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EMERGENCY PROTEST
OF BUSH’S PLAN TO ESCALATE IRAQ WAR
THURSDAY, JAN. 11, 5 P.M.
POWELL & MARKET STS.
SAN FRANCISCO
FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL THE A.N.S.W.E.R. COALITION:
415-821-6545

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Witness Against Torture
Thursday, January 11, 2007: The 5 year anniversary of the first
prisoners being brought to Guantánamo. March, Press Conference
and Nonviolent Direct Action in Washington, DC. Endorsed
by Center for Constitional Rights, CodePink, Network of Spiritual
Progressives, Pax Christi USA, School of Americas Watch, United
for Peace and Justice and other groups.
http://www.witnesstorture.org/jan11

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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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REPORT BACK ON VENEZUELA

7:00 PM Saturday, January 13
522 Valencia Street, 3rd Floor Auditorium

Hear about:

-Factories run by workers

-The election turnout for Hugo Chavez

-Occupied factories

-Socialism of the 21st Century

See: A short film on current developments in Venezuela.

Speakers:

-John Peterson, National Secretary of US Hands Off Venezuela,
Participant in HOV’s International Delegation to Venezuela

-Mel Martynne and Mary Eliasar, participants in Global
Exchange’s Election Delegation in Venezuela

-Nell Myhand and Lori Nairne, Global Women’s Strike,
San Francisco Bay Area

An opportunity for discussion will follow the presentations.

Sponsored by Hands Off Venezuela

Hands Off Venezuela is an international organization dedicated
to the principle that the people of Venezuela have the right to
determine their own destiny without interference from foreign
countries.

Contact info: (415) 786-1680, email:
sfbay@ushov.org web www.ushov.org

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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) THE URGE TO SURGE
[Col. Writ. 12/24/06] Copyright '06
Mumia Abu-Jamal
[VIA Email...bw]

2) The Imperial Presidency 2.0
New York Times Editorial
January 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/opinion/07sun1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

3) Working Harder for the Man
By BOB HERBERT
January 8, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/opinion/08herbert.html?hp

4) War Could Last Years, Commander Says
By JOHN F. BURNS
January 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/world/middleeast/08iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

5) Pelosi Hints at Denying Bush Iraq Funds
"She said Democrats are not interesting in cutting off money for
troops already in Iraq - 'We won't do that' - and that her party
favors increased the overall size of the Army by 30,000 and Marines
by 20,000 'to make sure we are able to protect the American people.'"
The Associated Press
Sunday 07 January 2007
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/01/07/ap3306883.html

6) Private Firms Lure Chief Executives With Top Pay
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and ERIC DASH
January 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/business/08private.html?hp&ex=1168318800&en=ff2bfe6afe1590ae&ei=5094&partner=homepage

7) Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says
By Edmund L. Andrews
January 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/washington/08tax.html

8) Queens Man Dies After Police Use Taser, Reports Say
By John Holusha
January 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/nyregion/08cnd-taser.html?ref=nyregion#

9) NO SAFE AGE
[Col. Writ. 12/3/06] Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal
[VIA Email...bw]

10) WHEN WAR CRIMES AIN'T CRIMES
[Col. Writ. 12/16/06] Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal
{VIA Email...bw}

11) Norway, Cuba deplore U.S.-owned hotel ban
REUTERS
Fri Jan 5, 4:26 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070105/wl_nm/cuba_norway_dc_1&printer=1

12) Chavez: Will nationalize telecoms, power
By IAN JAMES Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press
Jan. 8, 2007, 8:09PM
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4456071.html

13) U.S. Airstrike Aims at Qaeda Cell in Somalia
By DAVID S. CLOUD
January 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/world/africa/09somalia.html?hp&ex=1168405200&en=cc4f29d01f65cf61&ei=5094&partner=homepage

14) Past Time to Get Real on Iraq
New York Times Editorial
January 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/opinion/09tue1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

15) The Candidates: Where They Stand on Iraq
By John M. Broder
[Plus: Kennedy: ‘George Bush’s Vietnam’
By Kate Phillips...bw]
January 9, 2007, 11:25 am
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/

16) Only Relentless Struggle Will Bring Home the Cuban Five
Deisy Francis Mexidor
francis_mexidor@granma.cip.cu
GRANMA
January 6, 2007
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art09.html

17) Terrified Soldiers Terrifying People
Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily
Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches
http://dahrjamailiraq.com

18) US Peace Activists in Cuba
PHOTO:
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={F87034A4-5650-47D3-972D-7FC638A2BC9B})&language=EN

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

Within days the Bush regime is expected to announce its so-called "new
strategy" in Iraq -- the most talked-about plan being a surge in U.S.
forces in Iraq.

By 'surge' is meant the significant increase in troop size in that
beleaguered country, a plan meant to address the obvious failures in Iraq.

In light of the rumored 'surge', one wonders, what does it take for the
administration to listen to the voices of the People?

In February and March, 2003, the U.S. and much of the world spoke, with
millions marching in the streets of cities the globe over, against the
scourge of war.

The Bush regime ignored them. No -- "ignored" isn't right. President
Bush belittled the protests as 'a focus group.' As journalism professor
Robert Jensen notes in his book, *The Citizens of the Empire: The
Struggle to Claim Our Humanity* (San Francisco: City Lights Publ., 2004)
Bush's response to the "single largest public political demonstration in
history", was unbelievable:

"When asked a few days later about the size of the protest, he said:
'First of all, you know, size of protest, it's like deciding, well, I'm
going to decide policy based on a focus group. The role of a leader is
to decide policy based upon the security -- in this case, the security
of the people.'

"A focus group? Perhaps the leader of the free world was not aware that
a focus group is a small number of people who are brought together
(and typically paid) to evaluate a concept or product. Focus groups are
primarily a tool of businesses, which use them to figure out how to sell
things more effectively. Politicians also occasionally use them, for
the same purpose. That's a bit different from a coordinated gathering
of millions of people who took to the streets because they felt
passionately about an issue of life and death. As is so often the case,
Bush's comment demonstrated his ignorance and condescension, the
narrowness of his intellect and his lack of respect for the people he
allegedly serves." [pp. xi-xii]

Decades ago, during the height of the Vietnam War, presidents and their
military advisors extended the hostilities long after it was abundantly
clear that the conflict could not be won.

President Lyndon B. Johnson escalated it, but could not bring himself to
rein it in, for fear that history would judge him one who 'lost' Vietnam.

His successor, Richard M. Nixon further escalated the conflict, by

ordering bombing of neighboring countries. Some historians now say that
the escalation and continuation of the Vietnam war cost some 20,000
Americans lives; the numbers of Vietnamese, and other southeast Asians
are unknown to us.

The point is, the war and its needless carnage was extended for years,
at a horrific cost: to save U.S. face.

It seems that this not-so-distant history is repeating itself.

In a few weeks, we shall hear what "the Decider" has decided. You can
bet that it will conflict with the will of most Americans. What kind of
democracy is this?

Demonstrations don't matter. Elections don't matter. Study groups
don't matter.

No matter what most Americans think -- it doesn't matter.

Nothing matters -- but what the decider decides.

There's a word for that -- and it sure ain't democracy!

Americans have seemingly settled for a dictatorship of one -- in fact, a
dictatorship of disaster.

Like good little sheep, they plan to silently acquiesce as more of their
young people are slain on an altar slick with oil.

This isn't patriotism. It's the very essence of subservience.

There's another word for it.

Madness.

Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal

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2) The Imperial Presidency 2.0
New York Times Editorial
January 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/opinion/07sun1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Observing President Bush in action lately, we have to wonder if he
actually watched the election returns in November, or if he was
just rerunning the 2002 vote on his TiVo.

That year, the White House used the fear of terrorism to scare
American voters into cementing the Republican domination
of Congress. Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney then
embarked on an expansion of presidential power chilling
both in its sweep and in the damage it did to the constitutional
system of checks and balances.

In 2006, the voters sent Mr. Bush a powerful message that
it was time to rein in his imperial ambitions. But we have yet
to see any sign that Mr. Bush understands that — or even
realizes that the Democrats are now in control of the Congress.
Indeed, he seems to have interpreted his party’s drubbing
as a mandate to keep pursuing his fantasy of victory in Iraq
and to press ahead undaunted with his assault on civil liberties
and the judicial system. Just before the Christmas break, the
Justice Department served notice to Senator Patrick Leahy —
the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee — that it intended
to keep stonewalling Congressional inquiries into Mr. Bush’s inhumane
and unconstitutional treatment of prisoners taken in anti-terrorist
campaigns. It refused to hand over two documents, including one
in which Mr. Bush authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to
establish secret prisons beyond the reach of American law or
international treaties. The other set forth the interrogation
methods authorized in these prisons — which we now know
ranged from abuse to outright torture.

Also last month, Mr. Bush issued another of his infamous
“presidential signing statements,” which he has used scores of
times to make clear he does not intend to respect the requirements
of a particular law — in this case a little-noticed Postal Service bill.
The statement suggested that Mr. Bush does not believe the government
must obtain a court order before opening Americans’ first-class mail.
It said the administration had the right to “conduct searches in exigent
circumstances,” which include not only protecting lives, but also
unspecified “foreign intelligence collection.”

The law is clear on this. A warrant is required to open Americans’
mail under a statute that was passed to stop just this sort of abuse
using just this sort of pretext. But then again, the law is also clear on
the need to obtain a warrant before intercepting Americans’ telephone
calls and e-mail. Mr. Bush began openly defying that law after
Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the National Security Agency to
eavesdrop without a court order on calls and e-mail between
the United States and other countries.

News accounts have also reminded us of the shameful state
of American military prisons, where supposed terrorist suspects
are kept without respect for civil or human rights, and on the basis
of evidence so deeply tainted by abuse, hearsay or secrecy that
it is essentially worthless.

Deborah Sontag wrote in The Times last week about the sorry
excuse for a criminal case that the administration whipped up
against Jose Padilla, who was once — but no longer is — accused
of plotting to explode a radioactive “dirty bomb” in the United States.
Mr. Padilla was held for two years without charges or access to a lawyer.
Then, to avoid having the Supreme Court review Mr. Bush’s power
grab, the administration dropped those accusations and charged
Mr. Padilla in a criminal court on hazy counts of lending financial
support to terrorists.

But just as the government abandoned the “dirty bomb” case against
Mr. Padilla, it quietly charged an Ethiopian-born man, Binyam
Mohamed, with conspiring with Mr. Padilla to commit that very
crime. Unlike Mr. Padilla, Mr. Mohamed is not a United States citizen,
so the administration threw him into Guantánamo. Now 28, he
is still being held there as an “illegal enemy combatant” under
the anti-constitutional military tribunals act that was rushed
through the Republican-controlled Congress just before last
November’s elections.

Mr. Mohamed was a target of another favorite Bush administration
practice: “extraordinary rendition,” in which foreign citizens are
snatched off the streets of their hometowns and secretly shipped
to countries where they can be abused and tortured on behalf
of the American government. Mr. Mohamed — whose name
appears nowhere in either of the cases against Mr. Padilla —
has said he was tortured in Morocco until he signed a confession
that he conspired with Mr. Padilla. The Bush administration
clearly has no intention of answering that claim, and plans
to keep Mr. Mohamed in extralegal detention indefinitely.

The Democratic majority in Congress has a moral responsibility
to address all these issues: fixing the profound flaws in the
military tribunals act, restoring the rule of law over Mr. Bush’s
rogue intelligence operations and restoring the balance
of powers between Congress and the executive branch.
So far, key Democrats, including Mr. Leahy and Senator
Richard Durbin of Illinois, chairman of a new subcommittee
on human rights, have said these issues are high priorities
for them.

We would lend such efforts our enthusiastic backing and hope
Mr. Leahy, Mr. Durbin and other Democratic leaders are not
swayed by the absurd notion circulating in Washington that the
Democrats should now “look ahead” rather than use their new
majority to right the dangerous wrongs of the last six years
of Mr. Bush’s one-party rule.

This is a false choice. Dealing with these issues is not about
the past. The administration’s assault on some of the nation’s
founding principles continues unabated. If the Democrats
were to shirk their responsibility to stop it, that would make
them no better than the Republicans who formed and enabled
these policies in the first place.

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3) Working Harder for the Man
By BOB HERBERT
January 8, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/opinion/08herbert.html?hp

Robert L. Nardelli, the chairman and chief executive of Home Depot,
began the new year with a pink slip and a golden parachute.
The company handed him a breathtaking $210 million to take
a hike. What would he have been worth if he’d done a good job?

Data recently compiled by the Center for Labor Market Studies
at Northeastern University in Boston offers a startling look at
just how out of whack executive compensation has become.
Some of the Wall Street Christmas bonuses last month were
fabulous enough to resurrect an adult’s belief in Santa Claus.
Morgan Stanley’s John Mack got stock and options worth in
excess of $40 million. Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs did
even better — $53.4 million.

According to the center’s director, Andrew Sum, the top five
Wall Street firms (Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman
Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley) were expected
to award an estimated $36 billion to $44 billion worth
of bonuses to their 173,000 employees, an average of
between $208,000 and $254,000, “with the bulk of the
gains accruing to the top 1,000 or so highest-paid managers.”

Now consider what’s been happening to the bulk of the
American population, the ordinary men and women who
have to work for a living somewhere below the stratosphere
of the top corporate executives. Between 2000 and 2006,
labor productivity in the nonfarm sector of the economy
rose by an impressive 18 percent. But workers were not
paid for that impressive effort. During that period, according
to Mr. Sum, the inflation-adjusted weekly wages of workers
increased by just 1 percent.

That’s $3.20 a week. As Mr. Sum wryly observed, that won’t
even buy you a six-pack of Bud Light. Joe Six-Pack has been
downsized. Three bucks ain’t what it used to be.

There are 93 million production and nonsupervisory workers
(exclusive of farmworkers) in the U.S. Their combined real
annual earnings from 2000 to 2006 rose by $15.4 billion,
which is less than half of the combined bonuses awarded
by the five Wall Street firms for just one year.

“Just these bonuses — for one year — overwhelmingly exceed
all the pay increases received by these workers over the entire
six-year period,” said Mr. Sum.

In a development described by Mr. Sum as “quite stark and
rather bleak for the economic well-being of the average worker,”
the once strong link between productivity gains and real wage
increases has been severed. The mystery to me is why workers
aren’t more scandalized. If your productivity increases by
18 percent and your pay goes up by 1 percent, you’ve been
dealt a hand full of jokers in a game in which jokers aren’t wild.

Workers have received some modest increases in benefits
over the past six years, but most of the money from their
productivity gains — by far, it’s not even a close call —
has gone into profits and the salaries of top executives.

Fairness plays no role in this system. The corporate elite
control it, and they have turned it to their ends.

Mr. Sum, a longtime expert on the economic life of the
American worker, said he is astonished at the degree to
which ordinary workers have been shortchanged over the
past several years. “Productivity has been exceptional,”
he said. “And for most of my life, the way to get wages
up was to be more productive. That’s how our economy
was supposed to work.”

The productivity gains in the go-go decades that followed
World War II were broadly shared, and the result was
a dramatic, sustained increase in the quality of life for
most Americans. Nowadays workers have to be more
productive just to maintain their economic status quo.
Productivity gains are no longer broadly shared. They’re
barely shared at all.

The pervasive unfairness in the way the great wealth of
the United States is distributed should be seen for what
it is, an insidious disease eating away at the structure of
the society and undermining its future. The middle class
is hurting, propped up by the wobbly crutches of personal
debt. The safety net, not just for the poor, but for the middle
class as well, is disappearing. The savings rate has dropped
to below zero, and more Americans are filing for bankruptcy
than for divorce.

Your pension? Don’t ask.

There’s a reason why the power elite get bent out of shape
at the merest mention of a class conflict in the U.S. The fear
is that the cringing majority that has taken it on the chin for
so long will wise up and begin to fight back.

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4) War Could Last Years, Commander Says
By JOHN F. BURNS
January 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/world/middleeast/08iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

BAGHDAD, Jan. 7 — The new American operational commander in Iraq
said Sunday that even with the additional American troops likely to
be deployed in Baghdad under President Bush’s new war strategy
it might take another “two or three years” for American and Iraqi
forces to gain the upper hand in the war.

The commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, assumed day-to-day
control of war operations last month in the first step of a makeover
of the American military hierarchy here. In his first lengthy meeting
with reporters, General Odierno, 52, struck a cautious note about
American prospects, saying much will depend on whether commanders
can show enough progress to stem eroding support in the United
States for the war.

“I believe the American people, if they feel we are making progress,
they will have the patience,” he said. But right now, he added,
“I think the frustration is that they think we are not making
progress.”

The general laid out a plan to make an impact in Baghdad with
the additional troops. Several other military plans since the fall
of Baghdad in 2003 have faltered. He said he wanted the new
American units, working with three additional Iraqi combat
brigades that Iraqi officials say will be deployed in the capital,
to move back into the city’s toughest neighborhoods and
show that they can “protect the people,” which he said
coalition forces had previously failed to do.

General Odierno contrasted his approach with the last effort
to secure Baghdad, effectively abandoned for lack of enough
Iraqi troops last fall.

Then, American troops conducted house-to-house clearing
operations before moving on to other neighborhoods, leaving
the holding phase of the operation to Iraqi troops, who failed
to control the areas and forced Americans to return. This time,
the general said, American troops would remain in the cleared
areas “24/7,” to stiffen Iraqi resolve and build confidence
among residents that they would be treated evenhandedly.

Equally important, he said, coalition troops would move into
both Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods. That, too, would break
with the pattern set last fall, when American troops concentrated
on known Sunni insurgent strongholds, especially Dora, in
southwest Baghdad. This time, the general said, it was crucial
the security plan be evenhanded. “We have to have a believable
approach, of going after Sunni and Shia extremists,” he said.

Going into Shiite neighborhoods, particularly the sprawling
working-class district of Sadr City, the base for the powerful
Mahdi Army militia that has spawned Shiite death squads, will
risk new strains in the relationship between American commanders
and the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki. Sunni leaders and, increasingly, American commanders
here have accused Mr. Maliki of a strong Shiite bias. The criticism
has intensified since the sectarian taunting by Shiite guards at the
hanging nine days ago of Iraq’s ousted dictator, Saddam Hussein,
an event personally planned by Mr. Maliki.

General Odierno said he envisaged making enough of a difference
within three or four months of the new deployments to move to
a second phase of the new plan, pulling American troops back
to the periphery of Baghdad and leaving Iraqi forces to carry on
the fight in the capital. He said he hoped to be able to do that
by August or September, but with American troops prepared
to move back into the capital rapidly if commanders conclude
that the pullback was “a miscalculation.”

Meeting American reporters over lunch at a villa in the grounds
of one of Mr. Hussein’s former palaces, General Odierno was
careful not to divulge details of Mr. Bush’s new war plan, which
the president is expected to make public in coming days, perhaps
on Wednesday.

But much of the Bush plan has been leaked, including an influx
of as many as 20,000 additional combat troops to Baghdad. Their
arrival would be staged over coming months as American commanders
watch to see whether the Iraqis, who made troop commitments
before that they have not fulfilled, meet their part of the deal.

Sending up to five additional combat brigades, as suggested by
administration officials in Washington who have discussed the
plan with reporters, would push the American force in Iraq to
at least 160,000 troops, close to the levels involved in the
invasion nearly four years ago.

This so-called surge would constitute an abrupt about-face
in American strategy, which has aimed in the past two years
for a drawdown of American troops as Iraqi forces take on
greater responsibility for the war.

General Odierno, the second-ranking American commander
here, will be joined in Baghdad in coming weeks by the new
overall commander chosen by Mr. Bush, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus,
who will be promoted to full general when he succeeds Gen.
George W. Casey Jr., top commander in Iraq for the past two-
and-a-half years. The recasting of the war command will also
include a new top officer at the Central Command, with overall
responsibility for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That post will
go to Adm. William J. Fallon, a Navy officer who is now the American
commander in the Pacific. The appointments of Admiral Fallon
and General Petraeus are expected to be approved by the Senate.

Generals Petraeus and Odierno will assume control in Iraq at
a critical juncture, with additional American troops — assuming
Mr. Bush’s plan is not blocked by Democratic opponents in Congress
— and the burden of showing they can find ways of turning the
worsening situation around that escaped General Casey and
Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the operational commander who
preceded General Odierno. General Casey and General Chiarelli
have been wary of American troop increases, saying the key
to prevailing here is to have Iraqis take over, not to encourage
them to shelter behind enhanced American combat power.

The plans laid out by General Odierno appeared aimed at meeting
several goals in what American commanders here say has become
a highly complex interplay of American and Iraqi politics,
in addition to stabilizing a situation that has threatened
to spiral out of control as Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis move
ever closer to all-out civil war.

The commanders have acknowledged privately that the new
Bush plan is almost certain to represent a last-chance option
for persuading Americans that it is worth persisting with the
heavy burdens of the war, with more than 3,000 American
troops dead and overall costs that are nearing $450 billion.

General Odierno said one American goal would be to satisfy
Iraqi leaders’ insistence that American commanders transfer
to them as quickly as possible overall responsibility for the war.

One thorny issue for the Bush administration has been that
Iraqi leaders, facing the highest levels of violence in the war
and struggling with weaknesses in their forces, have been wary
of increasing American troop levels because of the impediment
that might pose to the Iraqis taking fuller control of events here.

General Odierno spoke of the mood in the United States as
another crucial factor. He served a year here in 2003 and 2004
as commander of the Fourth Infantry Division, during which
his troops took credit for capturing Mr. Hussein. But he spent
the last two years in Washington, the most recent 12 months
as military adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

He said he understood the failing confidence among Americans,
including some of those who had lost sons and daughters here,
that the war was worthwhile. The general’s own son, Capt.
Anthony Odierno, a 28-year-old West Point graduate, lost an
arm when a bomb detonated during a patrol in Baghdad in 2004.

As a father as well as a commander, the general said, he did not
doubt the sacrifices had been justified. “I believe it’s worth it,” he said.

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5) Pelosi Hints at Denying Bush Iraq Funds
"She said Democrats are not interesting in cutting off money for
troops already in Iraq - 'We won't do that' - and that her party
favors increased the overall size of the Army by 30,000 and Marines
by 20,000 'to make sure we are able to protect the American people.'
...Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress has approved
about $500 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan and other terrorism-fighting
efforts. The White House is working on its largest-ever appeal
for more war funds - a record $100 billion, at least. It will be
submitted along with Bush's Feb. 5 budget."
The Associated Press
Sunday 07 January 2007
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/01/07/ap3306883.html

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said newly empowered Democrats will
not give President Bush a blank check to wage war in Iraq, hinting
they could deny funding if he seeks additional troops.

"If the president chooses to escalate the war, in his budget request,
we want to see a distinction between what is there to support the
troops who are there now," she said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

"The American people and the Congress support those troops.
We will not abandon them. But if the president wants to add to this
mission, he is going to have to justify it and this is new for him
because up until now the Republican Congress has given him
a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions,"
said Pelosi, D-Calif.

Her comments on CBS' "Face the Nation" came as Bush worked
to finish his new war plan that could send as many as 20,000
additional U.S. troops to Iraq and provide more money for jobs
and reconstruction programs.

Bush is expected to announce his plan as early as Wednesday.

When asked about the possibility of cutting off funds, House
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer declined to say whether Democrats
might do so, saying only that the current strategy clearly is
"not working."

"I don't want to anticipate that," said Hoyer, D-Md., on
"Fox News Sunday."

Some military officials, familiar with the discussions, say Bush
at first could send 8,000 to 10,000 new troops to Baghdad,
and possibly Anbar Province, and leave himself the option
of adding more later if security does not improve.

"Based on the advice of current and former military leaders,
we believe this tactic would be a serious mistake," Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Saturday in the
Democratic radio address.

Pelosi and Reid told Bush in a letter last week that Democrats
oppose additional U.S. forces in Iraq and want him to begin
withdrawing in four months to six months American troops
already there.

Pointing to the November elections that ousted Republicans
from control of the House and Senate, Pelosi said on CBS the
public is "watching to see what difference this election can
make. The president ought to heed their message....
We should not be obliged to an open-ended war."

She said Democrats are not interesting in cutting off money
for troops already in Iraq - "We won't do that" - and that her
party favors increased the overall size of the Army by 30,000
and Marines by 20,000 "to make sure we are able to protect
the American people."

"That's different though, than adding troops to Iraq,"
Pelosi said.

The speaker stopped short of stating categorically that
Democrats would block money for additional troops in Iraq.
But she did say, "The burden is on the president to justify any
additional resources.... The president's going to have to engage
with Congress in the justification for any additional troops."

Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, said it would be a "tragic mistake" if Bush chooses
to increase troops. But Biden, D-Del., said cutting off funds
was not an option.

"As a practical matter there is no way to say this is going
to be stopped," Biden said regarding a troop increase, unless
enough congressional Republicans join Democrats in convincing
Bush the strategy is wrong.

Biden added that it probably would be an unconstitutional
violation of separation of powers if Democrats were to block
Bush's efforts as commander in chief after Congress had voted
to authorize going to war.

"It's unconstitutional to say, you can go, but we're going
to micromanage," Biden said.

Although most of the discussion about Bush's anticipated
plan has focused on troop strength, his strategy also is expected
to address political and economic issues.

Military analysts say Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who recently
finished his tour as the No. 2 general in Iraq, has recommended
a short-term jobs program.

Bush is said to favor short-term jobs programs, making micro-
loans to small business and increasing the amount of money that
military commanders can spend quickly on local projects
to improve the daily lives of Iraqis.

Bush is expected to continue his briefings with lawmakers this
week, culminating in a meeting with bipartisan leadership on

Wednesday, according to lawmakers and aides.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress has approved
about $500 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan and other terrorism-fighting
efforts. The White House is working on its largest-ever appeal
for more war funds - a record $100 billion, at least. It will be
submitted along with Bush's Feb. 5 budget.

"This war cost a trillion dollars if it ended now," Pelosi said.
"But more important than that, the lives lost, the casualties
sustained, the lost reputation in the world, and the damage
to our military readiness. For these and other reasons we
have to say to the president, in your speech ... we want to
see a plan in a new direction because the direction you've
been taking us in has not been successful.

"So when the bill comes ... it will receive the harshest
scrutiny. What do we really need to protect our troops?
What is there for an escalation? What is the justification for that?"

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6) Private Firms Lure Chief Executives With Top Pay
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and ERIC DASH
January 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/business/08private.html?hp&ex=1168318800&en=ff2bfe6afe1590ae&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Robert L. Nardelli’s unceremonious departure from Home Depot may
spell the end of the era of super-size pay packages for chief executives
of public companies, but a new refuge for lavish compensation
and private jets is emerging elsewhere.

Flush with hundreds of billions of dollars, private equity firms are
beginning to offer compensation on a previously unimaginable scale
to the chief executives who run the once-public companies that
the firms have bought out. At the privately held firms, the executives
still get salaries and bonuses, but a crucial difference lies in the
ownership positions they can secure, which can turn into particularly
bountiful riches when these businesses are sold or go public again.

While executives like Mr. Nardelli are being deposed, other public
company chieftains are deciding that they no longer want to
be judged by their shareholders and regulators, and are going
to work for businesses owned by private equity. The imperial
chief executive is still very much alive and well in the private realm.

“Five or 10 years ago, it used to be that private company C.E.O.’s
wanted to return to the public markets because they wanted
to run their own ship, not have private equity managers second-
guessing their decisions,” said Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, associate
dean of the Yale University School of Management.

Now, that pattern has reversed. “You regularly hear public
company C.E.O.’s talk about how they can make two or three
times the money in what they feel is half the effort because they
don’t have the same degree of scrutiny,” Mr. Sonnenfeld said.

David Calhoun, a 50-year-old vice chairman at General Electric
who ran the company’s $47 billion aircraft unit, left G.E. last
year to become chairman and chief executive of privately held
VNU, a $4.3 billion media company whose holdings include
Nielsen Media Research and The Hollywood Reporter.

Mr. Calhoun, who was a contemporary of Mr. Nardelli’s at
General Electric, was offered a compensation package worth
more than $100 million, according to executives involved
in negotiating the agreement. VNU, which up until last year
was a public company, is controlled by a consortium
of private equity firms led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
& Company.

Private equity investors “think about compensation differently.
They will spend the money to get the right person,” said
George B. Paulin, an executive pay consultant at Frederic
W. Cook & Company. They are “not under pressure to reform
the same way big public companies are,” he said.

This willingness to pay big money may bolster the argument
of defenders of corporate pay practices who have contended
that companies have simply been paying the going rate
in the market to attract top talent. At the same time,
however, private equity may be quicker than a public
company to fire an executive if he is not getting results.

“There’s also huge risk,” said Mr. Paulin, whose firm advised
on some of the richest pay packages for executives
at a number of big public companies. “It’s the classic
pay-for-performance model.”

Of course, the great irony is that private equity executives
usually get their biggest paydays when a private company
is either sold or taken public again. Then they again find
themselves in the public view.

Mark P. Frissora is an example of the risk being worth it.
Up until last year, Mr. Frissora was the chairman and chief
executive of Tenneco, the auto parts manufacturer. He was
making only a few million dollars a year at Tenneco when
executive recruiters approached him last year with several
job offers. Among them was one to lead a big public company.

But then he was offered the chief executive’s job at Hertz,
the rental car chain owned by a group of big private equity
firms, including Carlyle Group, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, and
an investment arm of Merrill Lynch. The public company
offers could not compete.

Mr. Frissora left Tenneco for Hertz in July and was granted
a $4 million “make-whole” cash award and a guaranteed bonus
of almost $1 million for 2006. He also was given millions in stock
options and the chance to buy company stock — both at a very
steeply discounted prices — and a special dividend that would
put another $1.2 million in his pocket.

Less than six months and an initial public offering later,
Mr. Frissora is more than $33 million richer on paper, according
to an analysis by Brian Foley, an independent compensation
consultant in White Plains. He stands to make even more money
if Hertz’s share price goes up.

“It’s nice work if you can get it,” Mr. Foley said. And Mr. Frissora
is not the only one to reap such riches.

Millard S. Drexler made hundreds of millions of dollars and his
reputation as the merchant prince in his 16 years running the
Gap retail chain. Now, four years after the Texas Pacific Group,
a private equity firm, recruited him in to turn around J. Crew, he
has made a princely sum of money: at least $300 million,
and growing.

Mr. Drexler took $200,000 in annual salary and received no bonus,
but he was granted millions of stock options and shares of restricted
stock. Those awards are now worth $190 million after J. Crew’s
initial public offering last in June. Over the last three years, the company
also reimbursed Mr. Drexler hundreds of thousands of dollars for moving
expenses, a personal chauffeur and business use of a personal jet,
according to public filings.

Even more lucrative was the chance to invest $10 million of his own
money. That investment is now worth at least $120 million today,
and has helped him solidify a 12 percent ownership stake — a size
virtually unheard of for a public company chieftain who is not the
company’s founder.

That kind of money is exacerbating the tension at public companies,
where directors weigh the demands of top officers, who are aware
of the riches elsewhere, against the demands of shareholders,
who expect to see some gains in return.

“You have conflicting pressures where people in the private
markets are driving up the numbers of compensation at public
companies,” said William W. George, the former Medtronic
chairman who serves on the boards of Exxon Mobil and
Goldman Sachs.

It is probably not surprising that some of the best examples
of imperial chief executives of the recent past — John F. Welch Jr.
of General Electric, Louis V. Gerstner of I.B.M. and Lawrence A.
Bossidy of Honeywell International — have all since ventured
into private equity after their retirement as advisors. Even
Mr. Nardelli, who departed abruptly on Wednesday and will exit
with a $210 million pay package, has already received phone
calls, e-mail messages and letters from the nation’s largest
private equity firms all seeking his services and dangling the
possibility of even more money, according to people in private
equity who approached him.

“He will wind up making a lot more money with a lot less grief
in the private equity world,” Leon Cooperman, one of Home Depot’s
largest shareholders, said on CNBC about an hour after news
of Mr. Nardelli’s departure. “I think it will be long time before
Bob Nardelli gets involved in a public company again.”

Some worry that with executives all rushing to take their companies
private, the United States is going to become less competitive.
Last month, the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation published
a report, which was endorsed by Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury
secretary, calling for a lightening of the regulatory burden on public
companies.

Henry Silverman, who spent the last decade building Cendant into
an $18 billion conglomerate — it owned dozens of the nation’s most
prominent businesses like Century 21, Avis, Days Inn and Orbitz —
through a number of stock deals, says being public is no longer
attractive. He broke up Cendant into four pieces and last month
sold Realogy, its former real estate unit, to Apollo Management,
a private equity firm.

“There is no reason to be a public company anymore,” he said.

“You don’t need access to the public market,” because, he said,
of the enormous amount of money sloshing around private equity
and hedge funds.

Like Mr. Nardelli, Mr. Silverman of Cendant had been accused
of being an imperial chief executive with an outsized pay package.
He is estimated to have made $36.6 million in salary and bonus
and reaped $223 million from exercising options between 1998
and 2002. And he will make $135 million more as a result
of selling Realogy.

“Wherever I show up next, it will not be at a public company,”
Mr. Silverman said.

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7) Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says
By Edmund L. Andrews
January 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/washington/08tax.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — Families earning more than $1 million a year
saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the
country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts, according to a new
Congressional study.

The study, by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, also
shows that tax rates for middle-income earners edged up in 2004,
the most recent year for which data was available, while rates
for people at the very top continued to decline.

Based on an exhaustive analysis of tax records and census data,
the study reinforced the sense that while Mr. Bush’s tax cuts reduced
rates for people at every income level, they offered the biggest benefits
by far to people at the very top — especially the top 1 percent
of income earners.

Though tax cuts for the rich were bigger than those for other
groups, the wealthiest families paid a bigger share of total taxes.
That is because their incomes have climbed far more rapidly, and
the gap between rich and poor has widened in the last several years.

The study offers ammunition to supporters and opponents of
Mr. Bush’s tax cuts, which are all but certain to touch off a battle
between the president and the Democrats who just took control of
Congress.

Democratic leaders have taken pains to avoid an immediate fight
over the tax cuts, most of which are scheduled to expire at the end
of 2010. But Democrats are looking for ways to increase revenue
well before then, in part because they want to spend more
on education and energy without increasing the deficit.

Economists and tax analysts have long known that the biggest dollar
value of Mr. Bush’s tax cuts goes to people at the very top income
levels. One reason is that two of his signature measures, tax cuts
on investment income and a steady reduction of estate taxes,
overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest households.

But the Congressional study offers additional insight because it
incorporates information about what people paid in 2004, the
first year in which taxpayers could take full advantage of the cuts
on stock dividends and capital gains.

The study estimates that the effective federal income tax rate,
which excludes payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare,
declined modestly for people in the middle- and lower-income
categories.

Families in the middle fifth of annual earnings, who had average
incomes of $56,200 in 2004, saw their average effective tax rate
edge down to 2.9 percent in 2004 from 5 percent in 2000. That
translated to an average tax cut of $1,180 per household, but the
tax rate actually increased slightly from 2003.

Tax cuts were much deeper, and affected far more money, for families
in the highest income categories. Households in the top 1 percent of
earnings, which had an average income of $1.25 million, saw their
effective individual tax rates drop to 19.6 percent in 2004 from 24.2
percent in 2000. The rate cut was twice as deep as for middle-income
families, and it translated to an average tax cut of almost $58,000.

In its report, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the overall
effective federal tax rate edged up to 20 percent in 2004, from 19.8
percent the year before.

But even with that increase, Americans faced lower tax rates than any
time since 1979. If President Bush has his way, those rates could
decline even more as the estate tax on inherited wealth is gradually
phased out by the start of 2010.

Mr. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress want to permanently
extend that tax cut and almost all of the others that Congress passed
in his first term. The cost of doing that would be more than $1 trillion
over the next decade, a cost that would hit the Treasury at the same
time that the spending on old-age benefits for retiring baby boomers
begins to soar.

The budget office offered little commentary on its new estimates, but
many of its numbers spoke for themselves.

The report shows that a comparatively small number of very wealthy
households account for a very big share of total tax payments, and
their share increased in the first four years after Mr. Bush’s tax cuts.

The top 1 percent of income earners paid about 36.7 percent of federal
income taxes and 25.3 percent of all federal taxes in 2004. The top
20 percent of income earners paid 67.1 percent of all federal taxes,
up from 66.1 percent in 2000, according to the budget office.

By contrast, families in the bottom 40 percent of income earners, those
with incomes below $36,300, typically paid no federal income tax and
received money back from the government. That so-called negative
income tax stemmed mainly from the earned-income tax credit,
a program that benefits low-income parents who are employed.

Put another way: rich families were the undisputed winners from
President Bush’s tax cuts, but people in the bottom half of the
earnings scale were not paying much in taxes anyway.

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8) Queens Man Dies After Police Use Taser, Reports Say
By John Holusha
January 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/nyregion/08cnd-taser.html?ref=nyregion#

A 38-year-old man went into cardiac arrest at his uncle’s home
in Queens on Sunday afternoon after a struggle with police officers
in which they tried to subdue him with a Taser gun, according
to media reports.

It was evidently the second death in two days involving Taser guns,
which are supposedly a non-lethal way for the police to deal
with uncooperative people. According to The Associated Press,
a 45-year-old Tennessee man died Saturday in Fort Pierce, Fla.,
after being struck twice by shocks from a Taser gun.

In Queens, the police were summoned to a house in the Rosedale
section where Blondel Lassegue was said to have stopped taking
his medicine for mental disorders and was acting erratically.
When the four police officers tried to arrest him, he reportedly
became combative and resisted efforts to take him into custody.

After trying a chemical spray, the police used a Taser gun.
Mr. Lassegue went into cardiac arrest shortly afterward and
was taken to Franklin Hospital, where he was pronounced dead..

In the Florida case, Douglas John Ilten of Nashville, Tenn., was
reported to have been acting erratically, hurling musical
instruments out of a rental truck at a gas station, according
to The Associated Press.

The Fort Pierce police said that Mr. Ilten, who was handcuffed,
struggled with officers as they tried to put leg restraints on him
in the back of a patrol car. When he kept struggling, the police
used two bursts from a Taser, The A.P. said. When the officers
noticed a few minutes later that Mr. Ilten was not breathing,
they were unable to revive him with cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.

There have been multiple studies of the effect of using the Taser
electric stun weapons, which can fire electrified barbs up to
25 feet. An academic study released last year preliminarily
concluded that the guns did not cause heart rhythm disturbances
if used for short periods on healthy people.

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9) NO SAFE AGE
[Col. Writ. 12/3/06] Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal
[VIA Email...bw]

It's boy's night out, and a group of brothers are having a bachelor's
party at a neighborhood club. One of them is particularly thrilled,
because his marriage to the woman he loves is just hours away.

But he will never marry, because a pack of wild, undercover cops will
execute him, and unleash a deadly rain of 50 bullets on he and his friends.

The crime? Cruising While Black ... Sean Bell, unarmed, was 23.

And the corporate media merely explains it may've been a case of
"contagious" shooting -- one cop fires, two cops fire, three cops ...
get the picture?

It's a kind of social illness, like alcoholism.

But neither Sean Bell, Trent Benefield, nor Joseph Guzman were armed.
According to some reports, one of them *said* he was armed.

Like the madmen who launched a preemptive war on the unsubstantiated
suspicion of weapons of mass destruction, undercover cops launched an
urban preemptive war on unarmed young Black men, reportedly based on
unsubstantiated suspicions. *50 shots*. Death, and serious injury.

No cellphones; no wallets; no threatening candy bars -- for such
trifles are no longer deemed necessary.

In America, blackness is sufficient.

Even maleness isn't required, as shown by the recent shooting of an
elderly woman who allegedly allowed a drug dealer to use her home.
Katherine Johnston, having lived almost 9 decades, was shot to death
while trying to defend her Atlanta home after it was attacked by
undercover cops.

According to a neighborhood snitch, he never claimed her house was a
drug site, despite police pressure to do so.

No significant quantities of drugs were found at the home.

What was *her* crime? Trying-to-survive-to-90-while-Black?

What's more dangerous -- drugs, or armed undercover cops kicking in
doors allegedly on drug raids?

Police suspicion, it seems, is a weapon of urban war. Several years
ago, writer Kristian Williams noted a case where a whole community was
held under siege, because of police suspicion. In his remarkable 2003
book, *Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America* (Brooklyn, NY: Soft
Skull Press), Williams recounted an amazing story:

"The racial politics of police suspicion are well illustrated by the
North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation's 'Operation Ready-Rock.'
In November 1990, forty-five state cops, including canine units and the
paramilitary Special Response Team, lay siege to the 100 block of Graham
Street, in a black neighborhood of Chapel Hill. Searching for crack
cocaine, the cops sealed off the streets, patrolled with dogs, and
ransacked a neighborhood pool hall. In terms of crime control, the
mission was a flop. Although nearly 100 people were detained and
searched, only 13 were arrested, and one of them convicted.
Nevertheless, and despite a successful class action lawsuit, the cops
defended their performance and no officers were disciplined.

"When applying for a warrant to search every person and vehicle on the
block, the police had assured the judge, 'there are no 'innocent' people
at this place ... Only drug sellers and drug buyers are on the described
premises.' But once the clamp-down was underway, they became more
discriminating: Blacks were detained and searched, sometimes at
gunpoint, while whites were permitted to leave the cordoned area." [p. 121]

How many of the armed maniacs who shot Johnston, Bell, Guzman or
Benefield will ever see the inside of a cell? How many will reach the
confines of Death Row?

We *know* the answer -- because we've seen this movie before ... Paid
leave (which amounts to paid vacations), a whitewash of an
investigation, and a 'they-were-doing-their-jobs' is all that ever happens.

It's a damned shame.

Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal

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10) WHEN WAR CRIMES AIN'T CRIMES
[Col. Writ. 12/16/06] Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal
{VIA Email...bw}

In the last few years, we've all seen nothing but mass violations of
virtually every international human rights treaty.

Torture, secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, violence against
civilians, orders to ignore the Geneva Conventions .... The list goes on
and on.

How has the American government dealt with this state of affairs?

It has virtually ignored it.

There have been a handful of military prosecutions against relatively
low level people, but there is a steel ceiling, above which the
prosecutors dare not go.

That's because the violations of international law go to the highest
levels of the U.S. government.

Writer Lila Rajiva argues, in her remarkable *The Language of Empire:
Abu Ghraib and the American Media* (New York: Monthly Review Press,
2005), that the tortures at Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of
Baghdad shows something deep and ugly in the American state:

"The Prometheans of today acknowledge no limits except of their own
imagining, and at least for now the world that they find themselves in
allows them the self-indulgence of that imagining. With such absolute
power comes absolute corruption, only not the corruption that the law
easily unmasks, the simple corruption of bribery and chicanery. The
occupation of Iraq displays ample evidence of that as well, but the
deeper corruption that rote the institutions of America today is one
legitimated by law, whose presence is revealed not in the courthouse but
in the solitary recesses of prison cells hidden from the light. Torture
is the insignia of this corrupt power. Torture is the deadly proof of
the metastasizing cancer of American empire." [p. 186]

Rajiva tells us many of the stories from Iraq that have been largely
whitewashed from the safe coverage that the corporate media airs. She
tells us the many cases where Iraqi women were raped by Americans, and
subjected to public humiliations.

Perhaps if more Americans read, saw or heard such accounts, they would
not be mystified by the steady growing of the insurgency in Iraq, which
is surely fueled, in part, by how Americans treated Iraqi men and women
in prisons there.

The corporate US media has done more to misinform its public than to
inform them. They keep Americans in the dark, while people all around
the world know more about America than Americans.

In this context, we can continue the illusion that the US is 'doing
good' in this new kind of colonialism of Arab lands. It is this mass
disinformation campaign that allows political figures to float the mad
idea of more troops in Iraq.

The somewhat tame Iraq Study Group report has come and gone, with
supporters of the military-industrial-complex working their media assets
to insure that their defense contractors keep getting paid.

Discussions over Geneva Conventions might as well be about treaties with
space aliens, as arcane as they are to most of us. But the Geneva
Conventions aren't rocket science. There are 4 of them. The first
governs wounded and sick soldiers; the second relates to the treatment
of war prisoners captured at sea; the third deals with treatment of
prisoners of war; and the fourth governs how citizens should be treated
in times of war. Under the articles of these conventions, people had
express rights to fair, humane treatment, family visitation, and the
right to be processed by "competent tribunal"[s]. As the flicks from
Abu Ghraib showed, in living color, folks were treated like dogs.
Geneva, though, to be 'quaint', didn't apply.

When it comes to the Empire, there is no higher law.

The Emperor has spoken: that is all that is needed to launch wars,
torture, terrorize, bomb, imprison, kill, obliterate.

That kind of logic can only lead to more disaster.

Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal

[Source: Rajiva, L., *The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the
American Media* (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005).]

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11) Norway, Cuba deplore U.S.-owned hotel ban
REUTERS
Fri Jan 5, 4:26 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070105/wl_nm/cuba_norway_dc_1&printer=1

Norway and Cuba on Friday deplored the decision of a U.S.-owned hotel
in Oslo to deny lodging to a Cuban delegation in compliance with U.S.
trade sanctions against Havana.

Norway's main trade union LO threatened to boycott the Scandic hotel
chain, owned by the U.S.-based Hilton Hotels Corp., if it did not
reverse its policy.

The Scandic Edderkoppen hotel in Oslo refused to book rooms for a
14-member Cuban delegation planning to attend a travel fair in the
Norwegian capital next week.

"These actions from Scandic managers are totally unacceptable,"
deputy Foreign Minister Raymond Johansen told Reuters by telephone.

"In Norway we are based on Norwegian law and Norwegian practices, not
those of any other country," he said.

Cuba accused Europe of bowing to American pressure.

"Helms-Burton rules in Europe," the ruling Communist Party newspaper
Granma said in a front-page story that slammed the Norwegian hotel
for what it said was kowtowing to Washington.

The 1996 Helms-Burton law, which codified trade and financial
sanctions enforced since 1962 against Fidel Castro's communist
government, bans U.S. companies and subsidiaries from doing business
with Cuba.

Johansen said the Norwegian government would have to take up the
issue with Washington.

The LO union, which is allied to Norway's center-left government,
said it was "deeply shocked" by the hotel's policy, saying it was a
"clear breach of Norwegian law, which forbids discrimination based on
nationality."

"We find it to be a very serious matter that a Norwegian hotel chain
maintains the United States' boycott of Cuba," the union said in a
statement on its Web site.

Last year the U.S.-owned Sheraton Maria Isabel Hotel in Mexico City
expelled a delegation of 16 Cubans to comply with U.S. sanctions
against Cuba.

The decision sparked protests in Mexico and led authorities to slap
the hotel with a $112,000 fine. (Additional reporting by Anthony
Boadle in Havana)

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited.

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12) Chavez: Will nationalize telecoms, power
By IAN JAMES Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press
Jan. 8, 2007, 8:09PM
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4456071.html

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez announced plans
Monday to nationalize Venezuela's electrical and telecommunications
companies, pledging to create a socialist state in a bold move with
echoes of Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba.

Chavez, who will be sworn in Wednesday to a third term that runs
until 2013, also said he wanted a constitutional amendment to
eliminate the autonomy of the Central Bank and would soon ask
the National Assembly, solidly controlled by his allies, to give him
greater powers to legislate by presidential decree.

"We're moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that
requires a deep reform of our national constitution," Chavez
said in a televised address after swearing in his new Cabinet.
"We're heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can
prevent it."

Before Chavez was re-elected by a wide margin last month,
he promised to take a more radical turn toward socialism.
His critics have voiced concern that he would use his sweeping
victory to consolidate more power in his own hands.

Cuba, one of Chavez's closest allies in the region, nationalized
major industries shortly after Castro came to power in 1959.
Bolivia's Evo Morales, another Chavez ally, moved to nationalize
key sectors after taking office last year.

"The nation should recover its ownership of strategic sectors,"
Chavez said. "All of that which was privatized, let it be nationalized,"
he added, referring to "all of those sectors in an area so important
and strategic for all of us as is electricity."

The nationalization appeared likely to affect Electricidad de Caracas,
owned by Arlington, Virginia-based AES Corp., and C.A. Nacional
Telefonos de Venezuela, known as CANTV, the country's largest
publicly traded company.

Chavez said lucrative oil projects in the Orinoco River basin involving
foreign oil companies should be under national ownership.
He did not spell out whether that meant a complete nationalization,
but said any vestiges of private control over the energy sector
should be undone.

"I'm referring to how international companies have control and
power over all those processes of improving the heavy crudes
of the Orinoco belt--no--that should become the property
of the nation," Chavez said.

Chavez did not appear to rule out all private investment in the
oil sector. Since last year, his government has sought to form
state-controlled "mixed companies" with British Petroleum PLC,
Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., Total
SA and Statoil ASA to upgrade heavy crude in the Orinoco. Such
joint ventures have already been formed in other parts of the
country.

The United States remains the top buyer of Venezuelan oil, which
provides Chavez with billions of dollars for social programs aimed
at helping Venezuela's poor as well as aid for countries around
the region.

Chavez threatened last August to nationalize CANTV, a Caracas-
based former state firm that was privatized in 1991, unless it fully
complied with a court ruling and adjusted its pension payments
to current minimum-wage levels, which have been repeatedly
increased by his government.

CANTV is the dominant provider of fixed-line telephone service
in Venezuela, and also has large shares of the mobile phone and
Internet markets.

Electricidad de Caracas is the largest private electricity firm in
Venezuela. U.S.-based AES, a global power company that today
has businesses in 26 countries, bought a majority stake of
Electricidad de Caracas in a hostile takeover in 2000.

After Chavez's announcement, American Depositary Receipts
of CANTV _ the only Venezuelan company traded on the New
York Stock Exchange _ immediately plunged 14.2 percent to
$16.84 before the NYSE halted trading. An NYSE spokesman
said it was not known when trading might resume.

Investors with sizable holdings in CANTV's ADRs include some
well-known names on Wall Street, including Deutsche Bank
Securities Inc., UBS Securities LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co.
But the biggest shareholder, according to Thomson Financial,
appears to be Brandes Investment Partners LP, an investment
advisory company in California. Also holding a noteworthy
stake is Julius Baer Investment Management LLC, a Swiss
investment manager.

CANTV said it was aware of Chavez's remarks but added in
a statement: "No government representatives have communicated
with the company, and the company has no other information."

Chavez cited the communist ideals of Karl Marx and Vladimir
Lenin at other points in his speech.

"I'm very much of (Leon) Trotsky's line--the permanent
revolution," he said.

In the fiery address, the president also used a vulgar word roughly
meaning "idiot" to refer to Organization of American States Secretary-
General Jose Miguel Insulza. He lashed out at Insulza for questioning
his government's decision not to renew the license of an opposition-
aligned TV station.

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13) U.S. Airstrike Aims at Qaeda Cell in Somalia
By DAVID S. CLOUD
January 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/world/africa/09somalia.html?hp&ex=1168405200&en=cc4f29d01f65cf61&ei=5094&partner=homepage

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 — A United States Air Force gunship carried
out a strike Sunday night against suspected operatives of Al Qaeda
in southern Somalia, a senior Pentagon official said Monday night.

The attack by an AC-130 gunship, which is operated by the Special
Forces Command, is believed to have produced multiple casualties,
the official said. It was not known Monday night whether the casualties
included members of a Qaeda cell that American officials have long
suspected was hiding in Somalia.

Special Forces units operating from an American base in Djibouti
are conducting a hunt for Qaeda operatives who have been forced
to flee Mogadishu, the Somali capital, since Islamic militants were
driven from there by an Ethiopian military offensive last month.

The American attack was first reported by CBS News.

The Special Forces attack is the first military action in Somalia that
Pentagon officials have acknowledged since American troops
departed the lawless country in the wake of the infamous “Black
Hawk Down” episode in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were
killed in street fighting in Mogadishu.

American officials have long suspected that a handful of Qaeda
suspects responsible for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya
and Tanzania have been hiding inside Somalia, a country that has
not had a central government since 1991.

The search for the terrorist suspects has driven American policy
toward Somalia for several years.

Earlier this year, the Central Intelligence Agency began making cash
payments to a group of Somali warlords who pledged to help hunt
down members of the Qaeda cell.

After Islamist militias took control of Mogadishu in the summer,
officials in Washington charged that the Islamists had ties to the
terror suspects, and made demands for their handover
to American custody.

The Ethiopian military offensive that began last month recently
drove the Islamists from the seaside Somali capital, raising hopes
within Washington that the Qaeda operatives might surface as they
fled the protection of the Islamists. The Islamists have retreated
to areas around the southern port city of Kismayo. Ethiopian
officials have said they have intelligence reports that members
of the Qaeda cell were hiding near the city.

The AC-130 gunship is a heavily armed propeller plane that, because
of its slow speed, operates primarily at night and can direct an
immense barrage of gunfire onto a target as it circles overhead.

The attack against suspected Qaeda operatives is the sort of targeted
operation that senior Bush administration officials have been
pressing the Special Operation Command, based in Tampa, Fla.,
to undertake in recent years.

But officials have said that Special Operations forces have had
difficulty carrying out targeted strikes in the past because of the
difficulty establishing the whereabouts of wanted terrorists
or getting forces in place when a suspected militant is located.

The Central Intelligence Agency has killed a small number
of suspected Qaeda members, using a pilotless drone armed
with a missile. Among them were five people killed in Yemen in 2002.

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.

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14) Past Time to Get Real on Iraq
New York Times Editorial
January 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/opinion/09tue1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

We’ve been down this road before. This time, it has to be different.

There have been too many times that President Bush has promised
a new strategy on Iraq, only to repeat the same old set of failed
approaches and unachievable objectives. Americans need to hear
Mr. Bush offer something truly new — not more glossy statements
about ultimate victory, condescending platitudes about what hard
work war is, or aimless vows to remain “until the job is done.”

If the voters sent one clear message to Mr. Bush last November,
it was that it is time to start winding down America’s involvement
in this going-nowhere war.

What they need is for the president to acknowledge how bad
things have gotten in Iraq (not just that it is not going as well
as he planned) and to be honest about how limited the remaining
options truly are. The country wants to know how Mr. Bush plans
to end its involvement in a way that preserves as much of the
nation’s remaining honor and influence as possible, limits the
suffering of the Iraqi people and the harm to Iraq’s neighbors,
and gives Iraqi leaders a chance — should they finally decide
to take it — to rescue their country from an even worse disaster
once the Americans are gone.

The reality that Mr. Bush needs to acknowledge when he speaks
to the nation tomorrow night is that the Iraqi government of Prime
Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is feeding rather than restraining
Iraq’s brutal civil war. The Iraqi Army cannot be relied on to
impose order even in Baghdad, while the Iraqi police forces —
dominated by sectarian militias — are inciting the mayhem.

Mr. Bush must acknowledge that there is no military solution
for Iraq. Whatever plan he offers needs to start with a tough
set of political benchmarks for national reconciliation that the
Iraqi government is finally expected to meet. It needs to
concentrate enough forces in Baghdad to bring some security
to streets and neighborhoods, giving Iraq’s leaders one last
opportunity to try to bargain their way out of civil war.

His plan needs to lay out tight timetables in which the Iraqis
must take major steps to solve fundamental issues, including
equitably dividing their oil wealth and disarming vengeful
militias. There must also be a clear and rapid timetable for
achieving enough stability in Baghdad to hand back significant
military responsibilities to the Iraqis.

The last time America presented Mr. Maliki with a set of
political benchmarks, he bluntly rejected them. If he does
that again, there is no way America can or should try to secure
Iraq on its own. Mr. Bush must make clear to both Iraqis and
Americans that without significant progress, American forces
will not remain.

We’re under no illusions. Meeting those challenges is going
to be extremely tough. And Iraq’s unraveling may already
be too far gone.

For Mr. Bush, this means resisting any vague Nixonian formula
of “peace with honor” that translates into more years of fighting
on for the same ever-receding goals. Democrats in Congress
should also resist euphemistic formulas like “phased redeployment,”
which really means trying to achieve with even fewer troops
what Washington failed to achieve with current force levels.

Nor can America simply turn its back on whatever happens
to Iraq after it leaves. With or without American troops,
a nightmare future for Iraq is a nightmare future for the
United States, too, whether it consists of an expanding civil
war that turns into a regional war or millions of Iraq’s people
and its oil fields falling under the tightening grip of a more
powerful Iran.

Mr. Bush is widely expected to announce a significant increase
in American troops to deploy in Baghdad’s violent neighborhoods.
He needs to explain to Congress and the American people where
the dangerously tapped-out military is going to find those troops.
And he needs to place a strict time limit on any increase,
or it will turn into a thinly disguised escalation of the
American combat role.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that just under 23,000
Iraqi civilians and police officers died violently in 2006, more than
17,000 of them in the last six months. That is a damning indictment
of the Maliki government, and of current American military strategy.

That is the Iraq that Americans want Mr. Bush to deal with
tomorrow night.

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15) The Candidates: Where They Stand on Iraq
By John M. Broder
[Plus: Kennedy: ‘George Bush’s Vietnam’
By Kate Phillips...bw]
January 9, 2007, 11:25 am
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/

As the nation awaits President Bush’s speech on Wednesday night
outlining his new approach to Iraq, a sampling of announced
or likely 2008 presidential candidates are staking out positions
on a spectrum from hawk to dove.

REPUBLICANS

Senator John McCain of Arizona
2002 INVASION: Voted to authorize use of force.
TROOP INCREASE: Supports increase as long as it is large enough
to assure success and sustained enough to finish the job.
WITHDRAWAL: Opposes deadlines for the American mission.
Has called for continued support for Iraqi authorities until
they reach a political settlement.

Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachussetts
2002 INVASION: Supported the invasion.
TROOP INCREASE: Has not commented specifically.
WITHDRAWAL: Says the United States should not withdraw
forces ‘’before Iraq is secure.'’

DEMOCRATS

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York
2002 INVASION: Voted to authorize use of force. Now says
her vote was based on flawed information.
TROOP INCREASE: Does not support.
WITHDRAWAL: Supports a phased withdrawal of troops,
with some remaining in the region.

[Withdrawal of troops but leave some there???
Is this not classic doublespeak?
Read on. They all speak with forked tongue!....bw]

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware
2002 INVASION: Voted to authorize use of force.
TROOP INCREASE: Says it would be a ‘’tragic mistake.'’
WITHDRAWAL: Advocates phased withdrawal. Supports a partition
of Iraq into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions, with a limited
central government to handle oil allocation and border security.

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois
2002 INVASION: Was not yet in the Senate. Says he would
have voted against it.
TROOP INCREASE: Does not support.
WITHDRAWAL: Supports a gradual withdrawal. Cautions
that a too-rapid departure could lead to a spike in civilian
deaths.

John Edwards, former senator from North Carolina
2002 INVASION: Voted to authorize use of force.
Says he now regrets it.
TROOP INCREASE: Does not support.
WITHDRAWAL: Advocates the start of immediate withdrawal
of as many as 40,000 troops and rapid turnover
of responsibilities to the Iraqis.

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16) Only Relentless Struggle Will Bring Home the Cuban Five
Deisy Francis Mexidor
francis_mexidor@granma.cip.cu
GRANMA
January 6, 2007
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art09.html

[This is not just one more defense committee being set up in one more
country or city. This is a broad overview of the campaign and what's
necessary to bring this case to the attention of a qualitatively new
audience, especially in the United States of America, where their
ultimate freedom will have to be, can only be, finally attained.
Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
http://www.walterlippmann.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews ]

In 2005, it seemed that justice would finally come for Rene Gonzalez,
Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Fernando Gonzalez and Antonio
Guerrero, the anti-terrorism fighters known as the Cuban Five, held
as political prisoners of the United States.

The good news began when a UN Panel on Arbitrary Detention concluded
that their imprisonment was illegal and capricious.

Two months later on August 9, a three judge panel of the 11th Circuit
Court of Appeals of Atlanta made a ruling on the defense attorney‚s
claim that the 2001 trial venue in Miami, bastion of violent
anti-Cuba groups, was clearly biased against their clients.

After evaluating the oral arguments presented by the defense back on
March 10, 2004 and taking all the time it deemed necessary to assess
and evaluate the evidence produced, the panel unanimously ruled in
favor of a new trial outside of Miami and revoked the five sentences.
The 93-page ruling maintained that the legal process lacked proper
defense guarantees and had been conducted in a hostile setting for
the defendants.

It appeared that the judicial system was telling the executive branch
that it had been poorly represented before the Appeals Court, and
then both, the judiciary and the executive joined forces. The
Attorney General‚s office requested a revision of the three judge
panel‚s ruling and a highly unusual reversal of their unanimous
decision.

Exactly one year later, on August 9, 2006, the full 12-member Appeals
Court reversed the earlier decision by the three-judge panel, sending
the appeals process back to square one.

Since the three judges had only voiced their view on the issue of
whether Miami was a proper venue for an impartial trial, now they are
required to pronounce themselves on nine other pending issues argued
by the defense.

In 2006, actions of solidarity with the Cuban Five were stepped up.
Additional reports have been requested by both, the defense and the
attorney‚s office. The judges must rule on aspects regarding the
charge of conspiracy to commit murder, obtaining and transporting
national security information, if Cubans have the right to defend
themselves or not, and other procedure-related issues.

Meanwhile, five men remain in five different US prisons for fighting
terrorism, subjected to different types of harsh treatment. In some
cases they are denied family visits, and in others they are
deliberately delayed. Eight years after their imprisonment, the US
court system has been unable to say if their trial was fair.

Until after the three judge panel and the entire court pronounces
itself on the nine pending issues the case cannot be taken to the
final rung of the ladder, the Supreme Court. The extremely slow
process remains clouded in uncertainty, with many question marks
being raised about its final results.

SOLIDARITY MULTIPLIED

In December 2002, there were only 100 committees demanding the Cuban
Five be freed. By December 2006, the figure has reached 290 in 90
countries.

The increase has taken place amidst a slander campaign unleashed
against Cuba by the European Union, the lack of information on the
Cuban Five in Western mainstream media, and the post 9/11 events.

Two world solidarity drives demanding the immediate release of
Gerardo, Ramon, Rene, Antonio and Fernando took place in 2006. The
first, September 12-October 6, coincided with the 8th anniversary of
their imprisonment and the 30 years since the terrorist bombing of a
Cuban airliner off the coasts of Barbados masterminded by Orlando
Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. The second drive, December 12-17,
took place 5 years after their sentencing.

On those dates, large protests took place in Washington D.C. and
Madrid and letters were sent to the US Attorney General, the Prison
Bureau, and to the jails were they are currently being held,
demanding respect for the rights of the Cuban Five and the visitation
rights of their relatives. Several books were published on the
subject, a Children‚s international contest was promoted, conferences
were held and concerts staged.

Likewise, Nobel Prize recipients from all over the world, leaders
from different religious denominations, European and Latin American
parliamentary groups and UN Human Rights bodies voiced their support
to the cause of the Cuban Five.

Solidarity has evolved from the creativity of each committee and the
specific conditions of each particular country. „Parallel to those
committees and their call for justice, many artists have taken
inspiration,‰ said Sergio Corrieri, president of the Cuban Friendship
Institute, ICAP.

Although we are still far from what is needed to achieve their
release, the support received in 2006 shows that breaking the wall of
silence has proved useful. The knowledge of their cause must now be
spread and diversified among all sectors of society, especially
within the United States, whose people are overwhelmingly ignorant
about who they are and what they fought for.

Some people wonder if the political changes in Washington after the
November 7 midterm elections will change the course of the protracted
case of the Cuban Five. „The hope for their release resides in the
struggle we all wage non-stop,‰ stressed lawyer Roberto Gonzalez,
Rene‚s brother.

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17) Terrified Soldiers Terrifying People
Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily
Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches
http://dahrjamailiraq.com

*FALLUJAH, Iraq, Jan 8 (IPS) - Ten-year-old Yassir aimed a plastic gun
at a passing U.S. armoured patrol in Fallujah, and shouted "Bang! Bang!"*

Yassir did not know what was coming. "I yelled for everyone to run,
because the Americans were turning back," 12-year-old Ahmed who was with
Yassir told IPS.

The soldiers followed Yassir to his house and smashed almost everything
in it. "They did this after beating Yassir and his uncle hard, and they
spoke the nastiest words," Ahmed said.

It is not just the children, or the people of Fallujah who are frightened.

"Those soldiers are terrified here," Dr. Salim al-Dyni, a
psychotherapist visiting Fallujah told IPS. Dr Dyni said he had seen
professional reports of psychologically disturbed soldiers "while
serving in hot areas, and Fallujah is the hottest and most terrifying
for them."

Dr. Dyni said disturbed soldiers were behind the worst atrocities. "Most
murders committed by U.S. soldiers resulted from the soldiers' fears."

Local Iraqi police estimate that at least five attacks are being carried
out against U.S. troops in Fallujah each day, and about as many against
Iraqi government security forces. The city in the restive al-Anabar
province to the west of Baghdad has been under some form of siege since
April 2004.

That has meant punishment for the people. "American officers asked me a
hundred times how the fighters obtain weapons," a 35-year-old resident
who was detained together with dozens of others during a U.S. military
raid at their houses in the Muallimin Quarter last month told IPS.

"They (American soldiers) called me the worst of names that I could
understand, and many that I could not. I heard younger detainees
screaming under torture repeating 'I do not know, I do not know',
apparently replying to the same question I was asked."

U.S. soldiers have been reacting wildly to attacks on them.

Several areas of Fallujah recently went without electricity for two
weeks after U.S. soldiers attacked the power station following a sniper
attack.

Thubbat, Muhandiseen, Muallimeen, Jughaifi and most western parts of the
city were affected. "They are punishing civilians for their failure to
protect themselves," a resident of Thubbat quarter told IPS. "I defy
them to capture a single sniper who kills their soldiers."

Many of those killed in the ongoing violence are civilians. The biggest
local complaint is that U.S. forces attack civilians at random in
revenge for colleagues killed in attacks by the resistance.

More than 5,000 civilians killed by U.S. soldiers have been buried in
Fallujah cemeteries and mass graves dug on the outskirts of the city,
according to the Study Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, a
non-governmental organisation based in Fallujah.

"At least half the deceased are women, children and elderly people,"
group co-director Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji told IPS.

Overstretched U.S. soldiers appear to be punishing civilians while
suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. IPS reported
Jan. 3 that new guidelines released by the Pentagon last month allow
commanders now to re-deploy soldiers suffering from such disorders.

According to the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes, service
members with "a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual
symptoms do not impair duty performance" may be considered for duty
downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a "treatable" problem.

Steve Robinson, director of Veterans Affairs for Veterans for America
told IPS correspondent Aaron Glantz that "as a layman and a former
soldier I think that's ridiculous."

"If I've got a soldier who's on Ambien to go to sleep and Seroquel and
Qanapin and all kinds of other psychotropic meds, I don't want them to
have a weapon in their hand and to be part of my team because they're a
risk to themselves and to others," he said. "But apparently, the
military has its own view of how well a soldier can function under those
conditions, and is gambling that they can be successful."


(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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18) US Peace Activists in Cuba
PHOTO:
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={F87034A4-5650-47D3-972D-7FC638A2BC9B})&language=EN

Havana, Jan 8 (Prensa Latina) Washington s hegemonic pretensions and
warmongering are part of an institutional policy that involves both
republicans and democrats, US pacifists visiting Cuba have denounced.

The humanitarian activists lashed at US power sectors that are making
a large fortune from wars.

According to Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the women s peace group
CODEPINK, who came to Cuba on Saturday along with Cindy Sheehan
and other US pacifists, it is strange that democrats say they want to end
the war in Iraq, but will approve over $100 billion more for that
armed conflict.

The US delegation is slated to move to eastern Guantanamo province to
stage a vigil around the naval base that Washington keeps in that
zone against the will of the Cubans.

In Guantanamo, a lawyer member of the group and an expert in legal
issues will deliver a speech on the conditions at that detention
center, which he has previously denounced before the US Supreme
Court.

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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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Gas-Like Odor Permeates Parts of New York City
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and SEWELL CHAN
January 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/nyregion/08cnd-odor.html?hp&ex=1168318800&en=b688635a7be2e78d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The Second Declaration of Havana
Walter Lippmann, CubaNews Los Angeles, California
This is one of the great political documents of all time. It was
presented to the Cuban people on February 4, 1962, following Cuba's
expulsion from the Organization of American States. It is printed
here in its entirety. [editorial note from Fidel Castro Speaks,
edited by James Petras and Martin Kenner, Grove Press, 1969.]
It is now web-posted in English here:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/fc-02-04-1962.html
Original Spanish:
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1962/esp/f040262e.html


The universe gives up its deepest secret
It is the invisible material that makes up most of the cosmos.
Now, scientists have created the first image of dark matter
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 08 January 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article2134891.ece

Blood and oil: How the West will profit from Iraq's
most precious commodity
The Independent (UK)
January 7, 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132574.ece

In Obesity Fight, Many Fear a Note From School
By JODI KANTOR
January 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/index.html

America's Holy Warriors
By Chris Hedges
"The former New York Times Mideast Bureau chief warns that the
radical Christian right is coming dangerously close to its goal
of co-opting the country's military and law enforcement."
Truthdig.com, 31 December 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207H.shtml

Mexico’s New President Sends Thousands of Federal Officers to Fight Drug Cartels
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
January 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/americas/07mexico.html

In a Divided Israel, Angry Words or No Words at All
By STEVEN ERLANGER
January 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast/07israel.html?ref=world

U.S. Selecting Hybrid Design for Warheads
By WILLIAM J. BROAD, DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
January 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/washington/07nuke.html?hp&ex=1168232400&en=294a07cfe6016dc9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war
How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches
By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb
Published: 07 January 2007
http://news. independent. co.uk/world/ middle_east/ article2132569. ece

FOCUS | Revealed: Israel Plans Nuclear Strike on Iran
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010707Z.shtml

The real Iraq Study Group
Forget Jim Baker's crew. The neocon hawks who sold the war, joined by
John McCain and Joe Lieberman, unveiled their new plan for "victory":
At least 25,000 new troops in combat roles well into 2008.
By Mark Benjamin
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/01/06/aei/index1.html

With Each Fallen Soldier, a Field of Flags Grows
By FERNANDA SANTOS
January 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/nyregion/06flags.html

Watada hearing tackles free speech
for soldiers, relevancy of truth
Jeff Paterson, Courage to Resist.
January 5, 2007
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/01/05/18344326.php

FOCUS | Images of Hanging Make Hussein a Martyr to Many
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010607Y.shtml

FOCUS | In Iraq New General, New Escalation
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010607Z.shtml

Fund banks on Cuba
A Miami-based closed-end fund focusing on companies that may
eventually benefit from trade ties with Cuba produced high returns,
as investors bet change is coming soon to the communist island.
By MARTHA BRANNIGAN
mbrannigan@MiamiHerald.com
Posted on Fri, Jan. 05, 2007
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16387035.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

Bill Moyers | For America's Sake
In an adaptation of remarks made by Bill Moyers to a December 12
gathering in New York sponsored by The Nation, Bill Moyers says, "Everywhere
you turn you'll find people who believe they have been written out of
the story. Everywhere you turn there's a sense of insecurity grounded in
a gnawing fear that freedom in America has come to mean the freedom of
the rich to get richer even as millions of Americans are dumped from
the Dream. So let me say what I think up front: The leaders and thinkers
and activists who honestly tell that story and speak passionately of
the moral and religious values it puts in play will be the first
political generation since the New Deal to win power back for the people."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010507J.shtml

SOA Watch Activists Face Prison
[Formerly School of the Americas - renamed the Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in 2001 (SOA/WHINSEC),
the controversial U.S. Army run school that trains
Latin American military and security personnel....bw]
http://www.soaw.org/new/

Canada: Goodyear to Change Tire Plant
By REUTERS
The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company will stop producing tires
at its Valleyfield, Quebec, plant and turn it into a materials mixing
center by the end of June, cutting 800 jobs, the company said. Goodyear
expects to save about $40 million a year under the plan, which will cut
the hourly and salaried work force at the unionized plant to 200 from
about 1,000. Goodyear expects to take charges of $115 million to
$120 million, or $165 million to $170 million after tax, for
restructuring and accelerated depreciation at Valleyfield, with
most of the charges in the fourth quarter.
January 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/business/worldbusiness/05fobriefs-GOODYEARTOCH_BRF.html

PALESTINE: DIARIES: LIVE FROM PALESTINE:
Living the New Year's Raid on Ramallah
By Dana Shalah, Live from Palestine,
5 January 2007
I never thought I would be so happy to come back home. I
am still disoriented and traumatized, and though I had
taken pain killers, and coffee after coffee, I just can't
bring myself to sleep. Early this morning while walking in
Ramallah, I took a road that brought awful memories into
my head. Last year, I witnessed one of the Israeli forces'
raids in Ramallah. Though it was from a distance, it was a
chilling experience to be totally surrounded by bullets
and blood. I have just come back from Ramallah where
together with my sister I was locked inside a building at
Al Manara, Ramallah's city center, for four hours.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6354.shtml

PALESTINE: ROLE OF THE MEDIA:
With the New Year, will Ha'aretz's op-ed page be any
different?
By Zachary Wales, The Electronic Intifada,
3 January 2007
On New Year's Day, notions of resolve, reform, or
reflection come as no surprise on newspaper editorial
pages. Similarly unsurprising are the op-eders that carry
on with business as usual. Things were no different on
Ha'aretz's opinion page, which kept an even keel of New
Yearisms. Rather untypical, however, was the limited role
that honesty played in the mix. The most curious example
was the lead editorial, -- often viewed as any paper's
mouthpiece -- entitled, "Our obligation to refugees, as
refugees."
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6345.shtml


PALESTINE: ART, MUSIC & CULTURE:
Why an academic boycott of Israel is necessary
By Lawrence Davidson, The Electronic Intifada,
3 January 2007
Let me begin by stating that any successful academic
boycott imposed upon Israeli institutions of higher
education will assuredly have an impact on the academic
freedom of Israeli scholars and teachers, at least in
terms of its expression beyond their national borders. Is
this acceptable? After all, other teachers and scholars
who obviously have a stake in academic freedom, will have
to cooperate with the boycott if it is to have an impact.
As one of those academics, my answer to this question is
that it is not o