WW News Service Digest #354
1) Threats Grow of Wider War
by Janet
2) State Judge Denies Mumia Appeal
by Janet
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 6, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
AS DEATH TOLL RISES: THREATS GROW OF WIDER WAR
Hawks Press for New Military Adventures
By Fred Goldstein
As November draws to a close, the Bush administration is
dramatically increasing the number of U.S. ground troops
in
Afghanistan, escalating the suffering of the people there,
warning of U.S. casualties, threatening to spread the war
to
Iraq, and continuing to pursue illegal and
unconstitutional
repression against U.S. residents of Mideast origin.
The Pentagon is sending 1,000 U.S. Marines, equipped with
armored personnel carriers, helicopter gunships and
fighter
plane air support into the battle to take Kandahar. Some
500
of the Marines are at an air base 80 miles southwest of
the
city and the other 500 at transit points for the city.
The U.S. military is establishing a base area around the
airport in anticipation of a much larger struggle to take
Kandahar. The likelihood that more U.S. soldiers will be
sent is considerable in the absence of any significant
Afghan puppet fighting forces in the south able to play
the
same mercenary role the Northern Alliance warlords played
in
the north.
"The degree of difficulty is increasing," President George
W. Bush is quoted as saying in the New York Times of Nov.
27. "It may take longer than some anticipate."
The Pentagon revealed what it said were the first U.S.
battle casualties after five U.S. Special Forces troops
were
seriously wounded by "friendly fire" when U.S. bombers
struck the Qala Jangi fortress outside Masar-e-Sharif. The
19th-century fortress is being used as a prison for
surrendering soldiers. It was reported that the 400 or so
prisoners were mainly Pakistani, and that almost all were
killed.
U.S. and British Special Forces were participating in the
suppression of prisoners who were said to be resisting
their
Northern Alliance jailers. The Special Forces had to come
in
to handle the situation, which they did by calling in air
strikes on the prison. These led to the massacre of the
prisoners and even killed some 40 to 50 Northern Alliance
troops.
Bush then took the initiative in a Rose Garden question
and
answer session at the White House to prepare the
population
here for battle casualties in the protracted, expansionary
wars that the Pentagon has on the drawing board.
"Afghanistan is still just the beginning," said Bush. He
emphasized that U.S. troops would die.
"It's going to happen," said Bush. "I said this early on,
as
the campaign began: Americans must be prepared for loss of
life."
GET READY TO DIE--FOR IMPERIALISM
It is part of the political objective of the White House
and
the Pentagon, as well as big business in general, to
condition the working class in the U.S. to accept dying on
the battlefield. What the workers aren't told is that it
is
to expand the power of U.S. imperialism, the very
exploiters
who control their daily lives.
It was the workers who died in the tens of thousands and
were wounded in the hundreds of thousands in Washington's
war to conquer Vietnam. Millions of Vietnamese were killed
and wounded and the country was devastated during that
war.
The Bush administration and the big business media, with
the
aid of Hollywood, are trying to erase that bloody
experience
from the memory of the people. They want to use the Sept.
11
disaster and the understandable popular outrage at the
massive destruction of innocent civilians as a springboard
to convince the working class to accept killing and being
killed in the long and widening war that has been promised
by the so-called Bush doctrine.
Since Sept. 11 there has been a much-discussed conflict
raging within the highest ranks of the Bush administration
over where to take the war next, assuming that the U.S.
military can triumph in Afghanistan.
The public figures associated with the two sides of this
conflict are Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
and
Secretary of State Colin Powell. But these names really
represent larger forces within the government and the
ruling
class. The public has been largely kept in the dark about
the secret deliberations at the summits involving the fate
of whole countries and regions.
The most venomous area of controversy, according to leaks
that began just days after Sept. 11, has been the question
of a war on Iraq. War against the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (DPRK) has also been spoken of quite
frequently.
ISSUE OF WAR AGAINST IRAQ
Just as there are forces in the Pentagon still angry over
not having brought to bear enough genocidal force to win
the
war in Vietnam, there are those burning with the more
recent
memories of having been stopped short in the 1991 Gulf War
without making an all-out assault on Baghdad and
overthrowing the government of Saddam Hussein by military
force, no matter how many lives it would have cost on both
sides. This is assuming that it could have been done,
which
is highly disputed by both military and civilian
authorities
in the U.S.
The issue of announcing and preparing a new war on Iraq
became so contested within the administration that Bush
had
to put a halt to it and postpone the decision, pending the
outcome of the struggle in Afghanistan. But with the war
seemingly going in favor of the U.S. and British forces,
the
right-wing, ultra-militarist forces in Washington are
beating the drums for military expansion into Iraq.
Bush, in the same Rose Garden Q&A on Nov. 26, addressed
the
question of Iraq. It is not yet clear whether he was
trying
to verbally appease the right wing or was moving in their
direction when he demanded that Saddam Hussein admit
weapons
inspectors back into the country or "face the
consequences."
Bush expanded the definition of "terrorist" to include any
governments that "use weapons of mass destruction to
terrorize nations" and declared that "they will be held
accountable."
Of course, this definition most describes the U.S.
government itself, the only government in the world ever
to
have used nuclear weapons. It has enough to destroy all of
civilization several times over and has tried to terrorize
nation after nation with its nuclear threat ever since
1945.
It also pioneered the development of both biological and
chemical warfare in their most modern forms.
In the same speech that threatened Saddam Hussein, Bush
also
threatened Korea by demanding that it allow inspectors
into
the country.
HOW SEPT. 11 AFFECTED RULING CLASS
The decision to expand the war is a momentous one for the
U.S. ruling class as well as the workers and oppressed
people here and abroad. U.S. imperialism has always been
characterized by military adventurism and
expansionism-from
the Korean War to the Vietnam War to the Gulf War and
including dozens of other interventions in the last
century.
When the Sept. 11 attack occurred, the ruling class here,
unlike the working class, took it as an attack on U.S.
capitalism. It was not really concerned with the
casualties
among the workers-witness the extraordinary suffering that
the unemployed and families of the victims are still going
through. They have been largely left to shift for
themselves, unlike the corporations, insurers, airlines,
construction firms, and so on that are getting billions in
aid.
The ruling class had a shock to its world prestige. In the
moment of fury it gave all-out license to the military and
the FBI to mobilize and engage in any amount of force and
constitutional violation necessary to get immediate
revenge
and remove the threat.
In the opening phase of the war all factions could unite
around this initial effort. But now that the Bush doctrine
of declaring war on any movement or nation that Washington
considers a "terrorist" has to be implemented beyond
Afghanistan, the harsh reality of having given the reins
to
the adventurers is starting to break up the unity. It will
give rise to intense inner struggle and instability in the
ruling circles and poses a grave danger to the mass of the
people.
The Bush administration has proposed military tribunals,
which are nothing more than summary justice meted out by
military authorities. It has made the civilian judiciary
completely irrelevant. Under the repressive Patriot Act,
Attorney General John Ashcroft is trying to round up
thousands of people of Mideast descent in a racist assault
on civil liberties and is refusing to reveal the number or
identity of those already in detention.
These measures have created deep anxiety in many sections
of
the ruling class--not because they sympathize with the
oppressed who are the victims of this repression, but
because they fear that a move in the direction of a
military-
police state could bring about resistance and
destabilization to capitalist society, particularly at a
moment of deepening economic crisis.
The working class and all progressive forces must continue
to resist the U.S. war to conquer Afghanistan and make it
a
base for U.S. military and business operations in Central
Asia, while also being on the alert for any move towards
expanding the military adventures into Iraq or any place
else.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (Janet)
Date: torstai 29. marraskuu 2001 07:30
Subject: [WW] State Judge Denies Mumia Appeal
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 6, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
TAKE IT TO THE STREETS/ DEC. 8: STATE JUDGE DENIES MUMIA'S
APPEAL
By Monica Moorehead
On Nov. 21, Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe turned down an
appeal to grant a new post-conviction relief hearing for
political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal is
recognized
around the world as a U.S. political prisoner who was
railroaded to Pennsylvania death row in 1982.
Abu-Jamal's lawyers, Marlene Kamish and Eliot Grossman,
went
into state court in Philadelphia back on Aug. 17 to
request
that Dembe grant a hearing to allow long-suppressed
evidence
to be heard that should lead to their client's release.
This
evidence includes a videotaped statement made by Arnold
Beverly, a self-confessed hit man for the mob who has
admitted on videotape to killing a white Philadelphia
police
officer--Daniel Faulkner--on Dec. 9, 1981.
Abu-Jamal was framed up for that killing in a sham of a
trial presided over by "hanging judge" Albert Sabo, a
member
of the Fraternal Order of Police. It is no secret that the
FOP was out to get Abu-Jamal because he was a long-time,
outspoken opponent of rampant police brutality.
During hearings in 1995 and 1996, Abu-Jamal's lawyers at
that time, Leonard
Weinglass and Daniel Williams, did not enter Beverly's
confession as evidence.
Dembe took the side of the biased prosecutors in making
her
decision. She stated that her court did not have
jurisdiction to grant Abu-Jamal a new trial because his
appeal was not filed within a certain time frame required
under state law. In other words, the introduction of
evidence proving innocence takes a back seat to procedure.
Whether this latest rejection will or can be appealed to a
higher state court remains to be seen. Abu-Jamal's case is
currently in the first stages of the federal appeals
process; the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court turned down
his appeals in 1999. William Yohn, the federal district
judge assigned to Abu-Jamal's case, has also turned down
the
death-row prisoner's request to have the Beverly
confession
added onto his federal appeal.
The original appeal, filed in October 1999 by Weinglass
and
Williams, requested an evidentiary hearing on behalf of
Abu-
Jamal. This appeal outlines 19 or more constitutional
violations during Abu-Jamal's original trial.
Yohn has already rejected the Beverly confession based on
restrictions outlined in the Effective Death Penalty Act
signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996. This act speeds
up
executions by gutting the writ of habeas corpus for
defendants appealing to federal courts to overturn state
court rulings based on suppressed or new evidence proving
innocence.
The Dembe ruling is a setback to Mumia Abu-Jamal's legal
strategy. But it should come as no surprise in a political
sense. The ruling class and its racist, repressive state
apparatus have one goal: to legally lynch this
revolutionary
journalist because of his anti-capitalist and anti-
imperialist perspective.
In the aftermath of the Sept.11 attacks on the World Trade
Center, it is now more important than ever to keep Abu-
Jamal's case highly visible within the political movement.
The U.S. government is using the Sept. 11 tragedy as an
excuse to strengthen its state repression by targeting
vulnerable sectors in society--thousands of Arab, Muslim
and
South Asian people are being detained by the FBI, CIA and
INS indefinitely under the U.S. "Patriot" Act. These
detentions reflect massive human violations of civil
liberties and civil rights.
At the same time, over 2 million people, the overwhelming
majority of them people of color and poor, are languishing
in U.S. jails and prisons. This is nearly 25 percent of
the
world's 8.5 million prison population, according to "World
Prison Populations: Facts, Trends and Solutions," a paper
prepared by the United Nations Crime Prevention and
Criminal
Justice Program Network.
This imprisoned population in the U.S. is the backbone of
the ever-expanding prison-industrial complex. This
exploitation has become a main focus of many of
Abu-Jamal's
political columns.
Dec. 7, 8 and 9 have been declared international days of
solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal. On Dec. 8, one day before
the 20th anniversary of his arrest, International
Concerned
Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal has called for a
mass
demonstration in Philadelphia. The protest will begin at
noon on the steps of City Hall at Broad and Market
streets.
The International Action Center is helping to organize as
many people as possible from around the country to descend
on Philadelphia on Dec. 8. A leaflet issued by the
national
office of the New York City-based IAC reads in part, "For
20
years, Mumia's case has symbolically represented
resistance
against every form of racist and political repression. And
today, his case cannot be separated from the reactionary
atmosphere created by the U.S. government, which wants to
use the tragic situation of Sept. 11 to stifle progressive
political dissent.
"As long as one person's civil liberties and civil rights
are under attack, all of our civil liberties and civil
rights are under attack. This is an important aspect of
Mumia's case."
For bus transportation to Philadelphia, contact the IAC at
(212) 633-6646.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
