNOP Contacts:
Daily Fact & Act Archive Index
http://lmno4p.org/fa/
| Copyright © MMII Wm Leslie Howard | eYeOpenersdesign.com | for LMNOP | Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace | Spread far & wide |