SAN FRANCISCO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT
REGARDING "THE STRUGGLE FOR PALESTINE" CONFERENCE.
(In response to the article, reprinted below:
San Francisco Schools For Jihad
By Lee Kaplan
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 1, 2004
http://frontpagemagazine.com/ )
BY BONNIE WEINSTEIN, BAY AREA UNITED AGAINST WAR
2) The Rape of Palestine
By Jess Ghannam
Gaza, Palestine
Sep 30, 2004, 11:23
3) Dear Friends:
We want to let the Cuban Five supporters
know that Saturday, October
16 is Antonio Guerrero's birthday.
Please send him your birthday
greetings soon.
4) French MP: US hit hostages' convoy
Friday 01 October 2004 9:06 PM GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/42AB2575-168C-4EF4-A80B-422878CBB0F9.
htm
5) NEWS: Bush administration supporting measure that allows
outsourcing of torture
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60779-2004Sep29.html?sub=AR
6) The Looming National Benefit Crisis
By Dennis Cauchon and John Waggoner, US NEWSWIRE
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/business/article.adp?id=20041004080409990024
7) High Court to Decide Sentencing, Death Penalty Cases
By James Vicini
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
Sun Oct 3, 2004 10:30 PM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6399474&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
8) Three Car Bombs in Iraq Kill at Least 26
By Luke Baker
BAGHDAD (Reuters)
Mon Oct 4, 2004 09:11 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6405357&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
9) Defying Army Offensive, Hamas Rockets Hit Israel
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters)
Mon Oct 4, 2004 07:20 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6403832&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
10) Three nuns and one unholy case
By Diane Carman
dcarman@denverpost.com
Denver Post Columnist
Sunday, October 03, 2004 -
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E53%257E2440795,00.html#
11) In this message:
· Weekly ANSWER Activist Meeting
· ANSWER Film Series: "Comandante"
For more information on the following events,
call 415-821-6545.
12) Two Peoples, One State
BY MICHAEL TARAZI
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/04/opinion/04tarazi.html?oref=login
13) Now on DVD: The Passion of the Bush
By FRANK RICH
14) It is as clear as Black and White, that the law is Racist.
The mandaory minimum for .177ounces or 5 Grams of crack
cocaine (Usually found in the Inner-Cities) is five years.
The mandaory minimum for 17.7ounces or 5 Grams powdered cocaine
(Usually found amongst the rich and/or in the
Suburbs) is five years.
15) On patrol in Sadr City
16) Israel uses illegal tanks shells against Palestinians:
medics
www.chinaview.cn 2004-10-03 19:03:50
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-10/03/content_2049422.htm
17) From: "International Solidarity Movement"
< ism-alerts@p... >
Date: Sun Oct 3, 2004 6:26 am
Subject: International Solidarity Movement Report
and Action Alert
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***Bring the Troops Home! Yes on N! Bring the Troops Home!***
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1) AN OPEN LETTER TO ARLENE ACKERMAN OF THE
SAN FRANCISCO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT
REGARDING "THE STRUGGLE FOR PALESTINE" CONFERENCE.
(In response to the article, reprinted below:
San Francisco Schools For Jihad
By Lee Kaplan
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 1, 2004
http://frontpagemagazine.com/ )
BY BONNIE WEINSTEIN, BAY AREA UNITED AGAINST WAR
Dear Ms. Ackerman,
I was very fortunate to be able to attend "The Struggle for Palestine"
conference held at Horace Mann Middle School this Saturday,
October 2. It was well attended and extremely informative with
excellent presentations that shed light on the many areas of
conflict in the Middle East. I commend you for acknowledging
the right for it to take place.
The presentations were scholarly, thorough and unbiased. The facts
presented spoke for themselves. But these are facts not covered by
"mainstream media." That is why it is so important to allow access
to the free dissemination of information and ideas to as broad an
audience as possible.
Allowing and encouraging conferences such as this one is fundamental
to our belief that the more informed a person is, the better he or she
is able to judge the facts. This is basic to our democratic principles
as a society.
As a person who has suffered anti-Semitism in her life, there is a
big difference between such bigotry and clear opposition to the
atrocities Israel is carrying out in the name of all Jewish people.
My response is, "Not in my name!"
The thorough examination of the issues has shed clarity on the
distinction between the "wrong" of anti-Semitism and the "wrong"
of the deeds and actions of the state of Israel against the people
of Palestine.
It has become clear to me that the conflict between Israel and
Palestine has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with
Israel being central to the U.S. control of the Middle East and the
rest of the world's oil resources. The struggles and wars all around
the world from Venezuela to the continent of Africa to the Middle
East and the former Soviet Union territories all have this common
thread.
Israel and their strategic arsenal of weapons of mass destruction--
the fourth largest in the world--would not exist but for the
$5 billion a year of our tax dollars that are currently being sent
to fund its arsenal. This amount adds up to trillions over the years
since the founding of Israel in 1948. It also amounts to millions of
innocent Palestinian lives lost, displaced and crushed over the years--
their land, ravaged and stolen.
These U.S. Government bi-partisan decisions and actions in support
of Israel impact us. This is our money that is paying for this. The
corporations are not paying, they are profiting from the conflict!
Weapons manufacturers are making trillions of dollars using the
world's resources building bombs then blowing them up along with
all of the human and Earthly life and structures of civilization they
land on . They vie and compete for the extravagant contracts to
"re-build"--also paid for with our tax dollars--contracts which are
fraught with corruption and fraud.
These monies wasted are monies desperately needed by our schools
and our children and grandchildren. I have raised two children in
the SFUSD and I am well aware of the budget problems that exist
in our schools. I am sure I don't have to tell you that.
Conferences and forums such as this one--the chance to "hear the
other side"--the "bigger picture" help to put the finger on the real
problem. And this is the first step to solving a problem--identifying
it for what it is. That's basic science.
But attempts to squelch free debate and the dissemination of facts
and ideas is ever present--even more so today. Under the guise of
the Patriot Act and Homeland Security these rights--the free
expression of ideas, facts and theories and freedom of information
in general--are being drastically eroded. And our ability to see the
facts clearly suffer as a result. Hence many are duped by those who
profit the most from this world scheme of oppression and war.
But I believe people are basically kind, smart and inquisitive. And
when given the facts can come to a correct, useful, intelligent and
positive conclusion on how we can solve this strife that consumes
the world today.
All of us who cherish freedom of speech and thought and the free
dissemination of information applaud the decision to acknowledge
that this conference and others like it have a right to take place--
in our communities--in our schools--which are at the foundation
of the democratic process. Encouraging free thought and discussion
develops wellinformed opinions--the best kind of opinions. This is
the lesson we want to teach our children.
Again, thank you for your judgment in favor of democracy.
Peace and solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein,
Bay Area United Against War
REPRINTED STORY - SORRY FOR DUPLICATION -
IT'S FOR CLARITY'S SAKE:
San Francisco Schools For Jihad
By Lee Kaplan
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 1, 2004
http://frontpagemagazine.com/
The San Francisco Unified School District will host an event tomorrow
(Saturday, October 2) in support of overseas terrorist groups given by
the International Solidarity Movement and its affiliate, International
ANSWER. Taking place at Horace Mann Middle School in San FranciscoÂ’s
Mission District, the event is titled “The Struggle for Palestine: 4th
Anniversary of the Intifada.” The Intifada means the violent insurrection
started by the PLO in September, 2000 that has resulted in over 25,000
terror attacks and more than 1,000 innocent people deliberately murdered
in cold blood.
For the radical Left, this event is especially timely, since it follows
the beheadings of two American citizens in Iraq last week, a crime and
tragedy that undoubtedly will not be condemned during the proceedings at
the Horace Mann Middle School this weekend.
Overall, this event is only one example of the support for terrorism
(euphemistically called “resistance”). The fourth purpose listed for
holding the event on some of the organizersÂ’ websites is especially
intriguing. It is to garner:
Support for resistance in Palestine, and to make links with others who
are fighting against the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and against U.S.
imperialism around the world.
Can you guess what the organizers of this event mean by “fighting against
the U.S. occupation in Iraq?” They mean killing of our sons and daughters
in Iraq who are in the U.S. military. And can you guess whoÂ’s fighting
against them? The terrorists from al-Qaeda, the Ba'ath Party, Ansar
Al-Islam and any other members of the terrorist network.
The organizers of this event misrepresented themselves to the San
Francisco Unified School District by claiming their event would be an
impartial meeting of progressives to discuss the Middle East. If that
were really so, it should certainly fall under the parameters of free
speech. However, internal emails broadcasted by the organizers to their
email lists and on their websites tell another story of supporting
terrorism -- an illegal activity not covered by free speech provisions.
Simply put, this event is being staged in San Francisco with workshops
designed to train “activists” to undermine anti-terrorism efforts abroad
and to help devise ways to aid the “resistance” in Iraq that is killing
American soldiers and other Coalition forces. Some of the groups
participating also actively fundraise fungible assets that, once they
arrive overseas, can go toward financing more terrorism.
One canÂ’t really blame the Palestine Solidarity Movement (an affiliate of
the International Solidarity Movement, or ISM), and the alphabet soup of
names its proxy groups go under, for utilizing a publicly funded junior
high school to hold another series of workshops and training sessions.
After all, radicals bent on destroying Israel and attacking U.S. forces
in Iraq need a place to practice “direct action,” plot strategy and plan
fundraising. The public officials who rented the school to them for 12
hours on October 2nd, meanwhile, bear more blame for their lack of scrutiny.
The application form, filled out in the name of International ANSWER, a
group that supports North Korean communism, states the event is merely an
“Educational Forum on the Middle East.” There is no mention of
celebrating the Intifada or supporting the Iraqi Insurgency.
International ANSWER and its affiliate, the International Action Center
(IAC), advocate a communist revolution. The IAC is led by Ramsey Clark,
Saddam Hussein's defense attorney.
When the deception was pointed out to Phillip Smith, the head of the Real
Estate Department for the San Francisco Unified School District, he
claimed by email he was unable to say no to the organizers, citing
California Education Code 38130 which allows use of school facilities for
political groups.
This is erroneous, as I explained to the school districtÂ’s attorney,
Miguel Marquez. California Education Code 38130 also states, “The school
district may grant the use of the school facilities and grounds upon
certain terms and conditions deemed proper by the governing board,
subject to specified limitations, requirements, and restrictions set
forth within the law.” (Emphasis added.)
If thatÂ’s the case, the event should come under Title 18 Section 2339A of
the Federal Criminal Code and Rules and amended Sections 702 and 703
regarding aid to terrorism that extends criminal penalties to those who
engage in aiding terrorism overseas from within the United States.
Marquez claims the rights of freedom of speech are broad and that this
event in San Francisco is an “educational” event, like the organizers
claimed it is. However, he had no reply for me when I told him the event
at Horace Mann Middle School will contain workshops to deal with damaging
the Caterpillar CorporationÂ’s business in the U.S. (placing the school
district at liability also from Caterpillar), as well as other ways to
aid terrorist movements overseas as outlined for the event on multiple
websites. The Israeli army uses Caterpillar tractors to demolish the
homes of suicide bombers because those homes are used as bomb factories
or to house terrorist cells. And any other aid to those “fighting against
the US occupation in Iraq” would also fall into the category of aiding
terrorism overseas, whether by financial or material support as well as
through propaganda.
The copy of the rental agreement, filled out by a Saul Kanowitz of
International ANSWER, had no clauses in the event of misrepresentation of
events to be held on school property. Certainly, the San Francisco
Unified School District would not permit a similar event by the Ku Klux
Klan or the American Nazi Party on school grounds if such organizations
said they were holding educational discussions on American race in their
applications. In any case, the federal statues related to aiding
terrorists overseas gives the school district the right to act in a case
of clear misrepresentation by the organizers.
Kanowitz, who is gay, came to media attention when he sponsored a float
in the San Francisco Gay Pride parade equating the gay rights movement
with the Palestinian struggle to dismantle Israel. Jewish gay rights
activists in San Francisco were infuriated. Kanowitz was also active in
supporting Saddam HusseinÂ’s Iraq against the United States. Kanowitz is
hardly someone who was seeking to organize an objective educational forum
on the Middle East at Horace Mann Middle School.
Most agreements of other school districts in California regarding the
renting of school property for events all contain provisions such as this:
Persons or organizations applying for the use of school facilities shall
submit a statement of information indicating that the organization
upholds the state and federal constitutions and does not intend to use
school premises to commit unlawful acts.
The San Francisco Unified School District might consider adding such a
clause to its own rental applications.
To verify some information, I called one of the organizers of this event
listed on the Al Awda website who answered the phone saying, “ADC” (the
acronym for the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee). The ADC
claims to be an Arab civil rights group fighting discrimination against
Arabs and Muslims since 9/11. So why is it conducting events designed to
aid terrorist movements overseas, especially in Iraq?
Rayan Elamine, who identified himself as an employee of the ADC during my
telephone interview, told me the San Francisco event was organized for
people who could not make it to the bigger national conference being held
at Duke University, October 15th-17th, which will also host workshops on
how to aid the “resistance” in Iraq against U.S. soldiers and damage the
Caterpillar Corporation’s business . He also spoke of “neo-conservatives”
(Jews) in the U.S. government that are “running things.” When I asked him
to specifically condemn attacks by al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups in
Iraq, he refused to condemn such activities even after I gave him several
opportunities to do so. “We don’t make statements about occupations first
and foremost,” he said, refusing even to condemn suicide bombings that
kill both U.S. soldiers and Israelis. However, all media about this event
on the websites run by the organizers list “fighting against the
occupation” as the event’s goal. Jess Ghannam, who is also on the Board
of the ADC, is listed as another contact for the event on the Al-Awda
website.
The Duke Conference will be mimicked in San Francisco by other local
sponsors besides International ANSWER. These include the ADC, the ISM,
Al-Awda, SUSTAIN (Stop U.S. Taxpayer Support Against Israel Now), Jews
for a Free Palestine (a group that includes Jamie Spector, who was
exposed and deported from Israel due to another Front Page Magazine
article), as well as a new group called QUIT (Queers Undermining the
Occupation), no doubt led by Kanowitz. The Stalinist National Lawyers
Guild and even a current attorney from the ACLU will round out the program.
I also asked the school districtÂ’s attorney, Marquez, if the district
would require that people with dissenting views be admitted to this
“educational event” or would they be forced to sign statements supporting
the dismantling of Israel or against U.S. forces in Iraq in order to get
in. Again, he had no reply, claiming state law tied his hands.
Apparently, “freedom of speech” isn’t as broad a topic as Marquez says it
is.
On many occasions, FrontPage Magazine has exposed how our colleges, high
schools and now even junior high schools are being used by
terrorist-supporting groups.
This support of terrorism has to stop.
The San Francisco Unified School District administrators refuse to stop
their complicity with terror -- even after they learned they are giving
support to murder overseas. No doubt, the administrators were duped by
the organizers of this event. However, instead of acknowledging their
error, they claim they are preserving the very freedoms that the
organizers of this event are working to destroy.
Let San Francisco Schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman know how you feel:
ackermana@sfusd.edu . So far her office has stonewalled any common sense
solution to not letting this event go forward. While youÂ’re at it, contact
Governor Schwarzenegger as well: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/.
Lee Kaplan is a contributing editor to Frontpagemag.com.
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2) The Rape of Palestine
By Jess Ghannam
Gaza, Palestine
Sep 30, 2004, 11:23
Yet again, Gaza is under siege. Israeli Destruction Forces have their
tanks, bulldozers, and troops in Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya, Jabaliya Camp,
Khan Younis, and Rafah. Another 46 Palestinians have been murdered and 86
permanently injured. Homes have been destroyed, olive trees uprooted, and
families torn asunder. Palestinians die a small death every time an olive
tree is uprooted, every time a Palestinian is killed, and every time a
family is displaced. These Israeli sieges are systematic, calculated and
opportunistic. The aim of these sieges is to promote the Zionist Project
(sometimes referred to as “Occupation”) to completely cleanse Palestine
of its indigenous Arab rooted-ness, culture, and history. According to
this colonizing project, the land of Palestine should be free of
Palestinians and any reminder of its Palestinian past, present, and
future. The resistance to this project is, however, fierce, steadfast,
and continuous.
I was recently in Gaza for almost 2 weeks and witnessed the many faces of
resistance, struggle, and freedom. I saw the faces of Palestinian
children coming home from school with back-packs filled with books and
homework--smiling, laughing, holding hands and saying, "see you tomorrow,
my friend". I saw the families of these children welcoming them home with
love in their eyes, despite their fears and anxieties. I saw Palestinians
going to work, passing through hours of dehumanizing checkpoints trying
to eek out a living to support their families. I saw weddings in the
evening (about 18) and funerals in the morning (about 20). I heard the
call to prayer and the Friday sermon calling out to the families of the
brave defenders of Palestine who paid the ultimate price. And life goes
on. Our rooted-ness in Palestine goes on. Our history goes on. Palestine
goes on, and on, and on....
It is obvious to everyone here that the main target of the Empire is the
Arab World. The Imperial Project is to control the natural resources,
markets, and labor force of the Arab World and to extend American-Israeli
domination in the region. Palestine is, however, the thorn in the side of
the Empire. The center of the resistance to the Empire is in Palestine,
and the epicenter of that struggle is in Gaza. When we resist in
Palestine, we are resisting for our brothers and sisters in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Haiti, and Venezuela and for all people resisting imperial
aims, globalization, and the ugly ravages of structural adjustment
programs. Israeli occupation of Palestine is a kind of structural
adjustment program. Palestinians no longer enjoy the fruits of their
labor nor live off of their land. When you go into markets in Gaza and
the West Bank the shelves are full of the Israeli products, the products
of our occupiers. The same process is happening Iraq and Afghanistan and
has happened already in Mexico and Latin American. This is Imperial
freedom and democracy, the kind of freedom and democracy that are brought
to the indigenous people of the Arab World. It is an imposed freedom
with imperial strings attached to it. Freedom, as every oppressed person
knows, is not brought to you, it is taken. This is the nature of
resistance and struggle in Palestine, a taking back of our freedom,
dignity, and right to exist on our own land.
How many times will Palestine be raped before the world takes note and
opens its eyes? You see, when Palestine is raped, all oppressed people
are raped. And when Palestinians resist dispossession, dislocation, and
dismemberment from their rooted-ness, they are resisting the Imperial
dreams of their American/Israeli colonizers who wish to control the Arab
World and beyond. The struggle for freedom in Palestine is the same
struggle of all oppressed people for freedom and dignity. Do you believe
in justice and freedom? If you do, then you have to go all the way. There
is no partial justice. Without genuine justice and freedom in Palestine,
there cannot be freedom and justice anywhere in the world.
Finally, I wish to speak to the inability of some people to go all the
way with justice, specifically to the so-called progressive movement, the
so-called left, and to all activists who cannot find it in themselves to
go all the way with justice in Palestine. This is directed to the Noam
Chomskys, the Michael Lerners, the Medea Benjamins, and to the Leslie
Kagans of the world. This is to the Tikkun Community, UFPJ, JVP, Global
Exchange and to all those individuals and groups who can speak about
justice and freedom in Iraq, but not in Palestine; who can speak about
justice and freedom in Haiti, Venezuela, Sudan, and every where else in
the world, but not in Palestine. It is time to confront your abject
political analyses. It is time to confront your denial and racism. It is
time to confront your moral hypocrisy. You are complicit in the rape of
Palestine.
I invite you to come to Gaza with me and look into the beautiful brown
eyes of Reema, a 7 year-old Palestinian child living in the Jabaliya
refugee camp and tell her and her family that they are not entitled to
justice, freedom, and the right to return to their village that is only 5
km from where they now live. Your abject sense of morality and justice
and vacuous political analyses are empowering the empire. Can you go all
the way with justice? If not, remember one thing—where there is
occupation and injustice there will always be resistance.
(c) Copyright 2004 by AxisofLogic.com
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3) Dear Friends:
We want to let the Cuban Five supporters know that Saturday, October
16 is Antonio Guerrero's birthday. Please send him your birthday
greetings soon.
Antonio Guerrero's address is:
Antonio Guerrero
#58741-004
U.S.P. Florence
P.O. Box 7000
Florence CO 81226
Queridos Amigos,
Queremos hacerles saber a todas las personas que apoyan a los Cinco
Cubanos que el 16 de Octubre es el cumpleaños de Antonio Guerrero.
Por favor, si pueden, envÃenle un mensaje para su cumpleaños.
La dirección de Antonio Guerrero es:
Antonio Guerrero
#58741-004
U.S.P. Florence
P.O. Box 7500
Florence CO 81226
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4) French MP: US hit hostages' convoy
Friday 01 October 2004 9:06 PM GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/42AB2575-168C-4EF4-A80B-422878CBB0F9.
htm
The two hostages have been held since 20 August
A French MP has accused the US of scuttling his unofficial attempt to
secure the release of two French journalists held in Iraq .
Didier Julia, an MP for French President Jacques Chirac's ruling party,
said his efforts to release reporters Georges Malbrunot and Christian
Chesnot failed after US troops opened fire on the convoy attempting
to bring them out of Iraq en route to Syria .
Six of the French journalists' Iraqi escorts were killed in the US
bombing barrage.
Julia's assistant, Philippe Brett, had persuaded the kidnappers to
release the Frenchmen and they all left in two separate convoys
from their place of detention, both of which had come under US
fire, the MP said.
"They set up 20 roadblocks and six members of the team protecting
the journalists were killed," said Julia, whose mission enjoys no
backing from the French foreign ministry.
The ministry said it had no comment on the release effort or Julia's
report of the US attack.
Mission failure
The MP said Brett learned of the mission's failure as soon as he arrived
separately at the Syrian border and headed straight back to the
journalists' captors.
The French foreign ministry is not
commenting on the accusations
"The three Frenchmen are still in Iraq in the hands of the resistance,"
he said.
"The Americans increased their bombardment and deployed two
divisions to fire upon all terrorists who pass."
Julia, 70, is vice-president of the Iraqi-French Friendship Group.
The two journalists have been held hostage by the Islamic Army
of Iraq since August 20.
US rejects accusation
The US military on Friday rejected Julia's accusations that US
troops had fired on a mercy mission to extricate the two
kidnapped French newsmen, killing six escorts.
"I'd say that none of that is true. I have not seen any reports
that would indicate any of these stories showing up are accurate
or true," said senior spokesman Rear Admiral Greg Slavonic.
Agencies
By
You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/42AB2575-168C-4EF4-A80B-422878CBB0F9.
htm
Close
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5) NEWS: Bush administration supporting measure that allows
outsourcing of torture
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60779-2004Sep29.html?sub=AR
[Regrettably, in the first debate of the 2004 presidential campaign the
following words were never uttered: "torture," "abuse," "prisons," and "Abu
Ghraib." Yet these subjects are certainly a considerable factor in U.S.
foreign affairs at present, as is indicated by the fact that on the day of
the
debate, in a front-page story, the *Washington Post*'s Dana Priest and
Charles
Babington reported that the Bush administration and its "Justice" Department
are supporting a measure that would allow the U.S. to deport foreigners to
countries where they are likely to be tortured -- as the U.S. did in 2002 in
the notorious case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was sent to Syria
where he was tortured for nearly a year. Such actions are now clearly
illegal
-- but the bill discussed below would allow it. The reporters from the
*Post*
write: "The provision, human rights advocates said, contradicts pledges
President Bush made after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal erupted this
spring that the United States would stand behind the U.N. Convention Against
Torture." --Mark]
Politics
Bush Administration
PLAN WOULD LET U.S. DEPORT SUSPECTS TO NATIONS
THAT MIGHT TORTURE THEM
By Dana Priest and Charles Babington
Washington Post
September 30, 2004
Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60779-2004Sep29.html?sub=AR
The Bush administration is supporting
a provision in the House leadership's
intelligence reform bill that would allow
U.S. authorities to deport certain
foreigners to countries where they are
likely to be tortured or abused, an
action prohibited by the international
laws against torture the United States
signed 20 years ago.
The provision, part of the massive bill
introduced Friday by House Speaker J.
Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would apply to
non-U.S. citizens who are suspected of
having links to terrorist organizations
but have not been tried on or
convicted of any charges. Democrats
tried to strike the provision in a
daylong House Judiciary Committee
meeting, but it survived on a party-line
vote.
The provision, human rights advocates
said, contradicts pledges President Bush
made after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse
scandal erupted this spring that the
United States would stand behind the
U.N. Convention Against Torture. Hastert
spokesman John Feehery said the Justice
Department "really wants and supports"
the provision.
Justice Department spokesman Mark
Corallo said, "We can't comment on any
specific provision, but we support those
provisions that will better secure
our borders and protect the American
people from terrorists."
The provision is one of several items
in the bill that Democrats say are
unrelated to intelligence reform but
Republicans say are important tools for
fighting terrorists. The Senate is debating
its own intelligence reform bill
that does not include the provision, and
the House bill is being marked up in
several committees.
Human rights groups and members of
Congress opposed to the provision say it
could result in the torture of hundreds
of people now held in the United
States who could be sent to such
countries as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen,
Jordan and Pakistan, all of which
have dubious human rights records.
Supporters say the measure would
provide a much-needed change to U.S. laws.
"Our laws are not up to date with the
war we're fighting," Feehery said. In
many cases, he said, the Justice
Department "can't keep [terror suspects] in
detention, they can't convict them,
they don't want to try them. . . . If you
can't detain them indefinitely, you sure
don't want them in America."
The international anti-torture law
prohibited the deportation of individuals
to countries where there is a
reasonable expectation that they will be
tortured, abused or persecuted.
U.S. immigration law permits non-U.S.
citizens to seek political asylum to
avoid such persecution and prohibits
deportation or removal to countries
likely to commit torture or abuse unless
the government seeks assurance the
country will not do so.
In 2002, the Justice Department, in
a case that has earned international
condemnation, approved the expedited
removal of a Syrian-born Canadian
citizen, Maher Arar, to Syria, a country
whose long record of torture has been
criticized publicly by Bush.
Arar, who U.S. authorities have said
they suspect of links to a terrorist
group, alleges that his Syrian captors
tortured him during his 375 days in
prison. He disputes U.S. claims.
Freed last year by Syria, he lives in
Canada with his family and has never
been arrested or charged with a crime by
Canada or the United States.
"Is it an inconvenience if we can't send
people back to torturers? Sure,"
said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights
Watch. "But since Abu Ghraib, everyone
from the president to the Defense
Department to Congress has said the United
States does not have a policy of torture.
If this passes, we will have a
policy of tolerating torture."
Under the Hastert bill, U.S. authorities
could send an immigrant to any
country, regardless of the likelihood
of torture or abuse. The measure would
shift to the deportee the burden of
proving "by clear and convincing evidence
that he or she would be tortured" --
a burden that human rights activists say
is impossible to satisfy. It would
bar a U.S. court from reviewing the
regulations, which would fall under
the secretary of homeland security.
The provision would apply retroactively,
to people now in detention and those
who may have already been secretly
deported under classified procedures to
countries with well-documented histories
of torture and human rights
violations.
It also would allow U.S. authorities to
deport foreigners convicted of any
felony or suspected of having links to
terrorist groups to any country -- even
somewhere that is not a person's home
country or place of birth, contrary to
current practice. The CIA already has
such authority, under a secret
presidential finding first signed by
President Bill Clinton and expanded by
Bush after Sept. 11, 2001. The CIA has
taken an unknown number of suspected
terrorists apprehended abroad to third
countries for interrogation.
Also in the Judiciary Committee meeting,
GOP members defeated other
Democratic-sponsored attempts to
strike provisions that would make it easier
to deport or track terrorist suspects.
GOP leaders scrambled to appease
disgruntled Republicans who said the chamber
was moving too quickly -- and ignoring
rank-and-file members -- in pushing the
335-page bill.
As several House committees
addressed various portions of the bill,
Republicans generally defeated
Democratic efforts to sidetrack it. But in
some cases, GOP members were
the sharpest critics.
In the intelligence committee, three
senior Republicans opened a daylong
markup by attacking the bill. "It is a
cobbled-together bill," said Rep. Ray
LaHood (R-Ill.). "It is a rush to judgment."
Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.)
said, "We're fools to rush forward and
pass something that has been worked
on for only so short a time." Rep. Jim
Gibbons (R-Nev.) said, "This Congress
appears to be rushing to implement
reform on an election-year timetable."
With House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.)
taking the unusual step of
temporarily filling a committee vacancy
for the day, members soothed tempers,
in part by accepting a handful of
amendments. One, offered by Gibbons and
backed by the panel's Democrats,
would authorize a newly appointed national
intelligence director to shift unlimited
amounts of money from one purpose to
another within agencies under the
director's purview.
Hours later, Gibbons voted to send the
amended bill to the House floor.
Cunningham did, too, saying he had
learned that the House Appropriations
Committee was content with the bill's
spending provisions. Most Democrats
also endorsed the bill. Only two members
of the intelligence committee --
LaHood and Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) --
voted against the measure.
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6) The Looming National Benefit Crisis
By Dennis Cauchon and John Waggoner, US NEWSWIRE
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/business/article.adp?id=20041004080409990024
The long-term economic health of the United
States is threatened by $53 trillion in government
debts and liabilities that start to come due in
four years when baby boomers begin to retire.
The "Greatest Generation" and its baby-boom
children have promised themselves benefits
unprecedented in size and scope. Many leading
economists say that even the world's most
prosperous economy cannot fulfill these
promises without a crushing increase in taxes -
and perhaps not even then.
Neither President Bush nor John Kerry is
addressing the issue in detail as they
campaign for the White House.
A USA TODAY analysis found that the
nation's hidden debt - Americans' obligation
today as taxpayers - is more than five times
the $9.5 trillion they owe on mortgages,
car loans, credit cards and other personaldebt.
This hidden debt equals $473,456 per
household, dwarfing the $84,454 each
household owes in personal debt.
The $53 trillion is what federal, state and
local governments need immediately -
stashed away, earning interest, beyond the
$3 trillion in taxes collected last year - to
repay debts and honor future benefits
promised under Medicare, Social Security
and government pensions. And like an
unpaid credit card balance accumulating
interest, the problem grows by more than
$1 trillion every year that action to pay
down the debt is delayed.
"As a nation, we may have already made
promises to coming generations of retirees
that we will be unable to fulfill," Federal
Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told the
House Budget Committee last month.
Greenspan and economists from both
political parties warn that the nation's
economy is at risk from these fast-
approaching costs. If action isn't taken
soon - when baby boomers are still
working and contributing payroll taxes-
the consequences may be catastrophic,
some economists say.
The worst-case scenario is a sudden crisis -
perhaps a major terrorist attack or a shutoff
of oil from the Middle East - that triggers a
loss of confidence by investors in the U.S.
economy. Foreign investors refuse to lend
more money to the government to finance
its deficits; drastic tax increases and benefit
cuts occur suddenly; the dollar's value
plummets, which raises the cost of imported
goods; and a severe recession or depression
results from falling incomes.
A softer landing: The USA acts swiftly and
becomes more like Europe. Taxes are higher,
retirement benefits are less generous but
widely distributed; health care costs are
controlled; and the economy is sound but
less productive.
Big payments on the debt start coming due
in 2008, when the first of 78 million baby
boomers - the generation born from 1946
to 1964 -qualify at age 62 for early retirement
benefits from Social Security. The costs start
mushrooming in 2011, when the first boomers
turn 65 and qualify for taxpayer-funded Medicare.
Early warning signs
But Americans needn't wait until 2008 or
2011 to see firsthand the escalating costs
of these benefit programs. Medicare last month
announced the largest premium increase in the
program's 39-year history. In 2004 alone,
federal spending on Medicare and Social
Security will increase $45 billion, to $789
billion. That one-year increase is more than
the $28 billion budget of the Department of
Homeland Security.
Many economists say a failure to confront the
nation's debt promptly will only delay the inevitable.
"The baby boomers and the Greatest
Generation are delivering an economic
disaster to their children," says Laurence
Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist
and co-author of The Coming Generational
Storm, a book about the national debt.
"We should be ashamed of ourselves."
USA TODAY used official government
numbers to compute what the burden
means to the average American household.
To pay the obligations of federal, state and
local government:
€All federal taxes would have to double
immediately and permanently. A household
earning $100,000 a year would see its
federal taxes double from an average of
about $20,000 to $40,000 a year. All state
taxes would have to increase 20% immediately
and permanently.
€Or, benefits for Social Security, Medicare and
government pensions would have to be
slashed in half immediately and permanently.
Social Security checks would be cut from an
average of $1,500 per month for couples to
$750. Military pensions would drop from an
average of $1,782 per month to $891.
Medicare spending would fall from $7,500
to $3,750 annually per senior. The Medicare
prescription-drug benefit enacted last year
would be canceled.
€Or, a combination of tax hikes and benefit
cuts - such as a 50% increase in taxes and a
25% reduction in benefits - would avoid the
extremes but still require painful changes
that are outside the scope of today's political
debate. Savings also could come in the form
of price controls on prescription drugs, raising
retirement ages and limiting benefits to the affluent.
Every solution has the potential to damage the
economy by reducing disposable income or
diverting economic resources.
The estimates computed by USA TODAY are similar
to ones by government watchdog agencies such as
the Congressional Budget Office and the Government
Accountability Office and respected think tanks such
as the conservative American Enterprise Institute, the
liberal Brookings Institution and the non-partisan Urban
Institute.
"Political leaders know this is a big problem," says Glenn
Hubbard, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for
President Bush from 2001 to 2003. "I know the president is
keenly aware. But in an election year, it's not easy to talk about.
The solutions may be very painful. If he is re-elected, I think he
will make this a top priority next year. I hope so."
"Economists agree this cannot go on," says Joseph Stiglitz,
President Clinton's chief economic adviser from 1995 to 1997.
"We can borrow and borrow, but eventually there will be a day
of reckoning."
Economist James Galbraith of the University of Texas in Austin
is a rare optimist in this debate. "I'm not at all concerned about
Medicare or Social Security," Galbraith says.
"Unless the government goes broke, Medicare isn't going to go
broke, and the U.S. government isn't going to go broke because
it can print money."
Galbraith says the country can handle higher tax rates, as
Europeans do, and can save money by cutting spending elsewhere,
such as on defense, and by implementing a Canadian-style health
care system that uses private doctors and hospitals but has the
government set prices and pay the bills.
"We are an enormously rich country," he says. "Providing health care
and a modest living for our elderly is certainly something we can afford."
An aging population
Social Security was created in 1935 to help the elderly avoid poverty
during the Great Depression. Medicare was established in 1965 to
provide health care for the elderly, who were finding it increasingly
difficult to afford medical care. But the aging of America and a
declining birth rate have put these programs on a collision course
with financial reality.
When the government set 65 as the retirement age in the 1930s, most
people didn't live that long. But life expectancy for women has increased
from 66 to 80 since 1940 and for men from 61 to 75.
Meanwhile, the birth rate has dropped from 25 births per 1,000
residents in the 1950s to just 15 today. The lower birth rate ultimately
means fewer workers paying taxes to finance Social Security and
Medicare benefits for the rapidly growing population of people 65
and over.
Medicare has had about 3.3 workers paying taxes for every recipient
for the past 30 years. Baby boomer retirements will reduce that to just
two workers supporting every Medicare recipient in 2040.
Immigration has helped offset some of the decline in birth rates. But
immigration rates would have to increase by five or 10 times - above
the recent peak of 1.2 million in 2001, legal and illegal - to provide
enough workers and their payroll taxes to boost Medicare.
Medicare recipients are growing older and more expensive, too. Annual
medical costs for an 85-year-old are double those of a 65-year-old.
Federal spending per Medicare recipient will average $7,500 this year.
The official projection for 2050: $26,683 per recipient in 2004 dollars.
A problem in plain view
The scope of the problem is no secret in Washington.
Medicare and Social Security trustees report the obvious every year:
The system has no way to pay for itself, even under the rosiest scenarios.
The Congressional Budget Office regularly updates Congress on the
liabilities.
Bush's budget for the fiscal year that began Friday spells out the
numbers in detail and concludes, "These long-term budget projections
show clearly that the budget is on an unsustainable path."
Comptroller General David Walker, the government's chief accountant,
travels the nation warning of the impending crisis. "I am desperately
trying to get people to understand the significance of this for our
country, our children, our grandchildren," Walker says. "How this is
resolved could affect not only our economic security but our national
security. We're heading to a future where we'll have to double federal
taxes or cut federal spending by 50%."
But documentation of the problem hasn't prompted political action to
address it. The $4.2 trillion national debt has generated some debate
in Congress and the presidential campaign. But the government's
obligations for Medicare and Social Security are 10 times the size of
the national debt.
"We have instructed our politicians not to tell us about this problem,"
says Boston University economist Kotlikoff. "If they even mention
cuts to Social Security, we vote them out of office."
Grim financial statement
To bring attention to the problem, USA TODAY prepared a consolidated
financial statement for taxpayers, similar to what corporations give
shareholders. The newspaper totaled federal, state and local
government liabilities, taken from official documents.
Key findings:
€Total hidden debt. Federal, state and local governments today have
debts and "unfunded liabilities" of $53 trillion, or $473,456 per
household. An unfunded liability is the difference, valued in today's
dollars, between what current law requires the government to pay
and what current law provides in projected tax revenue.
€Social Security. The retirement program has $12.7 trillion in
obligations it cannot meet for current workers and retirees at the
current Social Security tax rate.
€Medicare. The health care program has a $30 trillion unfunded
liability for people now in the system as workers or beneficiaries.
The $30 trillion reflects the value today of the more than $200 trillion
in deficits over 75 years to cover current workers and retirees at
existing levels of benefits, tax rates and premiums. Medicare's new
prescription-drug benefit, which starts in 2006, accounts for $6.9
trillion of the program's financial ill health.
How much is $30 trillion? The gross domestic product, the entire
economic output of the USA, was $11 trillion last year.
"These numbers are staggering in their magnitude," says economist
Thomas Saving, whom Bush appointed as a public trustee on the
Medicare and Social Security board. "But when I testify before
Congress, I'm the only one saying, 'We have a funding problem.'
Everyone else is testifying for more benefits."
Like a home mortgage
The $53 trillion in liabilities is like a mortgage balance: That's
what it would cost to pay off the debt now. The actual cost would
be higher because of interest payments. A $100,000 mortgage at
5% interest, for example, actually requires $193,000 in income to
repay over 30 years.
Under corporate accounting rules, a corporation would record a
$100,000 liability on its books if it promised to pay $193,000 in
medical benefits over 30 years. That liability would reduce profits
immediately, when the promise was made, although the money
would be paid over 30 years. Otherwise, shareholders could be
fooled into thinking that the company was better off than it really was.
In fact, the company had committed $193,000 in future revenue -
worth $100,000 today - to a retiree and couldn't use the money
for shareholder profits.
Government doesn't follow this accounting rule. If it did, the federal
deficit in 2004 would be $8 trillion, not $422 billion. The $8 trillion
reflects the value of new financial obligations Congress approved
without any way to pay for them,plus the year's operating deficit.
Government accounting rules are more lenient because, unlike a
business, Congress can take whatever money it needs through taxes
and renege on promises by passing new laws. Theoretically, the
president and Congress could end all health care for the elderly
tomorrow and cease Social Security payments the next day - or
double or triple tax rates to pay the bills.
That's why AARP, a non-partisan lobbying group for people over
50, says the unfunded promises of Medicare and Social Security
are less worrisome than they appear.
"The reason we make companies fund their pension liabilities is
because it's uncertain they'll be around in the future. That doesn't
apply to government," says John Rother, AARP's research director.
"The size of the liabilities isn't relevant, nor is how much we put
aside today. What matters is how healthy will the economy be in
the future."
He agrees that Medicare has a long-term funding problem but says
the nation's entire health system is the issue, not Medicare.
Alan Auerbach, director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and
Public Finance at the University of California-Berkeley, says
people are understandably skeptical about gloomy predictions.
But he says these numbers are not guesses.
"We can't predict major wars or major inventions," he says.
"But we do know the baby boomers aren't going to disappear.
We know pretty well that health care costs will rise because of
new technology. I wish these were worst-case scenarios, but
they're rather cautious best guesses. It could be much worse."
A bill coming due
The heart of the problem is that the Greatest Generation and baby
boomers have promised themselves retirement benefits so generous -
and have contributed so little to financing them - that even the most
prosperous economy in history cannot pay the bill.
Consider a married couple who throughout their lives earned the
median income - the amount at which half of Americans make more
and half make less - and who will retire at age 65 next year. They
earned $46,400 in their final year of work.
Mr. and Mrs. Median would get a joint Medicare benefit valued at
$283,500, the Urban Institute estimates. That's the present value of
the benefit - what it's worth today - not the larger amount the
government will actually pay over the years. But the couple would
have paid only $43,300 in Medicare taxes (valued in 2004 dollars).
Taxpayers lose $240,200 on the deal.
But the Medians' good fortune doesn't end there. They also qualify for
$22,900 in annual Social Security benefits, which rise annually with
inflation.
Present value of the Social Security benefit: $326,000. Present value
of Social Security taxes paid over a lifetime: $198,000.
Net loss to taxpayers: $128,000.
And the situation is worse than that. The federal government didn't
save the money that the Medians paid in Medicare and Social Security
taxes. It spent that money as it came in on other things - defense,
education, past Medicare costs, etc. So the Social Security and Medicare
taxes paid by Mr. and Mrs. Median won't help offset the cost of their
benefits. The Social Security and Medicare trust funds have no money,
only IOUs that other taxpayers must repay.
"These mythical trust funds are a financial oxymoron - they can't be
trusted and they aren't funded," says Peter Peterson, a businessman
and Commerce secretary under President Nixon who wrote the best
seller Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties
Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It.
Because the trust funds have been spent, taxpayers must come up
with the full $609,500 that Mr. and Mrs. Median are entitled to under
Medicare and Social Security. And the Medians are a bargain compared
with what their 45-year-old children will cost.
Social Security is structured so that future generations get increasingly
large benefits. And Medicare benefits rise with soaring health care costs.
The Medians' children would receive Social Security and Medicare
benefits with a present value of $884,000 in 2004 dollars when
they turn 65, according to the Urban Institute. That's 45% more
than their parents would get.
For Hubbard, now dean of the Columbia Business School in New
York, the stakes are clear: "The question is whether the political
process will make gradual changes or we'll wait for a crisis."
Contributing: Paul Overberg, Bruce Rosenstein
(c) 2004 U.S. Newswire
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7) High Court to Decide Sentencing, Death Penalty Cases
By James Vicini
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
Sun Oct 3, 2004 10:30 PM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6399474&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court begins a new
term on Monday that will decide important cases on federal
sentencing rules, the death penalty for juveniles and the
medical use of marijuana.
The high court will also rule on disputes including the
segregation of prisoners by race, how long the government may
detain certain immigrants awaiting deportation and bans on
out-of-state wine sales.
"Early in its 2004 term, the Supreme Court will confront a
series of cases that could transform America's criminal justice
system for years to come," said Steven Shapiro, legal director
of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The justices added to their 2004-2005 docket on Tuesday by
agreeing to decide upon the government's power to seize a
person's property for private development and whether a law
protecting disabled people from discrimination covered foreign
cruise ships in U.S. waters.
"The bottom line is it's a term likely to be filled with
blockbuster decisions," Duke University law professor Erwin
Chemerinsky said.
"Certainly, there are some very important cases," said Tom
Goldstein, a Washington lawyer specializing in the Supreme
Court. But he noted that in past years the justices tended to
add the really momentous cases later in the term.
He predicted that the court could end up deciding more
cases arising from the U.S. government's war on terrorism or
get involved in disputes arising from the 2004 presidential
election, especially if the vote is close.
The term that ended in June was best known for rulings that
rejected the Bush administration's position in the war on terror.
The court said "enemy combatants" held in the United
States or at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba could
contest their confinement in the U.S. legal system.
After their summer recess, the justices return to the bench
on Monday and hear arguments on the constitutionality of
federal guidelines used to sentence tens of thousands of
criminals every year.
The federal sentencing system Congress mandated in 1984 was
thrown into disarray by the Supreme Court's ruling in June,
near the end of the last term, that declared unconstitutional a
similar state law.
Moving fast to resolve the confusion created by their own
ruling, the justices over the summer set arguments for the
first day of their new term.
REVISITING RULING
On Oct. 13, the court will take up another important
criminal law issue and hear arguments on whether the death
penalty may be imposed on convicted murderers who were 16 or 17
when they committed their crimes.
The justices will revisit their ruling 15 years ago that
such executions did not amount to unconstitutional cruel and
unusual punishment.
Opponents of capital punishment have focused on the
juvenile death penalty as the next major legal battle after the
Supreme Court two years ago barred executions of criminals who
are mentally retarded.
In the medical marijuana case to be argued on Nov. 29, the
high court will decide whether the federal government can
prosecute seriously ill people whose doctors recommended they
use marijuana for their pain.
The Bush administration appealed to the Supreme Court after
it lost a ruling last year in the case of two California women
who say marijuana is the only drug that eases their chronic
pain and other medical problems.
The high court will review a ruling by a U.S. appeals court
in San Francisco that the federal law outlawing marijuana did
not apply to patients whose doctors had recommended the drug.
The appeals court ruled states could adopt medical
marijuana laws as long as the marijuana was not sold,
transported across state lines or used for nonmedicinal
purposes.
The court's most conservative members are Chief Justice
William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence
Thomas. Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor are
more moderate conservatives who often cast the decisive votes.
The more liberal members are Justices John Paul Stevens,
David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
(c) Copyright Reuters 2004.
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8) Three Car Bombs in Iraq Kill at Least 26
By Luke Baker
BAGHDAD (Reuters)
Mon Oct 4, 2004 09:11 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6405357&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A series of car bomb blasts tore
through Baghdad and the northern Iraq city of Mosul on Monday,
killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 100.
As the car bombers struck, U.S. forces kept up operations
against rebel-held towns elsewhere aimed at establishing
control throughout the country ahead of January elections. Air
strikes were launched against suspected militants in Falluja.
In the first blast in western Baghdad, a car blew up near
one of the entrances to the heavily fortified Green Zone, close
to an Iraqi security forces recruitment post, killing at least
15 people and wounding 80, an official at Yarmouk hospital said.
No U.S. troops were killed or wounded, a spokesman said.
A second bomb exploded about an hour later as a U.S.
military convoy was passing along Baghdad's Sadoun Street, a
major thoroughfare on the eastern side of the Tigris river,
where several hotels used by foreign contractors are located.
Witnesses said a small truck charged toward a group of
four-wheel-drive vehicles and detonated, destroying half a
dozen cars, shattering scores of shop windows and spraying
wreckage across the street. At least six people were killed and
more than a dozen wounded, a source at Iraq's Interior Ministry
said.
"I saw a head in one place and a leg in another. This was a
suicide bombing," said one bystander as thick clouds of black
smoke billowed behind him and U.S. helicopters circled overhead.
The U.S. military said no soldiers were killed or wounded.
In a third attack, a car bomb exploded outside a primary
school in the northern city of Mosul, killing five people,
including two children, police said. Earlier police had said
seven were killed, but later revised the toll. Eleven people
were wounded, including five children.
The car, driven by two men, may have exploded prematurely,
a U.S. officer at the scene said, as there was no obvious
target in the area, a quiet district in the south of the city.
SAMARRA CALMER
Operations to restore government control continued in
Samarra, a city north of Baghdad that U.S. and Iraqi forces
overran on Friday.
In a 36-hour blitz, some 3,000 U.S. troops and 2,000 Iraqi
soldiers, backed by U.S. warplanes and artillery, stormed the
city, 60 miles north of Baghdad, in an effort to dislodge an
estimated 500 to 1,000 guerrillas.
U.S. forces said they killed 125 fighters and captured 88
in the assault, which destroyed dozens of buildings and,
according to locals, inflicted a heavy toll on civilians.
Residents of Samarra tried to bury their dead on Monday --
the cemetery was off limits on Sunday -- progressing through
the streets of the city waving sticks with white flags
attached, family members weeping as they bore the coffins for
burial.
Iraq's interior minister, who comes from Samarra, said he
did not believe any civilians had been killed in the offensive,
a statement which drew an angry response from residents.
The U.S. military said it had tried to avoid civilian casualties.
Aid agencies returned to the city on Sunday, delivering
food, water and medicine to families forced to flee. Much of
the city still lacked water and electricity on Monday.
BATTLES LIE AHEAD
The two biggest challenges facing U.S. and Iraqi forces are
Falluja and Ramadi, guerrilla strongholds west of Baghdad
which the U.S. military tried unsuccessfully to capture in April.
There are also areas of Baghdad, including the Shi'ite slum
district of Sadr City, that will have to be seized from rebels.
On Monday, U.S. warplanes bombarded areas of Falluja for
the third consecutive night, targeting suspected hideouts of
Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his followers.
Doctors in Falluja said at least seven people were killed
and 14 wounded and said some were civilians. The military said
it was a building used by Zarqawi's group to store weapons.
In other incidents, a senior official in Iraq's Science and
Technology Ministry was assassinated as he drove to work in
Baghdad on Monday, and the chief of police in Balad Ruz, a
rebel bastion just north of Baghdad, was also killed.
(c) Copyright Reuters 2004
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9) Defying Army Offensive, Hamas Rockets Hit Israel
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters)
Mon Oct 4, 2004 07:20 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6403832&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
GAZA (Reuters) - Defiant Palestinian militants fired
rockets into an Israeli border town on Monday despite an
Israeli military offensive, the bloodiest in the Gaza Strip in
four years of conflict, intended to stop such attacks.
Pressing a massive operation to root out rocket crews, the
army killed four militants, including a senior Hamas commander,
and two civilians, aged 20 and 26, raising the Palestinian
death toll to 62 after five days of fighting.
But even as 200 tanks and armored vehicles blanket northern
Gaza, militants have kept up sporadic rocket firings, fueling
Israeli criticism of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to
evacuate Jewish settlements in the coastal territory next year.
One makeshift Qassam rocket hit a college campus in the
southern Israeli town of Sderot, lightly wounding a man, the
first casualty in such an attack since Wednesday when the
killing of two toddlers triggered the army assault in Gaza.
Army chief Moshe Yaalon has called the raid a success and
warned that the offensive will last "as long as necessary" to
halt rocket attacks by militants determined to portray Israel's
planned Gaza pullout as a withdrawal under fire.
At the United Nations, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
urged Israel to halt raids in Gaza "which have led to the
deaths of scores of Palestinians, among them many civilians."
He also called on Palestinian leaders to help curtail rocket fire.
Palestinian sources said at least 38 of the dead were
militants and most of the rest were civilians.
Sharon, under fire from rightists who say his Gaza
withdrawal plan has emboldened militants to step up attacks,
said on Sunday the army's mission was to ensure that armed
Palestinian factions were crushed ahead of the pullout.
CARVING OUT "BUFFER ZONE"
Israel's army has carved out a "buffer zone" covering 9
square km (3 square miles) and for the first time has carried
out raids deep into the teeming Jabalya refugee camp, a
militant stronghold. Tanks also encircle the town Beit Hanoun.
In a pre-dawn strike in Jabalya, an Israeli missile killed
four militants, including a Hamas field commander, blowing
their bodies to pieces. The army said the men were planting
bombs.
"Savage Zionist aggression continues and resistance by all
means will continue until the enemy is driven from our land,"
said Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, a faction behind a
campaign of suicide bombings and sworn to Israel's destruction.
The Palestinian leadership has expressed disappointment at
the mostly low-key international reaction to Israel's offensive
but has also signaled that militants should stop rocket attacks
to avoid "giving the Israelis a pretext."
Yaalon told reporters in Gaza on Sunday that the army had
hit seven cells of militants involved in firing rockets. "The
forces are prepared to carry out this operation not in terms of
days, but weeks," he said.
But rocket firings have persisted though at a lower rate
than before. The army said two Qassams hit Sderot on Friday
followed by three on Sunday. A second strike on Monday hit the
town's industrial zone but caused no casualties.
Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, suggested the militants
might be ready to reconsider firing rockets at Israel, telling
reporters on Sunday they "would seriously study their methods"
if Israel halted all military action in Gaza.
Other Hamas officials said rocket attacks would continue
regardless. Militants are determined to give the impression
they are driving Israel out, given Sharon's plan to withdraw
from the coastal strip Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East
War.
(c) Copyright Reuters 2004.
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10) Three nuns and one unholy case
By Diane Carman
dcarman@denverpost.com
Denver Post Columnist
Sunday, October 03, 2004 -
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E53%257E2440795,00.html#
The judge's question was like a bunker-buster to the heart
of the case. After countless hours of pricey federal investigations,
two years of litigation and the costly incarceration of three elderly,
pacifist Catholic nuns in federal penitentiaries, he wanted to know:
Was all this really necessary?
"Couldn't you have nailed them for trespassing, nailed them for
the cost of repairing the fence and fined them?" wondered Senior
Judge Stephen H. Anderson.
Assistant U.S. Attorney James Murphy stood before the three-judge
panel in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals last week and said, well,
yes, that was true.
All this, as well as two years of often unflattering attention from
the international media, might have been avoided if they had
chosen to portray the women as earnest - if occasionally disobedient -
peaceniks, instead of a serious threat to the national defense.
But that is irrelevant, Murphy said.
The trial jury agreed with the government.
Carol Gilbert, Jackie Hudson and Ardeth Platte, Dominican nuns
who have devoted the past 20 years to drawing attention to the
nation's nuclear arsenal and their belief that it is an instrument of
genocide, were convicted in April 2003 of obstructing national
defense and damaging government property.
The fact that the missiles still could have been deployed - despite
the women rapping ball-peen hammers on the rails outside the silos
and the platoon of soldiers training automatic weapons at their heads -
was immaterial, Murphy said. There was a principle here.
Somewhere.
The attorneys for the nuns argued that the judge failed to give
"good-faith instructions" to the jury. Critical information about
the definition of "intent to harm the defense" was not provided,
they said.
And the criteria for the legal definition of "sabotage" were not met
by the nuns' symbolic actions, which included cutting a hole in the
chain-link fence surrounding the Minuteman III missile site, spilling
their blood on the ground in the shape of peace symbols and praying.
The judges, however, seemed focused on more straightforward logic.
"You contend," Anderson said to Murphy, that the nuns' actions
"interfered with national defense" when troops were called outto
arrest them. "What if these sisters had some means ... of getting
over the fence without cutting it, and simply raised a banner?"
If troops were called out to arrest them for that, would they still
be charged with interfering with national defense?
No, said Murphy. The hole in the fence and the use of blood to
make their point on the site raised the charges from misdemeanor
trespassing to felony sabotage in the U.S. attorney's eyes.
(Note to anti-nuke activists everywhere: Next time, try parachuting
onto nuclear missile sites. And always use fake blood. Banners optional.)
After the hearing, defense attorneys Clifford J. Barnard, Scott
Poland and Sue Tyburski were optimistic.
The judges were well-informed about the case, Barnard said.
They obviously had studied the briefs. They seemed open to
considering the appeal.
"It's hard to guess what the opinion will be," he said. Impossible
is more like it. And there's practically an unwritten rule against
such speculation for fear it will jinx the case.
But for anyone who has encountered the charismatic nuns, who
pray for their prosecutors and beseech the Almighty to shower
his blessings on all the judges who sentence them, there is some
small satisfaction in the continuing courtroom drama, if not the
prospect of reversal.
Of course, the women would prefer not to be in prison.
"It's not easy," said Annabel Dwyer, a close friend of the nuns.
But through the efforts of an overzealous U.S. attorney general
and a grandstanding U.S. attorney, at least their message of self-
sacrifice, forbearance, love and peace lives on.
And on, and on, and on.
Diane Carman's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday.
She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com .
Sent By: 64.136.27.225
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11) In this message:
· Weekly ANSWER Activist Meeting
· ANSWER Film Series: "Comandante"
For more information on the following events,
call 415-821-6545.
----------
Tuesday, Oct. 5, 7pm
ANSWER ACTIVIST MEETING
2489 Mission St. Room 24 at 21st St.
Join us for a reportback from Palestine and discussion of
SaturdayÂ’s Palestine conference by Jess Ghannam, recently
returned from Gaza (Pres. of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination
Committee, SF). Also, a political update on Iraq, a reportback from
the March Against Racism in the Castro, and an update on
the PeopleÂ’s Anti-War Referendum.
-----------
Thursday, Oct. 7, 7:30pm
ANSWER FILM SERIES: “ COMANDANTE”
ATA 992 Valencia St. at 21st, San Francisco
Donation requested
Unavailable in the U.S., Comandante is an intimate portrait of
revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. The screening will include a
report on FidelÂ’s stand against U.S. aggression toward Cuba.
From three days filming in Cuba, Oliver Stone has edited down
more than 30 hours of interviews and conversations to provide
a candid and direct portrait of this leader.
Stone, co-participant in the film as interviewer, shares the risk
with Castro of being in the camera eye, creating an intimacy that
allows for unique responses from the Cuban leader that would
never otherwise have been possible, getting Castro to discuss
the state of his country, the present situation of international
politics and some thought-provoking details of the 20th
century history.
Overall, an illuminating one-on-one, that helps us to a better
understanding of how such small antagonist of the world's
greatest superpower has survived for more than four decades.
----------
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12) Two Peoples, One State
BY MICHAEL TARAZI
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/04/opinion/04tarazi.html?oref=login
Israel's untenable policy in the Middle East was more obvious
than usual last week, as the Israeli Army made repeated incursions
into Gaza, killing dozens of Palestinians in the deadliest attacks in
more than two years, even as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reiterated
his plans to withdraw from the territory. Israel's overall strategy
toward the Palestinians is ultimately self-defeating: it wants
Palestinian land but not the Palestinians who live on that land.
As Christians and Muslims, the millions of Palestinians under
occupation are not welcome in the Jewish state. Many Palestinians
are now convinced that Israeli support for a Palestinian state is
motivated not by a hope for reconciliation, but by a desire to
segregate non-Jews while taking as much of their land and
resources as possible. They are increasingly questioning the
most commonly accepted solution to the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict - "two states living side by side in peace and security,"
in the words of President Bush - and are being forced to consider
a one-state solution.
To Palestinians, the strategy behind Israel's two-state solution is
clear. More than 400,000 Israelis live illegally in more than 150
colonies, many of which are atop Palestinian water sources. Mr.
Sharon is prepared to evacuate settlers from Gaza - but only in
exchange for expanding settlements in the West Bank. And Israel
is building a barrier wall not on its land but rather inside occupied
Palestinian territory. The wall's route maximizes the amount of
Palestinian farmland and water on one side and the number of
Palestinians on the other.
Yet while Israelis try to allay a demographic threat, they are
creating a democratic threat. After years of negotiations, coupled
with incessant building of settlements and now the construction
of the wall, Palestinians finally understand that Israel is offering
"independence" on a reservation stripped of water and arable soil,
economically dependent on Israel and even lacking the right to
self-defense.
As a result, many Palestinians are contemplating whether the
quest for equal statehood should now be superseded by a
struggle for equal citizenship. In other words, a one-state
solution in which citizens of all faiths and ethnicities live
together as equals. Recent polls indicate that a quarter of
Palestinians favor the secular one-state solution - a
surprisingly high number given that it is not officially
advocated by any senior Palestinian leader.
Support for one state is hardly a radical idea; it is simply
the recognition of the uncomfortable reality that Israel and
the occupied Palestinian territories already function as a single
state. They share the same aquifers, the same highway network,
the same electricity grid and the same international borders.
There are no road signs reading "Welcome to Occupied Territory"
when one drives into East Jerusalem. Some government maps of
Israel do not delineate Israel's 1967 pre-occupation border.
Settlers in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem)
are interspersed among Palestinian towns and now constitute
nearly a fifth of the population. In the words of one Palestinian
farmer, you can't unscramble an egg.
But in this de facto state, 3.5 million Palestinian Christians and
Muslims are denied the same political and civil rights as Jews.
These Palestinians must drive on separate roads, in cars bearing
distinctive license plates, and only to and from designated
Palestinian areas. It is illegal for a Palestinian to drive a car with
an Israeli license plate. These Palestinians, as non-Jews, neither
qualify for Israeli citizenship nor have the right to vote in Israeli
elections.
In South Africa, such an allocation of rights and privileges based
on ethnic or religious affiliation was called apartheid. In Israel,
t is called the Middle East's only democracy.
Most Israelis recoil at the thought of giving Palestinians equal
rights, understandably fearing that a possible Palestinian majority
will treat Jews the way Jews have treated Palestinians. They fear
the destruction of the never-defined "Jewish state." The one-state
solution, however, neither destroys the Jewish character of the Holy
Land nor negates the Jewish historical and religious attachment
(although it would destroy the superior status of Jews in that state).
Rather, it affirms that the Holy Land has an equal Christian and
Muslim character.
For those who believe in equality, this is a good thing. In theory,
Zionism is the movement of Jewish national liberation. In practice,
it has been a movement of Jewish supremacy. It is this domination
of one ethnic or religious group over another that must be defeated
before we can meaningfully speak of a new era of peace; neither
Jews nor Muslims nor Christians have a unique claim on this
sacred land.
The struggle for Palestinian equality will not be easy. Power is
never voluntarily shared by those who wield it. Palestinians will
have to capture the world's imagination, organize the international
community and refuse to be seduced into negotiating for their
rights.
But the struggle against South African apartheid proves the battle
can be won. The only question is how long it will take, and how
much all sides will have to suffer, before Israeli Jews can view
Palestinian Christians and Muslims not as demographic threats
but as fellow citizens.
Michael Tarazi is a legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation
Organization.
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/04/opinion/04tarazi.html?oref=login
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13) Now on DVD: The Passion of the Bush
By FRANK RICH
New York Times, Sunday, 3 October 2004: You can run but you
can't hide: Oct. 5 will bring the perfect storm in this year's culture
wars. It's on that strategically chosen date, four Tuesdays before
the election, that the DVD of
"Fahrenheit 9/11" will be released along with not one but two
new Michael Moore books. It's also the release date of the
equally self-effacing Ann Coulter's latest rant, of a new DVD
documentary, "Horns and Halos," that revisits the Bush mystery
year of 1972, and of an R.E.M. album, "Around the Sun," that gets
in its own political licks at the state of the nation.
When Dick Cheney and John Edwards debate in Cleveland that
night, Bruce Springsteen will be barnstorming in another swing
state, as the Vote for Change tour hits St. Paul. All that's needed
to make the day complete is a smackdown between Kinky
Friedman and Teresa Heinz Kerry on "Imus in the Morning."
Of the many cultural grenades being tossed that day, though,
the one must-see is "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House,"
a DVD that is being specifically marketed in "head to head"
partisan opposition to "Fahrenheit 9/11." This documentary first
surfaced at the Republican convention in New York, where it was
previewed in tandem with an invitation-only, no-press-allowed
"Family, Faith and Freedom Rally," a Ralph Reed-Sam Brownback
jamboree thrown by the Bush campaign for Christian conservatives.
Though you can buy the DVD for $14.95, its makers told the right-
wing news service WorldNetDaily.com that they plan to distribute
300,000 copies to America's churches. And no wonder. This movie
aspires to be "The Passion of the Bush," and it succeeds.
More than any other campaign artifact, it clarifies the hard-knuckles
rationale of the president's vote-for-me-or-face-Armageddon re-
election message. It transforms the president that the Democrats
deride as a "fortunate son" of privilege into a prodigal son with the
"moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet." Its Bush is not
merely a sincere man of faith but God's essential and irreplaceable
warrior on Earth. The stations of his cross are burnished into cinematic
fable: the misspent youth, the hard drinking (a thirst that came from
"a throat full of Texas dust"), the fateful 40th-birthday hangover in
Colorado Springs, the walk on the beach with Billy Graham. A towheaded
child actor bathed in the golden light of an off-camera halo re-enacts
the young George comforting his mom after the death of his sister; it's
a parable anticipating the future president's miraculous ability to comfort
us all after 9/11. An older Bush impersonator is seen rebuffing a sexual
come-on from a fellow Bush-Quayle campaign worker hovering by a Xerox
machine in 1988; it's an effort to imbue our born-again savior with
retroactive chastity. As for the actual president, he is shown with a
flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message
isn't subtle: they were separated at birth.
"Faith in the White House" purports to be the product of
"independent research," uncoordinated with the Bush-Cheney
campaign. But many of its talking heads are official or unofficial
administration associates or sycophants. They include the evangelical
leader and presidential confidant Ted Haggard (who is also one of Mel
Gibson's most fervent P.R. men) and Deal Hudson, an adviser to the
Bush-Cheney campaign until August, when he resigned following The
National Catholic Reporter's investigation of accusations that he sexually
harassed an 18-year-old Fordham student in the 1990's. As for the
documentary's "research," a film positioning itself as a scrupulously
factual "alternative" to "Fahrenheit 9/11" should not inflate Mr. Bush's
early business "success" with Arbusto Energy (an outright bust for
most of its investors) or the number of children he's had vaccinated
in Iraq ("more than 22 million," the movie claims, in a country whose
total population is 25 million).
"Will George W. Bush be allowed to finish the battle against the forces
of evil that threaten our very existence?" Such is the portentous
question posed at the film's conclusion by its narrator, the religious
broadcaster Janet Parshall, beloved by some for her ecumenical
generosity in inviting Jews for Jesus onto her radio show during the
High Holidays. Anyone who stands in the way of Mr. Bush completing
his godly battle, of course, is a heretic. Facts on the ground in Iraq don't
matter. Rational arguments mustered in presidential debates don't
matter. Logic of any kind is a nonstarter. The president - who after
9/11 called the war on terrorism a "crusade," until protests forced the
White House to backpedal - is divine. He may not hear "voices"
instructing him on policy, testifies Stephen Mansfield, the author
of one of the movie's source texts, "The Faith of George W. Bush,"
but he does act on "promptings" from God. "I think we went into
Iraq not so much because there were weapons of mass destruction,"
Mr. Mansfield has explained elsewhere, "but because Bush had
concluded that Saddam Hussein was an evildoer" in the battle
"between good and evil." So why didn't we go into those other
countries in the axis of evil, North Korea or Iran? Never mind.
To ask such questions is to be against God and "with the terrorists."
The propagandists of "Faith in the White House" argue, as others
have, that the president's invocation of religion in the public
sphere, from his citation of Jesus as his favorite "political
philosopher" to his incessant invocation of the Almighty in
talking about how everything is coming up roses in Iraq, is
consistent with the civic spirituality practiced by his antecedents,
from the founding fathers to Bill Clinton. It's not. Past presidents
have rarely, if ever, claimed such godlike infallibility. Mr. Bush never
admits to making a mistake; even his premature "Mission Accomplished"
victory lap wasn't in error, as he recently told Bill O'Reilly. After all,
if you believe "God wants me to be president" - a quote attributed to
Mr. Bush by the Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention -
it's a given that you are incapable of making mistakes. Those who say
you have are by definition committing blasphemy. A God-appointed
leader even has the power to rewrite His texts. Jim Wallis, the liberal
evangelical author, has pointed out Mr. Bush's habit of rejiggering
specific scriptural citations so that, say, the light shining into the
darkness is no longer God's light but America's and, by inference,
the president's own.
It's not just Mr. Bush's self-deification that separates him from
the likes of Lincoln, however; it's his chosen fashion of Christianity.
The president didn't revive the word "crusade" idly in the fall of 2001.
His view of faith as a Manichaean scheme of blacks and whites to
be acted out in a perpetual war against evil is synergistic with the
violent poetics of the best-selling "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye
and Jerry Jenkins and Mel Gibson's cinematic bloodfest. The majority
of Christian Americans may not agree with this apocalyptic worldview,
but there's a big market for it. A Newsweek poll shows that 17 percent
of Americans expect the world to end in their lifetime. To Karl Rove
and company, that 17 percent is otherwise known as "the base."
The pandering to that base has become familiar in countless
administration policies, starting with its antipathy to stem-cell
research, abortion, condoms for H.I.V. prevention and gay civil rights.
But ever since Mr. Bush's genuflection to Bob Jones University
threatened to shoo away moderates in 2000, the Rove ruse is to
try to keep the most militant and sectarian tactics of the Bush
religious program under the radar. (Mr. Rove even tried to deny
that the wooden lectern at the Republican convention was a pulpit
embedded with a cross, as if a nation of eyewitnesses could all be
mistaken.) The re-election juggernaut has not only rounded up the
membership rosters of churches en masse but quietly mounted official
Web sites like kerrywrongforcatholics.com as well. (Evangelicals and
Mormons have their own Web variants on this same theme, but not
the Jews, who are apparently getting in Kerry just what they deserve.)
Even the contraband C-word is being revived out of sight of most of
the press: Marc Racicot, the Bush-Cheney campaign chairman, lobbed
a direct-mail fund-raising letter in March describing Mr. Bush as
"leading a global crusade against terrorism."
In this spring's classic "South Park" parody, "The Passion of the Jew,"
in which Mr. Gibson's movie tosses the community into a religious war,
one of the kids concludes: "If you want to be Christian, that's cool, but
you should focus on what Jesus taught instead of how he got killed.
Focusing on how he got killed is what people did in the Dark Ages,
and it ends up with really bad results." He has a point. It's far from
clear that Mr. Bush's eschatology and his religious vanity are leading
to good results now. The all-seeing president who could pronounce
Vladimir Putin saintly by looking into his "soul" is now refusing to
acknowledge that the reverse may be true. The general in charge of
tracking down Osama bin Laden, William G. Boykin, has earned cheers
in some quarters for giving speeches at churches proclaiming that
Mr. Bush is "in the White House because God put him there" to lead
the "army of God" against "a guy named Satan." But all that preaching
didn't get his day job done; he hasn't snared the guy named Osama
he was supposed to bring back "dead or alive."
"George W. Bush: Faith in the White House" must be seen because it
shows how someone like General Boykin can stay in his job even in
failure and why Mr. Bush feels divinely entitled to keep his job even
as we stand on the cusp of an abyss in Iraq. In this pious but not
humble worldview, faith, or at least a certain brand of it, counts more
than competence, and a biblical mission, or at least a simplistic,
blunderbuss facsimile of one, counts more than the secular goal
of waging an effective, focused battle against an enemy as elusive
and cunning as terrorists. That no one in this documentary, including
its hero, acknowledges any constitutional boundaries between church
and state is hardly a surprise. To them, America is a "Christian nation,"
period, with no need even for the fig-leaf prefix of "Judeo-."
Far more startling is the inability of a president or his acolytes to
acknowledge any boundary that might separate Mr. Bush's flawed
actions battling "against the forces of evil" from the righteous dictates
of God. What that level of hubris might bring in a second term is left
to the imagination, and "Faith in the White House" gives the imagination
room to run riot about what a 21st-century crusade might look like in
the flesh. A documentary conceived as a rebuke to "Fahrenheit 9/11" is
nothing if not its unintentional and considerably more nightmarish sequel.
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14) It is as clear as Black and White, that the law is Racist.
The mandaory minimum for .177ounces or 5 Grams of crack
cocaine (Usually found in the Inner-Cities) is five years.
The mandaory minimum for 17.7ounces or 5 Grams powdered cocaine
(Usually found amongst the rich and/or in the
Suburbs) is five years.
Understanding this law, Is it any wonder that Blacks and Latinos have
larger prison populations in disproportion to their proportion of
society as a whole? It is as clear as Black and White.
"In 1986 Kerry voted for H.R. 5484 which enacted the federal mandatory
minimums for drug crimes, this included the infamous 100-1 crack
cocaine disparity where defendants with five grams of crack received
a mandatory minimum of five years in federal prison while possession
of five hundred grams of powdered cocaine resulted in the same five
year mandatory minimum sentence. It would have been surprising if
Kerry had voted against this draconian law since it had been introduced
in the House of Representatives by then Speaker of the House Tip
O'Neil, Kerry's fellow Democrat from Boston."
Weekend Edition
October 2 / 3, 2004 Two Empty Bottles with Different Labels
John Kerry on Criminal Justice Issues
By PAUL WRIGHT
"Americans on the frontlines - our first responders, military
forces, sheriffs, policemen, firefighters, and civil defense volunteers -
must have the very best equipment, training and support possible.
Our safety and freedom are the envy of the world and John Kerry
and John Edwards will ensure this does not change. A Kerry-Edwards
administration will recruit more law enforcement and emergency
professionals, combat Meth labs and drug abuse, and build a
stronger judicial and prison system in rural areas."
John Kerry for President Website, www.Johnkerry.com
The issue of felon disenfranchisement, where millions of
Americans convicted of crimes that may or may not have r
resulted in imprisonment cannot vote in government elections,
is one of growing importance. Around the country various
lawsuits are challenging such laws under various theories,
so far with mixed results. Some political pressure, especially
by the black community is raising awareness about how this
results in dilution of the black vote and undermines any notion
of equality and democracy. In a system that claims to be a
democracy the right to vote should be a fundamental right.
But the flip side of the same coin is that people who wish to
vote should have candidates who either represent their interests
or their views on given issues. That a majority of the electorate
that can vote chooses not to may reflect recognition of Jim Hightower's
comment that "If the gods wanted us to vote, they would send us
candidates."
One reason for close national and statewide races for federal offices
is the lack of any discernable differences among the candidates.
For people who are concerned about criminal justice issues the lack
of any substantial policy differences among national candidates is
most easily seen by the fact that today no national political figure is
publicly opposed to the death penalty. For prisoners or families who
have loved ones in prison, people who do not support a police state,
the death penalty and the evisceration of human and civil rights the
electoral choices between John Kerry and George Bush amount to
choosing to be beat to death with a stick or a two by four.
In 1992 I wrote an article in Prison Legal News about Bill Clinton
interrupting his presidential campaign to fly back to Arkansas to
preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally ill black
prisoner who had blown most of his brains out in a botched suicide
attempt after killing a police man. While George Bush I was certainly
a supporter of the death penalty, he had not had the opportunity to
oversee one to prove his support of it to the electorate. Clinton could
and did. I predicted that based on his campaign promises and track
record as governor of Arkansas, Clinton would be a disaster for
prisoners and he was. However, I didn't think he would be as bad
as he turned out to be.
President George Bush II's record on criminal justice issues needs
little elaboration. As governor of Texas he oversaw over 150
executions, his predecessor Ann Richards began the massive
expansion of the Texas prison system, which Bush completed,
and much more. As president Bush has presided over the
concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, the rape and torture
chambers of Abu Gharaib, signed the PATRIOT Act into law and
otherwise done what American presidents historically do. But
presidents do not act alone, they need legislative approval for
these things and John Kerry has been in the U.S. senate for almost
20 years. Plenty of time to amass a track record on criminal justice
issues. Moreover, it is not as if Kerry has questioned or condemned
Bush on these human rights issues.
The Bush campaign has attempted to label Kerry as being "soft on
crime", just as Bush's last opponent for Texas governor, Texas
attorney general Dan Morales (who has since been imprisoned
himself on fraud charges), claimed Bush was "soft on crime."
However, a review of Kerry's actual voting record and personal
history reveals a consistent track record of supporting the death
penalty, mass imprisonment, harsher sentences, limited civil
rights and more importantly, the commitment and ability to
both pull the trigger and prosecute the cases himself.
In researching this article I called a prisoner rights lawyer in
Boston to ask about Kerry's record on prisoner rights issues.
He sighed and said "I don't know the specifics, but I'm sure
it's abysmal."
In 1986 Kerry voted for H.R. 5484 which enacted the federal
mandatory minimums for drug crimes, this included the
infamous 100-1 crack cocaine disparity where defendants
with five grams of crack received a mandatory minimum of
five years in federal prison while possession of five hundred
grams of powdered cocaine resulted in the same five year
mandatory minimum sentence. It would have been surprising
if Kerry had voted against this draconian law since it had been
introduced in the House of Representatives by then Speaker of
the House Tip O'Neil, Kerry's fellow Democrat from Boston.
Some people in the anti death penalty movement appear to
believe that Kerry is opposed to the death penalty. If he is, it
does not prevent him for voting for its expansion every
opportunity he gets. The same 1986 law mentioned above
reinstated the federal death penalty for so called "drug kingpins."
In 1994 Kerry voted for the massive 1994 crime bill that Clinton
had called for. As I wrote at the time [PLN, Dec. 1994], this bill
expanded the federal death penalty to dozens of new offenses,
including the killing of federal poultry inspectors, created new
crimes, funded 100,000 police, enacted the federal "three strikes"
law, gave the states billions of dollars to build new prisons, limited
the power of federal courts to rule on prisoner crowding suits,
eliminated Pell grants for prisoners to receive an education and
significantly changed the rules of evidence against criminal
defendants and resulted in a massive expansion of police power.
Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, has also been a strong
supporter of the death penalty.
In 1996 Kerry voted in favor of the Anti Terrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) which gutted what remained of federal
habeas corpus law as well as expanding the deportation of aliens
who had been convicted of a crime. The Prison Litigation Reform
Act was passed that same year but it was enacted as a rider to the
budget and thus no separate voting record is available.
Kerry voted in favor of the PATRIOT Act in 2001 which was a
Department of Justice wish list that had been around for a
number of years, essentially a continuation of the 1994 crime
bill and AEDPA.
As noted above, on his website Kerry is calling for more rural
prisons, which America needs as much as it needs a typhoid
epidemic. When Kerry says that America's freedom is the envy
of the world I don't recall hearing people in other countries wish
that they had over two million prisoners. While Kerry may be proud
of the fact that with 5 % of the world's population, the US has 25%
of the world's prisoners, few countries seem envious enough to lock
up that portion of their citizenry.
Kerry served as a prosecutor for several years in Massachusetts before
running for elected office. Recently his four months of service in
Viet Nam as a commander of a Swift patrol boat has come under
attack over whether or not he exaggerated his combat experience,
and that he was wounded four times in incidents that never required
hospitalization or medical treatment. The more significant aspects of
his undisputed actions in Viet Nam have been glossed over. Namely
that many of the Special Forces and CIA commandos Kerry's boat
transported along Vietnamese rivers were carrying out assorted war
crimes, including the torture and murder of captured civilians and
POWs, some of which occurred on Kerry's boat or in his presence.
Then Kerry boasts of killing a wounded National Liberation Front
guerrilla who was retreating. These exploits were laid out in detail
in the December, 2003, issue of the Atlantic Monthly in an article
by Douglas Brinkley, Tour of Duty, a sympathetic hagiography
excerpted from the book of the same title. Rather than running
for president a case can be made that Kerry should be indicted
for war crimes.
Both Kerry and Bush II are from wealthy families and have similar
educations and even memberships in the same Skull and Bones
secret society at Yale. I guess that is why it is called a ruling class.
On any substantial policy issue it is difficult to find any difference
between the two candidates. Asked by the New York Times how his
policies would differ from the current regime's, Kerry replied they
would differ in style but not substance. On criminal justice issues
neither candidate for the Democratic or Republican parties offers
voters any significant choice beyond being beaten to death with the
stick or the two by four. Both have reprehensible records on this
topic. However, unlike Bush II whose personal organizational
capabilities seem to max out at organizing a keg party, Kerry
has shown an ability and willingness to kill and prosecute people
himself.
If Kerry has any principles or actually believes in anything beyond
political expediency his supporters have yet to point out what those
may be. In his two decades in the Senate he has consistently voted
against the interests of prisoners and criminal defendants and in
support of state power and repression. It is unreasonable to expect
that if elected president he would be any different. No one in Kerry's
campaign office would return my calls seeking comment on his
positions on these issues.
Both vice president Dick Cheney and president Bush have been
convicted of drunk driving, twice each. They employ at least one
convicted felon, Elliot Abrams, in the white house, and won't tell
reporters how many other felons they employ. President Bush won't
answer any questions about his drug use in the past, apparently
believing the electorate has no business knowing if he violated the
nation's felony laws against drug use and possession. Of course, if
he has not violated such laws, one would think a simple denial
would suffice. Yet they condemn Kerry as being soft on crime when
he is anything but.
Bush's policies engender opposition and there is some awareness
that he is little more than a bag man for corporate interests. Under
Clinton not only were the rights of prisoners set back decades, there
was no resistance to it. When Reagan and Bush I attempted to gut
habeas corpus, there was opposition and the attempts failed. When
Clinton tried, there was no opposition and it succeeded. The same
thing occurred with regards to "welfare reform." It is likely that a
Kerry presidency would see a similar phenomenon.
Some members of the "anybody but Bush" camp argue that Kerry
should be supported at any cost but that lowers the bar for all
candidates. The most common argument is that at least Kerry
supports abortion rights for women. However, Kerry states he is
personally opposed to abortion and would not impose an abortion
litmus test on any judicial appointments he makes. This argument
also implicitly assumes that the more than 2 million victims of
mass incarceration in this country, almost all of whom are poor
and who are disproportionately black and Hispanic and mostly
men, are expendable and of no consequence, politically or morally.
That their liberty, human rights and families mean nothing and are
political fodder to be trashed for political gain. Poor, disenfranchised
and with no voice anyone in power seems compelled to listen to,
prisoners and criminal justice reformers have little choice in the
presidential race of 2004. Two empty bottles with different labels
indeed. Take your pick.
Paul Wright is a human rights advocate and the founder and editor
of Prison Legal News, an independent monthly magazine which
reports on criminal justice issues. www.prisonlegalnews.org. He
is also co-author of The Celling of America: AN Inside Look at the
US Prison Industry
(Common Courage, 1998) and
Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor
(Routledge, 2003).
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***Bring the Troops Home! Yes on N! Bring the Troops Home!***
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15) On patrol in Sadr City
[Scenes from the war in Sadr City, by a
*Washington Post* reporter: "The
soldiers ride for hours to the almost-
continuous thump of mortar rounds being
fired in the distance, but sometimes
go days without seeing the enemy.
Between patrols, they return to a
spartan base near a blue, onion-shaped
monument to the Iran-Iraq war to catch
a few hours' sleep. . . . The soldiers
are so accustomed to the sound of
mortars that they frequently sleep through
them." -- Steve Fainaru of the *Post*
describes the varied motivations of
three U.S. soldiers: (1) a job "is all it is";
(2) a spirit of altruism: "I
felt like I needed to contribute something";
(3) a need for tuition money:
"$50,000 toward his college tuition if he
would sign a contract to serve four
years." -- Their current assignment:
"Three times a day, four days a week,
the men join a four-truck platoon that
pushes into this ghetto of 2 million in
search of insurgents loyal to a rebellious
Shiite cleric, Moqtada Sadr. When
the soldiers find the insurgents -- or the
insurgents find them -- the
soldiers' task is to kill them." -- Thanks
to Tim Smith for posting this.
--Mark]
http://ufppc.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1476
World
Middle East
The Gulf
Iraq
IN SADR CITY, PROWLING THE DANGER ZONE
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post
October 3, 2004
Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2945-2004Oct2.html
BAGHDAD -- The column of armored
trucks jumped the curb, cut across a
dirt-and-gravel soccer field and made
its way north into the maze of narrow
streets.
A full moon cast shadows across Sadr
City, the insurgent-controlled Baghdad
slum. Headlights turned off for stealth,
the vehicles crossed into a
pitch-dark lot surrounded by abandoned
buildings. The lot was filled with
reeking garbage and clusters of glaring men.
"Man, I don't like driving across this field,"
muttered Anthony Stewart, 31, a
platoon sergeant from Sumter, S.C.,
speaking softly, glancing uneasily from
side to side. "Yeah," replied the driver,
Sgt. Nick Varney, 23, of
Ridgecrest, Calif. "It's an easy place to
get ambushed."
This Humvee crew -- Stewart, Varney and
Salakchay Monivong, 21, a Laotian
immigrant to the States who mans a
.50-caliber machine gun -- is at the core
of the U.S. military's strategy to take back
Sadr City, street by fetid
street.
Three times a day, four days a week, the
men join a four-truck platoon that
pushes into this ghetto of 2 million in
search of insurgents loyal to a
rebellious Shiite cleric, Moqtada Sadr.
When the soldiers find the insurgents
-- or the insurgents find them -- the
soldiers' task is to kill them.
The mission, as viewed by a *Washington
Post* reporter who rode along on four
Humvee patrols this week, is at once
monotonous, exhausting and, in moments,
terrifying. This is the war as it is being
fought all across Iraq: American
soldiers venturing out of their bases into
dangerous streets, confronting
myriad unseen risks. They face improvised
bombs secreted under the pavement
and in unmarked vehicles, mortars and
rockets fired by the hundreds, teams of
insurgents using light machine guns and
rocket-propelled grenades. This week
brought a spasm of new violence that
raised the death toll of American
personnel in Iraq to 1,060.
The soldiers ride for hours to the
almost-continuous thump of mortar rounds
being fired in the distance, but
sometimes go days without seeing the enemy.
Between patrols, they return to a spartan
base near a blue, onion-shaped
monument to the Iran-Iraq war to catch
a few hours' sleep. Many doze on the
hoods of their Humvees. The soldiers are
so accustomed to the sound of
mortars that they frequently sleep through them.
As of this week, platoons from the 2nd
Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment of the
1st Cavalry Division had conducted nearly
3,000 patrols into Sadr City since
April, according to the battalion command.
The strategy here is similar to that
playing out in other restive areas across
Iraq where U.S. forces hope to purge
the insurgency and initiate
reconstruction projects to win over
the populace. Those cities include
Samarra, where U.S. forces launched
an offensive early Friday to drive out
Sunni Muslim insurgents who had taken over the city.
"It's kind of ironic, when you think that
the Garden of Eden was supposedly
somewhere between the Tigris and the
Euphrates," said Varney, steering his
Humvee up a Baghdad road the military calls Route Pluto.
The day before, a remote-controlled
bomb filled with steel ball bearings
exploded about 25 feet from Varney's
truck. It instantly killed four Iraqi
National Guard soldiers riding in a
pickup truck directly in front of him and
splattered the armored skin of his
beige Humvee with ball bearings.
At the thud of another mortar launch,
Varney turned toward Monivong, whose
head and upper torso stuck out of the gunner's hatch.
"Hey, Moni, look for mortar signals, like
smoke, okay?" said Varney.
"Awright," said Monivong.
"You got a grenade, don't you?" said Varney.
"What?" said Monivong, unable to hear above
the drone of the engine.
"Never mind," said Varney. "I got one."
3 PATHS TO SIGNING UP
How the three men arrived at the center of the
most protracted and deadly
American conflict since Vietnam opens a window
on the all-volunteer army,
which draws hundreds of thousands of young
men and women attracted by a
mixture of idealism, patriotism and opportunity.
After getting out of high school, Stewart worked at
a Sumter furniture plant
for $6 an hour. One afternoon
in 1994, he recalled, he argued with his
girlfriend, got in his car and drove
aimlessly around the city until, finally,
he arrived at a shopping mall.
Across the street was an Army
recruiting center. In high school, when Stewart
had been approached by a recruiter,
he responded, "Get serious." But now,
unhappy and struggling to pay his rent,
he signed up on the spot.
"The rest is military history," he said.
Today, he is married with four
children. Ten years and several postings
later, he said he still views his
dangerous assignment as no more than a job.
"To me, that's all it is," he said. "I got kids to feed."
Varney grew up in Ridgecrest, a small
town in the Mojave Desert. Upon
graduating from high school, he worked
at a golf course for the summer and
snowboarded during the winter. Feeling
aimless, he decided to attend a
community college in Powell, Wyo., where
he could snowboard and study
communications. He lasted less than a semester.
"School was always pretty easy to me," said
Varney, "but I spent most of my
time on girls and partying."
After dropping out, he moved to Laramie
to live with his sister Melissa. He
had already accepted a job as a night
janitor when he was watching television
on his sister's couch one night and saw
footage from the bombing of the USS
Cole.
Varney went to talk with a recruiter.
"I felt like I needed to contribute
something," he said. "You go through
life, taking all the time, and you don't
really give back." He signed up.
Monivong immigrated to St. Angelo,
Tex., with his family when he was 9.
Approached by a recruiter, he was
impressed by one essential fact. The Army
would give him $50,000 toward his
college tuition if he would sign a contract
to serve four years.
He has completed three. He is about
to send $5,000 to Texas to help his
parents buy a house. A cartoonist
who draws the company's bulldog mascot, he
plans to enroll at University of Texas-
Arlington to study computer science and
animation. This week, Varney helped
him fill out his application online.
The three are part of the 16-man 2nd
Platoon of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion
of the 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry
Division. The battalion is based in
Fort Hood, Tex., but operates in Iraq
out of Camp Cuervo, about six miles
southeast of Sadr City. Half the platoon
is married; just three are
nonsmokers.
THANKFUL FOR THE ARMOR
Not even Camp Cuervo is totally safe for
them; mortar shells land frequently
inside the compound. On Wednesday, soldiers
heard a loud thump, followed
seconds later by a screaming whistle
and then an explosion just outside the
camp hospital. The blast, which was
believed to be caused by a rocket,
shattered the windows of rooms
housing the battalion physicians, but caused no
injuries.
"Jesus, I was just standing there two
minutes ago," an American contractor
told a reporter as they ducked behind
a wall. About 100 yards away, a plume
of smoke and dust rose from a courtyard
in front of the hospital.
That same afternoon, a mortar shell landed
near a huge white tent that serves
as the base dining hall. The men of the
2nd Platoon, on break from
patrolling, never moved. "We're used to
it," said Sgt. Ben Brown, 27, of
Tomball, Tex.
The platoon's operations begin with
businesslike efficiency. The men don
bulletproof vests and helmets and load
up the four Humvees parked outside
their barracks with coolers containing
water, Gatorade and Red Bull.
At exactly 3 p.m. one day, the platoon
leader, Lt. Tye Graham, 23, a West
Point graduate from Pecos, Tex., yells,
"mount up." The soldiers snub out
their cigarettes and climb inside the vehicles.
"I never used to be super-punctual,"
says Varney, steering and loading a 9mm
pistol and a black M-16 assault rifle.
"Now even as a civilian I am."
Varney, an amateur guitar player, is
white and thin, his manner quiet and
laconic. His military fatigues cover a
lavish tattoo of dice and guitars and
webs that snakes up his right arm.
Stewart, who is African American, normally
rides in a different Humvee, but on this
day has filled the spot of another
soldier who is on leave. Stewart seems
like a more serious older brother to
Varney and Monivong, whose smiling,
easygoing manner seems incongruous as he
stands behind the huge .50-caliber machine gun.
The vehicles move up and down the
maze of Sadr City streets, nearly
indistinguishable to an outsider,
turning back at a busy intersection that the
military calls Route Gold. The area
to the south represents about 20 percent
of Sadr City and is relatively peaceful.
The area to the north of Route Gold
is increasingly hostile -- crossing into
it in Humvees will almost certainly
draw fire.
The convoy takes a wrong turn, and
Varney, trying to turn around, backs the
Humvee into a concrete wall.
"Can we go a day without hitting something?"
says Stewart, exasperated.
Children run toward the convoy; most wave,
flash a thumbs up and jump up and
down with excitement. Some gather
rocks to hurl at the Americans. As the
Humvees move up and down the streets,
their radio antennas and guns brush
against thousands of sagging power lines
that are used to pirate electricity
into the concrete homes. The antennas
cause the lines to jump and
occasionally sever them.
Every 25 minutes or so, the vehicles
stop inside a courtyard. They park in a
loose circle and point their guns at the
neighborhood while the soldiers
dismount to smoke, chat and regroup.
The conversation turns to the day before,
when the roadside bomb exploded next
to the convoy. Two of the platoon's four
gunners, exposed in their hatches,
were injured by the blast: Spec. Clarence
Maxwell, who took a piece of
shrapnel in his right shoulder, separating
it, and Spec. Gregory King, who
suffered a concussion.
Without the armored vehicles, many of
which have been refitted for more
protection, the soldiers agree, casualties
in Iraq would be far greater.
HORSEPLAY, THEN A RAID
On Wednesday morning, the third day
of the mission, the soldiers were told to
prepare for an operation that was likely
to draw contact with the insurgents.
A surge of adrenaline swept through the
platoon. At 1:30 p.m., after a shower
break, the Humvees traveled from Camp
Cuervo to the staging base near the
onion-shaped monument.
The wait began. The soldiers milled
about in a courtyard, playing chess,
smoking and heaping good-natured
abuse on each other. Many wore brown
T-shirts with their blood types stenciled
on the front. Brown said people are
always giving him grief because it is
written so large. "They're like, "Hey,
O-positive.' You know what? Everybody
knows I'm O-positive.' "
Two soldiers began to wrestle and Graham,
the platoon leader, said sternly:
"After the mission!" When the horseplay
continued, several voices rang out:
"Knock it off!"
Nearby, an M1-A2 Abrams tank backed
into a parking space. The exhaust from
the massive vehicle lit a small tree on fire.
The platoon erupted with
laughter, then booed when a soldier doused
the flames.
Varney took apart his assault rifle, cleaned
it, then reassembled it on the
hood of his Humvee.
Around 9 p.m., Graham announced that the
platoon would have not one but two
missions: the dangerous assault, followed
a few hours later by a raid on
suspected members of the Mahdi Army, Sadr's militia.
Groans followed. It was clear that no one would sleep.
"We're robots; put that down," a soldier
said to a reporter. "We're frigging
robots."
Two hours later, the dangerous mission
was cancelled. There would be only the
raid.
The next morning, the Humvees rumbled
back into Sadr City. They blocked off a
street and soldiers from several platoons,
including the 2nd from Bravo
Company, burst into the houses.
In one, soldiers found an AK-47 assault rifle,
ammunition and a notebook
containing documents that indicated an
insurgent had trained in Jordan with
the new U.S.-sponsored Iraqi police.
They handcuffed, blindfolded and
detained a man with a prosthetic left leg.
In another, soldiers detained a half-
dozen men who they said appeared in
photographs with Mahdi Army insurgents.
The men were brought back to Camp
Cuervo and left bound and blindfolded at the
entrance to the battalion command post.
The soldiers processed the prisoners, then went off for lunch.
UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE | 212-868-5545
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***Bring the Troops Home! Yes on N! Bring the Troops Home!***
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16) Israel uses illegal tanks shells against Palestinians:
medics
www.chinaview.cn 2004-10-03 19:03:50
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-10/03/content_2049422.htm
GAZA, Oct. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- Palestinian medics showed on
Sunday x-rays and medical reports approving that the Israeli
army had fired tanks shells at the Palestinians, which are illegally
forbidden to use against civilians, local press reported.
Doctors at Shiffa Hospital showed black and white x-ray pictures
of Palestinians, who were killed and injured recently in northern
Gaza Strip, as a proof that they were hit by such kinds of shells.
The x-rays clearly showed little tiny nails infiltrating into the
bodies of the victims and stayed in the bones of the head, the
chest and the limps, and showed samples of the small sharp nails
that carry tiny fans at its end.
Doctor Joma'a Saqqa, chief of public relations at Shiffa Hospital
in Gaza City was quoted as saying that those tiny nails are filled
into the tank shells.
Once the shell is fired and exploded, thousands of these tiny nails
fly in the air and keep spinning until it hits anything it touches,
it added.
"These nails are causing severe inner injuries to the person it
hits. The nail keeps spinning while infiltrating into the body and
causes severe inner cuts to the inner organs of the victims," said
Saqqa.
Palestinian security sources and witnesses said that it is not the
first time that Israel is using such kind of tanks shells that are
called "Flushet", adding that it had been used by Israeli during
the last four years of the Intifada.
Two years ago, three Bedouin women were killed south of Gaza
City when Israeli army tanks stationed near Nitzarim settlement
fired two tanks shells at their tents.
A mother and two of her children were also killed as they were
working in a grapes field near the settlement after a Flushet tank
shell was fired at the room where they were sitting.
In Nuseirat refugee camp, an unmanned reconnaissance Israeli
army drone fired two Flushet missiles at a car that drove at the
entrance into the camp, where at least 14 Palestinians were killed.
On Tuesday night, more than 90 Israeli army tanks, armored
vehicles and bulldozers stormed the northern Gaza Strip area,
including Jabalia refugee camp with more than 160,000
Palestinian refugees.
The residents said that over the last six days, the Israeli army
has been firing tank shells and missiles from unmanned
reconnaissance Israeli army drones at Palestinian militants,
where the shrapnel of the missiles and shells causes a high
number of people getting killed and injured.
Saqqa said that the emergency room received dozens of
Palestinians with hundreds of cut wounds in their bodies, adding
that many others lost their arms and legs as a result of being hit
by such kinds of missiles and shells.
Medical reports said that 64 Palestinians were shot dead since
the beginning of the large scale operation Israel said it aims at
protecting the security of Israel and to prevent militants from
launching homemade rockets at Israel.
The reports said that more than 250 Palestinians were injured,
at least 20 of them are in critical conditions.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Israel Army announced
that the operations into northern Gaza Strip would continue until the
security of Israel is guaranteed. Enditem
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***Bring the Troops Home! Yes on N! Bring the Troops Home!***
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17) From: "International Solidarity Movement"
< ism-alerts@p... >
Date: Sun Oct 3, 2004 6:26 am
Subject: International Solidarity Movement Report
and Action Alert
International Solidarity Movement Report and Action Alert
1. Residents of Beit Awwa, Internationals and Israelis injured by
Israeli Army response to Non-Violent Protest
2. Death and destruction in Gaza continues as world leaders remain
silent in face of devastating Israeli army attacks
3. The International Solidarity Movement Condemns the Attack on CPT
Activists
_________________________________________________
1. Residents of Beit Awwa, Internationals and Israelis injured by
Israeli Army response to Non-Violent Protest
Israeli Army uses tear gas, rubber bullets and a piercing siren to
disperse protestors
Today, October 3, approxinmately 300 residents of Beit Awwa marched
with 30 internationals and Israelis this morning. They left the
center of the village around 10:00am and marched toward the site
where three bulldozers are being used to construct the Israeli
Annexation Wall.
Once they were near the bulldozers, two of the bulldozers stopped
working while the third continued to tear-up the land. Immediately
the Israeli army began throwing concussion grenades and shooting
tear gas canisters vertically into the crowd.
After 30-45 minutes, the Israeli army began shooting rubber bullets
at close range. One Israeli activist, Jonathon Polack, was shot
twice in the leg with rubber bullets when he attempted to help a
young Palestinian who was injured.
An ISM activist, Maya from Denmark, was also hit by a rubber bullet
that penetrated her back and was transferred to a hospital in Hebron
where she will under go surgery.
By 12:30pm, another six injured arrived to the same hospital in
Hebron and two more are going into surgery as a result of their
injuries. It is still not known the number of injuries in Beit Awwa.
The Israeli army pursued the protestors, shooting rubber bullets and
tear gas as the men, women and children tried to return to their
village. ISM activists reported that about 30 Israeli soldiers were
seen tear gassing children at the edge of town and then entered and
tear gassed the medical center.
At around 1:00pm, eye-witness reports communicated the Israeli army
is using a large speaker, mounted on a truck, that transmits an ear-
piercing siren. The high-pitch sound is deafening and painful and
is being used to disperse the villagers and their supporters.
The exact number of additional injuries and arrests is unknown at
the time of this report.
For more information please contact:
Eva: 972-47-619-275
Tariq: 972-59-6760-87
ISM Media Office: 972-2-277-4602 or 547-358-579
2. Death and Destruction in Gaza Continues as
World leaders remain silent in face of devastating Israeli army
attacks
Dozens of Palestinian men, women and children are being killed and
hundreds wounded in the massive Israeli army attack in the northern
area of the Gaza Strip.
More than 50 Palestinians, including civilians, have died since
Israel began the operation three days ago.
What is the response of world leaders who claim to condemn violence
and uphold international law?
The Middle East peace quartet of the United Nations, the European
Union, the United States and Russia remain SILENT in face of this
brutal Israeli attack on densely populated areas of Gaza!
The Israeli army continues to commit war crimes against a civilian
population.
On one day, Thursday, Israeli soldiers kill 32 Palestinians and
wounded more than 102 during their incursion into northern Gaza.
Three Israelis were also killed. The military attacks are being
aimed at refugee camps in northern Gaza, where the army said rockets
were fired.
Whatever the reason the Israeli army is using to justify the
attacks, men, women and children are paying a heavy price. Israeli
is violating international law by attacking areas that result in
civilian deaths and injuries.
Urgent Appeal From UHWC
For the last 48 hours, the Union of Health Work Committees (UHWC),
medical facilities are in state of top emergency in the northern
governorate of Gaza Strip. The medical teams are working
continuously to cope with the increasing number of causalities, due
to massive Israelis forces incursion into the northern governorate,
especially Jabaliya.
Israeli tanks, helicopters and various military forces are attacking
the area through four main sectors. The Israeli forces are
demolishing homes, destroying infrastructure and bulldozing trees at
the same time they shoot any moving target, including children,
women, old men or youths.
On Saturday, October 2, Al -Awda Hospital received 42 injured
people, 17 of are under 15 years old, 8 women, in addition to 8
martyrs (most of the injuries are due to explosive Bullets). Another
governmental hospital in the same area has also received tens of
causalities.
Two reports:
UHWC, Al-Quds Medical Center in Beit - Hanoun has been working 24
hours a day to cover the expected increasing number of injuries and
to offer other emergency medical aid. Beit - Hanoun has been
isolated from the rest of Gaza Strip.
Al-Assria (Al-Luhiedan) Medical Center - Jabalia refugee camp is now
in the middle of battle. The Israeli tanks and snipers are just 50
meters from the center, and all the other health and community
activities of Al-Luhiedan Community Health Center have been replaced
with first aid services.
The first aid medical teams and the ambulance service of the UHWC
(138 men and women volunteers) are working day and night to rescue
and evacuate the injured people. At the same time they provide
needed medical and food supplies.
UHWC teams call all International and human rights organization, Red
Cross, United Nations, and all those who are seeking just peace in
the area to urgently interfere to stop this massacre against our
Palestinian people. At the same time to pressure on the Israeli
government to stop its harassments against the medical teams and
civilians.
United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees Condemnation (UNRWA)
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees yesterday accused the Israeli
army of taking over schools in the Gaza Strip, while children were
still in class, and using them as firing positions for tanks.
"They have now taken positions in these three schools and are using
them as a military camp for their ongoing campaign, using them also
as firing positions," UN Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA) spokesman
Matthias Burchard said in Geneva. He said Israeli tanks broke down
the walls of three schools in the Jabaliya refugee camp on Thursday
while children were in class.
The Israeli army killed 10 Palestinians in Gaza yesterday, October
1, as it poured tanks and soldiers into the coastal strip, expanding
a ground offensive allegedly intended to root out militants firing
rockets into Israeli towns.
Palestinian officials said dozens of tanks pushed into north Gaza
while more forces massed on the border. Army bulldozers destroyed
homes as they carved paths for army forces.
What you can do:
1. Contact your local media and demand they report on the Israeli
army attack in a fair and accurate way, (especially in the context
of the rights of civilians under occupation).
2. Write letters to the editor condemning the attacks (if you are
from the United States include that fact that your government
provides billions in aid-of your tax dollars-annually to Israel)
3. Contact your government officials and demand they put pressure on
Israel to stop the assault. Israel must allow international
observers into Gaza.
4. Contact via phone, fax or e-mail officials of the Israeli
Government and demand the army withdraws from Northern Gaza.
5. Organize an action to protest the continued killing and wounding
of Palestinians in Gaza.
Israeli Government Contacts:
Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon
Office of the Prime Minister
Fax: 972-2-670-5475
e-mail: pm_eng@p...
Minister of Defense, Shaul Mofaz
Tel-Aviv 61909
Tel: 972-3-5692010
Fax: 972-3-6916940
e-mail: sar@m... or pnoit@m...
3. The International Solidarity Movement Condemns the Attack on CPT
Activists
The International Solidarity Movement sends a message of solidarity
to Chris and Kim and condemns the brutal attack by settlers that
left them both hospitalized. We hope that they recover soon and
continue with their work for justice and human decency.
Chris Brown, 40, of San Francisco, and Kim Lamberty, 44, of
Washington, were escorting Palestinian children to their school in a
West Bank village near Hebron, when they were attacked.
On the morning of Wednesday, September 29, 2004, settlers attacked
Christian Peacemaker Team members Chris Brown and Kim Lamberty as
they accompanied children to school. The children, from the village
of Tuba, have experienced harassment from settlers in the past as
they to school in the village of al-Tuwani.
Chris and Kim are members of the Christian Peacemakers Team, a group
that has been active in and around the West Bank city of Hebron for
several years. According to their mission statement, Christian
Peacemaker Teams (CPT) offers an organized, nonviolent alternative
to war and other forms of lethal inter-group conflict. CPT provides
organizational support to persons committed to faith-based
nonviolent alternatives in situations where lethal conflict is an
immediate reality or is supported by public policy.
For information on CPT and updates on Chris and Kim see: www.cpt.org
For news reports on the attack;
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
file=/news/archive/2004/09/30/international1257EDT0606.DTL
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~2439017,00.html
Report from BBC:
Please respond to this report, released today, October 3, 2004; it
is distorted and manipulative
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3701036.stm
For information on media bias in Great Britain:
www.arabmediawatch.com
Contact you local media and insist they report accurately on this
attack.
END
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