News Releases

Feb. 15, 2003, 15 years ago Thursday, saw massive protests around the world opposing the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, which began on March 20.

MIKE ZMOLEK, mike.zmolek at gmail.com
Zmolek served as national coordinator for the National Network to End the War Against Iraq (NNEWAI) between 2001 and 2004. He now teaches history and international studies at the University of Iowa. He said today: “On February 15, 2003, an estimated 15 million people world-wide took to the streets to protest the impending U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, shattering any prior records for turnout at popular protests. There were massive protests in London, Madrid, New York, Barcelona, Rome, Johannesburg, Tokyo, Hong Kong and hundreds of other cities, leading the New York Times to call the anti-war movement the ‘second super power.’ [See news video clips and excerpt from documentary “February 15th, 2003: The Day the World Said No to War.”]

“The date had been set by the Stop the War Coalition in Britain, then chaired by Jeremy Corbyn — now leader of the Labor Party. I organized a reception for Corbyn in Washington, D.C. in January 2003 and played an instrumental role in persuading the then recently-formed United for Peace (and Justice) Coalition to organize U.S. participation in the Feb. 15 protests.

“It was not a done deal that the U.S. coalition would join in that day. Much of the leadership of the coalition actually opposed it, but ultimately, they saw the wisdom in following the UK’s lead.

“At the time, most of us knew the protests were coming too late to stop the invasion. Had we been able to galvanize such large protests say, six months earlier, we might well have halted the invasion, which destabilized Iraq and brought massive suffering and destruction to its people.

“Our grassroots coalition, NNEWAI, commemorated the date one year later by organizing vigils in 120 cities internationally, most in the U.S. The idea of building on the show of strength shown on Feb. 15, 2003 never caught on with major national peace groups, however, as they chose instead to organize mid-March events, on the anniversary of the invasion — meaning we were commemorating our inability to stop the invasion.

“Other protests held shortly before the elections in D.C while Bush was in office became largely an ‘anti-Bush’ thing. When Obama came into office, turnout for protests inside the U.S. decreased dramatically and the Obama administration was effectively able continue to prosecute these wars largely unopposed.

“In the age of Trump, we are back to a policy outlook which echos Mahmood Mamdani’s book title Good Muslims, Bad Muslims, where it is acceptable to support ‘our Muslims,’ whilst ‘bad Muslims’ are to be targeted. This reification of the Arab other-as-terrorist serves as a damper on critiques of the U.S.-led or sponsored wars in the Middle East. Showing solidarity with that region’s oppressed is generally framed by the media as showing sympathy for terrorism, so the left is largely mute when it comes to these wars, which have been a boon for military contractors but a disaster for the peoples Southwest Asia, while the right applauds them.

“With the rise of the menacing ISIS, which grew out of the destabilization of the region following the U.S. invasion, it was as if all past sins were forgiven. Even as Trump now seeks, once again, to put the U.S. on a path to ‘victory’ by escalating the violence, President Bush is seeking to rehabilitate himself by jumping on the anti-Trump / anti-Russia bandwagon led by the Democratic Party establishment.”

After the break-up of NNEWAI in late 2004, Zmolek assisted in the drafting of several congressional resolutions calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney for Representatives Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) and Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).

Reuters reports this morning: “Israel will face ‘more surprises’ should it again attack Syrian territory, Damascus said on Tuesday, after Syria’s air defenses shot down an advanced Israeli warplane during the fiercest flare-up between the old foes in 36 years.”

JAFAR JAFARI, jijafari at yahoo.com
Jafari is with Al-Mayadeen, a Beirut-based pan-Arab news channel. He said today: “Israel has of course been trying to destabilize Syria for some time. Israel’s protests that its sovereignty is under attack are completely backwards. Israel regularly attacks Syria (and violates Lebanese airspace as well).

“As the blog Moon of Alabama recently noted: ‘This escalation comes after a series of recent provocations against the Russian forces in Syria, [Friday’s] U.S. attack on Syrian forces, last week’s Israeli threats against Lebanon and dozens of Israeli air attacks on alleged Hizbullah or Iranian installations in Syria.’

“Hizbullah seems to be succeeding in creating a united front against Israel in both Lebanon and Syria.

“This does seem to come at a bad time for Israel, with U.S. envoys in the region, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. One thing on his agenda: Getting Lebanon to accede to Israeli demands regarding oil drilling disputes off their coasts.

“One goal that Israel seems to be pursuing is to have al Nusra — the Syrian branch of al Qaeda — as a buffer proxy force inside Syria. This is similar to what Israel did in southern Lebanon with the South Lebanon Army.”

Al-Mayadeen was founded by Ghassan bin Jiddo, who gained much acclaim for his coverage of the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006 and was host of “Open Dialogue” on Al-Jazeera. Jiddo resigned from Al-Jazeera in 2011, accusing it of betraying its journalistic mission after the Arab uprisings began.

See Institute for Public Accuracy news release: “The Israeli-ISIS Accommodation and Other Inconvenient Realities.”

CBS Marketwatch reports today: “NBC was forced to fire one of its Olympic analysts after he inexplicably said Koreans are grateful for Japan’s role in their economic development — while ignoring the one-time imperial power’s brutalization of the peninsula. The Peacock Network was left red-faced by weird comments of corporate bigwig Joshua Cooper Ramo, whom 30 Rock worked as a commentator for coverage of opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Pyeongchang on Friday.” See Twitter feed of D.C.-based Korea specialist @TimothyS, who has been critiquing NBC’s coverage, including the comments by Ramo, a Henry Kissinger protege.

CHRISTINE AHN, christineahn at mac.com, @christineahn
Founder of Women Cross DMZ, Ahn recently appeared on The Real News segment “Trump, Pence Rain on Koreas’ Olympic Unity Parade.” Last month, her group backed “inter-Korean dialogue and the Olympics truce.” Ahn just tweeted: “The U.S. can’t be ‘open to talks’ with North Korea while maintaining its hostile ‘Maximum Pressure’ policies of decapitation strikes, isolation and hurting innocent lives. Thank goodness for [President of South Korea] Moon’s charm offensive; it’s not the U.S., but South Korea, working Maximum Engagement.” Regarding the U.S. and Japan, she stated: “How ironic the two countries with large and heavy military footprints on Korean soil in the last century can’t even celebrate Korean unity.”

CHRISTINE HONG, cjhong at ucsc.edu, @kpolicyo
Hong is an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and an executive board member of the Korea Policy Institute. She wrote the piece “The Long, Dirty History of U.S. Warmongering against North Korea” for The Progressive. She said today: “The Olympics have introduced welcome respite from the Trump administration’s reckless hurtling down the pathway of war against North Korea. Yet, through both words and deeds, including the deployment of nuclear-capable B-2 and B-52 bombers to Guam, this administration has signaled its desire to conduct a so-called limited strike against North Korea — an action that positions millions of South Koreans, supposedly a historical U.S. ally, as permissible collateral damage. Even as Trump in his recent State of the Union address has sought to take a page out of the George W. Bush interventionist human rights playbook by pointing to the suffering of ordinary citizens under ‘the cruel dictatorship in North Korea,’ the human rights issue that should concern us all right now is the prospect of aggressive war by the United States.”

NBC News reports today: “Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine is demanding the release of a secret memo outlining President Trump’s interpretation of his legal authority to wage war.

“Kaine, a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, sent a letter Thursday night to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seeking a 7-page memo the administration has kept under wraps for months. …

“There is a new urgency to obtain the memo given increasing U.S. involvement in Syria and recent Trump administration rhetoric on North Korea. Shortly after the 2017 bombing raid [on Syria], several members of Congress called on Trump to justify it under U.S. and international law. Article I of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. …

“‘The fact that there is a lengthy memo with a more detailed legal justification that has not been shared with Congress, or the American public, is unacceptable,’ Kaine said in the letter to Tillerson, obtained by NBC News.”

The Washington Post reports in “U.S. troops may be at risk of ‘mission creep’ after a deadly battle in the Syrian desert“: “The Syrian government accused the United States of ‘aggression’ in launching the strikes, which it said killed ‘scores’ of people. Russia denounced the U.S. presence in Syria as ‘illegal’ and accused the United States of seeking to seize Syria’s oil.”

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle at illinois.edu
Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He said today: “There’s no ‘mission creep,’ it’s clear the U.S. government has been using ISIS as a pretext to illegally intervene in Syria. None of the stated rationales for U.S. military involvement — including the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force or alleged ‘self-defense’ or buttressing the 2002 authorization regarding Iraq — are remotely legally valid. Syria has a sovereign government, the U.S. government should get out. The AUMFs should be rescinded.

“This memo that Kaine refers to was likely written by these Federalist Society lawyers that Trump has surrounded himself with, just like George W. Bush did.”

In September 2001, Boyle warned on an Institute for Public Accuracy news release that the 2001 AUMF would be like the “Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which the Johnson administration used to provide dubious legal cover for massive escalation of the Vietnam War.”

Last year, after Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. claimed that the authority to attack Syria stemmed from the 2001 AUMF, Boyle stated: “What the U.S. government is getting away with here is incredible. Gen. Dunford is citing the 2001 AUMF to go after Al Qaeda as justification to go after a secular government — Syria — that is actually fighting Al Qaeda, as well as ISIS.” See “Need to ‘Repeal the Perpetual Illegal Wars.’”

Boyle’s books include Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations (Duke University Press).

LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN, lkoshgarian at nationalpriorities.org, @natpriorities
Koshgarian is program director of the National Priorities Project, which just tweeted “Want to show ‘appreciation’ for troops? 1) Keep them out of pointless wars. 2) Invest in full pay & benefits. 3) Take better care of those who do return from war. And really, #1 is too often forgotten.”

Party leaders in the Senate say they have reached a budget agreement to increase military and domestic spending levels for two years.

Koshgarian said today: “Once again, Congress is selling the false story that we can finally be safe if only we hand over more money to the Pentagon. And once again, our health and future here at home comes in second, with an $80 billion discretionary increase for the Pentagon and nuclear weapons and a so-called ‘match’ of just $63 billion for everything else, ranging from the State Department to the National Institutes of Health, from public schools to Head Start. Adding insult to injury, the deal also includes an additional $71 billion for the Pentagon and nuclear weapons in a separate ‘war’ fund for which there is no equivalent in domestic spending. It’s time to stop short-changing our communities.”

She recently wrote the piece “Cut off the Pentagon Funds and Stop the March to War,” which states: “We spend more than the next eight countries combined. We spend nearly three times as much as China, nearly nine times as much as Russia, and North Korea and ISIS don’t even rate on this scale. U.S. military spending is higher than the entire GDP of Sweden. Our Pentagon is a country unto itself.”

During the campaign, candidate Trump stated: “We’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that frankly, if they were there and if we could’ve spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems — our airports and all of the other problems we’ve had — we would’ve been a lot better off. I can tell you that right now.” See video.

Sponsors of a petition with 22,784 signers and 4,474 individual comments — asking MSNBC to remedy an extreme imbalance of news coverage — announced Wednesday that the network and its primetime stars Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes have refused to respond despite repeated requests for a reply.

The petition was submitted more than 10 days ago to Maddow and Hayes via their producers as well as to MSNBC senior vice president Errol Cockfield. The petition also went to Kristen Osborne, the network’s senior manager in charge of media relations for “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “All In with Chris Hayes.”

Signers responded to outreach from three organizations — Just Foreign Policy, RootsAction.org and World Beyond War — calling for concerned individuals to “urge Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and MSNBC to correct their failure to report on the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen and the direct U.S. military role in causing the catastrophe by signing our petition.”

The petition is still gathering signers.

The petition — which tells MSNBC to “stop censoring the U.S.-assisted carnage in Yemen” — came after a January 8 report by the media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) that documented the near-total absence of Yemen coverage by the network.Meanwhile, the study — titled “MSNBC Ignores Catastrophic U.S.-Backed War in Yemen” — documented that “in these latter roughly six months of the year [2017], MSNBC ran nearly 5,000 percent more segments that mentioned Russia than segments that mentioned Yemen.”

Sponsors of the petition noted that MSNBC “did not run a single segment devoted specifically to the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen in the second half of 2017, even though — or perhaps because — the U.S. government has played a key role in creating the catastrophe.”

Citing the FAIR data, the organizations pointed out: “In all of 2017, MSNBC only aired one broadcast on the U.S.-assisted Saudi airstrikes that have killed thousands of Yemeni civilians. And it never mentioned Yemen’s cholera epidemic, which infected more than 1 million Yemenis in the largest outbreak in recorded history, a direct result of the U.S.-assisted Saudi/UAE war and blockade.”

Interviews Available:

BEN NORTON, email at bennorton.com, @BenjaminNorton
A reporter for AlterNet’s Grayzone Project, Norton wrote the study “MSNBC Ignores Catastrophic U.S.-Backed War in Yemen” for FAIR.

ROBERT NAIMAN, naiman at justforeignpolicy.org, @naiman
Naiman is policy director at Just Foreign Policy, one of the groups organizing the petition. His pieces on Yemen include “Rand Paul: Unconstitutional Saudi War in Yemen Is Not in Our Interest and Congress Should Vote.”

JAMES K. GALBRAITH, galbraith at mail.utexas.edu
Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin where he founded the University of Texas Inequality Project.

His most recent books include Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2016), Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice: The Destruction of Greece and the Future of Europe (Yale, 2016) and The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth (Free Press, 2014).

He said today: “Once again we hear that the ‘fundamentals are strong.’ This is irrelevant. What matters for the economy going forward is not past performance but the balance of confidence and fear.

“The stock boom was driven by low interest rates, share buy-backs and a falling dollar. Now, with the tax cuts in place and the latest wage report, it became clear that there were no obstacles to further increases in interest rates, flattening the yield curve. In this situation, equity investors fear losses and a flight to safety follows. This is now happening worldwide.

“If the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates, and even more so if it picks up the pace, the dollar will stop falling, and perhaps again start to rise. A funding crisis in the rest of the world (hinted at by some analysts) would produce yet another flight to safety and increase these effects. A financial crisis, exposing the weak position of some of the world’s largest banks, would likely end growth altogether, and not merely in the U.S. And yet, on the other hand, a reversal-of-course at this stage would reveal the fecklessness of the decision to start raising rates in the first place. In this situation, based on the record, expect the Fed to stay on course until disaster really strikes — and then to claim that ‘no one could have foreseen it.’

“As for the fundamentals, they aren’t sound. The expansion has gone on for a long time, the stock market remains overvalued, and household debts were piling up. Many provisions in the recent tax law will reduce middle class purchasing power and home values and economic security, and the ability of state and local governments to maintain tax effort and public services. These will tend to discourage the growth of business investment, despite greater corporate cash flow and despite the near-term boost to incomes from the tax cuts.

“The stated economic policy objective of the Trump administration has been to raise the rate of economic growth on a sustained basis, from the 2 percent or so characteristic of the post-crisis expansion to at least 3 percent and if possible beyond. The stock break does not by itself derail this goal for 2018, at least, not yet. But it makes clear that financial and economic risks, instabilities and crises have not gone away — and that a growth strategy rooted in the stock market is necessarily doomed to collapse at some point.”

JESSE FREESTON, [Currently in Tegucigalpa, Honduras], me at jessefreeston.com
Freeston has been publishing from Honduras, as a video-journalist and documentary filmmaker, for the last eight years, ever since the 2009 coup d’état. His work includes the acclaimed feature documentary “Resistencia: The Fight for the Aguan Valley.” In the past two weeks he has produced video reports for The Real News and “Democracy Now en Español.”

Jesse said today: “Just in the past few weeks this regime has: stolen an election; ignored calls from the Organization of American States to hold a new election; passed a law prohibiting the prosecution of all former and current members of Congress in the midst of a series of massive corruption scandals; appointed a new national police chief who has clear evidence against him of drug trafficking; tried two civilian activists inside a military base on dubious charges; been caught paying poor residents $25 each to attend the presidential inauguration; and sent military and police to attack protests arising from the above abuses. On multiple occasions they have fired live bullets into crowds; leaving at least 20 people dead and receiving a denunciation from the UN. In this context; not a single foreign government sent a foreign minister or head of state to Juan Orlando Hernández’s inauguration. But while foreign governments may prefer to avoid photographs with Hernández they continue sending the money and arms which uphold his regime.” He also highlights an analysis by The Economistmagazine on the evidence of electoral fraud.

KEN JONES, jonesk at maine.edu
Jones just returned from a delegation of fifty people, mostly clergy, to Honduras and wrote the piece “Accompaniment in Honduras,” which states: “In particular, the life of Jesuit priest and native Honduran Father Ismael Moreno, known as Padre Melo, is in danger. Possibly as well known as the assassinated Berta Caceres, Melo is the director of Radio Progreso, an independent station that reports on human rights violations, police and military abuses, and the work of dissidents and protectors of the land and waters. A humble and soft-spoken man, he is a spiritual and political leader who has not minced words as he has pointed to the illegal and brutal behaviors of the Honduran government and elites. He has also denounced the United States for its support of the regime, and for its hypocrisy in certifying Honduras as having an acceptable human rights record. Now his picture is featured on a flyer being circulated purporting to depict terrorists in El Progreso, in what could well be a prelude to his assassination.”

See in America magazine: “Jesuits issue open letter denouncing ‘grave threats’ against Honduran priest.”

See Twitter list: accuracy/lists/honduras.

GREG MELLO, gmello at lasg.org, @TrishABQ
Mello is executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group. The group put out a statement on the U.S. government’s major nuclear policy statement, the Nuclear Posture Review. A new NPR was release on Fridayafternoon — which was last updated in 2010.

The Los Alamos Study Group’s statement is available at: “Nuclear Posture Review Calls for Continuing Weapons Modernization — Minus ‘Interoperable’ Warhead, Plus New Nuclear Attack Options.”

Mello said today: “What is most ‘missing in action’ in this document is civilian leadership. Trump is not supplying that. In part the fault for this comes from Democrats — who, allied with the intelligence community and other military-industrial interests, insist that the U.S. must have an adversarial relationship with Russia. There is no organized senior-level opposition to the new Cold War, which is intensifying week by week. This document reflects, and is just one of many policies embodying, the new and very dangerous Cold War.

“Unfortunately the ‘hard power’ approach that we see in this NPR eliminates better options as it proceeds and creates the enemies it needs to justify high military expenditures. Fear is used to create more fear — and more appropriations. In that sense, our nuclear missiles are aimed at Congress. They are also aimed at the American people, whose nuclear fears were consciously cultivated and used as a social control mechanism by government in the first Cold War.

“The low-yield Trident warheads are a gratuitous self-inflicted wound on the supposed rationale of the nuclear mission. … [A]ny use of nuclear weapons — anywhere, against any adversary, with any yield, under any circumstance — will immediately lead to existential dangers for the United States and the world. …

“Starting in Obama’s second term, neoconservatives began to be ascendant. Their goal was then and is now to conquer — to ‘break’ — Russia, in the summation of Henry Kissinger, and to contain China, and thus to rule the world. That is the context of this document, and that is why it is consequential and frightening. To say, ‘Look at the terrifying things Trump is saying!’ is to miss the deeper point that successful conflict with Russia has been the entire thrust of U.S. policy for several years now. This is just another expression of it, in the nuclear weapons arena.”

Tom Cheshire and Alexander J. Martin report for Sky News: “Hacking suspect Lauri Love wins appeal against extradition.”

NAOMI COLVIN, NATHAN FULLER, nathan.fuller at couragefound.org, @couragefound
Colvin and Fuller are with the Courage Foundation, which supports whistleblowers and which has helped lead the campaign against Love’s extradition. Fuller is formerly with the Manning Support Network.

Courage Foundation just released a statement: “In a major victory for Lauri Love, the High Court has approved his appeal and quashed his extradition. As Courage Case Director Naomi Colvin said, ‘This ruling is a massive victory for free expression online, for the fair treatment of neurodiverse people and for those of us who have drawn attention to the dire treatment of hackers and information activists in the United States.’

“The High Court judges disagreed with the District Court on whether the forum bar should apply in Lauri’s case and on the prospect of proper medical care to treat the likely risk of suicide should Lauri have been sent to a U.S. prison. …

“The judges felt that the District Judge leaned too heavily on testimony to the effect that no prisoner commits suicide while on suicide watch, the U.S. prison’s term for 24/7 monitoring of at-risk inmates. The High Court argued, ‘Suicide watch is not a form of treatment; there is no evidence that treatment would or could be made available on suicide watch for the very conditions which suicide watch itself exacerbates.’

“This ruling marks the first successful use of the forum bar, created in the wake of Gary McKinnon’s case, to protect a UK citizen from being unduly extradited to the United States. It also throws much-needed light on the U.S. prison conditions, so lacking in adequate medical care as to put suicidal inmates at further risk.

“Finally, the judges noted that it is now on the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] to endeavor to try Lauri Love in the United Kingdom. The CPS has 14 days to find new arguments with which to appeal this ruling. Courage will continue to support Lauri Love and his family until his situation is resolved.”