October 30, 2006: 325 people came to Synod Hall at St. John’s Church of the Divine on the upper west side in New York City to hear why “It’s Worse Than You Think: where the Bush regime is taking the world and why it must be stopped.”
This teach-in was part of a nation-wide effort organized by World Can’t Wait, the Bush Crimes Commission, and others to bring out the issues not being talked about in the elections, and show the full scope, magnitude, and danger of the Bush agenda. The NYC flagship teach-in is being webcast for a month so that people all across the country can organize showings in their homes, schools, dorms, and churches. The aim is to bring the horrific truth to millions of people about just where the Bush regime is taking the world, because this regime will not be driven from power without dramatically changing the political conversation in this country.
The following excerpts from speakers will give a taste of the very real danger facing the world. Watch the full teach-in online to find out just why it is “worse than you think”.
Click here to read one reaction to the teach-in titled “The Little Idealist in All of Us”.
 Les Roberts
An author of the recent Johns Hopkins report revealing that over 600,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the 2003 invasion and occupation– far more than admitted by the US Government or widely reported in the press. He is a Columbia Univ. Lecturer in the Program on Forced Migration and Health. He will speak on “Incompatibility of Contrition and the Denial of Science”: how systems for discrediting or confusing science have been used by political leaders in recent years to prevent accountability with regard to smoking, global warming, the failure of abstinence programs to prevent teen pregnancies, and how similar techniques have been used to downplay the death toll in Iraq.
Excerpt:
Can you imagine today, the president, calling in the head of the FDA, or calling in the head of the EPA, and saying, okay, you’re the scientist, so you’re going to decide whether or not we’re going to regulate tobacco, or whether or not we’re going to, for example, have regulations of carbon emmissions, I just want to be informed in advance. That’s a laughable notion.
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 Bill Goodman
As Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, Goodman is involved in many legal challenges to the Bush administration, including Supreme Court cases to stop illegal domestic surveillance, challenge extraordinary rendition, and defend Guantanamo prison detainees.
Excerpt:
About 791 years ago, a bunch of guys that who called themselves noblemen actually did something that was noble. They forced the king of England to put in into written words a recognition of the right of habeus corpus…
791 years later, a man who would not recognize nobility if it crawled out from under the rug and bit him on the nose, signed a statute called the Military Commissions Act that was a vast assault on the right of habeus corpus.
This one moment, this signing of this legislation which he had engineered, which he had designed, which he had prepared for by planning the whole Guantanamo operation…
This moment i think recognized and emblemized what this administration is all about.
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 Cristina Page
Author, “How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex”; Vice President, Institute for Reproductive Health Access at NARAL Pro-Choice New York.
Excerpt:
The pro-life movement has found a friend in George Bush because they share a disdain for science, information, evidence, proof, truth…
When the pro-life movement asked Bush to appoint an abstinence-only ideologue to oversee the nation’s contraception program to the poor, Bush said yes…
When the right-to-life movement asked him to appoint an anti-contraception fanatic to the expert panel that approves contraceptives in the FDA, he said I will. And that choice led the FDA, our nation’s premiere scientific agency, to make its first ideological religious decision in its history by denying the over the counter application for emergency contraceptives…
When the right-to-life movement asked whether the president supports birth control, his spokesman dodged, only willing to say Bush supports a culture of life…
When the right-to-life movement asked Bush to defund the UN agency that provides contraception to the people living in the poorest countries on earth, the places where family planning is nothing less than a life-saving technology, Bush said where do I sign.
[Click here to read the full speech]
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 Larry Everest
Author, “Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda”; contributor to “Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney”; an organizer of Bush Crimes Commission.
Excerpt:
The call to this teach-in begins with the words that the world is facing a grave emergency. I couldn’t agree more, and I’d like to add that all the shocking things we’ve been seen for the past 6 yrs, including the things the other speakers have been talking about and will talk about tonight, are only the beginning of the horrors this regime has in store for us, unless it’s driven from power.
I don’t think this is hyperbole or hysteria, I think it’s based on a sober assessment of what the Bush agenda is all about and where it’s taking us and the rest of the world…
Obviously more and more people are opposing the war, are unhappy about the war, don’t particularly like the war. But unfortunately most people still think that Iraq was a mistake. They don’t understand the actual reasons that this war was launched. They think it’s going so bad so fast because of blunders by Bush; they don’t understand that developments in Iraq are rooted in the very nature of the agenda that’s being carried out there. And far too many people believe that there’s still some kind of legitimacy in Bush’s so-called “war on terror”. And flowing from this I don’t think people understand the grave danger of escalation of war in the region, whether it be in Iraq or Iran or other countries.
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 Chris Hedges
War reporter for almost 20 years, former Middle East bureau chief for New York Times; author of bestseller “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” and “Losing Moses on the Freeway: America ‘s Broken Covenant With The Ten Commandments.” Current article: “Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse.”
Excerpt:
As I speak to you tonight, the aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason, and fast-attack submarine US Newport News are arriving in the Straights of Hormuz off of Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it. The chances of a war with Iran, a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East, are not only real, but probably by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as a few weeks.
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