At this point in the tour we had a lot of things worked out. Chelsea usually took care of the table with all the great tools: petitions on Iran and Iraq, Antoni’s book : The Bush Agenda, We Will Not Be Silent t-shirts 
and I would work with the volunteers to put up the photo exhibit with amazing images from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon donated by amazing photojournalists. But one thing we did not have totally down by now was the traffic, weather and other unavoidable things on the road. All in all we did well, but the Rutgers football game that brought over 44,000 people to New Brunswick tonight was hard to contend with. Needless to say we made it to the event with a little time to spare, but were very late to meet the organizers, Rutgers Against the War or RAW for dinner! (We still managed to get a few bites in before moving on to the school, but not enough!)
Rostam started the talk tonight since Antonia was already back in California. He spoke about why GW Bush has been demonizing Iran since his re-election campaign in 2003. He explained it is because we are entering a new cold war, this time with China. The demonization of Iran is about controlling the world’s oil so the US can eventually control China. He warned the audience to remember that today’s leading neo-cons were once democrats and some still are.
Meaning there is no reason for Americans who disagree with US foreign policy to relax and take are guard down now that the dems are in the majority. The US is still investing in a new generation of nuclear weapons, and for the first time the US has a policy of attacking sovereign nations pre-emptively that are non-nuclear states.
Rostam explained to the audience that Iran is not an exception when it comes to human rights abusers. There are far more harmful governments in the world than Iran, to their own people and to others. This made me think of Indonesia slaughtering Acehnese and East Timorese for decades, the US government calls Indonesia its ally both then and now.
Rostam gave the example that although Iran is not in violation of the NPT (Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty) the United States is. The US and UK have both expanded its nuclear programs since signing, while Iran has not.
We are very grateful for all the work RAW did to organize this event, even with one of Rutgers largest sports events in history happening the same night our event had a decent attendance. 
