BS: Your Influence Against War...

Subject: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jan 03 - 11:18 PM

I really apologize for adding to the non-music traffic, folks, but I think this might be important enough to justify it -- if it is true. I have not tested this line myself:

> Please make your voice heard on this incredibly important issue and send it
> to your mailing lists. You can help stop or start this war.
> Appreciatively, Wayne
>
> The Bush White House has an "opinion" line for you to call. So, whether
> you oppose or approve of the proposed war in Iraq, give a call. The line
> only accepts calls from 9-5 EST., Monday thru Friday. Just call the
> White House at 202-456-1111. A machine will detain you for only a moment
> and then a pleasant live operator will thank you for saying "I oppose"
> or "I approve." It will only take minutes. Note that the weekends are
> closed for calls. The president has said that he wants to know what the
> American people are thinking. Let him know. Time is running out.
>
> Then please forward this e-mail to peace-loving friends.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Jan 03 - 11:33 PM

click here

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jan 03 - 11:52 PM

Thanks, most alert of you, ONO. So it is a real phone number but not an issue specific campaign.

Still it won't hurt to pick up the phone and voice discontent with war preparations. Sons and daughters--yours, or your friends', or their friends' are on the seas tonight making thier way to the Fertile Crescent, there to face a range of conditions from discomfort to the inside of a body bag -- no telling how or who.

Mister Bush has refused to reveal the talismanic information he is acting on, and has left it to the world to assume he must know something.

Dunno about you but I ain't condoning bloodshed on a vacuum of information. If he had any personal merit, it might be different. He has none in my eyes, except a sort of canine perseverance.

What the hell, give them White House gals a ring.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 12:23 AM

I'm in the UK. At least the calls seem to be to give the inspectors more time. As it stands though, it does seem to me as if there are those who would go to war on "suspicion". I don't like war anyway but I fail to see how anyone can justify it on the grounds "they MIGHT be a threat".

I also dread to think what the reaction not only of other countires but of Muslims in our own countries will be if action is taken without any evidence. The issue is sensitive enough without what seems to me to be the Bush attitude of "We'll go in and beat 'em up". Does he really know what he is playing with?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 12:40 AM

IF you mean the price and terror of angry lead butchering exhausted muscles into shreds, he has no knowledge of it. He is much too inexperienced to be where he is. He thinks of war as token of negotiation. This is like some psycho thinking of rape or murder as a symbolic gesture of self-clarification, some kind of Raskolnikovian perversion in the face of life.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 12:51 AM

I got this phone number in an email a few days ago. I have tried to get through to them repeatedly, at all given hours (9 to 5 EST), one day even using redial for more than 10 minutes. The line has always been 'busy'.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: Kaleea
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 03:21 AM

"Geez, don't tell me that you had a problem with the approximated one-hundred & eighty-thousand "royal guard troops" being killed in the first airstrikes way back when in "Desert Storm." Or the other who knows how many Iraqi troops. And the thousands of civilians . . ., well it's just all a part of war! And, hey--war is always good for the economy!" (I won't mention the name of the well-known comedian who said the above as a satirical/ironic comment a few months after the "Desert Storm" event changed to--what was it?--Desert Shield? The people in the audience actually laughed, not getting the "joke," as did the well known politician it was directed to.) They may have all forgotten, but I have not. Oh--the numbers? They were the numbers given out in an official televised military briefing for the press.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: mmm1a
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 10:16 AM

Thank You Amos
The line has been busy but I will continue to try to get through.
                  mmm

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: Mr Happy
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 11:19 AM

i've been following the spin & lies pro-bush war propaganda campaign on the popular media here in Britain,

Seems to me Iraq is in the 'witch trials' situation of mediaeval times.

A suspected 'witch' would be tied up then thrown in a river or pond.

if the suspect floated their guilt was proved & they'd be put to death.

If they drowned, they were deemed to be innocent.

So if the inspectors find no 'weapons of mass DISTRACTION' then the Iraquis must be guilty & war can be 'justified'

A 'no win' situation for them either way.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 01:54 PM

Thanks, Amos. Will try.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 04:21 PM

Amos, your gift for making beautiful quilts out of pithy metaphors and facts is truely wonderous... BTW, when do you think he'll wake up to his humanitarian responsibilities... Moral is pretty low around the world, and it's sagging demonstrably here in the states too... ttr

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: Rustic Rebel
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 05:44 PM

I agree with snopes on this. Get ahold of=House rep's
or-Senators
or else maybe something here-Special committees
Peace, Rustic

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 06:11 PM

There will be demonstartions in many major cities next Saturday, Ja. 18th. I would encourage folks to try to attend one close to them if at all possible. There will also be some demonstations the following Monday, Martin Luther King Day in some cities, that will also involve anit-war folks.

Maybe GUEST will throw a link in here that has a lisy of those planned demonstrations.

And, snail mail gets more attention ofter than e-mail or calls to the White House so I'd suugest a few letters.

Peace,

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 08:02 PM

You can also hold demonstrations in your congressional representatives offices! Here is my radical left district (more Nader voters than any other precinct in Minnesota), our congressional reps are/were (we lost Wellstone) very nice about it. Gave us cookies and coffee and candy and everything last fall before the "big vote" on Iraq.

Links to the usual suspects (organizers) of the big demos on the weekend of the 18th:

http://www.internationalanswer.org/

http://www.unitedforpeace.org/

http://www.refuseandresist.org/altindex.html

http://www.notinourname.net/

http://www.warresisters.org/

http://www.afsc.org/iraq/activism.shtm [American Friends Service Committee-Quakers, but they work with everybody]

http://www.wilpf.org/ [Women's International League for Peace & Freedom]

DEMOS WILL ALSO TAKE PLACE ACROSS EUROPE ALL YOU EUROCATS!

Here is one of the main orgs doing anti-war work in the UK--click on "Groups" on the left side of the page, there are groups all over the place listed:

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

And there is WILPF International links:

http://www.wilpf.int.ch/world/worldindex.htm

I will say, I am heartened by what seems to be the movement picking up some real steam here in the US. I nearly fainted when I saw reports on major media channels yesterday (local, NBC Nightly News & CNN) on the anti-war movement.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 09:26 PM

Good on you, GUEST!

Now, fir you Catters who really want to make a difference, *try* to get yerself to one of the demonstrations on Jan. 18th.

You can bet I'll be in D.C. next Saturday. Take a packpack with food and water 'cause some of these things ain't got either of them commodities. And be sure to take a cool sign. Yeah, even though this is some purdy danged serious stuff, make it fun.

Peace

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 09:30 PM

My most recent favorite placard was at a demo last fall before the big vote, carried by an early 20-something gal. It said "Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity"

I loved it, anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 09:44 PM

More great ideas, from today's Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Kim Ode: Code Pink is the new alert for peace
Kim Ode
Star Tribune

Published Jan. 11, 2003 ODE11

This is how it starts. Plates of cookies placed on low tables around a stylish living room, Web sites and talking points taped to the fireplace mantel, a flip chart propped in the foyer, women streaming through the door and whooping with delight at the particularly inflamed shade of pink they're being asked to wear to stop a war.

This is the way a peace movement begins, or one of the ways. Some are born in rage. Others in grief. But this group, Code Pink, was born in the intuition that a lot of women are willing, maybe for the first time in their lives, to stick their necks out.

That's what it can feel like these days, when pressing for hard evidence to warrant invading Iraq draws comparisons to Benedict Arnold. Again and again on this past Tuesday night, women in Binky Wood's living room said they'd never done this before, never spoken up about a global issue or considered joining an antiwar protest march, such as the one that will snake through Uptown Minneapolis at 1 p.m. today.

They'd also never contemplated wearing this shade of pink, but I got the feeling it won't be their last act of courage.

Code Pink joins a growing list of peace groups active here. I had no idea how many until the women started trying to find a day for their next meeting and kept bumping up against this vigil or that vigil. Each week, more than a dozen such vigils are held from Duluth to Northfield, mostly people standing on bridges and intersections, promoting peace. (For a list of vigils, see http://www.worldwidewamm.org).

Yet here we are, on the verge of war. So let's get to the rude question: Has a peace movement ever stopped a country from going to war? The short, true answer is no.

But of all the things that have to die in a war, isn't it good to know that hope doesn't have to be one of them? Hope and, strangely enough, courage.

"Code Pink is about giving each other the courage to do what we need to do," said Nina Utne, who brought the concept home to Minneapolis after joining a pink-clad group of women protesting in front of the White House in November. When she came home wearing a saucer-sized hot-pink button that read "Code Pink Women for Peace," she was forever being stopped by women relieved to find a kindred spirit.

Why, she wondered, were they so surprised? Following her intuition, she talked with a few friends, who talked with a few friends and within a week, 70 women swathed in shrieking pink mufflers were sitting in a crowded living room, amazed by the crowd.

But this how it begins. They brainstormed tactics, momentarily getting hung up on buying newspaper ads and building Web sites and getting media attention before blessedly breaking through to what might actually make a difference.

"You know how we look at each other's children?" one asked. "You know, as if they could be our own? That's what this is about. This is about creating conversations with the person in the grocery line, or our day-care providers or our book clubs or churches, talking with them as if we share something precious."

We can think bigger, said another. "Look at us. We're educated, middle-class women. We're on boards of directors. We have access to power."

We can think smaller, said another. She works with poor families, some of whom don't agree with the military buildup against Iraq, but who can't take time from a job to volunteer or afford child care to join a protest march. "But anyone can wear pink."

This is how they started: If you don't support war in Iraq, wear pink on Wednesdays. Buy a map of Iraq, put it on your fridge, and start learning the names of the towns that could be bombed; make it real for your family. Put up a lawn sign, which could give your neighbors the courage to put up their own. Show up for Saturday's march wearing fuchsia.

The women streamed into the night, buoyant, even hopeful that war could yet be stopped.

Code Pink, by the way, is the phrase hospitals use to alert staff that a baby may have been abducted. A child is in danger. People react as if it were their own.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 09:46 PM

And here are two wonderful posters being peddled by UK's Stop the War Coalition:

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/Resources/Art/startwars.jpg

This one is my fave:

http://www.incunabula.org/images/gwposter.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Your Influence Against War...
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Jan 03 - 09:55 PM

GUEST:

I'm gonna recycle my half worn out one that reads: "Who's God are you Hearing, Mr. Bush?". Yeah, it get lots of attention and, well, I made it up and I like it. Especially, since Bush is a Satanistic heathen who says he's a Christain. Yeah right. And I'm an astronaut... If Jesus say Bush comin' toward Him on the sidewalk, He'd cross the street.... No He wouldn't! He'd grab Bush by his coller and shake the Hell out of him...

Bobert