Financial Times commentary writes

Time to consider Iraq withdrawal

September 10 2004

This week a macabre milestone was passed in Iraq. More than 1,000 American soldiers have now been killed since the US-led invasion of the country began nearly 18 months ago. The overwhelming majority lost their lives after President George W. Bush declared major combat operations over in his now infamous "Mission Accomplished" photo-opportunity in May last year.

In that time, an unknown number of mostly civilian Iraqis, certainly not less than 10,000 and possibly three times that number, have perished, and hundreds more are dying each week. After an invasion and occupation that promised them freedom, Iraqis have seen their security evaporate, their state smashed and their country fragment into a lawless archipelago ruled by militias, bandits and kidnappers.

Rob Eshelman writes

Iraq Occupation Focus
www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk
Newsletter No. 7
September 8, 2004

Please circulate widely. To make sure you automatically receive
Iraq Occupation Focus Newsletters, go to our mailing list page to subscribe: http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/iraqfocus.

US Military Families Speak Out - UK tour
From the Saturday 4th December to Friday 10 December, Lou
Plummer of US Military Families Speak Out and Michael Hoffman from Iraq Veterans Against the War will be touring the country as guests of IOF. They will be available for media interviews, college and workplace and public meetings.
They would especially welcome any chance to meet with their counterparts among British military families. We are seeking financial sponsorship for Lou and Michael's visit (to defray cost of airfares). Please consider sending us a contribution.

Rob Eshelman writes :

An Appeal for the Release the Italian and Iraqi Aid Workers Abducted in Baghdad


THEY ARE NOT INSTRUMENTS OF THE OCCUPYING FORCES

We are individuals and organizations from around the world who opposed and
continue to oppose the occupation of Iraq and we plead for the release of two Italian and two Iraqi humanitarian workers who were abducted in Iraq last September 7, 2004.

Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both Italians, and Ra¹ad Ali Abdul Azziz< and Mahnoaz Bassam, both Iraqis, are members of Un Ponte Per Baghdad
(Bridges to Baghdad) an independent Italian humanitarian organization that has been working in Iraq since 1992. During the embargo, other humanitarian organizations refused to operate in Iraq, Bridges defied that in the belief that the suffering of civilians should not be used as a political bargaining chip.

"The Pentagon as Global Slumlord"
Mike Davis

[This piece is from April 2004 during the general uprising in Iraq and the American siege of Falluja.The current escalation in many Iraqi cities seems to call for some analysis of the general US military strategy.]

The young American Marine is exultant. "It's a sniper's dream," he tells a Los Angeles Times reporter on the outskirts of Fallujah. "You can go anywhere and there so many ways to fire at the enemy without him knowing where you are."

"Sometimes a guy will go down, and I'll let him scream a bit to destroy the
morale of his buddies. Then I'll use a second shot."

"To take a bad guy out," he explains, "is an incomparable 'adrenaline rush.'" He brags of having "24 confirmed kills" in the initial phase of the brutal U.S. onslaught against the rebel city of 300,000 people.

Faced with intransigent popular resistance that recalls the heroic Vietcong defense of Hue in 1968, the Marines have again unleashed indiscriminate terror. According to independent journalists and local medical workers, they have slaughtered at least two hundred women and children in the first two weeks of fighting.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

Stop the Draft Before it Starts

Healing Garden

Here we go:

There is pending legislation in the House and Senate to reinstate the draft (twin bills, S89 and HR163). Bill S89 was introduced by Sen. Fritz Hollings and Bill HR163 was introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY). This plan, among other things, eliminates higher education as a shelter and includes women as eligible to be drafted.

The Pentagon has quietly begun a public campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide. $28 million has been added to the 2004 Selective Service System(SSS)budget to prepare for a military draft that could start as early as June 15, 2005. The Selective Service must report to the President on March 31, 2005 that the system, which has lain dormant for decades, is ready for activation. (For further reading see here.)

from healinggarden@chartermi.net

Tel Aviv court orders expulsion of American ISM activist
By Relly Sa'ar, Haaretz Correspondent

Tel Aviv District Court Judge Oded Modrik on Thursday ruled to expel New Yorker Anne Robinson-Petter, the 44-year-old graphic and video artist who has been under arrest by the Immigration Police for the past two weeks.

The expulsion request was made Israel's security services, on the grounds that the member of the International Solidarity Movement posed a security threat.

The Tel Aviv court upheld the decision denying her entry into Israel and ordered her to leave the country within 24 hours, said her lawyer, Yael Berda. Robinson-Petter has been held at Ben-Gurion International Airport in the holding cells reserved for people refused entry to the country. She arrived two weeks ago for a 14-day visit with the intention of filming a video about a 79-year-old Holocaust survivor traveling the country and the territories, and to take part in demonstrations against the separation fence.

Marcello De Luna writes "The Redesign Project – Press Release July 3, 2004
Weinfelden, Switzerland, July 3, 2004
The Redesign Project is a contemporary art project reflecting on the Bush
Administration’s foreign and domestic policy.
The European artist Marcello De Luna has - by means of a contemporary art project -
expressed his concerns and hopes regarding the Iraq conflict and all that has come with it
(the biased media, the lies, the victims, the deteriorated image of the U.S. abroad, the
hope for the better with maybe a different administration in 2005). He has played on the
theme of the U.S. flag and "redesigned" it to reflect his thoughts about the events that
have unfolded for quite a while now.
The work is published on a web site that has been created for the project:
http://theredesignproject.com. The primary goal of the site is not commercial. It has been
fun to do the project and it's all about getting the designs out to help people who share

ANARSISTANBUL writes "ANARSISTANBUL: A SUMMARY OF WHAT WE'VE DONE AGAINST NATO
IMAGINATION WAS IN ACTION AGAINST NATO IN ISTANBUL

About a month before the global murderers had met in Istanbul on 28-29th of June; we said, "You don't have to watch this horror movie! Istanbul streets are yours!"

And then during the whole June, as ANARSISTANBUL ORGANIZATION AGAINST NATO we called everyone that loathes NATO for action against those murderers.
http://www.ozgurhayat.org/anarsistanbul/anarsisten g.htm#c

Bring The War Home writes

Bring The War Home in San Francisco June 27th to July 4th

On June 27th to July 4th, thousands of people will come to San Francisco to bring the war home.

Bring The War Home is a non-violent direct action campaign, centered around independent autonomous actions by related and unrelated affinity groups.