[pjnews] Small Arms? Big Problem
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=24574 Arms Suppliers Scramble to Feed Hungry Market When the 15-member U.N. Security Council legitimised the U.S.-imposed interim government in Baghdad in June, the five-page unanimous resolution carried a provision little publicised in the media: the lifting of a 14-year arms embargo on Iraq. The Security Council's decision to end military sanctions on Iraq has triggered a mad scramble by the world's weapons dealers to make a grab for a potentially new multi-million-dollar arms market in the already over-armed Middle East... -- http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0709-01.htm Small Arms? Big Problem by Frida Berrigan Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the specter of mobile chemical labs, dirty nuclear bombs, anthrax spores, sarin gas, and other weapons of mass murder has fueled fearful imaginations and launched countless anti-terrorism initiatives. While these fears are real, people throughout the world would be surprised to learn that the most deadly weapon of all is still legal, accessible and dirt cheap. The AK-47, the M-16 and other so-called small arms are responsible for half a million deaths each year. About 300,000 people- mostly civilians- are killed in wars, coups d'tat and other armed conflicts annually as the victims of small arms. Another 200,000 people are killed in homicides, suicides, unintentional shootings and shootings by police. Another 1.5 million are wounded. If we take into account their cumulative impact, small arms are truly weapons of mass destruction. They are also cheap, portable and easily concealed, making them ideal terrorist weapons. While small arms are deadly and dangerous, they are also profitable, which erects significant barriers to their control. According to data collected by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, more than $4 billion in small arms sales are made each year. The United States, responsible for 18% of that market share, has the dubious honor of being the largest exporter, with $741.4 million in sales in 2003. Not surprisingly, the U.S. purchased $602.5 million in small arms and munitions the same year, making it the largest importer as well. Profit notwithstanding, the failure of small arms producing states to curb and control small arms has a devastating impact on human rights, development and the war against terrorism. In Iraq, the prevalence of small arms has contributed to the marked increase in attacks on U.S. troops. According to journalist Evan Wright, author of Generation Kill, the Marine platoon he was embedded with in Iraq was shocked by amount of arms and ammunition that littered Iraq. In a recent article in the New York Times, Wright notes that at the time of the coalition invasion, Iraq had one of the largest conventional arms stockpiles in the world.includ[ing] three million tons of bombs and bullets; millions of AK-47's and other rifles, rocket launchers and mortar tubes; and thousands of more sophisticated arms like ground-to-air missiles.. As war approached, Iraqi commanders ordered these mountains of munitions to be dispersed across the country in thousands of small caches. If the platoon was stunned by the amount of weaponry they discovered; they were flabbergasted when ordered not to stop to destroy the stockpiles in the rush to Baghdad. As a result of these orders, by the time the Marines reached the capital, Iraqis bent on killing Americans had taken up the weapons they had passed along the way. Their experience is just one example of the dangers that result as the U.S. and other major powers continue to overlook the big problem of small arms. In Afghanistan, continued violence and instability can- at least in part- be attributed to the concentration of small arms in the hands of warlords and Mujahedeen. Many of these weapons were purchased with covert U.S. aid and given to anti-Communist fighters 25 years ago, a gruesome testimony to the durability of small arms and a powerful argument that destruction of weapons stockpiles be part of every peace agreement. Since the beginning of the war on terrorism, the United States has increased police and military aid to countries like Uzbekistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. But too often, the small arms and training provided by the United States have been turned against the civilian populations of those countries- used in human rights abuses, assassinations and state repression. In fact, according to Amnesty International, the demand for weapons has risen since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A correlation between the proliferation of small arms and the proliferation of human rights abuses is stark and out of control. The war on terrorism should have stopped arms falling into the wrong hands, but as Amnesty International's report Shattered Lives: The Case For Tough International Arms Control finds, U.S. and other Western suppliers have gone in the other direction, relaxing arms controls in order to arm
[pjnews] The Big Lie
http://snipurl.com/7p56 Conservatives Increasingly Unhappy With Bush http://snipurl.com/7pnw Congress, even though it is Republican-run, is showing an increasing willingness to stand up to the Bush administration. If the president is re-elected, it doesn't bode well for his second-term legislative agenda of permanent tax cuts and deep spending cuts... -- http://www.alternet.org/story/18765 The Big Lie By Nicholas von Hoffman, tomdispatch.com Posted May 23, 2004 The frightening shark swimming with toothy grin in a giant aquarium does not see the human faces looking in from the other side of the glass. The shark is in a world of its own, with its own reality. Like the shark, Americans don't see the people outside the glass. It is as though America is in a 3,000-mile-wide terrarium, an immense biosphere which has cut it off from the rest of the world and left it to pick its own way down the path of history. By the time the American army stepped into Iraq, the difference in world view between the United States and everybody else had grown to the size of the hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole. A fanciful explanation for the two realities is that the United States is the continent-wide set for a large scale re-enactment of the movie The Truman Show. The plot of that movie has the well-intentioned but naive hero go about his daily life without any suspicion that he is, in fact, in a gigantic soap opera. His hometown is actually the set for the TV show and from earliest childhood he has been manipulated and controlled by the producer and the director. The enthusiastic acceptance by the American multitudes of the Iraqi stuff-and-nonsense coming out of the White House would be understandable if we were all living on a stage set in a village called Freedom Island threatened by a town called Evil Axis. Americans believed, as they usually do when their government and their television tell them something, but the rest of the world laughed every time George Bush or Colin Powell or Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld thought up yet one more scary reason to invade Iraq. The ill-constructed, clumsy untruths were surprisingly crude for people who have had years to practice the craft of mass deception, and they had only to speak their latest falsehood to be cheered by their countrymen and disbelieved by non-Americans everywhere. It's not easy to pull off the Big Lie and George Bush failed; though, in mitigation, pulling off a bait-and-switch war demands skillful finagling and this one was complicated. There was the bait (terrorism), then the switch (weapons of mass destruction), then a switch again (kill the dictator), and yet again (regime change). A politician has to be an accomplished teller of tall tales and absurd fabrications to bring off such a demarché. Even the masters of mass prevarication occasionally fail. In September 1939, Adolf Hitler made the mistake of dressing up some nondescript clowns in Polish uniforms and having them attack the territory of the Third Reich. This was done to show an incredulous world that his invasion of Poland, which quickly followed his costume party on the border, was a justified counter thrust to unprovoked aggression. The world didn't believe him, but Hitler didn't care. At Obersalzberg, just before initiating the hell which was World War II, he had announced that, The . . . destruction of Poland begins Saturday early. I shall let a few companies in Polish uniform attack in Upper Silesia. . . . Whether the world believes it is quite indifferent. The world believes only in success. Hitler, the Biggest of Big Liars, had the brass and the disdain which George Bush, under his Texas cowpuncher veneer, does not have. This may be to his credit, but without them Iraq was guaranteed to be a bloody mess. If you are going to tell a Big Lie badly, you have to pull off the crime, you have to make it a success. George Bush didn't. The Big Lie must be simple and it must be repeated until it reverberates like a jack hammer digging up the street in front of where you live: inescapable sound. George Bush, either out of a fumbling honesty, inexperience, or incompetence, did not lie well. His labored and embarrassing build-up to the Iraqi invasion broke every rule for effective deception. Unlike a chef d'état who has the technique down pat, Bush made the amateur's mistake. He, his spokesmen and women, his spinners and weavers of untruth, his propagandists, all fell into the trap of answering back, elaborating, retracting, and adding on. Instead of the Big Lie, simple and pure, the official U. S. government story grew more ornate and complicated as the date Bush had set for the invasion came closer. Instead of one good reason to go to war, swarms of bad reasons were proffered, which gave skeptics in other countries material to pick his little white fables apart. A corollary to keeping things simple is to refrain from offering evidence. Where there is no evidence there
[pjnews] Anti-Gay Constitutional Amendment Fails
http://snipurl.com/7spk SENATE REPUBLICAN'S FAIL TO GET ANTI-GAY CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT Wednesday, July 14th 2004 WASHINGTON, DC--A proposed constitutional amendment died on a 48-yes, 50-no procedural vote today in the Senate. In a humiliating defeat for the right wing of the GOP and its social conservative allies, the original proposal was dropped yesterday when it became clear that they would not be able to muster even a simple majority, far less than the 67 votes needed for passage. Today's vote was even worse than it looked for the right wing as a number of Republicans said they would support the procedural vote but oppose the ammendment. In the end six Republican senators and one independent sided with all but five Democratic senators to vote no on the procedural vote. Two of the Democrats who didn't vote no were Sens. Kerry (D-MA) and Edwards (D-NC) who were out of Washington on the presidential campaign trail. The original wording of the amendment as put forward by Sen. Wayne Allard of Colorado, would have added these two sentences to the Constitution: Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman. Some GOP senators objected to the second sentence which they claimed was so vague that it could be interpreted as banning civil unions, which they supported. Others had states-rights issues with the federal intrusion into what has traditionally been an area under state jurisdiction. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), said The constitutional amendment we're debating today strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans...It usurps from the states a fundamental authority they have always possessed and imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them. Originally the Democrats had agreed to an up-or-down vote on the amendment if the Republicans in turn agreed not to change the proposed language. When the Republican leadership saw the size of their potential defeat, they tried to put forward alternate wording sponsored by Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) which they hoped would bring some of the defecting GOP senators on board. The Democrats opposed the move, and it was expected that today the leadership would fail to garner the 60 votes necessary to close debate and bring the amendment up for a vote. But nobody expected it would fail by such a large amount. The Republican leadership had hoped create and election-year issue and embarrass Democratic Presidential candidates Kerry and Edwards, by forcing them to vote against the amendment. However, due to the political infighting and the expected failure of the procedural vote, both candidates said they would not return to the senate for the debate, avoiding the Republican's trap. Moderate Republicans have seriously questioned the leadership's strategy saying that by putting such a divisive issue ahead of other important national matters, the party risks alienating moderates and independents. Much of the pressure for the amendment has come from social conservatives and religious groups within the GOP who see it as a test of President Bush's commitment to issues they consider important. However, those groups themselves have been surprised by the lack of enthusiasm shown by their own members and political analysts question whether they risk losing credibility by being seen to be placing so much importance into a cause while not even being able to rally their own base. - Gay Marriage Roll Call Vote http://snipurl.com/7spd from moveon.org: Yesterday, President Bush's effort to write divisiveness and hate into the Constitution went down in flames. Republicans needed 67 votes in the Senate to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment, but they got only 48 on yesterdays vote not even a simple majority. It's a huge victory. Despite the defeat in Congress, Republicans threaten now to make this an election year issue. Our response: Bring it on. Today, we're highlighting four great Democratic candidates who are running against some of the staunchest supporters of writing discrimination into the Constitution. If we all chip in a little to their campaigns, we can demonstrate that when you try to deny people their civil rights, you don't just lose a vote in Congress you lose your seat. While all four of our new featured candidates oppose the Marriage Amendment, they're also each good progressives on other issues as well. Each of these individuals has a compelling personal story and a record of leadership that inspired MoveOn members to nominate them. We believe it will also inspire their constituents to elect them this November. Each of these candidates also has the opportunity to knock off a
[pjnews] Condoleezza Needs to Call Anonymous
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/mcgovern.php?articleid=3015 Condoleezza Needs to Call Anonymous by Ray McGovern, 13 July 2004 In our various oral and written presentations on Iraq, my veteran intelligence officer colleagues and I took no delight in sharply criticizing what we perceived to be the corruption of intelligence analysis at CIA. Nothing would have pleased us more than to have been proven wrong. It turns out we did not know the half of it. Several of us have just spent a painful weekend digesting the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee on prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq. The corruption is far deeper than we suspected. The only silver lining is that corrupter-in-chief George Tenet is now gone. When the former CIA director departed, he left behind an agency on life support an institution staffed by sycophant managers and thoroughly demoralized analysts, who are embarrassed at their own naiveté in believing that the passage carved into the marble at the entrance to CIA Headquarters You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free held real meaning for their work. The Senate Committee report is meticulous. Its findings are a sharp blow to those of us who took pride in working in an agency where we could speak truth to power with career protection from retribution from the powerful, and with leaders who would face down those policymakers who tried to exert undue influence over our analysis. Enter Joe Centrifuge Although it was clear to us that much of the intelligence on Iraq had been cooked to the recipe of policy, not until the Senate report did we know that the skewing included outright lies. We had heard of Joe, the nuclear weapons analyst in CIA's Center for Weapons Intelligence and Arms Control, and it was abundantly clear that his agenda was to prove that the infamous aluminum tubes sought by Iraq were to be used for developing a nuclear weapon. We did not know that he and his CIA associates deliberately falsified the data including rotor testing ironically called spin tests. The Senate committee determined that Joe deliberately skewed data to fit preconceptions regarding an Iraqi nuclear threat. Who could have believed that about our intelligence community, that the system could be so dishonest? wondered the normally soft-spoken David Albright, a widely respected veteran expert on Iraq's work toward developing a nuclear weapon. I share his wonderment. I too am appalled and angry. You give 27 years of your professional life to an institution whose main mission to get at the truth is essential for orderly policy making, and then you find it has been prostituted. You realize that your former colleagues lacked the moral courage to rebuff efforts to enlist them as accomplices in deception. Deception that involved hoodwinking our elected representatives into giving their blessing to an ill-conceived, unnecessary war. Even Republican stalwart Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has conceded that, had Congress known before the vote for war what his committee has now discovered, I doubt if the votes would have been there. Catering to the Powers That Be It turns out that only one U.S. analyst had met with the Iraqi defector appropriately code-named Curveball the source of the scary tale about mobile biological weapons factories and that this analyst, in an e-mail to the deputy director of CIA's task force on weapons of mass destruction, raised strong doubt regarding Curveball's reliability before Colin Powell highlighted his claims at the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003. I almost became physically ill reading the cynical response from the deputy director of the task force: As I said last night, let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about. (Reading this brought to consciousness a painful flashback to early August 1964. We CIA analysts knew that reports of a second attack on U.S. destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf were spurious but were prevented from reporting that. The director of current intelligence explained to us condescendingly that President Johnson had decided to use the non-incident as a pretext to escalate the war and that we do not want to wear out our welcome at the White House. So this kind of politicization, though rare in the past, is not without precedent and not without similarly woeful consequences.) With respect to Iraq, George Tenet's rhetoric about truth and honesty in his valedictory last week has a distinctly Orwellian ring. Worse still, apparently Joe Centrifuge, the above-mentioned deputy director, and other co-conspirators will get off scot-free. Sen. Roberts says he thinks, It is very important that we quit looking in the rearview mirror and affixing blame and, you
[pjnews] Action: Stop the Genocide in Sudan
from TrueMajority.org : We Can Save 600,000 People If We Act Now Genocide is underway in Sudan. The contrast in our governments response to Sudan and Iraq is striking. Bush was willing to buck the United Nations and spend $200 billion to invade Iraq (most recently for humanitarian reasons). Now, for a few hundred million dollars and little risk to our armed forces, we really can stop a government from slaughtering a million of its own people. Instead, the Bush administration has ducked the issue by refusing to call it genocide. Why? Because the United States is party to a treaty that would force us to take strong action if they did. Now a bipartisan push is taking hold in Congress to call this genocide and get our government to act. The House resolution (H. Con. Res. 467) is moving quickly, and a vote may come as quickly as next week. In the Senate, Sen. Brownback (R-KS) and Sen. Corzine (D-NJ) have just introduced a resolution (S. Con. Res. 124) that would also call this genocide and require strong action. To send a message to your Senators and Representatives telling them to call the atrocities in Darfur genocide, click here: http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=184283l=742 WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR. Letters to the editor are another powerful way to influence your members of Congress. This feature uses state-of-the-art technology to make it really easy for you to submit a letter to the editor. Click here to give it a try: http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=184283l=743 Here is what's happening: Over the last several months, a government-backed Arab militia in Sudan called the Janjuweed has been attacking black Africans. The Janjuweed tactics are crude but effective. They enter a village and use terror to force everyone to leave their homes and crops. Entire populations have fled to distant camps in the middle of desolate areas. These desert camps are now surrounded and controlled by the Janjuweed, and anyone who tries to leave is raped or killed. Unarmed international aid workers are turned away. A total of 370,000 human beings are already dead or in the late stages of dying from starvation in these extermination camps. The death toll could reach 1 million within the next few months. Time is our worst enemy. Every day 1,000 people are dying in these camps. Currently, starvation is taking the weakest-70% of the dead are children five and under. As time goes on, the death toll will rise more quickly. The United States needs to ensure that food aid is brought to the people of Darfur with protection from an international military force. Congress has already allocated tens of millions of dollars for this mission and seems willing to allocate millions more if needed. The problem is that the Bush administration is unwilling to take the decisive action needed to make sure the food aid is safely delivered to those who need it most. Instead, they are calling on the corrupt Sudanese government to disarm their allies, the Janjuweed, and allow the food aid in. To pressure the Sudanese government, the Bush administration is talking about using sanctions, a process that will take months-long enough to kill everyone currently starving in the camps. That is why it is crucial that Congress speaks out now. To send a message to your Senators and Representatives telling them to call the atrocities in Darfur genocide, just click here: http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=184283l=742 Ben To learn more about what is happening in Darfur, you can check out our friends at Res Publica at http://www.darfurgenocide.org Calls for action from newspapers throughout the country have been compiled by the Center for American Progress at http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=184283l=744 Nicholas D. Kristof, columnist for the New York Times, has put together this slide show about his trip to Darfur: http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=184283l=745 Rep. Frank Wolfe (D-VA) recently visited Darfur and has created this report, complete with photos, of what he saw: http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=184283l=746 Letter to Senators/Representative: Dear Senators/Representative: Genocide is taking place in Sudan, and we must act to stop it. Aid agencies are routinely turned away from camps by the government-backed Janjuweed militia. We must act today to do everything we can to stop the killing of the people of Darfur. President Bush and Secretary Powell have been unwilling to call these atrocities genocide, but that is exactly what they are. Our nation is morally and legally bound to prevent genocide; that is why you must act. Please support the bipartisan resolutions moving through Congress that call the killing in Darfur genocide. Sincerely, (We'll put your name and address here.)
[pjnews] Bush fields softball questions from supporters
http://snipurl.com/7ukn A Chance to 'Ask the President' Bush uses folksy format to field friendly crowds' questions that are easier to answer than many. By Edwin Chen Times Staff Writer July 15, 2004 FOND DU LAC, Wis. The little boy so mumbled his words that the president could not make them out. But no matter. I think he said: 'Four more years,' a chuckling President Bush told an appreciative audience squeezed into a manufacturing warehouse, which was converted Wednesday into something akin to television stage set. Welcome to ask the president, a folksy format Bush is using as he intensifies his reelection bid. Ask the president events are nothing like the high-pressure, sometime contentious news conferences that Bush occasionally conducts at the White House. By contrast, Bush's aides try to ensure he will stand before a friendly audience at campaign events. Tickets to the event in Fond du Lac, attended by about 1,000 people, were handed out by the local Republican Party and the Bush campaign, said Paul Kiser, an area homebuilder and a campaign volunteer. Organizers of a Bush rally in Duluth, Minn., a day earlier had turned away Democrats and independents who acknowledged they were not sure they would vote for Bush, the Duluth News Tribune reported. As the sometimes jocular give-and-take showed here Wednesday, the ask the president format gives Bush an opportunity to respond to questions usually framed in a positive manner. Wondering if you can tell us all here the importance of the Patriot Act and what we can do to help get that renewed, one man asked, referring to the controversial anti-terrorism law passed after the 2001 terrorist attacks. As a compassionate conservative, I'd like to get your views and your vision on how to work with the social culture and lead that inner city into a brighter future, queried another. One woman asked: What can all of us here do to help you and [Vice President] Dick Cheney be sure to be reelected? Bush used the format from time to time as a presidential candidate in 2000, and his campaign resuscitated it in May. The event in Wisconsin came as Bush completed a two-day Midwestern swing that began in Michigan and Minnesota. He lost all three states four years ago. Each of Bush's three stops in Wisconsin on Wednesday were in counties that he carried handily and where his campaign hopes to generate greater turnout in November to carry the state. Today is more about get out the vote and motivating the base, said Nicolle Devenish, the reelection campaign's communications director. Bush began the day with a speech to invited guests at the Waukesha County fairgrounds outside Milwaukee, one of many Republican-leaning suburbs that also are crucial to Bush's chances of winning Wisconsin. From there, he rode a bus to Fond du Lac, stopping along the way in the town of West Bend to greet supporters and buy candy. Each outing was amply covered by the local news media. In Fond du Lac, the 80-minute ask the president gathering at the Mid-States Aluminum Corp. was something of a misnomer, because Bush did not begin taking questions until halfway through his allotted time. Bush, wearing a tie but no jacket, paced the stage as he defended his decision to wage war on Iraq and touted his domestic agenda. A man who sought suggestions on how he could support U.S. troops elicited a long response on America's post-World War II policies toward Japan and Germany. The president interrupted himself to quip, This is called a filibuster, before continuing his answer. Regardless of format, the essential theme of Bush's reelection bid remains unchanged: His tax cuts, he says, have revitalized the economy, while the war on terrorism has not only liberated 50 million Afghans and Iraqis, but has made America and the world safer. At an appearance late in the day in Green Bay, Bush made a dramatic entrance into the Veterans Memorial Complex, where an estimated 10,000 supporters were gathered. The president's bus pulled onto the floor of the arena as rock music blared. Moments earlier, several blocks away, Bush's bus was struck by an empty plastic water bottle hurled by a protester. It bounced off the vehicle. --- see also: http://lancasteronline.com/pages/news/local/6/7565 Bush quietly meets with Amish here; they offer their prayers
[pjnews] Robert Fisk on Iraqi Sovereignty, Martial Law and Continuing Violence
http://www.jordantimes.com/Thu/opinion/opinion2.htm After more than 14 months in Iraq, the US military cannot effectively counter either local resistance groups or foreign Islamists operating there http://snipurl.com/7vk5 Once united in their opposition to the US-led occupation authority, signs of division are emerging among the ranks of the Iraqi resistance, as nationalist militants grow resentful of the power and ruthlessness of Islamic extremists. But the jihadist component of the insurgency - Iraqis and other Arabs - appears as resolute as ever. Furthermore, only the withdrawal of foreign forces and the holding of full elections will help substantially reduce the level of violence, analysts say. http://snipurl.com/7vk7 Robert Fisk On Sovereignty, Martial Law, and Continuing Violence in the New Iraq (speaking with Amy Goodman on Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now!) RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: The new Iraq is in chaos. Since the so-called transfer of sovereignty on June 28th, over 30 people have been killed. This week alone, 22 people died in two car bombs in Baghdad. Now, the unelected Interim Prime Minister Allawi says he is going to create a new secret police force raising alarms among Iraqis who had suffered at the hands of Saddam Hussein's secret police. The violence is continuing unabated despite the comments from the U.S. and its allies in the invasion. After Thursday's recent bombing, the London Independent's Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk writes: At the al-Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad yesterday morning, there was blood on the walls, blood on the floor, blood on the doctors, blood on the stretchers. In the dangerous oven of Baghdad, 10 more lives had just ended. So what was it Tony Blair said in the Commons yesterday afternoon? We are not killing civilians in Iraq; terrorists are killing civilians in Iraq. So that's all right then. Question: Are Baghdad and London on the same planet? We go now to Baghdad to speak with Robert Fisk about the continuing violence in Iraq, house raids and phone tapping, and the unelected prime minister Iyad Allawi. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Robert. ROBERT FISK: Thank you. AMY GOODMAN: Well, we have just been spending the last half hour talking about Fox News coverage of Iraq and other issues involving the Bush administration. But we'd like to turn to you now to talk about what is happening on the ground. ROBERT FISK: Well, one thing that is happening on the ground is that the reporting of Iraq has reached a point where hardly any journalists leave Baghdad and some of them don't even leave their hotels. One of the reasons why the Bush administration is getting away with so much at the moment is that the degree of anarchy, the sheer size of the area of Iraq outside government or American control is being hidden from ordinary people. For example, in the town of Baquba, there are now hundreds of armed men. In Ramadi and Fallujah, they're virtually people's republics in which even the Americans cannot move freely. We do not realize, though we should, the degree to which the country of Iraq is outside the control of the new American-established government of Ayad Allawi. You know, we promised the people here democracy and we're giving them now martial law, telephone tapping, mail opening, special raids on houses, forget about habeas corpus. The big problem at the moment is that the degree of violence across the country is not getting across. For example, when 10 people were killed and 33 wounded by a suicide bomber in the center of Baghdad, it went around the world as headlines. When 10 people were killed and 33 wounded in Kirkuk, we didn't hear about it. And this is a major problem. We now find ourselves restricted by the danger. Now I'm still able to move around Baghdad and I can still travel outside Baghdad. But only with days of preparation. And so what we're doing, in effect, is that we're being circumscribed in our movements, which, of course, seeks the authorities because we can't report dozens of deaths going on elsewhere in the country. And at the same time, the insurgency continues. Allawi who, of course, was as C.I.A. Operative and is now the interim, quote Prime Minister, unquote, made a statement in the last 24 hours saying it's going to get worse. So, we're still back in the same old Alice in Wonderland world. Everything is getting better, democracy is coming and everything is getting worse. AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Fisk in Baghdad. Can you talk about the Al Yarmuk hospital and the time you spent there and what you saw. ROBERT FISK: Well, when I got there, as always after major bombings and atrocities, there was chaos, there were a large number of people believing that their families may have been wounded or killed. Of course, any family who knew that their loved ones were queuing at the gate at that moment to enter the Iraqi government compound naturally assumed the worst and rushed to the hospital.
[pjnews] Coalition Unravels, Saddam Lite Takes Command
interesting article... http://www.co-intelligence.org/polarizationDynamics.html Exploring the Dynamics of Polarization http://snipurl.com/7wie 900th GI Dies Since War Began in Iraq - http://snipurl.com/7wh6 THE COALITION UNRAVELS, SADDAM HUSSEIN LITE TAKES COMMAND 19 July 2004 by Phyllis Bennis and Michael Sochynsky, Institute for Policy Studies While U.S. media attention has decreased significantly in the weeks since the June 28 so-called hand-over of sovereignty, the U.S. occupation remains very much in place, and the level of violence in Iraq has remained constant. Although U.S. casualties remain high (36 GIs dead as of July 17, compared to 42 for all of June) resistance forces have shifted much of their attacks to Iraqi military and police institutions. Assassinations are on the rise, with Iraqi interim government ministers and police officials the primary targets of shootings and car-bombs. However, particularly with car-bombs, indiscriminate casualties are escalating, with increased deaths and injuries to many Iraqi civilians, including children, with no connection to the interim Iraqi government or to the U.S. occupation. The election-driven U.S. goal of Iraqization of the casualties is well underway, helping to divert public opinion from the continuing crisis on the ground in Iraq, the huge numbers of Iraqi casualties, and the diminishing levels of international support. The coalition, always more symbolically than militarily significant, is largely unraveling. The impact is felt more at the political than military level, with the Bush administration's claim that it is leading an international coalition in Iraq increasingly indefensible. The unraveling began with the withdrawal of Spain's 1300 troops after the defeat of the Bush-backing Aznar government. Spain's pull-out led Honduras and the Dominican Republic to recall their small contingents soon after. The latest premature withdrawal, that of the entire Philippines contingent to prevent the execution of a captured Filipino contract worker, is only the most visible. Hostage-taking and execution of nationals of countries with military troops in Iraq has continued, with the seizures of citizens of Japan, Poland, Bulgaria, South Korea, the Philippines and the U.S. The effect has been to increase political pressure on governments to end their military's unpopular deployments. Earlier this month Norway pulled out 140 of its 155 troops. New Zealand and Thailand have both announced plans to pull out their troops by September. The Netherlands and Poland will reportedly leave before the middle of next year. While eastern European and former Soviet countries remain the most committed to the U.S. war, even Estonia has announced pull-out plans. Other countries have reduced their already tiny contingents; Singapore left only 33 soldiers in Iraq out of 191, and Moldova, already the smallest group with 42 soldiers, is now down to 12. For the first time, a majority of Americans believe the war was wrong, that the U.S. should have stayed out - now 51%, up from 46% in June. In a new New York Times/CBS poll, public anger is rising with the continuing casualties among U.S. soldiers in Iraq, with 62% saying they believed the war was not worth the loss of American lives. Striking another blow against the Bush administration's only remaining claim of justification for the war, interim Iraqi prime minister Allawi has made clear as he consolidates his claim on partial authority, that democracy is not on his agenda. Whether he will go down in history as Saddam Hussein lite remains uncertain, but what is clear is that his rule is already characterized by the ruling style of the Ba'athist regime in which he got his start as an intelligence official, combining widescale repression with selective co-optation. Allawi's own familiarity with brutal rule emerged on July 17th, when an article in the Sydney Morning Herald documented Allawi having shot dead six hand-cuffed and bound suspected insurgents in cold blood in the courtyard of a Baghdad police station, just days before the U.S. occupation handed over sovereignty to him. Thus Allawi's July 7th announcement of emergency powers, authorizing his government to carry out most of the unpopular moves of the official U.S. occupation including curfews, closures, random searches, and more, gives a better indication of his intentions than does all the obeisance to democracy of the double Pauls [Bremer and Wolfowitz]. And, like its hands-off position regarding the repressive practices of the earlier Ba'athist regime under Saddam Hussein, the U.S. appears to think it's fine that repression and co-optation are the hallmarks of occupied sovereign Iraq today. (The announcement by Iraq's human rights minister that he will investigate the Allawi murders must be viewed with significant skepticism.) The co-optation side is seen in the effort to divide the resistance between the largely foreign Islamist forces and the
[pjnews] 9/11 Commission Takes on Patriot Act, Secrecy
http://snipurl.com/7yke 9/11 Commission Report Takes on Patriot Act, Government Secrecy; ACLU Outlines Civil Liberties Problems With Cabinet-Level Spymaster July 22, 2004 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WASHINGTON - The official 9/11 Commission report, released today, takes aim at the USA Patriot Act and the excessive amount of official secrecy in the Bush administration. Regarding civil liberties, the 9/11 Commission report essentially says that the Justice Department and White House have not made a compelling case for either the administrations obsession with secrecy or its Patriot Act, said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director. This bipartisan report should serve as a wake-up call for Congress that it must maintain the sunsets in the Patriot Act. As the report states on page 394, The burden of proof for retaining a particular governmental power should be on the executive, to explain (a) that the power actually materially enhances security and (b) that there is adequate supervision of the executives use of the powers to ensure protection of civil liberties. If the power is granted, there must be adequate guidelines and oversight to properly confine its use. The long-awaited report, which contains the official findings of the independent commission investigating the 9/11 terrorism attacks, contains significant recommendations germane to the debate over civil liberties that has raged for more than two-and-a-half years now. The report echoes criticisms by the ACLU and others that the Justice Department has so far failed to demonstrate why the expanded surveillance and investigative powers in the Patriot Act are needed to fight terrorism. The commissions findings, the ACLU said, strongly confirm the need to maintain the Patriot Act sunsets. The sunset provisions - which apply to some of the Patriot Acts most controversial provisions - would require Congress to reconsider about a tenth of the law in December 2005. Provisions that sunset include the infamous library records provision, which reduces judicial review when counter-intelligence agents seek secret court orders for the production of a wide array of personal information, including library, business, genetic, medical and even gun purchase records. Notably, the commission does not recommend that any sunseted provisions should be made permanent. In addition, the commissions report contains a list of 10 separate missed operational opportunities to foil the attacks. While the report stops short of calling the attacks preventable, it clearly shows that the intelligence and law enforcement communities were not using their existing counter-terrorism powers to their fullest potential. The administration has yet to explain why it didnt use its already expansive power to the fullest before 9/11, said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. The commissions report suggests that the White House claim that the worst parts of the Patriot Act are needed to stop terrorism is dubious, to say the least. The report also cites both excessive government secrecy and overclassification as threats to open government and, more notably, as threats to national security. The ACLU pointed to the finding as evidence that the government should stop stonewalling the series of Freedom of Information Act requests submitted by the ACLU and other civil liberties groups on the Patriot Act, the Abu Ghraib scandal and other matters of public interest. Characterizing the current Congressional intelligence watchdog system as dysfunctional, the commissions strongest recommendation is the need for more aggressive Congressional oversight of the intelligence community, including making the intelligence budget public. The ACLU applauded the move but emphasized that the structure of the committee would be less important than whether its operation was in turn open to public scrutiny. As the report stated: Secrecy stifles oversight, accountability and information sharing. Unfortunately, all the current organizational incentives encourage over-classification. This balance should change; and as a start, open information should be provided about the overall size of agency intelligence budgets. Contrary to earlier reports, the commission explicitly rejects - in part, for civil liberties reasons - the creation of a domestic intelligence agency modeled after Britains MI-5. The ACLU, a critic of any domestic intelligence activity that is not linked to law enforcement, applauded the move. Unfortunately, there are some recommendations that raise civil liberties concerns; two of the most salient are calls for the backdoor creation of national ID cards in the form of a standardized drivers licenses and a cabinet-level intelligence czar. A Senate-confirmed intelligence director sitting in the White House would be in the hip pocket of the president, Romero added. The ACLU questioned whether pitting the FBIs culture of case-oriented
[pjnews] Trouble Ahead for Bush from 9/11 Panel
http://snipurl.com/7zwq NYT: Pushed by U.S., Greece to Allow Troops at Olympics http://snipurl.com/7v8g Tony Blair admits Iraq graves claim 'untrue' http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0724-05.htm Published on Saturday, July 24, 2004 by the Guardian/UK Trouble Ahead for Bush from 9/11 Panel Commission plans to campaign, not disband by Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington Members of the commission investigating the September 11 terror attacks have injected a potentially unsettling element into President George Bush's re-election campaign by deciding not to disband. Although the bipartisan commission scrupulously avoided apportioning blame to either the Clinton or Bush administrations, the decision ensures that 9/11 and Iraq will remain at the forefront of the election campaign. The commission's 10 members said they planned to team up in pairs - one Democrat and one Republican - to campaign throughout the US for the adoption of their 41 recommendations to make the country safer. All 10 of us have decided to do everything we can, whether it's testimony or lobbying or speaking or whatever's necessary, to let the American people know about these recommendations - know how important they are, our belief that they can save lives, Thomas Kean, the commission's chair, told reporters on Thursday. Jamie Gorelick, who served in the Clinton administration, made the point even plainer. Everyone who is running for office can be asked: Do you support these recommendations? The strategy would mark the start of a new chapter in the life of a commission which has grown in credibility over the last 20 months. It has also accumulated moral force, thanks in large measure to the support of victims' families. Advocates for the families said they would also press for the adoption of the commission's recommendations. That could prove an embarrassment to the Bush administration, whose officials have responded cautiously to the commission's call for a sweeping overhaul of the intelligence services. The Democratic challenger, John Kerry, embraced the recommendations and said he would convene an emergency summit on security if he is elected in November. The contrast could spell trouble for Mr Bush, who has made his handling of terrorism the centerpiece of his campaign and has insisted that he fully understood the threat. This is going to underscore the sense that we really have not been prepared. Everyone on the commission seems to say that we are safer, but not safe, said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster. A poll by Mr Hart and a Republican pollster in the Wall Street Journal yesterday suggested that the Republicans' traditional supremacy on national security issues has fallen sharply. Only 8% had confidence in the Republican administration's handling of Iraq, down from 27% last January. The Bush administration's immediate response to the commission's call for sweeping changes to the government's intelligence agencies was cool. People should recognize that we're talking about pretty fundamental changes here, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told reporters. It only makes sense to try and understand the implications of them before you rush headlong one way. Mr Kerry has already endorsed one of the commission's central suggestions - the creation of an intelligence tsar - an idea that met little enthusiasm from the White House when it first surfaced. However, Mr Kerry's attempts to put himself on the side of the commission were pounced on almost immediately by the Bush re-election campaign, accusing the Democratic challenger of attempting to politicize the commission report.
[pjnews] Honorable Commission, Toothless Report
see also: http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/040715/w071572.html U.S. House wants aid cut to countries that hand Americans to war crime courts --- http://snipurl.com/80nc New York Times July 25, 2004 Honorable Commission, Toothless Report By RICHARD A. CLARKE, OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR mericans owe the 9/11 commission a deep debt for its extensive exposition of the facts surrounding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Yet, because the commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the public to draw many conclusions. Among the obvious truths that were documented but unarticulated were the facts that the Bush administration did little on terrorism before 9/11, and that by invading Iraq the administration has left us less safe as a nation. (Fortunately, opinion polls show that the majority of Americans have already come to these conclusions on their own. ) What the commissioners did clearly state was that Iraq had no collaborative relationship with Al Qaeda and no hand in 9/11. They also disclosed that Iran provided support to Al Qaeda, including to some 9/11 hijackers. These two facts may cause many people to conclude that the Bush administration focused on the wrong country. They would be right to think that. So what now? News coverage of the commission's recommendations has focused on the organizational improvements: a new cabinet-level national intelligence director and a new National Counterterrorism Center to ensure that our 15 or so intelligence agencies play well together. Both are good ideas, but they are purely incremental. Had these changes been made six years ago, they would not have significantly altered the way we dealt with Al Qaeda; they certainly would not have prevented 9/11. Putting these recommendations in place will marginally improve our ability to crush the new, decentralized Al Qaeda, but there are other changes that would help more. First, we need not only a more powerful person at the top of the intelligence community, but also more capable people throughout the agencies - especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. In other branches of the government, employees can and do join on as mid- and senior-level managers after beginning their careers and gaining experience elsewhere. But at the F.B.I. and C.I.A., the key posts are held almost exclusively by those who joined young and worked their way up. This has created uniformity, insularity, risk-aversion, torpidity and often mediocrity. The only way to infuse these key agencies with creative new blood is to overhaul their hiring and promotion practices to attract workers who don't suffer the failures of imagination that the 9/11 commissioners repeatedly blame for past failures. Second, in addition to separating the job of C.I.A. director from the overall head of American intelligence, we must also place the C.I.A.'s analysts in an agency that is independent from the one that collects the intelligence. This is the only way to avoid the groupthink that hampered the agency's ability to report accurately on Iraq. It is no accident that the only intelligence agency that got it right on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department - a small, elite group of analysts encouraged to be independent thinkers rather than spies or policy makers. Analysts aren't the only ones who should be reconstituted in small, elite groups. Either the C.I.A. or the military must create a larger and more capable commando force for covert antiterrorism work, along with a network of agents and front companies working under nonofficial cover'' - that is, without diplomatic protection - to support the commandos. Even more important than any bureaucratic suggestions is the report's cogent discussion of who the enemy is and what strategies we need in the fight. The commission properly identified the threat not as terrorism (which is a tactic, not an enemy), but as Islamic jihadism, which must be defeated in a battle of ideas as well as in armed conflict. We need to expose the Islamic world to values that are more attractive than those of the jihadists. This means aiding economic development and political openness in Muslim countries, and efforts to stabilize places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Restarting the Israel-Palestinian peace process is also vital. Also, we can't do this alone. In addition to hearts and minds television and radio programming by the American government, we would be greatly helped by a pan-Islamic council of respected spiritual and secular leaders to coordinate (without United States involvement) the Islamic world's own ideological effort against the new Al Qaeda. Unfortunately, because of America's low standing in the Islamic world, we are now at a great disadvantage in the battle of ideas. This is primarily because of the unnecessary and
[pjnews] 1/2 Wiring the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy
http://snipurl.com/81h9 Wiring the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy By MATT BAI July 25, 2004 - New York Times Andy Rappaport made his millions as a venture capitalist,searching out what he calls ''ideas that change the world.'' About six years ago, for instance, when most everyone else in the high-tech industry thought wireless communication was going to depend on new, exotic semiconductors, Rappaport threw $2.5 million into a start-up called Atheros Communications, whose founders were focusing instead on building low-cost radios using common chip technology. It was a smart move. When the company went public last February, the initial investment by Rappaport and his partners was worth more than $60 million. Rappaport is also, increasingly, an avid investor in liberal causes, and in this context he might be called a political venture capitalist. Rappaport and his wife, Deborah, whose philanthropic activities in recent years include several million dollars in donations to art museums and after-school music programs, have committed at least $5 million this year -- so far -- to support a bevy of fledgling liberal groups, like Music for America and Punkvoter.com, aimed at mobilizing younger voters. I met Rappaport, who is 46, in early June in his firm's offices on Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley's answer to Wall Street. As we talked in a plush conference room flanked by a sunlit terrace on one side and a pool table on the other, events in the world outside seemed to be tilting strongly in the Democrats' favor. Public support for President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq was dropping precipitously. The price of oil had shot up to $42 a barrel. Only hours earlier, voters in South Dakota sent a Democratic woman, Stephanie Herseth, to the U.S. House in a special election -- a race widely viewed as a potential harbinger for November. But if all of this made John Kerry a good bet to become the next president, it did nothing, in Rappaport's view, to solve the Democrats' underlying problems. When I asked if he was skeptical about the direction of the party, he smiled, then said dryly, ''If you've been able to discern a direction on which to be skeptical or optimistic, then you're doing pretty well.'' In fact, Rappaport was surprisingly downcast about the party's prospects, which, he said, would not be improved simply by winning back the White House. Though he sat and thought about it, he said he was unable to name a single Democratic leader in the years since Bill Clinton left Washington who he thought was articulating a compelling new direction for the party. ''There is a growing realization among people who take very seriously the importance of progressive politics that the Democratic Party has kind of failed to create a vision for the country that is strongly resonant,'' he said. ''And our numbers'' -- meaning Democrats as a whole -- ''are decreasing. Our political power has been diminishing, and it's become common knowledge that the conservative movement has established a very strong, long-term foundation, whereas we've basically allowed our foundation, if not to crumble, to at least fall into a state of disrepair. So there are a lot of people thinking, What can we do about this?'' Actually, Rappaport says he may be on to an answer. Last summer, he got a call from Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, a fund-raising and advocacy group in Washington. Would Rappaport mind sitting down for a confidential meeting with a veteran Democratic operative named Rob Stein? Sure, Rappaport replied. What Stein showed him when they met was a PowerPoint presentation that laid out step by step, in a series of diagrams a ninth-grader could understand, how conservatives, over a period of 30 years, had managed to build a ''message machine'' that today spends more than $300 million annually to promote its agenda. Rappaport was blown away by the half-hour-long presentation. ''Man,'' he said, ''that's all it took to buy the country?'' Stein and Rosenberg weren't asking Rappaport for money -- at least not yet. They wanted Democrats to know what they were up against, and they wanted them to stop thinking about politics only as a succession of elections. If Democrats were going to survive, Stein and Rosenberg explained, men like Rappaport were going to have to start making long-term investments in their political ideas, just as they did in their business ventures. The era of the all-powerful party was coming to an end, and political innovation, like technological innovation, would come from private-sector pioneers who were willing to take risks. For Rappaport -- who, like other Democratic donors, had grown increasingly doubtful that his donations to the party were being well spent -- Stein's pitch came as something of a revelation. This was a new way to look at progressive politics (politicians who 10 years ago called themselves liberals now prefer the less-demonized label ''progressive''), and it was an approach
[pjnews] The west is mired in a losing battle
http://snipurl.com/81h1 Abducted, beaten and sold into prostitution: two women's story from an Iraq in turmoil Financial Times-UK 22 July 2004 The west is mired in a losing battle By Anthony Cordesman The time has come to take a cold, hard look at whether the war on terrorism is being lost. There is no evidence of a reduction in the level of terrorist activity or that any action by any country has resulted in a net fall in the number of terrorists. By the time of the September 11 attacks in 2001, some 70,000-100,000 young men had been through some form of Islamist training camp since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda had affiliates or some kind of tie to movements in over 60 countries. Certainly, some of al-Qaeda's leaders and regular fighters have been killed or captured in fighting since then. Nothing suggests, however, that Islamic extremism and terrorism have been eliminated in a single country - on the contrary, new leaders and fight?ers have emerged. The International Institute of Strategic Studies recently estimated that alQaeda and its affiliates are now 18,000 strong, many joining as a result of the Afghan and Iraq conflicts. If anything, the war on terrorism has intensified in other areas. Last month, al-Qaeda carried out some of its most successful post-September 11, 2001 attacks in Saudi Arabia, striking for the second time in a month at a soft target in Saudi Arabia's petroleum industry, killing Americans, other foreigners and Saudis. However, the target was not the Saudi petroleum industry - not a barrel of export capacity was lost. It was instead the willingness of foreigners to stay in the country and contribute to the economic underpinnings of the kingdom and its ability to attract the investment it needs for reform. The success of al-Qaeda's attacks lies partly in US reaction - Washington's initial response was not to fight back but, rather, to panic. For the second time in a month it was to urge all Americans to leave the country. Washington has not called for any specific new Saudi security efforts; nor has it offered major aid for counterterrorism efforts or new measures to help US industry and workers in the kingdom. At a time of record oil prices and a crisis in world oil supply, the Bush administration seems to have no concrete plans to fight the war on terrorism in a country whose oil production and exports are critical to the US and global economy. The problem is not simply in Saudi Arabia. Every southern Gulf country has its own Islamist extremist cells. If Saudi Arabia proves vulnerable, they are next. Yet, the Bush administration has no publicly announced plans to deal with this threat in a region with 60 per cent of the world's proved oil reserves. It is all very well to talk about a global war on terrorism. To win it, however, you have to fight it. Afghanistan meanwhile has almost become the forgotten war and it is not one the US is winning. Since the fall of the Taliban, the US has failed dismally to secure the country and carry out the nation building that could bring true victory. The dispersal of al-Qaeda and Taliban elements has destabilised western Pakistan, and the resulting struggle has strengthened Islamists throughout the country and created a new regional threat. Instead of providing the aid and economic support necessary to fight it, US strategy has been to try to shift the burden to Nato allies. All the while, Iraq is growing more violent - the more extreme attacks are linked to groups with ties to al-Qaeda. There is still no meaningful evidence that Iraq was a centre of terrorism or had strong ties to al-Qaeda before the US invaded. Once again, the US failed to secure the country after a military victory and waited until an insurgency began before taking significant steps towards nation building. The result is that the US has wasted more than a year before transferring power and creating effective plans for Iraqi security forces, and has spent only $410m in aid funds in fiscal 2004, of $18.41m earmarked, to win hearts and minds. The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have a military dimension, but the primary struggle is political, ideological and economic. The US cannot win it by force or on the cheap; it can only win by strengthening local allies and reformers, not trying to impose its own political values or security concerns. Washington needs to take on fully the security and nation-building missions in Afghanistan and add a big aid dimension to its efforts in Pakistan. It needs to understand that, unless US involvement in Iraq is transformed into a sustained effort to help Iraqis rebuild on their terms, with years of military and economic aid, the net result will be an Iraq that is a centre of terrorism. As long as popular anger at the US in the Islamic world is shaped by perceptions that America is too close to Israel to move forward on the Arab-Israeli peace process, the war on terror cannot be won. Finally, the
[pjnews] Keeping America safe from foreign writers
So far two U.S servicemen have arrived in Canada and have applied for refugee status. The expectation is that there will be more. For more info, see this primer from the Canadian Quakers: http://cfsc.quaker.ca/statements/co-05-2004.pdf Briefing Paper for Quaker Meetings on soldiers from the USA coming to Canada Websites for the two young men who have deserted are at: http://jeremyhinzman.net/ http://brandonhughey.org/ A Globe and Mail story: http://www.refusingtokill.net/USGulfWar2/soldierwhorefusetofight.htm International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/529086.html 13 July 2004 Keeping America safe from foreign writers By Elena Lappin Two months ago, I traveled from London to Los Angeles on assignment for a British paper, The Guardian, believing that as a British citizen I did not require a visa. I was wrong: as a journalist, even from a country that has a visa waiver agreement with the United States, I should have applied for a so-called I (for information) visa. Because I had not, I was interrogated for four hours, body-searched, fingerprinted, photographed, handcuffed and forced to spend the night in a cell in a detention facility in central Los Angeles, and another day as a detainee at the airport before flying back to London. My humiliating and physically very uncomfortable detention lasted 26 hours. I've since learned that mine was not an isolated case: Since March 2003, when the Department of Homeland Security became responsible for immigration and border patrol, 13 foreign journalists were detained and deported in a similar manner in that year, all but one at the Los Angeles airport. The visa requirement itself and the treatment of journalists by American authorities are deemed untenable by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and by Reporters Without Borders. Both organizations have sent letters of protest to Tom Ridge, who heads the Department of Homeland Security, as well as to Secretary of State Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Possibly as a result of this concentrated action, Robert Bonner, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, recently announced that journalists arriving without an I visa may be allowed a one-time entry but should be advised that they must apply for it for any future journeys. We are an open society, Bonner declared, and we want people to feel welcome here. This claim could be disputed by American businesses, which have lost $30.7 billion in the last two years because of visa delays and denials for their foreign partners and employees, according to a survey sponsored by eight business organizations. With or without the special visas, journalists are now scrutinized by the Department of Homeland Security, which questioned me in detail in Los Angeles, and by the State Department, which - when I reapplied to travel back to the United States - asked me whom I was going to interview in the United States, what the nature of my article was and even what fee I would be paid. There is a turf war between the two departments, usually won by Homeland Security. Even with a visa, one can be turned back at any port of entry. American journalists working abroad, especially in free countries, are not accustomed to monitoring of this kind. By requiring foreign journalists to obtain special visas, the United States has aligned itself with the likes of Iran, North Korea and Cuba, places where reporters are treated as dangerous subversives and disseminators of uncomfortable truths. In June 2003, for example, the State Department cabled all its diplomatic and consular posts, urging them to pay attention to an increasing number of journalists being denied entry. Aliens coming to practice journalism are not eligible on the visa waiver program or a business visa, it explained. Journalists who attempt to do so are subject to removal. Ostensibly, this information is meant to apprise visa applicants of the rules of entry and spare them later distress. Still, the approach seems that of a police state with a repressive ideological agenda. But in truth, journalists and writers are not being singled out for their political views. Take the case of the British novelist Ian McEwan. Laura Bush admires his books so much that he was invited to a lunch she had with Prime Minister Tony Blair at No. 10 Downing Street in the fall of last year. Several months later, when McEwan traveled to the United States via Canada to address an audience of 2,500 in Seattle, he was refused entry by American immigration officials at the Vancouver airport. (Their explanation was that his $5,000 honorarium was too high for him to qualify for the visa waiver program.) The 36-hour crisis - which would have resulted in his detention had it occurred on American instead of Canadian soil - was finally resolved with the help of diplomats, Congress members, journalists and lawyers. We don't want to let you in, we don't think you should come in, McEwan
[pjnews] Fear of fraud in elections
http://snipurl.com/6log Sibel Edmonds: The puzzling 9/11 report http://snipurl.com/82f7 Failures of the Sept. 11 Commission http://snipurl.com/82f9 Questions Persist Despite 9/11 Investigations Among them: Who financed the attacks? Were terrorist cells in the U.S. involved? The New York Times 27 July 2004 Fear of fraud By Paul Krugman It's election night, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger's campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software. When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records. This isn't a paranoid fantasy. It's a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, Calif., reported by Andrew Gumbel of the British newspaper The Independent. Mr. Gumbel's full-length report, printed in Los Angeles City Beat, makes hair-raising reading not just because it reinforces concerns about touch-screen voting, but also because it shows how easily officials can stonewall after a suspect election. Some states, worried about the potential for abuse with voting machines that leave no paper trail, have banned their use this November. But Florida, which may well decide the presidential race, is not among those states, and last month state officials rejected a request to allow independent audits of the machines' integrity. A spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush accused those seeking audits of trying to undermine voters' confidence, and declared, The governor has every confidence in the Department of State and the Division of Elections. Should the public share that confidence? Consider the felon list. Florida law denies the vote to convicted felons. In 2000 the state hired a firm to purge supposed felons from the list of registered voters; these voters were turned away from the polls. After the election, determined by 537 votes, it became clear that thousands of people had been wrongly disenfranchised. Since those misidentified as felons were disproportionately Democratic-leaning African-Americans, these errors may have put George W. Bush in the White House. This year, Florida again hired a private company - Accenture, which recently got a homeland security contract worth up to $10 billion - to prepare a felon list. Remembering 2000, journalists sought copies. State officials stonewalled, but a judge eventually ordered the list released. The Miami Herald quickly discovered that 2,100 citizens who had been granted clemency, restoring their voting rights, were nonetheless on the banned-voter list. Then The Sarasota Herald-Tribune discovered that only 61 of more than 47,000 supposed felons were Hispanic. So the list would have wrongly disenfranchised many legitimate African-American voters, while wrongly enfranchising many Hispanic felons. It escaped nobody's attention that in Florida, Hispanic voters tend to support Republicans. After first denying any systematic problem, state officials declared it an innocent mistake. They told Accenture to match a list of registered voters to a list of felons, flagging anyone whose name, date of birth and race was the same on both lists. They didn't realize, they said, that this would automatically miss felons who identified themselves as Hispanic because that category exists on voter rolls but not in state criminal records. But employees of a company that prepared earlier felon lists say that they repeatedly warned state election officials about that very problem. Let's not be coy. Jeb Bush says he won't allow an independent examination of voting machines because he has every confidence in his handpicked election officials. Yet those officials have a history of slipshod performance on other matters related to voting and somehow their errors always end up favoring Republicans. Why should anyone trust their verdict on the integrity of voting machines, when another convenient mistake could deliver a Republican victory in a high-stakes national election? This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Think about what a tainted election would do to America's sense of itself, and its role in the world. In the face of official stonewalling, doubters probably wouldn't be able to prove one way or the other whether the vote count was distorted - but if the result looked suspicious, most of the world and many Americans would believe the worst. I'll write soon about what can be done in the few weeks that remain, but here's a first step: if Governor Bush cares at all about the future of the nation, as well as his family's political fortunes, he will allow that independent audit.
[pjnews] Whistle-blowing a factor in F.B.I. firing
http://snipurl.com/849p Filmmaker Michael Moore to take his cameras to Florida on Election Day - The New York Times 29 July 2004 Whistle-Blowing Said to Be Factor in an F.B.I. Firing By ERIC LICHTBLAU WASHINGTON, July 28 - A classified Justice Department investigation has concluded that a former F.B.I. translator at the center of a growing controversy was dismissed in part because she accused the bureau of ineptitude, and it found that the F.B.I. did not aggressively investigate her claims of espionage against a co-worker. The Justice Department's inspector general concluded that the allegations by the translator, Sibel Edmonds, were at least a contributing factor in why the F.B.I. terminated her services, and the F.B.I. is considering disciplinary action against some employees as a result, Robert S. Mueller III, director of the bureau, said in a letter last week to lawmakers. A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times. Ms. Edmonds worked as a contract linguist for the F.B.I. for about six months, translating material in Turkish, Persian and Azerbaijani. She was dismissed in 2002 after she complained repeatedly that bureau linguists had produced slipshod and incomplete translations of important terrorism intelligence before and after the Sept. 11 attacks. She also accused a fellow Turkish linguist in the bureau's Washington field office of blocking the translation of material involving acquaintances who had come under F.B.I. suspicion and said the bureau had allowed diplomatic sensitivities with other nations to impede the translation of important terrorism intelligence. The Edmonds case has proved to be a growing concern to the F.B.I. because it touches on three potential vulnerabilities for the bureau: its ability to translate sensitive counterterrorism material, its treatment of internal whistle-blowers, and its classification of sensitive material that critics say could be embarrassing to the bureau. The Justice Department has imposed an unusually broad veil of secrecy on the Edmonds case, declaring details of her case to be a matter of state secrets. The department has blocked her from testifying in a lawsuit brought by families of Sept. 11 victims, it has retroactively classified briefings Congressional officials were given in 2002, and it has classified the inspector general's entire report on its investigation into her case. As a result, groups promoting government openness have accused the Justice Department of abusing the federal procedures in place for classifying sensitive material. Mr. Mueller's letter, sent July 21 to leading members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, offered a rare glimpse inside the F.B.I.'s thinking on the case, and its content surprised some congressional officials. Given the tight secrecy surrounding the case, one could argue that Mueller himself disclosed classified material by quoting from a still-secret Justice Department report, said one congressional official who spoke on condition of anonymity. In his letter, Mr. Mueller said he was pleased that the office of the inspector general had not concluded that the F.B.I. retaliated against Ms. Edmonds when it terminated her services on April 2, 2002. At the same time, he said, I was concerned by the O.I.G.'s conclusion that Ms. Edmonds' allegations 'were at least a contributing factor in why the F.B.I. terminated her services.' He said the F.B.I. would work with the inspector general to determine whether any employees should be disciplined as a result. And he emphasized that he wanted to encourage all F.B.I. employees to raise good faith concerns about mismanagement or misconduct without fear of reprisals or intimidation. The letter did not say what other factors, if any, beyond Ms. Edmonds's accusations may have played a part in the decision to dismiss her. In the past, federal officials have suggested that her allegations had nothing to do with her dismissal, pointing instead to what they described as her disruptive presence in the field office. The inspector general also criticized the F.B.I.'s failure to adequately pursue Ms. Edmonds's allegations of espionage as they related to one of her colleagues, Mr. Mueller said in his letter. In that case, Ms. Edmonds accused a fellow Turkish linguist at the F.B.I. of failing to disclose her previous contacts with members of an overseas group who became the subject of an intelligence investigation and of blocking the translation of material as not pertinent. Mr. Mueller said that the F.B.I.'s prior review of the case did not corroborate Ms. Edmonds's allegations. Nor was anyone charged as a result of the espionage investigation. But Mr. Mueller said that given the inspector general's concerns that the case was not adequately investigated, the F.B.I. plans to revisit the case and conduct additional investigation as appropriate. Officials at the F.B.I. and the inspector general's office declined comment on the Edmonds case
[pjnews] Johnnie Been Good?
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=353row=0 JOHNNIE BEEN GOOD? by Greg Palast 07.30.04 - BOSTON -- The millionaires are dancing now. The balloons are falling on John Kerry, John Edwards and their nuclear families. They're playing Johnnie B. Goode over the loudspeakers. Democrats are hopping up and down like JFK never went to Dallas; like Bill Clinton didn't blow it for us; like there's a chance to bring the boys home alive; like America can crawl out of Dick Cheney's bunker and look at the sun again. But has Johnnie Kerry been good so far? He told us tonight about some poor bastard in Ohio whose job evaporated when his company unbolted the equipment and sent it south. Hey, Johnnie, didn't you vote for NAFTA? I applauded when he said the White House should stop treating teachers and school kids like fugitives from justice and help them out. But, Johnnie, didn't you vote for George Bush's No Child's Behind Left assault on public education? Then there was that little story meant to show us all he is a Man for All Seasons, above party politics. I broke with many in my own party, he said, to vote for a balanced budget, because I thought it was the right thing to do. No, John, it wasn't. It was craven political cowardice, going with the anti-government hysteria that put a knife into the heart of the programs you cried over tonight. He told us the sad story of the poor homeless guy huddled in front of the White House. Is this the same John Kerry that voted for Clinton's welfare reform? That put a five-year limit on food stamps, making child starvation the law of the USA? At least Ronald Reagan offered ketchup as a vegetable. Kerry made good use of the cash he saved on feeding the poor. I fought to put a 100,000 cops on the street. Hey, thanks, John. But my absolute favorite of the night was when Kerry told us, Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence. But, as Senator, you didn't. No questions asked: you just closed your eyes and voted for the lie. I know it, and you sure as hell know it. And you mentioned a time or two tonight that you served your country. Got yourself a medal for it, too. I'm sorry, but shooting a Vietnamese teenager in the back who was defending his country doesn't make you a hero. Yesterday, my buddy Michael Moore and I held a press conference in Boston. Some joker of a reporter asked Mr. Fahrenheit about Kerry's gung-ho keep'm-in-Baghdad position. Michael fudged and fidgeted. I felt bad for him as he faked the answer, President Kerry would not have sent us to war. As Senator, Kerry did. I've got an easier job than Michael: as a journalist I don't have to defend any candidate. Nevertheless, I know that my Democratic Party friends will want to ship me to Guantanamo for asking, You believe in Kerry, but does he believe in you? Remember, comrades, I'm only asking questions, here. I'm sorry if the answers make you uncomfortable about your favorite rich guy. I know what you're going to say. Isn't Bush worse? By a long shot. Asking if Kerry is as bad as Bush is like asking if a slap in the face is as painful as a brick to the skull. But don't you get tired of being slapped around by privileged politicos on hypocrisy hyper-drive -- then having to applaud? It can't be pleasant, no matter how many pretty balloons they drop on your head. _ Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Joker's Wild: George Bush's House of Cards regime change deck. Visit http://www.GregPalast.com
[pjnews] Canadian tortured in Syria disputes U.S. claims against torture
http://snipurl.com/858l Gen. Janis Karpinski Witnessed Abuses, Iraqi Says http://snipurl.com/858n Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, widow sue US contractors http://snipurl.com/858o Soldier Testifies Unit Was Ordered to Throw Iraqis Over Embankment -- http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9264400.htm Canadian sent to Syrian prison disputes U.S. claims against torture By Shannon McCaffrey Knight Ridder Newspapers OTTAWA - When memos surfaced recently showing top Justice Department lawyers trying to justify torture, Attorney General John Ashcroft moved quickly to stake out the moral high ground. This administration rejects torture, Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee. I condemn torture. Maher Arar, 34, however, doesn't buy it. For 10 months and 10 days, Arar was in a Syrian prison, beaten and confined to a cell not much bigger than a coffin. He thanks the United States for his time in hell. Arar was picked up by U.S. authorities at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, accused of being a terrorist and then shipped on Justice Department orders to Syria under a highly secret policy known as rendition. Arar's story reveals much about the Bush administration's hidden war on terror. I think when they say they do not support torture, they are not being truthful, the Syrian-born telecommunications engineer said in an interview in Ottawa. Whether they admit or not, they are complicit. In the wake of the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the firestorm over government memos that provide a road map around international treaties banning torture, scrutiny of the government's war on terrorism has increased. Arar provides a rare glimpse into one of its darkest corners. He was the victim of rendition, in which the United States sidesteps formal extradition and quietly ships detainees to other countries to be interrogated or tried. U.S. agents also have snatched terror suspects from other countries and taken them to unknown facilities for interrogation or for trial. The number of people swept up by the government is unknown. But at a hearing before the Sept. 11 commission, then-CIA Director George Tenet said 70 terror suspects were subject to rendition during an undisclosed period before the attacks. Counterterrorism experts believe the use of rendition has increased since. Some detainees are believed to end up in the prisons of countries with documented histories of torture, such as Egypt, Morocco and Jordan. Little is known about rendition because most of the detainees are never heard from again. But Arar isn't going quietly. In addition to going public with his story, he's filing a lawsuit against top officials in the U.S. government - including Ashcroft, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller - over his detention, saying officials should have known that he would be tortured if he was sent to Syria. His lawyers are hopeful the suit will hold government leaders accountable and shed more light on what Arar called America's dirty secret. My view is that it's entirely illegal, said Georgetown University Law School professor David Cole, who's among the lawyers working on Arar's case. The Convention Against Torture forbids sending a person to a country where there is reasonable belief he will be tortured. Citing the pending lawsuit, the Justice Department declined to comment on the case. The CIA also had no comment. For years, the State Department has condemned Syria's human rights record and said that police and intelligence agencies there use torture. And in May, President Bush placed sanctions on Syria, saying it had ties to terrorism. U.S. officials said they sent Arar to Syria only after receiving assurances that torture wouldn't be used. You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to believe that the Syrians were not going to use torture, even if they were making claims to the contrary, said former CIA counterterrorism official Vincent Cannistraro. He called Arar's treatment morally indefensible. In Canada, the Arar case has prompted a government inquiry to determine what Canadian authorities knew about Arar and what they told American authorities. Arar and his lawyers believe that Canada, in trying to prove to the United States that it was tough on terrorism, overstepped and provided Americans with a dossier that contained only the thinnest of evidence. In the post-Sept. 11 climate, it nonetheless peaked U.S. interest. Arar's ordeal began when U.S. immigration officials stopped him at Kennedy airport on Sept. 26, 2002. He was passing through the United States on his way to Ottawa after visiting his wife's family in Tunisia. Two weeks later, he found himself on a private plane to Syria, accused of being a member of al-Qaida. When U.S. authorities told him he was of special interest and they were sending him back to his homeland, Arar said he cried and pleaded for them to send him to Canada. Though he was born in
[pjnews] Gay Marriages: Weddings of Mass Destruction?
-- If you pass this comment along to others -- periodically but not repeatedly -- please explain that Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more folks can consult ZNet at http://www.zmag.org Today's commentary: http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-07/27secours.cfm Gay Marriages: Weddings of Mass Destruction? By Molly Secours August 01, 2004 It seems that the polls reflecting Democratic candidate John Kerry's rise in popularity struck a nerve with some conservatives, and before you can say ''wag the dog,'' we have a new orange level crisis here at home. Thank goodness for the Bush administration and conservative activists shaking their fists in the air to make us feel safe once again. This time, it's not the threat of terrorist bombings at home or far away dictators who may or may not possess weapons of mass destruction. No, this time the greatest threat facing us seems to be gay couples who want to legitimize and legalize their loving commitments to one another. It is so much of a threat to the institution of marriage that numerous urgent issues requiring the attention of our lawmakers last week were brushed aside to address a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Fortunately for those who are concerned about bigotry being written into the constitution, the amendment banning gay marriage will not be voted on - at least not this year. The primarily Republican backed siege on the rights of gays won less than half the Senate. Six Republicans voted with Democrats, defeating the effort 50-48. Even Republican Sen. John McCain stated that ''this amendment will never be adopted until more Americans feel as strongly as they do,'' ''they'' being the operative word. John McCain is right. Current polls indicate that Americans are actually less homophobic than conservatives were counting on and more concerned about bringing home troops from a war that is unnecessary and unjust. For most people, a flailing economy and rising unemployment seem to take precedence over the war on homosexuals. What I find interesting about the rhetoric being spewed forth by politicians and conservative activists - not to mention local columnists - is the vehemence of it. The intense fear and boiling blood that arises at the notion of same sex-couples legitimizing their commitment before the state is palpable. Why so impassioned? Are these same people really convinced that same-sex marriages are more threatening to American family values than body bags being shipped from Iraq? What about the suffering by men and women in the military returning with amputated limbs and the emotional scars of violence and war? Aren't their wounds far more threatening to ''American family values'' than a same-sex couple who swears to love, honor and obey? In trying to understand the orange homophobic alert, I spoke with a professor of psychology at TSU, Jill Hill, about how and why people feel intensely angry and threatened by a particular behavior or lifestyle - even if it ultimately doesn't affect them. She explained that when people are threatened or insecure, there are several classic Freudian defense mechanisms such as projection, repression and overreaction used to deflect attention away from the real issues troubling them. Is there a correlation between the level of terror and indignation these men - and the voices we hear are mostly men - express about gay marriages and their own repressed desires? Are all of these frightened heterosexuals afraid of being converted or leaving their marriages? I know gay and lesbian religious leaders, bankers, lawyers, actors, artists and football players and never felt my heterosexual lifestyle was threatened by their love of a person of the same sex. Admittedly, I was disappointed once when a man I found attractive fancied my date - but it never made me angry enough to legislate against his right to choose men over me. For those who don't remember Wag the Dog, it is a film starring Dustin Hoffman about a president who actually stages a war half-way across the world to divert attention away from some personal indiscretions that are threatening his popularity during an election year. If there were a Wag the Dog II, it would be a slight variation on the theme. It might involve a president who defied world opinion and declared war under false pretenses and got caught - but not until thousands of innocent people were killed and a country devastated. After the war debacle is exposed and his popularity drops in the polls, the president desperately attempts to ignite another war at home - this time pitting arch-conservatives against well, everybody else. Like Wag the Dog, the war on homosexuals is a smoke-screen to convince Americans that ''American family values'' are at stake - whatever those are. Since the media cooperated so nicely with selling the Iraqi war, the Bush team expects that any fear product they are selling will be consumed without
[pjnews] Iraq's Child Prisoners
http://snipurl.com/870y A Battle Over Blame: Rumsfeld may be rebuked by his own commission investigating prison abuse --- http://www.sundayherald.com/43796 Iraq's Child Prisoners By Neil Mackay A Sunday Herald investigation has discovered that coalition forces are holding more than 100 children in jails such as Abu Ghraib. Witnesses claim that the detainees some as young as 10 are also being subjected to rape and torture It was early last October that Kasim Mehaddi Hilas says he witnessed the rape of a boy prisoner aged about 15 in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets, he said in a statement given to investigators probing prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib. Then, when I heard the screaming I climbed the door and I saw [the soldiers name is deleted] who was wearing a military uniform. Hilas, who was himself threatened with being sexually assaulted in Abu Graib, then describes in horrific detail how the soldier raped the little kid. In another witness statement, passed to the Sunday Herald, former prisoner Thaar Salman Dawod said: [I saw] two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and [a US soldier] was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners. The prisoners, two of them, were young. Its not certain exactly how many children are being held by coalition forces in Iraq, but a Sunday Herald investigation suggests there are up to 107. Their names are not known, nor is where they are being kept, how long they will be held or what has happened to them during their detention. Proof of the widespread arrest and detention of children in Iraq by US and UK forces is contained in an internal Unicef report written in June. The report has surprisingly not been made public. A key section on child protection, headed Children in Conflict with the Law or with Coalition Forces, reads: In July and August 2003, several meetings were conducted with CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) and Ministry of Justice to address issues related to juvenile justice and the situation of children detained by the coalition forces Unicef is working through a variety of channels to try and learn more about conditions for children who are imprisoned or detained, and to ensure that their rights are respected. Another section reads: Information on the number, age, gender and conditions of incarceration is limited. In Basra and Karbala children arrested for alleged activities targeting the occupying forces are reported to be routinely transferred to an internee facility in Um Qasr. The categorisation of these children as internees is worrying since it implies indefinite holding without contact with family, expectation of trial or due process. The report also states: A detention centre for children was established in Baghdad, where according to ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) a significant number of children were detained. Unicef was informed that the coalition forces were planning to transfer all children in adult facilities to this specialised child detention centre. In July 2003, Unicef requested a visit to the centre but access was denied. Poor security in the area of the detention centre has prevented visits by independent observers like the ICRC since last December. The perceived unjust detention of Iraqi males, including youths, for suspected activities against the occupying forces has become one of the leading causes for the mounting frustration among Iraqi youths and the potential for radicalisation of this population group. Journalists in Germany have also been investigating the detention and abuse of children in Iraq. One reporter, Thomas Reutter of the TV programme Report Mainz, interviewed a US army sergeant called Samuel Provance, who is banned from speaking about his six months stationed in Abu Ghraib but told Reutter of how one 16-year-old Iraqi boy was arrested. He was terribly afraid, Provance said. He had the skinniest arms Ive ever seen. He was trembling all over. His wrists were so thin we couldnt even put handcuffs on him. Right when I saw him for the first time, and took him for interrogation, I felt sorry for him. The interrogation specialists poured water over him and put him into a car. Then they drove with him through the night, and at that time it was very, very cold. Then they smeared him with mud and showed him to his father, who was also in custody. They had tried out other interrogation methods on him, but he wasnt to be brought to talk. The interrogation specialists told me, after the father had seen his son in this state, his heart broke. He wept and promised to tell them everything they wanted to know. An Iraqi TV reporter Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz saw the Abu Ghraib childrens wing when he was arrested by Americans while making a documentary. He spent
[pjnews] Ted Turner: My Beef With Big Media
BBC Radio 4 aired a very interesting program last Saturday on the history of the Pacifica Radio Network in the US. The show has been archived online here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml Click listen where it says Archive Hour. The audio will remain at that link until Saturday, August 7th. - http://snipurl.com/7y8j My Beef With Big Media: How government protects big media--and shuts out upstarts like me. By Ted Turner Washington Monthly - July/August 2004 In the late 1960s, when Turner Communications was a business of billboards and radio stations and I was spending much of my energy ocean racing, a UHF-TV station came up for sale in Atlanta. It was losing $50,000 a month and its programs were viewed by fewer than 5 percent of the market. I acquired it. When I moved to buy a second station in Charlotte--this one worse than the first--my accountant quit in protest, and the company's board vetoed the deal. So I mortgaged my house and bought it myself. The Atlanta purchase turned into the Superstation; the Charlotte purchase--when I sold it 10 years later--gave me the capital to launch CNN. Both purchases played a role in revolutionizing television. Both required a streak of independence and a taste for risk. And neither could happen today. In the current climate of consolidation, independent broadcasters simply don't survive for long. That's why we haven't seen a new generation of people like me or even Rupert Murdoch--independent television upstarts who challenge the big boys and force the whole industry to compete and change. It's not that there aren't entrepreneurs eager to make their names and fortunes in broadcasting if given the chance. If nothing else, the 1990s dot-com boom showed that the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well in America, with plenty of investors willing to put real money into new media ventures. The difference is that Washington has changed the rules of the game. When I was getting into the television business, lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took seriously the commission's mandate to promote diversity, localism, and competition in the media marketplace. They wanted to make sure that the big, established networks--CBS, ABC, NBC--wouldn't forever dominate what the American public could watch on TV. They wanted independent producers to thrive. They wanted more people to be able to own TV stations. They believed in the value of competition. So when the FCC received a glut of applications for new television stations after World War II, the agency set aside dozens of channels on the new UHF spectrum so independents could get a foothold in television. That helped me get my start 35 years ago. Congress also passed a law in 1962 requiring that TVs be equipped to receive both UHF and VHF channels. That's how I was able to compete as a UHF station, although it was never easy. (I used to tell potential advertisers that our UHF viewers were smarter than the rest, because you had to be a genius just to figure out how to tune us in.) And in 1972, the FCC ruled that cable TV operators could import distant signals. That's how we were able to beam our Atlanta station to homes throughout the South. Five years later, with the help of an RCA satellite, we were sending our signal across the nation, and the Superstation was born. That was then. Today, media companies are more concentrated than at any time over the past 40 years, thanks to a continual loosening of ownership rules by Washington. The media giants now own not only broadcast networks and local stations; they also own the cable companies that pipe in the signals of their competitors and the studios that produce most of the programming. To get a flavor of how consolidated the industry has become, consider this: In 1990, the major broadcast networks--ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox--fully or partially owned just 12.5 percent of the new series they aired. By 2000, it was 56.3 percent. Just two years later, it had surged to 77.5 percent. In this environment, most independent media firms either get gobbled up by one of the big companies or driven out of business altogether. Yet instead of balancing the rules to give independent broadcasters a fair chance in the market, Washington continues to tilt the playing field to favor the biggest players. Last summer, the FCC passed another round of sweeping pro-consolidation rules that, among other things, further raised the cap on the number of TV stations a company can own. In the media, as in any industry, big corporations play a vital role, but so do small, emerging ones. When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can't compete by imitating the big guys--they have to innovate, so they're less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas. They are quicker to seize on new technologies and new product ideas. They
[pjnews] The Secret File of Abu Ghraib
http://snipurl.com/8712 The Secret File of Abu Ghraib New classified documents implicate U.S. forces in rape and sodomy of Iraqi prisoners By OSHA GRAY DAVIDSON It has been months since the now-infamous photographs from Abu Ghraib revealed that American soldiers tortured Iraqi prisoners -- yet the Bush administration has failed to get to the bottom of the abuses.There are some serious unanswered questions, says Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican on the Armed Services Committee. The Pentagon is stalling on several investigations, and congressional inquiries have ground to a halt. The foot-dragging is astonishing, given that Congress has access to classified documents detailing the abuses outlined by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba in his report on Abu Ghraib. Rolling Stone obtained those files in June and offers this report on their contents. -The Editors The new classified military documents offer a chilling picture of what happened at Abu Ghraib -- including detailed reports that U.S. troops and translators sodomized and raped Iraqi prisoners. The secret files -- 106 annexes that the Defense Department withheld from the Taguba report last spring -- include nearly 6,000 pages of internal Army memos and e-mails, reports on prison riots and escapes, and sworn statements by soldiers, officers, private contractors and detainees. The files depict a prison in complete chaos. Prisoners were fed bug-infested food and forced to live in squalid conditions; detainees and U.S. soldiers alike were killed and wounded in nightly mortar attacks; and loyalists of Saddam Hussein served as guards in the facility, apparently smuggling weapons to prisoners inside. The files make clear that responsibility for what Taguba called sadistic, blatant and wanton abuses extends to several high-ranking officers still serving in command positions. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who is now in charge of all military prisons in Iraq, was dispatched to Abu Ghraib by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last August. In a report marked secret, Miller recommended that military police at the prison be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees. After his plan was adopted, guards began depriving prisoners of sleep and food, subjecting them to painful stress positions and terrorizing them with dogs. A former Army intelligence officer tells Rolling Stone that the intent of Miller's report was clear to everyone involved: It means treat the detainees like shit until they will sell their mother for a blanket, some food without bugs in it and some sleep. In the files, prisoner after prisoner at Abu Ghraib describes acts of torture that Taguba found credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses. The abuses took place at the Hard Site, a two-story cinder-block unit at the sprawling prison that housed Iraqi criminals and insurgents, not members of Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. In one sworn statement, Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, detainee number 151108, said he witnessed a translator referred to only as Abu Hamid raping a teenage boy. I saw Abu Hamid, who was wearing the military uniform, putting his dick in the little kid's ass, Hilas testified. The kid was hurting very bad. A female soldier took pictures of the rape, Hilas said. During the Muslim holy period of Ramadan, Hilas saw Spc. Charles Graner Jr. and an unnamed helper tie a detainee to a bed around midnight. They . . . inserted the phosphoric light in his ass, and he was yelling for God's help, the prisoner testified. Again, the same female soldier photographed the torture. Another prisoner, Abd Alwhab Youss, was punished after guards accused him of plotting to attack an MP with a broken toothbrush. Guards took Youss into a closed room, poured cold water on him, pushed his head into urine and beat him with a broom. Then the guards pressed my ass with a broom and spit on it, Youss said. Mohanded Juma, detainee number 152307, testified that on his first day at Tier 1A, the west wing of the Hard Site where prisoners were brought for interrogation, he was stripped and left naked in his cell for six days. Graner, the guard in charge of the tier, entered Juma's cell at 2 a.m., cuffed his hands and feet, and took him to the shower room, where a female interrogator questioned him. After she left, Graner and another man threw pepper in Juma's face, beat him with a chair until it broke and choked him until he thought he was going to die. The assault lasted for half an hour. They got tired from beating me, Juma told investigators. They took a little break, and then they started kicking me very hard with their feet until I passed out. In another instance, Graner and a fellow guard reportedly beat a detainee until his nose split open. Torin Nelson, one of thirty-two private contractors who worked as interrogators at Abu Ghraib, told investigators that he spoke with an interpreter who witnessed an
[pjnews] FAIR Analysis of DNC Media Coverage
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/dnc-boston.html Fairness Accuracy In Reporting MEDIA ADVISORY: Covering the Convention: Media Pack Stick to the Script at DNC August 4, 2004 Every four years, journalists complain about the same thing: Political conventions are dull, scripted and almost entirely devoid of any real news. Though the argument is illogical at best-- most events in a political campaign are scripted, but journalists still find a way to cover them-- it probably explains why the networks decided to provide just three hours of prime-time coverage of the Democratic convention in Boston last week. Reporters and pundits tend to look for appealing storylines that they can promote throughout their coverage, and the Democratic convention was no different. Much of the broadcast coverage was framed by the idea that the Democrats were primarily concerned with setting a positive tone-- that the party elite and John Kerry wanted to blunt any serious criticisms of George W. Bush and accentuate the positive aspects of the Kerry-Edwards ticket. The New York Times (7/26/04) claimed that the word has gone out from Sen. John Kerry himself that speakers must accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. The piece did not actually quote Kerry or anyone from his campaign saying this; in fact, the paper noted that one spokesperson explained that speakers' remarks would be going through the same vetting process that conventions have used for decades. Nonetheless, the idea was echoed throughout the media: Reporter John Roberts told CBS Evening News viewers on the same day as the Times piece that the edict has gone down from Democratic leaders, for all of the speakers here, all of the celebrities and everyone else who will be attending, to keep the message positive. Don't get lost in the negative campaign. Don't get lost in the message about the Republicans as opposed to the message about the Democrats. Despite the perennial complaints from media that conventions are too scripted, many in the press corps seemed most interested in policing the convention for anyone who might stray from this script. Their golden opportunity came when former presidential contender Al Sharpton spoke (7/28/04). The MSNBC pundits were none too thrilled about Sharpton before he took to the podium, deriding his effect on the entire primary process: Chris Matthews asserted that Sharpton probably hurt this campaign. He was a humorist. Everything was a joke. Newsweek's Howard Fineman agreed that Sharpton's campaign was not to be taken seriously, frankly. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin asked the panelists to think of the contrast between Jesse Jackson in '88 . or you think of Obama the other night, last night, where he's a future candidate. Goodwin didn't make clear why Sharpton could only be compared to other African Americans. Nor did Fineman, noting derisively that Sharpton stayed first class wherever he went, explain where he thought Sharpton ought to have been staying on the campaign trail. The response from the convention delegates to Sharpton's address was very enthusiastic, but MSNBC actually cut away from the speech in order to resume its panel discussion, where the pundits were having a markedly different reaction. Matthews pondered: I have got to wonder tonight, Howard and Doris, if this is doing any good for the Democratic Party. They're trying to reach those middle 20 percent. Fineman echoed his consternation, saying he was very surprised, given the way the Kerry campaign has tried to control and modulate this message here. They didn't need to do this tonight. African-American voters are going turn out in droves for John Kerry and John Edwards regardless. They will walk through walls for them . He is the only guy-- he could actually turn off the black vote, yes. Goodwin concurred: In fact, the yelling in the rally right now is like chalk on a board, a blackboard. It's grating. You can't bear to listen to it. Instead, MSNBC viewers were treated to more analysis on the order of this from Fineman: I think, frankly, it's an insult. It's an insult, I think, as an outsider, to African-American voters that they're giving this guy as much time as they are. Matthews finally summed up MSNBC's vision of public service: We're doing a favor to the Democratic party right now. This is a partisan act. We've taken him off the air. The pundits shared a laugh, before Fineman added: It's completely counterproductive to what the aim of tonight was, to introduce John Edwards as the spokesman of and tribune of rural people, moderate voters, you know, not necessarily African-Americans, who are already in the camp, already in the camp of the Democratic Party. Interviewing Sharpton after he spoke, even NBC anchor Brian Williams appeared clueless about Sharpton's speech, referring to the teleprompter that just sat there for what seemed like a half-hour while you did a riff on whatever you did a riff on. Has it really come down to reporters
[pjnews] Party Time at the DNC
http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms PARTY TIME AT THE DNC Michelle Ciarrocca, Senior Research Associate World Policy Institute August 4, 2004 So much for campaign finance reform, the 2004 presidential election is shaping up to be the most expensive one yet. Analysts predict spending will reach or surpass $1 billion. During the national conventions, politicians and delegates will have their pick of breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, cocktail hours, parties, concerts, golf outings and much, much more as lobbyists, corporations, labor unions and other special interest groups dole out large sums of money for access. Unlimited donations to the national party committees - also known as Soft Money contributions - were banned in 2002, but, as the Washington Post reported, thanks to a loophole in campaign finance laws, a presidential convention is the one place where corporations and labor unions can still spend with abandon to influence holders of high office. And spending with abandon is just what they're doing. As Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, noted, Conventions are the Super Bowl of influence. During the Democratic National Convention more than 250 public and private events took place at a myriad of locations - from the usual hotel conference room to Fenway Park, museums, and ships docked in Boston Harbor. According to a study from the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute, while each party gets about $15 million in federal taxpayer money to hold its convention, this year corporate, union and individual private funds to the host committees will exceed $100 million, compared to the $56 million in 2000. Private funds for the Republican National Convention are estimated at $64 million, $39.5 million for the Democratic National Convention. Information on exactly who is giving and how much is somewhat hard to come by, the host committees are not required to disclose their contributors until 60 days after the conventions, though some of the information is available on their respective websites. Boston 2004 lists 162 donors, New York City host committee lists 85, the amount given by each donor is not listed. As The New York Times reported, There are hosts -- particularly corporations and interest groups -- that do not want the public to hear about how much money they spent to get face time with politicians. Here's a sampling of some of the key donors and the events that took place during the Democratic National Convention: Textron Inc. sponsored a lunch for Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) Lockheed Martin sponsored breakfasts for both the North Dakota and New York delegations Rep. Jane Harmon (D-CA) was featured at a brunch sponsored by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and SAIC In return for kicking in $100,000 each for a Symphony Hall gala, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Raytheon and the AFL-CIO among others, were promised a private post-event reception with Senator Kennedy (D-MA) Two dozen companies sponsored a party with an Indiana Jones theme at an Egyptian exhibit at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, including Altria Group (parent company of Philip Morris tobacco), BellSouth, Miller Brewing, Fannie Mae, Sallie Mae, FedEx and DynCorp International Official Providers for the DNC convention included IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, and Nextel among others $1+ million donors -- or platinum sponsors -- to the democratic host committee include Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the Boston Foundation, Fidelity Investments, Bank of America, John Hancock Financial Services and Raytheon Corporation Two lobbyists threw a Caribbean Beach Bash for Senator John Breaux (D-LA) who's retiring this year. The $300,000 event took place at the Aquarium with music by Ziggy Marley and Buckwheat Zydeco In a special report on the financing of the election for CorpWatch, Bill Mesler notes that corporate influence has become so pervasive that the very concept of impartial governance has been turned on its head: lobbyists have become government officials; and government officials have become lobbyists. One part of the solution is to get special interest money out of politics by supporting full public financing of presidential and congressional races on the clean money model, where candidates can successfully run for office without taking any corporate contributions. Notes and Resources: Ever since the Republicans took control of Congress in January 1995, major weapons contractors have favored them over Democratic candidates by a 2 to 1 margin. And this year is no exception. The Center for Responsive Politics lists the nation's top three weapons contractors among the top 50 overall donors in this election cycle. Northrop Grumman is at #34, donating $1,097,683, 68% of which went to Republican candidates. To date, Lockheed Martin (#44), Boeing (#47) and General Dynamics (#49) have all donated just under $1 million each, with Republicans receiving
[pjnews] Osama bin Laden Missing Since 2001
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0804-02.htm Published on Wednesday, August 4, 2004 by the lndependent/UK They Seek Him Here, They Seek Him There: Despite the US's huge intelligence-gathering network and diplomatic clout - and even a $25m reward on his head - there's not been a single sighting of Osama bin Laden since 2001. by Justin Huggler in Peshawar Somewhere, a man huddles in the shadows, speaking into a tape recorder, bringing his latest message to the outside world. His face is instantly recognisable. There is a $25m price tag on his head, and just a snippet of information on his whereabouts could make a man rich for life. He is the most wanted man in the world, but for more than three years, nobody has been able to find a trace of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts. With Washington and New York this week on orange alert, and the US releasing what it claims is the most detailed evidence yet of an al-Qa'ida plot to strike inside its borders, the focus is suddenly back on the hunt for Bin Laden. Al-Qa'ida allies are being blamed for the loathsome beheadings of foreigners that have become almost a grisly routine in Iraq. And with a US national election looming and President George Bush doing badly in the polls, the White House is said to be desperate to capture their man in time for November. But the trail appears to be remarkably cold. Unless something is being hidden from the public - and it would have to be remarkably well hidden - there has not been a single confirmed sighting of Bin Laden since he fled the US bombing of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001. Nor, according to Pakistani sources, has there been any intercepts of satellite phones call by him, or any e-mails. Drones fly constantly over the Afghan-Pakistan border monitoring all movements. They have failed to detect detected anything. He has disappeared from the US's electronic surveillance network, the most sophisticated the world has even known. The last heard of him was a tape recording in April in which he offered Europe a ceasefire if it stopped co-operating with the US. The central al-Qa'ida organisation has been decimated since 2001. Estimates vary, but as many as 3,400 out of 4,000 members are said to have been captured or killed, according to experts. Some put the number still at large as low as 200; the continued bombings and other attacks are believed to be the work of related groups, many of whose militants were trained by Bin Laden's organisation in Afghanistan, but not of the central al-Qa'ida itself. But if the organisation has been hit badly, its most senior commanders - Osama and his mentor Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri - remain elusive. Bin Laden, it appears, has pulled off one of the most remarkable disappearing acts in history. Or has he? Rumours abound that he has already been captured by the US, or maybe Pakistan, and that his captors are waiting for the perfect moment to announce his capture: just in time for President Bush's re-election bid, for example, or in order for Pakistan's President Musharraf to wring the most glittering rewards from the US. The internet is bursting with innuendo and speculation on the possibility, but respected sources insist they are not to be taken seriously. If Bin Laden has been captured, then his captors have pulled off a disappearing act as extraordinary as Osama's. Not one official has given the slightest hint. Not one sardonic smile. More than that, there has been no noise from Bin Laden's supporters to suggest he has been hunted down and captured or killed. The official version is still that he is in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan; which side he is actually on depends on which side you ask the question. Ask the Americans or President Hamid Karzai's interim government in Afghanistan, and they'll tell you Osama is in Pakistan. Ask in Pakistan, and the authorities will tell you he's in Afghanistan. Everyone is passing the buck across the border. The area is certainly a prime hiding place. The border is some 1,520 miles long and runs through some of the wildest and most inaccessible terrain on earth. Even if Pakistan and Afghanistan were to put their complete armies there, they couldn't seal the border, says Dr Rohan Gunaratna, the author of Inside al-Qa'ida. Much of the land on either side of the border is populated by Pashtun tribesmen whose loyalties to Bin Laden and al-Qa'ida date back to the mujahadeen war against the Soviets and who have little sympathy for the US, the new Afghan government or the Pakistani authorities. The Americans claim they have combed the Afghan side of the border exhaustively. But the Afghan government has repeatedly accused Pakistan of not doing enough. On a trip to Islamabad last month, the Foreign Minister, Abdullah Abdullah of Northern Alliance fame, made some pretty vicious swipes in the direction of the Pakistani authorities at a press conference. In fact, almost all the major successes in the hunt for al-Qa'ida have
[pjnews] Second-Guessing Hiroshima
On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan. At least 140,000 people were killed. Tens of housands more were injured and suffered the consequences of radiation sickness. Three days later the US dropped a second bomb on the city of Nagasaki. Second-Guessing Hiroshima by Leo Maley III and Uday Mohan Second-guessing the necessity and morality of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki [59] years ago is nothing new. Contrary to widely held opinion, the first critics of America's use of atomic weapons were not disillusioned 1960s radicals but figures from the conservative establishment and the highest ranks of the military. Criticism began within days of the obliteration of the two Japanese cities. On August 8, 1945, two days after the destruction of Hiroshima, former President Herbert Hoover wrote, The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul. Two days later, John Foster Dulles and Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam together urged President Truman to forgo additional use of the new weapon, saying they opposed the bomb's indiscriminate obliteration of human beings. Within days of the Hiroshima bombing, David Lawrence, the editor of what is now U.S. News World Report, wrote that Japanese surrender had appeared inevitable weeks before the bomb's use. The claim of military necessity, he argued, rang hollow. Official justifications would never erase from our minds the simple truth that we, of all civilized nations . . . did not hesitate to employ the most destructive weapon of all times indiscriminately against men, women and children. Such criticisms were not limited to civilians. The very day after the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima, the personal pilot of General Douglas MacArthur, commander of Allied forces in the Pacific, recorded in his diary that MacArthur was appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster. In 1963 President Eisenhower, the Allied commander in Europe during World War II, recalled, as he did on several other occasions, that in July 1945 he had opposed using the atomic bomb on Japan during a meeting with Secretary of War Henry Stimson: . . . I told him I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon. No one should easily discount these views. These six men were all respected public figures. With the exception of Oxnam, all were conservatives. None was a pacifist. None of the five who survived into the 1960s publicly opposed the war in Vietnam. Their dissenting opinions were not based on hindsight. They voiced their beliefs even before the war ended. These men considered the use of the atomic bomb to have been militarily unnecessary and morally repugnant based on the information available to them in the summer of 1945. Keep this in mind when, on Hiroshima anniversaries, you hear claims that opposition to the bombing emerged only in the 1960s, or that critics must, necessarily, be liberals or pacifists. The comments of men such as Hoover and Eisenhower, leading Republicans whose qualities of caution and prudence cannot be questioned, lend support to the view that America's use of atomic weapons to end World War II cannot easily be defended. The passage of time has done nothing to alter these considered judgments. Leo Maley III and Uday Mohan are graduate history students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and American University, Washington, D.C., respectively. They research and write about Hiroshima and American culture.
[pjnews] Ron Reagan: The Case Against George W. Bush
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6577.htm The Case Against George W. Bush The son of the fortieth president of the United States takes a hard look at the son of the forty-first and does not like what he sees By Ron Reagan 07/29/04 Esquire -- It may have been the guy in the hood teetering on the stool, electrodes clamped to his genitals. Or smirking Lynndie England and her leash. Maybe it was the smarmy memos tapped out by soft-fingered lawyers itching to justify such barbarism. The grudging, lunatic retreat of the neocons from their long-standing assertion that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama didn't hurt. Even the Enron audiotapes and their celebration of craven sociopathy likely played a part. As a result of all these displays and countless smaller ones, you could feel, a couple of months back, as summer spread across the country, the ground shifting beneath your feet. Not unlike that scene in The Day After Tomorrow, then in theaters, in which the giant ice shelf splits asunder, this was more a paradigm shift than anything strictly tectonic. No cataclysmic ice age, admittedly, yet something was in the air, and people were inhaling deeply. I began to get calls from friends whose parents had always voted Republican, but not this time. There was the staid Zbigniew Brzezinski on the staid NewsHour with Jim Lehrer sneering at the Orwellian language flowing out of the Pentagon. Word spread through the usual channels that old hands from the days of Bush the Elder were quietly (but not too quietly) appalled by his son's misadventure in Iraq. Suddenly, everywhere you went, a surprising number of folks seemed to have had just about enough of what the Bush administration was dishing out. A fresh age appeared on the horizon, accompanied by the sound of scales falling from people's eyes. It felt something like a demonstration of that highest of American prerogatives and the most deeply cherished American freedom: dissent. Oddly, even my father's funeral contributed. Throughout that long, stately, overtelevised week in early June, items would appear in the newspaper discussing the Republicans' eagerness to capitalize (subtly, tastefully) on the outpouring of affection for my father and turn it to Bush's advantage for the fall election. The familiar Heir to Reagan puffballs were reinflated and loosed over the proceedings like (subtle, tasteful) Mylar balloons. Predictably, this backfired. People were treated to a side-by-side comparisonRonald W. Reagan versus George W. Bushand it's no surprise who suffered for it. Misty-eyed with nostalgia, people set aside old political gripes for a few days and remembered what friend and foe always conceded to Ronald Reagan: He was damned impressive in the role of leader of the free world. A sign in the crowd, spotted during the slow roll to the Capitol rotunda, seemed to sum up the mooda portrait of my father and the words NOW THERE WAS A PRESIDENT. The comparison underscored something important. And the guy on the stool, Lynndie, and her grinning cohorts, they brought the word: The Bush administration can't be trusted. The parade of Bush officials before various commissions and committeesPaul Wolfowitz, who couldn't quite remember how many young Americans had been sacrificed on the altar of his ideology; John Ashcroft, lip quivering as, for a delicious, fleeting moment, it looked as if Senator Joe Biden might just come over the table at himthese were a continuing reminder. The Enron creeps, tooa reminder of how certain environments and particular habits of mind can erode common decency. People noticed. A tipping point had been reached. The issue of credibility was back on the table. The L-word was in circulation. Not the tired old bromide liberal. That's so 1988. No, this time something much more potent: liar. Politicians will stretch the truth. They'll exaggerate their accomplishments, paper over their gaffes. Spin has long been the lingua franca of the political realm. But George W. Bush and his administration have taken normal mendacity to a startling new level far beyond lies of convenience. On top of the usual massaging of public perception, they traffic in big lies, indulge in any number of symptomatic small lies, and, ultimately, have come to embody dishonesty itself. They are a lie. And people, finally, have started catching on. None of this, needless to say, guarantees Bush a one-term presidency. The far-right wing of the countrynearly one third of us by some estimatescontinues to regard all who refuse to drink the Kool-Aid (liberals, rationalists, Europeans, et cetera) as agents of Satan. Bush could show up on video canoodling with Paris Hilton and still bank their vote. Right-wing talking heads continue painting anyone who fails to genuflect deeply enough as a hater, and therefore a nut job, probably a crypto-Islamist car bomber. But these protestations have taken on a hysterical, almost comically desperate tone. It's one thing to get
[pjnews] Robert Fisk: Iraq About to Explode
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0805042bush1.html In an unfortunate, though not uncommon, verbal miscue, President George W. Bush today told a White House audience that his administration never stops thinking about ways to harm the United States. The embarrassing malapropism came as Bush appeared before military brass to sign a new $417 billion defense appropriation bill. Referring to the country's enemies, Bush said, They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. http://snipurl.com/8baz Shocking prisoner abuses are revealed at Guantanamo Bay http://snipurl.com/8bbe The situation in Iraq right now is not as bad as the news media are portraying it to be. It's worse. http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles427.htm 'Can't Blair see that this country is about to explode? Can't Bush?' By Robert Fisk in Baghdad Independent-UK 1 August 2004 The war is a fraud. Im not talking about the weapons of mass destruction that didnt exist. Nor the links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida which didnt exist. Nor all the other lies upon which we went to war. Im talking about the new lies. For just as, before the war, our governments warned us of threats that did not exist, now they hide from us the threats that do exist. Much of Iraq has fallen outside the control of Americas puppet government in Baghdad but we are not told. Hundreds of attacks are made against US troops every month. But unless an American dies, we are not told. This months death toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone has now reached 700 - the worst month since the invasion ended. But we are not told. The stage management of this catastrophe in Iraq was all too evident at Saddam Husseins trial. Not only did the US military censor the tapes of the event. Not only did they effectively delete all sound of the 11 other defendants. But the Americans led Saddam Hussein to believe - until he reached the courtroom - that he was on his way to his execution. Indeed, when he entered the room he believed that the judge was there to condemn him to death. This, after all, was the way Saddam ran his own state security courts. No wonder he initially looked disorientated - CNNs helpful description - because, of course, he was meant to look that way. We had made sure of that. Which is why Saddam asked Judge Juhi: Are you a lawyer? ... Is this a trial? And swiftly, as he realised that this really was an initial court hearing - not a preliminary to his own hanging - he quickly adopted an attitude of belligerence. But dont think were going to learn much more about Saddams future court appearances. Salem Chalabi, the brother of convicted fraudster Ahmad and the man entrusted by the Americans with the tribunal, told the Iraqi press two weeks ago that all media would be excluded from future court hearings. And I can see why. Because if Saddam does a Milosevic, hell want to talk about the real intelligence and military connections of his regime - which were primarily with the United States. Living in Iraq these past few weeks is a weird as well as dangerous experience. I drive down to Najaf. Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq. Westerners are murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police vehicles and American trucks. Every police post for 70 miles has been abandoned. Yet a few hours later, I am sitting in my room in Baghdad watching Tony Blair, grinning in the House of Commons as if he is the hero of a school debating competition; so much for the Butler report. Indeed, watching any Western television station in Baghdad these days is like tuning in to Planet Mars. Doesnt Blair realise that Iraq is about to implode? Doesnt Bush realise this? The American-appointed government controls only parts of Baghdad - and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government authority. Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister, is little more than mayor of Baghdad. Some journalists, Blair announces, almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq. He doesnt get it. The disaster exists now. When suicide bombers ram their cars into hundreds of recruits outside police stations, how on earth can anyone hold an election next January? Even the National Conference to appoint those who will arrange elections has been twice postponed. And looking back through my notebooks over the past five weeks, I find that not a single Iraqi, not a single American soldier I have spoken to, not a single mercenary - be he American, British or South African - believes that there will be elections in January. All said that Iraq is deteriorating by the day. And most asked why we journalists werent saying so. But in Baghdad, I turn on my television and watch Bush telling his Republican supporters that Iraq is improving, that Iraqis support the coalition, that they support their new US-manufactured government, that the war on
[pjnews] 1/2 Republicans: A Prose Poem by Eliot Weinberger
http://snipurl.com/8c3l Republicans: A Prose Poem by Eliot Weinberger They hate our friends. They hate our values. They hate democracy and freedom, and individual liberty. -- President George W. Bush I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. -- Vice-President Dick Cheney - Thomas Donahue, Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is a Republican. He said the newly unemployed should stop whining. Alfonso Jackson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is a Republican. He explained the enormous cuts to low-income housing by saying, Being poor is a state of mind, not a condition. Rick Santorum, Senator from Pennsylvania, is a Republican. He defended cuts to child care and welfare by suggesting that making people struggle a little bit is not necessarily the worst thing. Eric Bost, Undersecretary of Food and Nutrition, U.S. Department of Agriculture, is a Republican. A study by his own agency said that 34 million Americans, including 13.6 million children under the age of 12, were affected by hunger, but Bost doubts these numbers: If you ask any teenager if they're happy about the food they have in their house, what will they say? Responding to a report that the number of people seeking assistance at food pantries in Ohio had increased by 44% in the last three years, Bost told an Ohio newspaper: Food pantries don't require documentation of income. . . so there's no proof everyone asking for sustenance at a soup kitchen is truly in need. Dr. Tom Coburn, former Congressman and current candidate for the Senate from Oklahoma, is a Republican. Dr. Coburn supports the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions. Republicans do not like dogs. Major General Geoffrey Miller, former Chief of Prisons at Guantanamo Bay, now Director of Prisons in Iraq, said that at Guantanamo Bay we learned that the prisoners have to earn every single thing that they have. They are like dogs and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them. Republicans like dogs. Trent Lott, Senator from Mississippi, was asked about the use of attack dogs in torturing an Iraqi prisoner. He replied that there's nothing wrong with holding a dog up there unless it ate him. Republicans have a sense of history. The National Museum of Naval Aviation now exhibits the actual Navy S-3B Viking fighter jet that carried the President to the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln for his Mission Accomplished speech. It has George W. Bush Commander-in-Chief stenciled just below the cockpit window. Republicans are fighting terrorism. Ron Paige, Secretary of Education, called the National Education Association, with a membership of 2.7 million teachers, a terrorist organization. Karen Hughes, adviser to the President, said that, especially after September 11, Americans support Bush's efforts to ban abortion because the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life. Patricia Lynn Scarlett, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, is a Republican. She is the former president of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian group, and is opposed to recycling, nutritional labeling on food, consumer right to know laws, and restrictions on the use of pesticides. D. Nick Rerras, State Senator in Virginia, is a Republican. He believes that mental illness is caused by demons and, somewhat contradictorily, that God may be punishing families by giving children mental illnesses. He also claims that thunder and lightning mean God is mad at you. John Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, is a Republican. In January 2002, he sent a 42-page memo to William Haynes II, Chief Legal Counsel for the Pentagon, stating that the Geneva Conventions, the War Crimes Act, and customary international law do not apply to the war in Afghanistan. He was seconded by Alberto Gonzales, White House Legal Counsel, who wrote: In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions. A few days later, the President suspended all rights for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. William Haynes II, the recipient of Yoo's memo, is a Republican. As the Chief Legal Counsel for the Pentagon, he argued that the Defense Department should be exempt from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and allowed to test bombs on a Pacific Ocean nesting island. Such bombing, he said, would please bird-watchers, because it will make the birds more scarce, and bird watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one. Haynes has now been nominated by the President for a lifetime appointment as a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Republicans like children. John Cornyn, Senator from Texas, speaking in support of the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, said: It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that
[pjnews] 2/2 Republicans: A Prose Poem by Eliot Weinberger
http://snipurl.com/8c3l Republicans: A Prose Poem by Eliot Weinberger continued... Republicans like technology. Although most programs for low-income housing and job training have been greatly reduced or eliminated, the Department of Labor has created a website for the homeless. Republicans like methyl bromide, a pesticide that destroys the ozone layer and leads to prostate cancer in farm workers. The Reagan administration and 160 nations signed a treaty in 1987 to eliminate methyl bromide by 2005. The use of the pesticide has increased every year of the current Administration, which is seeking a waiver from compliance with the treaty. Claudia A. McMurray, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, explained: Our farmers need this. Republicans like dog-race gamblers, NASCAR track owners, bow-and-arrow makers, and Oldsmobile dealers. They were among those given $170 billion in tax cuts that were slipped into an obscure bill intended to resolve a minor trade dispute with Europe. Republicans do not like technology. On September 11, 2001, the FBI computers were still running on MS-DOS, which could only perform single-word searches of their files, and FBI agents did not have e-mail. They are hoping a new system will be in place in 2006. Lieutenant General William Boykin, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, formerly in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and currently directing Iraqi prison reform, is a Republican. He regularly appears at revival meetings sponsored by a group called the Faith Force Multiplier, which advocates applying military principles to evangelism. Its manifesto, Warrior Message, summons warriors in this spiritual war for souls of this nation and the world . Boykin preaches that Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army, and that Muslims will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus. He admits that George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the US, but adds: He was appointed by God. Kelli Arena, Justice Department correspondent for CNN, is presumably a Republican. She reported that there is some speculation that al Qaeda believes it has a better chance of winning in Iraq if John Kerry is in the White House . William Bucky Bush, uncle of the President, is a Republican. He is a director of Engineer Support Systems, Inc., which makes military items, such as the Chemical Biological Protected Shelter System (a mobile shed for a WMD attack) or the Field Deployable Environmental Control Unit. Since 2001, the company has had sales to the Pentagon of $300-400 million a year, and the Department of Homeland Security has ordered a fleet of mobile emergency communication centers for use in the event of a domestic biochemical attack. He is also a director of Lord Abbett Co., which owns 8 million shares of Halliburton. Jeb Bush inserted a line in the Florida state budget privatizing elevator inspections. Bucky is one of the owners of a company called National Elevator Inspection Services. Republicans like electronic voting machines. In the 1980's, Bob and Todd Urosevich founded a voting machine company, eventually called American Information Systems (AIS), with money from the Ahmanson family of California. The Ahmansons are Christian Reconstructionists who want to establish a theocracy based on biblical law and under the dominion of Christians. They support the death penalty for homosexuals, adulterers, and alcoholics. They are members of the secretive Council for National Policy, which combines remnants of the John Birch Society with apocalyptic Christians and is considered by many to be the driving force of hard right ideology. The Ahmansons sold the company to the McCarthy Group, whose Chairman and co-owner was Chuck Hagel. The McCarthy Group bought another voting machine company, Cronus Industries, from the Hunt oil family in Texas, also Christian Reconstructionists, who had supplied the original money for the Council for National Policy. The two voting machine companies were merged and became Election Systems and Software (ESS), with Hagel as CEO. Republicans like electronic voting machines. ESS counts 80% of the vote in the state of Nebraska. In 1996, Hagel resigned from ESS to run for Senator from Nebraska. His victory was called a stunning upset by Nebraska newspapers: African-American districts that had never voted for a Republican voted for Hagel. In 1992, Hagel ran again and received 83% of the vote- 3% more than ESS-tabulated votes and the largest election victory in the history of Nebraska. His Democratic opponent asked for a recount, but the Republican-dominated state legislature had passed a law that only ESS could recount the votes. Hagel won the recount. No longer Chairman of the McCarthy Group, Hagel had been succeeded by Thomas McCarthy, who was his campaign treasurer. Republicans like electronic voting machines. When Jeb Bush first
[pjnews] Women Committing War Crimes
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0810-03.htm
Diplomacy Sidelined as US Targets Iran: The US charge sheet against Iran
is lengthening almost by the day, presaging destabilizing confrontations
this autumn and maybe a pre-election October surprise.
-
-- If you pass this comment along to others -- periodically but not
repeatedly -- please explain that Commentaries are a premium sent to
Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more folks can consult ZNet
at http://www.zmag.org
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-08/08noll.cfm
Bloody Brigitte
By Andrea Noll
Honour women! They entwine and weave heavenly roses in our earthly life.
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805)
The first thought that came to my mind when I first saw the torture
pictures of Abu Ghraib and Lynndie England with her dog leash round the
neck of a naked Iraqi prisoner on the floor. 'Bloody Brigitte' (or 'Krwawa
Brygida', as the Polish inmates called her) was Hildegard Lächert, an
Austrian wardress at Majdanek KZ, one of those notorious death camps the
German SS ran between 1941 and 1944.
The camp was divided into a camp for men (Soviet prisoners of war, Jewish
men and other male inmates from 28 nations with 54 nationalities) and the
Majdanek 'Frauenlager' where women and children were guarded, selected,
killed by women.
Of the 500 000 human beings imprisoned in Majdanek, 250,000 were
eventually killed or selected for the gas chambers - in less than 3 years
- among them 100,000 women. From May to September 1943, during the
so-called 'Kinderaktionen', children were separated from their mothers.
The children were killed, the mothers' destiny was forced labor.
In cases were mother and child could not be separated, the mother was
gassed together with her child. In the 'Frauenlager' several sadistic SS
women were on duty. Two of the most notorious were Hilde Lächert ('Bloody
Brigitte') and Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan, eventually hunted down in New
York by Simon Wiesenthal in the 60s.
In 1975 - thirty years after the war - these two women, together with
several other former wardens of Majdanek, were put on trial in the
so-called Majdanek Trial in Dusseldorf (1975-1981). The longest trial in
German legal history.
Bloody Brigitte
The most disturbing fact about Hildegard Lächert is that she wasn't even a
Nazi but simply a sadist. The young Austrian woman wasn't in the NSDAP
when she joined the SS team in Majdanek's 'Frauenlager' at the age of 22.
Janina Latowitcz, a witness in the Majdanek Trial: she was like a beast,
hungry for blood. At the time she became wardress in Majdanek Lächert had
two small children. Nevertheless she treated the children in the camp with
special hate.
Lächert was the sadistic scourge of the camp as one witness put it. Her
former victims describe her as a very beautiful girl. Henryka Ostrowska:
... when she talked to the men of the SS or her colleagues, she was very
funny and charming. But when she talked to us and hit us, the (her) face
was gruesome. The face was not the face of a woman. Her nickname 'Bloody
Brigitte' resulted from her habit of whipping women till the flesh bled.
The Stomping Mare
The second woman on trial for her sadistic behaviour in Majdanek was
Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan. In Majdanek she used to wear steel studded
jackboots in which she gave blows to the inmates. Hermine Braunsteiner was
born in 1919 to a well-off family in Vienna. In her youth she had dreamt
of becoming a nurse. In the early 1940s she worked at the Heinkel aircraft
plant in Berlin. She quit the job to become a KZ wardress - because of the
better payment.
She was trained at Ravensbruck concentration camp near Berlin. There she
was well known for stomping old women to death. In October 1942, the blond
hair, blue eyed 23 year old girl was transferred to Majdanek death and
concentration camp outside Lublin, in German occupied Poland. There she
was promoted to assistant wardress under Elsa Erich, along with five other
women. She involved herself in selections of women and children to the
gas chambers and beat to death several women with her whip. She even
stomped women to death.
In March 1944, Hermine was reordered back to Ravensbruck where she was
promoted to supervising wardress at the Genthin subcamp of Ravensbruck. In
May 1945, Hermine fled the camp on the heals of the Soviet Red Army.
She was sentenced by an Austrian court for assassination, infanticide and
manslaughter in Ravensbruck, but released in 1949. An American soldier,
Russel Ryan, brought her as his Kriegsbraut first to Canada then to the
US. They settled down in Queens (New York). In 1963 she was awarded
American citizenship. Hermine Ryan would have lived happy ever after if it
wasn't for Wiesenthal to discover her real identity which he reported to
the US Immigration and Naturalization Department.
In 1971, the Department began to strip Mrs. Ryan of her citizenship
because she was an alien of questionable quality. In 1981 she was
[pjnews] Ashcroft Orders Libraries To Destroy Copies of Laws
Ashcroft Orders Libraries To Destroy Copies of Laws The American Library Association has refused the request July 30 Statement from American Library Association President-Elect Michael Gorman: Last week, the American Library Association learned that the Department of Justice asked the Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents to instruct depository libraries to destroy five publications the Department has deemed not 'appropriate for external use.' The Department of Justice has called for these five public documents, two of which are texts of federal statutes, to be removed from depository libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library. The topics addressed in the named documents include information on how citizens can retrieve items that may have been confiscated by the government during an investigation. The documents to be removed and destroyed include: Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure; Select Criminal Forfeiture Forms; Select Federal Asset Forfeiture Statutes; Asset forfeiture and money laundering resource directory; and Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA). ALA has submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the withdrawn materials in order to obtain an official response from the Department of Justice regarding this unusual action, and why the Department has requested that documents that have been available to the public for as long as four years be removed from depository library collections. ALA is committed to ensuring that public documents remain available to the public and will do its best to bring about a satisfactory resolution of this matter. Librarians should note that, according to policy 72, written authorization from the Superintendent of Documents is required to remove any documents. To this date no such written authorization in hard copy has been issued. Keith Michael Fiels Executive Director American Library Association (800) 545-2433 ext.1392 ___ Why Ashcroft may want destroyed Asset Forfeiture Laws at Public Libraries by R. Striker ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): Under the Patriot, Ashcroft and other agencies can't confiscate property on a grand scale from U.S. Citizens, businesses and others until a single provision protecting the public is removed from Rep. Henry Hides passed Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000. Provison affects USC 18 Forfeiture Statutes. Henry Hide's 2000 bill included a provision that was strongly resisted by the U.S. Justice Dept that states--if the U.S. Government attempts to seize an owner's property and fails, the U.S. Government must pay the owner's reasonable attorney fees and a limited amount of damages. This provision was included Hydes bill to stop government, police and paid informants from arbitrarily seizing property from U.S. Citizens using only a mere preponderance of evidence: Prior, (80%) of owners just gave up their property to government forfeiture because they could not afford to pay an attorney: Now more attorneys will defend an owner's property against government forfeiture because if they win, government must reimburse the property owner for reasonable attorney fees and damages. The public can now learn about this innocent owner provision and other forfeiture laws at public libraries without paying to consult an attorney-- provided Ashcroft does not have the forfeiture law books and guides destroyed. Ashcroft must get rid of this public protection provision under Title 18 before government agencies can begin asset forfeitures on a grand scale. There are over 200 federal forfeiture laws that have nothing to do with illegal-drugs. Currently quasi government agents and informants are paid up to 50% of an owner's forfeited property. In 2001 the Nation reported that DynCorp quasi-government agents were involved in seizing assets from 60,000 Americans. DynCorps asset forfeiture section was spun off in late 2003 to new corporate players, previously unknown to be working together according to the LA Times. Private mercenary quasi-government forfeiture agents and informants can make a fortune if Ashcroft gets Congress to remove the attorney reimbursement/damage provision in Hyde passed bill, The Civil Asset Forfeiture Act of 2000. Currently forfeiture mercenaries and informants need only provide hearsay evidence to get up to 50% of a forfeited owners property. Under the Patriot Act, U.S. Government agencies can seize and civilly forfeit under Title 18, the assets of U.S. Citizens without providing the owner of the confiscated property, any evidence that his or her property was involved in a crime or violation that made their property subject to forfeiture: Under the Patriot U.S. Government need only provide a mere preponderance of evidence to civilly seize a citizens property while offering concurrently offering witnesses and informants 50% of the confiscation. Property
[pjnews] Venezuela gets the Florida treatment
VENEZUELA FLORIDATED Tuesday, August 10, 2004 Will The Gang That Fixed Florida Fix the Vote in Caracas this Sunday? by Greg Palast Hugo Chavez drives George Bush crazy. Maybe it's jealousy: Unlike Mr. Bush, Chavez, in Venezuela, won his Presidency by a majority of the vote. Or maybe it's the oil: Venezuela sits atop a reserve rivaling Iraq's. And Hugo thinks the US and British oil companies that pump the crude ought to pay more than a 16% royalty to his nation for the stuff. Hey, sixteen percent isn't even acceptable as a tip at a New York diner. Whatever it is, OUR President has decided that THEIR president has to go. This is none too easy given that Chavez is backed by Venezuela's poor. And the US oil industry, joined with local oligarchs, has made sure a vast majority of Venezuelans remain poor. Therefore, Chavez is expected to win this coming Sunday's recall vote. That is, if the elections are free and fair. They won't be. Some months ago, a little birdie faxed to me what appeared to be confidential pages from a contract between John Ashcroft's Justice Department and a company called ChoicePoint, Inc., of Atlanta. The deal is part of the War on Terror. Justice offered up to $67 million, of our taxpayer money, to ChoicePoint in a no-bid deal, for computer profiles with private information on every citizen of half a dozen nations. The choice of which nation's citizens to spy on caught my eye. While the September 11th highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint's menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Argentines. How odd. Had the CIA uncovered a Latin plot to sneak suicide tango dancers across the border with exploding enchiladas? What do these nations have in common besides a lack of involvement in the September 11th attacks? Coincidentally, each is in the throes of major electoral contests in which the leading candidates -- presidents Lula Ignacio da Silva of Brazil, Nestor Kirschner of Argentina, Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador and Venezuela's Chavez-- have the nerve to challenge the globalization demands of George W. Bush. The last time ChoicePoint sold voter files to our government it was to help Governor Jeb Bush locate and purge felons on Florida voter rolls. Turns out ChoicePoint's felons were merely Democrats guilty only of V.W.B., Voting While Black. That little 'error' cost Al Gore the White House. It looks like the Bush Administration is taking the Florida show for a tour south of the border. However, when Mexico discovered ChoicePoint had its citizen files, the nation threatened company executives with criminal charges. ChoicePoint protested its innocence and offered to destroy the files of any nation that requests it. But ChoicePoint, apparently, presented no such offer to the government of Venezuela's Chavez. In Caracas, I showed Congressman Nicolas Maduro the ChoicePoint-Ashcroft agreement. Maduro, a leader of Chavez' political party, was unaware that his nation's citizen files were for sale to U.S. intelligence. But he understood their value to make mischief. If the lists somehow fell into the hands of the Venezuelan opposition, it could immeasurably help their computer-aided drive to recall and remove Chavez. A ChoicePoint flak said the Bush administration told the company they haven't used the lists that way. The PR man didn't say if the Bush spooks laughed when they said it. Our team located a $53,000 payment from our government to Chavez' recall organizers, who claim to be armed with computer lists of the registered. How did they get those lists? The fix that was practiced in Florida, with ChoicePoint's help, deliberate or not, appears to be retooled for Venezuela, then Brazil, Mexico and who knows where else. Here's what it comes down to: The Justice Department averts it's gaze from Saudi Arabia but shoplifts voter records in Venezuela. So it's only fair to ask: Is Mr. Bush fighting a war on terror -- or a war on democracy? --- Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.' This commentary is based on 'Tango Terrorists,' in the new chapter of the book's Expanded Election Edition (Penguin 2004). For Palast's reports on Venezuela for the Guardian of Britain and his exclusive interview for BBC Television with President Hugo Chavez, go to http://www.GregPalast.com
[pjnews] George W. Bush's Record-Breaking Economy
-- If you pass this comment along to others -- periodically but not repeatedly -- please explain that Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more folks can consult ZNet at http://www.zmag.org Today's commentary: http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-08/10weisbrot.cfm -- George W. Bush's Record-Breaking Economy By Mark Weisbrot Our economy since last summer has been growing at the fastest rate in 20 years said President Bush in a speech last week. The word went out from on high, and soon it began to spread: the fastest-growing economy in 20 years! A very important discovery for this election season, with voters none too pleased about the state of the economy. During a TV talk show (CNBC's Morning Call) on which I appeared, this claim was repeated to me. Is it true? Well if you pick the right three quarters -- the first quarter of this year and the second half of last year, to be exact -- it is technically true. Over these three quarters the economy grew by 5.4 percent, which is faster than any other 9-month period in the past 20 years. But not by much. For the last 9 months of 1999, for example, the economy grew by 5.1 percent. But why take 9 months? If we look at the last year, it's not any record at all. Similarly for the last two years. And since the recession ended in the last quarter of 2001, the economy has grown by 3.6 percent. This is not bad, but not particularly strong growth for a recovery from a recession -- when the economy usually grows at a much faster than normal rate. In the same speech Mr. Bush also bragged about the 1.5 million jobs created since last August. This impressive-sounding number also depends on a careful selection of time period. If we look at Mr. Bush's whole presidential term, the economy is still down more than a million jobs. Even the 1.5 million jobs created during Mr. Bush's selected ten months are a weak performance, barely enough to keep pace with the growth of the labor force. The economy from here on will have do better than even Mr. Bush's brag period, just for him to avoid the record achievement of being the first president since the Great Depression to preside over a net loss of jobs for the country. Perhaps the worst part of the job-loss recovery for most people has been that real wages -- adjusted for inflation -- have actually fallen over the last year. This means that most Americans are literally not getting anything out of our record growth. The Bush administration does have some real 20-year record-breaking numbers but they are not the kind that it would like to advertise. Here's the gold medal: our Federal budget deficit of $639 billion for 2004 is 5.6 percent of GDP, the highest since 1983, and second highest since World War II. Of course this figure from the Congressional Budget Office counts the borrowing from the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds -- which any good accountant would tell you should be counted, because it will have to be paid back. This knocks the wind out of another of President Bush's recent economic boasts: that the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 were a sound economic policy that ought to be continued. It is true that the tax cuts provided some modest stimulus to the economy, as opposed to doing nothing at all. But doing nothing was never the only practical alternative, and most economists would see these tax cuts as terribly irresponsible. That's because the tax cuts build a huge structural deficit into our federal budget, for years and even decades to come, until they are reversed. Another record: federal tax revenues are at their lowest in more than 50 years, as a percentage of our economy. For a small fraction of the trillions of dollars of deficit spending that the tax cuts have created over the next decade, we could have gotten the same or greater stimulus to the economy from a temporary rebate aimed at the majority of households -- and not so concentrated on the haves and the have-mores. About 24 percent of the Bush tax cuts have gone to the highest income one-percent of taxpayers. These are people who had already increased their after-tax income by 139 percent from 1979 to 2001 -- more than a $400,000 increase after inflation. The Bush Administration decided that these were the folks who most needed more tax breaks: on capital gains, dividends, and inheritances. Now there's another record we could break: for inequality of income and wealth in America. Mark Weisbrot is co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, DC (http://www.cepr.net).
[pjnews] Action: Protect Najaf - The Shrine of Ali
From Voices in the Wilderness http://www.vitw.org Dear friends, As the fighting and crisis intensifies in Najaf, Voices in the Wilderness calls for nonviolent acts demanding an end to the fighting. Call your Congressional Representative, US Senator and John Kerry's campaign headquarters in your state to demand that they publicly call for an end to all US military actions in Najaf, against its citizens and at the Imam Ali Mosque. Call candidates for federal office in your state and issue the same demand. If they don't respond positively, initiate nonviolent direct actions at their offices. Such nonviolent actions can include: an occupation of their office; a daily vigil outside of their office; a fax campaign to their office demanding they issue the statement; or a phone call campaign to their office. Also, write letters to the editor of your local newspapers and hold vigils in your local community. The time to act is now. Our country's military now declares preparations to attack the Shrine of Ali in the city of Najaf in Iraq. Our country stands on the precipice of declaring war on Islam. An attack on the Shrine of Ali is an attack on the heart of Islam and must be nonviolently resisted in our country. The US military is urging civilians to leave Najaf. We take this as a signal that our country is preparing to turn Najaf into a free fire zone, in which all who move, civilian or not, are targeted for attack. A free fire zone and an attack on the Shrine would significantly escalate the violence throughout Iraq, increasing the danger for all Iraqis. Voices in the Wilderness calls upon all US government officials-- elected or appointed-- to publicly declare their opposition to any attack by US military forces against the Shrine of Ali. We further call upon US military forces to withdraw from the holy city of Najaf and to cease all military operations against the city, its citizens and at the Imam Ali Mosque. The Shrine of Ali is the holiest of shrines in Shia Islam. It is the burial place for Imam Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed. The shrine is sacred to both Shia and Sunni Muslims. Attacking the Imam Ali Mosque is akin to bombing the burial site of Jesus for people of the Christian faith or the Western Wall for people of the Jewish faith. An attack on the Mosque would also replicate the history of oppression of Shia under Saddam Hussein. In 1991, Shia rose up against Saddam Hussein, at the urging of the first President Bush. As US warplanes flew overhead, not intervening, Saddam's helicopters massacred Shia on the ground below. Saddam attacked the Imam Ali Mosque during this time, killing those inside. As US citizens we must say no to this threatened attack on the heart of Islam. We will use all nonviolent means available to us to resist it. The violent overthrow of the Iraqi government and the subsequent military occupation of Iraq have not lead to freedom, security, and prosperity for the Iraqi people. Neither have they created the conditions in which freedom, security, and prosperity can be sown and nurtured. Quite the opposite: the threat and reality of violence is commonplace. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured. To this threat of violence, add the increased threat of water-borne disease and the weight of a collapsed electrical grid. The Iraqi people are our sisters and brothers. Our humanity demands that we begin to act as if lives of Iraqis and their faith truly matter to us. As US citizens we must respond without equivocation and act to end this war and occupation. Voices in the Wilderness was formed in 1996 in response to the US economic sanctions against Iraq. Voices has sponsored over 70 delegations to bring humanitarian supplies to Iraqi citizens despite US law. Voices currently faces a $20,000 fine for delivering medicine and other humanitarian supplies to Iraq. Kathy Kelly, Tess Kleinhaus, Jeff Leys, Danny Muller, Chuck Quilty, David Smith-Ferri, and Scott Blackburn for the Voices in the Wilderness Chicago office Video: Justice and Courage in Occupied Iraq: Challenges for the anti-war movement Michael Birmingham of Voices in the Wilderness speaks about the occupation of Iraq and resistance to Empire in the US, Iraq and elsewhere. This is from a talk that both Michael Birmingham and Kathy Kelly gave in Chicago, IL, July 7th 2004. You can view the video at http://vitw.org/video/ Audio: To listen to the complete audio of Justice and Courage in Occupied Iraq: Challenges for the anti-war movement please go to http://vitw.org/audio/ Please pass this information on to others. You can visit our email archive at http://vitw.org/emailarchives.html and use Send this message to a friend located at the bottom of each archived email. Our home page http://vitw.org/ letters from Iraq http://vitw.org/letters/ about us http://vitw.org/who_we_are/ recent updates http://vitw.org/updates/
[pjnews] International Observers at US Election
http://snipurl.com/8fgf International monitors to observe US election for first time By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles 10 August 2004 The Independent [UK] This November's presidential election will be observed by international monitors amid growing concerns that faulty machines and the manipulation of voter registration lists could lead to a repeat of the Florida fiasco of 2000. For the first time, experts from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) will observe the presidential election, after a formal invitation from the State Department. We will come to observe, not to oversee the elections, an OSCE spokeswoman, Urdur Gunnarsdottir, said. The presence of OSCE teams is a victory for campaigners who have raised the possibility that civil rights violations - which they say happened in the 2000 election - could be repeated. In July, 13 Democrats in the House of Representatives wrote to the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, asking him to send observers. After Mr Annan rejected their request, saying the Bush administration must make the application, the Democrats appealed to the Secretary of State, Colin Powell. Paul Kelly, an assistant Secretary of State, told the Democrats: OSCE members, including the United States, agreed in 1990 in Copenhagen to allow fellow members to observe elections in one another's countries. The OSCE, based in Poland, has 55 members and has sent teams to observe more than 150 elections. Many of its missions are in fledgling democracies and countries where free and fair elections are new. Campaigners in the US are desperate to avoid a repeat of 2000, when problems with voter rolls, ballot designs and recounts in Florida led to law suits. Ultimately, the Supreme Court in effect selected the nation's President. The team from the OSCE will not be the only election observers. The activist group Global Exchange is organising independent international election monitors to travel to the US twice, first in September to study computer voting machines, voter registration, disenfranchisement, campaign finance and other issues, and again for the election itself.
[pjnews] Fables of the Iraq Reconstruction
http://snipurl.com/8fu8 Several Iraqi officials working within the interim government have resigned in protest of the US-led assault on Najaf and Kut http://snipurl.com/8fue The Nation 30 August 2004 Fables of the Reconstruction by CHRISTIAN PARENTI As we speed down the Tigris River under a brilliant sun in a fiberglass skiff, Iraq almost seems like Vacationland--but only for a moment. Soon we're dodging the half-submerged barges and ferries sunk in last year's bombing. Then two Black Hawk helicopters dash low overhead, their menacing door gunners fully visible. Farther on, there are more bad signs. A strange column of dark smoke rises from a lush palm grove. And suddenly, huge nauseating plumes of raw sewage spill from pipes at Baghdad's southern edge. Not far from these fetid torrents are several major water-intake stations and a handful of fishermen setting long gill nets from wooden boats. Several of the fishermen, their vessels tucked in the shade of reed patches waiting for the nets to fill, say the catch is in decline. Sometimes the fish tastes and smells like sewage, explains one. Downriver, millions of people in cities like Basra draw their water from the Tigris. The sorry state of this river is just one piece of Iraq's failed reconstruction. Throughout the country, vital systems, from water and power to healthcare and education, are in woeful disrepair. The World Bank estimates that bringing Iraq back to its 1991 level of development will cost $55 billion and take at least four years. In the past seventeen months, US taxpayers have set aside a total of $24 billion to rebuild Iraq. Most of that sum has not been spent, though billions of dollars of poorly accounted for Iraqi oil revenues have been expended, or at least allocated to foreign (mostly American) contractors. Humanitarians see reconstruction as a moral obligation: a form of reparations for two US-led wars and thirteen years of brutal sanctions. From a military standpoint, reconstruction is central to the US counterinsurgency effort. The occupation's star officers, like Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, readily acknowledge that a broken economy means more violence. But seen up close, reconstruction in Iraq looks less like a mission of mercy or a sophisticated pacification program and more like a criminal racket. At the Rustimiyah South sewage-treatment plant, all is quiet except for a few mourning doves in the eucalyptus trees and a handful of Iraqi construction workers building a brick shed to house a new generator. This plant and its sister facility, Rustimiyah North, have been sitting dry--waiting for Bechtel, the largest US construction company and one of the lead contractors in occupied Iraq. As soon as Baghdad fell, Bechtel was in Iraq making deals with USAID, the government agency tasked with overseeing reconstruction. In total, the firm now has more than $2.8 billion in Iraq reconstruction jobs. As the primary contractor on much of Iraq's water system, as well as key parts of its power grid and some of the healthcare infrastructure, Bechtel's responsibilities are quite broad. Its initial April 2003 contract stated: The contractor will commence repairs of water infrastructure in 10 urban areas within the first month. Within the first 6 months the contractor will repair or rehabilitate critical water treatment, pumping and distribution systems in 15 urban areas. Within 12 months potable water supply will be restored in all urban centers, by the end of the program approximately 45 urban water systems will be repaired and put in good operational condition, and environmentally sound solid waste disposal will be established. None of those deadlines have been met--but luckily Bechtel's contracts are indemnified with loophole phrases like depending on the availability of equipment. The Rustimiyah sewage plants are among the few facilities given explicit mention as priority projects in Bechtel's contract-related documents. Together the two plants should handle all the sewage from Baghdad's populous east side, known as Rusafa; before the war the plants were fully functional but working beyond capacity. During the invasion they were knocked out by fighting and were then further damaged by looting. The sister plants haven't processed any sewage since April 2003. Now their daily flow of 780,000 cubic yards of human and industrial waste--a nasty cocktail of organic solids, heavy metals and poisonous chemicals from a battery factory, a soap factory, an electronics plant and other light industry--goes directly into the Diyala River, which joins the Tigris seven miles southwest of the plants. A third plant, farther north, has just started up again, but it is working at only about 20 percent capacity. Rustimiyah South's director is Riyidh Numan, a hospitable and reflective engineer in his early 30s working for the Baghdad Sewage Authority. Since Bechtel took over a year ago, his job has mostly consisted of sitting
[pjnews] Why Venezuelans Voted for Chavez
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0816-07.htm International Observers Ratify Chávez's Triumph in Referendum -- http://www.gregpalast.com/printerfriendly.cfm?artid=362 Dick Cheney, Hugo Chavez and Bill Clinton's Band Why Venezuela has Voted Again for Their 'Negro e Indio' President Baltimore Chronicle Monday, August 16, 2004 There's so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let's begin with this: 77% of Venezuela's farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the 'hacendados.' I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest march. Oddest demonstration I've ever seen: frosted blondes in high heels clutching designer bags, screeching, Chavez - dic-ta-dor! The plantation owner griped about the socialismo of Chavez, then jumped into his Jaguar convertible. That week, Chavez himself handed me a copy of the socialist manifesto that so rattled the man in the Jag. It was a new law passed by Venezuela's Congress which gave land to the landless. The Chavez law transferred only fields from the giant haciendas which had been left unused and abandoned. This land reform, by the way, was promoted to Venezuela in the 1960s by that Lefty radical, John F. Kennedy. Venezuela's dictator of the time agreed to hand out land, but forgot to give peasants title to their property. But Chavez won't forget, because the mirror reminds him. What the affable president sees in his reflection, beyond the ribbons of office, is a negro e indio -- a Black and Indian man, dark as a cola nut, same as the landless and, until now, the hopeless. For the first time in Venezuela's history, the 80% Black-Indian population elected a man with skin darker than the man in the Jaguar. So why, with a huge majority of the electorate behind him, twice in elections and today with a nearly two-to-one landslide victory in a recall referendum, is Hugo Chavez in hot water with our democracy-promoting White House? Maybe it's the oil. Lots of it. Chavez sits atop a reserve of crude that rivals Iraq's. And it's not his presidency of Venezuela that drives the White House bananas, it was his presidency of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. While in control of the OPEC secretariat, Chavez cut a deal with our maximum leader of the time, Bill Clinton, on the price of oil. It was a 'Goldilocks' plan. The price would not be too low, not too high; just right, kept between $20 and $30 a barrel. But Dick Cheney does not like Clinton nor Chavez nor their band. To him, the oil industry's (and Saudi Arabia's) freedom to set oil prices is as sacred as freedom of speech is to the ACLU. I got this info, by the way, from three top oil industry lobbyists. Why should Chavez worry about what Dick thinks? Because, said one of the oil men, the Veep in his bunker, not the pretzel-chewer in the White House, runs energy policy in the United States. And what seems to have gotten our Veep's knickers in a twist is not the price of oil, but who keeps the loot from the current band-busting spurt in prices. Chavez had his Congress pass another oil law, the Law of Hydrocarbons, which changes the split. Right now, the oil majors - like PhillipsConoco - keep 84% of the proceeds of the sale of Venezuela oil; the nation gets only 16%. Chavez wanted to double his Treasury's take to 30%. And for good reason. Landless, hungry peasants have, over decades, drifted into Caracas and other cities, building million-person ghettos of cardboard shacks and open sewers. Chavez promised to do something about that. And he did. Chavez gives them bread and bricks, one Venezuelan TV reporter told me. The blonde TV newscaster, in the middle of a publicity shoot, said the words pan y ladrillos with disdain, making it clear that she never touched bricks and certainly never waited in a bread line. But to feed and house the darker folk in those bread and brick lines, Chavez would need funds, and the 16% slice of the oil pie wouldn't do it. So the President of Venezuela demanded 30%, leaving Big Oil only 70%. Suddenly, Bill Clinton's ally in Caracas became Mr. Cheney's -- and therefore, Mr. Bush's -- enemy. So began the Bush-Cheney campaign to Floridate the will of the Venezuela electorate. It didn't matter that Chavez had twice won election. Winning most of the votes, said a White House spokesman, did not make Chavez' government legitimate. Hmmm. Secret contracts were awarded by our Homeland Security spooks to steal official Venezuela voter lists. Cash passed discreetly from the US taxpayer, via the so-called 'Endowment for Democracy,' to the Chavez-haters running today's recall election. A brilliant campaign of placing stories about Chavez' supposed unpopularity and dictatorial manner seized US news and op-ed pages, ranging from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times. But some facts just can't be smothered in propaganda ink. While George Bush can
[pjnews] Iraqis say soldiers rob them
http://snipurl.com/8hvw Police fire at reporters as US tanks roll up to shrine http://snipurl.com/8hvy Those they can't co-opt, they destroy; Najaf proves that the US will never allow democracy to flourish in Iraq http://snipurl.com/8hw5 Relatives of the U.S. soldier who sounded the alarm about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison said on Monday the family was living in protective custody because of death threats against them... - http://snipurl.com/8hw1 New York Newsday 15 August 2004 Iraqis say soldiers rob them Civilians allege that forces seeking rebels raid homes and take money, other property; U.S. authorities say such incidents are rare By Ray Sanchez, Staff Correspondent BAGHDAD, Iraq - On a scorching July night last year, the Abdullatif family was sleeping on the flat roof of their modest house to escape the heat. An explosion jolted them awake. U.S. troops on a counterinsurgency raid had blown open the front door. Military helicopters swooped down, so close they seemed almost to land on the roof. U.S. troops armed with M-16s arrested Omar Abdullatif, then 17, his two brothers and their 63-year-old father, who suffers from dementia, as suspected terrorists. As the troops searched the house, in Baghdad's al-Alam neighborhood, they broke open the locked, wooden chest in the parents' bedroom that held the family's savings, the Abdullatifs said. Omar Abdullatif said he saw U.S. soldiers stuff several gold bracelets, necklaces, rings and about $3,500 in Iraqi dinars, into pockets underneath their body armor. Like most Iraqis arrested by U.S. troops, the Abdullatifs ultimately were released and given a U.S. military document saying there were no charges against them. But they never recovered their cash and jewelry. Early this month, Omar's mother, Razqya Hasan, 52, trekked to Iraq's Human Rights ministry. The ministry's guards would not let her in, telling her the agency had no authority over U.S. troops and that she would have to make her complaint elsewhere. I hate America for this, Hasan said shortly afterward as she served an American visitor a lunch of steamed rice, pickled vegetables and Iraqi bread. In U.S.-occupied Iraq, It doesn't matter if you're innocent or not, she said. The Abdullatifs are an example of what appears to be a widespread problem that U.S. military authorities have yet to address: alleged theft by U.S. troops, notably during night- time anti-guerrilla raids. For months, ordinary Iraqis have complained - to human rights monitors, Iraqi officials and journalists - about such thefts. During the raids, there are seldom independent eyewitnesses and Iraqis held at gunpoint usually have no idea which soldiers or units are involved, making even cursory investigation of the allegations difficult. Forty accounts of theft recorded in recent days by Newsday include complaints by the caretaker of a Coptic Christian church, the manager of a small hotel in Baghdad, an Iraqi police captain and a grain farmer. A question of scale The U.S. military describes cases of theft by U.S. troops as rare exceptions among the 135,000 soldiers here. Despite repeated requests in the past 10 days, military spokesmen in Iraq had no direct comment on the theft allegations. A senior Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said, We set very high standards, and said any allegation of improper conduct would be investigated. A Pentagon official said soldiers may confiscate items, such as weapons or money, from suspected insurgents if they believe the items could be used to aid the anti-U.S. resistance, but said they must note any seizure in after-action reports to superiors. Military rules and the Geneva Conventions require troops to issue receipts for items formally confiscated. In Washington, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command says it has investigated 20 felony cases alleged against U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. So far, it has found credible evidence of a crime in 11 of the cases and referred them to the soldiers' units for adjudication, said Chris Grey, a spokesman for the command. Other officials said they are confident that less serious cases are being handled at lower levels of the military system, but no centralized statistics exist to count them. In Baghdad, allegations of theft abound. At each of two offices - the Human Rights Ministry and the Iraqi Assistance Center, an office that receives claims against U.S. forces - Iraqis arrived in recent days with claims of theft by troops at the rate of one every hour. Hundreds upon hundreds of the 20,000 compensation claims filed in the past year with the Iraqi Assistance Center alleged theft by U.S. troops during raids, said a source closely familiar with the office, who spoke on condition of anonymity. That center is one of 60 claim offices the U.S. military says have been set up throughout the country. Abu Ghraib accountability While Army spokesmen describe theft as rare, other officers said
[pjnews] Crying Wolf in the War Against Terror
Other news: http://snipurl.com/8ip5 Bush Gambles as Najaf Burns http://snipurl.com/8ipv Rumsfeld Escapes Blame in 'Whitewash' Abu Ghraib Report: A Pentagon report on prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison is being labelled a whitewash before it has even been released http://snipurl.com/8iph The Bush administration showed reckless disregard for public health after the World Trade Center collapse by failing to warn people of the health risks of breathing toxic smoke and dust at ground zero, an environmental group said Wednesday... --- http://snipurl.com/8ipd Crying Wolf in the War Against Terror: The feds face a stunning blow to credibility by releasing a long-jailed U.S. citizen. By Andrew Cohen, Los Angeles Times - 16 August 2004 Never mind, the feds now say to Yaser Esam Hamdi, the alleged enemy combatant whose case was decided in June by the U.S. Supreme Court. Never mind that we threw you into the brig and then fought like wildcats to deprive you of fundamental constitutional rights. Never mind that we told federal judges that you were a dangerous enemy of the United States. Now, it seems, the government is negotiating with Hamdi's attorneys for his release from confinement. According to reports, Hamdi would renounce his U.S. citizenship, move to Saudi Arabia and accept some travel restrictions, as well as some monitoring by Saudi officials, in exchange for his freedom. In addition, he may have to agree not to file a civil rights lawsuit against the federal government. If all Hamdi has to worry about is going forward into his new life of freedom, it would be a remarkable turnaround for a man who for years now the government has sworn is a terrorist. It would be a shocking admission from the government that there is not now, and probably never has been, a viable criminal case against Hamdi. And it would cause a stunning and long-lasting loss of credibility for the representations that government lawyers and military officials make in these sorts of terror law cases. The Justice Department is spinning the talks between Hamdi's attorneys and federal lawyers as a routine exercise in the release of prisoners in wartime. But it is fairly clear that such talks did not take place before the Supreme Court rode to Hamdi's rescue a couple of months ago by requiring his captors to give him some rights. If Hamdi is such a minor threat today that he can go back to the Middle East without a trial or any other proceeding, it's hard not to wonder whether the government has been crying wolf all these years. The government, remember, told a federal appeals panel in June 2002 that Hamdi's background and experience, particularly in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, suggest considerable knowledge of Taliban and Al Qaeda training and operations. Government lawyers told the Supreme Court itself as late as April that Hamdi's continued detention (without charges) was necessary and appropriate. Why? Because, the feds said, Hamdi was captured when his Taliban unit surrendered to Northern Alliance forces and, at the time of his capture, Hamdi had an AK-47 rifle. Since Sept. 11, many American citizens have been indicted and prosecuted in the domestic war on terrorism for less sinister conduct (remember the Lackawanna 6?). But apparently no case ever will be brought against Hamdi. No, he did his time without a judge or a jury finding proof against him beyond a reasonable doubt. And now that his case and his cause have become an embarrassment, now that the Supreme Court smacked down the executive branch's power grab, the feds have decided that they are better off just moving on. When you think about that, and you think about what the Constitution is supposed to protect us against, Hamdi's story is a scary one even during this time of terror. And it reminds me of the story of another U.S. citizen who was captured by the Northern Alliance while hanging out with the Taliban in the months after the 9/11 attacks. I wonder today what John Walker Lindh thinks of this governmental change of heart about Hamdi. Unlike Hamdi, Lindh was never deemed an enemy combatant and immediately deprived of his rights. Instead, he was indicted and prosecuted and is now spending 20 years in a federal prison after pleading guilty to aiding a terrorist organization. Lindh's attorneys are following this development very closely because of the similarities between their client and Hamdi. They hope the government gives Lindh the same reconsideration it has extended to Hamdi. Nothing the Supreme Court declared in the Hamdi case in June requires the government to take the action it took. All the court did was declare that Hamdi is entitled to some form of constitutional due process. The government could satisfy that obligation to Hamdi, the court suggested, by some form of military review process. But apparently Hamdi won't have to endure such a process. So don't blame the justices if you see Hamdi whooping it up in
[pjnews] Transfer Of Power, Sort Of -- Now And Then
-- If you pass this comment along to others -- periodically but not repeatedly -- please explain that Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more folks can consult ZNet at http://www.zmag.org Today's commentary: http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-08/17landau-hassen.cfm Transfer Of Power, Sort Of -- Now And Then By Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen The government is the potent omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States, 1928 Since first grade our teachers have intoned: We're a government of law, not of men. After endless repetition, we almost believed that crap. Sure, rich and poor people alike get arrested and jailed for sleeping under the bridge, begging without a license and stealing a loaf of bread. Try to find a rich white man in a state penitentiary! Nevertheless, the old nation of law saw begets endless repetition. Even Bush said it at the June 10, G-8 Summit in Sea Island, Georgia. Snapping at intimations that he might have authorized torture at Abu Ghraib prison, Bush lectured reporters that we're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. Maybe he forgot the atrocities carried out in Vietnam -- not just at My Lai with no one punished for carpet bombing cities, massacring villages and defoliating the countryside with poison. Did the Abu Ghraib affair snap people back to consciousness? The White House and Pentagon responded to the torture photos and videos with the traditional: a few bad apples at the bottom of the command barrel did it on their own (Saddam Hussein might try that for his defense). Then blame fell on Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who didn't have her act together and, by sexist implication, shouldn't have been in charge of a man's job. The pass-the-buck scenario evolved into a question of whether the military police or intelligence service should have controlled prison interrogations. Did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have advance knowledge of the malfeasance? Although the media continues to carry the story, its very confusion has led editors to hide it on more remote pages. On June 23, the public received a dramatic lesson in how law applies only to others when it conflicts with US imperial ambitions. When US soldiers or contract workers torture Iraqis, they should be tried, but by US courts. Foreigners accused of torture can go to the International Criminal Court (ICC). So, Bush's UN Ambassador twisted some arms to persuade the UN Security Council to pass a resolution extending another year's immunity for US troops in Iraq and other peacekeeping operations. Already, the US has negotiated bilateral agreements with Israel, India and the Philippines that provide US nationals immunity from the ICC's jurisdiction. When the Security Council refused to pass the resolution, appropriately explained by Chilean UN Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz as a vote for international law, the White House withdrew it, but then petulantly cast doubt on whether the US would contribute troops to future UN missions -- if subject to ICC review. An even more blatant show of imperial chutzpah ensued. Army General George Casey, the incoming commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, stated that the United States will extend legal immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts to all currently serving coalition personnel. In early June, US officials had asked Iyad Allawi, our appointed Iraqi Prime Minister and former CIA Agent, to also include foreign contractors in the immunity shield. So much for Iraqi judicial sovereignty! The mixture of concern for international law and simultaneous exemption for US bad behavior has historical precedent. President Theodore Roosevelt encouraged the formation of a Central American Court of Justice in 1907 for maintaining peace and hearing disputes between Central American states. But in 1910 President William Howard Taft twice dispatched US troops to Nicaragua to protect American interests. In 1911, Secretary of State Philander Knox epitomized US simul-opting, advocating law while flouting law. To justify the obvious US snub of law by its planned Nicaragua invasion, he asserted: We are in the eyes of the world, and because of the Monroe Doctrine, held responsible for the order of Central America. In 1912, Taft again sent marines under General Smedley Butler to invade and occupy Nicaragua as a promoter of peace and governmental stability. The Court concluded that the US invasion and occupation violated Nicaraguan sovereignty. But newly elected President Woodrow Wilson, the oratorical champion of self-determination and League of Nations architect, essentially destroyed the Court's legitimacy and efficacy. In 1913, Wilson declared that US-Latin America cooperation remained contingent
[pjnews] Palestinian Prisoners on Hunger Strike
Hunger strike final avenue for prisoners Published at http://www.palestinereport.org on August 18, 2004. by Omar Karmi MY DAUGHTER has only seen her father twice in her life, said one woman. Its been two months since I last saw my husband. A young boy, in a faltering voice, then recited a poem he had written to his father, also a prisoner, to warm applause from the audience. A group of youngsters sang a song, and an elderly woman asked how we can have peace when our children are being treated like animals. They were all speaking at a tent erected in front of the Ramallah Baladna Cultural Center on August 17. Similar tents have gone up all across the Palestinian areas for people to show solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails who have gone on a general hunger strike to protest their conditions. August 18 has been declared a national day of solidarity with the prisoners and in a speech on the same day, President Yasser Arafat praised them for their steadfastness and vowed his unstinting support. They have tried legal means to improve their conditions, Khalida Jarrar, Director of the Ramallah-based Adameer Prisoners Support Human Rights Association, told the Palestine Report. But nothing has worked. This is their last avenue. On August 15 it was announced that Palestinian prisoners were commencing a hunger strike until certain demands pertaining to their conditions were met. By August 17, according to numbers from Adameer, 3,500 prisoners were striking. The number is important if only because the Israel Prisons Service, in charge of the prisons that are affected by the hunger strike (as opposed to Israeli military prisons, or administrative detention centers), on August 18 claimed the number was 1,469 after several dozen terrorists halted their strike. Jarrar dismissed that claim as Israeli propaganda. The prisoners are charging that their basic rights are being systematically violated and accuse Israel of being in transgression of Israeli as well as international law. They are demanding, according to an August 15 press release from the Families of Palestinian Political Prisoners organization, an end to arbitrary and indiscriminate beatings; arbitrary and indiscriminate firing of tear gas into prison cells; humiliating strip searches in front of other prisoners every time they enter or exit their cells; and arbitrary imposition of financial penalties for minor infractions such as singing or speaking too loud. Prisoners are also demanding improved medical treatment and more and better food, while six separate demands deal with family visitation rights and procedures. I think the family visits are especially important, said Jarrar. Many prisoners and their families have been telling me how they wish they could go back to the old visitation facilities where, while prisoners and their relatives were separated, the glass partition wall had holes in them so they could at least touch fingers. Now, explains Jarrar, prisoners are separated from their visitors by two partition walls, and no physical contact is possible. In addition, children are no longer allowed to go and sit with the prisoners, and communication usually takes place over a phone. Both prisoners and visitors are subjected to what Jarrar calls humiliating searches, not only on their way into the visits, but on their way out. Finally, there are many restrictions in place as to who can visit, and how many times they go. In order to apply for a permit to visit prisoners, relatives must go through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that then applies to the Israeli civil administration on their behalf. Rejections or permits are conveyed back to the families through the same route. According to Jarrar, in many cases people are simply rejected for security reasons with no other explanation forthcoming. Appeals must be lodged through the ICRC. Only closest relatives are allowed to go in the first place, and no children or siblings between the ages of 16-45 will get a permit. The ICRC is also in charge, subject to the strictures of the Israeli authorities, of transportation to and from prisons, a process, prisoners charge, that has been needlessly prolonged and complicated. Trips that should only take a few hours are sometimes prolonged to dozens of hours, according to Israeli, Palestinian and international prisoner rights groups. Indeed, none of the prisoners complaints are new, and most of them are well documented. In February 2003, the International Federation of Human Rights (FDIH), in cooperation with several Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, released a lengthy report detailing several violations of international law. The report concluded that Israel, despite being signatory to international conventions on the treatment of detainees, was in flagrant violation of, among others, the Universal Human Rights Declaration, particularly those articles prohibiting all forms of
[pjnews] 'Staggering Amount' of Cash Missing In Iraq
http://snipurl.com/8kt0 New Fuel to Halliburton Fraud Fire The U.S. Army is threatening to partially withhold payments to Halliburton for the logistical support the company provides for troops in Iraq. The reason: allegations of millions of dollars in over-charges for food, shelter and services. There was no regard for spending limits, says former employee Marie DeYoung. Some of the most compelling accusations come from people like DeYoung, who worked for Halliburton subsidiary KBR. She recently told Congress that while troops rough it in tents, hundreds of preferred Halliburton KBR employees reside in five-star hotels like the Kempinski in Kuwait with fruit baskets and pressed laundry delivered daily. It costs $110 to house one KBR employee per day at the Kempinski, while it costs the Army $1.39 per day to bunk a soldier in a leased tent, DeYoung said. The military requested that Halliburton move into tents, but Halliburton refused. Documents obtained by CBS News show an auditor repeatedly flagged improper fees for soldiers' laundry. At one site, taxpayers reportedly paid $100 for each 15-pound load of wash -- $1 million a month in overcharges. [snip] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0821-01.htm Published on Saturday, August 21, 2004 by the Inter Press Service 'Staggering Amount' of Cash Missing In Iraq by Emad Mekay WASHINGTON - Three U.S. senators have called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to account for 8.8 billion dollars entrusted to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq earlier this year but now gone missing. In a letter Thursday, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, Byron L Dorgan of North Dakota and Tom Harkin of Iowa, all opposition Democrats, demanded a full, written account of the money that was channeled to Iraqi ministries and authorities by the CPA, which was the governing body in the occupied country until Jun. 30. The loss was uncovered in an audit by the CPA's inspector general. It has not yet been released publicly and was initially reported on the website of journalist and retired U.S. Army Col David Hackworth. The CPA was terminated at the end of July to make way for an interim Iraqi government, which is in turn scheduled to be replaced by an elected body early in 2005. We are requesting a full, written account of the 8.8 billion dollars transferred earlier this year from the CPA to the Iraqi ministries, including the amount each ministry received and the way in which the ministry spent the money, said the letter. The senators also requested that the Pentagon designate a date by which it will install adequate oversight and financial and contractual controls over money it spends in Iraq. They accused the CPA of transferring the staggering sum of money with no written rules or guidelines to ensure adequate control over it. They pointed to disturbing findings from the inspector general's report that the payrolls of some Iraqi ministries, then under CPA control, were padded with thousands of ghost employees. They refer to an example in which CPA paid the salaries of 74,000 security guards although the actual number of employees could not be validated. The report says that in one case some 8,000 guards were listed on a payroll but only 603 real individuals could be counted. Such enormous discrepancies raise very serous questions about potential fraud, waste and abuse, added the letter. This is not the first time that U.S. financial conduct in Iraq has come under fire, specifically over funds slated for reconstruction after the U.S.-led attack in March 2003, which then went unaccounted for. In June, British charity Christian Aid said at least 20 billion dollars in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds intended to rebuild the country have disappeared from banks administered by the CPA. Watchdog groups have complained before about the opaque nature of the CPA's handling of Iraqi money and the lack of transparency of U.S. and Iraqi officials. Halliburton, a giant U.S. company that has been awarded 8.2 billion dollars worth of contracts from the Defense department to provide support services such as meals, shelter, laundry and Internet connections for U.S. soldiers in Iraq, has been targeted for allegedly overcharging for those services. Continued failures to account for funds, such as the 8.8 billion dollars of concern here - and the refusal, so far, of the Pentagon to take corrective action are a disservice to the American taxpayer, the Iraqi people and to our men and women in uniform, the senators wrote. Groups critical of the lack of transparency in the CPA's spending have been particularly angry that the authority used Iraqi money to pay for questionable contracts -- some awarded without a public tendering process -- with U.S. companies. Washington initially restricted the most lucrative reconstruction contracts in Iraq to gigantic U.S. firms that appeared able to reap huge profits, fueling accusations the Bush administration was
[pjnews] Bush Wants To Be Your Shrink
http://snipurl.com/8jhy Bush Wants To Be Your Shrink: Now Bush wants to test every American for mental illness--including you! And guess who will create the tests? By Jordanne Graham Intervention Magazine Next month, President Bush plans to unveil a broad new mental health plan called the New Freedom Initiative. Never mind that it couldnt have less to do with freedom; if youre a thinking American, this initiative should scare the hell out of you. The New Freedom Initiative proposes to screen every American, including you, for mental illness. To this end, the president established a New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, to study the nations mental health delivery service and make a report. Its interesting to note that many on the staff appointed to the Commission have served on the advisory boards of some of the nations largest drug companies. The commission reported that despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed, so it recommended comprehensive mental health screening for consumers of all ages, including preschool children because each year, young children are expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviors and emotional disorders. Children and school personnel will be the first to be screened. The panel concluded that schools are in key positions to screen the 52 million students and six million adults who work at the schools. By doing this, the commission expects to flush out another six million persons not now receiving treatment. But who will decide the screening criteria? Bush and his people? The drug companies? What are their qualifications? One recommendation of the commission was that the screening be linked with treatment and supports, using specific medications for specific conditions. It is no coincidence that the treatments recommended for specific conditions are the newest state-of-the-art treatments that will bring in the most revenues for the drug companies. One of these emerging treatments is a capsule implanted within the body that delivers doses of medication without the patient having to swallow pills or take injections. If a government wanted to exert control of its citizens, think of the implications of using this device. The Texas Medication Algorithm Project, or TMAP, was named by the commission as a model medication treatment plan that illustrates an evidence-based practice that results in better consumer outcomes. Medical algorithms are a decision-tree approach to treatment. If symptoms A, B, and C are evident, use treatment X. In 1995, TMAP began as an alliance of individuals from the University of Texas, the pharmaceutical industry, and the mental health and corrections systems of Texas. This plan was trumpeted by the American Psychiatric Association even as it asked for increased funding to implement TMAP. When an employee of the Inspector Generals office revealed that state officials with influence over the plan had received money and perks from drug companies who stood to gain from it, the plan came under severe criticism. Allen Jones, an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, wrote a whistleblower report in which he stated that behind the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission was the political/pharmaceutical alliance that developed the Texas project, which promotes the use of newer, more expensive antipsychotics and antidepressants. He further claimed that this unholy alliance was poised to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy to treat mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects, and to force private insurers to pick up more of the tab. In an article in the British Medical Journal, Jones shows that many companies who helped launch TMAP are also major contributors to Bushs re-election funds. For example, Eli Lilly manufactures olanzapine. This is one of the drugs recommended in the New Freedom plan. Lilly has numerous ties to the Bush administration according to the British Medical Journal. It says George Herbert Walker Bush was once a member of Lillys board of directors. Our current President Bush appointed Lillys chief executive officer, Sidney Taurel, as a member of the Homeland Security Council. Eighty-two percent of Lillys $1.6 million in political contributions in 2000 went to Bush and the Republican Party. Now dont get me wrong. The medical algorithm approach used in Texas shows promise as a treatment tool for mental health and other illnesses. But make no mistake; this initiative is not really about treatment tools. Masquerading in the lamb's fleece of providing mental health treatment to needy folk is the greedy wolf called Big Pharma. Helping out Big Pharma in the form of the TMAP has nearly bankrupted Texas. So why would our president want to do that to the rest of the nation? To understand this, one must look at the big picture. At the recent
[pjnews] Hundreds on Do-Not-Fly List
http://snipurl.com/8n2v Hundreds Report Watch-List Trials Some Ended Hassles at Airports by Making Slight Change to Name By Sara Kehaulani Goo Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, August 21, 2004; Page A08 For more than a year and a half, Rep. John Lewis has endured lengthy delays at the ticket counter, intense questioning by airline employees and suspicious glances by fellow passengers. Airport security guards have combed through his luggage as he stood in front of his constituents at the Atlanta airport. An airline employee has paged him on board a flight for further questioning, he said. On at least 35 occasions, the Georgia Democrat said, he was treated like a criminal because his name, like that of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), appeared on a government terrorist watch list. While Kennedy managed to get security officials to end his airlines hassles after three weeks of trying, Lewis had no luck for months. Then he found his own way around the security mess. Lewis added his middle initial to his name when making his airline reservations. The computer system apparently didn't flag tickets for Rep. John R. Lewis, and the hassles suddenly ended. The 'R' is the only thing that has been saving me, Lewis said from Atlanta yesterday. Hundreds of passengers -- possibly thousands -- have contacted the Transportation Security Administration complaining that the government's secret watch lists are unfairly targeting innocent travelers and causing travel headaches. Just last month, more than 250 passengers sought to be removed from the list. But even more disconcerting, some of these travelers and security experts say, is that the system can be easily circumvented by a simple adjustment to one's name. The no-fly list assumes that dangerous people are going to use the same name the government thinks they use. If I'm Osama bin Laden, I'm going to use a fake ID when I go on an airline and hijack it, said Aaron H. Caplan, attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. The whole notion that keeping a list of names contributes to safety is kind of questionable, especially when terrorists use aliases all the time. Some passengers who were told that their names matched others on the watch lists said they have been tipped off by airline employees who were embarrassed and apologetic about having to delay them when the passengers were known to the employees. John W. Lewis, a 76-year-old doctor who lives in Camden, Maine, said he was stopped and questioned before several Continental Airlines flights to Houston, where he teaches a course. When he arrived for his usual flight in June, airline agents had some advice for him. They said, 'You're not on the list, but your name is, and if you change your name, it will be okay,' Lewis said. So he changed the name on his credit card and his airline tickets to Dr. John W. Lewis, but it has not eliminated the problem entirely, he said. Airline agents still stop him when he checks in at the ticket counter, he said. But no one raises any questions on the return trip. He said he has contacted Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R) and Rep. Lewis to try to fix the problem permanently. I can't believe we are all on the hit list, he said, referring to people named John Lewis. The no-fly list is a collection of names from the FBI and intelligence agencies that is managed by the TSA and delivered to airlines. Each airline has its own system for matching the names. A Department of Homeland Security official said that Kennedy and Rep. Lewis were not on the no-fly list but that similar names had popped up on another, more extensive airline terrorist watch list. Security experts said the government's no-fly list and other watch lists of known terrorists come up with false matches because they are based on antiquated technologies and are unevenly administered by airline employees instead of security personnel. What is flawed in the identification system is the administration of this list, said TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark. The agency is working to replace the existing system with one that is more ambitious, but it is not clear when it will be ready. Airlines have different policies and procedures, she said. Several airlines said privately yesterday that they find it uncomfortable enforcing a security policy created by the government, especially when they have to tell some of their best customers -- frequent fliers -- that they are on a watch list. Several carriers declined to comment on experiences by passengers. Douglas R. Laird, an aviation security consultant who helped develop another government computer screening system, said the no-fly list is pretty much worthless. Name search [systems] were relatively unimportant for the simple reason that you don't have to do much to throw the computer off, Laird said. But other security experts disagree and say that even though it is impossible to eliminate false positives -- that is, cases like that of John Lewis -- watch lists can
[pjnews] RNC Perks and Party News Round-up
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0825-11.htm Judge Blocks Central Park Protest http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0825-10.htm GOP Delegates Met With Anti-Bush Signs Bright blue tarps, painted with glaring yellow letters, are going up on dozens of rooftops in Brooklyn, under the flight paths into busy New York airports. Thousands of delegates and convention guests peering down at the city might see messages like No more years and Re-defeat Bush. We just hope that they'll look down and ask themselves, 'Why, why do they feel so strongly? Why is it that New York feels this way?' said Genevieve Christy, who has painted more than 80 banners since thinking of the idea a few weeks ago... http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms RNC PERKS AND PARTY NEWS ROUND-UP August 25, 2004 By Michelle Ciarrocca The estimated cost of the 2004 Republican National Convention, being held at Madison Square Garden in New York City from August 30 to September 2, is $166 million compared to an estimated $95 million for the Democratic National Convention held in Boston. How times have changed, in 1992 when Bill Clinton got the Democrats seal of approval, the convention * also held in the Big Apple * cost a mere $38.3 million. Opinions are mixed on whether or not the convention will provide a boost to the local economy, but some things are for certain: New Yorkers traveling in or around mid-town can expect delays in their morning commute * from train schedule changes to subway exits and entrances and whole city blocks closed. They can also expect to see more men and women in blue: the New York Times reported that more than 10,000 officers will be providing security at Madison Square Garden, delegate hotels, and throughout the city. One resident living near the Garden told me she was informed by the New York City police department that there would be snipers on the roof of her building. And while the Democrats had lobster rolls, Fenway Park and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Republicans will have Broadway shows, the U.S. Open and batting practice at Shea Stadium to choose from. Russ Schriefer, the convention program director, noted that the RNC would be shorter and have fewer speakers than the DNC. Schriefer has arranged events into segments and mini-programs saying, we tried to look at what TV shows do to keep an audience. The entire convention is spread over four days, with 19 hours of schedule programs. Capitalizing on the proximity in time and place to Ground Zero and 9/11, painted above the arena are the words A Nation of Courage. Building on that theme, there's a Preachers and Patriots segment in which people from around the country have been invited to make short statements during the convention, and although earlier rumors indicated Senator John McCain would deliver the keynote address, now Democratic Senator Zell Miller from Georgia is scheduled to deliver the address entitled, Fulfilling America's Promise: Building a Safer World and a More Hopeful America. Miller gave the keynote address in 1992 for Clinton. This year, his presence is meant to convey an image of broad support for the Republican Party. The GOP convention website notes that each day the convention speakers will focus on a key element of the goal of a safer world and more hopeful American. On Monday, former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Senator John McCain will talk about the courage of a nation. Tuesday, the theme of the day is compassion with comments from Mrs. Bush and the Terminator (now Governor of California) Arnold Schwartzenegger. On Wednesday, in addition to Miller's address there will be a special bonus-- who better to speak about the land of opportunity than Vice President Dick Cheney, whose former company, Halliburton has made billions on servicing U.S. troops in Iraq? And capping off the event on Thursday, will be none other than George W. presenting his plan for building a safer world by spreading freedom around the globe. Perks and events sponsored by the host committee, corporations or special interest groups include: Free Metrocards Guided tours of Coney Island featuring The Wonder Wheel and the Brooklyn Aquarium, but no mention of free rides on the rickety old Cyclone rollercoaster Shopping excursions and fashion shows at Cartier, Macy's, and Bloomingdale's Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) will be honored at the Good Ol' Honky Tonk Salute at the RNC convention, sponsors include the Nuclear Energy Institute, the National Mining Association, and the power companies' trade association, the Edison Electric Institute (each paid $20,000 a pop to cover the expenses) Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn) will throw a gala at Rockefeller Center on September 1st, featuring a concert, general reception and a VIP reception. A mere $250,000 gives you 10 tickets to the VIP event, 50 tickets to the general reception and concert, and entrée to another VIP event with Frist at the
[pjnews] Voting While Black in Florida
Other news: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0825-07.htm California Court to Rule on 1980 Death Squad Killing http://snipurl.com/8n2x The New York Times 20 August 2004 Voting While Black By BOB HERBERT The smell of voter suppression coming out of Florida is getting stronger. It turns out that a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation, in which state troopers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando in a bizarre hunt for evidence of election fraud, is being conducted despite a finding by the department last May that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud. State officials have said that the investigation, which has already frightened many voters and intimidated elderly volunteers, is in response to allegations of voter fraud involving absentee ballots that came up during the Orlando mayoral election in March. But the department considered that matter closed last spring, according to a letter from the office of Guy Tunnell, the department's commissioner, to Lawson Lamar, the state attorney in Orlando, who would be responsible for any criminal prosecutions. The letter, dated May 13, said: We received your package related to the allegations of voter fraud during the 2004 mayoral election. This dealt with the manner in which absentee ballots were either handled or collected by campaign staffers for Mayor Buddy Dyer. Since this matter involved an elected official, the allegations were forwarded to F.D.L.E.'s Executive Investigations in Tallahassee, Florida. The documents were reviewed by F.D.L.E., as well as the Florida Division of Elections. It was determined that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud concerning these absentee ballots. Since there is no evidence of criminal misconduct involving Mayor Dyer, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement considers this matter closed. Well, it's not closed. And department officials said yesterday that the letter sent out in May was never meant to indicate that the entire investigation was closed. Since the letter went out, state troopers have gone into the homes of 40 or 50 black voters, most of them elderly, in what the department describes as a criminal investigation. Many longtime Florida observers have said the use of state troopers for this type of investigation is extremely unusual, and it has caused a storm of controversy. The officers were armed and in plain clothes. For elderly African-American voters, who remember the terrible torment inflicted on blacks who tried to vote in the South in the 1950's and 60's, the sight of armed police officers coming into their homes to interrogate them about voting is chilling indeed. One woman, who is in her mid-70's and was visited by two officers in June, said in an affidavit: After entering my house, they asked me if they could take their jackets off, to which I answered yes. When they removed their jackets, I noticed they were wearing side arms. ... And I noticed an ankle holster on one of them when they sat down. Though apprehensive, she answered all of their questions. But for a lot of voters, the emotional response to the investigation has gone beyond apprehension to outright fear. These guys are using these intimidating methods to try and get these folks to stay away from the polls in the future,'' said Eugene Poole, president of the Florida Voters League, which tries to increase black voter participation throughout the state. And you know what? It's working. One woman said, 'My God, they're going to put us in jail for nothing.' I said, 'That's not true.' State officials deny that their intent was to intimidate black voters. Mr. Tunnell, who was handpicked by Gov. Jeb Bush to head the Department of Law Enforcement, said in a statement yesterday: Instead of having them come to the F.D.L.E. office, which may seem quite imposing, our agents felt it would be a more relaxed atmosphere if they visited the witnesses at their homes.'' When I asked a spokesman for Mr. Tunnell, Tom Berlinger, about the letter in May indicating that the allegations were without merit, he replied that the intent of the letter had not been made clear by Joyce Dawley, a regional director who drafted and signed the letter for Mr. Tunnell. The letter was poorly worded,'' said Mr. Berlinger. He said he spoke to Ms. Dawley about the letter a few weeks ago and she told him, God, I wish I would have made that more clear. What Ms. Dawley meant to say, said Mr. Berlinger, was that it did not appear that Mayor Dyer himself was criminally involved.
[pjnews] Action: Call on the GOP to stop voter suppression
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0826-25.htm Minorities Bear Brunt of 'Subtler' Bias at US Polls, Report Says --- Dear MoveOn member, Last month John Pappageorge, a Republican state representative in Michigan, told a journalist that the Republicans would do poorly if they failed to suppress the Detroit vote. Detroit, of course, is 83% black.[1] Democratic officials expressed their outrage, and Pappageorge eventually apologized for his words, but his statement spoke to a bigger truth: Republicans continue to actively suppress black and minority votes in order to win elections through intimidation, misinformation, and tampering with voter rolls and records. In 2000, the black voters who were not allowed to vote would have almost certainly swung the election in Al Gore's favor. And the practice continues: a recent report from the NAACP and the People for the American Way Foundation documents suppression tactics in use right now.[2] The Republican Party's continued silence is shameful. We're joining with Julian Bond, Chairman of the NAACP*, Reverend Jesse Jackson, President of the Rainbow/Push Coalition*, Congresswoman Maxine Waters and Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. and others to demand that the Republican Party abandon these racist, unfair, and undemocratic tactics and condemn anyone in their ranks who uses them. Please join us by signing the petition at: http://www.moveonpac.org/suppression/ Many of the leaders above and other signers will personally deliver this petition to the Bush/Cheney campaign headquarters next month, so please sign today and ask your friends to sign. Just last week, Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote a column describing armed, plain-clothes officers from the Florida state police (which reports directly to Governor Jeb Bush) going into the homes of elderly black voters and interrogating them, supposedly as part of an investigation into voter fraud. While ostensibly random, several of those questioned were members of the Orlando League of Voters, a group that has been very successful in mobilizing the city's black vote. According to Herbert, this supposed investigation has resulted in a blanket of fear, leaving organizers afraid to work and voters afraid of contact with campaign workers.[3] Four years ago, Florida election officials removed over 52,000 voters from the rolls under the guise of ?cleansing? the list of felons. Over 90% of those purged were not guilty of any crime and 54% were African-American, a group which, in Florida, are likely to vote Democratic over 90% of the time.[4] The company that provided the purge list warned Florida officials that thousands of eligible voters would likely be disenfranchised in the process, but Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State who also served as state campaign manager for George W. Bush, went forward with the purge anyway. The result was thousands of voters not allowed to vote in an election that was decided by just over 500 votes. It's not just Florida. A joint report from People for the American Way Foundation and the NAACP The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America Today highlights recent attempts to suppress African-American and minority voting, documenting instances of the following:[5] Challenges and threats against individual voters at the polls by armed private guards, off-duty law enforcement officers, local creditors, fake poll monitors, and poll workers and managers. Signs posted at the polling place warning of penalties for voter fraud or non-citizen voting, or illegally urging support for a candidate. Poll workers helping voters fill out their ballots, and instructing them on how to vote. Criminal tampering with voter registration rolls and records. Fliers and radio ads containing false information about where, when and how to vote, voter eligibility, and the false threat of penalties. Internal memos from party officials in which the explicit goal of suppressing black voter turnout is outlined. Here are a few other incidents highlighted in the report and elsewhere: In 2003, in Pennsylvania, men with clipboards bearing official-looking insignias were reportedly dispatched to African American neighborhoods. Tom Lindenfeld, who ran a counter-intimidation campaign for Democratic candidate John Street, said there were 300 cars with the decals resembling such federal agencies as the DEA and ATF and that the men were asking prospective voters for identification. In a post-election poll of 1000 African-American voters, seven percent said they had encountered such efforts. In 2002, in Louisiana, fliers were distributed in African American communities stating, Vote!!! Bad Weather? No problem!!! If the weather is uncomfortable on election day [Saturday, December 7th], remember you can wait and cast your ballot on Tuesday, December 10th. In a separate incident, apparently targeting potential supporters of Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, the
[pjnews] Depleted Uranium: A death sentence here and abroad
http://snipurl.com/8pmf 18 August 2004 Depleted Uranium: Dirty Bombs, Dirty Missiles, Dirty Bullets A death sentence here and abroad by Leuren Moret Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. - Henry Kissinger, quoted in Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POWs in Vietnam Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation. And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that Gulf-era veterans now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period. This week the American Free Press dropped a dirty bomb on the Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months. Since these soldiers were exposed to vaccines and depleted uranium (DU) only, this is strong evidence for researchers and scientists working on this issue, that DU is the definitive cause of Gulf War Syndrome. Vaccines are not known to cause cancer. One of the first published researchers on Gulf War Syndrome, who also served in 1991 in Iraq, Dr. Andras Korényi-Both, is in agreement with Barbara Goodno from the Department of Defenses Deployment Health Support Directorate, that in this war soldiers were not exposed to chemicals, pesticides, bioagents or other suspect causes this time to confuse the issue. This powerful new evidence is blowing holes in the cover-up perpetrated by the Pentagon and three presidential administrations ever since DU was first used in 1991 in the Persian Gulf War. Fourteen years after the introduction of DU on the battlefield in 1991, the long-term effects have revealed that DU is a death sentence and very nasty stuff. Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the 1960s reported that it targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as spectacular and a matter of concern. This evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on biological systems - radiation, chemical and particulate the particulate effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant one immediately after exposure and targets the Master Code in the DNA. This is bad news, but it explains why DU causes a myriad of diseases which are difficult to define. In simple words, DU trashes the body. When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Fulk was more specific: I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people. Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure. Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now have medical problems. The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II. They brought it home Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the battlefields, but they brought it home. DU in the semen of soldiers internally contaminated their wives, partners and girlfriends. Tragically, some women in their 20s and 30s who were sexual partners of exposed soldiers developed endometriosis and were forced to have hysterectomies because of health problems. In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were
[pjnews] The Pay-off in Bush Air Guard Fix
http://snipurl.com/8q3k President Bush acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that he had miscalculated post-war conditions in Iraq, The New York Times reported... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/28/politics/28rumsfeld.html In his first comments on the two major investigative reports issued this week at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday mischaracterized one of their central findings about the American military's treatment of Iraqi prisoners by saying there was no evidence that prisoners had been abused during interrogations... --- Still Unreported: The Pay-off in Bush Air Guard Fix Saturday, August 28, 2004 by Greg Palast In 1968, former Congressman George Herbert Walker Bush of Texas, fresh from voting to send other mens sons to Vietnam, enlisted his own son in a very special affirmative action program, the champagne unit of the Texas Air National Guard. There, Top Gun fighter pilot George Dubya was assigned the dangerous job of protecting Houston from Vietcong air attack. This week, former Lt. Governor Ben Barnes of Texas 'fessed up to pulling the strings to keep Little George out of the jungle. I got a young man named George W. Bush into the Texas Air Guard - and I'm ashamed. THE PAY-OFF Thats far from the end of the story. In 1994, George W. Bush was elected governor of Texas by a whisker. By that time, Barnes had left office to become a big time corporate lobbyist. To an influence peddler like Barnes, having damning information on a sitting governor is worth its weight in gold or, more precisely, theres a value in keeping the info secret. Barnes appears to have made lucrative use of his knowledge of our Presidents slithering out of the draft as a lever to protect a multi-billion dollar contract for a client. That's the information in a confidential letter buried deep in the files of the US Justice Department that fell into my hands at BBC television. Here's what happened. Just after Bush's election, Barnes' client GTech Corp., due to allegations of corruption, was about to lose its license to print money: its contract to run the Texas state lottery. Barnes, says the Justice Department document, made a call to the newly elected governor's office and saved GTech's state contract. The letter said, Governor Bush ... made a deal with Ben Barnes not to rebid [the GTech lottery contract] because Barnes could confirm that Bush had lied during the '94 campaign. In that close race, Bush denied the fix was in to keep him out of 'Nam, and the US media stopped asking questions. What did the victorious Governor Bush's office do for Barnes? According to the tipster, Barnes agreed never to confirm the story [of the draft dodging] and the governor talked to the chair of the lottery two days later and she then agreed to support letting GTech keep the contract without a bid. And so it came to pass that the governor's commission reversed itself and gave GTech the billion dollar deal without a bid. The happy client paid Barnes, the keeper of Governor Bushs secret, a fee of over $23 million. Barnes, not surprisingly, denies that Bush took care of his client in return for Barnes silence. However, confronted with the evidence, the former Lt. Governor now admits to helping the young George stay out of Vietnam. Take a look at the letter yourself - with information we confirmed with other sources - at http://www.gregpalast.com/ulf/documents/draftdodgeblanked.jpg Frankly, I dont care if President Bush cowered and ran from Vietnam. I sure as hell didnt volunteer but then, my daddy didnt send someone else in my place. And I dont march around aircraft carriers with parachute clips around my gonads talking about war and sacrifice. More important, I haven't made any pay-offs to silence those who could change my image from war hero to war zero. Time Warner Won't Let Us Air This By the way: I first reported this story in 1999, including the evidence of payback, in The Observer of London. US media closed its eyes. Then I put the story on British television last year in the one-hour report, Bush Family Fortunes. American networks turned down BBC's offer to run it in the USA. Wonderful film, one executive told me, but Time Warner is not going to let us put this on the air. However, US networks will take cash for advertisements calling Kerry a Vietnam coward. The good news is, until Patriot Act 3 kicks in, they can't stop us selling the film to you directly. The updated version of Bush Family Fortunes, with the full story you still can't see on your boob tube, will be released next month in DVD. See a preview at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm For more on our presidents war years and the $23 million payment, read this excerpt from the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=233row=1. Subscribe to Greg Palast's reports at http://www.GregPalast.com
[pjnews] A chill in Florida
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0826-04.htm Poll: 81% of NYers Support Protests http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0827-01.htm Peace Activists Launch Peaceful NY Police Program with Buttons, Discounts Peaceful police officers will receive smiles and positive responses from RNC protesters, as well as discounts at several New York City stores, if they pledge to remain peaceful during demonstrations that are planned during the Republican National Convention. CODEPINK: Women for Peace obtained the discounts and designed the peaceful New York police buttons in an effort similar to the peaceful political activist program that was launched by Mayor Bloomberg last week. Police officers who choose to wear the buttons can receive discounts from such businesses as ABC Homes and Carpets (20 % off); Axis Gallery (10 % of art work); The Culture Project (50 % off on any performance); Angelicas Kitchen (5 % off on meals); and screenings of the movie Uncovered at the Angelica Theater (10 % off). http://www.progressivetrail.org/articles/040826Bond.shtml Julian Bond: Jim Crow's New Party --- http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/23/opinion/23herbert.html A chill in Florida By Bob Herbert / 23 August 2004 The state police investigation into get-out-the-vote activities by blacks in Orlando, Fla., fits perfectly with the political aims of Gov. Jeb Bush and the Republican Party. The Republicans were stung in the 2000 presidential election when Al Gore became the first Democrat since 1948 to carry Orange County, of which Orlando is the hub. He could not have carried the county without the strong support of black voters, many of whom cast absentee ballots. The G.O.P. was stung again in 2003 when Buddy Dyer, a Democrat, was elected mayor of Orlando. He won a special election to succeed Glenda Hood, a three-term Republican who was appointed Florida secretary of state by Governor Bush. Mr. Dyer was re-elected last March. As with Mr. Gore, the black vote was an important factor. These two election reverses have upset Republicans in Orange County and statewide. Moreover, the anxiety over Democratic gains in Orange County is entwined with the very real fear among party stalwarts that Florida might go for John Kerry in this year's presidential election. It is in this context that two of the ugliest developments of the current campaign season should be viewed. A Democrat can't win a statewide election in Florida without a high voter turnout - both at the polls and with absentee ballots - of African-Americans, said a man who is close to the Republican establishment in Florida but asked not to be identified. It's no secret that the name of the game for Republicans is to restrain that turnout as much as possible. Black votes are Democratic votes, and there are a lot of them in Florida. The two ugly developments - both focused on race - were the heavy-handed investigation by Florida state troopers of black get-out-the-vote efforts in Orlando, and the state's blatant attempt to purge blacks from voter rolls through the use of a flawed list of supposed felons that contained the names of thousands of African-Americans and, conveniently, very few Hispanics. Florida is one of only a handful of states that bar convicted felons from voting, unless they successfully petition to have their voting rights restored. The state's felon purge list had to be abandoned by Glenda Hood, the secretary of state (and, yes, former mayor of Orlando), after it became known that the flawed list would target blacks but not Hispanics, who are more likely in Florida to vote Republican. The list also contained the names of thousands of people, most of them black, who should not have been on the list at all. Ms. Hood, handpicked by Governor Bush to succeed the notorious Katherine Harris as secretary of state, was forced to admit that the felons list was a mess. She said the problems were unintentional. What clearly was intentional was the desire of Ms. Hood and Governor Bush to keep the list secret. It was disclosed only as a result of lawsuits filed under Florida's admirable sunshine law. Meanwhile, the sending of state troopers into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando was said by officials to be a response to allegations of voter fraud in last March's mayoral election. But the investigation went forward despite findings in the spring that appeared to show that the allegations were unfounded. Why go forward anyway? Well, consider that the prolonged investigation dovetails exquisitely with that crucial but unspoken mission of the G.O.P. in Florida: to keep black voter turnout as low as possible. The interrogation of elderly black men and women in their homes has already frightened many voters and intimidated elderly get-out-the-vote volunteers. The use of state troopers to zero in on voter turnout efforts is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, in Florida. But the head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement,
[pjnews] Largest Demonstration Ever at a Political Convention
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0830-03.htm Hundreds of Thousands March Against Bush, War http://snipurl.com/8r0z NYT: Marchers Denounce Bush as they Pass G.O.P. Convention Hall http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0830-02.htm Gay GOP Leader Warns of a Cultural War Within Party --- http://www.alternet.org/story/19712/ Public Thunder By Dan Frosch, AlterNet Posted on August 29, 2004 Together, undaunted by a blazing late summer sun, hundreds of thousands marched through some of New York City's busiest streets on Sunday in a massive protest against George Bush and the Republican National Convention. The BBC estimated the number of demonstrators at over 250,000. Some carried clever posters decrying George Bush's ascent to power. Others wielded drums, horns, or in one case, a frying pan, and banged out their frustrations in rhythm. Still others carried small children on their shoulders. Despite rumblings about Molotov-cocktail hurling anarchists and a bitter last-minute legal battle between protest organizers and the city of New York over where to hold the march, Sunday's event was largely peaceful, even as protestors came face to face with police, the secret service, and a loud contingent of Republican hecklers at Madison Square Garden, the site of the convention. A police spokeswoman told AlterNet at 8:30 pm on Sunday night that 200 arrests were made, a relatively small amount considering the sheer number of protestors at press time, organizers estimated 450,000 according to news reports while the police have not yet released a figure and there were no immediate reports of violence. According to the AP, the largest mass-arrest was of 50 protesters on bicycles who stopped near the parade route were carted away in an off-duty city bus. Another 15 were arrested when someone set a papier-mache dragon float afire near Madison Square Garden, the AP reported. Protestors began gathering between 14th and 22nd Streets and 7th Avenue in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood early Sunday morning in preparation for the march. United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), the marches' organizer and an umbrella of over 800 different groups nationwide, designated different sections for the various participating contingents to assemble Vietnam, Gulf War and Iraqi War Veterans' groups were gathered at the front as were labor unions like Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and PSC-CUNY (City University of New York's Teachers' Union). National peace groups, youth and student collectives, as well as numerous regional organizations and individual protestors filled in behind them. Virtually all those in attendance were donned in brightly-hued t-shirts, holding an equally colorful sign, or wearing a politically charged button, many of them laden with the sort of sardonic slogans that have become symbolic of the left's criticism of the Bush administration. One man wore a shirt that read I'll Mess With Texas. A woman held a sign which said 'Yee-ha Is Not Foreign Policy.' One elderly man raised a placard asking Whose Taxes Would Jesus Cut? A young woman grinned as she hoisted a cardboard poster which demanded Pull Out Like Your Father Should Have! Another solemn-faced woman grasped one which stated: Bring My Son Home. This is incredible, gushed native New Yorker David Rosner, who came to protest by himself and wore a button which read Somewhere in Texas, A Village Is Missing An Idiot. Just before noon, filmmaker Michael Moore, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and UFPJ organizers led the march up Seventh Ave. toward Madison Square Garden. A team of yellow-shirted protest marshals from UFPJ locked arms and escorted them as they walked. The march snaked uptown at a snail's pace at first, with throngs of people waiting shoulder to shoulder for nearly an hour in stifling near-ninety degree heat to walk to one city block. We want an end to this war. We want the troops home, said Michael Moore. It's just not going to work with us there. We owe a huge apology to the people of Iraq for creating the amount of death and destruction that we have created there. Though police had cordoned off the first half of the protest route with barriers on either side of 7th Avenue, preventing anyone from exiting and entering the march except at designated areas, the mood of the marchers remained festive. The first ten blocks resembled more of a raucous political street party than anything else: Code Pink, a women's social justice group stopped at virtually every block to perform a well-choreographed dance routine as they chanted anti-Bush slogans; a head-bobbing group of teenage activists co-opted the hit Ludacris hip-hop song Move Bitch and began rapping Move Bush! Get Out The Way!; one young woman belted out an unrecognizable protest tune as she strummed wildly on an acoustic guitar. Meanwhile, as police helicopters pounded overhead and a corner of Madison Square Garden's coliseum appeared in the distance, 80-year-old
[pjnews] Israel, the ultimate swing state?
http://snipurl.com/8qow Government secrecy has increased sharply in the past few years -- keeping Americans in the dark about information they should be able to access, says a report released yesterday by a coalition of watchdog groups. It found the federal government created 14 million new classified documents in fiscal year 2003 -- a 26 percent increase over 2002, and a 60 percent increase over 2001. Those numbers cover more than 40 agencies, but exclude the CIA. At the same time, the government is declassifying fewer documents, the report said. Some 43 million pages were declassified in 2003 -- a significant decrease from 100 million pages in 2001... http://snipurl.com/8r0p Israel, the ultimate swing state? In Election 2004, true battlegrounds may be across the sea by RANDALL RICHARD, AP National Writer When decision time comes this fall, the real swing votes in the 2004 presidential election may not come from Pennsylvania, Ohio or even the notorious Florida. The ultimate Bush-Kerry battleground may turn out to be somewhere more far-flung and unexpected -- Israel, Britain, even Indonesia. And both political camps say they are getting ready for the fight, courting American voters who are living overseas and taking no chances that the expatriate vote will undermine them at the finish line. Although an official census has never been taken, between 4 million and 10 million American citizens are believed to be living abroad. Those over 18 are entitled to have their absentee votes counted in the state where they last lived -- no matter how long ago that was. And many are planning to do just that. There's enormous interest abroad, because the whole of the world depends on the result, said Phyllis Earl, 72, who lives in Britain and has not voted in a U.S. election since 1956, two years after she moved overseas. Overseas voters are considered particularly important this year. Polls suggest razor-thin margins in several battleground states, and votes coming in from abroad -- a score here, a dozen there -- could well tip the balance. Contrary to widespread belief, it was more likely American voters in Israel, not Florida, who put George W. Bush in the White House four years ago -- a phenomenon that has Kerry's supporters in Israel vowing to do whatever it takes to make certain that doesn't happen again in November. Kerry's sister Diana speaks several languages and has been using them all in campaign swings throughout Europe. Sharon Manitta, spokeswoman for the group Democrats Abroad, said Kerry supporters have been active in overseas outreach efforts in Europe, Indonesia, Mexico and even Iran. In 2000, the organization had 30 overseas chapters; now it has a presence in 73 countries -- including an Iraq chapter called Donkeys in the Desert. Bush, too, has advocates chasing the overseas vote on his behalf, according to Ryan King, deputy director of Republicans Abroad, which has chapters in 50 countries. Among those crossing the oceans for Bush this fall are former Vice President Dan Quayle and George P. Bush, son of the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Be an expatriate patriot, says an ad planned by Republicans Abroad that also quotes former President Ronald Reagan: We cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent. After Labor Day, Republicans Abroad also plans campaign ads on the president's behalf in the International Herald Tribune and in Stars and Stripes, a newspaper with wide distribution among the estimated 300,000 to 400,000 U.S. military personnel serving abroad. Those who doubt that Americans living abroad could tip the balance in 2004 might consider this: Various chads aside, Al Gore received 202 more votes than George W. Bush on Election Day 2000 in Florida. Only after all the overseas votes were counted, including more than 12,000 from Israel alone, was Bush's election victory certified. The margin was 537 votes. In 2000, according to King, Israel was one of the keys to Bush's success. No other foreign country's U.S. citizens contributed more to Bush's narrow Florida victory, he said. Harvard Professor Gary King, co-compiler of a survey analyzing Florida's overseas vote in 2000, has no doubt that expatriate Americans gave Bush his victory four years ago. And while it's unclear whether the vote from Israel alone was enough to put Bush over the top, 185,000 U.S. citizens live there -- an undetermined number from Florida. Mark Zober, chairman of Democrats Abroad in Israel, said he has no firm figures but estimates that roughly 100,000 Americans in Israel are eligible to vote in the upcoming U.S. election, and that roughly 14,000 were registered in 2000. But how could Israeli Jews give Bush his margin of victory when Jewish Democrats outnumber Jewish Republicans by a wide margin in the United States? Both Zober and Ryan King think they know the answer. Zober sees little doubt that the Jewish vote in New York state heavily favored Gore. But in the
[pjnews] Press Corps Keeps Anti-Kerry Distortions Alive
Fairness Accuracy In Reporting Media analysis, critiques and activism http://www.fair.org/press-releases/swift-boat.html MEDIA ADVISORY: Swift Boat Smears: Press Corps Keeps Anti-Kerry Distortions Alive August 30, 2004 A group of Vietnam veterans called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have managed to dominate campaign coverage recently with a series of inaccurate and unfounded allegations about John Kerry's Vietnam War service. But instead of debunking the group's TV ads and numerous media appearances, the press corps has devoted hours of broadcast time and considerable print attention to the group's message. At times, some reporters seem to suggest that the Swift Boat coverage is being driven by some external force that they cannot control. The ad war, at least over John Kerry's service in Vietnam, has for the moment effectively blocked out everything else, explained MSNBC's David Shuster (8/23/04)-- as if the media are not the ones responsible for deciding which issues were being blocked out. The New York Times similarly noted (8/20/04) that the group catapulted itself to the forefront of the presidential campaign, while Fox News reporter Carl Cameron (8/23/04) suggested that the controversy has completely knocked Kerry off message, and the political impasse suggests the story is not going away any time soon. That impasse is largely the result of the media's failure to sufficiently compare the Swift Boat charges to the available military records and eyewitness accounts. Even a cursory examination of the available evidence reveals fatal flaws in the group's charges, which fly in the face of all documentary evidence, and the testimony of almost every person present when Kerry earned his medals. Larry Thurlow, the Swift Boat Vet who claims that Kerry was not under enemy fire when he earned his Bronze Star, himself earned a Bronze Star for actions under enemy fire in the same incident. Louis Letson, who claims to have treated the wound that earned Kerry his first Purple Heart, is not the medic listed in medical records as having treated Kerry. John O'Neill, the leader of the group, has said that Kerry would have been court-martialed had he crossed the border into Cambodia-- but O'Neill is on tape telling President Richard Nixon that he himself had been in Cambodia. Several members of the group are on the record praising Kerry's leadership. And so on. Imagine that the situation were reversed: What if all available documentary records showed that George W. Bush had completed his stint in the Air National Guard with flying colors? What if virtually every member of his unit said he had been there the whole time, and had done a great job? Suppose a group of fiercely partisan Democrats who had served in the Guard at the same time came forward to say that the documents and the first-hand testimony were wrong, and that Bush really hadn't been present for his Guard service. Would members of the press really have a hard time figuring out who was telling the truth in this situation? And how much coverage would they give to the Democrats' easily discredited charges? But when Kerry is the target of the attacks, many journalists seem content to monitor the flow of charges and counter-charges, passing no judgment on the merits of the accusations but merely reporting how they seem to affect the tone of the campaign. As the Associated Press put it (8/24/04), Kerry has been struggling in recent days against charges-- denounced by Democrats as smear tactics -- that he lied about his actions in Vietnam that won five military medals. Credible charges or smears? AP's readers could only use their own personal opinions of Democrats to judge. To CNN, even the awarding of the medals became a matter of debate: They're not just attacking the medals that John Kerry might have won, reporter Daryn Kagan said of the Swift Boat Vets (8/24/04). The notion that reporters cannot pass some reasonable judgment about the ads was common. There is no way that journalism can satisfy those who think that Kerry is a liar or that Swift Boat Veterans For Truth are liars, asserted NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving (NPR.org, 8/25/04). When asked if the Swift Boat ads, along with other ads critical of Bush, were accurate, CNN's Bill Schneider (8/24/04) demurred: I don't have an answer because I haven't systematically looked at all those ads. Certainly, the Swift Boat Veterans' ads-- that first ad has been looked at with great care. And what the Washington Post concluded on Sunday was those allegations have remained unproved. At this point, the 60-second ad had been a major political controversy for weeks-- and CNN's senior political analyst couldn't find the time to figure out whether it was accurate or not? An editorial in the L.A. Times (8/24/04) noted that the problem is not that reporters can't say whether the charges are true-- it's that they don't want to say: The canons of the profession prevent most journalists from saying
[pjnews] A No-Win Situation in Iraq
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0831-01.htm Najaf Peace Deal Shows Why US Troops Must Leave Iraq - http://www.iht.com/articles/536652.html 31 August 2004 A No-Win Situation By PAUL KRUGMAN 'Everyone wants to go to Baghdad; real men want to go to Tehran. That was the attitude in Washington two years ago, when Ahmad Chalabi was assuring everyone that Iraqis would greet U.S. troops with flowers. More recently, some Americans had a different slogan: Everyone worries about Najaf; people who are really paying attention worry about Ramadi. Ever since the uprising in April, the Iraqi town of Falluja has in effect been a small, nasty Islamic republic. But what about the rest of the Sunni triangle? Last month a Knight-Ridder news agency report suggested that U.S. forces were effectively ceding many urban areas to insurgents. Last Sunday, The New York Times confirmed that while the world's attention was focused on Najaf, western Iraq fell firmly under rebel control. Representatives of the U.S.-installed government have been intimidated, assassinated or executed. Other towns, like Samarra, have also fallen to insurgents. Attacks on oil pipelines are proliferating. And America is still playing whack-a-mole with Moktada al-Sadr: His Mahdi Army has left Najaf, but remains in control of Sadr City, with its two million people. The Christian Science Monitor reports that interviews in Baghdad suggest that Sadr is walking away from the standoff with a widening base and supporters who are more militant than before. For a long time, anyone suggesting analogies with Vietnam was ridiculed. But Iraq optimists have, by my count, already declared victory three times. First there was Mission Accomplished - followed by an escalating insurgency. Then there was the capture of Saddam - followed by April's bloody uprising. Finally there was the furtive transfer of formal sovereignty to Ayad Allawi, with implausible claims that this showed progress - a fantasy exploded by the guns of August. Now, serious security analysts have begun to admit that the goal of a democratic, pro-American Iraq has receded out of reach. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies - no peacenik - writes that there is little prospect for peace and stability in Iraq before late 2005, if then. Cordesman still thinks - or thought a few weeks ago - that the odds of success in Iraq are at least even, but by success he means the creation of a government that is almost certain to be more inclusive of Ba'ath, hard-line religious, and divisive ethnic/sectarian movements than the West would like. And just in case, he urges the United States to prepare a contingency plan for failure. Fred Kaplan of the online magazine Slate is even more pessimistic. This is a terribly grim thing to say, he wrote recently, but there might be no solution to the problem of Iraq - no way to produce a stable, secure, let alone democratic, regime. And there's no way we can just pull out without plunging the country, the region, and possibly beyond into still deeper disaster. Deeper disaster? Yes: People who worried about Ramadi are now worrying about Pakistan. So what's the answer? Here's one thought: Much of U.S. policy in Iraq - delaying elections, trying to come up with a formula that blocks simple majority rule, trying to install first Chalabi, then Allawi, as strongman - can be seen as a persistent effort to avoid giving Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani his natural dominant role. But recent events in Najaf have demonstrated both the cleric's awesome influence and the limits of American power. Isn't it time to realize that the United States could do a lot worse than Sistani, and give him pretty much whatever he wants? Here's another thought. President George W. Bush says that the troubles in Iraq are the result of unanticipated catastrophic success. But that catastrophe was predicted by many experts. Cordesman says their warnings were ignored because the United States has the weakest and most ineffective National Security Council in post-war American history, giving control to a small group of neoconservative ideologues who shaped a war without any realistic understanding or plans for shaping a peace. Bush, who took a winning the war on terror bus tour just a few months ago, conceded Monday that I don't think you can win the war on terror. But he hasn't changed the national security adviser, nor has he dismissed even one of the ideologues who got America into this no-win situation. Rather than concede that he made mistakes, he's sticking with people who will, if they get the chance, lead the United States into two, three, many quagmires.
[pjnews] Florida Fixed Again? Absentee Ballots Go Absent
update: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0901-01.htm DESIGNER OF INFAMOUS 'BUTTERFLY BALLOT' LOSES REELECTION - http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=366row=0 Madame Butterfly Flies Off with Ballots Florida Fixed Again? Absentee Ballots Go Absent by Greg Palast Sunday, August 29, 2004 On Friday, Theresa LePore, Supervisor of Elections in Palm Beach, candidate for re-election as Supervisor of Elections, chose to supervise her own election, no one allowed. This Tuesday, Florida votes for these nominally non-partisan posts. You remember Theresa, Madame Butterfly, the one whose ballots brought in the big vote for Pat Buchanan in the Jewish precincts in November 2000. Then she failed to do the hand count that would have changed the White House from Red to Blue. This time, Theresa's in a hurry to get to the counting. She began tallying absentee ballots on Friday in her own re-election race. Not to worry: the law requires the Supervisor of Elections in each county to certify poll-watchers to observe the count. But Theresa has a better idea. She refused to certify a single poll-watcher from opponents' organizations despite the legal requirement she do so by last week. She'll count her own votes herself, thank you very much! And so far, she's doing quite well. Although 37,000 citizens have requested absentee ballots, she says she'd only received 22,000 when she began the count. Where are the others? Don't ask: though she posts the names of requesters, she won't release the list of those who have voted, an eyebrow-raising deviation from standard procedure. And she has no intention of counting all the ballots received. She has reserved for herself the right to determine which ballots have acceptable signatures. Her opponent, Democrat Art Anderson, had asked Theresa to use certified hand-writing experts, instead of her hand-picked hacks, to check the signatures. Unfortunately, while Federal law requires Theresa to allow a voter to correct a signature rejection when registering, the Feds don't require her to permit challenges to absentee ballot rejections. I know what you're thinking. How could Madame Butterfly know how people are voting? Well, she's printed PARTY AFFILIATION on the OUTSIDE of each return envelope. That certainly makes it easier to figure out which ballot is valid, don't it? And dear Reader, please take note of the implications of this story for the big vote in November. Millions have sought refuge in absentee ballots as a method to avoid the dangers of the digitizing of democracy. Florida and other states are reporting 400%-plus increases in absentee ballot requests due to fear of the new computer voting machinery. Some refuge. LePore is giving us an early taste of how the Bush Leaguers intend to care for your absentee ballot. If there's no safety in the absentee ballot, how about the computerized machines? The LePores of America have that one figured out too. On Friday, the day on which Theresa began her Kremlim-style vote count, the New York Times ran a puff piece on Jeb's Palm Beach political pet. Cub reporter Amy Goodnough derided fears of Democrats who painted dark scenarios about the computer voting machines Madame Butterfly installed over the objections of the state's official voting technology task force. If you're wondering why the experts told her not to use the machines, I'll tell you -- because the New York Times won't. It's not because the voting specialists are anti-technology Luddites. The fact is that Florida counties using touch-screens have reported a known error rate 600% greater than the alternative, paper ballots read by optical scanners. And those errors have occurred -- surprise! -- overwhelmingly in African-American precincts. First Brother Jeb has teamed with LePore to keep the vote clean and white. Together they have refused the Democrats request for the more-reliable paper ballots as an option for voters. In Leon County, by contrast, Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho insisted on paper ballots and did not lose a single vote to error in the March presidential primary. Sancho told me it's a slam-dunk certainty that the computer screens will snatch away several thousand Palm Beach votes. Theresa and the Jebster have been quite close since LePore came out of the closet. The Republican-turned-Democrat, nominally independent, this year accepted the sticky embrace of the Republican Party. One really has to wonder if she ever truly left the Republicans in the first place. It's a shame that Supervisor LePore was too busy counting her votes and rejecting ballots to respond to my phone calls. I wanted to be the first to congratulate her on her election victory -- two days before the election. Or maybe she fears I might be the early birddog who catches the butterfly as she turns back into a worm. ** Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His article on vote manipulation in
[pjnews] President Declares Ownership Society at RNC
President Declares Ownership Society Tells Convention He's Ordered Invasion of Social Security Trust Fund by Greg Palast September 2, 2004 17:06 New York - Of all the bone-headed, whacky, breathtakingly threatening schemes George W. Bush is trying to sell us in his acceptance speech tonight is something he and his handlers call, the Ownership Society. Sounds cool, ownership. Everyone gets a piece of the action. Everyone's a winner as the economy zooms. All boats rise. Sure. Behind the hooray-for-free-enterprise crapola is that dog-eared game-plan to siphon off Social Security revenues to pay for making Bush's tax cuts for the rich permanent. Here's what the President has in mind. Social Security is an insurance plan. You pay in, you get back. But it's hard to get your money back when there's a war where the Clinton surplus used to be. It's not the war on terror, or the war in Iraq, though Lord knows those have cost us a bundle with nothing to show for all the lost loot. I'm talking about the class war that Dubya and his Dick Cheney have waged on the average working person. We're talking an economic Pearl Harbor here. While firemen and policemen went running into falling buildings, the Bushmen were preparing to relieve some gazillionaires, such as say, the Bush family, of the need to pay the taxes that the rest of us pay. Work as a teacher, you pay Social Security and income taxes on every darn penny. Sit on your yacht and speculate in the stock market casino and you are off the hook on taxes on the capital gains. Bill Clinton proposed putting his big surpluses into a Social Security lock-box for that predictable rainy day. But tonight, Bush instead proposes to give the stock-options class a boost by lopping off a chunk of Social Security insurance revenue for gambling in the stock market. He had this same idea in 2000. If he'd had his way on his inauguration day, the average owner in America, investing in the stock market, would be 7% poorer, many flat busted. Some security. Happy elderly owners would be hunting for lunch in the garbage cans under Madison Square Garden. Here's the latest report from the front lines of the class war: The World Bank reports the USA has more millionaires than ever -- we'll see them at the Garden tonight. Median household income's down -- most of us are median -- while the bottom has fallen out for those at the bottom. Our poorest 20% have seen incomes drop by a fifth. America's upper one percent now own 53% of all the shares in the market. And now the uppers want to crack open your retirement piggy bank, cut some of your retirement benefits, then allow you to give them the remainder of your money to fund their latest stock float schemes. If betting trillions on stock market ponies doesn't produce a big win, what does Mr. Bush propose to do with all the hungry old folk? I think I heard George say, Let them eat Enron certificates. And the future market fall, Mr. President, is a slam-dunk certainty. Let's do the math. OK, class, we all buy stock this afternoon to fund our retirement. In fifteen years, baby-boomers are ready to kick back, take it easy and retire on the stock they're about to sell. Did I say, SELL? And HOW. Around 2020, tens of millions of owners will be selling their shares to whom? CASH! A deliberate policy of aiming for another 1929 is appropriate for the top-hat and pinky-ring party of Herbert Hoover. The big problem is that supposedly non-partisan and even Democratic poobahs are rushing to reform Social Security. We have Alan Greenspan, who has barely a word to say about the multi-trillion dollar deficit wrought by Mr. Bush's tax cuts, yet is already warning about some disaster in Social Security based on trends. Well, if we go by his own trend, the Fed chief will soon be marrying a 12-year-old Girl Scout. Hey, Alan, back to Economics 101 for you. As the boomers hit retirement age, we're going to need added borrowing for transfer payments like Social Security to maintain purchasing power to keep the economy alive while millions of old folk dump assets. Listen, Mr. President, we had an ownership society once before. Luckily, it came to an end when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. ** Greg Palast, nominated Britain's Business Writer of the Year by the UK Press Association for his writings in the Guardian papers, is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. This month, Palast, who has returned to his native USA, will release, Bush Family Fortunes, the film based on his investigative reports for BBC television. View a 2-minute preview at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm Sign up for Palast's reports at http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm
[pjnews] Bush Leaves Out Complex Facts in Speech
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/090404Z.shtml NYT: Bush Is 'Unfit' to Lead U.S., Kerry Charges --- http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0903-22.htm Published on Friday, September 3, 2004 by the Associated Press Bush Leaves Out Complex Facts in Speech by Calvin Woodward NEW YORK - President Bush's boast of a 30-member-strong coalition in Iraq masked the reality that the United States is bearing the overwhelming share of costs, in lives and troop commitments. And in claiming to have routed most al-Qaida leaders, he did not mention that the big one got away. Bush's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night brought the nation a collection of facts that told only part of the story, hardly unusual for this most political of occasions. He took some license in telling Americans that Democratic opponent John Kerry is running on a platform of increasing taxes. Kerry would, in fact, raise taxes on the richest 2 percent of Americans as part of a plan to keep the Bush tax cuts for everyone else and even cut some of them more. That's not exactly a tax-increase platform. And on education, Bush voiced an inherent contradiction, dating back to his 2000 campaign, in stating his stout support for local control of education, yet promising to toughen federal standards that override local decision-making. We are insisting on accountability, empowering parents and teachers, and making sure that local people are in charge of their schools, he said, on one hand. Yet, we will require a rigorous exam before graduation. On Iraq, Bush derided Kerry for devaluing the alliance that drove out Saddam Hussein and is trying to rebuild the country. Our allies also know the historic importance of our work, Bush said. About 40 nations stand beside us in Afghanistan, and some 30 in Iraq. But the United States has more than five times the number of troops in Iraq than all the other countries put together. And, with 976 killed, Americans have suffered nearly eight times more deaths than the other allies combined. Bush aggressively defended progress in Afghanistan, too. Today, the government of a free Afghanistan is fighting terror, Pakistan is capturing terrorist leaders ... and more than three-quarters of al-Qaida's key members and associates have been detained or killed. We have led, many have joined, and America and the world are safer. Nowhere did Bush mention Osama bin Laden, nor did he account for the replacement of killed and captured al al-Qaida leaders by others. Bush's address wasn't the only one this week that glossed over some realities. Vice President Dick Cheney, trying to make Kerry look wobbly on defense, implied in his speech that Kerry would wait until the United States is hit by a foe before hitting back. He declared at the Democratic convention that he will forcefully defend America after we have been attacked, Cheney said. New York Gov. George Pataki echoed Cheney's line of criticism Thursday night. Kerry said in his convention speech, Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. But he also spoke of pre-emptive action in that address, saying a threat that is real and imminent is also a justification for war. In his keynote address, Sen. Zell Miller attacked Kerry for Senate votes against the Navy F-14D Tomcat fighter and the B-2 bomber - the heart of his case that the Democrat has stood against essential weapons systems. He ignored the fact that Cheney, as defense secretary, canceled the F-14 and submitted a budget scaling back production of the B-2. Miller also said Kerry has made it clear he would use military force only if approved by the U.N., a stretch of Kerry's position. Kerry told his convention I will never hesitate to use force when it is required and I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security.
[pjnews] major announcement from washington
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 22:23:30 -0700 From: The People's Press Association Washington DC Congress today announced that the Office of President of the United States will be outsourced to overseas interests as of August 31, two months after the end of this fiscal year. The move is being made to save $400K a year in salary, a record $521 Billion in deficit expenditures and related overhead. The cost savings will be quite significant, says Congressman Adam Smith (D Wash) who, with the aid of the GAO (the General Accounting Office) has studied outsourcing of American jobs extensively. We simply can no longer afford this level of outlay and remain competitive in the world stage, Congressman Smith said. Mr. Bush was informed by email this morning of the termination of his position. He will receive health coverage, expenses and salary until his final day of employment. After that, with a two week waiting period, he will then be eligible for $240 dollars a week from unemployment insurance for 13 weeks. Unfortunately he will not be able to receive state Medicaid health insurance coverage as his unemployment benefits are over the required limit. Preparations have been underway for some time for the job move. Sanji Gurvinder Singh of Indus Teleservices, Mumbai, India, will be assuming the Office of President of the United States as of July 1. Mr. Singh was born in the United States while his parents were here on student visas, thus making him eligible for the position. He will receive a salary of $320 ($S$) a month but with no health coverage or other benefits. Due to the time difference between the US and India, Mr. Singh will be working primarily at night, when offices of the US Government will be open. I am excited to serve in this position, Mr. Singh stated in an exclusive interview. Working nights will let me keep my day job at the American Express call center. I always knew I could be President someday. Congress stressed patience when calling Mr. Singh as he may not be fully aware of all the issues involved with his new position. A Congressional Spokesperson noted that Mr. Singh has been given a script tree to follow which will allow him to respond to most topics of concern. The Spokesperson further noted that additional savings will be realized as these scripting tools have been successfully used by Mr. Bush and will enable Mr. Singh to provide an answer without having to fully understand the issue itself. Mr. Bush has been offered the use of a Congressional Page to help him write a resume and prepare for his upcoming job transition. According to Manpower, Inc., the placement firm, Mr. Bush may have difficulties in securing a new position as job prospects in the Sports Franchise Ownership arena remain limited. A recently released report from the Pentagon suggests a good prospect for him as a newly unemployed person may be in the Army National Guard. There he would be called up with his unit and stationed in Iraq, a country he has visited briefly before. I've been there, I know all about Iraq and the conditions there, stated Mr. Bush. He gained invaluable knowledge of the country in his first visit at the Baghdad Airport non-smoking terminal and gift shop. Meanwhile in Baghdad and Falluja, Iraq, sources report that local Iraqis say Mr. Bush would receive an especially warm reception from them. Such sources stated the Iraqis only request would be to be informed of which convoy he would be riding in order to give him the welcome he deserves. Congress continues to explore other outsourcing possibilities including that of Vice-president and most Cabinet positions.
[pjnews] Bob Graham: Saudi ties blocked in inquiry into 9/11
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/9584265.htm?1c Graham book: Inquiry into 9/11, Saudi ties blocked By FRANK DAVIES [EMAIL PROTECTED] WASHINGTON - Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Sen. Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday. The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers ''would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,'' the Florida Democrat wrote. And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained by The Herald Saturday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees. Graham also revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, just four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq. Graham recalled this conversation at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa with Franks, then head of Central Command, who was ``looking troubled'': ``Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan.'' ''Excuse me?'' I asked. ''Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq,'' he continued. Graham concluded: 'Gen. Franks' mission -- which, as a good soldier, he was loyally carrying out -- was being downgraded from a war to a manhunt.'' Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq war, voted against the war resolution in October 2002 because he saw Iraq as a diversion that would hinder the fight against al Qaeda terrorism. He oversaw the Sept. 11 investigation on Capitol Hill with Rep. Porter Goss, nominated last month to be the next CIA director. According to Graham, the FBI and the White House blocked efforts to investigate the extent of official Saudi connections to two hijackers. Graham wrote that the staff of the congressional inquiry concluded that two Saudis in the San Diego area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave significant financial support to two hijackers, were working for the Saudi government. Al-Bayoumi received a monthly allowance from a contractor for Saudi Civil Aviation that jumped from $465 to $3,700 in March 2000, after he helped Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhdar -- two of the Sept. 11 hijackers -- find apartments and make contacts in San Diego, just before they began pilot training. When the staff tried to conduct interviews in that investigation, and with an FBI informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who also helped the eventual hijackers, they were blocked by the FBI and the administration, Graham wrote. The administration and CIA also insisted that the details about the Saudi support network that benefited two hijackers be left out of the final congressional report, Graham complained. Bush had concluded that ''a nation-state that had aided the terrorists should not be held publicly to account,'' Graham wrote. ``It was as if the president's loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America's safety.'' Saudi officials have vociferously denied any ties to the hijackers or al Qaeda plots to attack the United States. Graham ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination and then decided not to seek reelection to the Senate this year. He has said he hopes his book will illuminate FBI and CIA failures in the war on terrorism and he also offers recommendations on ways to reform the intelligence community. On Iraq, Graham said the administration and CIA consistently overplayed its estimates of Saddam Hussein's threat in its public statements and declassified reports, while its secret reports contained warnings that the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was not conclusive. In October 2002, Tenet told Graham that ''there were 550 sites where weapons of mass destruction were either produced or stored'' in Iraq. ''It was, in short, a vivid and terrifying case for war. The problem was it did not accurately represent the classified estimate we had received just days earlier,'' Graham wrote. ``It was two different messages, directed at two different audiences. I was outraged.'' In his book, Graham is especially critical of the FBI for its inability to track al Qaeda operatives in the United States and blasts the CIA for ``politicizing intelligence.'' He reserves his harshest criticism for Bush. Graham found the president had ''an unforgivable level of intellectual -- and even common sense -- indifference'' toward
[pjnews] 9/9: Vigils to honor 1,000th U.S. death in Iraq
From http://www.moveon.org - In the past four days, clashes with Iraqi insurgents have claimed the lives of 17 American soldiers. With these deaths, we mark a grim milestone: over 1,000 military men and women have now died in this misconceived war. Their caskets have been hidden from view, and the President won't visit their graves. And this morning, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld diminished their deaths by calling the toll relatively small. But it is now time for us to publicly recognize the sacrifice these soldiers have made, and to demand that our leaders serve those in harm's way better in the future. [Tonight] at 8pm, we're joining with the Win Without War coalition to hold hundreds of candlelight vigils. Gathered together silently in towns across the country, we'll reflect on this terrible moment and honor the fallen. And by focusing attention on the dead, we'll help pressure our national leaders to get us out of this mess. Can you host a vigil? It's a small commitment of time -- you just need to identify a good location and pull together some candles and printed materials for attendees. To sign up to host a vigil, go to: http://action.moveon.org/vigil/newmeeting.html If you can't host, we welcome everyone to attend a candlelight vigil tomorrow night. You can search for one near you at: http://action.moveon.org/vigil/ 865 soldiers have died since President Bush declared, Mission Accomplished. And yesterday, top Pentagon officials told the New York Times that insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure those areas. The attacks are increasing, the death toll is rising, and there's no exit strategy to get us out. In the moments before the war in Iraq began, Win Without War and MoveOn members gathered in thousands of vigils around the country and the world to make a plea for peace. As of this morning, 1,003 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq -- along with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and hundreds of soldiers from other countries. It is time to come together again. We'll gather with candles, representing our mourning for those who have died and our hope for those who still live. We all support our troops. We hope that they all return safely to the waiting arms of their families and loved ones. But hiding the caskets of the dead does not honor the men and women who are in harm's way. It is time to recognize them, and tomorrow night, we will. Can you join us? To get involved, go to: http://action.moveon.org/vigil/ --Carrie, Joan, Lee, Marika, Noah, Peter, and Wes The MoveOn.org Team September 8th, 2004 P.S. We've posted an excerpt, below, from one of the many articles which capture the stories of some of the men and women who have died. You can see the pictures, names, and stories of all of the men and women who died in Iraq at: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/ Iraq war claims 1,000th U.S.casualty Seattle Post-Intelligencer http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/189908_iraq08.html [Excerpts:] Every name in the roster deserves a story: Caleb Powers, 21, a Marine Corps lance corporal from Mansfield who donated his time to the children's society that had cared for him as a boy. Army Spc. Jeremiah Schmunk, 20, a fun-loving man who wore a wig and dress to school to invite a girl to a Sadie Hawkins dance in his hometown of Warden. Army Spc. Jake Herring, a 20-year-old 180-pounder from Kirkland who was the undersized but tenacious center and co-captain of his high school football team. John Sully Sullivan, a 28-year-old heavy metal shredder who traded guitar for weapons as a member of the Army's 101st Airborne Division. The youngest soldiers from Washington to die in Iraq were only 19. They were: Marine Pfc. Cody Calavan of Lake Stevens; Army Pfc. Duane Longstreth from Tacoma; and Army Spc. Nathan Nakis from Sedro-Woolley. ... A thousand dead is a terrible toll. But even the number one is a harsh statistic for families who pick up the telephone and get the news no one wants to hear. It's just not the same here anymore, said David Scott, a father still grieving a year after his son's death. There's an empty spot -- and it's felt all through our house. To learn more about: the fallen American soldiers, visit http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/list.php Iraqi casualties, visit http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ Win Without War's efforts to end this war, visit http://www.WinWithoutWarUS.org
[pjnews] Town tainted by shame of Abu Ghraib
The Irish Times http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2004/0908/2106709727FR08MARLOWE.html 8 November 2004 Town tainted by shame of Abu Ghraib Lara Marlowe Across America: When the 372nd Military Police Company left for Iraq in the spring of 2003, the residents of Cresaptown, a small Maryland town in the Appalachians, waved flags and sang patriotic songs at the reserve unit's barracks. But when the 372nd returned last month, after three tours of duty in Iraq, the army held a discreet family reunion at Fort Bragg, allegedly for security reasons. They wanted no television reporters asking questions about the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal that has landed seven of the company's MPs in prison pending trial. The rest of the 372nd slipped home to the surrounding countryside. They're gone, gone, gone, says Sgt John Kershner, an older reservist who left Iraq early because of an arm injury. You won't see none of them until [the unit reconvenes in\] January. Allegany County, a battleground of the American revolution, criss-crossed with plaques saying George Washington slept here, is the poorest in Maryland. The only jobs are at the Luke paper mill and the WCI (Western Correctional Institute) just outside Cresaptown. Two of the accused, Charles Graner and Ivan Chip Frederick, were prison guards before they went to Iraq. WCI looks a little like Abu Ghraib, with watch towers and walls of concertina barbed wire. Most of the 1,600 prisoners are black. The guards are white. Residents of the county accuse rich, southern Maryland of sending its rubbish north. They oppose a plan to shut down the maximum security prison in Baltimore and graft it on to WCI. After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, a Nigerian inmate was killed by guards at WCI; they placed a bag over his head and asphyxiated him with several cans of mace. People were afraid the media would make a connection, says Bridget Nolan, an Irish-American radio reporter at WCBC in nearby Cumberland, who covered the disgrace of the 372nd. Even before the scandal broke, Nolan says, families had an inkling something was wrong. Kids were writing home to their parents, saying, 'I want you to know there are bad things going on; I want you to know I'm not part of it'. Nolan and her boyfriend, Jason Maurath, describe themselves as part of the small but growing minority of Kerry voters in Allegany County. The Abu Ghraib scandal is, she says, a tragedy within a bigger tragedy; one more reason we shouldn't have invaded Iraq. These kids are going to be imprisoned, because they are scapegoats. And the Iraqis have suffered the ultimate humiliation. Sgt Joseph Darby is deeper in hiding than the rest of his unit. Specialist Charles Graner, the alleged ringleader of the abuse, lent him a CD with pictures of a prison riot while Darby was on leave. But Darby discovered images of his fellow MPs leering over pyramids of naked Iraqis, setting dogs on prisoners, holding a prisoner on a leash, forcing Iraqis to masturbate in front of the camera . . . Darby was so horrified that he slipped an anonymous letter under an officer's door, then filed a sworn affidavit. His wife, Bernadette, was inundated with mail which called her husband a traitor and threatened the couple. Eggs were thrown at their house in Cresaptown, with its white picket fence. Bernadette had to drop out of Allegany College. Sgt Kershner reproaches Darby for breaking the chain of command and blames the press for blowing it out of proportion. Look out front, he says of the building he guards. See the barriers? See the fence? It used never to be there. We had family meetings and the media would swamp the parents and wives. We're a proud unit. We served in Desert Storm and Bosnia. It's a little stain on us, but we'll overcome. Cresaptown has four churches, three bars and one set of traffic lights. At the fork in the road stands a memorial to nearly 500 local men who were killed in two World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. It will be enlarged one day to include Iraq; three young men from Allegany County have already died there. Townspeople are trying to make up for the 372nd's inglorious homecoming with yellow ribbons and discounts. It's a shame, that whole unit being judged by a few, says Liz Simpson, a physical education teacher and the owner of 4 Star Pizza Subs and Wings. I thank every one of them that comes in here. I shake their hands and I give them a large pizza for $5.00, and 10 to 15 per cent off the whole order. At least one in four of the clapboard houses in the area flies a US flag. Mrs Simpson tells me three times that she is very, very patriotic. Her restaurant is decorated in red, white and blue. Signs saying, Freedom, I love America, and United We Stand hang alongside antique American flags. September 11th made me more patriotic, Simpson says. I support George Bush completely. When he says something, he says it with conviction. I will follow him. When Cresaptown was caught in the searchlights of the
[pjnews] September 11th: What You Ought Not to Know
SEPTEMBER 11: WHAT YOU OUGHT NOT TO KNOW DOCUMENT 199-I AND THE FBI'S WORDS TO CHILL THE SOUL Thursday, September 9, 2004 by Greg Palast On November 9, 2001, when you could still choke on the dust in the air near Ground Zero, BBC Television received a call in London from a top-level US intelligence agent. He was not happy. Shortly after George W. Bush took office, he told us reluctantly, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the FBI, were told to back off the Saudis. We knew that. In the newsroom, we had a document already in hand, marked, SECRET across the top and 199-I - meaning this was a national security matter. The secret memo released agents to hunt down two members of the bin Laden family operating a suspected terrorist organization in the USA. It was dated September 13, 2001 -- two days too late for too many. What the memo indicates, corroborated by other sources, was that the agents had long wanted to question these characters ... but could not until after the attack. By that time, these bin Laden birds had flown their American nest. Back to the high-level agent. I pressed him to tell me exactly which investigations were spiked. None of this interview dance was easy, requiring switching to untraceable phones. Ultimately, the insider said, Khan Labs. At the time, our intelligence agencies were on the trail of Pakistan's Dr. Strangelove, A.Q. Khan, who built Pakistan's bomb and was selling its secrets to the Libyans. But once Bush and Condoleeza Rice's team took over, the source told us, agents were forced to let a hot trail go cold. Specifically, there were limits on tracing the Saudi money behind this Islamic bomb. Then we made another call, this time to an arms dealer in the Mideast. He confirmed that his partner attended a meeting in 1995 at the 5-star Hotel Royale Monceau in Paris where, allegedly, Saudi billionaires agreed to fund Al Qaeda fanatics. We understood it to be protection money, not really a sign of support for their attacks. Nevertheless, rule number one of investigation is follow the money -- but the sheiks' piggy banks were effectively off-limits to the US agents during the Bush years. One of the men in the posh hotel's meeting of vipers happens to have been a Bush family business associate. Before you jump to the wrong conclusion, let me tell you that we found no evidence -- none, zero, no kidding -- that George Bush knew about Al Qaeda's plan to attack on September 11. Indeed, the grim joke at BBC is that anyone accusing George Bush of knowing anything at all must have solid evidence. This is not a story of what George Bush knew but rather of his very-unfunny ignorance. And it was not stupidity, but policy: no asking Saudis uncomfortable questions about their paying off roving packs of killers, especially when those Saudis are so generous to Bush family businesses. Yes, Bill Clinton was also a bit too tender toward the oil men of Arabia. But this you should know: In his last year in office, Clinton sent two delegations to the Gulf to suggest that the Royal family crack down on charitable donations from their kingdom to the guys who blew up our embassies. But when a failed Texas oil man took over the White House in January 2001, demands on the Saudis to cut off terror funding simply stopped. And what about the bin Laden suspected terrorist organization? Called the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the group sponsors soccer teams and summer camps in Florida. BBC obtained a video of one camp activity, a speech exhorting kids on the heroism of suicide bombings and hostage takings. While WAMY draws membership with wholesome activities, it has also acted as a cover or front, say the Dutch, Indian and Bosnian governments, for the recruitment of jihadi killers. Certainly, it was worth asking the bin Laden boys a few questions. But the FBI agents couldn't, until it was too late. In November 2001, when BBC ran the report on the spike of investigations of Saudi funding of terror, the Bush defenders whom we'd invited to respond on air dismissed the concerns of lower level FBI agents who'd passed over the WAMY documents. No action was taken on the group headed by the bin Ladens. Then, in May this year, fifty FBI agents surrounded, invaded and sealed off WAMY's Virginia office. It was like a bad scene out of the 'Untouchables.' The raid took place three years after our report and long after the bin Ladens had waved bye-bye. It is not surprising that the feds seized mostly empty files and a lot of soccer balls. Why now this belated move on the bin Laden's former operation? Why not right after the September 11 attack? This year's FBI raid occurred just days after an Islamist terror assault in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Apparently, messin' with the oil sheiks gets this Administration's attention. Falling towers in New York are only for Republican convention photo ops. The 199-I memo was passed to BBC television by the gumshoes at the National Security News Service in
[pjnews] Robert Fisk on September 11th Anniversary
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0911-09.htm Published on Saturday, September 11, 2004 by the lndependent/UK We Should Not Have Allowed 19 Murderers to Change our World by Robert Fisk So, three years after the international crimes against humanity in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania we were bombing Fallujah. Come again? Hands up those who knew the name of Fallujah on 11 September 2001. Or Samarra. Or Ramadi. Or Anbar province. Or Amarah. Or Tel Afar, the latest target in our war on terror'' although most of us would find it hard to locate on a map (look at northern Iraq, find Mosul and go one inch to the left). Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Three years ago, it was all about Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida; then, at about the time of the Enron scandal and I have a New York professor to thank for spotting the switching point it was Saddam and weapons of mass destruction and 45 minutes and human rights abuses in Iraq and, well, the rest is history. And now, at last, the Americans admit that vast areas of Iraq are outside government control. We are going to have to liberate them, all over again. Like we reliberated Najaf and Kufa, to kill or capture Muqtada Sadr'', according to Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, and like we lay siege to Fallujah back in April when we claimed, or at least the US Marines did, that we were going to eliminate terrorism'' in the city. In fact, its local military commander has since had his head chopped off by the insurgents and Fallujah, save for an occasional bloody air raid, remains outside all government control. These past two weeks, I've been learning a lot about the hatred Iraqis feel towards us. Troweling back through my reporter's notebooks of the 1990s, I've found page after page of my hand-written evidence of Iraqi anger; fury at the sanctions which killed half a million children, indignation by doctors at our use of depleted uranium shells in the 1991 Gulf War (we used them again last year, but let's take these things one rage at a time) and deep, abiding resentment towards us, the West. One article I wrote for The Independent in 1998 asked why Iraqis do not tear us limb from limb, which is what some Iraqis did to the American mercenaries they killed in Fallujah last April. But we expected to be loved, welcomed, greeted, fêted, embraced by these people. First, we bombarded Stone Age Afghanistan and proclaimed it liberated, then we invaded Iraq to liberate Iraqis too. Wouldn't the Shia love us? Didn't we get rid of Saddam Hussein? Well, history tells a different story. We dumped the Sunni Muslim King Feisal on the Shia Muslims in the 1920s. Then we encouraged them to rise against Saddam in 1991, and left them to die in Saddam's torture chambers. And now, we reassemble Saddam's old rascals, their torturers, and put them back in power to fight terror'', and we lay siege to Muqtada Sadr in Najaf. We all have our memories of 11 September 2001. I was on a plane heading for America. And I remember, as the foreign desk at The Independent told me over the aircraft's satellite phone of each new massacre in the United States, how I told the captain, and how the crew and I prowled the plane to look for possible suicide pilots. I think I found about 13; alas, of course, they were all Arabs and completely innocent. But it told me of the new world in which I was supposed to live. Them'' and Us''. In my airline seat, I started to write my story for that night's paper. Then I stopped and asked the foreign desk in London by this time the aircraft was dumping its fuel off Ireland before returning to Europe to connect me to the newspaper's copytaker, because only by talking my story to her, rather than writing it, could I find the words I needed. And so I talked my report, of folly and betrayal and lies in the Middle East, of injustice and cruelty and war, so it had come to this. And in the days to come I learnt, too, what this meant. Merely to ask why the murderers of 11 September had done their bloody deeds was to befriend terrorism. Merely to ask what had been in the minds of the killers was to give them support. Any cop, confronted by any crime, looks for a motive. But confronted by an international crime against humanity, we were not to be allowed to seek the motive. America's relations with the Middle East, especially the nature of its relationship with Israel, was to remain an unspoken and unquestioned subject. I've come to understand, in the three years since, what this means. Don't ask questions. Even when I was almost killed by a crowd of Afghans in December 2001 furious that their relatives had been killed in B-52 strikes The Wall Street Journal announced in a headline that I had got my due because I was a multiculturalist. I still get letters telling me that my mother, Peggy, was Adolf Eichmann's daughter. Peggy was in the RAF in 1940, repairing radios on damaged Spitfires, as I recalled at her funeral in 1998. But
[pjnews] 2/2 Arundhati Roy: Public Power in the Age of Empire
http://www.democracynow.org/static/Arundhati_Trans.shtml Transcript of full speech by Arundhati Roy in San Francisco, California on August 16th, 2004 continued... Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of mass resistance movements in third world countries today. The landless peoples' movement in Brazil, the anti-dam movement in India, the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Anti-Privatization Forum in South Africa, and hundreds of others, are fighting their own sovereign governments, which have become agents of the neo-liberal project. Most of these are radical struggles, fighting to change the structure and chosen model of development of their own societies. Then there are those fighting formal and brutal neocolonial occupations in contested territories whose boundaries and fault lines were often arbitrarily drawn last century by the imperialist powers. In Palestine, Tibet, Chechnya, Kashmir, and several states in India's northeast provinces, people are waging struggles for self-determination. Several of these struggles might have been radical, even revolutionary when they began, but often the brutality of the repression they face pushes them into conservative, even retrogressive spaces in which they use the same violent strategies and the same language of religious and cultural nationalism used by the states they seek to replace. Many of the foot soldiers in these struggles will find, like those who fought apartheid in South Africa, that once they overcome overt occupation, they will be left with another battle on their hands - a battle against covert economic colonialism. Meanwhile, as the rift between rich and poor is being driven deeper and the battle to control the world's resources intensifies. Economic colonialism through formal military aggression is staging a comeback. Iraq today is a tragic illustration of this process. An illegal invasion. A brutal occupation in the name of liberation. The rewriting of laws that allow the shameless appropriation of the country's wealth and resources by corporations allied to the occupation, and now the charade of a local Iraqi government. For these reasons, it is absurd to condemn the resistance to the U.S. occupation in Iraq, as being masterminded by terrorists or insurgents or supporters of Saddam Hussein. After all if the United States were invaded and occupied, would everybody who fought to liberate it be a terrorist or an insurgent or a Bushite? The Iraqi resistance is fighting on the frontlines of the battle against Empire. And therefore that battle is our battle. Like most resistance movements, it combines a motley range of assorted factions. Former Baathists, liberals, Islamists, fed-up collaborationists, communists, etc. Of course, it is riddled with opportunism, local rivalry, demagoguery, and criminality. But if we are only going to support pristine movements, then no resistance will be worthy of our purity. This is not to say that we shouldn't ever criticize resistance movements. Many of them suffer from a lack of democracy, from the iconization of their leaders, a lack of transparency, a lack of vision and direction. But most of all they suffer from vilification, repression, and lack of resources. Before we prescribe how a pristine Iraqi resistance must conduct their secular, feminist, democratic, nonviolent battle, we should shore up our end of the resistance by forcing the U.S. and its allies government to withdraw from Iraq. The first militant confrontation in the United States between the global justice movement and the neo-liberal junta took place famously at the WTO conference in Seattle in December 1999. To many mass movements in developing countries that had long been fighting lonely, isolated battles, Seattle was the first delightful sign that their anger and their vision of another kind of world was shared by people in the imperialist countries. In January 2001, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 20,000 activists, students, film makers - some of the best minds in the world - came together to share their experiences and exchange ideas about confronting Empire. That was the birth of the now historic World Social Forum. It was the first, formal coming together of an exciting, anarchic, unindoctrinated, energetic, new kind of Public Power. The rallying cry of the WSF is Another World is Possible. It has become a platform where hundreds of conversations, debates, and seminars have helped to hone and refine a vision of what kind of world it should be. By January 2004, when the fourth WSF was held in Mumbai, India, it attracted 200,000 delegates. I have never been part of a more electrifying gathering. It was a sign of the social forum's success that the mainstream media in India ignored it completely. But now, the WSF is threatened by its own success. The safe, open, festive atmosphere of the forum has allowed politicians and nongovernmental organizations that are imbricated in the
[pjnews] Sy Hersh: White House Told of Detainee Abuse
http://snipurl.com/91vq Cheney's No Terrorism Expert: Vice president's comments ignore the facts and distort recent history http://snipurl.com/91vs CIA May Have Held 100 'Ghost' Prisoners http://snipurl.com/91vu Military Specialist Pleads Guilty to Abuse and Is Jailed http://snipurl.com/91vv Independent Panel on Abu Ghraib Is Urged: Senator, former military officers and rights group say reports on prisoner abuse have been narrow. - http://snipurl.com/91vw The New York Times 12 September 2004 New Book Says Bush Officials Were Told of Detainee Abuse By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr. WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 - Senior military and national security officials in the Bush administration were repeatedly warned by subordinates in 2002 and 2003 that prisoners in military custody were being abused, according to a new book by a prominent journalist. Seymour M. Hersh, a writer for The New Yorker who earlier this year was among the first to disclose details of the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, makes the charges in his book Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (HarperCollins), which is being released Monday. The book draws on the articles he wrote about the campaign against terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Hersh asserts that a Central Intelligence Agency analyst who visited the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in the late summer of 2002 filed a report of abuses there that drew the attention of Gen. John A. Gordon, a deputy to Condoleezza Rice, the White House national security adviser. But when General Gordon called the matter to her attention and she discussed it with other senior officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, no significant change resulted. Mr. Hersh's account is based on anonymous sources, some secondhand, and could not be independently verified. Although a number of senior officials were briefed on the analyst's findings of abuse, the high-level White House meeting did not dwell on that question, but rather focused on whether some of the prisoners should not have been held at all, the book says. A White House official said Saturday that the meeting was held, but said that it was solely focused on whether people at Guantánamo were being improperly held. The official also said the C.I.A. analyst who visited the Guantánamo detention center filed a report that concerned only the question of improper detention, not abuses. Mr. Hersh also says that a military officer involved in counterinsurgency operations in Iraq learned of the abuses at Abu Ghraib in November and reported it to two of his superiors, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the regional commander, and his deputy, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith. I said there are systematic abuses going on in the prisons, the unidentified officer is quoted as telling Mr. Hersh. Abizaid didn't say a thing. He looked at me - beyond me, as if to say, 'Move on. I don't want to touch this.' But Capt. Hal Pittman, a Central Command spokesman, said in a statement Saturday, General Abizaid does not recall any officer discussing with him any specific cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib prior to January 2004, nor do any of the officers of the Centcom staff who travel with him. Mr. Hersh also says that F.B.I. agents complained to their superiors about abuses at Guantánamo, as did a military lawyer, and that those complaints, too, were relayed to the Pentagon. Mr. Hersh's thesis is that the roots of the Abu Ghraib scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists who have been charged so far, but in the reliance of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on secret operations and the use of coercion - and eye-for-eye retribution - in fighting terrorism. In particular, Mr. Hersh has reported that a secret program to capture and interrogate terrorists led to the abuse of prisoners. In a statement posted on its Web site, the Pentagon said: Based on media inquiries, it appears that Mr. Seymour Hersh's upcoming book apparently contains many of the numerous unsubstantiated allegations and inaccuracies which he has made in the past based upon unnamed sources. The statement added that several investigations so far have determined that no responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have authorized or condoned the abuses seen at Abu Ghraib. That is essentially the same reaction issued by the Pentagon when Mr. Hersh first reported, in May, that Mr. Rumsfeld, with White House approval, established a secret program under which commandos would capture and interrogate suspected terrorists with few if any constraints, and that eventually that program's reach extended into the Abu Ghraib prison.
[pjnews] Examing Current Bush/Kerry Polling Data
from www.moveon.org Though you'd never know it from the TV news, a close look at the polls shows that the Republican convention was actually a bust for the President. According to the Gallup polling agency, Bush's bounce was one of the smallest registered in Gallup polling history, along with Hubert Humphrey's two-point bounce following the 1968 Democratic convention [and] George McGovern's zero-point bounce following the 1972 Democratic convention . . . Bush's bounce is the smallest an incumbent president has received.[1] Bush's speech received slightly worse ratings from voters than John Kerry's, and according to the same Gallup poll, a remarkable 38% of voters said the convention made them less likely to vote for Bush.[2] The truth is that after hundreds of millions of dollars in negative advertising, after the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush attacks, after four nights of prime-time convention TV, and after four years in the bully pulpit of the White House, George Bush is still just neck-and-neck with John Kerry in the race for the Presidency. When the MoveOn.org Voter Fund polled likely voters in battleground states last week, Kerry was only two percentage points behind George Bush -- within the margin of error, and within reach of victory.[3] Together, we can close that gap by reaching out to millions of these swing-state voters and convincing hundreds of thousands of them to come out for Kerry on November 2nd. Footnotes: 1 http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/login.aspx?ci=12922 2 http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVFb=183679 3 MoveOn.org Voter Fund 17-state battleground poll, 9/7-9/9/2004 --- http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=859 It Is Not An 11 Point Race - by John Zogby, Zogby International Polling The Republican National Convention is over and score it a huge success for President George W. Bush. For one solid week he was on message and got Americans who watched to listen to the message he intends to carry in the fall campaign: leadership, decisiveness and success battling the war on terrorism. The convention actually followed another big week for Mr. Bush and equally dismal one for his opponent, Democratic Senator John Kerry. Now the first polls are out. I have Mr. Bush leading by 2 points in the simple head-to-head match up - 46% to 44%. Add in the other minor candidates and it becomes a 3 point advantage for the President - 46% to 43%. This is no small achievement. The President was behind 50% to 43% in my mid-August poll and he essentially turned the race around by jumping 3 points as Mr. Kerry lost 7 points. Impressive by any standards. For the first time in my polling this year, Mr. Bush lined up his Republican ducks in a row by receiving 90% support of his own party, went ahead among Independents, and now leads by double-digits among key groups like investors. Also for the first time the President now leads among Catholics. Mr. Kerry is on the ropes. Two new polls came out immediately after mine (as of this writing) by the nation's leading weekly news magazines. Both Time's 52% to 41% lead among likely voters and Newsweek's 54% to 43% lead among registered voters give the President a healthy 11 point lead. I have not yet been able to get the details of Time's methodology but I have checked out Newsweek's poll. Their sample of registered voters includes 38% Republican, 31% Democrat and 31% Independent voters. If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000. While party identification can indeed change within the electorate, there is no evidence anywhere to suggest that Democrats will only represent 31% of the total vote this year. In fact, other competitors have gone in the opposite direction. The Los Angeles Times released a poll in June of this year with 38% Democrats and only 25% Republicans. And Gallup's party identification figures have been all over the place. This is no small consideration. Given the fact that each candidate receives anywhere between eight in ten and nine in ten support from voters in his own party, any change in party identification trades point for point in the candidate's total support. My polls use a party weight of 39% Democrat, 35% Republican and 26% Independent. Thus in examining the Newsweek poll, add three points for Mr. Bush because of the percentage of Republicans in their poll, then add another 8% for Mr. Bush for the reduction in Democrats. It is not hard to see how we move from my two-point lead to their eleven-point lead for the President. I will save the detailed methodological discussion for another time. But I will remind readers that my polling has come closest to the final results in both 1996 and 2000. None of this takes away from the President's achievement. He got
[pjnews] Shut up and color: GOP bullying tradition continues
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=17514 Shut up and color Bush continues GOP tradition of bullying in politics By Paul Rogat Loeb (Editor's note: Paul Loeb's newest book, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, is now available.) The best thing John Kerry did at the Democratic convention was to challenge the bullying. He talked of the flag belonging to all of us, and how standing up to speak our minds is not a challenge to patriotism [but] the heart and soul of patriotism. By doing this, he drew the line against the pattern of intimidation that the Bush administration has used to wage war on democracy itself. A former Air Force Colonel I know described the administration's attitude toward dissent as shut up and color, as if we were unruly eight-year-olds. Whatever we may think of Bush's particular policies, the most dangerous thing he's done is to promote a culture that equates questioning with treason. This threatens the dialogue that's at the core of our republic. Think of the eve of the Iraq war, and the contempt heaped on those generals who dared to suggest that the war might take far more troops and money than the administration was suggesting. Think of the attacks on the reputations and motives of long-time Republicans who've recently dared to question, like national security advisor Richard Clarke, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, weapons inspector Scott Ritter, and Bush's own former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill. Think of the Republican TV ads, the 2000 Georgia Senate race, which paired Democratic Senator Max Cleland with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein -- asserting that because Cleland opposed President Bush's Homeland Security bill, he lacked the courage to lead. In this last case, it didn't matter that Cleland had lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam, while the Republican who eventually defeated him had never worn a uniform. Nor that Republican strategists nearly defeated South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson in the same election, with similar ads, although Johnson was the only person in Congress whose child was actually serving with the U.S. military -- and would see active duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's hard to talk about such intimidation without sounding partisan or shrill, but we need to make it a central issue, because if it succeeds, it becomes impossible to discuss any other issues. Remember after the 9/11 attacks, when Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly declared that anyone who disagreed with administration policy was an ally of terrorism. We were still stunned and reeling at that point. Yet Democrats and honorable Republicans should have had the courage to say that this definition was unacceptable. Instead they capitulated to the tactics of Republican strategists like Grover Norquist, who proudly quotes Lenin's motto, Probe with bayonets, looking for weakness. And a message of intimidation has dominated since, amplified through the endless echo chamber of O'Reilly, Rush, Hannity, and Drudge. Some who've embraced this approach believe they're on a divinely sanctioned Crusade. Others simply love the game -- like Karl Rove, who got his start by destroying the reputation of a fellow contender to head the national Young Republicans, and helped Bush first take office by spreading rumors that then-Texas governor Ann Richards was a lesbian. My friend Egil Krogh, who worked in the Nixon administration, hired G Gordon Liddy, and went to prison for Watergate, did things he knew were morally wrong, wanting to be loyal. He watched Nixon's administration frame everything in terms of national security, then identify that security as whatever consolidated their power, while branding those who challenged them as traitors. Bush's administration, to Krogh, seems even more ruthless. The resulting rule of intimidation and manipulation grinds into the dust traditional conservative ethics of honesty and fair play. In the 2000 election, while the Florida ballots were still being counted, a mob of a couple hundred people, pounding on doors and windows, succeeded in permanently stopping a count of 10,000 Miami-Dade County ballots that were expected to favor Al Gore. As The Wall Street Journal reported, this mob was made up largely of Republican Congressional aides, organized by future House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and flown in by the Bush campaign. In a tight 2002 race for the New Hampshire Senate seat that Republican John Sununu eventually won, a Virginia-based campaign consultant group, GOP Marketplace, hired an Idaho telemarketing firm to jam the phone lines of Democratic get-out-the-vote call centers. More recently, Michigan and Oregon Republicans have gone all out to get Ralph Nader on the ballot, to siphon off votes from John Kerry. The United States is an experiment whose outcome can be in doubt on any given day. But when our leaders embrace the ethics of Don Corleone, they undermine the very terms of our democracy. Go back to
[pjnews] EPA Holds DuPonts Teflon Over Flame
http://newstandardnews.net EPA Holds DuPonts Teflon Over Flame by Madeleine Baran (2004-07-14) The Environmental Protection Agency is asking DuPont, the second biggest chemical maker in the United States, to pay the largest toxic contamination penalty ever for failing to report health and environmental problems linked to an ingredient used to make Teflon. The exact figure has yet to be determined, but could be hundreds of millions of dollars. DuPont reported earnings of $973 million in 2003. But activists and those claiming to be harmed by the chemical say the fine is nothing more than a slap on the wrist. The chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid, or C8, is a waxy, soap-like substance used in stain and stick-resistant products like Gore-Tex and some microwaveable pizza boxes. It remains unregulated, despite mounting evidence that it may be linked to birth defects and other medical problems. This is shaping up as another in a long series of industry-friendly environmental 'enforcement' actions by the Bush EPA, wrote Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, an activist organization that researches connections between health and the environment. There's no message being sent here except the weakness of the Bush Administration and how it succumbed to DuPont's lobbying. It's pathetic. People who live near DuPonts Parkersburg, West Virginia plant are suing the company alleging that they are suffering from everything from respiratory problems to cancer as a result of high levels of C8 in the water and soil surrounding the plant. The Washington Post reports that after two women working in the Parkersburg plant had children with birth defects similar to those found in animals during studies conducted in 1981, DuPont transferred women of childbearing age away from the C8 section. The Post also notes that internal DuPont documents show the company detected high C8 levels in the blood of both childbearing female workers and their babies. The company then sent a letter to female workers saying they were not aware of a relationship between human birth defects and the chemical. However, they cautioned, We think this is a matter of sufficient concern that, as a precaution, a female who has [a blood level] above [the local normal] level should consult with her personal physician prior to contemplating pregnancy. Nevertheless, the company did not notify the EPA, and brought the women back to work with C8 a year later, after the chemicals supplier told DuPont that C8 did not cause birth defects in animals, the Post reports. Under the federal Toxic Substances Control Act, companies are required to report new information that reasonably supports the conclusion that a chemical presents a substantial risk of injury to health. Activists at the Environmental Working Group argue that Teflon, a $2 billion industry, should be banned altogether. They allege the chemicals that make up Teflon cause both long-term and short-term health problems. A 20/20 report on the dangers of Teflon featured an interview with Bucky Bailey, a 22 year-old who was born with one nostril and a deformed right eye. His mother worked at the Parkersburg plant while she was pregnant, and the family blames her exposure to C8 for Baileys birth defects. I've never, ever felt normal, Bailey, who has endured over 30 surgeries to correct the abnormalities, told 20/20. You can't feel normal when you walk outside and every single person looks at you. The same show also reported on a disturbing short-term side effect caused by using Teflon-treated pans. The sickness, known as Teflon Flu, occurs from exposure to fumes released from an overheated Teflon-coated pan. The symptoms include headache, chills, backache, and a temperature between 100 and 104 degrees. Jane Houlihan, vice president for research at the Environmental Working Group told 20/20: At 554 degrees Fahrenheit, studies show ultrafine particles start coming off the pan. These are tiny little particles that can embed deeply into the lungs. At 680, toxic gases can begin to come off of heated Teflon. DuPont officials do not dispute that the dangerous fumes can be released, but they told 20/20 that normal kitchen use would not get the pans hot enough to release fumes. However, when 20/20 cooked bacon in a kitchen demonstration, the pan heated past 554 degrees in just a few minutes. Uma Chowdhry, Dupont's vice president of research and development, then told 20/20, You get some fumes, yes, and you get a flu-like symptom, which is reversible. The Environmental Working Group has tried to get mandatory warning labels on the pans for years, with no success. But even if Teflon were banned tomorrow, any health problems linked to the chemical could persist because, as the Delaware News Journal reports, levels of the chemical, which is entirely man-made, have been found in the blood of almost everyone ever tested, including people in remote areas in China.
[pjnews] Iraqi Kidnapping Looks Like Undercover Police Operation
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0916-11.htm Published on Thursday, September 16, 2004 by the Guardian / United Kingdom Who Seized Simona Torretta? This Iraqi Kidnapping has the Mark of an Undercover Police Operation by Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill When Simona Torretta returned to Baghdad in March 2003, in the midst of the shock and awe aerial bombardment, her Iraqi friends greeted her by telling her she was nuts. They were just so surprised to see me. They said, 'Why are you coming here? Go back to Italy. Are you crazy?' But Torretta didn't go back. She stayed throughout the invasion, continuing the humanitarian work she began in 1996, when she first visited Iraq with her anti-sanctions NGO, A Bridge to Baghdad. When Baghdad fell, Torretta again opted to stay, this time to bring medicine and water to Iraqis suffering under occupation. Even after resistance fighters began targeting foreigners, and most foreign journalists and aid workers fled, Torretta again returned. I cannot stay in Italy, the 29-year-old told a documentary film-maker. Today, Torretta's life is in danger, along with the lives of her fellow Italian aid worker Simona Pari, and their Iraqi colleagues Raad Ali Abdul Azziz and Mahnouz Bassam. Eight days ago, the four were snatched at gunpoint from their home/office in Baghdad and have not been heard from since. In the absence of direct communication from their abductors, political controversy swirls round the incident. Proponents of the war are using it to paint peaceniks as naive, blithely supporting a resistance that answers international solidarity with kidnappings and beheadings. Meanwhile, a growing number of Islamic leaders are hinting that the raid on A Bridge to Baghdad was not the work of mujahideen, but of foreign intelligence agencies out to discredit the resistance. Nothing about this kidnapping fits the pattern of other abductions. Most are opportunistic attacks on treacherous stretches of road. Torretta and her colleagues were coldly hunted down in their home. And while mujahideen in Iraq scrupulously hide their identities, making sure to wrap their faces in scarves, these kidnappers were bare-faced and clean-shaven, some in business suits. One assailant was addressed by the others as sir. Kidnap victims have overwhelmingly been men, yet three of these four are women. Witnesses say the gunmen questioned staff in the building until the Simonas were identified by name, and that Mahnouz Bassam, an Iraqi woman, was dragged screaming by her headscarf, a shocking religious transgression for an attack supposedly carried out in the name of Islam. Most extraordinary was the size of the operation: rather than the usual three or four fighters, 20 armed men pulled up to the house in broad daylight, seemingly unconcerned about being caught. Only blocks from the heavily patrolled Green Zone, the whole operation went off with no interference from Iraqi police or US military - although Newsweek reported that about 15 minutes afterwards, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away. And then there were the weapons. The attackers were armed with AK-47s, shotguns, pistols with silencers and stun guns - hardly the mujahideen's standard-issue rusty Kalashnikovs. Strangest of all is this detail: witnesses said that several attackers wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms and identified themselves as working for Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister. An Iraqi government spokesperson denied that Allawi's office was involved. But Sabah Kadhim, a spokesperson for the interior ministry, conceded that the kidnappers were wearing military uniforms and flak jackets. So was this a kidnapping by the resistance or a covert police operation? Or was it something worse: a revival of Saddam's mukhabarat disappearances, when agents would arrest enemies of the regime, never to be heard from again? Who could have pulled off such a coordinated operation - and who stands to benefit from an attack on this anti-war NGO? On Monday, the Italian press began reporting on one possible answer. Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, from Iraq's leading Sunni cleric organisation, told reporters in Baghdad that he received a visit from Torretta and Pari the day before the kidnap. They were scared, the cleric said. They told me that someone threatened them. Asked who was behind the threats, al-Kubaisi replied: We suspect some foreign intelligence. Blaming unpopular resistance attacks on CIA or Mossad conspiracies is idle chatter in Baghdad, but coming from Kubaisi, the claim carries unusual weight; he has ties with a range of resistance groups and has brokered the release of several hostages. Kubaisi's allegations have been widely reported in Arab media, as well as in Italy, but have been absent from the English-language press. Western journalists are loath to talk about spies for fear of being labelled conspiracy theorists. But spies and covert operations are not a conspiracy in Iraq; they are a daily reality.
[pjnews] The Curse of Dick Cheney
see also: http://www.alternet.org/story/19832/ Cheney's Insecure Past: The vice president desperately wants to hide his embarrassing national security record http://snipurl.com/92su The Curse of Dick Cheney The veep's career has been marred by one disaster after another By T.D. ALLMAN Rolling Stone Should George W. Bush win this election, it will give him the distinction of being the first occupant of the White House to have survived naming Dick Cheney to a post in his administration. The Cheney jinx first manifested itself at the presidential level back in 1969, when Richard Nixon appointed him to his first job in the executive branch. It surfaced again in 1975, when Gerald Ford made Cheney his chief of staff and then -- with Cheney's help -- lost the 1976 election. George H.W. Bush, having named Cheney secretary of defense, was defeated for re-election in 1992. The ever-canny Ronald Reagan was the only Republican president since Eisenhower who managed to serve two full terms. He is also the only one not to have appointed Dick Cheney to office. This pattern of misplaced confidence in Cheney, followed by disastrous results, runs throughout his life -- from his days as a dropout at Yale to the geopolitical chaos he has helped create in Baghdad. Once you get to know his history, the cycle becomes clear: First, Cheney impresses someone rich or powerful, who causes unearned wealth and power to be conferred on him. Then, when things go wrong, he blames others and moves on to a new situation even more advantageous to himself. Cheney's manner and authority of voice far outstrip his true abilities, says Chas Freeman, who served under Bush's father as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. It was clear from the start that Bush required adult supervision -- but it turns out Cheney has even worse instincts. He does not understand that when you act recklessly, your mistakes will come back and bite you on the ass. Cheney's record of mistakes begins in 1959, when Tom Stroock, a Republican politician-businessman in Casper, Wyoming, got Cheney, then a senior at Natrona County High School, a scholarship to Yale. Dick was the all-American boy, in the top ten percent of his class, Stroock says. He seemed a natural. But instead of triumphing, Cheney failed. He spent his time partying with guys who loved football but weren't varsity quality, recalls Stephen Billings, an Episcopalian minister who roomed with him during Cheney's freshman (and only full) year at Yale. His idea was, you didn't need to master the material, says his other roommate, Jacob Plotkin. He passed one psych course without attending class or studying, and he was proud of that. But there are some things you can't bluff, and Dick reached a point where you couldn't recover. Cheney might have been flunking in the classroom, but he excelled at making connections. Dick always had this very calm way of talking, recalls Plotkin, now a retired math professor at Michigan State University. His thoughtful manner impressed people. Forty years before the son of a U.S. president picked Cheney to be his running mate, the son of a Massachusetts governor picked him to be his sophomore-year roommate. Mark Furcolo, whose father, Foster, had been elected governor as a Democrat, invited Cheney to Cape Cod for a visit. Dick came back enraptured, Plotkin says. He was fascinated by the official state cars and planes. The trappings of it got him. It could have been the start of a brilliant career -- in the Massachusetts of the 1960s, it would not have been too great a leap from the Furcolos to the Kennedys. Instead, after only one term as a Yale sophomore, Cheney dropped out. Dick never had the experience of learning from his mistakes, says Tom Fake, a Natrona classmate who also won a Yale scholarship. But he learned something perhaps more important to this future success. He found a path that got him into powerful positions is how Plotkin puts it. After leaving Yale, Cheney had one of his few experiences working in the private sector, on a telephone-company repair crew. He showed no interest, one way or another, in the Vietnam War -- until a Texas president, nearly forty years before George W. Bush, turned a remote foreign struggle into a catastrophic, unwinnable war. Thanks to Lyndon Johnson's escalation of Vietnam, lounging around was suddenly no longer an option. Cheney snapped into action. First he enrolled in Casper Community College; then he went to the University of Wyoming. That kept him out of the draft until August 7th, 1964, when Congress initiated massive conscription in the armed forces. Three weeks later, Cheney married Lynne Vincent, his high school girlfriend, earning him another deferment. Then, on October 26th, 1965, the Selective Service announced that childless married men no longer would be exempted from having to fight for their country. Nine months and two days later, the first of Cheney's two daughters, Elizabeth, was born. All told,
[pjnews] Bush by numbers: Four years of double standards
The Independent-UK http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=557746host=3dir=70 3 September 2004 Bush by numbers: Four years of double standards By Graydon Carter 1 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security issued between 20 January 2001 and 10 September 2001 that mentioned al-Qa'ida. 104 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein. 101 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned missile defence. 65 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned weapons of mass destruction. 0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of the Union addresses. 73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his three State of the Union addresses. 83 Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change) in his three State of the Union addresses. $1m Estimated value of a painting the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, received from Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States and Bush family friend. 0 Number of times Bush mentioned Saudi Arabia in his three State of the Union addresses. 1,700 Percentage increase between 2001 and 2002 of Saudi Arabian spending on public relations in the United States. 79 Percentage of the 11 September hijackers who came from Saudi Arabia. 3 Number of 11 September hijackers whose entry visas came through special US-Saudi Visa Express programme. 140 Number of Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, evacuated from United States almost immediately after 11 September. 14 Number of Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) agents assigned to track down 1,200 known illegal immigrants in the United States from countries where al-Qa'ida is active. $3m Amount the White House was willing to grant the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 11 September attacks. $0 Amount approved by George Bush to hire more INS special agents. $10m Amount Bush cut from the INS's existing terrorism budget. $50m Amount granted to the commission that looked into the Columbia space shuttle crash. $5m Amount a 1996 federal commission was given to study legalised gambling. 7 Number of Arabic linguists fired by the US army between mid-August and mid-October 2002 for being gay. George Bush: Military man 1972 Year that Bush walked away from his pilot duties in the Texas National Guard, Nearly two years before his six-year obligation was up. $3,500 Reward a group of veterans offered in 2000 for anyone who could confirm Bush's Alabama guard service. 600-700 Number of guardsmen who were in Bush's unit during that period. 0 Number of guardsmen from that period who came forward with information about Bush's guard service. 0 Number of minutes that President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the assistant Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, the former chairman of the Defence Policy Board, Richard Perle, and the White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove - the main proponents of the war in Iraq -served in combat (combined). 0 Number of principal civilian or Pentagon staff members who planned the war who have immediate family members serving in uniform in Iraq. 8 Number of members of the US Senate and House of Representatives who have a child serving in the military. 10 Number of days that the Pentagon spent investigating a soldier who had called the President a joke in a letter to the editor of a Newspaper. 46 Percentage increase in sales between 2001 and 2002 of GI Joe figures (children's toys). Ambitious warrior 2 Number of Nations that George Bush has attacked and taken over since coming into office. 130 Approximate Number of countries (out of a total of 191 recognised by the United Nations) with a US military presence. 43 Percentage of the entire world's military spending that the US spends on defence. (That was in 2002, the year before the invasion of Iraq.) $401.3bn Proposed military budget for 2004. Saviour of Iraq 1983 The year in which Donald Rumsfeld, Ronald Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, gave Saddam Hussein a pair of golden spurs as a gift. 2.5 Number of hours after Rumsfeld learnt that Osama bin Laden was a suspect in the 11 September attacks that he brought up reasons to hit Iraq. 237 Minimum number of misleading statements on Iraq made by top Bush administration officials between 2002 and January 2004, according to the California Representative Henry Waxman. 10m Estimated number of people worldwide who took to the streets on 21 February 2003, in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, the largest simultaneous protest in world history. $2bn Estimated monthly cost of US military presence in Iraq projected by the White House in April 2003. $4bn Actual monthly cost of
[pjnews] From Bad to Worse in Iraq
http://snipurl.com/96nf Oil Sabotage Threatens Iraq Economy, Rebuilding http://snipurl.com/96nt NYT: U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday. The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms. There's a significant amount of pessimism, said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments - concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts' conclusions - included in the document... http://snipurl.com/96mu Senators from both parties urged the Bush administration on Sunday to make a realistic assessment of the situation in Iraq and adjust its policies aimed at pacifying the country. But Bush readied a firm defense of his Iraq policy and a sharp new attack on rival John Kerry's stance for a speech Monday. The fact is a crisp, sharp analysis of our policies is required. We didn't do that in Vietnam, and we saw 11 years of casualties mount to the point where we finally lost, said Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran who is co-chairman of President Bush's re-election committee in Nebraska. [...] A major problem, said leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was incompetence by the administration in reconstructing the country's shattered infrastructure. The chairman, Sen. Richard Lugar, noted that Congress appropriated $18.4 billion a year ago this week for reconstruction. No more than $1 billion has been spent. This is the incompetence in the administration, Lugar, R-Ind., said on ABC's This Week. - http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0917-01.htm Published on Friday, September 17, 2004 by the Inter Press Service From Bad to Worse in Iraq by Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - After weeks of hurricanes and controversies over swift boats in Vietnam and Texas and Alabama National Guard records, Iraq is beginning to creep back onto the front pages, and the news is uniformly bad. Consider some of the headlines in major newspapers that appeared on their front pages on Wednesday alone: Wall Street Journal: Rebel Attacks Reveal New Cooperation: Officials Fear Recent Rise in Baghdad Violence Stems from Growing Coordination. Baltimore Sun: In Iraq, Chance for Credible Vote is Slipping Away. Philadelphia Inquirer: Outlook: The Growing Insurgency Could Doom U.S. Plans for Iraq, Analysts Say. Washington Post: U.S. Plans to Divert Iraq Money: Attacks Prompt Request to Move Reconstruction Funds to Security Forces. And then Thursday: USA Today: Insurgents in Iraq Appear More Powerful Than Ever. New York Times: U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future: Civil War Called Possible -- Tone Differs from Public Statements. All of which tended to confirm the conclusion of the latest 'Newsweek' magazine's Iraq feature: It's Worse Than You Think. Against these stories -- putting aside the other headlines detailing deadly suicide and other attacks that have killed scores of Iraqis in the past week -- Bush's insistence in a campaign address to a convention of the National Guard Tuesday that our strategy is succeeding appears awfully hollow, a point made repeatedly not only by Democratic, but by some Republican lawmakers at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday. It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing, noted Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who has long been sceptical of administration claims that the Iraq occupation was going well. It is now in the zone of dangerous. Indeed, it is now very difficult to find any analysts outside of the administration or the Bush campaign who share the official optimism. Consider the case of Michael O'Hanlon, a defence specialist at the Brookings Institution and former National Security Council aide who has been among the most confident of independent analysts of the basic soundness of Washington's strategy in Iraq. In my judgment the administration is basically correct that the overall effort in Iraq is succeeding, he testified to a Congressional panel just 10 months ago. By the standards of counterinsurgency warfare, most factors, though admittedly not all, appear to be working to our advantage. This week, however, O'Hanlon, who has developed a detailed index periodically published in the New York Times that measures U.S. progress in post-war Iraq, was singing an entirely different song at a forum sponsored by Brookings and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). We're in much worse shape than I thought we'd ever be, he said. I don't know how you get
[pjnews] US Companies Search for Future Oil Reserves
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092204X.shtml Crude Dudes: U.S. oil companies just happened to have billions of dollars they wanted to invest in undeveloped oil reserves. By Linda McQuaig The Toronto Star Monday 20 September 2004 From his corner office in the heart of New York's financial district, Fadel Gheit keeps close tabs on what goes on inside the boardrooms of the big oil companies. An oil analyst at the prestigious Wall Street firm Oppenheimer Co., the fit, distinguished-looking Gheit has been watching the oil industry closely for more than 25 years. Selling the modern world's most indispensable commodity has never been a bad business to be in - particularly for the small group of companies that straddle the top of this privileged world. But never more so than now. Profit-wise, things could not have been better, says Gheit, In the last three years, they died and went to heaven They are all sitting on the largest piles of cash in their history. But to stay rich they have to keep finding new reserves, and that's getting tougher. Increasingly it means cutting through permafrost or drilling deep underwater, at tremendous cost. The cheap oil has already been found and developed and produced and consumed, says Gheit. The low-hanging fruit has already been picked. Well, not all the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Nestled into the heart of the area of heaviest oil concentration in the world is Iraq, overflowing with low-hanging fruit. No permafrost, no deep water. Just giant pools of oil, right beneath the warm ground. This is fruit sagging so low, as it were, that it practically touches the ground under the weight of its ripeness. Not only does Iraq have vast quantities of easily accessible oil, but its oil is almost untouched. Think of Iraq as virgin territory This is bigger than anything Exxon is involved in currently It is the superstar of the future, says Gheit, That's why Iraq becomes the most sought-after real estate on the face of the earth. Gheit just smiles at the notion that oil wasn't a factor in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He compares Iraq to Russia, which also has large undeveloped oil reserves. But Russia has nuclear weapons. We can't just go over and ... occupy (Russian) oil fields, says Gheit. It's a different ballgame. Iraq, however, was defenceless, utterly lacking, ironically, in weapons of mass destruction. And its location, nestled in between Saudi Arabia and Iran, made it an ideal place for an ongoing military presence, from which the U.S. would be able to control the entire Gulf region. Gheit smiles again: Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath You can't ask for better than that. There's something almost obscene about a map that was studied by senior Bush administration officials and a select group of oil company executives meeting in secret in the spring of 2001. It doesn't show the kind of detail normally shown on maps - cities, towns, regions. Rather its detail is all about Iraq's oil. The southwest is neatly divided, for instance, into nine Exploration Blocks. Stripped of political trappings, this map shows a naked Iraq, with only its ample natural assets in view. It's like a supermarket meat chart, which identifies the various parts of a slab of beef so customers can see the most desirable cuts Block 1 might be the striploin, Block 2 and Block 3 are perhaps some juicy tenderloin, but Block 8 - ahh, that could be the filet mignon. The map might seem crass, but it was never meant for public consumption. It was one of the documents studied by the ultra-secretive task force on energy, headed by U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, and it was only released under court order after a long legal battle waged by the public interest group Judicial Watch. Another interesting task force document, also released under court order over the opposition of the Bush administration, was a two-page chart titled Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfields. It identifies 63 oil companies from 30 countries and specifies which Iraqi oil fields each company is interested in and the status of the company's negotiations with Saddam Hussein's regime. Among the companies are Royal Dutch/Shell of the Netherlands, Russia's Lukoil and France's Total Elf Aquitaine, which was identified as being interested in the fabulous, 25-billion-barrrel Majnoon oil field. Baghdad had agreed in principle to the French company's plans to develop this succulent slab of Iraq. There goes the filet mignon into the mouths of the French! The documents have attracted surprisingly little attention, despite their possible relevance to the question of Washington's motives for its invasion of Iraq - in many ways the defining event of the post-9/11 world but one whose purpose remains shrouded in mystery. Even after the supposed motives for the invasion - weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda -
[pjnews] Forged Documents: The 60 Minutes Story CBS Didn't Run
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0923-02.htm Published on Thursday, September 23, 2004 by MSNBC The Story That Didnt Run Heres the Piece that 60 Minutes Killed for Its Report on the Bush Guard Documents by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball In its rush to air its now discredited story about President George W. Bushs National Guard service, CBS bumped another sensitive piece slated for the same 60 Minutes broadcast: a half-hour segment about how the U.S. government was snookered by forged documents purporting to show Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium from Niger. The journalistic juggling at CBS provides an ironic counterpoint to the furor over apparently bogus documents involving Bushs National Guard service. One unexpected consequence of the networks decision was to wipe out a chanceat least for the momentfor greater public scrutiny of a more consequential forgery that played a role in building the Bush administrations case to invade Iraq. A team of 60 Minutes correspondents and consulting reporters spent more than six months investigating the Niger uranium documents fraud, CBS sources tell NEWSWEEK. The group landed the first ever on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who first obtained the phony documents, as well as her elusive source, Rocco Martino, a mysterious Roman businessman with longstanding ties to European intelligence agencies. Although the edited piece never ended up identifying Martino by name, the story, narrated by 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley, asked tough questions about how the White House came to embrace the fraudulent documents and why administration officials chose to include a 16-word reference to the questionable uranium purchase in President Bushs 2003 State of the Union speech. But just hours before the piece was set to air on the evening of Sept. 8, the reporters and producers on the CBS team were stunned to learn the story was being scrapped to make room for a seemingly sensational story about new documents showing that Bush ignored a direct order to take a flight physical while serving in the National Guard more than 30 years ago. The story has since created a journalistic and political firestorm, resulting in a colossal embarrassment for CBS. This week, the network concluded that its principle source for the documents, a disgruntled former Guard official and Democratic partisan named Bill Burkett, had lied about where he got the material. CBS anchor Dan Rather publicly apologized for broadcasting the faulty report. Today, CBS named a two-person team comprised of former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press chief Louis Boccardi to investigate the networks handling of the story. . This is like living in a Kafka novel, said Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing writer and a Web blogger who had been collaborating with 60 Minutes producers on the uranium story. Here we had a very important, well-reported story about forged documents that helped lead the country to war. And then it gets bumped by another story that relied on forged documents. Some CBS reporters, as well as one of the networks key sources, fear that the Niger uranium story may never run, at least not any time soon, on the grounds that the network can now not credibly air a report questioning how the Bush administration could have gotten taken in by phony documents. The network would be a laughingstock, said one source intimately familiar with the story. Although acknowledging that it was frustrating to have his story bounced, David Gelber, the lead CBS producer on the Niger piece, said he has been told the segment will still air some time soon, perhaps as early as next week. Obviously, everybody at CBS is holding their breath these days. Im assuming the story is going to run until Im told differently. The delay of the CBS report comes at a time when there have been significant new developments in the casealthough virtually none of them have been reported in the United States. According to Italian and British press reports, Martinothe Rome middleman at the center of the casewas questioned last week by an Italian investigating magistrate for two hours about the circumstances surrounding his acquisition of the documents. Martino could not be reached for comment, but his lawyer is reportedly planning a press conference in the next few days. Burba, the Italian journalist, confirmed to NEWSWEEK this week that Martino is the previously mysterious Mr. X who contacted her with the potentially explosive documents in early October 2002just as Congress was debating whether to authorize President Bush to wage war against Iraq. The documents, consisting of telexes, letters and contracts, purported to show that Iraq had negotiated an agreement to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger, material that could be used to make a nuclear bomb. (A U.S. intelligence official told NEWSWEEK
[pjnews] Transformation of the Republican Party
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/979/ Were Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrichs evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk? By Garrison Keillor / August 26, 2004 Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeonedand there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to todays. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor. In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. Bipartisanship is another term of date rape, says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP. I dont want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub. The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy. The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrongs moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newts evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks were deaf, dumb and dangerous. Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace. Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedythe single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the presidents personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. The omens are not good. Our beloved land has been fogged with fearfear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the
[pjnews] (no subject)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1001-23.htm Report on US Role in Allawi Speech Stirs Complaint http://snipurl.com/9io0 The Bush administration is supporting a provision in the House leadership's intelligence reform bill that would allow U.S. authorities to deport certain foreigners to countries where they are likely to be tortured or abused, an action prohibited by the international laws against torture the United States signed 20 years ago... http://snipurl.com/9io3 American legal investigators have discovered evidence of abuse, torture and rape throughout the US-run prison system in Iraq. A Michigan legal team meeting with former detainees in Baghdad during an August fact-finding mission gathered evidence supporting claims of prisoner abuse at some 25 US-run detention centers, most of them so far not publicly mentioned as being embroiled in the Iraq torture scandal... -- http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100204C.shtml The New York Times 1 October 2004 America's Lost Respect By PAUL KRUGMAN As a result of the American military, President Bush declared last week, the Taliban is no longer in existence. It's unclear whether Mr. Bush misspoke, or whether he really is that clueless. But his claim was in keeping with his re-election strategy, demonstrated once again in last night's debate: a president who has done immense damage to America's position in the world hopes to brazen it out by claiming that failure is success. Three years ago, the United States was both feared and respected: feared because of its military supremacy, respected because of its traditional commitment to democracy and the rule of law. Since then, Iraq has demonstrated the limits of American military power, and has tied up much of that power in a grinding guerrilla war. This has emboldened regimes that pose a real threat. Three years ago, would North Korea have felt so free to trumpet its conversion of fuel rods into bombs? But even more important is the loss of respect. After the official rationales for the Iraq war proved false, and after America failed to make good on its promise to foster democracy in either Afghanistan or Iraq - and, not least, after Abu Ghraib - the world no longer believes that we are the good guys. Let's talk for a minute about Afghanistan, which administration officials tout as a success story. They rely on the public's ignorance: voters, they believe, don't know that even though the United States promised to provide Afghanistan with both security and aid during its transition to democracy, it broke those promises. It has allowed the country to slide back into warlordism - and allowed the Taliban to make a comeback. These days, Mr. Bush and other administration officials often talk about the 10.5 million Afghans who have registered to vote in this month's election, citing the figure as proof that democracy is making strides after all. They count on the public not to know, and on reporters not to mention, that the number of people registered considerably exceeds all estimates of the eligible population. What they call evidence of democracy on the march is actually evidence of large-scale electoral fraud. It's the same story in Iraq: the January election has become the rationale for everything we're doing, yet it's hard to find anyone not beholden to the administration who believes that the election, if it happens at all, will be anything more than a sham. Yet Mr. Bush and his Congressional allies seem to have learned nothing from their failures. If Mr. Bush is returned to office, there's every reason to think that they will continue along the same disastrous path. We can already see one example of this when we look at the question of torture. Abu Ghraib has largely vanished from U.S. political discussion, largely because the administration and its Congressional allies have been so effective at covering up high-level involvement. But both the revelations and the cover-up did terrible damage to America's moral authority. To much of the world, America looks like a place where top officials condone and possibly order the torture of innocent people, and suffer no consequences. What we need is an effort to regain our good name. What we're getting instead is a provision, inserted by Congressional Republicans in the intelligence reform bill, to legalize extraordinary rendition - a euphemism for sending terrorism suspects to countries that use torture for interrogation. This would institutionalize a Kafkaesque system under which suspects can be sent, at the government's whim, to Egypt or Syria or Jordan - and to fight such a move, it's up to the suspect to prove that he'll be tortured on arrival. Just what we need to convince other countries of our commitment to the rule of law. Most Americans aren't aware of all this. The sheer scale of Mr. Bush's foreign policy failures insulates him from its political consequences: voters aren't
[pjnews] Something Rotten in Florida
Extremely disturbing... http://snipurl.com/9f7b Something rotten in the state of Florida: Pregnant chads, vanishing voters... the election fiasco of 2000 made the Sunshine State a laughing stock. More importantly, it put George Bush in the White House. You'd think they'd want to get it right this time. But no, as Andrew Gumbel discovers, the democratic process is more flawed than ever 29 September 2004 The Independent/UK Of the many weird and unsettling developments in Florida since the presidential election meltdown four years ago, none is so startling as the fact that Theresa LePore, the calamitously incompetent elections supervisor of Palm Beach County, still has her job. It was LePore who chose the notorious butterfly ballot - a format so confusing that it led thousands of Democrats, many of them elderly, retired Jewish people, to punch the wrong hole, giving their vote not to Al Gore, as they had intended, but to the right-wing, explicitly anti-Jewish fringe candidate Pat Buchanan. It was LePore, too, who caused huge problems for the fraught re-count process, first by insisting on the strictest standards for determining voter intent and then, with the final deadline 72 hours away, ordering her staff to take the day off for Thanksgiving. As a result, Palm Beach County fell short of completing its manual re-count on time, and the whole process - which even under LePore's strictures had turned up an extra 180 votes for Gore - was rendered void. Arguably, no one person did more to foul up the maddeningly close election in Florida in 2000, and no individual bears more responsibility for the fact that George Bush ended up President instead of Gore. (Without the butterfly ballot, Gore would have taken as many as 7,000 more votes and cruised past Bush's official 537-vote margin of victory.) Yet Theresa LePore will still be in charge for this November's presidential election - and things have got considerably worse in the interim. Palm Beach isn't the only place in Florida where crazy things have happened. Officials up and down the state have behaved like drunks caught out on one bender too many. They have talked the talk of reform quite convincingly, and even lavished considerable expense on covering up their past lapses. But the bottom line is that the voting machines still don't work, political corruption and underhand campaign tactics remain rampant, and too many black and lower-income voters face daunting, often insurmountable obstacles in exercising their voting rights. In a state that promises to be every bit as pivotal as it was last time, this is deeply worrying. And Palm Beach County shows why. After the 2000 débâcle, an unrepentant Theresa LePore was told by the state of Florida that she and her fellow election supervisors would have to replace the punchcard machines that had exposed the state to such ridicule. She flew to California, where she was quickly seduced by an electronic touchscreen voting system used in Riverside County, just east of Los Angeles. She was told that Riverside's system had performed flawlessly in November 2000, even as she and her canvassing board had been hung up for weeks examining punchcards for dimpled, hanging or pregnant chads. But Riverside's tabulation system had in fact suffered meltdown on election night, creating the first of many controversies about the reliability and accuracy of its Sequoia Pacific machines. Blissfully unaware of this, LePore spent $14.4m (£8m) on her own Sequoia system and unveiled it for local elections in March 2002. It seems to have fallen at the first hurdle. A former mayor of Boca Raton, Emil Danciu, was flabbergasted to finish third in a race for a seat on Boca Raton city council. A poll shortly before the election had put him 17 points ahead of his nearest rival. Supporters told his campaign office that when they tried to touch the screen to light up his name, the machine registered the name of an opponent. Danciu also found that 15 cartridges containing the vote totals from machines in his home precinct had disappeared on election night, delaying the result. It transpired that an election worker had taken them home, in violation of the most basicprocedures. Danciu's lawyer, his daughter Charlotte, said some cartridges were then found to be empty, for reasons that have never been adequately explained. Danciu sued for access to the Sequoia source code to see if it was flawed. He was told that the source code was considered a trade secret under Florida law, and that even LePore and her staff were not authorised to examine it, on pain of criminal prosecution. His suit was thrown out. Two weeks later, something even stranger happened. In the town of Wellington, a run-off election for mayor was decided by just four votes - but 78 votes did not register on the machines at all. This meant - assuming for a moment that the machines were not lying - that 78 people had driven to the polls, not voted, and gone home again. The
[pjnews] To Whom it May Concern
http://snipurl.com/9lgs Contradicting the main argument for a war that has cost more than 1,000 American lives, the top U.S. arms inspector said Wednesday he found no evidence that Iraq produced any weapons of mass destruction after 1991. He also concluded that Saddam Hussein's capabilities to develop such weapon had dimmed not grown during a dozen years of sanctions before last year's U.S. invasion. Contrary to prewar statements by President Bush and top administration officials, Saddam did not have chemical and biological stockpiles when the war began and his nuclear capabilities were deteriorating, not advancing, said Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group... http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1005-04.htm Two Administration Officials Embarrass Bush on Iraq http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3574429 MP Questions Iraqi Woman's Conference Speech: The weeping Iraqi woman who begged Labour conference delegates not to vote to withdraw British troops from the country has strong connections with the CIA, Britain's most senior back bench MP claimed today... http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1005-22.htm Letters from US soldiers in Iraq to Michael Moore --- http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/090604A.shtml To Whom it May Concern By Brooke M. Campbell / 3 September 2004 To Whom it May Concern, I found out that my brother, Sergeant Ryan M. Campbell, was dead during a graduate seminar at Emory University on April 29, 2004. Immediately after a uniformed officer knocked at my mother's door to deliver the message that broke her heart, she called me on my cell phone. She could say nothing but He's gone. I could say nothing but No. Over and over again we chanted this refrain to each other over the phone as I made my way across the country to hold her as she wept. I had made the very same trip in February, cutting classes to spend my brother's two weeks' leave from Baghdad with him. Little did I know then that the next time I saw him would be at Arlington National Cemetery. During those days in February, my brother shared with me his fear, his disillusionment, and his anger. We had all been led to believe that Iraq posed a serious threat to America as well as its surrounding nations, he said. We invaded expecting to find weapons of mass destruction and a much more prepared and well-trained Republican Guard waiting for us. It is now a year later, and alas, no weapons of mass destruction or any other real threat, for that matter. Ryan was scheduled to complete his one-year assignment to Iraq on April 25. But on April 11, he emailed me to let me know not to expect him in Atlanta for a May visit, because his tour of duty had been involuntarily extended. Just do me one big favor, ok? he wrote. Don't vote for Bush. No. Just don't do it. I would not be happy with you. Last night, I listened to George W. Bush's live, televised speech at the Republican National Convention. He spoke to me and my family when he announced, I have met with parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag, and said a final goodbye to a soldier they loved. I am awed that so many have used those meetings to say that I am in their prayers and to offer encouragement to me. Where does strength like that come from? How can people so burdened with sorrow also feel such pride? It is because they know their loved one was last seen doing good. Because they know that liberty was precious to the one they lost. And in those military families, I have seen the character of a great nation: decent, and idealistic, and strong. This is my reply: Mr. President, I know that you probably still don't do body counts, so you may not know that almost one thousand U.S. troops have died doing what you told them they had to do to protect America. Ryan was Number 832. Liberty was, indeed, precious to the one I lost-- so precious that he would rather have gone to prison than back to Iraq in February. Like you, I don't know where the strength for such pride on the part of people so burdened with sorrow comes from; maybe I spent it all holding my mother as she wept. I last saw my loved one at the Kansas City airport, staring after me as I walked away. I could see April 29 written on his sad, sand-chapped and sunburned face. I could see that he desperately wanted to believe that if he died, it would be while doing good, as you put it. He wanted us to be able to be proud of him. Mr. President, you gave me and my mother a folded flag instead of the beautiful boy who called us Moms and Brookster. But worse than that, you sold my little brother a bill of goods. Not only did you cheat him of a long meaningful life, but you cheated him of a meaningful death. You are in my prayers, Mr. President, because I think that you need them more than anyone on the face of the planet. But you will never get my vote. So to whom it may concern: Don't vote for Bush. No. Just don't do it. I would not be happy
[pjnews] Violence vs. Non-Violence Debate in Israel/Palestine
see also: http://snipurl.com/9lgq The Bush Administration urged the members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to approve an October 31 deadline on Iran for compliance or face sanctions at the UN Security Council. Bush lost that vote. Had the motion passed, that would have started the countdown to an Israel-Iran war just days before the November 2nd elections. Restrained by western nations on the IAEA, neoconservatives in Washington and their allies in Ariel Sharon's Likud government have had to forego the October surprise, an attack on Iranian nuclear installations on the eve of the U.S. presidential election. Nevertheless, events already in motion indicate that a pause before World War IV could last only weeks, if George W. Bush gains a second term... --- Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 22:24:14 -0400 (EDT) From: Rabbi Michael Lerner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Violence/Non-Violence Debate in Palestine Violence or Non-Violence Debate in Israel/Palestine September 4, 2004 Greetings! The recent formation of a non-violence campaign in Palestine, spurred by the visit of the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, has generated a fervent debate in both the Israeli and Palestinian peace movement about the relative efficacy of non-violence. While we at Tikkun come down firmly on the side of non- violence, and cheer on the work of this latest Gandhi and some of the Palesitnian leaders who are now seeking to follow that path, like Sami Awad, in this communication we are first going to present an article by Uri Avneri that shows some of the complications of the debate going on today in Palestine. After Avneri's article, we will present some criticisms of Avneri from our own position of principled non-violence. And after that we present some troubling news that happened today, just before the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, when members of the non-violent Christian Peace Makers Team were allegedly attacked and beaten by Israeli settlers. This comes immediately after the terrible reality of Yom Kippur on which many Palestinians found themselves prevented from leaving their homes and many more from leaving their villages which were surrounded by the Israeli army during this offical closure as a preventive measure against terror. What a shandah--that our holidays should be observed at the expense of this repression. And how terrible for Israelis also to be living at a such a level of fear that otherwise decent people would consider that kind of an outrageous measure necessary for self-defense. Please read the rest of this email to get a sense of the debate and our response to it. Uri Avnery 4.9.04 How Are You, Non-Violence? At the mass meeting with Arun Gandhi, the grandson of the Mahatma, in Abu-Dis, I observed the faces of the participants. While Gandhi was preaching non-violence, I imagined a debate between two young Palestinians in the audience. Yussuf: He is right. The armed intifada has failed. Hassan: On the contrary. Without the actions of the martyrs, the world would have forgotten us long ago. Yussuf: For half a year there were no suicide attacks in Israel, and look what we have achieved! Hassan: We have achieved nothing. On the contrary, the Israeli generals boast that they have defeated us with their targeted assassinations, incursions into our territories and all the other acts of oppression. And all this time they have been enlarging the settlements, putting up new 'outposts' and continuing to build the racist wall. Yussuf: You forget that the International Court has declared the wall illegal and the UN General Assembly has confirmed this with a huge majority. All of Europe voted in our favor. We are winning in the arena of world public opinion. Hassan: What is that worth, if in the meantime Sharon does what he wants, goes on keeping Arafat in a cage and spits in the face of Abu-Ala, while Abu-Ala is advocating non- violence? Yussuf: Even the senior jurists in Israel itself warn Sharon that if he goes on like this, the United Nations will end up imposing sanctions on Israel. Hassan: But in the meantime, the opposite is happening. Because of the lull in suicide attacks, the Israeli economy is reviving. Tourism to Israel, that had stopped altogether because of our actions, is starting up again. If the Israelis feel comfortable and are no longer afraid of suicide bombers, why should they talk with us? Why should they give back any territories? Why should they stop enlarging the settlements? They don't give a damn. Yussuf: We have to win international public opinion. We can do this only by non-violence. I admire the martyrs who are ready to die for our people. I am proud that we have such heroes. But they don't get us anywhere. They only provide Sharon with pretexts to oppress us even more. Hassan: As if Sharon needs pretexts! He wants to break us, and world public opinion will not lift a finger for us. The treacherous Arab leaders will not do anything for us, either. Only our heroes will
[pjnews] Senate data-mining law worries civil liberties advocates
Update: The bill described below was passed. See http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:s.02845: -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Expect: That after this Wednesday night, your most private/personal information can be distributed and sold on the street if this bill passed: Don't expect Databases with billions of records on Americans in the hands of local cops to stay confidential in your town, from your neighbors and local business associates. If this bill passes, private information about Citizens can be passed out like canday, distributed to thousands of sources without probable cause. There will be no stopping it. Mere contact with an activist or organization on a government watch list will be enough for the government to open up your private files to hundreds of agencies and local police. That includes copies of emails you have sent to organizations and individuals the government considers worth watching. If this bill passes, some employers can pay to have access to your personal records through companies that have contracts with government information databases. Is this still a government for and by the people? http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,65242,00.html Senate Wants Database Dragnet By Ryan Singel The Senate could pass a bill as early as Wednesday evening that would let government counter-terrorist investigators instantly query a massive system of interconnected commercial and government databases that hold billions of records on Americans. The proposed network is based on the Markle Foundation Task Force's December 2003 report, which envisioned a system that would allow FBI and CIA agents, as well as police officers and some companies, to quickly search intelligence, criminal and commercial databases. The proposal is so radical, the bill allocates $50 million just to fund the system's specifications and privacy policies. The Senate will likely have its final vote on the bill, sponsored by Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), Wednesday night. The draft of the bill was based on recommendations of the so-called 9/11 Commission, which investigated the United States' lapse in intelligence and security procedures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. To prevent abuses of the system, the Markle task force recommended anonymized technology, graduated levels of permission-based access and automated auditing software constantly hunting for abuses. An appendix to the report went so far as to suggest that the system should identify known associates of the terrorist suspect, within 30 seconds, using shared addressees, records of phone calls to and from the suspect's phone, e-mails to and from the suspect's accounts, financial transactions, travel history and reservations, and common memberships in organizations, including (with appropriate safeguards) religious and expressive organizations. But task force member James X. Dempsey, director of the Center for Democracy Technology, says the commercial records involved are more limited public records, such as home ownership data, not information about what mosque someone belongs to. He said he believes it's absurd to prohibit the FBI from using a commercial database like ChoicePoint to find a suspected terrorist's home address (though the FBI currently can and does do this). On the other hand, he asked, Should they be able to go to ChoicePoint and ask for all the subscribers to Gun Owners Monthly? No, I don't think so. The proposed network would not look for patterns in data warehouses to attempt to detect terrorist activities, Dempsey said. Instead, an investigator would start with a name and the system would try to see what information is known about that person. But critics say the Senate is moving too fast and the network could infringe on civil liberties. Lawmakers are taking a boil the ocean approach, according to Robert Griffin, president of Knowledge Computing. His company runs Coplink, a widely used system for linking law enforcement databases. Despite being a supporter of increased information sharing, Griffin criticized the proposal for trying too much too soon and relying too heavily on commercial data. The next Mohammed Atta is not going to be found in commercial databases, Griffin said, referring to the tactical leader of the 9/11 attacks. We are going to stop him running a red light somewhere, and we are going to run relationships associations with this guy and we are going to say, gee, you have things in common with guys on watch lists. That's how you are going to find the guy -- not because he has bad credit. Civil liberties lawyer Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation accused Congress of institutional laziness for not holding hearings on the proposal to hear the perspectives of advocates for consumers or battered women. Tien also argued that a widespread lack of privacy and due process protections would make data sharing dangerous. If someone transfers your credit
[pjnews] Is Bush Channelling Rove?
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10052004.html What's the Frequency, Karl? Is Bush Channelling Rove? By DAVE LINDORFF The man of a hundred voices, Harry Shearer, host of NPR's Le Show, recently did a skit about Sen. John Kerry's training for the first debate, which featured a soprano-voiced aide who would ask the verbose and vacuous Democratic presidential contender a mock question, and then press a button to administer an electric shock the minute Kerry started off on a windy subordinate clause or an equivocation. It was extremely funny, and the way Kerry kept to tightly scripted answers that fit into the debate format's tight time constraints makes it appear likely that it was close to what his training had probably been. Meanwhile, there is speculation that the Republicans wired their candidate, who has his own linguistic difficulties, not just in practice sessions, but for the debate itself. The theory is that Karl Rove and his minions gave their incoherent and intellectually-challenged candidate a secret little earplug connected to a wireless receiver, so that he could be provided with answers and clever punch lines when he heard a question and came up empty. Remember the peculiar interjection Now let me finish! which Bush blurted out angrily during the debate in Miami? It attracted the attention of commentators and observers, because no one had interrupted him. No one we could hear, that is. The comment came out of nowhere, because he was right in the middle of his answer, well within the prescribed time limit. But what if someone, realizing that the president was flailing around desperately for an answer, had jumped into his earpiece, irritating him. In fact, a hidden wire connected to Karl Rove or some flunky transmitting for Rove would also explain Bush's peculiar, hunched over stance and his frequent expressions of annoyance, as well as the uncomfortably long silences at odd points in his statementswhich looked just as if he were listening carefully to some instructions! We shouldn't be surprised if it has come to this. Remember how Ronald Reagan used to use cue cards for everything? He even had cards that reminded him to say Good Afternoon when meeting a head of state (I guess out of fear he might say Good Morning when it was afternoon). Still, a debate is supposed to be a test of wits between two candidates, not between one candidate and another candidate's staff. The suspicion that George Bush was literally channeling Karl Rove during the debate last week was first raised by blogger Joseph Cannon (see http://www.cannonfire.blogspot.com/), who says his girlfriend, during a replaying of the debate, noticed what looked like a wire running down the back of Bush's jacket. Cannon notes that others have noticed Bush appearing to wear a hearing aid at speaking events, though he has no known hearing impairment, and further suggests that technological advances now permit the implanting, in tooth or in the inner ear, of hearing devices that would be totally invisible but might nonetheless require a more noticeable receiver somewhere else on the body. (Note to readers. Everone should start scanning through Bush photos on line, looking for a telltale bulge on his jacket, or for a wire.) Though such devices might be difficult to detect (who's going to require that the president and his Democratic debate challenger submit to a body search or pass through a metal detector before the next debate?), it would be interesting to have someone with a high quality multi-frequency scanner observe the next two debates and check for broadcasts of answers to the president. Then again, here's an interesting idea for the Democrats, for a change: Equip Kerry with a miniature, high-tech multi-frequency jammer to keep in his own jacket pocket. At awkward moments for the president, Kerry could just press the button in his pocket and broadcast a loud electronic squawk. Such interference could make for interesting television! If publicity about a possible wire on the president frightens the White House into pulling the plug on this alleged scheme, it could also make for a fun time at the next two debates, when he'll have to operate solo, which could also make for interesting reality TV. Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns titled This Can't be Happening! is published by Common Courage Press. Information about both books and other work by Lindorff can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net. He can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[pjnews] Beyond the Debates, a Referendum on an Emperor
http://www.fair.org/media-beat/041005.html Media Swinging With the Pollsters http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0917-05.htm Missing: A Media Focus on the Supreme Court --- http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1007-36.htm Beyond the Debates, a Referendum on an Emperor by Norman Solomon More than any other events on the campaign trail this year, the debates have drawn intense public interest. Viewers are eager for something more than the carefully packaged junk that usually passes for political coverage -- the nonstop media mix of countless photo-ops, canned speeches, evasive interviews, calculated sound-bites, programmed national conventions and manipulative TV commercials. There's a lot wrong with the debates, especially the narrow range of views. But on the plus side, with no editing and no TelePrompTer, the contenders are on their own for 90 minutes. After watching a debate, people have gotten a look at the core of a presidential campaign's artifice -- the candidate himself. The exalted media persona of George W. Bush thrives on edited snippets along with scripted speeches and rousing deliveries of one-liners in front of adoring crowds. And the hunkered-down, hunched-over gravity of Dick Cheney is unaccustomed to direct challenge. But the debate format has forced both men to come down from their pedestals. Bush and Cheney have been stumbling when confronted with information about their deceptions on Iraq. Their biggest enemies are memory and videotape. Many voters remember the Bush administration's unrelenting claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. And when networks replay their prewar statements about WMDs, or supposed links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, the impacts can be devastating. The most concise bumper sticker in the country right now says, simply, Bush lied. The president likes to pretend that he's regally clothed with credibility. By now, at least half of the voting-age population can see through the finery; the emperor has no clothes. Realities of Iraq are now horrendous, and the future looks very bleak. Yet almost no one in a position of political power -- or media prominence -- seems willing to fully acknowledge that the United States cannot win this war. From all indications, the suffering has just begun. Beneath the red-white-and-blue rhetoric is determination not to lose a country with 112 billion barrels of oil under the sand. And there is equal determination for the Pentagon to establish more than a dozen U.S. military bases in Iraq. Real democracy in Iraq would thwart both aims -- since most Iraqi people don't want U.S. troops in their country. From the vantage point of the Bush administration, only phony democracy will do. John Kerry and John Edwards are whistling past a very large graveyard when they speak of seeking victory in Iraq. It's not going to happen. Among Iraqis, the resistance is already too wide and too deep; the resentments and rage are already too entrenched. Here at home, the Republicans are hell-bent on justifying the invasion of Iraq. This is Bush's war, and -- given the proven mentalities of the Bush-Cheney regime -- it's hard to imagine that the anti-war movement could force a rational response from the White House during a second term of George W. Bush. There's more potential under a Kerry administration for the anti-war movement to help create political conditions that could induce the president to pull back from Iraq. Ironically, from a journalist for a mainstream American news outlet, one of the most cogent accounts of present-day Iraq was not intended for publication. In late September, when a Wall Street Journal reporter e-mailed a letter from Baghdad to some friends, it ended up on various websites. Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster, Farnaz Fassihi wrote. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come. Even the blunt descriptions in major U.S. media seem evasive when compared to Fassihi's candid summary: One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if anything could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle. By now, the failure of the U.S. effort in Iraq should be clear, whether you believe the invasion of Iraq was noble or nefarious. Posturing to the contrary -- whether by politicians or pundits -- cannot change the facts on the ground or the future on the horizon. The earlier those facts can be candidly acknowledged, the more lives can be saved. To an extraordinary extent, George W. Bush has shown that he is willing -- even eager -- to be accountable only to his right-wing base. Of course, if he wins on Nov. 2,
[pjnews] Martha Stewart, Nelson Mandela and radical nuns
http://snipurl.com/9nwl What Martha Stewart, Nelson Mandela, and radical nuns have in common by Stephen Kobasa When reflecting on her imminent imprisonment during a recent interview, Martha Stewart declared that good people go to jail, offering Nelson Mandela, a man who was given a life sentence for his anti-apartheid leadership and who spent most of his 27 years of imprisonment in solitary confinement, as a case in point. Aside from her outrageous implication that she should be included in this category, her basic contention is indeed true: there are many good people imprisoned in this country, some of them for having acted morally. When Stewart arrives at the federal prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia, to serve her five-month sentence, she will not have to look far for confirmation of this. Among the women there is Carol Gilbert, a Dominican nun who last year began her 33 months of imprisonment. Along with Sisters Ardeth Platte (sentenced to 41 months) and Jackie Hudson (30 months), Gilbert cut through the fence surrounding a Minuteman III missile silo in Colorado. The three then poured blood on the massive concrete lid that covered the nuclear warhead. This provoked charges of sabotage from the federal government, and the attendant excessive punishments. As Gilbert said at her sentencing, We know something is very wrong with a system that can incarcerate us for years in prison for inspecting, exposing, and symbolically disarming America's weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps Stewart will learn from Sister Carol that the good life she is anxious to return to at her New York estate will be lived under the threat of annihilation posed by the 49 Minuteman III sites in northeastern Colorado, 84 in southwestern Nebraska, and 17 in southeastern Wyoming. Perhaps she will ask why the willingness of any presidential candidate to authorize nuclear war is never questioned or subject to debate as part of the current election campaign. Perhaps she will be be moved by news of the Adopt-a-Missile Silo action by Citizen Weapon Inspection Teams in Colorado on October 2 to mark the second anniversary of the three nuns' witness of conscience. And perhaps she will come to use her notoriety as an instrument for making public the injustice committed in their case. That might put her closer to that category of a good person in jail. Stephen Vincent Kobasa is a member of the Atlantic Life Community.
[pjnews] The Undoing of a U.S. Terror Prosecution
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9627-2004Oct5.html As little as 27 cents of every dollar spent on Iraq's reconstruction has actually filtered down to projects benefiting Iraqis, a statistic that is prompting the State Department to fundamentally rethink the Bush administration's troubled reconstruction effort... http://snipurl.com/9oi8 The New York Times 7 October 2004 After Convictions, the Undoing of a U.S. Terror Prosecution By Danny Hakim And Eric Lichtblau DETROIT, Oct. 6 - Publicly, federal prosecutors declared in the summer of 2002 that they had thwarted a sleeper operational combat cell based in a dilapidated apartment here. Privately, senior Justice Department officials had doubts about the strength of the case even as they were moving to indict four Middle Eastern immigrants on terrorism charges. The evidence was somewhat weak, an internal Justice Department memorandum obtained by The New York Times acknowledged. It relied on a single informant with some baggage, and there was no clear link to terrorist groups. But charging the men with terrorism, the memorandum said, might pressure them to give up information. We can charge this case with the hope that the case might get better, Barry Sabin, the department's counterterrorism chief, wrote in the memorandum, and the certainty that it will not get much worse. But the case did get worse. After winning highly publicized convictions of two suspects on terrorism charges in June 2003, the Justice Department took the extraordinary step five weeks ago of repudiating its own case and successfully moving to throw out the terrorism charges. In a long court filing, the government discredited its own witnesses and found fault with virtually every part of its prosecution. The blame, the department suggested in its filing, lay mainly at the feet of the lead prosecutor in Detroit, Richard G. Convertino, whom it portrayed as a rogue lawyer. But documents and interviews with people knowledgeable about the case show that top officials at the Justice Department were involved in almost every step of the prosecution, from formulating strategy to editing the draft indictments to planning how the suspects would be incarcerated. President Bush himself said the Detroit case was one of several critical investigations around the country that had thwarted terrorists.'' But the wreckage of the case reveals that it was built on evidence that has since been undermined. A series of missteps and in-fighting weakened the case further, documents and interviews show. The first line of the government's indictment now appears to have been copied without attribution from a scholarly article on Islamic fundamentalism. Government documents that cast doubt on a critical piece of evidence - what was described as a surveillance sketch of an American air base overseas - were not turned over to the defense. And tensions between prosecutors in Detroit and Justice Department officials in Washington escalated into open hostility. Mr. Convertino angered the Justice Department by testifying at a Congressional hearing held by a powerful Republican senator who is a vocal critic of the department. Mr. Convertino, who was ultimately removed from the prosecution, is now suing the department and is under investigation for his handling of this case and others. That inquiry led to the public disclosure of the name of an Arab informant in the case, who then fled the country because, he said, he feared for his safety. The miscalculations and bad blood so overshadowed the case that the truth about the defendants' intentions may never be known. Some law enforcement officials, however, continue to insist that the prosecution was a good one. In an internal e-mail message, an F.B.I. supervisor in Detroit told agents last month that they should be proud that their work may have prevented another attack. But the Justice Department's critics say that the prosecution was overzealous and that it demonstrated how the Bush administration's pre-emptive approach to fighting terrorists by disrupting plots before they materialize can clash with legal principles of due process and the right to a fair trial. This case became a poster child for the Justice Department in the war on terrorism, and it had no institutional checks and balances in place to really look hard at the evidence, said Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island who has written extensively about terrorism. The Justice Department declined to discuss the case publicly, citing a judge's gag order and pending investigations. But internal documents show that from its early days, the case never appeared as strong as the department's public enthusiasm for it. In August 2002, just days after Mr. Sabin's internal memorandum expressed doubts about the evidence, the suspects were indicted on terrorism charges, prompting a supervisor in Washington to send the prosecutors in Detroit
[pjnews] Support War Resisters
http://snipurl.com/9oi3 Papers: FBI Trailed 1960s Movement Leader - -- If you pass this comment along to others -- periodically but not repeatedly -- please explain that Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more folks can consult ZNet at http://www.zmag.org Support War Resisters By Doug Ireland The iniquity of the U.S. occupation of Iraq came home to me yet again this week as I watched a BBC report on the aerial bombardment of Samara. There was a helmeted American colonel, smilingly telling the camera that the residents of this city of 200,000 were happy at the bloody liberation of their home. The wailing Samarans filmed by the BBC didn't look particularly filled with joy as they dug through the rubble of residences destroyed by the U.S. gunships' rockets. The baby boy in swaddling clothes they dug from that rubble, who was covered from head to foot in dust, did not look happy either -- he looked dead. The baby also did not look like a terrorist. As I saw these latest pictures from this unhappy war, the thought came to me that this week was the anniversary of one of the most famous documents in French history -- the Manifesto of 121 against France's colonial war in Algeria. At the height of that other war, which saw French soldiers ordered to torture, rape and kill Algerian men and women (whether they were combatants in the Algerian FLN or not), the 121 writers, intellectuals, and artists proclaimed -- 44 years ago this week -- their support for the right to desert from an Army guilty of degradingly inhuman, criminal conduct. We respect, and consider justified, they said, the refusal to take up arms against the Algerian people. Among the signatories of the Manifesto of 121 were some of France's most prominent talents: Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, of course, but also Pierre Boulez, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, Vercors (the heroic writer-fighter of the French Resistance to Nazism), Marguerite Duras, Simone Signoret ... and more, all of whom risked a great deal, including indictment, for signing this incitement to desertion. When Signoret and other actors were banned from appearing on state-owned radio and television for signing the Manifesto, all the other players in France's most popular broadcasts went on general strike in solidarity with the banned. The links between France's conduct in Algeria then, and the United States actions in Iraq today, are rather concrete. Gilles Pontecorvo's award-winning 1965 docudrama, The Battle of Algiers -- detailing the illegal repressive tactics by the French -- has been used as a how-to-do-it training film for the U.S. counter-insurgency forces in Iraq. The 2001 memoir by the head of French intelligence in Algeria, General Paul Aussaresses -- Special Services, 1955-57, in which the General justified and recounted in detail the kidnapping, torture, and murder his self-described death squad employed -- has been used, too, as a training manual, notably for the intelligence officers deployed to the torture prison at Abu Ghraib, where teenage boys were raped. (General Aussaresses was indicted in France for publishing this apologia for crimes against humanity -- actions which French President Jacques Chirac qualified as atrocities when he ordered the General stripped of one France's most prestigious decorations, the Legion of Honor, for his published confession.) On October 20, Canada will hold its first hearing to determine the fate of an American Iraq-war resister in uniform: Jeremy Hinzman, who has applied for refugee status after refusing combat duty in Iraq. Hinzman, a North Carolinian, enlisted when he was just 17, when his father took him to the recruiting office, in part because of a promise of money for his education. Hinzman also told Canadian television, I also had a vision in my head of being a big guy and fighting for just causes. With the revelation that the reason for the U.S. invasion -- Saddam's pretended Weapons of Mass Destruction -- was a lie, Hinzman decided the war was a crime against humanity. That, he says, is not part of defending your country and it's not something I'm willing to kill someone else or lose my own life for. Hinzman applied for conscientious objector status after he received orders to go to Iraq, but was rejected while he was still serving in Afghanistan. He went to Canada while on leave. Hinzman is not the only war resister in uniform to have sought refuge in Canada. Brandon Hughey, 19, fled to Canada from Fort Hood, Texas, in March because he doesn't believe the U.S. war in Iraq is legal or moral; he has since become a prominent speaker at anti-war rallies there. Hinzman, Hughey, and the rest of the half-dozen uniformed war resisters seeking refugee status could face stiff prison terms if Canada returns them to the United States. A petition has been launched in Canada in support of these G.I. War resisters. This appeal to the Canadian government has
[pjnews] Is Iraq the Curveball?
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1010-01.htm Published on Sunday, October 10, 2004 by the lndependent/UK Is Iraq the Curveball That Could Dismiss the President? The report that confirmed Iraq had no WMD, Rumsfeld's denial that Saddam and al-Qa'ida were linked, and ex-proconsul Bremer's complaint of lack of manpower may irrevocably have tipped the campaign Kerry's way. Is it three strikes and out for President Bush? by Rupert Cornwell Just maybe the dreaded October Surprise has already happened. The phenomenon is part of US electoral lore, shorthand for some unscripted bombshell event that at the climax of the campaign throws the contest to one of the candidates. But in this volatile, close-fought and ever more bitter US election, the job may have been done - by a 1,000-page report bearing the distinctly unpromising title Comprehensive Report by the Special Adviser to the DCI on Iraq's WMD. In a sense, of course, Charles Duelfer, the man who for the past nine months has led the search for Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, did not deliver a surprise at all. Everyone knew there were no weapons - even George Tenet, the former director of Central Intelligence, who had commissioned the effort and who once boasted to President Bush of a slam-dunk case against Saddam. It had long been obvious that the pre-war intelligence was wildly off the mark - and equally obvious that the Bush administration had made matters worse still by shamelessly hyping that intelligence. But the Duelfer report was devastating nonetheless. It is beyond all refutation. Not only did Saddam have no weapons; he got rid of them long ago, shortly after the 1991 Gulf War. Not only did weapons not exist - there were not even programs for weapons, merely an unspecified intention on the part of Saddam to get back into the WMD business once United Nations sanctions had been lifted. In short, there was no threat, either imminent or in the medium term. The policy of containment and UN inspections was working. The President's handlers had braced themselves for trouble, but even they were taken aback by the starkness of Mr Duelfer's conclusions. The report may have been one of those tipping points that decide a campaign, in retrospect the moment at which a president's credibility is fatally undermined. For weeks, John Kerry has been arguing that Mr Bush and Dick Cheney, his Vice-President, live in a make-believe universe of their own, claiming that Saddam had been a major threat to world peace, and that all was going well in Iraq, despite the disorder and carnage on TV screens every night. After Mr Cheney had actually contended during his debate with John Edwards that the report had strengthened, not weakened the case for invasion, the Democrat ridiculed the President and Vice-President as the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq. It was the confident jibe of a candidate who senses the tide is turning his way. In fact, the report that Mr Duelfer presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday was but the low point of a thoroughly dismal fortnight for Mr Bush and his disintegrating case for war against Iraq. It began when Paul Pillar, the top CIA officer for the Middle East and South Asia, let it be known that the agency had warned beforehand that an invasion would provoke rebellion in Iraq and a surge in sympathy for radical Islam. A few days later, The New York Times published an exhaustive and widely noted account of the aluminium tubes affair, showing how the Bush White House built up the Iraqi nuclear scare by maintaining Saddam was buying aluminium tubes to enrich uranium - despite being told by its own Department of Energy and a host of other experts that they were for perfectly legitimate artillery rockets. Then yet another leaked CIA report from this once most leak-proof of administrations cast doubt on the links between Saddam and Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant linked with al-Qa'ida who masterminded the kidnapping and execution of Western hostages, including the Briton Ken Bigley. That finding tore another chunk from the administration's rationale for war, that the former Iraqi regime was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden. These attacks, emanating from America's flagship liberal newspaper and a CIA now conducting a guerrilla war of its own against the White House, might have been expected. Not so, however, the damning comments from some of the President's closest advisers on Iraq, and the even more damning nature of the Duelfer report. First, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, an architect of the war, blithely declared that he for one had never seen strong, hard evidence of connections between Saddam and al-Qa'ida. Then Paul Bremer, until June America's all-powerful proconsul in Baghdad, told the same group of insurance brokers addressed by Cherie Blair in West Virginia that the administration had ignored his pleas to send more troops to Iraq
[pjnews] Georgetown Professor Accuses Bill O'Reilly of Lying
see also: http://snipurl.com/9pa4 The Media Culpability for Iraq http://snipurl.com/9p81 Broadcast Exclusive: Georgetown Professor Accuses Bill O'Reilly of Lying About 9/11 Commission's Findings Monday, July 19th, 2004 AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!. Over the weekend, I saw Georgetown Law professor, David Cole. I talked to him for a few minutes at Dulles airport just outside Washington, D.C., about his experience being on the O'Reilly Factor, with Bill O'Reilly. DAVID COLE: It was an afternoon in June when I got a call from a Fox producer who says, Do you want to come on the O'Reilly factor to talk about a story that day in the New York Times about the Guantanamo situation? I generally have declined going on O'Reilly. It's not the kind of show that I'm a fan of, but I think it's an important issue; I will go on the show. I went on the show, and I am sitting in the Washington studio. It's being recorded in New York. They're recording the intro that O'Reilly apparently always does to his show. It's an introductory commentary. In the course of this, O'Reilly says -- he was talking about the Iraq-al Qaeda connection, 9/11, et cetera, and says, the factor -- the O'Reilly Factor established the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda and here's what governor Tom Kean, the head of the 9/11 commission said about it this weekend. Then he play as clip in which Kean says something like we have found no evidence whatsoever of any connection between the Saddam Hussein and 9/11. However, we have found some contacts between and at that point, O'Reilly interrupts very angry and says, we can't use this. We have to redo this whole thing. So, they -- so, there's silence for three minutes or so. They come back on. They re-record the introduction totally verbatim, except when they get to the Kean part, instead of putting on the sound bite, O'Reilly paraphrases and says over the weekend, the head of the 9/11 commission said they definitely found evidence of the connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. So, then we go into my segment, which is about this New York Times story, and OReilly's spin essentially is that the New York Times is lying to us, the New York Times is biased, and that bias is under mining people's resolve in the war on terrorism. He keeps characterizing the New York Times story as saying that the people in Guantanamo are innocent, there's no reason for them to be there. I keep saying, no, that's not what the New York Times story said. It said it was reporting on a C.I.A. Report that had found they had gotten very little intelligence from the people at Guantanamo and there were very few high level people at Guantanamo, mostly low-level people who didn't actually pose much of a danger. We go back and forth, the usual -- you know, very thoughtful exchange that you get on this kind of talk show. Until I keep saying -- you know, Bill, you are misleading your viewers by mischaracterizing what the New York Times is saying and you are criticizing the New York Times for mischaracterizing the facts and he says, no, I'm not. At which point I say, I might as well go for it and say, It seems to me, Bill, like it's the pot calling the kettle black because not five minutes ago, I sat here and watched you re-record the introduction to your show in order to take out the head of the 9/11 commission saying there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11. At which point he just went ballistic, screamed at me, called me an s.o.b. at least three times. He said -- guaranteed that this part of the segment would not air, and said that I would never ever be called back to the show, which at the time I wasn't sure whether to take as a threat or a promise. But in any event, that's where he left it. Later that night, the show aired and there was Bill O'Reilly fuming about the bias and spin of the New York Times, but leaving out both governor Kean's statement and my statement to O'Reilly about his own spinning of the al Qaeda - Hussein connection. That's the story. The most smarmy thing about the whole event was that O'Reilly's opening commentary was all about how terrible spin and how terrible the New York Times spin is because it's dividing the country, undermining the war on terrorism, and the final line was the spin must stop. Our lives depend on it. But he had just spun the statement of Governor Kean to serve his own interests.
[pjnews] Under Fire in Baghdad
Watch Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh's excellent, recent UC Berkeley speech on Iraq and the war on terror: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events/replay.html?event_id=170 http://snipurl.com/9qaw Scott Ritter: If you had seen what I have seen The inspection process was rigged to create uncertainty over WMD to bolster the US and UK's case for war --- http://snipurl.com/9qau The New York Times 10 October 2004 Get Me Rewrite. Now. Bullets Are Flying UNDER FIRE IN BAGHDAD By DEXTER FILKINS BAGHDAD, Iraq In the 19 months since American troops first rolled across the border here, Iraq has been many things to many people: necessary war, project for democracy, quagmire without end. Yet for the dozens of newspaper and television reporters trying to make sense of the place, Iraq above all is a shrinking country. Village by village, block by block, the vast and challenging land that we entered in March 2003 has shriveled into a medieval city-state, a grim and edgy place where the only question is how much more territory we will lose tomorrow. On some days, it seems, we are all crowded into a single room together, clutching our notebooks and watching the walls. What I mean, of course, is that the business of reporting in Iraq has become a terribly truncated affair, an enterprise clipped and limited by the violence all around. If the American military has its no-go zones, places where it no longer sends its troops, we in the press have ours: not just Falluja and Ramadi, but Tikrit, Mosul, Mahmudiya and large parts of Baghdad. Even in areas of the capital still thought to be relatively safe, very few reporters are still brazen enough to get out of a car, walk around and stop people at random. It can be done, but you better move fast. To state the preceding to anyone who has worked in Iraq in recent weeks would be a waste of time. Most of us have our own store of close calls to remind us of how dangerous the streets here have become. For the newcomer, there is the video of the two French reporters, kidnapped and pleading for their lives, and the list, updated regularly, of the 46 reporters killed here while doing their jobs. It was no small surprise, then, to witness the reaction to an e-mail message written by Farnaz Fassihi, a reporter in Iraq for The Wall Street Journal, that was intended to be a private letter to friends but made its way to the Internet and a mass audience. Any number of Ms. Fassihi's newspaper stories have described in detail the chaotic and uncertain state into which this country has fallen. Yet her description of her own working conditions, of the shrunken and dangerous world in which she now operates, shocked many people. Part of the fascination with Ms. Fassihi's e-mail message may lie in its personal nature; it's one thing for a reporter to describe a country in anarchy, but quite another thing - far more immediate and tactile - for the same person to say she can't leave her hotel room for fear of being killed. Part of the surprise may also lie in the presumption, now quaint, that reporters are regarded as neutrals in armed conflicts, that they are there to record the event for history. In Iraq, this has not been true for many months. For many insurgents here, and for a fevered class of Islamic zealots, Western reporters are fair game, targets in their war. Here at The New York Times, where we have spared no expense to protect ourselves, the catalogue of hits and near-misses is long enough to chill the hardiest war correspondent: we have been shot at, kidnapped, blindfolded, held at knifepoint, held at gunpoint, detained, threatened, beaten and chased. One of our correspondents was driven blindfolded to the outskirts of a town in the dead of night by armed men who told him to get out of the car. Another time, a crowd began throwing bricks, and one of our photographers, who was standing next to me, was struck in the head and required stitches. And that's just the intentional acts. On any given day here, car bombs explode, gun battles break out and mortar shells fall short, none of them exactly aimed at us, if they are aimed at anyone at all. In the writing of this essay, a three-hour affair, two rockets and three mortar shells have landed close enough to shake the walls of our house. The door to my balcony opens onto an Iraqi social club, and the roar from the blasts set the Iraqis into a panic, their screams audible above the Arabic music wafting from the speakers. In my time here, I have marked significant events here, like the drafting of a new Iraqi Constitution and the formal end of the American occupation, and I have marked a number of personal ones, too. Oct. 27, 2003: Attacked by a mob. Dec. 19, 2003: Shot at. May 8, 2004: Followed by a car of armed men. Aug. 28, 2004: Detained by the Mahdi Army. The last case was instructive, at least regarding how difficult it has become to work here. I was grabbed by a midlevel leader of the Mahdi Army
[pjnews] Documentary Highlights US Soldiers Traumatized by Iraq War
For those of you in the area, note the 10/14 premiere in Santa Monica. More details at the end of this e-mail... http://alternet.org/waroniraq/20140/ Soldiers Once ... And Young By Tai Moses, AlterNet After serving a 12-month tour of duty in Iraq last year, Marine Lance Corporal Jeff Lucey returned home to his relieved family with no injuries or at least none that were visible. When we didnt see him tremendously traumatized when he returned, we thought, 'Oh, thank god,' says his father, Kevin Lucey. And then it exploded. For months the 23-year-old battled his wartime demons; nightmares, bouts of depression and anxiety, and crushing guilt classic symptoms of acute post-traumatic stress. He told me he was a murderer, says Jeffs sister, Debra. He said, 'Dont you understand? Your brothers a murderer. On June 22, 2004, Jeff Lucey lost his battle. He hanged himself from a rafter in the cellar of his family home. He did something, or he saw something, that destroyed him, ventures his mother, Joyce. So that when he came back, he took his own life. The story of Jeff Lucey is the emotional centerpiece of Patricia Foulkrods short documentary, The Ground Truth: The Human Cost of War, a collection of interviews with Iraq combat veterans whose experiences have, up until now, remained largely invisible to the American public. Producer/director Foulkrod lets her subjects tell their stories without interruption or prompting, and the effect is nothing less than devastating. Like most of the young vets in Ground Truth, Rob Sarra went to Iraq trusting in the rightness of his mission. Today he is a tormented man, haunted by a memory. Sarras unit had just been in a firefight when he saw an elderly burkha-clad woman carrying a bag on her arm walking toward a nearby armored vehicle. The soldiers raised their weapons and began yelling at her to stop. Sarra, a Marine sergeant, then made an instantaneous and fatal assumption: if the woman did not respond, she must be carrying a bomb. She did not stop. Sarra had a clear shot and he took it. As soon as he fired his second shot, his fellow soldiers opened fire and cut her down. She fell to the dirt and as she fell she had a white flag in her hand, that she had pulled out of her bag, says Sarra, staring past the camera into the distance. At that moment right there I lost it, I threw my weapon down on the deck of the vehicle, I was crying, I was like, Oh my god what are we doing here. Pressure Trap One of the most treacherous aspects of battling the insurgency is that much of the combat takes place in the streets, intersections and marketplaces of urban neighborhoods places that are often crowded with innocent Iraqi civilians. There are no clear enemy lines, says Steve Robinson, the films narrator and executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center. The battlefield completely surrounds the soldier: its above you, its below you, its to the left, its to the right. Its 360 degrees you dont know where the enemy is. That is an incredible amount of pressure to operate under. Robinson believes that post-traumatic stress disorder will be this wars most destructive legacy, just as Agent Orange afflicted Vietnam veterans for decades, and Gulf War Syndrome still sickens soldiers who served during the first Iraq war. Having lost their son, the Luceys worry about what other veterans and military families may be going through. Were just wondering, Kevin Lucey says, to what extent are so many young men and women coming back [unable to] deal with the experience of being over there? Denver Jones, a specialist in the National Guard whose spine was shattered in a truck accident in Iraq, describes seeing a soldier drive over an Iraqi child who had walked into the roadway. But the Army told us, Jones says sadly, if someone got in front of the truck, to run over them. U.S. Army Sergeant Terry Atchison confirms the directive: If someone jumps out in front of your vehicle, regardless adult or child, then just run em over. When you value life, you dont really want to do it. But then again, if you value your life enough, youll do it. Its a very hard decision. Im glad I never had to face that decision. This war just emotionally destroyed me in a lot of ways, says Marine Lance Corporal Michael Hoffman. I just break down some nights knowing that I took part in something like this; that I took the lives of people. I see pictures of Iraqi children in hospital beds, and I cant help but wonder was it my unit that did this? Was I part of this? Yet the same military that trains these soldiers to be killers, gives them little support when they return bearing the scars of psychological wounds. National Guardsman Paul Rieckhoff, who came home in February, kept hearing from guys in his unit who had suffered injuries over the course of a year of combat and were fighting to get adequate medical treatment, disability pay or
[pjnews] Nigeria's Oil
-- If you pass this comment along to others -- periodically but not repeatedly -- please explain that Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more folks can consult ZNet at http://www.zmag.org http://snipurl.com/9r7a ZNet Commentary / October 12, 2004 Nigeria's Oil By Mandisi Majavu It is reported that the latest increase in oil prices are due to the ongoing conflict in Nigeria. Nigeria is Africa's leading oil producer and is the fifth-largest supplier of oil to the US . It is reported that since the discovery of oil in 1956, Nigeria has made about $400 billion in profits. However, despite the oil profits, 70 percent of the 130 million Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day. In the Niger Delta, where most of Nigeria 's oil reserves are found, the rivers have been polluted. The fish in the local rivers used to be one of the main sources of food for the poor. Now that is gone. Agricultural land has also been heavily polluted and can no longer be used to grow food. (Weston: www.marxist.com ) Shell has shipped oil from Nigeria for over 50 years, leaving the Niger Delta underdeveloped and in an environmentally worst condition than it had found it in. And that has been the main source of conflict in the area. In the past, Nigerians have kidnapped foreign workers employed by oil companies operating in the country as a tactic for more access to the country's oil wealth. Groups of women have taken over oil pumping facilities demanding that the oil companies provide them with jobs and basic amenities. The present threats have forced Shell to close one of its plants. The rebel Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force announced at the end of September that oil companies must shut down production and withdraw their staff before an all-out war on the Nigerian State . The announcement singled out the Royal Dutch Shell Group and Italy 's Agip for collaboration in acts of genocide against our people. The all-out war which was to begin at the beginning of this month (October) was, however, averted by an 11-hour peace negotiation. A study conducted by Shell, leaked to the media earlier this year, revealed that the violence in Niger Delta kills about 1,000 people a year, putting the area on par with conflicts in Chechnya and Colombia . Simon Buerk, the company's spokesperson, has been quoted as saying the study highlighted how Shell sometimes feeds conflict by the way we award contracts, gain access to land and deal with community representatives. In September alone, about 500 people died in Port Harcourt , Nigeria 's oil producing capital, according to Amnesty International. Another factor fuelling the Nigerian conflict is the government's corruption. In his book In the Shadow of a Saint Ken Wiwa, the son of the late Nigerian writer Ken Saro Wiwa, reveals that despite earning an annual average income of $30 billion from oil from 1990 to 2000, Nigeria somehow managed to amass an external debt of $40 billion without much capital investment or infra-structure to show for it. Nigeria is Africa 's largest oil exporter, with oil revenues expected to reach $27 billion this year, yet a large majority of people live below poverty line. Life expectancy barely tops 50 years, according to reports. Nigerian oil is produced by Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, Chevron Texaco and Agip. Shell is the largest oil producer in the Opec member nation. Opec, in turn, holds about two-thirds of the world's oil reserves. These companies have made huge profits out of Nigeria 's oil at a cost of human exploitation and air pollution. In some cases, these companies have been accused of negligence. Oil pipeline bursts have claimed thousands of lives in Nigeria . In the past four years, it is believed that more than 2,000 people have died due to pipeline bursts that result into fires. The worst incident occurred in 1998 when over 1,200 people died in a massive conflagration in the Niger Delta. Activists, like the late Ken Saro Wiwa, have been compelled to speak out against such transgression. In 1990 Ken Saro Wiwa founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People to protest against the devastation of their environment by Shell. Sadly, five years later, he was hanged by the state on trumped-up charges. The present rebellion (Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force) is armed and is headed by Mujahid Dokubo-Asari. The all-out war that the People's Volunteer Force was planning against the Nigerian State at the beginning of this month was averted because President Olusegun Obasanjo agreed to meet with rebel leaders. Asari claims to command 2,000 men, and insists that the rebellion is to control the oil reserves of the Ijaw people. Nigeria is a fraudulent creation?the oil companies are evil collaborators, he has been quoted as saying. Asari claims that the People's Volunteer Force has backing from the Ijaw people -- Nigeria 's fourth largest ethnic group. He says that the reason they have support of the local
[pjnews] The Bush Campaign's Media Endgame
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1013-11.htm Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash... http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1013-01.htm 'COMPUTER CRASH' CANCELS TEST OF E-VOTING MACHINES IN FLORIDA - http://www.fair.org/media-beat/041014.html Preview of the Bush Campaign's Media Endgame By Norman Solomon With the presidential debates now behind us, the struggle for the White House will tilt even more toward decentralized media battles for electoral votes. Between now and Election Day, vast resources will go toward spinning local news coverage in swing states while launching carefully targeted commercials on radio and television. For the Bush campaign and its allies, the media endgame will include these components: * Smearing John Kerry For months already, paid advertisements and interviews with pro-Bush operatives have portrayed Kerry as a betrayer of American troops in Vietnam. President Bush gained a temporary lead in the polls thanks largely to deceptive commercials aimed at discrediting Kerry's bravery under fire. Next came a fierce propaganda assault on the most laudable actions of Kerry's life -- his antiwar efforts as a Vietnam veteran. In 1971, Kerry gained national prominence as an eloquent leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War because he expressed the thoughts and feelings of so many veterans. Today, the media attacks on his activism are efforts to sway voters by rewriting history, as though the Vietnam War amounted to some kind of noble undertaking instead of the illegal and immoral crime against humanity that it was. The TV chain that owns more stations than any other firm in the country, the Republican-allied Sinclair Broadcast Group, has ordered its stations to preempt usual programming to air a 42-minute film, Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, in late October. The movie is devoted to bashing Kerry for his antiwar activism. Conveniently, more than a dozen of Sinclair's stations are in pivotal swing states -- Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Especially in battleground states, such defamation of Kerry is likely to intensify until the last votes are cast on Nov. 2. * Exploiting anti-gay prejudices It has become a media truism that ballot measures against gay marriage in some states will boost the turnout of Bush voters. The Bush-Cheney '04 campaign has winked and nodded at virulent anti-gay bigotry on the ground. It's part of a dual-track strategy: While the Republican ticket avoids overt anti-gay comments, and Dick Cheney uses high-profile media venues to express personal support for his lesbian daughter, the GOP campaign is avidly working to gain votes by capitalizing on anti-gay prejudice. * Inverting realities of class warfare All four men on the major-party tickets are rich. But the positions taken -- and constituencies represented -- by Bush-Cheney and Kerry-Edwards aren't the same. Typically, Bush has denounced the Democrats' call to raise taxes for Americans earning more than $200,000 a year. To obscure their own ultra-elite loyalties, Bush and Cheney will keep trying to portray Kerry and Edwards as tools of wealthy trial lawyers and Hollywood snobs. In reality, however, as reflected by the delegates to the Republican and Democratic national conventions, the base of the GOP is far more wealthy, corporate and non-union. * Making use of Ralph Nader's 2004 campaign In a little-noticed GOP maneuver during the last days of the 2000 campaign, Republican forces poured money into commercials boosting Nader in some battleground states. This time, we can expect pro-Bush forces to do the same -- but on a much larger scale. In a pre-election twist, the Associated Press reported on Oct. 27, 2000, Republicans are buying TV ads featuring Ralph Nader in states where votes for the Green Party candidate might tip the outcome to George W. Bush Republicans hope the commercials will help Bush by persuading would-be Gore voters to back Nader instead. A Republican group targeted three closely contested states in 2000 -- Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin -- with ads that featured film clips of Nader attacking Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee. AP reported that the Republican Leadership Council earmarked at least $100,000 for those commercials, airing just days before the election. The official Bush campaign of 2000 was glad to leave such Nader advertising endeavors to unofficial Republican allies. The Associated Press reported four years ago (on Nov. 4) that the Republican Leadership Council ran ads last week to help GOP presidential nominee George W. Bush. The ads were designed to induce Democrats to defect to Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. The executive director of the Republican Leadership Council, Mark Miller,
[pjnews] Platoon Defies Orders in Iraq
http://snipurl.com/9t46 Auditors Can't Account for Iraq Spent Funds- U.S. and Iraqi officials doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in oil proceeds and other moneys for Iraqi projects earlier this year, but there was little effort to monitor or justify the expenditures, according to an audit released Thursday... -- http://www.marinetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-453911.php Platoon Defies Orders in Iraq: Mississippi Soldier Calls Home, Cites Safety Concerns Published on Friday, October 15, 2004 in The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi) by Jeremy Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a suicide mission to deliver fuel, the troops' relatives said Thursday. The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq north of Baghdad because their vehicles were considered deadlined or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook. Sgt. McCook, a deputy at the Hinds County Detention Center, and the 16 other members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, S.C., were read their rights and moved from the military barracks into tents, Patricia McCook said her husband told her during a panicked phone call about 5 a.m. Thursday. The platoon could be charged with the willful disobeying of orders, punishable by dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay and up to five years confinement, said military law expert Mark Stevens, an associate professor of justice studies at Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount, N.C. No military officials were able to confirm or deny the detainment of the platoon Thursday. But today, Sgt. Salju Thomas of the Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad issued a statement saying that an investigation has begun. The Commander General of the 13 Corps Support Group has appointed a deputy commander to lead an investigation into allegations that members of the 343 Quartermaster Company refused to participate in theri assigned convoy mission on Oct. 13, Thomas' statement said. The investigation team is currently in Tallil taking statements and interviewing those involved, Thomas said in the statement. U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson said he plans to submit a congressional inquiry today on behalf of the Mississippi soldiers to launch an investigation into whether they are being treated improperly. I would not want any member of the military to be put in a dangerous situation ill-equipped, said Thompson, who was contacted by families. I have had similar complaints from military families about vehicles that weren't armor-plated, or bullet-proof vests that are outdated. It concerns me because we made over $150 billion in funds available to equip our forces in Iraq. President Bush takes the position that the troops are well-armed, but if this situation is true, it calls into question how honest he has been with the country, Thompson said. The 343rd is a supply unit whose general mission is to deliver fuel and water. The unit includes three women and 14 men and those with ranking up to sergeant first class. I got a call from an officer in another unit early (Thursday) morning who told me that my husband and his platoon had been arrested on a bogus charge because they refused to go on a suicide mission, said Jackie Butler of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Michael Butler, a 24-year reservist. When my husband refuses to follow an order, it has to be something major. The platoon being held has troops from Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Mississippi and South Carolina, said Teresa Hill of Dothan, Ala., whose daughter Amber McClenny is among those being detained. McClenny, 21, pleaded for help in a message left on her mother's answering machine early Thursday morning. They are holding us against our will, McClenny said. We are now prisoners. McClenny told her mother her unit tried to deliver fuel to another base in Iraq Wednesday, but was sent back because the fuel had been contaminated with water. The platoon returned to its base, where it was told to take the fuel to another base, McClenny told her mother. The platoon is normally escorted by armed Humvees and helicopters, but did not have that support Wednesday, McClenny told her mother. The convoy trucks the platoon was driving had experienced problems in the past and were not being properly maintained, Hill said her daughter told her. The situation mirrors other tales of troops being sent on missions without proper equipment. Aviation regiments have complained of being forced to fly dangerous missions over Iraq with outdated night-vision goggles and old missile-avoidance systems. Stories of troops' families purchasing body armor because the military didn't provide them with adequate equipment have been included in recent presidential debates. Patricia McCook said her husband, a staff sergeant, understands well the severity of disobeying orders. But he did not feel
[pjnews] Stealing A Nation
http://pilger.carlton.com/print/133384 Stealing A Nation By John Pilger, The Guardian (UK) There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia. The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing: American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the uninhabited British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan). It is the word uninhabited that turns the key on the horror of what was done there. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defence in London produced this epic lie: There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation. Diego Garcia was first settled in the late eighteenth century. At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation. Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered, palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish. All this began to end when an American rear-admiral stepped ashore in 1961 and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the biggest American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars, a golf course. Camp Justice the Americans call it. During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labour government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to sweep and sanitise the islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq. To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be returned to Mauritius, a thousand miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, is to convert all the existing residents... into short term, temporary residents. What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In August 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Ofice, wrote: We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks that will remain ours. (ours in italics). There will be no indigenous pipulation except seagulls. At the end of this is a hand-written note by D H Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: Along with the Birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays... Under the heading, Maintaining the fiction, another official urges his colleagues to re-classify the islanders as a floating population and to make up the rules as we go along. There is not a word of concern for their victims. Only one official appeared to worry about being caught, writing that it was fairly unsatisfactory that we propose to certify the people, more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else. The documents leave no doubt that the cover-up was approved by the prime minister and at least three cabinet ministers. At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those who had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from returning. As the Americans began to arrive and build the base, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, governor of the Seychelles who had been put in charge of the sanitising, ordered all the pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost a thousand pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked, said Lizette Tallatte, now in her 60s, ... and when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried. The islanders took this as a warning; and the remaining population were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas, the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children were forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertiliser. Arriving in the Seychelles, they were marched up the hill to a prison where they were held until they were transported to Mauritius. There, they were dumped on the docks.
[pjnews] Democracy in a Trash Can
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html Paul Krugman: Block the Vote The case of Florida's felon list - used by state officials, as in 2000, to try to wrongly disenfranchise thousands of blacks - has been widely reported. Less widely reported has been overwhelming evidence that the errors were deliberate. In an article coming next week in Harper's, Greg Palast, who originally reported the story of the 2000 felon list, reveals that few of those wrongly purged from the voting rolls in 2000 are back on the voter lists. State officials have imposed Kafkaesque hurdles for voters trying to get back on the rolls. Depending on the county, those attempting to get their votes back have been required to seek clemency for crimes committed by others, or to go through quasi-judicial proceedings to prove that they are not felons with similar names. [snip] http://snipurl.com/9s6d US unprepared to handle election fraud: Congress Thu Oct 14, 5:37 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US government is ill-prepared to address allegations of voting fraud should they arise during next month's presidential and legislative elections, a congressional report concluded. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) Congress's independent investigative arm, determined in a 106-page report that the US Justice Department has not established procedures for documenting voting irregularities or voter intimidation, and has no clearcut policy for responding to such allegations. Lawmakers who requested the report expressed outrage at the findings. It is inexcusable that the Justice Department is not fully prepared to protect the right of all Americans to vote, said Representative Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California. The Justice Department does not have the systems in place that are necessary to respond to reports of voters being turned away from the polls on Election Day, he said. Another top Democrat, Representative John Conyers of Michigan, said the lack of preparedness by Justice Department officials could result in a full-blown post-election crisis. In what appears to be another razor-thin election, the Justice Department appears woefully unprepared, and once again has left us vulnerable to another crisis in democracy, he said. The fundamentals of election protection are clearly not being met, he said. http://www.alternet.org/story/20183/ 14 October 2004 Democracy in a Trash Can By Bill Berkowitz These days, schemes to suppress the vote are coming down the pike at a NASCAR-like clip: In July, Michigan State Rep. John Pappageorge told a gathering of party officials at an election strategy meeting of the Oakland County Republican Party that If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election cycle. In Orlando, Fla., members of the Orlando League of Voters an African-American civic group made up of mostly elderly women that has helped turn out large numbers of Democratic voters in the city were the subject of an intimidating house-to-house investigation by Governor Jeb Bush's state police, who were supposedly checking out charges of electoral irregularities. The Rev. Jesse Jackson recently charged Republican Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell with trying to reverse gains made by the civil rights movement by limiting where some Ohioans can cast their ballots, the Palm Beach Post recently reported. Now, a new voter suppression scheme has been uncovered: One that thwarts the democratic process before voters even exercise their franchise. A voter registration outfit largely funded by the Republican National Committee is being accused of destroying the registration forms of hundreds of newly registered Democratic voters in Nevada. On Tuesday, Nov. 2, when hundreds and perhaps thousands of registered Democrats enter their polling places in Nevada, they will be in for a rude surprise: They won't be allowed to vote. Even though they filled out their registration forms properly and they did it way ahead of the deadline, there will be no record of their being registered to vote. That's because, according to an investigation by Las Vegas television station KLAS, a private voter registration company called Voters Outreach of America an outfit largely funded by the Republican National Committee has trashed hundreds of registration forms of registered Democrats. Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected, George Knapp, an investigative reporter for the television station's Eyewitness News I-Team, reported. Knapp was able to obtain information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at Democrats, from former employees of the company. Over the past few months, Voters Outreach of America has been working the Las Vegas area, sending more than 300 part-time workers to shopping malls, grocery stores, government
[pjnews] Former Female Abu Ghraib Prisoner Testifies to Tortures
http://snipurl.com/9t48 The Pentagon plans to promote Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former head of military operations in Iraq, risking a confrontation with members of Congress because of the prisoner abuses that occurred during his tenure... --- http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101604H.shtml The Last Woman Prisoner Released from Abu Ghraib Testifies to Tortures By Cécile Hennion, Le Monde (Translation by t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher) Tuesday 12 October 2004 Houda al-Azzawi, imprisoned for seven months in the American prison, talks about the brutality of tortures inflicted by the guards. Me, I like Saddam Hussein! When she expresses her views, Houda Al-Azzawi doesn't mince any words. That doesn't mean that I participate in the resistance, still less that I was or am a terrorist. Accused of financing the armed insurrection, Houda Al-Azzawi was imprisoned for over seven months in the Abu Ghraib prison. This experience has produced an enduring rancor towards the Americans. That doesn't prevent her from condemning the criminal actions of a grouplike Moussab Al-Zarkaoui's Tawhid wal Djihad (Unity and Holy War). By parading their hostages in orange coveralls imitating those of the Guantanamo detainees, by beheading American Nick Berg when the tortures' scandal broke, Tawhid wal Djihad presented itself as the Iraqi prisoners' avenging organization. The group has also kidnapped and beheaded two American engineers, as well as Briton Kenneth Bigley, after demanding that all female prisoners in Iraq be set free. But, if Houda Al-Azzawi can bear witness to the mistreatments inflicted at Abu Ghraib, she is also well placed to know that there are no women prisoners left there: because the last one to be released, on July 19th 2004, was she herself. A Business Woman Her personal fortune, - she would be the richest Iraqi woman after Sajida, Saddam Hussein's wife - and her stature as a 49 year old businesswoman, recently divorced, facilitate her unusual outspokenness. Today, she's back at the helm of Ishtar, a Mercedes import business. Clothes clinging to her statuesque figure, gold painted fingernails matching the jewelry on her wrists and neck, flashy makeup and a voluminous blonde hairdo: a glance suffices to understand that Ms. Azzawi is not a typical Iraqi woman. By divulging her Abu Ghraib story without euphemisms, she is one of the rare women who dares testify in this country. Her troubles began in the fall of 2003. Denunciations, a common practice during Saddam's regime, had become a favorite national pastime again. Houda and her rich family are natural targets. Anonymous letters warn them that if they don't pay up, they'll be denounced to the Americans. Ali, her eldest son, is beaten up. Nahla, the youngest daughter, is kidnapped, then released for $10,000. Houda herself would never give in to blackmail. In her businesslike manner, she decided to take care of the problem herself. On December 22nd 2003, she went to the American base at the Adhamiya palace to protest this unacceptable situation. An officer listened to me politely for ten minutes. Then we were interrupted by a soldier who brought in a document. The officer read it. One second later, I wasn't 'Mrs.' anymore, but 'terrorist'. Three Marines handcuffed her hands behind her back and put a hood over her head. Several months will pass before Houda realizes that she has been accused of financing the guerilla. In December, her arrest is followed by that of her three brothers, Ali, Ayad, and Moutaz, and of her sister Nahla. At that point, not one of them is aware of any of the other's presence in the Adhamiya detention center. In the room where she stayed, handcuffed and hooded, Houda realized when she heard sobbing she recognized, that her sister Nahla was being detained next to her. A painful week followed: kicked by boots or stuck with gun butts in her breasts and her stomach, insulted, forced to stay standing or squatting for hours, sleep and food deprived, subjected to terrifying music that was piped in endlessly. Mistreated by a guard, Houda dislocated her shoulder. Paradoxically, that was the best thing that happened to me. The doctor was furious with the guard and demanded that they cuff my hands in front of me, instead of behind my back, a less painful position. My Sister's Screams The worst was yet to come. One evening, I heard a muffled noise and my sister's screams. The naked body of a man had been thrown across her. She was panicking. She then realized that the body didn't move. With my hands cuffed in front of me, I was able to lift a corner of my blindfold. The naked man was Ayad, my brother, and his face was covered in blood. I asked Nahla to bend her head down to check if his heart was still beating. It wasn't. She spent the night with Ayad's corpse on her knees. Her father was only able to recover the body at the morgue in
[pjnews] 1/2 Bush's Faith-Based Presidency
http://snipurl.com/9uh8 Broad Use of Harsh Tactics Is Described at Cuba Base http://snipurl.com/9uhc Jordan 'ghost' jail 'is holding senior al-Qa'eda leaders' -- http://snipurl.com/9uhk The New York Times 17 October 2004 Without a Doubt By Ron Suskind Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion. ''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . . ''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.'' Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns'' -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?''' Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My instincts.'' Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ''I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!''' The democrat Biden and the Republican Bartlett are trying to make sense of the same thing -- a president who has been an extraordinary blend of forcefulness and inscrutability, opacity and action. But lately, words and deeds are beginning to connect. The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush's top deputies -- from cabinet members like Paul O'Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals fighting in Iraq -- have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president's decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on his ''gut'' or his ''instinct'' to guide the ship of state, and then he ''prayed over it.'' The old pro Bartlett, a deliberative, fact-based wonk, is finally hearing a tune that has been hummed quietly by evangelicals (so as not to trouble the secular) for years as they gazed upon President George W. Bush. This evangelical group -- the core of the energetic ''base'' that may well usher Bush to victory -- believes that their leader is a messenger from God. And in the first presidential debate, many Americans heard the discursive John Kerry succinctly raise, for the first time, the issue of Bush's certainty -- the issue being, as Kerry put it, that ''you can be certain and be wrong.'' What underlies Bush's certainty? And can it be assessed in the temporal realm of informed consent? All of this -- the ''gut'' and ''instincts,'' the certainty and religiosity -connects to a single word, ''faith,'' and faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness. The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised to see in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to those in the administration or in
[pjnews] 2/2 Bush's Faith-Based Presidency
http://snipurl.com/9uhk Without a Doubt continued... On Sept. 11, 2001, the country watched intently to see if and how Bush would lead. After a couple of days in which he seemed shaky and uncertain, he emerged, and the moment he began to lead -- standing on the World Trade Center's rubble with a bullhorn -- for much of America, any lingering doubts about his abilities vanished. No one could afford doubt, not then. They wanted action, and George W. Bush was ready, having never felt the reasonable hesitations that slowed more deliberative men, and many presidents, including his father. Within a few days of the attacks, Bush decided on the invasion of Afghanistan and was barking orders. His speech to the joint session of Congress on Sept. 20 will most likely be the greatest of his presidency. He prayed for God's help. And many Americans, of all faiths, prayed with him -- or for him. It was simple and nondenominational: a prayer that he'd be up to this moment, so that he -- and, by extension, we as a country -- would triumph in that dark hour. This is where the faith-based presidency truly takes shape. Faith, which for months had been coloring the decision-making process and a host of political tactics -- think of his address to the nation on stem-cell research -- now began to guide events. It was the most natural ascension: George W. Bush turning to faith in his darkest moment and discovering a wellspring of power and confidence. Of course, the mandates of sound, sober analysis didn't vanish. They never do. Ask any entrepreneur with a blazing idea when, a few years along, the first debt payments start coming due. Or the C.E.O., certain that a high stock price affirms his sweeping vision, until that neglected, flagging division cripples the company. There's a startled look -- how'd that happen? In this case, the challenge of mobilizing the various agencies of the United States government and making certain that agreed-upon goals become demonstrable outcomes grew exponentially. Looking back at the months directly following 9/11, virtually every leading military analyst seems to believe that rather than using Afghan proxies, we should have used more American troops, deployed more quickly, to pursue Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora. Many have also been critical of the president's handling of Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the 19 hijackers; despite Bush's setting goals in the so-called ''financial war on terror,'' the Saudis failed to cooperate with American officials in hunting for the financial sources of terror. Still, the nation wanted bold action and was delighted to get it. Bush's approval rating approached 90 percent. Meanwhile, the executive's balance between analysis and resolution, between contemplation and action, was being tipped by the pull of righteous faith. It was during a press conference on Sept. 16, in response to a question about homeland security efforts infringing on civil rights, that Bush first used the telltale word ''crusade'' in public. ''This is a new kind of -- a new kind of evil,'' he said. ''And we understand. And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.'' Muslims around the world were incensed. Two days later, Ari Fleischer tried to perform damage control. ''I think what the president was saying was -- had no intended consequences for anybody, Muslim or otherwise, other than to say that this is a broad cause that he is calling on America and the nations around the world to join.'' As to ''any connotations that would upset any of our partners, or anybody else in the world, the president would regret if anything like that was conveyed.'' A few months later, on Feb. 1, 2002, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners stood in the Roosevelt Room for the introduction of Jim Towey as head of the president's faith-based and community initiative. John DiIulio, the original head, had left the job feeling that the initiative was not about ''compassionate conservatism,'' as originally promised, but rather a political giveaway to the Christian right, a way to consolidate and energize that part of the base. Moments after the ceremony, Bush saw Wallis. He bounded over and grabbed the cheeks of his face, one in each hand, and squeezed. ''Jim, how ya doin', how ya doin'!'' he exclaimed. Wallis was taken aback. Bush excitedly said that his massage therapist had given him Wallis's book, ''Faith Works.'' His joy at seeing Wallis, as Wallis and others remember it, was palpable -- a president, wrestling with faith and its role at a time of peril, seeing that rare bird: an independent counselor. Wallis recalls telling Bush he was doing fine, '''but in the State of the Union address a few days before, you said that unless we devote all our energies, our focus, our resources on this war on terrorism, we're going to lose.' I said, 'Mr. President, if we don't devote our energy, our focus and our time on also overcoming global
[pjnews] Be the Wind: On the Upcoming Elections
http://snipurl.com/9vmi Be the Wind: On the Upcoming Elections by Starhawk As you read this, a mother in Iraq is newly wailing over the body of a dead child. A nineteen year old kid who used to be the star of his basketball team is being sent home without legs. A father in Guantanamo hasnt seen his kids, or sunlight, for three years. Another chunk breaks off the polar ice caps and the heat trapped by greenhouse gases churns the atmosphere into new swirls of turbulence like those that unleashed four hurricanes in one season in the Caribbean. As I type this sentence, another worker loses her union job, another child is shot in Palestine, another farmer somewhere drinks pesticides in despair. The stakes are really high right now. And the future is very unclear. It seems likely the outcome of the elections will be a cliff hanger until the very end. Bush could win. Kerry could win. Bush could try to manipulate, steal, or subvert the outcome. His forces could manufacture a last-minute surpriseunearth Bin Laden, say, or stage a terrorist attack. They could even try to postpone or cancel elections altogether. After all, this particular gang of thugs has for decades plotted, planned, schemed, manipulated and murdered to consolidate their powerwhy should they let it go for anything as simple as a fair election? I dont know when Ive seen so many people so deeply afraid, staring into the future like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. Will it run us down? Do we try to deflect its path, or run away? Im hearing two schools of thought among progressives. Some are heading to swing states to help get out the vote. Others are saying, Why vote? when both candidates are taking such similar positions on the war, and serve the same corporate interests. Im a direct action kind of gal, and I dont generally put a lot of energy into electoral politics. But I believe that we need to vote. We need to do all we can to keep the neocons behind Bush from further consolidating their power. Voting is not the most empowering of political acts -- but its the one that most people across the political spectrum take part in. When I stand in line to vote in my neighborhood, I stand in a crowd that is more diverse than almost any other political activity I take part in. Working class, middle class, old, young, Euro/African/Asian/Latino Americanseveryone is there. I dont see how we can claim to speak to the communities who are most impacted by the neocons policies, most disenfranchised, most utterly screwed, if we disdain this simplest, most basic of political acts. How do we speak to the parents of kids whose schools are lacking books and desks and supplies if we cant get out to vote for school bonds? In California, we have a chance to vote for Proposition 66, which would end the worst abuses of our vicious three-strike law that now condemns mostly black and brown offenders to life sentences for stealing a few bucks worth of groceries. If you cant be bothered to vote for that, dont claim to be an ally of communities of color. In every area, there are crucial issues on the ballot that go far beyond just the choice of presidential candidate -- whether they are initiatives to ban the growing of GMO crops that we need to pass, or initiatives to ban gay marriage that we need to defeat. What about voting for Nader, or the Green Party? Ive voted for Nader many times. Im registered Green Party. I strongly support Green Party candidates in local and regional elections. Ive seen what a Green Mayor and City Council can do in Sebastopol, where they have banned the use of pesticides on city property, planted a permaculture garden outside the Police Station, are working on a community garden and skateboard park. I think thats one way we can build a Green Party or other third party as a counterforce that might pull our national dialogue to the leftfrom the bottom up, in places where we can win and build alternatives as examples of what is possible. I thought Nader was right to run last time, to attempt to give voice to issues that other candidates werent talking about, to start to build a new base. But this time, I see his decisions as undermining that base. If by some miracle a candidate with his policies got elected, shed need to be a great coalition builder, with a brilliant sense of how to win over, influence, charm, and yes, and occasionally arm-twist both allies and enemies -- and I dont see that in Nader or the Greens nationally at this time. Ive heard it said that the lesser of two evils is still an evil. Kerry does not perfectly represent my vision for the world, or the policies I would like to see implemented. I dont expect that any candidate for President will, under the current system which is so driven by money and corporate influence. But Kerry does represent change, a refusal to give the current evil a mandate. And here let me quote my brother, Mark Simos,
[pjnews] ACTION: Call New Voters, Remind Them to Vote
(from truemajority.org) We've Helped Register Over 1 Million New Voters Calling Them Will Get Them to the Polls It's a fact of political organizing that the absolute best, most effective way to ensure that newly registered voters actually make it to the polls is to knock on their doors or call them. Now is the time to follow up with the MILLION new voters that progressive groups have registered this year. But there simple aren't enough current volunteers to visit every voter. Here's how you can help, from the comfort of your home and on your schedule. We've created a way for anyone in their home to call some of these voters and urge them to vote. You just register with our VoterCall system and we'll give you a few names and numbers to call. You'll get a simple script asking them if they know where to vote and if they need any help getting to the polls on Election Day. If they do we'll get them the help they need. While you're on the phone with what may be a first time voter, you can take a moment to share why this election is so important to you and really urge them to vote. This person-to-person contact is really effective in turning out new voters, and you can do it from home when it's convenient for you. To learn more and to register to make some calls just click this link: http://www.votercall.org/register/ - http://snipurl.com/9z55 The hundredth phone call by Paul Loeb 10.20.04 - We never quite know when that last bit of effort will make the difference. On the eve of the 2000 election, I distributed door-hangers for a closely fought US Senate race in Washington State. I walked four precincts, and by the four hundredth house, was cold, tired, and thought of quitting. Climbing stair after stair on block after block, I kept hearing the classic Nirvana line, Grandma take me home. But there were more houses to visit, more materials to give out, more people to talk with, when they were in. So I continued till the end, though my voice was already raw from spending every night the previous week calling endless phone lists to recruit more volunteers. On Election Day, there were 15,000-20,000 of us statewide, holding up signs during morning rush hour, calling and recalling voters who hadn't cast their ballots, watching the polls to check off who had voted. As a result of everything we did, and all our previous efforts, not only did Al Gore carry the state by an ample margin, but after a recount, Democrat Maria Cantwell defeated hard-right Republican Senator Slade Gorton by 2,229 votes out of more than 2.5 million cast. If each volunteer accounted for just a fraction of a vote, our actions changed the outcome. It's easy to think of our individual efforts as so insignificant and inconsequential that they're hardly worth the effort. But when enough of us act in small ways, our combined impact can change history. That's true even when our actions seem mundane and prosaic, yielding minuscule fruits for the labor we put in. We can spend an entire day calling voters, distributing literature, knocking on doors, and signing people up for rides to the polls -- and produce only a handful of additional votes. Yet if 15,000 others do the same, or 50,000, or several million, working all across America, our impact can be literally world changing. That was true last election, where a hundred additional volunteers could have swung Florida even with all the Republican machinations. It's never been more true than in this neck-and-neck race. We've done part of the key work already. Grassroots canvassers have registered record-breaking numbers of likely Democratic voters, particularly in key battleground states. Americans Coming Together (ACT), which has coordinated many of the progressive efforts, together with MoveOn, expects to end up with 2.5 million new voters. Rock the Vote, less partisan, has registered close to a million young voters. The League of Independent Voters has been registering young voters at bars and clubs -- then going back again with guides to an entire slate of progressive local and national candidates. A Cleveland professor had her students register voters at a jail where people were awaiting trial, working with a local prisoner's rights group that registered 700 new voters. In Miami, the League of Independent Voters put out a CD with songs about the issues by local hip-hop artists and placed their local and national endorsements inside. It's been decades since so many people involved themselves in progressive electoral activism. But the Republicans are also registering voters, particularly through fundamentalist churches. They're organized, well-funded, and have skillfully cultivated a politics of backlash and fear. Combining both parties, a million new voters have registered in Florida alone. Since new registrants traditionally turn out far less often than those for whom voting is routine, how many and which voters show up will depend on what the rest of us do, from now
