[Media-watch] FW: Morning Star: Anti-war movement

[Tim Gopsill]

(Naomi Klein has a fine  article in today's Guardian, on war imagery, reprinted from The Nation, but I haven't seen other reports of her Wednesday speech. She gave a press conference here at the NUJ on Wednesday afternoon, trailing the meeting, which no national media attended.)
TimG


> (Friday 26 November 2004) 
> Louise Nousratpour 
> BRITISH REPORT: LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR reports on Naomi Klein's calls for revitalisation and transformation of the movement. 
> The anti-imperialist author of No Logo and Fences and Windows addressed 1,200 sympathetic listeners at Friends Meeting House in London on Wednesday night. 
> The packed event was organised by activist groups Iraq Occupation Focus, Jubilee, Voices in the Wilderness UK and War on Want. 
> National Union of Journalists general secretary and chairman of the event Jeremy Dear introduced Ms Klein to the cheers of the crowd. 
> She issued a call for the US anti-war movement to stop dragging its feet in the mire of old slogans and reinvent itself as the leader of the fight for "genuine, meaningful" democracy for the Iraqi people. 
> In a lively and gripping speech that was packed with detail, Ms Klein exposed the intentions of the White House and Downing Street for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. 
> She spoke of how, every day, the Iraqi people face "brutal repression" from the so-called "freedom" coalition. 
> "It was very clear, from the beginning, that they were going to turn Iraq into a kind of a laboratory for the most radical forms of free-market economy," she noted. 
> Ms Klein warned that Iraq is being twisted into "the capitalist dream." 
> She drew attention to decisions to sell off 200 state-owned companies in Iraq which, she stressed, is yet another breach of the Geneva convention. 
> From her visit to Iraq earlier this year, she detailed the Iraqi people's heartfelt stories of "small and large betrayals and how they have lost faith in democracy, a bullet at a time." 
> She revealed that "the occupiers have undermined, suppressed, subverted and repressed expressions of genuine liberation and demands of real democracy. 
> She argued that "it is these acts, more than any others, that explain why Iraq is so consumed by violence." 
> Ms Klein went on to voice her frustration at the US peace movement's failure to make the case for "concrete political demands" to bring real liberation to Iraq. 
> On the depressing US election result, Ms Klein voiced the anxiety of many on the left, when she stressed the Herculean task of fighting this "supercharged" Bush. 
> "Bush has won a new sense of total impunity," she warned. 
> "We're seeing a newly defined Bush, a new swagger in the swagger, chock-full of impunity-boosting vitamins and minerals." 
> And she threw more harsh criticism at the anti-war movement's activities during the elections, noting that it was too wrapped up in depicting people in the West as the victims of lies, while forgetting the plight of Iraqi people. 
> "We need to start wrestling with how we can turn an anti-war movement into a pro-democracy movement," she urged. 
> "How we can become the voice demanding genuine democracy and the genuine liberation of Iraq that our leaders promised, but never meant to deliver." 
> 
> 
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