Reg Keys wasn't interested in politics until his son Tom was killed in Iraq in a war he insists was 'illegal and immoral'. Which makes him the ideal candidate to stand against the prime minister in his Sedgefield constituency, he tells Stuart Jeffries.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1442950,00.html


From Information Clearing House

Last Wednesday at City's job fair about twenty students stood in front of the National Guard table and began chanting anti-war slogans when, within moments, they were outnumbered by security, said Tiffany Paul, a City College student who participated in the protest.

http://tinyurl.com/5zt4f

Two years after the United States launched a war in Iraq with a crushing display of power, a guerrilla conflict is grinding away at the resources of the U.S. military and casting uncertainty over the fitness of the all-volunteer force, according to senior military leaders.

http://tinyurl.com/3nq3g


From Information Clearing House

Two years on, the occupiers justify the war by embracing the irrelevant and ignoring the inconvenient

Gary Younge

This is a tale of one war, two anniversaries, three different demonstrations - and inconsistencies, contradictions and civilian deaths that are too numerous to count.

http://tinyurl.com/5sf2l

(On March 19, 2005, according to United for Peace and Justice, 765 actions to End the Iraq War and Bring the Troops Home took place nationwide. But on March 20, the front page of the New York Times was silent on the nationwide protests. Instead, it [in the national edition] included the lead paragraphs of an article "Protesters at Hospice in Florida Push Showdown over Schiavo" by Abby Goodnough. . . . Robert D. McFadden's article "Hundreds of Rallies Held across U.S. to Protest Iraq War" [so titled in LexisNexis], however, was buried in page 35. Worse yet, the title given to the same article online is "Two Years after Iraq Invasion, Protesters Hold Small Rallies." Why the prominence of the Schiavo case? Is it because the public support conservative protesters, who prayed outside the hospice, with three of them arrested "when they tried to force their way past officers guarding the driveway of Woodside Hospice to take bread and water to Ms. Schiavo as a symbolic gesture" (Goodnough, March 20, 2005)? Not at all. The public "supports the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube" by a wide margin, according to an ABC poll. In contrast, the demands of anti-war demonstrators give voice to the view quietly held by a majority of Americans) -- FULL TEXT:
http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/03/covering-protests-iraq-war-and-terri.html


-- Yoshie

From ufpj-news

by Fernando Suarez del Solar

March 19, 2005


Today marks two years since the Bush administration initiated one of the greatest crimes in recent history--the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Two years have passed without Bush clarifying his motives for going to war.

Two years later and the entire world knows that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. And that Bush’s lies have cost more than 1500 young American lives, scores of members of the ill-named coalition, and hundreds of thousands innocent Iraqis. Thousands of children have been killed by the bullets and bombs used by the U.S. military, and thousands of human beings have been killed by terrorists who flocked to Iraq after Bush invited them to "Bring it on."

Two years since the beginning of this disaster, we parents continue to weep for our fallen children, mothers live in daily anguish waiting for news about their children who may have died in combat abroad, thousands of families live with the reality of their children wounded or incapacitated by the war in Iraq, hundreds of Iraqi families live without enough food, medicine, or housing, and all thanks to Bush's endless lies. Two years have passed and the Bush administration has flip flopped constantly regarding the real reasons for the war, "Democracy" and "freedom"?

In elections imposed by the forces of occupation and under threat of terrorist attacks, the Iraqi people voted for an end to the illegal and immoral occupation of their nation. Now there is an assembly that will either support the occupation that is destroying the people or demand the removal of the forces of occupation.

Two years of my family's grief, of spilled blood, of a domestic economy in freefall. Must we wait two more years before Bush understands that the entire world disapproves and condemns his criminal war? Can he sleep at night without remorse knowing that the blood of my son was spilled because of vested interests and lies? Can his daughters be proud of a father who is a liar and a criminal? Only God can pardon his sins because the people of the world condemn him to an unholy moral death.

POR UNA GENERACION LLENA DE PAZ Y AMOR!!
EL GUERRERO AZTECA
Que dios les bendiga.
Atentamente:
Fam. Suarez del Solar.
Padres del "GUERRERO AZTECA"
Jesus Alberto Suarez del Solar Navarro Lance Corporal USMC
1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division
fernando@guerreroazteca.org
Fvsuarez2000@yahoo.com.mx

http://www.guerreroazteca.org
http://www.gsfp.org
http://www.projectyano.org
http://www.activistsandiego.com
http://www.girights.objector.org
http://WWW.mfso.org
http://www.cpeace.com/C/Iraq/fernando.htm
http://www.globalexchange.org
http://www.occupationwatch.org
http://www.soldiersayno.org

Latest Iraq Body Count Number (Based on Verifiable Info):

Minimum: 17085
Maximum: 19457
URL: http://www.iraqbodycount.net
(This number is very conservative, other independent estimates put the Iraqi causalities over 100,000)

Latest US-UK and "Coalition" Forces Causalities (Based on DoD Info):
1600 Killed
11220 Wounded
URL: http://icasualties.org/oif/

The War in Iraq Cost the United States:
$157,667,000,000
URL: http://www.costofwar.com



Artists Make Portraits of U.S. War Dead
By CARL HARTMAN
.c The Associated Press

Faces of the Fallen: http://military.laws.com/

WASHINGTON (AP) - Row after row of photos in a newspaper, each the likeness of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, were the inspiration for an artistic tribute to those who lost their lives in the conflicts.

"Faces of the Fallen,'' 1,327 individual portraits of the dead produced by 200 artists, opens to the public Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery.

The images, each 6-by-8 inches, are mounted on plain steel rods that reach to near eye level. Each rod includes a label with the soldier's name, hometown and date of death.

Five rows are arranged chronologically by the soldiers' times of death and stretch along a half-circle inside the small museum at the entrance to the Women in Military Service for America Memorial. The number of images does not represent all those killed - that figure now is more than 1,600.

Annette Polan, head of the Corcoran College of Art and Design's painting department, said she was moved to create the memorial after seeing all the photos of dead soldiers displayed in a newspaper. She hopes it can have the same healing effect as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall.

Polan, 60, said she wanted to show that every death is an individual, each with their own hopes and dreams and memories. Artists were encouraged to show their own individuality and that of their subject.

A portrait artist herself who has painted Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Polan did nine of the collection's portraits. She assigned the others to artists she knew, either personally or through their work.

The artists worked mostly from newspaper and Internet photos, and some sent by families of the dead.

One particularly poignant portrait was done by John R. Phelps, a Vietnam veteran chosen to design the World War II memorial in Lander, Wyo. He painted his son, Marine Pfc. Clarence Phelps, who died April 9 from head wounds.

The artists, who donated their time and paid for all the materials, plan to give the portraits to the families when the exhibit is over, Polan said.

A large portion of the portraits were done conventionally, in color on canvas, but in other cases artists experimented with the images.

"As you view the image of your loved one, please bear in mind that each artist's hand and way of seeing is different from another's, just as each of our fingerprints are unique,'' Polan said in a Web site note to families. "All the artists have worked respectfully and from their hearts.''

Jason Zimmerman, a Washington artist, said he took a photo, inserted it in a computer imaging program. manipulated it "to make a ghostly kind of image'' and printed it on a heavy cotton fabric by ink-jet process.

Another artist molded low-relief images in clay. Another did scratch board drawings. Another did not portray faces at all, just flowers. The dead for whom no portraits could be made, for lack of photos or other reasons, are represented by generic black-and-white silhouettes.

The portraits will be on view at the memorial through Sept. 5. Admission is free. A Tuesday evening reception was planned for artists to meet family members of those they memorialized.

03/22/05 02:06 EST


Useful Links:

February 2005 Peace Zine
Special Counter Recruitment Issue
The Monthly Newsletter from Peace No War Network
URL: http://www.peacenowar.net/PeaceZine/Feb05.pdf

Photos of U.S. Military Torture in Abu Ghraib Prison
http://www.peacenowar.net/Iraq/News/April%2004-Photos/Abu%20Ghraib.htm

Los Angeles Times has a complete biographical Information on U.S. Soldiers Killed:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/external/fmmac2.mm.ap.org/war2/adv_search.php?SITE=CALOS&SECTION=MIDEAST

For more photos and Videos from Iraq, visit:

"Report from Baghdad" July, 2003
http://www.actionla.org/Iraq/IraqReport/intro.html



Peace, No War
War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate
Not in our Name! And another world is possible!

Information for antiwar movements, news across the World, please visit: http://www.PeaceNoWar.net

Please Visit the Website: http://www.actionla.org/Iraq/IraqReport/intro.html


Informant: SIUHIN

by Danny Schechter

Common Dreams

03/21/05

Not surprisingly, the absence of members of the political elite in the streets was mirrored by the paucity of coverage in the elite press which is not particularly partial to covering grass roots activism. The NY Times focused on one small civil disobedience protest at military recruiting office in Times Square, just down the street from the Times office, a protest at the Times itself may have made real news. There were more Antiwar actions in more cities than ever but that proliferation of protest or the presence of military families seemed to not too newsworthy. A media that routinely plays down the size of all protests in this case seemed to be obsessed with nothing more than their size, as in the protests were 'smaller than ever.' What were they saying?

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0321-21.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Artikel von Winfried Wolf (pdf)

http://www.labournet.de/krieg/zgk_20.pdf


Aus: LabourNet Nachrichtensammlung, Band 23, Eintrag 13