SAY NO TO PIPES!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


STOP THE NOMINATION OF DANIEL PIPES TO THE US INSTITUTE OF PEACE

On April 2, 2003 Daniel Pipes was nominated by the White House to the Board of the US Institute of Peace and the nomination was referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions for approval where it now sits. The Press Office for the Committee says the nomination will not be considered for the next 10 days and perhaps longer, but the Committee could act any time. Uncontroversial nominations often go through without any hearings, testimony, or public debate. That cannot be allowed to happen in this case. This nomination is a benchmark measure for our democracy and must not be allowed to go through without vigorous public challenge. Daniel Pipes is a symbol of anti-democratic values personified. His racist tracts are issued with regularity, his McCarthyite, or "neo-Stalinist", network, as it has more recently been characterized, built around his Campus Watch website is a true threat to free speech and ordinary civil liberties. His views on 'conflict resolution' which favor force and fear over negotiations sets him at immediate odds with the stated goals of the USIP. He is a regular contributor to Gamla, “an organization founded by former Israeli military officers and settlers that endorses the ethnic cleansing of every Palestinian as "the only possible solution" to the Arab-Israeli conflict…” (see The Nation), and it goes on.

This nomination is so far fetched it is easy to see how people did think it was a joke when it was first announced. But it must be stopped now. It's no joke. The Say No to Pipes Campaign is a grassroots campaign now collecting signatures on a letter that will be delivered in hard copy by courier to the Chairman, Ranking Member and all other members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions as well as electronically to the press and others. We need lots of signatures. Time may be very limited. PLEASE go to

http://www.say-no-to-pipes.org

and sign the letter and then send it to as many people as you possibly can.

SAY NO TO PIPES
http://www.say-no-to-pipes.org

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