WHAT CAN YOU DO TO PREVENT WAR WITH IRAQ? There are a number of things that you can do to stop war with Iraq.
1)You can use the sample letter below, plus the press releases, rewritten in your own words and HANDWRITTEN NOT TYPED AND NOT PRINTED, to Prime Minister John Howard, Opposition leader Simon Crean, and Shadow Foreign Affairs Spokes Kevin Rudd, to tell them that you utterly oppose war on Iraq. It is as important to ensure that Crean and Rudd get copies of what you send to John Howard, as it is to send the letter to Howard. Do please write! If Howard and more especially Crean and Rudd get hundreds of letters opposing war with Iraq they must take note of it, and Crean and Rudd must stiffen their opposition to war. It's important also, to write to your local federal parliamentarian and to urge them to oppose war with Iraq. Copy the letter to you to Howard, and Crean to them, and ask your local member to reply to you. 2 Do sign the online petition to the Prime Minister put together by WILPF http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/petition-sign.cgi?nowar1 3) If you are in Sydney do please attend the vigils that take place every friday in front of Sydney Town Hall, 5.30-8.30pm. If war breaks out, emergency actions will take place in all capital cities at 5pm that day, or 5pm the following day if the news arrives late. In Sydney the emergency action will be at the Town Hall, in Melbourne at the State Library, and in Adelaide in front of Parliament House. We can still stop this war. Do it now! TO: PRIME MINISTER JOHN HOWARD 6273-4100 02-9251-5454 CC FOREIGN MINISTER ALEXANDER DOWNER 6273-4112 SIMON CREAN 6277-8444, 03-9545-6299 KEVIN RUDD 6277-8508 07-3899-5755 YOUR LOCAL FEDERAL PARLIAMENT MEMBER RE: WAR WITH IRAQ Dear Prime Minister, I am writing to you to make clear my strong opposition to Australian participation in any war with Iraq. The Australian government should not only not be supporting US policy on Iraq, but should be urging the Bush Administration to change its own policy in this area. Your government should actively oppose US policy on Iraq both at a diplomatic level and in your public statements. Australian military involvement in a war of agression to control oil supplies should be absolutely unthinkable. The purported reason for miltary action against Iraq is because of their supposed development of weapons of mass destruction. However, a look at who has the largest arsenals of weapons of mass destruction shows that, while the US has some 12,000 nuclear warheads, Russia 22,000, France 450, China 400, Israel approx400, the UK 250, India 75-150, Pakistan 35-70, and North Korea between 5 and 15, Iraq's most probable estimate is - zero. The UN inspections, as expected, show that Iraq has little or nothing in the way of significant WMD stocks. War with Iraq would be a humanitarian disaster that would not be outweighed by the elimination of the Saddam Hussein regime. War with Iraq has been condemned by the Christian churches both in Australia and worldwide as morally unjustifiable. Mr Howard, I urge you to actively oppose the policy of war with Iraq and to devote Australias diplomatic and other resources to the cause of peace. War will bitterly divide Australian society. I want you to know clearly that if you continue to support US policy on Iraq I will continue to do all I can to change both Australian and US government policy. Australian military personnel would be in Iraq without my support, without my blessing, and not in my name. I am copying this letter to my local federal member in the hope that he will take action on it. In the meantime I would appreciate a detailed and prompt reply. Yours sincerely (Signed) AUSTRALIAN PEACE COMMITTEE FRIENDS OF THE EARTH AUSTRALIA OZPEACE CAMPAIGN FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION AND DISARMAMENT (CICD) NOT IN OUR NAME:HOW CLOSE TO WAR? With SAS leave canceled and the Prime Minister canceling other engagements to attend a national security conference on war against Iraq, Australian peace groups are urging the government to reverse its policy of support for Bush administration military action on Iraq. Australian government military action will take place without the consent, without the support of, and against the will of, most Australians. According to the groups: "All the ominous signs are there for Australian involvement in the Bush administrations push for military action on Iraq. The very denial of the government that the cancellation of SAS leave means anything, combined with todays announcement that the Prime Minister will be attending a special national security meeting suggests an inevitable-seeming drift toward war." "Yet at the same time, the United nations inspectors in Iraq have announced that they can find nothing - which is exactly what we expected they would find. It is quite clear that the Bush administration has wanted to go to war with Iraq all along, whether or not they actually have weapons of mass destruction. The country that really does have a significant nuclear weapons inventory and the means to deliver it - North Korea - rightly gets handled with kid gloves. In fact, the way North Korea with its far more deadly possibilities is being handled is the way Iraq should be handled " "There is no excuse for war with Iraq. The vast majority of Australians oppose war, and yet we seem to be drifting unthinkingly into it as if we had no will of our own." "The ALP must immediately take a strong and principled stand with no ifs or buts, against military action." "The Australian government must immediately send a message in the very strongest terms to President Bush saying they will not support war and that they will actively oppose military action at a diplomatic level." A peace vigil will take place at Sydney Town Hall from 5.30-8.30pm this evening. In the event of war, protests will take place in all capital cities (Town Hall Sydney, State Library Melbourne, Parliament Hs Adelaide) at 5pm on the day war breaks out or the next day if news arrives late in the day. Contact: John Hallam 02-9567-7533, 02-9810-2598 Irene Gale 08-8364-2291 Jacob Grech 0402-246-491 Pauline Mitchell 03-9555-3076 .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
