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The Second Front Like monster tanks dropped into the desert that burn more fuel in a single hour than a household uses in a year, they roar along, meaty and rude, testosterone spurting from every cylinder, ready and willing to do whatever it takes to pound their foes into submission. Rumsfeld and Armitage – look at them! How many Texas steers would it take to generate that much manure? And in Britain, Geoffrey Hoon and his phalanx of bully boys – maybe not so much meat, maybe not quite as dumb but just as brazen. Their second front isn’t Northern Iraq, folks, it’s right here at home. Lobbing uranium tipped missiles and cluster bombs into newsrooms across the world the casualties are pilling up like bruised and bloody victims of ‘Friendly Fire’. Salvos against the press and TV stations that deigned to show the American and British prisoners taken by Iraqi forces were launched straight at the heart of the freedom loving media. Those who’ve had the temerity to suggest there might be a tinge of hypocrisy considering what’s happened to US prisoners in Guantanamo, have been specifically targeted with the most precise laser controlled weaponry. And, one by one, they fall, not in combat, but right into line. Few were anything more than loudhailers for the Anglo-American military anyway. Those that weren’t have come under unrelenting fire. The pressures are enormous – either through direct action like shutting down the English version of the Al Jazeera web site (see adjoining article) or through extraordinary commercial and political intimidation. There are some brave souls in the mainstream media who have managed to bunker down and continue as honest and honourable journalists. Their numbers are few but those that remain deserve our thanks and our unwavering support - as this criminal war continues the bullying and intimidation will only get worse. From all of us at Ozymandias, we salute you! Vive la France! Previous Comments The Time Has Come the Walrus Said
Articles of Interest It Was an Outrage, an Obscenity: Independent, 27 March. Robert Fisk's passionate piece on the market bombing in Baghdad. Bring Our Lads Home: Sunday Mirror, 30 March, Robin Cook. The ex-Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House says he's already had his fill of 'this bloody and unnecessary war.' San Francisco Anti-War Protestors Change Tactics: SF Chronicle 30 March, Joe Garofoli. After over 2000 arrests for closing down the city centre, SF anti-war protesters direct themselves at corporate targets.
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News Roundup Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV station which won the Index on Censorship's third annual Freedom of Expression Award while being. attacked by the British and American governments for showing footage of US prisoners of war has been forced to shut down its web site after a series of crashes through acts of sabotage. Interviewed in the Guardian, the communications manager of Aljazeera.net said the incident was a worrying indication that ‘perhaps in certain quarters there is a fear of freedom of expression and freedom of the press.’ It has also been reported that the US hosting service running the English-language version of the Al-Jazeera site has buckled under pressure and has refused to service them from the end of this month. Meanwhile, NASDAQ has joined with the New York Stock Exchange in banning Al-Jazeera from using its facilities to broadcast live reports in a move that the Columbia Journalism Review said smacked of 'war fever'. Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for Linlithgow and longest serving Member of Parliament writes that his constituency party has voted to recommend that Tony Blair reconsider his position as party leader. He went on to say that many lawyers have concluded that military action in Iraq without proper UN authorisation is illegal under international law. Indeed, the deputy legal adviser of the Foreign Office, Elizabeth Wilmhurst, resigned on this point after 30 years’ service. Kate Adie, who reported on the first Gulf War for the BBC, said in an interview with Irish radio that there had been a complete erosion of the idea that journalists should be able to report what they see independent from the military. She was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks - that is the telephone and television signals from individual satellite equipment - were detected by American planes they'd be fired on no matter who was using them.. Also
interviewed on Irish radio, Scott Ritter, a former U.N. weapons
inspector who worked in military intelligence during his 12-year career in
the U.S. armed forces, warned that America will loose the war and
"will leave Iraq with its tail between its legs." According
to Russian war reports
sand storms turned out to be one of the main enemy of American
military equipment. It is claimed that a single Infantry division had
more than 100 vehicles disabled. This is causing serious concern on the
part of the coalition command. Repair crews are working around the clock
to return all the disabled equipment back into service. Richard Perle, a chief architect of the war, has resigned as chairman of the Pentagon's influential Defence Policy Board. Punishment for bad advice? Probably not. Most likely his business dealings were getting too close to home. Past features:
The
Forgotten Ones Six months ago the Evening Standard described how young mysterious men, aliens, were in Sangatte, ‘ready to invade our country’. No description of the nationality or the purpose of these refugees were given. They were just presented as gloomy dark faces, a kind of ‘phantom menace’ that would soon attack the United Kingdom. The word ‘refugee’ was never used. ..
An
Interview with Thich Nhat Hanh “As
an attack on Iraq seems imminent, what would you say to the government
leaders during one of the most dramatic moments in American history?” Sign of the Times
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It's Deja Vu All Over Again Martin
Vorkanski Nice one, Tony. You’ve managed to mobilise the biggest youth rebellion since 1968. And all the Pop Idols and Home and Aways can’t put them back together again. Moore Speaks Out at Oscar Ceremony
The Oscar Awards were livened up when Michael Moore gave his acceptance speech for best documentary. "We live in fictitious times," he thundered. "We live in a time with fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time when we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it is the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush! Shame on you! …Your time is up." Millions take to Streets as War Begins
From London to San Francisco workers downed tools and took to the streets in response to Bush's war... Students Walkout at Start of War
Thousands of students from cities, towns and villages in Britain left their classes to join in protest marches at the stroke of noon the day after fighting began in Iraq.... The People's Assembly for Peace
In the wake of World War II, over fifty years ago, Central Hall in Westminster was used as the venue for the General Assembly of the newly created United Nations. Ironically, the same meeting hall was used again on 12 March to launch the People’s Assembly for Peace where fifteen hundred delegates from labour unions, colleges and community organisations met to declare their opposition to war with Iraq and to coordinate a strategy of opposition.
Images by Kevin Biderman
The march stretches from Hyde Park to Black Friar's Bridge with another flank coming in from Gower Street. It undulates with regularity, this swelling sea, like the abdominal contractions of humanity about to give birth to something incredible.
The 15th of February was an historic moment. It was the day that over a million people gathered in London and millions more paraded in other cities throughout the world to show their support for the anti-war movement and to add their bodies in a visceral statement of opposition to the rag-tag coalition formed around the axis of Bush and Blair. It was a day when the tide was shown to have shifted firmly in the direction of peace – at least for the moment. Whatever happens next, the lights are dimming on Labour’s hold to power. After their latest and most inexcusable betrayal of trust, they cannot survive as a government. And so will end, ignominiously, New Labour’s ill-conceived experiment.... European
TUC Calls For Work Stoppages Meeting
in Athens on 7 March, the European Trades Union Council Executive Committee
confirmed its demand that all possible effort should be made to disarm Iraq by
means other than war.
In a bid to stop the rush toward hostilities, the EC launched an
appeal for work stoppages everywhere in Europe on 14
March at midday IRAQ AND VIETNAM Bob
Biderman
...there are those, of course, who will say Iraq isn’t Vietnam. And of course it isn’t. But neither is it Hitler’s Germany. However what is true is there exists the same class of political leaders, some liberal and well-meaning, who wish to convince us that if we don’t fight now we will regret it later. Well, we did fight in Vietnam and we did regret it later. And some of those well-meaning liberals came to lament their determined stance which they argued back then with such heart-felt passion. And some of them actually apologised for their ‘mistake’. But tell me, how do you apologise to the millions of corpses on both sides who died for that past mistaken notion? How do you apologise to the mothers and fathers who lost their children? How do you apologise to the women raped and the land despoiled? Tell me, do you just apologise and go on to the next bloody war? And then apologise for that?
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Letter from Paris Yann Perreau As
Spring arrives in Paris there is a curious feeling here that we live in
a small village from where we are viewing a strange and quite
frightening world. Never before has it been more l’exception française, for better or worse. The unexpected and brave position of the
French government against the war, with its Casanova (the foreign
Minister Dominique de Villepin) and its Godfather (Jacques Chirac), has
unified the country. Astonishingly, the suburban population – usually
forgotten in political debates and so disillusioned by politics - are
again pleased to be French. ‘We are proud of our President,’
declared a Muslim teenager in Le Monde.
The protests against the war that are occurring weekly in the
capital, the debates in papers or just in everyday discussions, the
rebirth of political consciousness, have all dramatically changed
Parisian life. But there
has also been another transformation just as striking: the Muslims are
no longer in the frightening situation they were last year with the
rebirth of racism fomented by Le Pen. Paris this Spring appears as a
kind of multicultural, almost old fashion city: a carte d’épinal. Veterans Call to Conscience The
following statement was issued by a group of US Army veterans
representing a variety of different political perspectives and
experiences who felt impelled to speak directly to the troops being sent
to fight in Iraq. We are veterans of the United States
armed forces. We stand with the majority of humanity, including millions
in our own country, in opposition to the United States' all out war on
Iraq. We span many wars and eras, have many political views and we all
agree that this war is wrong. Many of us believed serving in the
military was our duty, and our job was to defend this country. Our
experiences in the military caused us to question much of what we were
taught. Now we see our REAL duty is to encourage you as members of the
U.S. armed forces to find out what you are being sent to fight and die
for and what the consequences of your actions will be for humanity. We
call upon you, the active duty and reservists, to follow your conscience
and do the right thing. The entire statement as well as
further information about the group can be found on their website:
Collateral Damage the health and environmental costs of war on Iraq from
War Crimes Trials for Unsanctioned Invasion? Any member of a government backing an aggressive war will be open to prosecution, claims Mark Littman, lecturer in international law. "The threatened war against Iraq will be a breach of the United Nations Charter and hence of international law unless it is authorised by a new and unambiguous resolution of the security council. The Charter is clear. No such war is permitted unless it is in self-defence or authorised by the security council...."
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