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BARRIO UNIDO FOR A GENERAL AND UNCONDITIONAL AMNESTY

We make a call to the immigrant community and all those who are
in solidarity with our struggle to join us in front of the Federal Building
to protest the raids that we have been victims of and that are occurring
in different parts of the country.

They harass us as though we are animals of prey.
They lock us up in prisons for working for a miserable salary.
They steal our salaries that we earn with the sweat of our brow.
They separate us from our children leaving them traumatized for life......

We denounce the North American government for treating us like garbage
to be thrown away and taking advantage of our search for our daily bread
for their own political reasons.

We denounce the Mexican and Latin American governments for being
accomplices with the North American government for our misery and
for this involuntary exodus that has been forced upon us because
of the political, social, and economic conditions of our countries

We demand.......
To cease the immigration raids now!
To free all detained workers!
To return jobs to all those detained!
The right to all undocumented immigrants to unionize!

We demand a General and Unconditional Amnesty for all!

Protest the United States government

When: Friday, January 12, 2007
Where: 450 Golden Gate (Federal Building)
Time: 4pm to 7pm
Join in the struggle!

For more information call 415-431-9925

In Spanish:

BARRIÓ UNIDO POR UNA AMNISTÍA GENERAL E INCONDICIONAL
Hace un llamado a la población emigrante y a todos las que se
solidarizan con ella a un piquete enfrente del Edificio Federal
en protesta a las redadas de que estamos siendo victimas
en diferentes partes del país.
DONDE:
Se nos acosa como si fuéramos animales de caza.

Se nos encierra en prisiones para trabajar por sueldos de miseria.

Se nos roban los sueldos que hemos ganado con el sudor de
nuestra frente...

Se nos separa de nuestros hijos dej*ndolos traumados de por vida......

Denunciamos al gobierno Norte Americano por tratarnos como
basura desechable y utilizar nuestra búsqueda por el pan de cada
día para sus propósitos políticos...

Denunciamos a los gobiernos de México y América latina por ser
cómplices con el gobierno de Estados Unidos de nuestra miseria
y de este éxodo involuntario que las condiciones políticas,
sociales, y económicas de nuestros países nos ha obligado
a emprender.

Demandamos...

¡Cese a las redadas de la migra ahora!
¡Libertad a todos los trabajadores detenidos!
¡Regreso a su puesto de trabajo a todos los detenidos!
¡Derecho de los indocumentados a sindicalizarse!
¡Demandamos una Amnistía General e Incondicional para todos!

Piquete al Gobierno de Estados Unidos
Cuando: Viernes, 12 de Enero 2007
Dónde: 450 Golden Gate
Hora: 4pm a 7pm
Únete a la lucha
Para mas información llame a 415-431-9925

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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Chávez Plans One Big Venezuela Leftist Party, Led by Him
By SIMON ROMERO
January 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/world/americas/04venez.html?ref=world

2) In Padilla Wiretaps, Murky View of ‘Jihad’ Case
By DEBORAH SONTAG
January 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04padilla.html?ref=us

3) Exxon Accused of Trying to Mislead Public
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
January 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/business/04exxon.html

4) A Mother Fights for a Soldier Who Said No to War
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 4, 2007; C01
www.marxmail.org

5) A drop into the abyss
Saddam jailed me but his hanging was a crime. Iraq's misery is now far
worse than under his rule
Haifa Zangana
Thursday January 4, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1982437,00.html

6) Behold Marx's twitch
By John Thornhill
Financial Times, Dec. 28, 2006
www.marxmail.org

7) Dear Friends of Lynne Stewart and Mumia Abu-Jamal
Next planning meeting for Lynne Stewart tour:
Saturday, January 6 at 10:30 AM
Socialist Action Bookstore
298 Valencia Street (14th and Valencia)
San Francisco
[Message via email...bw]

8) OTHER PEOPLE'S CONGRESS
[Col. Writ. 12/14/06] Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Via email...be]

9) In War of Vague Borders, Detainee Longs for Court
By ADAM LIPTAK
January 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05terror.html

10) F.B.I. Lent Help on 2 Occasions to Nomination of Rehnquist
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05rehnquist.html

11) THE IRAQ WAR — 16 YEARS AND COUNTING
By Jack A. Smith
Hudson Valley (NY) Activist Newsletter, Jan. 4, 2007
[VIA email...bw]

12) Execution Memories Refuse To Go Away
Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily
http://dahrjamailiraq.com

13) A New Commander, in Step With the White House on Iraq
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
January 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/middleeast/06petraeus.html?hp&ex=1168146000&en=689c1f2b896c5559&ei=5094&partner=homepage

14) Bush Plan for Iraq Requests More Troops and More Jobs
By DAVID E. SANGER
January 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast/07prexy.html?hp&ex=1168146000&en=6290f2f1b6ed442c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

15) CUBA LEADS IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Hudson Valley Activist Newspaper,
Jan. 4, 2007
[VIA Email...bw]

16) THE URGE TO SURGE
[Col. Writ. 12/24/06] Copyright '06
Mumia Abu-Jamal
[VIA Email...bw]

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1) Chávez Plans One Big Venezuela Leftist Party, Led by Him
By SIMON ROMERO
January 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/world/americas/04venez.html?ref=world

CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan. 3 — President Hugo Chávez has begun
forging a single Socialist party among his varied supporters, one
of his recent efforts to create momentum for far-reaching changes
to Venezuela’s political system that analysts say will effectively
concentrate greater political power in his hands.

Mr. Chávez formally announced the plan for the single party,
called the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, in a speech last
month to supporters here. He reminded them of his 23-percentage
-point margin of victory when he was re-elected last month
to a six-year term.

“Those votes don’t belong to any party.” Mr. Chávez said. “They
belong to Chávez and the people.”

Since then the swiftness and boldness of Mr. Chávez’s attempt
to create such a large party tied so closely to his personal leadership
have created concern, even among sympathetic political analysts,
that the step would effectively turn Venezuela into a one-party state.

In an essay published on Aporrea, an influential pro-Chávez blog,
Edgardo Lander, a sociologist at the Central University of Venezuela,
questioned the reasoning behind forming a single political party
described as Socialist when the definition of the “21st-century
Socialism” that Mr. Chávez aspires to build remained extremely
vague.

“Isn’t the cart being placed in front of the ox?” Mr. Lander wrote.
“What future, from the point of view of pluralism and democracy,
lies ahead for a political organization decreed in this fashion?”

Analysts more critical of Mr. Chávez have drawn a parallel with
Fidel Castro’s successful effort to create a single ruling party
in Cuba in the early 1960s.

Mr. Chávez has tried to assuage concerns that his project would
lead to authoritarianism by saying party leaders would largely
be chosen by his rank-and-file supporters, an idea lambasted
by critics here. “His tireless finger won’t stop singling out those
who are going to be the bosses,” said Teodoro Petkoff, the
editor of the opposition-aligned newspaper Tal Cual.

Some of Mr. Chávez’s supporters say the creation of a single
party would strengthen the government’s hand in combating
excessive bureaucracy and corruption stemming from the need
to distribute political spoils to an array of different parties.
Others view the new party as a way to remain ahead of
a fractious opposition.

The move has already revealed tensions within the coalition
of more than 20 political parties that currently supports the
president. Critics of the plan say it could marginalize relatively
small pro-Chávez parties that support an open economy,
existing government institutions and a pluralistic political
system.

By contrast, much of the support comes from more hard-line
members of Mr. Chávez’s own party, the Fifth Republic Movement,
which was dissolved last month to make way for its larger successor.

Some of those supporters want to strengthen parallel political
institutions created by Mr. Chávez, like a system of health
clinics and universities closely tied to the president and his
Socialist project for the nation.

For instance, he has announced a plan to build as many as
50 new universities, expected to be modeled on the three-year-
old Bolivarian University of Venezuela, which provides Socialist-
inspired, tuition-free classes to more than 170,000 students.

“We’re witnessing a struggle between two ideological currents
within the Chavista movement,” said Steve Ellner, a political
scientist at University of the East in Venezuela.

Some of the strongest resistance comes from Mr. Chávez’s
allies on the far left. The Communist Party, in particular, stands
to lose considerable stature if it folds into the new party, though
it is expected to do so.

The Communists have weathered decades of persecution and
the collapse of the Soviet Union. “The Communist Party was
created to defend the workers and should continue this struggle,”
Jerónimo Carrera, a senior party official, told the newspaper
El Nacional.

Mr. Chávez’s critics on the left and right regularly say he is
carrying out a “fake revolution” exemplified by a boom in
consumer spending on imported goods and the distribution
of economic favors and government contracts to those
who support his oil-financed administration.

But Mr. Chávez has also created thousands of agricultural
and industrial cooperatives. And he has expanded the
influence of “communal councils,” groups of 20 or so people
in poor areas who make routine planning decisions and
are financed by small communal banks. He said recently
that he would put $2 billion at the disposal of these
councils in 2007.

He still runs the risk, however remote, of losing one or
two smaller but important parties in his coalition. These
parties, which include Podemos and Fatherland for
All, are expected to decide this month whether to join
the new party.

As Mr. Chávez presses forward with that party, he seems
eager to imbue senior officials with a greater understanding
of Socialist ideology, as well as closer allegiance to his
own wishes.

Late last year, legislators in the National Assembly,
controlled by supporters of Mr. Chávez, were enrolled
in classes on Marxist analysis and socialist thinking
taught by professors from the National Armed Forces
Experimental University.

Signaling a desire for even his highest-ranking allies
to fall into step with what he calls his Bolivarian Revolution,
Mr. Chávez publicly dressed down Vice President José
Vicente Rangel and Interior Minister Jesse Chacón last
month.

The reason? They let an orchestra omit the Panamanian
anthem from an act honoring Simón Bolívar, the South
American independence leader, who died 176 years ago.

“We have to struggle against such inefficiency,” Mr. Chávez
said in comments broadcast on the state television. “What
a shame to have such disorganization for such a sublime
event,” he added, as a small crowd in attendance applauded.

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2) In Padilla Wiretaps, Murky View of ‘Jihad’ Case
By DEBORAH SONTAG
January 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04padilla.html?ref=us

In 1997, as the government listened in on their phone call, Adham
Hassoun, a computer programmer in Broward County, Fla., proposed
a road trip to Jose Padilla, a low-wage worker there. The excursion
to Tampa would be his treat, Mr. Hassoun said, and a chance
to meet “some nice, uh, brothers.”

Mr. Padilla, 36, a Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican who had converted
to Islam a few years earlier, knew Mr. Hassoun, an outspoken
Palestinian, from his mosque. Still, according to a transcript
of the conversation obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Padilla
equivocated as Mr. Hassoun exhorted.

“We take the whole family and have a blast,” Mr. Hassoun said.
“We go to, uh, our Busch Gardens, you know ... You won’t
regret it. Money-back guarantee.”

Mr. Padilla, laughing, suggested that they not discuss
the matter over the phone.

“Why?” Mr. Hassoun said. “We’re going to Busch Gardens.
What’s the big deal!”

That conversation took place five years before Mr. Padilla,
a United States citizen accused of plotting a “dirty bomb”
attack against this country, was declared an enemy combatant.
Given that Mr. Padilla and Mr. Hassoun are now criminal
defendants in a terrorism conspiracy case in Miami,
it sounds suspicious, as if Mr. Hassoun were proposing
something more sinister than a weekend at the amusement
park. He well may have been — but maybe, too, he was
sincere or joking about a Muslim retreat.

Deciphering such chatter in order to construct a convincing
narrative of conspiracy is a challenge. Yet, prosecutors say,
the government will rely largely on wiretapped conversations
when it puts Mr. Padilla, Mr. Hassoun, and a third defendant,
Kifah Jayyousi, on trial as a “North American support cell”
that sent money, goods and recruits abroad to assist
“global jihad.”

Tens of thousands of conversations were recorded. Some 230
phone calls form the core of the government’s case, including 21
that make reference to Mr. Padilla, prosecutors said. But
Mr. Padilla’s voice is heard on only seven calls. And on those
seven, which The Times obtained from a participant in the
case, Mr. Padilla does not discuss violent plots.

But this is not the version of Mr. Padilla — Al Qaeda associate
and would-be bomber — that John Ashcroft, then the attorney
general, unveiled in 2002 when he interrupted a trip to Moscow
to trumpet Mr. Padilla’s capture. In the four and a half years
since then, as the government tested the limits of its power
to deal with terrorism outside the traditional law enforcement
system, Mr. Padilla is the only accused terrorist to have gone
from enemy combatant to criminal defendant.

His criminal trial, scheduled to begin late this month, will
feature none of the initial claims about violent plotting with
Al Qaeda that the government cited as justification for detaining
Mr. Padilla without formal charges for three and a half years.
Those claims came from the government’s overseas interrogations
of terrorism suspects, like Abu Zubaydah, which, the government
said, Mr. Padilla corroborated, in part, during his own questioning
in a military brig in South Carolina.

But, constrained by strict federal rules of evidence that would
prohibit or limit the use of information obtained during such
interrogations, the government will make a far more circumscribed
case against Mr. Padilla in court, effectively demoting him from
Al Qaeda’s dirty bomber to foot soldier in a somewhat nebulous
conspiracy.

The initial dirty bomb accusation did not disappear. It quietly
resurfaced in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The government filed the
dirty bomb charges against Mr. Padilla’s supposed accomplice,
an Ethiopian-born detainee, at about the same time it indicted
Mr. Padilla on relatively lesser offenses in criminal court.

A Change in Strategy

The change in Mr. Padilla’s status, from enemy combatant to
criminal defendant, was abrupt. It came late in 2005 as the
Supreme Court was weighing whether to take up the legality
of his military detention and the Bush administration, by filing
criminal charges, pre-empted its review. In a way, Mr. Padilla’s
prosecution was a legal maneuver that kept the issue of his
detention without charges out of the Supreme Court. After
apprehending him at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago
in May 2002, the Bush administration made a choice: to detain
Mr. Padilla militarily, in order to thwart further plotting, rather
than to follow him in order to gather evidence that might serve
a criminal prosecution.

Now that Mr. Padilla has ended up a criminal defendant after
all, the prosecution’s case does not fully reflect the Bush
administration’s view of who he is or what he did.

Senior government officials have said publicly that Mr. Padilla
provided self-incriminating information during interrogations,
admitting, they said, to undergoing basic terrorist training,
to accepting an assignment to blow up apartment buildings
in the United States, and to attending a farewell dinner with
Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected master planner
of the Sept. 11 attacks, before he flew to Chicago in 2002.

But any confessions by Mr. Padilla while he was detained
without charges and denied access to counsel — whether
or not he was mistreated, as his lawyers claim — would
not be admissible in court.

And it is unlikely that information obtained during the harsh
questioning of Al Qaeda detainees would be admissible, either —
and, further, the government is disinclined to expose sensitive
intelligence or invite further scrutiny of secret jails overseas.

Probably as a consequence, the current criminal case zeroes
in on what the government sees as an earlier stage of
Mr. Padilla’s involvement with terrorism. It focuses primarily
on the other defendants’ support during the 1990s for Muslim
struggles overseas, especially in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya.
Mr. Padilla, who was appended to their pre-existing case,
in which he had been an unnamed co-conspirator, is depicted
as their recruit.

Although prosecutors have declined to discuss the government’s
strategy, their filings and statements in court provide a picture
of the case they are expected to present at trial.

The most tangible allegation against Mr. Padilla is that in 2000
he filled out, under an alias, an Arab-language application to attend
a terrorist training camp. That application is expected to be offered
into evidence alongside the wiretapped conversations, but
Mr. Padilla’s lawyers say they will contest its admissibility,
challenging the government’s assertion that the “mujahideen
data form” belonged to their client.

Robert Chesney, a specialist in national security law at Wake
Forest University, called the prosecution a pragmatic one,
analogous to “going after Al Capone on tax evasion.”

But Deborah Pearlstein, a lawyer with Human Rights First
who has consulted with Mr. Padilla’s defense, said that his
will never be an ordinary, pragmatic prosecution. “If Jose
Padilla were from Day 1 just charged and tried, then maybe,”
she said. “But this is a case that comes after three and a half
years of the most gross deprivation of human rights that
we’ve seen in this country for a long time.”

Further, Ms. Pearlstein noted, the government has reserved
the option, should the prosecution fail, of returning Mr. Padilla
to the military brig. This, she said, “casts a shadow” over the
current prosecution.

The Bush administration’s military case against Binyam Mohamed,
28, the Ethiopian detainee at Guantánamo, put the current
proceedings in a different light, too.

In December 2005, Mr. Mohamed was referred to the military
commission in Guantánamo on accusations that he conspired
with Mr. Padilla on the dirty bomb plot. It was little noticed
at the time.

But accusations against Mr. Padilla that are nowhere to be found
in the indictment against him filled the pages of Mr. Mohamed’s
charging sheet, with Mr. Padilla repeatedly identified by name.
The sheet referred to the two men meeting in Pakistan after
Sept. 11, 2001, studying how to build an improvised dirty bomb,
discussing the feasibility of a dirty bomb attack with Al Qaeda
officials and agreeing to undertake the mission to blow up
buildings.

Mr. Mohamed’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, said that these
charges were based on a forced confession by Mr. Mohamed,
who, he said, was tortured overseas into admitting to a story
that was fed to him. “Binyam was told all along that his job was
to be a witness against Padilla, Abu Zubaydah and Khaled Sheikh
Mohammed,” Mr. Stafford Smith said, adding that his client “has
no conscious knowledge that he ever met” Mr. Padilla.

The charges against Mr. Mohamed and other Guantánamo detainees
who were headed for prosecution there have been suspended
temporarily as a result of the Military Commissions Act passed
by Congress in October. Those charges are likely to be reinstated,
a Pentagon official said yesterday.

That Mr. Mohamed faced dirty bomb charges and Mr. Padilla
does not speaks to the central difference between being a terrorism
suspect in Guantánamo and a criminal defendant charged with
terrorism offenses in the United States.

In Guantánamo, the military commission system that deals with
foreign-born terrorism suspects is expected to allow, with some
exceptions, the use of information obtained through coercion.

“Federal court rules are restrictive,” Professor Chesney of Wake
Forest University School of Law said. “The very essence of why
they’re trying to have that separate military system was to create
rules to use information that is deemed by the intelligence
community to be trustworthy but wouldn’t make it under
the federal rules of evidence.”

David Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown University and
author of books on terrorism and civil liberties, sees the difference
between the two systems more critically: “What this says clearly is
that they feel that they can get away with using tainted evidence
in the military commission system that they can’t use in the criminal
court system.”

The Wiretapping Case

The criminal case against Mr. Padilla has its roots in the prosecution
of Sheikh Omer Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who
was convicted in 1995 of conspiring to blow up the United Nations
and other New York landmarks.

In the early 1990s, Sheikh Rahman’s telephone was tapped, and
Mr. Hassoun and Dr. Jayyousi, a Jordanian-born American citizen
who holds a doctorate in civil engineering, came to the government’s
attention through phone calls to or from his line. Then the government,
under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, began to eavesdrop
on them, which eventually pulled Mr. Padilla into their net, too.

The government presents the three defendants as “joined at the hip,”
as one prosecutor put it in a hearing last summer. But Judge
Marcia G. Cooke of Federal District Court, noting that Mr. Padilla
was appended to a case well under way, asked the government,
“If they are so joined at the hip, why is Mr. Padilla so late to the dance?”

Dr. Jayyousi, a former school system administrator in both Detroit
and Washington, D.C., never met Mr. Padilla, his lawyer, William Swor, said.

It is Mr. Hassoun, the government said, who recruited Mr. Padilla.
But both Mr. Hassoun’s and Mr. Padilla’s lawyers deny that
Mr. Padilla was recruited.

Seven Taped Phone Calls

Mr. Padilla’s lawyers and relatives say that he left South Florida
for Egypt in September 1998 on a spiritual journey. A former juvenile
offender, he converted to Islam as part of an effort to straighten out his
life, they say. His mosque in Fort Lauderdale sponsored his travel, he told
friends, relatives and F.B.I. agents who interviewed him in 2002.
Mr. Hassoun belonged to that mosque, and the telephone transcripts
seem to indicate that Mr. Hassoun helped, at the least, with
Mr. Padilla’s travel plans.

The seven taped phone calls that bear Mr. Padilla’s voice involve
conversations with Mr. Hassoun from 1997 to 2000.

On those calls, Mr. Padilla, unlike some of the other defendants,
does not employ what the government says is coded language.
According to the government, other defendants refer to their jihad-
related plans as “getting some fresh air,” “participating in tourism,”
“opening up a market,” “playing football,” and so on. This leads
to silly-sounding exchanges where “the brothers” discuss going
on “picnics” in order “to smell fresh air and to eat cheese” or using
$3,500 to buy “zucchini.”

In contrast, Mr. Padilla’s seven conversations with Mr. Hassoun range
from straightforward — Mr. Hassoun tells Mr. Padilla that his grandmother
has died; Mr. Padilla tells Mr. Hassoun that he has found himself
an 18-year-old Egyptian bride who is willing to wear a veil —
to vaguely suggestive or just odd.

In one phone call, the two men talked about a dream. It appeared
to be the dream that Mr. Padilla, according to his relatives, cites
as having played a crucial role in inspiring him to convert
to Islam: the vision of a man in a turban, surrounded by the
swirling dust of a desert.

Mr. Hassoun brought it up and told Mr. Padilla that he himself had
experienced the same vision. “What do you mean you saw the
same dream?” Mr. Padilla asked.

“I saw the dream of the uh ... person with the turban,” Mr. Hassoun
said.

Mr. Hassoun explained how, in his dream, the turban was wrongly
wrapped and so he thought the man might be a spy, in which
case, he was prepared “to split his body apart.” But then, he
said, he understood that “the brother ... was a good one.”

“Yeah?” Mr. Padilla said.

In three of the seven conversations, Mr. Padilla made statements
that the government has identified as “overt acts” in furtherance
of the accused conspiracy.

In the first, Mr. Hassoun asked, “You’re ready, right?” and
Mr. Padilla said, “God willing, brother, it’s going to happen soon.”
That was the summer of 1997, a year before Mr. Padilla left South
Florida for Egypt.

In the second, Mr. Padilla told Mr. Hassoun, during a 1999
conversation from Egypt, that he had asked his ex-wife in the
United States to arrange for him to receive an army jacket, a book
bag and a sleeping bag, supplies that he had requested because
“there was a rumor here that the door was open somewhere.”
In the third, Mr. Padilla told Mr. Hassoun in April 2000, that he
would need a recommendation to “connect me with the good
brothers, with the right faith” if he were to travel to Yemen.

Prosecutors say Mr. Padilla is mentioned, although by his Muslim
name Ibrahim or by another alias, on 21 additional tapes. One of
them refers to Ibrahim as being “in the area of Usama,” which
the government takes to mean that he was near Osama bin
Laden. But Mr. Padilla’s lawyers contest that interpretation.

“That is just nonsensical, Your Honor, that these men who for
years, according to the government, have been talking in code
all of a sudden are going to throw Osama bin Laden’s name around,”
Michael Caruso, a federal public defender, said in court.

Mr. Padilla has pleaded not guilty. But before his case goes before
a jury, his fitness to stand trial will be evaluated. On the basis
of Mr. Padilla’s lawyers’ assertion that he is mentally damaged as
a result of his prolonged isolation and his interrogation in the
brig, Judge Cooke has ordered a psychiatric evaluation by a Bureau
of Prisons doctor to be completed this week.

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3) Exxon Accused of Trying to Mislead Public
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
January 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/business/04exxon.html

HOUSTON, Jan. 3 — The Union of Concerned Scientists released
a report on Wednesday accusing Exxon Mobil of spending millions
of dollars to manipulate public opinion on the seriousness of global
warming.

“Many of the tactics, and even some of the same organizations
and actors used by Exxon Mobil to mislead the public, draw
upon the tobacco industry’s 40-year disinformation campaign,”
the report said.

The report said that a task force that Exxon Mobil helped create
on global climate science in 1998 included someone who had
led a nonprofit organization called the Advancement of Sound
Science Coalition, “which had been covertly created by the
tobacco company Philip Morris in 1993 to manufacture
uncertainty about the health hazards posed by secondhand
smoke.”

Many of the accusations in the report have been made before
by the scientists’ organization and environmental groups.
But the organization, a liberal advocacy group, said this report
more completely detailed connections between money donated
by Exxon Mobil and the scientists in groups that question
the degree to which humans are contributing to climate change.

The release of the report comes as Democrats take control
of Congress, and the organization said it hoped incoming
committee chairmen investigate the links detailed in the report.

“The relatively modest investment of about $16 million between
1998 and 2004 to select political organizations has been
remarkably effective at manufacturing uncertainty about
the scientific consensus on global warming,” the report said.

Exxon Mobil released a statement responding to the report,
saying “many of the conclusions are inaccurate.” It added,
“Our support extends to a fairly broad array of organizations
that research significant domestic and foreign policy issues
and promote discussion on issues of direct relevance
to the company.”

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4) A Mother Fights for a Soldier Who Said No to War
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 4, 2007; C01
www.marxmail.org

Carolyn Ho is a mother on a mission.

She came to Washington in mid-December to build support for her son, Army
1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment
to Iraq.

Barring some kind of miracle, he will be court-martialed on Feb. 5 at Fort
Lewis, about 45 miles south of Seattle. If convicted, he could be sent to
military prison for six years. There's going to be a pretrial hearing today.

Like many Americans, she believed she could come to the capital city and
change the world. Or at least her small part of it.

She was acting purely on instinct, wanting to do everything in a mother's
power to protect her son. "I'm here to get what I can," said Ho, who is
from Honolulu. Dark hair pulled back. Dark eyes that moisten when she
speaks of her son. Soft voice. "I'm going to put it out there."

At the very least, she hoped for some kind of letter of support before
today's hearing. Late yesterday afternoon, a letter arrived. After a lot of
worry and work.

Lobbying Congress is no day at the spa.

During her Capitol Hill quest, she was accompanied by several seasoned
lobbyists, but they let her do the talking. She moved along the halls,
sitting down with staffers in the offices of Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.)
and Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) and aides from the offices of Reps. Lynn
Woolsey (D-Calif.), John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.).

In closed-door meetings, Ho told the same story. She sees her efforts as
part of a larger, multifaceted wave that is challenging the Bush
administration from every angle. At the same time the president is
advocating an increase in the number of soldiers in Iraq, there is on the
home front an increase in the number of vocal opponents of the war. "I
believe my son is part of this movement," Ho said.

Phoebe Jones of Global Women's Strike, an international antiwar network
that supports Ho and Watada, was at Ho's side on Capitol Hill. "The work of
mothers is protecting life, beginning with their children," Jones
explained. "And that is really the opposite of the obscenity of war."

On the Hill, Ho handed out information packets. She passed around photos of
Watada, who is taller, fuller of face than his mother, but shares her smile.

Her son "based his decision on facts," she said. He studied the war in Iraq
and decided it was illegal. He tried to resign and leave the service with
dignity, but the Army wouldn't let him. He asked to be shipped to
Afghanistan; his request was denied. He was offered a noncombat position in
Iraq; he said no thanks.

Because the United States entered the war based on false premises, Ho said,
the war is illegal. It is thus her son's constitutional duty to disobey orders.

So she asked that members of Congress get involved. She said that ideally
she would prefer that the military accept her son's resignation and dismiss
all charges against him. "He shouldn't be in a military prison," she said.
His voice "will be totally squelched."

She asked, "Just who is the criminal here? The one who is refusing to
participate in war crimes?"

From the Army's standpoint, the case is simple. Tens of thousands of
soldiers have passed through Fort Lewis on their way to the war and have
not asked for special treatment, said Army spokesman Joe Piek. Watada, 28,
signed on for military service in 2003 with full knowledge that he might
have to fight an unpopular war, Piek said. "This is a case about a soldier
who refused orders to deploy to Iraq. . . . That is the bottom line."

Watada has been charged with one count of "missing movement," which means
he did not board one of the planes that were taking his 3rd Brigade to
Kuwait on June 22. In Kuwait the brigade's 4,000 soldiers received their
equipment and their marching orders.

He also is charged with "conduct unbecoming an officer," for subsequent
statements he made. For now he is assigned to a special troops battalion
and has been doing everyday soldierly duties while awaiting his court
appearance.

Piek said, "He joined the Army and swore an oath, and that includes
following the orders of the officers appointed over him. His unit was
placed in a stop-loss category, which meant that everybody currently in
that unit would deploy. You don't get to pick and choose, especially if you
are a junior officer, which places you get to go to."

To Watada's attorney, Eric Seitz, the situation is more complicated. "The
United States talks out of both sides of its mouth," he said. "We've
prosecuted soldiers in other countries for following orders to commit war
crimes. But God forbid you should use that refusal as a defense in this
country."

The Watada defense: Questioning the war publicly is not "conduct
unbecoming" but an exercise of freedom of speech. And he had the right to
miss movement because he was refusing to participate in what he deems an
illicit enterprise.

To Carolyn Ho, congressional staffers were polite and receptive. She came
at an inopportune time, she was told several times. Congress had adjourned
for the holidays and there was not much time before the court-martial.

There were flashes of hope: Along the way, someone suggested that a
"sign-on letter" sent by members of Congress to the secretary of the Army
might be a way to galvanize support for Watada. Or a "dear colleague"
letter that would alert others in Congress to Watada's situation. One
staffer brought up the idea of a "private resolution," an arcane move in
which Congress passes a bill that affects one person. "Those are
possibilities," Ho said. But as the day wore on, fatigue showed on her face.

She left with little more than encouragement and good wishes. A high school
counselor, Ho had been on leave since the end of September. She had to get
back to work.

She is divorced. Her ex-husband, Bob Watada, has also been out drumming up
support, speaking to churches and civic organizations around the country.
She spent October and November on the West Coast and much of December on
the East. At one event she shared a podium with Cindy Sheehan, who refers
to the moms-against-bombs instinct as "matriotism."

Ho went back to Hawaii for Christmas, but is in the Seattle area this week
for the hearing.

On the phone from Fort Lewis, Ehren Watada explained how he decided while
still in college -- in the aftermath of 9/11 -- that he wanted to serve his
country in the military. He walked into a recruitment office in Honolulu
and said he wanted to go to officer candidate school. He failed the
physical because of childhood asthma. "I was heartbroken," he said. "I paid
out of pocket for a breathing test to prove I had no breathing problems. I
passed the test with flying colors and was eventually accepted at the end
of March 2003."

Though Watada's father did not serve in the military, several uncles were
in World War II. One of his uncles was killed in Korea. Another relative
was in Vietnam. "There is a history of service in our family," he said.

When he signed up, "I didn't know the things I know today. I believed the
military and the government when they told me that Iraq posed an imminent
threat."

Watada said it took him a couple of years to realize that the United States
should not be in Iraq. He submitted his resignation in January 2006. "The
commanders of my unit were not too happy about it," he said. They were
surprised, he said, because until that point he had received positive
evaluations.

"I can't stop the war," said Watada. "But if Americans believe the war is
wrong, they should be doing everything they can to stop it."

His mother is doing what she can. "People are stepping gingerly," she said
yesterday about legislative action. "There's a wait-and-see approach."

She was in Tacoma, Wash., yesterday for a press conference when she
received a personal letter from Rep. Maxine Waters. Ho read an excerpt over
the phone:

"The issue that [1st Lt. Ehren Watada] has raised deserves to be publicly
debated and considered. And I will use my platform as a member of Congress
and chair of the 'Out of Iraq' caucus to highlight the failed policies of
this administration and stimulate discussion. . . . Your son has shown
great integrity and dignity in his objection to the war in Iraq, and I
commend you for working so hard on his behalf."

Ho sighed and said she found the letter to be "disappointing."

But it was something.

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5) A drop into the abyss
Saddam jailed me but his hanging was a crime. Iraq's misery is now far
worse than under his rule
Haifa Zangana
Thursday January 4, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1982437,00.html

At 3.30am last Saturday, I was abruptly woken by the phone ringing. My
heart sank. By the time I reached the phone, I was already imagining bodies
of relatives and friends, killed and mutilated.

It was 6.30am in Baghdad and I thought of the last time I spoke to my
sister. She was on the roof of her house trying to get a better signal on
her mobile phone, but had to end the call as an American helicopter started
hovering above. Iraqis know it is within the US "rules of engagement" to
shoot at them when using mobiles, and that US troops enjoy impunity
whatever they do. But the call was from a Turkish TV station asking for
comments on Saddam's execution. I drew a deep sigh of relief, not for the
execution, but because I did not know personally anyone killed that day.

Death is now so commonplace in Iraq that we end up ranking it in these
personal terms. Last month, I attended the a'azas (remembrance events) of
three people whose work I highly respected. One was for Dr Essam al-Rawi,
head of the university professors' union who documented the assassination
of academics. A week before his killing his office at Baghdad University
had been ransacked and documents confiscated by US troops. The others were
for Dr Ali Hussain Mukhif, an academic and literary critic, and Saad
Shlash, professor of journalism in Baghdad University and editor of the
weekly journal Rayet Al Arab, who insisted on resisting occupation
peacefully - offering writers, including myself, a space to criticise the
occupation and its crimes, despite all the risks involved.

About 500 academics and 92 journalists have been murdered since the
invasion of Iraq. Hundreds more have been kidnapped, and many others have
fled the country after receiving threats against their lives. The human
costs are so high that many Iraqis believe that had there been a
competition between Saddam's regime and the Bush-Blair occupation over the
killing of Iraqi minds and culture, the latter would win by far. Sadly, I
am becoming one of them.

I am speaking as one who has been, from the start, a politically active
opponent of the Ba'ath regime's ideology and Saddam Hussain's dictatorship.
At times that was at the high personal cost of prison and torture. In 1984,
during the Iran-Iraq war, my family had to pay for the bullets used to
execute my cousin Fouad Al Azzawi before being allowed to collect his body.
But I find myself agreeing with many Iraqis, that life now is not just the
continuity of misery and death under new guises. It is much, much worse -
even without the extra dimensions of pillage, corruption and the total ruin
of the infrastructure.

Every day brings with it, due to the presence of occupation troops to
protect US citizens' safety and security, less safety and security for Iraqis.

The timing and method of the execution of Saddam Hussein proves that the US
administration is still criminally high on the cocktail of power,
arrogance, and ignorance. But above all racism: what is good for us is not
good for you. We are patriots but you are terrorists.

The US and their Iraqi puppets in the green zone chose to execute Saddam on
the first day of Eid al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice. This is the most
joyous day in the Muslim calendar when more than 2 million pilgrims in
Mecca start their ancient rituals, with hundreds of millions of others
around the world focused on the events. They then further humiliated
Muslims by releasing the official video of the execution, with the
69-year-old having a noose placed around his neck and being led to the
drop. The unofficial recording shows Saddam looking calm and composed, and
even managing a sarcastic smile, asking the thugs who taunted him "hiya hiy
al marjala?" ("is this your manliness?"), a powerful phrase in Arabic
popular culture connecting manliness to acts of courage, pride and
chivalry. He also managed to repeatedly say the Muslim creed as he was
dying, thus attaching himself in the last few seconds of his life to one
billion Muslims. Saddam had literally the final say. From now on, no Eid
will pass without people remembering his execution.

This was the climax of a colonial farce with the court proceedings' blatant
sectarian overtones welcomed by Bush and the British government as a "fair
trial". The occupation also welcomed the grotesque public execution as
"justice being done". Contrast this with the end of our hopes, as Iraqis in
opposition, of persuading our people of the humanity of democracy and how
it would, unlike Saddam's brutality, put an end to all abuses of human
rights, to execution in public, and to the death penalty.

It is no good the deputy prime minister John Prescott now condemning the
manner of Saddam's execution as "deplorable" when, as a representative of
one of the two main occupying powers, his government is both legally and
morally responsible for what took place.

It is hell in Iraq by all standards, and there is no end in sight to the
plight of Iraqi people. The resistance to occupation is a basic human right
as well as a moral responsibility. That was the case during the Algerian
war of independence, the Vietnamese war of independence, and it is the case
in Iraq now.

· Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi-born novelist and former prisoner of Saddam's
regime haifa_zangana@yahoo.co.uk

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6) Behold Marx's twitch
By John Thornhill
Financial Times, Dec. 28, 2006
www.marxmail.org

What does it take to kill an idea whose time has passed?

One would have thought--that several decades of experimentation with
communism would have convinced most observers that--it was a murderous and
economically sub-optimal creed. Even its most fervent supporters could
scarcely contest the view that it has spectacularly failed to live up to
its creators' utopian expectations.

According to the Black Book of Communism, published in 1997 by a group of
French scholars, communist regimes were responsible for the "class
genocide" of almost 100m people during the 20th century. Apologists for
Joseph Stalin used to justify such brutality by arguing that you could not
make an omelette without breaking eggs. But, as George Orwell once famously
responded: where's the omelette?

Leszek Kolakowski, one of the world's foremost students - and critics - of
Marxism, thought he had buried the communist idea as long ago as 1974. "The
only medicine communism has invented - the centralised, beyond social
control, state ownership of the national wealth and one-party rule - is
worse than the illness it is supposed to cure," he wrote in a damning open
letter published in the Socialist Register. Arguing that the communist idea
could never be successfully modified or revived, he concluded: "This skull
will never smile again."

His view seemed to be vindicated when China reverted to capitalism in the
1980s as the best means of promoting prosperity and the Soviet Union came
crashing down in 1991. The communist diehards in impoverished Pyongyang and
Havana who survive today are hardly the brightest advertisements for the
vitality of the Marxist faith.

Yet, it seems, the edges of Karl Marx's lips are beginning to twitch again
in Europe as fresh attempts are made to reanimate his ideas. Marx should
not be held accountable for those who acted on his (often contradictory)
analysis, his latter-day supporters claim. Besides, it is wrong to equate
Marxist theory with communist practice. As Marx himself declared, he was
not a Marxist. It would be as unfair to blame Marx for the excesses
committed in his name, they claim, as it would be to condemn Jesus for the
evils of the Spanish inquisition.

The latest surge of globalisation, which is in so many ways reminiscent of
the era in which Marx lived, has undoubtedly led to renewed interest in his
critique of capitalism. Globalisation may be lifting millions of people out
of absolute poverty, but it has also led to startling divergences in
relative wealth. How can it be, as a United Nations report recently
estimated, that the richest 2 per cent of the world's adult population own
more than 50 per cent of global assets while the poorest 50 per cent own
only 1 per cent? How can one understand capital without Das Kapital?

"Far from being buried under the rubble of the Berlin Wall, Marx may only
now be emerging in his true significance. He could yet become the most
influential thinker of the twenty-first century," Francis Wheen, his
British biographer, concludes in a recent essay on Das Kapital.

The eloquent Mr Wheen even helped to persuade BBC listeners that Marx was
the most important philosopher of all time in a radio poll conducted last year.

Across the Channel, Marx has never really gone out of fashion - even if
Marxist ideas have become an internalised rhetorical reflex among
politicians more than a meaningful programme for action.

François Bayrou, the leader of the centrist UDF party, argues that the
French left has never been properly demarxisée. Just look at the 2002
presidential elections in which two rival Trotskyist candidates, the head
of the Communist party of France, and the leader of the Revolutionary
Communist League won 17 per cent of the vote between them in the first round.

Much of the rhetoric from mainstream French politicians ahead of next
year's presidential elections has a decidedly Marxist ring to it.

Ségolène Royal, the presidential candidate of the opposition Socialist
party, constantly talks about the need to rebalance capital and labour
declaring it is her intention to "frighten the capitalists". Even Nicolas
Sarkozy, the presidential contender from the ostensibly centre-right ruling
UMP party, rails against "rogue bosses" who pay themselves obscene bonuses
while shifting jobs offshore.

One prominent socialist politician says that the new class divide in France
and elsewhere in the developed world is between the rich - including most
French people - and the super-rich.

This new globalised "aristocracy" of financiers, industrialists and
policymakers now spans the globe preaching "market fundamentalism". Its
members have more allegiances to each other than to any nation state. While
telling their employees that job insecurity, reduced welfare benefits and
lower salaries are the condition of the modern world, they don golden
parachutes to protect themselves from failure.

Jacques Attali, the polymath French financier, has also been busily buffing
up Marx's reputation as a prophet of our globalised times. In a recent
biography of Marx, Mr Attali argues that the 19th century philosopher still
has much to teach us about the nature of capitalism, the shocks that
modernisation inflicts on traditional societies, the rise of competitive
individualism and the spread of insecurity.

According to Mr Attali, Marx answers questions that are only now being
asked. It is only in our days that we can see Marx in his true light,
unencumbered by his association with the experience of communism.

However, Marx would surely have been grumpy about his new-found status as
an analyst of our times rather than as an agitator for revolutionary
change. "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways;
the point, however, is to change it," he wrote.

The skull may not be smiling so much as frowning.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

www.marxmail.org

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7) Dear Friends of Lynne Stewart and Mumia Abu-Jamal
Next planning meeting for Lynne Stewart tour:
Saturday, January 6 at 10:30 AM
Socialist Action Bookstore
298 Valencia Street (14th and Valencia)
San Francisco
[Message via email...bw]

Lynne Stewart and Michael Ratner have accepted our invitation
to tour the Bay Area. The confirmed dates are February 23-25, 2007.
Lynne, accompanied by her husband Ralph Poynter, will stay on
several more days for additional meetings through March 1.

Michael is the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights
and among the leading U.S. figures in the fight for fundamental
constitutional rights for those illegally detained and tortured
by U.S. authorities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ratner has also
been involved in filing war crimes charges in a German court
against several figures in the Bush Administration.

Lynne Stewart is in the process of preparing her appeal to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She was falsely
convicted of conspiracy to aide and abet terrorism in a trial
replete with constitutional violations including the government's
use of some 80,000 wiretaps, phone taps and other infringements
on the attorney client privilege. Lynne's appeal and her similarly
framed co-defendants Ahmed Sattar and Mohammed Yousry,
will be combined with a defense against government efforts
to reverse and lengthen the two-year jail sentence jail imposed
by District Court Judge John Koeltl. The government originally
asked for a 30-year sentence and is insisting that it be imposed.

In addition to Lynne and Michael, Jeff Mackler, a national
coordinator of the defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal will speak
on the final stages in the fight for Mumia's life and freedom.
Oral arguments to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third
Circuit are expected to be presented in Mumia's case in the
coming months. The government continues to seek a re-imposition
of the death penalty, while Mumia fights for a new trial and freedom.

To date the tour includes mass meetings in Palo Alto, Berkeley,
San Francisco and Marin. We need your help to schedule additional
meetings at colleges and universities, law schools, legal organizations,
new communities, etc. We need dedicated activists to help with
media work, publicity, outreach and all the other ingredients that
make for a successful tour in terms of political gains, new support
for Lynne, Mumia and Michael and serious fundraising. Lynne's last
visit raised in excess of $15,000. We expect to significantly top this
figure with the present tour. Your participation is essential. Your
attendance is required for the kind of effort that is vital to the
breakthrough victories we seek.

We have scheduled the next planning meeting for:

Saturday, January 6 at 10:30 AM
Socialist Action Bookstore
298 Valencia Street (14th and Valencia)
San Francisco

This will be a joint planning meeting of the tour co-sponsors
and friends including:
The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
The National Lawyers Guild, Bay Are Chapter
The Middle East Children's Alliance
The Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
KPFA

Everyone is welcome!
By agreement with Lynne and Michael, the tour proceeds are
to be divided by the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee and the
Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. The basic themes
of the tour will be defense of civil liberties and democratic rights.

In solidarity,

Jeff Mackler,
West Coast Coordinator, Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
Co-Coordinator, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

O: 415-255-1080
Cell: 510-387-7714
H: 510-268-9429

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8) OTHER PEOPLE'S CONGRESS
[Col. Writ. 12/14/06] Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal

It actually may be too early to tell, but are you getting the vibe that
Congress is going to betray you -- again?

The Congress -- both the House and the Senate -- are seen as honest and
trustworthy by an astonishingly low 14-and-16%, respectively, by most
Americans according to a recent poll. The converse of this, of course,
is that 84-86% of most Americans don't trust their Congress.

A term like that just ended at least partially explains that gap; for
Congress routinely sells its collective soul to the lobbyists and
corporate powers-that-be.

Only these wealthy forces could explain the actions and inactions of
Congress in its most recent term; complete servility to the
military-industrial-complex; the bankruptcy bill; their unbridled
hostility to a minimum wage -- you name it.

If you could afford their services -- cool; if you were a regular Joe
(or Joanna), working-class, or -- heavens forfend! -- poor -- forget it.

The Congress, in violation of the Constitution, ceded its power to the
President, and the executive has made a complete mess of every power it
was granted.

The mid-term elections, thought by many to have been a partial remedy of
this disaster, was predicated upon the wide public will to get out of Iraq.

The new congress was not yet in their seats, and already there are
whispers in the air of sending *more* troops to Iraq!

The march towards betrayal of the public will may have already begun.

As journalist Richard Swift explained in his book, *The No-Nonsense
Guide to Democracy* (Toronto, Ontario: New Internationalist Publ,
Ltd./Between the Lines, 2002), today's political parties strive to
actually be less and less *representative*:

"Such parties run the ideological spectrum from Right to Left (although
here differences between them are certainly narrowing). ... Such parties
have loose ideological commitments and use a vaguely populist rhetoric
(often of the Left) while campaigning. They typically contain a number
of powerful factions and interest groups each of which stakes a claim on
policy and economic awards once the party is in power ...

"Under most present circumstances these 'representatives' are only
answerable to us in a very general sense. Once they have been elected
any number of factors may weigh more heavily for them than the wishes of
their constituents; their own views, Party discipline, personal ambition
*or the influence of powerful lobbies*. Voters by-and-large do not get
to hold them accountable until the next general election. In the
meantime they form a virtual dictatorship -- particularly if they are
part of a majority government." [pp. 102-3]

For millions of people, especially those who voted for Democrats, there
is the expectation that this new class (or new majority) would headline
an Iraq withdrawal.

Now, it looks less so.

As the new congressional majority forms, lobbyists are bellying up to
the bar to make new and lucrative deals -- and with money comes influence.

Americans may learn that, in politics, faces may change, and parties may
swap -- but the same game goes on.

Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal

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9) In War of Vague Borders, Detainee Longs for Court
By ADAM LIPTAK
January 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05terror.html

Ali al-Marri, whom the government calls a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda
and who is the only person on the American mainland still held
as an enemy combatant, spends his days in a small cell in solitary
confinement at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. When he
is in an ironic mood, his lawyers say, he calls the cell his villa.

Mr. Marri waits there for word from his wife, two sons and three
daughters, whom he last saw in 2001, just before his arrest in
Peoria, Ill., where he was studying computer science at Bradley
University.

Letters arrive, but they are late and have words and sentences
blacked out. A note his wife sent to him 10 months ago landed
recently. It began with a standard Muslim invocation, but
a word was missing. Mr. Marri is pretty sure it was “Allah.”

But mostly Mr. Marri waits for word from a federal appeals
court, which will soon rule on one of the most urgent questions
in American law, one his case presents in stark form: May the
government indefinitely detain a foreigner living legally in the
United States, without charges and without access to the courts?

Mr. Marri, who is 41 and a citizen of Qatar, wants the right
to challenge President Bush’s assertion that he is a terrorist and
“a grave danger to the national security of the United States.”

The Bush administration says the courts cannot second-guess
the president when he decides that someone is an enemy
combatant, at least when noncitizens are involved. Detaining
combatants is a military rather than a criminal matter, the
administration says, adding that its purpose is not to punish
the prisoner but to stop him from returning to the battlefield.

The implications of that position are startling, according to
a brief filed last month in Mr. Marri’s case by some 30
constitutional scholars. “The government’s interpretation
would be vastly threatening to the liberty of more than 20
million noncitizens residing in the United States,” the brief
said, “exposing them to the risk of irremediable indefinite
detention on the basis of unfounded rumors, mistaken
identity, the desperation of other detainees subject to
coercive interrogation, and the deliberate lies of actual
terrorists.”

Kathleen M. Blomquist, a spokeswoman for the Justice
Department, disputed that contention.

“Of all the terrorists currently in the custody of the United
States military, al-Marri is the only one who was captured
in the United States,” Ms. Blomquist said, adding that the
notion that millions of people are at risk is “unfounded
and absurd.”

Mr. Bush’s determination that Mr. Marri is an enemy combatant,
she said, was based on substantial evidence, including “his
association with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of the
9/11 attacks, and files found on his computer concerning
chemical weapons of mass destruction.”

Mr. Marri maintains his innocence, his lawyers say. But they
have refused to offer point-by-point rebuttals of the
government’s detailed assertions, calling instead for
prosecutors to offer evidence to back them up in court.

“In a civilized society and under American law and tradition,”
said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer for Mr. Marri with the Brennan
Center for Justice at New York University School of Law,
“the government has the obligation to prove its case.”

One of Mr. Marri’s brothers, Mohammed Marri, in a telephone
interview from Qatar, rejected the charge that Mr. Marri is
a terrorist. “For sure it’s not true,” he said.

A third brother, Jarallah, is at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, held
as an enemy combatant based on accusations that he had
visited a Qaeda camp. “This is not a proper way to treat
other people from other countries,” Mohammed Marri said
of his brothers and other detainees. “If they are guilty,
let them prove it in court.”

An Exclusive Club

The Charleston brig can hold 288 military prisoners and 6 enemy
combatants, but there have never been more than 3 in the exclusive
enemy combatant club. Two of them are now gone.

One of them, Yaser Hamdi, was freed and sent to Saudi Arabia
after the United States Supreme Court allowed him to challenge
his detention in 2004. Jose Padilla was transferred to the criminal
justice system last year just as the Supreme Court was considering
whether to review his case. That leaves only Mr. Marri.

Mr. Hamdi and Mr. Padilla are American citizens, but Mr. Marri
is not. They were seized abroad or on their way back to the United
States, while Mr. Marri was living what seemed to be an ordinary life,
in Peoria, a city often caricatured as the nation’s most ordinary,
with a family and a minivan.

The government contends in a partly declassified declaration
from a senior defense intelligence official, Jeffrey N. Rapp, and
in a recent book by former Attorney General John Ashcroft, that
Mr. Marri was a Qaeda sleeper agent sent to the United States
to commit mass murder and disrupt the banking system.

The assertions have not been tested in court, and human rights
groups say they are based on unreliable evidence “There is
substantial reason to believe,” lawyers for two of the groups
wrote in a brief in November, “that the allegations of the Rapp
declaration are derived from the torture of two men interrogated
at Guantánamo Bay and other detention sites: Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi.”

The government says that Mr. Hawsawi was one of the
financiers of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Rapp’s declaration cites the personal views of Mr. Mohammed,
who is often referred to as K.S.M. “K.S.M. considered al-Marri an
ideal sleeper agent,” Mr. Rapp wrote.

Kept in Isolation

Mr. Marri was kept in isolation at the brig and, according to his
court filings, subjected to tough interrogation. Interrogators
threatened to send him to Egypt or Saudi Arabia, according
to a lawsuit filed on his behalf in 2005, “where, they told him,
he would be tortured and sodomized and where his wife would
be raped in front on him.”

“By winter ’05,” Andrew J. Savage, who also represents Mr. Marri,
said in a recent interview, “I genuinely thought he was losing his
mind. He told me in this sort of indirect way that he might not
be able to hold on, that his mind was playing tricks on him.”

Mr. Padilla’s lawyers have said that their client’s time in the brig
was so grueling that he is not fit to stand trial. But while Mr. Padilla
was passive, Mr. Marri pushed back. He put wet toilet paper
on the video camera, for instance. The brig responded by taking
away his mattress, Koran and hygienic products, including his
toilet paper.

“There is almost nothing to distract him from his torment,” his
lawyers wrote in the lawsuit, “and he therefore becomes
preoccupied with his pain and the degradation he suffers.”

Perhaps as a consequence of the lawsuit, conditions have
improved.

When Mr. Marri’s lawyers were first allowed to see him in
October 2004, after the decision in Mr. Hamdi’s case, Mr. Marri
was behind a transparent barrier and bound in leg-irons and
handcuffs that were linked to a belly-chain and fastened
to the floor. Officials from the Defense Intelligence Agency
and the brig were present, and the conversation was
videotaped.

On a recent visit, Mr. Savage said, he met his client in a visiting
lounge. Mr. Marri, who was not restrained, was wearing stylish
bifocals rather than institutional prison glasses. He was also
wearing a watch, which makes it easier for him to know when
to pray.

Mr. Savage brought hummus and pita bread. “We sat down, we
broke bread, and we had a three-and-a-half hour conversation,
unmonitored,” Mr. Savage said.

Mr. Marri is now allowed to watch television in the evening, but
not the news. He reads newspapers and magazines, but they
are edited. “Brig staff remove all materials associated with the
war on terror from them,” Cmdr. Stephanie L. Wright, the brig’s
commanding officer, said in court filing in July.

Sometimes that makes for a thin newspaper. “All I get is sports
and obits,” Mr. Marri has complained, Mr. Savage said.
He is critical of the former, saying there is not enough
soccer coverage.

The Defense Department has allowed journalists and others
to tour the Guantánamo facility, where Mr. Marri’s brother Jarallah
and 400 other men are being held. All of the Guantánamo prisoners
are foreigners who were seized abroad. The government has
not asserted that the brothers were working together.

The Defense Department refused a recent request to inspect
the Charleston brig. A spokesman, Cmdr. J. D. Gordon, cited
“operational security concerns surrounding the detention of
an alleged al Qaeda-linked operative in the U.S. mainland,”
a reference to Mr. Marri. Commander Gordon added that
“it has always been our policy to treat all detainees humanely.”

Return to the United States

Mr. Marri spent eight years in the United States as a young man,
graduating from Bradley with an undergraduate degree in business
administration in 1991. When he returned to the United States
10 years later, he brought his family.

In his declaration, Mr. Rapp noted that Mr. Marri’s profile “differed
significantly from that of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers.” Those
differences, Mr. Rapp said, made Mr. Marri all the more attractive
to Al Qaeda.

The years between Mr. Marri’s two stints at Bradley are a mystery.
The government says he trained at a Qaeda camp in Afghanistan
for about a year and a half between 1996 and 1998, specializing
in poisons. The government also says that Mr. Marri visited the
United States briefly in 2000, which Mr. Marri has denied.

In the summer of 2001, Mr. Rapp wrote, Mr. Mohammed introduced
Mr. Marri to Osama bin Laden. Mr. Marri “offered to be an
Al Qaeda martyr,” Mr. Rapp wrote.

“Al Qaeda instructed al-Marri that it was imperative that he arrive
in the United States prior to Sept. 11, 2001, and that if al-Marri
could not do so, that he should cancel all his plans and go
to Pakistan,” Mr. Rapp wrote.

The Marris arrived in Peoria on Sept. 10, 2001.

Mr. Marri soon came to the attention of the F.B.I., which first
interviewed him less than a month later. In December, agents
searched his laptop, finding “research consistent with the tradecraft
and teachings associated with Al Qaeda,” Mr. Rapp wrote. Mr. Marri
was arrested on Dec. 12, 2001, and held as a material witness
at the request of prosecutors in New York. He was indicted two
months later on charges of credit card fraud. In January 2003, the
government added charges of lying to federal agents and financial
institutions, and identity theft. Mr. Marri pleaded not guilty.
His family has since returned to the Middle East.

For a year and a half, the government pursued a conventional criminal
case. Mr. Ashcroft, in his book “Never Again,” which was published
in October, wrote that Mr. Marri “rejected numerous offers to improve
his lot” by cooperating with investigators. “He insisted,” Mr. Ashcroft
wrote, “on becoming a ‘hard case.’ ”

In June 2003, as the case was nearing trial, the government abruptly
changed course, taking Mr. Marri out of the criminal system and moving
him into indefinite military detention. That means, Mr. Ashcroft later
wrote, that Mr. Marri can be held “at least until the war against
Al Qaeda was over.”

In its rush to move Mr. Marri, the government short-circuited its
criminal case. On hearing that a federal judge in Peoria would allow
Mr. Marri’s lawyers to file papers opposing the transfer as long
as the criminal case was alive, the government agreed to dismiss
the criminal charges with prejudice, meaning they cannot be refiled.

The decision, however, would not prevent the government from
charging Mr. Marri with other crimes outlined in Mr. Rapp’s
declaration.

The declaration has served the purpose for which it was designed.
In August, it persuaded Henry F. Floyd, a federal judge in Spartanburg,
S.C., to deny a habeas corpus petition challenging Mr. Marri’s detention.
Saying that Mr. Marri had “offered nothing more than a general denial”
of the assertions in the declaration, Judge Floyd dismissed the petition.

Neither side was happy with the ruling. Mr. Marri has appealed
to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in
Richmond, saying that the president does not have the power
to detain him as an enemy combatant.

A foreigner living legally in the United States, his lawyers say, is not
the same as a soldier captured on a battlefield. Even if the president
does have the power, they say, he should be required to support his
assertions with evidence.

The government argues that Judge Floyd gave Mr. Marri too full
a hearing. It cited the recent Military Commissions Act, which says
that the courts have no jurisdiction to hear challenges from any alien
“who has been determined by the United States to have been properly
detained as an enemy combatant.”

The case will be heard Feb. 1

The government offered Mr. Marri a sort of consolation prize should
the appeals court dismiss his case. It said he could try to persuade
a combatant status review tribunal, convened by the Defense
Department, that he was not an enemy combatant. That would
apparently be the first such proceeding on the mainland; all of the
others known to have been conducted were at Guantánamo Bay.

A Different View

In a brief filed in November, eight former Justice Department officials,
including Janet Reno, the attorney general in the Clinton administration,
said that taking Mr. Marri out of the criminal system as his case
approached trial “has given to the appearance of manipulation
of the judicial process.” The brief listed several criminal statutes
available to prosecute people accused of terrorism along with many
successful prosecutions under them.

“The criminal justice system has proven that it can make the cases,”
Ms. Reno said in an interview. “For the president to be able to
designate someone as an enemy combatant, without process
and without regulation, just doesn’t make any sense and
isn’t necessary.”

Ms. Blomquist, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said, “While
we respect the views of former law enforcement officials, the
United States cannot afford to retreat to a pre-September 11
mind-set that treats terrorism solely as a domestic law
enforcement problem.”

Mr. Marri shared a fantasy with one of his lawyers not long ago.
“I’d love to be taken back to Saudi Arabia and they would beat the”
— here, he swore — “out of me for six months,” Mr. Marri said,
according to Mr. Savage. “It would be brutal, but it would be finite.”

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10) F.B.I. Lent Help on 2 Occasions to Nomination of Rehnquist
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05rehnquist.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 (AP) — The F.B.I.’s file on former Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist, made public more than a year after his death,
indicates that the Nixon and Reagan administrations enlisted
the bureau’s help in blunting criticism of him at Senate confirmation
hearings.

Administration officials apparently hoped to prevent any surprises
from derailing his confirmation, both when he was nominated
an associate justice by President Richard M. Nixon in 1971 and
when he was named chief justice by President Ronald Reagan
in 1986.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation released 1,561 pages of
Rehnquist documents on Wednesday to The Associated Press,
other news organizations and scholars in response to requests
that were made under the Freedom of Information Act after the
chief justice’s death in September 2005. An additional 207
pages were withheld under federal law, and the bureau said
an entire section of his file could not be found.

In 1971, the papers show, Deputy Attorney General Richard G.
Kleindienst directed the F.B.I. to investigate witnesses who were
planning to testify against the Rehnquist confirmation at
a Senate hearing. Fifteen years later, during the Reagan
administration, the bureau was enlisted to conduct similar
background checks.

Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina,
was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when
Justice Rehnquist was nominated to be chief justice, and
John R. Bolton was an assistant attorney general. In a
memorandum found in the file, a Justice Department
official told a counterpart at the bureau, “Thurmond just
gave these names to Bolton they will testify for the Democrats
and we want to know what they are going to say.”

The file also offers insight into the hallucinations and other
symptoms of withdrawal that occurred when Justice Rehnquist,
suffering from back problems, stopped using a prescription
painkiller in 1981. A doctor was quoted as saying that Justice
Rehnquist had tried to escape a hospital in his pajamas and had
imagined that the Central Intelligence Agency was plotting
against him.

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11) THE IRAQ WAR — 16 YEARS AND COUNTING
By Jack A. Smith
Hudson Valley (NY) Activist Newsletter, Jan. 4, 2007
[VIA email...bw]

This month, on Jan. 17, marks the 16th anniversary of the U.S. war against
Iraq. So far, a total of 2.25 million Iraqis have died, the great majority
of them civilians, in all three connected phases of the war. U.S. battle
deaths throughout these years amount to about 3,200.

PHASE ONE: “Desert Storm” lasted from Jan. 17 to March 2 of 1991 after a
six-month buildup. This is the war that put Pentagon Inc. back in the
destruction business after declaring bankruptcy in Vietnam.

The U.S. Army hung its head for 15 years after Vietnam while a select group
of generals led by Colin Powell figured out how to win the next unjust war
without encountering massive resistance from the American people. Powel
invented the doctrine named after him which was tested in Iraq 1991: Use
overwhelming force to bomb the civilian and state infrastructure to kingdom
come until the enemy died from within; avoid ground fighting, especially in
a guerrilla environment; use professionals, not politically unreliable
conscripts; make the war very short; keep the press away from the front
lines except under Pentagon supervision; enlist plenty of allies to convey
the impression the war is popular and moral; keep U.S. casualties very low
so the civilians back home don’t get upset by American deaths; and pile up
the dead on the other side so there can be victory parades, backslapping and
spirited chanting of USA!, USA!, USA!

Desert Storm resulted in the deaths of between 150,000 to 200,000 Iraqis,
soldiers and civilians. Over 500,000 U.S. military personnel were engaged
in Desert Storm. The Pentagon lists 148 as battle deaths, including 37 who
died from “friendly fire.” The U.S. never occupied Iraq but bombed it
continuously for 42 days with 110,000 aircraft sorties dropping almost
90,000 tons of explosives. Thousands of missiles were launched from the sea.

Iraq was decimated. Iraq’s entire civil and state infrastructure was
shattered — transportation, telephone service, water supplies, hospitals,
military facilities, schools, stores, farms, everything. More than 90% of
Iraq’s electrical power was destroyed the first day of the bombing. In some
cases it took years to restore electrical power; in some cases, because the
war never ended, it’s still not operating. Ramsey Clark told the whole real
story about Desert Storm in “The Fire This Time.” It’s so honest and
revealing it will never be on a high school reading list.

On Feb. 26, 1991, the U.S. Air Force vindictively attacked Iraqi soldiers,
mostly very young draftees, after they withdrew from Kuwait to southern
Iraq, backs to the war, heading home. Clark wrote “Iraqi forces began
retreating along the Basra Road. U.S. planes bombed both ends of the road
[so the vehicles and troops couldn’t move] and proceeded to attack the long
rows of cars along a 7-mile stretch. The U.S. killed thousands in the
‘turkey shoot,’ including many civilians fleeing Kuwait.“ On Feb. 28 the
U.S. agreed to a ceasefire, but on March 2, the 24th Mechanized Infantry
Division slaughtered thousands more Iraqi soldiers in a post-ceasefire
attack.

Asked how many Iraqi civilians died, Powell, then Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, answered disdainfully, “It’s not a number I’m terribly
interested in.” And why should he — the proud symbol of resurgent American
militarism, the man who made it possible for the officer corps to once again
strut and preen — why should he have an interest in counting yet another
superfluous Iraqi family torn apart by cluster bombs?

Dick Cheney was President George H. W. Bush’s Defense Secretary at the time.
A few days after Desert Storm ended the man who now functions as White
House puppet master told the Los Angeles Times, in regard to Iraqi deaths,
“If anybody is curious about what we think happened, we think there were a
lot of Iraqis killed.” Great joke, Dick. Great little war.

PHASE TWO : The draconian U.S.-UN sanctions against Iraq actually began in
August of 1990, soon after Iraqi troops entered Kuwait, but didn’t become
seriously effective until the day Desert Storm ended. The deaths caused by
the war were but a prelude to much worse horrors caused by the sanctions,
which ultimately killed at least 1.5 million Iraqi civilians, according to
UN estimates. We look back at that “moderate” sector of the U.S. antiwar
movement which in the days leading up to Desert Storm put forward the
demand, “Sanctions , Not War,” and can only shake our heads.

One of the main purposes of the sanctions was to force the Baghdad regime
to hand over its weapons of mass destruction. Remember them? Another purpose
was to prevent Iraq from ever rebuilding its civil infrastructure or its
military prowess. It still hasn’t. Baghdad was denied the ability to import
materials to reconstruct the electrical grid, to clean up and pump potable
water supplies, to repair wrecked transportation, to rebuild factories, to
import fertilizers, medicines and foodstuffs. Much of Iraq is desert. It
always imported food. But its ability to sell oil, its one big export, was
severely curtailed by the sanctions. Children starved. America watched, and
all it saw was the White House Propaganda Department’s larger than life,
demonized figure of the Arch-Fiend, the Devil Himself, Hitler Incarnate, the
Baby-Killer-of-Baghdad, and he’s coming after us — SADDAM !

During the mid-1990s the UN officially estimated that half the Iraqi
civilian dead from the sanctions were very young children suffering from
malnutrition, water-borne diseases, and lack of medications due to U.S.
embargo. It was at this time, in May 2006, when U.S. UN Ambassador Madeline
Albright was asked by “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl, “We have
heard that half a million children have died [in Iraq]. I mean, that is more
children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
Albright replied: “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we
think, the price is worth it.” President Bill Clinton, the iron-willed
enforcer of killer sanctions and the original champion of regime-change in
Iraq, soon named Albright Secretary of State, and not one senator at her
confirmation hearing inquired about her well-known remark.

Untold thousands more Iraqis, who are not included in our death count
because no figures exist, were killed in continuous bombings by U.S. and
British fighter planes from the spring of 1991 until the invasion of March
2003. They attacked at least once a month, sometimes in murderous attacks
for several days. The Clinton Administration recalled the weapons inspectors
from Iraq before launching a long series of deadly bombing raids starting in
December 1998. We held a small protest in Kingston, about 100 people. A
passing motorist shouted “Go Back to Iraq.” Clinton’s bombings lasted to the
summer of 1999, amounting to 10,000 sorties that killed hundreds of Iraqis.
The newspapers to this day say President Saddam Hussein kicked the
inspectors out but he just didn’t let them back in after it was revealed in
January 1999 that Clinton planted spies among the inspectors who secretly
informed Washington about what targets to bomb.

Interviewed about the long bombing campaign by the Washington Post on Aug.
30, 1999, U.S. Brig. General William Looney declared: “If they turn on the
radars we're going to blow up their goddamn SAMs [surface-to-air missiles].
They know we own their country. We own their airspace.… We dictate the way
they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a
good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need.”

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter began speaking out frequently about
Iraq in 2000. He insisted that all Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction had
been destroyed by the end of 1997. He even said this information was in
Washington’s possession for two years. Few paid attention. Only the left
seemed to be listening, as it always does when it senses the warmakers are
about to run amok once again.

President George W. Bush, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the
neocons almost attacked Iraq before the smoke cleared from the World Trade
Center on 9/11, but decided to hit poor, bedraggled Afghanistan first
because nobody in the rest of the world would care enough to complain, and
they needed more time to plan for the Big Oil Grab. Everything was flags and
yellow ribbons in those dreadful days. We held another demonstration in
Kingston against the new war. A passing motorist in a two-flag SUV yelled,
“Go back to Afghanistan.”

During the nine months leading up to the 2003 invasion, while President Bush
was insisting he had “no plans” to attack Iraq, the U.S. flew nearly 22,000
sorties over Iraqi territory, destroying Iraqi air defenses in preparation
for the impending new war that had been on the neoconservative hit list
since late 1991.

PHASE THREE: The antiwar movement was wonderful then, in the months leading
up to phase 3. ANSWER brought over 100,000 antiwarriors to Washington in
October 2002 and then came back with a million more of us in January 2003,
among many pre-emptive peace protests against an impending pre-emptive war.
We got 2,000 peace people to Kingston that October as well, and of course
some clown suggested that we “go back to Iraq,” but we were strong then, and
laughed as we marched through uptown streets.

The details about the Bush Administration’s fabrications that paved the way
for the March 2003 invasion need not be repeated. The U.S. assertion of its
imperial imperative started with the rockets' red glare and bombs bursting
in air, producing those abrupt flashes of bright light exploding over the
Baghdad night, illuminating the grinning skull of Rumsfeld the Great,
mumbling “bubble, bubble toil and trouble” as he savored the shock, the awe,
the magnificence of his plan, his war, his triumph.

Congress wrapped itself in red, white and blue bunting as always, and caved
in as always, so it ended up a bipartisan war as always, and it still is
bipartisan once we examine the tiny print on the back of the ballots many so
hopefully cast last November, reading in the case of 90% of the candidates:
“Redeemable in deeds at one one-hundredth of expressed value.”

Bush ended the sanctions shortly after the U.S. toppled the Baghdad
government, planning to have Iraqi oil money pay for the entire “three-week
war.” Rummy forgot the Powell Doctrine — crush ‘em fast and get out before
the roof collapses — and three weeks turned into the three years and 10
months to reach where we are today, and there is still a long war to go.

The number of Iraqi dead in this the latest phase of the war is over
600,000, mostly civilians of course. Iraq is still a ruin from 1991
compounded by the attacks of 1992, ‘93, ‘94, ‘95, ‘96, ‘97, ‘98, ‘99, 2000,
‘01, ‘02, ‘03,’ 04, ‘05, ‘06, ‘07….

So Happy New Year Baghdad! Revel in your new democracy. Please, please,
don’t thank us. We have been only too glad to help out. And we have a
surprise New Year present for you: All together now — Ding-Dong, Saddam is
dead, the Wicked Saddam is dead! — killed on the orders of George W. Bush,
our hangin’ president, and Prime Minister al-Quisling of your
collaborationist government. [Boisterous applause]

Bush had the effrontery to describe President Hussein’s murder, accompanied
as it was by taunting and humiliation from a death-squad of official
executioners, as “an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a
democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself.” The trial of Saddam
Hussein was a sham and a shame. The European Union, the UN Human Rights
Commission and hundreds of human rights and progressive groups denounced the
execution as barbaric and many also slammed the trial as a mockery of
justice.

Bush has chosen to ignore the verdict for peace in the November elections
and to continue the quest for victory and its spoils. The White House is
planning to increase the number of troops in Iraq and to authorize a
substantial permanent jump in the size of the Army, Marines and Special
Forces. The new Democratic-controlled Congress will push aside its small
minority of progressives and refuse to erect any barriers Bush cannot easily
sidestep in terms of funding the war, or enlarging the size of he Armed
Forces.

In a statement on the war in late December, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, with words reminiscent of an earlier Secretary of State, said Bush’s
fiasco in Iraq was “worth the investment” in American lives and dollars,
reminding us of the Vietnam War slogan, “War is good for business, invest
your son.” She didn’t mention Iraqi lives. Hardly anyone does now. It’s
always American lives that count. Even many in our peace movement seem to
express public grief only for their own. Maybe it’s unpatriotic in these
conservative and ultra-nationalist times to mourn the victims of American
aggression, when they have had the gall over these 16 years to kill one of
our troops for every 703 of their children, women and men. Iraq is
bleeding to death as America watches on TV, yawns and turns and switches
stations.

Today we’re learn that Bush’s speech next week “will reveal a plan to send
more U.S. troops to Iraq.” Today we learn that “American Generals agree:
Bush doesn’t want withdrawal, he wants victory.” Today we learn that the
Democratic Congressional leadership has reaffirmed its commitment not to
block the next “emergency” war appropriation. Today we learn from the
latest opinion poll in Iraq that “90% of those polled said life was better
before the American invasion.” Today we learn that Baghdad has “ordered an
investigation into the abusive behavior at the execution of Saddam Hussein.”
Today we learn that the new U.S.-backed UN Secretary-General “Defends Death
Penalty for Hussein.” Today we are told that “more than 108,000 Iraqis left
their homes and registered as refugees last month.” Today we learn that “in
the last 10 months, 432,000 Iraqis have left their homes.”

We can’t wait for tomorrow’s headlines: Bush Ponders New War Moves; Dems
Ponder New War Moves; Blair Ponders New War Moves. Paris Hilton Ponders New
War Moves; Gerald Ford Arises From Dead, Ponders New War Moves.

Every day it gets worse for the Iraqi people, just when it seems it can get
no worse. Every day for almost 16 years these people have suffered as a
result of actions taken by our government in our name and with our money.

If an American baby was born on Jan. 17, 1991, that child will be 16 in a
few days. Happy Birthday, kid, and don’t forget to thank God you are an
American because we’re number one. It’s a great age to be, 16, unless that
baby was born in Iraq and may be long dead by now — starved, bombed, caught
in a crossfire. Who knows, who mourns, who cares, in the home of the brave
and the land of the free in the midst of an endless war for profit and
plunder to benefit corporate tycoons and a ruling class that wouldn’t even
think of having us at their dinner table.

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. You got 16. Wanna try for 32?

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12) Execution Memories Refuse To Go Away
Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily
http://dahrjamailiraq.com

*BAGHDAD, Jan. 5 (IPS) - The footage of the execution of Saddam Hussein
has generated controversy in Iraq that is refusing to die down.*

Footage of Saddam's last moments, taken by an onlooker with a mobile
phone, shows the former dictator appearing calm and composed while
dealing with taunts from witnesses below him. The audio reveals several
men praising the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr,
founder of the Shia Dawa Party, who was killed by Saddam in 1980.

"Peace be upon Muhammad and his followers," shouted someone near the
person who filmed the events. "Curse his enemies and make victorious his
son Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada." These chants are commonly used by
members of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia..

There has been a huge international backlash to the footage. In India
millions of Muslims demonstrated against the execution being carried out
during the sacred festival of Eid.

Across Iraq, Shias seem mostly pleased. "Of course things will be better
now that Saddam is dead," Saed Abdul-Hussain, a cleric from the Shia
dominated city Najaf told IPS in Baghdad. "It is like hitting the snake
on the head and I hope his followers will hand over their weapons and
accept the fact that they lost."

But few believe that Saddam was inspiring the armed resistance.

"Who is Saddam and why would he affect anything after his death," a
55-year-old teacher from Fallujah told IPS. "The idea of his leading the
resistance from jail is too ridiculous for a sane man to believe. We
know that Mujahideen (holy warriors) are the only ones who will kick the
occupation out of the country."

Others believe unity between Iraqis is the only answer to the occupation.

"Saddam was terminated the day he was captured by occupation forces,"
Salah al-Dulaimy from Ramadi told IPS. "Things will continue to be as
bad as they are for both Iraqis and Americans because nothing has really
changed. A president who was removed from power four years ago is just
an ordinary man although the way he was executed and the timing of the
execution was a blessing to so many Iraqis, who realised the necessity
of being united no matter what religion and sect they belong to."

Facing broadening criticism over release of the mobile phone footage,
the Iraqi government arrested a guard accused of filming the execution.
Iraqi officials said on Wednesday that the execution chamber was
infiltrated by outsiders bent on inflaming sectarian tensions.

"Whoever leaked this video meant to harm national reconciliation and
drive a wedge between Shias and Sunnis," National Security Adviser
Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, who was among 20 officials and other witnesses
present at the execution at dawn last Saturday told reporters.

Rubaie later insisted that there was nothing improper about the shouting
from the crowd, or the fact that executioners and officials danced
around Saddam's body. "This is the tradition of the Iraqis, when they do
something, they dance around the body and they express their feelings,"
he said in an interview to CNN.

A senior Interior Ministry official told reporters that the hanging was
supposed to be carried out by hangmen employed by the Interior Ministry
but that "militias" had managed to infiltrate the executioners' team.

The airing of the footage has further damaged the government of
embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and possibilities of
reconciliation between political and sectarian groups in Iraq.

On Thursday the Iraqi government postponed the hanging of two of Saddam
Hussein's companions. Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikrit, Saddam's half brother
and former intelligence chief, along with Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, head of
Saddam's revolutionary court, were to have been hanged Thursday.

A senior official from Maliki's office told a reporter that the
executions were postponed "due to international pressure."

U.S. Presidential press secretary Tony Snow, formerly of Fox News,
dismissed calls to join international condemnation of Saddam Hussein's
execution. "The government is investigating the conduct of some people
within the chamber and I think we'll leave it at that," Snow told
reporters. "But the one thing you got to keep in mind is that you got
justice."

The U.S. military claims it had no control over the events at the
execution, despite handing Saddam over to Iraqi authorities just minutes
before the footage was taken. The U.S. military then transported the
body to Tikrit where it was later buried.

Many Iraqis simply want the bloodshed and chaos that has engulfed their
country to end.

"I just pray to Allah to stop the bleeding that started when those
strangers came into our country," 65-year-old Ahmed Alwan from Baghdad
told IPS. "There is no future for us to think about under such a mess,
and killing Saddam will just add more hatred between Iraqis, especially
with the savage comments that appeared on the video."

Most Iraqis seem skeptical of the current U.S.-backed Iraqi government,
which has been unable to restore even basic services, let alone security.

"Our government thought they could fool us again by killing the man,"
30-year-old grocer Atwan in the Hurriya district of Baghdad told IPS.
"We have had enough and what we demand is a real change, or else we will
take another course regardless of what our religious and political
leaders tell us. What we want is a better life and real brotherhood
between Iraqis."

(Ali al-Fadhily is our Baghdad correspondent. Dahr Jamail is our
specialist writer who has spent eight months reporting from inside Iraq
and has been covering the Middle East for several years.)

(c)2006 Dahr Jamail.

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13) A New Commander, in Step With the White House on Iraq
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
January 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/middleeast/06petraeus.html?hp&ex=1168146000&en=689c1f2b896c5559&ei=5094&partner=homepage

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 — The selection of Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus to
serve as the senior American commander in Iraq signals an important
turn in United States strategy.

As a supporter of increased forces in Iraq, General Petraeus is expected
to back a rapid five-brigade expansion, in sharp contrast to his
predecessor, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who has been openly
skeptical that additional troops would help stabilize the country.

Having overseen the recent drafting of the military’s counterinsurgency
manual, General Petraeus is also likely to change the American military
operation in Baghdad. American forces can be expected to take up
positions in neighborhoods throughout the capital instead of limiting
themselves to conducting patrols from large, fortified bases
in and around the city.

The overarching goal of the American military operation may be
altered as well. Under General Casey, the principal focus has been
on transferring security responsibilities to the Iraqi security forces,
so American troops could gradually withdraw. Now, the emphasis
will shift to protecting the Iraqi population from sectarian strife
and insurgent attacks.

Since his appointment was disclosed Thursday, General Petraeus
has not spoken publicly about his plans for Iraq. But the doctrine
he has advocated suggests that he will want all five of the combat
brigades slated to go to Iraq as quickly as possible instead
of waiting for them to be phased in.

Before the selection of General Petraeus, there was some doubt
about whether the top Iraq commander would be an enthusiastic
executor of the new strategy President Bush is preparing to unveil
next week — one that could send 20,000 new troops to Iraq.
Now, the White House will have an articulate officer to champion
and shape that strategy, an important asset for an administration
that has decided to buck the tide of public opinion by deepening
the American military involvement in Iraq. While some Democratic
lawmakers have insisted that any increase be limited to a few
months, neither the While House nor General Petraeus would
support such a deadline.

To many civilians, the military seems monolithic. But in fact, there
has been a lively debate behind the scenes about the best way
to achieve the United States’ objectives in Iraq — or at least
to preserve a measure of stability as sectarian passions threaten
to engulf the country.

At one end of the spectrum have been General Casey, Gen. John P.
Abizaid, the head of the United States Central Command, and Lt. Gen.
Martin Dempsey, who is in charge of training Iraqi security forces.

They have advocated plans to hand over security responsibilities
to the Iraqis while gradually reducing American forces and shrinking
the number of American bases in Iraq, as conditions permit. Their
argument has been that a lengthy expansion of American forces
in Iraq will simply put off the day when Iraqis take more responsibility
for their security.

Taking a different view, other officers have argued for sending more
troops while stepping up economic efforts, the better to apply the
military’s new counterinsurgency doctrine. Progress in stabilizing
Iraq, they argue, will come only when the Iraqi public does not feel
that it needs militias or insurgent groups to ensure its security, and
when it concludes that its basic economic needs are being met.

Training and advising the Iraqi forces should continue to be an
important priority, these officers have argued, but the Iraqis cannot
be expected to shoulder the brunt of the security effort so quickly.

General Petraeus has been squarely in this camp, as was reflected
in the military’s new counterinsurgency field manual.

The United States has sought to apply the basic lessons of
counterinsurgency operations in Baghdad before — most notably
during Operation Together Forward II, the second phase of an
effort begun over the summer to reduce violence in Baghdad.

But that effort foundered when the United States and Iraqi
authorities failed to marshal sufficient forces to hold neighborhoods
after they were cleared of insurgents and militias, and when the Iraqis
failed to follow through with the job a