RE: Angela�s Plan

While Whisper�s suggestion is the most solid thing we�ve seen on this
forum since Angela�s Plan was first mooted, it is not likely to bring
the troops out of Iraq anytime this year!

While clumsily searching for a way to do this, I have come across
several activism sites which I�ll list here, for those of us who just feel
time is running out for Iraq. I recommend you visit these sites and
add whatever you can to their cause, even if it is just a donation.
You�ll also be able to find out when and where demos and meetings
are taking place if you are able and willing to go out and swell the
visible ranks of people yearning for peace.

I�m just focussing on Iraq, which is what Angela�s plan first
addressed. Implementing Whisper�s plan will take time and will serve
for all the other global war issues, such as Afghanistan, Palestine and
Lebanon/Syria/Iran.

With Cassandra, I had agreed to gather web addresses with the idea
of somehow eventually pressurising and coordinating actions so as
to reach the critical mass necessary for the admin to pay attention.
While harvesting, I came across something which seems aimed at
doing exactly what we had talked about! It is called The World Social
Forum and I�ll add the link and brief description of their aims along
with the rest here. However, this discovery has a taste of bitterness
since it is NOT and organisation, but a forum �.

Meanwhile, to encourage those of us who feel the only way the
troops will be withdrawn soon is if the US public is seen to be asking
for it, here�s an encouraging snippet:

Gallup: 55% Now Back U.S. Pullout from Iraq Within a Year
By E&P Staff Published: August 03, 2006 11:55 AM ET

NEW YORK A new Gallup poll released today revealed another upward
bump in the number of Americans who now want a complete U.S.
troop withdrawal from Iraq in the next 12 months.

That number now stands at 55%, with 19% supporting immediate
withdrawal and another 36% wanting it done by August 2007.

"While the percentage of Americans who favour a withdrawal of all
U.S. troops either now or within a year is not a supermajority, it is a
majority, suggesting that the Democratic leadership is speaking to
an issue that resonates with many Americans," Frank Newport,
director of the Gallup Poll, writes today.

Another majority, 54%, now say that the U.S. invasion in 2003 was a
"mistake."

The partisan divided remains wide on the withdrawal question, with
77% of Democrats wanting U.S. troops out in a year and only 28% of
Republicans. Independents back a 12-month pullout at 56%.
Gallup polled 1,002 adult Americans at the very end of July.

-Now, here are the links for people to check out and act on:

www.troopshomefast.org/article.php?list=type&type=144
http://www.gsfp.org/ Gold Star Families for Peace
http://www.irishantiwar.org/index.adp
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/
http://www.mpdl.org/home.htm

And here is a way of finding more of the same:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anti-war_organizations

What the World Social Forum is

The World Social Forum is an open meeting place where social
movements, networks, NGOs and other civil society organizations
opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital or by
any form of imperialism come together to pursue their thinking, to
debate ideas democratically, for formulate proposals, share their
experiences freely and network for effective action. Since the first
world encounter in 2001, it has taken the form of a permanent world
process seeking and building alternatives to neo-liberal policies.
This definition is in its Charter of Principles, the WSF�s guiding
document.

The World Social Forum is also characterized by plurality and
diversity, is non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party. It
proposes to facilitate decentralized coordination and networking
among organizations engaged in concrete action towards building
another world, at any level from the local to the international, but it
does not intend to be a body representing world civil society. The
World Social Forum is not a group nor an organization.
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/index.php?cd_language=2

-My intuition and experience tells me you can not force Nature to do
what you wish: reaching �critical mass� is an organic process which
has its own momentum and abides by its own enigmatic rules.
Forcing issues is rarely productive, allowing them to mature while
guiding them as one nurtures a plant, is perhaps the best way to
treat them. As for the critical mass of public opinion, there definitely
is a way to help it, and that is by joining our voices with those of
organisations which already have a �power base�.


World Social Forum is not a group nor an organization.[/
SIZE]

Hola Cassandra, I too came to the conclusion that Angela's Plan will
remain here, Islamicity hosts willing! The responses over at The Pond
have been minimal and unconstructive, but besides that, there were
one or two comments made which were negative towards moslems. I
was shocked, as these comments came from people who often post
here too.

I like the name: Global Shout, could be a good one for the future
'umbrellist' activists!

A lot of us miss you when you are gone, Whisper.  Not least because when you are gone, the spice disappears and, instead of being served a nice dish of nan-kebab, we are forced to eat BigMacs instead. 

 

Speaking again of Hemingway�s biography, and though I don�t know his literary works well, I think also of how strangely unregulated must have been the lives of Americans during the era of the Spanish civil war, 1936-39!  I mean, a contingent of them, the �Abraham Lincoln Brigade,� along with volunteers from other nations, actually went to Spain, took up arms, and participated in the fight!  It�s not that I necessarily support their position, so much, or the cause for which they strove, but I simply note how apparently free they were in that process (though some later felt the political repercussions).   

 

These days, it seems, and, if it need be said, I do know that there are good reasons for heightened security in the USA, we almost have to get permission from Michael Chertoff to take a cyber-bicycle ride out beyond the Homeland to visit with auslanders [outsiders]. 

 

Serv 

 

An Empire?  America can�t even balance its own check book! 

Edited by Servetus

"A spark can start a prairy fire"

OR

"The Great Oak is born of a tiny acorn"

Angela, when you are meant to be, you simply are. All else stands by as sheer excuses. This is your hour. Only women have the wisdom and the guts to save the planet.

Do you know why you are called a woman?