Wasted Millions ?

(A comparison of mosques to the well organized way churches and synagogues are run and finds them wanting.)

Wednesday, 19 February 2003

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 19 (AFP) - One hundred and fourteen nations begin a conference in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur Thursday, preparing to deliver a resounding 'No' to a US-led war on Iraq.

Most of the countries grouped in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) carry little clout of their own, but they hope their official voices will be heard alongside those of millions of ordinary people protesting the war around the world.

The NAM states are mostly poor and militarily weak, although two of them -- India and Pakistan -- are nuclear powers and another, North Korea, is believed to be able to produce nuclear weapons within months, if it doesn't have them already.

by John Pilger, 17 February 2003

TERROR WAR

As the world protests against war, we hear again the lies of old. "A painful decision," say the supporters of an invasion. But it is not they who will feel the pain: it will be the Iraqi infants writhing in the dust when the cluster bombs fall

In "Dulce et decorum est", his classic poem from the First World War, Wilfred Owen described young soldiers, doomed to die, "like old beggars under sacks", and a man's "hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin".

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Feb. 16, 2003. 01:00 AM, Michelle Landsberg

So you wonder why so many Canadians are opposed to the U.S. plans to attack Iraq? It's not that we're weak-kneed wimps of Canuckistan, or bleeding-heart pacifists, or saps who actually believe Saddam, to repeat some of the more boorish epithets.

Whatever our other reasons for opposing the war, we're also skeptics, remembering the long history of official lies that have served as a smokescreen for U.S. government adventurism in other places and times.

For 30 years, America has acted hypocritically in wielding its UN veto

Henry Porter, Sunday February 16, 2003, The Observer

Britain and America may have to dilute their demands if they are to persuade the Security Council to consider a new resolution. Britain's Ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, talked of 'offering new language', an altogether less belligerent approach than the run-up to the meeting in November when resolution 1441 was adopted.

Euan Ferguson reports on a historic peace march whose massive turnout surpassed the organisers' wildest expectations and Tony Blair's worst fears

Sunday 16 February 2003, The Observer

'Are there any more coming, then?'

There have been dafter questions, but not many. At 1.10 yesterday afternoon, Mike Wiseman from Newcastle upon Tyne placed his accordion carefully on the ground below Hyde Park's gates and rubbed cold hands together. Two elderly women, hand in hand in furs, passed through, still humming the dying notes from his 'Give Peace A Chance'. They were, had he known it, early, part of a tiny crowd straggling into Hyde Park before the march proper.

Daily Mirror, Feb 14 2003, John Pilger

TOMORROW one of the most important public events in memory will take place in central London.

It is not possible to overstate the significance and urgency of the march and demonstration against an unprovoked British and American attack on Iraq, a nation with whom we have no quarrel and who offer us no threat.

Spy in the sky good enough for most experts on the ground

Dan Plesch in New York, Wednesday 5 February 2003, The Guardian

The chief UN weapons inspector yesterday dismissed what has been billed as a central claim of the speech the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, will make today to the UN security council.

Hans Blix said there was no evidence of mobile biological weapons laboratories or of Iraq trying to foil inspectors by moving equipment before his teams arrived.

By Phyllis Bennis , February 5, 2003

Editor: John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council on February 5 wasn't likely to win over anyone not already on his side. He ignored the crucial fact that in the past several days (in Sunday's New York Times and in his February 4th briefing of UN journalists) Hans Blix denied key components of Powell's claims.

Matthew Tempest, The Guardian, Tuesday 4 February 2003

Noam Chomsky: The [peace] demonstrations were another indication of a quite remarkable phenomenon. There is around the world and in the United States opposition to the coming war that is at a level that is completely unprecedented in US or European history both in scope and the parts of the population it draws on.