From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sat Mar  1 14:48:19 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 14:48:19 -0800
Subject: [news] 
 Turkish parliament rejects basing 62,000 U.S. combat troops against
 Iraq
Message-ID: <3E6138B3.921560BA@shaw.ca>

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/03/01/international1244EST0570.DTL>
Turkish parliament rejects basing 62,000 U.S. combat troops against Iraq

SUZAN FRASER, Associated Press Writer

Saturday, March 1, 2003
(03-01) 10:07 PST ANKARA, Turkey (AP)

In a serious blow to U.S. plans for a possible war with Iraq,
Turkey's parliament speaker nullified the legislature's vote Saturday
to allow deployment of 62,000 U.S. combat troops to open a northern
front against Iraq.

Speaker Bulent Arinc voided the vote on constitutional grounds,
ruling that a majority of legislators present had not voted in favor.
Arinc then closed parliament until Tuesday.

The vote was 264-250 with 19 abstentions, four short of a simple
majority.

The bill's rejection is likely to seriously increase tensions with
the United States which had been expecting a positive vote.

The motion would have empowered the government to authorize the
basing of up to 62,000 troops, 255 warplanes and 65 helicopters.

Washington has been looking to use bases in Turkey to open a northern
front against Iraq, which would have divided Saddam Hussein's army if
there is a war. Turkish and U.S. generals said the strategy would
lead to a quicker and less bloody war.

Washington had been offering Turkey some $15 billion in loans and
grants if the troops were allowed in to cushion the Turkish economy
from the impact of any war.

A signing of that agreement had been expected after the vote.

But there was strong resistance in the governing Justice and
Development Party to any vote. An overwhelming majority of the
Turkish public - polls show as high as 94 percent - oppose a war and
deputies were under strong domestic pressure to reject any U.S. troop
basing.

Hours before the vote, the party's leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, met
with his party legislators, trying to persuade them to back the U.S.
troop deployment.

A mile from parliament, 50,000 Turks held a rally to protest the war.

"No to War," and "We don't want to be America's soldiers'," they
shouted as some 4,000 police stood guard. Some carried banners that
read: "The people will stop this war," and "Budget for education not
war."

Party leaders had called for a Thursday vote, but that was put off
until Saturday amid signs that some legislators would vote against
the motion.

From pnbrown at vcn.bc.ca  Wed Mar  5 22:33:13 2003
From: pnbrown at vcn.bc.ca (Paul Browning)
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 22:33:13 -0800
Subject: [news] Fw: [Fwd: [march5mars] genaral assembly vs security concil]
Message-ID: <005901c2e3aa$43651a40$6401a8c0@PAUL>


----- Original Message -----
From: "vincentp" <vincentp at colosseum.com>
To: <san at lists.tao.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 10:31 PM
Subject: san: [Fwd: [march5mars] genaral assembly vs security concil]


>
>


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`
end



From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Fri Mar  7 10:40:27 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 10:40:27 -0800
Subject: [news] This Is What A 'Liberal-Democratic' Police State Looks Like
Message-ID: <3E68E79B.41FA9FDD@shaw.ca>

-----Forwarded Message-----
 
To: RPJC Discuss <rpjc-discuss at lists.riseup.net>
Date: 05 Mar 2003 18:46:28 -0800

[As cynical as I am, even I couldn't believe this story so I asked for
confirmation - the below from both Reuters and Fox.  What can I say?]

>From the Fox News Website:

Man Arrested After Refusing to Remove Anti-War Shirt in Mall
Wednesday, March 05, 2003

ALBANY, N.Y.  - A man was charged with trespassing in a mall after he
refused to take off a T-shirt that said "Peace on Earth" and "Give peace
a chance."

Mall security approached Stephen Downs, 61, and his 31-year-old son,
Roger, on Monday night after they were spotted wearing the T-shirts at
Crossgates Mall in a suburb of Albany, the men said.

The two said they were asked to remove the shirts made at a store there,
or leave the mall. They refused.

The guards returned with a police officer who repeated the ultimatum.
The son took his T-shirt off, but the father refused.

"'I said, `All right then, arrest me if you have to,"' Downs said. "So
that's what they did. They put the handcuffs on and took me away."

Downs pleaded innocent to the charges Monday night. The New York Civil
Liberties Union said it would help with his case if asked.

Police Chief James Murley said his officers were just responding to a
complaint by mall security.

"We don't care what they have on their shirts, but they were asked to
leave the property, and it's private property," Murley said.

A mall spokeswoman did not return calls Tuesday seeking comment.

Monday's arrest came less than three months after about 20 peace
activists wearing similar T-shirts were told to leave by mall security
and police. There were no arrests.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with
trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to
take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the
mall.

According to the criminal complaint filed on Monday, Stephen Downs was
wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Give Peace A Chance" that he had
just purchased from a vendor inside the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland,
New York, near Albany.

"I was in the food court with my son when I was confronted by two
security guards and ordered to either take off the T-shirt or leave the
mall," said Downs.

When Downs refused the security officers' orders, police from the town
of Guilderland were called and he was arrested and taken away in
handcuffs, charged with trespassing "in that he knowingly enter(ed) or
remain(ed) unlawfully upon premises," the complaint read.

Downs said police tried to convince him he was wrong in his actions by
refusing to remove the T-shirt because the mall "was like a private
house and that I was acting poorly.

"I told them the analogy was not good and I was then hauled off to night
court where I was arraigned after pleading not guilty and released on my
own recognizance," Downs told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Downs is the director of the Albany Office of the state Commission on
Judicial Conduct, which investigates complaints of misconduct against
judges and can admonish, censure or remove judges found to have engaged
in misconduct.

Calls to the Guilderland police and district attorney, Anthony Cardona
and to officials at the mall were not returned for comment.

Downs is due back in court for a hearing on March 17.

He could face up to a year in prison if convicted.

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sat Mar  8 12:14:36 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2003 12:14:36 -0800
Subject: [news] Online Newspaper Shakes Up Korean Politics
Message-ID: <3E6A4F2C.B126D239@shaw.ca>

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/international/asia/06SEOU.html?tnt
email1

Online Newspaper Shakes Up Korean Politics
By HOWARD W. FRENCH


EOUL, South Korea ? For years, people will be debating what made this
country go from conservative to liberal, from gerontocracy to youth
culture and from staunchly pro-American to a deeply ambivalent ally ?
all seemingly overnight.

For most here, the change is symbolized by the election in December of
Roh Moo Hyun, a reformist lawyer with a disarmingly unfussy style who at
56 is youthful by South Korean political standards. But for many
observers, the most important agent of change has been the Internet.

By some measures, South Korea is the most wired country in the world,
with broadband connections in nearly 70 percent of households. In the
last year, as the elections were approaching, more and more people were
getting their information and political analysis from spunky news
services on the Internet instead of from the country's overwhelmingly
conservative newspapers.

Most influential by far has been a feisty three-year-old startup with
the unusual name of OhmyNews. Around election time the free online news
service was registering 20 million page views per day.

Although things have cooled down a bit, even these days the service
averages about 14 million visits daily, in a country of only about 40
million people.

The online newspaper, which began with only four employees, started as a
glimmer in the eye of Oh Yeon Ho, now 38, a lifelong journalistic rabble
rouser who wrote for underground progressive magazines during the long
years of dictatorship here.

Its name, OhmyNews, a play on the expression "Oh my God!" which entered
the Korean language by way of a comedian who popularized it around the
time the online service was founded in 2000.

Although the staff has grown to 41, from the beginning the electronic
newspaper's unusual concept has been to rely mostly on contributions
from ordinary readers all over the country, who send dispatches about
everything from local happenings and personal musings to national
politics.

Only 20 percent of the paper each day is written by staff journalists.
So far, a computer check shows, there have been more than 10,000 other
bylines.

The newspaper deals with questions of objectivity and accuracy by
grading articles according to their content. Those that are presented as
straight news are fact-checked by editors. Writers are paid small
amounts, which vary according to how the stories are ranked, using
forestry terminology, from "kindling" to "rare species."

"My goal was to say farewell to 20th-century Korean journalism, with the
concept that every citizen is a reporter," said Mr. Oh, a wiry, intense
man whose mobile phone never stops ringing ? and who insists his name
has no connection with the newspaper's.

"The professional news culture has eroded our journalism," he said,
"and I have always wanted to revitalize it. Since I had no money, I
decided to use the Internet, which has made this guerrilla strategy
possible."

The kind of immediacy this brand of journalism can bring to a story was
brought home again in late January by the dispatches of a firefighter
from the central city of Taegu, who sent gripping accounts of the subway
arson disaster there, which killed nearly 200 people.

More pertinent to the impact OhmyNews has had on the country's political
culture were reports the service ran last summer after two schoolgirls
were crushed to death by a United States Army armored vehicle on patrol.

OhmyNews's reports of the incident were widely seen as forcing the hand
of the mainstream media to pay attention to a story that conservative
tradition here suggests they might have been inclined to ignore.

The rest is, as they say, history: a series of demonstrations against
the Army presence here snowballed in the fall and winter, becoming a
huge national movement that many see as having propelled the candidacy
of Mr. Roh.

The new president was, until then, a relative unknown and third in a
field of three major candidates. If no one else caught on to this link,
Mr. Roh appears to have. After his election, he granted OhmyNews the
first interview he gave to any Korean news organization.

For Mr. Oh, the story of the American military accident had echoes of
one of his first big scoops, a story he wrote as a little-known
freelance journalist in 1994 on the No Gun Ri incident, a reported
massacre of South Korean refugees by United States military forces who
opened fire on them at a railroad trestle in the summer of 1950, during
the Korean War.

The South Korean press made almost no mention of his reports after he
broke the story, but five years later The Associated Press wrote about
the incident, winning a Pulitzer Prize for its subsequent investigation
with American Army veterans.

"Once the American media picked up the story, our mainstream newspapers
wrote about No Gun Ri as if it was a fresh incident," Mr. Oh said. "This
made me realize that we have a real imbalance in our media, 80 percent
conservative and 20 percent liberal, and it needed to be corrected. My
goal is 50-50."

After he broke the No Gun Ri story, Mr. Oh went away to school in the
United States, earning a master's degree at the conservative, explicitly
Christian Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va., whose president is
the evangelist pastor Pat Robertson. It might have seemed like an
unlikely choice, but Mr. Oh said it was deliberate.

"Pat Robertson and I are very different in temperament and ideology,
but we are very similar in strategy," said Mr. Oh, who became what he
calls a serious Christian during his stay in the United States. "They
are very right-wing and wanted to overthrow what they saw as a liberal
media establishment. I wanted to overthrow a right-wing media
establishment, and I learned a lot from them."

Although OhmyNews pays its staff less than reporters earn at the top
South Korean newspapers, morale appears to very high. "Wherever I go,
people ask me, `What about the pay?' " said Son Byung Kwan, 31, a
reporter who helped break the story about the American soldiers'
accident. "I took a 30 percent pay cut to work here, but things couldn't
be better. My company is so famous that I have become well known, and
best of all, my stories have real impact."

From ron at resist.ca  Sun Mar  9 12:24:31 2003
From: ron at resist.ca (ron)
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2003 12:24:31 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] Palace Coup at the AFL-CIO
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0303091224000.6974-100000@resist.ca>


http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2003/nf2003037_7581_db016.htm

March 7, 2003

Business Week



Palace Coup at the AFL-CIO



In a rebuke to President John Sweeney, activists pushed through a plan aimed
at streamlining the federation and building membership



In 1995, union leaders anxious about labor's decline kicked out AFL-CIO
President Lane Kirkland and elected John J. Sweeney with a mandate to get
the labor movement moving again. Now, in a sharp rebuke to Sweeney, a group
of five union chiefs concerned that he hasn't made enough progress have
pulled off something of a palace coup. On Feb. 27, after most of the press
had left labor's annual winter gathering in Hollywood, Fla., the group
quietly pushed through the creation of a new governing body to run the
federation. The goal: to reinvigorate the AFL-CIO and refocus its agenda on
recruitment and politics -- and ditch almost everything else.



It's a bid to fundamentally overhaul the house of labor by slashing the
AFL-CIO's bureaucracy, orchestrating mergers of small unions, and mounting
national recruitment drives. "Today's labor movement was invented in the
1950s and hasn't changed much since," says John W. Wilhelm, president of the
Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees union and one of those behind the new
entity. "We need dramatic change. Every program of the AFL-CIO should be
evaluated in terms of its contribution to organizing and politics."

THREATENED.  The AFL-CIO's current governing body, the 54-member executive
council, voted in the leaner structure despite protests from a handful of
union leaders who would be excluded. The new group, called the executive
committee, will meet monthly without staff and includes the heads of the 10
largest unions, plus seven others Sweeney chose. He's a member, too, with
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka and Executive Vice-President Linda
Chavez-Thompson.

Will a more powerful, slimmed-down AFL-CIO make a real difference in labor's
fortunes? After all, Sweeney himself has been pushing many of the same ideas
ever since he came to power, only to encounter resistance from unions that
haven't mustered the will to change. The internal politics of the new
committee could also prove divisive. Several union presidents say Sweeney,
who ultimately endorsed the reorganization, feels threatened by the obvious
challenge to his leadership.

CALLING THE SHOTS.  The five union leaders who hatched the changes -- Sandra
Feldman of the teachers' union, Andy Stern of the service employees, Bruce
Raynor of the needle trades, Terence M. O'Sullivan of the laborers, and
Wilhelm -- began talking about the need for bold moves last year. But when
they approached Sweeney several months ago, "he took it like a slap in the
face," says one participant.

Sweeney only moved on the reorganization after meeting with the five union
chiefs on Feb. 25, the first day of the Florida meeting. Even then, he
didn't tell most other union leaders on the executive council -- who now
stand to lose much of their power -- what was up until he proposed the new
committee two days later. When asked by BusinessWeek about the new governing
structure after the vote, he responded angrily, at first saying it had been
his idea but then insisting it "will be advisory only." Still, the 10
largest unions represent two-thirds of the federation's membership, so they
likely will call the shots. "This will let union presidents get more
involved in decision-making, which is usually done beforehand" by the
AFL-CIO staff, says Gerald W. McEntee, head of the American Federation of
State, County & Municipal Employees.

If the new committee can truly remake the AFL-CIO, it would address a number
of the criticisms union leaders have privately leveled at Sweeney for years.
Like United Brotherhood of Carpenters President Douglas J. McCarron, who
yanked his union out of the AFL-CIO in 2001 over many of the same issues,
some labor leaders think Sweeney has built an expensive bureaucracy that
hasn't put enough emphasis on hiking union membership. Indeed, the latest
Bureau of Labor Statistics report, issued on Feb. 25, shows union membership
at 13.2% of the U.S. workforce in 2002, down from 13.4% the year before.
"The AFL-CIO can't afford to be everything to every union anymore; it needs
to focus more on a growth strategy," says Stern, whose union, the Service
Employees International Union (SEIU), has grown by some 200,000 members
since he succeeded Sweeney as its president.

LESS BUREAUCRACY.  The real question, though, is whether organized labor is
capable of reinventing itself, regardless of who is setting the agenda.
Sweeney himself came to power by exhorting unions to focus their
still-considerable resources on recruitment to offset labor's plummeting
share of the workforce. But most unions have done little to follow his
advice.

Some unions, such as Raynor's garment workers and Wilhelm's hotel workers,
have radically reshaped their structures. Like the Carpenters and the SEIU
under Stern, they have slashed bureaucracies and freed up staff and money
for organizing, leading to major recruitment victories.

The problem is, that group includes only a half-dozen or so unions. Now,
some of labor's most aggressive leaders will be on the new governing
committee, including Wilhelm, Raynor, and O'Sullivan, whom Sweeney chose as
representatives of smaller unions. If the new group can make tough decisions
about how the labor movement operates, it may bring back some of the vigor
that rippled through the house of labor when Sweeney first took office.


By Aaron Bernstein in Hollywood, Fla.


From ron at resist.ca  Wed Mar 12 08:55:42 2003
From: ron at resist.ca (ron)
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 08:55:42 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] APC: Olympic Bid Mobilization
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0303120855010.357-100000@resist.ca>



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 05:45:15 +0000
From: Big Garlic Bobcat <streetpoet77 at hotmail.com>
To: sutikalh2003 at telus.net, monaj at telus.net, bella_donna_36 at yahoo.com,
     thefishiest at hotmail.com, apc-discuss at lists.resist.ca, elp at telus.net,
     kymhothead at telus.net, telquaa at hotmail.com
Subject: [APC-Discuss] APC: Olympic Bid Mobilization



APC: Mobilization Against the Olympic Bid
By Joey Only

The Anti-Poverty Committee signed on to the Gloves Come Off Campaign against
the 2010 Vancouver/Whistler Winter Olympic Bid.  Our members organized were
part of many actions when the International Olympic Committee Tech Team came
March 1st-5th.

APCs action on Wednesday March 5th was the last thing the IOC saw of BC.
Speeches began at 4PM from Indigenous allies, APC and Health Employees Union
as people arrived at the Art Gallery.  Soon a snake march went to the Pan
Pacific Hotel where the IOC was.  The crowd (over 200) featured the disabled
community (14,000 facing benefit re-assesment), Indigenous people (BC is
untreatied soveriegn land), HEU allies (BC government is firing 4000 women
hospital workers), masked anarchists, homeless, and more.

The crowd yelled: ?NO OLYMPICS ON STOLEN NATIVE LAND? & ?IOC GO HOME.?
Racist Gold medalist Nancy Greene-Raine wants to build a $550 million ski
resort at Sutikalh (Cayoosh Mountains north of Whistler) to go
along with her Sun Peaks resort at Skwelkwek Welt.  The media portrayed APCs
action as an embarassment to the Bid Corps because the 2000 Sidney Games had
been caught expropriating indigenous lands.

At the Pan Pacific traffic was blocked while police waited nervously.

APC and its allies gave more speeches about the deteriorating conditions in
our communities while our governments hype ridiculous sports Games.  The
Housing Action Committee said they were going to fight homelessness.  APC
said that if the government will not build income affordable housing we will
take action this June during the National Housing Campaign.  People on
disability expressed rage about changes to the Disability Benefits.

Then the march walked up Georgia and blocked a major intersection at Robson.
  We made a mighty circle holding hands and received blessings from our
Indigenous allies as rush hour yuppies honked horns and the police remained
confused.  Telquaa and Rose asked the Spirit to protect us all and change
the minds of the IOC.

Afterward we dispersed in groups, with many of us being followed by police
on bicycles.  This action was a positive sign to APC as it was our first
major mobilization in four months, we have been overcoming our setbacks.
The crowd was large, loud, diverse but largely willing to escalate the
movement and push it forward.

Our demands are: Stop the Disability Re-Assesments.
End the Three Week Wait, Welfare on Demand.
Restore Funding to Social Housing.
No Olympics on Stolen Native Land




_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

_______________________________________________
APC-Discuss mailing list
APC-Discuss at lists.resist.ca
https://lists.resist.ca/mailman/listinfo/apc-discuss


From resist at resist.ca  Wed Mar 12 09:31:57 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist admin)
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 09:31:57 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] BC Liberals Taking Notice of Recall Campaigns
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0303120930300.28080-100000@resist.ca>


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Recall
From: "Bob Wilson" <BWilson at heu.org>
Date: Tue, March 11, 2003 11:30 am


Government paying attention

There's much to be said against the current recall campaigns in British
Columbia.  They clearly abuse the intent of the recall legislation.
They  create bitter divisions in communities.  They distract M.L.A.'s
and  ministers from their real duties of office.

But the campaigns have proven to be more effective at getting the
government's attention than other forms of political protest.  That's
why  they're unlikely to end anytime soon.

Far from being a crushing defeat that spelled the end of recall, the
near  miss at recalling Val Roddick gave other campaigns real hope of
success.  Delta South was one of the safest Liberal ridings in the
province.  In 2001 Ms. Roddick took 67% of the votes.  No political
strategist would choose her as a prime recall target.

The surprise wasn't that the campaign fell a couple thousand signatures
short.  The surprise was that it almost succeeded.  Think about what
could  happen in Nelson-Creston, where Blair Sufferdine got just 39% of
the votes  in 2001, or in Victoria-Beacon Hill, which Jeff Bray won by
only 35 votes,  taking 37% of the ballots.  Both are facing recall
campaigns.

The Liberal government is certainly thinking about it.  Premier Campbell
 may casually dismiss the recallers as disgruntled opponents who are
refighting the last election.  Behind that unconcerned facade, however,
the  government is mobilizing to fight recall with every weapon at its
disposal.

The Liberal campaign machine was slow to react to the Delta South
campaign.  The recall leader, Dr. John Bayne, looked like an amateur
totally out of his depth.  He was funding the campaign all by himself
and  had only a rag-tag batch of volunteers to help.  It was hard to
take him  seriously.

But Dr. Bayne outspent the Liberal machine--$21,500 to $9,000-- and
out-organized them as well.  The Liberal Party will assure that that
doesn't happen again.  Vigorous anti-recall organizations will spring up
to  defend any MLA under attack, and they will have both expertise and
money.

MLA's facing a recall petition will be given more chances to show off
for  their constituents.  Watch for backbenchers under the recall gun to
make  more aggressive "private member's" statements, to speak more often
on  government business, and to lob more soft questions about issues in
their  ridings at ministers during Question Period.

The recallers' real political clout is most evident in the government's
decision to tailor policies and reverse decisions to blunt recall
momentum.  For example, as the recall campaign against Ms. Roddick wore
on,  many of the cuts to the Delta Hospital were reversed.  And she was
front  and center as the restoration of services was announced.

The government plan to reduce inland ferry services and add tolls for
the  ride was protested throughout B.C.'s interior.  Nowhere was this
policy  more unpopular than in the riding of Nelson-Creston.  Once the
recall  campaign against Mr. Sufferdine got in gear, the government
reversed the  cuts and cancelled the tolls.

The announcement of highway construction in the so-called "heartland"
also  focused on recall-prone ridings.  The Kicking Horse Canyon is a
stretch of  the Trans-Canada Highway that badly needs rebuilding.  It
runs through the  riding of Columbia River-Revelstoke, where local MLA.
Wendy McMahon is  facing recall.  It was no surprise that the road got
special mention in  Premier Campbell's recent television address.

Making such recall-driven announcements poses a dilemma for the
government.  On the one hand, M.L.A.'s under attack desperately need to
show their constituents that they speak for them and can slow the
Juggernaut of government cuts.  On the other hand, such announcements
may  actually inspire more recall efforts, as voters in other ridings
see that  cuts can be reversed by making things hot for M.L.A.'s.

The dilemma will only deepen as the second year of service and staff
cuts  inspires further recall campaigns. One thing is clear: the recall
campaigns  have forced the government to pay far more attention to the
local effects  of provincial policies.  Recall petitioners may not
gather enough  signatures to throw M.L.A.'s out of office, but they will
affect government  policy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Ramsey is a former MLA and Cabinet Minister.  He now teaches at CNC
 and is a Visiting Professor in the Political Science Program at UNBC.

Informal distribution of this column is encouraged.  To discuss
reprinting  it, please contact Paul Ramsey at
<mailto:ramsey at shaw.ca>ramsey at shaw.ca.


From resist at resist.ca  Wed Mar 12 09:57:36 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist admin)
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 09:57:36 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] 
 BCCLA Attacks Surrey By-law That Would Reveal Personal Medical
 Information
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0303120952590.28080-100000@resist.ca>



British Columbia Civil Liberties Association

BCCLA ATTACKS SURREY BY-LAW THAT WOULD REVEAL PERSONAL MEDICAL
INFORMATION

March 10, 2003
For immediate Release

The BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) has gone on the attack against
a by-law to be voted on by Surrey City Council tonight. The by-law will
require pharmacists to keep lists of patients' methadone records,
including dosages, doctors' prescriptions and make them available to
police [CHECK WITH BYLAW].

"This is probably the most private and sensitive of all personal
information and the City of Surrey is proposing to hand it out like
candy," said BCCLA President John Dixon. "Pharmacists will be caught
between this by-law requiring them to make lists, check them twice and
hand them over to the police, and the College of Pharmacists, their
governing legislation and Code of Ethics telling them they can't release
it. It makes no sense whatsoever for the City of Surrey to do this."


The proposed bylaw is the latest in a series of attacks on pharmacies
supplying methadone to recovering drug addicts in Surrey. The City has
imposed a 5000 percent business license fee increase on the pharmacies
dispensing methadone in the Whalley area. A number of the pharmacies are
 challenging that by-law in court.

"Clearly the Mayor of Surrey is hoping to get rid of these pharmacists and
the patients they serve," Dixon said. "There is obviously a serious drug
and crime problem in Whalley, but this isn't the way to go about dealing
with it."


The BCCLA has written to the Mayor of Surrey to outline its many concerns
with this by-law, as have a number of other concerned groups, including
the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA). The provincial
Information and Privacy Commissioner has begun an investigation into the
 Surrey by-law and similar ones in other municipalities.
__

BCCLA: www.bccla.org
____


Murray Mollard, Executive Director
Vincent Gogolek, Policy Director
425 ? 815 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C. V6C 1B4
Phone: (604) 687-3013
E-mail: info at bccla.org





From resist at resist.ca  Wed Mar 12 10:13:30 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist admin)
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 10:13:30 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] Angry tenants Evict Quebec Housing Tribunal
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0303120957410.28080-100000@resist.ca>


[edited]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 16:35:10 +0100 (CET)
From: Nicolas Febus <nicolasphebus at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: a-infos-en at ainfos.ca
To: a-infos-en at ainfos.ca

 ________________________________________________
      A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
            http://www.ainfos.ca/
      News about and of interest to anarchists
 ________________________________________________

Quebec, march 10th 2003 -- More then 300 angry tenants took part in the
symbolic eviction of the Quebec Housing Tribunal during a demonstration in
Quebec City monday afternoon. The protest, organised by the Regroupement
des comit?s logement et associations de locataires du Qu?bec (RCLALQ, a
coalition of tenant unions), was aimed at denouncing the constant rent
rise being witnessed across the province. The Regie du logement (the
Housing Tribunal) was targeted as one of the organizations "responsible
for the rent hikes".

Demonstrators came from several tenant unions all over the province. The
crowd was a testimony to the 'unity will' of the right to housing
movement as many groups not usualy linked to the RCLALQ where in
attendance (including several radicals and anarchists).

After a quick march, demonstrators arrived in front of the location of the
Housing Tribunal. It seem autorities expected the group to pick a more
prestigious target (such as the parliament or the PM's office) as there
was no security in place. The door where open making it easy for the
action group to get inside, quickly followed by the rest of the
demonstration who 'occupied' the lobby of the building. As an activist was
reading an 'eviction notice' others where removing furniture from the
office's waiting room.  The workers seem chocked and surprised -- not used
to being seen as the enemy -- perhaps not realising that their eviction of
some 40 000 tenants a year may lead some people to view them as "on the
other side".

"Rent control in Quebec is a shame" explained one of the organiser, adding
"as long as tenants dont complain, landlords are free to do as they
please!"  Indeed, rent control is voluntary, so tenants need to first
refuse their rent hike before it is applied. Unfortunately not many know
that they have a right to do so). Less then 1% of the rent increases are
adjusted by the Housing Tribunal although many more tenants are able to
negotiate deals with their landlords outside the tribunal.

The RCLALQ is fighting for a universal and automatic rent control.



From van-announce-bounces at lists.resist.ca  Wed Mar 12 09:27:28 2003
From: van-announce-bounces at lists.resist.ca (van-announce-bounces at lists.resist.ca)
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 09:27:28 -0800
Subject: [news] Forward of moderated message
Message-ID: <mailman.0.1047490048.28009.van-announce@lists.resist.ca>

An embedded message was scrubbed...
From: Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby at tao.ca>
Subject: Simon Fraser Student Society racism
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 18:04:57 -0800
Size: 3337
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/news/attachments/20030312/7d916918/attachment.mht>

From resist at resist.ca  Wed Mar 12 14:20:27 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist admin)
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 14:20:27 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] OCAP report on riot trial
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0303121419330.15965-100000@resist.ca>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 11:21:14 -0800 (PST)
From: sabate <sabate at ziplip.com>
To: copb-van-l at lists.resist.ca
Subject: [copb-van-l] OCAP report on riot trial

OCAP report: WEEK SEVEN March 6th 2003: PRE-TRIAL MOTIONS AND JURY
SELECTION CONCLUDED - 'QUEEN'S PARK (POLICE) RIOT' GETS UNDERWAY

   On Thursday, March 6, twelve jury members took their seats and began to
hear the Crown's evidence against Stefan Pilipa, John Clarke and Gaetan
Heroux on charges that present them as architects of a 'planned riot' at
the Ontario Legislature on June 15, 2000. As such, the authorities seek to
send them to prison for terms of up to five years.

   This will be a new development when it comes to state persecution of
social activism in Canada. To find a comparable attempt to jail 'leaders'
of a political protest on these kinds of charges, it would be necessary to
go back to Valleyfield, Quebec in 1946 and the imprisonment of textile
workers' organizer, Kent Rowley. Indeed, the charge of 'counselling to
participate in a riot' is without precedent in Canada.

   The trial was preceded by seven weeks of arguments and deliberations on
various pre-trial motions that will continue to be subject to a total
publication ban (including on internet communication) that will remain in
effect until the jury retires to consider its verdict.

   The jury that has been selected may well seek to be as fair minded and
objective as they can but the Ontario Government's restrictive fiscal
policies cast a long shadow even over the process of selecting a 'jury of
their peers' for three organizers of the homeless and poor. Jurors are
paid only at a rate of $40 a day after the 11th day of service. Where
employers will not cover lost wages during jury duty, this allowance would
barely cover extra transportation and child care costs, let alone be
anything like adequate compensation. People on Employment Insurance or
Ontario Works would not be able to serve either. Sitting on a jury would
render them 'not available for work' and would lead to loss of benefits.
What exists, therefore, is a situation where the unemployed and working
poor are effectively unable to sit on juries. Yet, these are or course the
very people who face the bulk of criminal charges and, when they do, they
can expect the allegations against them to be considered by people whose
income level (and life experience) is very different from their own.

   So, on Thursday, March 6, Vincent Paris, from the Crown Attorney's
office gave his opening remarks to the Jury. He outlined the essential
elements of his case that a riot had been planned, that John Clarke had
counselled it and that Gaetan Heroux and Stefan Pilipa had participated in
it in a leading capacity. He also called his first witness, Detective
Sergeant Stubbings, who was with Police Intelligence at the time of the
demonstration. Stubbings offered his comments while, Paris played a couple
of hours of video footage of the scene that day.

   It is clear that the Crown's case will rest on the notion that OCAP
planned a confrontation on June 15 and the events of that day flowed from
our attempt to violently force entry into the Legislature. For our part,
we will present our plan for a militant action that would pressure the
Tory Government into accepting a delegation effected by homelessness and
responding to its grievances. We will also show that the confrontation
that was generated that day flowed from Tory intransigence and a police
force that was either reckless and incompetent or willfully provocative.

Court will resume on March 17 at which time our cross examination of
Det.Sgt. Stubbings will begin.



From resist at resist.ca  Thu Mar 13 18:32:15 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist admin)
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 18:32:15 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] APC Members Occupy Health Office in Victoria!
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0303131830560.28319-100000@resist.ca>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 17:26:32 -0800
From: Calvin Woida <calvinwoida at hotmail.com>
To: apc-announce at lists.resist.ca, apc-discuss at lists.resist.ca
Subject: [APC-Discuss] APC Members Occupy Health Office in Victoria!



OCCUPATION TO END THE DISABILITY REVIEW PROCESS


Today, March 13, at 12:30 PM, seven members of the Anti-Poverty Committee
occupied the Health Assistance Branch in support and solidarity with people
with disabilities with one demand:

THE IMMEDIATE END TO THE DISABILITY REVIEW PROCESS!


Only with a guarantee from the Minister of Human Resources, Murray Coell,
that this demand will be met will the group leave the office voluntarily.

On September 30, 2002, 14,000 people with disabilities received packages in
the mail giving them notice of the review process.  The combination of
living with a disability, the lack of willing and available medical
professionals (i.e. Doctors) or assessors and the additional threat to their
meager allowance makes it virtually impossible for those subject to this
arbitrary and arduous process to meet the requirements.  By forcing these
people to re-apply, the government is breaking a lifetime agreement with
people on disability benefits.

"It is necessary for us as community activists to take action and make our
demand on behalf of those who would be politically persecuted in their
reassessment if they did it themselves," said David Cunningham, a
participant in the occupation.

Since it's election, the Liberal government has launched a campaign against
poor and working people in the province of BC.  There is a plan to move
people off disability benefits to "employable" status which will eventually
lead to them being cut off assistance altogether.  As part of this campaign,
the Ministry of Human Resources has a clear mandate to remove 9,000 people
from Level 2 Disability Benefits.  This reassessment process is an
ideologically driven assault on the poor.

This is a direct attack on people with disabilities who live in poverty.
Because of the fear and distress the reassessment process has caused, there
has been an estimated 30 suicides in BC since October 1, 2002 (The Times
Colonist Nov. 22/02 A5 & The Province Nov. 15/02 A33).

Megan Oleson, spokesperson for the occupation, said, "The review process has
already cost over 30 human lives and $4 million of tax payers money.  This
is meant to be a cost-saving exercise.  The cost in lives and health care
dollars will be far more than what the government is proposing will be saved
by the implementation of this reassessment - the homeless and people with
disabilities will be dying on the streets and in hospitals.  We urgently
call on the people of BC to help defend the health and lives of thousands of
disabled people who are at severe risk from the BC Liberal government cuts."


OCCUPATION CONTACT:  MEGAN OLESON 604-857-5938

OUTSIDE CONTACT:  SHARAI 604-255-7915



From resist at resist.ca  Fri Mar 14 00:29:38 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist admin)
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 00:29:38 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] Update on Health Office Occupation and Arrests
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0303132252350.4105-100000@resist.ca>


Victoria - The seven people arrested at the Health Assistance Branch in
Victoria yesterday will appear in court at 850 Burdette St. today at 9:15
AM. The group was occupying the office demanding that the burdensome
review of people on disability insurance be halted. The deadline for
completing the 23 page application form is March 15.

The protesters were apparently sitting in a circle in the office with
their hands above their heads saying "we are not resisting, we are willing
to go peacefully" when officers assaulted them, sprayed them with pepper
spray and held a tazer gun near the head of one man. Police broke down two
doors and may have shot out a window.

The police used the word "terrorists" to describe the group while the
group responded by saying that the BC Liberal government could be more
easily labeled as a terrorist organization since it is responsible for the
deaths of at least 50 people unable to face the prospects of having to
defend their right to social assistance and how much harder life would be
if they were to loose their disability premiums.

Police also claimed that employees at the center were "traumatised" by the
incident but a representative of the group said "if the employees were
traumatised, it was by the actions of the police".



Original Message:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 17:26:32 -0800
From: Calvin Woida <calvinwoida at hotmail.com>
To: apc-announce at lists.resist.ca, apc-discuss at lists.resist.ca
Subject: [APC-Discuss] APC Members Occupy Health Office in Victoria!



OCCUPATION TO END THE DISABILITY REVIEW PROCESS


Today, March 13, at 12:30 PM, seven members of the Anti-Poverty Committee
occupied the Health Assistance Branch in support and solidarity with people
with disabilities with one demand:

THE IMMEDIATE END TO THE DISABILITY REVIEW PROCESS!


Only with a guarantee from the Minister of Human Resources, Murray Coell,
that this demand will be met will the group leave the office voluntarily.

On September 30, 2002, 14,000 people with disabilities received packages in
the mail giving them notice of the review process.  The combination of
living with a disability, the lack of willing and available medical
professionals (i.e. Doctors) or assessors and the additional threat to their
meager allowance makes it virtually impossible for those subject to this
arbitrary and arduous process to meet the requirements.  By forcing these
people to re-apply, the government is breaking a lifetime agreement with
people on disability benefits.

"It is necessary for us as community activists to take action and make our
demand on behalf of those who would be politically persecuted in their
reassessment if they did it themselves," said David Cunningham, a
participant in the occupation.

Since it's election, the Liberal government has launched a campaign against
poor and working people in the province of BC.  There is a plan to move
people off disability benefits to "employable" status which will eventually
lead to them being cut off assistance altogether.  As part of this campaign,
the Ministry of Human Resources has a clear mandate to remove 9,000 people
from Level 2 Disability Benefits.  This reassessment process is an
ideologically driven assault on the poor.

This is a direct attack on people with disabilities who live in poverty.
Because of the fear and distress the reassessment process has caused, there
has been an estimated 30 suicides in BC since October 1, 2002 (The Times
Colonist Nov. 22/02 A5 & The Province Nov. 15/02 A33).

Megan Oleson, spokesperson for the occupation, said, "The review process has
already cost over 30 human lives and $4 million of tax payers money.  This
is meant to be a cost-saving exercise.  The cost in lives and health care
dollars will be far more than what the government is proposing will be saved
by the implementation of this reassessment - the homeless and people with
disabilities will be dying on the streets and in hospitals.  We urgently
call on the people of BC to help defend the health and lives of thousands of
disabled people who are at severe risk from the BC Liberal government cuts."


OCCUPATION CONTACT:  MEGAN OLESON 604-857-5938

OUTSIDE CONTACT:  SHARAI 604-255-7915





From ron at resist.ca  Fri Mar 14 00:37:39 2003
From: ron at resist.ca (ron)
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 00:37:39 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] [vanarchy] UBC TAs Blockade and Shut Down Campus (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0303140037300.3149-100000@resist.ca>



*****************************************
http://resist.ca - appropriate technology
*****************************************

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 05:14:46 -0000
From: AJ <ringfingers at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: vanarchy at yahoogroups.com
To: vanarchy at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [vanarchy] UBC TAs Blockade and Shut Down Campus

UBC TAs Blockade and Shut Down Campus

by a Student Supporter
?
Most entrances to UBC were blocked Thursday, in defiance of
legislation enacted by the province Wednesday night, which
illegalized the constitutionally protected TA strike there, effectively
shutting down the campus and cancelling most classes. Striking
teaching assistants, librarians and clerical workers at the
University of British Columbia ignored back-to-work legislation
Thursday, picketing all but one entrance to the campus, while a
good number of supporting students and community members
joined them to beef up the road blockades.  At several points
throughout the day some of the wealthier and more priviliged
amongst the students - those driving BMWs and SUVs for the
most part - attempted to plow through the road blockades, yet the
people on the line held their ground quite well, even risking
personal injury for their wildcat action which was not sanctioned
by the union. Members of the Canadian Union of Public
Employees were ordered back to work when the B.C. Liberal
government rushed through a law Wednesday that imposed a
20-day "cooling-off" period on their labour dispute with the
university - which of course affects the TAs much more than it
does the administration.

But pickets were up again Thursday morning. Students on foot
and in cars generally respected the picket lines and did not
attend class while bus drivers in solidarity dropped their
passengers a few blocks from campus. Local firefighters
brought out hot coffee and went around to each road blockade to
distribute it in solidarity - though the fire engines were
intimidating when they first arrived.  With the entire campus
essentially shut down for the day, the union staged a noon-hour
rally on the campus and condemned the government's move as
a bid to crush free collective bargaining. "The government has
stepped in, stopped the bargaining process and forced through
legislation in 'Big Brother' fashion," union president Barry O'Neill
said. "It seems that UBC, in collusion with the government, has
clearly used the students as a pawn in this travesty of people's
rights."

The university planned to go to the B.C. Labour Relations Board
for an order to remove the pickets. The legislation passed
Wednesday ordered both sides back to the bargaining table
within 72 hours and effectively negated the right to strike
enshrined in Candian federal law. Teaching assistants,
graduate students who among other things mark papers, want a
pay increase and a tuition subsidy that would bring them up to a
level of parity with other schools in Canada, which they currently
lag behind. Labour Minister Graham Bruce claimed
unconvicingly that the government's top concern is for the 23,000
students, whose school terms might be jeopardized if the strike
continues.  "This isn't surprising," Bruce said of the strikers'
show of defiance - but he conceeded that "there's steps that the
employer can take."  Bruce claimed the legislation was
"necessary."  "Clearly the negotiations were dysfunctional and
we weren't going anywhere," he claimed. "I was concerned
students would lose their year."  The introduction of the
legislation followed separate meetings with the parties to see if
the issues could be resolved. Mediator Richard Longpre,
assistant deputy labour minister, will assist in the new talks. "We
expect both UBC and CUPE to be back at the bargaining table by
Saturday," Bruce said. Local media such as the Vancouver Sun
completely distorted what did and did not take place today,
minimizing the extent to which the campus was shut down,
which was very extensive, and ignoring the violence from wealthy
UBC students against TAs at the road blockades.




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From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Fri Mar 14 22:37:20 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 22:37:20 -0800
Subject: [news] Oregon Labor Videographer Arrested: The War On Terrorism At
	Home
Message-ID: <3E72CA20.C25419EC@shaw.ca>

THE WAR ON TERRORISM AT HOME.
Wes, 09.03.2003 19:29
http://rogueimc.org/2003/03/179.shtml

First Hand Account of the heavy hand of the law:

"Mr. Brain, put your hands behind your back. You are under arrest for
disorderly conduct." Wes Brain is the producer of the Labor TV show OPEU
D4 Productions and is on the Executive Board of SEIU 503.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, Friends and Activists:

LAST FRIDAY I WAS ARRESTED WHILE IN MY OFFICE DOING MY JOB FOR THE STATE
OF OREGON.

At approximately 2:45 p.m. on 3/7/03 while at work for the Safety
Department at Southern Oregon University I was sitting at my desk when
an Ashland Police Department Officer stuck her head around the doorway
and asked if I could talk to her for a few minutes. Since the Safety
Dept. (occupational health and safety services for university employees)
shares the same building with the SOU Security Dept. it was not strange
at all seeing Ashland Police in our building. In fact I know many of the
officers and although there are a few bad cops on the local force most
of them do a good job, I have always thought.

I walked out back to the small porch attached to our building and
noticed there were three officers in attendance. Since no one said
anything I started the conversation, "What's Up?" The reply was most
surprising: "Mr. Brain, put your hands behind your back. You are under
arrest for disorderly conduct." They failed to reveal it, but later I
found out that the charges for diorderly conduct are twofold with an
additional impeding a police officer charge. Two days later as I write
this I am still in utter shock and disbelief...

Since anything I say can be used against me, and since I have not talked
to my lawyer yet, and since I am paranoid that the FBI monitors my
electronic messages, and since I believe our system of justice is
fundamentally corrupt... I will only give you the short and sweet
version right now...

On 3/5/03 in Ashland Oregon there was a very successful and well
attended peace march and rally called "Books Not Bombs", and ours was
part of a national day of action against the impending Iraq war by
students all across the U.S.. Our new Rogue Valley Independent Media
Center had the best local media coverage of this event:

 http://www.rogueimc.org/2003/03/143.shtml

So on the day in question I took 4.5 hours of vacation time to be a
journalist and video tape this event (activists never take real
vacations, they use such time for peace and justice). Here in Southern
Oregon we broadcast regular programming on Rogue Valley Community
Television (RVTV), that's our access televison station and the show
highlights progressive issues about Labor, Human Rights, and the
Environment (M & W, 6PM, Ch.#31)...

That day I shot one hour and 41 minutes of raw footage which shows the
colorful march and rally with 500 or 600 (some say more) students
demonstrating that money for war should instead be spent on education
(books not bombs). This footage shows some of the things not reported by
the local mainstream media like the SWAT team that was called in from a
neighboring county to square off against our peacefully protesting
students. This footage looks like it is taken from another planet, I
mean can you imagine riot cops squaring off against young kids? Blanked
from coverage in the local press, it happened. My footage also shows the
tail-end of a scuffle in the street which shows the Ashland Police
throwing people to the ground. I did not capture the beginning of this
incident but do have an interview of someone who says she saw it from
the start and that the police instigated the scuffle.

Well, two days later on March 7th they came and arrested me, I told you
that part... I have no idea why. But am fearful that the war on
terrorism is more a war against anybody who speaks out against the war
mongering and foolish, corporate bought & paid for leadership of this
country. Period.

Stay tuned. Arrainment is 9 a.m. Tuesday, March 11 in Municipal Court
here in Ashland. More vacation time required, damn it, so that I can
prove myself innocent and stand proud for protecting our First
Ammendment Rights here in little ol' Ashland, Oregon. It is an important
fight and I am ready for the cause. Please come to the court arrainment.
Attendance of supporters is encouraged and appreciated.

Wes Brain
Brain at mind.net

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sat Mar 15 06:46:44 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 06:46:44 -0800
Subject: [news] Videographer pleads 'not guilty'
Message-ID: <3E733CD4.FDDA7FDE@shaw.ca>

http://www.dailytidings.com/2003/news0311/031103n1.shtml

Videographer pleads 'not guilty'

By Sean Wolfe and Myles Murphy
Ashland Daily Tidings

The recent arrest of videographer Wes Brain is just one of the many
controversies now bubbling up from the March 5 protest event in Ashland.

Brain, who works for Southern Oregon University as an environmental
health and safety technologist, was arrested by Ashland Police at his
workplace, two days after the protest.

"My presence with the video camera was very much there, and my gut
reaction is that the police didn't like that," Brain said.
?
Wes Brain (with cap) awaits the start of his arraignment proceedings
with a full crowd of supporters this morning in Ashland's Municipal
Court. Photo by Denise Baratta (click on the link if you want to see the
photo)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Brain, who is also a union shop steward, said he attended the rally to
shoot footage for Rogue Valley Community Television. He was charged with
two counts of disorderly conduct, and one count of impeding police. He
was then jailed and released on $10,000 bail.

At his arraignment today in Ashland, Brain was backed by a packed house
of supporters and fellow demonstrators. Brain pleaded not guilty to the
charges, and asked for copies of the police reports.

A trial date is expected to be set after April 1.

Following his arraignment, Brain said he looked forward to "justice
being done."

"This will be a big trial. It's not just about me, or about Cameron
(Brooks), but a lot of people being booked up across the U.S. right
now," Brain said.

Even though at least 6OO people were breaking laws in the un-permitted
march - mainly obstructing traffic - only one man was arrested at the
time. That arrest was an act of conscious civil disobedience on the part
of Southern Oregon University freshman Cameron Brooks. Brooks, a
criminology major, was arrested after ignoring Ashland Police Department
demands to remove himself from the street.

Since then, two others have been charged for alleged criminal action
during the march. 

A 20-year-old transient Jeremy Dahl was cited for obstructing traffic
and causing a public alarm, and Brain's arrest.

According to Ashland Police Lt. Rich Walsh - who was the incident
commander during the march - police were more than justified to single
out Brain and Dahl because they "terrorized" a woman attempting to drive
through the Plaza area between Oak and Pioneer at the time of the march.
The woman - who police declined to identify - was frightened when Brain
and Dahl repeatedly jumped in front of her car, and Brain allegedly
yelled at her. With a child in the car, and herself pregnant, the woman
was very alarmed, Walsh said.

"She was really upset," Walsh said. "Wes Brain was yelling at her and
she appeared scared to death.

"We have someone terrified in a car because of these two individuals,"
Walsh added. "That incensed me. That woman had more rights at that point
in time than they did."

Brain said he had approached a vehicle after it had nearly run down two
protesters.

"I said to her, lady, slow down, these are our kids. But I didn't yell
at her," Brain said.

The police report confirms Dahl's arrest as stemming from actions at
that time and place, about 1:30 p.m. at East Main and Pioneer streets.
However, the police report on Brain's arrest places his alleged criminal
activity at 2:24 p.m. between Mountain Avenue and Southern Oregon
University, not at Oak and Main, where he allegedly frightened the
unidentified pregnant woman with a child in her car.

"People need to understand what civil disobedience is." Walsh said.
"When you get out in the road and block traffic, you're committing a
crime."

According to Walsh, another point which led to Brain's late arrest was
the fact that police officers knew him and could identify him later,
while the majority of the crowd was relatively anonymous.

Even before the march, APD officials were concerned about what might
happen when children and young adults from Ashland Middle School,
Ashland High School, and Southern Oregon University gathered for the
march.

"Based on the information I had, I didn't know what to expect," Walsh
said. "I hoped for the best but prepared for the worst."

In a written statement, Brain detailed what he did the day of the
protest.

"That day I shot one hour and 41 minutes of raw footage which shows the
colorful march and rally with 500 or 600 (some say more) students
demonstrating that money for war should instead be spent on education
(books not bombs)," Brain wrote.

"This footage shows some of the things not reported by the local
mainstream media like the SWAT team that was called in from a
neighboring county to square off against our peacefully protesting
students. This footage looks like it is taken from another planet, I
mean can you imagine riot cops squaring off against young kids? My
footage also shows the tail-end of a scuffle in the street which shows
the Ashland police throwing people to the ground. I did not capture the
beginning of this incident but do have an interview of someone who says
she saw it from the start and that the police instigated the scuffle."

The SWAT team in question was actually a mobile response team and an
arrest team - 26 in all - contributed by the Jackson County Sheriff's
Department, according to county sheriff Mike Winters.

With respect to the scuffle, police and demonstrators have come forward
with different accounts.

According to Walsh, police attempted to clear a lane for vehicle
traffic. One man refused to get out of the lane. This led to police
placing a woman under arrest. When another man attempted to intervene,
he was also arrested. Then police lost control of the crowd.

"About 20 protesters jumped in and pulled the officers off the second
person and helped him escape," Walsh said. "It happened pretty quickly.
Those officers showed incredible restraint at that point - they backed
off."

John Fricker, a sound engineer living in Ashland, said the scuffle began
as the result of three officers attempting to clear a lane after
protesters had passed through the Pioneer Street intersection.

Fricker, who said he attended the demonstration as "a peacekeeper," said
he saw officers Teresa Selby, Phil Gray, and School Resource Officer
Mike Vanderlip approach the demonstrators from behind, asking them to
move out of the left lane.

"My immediate response was to follow them as the mass of people was very
large and my initial thought was that their task was impossible,"
Fricker said.

The scuffle began, according to Fricker, when officers approached a
couple and spoke to them.

"At first the couple did not respond and then it appeared one officer
placed their hand on the shoulder of one of the pair. One protester
turned, and the other appeared to trip and fall. It appeared that the
couple and one officer then fell to the ground," Fricker said.

At that point according to multiple eyewitnesses, a female demonstrator
was thrown to the ground. Another protester was then thrown against a
parked car by Gray.

At that point a group of protesters - roughly 20 - surrounded the
officers and called for calm.

"The officers were together at all times, and I did not see any
protester grab, block, or attack an officer," Fricker said.

Brain said he was about 80 feet away from the incident, and filmed the
latter part of the events. He has not yet released a copy of his video
to The Tidings, pending advice from his attorney.

A family of demonstrators who arrived at the courthouse today to support
Brain said they also witnessed the fracas.

Edgar Morton, 33, said he saw two officers wrestling two individuals to
the ground, and that they were approached by a third person, who was
"sent headfirst into a parked car by Officer Vanderlip."

At that point Morton, his wife and roughly 18 other demonstrators
surrounded the three officers. Morton's two children, aged 4 and 10,
also witnessed the scene.

"At this point the officers were no longer physically dominating the
kids because they were aware of their surroundings," Morton said.

Morton said he saw Brain approach the officers with his video camera.

"He told the policemen they should be ashamed of themselves for
traumatizing little children," Morton said.

Margaret Morton, Edgar's wife, said she found the whole scene
intimidating.

"All the kids were screaming and crying," she said.

Paul Morton, 10, concurred with his mother's view.

"When I saw the cops start throwing people down, it made me angry, and
then I got scared," he said.

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sat Mar 15 10:56:41 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 10:56:41 -0800
Subject: [news] WIZKIDS OF OZ
Message-ID: <3E737769.54B36D7B@shaw.ca>

SchNEWS 396, Friday 14th March, 2003

WIZKIDS OF OZ

The Australian Department of Defence has decided to withdraw advertising
from all student media in Australia because of an "adbust" by a student
newspaper. The Defence Department had been repeatedly requesting
advertising space in the magazine, who kept on saying no and got a bit
tired of repeating themselves and decided to run the following ad
instead:

"Why settle for an ordinary office job when you could have an
extraordinary and challenging career as a pawn in the power games of
politicians? Not only will you get to take orders from arrogant pricks
with buzz-cuts and ego-complexes, but on special occasions you'll get
the chance to repress your moral integrity and accept orders to bomb the
shit out of dark-skinned, tea-towel-wearing foreigners. Officer
positions are open in many specialised fields from engineering and
logistics through to carpet-bombing and cannon fodder. You will receive
over $44,700 per annum upon completion of initial training, which
should just about cover treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and
Gulf War Syndrome..."

----------------------------------------------------------

From paulr_urbanwarrior at yahoo.com  Sat Mar 15 18:52:56 2003
From: paulr_urbanwarrior at yahoo.com (Paul Richmond)
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 18:52:56 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] Premiere of movie on Cops becoming Troops, Tuesday, Weds
	Blinding Light Cinema
Message-ID: <20030316025256.68375.qmail@web41414.mail.yahoo.com>

Urban Warrior, a new documentry on police being turned into troops, will have its Vancouver premiere this week at Blinding Light Cinema, Tues March 18th and Weds March 18th at 8PM.  Urban Warior is the first film to look at how the military which the US has applied overseas is beginning to be applied at home, especially since the events of September 11, 2001. Both Screenings will be accompanied by Paul Richmond, activist and attorney, who was a producer and consultant on the film. Richmond has been responsible for getting one of the deadliest police precincts in the US broken apart, and ending a US pilot program to have National Guard accompanying police on drug raids.  He was one of the coordinators of legal support during the Seattle WTO demonstrations and author of the report Waging War on Dissent. Blinding light is located on 36 Powell Street.  Call 604 878 3366 for directions For more information on Urban Warrior go towww,geocities.com/urbanwarrior_northwest/film.html
 



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From pat_wobbly at hotmail.com  Sat Mar 15 20:12:07 2003
From: pat_wobbly at hotmail.com (Pat S)
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 20:12:07 -0800
Subject: [news] US mining firm pays Papuan army
Message-ID: <F17uRmewP9TQCv9gB8P00003c67@hotmail.com>

US mining firm pays Papuan army
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2850701.stm

The American mining giant Freeport McMoran paid the Indonesian military more 
than $5m last year for protection in Papua, a troubled Indonesian province.
Confirmation of the long-suspected arrangement was contained within a 
confidential document leaked to the media.

Freeport paid the army to protect their employees at Papua's Grasberg mine, 
one of the world's largest gold and copper mines.

The Indonesian military have been accused of widespread corruption and human 
rights abuses in Papua, where they are trying to contend with a sporadic 
separatist revolt.


The document was written in response to queries from Freeport's 
shareholders, who were said to be uncomfortable with the security 
arrangements that the subsidiary Freeport Indonesia had in Papua.

The document details the payment of $5.6m to the Indonesian military in 
2002, and $4.7m in 2001.

The money was paid for the employment of about 2,300 personnel, and covered 
costs for housing, fuel, travel and vehicle repairs.

A local Indonesian soldier admitted to the BBC's Indonesian service that 
"those who were on duty at Freeport got money for food and also got some 
pocket money".

The BBC's Jakarta correspondent Rachel Harvey says the admission, from the 
biggest company in Indonesia to what is basically a protection racket, is a 
significant move.

Human rights campaigners go even further, saying payments to the military 
provide an incentive for the maintenance of a high level of insecurity in 
Papua, which is also known as Irian Jaya.

Seven members of Kopassus, Indonesia's special forces, are on trial for 
murdering pro-independence leader Theus Eluay in November 2001.

The military has also been accused of taking part in the ambush and murder 
of two American teachers and a Freeport employee last year.

However the army has denied any role in the murders.

Carmel Budiardjo, a human rights activist, told BBC News Online that the 
relationship between Freeport and the military was "a very serious blemish 
on the whole situation in Papua".

Our Jakarta correspondent says that although Freeport is keen for the issue 
to be forgotten, now that the information is in the public domain it will 
raise questions that are unlikely to go away.

"Everybody officially knows what unofficially they thought they knew before 
- that money was exchanging hands," she said.

"But... is this an ethical way to conduct business?"

Freeport has been involved in mining in Papua since 1967, and the firm was 
one of the first big companies to invest in the province in the Suharto-era.




_________________________________________________________________
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From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sat Mar 15 21:14:08 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 21:14:08 -0800
Subject: [news] Prosecutors Rest Tyson Smuggling Case
Message-ID: <3E740820.2932A8CE@shaw.ca>

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=519&ncid=519&e=1&u=/ap/20030313/ap_on_re_us/tyson_immigrant_smuggling_2

U.S. National AP
Prosecutors Rest Tyson Smuggling Case
Thu Mar 13, 3:51 PM ET 

By BILL POOVEY, Associated Press Writer

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - Prosecutors wrapped up their immigrant-smuggling 
case against Tyson Foods on Thursday with testimony from a second 
manager who admitted knowingly hiring illegal workers for a Tyson 
poultry plant.

Spencer Mabe, a former Shelbyville plant manager who pleaded guilty in a 
deal with prosecutors, testified under cross-examination Thursday that 
although he was aware of illegal hirings and dealt with an immigrant 
smuggler, he never personally inspected employee hiring records.

"Any time they came through a recruiter, I pretty much knew they were 
illegal," Mabe said.

Mabe, who was fired in 2001, earlier told the federal court jury that he 
went along with hiring illegal workers because he was dedicated to the 
company.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John MacCoon rested the government's case in the 
five-week-old trial Thursday morning.

The judge also heard motions by defense attorneys, who said the 
government had failed to prove that any defendant caused illegal 
immigrants to be brought into the United States, caused their transport 
or caused them to possess false Social Security numbers. He did not
immediately rule.

Tyson and some former managers are accused of hiring illegal immigrants 
from Mexico and Central America as part of a nationwide conspiracy to 
boost production and profits.

Tapes of secretly recorded conversations between undercover agents 
posing as immigrant smugglers and Tyson managers were a big part of the 
government's evidence. Some of those conversations indicated that the 
hiring of illegal immigrants, particularly through temporary agencies, 
was routine.

Defense attorneys expect their case to take two weeks.

The company, based in Springdale, Ark., contends the government's 
investigation involved only a few plant managers who independently 
violated Tyson's "zero tolerance" policy on illegal hiring.

But Mabe and another fired manager have testified that executives up the 
company's chain of command knew about plants hiring illegal workers. 
Both pleaded guilty in January to an immigrant smuggling conspiracy 
charge and face up to of five years in prison at their May 12 
sentencings.

If found guilty, Tyson could face millions of dollars in fines.

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sun Mar 16 19:55:57 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 19:55:57 -0800
Subject: [news] Rachel Corrie
References: <b532gh+jst8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <3E75474D.819A2D6E@shaw.ca>

From: Ed Janzen <edjanzen at shaw.ca>

Photographic evidence re: the bulldozer killing of Rachel Corrie is 
available here:

http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml

Horrific.

Ed

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sun Mar 16 19:56:24 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 19:56:24 -0800
Subject: [news] 
 Israeli army bulldozer kills American peace activist in Gaza refugee
 camp
Message-ID: <3E754768.B76499AB@shaw.ca>

Israeli army bulldozer kills American peace activist in Gaza refugee
camp

By Ibrahim Barzak

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) ? An American college student in Gaza to 
protest Israeli military operations was killed Sunday when she was run
over by a bulldozer while trying to block troops from demolishing a
Palestinian home. At least one Palestinian also was killed.

The killing of the student by the Israelis ? the first of a foreign
activist in 29 months of fighting ? came as Israelis and Palestinians
wrangled over the terms of a U.S.-backed plan to end the violence and
establish a Palestinian state.

Rachel Corrie, 23, of Olympia, Wash., had been with U.S. and British 
demonstrators in the Rafah refugee camp trying to stop demolitions. She
died in the hospital, said Dr. Ali Moussa, a hospital administrator.

"This is a regrettable accident," said Capt. Jacob Dallal, an army
spokesman. "We are dealing with a group of protesters who were acting
very irresponsibly, putting everyone in danger."

The army said soldiers were looking for explosives and tunnels used to 
smuggle weapons.

There was no immediate reaction from Washington.

Greg Schnabel, 28, of Chicago, said four Americans and four Britons were 
trying to stop Israeli troops from destroying a building belonging to
Dr. Samir Masri.

Israel for months has been tearing down houses of Palestinians it
suspects in Islamic militant activity, saying such operations deter
attacks on Israel such as suicide bombings.

"Rachel was alone in front of the house as we were trying to get them to
stop," Schnabel said. "She waved for the bulldozer to stop. She fell
down and the bulldozer kept going. It had completely run over her and
then it reversed and ran back over her."

She was wearing a brightly coloured jacket when the bulldozer hit her.
Several Palestinians gathered at the site, and troops opened fire,
killing one Palestinian, witnesses said. The army had no comment on that
report.

Corrie was the first member of the International Solidarity Movement to
be killed in a conflict that has claimed more than 2,200 Palestinian
lives ? about three times the toll on the Israeli side.

A student at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Corrie would have 
graduated this year, Schnabel said.

Her killing should be a message to President George W. Bush, who is 
"providing Israel with tanks and bulldozers, and now they killed one of
his own people," said Mansour Abed Allah, 29, a Palestinian human rights
worker who witnessed Corrie's death.

Several other U.S. citizens have been killed in Palestinian-Israeli
violence. On March 5, Abigail Litle, 14, was killed in a Palestinian
suicide bombing attack on a bus in the northern Israeli city of Haifa.
Last July, five Americans died in a bombing at the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem.

Bush said Friday that a long-awaited "road map" for peace would be back
on the table once Palestinian President Yasser Arafat appoints a prime
minister with real power ? a process that appeared well underway last
week. But on Sunday, Arafat presented legislators with proposed changes
to the Palestinian basic law approved last Monday that, according to a
diplomatic source, that created the impression that a prime minister was
not independent.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the move could 
thereby reduce any pressure on Israel to constructively engage the new 
Palestinian prime minister.

The road map worked out by the United States, European Union, United 
Nations and Russia foresees Palestinian statehood by 2005 and an end to 
Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank and Gaza.

Bush has said that first, the Palestinians need to change their
leadership, and the road map calls for Arafat to appoint an empowered
prime minister. While Arafat bowed to intense international pressure and
agreed to share control with a new prime minister, Palestinian
legislators said Sunday he was now asking for amendments in the law
passed last week.

The most significant change was that Arafat wanted the ultimate say in
the creation of a new Palestinian cabinet, suggesting he could have veto
power over candidates nominated by the new prime minister. He also asked
for the right to chair cabinet meetings, said legislators.
 
The 88-member Palestinian Legislative Council was to meet Monday to 
discuss the proposed changes. If agreement is reached, legislators are 
expected to approve the appointment of Arafat's longtime deputy, Mahmoud 
Abbas, as prime minister.
 
Meanwhile, Israel pressed ahead with its proposals over key phrases in
the draft "road map." According to the Haaretz newspaper, Israel wants
to replace all references to an "independent" Palestinian state with the
term "certain attributes of sovereignty," noting that such a state has
to be "credible" and "law abiding."

Israeli officials had no immediate comment on the report, which cited 
anonymous Israeli sources. The Palestinians say U.S. officials have
assured them that no more changes will be made in the document.

In phase one of the draft, Palestinians would carry out government
reforms and crack down on militants, while Israel would withdraw from
Palestinian towns. Israel would then recognize an interim Palestinian
state. Negotiations on full statehood would come in stage three.

Each phase is laden with obstacles. If Arafat fails to appoint a prime
minister with real power, Israel could refuse to end its occupation of
West Bank towns and villages. To date, Israel says, Arafat has failed to
rein in militants.

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Mon Mar 17 12:14:29 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 12:14:29 -0800
Subject: [news] FWD: ASSASSINATED PRESS: Joint Chiefs Realize U.S. Forces In
	Gulf Are Pointed In the Wrong Direction
Message-ID: <3E762CA5.319DAFB8@shaw.ca>

From: grok <grok at sprint.ca>

[This website is gruesomely funny -- and penetrating to the core. Like
an X-Ray nuke. If you don't laff at the articles, you'll just cry...

I wouldn't recommend these pieces to those who are easily offended --
such as, say, a lot of/most pacifists, or anal-retentive rightwingers.

Reading this site actually makes me AFRAID FOR THE WORLD. IMO the U.S.
ruling class actually thinks this way. ;/

-- grok.]

-----Forwarded Message-----

Subject: Joint Chiefs Realize U.S. Forces In Gulf Are Pointed In the
Wrong Direction
Date: 15 Mar 2003 08:33:55 -0500

http://www.theassassinatedpress.com/ 

Joint Chiefs Realize U.S. Forces In Gulf Are Pointed In the Wrong
Direction: Camp New York---When Being All You Can Be Embarrasses Yo
Mama: The Monumental and Willful Ignorance Of The Media On Full Display
Thru Doomsday 

By YASO ADIODI
The Assassinated Press
March 14, 2003

http://www.theassassinatedpress.com/
 
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose. 

Constant apprehension of war has the same tendency
to render the head too large for the body. A standing military 
force with an overgrown executive will not long be safe 
companions to liberty.  -- Thomas Jefferson

"America is a quarter of a billion people totally misinformed and
disinformed  by their government. This is tragic but our media is -- I
wouldn't even say corrupt -- it's just beyond telling us anything that
the government doesn't want us to know." 

Gore Vidal

-- 
grok <grok at sprint.ca>

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Mon Mar 17 12:14:55 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 12:14:55 -0800
Subject: [news] A WARMONGER EXPLAINS WAR TO A PEACENIK
Message-ID: <3E762CBF.C0D8233@shaw.ca>

A WARMONGER EXPLAINS WAR TO A PEACENIK

--- In United-Stands-America at yahoogroups.com, "Victor" 
<angelman24 at s...> wrote:
A WARMONGER EXPLAINS WAR TO A PEACENIK
By Victor Forsythe

Dedicated to the Love it or Leave it crowd

PeaceNik: Why did you say we are invading Iraq?

WarMonger: We are invading Iraq because it is in violation of security 
council resolution 1441. A country cannot be allowed to violate 
security council resolutions.

PN: But I thought many of our allies, including Israel, were in 
violation of more security council resolutions than Iraq.

WM: It's not just about UN resolutions. The main point is that Iraq 
could have weapons of mass destruction, and the first sign of a smoking
gun could well be a mushroom cloud over NY.

PN: Mushroom cloud? But I thought the weapons inspectors said Iraq 
had no nuclear weapons.

WM: Yes, but biological and chemical weapons are the issue.

PN: But I thought Iraq did not have any long range missiles for 
attacking us or our allies with such weapons.

WM: The risk is not Iraq directly attacking us, but rather terrorist 
networks that Iraq could sell the weapons to.

PN: But couldn't virtually any country sell chemical or biological
materials? We sold quite a bit to Iraq in the eighties ourselves, 
didn't we?

WM: That's ancient history. Look, Saddam Hussein is an evil man that 
has an undeniable track record of repressing his own people since the
early eighties. He gasses his enemies. Everyone agrees that he is a
power- hungry lunatic murderer.

PN: We sold chemical and biological materials to a power-hungry 
lunatic murderer?

WM: The issue is not what we sold, but rather what Saddam did. He is 
the one that launched a pre-emptive first strike on Kuwait.

PN: A pre-emptive first strike does sound bad. But didn't our 
ambassador to Iraq, April Gillespie, know about and green-light the
invasion of Kuwait?

WM: Let's deal with the present, shall we? As of today, Iraq could 
sell its biological and chemical weapons to Al Quaida. Osama Bin Laden
himself released an audio tape calling on Iraqis to suicide-attack us, 
proving a partnership between the two.

PN: Osama Bin Laden? Wasn't the point of invading Afghanistan to kill 
him?

WM: Actually, it's not 100% certain that it's really Osama Bin Laden 
on the tapes. But the lesson from the tape is the same: there could
easily be a partnership between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein unless we
act.

PN: Is this the same audio tape where Osama Bin Laden labels Saddam a
secular infidel?

WM: You're missing the point by just focusing on the tape. Powell 
presented a strong case against Iraq.

PN: He did?

WM: Yes, he showed satellite pictures of an Al Quaeda poison factory 
in Iraq.

PN: But didn't that turn out to be a harmless shack in the part of 
Iraq controlled by the Kurdish opposition?

WM: And a British intelligence report...

PN: Didn't that turn out to be copied from an out-of-date graduate 
student paper?

WM: And reports of mobile weapons labs...

PN: Weren't those just artistic renderings?

WM: And reports of Iraquis scuttling and hiding evidence from 
inspectors...

PN: Wasn't that evidence contradicted by the chief weapons inspector, 
Hans Blix?

WM: Yes, but there is plenty of other hard evidence that cannot be 
revealed because it would compromise our security.

PN: So there is no publicly available evidence of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq?

WM: The inspectors are not detectives, it's not their JOB to find 
evidence. You're missing the point.

PN: So what is the point?

WM: The main point is that we are invading Iraq because resolution 
1441 threatened "severe consequences." If we do not act, the security 
council will become an irrelevant debating society.

PN: So the main point is to uphold the rulings of the security 
council?

WM: Absolutely ...unless it rules against us.

PN: And what if it does rule against us?

WM: In that case, we must lead a coalition of the willing to invade 
Iraq.

PN: Coalition of the willing? Who's that?

WM: Britain, Turkey, Bulgaria, Spain, and Italy, for starters.

PN: I thought Turkey refused to help us unless we gave them tens of 
billions of dollars.

WM: Nevertheless, they may now be willing.

PN: I thought public opinion in all those countries was against war.

WM: Current public opinion is irrelevant. The majority expresses its 
will by electing leaders to make decisions.

PN: So it's the decisions of leaders elected by the majority that is 
important?

WM: Yes.

PN: But George Bush wasn't elected by voters. He was selected by the 
U.S. Supreme C...-

WM: I mean, we must support the decisions of our leaders, however 
they were elected, because they are acting in our best interest. This is
about being a patriot. That's the bottom line.

PN: So if we do not support the decisions of the president, we are not 
patriotic?

WM: I never said that.

PN: So what are you saying? Why are we invading Iraq?

WM: As I said, because there is a chance that they have weapons of 
mass destruction that threaten us and our allies.

PN: But the inspectors have not been able to find any such weapons.

WM: Iraq is obviously hiding them.

PN: You know this? How?

WM: Because we know they had the weapons ten years ago, and they are 
still unaccounted for.

PN: The weapons we sold them, you mean?

WM: Precisely.

PN: But I thought those biological and chemical weapons would degrade 
to an unusable state over ten years.

WM: But there is a chance that some have not degraded.

PN: So as long as there is even a small chance that such weapons 
exist, we must invade?

WM: Exactly.

PN: But North Korea actually has large amounts of usable chemical, 
biological, AND nuclear weapons, AND long range missiles that can reach
the west coast AND it has expelled nuclear weapons inspectors, AND 
threatened to turn America into a sea of fire.

WM: That's a diplomatic issue.

PN: So why are we invading Iraq instead of using diplomacy?

WM: Aren't you listening? We are invading Iraq because we cannot 
allow the inspections to drag on indefinitely. Iraq has been delaying, 
deceiving, and denying for over ten years, and inspections cost us tens
of millions.

PN: But I thought war would cost us tens of billions.

WM: Yes, but this is not about money. This is about security.

PN: But wouldn't a pre-emptive war against Iraq ignite radical Muslim 
sentiments against us, and decrease our security?

WM: Possibly, but we must not allow the terrorists to change the way 
we live. Once we do that, the terrorists have already won.

PN: So what is the purpose of the Department of Homeland Security, 
color-coded terror alerts, and the Patriot Act? Don't these change 
the way we live?

WM: I thought you had questions about Iraq.

PN: I do. Why are we invading Iraq?

WM: For the last time, we are invading Iraq because the world has 
called on Saddam Hussein to disarm, and he has failed to do so. He must
now face the consequences.

PN: So, likewise, if the world called on us to do something, such as 
find a peaceful solution, we would have an obligation to listen?

WM: By "world", I meant the United Nations.

PN: So, we have an obligation to listen to the United Nations?

WM: By "United Nations" I meant the Security Council.

PN: So, we have an an obligation to listen to the Security Council?

WM: I meant the majority of the Security Council.

PN: So, we have an obligation to listen to the majority of the 
Security Council?

WM: Well... there could be an unreasonable veto.

PN: In which case?

WM: In which case, we have an obligation to ignore the veto.

PN: And if the majority of the Security Council does not support us 
at all?

WM: Then we have an obligation to ignore the Security Council.

PN: That makes no sense.

WM: If you love Iraq so much, you should move there. Or maybe France, 
with the all the other cheese-eating surrender monkeys. It's time to 
boycott their wine and cheese, no doubt about that.

PN: I give up!


Please get active! The war may be just hours away!

- Vic Forsythe

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Tue Mar 18 09:58:34 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 09:58:34 -0800
Subject: [news] T r u t h o u t: Into the Darkness
Message-ID: <3E775E4A.644F913A@shaw.ca>

http://truthout.org/docs_03/031903A.shtml

 Into the Darkness
 By William Rivers Pitt
 T r u t h o u t | Perspective
 Tuesday 18 March 2003

  An associate of mine, a former political appointee, recently spoke to
a Republican friend of his who serves in a senior position in what has
become the Office of Homeland Security. He reports that this official,
along with many of his colleagues across the political spectrum within
the apparatus of government, are absolutely terrified of George W. Bush.
According to this official, the consensus is that Bush has completely
lost touch with reality, and is bringing us to a place where politics
will no longer matter.

  A London newspaper, the Guardian, has quoted a source close to the
administration as saying, "This has been the worst diplomatic debacle of
our lifetime." A senior White House official is also quoted as saying,
in a voice reportedly awash with sarcasm, "There's a recognition that
this has not been our finest diplomatic hour."

  There is no calculating the understatement here. There was never any
diplomacy involved here to begin with. This has been a disaster, and it
is about to get worse by orders of magnitude.

  The weapons inspectors, empowered by UN resolution 1441 to ferret out
the weapons everyone is so concerned about, have packed their bags and
fled Iraq. They have been betrayed by the Bush administration, by Tony
Blair and by Spain, as they worked to protect us from both these weapons
and from the dreadful effects of a war in the Middle East.  

  The inspections were working ? weapons were being dismantled, Hussein
was under control, and no mass destruction materials were found. The
fact that the hammer has come down before these inspectors were even
half done with their work means, simply, that those pushing for war
never wanted the inspections to work in the first place.

  Welcome to the timeline.

  Very soon now, perhaps within the next 72 hours, the Pentagon's
"Shock and Awe" battle plan will be put into effect. 3,000 munitions,
including some 800 cruise missiles, will rain down on Baghdad, a city
inhabited by some 5 million civilians. This will be done in the hope
that the Iraqi army will surrender, thus avoiding the need to send U.S.
troops in to fight a ruinous house-to-house battle.

  The Arab news service Al Jazeera, operating out of Qatar, will capture
images of thousands and thousands of Iraqi civilians sprawled and
shattered and bloody in the Baghdad streets, in a manner quite like the
bodies we saw in New York on September 11. The resulting explosion of
rage within the moderate and extremist Muslim world will be immediate
and ferocious.

  The terrorism alert status in America will rise to red. Troops will
appear in the streets.

  Saddam Hussein will not flee, and his forces will stand in Baghdad. 
American troops will be forced to fight downtown.  

  The oilheads in Iraq will be fired, and the pipeheads will be opened.
Israel will be attacked, much to the dismay of Bush administration
officials who have pushed this war in the erroneous assumption that such
action will serve to protect that nation. Unlike the first Gulf War,
this time Israel will strike back.

  American homeland security forces ? police, fire fighters and
emergency rescue personnel ? will watch their radios nervously, waiting
for the inevitable call. They know, better than anyone, that this
country is not ready to defend itself against an attack. Their budgets
have been gutted, the promised funding to augment their preparedness has
not come. They are not ready, but they stand and wait regardless,
because that is what they have pledged to do.

  Somewhere in America ? perhaps in New York, perhaps in Washington DC,
Boston, Philadelphia, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, Miami,
Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Detroit, San Francisco, Cleveland, Atlanta,
perhaps in all of them simultaneously ? there will be an explosion. A
group that cares nothing for the well being of Saddam Hussein will take
responsibility, in the name of those thousands of Iraqi Muslims
slaughtered in the initial aerial bombardment of Baghdad.

  The body bags will come out, here at home and across the sea in Iraq,
as Americans begin to die in terrible numbers.

  Martial law will be declared, habeas corpus will be suspended, posse
comitatus will be left aside, and the strictures outlined by both
Patriot Acts will come to full bloom. 227 years of constitutional law in
America will draw to a close.

  An oil shock will roll across the global community, ripping through an
already precarious economic situation. Here at home, the financial cost
of this war will hurl us further into deficit.

  More explosions will echo across the streets of America. They could be
nuclear or biological or chemical in nature, because in the effort to
overthrow Hussein we have ignored completely the fact that al Qaeda
certainly possesses the capabilities to attack us with these weapons,
having needed no help whatsoever from Hussein. These explosions could
come from simple fertilizer, as well. Remember that two men with a
sniper rifle and a car held Maryland hostage for a month. It does not
take much, considering the shoddy state of affairs in the homeland
security realm.

  In all likelihood, America will score a decisive military victory.
U.S. forces will invest Iraq. The Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root
will begin construction on any number of permanent military bases. 
Administration officials will begin to formulate plans for the removal
of other governments in the Middle East, both friendly and unfriendly,
by any means necessary.

  Civil war will break out in Iraq as the Shia majority, the Kurdish and
Sunni minorities, go for each other's throats. American constabulary
work there will become infinitely complicated.

  The United States of America has concluded an incredible, perhaps
unstoppable, race to the bottom since January of 2001. The disputed
election brought to power a mob of men ? Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz,
Perle, Bolton ? who have been planning this war since at least 1997.
 
  The attacks of September 11, allowed in no small part by purposeful
blinders placed over the eyes of our intelligence services lest they
offend petroleum principalities like Saudi Arabia with their prickly
questions, gave these men the excuse they needed for war.

  The Bush administration's reaction to 9/11 ? placing blame on
"evildoers" instead of starting an honest dialogue, blocking an
independent investigation of the attack for over a year, nominating
master secret-keeper Henry Kissinger to chair that investigative panel
in what was perhaps the most disgusting insult possible to the families
of the lost, ignoring the real terrorist threats in order to focus on
the politically expedient annihilation of Iraq, instituting the most
ham-fisted diplomatic push ever seen in the history of this nation by
utterly ignoring the eleven Security Council members who said no to this
war, disrupting international relations vital to the pursuit of true
terrorist threats, and all the while underfunding the homeland defenses
necessary to protect the American people ? has led us to this dismal
place.

  The destruction of Saddam Hussein will do nothing, zero, zip, zilch,
nada, to protect America. It will place America and her citizens in
further peril. We stand alone and naked today. We will reap the
whirlwind.

  Take to the streets. Scream until your throat bleeds. Call whatever
congressional leaders you know, full in the knowledge that you will be
contacting a mob of failures, appeasers and political cowards. Make sure
you can look at yourself in the mirror as this darkness falls. Above
all else, do not succumb to despair.

  You owe that much to yourself, your children and your nation as we
fade to black.

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Tue Mar 18 20:52:54 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 20:52:54 -0800
Subject: [news] A forgotten anniversary ...
Message-ID: <3E77F7A6.BDCB08EA@shaw.ca>

Thanks to Graeme Moore

GlacierPublished on Sunday, March 16, 2003 by CommonDreams.org 
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History 
by Thom Hartmann
     
The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was
barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well
that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They 
commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that
mobilized citizens all across the world.

       It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide
economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A
foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings,
but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The
intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would
eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue
elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most
recent research implies they did not.)

      But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest
levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who 
claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority 
vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers
he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man
who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to
understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and 
internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his 
political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and 
often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, 
foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and
media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an 
occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls
and human bones.

      Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although 
he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his 
response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most 
prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who 
had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press
conference.

      "You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in
history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, 
surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling
with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from 
God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its 
ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the
Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.

      Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was 
built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous
terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was 
everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window 
display.

      Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's 
now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of 
combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - 
that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and 
habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; 
suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and 
without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes
without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.

      To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and 
State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil 
libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the 
national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, 
the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police
agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't
had time to read the bill before voting on it.

      Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal 
police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons
and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year
only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely 
ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus 
lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who
protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found 
themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and 
jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the
leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily 
lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures,
and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator.)

      Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the
suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word 
into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his 
countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began
to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the 
introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous 
propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's hearts 
swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was
sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were 
simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the only 
ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human 
rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it's
of little concern to us.

      Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement 
with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any 
international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best 
interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus 
withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and 
then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden 
of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.

      His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the 
people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were
rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the
Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity."

Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared 
"Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it
was true.

      Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader 
determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the
nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated 
administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the 
nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry
and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various 
troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a single new 
national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating 
the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and 
investigative agencies under a single leader.

      He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of 
this new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave
it a role in the government equal to the other major departments.

      His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the 
terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those voices 
questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising 
questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's 
recollection as his central security office began advertising a program
encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This 
program was so successful that the names of some of the people 
"denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations. Those denounced
often included opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak 
out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled 
through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.

      To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone 
wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, 
bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into 
high government positions. A flood of government money poured into 
corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry 
terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars 
overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire 
media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, 
particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle 
Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one 
corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the 
first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more 
would follow. Industry flourished.

      But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, 
voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. 
Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the
White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out 
against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to 
direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own
government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and 
the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being 
held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or
family.

      With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he
began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, 
limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the 
suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with 
the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was
tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they 
were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He called a 
press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of 
the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the 
right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe
- at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine 
only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like 
Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.

      It took a few months, and intense international debate and 
lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the 
leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the 
military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the 
nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike
doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria 
in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so 
often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and 
replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German 
corporations began to take over Austrian resources.

      In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, 
"Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with 
brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I
have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my 
people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met
me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants 
have we come, but as liberators."

      To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice
of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press 
began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the
nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that 
the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in 
splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said,
there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief"
("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media 
began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were 
attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him were labeled 
"anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were 
aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of
supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most 
effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom
most of the army came) against the "intellectuals and liberals" who were
critical of his policies.

      Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was 
successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of 
opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release 
of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't
enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent. A full-out 
war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles 
within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against 
liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism
that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but 
threatening the middle class's way of life.

      A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the 
nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in
the name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first 
experiment with democracy.

      As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones
worth remembering.

      February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist 
Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament
(Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to 
legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of his 
successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German
blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the 
history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was later Time 
magazine's "Man Of The Year."

      Most Americans remember his office for the security of the 
homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel,
simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.

      We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly 
violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while 
generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable
"shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors 
of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense 
University Press.

      Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary 
(Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of
government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close 
alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using 
war as a tool to keep power: "fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of 
government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically
through the merging of state and business leadership, together with 
belligerent nationalism."

      Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to 
remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the 
United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt 
chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and 
prosperity.

      Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations 
and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the 
commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and 
create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding 
war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, 
enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, 
increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created
Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs
to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.

      To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is
again ours.

      Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, and is
the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and 
"The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight." This article is copyright by Thom
Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, 
or web media so long as this credit is attached.

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Tue Mar 18 22:18:37 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 22:18:37 -0800
Subject: [news] Brainwashing America: THE MEDIA MENTALITY OF OBEDIENCE &
	CONSENT
Message-ID: <3E780BBD.D96C6B48@shaw.ca>

Subject: Brainwashing America ::: Perpetual War Portfolio
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 10:33:26 -1000
From: "MUTANEX Communications" <mutanex at wildmail.com>
Organization: FutureWorks Earth Portal 2002
To: "TheDailyWorld" <letters at thedailyworld.com>

THE MEDIA MENTALITY OF OBEDIENCE & CONSENT 

"To sin by silence when they should protest
makes cowards of men." - Abraham Lincoln

By Norman Solomon / Creators Syndicate

As the possibility of a U.S. invasion turns into the reality of massive
carnage, the war on Iraq cannot avoid confronting Americans with a tacit
expectation that rarely gets media scrutiny. In a word: obedience.

When a country -- particularly "a democracy" -- goes to war, the passive
consent of the governed lubricates the machinery of slaughter. 

Silence is a key form of cooperation, but the war-making system does not
insist on quietude or agreement. Mere passivity or self-restraint will
suffice to keep the missiles flying, the bombs exploding and the faraway
people dying.

On the home front, beliefs are of scant importance. Antiwar sentiment is
necessary but insufficient to halt a war. Much more is needed than
expressions of dissent that stay within the customary bounds.

Daily media speculation about the starting date for all-out war on Iraq
has contributed to widespread passivity -- a kind of spectator
relationship to military actions being implemented in our names.

We can't just blame the media conglomerates and Washington spinners for
the prevailing stupor. After decades of desensitizing propaganda, we
routinely crave the insulation that news outlets offer. We tell
ourselves that our personal lives are difficult enough without getting
too upset about world events.

The conventional wisdom of American political life has made it
predictable that editorial writers and politicians cannot resist
accommodating themselves to expediency by the time the first missiles
reach Baghdad. Conformist behavior -- in sharp contrast to authentic
conscience -- is notably plastic.

A pathetic case in point is Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat
who voted for the congressional war resolution last October while trying
to pass himself off as a critic of President Bush's enthusiasm for war.
While campaigning in Iowa the other day for his party's presidential
nomination, Kerry told a New York Times reporter: "When the war begins,
if the war begins, I support the troops and I support the United States
of America winning as rapidly as possible. When the troops are in the
field and fighting -- if they're in the field and fighting --
remembering what it's like to be those troops, I think they need a
unified America that is prepared to win."

Prepared to win. Such a phrase rolls off an oily tongue with ease. As a
consequence, of course, many blameless people must die.

Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont, is supposedly an antiwar
candidate for the Democratic presidential slot. On the campaign trail in
Iowa, he "stopped short when asked what he would say if there was a
war," according to the Times.

"You know, I don't know the answer to that yet," Dean said. "Certainly
I'm going to support American kids that are sent over there. Obviously,
I'm going to wish everybody well. You know, you root for your country."

You root for your country. No matter how horrific its actions.

Billions of buds on countless flowers and trees will wondrously open
across the United States during the next weeks. Meanwhile, the
Pentagon's firepower will destroy uncounted human beings in Iraq during
what will be, to put it mildly, a war of aggression.

Judgments at Nuremberg and precepts of international law forbid
launching aggressive war -- an apt description of what the U.S.
government has in store for Iraqi people this spring.

"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen
leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they
started it," said Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson, a U.S.
representative to the International Conference on Military Trials at the
close of World War II. He added that "no grievances or policies will
justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned
as an instrument of policy."

Last November, more than 300 law professors in the United States signed
a statement pointing out that "the international rule of law is not a
soft luxury to be discarded whenever leaders find it convenient or
popular to resort to savage violence."

The deadening lockstep of obedience is easier to fault in other
societies. Close to home, as the adrenaline of unfathomable violence
pulses through the televisions of America, the siren of deference to
authority may seem irresistible. But it isn't.

###

Norman Solomon is co-author of the new book "Target Iraq: What the News
Media Didn't Tell You," published by Context Books
http://www.contextbooks.com/newF.html


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Bombs and Blood

They seemed like very nice people, the men and women, some with
children, who dropped by to see the Liberty Bell, which is housed in a
one-story shedlike pavilion with large windows in the roof.

My mind wandering, I imagined the visitors as casualties of war. I
glanced up at the sunlight streaming through the roof and could
visualize an incoming warhead, a missile that perhaps had strayed off
course and was heading toward us. It wasn't hard to imagine the damage.
The pavilion and everyone in it would be obliterated.

This is the fate soon to be visited upon a certain number of innocent
Iraqi civilians (no one knows how many) if the president goes ahead with
the war he has pursued so relentlessly. We should outlaw the term
collateral damage. Above all else, the damage done by the weapons of war
is to the flesh, muscle, bone and psyches of real people, some of them
children. If we're willing to inflict such terrible damage, we should
acknowledge it and not hide behind euphemisms.

I interviewed a number of people in the vicinity of Independence Mall
about their views of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. No one I spoke with
was particularly well informed. But what struck me about those in favor
of invading Iraq was the cavalier way in which they talked about it.
Their message, essentially, was: "Saddam's a bad guy. It's time for him
to go." I got no sense that they thought of war as a horrible
experience. No one mentioned the inevitable carnage. No one spoke as if
they understood that war is always hideous, even if it's sometimes
necessary.

The children in Iraq are already in sorrowful shape. The last thing in
the world they need is another war. More than half the population of
Iraq is under the age of 18, and those youngsters are living in an
environment that has been poisoned by the Iran-Iraq war, the first gulf
war and long years of debilitating sanctions.

One out of every eight Iraqi children dies before the age of 5.
One-fourth are born underweight. One-fourth of those who should be in
school are not. One-fourth do not have access to safe water.

This generational catastrophe is the fault of Saddam Hussein, no
question. But those who favor war should at least realize that the
terrain to be invaded by the most fearsome military machine in history
is populated mostly by children who are already suffering.

The American military has significantly improved the accuracy of its
weapons, and the U.S. has gone to great lengths to develop war plans
designed to minimize civilian casualties. But war, as anyone who has
been in the military knows, is about killing people. Gen. Richard Myers,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has already made it clear that
the U.S. is planning to deliver what he calls a "shock" to the Iraqi
system.

That shock reportedly will be delivered by 3,000 precision-guided bombs
and missiles in the first 48 hours. The children of Iraq won't be the
targets, but that is what their country will face if America attacks.

(On Tuesday the Air Force tested the country's largest nonnuclear bomb,
the 21,000-pound Massive Ordnance Air Blast, gleefully nicknamed the
"Mother of All Bombs.")

After the war will come the humanitarian crisis. There will be the dead
to bury and the sick and wounded to tend to. And hundreds of thousands
of refugees.

Two-thirds of Iraq's 24 million people are entirely dependent on
government food rations, and the remaining 8 million are dependent to
some degree. U.N. officials have said plans by the United States to feed
the population after the war are inadequate, and food supplies could run
out in a matter of weeks.

Carol Bellamy, executive director of Unicef, told me: "The area we're
very concerned about is water and sanitation. There's very little ground
water in Iraq. At least half the water has to be treated. So if the
major power facilities and water treatment plants were knocked out,
there would be very significant consequences, and the children would
generally be the most vulnerable."

Most Americans will watch this war from the comfort of their living
rooms, well out of harm's way. These are a few of the items they might
consider as they make up their minds on whether an invasion is a good
idea, or whether a search for a better alternative is still in order.

Published on March 13, 2003 in The New York Times

 

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Stepford Citizen Syndrome: Top Ten Signs Your Neighbor is Brainwashed 

By Maureen Farrell

Though much of the world is convinced the 2000 election was a coup
d'etat, and many believe we're being lied to regarding 9/11, we
Americans are unaware of how numb we seem. Not only are we being coerced
into World War III, but at this very moment, unnamed souls are secretly
locked away, the Army's drafted plans for civilian detention camps and
there's a shadow government buzzing beneath our streets. And yet, we
continue to ignore the oily elephant in the living room. 

The administration's Iraq war dance is likewise baffling, particularly
when Dick Cheney says Saddam can't be trusted - even though, not too
long ago, he was trusted to the tune of $73 million during
Halliburton/Iraq transactions. Moreover, newly discovered memos reveal
that Cheney was also involved in a 1975 cover-up involving the CIA's
mind-control experiment, MK-ULTRA. Back then, the government paid
$750,000 restitution to Army biochemist Dr. Frank Olson's family, after
admitting the CIA slipped Dr. Olson LSD days before his 1953 fall from a
New York City building. When the Ford administration finally came clean,
they promised they'd revealed everything. Yet according to an article in
the "Mercury News," (Scientist's death haunts family, August 8, 2002)
key officials, including White House aides Dick Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld pushed to continue to conceal information.

But not only has the government tried to control people's minds, they've
copped to controlling the media, too. Operation Mockingbird, the CIA's
plan to infiltrate America's newsrooms, was such a success that former
CIA director William Colby boasted, "the Central Intelligence Agency
owns everyone of any major significance in the major media." Carl
Bernstein substantiated this, revealing that hundreds of journalists and
news organizations were involved in this subversion. And though
officials have admitted to planting fabrications in the past, it seems
they're still at it. Remember the story about the terrorist's passport
surviving the fiery crash into the World Trade Center? What could that
be but government-issued pabulum? And what else but full-scale public
brainwashing accounts for the rash of Stepford Citizen Syndrome
spreading throughout the country? 

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/09/05_stepford.html

Brainwashing America

The puppet Bush regime is using new, aggressive forms of brainwashing to
change the very way Americans think and feel. 

This is the psychological dimension of the "High Cabal's" general
onslaught against American workers, just as the "war on terrorism" is
the military dimension and corporate crime and tax cuts for the rich
comprise the economic dimension. 

We are living under the beginning stages of a military dictatorship in
precisely the same way that 1930s Germans suffered under the Nazi
regime. 

As in the case of Nazi Germany, state-sponsored propaganda
(brainwashing) is a vital part of the Bush regime's strategy.

New propaganda slogans are being overtly and subliminally implanted by
Bush and his gang through their speeches and actions:

?        dissent is treason

?        Constitutional liberties are less important than security

?        the "war on terrorism" excuses any attack on civil liberties 

?        the Bush administration has the right and the duty to bring
about "regime change" in any nation it chooses 

?        the economy is basically sound 

?        only a few bad apples are found in the corporate barrel, which
requires no new oversight laws 

*   if Bush and Cheney say they're not guilty of corporate crimes, then
believe it and shut up

Propaganda American Style

Some of these mind programming tactics are so subtle that they can be
overlooked in the hubbub of everyday life. For example, have you been
aware that the very way in which the "public discourse" is being carried
on is a subtle brainwashing strategy? The Congress, the media, the man
and woman on the street are encouraged to ask only this question: How
should the U.S. conduct its war against Iraq? 

What about the questions: 

?        Should the U.S. start a second war with Iraq? 

?        Does an unelected American president have the right to force a
"regime change" on another nation? 

?        Why aren't Americans up in arms about Bush starting a second
battle in his "war against terrorism?" 

Why should American military personnel die merely for Bush's insane
quest for world domination and oil? 

The Bush puppet regime is engaging in other rather subtle brainwashing
tactics: 

?        an elaborate ruse as to who was to blame for 9/11 

?        psychic and political numbing in preparation for war 

http://www.hermes-press.com/brainwash1.htm

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poised to succeed in the age of perpetual war. The stocks were selected
on the basis of popular product lines, strong political connections and
lobbying efforts, and paid-for access to key Congressional
decision-makers.

See here.. http://www.dack.com/war/portfolio

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be
dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War
is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies,
and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many
under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of
the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors,
and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds,
are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same
malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of
fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of
war . . . and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by
both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual
warfare." 

James Madison, April 20, 1795
 
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"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of
authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made
to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are
men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They
promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." 
-- Daniel Webster
 
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to
pause and reflect."
--Mark Twain
 
"Governments arise either out of the people or over the people." 
--Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man", 1791 
 
"The will to be stupid is a very powerful force . " 
--Bujold
 
"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and
catastrophe."
--H. G. Wells
 
???????M???????????T???????????N???????????X?????????
 
FutureFest MediaCentre
http://mutanex.com/futurefest
 
MetaMagic MediaMinistry @
Abracadabra Communications
http://metamagic.org
 
Hidden Elitist Conspiracies?
Visit BeamShip MUTANEX
http://mutanex.com
 
News of the Strange & Supernatural
Mark Fiore's FlashToon ::: 
"Preemptive Diplomacy"
http://metamagic.org/strange

From resist at resist.ca  Tue Mar 18 23:11:23 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist admin)
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 23:11:23 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] Strathcona hires 'extra eyes and ears'
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.53.0303182309450.25918@resist.ca>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 13:53:02 -0800 (PST)
From: pippikrakra at resist.ca

Bike security patrollers Stephen Ma and Armando Turcios are on the lookout
for crime in Strathcona. Photo by Dan Toulgoet.

Strathcona hires 'extra eyes and ears'

By Mike Howell-Staff writer

The spread of the Downtown Eastside drug trade and associated crime has
prompted the Strathcona Business Improvement Association to hire a private
security firm to help police the area.

Cathy Kwan, coordinator of the association, said the daily burglaries and
break-ins to vehicles are too much to handle for the limited number of
cops working in Strathcona, which runs from Gore Street east to Clark.

The crime has also made it difficult for businesses to attract customers
and workers to East Cordova, where street prostitution and open-air drug
dealing are common, Kwan said.

"We understand the police can't be everywhere, so this is the step we have
to take," she said, sitting in her office on East Cordova at Hawks Street.

York Security Ltd. started a two-man bicycle patrol last Monday to deter
criminals, drug deals and break-ins. The patrol, which operates strictly
during the day for now, is concentrating on the four blocks east of Gore
Street along Hastings.

Dressed in green and grey jackets and black pants, the guards are equipped
with first-aid kits, radios and disposal bins for syringes found in the
area. Part of their role will also be to help people to find shelter, food
or clothing.

Paul Reeve, business development manager for York, said the guards are
mostly "extra eyes and ears" for the community and police, but will do
some enforcement, telling illegal street vendors to move off the street.

"The aim is not to be confrontational-we're not going to be getting in
fights or drag-out battles," said Reeve, who worked as a Vancouver police
constable from 1957 to 1967 before getting into private security. "We're
there to aid and assist the police, and we'll be calling them when we need
to."

York Security will also be operating a "John Watch" program, where a
security guard in a car patrols the East Cordova industrial area-a known
working area for prostitutes-and records licence plate numbers and makes
and models of vehicles. That information will be given to Kwan, who is
setting up a Web site with descriptions of the johns' vehicles and all but
two of their licence plate numbers. Signs have already been posted in the
industrial area warning the johns they're being monitored.

Vancouver police Sgt. Mike Anfield, supervisor of the neighbourhood
policing team in Strathcona, supports the association's efforts, noting
the police department already works closely with various security firms in
the city, including one in Chinatown that seems to be working well.

"It's just a reality right now; there's just not enough policemen to deal
with the issues that we're facing in those areas right now," said Anfield.
"As a department, we're not opposed to private security, and obviously
we're in support of the community taking steps to help us deal with the
problems."

Neither Kwan nor Reeve would say how much it costs to have security guards
patrolling Strathcona. But Reeve said preventing a burglary or a break-in
is a huge saving to the community when court costs are taken into account.

Another factor in the decision to hire private security, said Kwan, is
fear that community policing centres in the area could be closed or
amalgamated in the wake of funding cuts by the provincial government.
Mayor Larry Campbell also recently told the Courier that the police
department won't be getting an additional 44 cops for the Downtown
Eastside.

Even so, Kwan believes the perception that Strathcona is unsafe is unfounded.

"We want our community to get away from that perception of fear down here.
We have crime problems, but I still believe it's a fairly safe place. I
come to work every day down here and I haven't had a problem. There's
crime all over the city-it just so happens it's more visible here."

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Wed Mar 19 08:58:50 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 08:58:50 -0800
Subject: [news] Israeli Troops Fire on Rachel Corrie Memorial Service
Message-ID: <3E78A1CA.1CB206D2@shaw.ca>

For Photos of the the incident go to:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0319-02.htm

Published on Wednesday, March 19, 2003 by the Guardian/UK
Activist's Memorial Service Disrupted
by Chris McGreal in Jerusalem

Israeli forces fired teargas and stun grenades yesterday in an attempt
to break up a memorial service for Rachel Corrie, the American peace
activist killed by an army bulldozer in Gaza on Sunday.

Witnesses including several dozen foreigners and Palestinian supporters
say Israeli armoured vehicles tried to disperse the gathering at the
spot in Rafah refugee camp where Ms Corrie was crushed to death.

The 23 year-old activist with the International Solidarity Movement
(ISM) was trying to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes by the
Israelis when she was hit by the bulldozer.

Joe Smith, a young activist from Kansas City, said about 100 people were
gathered to lay carnations and erect a small memorial when the first
armoured personnel carrier appeared.

"They started firing teargas and blowing smoke, then they fired sound
grenades. After a while it got hectic so we sat down. Then the tank came
over and shot in the air," he said. "It scared a lot of Palestinians,
especially the shooting made a lot of them run and the teargas freaked
people out. But most of us stayed."

Another witness said the army failed to break up the service.

"People were laying carnations at the spot where Rachel was killed when
a tank came and fired teargas right on them. Then a core group of the
peace activists took an ISM cloth banner to the fence and pinned it up.

"The tank chased after them trying to stop them with teargas but the
wind was against the army," she said.

Tensions rose further when a convoy of vehicles, including the bulldozer
that killed Ms Corrie, passed the area.

"I don't think it was deliberate but it was pretty insensitive," said Mr
Smith.

"I think they had been destroying some buildings elsewhere and had to
pass by to get back to their base."

The army said it was investigating the incident.

? Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

###

___________________________________________
If there is no struggle, there is not progress. Those who profess to
favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are those who want crops
without plowing the ground; they want rain without thunder and
lightening
. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical
one, or it may be both. But, it must be a struggle. Power concedes
nothing without demand; it never has and it never will.

-Frederick Douglas, 1857

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Wed Mar 19 16:40:35 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 16:40:35 -0800
Subject: [news] Michael Moore to George W. Bush on the Eve of War
Message-ID: <3E790E03.4FD6032A@shaw.ca>

Subject: A Letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush on the Eve of War

   Monday, March 17th, 2003

   George W. Bush
   600 Pennsylvania Ave.
   Washington, DC 

   Dear Governor Bush:

   So today is what you call "the moment of truth," the day that "France
and the rest of world have to show their cards on the table." I'm glad
to hear that this day has finally arrived. Because, I gotta tell ya,
having survived 440 days of your lying and conniving, I wasn't sure if I
could take much more. So I'm glad to hear that today is Truth Day,
'cause I got a few truths I would like to share with you:

   1. There is virtually NO ONE in America (talk radio nutters and Fox
News aside) who is gung-ho to go to war. Trust me on this one. Walk out
of the White House and on to any street in America and try to find five
people who are PASSIONATE about wanting to kill Iraqis. YOU WON'T FIND
THEM! Why? 'Cause NO Iraqis have ever come here and killed any of us! No
Iraqi has even threatened to do that. You see, this is how we average
Americans think: If a certain so-and-so is not perceived as a threat to
our lives, then, believe it or not, we don't want to kill him! Funny how
that works!

   2. The majority of Americans -- the ones who never elected you -- are
not fooled by your weapons of mass distraction. We know what the real
issues are that affect our daily lives -- and none of them begin with I
or end in Q. Here's what threatens us: two and a half million jobs lost
since you took office, the stock market having become a cruel joke, no
one knowing if their retirement funds are going to be there, gas now
costs two dollars a gallon -- the list goes on and on. Bombing Iraq will
not make any of this go away. Only you need to go away for things to
improve.

   3. As Bill Maher said last week, how bad do you have to suck to lose
a popularity contest with Saddam Hussein? The whole world is against
you, Mr. Bush. Count your fellow Americans among them.

   4. The Pope has said this war is wrong, that it is a SIN. The Pope!
But even worse, the Dixie Chicks have now come out against you! How bad
does it have to get before you realize that you are an army of one on
this war? Of course, this is a war you personally won't have to fight.
Just like when you went AWOL while the poor were shipped to Vietnam in
your place.

   5. Of the 535 members of Congress, only ONE (Sen. Johnson of South
Dakota) has an enlisted son or daughter in the armed forces! If you
really want to stand up for America, please send your twin daughters
over to Kuwait right now and let them don their chemical warfare suits.
And let's see every member of Congress with a child of military age also
sacrifice their kids for this war effort. What's that you say? You don't
THINK so? Well, hey, guess what -- we don't think so either!

   6. Finally, we love France. Yes, they have pulled some royal
screw-ups. Yes, some of them can be pretty damn annoying. But have you
forgotten we wouldn't even have this country known as America if it
weren't for the French? That it was their help in the Revolutionary War
that won it for us? That it was France who gave us our Statue of
Liberty, a Frenchman who built the Chevrolet, and a pair of French
brothers who invented the movies? And now they are doing what only a
good friend can do -- tell you the truth about yourself, straight, no
b.s. Quit pissing on the French and thank them for getting it right for
once. You know, you really should have traveled more (like once) before
you took over. Your ignorance of the world has not only made you look
stupid, it has painted you into a corner you can't get out of.

   Well, cheer up -- there IS good news. If you do go through with this
war, more than likely it will be over soon because I'm guessing there
aren't a lot of Iraqis willing to lay down their lives to protect Saddam
Hussein. After you "win" the war, you will enjoy a huge bump in the
popularity polls as everyone loves a winner -- and who doesn't like to
see a good ass-whoopin' every now and then (especially when it 's some
third world ass!). And just like with Afghanistan, we'll forget about
what happens to a country after we bomb it 'cause that is just too
complex! So try your best to ride this victory all the way to next
year's election. Of course, that's still a long ways away, so we'll all
get to have a good hardy-har-har while we watch the economy sink even
further down the toilet!

   But, hey, who knows -- maybe you'll find Osama a few days before the
   election! See, start thinking like THAT! Keep hope alive! Kill Iraqis
-- they got our oil!! 

   Yours, 

   Michael Moore 
   www.michaelmoore.com

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Thu Mar 20 12:21:06 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 12:21:06 -0800
Subject: [news] FWD: Netstrike on American Embassy in Italy
Message-ID: <3E7A22B2.6B999AD0@shaw.ca>

If you would like to participate:
http://digilander.libero.it/gigi198030/visita.html

From ron at resist.ca  Fri Mar 21 00:21:54 2003
From: ron at resist.ca (ron)
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 00:21:54 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] Pivot lawyer sues Vancouver Police Department 
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.53.0303210020460.30096@resist.ca>



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 23:40:03 -0800
From: Pivot Legal Society <pivot at pivotlegal.org>

Press Release: For Immediate Release
March 21, 2003

PIVOT LAWYER SUES VANCOUVER POLICE DEPARTMENT

VANCOUVER - Pivot Legal Society executive director, John Richardson, has filed a civil lawsuit against the Vancouver Police Department in BC Supreme Court.  The lawsuit alleges illegal arrest and false imprisonment for Richardson?s arrest during the police raid on the Woodwards encampment in September of 2002.  It also alleges abuse of authority, abuse of process, malice and defamation, for a series of spurious Law Society complaints laid against Richardson by Police Chief Jamie Graham and another VPD officer.

Richardson is referring all inquiries regarding the lawsuit to his lawyer, Howard Rubin.
Contact: Howard Rubin at (604) 984-2030

Copies of the statement of claim can be downloaded from:
http://www.pivotlegal.org/documents/statementofclaim-mar20-03.pdf

- 30 -





From resist at resist.ca  Fri Mar 21 21:56:50 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist admin)
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 21:56:50 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] Charges laid against six police officers
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.53.0303212156080.7078@resist.ca>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 19:59:05 -0800 (PST)
From: sabate <sabate at ziplip.com>

Charges laid against six police officers

canada.com

Friday, March 21, 2003

VANCOUVER (CP) -- Six Vancouver police officers have been charged in
connection with the alleged beating of three men in Stanley Park.

The officers, all of whom have less than five years experience, were
jointly charged Friday with assault, assault with a weapon and attempting
to obstruct justice.

The officers allegedly picked up three men on downtown Granville St. on
Jan. 14, took them to Stanley Park and beat them.

One of the men who claims to be a victim of the attack is Barry Lawrie, a
drug addict, who said he was beaten so severely that two weeks later his
testicles still ached and his lips were still split.

He said he was bounced around from police officer to police officer like a
basketball.

He alleged police also warned him that if he spoke about what happened he
would end up dead from a heroin overdose.

Vancouver police chief Jamie Graham urged people not to assume the
officers' guilt before they've had their day in court.

"We must all understand and respect that criminal law is based on fairness
and, that all persons must not be convicted before their legal right to a
fair trial," he said in a news release.

"The public is entitled to expect professionalism, honesty and
unquestionable ethical behaviour from police. It is incumbent upon us to
instil in our officers the clear expectation of these virtues and to
expect nothing less."

The six officers were suspended with pay in January while an investigation
was conducted.

They were in court Friday to hear the charges against them read out and
were released until their next court appearance on Apr. 11.


From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sat Mar 22 10:52:18 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 10:52:18 -0800
Subject: [news] Thanks Corporate Media! We Couldn't Control The People Without
	You!
Message-ID: <3E7CB0E2.8395BA4D@shaw.ca>

Thanks Corporate Media! We Couldn't Control The People Without You!

Help The War Effort

Show your "support" for corporate media's continuous coverage of the war
by continuously monitoring them while you go about your surfing. See
them get all excited as their hit counts soar. They'll be so pleased (if
their servers can keep up) and so will you, knowing you are doing your
patriotic share to "help" the war effort, showing your loyalty by always
being there for them.

http://www.kbiz.ca/wartools/ 

  Monitor this site:
                     
The home page of the selected media site will load every 10 seconds in a
hidden frame. As long as you leave this window open you will be showing
your continuous "support" for corporate media and their war effort. If
you have a high-speed connection you can even show your appreciation
to more than one media outlet by opening this page in several windows.

http://www.kbiz.ca/wartools/

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sat Mar 22 19:17:37 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 19:17:37 -0800
Subject: [news] FWD: KILLER CLOWNS: Anti-War from a Military Perspective....
References: <0HC600JBTIPIU3@l-daemon>
Message-ID: <3E7D2751.7A709AEE@shaw.ca>

----- Original Message ----- From: grok <grok at sprint.ca> To: Labor Left
Opposition <llo at coollist.com> Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2003 5:56 PM
Subject: [LLO] KILLER CLOWNS: Anti-War from a Military Perspective.... 

Forwarded message:

Subject: Anti-War from a Military Perspective.... Date: 22 Mar 2003
08:27:53 -0800 

[One thing I love about Stan is his no frills down home honesty and
another is his ego-less sense of humor, both in evidence in the below. 
For those of us who are cajoled into "supporting our troups," he
provides a ready answer......from one who's been there.  M] 

Supporting the Troops by Stan Goff 

March 19 

The US aggression against Iraq, now framed by the Ministry of Propaganda 
(aka CNN and the rest of the media), as the US War Against Saddam, has
entered the direct overthrow-a-sovereign-government phase. As this is
written, the reports are confusing. The military situation is entirely
unpredictable, since every operations order becomes obsolete the minute
of its own execution. The Brits and the US administration are spinning
away on television and claiming operational security, which may be
entirely true. But there is a look of worry about them that leads me to
suspect - perhaps wrongly - that the flurry of last minute plan changes
since Turkey's dastardly betrayal has produced some awful goat-screw on
the ground, exposing yet again the vast incompetence of the US
military's narcissistic officer corps that lurks just below the surface
of their incredible technological power. 

Yesterday saw a preemptive attack from the Republican Party toward Tom
Daschle, the Democratic House Minority Whip. Daschle made some anemic
criticisms of the Bush junta's diplomatic prowess, whereupon the Repubs
unleashed a torrent of accusations that Daschle was somehow failing to
support the troops. It was a preemptive attack directed at Daschle,
almost as a ritual, but ultimately this censure is directed against all
of us. 

This hasn't been an easy time for Bush and his killer clowns. It hasn't
been an easy time for a lot of so-called liberals either. An anti-war
movement came onto the scene, and not just any anti-war movement. It is
now the fastest and broadest international movement of its type in
history. It involves anarcho-kids, olde tyme lefties, and pacifists to
be sure, but it also involves soccer moms, Black preachers, Italian dock
workers, women who write books, nerds, doctors, Indian garment workers,
Nigerian intellectuals, Brazilian coffee pickers, Japanese students,
Haitian peasants, Filipino street cleaners. every damn body! 

And that's not all. Lots of them are picking up bad language. When I
hear a 60-year-old middle school teacher using words like "imperialism,"
I'm knowing that something is going on, and those who wanted every one
of the rest of us to just go along with the program, including
weak-kneed red-baiting liberals, have become alarmed. There's a very
dangerous consciousness that is emerging in the face of our would-be
fascists. 

So now they have pulled out the last trick in the bag, the one that is
supposed to silence us for good, by jingo! We have to support the
troops. This is the mother of all social policing strategies to stifle
criticism of our naked emperors. 

It goes, we must close ranks and support our president, who is after all
the commander-in-chief of the armed forces (our sons and daughters, our
sisters and brothers, our spouses and sweethearts), because without that
support, our (enter name of your loved one in the military) will not be
adequately filled with our spirit of support to effectively defend
themselves, whereupon lack of said spirit will result in American
casualties, which makes all of us who withhold said spirit complicit in
killing and wounding American troops, and therefore traitors. 

Let me explain something, by way of a war story. 

In 1983, I took part in the invasion of Grenada. Aside from being an
incompetent operation, it was also one that no one in the United States
even knew about until it was pretty much over. Hey - it doesn't take
long to conquer a nation that is on a ten-mile-wide island with fewer
than 90,000 people. even if it was planned by idiots. 

When America was informed that its treasure and youth were being risked
to secure the global nutmeg supply, over 99 percent of the country
couldn't tell you where Grenada was. We who conducted the operation had
committed it to memory less than 40 hours earlier. 

The invasion was ordered in part to take advantage of internal turmoil
in Grenada to install a new pro-US government. Mainly, however, its aim
was to flex a little American muscle after 258 Marines were killed by a
car bomb only days earlier in Beirut, whereupon the US expeditionary
force in Lebanon was unceremoniously withdrawn. 

Like a bully that gets his tail kicked, Reagan & Co. had to beat someone
smaller down to save face. 

The whole thing suddenly became a "rescue mission" when someone stumbled
over a low-rent offshore medical diploma mill full of American students
and Reagan's staff cranked up the propaganda machine. None of us
involved in Operation Urgent Fury (not joking. it was called that) had
even known the damn thing was there. 

The first hour of the operation was an old-fashioned country
ass-whuppin'. We were on the receiving end. 

We were forced to defend ourselves. But we didn't have the "support"
spirit of the American people, because as far as they knew, we were all
still home, cheating on our spouses in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
America woke up scratching its head, trying to figure out why Ronald
Reagan had just invaded a Spanish city named after a Ford compact. 

When the helicopter I was riding on with 15 other people reached the
island, we were greeted with small arms fire before we even crossed over
the first mangrove swamp, and it got worse fast. By the time we reached
out "target," Richmond Hill Prison, where we were going to "liberate"
prisoners that weren't there, we already had four people shot. As we
hovered over the prison, deciding whether or not to slide down ropes
into Grenada's drunk tank, machine gun fire poured through both doors
and stitched up the belly of the fuselage from below. By the time we
left, having decided not to put up with this any longer, seven members
of our group were shot, and most of the rest of us were having our
clothes shot off. 

In all this mayhem and confusion, while we (the Army's most elite,
whitest forces) were being spanked by skinny Black folk from Grenada and
equally dark Cuban construction workers, I can honestly say that I
didn't give a flying fuck about what anyone in the United States might
be thinking, or how much supportive spirit they might be psychically
channeling my way to cuddle up against. 

I didn't stop to consider that many of my countrymen and countrywomen
made jokes about our commander-in-chief once co-starring with a
chimpanzee, or how that might seem, unsupportive. 

I was extremely busy using a K-bar knife to cut the jammed harness off a
wounded door gunner to lay his pale, shocky ass on the helicopter floor
while I commandeered his portside machine gun to hose down some of our
most persistent assailants across the valley. 

Nothing I did would have changed one iota, even had the entire
population of the United States gathered naked at Stonehenge to chant
supportive mantras out to our precise geographic coordinates. 

Nothing we do or don't do here will have any impact on what the troops
do in Iraq in the coming days either. The support the troops thing is a
mystifying old red herring. What our new fascists really want us to do
is shut the fuck up. What we really want is for the troops to come home. 

And shutting up is exactly what I'm not going to do. 

What if I'd have been cut down in Grenada at the ripe old age of 32?
Would it have accomplished a damn thing worthwhile? In retrospect, I
have had the opportunity - an opportunity associated with my ability to
breathe - to learn just how cynical these military adventures are. 

The best thing we can do for our sons and daughters and sisters and
brothers and spouses and sweethearts. is to tell the damn truth. What is
endangering them is a right-wing, racist, military/security state -
including Uncle Tom and Aunt Thomasina - that is attempting to protect
the power of the powerful by plundering other people, and using soldiers
to do it. 

Goddamn George W. Bush and everyone like him! I will not be a chauvinist
who advocates victory in an illegal war where our people and the people
of Iraq are the cannon fodder and the victims. I do not want our
children to die. And I do not want them to kill other people's children.
This is not a fucking football game. 

If we want to support troops, we'll do it by encouraging them to think,
and when necessary, disobey. Since Freedom Road talked me into doing
this column, we have heard from soldiers and their families. They are
thinking. They are asking questions. Many are beginning to suspect
they've been had, and that behind all this high-flown mendacity coming
out of the White House briefing room is a gangster's errand of plunder
with our children as its unwitting tools. If we want to support the real
troops, the real people, instead of the abstraction, we'll keep
connecting the dots for them, as this column attempts to do, and as the
anti-war movement needs to do. 

If we start to send care packages full of books to the troops, that
would be supportive. They need something to fill the long, boring days
ahead, after the current mess is made. I can think of many titles. I'm
sure others can, too. 

http://www.freedomroad.org/milmatters_13_supporting 
--------------

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sun Mar 23 12:54:24 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 12:54:24 -0800
Subject: [news] Fw: Got a visa !
Message-ID: <3E7E1F00.5F7C46B2@shaw.ca>

Hi friends, 

I just got a visa about an hour ago (10am).  Cara and I are the only
ones to get visas so far so we will try to set off early tomorrow
morning for Baghdad.  Our team in Baghdad are running short of money so
we will attempt to get some to them.  It sounds likely that the rest of
the team will get their visas tomorrow and be able to join us the next
day. 

All the reports are that the road is quiet.  A lot of traffic is still
moving between Amman and Baghdad.  We may get stopped by US troops,
which is why we want to get through as soon as possible before the US
closes the road.  We have been in contact with our team in Baghdad and
they report that all is quiet for now.  Life goes on as normal.  All the
bombing has indeed been very localised just like the pentagon assure
us.  Why ever did we doubt the word of US officials ? 

I did an interview with Radio Sheffield this a.m. and we met an A
reporter at the consulate who will do an interview soon. 

I'll let you know if anything changes and will attempt to get a press
release out today once we have firmed up the transport details. 

We may need to try to raise more money.  The team in Baghdad have asked
those of us who are able to to stay as long as we can.  There are no
buses running to Baghdad and the taxis are charging at least US$1,100
per 6 seater car.  I'll see if I can use an ATM here today in Amman and
take as much money with me as I am able to. 

Many thanks for all your help and support.  I have been getting a lot of
messages of support.  God bless you. 

In peace and love, Dave 


Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq: 
http://www.prairienet.org/cpt/iraq.php Deacon Dave:  
http://www.colehse.demon.co.uk/DeaconDave.htm 

To contact Deacon Dave:  deacondave at onetel.com Contact Person:  Steve
Tozer-Loft,  0114-258-4382 steve at tozer-loft.fsnet.co.uk Fundraising: 
Terri Amber,  0114-201-4465  terriamber at synergynet.co.uk 

If you wish not to get these bulletins please just send an email to me
or Steve with the title unsubscribe. I shall not be offended ! 

---

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sun Mar 23 12:55:30 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 12:55:30 -0800
Subject: [news] History Repeats
Message-ID: <3E7E1F42.5D625AEB@shaw.ca>

From: Elam <alef at g0lem.net>

Dissenters have always been considered a fringe group. Afterall, why
wouldn't EVERYONE support America's wars? Because there are dissenters
who see through the lies. During the early part of the last century when
America was at war we had the Alien and the Sedition Acts which gave the
government the legal justification to deport aliens without due process
and the American police state could imprison anyone who criticized the
government. It is as if we have stepped back in time; the George Bush
administration is once again imprisoning people without due process and
keeping them there indefinitely. George Bush has abrogated habias corpus
and denies political prisoners access to legal representation and
refuses to bring them to trial. We haven't seen this onslaught on civil,
legal rights since the 30s and 40s. 

"When the United States entered World War I, there were two very
powerful social groups in the country opposed to war that had the
support of millions of Americans. One was the Socialist Party. Socialist
newspapers were being read by maybe 2 million people in the country, and
Socialists were being elected to city councils, legislatures, and even
to the U.S. Congress. The second was the Industrial Workers of the
World, the IWW." [Howard Zinn - "Terrorism and War" (2002)] 

"The IWW and the Socialist Party were very powerful social forces in the
United States that the government felt they had to suppress to
successfully prepare for and carry on a war. The government undertook
strenuous efforts to do this. When the United States went into war,
Congress passed the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act." [Zinn] 

"The Espionage Act had very little to do with espionage. Instead it made
it a crime, punishable by up to twenty years in prison, to say or print
anything that would `willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment
service of the United States.' That was the language of the statute,
which meant that if you spoke against the war, you were obviously
discouraging recruitment to the armed forces of the United States and
could be prosecuted." [Zinn] 

"The Sedition Act, which was an amendment to the Espionage Act, made it
even a little more drastic. In fact, two-thousand people were prosecuted
under those acts and about a thousand went to prison. One of the people
sent to jail for opposing World War I was the greatest socialist
activist and speaker Eugene Debs. The magazine THE MASSES was put out of
business, and an immense propaganda effort was undertaken to encourage
Americans to look for subversives and traitors in their midst." [Zinn] 

The same kind of mass hysteria is at play again. People have very short
memories. There are very few people alive today who lived through this
horrible and oppressive period in American history so they can't be
expected to remember these things but unfortunately the lack of
knowledge about our history is also terrible and few who should know
have any awareness of how civil liberties were under assault by pro war
forces just as they are today.

_______________________________________

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sun Mar 23 15:34:43 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 15:34:43 -0800
Subject: [news] U.S. Plans To Make Iraq Their Corporate Colony
Message-ID: <3E7E4493.CD5E4B83@shaw.ca>

The Guardian  22 March 2003 

Blow for Short in battle with Pentagon 

By Charlotte Denny, economics correspondent 

Clare Short returned empty handed from Washington yesterday as Britain's
efforts to put the UN in charge of reconstructing post-war Iraq ran into
opposition from the Pentagon. 

Amid signs of widening divisions off the battlefield between the US and
its closest ally, Whitehall officials expressed concern that America's
military planners appear to be cutting the UN out of any political role
in favour of its own plan to put a retired general, Jay Garner, in the
driving seat. 

Ms Short had hoped to secure agreement on a security council resolution
which would have given the UN the leading role in rebuilding the
shattered country. But after two days of meeting with Kofi Annan and
leading UN officials in New York, and state department officials in
Washington, the international development secretary returned home with
the issue unresolved. 


"They see a new resolution as cover for their activities rather than a
route to enabling the UN to co-ordinate reconstruction," said one
Whitehall official. 

President George Bush promised Tony Blair at the Azores summit that the
UN would have a key role after the war ends. But the Pentagon believes
this should be confined to humanitarian assistance and is pressing ahead
with its own plans, which would put US companies in charge of the
country's schools and hospitals. 

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the US agency for
international development has called for American companies to bid for
more than $1bn (?640m) worth of reconstruction contracts, including
running health and education services. 

Without a UN resolution, Whitehall lawyers say that the US and UK
occupying forces would have no legal right to run the country's
institutions. "There is no legal mandate for that sort of activity,"
said one Whitehall official. "It's all quite bizarre." 

While state department officials are believed to be sympathetic to the
British vision, the Pentagon is determined to win over the hearts and
minds of the Iraqi people by branding the postwar reconstruction effort
with an American flag. America has set up its own office for
reconstruction and humanitarian assistance as part of the department of
defence. 

UN officials have warned that they have no intention of acting as a fig
leaf for a US occupying authority. "We can't have a scenario where the
US says this is what is needed, now you guys get on and do it," said one
UN official. 

Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the UN development agency, said this
week that UN agencies could not act as "sub-contractors" to the US
government. The Pentagon's plans have alarmed aid agencies, which are
concerned about the precedent it would set and the likely political
fallout throughout the Middle East. 

"We are worried that the US believes and acts like it can replace the UN
in delivery of humanitarian aid and reconstruction," said Justin
Forsyth, head of policy at Oxfam. "We don't believe they have the skills
or the legitimacy." 

The disagreements between Britain and the US extend even to who should
be in charge of the immediate humanitarian work as the battle rages.
Washington is boasting that its soldiers will double as mobile aid
workers, bringing rations to the vulnerable population, 60% of whom
depend on food handed out by the UN's oil for food programme. 

"We don't want our aid equipment to be offloaded off the back of a US
military lorry, because if we were to do that we would be seen as part
of a belligerent force," said Mr Forsyth.

From pnbrown at vcn.bc.ca  Sun Mar 23 23:28:37 2003
From: pnbrown at vcn.bc.ca (Paul Browning)
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 23:28:37 -0800
Subject: [news] Fw: [R-G] Michael Moore criticizes Bush during Oscar
	acceptance
Message-ID: <005b01c2f1d6$fc80f3c0$6401a8c0@PAUL>


----- Original Message -----
From: <Tom_Childs at Douglas.BC.CA>
To: <rad-green at lists.econ.utah.edu>
Cc: <project-x at lists.resist.ca>; <womi at lists.riseup.net>
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2003 10:26 PM
Subject: [R-G] Michael Moore criticizes Bush during Oscar acceptance


> Make time to get out to see _Bowling for Columbine_ if you haven't
already.
> It is an emotional roller coaster ride.  Get it into your local library
> when it's available on video.       Best regards,  Tom
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>   ----- Forwarded message: -----From: "viviane" <vlerner at interpac.net>
> To: "Prog. Review" <news at prorev.com>
> CC:
> Subject: Michael Moore criticizes Bush during Oscar acceptance spe
> Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 19:28:50 -1000
>
>
>
>  http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/nation/5466481.htm
>
> Posted on Sun, Mar. 23, 2003
>
> Michael Moore criticizes Bush during Oscar acceptance speech
> Zap2it
>
> HOLLYWOOD - (KRT) - Winning the Academy Award for best documentary film
for
> "Bowling for Columbine," Michael Moore gave what's likely to be the most
> controversial acceptance speech of the night, criticizing President George
> W. Bush and the war on Iraq.
>
> "We like nonfiction," Moore said while standing onstage with the
filmmakers
> of the documentaries "Spellbound," "Prisoner of Paradise," "Daughter from
> Danang" and "Winged Migration," "and we live in fictitious times. We live
in
> a time where we have fictitious elections, which elects a fictitious
> president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for
> fictitious reasons."
>
> "We are against the war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you,"
he
> shouted, before music chimed in signaling the end of his time on the
stage.
>
> The reaction from the audience almost drowned out Moore's comments, with
> half the crowd booing and the other half clapping. The camera panned to
the
> reaction of several attendees, including best actor nominee Adrien Brody
> (with a stunned-looking Chad Lowe in the background), a smiling Lou
Gossett
> Jr. and Martin Scorsese, who looked as if he were on the brink of
clapping.
> Harrison Ford was seen smiling, while Denzel Washington looked less
enthused
> as he thoughtfully pulled at his beard.
>
> Host Steve Martin made light of the speech later by telling the crowd that
> "Teamsters are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo."
>
> ---
> =========
> *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is
> distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
> receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.***
>
>
>
> --
> Tom Childs - Audio/Visual Resources
> Douglas College Library
> New Westminster, B.C. Canada
> T: 604 527-5713 - library
> T: 604 524-9316 - home
> E: childst at douglas.bc.ac
> U: BCGEU Local 703
> W: http://www.globaljustice.ca
>    "There's no way to delay, that trouble comin' everyday."
>
> _______________________________________________
> Rad-Green mailing list
> Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu
> To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
>




From resist at resist.ca  Mon Mar 24 00:54:24 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist admin)
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 00:54:24 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] (Montreal) Riot Police Brutalize Anti-War Protestors Outside
	of American Consulate
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.53.0303240053310.28883@resist.ca>



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 18:56:56 -0500 (EST)
From: Stefan Christoff <christoff at dojo.tao.ca>
------------------------------------------------

Hundreds of Thousands Take to the Streets of Montreal in Opposition to the
War on Iraq - Montreal Riot Police Brutalize Protestors Outside of
American Consulate

Montreal Saturday March 22, 2003 ---- More than 250 000 people gathered
today in Montreal along with hundreds of thousands throughout the world to
march in opposition to the US / British lead strikes on Iraq. The streets
of downtown Montreal were filled with thousands who represent the growing
anti-war movement around the world which stands in solidarity with Iraq
and it's people who continue to be assaulted by massive pre-emptive
military strikes. As the Montreal demonstration arrived in the thousands
at the American Consulate, a main target for those in the streets,
protestors shouted slogans like "Bush, Blair Terrorist!" and "The People
United Will Never by Defeated!". George Bush, Tony Blair and those
governments such as Canada's, who stand in complicity with this war, were
clearly seen by the thousands on the streets of Montreal today as
International Terrorists for their military actions against Iraq and it's
people.

After the demonstration gathered for some time at the American Consulate,
the Montreal riot police arrived in full force, while protestors continued
to chant anti-war slogans, burn American & British flags in opposition to
the war. The flags of Palestine & Iraq where held high and cheered by the
crowds as people chanted slogans in support of the growing global revolt
against the American war machine. As protestors confronted the American
Consulate, the Montreal riot police began using peeper spray, clubs and
shields to keep demonstrators from crossing over the barricades to
confront the American Consulate directly.

For sometime the riot squad continued to assault anti-war / anti-American
demonstrators while protecting the American Consulate a clear symbol of
the American Empire in Montreal. Around 3pm the riot police began a
massive assault on demonstrators with peeper spray and beatings on those
confronting the war. Protestors were eventually pushed back in the
hundreds from the Consulate by riot police on to Rene Levesque street.
Hundreds of demonstrators then began a spontaneous sit-down on the street
and refused to move, at this point the first round of arrests took place
on Rene Levesque. As the riot police continued their assault on Anti-war
demonstrators, people began fighting back against the police repression in
outrage.

After the assault on protestors voicing their rejection to the war on Iraq
continued those in the streets began to show serious bruises and bloody
faces from the hits of the batons of the Montreal riot police. The cops at
this point where also covered in mud from the gardens surrounding the
American Consulate.

Police continued to brutalize protestors and more arrests began to take
place. Leila Mouammar a Palestinian activist in Montreal, was attacked by
riot police and swiftly dragged off and arrested. Many other arrests went
down and tonight in Montreal people are gathering at Police Station 20
where those arrested are currently being held, to show solidarity with
those taken down on the streets of Montreal today.

The demonstrations in Montreal today reflect a growing outrage with the
American & British lead war on Iraq and an escalation of street tactics,
which directly confront symbols in our cities of the American Empire. As
bombs continue to fall on Iraq and it's people, the streets of Montreal
and many other cities throughout the world continue to be filled with
those voicing their outrage toward this illegal attack on Iraq and it's
civilian population.

Reported by Stefan Christoff in Montreal - Stefan is an organizer with No
One is Illegal in Montreal and can be reached at christoff at tao.ca










From resist at resist.ca  Mon Mar 24 00:56:00 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist admin)
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 00:56:00 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] (Toronto) OCAP Member Goes to Trial for $17M Theft
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.53.0303240054340.28883@resist.ca>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: mick <mick at nefac.net>

> From: OCAP <ocap at tao.ca>
In October 2001, a standardized test intended for 260,000 Grade 10 high
school students across  was anonymously leaked across the Internet,
resulting in the test's temporary cancellation.  The Conservative Minister
of Education at the time, Janet Ecker, described herself as "livid" upon
hearing about the leak, and vowed publicly to prosecute those responsible.

The leak occurred in the midst of a campaign of "economic disruption"
called by the Ontario Common Front (OCF), which took aim at the
Conservative Party and their corporate backers.  OCAP played a large role
in this campaign, and further, several OCAP members were heavily involved
in a group that organized high school walkouts across Toronto and beyond
called the High School Flying Squad.  The group also organized around the
Tory government's initiation of standardized testing in Ontario high
schools, opposing their administration on the grounds that they encouraged
privatization and were the subject of widespread disdain on the part of
high school students who were forced to take them.

On October 15, during a strong High School Flying Squad demonstration at
the Board of Education, a trustee informed the crowd of the leak, and that
the tests had been cancelled.  As the demonstration was breaking up, Karen
Silverwomyn - a member of OCAP and the Flying Squad - was arrested on
charges of Possession of Stolen Property and Mischief over $5000.  On the
eve of the OCF's "Shut Down Bay St." action, news stations gave varying
reports about the financial impact of the leaked tests; some saying the
cost was as high as $17 Million.  Statements from the Education Quality
and Accountability Office (EQAO) - the private company contracted out to
write and administer the tests - lamented their continuing problems in
overseeing the tests, this incident only climaxing the opposition they had
faced, and threatening further the viability of the tests altogether.

Less than a month later another OCAP member, Tucker, was arrested and
charged with the stealing (Theft) and leak (Mischief over $5,000) of the
tests.  The arrests of both Karen and Tucker had glaring political
motivations.  Both were well-known organizers in the Flying Squad and were
labeled "leaders" by the authorities.  Both were also involved with OCAP,
who (especially at the time) served as a perfect political target to pin
the leak on.  Following this, no newspaper article that reported on the
events after the arrests were able to separate OCAP from the crimes.

If they did not make convenient political scapegoats for an embarrassed
government, the charges against Karen and Tucker would never have been
laid.  There is no evidence against them other than hearsay.  However, as
is common with those going through the court system, these dubious charges
have left Karen and Tucker in legal limbo for the past 18 months.  Last
week, with less than one month from her trial, and over one and a half
years after she was arrested, Karen's charges were completely dropped.
The Crown's witnesses apparently could no longer identify the defendant.
However the theft charged leveled against Tucker still stands, and there
are no signs that it is going away.  The trial is going forward this week.
Like with anyone who is singled out and punished for opposing the Tory
government, it is important that we show strong support at Tucker's trial.

We are asking all OCAP supporters to attend Tucker's trial on March 27 and
28.  Court begins at 10am each morning and will be held at Old City Hall
(Queen & Bay) in Courtroom A.

			       **
		   Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
	517 College Street, Suite 234  Toronto, Ontario  M5G 4A2
	     416-925-6939   ocap at tao.ca   www.ocap.ca
			       **

From resist at resist.ca  Mon Mar 24 01:22:33 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist admin)
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 01:22:33 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] Canadian Dock Workers' Union Hot Cargo Iraqi War Cargo 
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.53.0303240119010.28883@resist.ca>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Will Offley <willo at lynx.bc.ca>



Canadian Dock Workers' Union Hot Cargo Iraqi War Cargo

International Longshoremen's Association
ILA Local 273
20 Church Ave.
Saint John N.B., Canada
E2M 4P4
Office: 506-635-8610

For Immediate Release
March 17, 2003 11 a.m.

HOT CARGO EDICT FOR IRAQI WAR CARGO

Saint John Longshoremen have declared a "hot cargo" edict for military
cargo destined for the Iraqi war. Unless the United Nations gives its
approval, the port workers have voted to support that position and intend
to request other Saint John workers and citizens to adopt the same stance.

The Iraqi war will be an immoral war. Religious leaders of all
denominations and millions of people throughout the world have spoken out
against an attack on the Iraqi people. It is clear that there are more
peaceful means with which to eliminate the threat of the Saddam Hussein
regime.

Only in the United States of America, does there appear to be a majority
of people in favour of this war. A steady diet of pro-war propaganda from
the U.S. administration and a compliant American media have done its job.

We urge our American friends to seek out the truth about this war. We urge
them to listen to the religious leaders and the peoples around our globe
who are stating clearly and unequivocally that this war is wrong. We urge
our American friends to imagine themselves in the place of the innocent
Iraqi men, women and children who will be the victims of a bombing attack.



=====
War is not about winning or losing. It is about
death - Robert Fisk


From david at resist.ca  Mon Mar 24 07:23:57 2003
From: david at resist.ca (David)
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 07:23:57 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [news] RCMP, Canadian and U.S. Justice Depts. suffer total defeat in
 Barbarash case 
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.53.0303240723430.2752@resist.ca>

RCMP, Canadian and U.S. Justice Depts. suffer total defeat in Barbarash
case

After 7 months, RCMP forced to return property after search warrant
quashed

Matthew Williams, crown counsel acting on behalf of both the Canadian and
U.S. Justice Departments, abruptly dropped all further proceedings against
former Animal Liberation Front spokesperson and veteran political activist
David Barbarash. Williams filed a 'Notice of Abandonment' in BC Supreme
Court on March 17, 2003.

All property seized in the July 30th raid will be returned to Barbarash
this week.

"The RCMP have completely given up and admitted total defeat in this
case," a jubiliant Barbarash said last week. "Another chapter of police
and government harassment against me has concluded."

This marks the conclusion of the latest chapter of police and political
harrasment Barbarash has been subjected to from the RCMP, CSIS, and
various other law enforcement agencies since 1994. It is unclear how many
thousands of taxpayer dollars were wasted in this latest police campaign.

The RCMP, acting on a search warrant issued by Justice Dohm in July 2002,
raided and seized property belonging to Barbarash in the case of a Maine
law enforcement investigation into minor criminal acts commited by the
Animal Liberation Front in 1999. Barbarash spoke to Maine media in support
of the ALF actions.

That search warrant was issued by request of the U.S. Dept. of Justice to
the Canadian Justice Dept. several times in 2000 and 2001, and finally
signed by Justice Dohm in 2002, amidst the post-Sept. 11th hysteria. Total
damages from the Maine incidents amounted to no more than $8700.

The warrant was quashed by Madame Justice Elizabeth Bennett on Dec.
15, 2002. Bennett stated that the information the search warrant was based
upon, a single photocopied newspaper article from Oct. 1999, was
"unreliable" and that the Information To Obtain the Search Warrant was
based upon "triple hearsay."

Barbarash was neither charged nor under investigation for any of the
alleged offences.

The RCMP's new anti-terrorist unit INSET (Integrated National Security
Enforcement Team), headed by Cpl. Derrick Ross, were utilized publicly for
only the second time in this raid against Barbarash, enforcing a request
made under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty betwen the two countries.

Established in June 2002, INSET "will help ensure early detection and
prevention of any potential threats to national security," according to an
RCMP press release. The mandate of INSET is "to work with their partners
nationally and internationally towards the common goal of detection and
disruption of potential terrorist threats." (RCMP press release, June
18th, 2002)

Barbarash is still wondering how speaking with the media, the reason he
was targeted, was a "potential terrorist threat."

Property seized from the raid included two computers, dozens of computer
disks, many videos on environmental, alternative media, and alternative
news issues, and misc. files. It was destined for law enforcement
authorities in Maine as well as the FBI. All of it will be returned this
week to Barbarash.

"The dropping of all proceedings and an agreement to return all the
property seized was the only resolution I ever saw happening," comments
David Barbarash.

"This whole ordeal, everything from the door they smashed when they raided
my home, to the wholesale seizure of my property, to the reliability of
the entire campaign on a photocopied newspaper article from Maine three
years ago, was just outrageous. This was pure harrasment and it reeks of
rot and decay. Law enforcement the world over suffer from an inherent
ethical bankruptcy and the RCMP are no exception."

B.C. Civil Liberties Association spokesperson Murray Mollard has commented
on the raid: "It raises the question what is terrorism? This would not be
the kind of action we consider terrorism. (The raid) appears to be using a
criminal matter to permit the United States to come into Canada. Its an
expansion of authority on what is essentially a criminal issue." (Comox
Valley Echo, Aug. 09, 2002)

Further information and interviews are available. Contact David Barbarash
at 604-645-3101.

Background information:

Canadian Secret Police Raid Anarchist Activist's Home for U.S. Authorities
http://www.ainfos.ca/sup/ainfos00247.html

Anti-terrorism police harass island activists
http://www.mondaymag.com/monday/editorial/43_2002/news.htm  (scroll down)

RCMP anti-terrorism team faces hearing in BC Supreme Court
https://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/van-announce/2002-September/000124.html

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Tue Mar 25 12:11:23 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 12:11:23 -0800
Subject: [news] FW: Right plans for pro-war rallies
Message-ID: <3E80B7EB.ED31C8F6@shaw.ca>

Note the Vancouver one, this Sunday, 2 PM, American Consulate.

Thanks to Andy Lehrer <andylehrer at sympatico.ca>

-----Original Message----- From: Road to Freedom
[mailto:roadtofreedom at shaw.ca] Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2003 12:44 AM
To: Freedom Canada Subject: Grassroots Freedom Rallies Spring up Across
Canada Supporting U.S. Allied Efforts in Iraq 

Special Notice from The Road to Freedom 

Here is a list of Freedom Rallies being organized across Canada in
support of U.S. and Allied efforts in Iraq and for the liberation of the
Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein. 

*Note we have included contact information because it seems that dates
and times change but this is the latest information as of 12:00 AM March
25, 2003. For further information contact rally organizers. 

Please make sure to visit the web posted information. You will be able
to find rally information being posted and updated on the Free Dominion
website: http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=9 

Freedom and Liberty Rally Saturday, March 29, 2003, Ottawa, Ontario
Date: Saturday March 29, 2003 Place: Parliament Hill Time: 12:00 noon
Details: Come out and show your support for Operation Iraqi Freedom!
Bring flags and signs! For more information, email Deb: jodin4029 at r...
http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10090 

Rally For Freedom Sunday, March 30, 2003, Vancouver, British Columbia
Time: 2:00 PM Where: Outside the American Consulate,  1075 West Pender
Street Further Info:  freedomforum at s... Details: Come out and show your
support for our Allies, the United States of America, and for freedom
itself on Sunday March 30th @ 2pm, at the American Consulate in
Vancouver. PS: Don't forget to bring your American and Canadian Flags or
Homemade signs and meet us down at the Consulate THIS Sunday at 2pm!!!
http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10193 

Friends of America Rally Friday, April 4, 2003, Toronto, Ontario Where:
U.S. Consulate General Toronto 360 University Ave. Time: 11:00 AM (Time
could be changed) Details: More details will be forthcoming as our
speakers are lined up. Please support this important event. Contact: If
you are interested in participating in this rally or in its planning,
please contact Georganne Burke at georganneb at s... or call 
416-816-3412. http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10178 

Freedom Rally - Calgary, Alberta Date and Time TBA
http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=9 

In Liberty, Editor 

The Road to Freedom Newsletter email: roadtofreedom at shaw.ca Fax:
530.660.3079 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
Subscribe to The Road to Freedom monthly newsletter:
http://www.schillmack.com/roadtofreedom.html 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

From van-announce-bounces at lists.resist.ca  Tue Mar 25 09:41:40 2003
From: van-announce-bounces at lists.resist.ca (van-announce-bounces at lists.resist.ca)
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 09:41:40 -0800
Subject: [news] Forward of moderated message
Message-ID: <mailman.0.1048614100.2043.van-announce@lists.resist.ca>

An embedded message was scrubbed...
From: Stefan Christoff <christoff at dojo.tao.ca>
Subject: (Montreal) Supporters of Secwepemc Resistance to meet Chief of Staff Ministry of Justice 
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 12:35:16 -0500 (EST)
Size: 12717
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/news/attachments/20030325/c1a8aae1/attachment.mht>

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sat Mar 29 17:02:22 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 17:02:22 -0800
Subject: [news] Gordon Campbell Recall Website
Message-ID: <3E86421E.D2124858@shaw.ca>

Recall Gordon Campbell Website:

http://www.recallpointgrey.ca

From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Sun Mar 30 04:55:17 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 04:55:17 -0800
Subject: [news] Pro-War Rally At Peace Flame Park
Message-ID: <3E86E935.A0907342@shaw.ca>

In today's Province, at the end of the story about Friday & Saturday's
Peace Rallies, it says:

Meanwhile, a pro-American rally is being planned today for 2 p.m. at the
foot of Burrard Bridge to show support for the coalition troops.

The rally is to be held on the Kitsilano side of the bridge near
Canadian Tire. Organizers are asking people to bring American,
Australian, British and even Canadian flags to the rally.

Similar rallies are being planned in Winnipeg, Toronto and Lethbridge,
Alta.

The Province's free advertisement for their right-wing pals, if they
were capable of being honest, would say that they're having a pro-war
rally at Peace Flame Park. I'm going to the Peace Camp, I can't be
bothered with these losers and their clear attempt at provocation.
Support the troops! Don't make me laugh. Your know how the U.S.
government supports their troops? Last week the U.S. Congress voted to
cut their veterans' benefits by 25 billion dollars over 10 years. Those
tax cuts for the rich have to come from somewhere. That's how they
"support the troops". And why not? Only one member of Congress has an
enlisted son or daughter, so why should they give a shit?

Gord

From moe at kootenaycuts.com  Sun Mar 30 11:39:08 2003
From: moe at kootenaycuts.com (moe)
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 11:39:08 -0800
Subject: [news] Al-Jazeera to move its web servers out of  the US
Message-ID: <l03130303baacf82098da@[209.53.125.95]>

AL-JAZEERA TO MOVE WEB SERVERS OUT OF US
http://www.publicaddress.net/index.sm

Mediawatch presenter Russell Brown's Hard News weblog, March 28

AUCKLAND: (Hard News/Pacific Media Watch): Al-Jazeera is to move its
web servers out of  the US to a place - somewhere in Europe - where
freedom of speech is held in higher regard.

The independent Arab channel's new English-language website has been
hit by denial-of- service attacks ever since it launched on Monday.
The attacks appear to have been directed  both at the web servers and
at the DNS servers at al-Jazeera's US hosting company,  mynet.net.

The DNS attacks mean that the al-Jazeera site essentially disappears
from the Internet.  Attempts to access it draw a number of different
error messages, including: Could not open  the page
<http://english.aljazeera.net > because the server
english.aljazeera.net could not be  found. Al-Jazeera has now been
told by its upstream provider in the US that its service will be
terminated within days.

The Melbourne Age story suggests that some DNS records (including
those for the Iraqi state  ISP) may actually have been altered. Vik
Olliver, who has been exploring the problem with the  New Zealand
Linux Users Group, drew a similar conclusion after attempts to reach
www.aljazeera.info <http://www.aljazeera.info> late yesterday (it had
been reachable up till  about 4pm) returned the message: connection
timed out; no servers could be reached.

"Note that a DDoS attack will not remove an entry from a DNS server,"
she says. "There is a  different error if a domain server cannot be
contacted at all. It looks like someone actually  pulled the files
from the DNS server - the error was returned by the server after all,
so it could  be reached - and that would involve a US domain server
security breach of serious  proportions. Unless it was deliberate.

"This seems to be the case in the US too, not just NZ, as I found out
when attempting to use  the http://crit.org proxy.

"Google is also refusing to display cached pages from Al Jazeera. I
have asked colleagues in  the New Zealand Linux User's Group to repeat
this in New Zealand on different ISPs, and we  all get the same
problem."

If this is what it appears to be, it's awful. The internet and its
accompanying culture are the  great American achievement of my
lifetime. The attacks strike at its very ethos.

Meanwhile, Wellington-based Scoop <http://www.scoop.co.nz/> has
explained its decision to  continue to publish grisly pictures from
the war, including those from al-Jazeera. In a  passionate editorial
deputy editor Selwyn Manning says:

"To sanitise the reality of warfare is abhorrent to those serving to
public interest. To censor  images of capture, of death, as a
consequence of war, is wrong. If Scoop were to do so, it  would be
subscribing to the glitzy rah rah top-gun Hollywood-fa?ade-style of
reportage that the  mainstream United States based media has become
obsessed with."

Scoop's average daily traffic has roughly doubled to around 50,000
visits a day since the war  began, with much of the traffic coming
from the US.

+++niuswire

PACIFIC MEDIA WATCH ONLINE http://www.pmw.c2o.org

--
http://www.kootenaycuts.com/
"S/he who fears not the death of a thousand cuts will dare to unhorse the
emperor."
- Ancient Chinese proverb



From noii_van at hotmail.com  Fri Mar 28 12:24:00 2003
From: noii_van at hotmail.com (No One Is Illegal - Van)
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 12:24:00 -0800
Subject: [news] GRASSY NARROWS: ABORIGINAL RESISTANCE TO CONTINUING
	COLONIZATION
Message-ID: <F35v3MMUZ9pMkvKRZOU0000f2ab@hotmail.com>

GRASSY NARROWS: ABORIGINAL RESISTANCE TO CONTINUING COLONIZATION

Grassy Narrows Blockades

March 27, 2003

The Ojibway community living of Grassy Narrows in North Western Ontario are 
currently engaged in actions to resist the ongoing clear-cutting of unceded 
indigenous land perpetuated by Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. a
Montreal based corporation. Over the last few decades the community of
Grassy Narrows has experienced severe devastation at the hands of 
Abitibi,their environment has been poisoned by pesticides and other 
chemicals in the land and water.

This last month a group of youth from the Native Youth Movement of
Kahnawake, members of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and others
from the Montreal community visited the Grassy Narrows blockade to bear
witness and bring back first hand documentation of the atrocities being
committed by Abitibi Consolidated, the Government of Ontario and the
Canadian Government against the people of Grassy Narrows. This event is
meant to educate and build support for the struggle to cease the
destruction of indigenous lands at Grassy Narrows and to build support for 
the fight for indigenous sovereignty in Grassy Narrows and throughout Turtle 
Island.

More Information Contact:
nooneisillegal at tao.ca - 514.583.4890 - www.thunderbay.indymedia.org





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