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From: John Clancy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To All, News from the actions in New York! Peace, Tom Walsh
ViTW Chicago
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE___________________________
Contacts: 773-447-3964 Danny Muller (In New York)
773-784-8065 Tom Jackson, Tom Walsh (In Chicago)
Date: January 16, 2001
Location: US Mission to the United Nations, 45th and First Avenue
Sixteen Arrested at U.S. Mission to U.N. Marking Ten Years of War on
the Iraqi People
New York, NY-- Sixteen people Including Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J.,
Fr. Simon Harak, SJ, Fr. John Dear,SJ, and Kathy Kelly (2000 Nobel
Peace Prize Nominee) were arrested on the steps of the U.S. Mission
to the U.N. today as they protested ongoing sanctions and bombings
of the Iraqi people. January 16 marks ten years since the start of
the Gulf War. Although the formal Gulf War itself only lasted 42
days, sanctions and bombings in the U.S. and British imposed "No Fly
Zones" have killed between 1.5 and 2 million people over the past ten
years. UNICEF has stated that one in ten children under the age of
one will die before their first birthday as a direct result of the
sanctions. UNICEF has also stated that 5000 Iraqi children ages five
and under die every month as a direct result of the sanctions.
Today, activists from all over the US held a non-violent direct
action at the U.S. Mission to the U.N., symbolizing effects of the
war on the civilian population of Iraq. The group shared a simple
meal based on the daily food ration of ordinary Iraqi families under
the UN/US economic sanctions against Iraq. The meal consisted of
lentils and rice. Unpurified water from the East River was brought
to the meal to symbolize the contaminated water that many Iraqis
have to drink, because the country has not been allowed the means to
restore its water purification systems, destroyed during the Gulf
War. Prior to imposition of sanctions, Iraq was classified as an
emerging first world country: it is now a third world country. After
sharing the meal, sixteen activists from the group attempted to
proceed to the US Mission to the United Nations in order to invite
Ambassador Richard Holbrook and other workers at the Mission to share
the meal and reflect on the deadly effect of UN sanctions on Iraqi
children and other civilians. They were arrested on the steps of the
Mission.
Ten years ago, allied forces attacked Iraq after it invaded Kuwait.
Today Kuwait called for a U.N. program that would truly benefit the
Iraqi people. ``I have some reservations on the so-called oil-for-
food. I would like it to read 'oil-for-food, democracy and
freedom''' for the Iraqi people, said Kuwait Minister of State for
Foreign Affairs Suleiman al-Shaheen. ``Why do we treat the Iraqi
people as vegetables? We are not treating them like human beings.
Humans need not only food. They are not cattle, they are a nation,
we would like to hear the voice of the Iraqi people,"
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., the incoming presidential administration
continues to state that it will toughen the U.S. position on
sanctions, even though ten years of that policy has not phased
Iraq�s military regime.
Voices in the Wilderness� campaign to stop the UN/US economic
sanctions against Iraq began in January 1996 when a core of
activists declared their intent to openly carry medicines and
medical relief supplies to Iraq in public violation of the
sanctions. To date, the group has organized 35 delegations to Iraq
and has been threatened, for each offense, with 12 years in prison
and over one million dollars in fines.
*********
from: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
subject: Rob: (Smash the World Bank) Need anti-Imperialist camp
Forwarded From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Call for the Anti-imperialist Camp 2001, Italy, July 27th - August
5th
It is the Anti-imperialist Camp's purpose to encourage whatever form
of struggle against injustice, to create the conditions for a
united anti-imperialist front and to set the bases for a new uprising
of a global revolutionary alternative.
http://www.antiimperialista.com
Will this world survive until 2100?
"Within a hundred years from today the planet Earth will be half
dead, and so will the human beings."
It is not us who are saying this, but the scientists who observe
the ongoing processes in the biosphere. The greenhouse effect--
the overheating of the Earth--will provoke irreversible climatic
changes. As a consequence, there will be lack of water almost
everywhere within only 50 years. Already today more than a fifth of
the world's population is suffering the lack of drinking water while
five million people die every year due to drinking of polluted water.
The desertification and destruction of the top soil are progressing
and seem to be unstoppable. More than two billion hectares of
cultivable land appear to be irreversibly deteriorated which means
that famine will reach catastrophic extents within a few decades.
Following this rhythm, Africa will lose half of its cultivated land.
The destruction of forests is continuing without any break, already
affecting four fifths of the existing forests. Half of the remaining
fifth is in danger, thus accelerating the destruction of the top soil
and putting at risk big parts of the water resources.
The destruction of the ecosystem, which is threatening life on earth
and thus the future of mankind, is not the effect of a divine
curse, neither, as it is being claimed, of the demographic explosion.
The overpopulation is, just like the pollution, a result of the mode
of production, i.e. of the capitalist system, of the insane mechanism
of subordinating everything under profit, under opulence and under
an unsustainable level of consumption possible only for very few
people.
Thus, what capitalists call progress or development is the first
cause of the fatal danger hanging over mankind. We would have to
produce what is indispensable and consume what is necessary to live,
while the market has become a huge waste disposal site for goods
whose purpose is not to satisfy the real needs but to make people
become drug addicts of consumption.
While the West has still one century left before falling into the
abyss, four fifths of mankind already live under conditions of pure
barbarism. More than one and a half billion people have to live on
less than one dollar per day. In 2025, they will be two billion. More
than a hundred countries, with a population of one billion (a forth
of the world's population) are living in pure misery, while the
world's first 258 billionaires possess more than the total earnings
of poorest half of the world's inhabitants. Generally speaking, 20%
of the world population, those who benefit from the highest incomes,
consume 86% of all private consumptions, while the poorest 20%
consume only 1.3% of the world product. Considering only Africa,
today an average family consumes 20% less than it did 25 years ago.
More than 89 countries are facing worse economic conditions today
than ten years ago. More than 600 million men and women do not have a
place to live. In 2010, more than 1.4 million of people will live in
accommodations without drinkable water and sanitary facilities.
65% of the world population has never made a phone call while only
in Manhattan there are more telephone lines than in whole of Africa.
40% of the world population does not have access to electricity. The
total expenses for pet food in the USA and in Europe are higher than
what is being spent to fight famine in the "third world". The North
Americans spend 8 billion dollars every year on cosmetics, the
Europeans 11 billion dollars on ice-cream. That is more than would be
necessary in order to offer basic education, drinking water and
sanitary facilities to two billion people.
Thus, the capitalist system is destroying the very basis of life on
two levels: on the one hand destroying the natural resources and on
the other condemning the majority of human beings to live under
miserable conditions. Also in the West injustice is growing. Neo-
liberalism is aggravating social marginalisation and exploitation,
while richness and power is being concentrated in the hands of small
oligarchies.
Instead of retreating, capitalism is aggravating its despotic
and imperialistic characteristics. The so called "new world order",
with NATO as its main armed instrument, is based on violence, on
terrorism, on embargos, on genocide of those peoples who dare to
challenge the Empire.
That is what the real globalization is all about. In fact, it does
not look like the one the mass media are presenting to us.
However, rebellion against this barbarism is steadily and unstoppably
growing all over the world. From Palestine to Seattle, from Colombia
to Prague new movements are coming up stating the urgent need of an
alternative to the current state of things.
It is the Anti-imperialist Camp's purpose to encourage whatever form
of struggle against injustice, to create the conditions for a
united anti-imperialist front and to set the bases for a new uprising
of a global revolutionary alternative.
Rebellion is not only fair, it is also necessary!
Anti-imperialist
Camp http://www.antiimperialista.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] To
unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: Smash-the-Worldbank-
[EMAIL PROTECTED] " JC
Knowledge is Power!
Elimination of the exploitation of man by man
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