- We meet in response to a grave political crisis.
We see before us a society careening towards disaster. Bush-Cheney and
their Republican allies flout the popular will and are determined to wage
endless war, expanded beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to Iran and other countries,
including with nuclear weapons. At the same time, they are transforming
this country into an authoritarian police state. The Democrats, loyal to
their own wealthy backers, ignore the Constitutional imperative of impeaching
Bush and Cheney, despite crimes and abuses which cry out for impeachment.
Now, the Democratic Party has voted to fund an escalated and expanded version
of the very Iraq war they had pledged to end. Their excuse is that they
did not have the votes. But they only needed to block the Iraq funding
bill something Pelosi could have done by herself as Speaker of the
House. This massive betrayal has thrown the peace movement into disarray.
Peace activists had taken seriously the Democrats' pledge to end the war,
and this approach has proven ineffective. In the background there are rumblings
of a financial panic set off by the mortgage crisis, and by the ongoing
death agony of the US dollar, which increase the hysteria of the ruling
circles. The Republican presidential candidates eagerly debate the use
of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran a sure path to World War
III while Giuliani preens himself as a future dictator, and Mrs.
Clinton can hardly conceal her enthusiasm for the coming attacks on Iran
and Sudan. But the American people deserve something better than a choice
between competing Republican and Democratic warmonger elitist cliques.
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- In her farewell message, Cindy Sheehan called
on the peace movement to organize independently of the bankrupt two-party
system. She also supported a new inquiry into 9/11. The peace movement
needs a new strategy, and we are here in Philadelphia because we have taken
Cindy Sheehan's call seriously. We appeal to leftists, progressives, conservatives,
libertarians, independents, and those entering or re-entering politics
to transcend the artificial divisions that have diminished their impact.
The anti-war, impeachment, anti-globalization, labor, civil rights, veterans,
anti-tax, civil liberties, honest election, and 9/11 truth movements
along with civic and progressive religious groups and other issue groups
-- have been weakened too long by single issues and narrow focus. It is
time for these movements to unite as a national coalition on a common platform
for independent action. We call for a united front of all organizations
and persons of good will based on the following:
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- 1. Impeach, remove, and indict Bush-Cheney and their
henchmen (Gonzalez, Chertoff, and Rove) as an urgent measure to avoid wider
wars, including, for illegal NSA wiretaps, the lies and war crimes of Iraq
and Afghanistan, and their nonfeasance, malfeasance, and the misprision
of treason around 9/11. Bush and Cheney may also be subjected to court
martial. Break up the vote fraud machines, and impeach Supreme Court justices
found to complicit in the 2000 and 2004 stolen elections, such as Scalia.
Restore legality starting with the government itself.
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- 2. End all wars. All US troops must be brought home at
once from Afghanistan and Iraq by any means necessary, including the immediate
cutoff of funding. Stop all US acts of war and provocations against Iran,
Somalia, Lebanon, and Sudan. No attacks, whether directly or by proxies,
on Syria, Pakistan, Venezuela, North Korea. The US must not seek confrontation
with China, Russia, or any other nations, under any pretext whatsoever.
End the US military posture of "Global Strike" preventive war.
Restore the ABM treaty and respect existing disarmament treaties. No US
star wars missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. No extension
of NATO to Ukraine and Georgia. No more color revolutions and CIA people
power coups abroad. The future of China and Taiwan should be solved by
negotiation. Two state solution for Israel and Palestine according to the
Geneva accords of November 2003. Stop US support for terrorism worldwide.
Negotiate nuclear weapons disarmament with all nuclear powers, including
Israel. All sanctions, embargoes, and economic warfare must be terminated.
The US industrial-military complex must be drastically reduced.
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- 3. No to Bush's police state dictatorship. We demand
an immediate end to NSA wiretaps, tampering with the US mail, the Patriot
Act, espionage against political dissidents, CIA, FBI, and Pentagon domestic
spying, kidnappings, renditions, secret prisons, and the US gulag archipelago
from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib. No person shall be held as an enemy
combatant. Restore full habeas corpus, respect the Bill of Rights and the
Geneva Convention. Tear down all concentration camps built under US jurisdiction
or control anywhere in the world. All precedents, signing statements and
executive orders issued under Bush-Cheney must be abrogated, rescinded,
and declared null and void with extreme prejudice.
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- 4. Government by the people, not by cliques of bankers
and financiers. End the power of the Federal Reserve, the International
Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements.
No more government under the thumb of the Council on Foreign Relations,
the American Enterprise Institute, the Bilderberger Group, the Trilateral
Commission, and the Bohemian Grove cult. We must stop genocide and establish
economic justice in the developing countries, including through monetary
reform. Drive the neocons out of public life. The US population must be
educated in the use of the general strike as a tool of self-defense against
martial law, the suspension of elections, and illegal foreign wars. We
intend to maintain a permanent presence in Washington DC through demonstrations,
protests, and public agitation.
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- 5. 9/11 truth. We reject the demagogy of fear, terror,
and demonization. We condemn the fraud of the global war on terrorism as
the basis for US national life. We demand immediate measures to end Cheney's
campaign for a new 9/11 with weapons of mass destruction or a new Gulf
of Tonkin incident, as outlined in Zbigniew Brzezinski's February 1, 2007
warning to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Publish the full 9/11
documentation, and re-open the investigation.
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- At minimum, we aim to shape the climate of public opinion.
We may become the focal point of a new political regroupment. These questions
will be decided in the struggles that lie ahead. We suggest that questions
of economic and social policy be deferred for now, and that they become
the object of ongoing discussion. We also urge that organizational questions
be postponed until a later time. We call on all organizations to join in
launching the following urgent actions in support of the policies outlined:
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- A. We will nominate and support independent political
candidates of public office at all levels of government in the 2007 and
2008 elections. Because of the problems of ballot access, such candidate
may need to enter the primary elections of the Republican, Democratic,
Green, Libertarian, or other political parties.
- B. Truth squad interventions taking advantage of the
new media (using camcorders to capture political content which is then
posted on the internet) to intervene in the ongoing presidential primary
campaigns of the Democrats, Republicans, and others, to focus public attention
and political debate on the urgent questions outlined above, rather than
on the divisive and artificial wedge issues preferred by the corporate
media
- C. Mass political education, through internet web sites,
conferences, books, dvds, and a sustained to write our own fairness doctrine
by using radio, cable access, and call-ins to take back the public air
waves from the right-wing extremists and left gatekeepers.
- D. This united front will exist as a process of political
discussion, deliberation, mass organizing, and open debate open to political
forces of all types who agree with its platform of ideas. Special attention
will be given to campus organizing.
- E. Carefully selected legal actions, as typified by the
civil RICO suit against Bush-Cheney as a continuing criminal enterprise.
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- ANTIWAR COALITION FOR TRUTH,
- http://actindependent.org/
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