Wednesday, September 08, 2004

BAUAW NEWSLETTER-WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2004

NEXT BAY AREA UNITED AGAINST WAR MEETING:
TOMORROW, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 7 p.m.
1380 VALENCIA STREET
(Between 24th & 25th Streets, S.F.)

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1) Tomgram: Nick Turse on the new Homeland Security State
Posted September 5, 2004 at 11:09 am

2) One Thousand and One
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 08 September 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/090804A.shtml

3) CONFRONTING INSURGENTS
U.S. Conceding Rebels
Control Regions of Iraq
By ERIC SCHMITT and STEVEN R. WEISMAN
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/politics/08policy.html?hp

4) Fight Oppression One Olive at a Time
Help with the Palestinian Olive Harvest this Fall
This simple act will help Palestinians resist the occupation
by insisting on life.

5) Peace activist held as 'danger to Israel'
Lawyers question state motives behind detention
without trial of former woman soldier who befriended
leading Palestinian militant
Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Tuesday September 7, 2004
The Guardian

6) URGENT CALL TO ACTION: ORGANIZE A
VIGIL ON THURSDAY NIGHT
FOR THE MORE THAN 1,000 U.S. SOLDIERS AND TENS OF
THOUSANDS OF IRAQIS KILLED

7) CENSORED 2005:
THE TOP 25 CENSORED MEDIA STORIES OF 2003-2004
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/index.html

8) 150 Arrests during Demonstration by
San Francisco Hotel Workers
By Frontlines correspondent

9) Bush & Putin self-fulfilled prophesies:
Slaughter and Terrorism
Frontlines Editorial Board
http://www.sf-frontlines.com/
modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=828&mode=thread&order
=0&thold=0

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1) Tomgram: Nick Turse on the new Homeland Security State
Posted September 5, 2004 at 11:09 am


On the third night the Republican Convention was in town, I attended
a modest demonstration against the imperial broadcast media --
there's nothing like hundreds of people chanting about breaking
up media conglomerates while looking at the blank, skyscraping
faces of darkened, semi-deserted buildings. But who had time to
look for CNN or Time Warner or Fox News (where the march was
destined to end) when the most visible -- overwhelming and
intimidating -- presence on the street was the police. The "march,"
which you might want to imagine as a serpentine creature heading
south on New York's Sixth Avenue, had actually been chopped into
a series of one-block long segments by the New York Police
Department. Each small segment was penned on its sides by
moveable wooden barricades and on either end by the wheel-to-
wheel bikes of a seemingly endless supply of mounted policemen
backed up by all manner of police vehicles. Though the photographing
of protestors is an old practice, ! it once had a somewhat surreptitious
quality to it. Not here (or anywhere else in the city that week) --
police in uniform were openly videoing the crowd. To "march,"
that is, actually meant to step from pen to pen, hemmed in
everywhere, your protest at the mercy of the timing, tactics,
and desires of the police. It was one of many sobering moments
that week, a small reminder of what we've already lost, thanks
to the "war on terror" as it's being played out in our still-in-
formation Homeland Security State.

Nick Turse offered a preview of what New York had in store for
its demonstrators in a piece he did for Tomdispatch some weeks
before the Republicans arrived. I asked him, in the wake of the
Convention -- and with his own experiences as a demonstrator
in mind -- to return to the subject. Tom
The Rise of the Homeland Security State
Fortress Big Apple, Revisited
By Nick Turse

Prior to the Republican National Convention, I thought I knew
all about the militarization of Manhattan -- the transformation
of the island into a "homeland-security state" -- and about New
York City as the paradigm for the security culture that increasingly
grips American society. After all, I wrote about it in "Fortress Big
Apple."
It turns out I didn't know the half of it. Only after writing that
piece did I discover that the New York Police Department (NYPD)
had purchase two experimental sound weapons known as Long
Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) which I had once described in
writing about U.S. experimental weapons research
in Iraq.
I had then termed the deployment of an LRAD here during the
convention "improbable" -- yet there it was out on the very same
streets I was walking. I also looked out my window and caught
sight of the ultimate blending! of corporatism and the police-
state -- the Fuji blimp -- now emblazoned with a second logo:
"NYPD." This spy-in-the-sky, outfitted with the latest in video-
surveillance equipment, had been loaned free of charge www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4462474,00.html>
to the police all week long.

But even finding out about these new high-tech tools of the
homeland security-state didn't make things clear to me; nor
did the ever-present roar of helicopter rotors as those of us in
the streets during the RNC were surveilled from above; or even
when Brendan Galligan of the NYPD Aviation Unit

bluntly told a reporter from the local ABC TV affiliate: "I'm
looking for any kind of crime on the grou[nd]. In this case,
we're looking for roving mobs of people traveling in unison,
that might indicate some sort of problem for the ground
troops." "People traveling in unison" a crime? "Ground troops"?
I should have fully understood then, but I didn't.

I didn't quite get it when I saw the stone-faced feds out on the
streets with those ever-present ear-pieces piping in commands
from who knows where; nor as I scuttled between concrete
barricades and metal fences in the area around Madison Square
Garden while remote cameras tracked my every move; nor when
a march I was in was flanked by a phalanx of bicycle-riding police;
nor when a corps of plainclothes cops on scooters trolled the
streets near Times Square. You would think that I would have
understood it when the peaceful group of activists I was with were
pushed off the sidewalk by police in front of us, while the cops in
back ordered us onto the sidewalk; or when, left with no options,
we tried to escape by crossing Broadway only to have some of our
number caught in the NYPD's literal dragnet -- rolls of orange
plastic netting
which were repeatedly unfurled all across the city, snagging protesters,
! press, legal observers, pedestrians, and bystanders alike. I can't
understand why I didn't get it when I looked up from watching some
cops press a man's head to the pavement to see a hoard of police
on horseback heading down the street ?photo_id=8180547> towards me; or when officers from the
NYPD's Technical Assistance Response Unit (TARU) filmed me,
apparently for walking in a park or perhaps for what I might do,
prompting a young woman to sidle up next to me and whisper
"they're tailing you" --making me wonder, was the warning sincere
or could she be with them too?

I witnessed the fleets of black SUVs with police escorts roar down
virtually empty city streets near the Madison Square Garden bubble.
On numerous occasions, I saw flatbed police trucks filled with the
very interlocking metal barriers that a judge had ruled
could no
longer be used to pen in protesters (as the NYPD had been
doing for about a decade) -- and I saw those metal barricades
pressed back into action on multiple occasions. I witnessed a
black van door slide open, revealing tactical-gear clad troops
of some sort, brandishing automatic rifles. I witnessed cops
and feds on rooftops with binoculars and cameras trained on
me and/or my compatriots. I saw cops peering through the
near-blacked out windows of unmarked cars and noticed the
NYPD's "radio emergency patrol vehicles"

wherever protesters seemed to gather.

I repeatedly walked through gauntlets of blue-uniformed
cops and white-shirted brass to and from the subway in
Union Square Park -- where the three guys in jeans and
untucked button-down shirts (which every so often showed
the outlines of their guns) graciously smiled one evening as
I snapped a picture of their undercover activities. Much less
jolly were the secret service agents, one clad in polo shirt
and khaki pants, who moved in behind me prompting a legal
observer at an event to collect my name and contact
information in case I should be snatched off the street;
even less jolly was the beefy NYPD officer with no visible
badge or name tag who made it a point to shove me as I
attempted to take a picture of an orange-net arrest before
offering a less-than-convincing "excuse me!" as he strode
away.

Police vans with netting over the windows; helmeted riot
gear-clad cops; NYPD "paddy wagons"; constant sirens;
cops who shoved at us with their night-sticks
; armed park police
filming with camcorders; radios crackling information to
uniformed officers outside almost any subway stop, on
street corners, on subway platforms, and on the trains
themselves; even those menacing, or sometimes just weary-
looking, ultimate conscripts of the homeland security army,
the police attack dogs on street patrol, didn't fully hammer
home the reality of Fortress Big Apple. What did was the 10'
by 20' chain-link pen

with razor wire over the top that I found myself in after being
arrested for the crime of trying "to change trains," as a
Washington Post reporter wrote
,
after sitting "silently on a subway train! going uptown" to
"protest deaths in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere."

The floors of the pen were covered with a layer of grime

-- a mix of what might have been oil, grease, battery acid,
transmission fluid, antifreeze, diesel fuel, and possibly leaded
gasoline; the pipes overhead gave the appearance of incomplete
asbestos abatement; the rotting food and old milk cartons behind
the detention pens helped to further drive it home. Like

so many others articles_showa.html?article=43307> , I was illegally arrested and
taken to a makeshift detention center set up by the city especially
for the protesters. It was the old municipal bus garage which bears
the name "Marine and Aviation Pier 57" but has now been dubbed
"Guantanamo on the Hudson."

Of course, being incarcerated in New York's own Giitmo! (before
being packed off to central booking and then a cell in the infamous
"Tombs") rather than in America's "offshore archipelago of injustice"
--
Abu Ghraib, the actual Guantanamo, or "Camp Justice" on the Indian
Ocean island of Diego Garcia, to name but a few -- means I fared
infinitely better than most victims of America's security culture run
amok. Still, the visible abrasions on my wrists from the plastic cuffs
(fastened so purposefully tight) that restricted the blood flow to my
hands while I was in transit to jail aboard a corrections bus, or the
tears of the woman in a cage on the same bus suffering from also
too-tight hand restraints
(which left the cops in a joking mood), do show the bare traces of
the Abu Ghraib mentality alive in America's security forces, at home
as well as abroad.

Of course, in communities of color and poor neighborhoods, such
tactics, and worse, are old hat -- as my cell-mates behind the
arraignment courtroom were quick to point out. But now the NYPD
is field-testing new tactics and tools to use against us all. Perhaps
most distressing, they've established a precedent and the tacit acceptance
of the public as well. Most New Yorkers either left town or failed to
vigorously protest the chilling effect of the growth of the homeland-
security complex.

I heard first hand of seemingly baseless preemptive arrests and
intimidation by federal agents -- an activist en route to work grabbed
off the street by the feds; another apparently tailed by a black SUV
and shadowed by plainclothes agents. The question is: Will this stop
now that the RNC has left town or will it simply become the accepted
way of doing things in New York City and elsewhere around the country?

The RNC gave the NYPD (coordinating with the feds) a perfect
opportunity to stockpile weapons systems, high-tech equipment,
and surveillance devices. It allowed them to refine, perfect, and
implement new tactics (someday, perhaps, to be thought of as the
"New York model") for use penning in or squelching dissent. It offered
them the chance to write up a playbook on how citizens' legal rights
and civil liberties may be abridged, constrained, and violated at their
discretion. In short, it gave them a free hand to transform New York
City into a true homeland security statelet.

Nick Turse writes regularly for Tomdispatch on the military-industrial-
entertainment complex. He was jailed by the homeland-security state
when he dared to ride the subway with a "war dead" placard www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50658-2004Aug31.html>
around his neck (scroll down to photo). He asks that you consider
donating to the NYC Legal Work Fund Collective for RNC Arrestees
and/or the National
Lawyers Guild
who saved him more than once during the protests.
Copyright C2004 Nicholas Turse

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2) One Thousand and One
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 08 September 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/090804A.shtml

On the day Operation Iraqi Freedom suffered the 1,000th death
of a United States soldier, some quick numbers are in order:

1,095 days since the attacks of September 11;

538 days since the invasion and occupation of Iraq;

1,001 American soldiers dead in Iraq;

1,132 total Coalition soldiers dead in Iraq;

More than 20,000 'medical evacuations' of American
soldiers from Iraq;

More than 10,000 civilians dead in Iraq;

0 weapons of mass destruction;

0 democratic elections in Iraq;

0 connections between Iraq and the attacks of September 11;

0 captures of Osama bin Laden, in Iraq or anywhere else;

$1.7 trillion to be spent on Iraq in the next decade,
according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
report by the Committee on International Security Studies (CISS).

Jane Bright wrote to me in November of 2003 about the
death of her son, one of the 1,001. "I must share with you,"
wrote Bright, "the obituary I wrote for my son, Sgt. Evan Ashcraft,
who was killed July 24 near Mosul. I often think of the contributions
my intelligent, sensitive wonderful son could have made. He could
have been President of the United States. He could have been a
doctor caring for children in a Third World Country. He had so
much potential. He told us that when he came back from Iraq he
wanted to help people. He said he had seen so much hatred and
death that the only way to live his life was through aid to others.
Look at what we've lost. The loss is not just mine, it's the world's
loss. Evan will always be alive in my heart. He and all the other
victims of this heinous action in Iraq must be more than mere
numbers emerging from the Pentagon's daily tally. His death is
a crime against humanity and the fault lies with the war criminals
who inhabit our White House. Please share his story so that he may
come alive to your readers."

Writer Bruce Mulkey spoke recently to Jane Bright, and wrote
about his conversation in an essay titled 'Military Families Speak
Out.' Bright said to him, "Several months ago when George Bush
was performing his skit for the media in which he was looking
under his desk and under chairs for weapons of mass destruction,
I was horrified by the insensitivity of his performance. I thought to
myself, here is the president of the United States making a joke out
of a pre-emptive war and laughing about weapons of mass destruction,
the basis for going to war, a war in which my dear son died, over
1,000 coalition troops have died and thousands of Iraqi civilians
have died. How dare he!"

There are a lot of women like Jane Bright in America now.

Brooke Campbell lost her brother, Sergeant Ryan M. Campbell,
in Iraq on April 29, 2004. In his last letter to her, Ryan wrote, "Just
do me one big favor, OK? Don't vote for Bush. No. Just don't do it.
I would not be happy with you."

Ms. Campbell, in a subsequent letter to George W. Bush , wrote,
"I last saw my loved one at the Kansas City airport, staring after me
as I walked away. I could see April 29 written on his sad, sand-
chapped and sunburned face. I could see that he desperately wanted
to believe that if he died, it would be while 'doing good,' as you put it.
He wanted us to be able to be proud of him. Mr. President, you gave
me and my mother a folded flag instead of the beautiful boy who
called us 'Moms' and 'Brookster.' But worse than that, you sold my
little brother a bill of goods. Not only did you cheat him of a long
meaningful life, but you cheated him of a meaningful death."

At some point, you simply run out of words. 1,000 dead soldiers
in Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction, no connection to September 11,
torture and rape of men, women and children at Abu Ghraib prison, the
outing of a deep-cover CIA officer for political revenge, Rumsfeld ally
Ahmad Chalabi spying for Iran, the Israeli spy in the Pentagon, all the
dead civilians everywhere, the substantial failures of Bush et al. on
September 11, the crater in the economy, a gutted health care system,
the abandonment of the elderly, the evisceration of the environment,
and a federal budget deficit that guarantees a bleak future for anyone
planning to be alive sometime in the next ten years...

At some point, you simply run out of words. Let us instead have a
moment of silence for those 1,001 soldiers, and all the civilians who
have joined them in the Iraqi dust.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller
of two books - ' War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to
Know ' and ' The Greatest Sedition is Silence .'

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3) CONFRONTING INSURGENTS
U.S. Conceding Rebels
Control Regions of Iraq
By ERIC SCHMITT and STEVEN R. WEISMAN
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/politics/08policy.html?hp

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 - As American military deaths in Iraq operations
surpassed the 1,000 mark, top Pentagon officials said Tuesday that
insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was
unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure
those areas.

As of late Tuesday night, the Pentagon's accounting showed that
998 service members and three Defense Department civilians had
been killed in Iraq operations.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers,
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference
that the American strategy in retaking rebel-held strongholds hinged
on training and equipping Iraqi forces to take the lead.

Mr. Rumsfeld said Iraqi officials understood they must regain control
of the insurgent safe havens. "They get it, and will find a way over
time to deal with it,'' he said.

But General Myers said the Iraqi forces would probably not be ready
to confront insurgents in those areas until the end of this year.

Their comments, which came after a two-day spike in violence in Iraq
led to a surge in American military deaths, represented an
acknowledgment that the Americans had failed to end an increasingly
sophisticated insurgency in important Sunni-dominated areas and in
certain Shiite enclaves. Fighting raged on Tuesday in Sadr City, in
Baghdad, as Shiite militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr ended a self-
declared cease-fire. [Page A14.]

The officials' assessment also underscored the difficulty of pacifying
Iraq in time for elections scheduled for January. The cities of greatest
rebel control are Ramadi, Falluja, Baquba and Samarra, in the so-
called Sunni triangle, west and north of Baghdad, where Saddam
Hussein remains popular and many forces loyal to him have
gathered strength.

There is increasing concern in the administration over plans for
the election, with some officials saying that if significant parts
of the Sunni areas cannot be secured by January, it may be
impossible to hold a nationwide balloting that would be seen
as legitimate. Putting off the elections, though, would infuriate
Iraq's Shiite majority. The elections are for an assembly that is
to write a new constitution next year. Mr. Rumsfeld warned
that the violence would intensify as elections approached.

Mr. Rumsfeld said that Prime Minister Ayad Allawi recognized
that his government could not continue to allow rebel control
in crucial areas of the country, but that it would take time for
him to determine how to proceed.

"The prime minister and his team fully understand that it is
important that there not be areas in that country that are
controlled by terrorists," he said, adding that Dr. Allawi would
deal with the problem by "negotiation and discussion" in some
cases and by force in others.

Other administration officials, amplifying the secretary's
comments, said the administration had decided to let Dr.
Allawi try to persuade rebel leaders to join the process of
reconstructing Iraq, or suffer the consequences if they did
not.

"Allawi's strategy is to try to find people on the sidelines and
wean the moderates away, to give them courage and a hope
of reward for themselves," said an administration official.
"He's telling them: 'I'm giving you an opportunity to meet
your local concerns. You're going to be my guy, and together
we'll try to isolate the extremists.' "

Administration officials say no decision has been made yet
for American forces to attack those strongholds. The preference
is for Iraqi forces to do the job, as they were said to have been
poised to do last month in Najaf, the Shiite holy city.

But the record of the Iraqi security forces has not been inspiring,
although some Iraqi forces fought well in Najaf, American officials
said. While 95,000 soldiers have been trained and equipped up to
American commanders' satisfaction, General Myers said, they will
not be ready until the end of the year to join American forces in
any assault against insurgent strongholds and then keep the
peace afterward.

"While U.S. forces or coalition forces can do just about anything
we want to do, it makes a lot more sense that it be a sustained
operation, one that can be sustained by Iraqi security forces,"
General Myers said. "By December, we're going to have a
substantial number of Iraqi security forces equipped, trained
and led to conduct the kind of operations I was talking about.''

A senior American official said force would be tried by the Iraqi
government only after a couple of months' discussions with rebels.

"Force is the ultimate sanction, but let's exhaust the other ones
first," he added.

A two-month hiatus before major force is applied to rebel areas
would also mean a delay until after the American presidential
election, but senior officials insist there is no domestic political
calculus in the decision to wait - only a conviction that time is
needed for negotiation and for Iraqi forces to gain strength.

"This is ultimately about building an Iraqi government which
works for all of Iraq," said the official. "To the degree that we
can wait a couple months and let Iraqi politics work, so much
the better."

In describing the Iraqi forces, one American general in Iraq
said in an e-mail message that their "capabilities are still
uneven, but they're improving as we arm and equip them
better, improve their infrastructure, give them additional
training, and help them weed out the weak leaders." Mr.
Rumsfeld added that Iraqis had recently conducted effective
counterterrorism operations.

To buy time, General Myers said, Gen. George Casey, the top
American commander in Iraq, is working with the Iraqi
government to develop a strategy to retake the cities.
General Myers said that strategy included trying to "isolate
certain communities," hampering the insurgents' ability to
rearm and resupply, and curtailing attacks against American
forces. He said the strategy would also try "to set the
conditions for the successful use of force later,'' military
wording for preparing the battlefield by bombing safe
houses and weapons caches, and encouraging residents
to provide fresh intelligence on the location of insurgents.

Over the weekend, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the land
commander in Iraq, told The Associated Press that an
American assault is likely in the next four months. "I do
have about four months where I want to get to local control,''
General Metz said. "And then I've got the rest of January to
help the Iraqis to put the mechanisms in place."

Maj. Gen. John R. Batiste, the commander of the Army's First
Infantry Division, whose area north of Baghdad includes
Tikrit and Samarra, disputed reports that the United States
had given up in Samarra.

"Samarra is a city where Iraqis are taking charge to throw
out anti-Iraqi forces," he said in an e-mail message on
Tuesday. "No one has ceded the city to insurgents and
there is no cordon. What we have in Samarra is the good
people of Iraq, led by far-sighted provincial and city
leadership, senior sheiks, and clerics, standing up to the enemy."

Residents, however, say insurgents effectively control Samarra.

General Batiste and other commanders gave an upbeat
assessment, noting that "the messages at Friday Prayer are
becoming more and more moderate" and that American forces
"keep continuous pressure on the enemy" while they help Iraqis
with reconstruction. In an unusual step for a Pentagon that tends
to avoid citing body counts as a measure of success, Mr. Rumsfeld
said American and allied forces had probably killed 1,500 to 2,500
insurgents last month.

But other American officials are more pessimistic about the
prospects for regaining control of those areas. One noted, for
example, that attacks on American forces rose to 2,700 in August,
from 700 in March.

General Myers conceded that American forces faced a tough,
adaptive foe. "The enemy is becoming more sophisticated in his
efforts to destabilize the country," he said.

Opening U.S. to Iraqi Goods

By The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 - In a proclamation on Tuesday, President
Bush gave Iraq the right to export thousands of goods duty free
to the United States.

But because of the continued poor state of its economy, Iraq will
be unable to take immediate advantage of its new designation as
a beneficiary of the Generalized System of Preferences, which
grants preferential treatment to certain products from more than
140 developing countries and territories.

Petroleum, Iraq's only major export commodity, is not given duty
free status under the system.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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4) Fight Oppression One Olive at a Time
Help with the Palestinian Olive Harvest this Fall
This simple act will help Palestinians resist the occupation
by insisting on life.

The INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT asks you to join us
for the olive harvest in Palestine. According to the World Bank, more
than a million Palestinian fruit trees, nearly half of them olive trees,
have been bulldozed, uprooted or set ablaze by Israeli soldiers. Olive
trees become fully productive only after fifty years and produce for
many generations. Their destruction is a way of trying to breaking
the Palestinian bond with the land.

Your presence makes a difference! When international volunteers
join with Palestinians, Israeli forces are often more cautious about
abusing Palestinian rights. Volunteers also witness and report to
their communities and let the Palestinians know that they are not
alone. Come join the Olive Harvest Campaign, Oct. 5 - Nov. 15.
We also need local volunteers to organize, recruit, provide media
and logistical support, create speaking opportunities, and organize
fundraising activities. You can make a difference here, too.
Get involved. Call 510-236-4250 or e-mail info@norcalism.org

The INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT is a Palestinian-led
movement of Palestinian and International volunteers working to
raise awareness of the struggle for Palestinian freedom and an end
to Israeli occupation. We use nonviolent, direct-action resistance
methods to confront and challenge illegal Israeli occupation forces
and policies. For more info go to www.palsolidarity.org www.palsolidarity.org/> or www.norcalism.org
.
Come help us support Palestinians in their struggle for peace
and justice in Palestine!
Contact the INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
Support Group, 510-236-4250, info@norcalism.com
or
SEND DONATIONS to MECA/ISM, 405 Vista Heights Road
El Cerrito, CA 94530

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5) Peace activist held as 'danger to Israel'
Lawyers question state motives behind detention
without trial of former woman soldier who befriended
leading Palestinian militant
Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Tuesday September 7, 2004
The Guardian

Tali Fahima served her time in the Israeli army, voted
for Ariel Sharon as prime minister and took it as
given that her country was struggling for survival
against terrorism.

Then last year, the 29-year-old legal secretary from
Tel Aviv picked up a newspaper and read about Zakariya
Zubeidi, the Jenin leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigade, the group responsible for killing hundreds of
Israelis in suicide bombings and shootings. Ms Fahima
decided she would ask Mr Zubeidi why he killed Jews.

On Sunday, the military placed Ms Fahima in detention
without trial using a law applied to thousands of
Palestinians over the past four years of intifada but
rarely to Israelis.

The authorities declined to reveal the precise reasons
but the defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, who signed the
order, described her as "a clear and present danger to
all Israelis".

Intelligence sources told the Israeli press that Ms
Fahima had a hand in bombing an army checkpoint last
month, and that she was planning attacks inside
Israel.

But Ms Fahima's lawyers and friends accuse the
government of using draconian security laws to silence
her because she has broken a taboo against befriending
and explaining the enemy.

Ms Fahima started visiting Mr Zubeidi in Jenin a
little more than a year ago, despite an Israeli ban on
its citizens travelling to Palestinian towns. She said
she wanted to find out what motivated him to kill.

"I had to ask why a man goes ahead and does this," she
told Israeli television this year. "There is a reason
for this. A man doesn't wake up one morning and
decide, 'OK, I'm going to carry out an attack.'"

The army describes Mr Zubeidi as one of its
most-wanted terrorists. It has tried in vain to kill
him five times.

After several meetings with the al-Aqsa brigade's
commander, Ms Fahima described him as a freedom
fighter and "a kindhearted person whom I was lucky to
meet". She said she would be a human shield to protect
him from Israeli assassination attempts.

"It is hard for a 28-year-old girl who was brought up
on certain values to find out one day that they are
all wrong," she told the Jerusalem Post in June. "Who
causes the occupation? The Palestinians? No. It is the
Israelis and who am I? A Jew and an Israeli and by
sitting at home and doing nothing I am also
responsible.

"Zubeidi is not a terrorist, rather he is fighting
against the occupation. Suicide bombers are also
fighting the occupation. Put yourself in their place
and see what happens. They are denied basic rights and
freedom."

Those views have infuriated many Israelis who have
denounced Ms Fahima as a traitor and terrorist
sympathiser. Her religious parents refuse to speak to
her, and she was sacked from her job.

Ms Fahima's lawyers say if there were evidence she was
involved in violence the authorities would have laid
charges, not place her in the limbo of administrative
detention.

The justice minister, Yosef Lapid, said the activist
has not been charged due to the need to protect
intelligence sources.

"There is very, very concrete evidence in the material
indicating that she acted in a manner that endangers
the security of Israel. Until there is a trial, the
relevant officials believe that it would be better
from the point of view of the security of Israel that
she remain in detention," he said.

But Ms Fahima's lawyer, Smadar Ben-Natan, says her
client was detained last month after refusing to
inform for the Shin Bet.

"[The intelligence services] are attempting to prove
to her that she is politically mistaken, they are
giving her history lessons, debating with her whether
this should be described as occupation, whether
Palestinian fighters should be defined as freedom
fighters or as terrorists," she said.

One of Ms Fahima's friends, Lin Dovrat, a peace
activist, said the political motives behind her
detention were clear from the authorities' claim that
information against her was too sensitive to be made
public in court while the Shin Bet leaked accusations
to the press.

"They tried to kill Zubeidi five times and failed and
she got to him and was able to talk to him and was
able to connect with him on a very basic human level
and I think that drives them nuts," she said.

Ms Ben-Natan says that when Ms Fahima refused to
collaborate with the Shin Bet, it sought to discredit
her by telling journalists she was sleeping with Mr
Zubeidi, who is married. It is an accusation widely
given credibility in the Israeli press, and denied by
Ms Fahima.

Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Adam from San Francisco!

---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

6) URGENT CALL TO ACTION: ORGANIZE A VIGIL ON THURSDAY NIGHT
FOR THE MORE THAN 1,000 U.S. SOLDIERS AND TENS OF
THOUSANDS OF IRAQIS KILLED

More than one thousand young Americans have died in Iraq,
almost seven thousand are maimed, and tens of thousands of
Iraqis have died. The President won't mourn our dead, but
we will.

Please join United for Peace and Justice, in coordination
with Win Without War, and dozens of other groups,
including Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For
Peace, to say: Enough to Endless War and Suffering, Bring
Them Home NOW!

TAKE ACTION: ORGANIZE A PEACE VIGIL THIS THURSDAY, SEPT.
9, 2004

Please help us organize hundreds of peace vigils on
Thursday night, to mourn for all the people who?ve been
killed in Iraq, call for an end to the occupation, and
demand accountability for the lies that got us into the
war!

We will remember the more than 1,000 US servicemen and
women who have died in Iraq. We will remember the many
thousands of Iraqis--civilians and combatants, men and
women, children the elderly--who have been killed. And we
will remember that these deaths did not have to happen.

We know that the current administration has plunged us
into this unjust and unjustifiable war, driven by greed
for oil and lust for power and fueled by lie after lie. We
cannot remain silent!

We demand an end to the occupation so the Iraqi people can
determine their own destiny free from foreign interference
and control.

We want our troops brought home NOW. Don't ask these men
and women to continue to die for politicians' mistakes and
lies. And we want them treated right when they return.
Give them the benefits there were promised and give them
the help they will need to heal their bodies, their minds
and their spirits.

We will remember, honor and mourn. We will not forget!

-Text taken from the Vigil for the Fallen, held in Union
Square, NYC, last Thursday.

We suggest you hold the Sept. 9 vigil at your local
Congressional representatives? offices or at the federal
building in your town.

Post your event at http://www.unitedforpeace.org and
http://www.winwithoutwarus.org (which will link to a site
that has meet-up software) so the whole country will know
about your participation.

We also encourage you to support and participate in the
National Memorial Procession, a trail of mourning and
truth from Iraq to the White House, which will begin on
October 2 at Arlington National Cemetery. For more
information, see
http://www.peacepledge.org/resist/10-2-2004.htm.

UFPJ mailing list
UFPJ@mediajumpstart.net
https://secure.mediajumpstart.net/mailman/listinfo/ufpj

---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

7) CENSORED 2005:
THE TOP 25 CENSORED MEDIA STORIES OF 2003-2004
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/index.html

#1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy
and Democracy

#2: Ashcroft vs. the Human Rights Law that Hold
Corporations Accountable

#3: Bush Administration Censors Science

#4: High Levels of Uranium Found in Troops and Civilians

#5: The Wholesale Giveaway of Our Natural Resources

#6: The Sale of Electoral Politics

#7: Conservative Organization Drives Judicial Appointments

#8: Cheney's Energy Task Force and The Energy Policy

#9: Widow Brings RICO Case Against U.S. government for 9/11

#10: New Nuke Plants: Taxpayers Support, Industry Profits

#11: The Media Can Legally Lie

#12: The Destabilization of Haiti

#13: Schwarzenegger Met with Enron's Ken Lay Years Before
the California Recall

#14: New Bill Threatens Intellectual Freedom in Area Studies

#15: U.S. Develops Lethal New Viruses

#16: Law Enforcement Agencies Spy on Innocent Citizens

#17: U.S. Government Represses Labor Unions in Iraq in
Quest for Business Privatization

#18: Media and Government Ignore Dwindling Oil Supplies

#19: Global Food Cartel Fast Becoming hte World's
Supermarket

#20: Extreme Weather Prompts New Warning from UN

#21: Forcing a World Market for GMOs

#22: Censoring Iraq

#23: Brazil Holds Back in FTAA Talks, But Provides Little
Comfort for the Poor of South America

#24: Reinstating the Draft

#25: Wal-Mart Brings Inequality and Low Prices to the World


Project Censored - Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park, CA 94928
(707) 664-2500
censored@sonoma.edu

---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

8) 150 Arrests during Demonstration by
San Francisco Hotel Workers
By Frontlines correspondent

SAN FRANCISCO -- Over 500 of San Francisco hotel employees
and supporters today staged a noisy protest in Union Square with
more than 150 of them arrested for blocking Powell Street.

With labor contracts beginning to expire Saturday for more than
7,000 hotel workers in San Francisco, hotel and union representatives
are trying to hash out differences over health care and pension costs,
wages and employee workloads.

The contracts expiring Saturday affect 29 hotels. Contracts at 30 other
San Francisco hotels are due to expire in September. Union
representatives told Frontlines that management is trying to stall
negotiations. The same source says that members of Local 2 have
been working without a contract for three weeks and will take a strike
vote next week.

Hundreds of workers and labor activists marched from Market Street
to Union Square where they sat down in the streets stopping the cable
cars, blocking traffic and paralyzing the shopping district.

The workers want a two-year deal and do not want to have to contribute
more for their health care.

Hundreds of the workers chanted and banged on drums while those
willing to be arrested were hauled away by a numerous group of SFPD's
officers. Some elected officials were among those arrested, as well as
Labor leaders and some supporters of the action.

The group representing fourteen of the city's luxury hotels says it is
willing to negotiate around the clock to avert a strike and a federal
mediator is joining the talks. Union activists stated, "Talk is cheap,
they are doing the impossible not to negotiate in good faith."

The protest was organized by UNITE-HERE Local 2, which represents
more than 7,000 San Francisco hotel workers including cooks,
room cleaners, bartenders, bellmen, wait staff and dishwashers.
Mike Casey, President of HERE, Local 2 was among those marching.
Members of SEIU and other unions were also visible among the
hundreds of mostly immigrant workers from HERE.

The workers would like more comprehensive health care coverage,
decent pensions, pay increases and a more reasonable workload,
said Valerie Lapin, from HERE.

"Since Sept. 11, hotels laid off a lot of workers and now business is
up and people have to work too much and risk getting hurt," she said.

Hotels "are making huge profits," Lapin said. "Now it's time to
share in some of the success."

The arrest came about when workers and their supporters blocked
the entrance of the St. Francis Hotel, one of the targets of the
demonstration. ST. Francis's management asked the SFPD to
proceed with the arrests. SFPD's complied after agreeing that
the arrests will be framed as "citizen arrests" and a brief telephone
call to "high brass" who "checked with the Mayor or some of his
staff" one cop confirmed.

Among those arrested were Walter Johnson, 80-year old retiring
SF labor Council President; Leroy King; 8th Congressional Green
candidate Terry Baum; Father Louis Vitale; D5 Green candidate
Lisa Feldstein; Supervisor Tom Ammiano and D5 Democratic
candidate Robert Haaland.

Today's action in San Francisco followed those of thousands of
California hotel workers who rallied in San Francisco, Los Angeles
and San Diego on Aug. 13 to press their contract demands.

In San Francisco, the day before a master contract covering over
7,000 workers in 60 premier hotels expired, hundreds of
demonstrators gathered in downtown Union Square to march
past several of the hotels in mid-August.

As in today's rally, workers carried signs declaring, "Health care
is a right," and "Retire with dignity."

"We won't allow the hotels to balance their books on our
backs," said Local 2 President Mike Casey, adding, "Hotel
employees work too hard to keep our city's economy strong,
to be cast aside in their retirement."



---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

9) Bush & Putin self-fulfilled prophesies:
Slaughter and Terrorism
Frontlines Editorial Board
http://www.sf-frontlines.com/
modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=828&mode=thread&order
=0&thold=0

We are witnessing self-fulfilled prophesies. Bush orders the
invasion and occupation of Iraq on bogus claims of terrorist
links between Saddam and al Queda and the existence of WMDs.

Putin invades Chechnya making the bogus claim of fundamentalist
terrorism against Russian civilians and the danger of WMD falling
into the hands of terrorists.

In Iraq, Bush indiscriminately attacks anybody who does not agree
with the occupation: moderate and radical Shias and Sunnis,
nationalists and former members of Saddam's party. Torture is
applied in Abu Ghraib and tens of thousands of innocent civilians
are killed or wounded.

Putin invades Chechnya, massacres the civilian population, tramples
on the national self-rule and attacks moderates, radicals,
nationalists and even those who would collaborate to some
degree with Russian rule. His bands of "Special Forces" and
masked policemen kidnap, torture and kill political activists
and human rights advocates.

Both Bush in Iraq and Putin in Chechnya are acting on behalf
of the ruling classes of their respective countries. It is more
than a coincidence that the production, transportation and
commercialization of oil and gas are behind the armed invasions
of both Iraq and Chechnya.

Unable to resist the power of either the US forces or Russian
armies, people from Iraq and Chechnya, who otherwise would
be minding their own businesses, act desperately. They kidnap,
kill, maim anybody who is an occupier or suspected of
collaborating with the occupiers.

Otherwise reasonable people turn to religious fundamentalism
and terrorism when all the avenues for political expression or
legitimate opposition to the invasion of their countries are
smothered by the force of arms. When human rights activists,
journalists and politicians - even moderate ones - are smashed,
imprisoned or disappeared, people turn their eyes toward the
intangible of God for help.

Faith will not prevail against fire, and represents a regression to
Middle Age thinking and attitudes, but what are people supposed
to do when the might of "civilization" is brought to stamp their
freedoms out? What are people supposed to turn to when every
protest ends in massacre and the uncompromising imperial
hawks talk about annihilating their cultures, their countries,
their liberties? Bush's and Putin's prophecies become a self-
fulfilled reality.

Terrorism is the last line of defense for those with no way out.
Nothing - not even a noble cause such as national independence
and self-rule by oppressed nations - can justify the slaughter of
kids at the Beslan school, the blowup of passenger jets, the
bombing of subway stations or the crashing of airplanes into
buildings filled with civilians, mostly workers, in New York.
They are crimes and those who order, plan and execute them
are criminals. However, there is no doubt that, following on the
imperial designs of the US and Russia, terrorists are the product
of the policies of the Bushes and Putins of the world.

Bush and Putin relish a fight with desperate elements of society
as that reenforces the global reactionary consciousness and provides
them with a broader platform for the continuation of their policies.
No doubt the images of slaughtered children in Russia have served
well the political aspirations of both Bush and Putin, as 9/11 served
the aspirations of Bush and his gang. Thus, terrorism demoralizes
the opposition to imperialism and strengthens those very forces
that the terrorists are opposing.

There is a clear distinction to be made between legitimate resistance
to foreign occupation, included armed resistance directed towards
the occupying forces, and attacks on civilians, particularly if they
are not involved directly with the occupation.

The Spanish people had it right. When suffering the attacks of
terrorists, they justly blamed the Aznar government for bringing
the attacks on by participating in the invasion and occupation of
Iraq. And the people did the right thing: they voted Aznar out of
government a few days after the terrorist attacks. With that small
step forward they set an example for the rest of us. Not enough
of a step, as the persistence of the capitalist system in Spain made
that step forward only a provisionary one. But an important one,
nonetheless. Under different circumstances, the present Social
democratic government will reproduce Aznar's policies.

There is no solution to be found in the hollow cries to be "strong,"
ruthless and to increase repression and the violation of Civil Liberties
spewed by Bush - and Kerry - and Putin. The increasing number of
desperate millions created by their policies demonstrates the failure
of their strategies. These governments are increasingly turning on
their own peoples as well. Bush, and Putin, may be able to guarantee
their own safety and that of a handful of their supporters, but not of
the overwhelming majority of working people - those who worked
at the Twin Towers or the children and parents at Beslan.

In the final analysis, those victims are for Putin, and Bush, no more
than "collateral" damage or elements for manipulation of the public
through effective TV spots.

It is the responsibility and duty of the working classes of both the
US and Russia - and all other imperialist countries - to break the
cycle of violence and terrorism that originates in their very
governments, by getting rid of those governments. Nothing
short of such action will bring about a solution to the present
world crisis.

Terrorism, fundamentalism and regressive consciousness are
products of an over-extension of the brutal imperial world system,
not of an innate "evil" character of entire peoples as Bush and Putin
would like us to believe.

Fundamentalists and terrorists were a tiny minority, even nonexistent,
when secular, progressive, even though bourgeois, nationalist political
formations resisted imperialism even on a limited scale in Africa, Asia
and the Middle East during the postwar anti-colonial revolutions.

By overextending the imperialist domination of Africa, Asia and the
Middle East - and by destroying any and all secular and modern
opposition to their rules in those regions -- the US and European
imperial powers gave birth to fundamentalism and encouraged its
growth. In fact, they often paid and used fundamentalists to oppose
secular leaderships in those countries.

Capitalism and imperialism have long ago exhausted their ability
to move society forward and are rapidly leading "civilization" back
into barbarism. The present day trend is for the peoples of Russia,
the US and elsewhere to be progressively less safe and more
oppressed by the plans of their ruling classes, in a direct proportion
as the US and other imperial powers oppress other nations.

The replacement of capitalism and imperialism with a democratic
socialist society, in which countries share technology and production
for the benefit of all and in which the rebuilding of our environment
and the elimination of poverty, hunger and imperial rule are priorities,
will go a long way toward eliminating the need, and thus the suffering,
of acts of desperation.

Rejecting the strategy of desperation is also the policy of socialists.

We believe that, on the grand scale of things necessary to change society,
it is the action of the mass movement on the streets and in workplaces,
which can change governments, replace regimes, transform society
and make terrorism obsolete, once the material basics of education,
food, housing, jobs and health are guaranteed for all human beings.

In a prosperous world society where classes do not exist and
exploitation and oppression are outdated, there will simply be
no motivation for crime, terrorism or regression.

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