EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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 Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 1:20 am Post subject: Protest Oct. 5th: World Can't Wait |
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http://www.worldcantwait.org/
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| On October 5, people everywhere will walk out of school, take off work, and come to the downtowns & townsquares and set out from there, going through the streets and calling on many more to join us - making a powerful statement: "NO! THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US! AND WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!" |
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Remarks from Daniel Ellsberg at Sept. 7th organizing meeting
The following text originally appeared on truthdig.com:
I keep looking at that date on the calendar � October 5. I think of 1969-- I was copying the Pentagon Papers with Tony Russo in that month, starting October 1. My intention, however, at that time was to bring them out in connection with something called the Moratorium on October 15, 1969� because on that day �across the country 2 million people marched. Not in any one place, they were counted up and added up because they all walked out, it was a weekday, out of school, out of businesses on that weekday. They met in rallies, heard many speakers-- in those days there was great tolerance (well, there still is to some extent) for a lot of speeches. But it was a weekday and they called it the Moratorium because people thought the word general strike was too provocative, but that�s what they had in mind.
It was a walkout, in other words it was no business as usual. The president was watching it in the White House, hour by hour, while pretending that he wasn�t. In fact he was in the situation room getting half-hour reports on how many people. They were being counted, in Washington and New York, from a U2 [plane] above.
...They were there with their mothers, in toddler strollers and backpacks on their parents� backs, and they were doing the same job their parents were. Being counted from the air, from reconnaissance vehicles to add up to a number of 2 million.
What they didn�t know was that in fact they were stopping nuclear war. The president had made threats of nuclear war secretly several times starting in May and in August and September, saying that he was prepared to use nuclear weapons on Vietnam. They said that to the Russians and the North Vietnamese directly in Paris. And with 2 million people in the streets, he had to conclude that an ultimatum which was dated for November 1-- he was going to carry it out on November 3rd but the date that he gave to his adversaries was November 1st: �If by that time you haven�t met my terms (which they did not meet and never did meet) we will take measures of the gravest consequence,� including total bombing of North Vietnam, mining of Haiphong (which he didn�t do in the end until 1972), going into Laos and Cambodia.
There were plans and target folders for the use of nuclear weapons at that point. I know somebody, Roger Morris, who actually read those target folders with photographs of the targets selected. None of us knew that... ...we weren�t doing that because we knew that nuclear war was imminent; we just knew the war was going on unacceptably, that the country had to change course. There was no clue that we were on the verge of massive escalation.
Now I�ll give you something from 1969 that has come out now� 37 years later. Look at National Security Archives-- I think it is at nsarchive.com. Look at one of their latest releases, on documents finally declassified last November, now published for the first time on, I think, July 1-- their latest release on Nixon�s nuclear alert of 1969. This was first found out by Seymour Hersh, mainly with anonymous sources some years ago, but nobody believed him. And now the documents have become available that on October 13, 1969-- two days before the scheduled Moratorium�SAC, Strategic Air Command planes went on an unprecedented secret alert around the world, the intention of which was to show the Russians by their electronic means and their radar and their surveillance, that the U.S. was on a nuclear alert-- but not let the American people know. They actually dispersed planes with nuclear bombs aboard to airports like Boston airport, Los Angeles, and elsewhere as they might do on the eve of a nuclear war. They weren�t planning a first strike against the Soviet Union, although the Soviets were made to worry about that. This was meant to show the Soviets, who Nixon had threatened that we would use nuclear weapons against North Vietnam. And there was of course the possibility that the Russian nuclear weapons might be used in response. This alert was to let them know, don�t even think of it. Not because they would have worried about the Soviets really doing that, but to make it as clear as possible �we�re going to do this and we�re prepared for anything��to make the threat as strong as possible. |
Last edited by EFLtrainer on Tue Oct 03, 2006 3:53 am; edited 1 time in total |
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