JustPeace#12

Hot News

• ‘The government should follow up its call for the warring parties to ‘end hostilities’ with a direct appeal to the American forces to end their advance and negotiate a ceasefire with Baghdad’ said Keith Locke on 27 March. He was welcoming the call by the NZ ambassador at the United Nations for an end to hostilities in Iraq. Read
  
  Keith’s press release
  
  .

Hot Action

• MARCH and RALLY, Christchurch, Sunday March 30, 2 p.m. — assemble outside the Museum. Rolleston Ave, march to Cathedral Square.
• VIGILS — Regular weekly peace vigils are being held in Whangarei, Auckland, Thames, Napier, Wanganui, Dannevirke, Masterton, Wellington, Takaka, Nelson, Motueka, Christchurch, Greymouth and Timaru. For details on the vigil nearest to you go to
  
  PMA’s what’s on where listings
  
  .

Hot Analysis

• WHO PROFITS from this war? Contracts are already being let to American companies to ”clean up” (in both senses of the word) after the American and British forces have finished destroying Iraq’s infrastructure. Some of these companies have connections with members of the Bush administration — read more about it in
  
  Halliburton makes a killing on Iraq War
  
  , Pratap Chatterjee’s special report for Corpwatch.
• COALITION OF THE KILLING — President Bush has signed up 45 countries for his so-called ”coalition of the willing” — to attack Iraq. Just over a third of these countries have been judged to be ”not free” or ”partially free”, just over half have significant levels of corruption, and 9 of the 45 have very bad human rights records. Together the 45 countries represent less than 20% of the world’s population — and in all of them except Israel popular support for the war is less than 50%. For more details go to the Foreign Policy in Focus report
  
  A Coalition of Weakness
  
  by Erik Leaver and Sara Johnson.
• While this article is a few months old, and predates the invasion of Iraq, its’ description of the history of Western involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is well worth reading.

  Iran, Iraq, Whatever.
  
  By Richard Cummings; October 11, 2002

  One day, quite a few years ago, I was having lunch with my Iranian friend, Rudy Alam, who was attending the University of Pennsylvania, and who was the daughter of the then Prime Minster of Iran. It was a student hangout, and a waitress recognized her.

  “Well, I guess you’ll be going home to Iraq for summer vacation,” she said
  
  amiably.
  
  “Iran,” Rudy said.

  To which the waitress replied: “Oh well, whatever.”

  Oh well, indeed. Rudy’s father was prime minister of Iran because the Shah was on the Peacock throne thanks to Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA station chief in Teheran, who engineered the coup that deposed Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadegh, who had headed a secular, fledgling democracy that had the temerity to nationalize the oil fields that, up to that point, had been exploited by BP. Having sued in the World Court and lost, the UK turned to its ally, Uncle Sam, to get the oil fields back. Rent-a-Mobs appeared, the CIA paid off the military, and Mossadegh fled in his pajamas. Once in power, the Shah stifled all dissent, using the notorious SAVAK, his intelligence service, to torture his political opponents, all under the watchful and approving eye of the United States government.

  The full text of the article is posted at
  
  ZMag
  
  .

  JustPeace is produced by Christine Dann, Tim Hannah and Keith Locke, MP

  If you have feedback on the content of JustPeace, or news items, please e-mail
  
  
  christine [dot] dann
  
  [at]
  
  clear [dot] net [dot] nz
  
  
  (Christine Dann)
  
  
  .

  Previous issues of JustPeace are archived at
  
  www.justpeace.greens.org.nz
  
  .