The New Normalcy

A political and ideological program of "Resurgent America" is being cultivated
and guided from the highest offices in the land. Its prominent themes
- a "moral awakening of the nation" and the drive for America to be Number One in the world
by force of arms - have a distinctly fascist aura and raise the specter of a police state.

- Refuse & Resist! Founding Statement

Acts of Repression | Acts of Resistance | Acts of War

Statements, Letters and Thoughts About the Events of September 11

"...I have heard angry rhetoric by some Americans, including many of our nation's leaders, who advise a heavy dose of revenge and punishment. To those leaders, I would like to make clear that my family and I take no comfort in your words of rage. If you choose to respond to this incomprehensible brutality by perpetuating violence against other innocent human beings, you may not do so in the name of justice for my husband..."

Other Organizations Speak Out About S11

"...We call on the United States government to break the cycle of violence. We call on the people of the United States to expose our governmentÕs role in perpetuating the violence and to hold the government accountable..."

The New Political Terrain in the U.S. in the Aftermath of September 11 by Clark Kissinger

"...Since the September attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it has been commonplace to say that "the whole world has changed," or at least in the United States "everything has changed." But what exactly has changed? What does it mean for all our futures? And will we even be allowed to talk about it?..."

Israeli Repression and the Language of Liars by Tim Wise

"...Unless we who are Jews insist on a return to honest language, and an end to the hijacking of our culture and faith by madmen, racists and liars, I fear that the light may be extinguished forever..."

Forgotten victims by Jonathan Steele

"...As many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the US intervention. They too belong in any tally of the dead..."

The value of paranoia by John Sutherland

"...A minor photo-op occasion became a desperate damage-limitation exercise. "Had I known - fateful day - hunt them down one by one." He looked bad. The Los Angeles Times frankly compared him to Nixon..."

The U.S. Hit List at the United Nations by Ian Williams

"...At the UN and elsewhere, the U.S. has mounted a campaign to purge international civil servants judged to be out of step with Washington in the war on terrorism..."

What's So Patriotic About Trampling on the Bill of Rights? by Nancy Chang

"...To an unprecedented degree, the USA PATRIOT Act sacrifices our political freedoms in the name of national security and upsets the democratic values that define our nation by consolidating vast new powers in the executive branch..."

Why Slobodan Milosevic, but not Henry Kissinger? by Peter Tatchell

"...US bombing is calculated to have killed 350,000 civilians in Laos and 600,000 in Cambodia. Several times more civilians were wounded and made refugees..."

For Arab Americans, Pain in Familiar Faces

"...IT'S THE CRYING women who get to me. When the camera stops on the streets in Jenin, the Palestinian refugee camp destroyed by the Israeli Defense Forces, and a scarfed, pie-faced woman cries and yells, her arms flapping outward..."

The Road To War by Conn Hallinan

"...Sometime this fall, probably before the mid-term elections, the U.S. will likely be at war with Iraq. Not because Iraq is a threat to our security or engaged in terrorism. It will happen because more than a decade ago a small cabal of political heavyweights in the administration of George Bush the First sat down and drew up a blueprint to rule the world..."

What Israel Has Done by Edward Said

"...Are Palestinian civilians, men, women, children, no more than rats or cockroaches that can be killed and attacked in the thousands without so much as a word of compassion or in their defence? And what about the capture of thousands of Palestinian men who have been taken off by Israeli soldiers without a trace..."

Witness in the Territories by Russell Banks

"...at the end of a five-day voyage with seven fellow members of the International Parliament of Writers (IPW) through the battered archipelago of reservations that make up the Palestinian territories, I met for breakfast at the King David Inter-Continental Hotel in Tel Aviv with two young leaders of the so-called refuseniks..."

Immortal heroes of Jenin by Uri Avnery

"...Faced with the onslaught of the biggest military machine in the region and the most modern arms in the world, submerged in a sea of suffering, surrounded by bodies, the Palestinian nation straightened its back as never before..."

Thoughts about America by Edward Said

"...I don't know a single Arab or Muslim American who does not now feel that he or she belongs to the enemy camp, and that being in the United States at this moment provides us with an especially unpleasant experience of alienation and widespread, quite specifically targeted hostility..."

The Colder War by John Pilger

"...Of all the extraordinary news since September 11, this is the most alarming. It is time to break our silence...."

"Our grief is not a cry for war," nor for concentration camps and torture by Darnell Summers

"...I sat there and thought of my own experiences for I too was once a prisoner of the US Military. I know first hand how brutal they are..."

Why We're Suing Ashcroft by Jeremy Voas

"...Our complaint, drafted by Michael Steinberg, legal director of the Michigan chapter of the ACLU, asserts that the public and press have First Amendment rights and due process rights to attend Haddad's hearings..."

Bound and Gagged by Charles Glass

"...I remember the drill -- the blindfold, chains, solitude and loneliness. I was there for two months in 1987. It was a bad time, and it seemed unlikely to me then that I would one day see photographs of my countrymen treating Muslim prisoners much as I was treated..."

Talkin' About the F-Word by Bernard Weiner

"...things are happening, so quickly, in this country that are taking us closer to a brand of near-fascism that is frightening in its seeming acceptance by the American populace..."

A whiff of fascism by Andrew M. Greeley

"...When good does evil in its fight against evil, it becomes indistinguishable from that evil..."

WTC Poem by Ani DiFranco

"...yes, the lessons are all around us / and the truth is waiting there / so it's time to pick through the rubble, / clean the streets, and clear the air
..."

The innocent dead in a coward's war by Seumas Milne

"...ordinary Afghans, who had nothing whatever to do with the atrocities, didn't elect the Taliban theocrats who ruled over them and had no say in the decision to give house room to Bin Laden and his friends..."

No War Against Afghanistan! by Francis A. Boyle

"...there is one very unfortunate precedent. That's the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1946 where there the lawyers for the Nazi defendants took the position that they had reserved the right of self-defense under the Kellogg Breand Pact of 1928..."

The USA Patriot Act and the US Department of Justice: Losing Our Balances? by Susan Herman

"...Congress has been consistently funneling power to the President and his Executive branch subordinates, while minimizing its own role, as well as the role of the judiciary, in the decisions that are to be made about the conduct of our foreign as well as our domestic war..."

No Glory in Unjust War on the Weak by Barbara Kingsolver

"...We've killed whoever was too poor or crippled to flee, plus four humanitarian aid workers who coordinated the removal of land mines from the beleaguered Afghan soil..."

We're All in This Together by Tom Tomorrow

"...except when we're not..."

"The price is worth it" by Ed Herman

"...Wouldn't the mainstream media and intellectuals be wild with indignation at the inhumanity of the terrorists' coldblooded calculus? Wouldn't they respond in one voice that it is absolutely immoral, evil, and indefensible per se to kill civilians on a massive scale to make a political point?.."

Why We Refuse to Wave the Flag by Travis Morales

"...don t go looking in Afghanistan for those responsible for the death and destruction on September 11. Don't go looking in the Sudan. Don't go looking in Pakistan. If you want those responsible, look on American soil..."

Hidden Agenda Behind War on Terror by John Pilger

"...By killing innocents in Afghanistan, Blair and Bush stoop to the level of the criminal outrage in New York. Once you cluster bomb, "mistakes" and "blunders" are a pretence. Murder is murder, regardless of whether you crash a plane into a building or order and collude with it from the Oval Office..."

Hypothetical Questions by Edward Hasbrouck

"...a fugitive from international justice, wanted for mass murder and under indictment by the courts of a friendly country with which the USA maintains diplomatic relations..."

Weather Report by Chris Floyd

"...It won't come with jackboots and book burnings, mass rallies and fevered harangues. It won't come with "black helicopters" or tanks on the street. It won't come like a storm, but like a break in the weather, that sudden change of season..."

The uniforms and badges that surround us by Bob Greene

"...A person wearing a uniform or carrying a badge -- even if the uniform is issued by a private company, and the badge has no more meaning than something you could buy at a toy store -- is given a great deal of power..."

Duplicity On Domestic (White) Terrorism by Linn Washington

"...Native born terrorists like federal office building bomber Tim McVeigh are dismissed as anomalies while terrorists born in the Middle East like Osama bin Laden are not considered exceptions but are merely examples of their anti-America culture..."

A Message to Troops, Would-be Troops, and other Youth by Jeff Patterson

"...My Battalion Commander's reassurance that "if anything goes wrong we'll nuke the rag heads until they all glow" was not reassuring. Up against that, I publicly stated I would not be a pawn in America's power plays for profits, oil, and domination of the Middle East. I pledged to resist..."

Refuse & Resist the Atmosphere of Retribution & Repression by Refuse & Resist!

"...In an appeal and echo of his fundamentalist base, Bush vowed to unleash a "crusade against evildoers" conjuring up images of 21st century world-wide witch hunts and carnage. Cheney, Bush and Powell have called for the people to sacrifice for a multi-year war..."

Some Folks Never Felt Safe by Tim Wise

"...For those who are used to feeling safe and secure, the events of this past month will no doubt have had a particularly jarring effect. But for others, terrorism from abroad may only feel like a more extreme manifestation of everyday life..."

An Open Letter from One Person in the U.S. to the Others by Michael Novick

"...We have refused to confront the terrorism that we have harbored in our own midst; we have depended on the trappings of imperial might for security, and they have failed us..."

John Ashcroft's New America by James Ridgeway

"...Locking up more than 7 million American Muslims is a tall order. But the racial profiling that allows the government to keep tabs on this now suspect group may be the modern equivalent of a concentration camp..."

The War on the Bill of Rights by Nat Hentoff

"...The rush to push aside the Bill of Rights began on September 13, two days after the terrorist attacks. That night, the Senate swiftly attached to a previously written appropriations bill an amendment..."

Death... and Transfiguration? by Peter Laarman

"...In the catalogue of earthly horrors, fear and death are siblings. It is right and natural to be afraid, but it is extremely important in these terrible days to remember that love casts out fear and that we cannot defend the living and serve the interest of life -- as we must -- when we are too afraid of dying..."

Americans United Responds To Statements By Falwell, Robertson About Terrorist Attack

"..."Thousands of innocent men, women and children died in these attacks," Lynn continued. "It was not their fault. It was not the Supreme Court's fault. It was not the fault of civil liberties groups, gay people or Pagans..."

Death Downtown by Michael Moore

"...We have orphaned so many children, tens of thousands around the world, with our taxpayer-funded terrorism (in Chile, in Vietnam, in Gaza, in Salvador) that I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised when those orphans grow up and are a little whacked in the head from the horror we have helped cause..."

Our grief is not a cry for war!

"...put out a message as widely and as quickly and compellingly as possible which opposes the moves to war and the attacks on the Arab people including in this country..."

Resource List and Hotlines to Report Hate Crimes

"...from a list compiled by National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights..."

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