Manifestation mondiale, 15 mars 2003 a Paris, 14h30, place de la Nation

March 15 EMERGENCY CONVERGENCE ON THE WHITE HOUSE to STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ with parallel actions in San Francisco & Los Angeles

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and other organizations are calling for an Emergency National Anti-War Convergence to TAKE IT TO THE WHITE HOUSE on Saturday, March 15. There will be a parallel activities in San Francisco (gather at 11 am at Civic Center Plaza) and Los Angeles (gather 12 noon at Olympic and Broadway, march to Downtown Federal Building).
En savoir plus: http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/m15/index.html

Appel issu de la réunion de la coordination internationale contre la guerre de Londres (avec des représentants des coalitions de 25 pays)

« Après le succès sans précédent de la journée mondiale contre la guerre, le 15 février, nous appelons, dans les prochaines semaines, au développement massif des actions pour tenter d’empêcher la guerre. Nous pensons que la guerre en Irak est une erreur, qu’elle soit ou non soutenue par l’ONU.

DECINE DI MIGLIAIA ALLA MARCIA CONTRO LA GUERRA.
Appello di A.N.S.W.E.R.
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TENS OF THOUSANDS TO MARCH AGAINST THE WAR DEADLINE
The Politics of Deceit, Diplomacy, Oil and War

Join and support the tens of thousands of people who are
holding an Emergency March on the White House Saturday,
March 15 and conducting solidarity Stop the War actions
all around the world. On March 15, workers in Italy are
staging an anti-war General Strike. In Spain, Greece,
Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the UK, and in Los Angeles,
San Francisco and cities around the world people are
coming together in Emergency Mass Action on March 15 to
stop the U.S./UK war against the people of Iraq.

Bush and Blair have announced a March 17 deadline for war
and demanded the international community's ratification.
They are paving the path to war by racing to convince the
world that war is inevitable and that they answer to no
one except George W. Bush and his warmongering associates.
They want to demoralize and immobilize the opposition at
the most critical moment.

But the warmakers can still be stopped, and they know it.
If it hadn't been for the worldwide uprising against the
war the carnage would have started months ago. We can and
must intensify the mobilization for March 15.

While there are multiple plans for activities in the event
of war or after war has begun, all people of conscience
recognize that there are no planned actions more important
than those called to prevent a war before it starts, and
for people in the United States at this time that is
particularly true. We must do everything in our power now
to prevent the government of the U.S. from its planned
killing in the Middle East. That is what makes the March
15 Emergency Convergence so crucial.

THE WAR MAKERS FORGED DOCUMENTS

Confronted with the revelation of their own lies and
concealment, Bush and Blair are rushing to begin the
slaughter lest the growing global antiwar sentiment
overwhelm their plans. One day after his national
television "war speech," the UN weapons inspectors and
others exposed Bush's pretext for war as a lie in their
March 7 report. According to the U.N. weapons inspectors,
the U.S. and the U.K. provided "faked evidence" to the
U.N. to support the claim that Iraq was pursuing nuclear
weapons, a series of forged letters. ("Some Evidence on
Iraq Called Fake, U.N. Nuclear Inspector Says Document on
Purchases Were Forged," Washington Post, March 8, 2003,
A1) As claims made by Bush and Powell are dismissed and
discredited day by day, they are desperate to have the
headlines focus on the coming war rather than the
crumbling façade that they have asserted justifies the
war.

The underlying premise of the White House propaganda for
months can be summed up into one single message: This war
will happen because no one can stop us. Bush and company
know that they don't have the truth on their side, nor the
law, nor world public opinion, nor the governments of the
world, nor the UN. Their strategy is based on the myth of
invincible military superiority: a supremacy in arms and
equipment that can always crush those that it targets and
always succeed in intimidating and bullying those who
attempt political opposition. It is this same arrogance of
power that dragged the country into twelve years of war in
Vietnam killing more than a million Vietnamese and 58,000
GI's before the madness was brought to an end. It seems
that the only lesson taken by the Bush Administration from
the Vietnam War is that the administration should launch
massive and obliterating destruction and killing with the
belief that this will eliminate protracted battle for the
U.S. This is a dangerous fallacy. A war launched by the
U.S. government in the Middle East will have catastrophic
consequences in the region and in the U.S. for years to
come.

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S EXPLANATION FOR A RUSH TO WAR
HAS BEEN EXPOSED AS A FRAUD:

*UN Chief Nuclear Inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei's March 7
report to the UN exposed as a fraud the main U.S. argument
about Iraq's supposed nuclear activities. For months, U.S.
officials have cited Iraq's importing of aluminum tubes,
and the purported effort by Iraq to purchase uranium from
Niger as proof that Iraq posed a "grave and imminent
danger." ElBaradei told the UN "there is no indication
that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use
in centrifuge enrichment" of uranium into weapons-grade
material. Powell was briefed on the falseness of the
aluminum tube claim prior to his testimony before the U.N.
on the subject last month, and made misrepresentations to
the Security Council with this knowledge. ElBaradei also
revealed that the documents cited by U.S. officials about
the purchase of uranium by Iraq from Niger "are in fact
not authentic" and were forgeries.

*To the dismay of the Bush administration, Hans Blix
reported that Iraq was "pro-actively" cooperating with the
inspectors and that the inspections could be fully
completed and "will not take years, nor weeks, but
months." Iraq originally agreed to accept the weapons
inspections in 1991 with the promise that economic
sanctions would be lifted when it was confirmed that it
was "disarmed" of non-conventional weapons. Thus Iraq
could be finally free of the economic sanctions that have
killed more than one million Iraqis in the last decade.
That the inspections process was constructed solely as a
pretext for war is demonstrated by the fact that when the
inspections failed to serve as a trigger for war, the
administration had no further use for them.

THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF THIS PLANNED OIL
WAR -- WHO WINS, WHO LOSES?

The very day that Bush and Blair set a March 17 deadline
for war, the Labor Department issued its surprise report
that more than 300,000 workers lost their jobs just in the
last month in the latest wave of corporate layoffs. The
Jobs Report was expected to show an increase of 20,000
jobs. The Pentagon's military campaign of "Shock and Awe"
may help kill tens of thousands of Iraqis in the next
weeks but it won't help even one of these laid-off workers
get their jobs back. But Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and
Powell's real constituents are not unemployed workers but
the oil, banking, and military corporations who stand to
profit handsomely from gaining control over Iraq's vast
oil reserves (the second largest in the world).

While the danger of war and world instability sends
unemployment and gas prices sky high, not all are
suffering.

The San Francisco Chronicle of March 8 reported that
Halliburton Co., of which Dick Cheney was chairman until
his "selection" in 2000, has won a Pentagon contract for
the rebuilding of Iraq's oil field after the war.

"There are lots of business opportunities embedded in this
war. It represents the larger oil and energy issues at
stake," the Chronicle quotes Michael Renner of WorldWatch
Institute. "Regime change in Baghdad would reshuffle the
cards and give U.S. (and British) companies a good shot at
direct access to Iraq's oil fields for the first time in
30 years a windfall worth hundreds of billions of
dollars," he said.

Iraq's proven oil reserves of 112 billion barrels are the
world's second largest behind only Saudi Arabia. The
majority of Iraq's potential oil fields though remain
unexplored. Daily oil output capacity is about 2 million
barrels. Oil industry analysts believe that if western oil
and engineering companies take over Iraqi oil production,
it could surge to 10-12 million barrels a day within a
decade. (San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 2003) The prize
of Iraq and the other oil riches of the region could
constitute the single biggest boon for Bush's corporate
clients in decades. As one oil executive stated, "For any
oil company, being in Iraq is like being a kid in F.A.O.
Schwarz." ("Iraq Is a Strategic Issue for Oil Giants,
Too," The New York Times, February 22, 2003)

The U.S. government initially placed Iraq on the
"terrorist nations list" in 1972 after the Iraqi
government nationalized its oil fields, which had been in
the hands of U.S., British and other western companies.

On March 15, people in the United States will take to the
streets again. It is unacceptable to let a government
representing the corporate few, send the sons and
daughters of this country to kill and be killed, in a war
for Big Oil and corporate profits.

THE PLAN FOR THE EMERGENCY CONVERGENCE ON THE WHITE HOUSE
is to gather at 12 noon at the Washington Monument (just
south of the White House, Constitution Ave. between 15th
and 17th Sts. NW) for a rally and march.

Contact information for BUSES, VANS AND CAR CARAVANS
traveling to DC -- and an easy-to-use form to sign up to
list the transportation options from your city -- go to:
http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/m15/m15transp.html

A FLYER for the March 15 Emergency National Convergence on
the White House is available on the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
web site. You can easily download a PDF of the national
flyer for the Washington DC demonstration, as well as a
version for those in New York City planning to travel to
DC. Flyers for West Coast events are also available. To
download flyers, go to
http://internationalanswer.org/campaigns/resources/index.html

If you cannot download and print the flyers, you can pick
up stacks at A.N.S.W.E.R. offices around the country, or
you can call us at 202-544-3389 and request a packet of
flyers.

For logistical information -- such as a map of the rally
area, directions, public transportation in DC, disability
access, housing and more -- go to
http://internationalanswer.org/campaigns/m15/logistics.html