whitebeard

Friday, March 24, 2006

National
Please distribute:

Dear Friends and Supporters:

IS BUSH GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY?

THE EVIDENCE IS IN... THE FINAL VERDICT WILL BE RELEASED SOON...

The Bush Crimes Commission is launching a nation-wide campus tour this week, starting at UC Berkeley -- Speaking the Unspeakable: Is the Bush Administration Guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity? This is a tour of prominent whistleblowers, eye-witnesses, victims and experts, including excerpts of testimony on video that reveal the stark reality of the Bush Administrations' war crimes and crimes against humanity -- acts that, by their scale or nature, shock the conscience of humankind.

This is a tour of truth tellers. To quote Michael Ratner from this second session: "And so, as [Bertrand] Russell said then, we say today: we are putting the Bush administration on trial. We investigate in order to expose; we document in order to indict; we arouse consciousness in order to create mass resistance. ... Our country and our world are at a tipping point. Tipping toward permanent war, the end of human rights, and the impoverishment and death of millions. We still have a chance, an opportunity to stop this slide into chaos. But it is up to us."

It IS up to us. Your assistance is needed to make this tour possible. This spring we are focusing on the Bay Area, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, DC and possibly the Atlanta area. This is an opportunity to bring this evidence to an audience that urgently needs to be part of this discussion.

* HELP BUILD THIS TOUR. Send in or write to your contacts in colleges and universities.
* Help with publicity for this tour.
* If you can type, contact the National Office (commission@nion.us or 212-941-8086) to help with transcription of the first session of the Commission.
* If you can edit video, please contact us.
* And especially, make your financial contribution on line at www.nion.us/NSOC/sign.htm or send your check payable to Not In Our Name SOC and mail to Not In Our Name SOC, 305 West Broadway #199, NY, NY 10012. We need $2,000 right away to finish producing DVDs of the testimony.

Thank you.

Janet Yip for
The Bush Crimes Commission

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Below is a sample of the powerful testimony presented at the Commission. This is an excerpt from Vanessa Brocato's testimony on Indictment #4 Global HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Rights policies, especially the genocidal effects of imposing abstinence-only in the midst of an AIDS pandemic. Vanessa is an International Policy Associate for SIECUS and author of SIECUS PEPFAR [the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief] Country Profiles: Focusing In on Prevention and Youth:

"Though the abstinence-only until marriage programs have been funded in the U.S. since 1981, and have been the focal point of domestic policy, since Bush entered office in 2000, the Bush Administration has the gall to claim in the media and in policy documents, that the PEPFAR prevention strategy is based on the Uganda model. Uganda saw a significant decline in HIV prevention rates and many people are interested in replicating and scaling up this successful approach to prevention. Unfortunately, whatever that approach may have been has been obscured by ideological and political battling. By claiming the approach is based on the Uganda model, the Administration is attempting, of course, to avoid criticism that this is his western initiative being foisted upon developing nations.

"But interestingly, under this ostensibly indigenous approach, funds to deliver abstinence-only until marriage programs go to mainly U.S. based conservative organizations or local organizations with ties to U.S. groups or ties to the U.S. Government. I don't want to misrepresent, there are some local organizations receiving funds, and some HIV/AIDS organizations that used to do comprehensive prevention work, but are now turning to an abstinence-only approach just to receive really badly needed funds. In other cases, the Bush Administration is able to tap into local Christian fundamentalist movements to both implement and support an abstinence-only policy.

"The few organizations with contracts with USAID that predate PEPFAR, which are trying to maintain their comprehensive programming, are now coming under attack by the most conservative elements of our Congress. Their funding is threatened, even if they follow abstinence guidelines, because they are not considered morally capable, sufficiently ideologically in sync, to provide what proponents call, authentic abstinence education.

"PEPFAR has the ominous potential of making large scale impact. And we already have evidence of the U.S. Government's influence derailing good public programming and policy. In Uganda, the Bush Administration has played a major role in reversing the country's HIV prevention approach. The main program for information on sexuality and HIV prevention in Uganda is the Presidential Initiative on AIDS Strategy for Communication to Youth, also called PIASCY, which was launched in 2002. With the President's leadership, a team of stakeholders created educational materials for youths in elementary schools that promoted concepts, such as basic information about sexual health, information on resisting peer pressure to engage in sexual activity, condom use, and human rights. The materials were the basis for monthly HIV/AIDS related assemblies in Uganda's primary schools. PEPFAR support for PIASCY now includes assistance with the development, revision, and distribution of the PIASCY materials. But U.S. support for abstinence-only until marriage has resulted in the removal of critical HIV information and the addition of misinformation in these very same primary school curricula. This includes perpetuating myths about condoms and promoting marriage as a protective factor, regardless of the documented risks of HIV infection within marriage."

Read Vanessa's full testimony on line at www.bushcommission.org/Text/Brocato.htm.

Please send in your comments to commission@nion.us

Impeachment Movement Ignored by Corporate Media

By Peter Phillips

If a national movement calling for the impeachment of the President is rapidly emerging and the corporate media are not covering it, is there really a national movement for the impeachment of the President?

Impeachment advocates are widely mobilizing in the U.S. Over 1,000 letters to the editors of major newspapers have been printed in the past six months asking for impeachment. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette letter writer George Matus says, "I am still enraged over unasked questions about exit polls, touch-screen voting, Iraq, the cost of the new MedicareŠwho formulated our energy policy, Jack Abramoff, the Downing Street Memos, and impeachment." David Anderson in McMinnville, Oregon pens to the Oregonian, "Where are the members of our congressional delegation now in demanding the current president's actions be investigated to see if impeachment or censure are appropriate actions?" William Dwyer's letter in the Charleston Gazette says, "Congress will never have the courage to start the impeachment process without a groundswell of outrage from the people."

City councils, boards of supervisors, and local and state level Democrat central committees have voted for impeachment. Arcata, California voted for impeachment on January 6. The City and County of San Francisco, voted Yes on February 28. The Sonoma County Democrat Central Committee (CA) voted for Impeachment on March 16. The townships of Newfane, Brookfield, Dummerston, Marlboro and Putney in Vermont all voted for impeachment the first week of March. The New Mexico State Democrat party convention rallied on March 18 for the "impeachment of George Bush and his lawful removal from office." The national Green Party called for impeachment on January 3. Op-ed writers at the St. Petersburg Times, Newsday, Yale Daily News, Barrons, Detroit Free Press, and the Boston Globe have called for impeachment. The Nation (1/30/06) and Harpers (3/06) magazines published cover articles calling for impeachment. Garrison Keillor, and Richard Dreyfuss both have come out for impeachment. As of March 16, thirty-two US House of Representatives have signed on as co-sponsors to House Resolution 635, which would create a Select Committee to look into the grounds for recommending President Bush's impeachment.

Polls show that nearly a majority of Americans favor impeachment. In October of 2005, Public Affairs Research found that 50% of Americans said that President Bush should be impeached if he lied about the war in Iraq. A Zogby International poll from early November 2005 found that 53% of Americans say, "If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment." A March 16, 2006 poll by American Research Group showed that 42% of Americans favored impeaching Bush.

Despite all this advocacy and sentiment for impeachment, corporate media have yet to cover this emerging mass movement. The Bangor Daily News simply reported on March 17 that former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark has set up the website Votetoimpeach.org and that other groups are using the internet to push impeachment. The Wall Street Journal, on March 16, editorialized about how it is just "the loony left" seeking impeachment, but perhaps some Democrats in Congress will join in feeding on the "bile of the censure/impeachment brigades."

The corporate media is ignoring the broadening call for impeachment - wishing perhaps it will just go away. Television news and talk shows have mentioned impeachment over 100 times in the past 30 days, mostly however in the context of Senator Russ Feingold's censure bill and the lack of broad Democrat support for censure or impeachment. Nothing on television news gives the impression that millions of Americans are calling for the impeachment of Bush and his cohorts.

The Bush Administration lied about Iraq, illegally spied on US citizens, and continues war crimes in the Middle East. Despite corporate media's inability to hear the demands for impeachment, the groundswell of outrage continues to expand.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored a media research organization. He is co-editor with Dennis Loo from Cal Poly Pomona of the The Case for Impeachment of Bush and Cheney scheduled for release this summer by Seven Stories Press.
Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Professor Sociology/Director Project Censored
Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave.
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
Office: 707-664-2588
www.projectcensored.org