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The
Green House peace project started out as just an email list, a few
days after 9-11. The purpose, then as now, was to "engender ideas,
disseminate information and ideas, and help each other and other organizations
to take positive action to prevent war, support our Arab-American
brothers and sisters and protect our civil liberties." The list
still exists and a subscription to it can be obtained by sending an
email wih a blank text field to:
GHpeaceproject-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
During the final portions of the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq by
the US and coalition forces, the GH peaceproject began meeting on
Saturday afternoons, holding vigils at Nine Mile and Woodward. Perhaps
more significantly, we participated in the Cities for Peace campaign
to convince City councils and other organizations to pass resolutions
opposing the impending war.
The GHPP was thus a part of an effort that put Michigan tied for fifth
in the Nation for the number of cities passing such resolutions. California,
Massachusetts, New Jersy, and New York all had more; only California
had a lot more (28); the next three all numbered in the mid to lower
teens; and Ohio and Michigan were tied at 11.
It was, of course, not possible to obtain such a resolution in every
city in which we tried. But even in the cases in which it didn't pass,
it was worth the effort, because issues were raised during the attempts
that most people were not aware of. The major media were serving mainly
as cheerleaders for the adminstration's impending war, for which,
notably, several media outlets, including The New York Times,
have since apologized. Very little information outside of such cheerleading
was getting through.
We also sent out press releases on various aspects of the administration's
war plans, as we understood them, and understood the context. Those
press releases make interesting reading now; except for an occasional
point, we were right on the mark, as were many, many other groups,
the bulk of the anti-war movement. Why do we say this now? Not for
purposes of self-congratulation, but to make the point that the anti-war
movement was right about the war and right about the occupation, as
well. 
The occupation has been going wrong since shortly after the President's
address underneath the "mission accomplished" sign over
five years ago; conditions have worsened in a steady progression.
Go to globalsecurity.org; The crosses above were set up by Veterans
for Peace in the median strip of Woodward in Ferndale on the second
anniversary of the war.
The casualty rates were much lower then. You can get the casualty
toll up to the day from global
security. The morning of 12/25/08, that figure stood at 4144 US
service deaths and 30,182 wounded. Approximately 1.2 million Iraqi
deaths (estimated) (More than double what we projected before the
war and were often told was an overestimate.) There are also at least
two million refugees in surrounding countries, especially Jordan,
Syria, and Lebanon. For an interview on the refugee problem that is
undated but not exqactly recent, see epic-usa.org/files/EPIC/the_Ground_truth_Garcia.pdf.
Then, too there is the more than $10 billion per month we spend on
the war. Nobel Prize-winning American economist, Joseph Stiglitz,
estimated the ultimate cost of the war to be $3 trillion and said
it was ruining the US economy in The Three Trillion Dollar War.
It's not a matter of what figure is correct; the wasteful and largely
unnecessary military budget is a significant part of the very scary
economic downturn taking place in the US now. Even the IMF is now
predicting a global depression
Page
updated Dec. 25, 2008. Questions, comments, etc. should be forwarded
to the webmaster.
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