Thursday, March 06, 2003
-North Korea and the U.S. Spy Plane
By Conn Hallinan
While the Bush Administration is calling the recent interception of a U.S. spy plane by North Korean fighters a “provocation,” it is instead the logical outcome of a deeply flawed U.S. policy toward Pyongyang, and one that threatens a potentially devastating war on the peninsula.
There is a history here that predates the confrontation between the U.S. RC-135S and the four MIGs some 150 miles off the coast of North Korea. And while North Korea is certainly an unpleasant regime--a kind of socialist monarchy--it didn’t start the present crisis.
The current standoff began last October when the North Koreans admitted to U.S. State Department officials that they had a uranium enrichment program that violated the 1994 Agreed Framework. The Framework guaranteed North Korea diplomatic and economic relations, plus two light-water reactors, if it agreed to stop making plutonium.
When the North Koreans informed Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly of the program, the U.S. declared the Framework dead. Not that the Agreement was really up and running. The Republicans in Congress had already delayed building the reactors, and scuttled the diplomatic end of the treaty.
The North Koreans offered to end the nuclear program, according to journalist and Korea expert Tim Shorrock, “for a U.S. pledge not to launch a pre-emptive attack, sign a peace agreement and normalize relations.” Instead, the Bush Administration turned them down cold, and proceeded to cut off fuel oil shipments.
But long before that October meeting, the White House had laid the groundwork for the present crisis.
- When the Bush Administration took over, it halted talks with North Korea over restraining its ballistic missile program, even though the expensive (and technologically doubtful) U.S. Anti-Ballistic Missile system was supposedly designed to counter Pyongyang’s ICBMs.
- It pressured then South Korean President Kim Dae- Jung into appointing hard-line conservative, Han Seung Soo, defense minister. Han immediately re- established the Team Spirit war games, which recreates a joint U.S.-South Korean invasion of North Korea.
- President Bush not only named North Korea a member of the “axis of evil,” he explicitly threatened it with nuclear weapons. While the U.S. has condemned North Korea for violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it was the U.S. that first broke the agreement by threatening a non-nuclear power with nuclear weapons.
- On Feb. 5, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, labeled North Korea a “terrorist regime,” and ordered the deployment of 24 B-1 and B-52 bombers to Guam, along with shifting an aircraft carrier into the region. According to New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristoff, an element of the Administration, led by Rumsfeld, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and the National Security Council, is advocating a military strike on the Yongbyon reactor.
That could, in turn, ignite a war on the peninsula, which, according to Pentagon estimates, could kill upwards of a million people.
Now put a RC-135 into the air off the North Korean coast and should anyone be surprised that there was a confrontation?
This is hardly the first time one of these aircraft has put us into a jeopardy. On April 1, 2001, a U.S. EP-3E spy plane and a Chinese F-8 fighter collided over the South China Sea, because the Chinese objected to the plane’s spying on their main battle fleet at Zhanjiang.
While the Administration has portrayed the RC-135 as a craft designed for surveilling ballistic missiles, in fact the plane is an electronic warfare platform, and is particularly good at mapping radar coverage. If the U.S. were contemplating an attack on nuclear sites in North Korea, it would need to “map” that country’s radar system.
Over the years, EP-3Es, RC-135s, Blackbirds, U-2s and a variety of airborne intelligence-gathering devices have spied on people we disagree with (and some we agree with). More than 150 Americans have lost their lives in this activity since the end of World War II. Satellites can do the job more safely and efficiently, and without provoking a response.
North Korea may be an undemocratic and repressive regime, but the U.S. has no right to endanger another nation’s security and not expect a reaction. And plans to send out RC-135s with fighter escorts is asking for a shootout.
The solution to all this seems simple. Back in January, North Korea’s ambassador to China told the press, “If the United States legally assures us of security by concluding a nonaggression treaty, the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula will be settled.”
The strategy, then, would seem to be bi-lateral talks between the two parties aimed at ending the standoff, establishing diplomatic and economic relations, and ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program
And lastly, stop rattling ours at other people.
-Mobilize For The Next Phase
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=3099
Unprecedented in size, breadth and diversity, the world-wide February 15 demonstrations proved invaluable to the campaign against renewed war on Iraq. The millions of us who rallied and marched for peace in well over 600 cities from New York to Rome to Ramallah to Melbourne, communicated in no uncertain terms that the entire world really does say no to war. The level of our effectiveness can be debated, but there is no question we significantly impacted the discussion taking place at high, narrow levels. Millions of us.
Our organizing efforts succeeded in many ways. The demonstrations captured the eyes and ears of the mainstream press, and for the most part we have received relatively positive and accurate reports, including coverage of our numbers and our message. Clearly, we have broadened the debate, and we have opened a window of opportunity. What we do with that opportunity will be decisive.
The Next Step: Regroup
The International ANSWER coalition is calling for a demonstration in Washington, DC on March 15. That is only three weeks away, and many of us are deciding whether to heed their call and work to organize people in our communities to attend that demonstration. Still reeling from last weekend’s mobilization efforts, we must weigh seriously the costs of expending more energy traveling to big cities for long, cold days, instead of doing more education and outreach work at home.
We have seen that large, impressive demonstrations are crucial to our movement and provide us with great opportunities in terms of media coverage, coalition building, and collective expression. But at this point most organizers are probably better off regrouping and recouping in our communities. Now that we have expressed ourselves massively, it is time to lay better and more solid foundations for a continued antiwar movement, making community-based connections and doing real, on the ground educating and organizing. We need to work towards deepening the commitment of those who are already opposed to war and organizing locally to inspire more people to take action.
We aren’t at all suggesting people not go to DC on March 15. What we are saying is, if you want to contribute in a fundamentally different way, at this critical moment your energy is almost certainly better spent on local outreach and education, or developing stronger organization and dedication at home. Washington isn’t going to think we’ve all evaporated if we don’t show up in the hundreds of thousands on March 15. Millions of demonstrators dispersed throughout the country, accompanied by massive worker strikes, student walkouts and thousands committed to civil disobedience and direct action would exhibit resistance power on a radically new level.
So what are the keys to attracting millions more to active opposition and amplifying the commitment of those already involved? The answers are simple, but of course they will involve substantial work.
Outreach and Education
Without a doubt, we have piqued the interests of the general population. Tireless effort has begun to pay off, and suddenly dissent is not all that unpopular. There has never been a better opportunity to change minds than this very moment. And lest we get caught up in the fervor of our own ruckus, we must remember many Americans still support the war, and many who oppose it are irresolute in their antiwar convictions.
A recent poll conducted by Knight-Ridder News Service revealed that most Americans do not even know rudimentary facts about the Iraq crisis. For instance, 86% of respondents were not aware that there were, in fact, no Iraqi-born hijackers involved in he September 11th attacks. Two thirds of Americans think Iraq has a nuclear weapons arsenal. The list goes on, and it is sufficiently disturbing.
The same poll also showed that the more people are familiar with the facts, the less likely they are to support an invasion of Iraq. Though this may be obvious to most of us, the results of the Knight-Ridder poll illustrate conclusively that there remains much ground to be covered. It does little good to make sophisticated arguments about the nuances of international law or the particulars of various alternatives to invasion and occupation, when most pro-war Americans still think Iraq stands accused of planning 9/11 or that Hussein has recently threatened Israel with biological and chemical weapons.
Lacking the ability to seize control of television stations, we need to bring information to the public through more customary methods. Rallies and marches show our strength, but sloganeering is largely unpersuasive (and understandably so). We need to be producing more alternative media and disseminating it widely. We need to hit the streets with leaflets and bring the antiwar message to every neighborhood, every workplace, every place of worship, every community center, every shopping mall, every living room. Now is the phase for teach-ins and canvasses, coffee houses and soap boxes.
Intensification and Radicalization
In a front page New York Times article published Monday, February 17, reporter Patrick Tyler states:
“In his campaign to disarm Iraq, by war if necessary, President Bush appears to be eyeball to eyeball with a tenacious new adversary: millions of people who flooded the streets of New York and dozens of other world cities to say they are against war based on the evidence at hand. Mr. Bush’s advisers are telling him to ignore them and forge ahead, as are some leading pro-war Republicans.?
We have become a threat; but can we deliver? Policy makers are debating right now whether or not they have to heed our dissent. Now we must make it clear to them that there will be political and economic consequences if they decide to ignore our protest, and be prepared to follow through. We have shown the Bush Administration that we know how to organize on a national and international scale, against its interests and for our own. Two major demonstrations within a month of each other made the point loud and clear: our movement has the numbers and the capacity to mobilize, and there is no hint of dissipation in sight. What remains to be seen, however, is whether our movement, which is made up mostly of people who were virtually uninvolved a year ago, is radical and committed enough to hold its ground and even raise the stakes in spite of Bush’s slick rhetorical maneuvers.
No doubt the White House and State Department are making decisions in a new context. As a result we should expect attempts to pacify the demands of the least radical elements of our movement—those calling for war only through the UN Security Council, or harsher inspections, or more proof, and other reformist qualifications. Our protest will likely force the White House to slow down some, build more international support, and work through the UNSC. We should consider it an important short-term victory that we see such moves, but we must realize that a change in tune or tone does not equal an actual change in the administration’s goals of massive war and destruction, leading to control of Iraq, its people and its resources. History has shown that the US is extremely effective at bribing its way through UN proceedings, that further inspections are just a delay in the march to war, and that evidence of Iraqi misdeeds is easy enough to fabricate and distort.
Besides an acknowledgement of dissidents’ power, the above quote from the New York Times highlights these shortcomings. First, by stating Bush’s goal is to “disarm Iraq,? the real motives of our government are being ignored in an article flattering and sympathetic to its most vocal critics. Additionally, the author suggests that most protestors are “against the war based on the evidence at hand.? While that may not in fact be true, it certainly is the lowest common denominator. The article, completely in line with establishment thought on the topic, implies that we are being heard but our message is unclear, easily distorted and misunderstood.
It is probably true that the majority of this fledgling antiwar movement believes Iraq is among the most important issues faced by the US and the world. But if the actual threat posed by a Saddam Hussein whose military capacity is thoroughly contained, is in fact negligible, why should Iraq be a policy priority in the first place? As long as the US population is convinced that Hussein is a threat to our own security, the policy of “pre-emptive” strike will remain an option. So if the government’s job is to stir up hysteria, ours is to promote reasonable understanding of the issues and an accurate evaluation of the threat.
So while we work on building our movement, let’s pay very close attention to the arguments we are making. We need a movement that opposes all wars of aggression (instead of opportunistically differentiating between this war and Afghanistan or Kosovo/Serbia, as if those were reasonable). We must unequivocally oppose pre-emptive strikes and war for oil or power, plus demand an end to the sanctions and current air strikes against Iraq. We cannot allow the debate to be distracted by petty differentiations between an exclusive US/UK invasion and a UN-backed invasion.
Further, we need a movement that raises a stink about unilateral and politically motivated weapons inspections and states loud and clear that even some evidence of some illicit arms in Iraq is not proof of Hussein’s intention or capability to attack anyone (let alone the United States). In fact, such findings don’t compare in the slightest to the world’s biggest arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological warheads right here at home. Military containment has indeed worked for 12 years and should be applied to ALL potentially dangerous countries, regardless of their stature or venue.
In other words, we need to move the conversation to the left, and work to pull the whole antiwar movement in a more radical, yet sustainable direction. Rationality and fact are on our side.
Radicalization of those we’re reaching more regularly is the first, and perhaps most important, of the threats we pose to the establishment. Many who oppose war on Iraq state that they wish the government would focus more on the supposed war against anti-Western terrorism, instead of an approach that takes into account the inspirational roots of such threats. An important part of our antiwar organizing is to highlight the connections between the proposed invasion of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and repression masquerading as counter-terrorism. In addition, if those new to question US foreign policy also begin taking an interest in an array of other concerns (health care, immigration, labor issues, police misconduct, and so on), we threaten not only the government’s aspirations of empire, but also its domestic agenda—indeed it’s domestic footing. Facing such prospects of losing power, corporate and government leaders will have no choice but to take pause.
From Threat to Action
Choosing tactics is a delicate matter, and since September 11 the Left has mostly treated it with kid gloves. But peaceful marches and rallies, no matter how large, won’t keep Bush at bay for long. Increased popularity, sympathy and commitment among all elements of the general antiwar movement will provide enhanced opportunities for more active resistance. Not everyone is ready or able to take great risks in standing against war, but we’re selling newcomers short at this point if we doubt the bulk of our movement will support those who can and will raise the heat.
Various forms of civil disobedience and confrontational, nonviolent action have already manifested themselves among sectors of our movement. They have been met with predictable hesitation among some, but with delight among many more. Confrontations witnessed on February 15 in New York led to overwhelming condemnation of the police, instead of protesters, among first-time demonstrators and much of the mainstream media alike. Even CNN has blasted the NYPD for its blatant misbehavior!
The array of tactical options at our disposal is too much to cover here, but it is at last within reach once again. Coming weeks provide a significant opportunity for inspiring ourselves and one another to take more direct action. We should take care to separate risky actions from larger, permitted demonstrations; to remember that there are many diverse ways that people choose to raise their level of protest; and be mindful of the hierarchies and cliques that often form around those who can take risks or tend to practice the more prevalent/spectacular forms of CD and direct action. But in any way we can, we should take action!
We on the Left are not super-human and we have limited time and resources, so we have to make difficult decisions about priorities. Right now our movement is headed into a rut of trying to mobilize for large demonstrations on a monthly basis. But after February 15, we have the opportunity to move in a different direction. Instead of working towards large mobilizations and making arguments that are watered-down to appeal to a more mainstream crowd, we should shift gears and shift focus. It’s time make stronger arguments and entrench commitments while doubling our efforts to get the basic facts to more and more Americans in our own communities.
Jessica Azulay and Brian Dominick are organizers and journalists who live in Syracuse, New York. They welcome responses at
They have created several downloadable organizing tools to compliment this article, available on Z Net in PDF format:
“Inspect This!? Is a flyposter tying sanctions against Iraq to the proposed invasion of Iraq, available in legal size (8.5? x 14?) and ledger size (11? x 17?).
http://www.zmag.org/pdf/inspect-this_legal.pdf
http://www.zmag.org/pdf/inspect-this_ledger.pdf
“War Through the U.N? Not Even Then? is an 8.5? x 11? flyposter.
http://www.zmag.org/pdf/un-war_letter.pdf
“NONE of the 9/11 Hijackers Was Iraqi… And Other Facts Most Americans Don’t Know? is a brochure dispelling basic yet common myths about the Iraq crisis.
http://www.zmag.org/pdf/none_brochure.pdf
“Why are Millions Marching Against War? is a brochure explaining the general reasons why people in the U.S. and the world oppose an invasion of Iraq.
http://www.zmag.org/antiwar_leaflet.pdf
- Where do we go from here
by Michael Albert
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=3067
Even the New York Times was forced to admit it, after the mammoth Feb. 15-16 demonstrations: “there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.” But as all activists and indeed all people of good will justifiably celebrate this weekend’s tumultuous successes, we must also begin the next round of the struggle.
On one side we have governments and corporate elites. Their shared agenda is what it has always been. They universally seek to protect and enlarge their advantages over the overwhelming majority of the world’s population. Their shared means are two-fold. First, they want to rewrite the rules of international exchange to tilt even more toward their own aggrandizement. This is called corporate globalization. Second, they want to steadily erode popular protections and rights won in long-standing struggle around the globe. They want to assault affirmative action, immigrant rights, welfare programs, and broader social spending. They want to entrench new methods of repression. They call all this patriotism. Beyond this broad consensus, however, elites are split.
Since 9/11 the most central and powerful elite sector has felt that it could dramatically enlarge its control by concocting a war on terrorism. This overwhelmingly U.S.-based contingent of the world’s elites is seeking to scare and cajole publics all over the planet, hoping to propel all kinds of otherwise impossible redistribution and repression. Bush Blair and Co. now seem to think that turning the clock back a hundred years to reinstate brute force in international relations promises them even more control and power. Bombing Iraq to bones and then colonially occupying it is not the climax of their intentions but instead only a stepping stone to more war and colonization to come. Next stop Iran, Syria, Korea, Venezuela – especially Venezuela—Colombia, and perhaps even China. They intend perpetual war in pursuit of perpetual power. They seek a spiral of violence whose very logic will propel those who control most of the world’s weapons into ruling most of the world. Bush becomes Caesar.
Others at the top of the pile of detritus that rules the planet are perfectly content with business as it had been the past couple of decades. They want some tweaks here and there, but they think that seeking overt empire risks too great a dissident reaction and/or they fear that too much of the benefit may accrue to a too narrow a sector at the top. They worry Washington will benefit, but not Paris, Berlin, and Moscow. Thus French, German, and Russian elites rail against war in Iraq – but Chirac is not simultaneously rushing to reverse his racist assaults on immigrants, Schroeder is not calling off his incursions against German social supports for the poor, and Putin is not denouncing his war in Chechnya--much less will any of them sincerely advocate justice plus equitable redistribution at home, now or anytime soon.
Against the haves who want more wealth and power but who aren’t quite sure of the best path to pursue it, stands our growing world-spanning movement of movements. The shared agenda of our movements is no war in Iraq, reverse corporate globalization, and more justice for all. Our shared means are to utilize a wide range of disobedience extending from day to day organizing to teach-ins and rallies, to disseminating information by drama and media, to marching, to civil disobedience, and beyond. But our side of the great struggle also has divisions. Among us there are different ways of understanding what we are doing, as well as differences in approach.
Regarding understanding, the big variation is that some of us think we are only trying to win various proximate gains such as preventing war in Iraq or blocking some new trade agreement. Others of us think instead that we are doing that, of course, but that we are also trying to ensure that these victories persist and grow by challenging and ultimately replacing the underlying institutions that create the injustices we oppose. At the level of understanding, therefore, the division in our ranks is ultimately one between reform and revolution.
At the level of methods and tactics, there is also a major divide. Are we mostly trying to make a statement and manifest the feelings that we ourselves have percolating through our nervous systems at any given moment – or are we trying to build a movement aimed at winning massive change over the longer haul?
In the first case, as situations unfold we make decisions about what to do by consulting primarily our own feelings: how angry are we, how much do we wish to do this or that action based on our mood and desires and in light of what is called for from us and how we will look and feel in the aftermath?
In the second case, we make decisions instead by primarily consulting our best judgment as to what will enlarge our movements and best increase our insight and commitment. The second approach also has to pay attention to how we feel and what we are capable of, to be sure, but it prioritizes what is needed to win and not just to feel fine. It may sound harsh, but I do think this is a real and serious difference, even if it appears here in words a bit more stark than it often appears in practice.
In short, are we building an activist community that preserves itself against incursions from without, creating an identity for ourselves as dissidents which we protect from dissolving, sometimes even becoming more concerned about persisting unchanged in all our formulations and processes than we are concerned about growing and diversifying? Or are we developing a movement whose intention is to constantly grow and alter, and in which we must constantly adapt our personal proclivities as we attract new constituencies and incorporate new agendas? Are we eager to empower others thereby reducing our own level of power and our own impact on how things proceed, though seeing the overall power of the movement enlarge?
What next?
(1) Success is not a single “all or nothing? affair. Of course we want to prevent war in Iraq. And of course doing so would be a world transforming, historic achievement. But, should war proceed, it would not mean that we are failing, but only that we have a little less power than we hoped to have at this point yet far more than most people were willing to even dream about just a year ago. Whether this war occurs or not, our on-going task is unchanged. We must grow larger, more conscious, more militant, more organized – to try to prevent this war and the next one, to reverse globalization, and to continually challenge and eventually replace basic defining institutions. None of this will happen overnight. But we are on a path toward all of it, and we need to realize that’s our trajectory, to take it seriously, and to work tirelessly toward it.
(2) The anti-war demonstrations this past weekend were perhaps the largest such outpouring in modern history. Were there two million or one and half million in London? Were there two or three million in Rome? Two or three million in cities across Spain? Five hundred or seven hundred and fifty thousand in NYC? The point is, there was an incredible mobilization and, far more important, our opposition is growing very rapidly. Indeed, it is the growth rate of dissent that is utterly extraordinary and that communicates the true threat our movements represent. And this has occurred without an international organization overseeing it. And it has occurred without single organizations inside each country overseeing it. There should be no rush to impose on our emerging massively entwined but hugely diverse international movement of movements any kind of central authority or identity. Things are going well. In fact, things are going stupendously. We need more of what we have been doing, not a dramatic change in what we have been doing – except that we need to reach out even more aggressively to new and wider constituencies, and except that we need to work patiently, respecting differences, to ensure a widening comprehension and commitment.
(3) We must not in the flush of growth set our short-term goals so high that they are unattainable, making ourselves depressed about our efforts when we inevitably don’t attain them. We must instead see what we are doing as a process. We should exult in the growth of this process and see that growth as a tremendous achievement – but as an achievement that paves the way for more to come. The growth of our opposition brings a responsibility: more growth. We should not become enchanted with our current size and breadth whether it is on a single campus, or in a town, or a city, or a country, or internationally. The trick is not to celebrate ourselves but to celebrate our potential. The task is to reach out, reach out, reach out – precisely to constituencies we think we cannot reach out to – because we can. On a campus we need to do it in the dorms and the fraternities, seeking not only the dissidents but also the footballers – yes, the athletes, by all means! Put a leaflet under every door. And then do it again. And then knock on the doors and talk. And then do that again. In our neighborhoods and workplaces, give materials to and then talk with our fellow citizens over and over. Reach out to mail deliverers, public school teachers, short order cooks, flight attendants, assemblers, truck drivers, hospital orderlies, coal miners, and even the military and police, yes even and arguably most importantly the military and the police.
On one side there is Bush, Blair, and other political masters and mullahs, plus owners and CEOs galore. On the other side we have a movement of movements – and a massive worldwide constituency that we need to reach.
If movements for social change unswervingly seek diversity, solidarity, equity, and self-management – peace and justice – and if they do it in a manner and with a tone and with tactics all of which seek to empower the weak and to meet the needs of the poor, they/we can win this struggle – and the struggle I have in mind to win, the one I think we are all in, is not just over a reform here or there – and it is not just over peace now and then—it is a struggle over who will decide the future and who the future will serve. Showdown indeed.
We have reason to celebrate. But we must have courage. And we must have stamina. Our struggle will require much time and tremendous perseverance. But the day for the ship of equity, for the ship of self-management, for the ship of solidarity, for the ship of diversity, and for the ship of justice and peace to dock is coming. Row!
History is not over. It is, instead, ours to take.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=3067
- Month Python’s Terry Jones: “I’m going to blow up my street”
For some time now I’ve been really pissed off with Mr Johnson, who lives a couple of doors down the street. Well, him and Mr Patel, who runs the health food shop. They both give me queer looks, and I’m sure Mr Johnson is planning something nasty for me, but so far I haven’t been able to discover what. I’ve been round to his place a few times to see what he’s up to, but he’s got everything well hidden. That’s how devious he is. As for Mr Patel, don’t ask me how I know, I just know - from very good sources - that he is, in reality, a Mass Murderer. I have leafleted the street telling them that if we don’t act first, he’ll pick us off one by one.
Some of my neighbours say, if I’ve got proof, why don’t I go to the police? But that’s simply ridiculous. The police will say that they need evidence of a crime with which to charge my neighbours. They’ll come up with endless red tape and quibbling about the rights and wrongs of a pre-emptive strike and all the while Mr Johnson will be finalising his plans to do terrible things to me, while Mr Patel will be secretly murdering people. Since I’m the only one in the street with a decent range of automatic firearms, I reckon it’s up to me to keep the peace....
...Like Mr Bush, I’ve run out of patience, and if that’s a good enough reason for the President, it’s good enough for me. I’m going to give the whole street two weeks - no, 10 days - to come out in the open and hand over all aliens and interplanetary hijackers, galactic outlaws and interstellar terrorist masterminds, and if they don’t hand them over nicely and say ‘Thank you’, I’m going to bomb the entire street to kingdom come. It’s just as sane as what George W. Bush is proposing - and, in contrast to what he’s intending, my policy will destroy only one street.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=3181
-On The Winning Side
by Mickey Z
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=3182
Last month, within the context of impending US/UK war crimes in Iraq, I wrote about the 58th anniversary of the Allied firebombing of Dresden (Feb. 13-14). This month marks another grim reminder of just how far the US is willing to go: 58 years since General Curtis LeMay, head of the Twenty-first US Bomber Command, brought his brand of hell into the Pacific theater.
Acting upon General George C. Marshall’s 1941 idea of torching the poorer areas of Japan’s cities, on the night of March 9-10, 1945, LeMay’s bombers laid siege on Tokyo. Tightly packed wooden buildings were assaulted by 1,665 tons of incendiaries. LeMay later recalled that a few explosives had been mixed in with the incendiaries to demoralize firefighters (96 fire engines burned to ashes and 88 firemen died).
When asked about his role in the Tokyo firebombing, [LeMay] remarked: “I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=3182
- U.S. Diplomat’s Letter of Resignation
I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7......until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer......We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security......Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo.....I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration.......
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=3151
- US, Iraq, Korea, Japan and nuclear weapons
by Joseph Gerson
..... I want to invoke the memory of the courageous Hibakusha Watanabe Chieko, Years ago she drew from her own incalculable suffering to inveigh against U.S. bombings and nuclear threats against Vietnam. Yes, we want the people of Iraq, North Korea, and Iran to enjoy freedom. We want that for the U.S., Japanese, and South Korean people as well....
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=3155
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13:00 Open
14:00 Rally Start
15:30 Parade Start (across Ginza)
Place: The Large Outdoor Music Hall in Hibiya Park, TOKYO
(Hibiya Yagai-Dai-Ongakudo in Hibiya Park)
ENGLISH
http://give-peace-a-chance.jp/e38/index.htm
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http://give-peace-a-chance.jp/118/
DISCUSSION: ‚±‚ê‚©‚ç‚Ì•½˜aŠˆ“®/Where does the peace movement go?
- Japan and North Korea
by David Blake Willis
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0226-02.htm
Published on Wednesday, February 26, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
Looking into Pandora’s Box: Notes from Japan on Ground Zero
Pandora’s Box has been opened in Northeast Asia, and possibly the world, as the bellicose rhetoric and saber-rattling posturing of the United States, North Korea, and others has awakened fears in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan about possible scenarios of either US hyper-engagement or hyper-withdrawal and the need for “self-defense”.
These nations, it should be widely known, sit on top of large stockpiles of plutonium. The Japanese Self-Defense forces Director announced loudly in the international press last week that Japan reserves the right to pre-emptive strikes against North Korea. This is Japan talking, not the United States, about pre-emptive strikes. South Korea meanwhile, with the inauguration of their new President Roh Moo-hyun appears cool to the idea of any military action and distancing itself from the US. Taiwan cannot be far behind in its nervousness about the turn of events.
The evident beginning of the collapse of a formerly stable security system in Northeast Asia in such a short time is nothing short of stunning. The possible continuing sequence of events leaves little to the imagination:
Ground Zero all over again. Maybe many Ground Zeroes.
I write from Western Japan, from Kobe, the city devastated by an earthquake in 1995, and near Kyoto, the city saved from atomic bombing during World War II. It is not a comfortable place to be sitting in these cold winter months of 2003. Like the North Koreans, who suffer from lack of even basic heat or electricity, we are sitting here uncomfortably watching the unfolding horrors in the Middle East, filled with feelings of dread that we are next. This part of the world has seen many catastrophes in the past hundred years, but none of them will compare with the fragmentation of nations in Northeast Asia and the spread of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems that seems to have started here.
The Japanese Defense Agency today withheld even basic information from the civilian government about the latest missile launching for many hours, the national news reporting here that it was some time before the Prime Minister and other key figures were notified, many by the media apparently. Explanations from the Self-Defense Agency looked dissembling and seemed to be intentionally vague. What is disturbing is the pattern of closely held communication and secrecy. Curiously, too, few Japanese were aware of the Defense Agency Director’s threat of a pre-emptive strike on North Korea.
Although the story had big international airplay, it was not widely reported in Japan. Draw your own conclusions.
The steady drum-beat of the horrifying stories of Japanese people kidnapped by North Koreans over the years since the release of a group of them recently has at the same time raised the anger level to just the right pitch to justify military action. Discussion of the revision of the constitution and elimination of Article 9 (the so-called Peace Article, which mandates Japan forever from using war as an instrument of diplomacy) so that Japan can protect itself from outrages such as the abductions and other potential missile launchings from North Korea has spread, stoking the passions of right-wing nationalists.
In these troubled times, it might be appropriate to consider more carefully what the expression Ground Zero means, especially as events are escalating towards flashpoint. Originally a metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Ground Zero was co-opted by the events of 9/11 as the symbol of modern tragedy and righteous anger.
Immediately after the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, Pearl Harbor was the phrase on many people’s lips, a surprise attack that changed history. Pearl Harbor had devastated America’s image of comfortable isolation from the tempo of the rest of the world. Now it was happening again. Pearl Harbor, for Americans at least, stood apart from what had been happening:
“We were innocent and they were evil,” according to Americans.
Japanese-Americans and others were quick to jump on the use of Pearl Harbor in 2001 in the week after 9/11 as bearing another legacy, one of racism, abuse, and concentration camps. Then a strange period of namelessness emerged as we all tried to grope with what had happened in New York. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) began happening in disturbing and unpredictable ways. The image of a surprise attack has lingered, but the key phrase everyone gradually settled on was Ground Zero.
There is a serious danger, however, in simply using the term Ground Zero without a deep understanding of its historical precedents. The power of Ground Zero comes to this: it is the most powerful of all symbols of man’s inhumanity to man. We should continually remind ourselves that Ground Zero in its original context was the earth-shaking oblivion visited upon the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and, ultimately, humanity.
“You cannot understand the 20th century without Hiroshima,” said Robert Jay Lifton, one of the most profound authors of our time. The top news story of the 20th century, Hiroshima as Ground Zero should be remembered and considered as we appear to be headed for another reckless adventure of death and destruction. The stark images from the World Trade Center ruins evoke the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima. Ground Zero evokes our mortality as a species.
Hiroshima? “We were innocent and they were evil.” “They deserved what they got.” “If we hadn’t done it a million lives would have been lost.” “Pre-emptive strike.” These rationales pale by comparison with the catastrophic wreckage wrought on our collective psyches as humans by Hiroshima. What will happen next?
The shocking speed with which the world has been altered should give us pause as we consider what to do next. Like Philip Morrison, one of the early scientists with the Manhattan Project (the name resonates peculiarly today), many of those who bore direct witness to Hiroshima and Ground Zero in the scientific survey of that city in September 1945 saw what happened as “a crime and a sin.” Not because of the hotly-contested decision whether to use the bomb or not, but because it was “the first event of a future that’s intolerable.” Ground Zero was/is a token of what lies in the future.
At Ground Zero in New York City there are thousands of gifts of remembrance and tribute. Among them are the gifts of hundreds of children: folded paper birds of peace: Cranes, doves, and yes, eagles. We need to keep uppermost in our minds what Jimmy Carter said in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, that we cannot change the world for the better by killing each other?fs children.
- Anti-War Petition/当性なき米国のイラク
Emergency Petition to the Japanese Government on Iraq
“ú–{Œê
http://www.eforum.jp/shihou/iken-moushiire1.html
English
http://www.eforum.jp/shihou/iken-moushiire-eng1.html
みなさま
青山貞一です。
正当性なき米国のイラク攻撃を実質的に容認、支持しそう（している）
日本政府に対し、衆議院、参議院議員を通じて撤回を要請するための
意見申し入れです。
何回かにわたり衆参議長、国会議員及び与野党代表に意見申し入れす
る予定です。
以下の文面に賛同される方は、必ず no-war-iraq@eforum.jp 宛に
ご自身の氏名と所属あるいは肩書きをお送り下さい。
所属、肩書きがない場合は、山田 太郎（東京都品川区）のように居
住地名をお書き下さい。
なお、意見申し入れ文書、呼びかけ人、さらに一定期間毎に集約した
賛同者は、以下のホームページにて公開します。また各種連絡事項もＨＰ
に掲載する予定です。
環境行政改革フォーラムＨＰ
http://www.eforum.jp/shihou/iken-moushiire1.html
正当性なき米国のイラク攻撃ＨＰ
http://www.01.246.ne.jp/~aoyama/iken-moushiire1.html
本メールは転載歓迎ですので、他のメーリングリストはじめお知り合い、
友人等にも転送頂けると幸いです。
賛同署名は、必ず no-war-iraq@eforum.jp にお送り下さい。
転送大歓迎です（上記を含めすべてを転送して下さい）
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
国会議員各位
正当性なき米国のイラク攻撃への日本政府の実質的支持の撤回要請について
意見申し入れ
【呼びかけ人代表、発議者】
青山貞一 （環境総合研究所所長、
環境行政改革フォーラム代表幹事）
【呼びかけ人】
池田こみち（環境総合研究所副所長、関東学院大学
経済学部講師、国際市民参加学会会員）
枝廣 淳子（会議通訳者、環境ジャーナリスト）
大河内秀人（見樹院住職、ＮＰＯ法人パレスチナ
子どものキャンペーン常務理事）
逢坂 誠二（北海道ニセコ町町長）
小野寺義象（弁護士、仙台弁護士会）
梶山 正三（弁護士、ゴミ弁連会長）
釜井 英法（弁護士、ゴミ弁連会員）
佐竹 俊之（弁護士、ゴミ弁連会員）
鈴木 譲 （東京大学大学院農学生命科学研究科
附属水産実験所）
鷹取 敦 （環境総合研究所主任研究員、
法政大学工学部講師）
田中 優 （日本国際ボランティアセンター理事）
辻 淳夫 （日本湿地ネットワーク代表、
藤前干潟を守る会代表）
寺西 俊一（一橋大学大学院経済学研究科教授）
花輪 伸一（ＷＷＦジャパン自然保護室）
原科 幸彦（東京工業大学大学院教授、
国際影響評価学会理事）
星川 淳 （作家・翻訳家、屋久島環境政策研究所）
過去の人類の歴史、経験から武力攻撃が何ら問題解決にならないことは明らか
です。このことを最もよく知っているのは日本国民のはずです。
ドイツ、フランス、ベルギー、ロシア、中国など国連安保理主要国を含むＥＵ
等の国々は大量破壊兵器廃棄のための査察の継続を強く求めています。この２月
１５日にはニューヨーク、ロンドン、パリ、ベルリンなど世界６０カ国、４００
カ所で１０００万人を超えるひとびとのイラク攻撃反対デモもありました。全米
各地でもベトナム戦争時に比肩する反戦デモや集会が、東海岸のニューヨークか
ら西海岸のロサンゼルスまで全米約１５０の都市で行わ、ニューヨーク・マン
ハッタンでは約３８万人もの市民が参加しています。各国の世論調査でも
７０～８０％のひとびとが米国の正当性のない武力攻撃に反対の意志を表明して
います。
このような国際的な大きな反戦、非戦のうねりのなか、日本政府は米国のイラ
ク攻撃を実質的に支援することをきめました。これは非軍事的方法で解決を求め
る圧倒的多くの国際世論から、また憲法において武力による国際紛争の解決を放
棄した国家として論理的にも間違っていると思われます。
日本が米国の同盟国であるのは事実です。しかし、ドイツ、フランスなど米国
の主要同盟国でさえ、今回の米国のイラク攻撃についてはＮＡＴＯや国連安保理
において明確かつ論理的に批判し、査察の継続を求めています。
日本政府はイラクが国連決議を遵守していないとことあるたびに述べています
が、過去、イスラエルが６０件に及ぶ国連決議を無視してきたことを看過し続け
ています。朝鮮民主主義共和国の核保有問題についても非軍事的な解決の道を選
ぶと言ったり、「北朝鮮問題で米国に世話になるのでイラク攻撃を支持するしか
ない」と言う趣旨のことを述べています。これらは日本政府が明らかに米国のダ
ブルスタンダードに追随していることを物語るものであり整合性もなく、きわめ
て非論理的なものです。
さらに昨年７月に国際刑事裁判所(ICC)設立条約が成立し、戦争犯罪に関する
国際司法制度が設立されました。コフィ・アナン国連事務総長はこの国際刑事裁
判所について次のように述べています。すなわち、（国際刑事裁判所）は少なく
とも、ジェノサイド、人道に対する罪そして戦争犯罪といった国際社会に対する
重大な犯罪を裁く常設裁判所という、国際法体系が長い間失っていた輪を提供す
ることを約束する、と。
しかし、米国のブッシュ政権はこの制度からの離脱を表明し、結果としてイラ
クで米軍兵士が行う戦争犯罪の疑いのある行為を国際的に裁くことができませ
ん。米国が国際刑事裁判所(ICC)条約を批准する意思も示していない以上、日本
が米軍の攻撃を支持することは、今日の国際水準の戦争に関する規制が適用され
ないことを黙認し、日本はイラクで起こりうる戦争犯罪の共犯となりうると言わ
ざるを得ません。ましてや状況によっては核兵器の使用もありうると米国防長官
は公言しているのです。これを食いとめるすべもないまま日本政府が米軍支持を
するのは犯罪です。
そのブッシュ政権が地球温暖化防止のための京都議定書や核実験全面禁止条約
（ＣＴＢＴ）さらに米ロ弾道弾迎撃ミサイル制限条約（ＡＢＭ）など、国際的に
みてきわめて重要な公約を次々に反故にしてきたことは周知の事実です。
いずれにしてもイラク問題は国連による徹底した査察のなかで、非軍事的手段
で逐次解決して行くことが、理性ある国家が選択すべき最良の道であるはずです。
１０,６００個の核弾頭を所有し、世界３０カ国に軍事基地を持ち、世界の軍
事費の５０％になんなんとする軍事大国米国による正当性なきイラクへの先制武
力攻撃は、罪のない数限りない子供など市民を殺傷し環境を破壊するだけでな
く、２１世紀における世界のありようを根底から破壊し、取り返しのつかない大
きな禍根を残します。
米国に何でも追随してきた日本政府ですが、イラクと日本はもともと何ら敵対
的な関係にありません。イラク攻撃を実質的に容認、支持することは、日本の国
益にもなりません。米国による戦争行為への日本の支持は明らかに間違いです。
日本は米国の親密な同盟国であればこそ、米国が何が何でもイラク攻撃をする
という姿勢を是正させる義務と責任があるはずです。
思慮ある衆議院、参議院の国会議員の皆様、何としても日本政府に米国等のイ
ラク攻撃の養親、支援を制止させるよう、切にお願い申し上げます。
- Emergency Petition to the Security Council
- Join the Pledge of Resistance - Sunday March 9th Washington DC - Options in Congress
http://click.topica.com/maaaTHnaaWqb0a4NPN8e/
Emergency Petition to the Security Council The AFSC & MoveOn.com have just launched an emergency petition asking the members of the Security Council to back tough inspections, not war. The list of signers and your comments will be delivered to the 15 member states of the Security Council THURSDAY, March 6.
If hundreds of thousands of us sign, it could be an enormously important and powerful message—people from all over the world joining in a single call for a peaceful solution. But we really need your help, and soon.
In the next week, the U.N. Security Council will likely meet to decide on authorizing a war against Iraq. If the Council votes to accept a second resolution, it’ll be very difficult to avert a war. But if the resolution doesn’t get enough votes, it’ll be a major setback for the Bush Administration’s plans to invade and occupy Iraq.
In the United States and around the world, millions of us oppose a war against Iraq. We believe that tough inspections can disarm Saddam Hussein without the loss of a single life. This week may represent our last chance to win without war.
Please ask your friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances—anyone you know who shares this concern—to sign on today. As the New York Times put it, “there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.” The Bush Administration’s been flexing its muscles. Now let’s flex ours.
Please sign and ask your friends and colleagues to sign TODAY! http://click.topica.com/maaaTHnaaWqb0a4NPN8e/
-U.S. Spying on UN Delegates: Fallout
The Observer newspaper in London has reported on a leaked U.S. National Security Agency memo outlining plans for the surveillance of both office and home communications of UN delegates from Security Council member countries, as part of U.S. efforts to gain approval for its new Security Council resolution on Iraq.
The story is now causing reverberations in a number of countries where governments have not yet taken a clear position on the resolution in the Security Council. The following people are available for interviews:
ED VULLIAMY, , http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,905936,00.html One of the authors of the Observer article, Vulliamy said today: “Allegations that this document is not authentic have been dashed; no government official has denied its authenticity. While some have taken a ho-hum attitude in the U.S., many around the world are furious. Still, almost all governments are extremely reluctant to speak up against the espionage. This further illustrates their vulnerability to the U.S. government.”
MARTIN BRIGHT, One of the reporters who wrote the Observer article, Bright said today: “From the Chilean press, we know that Chilean president Ricardo Lagos and Tony Blair discussed the document in a recent phone conversation. A major question now is, ‘Who leaked the document?’ They clearly knew it would be damaging to the U.S. government. Was it an institutional decision or a rogue act?”
NORMAN SOLOMON, , http://www.contextbooks.com/newF.html Coauthor of the new book “Target Iraq,” Solomon discussed the Observer story in a live interview on CNN this afternoon, saying: “We’re kind of oblivious to it still here in the United States.... How dare the United States government bug and spy on and monitor the private communications of the representatives of sovereign governments at the United Nations?” Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
SARAH ANDERSON, , http://www.ips-dc.org, http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/armtwistindex.htm A fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Anderson coauthored the recently released report “Coalition of the Willing or Coalition of the Coerced?” which details some of the pressures the U.S. government is applying on various governments at the UN.
JOHN QUIGLEY, Professor of international law at Ohio State University, Quigley notes that the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations says: “The receiving State shall permit and protect free communication on the part of the mission for all official purposes.... The official correspondence of the mission shall be inviolable.”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
