International Action Organization

 

 
They Are Laughing At You

A breakdown of the signers of the Project for the New American Century's Statement of Principles and their current positions in and influence of the government.

By Lila Schow

 

 

U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said that over the last six years the toll in the Democratic Republic of Congo's amounted to "one tsunami every six months" - a reference to the December disaster which left about 300,000 people dead or missing in Asia.

    "In terms of the human lives lost ... this is the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today and it is beyond belief that the world is not paying more attention," he told a news conference.

Congo Crisis Dwarfs Both Iraq and Darfur, Bush Turns Blind Eye

 

Rwanda, 11 Years Later

Rwanda Still in Our Human Rights Blind Spot
The force that once saved Rwanda has resorted to abuses of its own while the rest of the world looks away again, says Juliane Kippenberg of Human Rights Watch

 
U.N.: Support Tribunals in the Final Stretch
Courts for Yugoslavia, Rwanda Need Promised Funds and Cooperation
The United Nations Security Council must adjust the deadlines to complete the work of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda if justice is to be done, Human Rights Watch urged today. U.N. member states have failed to meet their pledged financial commitments, leading to a hiring freeze at the tribunals.
 
Democratic Republic of Congo - Rwanda Conflict
A Human Rights Watch Backgrounder
Rwandan troops have invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo twice in the last decade. Press reports indicate that Rwanda troops have again crossed into Congo. Violence and instability in Congo have claimed the lives of three million people in the last five years and the dispatch of United Nations peacekeepers to eastern Congo has not brought stability to the region. Veteran Rwanda expert Alison Des Forges, a senior advisor to Human Rights Watch's Africa division and recipient of a 1999 MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, discusses current events in Rwanda and the Congo in a Q-and-A.
 
Witness Murdered: Intimidation of Gacaca witnesses continues unabated around Kaduha district.

UN tribunal accepts statements by the dead as court testimony

 

Depleted Uranium Update

 

Accounts of Depleted Uranium reported by various media outlets around the world

 

A young steel worker dies and an industry grapples with a disturbing rise in fatalities on the job.

 

Sudden Death by Dan Frosch

What’s your reaction to InterAct, our stories or our letters? Contact us and we’ll print your comments.

Thousands also took to the streets in several US cities. Some of them bore coffins draped with the country's flag.

But correspondents say the US demonstrations were far smaller than previous protests against the war.

"I think Bush's re-election took the steam out of the anti-war movement," said New York activist Michael Letwin.

Worldwide protests mark Iraq war : Protests have been taking place across the world marking two years since the start of the war in Iraq.

InterAct’s 5 Minutes to Make a Difference

Help protect clean air, roadless parks and forests, the constitution, civil liberties, and your vote!

Amnesty's Violence Against Women Campaign: March is women’s history month and throughout the month we are celebrating women on the front lines in the struggle for human rights. Aung San Suu Kyi, Digna Ochoa, Wangari Maathai, and Hawa Aden Mohamed have all stood up, spoken out and made history. Learn more about the people and events that have changed our world.

We have a problem in the United States right now where we are forcing young men and women to go into the military because of the lack of funds to continue with higher education, or simple lack of peer support from outside sources.

Former Marine Offers Cautionary War Story

 

Attention Idaho!!!

Global Humanitarian Award Winner, Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire will be speaking April 18 2005 at the Borah Symposium. Don't miss it!

 

ANS_m19 photo
In more than 1000 cities across the country and around the world, demonstrations today protested on the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In San Francisco, 25,000 marched, and 20,000 marched in Los Angeles. Both demonstrations were sponsored by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) which supported and helped to organize many of the other protests around the U.S.

Jodie's Editorial

Avoid Overwhlming, Inoperable Anger, But Embrace the Anger that Moves You to Act

The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures, we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in Vietnam explode at home -- they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

Martin Luther King, Jr., 1966

Updates

In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws, and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life.

George W. Bush talking, not about war, but Terri Schiavo

Iraq 

After every ''victory'' you have more enemies.

Jeanette Winterson

US Deaths in Iraq

For every $1 we spend on education in this country, we spend $6 on the defense industry. Are we really six times more dedicated to killing than educating?

John Cory The Savage Carnival

Iraqi Deaths in Iraq

Four reasons that American troops should leave rather than stay in Iraq by Journalist David Enders:

  1. It is the will of the Iraqi people." Enders cites a recent survey by Iraqi pollster Saadun Al-Dulaimie, who found that 85 percent of Iraqi people want U.S. troops out of their country as soon as possible.

  2. "The U.S. does not provide security for the average Iraqi, and it never has."

  3. "The U.S. has not prevented a civil war from taking place. If anything, it has exacerbated it."

  4. "It is not morally derelict to pull out; it's morally derelict to stay. Returning real control and sovereignty to Iraqis is the most effective way to prevent the country from breaking apart. U.S. troops complain Iraqis don't want to stand up and fight for themselves, and a big part of the reason is the occupiers' presence."

    Norman Solomon
    Why Iraq Withdrawal Makes Sense

Editorials: Notable and Newsworthy

Elections Run by Same Guys Who Sell Toothpaste By Noam Chomsky

Deficits and Deceit by Paul Krugman

Nuking Free Speech by Robert Byrd

INTELLIGENCE, INC. by Pratap Chatterjee

SPINNING OUT OF SIGHT by Diane Farsetta

The Siren of Santiago by Barbara T. Dreyfuss

The Forked-Tongue Awards by Melanie Sloan

Recently, the focus in the Middle East has broadened beyond the war and occupation in Iraq. Elections in the Palestinian Territories and massive non-violent demonstrations in Lebanon remind us of the wider region’s conflicts, present and past, and opportunities for change. The Bush administration has cited these events as evidence of the success of its Iraq war campaign. Ironically, as the security situation in Iraq fails and reconstruction stalls, the President has pointed to these other areas and shouted, "Freedom is on the march."

Not so fast. First, if there is to be progress toward democracy and freedom in the Middle East, the United States must declare unequivocally that it has no imperial ambitions in Iraq. The President's refusal to state that the U.S. will leave Iraq is increasing violence in that country and instability in the region. Attention should not be turned away from the ongoing U.S. occupation. Secondly, the situation is not as simple as the Bush administration would like to claim. While some events do point to potential progress in the Middle East, the situation requires additional explanation.

Democracy Hijacked, by Col. Dan Smith (USA, Ret.); Democratization and War in the Middle East, by Helena Cobban for FCNL; Decoding Lebanon, by Helena Cobban for FCNL

 

The conventional wisdom about an "out of control" civil legal system doesn't stand up to scrutiny. President Bush's own Justice Department reports that lawsuit filings are on the decline and jury awards are down.

Stephanie Mencimer, Class-Action Warfare

On a Positive Note

GU Students Starve to Help Janitors:  It's a cause unlike those of previous generations of campus activists, who've protested against the Vietnam War, apartheid in South Africa, Asian sweatshops and the war in Iraq. Foglizzo is starving herself for those closer to home: Georgetown University's janitors.

A popular Ivory Coast teacher is allowed to remain in the US for 17 months following a sustained campaign by his students.

Wal-Mart's California Supercenters delayed by environmental suits by JIM WASSERMAN

Mercurial Rulemaking by Frank O'Donnell

Top 10 Reasons Why Paul Wolfowitz Would Make a Good World Bank President
    By John Cavanagh
    Institute for Policy Studies

  1. He would follow in the great tradition of World Bank president Robert McNamara, who also helped kill tens of thousands of people in a poor country most Americans couldn’t find on a map before getting the job.
     

  2. It helps to be a good liar when you run an institution with employees who earn over $100,000 a year to pretend to help billions of people who live on less than $1 a day.
     

  3. With all his experience helping U.S. companies grab Iraq ’s oil profits, he's got just the right experience for doling out lucrative World Bank contracts to U.S. businesses.
     

  4. After predecessor James Wolfensohn blew millions of dollars on "consultations" with citizen groups to give the appearance of openness, Wolfowitz's tough-guy style is just what’s needed to rid the World Bank of those irritating activists.
     

  5. Unlike former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, another one of the four leading candidates, at least Wolfowitz hasn't failed at running a Fortune 500 company.
     

  6. Unlike the Treasury Department’s John Taylor, another leading candidate, at least Wolfowitz doesn't want to get rid of the institution he would head.
     

  7. While earning a University of Chicago Ph.D. , he was exposed to the tenets of market fundamentalism that have reigned at the World Bank for decades.
     

  8. He has experience in constructing echo chambers where only the advice he wants to hear is spoken.
     

  9. He knows some efficient private contractors who build echo chambers for only a few hundred billion dollars (cost plus, of course).
     

  10. He can develop a pre-emptive poverty doctrine where the World Bank could invade countries that fail to make themselves safe for U.S. business, modeled on the U.S. pre-emptive war doctrine he helped craft.

 

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Political violence is an act of force, intimidation or abuse by a group or individual aimed at influencing, maintaining or seizing political power. The time has come to end such illegitimate violence perpetrated by our own United States government.
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