[pjnews] The Coming Post-Election Chaos
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20041022.html/ Published on Friday, October 22, 2004 by FindLaw.com The Coming Post-Election Chaos A Storm Warning of Things to Come If the Vote Is as Close as Expected by John W. Dean This next presidential election, on November 2, may be followed by post-election chaos unlike any we've ever known Look at the swirling, ugly currents currently at work in this conspicuously close race. There is Republicans' history of going negative to win elections. There is Karl Rove's disposition to challenge close elections in post-election brawls. And there is Democrats' (and others) new unwillingness to roll over, as was done in 2000. Finally, look at the fact that a half-dozen lawsuits are in the works in the key states and more are being developed. Click here to find out more! This is a climate for trouble. A storm warning is appropriate. In the end, attorneys and legal strategy could prove as important, if not more so, to the outcome of this election as the traditional political strategists and strategy. Let's go over each factor that spells trouble - and see how they may combine. A GOP Disposition For Nasty Campaigns Before this year's race, 1988 presidential race between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis was well-known as the most foul of modern campaigns. The Bush campaign used Willie Horton to smear their way to the White House - with Lee Atwater playing the hardest of hardball. Horton was a convicted murderer. Massachusetts Governor Dukakis gave him a prison furlough. Once furloughed, Horton held a white Maryland couple hostage for twelve hours, raping the woman and stabbing the man. By using these facts - and Horton's mug shot - in a heavy-handed negative advertisement, Atwater turned the election for Bush. As a Southern, especially, he must have understood how the ad catered to racial prejudice. In the 2000 Republican primary race, George W. Bush used similar tactics against Senator John McCain. That's no surprise: Bush's political strategist Karl Rove, and Bush himself, were protégées' and admires of Lee Atwater. To my knowledge, all of Rove's campaigns have accentuated the negative - often dwelling exclusively on nasty attacks. This one is no exception. Thus, if Bush narrowly prevails on Election Day, the Democrats are likely to be in a less than congenial mood - and especially likely to go to court. And there will doubtless be fodder for litigation, given the GOP's propensity to try to disqualify votes and voters. The GOP's Campaign Tactic Of Attempting to Disqualify Votes And Voters In 1986, former Assistant United States Attorney James Brosnahan (today a noted San Francisco trial attorney) testified - based on an investigation the Justice Department had dispatched him to conduct - that as a young Phoenix attorney, Justice William Rehnquist had been part of conservative Republicans' 1962 efforts to disqualify black and Hispanic voters who showed up to vote. Brosnahan's testimony was supported by no less than fourteen additional witnesses. Rehnquist nevertheless became Chief Justice - thanks to the continued support of conservative Republicans. During the 1964 Goldwater versus Johnson race, when I first heard of such tactics, I was appalled to hear friends bragging about excluding Johnson supporters from voting. Later, when I found myself working at the Department of Justice for Richard Kleindienst, we discussed such tactics. Kleindienst served as director of field operations for Goldwater in 1964, and for Nixon in 1968. Remarkably, Kleindienst confided that he had engaged in fewer dubious tactics in 1968 than in 1964. If such efforts were mounted by the Nixon campaign in 1972, when I had a good overview of what was going on, I am not aware of it. Even Nixon had his limits, and he was more interested in wooing white Southerners into the Republican ranks. He did so, successfully, when such Southern Democrats stalwarts and pillars of bigotry and racism as Senators Strom Thrumond and Jesse Helms joined the GOP. They renewed the party's effort to disqualify voters who, and votes, that did not see the world as Republicans did. The racism became less blatant. After all, it had become a crime -- which called for new tactics. Yet the revised stratagems were (and remain) anything but subtle. The 2000 presidential race in Florida is an excellent example. Reportedly, Bush's Florida victory came courtesy of 537 votes out of some six million. It's plain from this slim margin that the GOP's voter and vote disqualifying tactics cost Vice President Al Gore the presidency. (In the October 2004 issue of Vanity Fair, an excellent article entitled The Path To Florida explains how the Republicans nullified and disqualified literally hundreds of thousands of Florida votes.) This lesson has not been lost on the Democrats - who are likely to refrain from conceding if they are losing in 2004 until all of the dubious disqualifications in closely-won swing states are sorted
[pjnews] Freedom is on the March
Freedom is on the March Eliot Weinberger, 23 October 2004 Among the things the second term of the Bush junta will bring is the New Freedom Initiative. This is a proposal, barely reported in the press, to give all Americans- beginning with school children- a standardized test for mental illness. Those who flunk the test will be issued medication, and those who do not want to take their medication will be urged to have it implanted under their skin. Needless to say, the New Freedom commission, appointed by the President, is composed almost entirely of executives, lawyers, and lobbyists for pharmaceutical corporations. The question is: Will anyone pass the test? Half of America is clearly deranged, and it has driven the other half mad. The President openly declares that God speaks through him. The Republicans are making television advertisements featuring the actor who played Jesus in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, while sending out pamphlets that warn that if Kerry is elected he will ban the Bible. Catholic bishops have decreed that voting for Kerry is a sin (mortal or venial?) that must be confessed before one can take communion. The one piece of scientific research actively promoted by the government is investigating whether having others pray for you can cure cancer. (The National Institute of Health has explained that this is imperative because poor people have limited access to normal health care.) At the official gift shop in Grand Canyon National Park, they sell a book that states that this so-called natural wonder sprang fully formed in the six days of Creation. We already know that the current United States government does not believe in global warming or the hazards of pollution; now we know it doesn't believe in erosion either. The polls are evidence that the country is suffering a collective head injury. On any given issue-- the economy, the war in Iraq, health care-- the majority perceive that the situation is bad and the President has handled it badly. Yet these same people, in these same polls, also say they'll be voting for Bush. Like a battered wife-- realizing yet denying what is happening, still making excuses for their man-- the voters are ruled by fear and intimidation and the threat of worse to come. They've been beaten up by the phantom of terrorism. Every few weeks we're bludgeoned by warnings that terrorists may strike in a matter of days. Incited by the Department of Homeland Security, millions have bought duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect their homes from biological and chemical attack, and have amassed caches of canned food and bottled water. To ensure that everyone everywhere stays afraid, 10,000 FBI agents have been sent to small towns to talk to local police chiefs about what they can do to fight terrorism. After the massacre at Beslan, school principals received letters from the Department of Education instructing them to beware of strangers.The Vice President intones that if Kerry is elected, terrorists will be exploding nuclear bombs in the cities. (And, to anticipate all possibilities, also warns that terrorists may set off bombs before the election to influence the vote. . . but we're not going to let them tell Americans who to vote for, are we?) Fear has infected even the most common transactions of daily life. It is not only visitors to the US who are treated as criminals, with fingerprints and photographs and retinal scans. Anyone entering any anonymous office building must now go through security clearances worthy of an audience with Donald Rumsfeld. At the airports, fear of flying has been replaced by fear of checking-in. Nearly every day there are stories of people arrested or detained for innocuous activities, like snapping a photo of a friend in the subway or wearing an antiwar button while shopping in the mall. Worst of all, the whole country has acquiesced to the myth of terrorist omnipotence. Even those who laugh at the color-coded Alerts and other excesses of the anti-terror apparatus do not question the need for the apparatus itself. The Department of Homeland Security, after all, was a Democratic proposal first rejected by Bush. Common sense has retreated to the monasteries of a few websites. It is considered delusional to suggest that international terrorism is nothing more than a criminal activity performed by a handful of people, that Al-Qaeda and similar groups are the Weather Underground, the Brigato Rosso, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, with more sophisticated techniques and more powerful weapons, operating in the age of hysterical 24-hour television news. They are not an army. They are not waging a war. They are tiny groups perpetrating isolated acts of violence. There's no question they are dangerous individuals, but- without demeaning the indelible trauma of 9/11 or the Madrid bombings- the danger they pose must be seen with some kind of dispassionate perspective. A terrorist attack is a rare and sudden disaster, the man-made
[pjnews] Bush vs. Kerry on POWs / Enemy Combatants
http://harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html Naomi Klein: Baghdad Year Zero- Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia http://snipurl.com/a0ow Insurgents funded by Saudis, U.S. says - THE DAILY MIS-LEAD http://www.Misleader.org BUSH SUPPORTERS MISLED A new study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) shows that supporters of President Bush hold wildly inaccurate views about the world. For example, a large majority [72 percent] of Bush supporters believe that before the war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.[1] Most Bush supporters [57 percent] also believe that the recently released report by Charles Duelfer, the administration's hand-picked weapons inspector, concluded Iraq either had WMD or a major program for developing them.[2] In fact, the report concluded Saddam Hussein did not produce or possess any weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade before the U.S.-led invasion and the U.N. inspection regime had curbed his ability to build or develop weapons.[3] According to the study, 75 percent Bush supporters also believe Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda.[4] Most Bush supporters [55 percent] believe that was the conclusion of the 9/11 commission.[5] In fact, the 9/11 commission concluded there was no collaborative relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq.[6] Bush supporters also hold inaccurate views about world public opinion of the war in Iraq and a range of Bush's foreign policy positions.[7] Visit http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1022-01.htm for further information about the study. http://snipurl.com/a070 The Washington Post 20 October 2004 Mr. Kerry on Prisoners LAST WEEK we questioned whether there was a difference between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry on the crucial question of U.S. policy for handling prisoners captured abroad. Mr. Bush continues to take the position that the Geneva Conventions should not be applied to many detainees, including anyone captured in Afghanistan, and that harsh interrogation techniques foresworn by the U.S. military for decades should be used on some of these prisoners. Mr. Kerry critiqued the shocking abuses that have resulted from that decision, at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere, but not the policy itself. Now Mr. Kerry has taken a stand. In a statement drawn up in response to our questions, the Democratic nominee declares that a Kerry administration will apply the Geneva Conventions to all battlefield combatants captured in the war on terror. The result is an important new distinction between the presidential candidates. In our view, Mr. Bush's decision in February 2002 to set aside the Geneva Conventions was one of the most damaging mistakes of his presidency. It led directly to the imprisonment of hundreds of foreigners at Guantanamo Bay without any legal process, until the Supreme Court intervened earlier this year. Mr. Bush's decision also led to the sanction by senior administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, of harsh interrogation techniques that are illegal under the Geneva Conventions. As several official investigations have found, these techniques soon migrated from Guantanamo to U.S. field units in Iraq and Afghanistan, leading to hundreds of cases of torture, homicide and other abuse, and a shameful stain on the international reputation of the United States. Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld still refuse to acknowledge the terrible consequences of the decisions they made, much less correct their mistakes. In a letter published on this page today, Mr. Rumsfeld's spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, once again claims that no policy or decision made by a senior official had anything to do with the abuses at Abu Ghraib. To bolster his case, he selectively cites official investigations that have, in fact, proven the opposite. For example, Gen. Paul J. Kern, whom Mr. Di Rita quotes, testified to Congress last month that techniques approved by Mr. Rumsfeld in December 2002 -- including nudity, painful stress positions and the use of dogs to incite fear -- found their way into documentation that we found in Abu Ghraib. The Schlesinger commission, also cited by Mr. Di Rita, determined that Iraq commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez approved similar practices, using reasoning from the President's memorandum of 2002. It also concluded, There is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels for the crimes at Abu Ghraib. Without any change in policy, there is every reason to expect that a second Bush term would produce more scandals like Abu Ghraib. As the history of the past three years demonstrates, such abuses result when the rule of law is set aside. That's why we welcome Mr. Kerry's pledge to resume full U.S. compliance with the Geneva Conventions. Such compliance does not prevent a U.S. president from holding enemy combatants indefinitely or from denying them prisoner-of-war status. It does not prevent American forces
[pjnews] The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration
100 Facts and 1 Opinion The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration by Judd Legum From the November 8, 2004 issue of The Nation (see http://snipurl.com/a06w for links to all citations) IRAQ 1. The Bush Administration has spent more than $140 billion on a war of choice in Iraq. Source: American Progress 2. The Bush Administration sent troops into battle without adequate body armor or armored Humvees. Sources: Fox News, The Boston Globe 3. The Bush Administration ignored estimates from Gen. Eric Shinseki that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq. Source: PBS 4. Vice President Cheney said Americans will, in fact, be greeted as liberators in Iraq. Source: The Washington Post 5. During the Bush Administration's war in Iraq, more than 1,000 US troops have lost their lives and more than 7,000 have been injured. Source: globalsecurity.org 6. In May 2003, President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit, stood under a banner proclaiming Mission Accomplished, and triumphantly announced that major combat operations were over in Iraq. Asked if he had any regrets about the stunt, Bush said he would do it all over again. Source: Yahoo News 7. Vice President Cheney said that Iraq was the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11. The bipartisan 9/11 Commission found that Iraq had no involvement in the 9/11 attacks and no collaborative operational relationship with Al Qaeda. Source: MSNBC , 9-11 Commission 8. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that high-strength aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, warning we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. The government's top nuclear scientists had told the Administration the tubes were too narrow, too heavy, too long to be of use in developing nuclear weapons and could be used for other purposes. Source: New York Times 9. The Bush Administration has spent just $1.1 billion of the $18.4 billion Congress approved for Iraqi reconstruction. Source: USA Today 10. According to the Administration's handpicked weapon's inspector, Charles Duelfer, there is no evidence that Hussein had passed illicit weapons material to al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, or had any intent to do so. After the release of the report, Bush continued to insist, There was a risk--a real risk--that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons, or materials, or information to terrorist networks. Sources: New York Times, White House news release 11. According to Duelfer, the UN inspections regime put an economic strangle hold on Hussein that prevented him from developing a WMD program for more than twelve years. Source: Los Angeles Times TERRORISM 12. After receiving a memo from the CIA in August 2001 titled Bin Laden Determined to Attack America, President Bush continued his monthlong vacation. Source: CNN.com 13. The Bush Administration failed to commit enough troops to capture Osama bin Laden when US forces had him cornered in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in November 2001. Instead, they relied on local warlords. Source: csmonitor.com 14. The Bush Administration secured less nuclear material from sites around the world vulnerable to terrorists in the two years after 9/11 than were secured in the two years before 9/11. Source: nti.org 15. The Bush Administration underfunded Nunn-Lugar--the program intended to keep the former Soviet Union's nuclear legacy out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states--by $45.5 million. Source: armscontrol.org 16. The Bush Administration has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money. Source: sfgate.com 17. According to Congressional Research Service data, the Bush Administration has underfunded security at the nation's ports by more than $1 billion for fiscal year 2005. Source: American Progress 18. The Bush Administration did not devote the resources necessary to prevent a resurgence in the production of poppies, the raw material used to create heroin, in Afghanistan--creating a potent new source of financing for terrorists. Source: Pakistan Tribune 19. Vice President Cheney told voters that unless they elect George Bush in November, we'll get hit again by terrorists. Source: Washington Post 20. Even though an Al Qaeda training manual suggests terrorists come to the United States and buy assault weapons, the Bush Administration did nothing to prevent the expiration of the ban. Source: sfgate.com 21. Despite repeated calls for reinforcements, there are fewer experienced CIA agents assigned to the unit dealing with Osama bin Laden now than there were before 9/11. Source: New York Times 22. Before 9/11, John Ashcroft proposed slashing counterterrorism funding by 23 percent. Source: americanprogress.org 23. Between January 20, 2001, and
[pjnews] 1/2 Bush's Secret Rewriting of Military Law
http://snipurl.com/a2b4 The New York Times 24 October 2004 After Terror, a Secret Rewriting of Military Law By TIM GOLDEN WASHINGTON - In early November 2001, with Americans still staggered by the Sept. 11 attacks, a small group of White House officials worked in great secrecy to devise a new system of justice for the new war they had declared on terrorism. Determined to deal aggressively with the terrorists they expected to capture, the officials bypassed the federal courts and their constitutional guarantees, giving the military the authority to detain foreign suspects indefinitely and prosecute them in tribunals not used since World War II. The plan was considered so sensitive that senior White House officials kept its final details hidden from the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, officials said. It was so urgent, some of those involved said, that they hardly thought of consulting Congress. White House officials said their use of extraordinary powers would allow the Pentagon to collect crucial intelligence and mete out swift, unmerciful justice. We think it guarantees that we'll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve, said Vice President Dick Cheney, who was a driving force behind the policy. But three years later, not a single terrorist has been prosecuted. Of the roughly 560 men being held at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, only 4 have been formally charged. Preliminary hearings for those suspects brought such a barrage of procedural challenges and public criticism that verdicts could still be months away. And since a Supreme Court decision in June that gave the detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal court, the Pentagon has stepped up efforts to send home hundreds of men whom it once branded as dangerous terrorists. We've cleared whole forests of paper developing procedures for these tribunals, and no one has been tried yet, said Richard L. Shiffrin, who worked on the issue as the Pentagon's deputy general counsel for intelligence matters. They just ended up in this Kafkaesque sort of purgatory. The story of how Guantánamo and the new military justice system became an intractable legacy of Sept. 11 has been largely hidden from public view. But extensive interviews with current and former officials and a review of confidential documents reveal that the legal strategy took shape as the ambition of a small core of conservative administration officials whose political influence and bureaucratic skill gave them remarkable power in the aftermath of the attacks. The strategy became a source of sharp conflict within the Bush administration, eventually pitting the highest-profile cabinet secretaries - including Ms. Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld - against one another over issues of due process, intelligence-gathering and international law. In fact, many officials contend, some of the most serious problems with the military justice system are rooted in the secretive and contentious process from which it emerged. Military lawyers were largely excluded from that process in the days after Sept. 11. They have since waged a long struggle to ensure that terrorist prosecutions meet what they say are basic standards of fairness. Uniformed lawyers now assigned to defend Guantánamo detainees have become among the most forceful critics of the Pentagon's own system. Foreign policy officials voiced concerns about the legal and diplomatic ramifications, but had little influence. Increasingly, the administration's plan has come under criticism even from close allies, complicating efforts to transfer scores of Guantánamo prisoners back to their home governments. To the policy's architects, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon represented a stinging challenge to American power and an imperative to consider measures that might have been unimaginable in less threatening times. Yet some officials said the strategy was also shaped by longstanding political agendas that had relatively little to do with fighting terrorism. The administration's claim of authority to set up military commissions, as the tribunals are formally known, was guided by a desire to strengthen executive power, officials said. Its legal approach, including the decision not to apply the Geneva Conventions, reflected the determination of some influential officials to halt what they viewed as the United States' reflexive submission to international law. In devising the new system, many officials said they had Osama bin Laden and other leaders of Al Qaeda in mind. But in picking through the hundreds of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, military investigators have struggled to find more than a dozen they can tie directly to significant terrorist acts, officials said. While important Qaeda figures have been captured and held by the C.I.A., administration officials said
[pjnews] Chaos, murder and mayhem in Iraq
check this out: http://www.liegirls.com Together with the Center for American Progress, the National Priorities Project releases today an interactive state-by-state analysis that details the cost of the war in Iraq for each state and for numerous cities across the country. In order to provide some context for the cost of war numbers, the map also shows the amount each state received in federal funding for homeland security and the No Child Left Behind Act. Go to: http://www.nationalpriorities.org/maps/index.html http://snipurl.com/a33f The Guardian -UK 25 October 2004 Chaos, murder and mayhem: Kidnapping and killing is a daily reality in Iraq, but in the west the atrocities go unrecorded and the dead are unnamed by Haifa Zangana The kidnapping of Margaret Hassan is shocking but not surprising. We have come to accept that the same thing might happen to any of our family or friends. In fact, it already has happened to my dearest friend Nada. Last month, her nephew Baree Ibrahim, an engineer, was kidnapped. I remember Baree very well from the mid-70s. Here is his aunt's account of what happened: Dear Haifa, My nephew Baree was picked up on September 25 and no ransom was asked. Actually the kidnappers didn't contact his family, and this led us to believe that they mistook him for someone else as he looked so European. He was beheaded on SaturdayOctober 2. I had a phone call from his brother to tell me to tune to al-Jazeera. I saw on TV, Baree talking with mute sound and the writing at the bottom of the screen saying that Iraqi engineer Baree Nafee Dawood Ibrahim was beheaded by 'Jamaa ansar assunna' and the detail of the beheading procedure can be seen on one of the Islamic sites. I called my sister immediately. She was unable to answer the phone. They couldn't mourn him traditionally because the body was not found. A couple of days later his brother was in Baghdad. He and his cousins went every day to the hospital's mortuary to look for Baree's body but they couldn't find him. They even went to look for his body in side streets but to no avail. My sister and her immediate family are all now in Amman, Jordan and my other brother and sisters and their children are preparing to leave Iraqs for Syria. At the moment there are about 2 million Iraqi in Jordan and the same in Syria and Lebanon. Some 200,000 Christian Iraqis have fled the country in the last couple of months. This is the freedom and democracy promised to the Iraqis. Nada. This is the daily reality in the new Iraq, especially in Baghdad. An average of 100 Iraqis are killed every day. Kidnapping for profit or revenge is widespread. Young girls are sold to neighbouring countries for prostitution. Madeline Hadi, a nine-year-old girl, was kidnapped from her father's car in the al-Doura district of Baghdad. Zinah Falih Hassan, a student in al-Warkaa secondary school, also in Baghdad, was kidnapped on her way back from school. Asma, a young engineer, was abducted in Baghdad. She was shopping with her mother, sister and male relative when six armed men kidnapped her. She was repeatedly raped. Mahnaz Bassam and Raad Ali Abdul Aziz were kidnapped last month along with two Italian aid workers and subsequently released. Unlike the Italians, the two Iraqis did not receive media attention in the west. No one prayed for them. And aid workers are not the only victims - 250 university professors and scientists have been killed in the past year, according to the Union of University Lecturers, and more than 1,000 academics have left the country Iraqi journalists are also frequently harassed, threatened and attacked by occupying troops. This year, 12 of the 14 journalists killed were Iraqi, and six Iraqi media workers were also killed. Many journalists have also fled the country. More than 100 Iraqi doctors and consultants have been killed or kidnapped in the past year. A spokesperson for the Iraqi Medical Society described the kidnappings as intimidating and forcing them to leave the country. The latest victim was Dr Turki Jabar al Saadi, chair of the Iraqi veterinary society. He was shot in the head on October 21. None of these killings has been investigated. These atrocities go unrecorded. The dead are unnamed. There are indeed reasons for all this chaos, murder and mayhem. Those reasons lie in the nature of invasion, war and, most crucially of all, occupation. The US-led occupation forces presented themselves as champions of liberation, freedom and democracy. What they have achieved is chaos, collective punishment, assassinations, abuse and torture of prisoners, and destruction of the country's infrastructure. The sovereign interim government has, like the Iraqi Governing Council before it, proved to be the fig leaf shielding the occupying forces from Iraqis' frustration and outrage. Powerless, and with no credibility among Iraqi people, the interim government's failure is disastrous. In addition to the lack of security, there
[pjnews] US on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Where to Vote/ For NEW VOTERS not sure of their Polling Location: Where's your polling place? The People for the American Way Foundation has provided an invaluable service with their guide to polling places across the country. Find out where to vote, what kind of voting machine will be used, map and driving directions, a short list of voters' rights, and step-by-step instruction for the exact voting equipment at the polling place by visiting http://www.MyPollingPlace.com/. * AND: Remember to take Drivers License or Picture ID. New Resources from The League of Women Voters The League of Women Voters of the United States (LWVUS) has embarked upon a voter education campaign with the publication of 5 Things You Need to Know on Election Day cards. The cards are meant to familiarize voters with new election procedures, to ensure that votes are properly counted, and to kick off a public awareness effort that involves a LWVUS tour in the run-up to the November election. The League also issued a report Helping America Vote: Safeguarding the Vote that provides guidelines for state and local election officials to implement better election practices. Read the report at http://www.lwv.org/elibrary/pub/voting_safeguarding_color.pdf. To download a card or for further information, visit http://www.lwv.org. Finally, the the League of Women Voters has put together a guide to implementing the new federal provisional ballot requirement. To view the guide, visit http://www.lwv.org/elibrary/pub/voting_help-vote.pdf. -- http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1023-06.htm In several battleground states across the country, a consulting firm funded by the Republican National Committee has been accused of deceiving would-be voters and destroying Democratic voter registration cards. Arizona-based Sproul Associates is under investigation in Oregon and Nevada over claims that canvassers hired by the company were instructed to register only Republicans and to get rid of registration forms completed by Democrats... http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1025-05.htm Storm Clouds Gathering Over the Legitimacy of This Election http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/dailystar/45132.php Some New Voters Suspect Registration Hanky-Panky --- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=575453 Published on Sunday, October 24, 2004 by the lndependent/UK Portrait of a Country on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown With only nine days to go and the polls showing Bush and Kerry still neck and neck, the result is once again likely to turn on the minutiae of the voting system. But this time the whole country seems poised to descend into post-election chaos. Andrew Gumbel reports on the traumatizing effects of this bitter campaign and how, as the world's most powerful democracy talks of exporting freedom to Iraq, it is at risk of becoming an object of international ridicule by Andrew Gumbel No need to wonder if this year's US presidential election is headed for another meltdown: the meltdown has already started. The voting machines have already begun to break down, accusations of systematic voter suppression and fraud are rampant, and lawyers fully armed and ready with an intimate knowledge of the nation's byzantine election laws have flocked to court to cry foul in half a dozen states. Nine days out from election day, we don't yet know whether the state-by-state arithmetic will lead to a post-election stalemate similar to the 36-day battle for Florida in 2000. It is, of course, possible that the margins of victory in the 50 states will be wide enough to avert the worst - even if overall conditions are likely to fall short of the usual definition of a free and fair election. Given the nail-bitingly close numbers in the opinion polls, however, Election 2004 could just as easily produce a concatenation of knockdown, drag-out fights in several states at once, making the débâcle in Florida four years ago look, in retrospect, like the constitutional equivalent of a vicarage tea party. Last week saw the start of early voting in Florida and a clutch of other states, and with it came a plethora of problems. In three heavily populated counties - around Tampa, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale - the network connection used to verify voter identifications broke down on the first day, creating hours of delay. In Jacksonville, where poor ballot design in 2000 knocked out the votes of 27,000 poor, predominantly black, predominantly Democratic voters, the county elections supervisor chose the first day of polling to resign, citing ill health. He had come under fire for failing to make early voting available in the city's African-American neighborhoods - something his interim successor is now going some way to remedy. Elsewhere, there were computer breakdowns during early voting in Memphis. Pre-election testing of electronic machines in Riverside County, California, and in Palm Beach County, Florida, led to multiple
[pjnews] Iraq updates
From the Arms Trade Resource Center... Iraq UPDATE: William Hartung The recent New York Times/CBS 60 Minutes report on the nearly 380 tons of high- intensity explosives that disappeared from a military facility in Iraq in the wake of the U.S. intervention last year is just the latest example of how misguided and incompetent the Bush administration's war effort has been (see link at the end of the section). Following on the report of their own hand-picked inspector, Charles Duelfer, who indicated that Iraq had no nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion- and no active programs to acquire them- this latest report delivers a devastating one-two punch to the administration's original rationale for going to war. Not only did Iraq not possess the nuclear, chemical or biological weapons that were cited as the imminent threats requiring a rush to war, but once the United States did go into Iraq, it failed to secure the high-priority weapons sites that the International Atomic Energy Agency told it about. In short, the weapons they warned about did not exist, and the weapons they knew about were not secured. In the mean time, the much-maligned UN inspection regime has now been vindicated. It did a far better job of disarming Iraq, and keeping track of its weapons programs, than either U.S. intelligence or U.S. military actions of the past decade and one-half, as a recent article by David Cortright and George Lopez in Foreign Affairs makes abundantly clear (see link at the end of this section). Continued inspections and monitoring would have been a far more effective way to prevent Iraq from threatening its neighbors or U.S. interests. Instead, thousands of U.S. and Iraqi lives have been lost, at a cost that will reach $200 billion and counting by the end of next year. And contrary to popular belief, a weapons monitoring and inspection program would have been sustained (under relevant UN resolutions) even if broader UN economic sanctions were lifted. To those in the Bush administration- and among its apologists- who argue that it was better to act than not to act against Saddam Hussein, the clear answer is that war is not the only form of action when other effective tools are available to get the job done at far less cost in lives, dollars, and in the reputation of the United States in the world community. RESOURCES A. Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq, By James Glanz, William J. Broad, and David E. Sanger, New York Times, October 25, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25bomb.html?pagewanted=printposition= (registration required) B. Containing Iraq: Sanctions Worked By George A. Lopez and David Cortright Foreign Affairs, July/August 2004 http://kroc.nd.edu/research/foreignaffairs2.html II. MORE IRAQ Frida Berrigan What do you say about a President who sends almost 200,000 soldiers into a warzone, and blithely believes that, We're not going to have any casualties?... Bush's comment to friend and fellow born-again rightwinger Pat Robertson before the March 2003 invasion, demonstrates callousness, ignorance, and cravenness. 1,114 soldiers have been killed so far, an average of two every day. Even those who do not die are casualties. The military reports that more than 8,000 soldiers have been wounded, and that includes a significant number of soldiers who are returning home without legs or arms. But that figure only tells part of the story, the military does not count the more than 16,000 soldiers who have been medically evacuated from Iraq for injures and ailments not contracted during combat. The Department of Defense count of wounded soldiers also does not include emotional breakdown as a war wound. More than 5,000 veterans from Iraq have been diagnosed with mental problems. In fact, psychological trauma is the third most common diagnosis after bone and digestive problems. Among those, 800 soldiers have become psychotic. The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in July that found that 16% of soldiers returning from Iraq might suffer major depression, generalized anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. These are not counted as wounds, just as the more than 27 suicides by soldiers have not counted as war deaths. We know Americans are not the only ones who are dying. Last year, General Tommy Franks said We don't do body counts. Thus, there is no official record of how many Iraqis have been killed in the war. www.IraqBodyCount.net tries to keep a credible tally. They say that as many as 15,377 Iraqi civilians have been killed. In an October 19th article titled How Many Iraqis Are Dying? By One Count, 208 in a Week, New York Times reporter Norimitsu Onishi, tries to count Iraqi civilian dead. The estimated 208 Iraqis who were killed in war-related incidents that week was significantly higher than the average week. During that same period 23 members of the United States military died. In one day, October
[pjnews] Florida Computers Snatch Thousands of Votes from Kerry
CONGRATULATIONS, MR. PRESIDENT! FLORIDA'S COMPUTERS HAVE ALREADY COUNTED THOUSANDS OF VOTES FOR GEORGE W. BUSH Before one vote was cast in early voting this week in Florida, the new touch-screen computer voting machines of Florida started out with a several-thousand vote lead for George W. Bush. That is, the mechanics of the new digital democracy boxes spoil votes at a predictably high rate in African-American precincts, effectively voiding enough votes cast for John Kerry to in a tight race, keep the White House safe from the will of the voters. Excerpted from the current (November) issue of Harper's Magazine by Greg Palast To understand the fiasco in progress in Florida, we need to revisit the 2000 model, starting with a lesson from Dick Carlberg, acting elections supervisor in Duval County until this week. Some voters are strange, Carlberg told me recently. He was attempting to explain why, in the last presidential election, five thousand Duvalians trudged to the polls and, having arrived there, voted for no one for president. Carlberg did concede that, after he ran these punch cards through the counting machines a second time, some partly punched holes shook loose, gaining Al Gore160 votes or so, Bush roughly 80. So, if you ran the 'blank' ballots through a few more times, we'd have a different president, I noted. Carlberg, a Republican, answered with a grin. So it was throughout the state - in certain precincts, at least. In Jacksonville, for example, in Duval precincts 7 through 10, nearly one in five ballots, or 11,200 votes in all, went uncounted, rejected as either an 'under-vote' (a blank ballot) or 'over-vote' (a ballot with extra markings). In those precincts, 72 percent of the residents are African-American; ballots that did make the count went four to one for Al Gore. All in all, a staggering 179,855 votes were spoiled (i.e., cast but not counted) in the 2000 election in Florida. Demographers from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission matched the ballots with census stats and estimated that 54 percent of all the under- and over-voted ballots had been cast by blacks, for whom the likelihood of having a vote discarded exceeded that of a white voter by 900 percent. Votes don't spoil because they are left out of the fridge. Vote spoilage, at root, is a class problem. Just as poor and minority districts wind up with shoddy schools and shoddy hospitals, they are stuck with shoddy ballot machines. In Gadsden, the only black-majority county in Florida, one in eight votes spoiled in 2000, the worst countywide record in the state. Next door in Leon County (Tallahassee), which used the same paper ballot, the mostly white, wealthier county lost almost no votes. The difference was that in mostly-white Leon, each voting booth was equipped with its own optical scanner, with which voters could check their own ballots. In the black county, absent such second-chance equipment, any error would void a vote. The best solution for vote spoilage, whether from blank ballots or from hanging chads, is Leon County's: paper ballots, together with scanners in the voting booths. In fact, this is precisely what Governor Bush's own experts recommended in 2001 for the entire state. His Select Task Force on Elections Procedures, appointed by the Governor to soothe public distrust after the 2000 race, chose paper ballots with scanners over the trendier option -- the touch-screen computer. Although the computer rigs cost eight times as much as paper with scanners, they result in many more spoiled votes. In this year's presidential primary in Florida, the computers had a spoilage rate of more than 1 percent, as compared to one-tenth of a percent for the double-checked paper ballots. Apparently some Bush boosters were not keen on a fix so inexpensive and effective. In particular, Sandra Mortham - a founder of Women for Jeb Bush, the Governor's re-election operation - successfully lobbied on behalf of the Florida Association of Counties to stop the state the legislature from blocking the purchase of touch-screen voting systems. Mortham, coincidentally, was also a paid lobbyist for Election Systems Strategies, a computer voting-machine manufacturer. Fifteen of Florida's sixty-seven counties chose the pricey computers, twelve of them ordered from ESS which, in turn, paid Mortham's County Association a percentage on sales. Florida's computerization had its first mass test in 2002, in Broward County. The ESS machines appeared to work well in white Ft. Lauderdale precincts, but in black communities, such as Lauderhill and Pompano Beach, there was wholesale disaster. Poll workers were untrained, and many places opened late. Black voters were held up in lines for hours. No one doubts that hundreds of Black votes were lost before they were cast. Broward county commissioners had purchased the touch-screen machines from ESS over the objection of Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant; notably, one commissioner's campaign
[pjnews] Tom Hayden on the elections
NO STOLEN ELECTIONS! www.Nov3.US http://www.Nov3.US/ 27 October 2004 First Action Notice: As the election closes in there is mounting evidence that the outcome may not be immediately clear. A wide range of voter fraud may emerge that will require intense work at the local level to organize direct actions to seek remedies. Fortunately there are already thousands of people mobilized in existing election protection efforts to insure that every vote is counted on November 2nd, but they will need more support. That¹s why 15,000 people have already signed the No Stolen Elections pledge. If there is election fraud, we are committed to take action to ensure that every vote is counted in the days following November 2nd. Late on election night, November 2nd, you and everyone else who signed the pledge (sign the pledge here: http://www.Nov3.US/) will receive an Urgent Response Network email notice informing you of whether the Fair Elections Advisory Council has found evidence of significant fraud impacting the outcome of the election. This notice will also appearon the website. In the meantime, the No Stolen Elections campaign is well underway, and our website is constantly being updated to provide you with information, suggestions, contacts, and other resources to help you follow up on your pledge to defend voting rights. Here is what you can do right now: 1. GET READY Prepare Your Local Response - Go to the website and click on Directory of Local Actions, and see if someone in your community has already organized a rally, public meeting, or other event for November 3rd, and beyond. If so, please contact them and help them out. If not, please take steps to organize such an event, and please post the details about it on the website. Click on What You Can Do for tips and suggestions for your local organizing, and for a PDF poster you can download for local use. Read Up - Go to the website and click on Stolen Election Deja Vu to read an excellent article by Steve Cobble which details the kinds of abuses the Fair Elections Advisory Council will be looking out for on November 2nd. Click on Action Framework to read a document which will provide you with an overall guide regarding how to prepare for November 3rd, and for what may happen in the weeks and months following a stolen election. Get Text Messaging - One way we'll get the word out on November 2nd will be via text messaging. Please sign up to receive the word via your cell phone. Simply: (1) Go to http://www.txtmob.com, (2) Create an account (click on login), (3) Click on Join More Groups, and (4) Select NOV3. 2. SPREAD THE WORD - Tell everyone about it! Go to the website and click on Spread the Word. Use the form that is there to send out a letter to everyone you know asking them to join you in signing the pledge. On that same Spread the Word page there is also a banner at the bottom. Click on that to see an array of banners and buttons you can add to your website as links to the No Stolen Elections campaign. 3. CONTRIBUTE - Go to the website and click on Contribute! to make a contribution to the No Stolen Elections campaign. For the timebeing, the costs of coordinating this campaign are limited to field support, web, communications costs. But we expect that if Urgent Response Network is mobilized, costs will increase significantly. We need to be prepared. Please contribute today. 4. UPDATES - Watch the website for regular updates. Recent updates have included the Fair Elections Advisory Council, No Stolen Elections Deja Vu, What You Can Do, the Action Framework, new signatories to the pledge, links to election protection groups on the About Us page, and many other lesser updates. Look for at least one more email update before election day. NO STOLEN ELECTIONS! http://www.Nov3.US This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. ~ Frederick Douglass, 1857 --- GETTING PHYSICAL by Tom Hayden Not since the 1930s have the labor, civil rights and peace movements been this unified in a presidential campaign, and almost never before have the raw realities of power been so flagrantly revealed behind the showcasing of democracy American-style. It will get worse in the days ahead. Many Americans will have to push their way through the resistance of Republican operatives seeking to obstruct the right to vote. I predict it will get physical. Remember the white riot staged by Republican congressional staffers, many of them flown in on Enron
[pjnews] Voting troubles
see also: http://snipurl.com/a76x Voters claim abuse of electoral rolls Students say they were conned into registering twice http://snipurl.com/a772 A shortage of at least 500,000 poll workers nationwide means many voters could face long lines, cranky volunteers, polling places that don't open or close on schedule and the chance that results won't be known until long after the polls are closed... Handy tips to help you vote on Tuesday, November 2nd: DONT KNOW WHERE TO VOTE? Go to http://www.mypollingplace.com Just enter in your address and it will tell you where to go. AFRAID YOUR VOTE IS BEING SUPPRESSED? Go to http://snipurl.com/a769 THIS SITE TELLS YOU YOUR VOTING RIGHTS, and who to call to get immediate assistance if you think something fishys happening to you when you vote. WHO SHOULD YOU VOTE FOR? Still undecided or know someone who is?! Go to http://www.dnet.org and http://www.vote-smart.org and find out where ALL the candidates stand on issues, from the presidential race to the ones for your state government. WHEN SHOULD YOU VOTE? Remember that most polling locations are open until 8 pm your local time. And if youre in line when the polls close, you still have the right to vote BECAUSE you are in line. EXPECT LONG LINES. But when you think of the line, think of the next 4 years. There will be the longest lines in the late afternoon when everyone is done working. So take off work if you have to or go during your lunch break for democracys sake. --- BBC report sparks Florida vote storm By Martin Sieff UPI Senior News Analyst Washington, DC, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- A British Broadcasting Corporation report has unleashed a political storm over suggestions that the Bush campaign in Florida may be planning to disrupt voting in the state's black neighborhoods. Democrats have expressed outrage over the BBC report, while Republicans are heatedly challenging its accuracy. BBC's prestigious Newsnight regular news program reported Tuesday that two e-mail messages prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida contained a so-called caging list with the names and addresses of 1,886 voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville. The report then noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations to stop voters from obtaining a ballot. Then, they can only vote provisionally after signing an affidavit attesting to their legal voting status. Yet U.S. federal law, the BBC's Greg Palast noted, prohibits targeting any challenges to voters -- even if there is a basis for the challenge -- if race is a factor in targeting the voters. Republican state campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker Fletcher confirmed to the BBC that GOP poll workers in Florida would be instructed to challenge voters where it's stated in the law. But at the time she refused to deny the possibility that the caging list would be used to create a challenge list for black voters from overwhelmingly Democratic districts. Later, she offered another explanation for it. An elections supervisor in Tallahassee shown the caging list by a BBC reporter responded, The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on Election Day. The existence of the list came to light when it was sent to the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and to the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign's national research director in Washington. In a later response e-mailed to the BBC, Tucker Fletcher offered a new explanation that she had not given the BBC when first questioned about it. She said the list had been created to try and reach out to new registrants for the election. The Duval County list was created to collect the returned mail information from the Republican National Committee mailing and was intended and has been used for no purpose other that, Tucker Fletcher wrote to BBC Newsnight editor Peter Barron Tuesday. Palast's insinuation that it was created for and will be used for the purposes of an Election Day challenge is erroneous and frankly illustrates his willingness to twist information to suit his and others' political agendas, she continued. Reporting of these types of baseless allegations by the news media comes directly from the Democrats election playbook. However, the controversy around the Jacksonville list is far from the only allegation of attempts by GOP campaign officials to suppress or discourage African-American voter turnout. In Ohio, where around 400,000 new voters in generally Democratic areas have been added to the polls this year, Republicans have deployed a high proportion of their 3,600 polling monitors in predominantly black areas such as inner-city Cleveland. And BBC Newsnight also reported that it filmed a private detective who was filming early voters in a predominantly black neighborhood. Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown told the BBC she believed that surveillance operation was part of a
[pjnews] Michael Moore: One Day Left
(from http://www.truemajority.org) Ralph Nader's Former Advisors as Well as His Former Running Mate Winona LaDuke Urges Support for Kerry Some of us love Ralph Nader. Some hate him. Some voted for him in the last presidential election. Some of us did not. But now let's join together on Tuesday to vote Bush out of office. That means voting for Kerry. I've recently joined Noam Chomsky, Phil Donahue, Barbara Ehrenreich, Jim Hightower, Bonnie Raitt, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Howard Zinn and dozens of other former Nader supporters in urging everyone to vote for Kerry in swing states. (See the members of the Nader 2000 Citizens' Committee who are urging swing state support for Kerry at http://www.vote2stopbush.com) Click here to read former Nader running mate Winona LaDuke's eloquent explanation of why she is voting for Kerry this year: http://snipurl.com/a76f Click here to see some of the differences between Kerry and Bush: http://snipurl.com/a76j If you know people who may vote for Ralph Nader, please forward this e-mail to them. Yours for Booting Bush, Ben Cohen President, TrueMajorityACTION Co-Founder, Ben Jerry's Ice Cream P.S. If you want to join efforts to convince former Nader voters NOT to vote for Ralph Nader this year, visit http://www.repentantnadervoter.com Published on Monday, November 1, 2004 by MichaelMoore.com One Day Left by Michael Moore Dear Friends, This is it. ONE DAY LEFT. There are many things Id like to say. Ive been on the road getting out the vote for 51 straight days so I havent had much time to write. So Ive put together a bunch of notes to various groups all in this one letter. Please feel free to copy and send whatever portions are appropriate to your friends and family as you spend these last 24 hours trying to convince whomever you can to show up and vote for John Kerry. Here are my final words To Decent Conservatives and Recovering Republicans: In your heart of hearts you know Bush is a miserable failure. From having no plan on what to do in Iraq once he conquered Baghdad to the 380 missing tons of explosives that could be used to kill our brave young men and women, this guy doesnt have a clue how to fight and win a war. You should see the mail Ive been getting lately from our troops over there. They know how much the Iraqi people hate them. They are sitting ducks anytime they go out on the road. Many believe we are not that far away from a Tet-style offensive inside the Green Zone with hundreds of Americans and Brits killed. Bush refused to go after and capture Osama bin Laden. He fought, every step of the way, the investigation into the 9/11 attacks. Who on earth would oppose such a thing? If 3,000 people died at your place of work and your boss said we dont need to find out why or how it happened, hed be thrown out on his ear. Bushs behavior after this great tragedy alone is reason enough for his removal. You already know that George W. Bush is the farthest thing from a conservative. Hes a reckless spender who has run up record-breaking deficits and the biggest debt in our history. He believes in having the government pry into everything from your library records to your bedroom. He has hit you with hidden taxes with his tax cuts for the rich. I know many of you dont like Bush, but are unsure of Kerry. Give the new guy a chance. He wont raise your taxes (unless you are super-rich), he wont take your hunting gun away, he wont make you visit France. He risked his life for you many years ago. Hes asking for the chance to do it again. Scott McConnell at The American Conservative magazine has endorsed him. What more do you need? To My Friends on the Left: Okay, Kerry isnt everything you wished he would be. Youre right. Hes not you! Or me. But were not on the ballot Kerry is. Yes, Kerry was wrong to vote for authorization for war in Iraq but he was in step with 70% of the American public who was being lied to by Bush Co. And once everyone learned the truth, the majority turned against the war. Kerry has had only one position on the war he believed his president. President Kerry had better bring the troops home right away. My prediction: Kerrys roots are anti-war. He has seen the horrors of war and because of that he will avoid war unless it is absolutely necessary. Ask most vets. But dont ask someone whose only horror was when he arrived too late for a kegger in Alabama. Theres a reason Bush calls Kerry the Number One Liberal in the Senate THATS BECAUSE HE IS THE NUMBER ONE LIBERAL IN THE SENATE! What more do you want? My friends, this is about as good as it gets when voting for the Democrat. We dont have the #29 Liberal running or the #14 Liberal or even the #2 Liberal we got #1! When has that ever happened? Those of us who may be to the left of the #1 liberal Democrat should remember that this year conservative Democrats have had to make a far greater shift in their position to back Kerry than we have.
[pjnews] What to Do on Election Day
Forward this, print it out and bring it with you to the polls... http://snipurl.com/abpq Today's Editorials: What to Do on Election Day November 1, 2004 NY Times Civics books make voting look like a breeze, but it can be hard work. Voter rolls are inaccurate, ID requirements vary and are erratically enforced, partisans try to disqualify likely supporters of their opponents, and lines at the polls can be excruciatingly long. In 2000, as many as six million presidential votes were lost for technical reasons, and this year the number could be even larger. Voters, particularly in battleground states, should head to the voting booth prepared to fight for their vote to be counted: 1. Know where to go. In many states, you will not be allowed to vote if you show up at the wrong polling place. Worse still, you may be given a provisional ballot to vote on that will later be thrown out. Your board of elections can tell you where to vote. If you can't reach the board, a nonpartisan hotline, 1-866-OURVOTE, has a polling place locator. So does the Web site mypollingplace.com. 2. Bring proper ID. The rules vary by state. If you have a photo ID, it's wise to bring it, just in case. Too often, poll workers demand ID when it is not required, or demand the wrong ID. If you do not know the law in your jurisdiction, you should check your local board of elections Web site. 3. Review the sample ballot before voting. Ballots are often confusing, and their designs can change considerably from election to election. And as the infamous butterfly ballot showed in 2000, a poorly designed ballot can trick voters into choosing a candidate they did not intend. If you have questions about how to vote on your ballot, ask a poll worker or poll monitor for help. 4. Check your ballot before finalizing your vote. As we saw in 2000, if punch card chads are not punched out precisely, votes may not be counted. On electronic machines, a brush of the hand can erase or change a vote. On paper ballots, stray or incomplete marks can disqualify a vote. 5. Know your rights concerning provisional ballots. No voter can be turned away in any state this year without being allowed to vote. If there is a question about your eligibility, you must be allowed to vote on a provisional ballot, the validity of which will be determined later. But if you are entitled to vote on a regular ballot, you should insist on doing so, since a provisional ballot may be disqualified later on a technicality. 6. Know where to turn for help. If you experience problems voting, or if you see anything improper at the polls, you may want to get help. There will be nonpartisan poll monitors at many polling places. (There may also be partisan poll watchers, and it's possible one of them may be the person objecting to your voting.) It is a good idea to bring a cellphone, and phone numbers of nonpartisan hotlines like the Election Protection program's 1-866-OURVOTE and Common Cause's 1-866-MYVOTE1. 7. Be prepared for long lines. In some precincts, the wait may stretch into hours. Try to get to your polling place very early in the morning, or between the before-work and after-work rushes. As long as you are in line before the polls close, you are legally entitled to vote. Do not let poll workers close the polls until you have voted. Making Votes Count: Editorials in this series remain online at http://www.nytimes.com/makingvotescount --- additional advice from truemajority.org If you are confused about ANYTHING or feel you are being harassed, ask the official poll workers to help. Do not rely on fellow citizens for advice about the ballot, how the voting machines work, or why you are not on the rolls. If someone is challenging your right to vote, ask the poll workers to intervene. If someone harasses you, don't cause a ruckus. Just ignore the harasser, report it to a poll worker, and let the voting process continue. What kinds of things might somebody try? Well, in the past people have insisted on more ID than is required or argued that someone is at the wrong polling place. If something goes wrong, document it. Write down what happened, when, and descriptions of the people involved, including their names, if you can get them. If you have a camera or camera-phone, take pictures. Report voting problems to an organization ready to respond to problems at the polls: Common Cause: Call 1-866-MYVOTE1. This is a hotline you can call to report any voting problems. 1-866-OUR-VOTE. This hotline has been set up by a coalition of nonpartisan groups to deal with the most serious problems on Election Day. They have hundreds of lawyers standing by to immediately respond to the most egregious problems. 1-866-OUR-VOTE is the 911 of voter suppression hotlines. Please don't call unless your problem is serious enough that you have to talk to a lawyer immediately. Contact the media. If something is going terribly wrong at a polling site and you have reported it to the folks
[pjnews] An Election Spoiled Rotten
Sorry I've been sending out so much the past couple of days. I've come across a lot of last minute election stuff. Scott http://snipurl.com/a7i8 Deputy tackles, arrests journalist for photographing voters http://snipurl.com/abm5 Complaint Sheets in Hand, Army of Volunteers Watches Over Florida's Voting http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1101-08.htm Wal-Mart, A Discreet Player in US Presidential Campaign -- RUN-UP TO ELECTION EXPOSES WIDESPREAD BARRIERS TO VOTING Some public and Party officials focus on preventing rather than encouraging voting, while dirty tricks campaigns seek to intimidate voters and discourage participation. With just hours left before final voting in the 2004 election, it is clear that barriers to voting have arisen in recent months and days that could pose enormous risk for voter disenfranchisement, particularly among minority, immigrant and low-income Americans, according to a report released by three national voting rights organizations: People For the American Way Foundation, the NAACP, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. While some challenges have been resolved in voters' favor, and other situations are changing hour by hour, it is clear that significant challenges remain. You can view the report at http://interactive.pfaw.org/pdf/BarriersToVoting.pdf - http://snipurl.com/abpf An Election Spoiled Rotten by Greg Palast / November 01, 2004 It's not even Election Day yet, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign is already down by a almost a million votes. That's because, in important states like Ohio, Florida and New Mexico, voter names have been systematically removed from the rolls and absentee ballots have been overlookedoverwhelmingly in minority areas, like Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, where Hispanic voters have a 500 percent greater chance of their vote being spoiled. Investigative journalist Greg Palast reports on the trashing of the election. John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not one ballot has yet been counted. He's also losing big time in Colorado and Ohio; and he's way down in Florida, though the votes won't be totaled until Tuesday night. Through a combination of sophisticated vote rustlingethnic cleansing of voter rolls, absentee ballots gone AWOL, machines that spoil votesJohn Kerry begins with a nationwide deficit that could easily exceed one million votes. The Urge To Purge Colorado Secretary of State Donetta Davidson just weeks ago removed several thousand voters from the state's voter rolls. She tagged felons as barred from voting. What makes this particularly noteworthy is that, unlike like Florida and a handful of other Deep South states, Colorado does not bar ex-cons from voting. Only those actually serving their sentence lose their rights. There's no known, verified case of a Colorado convict voting illegally from the big house. Because previous purges have wiped away the rights of innocents, federal law now bars purges within 90 days of a presidential election to allow a voter to challenge their loss of civil rights. To exempt her action from the federal rule, Secretary Davidson declared an emergency. However, the only emergency in Colorado seems to be President Bush's running dead, even with John Kerry in the polls. Why the sudden urge to purge? Davidson's chief of voting law enforcement is Drew Durham, who previously worked for the attorney general of Texas. This is what the Lone Star State's current attorney general says of Mr. Durham: He is, unfit for public office... a man with a history of racism and ideological zealotry. Sounds just right for a purge that affects, in the majority, non-white voters. From my own and government investigations of such purge lists, it is unlikely that this one contains many, if any, illegal voters. But it does contain Democrats. The Dems may not like to shout about this, but studies indicate that 90-some percent of people who have served time for felonies will, after prison, vote Democratic. One suspects Colorado's Republican secretary of state knows that. Ethnic Cleansing Of The Voter Rolls We can't leave the topic of ethnically cleansing the voter rolls without a stop in Ohio, where a Republican secretary of state appears to be running to replace Katherine Harris. In Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), some citizens have been caught Registering While Black. A statistical analysis of would-be voters in Southern states by the watchdog group Democracy South indicates that black voters are three times as likely as white voters to have their registration requests returned (i.e., subject to rejection). And to give a boost to this whitening of the voter rolls, for the first time since the days of Jim Crow, the Republicans are planning mass challenges of voters on Election Day. The GOP's announced plan to block 35,000 voters in Ohio ran up against the wrath of federal judges; so, in Florida, what appear to be similar plans had been kept
[pjnews] reflections the morning after
Nothing's officially final at the time I'm sending this out, but with a Bush win seeming certain, here are some thoughts... When in despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have always been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. -- Gandhi The arc or the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. ---Martin Luther King, Jr. - http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040920s=zinn The Optimism of Uncertainty by Howard Zinn In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. A revolution to overthrow the czar of Russia, in that most sluggish of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most advanced imperial powers but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Who would have predicted the bizarre shifts of World War II--the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German Army rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of Stalingrad, followed by the defeat of the German army, with Hitler huddled in his Berlin bunker, waiting to die? And then the postwar world, taking a shape no one could have drawn in advance: The Chinese Communist revolution, the tumultuous and violent Cultural Revolution, and then another turnabout, with post-Mao China renouncing its most fervently held ideas and institutions, making overtures to the West, cuddling up to capitalist enterprise, perplexing everyone. No one foresaw the disintegration of the old Western empires happening so quickly after the war, or the odd array of societies that would be created in the newly independent nations, from the benign village socialism of Nyerere's Tanzania to the madness of Idi Amin's adjacent Uganda. Spain became an astonishment. I recall a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade telling me that he could not imagine Spanish Fascism being overthrown without another bloody war. But after Franco was gone, a parliamentary democracy came into being, open to Socialists, Communists, anarchists, everyone. The end of World War II left two superpowers with their respective spheres of influence and control, vying for military and political power. Yet they were unable to control events, even in those parts of the world considered to be their respective spheres of influence. The failure of the Soviet Union to have its way in Afghanistan, its decision to withdraw after almost a decade of ugly intervention, was the most striking evidence that even the possession of thermonuclear weapons does not guarantee domination over a determined population. The United States has faced the same reality. It waged a full-scale war in lndochina, conducting the most brutal bombardment of a tiny peninsula in world history, and yet was forced to withdraw. In the headlines every day we see other instances of the failure of the presumably powerful over the presumably powerless, as in Brazil, where a grassroots movement of workers and the poor elected a new president pledged to fight destructive corporate power. Looking at this catalogue of huge surprises, it's clear that the struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience--whether by blacks in Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Vietnam, or workers and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union itself. No cold calculation of the balance of power need deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just. I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?), but I keep
[pjnews] On expatriation
see also: http://snipurl.com/adl9 Unhappy Democrats Need to Wait to Get Into Canada and pretty fascinating and kind of funny article- http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1103-29.htm Electing to Leave: A Readers Guide to Expatriating on November 3rd http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1103-28.htm Ten Reasons Not to Move to Canada by Sarah Anderson Ready to say screw this country and buy a one-way ticket north? Here are some reasons to stay in the belly of the beast. 1. The Rest of the World. After the February 2003 antiwar protests, the New York Times described the global peace movement as the world's second superpower. Their actions didn't prevent the war, but protestors in nine countries have succeeded in pressuring their governments to pull their troops from Iraq and/or withdraw from the so-called coalition of the willing. Antiwar Americans owe it to themajority of the people on this planet who agree with them to stay and do what they can to end the suffering in Iraq and prevent future pre-emptive wars. 2. People Power Can Trump Presidential Power. The strength of social movements can be more important than whoever is in the White House. Example: In 1970, President Nixon supported the Occupational Safety and Health Act, widely considered the most important pro-worker legislation of the last 50 years. It didn't happen because Nixon loved labor unions, but because union power was strong. Stay and help build the peace, economic justice, environmental and other social movements that can make change. 3. The great strides made in voter registration and youth mobilization must be built on rather than abandoned. 4. Like Nicaraguans in the 1980s, Iraqis Need U.S. Allies. After Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984, progressives resisted the urge to flee northwards and instead stayed to fight the U.S. governments secret war of arming the contras in Nicaragua and supporting human rights atrocities throughout Central America. Iraq is a different scenario, but we can still learn from the U.S.-Central America solidarity work that exposed illegal U.S. activities and their brutal consequences and ultimately prevailed by forcing a change in policy. 5. We Can't Let up on the Free Trade Front Activists have held the Bush administration at bay on some issues. On trade, opposition in the United States and in developing countries has largely blocked the Bush administrations corporate-driven trade agenda for four years. The President is expected to soon appoint a new top trade negotiator to break the impasse. Whoever he picks would love to see a progressive exodus to Canada. 6. Barak Obama. His victory to become the only African-American in the U.S. Senate was one of the few bright spots of the election. An early opponent of the Iraq war, Obama trounced his primary and general election opponents, even in white rural districts, showing he could teach other progressives a few things about broadening their base. As David Moberg of In These Times puts it, Obama demonstrates how a progressive politician can redefine mainstream political symbols to expand support for liberal policies and politicians rather than engage in creeping capitulation to the right. 7. Say so long to the DLC. Barry Goldwater suffered a resounding defeat when he ran for president against Lyndon Johnson in 1964, but his campaign spawned a conservative movement that eventually gained control of the Republican Party and elected Ronald Reagan in 1980. Progressives should see the excitement surrounding Dean, Kucinich, Moseley Braun, and Sharpton during the primary season as the foundation for a similar takeover of the Democratic Party. 8. 2008. President Bush is entering his second term facing an escalating casualty rate in Iraq, a record trade deficit, a staggering budget deficit, sky-high oil prices, and a deeply divided nation. As the Republicans face likely failure, progressives need to start preparing for regime change in 2008 or sooner. Remember that Nixon was re-elected with a bigger margin than Bush, but faced impeachment within a year. 9. Americans are Not All Yahoos. Although I wouldn't attempt to convince a Frenchman of it right now, many surveys indicate that Americans are more internationalist than the election results suggest. In a September poll by the University of Maryland, majorities of Bush supporters expressed support for multilateral approaches to security, including the United States being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (68%), the International Criminal Court (75%), the treaty banning land mines (66%), and the Kyoto Treaty on climate change (54%). The problem is that most of these Bush supporters weren't aware that Bush opposed these positions. Stay and help turn progressive instincts into political power. 10. Winter. Average January temperature in Ottawa: 12.2°F. Sarah Anderson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.
[pjnews] Hanging in there / reasons for hope
from moveon.org: We'll admit to being heartbroken by the outcome of yesterday's election. It's a dark day. But this afternoon, we received this email: Subject: Running for Congress Eli, In light of what happened yesterday, my friend and I have decided to get personally involved. He wants to run for Congress in 2006, and I'm his campaign manager at this point. Do you know of a good information source for how we handle the legalities of forming a campaign, opening bank accounts, registering with the FEC, etc? Thanks, Chris We have suffered a defeat, but we are not defeated. And our heartache does not diminish our pride in what you've done. We're proud about Wisconsin, where MoveOn volunteers turned out over 27,000 voters and Kerry won by only 11,813 votes. And New Hampshire, a former Bush state where we turned out 9,820 of the people on our list and Kerry won by 9,171 votes. Other groups were working with us in both states, but it's clear volunteers were at least partly responsible for the margin of victory. We're proud about Ken Salazar, the newest Senator from Colorado, whose campaign was fueled by the donations of thousands of MoveOn members. We're proud that before he conceded this morning, John Kerry called to thank all of you for what we did to help his campaign. Most of all, we are so proud of all of you, the MoveOn members who worked so hard and gave so much to take back America. Yesterday, over 70,000 of us worked from before 5am Eastern to 8pm Pacific, getting voters to the polls. At 4:50am in Florida, we heard from our lead organizers that hundreds of precinct leaders had checked in and were on their way to the polls. In Columbus, with three hours to go, we sent out a final message saying It's not too late! Help volunteer. Within minutes, two dozen people came running up the stairs in the rain, wanting to know, What can we do? Put us to work! One volunteer whose car broke down ran home, grabbed her bike, and biked from house to house in the thunderstorm, knocking on doors and reminding people to vote. That you put so much into this effort makes the loss more painful in some ways. But the fact that so many of us were involved offers true hope for the future of democracy. In the campaign to defeat George Bush, you have proven that real Americans can have a voice in American politics. In the months and years to come, that revelation will change everything. [...] Today, we'll take a breath. Tomorrow, we'll keep moving toward the America we know is possible. - from truemajority.org: What a difference four years makes. For the first time in decades, the number of people voting went way up. The number of folks who actually got involved in the election went through the roof. But the change was far deeper than that. Big money was still monumental, but little money collected online from lots of people added up to big money. More important, the things that really mattered in the end were accomplished by an army of regular folks. Millions of doors were knocked on, and even more calls to new voters were made. Regular people who were never political activists held house parties to share their enthusiasm with friends. Quite simply, politics went from something we watched on TV to something we all did. --- http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2626 Don't Mourn, Organize by United for Peace and Justice November 3rd, 2004 In the wake of Bushs election, time to regroup and take the long view: The bad news is obvious and awful, but the good news is that our movement continues to grow. Here at United for Peace and Justice we share with millions of people around the country and millions more around the world a sense of horror about what happened on election day. The largest grassroots electoral mobilization in memory was not strong enough to unseat George W. Bush. We are upset by the outcome, and disgusted that the politics of fear have been so fine-tuned by Karl Rove and company. We are outraged by the voter intimidation, vote suppression, and other tactics of disenfranchisement used before and on November 2. But we are not totally surprised by the outcome of this election. For more than 40 years the right wing has been planning, organizing, fund raising, and executing strategies for taking control of this country. With George W. Bush and the so-called war on terror, they have found the perfect instrument for consolidating their power. Weve known for a long time what we are up against. We worked with all our might to stop the U.S. from going to war against Iraq, but we could not prevent it, even with 10 million people taking to the streets simultaneously around the world on February 15, 2003. We have all been working hard to end that war and occupation and to bring the troops home, and even though the lies behind the war have been exposed, we have not yet succeeded. At the same time, every day we are inspired by the outpouring of energy and creativity
[pjnews] Evidence Mounts That Vote Was Hacked
It sounds conspiratorial at first glance, but the article makes a quite convincing argument... -- Congressional Representatives John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida requested on Friday that the General Accounting Office (GAO) conduct an investigation into numerous voting and e-voting irregularities across at least seven states. See the letter they sent at: http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4188 and read more about their request at: http://snipurl.com/agea There's only a ten day window in which any candidate can challenge the election results. Note that five of those days have already passed. This topic is also beeing discussed on Air America Radio's Randi Rhodes Show. See the stunning graphic contrasting exit polls with voting machine tallies at http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/main.html Black Box Voting - one of the leading groups doing voting machine investigations - has already filed more than 3000 Freedom of Information Act requests, and desperately needs money and lawyers to investigate these otherwise untraceable paperless problems. For more info, visit http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ see also: http://michiganimc.org/feature/display/7644/index.php Outrage in Ohio: Angry Residents Storm State House -- http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm Published on Saturday, November 6, 2004 Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked by Thom Hartmann When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat. It was practice for a national effort, Fisher told me. And some believe evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004. The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling. While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida's counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking the results seem to contain substantial anomalies. In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry. In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush. The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush. Yet in the touch-screen counties, where investigators may have been more vigorously looking for such anomalies, high percentages of registered Democrats generally equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry. (I had earlier reported that county size was a variable this turns out not to be the case. Just the use of touch-screens versus optical scanners.) More visual analysis of the results can be seen at http://us together.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm, and www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm. Note the trend line the only variable that determines a swing toward Bush was the use of optical scan machines. One possible explanation for this is the Dixiecrat theory, that in Florida white voters (particularly the rural ones) have been registered as Democrats for years, but voting Republican since Reagan. Looking at the 2000 statistics, also available on Dopp's site, there are similar anomalies, although the trends are not as strong as in 2004. But some suggest the 2000 election may have been questionable in Florida, too. One of the people involved in Dopp's analysis noted that it may be possible to determine the validity of the rural Democrat theory by comparing Florida's white rural counties to those of Pennsylvania, another swing state but one that went for Kerry, as the exit polls there predicted. Interestingly, the Pennsylvania analysis, available at
[pjnews] New York Times Killed Bush Bulge Story
Fairness Accuracy In Reporting Media analysis, critiques and activism http://www.fair.org/press-releases/bush-bulge.html PRESS RELEASE: New York Times Killed Bush Bulge Story November 5, 2004 Five days before the presidential election, the New York Times killed a story about the mysterious object George W. Bush wore on his back during the presidential debates, journalist Dave Lindorff reveals in an exclusive report on this week's CounterSpin, FAIR's weekly radio show. The spiked story included compelling photographic and scientific evidence that would have contradicted Bush's claim that the bulge on his back was just a matter of poor tailoring. The New York Times assigned three editors to this story and had it scheduled to run five days before the election, which would have raised questions about the president's integrity, said Lindorff. But it was killed by top editors at the Times; clearly they were chickening out of taking this on before the election. Lindorff says two other major newspapers, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, also decided not to pursue the story, which featured a leading NASA satellite photo imaging scientist's analysis of pictures of the presidents back from the first debate. The Times' bulge story is the latest example of possible self-censorship by major news media during the election campaign. In September, CBS's 60 Minutes decided to delay until after the election an investigative segment that questioned the Bush administration's use of forged Niger uranium documents in making its case for the Iraq war, saying that it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election (New York Times, 9/25/04; FAIR Action Alert, 9/28/04). And on September 10, CNN reporter Nic Robertson said of a CNN documentary on Saudi Arabia, I don't want to prejudge our executives here at CNN... but I think we can be looking forward to [it] shortly after the U.S. elections. The segment is now scheduled to air this Sunday, five days after the election. Lindorff first broke the story of the bulge in Salon (10/8/04). His latest report, Was Bush Wired? Sure Looks Like It, was published October 30 on MotherJones.com (www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/11/10_407.html). CounterSpin provides a critical examination of major media stories every week, exposing issues the mainstream press misses. It is heard on more than 130 noncommercial stations across the United States and Canada, and can also be heard on FAIR's website. To listen to Lindorff's CounterSpin interview (available in Real Audio in MP3 format), go to: www.fair.org/counterspin/110504.html. The interview begins 17 minutes and 30 seconds into the show. from: http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/11/10_407.html ...The White House position on the issue of the bulge has shifted over time. When the bulge was first reported by this writer in Salon on Oct. 8, the White House claimed that it didn't exist -- suggesting that photos depicting a rectangular bulge had been doctored. When it was explained that in fact the photos had been taken directly off of broadcasts of the debate, and that the bulge could be clearly seen in stop-frames of the Fox News pool broadcast, the White House fell back on the claim that the bulge was a pucker in an ill-tailored suit -- the explanation given to the New York Times, which ran one news report on the issue, on Oct. 9. While the mainstream media for the most part failed to press the matter further, Charles Gibson of ABC's Good Morning America show, in an interview with the president, did ask him for an explanation. Bush replied that the bulge had been the result of a poorly tailored shirt. Gibson didn't press the matter, and didn't ask about the bulges that were evident during the subsequent debates. A call to the Bush campaign press office on Oct. 29 elicited the same response: it was a badly tailored shirt. The problem, of course, is that with photos showing that the bulge was apparent at all three debates, this would mean that the president either wore the same bad shirt on all three occasions (he changed jackets and ties), or that he has a whole wardrobe of similarly ill-fitting shirts. [...] Alex Darbut, technical and business development vice president at Resistance Technology, Inc. of Arden Hills, MN, a company that makes back-mounted transceivers that link to wireless earpieces hidden in the ear canal, says he is certain the president was wearing such a device. Darbut, whose company sells such a device to the military and to professionals, including actors and people in communications, says, There's no question about it. It's a pretty obvious one -- larger than most because it probably has descrambling capability. If the president were wearing a wire, the second question would be: was he cheating and getting help with his answers? His behavior during all three debates left many viewers wondering. During the first debate, there were those two
[pjnews] A Brief History of Election Fraud in America
Washington Post - In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials misjudged the amount of data that could be stored electronically by a computer. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29190-2004Nov5.html Associated Press/ABC - Voters nationwide reported some 1,100 problems with electronic voting machines on Tuesday, including trouble choosing their intended candidates. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=220927 Miami Herald - An article titled Defective Software Lost Votes states, Attorneys scrutinizing the close vote on Amendment Four noticed that vote totals changed in an unexpected way after 13,000 final ballots were counted. Election officials quickly determined the problem was caused by the Unity Software. The glitch was discovered two years ago, and should have been corrected by software manufacturer ESS. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/10099198.htm CNN - An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.problems.ap/index.html USA Today - Nearly one in three voters, including about half of those in Florida, were expected to cast ballots using ATM-style voting machines that computer scientists have criticized for their potential for software glitches, hacking and malfunctioning. Most of the machines, including all of Florida's, lack paper records that could be used to verify the electronic results in a recount. Over 20 percent of the machines tested by observers around the country failed to record votes properly. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2004-11-03-evote-trouble_x.htm These are only a few of the many problems that we know about. How many more votes were changed or disappeared that we don't know about? We will never know. For more powerful information on this, the excellent documentary Votergate takes us on a fact-finding mission across the US revealing stunning evidence of defects and outright fraud in electronic voting. Engaging interviews with whistleblowers and courageous Americans, including members of Congress and top elections officials, reveal critical information which the mass media has given very little coverage. Don't miss this powerful 30-minute documentary available free at http://www.votergate.tv The Problem Goes Deeper. Below are excerpts from a riveting article which goes to the very core of the problem. The author's father and uncle uncovered serious elections fraud years ago and suffered severely for trying to reveal the truth. In 1992, they published the book Votescam which exposed major elections fraud, only to have it effectively banned. They both died young in the 1990s. Please pass on this powerful information which is so vital to the future of democracy. Invite all of your friends and colleagues to forward this message, and to join together in calling for election reform. For the full original article, see http://www.truthout.com/docs_03/102503C.shtml A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America (Excerpts) By Victoria Collier Squadrons of shiny new touch screen Trojan horses are being rolled into precincts across America. Not, as we are told, to make voting easier or more accurate. The real reason America is being flooded with billions of dollars worth of paperless computerized voting machines is so that no one will be able to prove vote fraud. These machines are not just unverifiable, they are secretly programmed. Their software is not open to scrutiny by election officials or computer experts. They are also equipped with modems accessible by computer, telephone, and satellite. We the People are responsible for taking back the control of our democratic process. No one else will do it for us. We cannot afford to be naive, or uneducated at this time in history. In order to fully understand theextent of the corruption we are dealing with, and to avoid making dangerous mistakes based on ignorance, we must understand the history, and the power structure, behind vote fraud in America. I grew up with two men who spent twenty-five years investigating vote fraud in America: James and Kenneth Collier, my father and uncle. Their book, Votescam: The Stealing of America was published in 1992 and immediately banned by the major book chains, which listed the book as out of print and actively worked to prevent its sale. Votescam chronicles the Collier brother's groundbreaking investigation into America's multi-billion dollar election rigging industry, and the corporate government and media officials who control it. [First five chapters available free online] The Votescam investigation beganin 1970, in -- surprise! -- Dade County, Florida, where Ken ran for Congress (with Jim as his campaign manager). Ken was rigged out of the election through a vote scam, which the Colliers later discovered was used throughout the country for decades. It went like this: The local newscaster would
[pjnews] No Surrender
http://snipurl.com/agdx No Surrender By PAUL KRUGMAN, OP-ED COLUMNIST New York Times November 5, 2004 President Bush isn't a conservative. He's a radical - the leader of a coalition that deeply dislikes America as it is. Part of that coalition wants to tear down the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, eviscerating Social Security and, eventually, Medicare. Another part wants to break down the barriers between church and state. And thanks to a heavy turnout by evangelical Christians, Mr. Bush has four more years to advance that radical agenda. Democrats are now, understandably, engaged in self-examination. But while it's O.K. to think things over, those who abhor the direction Mr. Bush is taking the country must maintain their intensity; they must not succumb to defeatism. This election did not prove the Republicans unbeatable. Mr. Bush did not win in a landslide. Without the fading but still potent aura of 9/11, when the nation was ready to rally around any leader, he wouldn't have won at all. And future events will almost surely offer opportunities for a Democratic comeback. I don't hope for more and worse scandals and failures during Mr. Bush's second term, but I do expect them. The resurgence of Al Qaeda, the debacle in Iraq, the explosion of the budget deficit and the failure to create jobs weren't things that just happened to occur on Mr. Bush's watch. They were the consequences of bad policies made by people who let ideology trump reality. Those people still have Mr. Bush's ear, and his election victory will only give them the confidence to make even bigger mistakes. So what should the Democrats do? One faction of the party is already calling for the Democrats to blur the differences between themselves and the Republicans. Or at least that's what I think Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council means when he says, We've got to close the cultural gap. But that's a losing proposition. Yes, Democrats need to make it clear that they support personal virtue, that they value fidelity, responsibility, honesty and faith. This shouldn't be a hard case to make: Democrats are as likely as Republicans to be faithful spouses and good parents, and Republicans are as likely as Democrats to be adulterers, gamblers or drug abusers. Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country; blue states, on average, have lower rates of out-of-wedlock births than red states. But Democrats are not going to get the support of people whose votes are motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay rights (and, in the background, opposition to minority rights). All they will do if they try to cater to intolerance is alienate their own base. Does this mean that the Democrats are condemned to permanent minority status? No. The religious right - not to be confused with religious Americans in general - isn't a majority, or even a dominant minority. It's just one bloc of voters, whom the Republican Party has learned to mobilize with wedge issues like this year's polarizing debate over gay marriage. Rather than catering to voters who will never support them, the Democrats - who are doing pretty well at getting the votes of moderates and independents - need to become equally effective at mobilizing their own base. In fact, they have made good strides, showing much more unity and intensity than anyone thought possible a year ago. But for the lingering aura of 9/11, they would have won. What they need to do now is develop a political program aimed at maintaining and increasing the intensity. That means setting some realistic but critical goals for the next year. Democrats shouldn't cave in to Mr. Bush when he tries to appoint highly partisan judges - even when the effort to block a bad appointment fails, it will show supporters that the party stands for something. They should gear up for a bid to retake the Senate or at least make a major dent in the Republican lead. They should keep the pressure on Mr. Bush when he makes terrible policy decisions, which he will. It's all right to take a few weeks to think it over. (Heads up to readers: I'll be starting a long-planned break next week, to work on a economics textbook. I'll be back in January.) But Democrats mustn't give up the fight. What's at stake isn't just the fate of their party, but the fate of America as we know it.
[pjnews] Examining the exit polls
The figures in the chart at the end of this e-mail are really quite amazing. If the formatting is screwed up in your e-mail, I encourage all of you to view it at this address: http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=405 [excerpted] Odds of Bush gaining by 4 percent in all exit polling states 1 in 50,000; By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor A statistical analysis of exit polling conducted for RAW STORY by a former MIT mathematics professor has found the odds of Bush making an average gain of 4.15 percent among all 16 states included in the medias 4 p.m. exit polling is 1 in 50,000, or .002 percent. The analysis, conducted by former Associate Professor of Mathematics David Anick, also ruled out any significance of a variance between electronic voting and paper ballot states, which RAW STORY reported last week. In fact, the non-electronic voting states of New York and New Hampshire had higher gains for President Bush than states in the exit polls using some electronic voting: Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada and West Virginia. [...] Many of the states, however, including crucial swing states like Florida, Ohio and New Hampshire use optical scan technology which counts the paper ballots. Since these systems use Windows machines and a simple database (many of which are connected by modems to a central tabulator), these states are subject to hacking as well. The site chose to use the 4 p.m. exit polling because it polled the largest number of states, which would provide a larger sample. The National Election Pool refuses to release any of their exit polling on any other states, or to break it down by county, without being paid. On average, Bush made a gain of 4.15 percent when the reported vote was tallied in all sixteen states included in the reported 4 p.m. exit polling conducted by the National Election Pool. The gain was calculated by taking the difference between Kerry and Bush in the exit poll and comparing it with the difference between Kerry and Bush in the reported vote. Anick reasons that there are four possible causes of the Bush gains. (1) Significantly greater lying or refusal to speak to pollsters in Bush voters versus Kerry voters; (2) Consistent/systematic errors in weighting demographic groups; (3) A surge of Bush voters after 4 p.m., in all states; (4) Systematic tampering/hacking of reported vote totals, in Bushs favor. In no state did Bush have a loss. Bushs support in the reported vote tallies went up in every single state compared with the exit polling. The Pool conducts exit polling paid for by the Associated Press and five television networks, which is used in part for calling winners. Besides New Hampshire and New York, Bush also made sizable gains in Florida, 7.0 percent, Pennsylvania, 4.8 percent, and Colorado, 4.6 percent. Exit polling is used in many foreign countries to determine the legitimacy of the reported results; some note that in the American situation, however, the variance is not of the size at which foreign observers would question an election. RAW STORY and Dr. Anick have called for the release of the full exit polling for all states by county. No real conclusion can be drawn without all the data, and county by county exit polling would be the best means for examining claims of fraud. The National Election Pools spokesman, at CBS News, has not returned repeated calls for comment. Exit Polling Reported Vote State Kerry BushDiff. Kerry BushDiff. Bush Gain AR 45 54 -9 45 54 -9.80.8 CO 49 50 -1 47 52 -5.64.6 FL 51 49 2 47 52 -5.07.0 IA 50 49 1 49 50 -0.91.9 MI 52 46 6 51 48 3.42.6 MN 52 46 6 51 48 3.52.5 MO 47 52 -5 46 53 -7.32.3 NH 54 44 10 50 49 1.48.6 NJ 54 44 10 53 46 6.23.8 NM 50 48 2 49 50 -1.13.1 NV 49 48 1 48 50 -2.63.6 NY
[pjnews] How Bush Became President
http://snipurl.com/ai3e Warren's vote tally walled off Alone in Ohio, officials cited homeland security By Erica Solvig ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Enquirer staff writer Friday, November 5, 2004 LEBANON - Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns. County officials say they took the action Tuesday night for homeland security, although state elections officials said they didn't know of any other Ohio county that closed off its elections board. Media organizations protested, saying it violated the law and the public's rights. The Warren results, delayed for hours because of long lines that extended voting past the scheduled close of polls, were part of the last tallies that helped clinch President Bush's re-election. The media should have been permitted into the area where there was counting, Enquirer attorney Jack Greiner said. This is a process that should be done in complete transparency and it wasn't. Warren County Emergency Services Director Frank Young said he had recommended increased security based on information received from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in recent weeks. Commissioners made the security decisions in a closed-door meeting last week, but didn't publicize the restrictions that were made until after polls closed. If we were going to make a judgment, we wanted to err on the side of caution, Commissioner Pat South said Thursday. ... Hindsight is 20-20. There was never any intent to exclude the press. We were trying to protect security. WCPO-TV (Channel 9) News Director Bob Morford said he's never seen anything like it. When he first heard about Warren County's building restrictions, he said he understood concerns that too many people could make the counting process a circus. But he said it's never been a problem in the past, and that the county could have set up a security checkpoint and had people show identification. Frankly, we consider that a red herring, Morford said of the county's homeland security reason. That's something that's put up when you don't know what else to put up to keep us out. James Lee, spokesman with the Ohio Secretary of State's Office in Columbus, said Thursday he hasn't heard of any situations similar to Warren County's building restrictions. He said general security concerns are decided at the local levels. Other counties, such as Butler County, let people watch ballot checkers through a window. Typically, the Warren County commissioners' room is set up as a gathering place for people to watch the votes come in. But that wasn't done this year. And despite being told that there would be an area with telephones set up for the media, those who tried to get into the building on Justice Drive were stopped by a county employee who stood guard outside. After journalists challenged the restriction, reporters were allowed into the building's lobby - two floors below the elections office. A representative of The Associated Press, which had stringers at every Ohio board of elections site, said no such election-night access problems were reported outside of Warren County. County Prosecutor Rachel Hutzel said commissioners were within their rights to restrict building access. Having reporters and photographers around could have interfered with the count, she said.
[pjnews] Situation in Falluja
http://snipurl.com/ak47 Fighting Prevents Falluja Wounded From Getting Help http://snipurl.com/ak49 Red Cross Says Falluja Refugee Situation Dire http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1107-02.htm Holy War: Evangelical Marines Prepare to Battle Barbarians - http://snipurl.com/ak4g BAGHDAD - Insurgent leaders in Falluja probably fled before the American-led offensive and may be coordinating attacks in Iraq that have left scores dead over the past few days, according to American military officials here. [...] This is causing some concern because if Falluja comes up a 'dry hole,' after all the operations, we will have to explain it, said a military official in Baghdad. We will have to address it if this happens. If we don't retain any senior leadership, it may cause backlash. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3996111.stm 'Watching tragedy engulf my city' US and Iraqi forces are locked in desperate street battles against insurgents in the Iraqi city of Falluja. The BBC News website spoke by phone to Fadhil Badrani, a journalist in Falluja who reports for the BBC World Service in Arabic. I am surrounded by thick black smoke and the smell of burning oil. There was a big explosion a few minutes ago and now I can hear gunfire. A US armoured vehicle has been parked on the street outside my house in the centre of the city. From my window, I can see US soldiers moving around on foot near it. They tried to go from house to house but they kept coming under fire. Now they are firing back at the houses, at anything that moves. It is war on the streets. The American troops look like they have given up trying to go into buildings for now and are just trying to control the main roads. I am sitting here on my own, watching tragedy engulf my city. Looks like Kabul I was with some of the Falluja fighters earlier. They looked tired - but their spirits were high and they were singing. Recently, many Iraqis from other parts of the country have been joining the local men against the Americans. No one has had much sleep in the past two days of heavy fighting and of course, it is still Ramadan, so no one eats during the day. I cannot say how many people have been killed but after two days of bombing, this city looks like Kabul. Large portions of it have been destroyed but it is so dangerous to leave the house that I have not been able to find out more about casualties. Mosques silent A medical dispensary in the city centre was bombed earlier. I don't know what has happened to the doctors and patients who were there. It was last place you could get medical attention because the big hospital on the outskirts of Falluja was captured by the Americans on Monday. A lot of the mosques have also been bombed. For the first time in Falluja, a city of 1,200 mosques, I did not hear a single call to prayer this morning. I broke my Ramadan fast yesterday with the last of our food - two potatoes and two tomatoes. The tomatoes were rotten because we have no electricity to run the fridge. My neighbours - a woman and her children - came to see me yesterday. They asked me to tell the world what is happening here. I look at the devastation around me and ask - why? Translation from Arabic by Jumbe Omari Jumbe of bbcarabic.com --- http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1110-28.htm Published on Wednesday, November 10, 2004 by Aljazeera.net Squeezing Jello in Iraq by Scott Ritter The much-anticipated US-led offensive to seize the Iraqi city of Falluja from anti-American Iraqi fighters has begun. Meeting resistance that, while stiff at times, was much less than had been anticipated, US Marines and soldiers, accompanied by Iraqi forces loyal to the interim government of Iyad Allawi, have moved into the heart of Falluja. Fighting is expected to continue for a few more days, but US commanders are confident that Falluja will soon be under US control, paving the way for the establishment of order necessary for nation-wide elections currently scheduled for January 2005. But will it? American military planners expected to face thousands of Iraqi resistance fighters in the streets of Falluja, not the hundreds they are currently fighting. They expected to roll up the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his foreign Islamic militants, and yet to date have found no top-tier leaders from that organization. As American forces surge into Falluja, Iraqi fighters are mounting extensive attacks throughout the rest of Iraq. Far from facing off in a decisive battle against the resistance fighters, it seems the more Americans squeeze Falluja, the more the violence explodes elsewhere. It is exercises in futility, akin to squeezing jello. The more you try to get a grasp on the problem, the more it slips through your fingers. This kind of war, while frustrating for the American soldiers and marines who wage it, is exactly the struggle envisioned by the Iraqi resistance. They know they cannot
[pjnews] Kerry should be glad he lost
worldwide apologies: http://72.3.131.10/gallery/1/ - http://snipurl.com/agds Kerry should be glad he lost ANATOLE KALETSKY The British Times November 04, 2004 FOR THOSE of us who were disappointed, and even horrified, by George W. Bushs return to power there was one consolation in yesterdays result. On the contrary, the previously unmentionable hope for the supporters of liberal politics in America, is that Senator Kerry has done the Democratic Party a favour of immense, historic proportions by losing to Mr Bush. In military history, it is a commonplace that there are certain battles worth losing rather than winning and if ever this were true in politics, then the 2004 US election would be a case in point. To see what I mean, step away from America for a moment and consider the most successful left-of-centre party in the modern world: Britains new Labour Party. Now ask yourself what electoral event laid the foundation for Labours success. This would be the 1992 election, in which a manifestly incompetent Tory Government was unexpectedly and undeservedly returned to power. If Neil Kinnock instead of John Major had won the 1992 election, the devaluation of Black Wednesday would have occurred even sooner. The monetary crisis which undermined the Tories long-established reputation for economic competence would have been blamed on Labours mismanagement. Black Wednesday (or Monday or Tuesday) would almost certainly have brought down the Kinnock Government and would unquestionably have ended Labours hopes of ever again becoming a serious party of government. Indeed, as a very minor contributor to the outcome of the 1992 election through my articles unravelling Labours absurd tax plans, I have often been thanked by friends in the party for inadvertently helping them to avoid the terrible fate awaiting them if they had gained power. So was 2004 a good election to lose, just like 1992 in Britain? Will the Democrats one day thank John Kerry for losing, just as Labour is grateful to Mr Kinnock? This seems distinctly possible, given the challenges now facing America, especially in geopolitics and macroeconomics. Iraq is a mess which Mr Bush created and it is surely fitting that he should be the one forced to clean it up. The same is true of ballooning government deficits, escalating oil prices and the small but growing, threat of a crisis in the US balance of payments leading to an international run on the dollar. Extricating American forces from Iraq will be extremely difficult for Mr Bush, especially if he tries to maintain significant control over its foreign policies and its energy resources. Restoring stability to Iraq, without handing the country over to an overtly anti-Western or theocratic regime will become even harder if Mr Bush decides to pick a fight with Iran over nuclear proliferation or, even worse, if he backs Israel in a pre-emptive military attack. To control Americas public finances will be equally difficult, given that the President and his party are now totally committed to ever-lower taxes, ever-more aggressive military postures and ever-more generous corporate subsidies. It is quite likely, therefore, that in the next year or two President Bush could face a military or economic crisis (or both) and, crucially, that such a crisis would be analogous to Black Wednesday in its political effects. If Mr Bush suffered a serious military setback, either in Iraq or in a broader confrontation involving Iran, Israel and other Middle East countries (not to mention North Korea or Taiwan), the Republicans would lose their reputation as the party of national security, just as the British Tories lost their reputation as the party of economic competence in 1992. The damage to the Republicans national security reputation would be even greater if America were hit by a serious terrorist attack or if withdrawal from Iraq turned into a disorderly Vietnam-style humiliation. On the economic front, the Republicans risk disgrace if they raise taxes or if, as is much more likely in my view, America suffers a financial and inflationary crisis because of its failure to bring the federal budget back under control. But even if the Bush Administration manages to avoid any such disasters, the analogy with Britain in the early 1990s suggests that the Democrats should be grateful to stay out of the White House for the next four years. The electorates decision to let Mr Bush clear up his own messes does not just threaten the incumbent with poetic justice; more importantly it offers a reprieve from a potential death sentence on the Democrats. If a newly-elected President Kerry were to suffer a terrorist attack or a humiliation in Iraq or some kind of fiscal crisis, the political backlash against the Democrats would be far worse than the damage faced in similar circumstances by Mr Bush. For as hard as Mr Kerry would try to blame the Bush legacy for any such disasters, the public would
[pjnews] Mordecai Vanunu re-arrested
From Voices in the Wilderness... Dear friends, Mordecai Vanunu was re-arrested in Israel this morning. Immediate Solidarity Actions Required for more information go to the following web site: http://www.nonviolence.org/vanunu/ Mordechai Vanunu was arrested this morning in his room at St. George's Cathedral in East Jerusalem, by a huge police force (about 30 armed officers). The pretext for his arrest: Vanunu violated the Draconian restrictions that were imposed on him when he was released from prison in April, by giving interviews to foreign media. The attempt to silence Mordechai Vanunu on this of all days, is an attempt to bury Israel's secret nuclear arsenal together with Yasser Arafat. While the world media and attention are focused on the burial of the Palestinian leader, the Israeli government is attempting to disappear the nuclear whistleblower, whose only crime is revealing the terrible truth that Israel is trying to hide: weapons of mass destruction that are concealed from Israeli citizens and from the world. Mordechai Vanunu is expected to be brought to court on Friday morning, November 12. His supporters will demonstrate outside the courthouse. Details will be sent out later today. Vanunu worked in Israels nuclear program and in the 1980s blew the whistle on Israels secret nuclear weapons program. Vanunu served in the Israeli army and then went to work as a young man in the Dimona nuclear research center in the Negev Desert near his home at Beersheba. The facility harbored an underground plutonium separation plant operated in strictest secrecy. As the years went by he grew increasingly troubled as he realized his work was part of Israel's nuclear bomb program. In 1985, before leaving Dimona, he took extensive photographs inside the factory in order to document the truth for his fellow citizens and the entire world. Vanunu's story, published in Londons Sunday Times on October 5, 1986, gave the world its first authoritative confirmation that tiny Israel had become a major nuclear weapons power, with material for as many as 200 nuclear warheads of advanced design. Mordecai was released from Israels prisons in April 2004 after spending 18 years in prison. Please contact the officials of Israels government to demand the immediate release of Mordecai. A full list of contacts is at the bottom of this email. Other updates on the VitW Website Recently Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has Updated their Iraqi Detainee Website. CPT Iraq has done a thorough job of rechecking with the detainees listed on their detainee files. Some have been released and shared devastating testimony of their detention experience. We encourage new people to join the campaign on behalf of Iraqi detainees, and those already involved to re-energize their efforts. Visit http://vitw.org/archives/647 to learn more. Prayers for Vengeance, More Death... By Dahr Jamail November 11, 2004 This is life in Baghdad today. Visit http://vitw.org/archives/646 to read the article. Lawton Journal, Day Two Voices in the Wilderness members who have served in Iraq as peace witnesses are in Lawton this week to honor and celebrate what they call a courageous stance by Iraq War veteran Camilo Mejia. Visit http://vitw.org/archives/642 to read the Journal. Hands Off Fallujah Photos and more from Recent Actions in the UK for Fallujah http://vitw.org/archives/640 Bushs Impact on the People of the World: Kathy Kelly Kathy Kelly talked to Nora Barrows-Friedman of Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio on November 3rd. This is Kathys take on how we move forward toward a just and sustainable future. http://vitw.org/archives/639 Rise and cry out. Rise and tell the people. You can. I, the bolt, the technician, mechanic? -- Yes, you. You are the secret agent of the people. You are the eyes of the nation. Agent-spy, tell us what you've seen. Tell us what the insiders, the clever ones, have hidden from us. Without you, there is only the precipice. Only catastrophe. I have no choice. I'm a little man, a citizen, one of the people, but I'll do what I have to. I've heard the voice of my conscience and there's nowhere to hide. The world is small, small for Big Brother. I'm on your mission. I'm doing my duty. Take it from me. excerpted from I Am Your Spy by Mordechai Vanunu For the complete poem see: http://nonviolence.org/vanunu/archive/iamyourspy.html Prime Minister Ariel Sharon 3 Kaplan St. Hakirya, Jerusalem 91007 Fax: +972 2 566 4838 Email. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tommy Lapid Minister of Justice 29 Salah al-Din St. Jerusalem 91010 Fax: +972 2 628 5438 Email. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tzahi Hanegbi Minister of Internal Security P.O. Box 18182 Jerusalem 91181 Fax: +972 2 581 1832 Email. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Contact the Israeli Embassy in Washington to demand his release: phone: 202-364-5500 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] fax. 202-364-5607 Public Interreligious Affairs v.(202) 364-5542 Political Department (202)364-5581/2 Press Office (202) 364-5538
[pjnews] Going Down the Stolen Election Road?
http://www.alternet.org/story/20458/ The Nation 10 November 2004 Going Down the Stolen Election Road? By David Corn Before the vote-counting was done, the e-mails started arriving. The election's been stolen! Fraud! John Kerry won! In the following days, these charges flew over the Internet. The basic claim was that the early exit polls which showed Kerry ahead of George W. Bush were right; the vote tallies were rigged. Could this be? Or have ballot booths with electronic voting machines become the new Grassy Knoll for conspiracy theorists? Anyone who questioned the integrity of the nation's voting system before the election or after has had good reason to do so. Electronic voting that does not produce an auditable paper trail is worrisome as is the possibility that the machines can be hacked. The proponents of these systems claim there are sufficient safeguards. But in this election there were numerous reports of e-voting gone bad. Votes cast for one candidate were registered for another. In Broward County, Fla., software subtracted votes rather than added them. In Franklin County, Ohio, an older electronic machine reported an extra 3,893 votes for Bush. Local election officials caught that error. But when I asked Peggy Howell, one of those officials, why the mistake occurred, she replied, We really don't know. Were these errors statistically insignificant glitches that inevitably happen in any large system? It gives us the uneasy feeling that we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is part of the Election Protection Coalition, told Reuters. What has most concerned scientists are problems that are not observable, David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, explained to the Associated Press. The fact that we had a relatively smooth election ... does not change at all the vulnerability these systems have to fraud or bugs. And the 2000 fiasco in Florida demonstrated that non-electronic voting can also have serious problems, which often disproportionately affect low-income counties. Then there's the issue of who is running the show. Only a few companies manufacture electronic voting machines. They are not transparent. They do not use open-source code. Last year, Walden O'Dell, the head of Diebold, a leading manufacturer of touch-screen machines, declared in a fundraising letter for the Ohio Republican Party that he was committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year. That hardly inspired confidence. And across the country, oversight of voting is conducted by partisan officials. In Ohio, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican and conservative activist, oversaw the voting. On his watch, the polling place for Kenyon College was equipped with only two voting machines. Yet about 1,100 people mostly students wanted to vote there. These voters (and you can guess whom they preferred) had to wait up to nine hours. It doesn't require much cynicism to suspect that this was no accident. But did something more foul than minor slip-ups and routine political chicanery occur? Those who say yes at this point are relying more on supposition than evidence. They cite the exit polls to claim the vote count was falsified to benefit Bush. The pollsters say they oversampled women, that their survey takers were not allowed to get close enough to the polls and that Kerry supporters may have been more willing to cooperate with the pollsters than Bush backers. Impossible, huffs pollster/consultant Dick Morris: Exit polls are almost never wrong. But Morris argues that the faulty exit polls are not a sign the vote count was off but an indication that the pollsters deliberately produced pro-Kerry results to try to chill the Bush turnout. (Talk about conspiracy theory.) The screwy exit polls do raise questions, but they are not proof of sabotage. And left-of-center accusers have promoted contradictory theories. Many suggest Diebold and other vendors put in the fix via the paperless touch-screen machines. But other critics including progressive talk show host and author Thom Hartmann also point to a spreadsheet created by an activist named Kathy Dopp that shows what she considers anomalous pro-Bush results in Florida counties that used optical-scan voting, not electronic touch-screen voting. (The optical-scan machines were manufactured by Diebold and the other firms that produce the touch-screen machines.) But Walter Mebane, a Cornell professor, and colleagues at Harvard and Stanford examined this allegation of fraud and concluded that it is baseless. They note that the counties in question are mostly in the conservative Florida Panhandle and have trended strongly Republican over the past twelve years. Making a different we-wuz-robbed claim, journalist Greg Palast, in an article bluntly titled Kerry Won, contends the Democrat would have definitely triumphed
[pjnews] Fallujah and the Reality of War
http://snipurl.com/alyo Odds heavily against US counter-attack succeeding - http://www.counterpunch.org/mahajan11062004.html Will the Anti-War Movement Stand Up This Time? Fallujah and the Reality of War By RAHUL MAHAJAN The assault on Fallujah has started. It is being sold as liberation of the people of Fallujah; it is being sold as a necessary step to implementing democracy in Iraq. These are lies. I was in Fallujah during the siege in April, and I want to paint for you a word picture of what such an assault means. Fallujah is dry and hot; like Southern California, it has been made an agricultural area only by virtue of extensive irrigation. It has been known for years as a particularly devout city; people call it the City of a Thousand Mosques. In the mid-90's, when Saddam wanted his name to be added to the call to prayer, the imams of Fallujah refused. U.S. forces bombed the power plant at the beginning of the assault; for the next several weeks, Fallujah was a blacked-out town, with light provided by generators only in critical places like mosques and clinics. The town was placed under siege; the ban on bringing in food, medicine, and other basic items was broken only when Iraqis en masse challenged the roadblocks. The atmosphere was one of pervasive fear, from bombing and the threat of more bombing. Noncombatants and families with sick people, the elderly, and children were leaving in droves. After initial instances in which people were prevented from leaving, U.S. forces began allowing everyone to leave except for what they called military age males, men usually between 15 and 60. Keeping noncombatants from leaving a place under bombardment is a violation of the laws of war. Of course, if you assume that every military age male is an enemy, there can be no better sign that you are in the wrong country, and that, in fact, your war is on the people, not on their oppressors,, not a war of liberation. The main hospital in Fallujah is across the Euphrates from the bulk of the town. Right at the beginning, the Americans shut down the main bridge, cutting off the hospital from the town. Doctors who wanted to treat patients had to leave the hospital, with only the equipment they could carry, and set up in makeshift clinics all over the city; the one I stayed at had been a neighborhood clinic with one room that had four beds, and no operating theater; doctors refrigerated blood in a soft-drink vending machine. Another clinic, I,m told, had been an auto repair shop. This hospital closing (not the only such that I documented in Iraq) also violates the Geneva Convention. In Fallujah, you were rarely free of the sound of artillery booming in the background, punctuated by the smaller, higher-pitched note of the mujaheddin's hand-held mortars. After even a few minutes of it, you have to stop paying attention to it and yet, of course, you never quite stop. Even today, when I hear the roar of thunder, I,m often transported instantly to April 10 and the dusty streets of Fallujah. In addition to the artillery and the warplanes dropping 500, 1000, and 2000-pound bombs, and the murderous AC-130 Spectre gunships that can demolish a whole city block in less than a minute, the Marines had snipers criss-crossing the whole town. For weeks, Fallujah was a series of sometimes mutually inaccessible pockets, divided by the no-man's-lands of sniper fire paths. Snipers fired indiscriminately, usually at whatever moved. Of 20 people I saw come into the clinic I observed in a few hours, only five were military-age males. I saw old women, old men, a child of 10 shot through the head; terminal, the doctors told me, although in Baghdad they might have been able to save him. One thing that snipers were very discriminating about every single ambulance I saw had bullet holes in it. Two I inspected bore clear evidence of specific, deliberate sniping. Friends of mine who went out to gather in wounded people were shot at. When we first reported this fact, we came in for near-universal execration. Many just refused to believe it. Some asked me how I knew that it wasn't the mujaheddin. Interesting question. Had, say, Brownsville, Texas, been encircled by the Vietnamese and bombarded (which, of course, Mr. Bush courageously protected us from during the Vietnam war era) and Brownsville ambulances been shot up, the question of whether the residents were shooting at their own ambulances, I somehow guess, would not have come up. Later, our reports were confirmed by the Iraqi Ministry of Health and even by the U.S. military. The best estimates are that roughly 900-1000 people were killed directly, blown up, burnt, or shot. Of them, my guess, based on news reports and personal observation, is that 2/3 to were noncombatants. But the damage goes far beyond that. You can read whenever you like about the bombing of so-called Zarqawi safe houses in residential areas in Fallujah, but the reports don't tell you what that means. You
[pjnews] The New GOP: No Policy is Too Right-Wing
see also: http://www.bju.edu/letter Bob Jones University's Congratulatory Letter to Bush --- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=580547 Published on Monday, November 8, 2004 by the lndependent/UK The New Republican Reality: No Policy is Too Right-Wing Conservative Pipedreams are Suddenly Part of America's Mainstream by Andrew Gumbel reports from Los Angeles Where should the United States invade next? Iran, Syria, or Cuba? Will George Bush merely slash taxes on the rich even further in his second term, or will he have the courage to abolish income tax altogether? Will gay marriage simply be outlawed state by state, or will a much-threatened constitutional amendment come into being? These might once have been idle questions for conservative Washington think-tanks. But now, with President Bush safely re-elected for another four years and increased Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, such radical right-wing notions are no longer pipedreams. They are the active stuff of policy discussion. Grass-roots conservatives, many of them religious fundamentalists who paved the way for President Bush's victory in the suburbs and the rural heartland, are positively salivating at the prospect of having their efforts rewarded. I don't know if we're going to abolish the prescription drug benefit [for senior citizens], but we'd like to. It's just an expansion of government, the Republican strategist and direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie said over the weekend. We'd like to see oil and gas exploration increased in the continental United States. We want a constitutional amendment on marriage. We want the culture of life expanded. This wish list and others like it now face little or no opposition in Congress, in the White House or - as the federal bench is increasingly filled with ideological conservatives - the courts. The rest of the world may have thought the first four years of Mr Bush's presidency were quite radical enough, but they could turn out to be just the hors d'oeuvre to a radical-right beanfeast. The New York Times reported yesterday that Vice-President Dick Cheney was supporting the idea of abolishing income tax and replacing it with a flat national sales tax - a highly regressive notion that would effectively shift the tax burden drastically away from the rich to the dwindling middle class and the working poor. In Cuban exile circles in Miami, meanwhile, hardline anti-Castro leaders are getting very excited by a pledge President Bush made in one of his last campaign appearances in Florida to liberate their homeland. Career diplomats at the State Department are getting concerned this might be an indication that military intervention - the first since President Kennedy's disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 - might be seriously contemplated. State Department stalwarts are getting equally alarmed at the prospect - yet to be confirmed - that Colin Powell will depart his post as Secretary of State and open the door to a neo-conservative takeover of foreign and national security policy. A senior State Department official, writing anonymously in the online magazine Salon.com last month, laid out a stark future for US policy in the Middle East in a second Bush term, the first part of which appears to be close to fruition already. The neo-cons, working in tandem with a similar staff in the office of Prime Minister Sharon of Israel, have a three-part agenda for the first part of Bush's second term, he wrote. First, oust Yasser Arafat; second, overthrow the secular Baathist al-Assad dictatorship in Syria; and, third, eliminate, one way or another, Iran's nuclear facilities. The Republicans' domestic agenda is likely to contemplate the further delegation of social services to religious charities, the further concentration of media ownership in a few corporate, largely pro-Republican hands, further moves to restrict or even outlaw abortion, restrictions on the civil rights of gay couples (for example, their right to bequeath property to each other) and increasing challenges to Darwinian evolution in school classrooms. Some of the new faces in the Senate gave a flavour of the kind of politics we can expect out of Washington in the next political cycle. Tom Coburn, newly elected Senator from Oklahoma, is on record saying he thinks doctors who perform abortions should be executed. (So much for the culture of life behind the anti-abortion movement.) Jim DeMint of South Carolina said during his campaign that homosexuals and unmarried pregnant women should not be allowed to teach in public schools. Democrats and many Independents are appalled at the prospects ahead. Since moderation seems unlikely in the immediate future, some of them are left hoping the Republicans will overreach so drastically that it will create a large political backlash. California: Three strikes and jail for life Petty criminals who steal a slice of pizza or a pack of
[pjnews] A Distant Mirror of Holy War
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110904A.shtml Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime -- http://www.commondreams.org/views04/-32.htm A Distant Mirror of Holy War by Norman Solomon The conflict in Iraq has become a holy war. In both directions. On the surface, the most prominent headline on the New York Times front page Nov. 10 was simply matter-of-fact: In Taking Fallujah Mosque, Victory by the Inch. Yet its not mere happenstance that American forces have bombed many of Fallujahs mosques. For public consumption, U.S. military officers -- like their civilian bosses and American journalists -- usually discuss this war in secular, even antiseptic terms. When the Times quoted Marine battalion commander Gary Brandl in another front-page story, on Nov. 6, the lieutenant colonel sounded straightforward: We are going to rid the city of insurgents. If they do fight, we will kill them. However, on the same day, the Associated Press reported that the same Lt. Col. Brandl said: The enemy has got a face. Hes called Satan. Hes in Fallujah, and were going to destroy him. That statement by Brandl -- an officer with 800 soldiers under his command -- caused a bit of stir in some Internet circles. But mainstream U.S. media outlets scarcely noted his holy-warrior declaration. Most news outlets ignored it entirely. Providing a fuller, more revealing quote from Lt. Col. Brandl, the Sunday Times of London included a lead-in sentence: The Marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been attacked by a faceless enemy. But the enemy has got a face. Hes called Satan In other words, Satan started this conflict. And we -- the anti-Satan forces -- fully intend to finish it by destroying him. Sounds very fundamentalist. Sounds a lot like Osama bin Laden. In public-relations terms, the colonel was a tad off-message. Except for occasional lapses, the rhetoric from Washington stops short of proclaiming a crusade against Islamic devils. And the U.S. news coverage rarely fails to detour around the American side of the jihad equation. During a real holy war, of course, the fire and brimstone is not just figurative. Dominating the top half of the New York Times front page on Nov. 10 was a full-color picture with stunning hues and brilliant composition, over this caption: Marines tried to take cover after a phosphorous round, set off to help provide cover for tanks, rained down on the unit. No one was seriously hurt. An article inside mentioned that the phosphorous broke into a hundred flaming pieces ... burning backpacks and gear but seriously hurting no one. Reassuring. Meanwhile, a Washington Post article provided more graphic -- though sketchy -- information about phosphorous. Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water, the Post explained more than 20 paragraphs into the story. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns. The Post quoted hospital physician Kamal Hadeethi: The corpses of the mujaheddin which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted. But such melting of human flesh is an abstraction in U.S. media, as it is apt to be for holy warriors. On NBCs Today show Nov. 9, a network correspondent in Baghdad mentioned phosphorous shells just long enough to say that they are meant to burn through metal bunkers. Presumably a description of effects on human beings would not have gone well with viewers breakfasts. A live report from a CNN correspondent in Fallujah, on Nov. 8, was similarly circumspect: Tanks have been blasting away inside the city, and shells filled with phosphorous -- shells to hide the movement of the Marines inside the city -- have been exploding overhead. The CNN reporter added that, along with gunfire from the city, We have also heard, even from our distance about two kilometers away, chants of Allah Akbar going up from the insurgents, the chants of God is great going up from the insurgents. Lt. Col. Brandl, like his commander in chief, would doubtless scorn such prayerful chants as satanic. The holy warriors from America are blessed with superior military strength, which includes the capacity to melt human flesh ... and to drop large quantities of cluster bombs -- one of the most inhuman weapons on the planet -- from sleek A-10 jets flying over Fallujah. Children often pick up not-yet-exploded cluster bombs because they look like toys. At the outset of the new assault, U.S. forces captured Fallujahs general hospital. In terms of the information war, the hospital was indeed the most strategic of targets, international correspondent Pepe Escobar writes. During the first siege of Fallujah in April, doctors told independent media the real story about the suffering of civilian victims. So this time the Pentagon took no chances: no gory, disturbing
[pjnews] Exit Iraq
The Washington Post 7 November 2004 Exit Iraq By Robert Kuttner President Bush should enjoy his victory celebration while he can. He will soon face the most determined antiwar movement since the 1960s. The Iraq situation is becoming more and more reminiscent of the Vietnam disaster. American troops mostly stay in heavily fortified barracks. When they do venture out, their sweeps don't achieve durable pacification. Militants and young men of fighting age are long gone by the time American bombardments start. The Iraqi casualties include women, children and old people, and the American casualties keep mounting. After the U.S. troops move out of an area, they leave in their wake new sympathizers and recruits for the insurgents. And the pro- visional Iraqi government is even less capable of maintaining order than its Vietnamese counterpart was. It was Howard Dean's antiwar campaign last year that infused energy into rank-and-file Democrats. Antiwar sentiment among Democrats has been kept politely under wraps pending Election Day, but it hasn't gone away. Democrats will now be liberated to mount full-blown protests, and Republicans will be on the defensive. It was several years before opposition to the Vietnam War became a politically potent mainstream protest. This time, a new and mainstream antiwar movement will mature almost overnight. MoveOn.org tried to help get John Kerry elected. Now it will be reborn as a grass-roots antiwar movement. Unlike the Vietnam protests, this one was mainstream from the beginning. The Iraq occupation is one of the worst American blunders ever, as countless experienced diplomats and former intelligence officials keep pointing out. There is no political support in either party to put in the number of troops necessary to secure the place. We can't even seal Iraq's borders, let alone hunt down insurgents. Our very presence is a recruiting poster for every kind of anti-American militant. Prominent critics of the war are counseling an early withdrawal. The Cato Institute, a prominent conservative and libertarian think tank, advocates a U.S. pullout. Hawks insist that America, having made an epic blunder, must nonetheless stay the course, lest Bush's mistaken description of Iraq as a center of world terrorism mutate into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The hawks are right about the risks, but doves are right that the United States needs to exit. The exit strategy, however, must include a long-term stabilization process, lest Iraq face anarchy and civil war or, worse, an Iraq-Iran regional alliance, perhaps with nuclear weapons. In this respect, Iraq is far more dangerous than Vietnam, where, to paraphrase Sen. George Aiken, we could declare defeat and go home without jeopardizing global security. Bush's policy has turned Iraq into a far more dangerous place. That's why we need to combine a U.S. exit with an international stabilization effort. This policy shift would have been easier to achieve for John Kerry, who favored a more multilateral approach. But even Bush will now face heavy pressure, Republican as well as Democratic, to cut American losses. In Bush's second term, the neocon architects who got Bush and America into this calamity will likely lose influence. In Ronald Reagan's second term, the ferocious anti-Soviet rhetoric softened, traditional foreign policy realists took over and Reagan pursued detente. One hopes the same thing will happen with George W. Bush. Bush has borrowed Kerry's proposal for a great-power summit. It's a good beginning -- but don't expect Europe to bail out Bush unless some humble pie is eaten. A serious exit strategy would require the United States to finance much of the cost of a multinational peacekeeping force of at least a quarter-million troops, as well as economic reconstruction money, plus a major role for the United Nations. Can Bush swallow that? He'd better. Most Americans will ultimately conclude: Better their boys than ours, particularly since Iraqis are much less likely to shoot at an international force. It's American presence that's the regional lightning rod. Bush should also appreciate the fact that an early U.S. exit is better domestic politics and better Middle East politics. If he doesn't, he will face a massive popular movement to remind him, as well as growing defections in his own ranks. The United Nations managed the Iraq situation far better than the Bush administration has, and the American people are getting very weary of this war. As his reward for winning reelection, Bush faces a suitable consequence for having gotten us unto this mess. He must now find a decent way out. The writer is co-editor of the American Prospect.
[pjnews] Unseen Wounds of War Cut Deep
http://snipurl.com/ao0q These Unseen Wounds Cut Deep A mental health crisis is emerging, with one in six returning soldiers afflicted, experts say. By Esther Schrader Times Staff Writer November 14, 2004 WASHINGTON Matt LaBranche got the tattoos at a seedy place down the street from the Army hospital here where he was a patient in the psychiatric ward. The pain of the needle felt good to the 40-year-old former Army sergeant, whose memories of his nine months as a machine-gunner in Iraq had left him, he said, feeling dead inside. LaBranche's back is now covered in images, the largest the dark outline of a sword. Drawn from his neck to the small of his back, it is emblazoned with the words LaBranche says encapsulate the war's effect on him: I've come to bring you hell. In soldiers like LaBranche their bodies whole but their psyches deeply wounded a crisis is unfolding, mental health experts say. One out of six soldiers returning from Iraq is suffering the effects of post-traumatic stress and as more come home, that number is widely expected to grow. The Pentagon, which did not anticipate the extent of the problem, is scrambling to find resources to address it. A study by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research found that 15.6% of Marines and 17.1% of soldiers surveyed after they returned from Iraq suffered major depression, generalized anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder a debilitating, sometimes lifelong change in the brain's chemistry that can include flashbacks, sleep disorders, panic attacks, violent outbursts, acute anxiety and emotional numbness. Army and Veterans Administration mental health experts say there is reason to believe the war's ultimate psychological fallout will worsen. The Army survey of 6,200 soldiers and Marines included only troops willing to report their problems. The study did not look at reservists, who tend to suffer a higher rate of psychological injury than career Marines and soldiers. And the soldiers in the study served in the early months of the war, when tours were shorter and before the Iraqi insurgency took shape. The bad news is that the study underestimated the prevalence of what we are going to see down the road, said Dr. Matthew J. Friedman, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Dartmouth Medical School who is executive director of the VA's National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since the study was completed, Friedman said: The complexion of the war has changed into a grueling counterinsurgency. And that may be very important in terms of the potential toxicity of this combat experience. Mental health professionals say they fear the system is not moving fast enough to treat the trauma. They say slowness to recognize what was happening to Vietnam veterans contributed to the psychological devastation from that war. More than 30% of Vietnam veterans eventually suffered from the condition that more than a decade later was given the name post-traumatic stress disorder. But since their distress was not clinically understood until long after the war ended, most went for years without meaningful treatment. When we missed the boat with the Vietnam vets, we didn't get another chance, said Jerry Clark, director of the veterans clinic in Alexandria, Va. When they left the service, they went away not for a month or two but for 10 years. And they came back addicted, incarcerated and all these things. We can't miss the boat again. It is imperative. Experts on post-traumatic stress disorder say it should come as no surprise that some of the soldiers in Iraq are fighting mental illness. Combat stress disorders named and renamed but strikingly alike have ruined lives following every war in history. Homer's Achilles may have suffered from some form of it. Combat stress was documented in the late 19th century after the Franco-Prussian War. After the Civil War, doctors called the condition nostalgia, or soldiers heart. In World War I, soldiers were said to suffer shell shock; in World War II and Korea, combat fatigue or battle fatigue. But it wasn't until 1985 that the American Psychiatric Assn. finally gave a name to the condition that had sent tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans into lives of homelessness, crime or despair. A war like the one in Iraq in which a child is as likely to die as a soldier and unseen enemies detonate bombs presents ideal conditions for its rise. Yet the Army initially sent far too few psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers to combat areas, an Army study released in the summer of 2003 found. Until this year, Congress had allocated no new funds to deal with the mental health effects of the war in Iraq. And when it did earmark money, the sum was minimal: $5 million in each of the next three years. We're gearing ourselves up now and preparing ourselves to meet whatever the need is, but clearly this is something that could not be planned for, said Dr. Alfonso Batres, a psychologist who
[pjnews] Numerous Insiders Have Opposed Bush's Iraq Policy
http://snipurl.com/ao0g Colin Powell, 3 others resign posts in Cabinet Total of 6 won't return for second term of Bush administration While none of the most recent officials to resign cited policy differences as reasons for their departure, here is a list of former insiders and Republican allies who have: http://www.btlonline.org/btlthosewhotold.html Cracks in the Empire: Compilation of insiders who have taken aim at Bush's Iraq Policy by Anna Manzo and Scott Harris Toward Freedom, Summer 2004 When U.S. Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press during the Vietnam War, the 47-volume Defense Department internal study of the U.S. role in Southeast Asian conflicts over three decades was classified top secret. The documents chronicled the lies and deceit employed by government officials to justify U.S. military intervention in the region's wars. Ellsberg -- a strong supporter of the Vietnam War who later became a committed opponent -- faced felony charges that could have put him in prison for 115 years. Those charges were dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct, which led to the conviction of several White House aides. The targeting of Ellsberg was an important factor in the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon. Today, numerous Washington insiders are speaking out against what they allege are Bush administration violations of the public trust: most notably, the justifications cited for pre-emptive war in Iraq. In turn, high-level officials -- former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter -- and others have become victims of smear campaigns reportedly directed from the White House. Compelling charges of secrecy and deception are leveled by former Nixon aide John Dean. In Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, the former counsel to the president-turned whistle-blower reminds us that no one died in the Watergate scandal. Dean, whose testimony helped convince the House Judiciary Committee to vote for articles of impeachment against his former boss, charges that George Bush is guilty of impeachable offenses. Presented here is an alphabetical, annotated list of several prominent government insiders -- many of them Republicans -- who have spoken out against President Bush's decision to launch the Iraq war and his administration's conduct in managing the conflict. - Rand Beers, former anti-terrorism adviser to President George W. Bush, and now John Kerry's homeland security adviser. He said the administration is underestimating the enemy;has failed to address terrorism's root causes; and that difficult, long-term issues at home and abroad have been avoided, neglected or shortchanged and generally under-funded. The Iraq war created fissures in U.S. counterterrorism alliances, he added, and could breed a new generation of al Qaeda recruits. Source: Former Aide Takes Aim at War on Terror, Washington Post, June 16, 2003. Doug Bereuter, retiring Republican Nebraska congressman who broke ranks with his party, reversed his earlier stance, saying the military strike against Iraq is a mistake, and blasted a massive failure of intelligence before the war. Source: Retiring GOP congressman breaks ranks on Iraq, CNN, Aug. 18, 2004 Robert L. Black, a retired Ohio judge of Hamilton County Common Pleas Court and the Ohio First District Court of Appeals, stated publicly that he believes the Republican party candidate's record has a history not only of repeated violations of the key principles underlying our democracy, but of the core values of the Christian faith to which he claims commitment. Black says he will refuse to support his lifelong Republican party in the re-election of the incumbent president. A Republican Declares His Independence, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 13, 2004 Hans Blix, former U.N chief weapons inspector in Iraq and author of Disarming Iraq. Two weeks before attacking Baghdad, the U.S. unsuccessfully pressured him to tell the Security Council that Iraq was violating UN resolutions. He said that if inspections had continued, Iraq may have proven its lack of banned weapons. He also says the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had failed tragically in its aim of making the world a safer place and succeeded only in stimulating terrorism. Sources: U.N. Inspector Writes of Pressure From U.S. on Iraq: Blix's Book Said He Was Challenged About Arms Assessment on Eve of Last Report to Security Council, Washington Post, March 9, 2004. Blix Says Iraq War Stimulated Terrorism, Reuters, Oct. 13, 2003 Paul Bremer, former U.S. official appointed by Bush to govern Iraq after the invasion said that the United States made two major mistakes: not deploying enough troops in Iraq and then not containing the violence and looting immediately after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Source:
[pjnews] Are Afghans Being Poisoned by Anti-Drug Effort?
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/b7c3 Institute for War and Peace Reporting 4 December 2004 Are Afghans Being Poisoned by Anti-Drug Effort? Residents of Kunar and Nangarhar blame aerial eradication of opium poppies for an outbreak of illness, and the government promises to investigate. By Hayatullah Gaheez in Jalalabad and Amanullah Nasrat in Kabul Omardin, a farmer in the Pacheeragam district in Nangarhar province, pointed to the contents of a black plastic bag. Inside, he said, was a substance he claimed was sprayed from an airplane as part of a drug-eradication effort in the country. He said his son has been made ill by the chemicals. I never even bothered to grow poppy, but because of the Americans, my God-given only son is sick, he said, shaking with anger. His skin is sore and his body aches. As his eyes welled up with tears, Omardin vowed, If my son dies, I will join the Taleban, and I will kill as many Americans as I can find. Omardin is not the only person who believes that foreigners - perhaps the Americans - are spraying opium crops with herbicides here as part of a counter-narcotics programme. Eyewitnesses in the eastern provinces of Nangarhar and Kunar have reported seeing aircraft spraying poppy fields. Doctors in the region, meanwhile, said the sudden outbreak of skin diseases and respiratory ailments are due to a mysterious chemical they have so far been unable to identify. Afghan government officials have promised to investigate these claims. Jawed Ludin, spokesman for Afghan president Hamed Karzai, denies that the government authorised such aerial spraying in the Khogiani and Shinwari districts of Nangarhar. An official delegation is now studying soil samples taken from poppy fields in the area. Afghanistan is the worlds biggest producer of opium, accounting for three-quarters of global output. According to newly-released United Nations statistics, opium cultivation in 2004 increased by 64 per cent over the previous year. Worried that Afghanistan may be evolving into a narco-mafia state, the United States, Europe and the United Nations have pledged to get tough on the opium trade. But the US military has insisted that its forces are not involved in crop eradication. US troops are not involved are not involved in eradication, which would include the spraying of poppy fields which we do not do, US military spokesman Major Mark McCann told Agence France-Presse last week. A US embassy spokesperson in Kabul declined to comment, saying questions on the subject could be asked in an upcoming press conference. Last month, however, the US Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA, announced that it had joined with the State Department and the Department of Defence in developing a new Counternarcotics Implementation Plan for Afghanistan. Under the programme, the DEA announced that it will assist in destroying clandestine labs and seizing precursor chemicals, raw opium, and opiate stockpiles. To achieve that, the DEA said it is expanding its presence in Afghanistan by permanently stationing additional special agents and intelligence analysts in the country to enhance Afghanistans counternarcotics capacity. In addition, the DEA announced it would deploy foreign advisory and support teams to Afghanistan early next year to provide guidance and conduct bilateral investigations that will identify, target, and disrupt illicit drug trafficking organisations. These teams, the agency said, will help with the destruction of existing opium storage sites, clandestine heroin processing labs, and precursor chemical supplies. US law enforcement agencies such as the DEA and the FBI already maintain a sizable presence in Afghanistan Haji Din Mohammad, the governor of Nangarhar province, is convinced that aerial eradication is already under way and that the United States is behind it. At a recent press conference, he said, The crops were eradicated, and farmers have seen big planes flying over the fields and spraying. And in a separate press conference, General Mohammad Daoud, deputy interior minister in charge of counter-narcotics characterised aerial eradication as illegal. Asked about official US denials of their involvement in such a programme, Din Mohammad said, They control the airspace, and no plane can fly over Afghanistan without their permission. Local residents blame the Americans for an outbreak of illness. Sayed Asadullah, 47, a resident of Kaga district, Nangarhar province, showed a reporter a dozen children between the ages of 10 and 14 who complained of severe body aches. Abed, 11, said, A few days after the chemicals were sprayed, I found I had a sore throat and this terrible ache. Mohammad Sediq, 14, said his throat was hoarse from the substance sprayed on the fields. Ever since I ate some spinach from our field next to the opium field, I've had a sore throat, he said.
[pjnews] Rich kids go to college, poor ones to Baghdad
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/b4dq Rich kids go to college, poor ones to Baghdad By Tom Woodward Monday 6th December 2004 The New Statesman You're a 14-year-old high school student in the United States, and it's time to choose your electives for the next academic year. What catches your eye? History, music, physical education- or how about the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC)? The programme, partly funded by the US military, and taught by retired armed forces personnel, is styled as an improving educational experience, and couched in the jargon of personal development. Its purported aim is to motivate young people to be better citizens, and on the curriculum are communication skills, leadership, physical fitness, history and citizenship, as well as drug abuse prevention. It also involves military drills with real and dummy firearms, and marksmanship training. (Funding for some of these programmes comes from an obvious source: in late 2003, the JROTC at Channelview High School, near Houston, Texas, received a $14,000 grant from the Friends of the National Rifle Association.) JROTC, which has a membership of 470,000 high school students, is widely seen as a thinly disguised recruitment programme for the military. More serious concerns, however, are about the way JROTC, and similar schemes such as the National Guard Leadership Education programme, target children at public (state) schools in poor areas. In early 2003, the chief executive of the School District of Philadelphia, Paul Vallas, announced plans for a free-standing military high school and an increase in the number of JROTC programmes in schools across the city from eight to 22. John Grant, president of the Philadelphia chapter of Veterans for Peace, led the protest against the plan: The idea of moving military education down the schools gets pretty spooky to me. It's not literally a tool of recruitment. But it is a tool of indoctrination. I would like these kids to have more options, like college. As in Philadelphia, public schools in Chicago are filled overwhelmingly with poor, non-white students. Of the latter's 93 high schools, 44 run a JROTC programme. And even the 11-14 age group gets military influence: 20 of Chicago's middle schools offer Cadet Corps, a modified version of JROTC. This is not to mention the seven military academies that operate as schools within schools in Chicago. Before 2002, there was a cap of 3,500 on JROTC programmes; in 2002, this cap was removed by the Defence Authorisation Act. In April this year, residents of Ayer, Massachusetts, a working-class town, expressed their displeasure at Ayer School's adoption of the National Guard programme. As one Ayer resident, James Nehrin, put it: It is unfair to the kids in my town that they need to risk their lives to get ahead. It is as if the rich kids go to college and the poor kids go to Baghdad. The Bush administration signed the No Child Left Behind Act in January 2002 - which it hailed as an important social initiative. In the small print is a provision that threatens the withdrawal of federal funding from any high school which refuses to provide students' details to military recruiters. Section 9528, Armed Forces Recruiter Access to Students and Student Recruiting Information, enables the military to make unsolicited contact with children as young as 11. Outside school, any internet-savvy teenager can download America's Army, the official computer game of the US army, which has more than four million registered users online. The answers to FAQs on the accompanying website are penned by Colonel E Casey Wardynski, of West Point Academy, and make instructive reading. Asked: Is this a recruitment tool?, he responds: The army's success in attracting high-potential young adults is essential to building the world's premier land force . . . the game is designed to substitute virtual experiences for vicarious insights. The colonel also advocates exposing children as young as 13 to America's Army, on the grounds that it is educational: They ['kids'] need to know that the army is engaged around the world to defeat terrorist forces bent on the destruction of America and our freedoms. Between September 2002 and September 2003, 11,309 17-year-olds signed enlistment contracts with the army. In January 2003, the army pledged to not assign or deploy soldiers less than 18 years of age, outside the continental US, Puerto Rico or territories or possessions of the United States. Despite the amendment, 62 Americans aged 17 served in Afghanistan and Iraq during 2003 and 2004. There were 15 fatalities among 18-year-olds, all in Iraq, all from the army and the marines. _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not
[pjnews] kidnapping in Iraq
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. From Donna Mulhearn, an Australian woman in Iraq. To receive her updates, send an e-mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Friends, Theres a family in Leiths neighbourhood that is selling their house. He says its a large, beautiful home with a big garden one of the nicest in the street. They are not selling the house to move to a more fashionable neighbourhood. The desperate sale is to access funds to pay the $50,000 ransom that has been demanded by kidnappers for the life of their 10-year-old son. They are not alone. Five children were kidnapped in this suburb last month in the space of a week. Two in a neighbouring suburb before that and so on. Kidnappings in Iraq are now endemic. Along with the international community, Iraqis condemn, discuss, analyse and mourn the kidnappings of a number of foreigners that have occurred in Iraq. But for them theres more to it. They know how it feels. The only difference is their stories rarely make it to the news. Since the break down of law and order after the invasion of Iraq by foreign forces, kidnapping has been one of the most common and lucrative activities of criminal gangs. Police estimate more than one thousand children and adults of various ages have been kidnapped in Baghdad alone. It seems that all of my Iraqi friends know a family that has been affected by kidnapping. The criminals are brazen. In Leiths area a gang entered shops and businesses in the main street and demanded $10,000 or their child would be kidnapped. If they didnt pay up the gang painted a red cross above the shop. Because many shop owners could not find $10,000 they had to close the shop and flee with their families. I sit in a daze of shock and sadness as I listen to the story. How could anybody ? This is normal since the invasion, Hardie says matter-of-factly. There is no law here now. Iraq has become a place where anyone can do whatever they want. Some of the gangs have deals with the police to protect them. Leith says that most kidnapped children are returned upon payment of the ransom plunging middle-class families into poverty after handing over their life savings. He has also heard of a few cases where teenagers were killed when a ransom was not paid on time. How could anybody ? As a result of the breakdown of law and order in Iraq parents are understandably petrified to part with their children. Some have left their jobs so they are available to drive their child to and from school each day. Others do not allow their children to go to school at all. How can this be stopped? I asked out loud not really expecting an answer. Hardie responded in a flash. Saddam Hussein. What? I asked rather surprised coming from the mouth of young, well-educated Shiite man. When we lived under Saddam I used to stay out all night and walk home at three in the morning without a thought for my safety. I could leave my car in any place with the key in the ignition! Now you cant leave a toy car on the street or it will disappear! You think we want to live like this, like we are in a prison? No, we prefer how it was before. Under Saddam we knew how to protect our family, the rules were clear. But now we live each day afraid we will lose someone we love whenever they leave the house. This sombre conversation with Leith and Hardie is one of many I have with Iraqis on a daily basis about the kidnappings, the breakdown of law and order and the general violence and chaos in which they now live. When I ask them how they feel about foreigners being kidnapped the response is always sad and sympathetic. We feel for the foreigners and their families so much because they did not deserve this, Leith says. We know how it feels and no one should have to experience this kind of suffering. We dont deserve it either. Your pilgrim, Donna PS: The kidnap situation here is so messy, dark and horrible; it is hard to make any sense of it. Thats why I made no attempt to analyse or suggest a solution. Simply recounting a conversation that is commonplace among Iraq people on a daily basis is all I feel I can do for now. I can share with you their opinions and then you can try to make your own analysis - let me know what you come up with! PPS: The Iraqis do not believe the kidnapping of foreigners is the action of the Iraqi resistance, but purely criminal gangs seeking money. They believe this is the case for Margaret Hussein, and the evidence would also suggest this, although there are other theories on that too. They do not consider AlZarqawi as part of the Iraqi resistance, but a separate force attracted to Iraq by the US occupation, with another agenda and with minor influence amongst Iraqis. _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice
[pjnews] Fallujah Refugees Tell of Life and Death in the Kill Zone
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/b99a December 03, 2004 The NewStandard Fallujah Refugees Tell of Life and Death in the Kill Zone by Dahr Jamail Journalists and residents who have fled Fallujah share accounts of US troops killing unarmed and wounded people; Dahr Jamail continues interviewing survivors as images of a city under US assault further emerge. Baghdad , Dec 3 - Men now seeking refuge in the Baghdad area are telling horrific stories of indiscriminate killings by US forces during the peak of fighting last month in the largely annihilated city of Fallujah. In an interview with The NewStandard, Burhan Fasaa, an Iraqi journalist who works for the popular Lebanese satellite TV station, LBC, said he witnessed US crimes up close. Burhan Fasaa, who was in Fallujah for nine days during the most intense combat, said Americans grew easily frustrated with Iraqis who could not speak English. Americans did not have interpreters with them, Fasaa said, so they entered houses and killed people because they didnt speak English. They entered the house where I was with 26 people, and [they] shot people because [the people] didnt obey [the soldiers] orders, even just because the people couldnt understand a word of English. A man named Khalil, who asked The NewStandard not to use his last name for fear of reprisals, said he had witnessed the shooting of civilians who were waving white flags while they tried to escape the city. Fasaa further speculated, Soldiers thought the people were rejecting their orders, so they shot them. But the people just couldnt understand them. Fasaa says American troops detained him. They interrogated him specifically about working for the Arab media, he said, and held him for three days. Fasaa and other prisoners slept on the ground with no blankets. He said prisoners were made to go to the bathroom in handcuffs, using one toilet in the middle of the camp. During the nine days I was in Fallujah, all of the wounded women, kids and old people, none of them were evacuated, Fasaa said. They either suffered to death, or somehow survived. Many refugees tell stories of having witnessed US troops killing already injured people, including former fighters and noncombatants alike. I watched them roll over wounded people in the street with tanks, said Kassem Mohammed Ahmed, a resident of Fallujah. This happened so many times. Other refugees recount similar stories. I saw so many civilians killed there, and I saw several tanks roll over the wounded in the streets, said Aziz Abdulla, 27 years old, who fled the fighting last month. Another resident, Abu Aziz, said he also witnessed American armored vehicles crushing people he believes were alive. Abdul Razaq Ismail, another resident who fled Fallujah, said: I saw dead bodies on the ground and nobody could bury them because of the American snipers. The Americans were dropping some of the bodies into the Euphrates near Fallujah. A man called Abu Hammad said he witnessed US troops throwing Iraqi bodies into the Euphrates River. Others nodded in agreement. Abu Hammed and others also said they saw Americans shooting unarmed Iraqis who waved white flags. Believing that American and Iraqi forces were bent on killing anyone who stayed in Fallujah, Hammad said he watched people attempt to swim across the Euphrates to escape the siege. Even then the Americans shot them with rifles from the shore, he said. Even if some of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their heads to show they are not fighters, they were all shot. Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein reported witnessing similar events. After running out of basic necessities and deciding to flee the city at the height of the US-led assault, Hussein ran to the Euphrates. I decided to swim, Hussein told colleagues at the AP, who wrote up the photographers harrowing story, but I changed my mind after seeing US helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river. Hussein said he saw soldiers kill a family of five as they tried to traverse the Euphrates, before he buried a man by the riverbank with his bare hands. I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some US snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim, Hussein recounted. I quit the idea of crossing the river and walked for about five hours through orchards. A man named Khalil, who asked The NewStandard not to use his last name for fear of reprisals, said he had witnessed the shooting of civilians who were waving white flags while they tried to escape the city. They shot women and old men in the streets, he said. Then they shot anyone who tried to get their bodies. There are bodies the Americans threw in the river, Khalil continued, noting that he personally witnessed US troops using the Euphrates to dispose of Iraqi dead. And anyone who stayed thought they would
[pjnews] Ex-CIA officer claims he was fired for not falsifying WMD data
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/ba9o The Seattle Times 9 December 2004 Ex-CIA officer alleges agency retaliated after he didn't falsify WMD report By Dana Priest WASHINGTON A senior CIA operative who handled sensitive informants in Iraq asserts that CIA managers asked him to falsify his reporting on weapons of mass destruction and retaliated against him after he refused. The operative, who remains under cover, claims in a lawsuit made public yesterday that a co-worker warned him in 2001 that CIA management planned to 'get him' for his role in reporting intelligence contrary to official CIA dogma. The subject of that reporting has been blacked out by the CIA, and the word Iraq does not appear in the heavily redacted version of the complaint, but other language and context make clear the officer's work related to prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In the lawsuit, the officer asserts CIA managers retaliated for refusing their demands by beginning a counterintelligence investigation of allegations he had sex with a female contact and by initiating an inspector general's investigation into allegations that he stole money meant to be used to pay contacts. The lawsuit marks the first public instance in which a CIA employee has charged directly that agency officials pressured him to produce intelligence to support the Bush administration's prewar position that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were a grave and gathering threat, and to suppress information that ran counter to that view. Their official dogma was contradicted by his reporting, and they did not want to hear it, said Roy Krieger, attorney for the 23-year officer of Middle Eastern descent. Anya Guilsher, a CIA spokeswoman, said the agency could not comment on the lawsuit. But she added, The notion that CIA managers order officers to falsify reports is flat wrong. Our mission is to call it like we see it and report the facts. Critics of the Iraq war have asserted the administration pressured analysts and operators to produce information that bolstered the case for invading Iraq. Congressional investigations did not find such evidence, but found the CIA did not have enough spies in Iraq and that the analysis of the highly circumstantial evidence was mischaracterized as firmer than it was. No biological or chemical weapons have been found in Iraq. A subsequent CIA-led investigation found Iraq was nowhere near producing a nuclear weapon, as the administration had asserted. In 2002, the lawsuit says, the CIA officer attempted to report routine intelligence from a contact but was thwarted by CIA superiors. It goes on to say that he subsequently was approached by a senior desk officer who insisted that Plaintiff falsify his reporting, and that when he refused, the management of the CIA's Counterproliferation Division ordered that he remove himself from any further 'handling' of the unnamed contact, referred elsewhere in the document as a highly respected human asset. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., says the plaintiff's superiors falsely promised him they would report his findings to President Bush and falsely claimed they had disseminated some of his other reports through normal channels. In 2003, the lawsuit says, the CIA officer learned of the counterintelligence investigation of allegations that he was having sex with a female contact. Five days later, it says, he was told a promotion was being canceled because of pressure from the DDO (Deputy Director of Operations) James Pavitt. Pavitt declined to comment. In September 2003, the CIA placed the officer on administrative leave without explanation, the lawsuit says. Eight months later, it says, the inspector general's office advised him he was under investigation for diverting to his own use monies provided him for payment to human assets. The document says the allegations were made by the same managers who had asked him to falsify reports. Last August, he was terminated for unspecified reasons, the lawsuit says. It requests that his employment, salary and promotions be restored and that the CIA pay compensatory damages and legal fees. _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject quot;subscribequot; to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will be deleted from this list.
[pjnews] Homeless Iraq vets showing up at shelters
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/b81d Homeless Iraq vets showing up at shelters By Mark Benjamin UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Washington, DC, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era. When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God, said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that. I drove off in my truck. I packed my stuff. I lived out of my truck for a while, Seabees Petty Officer Luis Arellano, 34, said in a telephone interview from a homeless shelter near March Air Force Base in California run by U.S.VETS, the largest organization in the country dedicated to helping homeless veterans. Arellano said he lived out of his truck on and off for three months after returning from Iraq in September 2003. One day you have a home and the next day you are on the streets, he said. In Iraq, shrapnel nearly severed his left thumb. He still has trouble moving it and shrapnel still comes out once in a while, Arellano said. He is left handed. Arellano said he felt pushed out of the military too quickly after getting back from Iraq without medical attention he needed for his hand -- and as he would later learn, his mind. It was more of a rush. They put us in a warehouse for a while. They treated us like cattle, Arellano said about how the military treated him on his return to the United States. It is all about numbers. Instead of getting quality care, they were trying to get everybody demobilized during a certain time frame. If you had a problem, they said, 'Let the (Department of Veterans Affairs) take care of it.' The Pentagon has acknowledged some early problems and delays in treating soldiers returning from Iraq but says the situation has been fixed. A gunner's mate for 16 years, Arellano said he adjusted after serving in the first Gulf War. But after returning from Iraq, depression drove him to leave his job at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He got divorced. He said that after being quickly pushed out of the military, he could not get help from the VA because of long delays. I felt, as well as others (that the military said) 'We can't take care of you on active duty.' We had to sign an agreement that we would follow up with the VA, said Arellano. When we got there, the VA was totally full. They said, 'We'll call you.' But I developed depression. He left his job and wandered for three months, sometimes living in his truck. Nearly 300,000 veterans are homeless on any given night, and almost half served during the Vietnam era, according to the Homeless Veterans coalition, a consortium of community-based homeless-veteran service providers. While some experts have questioned the degree to which mental trauma from combat causes homelessness, a large number of veterans live with the long-term effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse, according to the coalition. Some homeless-veteran advocates fear that similar combat experiences in Vietnam and Iraq mean that these first few homeless veterans from Iraq are the crest of a wave. This is what happened with the Vietnam vets. I went to Vietnam, said John Keaveney, chief operating officer of New Directions, a shelter and drug-and-alcohol treatment program for veterans in Los Angeles. That city has an estimated 27,000 homeless veterans, the largest such population in the nation. It is like watching history being repeated, Keaveney said. Data from the Department of Veterans Affairs shows that as of last July, nearly 28,000 veterans from Iraq sought health care from the VA. One out of every five was diagnosed with a mental disorder, according to the VA. An Army study in the New England Journal of Medicine in July showed that 17 percent of service members returning from Iraq met screening criteria for major depression, generalized anxiety disorder or PTSD. Asked whether he might have PTSD, Arrellano, the Seabees petty officer who lived out of his truck, said: I think I do, because I get nightmares. I still remember one of the guys who was killed. He said he gets $100 a month from the government for the wound to his hand. Lance Cpl. James Claybon Brown Jr., 23, is staying at a shelter run by U.S.VETS in Los Angeles. He fought in Iraq for 6 months with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines and later in Afghanistan with another unit. He said the fighting in Iraq was sometimes intense. We were pretty much all over the place, Brown said. It was really heavy gunfire, supported by mortar and tanks, the whole nine (yards). Brown acknowledged the mental stress of war,
[pjnews] No Escape from Oil Dependency
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/basg No Escape from Dependency Looming Energy Crisis Overshadows Bush's Second Term By Michael Klare When George W. Bush entered the White House in early 2001, the nation was suffering from a severe energy crisis brought on by high gasoline prices, regional shortages of natural gas, and rolling blackouts in California. Most notable was the artificial scarcity of natural gas orchestrated by the Enron Corporation in its rapacious drive for mammoth profits. In response, the President promised to make energy modernization one of his top concerns. However, aside from proposing the initiation of oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, he did little to ameliorate the country's energy woes during his first four years in office. Luckily for him, the energy situation improved slightly as a national economic slowdown depressed demand, leading to a temporary decline in gasoline prices. But now, as Bush approaches his second term in office, another energy crisis looms on the horizon -- one not likely to dissipate of its own accord. The onset of this new energy crisis was first signaled in January 2004, when Royal Dutch/Shell -- one of the world's leading energy firms revealed that it had overstated its oil and natural gas reserves by about 20%, the net equivalent of 3.9 billion barrels of oil or the total annual consumption of China and Japan combined. Another indication of crisis came only one month later, when the New York Times revealed that prominent American energy analysts now believe Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, had exaggerated its future oil production capacity and could soon be facing the wholesale exhaustion of some of its most prolific older fields. Although officials at the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) insisted that these developments did not foreshadow a near-term contraction in the global supply of energy, warnings increased from energy experts of the imminent arrival of peak oil -- the point at which the world's known petroleum fields will attain their highest sustainable yield and commence a long, irreversible decline. How imminent that peak-oil moment may in fact be has generated considerable debate and disagreement within the specialist community, and the topic has begun to seep into public consciousness. A number of books on peak oil -- Out of Gas by David Goodstein, The End of Oil by Paul Roberts, and The Party's Over by Richard Heinberg, among others -- have appeared in recent months, and a related documentary film, The End of Suburbia, has gained a broad underground audience. As if to acknowledge the seriousness of this debate, the Wall Street Journal reported in September that evidence of a global slowdown in petroleum output can no longer be ignored. While no one can say with certainty that recent developments portend the imminent arrival of peak oil output, there can be no question that global supply shortages will prove increasingly common in the future. Nor is the evidence of a slowdown in oil output the only sign of an unfolding energy crisis. Of no less significance is the dramatic increase in energy demand from newly-industrialized nations -- especially China. As recently as 1990, the older industrialized countries (including the former Soviet Union) accounted for approximately three-quarters of total worldwide oil consumption. But the consumption of petroleum in developing nations is growing so rapidly -- at three times the rate for developed countries -- that it is soon expected to draw even. To meet the needs of their older customers and satisfy the rising demand from the developing world, the major oil producers will have to boost production at breakneck speed. According to the DoE, total world petroleum output will have to grow by approximately 44 million barrels per day between now and 2025 -- an increase of 57% -- to satisfy anticipated world demand. This increase represents a prodigious amount of oil, the equivalent to total world consumption in 1970, and it is very difficult to imagine where it will all come from (especially given indications of a global slowdown in daily output). If, as appears likely, the world's energy firms prove incapable of satisfying higher levels of international demand, the competition among major consumers for access to the remaining supplies will grow increasingly more severe and stressful. To further complicate matters, many of the countries the Bush administration considers potential suppliers of additional petroleum, including Angola, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, are torn by ethnic and religious conflict or are buffeted by powerful anti-American currents. Even if these countries possess sufficient untapped reserves to sustain an increase in output, as long as they remain chronically unstable, the
[pjnews] R.I.P. Gary Webb
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1213-31.htm Published on Monday, December 13, 2004 by CommonDreams.org R.I.P. Gary Webb -- Unembedded Reporter by Jeff Cohen Gary Webb, a courageous investigative journalist who was the target of one of the most ferocious media attacks on any reporter in recent history, was found dead Friday after an apparent suicide. In August 1996, Webb wrote one of the first pieces of journalism that reached a massive audience thanks to the Internet: an explosive 20,000 word, three-part series documenting links between cocaine traffickers, the crack epidemic of the 1980s and the CIA-organized right-wing Nicaraguan Contra army of that era. The series sparked major interest in the social justice and African-American communities, leading to street protests, constant discussion on black-oriented talk radio and demands by Congressional Black Caucus members for a federal investigation. But weeks later, Webb suffered a furious backlash at the hands of national media unaccustomed to seeing their role as gatekeepers diminished by the emerging medium known as the WorldWideWeb. Webb's explosive San Jose Mercury News series documented that funders of the Contras included drug traffickers who played a role in the crack epidemic that hit Los Angeles and other cities. Webb's series focused heavily on Oscar Danilo Blandon, a cocaine importer and federal informant, who once testified in federal court that whatever we were running in L.A., the profit was going to the Contra revolution. Blandon further testified that Colonel Enrique Bermudez, a CIA asset who led the Contra army against Nicaragua's leftwing Sandinista government, knew the funds were from drug running. (Bermudez was a colonel during the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua.) Webb reported that U.S. law enforcement agents complained that the CIA had squelched drug probes of Blandon and his partner Norwin Meneses in the name of national security. Blandon's drugs flowed into L.A. and elsewhere thanks to the legendary Freeway Ricky Donnell Ross, a supplier of crack to the Crips and Bloods gangs. While Webb's series could be faulted for some overstatement in presenting its powerful new evidence (a controversial graphic on the Mercury News website superimposed a person smoking crack over the CIA seal), the fresh documentation mightily moved forward the CIA-Contra-cocaine story that national media had been trying to bury for years. Any exaggeration in the Mercury News presentation was dwarfed by a mendacious, triple-barreled attack on Webb that came from the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. The Post and others criticized Webb for referring to the Contras of the so-called Nicaraguan Democratic Force as the CIA's army -- an absurd objection since by all accounts, including those of Contra leaders, the CIA set up the group, selected its leaders and paid their salaries, and directed its day-to-day battlefield strategies. The Post devoted much ink to exposing what Webb readily acknowledged -- that while he could document Contra links to cocaine importing, he was not able to identify specific CIA officials who knew of the drug flow. The ferocity of the attack on Webb led the Post's ombudsman to note that the three national newspapers showed more passion for sniffing out the flaws in the Webb series than for probing the important issue Webb had raised: U.S. government relations with drug smuggling. The L.A. Times' anti-Webb package was curious for its handling of Freeway Ricky Ross, the dealer Webb had authoritatively linked to Contra-funder Blandon. Two years before Webb's revelations, the Times had reported: If there was a criminal mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw capitalist most responsible for flooding Los Angeles' streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick. In a profile of Ross headlined Deposed King of Crack, the Times went on and on about South-Central's first millionaire crack lord and how Ross' coast to coast conglomerate was selling more than $550,000 rocks a day, a staggering turnover that put the drug within reach of anyone with a few dollars. But two months after Webb's series linked Ricky Ross to Contra cocaine, the L.A. Times told a totally different story, now seeking to minimize Ross's role in the crack epidemic: Ross was just one of many interchangeable characters -- dwarfed by other dealers. The reporter who'd written the 1994 Ross profile was the one called on to write the front-page 1996 critique of Webb; media critic Norman Solomon noted that it reads like a show-trial recantation. The hyperbolic reaction against Webb's series can only be understood in the context of years of bias and animosity toward the Contra-cocaine story on the part of many national media. Bob Parry and Brian Barger first reported on Contra-cocaine smuggling for AP
[pjnews] Staggering National Debt Worries Economists
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_5832.shtml Staggering National Debt Worries Economists By BILL STRAUB Dec 9, 2004 America's decadent ways and its desire to party like it's 1999 - literally - has generated a skyrocketing national debt that many economists fear will burden the nation's balance sheet in the near future. After achieving a balanced budget in the latter years of the Clinton administration, the United States has seen the red ink steadily increase as President Bush has waged war in Iraq while simultaneously cutting taxes. Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, which promotes a balanced budget, called the deficit a serious problem needing serious attention. It's not going to go away on its own, Bixby said. Even assuming strong economic growth, today's numbers show deficits persisting for as far as the eye can see. The numbers are staggering. The 2004 fiscal year ended on Sept. 30 with a $413 billion deficit - the largest in the nation's history and almost $40 billion higher than it ran in 2003. Over the next 10 years, the accumulated shortfall is projected to reach $2.3 trillion - as long as the economy remains relatively healthy, appropriations growth slows and the tax cuts championed by Bush during his first term are allowed to expire. It's unlikely all of those conditions will be met - Bush already has promised to use some of his newly attained political capital to make the tax cuts permanent. Some economists fear the nation could accumulate deficits reaching $5 trillion over the next 10 years. The still growing national debt already has hit $7.5 trillion. Congress last month was forced to raise the debt limit, a move that enables the federal government to borrow $8.18 trillion to meet its obligations. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who lost in his effort to replace Bush in the White House, cited the accumulated red ink as evidence of the administration's inability to handle the nation's economy. The United States is operating a borrow-and-spend government continuously stretched by demands for more tax cuts and more spending, Kerry said. And when they don't have money to pay for their choices, they just put the tab on the national credit card and send the bill to our kids. It is an economic policy of borrow and spend and it cannot be sustained. Few are willing to defend the $7.5 trillion national debt, other than to acknowledge it as a necessary evil that needs to be addressed. Edward Prescott, a Nobel laureate and professor of economics at Arizona State University, is one who argues that the debt is no problem and that anyone who argues others is ignorant. I don't see any problems with the U.S. deficit, he said in Stockholm, Sweden, where he is receiving the prize. It's for political reasons that people are yelling and screaming about that. Regardless, the president has vowed to address the situation, promising to cut the $413 billion deficit in half by 2009. But analysts assert that could prove difficult given his desire for further tax cuts, the need to finance the war in Iraq and his initiative to partially privatize Social Security, a move that would conservatively cost the treasury $2 trillion. The administration is offering no apology for the prickly fiscal situation. Appearing at the World Economic Forum earlier this year, Vice President Dick Cheney acknowledged that deficits do matter, but that he is a great believer in the policies of the White House. That is to say that it was very important for us to reduce the tax burden on the American economy by way of stimulating growth, Cheney said. The progress we see today with respect to our economy is directly related to that. While large, Cheney said, the deficit remains manageable. We're engaged in a military conflict - we've had to increase defense spending, Cheney said. We inherited a recession which caused a falloff in government revenues. So for a lot of reasons, I don't find it surprising that we have a deficit. But in terms of trying to move back to a balanced budget, that clearly will be our long-term goal and objective, but we would not now move immediately to a balanced budget at the cost of adequately funding our military operations or having the kind of pro-growth policies that we think are vital to generating long-term revenues for the economy. The Concord Coalition, a Washington-based think tank that champions fiscal restraint, acknowledges that a single year's deficit won't likely serve as a detriment. But deficits that continue to accumulate will lead to slower economic growth and a lower standard of living. In order to pay off its debt, the United States is forced to visit both domestic and foreign lenders to borrow the money necessary to meet obligations by issuing Treasury bonds. That places the federal government in competition with businesses, homebuyers
[pjnews] Ex-Military Recruiter Speaks Out
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.antiwar.com/orig/ferner.php?articleid=3996 Sign Here, Kid by Mike Ferner He trolled for teenagers in North Carolina high schools, barked orders at recruits in boot camp, and pulled charred civilian corpses out of cars in Iraq. Now Jimmy Massey is making good on his promise to tell the whole world what he learned as a Marine. For the first 10 years, Massey loved being in the USMC. With a quick mind and an easy manner, he and his superiors knew he'd make a great recruiter. And by the luck of the draw, he was assigned to the area around Asheville, N.C., not far from where he grew up. It was an advantage being a recruiter in this area. I understand the mentality of mountain people. When we'd talk about topics like the economy and industry around here, I knew what people were talking about. And too, people here usually don't open up to strangers. Contrary to what some believe, Marine Corps recruiters don't get paid commission for going over quota, the 32-year-old former staff sergeant explained. My monthly quota was three in the summer and two in the winter. You could get five one month but still go from hero to zero next month when you started over again. Recruiters are, however, one of only three Military Occupational Specialties (MOS) in the Marines that get Special Duty Assignment (SDA) pay an extra $475 a month when I was in to offset the higher cost of living when you're a recruiter, he said. An E-5 recruiter would make about $1,500 every two weeks including SDA pay. But being a recruiter is expensive. There's extra costs. When you're a recruiter, you've got to play the part. Bling, Promises, and the Moment of Truth For example, you have to have a nice car you can't go rolling down the street in some old family wagon. You can't be sittin' there talking to a kid about financial stability and driving an old Ford Ranger. That just don't get it! He said he drove a Mustang for his personal car, and Army recruiters he knew drove decked-out Expeditions with 20-inch rims. You have to have a little 'bling' [gold, jewelry, etc.] on you that kind of thing. I made sure I always dressed nice when I was off duty. You gotta play the part. Young kids are really materialistic minded. Then there's the everyday expenses of recruiting, like taking a guy to Hooters for some wings. The government gives me a credit card, but it's in my name and the bill comes to me. I have to pay it and then get reimbursed. Often the biggest enticement a recruiter can offer young men and women trying to escape poverty is the promise of job training, even more appealing when it's for a MOS in data systems, aircraft electronics, aircraft crew chief, or other sought-after specialties. But as Massey acknowledged, The Marine Corps can guarantee you a job all day long, but that doesn't mean you're going to actually get it. A common way to swindle recruits out of promised jobs is the Moment of Truth exercise in boot camp. New recruits are taken to a room where their DI (drill instructor) tells them to really think about it and see if they've lied while enlisting or filling out their application. They'll ask the recruits if they lied about things like ever having smoked grass, or maybe how many times they've smoked, and ask them to raise their hand if they've lied any time in the recruiting process, Massey said. When the hands go up, the DI looks at them and says, Listen. This is what's gonna happen now. You lied to us. You can either quit in disgrace now, or since you signed a contract to be a Marine, you can stay in, but we're not going to let you have the job you asked for. Investigations and Private Eyes There's a whole network within the community to enable recruiters to make their quotas the sheriff's department, police department, schools all the way up to the local congressional office. Massey recalled that at one point, There was a congressional investigation brought up against me. I enlisted someone who was handicapped. I should have been in deep sh*t, but the Marine Corps swept it under the rug by stating that the kid had fraudulently enlisted. I got a call from Congressman Charles Taylor congratulating me on the work I had been doing, and he sent me an autographed picture. A recruiter is like a private eye, Massey said. They know everything about the kids they're recruiting. For example, he learned the names of virtually every graduating high school senior in his seven-county district about 1,000 youngsters annually in that largely rural area. And high school students weren't the only people he got to know well. We knew the names of the district attorneys [DAs] in every county and went to them to get certain charges reduced or dismissed on kids we were recruiting. We took flowers to the secretaries in the clerk of courts offices. The clerk of courts can make a lot of things appear
[pjnews] The P.U.-litzer Prizes For 2004
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/20714/ The P.U.-litzer Prizes For 2004 By Norman Solomon, AlterNet December 10, 2004. There are media awards of all kinds, but none so foul and smelly as these. The P.U.-litzer Prizes were established a dozen years ago to provide special recognition for truly smelly media performances. As usual, I've conferred with Jeff Cohen, founder of the media watch group FAIR, to sift through the large volume of entries. And now, the 13th Annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, for the foulest media performances of 2004: MANDATE MANIA: Too many winners to name It became a media mantra. Two days after the election, the Los Angeles Times reported that Bush can claim a solid mandate of 51 percent of the vote. Cox columnist Tom Teepen referred to Bush's vote margin as an unquestionable mandate. Right-wing pundit Bill Kristol argued that Bush's mandate went beyond the 49-states-to-one landslides of Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984. Reality check: This was the narrowest win for an incumbent president since 1916. As Greg Mitchell wrote in Editor Publisher: Where I come from, 51 percent is considered a bare majority, not a comfortable margin. If only 51 percent of my family or my editorial staff think I am doing a good job, I might look to moderate my behavior, not repeat or enlarge it. MEDIA BIGOT OF THE YEAR: MSNBC and radio host Don Imus On his Nov. 12 show, the day after Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat died, Imus said of Palestinians: They're eating dirt and that fat pig wife of his is living in Paris. After an Imus colleague referred to Palestinians as stinking animals and said they ought to drop the bomb right there, kill 'em all right now, Imus responded: Well, the problem is we have (NBC reporter) Andrea (Mitchell) there; we don't want anything to happen to her. In February, when a civilian Iranian airliner crashed, killing 43 people, Imus reacted: When I hear stories like that, I think 'Who cares?' So much for showing the Islamic world we don't see all Muslims as enemies. NO APOLOGY FOR BEING GULLIBLE AWARD: CBS anchor Dan Rather Asked at a Harvard forum in July what network TV news could have done better during the build-up to the Iraq war, Dan Rather said more questions should have been asked and then declared: Look, when a president of the United States, any president, Republican or Democrat, says these are the facts, there is heavy prejudice, including my own, to give him the benefit of any doubt, and for that I do not apologize. TIMIDITY RULES PRIZE: The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius Explaining why mainstream journalism failed to ask tough questions about the Iraq war before it started, columnist Ignatius a war supporter wrote in April: In a sense, journalists were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own. Create a debate? Ignatius suggests it would have been unprofessional to raise questions at a time that many experts, over a hundred Congress members and millions of others were already questioning the drive to war. ONLY RIGHT-WING POLITICS THIS ELECTION YEAR AWARD: Disney's Michael Eisner In May, when Disney refused to distribute Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 documentary, CEO Michael Eisner said that Disney didn't want to be in the middle of a politically-oriented film during an election year. But Disney was one of the 2004 election year's leading broadcasters of political propaganda, almost all of it pro-Bush, as its powerful talk radio stations served up hour after hour of right-wing hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Matt Drudge, etc. MEDIA MOGULS FOR BUSH PRIZE: Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone Seven weeks before the election, Sumner Redstone expressed support for Bush on behalf of his company, which owns CBS, UPN, MTV, VH1, Infinity radio and dozens of other subsidiaries: From a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on. Days later, Redstone added: I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one. (Ironically, cultural conservatives often blame TV and radio sleaze on The Liberal Media not GOP-backing media owners like Redstone and Rupert Murdoch.) MOUTHPIECE FOR POWER AWARD: The Washington Post Give credit for candor to Karen DeYoung, former assistant managing editor, for this comment in an August report examining why the Washington Post marginalized prewar doubts about White House claims on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction: We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power. If the president
[pjnews] One-year anniversary of Saddam Hussein's capture
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. Here is the partial transcript of an interview between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and CNN's Wolf Blitzer (Late Edition, 12/5/04, 12:19PM). Blitzer: Is the world safer today as the result of the invasion of Iraq? Musharraf: I think it's less safe, certainly. Blitzer: So, it was a mistake for President Bush to order this invasion, with hindsight? Musharraf: Yes, with hindsight, yes. We have landed ourselves in more trouble, yes. Approximately ten minutes later (12:29PM), Mr. Blitzer returned with the following announcement: ...early after the interview a Pakistani government spokesman told me that General Musharraf didn't want to be that categorical in his assertion that President Bush had made a mistake by invading Iraq. -- From Donna Mulhearn, an Australian woman in Iraq. To receive her updates, send an e-mail to: ThePilgrim-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Friends, When Saddam Hussein was captured, a year ago today, I was in Baghdad and wrote a reflection called: Saddam is captured: what has changed? based on the comments of a philosophical young Iraqi who I spoke to that day. I have just re-read his comments and was struck numb by their disturbing insight. Have a read. At the end, Ill update you on what has changed in the last 12 months. -- The gunshots are firing thick and fast. Some are in the distance, others are just outside my window. It's about 7pm on Sunday night, the shots have been regular since news of the capture of Saddam Hussein started to spread around Baghdad at about 2pm this afternoon. Be careful Miss Donna, my Iraqi friends are saying. Don't go outside or a bullet might fall on your head! I appreciate their concern (and yours) but how can you ask a former journalist with an ingrained news sense to stay inside when the world's biggest story is happening outside her front door? I have to go out, but I promise I won't stay out late! Many Iraqis are in a state of disbelief tonight - as I was until I saw images of a dazed, bushy-bearded Saddam willingly having his teeth checked in a video shown at the occupier's press conference in Baghdad this afternoon. I stood around a television with a bunch of Iraqis and watched their jaws drop in unison as they saw their deposed former president pose sedately for a mugshot, his bushy-beard newly shaved and his hair neatly trimmed for the picture. Now many are celebrating the capture (hence the gunshots). When I first heard the news I felt a sense of relief and laughed out loud with the Iraqis around me. My landlord told me the gunshots will go all night... Do you want a gun? he asked. I can give you one to fire too. I politely declined. I'll just have a beer and a falafel, I said. But some Iraqis are still wary, after being betrayed by so many people so many times, they want more confirmation. Others are sad and angry: What is our hope now? one man asked under his breathe as he watched the press conference. My friends have just returned from one suburb in Baghdad where a large pro-Saddam mob are nearing a riot if Saddam is gone, said one man Mustafa, we will fight even harder... One philosophical young man I spoke to shrugged his shoulders. What does it mean? he said. One man is captured... Did so many people have to die for this? So many thousands of people ... for this? What will change now? As I walked back to my home this afternoon I wondered what would change now. I looked at the 2-kilometre long queue for petrol along Sadoon Street. Iraqis with cars have to leave home early in the morning and wait seven hours before getting to the bowser for their ration of petrol. Tensions are rising as taxi drivers, transporters and businesses are thrown into disarray by the delays. This won't change overnight. I walked past the generators that sit on the footpath outside shops and hotels, big dirty things, chugging out clouds of black smoke with the noise of a thousand lawnmowers. The generators are necessary for survival here, with power only lasting a few hours a day. For those without generators life is cold and dark. That won't change overnight. I thought about the 15,000 people detained in the bleak Abu Graib prison without charge or trial. Many were taken from their homes in the middle of the night by gunpoint and their families have not heard from them. I wonder if tomorrow they get legal representation, a family visit and a fair trial? I thought about the poor family we know who live in the concrete basement of a bombed out building. They huddle in a corner and try to hide from the wind coming in the open doors. We've given them mattresses and blankets, but the nights are bitter cold. I wonder what they think of the news and what it might mean for them - husband without a job, with a wife and five small children. I asked the philosophical young man what
[pjnews] U.S. media still hiding bad news from Americans
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/bbh0 9 December 2004 The Toronto Star U.S. media still hiding bad news from Americans ANTONIA ZERBISIAS And now the good news from America's accomplished mission in Iraq ... The other night on ABC News Nightline, Ted Koppel asked National Public Radio war correspondent Anne Garrels, who has been in Iraq throughout the war, When you hear people in this country, Anne, say, look, the media is only giving the negative side of what's going on there, why don't they ever show the good side, what do you tell 'em? I tell them that there isn't much good to show, she replied, describing how even military commanders have only bad news to share. Two weeks ago on CNN, Time's Michael Ware, who has been covering Iraq for two years, gave an alarming account of being trapped in his Baghdad compound, which is regularly bombed and encircled by kidnap teams. He reported that the U.S. military has lost control and that Americans are the midwives of the next generation of jihad, of the next Al Qaeda. At the end of the exchange, anchor Aaron Brown warned, (O)ther people see the situation there differently than Michael. We talk to them as well. The next day, when the interview was repeated, anchor Carol Lin closed with, And of course there are others who disagree with that. Never mind that those others never had Iraqi sand in their shoes, let alone been under fire there. Freedom is on the march! We're making progress! The terrorists will do all they can to disrupt free elections in Iraq, and they will fail. These are just some of the slogans that U.S. President George W. Bush now spouts, while the American cable channels duly carry his speeches live and the American print media give them front-page play. Not that they aren't sneaking in a little bad news, mind you. But not much. This week, we learned, mostly via a text crawl at the bottom of the screen, that the milestone of 1,000 U.S. troops killed in combat had been reached. If you blinked, you would have missed news of a Pentagon strategic report to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld revealing that U.S. actions have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended. There was a bit in some newspapers about a damning classified cable from the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Baghdad that painted a dismal picture of Iraq's economic, political and security prospects. And, while it got notice when published in October, there's been no follow-up on a study in an esteemed British medical journal suggesting that up to 100,000 civilians had died since the invasion. No follow-up, that is, except to trash the research. It figures that, on Tuesday in Camp Pendleton, California, all media eyes were on Bush giving a rousing crowd-pleaser, urging every American to find some way to thank our military and to help out the military family down the street. That while yesterday Rumsfeld was in Kuwait, dismissing concerns from troops about a lack of armour. You go to war with the army you have, he said. Want to guess whose comments got better play? Biased coverage in Iraq; Bad News Overwhelms The Good, asserted the Washington Times last week. If you trust most media accounts fed to American viewers and readers, Iraq is an unmitigated disaster, began Helle Dale of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, insisting that 40 per cent of Iraqis say their country is (now) better and at least 35 per cent want the United States to stay. Dale exhorted readers to check all the wonderful progress being catalogued by the U.S. Agency for International Development (http://www.usaid.gov), which, if you examine carefully, doesn't contain that much good news at all. For example, compare and contrast one vaguely-worded USAID report from last spring with another from last week and you'll see the dirty water situation has not much improved. Still, Dale claims, Much of this good work you will never find reported, precisely because no news is good news for much of the U.S. media. Well, here's a positive piece of media news from Iraq: Farnaz Fassihi, the Wall Street Journal reporter whose harrowing private e-mail to friends describing the hazards of Baghdad made international news, is back on the war beat after what many suspected was a month-long suspension. She returns despite vicious criticism from the right that she is too biased to work there just because she felt it was a deadly situation. But then, what would she know? She's just there, in very real danger of getting killed. Stateside, she's threatened with being shot down, along with other reporters, just for telling the truth. Antonia Zerbisias writes every Thursday. [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues,
[pjnews] Fiddling as Iraq Burns
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/bg9t The New York Times 17 December 2004 Fiddling as Iraq Burns By BOB HERBERT The White House seems to have slipped the bonds of simple denial and escaped into the disturbing realm of utter delusion. On Tuesday, there was President Bush hanging the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, on George Tenet, the former C.I.A. director who slept through the run-up to Sept. 11 and then did the president and the nation the great disservice of declaring that it was a slam-dunk that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. It was a fatal misjudgment. Another Medal of Freedom was given to Paul Bremer III, the chief civilian administrator of the American occupation, who made the heavily criticized decision to disband the defeated Iraqi Army and presided over an ever-worsening security situation. Thousands upon thousands have died in this unnecessary and incompetently conducted war, yet here was the president handing out medals as if some kind of triumph had been achieved. If these guys could get the highest civilian award, what honor is left for someone who actually does a good job? A third medal was given to Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq, which Mr. Bush, in his peculiar way, has characterized as a catastrophic success. It's an interesting term. Some people have applied it to the president's run for re-election. By anyone's standards, terrible things are happening in Iraq, and no amount of self-congratulation in Washington can take the edge off the horror being endured by American troops or the unrelenting agony of the Iraqi people. The disconnect between the White House's fantasyland and the world of war in Iraq could hardly have been illustrated more starkly than by a pair of front-page articles in The New York Times on Dec. 10. The story at the top of the page carried the headline: It's Inauguration Time Again, and Access Still Has Its Price - $250,000 Buys Lunch With President and More. The headline on the story beneath it said: Armor Scarce for Heavy Trucks Transporting U.S. Cargo in Iraq. This administration has many things on its mind besides the welfare of overstretched, ill-equipped G.I.'s dodging bombers and snipers in Iraq. In addition to the inauguration, which will cost tens of millions of dollars, Mr. Bush is busy with his obsessive campaign against junk and frivolous lawsuits, his effort to further lighten the tax load on the nation's wealthiest individuals and corporations, and his campaign to cut the legs from under the proudest achievement of the New Deal, Social Security. So much for America's wartime priorities. Even domestic security gets short shrift. During the Republican convention, Mr. Bush said, I wake up every morning thinking about how to better protect our country. Try squaring that with the Bernard Kerik fiasco, in which the administration's background check of its candidate for the nation's ultimate domestic security post was handled with the same calamitous incompetence as the intelligence effort that led to the war in Iraq. Mr. Bush's pick (at Rudy Giuliani's urging) for homeland security secretary turned out to be a slick character who had once ducked a required F.B.I. clearance, had a social relationship with the owner of a company suspected of business ties to organized crime figures and had rented a love nest that overlooked the ruins of the World Trade Center. I'm Not Perfect, said a headline next to Mr. Kerik's picture in Tuesday's New York Post. You wonder, with so much at stake, where to look in the Bush constellation for the care and competence that the times call for. Colin Powell is heading toward the exit, to be replaced by Condoleezza Rice, who did her best to petrify the nation with loose talk about mushroom clouds. Dick Cheney would still have us believe in a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The man who took the lead in vetting Bernie Kerik, the White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, was also the point person in the administration's bid to duck the constraints of the Geneva Conventions, and even to justify torture. Mr. Gonzales is a favorite of the president, who has nominated him to be attorney general and may someday appoint him to the Supreme Court. Medals anyone? The president may actually believe that this crowd is the best and brightest America has to offer. Which is disturbing. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject quot;subscribequot; to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit:
[pjnews] fwd: my family in Iraq
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1217-28.htm Iraq: A Silenced Majority From Interviews With My Family by Stephan Smith http://www.stephansmith.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Since my return from this fall's busy touring schedule, I have been able to reach my family in Iraq regularly for the first time since the beginning of the war. One of the most important things we can do for them, and for the people of Iraq, is to counteract the unjust dehumanization of their entire nation of people, by giving voice to the silenced majority there who want peace. This silenced majority rarely makes it in the mainstream press because they are not killing people, and because they neither support the US occupation and its puppet interim government, nor the minority of reactionary extremists in their own country, who are on our front pages every day. And so, I've decided to begin a series of reports on what ordinary life is like in Iraq through interviews with my family and their friends. I come from a large Sunni family originally from Nineveh, but now spread between Mosul and Baghdad, and I am grateful to report that all of my nephews, nieces, aunts and uncles are alive. If you listen to Democracy Now!, you may have heard my Uncle Ghazi's voice the last time I did. My uncle Ghazi was Chief Electrical Engineer for the entire country until he retired in the nineties. The last time I heard his voice, it was crackling through a small bedside radio on the day the invasion began, when Amy Goodman interviewed him from his home. I shall never forget laying there, hearing Ghazi's unshakeable, dignified voice, when Amy asked him what he and his family planned to do, Will you leave town, or...?, and he responded, What can we do? We are expecting our first grandchild in the next two month we will gather the family and take them into the basement until the bombing stops. Arundhati Roy, also on line from India, burst out in tears thoroughly disturbed that Americans could hear such a testimony and not do everything possible to stop the war that would begin a mere three hours later. Still composed, Ghazi went on to say that he did not blame all Americans for the acts of their administration ... he understood how a people, any people, and in this case the Americans, can be systematically disinformed. When I reached my cousin Omar at home in Baghdad last week, he said his father had been stranded in Mosul since the siege on Fallujah. Ghazi had gone to our family home there to be with my aunts Zeineb and Butheina for Ramadan feast. He told my father that when the siege on Fallujah began and the freedom fighting (or insurgency as it is called in the American media) spread to Mosul, the whole town shut down, everyone too afraid to go out, no businesses open, as though the place were deserted. Speaking with my father from their family home, Ghazi reported that now conditions are so bad, that the vast majority wishes Saddam Hussein were back in power...it was better then, even for the majority who either endured or tolerated, as my family, but did not support the Baathist regime. Four of my aunts and uncles are doctors in the main Hospitals in both Baghdad and Mosul. From contact with them, I can only imagine what it does to a doctor's heart to try to heal, knowingly in vain, a people who now may have become the first victims of irreparable, long-term geno-contamination in human history: Already at the Conference on Nuclear Arms in Hamburg, Oct. 2003, Dr. Katsuma Yagasaki, Prof. of Science at the University of Ryukyus, Okinawa, reported the US had dropped the equivalent of 250,000 times the radioactive nuclear waste dropped on Nagasaki in Iraq. Different from Nagasaki, however, the contamination in Iraq is widespread, dispersed over entire regions of the country, bullets, strewn casings, armor, fragments, shrapnel... all containing radioactive waste. From scant reports and video that leak past the mainstream embargo on images from Iraq, we can only assume that Fallujah has been leveled like Dresden was in the 2nd World War. At an event coordinated by Veterans for Peace at New York City's Community Church this past Sunday at which I sang, the Nation's correspondent Christian Parenti described why the siege on Fallujah was such a critically huge mistake: it was a city with more Mosque's than any other city in Iraq, beloved across the religious spectrum. Now many of those Mosques are no more than rubble, and the total $82 million magnanimously pledged by the US to rebuild the city would scarcely be enough to rebuild more than a couple of these churches alone. But the truth is, Fallujah's damage is far worse than meets the eye. The entire city could very well be a permanently uninhabitable radioactive zone, yet we hear about the noble efforts of the US to move the 250-300,000 inhabitants back in to live in the now poisoned homes,
[pjnews] Guard Reports Serious Drop in Enlistment
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/bg9n The New York Times 17 December 2004 Guard Reports Serious Drop in Enlistment By ERIC SCHMITT WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - In the latest signs of strains on the military from the war in Iraq, the Army National Guard announced on Thursday that it had fallen 30 percent below its recruiting goals in the last two months and would offer new incentives, including enlistment bonuses of up to $15,000. In addition, the head of the National Guard Bureau, Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, said on Thursday that he needed $20 billion to replace arms and equipment destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan or left there for other Army and Air Guard units to use, so that returning reservists will have enough equipment to deal with emergencies at home. The sharp decline in recruiting is significant because National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers now make up nearly 40 percent of the 148,000 troops in Iraq, and are a vital source for filling the ranks, particularly those who perform essential support tasks, like truck drivers and military police. General Blum said the main reason for the Army National Guard's recruiting shortfall was a sharp reduction in the number of recruits joining the Guard and Reserve when they leave active duty. In peacetime the commitment means maintaining their ties to the military with a weekend of service a month and two weeks in the summer. Over the last 30 years, General Blum said, the Guard has counted on these soldiers with prior military service for about half of its recruits. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, however, many of these soldiers have been hesitant to join the Guard because of the increasing likelihood that America's citizen-soldiers will be activated and sent to Iraq or Afghanistan for up to 12 months. Indeed, many of the active-duty soldiers the Army would like to enlist in the Reserves have recently fought in Afghanistan or Iraq, and some have no inclination to do so again. In an effort to halt the slide, the Army National Guard this week approved recruiting incentives that triple the enlistment bonuses to $15,000 for soldiers with prior military experience who sign up for six years (tax-free if soldiers enlist overseas), Guard officials said. Bonuses for new enlistees will increased to $10,000 from $6,000. The Guard has already said it intends to increase the number of recruiters to 4,100 from 2,700 over the next three months, the first large increase since 1989. We're in a more difficult recruiting environment, period, General Blum told reporters in disclosing the new figures and the new incentives. There's no question that when you have a sustained ground combat operation going that the Guard's participating in, that makes recruiting more difficult. There are 42,000 Army National Guard soldiers serving in Iraq and Kuwait, and 8,200 serving in Afghanistan. Since Sept. 11, General Blum said, there have been about 100,000 Army National Guard troops activated for duty at home or abroad at any given time. General Blum's remarks come just a few days after the chief of the Army Reserve, Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, told The Dallas Morning News that the Army Reserve recruiting was in a precipitous decline that if unchecked could inspire renewed debate over the draft. General Helmly told the newspaper that he personally opposed reviving the draft. For the first two months of the fiscal year 2005, which started Oct. 1, the Army Reserve has also stumbled, falling 315 recruits short of its goal of 3,170 soldiers, a drop of 10 percent. In November, the Guard recruited 2,902 enlistees, about 26 percent below its target of 3,925 recruits. In October and November combined, the Guard recruited 5,448 enlistees, nearly 30 percent below its goal of 7,600. At full strength, the Guard has 350,000 soldiers. In the 2004 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the Guard missed its overall recruiting target of 56,000 soldiers by more than 5,000, the first time it had missed its yearly goal since 1994. The active-duty branches of the armed services all met their recruiting goals last year. As a result, General Blum said, the Guard has lowered its reliance on recruits with military experience to just 35 percent of its overall total and will seek a much larger pool of recruits with no military experience. We are correcting, frankly, some of our recruiting themes and slogans to reflect a reality of today, he said. We're not talking about one weekend a month and two weeks a year and college tuition. We're talking about service to the nation. General Blum expressed confidence that the nearly $300 million in recruiting bonuses in this year's budget and the increase in the number of recruiters would propel the Guard to meet its yearly goal but said that probably would not happen until August or so. I think we'll recover, he said. Some military personnel specialists offered a much more
[pjnews] Iraq Torture Begins at the Top
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/bhi4 Salon 17 December 2004 Torture Begins at the Top By Joe Conason A recently disclosed FBI memo indicates that marching orders to abandon traditional interrogation methods came from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld himself. Dec. 17, 2004 | Renewed exposure of prisoner abuse, torture and even murder by American military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan is widening already deep divisions between the Pentagon and the intelligence community -- and creating an untenable situation for Donald Rumsfeld, the beleaguered secretary of defense. A recently disclosed FBI memo indicates that marching orders to abandon traditional interrogation methods came from the defense secretary himself. In recent days, a coalition of human rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights has brought new cases of abuse to public attention. Using the Freedom of Information Act, they have pried thousands of pages of previously secret documents from the Defense Department and other agencies. Even after the shock of Abu Ghraib, these substantiated stories of cruelty, sadism and lawlessness are stunning. Files from the Navy's Criminal Investigative Service describe how U.S. Marines ordered four Iraqi teenagers to kneel while a gun was discharged to conduct a mock execution; how they inflicted severe burns on a detainee's hands with flaming alcohol; and how they tortured another detainee with an electric transformer, making him dance. In June, a Navy investigator revealed in an e-mail that his caseload of high visibility cases of abuse was exploding. As a result of such offenses, at least two Marines were convicted and sent to prison. If justice has been done in a few cases, the ACLU documents show that abuses were more common -- and more extreme -- than the Bush administration had previously conceded. More important, however, the documents show that the impetus for abuse came from above, not below. The use of coercive and violent methods spread from Guantánamo Bay, where alleged Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners are incarcerated, to Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents also show that officers from the CIA, the FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency lodged heated objections to the abusive methods of interrogation used by the military, denouncing them in previously secret memoranda as not only unethical but useless and destructive. In the files released by the government, FBI officials with special expertise in counterterrorism and interrogation techniques recorded their ongoing debate with Army officers about the harsh, coercive techniques authorized by the Pentagon. They were as concerned about the efficacy of those methods -- which they believe often produce poor intelligence -- as with possible violations of law and regulations. But the commanders overseeing the military interrogations simply dismissed the sharp warnings of the law enforcement and intelligence officers. The abuses continued, in some cases even after the initial furor over Abu Ghraib. What's more, an internal FBI memo indicates that the directive to discard traditional restraints came from the very highest civilian official in the Pentagon: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. That revealing memo is dated May 10, 2004, a time when the Abu Ghraib revelations were humiliating the United States before the entire world. An e-mail, it is addressed to FBI counterterrorism officer Thomas J. Harrington from an agent whose name is redacted (along with much else), and its subject is captioned Instructions to GTMO [Guantánamo] Interrogators. The memo's obvious purpose is to set down, for the record, the FBI's opposition to the Pentagon's use of coercive and abusive methods when questioning the Guantánamo detainees. It describes the FBI's fundamental disagreement over interrogation tactics with Gen. Geoffrey Miller and Gen. Michael Dunlavey, then the military commanders at Guantánamo Bay. I will have to do some digging into old files, the unnamed author begins. We did advise each supervisor that went to GTMO to stay in line with Bureau policy and not deviate from that ... I went to GTMO ... We had also met with Generals Dunlevy Miller explaining our position (Law Enforcement Techniques) vs. DoD [Department of Defense]. Both agreed the Bureau has their way of doing business and DoD has their marching orders from the SecDef [Secretary of Defense]. Although the two techniques [of interrogation] differed drastically, both Generals believed they had a job to accomplish. The e-mail goes on to recall how, during the questioning of one prisoner, the Pentagon interrogators wanted to pursue expeditiously their methods to get more out of him ... We were given a so-called deadline to use our traditional methods. Scott Horton, a New York lawyer and president of the International League for Human
[pjnews] Bush Disgraced by Silence
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://207.44.245.159/article7510.htm Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans, according to a nationwide poll. The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious. Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim-Americans. Its sad news. Its disturbing news. But its not unpredictable, said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society. The nation is at war, even if its not a traditional war. We just have to remain vigilant and continue to interface. The survey found 44 percent favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted in any way. The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim-Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising [snip] http://snipurl.com/bhgl The Los Angeles Times 19 December 2004 Editorial Disgraced by Silence: When will the president respond to the cascading allegations of prisoner abuse by the military? A Marine guard in Iraq sprayed an alcohol-based liquid on a detainee, struck a match and ignited the prisoner, burning and blistering the man's hands. Another Marine held wires from an electric transformer to a detainee's shoulders, so that the man danced as he was shocked, according to military documents made public this month. In photographs now under investigation, Navy SEALs appeared to sit on a hooded and handcuffed Iraqi prisoner and to point a gun at another, bleeding detainee. Army troops repeatedly beat Afghan prisoners in their custody, ripped off their toenails, shocked them and dunked them in cold water, according to recent reports from a U.N. group. Most incidents occurred in 2002 and 2003. The cascading allegations of prisoner abuse, of which these are but a few examples, long ago demolished the president's claim that only a few bad apples were responsible. So did reports that soldiers and officers who complained to their superiors about this mistreatment were threatened with reprisals and even physical harm. Yet as reports of unexplained deaths, humiliations and depravity across the services multiply, President Bush has recently remained silent. Soldiers on the battlefield deserve a fair amount of leeway for their conduct under the heat of fire, when adrenaline and the need to kill or be killed prompt people to do things they'd never consider under normal conditions. But many pictures continuing to come to light look a lot more like coldblooded sadism than acceptable combat actions. It's impossible to know what other abuse, past or present, might await discovery. In May, soon after photographs from Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad became public, Bush said he was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi detainees and their families. But the cruelty of a few, he said a week later, cannot diminish the honor and achievement of the thousands who have served honorably in Iraq. It is now clear that the few are in fact many. So many that either U.S. troops are not under their commanding officers' control or they are beating, burning and sodomizing suspects with the blessing or worse, at the direction of their commanders and Washington policymakers. Either explanation is inexcusable, and as commander in chief, Bush has an obligation to say so. The president should directly and forthrightly state what he neglected to say last spring: Torture and humiliation of prisoners disgraces every American; such conduct is always unacceptable; and any officer who learns of such behavior and, instead of stopping it, encourages or ignores it, will be court-martialed. _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject quot;subscribequot; to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full,
[pjnews] America's Sinister Plan for Falluja
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6732484/site/newsweek/ 2001 Memo Reveals Push for Broader Presidential Powers: A Justice Department lawyer may have been laying the groundwork for the Iraq invasion long before it was discussed publicly by the White House TomDispatch http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2072_ 16 December 2004 America's Sinister Plan for Falluja By Michael Schwartz The chilling reality of what Falluja has become is only now seeping out, as the American military continues to block almost all access to the city, whether to reporters, its former residents, or aid groups like the Red Crescent Society. The date of access keeps being postponed, partly because of ongoing fighting -- only this week more air strikes were called in and fighting in pockets remains fierce (despite American pronouncements of success weeks ago) -- and partly because of the difficulties military commanders have faced in attempting to prettify their ugly handiwork. Residents will now officially be denied entry until at least December 24; and even then, only the heads of households will be allowed in, a few at a time, to assess damage to their residences in the largely destroyed city. With a few notable exceptions the media has accepted the recent virtual news blackout in Falluja. The ongoing fighting in the city, especially in cleared neighborhoods, is proving an embarrassment and so, while military spokesmen continue to announce American casualties, they now come not from the city itself but, far more vaguely, from al Anbar province of which the city is a part. Fifty American soldiers died in the taking of the city; 20 more died in the following weeks -- before the reports stopped. Iraqi civilian casualties remain unknown and accounts of what's happened in the city, except from the point of view of embedded reporters (and so of American troops) remain scarce indeed. With only a few exceptions (notably Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post), American reporters have neglected to cull news from refugee camps or Baghdad hospitals, where survivors of the siege are now congregating. Intrepid independent and foreign reporters are doing a better job (most notably Dahr Jamail, whose dispatches are indispensable), but even they have been handicapped by lack of access to the city itself. At least Jamail did the next best thing, interviewing a Red Crescent worker who was among the handful of NGO personnel allowed briefly into the wreckage that was Falluja. A report by Katarina Kratovac of the Associated Press (picked by the Washington Post) about military plans for managing Falluja once it is pacified (if it ever is) proved a notable exception to the arid coverage in the major media. Kratovac based her piece on briefings by the military leadership, notably Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commander of the Marines in Iraq. By combining her evidence with some resourceful reporting by Dahr Jamail (and bits and pieces of information from reports printed up elsewhere), a reasonably sharp vision of the conditions the U.S. is planning for Falluja's liberated residents comes into focus. When they are finally allowed to return, if all goes as the Americans imagine, here's what the city's residents may face: * Entry and exit from the city will be restricted. According to General Sattler, only five roads into the city will remain open. The rest will be blocked by sand berms -- read, mountains of earth that will make them impassible. Checkpoints will be established at each of the five entry points, manned by U.S. troops, and everyone entering will be photographed, fingerprinted and have iris scans taken before being issued ID cards. Though Sattler reassured American reporters that the process would only take 10 minutes, the implication is that entry and exit from the city will depend solely on valid ID cards properly proffered, a system akin to the pass-card system used during the apartheid era in South Africa. * Fallujans are to wear their universal identity cards in plain sight at all times. The ID cards will, according to Dahr Jamail's information, be made into badges that contain the individual's home address. This sort of system has no purpose except to allow for the monitoring of everyone in the city, so that ongoing American patrols can quickly determine if someone is not a registered citizen or is suspiciously far from their home neighborhood. * No private automobiles will be allowed inside the city. This is a precaution against car bombs, which Sattler called the deadliest weapons in the insurgent arsenal. As a district is opened to repopulation, the returning residents will be forced to park their cars outside the city and will be bused to their homes. How they will get around afterwards has not been announced. How they will transport reconstruction materials to rebuild their devastated property is
[pjnews] Social Security: It's Not Broken, So Don't Fix It
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. -- 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/2004-12/18weisbrot.cfm Social Security: It's Not Broken, So Don't Fix It By Mark Weisbrot Four years ago Dean Baker and I wrote a book entitled Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000). We showed that there was no financial, economic, actuarial, or other reason to be worried about the future of Social Security. The whole idea that Social Security would run into trouble when the baby boomers retire was an urban legend -- and still is. Among others, The Economist -- a conservative British magazine -- reviewed the book and agreed. In fact no one dared challenge what we wrote. How could they? The numbers we used were the same that everyone -- including the current campaign of President George W. Bush -- uses. They are straight from the Social Security Trustees' annual report. We hoped that our book would put an end to all the nonsense about how to fix Social Security. And indeed there has been some progress over the last four years. Last March, the New York Times editorial board stated, for the first time, that those worried that Social Security will not be there for them when they retire are simply mistaken. Four years ago, the idea of partially privatizing Social Security had majority support in some polls. This was partly a result of aggressive advocacy on the part of right-wing think tanks and politicians, backed by Wall Street firms that stand to gain tens of billions of dollars from privatization. These people had not only convinced most of the public that they would never see their Social Security benefits, but that they could get more for their money in the stock market. In our book we showed that the latter claim was also wrong. We demonstrated arithmetically, as no one else had done, that the bubble-inflated stock prices at the time were incompatible with any plausible projected rates of growth for profits and the economy. As we predicted, the stock market bubble burst, and with it went a lot of the support for privatizing Social Security. But the Bush team is still promoting such privatization. Their proposal has a number of pitfalls: it would add to our federal budget deficit, which is already at a near-record (as a percent of the economy) level. It would increase the administrative costs of Social Security enormously, which would subtract from future benefits. It would expose future retirees to the risks of a volatile stock market that is still, by historical measures of price relative to earnings, overvalued. And it would undermine the political support for America's largest anti-poverty program by splitting future retirees into two camps: the wealthier ones would get a large share of their Social Security income from the privatized accounts, while most others would not. This is perhaps the privatizers' main purpose: Social Security is not a retirement account but a system of social insurance. It is a commitment by society from one generation to another; we all pay in, and we all draw out, because we never know how we will fare in our old age. The program also provides disability and survivors' insurance. The idea that we are all in this together, on which Social Security is based, has always been unpalatable for those who believe in every man for himself and the law of the jungle. Social Security is currently more financially sound than it has been throughout most of its entire history. To cover any shortfalls that may occur over the next 75 years would require less than we came up with in each of the decades of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, or 80s. All we have to do to save Social Security is to keep the privatizers' hands off of it. Who Wants to Cut Social Security Benefits? Sometimes the news makes me laugh out loud. Here's a good one: On Social Security, reported the New York Times last week, 45 percent said a proposal to permit people to invest their Social Security withholding money in private accounts was a bad idea; 49 percent said it was a good idea. Get it? The NYT/CBS poll cited here asked people whether they would like to have a choice about what happens to their tax dollars. No wonder almost half said yes. What the pollsters inadvertently left out of the question was the down side: big cuts in Social Security benefits. That's right, according to Reform Plan 2 of the carefully misnamed President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security, this partial privatization would mean a sizeable loss of benefits for most Americans. A 20-year-old just entering the labor force would lose 34 percent of his or her expected benefits under this plan. This would
[pjnews] New revelations about election
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/985 Startling new revelations highlight rare Congressional hearings on Ohio vote by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman December 13, 2004 Startling new revelations about Ohio's presidential vote have been uncovered as Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee join Rev. Jesse Jackson in Columbus, the state capital, on Monday, Dec. 13, to hold a rare field hearing into election malfeasance and manipulation in the 2004 vote. The Congressional delegation will include Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, and others. Taken together, the revelations show Republicans in state and county government, and in the Ohio Republican Party were determined to undermine and suppress Democratic turnout by a wide variety of methods. The revelations were included in affidavits gathered for an election challenge lawsuit filed Monday at the Ohio Supreme Court. Ohio's Republican Electoral College representatives are also to meet at noon, Monday, at the State House, even though the presidential recount, requested by the Green and Libertarian Parties, is only beginning the same day. On Sunday, John Kerry spoke with Rev. Jesse Jackson and urged him to take an more active role in investigating the irregularities and ensuring a fair and impartial recount. Kerry said there were three areas of inquiry that should be addressed: 92,000 ballots that recorded no vote for president; qualifying and counting provisional ballots; and supported an independent analysis of the software and set-up of the optical scan voting machines. What follows are excerpts from some of the affidavits for the election challenge. - In Warren County, where election officers declared a homeland security emergency on Election Day, and barred reporters and others from watching the vote count, it now has been revealed that county employees were told the previous Thursday they should prepare for the Election Day lockdown. That disclosure suggests the lockdown was a political decision, not a true security risk. Moreover, statements also describe how ballots were left unguarded and unprotected in a warehouse on Election Day, and they were hastily moved after county officials received complaints. - In Franklin County, where Columbus is located, the election director, Matt Damschroder, misinformed a federal court on Election Day when he testified the county had no additional voting machines in response to a Voting Rights Act lawsuit brought by the state Democratic Party that minority precincts were intentionally deprived of machines. It now appears as many as 81 voting machines were being held back, out of 2,866 available, according to recent statements by Damschroder and Bill Anthony, the chairman of the Franklin County Board of Elections. The shortage of machines in Democratic-leaning districts lead to long lines and thousands of people leaving in frustration and not voting. Damschroder's contradictory statements raise the possibility of perjury. - Also in Franklin County, a worker at the Holiday Inn observed a team of 25 people who called themselves the Texas Strike Force using payphones to make intimidating calls to likely voters, targeting people recently in the prison system. The Texas Strike Force members paid their way to Ohio, but their hotel accommodations were paid for by the Ohio Republican Party, whose headquarters is across the street. The hotel worker heard one caller threaten a likely voter with being reported to the FBI and returning to jail if he voted. Another hotel worker called the police, who came but did nothing. - In Knox County, students at Kenyon College, a liberal arts school, stood in line for up to 11 hours, because only one voting machine was in use. However, at nearby Mt. Vernon Nazarene University, there were ample voting machines and no lines. This suggests the GOP shorting of voting machines was a more widespread tactic than just targeting inner-city neighborhoods. - Reports in sworn affidavits affirm numerous instances of direct official interference with the right to vote. In Warren County, Democrats were being targeted and forced to use provisional ballots, even if they had proper identification. These ballots were then subjected to more rigorous standards to be counted than were other ballots. In a half-dozen precincts in Franklin County, people who were not inside polling places by 7:30 PM were told to leave - even if they had waited in line for hours. This is a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Sworn affidavits also confirmed reports of old voter rolls being used, meaning that new voters were not on the list and would be given provisional ballots, if allowed to vote at all. Affidavits were also filed in support of the election challenge suit
[pjnews] Torture's Path in Iraq
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. Newsweek http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6733213/site/newsweek/ Torture's Path: The paper trail is long, and it isn't pretty. But it's sure to produce some tough Senate questions for Alberto Gonzales. By Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman and Michael Hirsh Dec. 27 / Jan. 3 issue - The CIA had a question for the top lawyers in the Bush administration: how far could the agency go in interrogating terror suspectsin particular, Abu Zubaydah, the close-mouthed Qaeda lieutenant who was resisting standard methods? So in July of 2002 the president's chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, convened his colleagues in his cozy, wood-paneled White House office. One by one, the lawyers went over five or six pressure techniques proposed by the CIA. One such technique, a participant recalls, was waterboarding (making a suspect think he might drown). Another, mock burial, was nixed as too harsh. A third, the open-handed slapping of suspects, drew much discussion. The idea was just to shock someone with the physical impact, one lawyer explained, with little chance of bone damage or tissue damage. Gonzales and the lawyers also discussed in great detail how to legally justify such methods. Among those at that first White House meeting was Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who sat on a couch along the wall. And partly out of the discussions in Gonzales's office came the most notorious legal document to emerge from last spring's Abu Ghraib interrogation scandal. This was an Aug. 1, 2002, memodrafted by Yoo, signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee and addressed to Gonzaleswhich provoked outrage among human-rights advocates by narrowly defining torture. The memo concluded, among other things, that only severe pain or permanent damage that was specifically intended constituted torture. Mere cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment did not qualify. At the White House meeting, Gonzales was concerned about observing the law, the participant recalls. We didn't want to go over the line, he says. But Gonzales's worry was: Are we forward-leaning enough on this? That's a phrase I heard Gonzales use many times, recalls this lawyer. Lean forward had become a catchphrase for the administration's offensive approach to the war on terror. And the second part of that statement was always, 'Prevent an attack, save lives.' If Gonzales had any role in this, it was to be the fair arbiter of 'Are we doing enough?' Such aggressiveness after 9/11 was typical for Alberto Gonzales, the soft-spoken Harvard Law graduate who has been George W. Bush's lawyer since the latter's days in the Texas governor's mansion. Gonzales's legal and ethical advice will be the focus of confirmation hearings next month on his nomination as Bush's second-term attorney general. In the first months after 9/11, Gonzales helped to craft some of the most momentous and controversial decisions of Bush's presidency. Among them: to create military commissions for the trials of terrorists, to designate U.S. citizens as enemy combatants and to disregard the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. But until now he has steered clear of the spotlight. He's kind of an enigma, says one lawyer who worked with him. His defining characteristic is loyalty to the president. Yet memos reviewed by NEWSWEEK and interviews with key principals show that Gonzales's advice to the president reflected the bold views laid out in the Aug. 1 memo and other documents. Sources close to the Senate Judiciary Committee say a chief focus of the hearings will be Gonzales's role in the so-called torture memo, as well as his legal judgment in urging Bush to sidestep the Geneva Conventions. In a Jan. 25, 2002, memo to Bush, Gonzales said the new war on terror renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners. Some State Department lawyers charge that Gonzales misrepresented so many legal considerations and facts (including hard conclusions by State's Southeast Asia bureau about the nature of the Taliban) that one lawyer considers the memo to be an ethical breach. In response, a senior White House official says Gonzales's memo was only a draft and just one part of an extensive decision-making process in which all views were aired. By several accounts, Gonzales and his team were constantly looking to push legal limits, to widen and maximize Bush's powers. Just two weeks after September 11, an earlier secret memo drafted by Yoo had landed on Gonzales's desk, arguing there were effectively no limits on Bush's powers to respond to the attacks. Startlingly, the memo said the president could deploy military force pre-emptively against terror groups or entire countries that harbored them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terror incidents of Sept. 11. The president's decisions are for him alone and are unreviewable, the memo said. Never
[pjnews] Bush May Have Ordered Iraq Torture
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=17216c=206 20 December 2004 FBI E-Mail Refers to Presidential Order Authorizing Inhumane Interrogation Techniques Newly Obtained FBI Records Call Defense Departments Methods Torture, Express Concerns Over Cover-Up That May Leave FBI Holding the Bag for Abuses NEW YORK -- A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as torture and a June 2004 Urgent Report to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up. These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests, said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers. The documents were obtained after the ACLU and other public interest organizations filed a lawsuit against the government for failing to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request. The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc. The ACLU is urging the White House to confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists. The FBI e-mail, which was sent in May 2004 from On Scene Commander--Baghdad to a handful of senior FBI officials, notes that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques that the President is said to have authorized. Another e-mail, dated December 2003, describes an incident in which Defense Department interrogators at Guantánamo Bay impersonated FBI agents while using torture techniques against a detainee. The e-mail concludes If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [sic] the FBI interrogators. The FBI will [sic] left holding the bag before the public. The document also says that no intelligence of a threat neutralization nature was garnered by the FBI interrogation, and that the FBIs Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF) believes that the Defense Departments actions have destroyed any chance of prosecuting the detainee. The e-mails author writes that he or she is documenting the incident in order to protect the FBI. The methods that the Defense Department has adopted are illegal, immoral, and counterproductive, said ACLU staff attorney Jameel Jaffer. It is astounding that these methods appear to have been adopted as a matter of policy by the highest levels of government. The June 2004 Urgent Report addressed to the FBI Director is heavily redacted. The legible portions of the document appear to describe an account given to the FBIs Sacramento Field Office by an FBI agent who had observed numerous physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian detainees, including strangulation, beatings, [and] placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings. The document states that [redacted] was providing this account to the FBI based on his knowledge that [redacted] were engaged in a cover-up of these abuses. The release of these documents follows a federal court order that directed government agencies to comply with a year-old request under the Freedom of Information Act filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case. Other documents released by the ACLU today include: An FBI email regarding DOD personnel impersonating FBI officials during interrogations. The e-mail refers to a ruse and notes that all of those [techniques] used in these scenarios were approved by the Deputy Secretary of Defense. (Jan. 21, 2004) Another FBI agents account of interrogations at Guantánamo in which detainees were shackled hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor. The agent states that the detainees were kept in that position for 18 to 24 hours at a time and most had urinated or defacated [sic] on themselves. On one occasion, the agent reports having seen a detainee left in an unventilated, non-air conditioned room at a temperature probably well over a hundred degrees. The agent notes: The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night. (Aug. 2,
[pjnews] Desperately Seeking Senators
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. see also: http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/senatorsnocertify fwd... Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 11:31:57 -0500 (EST) From: Tim Carpenter [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Desperately Seeking Senators Greetings! We all remember that early scene from Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, where one African American after another stands up in the well of the House to challenge the Florida vote from 2000, only to be ruled out of order due to the lack of a single signature from a single Senator. Not this time. On January 6, 2005, the House and Senate will once again meet to consider the electoral vote count. And once again, that vote count is likely to be challenged by a group of progressive House members, who will make the case that the misallocation of voting machines (especially in Ohio), the abuse of provisional balloting in numerous states, and the refusal and/or inability to conduct the recount in an open and auditable manner in Ohio, in Florida, and in so many other key states, mean that the certified electors should not be seated. This time, we want several U.S. Senators to join with them, to make a serious voting rights challenge that the entire world will hear. This time, we want so much polite-but-firm grassroots contact from progressive voters beforehand that a whole group of Senators will choose to stand up and fight for the voting rights of African-Americans, Latinos, and youth voters that the Republican Party targeted for disruption and disenfranchisement in the 2004 election. This time, we want several U.S. Senators to join with them, to make a serious voting rights challenge that the entire world will hear. This time, we want so much polite-but-firm grassroots contact from progressive voters beforehand that a whole group of Senators will choose to stand up and fight for the voting rights of African-Americans, Latinos, and youth voters that the Republican Party targeted for disruption and disenfranchisement in the 2004 election. Some who need to hear from us are new, such as Barak Obama of Illinois and Ken Salazar of Colorado. These new Senators could use cover from the new leadership of the Senate, especially Dick Durbin, who also hails from Obama's home state. Some Senators depend on African American and Latino votes to be elected, and thus could be expected to stand up tall when voting rights issues are on the line, including Joe Biden of Delaware, Carl Levin of Michigan, Bill Nelson of Florida, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Barbara Mikulski and Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. Senator Byrd of West Virginia was once a Klansman; but his eloquent leadership against the Iraq War has inspired us all, and he has the courage and fortitude to cap his career with an outspoken battle on behalf of abused African American voters. Senator Lieberman of Connecticut rightfully brags about his youthful efforts to register voters in the Old South in the 1960s; on 1/6/05, he will have the chance to demonstrate that his youthful idealism still survives. There are Senators who are safe, and could do the right thing--like Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, Charles Schumer of New York, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin. There is Jim Jeffords of Vermont, an Independent who was brave enough to stand up to the Bush White House once before. There is Senator Lincoln Chafee, a Republican in a solid Democratic state, the namesake of Lincoln, a moderate caught in a far right party. And, of course, there is John Kerry. To remind them why they're in Washington, go here: http://snipurl.com/bjwu . Ask them to stand for every American's right to vote (and have it counted.) Thank you for forwarding this action alert to your networks. Standing tall in solidarity, Tim Carpenter Progressive Democrats of America email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: (877) 368-9221 _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject quot;subscribequot; to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will be deleted from this list. FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the information in this e-mail is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. I am making such
[pjnews] Prosecuting US Torture
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/bklv The Nation 3 January 2005 Prosecuting US Torture Editorial Did anyone in the Bush White House cast an uneasy eye over the new indictment of Gen. Augusto Pinochet? It may seem over the top to mention that old buzzard in the same breath as an elected US President. But consider Task Force 6-26. It sounds like a relic of Pinochet's Operation Condor, whose state-sanctioned acts of murder resulted in the dictator's finally being brought to book after thirty years. In fact, Task Force 6-26 is a secret unit composed mostly of US Navy SEALs operating in Baghdad--its existence unacknowledged by the Pentagon. According to the Washington Post, a fact-finding mission for Army generals warned a year ago that Task Force 6-26 was running an off-the-books prison for detainees and applying more-than-moderate physical pressure--and that same task force is implicated in two prisoner deaths. Despite those warnings, Task Force 6-26, with its bland bureaucratic label, operates in Baghdad to this day. The infamous photographs of depravity at Abu Ghraib may now actually be impeding public reckoning with the latest evidence of operations like Task Force 6-26. The pornographic violence of Abu Ghraib could be hung on low-level, poorly trained reservists like Lynndie England. The latest reports trickling out of prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo paint another picture: systematic violence by trained interrogators and systematic deceit by their bosses up the chain of command. FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memos released to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act depict Defense Department interrogators--not rogue reservists--gagging a Guantánamo prisoner with duct tape that covered much of his head for reciting the Koran; squeezing a prisoner's genitalia and bending back his thumbs; punching another's face to a pulp and leaving beaten prisoners moaning in a fetal position on the cell floor. The International Committee of the Red Cross reports physical and psychological coercion tantamount to torture, with the collusion not just of career leg-breakers but physicians and psychologists. These reports match in sickening detail affidavits from Camp Delta detainees David Hicks of Australia and British national Moazzam Begg. Critically, in the new reports the chain of evidence ends just a whisper away from Donald Rumsfeld. In June, DIA director Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby complained in a letter to Stephen Cambone, Rumsfeld's under secretary for intelligence, that two of his staffers had witnessed Special Forces in Baghdad beating a prisoner in the face severely enough to require medical attention. When they protested, Jacoby told Cambone, the DIA officers were threatened and their photos of the injuries confiscated. Meanwhile, FBI officials at Guantánamo were firing off alarmed and frustrated memos to Washington describing beatings, the use of dogs and other aggressive measures, which they found morally repugnant as well as likely to produce unreliable results. The agents were overruled by Guantánamo's commanders and cautioned against too-vigorous a dissent by senior FBI officials. (No one in Congress has asked the obvious: If, as Rumsfeld insists, it is against US policy to torture prisoners, where did these skilled military interrogators learn their craft?) What can be done? That's the pressing question, since US political and judicial institutions seem to be failing spectacularly. The CIA Inspector General's report on the role of intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib has yet to be released. It has been three months since the last--superficial--Congressional hearings on prison abuse. And although ranking Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat Patrick Leahy promises to ask tough questions about Abu Ghraib when Alberto Gonzales comes up for confirmation as Attorney General, that's no substitute for a proper investigation, for which Congressional Republicans show no inclination. Neither house has passed legislation to correct the Administration's contorted interpretation of US war-crimes statutes and the Geneva Conventions. Even the Supreme Court seems to have little leverage: For months the White House has dragged its feet about scheduling Geneva Convention prisoner-of-war status reviews demanded by the Justices, finally establishing guilty-until-proven-innocent hearings so unfair that a federal judge has now issued an injunction against them. No wonder the Center for Constitutional Rights, in New York--whose bold litigation won Guantánamo's detainees their Supreme Court recognition--has now turned to overseas human rights laws. On behalf of four Iraqis, CCR has appealed to Germany's federal prosecutor to initiate an inquiry under the universal-jurisdiction doctrines of that country's war-crimes statutes. German law--encoding that nation's revulsion at its past--allows for the
[pjnews] Losing A War, Dismantling An Empire
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. -- 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/2004-12/20jensen.cfm Losing A War, Dismantling An Empire December 22, 2004 By Robert Jensen The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and thats a good thing. By that I dont mean that the loss of American and Iraqi lives is to be celebrated. The death and destruction are numbingly tragic, and the suffering in Iraq is hard for most of us in the United States to comprehend. The tragedy is compounded because these deaths havent protected Americans or brought freedom to Iraqis -- they have come in the quest to extend the American empire in this so-called new American century, as some right-wing ideologues have named our future. So, as a U.S. citizen, I welcome the U.S. defeat, for a simple reason: It isnt the defeat of the United States -- its people or their ideals -- but of that empire. And its essential the American empire be defeated and dismantled. Making that statement in the United States, as I often have done over the past year, guarantees that one will be attacked as a traitor by those on the center and the right; in their world, to oppose any U.S. military action is by definition treason because, in their world, the U.S. military is always on the side of truth, freedom, justice and democracy. These people condemn me, in the words of one who wrote to berate me, for engaging in constant introspection of what you think are the flaws in America. For these people, whatever potential flaws there are in U.S. society or politics are so minor as to be meaningless, hence any critical moral assessment is wasted energy. Better to move forward boldly, they argue, lauding George W. Bush for exactly that. But stating that level of intensity of opposition to the U.S. assault on Iraq also opens one up to criticism from many liberals who complain that such remarks are callous; Ive been scolded for not taking into consideration the feelings of Americans whose friends and loved ones serving in the military are at risk in Iraq. Other liberals have argued that such blunt talk is ill-advised on strategic grounds; it will alienate the vast majority of Americans who reflexively support the U.S. military for emotional reasons. But now is precisely the time to make these kinds of blunt statements. The 2004 elections made it clear just how marginal the anti-empire/global-justice movement in the United States is at this moment in history. There is no hope of success in watering down a message in a vain quest to accommodate the maximal number of people for a short-term campaign; that kind of attempt in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq failed. Although the worldwide turnout for the mass demonstrations on Feb. 15, 2003, was inspiring, we shouldnt delude ourselves about the composition of the crowds in the United States. Many of those anti-war demonstrators were motivated by simple hatred of the Bush administration; if it had been a Democratic president taking us to war, those folks likely would have stayed home. Another segment of demonstrators was there not through the long-term work of organizing and public education, but because of a rejection of the Bush ideologues that was based more in a visceral fear than in analysis; without a connection to a movement, they disappeared from public protest once the bombs started falling. In my estimation, at best only a third of the people who participated in that mass mobilization had any meaningful connection to an anti-empire/global-justice movement that looked beyond the moment. So, there is no short-term strategy for victory that makes any sense if one takes seriously a left, anti-authoritarian political project. That doesnt mean there is no hope for left politics in the United States, but only that we have to avoid naiveté and wishful thinking: We are in a period of movement building -- trying to identify a core group, radicalize and clarify the analysis, and begin the process of finding ways to speak to a broader public that is (1) intensely propagandized through a highly ideological news media to accept hyperpatriotic politics, and at the same time (2) encouraged to be politically passive and disengaged from meaningful participation. That kind of change cant happen overnight. We are faced with the task of literally rebuilding U.S. politics. This isnt an argument for self-indulgent ideological purity or dogmatism; in fact, just the reverse. Its an argument for carefully assessing where we are -- both in terms of the state of the power of the empire worldwide and of domestic U.S. politics -- and charting a path that can do more than put forward an
[pjnews] When peace broke out at Christmas
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/bl1q When peace broke out: British and German soldiers made history in 1914 when they stopped shooting and started to sing carols and play football together. by Malcolm Brown The Guardian [UK] Monday December 24, 2001 The facts almost beggar belief. At the first Christmas of a hideous war, Germans and British sang carols to each other, lit each other's cigarettes in no man's land, exchanged souvenirs, took group photographs, even played football. Some sort of accommodation with the enemy, from cheerful waves and shouted greetings to full-scale fraternisation, took place over two-thirds of the 30 miles of the western front held by the British Expeditionary Force. Far from denouncing the event, the press celebrated it with a spate of approving headlines. Leader writers mused thoughtfully about it. Most national and many local newspapers carried letters from soldiers who had taken part in it. In an early example of instant history, none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle saluted it in a book published in 1915 as one human episode among all the atrocities which have stained the memory of the war. And then, to all intents, the story was forgotten. It disappeared under the gas clouds of Ypres and the colossal casualty lists of the Somme and Passchendaele. Thus, looking back on that stunning Christmas from the 1920s, a former infantryman who had shared the camaraderie across the lines could write: Men who joined us later were inclined to disbelieve us when we spoke of the incident, and no wonder, for as the months rolled by, we who were actually there could hardly realise that it had happened, except for the fact that every little detail stood out well in our memory. Every little detail - the devil is often said to be in the detail, but not in this story. On Christmas Eve at Plugstreet Wood, Germans put Christmas trees on the parapet of their front-line trench and sang Stille Nacht (Silent Night), then largely unfamiliar to British ears but instantly acknowledged as a carol of extraordinary beauty. Moved to respond the territorials opposite struck up with The First Noël. So it continued until, when the British sang O Come, All Ye Faithful, they heard the Germans joining in with the Latin words Adeste Fideles. Recalling the event many years later, one former soldier commented: I thought this a most extraordinary thing - two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of the war. A memorable joint burial service between the trenches on Christmas morning offers another uplifting detail. The prayers and readings were spoken first in English by a battalion chaplain and then in German by a young divinity student. It was an extraordinary and most wonderful sight, wrote one witness. The Germans formed up on one side, the English on the other, the officers standing in front, every head bared. I think it was a sight one will never see again. To deal decently with the dead was one powerful motive for establishing a truce. The Christmas spirit provided another. It doesn't seem right to be killing each other at Xmas time, a Tommy noted in his diary. Officers as well as men succumbed to the festive mood. Thus the commanding officer of a guards battalion strode out to join a mixed group of British and Germans and with the cry Well, my lads, a Merry Christmas to you! This is damned comic, isn't it? handed round a bottle of best rum which, one participant recorded, was polished off before you could say knife. Other lubricants assisted the event. Near Armentières the premises and product of a brewery had fallen to the enemy. On Christmas morning, after calling out Don't shoot, a party of Germans rolled a barrel of best Belgian beer into no-man's-land and indulged in a seasonal booze-up with the British, who in this particular case were Welsh. No nonconformist conscience inhibited these celebrations. Details which seem almost ludicrous enrich the story. A British Tommy met his German barber from High Holborn in London and had a short-back-and-sides between the lines. A German who had raided an abandoned house strutted about wearing a blouse, skirt and top hat and sporting an umbrella. After a bout of between-the-lines photography, one officer wrote in a letter home that another truce had been fixed for new year's day as the Germans want to see how the photos come out. Footer, a favourite recreation then as now on both sides, was an inevitable part of the occasion, but there was not one England v Germany fixture as such, rather a scatter of impromptu games or kickabouts, sometimes using a tin can or a rolled-up sandbag as a ball. Here and there a genuine leather ball was produced and a more serious contest attempted. A German lieutenant wrote of one such effort: We marked the goals with our caps. Teams were quickly established for a match on the frozen mud, and the Fritzes beat the
[pjnews] Further Detainee Abuse Alleged
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/blvk U.S.: Did President Bush Order Torture? White House must explain Executive Order cited in F.B.I. e-mail -- http://snipurl.com/blvm Further Detainee Abuse Alleged Guantanamo Prison Cited in FBI Memos By Carol D. Leonnig Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 26, 2004; Page A01 At least 10 current and former detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have lodged allegations of abuse similar to the incidents described by FBI agents in newly released documents, claims that were denied by the government but gained credibility with the reports from the agents, their attorneys say. In public statements after their release and in documents filed with federal courts, the detainees have said they were beaten before and during interrogations, short-shackled to the floor and otherwise mistreated as part of the effort to get them to confess to being members of al Qaeda or the Taliban. Even some of the detainees' attorneys acknowledged that they were initially skeptical, mainly because there has been little evidence that captors at Guantanamo Bay engaged in the kind of abuse discovered at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. But last Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union released FBI memos, which it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, in which agents described witnessing or learning of serious mistreatment of detainees. On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water, an unidentified agent wrote on Aug. 2, 2004, for example. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more. Brent Mickum, a Washington attorney for one of the detainees, said that now there's no question these guys have been tortured. When we first got involved in this case, I wondered whether this could all be true. But every allegation that I've heard has now come to pass and been confirmed by the government's own papers. A Pentagon spokesman has said the military has an ongoing investigation of torture claims and takes credible allegations seriously. Pentagon officials and lawyers say the military has been careful not to abuse detainees and has complied with treaties on the handling of enemy prisoners to the extent possible in the middle of a war. The detainees who made public claims of torture at Guantanamo Bay describe a prison camp in which abuse is employed as a coordinated tool to aid interrogators and as punishment for minor offenses that irked prison guards. They say military personnel beat and kicked them while they had hoods on their heads and tight shackles on their legs, left them in freezing temperatures and stifling heat, subjected them to repeated, prolonged rectal exams and paraded them naked around the prison as military police snapped pictures. In some allegations, the detainees say they have been threatened with sexual abuse. British detainee Martin Mubanga, one of Mickum's clients, wrote his sister that the American military police were treating him like a rent boy, British slang for a male prostitute. A group of released British detainees said that several young prisoners told them they were raped and sexually violated after guards took them to isolated sections of the prison. They said an Algerian man was forced to watch a video supposedly showing two detainees dressed in orange, one sodomizing the other, and was told that it would happen to him if he didn't cooperate. Another detainee, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan, an alleged paymaster for al Qaeda, has claimed in court documents that Guantanamo Bay interrogators wrapped prisoners in an Israeli flag. In an Aug. 16 e-mail, an FBI agent reported observing a detainee sitting in an interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played and a strobe light flashing. Many of the claims were filed in federal courts as a result of a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June that gave the Guantanamo Bay detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment in court. More than 60 of the 550 men who are detained have filed claims. Some have been held at the U.S. Navy base for nearly three years. Moazzam Begg, a British detainee first imprisoned in Egypt and kept since February 2003 in solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay, said in a recently declassified letter to the court that he has been repeatedly beaten and has heard the terrifying screams of fellow detainees facing similar methods. He said he witnessed two detainees die after U.S. military personnel had beaten them. Feroz Abbasi, a British man captured in Afghanistan, has been kept in solitary confinement for more than a year. He said that on the same day U.S. officials say he confessed to training as a suicide bomber for al Qaeda, his captors
[pjnews] war is the greatest failure of the human race
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. Dr. Robin Meyers Oklahoma University Peace Rally November 14, 2004 As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. But you would most likely have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette, where I have been a columnist for six years, and hold the record for the most number of angry letters to the editor. Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian. We've heard a lot lately about so-called moral values as having swung the election to President Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly what constitutes a moral value -- I mean what are we talking about? Because we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does. Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their side: -- When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will, and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us who have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this is not only not moral, but immoral. -- When you live in a country that has established international rules for waging a just war, build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral. -- When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or turn them on their head (you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like that we must never return violence for violence and that those who live by the sword will die by the sword), you are doing something immoral. -- When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you are doing something immoral. -- When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you are doing something immoral. -- When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel, which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something immoral. -- When you wink at the torture of prisoners, and deprive so-called enemy combatants of the rules of the Geneva convention, which your own country helped to establish and insists that other countries follow, you are doing something immoral. -- When you claim that the world can be divided up into the good guys and the evil doers, slice up your own nation into those who are with you, or with the terrorists -- and then launch a war which enriches your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are addicted, instead of helping us to kick the habit, you are doing something immoral. -- When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children, you are doing something immoral. -- When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country that was once the most loved country in the world, and act like it doesn't matter what others think of us, only what God thinks of you, you have done something immoral. -- When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are doing something immoral. -- When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a follower of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the kingdom, you are doing something immoral. -- When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to protect the earth which is God's gift to us all, so that the corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will make higher profits while our children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic world, you have done something immoral. The earth belongs to the Lord, not Halliburton. -- When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met
[pjnews] Pink-ish, Blue-ish States R Us
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. -- 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/2004-12/07peters.cfm Pink-ish, Blue-ish States R Us By Cynthia Peters When you opened your newspaper on November 4, you could be forgiven for thinking we live in a completely divided country. The blue states were on either coast, plus a couple of states in the middle, and the rest of the country was red. Many friends of mine -- fellow activists and leftists -- reacted despairingly to this image. Who are these people who voted for Bush? one asked, as if Republican voters must hail from some other species. How can so many people vote against their own interests? another friend wondered, hinting that maybe they are all just all stupid. Emails began circulating that identified the red states as Dumbfuckistan and proposed that the two coasts be known as Coastopia. I find myself feeling worried, too, but not so much about the voters. There is another group that has me more concerned. But before we get to that, let's consider the wildly inaccurate view of the country that we get from these maps that mark off our states in either blue or red. A more accurate picture would signify each voter with a red or a blue dot, and would reveal the close margins in many states rather than the winner-take-all monochrome approach. In addition, the more accurate picture should have white dots for all those who didn't vote. And for the latter group, we should be sure to include not just the registered voters that did not exercise their franchise, but all those who would be eligible to vote if they were to register. The shocking red of the Bush victory would look more like a washed out pinkish-blue if it were thus mixed with the blues (who voted Democrat) and the whites (who demonstrated their alienation from the whole process by not participating in it). To complicate matters even further, the color of each dot is of questionable significance. Being from a liberal blue state (Massachusetts), I know that too many of the blue dots who live around here say all the right things about tolerance, gay marriage, racial harmony, and the war in Iraq, but meanwhile benefit big time from the status quo. They're worried about Bush because his foreign and domestic policies may ultimately prove too disruptive of the very institutions that ensure for them such safe and comfortable lifestyles. They want U.S. Empire at home and abroad to proceed along a more polite course -- with more crumbs thrown to the chronically marginalized and more multi-lateral support garnered for foreign exploits. They don't want to have to step over homeless people on the way to the museum downtown, and they don't want to be called scumbags by the locals when they take their Paris vacations. Just as the privileged blue dots have streaks of red in them, so do the working-class blue dots, some of whom voted for Kerry despite the fact they are appalled by his association with abortion and gay marriage. Blue dots are not the only ones that are confusing. What exactly does it mean to be a red dot? My Chicano friend in El Paso is a Vietnam veteran and works the night shift at the post office. He thinks the point of most U.S. foreign policy in the last 50 years has been to secure profits for U.S. corporations -- mostly at the expense of poor people at home and abroad. He doesn't see Democrats taking a much different course from the Republicans on that front, but at least the Republicans give voice to values he can relate to when it comes to family and sexuality, etc. One member of the American Federation of Government Employees, who I met recently at the Jobs with Justice Solidarity School, said that some of his fellow workers in Missouri voted for Bush even though they understood quite well that it would be a vote against their class interests. They were swayed by the Republicans' politics of fear, and they were willing to sacrifice financial security for security from terrorists. Is this a knuckle-dragging redneck, as some progressives claim? Or is he someone who is honestly evaluating the available information and choosing the path that he thinks will keep his family and his community most safe? The point is, don't assume too much about either the red dots or the blue dots, and don't forget about the millions of white dots. In all three categories, there are abhorrent views and sympathetic ones. There are potential allies and enemies. Parsing out the pinkish-blue hue that seems to describe our country doesn't do much to relieve the agony of another four years of Bush, but it should give us some perspective on how we go about organizing. Which brings me back
[pjnews] More on Alleged Ohio Election Fraud
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1222-05.htm Leading Democrat Asking for Exit Poll Data http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1228-01.htm Ohio GOP Election Officials Ducking Subpoenas as Kerry Enters Stolen Vote Fray - http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121604Z.shtml Proof of Ohio Election Fraud Exposed By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Report Wednesday 15 December 2004 Among activists and investigators looking into allegations of vote fraud in the 2004 Presidential election, the company always mentioned was Diebold and its suspicious electronic touch-screen voting machines. It is Diebold that has multiple avowed Republicans on its Board of Directors. It was Diebold that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bushs election campaign. It was Diebold CEO Walden ODell who vowed to deliver Ohios electoral votes to Bush. As it turns out, everyone was looking the wrong way. The company that requires immediate and penetrating scrutiny is Triad Systems. Triad is owned by a man named Tod Rapp, who has also donated money to both the Republican Party and the election campaign of George W. Bush. Triad manufactures punch-card voting systems, and also wrote the computer program that tallied the punch-card votes cast in 41 Ohio counties last November. This Triad company graphic displays the counties where their machines are used: Given the ubiquity of the Triad voting systems in Ohio, the allegations that have been leveled against this company strike to the heart of the assumed result of the 2004 election. Earlier this week, the allegations against triad were first raised by Green Party candidate David Cobb, who testified at a hearing held in Columbus, Ohio by Rep. John Conyers of the House Judiciary Committee. In his testimony, Cobb stated: Mr. Chairman, though our time is limited, I must bring to the committee's attention the most recent and perhaps most troubling incident that was related to my campaign on Sunday, December 12, about a shocking event that occurred last Friday, December 10. A representative from Triad Systems came into a county board of elections office un-announced. He said he was just stopping by to see if they had any questions about the up-coming recount. He then headed into the back room where the Triad supplied Tabulator (a card reader and older PC with custom software) is kept. He told them there was a problem and the system had a bad battery and had lost all of its data. He then took the computer apart and started swapping parts in and out of it and another spare tower type PC also in the room. He may have had spare parts in his coat as one of the BOE people moved it and remarked as to how very heavy it was. He finally re-assembled everything and said it was working but to not turn it off. He then asked which precinct would be counted for the 3% recount test, and the one which had been selected as it had the right number of votes, was relayed to him. He then went back and did something else to the tabulator computer. The Triad Systems representative suggested that since the hand count had to match the machine count exactly, and since it would be hard to memorize the several numbers which would be needed to get the count to come out exactly right, that they should post this series of numbers on the wall where they would not be noticed by observers. He suggested making them look like employee information or something similar. The people doing the hand count could then just report these numbers no matter what the actual count of the ballots revealed. This would then match the tabulator report for this precinct exactly. The numbers were apparently the final certified counts for the selected precinct. Triad is contracted to do much of the elections work in this county and elsewhere in Ohio. This included programming the candidates into the tabulator, and coming up with the rotation of candidates in the various precincts (that is, the order of which candidate is first changes between precincts). They also have a technician in the office on election night to actually run the tabulator itself. Triad also supplies the network computers on which all of the voter registration information and processing is kept for the county. It was unusual for the computers to be taken apart. At least one member of the Board of Elections was told the tabulator was in pieces when he called to check on the office. The source of this report believes that the Triad representative was making the rounds of visiting other counties also before the recount. This person also stated they would not pass on the suggestion of the posted hidden totals, and would refuse to go along with it if it were suggested by the others in the office at the time. The source of this information believes they could lose
[pjnews] Tsunami relief is not a priority for Bush
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. Democracy Now! - Tsunami relief is not a priority for Bush http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/29/161210 While the Bush administration has pledged to play a major role in the relief effort, it is already coming under criticism for its handling of the crisis. On Monday, the Bush administration pledged an initial $15 million for the effort. After a top UN official described the donation as stingy, the US pledged another $20 million bringing the total offering to $35 million. To put the figure in perspective, President Bush plans to spend between $30 and $40 million for his upcoming inauguration celebration. And the amount pledged to victims of the tsunami is dwarfed by the Bush administration's war effort in Iraq. The U.S. has spent an average of $9.5 million every hour on the war and occupation of Iraq. With a current price tag of $147 billion, the U.S. has spent n average of about $228 million a day in Iraq. In other words, the U.S. spends what it promised on the tsunami relief effort in less than four hours in Iraq. http://www.juancole.com/ As John F. Harris and Robin Wright of the Washington Post cannily note [see below], US President George W. Bush has missed an important opportunity to reach out to the Muslims of Indonesia. The Bush administration at first pledged a paltry $15 million, a mysteriously chintzy response to what was obviously an enormous calamity. Bush himself remained on vacation, and now has reluctantly agreed to a meeting of the National Security Council by video conference. If Bush were a statesman, he would have flown to Jakarta and announced his solidarity with the Muslims of Indonesia (which has suffered at least 40,000 dead and rising). Indeed, the worst-hit area of Indonesia is Aceh, the center of a Muslim separatist movement, and a gesture to Aceh from the US at this moment might have meant a lot in US-Muslim public relations. Bin Laden and Zawahiri sniffed around Aceh in hopes of recruiting operatives there, being experts in fishing in troubled waters. Doesn't the US want to outflank al-Qaeda? As it is, the president of the United States is invisible and on vacation (unlike several European heads of state), and could think of nothing better to do than announce a paltry pledge. As Harris and Wright rightly say, the rest of the world treated the US much better than this after September 11... http://snipurl.com/bo2g Aid Grows Amid Remarks About President's Absence By John F. Harris and Robin Wright Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, December 29, 2004; Page A01 The Bush administration more than doubled its financial commitment yesterday to provide relief to nations suffering from the Indian Ocean tsunami, amid complaints that the vacationing President Bush has been insensitive to a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions. As the death toll surpassed 50,000 with no sign of abating, the U.S. Agency for International Development added $20 million to an earlier pledge of $15 million to provide relief, and the Pentagon dispatched an aircraft carrier and other military assets to the region. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in morning television appearances, chafed at a top U.N. aid official's comment on Monday that wealthy countries were being stingy with aid. The United States is not stingy, Powell said on CNN. Although U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland yesterday withdrew his earlier comment, domestic criticism of Bush continued to rise. Skeptics said the initial aid sums -- as well as Bush's decision at first to remain cloistered on his Texas ranch for the Christmas holiday rather than speak in person about the tragedy -- showed scant appreciation for the magnitude of suffering and for the rescue and rebuilding work facing such nations as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia. After a day of repeated inquiries from reporters about his public absence, Bush late yesterday afternoon announced plans to hold a National Security Council meeting by teleconference to discuss several issues, including the tsunami, followed by a short public statement. Bush's deepened public involvement puts him more in line with other world figures. In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder cut short his vacation and returned to work in Berlin because of the Indian Ocean crisis, which began with a gigantic underwater earthquake. In Britain, the predominant U.S. voice speaking about the disaster was not Bush but former president Bill Clinton, who in an interview with the BBC said the suffering was like something in a horror movie, and urged a coordinated international response. Earlier yesterday, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the president was confident he could monitor events effectively without returning to Washington or making public statements in Crawford, where he spent part of the day clearing
[pjnews] Tsunami relief followup
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. You can make a contribution to UNICEF for cleanup and humanitarian assistance by going to: http://snipurl.com/bo39 _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject quot;subscribequot; to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will be deleted from this list. FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the information in this e-mail is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. I am making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for in the US Copyright Law.
[pjnews] A New Course in Iraq
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.fpif.org/pdf/gac/0412iraq.pdf A New Course in Iraq by Erik Leaver, Foreign Policy in Focus December 10th, 2004 As many members of Congress and President George W. Bushs administration argue that its unacceptable to leave Iraq as a failed state, it becomes clearer every day that U.S. operations and policies are fueling violence and instability. Its time for the government to directly confront the question of how to fulfill U.S. obligations under international law, restore basic security, and responsibly withdraw U.S. forces. Central to this point, Washington must not simply abandon the Iraqi people to the chaos it has created. But the U.S. needs to accept the fact that continued military occupation by the U.S. will only cause more casualties, foster division in the country, and keep reconstruction from advancing. In the six months since the transition to Iraqi sovereignty officially got underway on June 28, 2004, the human cost of the U.S. occupation of that country has risen dramatically. U.S. military deaths have topped 1,200. A study published in The Lancet has estimated that 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of war and conditions under occupation. Norwegian researchers, the United Nations, and the Iraqi government recently reported that malnutrition among the youngest children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the U.S.-led invasion of that country. And soaring rates of disease and a crippled health system are threatening to kill more than have died in the aftermath of the war. This dynamic is unlikely to change in the near term. The Bush administrations stated two-pronged plan of staging elections and putting Iraqis in charge of their own security is clearly the right objective. But on the ground this is failing for a variety of reasons. Iraqi elections held under U.S. military occupation and under election rules written by the U.S will lack legitimacy both inside and outside Iraq. Furthermore, the lack of UN election experts on the ground, coupled with continued fighting, and the fact that any polling location guarded by U.S. troops will be a military target, means free and fair elections cant take place as scheduled in January. Iraqis need to be in charge of their own security. But the Iraqi police and National Guard have largely failed to provide security for the Iraqi people and the situation appears to be only worsening. Iraqs security forces are fighting in a war that puts anyone who is physically near or associated with the U.S. occupation at risk. At the same time, soldiers and police officers lack adequate training. One measure of the problem can be seen in their death toll. Over 1,500 Iraqi security force recruits and 750 Iraqi police officers have been killed. Iraqi security forces cant succeed as long as the U.S. is leading a war on the ground in Iraq. As Larry Diamond, who worked as a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, has noted, There are really no good options, at this point. But there are better options than the policies being currently pursued. The following five steps would lessen the violence and insecurity in Iraq: 1) Decrease U.S. troops and end offensive operations: As a first step to withdrawal, the U.S. should declare an immediate cease-fire and reduce the number of troops deployed in Iraq. Instead, the Bush administration has done the opposite, increasing the number of troops stationed there by 12,000. Increased offensive operations will only escalate the violence and make Iraq less secure and less safe. The U.S. should pull troops out of major cities so that greater manpower can be directed to guarding the borders to stem the flow of foreign fighters and money being used to fund the resistance. If Iraqi security forces need assistance maintaining order, they have the option of inviting in regional forces, as proposed by Saudi Arabia. They could also reinstate the former Iraqi army, which was well-trained, after purging upper-level Saddam supporters and providing additional counterinsurgency training to deal with the current war. Once implemented, these measures would allow for total withdrawal of U.S. forces. 2) Declare that the U.S. has no intention to maintain a permanent or long-term military presence or bases in Iraq . Congress needs to make clear that it is committed to the principle of responsible withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq. By making this statement through a congressional resolution, the U.S. would openly acknowledge that it has no interest in controlling Middle Eastern oil or in suppressing Muslims, hence depriving insurgents of their central organizing message. Without such a resolution, Iraqis have little reason to believe that our present actions are nothing greater than a plan to establish a long-term military presence in Iraq and make the occupation a permanent feature of Iraqi life. 3) Do
[pjnews] The Emperor-in-Chief
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/122704A.shtml The Emperor-in-Chief By Marjorie Cohn t r u t h o u t | Perspective Monday 27 December 2004 Rumor has it that George W. Bush's tailor is busily stitching a royal blue cloak to go with the gold crown that will adorn the president as he takes the oath of office on January 20. Now that Bush has secured a second term, it is no longer necessary to hide behind the subtle flight suit that bedecked him on the deck of the aircraft carrier declaring Mission Accomplished in May 2003. He can now come out of the closet as full-fledged Emperor of the World. Notwithstanding the United States Constitution and the United Nations Charter, Bush nicely qualifies as the male sovereign or supreme ruler of an empire, as required by Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. Bush wasn't always riding high. Shortly before 9/11, his ratings were falling. It was a mere two weeks after the September 11 attacks that a secret memo prepared for Alberto Gonzales's office concluded Bush had the power to use military force preemptively against any terrorist organizations or countries that supported them. Any link to the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon was unnecessary, said the memo, even though Congress had so limited its license for the president to use force. Treaties ratified by the United States, such as the Charter of the United Nations, are the Supreme law of the land under our Constitution. The U.N. Charter forbids the use of armed force against another State unless undertaken in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council. The necessity for self-defense must be instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation, according to the leading Caroline Case of 1841. The Charter's prohibition on the use of force has not prevented prior presidents from acting unilaterally. Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada, George H.W. Bush invaded Panama, and Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia in 1999, the year after he bombed Afghanistan and the Sudan. Before invading Iraq, George W. Bush made war on Afghanistan to retaliate against the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden. None of these interventions was an exercise of self-defense; none was approved by the Council. All were illegal. George W. Bush, however, has taken chutzpah to a higher level with his new doctrine of preemptive war. It was first elaborated in the secret September 25, 2001 memo from Justice Department lawyer John Yoo to Tim Flanigan, Gonzales's chief deputy. Near the top of the 15-page memo is the following language: The President has constitutional power not only to retaliate against any person, organization, or State suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States, but also against foreign States suspected of harboring or supporting such organizations. The President may deploy military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of September 11. Nowhere does the U.N. Charter permit the use of force to retaliate against anyone or any State. Nowhere does the Charter allow military force to be used preemptively against any organization. Yet nowhere did John Yoo mention the United Nations Charter. Nevertheless, George W. Bush adopted the Yoo theory as his own, publicly proclaiming in a June 2002 speech at the West Point Military Academy graduation, If we wait for threats to fully materialize we will have waited too long. He added, Our security will require all Americans to be forward looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives. The new Bush Doctrine was again set forth three months later in the National Security Strategy of the United States. It said: America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed. This does not meet the Caroline test. And in his March 17, 2003 speech that launched Operation Iraqi Freedom Bush maintained, We choose to meet that threat now where it arises, before it can appear suddenly in our skies and cities, in spite of the fact that Iraq had not attacked any country for 12 years, and posed no threat to any other country. When Bush's lawyers tried to defend the indefinite detentions of 600 men held incommunicado at the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and of U.S. citizen Yasser Hamdi in the United States, the Supreme Court scolded them, saying war in not a blank check for the president. The due process the Court required the Bush administration to provide these men has been slow in coming, however; six months after the Court's ruling in the Guantánamo case, very few have been afforded hearings. Flush from their election victory, Bush's
[pjnews] Molly Ivins on 2004
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1231-05.htm Published on Friday, December 31, 2004 by the Boulder Daily Camera (Colorado) Oh, What a Year it Was by Molly Ivins AUSTIN, Texas Oh 2004, 2004, bird thou never wert. Was it really that horrible a year, or does it only seem that way? Abu Ghraib, the endless trials anent Kobe Bryant and Scott Peterson, war in Iraq looking worse every day, Howard Dean eliminated over a whoop and a presidential race so devoid of joy that the high point was when the president claimed God speaks through him leaving us to contemplate the news that God doesn't know how to pronounce nuclear and has yet to master subject-verb agreement. Performance enhancing drugs in baseball. Ray Charles died. Karl Rove is Man of the Year. We're all overweight. Swift Boat Liars win the presidential race for Bush. Then just to round things off nicely, a terrible natural disaster. What a bummer. But, look at it this way ... the Boston Red Sox won the championship. Eliot Spitzer is scaring the spit out of the insurance industry (check out those year-end bonuses on Wall Street, El). The Greek Olympics went well. Maybe we could end the payola by just having them in Greece every time. Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France for a record sixth time, a symbolic victory for cancer patients everywhere. Jon Stewart survived a storm of approval and came out just as sardonic as ever. Richard Clarke showed us all that public servant, class act and bureaucrat can be the same thing. In other highlights: The Coalition of the Willing was depleted when Hungary, Thailand, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Honduras, Ukraine, Spain, the Philippines, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Poland (so movingly cited by President Bush during one of the debates) all proved less than willing. On the other hand, Tonga is still with us. Texan Jessica Simpson, the one who makes Paris Hilton look like a genius, showed an astonished nation what a Texas intellectual looks like. Upon being introduced to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, she said, You've done a nice job decorating the White House. The Ukrainians showed us all what people who really care about democracy do when there's cheating at the polls. Bless them for just not standing for it. Media Low Point of the Year: Rush Limbaugh on Abu Ghraib: I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of the need to blow some steam off? Emblematic Political Moment of the Year: As the full dimensions of the tidal wave in the Indian Ocean became clear, Bush's staff used the occasion to ... take a few cheap shots at Bill Clinton. Explaining why the president had neither returned to Washington nor even bothered to come out and read a statement of sorrow, The Washington Post reported that one official said: 'The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He doesn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain. Many Bush aides believe Clinton was too quick to head for the cameras and to hold forth on tragedies with his trademark sympathy. 'Actions speak louder than words,' a top Bush aide said. So for action, the Bushies pledged less than the amount that will be spent on parties for the Bush inauguration. What Were They Thinking? Moment of the Year: Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl. Seriously, who planned that? Dumbest Reaction to Wardrobe Malfunction: FCC decides its job is to censor bad taste on television (got their life's work cut out for them, haven't they?), instead of preventing the truly obscene and dangerous concentration of ownership in the media. Another high point: John Ashcroft (the man whose understanding of the right to dissent is so profound he said, To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve) will be replaced as attorney general by Al (Defining Torture Down) Gonzales. Gonzales put out the legal memo that says cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment does not constitute torture as long as it is not equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death. Well, friends, the old ball is starting another orbit of the sun, giving us all a chance to do better this time. Let's not blow it, because we sure look like dogmeat after this one. _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject
[pjnews] 2004: Things to Forget
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1230-09.htm Published on Thursday, December 30, 2004 2004: Things to Forget by Arianna Huffington While so many year-end publications focus on what we should remember about the year now grinding to a close, I'd like to continue this column's contrarian tradition of pointing out the things we'd all be better off never having cross our minds again. Here then is a list of all the things I'd like to forget, circa 2004: Bernard Kerik's nanny. Bernard Kerik's Ground Zero love nest. Bernard Kerik. That the woman who dismissed a presidential briefing entitled Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. as a historical document is going to be our next secretary of state. That a man who finds the Geneva Conventions quaint is going to be our next attorney general. Janet Jackson's briefly exposed right boob. That it took 14 months and public protests from the victims' families before the president OK'd the 9/11 Commission, but only two weeks before the first hearings were held on Janet Jackson's boob. That the media thought Don't be economic girlie men was a great line. Scott Peterson's love of golf. And that his lawyers thought it was a reason he shouldn't be sentenced to death. Paris Hilton's new perfume. Paris Hilton's new album. Paris Hilton's new book. Paris Hilton. Surviving Christmas, Jersey Girl, J-Lo: Ben Affleck goes 0-for-2004. Madrid, Spain, March 11, 2004. Beslan, Russia, Sept. 3, 2004. That the Federal budget deficit hit $413 billion this year, and two-thirds of it is the result of Bush's tax cuts. That Dick Cheney is talking about another round of tax cuts. What Colin Powell did to his credibility. You break it, you live with it for the rest of your life. I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it. That picture of Lynndie England holding the leash. The way the administration tried to sweep Abu Ghraib under the rug. William Hung, recording artist. Ashlee Simpson, lip synch artist. Bob Dylan, lingerie salesman. That George Tenet, who knew that the intel on Iraqi WMD was thinner than Lara Flynn Boyle on Dexatrim, turned into the Dick Vitale of WMD: It's a slam dunk, baby! That George Tenet was subsequently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. That a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich allegedly bearing the likeness of the Virgin Mary sold for $28,000 on eBay. The 10,000 Web remixes incorporating The Dean Scream. That of the roughly 550 enemy combatants held captive in Guantanamo Bay, only four have been formally charged. The Pistons/Pacers basketbrawl. The looks on George and Laura Bush's faces when Dr. Phil asked them about the epidemic levels of oral sex in America's middle schools. That Osama is still on the loose and releasing tapes. That the Kyoto Protocol was ratified and we aren't part of it. That Ken Lay has still not gone to trial or served a minute in jail. That 35.9 million Americans live below the poverty line 12.9 million of them children. That 42 percent of Americans still think Saddam Hussein was directly involved in planning, financing or carrying out the 9/11 attacks. That, thanks to presidential cutbacks, we actually have fewer police and first responders on the streets today than we had on 9/11. Star Jones' wedding. The Movie Multiplex from Hell: Alexander, My Baby's Daddy, Thunderbirds, Sleepover, Around the World in 80 Days. The iPod Party Mix from Hell: Jessica Simpson's Take My Breath Away, William Hung's She Bangs, Britney Spears' Toxic, Britney Spears' My Prerogative, Britney Spears' I've Just Begun Having My Fun. That Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld couldn't find time to personally sign letters of condolence to the families of troops killed in Iraq. That Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz couldn't remember the number of soldiers who'd lost their lives in Iraq. Drilling for oil in ANWR (I've been desperately trying to forget this one since 2001, but the White House just won't let me!). _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject quot;subscribequot; to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will be deleted from this list. FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the information in this e-mail is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a
[pjnews] An Open Letter to Senator John Kerry
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://democrats.com/kerry-letter Stolen Election 2004: An Open Letter to Senator John Kerry on Leading the Challenge to Ohio's Electors on January 6 by Bob Fertik on 12/28/2004 11:33am. (revised 01/01/2005 8:11pm) Dear Senator Kerry, I was proud to support you in every way possible this year, including casting an enthusiastic vote for you - just one of 59 million Americans who put our ultimate trust in your hands. Today I am writing you to ask you to honor our trust by leading the challenge to Ohio's Electors on January 6. Your attorneys in Ohio have carefully monitored the recount and ongoing contest based on serious allegations of fraud. Monday afternoon, your attorney Don McTigue joined John Bonifaz in two important motions to preserve and augment evidence of such fraud in the November election, stemming from Triad's actions in Hocking County. But Monday night, your attorney Dan Hoffheimer told Keith Olbermann your investigation is over: There are many conspiracy theorists opining these days. There are many allegations of fraud. But this presidential election is over. The Bush-Cheney ticket has won. The Kerry-Edwards campaign has found no conspiracy and no fraud in Ohio, though there have been many irregularities that cry out to be fixed for future elections. Senator Kerry and we in Ohio intend to fix them. When all of the problems in Ohio are added together, however bad they are, they do not add up to a victory for Kerry-Edwards. Senator Kerry's fully-informed and extremely careful assessment the day after the election and before he conceded remains accurate today, notwithstanding all the details we have since learned. I beg to differ with Dan Hoffheimer. Let me address two issues: 1) When do many irregularities (Hoffheimer's own phrase) rise to the level of fraud and ultimately conspiracy? 2) How much fraud would it take to add up to a victory for Kerry-Edwards? 1) When do many irregularities (Hoffheimer's own phrase) rise to the level of fraud and ultimately conspiracy? Irregularities happen by accident or neglect. Fraud happens by design, when someone intends to interfere with a free and fair election. Conspiracy happens by coordination among those intending to commit fraud. The first challenge is proving the many irregularities were not accidental, but were intentional fraud. There is no doubt that George Bush's campaign stole Florida in 2000 through a conspiracy to commit fraud. In the midst of the 2000 recount - Dec. 4, 2000 - Greg Palast discovered that the felon purge list used by Katherine Harris disenfranchised thousands of non-felons, mostly Democrats who would have cast far more than the 537 votes (actually only 154 following Florida Supreme Court's key ruling on Dec. 8) needed to make Al Gore the winner. Palast's initial discovery was fraud - the eligible voters were wrongly purged in clear violation of their right to vote. But eventually Palast found a smoking gun - the e-mails from the database vendor specifically warning Harris' staff that her deliberately inexact match criteria would disenfranchise many votes. Harris' staff told them to do it anyway - making it a conspiracy. The only reason Harris - and her patron Jeb Bush - are not in jail is because Attorney General John Ashcroft engineered a coverup, the Republican majority in Congress refused to investigate, and the mainstream media ignored Palast's documented work and instead marched in lockstep behind the Republican Party as it seized the White House. Even when Vanity Fair's David Margolick revealed that the Supreme Court's Republican majority in Bush v. Gore intentionally discarded 175,000 uncounted ballots to install Bush in the White House, the media remained silent. Now what about Ohio in 2004? A large group of detectives are painstakingly examining evidence and interviewing witnesses. As in all difficult criminal investigations, key discoveries are being made in fits and starts, and key questions are being highlighted. I have documented all of the key discoveries on one page: http://democrats.com/ohio Have we found the smoking gun? Not yet. But we have made many important discoveries that suggest the many irregularities were outright fraud. And we are close to uncovering a conspiracy, which seems ever more likely because of Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's fierce effort to block any investigation whatsoever. The Republican effort to steal Ohio's electors began long before Election Day, and continues to this very moment. Before Election Day In October 2000, Florida's then-House Speaker Tom Feeney asked programmer Clint Curtis to write a program to flip votes in electronic voting machines. On August 14, 2003, the CEO of the nation's largest electronic voting machine vendor - Diebold's Wally O'Dell - sent a fundraising letter promising to deliver Ohio's Electoral votes to Bush. There is
[pjnews] Rage of Fallujah residents boils over
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news14.htm The Jordan Times 31 December 2004 Rage of Fallujah residents boils over FALLUJAH (AFP) Three-year-old Mustapha stands at the door of his family's torched living room in the devastated Iraqi city of Fallujah. He has not had a hot meal in nearly two months. Residents of the city battered by a massive US-led onslaught against Sunni Muslim rebels are being allowed to gradually return to their homes despite ongoing clashes with some pockets of insurgents. But the US military and the interim Iraqi government are having to confront the rage and despair of many returning residents and the few that lived through the massive assault in November and its aftermath. Mustapha's father, Omar Khalil, 38, moved his family of eight about 10 days ago to a nearby Red Crescent compound because he was told Iraqi and US troops wanted to sweep through homes to make sure no insurgents were hiding there. They came back a week ago and found their home a living room and one bedroom destroyed by fire, along with all their contents. We were heartbroken, said Khalil's wife Thana, 30. This is worse than the shelling and bombing. The family survived the worst moments of the fighting and did not join the few hundred thousand people that fled the city before the start of the assault and settled in makeshift camps or with relatives. The US military has promised to reopen more sections of Fallujah one week after it started allowing Iraqis to return to three western neigbourhoods. We take our direction from the Iraqi interim government of Iyad Allawi, we were instructed to let residents in even though some neighbourhoods are unsafe and we continue to combat insurgents, said Major Naomi Hawkins, a civil affairs officer with the Marines. She said troops find weapons caches and defuse roadside bombs daily. Hawkins told Khalil he can go to the mayor's office to file a claim or to Baghdad and receive $100 from reconstruction funds deposited at designated banks to tie him over until his application is processed. But a weary-looking Khalil was not convinced and spoke of the perils of venturing out of his neighbourhood as sporadic blasts echoed in the background. Every single home, shop and shed in Khalil's neighbourhood has a big x mark sprayed in red to indicate that US and Iraqi forces have searched it. Some are burnt or simply levelled to the ground. I saw them burn homes with my own eyes on the 14th (of December), there was no fighting, why? said an angry Ismail Ibrahim Shaalan, 50. His son was angry at both sides. Insurgents beheaded people and the Americans destroyed our city, we do not know who to believe now, said Wisam, 14. Another neighbour emptied a pair of shoes and a sweater from inside a paper bag on to the ground, saying this was all he was able to salvage from his destroyed home. Is this the olive branch that Allawi extended? said a bitter and tearful Alaa Abdullah, 25, who has just returned to the city. Most are returning to destroyed and looted homes in a city that resembles a disaster zone with no power, heat or running water. Some are finding bodies of relatives that stayed behind. I buried my father three days ago, said Qisma Diab, 55, as she waited with nine other women at an intersection for a special bus to take them back to a checkpoint through which they entered earlier. The few that stay are setting up tents next to the rubble of their homes and living off rations handed out by US and Iraqi forces. A US Marine admitted that in some cases they were forced to use alternative means like torching or bombing homes they believed were being used as sanctuaries for insurgents. If we could not get in there we had to use alternative means, said Sergeant John Cross. But an Iraqi soldier nearby admitted that in some cases Iraqi troops burnt homes if they found pro-insurgency literature or material. His remarks provoked the anger of a man who overheard him and a scuffle ensued, which is broken up by a passing national guard patrol. In a similar scene of anger and frustration, an argument broke out between an old-man and an official with the Red Crescent handing out blankets and heaters. The humanitarian agency tried to venture Wednesday into some of the worst neighbourhoods of Fallujah to look for bodies, but was told by the US military this work was being done by the health ministry and that it was better off distributing aide to returning residents. It takes about six hours for people to make it through a security checkpoint at the entrance of the city. They are then handed small orange cards that list 13 new rules of conduct such as a ban on graffiti and public meetings. This is an insult, sayd Khalid Ibrahim, 42. They treat us like Palestinian refugees. _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail
[pjnews] Action: Challenge Gonzales Nomination as Attorney General
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://capwiz.com/fconl/issues/alert/?alertid=6757941 FCNL Action Alert: Challenge Gonzales Nomination as Attorney General! The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin hearings on Alberto Gonzales nomination on Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2005. Following Judiciary Committee approval, the nomination will be considered on the floor of the Senate. As White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales was an architect of the administrations policies on enemy combatant status, indefinite detention, and military tribunals. He was responsible for the administrations policy about the use of torture by U.S. personnel, drafting at least one memo that narrowed the definition of torture so as to approve of U.S. forces conducting interrogations with techniques previously considered illegal. ACTION: Please call, e-mail, or fax your senators today. It is especially important to contact those senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee. However, because the Judiciary Committee refers the nomination to the entire Senate, contact with your senators is important even if they are not on the Judiciary Committee. To see a list of Senate Judiciary Committee members, follow this link: http://snipurl.com/bqce and select that committee from the pull-down menu. Urge them to fulfill their constitutional duty by participating in thorough, comprehensive confirmation hearings and full Senate consideration of this nomination. Although it is unlikely that Alberto Gonzales confirmation can be prevented, it is of utmost importance to have a thorough Senate airing of these issues, alerting the press and public to Alberto Gonzales professional philosophy, past actions, and commitments (or avoidance of commitments) that will guide his tenure as Attorney General. BACKGROUND: After the November 2004 election, Attorney General John Ashcroft resigned, and President Bush nominated White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general. As counsel to the President during the post-Sept. 11, 2001, period, Alberto Gonzales participated in drafting legal memos to narrow the definition of torture, attempting to legally justify the brutal treatment of people detained under U.S. control. He was the architect of the Presidents use of the designation enemy combatant and approved of the Presidents application of that designation, even for U.S. citizens arrested in the United States, without court or congressional oversight. His office authored the opinion that the Geneva Conventions are not applicable to al Qaeda combatants, and that military tribunals without due process protections are adequate for adjudication of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Prison facility. As White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales had the role of advising and assisting the President about policies intended to enhance the Presidents policy determinations and Executive branch power. And, as counsel to the governor, Alberto Gonzales served then-Gov. Bush in the same relationship. If confirmed as attorney general, Alberto Gonzales would have to pay a completely different role that of the chief law enforcement officer in the U.S. As such, would he remain a quasi-counsel to the President, a loyal cabinet officer and legal apologist, or would he make the transition to a very different, independent role? Would he honor the rule of law, rather than the rule of men, in the chief law enforcement role? Would he honor U.S. treaty commitments concerning torture and other human rights transgressions? Would he submit to congressional oversight and respect the opinions of the courts? Senators have a constitutional duty to carefully review the individual that the President nominates to be attorney general. They should participate in thorough, comprehensive confirmation hearings and full Senate consideration of this nomination. They should ask Alberto Gonzales about the memos he helped draft, in which he argued that the definition of torture should be changed so that brutal interrogation techniques would be considered acceptable. They should ask him about his participation in the drafting and execution of the Executive Order claiming that the President has the right to designate, without due process or oversight, individuals as enemy combatants even U.S. citizens. They should ask him about his approval of the policy and procedures involved in the military tribunal proceedings being conducted at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. They should ask him what differences he perceives between the role of counsel to the President and that of U.S. Attorney General, and whether he can commit to fulfilling his responsibilities as the head of U.S. law enforcement. And, they should ask him how he would handle the conflict of interest inherent in investigations and prosecutions of his White House colleagues? For talking points about the Presidents choice of Alberto Gonzales to serve as
[pjnews] New Torture Allegations from Guantánamo
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/bqds Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials... http://snipurl.com/bqdt Fresh Details Emerge on Harsh Methods at Guantánamo Interviews with former intelligence officers and interrogators provided new details and confirmed earlier accounts of inmates being shackled for hours and left to soil themselves while exposed to blaring music or the insistent meowing of a cat-food commercial. In addition, some may have been forcibly given enemas as punishment. [...] In a recent interview, another former official added new details, saying that many interrogators used a different audio tape on prisoners, a mix of babies crying and the television commercial for Meow Mix in which the jingle consists of repetition of the word meow... --- http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1382033,00.html The Observer-UK 2 January 2005 Guantanamo Briton 'in handcuff torture' David Rose British detainee at Guantanamo Bay has told his lawyer he was tortured using the 'strappado', a technique common in Latin American dictatorships in which a prisoner is left suspended from a bar with handcuffs until they cut deeply into his wrists. The reason, the prisoner says, was that he was caught reciting the Koran at a time when talking was banned. He says he has also been repeatedly shaved against his will. In one such incident, a guard told him: 'This is the part that really gets to you Muslims, isn't it?' The strappado allegation was one among many made about treatment at both Guantanamo and the US base at Bagram in Afghanistan made to the British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith when he visited his clients Moazzam Begg and Richard Belmar at the Cuban prison six weeks ago, having tried for the previous 14 months to obtain the necessary security clearance. But it is clear the disturbing claim is only the tip of the iceberg. Under the rules the United States military has imposed for defence lawyers who visit Guantanamo, Stafford Smith has not been allowed to keep his notes of meetings with prisoners, and will not be able to read them again until they have been examined and de-classified by a government censor. He cannot disclose in public anything the men have told him until it too has been been de-classified, on pain of likely imprisonment in the US. Stafford Smith has drawn up a 30-page report on the tortures which Begg and Belmar say they have endured, and sent it as an annexe with a letter to the Prime Minister which Downing Street received shortly before Christmas. For the time being - possibly forever - the report cannot be published, because the Americans claim that the torture allegations amount to descriptions of classified interrogation methods. However, Stafford Smith's letter to Tony Blair - which has been declassified - says that on his visit to the Guantanamo prisoners, he heard 'credible and consistent evidence that both men have been savagely tortured at the hands of the United States' with Begg having suffered not only physical but 'sexual abuse' which has had 'mental health consequences'. Thousands of documents obtained last month under the US Freedom of Information Act by the American Civil Liberties Union support the claims of torture at Guantanamo, which has apparently continued long after the publication last April of photographs of detainees being abused at the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. They include memos and emails to superiors by FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency officers, who say they were appalled by the methods being used by the young military interrogators at Guantanamo. According to the memos, the abuse was 'systematic', with frequent beatings, chokings, and sleep deprivation for days on end. Religious humiliation was also routine, with one agent reporting a case in which a prisoner was wrapped in an Israeli flag. 'On a couple of occasions I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a foetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water,' an anonymous FBI agent wrote on 2 August. 'Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more.' Reports of identical treatment were first published by The Observer last March, in interviews with three British detainees who had been released - Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed. They were then strenuously denied by the Pentagon. But according to another FBI memo dated 10 May, when an agent asked Guantanamo's former commander, Major General Geoffrey Miller, about techniques the FBI regarded as illegal, he was told that the interrogators 'had their marching orders from the Sec[retary]
[pjnews] Ted Glick on Hope in the New Year
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. Future Hope column, January 1, 2005 Happy New Year, 2005 By Ted Glick It's hard to even write the words, much less say them. The staggering toll of dead, injured and devastation wrought by the Christmas tsunami in south Asia is heart-breaking. And this is on top of the Bush electoral victory, the war in Iraq, recent U.S. obstruction of international efforts to rein in global warming, plans to privatize/decimate Social Security and more. It reminds me of a line from a poem I once wrote: Where do we look for strength in times like these- hard times, struggling times, fighting-seemingly-insurmountable-odds times? I had some answers in the poem: To one another. . . Spiritual traditions. . . Children, grandchildren, neighbor children, friends' children, students. . . And some of us just muddle along, doing the best we can, learning from history, understanding the historical truth, the law of physics that for every action there is a reaction- that oppression breeds resistance- that, as Dr. King said, 'The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.' As I write we are seeing concrete evidence of this law of physics. For the last two months, since right after the seriously flawed Presidential election and John Kerry's seriously problematic immediate concession speech, a grassroots, pro-democracy movement has been growing. There were two initiatives that gave leadership to this movement: the citizen's hearings on voter disenfranchisement in Columbus, Ohio on November 13th organized by the League of Pissed Off Voters, Common Cause and the Election Protection Coalition, and the Green Party's Cobb-LaMarche campaign which initiated, raised money for and provided the organizational muscle for the (seriously flawed) Ohio recount. Without these two efforts, it is likely that the mushrooming pro-democracy movement would have stalled at the starting line. Since that time a growing number of important developments have taken place: -the active leadership and involvement in this movement by Representative John Conyers and Rev. Jesse Jackson; -the very successful Progressive Dialogue III meeting in D.C. which founded United Progressives for Democracy and called for a Winter Democracy Campaign; -the actions by Electors in at least five states, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, California and North Carolina, who, for the first time in history, turned the heavily scripted and ritualized electoral college proceedings December 13th into a forum calling for congressional investigation and legislative action; -the national organizing by No Stolen Elections and other groups to put pressure on U.S. Senators to get them to join with members of the Congressional Black Caucus on January 6th, refusing to automatically pass through the Ohio Electoral College vote; -the organization of demonstrations on January 6th in D.C., beginning with a rally at Lafayette Park in the morning, followed by a march to Capitol Hill to link up with another rally there; -the Save Our Votes March from Baltimore to D.C. January 4th to 6th organized by 51capitalmarch; -and, last but by no means least, the announcement just yesterday by We Do Not Concede that disenfranchised voters from Ohio will board a bus and/or caravan, leaving from Columbus early on the morning of January 5th and going to Washington, D.C. to lobby Senators and join with the January 6th demonstrators. Those who are feeling depressed and pessimistic about the political situation should join with this mushrooming, hopeful, grassroots-driven, pro-democracy movement. We should all be doing everything we can on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week to put heavy pressure on U.S. Senators. By Thursday they should be feeling like they must have felt back in October of 2002 when a tidal wave of grassroots pressure led to 156 members of Congress voting against the legislation giving Bush the green light to invade Iraq. The U.S. Senate needs to be hit this week with the equivalent of a political tsunami. If it is, come January 7th, Bush's political capital may have taken a major hit, and the political terrain for advancing the pro-democracy agenda and all other progressive issues will have been improved, perhaps significantly. This is no time for cynicism or despair. It's time for action. This week, every day. And it's time for people to make last-minute plans to get to Lafayette Park in D.C. on the morning of the 6th. History is calling. Let's start the new year off right. For contact information for U.S. Senators call the Capitol Hill information number, 202-224-3121. For a calendar of all the events happening this week go to: http://fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com/2005/01/calendar-of-upcoming-events.html. To learn more about what happened with the Ohio recount go
[pjnews] The Top Ten War Profiteers of 2004
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010205X.shtml The Top Ten War Profiteers of 2004 The Center for Corporate Policy Friday 31 December 2004 1. AEGIS: In June, the Pentagon's Program Management Office in Iraq awarded a $293 million contract to coordinate security operations among thousands of private contractors to Aegis, a UK firm whose founder was once investigated for illegal arms smuggling. An inquiry by the British parliament into Sandline, Aegis head Tim Spicer's former firm, determined that the company had shipped guns to Sierra Leone in 1998 in violation of a UN arms embargo. Sandline's position was that it had approval from the British government, although British ministers were cleared by the inquiry. Spicer resigned from Sandline in 2000 and incorporated Aegis in 2002. 2. BEARING POINT: Critics find it ironic that Bearing Point, the former consulting division of KPMG, received a $240 million contract in 2003 to help develop Iraq's competitive private sector, since it had a hand in the development of the contract itself. According to a March 22 report by AID's assistant inspector general Bruce Crandlemire, Bearing Point's extensive involvement in the development of the Iraq economic reform program creates the appearance of unfair competitive advantage in the contract award process. Bearing Point spent five months helping USAID write the job specifications and even sent some employees to Iraq to begin work before the contract was awarded, while its competitors had only a week to read the specifications and submit their own bids after final revisions were made. No company who writes the specs for a contract should get the contract, says Keith Ashdown, the vice president of Washington, DC-based Taxpayers for Common Sense. 3. BECHTEL: Schools, hospitals, bridges, airports, water treatment plants, power plants, railroad, irrigation, electricity, etc. Bechtel was literally tasked with repairing much of Iraq's infrastructure, a job that was critical to winning hearts and minds after the war. To accomplish this, the company hired over 90 Iraqi subcontractors for at least 100 jobs. Most of these subcontracts involved rote maintenance and repair work, however, and for sophisticated work requiring considerable hands-on knowledge of the country's infrastructure, the company bypassed Iraqi engineers and managers. Although Bechtel is not entirely to blame, the company has yet to meet virtually any of the major deadlines in its original contract. According to a June GAO report, electrical service in the country as a while has not shown a marked improvement over the immediate postwar levels of May 2003 and has worsened in some governorates. 4. BKSH ASSOCIATES: Chairman Charlie Black, is an old Bush family friend and prominent Republican lobbyist whose firm is affiliated with Burson Marsteller, the global public relations giant. Black was a key player in the Bush/Cheney 2000 campaign and together with his wife raised $100,000 for this year's reelection campaign. BKSH clients with contracts in Iraq include Fluor International (whose ex-chair Phillip Carroll was tapped to head Iraq's oil ministry after the war, and whose board includes the wife of James Woolsey, the ex-CIA chief who was sent by Paul Wolfowitz before the war to convince European leaders of Saddam Hussein's ties to al Qaeda). Fluor has won joint contracts worth up to $1.6 billion. Another client is Cummins Engine, which has managed to sell its power generators thanks to the country's broken infrastructure. Most prominent among BKSH's clients, however, is the Iraqi National Congress, whose leader Ahmed Chalabi was called the George Washington of Iraq by certain Pentagon neoconservatives before his fall from grace. BKSH's K. Riva Levinson was hired to handle the INC's U.S. public relations strategy in 1999. Hired by U.S. taxpayers, that is: Until July 2003, the company was paid $25,000 per month by the U.S. State Department to support the INC. 5. CACI AND TITAN: Although members of the military police face certain prosecution for the horrific treatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison, so far the corporate contractors have avoided any charges. Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba reported in an internal Army report that two CACI employees were either directly or indirectly responsible for abuses at the prison, including the use of dogs to threaten detainees and forced sexual abuse and other threats of violence. Another internal Army report suggested that Steven Stefanowicz, one of 27 CACI interrogators working for the Army in Iraq, clearly knew [that] his instructions to soldiers interrogating Iraqi prisoners equated to physical abuse. Titan's role in Iraq is to serve as translators and interpreters for the U.S. Army, company CEO Gene Ray said, implying that news reports had
[pjnews] Legal tide turning on detainee issue
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/bt5g The Chicago Tribune 3 January 2005 Legal tide turning on detainee issue Shifting opinion threatens nominee By Andrew Zajac WASHINGTON -- In the spring of 2002, a handful of lawyers made the rounds of U.S. law firms seeking help for a very big, but very unpopular, cause: providing legal representation for the 600 or so accused foreign enemy combatants held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. With the memory of the Sept. 11 attacks still fresh and military overseers of Guantanamo describing their prisoners as the worst elements of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, few lawyers volunteered to fight for any rights the detainees might have. They would give an answer like, `Well, we've raised this with [the law firm's] management committee and decided not to take this one on,' recalled Douglass Cassel, director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University's School of Law. After three years and a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, attitudes and the legal landscape have shifted dramatically. Sixty-nine Guantanamo detainees have filed papers seeking access to U.S. courts assisted by lawyers from at least 17 firms, according to a review of court filings. In addition, four detainees are on trial before military commissions, although the cases have been suspended while new legal issues are considered. The increased legal representation by American lawyers of foreign detainees came after the disclosure of abuses, including the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, that helped galvanize some lawyers' opposition to Bush administration detention policies. Although Abu Ghraib is in Iraq, the abuses helped focus attention on how prisoners in the war on terrorism are treated, said Thomas Wilner, a corporate lawyer from Washington whose defense of Kuwaiti detainees helped trigger the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in June that gave Guantanamo detainees a foothold to contest their confinement in U.S. courts. Though some firms still are reluctant get involved, it's become sort of chic now to represent detainees, Wilner said. New accounts of abuse of Guantanamo detainees surfaced in December in documents from the FBI and the Army indicating that mistreatment of prisoners in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan may be more widespread and serious than the Defense Department had acknowledged. The increasingly aggressive legal response to the detention policies could translate into difficulties at Senate confirmation hearings for White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, President Bush's nominee to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general. In his current job, Gonzales played a role in the production of memos that argued Bush was not bound by federal or international law governing the duration and conditions of detainees' confinement and prohibiting torture. One of the more notorious memos, crafted by the Justice Department for Gonzales in August 2002, appeared to sanction torture and was explicitly repudiated in a memo issued Thursday, a week before the hearings are slated to begin. While it is not believed that the nomination is in trouble, some who have come forward to assist the detainees, including former high-ranking military lawyers, are furious at the administration's unwillingness to abide by international law. They could turn Gonzales' confirmation into a messy proceeding. Wilner, who overcame objections from his partners at the law firm Shearman Sterling to take the Kuwaitis' case in 2002, said accounts of detainee abuse were a wake-up call to a large chunk of the legal community that just had been cowed by [the Bush] administration. Lawyers were not being asked to defend terrorists, he said. They were being asked to oppose a policy that decreed detainees had no rights, except as Bush might recognize them. The rule of law is what distinguishes us from the animals, Wilner said. Administration defends policy The administration, however, vehemently disputes that detainees are held in a lawless limbo. The government maintains that detainees are not covered by the Geneva Conventions, but they have been treated humanely, with multiple safeguards to ensure that only unlawful combatants are imprisoned. While lawyers for the detainees don't dispute that detention in wartime is an act of security and necessity, they contend the issue boils down to who, if anyone, gets to look over the government's shoulder. Until the Supreme Court ruled in June, the answer had been: no one. Two early cases--Wilner's and another involving British and Australian detainees represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Joseph Margulies of the University of Chicago's MacArthur Justice Center--were tossed out by federal courts. The lawyers for the detainees decided to focus their case on what they said are fundamental constitutional values. We made a strategic decision
[pjnews] Questions Over Torture Memo Threaten Gonzales' Nomination
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/bt5c A dozen high-ranking retired military officers took the unusual step yesterday of signing a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee expressing deep concern over the nomination of White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general, marking a rare military foray into the debate over a civilian post. The group includes retired Army Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The officers are one of several groups to separately urge the Senate to sharply question Gonzales during a confirmation hearing Thursday about his role in shaping legal policies on torture and interrogation methods... http://snipurl.com/bt5d Bush Leagues: Questions Over Torture Memo Threaten Gonzales' Nomination By Staff and Wire Reports Jan 4, 2005, 05:45 (From Capitol Hill Blue) Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales' confirmation hearing this week may become more contentious because the White House has refused to provide copies of his memos on the questioning of terror suspects. We go into the hearing with some knowledge of what has occurred because of press reports or leaks but without the hard evidence that will either exonerate or implicate Judge Gonzales in this policy, complained Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, on Monday. Durbin and other Democrats plan to question Gonzales on his involvement in the crafting of policies concerning questioning - policies that the Justice Department has backed away from. Still, the issue probably won't be enough to stop Republicans from confirming Gonzales as the first Hispanic attorney general. Republicans hold 55 seats in the new Senate, while Democrats control 44 seats and there is a Democratic-leaning independent. The Democrats have not yet decided whether to try to block Gonzales' confirmation. I think the hearing will be contentious, but in the end Judge Gonzales will be confirmed because he deserves to be confirmed, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who will introduce Gonzales at the confirmation hearing. The Justice Department in 2002 asserted that President Bush's wartime powers superseded anti-torture laws and treaties like the Geneva Conventions. Gonzales, while at the White House, also wrote a memo to President Bush on January 25, 2002, arguing that the war on terrorism renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions. Gonzales also received several memos on the subject, including one from then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee arguing that the president has the power to issue orders that violate the Geneva Conventions as well as international and U.S. laws prohibiting torture. Durbin, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, says the White House has refused to give those memos to Democrats so they can determine exactly how the policies were crafted. We asked them to produce the memos that they have and can release that were given to Judge Gonzales or were generated by him, and so far they have not claimed executive privilege but have refused to produce this documentation, Durbin said. The White House says it has shared several documents with the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and plans on working with Democrats to see if their questions can be resolved. The Justice memos have since been disavowed and the White House says the United States has always operated under the spirit of the Geneva Conventions that prohibit violence, torture and humiliating treatment. But critics say the original documents set up a legal framework that led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at the U.S. prison camp for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. What they're trying to do is continue their attacks on President Bush because of his policies since 9/11 that the people didn't buy on Nov. 2, Cornyn said. They also are trying to muddy the water to make it harder for the president to nominate him for the Supreme Court later on. On New Year's Eve, the Justice Department made public a new policy backing off those memos. The fact that officials in this administration's own Justice Department felt compelled to repudiate an earlier torture memo approved by Mr. Gonzales should itself be sufficient to persuade the senators that he is not fit to be the top law enforcement official in the land, said Ron Daniels, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. - MoveOn.org 4 January 2005 Say No to Torture On Thursday, the Senate will consider Alberto Gonzales' nomination to become Attorney General. Gonzales is the White House counsel notorious for opening the door to torture at Abu Ghraib. Ask Gonzales and your Senators to renounce torture. We hate to start the New Year with bad news, but on Thursday, the Senate will
[pjnews] Redefining Torture
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010305A.shtml Redefining Torture By Marjorie Cohn t r u t h o u t | Perspective Monday 03 January 2005 The election's over, but the Bush spin machine goes on. In anticipation of hard questions Alberto Gonzales will face at his attorney general confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, Bush's lawyers are seeking to minimize the damage from the release of the torture memos in which Gonzales concurred. Gonzales wrote a memo in January 2002 that proposed for the first time, The war against terrorism is a new kind of war and this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions. Gonzales also designed the military commissions to deny due process to those who will face trials in them. (See my editorial, The Quaint Mr. Gonzales). An August 2002 memo leaked during 2004 set the stage for the torture of prisoners in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay. It helped provide an after-the-fact legal basis for harsh procedures used by the CIA on high-level leaders of Al Qaeda, according to the New York Times. In it, Bush's legal eagles defined torture so narrowly, the torturer would have to nearly kill the torturee in order to run afoul of the legal prohibition against torture. It said that to constitute torture, the pain caused by an interrogation must include injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions. That memo also set forth the opinion that the laws prohibiting torture do not apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants, because he is Commander-in-Chief of the United States. And it posited various defenses to shield the President and his men from prosecution under the federal torture statute. The release of this memo, coupled with the repulsive torture photographs, launched a firestorm of criticism at the Bush administration. The White House quickly disavowed the memo as the work of a small group of Justice Department lawyers. But the Washington Post reported that administration officials now confirm it was vetted by a larger number of officials, including lawyers at the National Security Council, the White House counsel's office and Vice President Cheney's office. According to Newsweek, the memo was drafted after White House meetings convened by George W. Bush's chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general counsel William Haynes and [Cheney counsel] David Addington. Haynes is one of Bush's judicial nominees who was not approved by the Senate; Bush, however, has resubmitted Haynes' name to the Senate, hoping Republican senators will engage in the unprecedented destruction of the filibuster. Now, on the threshold of Senate hearings to confirm Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, Justice Department lawyers have redefined torture in a new memo meant to supersede the embarrassing August 2002 memo. The new memo, dated December 30, 2004, begins with the admirable statement: Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms. Although undoubtedly aware of the abhorrent nature of torture back in 2002, the old memo's authors launched right into narrowing the definition of torture in its first paragraph. They didn't bother to mention that it is repulsive to the people. In the fourth paragraph of the 17-page December memo, its authors say: This memorandum supersedes the August 2002 Memorandum in its entirety. When the August 2002 memo came to light, it provoked such an outcry, Gonzales stepped up to the political damage control plate, and dubbed the Commander-in-Chief section unnecessary. Gonzales' damage control statement has now been codified in the December memo. It says: Because the discussion in that [August 2002] memorandum concerning the President's Commander-in-Chief power and the potential defenses to liability was - and remains - unnecessary, it has been eliminated from the analysis that follows. Consideration of the bounds of any such authority would be inconsistent with the President's unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture. What a relief! But wait. The new memo doesn't actually say the President doesn't have unlimited power to defy our torture laws. It begs the question by saying it's unnecessary to deal with the broader legal issue because Bush has commendably declared that U.S. personnel should not commit torture. The myriad reports, photographs, and testimonials that document widespread torture by U.S. personnel, however, show that Bush's directive has been ignored. So the scope of possible defenses to torture prosecutions would indeed be relevant. What the new memo does do is modify the definition of torture. We disagree with statements in the
[pjnews] Victims Of Tsunami Pay The Price Of War On Iraq
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-01/01raptis.cfm Tsunamis And People http://coreykoberg.com/Tsunami/ photos from tsunami hitting Thailand's coast http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1187/ Surviving a Tsunami Lessons from Chile, Hawaii, and Japan http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0107-28.htm The Tsunami Victims That We Don't Count by Derrick Z. Jackson / Boston Globe Bush quoted all the numbers for the tsunami in speeches this week: 150,000 lives lost, including 90,000 in Indonesia; perhaps 5 million homeless; millions vulnerable to disease. That stands in hypocritical contrast to the refusal to count the Iraqi civilians killed in his invasion over false claims of weapons of mass destruction and the crime-ridden chaos of an occupation that did not plan on an insurgency. [...] No flags have been flown at half-staff for Iraqi civilians. There have been no moments of silence in Congress. There have been no speeches by Bush mourning the tens of thousands of children who are lost. Americans have not been asked to think of the tens of thousands more who will grow up without their parents or their brothers or their sisters. In a nation that supposedly reelected Bush on moral values, there have been no prayers from the White House for all the people whose fate is still unknown in Iraq. This was a bipartisan hypocrisy. [...] Let us do what we can for the victims of the tsunami. But no matter how much we weep for them, no matter what donations we spare, the offerings will not spare us from history's judgment, if not God's. Lugar said his heart goes out to the victims of the tsunami. No hearts have gone out to Iraqi civilians in this heartless coverup. Powell said of the tsunami, The power of the wave to destroy bridges, to destroy factories, to destroy homes, to destroy crops, to destroy everything in its path is amazing. He said, I have never seen anything like it in my experience. Yes, he has. It was in Iraq. The tsunami was us. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/01/04/killing-vs-helping/ Killing vs Helping Bush and Blair no longer seem able to see the difference. By George Monbiot Published in the Guardian 4th January 2005 There has never been a moment like it on British television. The Vicar of Dibley, one of our gentler sitcoms, was bouncing along with its usual bonhomie on New Years Day when it suddenly hit us with a scene from another world. Two young African children were sobbing and trying to comfort each other after their mother had died of AIDS. How on earth, I wondered, would the show make us laugh after that? It made no attempt to do so. One by one the characters, famous for their parochial boorishness, stood in front of the camera wearing the white armbands which signalled their support for the Make Poverty History campaign. You would have to have been hewn from stone not to cry. The timing was perfect. In my local Oxfam shop last week, people were queueing to the door to pledge money for the tsunami fund. A pub on the other side of town raised £1000 on Saturday night. In the pot on the counter of the local newsagents there must be nearly £100. The woman who runs the bakery told me about the homeless man she had seen, who emptied his pockets in the bank, saying I just want to do my bit, while the whole queue tried not to cry. Over the past few months, reviewing the complete lack of public interest in what is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the failure, in the West, to mobilise effective protests against the continuing atrocities in Iraq, I had begun to wonder whether we had lost our ability to stand in other peoples shoes. I have now stopped wondering. The response to the tsunami shows that, however we might seek to suppress it, we cannot destroy our capacity for empathy. But one obvious question recurs. Why must the relief of suffering, in this unprecedentedly prosperous world, rely on the whims of citizens and the appeals of pop stars and comedians? Why, when extreme poverty could be made history with a minor redeployment of public finances, must the poor world still wait for homeless people in the rich world to empty their pockets? The obvious answer is that governments have other priorities. And the one that leaps to mind is war. If the money they have promised to the victims of the tsunami still falls far short of the amounts required, it is partly because the contingency fund upon which they draw in times of crisis has been spent on blowing people to bits in Iraq. The US government has so far pledged $350m to the victims of the tsunami, and the UK government £50m ($96m). The US has spent $148 billion on the Iraq war (1) and the UK £6bn ($11.5bn).(2) The war has been running for 656 days. This means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by the United States is the equivalent of one and a half days
[pjnews] Iraq's Kurds Enjoy Self-Rule
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/bpug The New York Times 31 December 2004 Iraq's Kurds Enjoy Self-Rule and Are Trying to Keep It By Richard A. Oppel Jr. ERBIL, Iraq - Even at night, on a busy thoroughfare in this Kurdish city, the sedan is an easy mark for the Kalashnikov-toting police at the checkpoint. It has Baghdad license plates and, more alarmingly, Arabs in the front seat. What are you doing here? the police demand, motioning the car to the side. It was a routine exchange, but one that reveals how far Erbil and the entire Kurdish region have drifted from the rest of Iraq and toward an informal but unmistakable autonomy that Kurdish leaders are determined to preserve. Residents in northern Iraq already call the area Kurdistan. The territory, stretching from Kirkuk on the region's southern edge to the Tigris River in the west and to Turkey and Iran in the north and east, is patently a world apart from the rest of Iraq. There is a building boom, with new apartments, hospitals and shopping centers. The gleaming 10-story Hotel Erbil, opened in October, is often sold out, its 167 rooms renting for $68 to $193. Markets bustle, and even the devalued dollar goes a long way, with decent-quality Turkish-made pullovers for $12 and a Pepsi and shwarma sandwich - the Iraqi hot dog - for a little more than 50 cents. While extensive areas of Iraq remain plagued by violence, the Kurdish sector is calm, with tight security maintained by swarms of Kurdish police officers and militiamen. Reconstruction projects, lagging in many parts of the country, are moving briskly ahead. The Kurds have veto power over most laws passed by the central government in Baghdad and have their own 80,000-member military, the pesh merga, whose troops are far better disciplined and skilled than most of their new Iraqi counterparts. In many places it is impossible to find an Iraqi flag. But the Kurds' red, white and green standard with a shining sun in the middle flies everywhere, even atop an Iraqi border guard compound in far northeastern Iraq. Yet while the Kurdish region may appear to be, for all practical purposes, a separate country, it can preserve its shaky independence only by denying it, and not just to Baghdad. Powerful neighbors, particularly Turkey and Iran, which both have substantial Kurdish populations, are highly sensitive to the slightest hint of Kurdish nationalism. And the United States rejects any idea of independence, which has wide support among Kurdish residents. The Kurds' desire for autonomy promises to tear at the unity of the new Iraq that the election planned for late January is supposed to help build. The voters are to choose a legislature to write a new constitution. But some Iraqi leaders have already expressed resentment at the most important safeguard of Kurdish independence: the power to veto the new constitution. For now Kurdish officials appear unwilling to coexist on anything but their own terms, which means bolstering their autonomy and preventing outside interference, whether from Baghdad or another country. Hamid Afandi, the minister of pesh merga for the Kurdish regional government based in Erbil, outlined one possible strategy: take control of Kirkuk - the disputed oil city north of Baghdad, where Kurds are even now wresting land from the Arabs who were settled there by Saddam Hussein - grab a far larger share of Kirkuk's oil revenue than the Kurds now get and use that to triple the size of the pesh merga force. We are ready to fight against all forces to control Kirkuk, Mr. Afandi said. Our share is very little. We'll try to take a larger share. So far, the Americans have blocked those ambitions, Mr. Afandi said. If they would permit us, we could control Kirkuk, he said, but it is forbidden. Kurdish officials say they will take part in the writing of the new constitution on the assumption that if they do not like what emerges, they have a veto. According to the existing temporary constitution, the public referendum on the new charter will be defeated if two-thirds of voters in three provinces (the Kurdish-dominated region of northern Iraq has three) reject it. But other Iraqi leaders have in the past suggested that the temporary constitution will no longer be operative after the January election, depriving Kurds of their veto power. Striving to avoid that sort of outcome, the main Kurdish political parties have joined forces to offer a unified slate of candidates. And the Kurds finished a huge voter registration drive in early December in hopes of packing the new parliament with as many representatives as possible. But it has been a difficult process, compounded by the region's deep mistrust and suspicion of Arabs. Up to 90 percent of the voter registration forms in Erbil Province contained errors, according to Kurdish officials. Those people in Baghdad did this deliberately! said
[pjnews] What Went Wrong in Ohio
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=528 Ohio Republican Secretary of State brags about delivering Ohio for Bush in gubernatorial fundraising letter http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1067 List of 45 Election Day problems, as described by more than 85 people who came to independently convened public hearings in Columbus on Nov. 13 and 15, and Cleveland on Nov 20, and filed affidavits on Election day. --- http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/printer_010605Y.shtml Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff Wednesday 05 January 2005 Executive Summary Representative John Conyers, Jr., the Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, asked the Democratic staff to conduct an investigation into irregularities reported in the Ohio presidential election and to prepare a Status Report concerning the same prior to the Joint Meeting of Congress scheduled for January 6, 2005, to receive and consider the votes of the electoral college for president. The following Report includes a brief chronology of the events; summarizes the relevant background law; provides detailed findings (including factual findings and legal analysis); and describes various recommendations for acting on this Report going forward. We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election, which resulted in a significant disenfranchisement of voters. Cumulatively, these irregularities, which affected hundreds of thousand of votes and voters in Ohio, raise grave doubts regarding whether it can be said the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosen in a manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone federal requirements and constitutional standards. This report, therefore, makes three recommendations: (1) consistent with the requirements of the United States Constitution concerning the counting of electoral votes by Congress and Federal law implementing these requirements, there are ample grounds for challenging the electors from the State of Ohio; (2) Congress should engage in further hearings into the widespread irregularities reported in Ohio; we believe the problems are serious enough to warrant the appointment of a joint select Committee of the House and Senate to investigate and report back to the Members; and (3) Congress needs to enact election reform to restore our people's trust in our democracy. These changes should include putting in place more specific federal protections for federal elections, particularly in the areas of audit capability for electronic voting machines and casting and counting of provisional ballots, as well as other needed changes to federal and state election laws. With regards to our factual finding, in brief, we find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio. First, in the run up to election day, the following actions by Mr. Blackwell, the Republican Party and election officials disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Ohio citizens, predominantly minority and Democratic voters: The misallocation of voting machines led to unprecedented long lines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, of predominantly minority and Democratic voters. This was illustrated by the fact that the Washington Post reported that in Franklin County, 27 of the 30 wards with the most machines per registered voter showed majorities for Bush. At the other end of the spectrum, six of the seven wards with the fewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry. (See Powell and Slevin, supra). Among other things, the conscious failure to provide sufficient voting machinery violates the Ohio Revised Code which requires the Boards of Elections to provide adequate facilities at each polling place for conducting the election. Mr. Blackwell's decision to restrict provisional ballots resulted in the disenfranchisement of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of voters, again predominantly minority and Democratic voters. Mr. Blackwell's decision departed from past Ohio law on provisional ballots, and there is no evidence that a broader construction would have led to any significant disruption at the polling places, and did not do so in other states. Mr. Blackwell's widely reviled decision to reject voter registration applications based on paper weight may have resulted in thousands of new voters not being registered in time for the 2004 election. The Ohio Republican Party's decision to engage in preelection caging tactics, selectively targeting 35,000 predominantly minority voters for intimidation had a
[pjnews] Iraq: The Devastation
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/ The Salvador Option: The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq - http://tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2109 Iraq: The Devastation By Dahr Jamail The devastation of Iraq? Where do I start? After working 7 of the last 12 months in Iraq, I'm still overwhelmed by even the thought of trying to describe this. The illegal war and occupation of Iraq was waged for three reasons, according to the Bush administration. First for weapons of mass destruction, which have yet to be found. Second, because the regime of Saddam Hussein had links to al-Qaeda, which Mr. Bush has personally admitted have never been proven. The third reason -- embedded in the very name of the invasion, Operation Iraqi Freedom -- was to liberate the Iraqi people. So Iraq is now a liberated country. I've been in liberated Baghdad and environs on and off for 12 months, including being inside Fallujah during the April siege and having warning shots fired over my head more than once by soldiers. I've traveled in the south, north, and extensively around central Iraq. What I saw in the first months of 2004, however, when it was easier for a foreign reporter to travel the country, offered a powerful -- even predictive -- taste of the horrors to come in the rest of the year (and undoubtedly in 2005 as well). It's worth returning to the now forgotten first half of last year and remembering just how terrible things were for Iraqis even relatively early in our occupation of their country. Then, as now, for Iraqis, our invasion and occupation was a case of liberation from -- from human rights (think: the atrocities committed in Abu Ghraib which are still occurring daily there and elsewhere); liberation from functioning infrastructure (think: the malfunctioning electric system, the many-mile long gas lines, the raw sewage in the streets); liberation from an entire city to live in (think: Fallujah, most of which has by now been flattened by aerial bombardment and other means). Iraqis were then already bitter, confused, and existing amid a desolation that came from myriads of Bush administration broken promises. Quite literally every liberated Iraqi I've gotten to know from my earliest days in the country has either had a family member or a friend killed by U.S. soldiers or from the effects of the war/occupation. These include such everyday facts of life as not having enough money for food or fuel due to massive unemployment and soaring energy prices, or any of the countless other horrors caused by the aforementioned. The broken promises, broken infrastructure, and broken cities of Iraq were plainly visible in those early months of 2004 -- and the sad thing is that the devastation I saw then has only grown worse since. The life Iraqis were living a year ago, horrendous as it was, was but a prelude to what was to come under the U.S. occupation. The warning signs were clear from a shattered infrastructure, to all the torturing, to a burgeoning, violent resistance. Broken Promises It was quickly apparent, even to a journalistic newcomer, even in those first months of last year that the real nature of the liberation we brought to Iraq was no news to Iraqis. Long before the American media decided it was time to report on the horrendous actions occurring inside Abu Ghraib prison, most Iraqis already knew that the liberators of their country were torturing and humiliating their countrymen. In December 2003, for instance, a man in Baghdad, speaking of the Abu Ghraib atrocities, said to me, Why do they use these actions? Even Saddam Hussein did not do that! This is not good behavior. They are not coming to liberate Iraq! And by then the bleak jokes of the beleaguered had already begun to circulate. In the dark humor that has become so popular in Baghdad these days, one recently released Abu Ghraib detainee I interviewed said, The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house! Sadiq Zoman is fairly typical of what I've seen. Taken from his home in Kirkuk in July, 2003, he was held in a military detention facility near Tikrit before being dropped off comatose at the Salahadin General Hospital by U.S. forces one month later. While the medical report accompanying him, signed by Lt. Col. Michael Hodges, stated that Mr. Zoman was comatose due to a heart attack brought on by heat stroke, it failed to mention that his head had been bludgeoned, or to note the electrical burn marks that scorched his penis and the bottoms of his feet, or the bruises and whip-like marks up and down his body. I visited his wife Hashmiya and eight daughters in a nearly empty home in Baghdad. Its belongings had largely been sold on the black market to keep them all afloat. A fan twirled slowly over the bed as Zoman stared blankly at the
[pjnews] Robert Fisk: A Routine Tale of Our Times
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/printer_010905F.shtml#2 A Routine Tale of Our Times: Abuse, Beatings, Imprisonment and Injustice By Robert Fisk The Independent U.K. Saturday 08 January 2005 After two months, and 15 interrogations, Mustafa says one of his American questioners told him he believed he was innocent. I travelled down to Zarqa on Christmas Eve - Zarqa as in Zarqawi, for it is indeed the home town of the latest of America's bogeymen, a grey, dirt-poor, windy town south of Amman. The man I went to see was palpably innocent of any crime - indeed, he even has a document from the American military to prove it - but he spent almost two years of his life locked up in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay. Hussein Abdelkader Youssef Mustafa's story tells you a lot about the war on terror and about the abuses that go with it. Mustafa is a thin, ascetic man with a long pepper-and-salt beard, and he sat on the concrete floor of his brother's home dressed in a long cloak and a black woollen hat and frameless spectacles. He is a Palestinian by birth but had been a resident in Pakistan since 1985, working in a school near Peshawar, teaching Afghans who had fled the 1980 Soviet invasion, visiting Afghanistan just once, in 1988, to teach at a school near Mazar-e-Sharif. Then on 25 May 2002, Pakistani soldiers and plain-clothes police stormed into his home, tied Mustafa up, led him out of the house past two Westerners, a man and a woman in civilian clothes - he assumes they were American FBI agents - and dumped him in the old Khaibar prison for 10 days. He was interrogated there by a blond, Arabic-speaking American and then taken to Peshawar airport where he was freighted off with 34 other Arabs - illegally under international law - to the large American base at Bagram in Afghanistan. We had been hooded in the plane, and when we arrived they stripped us naked and gave us overalls with numbers on. I was 171 and then I spent two months under interrogation, Mustafa told me. They were Americans, usually in uniform but without names. They wanted to know about my life, about what Afghans I'd met, about where false passports came from. I knew nothing about this. I told them all about myself. I said I was innocent. They made me stand on one leg in the sun. They wouldn't let me sleep for more than two hours. We had only a barrel for a toilet and had to use it in front of everyone. In the hours to come, I will learn that the Jordanian authorities have told Mustafa not to talk any more about his experiences - no doubt, the Americans told the Jordanians to shut him up. But he would admit later: My torture was even less than what they did to others. A broomstick was inserted in my backside and I was beaten severely and water was thrown on me before facing an air conditioner. And why did he think the Americans did this to him? If a prisoner did not comply and cooperate in details in Bagram, he would be abused according to how convinced the interrogator thought he was guilty; and to reach the stage of 'not guilty' in the eyes of the interrogator, one went through a long period of being physically abused. After two months, and 15 interrogations, Mustafa says one of his American questioners told him he believed he was innocent. He said to me: 'Have you seen Cuba on the television? I'm going to make you one of the prisoners there. I'm very sorry, it's out of our hands. Your names are in Washington now. You have to go to Cuba.' We were tied up, blindfolded, handcuffed and chains were attached to us. They put dark eyeglasses on us so we couldn't see. They covered our ears and nose and mouth so I could hardly breathe. On the plane, they pushed three or four pills into my mouth, drugs. I felt all the time I was between sleeping and waking. It took 24 hours to reach Cuba and we stopped once on the way and changed planes about four hours after leaving Bagram. Diego Garcia? Was this the mystery airbase? Were these chained, hooded, drugged Muslims taken via our very own and very British Diego Garcia? Mustafa says he was less harshly treated at Guantánamo Bay. One of his interrogators was an American Iraqi. I was shut up first in isolation in a room made all of metal. Even the floor was metal. There was just a small slit in the door. They kept going through my background papers, asking me the same questions over and over. Why was I a teacher in Pakistan? Why had I gone to Afghanistan? Sometimes in the showers, the American women soldiers could see us naked. They shaved off our beards. If we didn't obey orders quickly, they sprayed mace in our faces. In Bagram, they beat the men with sticks. Here they didn't do that. But many men tried to commit suicide in Guantánamo. I remember at least 30. We'd see them hanging themselves and shout: Soldiers! Quickly!, and the Americans would
[pjnews] Defining Victory Down in Iraq
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60832-2005Jan9.html In another significant blow to Iraq's upcoming elections, the entire 13-member electoral commission in the volatile province of Anbar, west of the capital, resigned after being threatened by insurgents, a regional newspaper reported Sunday... http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/20935/ In Good Conscience: A soldier who served with the 320th Military Police Company at Abu Ghraib speaks out about the atrocities he witnessed --- http://snipurl.com/bx9j The New York Times 9 January 2005 Defining Victory Down By Maureen Dowd Washington - The president prides himself on being a pig-headed guy. He is determined to win in Iraq even if he is not winning in Iraq. So get ready for a Mohammedan mountain of spin defining victory down. Come what may - civil war over oil, Iranian-style fatwas du jour or men on prayer rugs reciting the Koran all day on the Iraqi TV network our own geniuses created - this administration will call it a triumph. Even for a White House steeped in hooey, it's a challenge. President Bush will have to emulate the parsing and prevaricating he disdained in his predecessor: It depends on what the meaning of the word win is. The president's still got a paper bag over his head, claiming that the daily horrors out of Iraq reflect just a few soreheads standing in the way of a glorious democracy, even though his commander of ground forces there concedes that the areas where more than half of Iraqis live are not secure enough for them to vote - an acknowledgment that the insurgency is resilient and growing. It's like saying Montana and North Dakota are safe to vote, but New York, Philadelphia and L.A. are not. What's a little disenfranchisement among friends? I know it's hard, but it's hard for a reason, Mr. Bush said on Friday, a day after seven G.I.'s and two marines died. And the reason it's hard is because there are a handful of folks who fear freedom. If it's just a handful, how come it's so hard? Then the president added: And I look at the elections as a - as a - you know, as a - as - as a historical marker for our Iraq policy. Well, that's clear. Mr. Bush is huddled in his bubble, but he's in a pickle. The administration that had no plan for what to do with Iraq when it got it, now has no plan for getting out. The mood in Washington about our misadventure seemed to grow darker last week, maybe because lawmakers were back after visiting with their increasingly worried constituents and - even more alarming - visiting Iraq, where you still can't drive from the Baghdad airport to the Green Zone without fearing for your life. It's going to be ugly, Joe Biden told Charlie Rose about the election. The arrogant Bush war council never admits a mistake. Paul Wolfowitz, a walking mistake, said on Friday he's been asked to remain in the administration. But the idealists, as the myopic dunderheads think of themselves, are obviously worried enough, now that Mr. Bush is safely re-elected, to let a little reality seep in. Rummy tapped a respected retired four-star general to go to Iraq this week for an open-ended review of the entire military meshugas. Mr. Wolfowitz, who devised the debacle in Iraq, is kept on, while Brent Scowcroft, Poppy Bush's lieutenant who warned Junior not to go into Iraq, is pushed out as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. That's the backward nature of this beast: Deceive, you're golden; tell the truth, you're gone. Mr. Scowcroft was not deterred. Like Banquo's ghost, he clanked around last week, disputing the president's absurdly sunny forecasts for Iraq, and noting dryly that this administration had turned the word realist into a pejorative. He predicted that the elections have the great potential for deepening the conflict by exacerbating the divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. He worried that there would be an incipient civil war, and said the best chance for the U.S. to avoid anarchy was to turn over the operation to the less inflammatory U.N. or NATO. Mr. Scowcroft appeared at the New America Foundation with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, who declared the Iraq war a moral, political and military failure. If we can't send 500,000 troops, spend $500 billion and agree to resume the draft, then the conflict should be terminated, he said, adding that far from the Jeffersonian democracy Mr. Bush extols, the most we can hope for is a Shiite-controlled theocracy. The Iraqi election that was meant to be the solution to the problem - like the installation of a new Iraqi government and the transfer of sovereignty and all the other steps that were supposed to make things better - may actually be making things worse. The election is going to expand the control of the Shiite theocrats, even beyond what their numbers would
[pjnews] Economic Rally for Argentines Defies Forecasts
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/bvjy Economic Rally for Argentines Defies Forecasts *By LARRY ROHTER * New York Times December 26, 2004 BUENOS AIRES, Dec. 23 - When the Argentine economy collapsed in December 2001, doomsday predictions abounded. Unless it adopted orthodox economic policies and quickly cut a deal with its foreign creditors, hyperinflation would surely follow, the peso would become worthless, investment and foreign reserves would vanish and any prospect of growth would be strangled. But three years after Argentina declared a record debt default of more than $100 billion, the largest in history, the apocalypse has not arrived. Instead, the economy has grown by 8 percent for two consecutive years, exports have zoomed, the currency is stable, investors are gradually returning and unemployment has eased from record highs - all without a debt settlement or the standard measures required by the International Monetary Fund for its approval. Argentina's recovery has been undeniable, and it has been achieved at least in part by ignoring and even defying economic and political orthodoxy. Rather than moving to immediately satisfy bondholders, private banks and the I.M.F., as other developing countries have done in less severe crises, the Peronist-led government chose to stimulate internal consumption first and told creditors to get in line with everyone else. This is a remarkable historical event, one that challenges 25 years of failed policies, said Mark Weisbrot, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal research group in Washington. While other countries are just limping along, Argentina is experiencing very healthy growth with no sign that it is unsustainable, and they've done it without having to make any concessions to get foreign capital inflows. The consequences of that decision can be seen in government statistics and in stores, where consumers once again were spending robustly before Christmas. More than two million jobs have been created since the depths of the crisis early in 2002, and according to official figures, inflation-adjusted income has also bounced back, returning almost to the level of the late 1990's. That is when the crisis emerged, as Argentina sought to tighten its belt according to I.M.F. prescriptions, only to collapse into the worst depression in its history, which also set off a political crisis. Some of the new jobs are from a low-paying government make-work program, but nearly half are in the private sector. As a result, unemployment has declined from more than 20 percent to about 13 percent, and the number of Argentines living below the poverty line has fallen by nearly 10 points from the record high of 53.4 percent early in 2002. Things are by no means back to normal, but we've got the feeling we're back on the right track, said Mario Alberto Ortiz, a refrigeration repairman. For the first time since things fell apart, I can actually afford to spend a little money. Traditional free-market economists remain skeptical of the government's approach. While acknowledging there has been a recovery, they attribute it mainly to external factors rather than the policies of President Néstor Kirchner, who has been in office since May 2003. Increasingly, they also maintain that the comeback is beginning to lose steam. We've been lucky, said Juan Luis Bour, chief economist at the Latin American Foundation for Economic Research here. We've had high prices for commodities and low interest rates. But if we want to grow in 2005, we're going to have to settle the debt question and have foreign capital come in. The I.M.F., which Argentine officials blame for inducing the crisis in the first place, argues that the current government is acting at least in part as the I.M.F. has always recommended. It has limited spending and moved to increase revenues, a classic prescription when an economy is ailing, and has built up a surplus twice the size of what the fund had asked before negotiations were put on hold several months ago. The return to these encouraging numbers has been helped a lot by a fiscal discipline that is almost unprecedented by Argentine standards, said John Dodsworth, the senior I.M.F. representative here. We've had a primary surplus which has increased steadily over these past few years at both the central and provincial levels, and that has been the main anchor on the economic side. But some of that record budget surplus has come from a pair of levies on exports and financial transactions that orthodox economists at the I.M.F. and elsewhere want to see repealed. About a third of government revenues are now raised by those taxes, which have surged. The I.M.F. wants these taxes to be eliminated, but on the other hand they also want Argentina to improve its offer to creditors and also pay back the fund so it can reduce its own exposure
[pjnews] Letter to Alberto Gonzales
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/011005A.shtml Dear Mr. Gonzales By Marjorie Cohn t r u t h o u t | Perspective Monday 10 January 2005 Dear Mr. Gonzales, You have been rewarded for your unflinching loyalty to George W. Bush with a nomination for Attorney General of the United States. As White House Counsel, you have walked in lockstep with the President. As Attorney General, you will be charged with representing all the people of the United States. Your performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday verified that you will continue to be a yes-man for Bush once you are confirmed. In the face of interrogation by members of the Committee, you waffled, equivocated, lied, feigned lack of memory, and even remained silent, in the face of the most probing questions. Your refusals to answer prompted Senator Patrick Leahy to say, Mr. Gonzales, I'd almost think that you'd served in the Senate, you've learned how to filibuster so well. Even though the Department of Justice retracted the August 2002 torture memo, and replaced it with a new one on the eve of your confirmation hearing, you still refuse to denounce the old memo's narrow and illegal definition of torture. You permitted that definition to remain as government policy for 2 1/2 years, which enabled the torture of countless prisoners in U.S. custody. You continually evaded inquiries about your responsibility for drafting the now-repudiated memo by portraying yourself as a mere conduit for legal opinions from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. This puzzled Senator Russ Feingold, who said, If you were my lawyer, I'd sure want to know your opinion about something like that. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told you, I think we've dramatically undermined the war effort by getting on the slippery slope in terms of playing cute with the law, because it's come back to bite us. Indeed, 12 retired professional military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces wrote to the Judiciary Committee, expressing deep concern about your nomination because detention and interrogation operations which you appeared to have played a significant role in shaping have undermined our intelligence gathering efforts, and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world. When Senator Graham, an Air Force judge advocate, asked you if you agreed with a professional military lawyer's opinion that the August memo may have put our troops in jeopardy, you were tongue tied. You said nothing for several embarrassing seconds, until Senator Graham suggested you think it over and respond later. When Senator Richard Durbin asked Do you believe there are circumstances where other legal restrictions, like the War Crimes Act, would not apply to U.S. personnel? you again sat mute for several seconds, and then asked to respond later. It is alarming, Mr. Gonzales, that a lawyer with your pedigree would be stumped into silence by these questions. You have taken the unprecedented step of advising the President that the Geneva Conventions have become obsolete. You testified that since we are fighting a new type of enemy and a new type of war, you think it is appropriate to revisit whether or not Geneva should be revisited. You admitted preliminary discussions are already underway. The 12 former military leaders wrote, Repeatedly in our past, the United States has confronted foes that, at the time they emerged, posed threats of a scope or nature unlike any we had previously faced. But we have been far more steadfast in the past in keeping faith with our national commitment to the rule of law. Mr. Gonzales, you have concurred in, even commissioned, advice that led to the following: Sodomy with a broomstick, chemical light, metal object Severe beatings Water boarding (simulated drowning) Electric shock Attaching electrodes to private parts Forced masturbation Pulling out fingernails Pushing lit cigarettes into ears Chaining hand and foot in fetal position without food or water Forced standing on one leg in the sun Feigned suffocation Gagging with duct tape Tormenting with loud music and strobe lights Sleep deprivation Hooding Subjecting to freezing/sweltering temperatures Dietary manipulation Repeated, prolonged rectal exams Hanging by arms from hooks Permitting serious dog bites Bending back fingers Intense isolation for more than 3 months Grabbing genitals Severe burning Stacking of naked prisoners in pyramids Injecting with drugs Leaving bullet in body of wounded prisoner Taping naked prisoner to board Shooting into containers with men inside Keeping prisoners in small, outdoor cages Pepper spraying in face Forcing heads into toilets and flushing Threatening live burial, drowning, electrocution, rape and death Beating prisoners to death Killing wounded
[pjnews] Greg Palast on CBS Purge
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. CBS' COWARDICE AND CONFLICTS BEHIND PURGE Network's Craven Back-Down on Bush Draft Dodge Report Sure to Get a Standing Rove-ation at White House Tuesday, January 11, 2005 By Greg Palast Independent my ass. CBS' cowardly purge of five journalists who exposed George Bush's dodging of the Vietnam War draft was done under cover of what the network laughably called an Independent Review Panel. The panel was just two guys as qualified for the job as they are for landing the space shuttle: Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi. Remember Dickie Thornburgh? He was on the Bush 41 Administration's payroll. His grand accomplishment as Bush's Attorney General was to whitewash the investigation of the Exxon Valdez Oil spill, letting the oil giant off the hook on big damages. Thornburgh's fat pay as counsel to Kirkpatrick Lockhart, the Washington law-and-lobbying outfit, is substantially due to his job as a Bush retainer. This is the kind of stinky conflict of interest that hardly suggests independent. Why not just appoint Karl Rove as CBS' grand inquisitor and be done with it? Then there's Boccardi, not exactly a prince of journalism. This is the gent who, as CEO of the Associated Press, spiked his own wire service's exposure of Oliver North and his traitorous dealings with the Ayatollah Khomeini. Legendary AP investigative reporters Robert Parry and Brian Barger found their stories outing the Iran-Contra scandal in 1986 stopped by their bosses. They did not know that Boccardi was on those very days deep in the midst of talks with North, participating in the conspiracy. Today I spoke with Parry at his home in Virginia. He was sympathetic to Boccardi who at the time was trying to spring AP reporter Terry Anderson held hostage in Iran. But to do so, Boccardi joined, unwittingly, in a criminal conspiracy to trade guns for hostages. He then spiked his own news agency's investigation of it. Parry later discovered a 1986 email from North to John Poindexter in which North notes that Boccardi is supportive of our terropism (sic) policy and wants to keep the story quiet. Poindexter was indicted, then pardoned. Boccardi was not, and there is no indication he knew he was abetting a crime. But the AP demoted journalist Barger and forced him to quit for -- the offense of trying to report the biggest story of the decade. This hardly gives Mr. Spike the qualification to pass judgment on working journalists. And who are the journalists whom CBS has burned at the corporate stake? The first lined up for career execution is '60 Minutes' producer Mary Mapes. Besides the Bush draft dodge story, Mapes produced the exposé of the torture at Abu Ghraib when other networks had the same material and buried it. I admit to a soft spot for Mapes. Four years ago, BBC Television London broadcast my report that Jeb Bush had wrongly purged thousands of African-Americans from the voter rolls, thereby fixing the election for his big brother. CBS Evening News ran away scared from the story, as did ABC and other US networks. This year, when Bush tried to repeat the trick, Mapes wanted to put it on '60 Minutes.' However, after the draft dodge story hullabaloo, that was not going to happen. And what was the crime committed by Mapes and, let's not forget, Dan Rather, whose career was also toasted by the story? CBS said, The Panel found that Mapes ignored information that cast doubt on the story she had set out to report -- that President Bush had received special treatment 30 years ago, getting to the [Texas Air National] Guard ahead of many other applicants . Well, excuse me, but that story is stone cold solid, irrefutable, backed-up, sourced, proven to a fare-thee-well. I know, because I'm one of the reporters who broke that story way back in 1999, for the Guardian papers of Britain. No one has challenged the Guardian report, or my follow-up for BBC Television, whatsoever, though we've begged the White House for a response from our self-proclaimed war president. CBS did not break this Chicken-Hawk George story; it's just that Dan Rather, with Mapes' encouragement, found his journalistic soul and the cojones, finally, after 5 years delay, to report it. Did Bush get special treatment to get into the Guard? Baby Bush tested in the 25th percentile out of 100. Yet, he leaped ahead of thousands of other Vietnam evaders because the then-Speaker of the Texas legislature sent a message to General Craig Rose, head of the Guard, to let in Little George and a few other sons of well-placed politicos. [See some of the documentation at http://www.gregpalast.com/ulf/documents/draftdodgeblanked.jpg and a clip from the BBC Television report at http://www.gregpalast.com/images/TrailerClips.mov] Mapes and Rather did make a mistake, citing a memo which could not be authenticated. But let's get serious folks: this Killian memo had not a darn thing to do
[pjnews] Tsunami, Mangroves and Market Economy
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. fwd... From: Shana Berger [EMAIL PROTECTED] Some people I met a couple years ago from an amazingly strong network of fishing communities based in Maine have set up a fund for tsunami victims from fishing communities. Funds would go directly to the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement (NAFSCO), a grassroots organization in Sri Lanka doing tremendous work both to meet immediate food and shelter needs of victims as well as to help fishing dependent communities get back to work so that they can support themselves again. I can vouch for the US organizations involved in setting up this fund. NAFSCO is a grass-roots movement of fisher people in Sri Lanka representing themselves in local and global battles such as industrial aquaculture, pollution, oil gas development, privatization and industrialization of the oceans, workers' rights, and environmental and economic justice. For more info, go to: http://www.namanet.org/relieffund.htm - http://indiatogether.org/2005/jan/dsh-tsunami.htm Tsunami, Mangroves and Market Economy By Devinder Sharma As the first news reports of the devastation caused by the tsunami killer waves began to pour in, a newsreader on Aaj Tak?s Headline Today television channel asked his correspondent reporting from the scene of destruction in Tamil Nadu in south of India : Any idea about how much is the loss to business? Can you find that out because that would be more important for our business leaders? Little did the newscaster realise or even know that the tsunami disaster, which eventually turned out to be a catastrophe, was more or less the outcome of faulty business and economics. The magnitude of the disaster was only exacerbated by the neoliberal economic policies that pushed economic growth at the expanse of human life. It was the outcome of an insane economic system - led by the World Bank and IMF - that believes in usurping environment, nature and human lives for the sake of unsustainable economic growth for a few. Since the 1960s, the Asian sea-coast region has been plundered by the large industrialised shrimp firms that brought environmentally-unfriendly aquaculture to its sea shores. Shrimp cultivation, rising to over 8 billion tonnes a year in the year 2000, had already played havoc with the fragile eco-systems. The rape-and-run industry, as the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) once termed it, was largely funded by the World Bank. Nearly 72 per cent of the shrimp farming is confined to Asia. The expansion of shrimp farming was at the cost of tropical mangroves -- amongst the world's most important ecosystems. Each acre of mangrove forest destroyed results in an estimated 676 pounds loss in marine harvest. Mangrove swamps have been nature's protection for the coastal regions from the large waves, weathering the impact of cyclones, and serving as a nursery for three-fourth of the commercial fish species that spend part of their life cycle in the mangrove swamps. Mangroves in any case were one of the world's most threatened habitats but instead of replanting the mangrove swamps, faulty economic policies only hastened its disappearance. Despite warning by ecologists and environmentalists, the World Bank turned a deaf ear. Shrimp farming continued its destructive spree, eating away more than half of the world's mangroves. Since the 1960's, for instance, aquaculture in Thailand resulted in a loss of over 65,000 hectares of mangroves. In Indonesia, Java lost 70 per cent of its mangroves, Sulawesi 49 per cent and Sumatra 36 per cent. So much so that at the time the tsunami struck in all its fury, logging companies were busy axing mangroves in the Aceh province of Indonesia for exports to Malaysia and Singapore. In India, mangrove cover has been reduced to less than a third of its original in the past three decades. Between 1963 and 1977, the period when aquaculture industry took roots, India destroyed nearly 50 per cent of its mangroves. Local communities were forcibly evicted to make way for the shrimp farms. In Andhra Pradesh, more than 50,000 people were forcibly removed and millions displaced to make room for the aquaculture farms. Whatever remained of the mangroves was cut down by the hotel industry. Aided and abetted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Ministry of Industries, builders moved in to ravage the coastline. Five-star hotels, golf courses, industries, and mansions sprung up all along disregarding the concern being expressed by environmentalists. These two ministries worked overtime to dilute the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) norms thereby allowing the hotels to even take over the 500 meter buffer that was supposed to be maintained along the beach. In an era of market economy, that was reflected through misplaced Shining India slogan, the bureaucrats are in league with the industrialists
[pjnews] Congress passes `doomsday' plan
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://news.bostonherald.com/politics/view.bg?articleid=62564 Congress passes `doomsday' plan By Noelle Straub Sunday, January 9, 2005 WASHINGTON - With no fanfare, the U.S. House has passed a controversial doomsday provision that would allow a handful of lawmakers to run Congress if a terrorist attack or major disaster killed or incapacitated large numbers of congressmen. ``I think (the new rule) is terrible in a whole host of ways - first, I think it's unconstitutional,'' said Norm Ornstein, a counselor to the independent Continuity of Government Commission, a bipartisan panel created to study the issue. ``It's a very foolish thing to do, I believe, and the way in which it was done was more foolish.'' But supporters say the rule provides a stopgap measure to allow the government to continue functioning at a time of national crisis. GOP House leaders pushed the provision as part of a larger rules package that drew attention instead for its proposed ethics changes, most of which were dropped. Usually, 218 lawmakers - a majority of the 435 members of Congress - are required to conduct House business, such as passing laws or declaring war. But under the new rule, a majority of living congressmen no longer will be needed to do business under ``catastrophic circumstances.'' Instead, a majority of the congressmen able to show up at the House would be enough to conduct business, conceivably a dozen lawmakers or less. The House speaker would announce the number after a report by the House Sergeant at Arms. Any lawmaker unable to make it to the chamber would effectively not be counted as a congressman. The circumstances include ``natural disaster, attack, contagion or similar calamity rendering Representatives incapable of attending the proceedings of the House.'' The House could be run by a small number of lawmakers for months, because House vacancies must be filled by special elections. Governors can make temporary appointments to the Senate. Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), one of few lawmakers active on the issue, argued the rule change contradicts the U.S. Constitution, which states that a majority of each (House) shall constitute a quorum to do business. Changing what constitutes a quorum in this way would allow less than a dozen lawmakers to declare war on another nation,'' Baird said. _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject quot;subscribequot; to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will be deleted from this list. FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the information in this e-mail is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. I am making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for in the US Copyright Law.
[pjnews] America's War with Itself
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/c02l America's War with Itself By George Monbiot I have a persistant mental image of US foreign policy, which haunts me even in my sleep. The vanguard of a vast army is marching around the globe, looking for its enemy. It sees a mass of troops in the distance, retreating from it. It opens fire, unaware that it is shooting its own rear. Is this too fanciful a picture? Both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were groomed and armed by the United States. Until the invasion of Iraq, there were no links between the Baathists and Al Qaeda: now Bush's government has created the monster it claimed to be slaying. The US army developed high-grade weaponised anthrax in order, it said, to work out what would happen if someone else did the same. No one else was capable of producing it: the terrorist who posted envelopes of anthrax in 2001 took it from one of the army's laboratories.(1) Now US researchers are preparing genetically modified strains of smallpox on the same pretext, and with the same likely consequences.(2) The Pentagon's space-based weapons programme is being developed in response to a threat which doesn't yet exist, but which it is likely to conjure up. The US government is engaged in a global war with itself. It is like a robin attacking its reflection in a window. Nowhere is this more obvious than in its assaults on the multilateral institutions and their treaties. Listening to some of the bunkum about the United Nations venting from Capitol Hill at the moment, you could be forgiven for believing that the UN was a foreign conspiracy against the United States. It was, of course, proposed by a US president, launched in San Francisco and housed in New York, where its headquarters remain. Its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, characterised by Republicans as a dangerous restraint upon American freedoms, was drafted by Franklin D. Roosevelt's widow. The US is now the only member of the UN Security Council whose word is law, with the result that the UN is one of the world's most effective instruments for the projection of American power. The secret deals in Iraq for which the United Nations is currently being attacked by US senators were in fact overseen by the US government. It ensured that Saddam Hussein could evade sanctions by continuing to sell oil to its allies in Jordan and Turkey.(3) Republican congressmen are calling on Kofi Annan to resign for letting this happen, apparently unaware that it was approved in Washington to support American strategic objectives. The United States finds the monsters it seeks, as it pecks and flutters at its own image. So we could interpret the activities of Bush's government in Buenos Aires last week as another vigorous attempt to destroy its own interests. US economic growth depends on the rest of the world's prosperity. The greatest long-term threat to global prosperity is climate change, which threatens to wreck many of America's key markets in the developing world. Coastal cities in the United States - including New York - are threatened by rising sea levels. Florida could be hit by stronger and more frequent hurricanes. Both farms and cities are likely to be affected by droughts. In February, a leaked report from the Pentagon revealed that it sees global warming as far more dangerous to US interests than terrorism.(4) As a result of abrupt climate change, it claimed, warfare may again come to define human life. ... As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges: the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies. The nuclear powers, it suggested, are likely to invade each other's territories as they scramble for diminishing resources. So how does Bush respond to this? Bring it on. The meeting in Buenos Aires was supposed to work out what the world should do about climate change when the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012. Most of the world's governments want the protocol to be replaced by a new, tougher agreement. But the Bush administration has been seeking to ensure both that the original agreement is scrapped, and that nothing is developed to replace it. No one can say with any certainty, George Bush asserts, what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must be avoided.(5) As we don't know how bad it is going to be, he suggests, we shouldn't take costly steps to prevent it. Now read that statement again and substitute terrorism for warming. When anticipating possible terrorist attacks, the US administration, or so it claims, prepares for the worst. When anticipating the impacts of climate change, it prepares for the best. The precautionary principle is applied so enthusiastically to matters of national security that it now threatens American civil liberties. But it is rejected altogether when discussing the environment. The Kyoto protocol is
[pjnews] Iraq WMD Search is Over
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0112-01.htm Published on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 by Agence France Presse US Search for WMD in Iraq is Over: Report WASHINGTON - The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ended before Christmas and an interim report by top US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer saying that there are no weapons to be found will likely stand, according to a report in a US newspaper. The September 30 report is really pretty much the picture, a senior intelligence official who asked not to be identified told the Washington Post. We've talked to so many people that someone would have said something. We received nothing that contradicts the picture we've put forward. It's possible there is a supply some place, but what is much more likely is that (as time goes by) we will find a greater substantiation of the picture that we've already put forward, he added. The daily said officials who served in the Iraq Survey Group, tasked with the search of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq, wrapped up their job shortly before Christmas. The ongoing violence in Iraq together with the lack of new information, they said, led to the decision. Duelfer's report to Congress, which officials say he is finishing and will be published by the end of June, said deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had the intent but not the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction. The report contradicted the US government's chief, publicly stated reason for overthrowing Saddam in a quick war in April 2003. President George W. Bush's administration has recently insisted weapons of mass destruction might still be hidden in Iraq, but the intelligence official told The Washington Post that possibility was very small. A Pentagon spokesman told the daily that details of how hundreds of millions of dollars allotted by the US Congres for the WMD search in Iraq were spent remained classified. _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject quot;subscribequot; to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will be deleted from this list. FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the information in this e-mail is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. I am making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for in the US Copyright Law.
[pjnews] Bush Plans to Build Worldwide Guantanamos
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1390096,00.html A global gulag to hide the war on terror's dirty secrets Bush is now thinking of building jails abroad to hold suspects for life Jonathan Steele Friday January 14, 2005 The Guardian The promise of imminent release for four British detainees held at the notorious US prison at Guantánamo Bay is obviously welcome, but it is only a tiny exception in the surge of bad news from the Bush team on the human rights front. The first few days of the new year have produced two shocking exposures already. One is the revelation that the administration sees the US not just as a self-appointed global policeman, but also as the world's prison warder. It is thinking of building jails in foreign countries, mainly ones with grim human rights records, to which it can secretly transfer detainees (unconvicted by any court) for the rest of their lives - a kind of global gulag beyond the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or any other independent observers or lawyers. The other horror is the light shone on the views of Alberto Gonzales, the White House nominee to be the chief law officer, the attorney general. At his Senate confirmation hearings last week he was revealed to be a man who not only refuses to rule out torture under any circumstances but also, in his capacity as White House counsel over the past few years, chaired several meetings at which specific interrogation techniques were discussed. As Edward Kennedy pointed out, and Gonzales did not deny, they included the threat of burial alive and water-boarding, under which the detainee is strapped to a board, forcibly pushed under water, wrapped in a wet towel, and made to believe he could drown. Since its establishment after 9/11, the US camp for foreigners at Guantánamo Bay has become a beacon of unfreedom, a kind of grisly competitor to the Statue of Liberty in the shopfront of authentic American images. The trickle of releases of prisoners from its cages has brought direct testimony of the horrors which go on there. So it is no wonder that the Bush administration would like to find less visible places to hold prisoners, and keep them there for ever so that they cannot tell the world. The Guantánamo prisoners are held by the department of defence, but under the new scheme most foreign detainees are expected to be in the hands of the CIA, which submits to less congressional scrutiny and offers the Red Cross no access. They include hundreds of people who have been arrested in recent weeks in Falluja and other Iraqi cities. According to the Washington Post, which broke the story last week, one proposal is to have the US build new prisons in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Officials of those countries would run the prisons, and would have to allow the state department to monitor human rights compliance. It is a laughable proposition, since the whole purpose of the exercise is to minimise scrutiny. CIA agents would have the right to question the detainees, with or without the aid of foreign interrogators, as they already do at other off-limits prisons at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, on ships at sea, in Jordan and Egypt, and at Diego Garcia. The US policy of lending detainees to other countries' jailers and torturers, known as rendition, began during the war on drugs as a way of arresting alleged Latin American narco-barons and softening them up for trial in the US. It has expanded enormously under the war on terror. As one CIA officer told the Washington Post, the whole idea has become a corruption of renditions. It's not rendering to justice. It's kidnapping. He could have added that it's kidnapping for life. A senior US official told the New York Times last week that three-quarters of the 550 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay no longer have any intelligence of value. But they will not be released out of concern that they pose a continuing threat to the US. You're basically keeping them off the battlefield, and, unfortunately in the war on terrorism, the battlefield is everywhere, he said. Since the attack on Falluja, the US holds 325 non-Iraqis in custody, many of them Syrians and Saudis. Questioned by the Senate's judiciary committee, Gonzales said that the justice depart ment believes that non-Iraqis captured in Iraq are not protected by the Geneva conventions, which prevent prisoners being transferred out of the country in which they are held. It was revealed last year that Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, had approved the secret holding of ghost detainees in Iraq. They were kept off the registers that were shown to the Red Cross and therefore lost the chance of being visited or having other rights. Now many new prisoners will be candidates for a deeper category of invisibility by being sent for detention in secret locations abroad. While making bland
[pjnews] Record Opium Crop in Afghanistan
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/c1ri An Afghan Quandary for the U.S. Bush administration is split over a response to a likely record opium poppy crop: push for aerial eradication or let local officials handle it? By Sonni Efron Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 2, 2005 WASHINGTON With a bumper poppy harvest expected in Afghanistan in the new year, a debate has erupted within the Bush administration on whether the United States should push for the crop's destruction despite the objections of the Afghan government. Some U.S. officials advocate aerial spraying to reduce the opium crop, warning that if harvested, it could flood the West with heroin, fill the coffers of Taliban fighters and fund terrorist activity in Afghanistan and beyond. They estimate the haul could earn Afghan warlords up to $7 billion, up from a record $2.2 billion in 2004. With the January planting season approaching, the State Department is asking Congress to earmark nearly $780 million in aid to Afghanistan, the world's largest opium producer, for a counter-narcotics effort that would include $152 million for aerial eradication. Although Afghan President Hamid Karzai has declared a jihad against the drug trade, he has vetoed aerial spraying. And his stance is supported by some U.S. officials, who warn that attempts at mass crop eradication in spring, during the campaign season for parliamentary elections scheduled for April, will alienate rural voters. Instead, they argue for a delay in crop eradication but a vigorous crackdown on drug traffickers. The dispute underscores a vexing dilemma for the United States. Having ousted the Taliban from power, the Bush administration now finds that its three main policy objectives in the strategically important country counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and political stability appear to be contradictory. President Bush's Cabinet has discussed the problem, sources said, and the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan met with Bush in December. But the White House has reportedly not made a final decision. We still don't have a policy, a senior Republican congressional aide said on condition of anonymity. The arguments over Afghan policy have cut across the usual administration lines, dividing policymakers within the State Department, National Security Council and Pentagon, administration and congressional sources said. Some diplomats as well as many outside experts argue that aerial spraying, in particular, would be folly. You tell them, 'You're voting for a new democratic country,' while their government is allowing foreigners to come in and destroy their livelihood? said Barnett R. Rubin, who was an advisor to the U.N. in Afghanistan in 2001. And if you try to destroy it and have the economy decline by 10%, 20%, 40% in one year, what will the result be? The result will be armed revolt. Instead of trying to eradicate this year's poppy crop, the U.S. and Afghan governments should focus on providing alternative livelihoods for farmers, improving law enforcement and drug interdiction. Eradication should only be considered once the political climate is more stable, argued Mark L. Schneider, a former Peace Corps director now at the International Crisis Group. Aerial spraying, Schneider warned, would be tantamount to providing the Taliban with a great recruiting slogan: 'Go with us, or they'll spray you.' Other administration officials and lawmakers warn that allowing the Afghan economy to become dependent on narco-profits could be even more dangerous. One official noted that the Sept. 11 commission estimated that it had cost only $400,000 to $500,000 to carry out the terrorist attacks on the United States. Imagine what they can do with $10 billion. You [can] own a country with that much money. Advocates of an aggressive strategy worry that warlords could use drug profits to influence the coming election. And they argue for swift intervention before next year's harvest further swells the warlords' coffers. Robert B. Charles, assistant secretary of State for international narcotics and law enforcement, has asserted in testimony before Congress that drug profits are almost definitely funding the Taliban, which once banned opium farming, and possibly Al Qaeda as well. According to Charles, the profits are also flowing to the Hezb-i-Islami faction led by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The terrorist group, which has staged attacks aimed at driving U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, is loosely allied with the Taliban and has ties to Osama bin Laden. The U.S. government estimates that poppy cultivation exploded from 150,000 acres in 2003 to 510,000 acres in 2004 much higher than an earlier U.N. estimate of 324,000 acres. That works out to potential profits of up to $7 billion, says Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.), who follows counter-narcotics efforts from the House Appropriations Committee.
[pjnews] MLK's words still relevant
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. Beyond Vietnam by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Address delivered to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, at Riverside Church, New York City, 4 April 1967 (excerpted) Download and read the entire speech at: http://snipurl.com/c2eq (Acrobat PDF file) Listen to a similar version of this speech at: http://www.hpol.org/record.php?id=150 I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together, Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement, and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people? they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment, or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church-the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate-leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight. I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans. Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it
[pjnews] Look what they're doing to the land of freedom
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1383205,00.html Grannie, look what they're doing to the land of freedom Guardian (London) 3 Jan 05 by Sara Paretsky My grandmother came to America from eastern Europe in 1911, when she was not quite 13. Her father had been murdered in a pogrom in front of his family. Her mother was afraid the mob would turn on her next, so she sent her eldest child, alone, to the new world. My grandmother often talked about sailing into New York harbour and seeing the Statue of Liberty, like a second mother, welcoming her under its outstretched arm. She never saw her mother or most of her family again: they perished in the Holocaust. Her education ended when she left Europe. She worked as a finisher in the garment industry for 50 cents a day, became active in the Garment Workers Union, became pregnant and married at 15. But she knew when she sailed in under the statue that her life would not be in danger again because of who she was or what she thought or said. She had come home to freedom. I recently completed a speaking tour in Europe in connection with my novel Blacklist, which is set partly in the McCarthy era and partly in the world of the Patriot Act. The book has generated hate mail from people who accuse me of hating America and loving terrorists. When I walked into the US consulate in Hamburg and saw a sketch of the statue on the wall, I thought of my grandmother and wept. Grannie, this is what we're doing now: We imprisoned an artist in upstate New York for an installation piece he was creating around genetically modified food. When his wife died suddenly one morning and he called 911, he was arrested for having micro-organisms in the apartment. He was held without charge until a postmortem was completed and showed that the benign, legally obtained organisms in his home had not caused his wife's death. He faces trial in January for having benign, legal organisms in his house, his travel is restricted, and he is subject to frequent drug tests. We arrested a library patron in New Brunswick for looking at foreign-language pages on the web. We held him for three days without charging him, without letting him call a lawyer, or notify his wife. We arrested a man at St John's College in Santa Fe for making a negative comment about George Bush in a chatroom from the college library. We put a gag order on all the students and faculty, forbidding them from revealing that this arrest had taken place: the staff member who told me about it could be imprisoned for doing so. We pressured a North Carolina public radio station to drop a long-time sponsorship from a reproductive rights group, claiming that it is political and therefore not permissible as a donor. We've seized circulation and internet-use records from a tenth of the nation's libraries without showing probable cause. We're imprisoning journalists for their coverage of a White House vendetta on a CIA agent. We coerced newspapers in Texas and Oregon to fire reporters who criticised the president's behaviour in the days immediately after 9/11. We have held citizens and non-citizens alike for more than three years in prison, without charging them, without giving them any idea on how long their incarceration might be, and we have out-sourced their torture to Pakistan and Egypt. When George Bush spoke at the Ohio State University commencement in 2002, we threatened protesters with expulsion from the university. We imprisoned an 81-year-old Haitian Baptist minister when he landed at Miami airport with a valid passport and visa. We took away his blood-pressure medicine and ridiculed him for not speaking clearly through his voice-box. He collapsed and died in our custody five days later. In Germany, there is a feeling of terrible loss and betrayal in the wake of the presidential election. People in their 60s told me that growing up in postwar Germany, they idealised America. Even when our faults were obvious, as with lynch mobs and segregation, these Germans saw America as struggling to become true to its ideals of justice and equality. Now, as Germans see the many ways in which we are turning our backs on those ideals in the name of protecting ourselves from terror, they feel a betrayal deeper than the loss of a lover. They fear, too, that as America moves the definition of radicalism to new points on a rightwing compass, other nations will follow suit. They fear that in a world without a beacon of liberty, there will be no curbs on totalitarian behaviour anywhere. I never met any anti-American sentiment in Germany, despite the bewilderment that people feel. People were supportive and helpful, even if no one is very hopeful right now. In Dresden, a man in his 70s said that anyone who thought the worsening war in Iraq, and a worsening US economy, would turn Americans against this administration
[pjnews] Account of Iraqi Torture
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/c1ra Graner Gets 10 Years in Iraq Prison Abuse -- http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=2687 'They put a hood on me, tied my hands and took me to Camp Fallujah' Robert Fisk in Baghdad The Independent January 14, 2005 The General was a slim 58-year-old, his hair black, big hands, a suit that hung uneasily upon him, a bespoke tailor's work that could never equal his pea-green uniform with swords on the epaulettes. It was at least three minutes before I remembered the young colonel in his 30s who had led the first Iraqi tank unit across the Karun river north of Basra against the Iranian army in 1980, bulkier then, but the same black hair, the same way of sitting ramrod-straight when answering questions from reporters, 25 years of our lives and Iraqs defeat having gone by n the meantime. He wanted to talk about the resistance to Americas occupation and about how his life was transformed by the liberation of Iraq by the United States, changed utterly by his own arrest by the liberators. He was still a general when the American pro-consul, Paul Bremer, disbanded the Iraqi army in 2003. They came for him while he was eating dinner with his family on 3 November, 2003. There were helicopters overhead and they came to my home from the neighbours houses, over the roof, through the front and back doors. They took everything that was of value money, old books, anything they wanted. They put a hood on me and tied my hands behind my back and took me to Camp Fallujah, one of Saddams former palaces outside the town. That was the easy part. They made me sit in the dirt for a day without food or being able to go to the lavatory, the General says. Three American officers carried out the first interrogation. They wanted information about my military career and about other military leaders. They put a strong light in my face so I couldnt see anything. The interpreters had Egyptian, Saudi or Lebanese accents. They kept getting my name wrong, even though I spelled it for them. I told them my name, rank and number, but they violated the Geneva Convention they wanted to know more, and I was an officer. The General never accepted pro-consul Bremers disbandment of the army. He wanted to abide by the Conventions even though the Iraqi army rarely did But the Americans regarded him as a civilian, a supporter of the insurgents. They wanted to know who was behind the resistance, who was financing it, where they got their arms, how they crossed the border from Syria. The second interrogations, the General says, took place outdoors. There were three American officers, and they took turns in beating me. They used plastic bottles of water to beat me on the face and the neck and the chest. Once, the bottle broke and the plastic cut into my ear. He showed me a deep scar that curls through his earlobe. One of the Americans was a tall man with crew cut hair, a captain so the guards told me later. The second was shorter, with black hair. The third was the tallest, heavy with dark eyes. They sat on chairs. I was made to sit on the dirt while I was beaten. Then, for three days and nights I was made to stand on one foot or forced to sit on the ground but not lie down. The General claimed he endured three false executions as American soldiers pulled the triggers of empty rifles beside his face while he was hooded. On one occasion, tied to a tent pole, his jailers took off his hood to allow him to see American jets bombing Fallujah. At the second interrogation, they kept asking me military information what was the Mehdi army, who were the Wahhabis in Fallujah, how do they buy their arms, how do foreign fighters cross the border of Syria? They asked: Where are the arms being sold? I told them: They are on sale in the bazaar you buy guns there yourselves. After nine days, the General was taken hooded and in a truck on unpaved roads to the soon-to-be notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Here our interrogators were wearing civilian clothes, jeans and t-shirts. Each had an interview room of their own. We sat on the concrete in front of them. Some of the interrogations were very stupid. They would ask us about Shia political parties, the influence of Iran, the frontiers of Iraq. They should have asked us about the weapons we used. But they asked only political questions. The Generals memories of Abu Ghraib were more than intriguing. In December, 2003, he said, a prisoner had a handgun smuggled to him in the cells and tried to kill an American guard. The prisoner was wounded with a shotgun when the Americans fetched reinforcements, and taken off to the camp hospital. Several men were tortured with electrodes. One Iraqi man came to me after they had used electricity on his penis it was so bad that his penis was bleeding. Eventually, to the
[pjnews] 1/3 What I Heard About Iraq
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. What I Heard About Iraq Eliot Weinberger, 11 January 2005 In 1991, during the first Gulf War, I heard Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, say that the U.S. would not invade Baghdad, to avoid getting bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq I heard him say: The question in my mind is: How many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is: Not very damned many. In February 2001, I heard Colin Powell say that Saddam Hussein has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. That same month, I heard that a CIA report stated: We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction programs. Two months later, I heard Condoleezza Rice say: We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt. On September 11, 2001, six hours after the attacks, I heard that Donald Rumsfeld advised the President to hit Iraq. I heard that he said: Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not. I heard that Condoleezza Rice asked: How do you capitalize on these opportunities? I heard that the President, on September 17, signed a document marked TOP SECRET that directed the Pentagon to begin planning for the invasion and that, a few months later, he secretly and illegally diverted $700 million approved by Congress for operations in Afghanistan into planning for the new battle front. In February 2002, I heard that an unnamed senior military commander said: We are moving military and intelligence personnel and resources out of Afghanistan to get ready for a future war in Iraq. I heard the President say that Iraq is a threat of unique urgency, and that there is no doubt the Iraqi regime continues to possess the most lethal weapons ever devised. I heard the Vice President say: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. I heard the President tell Congress, The danger to our country is grave. The danger to our country is growing. The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material, could build one within a year. And that same day, I heard him say: The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and from year to year. To ignore these threats is to encourage them. And when they have fully materialized it may be too late to protect ourselves and our friends and our allies. By then the Iraqi dictator would have the means to terrorize and dominate the region. Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX nerve gas or some day a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally. I heard the President, in the State of the Union Address, say that Iraq was hiding 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and nerve gas. I heard the President say that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger and thousands of aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. I heard the Vice President say: We know that he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I heard the President say: Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent. I would not be so certain. I heard the President say: America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof-- the smoking gun-- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. I heard Condoleezza Rice say: We don't want the 'smoking gun' to be a mushroom cloud. I heard the American Ambassador to the European Union tell the Europeans: You had Hitler in Europe and no one really did anything about him. The same type of person is in Baghdad. I heard Colin Powell at the United Nations say: They can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard gas, 30,000 empty munitions, and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents. If we consider just one category of missing weaponry: 6,500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq war. Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent. Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles
[pjnews] The Next Bush Administration
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/updates.html The Next Bush Administration: While many Democrats are fleeing DC this week - too sad, depressed, and or aggravated to witness the 2nd Bush administration come back to town - now, more than ever, we need to stand up and take notice of whos replacing who in key posts. Nine of Bushs 15 Cabinet secretaries will be replaced - from a top polluter taking over as Energy Secretary to an Attorney General complicit with torture and a Secretary of State more concerned with touting missile defense than combating terrorism. This is no time to take our eyes off of what is happening in Washington. --Former National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice will take over for Secretary of State Colin Powell - from Bushs foreign policy tutor to close friend and confidant - Ms. Rice will become the 66th Secretary of State, following in the footsteps of Henry Kissinger, the last National Security Adviser to move on to head the State Department. Rice told senators at her confirmation hearing she would reinsert diplomacy in the Bush administrations foreign policy agenda. She like Powell, is expected to be equally vocal, though possibly more influential given the broad trust Bush places in her. At the same time, given her role in perpetuating false information on Iraqs WMD, the handling of terrorist warnings before Sept. 11, and the lack of diplomacy used in dealing with nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, its hard to tell what to expect. As Tom Barry of the International Relations Center points out, on an initially positive note, Rices selection of Robert Zoellick as her top deputy indicate that the ultra-hawks and neocon foreign policy revolutionaries wont completely dominate the second administration. But dont be fooled Barry warns, while Rice and Zoellick might not be ideologues, they arent moderate conservatives either. For more on Zoellick read Barrys No. 2 at Rices State Department, at rightweb.irc-online.org --The day Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his resignation, I jumped for joy - really. Now, with Alberto Gonzales almost certain to be confirmed for the post, my joy has subsided. Senators on both sides of the aisle were dissatisfied with Mr. Gonzales answers during his confirmation hearing. A Washington Post editorial cited his lack of responsiveness to questions about his judgments as White House counsel on the detention of foreign prisoners as cause for concern. The editorial also noted that some expressed dismay at his reluctance to state that it is illegal for American personnel to use torture, or for the president to order it. Although believed to be less ideological than his predecessor, Mr. Gonzales firmly backs the administrations aggressive policies and has a long history with the President - back in Texas, when President Bush was Governor Bush, Mr. Gonzales served as his General Counsel, followed by Secretary of State, and Supreme Court Justice. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) urged senators to reject President Bushs nomination of his former chief counsel as an affront to the rule of law. CCR, which is the only organization in the country that actually represents men and women who were tortured in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, charges that Mr. Gonzales knowingly and willingly provided counsel and advocated policies calculated to evade or circumvent domestic and international laws prohibiting the use of torture and inhumane treatment to extract information from soldiers or detainees held in U.S. custody, for more information go to www.CommonDreams.org --President Bush named Deputy Treasury Secretary Samuel W. Bodman as head of the Energy Department. Bodman is former chairman and chief executive of the Cabot Corporation. If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Bodman will succeed Spencer Abraham, who resigned last month. The New York Times reported that Mr. Bodman will face many of the same issues that consumed Mr. Abraham: the future of nuclear power, the development of clean-coal technology, how to update an outmoded electricity industry and the battle over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. President Bush said, In academics, in business and in government, Sam Bodman has shown himself to be a problem solver who knows how to set goals, and he knows how to reach them. He continued, hailing his nominee's great talent for management and . . . precise thinking of an engineer. Despite Bushs confidence in his nominee, many analysts were surprised that Bush did not appoint a nuclear weapons expert. Given Bodmans limited experience in energy policy, some maintain his selection is strategic and meant to allow Vice President Cheney to keep a firm grip on the department. Karen Wayland, legislative director for Natural Resources Defense Council, told Reuters, I think its pretty clear over the last four
[pjnews] The 55th Presidential Inauguration
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/updates.html The 55th Presidential Inauguration: Costly but Secure As Ralph Basham, the Secret Service chief told the Associated Press, We dont want to leave anything to chance. We want to make sure that everyone who comes to participate in these events can do so in a safe, secure fashion. Though there have been heightened security measures in the Capitol and other Washington locations since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Basham said that this is unprecedented when it comes to the level of security that will be in effect for the inauguration and those events that are surrounding it. And, in keeping with the theme of the campaign and conventions, the 55th Presidential Inauguration is shaping up to be the costliest one yet. Of course, topping the list of donors are companies from the energy, oil, and defense industry. The nation's top three defense contractors -- Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman -- each chipped in $100,000 for the event, while defense contractor United Technologies ponied up $250,000! For a full list of donors go to http://www.inaugural05.com Two Great Articles below, one from Knight-Ridder, the second from the Center for Responsive Politics Big Companies' Inauguration Donations Raise Eyebrows by Matt Stearns, Published on Monday, January 17, 2005 by Knight-Ridder WASHINGTON - Large corporations, many of which have enormous regulatory and policy interests in Washington, are paying for most of President Bush's inauguration. Critics call the arrangement too cozy, while others say the lavish spending is inappropriate in a time of war and as South Asia recovers from a devastating tsunami. Bush told reporters Thursday he sees no problem with either how the money is raised or how it is spent. There's no taxpayer money involved in this, he said. The inaugural celebration is expected to cost up to $40 million, with the money all raised from private donations. That would tie the record set by Bush's 2001 inaugural. Bill Clinton's 1993 inaugural cost $33 million, the previous record. That amount doesn't include the swearing-in itself, or security for inaugural events, two costs the government does cover. Officials say those will be in the millions of dollars, although they don't know how much yet. But for the associated celebrating, it's become common for private donations to pay for the ever escalating partying that is the biggest part of any inauguration. Of the more than $25 million raised so far by the Presidential Inaugural Committee, more than two-thirds came from corporate coffers. As of Jan. 14, 42 corporate contributors chipped in $250,000 each, the self-imposed maximum donation accepted by the committee. Unlike campaign contributions, there's no legal limit to how much a donor can give. Financial services companies and their executives have donated more than any other industry, with 26 financial services firms donating more than $4 million. The industry could reap a windfall if Congress approves Bush's plan for private investment accounts as part of Social Security. It also has an interest in Bush's goal of extending the tax cuts of his first term. Energy companies and their executives contributed more than $2.7 million. They've worked closely with the Bush Administration for years to pass an industry-friendly energy bill that remains stalled in Congress. Bush told reporters Thursday that the energy bill is a major goal of his second term. I feel good we'll be able to get one out of Congress this year, he said. The companies call the donations good corporate citizenship, saying they are merely participating in an important rite of democracy and enabling average Americans to enjoy events such as the inaugural parade and the inauguration eve fireworks. We view this as a patriotic event and a patriotic thing to do, said Terri McCullough, spokeswoman for Southern Co., an energy firm that gave $250,000 to the committee. Many donor companies have contributed to inaugurations in the past, for both Democrats and Republicans. Asked whether it was appropriate for companies with legislative and regulatory concerns to pay for his inauguration, Bush said, It's exactly what happened last inauguration, the inauguration before, the inauguration before. Bush said if he thought it was inappropriate, I wouldn't be doing it. But critics say that for-profit companies don't give money away without a reason involving self-interest. It's part of their government relations and influence program, said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that monitors money in politics. They're doing it to gain access to the White House and to members of Congress. The access works on two levels, Noble said. First, there's the immediate access that donors get from rubbing shoulders with
