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What You Can Do About the Massacre In Iraq

Captain Swing | 10.04.2004 14:44 | Analysis | Anti-militarism

What to Do

This is an appeal to the anti-war movement, to the peace movement, eco-action movement, animal rights movement, anti-fascists, everybody active, everybody who can respond, can call a demo, can organise a protest, an office occupation, an embassy storming, a road blockade, mass civil disobedience, industrial shut-down, work-place occupation, solidarity work stoppage, blockade the US Embassy, Fairford Military Base action campaign? What's taking off at Fairford? Are B52s being deployed? Shannon Peace Camp protestors- are there new movements at Shannon airport?

We need to address this, we need to resist this. We become the solidarity resistance in Iraq by taking action in our neighbourhoods and in our cities. Print up a leaflet. Paint up a banner. Take to the streets. Only a small group can make a change. Show people in Iraq that we are standing by them. 700 more British troops have been flown in to quell the uprising in the South. No Pasaran. Take to the embassies, the bases, the US interests, the streets.

 http://www.usembassy.org.uk/ukaddres.html - addresses of US Embassies in
London, Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff

 http://cndyorks.gn.apc.org/caab/ - Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases ? this site has a list of the locations of all the main US air bases used in the UK

 http://www.caat.org.uk/links/companies.php - full list of arms companies. BAE Systems, and Lockheed Martin have been principal supplies of weapons of mass destruction for the war on Iraq

 http://www.caat.org.uk/support/confronting-companies.php - tips on confronting arms companies by Campaign Against the Arms Trade

 http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage - Keep up to date with Al Jazeera

Sample Leaflet Text

As you read this, a massacre is taking place in Falluja, Iraq. Falluja is a town which has been resisting the occupation of Iraq since June. US troops have been forced to the border of the town since then. It has fought hardest and most uncompromisingly and has regularly pummelled by F16 fighter jets and apache helicopter gunships since then, with civilians being slaughtered on a regular basis.

Well over 470 people have now been slaughtered by US troops in Falluja, this week. 1700 have been injured. The deathtoll is expected to rise due to the siege nature of the military cordon around the town. ambulances are being fired upon and followed by sniper sights if they attempt to enter the town. Eyewitnesses have reported seeing bodies lying dead in the streets. Hospitals have been attacked. Medical supplies and bed shortages are at crisis levels. Residents are calling it a massacre. People from all over are attempting, some succeeding, to get into Falluja to help evacuate the injured by car. People are donating food, medical supplies and water to those fleeing. All of Iraq is watching and sympathising with Falluja say people on the ground there.

There is at the time of writing (10/04/04) a 13km column of Falluja residents fleeing the bomb-smashed town, trapped in the desert and surrounded by US troops which eye-witnesses report have been firing on them. Most of the desert marooned refugees are elderly men, women and children.

For US soldiers stationed near the town, they have been in an impossible situation and their blood too is being shed for the market-profit-power chasing interests of the US and UK government and corporate interests. Recently, the long-time brewing discontent, frustration, humiliation, and mounting rage against the occupation has exploded. The occupation is being fought for its very existence, its racism, its violence. Its recycling and re-empowerment of a neo-Baathist ruling elite, its re-training and re-hiring of over 10,000 Baathist torturers and intelligence agents, its re-writing of Iraq?s laws through Coalition Provisional Authority Orders (principally Order 30 on Salaries and Employment Conditions for Civil Service Employees which sets the minimum wage for Iraqi Public Sector workers at 69,000 ID ($40 per month ? less than half the recommended wage of a sweatshop worker in a free trade zone in neighbouring Iran), plus Order 39 on Foreign Investment which allows for 100% foreign ownership ' privatisation ' and slashes the highest rate of income tax from 45% to 15%) has resulted in insurrection.

The climate in Iraq has moved on from protest to resistance, and now to insurgency. Demonstrations have been taking place every day all over the country since the occupation began, with protestors ranging from students to pensioners, unemployed, women, former soldiers and children. This new uprising has been labelled a revolt in support of the anti-Occupation cleric Muqtada al Sadr, but the reality is that it is widespread, uncontrollable, inchoate and varied. It is not Islamic, it is not just nationalist, it is not Baathist. It is a generalised struggle against the Occupation - the biggest incitement to violence in the country.

Please stand in solidarity with the people in Iraq during this upheaval and time of bloodshed. Please join the protest against the bloody massacre in Falluja, which will spread if the occupation armies continue unchecked and un-challenged.

Stop the ongoing war on Iraq.

Troops out of Iraq.

Captain Swing

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

People of Iraq DO NOT WANT your Hezbollah & Ayatollahs! Hear us out UK!

10.04.2004 16:35

TAKE YOUR HEZBOLLAH BACK TO UK. DO WHATEVER YOU WILL, BUT

NO NATION WANTS TO BE UNDER THEOCRATIC RULE.

GET OUT OF OUR FACE

THE PEOPLE


.

11.04.2004 00:13

This article isn't in support of any religious leaders at all. It's calling for demonstrations against the massacres in Falluja.

mark


COMPLAIN TO THE WEHRMACHT

11.04.2004 00:54

Another thing you can do is to complain
to the deputy commander of the U.S. Wehrmacht
in Iraq, Army Brig. Gen. Mark T. Kimmitt, who
is also the spokesman/apoligist for the Rape
of Falluja:

 kimmitt.m@skynet.be

This guy is a real creep.

Solstice
mail e-mail: kimmitt.m@skynet.be


Not a massacre of people but the Hezbollah thugs!

11.04.2004 16:11

Frankly I rather see all of these hezbollah thugs dead, if it is a massacre to you then so be it. The people are not fighting, they all hate Sadr and his thugs.

Iraq can not afford a theocratic rule. Will not tolerate some bastards fighting for power so they can bring another dictatorship based on terror. we want them dead and GONE for good.

Tell you what you can do, you can stop backing hezbollah in Iraq.
You can tell your gov. to stop supporting ayatollahs!

That's what you can do.

MidEast for Secularism


MidEast for Secularism

11.04.2004 20:36

MidEast must be an American, or at least be Americam educated(sic). Everyone else calls it the Middle East. By secularism I assume you mean unmitigated free market capitalism - you don't want your oils shares falling do you.

If you are right and the fighters in Fallujah have no popular support then the indiscriminate shelling by the American Occupation Forces is all the more disgusting. You probably haven't considered this in your mindless bloodthirsty arrogance, but even if you had you probably wouldn't care much for the fate of innocent men, women and children when your own personal wealth is at stake.

By the way do you also post as Freedom Giver? You share the same note of insanity (you know, dressing up as Napoleon, invading Poland and living in a plastic bubble)

Skyver

Skyver Bill


no ayatollahs being killed in Fallujah

13.04.2004 00:06

You're very confused: Hizbollah is Shia, Ayatollahs are Shia. Falluja is 'notoriously' Sunni (as in the "Sunni triangle"?) Human civilians are being butchered at will by US and UK armies.

As regards secularism, the USA has always intended to replace secular dictatorship with Shari'a, regardless of Iraqi culture or wishes. Remember the cowboy who compared bin Laden to the founding fathers of the USA?

Stompie


By Secularism we mean NO THEOCRATIC RULE!

13.04.2004 05:20

to answer previous remark: 11.04.2004 21:36
... By secularism I assume you mean unmitigated free market capitalism - you don't want your oils shares falling do you.


By Secularism I mean No more Theocratic Rule in Middle East! What part of it do you not understand?

and yes if that means UK will loose its Ayatollah Thugs ( Now also working with the sunnis of Iraq) then so be it.

WE DON'T WANT YOUR PROFITS, KEEP 'EM! PLEASE!
THE SHARE GIVEN TO THE PEOPLE OF THE REGION FROM AYATOLLAHS TRADES WITH YOU WAS PAIN AND SUFFERING. WE ARE WILLING TO GIVE THAT UP, IF THAT'S WHAT YOU CALL 'SHARE FROM OIL'.

YOU KEEP IT! KEEP THE SHARE OF PAIN AND MISERY TO YOURSELVES. WE DON'T WANT YOUR THUGS OR YOUR TRADES! HOPE THAT'S CLEAR NOW.

MidEast for Secularism


i smell a genocidist

13.04.2004 10:32

"Not a massacre of people but the Hezbollah thugs!"

Ahh, untermenchen. What a concept. The nostalgia comes flooding back to me. It was great back then before that sodding declataration of universal human rights. UNIVERSAL? But what about the Arab- I mean thugs! If we can't shoot them what will we waste billions of tax-payers subsidy on?

In fact the entire population of Falluja isn't human at all! They're foreign thugs! And everyone knows that massacring foreign thugs is the very height of civilisation.


All (middle-eastern) nations are arbitrary invisibly bordered constructs created by the imperial powers after the 1st global slaughter (WWI). Does anyone else see the irony in US troops bleating about 'foreign fighters' in Iraq?

Tom


MidEast

14.04.2004 10:26

One thing that i do think is important, and which i think is suggested by MideEast's post, is the importance of retaining our independence from the various different Islamisms. We must say, "if you want to fight imperialism, then we are with you, but you must be clear that it is imperialism you are fighting, not unbelievers". Clarity about who the enemy is is crucially important at the moment, and that is something that we can help bring to the debate.

of course, suggesting that hezbollah be massacred is a stupid, pernicious thing to do and needs to be denounced. but the opposite extreme of being too cosy with them is also to be avoided.

ben

Ben