Posted November 2, 2002

Website Recommendation

I'm a senior in high school and am confused on all that is going on in Iraq. The media only presents the side of Bush and that war is the only answer in this matter. But I for one do not believe that it is! I want to try to get involved in helping other high school students understand and know what is happening and keep them up to date. So I was wondering if you could recommend any web sites, rallies, or just information that I could pass along to people at my school who feel the same way?

~ Jessica S.

Webmaster Eric Garris replies:

I would recommend our site. We update our page 7 days a week throughout the day with a combination of mainstream and alternative media reflecting an antiwar position, and offer opinion pieces from a number of our own columnists and contributors. We also try to keep you up to date on activities through our link to Peace.Protest.net.

Conservative Evolution

Justin Raimondo rocks!

I am a former neocon turned antiwar, Chronicles-reading Buchananite conservative. I had been evolving that way since my college days in the early '90s, but the real turning point for me was when the global elites bombed Serbia in 1999. I've been reading Antiwar.com ever since. An indispensable site.

~ Richard V.

Trials

Regarding "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore" by Justin Raimondo:

I enjoy your columns at Antiwar.com. I oppose a war with Iraq. I support an independent investigation of 9/11. I think your columns are clear and convincing advocating these positions.

In your column today [October 28], you include a link to a page with alleged 'facts' about Mumia Abu Jamal. These are the same type of 'facts' that Bush and Rumsfield use to promote a war with Iraq: they are distortions or they are totally false.

I live in Philadelphia. Whether Jamal was the killer or not, one thing is certain: he did not receive a fair trial. The Judge was biased against Jamal from the start. As for some of the evidence: the assertion about Jamal's confession in the hospital was made two months after it allegedly happened. The original police report stated Jamal made no statement at the hospital. Why? There were not five eyewitnesses who claimed they saw Jamal fire and kill Faulkner, there was only one, who testified in return for non-prosecution of charges of prostitution.

The Accuracy in Academia piece also mentions Alger Hiss. At the trial where Hiss was convicted, the FBI:

1. lied on the witness stand,
2. knew the typewriter submitted as evidence could not be the Hiss typewriter, and
3. infiltrated the Hiss defense team.

For these reasons, Hiss may be the only lawyer who was readmitted to the bar after a disbarment.

~ Steven G.

Political Boundaries

Regarding "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore" by Justin Raimondo:

Justin Raimondo's visceral hatred of all things left has never been one of the most inspiring things about his columns. The fact that he is a defender of free market capitalism (has such a beast ever truly existed?) does not prevent him from being one of the better antiwar critics on the net. The fact that he insists on the antiwar movement being "patriotic" has never stopped me liking his columns. When he chooses to make sneering comments about "leftist bromides" and "idiotic lefties" etc., I simply skip a sentence or two.

I can stomach Raimondo's sectarianism in the movement, for he is entitled to be repulsed by views alien to his own. What is unpalatable is the hypocrisy of a man who attends a demonstration, perhaps one of the largest in a series, one of the most successful for years, and objects to the fact that he is in a minority. The libertarian critics of the war are important to the movement, but they are a tiny fringe, even tinier in the antiwar movement than the Trotskyists he accuses of rigging the speeches. So what if some speakers want to demand money be spent on jobs not war? (Job creation is surely a far more worthy use for public money than warmongering, whatever Raimondo's objections to Keynesian intervention in the economy.) So what if some believe Mumia Abu Jamal is an innocent man whose original trial was a sham? Evidently, the left is far more active in organising against the war than the libertarian right.

And let us recall that Antiwar.com is a website which claims to provide antiwar news, yet which regularly offers us up a supply of anti-immigrant stories (see my previous correspondence) and stories hostile to the FARC movement in Colombia. The truth is, political animals are incapable of seeing an issue as being solely contained within its own boundaries; they always see it as being linked to a general understanding of society, the economy and the world. This goes for both left and right, for both Justin Raimondo and John Pilger.

~ Richard Seymour, London, England

Chastity on the Nile

Regarding "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore" by Justin Raimondo:

Your readers can check out Amnesty International's 35 page report on the Mumia Abu-Jamal case. It totally shreds the "arguments" advanced by Dan Flynn of Inaccuracy in Academia, an offshoot of Reed Irvine's Inaccuracy in Media. As Bill Moyers put it, Irvine is to accuracy in media what Cleopatra was to chastity on the Nile.

The "trial" of Mumia was so flawed that any decent society would have a new trial at the very least.

A short while back a court in Philadelphia threw out hundreds of felony convictions that were improperly obtained due to the misconduct of the Philadelphia police. This included several capital cases. But somehow we are supposed to believe that the notoriously rogue Philly police got it right in the Mumia, where the defendant was a longtime political enemy of the cops.

Contrary to Flynn's big lie, the bullet that shot Faulkner was of a different caliber than Mumia's gun, this is just one of the many discrepancies in the DA's "case."

I might agree with other parts of your criticism of the antiwar marchers. But you obviously do not know what you are talking about in the Mumia case.

~ Michael P. Hardesty, Oakland, California

Situation in Russia

Regarding "Destroying Hostages to Save Them" by Alan Bock:

I think you do not understand the real situation in Russia. This is a very poor country first raped by Communists and now by Western countries (huge external debt), a country where the Muslim population is close to a majority (for example Chechens are the tenth largest Russian ethnic group -- over 1 million people, with only small percentage in Chechnya). This was "Islamised" with the help of billions dollars from Saudi Arabia (and possibly from the USA) with the most virulent flavor of Islam (Wahabism) since the dissolution of the USSR.

So the problem here not an independence of Chechnya -- they got it and ended up invading Russia in 1996. Check the history if you want. By armed attacks and shellings in Dagestan, the precarious five years truce, established in 1996, was broken by Chechen side.

Connections between the Chechen fighter units and international terrorism, drugs and weapons, mafias and especially slave trade are well documented. Horrible crimes committed by Chechen warlords are comparable only with SS forces crimes. Did you see any videotapes about beheadings and other horrible crimes in this region? It was actually the Russians who were forced out of Chechnya, forced by SS-style brutality and crimes against civil population. The role of Chechen commander Chatab (from Jordan) in al-Qaeda, the spread of violent Islam (‘Wahabism’) from Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, and the supplies of modern weapons from Arab countries, are no longer disputed by anybody.

The real problem is that Russia essentially became a second Israel if you wish. That's a tragedy of global importance. In my humble opinion, Chechen independence will not solve any problems. It will just create a new "Talibanized" Afghanistan in Europe. Do you really want that? Do you still think that this would be a big success of democracy now, after the events of Sept. 11?

I generally highly value Antiwar.com and I am inclined to think that this article is probably just an accidental misstep on your part. So please be more careful in your future articles on this subject, if any.

~ Nikolai B.

Bad Seed

USA people, fly to Iraq! Yes, get the word out or start the rumor! If Americans flew to, and landed in, Iraq to stop the war maybe Mr. Bush would call off the attacks (if his own people/voters are there)! However, he may call us anti-American and really blast us all! He is a bad seed in Earth's garden, unlike a thorny rose Bush!

~ A. Blake