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The 9-11 bombings Are Not Acts of War

The 9-11 bombings Are Crimes Against Humanity


the focus is:
Reclaiming Our Voices
Reclaiming Hope
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"One of the reasons I like this list [articulating what the protesters for global justice want] is that it places Democracy first. As focused as we get on specific issues, it is easy to forget that democracy is the only decent tool we have to handle all the other issues well. The higher the quality of our democracy, the better EVERY issue will be handled. That's why I've chosen to focus my own attention there. Furthermore, I expect democracy will rise into greater public and activist consciousness as the aspects of democracy people take for granted are increasingly challenged by efforts to concentrate power, silence dissent, control election outcomes, etc."



"The greatest spiritual question of them all is, `Is there life before death?' Life, not death, has always been the fundamental spiritual question of every great spiritual tradition. . . .
        "It is time for women to assume as much responsibility for maintaining the life of the world as they do for bearing the life of the world. Otherwise we birth one world to destroy the other. . . .
        "This is, indeed, a most religious moment. Why? Because religion is fast becoming the most dangerous thing the world has to offer. Religion has become, in other words, religion's worst enemy. It is time for women -- the other half of the human race -- the other face of God! -- to save both their religions and their nations. Women, the life bearers, must now give to the world the spiritual life the world lacks. . . .
        "It is time for women to speak a public voice against the wars that men have designed to "protect them" without ever putting women themselves at the tables where only a few men decide to wage war and governments refuse to negotiate them."

--Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister, The Global Peace Initiative of Women
Religious and Spiritual Leaders, UN, Geneva, 7 Oct 2002


"Dr. Muller proceeded to say, `Never before in the history of the world has there been a global, visible, public, viable, open dialogue and conversation about the very legitimacy of war.' . . . `We are not at war,' he kept saying. We, the world community, are WAGING peace. It is difficult, hard work. It is constant and we must not let up. It is working and it is an historic milestone of immense proportions. It has never happened before -- never in human history -- and it is happening now -- every day every hour -- waging peace through a global conversation. He pointed out that the conversation questioning the validity of going to war has gone on for hours, days, weeks, months and now more than a year, and it may go on and on. . . . No matter what happens, history will record that this is a new era, and that the 21st century has been initiated with the world in a global dialogue looking deeply, profoundly and responsibly as a global community at the legitimacy of the actions of a nation that is desperate to go to war."

--Dr. Robert Muller, The Vital Role of the UN
in Preserving Planet Earth, 5 Feb 2003


"We, all of us gathered here, have, each in our own way, laid siege to `Empire.' We may not have stopped it in its tracks--yet--but we have stripped it down. We have made it drop its mask. We have forced it into the open. It now stands before us on the world's stage in all it's brutish, iniquitous nakedness.
        "Empire may well go to war, but it's out in the open now -- too ugly to behold its own reflection. Too ugly even to rally its own people. It won't be long before the majority of American people become our allies. Only a few days ago in Washington, a quarter of a million people marched against the war on Iraq. Each month, the protest is gathering momentum. . . .
        "When George Bush says `you're either with us, or you are with the terrorists' we can say `No thank you.' We can let him know that the people of the world do not need to choose between a Malevolent Mickey Mouse and the Mad Mullahs.
        "Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness--and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe."

--Arundhati Roy, Confronting Empire, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 27 Jan 2003


"Bush II intentionally chose to mislabel the 9-11 bombings as an act of war to justify initiating lengthy, large scale, and open-ended wars rather than treat the events of September 11 as a crime to be addressed through legal means. By rejecting the latter course, and truly seek a redress of grievances, the opportunity to alter the vicious spiral of violence, inflamed by the long-term pursuit of U.S. global economic and military domination, was squandered. Instead of embarking on a methodical and thorough investigation to determine who was responsible for these horrendous crimes against humanity, destructive and violent hi-tech warfare was used to kill thousands of innocent people in Afghanistan.[63] An investigation could be done through the creation of an ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal to try these criminals on charges of mass murder, applicable under existing international laws."


"If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace. Because what [America] is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries. That is the message they are sending to the world.
        "That must be condemned in the strongest terms. And you will notice that France, Germany Russia, China are against this decision. It is clearly a decision that is motivated by George W. Bush's desire to please the arms and oil industries in the United States of America. . . .
        ". . . Scott Ritter, a former United Nations arms inspector who is in Baghdad, has said that there is no evidence whatsoever of [development of weapons of] mass destruction [by Iraq]. Neither Bush nor [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair has provided any evidence that such weapons exist. But what we know is that Israel has weapons of mass destruction. Nobody talks about that. Why should there be one standard for one country, especially because it is black, and another one for another country, Israel, that is white."




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