WLOE Newsletter: 10 April 2003:

Uniting for Peace, Dangers of Depleted Uranium, Guns vs Butter in the USA – and Tax Resistance

• On Tuesday, April 8, Arab nations requested a U.N. General Assembly meeting on the war in Iraq, hoping to win approval for a resolution calling for a cease-fire. Such a special meeting under the provisions of Resolution 337 (V), “Uniting for Peace”, has been urged by women’s, Green Party and other international groups.
  From the website of Uniting for Peace: http://habitat.igc.org/ufp/
  "We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war ..."
  Preamble to the United Nations Charter
  Join an e-merging global peoples movement supported by non-governmental organizations that is calling on Member States of the United Nations to convene an Emergency Meeting of the UN General Assembly under the provisions of General Assembly Resolution 377 (V), Uniting for Peace.
  Resolution 377 (V) empowers a majority of the Members of the General Assembly - or of the Security Council - to call such a meeting where "... Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression."
  Resolution 377 (V) was decided in November 1950 with the active support of the U.S. as a way of responding to what was perceived as abuse of the Security Council veto power by the U.S.S.R. and had its legislative roots in General Assembly Resolution 290 (IV), Essentials of Peace.
  Here is a listing of just a few of the web sites that are calling for an Emergency Meeting of the General Assembly under the provisions of Resolution 337 (V), Uniting for Peace…
  Please sign the petitions, and/or send an email or fax to the Permanent Mission of Member States - see contact information below.
  Arab nations formally request General Assembly meeting on Iraq
  Uniting for Peace Petition - International site
  Uniting for Peace Petition - Voice4Change
  Uniting for Peace Petition - Greenpeace
  Uniting for Peace - Center for Constitutional Rights, New York
  Uniting for Peace - Denmark
  Petition - Last Chance to Give Peace a Chance
  Uniting for Peace - Friends of the Earth, UK
  MADRE Urges General Assembly to "Unite for Peace"
  Phone, Fax & Email information for Permanent Missions to the UN in New York
  Council of Europe Resolution 1326: Europe and the war in Iraq
  U.S. opposes Uniting for Peace - fax sent to Ambassadors worldwide
  Project for a New American Century - blueprint for U.S. world dominance
  
  
• Resolution 377 (V), Uniting for Peace
  377 (V) English - HTML
  Women’s groups word-wide support special UN session to discuss war and peace in Iraq:
  
  NEW YORK - March 28 - International women's organizations,including MADRE, Women of Color Resource Center, Center for Women's Global Leadership, and the International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic, today joined other women's organizations worldwide as they called on the member states of the United Nations General Assembly to enact an emergency application of UN Resolution 377 ("Uniting for Peace") to stop the US-led bombing of Iraq and protect Iraqi civilians.
  
  Uniting for Peace provides that in the event of a "threat to the peace or act of aggression," which the Security Council does not counter, the General Assembly "shall consider the matter immediately." The Assembly can recommend collective measures, including the use of armed forces, to member states to "maintain or restore international peace and security."
  
  This action follows a recent call in New Delhi made by women's organizations from over 35 countries condemning the Bush Administration's war against Iraq and urging the General Assembly to challenge US aggression. The organizations also condemn the Bush Administration's attempts to undermine the United Nations, which have been reported in the Chilean newspaper, La Tercera, and other sources. According to those reports, the US has issued a warning to the 191 UN member states, demanding that the General Assembly not convene an emergency session to address the US attack on Iraq.
  
  In their open letter to the UN General Assembly, the group of organizations stated, "The bribery and bullying that the Bush Administration calls diplomacy reflects its brazen contempt for democracy both in the US and abroad. Bush has claimed that the United Nations would render itself irrelevant if it did not submit to his demands. But as the decrepit state of the US Democratic Party reveals, it is those who collude with llegitimate power that render themselves irrelevant. Meanwhile, the resolve of many UN member states to stand firm against the US, reinforced by the call to enact Uniting for Peace, offer hope for a revitalized international system better able to fulfill the United Nation's founding mission to 'save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.'"
  
  The groups first issued the call to enact Uniting for Peace on September 12, 2002, when Bush declared, in a speech at the United Nations, his intent to escalate hostilities against Iraq. Since then, the threat posed by his Administration to the people of Iraq, and indeed, to the people of the world, has mushroomed. The world now faces a nuclear-armed religious fundamentalist who, according to journalists who have interviewed him extensively, believes that he was placed in the White House by God to carry out a divine mission. With Bush's doctrine of preventive war justifying an attack against any country that he claims is a threat to present or future US interests, the world is his target. The Bush Administration is indeed a grave threat to international peace and security and must be challenged by a multi-lateral effort aimed at protecting the principles and practices of international cooperation and the rule of law.
  The organizations made the following declarations to the General Assembly:
  
  * "We therefore reiterate our call on the United Nations General Assembly to convene an emergency session to enact United Nations resolution 377, Uniting for Peace to halt the
  US-led bombing and protect the human rights of Iraqi civilians.
  
  * "We condemn the Bush Administration's plan to sideline UN relief agencies and turn Iraq's reconstruction into a bonanza for US-based corporations. We urge the General
  Assembly to address the issue of reconstruction and to guarantee the social and economic rights of Iraqi women and their families in the reconstruction process."
  
  * In accordance with Security Council Resolution 1325, which recognizes that women are disproportionately impacted by war and calls for women’s involvement in conflict-resolution and peace-building, we urge that women’s voices and priorities be represented in resolution and reconstruction efforts.”
  (for more information and list of signers:) http://www.madre.org/art_iraq_UnitePeace.html
  The destruction and human misery caused by war is not over when the shooting stops, especially when the ammunition used is radioactive, as this interview explains:
  
  
• An Interview with Major Doug Rokke
  from YES! Magazine - Spring, 2003
  Doug Rokke has a PhD in health physics and was originally trained as a forensic scientist. When the (1991 – ed.) Gulf War started, he was assigned to prepare soldiers to respond to nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare, and sent to the Gulf. What he experienced has made him a passionate voice for peace, traveling the country to speak out. The following interview was conducted by the director of the Traprock Peace Center, Sunny Miller, supplemented with questions from YES! editors. 
  
  QUESTION: Any viewer who saw the war on television had the impression this was an easy war, fought from a distance and soldiers coming back relatively unharmed. Is this an accurate picture?
  
  ROKKE: At the completion of the Gulf War, when we came back to the United States in the fall of 1991, we had a total casualty count of 760: 294 dead, a little over 400 wounded or ill. But the casualty rate now for Gulf War veterans is approximately 30 percent. Of those stationed in the theater, including after the conflict, 221,000 have been awarded disability, according to a Veterans Affairs (VA) report issued September 10, 2002. Many of the US casualties died as a direct result of uranium munitions friendly fire. US forces killed and wounded US forces. We recommended care for anybody downwind of any uranium dust, anybody working in and around uranium contamination, and anyone within a vehicle, structure, or building that's struck with uranium munitions. That's thousands upon thousands of individuals, but not only US troops. You should provide medical care not only for the enemy soldiers but for the Iraqi women and children affected, and clean up all of the contamination in Iraq… For full article see:
  http://traprockpeace.org/rokkeyesspring03.html or http://www.yesmagazine.org/25environmentandhealth/rokke.html
  
  Guns vs Butter in the USA
  War involves more than pain, brutality -- and control over land and resources. It is also about how participating countries’ limited resources will be used—or abused. The people of the USA are feeling the results of the Bush administration’s choices. These have been put together in a Green Party US brochure, quoted below. It can be downloaded in full from their site: http://www.gp.org/articles/gunsnbutter.html
  
  THE "GUNS" REPORT
  The proposed 2004 Military Budget is $399.1 billion (a $48 billion increase). This figure does not include a requested $79 billion for 6 months for the War on Iraq. A Yale report estimates that an additional $300 billion will be needed to "secure" Iraq over two years of occupation. By 2035 the estimated cost of "missile defense" program pushed by Bush et company is $1.2 trillion. Here are the amounts that a sampling of "defense" contractors raked in.
  WINNERS LIST
  "Defense" contracts for 2001/2002
  Wackenhut $17.3 million
  Thales-Raytheon $ 119 million
  Rand $ 146 million
  Phillip Morris $ 299 million 
  Rolls Royce $ 611 million 
  Johns Hopkins $ 729 million
  Alliant $ 1.2 billion 
  Bechtel $ 1.7 billion
  TRW $ 3.9 billion 
  Northrup Grumman $ 13.9 billion 
  Boeing $ 31 billion
  Halliburton unlimited contracts
  
  While the budget is touted for fighting terrorism, the bulk of the funding goes for buying weapons, manufactured by corporations like those above. Even worse, V.P. Cheney still makes about a million dollars a year from Halliburton while holding the office of U.S. Vice President. All U.S. wars will directly enrich him and that corporation
  
  
• THE "BUTTER" REPORT
  
  Trillions of dollars in "corporate welfare for "defense" corporations, but look what is happening to the human services that your tax dollar should be paying for.
  LOSERS LIST
  Cuts in Social Services
  $61 million cut in child care for poor working families
  $172 million cut in funding for health resources including care for HIV and AIDS
  $286 million cut Environmental Protection Agency
  $305 million cut in funding for public housing, energy and security
  $340 million cut for Center for Disease Control
  $395 million cut for Head Start 
  $684 million cut in job training for workers and youth
  $1.4 trillion proposed by Bush administration for "diversion" of Social Security to pay for other programs in the next 10 years
  
  The house budget plan requires Congress to cut $265 billion from entitlement programs over ten years, $165 billion of which would come from programs for low-income households. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that Medicaid will be cut by $92 billion and the State Children's Health Insurance will be cut by $2 billion from FY 2003 to 2014. 
  For more information from The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities see: COMPARING THE HOUSE AND SENATE BUDGETS by Robert Greenstein and Richard Kogan “The Senate and House budgets now in conference each would increase deficits by nearly $2 trillion through 2013, with the House budget adding $1.9 trillion to deficits and the Senate budget adding $1.7 trillion.  But the two budgets nevertheless differ in important ways.”  http://www.cbpp.org/3-31-03bud2.htm)
  Starve the Pentagon, Feed the People
  Yes, there is tax resistance in the US. On Tuesday, April 15, the day taxes are due, many women will lead and participate in actions coordinated by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. For more information see: http://www.nwtrcc.org/
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