---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ! BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!
ALL OUT JANUARY 20TH, 5:00 P.M., CIVIC CENTER, S.F.
************BREAKING NEWS**************
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kkk1928.jpg
This link brings you to a photo of the KKK marching down
Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC in 1928. Evidently
they were able to get a permit.
(With many thanks to Kwame Somburu for supplying the link.
This site has a plethora of information about the KKK....
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War)
According to the A.N.S.W.E.R. Washington, DC news conference
covered live on CSPAN on Friday, Dec. 17, (the news conference
will be re-broadcast-see item following this) the U.S. government
is not allowing antiwar/anti-Bush protestors onto Pennsylvania
Ave. along the inauguration route.
A.N.S.W.E.R. reported, there are three types of tickets available
for the inauguration, Group A, is for personally invited guests;
Group B, is for contributors to the Bush campaign (for both of
these groups a list is carefully checked before tickets are sold;)
tickets for Group C, for the general public, are not available.
None. They are simply not sold.
The Government, in a stalling move, has not denied permits
to ANSWER for space for counter demonstrators, rather they are
delaying as long as possible with the knowledge that the longer
the permits are denied, the harder it will be for people to make
arrangements to come to DC to protest. If and when permits
are officially denied, A.N.S.W.E.R. declared they would challenge
the government legally as they did in the last presidential
inauguration "celebration."
We have a constitutional right to protest the inauguration.
BAUAW encourages all to show up in DC and come to Pennsylvania
Avenue with your signs and banners and express your opposition
to Bush and to the War.
We demand, along with A.N.S.W.E.R., equal access along the rout
for all. We have a right to protest our government or any of its
official representatives. Nothing gives the government the right
to disallow legal and peaceful protest.
If you can't go to DC, come out Jan. 20, 5pm, Civic Center, SF. in
solidarity with all protestors in Washington and everywhere who
oppose this war.
We are encouraging everyone to participate somehow by wearing
buttons and signs at work, at school and on the bus; hold banners
at freeway entrances, and crowded shopping areas etc. on Jan. 20.
Students should hold rallies and march to the Civic Center.
Come to our next meeting and pick a place to flyer or table for
Jan. 20 or hold a sign during the day, on Jan. 20 if you can.
NEXT BAY AREA UNITED AGAINST WAR MEETING:
SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 11AM
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
(NEAR 16TH STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO)
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Let's Hit the Streets
To Defend Abortion Rights!
Saturday, January 22
Emboldened rightwing abortion foes have had the nerve to announce
a march in San Francisco on the anniversary of the historic Roe v. Wade
decision! Show them that San Francisco is a reproductive rights town
-- save the date and plan to attend a counter demonstration!
What is needed in response is a multi-issue, militant, united front of
women, people of all colors, queers, immigrants, workers and everyone
targeted by the rightwing to show that the anti-abortionists are not
welcome in San Francisco!
Make your opinion heard! Please come to the coalition planning
meeting Monday, December 20, 6:00-8:00 p.m. at the Women's
Building, 3543 18th Street between Valencia and Guerrero, in San
Francisco. Call Toni at 415-864-1278 for more information.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) BLACK HUMOR: US deploys the Phraselator in Iraq
2) Energy Firms Lavish Funds on Inauguration
By PETE YOST
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP)
Dec 18, 2:04 AM EST
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BUSH_INAUGURAL_DONORS?SITE=KLIF&SECTI
ON=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
3) Cuban 5 Documentary to debut in U.S.
4) How Dubious Evidence Spurred Relentless Guantánamo Spy Hunt
By TIM GOLDEN
December 19, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/politics/19gitmo.html?oref=login
5) First Jury Trial Arising from the RNC Protests Ends in
Dismissal As D.A. Drops All Charges Against Gulf War I
Veteran and Anti-Depleted Uranium Activist Dennis Kyne
Mid-Trial Current rating: 6
6) Sunday December 19th beginning at 5:30 pm and
going to midnight and beyond, Musicians for Peace will our
concert in support of a U.S. Department of Peace.
7) From Kobe Bryant to Uncle Sam
Why They Hated Gary Webb
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
http://www.counterpunch.org/
Weekend Edition
December 18 / 19, 2004
8) World Tribunal on Iraq
Premeditated Death and Destruction Unleashed Against
a Sovereign Nation and People
By Niloufer Bhagwat
Opening statement before the Iraq tribunal hearings at Tokyo,
http://207.44.245.159/article7475.htm 11 Dec 2004
9) Democrats Eye Softer Image on Abortion
Leaders urge more welcome for opponents
by Susan Milligan
WASHINGTON
Published on Sunday, December 19, 2004 by the Boston Globe
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1219-03.htm
10) U.S. Waters Down Global Commitment to Curb Greenhouse Gases
By LARRY ROHTER
BUENOS AIRES
December 19, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/science/19climate.html?oref=login
11) Najaf, Karbala Car Bombs Kill at Least 60
By ABDUL HUSSEIN AL-OBEIDI, Associated Press Write
NAJAF, Iraq
1 hour, 37 minutes ago (12/19/04)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041219/ap_on_re_mi_ea/i
raq
12) Stolen Childhoods: For 246 Million Children Life is
Nothing but Work
In a message dated 12/19/04 10:43:17 AM,
knash@igc.org writes:
Monday, December 20, 2004, 7 - 8 p.m. EST, over 99.5 FM
or streaming live at
http://www.2600.com/offthehook/hot2.ram
13) Pentagon Seeks to Expand Role in Intelligence-Collecting
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON
December 19, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/politics/19military.html
14) Workers of the world are uniting
By Brendan Barber,
General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (UK)
Financial Times - December 7, 2004
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/414b186c-47f4-11d9-a0fd-00000e2511c8,ft_acl=,s01=1.
Html
15) Support the Struggle for Free speech in NYC!
March 20, 2005 March on Central Park to Demand "Out Now!"
16) Hello Friends:
Several members of the Jewish Palestinian Solidarity Committee
(JPSC) of Jewish Voice for Peace are planning a presence and silent
march around Union Square. It will be a reminder to holiday shoppers
that there is not peace or will ever be peace in Bethlehem as long as
Palestinians are living under Israeli military occupation.
Come join us at Union Square, San Francisco, on Friday
December 24, 2004, from 4pm until 6pm. We will gather at
the southwest corner of the square, Geary and Powell Streets at
4 pm and then proceed to walk slowly around Union Square on
the sidewalk. Please bring a candle and tell friends as we would
like as many people as possible to join us.
If you have questions, please contact us at
jewpalsolidaritycommittee@yahoo.com
Sow Justice - Reap Peace
"Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, people do not
easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy,
especially in time of war."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
17) Iraqis Round Up 50 After After Najaf Suicide Bomb
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters)
Mon Dec 20, 2004 06:25 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7138431&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
18) Iran: Israel, U.S. Rigging Iraq Election
TEHRAN (Reuters)
Mon Dec 20, 2004 09:25 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7140317&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
19) The New Military Life: Heading Back to the War
By MONICA DAVEY
MANHATTAN, Kan.
December 20, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/national/20riley.html?oref=login&oref=logi
n
20) On Thinning Ice
Michael Byers
Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Arctic Climate Impact
Assessment · Cambridge,
139 pp, £19.99
LRB | Vol. 27 No. 1 dated 6 January 2005 | Michael Byers
21) Bush Says Some Iraqi Troops Not Ready to Take Over Security
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/politics/20cnd-prexy.html?hp&ex=1103605200
&en=70930e3915321654&ei=5094&partner=homepage
22) Iraq's Crucial Election Ballot Down to Lottery
By Lin Noueihed
Mon Dec 20,10:23 AM ET
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=1&u=/nm/20041220/wl_nm
/iraq_ballot_dc
23) Report: U.S. Rentals Unaffordable to Poor
By Genaro C. Armas
WASHINGTON
Published on Monday, December 20, 2004 by the Associated Press
On the Net:
National Low Income Housing Coalition:
http://www.nlihc.org/index.html
HUD: http://www.hud.gov/
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1220-01.htm
"For a two-bedroom rental alone, the typical worker must earn at least
$15.37 an hour - nearly three times the federal minimum wage, the
National Low Income Housing Coalition said in its annual "Out of
Reach" report. "
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) BLACK HUMOR: US deploys the Phraselator in Iraq
[The Pentagon bills the Phraselator as
"a complete solution for cross-cultural
awareness." -- *Not*. -- (N.B. This is
not a satirical piece. It appeared
word for word as below, with a 2/3-page
drawing of the device being used by an
American soldier to tell a Middle Eastern
man: "DO NOT ENTER THIS AREA." --
The caption to the illustration reads:
"Programmed with phrases like 'Put
your hands on the wall' in Arabic, the
Phraselator allows American soldiers in
Iraq to get their message across to the
locals.") --Mark]
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/1941/
The 4th Annual Year in Ideas
THE PHRASELATOR
By Robert Mackey
New York Times Magazine
December 12, 2004
Page 86
No Americans suffer more from their inability to understand, or make
themselves understood by, non-English speakers than AmericaÂ’s soldiers in
Iraq. ThatÂ’s why this year the Pentagon equipped thousands of them with the
Phraselator, a hand-held electronic gadget that allows the soldiers to
deliver
hundreds of useful phrases, prerecorded in Arabic, to the Iraqis they
encounter.
The device, which looks like an oversize Palm Pilot with a speaker and a
microphone on top, breaks into Arabic when it hears an equivalent phrase in
English spoken by a user whose voice it recognizes. Like an electronic
parrot, the Phraselator may not be much of a conversationalist and can lack
charm -- sample phrases include “Not a step farther,” “Put your hands on the
wall,” and “Everyone stop talking” -- but its boosters claim that because
the
phrases are prerecorded by native speakers and not computer-generated, the
monologues have “a more natural feel.” The Phraselator is marketed as “a
complete solution for cross-cultural awareness.
Its creators at the Pentagon-financed company VoxTec admit that even the new
model, the P2, has a drawback: it is still just a “one-way” translation
device. In other words, it phraselates perfectly well from English into
Arabic (or any of the 59 other “target languages” it has mastered so far),
but
the device is no better at understanding foreign languages than the
Americans
who are wielding it. So the Phraselator allows occupiers to issue commands,
but it does not help them comprehend any of what the occupied may have to
say
in response.
Despite this limitation, VoxTec is planning to roll out a consumer version
soon, so it wonÂ’t be long before American tourists will be able to make
demands and deliver orders in foreign languages without having to learn a
single word of them.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Energy Firms Lavish Funds on Inauguration
By PETE YOST
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP)
Dec 18, 2:04 AM EST
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BUSH_INAUGURAL_DONORS?SITE=KLIF&SECTI
ON=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than $4.5 million from the corporate world
has flowed to President Bush's inauguration fund, much of it from the
energy industry and some of its executives in contributions of
$250,000 each.
Outside the energy sector, New Orleans Saints football team owner
Tom Benson gave $50,000 and his companies gave $200,000, the
fund reported Friday.
Northrop Grumman Corp., the world's largest shipbuilder and
second-largest U.S. defense contractor, donated $100,000.
Michael Dell, chairman of Dell Inc., the world's largest personal
computer maker, gave $250,000. So did United Technologies,
maker products ranging from escalators to aircraft engines.
Investment banking firm Stephens Group Inc. of Little Rock, Ark.,
gave $250,000. And the education loan firm Sallie Mae gave
$250,000.
Occidental Petroleum Corp., whose business stands to benefit from
the president's actions concerning Libya, donated $250,000, as
did Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company.
Exxon Mobil reported record third-quarter profits, thanks to
higher prices for oil and natural gas.
In April, Bush took steps to restore normal trade and investment
ties with Libya, enabling four American oil companies, including
Occidental, to resume commercial activities there after an
18-year absence.
Bush's action was a reward to Moammar Gadhafi for eliminating
his most destructive weapons programs.
Other donors from the energy sector included Texas oilman
T. Boone Pickens, who gave $250,000; and former Enron President
Richard Kinder, who left the firm five years before it collapsed
and now is CEO of one of the largest energy transportation and
storage companies in the country. Kinder also gave $250,000.
Energy provider Southern Co., which owns utility companies
in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi, gave $250,000.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, the policy organization of the
nuclear industry, gave $100,000.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) Cuban 5 Documentary to debut in U.S.
Dear Friends of the Cuban 5:
A new and important documentary on the Cuban 5, "Mission Against Terror,"
will begin touring in the U.S., along with film co-director Bernie Dwyer. A
Radio Habana Cuba reporter who is from Ireland, Dwyer and co-director
Roberto Ruiz Rebó, a Cuban TV producer in Havana, recently debuted their
film in Havana's 26th Festival of New Latin American Cinema, December 15
and 16.
The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five is sponsoring a national tour
along with local organizations across the U.S. for Dwyer to present the
documentary in many cities. By this tour, we expect to raise the visibility
of the
valiant cause of the five Cuban political prisoners, and the campaign for
their
freedom.
Dwyer's tour will begin Jan. 28 in Miami and end on February 28 in southern
California, We will publish the tour schedule in the near future, and hope
that
all Cuban 5 supporters can contribute to the success of the film. For more
information, please call our office at 415-821-6545.
Following is an excellent article from Radio Habana Cuba reporter Steve Fay
on the Havana premiere of Mission Against Terror (courtesy of
www.antiterroristas.cu)
December 15, 2004
The 26th Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, Cuba, is much
more than a venue for fictional film entertainment. As the President of the
Festival Alfredo Guevara said at the official opening, it is a forum for
demonstration and debate on the most relevant issues of social, cultural and
political identity of the Latin American continent.
The documentary "Mission Against Terror" that received its Cuban premiere at
the Charles Chaplin cinema this morning, adds a unique and eloquent voice
to that political discourse addressing as it does one of the most
contentious
political trials of the last 100 years and the ongoing undeclared war that
one
of the largest countries in the Americas has waged against one of the
smallest
for almost 50 years.
"Mission Against Terror" by Bernie Dwyer and Roberto Ruiz is a co-produced
Irish-Cuban documentary on the case of the five Cuban men imprisoned for
between 15 years and double-life plus 15 years on charges of conspiracy to
commit espionage and related offenses. Defense lawyers for the Cuban Five
(as Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, René
González and Antonio Guerrero have become known) insist that the men are
not spies, were never a threat to US national security, never used violence
and have been wrongfully convicted and excessively punished. What the
Cuban Five and their attorneys insist, and what is forcefully demonstrated
in
Dwyer and Ruiz's documentary, is that the men were actually trying to
prevent
further violent actions against Cuba and her people and against the United
States itself by infiltrating ultra right wing terrorist organizations based
in
South Florida.
But the sorry history of anti-Cuban terrorism launched from the US does not
begin with the trial of these five men. "Mission Against Terror" documents
over
45 years of what one ex-CIA agent called the 'undeclared war' waged by
terrorist groups against Cuba that has cost many lives on both sides of the
Florida Straits. Through interviews with some of the key protagonists in
that
bloody covert war, the documentary presents disturbing evidence that the so
called 'Land of the Free' is actually a haven to some of the world's most
heinous criminals and killers.
Co-director Roberto Ruiz told me that the documentary is so powerful simply
because the facts of anti-Cuban terrorism and the injustice of the Cuban
Five's case are also so disturbing:
"There's no rhetoric in the documentary. It's something that is very direct.
We
are telling the facts. There's no fiction. We tell how it happened."
But these disturbing facts have largely been silenced in many countries
around the world, particularly in the United States and in Miami, where the
rabid anti-Cuban sentiments of a reactionary core have blocked debate with
the island and made a free trial for the Cuban Five in that city virtually
impossible. The President of the Cuban Parliament Ricardo Alarcón, who has
been a key figure in the fight to free the Five, told me of his faith in a
US public
with access to the kind of information that Mission Against Terror offers:
"I am sure that if Americans were to know what really happened they would
react in a way that would be the key to the resolution of this case. It is a
very
serious issue for Americans to discover that for the last six years five
individuals have been imprisoned for the sole reason of having opposed
terrorist groups that operate freely from US territory. Americans would be
concerned to discover that in their midst there are people in full
(guerilla)
uniform that organize events and public demonstrations and go on Miami
television and radio. People elsewhere in the US don't know of this but it
is a
reality and Americans have the right to know of this. I am sure that once
they
discover this reality they will react as always - remember Vietnam and other
occasions when they were able to stop the immoral policies of their
government."
Bernie Dwyer, co-director of "Mission Against Terror", spoke to me about the
difficulty of overcoming prejudices against Cuba in the fight to present
accurate information on the Cuban Five's case and suggested that the
documentary's Irish-Cuban perspective could be crucial in that fight:
"The value of it being a co-production is that there's already enough
prejudice
against material coming out of Cuba. People are not even prepared to look at
such material as they've already made up their minds. The European
common position on Cuba is full of anti-Cuba propaganda, too, so this
doesn't
help. The value of this documentary is that it's a Cuban-Irish co-production
which gives it another profile."
Bernie was confident that the documentary would now build up its own
momentum and reach all the important audiences.
"Once people see it they really like it. They talk about wanting to
distribute it.
For example, a man from Canadian television today said that he is very
confident that it could be shown on Canadian TV and that it would go to the
USA if it was shown in Canada. Obviously the USA is the place we want this
shown as widely as possible. As the Cuban Parliament President and US
attorney Leonard Weinglass both have said, once people in the US find out
about the case they will take an interest in it and would put pressure on
their
local politicians to at least get them to demand a new trial.
International solidarity is also very important, but I think the point is
to get it shown in the United States."
I asked Elizabeth Palmeiro, wife of Ramon Labañino, what the documentary
meant for the relatives of the Cuban Five:
"For us as family, I think it will be a very important weapon for everybody
to
know about the situation of the Five. Why they are in prison and why Cuba
has to defend itself against terrorism prepared and sponsored in Miami."
She also alluded to the possible impact of Mission Against Terror in the
United States:
"In the US they talk about terrorism, they talk about the "war against
terror" but
they don't talk about the terrorist attacks that the people of Cuba have
been
suffering since 1959. My husband is in prison because he fought against
terrorism by infiltrating terrorist groups in Miami. The people of the US
have
not been told of this. He was not only defending Cubans but also US people.
Those terrorists like Orlando Bosch who are now free in Miami also carried
out terrorist attacks in the United States."
Co-directors Bernie Dwyer and Roberto Ruiz have spent the last year making
their documentary "Mission Against Terror" on the case of the Cuban Five and
the terrorist attacks the Cuban people have been exposed to for the last 45
years. I finally asked Roberto how the largely Cuban public in the Charles
Chaplin cinema had reacted and what were the future plans for the
documentary:
"Well, you saw that the public reacted very well. We have come from a tour
in
Europe and the reaction over there was also wonderful. We want to distribute
the documentary in different festivals to reach a bigger audience. We also
expect to go on a German and Irish tour early next year, and also a tour in
the
United States"
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) How Dubious Evidence Spurred Relentless Guantánamo Spy Hunt
By TIM GOLDEN
December 19, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/politics/19gitmo.html?oref=login
Capt. Theodore C. Polet Sr., an Army counterintelligence officer at the
detention camp for terrorism suspects at Guantá namo Bay, Cuba, had
just begun investigating a report of suspicious behavior by a Muslim
chaplain at the prison last year when he received what he thought was
alarming new information.
The F.B.I. had found that a car belonging to the chaplain,
Capt. James J. Yee, had been spotted twice outside the home of
a Muslim activi st in the Seattle area who, years earlier, had been a host
for a visit from Omar Abdel Rahman, the militant Egyptian cleric convicted
in a 1993 plot to blow u p various New York landmarks.
Although it was unclear what the activist had done or whether Captain Yee
even knew him, Captain Polet took the report to the Guantánamo
commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, and laid it out in stark terms.
"I said we had found something that connected Yee with a known
terrorist supporter in Washington State, and at that point, he got very
upset," Captain Polet said, noting that General Miller's ears turned red
with anger. "This became far more serious than a basic security
violation. The case was going to get bigger."
In fact, documents and interviews show that the case grew much
bigger than has been publicly disclosed, spinning into a web of
counterintelligence investigations that eventually involved more
than a dozen suspects, a handful of military and civilian agencies
and numerous agents in the United States and overseas.
Within less than a year, however, the investigations into espionage
and aiding the enemy grew into a major source of embarrassment
for the Pentagon, as the prosecutions of Captain Yee and another
Muslim serviceman at the base, Airman Ahmad I. Al Halabi,
unraveled dramatically.
Even now, Defense Department officials refuse to explain in detail
how the investigations originated and what drove them forward in
the face of questions about much of the evidence. Military officials
involved in the case have defended their actions, emphasizing that
some of the inquiries continue.
But confidential government documents, court files and interviews
show that the investigations drew significantly on questionable
evidence and disparate bits of information that, like the car report,
linked Captain Yee tenuously to people suspected of being Muslim
militants in the United States and abroad.
Officials familiar with the inquiries said they also fed on petty personal
conflicts: antipathy between some Muslim and non-Muslim troops
at Guantánamo, rivalries between Christian and Muslim translators,
even the complaint of an old boss who saw Airman Al Halabi as
a shirker.
The military's aggressive approach to the investigation was
established at the outset by General Miller, the hard-charging
Guantánamo commander. Along the way, some investigators and
prosecutors suggested that the job of ferreting out spies at the
base had put them, too, on the front lines of the fight against
terrorism.
Perhaps the most aggressive was the lead Air Force investigator
in the case of Airman Al Halabi, Lance R. Wega, a probationary
agent who took over the inquiry after barely a month on the job.
While he was later commended by superiors and rewarded with
a $1,986 bonus, testimony showed that Agent Wega had
mishandled important evidence.
Ultimately, Air Force prosecutors could not substantiate a vast
majority of the charges they brought against Airman Al Halabi,
a translator at Guantánamo, who had faced the death penalty.
He pleaded guilty in September to four relatively minor charges
of mishandling classified documents, taking two forbidden
photographs of a guard tower and lying to investigators about
the snapshots. He was sentenced to the 10 months imprisonment
he had already served, and is appealing a bad-conduct discharge.
Captain Yee, 36, a West Point graduate from Springfield, N.J., was
held for 76 days in solitary confinement, charged with six criminal
counts of mishandling classified information and suspected of
leading a ring of subversive Muslim servicemen. He was found
guilty only of noncriminal charges of adultery and downloading
Internet pornography. That conviction was set aside in April, and
his punishment was waived.
Another Guantánamo interpreter, and sometime interrogator, Ahmed
F. Mehalba, has been jailed since September 2003 on federal charges
that he lied to investigators who found that at least two classified
documents on a compact disc he had taken with h im on a trip to
visit relatives in Egypt. He has pleaded not guilty.
Coloring much of the episode, interviews and documents indicate,
were simmering tensions over the military's treatment of the roughly
660 foreign men who were then held at Guantánamo without charge.
"Lots of the guards saw us as some sort of sympathizers with the
detainees," Airman Al Halabi recalled in one of several interviews.
"We heard it many times: 'detainee-lovers,' or 'sympathizers.' They
called us 'sand niggers.' "
Airman Al Halabi, who came to the United States at 16 after growing
up in poverty in his native Syria, has emphasized his loyalty as
a naturalized American citizen. While insisting that he was careful
not to share his views with anyone but close friends at Guantánamo,
he said he was one of many servicemen and translators there who
were uncomfortable with the way the detainees were treated.
"I did disagree with what was going on," he said. "These people
had been there forever and were blocked from the legal system.
This country stands for justice and human rights, and there we
were at Guantánamo doing none of that."
Chaplains Under Scrutiny
The conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim servicemen and
the suspicions of improper relationships with the detainees by
Muslim chaplains had taken root at Guantánamo well before
Captain Yee arrived there in November 2002, officials said.
"Every one of the chaplains was accused of something while
I was there," said Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus, a former military police
commander at the base, dismissing the suspicions as unfounded.
"They were always under suspicion by the interrogators, because
they were interacting with the detainees and giving them Korans,"
General Baccus said in an interview. "The M.P.'s suspected them
all the time, too. They just didn't like the chaplains going around
talking to the detainees."
One chaplain who served under General Baccus, Lt. Abuhena
Saiful Islam of the Navy, was accused by interrogators of sending
messages from several detainees back to their families overseas.
The allegations prompted a formal investigation by the Naval
Criminal Intelligence Service.
According to three officials familiar with the inquiry, it turned
up no evidence of any wrongdoing by the chaplain. Rather,
they said, the case reflected the depth of suspicion among the
guards and the need for a clearer understanding of the chaplains'
role in dealing with the detainees. (A spokeswoman for the
Norfolk Naval Station, where Lieutenant Saiful Islam is now based,
said the chaplain had no comment.)
General Miller, who assumed command on Nov. 4, 2002, placed
a premium on clarifying the responsibilities of those serving
beneath him.
Captain Yee, a Muslim convert who had studied Islam in Syria
in the late 1990's, arrived a short time later. He was assigned
to advise senior officers on religious questions regarding the
detainees, provide detainees with Korans and prayer beads and
oversee the distribution of reading materials as part of an effort
to limit the radicalization of the prisoners. Officers said Captain
Yee was shunned as a traitor by some of the detainees, but
cultivated relationships with others in what he described as
an attempt to reduce tensions.
Soon, however, the chaplain's presence became a source of
discomfort for some of his colleagues, most notably Capt.
Jason B. Orlich, a 33-year-old former schoolteacher who had
taken over as the intelligence officer for the guard force at
Camp Delta, the main Guantánamo detention center.
In one of several sworn statements of his filed in the Al Halabi
investigation, Captain Orlich complained that Muslim soldiers
and contract linguists would come into the building where he
worked each day to pray, often loudly, "while non-Muslims
were performing their duties."
"They were fervent in their beliefs and encouraged other Muslims
to participate in their religious activities," he said in another
statement, referring to Captain Yee, Airman Al Halabi and two
of their friends, Capt. Tariq O. Hashim and Petty Officer Samir
Hejab. "A lot of their religious beliefs mirrored those of the
detainees."
The tensions reached a climax in late March or early April 2003,
several officers said, after Captain Yee questioned assertions
made by Captain Orlich during a briefing for interrogators and
others about the behavior of the Camp Delta prisoners.
According to one investigator involved in the case, Captain
Orlich filed a sworn statement to the counterintelligence
group on what he considered the chaplain's improper
participation at the briefing. Based on Captain Orlich's
complaint, officers said, Captain Yee was barred from attending
further intelligence briefings. The half-dozen officers of the
counterintelligence group also began to more closely
scrutinize the chaplain's activities and take note of the
grumbling against him.
"I was very methodical in making sure this was not just
a personality conflict," Captain Polet said in an interview.
"From a counterintelligence standpoint, there was nothing
to act on. But we made a conscious decision to monitor it."
According to investigators and prosecutors, some of the primary
accusations against Captain Yee echoed those that had been
made earlier against Lieutenant Saiful Islam: that he spent
an inordinate amount of time speaking with the detainees,
took frequent notes during those conversations and seemed
to some guards overly sympathetic with the prisoners' plight.
There was also an argument - often made by Captain Orlich -
that Captain Yee and some members of his small Muslim prayer
group at Guantánamo constituted a suspicious fellowship of
servicemen who appeared to sympathize with the detainees
and question some of the government's counterterrorism
policies.
"There was a concern that there was, like, a clique of people
who would go off and spend time away from the unit and
were not as supportive of the mission as they ought to be,"
said the chief Air Force prosecutor in the Al Halabi case, Lt.
Col. Bryan T. Wheeler. "If people want to have a prayer group,
that's great. If, on the other hand, you have people complaining
about the treatment people are receiving, there are ways to
do that. Subverting the mission is not the way to do it."
Over the course of 2002, the handling of the Guantánamo
detainees had been criticized in briefings and memorandums
by many of those who served there: General Baccus, his
counterpart for intelligence, Maj. Gen. Michael E. Dunlavey,
a chief of the C.I.A. field group on the base, the military's
criminal investigators, senior F.B.I. agents and others.
But according to many officers, General Miller ran a tighter
operation. Morale improved, they said, but with that came
an atmosphere in which criticism of the detainees' treatment
was tacitly discouraged.
"People were definitely careful about expressing their opinions,"
said one Guantánamo veteran who knew Captain Yee and Airman
Al Halabi. "But a lot of us felt some sympathy for some of the
detainees. A lot of those guys were low-level or no-level.
They were not terrorists."
Developing a Case
The case against Captain Yee turned, several officers said,
after Captain Orlich returned to the counterintelligence office
at the base in April 2003 with one of the contract Arabic
interpreters who had what several people described as
a frosty relationship with Captain Yee and his friends.
The officers said the interpreter reported overhearing the
chaplain speaking in Arabic to a detainee at the base hospital,
mocking a psychological-operations posters intended to
encourage the detainees' cooperation with interrogators.
This time, the counterintelligence unit responded more
quickly, filing a basic report of sus pected espionage or
subversion to the 470th Military Intelligence Group in
Puerto Rico.
The intelligence officials in Puerto Rico responded in early
May, two officers said, dismissing the allegation and
instructing the Guantánamo office to drop the matter.
But Captain Polet, then the head of Guantánamo's
counterintelligence unit, remained concerned. He rewrote
what was basically the same report, officials said, and
forwarded it to a higher-level authority, the Army Central
Control Office.
While Captain Polet's unit awaited a response, one of its
agents sent the Social Security numbers for Captains Yee
and Hashim, Airman Al Halabi and Petty Officer Hejab to
a friend at the F.B.I., two military officers said. The friend
called back to report that a computer search turned up
the report of the chaplain's car having been observed at
the home of the activist in the Seattle area - once while
Captain Yee was at Guantánamo, and once while he was
believed to be stationed at Fort Lewis, just south of Tacoma.
By the time the Army control office authorized a preliminary
investigation, General Miller had been briefed on the F.B.I.
information and had ordered Captain Polet to investigate
thoroughly. "Exonerate this man or bring him to justice,"
two officers quoted him as saying of Captain Yee. "Whatever
support you need to conduct this investigation, you will have."
A spokesman said General Miller would not comment.
In mid-June, General Miller was also briefed on the Al Halabi
case by Agent Wega, who had been sent to Guantánamo from
Travis Air Force Base in northern California to investigate.
As with Captain Yee, the initial conduit for accusations of
wrongdoing was Captain Orlich. He had discovered the
disposable camera with which Airman Al Halabi had
photographed the guard tower, and he learned that Airman
Al Halabi had come under investigation at Travis for
supposedly plugging his laptop into a government network.
Captain Orlich had also sent two subordinates to confiscate
a box of photocopied documents from the library where
Airman Al Halabi worked under Captain Yee, on the
suspicion that the two men were distributing radical
literature to the detainees.
"Who's to say what it was," Second Lt. Victor Ray Wheeler,
one of the people who retrieved the documents, said in
an interview. "But it could have been reinforcing fanatical
beliefs of the detainees."
The concerns about the documents later proved unfounded.
But two searches of Airman Al Halabi's Guantánamo dorm
room by Agent Wega turned up some the letters from
detainees that the airman routinely translated in his
primary job as a linguist. Agent Wega also surreptitiously
copied the hard drive of Airman Al Halabi's laptop, and later
found a letter from the Syrian Embassy authorizing him to
enter the country.
For months, Airman Al Halabi had been telling co-workers
he was preparing to travel to Damascus to marry his Syrian
fiancée, a family friend. But the investigators suspected
something more ominous.
When Agent Wega detained Airman Al Halabi as he returned
from Guantánamo on July 23, 2003, he found computer files
containing 186 detainee letters he had translated - all of
which, he said, Captain Orlich had told him were classified.
Rather than keep him at Travis while the investigation continued,
Air Force commanders ordered Airman Al Halabi's immediate
arrest and Air Force prosecutors got to work.
Airman Al Halabi soon faced 30 different charges, including
attempted espionage, aiding the enemy and bank fraud. But
many of the accusations began to dissolve almost as quickly.
The Prosecution Unravels
One charge of aiding the enemy was based on the second-hand
claim that Airman Al Halabi had boasted of distributing baklava
pastries to the detainees. It was soon determined, however, that
he had been on a mission in Afghanistan when the sweets
arrived at Guantánamo by mail, and that they had been
consumed by other translators before he returned.
Another accusation, that he distributed radical literature to
the detainees, was based on an erroneous translation of an
Islamic symbol in Ottoman-style calligraphy. The bank-fraud
charge collapsed after the government found that bank and
credit card companies had simply misspelled Airman Al Halabi's
name on some of his cards.
But defense lawyers also protested that the prosecutors
withheld some crucial evidence that undermined their case.
One of the prosecutors' most important assertions was that
a computer analysis showed that some detainee letters had
been e-mailed from Airman Al Halabi's laptop, possibly
overseas. Months after that claim was quietly dropped, the
defense learned that early on, a computer expert had told
the government that it was not clear the documents had
been e-mailed at all.
Airman Al Halabi's lawyers also made a charge of misconduct
after a government translator contacted them to say that one
of the prosecutors, Capt. Dennis Kaw, had discouraged her
from alerting the court when she found a mistake in her
translation of the Syrian government's letter. Captain Kaw
had insisted, rather improbably, that the Syrian government
had given Airman Al Halabi permission in the letter to travel
not only to Syria but also to Qatar; instead, the relevant word
meant "the homeland."
The translator, Staff Sgt. Suzan Sultan, also disclosed that
Agent Wega and other investigators had celebrated with beer
as they examined a package that Airman Al Halabi had sent
home with the documents later used to convict him on minor
charges. The agents later taped up the box, put on gloves and
photographed their steps as they reopened it, she testified.
"This is not the way our system of justice is set up," said one
of the defense lawyers, Maj. James E. Key III. "You are supposed
to investigate, and then charge. The system is premised on the
idea that men and women who serve should not be subjected
to these kinds of baseless allegations."
In the case of Captain Yee, Army investigators also operated on
the mistaken belief that the names and identity numbers of
Guantánamo detainees, which were found in notebooks that
the chaplain carried with him when he went on leave, were
classified.
But their suspicions were also raised by information from the
F.B.I. and other sources that suggested possible connections
between Captain Yee and Islamic militants.
A Dec. 30, 2003, memo by the F.B.I. counterterrorism analysis
section asserted that the Abu Nour Institute in Syria, where
Captain Yee had studied Islam, "may be an international center
of Islamic terrorism," according to a document reviewed by
The New York Times.
But the memorandum based that claim primarily on the activities
of a few unrelated persons and it noted that "the exact nature of
terrorist activity or training" at the center was "currently unclear."
(Officials of the institute, which is known for teaching a moderate
brand of Sufi Islam and is affiliated with the Syrian government,
have denied that it supports terrorism.)
According to another F.B.I. document, a search of Captain Yee's
home in Seattle also tur ned up notations linking him to two men
already in the bureau's sights: the assistant imam of an Islamic
center in Baltimore and another Baltimore man Captain Yee knew
who belonged to the Nation of Islam. Military investigators said
the F.B.I. also raised questions about some Muslims whom
Captain Yee had met in Germany around the time he converted
to Islam in 1991.
One F.B.I. official familiar with the Yee and Al Halabi cases
suggested that the agency had merely assisted military investigators
but had not endorsed their approach. But two military investigators
said that the F.B.I. played a far greater role, and that information
it provided had bolstered the notion that the two servicemen might
be involved in subversive activities.
A lawyer for Captain Yee, Eugene R. Fidell, had no comment on the
F.B.I. information. But he sharply criticized the prosecution of his
client.
"What happened to Chaplain Yee was a grave miscarriage of justice,"
he said. "The career and personal life of a loyal American officer
has been turned inside out, and he's not the only victim. This
case has proven to be a self-inflicted wound for the military
justice system."
Captain Yee declined a request to be interviewed. He is to leave
the military on Jan. 7, with an honorable discharge.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times
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5) First Jury Trial Arising from the RNC Protests Ends in
Dismissal As D.A. Drops All Charges Against Gulf War I
Veteran and Anti-Depleted Uranium Activist Dennis Kyne
Mid-Trial Current rating: 6
CONTACT: TO INTERVIEW DENNIS KYNE, PLEASE CONTACT HIM
THROUGH HIS ATTORNEYS AT (646) 602-9242
Dennis Kyne was among those arrested on the evening of
August 31st on the steps of the New York City public
library. On December 16, 2004, halfway through the
jury trial against Mr. Kyne, New York County District
Attorney Robert Morgenthau's Office made a motion to
dismiss all of the charges. New York City Criminal
Court Judge Gerald Harris granted the motion and
commended the District Attorney's office for its
fairness and professionalism. That decision came after
Lewis and Gideon Oliver, Kyne's attorneys, produced
video and photographic evidence which they believe
raise serious concerns that NYPD Officer Matthew Wohl
may have lied numerous times under oath.
On the 31st, according to Officer Wohl's testimony, he
was part of a mobile response team present at the
library over an hour before any arrests were made.
According to eyewitnesses at the library that day,
including Mr. Kyne, and videotape of the event,
members of the NYPD began searching and arresting
people shortly before 6:00 PM. According to
eyewitnesses, the searches and arrests were forceful,
apparently indiscriminate, and frightening. Among
those arrested prior to Mr. Kyne were a fifty-five
year old art history professor from the University of
Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, who
was at the library with his eighteen year old son en
route to a Yankees game, along with two women who had
been seated at a table in the plaza in front of the
library singing and playing guitar, one of whom was
sixteen and the other of whom was seventeen.
Officer Wohl testified that he personally observed Mr.
Kyne yelling in a "boisterous" manner just before he
was placed under arrest, although he could not
specifically remember what Mr. Kyne was yelling.
According to the sworn Accusatory Instrument Officer
Wohl signed on September 1, 2004, Mr. Kyne was
yelling, "Look what they are doing. The government is
taking away our rights. They lied to you; they lied to
me" in a "violent and tumultuous manner."
Officer Wohl testified that he personally effected Mr.
Kyne's arrest along with two other unidentified
officers. According to him, Mr. Kyne was "screaming,
yelling, and moving around" throughout the process.
When asked how Mr. Kyne had resisted arrest, Officer
Wohl testified that his "mouth, heart, and eyes" were
moving, and that he lunged in a number of different
directions, "almost like what a little kid would do."
Officer Wohl also testified that Mr. Kyne "went down
to the ground himself" and that Officer Wohl and three
others had to pick him up and carry him across the
street "while he squirmed and screamed" all the way to
the back of the NYPD transport vehicle.
Mr. Kyne's attorneys believe that the videotape and
pictures raise serious questions about key elements of
Officer Wohl's sworn testimony. Officer Wohl does not
appear on the videotape or pictures produced by Mr.
Kyne's attorneys. Nor does the videotape ever show Mr.
Kyne yelling what Officer Wohl's Accusatory Instrument
claims he was yelling. The videotape shows that Mr.
Kyne reacted to several apparently baseless detentions
and sometimes violent arrests by shouting that the
police were "fucking Nazis" as he was walking away
from the library. Officer Wohl testified that he did
not recall Mr. Kyne ever yelling those words, despite
that, according to his testimony, he was within feet
of Mr. Kyne moments before his arrest.
According to Mr. Kyne, as he was on the sidewalk
walking away from the library, a police officer in a
white shirt suddenly yelled, "That's a collar!"
Videotape and pictures of the event show that two
officers - neither of whom was Officer Wohl - then
forced Mr. Kyne to his knees and placed him in plastic
flexi-cuffs. As they were doing so, another police
officer, who was wearing khaki pants and a
short-sleeved, white t-shirt bearing no name or badge
number, recognized Mr. Kyne and ordered that he be
charged with "Dis Con and resisting." Mr. Kyne was, at
that time, complying with the officers who were
arresting him and repeating, "I'm not resisting."
Another videotape shows that the officer in khaki
pants - whom one person referred to as a
"Commissioner" - later approached a Lieutenant from
the NYPD's Legal Bureau and said, "We got one of the
troublemakers from Pataki's last night." According to
news reports, Governor Pataki was at McSorley's
Alehouse the night of the 30th.
Mr. Kyne was charged with seven violations and
misdemeanors, including three Class A misdemeanors -
Riot in the Second Degree, Resisting Arrest, and
Obstructing Governmental Administration - each of
which carries a potential sentence of up to a year in
jail. The DA's Office dropped the Riot charge before
the trial started. It also offered to dismiss the five
other charges in exchange for a single Disorderly
Conduct guilty plea, but Mr. Kyne believed that it was
his duty to fight the charges.
During the trial, Officer Wohl also testified that he
arrested four others along with Mr. Kyne, including
two French Canadian men who were arrested for merely
holding a banner in their hands in front of one of the
library's famous lions after another police officer
told them they could do so. Several of the people
Officer Wohl claims he arrested were prepared to
testify that Officer Wohl had not, in fact, done so.
"Especially these past few months in New York City,
the scope of constitutionally protected conduct the
Police Department has been criminalizing is shocking,"
said Kyne's lawyers. "We are worried that Officer Wohl
did not tell the truth about what the NYPD did to
Dennis. Maybe he was just following orders. If that is
the case - if someone ordered him to lie on the stand
- we believe that the District Attorney's office has
an obligation to investigate this matter immediately,
and lodge charges against those responsible, where
appropriate. Police officers cannot lie in a court of
law and get away with it. The District Attorney's
office acted admirably in dismissing the charges
against Mr. Kyne, but we believe that justice requires
more of them in this case."
Mr. Kyne comes from a long line of military men, and
is himself a Gulf War I veteran. Mr. Kyne served as a
medic for the United States Army and enjoys an
honorable discharge from military service. He served
in the United States Army from 1989 through 1995,
achieved the rank of Drill Sergeant, and was with the
24th Infantry Division, the most forward unit in the
conflict, during Operation Desert Storm. Mr. Kyne now
receives a monthly check from the United States
Government for "undiagnosed illnesses" in connection
with his military service. For more than fifteen
years, during the Gulf War, and even today the United
States military has been using "depleted" uranium in
artillery shells and armor plating. Mr. Kyne believes
that what the government refers to as "Gulf War
Syndrome" is, in fact, the result of the Army's use of
"depleted" uranium on the battlefield. He has written
a book on the topic, "Support the Truth," twelve
copies of which were in his possession when he was
arrested on August 31st.
Mr. Kyne was in New York City during the Republican
National Convention in order to speak about "depleted"
uranium. He was particularly concerned to speak with
New York City Police, Corrections, and Fire Department
Officers in connection with reports that four New
Yorkers from a unit made up mostly of those officers
had recently shown signs of manmade, "depleted"
uranium in their urine. Mr. Kyne is concerned that he
was targeted by the NYPD and forced to face criminal
charges because they disagreed with his fervent
activism against the military's use of "depleted"
uranium, which Mr. Kyne believes is still killing
soldiers.
Mr. Kyne was represented by Lewis B. Oliver, Jr. and
Gideon Orion Oliver, a father-and-son team of civil
rights attorneys. Lewis B. Oliver, Jr. conducted the
trial. The Olivers are among the attorneys affiliated
with the National Lawyers Guild who have initiated a
federal civil rights class action against the New York
City Police Department in connection with its conduct
during the Republican National Convention. For more
information about that lawsuit, please contact the
National Lawyers Guild at (212) 679-6018, extension
16.
Mr. Kyne's attorneys are calling on District Attorney
Morgenthau to dismiss the charges against the others
Officer Wohl claims to have arrested, and hope that it
will launch a full investigation into this matter.
They are concerned that, during the Republican
National Convention, police officers appear to have
made "dragnet" arrests, sweeping up groups of people
instead of individuals, and then forced them to face
criminal penalties based on the testimony of officers
like Wohl, who may not have seen what they claim to
have seen. "No matter when he said it, or how loud,
Dennis was right," said Mr. Kyne's attorneys. "They
lied to you, they lied to me, and they are
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) Sunday December 19th beginning at 5:30 pm and
going to midnight and beyond, Musicians for Peace will our
concert in support of a U.S. Department of Peace.
Dear butterflies
We have placed some of our music
from our CD on our webpage. Its a great
opportunity to sample some of the
wonderful music on our compilation peace CD for
free. Please go to
www.butterflyspirit.org and click on the music tab.
Don't forget that tomorrow, Sunday
December 19th beginning at 5:30 pm and
going to midnight and beyond, Musicians
for Peace will our concert in support of
a U.S. Department of Peace.
The Groove will feature Fontain's M.U.S.E.,
Laramie Crocker, Kashi Stone with
Beautiful Destruction and Phil Deal & the
Inside/Out Trio. The program will
begin with a kirtan by Maha Kirtan with
Saraswati, Jean & Richard and Mary
Eberspacher will perform a crystal bowl
toning and chanting calling the "I Am
Presence" of each person present. There
will also be sets by Mokai, Sophia,
Lauren Renee Hotchkiss, Alan Tower,
Chris Skyhawk, Marisa Handler, Maria Halyna,
Maria Mango, Roberta Donnay, Danilee
DeVere, Jenny Kerr, Alex Walsh, Jack
Chernos, Farasha, Essence and others.
Steve Bhaerman, also know as Swami
Beyondananda, will do a special comedy
routine. Sherry Glaser of Oh My Goddess fame will
be doing a skit called `Activist Mom' that
will reflect her involvement in
Breasts not Bombs.
Tickets for the event are $10 general
admission at door, $8 with butterfly
attire, or $6 with wings.
Please join us at Studio Z, 314 11th St,
San Francisco, CA 94103
For more information on this event and performers bios, please visit
www.butterflyspirit.org/DOPeaceParty.htm
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7) From Kobe Bryant to Uncle Sam
Why They Hated Gary Webb
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
http://www.counterpunch.org/
Weekend Edition
December 18 / 19, 2004
I read a piece about Kobe Bryant a couple of days ago. The way
it described his fall made me think of Bryant as a parable of
America in the Bush years, that maybe even W himself could
understand. No longer the big guy leading the winning team
to victory over Commie scum, but a street-corner lout, picking
on victims quarter his size, trying always to buy his way out of
trouble. Don't leave your sister alone with Uncle Sam! No one
want to buy Uncle Sam's jerseys anymore, same way they don't
buy Kobe Bryant's.
This business of Uncle Sam's true face brings me to Gary Webb
and why they hated him. Few spectacles in journalism in the mid
-1990s were more disgusting than the slagging of Gary Webb in
the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.
Squadrons of hacks, some of them with career-long ties to the
CIA, sprayed thousands of words of vitriol over Webb and his
paper, the San Jose Mercury News for besmirching the Agency's
fine name by charging it with complicity in the importing of
cocaine into the US.
There are certain things you aren't meant to say in public in
America. The systematic state-sponsorship of torture by the
US used to be a major no-no, but that went by the board this
year (even though Seymour Hersh treated the CIA with undue
kindness in Chain of Command: the Road to Abu Ghraib) .
A prime no-no is to say that the US government has used
assassination down the years as an instrument of national
policy; also that the CIA's complicity with drug dealing criminal
gangs stretches from the Afghanistan of today back to the
year the Agency was founded in 1947. That last one is the
line Webb stepped over.He paid for his presumption by
undergoing one of the unfairest batterings in the history of
the US press, as the chapter from Whiteout we ran on our
site yesterday narrates.
Friday, December 10, Webb died in his Sacramento apartment
by his own hand, or so it certainly seems. The notices of his
passing in many newspapers were as nasty as ever. The Los
Angeles Times took care to note that even after the Dark
Alliance uproar Webb's career had been "troubled", offering
as evidence the fact that " While working for another legislative
committee in Sacramento, Webb wrote a report accusing the
California Highway Patrol of unofficially condoning and even
encouraging racial profiling in its drug interdiction program."
The effrontery of the man! "Legislative officials released the
report in 1999", the story piously continued, "but cautioned
that it was based mainly on assumptions and anecdotes", no
doubt meaning that Webb didn't have dozens of CHP officers
stating under oath, on the record, that they were picking on
blacks and Hispanics.
There were similar fountains of outrage in 1996 that the CIA
hadn't been given enough space in Webb's series to solemnly
swear that never a gram of cocaine had passed under its nose
but that it had been seized and turned over to the DEA or US
Customs.
In 1998 Jeffrey St Clair and I published our book, Whiteout, about
the relationships between the CIA, drugs and the press since the
Agency's founding. We also examined the Webb affair in detail.
On a lesser scale, at lower volume it elicited the same sort of
abuse Webb drew. It was a long book stuffed with well-documented
facts, over which the critics lightly vaulted to charge us, as they
did Webb, with "conspiracy-mongering" though, sometimes in
the same sentence, of recycling "old news". Jeffrey and I came
to the conclusion that what really affronted the critics, some of
them nominally left-wing, was that our book portrayed Uncle
Sam's true face. Not a "rogue" Agency but one always following
the dictates of government, murdering, torturing, poisoning,
drugging its own subjects, approving acts of monstrous cruelty,
following methods devised and tested by Hitler's men, themselves
transported to America after the Second World War.
One of the CIA's favored modes of self-protection is the
"uncover-up".The Agency first denies with passion, then later
concedes in muffled tones, the charges leveled against it. Such
charges have included the Agency's recruitment of Nazi scientists
and SS officers; experiments on unwitting American citizens;
efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro; alliances with opium lords
in Burma, Thailand and Laos; an assassination program in
Vietnam; complicity in the toppling of Salvador Allende in
Chile; the arming of opium traffickers and religious fanatics
in Afghanistan; the training of murderous police in Guatemala
and El Salvador; and involvement in drugs-and-arms shuttles
between Latin America and the US.
True to form, after Webb's series raised a storm, particularly on
black radio, the CIA issued categorical denials. Then came the
solemn pledges of an intense and far-reaching investigation by
the CIA's Inspector General, Fred Hitz. On December 18, 1997,
stories in the Washington Post by Walter Pincus and in the New
York Times by Tim Weiner appeared simultaneously, both saying
the same thing: Inspector General Hitz had finished his investigation.
He had found "no direct or indirect" links between the CIA and the
cocaine traffickers. As both Pincus and Weiner admitted in their
stories, neither of the two journalists had actually seen the report.
The actual report itself, so loudly heralded, received almost no
examination. But those who took the time to examine the 149-
page document  the first of two volumes--found Inspector
General Hitz making one damning admission after another
including an account of a meeting between a pilot who was making
drug/arms runs between San Francisco and Costa Rica with two
Contra leaders who were also partners with the San Francisco-
based Contra/drug smuggler Norwin Meneses. Present at this
encounter in Costa Rica was a curly-haired man who said his
name was Ivan Gomez, identified by one of the Contras as CIA's
"man in Costa Rica." The pilot told Hitz that Gomez said he was
there to "ensure that the profits from the cocaine went to the Contras
and not into someone's pocket ." The second volume of CIA
Inspector General Fred Hitz's investigation released in the fall
of 1998 buttressed Webb's case even more tightly, as James
Risen conceded in a story in the New York Times on October 12
of that year.
So why did the top-tier press savage Webb, and parrot the CIA's
denials. It comes back to this matter of Uncle Sam's true face.
Another New York Times reporter, Keith Schneider was asked by
In These Times back in 1987 why he had devoted a three-part
series in the New York Times to attacks on the Contra hearings
chaired by Senator John Kerry. Schneider said such a story could
"shatter the Republic. I think it is so damaging, the implications
are so extraordinary, that for us to run the story, it had better be
based on the most solid evidence we could amass." Kerry did
uncover mountains of evidence. So did Webb. But neither of them
got the only thing that would have satisfied Schneider, Pincus and
all the other critics: a signed confession of CIA complicity by the
DCI himself. Short of that, I'm afraid we're left with "innuendo",
"conspiracy mongering" and "old stories". We're also left with the
memory of some great work by a very fine journalist who deserved
a lot better than he got from the profession he loved.
Footnote: a version of this column ran in the print edition of The
Nation that went to press last Wednesday. In fact the oddest of
all reviews of Whiteout was one in The Nation, a multi-page
screed by a woman who I seem to remember was on some
payroll of George Soros. She flayed us for giving aid and comfort
to the war on drugs and not addressing the truly important
question, Why do people take drugs. As I said at the time, to
get high, stupid!
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) World Tribunal on Iraq
Premeditated Death and Destruction Unleashed Against
a Sovereign Nation and People
By Niloufer Bhagwat
Opening statement before the Iraq tribunal hearings at Tokyo,
http://207.44.245.159/article7475.htm 11 Dec 2004
Honorable Judges , Prosecutors , Amici Curiae , witnesses of the satanic
death and destruction of the people of Iraq , of homes and livelihood , of
hospitals , schools and places of worship; concerned citizens of Japan .
We live in strange times. For even as a war rages fiercely in Iraq which in
epic terms can be compared to a "Mahabharat" , a fierce war between the
forces of right and wrong , justice and injustice , occupation and national
liberation ; we resume this trial in the dark shadows of an "Apocalypse"
which is the continuing military occupation and the reduction of the entire
population of Iraq into the inmates of a vast concentration camp unmonitored
even by the Red Cross and other UN and other International humanitarian
organizations. Unprecedented in the annals of legal history, evidence is
being recorded in this trial even as crimes continue to be committed with
impunity, bringing home to us the reality of human existence, that words are
never enough to defeat a brutal tyranny and even those of us who use words
as tools are speechless in the face of the deliberate and premeditated death
and destruction unleashed against a sovereign nation and people ,a member
state of the United Nations waged solely to capture its oil resources and
with that objective to subjugate and eliminate its population through one
strategy or another.
Millions of people in the world including in the United States , even before
the aggression and military occupation commenced , much before we commenced
our slow and painstaking examination of evidence and precedents , sensing
imminent and unprecedented danger to the peoples of the entire world
including to soldiers recruited to defend Republics and parliamentary
democracies proceeded to pronounce their verdict against the doctrine of
"continuous war " against one nation or another ;against the conversion of
domestic economies into "war economies" even as thousands and thereafter
millions were rendered unemployed .The people across continents opposed the
policy of "blood for oil" and declared their rejection of this strategy of
pre-emptive war for the control of resources of other societies and nations
.
The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War had estimated
before the military onslaught that a fresh attack against Iraq would result
in the deaths of anywhere between 48,000 to 260,000 Iraqi citizens and that
post-war effects could take the lives of an additional 200,000 Iraqis
excluding those killed in the 1991 attack on Iraq and those dead because of
illegal sanctions imposed on the civilian population of Iraq by the Security
Council and issue which I had dealt with in detail at Kyoto, quoting
extensively from the statements of Mr. Dennis Halliday a former
International Civil Servant of rare integrity who had resigned on the issues
of sanctions claiming that it amounted to an illegal declaration of war on
the civilian population.
Now in the 19 month of the occupation by the military forces mainly drawn
from the United States and UK along with other smaller contingents all
members of the coalition of the aggressors ; Lancet Online Medical Journal
based in the UK has published a study by American health experts and
researchers at the John Hopkins School of Public Health, Columbia University
and al Mustansiriya University Baghdad on the deaths of Iraqi civilians
under the military occupation. The study confirms that : " Violent deaths
were widespread....and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most
individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and
children..."
The report went on to say that: "Making conservative assumptions , we think
that about 100,000 excess deaths , or more have happened since the 2003
invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air
strikes of coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths."
Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham who collaborated on the research published
informed the media that they had evidence of the use of air power in
populated urban areas. Richard Horton editor of the Lancet in an editorial
emphasized that the "findings also raise questions for those far removed
from Iraq - in the governments of the countries responsible for launching a
pre -emptive war". The mounting evidence of the human catastrophe in Iraq
not seen since the days of the Second World War prima facie indicates that
the death toll may be more but not less than 100,000 and even the Lancet
report however sincere has underestimated the death toll from all facets of
the Occupation.
In assessing the extent of Genocide it is necessary to focus on the
destruction and attack on hospitals and health clinics to deny medical
relief to those who could be saved if the Iraqi health service was not
destroyed . This strategy was visible in the policy of organized looting and
destruction of Iraqi hospitals in the weeks and months after the attack .The
deliberate bombing of water pipes, the cutting off of water supplies to
cities and town under siege by US, UK and other forces , destruction of
sewage pipes and sanitary facilities , of electricity and heating have
condemned millions in Iraq to consume contaminated water and food ,as a
consequence the old, the feeble, and the children have been dying of
diarrhea and related diseases caused by contamination of food and water with
lack of medicines and health care leading to an increase in mortality. This
is an indicator that apart from death by violence the Occupation has
condemned people to death from malnutrition and lack of food , and water and
food borne diseases with inadequate health care directly caused by the
Occupation .
The intrepid reporter Dahr Jamail reporting for a weekly in Alaska has
disclosed that from what he had seen in six months in Iraq at close quarters
, it was difficult to find any family in Iraq who had not had a member
killed on account of the conditions arising from the Occupation. And what of
the heroic city of Fallujah which dared to resist the mercenaries of US and
UK Security Companies and Agencies, who have no combatant status under the
Geneva Convention in any armed conflict , yet are to-day high profile in one
war after another in Bosnia, in Kosovo , in Afghanistan and other theatres
including in the trafficking in human beings as slaves .On 14th October 2004
sensing that the city of 300,000 was to be singled out for destruction as it
had become a symbol of Resistance against the Occupation ; the people of
Fallujah through several organizations of Teachers, Tribal Leaders, the
Shura Council , the Bar Association, through the President of the Study
Centre of Human Rights and Democracy forwarded an urgent appeal to the
Secretary General of the United Nations in these words:
" Your Excellency, It is obvious that the American forces are committing
crimes of genocide every day in Iraq .Now while we are writing to Your
Excellency , the American warplanes are dropping their most powerful bombs
on the civilians in the city , killing and injuring hundreds of innocent
people . At the same time their tanks are attacking the city with their
heavy artillery..." "On the night of 13th October alone American bombardment
demolished 50 houses on top of their residents. Is this a genocidal crime or
a lesson about democracy? It is obvious that the Americans are committing
acts of terror against the people of Fallujah for one reason only : their
refusal to accept the Occupation."
"Your Excellency and the whole world knows that the Americans and their
allies devastated our country under the pretext of the threat of the Weapons
of Mass Destruction .Now after the destruction and the killing of thousands
of civilians , they have admitted that there were no weapons found .But they
say nothing about all the crimes they have committed .Unfortunately everyone
is now silent and will not dignify the murdered Iraqi civilians with words
of condemnation .Are the Americans going to pay compensation as Iraq has
been forced to do after the Gulf War......."
" We know we are living in a world of double standards .In Fallujah , they
have created a new vague target: AL ZARQAWI. This is a new pretext to
justify their crimes, killing and daily bombardment of civilians. Almost a
year has passed since they created this new pretext and whenever they
destroy houses ....they said 'We have launched a successful operation
against
AL Zarqawi. hey will never say that they have killed him because there is no
such person. And that means the daily killings of civilians and the daily
genocide will continue."
"At the same time the representatives of Fallujah , our tribal leader has
denounced on many occasions the kidnapping and killing of civilians , and we
have no links to any group committing such inhuman behaviour." " Excellency
, we appeal to you and to all the world leaders to exert the greatest
pressure on the American administration to stop the crimes in Fallujah and
withdraw their army....the city was quiet and peaceful when its people ran
it
....We simply did not welcome the Occupation. This is our right according to
the UN Charter , International Law and the laws of humanity. If the
Americans believe in the opposite they should first withdraw from the UN and
all its agencies before acting in a way contrary to the Charter they have
signed"
" It is very urgent that your Excellency along with the world leaders,
intervenes in a speedy manner to prevent a new massacre...." This was the
voice of the people of Fallujah appealing to the UN and to world leaders and
what was the response? After the administration of the United States had
taken care of the African-American voters and others through the Diebold
electronic voting machines on the 8th November commenced the destruction of
Fallujah which to the United States was a symbol of Iraqi resistance
throughout the world. There is hardly a home intact in the city of Fallujah.
The first attack by US forces with the Black Watch Regiments poised on the
highways , was on the Fallujah hospitals and medical personnel who report
the casualty figures and treat the wounded the messengers of the devastation
and loss of lives .Dr Khamis al-Muhammadi of the Fallujan General Hospital
has informed the media that she was seized and taken away by Occupation
forces even as she was about to cut an unbilical cord during child birth;
several doctors have been reported to have been killed and all hospitals and
clinics destroyed. AL ZARQAWI like BIN LADEN was never captured despite the
destruction of the entire city. Yet who can destroy the spirit of Fallujah
which has survived many attempts of a whole century to crush it.
Even as use of Depleted Uranium , of napalm, of banned chemicals spread
throughout the world , Mr . Kofi Anan reacted to the appeal of Fallujah and
pronounced what had already been known to millions that : "The Occupation of
Iraq is illegal..." with the Japan Times subsequently reporting that the
Secretary General of the United Nations would pay the price for this
statement with calls for his resignation despite past services rendered and
though the real price for the fraudulently conceived 'FOOD FOR OIL' program
vests with the Security Council and the entire policy and its implementation
was illegal as it sought to impose control over the resources of anther
sovereign country to regulate production and distribution of Oil.
With the war declared categorically illegal even by the Secretary General of
the United Nations , on what basis does the US administration plan to
increase troop levels .Why has it concealed from the world that it has
already created four military bases in Iraq with the objective of permanent
occupation . And what is the nature of the liberation of Iraq. Dahr Jamail
reports that Baghdad after 19 months remains in shambles bombed out
buildings sit as insulting reminders of unbroken promises of reconstruction
70 % of Iraqis at the very minimum are unemployed and there is a five mile
petrol lines in an oil rich country.Engineers and doctors are unemployed and
ply taxis .there are mass graves of innocent civilians in Fallujah and
bodies with skins melted by napalm .bodies bloated and rotting devoured by
dogs in the street after the complete destruction of the city of Fallujah
water supply is frequently cut off from cities and towns targeted for attack
children lie deformed by Depleted Uranium exposure in shattered hospitals
from lack of treatment or even pain medication the Iraqi Red Crescent, other
relief teams and the Red Cross has been obstructed in rendering aid mosques
are bullet ridden with blood stained carpets."
Even as governments and heads of State continue to deal with war criminals
we must recall that the assault on Fallujah and other cities , towns and
villages of Iraq are covered by article 6 (b) of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter
and in the trials of the Far East or Tokyo trials among the war crimes
defined include the" Wanton destruction of cities , towns or villages "
crimes for which the Nazi leaders and other Generals and militarists were
tried and executed .The acts perpetrated by US,UK forces in the onslaught on
Fallujah constitutes a clear violation of the laws of Land War found in the
US army Field Manual 27-10. What of the US, UK soldiers used as one half of
the poor to kill the other half ;recruited from working class families from
isolated and marginalized communities and towns affected by the economic
recession and the downturn sweeping the United States and England with
employment opportunities steadily decreasing. Christian Bollyn of the
American Free Press , Washington D.C asked Lt.Col. Joe Yoswa if the US was
using Depleted Uranium in Fallujah and received the reply that " DU is the
standard round on the M-1 Abraham Tanks" which have been used in Fallujah.
Because of the nature of poison gas exploded by the exploded DU shells,
American Free Press asked Yoswa if the troops were protected from DU
poisoning .Lt.Col. Joe Yoswa seemed unaware of the dangers posed by DU.
Marion Falk a retired Nuclear scientist from Livermore Lab informed the
media that US troops in DU contaminated battlefields are considered "throw
away soldiers" who are dispensed with once exposed , and replaced by others
who become throw away in their turn with risks of cancer ,deformed children
from genetic damage and serious health problems. There is no higher purpose
to fulfil for the "throw away soldiers" than the war and oil profits of the
Corporations at stake from the continued occupation and the fear and
unemployment at home; the bankrupting of the US economy are two sides of the
same coin of which one side is the Occupation and the other side is the
whipping up of fear and frenzy in the United States. Uranium Weapons
There is a direct connection between the appropriation sought for the war at
the cost of sweeping budget cuts and the steady elimination of social
security funds and post office savings .There is also a direct connection
between the nature of elections held in the United States , in Kabul where
Mr.Hamid Karzai the representative of the UNOCAL Company cannot stir out of
Kabul , and the elections proposed to be held in Iraq under conditions of
Occupation and coercion .
In all three countries the strategy is the same ; coerce the electorate and
declare an election as "won" after which without a constitutional mandate
enslave the majority of the people by obfuscating political ,economic and
social rights reducing countries to garrisons .In recognition of these
similarities and the impact of the illegal war on the people of the United
States that the anti-war coalition has supported the "absolute right of the
people of Iraq to resist the occupation of their country" and declared their
own resistance to re-instate the draft and to prepare for resistance if
conscription returns. In what has far reaching consequences for
International Security the movement has declared that "it is incumbent on us
to reject that notion that smaller countries must disarm and leave
themselves defenseless at the demand of Bush and the Pentagon. Such demands
are not only hypocritical , irrational and unjust , they amount to little
more than a pretext for more invasions and occupations " . In the context of
the fact that the resistance to the Iraq war has more than one front with
the the military front in Iraq and the political front in the Americas it is
necessary in view of the Security Council having acquiesced to the
Occupation despite the fact that it is illegal that the General Assembly
should be moved by a member of the United Nations to initiate moves for the
vacating of the aggression against Iraq under Article 35 read with article
11 (2 ) . Any organization in which some powers have the hegemony of the
veto can never fulfill the requirements of a new democratic international
order .
Prof. Niloufer Bhagwat
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9) Democrats Eye Softer Image on Abortion
Leaders urge more welcome for opponents
by Susan Milligan
WASHINGTON
Published on Sunday, December 19, 2004 by the Boston Globe
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1219-03.htm
WASHINGTON -- Leading Democrats, stung by election losses, are
signaling they want the party to embrace antiabortion voters and
candidates, softening the image of the party from one fiercely
defensive of abortion rights to one that acknowledges the moral
and religious qualms some Americans have about the issue.
I don't think it's smart to have the Democrats change their position.
They don't need to abandon a position on choice America agrees with.
I think they need to do a better job defining choice as the mainstream
value that it is.
Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who is
one of the most ardent supporters of abortion rights in Congress,
has encouraged Tim Roemer, a former representative with a strong
voting record against abortion, to run for the chairmanship of the
Democratic National Committee. The Democrats' new Senate minority
leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, opposes abortion rights.
No prominent Democrat has suggested that the party change its
long-held stance that a woman should have the right to an abortion
if she chooses. But as Democrats assess what went wrong for them
in November, some are urging a "big tent" approach that is more
welcoming to those who oppose abortion. Democrats say that attitude
might be especially useful with Hispanics, a critical constituency that
tends to be Roman Catholic and whose majority support for Democrats
has slipped in recent elections.
Abortion rights activists are alarmed at the potential shift in the party's
approach to the issue as they look warily ahead to Supreme Court
nomination fights and efforts in Congress to restrict abortion. But
Democratic leaders say they can reach out to voters in the "red states,"
which voted Republican in November, without compromising their
party platform on abortion.
"All Democrats are united around the idea that we should make abortion
safe, legal, and rare," but "we also have to be open to people who
are pro-life," said Simon Rosenberg, the president of the New Democratic
Network who is mulling a run for the DNC chairmanship.
Former Vermont governor and presidential candidate Howard Dean, who
supports abortion rights, said the Democrats should "embrace"
antiabortion voters and expand the term "pro-life" to such social issues
as providing for children's medical care. "I have long believed that we
ought to make a home for pro-life Democrats. . . . We can have
a respectful dialogue, and we have to stop demagoguing this issue,"
Dean, another potential candidate for DNC chairman, said on NBC's
"Meet the Press" earlier this month.
Kristin Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, said
that during this year's campaign, she was frustrated by her inability
to persuade the DNC to list the Internet link for her group on the
DNC's website. But now, staffers for potential DNC candidates have
been calling her to discuss including antiabortion Democrats in
the party mix, she said.
"We're very encouraged. I think people are starting to wake up and
say we can't alienate this whole wing of our party," she said. The
group points to a Zogby poll indicating 43 percent of Democrats
surveyed said they think abortion is manslaughter, a finding Day
said shows the Democratic party leadership is out of synch with
its members.
But abortion rights supporters worry that the right to abortion will
be further eroded if the party weakens its position -- or even if it
has high-profile leaders who favor restrictions or a ban on the
procedure. Roemer, for example, said last week on CNN that those
who don't favor bans on late-term abortion have a "moral blind
spot" on the issue.
"Tim Roemer is the one with a 'moral blind spot,' " said Gloria
Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
"He is completely failing to consider the women whose lives may
be in danger."
Abortion rights advocates are particularly worried that Democrats
will fail to mount successful campaigns against antiabortion
judicial nominees. Reid has said he would accept elevating
Antonin Scalia, a justice who opposes abortion, to chief justice.
Republican Senate leaders are considering an effort to eliminate
the filibuster for judicial nominations, a threat some worry will
make Democrats skittish about opposing all antiabortion nominees.
Feldt, who said she was not endorsing any particular candidate
for the DNC, said the party should do a better job explaining
its position on family planning issues, such as access to
contraception and teen pregnancy prevention programs,
instead of allowing Republicans to cast the Democrats as
a party that favors abortion.
"Putting prevention [of unwanted pregnancies] first is a great
vehicle to force the discussion. It will bring the conservative
Democrats and many moderates together, and it will make the
extreme right look as extreme as it is," Feldt said.
Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, agreed.
"I don't think it's smart to have the Democrats change their
position. They don't need to abandon a position on choice
America agrees with. I think they need to do a better job
defining choice as the mainstream value that it is."
Offering a warmer welcome for antiabortion voices would give
Democrats a chance at bringing back voters who might agree
with the party on economic and foreign policy issues, but balk
at what they perceive is an uncompromising stance on abortion,
Democrats said. Republicans, they note, finessed the matter
so that the party retained its staunch antiabortion platform,
but paraded Republican supporters of abortion rights such
as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani at the GOP convention
this summer.
Both camps on the abortion issue claim to hold majority support
for their positions; national polls tend to differ based on how
the question is phrased. Representative Louise Slaughter,
a New York Democrat who strongly supports abortion rights,
noted that more than a million people thronged the streets
of the Capitol earlier this year to demand that abortion be
kept legal. But a Zogby poll conducted last year also indicated
a red state-blue state divide; 57 percent of voters in states
that voted for President Bush in 2000 favored restrictions
on abortion or a ban on abortion, while 46 percent of voters
in states that favored Democrat Al Gore would approve
restrictions or a ban on abortion.
But even some who generally favor abortion rights become
squeamish about the procedure in certain circumstances, said
Marie Sturgis, executive director of Massachusetts Citizens for
Life. Opponents of a procedure opponents labeled "partial birth
abortion" -- a technique doctors use mainly in very late-term
abortions -- made Democrats look "hard-line" on abortion,
she said.
"The Democrats are not in touch; they're out of step with the
electorate," Sturgis said. "The Democrats are trying to stay with
the old methods, and they're not current."
"Listen, we need to be competitive in all 50 states. Our party
needs to be able to converse on that issue. And have a big tent
on that issue," Roemer said on CNN.
Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi, said the congresswoman
would continue to be a vocal supporter of abortion rights in
Congress, but would not oppose an antiabortion leader of the
party. Pelosi approached Roemer about running for the DNC
chairmanship but has not endorsed him for the post, Daly said.
Democrats could accept a leader who opposes abortion rights,
but would not tolerate a weakening of the party's position on
abortion, Slaughter said. The failing, she said, is that the party
has not articulated its position well: "I don't think we ever said
we're for abortion. We're for choice."
(c) 2004 Boston Globe
(c) Copyrighted 1997-2004
www.commondreams.org
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10) U.S. Waters Down Global Commitment to Curb Greenhouse Gases
By LARRY ROHTER
BUENOS AIRES
December 19, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/science/19climate.html?oref=login
BUENOS AIRES, Dec. 18 - Two weeks of negotiations at a United Nations
conference here on climate change ended early Saturday with a weak
pledge to start limited, informal talks on ways to slow down global
warming, after the United States blocked efforts to begin more
substantive discussions.
The main focus was to discuss the Kyoto Protocol on global warming,
which goes into force on Feb. 16 and will require industrial nations to
make substantial cuts in their emissions of so-called greenhouse
gases. But another goal had been to draw the United States, which
withdrew from the accord in 2001, back into discussions about ways
to mitigate climate change after 2012, when the Kyoto agreement
expires.
Governments that are already committed to reducing emissions
under the Kyoto plan used diplomatic language to express their
disappointment at the American position. Environmental groups,
however, were more critical of what they characterized as
obstructionism.
"This is a new low for the United States, not just to pull out, but
to block other countries from moving ahead on their own path,"
said Jeff Fiedler, an observer representing the Washington-based
Natural Resources Defense Council. "It's almost spiteful to say,
'You can't move ahead without us.' If you're not going to lead,
then get out of the way."
Because the United States rejects the Kyoto accord, it cannot take
part except as an observer in talks on global warming held under
that format. It has, however, signed a broader 1992 convention
on climate change that is based on purely voluntary measures,
and the European Union and others had hoped to organize
seminars within that framework.
But the United States maintains it is too early to take even that
step, and initially insisted that "there shall be no written or oral
report" from any seminars. In the end, all that could be achieved
was an agreement to hold a single workshop next year to "exchange
information" on climate change.
"We are very flexible, but not at all costs," said Pieter van Geel, state
secretary of the environment for the Netherlands and president of
the European Union delegation. "It must be a meaningful seminar"
with "a report somewhere," he added. "These are very modest things
when you start a discussion."
Delegations and observer groups also criticized what they described
as an effort led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the United States
to hamper approval of so-called adaptation assistance. That term
refers to payments that richer countries would make, mostly to
poor, low-lying island countries to help them cope with the
impacts of climate change.
The group that would receive the aid includes Pacific Ocean
states like Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia,
and Caribbean nations like the Bahamas and Barbados. At a news
conference here on Thursday, their representatives said rising
sea levels, accelerated land erosion and more intense storms
were already affecting their economic development.
But the issue was complicated by Saudi Arabia's insistence that
the aid include compensation to oil-producing countries for any
fall in revenues that may result from the reduction in the use of
carbon fuels. The European Union, which had announced its
intention to provide $400 million a year to an assistance fund,
strongly opposed any such provision.
Harlan Watson, a senior member of the American delegation,
would not specifically discuss the American position other than
to say there are "always tos and fros in any negotiation." He
described the results as "the most comprehensive adaptation
package that has ever been completed," and "something that
satisfied all parties."
The United States also stood virtually alone in challenging the
scientific assumptions underlying the Kyoto Protocol. "Science
tells us that we cannot say with any certainty what constitutes
a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must
be avoided," Paula Dobriansky, under secretary of state for
global affairs and the leader of the American delegation, said
in her remarks to the conference.
At a side meeting organized by insurance companies, however,
concerns were expressed about rapidly rising payments resulting
from more severe and frequent hurricanes, heat waves and
flooding. Representatives of major European reinsurance
companies described 2004 as "the costliest year for the insurance
industry worldwide" and warned that worse is likely to come.
Thomas Loster, a climate expert at the Munich Re insurance
group, estimated that the cost of disasters will rise to as much
as $95 billion annually, compared to an average of $70 billion
over the past decade. Experts here acknowledge that extreme
weather patterns have always existed, but maintain that their
frequency and intensity has been increasing because of global
warming.
"There is more and more evidence building up that indicates
that whatever is going on is not natural and is no longer within
the realm of variability," said Alden Meyer, policy director of
the Union of Concerned Scientists. Enough research has been
done, especially in the Arctic, he added, to establish that
"we are starting to see the impact of human interference"
and "a clear pattern of human-induced climate change."
Those sharply different perceptions led to a clash even over
what language should be used in discussing disaster relief.
Bush administration emissaries opposed the use of the phrase
"climate change," employed since the days of the first Bush
administration, in favor of "climate variability," a much more
nebulous term.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times
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11) Najaf, Karbala Car Bombs Kill at Least 60
By ABDUL HUSSEIN AL-OBEIDI, Associated Press Write
NAJAF, Iraq
1 hour, 37 minutes ago (12/19/04)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041219/ap_on_re_mi_ea/i
raq
NAJAF, Iraq - Car bombs tore through a Najaf funeral procession
and Karbala's main bus station Sunday, killing at least 60 people
and wounding more than 120 in the two Shiite holy cities. In
Baghdad, gunmen launched a bold ambush, executing three
election officials, in their campaign to disrupt next month's
parliamentary ballot.
The deadly strikes highlighted the apparent ability of the insurgents
to launch attacks almost at will, despite confident assessments by
U.S. military commanders that they had regained the initiative after
last month's campaign against militants in Fallujah.
In the Baghdad attack, dozens of guerrillas - unmasked and
apparently unafraid to show their faces - ran rampant over Haifa
Street, a main downtown thoroughfare. They dragged the three
election workers from a car, lay them on the street in the middle
of morning traffic and shot them point-blank.
The bombings in Najaf and Karbala, which Shiite officials suspected
were coordinated, were the deadliest attacks since July. They were
a bloody reminder that the Shiite heartland in the south - not just
the Sunni regions of central and northern Iraq ( news -web sites )
- is vulnerable to the mainly Sunni insurgents aiming to wreck the
vote.
Shiites, who make up around 60 percent of Iraq's population, have
been strong supporters of the election, which they expect will reverse
the longtime domination of Iraq by the Sunni Arab minority. The
insurgency is believed to include many Sunnis who have lost
prestige and privilege since Saddam Hussein ( news -web sites )'s fall.
The persistent insurgent violence has already raised questions
over whether residents of central and northern Iraq will be able
to vote. If attacks scare away voters in the south as well, it would
further undermine the first national ballot since Saddam was ousted.
In a message passed on by lawyers who visited him in his cell last
week, Saddam denounced the elections as an American plot.
"President Saddam recommended to the Iraqi people to be careful
of this election, which will lead to dividing the Iraqi people and
their land," Ziad al-Khasawneh, who heads Saddam's legal team,
said in Jordan. An Iraqi member of the team met Saddam in
detention on Thursday.
Saddam said the elections "aimed at splitting Iraq into sectarian
and religious divisions and weakening the (Arab) nation," said
Bushra Khalil, another member of the defense team.
The bombings in Najaf and Karbala, predominantly Shiite cities
45 miles from each other south of Baghdad, came just over an
hour apart. The first was a suicide blast that ripped through
minibuses parked at the entrance of to Karbala's main bus station,
followed by a car bomb in a central Najaf square crowded with
people watching a funeral procession attended by the city police
chief and provincial governor.
The Najaf car bomb detonated in central Maidan Square where
a large crowd of people had gathered for the funeral procession
of a tribal sheik - about 100 yards from where Gov. Adnan
al-Zurufi and police chief Ghalib al-Jazaari were standing.
They were unhurt.
Hospital officials said 47 people were killed and at least 90
others wounded in the blast, which went off about 400 yards
from the Imam Ali Shrine, the holiest Shiite site in Iraq
"A car bomb exploded near us," al-Zurufi said. "I saw about
10 people killed." Al-Jazaari believed he and al-Zurufi were
the targets of the attack.
The blast sheered facades off nearby buildings and brought
down part of a two-floor building. Dozens of local men
clambered over the rubble, digging for survivors.
The Karbala blast destroyed about 10 passenger minibuses
and set ablaze five cars outside the crowded Bab Baghdad bus
station. Hospital officials said 13 people were killed and 33 injured.
It was Karbala's second bombing in a week. On Wednesday,
a bomb exploded at the city's gold-domed Imam Hussein Shrine,
killing eight people and wounding 40 in an apparent attempt to
kill a top aide to Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
An official with the leading Shiite political party, the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution, said the two bombings
Sunday were "no doubt" linked. "These operations aim at driving
the Shiites away from the political process and toward acts of
revenge to undermine the national unity," Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer
said. "The whole issue has to do with elections."
Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Said al-Hakim, one of Najaf's top
four Shiite clerics along with al-Sistani, denounced the bombings,
saying they aimed to "create a disturbance in security and incite
sectarian sedition" and that God will "avenge and compensate"
the victims.
The Baghdad ambush was the latest attack to target Iraqi officials
working to organize the elections.
During morning rush hour, about 30 armed insurgents, hurling
hand grenades and firing guns, swarmed onto Haifa Street, the
scene of repeated clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents.
They stopped a car carrying five employees of the Iraqi Electoral
Commission and dragged out three of them. The other two escaped.
Pistol-wielding guerrillas forced the officials to kneel in the middle
of Haifa Street, while cars behind them braked to a halt, with some
panicked drivers trying to reverse away. One of the officials was
punched by the gunmen as he lay on the ground, while another
knelt nearby, before the militants shot all three at point-blank range.
The gunmen then set fire to the officials' car.
The commission condemned the attack as a "terrorist ambush."
A police official said the ferocity of the clashes prevented police
from nearing the area. The attackers, most of whom wore no
masks or scarves over their faces, set fire to at least one other
vehicle before melting away as U.S. and Iraqi National Guard
forces cordoned off the area.
Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi, who is running in the
Jan. 30 elections, said the Haifa Street violence proved there
should be a "short postponement" of the national polls to
address the concerns of senior Sunni clerics demanding
a boycott.
Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a pro-American
secular Shiite, said an increase in attacks ahead of the elections
had been anticipated.
"For sure we expect strikes and we hope the eyes of our people
will be open to inform authorities and help them in doing their
job," told Al-Iraqiya TV.
Meanwhile, masked insurgents claiming to represent three Iraqi
militant groups released a videotape showing what they said
were 10 abducted Iraqis who had been working for an American
security and reconstruction company.
The militants said they represent the Mujahedeen Army, the
Black Banner Brigade and the Mutassim Bellah Brigade, all
previously unknown groups. Nine blindfolded hostages were
seen lined up against a stone wall and a 10th was lying in a bed,
apparently wounded.
The kidnappers said they would kill the hostages if the
Washington-based company, Sandi Group, does not leave Iraq.
___
Associated Press Writers Mariam Fam and Sameer N. Yacoub
in Baghdad and Gassid Jabbar in Karbala contributed to this report.
Copyright (c) 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
The information contained in the AP News report may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the
prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright (c) 2004 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) Stolen Childhoods: For 246 Million Children Life is
Nothing but Work
In a message dated 12/19/04 10:43:17 AM,
knash@igc.org writes:
Monday, December 20, 2004, 7 - 8 p.m. EST, over 99.5 FM
or streaming live at
http://www.2600.com/offthehook/hot2.ram
WBAI Radio's Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report
Produced & Hosted by Mimi Rosenberg & Ken Nash
Monday, December 20, 2004, 7 - 8 p.m. EST, over 99.5 FM
or streaming live at http://www.2600.com/offthehook/hot2.ram
Stolen Childhoods: For 246 Million Children Life is
Nothing but Work with
Robin Romano, Co-Director, Stolen Childhoods
Pharis J. Harvey, Senior Consultant, International Labor
Rights Fund, &
Charlie Kernaghan & Barbara Briggs, National Labor
Committee
" The existence of child labor is the worst
form of human rights violation.
Even animals do not allow their babies
to produce wealth and food for them.
In the animal world adults arrange
food for their babies.
Sadly, in human society we do it
the other way around."
Kailash Satyarthi, International Coordinator & Founder,
Global March Against Child Labor
After reading this poem, I am reminded
of the poem by the American Socialist
Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn in 1915 and of
how things are worse today for world's children.
"The golf links lie so near the mill
that almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And watch the men at play."
For more information visit
http://www.buildingbridgesonline.org
send e-mail to mimi@buildingbridgesonline.org
To listen to selected archived Building Bridges
programs click on the link below:
www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=producer-info&uid=123&nav=producer-directory
ducer-directory>
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) Pentagon Seeks to Expand Role in Intelligence-Collecting
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON
December 19, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/politics/19military.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - The Pentagon is drawing up a plan that
would give the military a more prominent role in intelligence-collection
operations that have traditionally been the province of the Central
Intelligence Agency, including missions aimed at terrorist groups
and those involved in weapons proliferation, Defense Department
officials say.
The proposal is being described by some intelligence officials as
an effort by the Pentagon to expand its role in intelligence gathering
at a time when legislation signed by President Bush on Friday sets in
motion sweeping changes in the intelligence community, including
the creation of a national intelligence director. The main purpose
of that overhaul is to improve coordination among the country's
15 intelligence agencies, including those controlled by the Pentagon.
The details of the plan remain secret and are evolving, but
indications of its scope and significance have begun to emerge
in recent weeks. One part of the overall proposal is being drafted
by a team led by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, a deputy under
secretary of defense.
Among the ideas cited by Defense Department officials is the
idea of "fighting for intelligence," or commencing combat
operations chiefly to obtain intelligence.
The proposal also calls for a major expansion of human intelligence,
which is information gathered by spies rather than by technological
means, both within the military services and the Defense Intelligence
Agency, including more missions aimed at acquiring specific
information sought by policy makers.
The proposal is the latest chapter in the fierce and long-running
rivalry between the Pentagon and the C.I.A. for dominance over
intelligence collection.
White House officials are monitoring the Pentagon's planning, as
is the C.I.A. The proposal has not yet won White House approval,
according to administration officials. It is unclear to what extent
American military forces have already been given additional
authority to carry out intelligence-gathering missions.
Until now, intelligence operations run by the Pentagon have
focused primarily on gathering information about enemy forces.
But the overarching proposal being drafted in the Pentagon,
which encompasses General Boykin's efforts, would focus military
intelligence operations increasingly on counterterrorism and
counterproliferation, areas in which the C.I.A. has played the
leading role.
"Right now, we're looking at providing Special Operations forces
some of the flexibility the C.I.A. has had for years," said a Defense
Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because the plan has not yet been approved. "It would be used
judiciously, and with all appropriate oversight controls."
General Boykin's proposal would revamp military commands
to ensure that senior officers planning and fighting wars work
more closely with the intelligence analysts tracking threats like
terrorists and insurgency cells. Another part of the Pentagon's
plan was articulated in a recent directive by Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld that instructed regional commanders to
expand the military's role in intelligence gathering, particularly
in tracking terrorist and insurgent leaders.
While declining to comment directly on the recent directive,
a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said, "Regional
commanders are looking at ways to maximize the use of
their resources to contribute to the overall intelligence picture."
In public allusions to the plan, both General Boykin and Vice
Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, the director of the Defense Intelligence
Agency, have stuck to generalities. It is still unclear how many
additional personnel may be assigned to intelligence gathering
or when and where such operations may take place. But some
intelligence officials say they believe those remarks open the
way to more clandestine military operations intended to gather
intelligence on terrorists and weapons proliferators.
One former intelligence official questioned the utility of the
military's putting more resources into intelligence collection
at a time when it is already stretched thin in dealing with the
counterinsurgency in Iraq and addressing threats elsewhere.
"If you're a shooter, go do that job," said the former intelligence
official, who has opposed efforts by the Pentagon to expand
its intelligence-gathering role. "But don't put the shooter in
a pinstripe suit and send him to Beirut to chase bad guys."
Still, a current intelligence official who works outside the
Pentagon described the relationship between the Pentagon
and the C.I.A. as "closer than ever," but he added that
"cooperation is strongest in the places where it counts most,
like Iraq and Afghanistan." The official said, "There's a real
sense that there's plenty of work for everyone."
General Boykin was traveling abroad and not available for
comment this week. Over the last two weeks, he and his top
aides have declined repeated interview requests on this subject.
The general provided an overview of the plan in an address
in October to the Association of the United States Army,
a nonprofit educational organization. Copies of his briefing
slides are posted on the group's Web site.
A synopsis of General Boykin's plan was provided by Defense
Department officials, as were remarks prepared for delivery
in a Nov. 15 address by Admiral Jacoby at a conference on
military intelligence.
"Our present intelligence collection architecture - optimized
to identify and track large conventional forces - is inadequate
to warn against these new challenges for terrorists, provide
sufficient information on insurgent groups, determine the
status of discrete W.M.D. production capabilities, learn the
intentions of leaderships from rogue states, or determine
friend from foe when intermingled in a foreign country,"
Admiral Jacoby said in that speech.
General Boykin, who attracted controversy last year for saying in
remarks to Christian groups that Muslims worship "an idol" and
describing the battle against Muslim radicals as a fight against
Satan, has been the prime architect of the proposal, which has
been under review at the Pentagon since January 2004. The
general reports to Stephen A. Cambone, who since 2003 has
used his newly created post as under secretary of intelligence
to assert a role in which he has competed with George J. Tenet,
the former director of central intelligence, and his successors
for influence over American intelligence agencies.
Among the proposals described by Defense Department officials
is a plan to create a Joint Intelligence Operational Command
within the Pentagon, which would elevate intelligence to much
more power and prominence and possibly replace the Defense
Intelligence Agency.
Maj. Gen. Charles W. Thomas, a retired senior Army intelligence
officer who has worked as a consultant for General Boykin on his
project, said he broadly supported the general's goals. But he
warned that one possible danger in bringing battle commanders
and intelligence officials so close together to fight a common
enemy was the risk that the intelligence could be skewed to fit
the commander's war plan and not the reality on the ground.
A spokesman for the Special Operations Command in Tampa,
Fla., Col. Samuel Taylor, said on Friday that the command had
been briefed on an early draft of General Boykin's remodeling
initiative, but that staff officers and senior commanders had
not yet reviewed it in depth.
President Bush last month ordered the C.I.A. and the Defense
Department to review a plan that could expand the Pentagon's
role in covert operations, perhaps replacing the C.I.A. in providing
paramilitary forces for such missions.
The idea of transferring paramilitary authority from the intelligence
agency to the military's Special Operations Forces was among
several prominent recommendations made by the Sept. 11
commission.
The proposal remains under review. But in public testimony
in August, Mr. Rumsfeld and John E. McLaughlin, who was then
the acting intelligence chief, expressed reservations about the
idea, and it was not included in the measure Mr. Bush approved
on Friday.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Workers of the world are uniting
By Brendan Barber,
General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (UK)
Financial Times - December 7, 2004
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/414b186c-47f4-11d9-a0fd-00000e2511c8,ft_acl=,s01=1.
Html
The world trade union movement is poised to follow the
lead of transnational companies, by extending its reach
and throwing off the shackles of national boundaries.
Unions are about to go global.
It will come as news to some employers - and a shock to
some of the anti-globalisers - but trade unions are in
favour of globalisation. Most of the world's trade
union movements are meeting this week in Japan to
discuss an epoch-making strategy called "Globalising
Solidarity". By the end of this week, we may well have
ended 50 years of division in world trade unionism,
abandoned a creativity-stifling global bureaucracy and
refocused our core business on campaigning and
recruitment.
In recent years, trade unions have sometimes looked,
and felt, outdated and sluggish, unable to respond as
business "delocalises" and the free movement of capital
and jobs makes it possible for companies to race for
the bottom in terms of wages, employment conditions and
questions of health and safety. Some have called this
the "Wal-Mart-isation" of the workplace.
Unions have made academic statements and sent symbolic
deputations to address global institutions such as the
World Bank, the International Labour Organisation and
the World Trade Organisation. Bureaucrat has spoken
unto bureaucrat while transnational corporations have
spread around the globe, revolutionising world trade.
Some of this is overstated. Despite comparatively
little progress in the US, Wal-Mart has been dragged to
negotiating tables from Canada to China by UNI, the
global union federation for private service sector
unions.
Global union campaigns to encourage ethical sourcing
for goods have been linked to this year's Athens
Olympics, with the purpose of spreading decent labour
standards right along the global supply chain. The
campaign will be resurrected for the Turin Winter
Olympics in 2006, the soccer World Cups in Germany and
South Africa, and the Olympics in China. The Trades
Union Congress is already discussing the issue with the
2012 London Olympics bid.
The global trade union movement has learnt from the
tactics of non- governmental organisations and is
working more closely with them on corporate social
responsibility. We increasingly recognise the power of
consumers, shareholders and pension funds.
This week's world congress of the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) could take
the bold next step. The ICFTU is the largest trade
union confederation in the world, with 250 affiliates
in 152 countries representing 148m trade union members.
It was created in 1949 at the start of the cold war but
has been split since then. The breakaway communist-
backed confederation formed at the time is fading. This
week's congress may decide to merge the two remaining
global organisations - the ICFTU itself and the World
Confederation of Labour, originally a Christian body.
Such a merger would create a single free trade union
movement around the world, from Australia to Zimbabwe,
united by a common vision of social globalisation that
works for people rather than the other way around.
But, as so many companies have found out, mergers are
not enough. The new global union federation would need
to refocus on its core function. Its unique selling
proposition would be the ability to mobilise a total of
174m members and attract more. In this way, global
businesses, world institutions and governments would
take the organisation seriously and would have to
negotiate and reach agreements.
Old committee structures, conferences and paperwork
must go. In their place must come the ability to target
key companies, sectors and campaigns. Guy Ryder, the
ICFTU's popular and thoughtful general secretary, has
had his work cut out securing agreement from often-
embattled unions to give up the security of their
bureaucracy. But he has the support of the TUC, the DGB
in Germany, the AFL-CIO in the US, Cosatu in South
Africa and many more.
Each of these bodies, with their proud traditions,
knows it cannot continue to champion the interests of
its members if it does not operate internationally.
Trade unions in every developed country face the
challenge of delocalisation. We must not re-erect the
barriers of protectionism but we must protect the
livelihoods of workers at both ends of the
delocalisation equation.
British unions have done a lot in the financial
services sector to ensure retraining at home and better
wages in places such as India. We could do a lot more
if our international organisations were focused on
helping unions address the organising and bargaining
challenges that delocalisation presents. But how much
more could we achieve if employers faced the same union
when they arrived in Mumbai as they did when they
deserted Macclesfield or Milwaukee?
That is a huge challenge for a trade union movement
that has admirable internationalist credentials yet
sticks rigidly to 20th -century borders. This week
trade unionism will try to show it up to that
challenge.
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism
------ End of Forwarded Message
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) Support the Struggle for Free speech in NYC!
March 20, 2005 March on Central Park to Demand "Out Now!"
During the weeks leading up to the Republican National Convention
in August of 2004, the Bloomberg Administration and the New York
Police Department demonstrated open contempt for freedeom of
speech and assembly by denying antiwar demonstrators their right
to rally in Central Park.
Despite the fact that Central Park has been the site of numerous
large events, including concerts that have drawn more than 100,000
listeners, the Bloomberg Administration refused to allow a peaceful
demonstration in the Park, simply because it challenged the Bush-
Bloomberg agenda of war and repression. By denying activists access
to the park, Bloomberg is attempting to marginalize and criminalize
dissent and silence the antiwar movement.
We cannot allow this decision to stand; our First Amendment rights
are not negotiable. We must demand the right to march and assemble
in Central Park - our Park.
On March 20, the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq,
a broad coalition of antiwar, community, international solidarity,
and labor organizations plan to march on Central Park to demand
an immediate, complete, and unconditional end to the illegal
occupation of Iraq. Demonstrations in New York, Los Angeles,
San Francisco, Washington DC, Fayetteville and other cities
throughout the U.S. will occur on the weekend of March 19-20
in response to the call from the global antiwar movement. In
New York, many, many thousands of people will rally and march
under the slogan "Out Now!"
From Iraq to Haiti to Palestine, the people are resisting the empire
and colonial occupation. Resistance is also growing within the
ranks of the U.S. military. We must also be in the streets to oppose
the Bush-Bloomberg agenda. We must mobilize to oppose the
Bush war budget, which will spend an additional $80-100 billion
on the war, while social services, housing, education, and healthcare
budgets are being slashed and New Yorkers are facing yet another
subway fare increase.
The events of the past year have shown us that we cannot place
our trust in corporate-owned political parties and we cannot
negotiate away our right to march and assemble. Only an independent
peoples movement will stop the war, and we must be back in the
streets to build that movement.
We are currently in negotiations with the city and we fully expect
to exercise our right to march and assemble on March 20, but we
need your help:
How you can help:
1) Call, fax, and email Bloomberg's Office - demand the right to
rally in Central Park!
Phone (212)-639-9675
Fax (212) 788-2460
email: http://nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html
2) Forward this email widely
3) Help build a massive movement against war and occupation.
Volunteer meetings are every Tuesday night at the International
Action Center, 39 W. 14th St. # 206 - between 5th & 6th Aves.
in Manhattan. (Click here
for other
meeting locations throughout the country )
4) Donate
to help with
the expenses for March 20. Make a donation online at:
http://peoplejudgebush.org/donate.shtml
or by check to IAC 39 W. 14 St. #206, New York, NY10011.
5) Endorse
the Call for a united march against the war and occupation on March 20.
*for the full text of the Call, go to http://www.PeopleJudgeBush.org
International Action Center
39 W. 14th St. #206
NY NY 10011
212-633-6646
www.iacenter.org
Anyone can subscribe.
Send an email request to
AntiWar4theMillionWorkerMarch-subscribe@organizerweb.com
To unsubscribe AntiWar4theMillionWorkerMarch-unsubscribe@organizerweb.com
Subscribing and unsubscribing can also be done on the Web at
http://www.organizerweb.com/mailman/listinfo/antiwar4themillionworkermarch
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) Hello Friends:
Several members of the Jewish Palestinian Solidarity Committee
(JPSC) of Jewish Voice for Peace are planning a presence and silent
march around Union Square. It will be a reminder to holiday shoppers
that there is not peace or will ever be peace in Bethlehem as long as
Palestinians are living under Israeli military occupation.
Come join us at Union Square, San Francisco, on Friday December
24, 2004, from 4pm until 6pm. We will gather at the southwest corner
of the square, Geary and Powell Streets at 4 pm and then proceed to
walk slowly around Union Square on the sidewalk. Please bring
a candle and tell friends as we would like as many people as
possible to join us.
If you have questions, please contact us at
jewpalsolidaritycommittee@yahoo.com
Sow Justice - Reap Peace
"Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, people do
not easily assume the task of opposing their government's
policy, especially in time of war."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
17) Iraqis Round Up 50 After After Najaf Suicide Bomb
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters)
Mon Dec 20, 2004 06:25 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7138431&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Fifty people suspected of involvement in Iraq's
insurgency have been detained in Najaf following Sunday's suicide
car bombing in which the death toll has risen to 52 killed and over
140 wounded, the governor said.
Provincial governor Adnan al-Zurfi gave few details at a news
conference but said at least one suspect held a foreign Arab passport.
Many of the wounded, he said, were making a good recovery after
the attack, which followed a similar blast in nearby Kerbala that
killed at least 14 people and wounded about 40. The total toll on
the day was at least 66 dead and over 180 wounded.
Both explosions occurred not far from some of the holiest shrines
in Shi'ite Islam, exactly six weeks before a Jan. 30 election that
should hand power to the long-oppressed Shi'ite majority at the
expense of Saddam Hussein's fellow Sunnis.
Shi'ite leaders called for calm, saying Sunday's attacks looked like
an attempt by radicals to ignite sectarian conflict.
(c) Reuters 2004
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
18) Iran: Israel, U.S. Rigging Iraq Election
TEHRAN (Reuters)
Mon Dec 20, 2004 09:25 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7140317&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Israeli and U.S. agents were behind bombings
in Iraq's Shi'ite holy cities of Kerbala and Najaf, Iran's Supreme Leader
said Monday, accusing Tehran's arch-foes of trying to rig Iraq's
elections for their own ends.
Shi'ite Muslim Iran was quick to condemn Sunday's car bombings
in Najaf and Kerbala, which killed 66 people.
"I am sure Israeli and American spy services were behind these
events. This is a plot which aims at keeping the Iraqis so busy
that they will miss the exceptional chance to participate in the
January 30 elections," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, speaking
to Mecca pilgrimage organizers on state TV.
"The British and Americans want to hold elections on the
surface but in reality they want to bring their own agents to
power by holding superficial elections," added the Supreme
Leader, who has the last word on all state matters.
Officials from oil-rich Iran have called for fully
democratic elections next year in Iraq, where the majority of
people are their Shi'ite coreligionists.
President Bush and Iraq's interim Defense Minister Hazim
al-Shalaan have accused Iran of aiding al Qaeda ally Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi and former agents of Saddam Hussein in inflaming
pre-election violence.
Many analysts believe that the simmering violence in Iraq
distracts Washington's gaze from Tehran.
(c) Reuters 2004
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
19) The New Military Life: Heading Back to the War
By MONICA DAVEY
MANHATTAN, Kan.
December 20, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/national/20riley.html?oref=login&oref=logi
n
MANHATTAN, Kan., Dec. 15 - Earlier this year, as Sgt. Alexander
Garcia's plane took off for home after his tense year of duty in Iraq,
he remembered watching the receding desert sand and thinking,
I will never see this place again.
Never lasted about 10 months for Sergeant Garcia, a cavalry scout
with the First Armored Division who finished his first stint in Iraq
in March and is now preparing to return.
He and the rest of his combat brigade at Fort Riley, the Army base
a few miles from this town, have been working for weeks, late into
the frigid prairie nights, cleaning and packing gear and vehicles for
the trip back to Baghdad after the New Year.
"I figured that the Army was big enough that one unit would not
have to go back again before this thing was over," said Sergeant
Garcia, 20. "It's my job and it's my country, and I don't have any
regrets. But I kind of feel like I did my part. Just as I was readjusting
to life back home, just as I was starting to feel normal again, this
kind of throws me back into the waves."
No one is feeling normal anymore at Fort Riley and other bases
across the country, where military life is undergoing a radical
change. They are stoic here, and many point out, as Sergeant
Garcia does, that they signed up for this.
Still, in decades past, troops had gotten used to a predictable
rhythm to their deployments. Even during Desert Storm and
Vietnam, most soldiers could expect to take just one trip into
harm's way.
But with the military stretched thin in Iraq and in Afghanistan,
some soldiers and marines are being sent to war zones repeatedly,
for longer stretches in some cases, and with far less time at
home between deployments than they say they have ever
experienced before.
Here in Kansas, the base and the small towns nearby have begun
to resemble an enormous machine in an endless cycle: bringing
soldiers home with late-night celebrations in gymnasiums and
screaming roadside banners, and then sending them off again,
with fresh uniforms, new DVD players and snapshots, and
formal farewells.
The motion is constant, whirring along, even as the world
beyond Fort Riley's churning slows down for the holidays.
Next month, a brigade of 3,500 Fort Riley soldiers will begin
returning to Iraq for a second time; a few days ago, 3,500 others,
many of whom arrived home to their quiet Midwestern post this
fall, learned they would be headed back to Iraq as early as the
middle of next year.
This frenzied pace is swiftly becoming the norm. Nearly a third
of the 950,000 people from all branches of the armed forces
who have been sent to Iraq or Afghanistan since those conflicts
began have already been sent a second time. Part-time soldiers
- Army national guardsmen and reservists - who often have
handled support roles, not frontline combat roles, are slightly
more likely to have served more than one deployment to the
conflict zones than regular Army members.
And, of the nearly 1,300 troops who have died in Iraq since the
war began, more than 100 of them were on second tours.
The change is leaving its emotional mark on thousands of military
families. Some family members say the repeated separations have
been like some awful waking dream, holding their breath for their
soldiers to make it home safely, only to watch them leave once more.
Some families who have lost loved ones on repeat tours of duty said
they felt a particular ache - a sense that the second trip pushed fate
too hard.
Among some of the soldiers themselves, the thought of returning
to Iraq carries one puzzling quality: Unlike so many parts of life,
in which the second try at anything feels easier than the first, these
soldiers say that heading to Iraq is actually more overwhelming the
second time around.
"The first time, I didn't know anything," Sergeant Garcia said. "But
this time I know what I'm getting into, so it's harder. You know what
you're going to do. You know how bad you're going to be feeling."
During peacetime, marines have usually been deployed for six months,
then stationed at home for 18 months, said Capt. Dan McSweeney,
a Marine Corps spokesman. For now, Captain McSweeney said,
the pace for some is closer to seven months away and seven months
home. About half of the 32,000 marines now stationed in Iraq are
serving second tours, he said.
The Army's goal is that fulltime soldiers can expect deployments
one year of every three, and reservists expect to go away far less,
one year of every six, said Lt. Col. Christopher Rodney, an Army
spokesman. At the moment, though, Colonel Rodney said, some
soldiers are leaving for a year and coming home for a year, though
some tours have stretched longer, some stays at home shorter.
Army officials said they were seeking ways to make repeated
deployments easier on soldiers and their families, as the Army
is shifted to create more brigades and to spread the burdens.
Colonel Rodney said that the military was also trying to give troops
as much advance warning about deployments as possible. The
Army's chaplains, too, said they were offering more extensive
relationship counseling for military families as one way to ease
the strains.
"This is a completely new and completely different kind of animal,"
said Sgt. First Class Tom Ogden, a member of an Army aviation
unit from Fort Carson, Colo., who has spent nearly 20 years in
the military.
"I've never seen anything like it," he said. "And what everybody
is starting to know now is that this is going to be what's going
on for the foreseeable future."
Sergeant Ogden, 37, returned home to his wife, Rene, and their
7-year-old twins in April. His unit is to leave again, he said, in
March. "For me, this one will be harder," he said. "The last time,
we thought there was an off-chance we would see some stuff.
But things have escalated, and now we know we will."
At Fort Riley, soldiers and their families said they had wrestled
with the new, faster pace. Some spouses said they worried about
managing so much of life alone - children, bills, cars and home
repairs.
"I think this is the new norm," said Sandra Horton, whose
husband, Staff Sgt. T. J. Horton, is to leave Fort Riley for Iraq,
once again, in January.
The Hortons have been through the stresses and loneliness of
deployments many times in Sergeant Horton's 17 years in the
service, and they said they would manage just fine this time, too.
Again and again, they both said that this was simply his job, even
if it meant that Ta'Von, 6, grew many more inches before his father
saw him again.
Still, in a quiet moment, Ms. Horton acknowledged: "It feels never-
ending now. We feel like he's always gone. But what can we do?"
For Specialist James Webb, a younger soldier here at Fort Riley, the
amily stresses seem overwhelming. "I feel like I'm in a no-win
situation," he said.
Specialist Webb, 28, lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment
off the base. He talks on the telephone for hours to his wife, who
lives in Georgia. He said he was lonely, struggling with depression
and being treated for post-traumatic stress from the roadside
bombs and rocket-propelled grenades he saw as a gunner on
the top of a Humvee.
He returned this fall, but has not been able to reunite permanently
with his wife and three stepdaughters because he cannot find them
on-base housing. His wife moved home, to Georgia, during his
deployment, and now there is talk of another deployment as
quickly as next year.
"There's been some distance," he said somberly of his wife,
whom he married in October 2002, not long before his first
deployment. "She's really not liking the military lifestyle at all.
She tells me things would be better if I just moved back to
Georgia."
Still, Specialist Webb said he hoped to remain a soldier for his
career, though he said he worried about losing his family."At
the same time, this is my job," he said. "I signed on the dotted
line. And this is a small thing I can do for my country, to protect
my wife and stepdaughters."
No one can be certain how the pace of deployment may affect
the military in the years ahead: Will soldiers finish their enlistments
and leave? Will fewer recruits agree to sign up? Two studies based
on data before the 2001 terrorist attacks suggested that service
members who had one or two deployments were more likely to
re-enlist than those who had had no deployments, but the pace
and danger levels of deployments have shifted since then.
Cpl. Kenneth Epperson, a Fort Riley soldier, said that he and his
wife, Amanda, were fine with the pace of deployment. His
daughter, Nikki, was born while he was in Iraq, and he has
spent many weeks since he returned in April away from his
family again, getting special training in California and Georgia.
"I joined the Army to be a soldier," said Corporal Epperson, who
is 21 and headed back to Iraq in a few weeks. "I expected this."
Others were surprised.
At Camp LeJeune, in North Carolina, Lance Cpl. Peter Kirby said
he probably would not re-enlist in the Marines when his contract
ends in 16 months. He had thought about the military as a career,
Corporal Kirby said, but was now leaning toward being a police
officer or a park service worker.
"This isn't the life I'd like to lead," he said, adding that he was
getting married in a few weeks. "If I'm going to start a family,
I don't want to be absent in my kids' lives."
In Tucson, Elena Zurheide is preparing Christmas for her 7-and-
a-half-month-old son, Robert III. "I hate Christmas," Ms. Zurheide
said. "I hate holidays. I hate everything right now."
Her husband, Robert Jr., was a lance corporal in the Marines. He
was killed in Falluja this spring, a few weeks before their son was
born. He was on his second tour to Iraq.
"I never wanted him to go a second time," she said. "I just started
having the feeling that we were pushing our luck too far, and he
thought so, too."
She said she wrote to Corporal Zurheide's commander before he
left, asking that her huband be permitted to stay behind - or that
he at least be allowed to wait for the birth of their son. She said
she never heard back.
"I should have broken his arm to keep him here," she said. "I knew
it was too much to go again."
Her son, Ms. Zurheide said, looks just like his father.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
20) On Thinning Ice
Michael Byers
Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Arctic Climate Impact
Assessment · Cambridge,
139 pp, £19.99
LRB | Vol. 27 No. 1 dated 6 January 2005 | Michael Byers
The polar bears stare forlornly at Hudson Bay. ItÂ’s late November and they
should be out on the sea ice hunting ring seals, but the ice hasnÂ’t formed
and the bears are starving. Ursus maritimus doesnÂ’t hunt on land and
normally fasts for months each summer. Now, however, the summers are
growing longer across most of the Arctic, and the waters of Hudson Bay are
ice-free for three weeks longer than they were thirty years ago. In a
decade or two, polar bears wonÂ’t be found this far south; by the end of the
century, they might exist only in zoos.
In the two hundred years since industrialisation – a geological millisecond
– we’ve increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s
atmosphere by 35 per cent; a third of that has appeared in the last four
decades. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, such as methane, trap
heat that would otherwise radiate into space. As greenhouse gas levels
rise, the lower atmosphere heats up and the climate changes, sometimes in
unexpected ways.
The global average temperature has increased by about 0.6°C over the last
two centuries. Most greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere for decades,
and have an ongoing, cumulative warming effect. In 2001, the UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 2500 scientists,
predicted an additional increase during the 21st century of between 1.4 and
5.8°C. In October, a body of nearly 300 scientists completed the Arctic
Climate Impact Assessment, a report based not on worst-case scenarios but
on observed changes to-date combined with projected temperature increases
that are below the middle range of those anticipated by complex,
increasingly accurate global climate models. Despite this methodological
caution, the predictions made in the Assessment are terrifying. By the end
of the century, annual average temperatures in the north will rise between
3 and 5°C on land and up to 7°C over the Arctic Ocean, with winter
temperatures increasing even more. Sea-ice cover will decline by 50 per
cent, and could disappear entirely in summer.
full: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n01/byer01_.html
www.marxmail.org
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
21) Bush Says Some Iraqi Troops Not Ready to Take Over Security
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/politics/20cnd-prexy.html?hp&ex=1103605200
&en=70930e3915321654&ei=5094&partner=homepage
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - President Bush acknowledged today that he
is disappointed with the performance of some of the Iraqi troops who
are supposed to eventually provide the security for their country.
"We're under no illusions," Mr. Bush said at a White House news
conference. Some individual Iraqi units are ready to provide security,
he said, but there are not enough of them to make up a cohesive
fighting force. Mr. Bush declined to speculate on how long United
States troops will have to remain in Iraq.
The president reiterated his stance that the American campaign in
Iraq is worthwhile, not just for the sake of the Iraqi people but for
the long-range security of the United States. And he again
emphatically voiced his confidence in Defense Secretary Donald
H. Rumsfeld, who has come under increasingly heavy criticism
from some prominent Republicans in Congress.
"I believe he's doing a really fine job," Mr. Bush said, adding that
Mr. Rumsfeld will continue to reach out to Capitol Hill leaders.
The president also said no one should equate Mr. Rumsfeld's
characteristic gruff demeanor with callousness. "I know how much
he cares for the troops," Mr. Bush said, adding that the secretary
and his wife, Joyce, visit wounded American troops "all the time"
at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington and the Naval
Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Md.
Mr. Bush, who will spend Christmas at Camp David, Md., and the
rest of the holiday season at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., pointedly
did not announce his intentions on filling two major posts,
homeland security secretary and national intelligence director.
The latter position was created by the intelligence-overhaul bill
that Mr. Bush signed last week.
In a session that lasted 55 minutes, Mr. Bush fielded 15 questions
and once again laid out his second-term agenda. He said he
would push Congress to enact changes in Social Security, revamp
the tax system and work to reduce what he has called "frivolous
lawsuits." (He did not use that term today, referring instead to
"tort reform.")
Mr. Bush said the budget he will submit early next year "will
maintain strict discipline" and adhere to his commitment to
cut the federal deficit in half in five years.
Responding to several questions on Iraq, Mr. Bush acknowledged
that the country's emerging security forces had performed "with
mixed results" and that some had simply fled after encountering
insurgents. "That's unacceptable," he said. But he added that
some Iraqi security forces had fought well at Falluja and other
battle sites.
A day after insurgent bombers killed more than 60 people in Iraq,
the president said such killers are trying to shake America's collective
will as well as the Iraqis' resolve. "We must meet the objective,"
Mr. Bush said, "and I believe we will."
The president said he would continue to send strong diplomatic
messages to Iran and Syria to discourage them from interfering in Iraq.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times
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22) Iraq's Crucial Election Ballot Down to Lottery
By Lin Noueihed
Mon Dec 20,10:23 AM ET
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=1&u=/nm/20041220/wl_nm
/iraq_ballot_dc
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Spinning a clear plastic drum filled with
numbered balls, like a national lottery, Iraq (news -web sites )'s
electoral commission determined Monday where parties contesting
the Jan. 30 poll would rank on ballot papers.
Some 256 parties, blocs and individuals have signed up to contest
the poll -- around 7,700 candidates in all -- and the order they
appear on the ballot sheet, which could be many pages thick, is
determined by chance.
Thanks to electoral pacts and a failure of small parties to field
actual candidates, the ballot paper itself should present voters
with a choice of closer to 100 names, officials said.
The United Nations ( news -web sites ) envoy to Iraq, Ashraf Qazi,
pulled the first three balls from the drum, as dozens of candidates
looked on expectantly, in a process designed for maximum
transparency in the country's first democratic election in nearly
50 years.
"Today is a great day in the history of your great nation," Qazi told
the crowd gathered in a room at a conference center that used to
be part of Saddam Hussein ( news -web sites )'s palace complex.
"It is truly in the interests of every Iraqi citizen, whatever their
political
views, to participate in this electoral process. It is the only way
forward."
Iraq is being treated as a single electoral district. Registered voters
will choose either an individual, party or coalition list of candidates,
and the 275 seats in the National Assembly will be distributed by
proportional representation.
The system, chosen with United Nations help, is designed to
encourage the formation of alliances and coalitions that try to
appeal across Iraq's spread of ethnic and religious groups.
Since the electorate, expected to be 10-14 million strong, is
inexperienced with democratic polls, the order in which names
appear on the ballot may influence voting patterns.
The balls were numbered from 101 to 356, to ensure no party got
a catchy figure like 1 or 10, which might be easier for voters to
remember and give a campaigning advantage.
If around 10 million people end up voting, braving what is expected
to be intense intimidation from insurgents not to do so, it would
require around 36,000 votes to win one seat.
The little-known Independent Iraqi Alliance drew first place --
but will probably not appear on the ballot at all since it has not
registered a list of candidates.
To the confusion and suspicion of candidates who repeatedly
interrupted the draw to demand officials explain the process,
balls were picked for all groups and blocs registered for the poll,
even those that failed to submit candidate lists on time.
CLOSE SCRUTINY
Voters will also be electing candidates to councils in Iraq's 18
governorates, and in the Kurdish north they will elect a regional
assembly, meaning even thicker ballot sheets.
There will be 6,000-6,500 voting stations around the country.
Iraqi security forces will be in charge of protecting the stations,
while monitors will look out for voter fraud.
Before the draw began, onlookers stood in a minute of silence
for three members of the Commission, gunned down on Sunday
in broad daylight on a busy Baghdad street.
Several Sunni and secular parties want the poll to be delayed,
fearing people in Iraq's Sunni north and west where violence
is worst will be too afraid to vote.
"In challenging times ... it is natural for people to have major
differences of opinion," Qazi said. "What you share is a massive
stake in the successful establishment of democracy."
The most powerful blocs are expected to be nine coalitions
who have fielded candidates, especially an alliance of parties
largely representing the long-oppressed Shi'ite majority.
As a young woman turned the drum, candidates watched hawk
-eyed, on guard for sleight of hand. As numbers emerged, they
were written up on a board.
In any list, every third candidate must be a woman, to ensure
they make up at least 25 percent of the new assembly.
Once elected, the assembly will appoint a new government and
draft a constitution, before new elections a year later.
Copyright (c) 2004 Yahoo! Inc.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
23) Report: U.S. Rentals Unaffordable to Poor
By Genaro C. Armas
WASHINGTON
Published on Monday, December 20, 2004 by the Associated Press
On the Net:
National Low Income Housing Coalition:
http://www.nlihc.org/index.html
HUD: http://www.hud.gov/
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1220-01.htm
WASHINGTON - Most Americans who rely on just a full-time job
earning the federal minimum wage cannot afford the rent and
utilities on a one- or two-bedroom apartment, an advocacy group
on low-income housing reported Monday.
For a two-bedroom rental alone, the typical worker must earn at least
$15.37 an hour - nearly three times the federal minimum wage, the
National Low Income Housing Coalition said in its annual "Out of
Reach" report.
That figure assumes that a family spends no more than 30 percent
of its gross income on rent and utilities - anything more is generally
considered unaffordable by the government.
Yet many poor Americans are paying more than they can afford
because wage increases haven't kept up with increases in rent
and utilities, said Danilo Pelletiere, the coalition's research director.
The median hourly wage in the United States is about $14, and
more than one-quarter of the population earns less than $10
an hour, the report said.
"A lot of people continue to be squeezed out," said Judy Levey,
executive director of the Homeless and Housing Coalition of
Kentucky. "Housing here is relatively inexpensive, but because
the wages are so low, people can't afford housing,"
The report quoted federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data that
showed hourly wages rising about 2.6 percent over the past year,
slower than the 2.9 percent rise in rents recorded in the Consumer
Price Index.
In addition, Pelletiere said, government spending on Section 8
rental vouchers, which helps 2 million Americans - mainly poor
- pay rent hasn't kept up with demand.
The study analyzed data from the Census Bureau and the
Housing and Urban Development Department to derive the
hourly wage figures.
In only four of the nation's 3,066 counties could a full-time
worker making the federal minimum wage afford a typical one
-bedroom apartment, the coalition said. Three were in Illinois:
Clay, Crawford and Wayne counties; the other was Washington
County, Fla.
California topped all states in the hourly wage needed to afford
a two-bedroom apartment, at $21.24, followed by Massachusetts,
New Jersey, Maryland and New York.
States with more residents in rural areas were generally the most
affordable, although no state's housing wage was lower than the
federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, which has not changed
since 1997.
West Virginia was the lowest at $9.31 an hour for a two-bedroom
rental, followed by North Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama.
Pelletiere said the coalition's data for 2004 could not be compared
with previous years because of changes in the way that HUD calculated
"Fair Market Rents," which is the cost of rent and most utilities for
a typical apartment. The fair rent varies widely by metropolitan area.
Overall, though, utility costs appear to be rising at a faster rate than
rents, Pelletiere said. Add in stagnant wages and the housing
situation for the nation's poor "has gotten worse over the last
year," he said.
(c) Copyright 2004 Associated Press
