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BAUAW NEWSLETTER Subscribe/Unsubscribe
Friday, September 10, 2004
YES ON PROP. N-BAUAW NEWSLETTER
Dear readers,
At our meeting last evening we resolved to throw our efforts in the coming weeks before the elections, into the Proposition N antiwar campaign in San Francisco. Proposition N reads: "It is the Policy of the people of the City and County of San Francisco that: The Federal government should take immediate steps to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq and bring our troops safely home now." To this end we have already entered a ballot argument in support of Prop. N at a cost of over $600.00 and have contributed an additional $50.00 to the Prop. N campaign committee last evening. However our funds are getting very low. We wish to publish material so that we can cover the city with Yes on Prop N material. Very few people even know about the initiative yet. We need to change this and make it a central focus for the movement here. There should be window signs in every window on every block urging a YES on N vote. We are a voluntary organization and have no outside funding other than contributions from folks like you. We have no paid staff or office so all the money we get is spent on antiwar organizing efforts-posters, brochures, flyers, forums, teach-ins, street meetings and mailings-and now we want to focus on YES on N material and community organizing up until the elections. This means we need money for printed material and for sound permits (at $60.00 each) for community street meetings, etc., to get out the YES on N vote. We are appealing to our readers to make a financial contribution to help us in this work. Please send a contribution to: Bay Area United Against War P.O. Box 318021 San Francisco, CA 94131-8021 If you can send an amount over $50.00 and wish to take a tax deduction then make your check payable to: Bay Area United Against War/NVM P.O. Box 318021 San Francisco, CA 94131-8021 We want to ensure nothing less than a landslide victory for Proposition N in San Francisco this year and we need your support! Peace and solidarity, BAUAW P.S. We will be launching our redesigned web site soon with links to all major antiwar groups. The site will include all the latest news and information of actions and activity in the San Francisco Bay Area. Keep a lookout for the opening launch soon! The next BAUAW meeting will be: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 7 p.m. 1380 VALENCIA STREET (BETWEEN 24TH & 25TH STREETS, S.F.) ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 1) U.S. Hid Dozens of Iraqi Prisoners, Investigators Say By Vicki Allen WASHINGTON (Reuters) Thu Sep 9, 2004 05:41 PM ET http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6197512&src=eDialog/GetContent§ion=news 2) New Documents Reveal that USAID Provided $2.3 Million to Venezuela's Opposition in 2003 By: Eva Golinger - Venezuelafoia.info New York, September 8, 2004 http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/print.php?newsno=1360 3) Ashcroft Strikes Out, Third Federal Court Rules Federal Abortion Ban is Unconstitutional and Cannot Be Enforced Decision Echoes Rulings in San Francisco and New York NEW YORK CITY September 8, 2004 http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about/pr/040908_Ashcroft.html 4) Gaza Emergency "Barbara Lubin" Thu, 9 Sep 2004 16:12:16 -0700 (PDT) ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 1) U.S. Hid Dozens of Iraqi Prisoners, Investigators Say By Vicki Allen WASHINGTON (Reuters) Thu Sep 9, 2004 05:41 PM ET http://www.reuters.com/ newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6197512&src=eDialog/ GetContent§ion=news WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United may have kept up to 100 "ghost detainees" in Iraq off the books and concealed from Red Cross observers, a far higher number than previously reported, an Army general told Congress on Thursday. Estimates were rough because the CIA has withheld documents on concealed detainees, Army generals who investigated U.S. abuses of Iraqi prisoners told lawmakers. Republican and Democratic senators blasted the CIA, and called for it to turn over the material. At a Senate committee hearing, Gen. Paul Kern, commander of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, said he believed the number of ghost detainees held in violation of Geneva Convention protections was "in the dozens to perhaps up to 100," far surpassing the eight people identified in an Army report. Maj. Gen. George Fay, deputy commander at the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, said he expected it may be two dozen or more. "We were not able to get documentation from the Central Intelligence Agency to answer those types of questions. So we really don't know the volume," he said. The Geneva Conventions require countries to disclose information on prisoners to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors their treatment. The Senate and House of Representatives Armed Services Committees held hearings on an Army probe of the role of military intelligence in abuses at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, as well as broader findings on U.S. mistreatment of prisoners by an independent panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. The reports depicted more widespread abuses than the acts of a handful of soldiers accused when the images of horrific sexual and physical humiliation and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison first came to light last spring. CIA CRITICIZED While the panel led by Schlesinger blamed top Pentagon civilian and military leaders for contributing to a climate that led to the sadistic treatment of detainees, Schlesinger said U.S. forces in Iraq had behaved far better overall than in previous wars, including World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He said the 66 cases of confirmed abuse, although higher than the Bush administration first disclosed, "is a s mall number -- comparing quite well ... with previous wars." Senators called the CIA's failure so far to turn over information sought by Army investigators unacceptable. "The situation with the CIA and ghost soldiers is beginning to look like a bad movie," said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican. "I think that this is something that needs to be asked ... of the incoming director of the CIA," McCain said, referring to Rep. Porter Goss, a Florida Republican tapped by President Bush to run the CIA. The Senate Intelligence Committee scheduled a confirmation hearing for Goss on Sept. 14. Warner said the Intelligence Committee also was pressing the CIA for information, and said the Armed Services Committee would more closely examine the ghost detainees issue. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the agency's inspector general was conducting "a comprehensive review of the agency's involvement in detention and interrogation activities," and the agency was "determined to examine thoroughly any allegations of abuse." The findings of the Army investigation, headed by Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony Jones and released in August, listed 44 instances of prisoner abuse, 13 directly involving interrogations. It said 27 military intelligence personnel -- 23 soldiers and four contractors -- directly took part in abuse or induced others to do so, while another eight -- six soldiers and two contractors -- failed to report abuse they had witnessed. All have been recommended for possible criminal charges. Lawmakers said those higher up the chain of command also must be held accountable for failing in key duties. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, worried that the "only people that are court-martialed here are privates and sergeants ... Dereliction of duty will be redefined one way or the other after this investigation." (Additional reporting by Will Dunham, Jim Wolf and Tabassum Zakaria) (c) Copyright Reuters 2004. ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 2) New Documents Reveal that USAID Provided $2.3 Million to Venezuela's Opposition in 2003 By: Eva Golinger - Venezuelafoia.info New York, September 8, 2004 http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/print.php?newsno=1360 New York, September 8, 2004- Documents recently obtained from the U.S. Department of State under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by www.venezuelafoia.info than $5 million annually during the past two years was given by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to various organizations in Venezuela, many of which are aligned with the opposition. One of the key groups collaborating with USAID is Súmate, the organization that promoted the recall referendum campaign against President Hugo Chávez and is now rejecting the results that have been certified by the most credible international observers and even by the U.S. government. Súmate, despite its numerous undemocratic positions and actions, has also been a recipient of U.S. government funds from the National Endowment for Democracy in 2003. However, these new documents obtained by Venezuelafoia.info have all been censored by the U.S. Government despite the use of the FOIA, which intends to ensure transparency in U.S. Government operations. The Department of State has withheld the names of the organizations receiving financing from USAID by misapplying a FOIA exemption that is intended to protect "personnel and medical files" of individuals. Such clear censorship indicates that USAID and the U.S. Government clearly have something to hide regarding their collaborations with the Venezuelan opposition. Despite USAID's ongoing crusade to encourage transparency in foreign governments, the withholding of information that does not fall under any available exemptions clearly demonstrates a double standard applied by the U.S. Government in this case. USAID is financed by the U.S. Congress and is controlled by the Department of State. Founded by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, USAID was established as a fund dedicated to humanitarian intervention around the world. Despite Kennedy's humane intentions, USAID has more recently been used, in many instances, as a mechanism to promote the interests of the U.S. in strategically important countries around the world. In the case of Venezuela, USAID maintains a private contractor in Caracas monitoring and facilitating its projects and funds and also has a local operating center, the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) that was established in 2002, after the failed coup d'etat against President Chávez. The private contractor, Development Alternatives, inc. (DAI), manages and supervises grants approved by USAID to Venezuelan organizations. Under a program entitled Venezuela: Initiative to Build Confidence, DAI has awarded 67 grants to Venezuelan organizations in various sectors and areas of interest. These grants equal $2.3 million, just during 2003. In total, DAI 's program in Venezuela counts on $10,000,000 in funding for the period August 2002 through August 2004 -$5 million annually to "focus on common goals for the future of Venezuela". According to the documents obtained under FOIA and DAI's project description (available on www.dai.com/about_dai/about_fs.htm none of the project grants or programs have been in collaboration with the Venezuelan government. In fact, many of the same recipients of U.S. government funds through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have also received USAID funding through DAI. Despite the illegal withholding of names on the USAID-DAI grants, one document apparently was skipped, at least in part. The name, Súmate appears on a grant intended to encourage "electoral participation" in the recall referendum, citing $84,840 as the total grant amount. Combined with the NED grant of $53,400 given to Súmate in 2003-2004, the organization that is now crying fraud about the recall referendum against President Chávez, the results of which have been recognized as absolutely credible by the Carter Center and the U.S. Department of State, has received, at minimum, more than $200,000 in just one year for promoting its attempts to remove Venezuela's President from office. Other recipients of USAID funds through DAI which are apparent in the censored documents include the organization Liderazgo y Visión for its project, "Un Sueño para Venezuela", ("A Dream for Venezuela") a project created in 2002-2003 with the intent of offering an alternative vision and agenda for those opposing President Chávez's administration. Liderazgo y Visión has also been a recipient of NED funds over the past few years. More than 6 organizations have been given funding for political and social formation and development in Petare, a poor neighborhood in the outskirts of Caracas, in the Miranda State. The work in Petare and the more than $200,000 that have been funneled into that neighborhood in the past year, appear to have been aimed at converting a community that was traditionally pro-Chávez, into one that supports the opposition. The recall referendum results from August 15, 2004 show the opposition gaining substantial numbers in Petare, and Miranda state was one of only two states in the entire nation that gave victory to the opposition in the referendum. One grant from USAID/DAI focuses on the creation of radio and television commercials during the December 2002- February 2003 strike imposed by the opposition, during which the private media dedicated its airwaves 24-7 to opposition propaganda. One of the most striking aspects of the media's dedication to the strike was the use of anti-Chávez commercials to indoctrinate viewers' opinions on Venezuela's political situation. The USAID/DAI grant shows funding originating from the U.S. government for some of these anti-Chávez commercials, collaborating with former Fedecámaras President Carlos Fernandez, who was one of the leaders of the strike, in the project. These new documents from USAID provide evidence for a clear focus on two major projects in Venezuela: The Recall Referendum and the Formation of a National Agenda that would serve as a transitional government post-Chávez (assuming the referendum was won by the opposition). The documents are available for public viewing on www.venezuelafoia.info ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 3) Ashcroft Strikes Out, Third Federal Court Rules Federal Abortion Ban is Unconstitutional and Cannot Be Enforced Decision Echoes Rulings in San Francisco and New York NEW YORK CITY September 8, 2004 http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about/pr/040908_Ashcroft.html NEW YORK CITY - In the third of three federal court rulings, a Nebraska judge has struck down the federal abortion ban passed by Congress last October and signed by President Bush. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) applauded the ruling issued today in Carhart v. Ashcroft . "Today's ruling should be a cease and desist order for Attorney General Ashcroft and his taxpayer-funded anti-choice pursuits," PPFA President Gloria Feldt said. "Like the San Francisco and New York courts, the Nebraska court recognized that women's health, medical privacy and the U.S. Constitution trump anti-choice ideology. Women and doctors should make private, personal health care decisions - not John Ashcroft or any other politician." On June 1, 2004, in Planned Parenthood Federation of America v. Ashcroft, a federal court in northern California struck down the federal abortion ban. In doing so, the federal court ruled that Attorney General Ashcroft cannot enforce the federal abortion ban against any Planned Parenthood affiliate, or its "officers, agents, servants, employees, [or] contractors," whether the abortion is performed in a facility owned or operated by Planned Parenthood or elsewhere. On August 26, the federal court in New York City struck down the ban again in National Abortion Federation (NAF) v. Ashcroft . All three cases included the overwhelming testimony of highly respected ob/gyns from around the country who testified that this law would ban abortions as early as 12 to 15 weeks in pregnancy, abortions they say are safe and among the best for women's health. The ban would further fail to safeguard women because it does not contain an exception to protect their health. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and many other major medical organizations join PPFA in opposing the ban. In an attempted sweeping invasion of medical privacy earlier this year, Attorney General John Ashcroft tried unsuccessfully to obtain thousands of confidential medical records of women who obtained abortions. Among the records subpoenaed were those from Planned Parenthood health centers nationwide, but PPFA successfully blocked the effort. Ashcroft's calculated fishing expedition was in response to the effort to block the federal abortion ban. On March 29, 2003, three federal courts began hearing legal challenges to the "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003," a new law passed by Congress in October 2003 and signed by President Bush in November 2003. The lawsuits were brought by PPFA on behalf of Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, the affiliate in San Francisco, and the physicians, staff and patients of Planned Parenthood affiliates nationwide; the American Civil Liberties Union and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP on behalf of the National Abortion Federation and other doctors; and the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) on behalf of Dr. LeRoy Carhart and other doctors. Planned Parenthood Federation of America is the nation's largest and most trusted voluntary reproductive health organization. We believe that everyone has the right to choose when or whether to have a child - and that every child should be wanted and loved. Planned Parenthood affiliates operate nearly 850 health centers nationwide, providing medical services and sexuality education for millions of women, men, and teenagers each year. Contact: Colleen McCabe (212) 261-4729 Joel Lawson (202) 973-4880 ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 4) Gaza Emergency "Barbara Lubin" Thu, 9 Sep 2004 16:12:16 -0700 (PDT) All of us at the Middle East Children's Alliance are concerned, as I'm sure you are, about the worsening situation in Palestine and particularly the latest news coming out of northern Gaza. I, MECA's executi= ve director, spoke with a friend and doctor in Gaza City this morning and was = told that 19 Palestinians had been admitted into the Al-Awda hospital last night with serious injuries. The Israeli army has stated that this an open ended invasion. We fear that this will become another operation like those in Rafah and Beit Hanoun, leaving many more Palestinians killed, injured, and homeless. We felt we had to send out a message to our friends and supporters to update you on the tragedies being paid for by our US tax dollars. Please find below a number of excerpts with the links to full articles. We = hope you will pass on this information to your friends and families. Thank you, Middle East Children's Alliance 901 Parker Street Berkeley, California 94710 United States No US Aid to Israel. End the Occupation. Support Divestment and Sanctions. From the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR): http://www.pchrgaza.org/ files/PressR/English/2004/110-2004.htm "At the time of writing, 4 Palestinians, including a 10 year old child, have been killed and 53 others, mostly children, have been injured by the Israeli gunfire and shelling. PCHR's investigations strongly indicate that Israeli troops used excessive lethal force against unarmed Palestinian civilians, without adhering to the principles of proportionalit= y and distinction." "...At approximately 12:00, Israeli troops indiscriminately shelled [Jabalya] camp. As a result, 3 Palestinian civilians, including a child, were killed." "PCHR reminds the international community of Israeli violations of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 1949 (Fourth Geneva Convention), particularly article 33 which prohibits collective punishment, and article 147 which considers "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity, and carried out unlawfully and wantonly" a grave breach that may amount, in some circumstances, to be a war crime under article 85-3 of Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Conventions." 10-Year Old Girl Hit in UNRWA Classroom by Israeli Gunfire UNRWA Press Release- September 7 http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/ 6b9f5e29011585b585256f08004f231b?OpenDocument At 07:45 10-year old Raghda Adnan Al-Assar was struck in the head by Israeli fire while sitting at her desk in UNRWA's Elementary C Girl's School in Khan Younis camp. She is now in the European Gaza Hospital where she has undergone major surgery. UNRWA's Commissioner-General Peter Hansen said: "The kind of live firing into refugee camps that is so indiscriminate that it makes classroom= s dangerous for 10-year old children is totally unacceptable. UNRWA will protest this violation of the sanctity of its school in the strongest possible terms to the Israeli authorities." Story about the extrajudicial assassination of a Palestinian at an internet café in Jericho. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-09/09/ content_1962652.htm "A special Israeli undercover unit stormed the West Bank city of Jericho Wednesday night and assassinated a Palestinian member of Al Aqsa martyrs brigades, Palestinian security sources said on Thursday. "...Witnesses confirmed that the soldiers opened intensive gunfire directly on Abedeia who tried to pull out from the café. "Three of the café visitors were wounded by Israeli soldiers who opened fire haphazardly in the café, added the witnesses." What you can do: -Invite MECA to speak to your community group, school, church, synagogue, mosque, union, etc. -Send a contribution to MECA for emergency medical aid Donate online: https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=1171 Checks can be mailed to: 901 Parker Street Berkeley, CA 94710 -Email this message to as many people as possible -Tell your US senators and congress representatives to stop aid to Israel www.congress.org
Thursday, September 09, 2004
BAUAW NEWSLETTER-THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2004
BAUAW MEETING TONIGHT
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9. 7 PM 1380 VALENCIA STREET ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 1) FW: Press conference and vigil From: Howard Wallace Wed, 8 Sep 2004 2) For 1,000 Troops, There Is No Going Home By MONICA DAVEY September 9, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/national/09deaths.html?hp 3) U.S. Forces on Offensive in Iraq Rebel Strongholds By Luke Baker BAGHDAD (Reuters) Thu Sep 9, 2004 09:28 AM ET http://www.reuters.com/ newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6193417&src=eDialog/ GetContent§ion=news 4) Israel Kills 4, Including 9-Year-Old, in Gaza By Nidal al-Mughrabi JABALYA, Gaza Strip (Reuters) Thu Sep 9, 2004 09:43 AM ET http://www.reuters.com/ newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6193616&src=eDialog/ GetContent§ion=news 5) Family 'Thanks' Bush for Death of Son WKYC-TV Wednesday 08 September 2004 http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091004Z.shtml 6) USA: Chevron donates to Schwarzenegger, gets removal of restrictions on oil refineries in California by Tom Chorneau , Associated Press Friday, September 03, 2004 - SACRAMENTO http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11519 7) The Beslan hostage tragedy: the lies of the Putin government and its media By Vladimir Volkov 8 September 2004 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/sep2004/puti-s08.shtml 8) Protests Powered by Cellphone By PATRICK DI JUSTO September 9, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/technology/circuits/09mobb.html 9) Ex-Banking Star Given 18 Months for Obstruction By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN September 9, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/business/09star.html ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 1) FW: Press conference and vigil From: Howard Wallace Wed, 8 Sep 2004 Dear Friends, Please help us spread the word about the vigil below to commemorate the over 1,000 US soldiers who died in Iraq. If any of you or someone from your organizations would like to speak, please do so. Thanks so much, Medea Benjamin Code Pink and Global Exchange URGENT CALL TO ACTION: JOIN US AT A VIGIL FOR THE 1,000 U.S. SOLDIERS AND TENS OF THOUSANDS IRAQIS KILLED IN IRAQ THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 5-7PM at UN PLAZA (Market St between 7th and Hyde), San Francisco For more information: Nancy Mancias, Code Pink, 415-342-6409 or foonan@jps.net Over 1,000 young Americans have now died in Iraq, over 7,000 are maimed, and many thousands of Iraqis have died. The President won't mourn our dead, but we will. Please join Code Pink, Bring Our Troops Home Now Committee, Mother Speak, United for Peace and Justice, Veterans For Peace, Not in Our Name, and Global Exchange to say: Enough to Endless War and Suffering, Bring Them Home NOW. There will be dozens such vigils happening all over the country, where we will remember the 1,000 US servicemen and women who have died in Iraq. We will remember the tens of thousands of Iraqis--civilians and combatants, men and women, children, the elderly--who have been killed. We will remember that these deaths did not have to happen. We know that the current administration has plunged us into this unjust and unjustifiable war, driven by greed for oil and lust for power and fueled by lie after lie. We cannot remain silent. We want an end to the occupation so the Iraqi people can determine their own destiny free from foreign interference and control. We want our troops brought home now. Don't ask these men and women to continue to die for politicians' mistakes and lies. And we want them treated right when they return. Give them the benefits there were promised and give them the help they will need to heal their bodies, their minds and their spirits. We are here to remember, to honor and to mourn. We will not forget! ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 2) For 1,000 Troops, There Is No Going Home By MONICA DAVEY September 9, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/national/09deaths.html?hp Dixie Codner had a question for the marines who came down her gravel road, past the rows of corn and alfalfa, to tell her that her 19-year-old son, Kyle, had been killed in Iraq. Should she bring them the dress blues, = still pressed and hanging neatly in his closet, for his funeral? No need, she recalled them answering. They had dress uniforms from all the services, all sizes, waiting back at Dover Air Force Base in Delawa= re, where the bodies of American service members come home. "What does that say?" Ms. Codner asked, as she sat at her kitchen table in Shelton, Neb., on a recent morning, fingering a thick stack of photograp= hs that her son had sent from the desert. "How many more are they expecting? All I know is that there are 1,000 families that feel just like we do. We g= o to bed at night, and we don't have our children." Like Lance Cpl. Kyle W. Codner, each of the more than 1,000 marines and soldiers, sailors and airmen killed since the United States sent troops to invade Iraq leaves behind a grieving family, a story, a unique memory of duty and sacrifice in what has become the deadliest war for Americans since Vietnam. But along with so much personal loss, the roster of the dead tells a larger story, a portrait of a society and a military in transition, with ever-widening roles and costs for the country's part-time soldiers, women and Hispanics. As has often been true in the United States' wars, small towns like Shelton and other rural areas suffered a disproportionate share of deaths compared with the nation's big cities. More than 100 service members who died were from California, the most for any state, but the smaller, less-populated states, many in the nation's middle - the Dakotas, Wyoming and Nebraska - recorded some of the biggest per capita losses. In these mostly Republican-leaning states, people have begun to take painful note of the toll in Iraq. Many of the families of the dead there said they remained supportive of the war, the troops and the president. Still, with the death toll reaching 1,000 just two months before the presidential election, the somber milestone captured a central spot in the national political debate this week. More than 70 percent of the dead were soldiers in the Army, and more than 20 percent were marines. More than half were in the lowest-paid enlisted ranks. About 12 percent were officers. Three- quarters of the troops died in hostile incidents: most often, homemade-bomb explosions, small-arms fire, rocket attacks. A quarter died in illnesses or accidents: truck and helicopter crashes and gun discharges. On average, the service members who died were about 26. The youngest was 18; the oldest, 59. About half were married, according to the death roll, which does not include a handful yet to be identified by the Defense Department and three civilians who worked for the military. Part-time soldiers, the guardsmen and reservists who once expected to tend to floods and hurricanes, were called to Iraq on a scale not seen through five decades of war. Increasingly, Iraq is becoming their conflict, and in growing numbers this spring and early summer, these part-time soldiers died there. Ten times as many of them died from April to July of this year as had in the war's first two months. American women, too, have quietly drawn closer to combat than they had in half a century. At least 24 female service members died in Iraq, more than in any American conflict since World War II, a stark sign of a barrier broken. Many Hispanics, once underrepresented in the armed forces, have fought and died in striking numbers. At least 122 Hispanics have died in Iraq, meaning that they died at a rate disproportionately high for their representation in the active forces and among the deployed troops. Among the dead were 39 service members who were not American citizens, significantly more than had died in Vietnam or Afghanistan, according to Defense Department records. Most of the troops - 85 percent - died after President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1, 2003. Nearly 15 percent died after the United States turned over sovereignty to Iraq's new leaders this June. The deadliest month was this April, as insurgents stepped up their attacks. Nearly as many American troops died that month as had in the initial invasion. The Pentagon says it does not track or release estimates of the number of Iraqis killed since the war began, although some independent groups have offered widely varying estimates. (A group called Iraq Body Count said Iraqi civilian deaths exceeded 11,000.) Among Americans, especially the relatives of service members who have died, the meaning of the toll is already a matter of feverish, sometimes bitter, debate. Some say they view the number of deaths - and the injuries to more than 7,000 other Americans - as a tragic but unavoidable price of war, and one that seems modest beside the death toll from Vietnam, which was 58,000. About 380 troops died in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, and some 97 in Afghanistan. Any questions about the mounting numbers in Iraq, these relatives said, served as a rejection of the troops' mission, an insult to their lost soldier's work. "The loss is there, of course, but we also know the honor and the pride," said Kelby McCrae, himself a captain in the National Guard and the son of a veteran soldier. His younger brother, Erik, was killed in June. "We're just so honored at the sacrifice he gave." But others said they worried that their soldier's sacrifice in Iraq might be forgotten as more months pass and people grow inured to news of so many deaths, one after the next in this war. The Guard and the Reserves: 'Weekend Warriors' Go Full Time Eric S. McKinley was a baker and a part-time soldier. He dyed his hair strange colors and pierced his body in places his mother sometimes wished he had not. His six-year stint in the Oregon National Guard was supposed to end in April, but it was extended, and Specialist McKinley died June 13 when a bomb blew up near his Humvee near Baghdad. Specialist McKinley's father, Tom, said he was left with a haunting conviction: that guardsmen and reservists are now being asked in record numbers to fight the same lethal wars as full-time soldiers, but without the same level of training, equipment or respect. Dozens of parents and spouses of guardsmen - some who died and others still serving in Iraq - said they shared Mr. McKinley's worries as they wrestled with what the role of the nation's 1.2 million part-time service members once was and what it was becoming. "They are not prepared for this, not emotionally and not with their gear and equipment," said Mr. McKinley, of Salem, Ore. "There's this opinion that these guys are just 'weekend warriors,' and we'll have them do all the things the regular army doesn't have time to do. But these guys are being asked to put their lives on the line just as much as everyone else. These guys are yanked from their lives, and yet they aren't treated the same." During special training at a base in Texas before he left for Iraq, Specialist McKinley told his father that his Guard unit was getting only two meals a day, while regular units ate three. And in Iraq, on the day of his death, Specialist McKinley's fellow guardsmen said he was in a Humvee reinforced with plywood and sandbags, not real armor. Cecil Green, a spokesman at Fort Hood where Specialist McKinley's unit trained before it left for Iraq, said all soldiers - regular and part time - were fed equally. But Col. Mike Caldwell, deputy director of the Oregon National Guard, said his troops had complained about unequal conditions during training there in months past. "There were a lot of problems in their treatment," Colonel Caldwell said. "It was deplorable. They were treated like slaves in some respects." Thomas F. Hall, the assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, acknowledged in a telephone interview last week that since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the nation's reserve components had been called in numbers unknown since perhaps World War II. But those part-timers sent to Iraq are trained and equipped to the same level as any active-duty troops, Mr. Hall said. "It's no longer your father or your grandfather's Guard and Reserves," Mr. Hall said. "A lot of this is a leftover vestige from a time in which we didn't perhaps equip and train our Guard and Reserve as we need to." Any shortages of equipment - of armored Humvees or protective gear - have been faced by all types of troops, not just guardsmen, he said. And Mr. Hall insisted that no one, not even him, could distinguish between part--s and others when it came to Iraq. "They look the same. Their standards are the same. Their training is the same," he said. Recently home from Iraq with an injury, Specialist Andrew Cross, a member of the North Carolina National Guard, said the only difference he discerned was a little taunting. "Sure, they say stuff about you not being full time,'' Specialist Cross said, "but who cares what they say." Specialist Cross's best friend, Specialist Daniel A. Desens, who listened to Bob Marley and Dave Matthews with him as they rolled along in their Bradleys in Iraq, was one of at least 179 guardsmen and reservists killed there, the records of those identified as of yesterday show. Their deaths make up less than a fifth of those killed, but the timing of their deaths underscores the changing makeup of American forces in Iraq. In the first weeks of war, only a small group of reserve forces was sent to Iraq, and only a few died. The numbers grew swiftly this year, and reserves and guards now amount to about 40 percent of the forces deployed to Iraq, and maybe still more soon. Back in Oregon, Colonel Caldwell said leaders were busy arranging more deployments for some of the state's 8,400 Army and Air National Guard troops in the coming weeks, even as gloom lingered over the headquarters. Four Oregon guardsmen, including Specialist McKinley, died in a 10-day stretch. Nationally, Mr. Hall said, recruiters may fall 1 percent short of their goals for new Guard members when the annual count is taken at the end of September. In Oregon, Colonel Caldwell predicted direr shortfalls: 10 percent to 15 percent. "I think it's pretty obvious what's happening," he said. "People have realized: you join the Guard in Oregon, you're going to be mobilized." The Women: Dying, in a Role Quietly Redefined Before she left her home in Richmond, Va., Leslie D. Jackson's Junior R.O.T.C. instructor warned her that although women might not officially be on the very front line of a ground war, they were edging ever closer - and the line itself, if ever there was one in Iraq, had grown dangerously blurry. "I told her that even combat support roles could still take you places that maybe you should not be," said Master Sgt. Earl G. Winston Jr., who taught Private Jackson at George Wythe High School. "But she said she was ready to accept the challenge. She said she did not want her fellow soldiers, most of them men, to think that she wasn't every bit as good as them." Private Jackson, who had talked her reluctant mother into letting her sign up for the Army when she was 17, died on May 20 in Baghdad. The truck she was transporting supplies in hit a roadside bomb. She had finished basic training eight months before, and had turned 18, making her the youngest of 24 women who have died in Iraq. Not long before, she had sent an e-mail message to her former principal, Earl Pappy, to say that she was spending long hours driving trucks and had been unnerved at seeing a soldier killed for the first time right before her: " 'I left home as Mommy's little girl,' ''= Mr. Pappy said she wrote, " 'and I'm coming back as a strong woman.' "She told me she wouldn't be in combat, and I don't think women should be," said Viola Jackson, Private Jackson's mother. "But then again, they joined the Army, and I guess you've got to do whatever the other people are doing. I don't know. What I know is she was a sweet child." Women make up some 10 percent of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they account for less than 3 percent of the 1,000 deaths in Iraq. Still, more women have died there than in any conflict since hundreds died in World War II - a certain if somber sign of how women's roles in the military have grown in the last decade. More surprising, though, to advocates on both sides of a long- simmering debate over what women should and should not do in times of war has been the public's reaction to the loss of 24 women. Mostly, there has been silence. "What it means is that our view of women has changed," said Lory Manning, director of the Women in the Military Project at the Women's Research and Education Institute in Washington and a retired 25-year veteran of the Navy. "Within our minds, women are doing a lot of athletic things. They're SWAT team members and firefighters now. This is worldwide. So people see this as less horrible. The horror of death is equal now." But others, like Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent public policy group in Livonia, Mich., said Americans were largely oblivious to the role women were playing in Iraq and would be disturbed if they knew. Female soldiers who die receive little attention, she said, except in small hometown newspapers; the same is true of the 207 women who have been injured in Iraq. Shortly after the war began, there were hints of the nation's discomfort when three female soldiers, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch and Specialist Shoshana Johnson, were taken hostage, and one of them, Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, was killed, Ms. Donnelly said. In images broadcast around the world, Specialist Johnson looked terrified, her eyes darting. "The risk of capture is why we oppose women in combat," said Ms. Donnelly, who wants the Pentagon to reconsider the jobs close to combat that women now hold. "We're a civilized nation. Violence against women is wrong. I hope that we don't become that kind of a nation that doesn't care about this sort of thing." Eight women died in Vietnam. Sixteen died in the first Persian Gulf war. Three died in Afghanistan. And through most of that time, people have argued over what place women should take in war. Women have served in the American military since 1901, and others quietly did unofficial military work as early as the Revolutionary War. But in 1948, Congress adopted the Armed Forces Integration Act, which capped women at 2 percent of the services and barred them from serving on combat planes and combat ships. After Vietnam, and the end of the draft, the restrictions on women began to fade, one by one. By 1994, women were allowed to fly combat aircraft, to serve on fighter ships but not submarines, and to fill ground jobs except those most directly on the front lines: special forces, infantry, armor, artillery. But in Iraq, the jobs that women could fill - as drivers in convoys bringing supplies to troops and as members of military police units - came under attack from homemade bombs and mortar fire, too, and the notion of a front line seemed no longer to fit the conflict. Nearly all of the women killed were full-time soldiers in the Army. And two-thirds of them died in hostile situations, not in accidents or because of illness. Even Ms. Manning, who supports bigger roles for women in the military, said she was surprised at the degree to which women had been included in critical operations, including patrolling checkpoints. In part, their role may have been a necessary outgrowth of cultural differences in Iraq. Female soldiers were needed when Iraqi women were searched or questioned. Still, Ms. Donnelly and other critics say, the scars from so much change are being ignored: What will come of the children, they asked, who lose their mothers to war? Sgt. Tatjana Reed, a single mother, was killed on July 22 when a bomb exploded near her convoy vehicle. She had signed papers leaving her 10-year-old daughter, Genevieve, in the care of relatives near her base in Germany, expecting the arrangement to be temporary. Sergeant Reed "always said, 'What a man can do, I can do,' '' recalled her mother, Brigitte Dykty, who lives in Clarksville, Tenn. "Sometimes I wish she hadn't thought that." The Hispanics: Underrepresented, Except on Death Rolls Five years ago, the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group for Hispanics, released a scathing study of Hispanics in the United States military. The central finding was that the military was not employing as many Hispanics as it should. In 1996, the study said, Hispanics 18 to 44 made up more than 11 percent of the civilian work force but accounted for less than 7 percent of the military's active forces. The military took notice, and the Marines, in particular, began a serious recruiting effort aimed at Spanish-speaking markets, said Lisa Navarrete, vice president of the advocacy group. "They took it very, very seriously," Ms. Navarrete said. By 2004, Latinos accounted for 9.2 percent of all active-duty forces and about 10 percent of those forces deployed to Iraq nd Afghanistan. That news came with a distinctly bittersweet edge. Of the 1,000 killed in Iraq, at least 122, or more than 12 percent, were Hispanic, according to the Defense Department, which says ethnicity was not tracked by the same measures in previous wars. "It seems that in a time of peace, we're underrepresented," Ms. Navarrete said quietly. "In a time of war, the situation is completely changed." One reason for the high rate of Hispanic deaths in Iraq is that Hispanics = account for a particularly large segment - more than 13 percent - of the Marines, the ground troops who suffered significant losses early in the war, as well as in the uprisings of recent weeks. Some of those who died fighting for the United States were not even citizens. At least 39 noncitizens - many, though not all, of Hispanic heritage - were among the dead. Legal residents of this country have long served in the armed forces, but records of their deaths in war are hard to find. The official Defense Department records show that one noncitizen died in military duty in Vietnam and three in Afghanistan. In 2002, Mr. Bush issued an order shortening the waiting periods for service members and their families seeking citizenship, and Congress made those changes permanent with a law that takes effect in October. Some anti-immigration advocates said that military service alone was not a qualification for citizenship, while others worried that the changes might induce some immigrants to enlist in hopes of speedy citizenship. "But the bottom line, whatever the casualties, is that people are going to continue to join because they have to," said Rodolfo Acuna, a professor of Chicano studies at California State University, Northridge. "They want to live better. They want to get money. They want to better themselves." Rey David Cuervo was born in Tampico, Mexico, but his mother, Rosalba Kuhn, took him to Texas when he was 6. She was a maid in Port Isabel. He was an only boy among three sisters, the quiet one with just a handful of friends. At age 8, she said, he went to her carrying a picture of the American flag and explained that he planned to join the American Army. "He said that this is all he wanted," she recalled not long ago. "He said if they wouldn't take him in the Army here, then he'd go back to Mexico and sign up there." In 1999, he left for basic training. "I was so proud," Ms. Kuhn said. "When I came here, my dreams were that I would see my kids here, see them learn the language, see them get a better life for themselves. Part of that was wanting to see my son in an American uniform." Ms. Kuhn said she thinks of her son every day when she wakes up. She lights candles for him. She holds a hat of his under her nose and breathes it in. In the sadness, though, Ms. Kuhn said she had no anger. Her son wanted to go into the Army. He wanted to go to Iraq. He chose his future. Private Cuervo, who once told his mother that he planned to retire from the military after 20 years and then buy a big house, died on Dec. 28, 2003, when a bomb exploded. He was 24, one of 32,000 noncitizens in the armed forces. The government granted him citizenship after he died. The Small Towns: When the Population Is Reduced by One There are no sidewalks along the quiet streets of Shelton, Neb., but there is red-white-and-blue bunting, a little faded now, and tattered black ribbon tied to the street posts. Not that anyone here needs to be reminded about Kyle Codner. The nation's small towns experienced more than their share of death in Iraq, a clear reflection of their representation in the nation's military services. Not only did death arrive in disproportionate numbers in these towns, but each death seemed to echo louder and longer than it might have in a big city. One resident here compared Corporal Codner's death on May 26 to a tornado whipping up in the Midwest and zeroing in on this town of 1,100 people. "The word 'shock' is overused, generally," said Lynn McBride, the chairman of Shelton's village trustees and a schoolteacher. "But it understates the feelings about this. We're all in it together here, and there was a feeling that this couldn't be true." To Shelton, Corporal Codner was the son of Dixie and Wain Codner. He was one of 19 graduates of Shelton High in 2003, and one of two to go off to the military. He was the basketball player with the blond girlfriend, each of them usually on the king and queen court. He was the clerk at J. R.'s Mini Mart. He was the kid who got his photograph taken in front of the old military tank that sits at the town's entrance, and the student named in the yearbook as "Most Likely to Kick Some Terrorist Butt." Nebraska and a long list of states in the country's middle and South had some of the highest death rates per capita. Many of these states are considered Republican strongholds. Vermont, a Democratic-leaning state in the presidential race, had the most deaths per capita. Among swing states in the presidential race, Oregon, Maine and Iowa had heavy losses. No one can be sure what role the deaths in Iraq will play in this election = season. Nebraska has been more reliably Republican through five decades of presidential races than any other state. Still, Democrats in Nebraska say the war and the death toll of 14 is stirring political discussion. "The Republican voting bloc is persuadable here, especially when you're talking about sending your sons and daughters to war," said Barry R. Rubin, executive director of the Nebraska Democratic Party. "One thing about Nebraska is we are very independent-minded people, and people are seriously questioning the merits of this war." But along the streets of Shelton last weekend, most people said they backed the war, and would probably vote for Mr. Bush. Among them was Corporal Codner's best friend from childhood, Matthew S. Walter, 19 and preparing to vote in his first presidential election. "I don't think= I like what John Kerry has to say,'' Mr. Walter said. Most people interviewed said they did not see Corporal Codner's death through the prism of politics. "I sense no bitterness or contrition whatsoever about Kyle,'' Mr. McBride said. "I've never heard any of that. I think the overall feeling is that we're grateful he died the way he did - serving his country." About eight miles away, back at Ms. Codner's kitchen table, the Codners said they would vote against President Bush, one of the many people Ms. Codner describes as "someone without skin in the game." She and her husband go to sleep thinking of the boy in the circle of class pictures on their living room wall, she said, and then they wake up thinking of him. In the moments when other thoughts crowd out those memories, Ms. Codner said, something always brings him back. On Friday, it was the mail. Four packages that had been sent to her son in Iraq were returned to her, unopened. A yellow form on the front of the boxes gave a curt explanation in the form of a checked box: "Deceased." The Codners tried to discourage their son from joining the Marines during his senior year in high school, but when he complained that they were not being supportive, they tried to go along. Wain Codner said the town's embrace helped his family the first weeks after his son's death. "The support was incredible," he said. "But then, people go on with their lives." A few days before Corporal Codner died, he sent home a roll of film. His family developed it, then waited, hoping he would call, so he could tell them exactly what they were seeing. The mysterious stack of pictures still sits on the kitchen table. One shows Corporal Codner, with a wide smile, beside an Iraqi child. In another, a thick automatic weapon dangles around his neck, seeming to dwarf his slim frame. Another shows just a sleeping bag and pad, arranged carefully on a concrete block. This is probably where he slept, his parents surmise, but they will never be sure. Tom Torok and the research staff of The New York Times contributed to this report. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 3) U.S. Forces on Offensive in Iraq Rebel Strongholds By Luke Baker BAGHDAD (Reuters) Thu Sep 9, 2004 09:28 AM ET http://www.reuters.com/ newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6193417&src=eDialog/ GetContent§ion=news BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S.-led forces launched operations in three Iraqi rebel strongholds on Thursday, killing nearly two dozen insurgents in a town near the Syrian border and bombing targets in Falluja for the third straight day. Fierce fighting around the town of Tal Afar, a suspected haven for foreign fighters about 100 km (60 miles) east of the Syrian border in northern Iraq, left 22 insurgents dead and more than 70 wounded, a local government health official said. "The situation is critical," Rabee Yassin, general manager for health in Nineveh province, told Reuters. "Ambulances and medical supplies cannot get to Tal Afar because of the ongoing military operations." There were no immediate reports of any U.S. or Iraqi government casualties in the fighting which local government sources said had killed 57 since Saturday. U.S. forces said the assault was in response to provocation after they and Iraqi security forces "were repeatedly attacked by a large terrorist element that has displaced local Iraqi security forces throughout recent weeks." "These attacks by terrorist groups included rocket-propelled grenades, small arms fire, mortars and roadside bombs, and resulted in civilian casualties," the military said. Further south, U.S. warplanes bombed rebel-held Falluja for a third successive night. The U.S. military said the assault was part of a "precision strike" on an operating base for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant Washington says is allied to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. "The target was a building frequently used by terrorists at the time of the strike. Three Zarqawi associates were reported to be in the area, no other individuals were present at the time of the strike," the statement said. DOCTORS SAY CHILDREN KILLED But doctors in Falluja said at least eight people were killed. Doctor Rafi Hayad said four of them were children and two women. Iraq's Health Ministry said at least 16 people had been killed in fighting in Falluja in the past 24 hours. Reuters Television pictures showed several bloodied and heavily bandaged children being treated in a Falluja hospital. The United States blames Zarqawi for masterminding a series of suicide bomb attacks and the killing of several hostages. It has offered a $25 million reward for his capture. A statement posted on an Islamic Web Site and claiming to come from Zarqawi's group said four of his militants had been killed in the U.S. bombardment of Falluja earlier this week. The past few days have seen a surge in attacks and clashes in Iraq that pushed the official Pentagon U.S. death toll for the war to above 1,000. The Pentagon has admitted that U.S. and Iraqi forces are not in control of strongholds of the insurgency like Falluja, Ramadi and Samarra. U.S. forces entered Samarra on Thursday for the first time in weeks to try to reestablish Iraqi government control there. A military statement said the troops went in to install a temporary mayor and police chief, set up a local council and assess police stations. There were no reports of clashes. NO WORD ON HOSTAGES Besides trying to contain the insurgency, Iraq's government is also grappling with a hostage crisis. In one of the most brazen abductions so far, two Italian women aid workers and two Iraqi colleagues were snatched from their office in central Baghdad in broad daylight on Tuesday. No word has yet emerged from their captors. Since April, people from more than two dozen countries have been kidnapped as guerrillas have tried to force foreign troops and firms to leave. More than 20 foreign hostages have been killed, including two Italians. The latest kidnappings has piled more pressure on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Most Italian voters strongly oppose Italy's role in Iraq, where it has sent 2,700 soldiers. Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Margherita Boniver flew to the Middle East on Thursday to seek help in securing the women's release. The abductions are likely to fuel uncertainty over the fate of two French journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, who have been held since Aug. 20 despite intense diplomatic efforts to free them. The seizure of the aid workers is also likely to trigger an exodus of the 50 or so remaining foreign humanitarian workers in Iraq. (c) Copyright Reuters 2004. ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 4) Israel Kills 4, Including 9-Year-Old, in Gaza By Nidal al-Mughrabi JABALYA, Gaza Strip (Reuters) Thu Sep 9, 2004 09:43 AM ET http://www.reuters.com/ newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6193616&src=eDialog/ GetContent§ion=news JABALYA, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Israeli forces thrust into Gaza's largest refugee camp on Thursday, killing four Palestinians including a 9-year-old boy, as the army tightened its grip on the northern part of the coastal strip. Scores of gunmen fought a column of tanks and armored vehicles as Israeli troops took up positions in and around the teeming Jabalya camp, a militant stronghold, in an operation the army said was aimed at stopping rocket fire into Israel. Helicopter gunships fired missiles into the camp of 100,000 inhabitants as Israeli forces sealed it off in Israel's biggest incursion in the northern Gaza Strip in months. Munir el-Deqqes was shot in the chest while playing with friends outside his grandfather's house, witnesses said. "How can anyone blame children playing in the street?" said the boy's uncle. "Munir was a victim of blind Israeli retaliation." At least 35 people, including militants and civilians, were wounded by Israeli fire, medics said. A military source said soldiers had shot only at armed men. It was the latest chapter in Israel's military response after suicide bombers killed 16 people in southern Israel last week. The raid marked a widening of Israel's incursion that began on Wednesday when forces swept in and seized control following a barrage of makeshift rocket strikes in southern Israel. The latest spiral of violence could further complicate Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw troops and settlers from the occupied Gaza Strip by the end of 2005. Palestinian militants are determined to claim any Israeli pullout as a victory, but Israel has vowed to smash them first. PALESTINIAN CONDEMNATION "We urge the ... civilized world to stop these crimes by Israeli occupation forces and call on the United States to shoulder its responsibilities toward the peace process," Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said in a statement. Israel's army killed 14 Hamas fighters at a Gaza training camp on Tuesday in the deadliest strike ever against the militant Islamic group, which is sworn to Israel's destruction. Hamas, responsible for a double suicide bombing in the Israeli city of Beersheba on August 31, vowed revenge for the Israeli attacks. In the second day of Israel's incursion in northern Gaza, the army said its forces had penetrated to the first row of houses in eastern Jabalya. Israeli commanders have usually been reluctant to send forces deep into Jabalya's cramped alleys, where they would be vulnerable to booby traps and bombs planted by militants. "We won't stay there forever," a senior Israeli official said. "But we have to conduct forays just to keep them (the rocket crews) off balance." Medics said troops shot dead four people in Jabalya, including at least one Hamas militant. It was not known if two other dead, both men in their 20s, were militants or civilians. Israeli forces surrounded Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya on Wednesday -- towns that have been frequently raided -- and bulldozers tore up stretches of road to cut off the area. By Thursday, shops were getting low on supplies. Despite the two-day-old raid, militants managed to fire several primitive Qassam rockets from fenced-in Gaza toward the Israeli town of Sderot. There were no reports of casualties. In a game of cat-and-mouse, militants in some cases use timers so they can escape minutes before the rockets are launched, Palestinian sources said. The army said soldiers in northern Gaza destroyed three welding machines on Thursday used to make the rockets. (c) Copyright Reuters 2004. ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 5) Family 'Thanks' Bush for Death of Son WKYC-TV Wednesday 08 September 2004 http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091004Z.shtml THOMPSON - In Geauga County, anger and frustration over the death of a young soldier inside Iraq has prompted one family to send a personal message to President Bush. Ken and Betty Landrus have put up a large sign outside their home near Thompson, Ohio that is sharply critical of the Bush administration. The sign reads "Thanks Mr. Bush for the death of our son." Their son, Staff Sgt. Sean Landrus was killed near Fallujah in January. They believe the president misled the country about the reasons for invading Iraq and that their son died for nothing. "Yes I do feel lied to because they kept saying there's mass destruction and nobody's found anything yet," father Ken Landrus said. Sean Landrus also left behind a wife and three young children. His youngest daughter, Kennedy, was born just before Sean left to serve inside Iraq. ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 6) USA: Chevron donates to Schwarzenegger, gets removal of restrictions on oil refineries in California by Tom Chorneau , Associated Press Friday, September 03, 2004 - SACRAMENTO http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11519 Friday, September 03, 2004 - SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ambitious plan to reorganize almost every aspect of state government was influenced significantly by oil and gas giant ChevronTexaco Corp., which managed to shape such key recommendations as the removal of restrictions on oil refineries. Many corporations and interest groups participated in the governor's reform plan - known as the California Performance Review - but state records and interviews with the participants show Chevron enjoyed immense success in influencing the report through its array of lobbyists, attorneys and trade organizations. And few corporations have spent so much political cash on the governor, either. Since Schwarzenegger's election last October, the San Ramon company has contributed more than $200,000 to his committees and $500,000 to the California Republican Party. Chevron, whose officials acknowledge they lobbied hard to get their ideas in the report, is one of about 20 companies that paid to send the governor and his staff to this week's Republican National Convention in New York. On Wednesday, Schwarzenegger attended a closed-door meeting in New York with representatives of those companies, including Chevron. And just three weeks after the governor's office released the 2,700-page reorganization report, the company gave $100,000 to a Schwarzenegger- controlled political fund. Environmental watchdogs and local agencies that regulate some of Chevron's operations complain that they had no such access, and that their counterproposals appear nowhere in the massive report. Top reform project Disclosure of Chevron's determined role in what many believe is the administration's most important political reform effort contrasts sharply with statements he made during last year's election campaign and afterward in which he promised to sweep out a corrupt system where "contributions go in, the favors go out." Schwarzenegger launched the reorganization effort in January, calling the state bureaucracy a "mastodon frozen in time" that needed to be reviewed from top to bottom to eliminate waste and duplication. The administration said the recommendations in the report would save $32 billion over five years, a claim analysts said is exaggerated. Although the governor's senior aides helped organize and oversee the reorganization effort, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger said the review staff, not the governor's office, was responsible for the report. Schwarzenegger announced the review in January and then appointed its two top members, who then assembled the rest of the staff. Ashley Snee, the governor's deputy press secretary, said it was premature to assume any of the recommendations will be adopted and that those who are unhappy with parts of the report can comment at a series of statewide hearings on the proposal. Beneficial proposals Proposals that would benefit Chevron are peppered throughout the four-volume report. They include: - Streamlining the permit process for the construction of new oil refineries and the expansion of existing ones. Chevron, which owns two of the state's largest refineries in Richmond and El Segundo, wanted the state's help in revising existing laws so local government officials would be required to make decisions more quickly on construction permits at refineries. - Streamlining the activities of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. That agency, which issues permits for dredging and sand mining in the Bay Area, oversees activities related to Chevron's interests in the Bay Area. - Reorganizing the regulatory process for picking the locations for refineries, tank farms, liquefied natural gas and other energy facilities. Chevron has two proposals to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities in Southern California and the Mexican state of Baja California. But Mark Petracca, a University of California, Irvine political scientist, said Chevron's considerable influence on the CPR report may taint the whole review because the study was presented to the public as an objective and authoritative analysis of how to fix state government. "This is good old fashioned interest-group politics," Petracca said. "Powerful people who have money can hire powerful people and use occasions like this report to set the agenda for policy beneficial to those interests." Under scrutiny In response, Snee repeated that the report was independent of the governor's office. Chevron's operations have drawn steady and critical scrutiny from state and federal regulators, including a settlement last October of a lawsuit with the U.S. Justice Department that required the company to install $275 million in air pollution equipment and pay $3.5 million in civil penalties. Company officials said they were just doing their jobs through their vigorous participation in the CPR process, which included meeting with senior aides to the governor. "This is what we are here for," said Jack Coffey, Chevron's general manager over state government relations, from New York where he was attending the Republican convention. Chevron learned about the CPR early and "obviously understood their agenda," Coffey said, adding that while there was direct contact by company lobbyists, most contact came through trade groups of which Chevron is a member. "We made an effort to feed those trade associations who were more active." But, Coffey said, Chevron's donations to Schwarzenegger are because of his "pro-business agenda" and have nothing to do with the CPR report. Chevron's concerns In an interview, Chevron lobbyist K.C. Bishop said he met with Richard Costigan, Schwarzenegger's legislative affairs secretary, in April or May, about trouble the company was having with routine refinery permits and proposed legislation on the issue. At the end of the discussion, Bishop was directed to the CPR staff, which he visited a week or so later. Neither the meeting with Costigan nor with CPR staff were reported in Chevron's quarterly lobbying filings. Also acknowledged in the CPR report were Bishop; Mike Barr, a lawyer with the San Francisco-based firm Pillsbury Winthrop and who represents Chevron; and affiliated lobbyists of the Western States Petroleum - Kahl/Pownall Advocates - of which Chevron is also a member. Meanwhile, the Bay Planning Coalition - a business-oriented group of which Chevron is a board member - contacted the governor's cabinet secretary over problems its members were having with the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. Schwarzenegger's staff sent the coalition's issue to the CPR staff, which met with the coalition sometime in April, according Ellen Johnck, the coalition's executive director. Complaints lodged A letter from the coalition outlining the complaints - including some lodged by Chevron - was used a primary source for the CPR report that concluded BCDC had overstepped its authority. Although BCDC officials offered significant documentation to rebut the allegations, none of the commission's defense was included in the CPR report. In its section about making it easier to locate refineries or LNG plants, the CPR report cites attorney Mike Carroll of the law firm Latham & Watkins as a source. Based in the firm's Orange County office, Carroll represents Chevron on a variety of regulatory issues, according to the firm's Web site. Carroll did not return telephone calls for comment from the Associated Press. Chevron has two LNG proposals - a $650 million facility that would be built offshore on an island near Tijuana in Baja California; and a second plan that would place a facility at Camp Pendleton in Orange County. Schwarzenegger is expected to meet with Mexican officials in Mexicali later this month. One expected topic of discussion is Chevron's LNG proposal. FAIR USE NOTICE. This document may contain copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. CorpWatch is making this article available in our efforts to advance the understanding of corporate accountability, human rights, labor rights, social and environmental justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 7) The Beslan hostage tragedy: the lies of the Putin government and its media By Vladimir Volkov 8 September 2004 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/sep2004/puti-s08.shtml The hostage-taking tragedy in the town of Beslan in North Ossetia has demonstrated the lengths to which the ruling elite in Russia is prepared to go in deceiving its own people. Four days after the hostage drama began with terrorists seizing over 1,000 children, parents and teachers, elementary facts still remain unclear. The Russian government has denied the people the most important and elementary right-that of reliable, rapid and extensive information on what has taken place. From the beginning of the crisis on the morning of September 1 to its tragic end two days later, leading politicians, representatives of the secret police and the major media outlets in Russia conducted a deliberate campaign of disinformation regarding the extent of the catastrophe and its dreadful consequences. Lie number one: the number of hostages From the outset, the number of hostages was deliberately underestimated. The official figure of 354 hostages was repeated by television channels and in the public appearances of government representatives up to the point of the storming of the school building. Early on in the crisis, much higher figures for the hostages were provided by newspapers and Internet sources, yet the television networks held firm to their original claim. After talks September 2 between the hostage takers and the former president of Ingushetia, Ruslan Auschev-resulting in the release of 26 women and children-the media repeated its estimate, even though the real extent of the hostage taking could at that stage hardly be concealed. Auschev had seen how many people had been incarcerated in the gymnasium hall. One of the women released September 2 told the press: "There are many hostages, very many. I think a thousand." Another woman whose two children remained in the school said: "According to the list 860 children attend the school. Maybe half of them did not come to the school's opening ceremony. Then there are the parents. Look around at how many people are standing here. Here in the House of Culture there are 1,000 people and all of them have at least one relative or child in the school." Similar reports appeared in newspapers and Internet magazines. Nevertheless the television channels remained stubbornly attached to their original figure. Lie number two: the terrorists had posed no demands At the outset of the drama, a decision was made at the highest political level that under no circumstances would information be released concerning the terrorists' demands. This was a lesson that the Putin government had drawn from the hostage drama at the Moscow Musical Theatre "Nordost" in 2002. Relatives of the hostages then held captive inside the theatre had demonstrated for an end to the Russian war in Chechnya. The demand met with widespread popular support, and the Kremlin has had great difficulty suppressing this political sentiment. This time it was claimed that the terrorists had made no demands. A statement calling for an end to the Chechen war and the withdrawal of Russian troops made at the start of the hostage crisis by an Islamist group was kept secret. In addition, the government maintained that all of its efforts to make contact with the terrorists had been ignored. On September 6, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that as early as the afternoon of September 1 and not far from the school, "Parents of children being held in the school had addressed the Russian president in a video. They called upon him to fulfill all the demands of the terrorists in order to save the lives of the children." All the major television and other media outlets kept this information secret for a considerable period. According to numerous witnesses, the hostage takers made no secret about their demands. For example, on September 3, Izvestia interviewed a teacher who had been released along with her three-year-old daughter. Question: "Did the terrorists tell you their demands?" Answer: "They said they had just one demand: the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya." Lie number three: there were no plans for storming the building Immediately after news of the hostage taking broke, leading to widespread popular anguish, representatives of the Russian government declared that everything would be done to avoid an armed assault on the school by security forces. In fact, nothing was done to prevent such a storming of the school. According to a commentary in the newspaper Izvestia, the drama "took the worst possible turn." The government sought to hide its own failure by claiming that the storming of the building had not been prepared, and even that there were no plans for such an action. This claim is contradicted by a series of facts and reports by witnesses. On September 3, the paper Nezavicimaya Gazeta reported that "intelligence forces were preparing to storm the school." The paper referred to the fact that on the night of September 1 specially equipped military transport planes had landed in North Ossetia. The paper also said it was presumed that the anti-terror unit "Alfa" had been flown in. It is now known that "Alfa" and another anti-terror unit, "Vimpel," played the decisive role in the storming of the building. The very fact that, following the unexpected exchange of fire on September 3, the terrorists immediately began shooting and set off previously installed explosives indicates that they were sure a storming of the building would take place. Bearing these facts in mind-the demands of the terrorists that were never disclosed, the refusal of the government to undertake any discussions with the hostage-takers, the scale of the censorship of information regarding what was taking place inside the school and the positioning of the special forces units in the front line-the newspaper Gazeta.ru concluded on September 4: "The storming had in fact been prepared and was to have been carried out within the next two days. Without water, the children could only have survived for three or four days, and then it would have no longer been possible to rescue most of the hostages. However, on Friday they were forced to take action." Lie number four: the number of victims Even after the catastrophe had taken place-bombs had gone off in the gym, part of which had collapsed-the government and the media continued to lie by minimizing the number of casualties. The official death toll rose only as the bodies began to be counted. According to government sources on Monday morning, September 6, 335 dead had been counted. At the same time it became clear there existed a list of missing persons totaling 260. According to the radio station "Echo Moscow," these victims feature neither on the lists of those who have died nor on the list of those who have been hospitalized. On Saturday, inhabitants of Beslan, who observed coffins with victims inside being transported from the burnt out ruins of the school, reported t hat they had counted a total of between 500 and 600. Against this background it is hardly necessary to examine the other lies broadcast by the Russian media about the number of terrorists involved-which was also minimized-or the course of events that was officially reported in wildly varying versions. The overall conduct of the Russian media, in particular the major television networks, was shameful. While in the West many television stations devoted special coverage to the events in North Ossetia, often working with Russian cameramen, Russian television refused to interrupt its regular programming. At one point in the crisis, a correspondent for the Russian television channel NTW addressed the camera and bluntly declared, "We cannot say what is happening; we cannot comment on the actions of those involved in the fighting!" It is no wonder that television journalists have been physically assaulted by Beslan inhabitants. As the first information emerged on the real extent of the casualties, outraged bystanders turned on television journalists, lashing out at their cameras and the reporters themselves. The role played by Russian television, however, only expressed the iron-fisted control exerted over the major media outlets by Putin's Kremlin, which has brought every television channel under either direct or indirect state control. The Russian regime has enforced media subservience with intimidation and state gangsterism, which is backed by much of Russia's ruling strata of corrupt businessmen and ex-Stalinist bureaucrats. Putin used the hostage-taking crisis at the Moscow theatre two years ago to consolidate this grip over the media, claiming that it had abused freedom of the press in its coverage. He demanded that the news outlets report nothing that could conceivably aid the terrorists, including their statements or demands, analysis of the events or coverage of Russian military and police operations. This noose is tightening. The editor in chief of Izvestia, Raf Shakirov, announced his forced resignation Monday after coming under fire from the Kremlin and the newspaper's corporate publishers over its coverage of the Beslan events. The paper filled its entire front page last Saturday with a photograph of a man carrying a wounded child from the besieged school. The newspaper also raised pointed questions about the official claim that only 350 people were held hostage and published a stinging column denouncing the self- censorship by the television channels. Meanwhile, a prominent Russian journalist who has reported critically on the war in Chechnya was prevented from reaching the scene of the latest hostage-taking tragedy under circumstances that can only be described as ominous. Novaya Gazeta correspondent Anna Politkovskaya fell sick after drinking tea during the first leg of her flight to Beslan. Rushed to the hospital after landing in Rostov, she was diagnosed with acute food poisoning. According to one report, authorities had blocked her from boarding her original flight, but the captain of another airliner recognized her and invited her aboard. The suppression of the media, together with the impotence of the Russian parliament-the Duma chose not to meet during the crisis, with its leaders affirming that all they could do was issue another statement-are hallmarks of the authoritarian state that Putin is consolidating in Russia. The president's resort to the methods of state censorship, however, is a manifestation of the general impotence and political isolation of the regime as a whole. Under conditions of historically unprecedented social inequality between a thin layer of "new Russian" entrepreneurs and masses of impoverished working people, democratic forms of rule are not possible. While capable of buying off or intimidating his political opponents and much of the media, Putin has proven unable to resolve any of the deepening crises wracking Russia, from the war in Chechnya and other outbreaks of regional separatism, to the generalized corruption and breakdown that characterizes the entire state apparatus and the economy. All of these crises came together to produce the tragedy in Beslan. While these failures are behind the drive to control the media, the ham-fisted censorship carried out in the latest crisis has provoked widespread anger and opposition within the former Soviet Union. The "democratic reforms" that were touted as a byproduct of the collapse of the USSR and the introduction of capitalism have produced instead a media that is in many ways reminiscent of the worst of the Stalinist period, based on lies and deception and dedicated to the suppression of any news that casts the head of state in a bad light. Putin has seized upon the atrocity in Beslan to claim even more authoritarian power and to reject any suggestion of negotiating an end to the brutal war in Chechnya. His transparent aim is to emulate Bush in claiming unlimited power to carry out repression in the name of a "war on terror." While hundreds of thousands turned out at rallies against terrorism that were organized with state support on Tuesday, the mood of outrage was directed not only at the terrorists, but at the government itself. The harshest anger was expressed at a rally in the North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz, about 18 miles north of Beslan. The crowd that turned out in the city's central square protested not only against terrorism, but the state authorities as well. "Today, we will bury our children and tomorrow we will come here and throw these devils out of their seats, from the lowest director up to ministers and the president," a speaker at the rally declared. A protest sign raised above the crowd read, "Corrupt authority is a source of terrorism." ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 8) Protests Powered by Cellphone By PATRICK DI JUSTO September 9, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/technology/circuits/09mobb.html AS thousands of protesters marched through Manhattan during the Republican National Convention last week, some were equipped with a wireless tactical communications device connected to a distributed information service that provided detailed and nearly instantaneous updates about route changes, street closures and police actions. The communications device was a common cellphone. The information service, a collection of open-source, Web-based programming scripts running on a Linux server in someone's closet, is called TXTMob. TXTMob works like an Internet mailing list for cellphones and is the brainchild of a young man who goes by the pseudonym John Henry. He is a member of the Institute for Applied Autonomy, a group of artists, programmers and others who say their mission is to develop technologies that serve the social and human need for self-determination. (The group was behind iSee, a Web site that has maps of surveillance cameras in Lower Manhattan and calculates routes for those seeking to avoid them.) He conceals his identity as part of an agreement with other members of the group and out of concern that he might become the target of an effort to force disclosure of TXTMob members' phone numbers, which are kept in a database he maintains. TXTMob allows people to quickly and easily send text messages from one cellphone to a group of other cellphones. This in itself is nothing new: other mobile networking systems like dodgeball.com and bedno.com already exist. To sign up for TXTMob, users enter their cellphone numbers into the TXTMob Web site, www.txtmob .com. To thwart spammers, the system uses opt-in registration: a machine-generated authorization code is sent to each registered number and must be re-entered into the Web site to activate the registration. TXTMob is designed to carefully maintain members' privacy, not surprising given why most are using TXTMob. The software was not intended for everyday mobile socializing. It was created as a tool political activists could use to organize their work, from staff meetings to street protests. Most of the people using it are on the left: of the 142 public groups listed on the TXTMob site, the largest are dedicated to protesting the Bush administration, the Republican Party or the state of the world in general. When a preliminary version of TXTMob was tested at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July, about 200 people used it to organize protesters into spontaneous rallies, to warn them about the location of police crackdowns and to direct volunteer medics where they were needed, all in real time. Based on user feedback afterward, some changes were made - primarily beefing up the system to handle a heavier volume of messages - to increase its usefulness for what were expected to be much larger protests during the Republican National Convention. TXTMob had its first major New York workout on the evening of Aug. 27, during the Critical Mass, a loosely organized bicycle ride through Manhattan by anti-Republican protesters. From the start of the ride, participants in a TXTMob group called comms_dispatch sent a slew of messages alerting one another to route changes and warning of traffic snarls. As the ride neared its end, comms_dispatch buzzed with reports of arrests from Second Avenue to 10th Avenue, and around St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery. On Aug. 29, two days after she took part in the Critical Mass ride, a woman from San Francisco who identified herself only as Josie sat outside St. Mark's and read text messages on her cellphone. Describing herself as a "voracious" TXTMob reader, she credited the service with helping keep her safe during the ride. "It told me where the cops were and where I could rest," she said as she thumbed through the TXTMob messages from that day's United for Peace and Justice march that were arriving on her cellphone at the rate of about one per minute. "It brought me here." As reports of clashes between the police and protesters appeared on her cellphone screen, it became possible to build a mental picture of the march: a burning papier mâché dragon outside Madison Square Garden, barricades on 34th Street, police officers zipping around on scooters, a rally so large that the first marchers had finished before the last marchers had started. That, to Josie, was TXTMob's most important function. "When I can't be at a protest, like now," she said, waving her phone, "it's like I can be there, because I can know what's going on directly from the people who are there in the streets." What might have been TXTMob's greatest moment, the planned flash mob at Union Square on Aug. 31, did not work out as planned. That afternoon, TXTMob subscribers with cellular service from Sprint or T-Mobile stopped receiving messages for nearly four hours, leaving them unaware of the first meeting location. When those who did meet started marching, the police quickly set up a barricade across 16th Street and began arresting the marchers. All told, it took about an hour for the event, loosely organized by the A31 Action Coalition, to go from promise to debacle: 18:15:50 Tue., Aug 31: A31 party mtg at SE corner of Union Sq. 18:37:56 Tue., Aug 31: A31 party look for festive signs. 19:02:51 Tue., Aug 31: A31 party on B-way at 15th headed north. Doing fine. 19:07:02 Tue., Aug 31: A31 party penned in b/w Irving and 16th. More in next message. 19:15:23 Tue., Aug 31: A31 party disperse immediately. What happens to TXTMob after Election Day? The events of last week left the Institute for Applied Autonomy convinced that it has a future, not just as an activist organizing tool but also as a general mobile networking system. The Internet Business Chronicle, an online publication, is using TXTMob to deliver news updates to readers, and the number of party groups is quickly catching up to the number of protest groups. The pseudonymous John Henry said he was looking at keeping the system going and might even expand it to work with cellphones in Europe and Asia. After that, it's anyone's guess. "People keep finding their own uses for this thing, and they're developing it on the fly," he said. "That's what's really exciting." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 9) Ex-Banking Star Given 18 Months for Obstruction By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN September 9, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/business/09star.html Frank P. Quattrone, the Wall Street banker whose pay and deals made him a vivid symbol of the 1990's technology boom, was sentenced to 18 months in prison yesterday for obstructing a government investigation into the allocation of hot stock offerings. Mr. Quattrone, 48, who led the initial offerings of companies like Amazon.com and Cisco Systems as a banker at Credit Suisse First Boston, is the most prominent Wall Street figure to face prison since Michael R. Milken pleaded guilty to six securities charges in 1990. Judge Richard Owen of Federal District Court in Manhattan handed down a harsher prison sentence than the 10 to 16 months stipulated by basic federal guidelines, finding that Mr. Quattrone perjured himself when he took the witness stand during his trial and said under oath that he had not intended to impede the government's investigation when he sent a one-line e-mail message at the heart of the case. "It is crystal clear that he was untruthful," Judge Owen said yesterday. Mr. Quattrone, who made $120 million in 2000, was perhaps the most prominent banker in Silicon Valley during the 1990's, assembling a team that brought public many of the biggest names in technology. After that success and the bursting of the technology bubble, Mr. Quattrone and First Boston came under the microscope of regulators and prosecutors, who began investigating whether the bank was soliciting kickbacks from preferred investors, later dubbed Friends of Frank, in exchange for access = to hot stock offerings. While that inquiry did not lead to criminal charges, Mr. Quattrone was charged with hampering the investigations when he endorsed a colleague's e-mail message in December 2000 urging his staff to "clean up those files." Mr. Quattrone's first trial ended in a hung jury, but he was convicted at a retrial. Judge Owen refused Mr. Quattrone's request to remain free while he appealed the case. Mr. Quattrone must surrender to federal prison authorities within 50 days. The judge also fined him $90,300 and initially asked him to make the payment immediately. "There's $50 million in the bank," Judge Owen said. "He can't write a check today?" He then acquiesced to requests by Mr. Quattrone's lawyers to pay the fine within 20 days. Mr. Quattrone's sentence, which includes two years of probation, stands in stark contrast to the one recently given to Martha Stewart, who was also convicted of obstruction of justice. In that case, Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum sentenced Ms. Stewart to five months in prison, plus five months of home confinement. Ms. Stewart was also allowed to remain free pending appeal. The Bureau of Prisons had recommended in its presentencing report that Mr. Quattrone receive the same sentence as Ms. Stewart. Robert G. Morvillo, who is Ms. Stewart's lawyer, said yesterday that Mr. Quattrone's sentence was too severe. "Is it a reasonable sentence?" Mr. Morvillo asked. "You won't find a defense attorney in town who thinks this is reasonable. The idea that Judge Owen jumped the sentence just continues the defense bar view that he is overly harsh." Judge Owen, an appointee of President Richard M. Nixon, has long had a reputation among defense lawyers of favoring prosecutors, and the sentencing of Mr. Quattrone capped nearly a year of dueling between his lawyers and the judge that often included heated exchanges in court. At one point yesterday, Mr. Quattrone's trial lawyer, John W. Keker, a former prosecutor of Oliver L. North during the Iran-contra trial, told the judge he thought he was being strung along while making his argument for leniency. "If you've made up your mind on this, just tell me," Mr. Keker said. At another point, in which Mr. Keker cited the hung jury in the first trial and asserted there were grounds for appeal because the case was so close, Judge Owen blurted out: "I don't agree with you that this was a close case." Mr. Quattrone's appeal will be based in large part on several rulings Judge Owen made that barred him from introducing evidence that may have been helpful to his case. The clash continued in court yesterday and spilled into the street after the hearing, with Mr. Quattrone's lawyers standing in pelting rain accusing Judge Owen of an unfair trial. "Cases like this are why we have courts of appeals," said Mark F. Pomerantz, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in Manhattan who will lead Mr. Quattrone's appeal. "The defense was forced to try its case from the inside of a straitjacket." "The trial judge kept out critical evidence offered by the defense," said Mr. Pomerantz, who represented Dr. Samuel D. Waksal, the founder of ImClone Systems Inc. , who pleaded guilty to insider trading. "And although the judge tied the hands of the defense, he gave the government free rein to put in irrelevant but prejudicial evidence." Before he was sentenced, Mr. Quattrone addressed the judge, saying: "I humbly ask that you show mercy and compassion for me and my family, for whom any separation from me would be extremely detrimental." But the judge denied his request, and Mr. Quattrone's legal team and friends sitting in court were enraged when Judge Owen then appeared to gratuitously make public the medical problems of Mr. Quattrone's 15-year-old daughter, Cristina, questioning the severity of claims from doctors who submitted records that she has a medical disorder. Mr. Quattrone's lawyers had asked that the medical records of the family remain sealed. Judge Owen also dismissed arguments from Mr. Quattrone's lawyers that he should receive a lenient sentence because his wife has a chronic illness that makes him the "only functioning adult" in the household. "There's $50 million of assets out there to take care of Mrs. Quattrone and $26 million to take care of Cristina in some trust fund," Judge Owen said. Reading from Mrs. Quattrone's medical records, Judge Owen added, "It says here she can drive under limited conditions." Judge Owen's decision to depart from the basic federal guidelines and give Mr. Quattrone a tougher sentence raises questions about whether it will be upheld. In a case from Washington State in June, the Supreme Court ruled that the state's judicial system, which allowed judges to increase a convicted defendant's sentence beyond the ordinary range for the crime, violated the constitutional right to trial by jury. While the ruling only applies to Washington State, the decision - Blakely v. Washington - is being watched by federal judges nationwide, and many have stuck to the guidelines, worried that their sentences will be overturned. The Supreme Court has agreed to rule on the constitutionality of the guidelines for federal criminal sentences this fall. "Given that the Blakely case is still out there, to do an upward departure, this is a judge who is thumbing his nose at Blakely," said John J. Fahy, a former federal prosecutor who practices law in New Jersey. Some defense lawyers contended the sentence might help Mr. Quattrone's appeal. "It plays into the defense claim of unfair treatment on the part of Judge Owen," said Robert A. Mintz, a former federal prosecutor and a partner at McCarter & English. Judge Owen agreed to a request from Mr. Quattrone's lawyers that he be assigned to Lompoc Federal Prison Camp in California, which is a minimum-security prison northwest of Los Angeles where Ivan F. Boesky was once an inmate. As he left the courthouse, Mr. Quattrone said: "To my family in California, Dad is coming home soon, and I love you. And I can hold my head high because I know I'm innocent and I never intended to obstruct justice." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
BAUAW NEWSLETTER-WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2004
NEXT BAY AREA UNITED AGAINST WAR MEETING:
TOMORROW, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 7 p.m. 1380 VALENCIA STREET (Between 24th & 25th Streets, S.F.) ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 1) Tomgram: Nick Turse on the new Homeland Security State Posted September 5, 2004 at 11:09 am 2) One Thousand and One By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Perspective Wednesday 08 September 2004 http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/090804A.shtml 3) CONFRONTING INSURGENTS U.S. Conceding Rebels Control Regions of Iraq By ERIC SCHMITT and STEVEN R. WEISMAN WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/politics/08policy.html?hp 4) Fight Oppression One Olive at a Time Help with the Palestinian Olive Harvest this Fall This simple act will help Palestinians resist the occupation by insisting on life. 5) Peace activist held as 'danger to Israel' Lawyers question state motives behind detention without trial of former woman soldier who befriended leading Palestinian militant Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Tuesday September 7, 2004 The Guardian 6) URGENT CALL TO ACTION: ORGANIZE A VIGIL ON THURSDAY NIGHT FOR THE MORE THAN 1,000 U.S. SOLDIERS AND TENS OF THOUSANDS OF IRAQIS KILLED 7) CENSORED 2005: THE TOP 25 CENSORED MEDIA STORIES OF 2003-2004 http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/index.html 8) 150 Arrests during Demonstration by San Francisco Hotel Workers By Frontlines correspondent 9) Bush & Putin self-fulfilled prophesies: Slaughter and Terrorism Frontlines Editorial Board http://www.sf-frontlines.com/ modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=828&mode=thread&order =0&thold=0 ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 1) Tomgram: Nick Turse on the new Homeland Security State Posted September 5, 2004 at 11:09 am On the third night the Republican Convention was in town, I attended a modest demonstration against the imperial broadcast media -- there's nothing like hundreds of people chanting about breaking up media conglomerates while looking at the blank, skyscraping faces of darkened, semi-deserted buildings. But who had time to look for CNN or Time Warner or Fox News (where the march was destined to end) when the most visible -- overwhelming and intimidating -- presence on the street was the police. The "march," which you might want to imagine as a serpentine creature heading south on New York's Sixth Avenue, had actually been chopped into a series of one-block long segments by the New York Police Department. Each small segment was penned on its sides by moveable wooden barricades and on either end by the wheel-to- wheel bikes of a seemingly endless supply of mounted policemen backed up by all manner of police vehicles. Though the photographing of protestors is an old practice, ! it once had a somewhat surreptitious quality to it. Not here (or anywhere else in the city that week) -- police in uniform were openly videoing the crowd. To "march," that is, actually meant to step from pen to pen, hemmed in everywhere, your protest at the mercy of the timing, tactics, and desires of the police. It was one of many sobering moments that week, a small reminder of what we've already lost, thanks to the "war on terror" as it's being played out in our still-in- formation Homeland Security State. Nick Turse offered a preview of what New York had in store for its demonstrators in a piece he did for Tomdispatch some weeks before the Republicans arrived. I asked him, in the wake of the Convention -- and with his own experiences as a demonstrator in mind -- to return to the subject. Tom The Rise of the Homeland Security State Fortress Big Apple, Revisited By Nick Turse Prior to the Republican National Convention, I thought I knew all about the militarization of Manhattan -- the transformation of the island into a "homeland-security state" -- and about New York City as the paradigm for the security culture that increasingly grips American society. After all, I wrote about it in "Fortress Big Apple." It turns out I didn't know the half of it. Only after writing that piece did I discover that the New York Police Department (NYPD) had purchase two experimental sound weapons known as Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) which I had once described in writing about U.S. experimental weapons research I had then termed the deployment of an LRAD here during the convention "improbable" -- yet there it was out on the very same streets I was walking. I also looked out my window and caught sight of the ultimate blending! of corporatism and the police- state -- the Fuji blimp -- now emblazoned with a second logo: "NYPD." This spy-in-the-sky, outfitted with the latest in video- surveillance equipment, had been loaned free of charge to the police all week long. But even finding out about these new high-tech tools of the homeland security-state didn't make things clear to me; nor did the ever-present roar of helicopter rotors as those of us in the streets during the RNC were surveilled from above; or even when Brendan Galligan of the NYPD Aviation Unit bluntly told a reporter from the local ABC TV affiliate: "I'm looking for any kind of crime on the grou[nd]. In this case, we're looking for roving mobs of people traveling in unison, that might indicate some sort of problem for the ground troops." "People traveling in unison" a crime? "Ground troops"? I should have fully understood then, but I didn't. I didn't quite get it when I saw the stone-faced feds out on the streets with those ever-present ear-pieces piping in commands from who knows where; nor as I scuttled between concrete barricades and metal fences in the area around Madison Square Garden while remote cameras tracked my every move; nor when a march I was in was flanked by a phalanx of bicycle-riding police; nor when a corps of plainclothes cops on scooters trolled the streets near Times Square. You would think that I would have understood it when the peaceful group of activists I was with were pushed off the sidewalk by police in front of us, while the cops in back ordered us onto the sidewalk; or when, left with no options, we tried to escape by crossing Broadway only to have some of our number caught in the NYPD's literal dragnet -- rolls of orange plastic netting which were repeatedly unfurled all across the city, snagging protesters, ! press, legal observers, pedestrians, and bystanders alike. I can't understand why I didn't get it when I looked up from watching some cops press a man's head to the pavement to see a hoard of police on horseback heading down the street NYPD's Technical Assistance Response Unit (TARU) filmed me, apparently for walking in a park or perhaps for what I might do, prompting a young woman to sidle up next to me and whisper "they're tailing you" --making me wonder, was the warning sincere or could she be with them too? I witnessed the fleets of black SUVs with police escorts roar down virtually empty city streets near the Madison Square Garden bubble. On numerous occasions, I saw flatbed police trucks filled with the very interlocking metal barriers that a judge had ruled longer be used to pen in protesters (as the NYPD had been doing for about a decade) -- and I saw those metal barricades pressed back into action on multiple occasions. I witnessed a black van door slide open, revealing tactical-gear clad troops of some sort, brandishing automatic rifles. I witnessed cops and feds on rooftops with binoculars and cameras trained on me and/or my compatriots. I saw cops peering through the near-blacked out windows of unmarked cars and noticed the NYPD's "radio emergency patrol vehicles" wherever protesters seemed to gather. I repeatedly walked through gauntlets of blue-uniformed cops and white-shirted brass to and from the subway in Union Square Park -- where the three guys in jeans and untucked button-down shirts (which every so often showed the outlines of their guns) graciously smiled one evening as I snapped a picture of their undercover activities. Much less jolly were the secret service agents, one clad in polo shirt and khaki pants, who moved in behind me prompting a legal observer at an event to collect my name and contact information in case I should be snatched off the street; even less jolly was the beefy NYPD officer with no visible badge or name tag who made it a point to shove me as I attempted to take a picture of an orange-net arrest before offering a less-than-convincing "excuse me!" as he strode away. Police vans with netting over the windows; helmeted riot gear-clad cops; NYPD "paddy wagons"; constant sirens; cops who shoved at us with their night-sticks filming with camcorders; radios crackling information to uniformed officers outside almost any subway stop, on street corners, on subway platforms, and on the trains themselves; even those menacing, or sometimes just weary- looking, ultimate conscripts of the homeland security army, the police attack dogs on street patrol, didn't fully hammer home the reality of Fortress Big Apple. What did was the 10' by 20' chain-link pen with razor wire over the top that I found myself in after being arrested for the crime of trying "to change trains," as a Washington Post reporter wrote after sitting "silently on a subway train! going uptown" to "protest deaths in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere." The floors of the pen were covered with a layer of grime -- a mix of what might have been oil, grease, battery acid, transmission fluid, antifreeze, diesel fuel, and possibly leaded gasoline; the pipes overhead gave the appearance of incomplete asbestos abatement; the rotting food and old milk cartons behind the detention pens helped to further drive it home. Like so many others taken to a makeshift detention center set up by the city especially for the protesters. It was the old municipal bus garage which bears the name "Marine and Aviation Pier 57" but has now been dubbed "Guantanamo on the Hudson." Of course, being incarcerated in New York's own Giitmo! (before being packed off to central booking and then a cell in the infamous "Tombs") rather than in America's "offshore archipelago of injustice" Abu Ghraib, the actual Guantanamo, or "Camp Justice" on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, to name but a few -- means I fared infinitely better than most victims of America's security culture run amok. Still, the visible abrasions on my wrists from the plastic cuffs (fastened so purposefully tight) that restricted the blood flow to my hands while I was in transit to jail aboard a corrections bus, or the tears of the woman in a cage on the same bus suffering from also too-tight hand restraints (which left the cops in a joking mood), do show the bare traces of the Abu Ghraib mentality alive in America's security forces, at home as well as abroad. Of course, in communities of color and poor neighborhoods, such tactics, and worse, are old hat -- as my cell-mates behind the arraignment courtroom were quick to point out. But now the NYPD is field-testing new tactics and tools to use against us all. Perhaps most distressing, they've established a precedent and the tacit acceptance of the public as well. Most New Yorkers either left town or failed to vigorously protest the chilling effect of the growth of the homeland- security complex. I heard first hand of seemingly baseless preemptive arrests and intimidation by federal agents -- an activist en route to work grabbed off the street by the feds; another apparently tailed by a black SUV and shadowed by plainclothes agents. The question is: Will this stop now that the RNC has left town or will it simply become the accepted way of doing things in New York City and elsewhere around the country? The RNC gave the NYPD (coordinating with the feds) a perfect opportunity to stockpile weapons systems, high-tech equipment, and surveillance devices. It allowed them to refine, perfect, and implement new tactics (someday, perhaps, to be thought of as the "New York model") for use penning in or squelching dissent. It offered them the chance to write up a playbook on how citizens' legal rights and civil liberties may be abridged, constrained, and violated at their discretion. In short, it gave them a free hand to transform New York City into a true homeland security statelet. Nick Turse writes regularly for Tomdispatch on the military-industrial- entertainment complex. He was jailed by the homeland-security state when he dared to ride the subway with a "war dead" placard around his neck (scroll down to photo). He asks that you consider donating to the NYC Legal Work Fund Collective for RNC Arrestees Lawyers Guild who saved him more than once during the protests. Copyright C2004 Nicholas Turse ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 2) One Thousand and One By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Perspective Wednesday 08 September 2004 http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/090804A.shtml On the day Operation Iraqi Freedom suffered the 1,000th death of a United States soldier, some quick numbers are in order: 1,095 days since the attacks of September 11; 538 days since the invasion and occupation of Iraq; 1,001 American soldiers dead in Iraq; 1,132 total Coalition soldiers dead in Iraq; More than 20,000 'medical evacuations' of American soldiers from Iraq; More than 10,000 civilians dead in Iraq; 0 weapons of mass destruction; 0 democratic elections in Iraq; 0 connections between Iraq and the attacks of September 11; 0 captures of Osama bin Laden, in Iraq or anywhere else; $1.7 trillion to be spent on Iraq in the next decade, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences report by the Committee on International Security Studies (CISS). Jane Bright wrote to me in November of 2003 about the death of her son, one of the 1,001. "I must share with you," wrote Bright, "the obituary I wrote for my son, Sgt. Evan Ashcraft, who was killed July 24 near Mosul. I often think of the contributions my intelligent, sensitive wonderful son could have made. He could have been President of the United States. He could have been a doctor caring for children in a Third World Country. He had so much potential. He told us that when he came back from Iraq he wanted to help people. He said he had seen so much hatred and death that the only way to live his life was through aid to others. Look at what we've lost. The loss is not just mine, it's the world's loss. Evan will always be alive in my heart. He and all the other victims of this heinous action in Iraq must be more than mere numbers emerging from the Pentagon's daily tally. His death is a crime against humanity and the fault lies with the war criminals who inhabit our White House. Please share his story so that he may come alive to your readers." Writer Bruce Mulkey spoke recently to Jane Bright, and wrote about his conversation in an essay titled 'Military Families Speak Out.' Bright said to him, "Several months ago when George Bush was performing his skit for the media in which he was looking under his desk and under chairs for weapons of mass destruction, I was horrified by the insensitivity of his performance. I thought to myself, here is the president of the United States making a joke out of a pre-emptive war and laughing about weapons of mass destruction, the basis for going to war, a war in which my dear son died, over 1,000 coalition troops have died and thousands of Iraqi civilians have died. How dare he!" There are a lot of women like Jane Bright in America now. Brooke Campbell lost her brother, Sergeant Ryan M. Campbell, in Iraq on April 29, 2004. In his last letter to her, Ryan wrote, "Just do me one big favor, OK? Don't vote for Bush. No. Just don't do it. I would not be happy with you." Ms. Campbell, in a subsequent letter to George W. Bush , wrote, "I last saw my loved one at the Kansas City airport, staring after me as I walked away. I could see April 29 written on his sad, sand- chapped and sunburned face. I could see that he desperately wanted to believe that if he died, it would be while 'doing good,' as you put it. He wanted us to be able to be proud of him. Mr. President, you gave me and my mother a folded flag instead of the beautiful boy who called us 'Moms' and 'Brookster.' But worse than that, you sold my little brother a bill of goods. Not only did you cheat him of a long meaningful life, but you cheated him of a meaningful death." At some point, you simply run out of words. 1,000 dead soldiers in Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction, no connection to September 11, torture and rape of men, women and children at Abu Ghraib prison, the outing of a deep-cover CIA officer for political revenge, Rumsfeld ally Ahmad Chalabi spying for Iran, the Israeli spy in the Pentagon, all the dead civilians everywhere, the substantial failures of Bush et al. on September 11, the crater in the economy, a gutted health care system, the abandonment of the elderly, the evisceration of the environment, and a federal budget deficit that guarantees a bleak future for anyone planning to be alive sometime in the next ten years... At some point, you simply run out of words. Let us instead have a moment of silence for those 1,001 soldiers, and all the civilians who have joined them in the Iraqi dust. William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - ' War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know ' and ' The Greatest Sedition is Silence .' ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 3) CONFRONTING INSURGENTS U.S. Conceding Rebels Control Regions of Iraq By ERIC SCHMITT and STEVEN R. WEISMAN WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/politics/08policy.html?hp WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 - As American military deaths in Iraq operations surpassed the 1,000 mark, top Pentagon officials said Tuesday that insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure those areas. As of late Tuesday night, the Pentagon's accounting showed that 998 service members and three Defense Department civilians had been killed in Iraq operations. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference that the American strategy in retaking rebel-held strongholds hinged on training and equipping Iraqi forces to take the lead. Mr. Rumsfeld said Iraqi officials understood they must regain control of the insurgent safe havens. "They get it, and will find a way over time to deal with it,'' he said. But General Myers said the Iraqi forces would probably not be ready to confront insurgents in those areas until the end of this year. Their comments, which came after a two-day spike in violence in Iraq led to a surge in American military deaths, represented an acknowledgment that the Americans had failed to end an increasingly sophisticated insurgency in important Sunni-dominated areas and in certain Shiite enclaves. Fighting raged on Tuesday in Sadr City, in Baghdad, as Shiite militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr ended a self- declared cease-fire. [Page A14.] The officials' assessment also underscored the difficulty of pacifying Iraq in time for elections scheduled for January. The cities of greatest rebel control are Ramadi, Falluja, Baquba and Samarra, in the so- called Sunni triangle, west and north of Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein remains popular and many forces loyal to him have gathered strength. There is increasing concern in the administration over plans for the election, with some officials saying that if significant parts of the Sunni areas cannot be secured by January, it may be impossible to hold a nationwide balloting that would be seen as legitimate. Putting off the elections, though, would infuriate Iraq's Shiite majority. The elections are for an assembly that is to write a new constitution next year. Mr. Rumsfeld warned that the violence would intensify as elections approached. Mr. Rumsfeld said that Prime Minister Ayad Allawi recognized that his government could not continue to allow rebel control in crucial areas of the country, but that it would take time for him to determine how to proceed. "The prime minister and his team fully understand that it is important that there not be areas in that country that are controlled by terrorists," he said, adding that Dr. Allawi would deal with the problem by "negotiation and discussion" in some cases and by force in others. Other administration officials, amplifying the secretary's comments, said the administration had decided to let Dr. Allawi try to persuade rebel leaders to join the process of reconstructing Iraq, or suffer the consequences if they did not. "Allawi's strategy is to try to find people on the sidelines and wean the moderates away, to give them courage and a hope of reward for themselves," said an administration official. "He's telling them: 'I'm giving you an opportunity to meet your local concerns. You're going to be my guy, and together we'll try to isolate the extremists.' " Administration officials say no decision has been made yet for American forces to attack those strongholds. The preference is for Iraqi forces to do the job, as they were said to have been poised to do last month in Najaf, the Shiite holy city. But the record of the Iraqi security forces has not been inspiring, although some Iraqi forces fought well in Najaf, American officials said. While 95,000 soldiers have been trained and equipped up to American commanders' satisfaction, General Myers said, they will not be ready until the end of the year to join American forces in any assault against insurgent strongholds and then keep the peace afterward. "While U.S. forces or coalition forces can do just about anything we want to do, it makes a lot more sense that it be a sustained operation, one that can be sustained by Iraqi security forces," General Myers said. "By December, we're going to have a substantial number of Iraqi security forces equipped, trained and led to conduct the kind of operations I was talking about.'' A senior American official said force would be tried by the Iraqi government only after a couple of months' discussions with rebels. "Force is the ultimate sanction, but let's exhaust the other ones first," he added. A two-month hiatus before major force is applied to rebel areas would also mean a delay until after the American presidential election, but senior officials insist there is no domestic political calculus in the decision to wait - only a conviction that time is needed for negotiation and for Iraqi forces to gain strength. "This is ultimately about building an Iraqi government which works for all of Iraq," said the official. "To the degree that we can wait a couple months and let Iraqi politics work, so much the better." In describing the Iraqi forces, one American general in Iraq said in an e-mail message that their "capabilities are still uneven, but they're improving as we arm and equip them better, improve their infrastructure, give them additional training, and help them weed out the weak leaders." Mr. Rumsfeld added that Iraqis had recently conducted effective counterterrorism operations. To buy time, General Myers said, Gen. George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, is working with the Iraqi government to develop a strategy to retake the cities. General Myers said that strategy included trying to "isolate certain communities," hampering the insurgents' ability to rearm and resupply, and curtailing attacks against American forces. He said the strategy would also try "to set the conditions for the successful use of force later,'' military wording for preparing the battlefield by bombing safe houses and weapons caches, and encouraging residents to provide fresh intelligence on the location of insurgents. Over the weekend, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the land commander in Iraq, told The Associated Press that an American assault is likely in the next four months. "I do have about four months where I want to get to local control,'' General Metz said. "And then I've got the rest of January to help the Iraqis to put the mechanisms in place." Maj. Gen. John R. Batiste, the commander of the Army's First Infantry Division, whose area north of Baghdad includes Tikrit and Samarra, disputed reports that the United States had given up in Samarra. "Samarra is a city where Iraqis are taking charge to throw out anti-Iraqi forces," he said in an e-mail message on Tuesday. "No one has ceded the city to insurgents and there is no cordon. What we have in Samarra is the good people of Iraq, led by far-sighted provincial and city leadership, senior sheiks, and clerics, standing up to the enemy." Residents, however, say insurgents effectively control Samarra. General Batiste and other commanders gave an upbeat assessment, noting that "the messages at Friday Prayer are becoming more and more moderate" and that American forces "keep continuous pressure on the enemy" while they help Iraqis with reconstruction. In an unusual step for a Pentagon that tends to avoid citing body counts as a measure of success, Mr. Rumsfeld said American and allied forces had probably killed 1,500 to 2,500 insurgents last month. But other American officials are more pessimistic about the prospects for regaining control of those areas. One noted, for example, that attacks on American forces rose to 2,700 in August, from 700 in March. General Myers conceded that American forces faced a tough, adaptive foe. "The enemy is becoming more sophisticated in his efforts to destabilize the country," he said. Opening U.S. to Iraqi Goods By The New York Times WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 - In a proclamation on Tuesday, President Bush gave Iraq the right to export thousands of goods duty free to the United States. But because of the continued poor state of its economy, Iraq will be unable to take immediate advantage of its new designation as a beneficiary of the Generalized System of Preferences, which grants preferential treatment to certain products from more than 140 developing countries and territories. Petroleum, Iraq's only major export commodity, is not given duty free status under the system. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 4) Fight Oppression One Olive at a Time Help with the Palestinian Olive Harvest this Fall This simple act will help Palestinians resist the occupation by insisting on life. The INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT asks you to join us for the olive harvest in Palestine. According to the World Bank, more than a million Palestinian fruit trees, nearly half of them olive trees, have been bulldozed, uprooted or set ablaze by Israeli soldiers. Olive trees become fully productive only after fifty years and produce for many generations. Their destruction is a way of trying to breaking the Palestinian bond with the land. Your presence makes a difference! When international volunteers join with Palestinians, Israeli forces are often more cautious about abusing Palestinian rights. Volunteers also witness and report to their communities and let the Palestinians know that they are not alone. Come join the Olive Harvest Campaign, Oct. 5 - Nov. 15. We also need local volunteers to organize, recruit, provide media and logistical support, create speaking opportunities, and organize fundraising activities. You can make a difference here, too. Get involved. Call 510-236-4250 or e-mail info@norcalism.org The INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT is a Palestinian-led movement of Palestinian and International volunteers working to raise awareness of the struggle for Palestinian freedom and an end to Israeli occupation. We use nonviolent, direct-action resistance methods to confront and challenge illegal Israeli occupation forces and policies. For more info go to www.palsolidarity.org Come help us support Palestinians in their struggle for peace and justice in Palestine! Contact the INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT Support Group, 510-236-4250, info@norcalism.com SEND DONATIONS to MECA/ISM, 405 Vista Heights Road El Cerrito, CA 94530 ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 5) Peace activist held as 'danger to Israel' Lawyers question state motives behind detention without trial of former woman soldier who befriended leading Palestinian militant Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Tuesday September 7, 2004 The Guardian Tali Fahima served her time in the Israeli army, voted for Ariel Sharon as prime minister and took it as given that her country was struggling for survival against terrorism. Then last year, the 29-year-old legal secretary from Tel Aviv picked up a newspaper and read about Zakariya Zubeidi, the Jenin leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the group responsible for killing hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and shootings. Ms Fahima decided she would ask Mr Zubeidi why he killed Jews. On Sunday, the military placed Ms Fahima in detention without trial using a law applied to thousands of Palestinians over the past four years of intifada but rarely to Israelis. The authorities declined to reveal the precise reasons but the defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, who signed the order, described her as "a clear and present danger to all Israelis". Intelligence sources told the Israeli press that Ms Fahima had a hand in bombing an army checkpoint last month, and that she was planning attacks inside Israel. But Ms Fahima's lawyers and friends accuse the government of using draconian security laws to silence her because she has broken a taboo against befriending and explaining the enemy. Ms Fahima started visiting Mr Zubeidi in Jenin a little more than a year ago, despite an Israeli ban on its citizens travelling to Palestinian towns. She said she wanted to find out what motivated him to kill. "I had to ask why a man goes ahead and does this," she told Israeli television this year. "There is a reason for this. A man doesn't wake up one morning and decide, 'OK, I'm going to carry out an attack.'" The army describes Mr Zubeidi as one of its most-wanted terrorists. It has tried in vain to kill him five times. After several meetings with the al-Aqsa brigade's commander, Ms Fahima described him as a freedom fighter and "a kindhearted person whom I was lucky to meet". She said she would be a human shield to protect him from Israeli assassination attempts. "It is hard for a 28-year-old girl who was brought up on certain values to find out one day that they are all wrong," she told the Jerusalem Post in June. "Who causes the occupation? The Palestinians? No. It is the Israelis and who am I? A Jew and an Israeli and by sitting at home and doing nothing I am also responsible. "Zubeidi is not a terrorist, rather he is fighting against the occupation. Suicide bombers are also fighting the occupation. Put yourself in their place and see what happens. They are denied basic rights and freedom." Those views have infuriated many Israelis who have denounced Ms Fahima as a traitor and terrorist sympathiser. Her religious parents refuse to speak to her, and she was sacked from her job. Ms Fahima's lawyers say if there were evidence she was involved in violence the authorities would have laid charges, not place her in the limbo of administrative detention. The justice minister, Yosef Lapid, said the activist has not been charged due to the need to protect intelligence sources. "There is very, very concrete evidence in the material indicating that she acted in a manner that endangers the security of Israel. Until there is a trial, the relevant officials believe that it would be better from the point of view of the security of Israel that she remain in detention," he said. But Ms Fahima's lawyer, Smadar Ben-Natan, says her client was detained last month after refusing to inform for the Shin Bet. "[The intelligence services] are attempting to prove to her that she is politically mistaken, they are giving her history lessons, debating with her whether this should be described as occupation, whether Palestinian fighters should be defined as freedom fighters or as terrorists," she said. One of Ms Fahima's friends, Lin Dovrat, a peace activist, said the political motives behind her detention were clear from the authorities' claim that information against her was too sensitive to be made public in court while the Shin Bet leaked accusations to the press. "They tried to kill Zubeidi five times and failed and she got to him and was able to talk to him and was able to connect with him on a very basic human level and I think that drives them nuts," she said. Ms Ben-Natan says that when Ms Fahima refused to collaborate with the Shin Bet, it sought to discredit her by telling journalists she was sleeping with Mr Zubeidi, who is married. It is an accusation widely given credibility in the Israeli press, and denied by Ms Fahima. Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 Adam from San Francisco! ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 6) URGENT CALL TO ACTION: ORGANIZE A VIGIL ON THURSDAY NIGHT FOR THE MORE THAN 1,000 U.S. SOLDIERS AND TENS OF THOUSANDS OF IRAQIS KILLED More than one thousand young Americans have died in Iraq, almost seven thousand are maimed, and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died. The President won't mourn our dead, but we will. Please join United for Peace and Justice, in coordination with Win Without War, and dozens of other groups, including Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace, to say: Enough to Endless War and Suffering, Bring Them Home NOW! TAKE ACTION: ORGANIZE A PEACE VIGIL THIS THURSDAY, SEPT. 9, 2004 Please help us organize hundreds of peace vigils on Thursday night, to mourn for all the people who?ve been killed in Iraq, call for an end to the occupation, and demand accountability for the lies that got us into the war! We will remember the more than 1,000 US servicemen and women who have died in Iraq. We will remember the many thousands of Iraqis--civilians and combatants, men and women, children the elderly--who have been killed. And we will remember that these deaths did not have to happen. We know that the current administration has plunged us into this unjust and unjustifiable war, driven by greed for oil and lust for power and fueled by lie after lie. We cannot remain silent! We demand an end to the occupation so the Iraqi people can determine their own destiny free from foreign interference and control. We want our troops brought home NOW. Don't ask these men and women to continue to die for politicians' mistakes and lies. And we want them treated right when they return. Give them the benefits there were promised and give them the help they will need to heal their bodies, their minds and their spirits. We will remember, honor and mourn. We will not forget! -Text taken from the Vigil for the Fallen, held in Union Square, NYC, last Thursday. We suggest you hold the Sept. 9 vigil at your local Congressional representatives? offices or at the federal building in your town. Post your event at http://www.unitedforpeace.org and http://www.winwithoutwarus.org (which will link to a site that has meet-up software) so the whole country will know about your participation. We also encourage you to support and participate in the National Memorial Procession, a trail of mourning and truth from Iraq to the White House, which will begin on October 2 at Arlington National Cemetery. For more information, see http://www.peacepledge.org/resist/10-2-2004.htm. UFPJ mailing list UFPJ@mediajumpstart.net https://secure.mediajumpstart.net/mailman/listinfo/ufpj ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 7) CENSORED 2005: THE TOP 25 CENSORED MEDIA STORIES OF 2003-2004 http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/index.html #1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy #2: Ashcroft vs. the Human Rights Law that Hold Corporations Accountable #3: Bush Administration Censors Science #4: High Levels of Uranium Found in Troops and Civilians #5: The Wholesale Giveaway of Our Natural Resources #6: The Sale of Electoral Politics #7: Conservative Organization Drives Judicial Appointments #8: Cheney's Energy Task Force and The Energy Policy #9: Widow Brings RICO Case Against U.S. government for 9/11 #10: New Nuke Plants: Taxpayers Support, Industry Profits #11: The Media Can Legally Lie #12: The Destabilization of Haiti #13: Schwarzenegger Met with Enron's Ken Lay Years Before the California Recall #14: New Bill Threatens Intellectual Freedom in Area Studies #15: U.S. Develops Lethal New Viruses #16: Law Enforcement Agencies Spy on Innocent Citizens #17: U.S. Government Represses Labor Unions in Iraq in Quest for Business Privatization #18: Media and Government Ignore Dwindling Oil Supplies #19: Global Food Cartel Fast Becoming hte World's Supermarket #20: Extreme Weather Prompts New Warning from UN #21: Forcing a World Market for GMOs #22: Censoring Iraq #23: Brazil Holds Back in FTAA Talks, But Provides Little Comfort for the Poor of South America #24: Reinstating the Draft #25: Wal-Mart Brings Inequality and Low Prices to the World Project Censored - Sonoma State University 1801 East Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park, CA 94928 (707) 664-2500 censored@sonoma.edu ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 8) 150 Arrests during Demonstration by San Francisco Hotel Workers By Frontlines correspondent SAN FRANCISCO -- Over 500 of San Francisco hotel employees and supporters today staged a noisy protest in Union Square with more than 150 of them arrested for blocking Powell Street. With labor contracts beginning to expire Saturday for more than 7,000 hotel workers in San Francisco, hotel and union representatives are trying to hash out differences over health care and pension costs, wages and employee workloads. The contracts expiring Saturday affect 29 hotels. Contracts at 30 other San Francisco hotels are due to expire in September. Union representatives told Frontlines that management is trying to stall negotiations. The same source says that members of Local 2 have been working without a contract for three weeks and will take a strike vote next week. Hundreds of workers and labor activists marched from Market Street to Union Square where they sat down in the streets stopping the cable cars, blocking traffic and paralyzing the shopping district. The workers want a two-year deal and do not want to have to contribute more for their health care. Hundreds of the workers chanted and banged on drums while those willing to be arrested were hauled away by a numerous group of SFPD's officers. Some elected officials were among those arrested, as well as Labor leaders and some supporters of the action. The group representing fourteen of the city's luxury hotels says it is willing to negotiate around the clock to avert a strike and a federal mediator is joining the talks. Union activists stated, "Talk is cheap, they are doing the impossible not to negotiate in good faith." The protest was organized by UNITE-HERE Local 2, which represents more than 7,000 San Francisco hotel workers including cooks, room cleaners, bartenders, bellmen, wait staff and dishwashers. Mike Casey, President of HERE, Local 2 was among those marching. Members of SEIU and other unions were also visible among the hundreds of mostly immigrant workers from HERE. The workers would like more comprehensive health care coverage, decent pensions, pay increases and a more reasonable workload, said Valerie Lapin, from HERE. "Since Sept. 11, hotels laid off a lot of workers and now business is up and people have to work too much and risk getting hurt," she said. Hotels "are making huge profits," Lapin said. "Now it's time to share in some of the success." The arrest came about when workers and their supporters blocked the entrance of the St. Francis Hotel, one of the targets of the demonstration. ST. Francis's management asked the SFPD to proceed with the arrests. SFPD's complied after agreeing that the arrests will be framed as "citizen arrests" and a brief telephone call to "high brass" who "checked with the Mayor or some of his staff" one cop confirmed. Among those arrested were Walter Johnson, 80-year old retiring SF labor Council President; Leroy King; 8th Congressional Green candidate Terry Baum; Father Louis Vitale; D5 Green candidate Lisa Feldstein; Supervisor Tom Ammiano and D5 Democratic candidate Robert Haaland. Today's action in San Francisco followed those of thousands of California hotel workers who rallied in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego on Aug. 13 to press their contract demands. In San Francisco, the day before a master contract covering over 7,000 workers in 60 premier hotels expired, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in downtown Union Square to march past several of the hotels in mid-August. As in today's rally, workers carried signs declaring, "Health care is a right," and "Retire with dignity." "We won't allow the hotels to balance their books on our backs," said Local 2 President Mike Casey, adding, "Hotel employees work too hard to keep our city's economy strong, to be cast aside in their retirement." ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 9) Bush & Putin self-fulfilled prophesies: Slaughter and Terrorism Frontlines Editorial Board http://www.sf-frontlines.com/ modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=828&mode=thread&order =0&thold=0 We are witnessing self-fulfilled prophesies. Bush orders the invasion and occupation of Iraq on bogus claims of terrorist links between Saddam and al Queda and the existence of WMDs. Putin invades Chechnya making the bogus claim of fundamentalist terrorism against Russian civilians and the danger of WMD falling into the hands of terrorists. In Iraq, Bush indiscriminately attacks anybody who does not agree with the occupation: moderate and radical Shias and Sunnis, nationalists and former members of Saddam's party. Torture is applied in Abu Ghraib and tens of thousands of innocent civilians are killed or wounded. Putin invades Chechnya, massacres the civilian population, tramples on the national self-rule and attacks moderates, radicals, nationalists and even those who would collaborate to some degree with Russian rule. His bands of "Special Forces" and masked policemen kidnap, torture and kill political activists and human rights advocates. Both Bush in Iraq and Putin in Chechnya are acting on behalf of the ruling classes of their respective countries. It is more than a coincidence that the production, transportation and commercialization of oil and gas are behind the armed invasions of both Iraq and Chechnya. Unable to resist the power of either the US forces or Russian armies, people from Iraq and Chechnya, who otherwise would be minding their own businesses, act desperately. They kidnap, kill, maim anybody who is an occupier or suspected of collaborating with the occupiers. Otherwise reasonable people turn to religious fundamentalism and terrorism when all the avenues for political expression or legitimate opposition to the invasion of their countries are smothered by the force of arms. When human rights activists, journalists and politicians - even moderate ones - are smashed, imprisoned or disappeared, people turn their eyes toward the intangible of God for help. Faith will not prevail against fire, and represents a regression to Middle Age thinking and attitudes, but what are people supposed to do when the might of "civilization" is brought to stamp their freedoms out? What are people supposed to turn to when every protest ends in massacre and the uncompromising imperial hawks talk about annihilating their cultures, their countries, their liberties? Bush's and Putin's prophecies become a self- fulfilled reality. Terrorism is the last line of defense for those with no way out. Nothing - not even a noble cause such as national independence and self-rule by oppressed nations - can justify the slaughter of kids at the Beslan school, the blowup of passenger jets, the bombing of subway stations or the crashing of airplanes into buildings filled with civilians, mostly workers, in New York. They are crimes and those who order, plan and execute them are criminals. However, there is no doubt that, following on the imperial designs of the US and Russia, terrorists are the product of the policies of the Bushes and Putins of the world. Bush and Putin relish a fight with desperate elements of society as that reenforces the global reactionary consciousness and provides them with a broader platform for the continuation of their policies. No doubt the images of slaughtered children in Russia have served well the political aspirations of both Bush and Putin, as 9/11 served the aspirations of Bush and his gang. Thus, terrorism demoralizes the opposition to imperialism and strengthens those very forces that the terrorists are opposing. There is a clear distinction to be made between legitimate resistance to foreign occupation, included armed resistance directed towards the occupying forces, and attacks on civilians, particularly if they are not involved directly with the occupation. The Spanish people had it right. When suffering the attacks of terrorists, they justly blamed the Aznar government for bringing the attacks on by participating in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And the people did the right thing: they voted Aznar out of government a few days after the terrorist attacks. With that small step forward they set an example for the rest of us. Not enough of a step, as the persistence of the capitalist system in Spain made that step forward only a provisionary one. But an important one, nonetheless. Under different circumstances, the present Social democratic government will reproduce Aznar's policies. There is no solution to be found in the hollow cries to be "strong," ruthless and to increase repression and the violation of Civil Liberties spewed by Bush - and Kerry - and Putin. The increasing number of desperate millions created by their policies demonstrates the failure of their strategies. These governments are increasingly turning on their own peoples as well. Bush, and Putin, may be able to guarantee their own safety and that of a handful of their supporters, but not of the overwhelming majority of working people - those who worked at the Twin Towers or the children and parents at Beslan. In the final analysis, those victims are for Putin, and Bush, no more than "collateral" damage or elements for manipulation of the public through effective TV spots. It is the responsibility and duty of the working classes of both the US and Russia - and all other imperialist countries - to break the cycle of violence and terrorism that originates in their very governments, by getting rid of those governments. Nothing short of such action will bring about a solution to the present world crisis. Terrorism, fundamentalism and regressive consciousness are products of an over-extension of the brutal imperial world system, not of an innate "evil" character of entire peoples as Bush and Putin would like us to believe. Fundamentalists and terrorists were a tiny minority, even nonexistent, when secular, progressive, even though bourgeois, nationalist political formations resisted imperialism even on a limited scale in Africa, Asia and the Middle East during the postwar anti-colonial revolutions. By overextending the imperialist domination of Africa, Asia and the Middle East - and by destroying any and all secular and modern opposition to their rules in those regions -- the US and European imperial powers gave birth to fundamentalism and encouraged its growth. In fact, they often paid and used fundamentalists to oppose secular leaderships in those countries. Capitalism and imperialism have long ago exhausted their ability to move society forward and are rapidly leading "civilization" back into barbarism. The present day trend is for the peoples of Russia, the US and elsewhere to be progressively less safe and more oppressed by the plans of their ruling classes, in a direct proportion as the US and other imperial powers oppress other nations. The replacement of capitalism and imperialism with a democratic socialist society, in which countries share technology and production for the benefit of all and in which the rebuilding of our environment and the elimination of poverty, hunger and imperial rule are priorities, will go a long way toward eliminating the need, and thus the suffering, of acts of desperation. Rejecting the strategy of desperation is also the policy of socialists. We believe that, on the grand scale of things necessary to change society, it is the action of the mass movement on the streets and in workplaces, which can change governments, replace regimes, transform society and make terrorism obsolete, once the material basics of education, food, housing, jobs and health are guaranteed for all human beings. In a prosperous world society where classes do not exist and exploitation and oppression are outdated, there will simply be no motivation for crime, terrorism or regression.
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
US DEATH TOLL NEARS 1,000; DOZENS KILLED AS SADR CITY ERUPTS AGAIN
US Death Toll Nears 1,000; Dozens Killed as
Sadr City Erupts Again Published on Tuesday, September 7, 2004 by the Agence France Presse http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0907-01.htm Iraq was steeped in blood as a fledgling truce in a Baghdad rebel bastion was shattered by fresh fighting that officials said left 40 killed and scores wounded, while the US death count neared the 1,000 mark. Fierce clashes were raging in Sadr City, an AFP correspondent said, reporting that smoke was rising from some areas of the over-populated Baghdad slum while US fighter jets were flying overhead. Supporters of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr cheer and shout pro-Sadr slogans as U.S. armored vehicles withdraw after hours of fighting in Sadr City, Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday Sept. 7, 2004. U.S. forces battled al-Sadr's supporters in the Baghdad slum on Tuesday, killing at least 34 people, including one American The health ministry said 40 Iraqis were killed and more than 270 wounded in overnight clashes between US forces and combatants loyal to rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr. Sadr Lieutenant Sheikh Naim al-Qaabi said 15 of his movement's Mehdi Army fighters were killed and 62 wounded. "Last night was the most intense shelling of Sadr City since the Americans arrived in Iraq," he said, adding heavy aircraft fire lasted from 11:00 pm (1900 GMT) to 4:00 am. US army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel James Hutton reported several bomb and small arms attacks on US forces in Sadr City overnight and said one US soldier was killed in an ambush there on Tuesday. US tanks rumbled around the neighbourhood and automatic fire echoed on Sadr City's main al-Shuhada Street. Four US military vehicles blocked off al-Hay square, home to Sadr's main office. Tuesday's clashes marked the deadliest combat in the Baghdad neighbourhood since April. The US military had also reported the deaths of three other troops in separate attacks in the Baghdad area on Monday, bringing the total number of soldiers killed since the March 2003 invasion to 992. The fresh violence came after the US military suffered its worst single human loss in months Monday, when a car bomb ripped through a joint convoy, killing seven marines and three Iraqi national guards near Fallujah. The new eruption of violence brought an abrupt end to a period of relative calm which had followed Sadr's call last week for a ceasefire and pledge to join the political arena. His surprise announcement came after the end of the weeks- long standoff between US troops and his Mehdi Army around the Imam Ali shrine in the holy Shiite of Najaf. Yet negotiations to secure an agreement guaranteeing an end to violence in Sadr collapsed last week. Sadr's office said the Iraqi government had refused their request that US troops should only enter the two-million-strong slum for reconstruction purposes and also rejected their demand for compensation. The US military announced they had set up collection points across Sadr City for fighters to turn in their heavy weaponry but the call remained unheeded in the absence of a formal agreement. The new flare-up left the Iraqi government in a deepening crisis, following the embarrassment over the false announcement that Saddam's fugitive deputy Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri had been arrested. The capture would have been the highest-profile since Saddam Hussein himself was netted in December 2003 but officials sheepishly retracted their claim Monday after a day-long confusion. Ibrahim is the most wanted member of the former regime still at large but an interior ministry spokesman said Monday that Iraqi forces had detained a man who resembled him. As the capital was engulfed in a fresh wave of violence, Baghdad governor Ali al-Haidri narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, officials said. The governor himself told the Al-Arabiya news channel that two civilians were killed in the roadside bomb attack, although there was no immediate confirmation from hospital sources. In further unrest, the 19-year-old son of the governor for the northern Iraqi province of Niniveh which includes the city of Mosul was assassinated by unknown attackers, medical and police sources said. A mortar attack on the provincial government building killed a policeman and wounded 18 people last week. The governor's predecessor was assassinated in July. As a recent spate of attacks on the country's oil and gas infrastructure further crippled the ailing Iraqi economy, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari continued a tour of the region to muster support for his embattled government. After talks in Jordan, Zebari was due to visit Yemen, Sudan and Egypt, where he will attend an extraordinary meeting of the 22-member of the Arab League later this month. © Copyright 2004 AFP ### Common Dreams NewsCenter A non-profit news service providing breaking news & views for the progressive community. © Copyrighted 1997-2004 www.commondreams.org
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