COUNTER TERROR: BUILD JUSTICE 2005
An invitation to join a transatlantic anti-war protest

Justice Not Vengeance in the UK and Voices in the Wilderness in the US would like to invite your anti-war/peace group to be part of an international month of peace action in the spring of 2005. Below is an explanation of what the month of peace is about, a statement that we invite you to sign, and a menu of actions you may wish to organize during the month of action.

‘Counter Terror: Build Justice’ - Why

THE CONTEXT

As the crisis in Iraq deepens, and we face US presidential elections, it is crucial that the next US president - either a new President Kerry, or a re-elected President Bush - is met with a vigorous challenge from the US and British peace movements over both the occupation of Iraq, and the wider ‘war on terrorism’.

“The Palestinian female detainees in Telmond, among whom there are at least five aged under-18, have embarked on a hunger strike to protest against the maltreatment they have suffered at the hands of the prison administration and the appalling conditions in which they are held.”

From Defense Children International - Palestine Section
2 December 2004

(Please Note: According to a DCI/PS press release, the hunger strike was suspended on December 1. Please visit DCI/PS website or the Al-Awda website for more information).

On 30 November 2004, a DCI/PS lawyer visited the women’s section of Telmond prison where he was able to talk to one Palestinian detainee, Samah Abdallah. Samah informed him that on Sunday 28 November, the female Palestinian prisoners in Telmond went out to the exercise yard as normal. However, before the end of their allotted time outdoors, the prison administration ordered the Palestinian women and girls to return to their cells. The representative of the Palestinian female detainees, Amna Mouna, complained to the guards that it was too soon for the women to go back inside. As she did so, she was severely beaten by a group of prison guards after which she was taken to the punishment cells, which are cold bare rooms with no bedding, no heating and no natural light.

Dahr Jamail
December 6, 2004

Driving across Baghdad yesterday a GMC full of armed men races past our car, missing it by inches. Along with guns pointed out their windows at us (and all the other cars), a couple of the men hold their hands out, waving them down towards the ground in order to instruct the traffic they are pushing their way through to stay back.

CIA and/or mercenaries always travel like this here.

As the SUV passes a gunman sits behind a metal barrier, with his machine gun aimed at us. He’s flashing a light at us, to underscore the fact we should stay back.

As a second SUV full of armed men wearing helmets passes us my friend Ahmed turns to me and says, “We are nowhere here. Iraq is nowhere now. Look at this life we are living.”

By David Smith-Ferri

While conditions for most Iraqis continue to deteriorate, as the country slips even more deeply into an environmental and health crisis, George Bush and his supporters danced to country music on the evening of election day, celebrating the War President’s reelection. This image has haunted me over the last few weeks, as people in Fallujah have had to endure a military assault, without electricity and without access to clean water, food, and medical care. Upon reflection, that celebration, if not exactly dancing on Iraqi graves, is close enough to create the same revolting effect. Anyone, it seems to me, who stands so squarely beside this president and his administration does so in the face of a continuing legacy of US brutality in Iraq.

By Kathy Kelly
published in the All Times Union

The first President Bush, at a 1992 energy conference in Rio de Janeiro, declared that the American way of life is nonnegotiable. Twelve years later, led by his son into unending war and unending impoverishment, an unwillingness to change a dangerously wasteful lifestyle has locked the people of the United States into a terrible conundrum.

Enormous talent, creativity and money are poured into military spending, ostensibly to defend us. And yet the luxurious way of life available to the majority of people in the United States is considered morally indefensible by people in lands held hostage by U.S. policies designed to control their resources. Meanwhile, Western culture continues an ongoing war against Mother Earth as we contaminate the water, land and air, ravage the soil and burn fossil fuels.