JILL NELSON
Author of Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience and a columnist for MSNBC, Nelson said today: “What we can do is demand leadership. Not the leadership of politicians angling for pet projects like missile defense shields or casting about for somewhere to lay the blame and someone to wage war upon. We certainly don’t need the leadership of America’s corporations and Oiltocracy, the defense contractors who stand to profit from military activity or the independent profiteers who are capitalizing on our fears by gouging gas prices. It’s up to the American people to take the high road and demand that our leaders join us. Revenge will not resolve the magnitude of this tragedy. Nothing does. We owe the dead and those who mourn them the tribute of our true, loving, compassionate selves, not the violent and vengeful other.”
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NAOMI KLEIN
Author of the international bestseller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies — called “a movement bible” by the New York Times — and a leading voice against corporate globalization, Klein said today: “Americans don’t get daily coverage on CNN of the ongoing bombings in Iraq, nor are they treated to human-interest stories on the devastating effects of economic sanctions on that country’s children. After the 1998 bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan (apparently mistaken for a chemical weapons facility) there weren’t too many follow-up reports about what the loss of vaccine manufacturing did to disease prevention. When NATO bombed civilian targets in Yugoslavia — including markets, hospitals, refugee convoys, passenger trains, and a TV station — major media didn’t do ‘streeter’ interviews with survivors about how shocked they were by the indiscriminate destruction. The U.S. has become expert in the art of sanitizing and dehumanizing acts of war committed elsewhere. This is one of the country’s many paradoxes: though the engine of globalization around the world, the nation has never been more inward looking, less worldly. The U.S. is a country that believed itself not just at peace but war-proof, a self-perception that would come as quite a surprise to most Iraqis, Palestinians and Colombians. The era of the video game war in which the U.S. is always at the controls has produced a blinding rage in many parts of the world, a rage at the persistent asymmetry of suffering. This is the context in which twisted revenge seekers make no other demand than that American citizens share their pain.”
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STEVE NIVA
Niva, who wrote the article “Between Clash and Cooptation: U.S. Foreign Policy and Islamic Movements,” is professor of international politics at Evergreen State College in Washington and an associate with the Middle East Research and Information Project. He said today: “The present U.S. strategy for ending the threat of terrorism through the use of military force will only exacerbate the problem. Terrorism is a phenomenon that can be defeated only by amelioration of the conditions that inspire it. These attacks have been attributed to Islamic radicals based in the Middle East and Central Asia. While only a fringe element has seized upon violence as their solution, many of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslim people are understandably aggrieved by double standards. When innocent U.S. citizens are killed or harmed the U.S. government expects expressions of outrage and grief over brutal terrorism. But when U.S. cruise missiles kill and maim innocent Iraqis, Sudanese, Afghanis, and Pakistanis, the U.S. calls it ‘collateral damage.'”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167