SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 11AM
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
(NEAR 16TH STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO)
www.bauaw.org
2) STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ! BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!
ALL OUT JANUARY 20TH,
5:00 P.M., CIVIC CENTER, S.F.
3) Let's Hit the Streets
To Defend Abortion Rights!
Saturday, January 22
4) PICTURES OF WAR
5) ITALIAN.QUEER.DANGEROUS
a one-man show featuring Tommi Avicolli Mecca
directed by Francesca Prada, Jan. 14-19, 8:00pm,
JON SIMS CENTER
1519 Mission, Between Van Ness and 11th Sts., SF
6) Tsunamis and a Nuclear Threat in the South of India
By J. Sri Raman
Chennai, India
t r u t h o u t | Report
Sunday 02 January 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010305W.shtml
7) US Plans Permanent Guantanamo Jails
Julian Borger in Washington
Monday January 3, 2005
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1382362,00.html
8) LABOR NEEDS A RADICAL VISION
By David Bacon
New Years Day, 2005
9) Rebels Kills 17 Iraq Security in Bombing Spree
By Matt Spetalnick
BAGHDAD (Reuters)
Mon Jan 3, 2005 09:00 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7222637&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
10) Israelis hasten land grab in shadow of wall
Bulldozers go in as expansion of settlements continues
Chris McGreal in Jayyous
Guardian
Tuesday December 14, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1372963,00.html
11) HANDS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY!
SOCIAL SECURITY FOR THE FUTURE, NOT FOR WALL STREET!
JOIN US: TUESDAY, JANUARY 18, 11:30 AM
PACIFIC COAST STOCK EXCHANGE, 115 SANSOME ST, SF.
12) Hiroshima Cover-up: How the War Department's Timesman
Won a Pulitzer
By Amy Goodman and David Goodman
Published on Tuesday, August 10, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0810-01.htm
13) Peltier Seeks to Correct Illegal Sentence
14) Subject: Decisive days
From: "Barbara Deutsch"
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 03:07:55 -0800
Granny D, who is finishing her 95th year providing
a beautiful and unshakeable example of femininity,
feminism, and faith in democracy and in humanity,
will be a part of the January 4-6 march and actions
in Washington this week.
15) A plan for Hunters Point
Sunday, January 2, 2005
URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/01/02/EDG
229H4D51.DTL
16) The Tsunami in Iraq -- We Can End It
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2005 18:35:55 -0800
Original Message From: Alison Weir
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) NEXT BAY AREA UNITED AGAINST WAR MEETING:
www.bauaw.org
SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 11AM
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
(NEAR 16TH STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO)
An urgent message from Carole Seligman, BAUAW:
"We should be in the streets demanding billions for relief, not
a penny for war!
ESPECIALLY as all predictions are that the death toll could double
without adequate relief. Tens of thousands of lives could be saved.
We could call on the international antiwar groups who linked
up twice around international antiwar days to call coordinated
pickets at every US embassy demanding transfer of funds
from bombing Fallujah [and the war on Iraq as a whole] to
tsunami relief, and on the same day(s) picket Federal
buildings around the U.S."
[Note: the above is a section of an email sent to me with
exactly what I think we should do. The national antiwar
organizations could set it in motion on an emergency basis
and I'll just bet that antiwar people all over the U.S. and the
world will adopt it as their own and build it actively.
Carole Seligman]
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ! BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!
ALL OUT JANUARY 20TH, 5:00 P.M., CIVIC CENTER, S.F.
(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)
The U.S. government is not allowing antiwar/anti-Bush protestors
onto Pennsylvania Ave. along the inauguration route Jan. 20th.
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 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.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) 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!
Details of assembly time and place will be announced soon.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) PICTURES OF WAR
PLEASE ACCESS:
** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **
I have obtained the originals of the photos I recently posted which were
taken from inside Fallujah.
These are of much higher quality.
Some of the comments have been updated, and there are
some additional pictures added which I did not have before.
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=
1
More writing, photos and commentary at http://dahrjamailiraq.com
You can visit http://dahrjamailiraq.com/email_list/ to subscribe
or unsubscribe to the email list.
(c)2004 Dahr Jamail.
All images and text are protected by United States and international
copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's Dispatches on
the web, you need to include this copyright notice and
a prominent link to the DahrJamailIraq.com website. Any
other use of images and text including, but not limited to,
reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing
requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free
to forward Dahr's dispatches via email.
Iraq_Dispatches mailing list
http://lists.dahrjamailiraq.com/mailman/listinfo/iraq_dispatches
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/
view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/message/26138
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/message/26138
Virginion Pilot via AP - Photos - click here
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=79598&ran=187050
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) ITALIAN.QUEER.DANGEROUS
a one-man show featuring Tommi Avicolli Mecca
directed by Francesca Prada, Jan. 14-19, 8:00pm,
JON SIMS CENTER
1519 Mission, Between Van Ness and 11th Sts., SF
(The most important thing is for folks to make reservations ASAP.
Seating is limited. Please take a moment to call 554-0402 if you plan
to come to the show.)
JANUARY 14-29
(Friday and Saturday nights only: 14, 15; 21, 22; 28, 29)
JON SIMS CENTER, 1519 Mission/between Van Ness and 11th
8pm, $5-10 sliding scale (no one turned away)
seating is limited, for reservations: 415-554-0402
to volunteer to help with the show, call 415-552-6031
Through monologue and spoken word, well-known San Francisco
queer activist and writer Tommi Avicolli Mecca tells his story of
growing up in South Philly's working-class Little Italy. At age 19,
fired up with new pride in being gay, he came out to the world--
and his traditional Roman Catholic southern Italian famiglia--on
a TV talk show. The rest is history, and the subject of this performance.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) Tsunamis and a Nuclear Threat in the South of India
By J. Sri Raman
Chennai, India
t r u t h o u t | Report
Sunday 02 January 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010305W.shtml
Chennai, India - This coastal city in south India has just survived
a double peril - the tsunami disaster and a nuclear threat.
The waves of tidal height, which hit Chennai last Sunday, did not
stop with destroying fishermen's hamlets and flooding out thousands
of other homes and lives. The tsunamis also inundated a part of the
nuclear plant located in the city outskirts and close to the sea.
We have to wait for a full report on the damage. And, we may only
wait in vain for an official report of this description. It needs no further
investigation, however, to see that the Kalpakkam nuclear complex
and the tsunami made a deadly combination indeed.
The nuclear part of the combination ruled out a full report for now,
for two reasons. No one, in the first place, can easily dent the
disaster-proof secrecy that surrounds any nuclear plant. The second
and more important reason lies in the threat of radioactive leaks.
Camera crews cannot capture these as easily as carcasses and debris
floating in furious waters.
There can be slower nuclear horrors than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Environmentalists have, for about two decades, talked of Kalpakkam
as a disaster of this less dramatic kind. The tsunamis may well have
made the situation worse.
The incompletely and almost instantaneously post-tsunami official
report peremptorily ruled out any damage to the complex. Even more
emphatically, it denied any radioactive leak. Even the official report,
however, acknowledged the havoc in the entire Kalpakkam area,
habitat of a sizeable fishing community, housing the employees
of the nuclear complex as well. On the morrow of the disaster,
at least 60 lives were reported lost in the employees' township
and some 250 in the rest of the area. The toll, unofficially much
higher, has kept mounting since then.
No official concern was voiced over the complex at all. The
complex comprises: two pressurized heavy water reactors and
a test reactor, a reprocessing plant and an under-construction
prototype fast breeder reactor or PFBR ("dedicated to the nation"
by the Prime Minister in late October). The authorities claimed
that, while one of the heavy water reactors had been closed for
"re-tubing" before the tsunamis, the other was shut down the
moment the an inordinate amount of water from the sea was
detected entering the pump-house for the coolant unit. (The
second reactor was re-started seven days later, this Sunday.)
Not a word, significantly, has been said in this connection
about the reprocessing plant and its central waste management
facility, in particular, besides the test reactor. No reassurance,
in other words, has been forthcoming about the most crucially
radioactivity-linked components of the complex. India's nuclear
establishment is not known for innocent or accidental omissions
in statements of this kind.
The authorities could not have concealed the deaths of
employees in the Sunday disaster. The complex has lost scores
of scientific and technical personnel, ranging from a design
engineer of the test reactor washed away while praying in a church
mass, to others carried away by monster waves from within the
about 500 houses destroyed in the sprawling township. What,
however, of the humble woman worker who, many say, met her
watery end inside the complex? What of the two male workers,
posted at the waste discharge point at the seafront jetty, who
are reported missing?
The Doctors for Safe Environment, a forum of physicians that
is asking these questions, has been raising larger posers about
Kalpakkam and its location for years. V. Pugazhendhi of the
forum, who has carried out painstaking health research in
Kalpakkam and around, explains why radioactive leaks here
do not belong to the realm of fantasy.
According to a survey under his guidance, the incidence
of multiple cancers of blood and bone worked out to three
per population of 25,000 in the age group of 15 to 50 for
seven months from May to October 2003 in the Kalpakkam
area. Set this against the normal figure of 1.7 per population
of 100,000 in the same age group for a year, he suggests, and
you see the result of radioactive pollution.
R. Ramesh of the same forum points to yet another peril in
the making. He says that "land subsidence" in coastal areas
should be expected as an inevitable consequence of tsunamis
- and underscores the fact that the fast breeder reactor's site
is just three to 5.6 meters above the sea level. You don't
fantasize, if you fear the flattening of the entire reaction
by tsunamis of five to 12 meters, with nuclear consequences
of a nightmarish kind.
Objections to the construction of the fast breeder reactor
have been raised before. The opponents of the plan, originally,
argued that the plan violated the law of 1991 against such
environment-unfriendly constructions in the terrain defined
as the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ). The official reaction
was an outrage. It consisted in amending the law to exempt
nuclear plants from its purview. Kalpakkam is only one of
the many nuclear installations to endanger India's coastal
environment.
King Canute of England and Denmark, says the legend,
could not stop the waves. The rulers of India can at least
stop tsunamis from wreaking nuclear havoc.
A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India,
J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common
Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t .
(c) Copyright 2005 by TruthOut.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) US Plans Permanent Guantanamo Jails
Julian Borger in Washington
Monday January 3, 2005
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1382362,00.html
The United States is preparing to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely
without trial, replacing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp with
permanent prisons in the Cuban enclave and elsewhere, it was
reported yesterday.
The new prisons are intended for captives the Pentagon and the
CIA suspect of terrorist links but do not wish to set free or put
on trial for lack of hard evidence.
The plans have emerged at a time when the US is under increasing
scrutiny for the interrogation methods used on the roughly 550
"enemy combatants" at the Guantanamo Bay base, who do not
have the same rights as traditional prisoners of war.
A leaked Red Cross report described the techniques used as
"tantamount to torture".
Over the weekend the New York Times quoted a former
interrogator as saying one in six detainees were subject
to harsh techniques including sleep deprivation, exposure
to constant loud music or adver tising jingles, and being
shackled for long periods to a low chair.
The State Department is proposing the transfer of Afghan,
Saudi and Yemeni detainees to their home countries for
incarceration in purpose-built jails to be financed and
constructed by the US, according to a report in the
Washington Post.
The Pentagon has built a new 100-cell prison on Guantanamo
Bay, known as Camp 5, and plans to ask Congress this year for
$25m (£13m) to build Camp 6, a 200-bed version. The two jails
are intended for suspected members of al-Qaida, the Taliban
or other extremist groups, who are unlikely to go before
a military tribunal because military prosecutors lack proof.
"Since global war on terror is a long-term effort, it makes
sense for us to be looking at solutions for long-term
Problems," Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman,
told the Washington Post.
"This has been evolutionary, but we are at a point in time
where we have to say, 'How do you deal with them in the
long term?' "
Only four Guantanamo Bay detainees had been charged
by the time the military tribunals were suspended in
November when a Washington judge ruled them
unconstitutional.
Detainees would be sent to the new prisons when military
and CIA interrogators decide they are of no further
intelligence value. They are modelled on medium-security
civilian prisons in the US and made of steel and concrete
in place of the welded shipping containers used as cells
in Camp Delta.
The Pentagon is also planning to form a permanent
324-strong military police battalion to replace the
mostly reservist force guarding the Guantanamo Bay camp.
Last June the supreme court ruled that prisoners in
Guantanamo Bay were within the jurisdiction of US courts
and therefore had the right to challenge their detention.
In response the Pentagon set up "combatant status review
panels", but after hearing more than 525 cases the panels
have recommended release for only two detainees.
The CIA is also reported to be holding about 30 senior
al-Qaida officials in secret detention centres at Bagram
air force base near Kabul, Britain's Indian Ocean island,
Diego Garcia, and on US ships at sea. British officials
have denied knowledge of such centres at Diego Garcia.
Some CIA detainees have been subjected to "rendition",
being handed over to US allies, such as Egypt, Jordan and
Afghanistan, who agree to hold them secretly to extract
information. The practice has been criticised by human
rights groups as an endorsement and indirect use of torture.
The CIA is said to have proposed building its own
permanent prison but the plan was rejected as impractical.
More than six dozen current and former inmates,
including former British Guantanamo Bay prisoners,
have taken the US government to court over their treatment.
Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) LABOR NEEDS A RADICAL VISION
By David Bacon
New Years Day, 2005
For forty years, AFL-CIO leaders George Meany and Lane
Kirkland saw unorganized workers as a threat when they saw
them at all. They drove leftwing activists out of unions, and
threw the message of solidarity on the scrapheap. Labor's
dinosaurs treated unions as a business, representing members
in exchange for dues, while ignoring the needs of workers as a whole.
A decade ago new leaders were thrust into office in
the AFL-CIO - a product of the crisis of falling union density,
weakened political power, and a generation of angry labor activists
demanding a change in direction. Those ten years have yielded
important gains for unions. Big efforts were made to organize -
strawberry workers in Watsonville, asbestos workers in New York
and New Jersey, poultry and meatpacking workers in the south,
and healthcare workers throughout the country. Yet in only
one year was the pace of organizing fast enough to keep
union density from falling.
Other gains were made in winning more progressive
policies on immigration, and in some areas, relations with
workers in other countries. Yet here also, progress has not
been fast enough. Corporations and the government policies
that serve them have presented new dangers even greater
than those faced a decade ago.
The set of proposals made by SEIU, and now by other
unions from CWA to the Teamsters, are a positive response
to this crisis. They've started a debate labor desperately needs.
And they all put the issue of stopping the slide in members
and power - the problem of organizing - in center stage
where it belongs.
Organizing large numbers of workers will not just help
unions. Wages rise under the pressure of union drives,
especially among non-union workers. Stronger unions will
force politicians to recognize universal healthcare, secure jobs,
and free education after high school, not as pie-in-the-sky
dreams, but as the legitimate demands of millions of people.
But the AFL-CIO has a huge job. Raising the percentage
of organized workers in the U.S. from just 10 to 11 percent would
mean organizing over a million people. Only a social movement
can organize people on this scale. In addition to examining
structural reforms that can make unions more effective and
concentrate their power, the labor movement needs a program
which can inspire people to organize on their own, one which
is unafraid to put forward radical demands, and rejects the
constant argument that any proposal that can't get through
Congress next year is not worth fighting for.
As much as people need a raise, the promise of one is
not enough to inspire them to face the certain dangers they
know too well await them. Working families need the promise
of a better world. Over and over, for more than a century,
workers have shown that they will struggle for the future of
their children and their communities, even when their own
future seems in doubt. But only a new, radical social vision
can inspire the wave of commitment, idealism and activity
necessary to rebuild the labor movement.
Organizing a union is a right, but it only exists on paper.
Violating a worker's right to organize should be punished with
the same severity used to protect property rights. Fire
a worker for joining a union - go to jail.
Today, instead, workers get fired in a third of all organizing
drives. Companies close and abandon whole communities, and
threaten to do so even more often. Strikebreaking and union
busting have become acceptable corporate behavior. There
are no effective penalties for companies that violate labor
rights, and most workers know this. In addition, there are
new weapons, like modern-day company unions, in the
anti-union arsenal. Chronic unemployment, and social
policies like welfare reform, pit workers against each other
in vicious competition, undermining the unity they need
to organize.
Millions of workers are desperate because they have
lost jobs, or are in danger of losing them. Employers move
factories, and downsize their workforce to boost stock prices.
The government cuts social benefits while driving welfare
recipients into a job market already glutted with millions
of people who can't find work.
Without speaking directly to workers' desperation and
fear of unemployment, unions will never convince millions
to organize, and risk the jobs they still have. Government
and corporations may treat a job as a privilege, and a vanishing
one at that, but unions must defend a job as a right. And to
protect that right, workers need laws which prohibit capital
flight, and which give them a large amount of control over
corporate investment. In the meantime, organizing unemployed
people should be as important as organizing in the workplace.
Since grinding poverty in much of the world is an
incentive for moving production, defending the standard
of living of workers around the world is as necessary as
defending our own. The logic of inclusion in a global labor
movement must apply as much to a worker in Bangladesh as
it does to the non-union worker down the street.
While the percentage of organized workers has declined
every year for the past decade, unions have made important
progress in finding alternative strategic ideas to the old business
unionism of Meany and Kirkland. If these ideas are developed
and extended, they provide an important base for making
unions stronger and embedding them more deeply in
working-class communities.
The two proposals at the end of SEIU's ten points begin to
address these strategic ideas, but they fall short of providing
a new direction. They are the proposals on diversity, or civil
rights, and on building a global labor movement.
Labor's change in immigration policy was a watershed
development, which put unions on the side of immigrants,
rather than against them. The change provided the basis
for an alliance between labor and immigrant communities
based on mutual interest, and asked union members, and
workers in general, to fight for a society based on inclusion,
rather than exclusion. But this policy was usually implemented
to win support for union organizing campaigns, and only
rarely to defend immigrant communities as they were
attacked in the post-911 hysteria.
When 40,000 airport screeners lost their jobs because
of their citizenship status, there was hardly any labor outcry
or protest. For unions who want workers outside their ranks
to feel they represent their interests, this was a terrible mistake.
But it was compounded when Bush banned unions for the
new screener workforce. Once again, an attack on the
rights of immigrants led to attacks on the rights of workers
generally - a move which called for mass opposition and
was met instead with more silence.
Labor needs an outspoken policy that defends the
civil rights of all sections of US society, and is willing to
take on the Bush administration in an open fight to protect
them. If the war on terror scares labor into silence, few workers
will feel confident in risking their jobs (and freedom) to join
unions. Yet people far beyond unions will defend labor rights
if they are part of a broader civil rights agenda, and if the
labor movement is willing to go to bat with community
organizations for it.
Political calculations in Washington shouldn't be the
guide to labor's policy on immigration and civil rights.
Workers need a movement that fights for what they really
need, not what lobbyists say a Republican administration
and Congress will accept. The position won at the AFL-CIO's
Los Angeles convention - calling for immigration amnesty, the
repeal of employer sanctions, and a halt to corporate guest
worker proposals - has yet to be achieved in real life.
A new direction on civil rights requires linking immigrant
rights to a real jobs program and full employment economy.
It demands affirmative action that can come to grips with the
devastation in communities of color, especially African American
communities. Some unions, particularly HERE, have moved
from rhetoric to actual contract proposals linking immigrant
rights and jobs for underrepresented communities. But
this is just a step towards unity, and it is already endangered
by proposals for new guest worker programs that will pit
immigrants against the unemployed. As employer lobbyists
continually point out, jobs and immigration are tied together.
Corporations will either pit people against each other at the
bottom of the workforce, or labor will unite them in
a struggle for their mutual interest.
When Tom Donahue and the old Kirkland administration
were defeated in 1995, activists on all levels of the labor
movement expected that the AFL-CIO would take down
the cold war barriers. Labor's cold war foreign policy
separated US unions from workers around the world,
and often betrayed them in the interest of US foreign policy.
The demand to change this policy was partly driven
by the impact of NAFTA on the consciousness of millions
of US workers. For the first time in decades, pressure came
from below, from local unions and rank-and-filers, demanding
that the labor movement seek alliances with workers abroad
based on common interest. In an era when the fate of
millions of US workers is tied to the international system
of production and markets, this is a survival question.
A growing number of workers, both inside and outside
unions, today understand that an effective response to
globalization will affect their own welfare. For the first
time since the 1940s, millions of US workers can be,
and have been, drawn into the fight against the global
free market economy, from Seattle to Miami.
The neoliberal policies imposed by the US and other
wealthy countries attack living standards, workers rights
and the public sector everywhere. Increasingly, they are
imposed at the point of a gun, using the war on terror as
a pretext to suppress opposition. The US labor movement
should be, and can be, the most outspoken advocate for
peace, since eroded standards and privatization are used
to attract corporate investment, and the further export
of jobs and production.
Instead, after expressing doubts before the invasion
of Iraq, the AFL-CIO stood silent once it began. Some
unions made opposition to the war part of their election
campaign, but the official AFL-CIO apparatus accepted
the false logic that speaking out on the war was the
"kiss of death." The opposite proved true. Some 10.5
million voters from union households said the war was
the most important issue to them. To the 51% who voted
for Kerry, the campaign had nothing to say. And for the
49% who voted for Bush - families with children in the
service, or reservists, or honest people affected by
national security hysteria - no effort was made to
convince them that the war was as bad for working
families at home as it was for the Iraqis whose
country is being destroyed. Silence on the war
had a high price.
The AFL-CIO needs a program that opposes
the effort to implement neoliberal policies internationally,
taking a consistent approach from Mexico to China, from
Baghdad to Bogotá. Moving away from the cold war past
was a watershed development as important as the change
on immigration, and related to it. But change in the labor
movement's international activity has been incomplete.
A new direction in international relations should be
based on solidarity, and solidarity is a two-way street.
The end of labor's cold war policy has to be made explicit,
as part of finding a new set of principles for our relations
with unions and workers in other countries. While some of
those principles are embodied in ILO labor standards calling
for the right to organize, an end to child labor, and other
protections, unions in developing countries increasingly
demand a broader agenda. In particular they want greater
help in defending the public sector under attack from
privatization, and an international system for defending the
rights of migrants. New international relationships need to
be based on the ability of US unions to listen to the concerns
of labor in the developing world, and not just impose its own
agenda, however well intentioned.
A new, more radical political program runs counter to
the prevailing wisdom of our times, which holds the profit
motive sacred, and believes that market forces solve all
social problems. If labor's leaders move in this direction,
they won't get invited for coffee with the President, or
included in meetings of the Democratic Leadership Council.
At the beginning of the cold war, the AFL-CIO built its
headquarters right down the street from the White House,
eloquent testimony to the desire of its old leaders for
respectability in the eyes of the political elite. That dream
may be difficult for some to give up. But labor can't speak
convincingly to the working poor without, at the same time,
directly opposing the common economic understanding
shared by Republicans and many Democrats.
The labor movement needs political independence.
To organize by the millions, workers have to make
hard decisions, putting their jobs on the line for the sake
of their future. Unions of past decades won the loyalty of
working people when joining one was even more dangerous
and illegal than it is today. The left in labor then proposed
an alternative social vision - that society could be organized
to ensure social and economic justice for all people.
While some workers believed that change could be made
within the capitalist system, and others argued for
replacing it, they were united by the idea that working
people could gain enough political power to end poverty,
unemployment, racism, and discrimination.
The poor will not be always with us, they declared.
Today our biggest problem is finding similar ways for
unions to affect workers' consciousness -- the way people
think. A new commitment to organizing can't be simply
a matter of more money and organizers, or more intelligent
and innovative tactics, or structural change, as necessary as
these things are. During the periods in our history when unions
grew by qualitative leaps, their activity relied on workers
organizing themselves, not just acting as troops in
campaigns masterminded by paid staff.
For workers to act in this way today, they would have
to have a much clearer sense of their own interests, and
a vision that large-scale social change is possible. Does
the labor movement present such a vision of a more just
society, capable of inspiring workers to struggle and sacrifice?
Labor's radical vision of decades ago made it a stronger
movement. Losing it in the red scares of the 1950s deprived
most unions of their ability to inspire. It's no accident that
the years of McCarthyism marked the point when the percentage
of union members began to decline.
Our history should tell us that radical ideas have always
had a transformative power - especially the idea that while
you might not live to see a new world, your children might,
if you fought for it. In the 1930s and 40s, these ideas were
propagated within unions by leftwing political organizations.
A general radical culture reinforced them. Today most unions
no longer have this left presence. Can the labor movement
itself fulfill this role? At the very least, unions need a large
core of activists at all levels who are unafraid of radical ideas
of social justice, and who can link them to immediate
economic bread-and-butter issues.
And since good ideas are worthless unless they reach
people, the labor movement has to be able to communicate
that vision to workers outside its own ranks. In an era when
many unions have discontinued their own publications, or
turned them into ones light on content, they need exactly
the opposite.
This is a very important moment, in which a national
debate and discussion can have real-life consequences for
the future. It can provide a powerful impetus to organizing
an anti-Bush coalition in the short term, and a more
profound political realignment in the longer term.
The present period is not unlike the 1920s, which were
also filled with company unions, the violence of strikebreakers,
and a lack of legal rights for workers. A decade later, those
obstacles were swept away. An upsurge of millions in the
1930s, radicalized by the depression and leftwing activism,
forced corporate acceptance of labor for the first time in
the country's history. The current changes taking place
in U.S. unions may be the beginning of something as large
and profound. If they are, then the obstacles unions face
today can become historical relics as quickly as did those
of an earlier era.
U.S. Labor Against War (USLAW)
www.uslaboragainstwar.org
info@uslaboragainstwar.org
PMB 153
1718 "M" Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20036
Gene Bruskin and Bob Muehlenkamp, Co-convenors Amy
Newell, National Organizer Michael Eisenscher, Organizer
& Web Coordinator Adrienne Nicosia, Administrative Staff
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) Rebels Kills 17 Iraq Security in Bombing Spree
By Matt Spetalnick
BAGHDAD (Reuters)
Mon Jan 3, 2005 09:00 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7222637&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Insurgents killed 17 Iraqi police and National
Guards Monday in another bloody spree of ambushes, bombings and
suicide attacks aimed at wrecking Iraq's Jan. 30 national election.
Two explosions rocked Baghdad, including one detonated by
a suicide bomber posing as a taxi driver who killed two policemen
and a civilian near interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's party
headquarters.
The other deadly attacks were centered in the restive Sunni
heartland north of the capital, raising further questions among
Iraqis on how the country's fledgling security forces will be
able to protect voters if they can hardly protect themselves.
In west Baghdad, an explosives-laden car tried to ram
through a checkpoint on a road leading to Allawi's party
offices but hit a police pick-up truck and blew up, setting
nearby vehicles ablaze and sending up plumes of black smoke.
The blast, which also wounded 25 people, came a day after
insurgents exposed the vulnerability of Iraq's security
services with a suicide bombing that killed 25 National Guards.
The attacks were the latest in a campaign by Sunni rebels
trying to drive out U.S.-led forces, cripple the
American-backed government and scare voters
away from the polls. Iraqi leaders say the insurgency
also seeks to provoke sectarian civil war.
The Al Qaeda Organization of Holy War in Iraq led by Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, behind most of the attacks since a U.S.-led
invasion in 2003, has vowed to "slaughter" Iraqis it brands
collaborators with foreign occupiers.
And Osama bin Laden and Islamist groups have pledged to
wreck the vote as part of a holy war.
Despite that, Allawi promised Iraqis in a New Year's Eve
broadcast that new security forces backed by U.S.-led troops
would be capable of doing the job.
Monday's first explosion in Baghdad hit a roadblock about a
kilometer (half a mile) from the main offices of Allawi's Iraqi
National Accord bloc just minutes before the party had been due
to hold a news conference to announce its slate of candidates.
Aides said Allawi, a secular Shi'ite who heads the interim
administration, was safe and had been nowhere near the scene.
"Most of the casualties have been among the security forces
manning the checkpoint. No one senior from the Iraqi National
Accord was hurt," a senior Iraqi official told Reuters.
Police commanders said the bomber had been driving a taxi,
a method used before by insurgents to avoid raising suspicion.
After a loud explosion that rocked the capital, ambulances
rushed to the scene, where wounded lay on the ground as police
fired warning shots in the air to clear the area.
RAPID SUCCESSION OF ATTACKS
More attacks followed in rapid succession.
A suicide car bomb killed six National Guards and wounded
eight at a checkpoint near an American military base close to
the town of Balad, not far from Sunday's even-deadlier attack
in the north, Iraqi officials said.
Two roadside bomb blasts killed another six National Guards
and wounded four in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. A
policeman was killed near the northern city of Mosul when his
patrol came upon a decapitated body and tried to move it,
setting off a booby-trap explosion.
Gunmen killed two more officers at a checkpoint in Baiji.
In another attack in the capital, a car bomb exploded close
to a four-wheel-drive vehicle of the type used by foreign
security contractors and leading Iraqi officials, police and
witnesses said. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Bloodshed has been heaviest in areas dominated by Saddam's
once-privileged Sunni minority which now faces the prospect of
elections cementing the newfound political power of the long-
oppressed Shi'ite majority.
U.S. and Iraqi officials ushered in the New Year warning
they expected a spike in pre-election assaults by insurgents
but pledging to do everything possible to safeguard what they
say will be the country's first free elections since the 1950s.
But in a sign that the campaign of intimidation was having
an effect, an election organizing committee in the northern
city of Baiji quit en masse Sunday after receiving death threats.
(c) Reuters 2005
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) Israelis hasten land grab in shadow of wall
Bulldozers go in as expansion of settlements continues
Chris McGreal in Jayyous
Guardian
Tuesday December 14, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1372963,00.html
Sharif Omar has been waiting two years for the bulldozers, ever since
Israel's steel and barbed wire "security fence" carved its way between
his village and its land. Last week the excavators and diggers finally
arrived on the outskirts of Jayyous to lay the foundations for an
expansion of the nearby Jewish settlement of Zufim, fulfilling the
fears and warnings of its Palestinian neighbours.
The bulldozers were preparing the ground for hundreds of new
homes, despite the Israeli government's claim that it is not
expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Like other
building work along the route of the barrier, it seems to be an
attempt to ensure that the land between the fence and the
1967 border remains in Israeli hands in any final agreement
with the Palestinians.
"When they built the fence, we said they would use it to build
a much bigger settlement, and they would take our land to do it,"
said Mr Omar, whose olive and citrus groves are now encircled.
"It is very clear to us, they are planning to confiscate all of our
land and drive us from here. They came and told us to finish
harvesting because they were going to begin building 80 houses.
They are beginning with my neighbour's land but if they do it there
they will do it on mine."
At least five other sites along the barrier have settlement work in
progress. Israeli human rights groups say the government appears
to be racing to fill in the gap between the barrier and the Israeli
border before a US team arrives next year to mark out the final
limits of settlement expansion.
Zufim, where about 200 families live, is built on 136 hectares
(336 acres) of land confiscated from Jayyous in 1986. An Israeli
rights group, Bimkom, says that developers in Zufim plan to
build about 1,200 new homes. Yehezkel Lein, a researcher for
another Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, said the military
government in the occupied territories had issued permits for
the work.
He added: "In the plan for Zufim there is an extension to the
north of the settlement that was already approved. There is
also another expansion to the east. But there is no territorial
contiguity between Zufim and the new construction, so it is
really a new settlement."
He said the government's intention became clear when it
sited the barrier between Jayyous and Zufim so that most of
the land was on the settlers' side. "The fence took an
inconvenient route, not one that is best for security. If you
ask why, it can only be to take the land."
About 400 more houses are being built around Alfe Menashe
settlement, at the heart of an enclave created by a loop in
the barrier less than two miles south of Zufim. Trapped inside
are five smaller Palestinian communities of about 1,000 people
and their land.
A short distance away work has begun on about 50 houses at
Nof Sharon on land confiscated from a Palestinian town. In
recent months the government has invited tenders to build
thousands of houses in big settlements, such as Ariel, and
those close to Jerusalem, including Ma'ale Adumim.
The first stage of the peace road map obliges Israel to freeze
all settlement construction. Its foreign minister, Silvan Shalom,
told the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, in Jerusalem last
month that the government was not expanding its settlements.
But a foreign ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said yesterday
that Israel had an agreement with the US that new building was
allowed within existing built-up areas. "The word settlement
expansion means the outward growth of settlements. From our
interpretation, that means building inside existing settlements,"
he said.
Pressed on why the building near Zufim and other sites was some
distance from the settlements, Mr Regev said there was a different
view of Jewish colonies close to the 1967 border. "We are talking
about places that it's accepted will remain inside Israel whatever
the outcome of final status talks. It's possible that in those
places the thinking is different."
The Palestinians say there is no such acceptance on their part,
and this is an Israeli interpretation of an agreement with Washington.
Settlement expansion between the barrier and the green line
has been encouraged by a letter from President Bush to Ariel
Sharon in April promising that "population concentrations" in
the occupied territories - taken to mean Jewish settlements -
would remain in Israeli hands under any peace agreement with
the Palestinians.
Last week the US national security council adviser on the Middle
East, Elliott Abrams, told a closed meeting of Jewish leaders that
Washington saw settlements to the east of the barrier as
ultimately intended for removal. But he said Israel would be
allowed to hold on those to the west, which include Zufim.
The Palestinian communities trapped in the enclave with Alfe
Menashe have gone to the Israeli high court to get the barrier
moved, in part because they are afraid that settlement expansion
will grab more of their land.
Last week government lawyers told the court that living next to
Alfe Menashe gave the Palestinians the opportunity to find jobs
in the settlement, and so they "were not only not harmed by
building the fence but even benefited from it".
The villagers' lawyer, Michael Sefarad, was astonished by the
government's claim. "None of the enclave's residents wants
the fence, and is not interested in being at the mercy of the
settlers. To suggest that is outrageous," he said.
"It reveals how the justice ministry really regards the
Palestinians' lives and wishes. If anyone can even think
that a Palestinian would be happy to live in a walled-in
enclave because it gives him the opportunity to work in
a settlement, it is very sad."
Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) HANDS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY!
SOCIAL SECURITY FOR THE FUTURE, NOT FOR WALL STREET!
JOIN US: TUESDAY, JANUARY 18, 11:30 AM
PACIFIC COAST STOCK EXCHANGE, 115 SANSOME ST, SF.
In a message dated 1/2/05 6:04:28 PM, mlyon01@comcast.net writes:
This is just an informal notice, we don't have a prepared piece on
this yet, but we will soon:
a number of Bay Area groups (Gray Panther chapters, SF OWL, Calif
Alliance of Retired Americans members, and hopefully, more to come)
are having a march with a series of demonstrations against Social
Security restructuring and privatization. We invite you and your
organizations!
HANDS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY!
SOCIAL SECURITY FOR THE FUTURE, NOT FOR WALL STREET!
JOIN US: TUESDAY, JANUARY 18, 11:30 AM
PACIFIC COAST STOCK EXCHANGE, 115 SANSOME ST, SF.
We want to bring out:
(1) the soundness, efficiency, and morality of the present system, and
that future generations
can use it,
(2) people depend on Social Security,
(3) future benefit cuts are in addition to privatization
(4) future beneficiaries are going to have both benefit cuts and pay
the transition costs,
(5) private administration costs will be ruinous,
(6) privatization is feeding corporate greed,
(7) Corporations and government want us to pay for an economic mess
they created,
(8) Wall Street is lying about both the dangers to current Social
Security and the benefits of
privatization, and finally
(9) privatizing Social Security would bring us back to the same
situation that led to the Great Depression and the creation of Social
Security in the first place.
Michael Lyon
128 Faith St
San Francisco CA 94110
415-215-7575
new e-mail
mlyon01@comcast.net
We will meet at the
Pacific Stock Exchange, downtown San Francisco
115 Sansome St. (between Bush and Pine),
(See the attached map, which show this and all other locations
described)
and have a short rally/demonstration,
then march to the
SF Chamber of Commerce,
235 Montgomery St. (also between Bush and Pine),
and have another short rally/demonstration,
and march again to the offices of
Sen. Dianne Feinstein,
1 Post St (at Market and Montgomery)
for another short rally/demonstration
All of these locations are within 2-3 blocks of each other.
Use the Montgomery Street BART station,
(at Market and Montomery, at Feinstein's office)
Parking is available at 71 Stevenson (between 1st and 2nd Sts.)
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SocialSecurityNow/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
SocialSecurityNow-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) Hiroshima Cover-up: How the War Department's Timesman
Won a Pulitzer
By Amy Goodman and David Goodman
Published on Tuesday, August 10, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0810-01.htm
Governments lie.
-- I. F. Stone, Journalist
At the dawn of the nuclear age, an independent Australian journalist
named Wilfred Burchett traveled to Japan to cover the aftermath of
the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The only problem was that
General Douglas MacArthur had declared southern Japan off-limits,
barring the press. Over 200,000 people died in the atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no Western journalist
witnessed the aftermath and told the story. The world's media
obediently crowded onto the USS Missouri off the coast of
Japan to cover the surrender of the Japanese.
Wilfred Burchett decided to strike out on his own. He was
determined to see for himself what this nuclear bomb had done,
to understand what this vaunted new weapon was all about.
So he boarded a train and traveled for thirty hours to the city
of Hiroshima in defiance of General MacArthur's orders.
Burchett emerged from the train into a nightmare world. The
devastation that confronted him was unlike any he had ever
seen during the war. The city of Hiroshima, with a population
of 350,000, had been razed. Multistory buildings were reduced
to charred posts. He saw people's shadows seared into walls
and sidewalks. He met people with their skin melting off. In
the hospital, he saw patients with purple skin hemorrhages,
gangrene, fever, and rapid hair loss. Burchett was among the
first to witness and describe radiation sickness.
Burchett sat down on a chunk of rubble with his Baby Hermes
typewriter. His dispatch began: "In Hiroshima, thirty days
after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook
the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and
horribly-people who were uninjured in the cataclysm
from an unknown something which I can only describe
as the atomic plague."
He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to
this day: "Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city.
It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it
and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as
dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as
a warning to the world."
Burchett's article, headlined THE ATOMIC PLAGUE, was
published on September 5, 1945, in the London Daily
Express. The story caused a worldwide sensation.
Burchett's candid reaction to the horror shocked readers.
"In this first testing ground of the atomic bomb I have
seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in four
years of war. It makes a blitzed Pacific island seem like
an Eden. The damage is far greater than photographs
can show.
"When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around for
twenty-five and perhaps thirty square miles. You can see
hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the
stomach to see such man-made destruction."
Burchett's searing independent reportage was a public
relations fiasco for the U.S. military. General MacArthur
had gone to pains to restrict journalists' access to the
bombed cities, and his military censors were sanitizing
and even killing dispatches that described the horror.
The official narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed
civilian casualties and categorically dismissed reports of
the deadly lingering effects of radiation. Reporters whose
dispatches convicted with this version of events found
themselves silenced: George Weller of the Chicago Daily
News slipped into Nagasaki and wrote a 25,000-word
story on the nightmare that he found there. Then he
made a crucial error: He submitted the piece to military
censors. His newspaper never even received his story.
As Weller later summarized his experience with
MacArthur's censors, "They won."
U.S. authorities responded in time-honored fashion to
Burchett's revelations: They attacked the messenger.
General MacArthur ordered him expelled from Japan
(the order was later rescinded), and his camera with
photos of Hiroshima mysteriously vanished while he
was in the hospital. U.S. officials accused Burchett of
being influenced by Japanese propaganda. They scoffed
at the notion of an atomic sickness. The U.S. military
issued a press release right after the Hiroshima bombing
that downplayed human casualties, instead emphasizing
that the bombed area was the site of valuable industrial
and military targets.
Four days after Burchett's story splashed across front pages
around the world, Major General Leslie R. Groves, director
of the atomic bomb project, invited a select group of thirty
reporters to New Mexico. Foremost among this group was
William L. Laurence, the Pulitzer Prize-winning science
reporter for The New York Times. Groves took the reporters
to the site of the first atomic test. His intent was to
demonstrate that no atomic radiation lingered at the site.
Groves trusted Laurence to convey the military's line; the
general was not disappointed.
Laurence's front-page story, U.S. ATOM BOMB SITE BELIES
TOKYO TALES: TESTS ON NEW MEXICO RANGE CONFIRM
THAT BLAST, AND NOT RADIATION, TOOK TOLL, ran on
September 12, 1945, following a three-day delay to clear
military censors. "This historic ground in New Mexico, scene
of the first atomic explosion on earth and cradle of a new
era in civilization, gave the most effective answer today to
Japanese propaganda that radiations [sic] were responsible
for deaths even after the day of the explosion, Aug. 6, and
that persons entering Hiroshima had contracted mysterious
maladies due to persistent radioactivity," the article began.3
Laurence said unapologetically that the Army tour was intended
"to give the lie to these claims."
Laurence quoted General Groves: "The Japanese claim that
people died from radiation. If this is true, the number was
very small."
Laurence then went on to offer his own remarkable editorial
on what happened: "The Japanese are still continuing their
propaganda aimed at creating the impression that we won
the war unfairly, and thus attempting to create sympathy
for themselves and milder terms . . . Thus, at the beginning,
the Japanese described 'symptoms' that did not ring true."
But Laurence knew better. He had observed the first atomic
bomb test on July 16, 1945, and he withheld what he knew
about radioactive fallout across the southwestern desert that
poisoned local residents and livestock. He kept mum about
the spiking Geiger counters all around the test site.
William L. Laurence went on to write a series of ten articles
for the Times that served as a glowing tribute to the
ingenuity and technical achievements of the nuclear
program. Throughout these and other reports, he downplayed
and denied the human impact of the bombing. Laurence won
the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.
It turns out that William L. Laurence was not only receiving
a salary from The New York Times. He was also on the
payroll of the War Department. In March 1945, General
Leslie Groves had held a secret meeting at The New York
Times with Laurence to offer him a job writing press releases
for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program to develop atomic
weapons. The intent, according to the Times, was "to explain
the intricacies of the atomic bomb's operating principles in
laymen's language." Laurence also helped write statements
on the bomb for President Truman and Secretary of
War Henry Stimson.
Laurence eagerly accepted the offer, "his scientific curiosity
and patriotic zeal perhaps blinding him to the notion that
he was at the same time compromising his journalistic
independence," as essayist Harold Evans wrote in a history
of war reporting. Evans recounted: "After the bombing,
the brilliant but bullying Groves continually suppressed
or distorted the effects of radiation. He dismissed reports
of Japanese deaths as 'hoax or propaganda.' The Times'
Laurence weighed in, too, after Burchett's reports, and
parroted the government line." Indeed, numerous press
releases issued by the military after the Hiroshima
bombing-which in the absence of eyewitness accounts
were often reproduced verbatim by U.S. newspapers-
were written by none other than Laurence.
"Mine has been the honor, unique in the history of
journalism, of preparing the War Department's official
press release for worldwide distribution," boasted
Laurence in his memoirs, Dawn Over Zero. "No greater
honor could have come to any newspaperman,
or anyone else for that matter."
"Atomic Bill" Laurence revered atomic weapons. He
had been crusading for an American nuclear program
in articles as far back as 1929. His dual status as
government agent and reporter earned him an
unprecedented level of access to American military
officials-he even flew in the squadron of planes that
dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. His reports
on the atomic bomb and its use had a hagiographic
tone, laced with descriptions that conveyed almost
religious awe.
In Laurence's article about the bombing of Nagasaki
(it was withheld by military censors until a month after
the bombing), he described the detonation over Nagasaki
that incinerated 100,000 people. Laurence waxed: "Awe-
struck, we watched it shoot upward like a meteor coming
from the earth instead of from outer space, becoming ever
more alive as it climbed skyward through the white
clouds. . . . It was a living thing, a new species of being,
born right before our incredulous eyes."
Laurence later recounted his impressions of the atomic
bomb: "Being close to it and watching it as it was being
fashioned into a living thing, so exquisitely shaped that
any sculptor would be proud to have created it, one . . .
felt oneself in the presence of the supranatural."
Laurence was good at keeping his master's secrets-from
suppressing the reports of deadly radioactivity in New
Mexico to denying them in Japan. The Times was also
good at keeping secrets, only revealing Laurence's dual
status as government spokesman and reporter on
August 7, the day after the Hiroshima bombing-and four
months after Laurence began working for the Pentagon.
As Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell wrote in their
excellent book Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of
Denial, "Here was the nation's leading science reporter,
severely compromised, not only unable but disinclined
to reveal all he knew about the potential hazards of
the most important scientific discovery of his time."
Radiation: Now You See It, Now You Don't
A curious twist to this story concerns another New York
Times journalist who reported on Hiroshima; his name,
believe it or not, was William Lawrence (his byline was
W.H. Lawrence). He has long been confused with
William L. Laurence. (Even Wilfred Burchett confuses the
two men in his memoirs and his 1983 book, Shadows of
Hiroshima.) Unlike the War Department's Pulitzer Prize
winner, W.H. Lawrence visited and reported on Hiroshima
on the same day as Burchett. (William L. Laurence, after
flying in the squadron of planes that bombed Nagasaki,
was subsequently called back to the United States by
the Times and did not visit the bombed cities.)
W.H. Lawrence's original dispatch from Hiroshima was
published on September 5, 1945. He reported matter-
of-factly about the deadly effects of radiation, and wrote
that Japanese doctors worried that "all who had been in
Hiroshima that day would die as a result of the bomb's
lingering effects." He described how "persons who had
been only slightly injured on the day of the blast lost
86 percent of their white blood corpuscles, developed
temperatures of 104 degrees Fahrenheit, their hair
began to drop out, they lost their appetites, vomited
blood and finally died."
Oddly enough, W.H. Lawrence contradicted himself
one week later in an article headlined NO RADIOACTIVITY
IN HIROSHIMA RUIN. For this article, the Pentagon's spin
machine had swung into high gear in response to Burchett's
horrifying account of "atomic plague." W.H. Lawrence
reported that Brigadier General T. F. Farrell, chief of the
War Department's atomic bomb mission to Hiroshima,
"denied categorically that [the bomb] produced a dangerous,
lingering radioactivity." Lawrence's dispatch quotes only
Farrell; the reporter never mentions his eyewitness
account of people dying from radiation sickness that
he wrote the previous week.
The conflicting accounts of Wilfred Burchett and William
L. Laurence might be ancient history were it not for
a modern twist. On October 23, 2003, The New York Times
published an article about a controversy over a Pulitzer
Prize awarded in 1932 to Times reporter Walter Duranty.
A former correspondent in the Soviet Union, Duranty had
denied the existence of a famine that had killed millions of
Ukrainians in 1932 and 1933. The Pulitzer Board had launched
two inquiries to consider stripping Duranty of his prize. The
Times "regretted the lapses" of its reporter and had published
a signed editorial saying that Duranty's work was "some of
the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper." Current
Times executive editor Bill Keller decried Duranty's "credulous,
uncritical parroting of propaganda."
On November 21, 2003, the Pulitzer Board decided against
rescinding Duranty's award, concluding that there was "no
clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception" in
the articles that won the prize.
As an apologist for Joseph Stalin, Duranty is easy pickings.
What about the "deliberate deception" of William L. Laurence
in denying the lethal effects of radioactivity? And what of the
fact that the Pulitzer Board knowingly awarded the top
journalism prize to the Pentagon's paid publicist, who
denied the suffering of millions of Japanese? Do the
Pulitzer Board and the Times approve of "uncritical
parroting of propaganda"-as long as it is from the
United States?
It is long overdue that the prize for Hiroshima's
apologist be stripped.
Amy Goodman is host of the national radio and TV show
"Democracy Now!." This is an excerpt from her new
national bestselling book The Exception to the Rulers:
Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media
that Love Them , written with her brother journalist
David, exposes the reporting of Times correspondent
William L. Laurence
Democracy Now! is a national radio and TV program,
broadcast on more than 240 stations.
###
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13) Peltier Seeks to Correct Illegal Sentence
Fargo, ND --Today, in the United States District Court (North
Dakota), attorneys for American Indian activist Leonard Peltier
filed a Motion to Correct an Illegal Sentence.
"Peltier has been illegally imprisoned for nearly 30 years,"
said Barry Bachrach, Peltier's attorney.
On June 26, 1975, two agents of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation were killed on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
in South Dakota. Mr. Peltier was charged in a two- count
federal indictment. He was tried & convicted on both counts
of first-degree murder & was sentenced to two consecutive
life sentences. Designated as a political prisoner by
Amnesty International, which has called for his
immediate & unconditional release, Peltier is
imprisoned at the U.S. penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
"The federal jurisdiction conferred by the statutes under
which my client was convicted & sentenced depended on
the location of the alleged crime, not against whom the
crime was allegedly committed."
The statutes required that the acts in question take place
"within the special maritime & territorial jurisdiction of the
United States". Because the acts occurred on the Pine Ridge
Indian Reservation, which Bachrach argues is neither "within
the special maritime [or] territorial jurisdiction of the United
States," Mr. Peltier claims he was convicted & sentenced for
crimes over which the U.S. District Court had no jurisdiction.
The recent Supreme Court decision that ruled the
sentencing guidelines in Washington State unconstitutional
& threw state & federal courts into turmoil (Blakely v.
Washington 124 S.Ct. 2531, 2004) also is cited in the
brief submitted to the District Court on Peltier's behalf.
In that case, the judge made "findings" independent of
the jury and added 37 months to the 53-month sentence
stipulated by the state guidelines thereby using a looser
legal standard -- "preponderance of the evidence" --
than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" that juries use
in criminal cases. The Supreme Court ruled that this
practice violates the Sixth Amendment right to a trial
by jury. Any facts used by a judge to justify a sentence
longer than that recommended by the guidelines must
be based on facts the jury had when it convicted the
defendant.
"Not only did the court not have jurisdiction in the
Peltier case, but the trial judge inflicted punishment
-- two consecutive life terms -- that the jury's verdict
alone did not allow. The jury did not find all the facts
'which the law makes essential to the punishment'.
According to the Supreme Court, the judge exceeded
his proper authority."
Peltier is calling on the Federal Rules of Criminal
Procedure in effect at the time of his sentencing --
specifically, Rule 35(a) -- that provided that the
Court could correct an illegal sentence at any time.
"This rule applies to any offense committed before
November 1, 1997," Bachrach explained.
"The appellate courts have recognized the undisputed
misconduct in Peltier's case 'fabricated & suppressed
evidence, as well as coerced testimony' yet have refused
to take corrective action for nearly three decades. This
is clearly an abuse of the legal standards of American
justice. It is our belief that the action filed today should
ultimately lead to Mr. Peltier's release."
Released on December 15, 2004
Contact: Barry Bachrach, Esquire; Bowditch & Dewey,
311 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01615; (508) 926-3403 or
Also see:
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee PO Box 583 Lawrence, KS 66044-0583
Telephone: 785/842-5774; 785/842-5796 (Fax); Web:
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Subject: Decisive days
From: "Barbara Deutsch"
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 03:07:55 -0800
Granny D, who is finishing her 95th year providing
a beautiful and unshakeable example of femininity,
feminism, and faith in democracy and in humanity,
will be a part of the January 4-6 march and actions
in Washington this week.
To learn about her new Democracy Road project which you can
support, and bulletin, Democracy Week, to which you can
subscribe, go to GrannyD.com.
These are the words of greeting on the project page:
Help Doris "Granny D" Haddock bring street-level progressive
organizing to the neediest streets and byways in America --
because our elections are only our report cards on how we
are serving each other's needs.
. . . . "We have much to do in the months and years ahead
as America's loyal opposition. Half the nation may not be
enough to stop the Bush lie machine from retaining the
White House, but it is more than enough to stop the war
and protect our environment and our necessary social
programs. Read your Gandhi and be prepared to act
together with millions of thoughtful Americans." --
Doris Haddock
Ray Beckerman and Sheila Parks are other inspiring
examples of amazing grace manifest in astounding work,
well underway, to wrest just and accountable democracy
from the present hellacious hypocrisy, administering
what Alison Weir calls "the tsunami we can prevent"
(see IfAmericansKnew.org).
Ray Beckerman's blog <
http://fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com>
is the response of a NY lawyer to what he learned
working for voter protection in Ohio:
Ray Beckerman writes:
SPECIAL NOTE: January 6th is a critical date in American
history. It is the last chance this country has to preserve
its democracy. If Senators and Congresspeople do not
stand up and do the right thing that day, democracy is
over in the nation that introduced it to the modern world,
and our descent into dictatorship will have been completed.
If the small group of ultra-reactionary traitors at present
in control of the Senate, the House, the Presidency, the
Judiciary, the Press, and the manufacture of deliberately
unverifiable voting machines, is permitted to stage
a second coup d'etat, there will never be "election reform";
this crowd has made it abundantly clear that it respects
power, not law. It will have become impossible to rid our
nation of this cancer through the electoral process.
For the reasons expressed above, I have decided that,
as a matter of editorial policy, I will not list in this calendar
any events subsequent to January 6th, unless they involve
investigation, litigation, and/or prosecution of the abuses
that were committed in Ohio in 2004, and will devote no
space in this calendar or elsewhere in this blog to (a)
generalized long range election reform, (b) 'counter-
inaugurals', or (c) attacks on the Bush administration's
policies.
I urge everyone to stay focussed on the 2004 election,
and to , , , fight for the true outcome of that election. . . .
Sincerely yours,
R. B.
At
find both a comprehensive calendar of events and all
the latest action memos.
Ray Beckerman also wrote this Notice to All United
States Senators and Congress people:
You took an oath to defend and protect the Constitution
of the United States from its enemies both foreign and domestic.
On January 6th your sincerity and commitment to that
oath will be tested.
The evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible that
the electors from Ohio were unlawfully chosen and
unlawfully seated.
Evidence is pouring in that even the incomplete remedy
of a recount is being thwarted by election officials brazenly
engaged in a cover-up designed to destroy any possible
efficacy the recount could have.
If a President can be selected in this country as a result
of conduct which was wildly unlawful, then the rule of law,
and with it democracy, has ceased to exist.
It is your duty not to accept the vote of the illegal electors
for President or Vice President of the United States, and to
accept the vote of the electors who were lawfully chosen
by the voters of the State of Ohio . . .
Your decision to honor your duty, or not to honor it, is
something for which you will have to answer not only to
the people of the United States, and to your constituents,
but to your own families, and your children and grandchildren
and their children's children, and to your own conscience.
I implore you to do your duty in defense of democracy,
and not to allow "government of the people, by the people,
and for the people" to perish from the great nation which
introduced it to the modern world.
-- Ray Beckerman
Sheila Parks includes "a wonderful letter john conyers sent to
all the senators" in her December 31 message from Coalition
Against Election Fraud [www.caef.us], the group that has
been and continues holding a daily vigil at John Kerry's
house on Beacon Hill in Boston. Her message is posted
with other action memos at
She writes:
some of us from caef are leaving for dc . . . to talk with
senators and ask them to object to the electoral college
vote of ohio. (remember they could not find one in 2000)
if you or anyone you know knows senators on our dream
list, ( boxer ,byrd, biden, wyden, lautenberg, nelson, graham,
obama, harkin, kerry, kennedy, dayton, jeffords, leahy, levin,
lieberman, snowe,schumer,feingold ((yes we have added some
since we put the petition out and we cannot change that))
please contact me asap. if you know people from states
where senators we are focusing on live and who might
meet us in d.c to go with us to visit their senator, please
let me know that too, asap.or if you have any personal
kind of connection with any of these senators . . .
Sign our petition to the Senators:
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/senatorsnocertify
if you can send some money [www.caef.us] for expenses
for this trip, not only for me. . .
happy new year to you, yours and our beautiful planet
earth. wishing for all of us a year of change, internally
and externally here in our country and inr the world.
only you can make both happen. if not you, who? if
not now, when?
sxo
AT a RALLY [tonight] IN FANEUIL HALL the COALITION
[is going to call on] SENATORS TO ACT AGAINST ELECTION FRAUD
Let's help make sure the Senators hear that call (and maybe
we should think about raising it).
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) A plan for Hunters Point
Sunday, January 2, 2005
URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/01/02/EDG
229H4D51.DTL
Subject: re: FYI: A plan for Hunters Point
From : Rolandgarret@aol.com
Sent : Sunday, January 02, 2005 12:23 PM
I am just sending this out, in case anyone did not read the
editorial today in The Chronicle .
If one reads the accounts on this plan that are written in the
Bay View Hunters Point community paper, The San Francisco
Bay View, one knows the following part of the editorial is mythology :
"It's an unprecedented pact between the Navy, the city,
environmentalists, the developer and, most of all,
community leaders who were in the room, scrutinizing
it page by page."
A plan for Hunters Point
-
Sunday, January 2, 2005
URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/01/02/EDG
229H4D51.DTL
AFTER 30 years of planning setbacks, environmental impasses
and much debate about how it will benefit local residents,
it finally appears that the almost mythical notion of developing
the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard is on the verge of becoming
reality.
With the San Francisco Redevelopment Commission voting
to take over a portion of the 500-acre yard from the Navy,
and city supervisors endorsing the construction plans, the
so called Phase One project on Parcel A is scheduled to
begin in March.
Under the plan, construction on Parcel A -- 88 acres of
rolling hilltops with sweeping bay vistas -- will include
1,600 housing units. Based on an income-related formula,
about 30 percent of homes will be deemed as affordable,
presumably meaning they will be within the financial
reach of the modest wage-earners who live nearby.
In addition, construction will create as many as 600 new
jobs. Fifty percent of them are promised to city residents,
focusing on hiring from the immediate neighborhood,
where double-digit joblessness has persisted for more
than two decades.
The agreement also calls for assistance programs for
first-time home buyers, local contractors and small
businesses; 34 acres of improved recreation, park and
open space; employment-training programs and an
estimated 1,000 new permanent jobs when
construction is through.
It's an unprecedented pact between the Navy, the city,
environmentalists, the developer and, most of all,
community leaders who were in the room,
scrutinizing it page by page.
There are even some disincentives written into the plan
to dissuade the developer, Lennar Corp., from reneging
on its community commitments. Notable is the threat
to rescind its right to any future shipyard projects.
On paper, it sounds great.
Still, we're uneasy. The city -- indeed the Redevelopment
Agency -- has a spotty record in matters like this.
This is the agency that in the 1970s razed Fillmore District
homes and businesses of mostly African Americans, driving
many of them away. And there has been a long string of
promises made then broken to revitalize the Hunters Point
and Bayview districts -- including the recent pledge to
hire mostly residents to work on the Third Street
light-rail project.
"Whether the community is going to benefit or not, we won't
know until 10 years from now,'' said the Rev. Calvin Jones,
who sits on the shipyard's Community Advisory Committee
and, as pastor of Providence Baptist Church, is a community
-housing developer. He likes the deal yet cites "No More
Fillmore" as his motto.
"Who is going to build, who is going to get hired -- when
it comes down to details, there's still a lot to be done. I'm
not putting all my faith in the Redevelopment Agency.
Because of what happened in the past, somebody needs
to be watching."
As Michael Cohen, the city's point man on the project, puts
it, this is the last chance for the city to get it right and
restore the trust of a skeptical and long-neglected
community.
Like most, we desperately want to believe that this time
the process will work. But like Jones, we'll be watching.
Page B - 4
(c)2005 San Francisco Chronicle
From: "Ahimsa Sumchai"
Stupid bastards...build homes adjacent to a seismically
unstable 174 acre toxic land parcel that harbors
a partially capped active landfill that the Navy recently
identified as having breaks in its barrier wall in the
aftermath of 150 thousand deaths in South Asia.
Stupid bastards!
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16) The Tsunami in Iraq -- We Can End It
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2005 18:35:55 -0800
Original Message From: Alison Weir
Dear friends,
As we see the tragic images resulting from the recent tsunami and
earthquake and send our contributions toward relief efforts,
perhaps we should consider the even greater tragedy that we
have the power to end:
A San Francisco cab-driver named Hal Womack recently pointed
out that the total population of the recent tsunami-destroyed
countries is about 50 times greater than that of Iraq. Therefore,
comparing the per capita death rate for the two areas of
devastation -- one a natural disaster, one man-made -- it
turns out that the civilian death toll in Iraq since 1991 due
to sanctions and the American invasion is ten times greater
than that caused by the present natural disaster.
May 2005 be the year in which all Americans -- including and
especially the massive majority of decent, busy, normally
unpolitical teachers and nurses and doctors and clerks and
plumbers and lawyers and retirees and contractors and
businessmen and farmers and office workers and all of
us who are busy earning our livings and raising our
children and paying our bills... may all of us finally fulfill
our obligations as citizens and as human beings by
ending the needless, tragic, and self-destructive violence
in the Middle East being committed in our name and
with our money.
This is the tsunami we have the power to stop.
Alison Weir
If Americans Knew
www.ifamericansknew.org
Save the Dates - Al-Awda's Third International Convention:
Empowering the Palestine Right to Return Movement,
15 - 17 April 2005, Los Angeles, California. Please check
http://al-awda.org and http://al-awdacal.org
for details to be posted soon.
We need your support to do our work. To find out how
you can make a tax-deductible donation to Al-Awda,
please go to:
http://www.al-awda.org/donatenow/
Unless indicated otherwise, all statements posted represent
the views of their authors and not necessarily those of
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition.
Yahoo! Groups Links
To visit your group on the web, go to:
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