KATHY KELLY, STEPHANIE SCHAUDEL, DANNY MULLER
Dr. DAVID HILFIKER, BERT SACKS
Voices in the Wilderness campaign members who have refused payment of $50,000 in fines for their previous travel to Iraq will hold a press conference at the National Press Club (Tuesday, January 21 at 9:30 a.m.) to announce future delegations and assert continued readiness to challenge both economic sanctions and U.S.-led warfare against Iraq. Returned activists will offer testimony, photographs, and information, based on their recent travel to Iraq as members of the Iraq Peace Team.
JAMES JENNINGS
Jennings is president of Conscience International and coordinator of “U.S. Academics Against the War.” Jennings returned from Iraq on Saturday after leading 32 professors from 28 U.S. universities in 21 states and the District of Columbia to a faculty conference attended by 2,000 professors at Baghdad University. He previously taught Middle Eastern History at several U.S. universities and has made approximately 20 trips to Iraq since 1996, mainly for children’s health projects. Jennings said today: “Instead of dialogue, U.S. and British politicians are offering a series of hackneyed slogans.” The group, part of the 30,000 U.S. academics who signed a “No Attack Iraq” petition to President George W. Bush, will issue a report from their fact-finding mission later in the week.
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WILLIAM RIVERS PITT
Pitt is co-author (with Scott Ritter) of War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know and wrote a piece on the artillery munitions the UN arms inspectors recently found in Iraq.
SANAR YURDATAPAN
Yurdatapan was recently awarded the Global Rights Defenders award by Human Rights Watch. He said today: “An overwhelming majority of the people in Turkey are opposed to a U.S. war on Iraq; a recent Pew Research Foundation poll shows that a full 83 percent of the population is against the use of Turkey’s bases to strike Iraq ( http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1205-06.htm). In spite of such strong popular opposition, the current government is inclined to allow Turkey to be used in this war. The Turkish government is obviously being pressured — as many others are — by the U.S. government. Turkey is particularly vulnerable to pressure because of its dependence on IMF loans — its external debt is now more than $115 billion.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
