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

STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ! BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!
ALL OUT JANUARY 20TH, 5:00 P.M., CIVIC CENTER, S.F.

************BREAKING NEWS**************

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kkk1928.jpg

This link brings you to a photo of the KKK marching down Pennsylvania
Avenue in Washington, DC in 1928. Evidently they were able to get
a permit.

(With many thanks to Kwame Somburu for supplying the link. This site
has a plethora of information about the KKK.... Bonnie Weinstein,
Bay Area United Against War)

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.

NEXT BAY AREA UNITED AGAINST WAR MEETING:

SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 11AM
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
(NEAR 16TH STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO)

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

Let's Hit the Streets
To Defend Abortion Rights!
Saturday, January 22

Emboldened rightwing abortion foes have had the nerve to announce
a march in San Francisco on the anniversary of the historic Roe v. Wade
decision! Show them that San Francisco is a reproductive rights town
-- save the date and plan to attend a counter demonstration!

What is needed in response is a multi-issue, militant, united front of
women, people of all colors, queers, immigrants, workers and everyone
targeted by the rightwing to show that the anti-abortionists are not
welcome in San Francisco! Make your opinion heard!

Details of assembly time and place will be announced soon.

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

WAILING WOMEN: By wailing together, this solstice event allows us to
share our true anguish and bring others' attention to the death and
destruction in Iraq during the height of the holiday season. Please
flashlight, and candle/cup as well as drums.
TUESDAY DECEMBER 21st
5:30 to 6:30PM UNION SQUARE
MORE INFORMATION, CALL: 415-565-0201 X24
Stephen McNeil
Assistant Regional Director Peacebuilding/Relief Work
AFSC
65 Ninth Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
tel: 415-565-0201 x 12
fax: 415-565-0204

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PICTURES OF WAR
Here are two sets of pictures.
First set---
PLEASE ACCESS:
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/
view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1
view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1>
Second Set--
PLEASE ACCESS:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/message/26138
>

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1) Attack on U.S. Base in Mosul Kills 22
By MICHAEL McDONOUGH
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP)
Dec 21, 11:33 AM EST
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=WFAA&SECTION=HOME

2) At Least 14 U.S. Soldiers Are Among the Dead
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
and CHRISTINE HAUSER
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 21, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/international/middleeast/21cnd-iraq.html?h
p&ex=1103691600&en=f90ba306f379b2a0&ei=5094&partner=homepage?hp

3) Reporter Provides Account of Mosul Attack
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
FORWARD OPERATING BASE MAREZ, Iraq (AP)
Filed at 1:53 p.m. ET
December 21, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Attack-Scene.html?oref
=login

4) 56 Percent in Survey Say Iraq War Was a Mistake
Poll Also Finds Slight Majority Favoring Rumsfeld's Exit
By John F. Harris and Christopher Muste
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 21, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14266-2004Dec20.html

5) Over 30,000 Georgians want country's servicemen in
Iraq withdrawn
From: Rick Rozoff
Itar-Tass
December 21, 2004
http://www.interfax.com/com?item=Geor&pg=0&id=5779269&req=

6) Stop the Lunch Break Take-Away:
Message from California Federation of Labor

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

1) Attack on U.S. Base in Mosul Kills 22
By MICHAEL McDONOUGH
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP)
Dec 21, 11:33 AM EST
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=WFAA&SECTION=HOME

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Rockets struck a mess tent at a military base in
Mosul where hundreds of U.S. soldiers had just sat down to lunch
Tuesday, and a Pentagon official said at least 22 people were killed
and 50 were wounded. A radical Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah
Army, claimed responsibility.

The attack came the same day that British Prime Minister Tony Blair
made a surprise visit to Baghdad and described the ongoing violence
in Iraq as a "battle between democracy and terror."

Jeremy Redmon, a reporter for the Richmond, Va., Times-Dispatch
embedded with the troops in Mosul, said 13 soldiers were killed in
the attack at Forward Operating Base Marez, including two from the
Richmond-based 276th Engineer Battalion. More than 50 people
were wounded, and civilians may have been among them, he said.

The base, also known as the al-Ghizlani military camp, is used by
both U.S. troops and the interim Iraqi government's security forces
The identities of the casualties were not known, the Pentagon official
said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. Army's Task Force Olympia is based in this predominantly
Sunni Muslim city, about 220 miles north of Baghdad.

Amid the screaming and thick smoke in the tent, soldiers turned
their tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently
carried them into the parking lot, Redmon said.

Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters, while others
wandered around in a daze and collapsed, he said.

"I can't hear! I can't hear!" one female soldier cried as a friend
hugged her.

The shelling blew a huge hole in the roof of the tent, and puddles
of blood, lunch trays and overturned tables and chairs covered the
floor, Redmond reported.

Near the front entrance, troops tended a soldier with a serious head
wound, but within minutes, they zipped him into a black body bag,
he said. Three more bodies were in the parking lot.

The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for the attack in
a statement on the Internet. It said the attack was a "martyrdom
operation" targeting a mess hall in the al-Ghizlani camp.

Ansar al-Sunna is believed to be a fundamentalist group that wants
to turn Iraq into an Islamic state like Afghanistan's former Taliban
regime. The Sunni Muslim group claimed responsibility for
beheading 12 Nepalese hostages and other recent attacks in Mosul.

Mosul was the scene of the deadliest single incident for U.S. troops
in Iraq. On Nov. 15, 2003, two Black Hawk helicopters collided over
the city, killing 17 soldiers and injuring five. The crash occurred as
the two choppers maneuvered to avoid ground fire from insurgents.

Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, was relatively peaceful in the
immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last
year. But insurgent attacks in the largely Sunni Arab area have
increased dramatically in the past year and particularly since the
U.S.-led military operation in November to retake the restive city
of Fallujah from militants.

Earlier in the day, hundreds of students demonstrated in the
center of the city, demanding that U.S. troops cease breaking
into homes and mosques there.

Also Tuesday, Iraqi security forces repelled another attack by
insurgents trying to seize a police station in the center of the city,
the U.S. military said.

On Sunday, insurgents detonated two roadside bombs and a car
bomb targeting U.S. forces in Mosul in three separate attacks.
Other car bombs Sunday killed 67 people in the Shiite holy cites
of Najaf and Karbala.

Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, warned Monday that
insurgents are trying to foment sectarian civil war as well as
derail the Jan. 30 elections.

During his visit, Blair held talks with Allawi and Iraqi election
officials, whom he called heroes for carrying out their work
despite attacks. Three members of Iraq's election commission
were dragged from the car and killed this week in Baghdad.

"I said to them that I thought they were the heroes of the new
Iraq that's being created, because here are people who are
risking their lives every day to make sure that the people of
Iraq get a chance to decide their own destiny," Blair said at
a joint news conference with Allawi.

Blair, who has paid a political price for going to war in Iraq,
defended the role of Britain's 8,000 troops by referring to
terrorism.

"If we defeat it here, we deal it a blow worldwide," he said.
"If Iraq is a stable and democratic country, that is good for
the Middle East, and what is good for the Middle East,
is actually good for the world, including Britain.

Blair, whose trip to Iraq hadn't been disclosed for security
reasons, urged Iraqis to back next month's elections.

"Whatever people's feelings and beliefs about the removal
of Saddam Hussein, and the wisdom of that, there surely is
only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle
between democracy and terror," he said.

Allawi said his government was committed to holding the
elections as scheduled, despite calls for their postponement
owing to the violence.

"We have always expected that the violence would increase
as we approach the elections," Allawi said. "We now are on
the verge, for the first time in history, of having democracy
in action in this country."

Blair flew into the Iraqi capital about 11 a.m. aboard a British
military transport aircraft from Jordan. A Royal Air Force
Puma helicopter flew from Baghdad airport to the city center,
escorted by U.S. Black Hawk helicopters.

It was Blair's first visit to Baghdad and his third to Iraq since
the dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003. Blair
visited British troops stationed around the southern Iraqi city
of Basra in mid-2003 and in January. President Bush had paid
a surprise visit to U.S. troops in Baghdad at Thanksgiving in
2003.

Blair flew to Basra later Tuesday.

The British leader was a key supporter of the U.S.-led invasion
of Iraq that toppled Saddam. His decision to back the U.S.
offensive angered many lawmakers in his governing Labour Party
and a large portion of the British public.

In other violence Tuesday, a U.S. jet bombed a suspected insurgent
target west of Baghdad. Hamdi Al-Alosi, a doctor in a hospital in
the city of Hit, said four people were killed and seven injured in
the strike. He said the attack damaged several cars and two
buildings. A U.S. military spokesman could not confirm the
casualties.

Elsewhere, five American soldiers and an Iraqi civilian were
wounded when the Humvee they were traveling in was hit by
a car bomb near Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S.
military said.

In Baqouba, a city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, unidentified
assailants shot and killed an Iraqi nuclear scientist as he was on
his way to work, witnesses said. Taleb Ibrahim al-Daher,
a professor at Diyala University, was killed as he drove over
a bridge on the Khrisan river. His car swerved and plummeted
into the water.

In northern Iraq, insurgents set ablaze a major pipeline used
to ship oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, a principal export
route for Iraqi oil, an official with the North Oil CO. said.
Firefighters were on the scene, 70 miles southwest of Kirkuk.

Insurgents have often targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure,
repeatedly cutting exports and denying the country much-
needed reconstruction money.

Associated Press writer John Lumpkin in Washington
contributed to this story.

(c) 2004 The Associated Press

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

2) At Least 14 U.S. Soldiers Are Among the Dead
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
and CHRISTINE HAUSER
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 21, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/international/middleeast/21cnd-iraq.html?h
p&ex=1103691600&en=f90ba306f379b2a0&ei=5094&partner=homepage?hp

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 21 - An attack at an American military
base in Mosul today killed at least 24 people and wounded
57, among them American and Iraqi soldiers and American
and foreign contractors, the military said.

Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, who briefed reporters from Mosul,
said an explosion had devastated a military dining facility
around lunchtime, but he gave no further details on the means
of the attack or of the casualty toll in terms of numbers of dead
or wounded or their nationalities. At least 14 American servicemen
were among the dead, officials said, making the explosion one
of the single worst attacks on American forces in Iraq.

"It's a sad day in Mosul," General Ham said, "but as they always
do, soldiers will come back from that and they will do what they
can do best to honor those who have fallen today and that is
to see this very important mission through to a successful
conclusion."

The Bush administration reiterated its resolve to press ahead
with its Iraq policy. "The enemies of freedom understand the
stakes involved," the chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan,
said in Washington. "You heard the president talk about that
yesterday. They will be defeated, and a free and peaceful Iraq
will emerge."

The attack was the latest in a campaign by militants to terrorize
and intimidate Iraqis working either for the Iraqi security services
or for American forces, and to disrupt the elections planned for
Jan. 30, which the militants oppose.

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna took responsibility for today's attack,
at Forward Operating Base Marez, also known as the Ghizlani camp,
saying in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site that it had been
a "martyrdom operation." That usually indicates a suicide bombing,
but the means of attack were still unclear this evening. Investigators
were also considering mortar or rocket fire.

Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman for Task Force Olympia at the
base, described the attack to The Associated Press as a "single
explosion," though officials "do not know if it was a mortar or
a placed explosive."

Photographs by Dean Hoffmeyer of the Richmond Times-Dispatch,
broadcast on television and posted on the Internet, showed scenes
of mayhem and chaos as the casualties were being evacuated from
the huge, tattered military tent, which can seat several hundred
soldiers at a time. The dining facility, alongside the main airport
in Mosul, was recently featured in an Agence France-Presse
report on Thanksgiving Day for the troops.

"Most of the soldiers belonged to units of the Fort Lewis,
Washington state-based 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division,
known as the Stryker Brigade, which deployed in Mosul in mid-
October for a one-year mission," the Agence France-Presse
report said. Statements by military officers at Fort Lewis today
indicated that the base was still home to a large contingent from
Washington State.

Mosul has been the scene of frequent raids by insurgents on
police stations in the past six weeks. More than 100 bodies have
turned up in the city in recent weeks, as the country heads toward
the elections. On Sunday, car bombers struck crowds in Najaf and
Karbala, killing at least 61 people and wounding about 120 in those
two holy Shiite cities. In Baghdad, about 30 insurgents hurling
grenades and firing machine guns pulled three election officials
from their car in the midst of morning traffic and killed them with
shots to the head.

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna is regarded as a particularly brutal
faction of the insurgency that has developed in strength and scope
over the last several months. Among its more notable acts have
been the killings, sometimes by beheading, of 11 captive Iraqi
soldiers and 12 hostage truck drivers from Nepal. Ansar al-Sunna
is an offshoot of Ansar al-Islam, a jihadist organization chased out
of its mountain base in northern Iraq by American Special Forces
and Kurdish militiamen at the start of the war in Iraq.

Today's explosion coincided with an unannounced visit to Baghdad
by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who vowed that the war
against the insurgents would be won and the elections held on
time. Britain has some 8,000 troops in Iraq, mainly in the south
of the country, centered in the city of Basra.

At a news conference in the so-called Green Zone, a fortified,
heavily guarded walled compound for Iraqi government officials
and foreign forces, Mr. Blair used his visit, his first to Baghdad
since Saddam Hussein was toppled in spring 2003, to emphasize
Britain's support for the national elections, saying the country
was engaged in a "battle between democracy and terror."

Insurgents have been trying to disrupt or prevent the scheduled
vote and the campaigning process by an Iraqi government that
they see as collaborating with occupying foreign forces. The
attacks on the Iraqi police and national guard officers have
complicated plans to train enough local forces that would ideally
spearhead security at polling stations.

Some Iraqi leaders have called for a postponement of the elections,
saying that the continuing violence has made holding them untenable,
especially in the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of Baghdad.
Millions of voters would have to brave the threat of attacks by
guerrillas to go to polling stations.

With the elections only six weeks away and just days into the
campaigning, concern has been growing over whether the Iraqi
security forces will be able to perform well enough to allow
voting to proceed.

David Stout contributed reporting from Washington.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times

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

3) Reporter Provides Account of Mosul Attack
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
FORWARD OPERATING BASE MAREZ, Iraq (AP)
Filed at 1:53 p.m. ET
December 21, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Attack-Scene.html?oref
=login

FORWARD OPERATING BASE MAREZ, Iraq (AP) -- It was a brilliant,
sunny day with blue skies and warmer than usual weather in the
northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Hundreds of U.S. soldiers had just sat down for lunch in their giant
chow hall tent.

It was about noon Tuesday when insurgents hit their tent with
a suspected rocket attack, killing 24 people, including two soldiers
from the Richmond-based 276th Engineer Battalion. Sixty-four
people were reported wounded; civilians may have been among
them.

The force of the explosions knocked soldiers off their feet and
out of their seats. A fireball enveloped the top of the tent, and
shrapnel sprayed into the men.

Amid the screaming and thick smoke that followed, quick-thinking
soldiers turned their lunch tables upside down, placed the wounded
on them and gently carried them into the parking lot.

``Medic! Medic!'' soldiers shouted.

Medics rushed into the tent and hustled the rest of the wounded
out on stretchers.

Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters outside.
Others wobbled around the tent and collapsed, dazed by the blast.

``I can't hear! I can't hear!'' one female soldier cried as a friend
hugged her.

Near the front entrance to the chow hall, troops tended a soldier
with a gaping head wound. Within minutes, they zipped him into
a black body bag. Three more bodies were in the parking lot.

The military asked that the dead not be identified until families
could be notified.

Soldiers scrambled back into the hall to check for more wounded.
The explosions blew out a huge hole in the roof of the tent. Puddles
of bright red blood, lunch trays and overturned tables and chairs
covered the floor.

Grim-faced soldiers growled angrily about the attack as they
stomped away.

``Mother (expletive)!'' one mumbled.

Sgt. Evan Byler, of the 276th, steadied himself on one of the
concrete bomb shelters. He was eating chicken tenders and
macaroni when the bomb hit. The blast knocked him out of his
chair. When the smoke cleared, Byler took off his shirt and wrapped
it around a seriously wounded soldier.

Byler held the bloody shirt in his hand, not quite sure what to
do with it.

``It's not the first close call I have had here,'' said Byler, a Fauquier
County, Va., resident who survived a blast from an improvised
explosive device while riding in a vehicle earlier this year.

Byler started walking back to his base when he spotted a soldier
collapse from shock on the side of the road. Byler and Lt. Shawn
Otto, also of the 276th, put the grieving soldier on a passing
pickup truck.

The 276th, with about 500 troops, had made it a year without
losing a soldier and is preparing to return home in about a month.

``We almost made it. We almost made it to the end without
getting somebody killed,'' Otto said glumly.

At least two other soldiers with the 276th were injured, but it
was not clear how serious their wounds are.

Insurgents have fired mortars at the chow hall more than 30
times this year. One round killed a female soldier with the 3rd
Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division in the summer as she scrambled
for cover in one of the concrete bomb shelters. Workers are
building a new steel and concrete chow hall for the soldiers
just down the dusty dirt road.

Lt. Dawn Wheeler, a member of the 276th from Centreville, Va.,
was waiting in line for chicken tenders when a round hit on the
other side of a wall from her. A soldier who had been standing
beside her was on the ground, struggling with shrapnel buried
deep in his neck.

``We all have angels on us,'' she said as she pulled away
in a Humvee.

Wheeler quickly joined other officers from the 276th for
an emergency meeting minutes after the blast.

Maj. James Zollar, the unit's acting commander, spoke to
more than a dozen of his officers in a voice thick with emotion.
He urged them to keep their troops focused on their missions.

``This is a tragic, tragic thing for us but we still have missions,''
he told them. ``It's us, the leaders, who have to pull them together.''

Just hours before the blast, Zollar had awarded a Purple Heart
to a soldier from the 276th who was wounded in a mortar attack
on another part of the base in October.

Zollar eventually turned the emergency meeting over to Chaplain
Eddie Barnett. He led the group in prayer.

``Help us now, God, in this time of this very tragic circumstance,''
Barnett said. ``We pray for your healing upon our wounded soldiers.''

With heads hung low, the soldiers trudged outside. They had work
to do.

Jeremy Redmon, a Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter embedded
with U.S. troops, was at Forward Operating Base Marez when it
came under attack.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

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

4) 56 Percent in Survey Say Iraq War Was a Mistake
Poll Also Finds Slight Majority Favoring Rumsfeld's Exit
By John F. Harris and Christopher Muste
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 21, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14266-2004Dec20.html

President Bush heads into his second term amid deep and growing
public skepticism about the Iraq war, with a solid majority saying for
the first time that the war was a mistake and most people believing
that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should lose his job,
according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

While a slight majority believe the Iraq war contributed to the long-
term security of the United States, 70 percent of Americans think
these gains have come at an "unacceptable" cost in military casualties.
This led 56 percent to conclude that, given the cost, the conflict there
was "not worth fighting" -- an eight-point increase from when the
same question was asked this summer, and the first time a decisive
majority of people have reached this conclusion.

Bush lavished praise on Rumsfeld at a morning news conference
yesterday, but the Pentagon chief who soared to international
celebrity and widespread admiration after the terrorist attacks
three years ago can be glad he answers to an audience of one.
Among the public, 35 percent of respondents approved of his
job performance and 53 percent disapproved; 52 percent said
Bush should give Rumsfeld his walking papers.

Seven weeks since his reelection victory over Democrat
John F. Kerry and four weeks before his second inauguration,
the poll suggests Bush is in a paradoxical situation -- a triumphant
president who remains acutely vulnerable in public opinion on
a national security issue that is dominating headlines and could
shadow his second term.

While the results are bad for Bush as people look at past decisions --
whether the Iraq war should have been waged in the first place --
the president has more support for his policies over the choices
he faces going forward.

A strong majority of Americans, 58 percent, support keeping military
forces in Iraq until "civil order is restored," even in the face of
continued U.S. causalities. By a slight margin, 48 percent to 44 percent,
more voters agreed with Bush's position that the United States is
making "significant progress" toward its goal of establishing
democracy in Iraq. Yet, by a similar margin, the public believes
the United States is not making significant progress toward
restoring civil order.

This was just one area where there was considerable
ambivalence and even pessimism about the challenges
confronting U.S. policy in the coming months.

On the question of whether Iraq is prepared for elections next
month -- a topic widely debated among national security experts
-- 58 percent of respondents believed the violence-plagued
country is not ready. Nonetheless, 60 percent want elections
to go forward as scheduled -- even though 54 percent do not
expect honest results with a "fair and accurate vote count."
Fifty-four percent are not confident elections will produce
a stable government that can rule effectively.

Bush waged his reelection campaign heavily on national security,
but the polling data reaffirm what similar surveys showed during
the campaign: He is winning only half the case.

A full 57 percent disapprove of his handling of Iraq, a number
that is seven percentage points higher than a poll taken in
September. But the president's core political asset, public
confidence in his leadership on terrorism, remains intact,
albeit down significantly from even a year ago. Fifty-three
percent approve of his record on terrorism, while 43 percent
do not. Those numbers were 70 percent and 28 percent
a year ago this week.

The public splits down the middle on Bush's overall job
performance, with 48 percent approving while 49 percent
disapprove, percentages that closely approximate results
taken just before the election. By contrast, President Bill
Clinton had an approval of 60 percent in a poll taken just
before he began his second term.

The Post-ABC results are consistent with other newly
released surveys. Time magazine, which this week named
Bush its "Person of the Year," found that 49 percent approve
of his job performance, little changed from before the
election. A Pew Research Center survey, meanwhile,
showed that the angry divisions about Bush that marked
the 2004 campaign were hardly bridged by the election's
end -- nor were the sharply divergent appraisals of reality.
By emphatic majorities, Bush voters were upbeat on whether
things are going well in Iraq and with the economy, while
Kerry voters were negative.

The Post poll also showed such partisan divides on many
foreign policy and national security questions. In a potential
trouble sign for the White House, Republicans' support for
Bush on these questions is lower than the Democratic
opposition. And majorities of independents side with the
Democrats in their skepticism toward the administration's
course.

There are sharp partisan divisions over Rumsfeld, with
about two-thirds of Democrats and slight majorities of
independents disapproving of his job performance and
believing he should be replaced. Smaller majorities of
Republicans, about six in 10, approve of Rumsfeld and
want him to stay in the job.

There are similar splits on Iraq. Majorities of Republicans,
Democrats and independents agree the elections should be
held. But more than two-thirds of Democrats and about six
in 10 independents believe that Iraq is not ready for elections
and that the vote will not be fair and will not produce a stable
Iraqi government, in contrast to a majority of Republicans.
Opinion is even more sharply divided over the outcome of
elections. Seven in 10 Democrats and five in nine independents
believe elections will not produce a stable government in Iraq,
while more than two-thirds of Republicans believe they will.

A total of 1,004 randomly selected Americans were interviewed
Dec. 16 to 19. The margin of sampling error for the results
is plus or minus three percentage points.

(c) 2004 The Washington Post Company

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

5) Over 30,000 Georgians want country's servicemen in
Iraq withdrawn
From: Rick Rozoff
Itar-Tass
December 21, 2004
http://www.interfax.com/com?item=Geor&pg=0&id=5779269&req=

Tbilisi - About 34,000 Georgians put their signatures
under the appeal to refrain from sending servicemen
for duty out of the country, and withdraw the military
contingent from Iraq, Irina Sarishvili-Chanturiya,
chairwoman of the People's Protection League, a
non-governmental organization that started the action,
told Interfax-Military News Agency Tuesday.

"According to our laws, it is necessary to collect
30,000 signatures for the parliament to take an appeal
for consideration. We collected 34,000, " she said.

Sarishvili-Chanturiya said that the appeal with duly
listed signatures of Georgian citizens will be handed
over to the parliament soonest, but no later than in
January. "We have a preliminary agreement with some
legislators to voice our requests which will be then
discussed," she added.

The collecting of signatures has been on since summer.
"The process gained momentum recently, with more and
more citizens speaking in favor of the withdrawal of
our servicemen from Iraq," she said.

Georgia has been involved in the operation of the
multinational forces in Iraq since 2003, with its 300
servicemen deployed there now. There are plans to
increase the strength to 850 in 2005.

Marxism mailing list
Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
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---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

6) Stop the Lunch Break Take-Away:
Message from California Federation of Labor

Dear Friends,

Governor Schwarzenegger is trying to bully California workers
out of their lunch breaks! Late Friday evening the Administration
announced new "emergency regulations" that would eliminate
the guaranteed right to a lunch break for California workers
in the private sector.

The changes announced by the Governor would also shorten
the amount of time that employers can be held liable for refusing
to provide breaks. Wal-Mart and other companies that are being
sued for cheating their workers out of lunch breaks would
be off the legal hook if Gov. Schwarzenegger's changes
go into effect.

The new regulations also include language that would make
the timing on lunch breaks more flexible. The Administration
is suggesting to the media that these are the only changes to
the law -- hoping we won't notice the lunch break robbery until
its too late.

Tell Governor Schwarzenegger that you will not stand by while
he cheats California workers out of their lunch break. Go to:
http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/EpzEsL117u2b/ to take action now.

Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.

http://www.unionvoice.org/join-forward.html?domain=calaborfed&r=1pzEsL11PcAN

If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for
California Labor Federation AFL-CIO at:

http://www.unionvoice.org/calaborfed/join.html?r=1pzEsL11PcANE

OWC CAMPAIGN NEWS - distributed by the Open World Conference in
Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights, c/o S.F. Labor
Council, 1188 Franklin St., #203, San Francisco, CA 94109.
To SUB/ UNSUBSCRIBE, contact the OWC at .
Phone: (415) 641-8616 Fax: (415) 440-9297.
Visit our website at www.owcinfo.org - Notify if any change in email
address.
(Please excuse duplicate postings, and please feel free to re-post.)

posted 7:17 PM  0 comments