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) Military's Test at High Schools Brings a Salvo of Concerns
By Liz F. Kay
Published on Monday, January 3, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0103-02.htm
7) Honoring 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
(A resolution put before the S.F. Board of Supervisors
8) WMD: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION, the movie will be at the
Red Vic Theatre in S.F. for two days: Jan.4th and 5th.
Check newspapers for details.
For more information contact:
Richard Castro
Outreach & Special Distribution
Cinema Libre Studio
818.349.8822 Ph.
818.349.9922 Fax
www.cinemalibrestudio.com
9) The Mighty US GI's: Lied To, Used, and Losing.
By Amer Jubran
January 2, 2005
10) Update on National Assembly of United for Peace and Justice
11) Zarqawi Qaeda-Linked Group Kills Iraq Governor-Web
DUBAI (Reuters)
Tue Jan 4, 2005 08:21 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7231891&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
12) Iraq Battling More Than 200,000 Insurgents: Intelligence Chief
Agence France-Presse
Baghdad - Iraq
Monday 03 January 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010405W.shtml
13) U.S. May Add Advisers to Aid Iraq's Military
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/international/middleeast/04military.html?o
ref=login&hp&ex=1104814800&en=1d44abe6f1fb9a3e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
14) 5 U.S. Troops Are Killed, and Baghdad
Governor Is Slain
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and DAVID E. SANGER.
BAGHDAD, Iraq
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/international/middleeast/04cnd-iraq.html?h
p&ex=1104901200&en=774671f9e3bc3432&ei=5094&partner=homepage
15) Supreme Court to Rule on Executing Young Killers
By ADAM LIPTAK
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/national/04juvenile.html?hp&ex=1104901200&
en=ceb849ee6735d090&ei=5094&partner=homepage
16) Prosecution Concludes Case in Terror Trial (Lynne Stewart)
By JULIA PRESTON
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/nyregion/04stewart.html
17) Limits Eased on Killing of Wolves
By KIRK JOHNSON
DENVER
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/national/04wolf.html
18) UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
WINTER/SPRING ORGANIZING DRIVE TO END THE U.S.
WAR ON IRAQ
From: "Carwil James" < carwil@falseignorance.info >
To: "Direct Action to Stop the War"
< directaction@lists.riseup.net >
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 11:51 AM
Subject: [DASW] UFPJ Presents [ending the]
Iraq [War] Strategy
19) The Pentagon says that more than 10,000 US military personnel have been
wounded in Iraq since the conflict began in March 2003.
Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2005/01/05 10:33:34 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4147705.stm
20) Ramsey Clark: Why I'm Taking
Saddam's Case
By Lizzy Ratner
http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage1.asp#
21) Iraqi Resistance speech on videotape December 13 2004
GISpecial 3A5
ThomasFBarton@earthlink.net
22) The victims of the tsunami pay the price
of war on Iraq
US and British aid is dwarfed by the billions
both spend on slaughter
George Monbiot
Guardian
Tuesday January 4, 2005
23) National Task Force for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Legal Update - December 11, 2004 meeting in New York City
(Reviewed by Attorney Robert R. Bryan)
24) U.S. Copters Speed Pace of Aid for Indonesia Refugees
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
http://nytimes.com/2005/01/02/international/worldspecial4/02quake.html?ei=50
94
&en=92dbe740aaf891ca&hp=&ex=1104642000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&pos
it
ion=
25) IRAQ: Death in Fallujah rising, doctors say
04 Jan 2005 14:56:16 GMT
Source: Integrated Regional Information Networks
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/121b671d950efc3ac031b54b55118d
85.htm
26) The best kept media secret of the week is that the
greatest devastation and death occurred and is occurring
in Indonesia's Aceh province.
27) War Resisters Go North
By Alisa Solomon, The Nation
Posted on December 22, 2004, Printed on January 3, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/20826/
28) War Resisters Go North
By Alisa Solomon, The Nation
Posted on December 22, 2004, Printed on January 3, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/20826/
29) Iraq War is Bad for Business
By Jim Lobe
Peace and Justice News from FPIF
http://www.fpif.org/
January 4, 2005
Introducing a new commentary from Foreign Policy In Focus
--------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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)
In a message dated 12/29/04 4:09:45 PM, caroseligman writes:
"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) Military's Test at High Schools Brings a Salvo of Concerns
By Liz F. Kay
Published on Monday, January 3, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0103-02.htm
A few days before her holiday break, South River High School junior
Emily Hawse took a three-hour standardized test offered by military
officials that suggests possible careers for students while helping to
identify promising recruits.
Hawse, 16, of Davidsonville said she did not realize until the day of
the exam that it had a military link. She said students were told not
to go to the Edgewater school that morning if they didn't want to
take the test, called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.
"We couldn't go to class if we wanted to," said Hawse, who is undecided
about her future but said it doesn't include the military.
Emily Hawse, a junior at South River High School, said she didn't
know until the day she took the aptitude test that it was part of
a Defense Department program.
(Sun photo by Elizabeth Malby)
At a time of heightened awareness of military recruitment, the aptitude
test offered free by the Defense Department is drawing criticism.
Although Baltimore area school districts have made the test available
for years, some Anne Arundel County students and their parents
complained recently when the test was scheduled during class time
at some schools, and it was unclear to some students that they
could opt out.
The tests have also raised concerns in other places. In a Buffalo,
N.Y., suburb, a high school junior refused to take the exam. And
critics of the program say they field inquiries from all over the
country. They say military recruiters use the test to identify students
with skills that would be useful in the armed forces.
"You're getting hot leads as opposed to cold leads," said Oskar
Castro, an associate with the Youth and Militarism Program of
the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group.
Area school and military officials defend the test as a valuable
career-planning tool.
"This is actually a community service that the Department of
Defense provides to help every generation of youth find where
they fit in the world about them," said Chris Arendt, deputy
director of accession policy at the Pentagon.
In the Baltimore area, nearly 1,400 Anne Arundel students took
the test last school year, along with about 1,000 from Baltimore
County, nearly 500 from Baltimore, 181 from Carroll County
and 573 from Howard County. In Howard, three schools with
ROTC programs offer the test, school district officials said.
Baltimore administers the test to seniors on a voluntary basis,
generally at career and technology schools, and at schools with
ROTC programs. Baltimore County makes it available
to students who request it.
Anne Arundel County school officials say the test is not
mandatory but acknowledge that the message might not
have been clear to all students, given the many standardized
tests they must take.
"This is one of the first times where kids get to choose
whether they take a test," said Jonathan Brice, spokesman
for the Anne Arundel schools. Next year, officials said, they
will emphasize that the test is voluntary.
The test, which has been given to recruits since 1968,
measures verbal and math skills, and knowledge in areas
such as automotive maintenance and repair, electronics and
mechanics. It was expanded to schools at the urging of the
federal Labor and Education departments, Defense Department
officials say.
Military recruitment of high school students has come under
scrutiny recently with the war in Iraq continuing. Such efforts
were criticized in the Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 9/11.
In addition, the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires schools
that receive federal funding to provide military recruiters with
students' names, addresses and phone numbers unless parents
have opted out. Schools also must allow recruiters to have
the same access to campuses that colleges have.
The military's vocational aptitude test is not part of the No
Child Left Behind requirement, and the test's "career
explorations" Web site says students who agree to take
the test aren't making any obligations.
Nationwide, 722,450 students took the test during the
past school year, according to the Defense Department.
That includes more than 8,700 Maryland students from
175 schools.
The assessment has evolved several times since it was
developed from tests used by branches of the military,
said Arendt, a Navy captain. He said he remembers
taking an early version of the test while he was in high
school in the 1970s.
"It gave me, as a student, a good idea about what
I could and could not look forward to in careers," he said.
Students or parents who are concerned about how
information about them is used have options, he said.
One is to indicate on the test that they do not want
their results released to military recruiters.
"They get the results, and it's transparent to us," Arendt said.
Some students and their families aren't aware of that option,
Castro said. For more than 18 years, the committee has
answered questions about the test from families who
encounter it in their schools.
As for casting the test as a career-planning tool, he said,
"We think it's a disingenuous use of the test."
Area school officials say the tests can suggest opportunities
in military and civilian jobs.
"It's a career-interest inventory," said Rhonda C. Gill, Anne
Arundel's director of pupil services. "It's not done in any way,
shape or form to focus kids on going into the military."
In Carroll County, all seven high schools have made the test
available to students since the late 1970s, said Barbara Guthrie,
the school system's guidance supervisor. Typically, a handful
of students sign up for it at each school, she said, but at Winters
Mill High School, 70 students took the test this year.
"It's helpful to students and parents as well, but you use it in
combination with lots of other assessments in schools to help
students figure out future plans and what their abilities are,"
Guthrie said.
Although some Anne Arundel schools administer the test more
formally than schools in other counties, officials noted that
students aren't required to take it. Of 250 South River juniors,
70 chose not to take the test on one of the two days it was
offered last month.
While ninth-, 10th- and 11th-graders were taking the PSAT
countywide in October, a little more than half of the seniors
at Broadneck High School took the military test, said guidance
counselor Joe Kozik, as did seniors at North County and other
high schools. At Broadneck, several parents called to get
more information about the test.
"I think the Iraq war has certainly raised concerns on
multiple levels," said Broadneck Principal Cindy Hudson.
The test serves a purpose for military recruiters. Kozik
noted that recruiters are especially interested in the test
results of five Broadneck students this year.
Because of the reporting requirements of No Child Left
Behind, Kozik said, "whether you take this test or not
... we by law have to provide your name to the federal
government."
At South River High School, some juniors left their classes
to take the test two weeks ago. Others remained in class
or went to school later rather than take it.
Emily Hawse said knowing the test's military connection
earlier would not have kept her from taking it. "I was
thinking that this might help me for college," she said.
Her mother, Monica M. Hawse, agreed that the test would
be useful but added, "I think everybody - kids, parents,
teachers - should know it's affiliated with the military."
Megan Lloyd, 16, a junior from Edgewater, said she
learned about the test when a military recruiter spoke
to her class. She was interested in anything that could
help her decide what path to pursue and was not
concerned about the military connection.
"The man who came into our social studies class
made me feel comfortable about it," she said after
classes one day.
"It's not like they're going to hound you about it,"
said fellow Edgewater resident Charlie Fischer, 16,
who is considering the armed forces and college.
"Or at least, we hope not," Lloyd said.
Sun staff writers Athima Chansanchai and Laura
Loh contributed to this article.
(c) Copyright 2004 Baltimore Sun
###
Common Dreams NewsCenter
(c) Copyrighted 1997-2004
www.commondreams.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Honoring 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
(A resolution put before the S.F. Board of Supervisors
Resolution recognizing January 22, 2005 as "Stand Up For
Choice Day" in honor of the 32nd anniversary of the landmark
1973 United States Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade
establishing a woman's constitutional right to decide when
and if to have a child; and further supporting the local Pro-
Choice community demonstrating in San Francisco to defend
a woman's right to choose safe and legal abortion and birth
control and further urging all legal authorities to fully facilitate
the protection of the right of women to control their reproductive
health, lives and futures in an ever-increasingly hostile
anti-choice climate on the federal level and in state
legislatures and courts throughout the country.
WHEREAS, The 1973 landmark United States Supreme Court
decision Roe v. Wade (the "Roe decision") recognized the right
of women to control their reproductive lives is central to their
ability to participate fully and equally in the economic and
social spheres of society; and
WHEREAS, The Roe decision states that (1) the decision to
have an abortion is accorded the highest level of constitutional
protection, like any other fundamental constitutional right,
(2) state laws regarding abortion must be neutral with respect
to influencing a woman's decision whether or not to have an
abortion, (3) in the period before a fetus is viable, the
government may restrict abortion only to protect a woman's
health, and (4) after a fetus becomes viable, a state
government may prohibit abortion, provided that such
state's laws must permit abortion where necessary to
protect a women's health or life; and
WHEREAS, The protected right to make childbearing
decisions, including abortion, has enabled women to
pursue educational and employment opportunities that
were often unattainable prior to the Roe decision; and
WHEREAS, The Center for Reproductive Rights reports that
prior to the Roe decision, between 200,000 and 1.2 million
illegally induced abortions occurred in the United States
each year; and
WHEREAS, In 1992, the United States Supreme Court decided
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey
(the "Casey decision"), where, although it upheld a woman's
right to choose, it also allowed federal, state and local laws
that favor fetal rights and burden a woman's choice to have
abortion, as long as the burden is not "undue;" and
WHEREAS, The Casey decision has unlocked the door to
hundreds of state and federal criminal restrictions designed
to discourage women from accessing abortion and to promote
the rights of the fetus throughout pregnancy; and
WHEREAS, According to the Allen Gutmacher Institute
(AGI), since 1996, more than 300 criminal abortion
restrictions have been enacted by state and federal
legislatures, none of which would have been constitutional
under the original Roe decision; and
WHEREAS. According to Planned Parenthood, only eight
states, including California, do not mandate parental
involvement before a minor can obtain an abortion; and
WHEREAS, According to AGI, as of January 1, 2004,
twenty-one (21) states will have laws in effect that require
a woman to wait for a period of time, usually twenty four
(24) hours, but up to as many as seventy-two (72) hours,
after receiving state-directed counseling before she can
receive an abortion; and
WHEREAS, These restrictions on access to abortion particularly
discriminate against young women, poor women and
women of color; and
WHEREAS, AGI indicates that 87 percent of all counties
in the United States do not have an abortion provider; and
WHEREAS, For the first time since Roe v. Wade was decided,
anti-choice officials are firmly in control of both the
executive and legislative branches of the federal
government; and
WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court is only
one vacancy away from eliminating the Constitutional
right to abortion; and
WHEREAS, Anti-choice leaders in the Bush Administration
and the federal government are imposing their anti-choice
ideology on the world's most vulnerable women worldwide
by blocking international family planning funding and
promoting ineffective and harmful abstinence-only
programs; and
WHEREAS, On January 22nd, people from all over the San
Francisco Bay Area and beyond will gather to defend one of
our most prized rights and liberties, the freedom of women
to control their reproductive health, lives and futures; now,
therefore, be
RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors recognizes January 22nd,
2005 as "Stand Up for Choice Day" in honor of the landmark 1973
United States Supreme Court decision of Roe. v. Wade, which
established a woman's constitutional right to decide when and
if to have a child; and, be it
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors support the
local Pro-Choice community demonstrating in San Francisco to
defend a woman's right to choose safe and legal abortion and
birth control; and, be it
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors urge all legal
authorities to fully facilitate the protection of the right of women
to control their reproductive health, lives and futures in an ever-
increasingly hostile anti-choice climate on the federal level and
in state legislatures and courts throughout the country.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) WMD: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION, the movie will be at the
Red Vic Theatre in S.F. for two days: Jan.4th and 5th.
Check newspapers for details.
For more information contact:
Richard Castro
Outreach & Special Distribution
Cinema Libre Studio
818.349.8822 Ph.
818.349.9922 Fax
www.cinemalibrestudio.com
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) The Mighty US GI's: Lied To, Used, and Losing.
By Amer Jubran
January 2, 2005
"I am surprised that the forces are not using air-lifting C-130 airplanes to
avoid ground transportation, which is costing us about a hundred soldiers
every month," said commanding Colonel John Jumpier of the US Air Force
during a press conference in December. About 2,000 military convoys must use
the Iraqi highways to supply the spread-out US forces with water, food, fuel
and other essential supplies. Jumpier said, "It will not be efficient to
serve our troops, but it's a chance to save some lives." He added, "I know
that there will be an increase in the chances of getting these slow and low
altitude flying C-130's shot down, but it's a risk that we should take."
A first look at this statement and one would conclude, correctly, that it is
a very dangerous situation on the ground for US occupying forces. Their lack
of control inside the cities of Iraq is now matched by their lack of control
over the highways between them. When US military leaders have to decide
which deadly option to choose from, it reflects a tone of despair where the
safety of the troops is no longer an important issue. No one is able to
define the mission of the troops in Iraq, or for how long this mission will
last. No one at all, including George W. Bush, can explain the US strategy
in Iraq. This is because there is no strategy. With the Iraqi resistance
raging, it is not clear why the US is occupying this country and why the US
is so willing to sacrifice its soldiers there.
While news sources are divided between either concealing or exaggerating the
number of those killed in Iraq, other important statistics about US soldiers
are forgotten. These statistics give a shocking picture about the truth of
what is happening in Iraq. For example, CBS's 60 Minutes reported last fall
that 300 soldiers migrated to Canada when they received orders to join their
units heading to Iraq. 60 Minutes went on to say that 5,500 US soldiers had
deserted for fear of being killed in Iraq. Some refused to join units
leaving for Iraq, but most of them escaped after arriving in Iraq by fleeing
to neighboring countries such as Turkey and Jordan. As one soldier stated:
"They deceived us when they described our mission to Iraq as a walk in the
park." He added: "I took off so that they won't write on my grave, Deceived
Dead GI in Iraq."
Smuggling American GI's is a booming business in Iraq these days. For $1,000
and his/her weapon and uniform, any US soldier can get him or herself out of
Iraq through Kurdistan. Last April, a female US soldier was captured by the
Kurds, allies of the US, dressed like a Kurdish woman with a face veil,
attempting to cross into Turkey.
According to the New York Times, a Pentagon study revealed that one in every
six soldiers who served in Iraq requires immediate psychological treatment.
Over a million soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last two
years. Steven Robinson, a NY Times military expert, believes that the number
needing treatment could jump from one to three soldiers in every six. "There
is a train loaded with people who need help that will be coming to town for
the next thirty five years," said Robinson.
These figures are the worst for the US since the Vietnam War. "Operation
Iraqi Freedom" was supposed to be short and swift. Soldiers were promised
that it would be an easy victory and that they would be home in time for the
summer of 2003. Instead, urban fighting like that in the city of Fallujah
last November, which provided unlimited possibilities for resistance
hideouts, booby-trapped houses, and roads full of roadside bombs, put US
soldiers in the position of having to live every single minute of the day in
fear of an attack. In addition, seeing Iraqis and not being able to
distinguish who is a friend and who is an enemy causes severe anxiety to
soldiers. Paul Raykhouve, commander of a Florida National Guard platoon who
served in Iraq for ten months, was quoted during CBS Sixty Minutes saying:
"The enemy is everywhere, in every street, looking at you from every window,
in every alley. One cannot think straight because of nerve-wracking fear."
Frightened troops lacking both certainty about their mission and a strong
conviction about what they are doing often end up committing war crimes,
such as killing prisoners or injured people. They see in these crimes an
opportunity to get even with their enemy. Racism combines with fear to make
this killing possible. It then becomes important to win acceptance among
other soldiers to justify the crimes. The poor training and poor education
of these soldiers also stands in the way of reason and critical thinking.
They learn to copy existing models of behavior, without a code of ethics or
outside authority to prevent violations of rules of warfare. Even those
soldiers who are not convinced that it is okay to commit war crimes find it
hard to resist.
Both the political and military leadership of the US forces are directly
responsible for providing a large -scale coverup of these crimes. Soldiers
are subjected to an emotional extortion known as "Uniform Code of Loyalty
and Secrecy." Furthermore, the political strength of the US is used to
provide immunity for these soldiers from an international war crimes
tribunal. This leads to normalizing the criminal behavior of servicemen, who
know they can act with impunity.
Caught in frenzy of mass killing, most soldiers develop psychological stress
and mental trauma as a result of serving in Iraq. This stress, predictably,
has been taken out on defenseless Iraqi civilians. Many Iraqis are killed
everyday simply because US soldiers suspected that they were resistance
members. The horrific stories about US soldiers executing wounded Iraqis or
sexually assaulting Iraqi prisoners reveal the severe psychological
conditions that US troops are living under.
Upon finishing service in Iraq, these soldiers will no longer have Iraqis to
murder at will. The weapons they were trained to use will be left behind.
These two things -- without their knowing it -- had become important in
their lives. Without them their return to US society, where there is little
social support, will often mean poverty, alcohol, drugs, domestic violence,
divorce, and suicide. In order not to face themselves, the lies they were
told, and the crimes they committed, these soldiers will return to what they
learned in Iraq - crime, drug trafficking, prostitution, rape, armed
robbery, child abuse, racism, and rallying around the flag.
The government of the US will then have to engage in another massive
coverup. This time it will be to avoid admitting any responsibility for the
psychological illnesses of its servicemen, and for providing no resources to
treat them. Damaged soldiers will become a supply of felons to the US
justice system, which long ago stopped caring about any kind of social
justice. The justice system will in turn deliver the veterans to the prison
system, the US's largest growth industry.
Information about the number of US causalities in Iraq is available on a web
site of the Pentagon or known as the "War Hub" at www.pentagon.gov. This
information covers only those who are officially US citizens enlisted with
different military services. Hired security contractors, or mercenaries, and
recruits who are not citizens who enlisted to obtain a "green card," are not
counted or mentioned. A large number of the green card recruits are from
Mexico and Central America. There are no organizations to look after their
rights or help them once they're in Iraq. Most of them are buried in Iraq
when killed. A videotape produced and distributed by the "Majles Shora
Al-Mojahideen in Fallujah," one of the most important military wings of the
Iraqi resistance, showed a burial site discovered outside the Iraqi city of
Samara with tens of bodies in US military body bags. The dead where dressed
in US uniforms. It is estimated that as many as 40% of the US troops serving
in Iraq are green card recruits.
The website of the Pentagon divides the causalities in Iraq into three
categories:
1)"Combat Causalities" -- 1,300 dead, and 9,000 injured since March, 2003.
Both figures are false.
2) "Non-Combat Causalities." The site does not report how many of these were
injured or killed. Last fall, 60 Minutes concluded that the figure could be
around 3,000 killed and over 25,000 injured.
3) "Coalition Causalities." Information under this category was posted
briefly, then deleted. The figures showed 750 killed and 1,034 injured. It
is not clear who these people were. If they were "coalition forces," then
why are their countries not claiming them?
The US government has gained a reputation of systematically lying to its
population and the rest of the world, but a few facts about Iraq are
emerging despite efforts to conceal them:
* Political stability and security in Iraq is non-existent. This goes to the
heart of the claimed US goal in Iraq. The US justified its removal by
military means of Saddam as a way to create a better and more stable
country. Instead, Iraqis are caught in poverty, hunger, and terrible
violence every day as a direct result of US forces. Iraq is not a better
place today, as Tony Blair and George Bush have claimed. And after Fallujah
no one any longer believes the US is trying to bring freedom to the Iraqis.
* That great lie, the "war on terrorism," has failed to crush what the US
calls international terrorism. US citizens are not safer today than they
were on September 11, 2001. In fact, the most powerful force in the US --
its military machine - is now completely vulnerable to lethal attacks by the
ever-growing Iraqi resistance. Normally, the military is established to
defend or attack those labeled enemies of the state. In the case of the US,
its military is designed to twist the arms of those who do not agree with
its imperial agenda. The US is clearly involved in practicing terrorism by
military means to achieve its strategic interests everywhere around the
globe. But in Iraq, the mighty US military, with over 150,000 well-armed
troops, is very nervous and suffers from low morale, and in the eyes of the
world has lost the moral edge. Furthermore, the war is not a well supported
cause in the US. This time the risk of getting killed in Iraq is real. This
time the enemy is real.
The US public must decide on supporting a policy of war that is killing
their own children and the Iraqi people, or fighting against the war by
taking drastic measures --measures that go beyond vigils and feel-good
political demonstrations. We may be sure that if what we are told about Iraq
by the US government does not look good, the actual truth must be a great
deal worse. Knowing the truth is a big burden. The truth about Iraq is that
the US “Mighty GI’s” are not so mighty!
Announce mailing list
Announce@onepalestine.org
http://mail.onepalestine.org/mailman/listinfo/announce_onepalestine.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) Update on National Assembly of United for Peace and Justice
We are happy to let you know that after a great deal of work we have
secured a great site for the National Assembly on the weekend of
Feb. 19-21...the Millennium Hotel in downtown St. Louis, Missouri.
The hotel is easy to get to from the airport, and St. Louis is in driving
distance from many cities. The hotel is across the street from the
famous Arch on the Mississippi River. I visited the hotel last week
and so we know it has all of the facilities we will need to help ensure
a successful assembly, and we have been able to negotiate an
excellent price.
As Feb. 19 is about seven weeks away we encourage your group
or organization to start the process of selecting delegates to
represent you at the National Assembly. We are still working out
financial details but have decided that the minimal registration fee
for the assembly will include accommodations and food for up to
two delegates from each UFPJ member group (local affiliates or
chapters of national organizations that are members of UFPJ will
only have one delegate). All the details will be worked out and
emailed to you by the end of this week. Registration for the
assembly will be available on the United for Peace and Justice
web site next week. Travel is the responsibility of the member
groups.
During the National Assembly United for Peace and Justice will
decide on a strategic framework, as well as specific strategy,
program and organizing proposals. There will be speakers and
small group discussions on the war in Iraq, and the State of the
U.S. and the Anti-War Movement and much more. The coalition
will elect a new national Steering Committee. Cultural and analytical
presenters and some special guests as well as a dance party will
round out the weekend.
I also want to introduce the coordinator of the National Assembly,
Diane Lent. Diane has been a volunteer with UFPJ and has worked
on many of the mobilizations in New York. She has a long history
in the peace and justice movement and has coordinated similar
gatherings for progressive organizations.
We'll let you know as soon as the assembly registration is set up
on the web site and in the coming weeks you will be getting
a lot more information about the assembly. In the meantime,
if you have any questions please feel free to contact Diane either
by phone at the national office (212-868-5545) or by email
(greenelent@earthlink.net).
peace,
Leslie Cagan
National Coordinator
UFPJ@mediajumpstart.net
https://secure.mediajumpstart.net/mailman/listinfo/ufpj
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) Zarqawi Qaeda-Linked Group Kills Iraq Governor-Web
DUBAI (Reuters)
Tue Jan 4, 2005 08:21 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7231891&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
DUBAI (Reuters) - A group led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi said it had assassinated Baghdad governor Ali
al-Haidri Tuesday, according to an Internet statement.
"A group of mujahideen of the Qaeda Organization for Holy
War in Iraq assassinated a tyrant and American agent, the
governor of Baghdad Ali Haidri," said the statement, which was
posted on an Islamist site.
"We warn every traitor and ally of the Jews and the
Christians that this will be your fate," it added.
Gunmen killed Haidri in Iraq's highest-profile
assassination in eight months and a suicide bomber killed 11
people at a police checkpoint Tuesday in an escalating campaign
to wreck an election due on Jan. 30.
Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for some of the
bloodiest suicide bombings and attacks in Iraq. Haidri had
survived a previous assassination attempt in September.
(c) Reuters 2005
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) Iraq Battling More Than 200,000 Insurgents: Intelligence Chief
Agence France-Presse
Baghdad - Iraq
Monday 03 January 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010405W.shtml
Baghdad - Iraq's insurgency counts more than 200,000 active
fighters and sympathisers, the country's national intelligence
chief told AFP, in the bleakest assessment to date of the armed
revolt waged by Sunni Muslims.
"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq.
I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people," Iraqi intelligence
service director General Mohamed Abdullah Shahwani said in an
interview ahead of the January 30 elections.
Shahwani said the number includes at least 40,000 hardcore
fighters but rises to more than 200,000 members counting
part-time fighters and volunteers who provide rebels everything
from intelligence and logistics to shelter.
The numbers far exceed any figure presented by the US military
in Iraq, which has struggled to get a handle on the size of the
resistance since toppling Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003.
A senior US military officer declined to endorse or dismiss the
spy chief's numbers.
"As for the size of the insurgency, we don't have good resolution
on the size," the officer said on condition of anonymity.
Past US military assessments on the insurgency's size have been
revised upwards from 5,000 to 20,000 full and part-time members,
in the last half year, most recently in October.
Defense experts said it was impossible to divine the insurgency's
total number, but called Shahwani's estimate a valid guess, with
as much credence, if not more, than any US numbers.
"I believe General Shahwani's estimation, given that he is
referring predominantly to active sympathizers and supporters
and to part-time as well as full-time active insurgents, may not be
completely out of the ballpark," said defense analyst Bruce Hoffman
who served as an advisor to the US occupation in Iraq and now works
for US-based think-tank RAND Corporation.
Compared to the coalition's figure, he said: "General Shahwani's -
however possibly high it may be, might well give a more accurate
picture of the situation."
Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq analyst with the Washington-based
Center for Strategic and International Studies, put Shahwani's
estimates on an equal footing with the American's.
"The Iraqi figures do... recognize the reality that the insurgency
in Iraq has broad support in Sunni areas while the US figures down
play this to the point of denial."
Shahwani said the resistance enjoys wide backing in the
provinces of Baghdad, Babel, Salahuddin, Diyala, Nineveh and
Tamim, homes to Sunni Arabs who fear they will lose influence
after the elections.
Insurgents have gained strength through Iraq's tight-knit
tribal bonds and links to the old 400,000-strong Iraqi army,
dissolved by the US occupation in May 2003 two months after
the US-led invasion, he said.
"People are fed up after two years, without improvement.
People are fed up with no security, no electricity, people feel
they have to do something. The army was hundreds of thousands.
You'd expect some veterans would join with their relatives,
each one has sons and brothers."
The rebels have turned city neighborhoods and small towns
around central Iraq into virtual no-go zones despite successful
US military efforts to reclaim former enclaves like Samarra and
Fallujah, he said.
"What are you going to call the situation here (in Baghdad)
when 20 to 30 men can move around with weapons and no
one can get them in Adhamiyah, Dura and Ghazaliya," he said,
naming neighborhoods in the capital.
The spy chief also questioned the success of the November
campaign to retake Fallujah, which US forces have hailed as
a major victory against the resistance.
"What we have now is an empty city almost destroyed... and
most of the insurgents are free. They have gone either to Mosul
or to Baghdad or other areas."
Shahwani pointed to a resurgent Baath party as the key to the
insurgency's might. The Baath has split into three factions, with
the deadliest being the branch still paying allegiance to jailed
dictator Saddam Hussein, he said.
Shahwani said the core Baath fighting strength was more
than 20,000.
Operating out of Syria, Saddam's half-brother Sabawi Ibrahim
al-Hassan and former aide Mohamed Yunis al-Ahmed are
providing funding and tapping their connections to old army
divisions, particularily in Mosul, Samarra, Baquba, Kirkuk and Tikrit.
Saddam's henchman, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, still on the lam
in Iraq, is also involved, he said.
Another two factions, which have broken from Saddam, are
also around, but have yet to mount any attacks. The Baath are
complemented by Islamist factions ranging from Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda affiliate to Ansar al-Sunna and Ansar
al-Islam.
Asked if the insurgents were winning, Shahwani
answered: "I would say they aren't losing."
(c) Copyright 2005 by TruthOut.org
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13) U.S. May Add Advisers to Aid Iraq's Military
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/international/middleeast/04military.html?o
ref=login&hp&ex=1104814800&en=1d44abe6f1fb9a3e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top
commander in Iraq, is reviewing a proposal to add hundreds
of American military advisers to work directly with Iraqi units,
whose disappointing performance could jeopardize the long-
term American exit strategy from Iraq, senior military officials
said Monday.
Americans are training Iraqi police officers and national guard
troops to replace them in securing the country, but the results
over all have been troubling, with growing desertion rates in the
most violent provinces, gaps in leadership, and poor battlefield
performance, American military officers and troops say.
The advisers would bolster the Iraqi will to fight, help train
officers who would lead the troops, curb desertion and provide
Iraqi forces with the confidence that American units would
back them up - in some cases fighting alongside them if
needed, military and Pentagon officials said.
Several hundred American troops are already embedded with
Iraqi units, following a long tradition in American military
actions. But the proposal would greatly expand this presence.
The details of the proposal are still being discussed among
American and Iraqi officials, and more troops would probably
not be embedded until after the Jan. 30 elections, in which
Iraqi forces will play a crucial part.
Embedding more Americans with Iraqis would mean diverting
perhaps several hundred additional American troops away
from combat operations, military officials said. There are
150,000 American forces in Iraq.
Although diverting soldiers might be risky at a time when
commanders say they need troops to press offensives against
insurgents, the plan addresses a widely acknowledged need.
American commanders have praised the skills of some Iraqi
forces, particularly new commando units that have seen
combat throughout the country. But the Americans have
criticized other Iraqi forces for their slovenly appearance
and lack of commitment, raising questions about how
soldiers and marines will respond tojoining such units.
There has been widespread concern in the Bush administration
about the poor performance of Iraqi troops. President Bush
himself discussed the issue in a news conference on Dec. 20.
"They've got some generals in place and they've got foot
soldiers in place, but the whole command structure necessary
to have a viable military is not in place," he said. "And so
they're going to spend a lot of time and effort on achieving
that objective."
If approved, the plan would expand and standardize steps
already taken by some American units, including the Army's
First Cavalry Division and some Marine Corps units, to
enhance the training that the Iraqi Army, National Guard
and police forces receive after boot camp.
"The development of Iraqi security forces is, in my view,
necessarily the main effort," Brig. Gen. Carter Ham,
commander of American forces in northern Iraq, said in
an e-mail message from his headquarters in Mosul on
Monday. "Building capable and loyal Iraqi forces is what
will eventually lead to the defeat of the insurgency and
to a sufficiently stable environment so that U.S. and other
forces can begin to reduce our presence."
General Ham, noting the earlier efforts by some units,
said, "It's time to apply it on a larger scale."
"It seems to me that this is something we want to start
doing in the immediate post-election period," he said.
The proposal that General Casey and his top aides are
weighing has received support in principle from Pentagon
officials at a time when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
has been urging commanders in Iraq to accelerate the creation
of Iraqi security forces and to improve their quality, a senior
Pentagon official said Monday.
General Casey, at a Pentagon news conference on Dec. 16,
said an exhaustive internal review of the military's campaign
plan for Iraq concluded that training the local police and
building a better border patrol were two of three essential
areas that were well behind schedule. The other area was
establishing effective Iraqi intelligence services.
Proponents of embedding programs readily acknowledge
that they will lose the American troops for active combat
operations, but they insist that the Iraqis' training and
confidence has improved.
"It's cost us," Brig. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, an assistant
commander of the First Cavalry Division in Baghdad, told
reporters last week of the division's 540 soldiers who are
now assigned to Iraqi National Guard units in the city.
But, he added, "It pays dividends."
Some influential lawmakers, however, including Senator
John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the
Armed Services Committee and who recently visited troops
in Iraq, have expressed pessimism that Iraqis will be able
to develop independent security forces potent enough to
thwart the insurgency. "The raw material is lacking in the
willpower and commitment after they receive this training
to really shoulder the heavy responsibilities," he said on
the NBC News program "Meet the Press" on Dec. 19.
On paper, there are reasons for worry and for hope,
military officials say. There are plans to produce a total
of 179,600 police and border patrol officers. Of about
116,000 officers on duty now, only 73,000 are fully
trained and equipped, according to Pentagon statistics
on Dec. 27. About half of a projected 100,000 Iraqi
Army, National Guard and commando troops are
now operating.
There are now 10-man adviser and support teams with
each of 27 regular Iraqi Army and intervention force
battalions (nine of which are still in training), their
nine brigade headquarters (three still in training)
and their three division headquarters, senior military
officials in Iraq said.
In addition, adviser teams from Army Special Forces
and other American units are with most of the Iraqi
National Guard forces.
Expanding on those adviser teams, the proposal before
General Casey would probably provide 10-man teams
with 45 existing and 20 emerging national guard
battalions. In addition, the Department of Homeland
Security is providing small teams to help train new
Iraqi border police officers, a military official in Iraq said.
Some details of the new plan were first reported by
CNN on Dec. 26.
Some of the most ambitious plans are to bolster the
abilities of the Iraqi police. The new Iraqi government has
fielded about a dozen police commando units or other
specialized units, whose performance American officers
have largely praised.
The commandos include former Iraqi special forces troops
and have performed well, combining commando skills and
weaponry with police powers to make arrests, a senior
allied official in Baghdad said Monday.
The approach would also provide assistance and mentoring
to the 3,500 basic police graduates that academies in Iraq
and Jordan are churning out every month.
After the insurgent attacks on police stations in Mosul in
November, in which most of the city's police officers abandoned
their posts, American officials, working closely with the Iraqi
government, have toughened the training to resemble more
paramilitary operations and have enforced policies to cut
down on Iraqis' skipping out on leave.
In Mosul, American forces have been assigned to all police
stations. On Saturday, Iraqi security forces and their
American advisers fought off a rocket-propelled grenade
attack on a police station in the southeast part of the city.
A military spokesman, Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, said it was the
12th time since Nov. 10 that insurgents had tried to take
over a police station, none of which have fallen to rebels
in that period.
Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington for
this article, and Erik Eckholm from Baghdad.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) 5 U.S. Troops Are Killed, and Baghdad
Governor Is Slain
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and DAVID E. SANGER.
BAGHDAD, Iraq
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/international/middleeast/04cnd-iraq.html?h
p&ex=1104901200&en=774671f9e3bc3432&ei=5094&partner=homepage
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 4 - Four American soldiers and a marine
were killed today and three other soldiers were wounded on a
day that also saw the assassination of the governor of Baghdad,
one of the highest-profile killings of an Iraqi official in months.
In other violence, a bomb-laden fuel truck killed eight Iraqi
commandos and two other people when it crashed into
a checkpoint in western Baghdad about 9 a.m. today, according
to an Interior Ministry official. Sixty others were wounded in
the attack, which happened near the scene of two deadly car
bombings on Monday.
Three soldiers with the First Cavalry Division died and two
were wounded when an improvised bomb went off at about
11 a.m. in north Baghdad.
About 30 minutes later a soldier with the First Infantry
Division was killed and another was wounded, the military
said, when a bomb exploded near Balad, site of an American
air base about 50 miles north of Baghdad.
The marine with the First Marine Expeditionary Force was
killed in action while carrying out security operations in Al
Anbar Province, a restive Sunni region west of the capital,
the military said.
The Baghdad governor, Ali al-Haidari, was attacked and killed
in a roadside ambush after he left his home, the Interior
Ministry said. The Associated Press reported that six of the
governor's bodyguards were also killed. He was the most
senior official assassinated in the city since the head of the
Governing Council was killed last May.
Mr. Haidari survived a previous assassination attempt in
September.
Later, an insurgent group led by the Jordanian Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi and linked to Al Qaeda claimed responsibility
for the ambush, according to a message and video posted
on an Islamist Internet site. The group has taken responsibility
for many previous deadly attacks in Iraq.
Insurgents have repeatedly attacked Iraqi officials as well as
members of the country's security forces, accusing them of
collaborating with foreign occupiers.
The steady violence prompted Iraq's interim president, Ghazi
al-Yawar, to urge the United Nations to to look into whether
the country should go ahead with its scheduled Jan. 30 election.
"Definitely the United Nations, as an independent umbrella
of legitimacy, should really take the responsibility by seeing
whether that is possible or not," Mr. al-Yawar, a Sunni Arab
sheik, told Reuters in an interview.
"On a logical basis, there are signs that it will be a tough call
to hold the election," he said, in comments that pulled back
from a statement he made on a visit to Washington in December.
On that visit with President Bush, both men reinforced their
message that elections must go ahead as scheduled, despite
the violence.
Mr. al-Yawar's comments today came after Prime Minister
Ayad Allawi telephoned President Bush on Monday and
discussed the many impediments still facing the country
as it heads toward elections in 27 days, according to senior
American officials familiar with the contents of the call.
The officials insisted that Dr. Allawi, Iraq's interim leader, did
not tell Mr. Bush that the elections should be delayed, though
his defense minister said in Cairo on Monday that the voting
could be postponed to ensure greater participation by Sunnis.
"There was no substantive conversation about delay," a senior
administration official said. Dr. Allawi, the official said, "wasn't
even a bit wobbly" on that point.
But some officials in Washington and in Iraq interpreted the
telephone call as a sign that Dr. Allawi, who is clearly concerned
his own party could be headed to defeat if the election is held on
schedule, may be preparing the ground to make the case for delay
to Mr. Bush.
"Clearly the thinking on this is still in motion in Baghdad," a senior
administration official said Monday evening. "And President Bush
is holding firm," the official said, telling Dr. Allawi that the Iraqi
government has met every deadline so far, including assuming
power from the United States in June.
Mr. Bush has publicly insisted that the elections must go forward
on Jan. 30, as scheduled, and said any delay would mean giving
in to the insurgents who have vowed to stop the elections from
taking place.
Dr. Allawi's call, on Mr. Bush's first day back in Washington after
a weeklong break at his Texas ranch, came just hours after a wave
of bombing attacks left at least 20 people dead, including one blast
near the interim prime minister's Baghdad party headquarters.
Another killed three British citizens and an American in a convoy
of the American security firm Kroll Inc. In addition to the 20 or
more deaths - a figure that included suicide bombers - dozens
were injured.
The attacks, which followed a car bombing north of Baghdad on
Sunday that killed 18 Iraqi troops, were the latest attempt by
insurgents to destabilize the country and intimidate Iraqis in
the weeks before the parliamentary elections. The insurgents'
targets are Iraqis who work with American forces, especially in
Sunni areas, in hopes of frightening people from the polls. Some
groups have already warned of major attacks on Election Day.
While White House officials were hesitant to give many details of
the discussion between Dr. Allawi and Mr. Bush, they said the
Iraqi leader brought up questions of security and the ferocity
of the insurgency. "It was a discussion about the impediments,"
said an official who reviewed a transcript of the call. "But no one
suggested the impediments could not be overcome."
Yet Dr. Allawi's cabinet is already showing signs of weakening
on the question of holding the elections this month. The defense
minister, Hazem Shaalan, suggested during his Cairo visit that
a postponement would encourage Sunnis to participate;
American and Iraqi officials have been concerned that if the
Sunnis are blocked from voting or boycott the election, the
outcome will not be considered legitimate.
But an American Embassy official said the United States
wanted the elections to proceed as scheduled, and an
official with Iraq's independent election commission told
The Associated Press that there were no plans for a delay.
No one affiliated with Prime Minister Allawi's party, the
Iraqi National Accord, was hurt in the suicide car bombing
Monday morning near the party's headquarters in Baghdad,
Iraqi officials said. But the blast killed two Iraqi police officers
and one other person in addition to the car's driver while
injuring at least 25 others, according to Iraqi officials.
The Iraqi police said the bomb detonated after the police
rained gunfire on the vehicle to stop it from passing
a checkpoint.
The suicide bomber drove a Chevrolet Caprice with the
markings of a Baghdad taxicab and rammed the
checkpoint near the party headquarters just west of
the Green Zone, the heavily fortified American compound
in central Baghdad.
The victims were taken to Yarmouk Hospital. Ahmed Thamir,
a 21-year-old soldier slightly wounded in the attack, stood
guard outside the hospital with a Kalashnikov rifle. "It's hard
to trust anyone nowadays," he said.
The group that calls itself the Army of Ansar al-Sunna took
responsibility for the attack in an Internet posting. In the
message, the group warned "apostates" that if they "do not
repent from your infidelity," it had other bombers ready to
"kill you one by one." The group has claimed a string of attacks,
including the Dec. 21 bombing of a mess tent in Mosul that
killed 14 American servicemen and 8 other people.
Many recent attacks against Iraqi troops and officials have
occurred in the heavily Sunni areas north of Baghdad, a region
where the deadliest attacks took place on Monday.
In the first attack, shortly before 8 a.m., a car bomb killed
4 Iraqi National Guard soldiers and wounded 14 more near
a military base in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, said
Master Sgt. Robert Cowens, a spokesman for the First
Infantry Division. The attack was not far from where insurgents
killed 18 Iraqi troops and a civilian the day before by
detonating an explosives-laden vehicle next to a bus
full of national guardsmen.
Early Monday afternoon, six Iraqi National Guard troops
were killed and four wounded when insurgents attacked
a patrol near Tikrit, farther north of Baghdad, with
a roadside bomb. The attackers used an artillery shell
for ammunition in the attack, which happened at 2:40 p.m.,
Sergeant Cowens said.
There were reports of other attacks across Iraq. In Tal Afar,
a city in northern Iraq, one Iraqi policeman was killed and
two were wounded when a homemade bomb hidden in
a decapitated body exploded as the policemen approached
the body, the government said in a statement.
The attack on a car carrying employees of Kroll Inc., the New
York-based risk consulting and security firm, occurred at
3:45 p.m. at a checkpoint where people leave Baghdad's
fortified Green Zone to get onto the road to the airport.
A Kroll official said that four people were killed when a suicide
bomber rammed into their car, including two British employees
of Kroll. "It was a suicide attack on a convoy coming from the
airport," said Pat Wood, Kroll's vice president for corporate
communications.
The other victims were an American woman, Tracy Hushin,
of Islip, N.Y., with the consulting firm BearingPoint, and
a British citizen working for a subcontractor of the company,
an announcement by BearingPoint said.
Despite the violence, American officials say the election must
be held, as planned, on Jan. 30. For one thing, they say, the
Iraqi interim constitution mandates the timing. There have
already been extensive preparations by the American military
for the elections, they say.
Some Sunni leaders have called for a delay, worried that the
intimidation tactics will keep many voters home and lead to
severe Sunni under representation in the new government.
Mr. Shaalan made his suggestion for a delay Monday as he
sought help from other Arab nations to persuade Iraq's
Sunnis to take part.
Richar A. Oppel Jr. reported from Baghdad for this article
and David E. Sanger from Washington. Steven R. Weisman
contributed reporting from Washington.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) Supreme Court to Rule on Executing Young Killers
By ADAM LIPTAK
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/national/04juvenile.html?hp&ex=1104901200&
en=ceb849ee6735d090&ei=5094&partner=homepage
In August, six months after the United States Supreme Court
agreed to consider the constitutionality of the juvenile death
penalty, Robert Acuna, a high school student from Baytown,
Tex., was put on trial for his life.
The jury convicted Mr. Acuna of killing two elderly neighbors,
James and Joyce Carroll, when he was 17, shooting them
"execution style," as prosecutors described it, and stealing
their car. At sentencing, when jurors weighed his crime
against factors counseling leniency, Mr. Acuna's youth
should have counted in his favor.
Instead, his brooding and volatile adolescent demeanor
may have hurt more than helped, and the Houston jury
sentenced him to die.
"They probably thought that he wasn't showing remorse,"
said Mr. Acuna's mother, Barbara.
that his behavior at the trial had alienated the jury. "He was very
nonchalant," Ms. Magee said. "He laughed at inappropriate things. He still
didn't quite get the magnitude of everything he did."
1) NEXT BAY AREA UNITED AGAINST WAR MEETING:
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) Military's Test at High Schools Brings a Salvo of Concerns
By Liz F. Kay
Published on Monday, January 3, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0103-02.htm
7) Honoring 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
(A resolution put before the S.F. Board of Supervisors
8) WMD: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION, the movie will be at the
Red Vic Theatre in S.F. for two days: Jan.4th and 5th.
Check newspapers for details.
For more information contact:
Richard Castro
Outreach & Special Distribution
Cinema Libre Studio
818.349.8822 Ph.
818.349.9922 Fax
www.cinemalibrestudio.com
9) The Mighty US GI's: Lied To, Used, and Losing.
By Amer Jubran
January 2, 2005
10) Update on National Assembly of United for Peace and Justice
11) Zarqawi Qaeda-Linked Group Kills Iraq Governor-Web
DUBAI (Reuters)
Tue Jan 4, 2005 08:21 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7231891&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
12) Iraq Battling More Than 200,000 Insurgents: Intelligence Chief
Agence France-Presse
Baghdad - Iraq
Monday 03 January 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010405W.shtml
13) U.S. May Add Advisers to Aid Iraq's Military
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/international/middleeast/04military.html?o
ref=login&hp&ex=1104814800&en=1d44abe6f1fb9a3e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
14) 5 U.S. Troops Are Killed, and Baghdad
Governor Is Slain
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and DAVID E. SANGER.
BAGHDAD, Iraq
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/international/middleeast/04cnd-iraq.html?h
p&ex=1104901200&en=774671f9e3bc3432&ei=5094&partner=homepage
15) Supreme Court to Rule on Executing Young Killers
By ADAM LIPTAK
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/national/04juvenile.html?hp&ex=1104901200&
en=ceb849ee6735d090&ei=5094&partner=homepage
16) Prosecution Concludes Case in Terror Trial (Lynne Stewart)
By JULIA PRESTON
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/nyregion/04stewart.html
17) Limits Eased on Killing of Wolves
By KIRK JOHNSON
DENVER
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/national/04wolf.html
18) UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
WINTER/SPRING ORGANIZING DRIVE TO END THE U.S.
WAR ON IRAQ
From: "Carwil James" < carwil@falseignorance.info >
To: "Direct Action to Stop the War"
< directaction@lists.riseup.net >
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 11:51 AM
Subject: [DASW] UFPJ Presents [ending the]
Iraq [War] Strategy
19) The Pentagon says that more than 10,000 US military personnel have been
wounded in Iraq since the conflict began in March 2003.
Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2005/01/05 10:33:34 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4147705.stm
20) Ramsey Clark: Why I'm Taking
Saddam's Case
By Lizzy Ratner
http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage1.asp#
21) Iraqi Resistance speech on videotape December 13 2004
GISpecial 3A5
ThomasFBarton@earthlink.net
22) The victims of the tsunami pay the price
of war on Iraq
US and British aid is dwarfed by the billions
both spend on slaughter
George Monbiot
Guardian
Tuesday January 4, 2005
23) National Task Force for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Legal Update - December 11, 2004 meeting in New York City
(Reviewed by Attorney Robert R. Bryan)
24) U.S. Copters Speed Pace of Aid for Indonesia Refugees
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
http://nytimes.com/2005/01/02/international/worldspecial4/02quake.html?ei=50
94
&en=92dbe740aaf891ca&hp=&ex=1104642000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&pos
it
ion=
25) IRAQ: Death in Fallujah rising, doctors say
04 Jan 2005 14:56:16 GMT
Source: Integrated Regional Information Networks
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/121b671d950efc3ac031b54b55118d
85.htm
26) The best kept media secret of the week is that the
greatest devastation and death occurred and is occurring
in Indonesia's Aceh province.
27) War Resisters Go North
By Alisa Solomon, The Nation
Posted on December 22, 2004, Printed on January 3, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/20826/
28) War Resisters Go North
By Alisa Solomon, The Nation
Posted on December 22, 2004, Printed on January 3, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/20826/
29) Iraq War is Bad for Business
By Jim Lobe
Peace and Justice News from FPIF
http://www.fpif.org/
January 4, 2005
Introducing a new commentary from Foreign Policy In Focus
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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)
In a message dated 12/29/04 4:09:45 PM, caroseligman writes:
"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) Military's Test at High Schools Brings a Salvo of Concerns
By Liz F. Kay
Published on Monday, January 3, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0103-02.htm
A few days before her holiday break, South River High School junior Emily
Hawse took a three-hour standardized test offered by military officials that
suggests possible careers for students while helping to identify promising
recruits.
Hawse, 16, of Davidsonville said she did not realize until the day of the
exam that it had a military link. She said students were told not to go to
the Edgewater school that morning if they didn't want to take the test,
called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.
"We couldn't go to class if we wanted to," said Hawse, who is undecided
about her future but said it doesn't include the military.
Emily Hawse, a junior at South River High School, said she didn't know until
the day she took the aptitude test that it was part of a Defense Department
program.
(Sun photo by Elizabeth Malby)
At a time of heightened awareness of military recruitment, the aptitude test
offered free by the Defense Department is drawing criticism.
Although Baltimore area school districts have made the test available for
years, some Anne Arundel County students and their parents complained
recently when the test was scheduled during class time at some schools, and
it was unclear to some students that they could opt out.
The tests have also raised concerns in other places. In a Buffalo, N.Y.,
suburb, a high school junior refused to take the exam. And critics of the
program say they field inquiries from all over the country. They say
military recruiters use the test to identify students with skills that would
be useful in the armed forces.
"You're getting hot leads as opposed to cold leads," said Oskar Castro, an
associate with the Youth and Militarism Program of the American Friends
Service Committee, a Quaker group.
Area school and military officials defend the test as a valuable
career-planning tool.
"This is actually a community service that the Department of Defense
provides to help every generation of youth find where they fit in the world
about them," said Chris Arendt, deputy director of accession policy at the
Pentagon.
In the Baltimore area, nearly 1,400 Anne Arundel students took the test last
school year, along with about 1,000 from Baltimore County, nearly 500 from
Baltimore, 181 from Carroll County and 573 from Howard County. In Howard,
three schools with ROTC programs offer the test, school district officials
said.
Baltimore administers the test to seniors on a voluntary basis, generally at
career and technology schools, and at schools with ROTC programs. Baltimore
County makes it available to students who request it.
Anne Arundel County school officials say the test is not mandatory but
acknowledge that the message might not have been clear to all students,
given the many standardized tests they must take.
"This is one of the first times where kids get to choose whether they take a
test," said Jonathan Brice, spokesman for the Anne Arundel schools. Next
year, officials said, they will emphasize that the test is voluntary.
The test, which has been given to recruits since 1968, measures verbal and
math skills, and knowledge in areas such as automotive maintenance and
repair, electronics and mechanics. It was expanded to schools at the urging
of the federal Labor and Education departments, Defense Department officials
say.
Military recruitment of high school students has come under scrutiny
recently with the war in Iraq continuing. Such efforts were criticized in
the Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 9/11.
In addition, the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires schools that
receive federal funding to provide military recruiters with students' names,
addresses and phone numbers unless parents have opted out. Schools also must
allow recruiters to have the same access to campuses that colleges have.
The military's vocational aptitude test is not part of the No Child Left
Behind requirement, and the test's "career explorations" Web site says
students who agree to take the test aren't making any obligations.
Nationwide, 722,450 students took the test during the past school year,
according to the Defense Department. That includes more than 8,700 Maryland
students from 175 schools.
The assessment has evolved several times since it was developed from tests
used by branches of the military, said Arendt, a Navy captain. He said he
remembers taking an early version of the test while he was in high school in
the 1970s.
"It gave me, as a student, a good idea about what I could and could not look
forward to in careers," he said.
Students or parents who are concerned about how information about them is
used have options, he said. One is to indicate on the test that they do not
want their results released to military recruiters.
"They get the results, and it's transparent to us," Arendt said.
Some students and their families aren't aware of that option, Castro said.
For more than 18 years, the committee has answered questions about the test
from families who encounter it in their schools.
As for casting the test as a career-planning tool, he said, "We think it's a
disingenuous use of the test."
Area school officials say the tests can suggest opportunities in military
and civilian jobs.
"It's a career-interest inventory," said Rhonda C. Gill, Anne Arundel's
director of pupil services. "It's not done in any way, shape or form to
focus kids on going into the military."
In Carroll County, all seven high schools have made the test available to
students since the late 1970s, said Barbara Guthrie, the school system's
guidance supervisor. Typically, a handful of students sign up for it at each
school, she said, but at Winters Mill High School, 70 students took the test
this year.
"It's helpful to students and parents as well, but you use it in combination
with lots of other assessments in schools to help students figure out future
plans and what their abilities are," Guthrie said.
Although some Anne Arundel schools administer the test more formally than
schools in other counties, officials noted that students aren't required to
take it. Of 250 South River juniors, 70 chose not to take the test on one of
the two days it was offered last month.
While ninth-, 10th- and 11th-graders were taking the PSAT countywide in
October, a little more than half of the seniors at Broadneck High School
took the military test, said guidance counselor Joe Kozik, as did seniors at
North County and other high schools. At Broadneck, several parents called to
get more information about the test.
"I think the Iraq war has certainly raised concerns on multiple levels,"
said Broadneck Principal Cindy Hudson.
The test serves a purpose for military recruiters. Kozik noted that
recruiters are especially interested in the test results of five Broadneck
students this year.
Because of the reporting requirements of No Child Left Behind, Kozik said,
"whether you take this test or not ... we by law have to provide your name
to the federal government."
At South River High School, some juniors left their classes to take the test
two weeks ago. Others remained in class or went to school later rather than
take it.
Emily Hawse said knowing the test's military connection earlier would not
have kept her from taking it. "I was thinking that this might help me for
college," she said.
Her mother, Monica M. Hawse, agreed that the test would be useful but added,
"I think everybody - kids, parents, teachers - should know it's affiliated
with the military."
Megan Lloyd, 16, a junior from Edgewater, said she learned about the test
when a military recruiter spoke to her class. She was interested in anything
that could help her decide what path to pursue and was not concerned about
the military connection.
"The man who came into our social studies class made me feel comfortable
about it," she said after classes one day.
"It's not like they're going to hound you about it," said fellow Edgewater
resident Charlie Fischer, 16, who is considering the armed forces and
college.
"Or at least, we hope not," Lloyd said.
Sun staff writers Athima Chansanchai and Laura Loh contributed to this
article.
(c) Copyright 2004 Baltimore Sun
###
Common Dreams NewsCenter
(c) Copyrighted 1997-2004
www.commondreams.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Honoring 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
(A resolution put before the S.F. Board of Supervisors
Resolution recognizing January 22, 2005 as "Stand Up For Choice Day" in
honor of the 32nd anniversary of the landmark 1973 United States Supreme
Court decision of Roe v. Wade establishing a woman's constitutional right to
decide when and if to have a child; and further supporting the local
Pro-Choice community demonstrating in San Francisco to defend a woman's
right to choose safe and legal abortion and birth control and further urging
all legal authorities to fully facilitate the protection of the right of
women to control their reproductive health, lives and futures in an
ever-increasingly hostile anti-choice climate on the federal level and in
state legislatures and courts throughout the country.
WHEREAS, The 1973 landmark United States Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade
(the "Roe decision") recognized the right of women to control their
reproductive lives is central to their ability to participate fully and
equally in the economic and social spheres of society; and
WHEREAS, The Roe decision states that (1) the decision to have an abortion
is accorded the highest level of constitutional protection, like any other
fundamental constitutional right, (2) state laws regarding abortion must be
neutral with respect to influencing a woman's decision whether or not to
have an abortion, (3) in the period before a fetus is viable, the government
may restrict abortion only to protect a woman's health, and (4) after a
fetus becomes viable, a state government may prohibit abortion, provided
that such state's laws must permit abortion where necessary to protect a
women's health or life; and
WHEREAS, The protected right to make childbearing decisions, including
abortion, has enabled women to pursue educational and employment
opportunities that were often unattainable prior to the Roe decision; and
WHEREAS, The Center for Reproductive Rights reports that prior to the Roe
decision, between 200,000 and 1.2 million illegally induced abortions
occurred in the United States each year; and
WHEREAS, In 1992, the United States Supreme Court decided Planned Parenthood
of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (the "Casey decision"), where,
although it upheld a woman's right to choose, it also allowed federal, state
and local laws that favor fetal rights and burden a woman's choice to have
abortion, as long as the burden is not "undue;" and
WHEREAS, The Casey decision has unlocked the door to hundreds of state and
federal criminal restrictions designed to discourage women from accessing
abortion and to promote the rights of the fetus throughout pregnancy; and
WHEREAS, According to the Allen Gutmacher Institute (AGI), since 1996, more
than 300 criminal abortion restrictions have been enacted by state and
federal legislatures, none of which would have been constitutional under the
original Roe decision; and
WHEREAS. According to Planned Parenthood, only eight states, including
California, do not mandate parental involvement before a minor can obtain an
abortion; and
WHEREAS, According to AGI, as of January 1, 2004, twenty-one (21) states
will have laws in effect that require a woman to wait for a period of time,
usually twenty four (24) hours, but up to as many as seventy-two (72) hours,
after receiving state-directed counseling before she can receive an
abortion; and
WHEREAS, These restrictions on access to abortion particularly discriminate
against young women, poor women and women of color; and
WHEREAS, AGI indicates that 87 percent of all counties in the United States
do not have an abortion provider; and
WHEREAS, For the first time since Roe v. Wade was decided, anti-choice
officials are firmly in control of both the executive and legislative
branches of the federal government; and
WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court is only one vacancy away from
eliminating the Constitutional right to abortion; and
WHEREAS, Anti-choice leaders in the Bush Administration and the federal
government are imposing their anti-choice ideology on the world's most
vulnerable women worldwide by blocking international family planning funding
and promoting ineffective and harmful abstinence-only programs abroad; and
WHEREAS, On January 22nd, people from all over the San Francisco Bay Area
and beyond will gather to defend one of our most prized rights and
liberties, the freedom of women to control their reproductive health, lives
and futures; now, therefore, be
RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors recognizes January 22nd, 2005 as
"Stand Up for Choice Day" in honor of the landmark 1973 United States
Supreme Court decision of Roe. v. Wade, which established a woman's
constitutional right to decide when and if to have a child; and, be it
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors support the local Pro-Choice
community demonstrating in San Francisco to defend a woman's right to choose
safe and legal abortion and birth control; and, be it
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors urge all legal authorities
to fully facilitate the protection of the right of women to control their
reproductive health, lives and futures in an ever-increasingly hostile
anti-choice climate on the federal level and in state legislatures and
courts throughout the country.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) WMD: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION, the movie will be at the
Red Vic Theatre in S.F. for two days: Jan.4th and 5th.
Check newspapers for details.
For more information contact:
Richard Castro
Outreach & Special Distribution
Cinema Libre Studio
818.349.8822 Ph.
818.349.9922 Fax
www.cinemalibrestudio.com
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) The Mighty US GI's: Lied To, Used, and Losing.
By Amer Jubran
January 2, 2005
"I am surprised that the forces are not using air-lifting C-130 airplanes to
avoid ground transportation, which is costing us about a hundred soldiers
every month," said commanding Colonel John Jumpier of the US Air Force
during a press conference in December. About 2,000 military convoys must use
the Iraqi highways to supply the spread-out US forces with water, food, fuel
and other essential supplies. Jumpier said, "It will not be efficient to
serve our troops, but it's a chance to save some lives." He added, "I know
that there will be an increase in the chances of getting these slow and low
altitude flying C-130's shot down, but it's a risk that we should take."
A first look at this statement and one would conclude, correctly, that it is
a very dangerous situation on the ground for US occupying forces. Their lack
of control inside the cities of Iraq is now matched by their lack of control
over the highways between them. When US military leaders have to decide
which deadly option to choose from, it reflects a tone of despair where the
safety of the troops is no longer an important issue. No one is able to
define the mission of the troops in Iraq, or for how long this mission will
last. No one at all, including George W. Bush, can explain the US strategy
in Iraq. This is because there is no strategy. With the Iraqi resistance
raging, it is not clear why the US is occupying this country and why the US
is so willing to sacrifice its soldiers there.
While news sources are divided between either concealing or exaggerating the
number of those killed in Iraq, other important statistics about US soldiers
are forgotten. These statistics give a shocking picture about the truth of
what is happening in Iraq. For example, CBS's 60 Minutes reported last fall
that 300 soldiers migrated to Canada when they received orders to join their
units heading to Iraq. 60 Minutes went on to say that 5,500 US soldiers had
deserted for fear of being killed in Iraq. Some refused to join units
leaving for Iraq, but most of them escaped after arriving in Iraq by fleeing
to neighboring countries such as Turkey and Jordan. As one soldier stated:
"They deceived us when they described our mission to Iraq as a walk in the
park." He added: "I took off so that they won't write on my grave, Deceived
Dead GI in Iraq."
Smuggling American GI's is a booming business in Iraq these days. For $1,000
and his/her weapon and uniform, any US soldier can get him or herself out of
Iraq through Kurdistan. Last April, a female US soldier was captured by the
Kurds, allies of the US, dressed like a Kurdish woman with a face veil,
attempting to cross into Turkey.
According to the New York Times, a Pentagon study revealed that one in every
six soldiers who served in Iraq requires immediate psychological treatment.
Over a million soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last two
years. Steven Robinson, a NY Times military expert, believes that the number
needing treatment could jump from one to three soldiers in every six. "There
is a train loaded with people who need help that will be coming to town for
the next thirty five years," said Robinson.
These figures are the worst for the US since the Vietnam War. "Operation
Iraqi Freedom" was supposed to be short and swift. Soldiers were promised
that it would be an easy victory and that they would be home in time for the
summer of 2003. Instead, urban fighting like that in the city of Fallujah
last November, which provided unlimited possibilities for resistance
hideouts, booby-trapped houses, and roads full of roadside bombs, put US
soldiers in the position of having to live every single minute of the day in
fear of an attack. In addition, seeing Iraqis and not being able to
distinguish who is a friend and who is an enemy causes severe anxiety to
soldiers. Paul Raykhouve, commander of a Florida National Guard platoon who
served in Iraq for ten months, was quoted during CBS Sixty Minutes saying:
"The enemy is everywhere, in every street, looking at you from every window,
in every alley. One cannot think straight because of nerve-wracking fear."
Frightened troops lacking both certainty about their mission and a strong
conviction about what they are doing often end up committing war crimes,
such as killing prisoners or injured people. They see in these crimes an
opportunity to get even with their enemy. Racism combines with fear to make
this killing possible. It then becomes important to win acceptance among
other soldiers to justify the crimes. The poor training and poor education
of these soldiers also stands in the way of reason and critical thinking.
They learn to copy existing models of behavior, without a code of ethics or
outside authority to prevent violations of rules of warfare. Even those
soldiers who are not convinced that it is okay to commit war crimes find it
hard to resist.
Both the political and military leadership of the US forces are directly
responsible for providing a large -scale coverup of these crimes. Soldiers
are subjected to an emotional extortion known as "Uniform Code of Loyalty
and Secrecy." Furthermore, the political strength of the US is used to
provide immunity for these soldiers from an international war crimes
tribunal. This leads to normalizing the criminal behavior of servicemen, who
know they can act with impunity.
Caught in frenzy of mass killing, most soldiers develop psychological stress
and mental trauma as a result of serving in Iraq. This stress, predictably,
has been taken out on defenseless Iraqi civilians. Many Iraqis are killed
everyday simply because US soldiers suspected that they were resistance
members. The horrific stories about US soldiers executing wounded Iraqis or
sexually assaulting Iraqi prisoners reveal the severe psychological
conditions that US troops are living under.
Upon finishing service in Iraq, these soldiers will no longer have Iraqis to
murder at will. The weapons they were trained to use will be left behind.
These two things -- without their knowing it -- had become important in
their lives. Without them their return to US society, where there is little
social support, will often mean poverty, alcohol, drugs, domestic violence,
divorce, and suicide. In order not to face themselves, the lies they were
told, and the crimes they committed, these soldiers will return to what they
learned in Iraq - crime, drug trafficking, prostitution, rape, armed
robbery, child abuse, racism, and rallying around the flag.
The government of the US will then have to engage in another massive
coverup. This time it will be to avoid admitting any responsibility for the
psychological illnesses of its servicemen, and for providing no resources to
treat them. Damaged soldiers will become a supply of felons to the US
justice system, which long ago stopped caring about any kind of social
justice. The justice system will in turn deliver the veterans to the prison
system, the US's largest growth industry.
Information about the number of US causalities in Iraq is available on a web
site of the Pentagon or known as the "War Hub" at www.pentagon.gov. This
information covers only those who are officially US citizens enlisted with
different military services. Hired security contractors, or mercenaries, and
recruits who are not citizens who enlisted to obtain a "green card," are not
counted or mentioned. A large number of the green card recruits are from
Mexico and Central America. There are no organizations to look after their
rights or help them once they're in Iraq. Most of them are buried in Iraq
when killed. A videotape produced and distributed by the "Majles Shora
Al-Mojahideen in Fallujah," one of the most important military wings of the
Iraqi resistance, showed a burial site discovered outside the Iraqi city of
Samara with tens of bodies in US military body bags. The dead where dressed
in US uniforms. It is estimated that as many as 40% of the US troops serving
in Iraq are green card recruits.
The website of the Pentagon divides the causalities in Iraq into three
categories:
1)"Combat Causalities" -- 1,300 dead, and 9,000 injured since March, 2003.
Both figures are false.
2) "Non-Combat Causalities." The site does not report how many of these were
injured or killed. Last fall, 60 Minutes concluded that the figure could be
around 3,000 killed and over 25,000 injured.
3) "Coalition Causalities." Information under this category was posted
briefly, then deleted. The figures showed 750 killed and 1,034 injured. It
is not clear who these people were. If they were "coalition forces," then
why are their countries not claiming them?
The US government has gained a reputation of systematically lying to its
population and the rest of the world, but a few facts about Iraq are
emerging despite efforts to conceal them:
* Political stability and security in Iraq is non-existent. This goes to the
heart of the claimed US goal in Iraq. The US justified its removal by
military means of Saddam as a way to create a better and more stable
country. Instead, Iraqis are caught in poverty, hunger, and terrible
violence every day as a direct result of US forces. Iraq is not a better
place today, as Tony Blair and George Bush have claimed. And after Fallujah
no one any longer believes the US is trying to bring freedom to the Iraqis.
* That great lie, the "war on terrorism," has failed to crush what the US
calls international terrorism. US citizens are not safer today than they
were on September 11, 2001. In fact, the most powerful force in the US --
its military machine - is now completely vulnerable to lethal attacks by the
ever-growing Iraqi resistance. Normally, the military is established to
defend or attack those labeled enemies of the state. In the case of the US,
its military is designed to twist the arms of those who do not agree with
its imperial agenda. The US is clearly involved in practicing terrorism by
military means to achieve its strategic interests everywhere around the
globe. But in Iraq, the mighty US military, with over 150,000 well-armed
troops, is very nervous and suffers from low morale, and in the eyes of the
world has lost the moral edge. Furthermore, the war is not a well supported
cause in the US. This time the risk of getting killed in Iraq is real. This
time the enemy is real.
The US public must decide on supporting a policy of war that is killing
their own children and the Iraqi people, or fighting against the war by
taking drastic measures --measures that go beyond vigils and feel-good
political demonstrations. We may be sure that if what we are told about Iraq
by the US government does not look good, the actual truth must be a great
deal worse. Knowing the truth is a big burden. The truth about Iraq is that
the US “Mighty GI’s” are not so mighty!
Announce mailing list
Announce@onepalestine.org
http://mail.onepalestine.org/mailman/listinfo/announce_onepalestine.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) Update on National Assembly of United for Peace and Justice
We are happy to let you know that after a great deal of work we have secured
a great site for the National Assembly on the weekend of Feb. 19-21...the
Millennium Hotel in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. The hotel is easy to get
to from the airport, and St. Louis is in driving distance from many cities.
The hotel is across the street from the famous Arch on the Mississippi
River. I visited the hotel last week and so we know it has all of the
facilities we will need to help ensure a successful assembly, and we have
been able to negotiate an excellent price.
As Feb. 19 is about seven weeks away we encourage your group or organization
to start the process of selecting delegates to represent you at the National
Assembly. We are still working out financial details but have decided that
the minimal registration fee for the assembly will include accommodations
and food for up to two delegates from each UFPJ member group (local
affiliates or chapters of national organizations that are members of UFPJ
will only have one delegate). All the details will be worked out and emailed
to you by the end of this week. Registration for the assembly will be
available on the United for Peace and Justice web site next week. Travel is
the responsibility of the member groups.
During the National Assembly United for Peace and Justice will decide on a
strategic framework, as well as specific strategy, program and organizing
proposals. There will be speakers and small group discussions on the war in
Iraq, and the State of the U.S. and the Anti-War Movement and much more. The
coalition will elect a new national Steering Committee. Cultural and
analytical presenters and some special guests as well as a dance party will
round out the weekend.
I also want to introduce the coordinator of the National Assembly, Diane
Lent. Diane has been a volunteer with UFPJ and has worked on many of the
mobilizations in New York. She has a long history in the peace and justice
movement and has coordinated similar gatherings for progressive
organizations.
We'll let you know as soon as the assembly registration is set up on the web
site and in the coming weeks you will be getting a lot more information
about the assembly. In the meantime, if you have any questions please feel
free to contact Diane either by phone at the national office (212-868-5545)
or by email (greenelent@earthlink.net).
peace,
Leslie Cagan
National Coordinator
UFPJ@mediajumpstart.net
https://secure.mediajumpstart.net/mailman/listinfo/ufpj
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) Zarqawi Qaeda-Linked Group Kills Iraq Governor-Web
DUBAI (Reuters)
Tue Jan 4, 2005 08:21 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7231891&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news
DUBAI (Reuters) - A group led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said it
had assassinated Baghdad governor Ali al-Haidri Tuesday, according to an
Internet statement.
"A group of mujahideen of the Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq
assassinated a tyrant and American agent, the governor of Baghdad Ali
Haidri," said the statement, which was posted on an Islamist site.
"We warn every traitor and ally of the Jews and the Christians that this
will be your fate," it added.
Gunmen killed Haidri in Iraq's highest-profile assassination in eight
months and a suicide bomber killed 11 people at a police checkpoint Tuesday
in an escalating campaign to wreck an election due on Jan. 30.
Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for some of the bloodiest
suicide bombings and attacks in Iraq. Haidri had survived a previous
assassination attempt in September.
(c) Reuters 2005
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12) Iraq Battling More Than 200,000 Insurgents: Intelligence Chief
Agence France-Presse
Baghdad - Iraq
Monday 03 January 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010405W.shtml
Baghdad - Iraq's insurgency counts more than 200,000 active fighters and
sympathisers, the country's national intelligence chief told AFP, in the
bleakest assessment to date of the armed revolt waged by Sunni Muslims.
"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think
the resistance is more than 200,000 people," Iraqi intelligence service
director General Mohamed Abdullah Shahwani said in an interview ahead of the
January 30 elections.
Shahwani said the number includes at least 40,000 hardcore fighters but
rises to more than 200,000 members counting part-time fighters and
volunteers who provide rebels everything from intelligence and logistics to
shelter.
The numbers far exceed any figure presented by the US military in Iraq,
which has struggled to get a handle on the size of the resistance since
toppling Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003.
A senior US military officer declined to endorse or dismiss the spy
chief's numbers.
"As for the size of the insurgency, we don't have good resolution on the
size," the officer said on condition of anonymity.
Past US military assessments on the insurgency's size have been revised
upwards from 5,000 to 20,000 full and part-time members, in the last half
year, most recently in October.
Defense experts said it was impossible to divine the insurgency's total
number, but called Shahwani's estimate a valid guess, with as much credence,
if not more, than any US numbers.
"I believe General Shahwani's estimation, given that he is referring
predominantly to active sympathizers and supporters and to part-time as well
as full-time active insurgents, may not be completely out of the ballpark,"
said defense analyst Bruce Hoffman who served as an advisor to the US
occupation in Iraq and now works for US-based think-tank RAND Corporation.
Compared to the coalition's figure, he said: "General Shahwani's -
however possibly high it may be, might well give a more accurate picture of
the situation."
Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq analyst with the Washington-based Center for
Strategic and International Studies, put Shahwani's estimates on an equal
footing with the American's.
"The Iraqi figures do... recognize the reality that the insurgency in
Iraq has broad support in Sunni areas while the US figures down play this to
the point of denial."
Shahwani said the resistance enjoys wide backing in the provinces of
Baghdad, Babel, Salahuddin, Diyala, Nineveh and Tamim, homes to Sunni Arabs
who fear they will lose influence after the elections.
Insurgents have gained strength through Iraq's tight-knit tribal bonds
and links to the old 400,000-strong Iraqi army, dissolved by the US
occupation in May 2003 two months after the US-led invasion, he said.
"People are fed up after two years, without improvement. People are fed
up with no security, no electricity, people feel they have to do something.
The army was hundreds of thousands. You'd expect some veterans would join
with their relatives, each one has sons and brothers."
The rebels have turned city neighborhoods and small towns around central
Iraq into virtual no-go zones despite successful US military efforts to
reclaim former enclaves like Samarra and Fallujah, he said.
"What are you going to call the situation here (in Baghdad) when 20 to
30 men can move around with weapons and no one can get them in Adhamiyah,
Dura and Ghazaliya," he said, naming neighborhoods in the capital.
The spy chief also questioned the success of the November campaign to
retake Fallujah, which US forces have hailed as a major victory against the
resistance.
"What we have now is an empty city almost destroyed... and most of the
insurgents are free. They have gone either to Mosul or to Baghdad or other
areas."
Shahwani pointed to a resurgent Baath party as the key to the
insurgency's might. The Baath has split into three factions, with the
deadliest being the branch still paying allegiance to jailed dictator Saddam
Hussein, he said.
Shahwani said the core Baath fighting strength was more than 20,000.
Operating out of Syria, Saddam's half-brother Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan
and former aide Mohamed Yunis al-Ahmed are providing funding and tapping
their connections to old army divisions, particularily in Mosul, Samarra,
Baquba, Kirkuk and Tikrit.
Saddam's henchman, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, still on the lam in Iraq, is
also involved, he said.
Another two factions, which have broken from Saddam, are also around,
but have yet to mount any attacks. The Baath are complemented by Islamist
factions ranging from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda affiliate to Ansar
al-Sunna and Ansar al-Islam.
Asked if the insurgents were winning, Shahwani answered: "I would say
they aren't losing."
(c) Copyright 2005 by TruthOut.org
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13) U.S. May Add Advisers to Aid Iraq's Military
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/international/middleeast/04military.html?o
ref=login&hp&ex=1104814800&en=1d44abe6f1fb9a3e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq, is
reviewing a proposal to add hundreds of American military advisers to work
directly with Iraqi units, whose disappointing performance could jeopardize
the long-term American exit strategy from Iraq, senior military officials
said Monday.
Americans are training Iraqi police officers and national guard troops to
replace them in securing the country, but the results over all have been
troubling, with growing desertion rates in the most violent provinces, gaps
in leadership, and poor battlefield performance, American military officers
and troops say.
The advisers would bolster the Iraqi will to fight, help train officers who
would lead the troops, curb desertion and provide Iraqi forces with the
confidence that American units would back them up - in some cases fighting
alongside them if needed, military and Pentagon officials said.
Several hundred American troops are already embedded with Iraqi units,
following a long tradition in American military actions. But the proposal
would greatly expand this presence.
The details of the proposal are still being discussed among American and
Iraqi officials, and more troops would probably not be embedded until after
the Jan. 30 elections, in which Iraqi forces will play a crucial part.
Embedding more Americans with Iraqis would mean diverting perhaps several
hundred additional American troops away from combat operations, military
officials said. There are 150,000 American forces in Iraq.
Although diverting soldiers might be risky at a time when commanders say
they need troops to press offensives against insurgents, the plan addresses
a widely acknowledged need.
American commanders have praised the skills of some Iraqi forces,
particularly new commando units that have seen combat throughout the
country. But the Americans have criticized other Iraqi forces for their
slovenly appearance and lack of commitment, raising questions about how
soldiers and marines will respond tojoining such units.
There has been widespread concern in the Bush administration about the poor
performance of Iraqi troops. President Bush himself discussed the issue in a
news conference on Dec. 20. "They've got some generals in place and they've
got foot soldiers in place, but the whole command structure necessary to
have a viable military is not in place," he said. "And so they're going to
spend a lot of time and effort on achieving that objective."
If approved, the plan would expand and standardize steps already taken by
some American units, including the Army's First Cavalry Division and some
Marine Corps units, to enhance the training that the Iraqi Army, National
Guard and police forces receive after boot camp.
"The development of Iraqi security forces is, in my view, necessarily the
main effort," Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of American forces in
northern Iraq, said in an e-mail message from his headquarters in Mosul on
Monday. "Building capable and loyal Iraqi forces is what will eventually
lead to the defeat of the insurgency and to a sufficiently stable
environment so that U.S. and other forces can begin to reduce our presence."
General Ham, noting the earlier efforts by some units, said, "It's time to
apply it on a larger scale."
"It seems to me that this is something we want to start doing in the
immediate post-election period," he said.
The proposal that General Casey and his top aides are weighing has received
support in principle from Pentagon officials at a time when Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been urging commanders in Iraq to
accelerate the creation of Iraqi security forces and to improve their
quality, a senior Pentagon official said Monday.
General Casey, at a Pentagon news conference on Dec. 16, said an exhaustive
internal review of the military's campaign plan for Iraq concluded that
training the local police and building a better border patrol were two of
three essential areas that were well behind schedule. The other area was
establishing effective Iraqi intelligence services.
Proponents of embedding programs readily acknowledge that they will lose the
American troops for active combat operations, but they insist that the
Iraqis' training and confidence has improved.
"It's cost us," Brig. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, an assistant commander of the
First Cavalry Division in Baghdad, told reporters last week of the
division's 540 soldiers who are now assigned to Iraqi National Guard units
in the city. But, he added, "It pays dividends."
Some influential lawmakers, however, including Senator John W. Warner, a
Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee and who recently
visited troops in Iraq, have expressed pessimism that Iraqis will be able to
develop independent security forces potent enough to thwart the insurgency.
"The raw material is lacking in the willpower and commitment after they
receive this training to really shoulder the heavy responsibilities," he
said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" on Dec. 19.
On paper, there are reasons for worry and for hope, military officials say.
There are plans to produce a total of 179,600 police and border patrol
officers. Of about 116,000 officers on duty now, only 73,000 are fully
trained and equipped, according to Pentagon statistics on Dec. 27. About
half of a projected 100,000 Iraqi Army, National Guard and commando troops
are now operating.
There are now 10-man adviser and support teams with each of 27 regular Iraqi
Army and intervention force battalions (nine of which are still in
training), their nine brigade headquarters (three still in training) and
their three division headquarters, senior military officials in Iraq said.
In addition, adviser teams from Army Special Forces and other American units
are with most of the Iraqi National Guard forces.
Expanding on those adviser teams, the proposal before General Casey would
probably provide 10-man teams with 45 existing and 20 emerging national
guard battalions. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security is
providing small teams to help train new Iraqi border police officers, a
military official in Iraq said.
Some details of the new plan were first reported by CNN on Dec. 26.
Some of the most ambitious plans are to bolster the abilities of the Iraqi
police. The new Iraqi government has fielded about a dozen police commando
units or other specialized units, whose performance American officers have
largely praised.
The commandos include former Iraqi special forces troops and have performed
well, combining commando skills and weaponry with police powers to make
arrests, a senior allied official in Baghdad said Monday.
The approach would also provide assistance and mentoring to the 3,500 basic
police graduates that academies in Iraq and Jordan are churning out every
month.
After the insurgent attacks on police stations in Mosul in November, in
which most of the city's police officers abandoned their posts, American
officials, working closely with the Iraqi government, have toughened the
training to resemble more paramilitary operations and have enforced policies
to cut down on Iraqis' skipping out on leave.
In Mosul, American forces have been assigned to all police stations. On
Saturday, Iraqi security forces and their American advisers fought off a
rocket-propelled grenade attack on a police station in the southeast part of
the city.
A military spokesman, Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, said it was the 12th time
since Nov. 10 that insurgents had tried to take over a police station, none
of which have fallen to rebels in that period.
Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington for this article, and
Erik Eckholm from Baghdad.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) 5 U.S. Troops Are Killed, and Baghdad
Governor Is Slain
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and DAVID E. SANGER.
BAGHDAD, Iraq
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/international/middleeast/04cnd-iraq.html?h
p&ex=1104901200&en=774671f9e3bc3432&ei=5094&partner=homepage
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 4 - Four American soldiers and a marine were killed
today and three other soldiers were wounded on a day that also saw the
assassination of the governor of Baghdad, one of the highest-profile
killings of an Iraqi official in months.
In other violence, a bomb-laden fuel truck killed eight Iraqi commandos and
two other people when it crashed into a checkpoint in western Baghdad about
9 a.m. today, according to an Interior Ministry official. Sixty others were
wounded in the attack, which happened near the scene of two deadly car
bombings on Monday.
Three soldiers with the First Cavalry Division died and two were wounded
when an improvised bomb went off at about 11 a.m. in north Baghdad.
About 30 minutes later a soldier with the First Infantry Division was killed
and another was wounded, the military said, when a bomb exploded near Balad,
site of an American air base about 50 miles north of Baghdad.
The marine with the First Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in action
while carrying out security operations in Al Anbar Province, a restive Sunni
region west of the capital, the military said.
The Baghdad governor, Ali al-Haidari, was attacked and killed in a roadside
ambush after he left his home, the Interior Ministry said. The Associated
Press reported that six of the governor's bodyguards were also killed. He
was the most senior official assassinated in the city since the head of the
Governing Council was killed last May.
Mr. Haidari survived a previous assassination attempt in September.
Later, an insurgent group led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and
linked to Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the ambush, according to a
message and video posted on an Islamist Internet site. The group has taken
responsibility for many previous deadly attacks in Iraq.
Insurgents have repeatedly attacked Iraqi officials as well as members of
the country's security forces, accusing them of collaborating with foreign
occupiers.
The steady violence prompted Iraq's interim president, Ghazi al-Yawar, to
urge the United Nations to to look into whether the country should go ahead
with its scheduled Jan. 30 election.
"Definitely the United Nations, as an independent umbrella of legitimacy,
should really take the responsibility by seeing whether that is possible or
not," Mr. al-Yawar, a Sunni Arab sheik, told Reuters in an interview.
"On a logical basis, there are signs that it will be a tough call to hold
the election," he said, in comments that pulled back from a statement he
made on a visit to Washington in December.
On that visit with President Bush, both men reinforced their message that
elections must go ahead as scheduled, despite the violence.
Mr. al-Yawar's comments today came after Prime Minister Ayad Allawi
telephoned President Bush on Monday and discussed the many impediments still
facing the country as it heads toward elections in 27 days, according to
senior American officials familiar with the contents of the call.
The officials insisted that Dr. Allawi, Iraq's interim leader, did not tell
Mr. Bush that the elections should be delayed, though his defense minister
said in Cairo on Monday that the voting could be postponed to ensure greater
participation by Sunnis. "There was no substantive conversation about
delay," a senior administration official said. Dr. Allawi, the official
said, "wasn't even a bit wobbly" on that point.
But some officials in Washington and in Iraq interpreted the telephone call
as a sign that Dr. Allawi, who is clearly concerned his own party could be
headed to defeat if the election is held on schedule, may be preparing the
ground to make the case for delay to Mr. Bush.
"Clearly the thinking on this is still in motion in Baghdad," a senior
administration official said Monday evening. "And President Bush is holding
firm," the official said, telling Dr. Allawi that the Iraqi government has
met every deadline so far, including assuming power from the United States
in June.
Mr. Bush has publicly insisted that the elections must go forward on Jan.
30, as scheduled, and said any delay would mean giving in to the insurgents
who have vowed to stop the elections from taking place.
Dr. Allawi's call, on Mr. Bush's first day back in Washington after a
weeklong break at his Texas ranch, came just hours after a wave of bombing
attacks left at least 20 people dead, including one blast near the interim
prime minister's Baghdad party headquarters. Another killed three British
citizens and an American in a convoy of the American security firm Kroll
Inc. In addition to the 20 or more deaths - a figure that included suicide
bombers - dozens were injured.
The attacks, which followed a car bombing north of Baghdad on Sunday that
killed 18 Iraqi troops, were the latest attempt by insurgents to destabilize
the country and intimidate Iraqis in the weeks before the parliamentary
elections. The insurgents' targets are Iraqis who work with American forces,
especially in Sunni areas, in hopes of frightening people from the polls.
Some groups have already warned of major attacks on Election Day.
While White House officials were hesitant to give many details of the
discussion between Dr. Allawi and Mr. Bush, they said the Iraqi leader
brought up questions of security and the ferocity of the insurgency. "It was
a discussion about the impediments," said an official who reviewed a
transcript of the call. "But no one suggested the impediments could not be
overcome."
Yet Dr. Allawi's cabinet is already showing signs of weakening on the
question of holding the elections this month. The defense minister, Hazem
Shaalan, suggested during his Cairo visit that a postponement would
encourage Sunnis to participate; American and Iraqi officials have been
concerned that if the Sunnis are blocked from voting or boycott the
election, the outcome will not be considered legitimate.
But an American Embassy official said the United States wanted the elections
to proceed as scheduled, and an official with Iraq's independent election
commission told The Associated Press that there were no plans for a delay.
No one affiliated with Prime Minister Allawi's party, the Iraqi National
Accord, was hurt in the suicide car bombing Monday morning near the party's
headquarters in Baghdad, Iraqi officials said. But the blast killed two
Iraqi police officers and one other person in addition to the car's driver
while injuring at least 25 others, according to Iraqi officials. The Iraqi
police said the bomb detonated after the police rained gunfire on the
vehicle to stop it from passing a checkpoint.
The suicide bomber drove a Chevrolet Caprice with the markings of a Baghdad
taxicab and rammed the checkpoint near the party headquarters just west of
the Green Zone, the heavily fortified American compound in central Baghdad.
The victims were taken to Yarmouk Hospital. Ahmed Thamir, a 21-year-old
soldier slightly wounded in the attack, stood guard outside the hospital
with a Kalashnikov rifle. "It's hard to trust anyone nowadays," he said.
The group that calls itself the Army of Ansar al-Sunna took responsibility
for the attack in an Internet posting. In the message, the group warned
"apostates" that if they "do not repent from your infidelity," it had other
bombers ready to "kill you one by one." The group has claimed a string of
attacks, including the Dec. 21 bombing of a mess tent in Mosul that killed
14 American servicemen and 8 other people.
Many recent attacks against Iraqi troops and officials have occurred in the
heavily Sunni areas north of Baghdad, a region where the deadliest attacks
took place on Monday.
In the first attack, shortly before 8 a.m., a car bomb killed 4 Iraqi
National Guard soldiers and wounded 14 more near a military base in Balad,
50 miles north of Baghdad, said Master Sgt. Robert Cowens, a spokesman for
the First Infantry Division. The attack was not far from where insurgents
killed 18 Iraqi troops and a civilian the day before by detonating an
explosives-laden vehicle next to a bus full of national guardsmen.
Early Monday afternoon, six Iraqi National Guard troops were killed and four
wounded when insurgents attacked a patrol near Tikrit, farther north of
Baghdad, with a roadside bomb. The attackers used an artillery shell for
ammunition in the attack, which happened at 2:40 p.m., Sergeant Cowens said.
There were reports of other attacks across Iraq. In Tal Afar, a city in
northern Iraq, one Iraqi policeman was killed and two were wounded when a
homemade bomb hidden in a decapitated body exploded as the policemen
approached the body, the government said in a statement.
The attack on a car carrying employees of Kroll Inc., the New York-based
risk consulting and security firm, occurred at 3:45 p.m. at a checkpoint
where people leave Baghdad's fortified Green Zone to get onto the road to
the airport.
A Kroll official said that four people were killed when a suicide bomber
rammed into their car, including two British employees of Kroll. "It was a
suicide attack on a convoy coming from the airport," said Pat Wood, Kroll's
vice president for corporate communications.
The other victims were an American woman, Tracy Hushin, of Islip, N.Y., with
the consulting firm BearingPoint, and a British citizen working for a
subcontractor of the company, an announcement by BearingPoint said.
Despite the violence, American officials say the election must be held, as
planned, on Jan. 30. For one thing, they say, the Iraqi interim constitution
mandates the timing. There have already been extensive preparations by the
American military for the elections, they say.
Some Sunni leaders have called for a delay, worried that the intimidation
tactics will keep many voters home and lead to severe Sunni under
representation in the new government. Mr. Shaalan made his suggestion for a
delay Monday as he sought help from other Arab nations to persuade Iraq's
Sunnis to take part.
Richar A. Oppel Jr. reported from Baghdad for this article and David E.
Sanger from Washington. Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from
Washington.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
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15) Supreme Court to Rule on Executing Young Killers
By ADAM LIPTAK
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/national/04juvenile.html?hp&ex=1104901200&
en=ceb849ee6735d090&ei=5094&partner=homepage
In August, six months after the United States Supreme Court agreed to
consider the constitutionality of the juvenile death penalty, Robert Acuna,
a high school student from Baytown, Tex., was put on trial for his life.
The jury convicted Mr. Acuna of killing two elderly neighbors, James and
Joyce Carroll, when he was 17, shooting them "execution style," as
prosecutors described it, and stealing their car. At sentencing, when jurors
weighed his crime against factors counseling leniency, Mr. Acuna's youth
should have counted in his favor.
Instead, his brooding and volatile adolescent demeanor may have hurt more
than helped, and the Houston jury sentenced him to die.
"They probably thought that he wasn't showing remorse," said Mr. Acuna's
mother, Barbara.
Renee Magee, who prosecuted Mr. Acuna, now 18, agreed that his behavior at
the trial had alienated the jury. "He was very nonchalant," Ms. Magee said.
"He laughed at inappropriate things. He still didn't quite get the magnitude
of everything he did."
Mr. Acuna is the latest person to enter death row for a crime committed
before age 18. He may also be the last.
If the Supreme Court prohibits the execution of 16- and 17-year-olds in a
case it accepted a year ago, involving a Missouri man, the lives of Mr.
Acuna and 71 other juvenile offenders on death row will be spared.
A central issue before the court, which is expected to rule in the next few
months, is whether the plummeting number of such death sentences - there
were two last year - lends weight to the argument that putting youths on
death row amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Supporters of the
juvenile death penalty argue that the small number proves instead that the
system works and that juries are making discerning choices on whom to
sentence to death, taking due account of the defendants' youth and reserving
the ultimate punishment for the worst of the worst.
But a look at the cases of some of the juvenile offenders now on death row
raises questions about how reliable and consistent juries have been in
making those decisions.
Age can shape every aspect of a capital case. Crimes committed by teenagers
are often particularly brutal, attracting great publicity and fierce
prosecutions. Adolescents are more likely to confess, and are not adept at
navigating the justice system.
Jurors' reactions to teenagers' demeanor and appearance can be quite varied.
The defendants they see have aged an average of two years between the crime
and the trial. And jurors may not necessarily accept expert testimony
concerning recent research showing that the adolescent brain is not fully
developed.
The Supreme Court in 1988 banned the execution of those under 16 at the time
of their crimes. During arguments in October on whether to move that
categorical line to 18, Justice Antonin Scalia said the drop in juvenile
death sentences was proof that juries could be trusted to sort through and
weigh evidence about defendants' youth and culpability.
"It doesn't surprise me that the death penalty for 16- to 18-year-olds is
rarely imposed," Justice Scalia said. "I would expect it would be. But it's
a question of whether you leave it to the jury to evaluate the person's
youth and take that into account or whether you adopt a hard rule."
Juries in capital cases involving juvenile offenders certainly place great
weight on the defendants' youth. The defendants seldom testify, but jurors
inspect them closely and draw conclusions from how they look and handle
themselves. And the very same factors may cut both ways. Adolescent
recklessness may suggest diminished responsibility to some and a terrible
danger to others.
The youth of Christopher Simmons, the defendant whose case is now before the
Supreme Court, was such a double-edged sword. Mr. Simmons was 17 in 1993,
when he and a friend robbed, bound and gagged Shirley Crook, 46, and pushed
her into a river, where she drowned.
During Mr. Simmons's sentencing hearing, a Missouri prosecutor scoffed at
the notion that Mr. Simmons's age should count as a mitigating factor in
his favor.
"Seventeen years old," the prosecutor, George McElroy, said. "Isn't that
scary? Doesn't that scare you? Mitigating? Quite the contrary, I submit.
Quite the contrary."
Mr. Acuna had a tough-looking buzz cut at the time of the killings, said Tim
Carroll, the son of the couple Mr. Acuna killed. At the trial, he looked
different.
"He appeared as though someone had tried to make him look 8 years old all
over again," Mr. Carroll said. "His hair was all combed down, almost in
little bangs."
That did not sway Mr. Acuna's jury. But the youthful appearance of Lee
Malvo, the teenager who participated in the sniper shootings in the
Washington area in 2002, may have saved his life. Mr. Malvo, who is short
and slight, wore boyish, baggy sweaters most days. Although a Virginia jury
convicted him of a killing he committed at 17, it voted against putting him
to death.
"He's very lucky that he looks a lot younger than he is," Robert F. Horan
Jr., the lead prosecutor in the case, said at the time.
But Mr. Malvo is growing older, and he still faces capital charges in other
states.
"They're talking about letting him grow a five o'clock shadow and then
trying him in Alabama or Louisiana," said Victor L. Streib, a law professor
at Ohio Northern University and an expert on the juvenile death penalty,
referring to prosecutors in those states. "Prosecutors don't mind delay in
juvenile death penalty cases."
Beyond wrestling with the appearance of youth, juries must also often
balance the brutality and recklessness of much juvenile crime against young
people's immaturity.
Studies support the common view that adolescents tend to be reckless and do
not calculate the risks and consequences of their actions as adults do. They
are moodier, more susceptible to peer pressure and do not have an acute
sense of mortality.
The law seems to recognize this, with most states using 18 as the dividing
line between childhood and adulthood in many areas, including the ability to
vote and to serve on a jury.
Mr. Carroll, the murdered couple's son, said a categorical rule made no
sense in the context of the death penalty.
"If you're going to make the argument that someone's cognitive reasoning is
not developed at 17 years and 8 months but would be at 18," he said, "we
should rethink whether they should be able to drive, and make split-second
decisions in an 8,000-pound vehicle, or get married, or have children."
When the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Simmons case, a brief
supporting Missouri submitted by Alabama and five other states with the
juvenile death penalty received particular attention.
It set out, in plainspoken prose, the disturbing stories of 10 murders
committed by seven young killers, all on death row in Alabama.
The cases cited in the Alabama brief are in many ways typical, Professor
Streib said. "The capital crimes committed by juveniles," he said, "are
often classic adolescent male bizarreness, often sexual and all the more
revolting for that reason."
Mr. Carroll said Mr. Acuna's killings were sadistic.
"The evidence given in the case very strongly indicates that he made my
father kneel and shot him in the back of the head, execution-style," Mr.
Carroll said. "My mother, who could not walk without the help of a walker -
this fellow shot her in the side of her face and blew her teeth out all over
the kitchen floor."
Mr. Acuna then gave the woman time to wipe the blood from her mouth with a
paper towel, Mr. Carroll said.
"And then he moved in," Mr. Carroll said, "to shoot her through the brain
when he thought it was time."
If their youth can make teenage defendants wilder and their crimes more
odious, it can also trip them up when they start navigating the legal
system.
According to a study of the juvenile offenders on death row by The New York
Times, 56 percent confessed or gave incriminating statements to the
authorities. Mr. Acuna was in the minority.
"Juveniles are more likely to be more compliant, more naïve and less likely
to believe that police do not have their best interests in mind," said
Steven A. Drizin, a law professor at Northwestern who has studied false
confessions by juvenile defendants. "They are more likely to confess simply
to bring an end to the interview process and take their chances in court."
In the case of Mr. Acuna, the evidence in the case was largely
circumstantial. He was found with James Carroll's wallet in a Dallas motel.
The murdered couple's car was outside, and it contained the murder weapon.
Juries have in recent years been increasingly reluctant to sentence
teenagers to death, and the number of death sentences imposed on juvenile
offenders is now almost at the vanishing point. In 2003 and 2004, only two
juvenile offenders were sentenced to death in the United States. The average
annual number in the 1990's was slightly more than 10. From 1999 to 2003,
according to a study to be published in The Journal of Criminal Law and
Criminology, the number of juvenile death sentences per 100 homicide arrests
of those under 18 dropped to 0.2 from 1.6.
"Over the past five years, there has been a very strong decline in
willingness of juries and judges to sentence adolescents to death," said
Jeffrey Fagan, a co-author of the study with Valerie West. "The decline is
greater than you would expect knowing the decline in the homicide rate, the
decline in juvenile homicide arrests and the decline in adult death
sentences."
It can be hard to say, then, what made the crimes of Mr. Acuna and Eric
Morgan, the only two juvenile offenders sentenced to die last year, worse
than other murders committed by teenagers around the nation. Mr. Morgan was
convicted of killing a convenience store clerk in South Carolina during a
robbery.
The jury that spared Mr. Malvo's life heard many days of testimony about his
difficult childhood in Jamaica and about the influence that his surrogate
father and accomplice, John A. Muhammad, wielded over him.
Mr. Acuna's lawyers had less to work with.
"Robert wasn't on drugs, he wasn't abused, he wasn't mentally retarded or
mentally ill," Ms. Acuna, his mother, said.
The prosecutor, Ms. Magee, agreed that there had been nothing in the youth's
personal life that would help explain the killings.
Mr. Acuna's lawyers were left to rely almost entirely on his age in pleading
for his life, and that was not enough, Ms. Magee said.
"The crime just far outweighed the mitigating factor that he was a juvenile
offender," she said. Ms. Acuna said it was hard to listen to Ms. Magee's
pleas for her son's death at the trial.
"Here is my son that I love and that I protect with my life," she said. "And
here's a person who stands up and says, 'I'm going to do everything that I
can to legally kill him.' "
At bottom, Professor Streib said, only a few themes run through the 72 men
on death row whose lives depend on how the Supreme Court rules on the
juvenile death penalty. Most of the men, unlike Mr. Acuna, come from
troubled backgrounds, and all committed terrible crimes. But that is true of
many thousands of other juvenile killers.
"It's not a rational process," Professor Streib said. "We can't look at
juveniles on death row and say they are the worst of the worst. Some have
killed entire families. Some shot a clerk while robbing a convenience store
like thousands of others, and you have no idea why lightning struck in this
or that case."
Toby Lyles, Tom Torok and Margot Williams contributed reporting for this
article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
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16) Prosecution Concludes Case in Terror Trial
By JULIA PRESTON
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/nyregion/04stewart.html
A federal prosecutor yesterday wrapped up the government's case against
Lynne F. Stewart, a lawyer accused of aiding terrorists, by charging that
she had released a bellicose statement to the news media on behalf of an
imprisoned client because she secretly wanted to help violent militants
overthrow the Egyptian government.
The prosecutor, Andrew Dember, an assistant United States attorney, assailed
the basic tenet of Ms. Stewart's defense: that she had conveyed messages to
the news media from her client as part of a legal strategy to secure his
eventual release from jail. The client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian
Islamic cleric who is blind, is serving a life sentence in federal prison
for a failed plot to bomb the United Nations building, the Lincoln and
Holland Tunnels and other New York sites.
"None of the things that Stewart did in this case has anything to do with
any legal matter, nothing to do with being a lawyer," Mr. Dember thundered
to the jury, concluding an unusually long closing argument that lasted two
and a half days.
Ms. Stewart was dealing with "illegal matters, not legal matters," he
charged.
The case centers on a statement Ms. Stewart gave to a reporter after
visiting Mr. Abdel Rahman in jail in May 2000, in which the sheik said he
was withdrawing his support for a cease-fire his followers in Egypt had
observed since 1997. Ms. Stewart had agreed in writing to prison rules that
barred her from helping the sheik communicate with the press.
To make his point, Mr. Dember replayed for the jury, in Federal District
Court in Manhattan, an excerpt from a television interview Ms. Stewart gave
in 2002, a few weeks after her arrest, to Greta Van Susteren of Fox News.
After many weeks of presenting the government's main evidence - secret
F.B.I. audio and video recordings of telephone calls and meetings involving
Ms. Stewart and two co-defendants - prosecutors had introduced the interview
video at the end, almost as an afterthought.
In the interview, Ms. Stewart acknowledged that she had agreed not to convey
messages from the sheik to the news media. She also said the sheik's best
hope for getting out of his American jail would be a seizure of power by his
party in Egypt, which could then negotiate a prisoner exchange to bring him
home.
Mr. Dember charged that Ms. Stewart knew that many of the sheik's followers
were designated as terrorists and might jump at the chance to return to war
in their country. "She had all the power in the world to stop it," Mr.
Dember said of the sheik's message to his followers. "But she didn't want to
stop it."
Ms. Stewart remained composed at the defendants' table, at times even
looking amused. Noting during a break that her chief lawyer, Michael E.
Tigar, will begin his closing arguments as early as tomorrow, she said,
"Just wait!"
Mr. Dember asserted that it was "nonsense" for Ms. Stewart to say that the
sheik's news release was part of her plan to persuade Egypt to let him
return home to serve out his sentence there. The prosecutor pointed out that
United States and Egyptian officials would be unlikely to send the sheik
back to his country when he was supporting renewed violence there.
Mr. Dember provided only vague details when it came to demonstrating
connections between Ms. Stewart and the activities of a co-defendant, Ahmed
Abdel Sattar, who dealt extensively by telephone with militants who were
labeled terrorists by the United States. The prosecutor acknowledged that
Ms. Stewart, in dozens of hours of secretly recorded phone calls, never said
she undertook any action to promote violent revolution in Egypt.
Instead, he based his allegations heavily on general statements Ms. Stewart
had made supporting what she called revolutionary violence in apartheid
South Africa and against the government of Israel.
Mr. Dember aimed some of his most intense anger against the other
co-defendant, Mohamed Yousry, an Arabic interpreter who translated the
sheik's conversations for Ms. Stewart and read letters and newspapers to the
cleric.
"He had all the power to say, 'No!' " Mr. Dember said, raising his voice,
about Mr. Yousry's role in translating the sheik's cease-fire message.
Beginning his summation in the afternoon, a lawyer for Mr. Yousry, David
Stern, said his client had always followed the guidance of Ms. Stewart and
other lawyers. "He honestly believed that what he was doing was not
criminal," Mr. Stern said. "His only job was to translate."
Mr. Stern showed the jury that Mr. Yousry had once referred to the sheik and
his followers as "garbage," and had repeatedly rejected the sheik's
political views. Mr. Stern played a video excerpt of a prison meeting where
Mr. Yousry had questioned the sheik about an edict issued under his name
that called for the murder of Jews.
"None of your business!" the sheik had barked contemptuously at Mr. Yousry.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
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17) Limits Eased on Killing of Wolves
By KIRK JOHNSON
DENVER
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/national/04wolf.html
DENVER, Jan. 3 - Killing a gray wolf in Idaho or Montana will soon get
easier under new rules issued Monday by the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The animals are still formally protected by the federal Endangered Species
Act, but starting in 30 days, they can be killed if a landowner believes a
wolf is in the process of attacking livestock or other animals. The old
rules required physical evidence of an actual attack - bite marks or a
carcass.
"Under the old rule, he had to have its teeth in; under the new rule he can
be a foot away chasing them," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for
the Wildlife Service.
State wildlife management officials were also given greater flexibility in
controlling wolf populations to maintain the deer and elk herds upon which
wolves often feed.
State and federal officials said that the looser standards, part of the
process of removing wolves from federal protections, reflected a robust
recovery by wolves in the northern Rocky Mountain region. The recovery has
surpassed all expectations since the first experimental populations were
reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and 1996, the officials
said.
"The old rule was written to protect 25 to 50 wolves, and we now have over
500," said Idaho's governor, Dirk Kempthorne, in a conference call with
reporters. "The dynamics have changed."
Environmentalists said that the federal estimate of wolf mortality - about
10 percent a year under the more flexible guidelines - is deeply uncertain
and could end up being much greater.
"Ten percent in a large, healthy population might not have much impact, but
we still have wolves struggling with recovery in some areas," said Nina
Fascione, a vice president for field conservation programs at Defenders of
Wildlife, a conservation group based in Washington. "With all the increased
flexibility, I would be surprised if the impact is just 10 percent," Ms.
Fascione said.
Wyoming, which also has a substantial wolf population, was not included in
the new rules because the Fish and Wildlife Service has not approved the
state's proposed wolf management plan.
Gale A. Norton, who as secretary of the interior oversees the wildlife
service, said that the full removal of gray wolves from federal protections
would proceed only when all three states in the recovery area had plans in
place.
Ms. Norton said the old, stricter rules about wolf killing would still apply
in Wyoming for now.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
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18) UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
WINTER/SPRING ORGANIZING DRIVE TO END THE U.S.
WAR ON IRAQ
From: "Carwil James" < carwil@falseignorance.info >
To: "Direct Action to Stop the War"
< directaction@lists.riseup.net >
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 11:51 AM
Subject: [DASW] UFPJ Presents [ending the]
Iraq [War] Strategy
As the U.S. war against Iraq approaches the end of its second year, there
are no signs of any change in U.S. foreign policy or any let-up in the
fighting. People throughout this country and around the world have
marched, rallied, lobbied, participated in actions of nonviolent civil
disobedience, passed resolutions in their unions and religious
institutions, and much more. But the Bush Administration has claimed the
U.S. election results as a mandate for continued war and occupation, the
death toll ? among Iraqis and U.S. servicepeople -- mounts every day, and
the U.S. is increasing troop levels rather than taking steps toward
military disengagement.
United for Peace and Justice believes that, in order to bring an end to the
war and bring the troops home, the antiwar movement must reshape its work.
Yes, we need to continue with mass mobilizations and public protests ? in
fact, we need to increase their size and visibility. At the same time, we
must broaden the active core of our movement, give it greater strategic
focus, and intensify our resistance. Ending the war will not be an easy
task, nor will it happen overnight. To succeed, the anti-war movement
needs to expand our numbers; involve new organizations and communities;
and focus pressure strategically on the weak points in the
Administration's war program ? its moral bankruptcy, the massive human
costs, its financial cost, and the intensifying need for new military
recruits.
The proposal below is for a specific program of activism during the first
three months of 2005, but it flows from a larger, longer-term vision of
organizing that we hope member groups will embrace and continue into the
future.
Strategy We believe that there are three crucial weak points in the
Administration's war strategy. The Bush Administration cannot fight this
war without taxpayer funding, soldiers willing to die, and the ability to
contain domestic opposition to acceptable levels. The anti-war movement
should focus its energies on increasing the war's unpopularity,
particularly by emphasizing the horrific loss of life on all sides; by
highlighting the war's escalating financial cost, and the consequences of
war spending for our communities; and by disrupting the Pentagon's ability
to recruit new troops.
Public opinion polls suggest that support for the war continues to erode as
the conflict drags on and the death toll mounts. The staggering cost of
the war creates the practical basis for building durable alliances between
groups whose main priority may be winning social and economic justice at
home (e.g. civil rights groups, labor, clergy, community groups) with
those who focus primarily on ending the war abroad. More and more combat
veterans are resisting their call-ups; the Army and National Guard are
having difficulty meeting their recruitment goals; and the military is
overstretching itself in Iraq.
The anti-war movement can:
* offer those who oppose the war but are not yet active with simple,
high-visibility ways to express their views * intensify opposition to the
war among those who are active and raise the level of popular unrest *
build pressure at the Congressional district level to freeze, then cut,
funding and troop levels * work to reduce military enlistments and support
dissenting soldiers, combat veterans, reservists, and their families who
are speaking out against the war or refusing to serve
To do these things successfully, anti-war organizations will need to engage
in a concerted program of base- and alliance-building, ongoing visibility
and protest activities, strategic pressure campaigns, and campaigns of
nonviolent civil resistance.
This organizing drive is one central component of this larger strategy for
ending the war. UFPJ has just created a new civil resistance working group,
and specific proposals for action will soon be circulated. We are also
developing detailed suggestions for how member groups can organize
pressure campaigns around funding for the war and military recruitment,
including targeting members of Congress. We are developing a grassroots
media campaign to draw public attention to civilian casualties in Iraq,
and we will also continue to provide organizing ideas and calls to action
around other key developments and issues in Iraq: e.g., free and fair
elections are not possible under occupation; no foreign control of Iraqi
oil; the humanitarian crisis intensifies; the U.S. must respect human
rights and international law.
Vision for this Organizing Drive This coordinated campaign - includes a
series of activities, with each one promoting and building the next,
intended to broaden the organized base of the antiwar movement. The
activities ? ranging from a "white ribbon" visibility campaign to
coordinated days of outreach to local town hall meetings ? are designed to
provide opportunities for intensive, face-to-face organizing, in order to
reach and involve people who have not previously taken action against the
war. UFPJ will provide a series of tools and resources to help member groups
reach their goals through this work.
To participate in this organizing drive, a group need not commit to every
activity or date; many groups will wish to tailor the calendar, activities,
and goals to fit their organizational capacity and local needs. Some
member groups of UFPJ are already engaged in this type of base- and
alliance-building work on a regular basis and may choose to participate in
just a few components of the organizing drive.
Organizing Goals We encourage each organization that participates in
this organizing drive, no matter its size, to set concrete goals for
expansion over the coming months. The specific goals may vary depending on
the organization's constituency, location, and mission, but we suggest the
following:
* build strong, ongoing relationships with a targeted number of
organizations or communities that have not previously been directly
engaged in anti-war work, particularly communities of color, labor, and
faith-based organizations (for groups in small towns, the goal might be
three new relationships; groups in urban areas might aim to build a dozen
or more) * double the number of contacts your organization has (on your
email list, phone bank, and/or mailing list) * double the number of
active participants in your group's day-to-day work * distribute at least
ten times as many white ribbons in your community as you have contacts (on
your email list, phone bank, and/or mailing list) ? e.g., if you have an
email list of 500 people, aim to distribute at least 5000 ribbons * using
these new relationships and contacts as a base, organize a local action on
March 19, the two-year anniversary of the war, that is larger than any
action your group has organized to date
Organizing Drive Components
Alliance-Building Meetings: We encourage member groups to expand local
peace and justice coalitions by setting up meetings in early 2005 with
potential allies such as unions; black, Latino, Arab, and other community
of color organizations; religious institutions; student groups; and
community organizations. The goals are to build new relationships;
identify issues these groups are working on or concerned about; identify
ways in which the Iraq war is making it more difficult to win gains in
these struggles; explore opportunities to work together in those areas of
intersection. While we hope for a concerted national alliance-building
push in January and February, we believe that these types of meetings should
be a regular part of every group's organizing work, and these connections
need to be built at the local level.
Days of Outreach: We are proposing a series of national days of outreach,
where member groups of UFPJ mobilize their members to talk to large
numbers of new people. The purpose is two-fold: to educate and persuade
people about the reasons to oppose the war; and to identify potential new
activists from those who are already opposed to the war and gather their
contact information, with the goal of involving them in future anti-war
activities. Concretely, groups will be encouraged to hand out leaflets to
educate about the human toll of the war and its cost to our communities;
distribute white ribbons to increase the visibility of anti-war sentiment;
gather signatures on a national anti-war petition as a way of obtaining
new contacts for their ongoing organizing effort; and publicize key
upcoming events in their community (such as a February 4 town hall meeting
and/or March 19 protest on the two-year-anniversary of the war).
Town Hall Meetings: We are proposing that groups all around the country
convene town hall meetings on February 4 or some other locally suitable
date, to discuss what the war is costing their communities: most
dramatically, in lost funding for crucial social programs; but also in
lives, if your community has lost U.S. servicepeople in the conflict, and
in the drain on firefighters and other first responders sent to Iraq
through the National Guard. These town hall meetings will occur shortly
after President Bush delivers his State of the Union Address and around
the time Congress is expected to debate $100 billion in additional
appropriations for Iraq, dramatizing the Bush Administration's misplaced
priorities. Through their focus on the connection between the cost of the
war and the issues facing communities here at home, these town hall meetings
will provide an important opportunity to build or strengthen alliances with
groups working for social and economic justice. They will also serve as an
opportunity to identify and get to know potential new activists, help build
a sense of connection among people across the country who oppose the war,
and encourage strategic discussion about what it will take to bring the
war to an end. UFPJ will distribute suggested questions for discussion
that local facilitators can use to help frame debate during the meeting.
Campaign Tools United for Peace and Justice will provide member groups
with a series of tools to help with this organizing campaign. These will
include tips for maximizing the effectiveness of the alliance-building
meetings, days of outreach, and town hall meetings. We will also provide a
petition for the national petition drive; educational leaflets that can be
modified for local use; and visibility tools such as white ribbons,
buttons, magnets, and posters.
Campaign Calendar
December Launch the White Ribbon Campaign; attend public holiday events in
your community and pass out small fliers/cards with white ribbons attached
urging people to visibly say No to the War in Iraq this holiday season.
For more information about the White Ribbon Campaign click here:
Late Dec. United for Peace and Justice will issue a call for coordinated
local actions on March 19 to mark the second anniversary of the war, with
strong support for the mobilization in Fayetteville, NC (home of Ft.
Bragg)
Early Jan Launch a national petition drive to dump Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, highlighting our message of "end the war, bring the troops home ?
rebuild our communities"
Jan 15/17 National Days of Outreach ? contact churches, labor, and
community groups in the African-American community who are organizing
events, to discuss how we could help to highlight the peace message that
was a centerpiece of Dr. King's legacy; fliers and ribbons could be
distributed at MLK parades and events, highlighting this message and
inviting people to January 20 counter-inaugural activities and the
February 4 Town Hall Meeting
Jan 20 Inauguration Day ? National Day of Mourning and Resistance, protests
in Washington, D.C. and in communities all around the country
Jan 29 National Day of Outreach ? distribute leaflets and white ribbons,
gather petition signatures, promote the February Town Hall meetings
Feb 4 Town Hall Meetings: Ending the War / Rebuilding Our Communities
Feb 19-21 UFPJ National Assembly
March 8 National Day of Outreach on International Women's Day?
distribute leaflets and white ribbons, gather petition signatures, promote
the March 19 actions
March 19 Global Day of Action to Protest the Second Anniversary of the
Iraq War This is the announcement list for Direct Action to Stop the War
(DASW). To remove yourself from this list, send an email to
directaction-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net .
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
19) US Wounded in Iraq Reaches 10,000
The Pentagon says that more than 10,000 US military personnel have been
wounded in Iraq since the conflict began in March 2003.
Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2005/01/05 10:33:34 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4147705.stm
Newly published figures show that more than 5,000 of the wounded have been
unable to return to duty.
Many have been left with serious injuries such as lost limbs and sight,
mostly as a result of the blast effects of roadside bombs.
More than 1,300 US troops have been killed.
The latest figures underline that an equally telling price is being paid in
the number of US soldiers being wounded there, says the BBC's Pentagon
correspondent Nick Childs.
Advances in military medicine and body armour mean that many have survived
wounds that they would not have done in previous conflicts.
In Iraq on Wednesday, a car bomb killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded 10
others in Baghdad.
Police say the bomb exploded near a petrol station in the western district
of Amiriyah.
The explosion came a day after gunmen assassinated the governor of Baghdad
province, and in a separate attack killed at least 10 people outside the
headquarters of the Iraqi National Guard.
(c) BBC MMV
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21) Ramsey Clark: Why I'm Taking
Saddam's Case
By Lizzy Ratner
http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage1.asp#
"You can't be sure of how the trial will go," said longtime Manhattan
civil-rights attorney Ramsey Clark, wagging a long, slender forefinger. "But
you could say that if it's properly done, it will be the biggest trial of
this century."
Mr. Clark was talking about the trial of Saddam Hussein, whom he recently
signed on to represent before a special tribunal in Baghdad. For the man who
has represented Leonard Peltier, the Harrisburg Seven and the Attica
Brothers, but also prosecuted war resisters in the Johnson
administration-indeed, for the man who, as a young Marine Corps courier,
witnessed the Nuremberg trials after World War II-calling it the "trial of
the century" was no small thing.
Ramsey Clark was in his office, in a loft on East 12th Street in the East
Village, speaking like a law professor across a large slab of a wooden
table. He'd just returned a few days before from a visit to Jordan, where he
met with other members of Mr. Hussein's legal team as well as the families
of both Mr. Hussein and former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. In the
room hung an Salvadoran solidarity poster and a painting by Mr. Peltier. The
painting is of an old Native American woman with a single tear running down
her cheek; it's called Big Lady Mountain .
By Mr. Clark's own telling, his interest in representing the deposed Iraqi
leader was inflamed when media reports started coming in of Mr. Hussein's
arrest in a spider-hole hideout in the desert. He said he was "shocked" by
the images he saw.
"The savage presentation of [Mr. Hussein], disheveled, with his mouth open,
people probing in his mouth, the dehumanization," he said. "I represented
Indian peoples for many years, and I can't tell you how many Indians I've
worked with called after they saw the picture and said, 'That's exactly the
way they treated us.' And this is hardly the road to peace if you want
respect for human dignity.
"I wrote to him a year ago in December, shortly after he was arrested," he
continued. "I'd also written to Tariq Aziz right after he turned himself in
April of '03, because I thought it was essential that they have independent
contact immediately to assure their proper treatment. And I was repeatedly
turned down as to both.
"I did it because, obviously, these cases are extremely important in terms
of history and in terms of reconciliation of peoples, and in terms of belief
in truth and justice as a priority over force and violence," Mr. Clark said.
"It's about addressing the concept of victor's justice, which is only the
exercise of power. If you really want peace, you have to satisfy people
about the honor of your purpose."
Mr. Clark has not been able to meet with Mr. Hussein since he sent his
letter.
"There has not been anything approaching adequate contact with him," he
said. "None of his family has seen him; only one lawyer has seen him, and
that was in the first half of December-a full year after his arrest. It was
by a single person, with soldiers standing by, hearing, with whatever other
type of surveillance there might have been.
"And there's not adequate contact with that lawyer, who's an Iraqi. So for a
defense to be developed, there has to be extensive communication with the
principal person whose life it involves.
"He is a decisive, knowledgeable person," Mr. Clark said, "and has to play a
major role in every aspect of choosing a defense team and preparing a
defense. The lack of access to him is a major violation. Our Supreme Court
has thrown cases out where a person wasn't given access to independent
non-police parties within 48 hours of arrest, within less than 12 hours.
Here you've got 12 months. That sounds technical, but it's not technical at
all-it's the essential beginning."
It's not that he's never met Mr. Hussein.
Mr. Clark's history with the former Iraqi leader dates back to the first
Gulf War, when Mr. Clark traveled to Iraq to protest the U.S.-led
coalition's bombing campaign. He spent 14 days chronicling the destruction
and later defied sanctions by returning on dozens of aid missions. He met
with Mr. Hussein on at least four of these occasions, including a month-long
visit just before the March 2003 invasion.
"I've met with him I think four times, probably averaged two to three hours
at a time," he said. "In presence he is reserved, quiet,
thoughtful-dignified, you might say, in the old-fashioned sense. I'm not a
big fan of dignity in the old-fashioned sense of stuffiness or posture."
Could he see how that might be praising with faint damnation a man who is
said to have ordered the deaths of some 300,000 of his own citizens?
"I have long believed that one of the greatest barriers to peace is
demonization," Mr. Clark said. "It has always been necessary in war for
soldiers to demonize the enemy. Now, with the mass media saturating the
public with perceptions that come from very slim contact with actuality and
are heavily influenced by desire and prejudice, we demonize."
And if other lawyers might blanch at the argument that it was the American
media who demonized Saddam-wasn't he something of a demon to begin with? If
it were a simple referendum on Mr. Hussein's treatment of the Kurds or
political dissidents, who could possibly represent him in good faith? But
what if the trial of Saddam Hussein is really a referendum on the American
campaign in Iraq?
"Demonization is the most dangerous form of prejudice," Mr. Clark continued.
"Once you call something evil, it's easy to justify anything you might do to
harm that evil. Evil has no rights, it has no human dignity, it has to be
destroyed. That's how you get your Fallujas, your Abu Ghraibs, your
shock-and-awes."
And, like many civil-rights lawyers, Mr. Clark believes he's representing a
client in a court that is fundamentally flawed.
"A tribunal that doesn't meet the standards of international law can do
enormous harm. International law requires first that a tribunal be created
by legal authority, by pre-existing legal authority," he argued. "That's
referred to as competence. After competence comes independence-it can't be
subject to political power. And finally, it has to be impartial. If it's not
impartial, what's the point? Why don't you just go ahead and say 'Hang him'
instead of this ruse?
"Now, the present Iraqi court meets none of those standards. It was a
creation of the U.S. military occupation, the so-called governing council,
which was appointed by the U.S. And who becomes the first judge of the
court? Chalabi's nephew. I mean, suppose he's the most honorable person in
the world, this nephew? Is it really conceivable that that's the person that
ought to be judge in a world as big as this? So you don't have independence,
because everything depends on what the U.S. does for the court: financing,
training, selection and everything else. You don't have competence, because
it's not legal. And you don't have impartiality, as far as can be told from
the appearance.
"The only existing court that is competent and independent and impartial is
the International Criminal Court, which came into existence July 1, 2002.
It's a court the U.S. opposed. It's a court the U.S. tragically weakened,
but it's been approved by more than 120 countries.
"The judges were appointed not by the U.S., but the Iraqis, and after the
new government comes to power, they will have to be reconfirmed," said
Michael Scharf, a human-rights lawyer at Case Western Reserve who has helped
train Iraqi judges, when Mr. Clark's claims were put before him. "Not only
that: The judges who I work with are extremely independent people. They have
no particular love for the United States. These are people who were chosen
for their expertise and independence."
Mr. Clark is 77 years old, stooped and slender. He was wearing New Balance
sneakers and a worn blue button-down shirt tucked into a pair of wool or
polyester pants that might have dated from his early political career. He
has wide-set eyes, a bit like a crawfish. And to many, his movements are
just as mysterious-sideways, quirky, puzzling.
"Ramsey is a mystery," said Melvin Wulf, an old colleague who shared a law
practice with Mr. Clark during the late 1970's and early 1980's, in an
earlier interview. "I saw him every day, but I didn't know him any better at
the end of five years than I knew him on the first day. He plays himself
very close to the vest, consults with no one except for himself."
Outside the room, the office manager, Ben Cheney, brother of the slain
civil-rights activist, typed at a keyboard. A few unlikely magazines- The
New Yorker ,Gourmet ,Opera News -sat in a stack in the waiting room for
visitors. Like some small-town doctor's office, there were no visitors and
the office was quiet-nothing that would suggest that this was the home away
from home of one of the most controversial attorneys in the United States.
It all started in the last hoary week of 2004, when Mr. Clark jetted over to
Jordan for a conference with 20 or so other attorneys on Dec. 28 to start
forming their strategy.
Reaction to Mr. Clark's trip was swift and certain across the political
spectrum. On the right, bloggers for Web sites like RightNation declared
that he should be "tried for sedition and treason." The New York Sun accused
him of losing all "credibility when it comes to claiming to be for peace."
Even some of his left-wing comrades rolled their eyes when they heard that
he'd signed on to represent a man who had allegedly ordered 300,000
political killings.
"I do think that Saddam, like anybody else, does have a right to a fair
trial and a competent lawyer. I'm just not sure why Ramsey Clark needs to do
that," said Leslie Cagan, a longtime peace and justice activist.
"Personally, I wish he didn't do some of those things, because he is one of
the few public well-known leftists in this country, and it does make our
work harder sometimes."
Conservatives loathe Mr. Clark, but even staunch progressives don't always
know what to make of him, and some of his closest friends say he can't be
easily defined: Is he a valiant "dissenter" in the tradition of Supreme
Court Justice William O. Douglas, as his friend Victor Navasky suggested? Or
is he an old ideologue, as others have charged, who is driven above all by
his ties to a Communist splinter group called the Workers World Party? Is he
a profile in courage, or a study in eccentricity?
Perhaps predictably, Mr. Clark presents himself as neither. A rangy Texan
with a down-home Southern drawl, he seems to move to his own unapologetic
drumbeat.
He is not without supporters, including some colleagues who argued that Mr.
Clark will provide Mr. Hussein with a competent defense, a necessary
component of a fair trial.
"[Mr. Clark] has a very good point: The international legal issues are
compelling in some ways," said Alan Dershowitz, who has worked both with and
against Mr. Clark on a number of cases. "I think it has to be perceived as a
fair trial, and Ramsey's being involved increases the chances that it will
be perceived as a fair trial, because he is a very good lawyer-very smart
and very tough."
Mr. Clark is used to being in the center of the storm. Over the years, he
has become a fixture of national and international crime scenes, taking on
the kind of thorny cases that have earned him comparisons to the crusading
civil-liberties lawyer Clarence Darrow on the one hand-and to Benedict
Arnold on the other.
"I think he seems to have some kind of inner compass that tells him that
this situation is unfair, and because of that we have to get involved in
it," said Abdeen Jabara, an old friend and lawyer who formerly ran the Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee. "I don't think I've ever met anybody who is
as principled in his beliefs to fight for the underdog."
Long before he joined Saddam Hussein's defense team, before he became the
mascot of the anti-Establishment, Ramsey Clark was himself a pedigreed
member of the political elite. Born into an influential Texas family, he
came from a long line of lawyers who moved effortlessly within the highest
levels of law and government. His maternal grandfather was a member of the
Texas Supreme Court; his paternal grandfather was president of the Texas Bar
Association. His father, Tom C. Clark, was a law-and-order lawyer with close
ties to Lyndon B. Johnson. At Mr. Johnson's urging, President Harry S.
Truman named the elder Mr. Clark his Attorney General in 1945. Four years
later, Mr. Truman appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Early in his life, the young Ramsey rebelled at least twice against these
Clark family precedents. He tried to join the Marines when he was 13, on
Dec. 8, 1941, "and it probably would have been pretty dangerous," he
laughed.
"As far as I can tell, I've always had a fierce opposition to violence," he
said. "I can remember when I was in fifth or sixth grade, the subject of
capital punishment came up. And I was shy and quiet and rarely said much,
but I really got upset and I just was passionately against it."
But when he was 17, he did drop out of high school-against his father's
wishes-to join the Marine Corps and fight in World War II.
Several years later, he defied his father again when he chose to go to the
more progressive-minded University of Chicago Law School rather than Harvard
Law.
Following law school, Mr. Clark headed back to Texas and appeared, at least
on the surface, to return to the path his father and grandfathers had carved
out before him. He married his college sweetheart, Georgia Welch, and went
to work for the family's Dallas law firm. He stayed there for 10 years,
specializing in antitrust work, until, in 1961, President John F. Kennedy
made him an Assistant Attorney General in brother Robert Kennedy's Justice
Department.
Mr. Clark arrived in Washington as the Justice Department was taking on a
bigger role in enforcing civil rights.
He roved the South as part of Robert Kennedy's "riot squad" and ultimately
helped to draft the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
"I went in '61, and because I was from Texas I could pass, so I was used
extensively in the South," he said. "I was in charge of supervising the
desegregation of all public schools in '62 in the South. There were only
five, but it was a big job-doing just one of them was a big job. You had to
worry about children being beat up, their homes being firebombed. It seemed
incredibly important, exciting and a privilege to be involved in that."
His outspokenness and sharp positions-from his support of civil rights to
his opposition to wire-tapping and the death penalty-ultimately earned him
the nickname "the Preacher" among his Justice Department colleagues.
"[Ramsey Clark] was liberal, though he was much more restrained than he is
today," recalled Nicholas Katzenbach, who worked alongside Mr. Clark for
some six years, first as Deputy Attorney General and then as Attorney
General. "Still, I think he was far more liberal than his dad."
Indeed, Mr. Clark bumped squarely against his father's own, more
conservative legal judgments several times during his years in the Justice
Department. Most notably, when Johnson appointed him Attorney General in
1967, one of his first steps was to drop the case against Judith Coplon, a
Justice Department clerk who had been charged during the early McCarthy days
with passing secrets to her Soviet lover. Mr. Clark's father had brought the
case when he was Attorney General.
"It seemed to me a quite fascinating thing to do," said Mr. Navasky, who
became close friends with Mr. Clark in the late 1960's while writing the
book Kennedy Justice . "Ramsey was appointed under the cloud that he got the
job [of Attorney General] because his family was Texas buddies of the
Johnson family. But I came to the conclusion, both from my interviews and
what he did in the Justice Department, that he was a kind of
civil-libertarian Attorney General, which is very unusual."
This civil-libertarian streak didn't always go over well in the Johnson
cabinet, however. During his two years as Attorney General, Mr. Clark found
himself at odds with the administration over everything from wire-tapping to
prison reform to the Vietnam War.
"President Johnson knew I [opposed the war in Vietnam] before he appointed
me Attorney General," Mr. Clark said. "And he didn't put me on the National
Security Council, which every Attorney General before me had been on and
every Attorney General since me had been on. He would call me over once in a
while to some meeting on the war when he wanted an extreme position, and I
remember one breakfast, the question was whether to bomb north of a famous
parallel, I can't remember which one. And the guys were arguing
"yes-no-yes-no" as to whether you could bomb north of the line, and when it
came to me I said, 'I don't think you can bomb on either side of the line.'
Because bombing is just killing people, and you didn't know who the hell you
were killing-you were killing civilians. It was just a shameful, sick
thing."
When Richard Nixon denounced Mr. Clark in a campaign speech in 1968, Johnson
reportedly deadpanned, "I had to sit on my hands so I wouldn't cheer it."
But Mr. Clark said his relationship with Johnson was friendly.
"I never had any real conflict with him. But he [did] say to me one time,
'Some people think you're destroying the Democratic Party.' And I said, 'I'm
not even in politics, I'm just doing the law.'"
Mr. Clark never spoke out publicly against the administration, and he never
resigned, despite his apparent misgivings about Vietnam.
"You know, I had a choice of resigning," Mr. Clark recalled, "and it's
something I considered-it's something I thought was important and respected.
But I also thought what I was doing was important-was more important in the
sense of its direct impact on lives. And I saw an environment around me in
which everything I had been trying to do would be swept away. I already felt
that the civil-rights movement after the Watts riots in '65 was in deep
trouble. So I couldn't see giving up on that. And I had no role in the
Vietnam business, because I wasn't even on the Security Council."
Some of Mr. Clark's colleagues have suggested that he is still doing penance
for this period of his life-in particular, for prosecuting war resisters
like Dr. Benjamin Spock, the Reverend William Sloane Coffin and boxing
legend Muhammad Ali.
"Standing by, being Attorney General during the Vietnam War without
resigning, is not a particularly heroic position to have taken," said his
old colleague, Mr. Wulf. "I sometimes speculate-and this is absolute
speculation-that what he's doing is a kind of atonement for having been
Attorney General for Lyndon Johnson at the time of the Vietnam War, and for
having in fact initiated the indictment against Dr. Spock and the others."
As in most cases, Mr. Clark was as unapologetic about his indictment of
Spock as he has since become about his Johnson administration apostasy.
"I personally authorized the case against William Sloane Coffin, who came
down to marry our son a few years later. I visited him and stayed in his
home in '69, at Yale. Dr. Spock I became very close friends with. And I
really haven't had regrets about the case. I think the government has the
duty to protect laws that it believes are constitutional, and I believe the
Selective Service Act was constitutional."
Still, there's no question that Mr. Clark veered sharply leftward after his
Johnson years. Beginning in the early 1970's, Mr. Clark took a string of
headline-grabbing "movement" cases, amassing a docket that read like a Who's
Who of the decade's radicals and revolutionaries. In 1973, he defended the
Harrisburg Seven, a group of peace activists who were accused, among other
things, of plotting to kidnap Henry Kissinger. One year later, he joined
famed radical lawyer William Kunstler in representing two of the Attica
Brothers who had been accused of killing a prison guard. Around the same
time, he also launched an upstart campaign for U.S. Senate against New York
Republican Jacob Javits. (At the state Democratic convention in 1974, Frank
Serpico nominated him and Attica Brother Herbert X. Blyden seconded it.)
Running as a Democrat, he argued for a 50 percent cut in the defense budget
and refused to take contributions above $100. Mr. Navasky managed the
operation.
During the next two decades, Mr. Clark began taking on clients who hovered
further and further on the political fringes, clients who were not merely
controversial but downright incendiary. He often framed these cases in the
old language of civil rights, but these clients were hardly left-wing
"cause" clients in the traditional sense (though there were some of those as
well). For instance, he took on the case of Karl Linnas, an alleged former
Nazi. And he defended-and supposedly befriended-Lyndon LaRouche, the
political-cult guru. In the early 1990's, Mr. Clark represented Radovan
Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb general who was indicted on war crimes. More
recently, he gave legal advice to Slobodon Milosevic, the former Yugoslavian
president who was also charged with war crimes. Now, of course, there's
Saddam Hussein.
Taken together, these clients make up quite a rogues' gallery, and some of
Mr. Clark's friends and colleagues have been almost as confounded by his
legal choices as his critics. To help explain, they have dreamed up a raft
of different theories. On the one side are those who believe that Mr. Clark
is, above all, a civil libertarian in the Clarence Darrow tradition. To
these friends, he is a hero, albeit at times an eccentric one.
"He's represented a lot of bad guys. I would say bad guys are entitled to a
lawyer. Dracula should have a lawyer, but it's not going to be me," said
Michael Steven Smith, a New York City attorney and author. "It's probably
not a position taken by most movement lawyers, but it's still a principled
position."
But other friends and colleagues have said they suspect he is driven
primarily by ideology, and not just the standard lefty ideology.
"I support many of the causes he supports, but I also vehemently disagree
with some of the choices he's made, because I perceive him as thinking that
any enemy of the United States is a friend of his, and I think that leads
him into representing people he should not," said Beth Stevens, an attorney
who represented a group of Bosnian Muslim women who sued Mr. Karadzic in
1993.
And yet for a man who sticks to certain basic principles of justice, even
when the circumstances of the world seem to be pressing their defense to the
point of absurdity, Mr. Clark had a deceptively simple answer for the
choices he's made.
"You know, we tend to demean here the idea that you're innocent until proven
guilty, and most people are going to chuckle when you say that in connection
with a case like Saddam Hussein," said Mr. Clark, responding to his critics.
"But the main meaning is that truth is hard to find. You don't really know,
you have to search for it-you have to inquire diligently, be very
skeptical."
You may reach Lizzy Ratner via email at: lratner@observer.com .
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21) Iraqi Resistance speech on videotape December 13 2004
GISpecial 3A5
ThomasFBarton@earthlink.net
A Message From The Iraq Resistance
Islamic Jihad Army - A message in English
"We are simple people who chose principles over fear."
Propaganda or disinformation? You decide.
Iraqi Resistance speech on videotape December 13 2004
Title: Communiqué Number 6
The media platoon of the Islamic Jihad Army. On the 27th of Shawal
1425h. 10 December 2004
People of the world! These words come to you from those who up to the
day of the invasion were struggling to survive under the sanctions
imposed by the criminal regimes of the U.S. and Britain .
We are simple people who chose principles over fear.
We have suffered crimes and sanctions, which we consider the true
weapons of mass destruction.
Years and years of agony and despair, while the condemned UN traded with
our oil revenues in the name of world stability and peace.
Over two million innocents died waiting for a light at the end of a
tunnel that only ended with the occupation of our country and the theft
of our resources.
After the crimes of the administrations of the U.S. and Britain in Iraq
, we have chosen our future. The future of every resistance struggle
ever in the history of man.
It is our duty, as well as our right, to fight back the occupying
forces, which their nations will be held morally and economically
responsible; for what their elected governments have destroyed and
stolen from our land.
We have not crossed the oceans and seas to occupy Britain or the U.S.
nor are we responsible for 9/11. These are only a few of the lies that
these criminals present to cover their true plans for the control of the
energy resources of the world, in face of a growing China and a strong
unified Europe . It is Ironic that the Iraqi's are to bear the full face
of this large and growing conflict on behalf of the rest of this
sleeping world.
We thank all those, including those of Britain and the U.S. , who took
to the streets in protest against this war and against Globalism. We
also thank France , Germany and other states for their position, which
least to say are considered wise and balanced, til now.
Today, we call on you again.
We do not require arms or fighters, for we have plenty.
We ask you to form a world wide front against war and sanctions. A
front that is governed by the wise and knowing. A front that will bring
reform and order. New institutions that would replace the now corrupt.
Stop using the U.S. dollar, use the Euro or a basket of currencies.
Reduce or halt your consumption of British and U.S. products. Put an
end to Zionism before it ends the world. Educate those in doubt of the
true nature of this conflict and do not believe their media for their
casualties are far higher than they admit.
We only wish we had more cameras to show the world their true defeat.
The enemy is on the run. They are in fear of a resistance movement they
can not see nor predict.
We, now choose when, where, and how to strike. And as our ancestors
drew the first sparks of civilization, we will redefine the word
“conquest.“
Today we write a new chapter in the arts of urban warfare.
Know that by helping the Iraqi people you are helping yourselves, for
tomorrow may bring the same destruction to you.
In helping the Iraqi people does not mean dealing for the Americans for
a few contracts here and there. You must continue to isolate their
strategy.
This conflict is no longer considered a localized war. Nor can the
world remain hostage to the never-ending and regenerated fear that the
American people suffer from in general.
We will pin them here in Iraq to drain their resources, manpower, and
their will to fight. We will make them spend as much as they steal, if
not more.
We will disrupt, then halt the flow of our stolen oil, thus, rendering
their plans useless.
And the earlier a movement is born, the earlier their fall will be.
And to the American soldiers we say, you can also choose to fight
tyranny with us. Lay down your weapons, and seek refuge in our mosques,
churches and homes. We will protect you. And we will get you out of Iraq
, as we have done with a few others before you.
Go back to your homes, families, and loved ones. This is not your war.
Nor are you fighting for a true cause in Iraq .
And to George W. Bush, we say, “You have asked us to ‘Bring it on’, and
so have we. Like never expected. Have you another challenge?”
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
22) The victims of the tsunami pay the price
of war on Iraq
US and British aid is dwarfed by the billions
both spend on slaughter
George Monbiot
Guardian
Tuesday January 4, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1382857,00.html
There has never been a moment like it on British television. The Vicar of
Dibley, one of our gentler sitcoms, was bouncing along with its usual
bonhomie on New Year's Day when it suddenly hit us with a scene from another
world. Two young African children were sobbing and trying to comfort each
other after their mother had died of Aids. How on earth, I wondered, would
the show make us laugh after that? It made no attempt to do so. One by one
the characters, famous for their parochial boorishness, stood in front of
the camera wearing the white armbands which signalled their support for the
Make Poverty History campaign. You would have to have been hewn from stone
not to cry.
The timing was perfect. In my local Oxfam shop last week, people were
queueing to the door to pledge money for the tsunami fund. A pub on the
other side of town raised £1,000 on Saturday night. In the pot on the
counter of the local newsagent's there must be nearly £100. The woman who
runs the bakery told me about the homeless man she had seen, who emptied his
pockets in the bank, saying "I just want to do my bit", while the whole
queue tried not to cry.
Over the past few months, reviewing the complete lack of public interest
in what is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the failure,
in the west, to mobilise effective protests against the continuing
atrocities in Iraq, I had begun to wonder whether we had lost our ability to
stand in other people's shoes. I have now stopped wondering. The response to
the tsunami shows that, however we might seek to suppress it, we cannot
destroy our capacity for empathy.
But one obvious question recurs. Why must the relief of suffering, in this
unprecedentedly prosperous world, rely on the whims of citizens and the
appeals of pop stars and comedians? Why, when extreme poverty could be made
history with a minor redeployment of public finances, must the poor world
still wait for homeless people in the rich world to empty their pockets?
The obvious answer is that governments have other priorities. And the one
that leaps to mind is war. If the money they have promised to the victims of
the tsunami still falls far short of the amounts required, it is partly
because the contingency fund upon which they draw in times of crisis has
been spent on blowing people to bits in Iraq.
The US government has so far pledged $350m to the victims of the tsunami,
and the UK government £50m ($96m). The US has spent $148 billion on the
Iraq war and the UK £6bn ($11.5bn). The war has been running for 656 days.
This means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by the United
States is the equivalent of one and a half day's spending in Iraq. The money
the UK has given equates to five and a half days of our involvement in the
war.
It looks still worse when you compare the cost of the war to the total
foreign aid budget. The UK has spent almost twice as much on creating
suffering in Iraq as it spends annually on relieving it elsewhere. The
United States gives just over $16bn in foreign aid: less than one ninth of
the money it has burnt so far in Iraq.
The figures for war and aid are worth comparing because, when all the other
excuses for the invasion of Iraq were stripped away, both governments
explained that it was being waged for the good of the Iraqis. Let us, for a
moment, take this claim at face value. Let us suppose that the invasion
and occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with power, domestic politics or
oil, but were, in fact, components of a monumental aid programme. And let
us, with reckless generosity, assume that more people in Iraq have gained as
a result of this aid programme than lost.
To justify the war, even under these wildly unsafe assumptions, George Bush
and Tony Blair would have to show that the money they spent was a
cost-efficient means of relieving human suffering. As it was sufficient to
have made a measurable improvement in the lives of all the 2.8 billion
people living in absolute poverty, and as there are only 25 million people
in Iraq, this is simply not possible. Even if you ignore every other issue -
such as the trifling matter of mass killing - the opportunity costs of the
Iraq war categorise it as a humanitarian disaster. Indeed, such calculations
suggest that, on cost grounds alone, a humanitarian war is a contradiction
in terms.
But our leaders appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between
helping people and killing them. The tone of Blair's New Year message was
almost identical to that of his tear-jerking insistence that we understand
the Iraqi people must be bombed for their own good. The US marines who have
now been dispatched to Sri Lanka to help the rescue operation were, just a
few weeks ago, murdering the civilians (for this, remember, is an illegal
war), smashing the homes and evicting the entire population of the Iraqi
city of Falluja.
Even within the official aid budgets the two aims are confused: $8.9bn of
the aid money the US spends is used for military assistance, anti-drugs
operations, counter-terrorism and the Iraq relief and reconstruction fund
(otherwise known as the Halliburton benevolent trust). For Bush and Blair,
the tsunami relief operation and the Iraq war are both episodes in the same
narrative of salvation. The civilised world rides out to rescue foreigners
from their darkness.
While they spend the money we gave them to relieve suffering on slaughtering
the poor, the world must rely for disaster relief on the homeless man
emptying his pockets. If our leaders were as generous in helping people as
they are in killing them, no one would ever go hungry.
·You can join the campaign against global poverty at:
www.makepovertyhistory.org
www.monbiot.com
Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
23) National Task Force for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Legal Update - December 11, 2004 meeting in New York City
(Reviewed by Attorney Robert R. Bryan)
LEGAL UPDATE:
Mumia's case is simultaneously being heard in two different courts
presently: the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
(appellate court) and the Pennsylvania State Court of Common Pleas (trial
court), both of which sit in Philadelphia.
The Third Circuit (the appellate court)
Procedure
In July 2004, both Robert Bryan and the state of Pennsylvania submitted
briefs on the effect of the 06-24-04 United States Supreme Court decision
in Beard v. Banks on Mumia's case. On 07-29-04, Robert filed a memorandum
of law on the affect of Banks for Mumia, and requested a stay of the
proceedings in this matter pending the outcome of the issues simultaneously
being litigated in the Pennsylvania trial court before Judge Pamela Dembe.
On 10-19-04, the appellate court entered an order denying the 07-29-04
request from Robert Bryan for a stay of the proceedings. What this means
is that the issues currently pending before the appellate court are moving
forward. The next step involves putting these issues on what is called a
"briefing schedule," which has yet to be done by the appellate court. In
other words, Robert has yet to receive notice from the appellate court as
to when briefs will be due on the issues currently before it.
Robert initially filed for a stay of these proceedings because of the
active litigation pending before Judge Dembe in the trial court in
Philadelphia, and argued against having to litigate one case in two courts
at the same time. The matters before Judge Dembe cannot be resolved by the
Third Circuit, but must first be addressed at the trial level in the state
system.
Additionally, Robert Bryan is currently working on a brief to be filed with
this court requesting that additional issues be certified for appeal from
district court Judge Yohn's 2001 habeas decision, which certified only one
claim for relief: racial bias in jury selection, also known as the Batson
claim. Mumia's former attorneys filed the original motion on this issue,
which Robert plans to supplement, requesting that additional issues be
certified on appeal to the appellate court. What are the possible
outcomes? There are four possibilities: the Third Circuit could (1) deny
this request outright, (2) only allow a few of the 29 issues raised by
Mumia's writ for habeas corpus, (3) send the case back to Judge William
Yohn to apply the standard set out in Miller-El (see below), or (4) wait
for Mumia's Batson issue to be resolved before moving forward on this one.
More immediately, Robert plans to file a motion for remand back down to the
district court on the issues raised by Terri Maurer-Carter's affidavit.
Terri Maurer-Carter is the court reporter who overheard trial judge Albert
Sabo-who presided over Mumia's 1982 "trial," and 1995, 1996, and 1997
Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) appellate hearings in Philadelphia-say:
"Yeah, and I'm going to help 'em [the prosecution] fry the n****r."
Issues
There are two issues before the appellate court, which will be explained
below.
First, what did the United States Supreme Court decide in Beard v. Banks,
and how does that affect Mumia?
In July 2004, the appellate court allowed both Robert Bryan and the state
of Pennsylvania to submit briefs on the affect of Banks on Mumia's case.
The issue was whether Mumia's case was affected by the recent United States
Supreme Court decision in Beard v. Banks. George Banks was sentenced to
death in 1982. After his state appeals were exhausted, he sought habeas
relief in federal district court and was denied. On appeal to the Third
Circuit Court of Appeals, Banks' death sentence was found to be
unconstitutional, and the decision of the district court was reversed. The
appellate court held that jury instructions during Banks' sentencing led
jurors to believe they could not vote against the death penalty unless they
all agreed on mitigating evidence-evidence that would have inclined them
not to vote for a death sentence. The appellate court reasoned that these
jury instructions violated the United States Supreme Court's 1988 ruling in
Mills v. Maryland.
However, the Third Circuit did not decide whether the rule of Mills was
retroactive. In other words, could Banks benefit from the United States
Supreme Court's 1988 decision in Mills where his conviction became final in
1987? Thus, when Banks' case was next brought before the United States
Supreme Court on appeal, the Court sent the case back down to the Third
Circuit to decide this issue. The appellate court then decided that the
rule created by the Supreme Court in Mills was retroactive and that Banks
could benefit. The case was again appealed to the Supreme Court and on
06-24-04, the United States Supreme Court reversed the decision of the
Third Circuit and declared that the rule of law created in Mills was not
retroactive. In a 5-to-4 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the
Court found that the rule announced in Mills-that sentencing schemes could
not prevent jurors from considering mitigating evidence that had not been
accepted unanimously when deciding whether to apply the death penalty-was a
new rule of law that was not a "watershed rule of criminal procedure
implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal
proceeding." Finding that the rule of Mills was not a "watershed rule,"
the United States Supreme Court said that Mills could not be applied
retroactively and that Banks' conviction was constitutional.
What does this mean? Basically, it means that a "Mills challenge" to a
death sentence is only applicable where the sentencing relief sought is for
a person whose conviction became final after the rule of Mills was decided
in 1988. Seemingly, the Court has said that relief is available to those
whose convictions post-date Mills, creating what is called in the law a
"bright line rule." Robert Bryan argued in his brief that Mumia benefits
from the rule of Mills because his conviction became final in 1990. The
state of Pennsylvania has argued that Mumia should not get the benefit of
Mills, despite this seemingly bright line rule, and there have been several
exchanges back and forth (one as recent as 10-31-04) through the filing of
papers with the appellate court on this issue. This matter is still
pending.
If Mumia wins on this issue, that he does get the benefit of Mills, his
case will go back to the trial level in the Pennsylvania Court of Common
Pleas. The state of Pennsylvania will have two choices, either (1)
sentence Mumia to life imprisonment, or (2) grant Mumia a full jury trial
on the issue of whether he should be sentenced to life imprisonment or
death. A full jury trial, or penalty-phase hearing, means that Mumia is
back to 1982 in terms of the issue of sentencing. The state of
Pennsylvania will put on evidence of guilt and aggravation to argue for a
death sentence. Robert Bryan will then be able to put on evidence of
innocence and mitigation. However, the only decision the jury can make
should there be a new penalty-phase hearing is life imprisonment or death.
If Mumia loses, then the state of Pennsylvania can sign another death
warrant, side-stepping Yohn's 2001 habeas decision.
However, there still remains another issue pending before the appellate
court: the issue of jury selection, Mumia's Batson claim.
Second, what is Mumia's Batson claim? The issue of racial bias in jury
selection, Mumia's Batson claim, is also still pending before the appellate
court. This issue was the only issue Judge Yohn allowed to be appealed to
the Third Circuit. In other words, this is the only guilt-phase appellate
issue Yohn certified to go before the appellate court.
Recently, the United State Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of
Thomas Miller-El. A summary of that case from an article in the 12-05-04
NYT is as follows:
"In an 8-to-1 decision last year, the Supreme Court instructed the appeals
court to rethink its "dismissive and strained interpretation" of the proof
in the case, and to consider more seriously the substantial evidence
suggesting that prosecutors had systematically excluded blacks from Mr.
Miller-El's jury. Prosecutors used peremptory strikes to eliminate 10 out
of 11 eligible black jurors, and they twice used a local procedure called a
jury shuffle to move blacks lower on the list of potential jurors, the
decision said. The jury ultimately selected, which had one black member,
convicted Mr. Miller-El, a black man who is now 53, of killing a clerk at a
Holiday Inn in Dallas in 1985.
Instead of considering much of the evidence recited by the Supreme Court
majority, the appeals court engaged in something akin to plagiarism. In
February, it again rejected Mr. Miller-El's claims, in a decision that
reproduced, virtually verbatim and without attribution, several paragraphs
from the sole dissenting opinion in last year's Supreme Court decision,
written by Justice Clarence Thomas."
According to Attorney Bryan, Miller-El deals with two issues: (1) racism in
jury selection and (2) the certification of appellate issues by federal
district courts. Regarding racial bias in jury selection, should the
United States Supreme Court decide in favor of Miller-El on this issue,
Mumia's position will be strengthened. Furthermore, there is also good
case law in the Third Circuit on this issue that should also support
Mumia's case. As for the certification of issues for appeal by the lower
federal courts, the Supreme Court appears to be saying that these courts
have too high a standard. In other words, they have made it such that
unless a petitioner can prove a certain win on appeal, then that issue will
not move forward. But if a certain win was apparent, then there would be
no need for an appeal because the district court would have granted relief
in the first instance, right? If Miller-El succeeds on this issue, then
Robert will be in a better position to argue that Judge Yohn violated the
proper standard and set the bar to high for his certificates of
appealability.
If Mumia wins his Batson claim, there will be a completely new trial,
meaning there will be a new trial to decide guilt or innocence. If there
is an acquittal, Mumia will be released. If Mumia is found guilty, there
will be a penalty-phase hearing.
The Pennsylvania State Court of Common Pleas (trial court)
Procedure
With regards to the newly discovered evidence presented to this court
through the affidavits of William Pate and Yvette Williams, Robert Bryan
has requested a hearing on the issues this evidence raises in relation to
Mumia's conviction. Currently pending before Judge Dembe is a motion to
dismiss that was filed by the state of Pennsylvania. This new evidence has
not been presented in federal court because the issues it raises have not
yet been resolved by Dembe in the state court system. Robert Bryan has
replied to this motion, and was forced by Dembe in September 2004 to
qualify himself to handle a capital case, despite his years of experience
in these matters. Robert has handled hundreds of capital cases.
Interestingly, there is a new state law in Pennsylvania that requires
defense attorneys handling capital litigation to demonstrate that they are
qualified to handle such matters, but that law was not in effect when Dembe
challenged Robert's ability to handle Mumia's case.
If Judge Dembe decides in Mumia's favor, then he would get a new trial. If
Dembe denies relief, then Robert will appeal that decision through to the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court. It should be noted that if Dembe or the
Pennsylvania appellate courts grants Mumia relief, there will be no need to
remain in federal court-another reason why Robert has argued against the
lifting of the stay by the Third Circuit.
Issues
There are two issues before the trial court: the fabricated confession of
Pricilla Durham and that the false testimony the state of Pennsylvania put
on during the trial through their key witness Cynthia White.
William Pate is the half-brother of Pricilla Durham. In his affidavit, he
says that Durham lied about the confession she claimed Mumia made at the
hospital on the night he was shot and Faulkner died.
Yvette Williams said in her affidavit that Cynthia White was not present
during the shooting, but appeared sometime thereafter.
HEARING SET FOR MUMIA ON FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2005
Dear Friends:
Today official notification was received that on Friday, February
11, 2005, there will be a hearing concerning Mumia Abu-Jamal in the
Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia before Judge Pamela Pryor
Dembe. The hearing will be pursuant to the Petition for Writ of Habeas
Corpus we filed December 8, 2003 on Mumia's behalf.
Next month the court will issue a memorandum that is to include
preliminary rulings on the petition. At that time she will direct counsel
as to how she wishes to proceed. The hearing will be in the Criminal
Justice Center, Philadelphia, but to date no courtroom has been assigned.
The issues raised in our habeas corpus petition are:
1. The State Manipulated A Purported Eyewitness To Falsely
Identify Petitioner As The Shooter, In Violation Of His Rights Under The
Fifth, Sixth Eighth, And Fourteenth Amendments To The United States
Constitution.
2. Petitioner Was Found Guilty And Sentenced To Death
Through The Use Of A Fabricated Confession, In Violation Of The Fifth,
Eighth And Fourteenth Amendments.
We will advise when more is known about the upcoming hearing.
With best wishes,
Robert
=======
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4124
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Black legislators support Mumia's release
On Dec. 3, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators (NBCSL) passed a
resolution during its conference in Philadelphia calling for the freedom of
African American political prisoner and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal.
This comes on the heels of another important resolution passed at the NAACP
national convention on July 15 that demanded a new trial for Abu-Jamal and
condemned the racist application of the death penalty by the criminal
justice system.
The state legislators' resolution reads:
WHEREAS Mumia Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial in Phila delphia was characterized by
illegal suppression of evidence, police coercion, illegal exclusion of
Black jurors, and grotesquely unfair and unconstitutional rulings by the
judge; and
WHEREAS the trial judge, Albert Sabo, has been quoted in a sworn statement
to have vowed at the time of the trial to help the prosecution 'fry the
n--'; and
WHEREAS subsequent appellate rulings have bent the law out of shape to
sustain the guilty verdict of that trial; and
WHEREAS the appellate courts have also refused to consider strong evidence
of Mumia Abu-Jamal's innocence, most notably a confession by Arnold Beverly
to the crime; and
WHEREAS Mumia Abu-Jamal still is incarcerated on Death Row and still faces
a death sentence; and
WHEREAS Mumia Abu-Jamal's case is now on appeal before the federal Third
Circuit and the state court system; and
WHEREAS Mumia Abu-Jamal has for decades as a journalist fought courage
ously against racism and for the human rights of all people; and
WHEREAS the continued unjust incarceration of Mumia Abu-Jamal represents a
threat to the civil rights of all people,
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the National Caucus of Black State
Legislators demands that the courts consider the evidence of innocence of
Mumia Abu-Jamal and that he be released from prison; and
THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the NCBSL demands that Pennsylvania
Gov. Edward Rendell instruct his Attorney General to take over the case of
Mumia Abu-Jamal from the Philadelphia County District Attorney's office and
actually pursue justice; namely, go to court, make a legal confession of
error, and stipulate that the conviction be vacated;
THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the NCBSL will communicate its views
on this matter to Gov. Rendell, 225 Main Capitol Bldg., Harris burg, PA
17120, and to the appropriate courts in consultation with the legal defense
team of Mumia Abu-Jamal; and
THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the NCBSL will work with the legal
defense team of Mumia Abu-Jamal to petition the courts to file any
necessary friend of the court brief on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
24) U.S. Copters Speed Pace of Aid for Indonesia Refugees
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
http://nytimes.com/2005/01/02/international/worldspecial4/02quake.html?ei=50
94
&en=92dbe740aaf891ca&hp=&ex=1104642000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&pos
it
ion=
The Times article below presents more evidence for the need to divert all US
forces from Iraq (where of course they had no business being in the first
place) to tsunami disaster areas. Especially right now with the lack of
transport
equipment and infrastructure and the need to reach isolated victims quickly,
every last US helicopter should leave Iraq immediately, be used to ferry aid
to
victims and to ferry injured out -- and then when their job is done, to come
home.
And it's the job of the antiwar movement to get back out in the streets to
fight for this!
January 2, 2005
AID
U.S. Copters Speed Pace of Aid for Indonesia Refugees
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Substantial aid finally began reaching
desperate refugees in devastated areas
of northern Sumatra yesterday as American
warships, led by the aircraft
carrier Abraham Lincoln, arrived offshore
and a fleet of helicopters airlifted
critical supplies to stricken towns in Aceh Province.
Flying through pounding rains, a dozen
Sea Hawk helicopters from the Lincoln
ferried food, water, medicines, tents
and other supplies from warehouses at
Banda Aceh airport to refugees in
decimated Indonesian coastal towns and inland
villages that had been virtually cut off
when the tsunami destroyed roads,
bridges and communications a week ago.
It was the beginning of what was
expected to become a steady stream of
international aid for Indonesia and
a dozen other countries on the rim of the Indian
Ocean, where estimates of the dead
hovered between 140,000 and 150,000.
Serious injuries were believed to
exceed 500,000, and the likelihood of epidemics
of cholera and other diseases threatened
to send the totals much higher.
As the first trickle of supplies broke
through, the global relief effort to
save an estimated five million homeless
survivors of last weekend's undersea
earthquake and tsunami was reinforced
yesterday when Japan raised its pledge of
aid from $30 million to $500 million,
the largest contribution so far.
Combined with a $350 million pledge
by the United States on Friday, this brought the
total contributions of more than
40 nations to $2 billion, according to the
United Nations. [Page 9.]
The United Nations will begin a new
world appeal for money in New York this
week, and Secretary General Kofi Annan
will arrive in Jakarta on Thursday to
convene a meeting of major donor
nations to map strategy for the relief
campaign. Private donations, which
have flooded charitable organizations around the
world, are expected to add hundreds
of millions to the relief programs.
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, in
his first comments on the disaster,
said the world faced a long-term relief
commitment. "At first it seemed a
terrible disaster, a terrible tragedy," he
said. "But I think as the days have
gone on, people have recognized it as
a global catastrophe. There will be months,
if not years, of work ahead of us."
President Bush too spoke of a long
commitment. "We offer our love and
compassion, and our assurance that
America will be there to help," he said in his
weekly radio address from his ranch in
Crawford, Tex. He cited a host of problems
- communications, roads and medical
facilities damaged or washed out - but
promised that help was coming, and,
indeed, had already begun to arrive.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and
Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, the
president's brother, were expected to
arrive in the region today with a team of
experts to tour some stricken areas and
to assess the needs. Their schedule was
still being worked out, officials said.
The need is indeed enormous, especially
in Aceh Province, where towns and
villages were destroyed. Meulaboh, on
Aceh's west coast, was flattened, and as
many as 40,000 of the 120,000 residents
were killed. It lay buried under
mountains of mud and debris yesterday
as Indonesia's president, Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, flew in to see the devastation.
Other firsthand reports of the devastation
in Aceh were provided by the
pilots and crew members of the helicopters
that, from dawn to sunset on New Year's
Day, shuttled 25,000 pounds of supplies to
refugees. "There is nothing left to
speak of at these coastal communities,"
Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Vorce, a pilot from
San Diego, told The Associated Press.
He told of a swath of destruction two
miles deep from the coasts, with trees
mowed down, roads washed away and only
foundations where buildings once stood.
Besides airdrops by the American helicopters,
fleets of cargo planes from
Australia, New Zealand and other
nations continued to land at Banda Aceh and
Medan, ferrying in tons of supplies.
But bad roads, destroyed bridges, a lack of
fuel and trucks, and other problems
continued to hamper the distribution.
While the Abraham Lincoln and four
accompanying ships represented the
vanguard of American emergency aid
to Indonesia, American officials said seven more
vessels led by the amphibious assault
ship Bonhomme Richard were steaming west
from the South China Sea with more
supplies and were expected to be off the
coast of Sri Lanka in the coming week,
a Pentagon spokesman said.
Military officials said that yet another
convoy, six slower-moving ships
loaded with food, water, blankets and
a 500-bed portable hospital, was en route
from Guam, but was not expected to
reach the stricken region for about two
weeks.
Capt. Rodger Welch of the Navy,
representing the operations directorate of
the military's Pacific Command, said
late Saturday that the American relief
mission likely was the largest in the
region in at least 50 years. "And we are
only beginning this effort," he added.
About 10,000 to 12,000 American
military personnel were now involved, mostly
aboard the Lincoln and Bonhomme
Richard groups. In Sri Lanka, flash floods
yesterday forced the evacuation of
thousands of people from low-lying areas hard
hit by the tsunami, which killed more
than 28,700 there. At least 15 camps
where 30,000 refugees had been
sheltering were evacuated after storms dumped 13
inches of rain over the eastern coastal region.
Weeklong efforts to bury the dead
in Sri Lanka and coastal areas of India
were winding down, and government
and private aid workers said they were turning
their attention increasingly to
sheltering the survivors in more sanitary
refugee camps, while the homes of an
estimated one million displaced persons are
rebuilt.
"This is where we are going to see
a rise in communicable diseases, diarrhea,
measles, upper respiratory infections,"
said David Overlack, a health care
specialist surveying camps in Sri Lanka
for the International Federation of the
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
World Health Organization workers
have noted "a slight increase in the
reporting of diarrheal illness" in areas
of Sri Lanka and Indonesia affected by the
tsunami, David Nabarro, an official of
the United Nations agency, said in an
interview yesterday.
But the increase does not mean an
epidemic, he said. There have been no
outbreaks of cholera or other diseases,
he said, adding that it is too early for
such outbreaks to occur.
Aid workers praised Sri Lankan officials
and volunteers for their efforts to
bury the dead quickly and to place
600,000 homeless people in schools, temples
and mosques. An outpouring of
donations from Sri Lankans has prevented
shortages of food and clothing, officials said.
Jeffrey J. Lunstead, the American
ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives,
said the first planeload of American
relief supplies had arrived in Sri Lanka -
plastic sheeting to house 3,600 people
and 5,400 cans of fresh water. He said
most of the American aid would be aimed
at reconstruction, rather than
emergency food and medicines.
To that end, American military officials
said 1,500 marines and 20
helicopters would be deployed in the
next few days to clear debris and aid survivors in
devastated areas of Sri Lanka. The first
Reporting for this article was contributed
by Ian Fisher in Sri Lanka,
Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez in Indonesia,
Thom Shanker in Washington and Lawrence
K. Altman in New York.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
25) IRAQ: Death in Fallujah rising, doctors say
04 Jan 2005 14:56:16 GMT
Source: Integrated Regional Information Networks
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/121b671d950efc3ac031b54b55118d
85.htm
FALLUJAH, 4 January (IRIN) - "It was really distressing picking up dead
bodies from destroyed homes, especially children. It is the most
depressing situation I have ever been in since the war started," Dr
Rafa'ah al-Iyssaue, director of the main hospital in Fallujah city, some
60 km west of Baghdad, told IRIN.
According to al-Iyssaue, the hospital emergency team has recovered more
than 700 bodies from rubble where houses and shops once stood, adding
that more than 550 were women and children. He said a very small number
of men were found in these places and most were elderly.
Doctors at the hospital claim that many bodies had been found in a
mutilated condition, some without legs or arms. Two babies were found at
their homes, who are believed to have died from malnutrition, according
to a specialist at the hospital.
Al-Iyssaue added these numbers were only from nine neighbourhoods of the
city and that 18 others had not yet been reached, as they were waiting
for help from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) to make it easier
for them to enter. He explained that many of the dead had been already
buried by civilians from the Garma and Amirya districts of Fallujah
after approval from US-led forces nearly three weeks ago, and those
bodies had not been counted. IRCS officials told IRIN they needed more
time to give an accurate death toll, adding that the city was completely
uninhabitable.
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
26) The best kept media secret of the week is that the
greatest devastation and death occurred and is occurring
in Indonesia's Aceh province.
Adding to Jim's post: ETAN (many will know Ben Terrall's work with and for
ETAN here).
Marc Sapir writes that Allan Nairn was Dennis Bernstein's guest on
Flashpoints Thurs., Dec. 30 and that:
The best kept media secret of the week is that the greatest devastation and
death occurred and is occurring in Indonesia's Aceh province. I Just heard
the scoop on Indonesia (from Alan Nairn, plus an Indonesian UC Berkeley
professor and a fellow with nonviolence international). The Indonesian
military yesterday began a new major military campaign in Aceh province
(where
perhaps 80,000 are dead) attacking villages (that are still standing) in an
effort to wipe out the independence movement. They will be sending in
another
15,000 troops to complement the 50,000 that have been used to impose martial
law the past year. While claiming to be doing relief work they are
hampering
the relief efforts and will steal as much money as they can from relief
work.
The U.S. is likely to be asked by Indonesia to put the Aceh popular
resistance
movement on it's list of terrorist organizations and there is fear that
under
Condoleeza that will be approved. That will then make most Indonesians in
the
U.S. and around the world terrorist collaborators as they try to help their
families and the independence movement get out from under the terror of the
Indonesian military. Please tell people who want to send financial aid to
the
Tsunami victims of Indonesia to go through the East Timor Action Network not
through government channels. They can be contacted at www.ETAN.org
Aceh, the region closest to the earthquake, has been almost entirely sealed
from foreign presence since the beginning of martial law in May 2003. There
are rumors that the Indonesian government is now debating whether to allow
foreign organizations access to Aceh. The U.S. government has offered
assistance. Every second delayed contributes to needless death, sickness and
suffering. This is clearly not the time for politics to supersede dire
humanitarian needs.
East Timor ACTION Network ALERT
Donate to Aceh relief
Go to the website for information re: contacting your congressional reps and
about how to donate to grassroots efforts in Aceh:
http://www.etan.org/action/action2/23alert.htm#Donate%20to%20Aceh%20relief
Beware Medecins sans Frontieres:
At 11:41 PM -0800 1/3/05, echo wrote:
Medecins Sans Frontieres was arrogant and controlling at the Colomoncagua
refugee camp. Didn't want to trust the community with the supplies and
pharmaceuticals. The survivors at Colomoncagua were organized on an
anarchist
basis, with every person regardless of age or sex contributing with whatever
knowledge or skill he or she possessed. They had lived so long because they
were responsible.
adding that the US is moving to displace UNICEF in relief work, and use the
opportunity to tighten military control. (Again on Flashpoints yesterday,
Monday the 3rd, the Acehnese head-of-state-in-exile was interviewed,
and reported that Indonesian soldiers are shooting survivors who try to
bury the dead, a practice sickeningly familiar from Palestine and Iraq.)
more on military repression of Acehnese:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0103-25.htm
''We are now carrying out two duties: humanitarian work and the
security operation,'' he told the daily. ''The raids to quell the
secessionist movement in Aceh will continue unless the president issues
a decree to lift the civil emergency and assign us to merely play a
humanitarian role in Aceh.''<<
and:
Published January 4th, 2005, in The Age, Melbourne, Australia.
Kantha Shakti (Strength to Women) is a partner group supported by IWDA.
Rapists, abusers prey on disaster victims
By Liz Minchin
January 5, 2005
First their lives were torn apart by the tsunami; now women and
children are being pursued by human predators.
With millions left homeless and vulnerable throughout south Asia, some
survivors have been further traumatised by shocking acts of violence,
including gang rape, kidnapping, child abuse and the mutilation of
corpses.
Most of the reported violence has been in Sri Lanka, where a national
women's group, Kantha Shakti (Strength of Women), has warned that
"many, many" children and women are believed to have been abducted,
mostly in the chaotic south.
"Lots of children are being abducted and taken away for slavery . . .
This [i]s happening on a large scale," Kantha Shakti executive director
Rohini Weerasinghe told The Age.
Even on the day the tsunami struck, women were abducted, she said.
There has been no news of those women since.
Other reports of abuse have been equally shocking.
(I will send the full report to anyone who requests it)
In Sri Lanka, non-government groups, including Kantha Shakti, are trying
to raise money to send trained locals into the camps to tackle abuse.
Donations to Kantha Shakti in Sri Lanka can be made through the
International Women's Development Agency at www.iwda.org.au or by
calling +(61-3) 9650 5574 during business hours or + (61-425) 712 478
after hours.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
28) War Resisters Go North
By Alisa Solomon, The Nation
Posted on December 22, 2004, Printed on January 3, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/20826/
EDITOR'S NOTE: As The Nation was going to press, Canada's willingness
to take in Americans resisting the Iraq war became more concrete. In a
year-end review with Canada's Global National, Prime Minister Paul
Martin said that Canada was prepared to accept U.S. citizens who do not
want to serve in the war. According to the report, when reminded that
former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau opened Canada's doors to draft
dodgers and deserters during the Vietnam War, Martin said: "In terms
of immigration, we are a country of immigrants and we will take
immigrants from around the world. I'm not going to discriminate." Asked
whether Martin was referring to Jeremy Hinzman's request for refugee
status, a spokesperson said that Martin "was not commenting on any
individual case and certainly was not sending a signal to the
immigration board." Still, Hinzman's attorney Jeffry House tells The
Nation that the prime minister's remarks represent "a step in the right
direction."
Protests over the conduct of the Iraq war are mounting from what seems
an unlikely place: the ranks of the military. In early December, eight
soldiers sued in federal court to overturn the stop-loss policy that
has extended their tour of duty indefinitely. At Camp Buehring in the
Kuwaiti desert, Army National Guard Specialist Thomas Wilson, cheered
on by his fellow soldiers, demanded that Donald Rumsfeld explain why
the troops had to rummage through garbage heaps for scraps to armor
their vehicles. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has admitted that some 5,500
enlisted soldiers have deserted since the "liberation" of Iraq began.
While these disgruntled grunts don't explicitly challenge the validity
of the war itself, their decision to complain formally, or even to
quit, strongly suggests a dwindling of faith in the mission.
Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman, of the 82nd Airborne, has made his second thoughts
public. As he told me this past March, "The war is bogus. There weren't
any weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do
with 9/11. The war was not pursued in self-defense, and as such it is
illegal. I decided I could not participate in such a criminal
enterprise."
On December 6-8, while his comrades were filing suit and confronting
Rumsfeld, Hinzman was making this argument before Canada's Immigration
and Refugee Board (IRB) in a bid for asylum as a principled deserter
from the US Army. In doing so, he was putting the war itself on trial,
articulating clearly the doubts that are beginning to tug at the
conscience of some US troops.
Hinzman enlisted in the Army in 2001, making what he calls a typical
"Faustian bargain" - trading service for college - and looking for a
way to be part of something "bigger than myself," where he might "live
for ideals rather than just to consume." But in basic training, as
drills focused on "breaking down the human inhibition to killing," he
began to realize he had made the wrong choice. Aghast at finding
himself joining in training chants like, "What makes the grass grow?
Blood, blood, bright red blood," he filed for conscientious objector
status, serving in noncombat duty in Afghanistan while his application
was in process. Back at Fort Bragg in late 2003, his CO application
denied, Hinzman received word that his unit would be shipping out to
Iraq in a few days. He and his wife got into their Chevy with their
toddler and drove to Toronto, arriving there January 3 of last year. He
is the first of three deserters to ask for refugee protection. A ruling
is expected in February.
As is typical in a case making a novel claim or with a high public
profile, the Canadian government intervened, asserting that Hinzman
does not fit the definition of a refugee: someone who is fleeing a
well-founded fear of persecution. Canada also argued - and in an
interim ruling issued about two weeks before the hearing, the IRB judge
agreed - that the question of the war's legality is irrelevant to the
case.
The government is not revealing its reasoning, but one can imagine a
number of competing concerns pulsing beneath it: on the one hand, a
reluctance to embarrass its bullying trading partner; on the other, an
intense domestic opposition to the Iraq War. At the same time, Canada
may be anxious about the possibility of an American draft, despite the
Bush Administration's repeated denials that one is coming. Some
thirty-five years ago, an estimated 60,000 men and women resisting the
Vietnam War surged north. (In those days, they could simply present
themselves at the border and apply for landed immigrant status; since
then, Canada has instituted a refugee determination procedure.)
One of them was Jeffry House, Hinzman's attorney. He regrets losing
"our cleanest argument": While refugee law states that prosecution is
not persecution, House intended to show that it is indeed persecution
to punish someone for refusing to take part in a war that is illegal
under international law, which sanctions war only when it is undertaken
in self-defense or with authorization of the United Nations Security
Council.
Still, House explains, even if the illegality of the decision to go to
war is off the table, the question of how the war is being waged
remains relevant to Hinzman's claim. "What's happening on the ground in
Iraq is violating Geneva Conventions and international human rights
law," House says. "No one should be forced to participate." From the
cells of Abu Ghraib to the living rooms of Falluja, any number of
examples can make the case.
Marine Sgt. Jimmy Massey, who served in Iraq during the invasion in
March 2003, testified on Hinzman's behalf, explaining, he told me, that
"it's the system, not the individual soldier, that is the problem. Even
atrocities are standard operating procedure." At the hearing, he
recounted in graphic and shocking detail how his unit killed more than
thirty innocent Iraqi civilians at checkpoints, "lighting them up" with
machine gun fire. He also described how Marines shot dead unarmed Iraqi
demonstrators who posed no threat. "I was never clear on who was the
enemy and who was not," he said. "When you don't know who the enemy is,
what are you doing there?" A Marine Corps spokesman has said that none
of the acts Massey described violated rules of engagement.
If Hinzman is denied at the IRB, there are possibilities for appeal.
And then, House notes, "the question of the illegality of the war has
to be confronted politically." After all, Prime Minister Paul Martin
may have promised to help with Iraq's elections, but his predecessor,
Jean Chrétien, declined to join the "coalition" forces without a nod
from the UN Security Council. And the current Justice Minister, Irwin
Cotler, is on record challenging the war under international law. In
answering Specialist Wilson's question at Camp Buehring, Rumsfeld
smugly told the 2,000 assembled soldiers, "You go to war with the army
you have." In his brave stand, Jeremy Hinzman suggests another option:
The army can refuse to go at all.
(c) 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/20826/
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Yahoo! Groups Links
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---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
29) Iraq War is Bad for Business
By Jim Lobe
Peace and Justice News from FPIF
http://www.fpif.org/
January 4, 2005
Introducing a new commentary from Foreign Policy In Focus
On top of the human and financial costs of the war in Iraq, the Bush
administration's foreign policy may be costing U.S. corporations
business overseas, according to a new survey of 8,000 international
consumers released this week by the Seattle-based Global Market
Insite (GMI) Inc.
Brands closely identified with the U.S., such as Marlboro cigarettes,
America Online (AOL), McDonald's, American Airlines, and
Exxon-Mobil, are particularly at risk. GMI, an independent market
research company, conducted the internet survey with consumers
in eight countries from Dec. 10-12. One-third of all consumers in
Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United
Kingdom said that U.S. foreign policy, particularly the "war on
terror" and the occupation of Iraq, constituted their strongest
impression of the United States.
Twenty percent of respondents in Europe and Canada said they
consciously avoided buying U.S. products as a protest against those
policies. That finding was consistent with a similar poll carried out
by GMI three weeks after Bush's November election victory.
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus, online
at http://www.fpif.org
regularly for Inter Press Service.
See new FPIF commentary online at:
http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2004/0412europoll.html
With printer-friendly pdf version at:
http://www.presentdanger.org/pdf/gac/0412europoll.pdf
For More Analysis from Foreign Policy In Focus:
Mainstream Media Miss Rumsfeld's "Dirty Wars" Talk
By Jim Lobe (December 1, 2004)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0412rumsfeld.html
Neocon Wish List
By Jim Lobe (November 11, 2004)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0411wish.html
Security Scholars Say Iraq War Most Misguided Policy Since Vietnam
By Jim Lobe (October 13, 2004)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0410scholars.html
Interhemispheric Resource Center is proud to announce that,
in conjunction with our 25th anniversary, we have changed our
name to International Relations Center. Please visit our website
at www.irc-online.org
new logo and check back in the coming months as we begin the
integration and improvement of all of our program and project
websites. As International Relations Center we remain IRC and
committed to our mission of: working to make the U.S. a more
responsible member of the global community by promoting
progressive strategic dialogues that lead to new citizen-based
agendas.
Produced and distributed by FPIF:“A Think Tank Without Walls,
” a joint program of International Relations Center (IRC) and
Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
For more information, visit http://www.fpif.org
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Email: communications@irc-online.org
Mr. Acuna is the latest person to enter death row for a crime
committed before age 18. He may also be the last.
If the Supreme Court prohibits the execution of 16- and
17-year-olds in a case it accepted a year ago, involving
a Missouri man, the lives of Mr. Acuna and 71 other juvenile
offenders on death row will be spared.
A central issue before the court, which is expected to rule in
the next few months, is whether the plummeting number of
such death sentences - there were two last year - lends weight
to the argument that putting youths on death row amounts to
cruel and unusual punishment. Supporters of the juvenile death
penalty argue that the small number proves instead that the
system works and that juries are making discerning choices
on whom to sentence to death, taking due account of the
defendants' youth and reserving the ultimate punishment
for the worst of the worst.
But a look at the cases of some of the juvenile offenders now
on death row raises questions about how reliable and consistent
juries have been in making those decisions.
Age can shape every aspect of a capital case. Crimes committed
by teenagers are often particularly brutal, attracting great
publicity and fierce prosecutions. Adolescents are more likely
to confess, and are not adept at navigating the justice system.
Jurors' reactions to teenagers' demeanor and appearance can
be quite varied. The defendants they see have aged an average
of two years between the crime and the trial. And jurors may not
necessarily accept expert testimony concerning recent research
showing that the adolescent brain is not fully developed.
The Supreme Court in 1988 banned the execution of those under
16 at the time of their crimes. During arguments in October on
whether to move that categorical line to 18, Justice Antonin
Scalia said the drop in juvenile death sentences was proof that
juries could be trusted to sort through and weigh evidence
about defendants' youth and culpability.
"It doesn't surprise me that the death penalty for 16- to
18-year-olds is rarely imposed," Justice Scalia said. "I would expect
it would be. But it's a question of whether you leave it to the jury
to evaluate the person's youth and take that into account or
whether you adopt a hard rule."
Juries in capital cases involving juvenile offenders certainly place
great weight on the defendants' youth. The defendants seldom
testify, but jurors inspect them closely and draw conclusions
from how they look and handle themselves. And the very same
factors may cut both ways. Adolescent recklessness may
suggest diminished responsibility to some and a terrible
danger to others.
The youth of Christopher Simmons, the defendant whose case
is now before the Supreme Court, was such a double-edged
sword. Mr. Simmons was 17 in 1993, when he and a friend
robbed, bound and gagged Shirley Crook, 46, and pushed
her into a river, where she drowned.
During Mr. Simmons's sentencing hearing, a Missouri prosecutor
scoffed at the notion that Mr. Simmons's age should count as
a mitigating factor in his favor.
"Seventeen years old," the prosecutor, George McElroy, said.
"Isn't that scary? Doesn't that scare you? Mitigating? Quite
the contrary, I submit. Quite the contrary."
Mr. Acuna had a tough-looking buzz cut at the time of the
killings, said Tim Carroll, the son of the couple Mr. Acuna
killed. At the trial, he looked different.
"He appeared as though someone had tried to make him
look 8 years old all over again," Mr. Carroll said. "His hair
was all combed down, almost in little bangs."
That did not sway Mr. Acuna's jury. But the youthful
appearance of Lee Malvo, the teenager who participated
in the sniper shootings in the Washington area in 2002,
may have saved his life. Mr. Malvo, who is short and slight,
wore boyish, baggy sweaters most days. Although a Virginia
jury convicted him of a killing he committed at 17, it voted
against putting him to death.
"He's very lucky that he looks a lot younger than he is,"
Robert F. Horan Jr., the lead prosecutor in the case, said
at the time.
But Mr. Malvo is growing older, and he still faces capital
charges in other states.
"They're talking about letting him grow a five o'clock shadow
and then trying him in Alabama or Louisiana," said Victor L.
Streib, a law professor at Ohio Northern University and an
expert on the juvenile death penalty, referring to prosecutors
in those states. "Prosecutors don't mind delay in juvenile
death penalty cases."
Beyond wrestling with the appearance of youth, juries must
also often balance the brutality and recklessness of much
juvenile crime against young people's immaturity.
Studies support the common view that adolescents tend to
be reckless and do not calculate the risks and consequences
of their actions as adults do. They are moodier, more susceptible
to peer pressure and do not have an acute sense of mortality.
The law seems to recognize this, with most states using 18 as
the dividing line between childhood and adulthood in many
areas, including the ability to vote and to serve on a jury.
Mr. Carroll, the murdered couple's son, said a categorical rule
made no sense in the context of the death penalty.
"If you're going to make the argument that someone's cognitive
reasoning is not developed at 17 years and 8 months but would
be at 18," he said, "we should rethink whether they should be
able to drive, and make split-second decisions in an 8,000-
pound vehicle, or get married, or have children."
When the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Simmons case,
a brief supporting Missouri submitted by Alabama and five other
states with the juvenile death penalty received particular attention.
It set out, in plainspoken prose, the disturbing stories of
10 murders committed by seven young killers, all on death
row in Alabama.
The cases cited in the Alabama brief are in many ways typical,
Professor Streib said. "The capital crimes committed by juveniles,"
he said, "are often classic adolescent male bizarreness, often
sexual and all the more revolting for that reason."
Mr. Carroll said Mr. Acuna's killings were sadistic.
"The evidence given in the case very strongly indicates that he
made my father kneel and shot him in the back of the head,
execution-style," Mr. Carroll said. "My mother, who could not
walk without the help of a walker - this fellow shot her in the
side of her face and blew her teeth out all over the kitchen floor."
Mr. Acuna then gave the woman time to wipe the blood from
her mouth with a paper towel, Mr. Carroll said.
"And then he moved in," Mr. Carroll said, "to shoot her through
the brain when he thought it was time."
If their youth can make teenage defendants wilder and their
crimes more odious, it can also trip them up when they start
navigating the legal system.
According to a study of the juvenile offenders on death row by
The New York Times, 56 percent confessed or gave incriminating
statements to the authorities. Mr. Acuna was in the minority.
"Juveniles are more likely to be more compliant, more naïve and
less likely to believe that police do not have their best interests
in mind," said Steven A. Drizin, a law professor at Northwestern
who has studied false confessions by juvenile defendants. "They
are more likely to confess simply to bring an end to the interview
process and take their chances in court."
In the case of Mr. Acuna, the evidence in the case was largely
circumstantial. He was found with James Carroll's wallet in
a Dallas motel. The murdered couple's car was outside, and it
contained the murder weapon.
Juries have in recent years been increasingly reluctant to sentence
teenagers to death, and the number of death sentences imposed
on juvenile offenders is now almost at the vanishing point. In 2003
and 2004, only two juvenile offenders were sentenced to death in
the United States. The average annual number in the 1990's was
slightly more than 10. From 1999 to 2003, according to a study
to be published in The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology,
the number of juvenile death sentences per 100 homicide arrests
of those under 18 dropped to 0.2 from 1.6.
"Over the past five years, there has been a very strong decline in
willingness of juries and judges to sentence adolescents to death,"
said Jeffrey Fagan, a co-author of the study with Valerie West. "The
decline is greater than you would expect knowing the decline in
the homicide rate, the decline in juvenile homicide arrests and
the decline in adult death sentences."
It can be hard to say, then, what made the crimes of Mr. Acuna
and Eric Morgan, the only two juvenile offenders sentenced to
die last year, worse than other murders committed by teenagers
around the nation. Mr. Morgan was convicted of killing
a convenience store clerk in South Carolina during a robbery.
The jury that spared Mr. Malvo's life heard many days of
testimony about his difficult childhood in Jamaica and about
the influence that his surrogate father and accomplice, John
A. Muhammad, wielded over him.
Mr. Acuna's lawyers had less to work with.
"Robert wasn't on drugs, he wasn't abused, he wasn't mentally
retarded or mentally ill," Ms. Acuna, his mother, said.
The prosecutor, Ms. Magee, agreed that there had been nothing
in the youth's personal life that would help explain the killings.
Mr. Acuna's lawyers were left to rely almost entirely on his age
in pleading for his life, and that was not enough, Ms. Magee said.
"The crime just far outweighed the mitigating factor that he was
a juvenile offender," she said. Ms. Acuna said it was hard to listen
to Ms. Magee's pleas for her son's death at the trial.
"Here is my son that I love and that I protect with my life," she
said. "And here's a person who stands up and says, 'I'm going
to do everything that I can to legally kill him.' "
At bottom, Professor Streib said, only a few themes run
through the 72 men on death row whose lives depend on
how the Supreme Court rules on the juvenile death penalty.
Most of the men, unlike Mr. Acuna, come from troubled
backgrounds, and all committed terrible crimes. But that
is true of many thousands of other juvenile killers.
"It's not a rational process," Professor Streib said. "We can't
look at juveniles on death row and say they are the worst of
the worst. Some have killed entire families. Some shot
a clerk while robbing a convenience store like thousands
of others, and you have no idea why lightning struck in this
or that case."
Toby Lyles, Tom Torok and Margot Williams contributed
reporting for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) Prosecution Concludes Case in Terror Trial
By JULIA PRESTON
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/nyregion/04stewart.html
A federal prosecutor yesterday wrapped up the government's
case against Lynne F. Stewart, a lawyer accused of aiding terrorists,
by charging that she had released a bellicose statement to the news
media on behalf of an imprisoned client because she secretly wanted
to help violent militants overthrow the Egyptian government.
The prosecutor, Andrew Dember, an assistant United States attorney,
assailed the basic tenet of Ms. Stewart's defense: that she had
conveyed messages to the news media from her client as part
of a legal strategy to secure his eventual release from jail. The
client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian Islamic cleric who
is blind, is serving a life sentence in federal prison for a failed plot
to bomb the United Nations building, the Lincoln and Holland
Tunnels and other New York sites.
"None of the things that Stewart did in this case has anything to
do with any legal matter, nothing to do with being a lawyer,"
Mr. Dember thundered to the jury, concluding an unusually long
closing argument that lasted two and a half days.
Ms. Stewart was dealing with "illegal matters, not legal matters,"
he charged.
The case centers on a statement Ms. Stewart gave to a reporter
after visiting Mr. Abdel Rahman in jail in May 2000, in which the
sheik said he was withdrawing his support for a cease-fire his
followers in Egypt had observed since 1997. Ms. Stewart had
agreed in writing to prison rules that barred her from helping
the sheik communicate with the press.
To make his point, Mr. Dember replayed for the jury, in Federal
District Court in Manhattan, an excerpt from a television interview
Ms. Stewart gave in 2002, a few weeks after her arrest, to Greta
Van Susteren of Fox News. After many weeks of presenting the
government's main evidence - secret F.B.I. audio and video
recordings of telephone calls and meetings involving Ms. Stewart
and two co-defendants - prosecutors had introduced the
interview video at the end, almost as an afterthought.
In the interview, Ms. Stewart acknowledged that she had agreed
not to convey messages from the sheik to the news media. She
also said the sheik's best hope for getting out of his American
jail would be a seizure of power by his party in Egypt, which
could then negotiate a prisoner exchange to bring him home.
Mr. Dember charged that Ms. Stewart knew that many of the
sheik's followers were designated as terrorists and might jump
at the chance to return to war in their country. "She had all the
power in the world to stop it," Mr. Dember said of the sheik's
message to his followers. "But she didn't want to stop it."
Ms. Stewart remained composed at the defendants' table,
at times even looking amused. Noting during a break that her
chief lawyer, Michael E. Tigar, will begin his closing arguments
as early as tomorrow, she said, "Just wait!"
Mr. Dember asserted that it was "nonsense" for Ms. Stewart
to say that the sheik's news release was part of her plan to
persuade Egypt to let him return home to serve out his
sentence there. The prosecutor pointed out that United States
and Egyptian officials would be unlikely to send the sheik back
to his country when he was supporting renewed violence there.
Mr. Dember provided only vague details when it came to
demonstrating connections between Ms. Stewart and the
activities of a co-defendant, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, who dealt
extensively by telephone with militants who were labeled
terrorists by the United States. The prosecutor acknowledged
that Ms. Stewart, in dozens of hours of secretly recorded phone
calls, never said she undertook any action to promote violent
revolution in Egypt.
Instead, he based his allegations heavily on general statements
Ms. Stewart had made supporting what she called revolutionary
violence in apartheid South Africa and against the government
of Israel.
Mr. Dember aimed some of his most intense anger against the
other co-defendant, Mohamed Yousry, an Arabic interpreter
who translated the sheik's conversations for Ms. Stewart and
read letters and newspapers to the cleric.
"He had all the power to say, 'No!' " Mr. Dember said, raising
his voice, about Mr. Yousry's role in translating the sheik's
cease-fire message.
Beginning his summation in the afternoon, a lawyer for
Mr. Yousry, David Stern, said his client had always followed
the guidance of Ms. Stewart and other lawyers. "He honestly
believed that what he was doing was not criminal," Mr. Stern
said. "His only job was to translate."
Mr. Stern showed the jury that Mr. Yousry had once referred to
the sheik and his followers as "garbage," and had repeatedly
rejected the sheik's political views. Mr. Stern played a video
excerpt of a prison meeting where Mr. Yousry had questioned
the sheik about an edict issued under his name that called for
the murder of Jews.
"None of your business!" the sheik had barked contemptuously
at Mr. Yousry.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
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17) Limits Eased on Killing of Wolves
By KIRK JOHNSON
DENVER
January 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/national/04wolf.html
DENVER, Jan. 3 - Killing a gray wolf in Idaho or Montana will soon
get easier under new rules issued Monday by the Fish and Wildlife
Service.
The animals are still formally protected by the federal Endangered
Species Act, but starting in 30 days, they can be killed if a landowner
believes a wolf is in the process of attacking livestock or other animals.
The old rules required physical evidence of an actual attack - bite
marks or a carcass.
"Under the old rule, he had to have its teeth in; under the new rule
he can be a foot away chasing them," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery
coordinator for the Wildlife Service.
State wildlife management officials were also given greater flexibility
in controlling wolf populations to maintain the deer and elk herds
upon which wolves often feed.
State and federal officials said that the looser standards, part of the
process of removing wolves from federal protections, reflected
a robust recovery by wolves in the northern Rocky Mountain region.
The recovery has surpassed all expectations since the first
experimental populations were reintroduced in Yellowstone
National Park in 1995 and 1996, the officials said.
"The old rule was written to protect 25 to 50 wolves, and we
now have over 500," said Idaho's governor, Dirk Kempthorne,
in a conference call with reporters. "The dynamics have changed."
Environmentalists said that the federal estimate of wolf mortality -
about 10 percent a year under the more flexible guidelines - is
deeply uncertain and could end up being much greater.
"Ten percent in a large, healthy population might not have
much impact, but we still have wolves struggling with recovery
in some areas," said Nina Fascione, a vice president for field
conservation programs at Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation
group based in Washington. "With all the increased flexibility,
I would be surprised if the impact is just 10 percent,"
Ms. Fascione said.
Wyoming, which also has a substantial wolf population, was not
included in the new rules because the Fish and Wildlife Service
has not approved the state's proposed wolf management plan.
Gale A. Norton, who as secretary of the interior oversees the
wildlife service, said that the full removal of gray wolves from
federal protections would proceed only when all three states in
the recovery area had plans in place.
Ms. Norton said the old, stricter rules about wolf killing would
still apply in Wyoming for now.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
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18) UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
WINTER/SPRING ORGANIZING DRIVE TO END THE U.S.
WAR ON IRAQ
From: "Carwil James" < carwil@falseignorance.info >
To: "Direct Action to Stop the War"
< directaction@lists.riseup.net >
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 11:51 AM
Subject: [DASW] UFPJ Presents [ending the]
Iraq [War] Strategy
As the U.S. war against Iraq approaches the end of its second
year, there are no signs of any change in U.S. foreign policy or
any let-up in the fighting. People throughout this country and
around the world have marched, rallied, lobbied, participated in
actions of nonviolent civil disobedience, passed resolutions in
their unions and religious institutions, and much more. But the Bush
Administration has claimed the U.S. election results as a mandate for
continued war and occupation, the death toll ? among Iraqis and
U.S. servicepeople -- mounts every day, and the U.S. is increasing
troop levels rather than taking steps toward military disengagement.
United for Peace and Justice believes that, in order to bring an end
to the war and bring the troops home, the antiwar movement must
reshape its work. Yes, we need to continue with mass mobilizations
and public protests ? in fact, we need to increase their size and
visibility. At the same time, we must broaden the active core of our
movement, give it greater strategic focus, and intensify our
resistance. Ending the war will not be an easy task, nor will it happen
overnight. To succeed, the anti-war movement needs to expand
our numbers; involve new organizations and communities; and
focus pressure strategically on the weak points in the
Administration's war program ? its moral bankruptcy, the
massive human costs, its financial cost, and the intensifying
need for new military recruits.
The proposal below is for a specific program of activism
during the first three months of 2005, but it flows from
a larger, longer-term vision of organizing that we hope
member groups will embrace and continue into the future.
Strategy We believe that there are three crucial weak points
in the Administration's war strategy. The Bush Administration
cannot fight this war without taxpayer funding, soldiers willing
to die, and the ability to contain domestic opposition
to acceptable levels. The anti-war movement should focus its
energies on increasing the war's unpopularity, particularly by
emphasizing the horrific loss of life on all sides; by highlighting
the war's escalating financial cost, and the consequences of war
spending for our communities; and by disrupting the
Pentagon's ability to recruit new troops.
Public opinion polls suggest that support for the war continues
to erode as the conflict drags on and the death toll mounts.
The staggering cost of the war creates the practical basis for
building durable alliances between groups whose main priority
may be winning social and economic justice at home (e.g. civil
rights groups, labor, clergy, community groups) with those who
focus primarily on ending the war abroad. More and more combat
veterans are resisting their call-ups; the Army and National
Guard are having difficulty meeting their recruitment goals;
and the military is overstretching itself in Iraq.
The anti-war movement can:
* offer those who oppose the war but are not yet active with simple,
high-visibility ways to express their views * intensify opposition
to the war among those who are active and raise the level
of popular unrest * build pressure at the Congressional
district level to freeze, then cut, funding and troop levels
* work to reduce military enlistments and support dissenting
soldiers, combat veterans, reservists, and their families who
are speaking out against the war or refusing to serve
To do these things successfully, anti-war organizations will
need to engage in a concerted program of base- and alliance-
building, ongoing visibility and protest activities, strategic
pressure campaigns, and campaigns of nonviolent civil
resistance.
This organizing drive is one central component of this
larger strategy for ending the war. UFPJ has just created
a new civil resistance working group, and specific proposals
for action will soon be circulated. We are also developing
detailed suggestions for how member groups can organize
pressure campaigns around funding for the war and military
recruitment, including targeting members of Congress.
We are developing a grassroots media campaign to draw
public
attention to civilian casualties in Iraq, and we will also
continue to provide organizing ideas and calls to action
around other key developments and issues in Iraq: e.g.,
free and fair elections are not possible under occupation; no
foreign control of Iraqi oil; the humanitarian crisis intensifies;
the U.S. must respect human rights and international law.
Vision for this Organizing Drive This coordinated campaign
- includes a series of activities, with each one promoting and
building the next, intended to broaden the organized base of the
antiwar movement. The activities ? ranging from a "white ribbon"
visibility campaign to coordinated days of outreach to local
town hall meetings ? are designed to provide opportunities
for intensive, face-to-face organizing, in order to reach and
involve people who have not previously taken action against
the war. UFPJ will provide a series of tools and resources to
help member groups reach their goals through this work.
To participate in this organizing drive, a group need not
commit to every activity or date; many groups will wish to
tailor the calendar, activities, and goals to fit their
organizational capacity and local needs. Some member groups
of UFPJ are already engaged in this type of base- and
alliance-building work on a regular basis and may choose
to participate in just a few components of the organizing
drive.
Organizing Goals We encourage each organization that
participates in this organizing drive, no matter its size, to
set concrete goals for expansion over the coming months. The
specific goals may vary depending on the organization's
constituency, location, and mission, but we suggest the
following:
* build strong, ongoing relationships with a targeted number
of organizations or communities that have not previously
been directly engaged in anti-war work, particularly communities
of color, labor, and faith-based organizations (for groups in
small towns, the goal might be three new relationships; groups in
urban areas might aim to build a dozen or more) * double the
number of contacts your organization has (on your email list,
phone bank, and/or mailing list) * double the number of
active participants in your group's day-to-day work * distribute
at least ten times as many white ribbons in your community as you
have contacts (on your email list, phone bank, and/or mailing
list) ? e.g., if you have an email list of 500 people, aim to
distribute at least 5000 ribbons * using these new relationships
and contacts as a base, organize a local action on March 19,
the two-year anniversary of the war, that is larger than any action
your group has organized to date
Organizing Drive Components
Alliance-Building Meetings: We encourage member groups to
expand local peace and justice coalitions by setting up meetings
in early 2005 with potential allies such as unions; black, Latino,
Arab, and other community of color organizations; religious
institutions; student groups; and community organizations.
The goals are to build new relationships; identify issues these
groups are working on or concerned about; identify ways in
which the Iraq war is making it more difficult to win gains
in these struggles; explore opportunities to work together
in those areas of intersection. While we hope for a concerted
national alliance-building push in January and February,
we believe that these types of meetings should be
a regular part of every group's organizing work, and
these connections need to be built at the local level.
Days of Outreach: We are proposing a series of national days
of outreach, where member groups of UFPJ mobilize their
members to talk to large numbers of new people. The
purpose is two-fold: to educate and persuade people about the
reasons to oppose the war; and to identify potential new
activists from those who are already opposed to the war
and gather their contact information, with the goal of
involving them in future anti-war activities. Concretely, groups
will be encouraged to hand out leaflets to educate about the
human toll of the war and its cost to our communities;
distribute white ribbons to increase the visibility of
anti-war sentiment; gather signatures on a national anti-war
petition as a way of obtaining new contacts for their ongoing
organizing effort; and publicize key upcoming events in
their community (such as a February 4 town hall meeting
and/or March 19 protest on the two-year-anniversary of the war).
Town Hall Meetings: We are proposing that groups all around
the country convene town hall meetings on February 4 or
some other locally suitable date, to discuss what the war
is costing their communities: most dramatically, in lost
funding for crucial social programs; but also in lives, if
your community has lost U.S. servicepeople in the
conflict, and in the drain on firefighters and other first
responders sent to Iraq through the National Guard. These
town hall meetings will occur shortly after President Bush
delivers his State of the Union Address and around the time
Congress is expected to debate $100 billion in additional
appropriations for Iraq, dramatizing the Bush Administration's
misplaced priorities. Through their focus on the connection
between the cost of the war and the issues facing communities
here at home, these town hall meetings will provide an
important opportunity to build or strengthen alliances with
groups working for social and economic justice. They will also
serve as an opportunity to identify and get to know potential
new activists, help build a sense of connection among people
across the country who oppose the war, and
encourage strategic discussion about what it will take to bring
the war to an end. UFPJ will distribute suggested questions for
discussion that local facilitators can use to help frame debate
during the meeting.
Campaign Tools United for Peace and Justice will provide
member groups with a series of tools to help with this
organizing campaign. These will include tips for maximizing
the effectiveness of the alliance-building meetings, days of
outreach, and town hall meetings. We will also provide a petition
for the national petition drive; educational leaflets that can be
modified for local use; and visibility tools such as white ribbons,
buttons, magnets, and posters.
Campaign Calendar
December Launch the White Ribbon Campaign; attend public
holiday events in your community and pass out small fliers/cards
with white ribbons attached urging people to visibly say No to
the War in Iraq this holiday season. For more information about
the White Ribbon Campaign click here:
Late Dec. United for Peace and Justice will issue a call for
coordinated local actions on March 19 to mark the second
anniversary of the war, with strong support for the mobilization
in Fayetteville, NC (home of Ft. Bragg)
Early Jan Launch a national petition drive to dump Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, highlighting our message of
"end the war, bring the troops home ? rebuild our communities"
Jan 15/17 National Days of Outreach ? contact churches,
labor, and community groups in the African-American
community who are organizing events, to discuss
how we could help to highlight the peace message that
was a centerpiece of Dr. King's legacy; fliers and ribbons
could be distributed at MLK parades and events, highlighting
this message and inviting people to January 20 counter-
inaugural activities and the February 4 Town Hall Meeting
Jan 20 Inauguration Day ? National Day of Mourning and
Resistance, protests in Washington, D.C. and in communities
all around the country
Jan 29 National Day of Outreach ? distribute leaflets and
white ribbons, gather petition signatures, promote the
February Town Hall meetings
Feb 4 Town Hall Meetings: Ending the War /
Rebuilding Our Communities
Feb 19-21 UFPJ National Assembly
March 8 National Day of Outreach on International
Women's Day?
distribute leaflets and white ribbons, gather petition
signatures, promote the March 19 actions
March 19 Global Day of Action to Protest the Second
Anniversary of the
Iraq War This is the announcement list for Direct Action
to Stop the War (DASW). To remove yourself from this list,
send an email to directaction-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net .
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
19) US Wounded in Iraq Reaches 10,000
The Pentagon says that more than 10,000 US military personnel
have been wounded in Iraq since the conflict began in March 2003.
Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2005/01/05 10:33:34 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4147705.stm
Newly published figures show that more than 5,000 of the wounded
have been unable to return to duty.
Many have been left with serious injuries such as lost limbs and sight,
mostly as a result of the blast effects of roadside bombs.
More than 1,300 US troops have been killed.
The latest figures underline that an equally telling price is being
paid in the number of US soldiers being wounded there, says
the BBC's Pentagon correspondent Nick Childs.
Advances in military medicine and body armour mean that many
have survived wounds that they would not have done in previous
conflicts.
In Iraq on Wednesday, a car bomb killed two Iraqi civilians and
wounded 10 others in Baghdad.
Police say the bomb exploded near a petrol station in the western
district of Amiriyah.
The explosion came a day after gunmen assassinated the governor
of Baghdad province, and in a separate attack killed at least
10 people outside the headquarters of the Iraqi National Guard.
(c) BBC MMV
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21) Ramsey Clark: Why I'm Taking
Saddam's Case
By Lizzy Ratner
http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage1.asp#
"You can't be sure of how the trial will go," said longtime Manhattan
civil-rights attorney Ramsey Clark, wagging a long, slender forefinger.
"But you could say that if it's properly done, it will be the biggest trial
of this century."
Mr. Clark was talking about the trial of Saddam Hussein, whom he
recently signed on to represent before a special tribunal in Baghdad.
For the man who has represented Leonard Peltier, the Harrisburg Seven
and the Attica Brothers, but also prosecuted war resisters in the Johnson
administration-indeed, for the man who, as a young Marine Corps
courier, witnessed the Nuremberg trials after World War II-calling it
the "trial of the century" was no small thing.
Ramsey Clark was in his office, in a loft on East 12th Street in
the East Village, speaking like a law professor across a large slab
of a wooden table. He'd just returned a few days before from a visit
to Jordan, where he met with other members of Mr. Hussein's legal
team as well as the families of both Mr. Hussein and former Iraqi
Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. In the room hung an Salvadoran solidarity
poster and a painting by Mr. Peltier. The painting is of an old Native
American woman with a single tear running down her cheek; it's
called Big Lady Mountain .
By Mr. Clark's own telling, his interest in representing the deposed
Iraqi leader was inflamed when media reports started coming in of
Mr. Hussein's arrest in a spider-hole hideout in the desert. He said
he was "shocked" by the images he saw.
"The savage presentation of [Mr. Hussein], disheveled, with his
mouth open, people probing in his mouth, the dehumanization,"
he said. "I represented Indian peoples for many years, and I can't
tell you how many Indians I've worked with called after they saw
the picture and said, 'That's exactly the way they treated us.' And
this is hardly the road to peace if you want respect for human
dignity.
"I wrote to him a year ago in December, shortly after he was
arrested," he continued. "I'd also written to Tariq Aziz right after
he turned himself in April of '03, because I thought it was
essential that they have independent contact immediately to
assure their proper treatment. And I was repeatedly turned
down as to both.
"I did it because, obviously, these cases are extremely
important in terms of history and in terms of reconciliation
of peoples, and in terms of belief in truth and justice as
a priority over force and violence," Mr. Clark said. "It's about
addressing the concept of victor's justice, which is only the
exercise of power. If you really want peace, you have to
satisfy people about the honor of your purpose."
Mr. Clark has not been able to meet with Mr. Hussein since
he sent his letter.
"There has not been anything approaching adequate
contact with him," he said. "None of his family has seen
him; only one lawyer has seen him, and that was in the
first half of December-a full year after his arrest. It was by
a single person, with soldiers standing by, hearing, with
whatever other type of surveillance there might have been.
"And there's not adequate contact with that lawyer, who's an
Iraqi. So for a defense to be developed, there has to be
extensive communication with the principal person whose
life it involves.
"He is a decisive, knowledgeable person," Mr. Clark said, "and
has to play a major role in every aspect of choosing a defense
team and preparing a defense. The lack of access to him is
a major violation. Our Supreme Court has thrown cases out
where a person wasn't given access to independent non-police
parties within 48 hours of arrest, within less than 12 hours.
Here you've got 12 months. That sounds technical, but it's
not technical at all-it's the essential beginning."
It's not that he's never met Mr. Hussein.
Mr. Clark's history with the former Iraqi leader dates back to
the first Gulf War, when Mr. Clark traveled to Iraq to protest
the U.S.-led coalition's bombing campaign. He spent 14 days
chronicling the destruction and later defied sanctions by
returning on dozens of aid missions. He met with Mr. Hussein
on at least four of these occasions, including a month-long
visit just before the March 2003 invasion.
"I've met with him I think four times, probably averaged two
to three hours at a time," he said. "In presence he is reserved,
quiet, thoughtful-dignified, you might say, in the old-fashioned
sense. I'm not a big fan of dignity in the old-fashioned sense
Could he see how that might be praising with faint damnation
a man who is said to have ordered the deaths of some 300,000
of his own citizens?
"I have long believed that one of the greatest barriers to peace
is demonization," Mr. Clark said. "It has always been necessary
in war for soldiers to demonize the enemy. Now, with the mass
media saturating the public with perceptions that come from
very slim contact with actuality and are heavily influenced by
desire and prejudice, we demonize."
And if other lawyers might blanch at the argument that it was
the American media who demonized Saddam-wasn't he
something of a demon to begin with? If it were a simple
referendum on Mr. Hussein's treatment of the Kurds or
political dissidents, who could possibly represent him in
good faith? But what if the trial of Saddam Hussein is really
a referendum on the American campaign in Iraq?
"Demonization is the most dangerous form of prejudice,"
Mr. Clark continued. "Once you call something evil, it's easy
to justify anything you might do to harm that evil. Evil has no
rights, it has no human dignity, it has to be destroyed. That's
how you get your Fallujas, your Abu Ghraibs, your shock
-and-awes."
And, like many civil-rights lawyers, Mr. Clark believes he's
representing a client in a court that is fundamentally flawed.
"A tribunal that doesn't meet the standards of international
law can do enormous harm. International law requires first
that a tribunal be created by legal authority, by pre-existing
legal authority," he argued. "That's referred to as competence.
After competence comes independence-it can't be subject to
political power. And finally, it has to be impartial. If it's not
impartial, what's the point? Why don't you just go ahead and
say 'Hang him' instead of this ruse?
"Now, the present Iraqi court meets none of those standards.
It was a creation of the U.S. military occupation, the so-called
governing council, which was appointed by the U.S. And who
becomes the first judge of the court? Chalabi's nephew.
I mean, suppose he's the most honorable person in the world,
this nephew? Is it really conceivable that that's the person that
ought to be judge in a world as big as this? So you don't have
independence, because everything depends on what the U.S.
does for the court: financing, training, selection and everything
else. You don't have competence, because it's not legal. And
you don't have impartiality, as far as can be told from the
appearance.
"The only existing court that is competent and independent and
impartial is the International Criminal Court, which came into
existence July 1, 2002. It's a court the U.S. opposed. It's a court
the U.S. tragically weakened, but it's been approved by more
than 120 countries.
"The judges were appointed not by the U.S., but the Iraqis, and
after the new government comes to power, they will have to be
reconfirmed," said Michael Scharf, a human-rights lawyer at Case
Western Reserve who has helped train Iraqi judges, when
Mr. Clark's claims were put before him. "Not only that: The
judges who I work with are extremely independent people. They
have no particular love for the United States. These are people
who were chosen for their expertise and independence."
Mr. Clark is 77 years old, stooped and slender. He was wearing
New Balance sneakers and a worn blue button-down shirt tucked
into a pair of wool or polyester pants that might have dated from
his early political career. He has wide-set eyes, a bit like a crawfish.
And to many, his movements are just as mysterious-sideways,
quirky, puzzling.
"Ramsey is a mystery," said Melvin Wulf, an old colleague who
shared a law practice with Mr. Clark during the late 1970's and
early 1980's, in an earlier interview. "I saw him every day, but
I didn't know him any better at the end of five years than I knew
him on the first day. He plays himself very close to the vest,
consults with no one except for himself."
Outside the room, the office manager, Ben Cheney, brother of
the slain civil-rights activist, typed at a keyboard. A few unlikely
magazines- The New Yorker ,Gourmet ,Opera News -sat in
a stack in the waiting room for visitors. Like some small-town
doctor's office, there were no visitors and the office was quiet
-nothing that would suggest that this was the home away from
home of one of the most controversial attorneys in the United
States.
It all started in the last hoary week of 2004, when Mr. Clark jetted
over to Jordan for a conference with 20 or so other attorneys
on Dec. 28 to start forming their strategy.
Reaction to Mr. Clark's trip was swift and certain across the
political spectrum. On the right, bloggers for Web sites like
RightNation declared that he should be "tried for sedition and
treason." The New York Sun accused him of losing all "credibility
when it comes to claiming to be for peace." Even some of his
left-wing comrades rolled their eyes when they heard that he'd
signed on to represent a man who had allegedly ordered
300,000 political killings.
"I do think that Saddam, like anybody else, does have a right
to a fair trial and a competent lawyer. I'm just not sure why
Ramsey Clark needs to do that," said Leslie Cagan, a longtime
peace and justice activist. "Personally, I wish he didn't do some
of those things, because he is one of the few public well-known
leftists in this country, and it does make our work harder sometimes."
Conservatives loathe Mr. Clark, but even staunch progressives
don't always know what to make of him, and some of his closest
friends say he can't be easily defined: Is he a valiant "dissenter"
in the tradition of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas,
as his friend Victor Navasky suggested? Or is he an old ideologue,
as others have charged, who is driven above all by his ties to
a Communist splinter group called the Workers World Party?
Is he a profile in courage, or a study in eccentricity?
Perhaps predictably, Mr. Clark presents himself as neither.
A rangy Texan with a down-home Southern drawl, he seems
to move to his own unapologetic drumbeat.
He is not without supporters, including some colleagues who
argued that Mr. Clark will provide Mr. Hussein with
a competent defense, a necessary component of a fair trial.
"[Mr. Clark] has a very good point: The international legal
issues are compelling in some ways," said Alan Dershowitz,
who has worked both with and against Mr. Clark on
a number of cases. "I think it has to be perceived as
a fair trial, and Ramsey's being involved increases the
chances that it will be perceived as a fair trial, because
he is a very good lawyer-very smart and very tough."
Mr. Clark is used to being in the center of the storm.
Over the years, he has become a fixture of national and
international crime scenes, taking on the kind of thorny
cases that have earned him comparisons to the crusading
civil-liberties lawyer Clarence Darrow on the one hand-
and to Benedict Arnold on the other.
"I think he seems to have some kind of inner compass
that tells him that this situation is unfair, and because
of that we have to get involved in it," said Abdeen Jabara,
an old friend and lawyer who formerly ran the Arab Anti-
Discrimination Committee. "I don't think I've ever met
anybody who is as principled in his beliefs to fight for
the underdog."
Long before he joined Saddam Hussein's defense team, before
he became the mascot of the anti-Establishment, Ramsey Clark
was himself a pedigreed member of the political elite. Born
into an influential Texas family, he came from a long line of
lawyers who moved effortlessly within the highest levels of
law and government. His maternal grandfather was a member
of the Texas Supreme Court; his paternal grandfather was
president of the Texas Bar Association. His father, Tom C. Clark,
was a law-and-order lawyer with close ties to Lyndon B. Johnson.
At Mr. Johnson's urging, President Harry S. Truman named the
elder Mr. Clark his Attorney General in 1945. Four years later,
Mr. Truman appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Early in his life, the young Ramsey rebelled at least twice against
these Clark family precedents. He tried to join the Marines when
he was 13, on Dec. 8, 1941, "and it probably would have been
pretty dangerous," he laughed.
"As far as I can tell, I've always had a fierce opposition to
violence," he said. "I can remember when I was in fifth or sixth
grade, the subject of capital punishment came up. And I was
shy and quiet and rarely said much, but I really got upset and
I just was passionately against it."
But when he was 17, he did drop out of high school-against
his father's wishes-to join the Marine Corps and fight in World
War II.
Several years later, he defied his father again when he chose
to go to the more progressive-minded University of Chicago
Law School rather than Harvard Law.
Following law school, Mr. Clark headed back to Texas and
appeared, at least on the surface, to return to the path his
father and grandfathers had carved out before him. He
married his college sweetheart, Georgia Welch, and went
to work for the family's Dallas law firm. He stayed there
for 10 years, specializing in antitrust work, until, in 1961,
President John F. Kennedy made him an Assistant Attorney
General in brother Robert Kennedy's Justice Department.
Mr. Clark arrived in Washington as the Justice Department
was taking on a bigger role in enforcing civil rights.
He roved the South as part of Robert Kennedy's "riot squad"
and ultimately helped to draft the 1964 Civil Rights Act and
the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
"I went in '61, and because I was from Texas I could pass, so
I was used extensively in the South," he said. "I was in charge
of supervising the desegregation of all public schools in '62
in the South. There were only five, but it was a big job-doing
just one of them was a big job. You had to worry about children
being beat up, their homes being firebombed. It seemed
incredibly important, exciting and a privilege to be involved
in that."
His outspokenness and sharp positions-from his support of
civil rights to his opposition to wire-tapping and the death
penalty-ultimately earned him the nickname "the Preacher"
among his Justice Department colleagues.
"[Ramsey Clark] was liberal, though he was much more
restrained than he is today," recalled Nicholas Katzenbach,
who worked alongside Mr. Clark for some six years, first as
Deputy Attorney General and then as Attorney General. "Still,
I think he was far more liberal than his dad."
Indeed, Mr. Clark bumped squarely against his father's own,
more conservative legal judgments several times during his
years in the Justice Department. Most notably, when Johnson
appointed him Attorney General in 1967, one of his first steps
was to drop the case against Judith Coplon, a Justice Department
clerk who had been charged during the early McCarthy days with
passing secrets to her Soviet lover. Mr. Clark's father had
brought the case when he was Attorney General.
"It seemed to me a quite fascinating thing to do," said Mr. Navasky,
who became close friends with Mr. Clark in the late 1960's while
writing the book Kennedy Justice . "Ramsey was appointed under
the cloud that he got the job [of Attorney General] because his
family was Texas buddies of the Johnson family. But I came to
the conclusion, both from my interviews and what he did in the
Justice Department, that he was a kind of civil-libertarian Attorney
General, which is very unusual."
This civil-libertarian streak didn't always go over well in the
Johnson cabinet, however. During his two years as Attorney
General, Mr. Clark found himself at odds with the administration
over everything from wire-tapping to prison reform to the
Vietnam War.
"President Johnson knew I [opposed the war in Vietnam] before
he appointed me Attorney General," Mr. Clark said. "And he didn't
put me on the National Security Council, which every Attorney
General before me had been on and every Attorney General
since me had been on. He would call me over once in a while
to some meeting on the war when he wanted an extreme position,
and I remember one breakfast, the question was whether to
bomb north of a famous parallel, I can't remember which one.
And the guys were arguing "yes-no-yes-no" as to whether you
could bomb north of the line, and when it came to me I said,
'I don't think you can bomb on either side of the line.' Because
bombing is just killing people, and you didn't know who the
hell you were killing-you were killing civilians. It was just a
shameful, sick thing."
When Richard Nixon denounced Mr. Clark in a campaign
speech in 1968, Johnson reportedly deadpanned, "I had to
sit on my hands so I wouldn't cheer it."
But Mr. Clark said his relationship with Johnson was friendly.
"I never had any real conflict with him. But he [did] say to me
one time, 'Some people think you're destroying the Democratic
Party.' And I said, 'I'm not even in politics, I'm just doing the law.'"
Mr. Clark never spoke out publicly against the administration,
and he never resigned, despite his apparent misgivings about
Vietnam.
"You know, I had a choice of resigning," Mr. Clark recalled,
"and it's something I considered-it's something I thought was
important and respected. But I also thought what I was doing
was important-was more important in the sense of its direct
impact on lives. And I saw an environment around me in
which everything I had been trying to do would be swept
away. I already felt that the civil-rights movement after the
Watts riots in '65 was in deep trouble. So I couldn't see
giving up on that. And I had no role in the Vietnam business,
because I wasn't even on the Security Council."
Some of Mr. Clark's colleagues have suggested that he is still
doing penance for this period of his life-in particular, for
prosecuting war resisters like Dr. Benjamin Spock, the
Reverend William Sloane Coffin and boxing legend
Muhammad Ali.
"Standing by, being Attorney General during the Vietnam
War without resigning, is not a particularly heroic position
to have taken," said his old colleague, Mr. Wulf. "I sometimes
speculate-and this is absolute speculation-that what he's
doing is a kind of atonement for having been Attorney
General for Lyndon Johnson at the time of the Vietnam
War, and for having in fact initiated the indictment against
Dr. Spock and the others."
As in most cases, Mr. Clark was as unapologetic about his
indictment of Spock as he has since become about his
Johnson administration apostasy.
"I personally authorized the case against William Sloane
Coffin, who came down to marry our son a few years later.
I visited him and stayed in his home in '69, at Yale. Dr. Spock
I became very close friends with. And I really haven't had
regrets about the case. I think the government has the duty
to protect laws that it believes are constitutional, and
I believe the Selective Service Act was constitutional."
Still, there's no question that Mr. Clark veered sharply leftward
after his Johnson years. Beginning in the early 1970's, Mr. Clark
took a string of headline-grabbing "movement" cases, amassing
a docket that read like a Who's Who of the decade's radicals and
revolutionaries. In 1973, he defended the Harrisburg Seven,
a group of peace activists who were accused, among other
things, of plotting to kidnap Henry Kissinger. One year later,
he joined famed radical lawyer William Kunstler in representing
two of the Attica Brothers who had been accused of killing
a prison guard. Around the same time, he also launched an
upstart campaign for U.S. Senate against New York Republican
Jacob Javits. (At the state Democratic convention in 1974,
Frank Serpico nominated him and Attica Brother Herbert X.
Blyden seconded it.) Running as a Democrat, he argued for
a 50 percent cut in the defense budget and refused to take
contributions above $100. Mr. Navasky managed the operation.
During the next two decades, Mr. Clark began taking on
clients who hovered further and further on the political fringes,
clients who were not merely controversial but downright
incendiary. He often framed these cases in the old language
of civil rights, but these clients were hardly left-wing "cause"
clients in the traditional sense (though there were some of
those as well). For instance, he took on the case of Karl Linnas,
an alleged former Nazi. And he defended-and supposedly
befriended-Lyndon LaRouche, the political-cult guru. In the
early 1990's, Mr. Clark represented Radovan Karadzic, the
Bosnian Serb general who was indicted on war crimes. More
recently, he gave legal advice to Slobodon Milosevic, the
former Yugoslavian president who was also charged with
war crimes. Now, of course, there's Saddam Hussein.
Taken together, these clients make up quite a rogues' gallery,
and some of Mr. Clark's friends and colleagues have been almost
as confounded by his legal choices as his critics. To help explain,
they have dreamed up a raft of different theories. On the one
side are those who believe that Mr. Clark is, above all, a civil
libertarian in the Clarence Darrow tradition. To these friends,
he is a hero, albeit at times an eccentric one.
"He's represented a lot of bad guys. I would say bad guys are
entitled to a lawyer. Dracula should have a lawyer, but it's not
going to be me," said Michael Steven Smith, a New York City
attorney and author. "It's probably not a position taken by most
movement lawyers, but it's still a principled position."
But other friends and colleagues have said they suspect he is
driven primarily by ideology, and not just the standard lefty
ideology.
"I support many of the causes he supports, but I also vehemently
disagree with some of the choices he's made, because I perceive
him as thinking that any enemy of the United States is a friend of
his, and I think that leads him into representing people he should
not," said Beth Stevens, an attorney who represented a group of
Bosnian Muslim women who sued Mr. Karadzic in 1993.
And yet for a man who sticks to certain basic principles of justice,
even when the circumstances of the world seem to be pressing
their defense to the point of absurdity, Mr. Clark had a deceptively
simple answer for the choices he's made.
"You know, we tend to demean here the idea that you're innocent
until proven guilty, and most people are going to chuckle when
you say that in connection with a case like Saddam Hussein,"
said Mr. Clark, responding to his critics. "But the main meaning
is that truth is hard to find. You don't really know, you have to
search for it-you have to inquire diligently, be very skeptical."
You may reach Lizzy Ratner via email at: lratner@observer.com .
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
21) Iraqi Resistance speech on videotape December 13 2004
GISpecial 3A5
ThomasFBarton@earthlink.net
A Message From The Iraq Resistance
Islamic Jihad Army - A message in English
"We are simple people who chose principles over fear."
Propaganda or disinformation? You decide.
Iraqi Resistance speech on videotape December 13 2004
Title: Communiqué Number 6
The media platoon of the Islamic Jihad Army. On the 27th of Shawal
1425h. 10 December 2004
People of the world! These words come to you from those who up to the
day of the invasion were struggling to survive under the sanctions
imposed by the criminal regimes of the U.S. and Britain .
We are simple people who chose principles over fear.
We have suffered crimes and sanctions, which we consider the true
weapons of mass destruction.
Years and years of agony and despair, while the condemned UN traded with
our oil revenues in the name of world stability and peace.
Over two million innocents died waiting for a light at the end of a
tunnel that only ended with the occupation of our country and the theft
of our resources.
After the crimes of the administrations of the U.S. and Britain in Iraq
, we have chosen our future. The future of every resistance struggle
ever in the history of man.
It is our duty, as well as our right, to fight back the occupying
forces, which their nations will be held morally and economically
responsible; for what their elected governments have destroyed and
stolen from our land.
We have not crossed the oceans and seas to occupy Britain or the U.S.
nor are we responsible for 9/11. These are only a few of the lies that
these criminals present to cover their true plans for the control of the
energy resources of the world, in face of a growing China and a strong
unified Europe . It is Ironic that the Iraqi's are to bear the full face
of this large and growing conflict on behalf of the rest of this
sleeping world.
We thank all those, including those of Britain and the U.S. , who took
to the streets in protest against this war and against Globalism. We
also thank France , Germany and other states for their position, which
least to say are considered wise and balanced, til now.
Today, we call on you again.
We do not require arms or fighters, for we have plenty.
We ask you to form a world wide front against war and sanctions. A
front that is governed by the wise and knowing. A front that will bring
reform and order. New institutions that would replace the now corrupt.
Stop using the U.S. dollar, use the Euro or a basket of currencies.
Reduce or halt your consumption of British and U.S. products. Put an
end to Zionism before it ends the world. Educate those in doubt of the
true nature of this conflict and do not believe their media for their
casualties are far higher than they admit.
We only wish we had more cameras to show the world their true defeat.
The enemy is on the run. They are in fear of a resistance movement they
can not see nor predict.
We, now choose when, where, and how to strike. And as our ancestors
drew the first sparks of civilization, we will redefine the word
“conquest.“
Today we write a new chapter in the arts of urban warfare.
Know that by helping the Iraqi people you are helping yourselves, for
tomorrow may bring the same destruction to you.
In helping the Iraqi people does not mean dealing for the Americans for
a few contracts here and there. You must continue to isolate their
strategy.
This conflict is no longer considered a localized war. Nor can the
world remain hostage to the never-ending and regenerated fear that the
American people suffer from in general.
We will pin them here in Iraq to drain their resources, manpower, and
their will to fight. We will make them spend as much as they steal, if
not more.
We will disrupt, then halt the flow of our stolen oil, thus, rendering
their plans useless.
And the earlier a movement is born, the earlier their fall will be.
And to the American soldiers we say, you can also choose to fight
tyranny with us. Lay down your weapons, and seek refuge in our mosques,
churches and homes. We will protect you. And we will get you out of Iraq
, as we have done with a few others before you.
Go back to your homes, families, and loved ones. This is not your war.
Nor are you fighting for a true cause in Iraq .
And to George W. Bush, we say, “You have asked us to ‘Bring it on’, and
so have we. Like never expected. Have you another challenge?”
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
22) The victims of the tsunami pay the price
of war on Iraq
US and British aid is dwarfed by the billions
both spend on slaughter
George Monbiot
Guardian
Tuesday January 4, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1382857,00.html
There has never been a moment like it on British television. The
Vicar of Dibley, one of our gentler sitcoms, was bouncing along
with its usual bonhomie on New Year's Day when it suddenly hit
us with a scene from another world. Two young African children
were sobbing and trying to comfort each other after their mother
had died of Aids. How on earth, I wondered, would the show make
us laugh after that? It made no attempt to do so. One by one the
characters, famous for their parochial boorishness, stood in front
of the camera wearing the white armbands which signalled their
support for the Make Poverty History campaign. You would have
to have been hewn from stone not to cry.
The timing was perfect. In my local Oxfam shop last week, people
were queueing to the door to pledge money for the tsunami fund.
A pub on the other side of town raised £1,000 on Saturday night.
In the pot on the counter of the local newsagent's there must be
nearly £100. The woman who runs the bakery told me about the
homeless man she had seen, who emptied his pockets in the bank,
saying "I just want to do my bit", while the whole queue tried not to cry.
Over the past few months, reviewing the complete lack of public
interest in what is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
and the failure, in the west, to mobilise effective protests against
the continuing atrocities in Iraq, I had begun to wonder whether
we had lost our ability to stand in other people's shoes. I have
now stopped wondering. The response to the tsunami shows that,
however we might seek to suppress it, we cannot destroy our
capacity for empathy.
But one obvious question recurs. Why must the relief of
suffering, in this unprecedentedly prosperous world, rely on
the whims of citizens and the appeals of pop stars and comedians?
Why, when extreme poverty could be made history with a minor
redeployment of public finances, must the poor world still wait
for homeless people in the rich world to empty their pockets?
The obvious answer is that governments have other priorities.
And the one that leaps to mind is war. If the money they have
promised to the victims of the tsunami still falls far short of
the amounts required, it is partly because the contingency
fund upon which they draw in times of crisis has been spent
on blowing people to bits in Iraq.
The US government has so far pledged $350m to the victims
of the tsunami, and the UK government £50m ($96m). The
US has spent $148 billion on the Iraq war and the UK £6bn
($11.5bn). The war has been running for 656 days. This
means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by
the United States is the equivalent of one and a half day's
spending in Iraq. The money the UK has given equates to
five and a half days of our involvement in the war.
It looks still worse when you compare the cost of the war
to the total foreign aid budget. The UK has spent almost
twice as much on creating suffering in Iraq as it spends
annually on relieving it elsewhere. The United States gives
just over $16bn in foreign aid: less than one ninth of the
money it has burnt so far in Iraq.
The figures for war and aid are worth comparing because,
when all the other excuses for the invasion of Iraq were
stripped away, both governments explained that it was
being waged for the good of the Iraqis. Let us, for a moment,
take this claim at face value. Let us suppose that the
invasion and occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with
power, domestic politics or oil, but were, in fact, components
of a monumental aid programme. And let us, with reckless
generosity, assume that more people in Iraq have gained
as a result of this aid programme than lost.
To justify the war, even under these wildly unsafe assumptions,
George Bush and Tony Blair would have to show that the money
they spent was a cost-efficient means of relieving human
suffering. As it was sufficient to have made a measurable
improvement in the lives of all the 2.8 billion people living
in absolute poverty, and as there are only 25 million people
in Iraq, this is simply not possible. Even if you ignore every
other issue - such as the trifling matter of mass killing - the
opportunity costs of the Iraq war categorise it as a humanitarian
disaster. Indeed, such calculations suggest that, on cost grounds
alone, a humanitarian war is a contradiction in terms.
But our leaders appear to have lost the ability to distinguish
between helping people and killing them. The tone of Blair's
New Year message was almost identical to that of his tear-jerking
insistence that we understand the Iraqi people must be bombed
for their own good. The US marines who have now been
dispatched to Sri Lanka to help the rescue operation were,
just a few weeks ago, murdering the civilians (for this,
remember, is an illegal war), smashing the homes and
evicting the entire population of the Iraqi city of Falluja.
Even within the official aid budgets the two aims are
confused: $8.9bn of the aid money the US spends is used
for military assistance, anti-drugs operations, counter-
terrorism and the Iraq relief and reconstruction fund
(otherwise known as the Halliburton benevolent trust).
For Bush and Blair, the tsunami relief operation and
the Iraq war are both episodes in the same narrative
of salvation. The civilised world rides out to rescue
foreigners from their darkness.
While they spend the money we gave them to relieve
suffering on slaughtering the poor, the world must
rely for disaster relief on the homeless man emptying
his pockets. If our leaders were as generous in
helping people as they are in killing them, no one
would ever go hungry.
·You can join the campaign against global poverty
at: www.makepovertyhistory.org
www.monbiot.com
Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
23) National Task Force for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Legal Update - December 11, 2004 meeting in New York City
(Reviewed by Attorney Robert R. Bryan)
LEGAL UPDATE:
Mumia's case is simultaneously being heard in two different courts
presently: the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
(appellate court) and the Pennsylvania State Court of Common Pleas (trial
court), both of which sit in Philadelphia.
The Third Circuit (the appellate court)
Procedure
In July 2004, both Robert Bryan and the state of Pennsylvania submitted
briefs on the effect of the 06-24-04 United States Supreme Court decision
in Beard v. Banks on Mumia's case. On 07-29-04, Robert filed a memorandum
of law on the affect of Banks for Mumia, and requested a stay of the
proceedings in this matter pending the outcome of the issues simultaneously
being litigated in the Pennsylvania trial court before Judge Pamela Dembe.
On 10-19-04, the appellate court entered an order denying the 07-29-04
request from Robert Bryan for a stay of the proceedings. What this means
is that the issues currently pending before the appellate court are moving
forward. The next step involves putting these issues on what is called a
"briefing schedule," which has yet to be done by the appellate court. In
other words, Robert has yet to receive notice from the appellate court as
to when briefs will be due on the issues currently before it.
Robert initially filed for a stay of these proceedings because of the
active litigation pending before Judge Dembe in the trial court in
Philadelphia, and argued against having to litigate one case in two courts
at the same time. The matters before Judge Dembe cannot be resolved by the
Third Circuit, but must first be addressed at the trial level in the state
system.
Additionally, Robert Bryan is currently working on a brief to be filed with
this court requesting that additional issues be certified for appeal from
district court Judge Yohn's 2001 habeas decision, which certified only one
claim for relief: racial bias in jury selection, also known as the Batson
claim. Mumia's former attorneys filed the original motion on this issue,
which Robert plans to supplement, requesting that additional issues be
certified on appeal to the appellate court. What are the possible
outcomes? There are four possibilities: the Third Circuit could (1) deny
this request outright, (2) only allow a few of the 29 issues raised by
Mumia's writ for habeas corpus, (3) send the case back to Judge William
Yohn to apply the standard set out in Miller-El (see below), or (4) wait
for Mumia's Batson issue to be resolved before moving forward on this one.
More immediately, Robert plans to file a motion for remand back down to the
district court on the issues raised by Terri Maurer-Carter's affidavit.
Terri Maurer-Carter is the court reporter who overheard trial judge Albert
Sabo-who presided over Mumia's 1982 "trial," and 1995, 1996, and 1997
Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) appellate hearings in Philadelphia-say:
"Yeah, and I'm going to help 'em [the prosecution] fry the n****r."
Issues
There are two issues before the appellate court, which will be explained
below.
First, what did the United States Supreme Court decide in Beard v. Banks,
and how does that affect Mumia?
In July 2004, the appellate court allowed both Robert Bryan and the state
of Pennsylvania to submit briefs on the affect of Banks on Mumia's case.
The issue was whether Mumia's case was affected by the recent United States
Supreme Court decision in Beard v. Banks. George Banks was sentenced to
death in 1982. After his state appeals were exhausted, he sought habeas
relief in federal district court and was denied. On appeal to the Third
Circuit Court of Appeals, Banks' death sentence was found to be
unconstitutional, and the decision of the district court was reversed. The
appellate court held that jury instructions during Banks' sentencing led
jurors to believe they could not vote against the death penalty unless they
all agreed on mitigating evidence-evidence that would have inclined them
not to vote for a death sentence. The appellate court reasoned that these
jury instructions violated the United States Supreme Court's 1988 ruling in
Mills v. Maryland.
However, the Third Circuit did not decide whether the rule of Mills was
retroactive. In other words, could Banks benefit from the United States
Supreme Court's 1988 decision in Mills where his conviction became final in
1987? Thus, when Banks' case was next brought before the United States
Supreme Court on appeal, the Court sent the case back down to the Third
Circuit to decide this issue. The appellate court then decided that the
rule created by the Supreme Court in Mills was retroactive and that Banks
could benefit. The case was again appealed to the Supreme Court and on
06-24-04, the United States Supreme Court reversed the decision of the
Third Circuit and declared that the rule of law created in Mills was not
retroactive. In a 5-to-4 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the
Court found that the rule announced in Mills-that sentencing schemes could
not prevent jurors from considering mitigating evidence that had not been
accepted unanimously when deciding whether to apply the death penalty-was a
new rule of law that was not a "watershed rule of criminal procedure
implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal
proceeding." Finding that the rule of Mills was not a "watershed rule,"
the United States Supreme Court said that Mills could not be applied
retroactively and that Banks' conviction was constitutional.
What does this mean? Basically, it means that a "Mills challenge" to a
death sentence is only applicable where the sentencing relief sought is for
a person whose conviction became final after the rule of Mills was decided
in 1988. Seemingly, the Court has said that relief is available to those
whose convictions post-date Mills, creating what is called in the law a
"bright line rule." Robert Bryan argued in his brief that Mumia benefits
from the rule of Mills because his conviction became final in 1990. The
state of Pennsylvania has argued that Mumia should not get the benefit of
Mills, despite this seemingly bright line rule, and there have been several
exchanges back and forth (one as recent as 10-31-04) through the filing of
papers with the appellate court on this issue. This matter is still
pending.
If Mumia wins on this issue, that he does get the benefit of Mills, his
case will go back to the trial level in the Pennsylvania Court of Common
Pleas. The state of Pennsylvania will have two choices, either (1)
sentence Mumia to life imprisonment, or (2) grant Mumia a full jury trial
on the issue of whether he should be sentenced to life imprisonment or
death. A full jury trial, or penalty-phase hearing, means that Mumia is
back to 1982 in terms of the issue of sentencing. The state of
Pennsylvania will put on evidence of guilt and aggravation to argue for a
death sentence. Robert Bryan will then be able to put on evidence of
innocence and mitigation. However, the only decision the jury can make
should there be a new penalty-phase hearing is life imprisonment or death.
If Mumia loses, then the state of Pennsylvania can sign another death
warrant, side-stepping Yohn's 2001 habeas decision.
However, there still remains another issue pending before the appellate
court: the issue of jury selection, Mumia's Batson claim.
Second, what is Mumia's Batson claim? The issue of racial bias in jury
selection, Mumia's Batson claim, is also still pending before the appellate
court. This issue was the only issue Judge Yohn allowed to be appealed to
the Third Circuit. In other words, this is the only guilt-phase appellate
issue Yohn certified to go before the appellate court.
Recently, the United State Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of
Thomas Miller-El. A summary of that case from an article in the 12-05-04
NYT is as follows:
"In an 8-to-1 decision last year, the Supreme Court instructed the appeals
court to rethink its "dismissive and strained interpretation" of the proof
in the case, and to consider more seriously the substantial evidence
suggesting that prosecutors had systematically excluded blacks from Mr.
Miller-El's jury. Prosecutors used peremptory strikes to eliminate 10 out
of 11 eligible black jurors, and they twice used a local procedure called a
jury shuffle to move blacks lower on the list of potential jurors, the
decision said. The jury ultimately selected, which had one black member,
convicted Mr. Miller-El, a black man who is now 53, of killing a clerk at a
Holiday Inn in Dallas in 1985.
Instead of considering much of the evidence recited by the Supreme Court
majority, the appeals court engaged in something akin to plagiarism. In
February, it again rejected Mr. Miller-El's claims, in a decision that
reproduced, virtually verbatim and without attribution, several paragraphs
from the sole dissenting opinion in last year's Supreme Court decision,
written by Justice Clarence Thomas."
According to Attorney Bryan, Miller-El deals with two issues: (1) racism in
jury selection and (2) the certification of appellate issues by federal
district courts. Regarding racial bias in jury selection, should the
United States Supreme Court decide in favor of Miller-El on this issue,
Mumia's position will be strengthened. Furthermore, there is also good
case law in the Third Circuit on this issue that should also support
Mumia's case. As for the certification of issues for appeal by the lower
federal courts, the Supreme Court appears to be saying that these courts
have too high a standard. In other words, they have made it such that
unless a petitioner can prove a certain win on appeal, then that issue will
not move forward. But if a certain win was apparent, then there would be
no need for an appeal because the district court would have granted relief
in the first instance, right? If Miller-El succeeds on this issue, then
Robert will be in a better position to argue that Judge Yohn violated the
proper standard and set the bar to high for his certificates of
appealability.
If Mumia wins his Batson claim, there will be a completely new trial,
meaning there will be a new trial to decide guilt or innocence. If there
is an acquittal, Mumia will be released. If Mumia is found guilty, there
will be a penalty-phase hearing.
The Pennsylvania State Court of Common Pleas (trial court)
Procedure
With regards to the newly discovered evidence presented to this court
through the affidavits of William Pate and Yvette Williams, Robert Bryan
has requested a hearing on the issues this evidence raises in relation to
Mumia's conviction. Currently pending before Judge Dembe is a motion to
dismiss that was filed by the state of Pennsylvania. This new evidence has
not been presented in federal court because the issues it raises have not
yet been resolved by Dembe in the state court system. Robert Bryan has
replied to this motion, and was forced by Dembe in September 2004 to
qualify himself to handle a capital case, despite his years of experience
in these matters. Robert has handled hundreds of capital cases.
Interestingly, there is a new state law in Pennsylvania that requires
defense attorneys handling capital litigation to demonstrate that they are
qualified to handle such matters, but that law was not in effect when Dembe
challenged Robert's ability to handle Mumia's case.
If Judge Dembe decides in Mumia's favor, then he would get a new trial. If
Dembe denies relief, then Robert will appeal that decision through to the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court. It should be noted that if Dembe or the
Pennsylvania appellate courts grants Mumia relief, there will be no need to
remain in federal court-another reason why Robert has argued against the
lifting of the stay by the Third Circuit.
Issues
There are two issues before the trial court: the fabricated confession of
Pricilla Durham and that the false testimony the state of Pennsylvania put
on during the trial through their key witness Cynthia White.
William Pate is the half-brother of Pricilla Durham. In his affidavit, he
says that Durham lied about the confession she claimed Mumia made at the
hospital on the night he was shot and Faulkner died.
Yvette Williams said in her affidavit that Cynthia White was not present
during the shooting, but appeared sometime thereafter.
HEARING SET FOR MUMIA ON FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2005
Dear Friends:
Today official notification was received that on Friday, February
11, 2005, there will be a hearing concerning Mumia Abu-Jamal in the
Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia before Judge Pamela Pryor
Dembe. The hearing will be pursuant to the Petition for Writ of Habeas
Corpus we filed December 8, 2003 on Mumia's behalf.
Next month the court will issue a memorandum that is to include
preliminary rulings on the petition. At that time she will direct counsel
as to how she wishes to proceed. The hearing will be in the Criminal
Justice Center, Philadelphia, but to date no courtroom has been assigned.
The issues raised in our habeas corpus petition are:
1. The State Manipulated A Purported Eyewitness To Falsely
Identify Petitioner As The Shooter, In Violation Of His Rights Under The
Fifth, Sixth Eighth, And Fourteenth Amendments To The United States
Constitution.
2. Petitioner Was Found Guilty And Sentenced To Death
Through The Use Of A Fabricated Confession, In Violation Of The Fifth,
Eighth And Fourteenth Amendments.
We will advise when more is known about the upcoming hearing.
With best wishes,
Robert
=======
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4124
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Black legislators support Mumia's release
On Dec. 3, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators (NBCSL) passed a
resolution during its conference in Philadelphia calling for the freedom of
African American political prisoner and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal.
This comes on the heels of another important resolution passed at the NAACP
national convention on July 15 that demanded a new trial for Abu-Jamal and
condemned the racist application of the death penalty by the criminal
justice system.
The state legislators' resolution reads:
WHEREAS Mumia Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial in Phila delphia was characterized by
illegal suppression of evidence, police coercion, illegal exclusion of
Black jurors, and grotesquely unfair and unconstitutional rulings by the
judge; and
WHEREAS the trial judge, Albert Sabo, has been quoted in a sworn statement
to have vowed at the time of the trial to help the prosecution 'fry the
n--'; and
WHEREAS subsequent appellate rulings have bent the law out of shape to
sustain the guilty verdict of that trial; and
WHEREAS the appellate courts have also refused to consider strong evidence
of Mumia Abu-Jamal's innocence, most notably a confession by Arnold Beverly
to the crime; and
WHEREAS Mumia Abu-Jamal still is incarcerated on Death Row and still faces
a death sentence; and
WHEREAS Mumia Abu-Jamal's case is now on appeal before the federal Third
Circuit and the state court system; and
WHEREAS Mumia Abu-Jamal has for decades as a journalist fought courage
ously against racism and for the human rights of all people; and
WHEREAS the continued unjust incarceration of Mumia Abu-Jamal represents a
threat to the civil rights of all people,
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the National Caucus of Black State
Legislators demands that the courts consider the evidence of innocence of
Mumia Abu-Jamal and that he be released from prison; and
THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the NCBSL demands that Pennsylvania
Gov. Edward Rendell instruct his Attorney General to take over the case of
Mumia Abu-Jamal from the Philadelphia County District Attorney's office and
actually pursue justice; namely, go to court, make a legal confession of
error, and stipulate that the conviction be vacated;
THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the NCBSL will communicate its views
on this matter to Gov. Rendell, 225 Main Capitol Bldg., Harris burg, PA
17120, and to the appropriate courts in consultation with the legal defense
team of Mumia Abu-Jamal; and
THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the NCBSL will work with the legal
defense team of Mumia Abu-Jamal to petition the courts to file any
necessary friend of the court brief on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
24) U.S. Copters Speed Pace of Aid for Indonesia Refugees
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
http://nytimes.com/2005/01/02/international/worldspecial4/02quake.html?ei=50
94
&en=92dbe740aaf891ca&hp=&ex=1104642000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&pos
it
ion=
The Times article below presents more evidence for the need to divert all US
forces from Iraq (where of course they had no business being in the first
place) to tsunami disaster areas. Especially right now with the lack of
transport
equipment and infrastructure and the need to reach isolated victims quickly,
every last US helicopter should leave Iraq immediately, be used to ferry aid
to
victims and to ferry injured out -- and then when their job is done, to come
home.
And it's the job of the antiwar movement to get back out in the streets to
fight for this!
January 2, 2005
AID
U.S. Copters Speed Pace of Aid for Indonesia Refugees
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Substantial aid finally began reaching desperate refugees in devastated
areas
of northern Sumatra yesterday as American warships, led by the aircraft
carrier Abraham Lincoln, arrived offshore and a fleet of helicopters
airlifted
critical supplies to stricken towns in Aceh Province.
Flying through pounding rains, a dozen Sea Hawk helicopters from the Lincoln
ferried food, water, medicines, tents and other supplies from warehouses at
Banda Aceh airport to refugees in decimated Indonesian coastal towns and
inland
villages that had been virtually cut off when the tsunami destroyed roads,
bridges and communications a week ago.
It was the beginning of what was expected to become a steady stream of
international aid for Indonesia and a dozen other countries on the rim of
the Indian
Ocean, where estimates of the dead hovered between 140,000 and 150,000.
Serious injuries were believed to exceed 500,000, and the likelihood of
epidemics
of cholera and other diseases threatened to send the totals much higher.
As the first trickle of supplies broke through, the global relief effort to
save an estimated five million homeless survivors of last weekend's undersea
earthquake and tsunami was reinforced yesterday when Japan raised its pledge
of
aid from $30 million to $500 million, the largest contribution so far.
Combined with a $350 million pledge by the United States on Friday, this
brought the
total contributions of more than 40 nations to $2 billion, according to the
United Nations. [Page 9.]
The United Nations will begin a new world appeal for money in New York this
week, and Secretary General Kofi Annan will arrive in Jakarta on Thursday to
convene a meeting of major donor nations to map strategy for the relief
campaign. Private donations, which have flooded charitable organizations
around the world, are expected to add hundreds of millions to the
relief programs.
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, in his first comments on the disaster,
said the world faced a long-term relief commitment. "At first it seemed a
terrible disaster, a terrible tragedy," he said. "But I think as the days
have
gone on, people have recognized it as a global catastrophe. There will be
months, if not years, of work ahead of us."
President Bush too spoke of a long commitment. "We offer our love and
compassion, and our assurance that America will be there to help," he said
in his
weekly radio address from his ranch in Crawford, Tex. He cited a host of
problems
- communications, roads and medical facilities damaged or washed out - but
promised that help was coming, and, indeed, had already begun to arrive.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, the
president's brother, were expected to arrive in the region today with a team
of
experts to tour some stricken areas and to assess the needs. Their schedule
was
still being worked out, officials said.
The need is indeed enormous, especially in Aceh Province, where towns and
villages were destroyed. Meulaboh, on Aceh's west coast, was flattened, and
as
many as 40,000 of the 120,000 residents were killed. It lay buried under
mountains of mud and debris yesterday as Indonesia's president, Susilo
Bambang
Yudhoyono, flew in to see the devastation.
Other firsthand reports of the devastation in Aceh were provided by the
pilots and crew members of the helicopters that, from dawn to sunset on New
Year's
Day, shuttled 25,000 pounds of supplies to refugees. "There is nothing left
to
speak of at these coastal communities," Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Vorce, a pilot from
San Diego, told The Associated Press. He told of a swath of destruction two
miles deep from the coasts, with trees mowed down, roads washed away and
only
foundations where buildings once stood.
Besides airdrops by the American helicopters, fleets of cargo planes from
Australia, New Zealand and other nations continued to land at Banda Aceh and
Medan, ferrying in tons of supplies. But bad roads, destroyed bridges, a
lack of
fuel and trucks, and other problems continued to hamper the distribution.
While the Abraham Lincoln and four accompanying ships represented the
vanguard of American emergency aid to Indonesia, American officials said
seven more
vessels led by the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard were steaming
west
from the South China Sea with more supplies and were expected to be off the
coast of Sri Lanka in the coming week, a Pentagon spokesman said.
Military officials said that yet another convoy, six slower-moving ships
loaded with food, water, blankets and a 500-bed portable hospital, was en
route
from Guam, but was not expected to reach the stricken region for about two
weeks.
Capt. Rodger Welch of the Navy, representing the operations directorate of
the military's Pacific Command, said late Saturday that the American relief
mission likely was the largest in the region in at least 50 years. "And we
are
only beginning this effort," he added.
About 10,000 to 12,000 American military personnel were now involved, mostly
aboard the Lincoln and Bonhomme Richard groups. In Sri Lanka, flash floods
yesterday forced the evacuation of thousands of people from low-lying areas
hard
hit by the tsunami, which killed more than 28,700 there. At least 15 camps
where 30,000 refugees had been sheltering were evacuated after storms dumped
13
inches of rain over the eastern coastal region.
Weeklong efforts to bury the dead in Sri Lanka and coastal areas of India
were winding down, and government and private aid workers said they were
turning
their attention increasingly to sheltering the survivors in more sanitary
refugee camps, while the homes of an estimated one million displaced persons
are
rebuilt.
"This is where we are going to see a rise in communicable diseases,
diarrhea,
measles, upper respiratory infections," said David Overlack, a health care
specialist surveying camps in Sri Lanka for the International Federation of
the
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
World Health Organization workers have noted "a slight increase in the
reporting of diarrheal illness" in areas of Sri Lanka and Indonesia affected
by the
tsunami, David Nabarro, an official of the United Nations agency, said in an
interview yesterday.
But the increase does not mean an epidemic, he said. There have been no
outbreaks of cholera or other diseases, he said, adding that it is too early
for
such outbreaks to occur.
Aid workers praised Sri Lankan officials and volunteers for their efforts to
bury the dead quickly and to place 600,000 homeless people in schools,
temples
and mosques. An outpouring of donations from Sri Lankans has prevented
shortages of food and clothing, officials said.
Jeffrey J. Lunstead, the American ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives,
said the first planeload of American relief supplies had arrived in Sri
Lanka -
plastic sheeting to house 3,600 people and 5,400 cans of fresh water. He
said
most of the American aid would be aimed at reconstruction, rather than
emergency food and medicines.
To that end, American military officials said 1,500 marines and 20
helicopters would be deployed in the next few days to clear debris and aid
survivors in
devastated areas of Sri Lanka. The first contingent of 200 was expected to
arrive today.
Reporting for this article was contributed by Ian Fisher in Sri Lanka,
Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez in Indonesia,Thom Shanker in Washington and
Lawrence
K. Altman in New York.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
25) IRAQ: Death in Fallujah rising, doctors say
04 Jan 2005 14:56:16 GMT
Source: Integrated Regional Information Networks
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/121b671d950efc3ac031b54b55118d
85.htm
FALLUJAH, 4 January (IRIN) - "It was really distressing picking up dead
bodies from destroyed homes, especially children. It is the most
depressing situation I have ever been in since the war started," Dr
Rafa'ah al-Iyssaue, director of the main hospital in Fallujah city, some
60 km west of Baghdad, told IRIN.
According to al-Iyssaue, the hospital emergency team has recovered more
than 700 bodies from rubble where houses and shops once stood, adding
that more than 550 were women and children. He said a very small number
of men were found in these places and most were elderly.
Doctors at the hospital claim that many bodies had been found in a
mutilated condition, some without legs or arms. Two babies were found at
their homes, who are believed to have died from malnutrition, according
to a specialist at the hospital.
Al-Iyssaue added these numbers were only from nine neighbourhoods of the
city and that 18 others had not yet been reached, as they were waiting
for help from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) to make it easier
for them to enter. He explained that many of the dead had been already
buried by civilians from the Garma and Amirya districts of Fallujah
after approval from US-led forces nearly three weeks ago, and those
bodies had not been counted. IRCS officials told IRIN they needed more
time to give an accurate death toll, adding that the city was completely
uninhabitable.
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
26) The best kept media secret of the week is that the
greatest devastation and death occurred and is occurring
in Indonesia's Aceh province.
Adding to Jim's post: ETAN (many will know Ben Terrall's work with and for
ETAN here).
Marc Sapir writes that Allan Nairn was Dennis Bernstein's guest on
Flashpoints Thurs., Dec. 30 and that:
The best kept media secret of the week is that the greatest devastation and
death occurred and is occurring in Indonesia's Aceh province. I Just heard
the scoop on Indonesia (from Alan Nairn, plus an Indonesian UC Berkeley
professor and a fellow with nonviolence international). The Indonesian
military yesterday began a new major military campaign in Aceh province
(where
perhaps 80,000 are dead) attacking villages (that are still standing) in an
effort to wipe out the independence movement. They will be sending in
another
15,000 troops to complement the 50,000 that have been used to impose martial
law the past year. While claiming to be doing relief work they are
hampering
the relief efforts and will steal as much money as they can from relief
work.
The U.S. is likely to be asked by Indonesia to put the Aceh popular
resistance
movement on it's list of terrorist organizations and there is fear that
under
Condoleeza that will be approved. That will then make most Indonesians in
the
U.S. and around the world terrorist collaborators as they try to help their
families and the independence movement get out from under the terror of the
Indonesian military. Please tell people who want to send financial aid to
the
Tsunami victims of Indonesia to go through the East Timor Action Network not
through government channels. They can be contacted at www.ETAN.org
Aceh, the region closest to the earthquake, has been almost entirely sealed
from foreign presence since the beginning of martial law in May 2003. There
are rumors that the Indonesian government is now debating whether to allow
foreign organizations access to Aceh. The U.S. government has offered
assistance. Every second delayed contributes to needless death, sickness and
suffering. This is clearly not the time for politics to supersede dire
humanitarian needs.
East Timor ACTION Network ALERT
Donate to Aceh relief
Go to the website for information re: contacting your congressional reps and
about how to donate to grassroots efforts in Aceh:
http://www.etan.org/action/action2/23alert.htm#Donate%20to%20Aceh%20relief
Beware Medecins sans Frontieres:
At 11:41 PM -0800 1/3/05, echo wrote:
Medecins Sans Frontieres was arrogant and controlling at the Colomoncagua
refugee camp. Didn't want to trust the community with the supplies and
pharmaceuticals. The survivors at Colomoncagua were organized on an
anarchist
basis, with every person regardless of age or sex contributing with whatever
knowledge or skill he or she possessed. They had lived so long because they
were responsible.
adding that the US is moving to displace UNICEF in relief work, and use the
opportunity to tighten military control. (Again on Flashpoints yesterday,
Monday the 3rd, the Acehnese head-of-state-in-exile was interviewed, and
reported that Indonesian soldiers are shooting survivors who try to bury the
dead, a practice sickeningly familiar from Palestine and Iraq.)
more on military repression of Acehnese:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0103-25.htm
''We are now carrying out two duties: humanitarian work and the
security operation,'' he told the daily. ''The raids to quell the
secessionist movement in Aceh will continue unless the president issues
a decree to lift the civil emergency and assign us to merely play a
humanitarian role in Aceh.''<<
and:
Published January 4th, 2005, in The Age, Melbourne, Australia.
Kantha Shakti (Strength to Women) is a partner group supported by IWDA.
Rapists, abusers prey on disaster victims
By Liz Minchin
January 5, 2005
First their lives were torn apart by the tsunami; now women and
children are being pursued by human predators.
With millions left homeless and vulnerable throughout south Asia, some
survivors have been further traumatised by shocking acts of violence,
including gang rape, kidnapping, child abuse and the mutilation of
corpses.
Most of the reported violence has been in Sri Lanka, where a national
women's group, Kantha Shakti (Strength of Women), has warned that
"many, many" children and women are believed to have been abducted,
mostly in the chaotic south.
"Lots of children are being abducted and taken away for slavery . . .
This [i]s happening on a large scale," Kantha Shakti executive director
Rohini Weerasinghe told The Age.
Even on the day the tsunami struck, women were abducted, she said.
There has been no news of those women since.
Other reports of abuse have been equally shocking.
(I will send the full report to anyone who requests it)
In Sri Lanka, non-government groups, including Kantha Shakti, are trying
to raise money to send trained locals into the camps to tackle abuse.
Donations to Kantha Shakti in Sri Lanka can be made through the
International Women's Development Agency at www.iwda.org.au or by
calling +(61-3) 9650 5574 during business hours or + (61-425) 712 478
after hours.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
28) War Resisters Go North
By Alisa Solomon, The Nation
Posted on December 22, 2004, Printed on January 3, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/20826/
EDITOR'S NOTE: As The Nation was going to press, Canada's willingness
to take in Americans resisting the Iraq war became more concrete. In a
year-end review with Canada's Global National, Prime Minister Paul
Martin said that Canada was prepared to accept U.S. citizens who do not
want to serve in the war. According to the report, when reminded that
former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau opened Canada's doors to draft
dodgers and deserters during the Vietnam War, Martin said: "In terms
of immigration, we are a country of immigrants and we will take
immigrants from around the world. I'm not going to discriminate." Asked
whether Martin was referring to Jeremy Hinzman's request for refugee
status, a spokesperson said that Martin "was not commenting on any
individual case and certainly was not sending a signal to the
immigration board." Still, Hinzman's attorney Jeffry House tells The
Nation that the prime minister's remarks represent "a step in the right
direction."
Protests over the conduct of the Iraq war are mounting from what seems
an unlikely place: the ranks of the military. In early December, eight
soldiers sued in federal court to overturn the stop-loss policy that
has extended their tour of duty indefinitely. At Camp Buehring in the
Kuwaiti desert, Army National Guard Specialist Thomas Wilson, cheered
on by his fellow soldiers, demanded that Donald Rumsfeld explain why
the troops had to rummage through garbage heaps for scraps to armor
their vehicles. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has admitted that some 5,500
enlisted soldiers have deserted since the "liberation" of Iraq began.
While these disgruntled grunts don't explicitly challenge the validity
of the war itself, their decision to complain formally, or even to
quit, strongly suggests a dwindling of faith in the mission.
Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman, of the 82nd Airborne, has made his second thoughts
public. As he told me this past March, "The war is bogus. There weren't
any weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do
with 9/11. The war was not pursued in self-defense, and as such it is
illegal. I decided I could not participate in such a criminal
enterprise."
On December 6-8, while his comrades were filing suit and confronting
Rumsfeld, Hinzman was making this argument before Canada's Immigration
and Refugee Board (IRB) in a bid for asylum as a principled deserter
from the US Army. In doing so, he was putting the war itself on trial,
articulating clearly the doubts that are beginning to tug at the
conscience of some US troops.
Hinzman enlisted in the Army in 2001, making what he calls a typical
"Faustian bargain" - trading service for college - and looking for a
way to be part of something "bigger than myself," where he might "live
for ideals rather than just to consume." But in basic training, as
drills focused on "breaking down the human inhibition to killing," he
began to realize he had made the wrong choice. Aghast at finding
himself joining in training chants like, "What makes the grass grow?
Blood, blood, bright red blood," he filed for conscientious objector
status, serving in noncombat duty in Afghanistan while his application
was in process. Back at Fort Bragg in late 2003, his CO application
denied, Hinzman received word that his unit would be shipping out to
Iraq in a few days. He and his wife got into their Chevy with their
toddler and drove to Toronto, arriving there January 3 of last year. He
is the first of three deserters to ask for refugee protection. A ruling
is expected in February.
As is typical in a case making a novel claim or with a high public
profile, the Canadian government intervened, asserting that Hinzman
does not fit the definition of a refugee: someone who is fleeing a
well-founded fear of persecution. Canada also argued - and in an
interim ruling issued about two weeks before the hearing, the IRB judge
agreed - that the question of the war's legality is irrelevant to the
case.
The government is not revealing its reasoning, but one can imagine a
number of competing concerns pulsing beneath it: on the one hand, a
reluctance to embarrass its bullying trading partner; on the other, an
intense domestic opposition to the Iraq War. At the same time, Canada
may be anxious about the possibility of an American draft, despite the
Bush Administration's repeated denials that one is coming. Some
thirty-five years ago, an estimated 60,000 men and women resisting the
Vietnam War surged north. (In those days, they could simply present
themselves at the border and apply for landed immigrant status; since
then, Canada has instituted a refugee determination procedure.)
One of them was Jeffry House, Hinzman's attorney. He regrets losing
"our cleanest argument": While refugee law states that prosecution is
not persecution, House intended to show that it is indeed persecution
to punish someone for refusing to take part in a war that is illegal
under international law, which sanctions war only when it is undertaken
in self-defense or with authorization of the United Nations Security
Council.
Still, House explains, even if the illegality of the decision to go to
war is off the table, the question of how the war is being waged
remains relevant to Hinzman's claim. "What's happening on the ground in
Iraq is violating Geneva Conventions and international human rights
law," House says. "No one should be forced to participate." From the
cells of Abu Ghraib to the living rooms of Falluja, any number of
examples can make the case.
Marine Sgt. Jimmy Massey, who served in Iraq during the invasion in
March 2003, testified on Hinzman's behalf, explaining, he told me, that
"it's the system, not the individual soldier, that is the problem. Even
atrocities are standard operating procedure." At the hearing, he
recounted in graphic and shocking detail how his unit killed more than
thirty innocent Iraqi civilians at checkpoints, "lighting them up" with
machine gun fire. He also described how Marines shot dead unarmed Iraqi
demonstrators who posed no threat. "I was never clear on who was the
enemy and who was not," he said. "When you don't know who the enemy is,
what are you doing there?" A Marine Corps spokesman has said that none
of the acts Massey described violated rules of engagement.
If Hinzman is denied at the IRB, there are possibilities for appeal.
And then, House notes, "the question of the illegality of the war has
to be confronted politically." After all, Prime Minister Paul Martin
may have promised to help with Iraq's elections, but his predecessor,
Jean Chrétien, declined to join the "coalition" forces without a nod
from the UN Security Council. And the current Justice Minister, Irwin
Cotler, is on record challenging the war under international law. In
answering Specialist Wilson's question at Camp Buehring, Rumsfeld
smugly told the 2,000 assembled soldiers, "You go to war with the army
you have." In his brave stand, Jeremy Hinzman suggests another option:
The army can refuse to go at all.
(c) 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/20826/
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
29) Iraq War is Bad for Business
By Jim Lobe
Peace and Justice News from FPIF
http://www.fpif.org/
January 4, 2005
Introducing a new commentary from Foreign Policy In Focus
On top of the human and financial costs of the war in Iraq, the Bush
administration's foreign policy may be costing U.S. corporations business
overseas, according to a new survey of 8,000 international consumers
released this week by the Seattle-based Global Market Insite (GMI) Inc.
Brands closely identified with the U.S., such as Marlboro cigarettes,
America Online (AOL), McDonald's, American Airlines, and Exxon-Mobil, are
particularly at risk. GMI, an independent market research company, conducted
the internet survey with consumers in eight countries from Dec. 10-12.
One-third of all consumers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia,
and the United Kingdom said that U.S. foreign policy, particularly the "war
on terror" and the occupation of Iraq, constituted their strongest
impression of the United States.
Twenty percent of respondents in Europe and Canada said they consciously
avoided buying U.S. products as a protest against those policies. That
finding was consistent with a similar poll carried out by GMI three weeks
after Bush's November election victory.
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus, online at
http://www.fpif.org
Inter Press Service.
See new FPIF commentary online at:
http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2004/0412europoll.html
printer-friendly pdf version at:
http://www.presentdanger.org/pdf/gac/0412europoll.pdf
from Foreign Policy In Focus:
Mainstream Media Miss Rumsfeld's "Dirty Wars" Talk
By Jim Lobe (December 1, 2004)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0412rumsfeld.html
By Jim Lobe (November 11, 2004)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0411wish.html
Iraq War Most Misguided Policy Since Vietnam
By Jim Lobe (October 13, 2004)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0410scholars.html
Interhemispheric Resource Center is proud to announce that, in conjunction
with our 25th anniversary, we have changed our name to International
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